THE 
 
 MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
Progress is 
 
 The law of life, man is not man as yet. 
 Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 
 Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, 
 While only here and there a star dispels 
 The darkness, here and there a towering mind 
 O'erlooks its prostrate fellows : when the host 
 Is out at once to the despair of night, 
 When all mankind alike is perfected, 
 Equal in full-blown powers then, not till then, 
 I say, begins man's general infancy. 
 
 BROWNING, Paracelsus 
 
THE 
 
 MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE 
 GREATER POETS OF THE CENTURY. 
 
 W. J. DAWSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD," " A VISION OF SOULS AND OTHER 
 BALLADS," " QUEST AND VISION," ETC. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCXCII. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 I. 
 
 THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD. A Young Man's 
 Words to Young Men. Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, 
 cloth, 33. 6d. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE REDEMPTION OF EDWARD STRAHAN 
 
 Third Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 35. 6d. 
 
 III. 
 
 A VISION OF SOULS : with other Ballads and Poems. 
 Price 6s. 
 
 IV. 
 
 QUEST AND VISION : Essays in Life and Literature. 
 
 Price 53. 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 IS Edition remains substantially the same as the 
 *- first, except that dates have been corrected, and 
 certain misquotations rectified. In one instance I have 
 accepted a hint from my critics, and have replaced a 
 quotation by another which better expresses the 
 meaning of the text. Having done my best to rectify 
 any unintentional errors, I trust I may be permitted 
 to put the book itself under Mr. Leslie Stephen's 
 tolerant aphorism : So long as a man says sincerely 
 what he thinks, he tells us something worth knowing. 
 
 W. J. DAWSON. 
 January zist, 1891. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 r I ^HE purpose of this volume is sufficiently 
 explained in its introductory chapter. The 
 aim of the book is to provide within small compass 
 a handy guide to the chief poetry of the century, 
 such as the student of literature may find service- 
 able for the direction of thought and the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge. Many names which deserve 
 mention have of necessity been passed over, and no 
 purely prose writers are included, because for them 
 a separate volume is needed. So far as is possible 
 to me, I have endeavoured to follow a continuous 
 plan, and to arrange the matter in the longer 
 studies under specific heads. This I have done for 
 facility of reference, but at the price of occasional 
 repetition, which I hope will be forgiven me. 
 
 W. J. DAWSON. 
 
 GLASGOW, March 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY I 
 
 II. THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN . . 8 
 
 III. ROBERT BURNS .' I/ 
 
 IV. LORD BYRON 26 
 
 V. SHELLEY 36 
 
 VI. JOHN KEATS 48 
 
 VII. SIR WALTER SCOTT 6 1 
 
 VIII. COLERIDGE /I 
 
 IX. ROBERT SOUTHEY 8 1 
 
 X. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH . . . . 9 1 
 XI. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDSWORTH'S 
 
 LIFE AND HIS POETRY . . 99 
 XII. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S 
 
 POETRY 108 
 
 xin. WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN . 117 
 xiv. WORDSWORTH'S PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL 
 
 POEMS , . , 127 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 / TpHE purpose of this volume is sufficiently 
 explained in its introductory chapter. The 
 aim of the book is to provide within small compass 
 a handy guide to the chief poetry of the century, 
 such as the student of literature may find service- 
 able for the direction of thought and the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge. Many names which deserve 
 mention have of necessity been passed over, and no 
 purely prose writers are included, because for them 
 a separate volume is needed. So far as is possible 
 to me, I have endeavoured to follow a continuous 
 plan, and to arrange the matter in the longer 
 studies under specific heads. This I have done for 
 facility of reference, but at the price of occasional 
 repetition, which I hope will be forgiven me. 
 
 W. J. DAWSON. 
 
 GLASGOW, March 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY I 
 
 II. THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN . . 8 
 
 III. ROBERT BURNS .' I/ 
 
 IV. LORD BYRON 26 
 
 V. SHELLEY 36 
 
 VI. JOHN KEATS 48 
 
 VII. SIR WALTER SCOTT 6 1 
 
 VIII. COLERIDGE /I 
 
 IX. ROBERT SOUTHEY 8 1 
 
 X. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH . . . . 9 1 
 XI. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDSWORTH'S 
 
 LIFE AND HIS POETRY . . - 99 
 XII. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S 
 
 POETRY 108 
 
 xin. WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN . 117 
 xiv. WORDSWORTH'S PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL 
 
 POEMS . , 127 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 xv. WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . 137 
 
 XVI. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONCLUDING SURVEY 146 
 XVII. THE HUMANITARIAN MOVEMENT IN POETRY 
 
 THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING . 155 
 
 XVIII. LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 169 
 
 xix. TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE t ,178 
 
 XX. TENNYSON : LOVE AND WOMAN . . . IQO 
 
 xxi. TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY . 202 
 
 XXII. TENNYSON AND POLITICS . . . .214 
 
 XXIII. IDYLLS AND THE " IDYLLS OF THE KING " . 224 
 
 XXIV. TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET . .236 
 
 xxv. TENNYSON'S " IN MEMORIAM "... 247 
 
 XXVI. ROBERT BROWNING 270 
 
 xxvii. BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE . . 279 
 
 XXVIII. THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION . .288 
 
 xxix. BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY . 298 
 xxx. BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE . 307 
 
 XXXI. ROBERT BROWNING CONCLUDING SURVEY . 314 
 
 XXXII. MATTHEW ARNOLD . . , -328 
 
 XXXIII. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI . . . -341 
 
 XXXIV. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE . . -353 
 XXXV. WILLIAM MORRIS . . . . 363 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN7 RODUCTOR Y. 
 
 THESE studies have a certain aim, and it is hoped 
 will have a certain coherence, which may make 
 them acceptable to the class of readers for whom they 
 are intended. It may be well to state in a few words 
 what the aim of the writer is. 
 
 In the first place, it is somewhat difficult to define 
 where what is called modern English literature com- 
 mences. In the truest sense English literature is a 
 unity. It has grown up out of small and semi-articulate 
 beginnings into a great organic whole. It may be 
 compared to a tree which has passed through various 
 stages of growth, and has at certain seasons put forth 
 foliage and blossom, passing through adolescence to 
 maturity, at last becoming rooted in a stately strength, 
 and bearing a perpetual harvest. Or it may be com- 
 pared to a river which has broadened and deepened in 
 its course, until at last what was a feeble and insig- 
 nificant stream is a mighty tideway, on which the 
 leviathan may float, or the craft of many and diverse 
 masters sail at ease. 
 
 Whichever illustration we may select as most appro- 
 priate, the point to be remembered is, that English 
 literature is an organic whole. There are no deep 
 dividing fissures, and the divisions which we have 
 
 I 
 
2 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 invented to help us in our survey of it are purely 
 arbitrary. Not the less, however, it has its periods. 
 A just criticism and discerning eye perceive how, at 
 certain eras of national life, a seemingly new force has 
 flowed through the old channels, or has made a new 
 channel for itself, and has produced distinct and definite 
 results. The great literary battle of Victor Hugo's 
 life between classicism and romanticism has had its 
 counterpart again and again in English literature. In 
 the days of Pope and Dryden we had a certain theory 
 of poetry which was thought to be perfect and all- 
 sufficient. Poetry was treated almost as an exact 
 science, and the laws for its manufacture were reduced 
 to a precise code, and stated with axiomatic clearness. 
 There were even certain phrases for natural facts, 
 which were universally adopted as current coin, and 
 the west wind was always spoken of as " the gentle 
 zephyr," and the north wind as " the blast of Boreas.'' 
 The aim of poetry was not to startle, but to instruct. 
 It was to put into lucid and authentic <phrase certain 
 facts and teachings which the individual poet thought 
 it well that his generation should learn. Poetry was 
 not the vehicle of passion, not the expression of 
 imagination, not the voice of the emotions, so much 
 as the vehicle of philosophic thought and reflection. 
 To say that the poetry produced under such circum- 
 stances was not poetry is false; but it is poetry in 
 fetters. Everyone knows that Byron loved and defended 
 Pope, and looked upon Pope as an impeccable master; 
 and Pope deserved the recognition of Byron. For 
 lucidity, for sharpness and brilliance of phrase, for 
 delicate force and effect, it is hard to surpass the finest 
 work of Pope. 
 
 But gradually men came to see that Pope's " Essay 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 on Man " was not the last possibility of English poetry. 
 The new social and political forces at work in the 
 world spread a revolutionary ferment through the realm 
 of letters also. Men were tired of the artificial glitter 
 of didactic poetry ; they began to yearn for the fresh- 
 ness and wholesomeness of a more natural style. Just 
 at the nick of time, in 1/26, Thomson published his 
 " Seasons/' which sounded the note of recall to nature. 
 Then, in 1765, Bishop Percy published his " Reliques 
 of English Ballad-Poetry/' in which the note of recall 
 became an imperative and irresistible voice. There 
 was yet to be a long pause before the tree burgeoned 
 with its new spring, or the river burst its old banks 
 into a wider channel ; but at last the ear of the world 
 caught the voice of a Scotch ploughman singing, at 
 the plough's tail, "A man's a man for a' that," and 
 at the brook-side to his " Mary in Heaven ; " and then, 
 in the fulness of the time, came Wordsworth, speaking 
 from the dewy calmness of the English mountains, and 
 Shelley from the passionate air of Italy. But all this 
 was not revolution : it was development. The change 
 was not arbitrary : it was inevitable from the nature of 
 things, and was part of that vast process of evolution 
 which in the world of letters is as distinct a law as in 
 the world of nature. 
 
 Where, then, modern literature may be said to begin 
 it is difficult to determine, and is a point one can 
 scarcely determine without adopting some arbitrary law 
 of criticism, such as the general order of history forbids. 
 Speaking generally, however, it may be said the old 
 movement exhausted itself in Pope, and from that point 
 a new era did begin. The poetry of Goldsmith and 
 Cowper is entirely different from the poetry of Pope 
 and Gay. Recurring again to our illustration, we may 
 
4 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 say that while the stream flows on, one and indivisible, 
 swelled by many rivulets and springs, yet it is quite 
 possible to follow its banks, and to mark certain altera- 
 tions in its character as it passes onward to its fuller 
 life. We notice differences of colour, of speed, and of 
 temperature. As the volume of English literature has 
 increased its variety has also increased. It has become 
 more flexible, more various in power, more complex 
 in its manifold results. It reflects the lights of thought 
 and passion more clearly, and it is readier to catch the 
 shifting side-lights of the times. In a thousand ways 
 the literature of to-day differs from, and in a hundred 
 ways transcends, the literature of the eighteenth century. 
 Into this vast subject it is not my province to enter; it 
 is enough for me to point out, even in this general 
 way, what I mean by modern English. 
 
 The second point to which I would ask attention is 
 the nature of the brief studies contained in this series. 
 The age in which we live is an age of many books and 
 few readers. Does this appear a paradox ? It is ex- 
 plained by what we mean by " a reader." The true 
 reader is a man who applies patience and industry to 
 books, and is contented with nothing less than their 
 actual mastery. He is in earnest in his work, and 
 " reads, marks, learns, and inwardly digests " his 
 books. How many do this? There is reading in 
 plenty, but digestion is rare. The very plethora of 
 books has produced literary dyspepsia. But there is 
 another reason for the growth of books and the haste 
 with which they are devoured not digested. The 
 pace of life has vastly increased since the nineteenth 
 century dawned. Leisure has almost disappeared. 
 The railway has altered everything. It is true that 
 he who runs may read, but much of our reading has 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 to be taken running. The vast mass of readers have 
 no time to devote to intricate literary problems and the 
 ever-multiplying details of literary history. They are 
 interested in books, they feel the fascination of literature, 
 but they are destitute of that leisure for contemplation 
 in which a just criticism grows up, and a sound personal 
 opinion on the problems of literature can be formed. 
 They have " no shelter to grow ripe, no leisure to grow 
 wise " to quote the pregnant line of Matthew Arnold. 
 It follows, therefore, that for this vast mass of readers 
 a sort of middleman is needed, who will do for them 
 what they cannot do for themselves, and put their 
 literary fare before them, not in its uncooked bulk, but 
 carefully prepared in portable doses, and warranted to 
 digest easily. It may not be a very dignified description 
 of the critic to call him a " middleman ; " but that is 
 what he really is, the middleman of literature. But 
 if it is not a very dignified appellation, certainly the 
 function performed is a very useful one, and one that 
 in this age of many books and little leisure is becoming 
 an increasingly important office. 
 
 For instance, take in illustration of this statement 
 such a history as Shelley's. The Shelley literature has 
 now become almost a library in itself. It ranges through 
 every variety of detraction and adulation. To one bio- 
 grapher Shelley is a monster of pollution, to another 
 a saviour of society, who, " under favourable circum- 
 stances, might have become the saviour of the world." 
 Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson has written a huge book on the 
 subject, and Mr. Edward Dowden has written a still 
 larger. Mr. Jeaffreson's book was the unauthorised 
 version of Shelley & life, in which men complained that 
 everything against Shelley was stated with a sort of 
 malicious veracity, and often with a lack of insight and 
 
6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 sympathy which led to actual perversion of the truth. 
 On the other hand, Mr. Dowden's critics complained 
 that he glossed over the really difficult points in Shelley's 
 strange history, and was misled by his sympathy into 
 an equal perversion of the truth. Then, besides these 
 two great representatives of the two essentially divergent 
 views of Shelley, there is a host of writers, essayists, 
 poets, and critics of the first water, who have written 
 with more or less acuteness, and more or less diffuse- 
 ness, on the same subject. Shelley has been pronounced 
 viler and more dangerous than Byron, and has been 
 pictured as a pure and holy being, whose boots Byron 
 was not worthy to black. Every shade of vituperation 
 and praise lies between these extremes. Nor is the 
 battle of the books over. It is very well for Mr. 
 Dowden to write "Last Words" on Shelley, but the 
 last word is not said yet. At this very moment probably 
 there are half-a-dozen writers who believe that they 
 have a fresh view of Shelley to present, and are deter- 
 mined to produce presently an epoch-making book 
 thereon. 
 
 Now, what is the plain practical man, the intelli- 
 gent but unleisured reader, to do amid this babble of 
 tongues ? Obviously he cannot for himself sort all the 
 evidence, and study all the books on Shelley, and yet, 
 perhaps, he feels a deep curiosity to know more of that 
 strange and visionary spirit whose winged words have 
 fascinated him. He wants to know what relation his 
 poetry has to the other poetry of his time, and what is 
 the true secret of his wayward life. To such a reader 
 the literary middleman is an ambassador of peace. He 
 may not know everything, for we are none of us 
 infallible, not even the youngest of us ; but he knows 
 more than the reader who can only take his literary 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 diet by snatches. It is for him to give as fairly as 
 he can the result of his own reading, the impression 
 which a given poet's poetry has had upon him, the 
 general estimate which he has been led to form both of 
 the man and his works. Of course, it may be objected 
 that all the busy man gets from the critic, then, is 
 after all the critic's mere personal view of the matter. 
 But after all that is what the most accomplished critic 
 gives us, and he gives us no more. The worth of his 
 verdict, and the laws by which it is attained, depend 
 on the qualities of his own mind. According to his 
 discernment will be the worth of his judgment ; but his 
 own personal judgment is, when all is done, the one 
 gift the critic has to give. 
 
 This then is in brief the object of this book. It 
 is to put before the reader in a compact form what 
 can be said of the character and worth of writers who 
 have made English literature glorious. The estimate 
 may be imperfect, the verdict may be wrong : but it 
 will be honestly given, as far as the knowledge and 
 conviction of the writer are concerned ; to which it is 
 only necessary to add, that every wise reader will 
 reconsider the verdict for himself, and will, as far as 
 his opportunities allow, avail himself of those legitimate 
 sources of information on which any estimate of any 
 writer must be based. The astonishing cheapness of 
 books puts such sources of information within the reach 
 of almost all to-day, and the process of education will 
 in another generation leave no excuse for those who 
 have not read the great masterpieces of that long line of 
 English writers who have made the nineteenth century 
 famous. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN. 
 
 WE have seen that in Alexander Pope one great 
 period of English literature found its consum- 
 mation and its close. He was the last master of a 
 style of poetry distinguished by a species of hard and 
 artificial brilliance, intellectual rather than emotional, 
 dealing with philosophic niceties rather than the great 
 passions and common thoughts of men, excelling in 
 epigrammatic force and satirical incisiveness, but desti- 
 tute, or nearly destitute, of tenderness and pathos, and, 
 above all, marked by a total indifference to nature. It 
 is a clipped and gravelled garden in which the poets of 
 Pope's school walk, never in the fresh fields and true 
 presence of nature. Their treatment of love is as 
 artificial as their treatment of nature : it is mere con- 
 ventional rhodomontade of " Dying swains to sighing 
 Delias." They hear no lark singing at heaven's gate 
 as did Shakespeare, and travel through no morning 
 meadows fresh with dew as did Chaucer. 
 
 The childlike simplicity of Chaucer, garrulous, un- 
 affected, bewitching by the magic of an art that 
 scarcely seems to be art at all, was entirely forgotten 
 by the men of the earlier decades of the eighteenth 
 century. The magnificent force of the Elizabethan 
 poets was even abhorrent to them. In Marlowe they 
 
THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN. 9 
 
 saw nothing but the violent and untrained imagination 
 of a barbarian, and Shakespeare himself was disallowed 
 the full diploma of their approval. Spenser was left in 
 complete obscurity, and the passionate and fanciful 
 lyrics of Elizabethan literature, excelling as they do in 
 the most delicate and tender workmanship of which 
 poetry is capable, were wholly forgotten. Then came 
 the faint signs of a new era, but they were slow 
 and intermittent. There was an interval before the 
 dawn, an interval between the dying of the old and 
 the birth of the new. The voices that heralded the 
 return to nature were solitary voices, like the un- 
 accompanied song of the lark in the gray morning 
 skies, when the light is thickening and before the day 
 has broken. It will be well before passing to the 
 world of modern English to enumerate those who 
 stood upon its threshold, and were its heralds and its 
 architects. 
 
 There is, first of all, a group of writers, in which the 
 spirit of Pope's poetry survived, and in whose work 
 the ideals of the didactic school made their last stand. 
 Dr. Johnson's " Vanity of Human Wishes " is a sample 
 of this school. It is a stately and pompous poem, full 
 of careful phrases, polished into epigrammatic force, and 
 not without a certain pathos in its descriptions, which, 
 however, springs largely from what we know of the 
 early struggles of Johnson himself. Young's " Night 
 Thoughts" and Churchill's "Satires" belong to the 
 same school, but still further mark the process of dis- 
 integration. The poems of Gray and Collins contain a 
 different element, and in one sense may be said to stand 
 unclassed and isolated. They are among the finest 
 examples we possess of studious, scholarly, exquisite 
 workmanship in poetry. Every word is weighed in 
 
io THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 the finest balances of judicious criticism, and every 
 phrase is turned with the utmost nicety. They breathe 
 the spirit of classic and artistic culture. They are not 
 wholly free from the affectation of their age, but their 
 work is so excellent that we are rarely conscious of 
 this defect. Goldsmith reckoned that ten lines of 
 poetry was a good day's work, but Gray calculated that 
 years were well filled in the perfecting of so short a 
 poem as the " Elegy." 
 
 Gray is also remarkable for another element which 
 was to be a very striking feature of the new school of 
 poets, viz., a sense of the romantic past. The old wild 
 stories of chivalry and daring fascinated him, as they 
 fatally fascinated Chatterton a little later. In Chatterton 
 indeed we have the first and fullest expression of the 
 romantic element of modern poetry. The old grandeur 
 of phrase which distinguished the Elizabethan writers 
 leaps up again in him, and the stern simplicity and 
 tragic force of the older ballad- writers is again exempli- 
 fied. And yet another writer who in no small degree 
 helped on the change was James Macpherson, who 
 published his "Ossian" in 1762. To many modern 
 readers " Ossian " seems a wild farrago of formless 
 bombast; but to the men of the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century it meant much. It is known that it 
 powerfully affected Scott, and was to him a valuable 
 stimulus to poetic creation. Wild and chaotic as it 
 was in form, it occasionally reached a grandeur of 
 imagination and largeness of phrase wholly astonishing 
 and new to those who looked upon didactic poetry as 
 the final consummation of all poetic form and utterance. 
 It was steeped in nature, it painted the impressiveness 
 of savage scenery, the lonely vastness of moor and 
 ocean, the broken magnificence of wild sea-coasts, as 
 
THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN. n 
 
 no one had done before, and with the freshness and 
 frankness of an evident delight. 
 
 To poets who never ventured beyond a park or 
 garden, and thought that Fleet Street provided every 
 interest that human imagination could desire, the wild 
 work of Macpherson was a revelation. He had 
 managed to utter a need which had long been silenced 
 in the hearts of men, the need of communion with 
 nature. Not the distorted nature of trim gardens and 
 well-ordered parks, but nature in her solitude, her 
 sternness, her terror; the majesty of her scarred and 
 tempest-riven rocks, the pomp and splendour of her 
 skies and seas, the " mountain glory " and the " moun- 
 tain gloom," the nature that Turner was to paint, the 
 skies that Shelley was to picture, the sea whose 
 boundless and eternal freedom Byron was to sing, the 
 mountains whose ever-shifting pageant, ranging from 
 the vision of magic colouring and airy distance to the 
 sublimity of tempest and trailing storm-cloud, Ruskin 
 was to describe with unapproachable fidelity and 
 eloquence. Strange as it may seem to those who 
 disinter from their obscure grave the tiresome tirades 
 of James Macpherson to-day, and read them with 
 impatience and disdain, yet the first note of all the 
 wealth of work represented in such names as Turner, 
 Shelley, Byron, and Ruskin is struck in his forgotten 
 " Ossian." 
 
 There was yet another writer in whom the new spirit 
 was to find a still higher expression ; that writer was 
 William Cowper. The pathetic story of Cowper's life 
 is well known. What a strange contradiction the man 
 seems 1 The writer of " John Gilpin " and the " Olney 
 Hymns," the despairing suicide and the brilliant 
 humorist ; can the force of contrast go farther ? How 
 
12 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 incomprehensible it seems that the man who wrote 
 " God moves in a mysterious way " should also write 
 about himself thus : 
 
 Hatred and vengeance my eternal portion, 
 Scarce can endure delay of execution 
 Wait with impatient readiness to seize my 
 Soul in a moment. 
 
 Man disavows and Deity disowns me ; 
 Hell might afford my miseries a shelter, 
 Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths 
 All bolted against me. 
 
 How tragic is the reflection that the sweet singer 
 who has done so much to inspire cheerfulness and 
 trust in others should write of himself, " I feel a wish 
 that I had never been, a wonder that I am, and an 
 ardent but hopeless desire not to be 1 " The secret of 
 this immense despair was in the fact that Cowper's 
 delicate spirit was crushed beneath the weight of 
 intolerable theological problems the riddle of " this 
 unintelligible world." It was Cowper who introduced 
 the theological element into English poetry, and it has 
 worked ill both for poetry and theology. 
 
 But Cowper also introduced another element the 
 utmost simplicity and unaffected naturalness of style, 
 and a true and beautiful love of nature. Far away 
 from the vexed and crowded life of cities he lived in 
 the heart of nature, and his own heart was ever open 
 to her inspiration. When he described the flowers, the 
 clouds, the weather, he did so with an inimitable fidelity. 
 He put down just what he saw with the utmost simpli- 
 city, one might say almost with a scientific simplicity. 
 In this Cowper was intensely modern. Nothing is 
 better worth study, or would prove more interesting, 
 than to trace how the scientific spirit of description 
 
THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN. 13 
 
 has grown in English poetry. The earlier eighteenth- 
 century poets describe what they never saw, and what 
 they had never taken the trouble to identify. Hence, 
 because they have never really studied nature for 
 themselves, they perforce fall back upon the stock 
 phrases of artificial description. In this they stand 
 aloof both from the earliest English poets and the 
 latest. Chaucer tells us just what he sees he makes 
 us feel that he has seen it, and we see it too. Tenny- 
 son, in like manner, has brought the most vigilant 
 observation to bear on all natural phenomena which he 
 has described. The botanist cannot improve on his 
 description of a flower, or the naturalist on his picture 
 of the way in which a bird flies or a wave breaks. We 
 have now become used to this species of scientific 
 accuracy in poetic description, and we resent the loose 
 and inaccurate generalities of which many poets are still 
 guilty. But the true author of this change was Cowper. 
 He was the forerunner of Wordsworth. He wrote of 
 nature, not because it was part of the stock business of 
 a poet to do so, but because he loved her. He, too, had 
 felt the " impulse of a vernal wood," and knew that 
 nature, when reverently studied, has secrets to teach 
 which neither sage nor scholar can unfold. Few read 
 Cowper to-day. His "Task" has verified its title, 
 and men weary of it midway. Cowper is known rather 
 by his hymns and a few brief lyrics than by his more 
 serious and ambitious poems. But it was nevertheless 
 William Cowper who was the herald of the modern 
 school of poets, and who sang the glories of the day 
 when the dawn had scarcely broken. 
 
 Not less marked was the change effected in poetry 
 in relation to its human interests. Cowper loved man 
 as well as nature. In this he was the precursor of a 
 
H THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 great line of great poets. In place of violent satire on 
 the follies of the great, Cowper gave us sympathetic 
 descriptions of the labour and sorrows of the poor. 
 In this he was followed by George Crab be, whose 
 descriptions are equally sympathetic, but more realistic. 
 Crabbe has even fewer readers than Cowper to-day, 
 and is only known to many readers as the "John 
 Richard William Alexander Dyer " of Horace Smith's 
 "Rejected Addresses;" yet he was a true poet, and 
 deserves a better fate. John Murray said truly that 
 Crabbe said uncommon things in a common way, and 
 perhaps it is the homeliness of his verse which has 
 done much to obscure its great qualities. Byron called 
 him " Nature's sternest painter and the best ; " Words- 
 worth predicted for him immortality; Scott read him 
 with renewed and fresh delight in old age ; Tennyson 
 says, " Crabbe has a world of his own ; " while Newman, 
 in one of his " Addresses to the Catholics of Dublin," 
 tells us that he had read one of his poems " on its first 
 publication with extreme delight," and again, twenty 
 years after, with even more emotion, and yet again, 
 twenty years after that, with undiminished interest, and 
 adds that "whether for conception or execution" it is 
 one of the most touching poems in the language.* 
 
 It seems strange that a poet whose claims are so 
 unanimously endorsed by the most competent judges 
 should have fallen into such complete oblivion, and 
 perhaps the real reason lies in the deficiencies of 
 metrical art which appear in Crabbe's poetry, and the 
 carelessness of his diction as compared with the metrical 
 refinement of later verse. Crabbe is a poet who wears 
 worsted ; but, homely as he is, his writings have some 
 
 * Vide Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. iii., p. 490. 
 
THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE DAWN. 15 
 
 of the qualities of the greatest poetry. It is in realism 
 that his force lies. He has little humour ; he is in 
 deadly earnest. He goes to the gaol, the workhouse, 
 the hospital, the half-ruined cottage, for his themes. He 
 pictures the shameful squalor, the hard life, the unpitied 
 ignorance, and the humble heroisms of the poor. He 
 tells his tale of shame and ruin with a grave simplicity 
 and directness of statement which is wholly tragic. 
 He is the spokesman of the ignorant and neglected 
 He utters their appeal against the social system of their 
 time, and in this Crabbe was the avant-coureur of the 
 great Revolution. 
 
 With the French Revolution an entirely new spirit 
 was breathed into European literature. The social 
 problems of the times were forced upon the minds of 
 all men of letters, and especially of the poets. This 
 is again one of the most distinctive features of modern 
 English literature. The social problem is to-day the 
 great problem of Europe. It engages the perpetual 
 thought of statesmen, and it presses heavily upon the 
 hearts of all imaginative writers. A large section of 
 the poetry of our day is full of bitter invective on the 
 tragedies endured by the poor, and an increasing section 
 of our fiction is animated by the same spirit. The 
 beginning of this movement is in Crabbe and Cowper. 
 With the dawn of the Revolution, there rose up poets 
 who uttered the same cry with infinitely greater bitter- 
 ness, and expressed the same spirit with an agonised 
 intensity, a passionate daring and poignancy, wholly 
 transcending the works of Crabbe and Cowper. But, 
 as we have seen, these poets lived in the interval 
 
 Between two worlds one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born. 
 
1 6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 They, however, were its prophets. They struck the 
 first note of the new music. They perceived the drift 
 of thought, and watched the first trailing vapours of 
 the approaching storm. By the time their work was 
 done new spirits were at work, and Burns, Wordsworth, 
 Byron, and Shelley were inaugurating the new age 
 which is our heritage to-day. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 [Born at Alloway, Ayr, 1759. His poems published, 1786. Died at 
 Dumfries, July 2ist, 1796.] 
 
 WE have named Robert Burns as truly the first 
 singer of the new era, and since Burns re- 
 presents so much, he demands more than the concise 
 brevity of a paragraph. He accepted the ideals of 
 Crabbe and Cowper, and carried on the revolution 
 they had commenced, but it was with large and 
 important differences. It must not be forgotten that 
 these great poets were contemporaries. While Crabbe 
 in 1783 was beginning his series of life-pictures of the 
 poor, and Cowper in 1785 was feeling his way towards 
 a more simple and unaffected style of poetry, Burns 
 in 1786 was rousing genuine enthusiasm in Scotland 
 by the publication of the first poems of genius in 
 Scottish dialect which had enriched the literature of 
 Scotland for many years. Like Cowper, he described 
 nature with admirable simplicity, but with a terseness 
 and exquisiteness of expression which Cowper never 
 gained. Like Crabbe, he described " the short and 
 simple annals of the poor," but it was with a more 
 moving sympathy, a deeper pathos, and a concentration 
 and brilliance of phrase which Crabbe never acquired. 
 So far the work of Burns resembles the work of 
 
1 8 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Crabbe and Cowper, but no further. Burns brought 
 to his task a broad humour and incisive wit which 
 neither of his English rivals could emulate. He was 
 himself a poor man, a man of the soil, a son of labour, 
 and he described what such a life was, not from the 
 calm heights of observation, but from actual experience. 
 Above all, he did what neither Crabbe nor Cowper 
 could accomplish he sang of love. He sang of it 
 with a full, passionate utterance, a grace and a fire 
 unknown in English poetry for upwards of a century. 
 There was the magic of enchantment in his song. His 
 lyrics have a sweetness and a poignancy all their own. 
 They sing themselves into the universal heart. As a 
 love-poet he is unsurpassed and unapproachable. Such 
 lines as 
 
 Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 
 Never met, and never parted, 
 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted, 
 
 are immortal. Scott said they had the essence of 
 a thousand love stories in them. They utter in the 
 simplest but most pathetic fashion the experience of 
 multitudes. And in all his lyrics, whether of love or 
 nature, there is an abandonment and freshness which 
 are captivating. It is beautiful to remember, when we 
 read these exquisite love-verses, that the women who 
 inspired them were farm-girls, domestic servants 
 Scotch maidens met at a dance or in the harvest-field, 
 all of them used to toil, and born to toil, and living a 
 life far more akin to drudgery than romance. Yet no 
 heroine of ancient or mediaeval song ever had more 
 beautiful things said of her than this child of the 
 plough addressed to the comrades of his labour. In 
 nothing does the manliness and originality of Burns's 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 19 
 
 genius show to better advantage. He was so truly 
 a child of the people that he found among the people 
 with whom he lived all the elements needful for the 
 nurture of his genius, all the materials requisite for his 
 immortal songs. 
 
 There is not much that is new that can be said about 
 the life of Burns. The story has become an epic, and 
 the epic is known to all the world. It is something of 
 a misconception which describes Burns as a plough- 
 man : he was rather a small yeoman, born of a race 
 of small farmers, hard-headed, industrious, fond of 
 reading, sober, religious; precisely that class which 
 is the strength and pride of Scotland to-day. His 
 father was a man considerably superior to the class in 
 which he moved ; and a strong taste, almost amount- 
 ing to a thirst, for knowledge, was one of the leading 
 characteristics of the home in which Burns was born. 
 But whatever was the precise social position of Burns, 
 there can be no doubt about one thing viz., his 
 passionate love of the people. In his poetry it is 
 the human element that is supreme. For the mere 
 picturesque side of nature, as such, he had no great 
 love; nature is everywhere in his poetry the back- 
 ground for man. Not that he did not love nature ; 
 he loved her as few poets have loved her. His poems 
 are full of those short, crisp phrases, those felicitous 
 touches of description, which bring before us in an 
 instant, with magical clearness and beauty, the aspects 
 of nature in all her seasons, and all her moods. But 
 when Burns looked at a landscape it was not to brood 
 over its beauty, and to invent exquisite phrases with 
 a laborious skill to interpret it. That is Tennyson's 
 method, and living and beautiful as his touches oi 
 natural description always are, yet they are seldom 
 
20 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 quite spontaneous. We are pretty sure they have 
 been corrected, sublimated, refined to the very last de- 
 gree before they have passed the muster of publicity. 
 When Burns describes nature, it is always with a 
 rapid and easy touch, as one who thinks less of nature 
 than of the human toil and passion for which nature 
 is the background. Nothing remains to-day of Burns's 
 brilliant conversation among the notables of Edinburgh, 
 during his first visit to that city in the early days of 
 his fame, but one little story which Dugald Stewart 
 recalls. He and Burns had climbed the Braid Hills 
 in the early morning, and were looking down upon the 
 fair plains, full of the dewy freshness of the morning 
 glory. Stewart expressed his admiration of the beauty 
 of the scene, and beautiful indeed it was. But Burns 
 had his eyes fixed upon the little cluster of cottages 
 at his feet, with the rising clouds of blue smoke trailing 
 in the morning air, eloquent of the labourer's early 
 meal, and said the worthiest object in all that fair 
 scene was this little cluster of labourers' cottages, 
 knowing as he did the wealth of true character, the 
 piety, and happiness, and contentment, which they 
 enshrined. It was a speech that was characteristic 
 of the man. His mission was not to describe nature, 
 but to sing the epic of man. He has himself given 
 excellent expression to this idea in his well-known 
 lines : 
 
 To mak a happy fireside clime 
 
 To weans and wife, 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 
 Of human life. 
 
 There are certain passages in Burns's letters which 
 do not exactly tally with this simplicity of nature, but 
 the letters Burns wrote are the only bad things he ever 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 21 
 
 did write. They are artificial and stilted, and were 
 unworthy of him. For among the many weaknesses of 
 Burns was the temporary desire to be a polite letter- 
 writer, and consequently he has left a mass of letters 
 conceived in false sentiment, and written in false taste. 
 It is true these letters occasionally give us vivid insight 
 into the heart of the man, but upon the whole they 
 distort the true image of Burns. They give us an un- 
 pleasant feeling that under the fascination of society the 
 sturdiness of Burns' s character suffered some deteriora- 
 tion. It would not have been wonderful if it had. But 
 any such lapse was entirely temporary, and limited in 
 its results. A worshipper of wealth and power Burns 
 never was, nor could be. He was, indeed, at times 
 fiercely Republican, and got into frequent trouble for 
 his outspoken political views. His heart was with 
 poor folk, and he was happiest amongst them. How 
 fully he understood their ways, their noble struggles, 
 their social difficulties, let this passage from " The Twa 
 Dogs " declare : 
 
 But then to see how ye're negleckit, 
 How huff d an' cuff d, an' disrespeckit ! 
 Lord, man, our gentry care as little 
 For delvers, ditchers, an' sic cattle, 
 They gang as saucy by puir folk 
 As I wad by a stinkin' brock. 
 
 I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, 
 An' mony a time my heart's been wae, 
 Puir tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
 How they maun thole a factor's snash ; 
 He'll stamp an' threaten, curse an' swear, 
 He'll apprehend them, poind their gear, 
 While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, 
 An' hear it a', an' fear an' tremble ! . . 
 There's mony a creditable stock 
 O' decent, honest, fawsont folk, 
 
22 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Are riven out baith root and branch, 
 Some rascal's pridefu' greed to quench, 
 Wha thinks to knit himsel' the faster 
 In favour wi' some gentle master, 
 Wha, aiblins, thrang a parliamentin', 
 For Britain's guid his saul indentin'. 
 
 Any student of Burns could cite at will a score of 
 passages setting forth with equal or superior force of 
 diction the condition of the labouring poor, and full 
 of honest admiration for their virtues, and sympathetic 
 understanding of their lot. What wonder is it that 
 Burns is the poet of the poor ? What wonder that he 
 is the singer best known in the field, the factory, the 
 mine, the wild settlements of distant lands, among 
 crowds of horny-handed men who have known nothing 
 but hard toil all their lives, and have found but one 
 poet who loves them and understands them perfectly, 
 and has written songs that they can comprehend, and 
 which bring a new light of sweetness and contentment 
 into their difficult lot ? Burns is the poet of the 
 common people, almost the only one, and the common 
 people receive him gladly. 
 
 Another element in Burns which had a wide influence 
 on literature was the mixture of jovial fun, pervasive 
 humour, and excellent wit and satire in which he 
 abounded. He commanded laughter as well as tears. 
 He had an irresistible power of ridicule, and knew how 
 to use it with consummate effect. All that he did he 
 seemed to do easily, without the least sense of effort, 
 drawing upon the resources of a rich and wholesome 
 nature, which never showed the remotest sign of ex- 
 haustion. With him a song was the joyous work of 
 a morning, or even of an hour, and that most match- 
 less example of jovial and rollicking humour, "Tarn 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 23 
 
 o' Shanter," was written in a single day. As for the 
 satire of Burns, that also at its best is unsurpassable. 
 He knew how to strike with swift and deadly effect. 
 He had a wholesome hatred of cant, and a fearlessness 
 of conventional opinion, which were the sources of his 
 satirical vigour. "Holy Willie's Prayer" is the most 
 tremendous blow ever dealt at the Calvinistic dogma 
 of Predestination. Burns rushed into the theological 
 combat of his times with no knowledge of theology 
 beyond that of the ordinary yeoman, but with a splendid 
 endowment of common-sense and brilliant satirical 
 force, which enabled him to do more for the demolition 
 of the rigid Calvinism of Scotland than any other writer 
 who has assailed it. 
 
 The two forces by which poets link the hearts of 
 mankind to themselves are love and admiration. We 
 may admire, and almost worship, but not love : we may 
 love, and yet be unable to worship. We do not love 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, or Milton. They tower above us 
 in an inaccessible majesty. They are the mountain 
 heights of humanity, ^.xid are girded with a sublime 
 isolation. We approach them with awe and reverence, 
 and it is with reverence we habitually remember them. 
 But there is another class of poets whom we love. 
 Their very frailties interpret them to us and endear 
 them. They are not too bright and good for human 
 nature's daily food. We cannot revere them, for they 
 were full of faults and blemishes. They have no claim 
 to majesty, but they have the tenderer claim to sym- 
 pathy. Milton was scarcely the sort of man we should 
 have cared to live with. His own daughters found 
 it particularly difficult to live with him, and his first 
 wife found it so difficult that she ran away from him. 
 His friends always approached him with a solemn 
 
24 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 etiquette such as a monarch might demand. But we 
 should all have felt it a privilege to live in the company 
 of Burns. The geniality of his presence would have 
 filled any place with sunlight. Our love would easily 
 have made us " to his faults a little blind." We should 
 have forgiven him his excesses, and have run eagerly 
 upon the errands of ministration when he was sick. 
 His words of tenderness, his pathetic glances, his whole- 
 some wit, his abundant laughter, his brave struggles 
 with poverty and temptation, even his weaknesses, 
 would have endeared him to us. As a matter of fact, 
 they did endear him to his countrymen, and they have 
 endeared him to posterity. He has now the love of 
 countless thousands of human beings who never saw 
 his face, and know him only by his history. He was 
 so intensely human that no human heart can find it 
 easy to deal harshly with him. He exerts a persuasive 
 fascination on mankind, quite independent of his genius, 
 his song, his exquisite creations in poetry. It is the 
 fascination of a true, loving-hearted man, a man who 
 sinned much and suffered much, who had a hard life, 
 and fought it out bravely as best he could, and in the 
 very prime of mid-manhood lay down to die in poverty 
 and broken-heartedness. The secret of the fascination 
 of Burns, as it was with Byron, is in the man himself as 
 much as in his poetry, and it is the individual note in 
 his poetry, the strong personality which speaks through 
 it, which gives it so wide a mastery over the hearts of 
 all kinds and conditions of men. 
 
 On the other hand, genius is no apology for breaches 
 of the moral law. The sort of explanation which the 
 apologist of Burns sets up for his lapses from sobriety 
 and virtue to-day is an explanation which Burns himself 
 would have indignantly repudiated. He was under no 
 
ROBERT BURNS. 25 
 
 delusion as to himself. He mourned his follies, and he 
 expiated them in bitter suffering. There is no sadder 
 tragedy than the closing days of Burns. Undoubtedly 
 it is a reproach to his time that the greatest of Scotch 
 poets should have worn his heart out in ineffectual 
 struggles with financial embarrassment. But there were 
 other causes also which deepened the gloom of those 
 dark days at Dumfries. Partly by his own errors of 
 conduct, partly by his injudicious violence of political 
 opinion, he had estranged his best friends. He was sick, 
 poor, and in debt. The last letter he ever wrote was 
 a pathetic appeal to his cousin to lend him ten pounds, 
 and save him from the terrors of a debtor's dungeon. 
 It would not have been much to expect from that 
 brilliant society of wealth and culture in Edinburgh 
 that some help might have been forthcoming to soothe 
 the dying hours of the man it had once received with 
 adulation. But no help came. There he lay, wasted 
 by fever, his dark hair threaded with untimely grey ; 
 poor, penniless, overwhelmed with difficulties, but to 
 the last writing songs, which won him no remuneration 
 then, but which are now recognised as the choicest 
 wealth of the nation which let him die uncomforted. 
 Then at last the end came. Those dark eyes, which 
 Sir Walter Scott said " glowed " with such an intense 
 fire, flamed once more, but it was with anger. His 
 last word was an execration on the impatient creditor 
 who had striven to drag him from a dying bed to 
 prison ; and then the troubled spirit passed. It is the 
 old story : we slay the prophets, and then build their 
 sepulchres ; to the living in their need we measure out 
 neglect, and reserve our praises for the dead who are 
 beyond our charity. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LORD BYRON. 
 
 [Born at Holies Street, London, January 22nd, 1788. His poems first 
 printed at Newark, 1807. Died at Missolonghi, Western Greece, 
 April iQth, 1824.] 
 
 THE later science tells us that we do not come into 
 this world with a nature like a sheet of white 
 paper, waiting for any inscriptions we may choose to 
 write thereon, but we carry our ancestors with us in 
 our brains and blood. We inherit tendencies, and are 
 apt to reproduce them. The laws of heredity and 
 environment condition all human life. If this be so, 
 it must be confessed, nothing could be more disastrous 
 than the environment of Byron's life. His father was 
 a ruined profligate, and his mother a woman of coarse 
 instincts and violent temper. It was his mother's 
 habit to mock his deformity, and then to smother him 
 with caresses. She had a tongue full of bitterness 
 and a hand swift to smite, and her habitual treatment 
 of one of the proudest and most sensitive natures ever 
 fashioned was a process of alternate violence and 
 affection. There was something to be said for the 
 poor woman : her profligate husband had squandered 
 the fortune for which alone he had married her, and 
 then had left her to the emptiness of an embittered and 
 lonely life. There was absolutely no good influence 
 ever shed upon the boyhood of Byron. His only reply 
 
LORD BYRON. 27 
 
 to his mother's outbreaks of temper was a fit of silent 
 rage ; which occasionally frightened her into a tender- 
 ness as odious to him as her brutality. Then this lad, 
 full of strong passion and strong pride, is launched 
 upon University life as it was in those bad days, and 
 it is little wonder that he should instantly become the 
 leader of the fastest set the University could boast. 
 Full of humour and equally given to melancholy, sensi- 
 tive to a degree beyond the comprehension of ordinary 
 men, fond of all athletic sports, but debarred from 
 them by his deformity, with an imagination brilliant, 
 powerful, intense ; easily swayed by either good or evil 
 influences, yet also full of pride altogether morbid in 
 its excess, and, when once his mind was made up, 
 absolutely stubborn, and of indomitable will what 
 future could the most charitable augur for such a youth 
 as this? The future was precisely the future such 
 an endowment indicated. The only difference between 
 the boy of sixteen and the man of thirty was that the 
 good qualities had diminished while the evil qualities 
 had ripened. The pride, the stubbornness, the morbid 
 sensitiveness increased with years ; the susceptibility 
 to the influence of better natures decreased as his own 
 nature developed its own forces of will and individuality, 
 and that developed individuality became a power to 
 subdue -others by its own imperious fascination. 
 
 On the verge of manhood Byron awoke and found 
 himself famous. What were the sources of his fame ? 
 First of all there was, of course, the genius which 
 deserved it. He brought into poetry an intensity and 
 passion altogether his own. All the strength of his 
 own nature, and all its weakness too, were interpreted 
 in his poetry. No poet was ever more fearless in 
 putting himself into his work. He wrote with perfect 
 
28 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 self-knowledge, and he made the public the confidant 
 of his most secret thoughts. He had no reticence, no 
 self-respect in one sense ; he flung himself on the public 
 sympathy, and poured all his bitterness into the public 
 ear. He did so in language of unequalled force and 
 beauty. He said what he had to say with an energy 
 which compelled attention. He cared little for mere 
 felicities of construction in his verse, his heart was 
 surcharged with emotion, and he poured it out in 
 an intense and overwhelming volume. The poetry he 
 gave the public was intensely individual poetry. Every 
 character he sketched was himself in various disguises, 
 and the disguise deceived no one. A more undramatic 
 dramatist never lived. He set up a puppet and tried 
 hard to make it work, but it was useless : before the 
 first scene had ended, the puppet was always kicked 
 aside, and it was Byron himself who was pouring out 
 the story of his pride, his wrongs, his passionate hopes, 
 and infinite despair. And not only did he interpret 
 himself, but in a certain degree his times also. The 
 old order was perishing, and the air was full of revo- 
 lution. Without in the least sympathising with the 
 people for a prouder aristocrat never lived he caught 
 up the inarticulate cry of the people and uttered it. 
 He wrote with just that scorn, that fierce anger, that 
 reckless revolt against the conventional order of things, 
 which was seething in thousands of hearts in the last 
 days of George III., and the infamous period of the 
 Regency. Just as Swift served the Irish people, but 
 despised them and their plaudits, so Byron served the 
 democracy, but scorned them ; and just as the Irish 
 people made an idol of Swift, so the English people 
 made an idol of Byron. His books sold by thousands 
 on the first day of issue. They were the solace of the 
 
LORD BYRON. 29 
 
 student, the inspiration of the democrat, the secret 
 delight of the school-girl ; they were read by noble 
 lords and needy apprentices, society beauties and 
 sympathetic dressmakers, atheists and Methodists, all 
 kinds and conditions of men. The English people love 
 a fight, and Byron was fighting the Reviews, the 
 solemn critics whose word had hitherto been as the 
 law of the Medes and Persians, the social proprieties, 
 the edicts of conventional opinion, the King and the 
 Court and the people cheered him on. He became, 
 in a word, the idol of the people, and every excess, 
 every audacity of opinion or of conduct, was eagerly 
 condoned to one so young, so brave, so famous, and so 
 splendidly endowed. 
 
 Then, also, we must take into account the personal 
 beauty of Byron himself. With that one terrible 
 exception of the club-foot, which was his torturing 
 thorn in the flesh, he had the face and figure of an 
 Adonis. Both face and figure were cast in the very 
 finest mould of manly grace. Some one spoke of his 
 face as being like a mask of perfect alabaster, lit up by 
 a great light which glowed within. The shapely head, 
 with its close clustering curls, was like the head of a 
 Greek god. Nor was his grace merely physical : there 
 was an exquisite charm of manner which distinguished 
 him. He was a perfect actor, and the sadness of sated 
 hope which he had set himself to write about he con- 
 stantly strove to personify. Of course, society was at 
 his feet. He was the observed of all observers. There 
 was a faint aroma of delightful wickedness about him 
 dear to many female hearts which would shudder to 
 confess the feeling. Byron had to deplore errors 
 enough in conduct which were real and circumstantial, 
 but he always loved to exaggerate his own wickedness, 
 
30 7'HE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 He called on earth and heaven to witness that it was 
 not his fault that he was wicked. He had never met 
 the heart that really loved him, or if he had, like the 
 young gazelle "it pined and died." All things were 
 against him, the fates pursued him with relentless fury. 
 Such an attitude in the ordinary man would simply 
 expose him to ridicule ; but we must remember that 
 Byron was not an ordinary man. When this theatrical 
 wickedness, this melodramatic despair, this passionate 
 sadness, is interpreted by a man of marvellous physical 
 beauty, in language of matchless force and energy, it 
 is not difficult to understand the success that would 
 attend the representation, or the applause that would 
 greet the consummate actor. 
 
 It is because Byron has projected so deep a shadow 
 of himself over all his literary work, that we are bound 
 to take the fullest cognisance of the conditions and 
 character of his life. What is the effect produced upon 
 the mind by his works ? It is an intense but unwhole- 
 some brilliance. They leave an evil taste upon the 
 palate. The taint of a morbid despair is on all he 
 has written, and on much that he has written there is 
 the worse taint of moral depravity. No satirist has 
 surpassed him in the keenness of his irony, no con- 
 troversialist in the violence of his invective, no humorist 
 in the grotesqueness of his imagination, no writer of 
 any age in the masculine good " sense which he can 
 manifest when it so pleases him; and yet in all, and 
 through all, there runs an element of depraved egotism, 
 a contempt for virtue curiously allied to a remorseful 
 loathing of vice, a perpetual bitterness and cynicism 
 which leave upon the mind the unhappiest and most 
 perilous deposits. In truth, Byron's was a great but 
 morbid genius. His character was destitute of moral 
 
LORD BYRON. 3 1 
 
 cohesion. He was the child of impulse, never un- 
 conscious of higher ideals, but habitually swayed and 
 governed by the lower, or the lowest. His poetry 
 was the exact reflex of his life. He was perpetually 
 sinning, and blaming other people for his sin. He 
 lived in a hard-drinking, fast-living age, and he drank 
 harder and lived faster than anybody. He never 
 seems to have known a good woman. His views of 
 womanhood are simply brutal in their callous carnality. 
 The purity and chivalry of woman's nature had no 
 existence for him. It is the pure in heart who see not 
 only God but the God-like, and it is the genius that is 
 pure-hearted which scales the loftiest heights of achieve- 
 ment ; but to Byron such heights were impossible. The 
 distractions of vice disturbed and poisoned his genius. 
 The only form of womanly purity he ever met was 
 unsympathetic purity. It is needless to enter here 
 into the vexed controversy of Byron's relations to his 
 wife, but it is pretty clear that Miss Millbank was the 
 last woman Byron ought to have married. She was 
 precise, formal, and cold; he was passionate and im- 
 pulsive. A man with a record like Byron's,, if he is to 
 be reclaimed, can only be reclaimed by the most patient 
 sympathy, the most prudent and delicate tact. But of 
 this faculty Lady Byron unhappily had little. Fletcher, 
 Byron's valet, said that any woman could manage his 
 master except her ladyship. That she irritated Byron 
 by her coldness is beyond dispute; and that he be- 
 haved badly to her is equally clear. But beyond that 
 there is no evidence. The foul and odious myth 
 evolved from the lively imagination of Mrs. Beecher 
 Stowe has been repeatedly disproved, and may be 
 consigned to the shameful oblivion which is its due. 
 Byron was a bad man in his relations to women, 
 
32 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 beyond all question, but he was not so bad a man as 
 Mrs. Stowe imagined him. The chief thing for us to 
 note, in our attempt to estimate the significance of 
 Byron in poetry, is that his life coloured his poetry 
 absolutely, and that that life was one long series of 
 misadventures, follies, and errors, for the most part 
 conditioned by the lower instincts of his nature, and 
 embittered by the usual results of unbridled passions 
 and undisciplined desires. Byron sowed the wind ; in 
 his poetry the world has reaped the whirlwind. 
 
 So much in relation to the moral aspects of Byron's 
 worth every just critic is bound to admit. The plea 
 that genius is a chartered libertine was one Byron 
 perpetually paraded, but it is a plea which the common 
 sanity of the race instinctively rejects. We must repeat 
 of Byron, as of Burns, that genius has no more in- 
 herent right than dulness to break the moral law. It 
 is, indeed, the more bound to respect it, "because, as 
 genius is the highest effluence of the intellect, so its 
 example should be the highest manifestation of the 
 soul. Every man of genius ought to say with Milton, 
 " I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment 
 by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of the free 
 man by the actions of the slave; but by the grace 
 of God I have kept my life unsullied." But, leaving 
 the question of Byron's life, what are the distinctive 
 features of his poetry ? They are superb force and 
 imaginative daring, a masculine strength of style, an 
 intensity of conception and vigour of execution which 
 few English poets have ever rivalled. He has little 
 play of fancy ; it is in imagination he excels. His 
 verse has a large and noble movement, and inspires 
 the mind with an exhilarating sense of freedom. He 
 was not a thinker, but he insensibly perceived and 
 
LORD BYRON. 33 
 
 absorbed the new thought of his day, and gave it 
 courageous expression. He did much to accelerate 
 the decay of old institutions and the birth of new. He 
 swept like a storm across the mind of Europe, and uttered 
 in the language of the storm the new thoughts which 
 were then trying to liberate and express themselves. 
 To say that Byron is a great poet is not enough ; he 
 is among the greatest It is the fashion now to 
 depreciate his claims, and Matthew Arnold and Mr. 
 Swinburne have both demonstrated the looseness of his 
 rhymes, and his ignorance of metrical construction, 
 To do this is easy. Eyron aimed at force rather than 
 art, and art was less fastidious in his days than ours. 
 He wrcte careless!}' because he cared little for the 
 criticism of his age, and was at war with it. But 
 for a man ignorant of metrical construction he has 
 done exceedingly well. He won the praise of Goethe, 
 and the foremost place of influence in his time. He 
 alone of the writers of his time shared with Scott 
 a European reputation, and his reputation entirely 
 eclipsed Scott's. Hitherto English poetry had been 
 insulated ; he lifted it into a cosmopolitan currency. 
 In the large and startling effects of imagination few 
 can surpass him. What picture of a Swiss glacier, in 
 the early morn when the mists are rolling off, can 
 excel in truth of description and daiing of imagination 
 such lines as these ? 
 
 The mists boil up around the glaciers ; clouds 
 Rise curling fast beneath me, white and s Iphury, 
 Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, 
 Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, 
 Heaped with the damned, like pebbles ! 
 
 It is in passages like these that the strength of 
 Byron is seen : it is in virtue of poetic power like this 
 
 3 
 
34 7 HE MA KERS\OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 that B ron Has -taken His place among the great poets 
 of all time. 
 
 The last chapters of Byron's life are familiar to 
 everybody. His life in Italy was one profound dis- 
 grace. Shelley said the best thing to hope for Byron 
 at that time was that he might meet with a violent arid 
 sudden death. But it was at this period of moral de- 
 cadence that some of his most extraordinary work was 
 done. It was in Italy he wrote " Don Juan," one of the 
 cleverest books the world has ev~vr seen ; one of the 
 saddest and most wonderful, but also one of the most 
 immoral. Then came the sudden kindling of patriotic 
 fervour for the cause of Greek independence. It seemed 
 as if Byron, after all, would triumph over his lower 
 self, and at mid-manhood begin a new and noble career 
 of public service. But it was not to be. On the I4th 
 of April, 1824, the fatal fever struck him at Missolonghi. 
 On the Jpth, with his last thoughts on his wife, his 
 sister, and his child, he died. Like a sudden shock of 
 sorrow the news ran round the world, " Byron is dead ! " 
 Tennyson, speaking many years afterward, said, "Byrvtn 
 was dead. 1 thought the whole world was at an end. 
 1 thought everything was over and finished for every 
 one that nothing else mattered." " I was told it," 
 writes Mrs. Carlyle, " in a room full of people. Had 
 I heard that the sun and moon had fallen out of their 
 spheres, it could not have conveyed to me the feeling 
 of a more awful blank than did the simple words, 
 'Byron is dead.'" Mis. Shelley, who had known him 
 on his worst side, and had little cause to love him, 
 wrote in that hour of loss and consternation, " Beauty 
 sat on his countenance, and power beamed from his 
 eye. I knew him in the bright days of youth. Can 
 I forget our excursions on the lake, when he sang the 
 
LORD BYRON. 35 
 
 Tyrolese hymn, and his voice harmonised with winds 
 and waves ? Can I forget his attentions and conso- 
 lations to me during my deepest misery? Never!" 
 Even Lady Byron sent for Fletcher, and was overcome 
 with passionate grief; but, as he observed, was "per- 
 fectly implacable." That indeed was the general atti- 
 tude of public opinion toward him : remorseful, but 
 implacable. Greece would have buried his remains in 
 the temple of Theseus ; England refused them West- 
 minster Abbey. The Grecian cities contended for his 
 body, but the country of his birth turned from him with 
 cold disfavour. It was therefore in the quiet church- 
 yard at Hucknall, on the i6th of July, 1824, that his 
 unquiet dust at last found rest. 
 
 In Mrs. Browning's " Vision of Poets," in which the 
 poets of ancient or modern fame are touched off with 
 a precision and beauty of phrase altogether admirable, 
 there is no verse more appropriate than that which 
 describes Byron : 
 
 And poor proud Byron ! sad as grave, 
 And salt as life; lorlornly brave, 
 And quivering with the dart he drave. 
 
 The pity which the poet-heart of Mrs. Browning felt 
 for Byron will always be the predominant feeling of the 
 world towards him. Much there was in him altogether 
 contemptible his vanity, his insincere vapourings, his 
 coarseness, his selfishness, his devotion to what he 
 describes as that most old-fashioned and gentlemanly 
 vice avarice ; but when all is said and done, Byron 
 attracts in no common degree the sympathy of the 
 world. Before we measure out hard judgment upon 
 him, let us consider the environment of his life, and 
 remember that v\ith what n.easure we mete it shall 
 be measured to us again. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SHELLEY. 
 
 [Born at Field Place, Sussex, August 4th, 1792. Poems first published 
 1810. Meets Lord byron at Geneva, 1816. Drowned in the Bay 
 of Spezzia, July 8th, 1822.] 
 
 THE name of Shelley is irresistibly suggested by the 
 name of Byron, and the connection is a vital one. 
 They were contemporaries, and their lives interlaced 
 in many ways, and profoundly affected each other. The 
 influence of Byron upon Shelley was comparatively 
 slight ; the influence of Shelley upon Byron was high 
 and stimulating. In life, in habits, in modes of thought, 
 no two men could be more diverse, and yet both shared 
 a common obloquy and exile. Both were at war with 
 society, and each has left an imperishable inheritance 
 in English literature. 
 
 The main point that unites spirits so different as 
 Shelley's and Byron's is that they were both poets of 
 the Revolution. Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth 
 were equally fascinated by that immense awakening of 
 Europe, and in the early days of its Titanic movement 
 could feel that at such an hour " it was bliss to be 
 alive." But as the lurid light of the days of the Terror 
 fell upon the scene, each receded in astonishment and 
 horror. Coleridge watched the transformation in silent 
 dismay ; Southey took refuge in violent Toryism ; 
 Wordsworth retreated to the cloistered calm of Nature. 
 
SHELLEY. 
 
 Byron and Shelley alone remained, and still cham- 
 pioned the cause of human liberty. But Byron's was 
 the cry of despair ; Shelley's the trumpet-voice of 
 perpetual hope. The one gazed like a dark spirit 'on 
 the general overthrow, and uttered mocking, bitter, 
 angry words, and felt the wild storm of the nations 
 akin to the storm within his own heart, and the ruin 
 but the picture of his life ; the other rose above the red 
 scenes of revolution, and built up in the realms of 
 fantasy a new and golden age. It is this idea that 
 colours Shelley's poetry throughout He really be- 
 lieved in an age of unrestrained personal liberty and 
 consequent happiness. He believed that he was help- 
 ing it on. The fine thrill of a rapt enthusiasm is felt in 
 all he said and wrote. He denounces the old with 
 the fervour of a prophet, and heralds the new with the 
 passionate joy of a poet. " Queen Mab" marks the 
 rise of this conception of a golden age in the mind ot 
 Shelley ; the " Revolt of Islam " expresses the sacri- 
 ficial side of the revolution he desires ; the " Prometheus 
 Unbound " paints the apotheosis of his thought, and i 
 his completed picture of a regenerated universe, the 
 magnificent song which ushers in a liberated world. 
 Shelley sets the French Revolution to music; but he 
 does his work with such an ethereal magic, that its 
 earthly and faulty aspects are forgotten, and it is lifted 
 into a realm of pure enchantment, where all its errors 
 are obliterated, and all its boundless hopes are crowned 
 with a more than human fulfilment 
 
 It is necessary always to recollect how controlling 
 was the force of these ideas upon the life of Shelley, 
 if we are to gain a clue to the strange vicissitudes of 
 his career. The circumstances of his life and the 
 peculiarities of his thought have been so variously 
 
38 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 represented by his biographers, that it is quite possible 
 to rise from the perusal of one life of Shelley with 
 the impression that he was a gifted madman of im- 
 pure mind, and to close another biography with the 
 feeling that of all poets he was the most spiritual, the 
 most unselfish, the most ideally pure-minded. In 
 point of fact, there is evidence to sustain both con- 
 clusions, that is, to the critic who has a cause to plead, 
 and enters on the study of Shelley in the spirit of 
 a special advocate. There were certain ideas which 
 Shelley held which almost savoured of a disturbed 
 sanity. The very recurrence and insistence of such 
 ideas leads the reader to suspect a mental twist. To 
 the staid and respectable people of his day, who only 
 knew him by his advocacy of these ideas, it is not 
 surprising that he was to quote his own phrase " a 
 monster of pollution whose very presence might infect." 
 When a serious and fatal error in his own conduct 
 added impetus to the resentment which his sentiments 
 bad produced, it is easy to understand the position 
 Shelley occupied in the opinion of his contemporaries. 
 Yet, on the other hand, there was about Shelley an 
 atmosphere of unworldliness and purity, which struck 
 all who knew him with surprise and admiration. It 
 was a sort of unearthly charm which invested him 
 with the purity and irresponsibility of a fairy or a 
 spirit. There was a boyish impulsiveness, a childlike 
 simplicity and unselfishness about him which he never 
 lost. He was in truth an eternal child. He was 
 unfitted for the rough shocks of life, and never grew 
 familiar with, or tolerant of, the compromises on which 
 society is built. When he believed in an idea he was 
 always ready to carry it to its utmost logical sequence, 
 and to suffer martyrdom rather than forswear it. 
 
SHELLEY. 
 
 i Of the generosity of Shelley's impulses there can be 
 no question. When Harriet Westbrook, the daughter 
 of a London coffee-house keeper, threw herself on 
 him for protection from the persecutions of home, he 
 instantly married her. When he discovered the reck- 
 lessness and injustice of British government in Ireland, 
 he at once proceeded to Dublin to proclaim a revolution, 
 which should be accomplished by the moral regenera- 
 tion of the people. When he found a Sussex school- 
 mistress who sympathised with his vast schemes for 
 the regeneration of Ireland and the world, he instantly 
 persuaded her to sell ail she had, and live with him 
 for ever in platonic friendship. He was incapable of 
 prudence ; the tide of impulse always mastered him. 
 He never paused for the mitigating caution of the 
 second thought If he did an act of charity and he 
 did many he performed ,,it with complete se.lf-forget- 
 fulness. He could pinch himself to be munificent to 
 others, and when most in want of money always found 
 ways of relieving the embarrassments of his friends. 
 His wants were few and of the simplest. He was 
 perfectly content with a couple of rooms, cold water, 
 and a diet of bread and vegetables. Delicate and frail 
 as he appeared, he could endure the strain of prolonged 
 intellectual toil, and was absolutely happy if Homer or 
 Euripides shared his shabby solitude. 
 
 It was in such a lodging in Oxford Street that Leigh 
 Hunt discovered him, and said that, with his slight 
 figure, his bright colour, his flying hair, he only wanted 
 a green sod beneath his feet to become a sort of human 
 lark, pouring out in the sunlight a song of unearthly 
 sweetness. Everyone who knew Shelley realised 
 something of this feeling which Hunt expressed in his 
 graceful fancy. They felt that Shelley was an ethereal 
 
40 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 creature, whose life was so purely one of the imagina- 
 tion that he seemed outside the world of common 
 human action, with its customs built upon the tradi- 
 tions of the centuries, and its prudence taught by the 
 sorrows of experience. 
 
 This, then, was the sort of nature which was given 
 to the world on August 4th, 1792, when the first 
 thunders of the great Revolution were already in the 
 air. We can easily picture Shelley, the frail and vision- 
 ary child, of quick imagination, eager, resolute, and yet 
 brooding, moved by the strangest impulses, and acting 
 on them with an utter scorn of consequence. His 
 imagination was his life, and it took very little to set 
 those delicately-strung nerves of his vibrating and 
 tingling with ecstasy or terror. As was the child so 
 was the man. The first movement of his mind was 
 towards the supernatural, and his first published writ- 
 ing a worthless romance, in which the supernatural 
 and the terrible were the chief elements. The first 
 man who really influenced his mind was a Dr. Lind, 
 of Eton, who shared the revolutionary ferment of the 
 times, and dropped its fiery leaven into the inflammable 
 nature of Shelley. Even at Eton the wild and dreamy 
 lad was known as "mad Shelley." Then followed the 
 brief residence at Oxford, from which he was expelled 
 at seventeen for having published a pamphlet on the 
 " Necessity of Atheism." There can be little doubt 
 that in his expulsion from the University unnecessary 
 harshness was displayed. The pamphlet was a declara- 
 tion of ideas not of convictions, and was really a 
 series of logical propositions, in which Shelley chal- 
 lenged the first minds of the University to dispute 
 after the fashion of the mediaeval schoolmen. It was 
 one of those impracticable notions with which the mind 
 
SHELLEY. 41 
 
 of Shelley was always teeming. The learned dons of 
 an ancient University did nothing, of course, to convert 
 the sinner from the error of his ways : their method of 
 conversion was expulsion. Such a course might have 
 been readily anticipated. But such a result had never 
 occurred to the unsophisticated calculations of Shelley. 
 The issue of his expulsion was that Shelley's mind, 
 already alienated from Christianity, was now embittered 
 against it, and that at seventeen he was master of his 
 own career. 
 
 Byron spoke of being " lord of himself, that heritage 
 of woe ; " certainly no man was ever less fitted by 
 natural endowment, or acquired experience, to ad- 
 minister the difficult heritage of himself than Shelley. 
 He was flung upon the world with a heart hot with 
 anger, a mind fermenting with revolution, and a 
 character destitute of the discipline of self-control, and 
 regulated by no knowledge of life or affairs. The 
 wonder is not that he erred, but that he did not err 
 more widely. As it was, from that hour he became 
 the poet of revolution. He practised what he preached 
 He had none of the cold selfishness which was the 
 underlying stratum of Byron's character. His view of 
 the brotherhood of man literally led him to share all he 
 had with the poorest, and to meet the most remote from 
 him in the social scale upon a level of frank equality. All 
 the fervour of an exceptionally ardent nature was given 
 to the work of spreading his ideas, and as these ideas 
 passed through the alembic of an extraordinary imagi- 
 nation, they were transformed into the^ noblest poetry. 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable in English litera- 
 ture than the rapid advancement of Shelley's intellect 
 to the highest victories of poetry. His first poem, 
 "Queen Mab," like his first romance, was poor stuff, 
 
42 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 flirrsy and incoherent, and it was against his expressed 
 wish that it was ever included in his works. " Alastor," 
 his second long poem, is equally incoherent, but the 
 beginnings are in it of his marvellous mastery of 
 language, and the first bright glory of his extraordinary 
 imagination. Every year that Shelley wrote he wrote 
 better, and his style increased in purity and condensa- 
 tion. It reaches its highest point of splendour in such 
 poems as the " Prometheus Unbound," the " Adonais," 
 an elegy on John Keats ; the grave and terrible drama 
 of " The Cenci," which is unmatched by anything since 
 the Elizabethan dramatists ; and lastly the " Epipsy- 
 chidion," which has been well described by his most 
 relentless censor as the greatest love-poem in the 
 universe. The " Prometheus Unbound" is, without 
 question, the mightiest and most majestic production 
 of modern English poetry. It stands alone in the 
 magnificent scale of its conception, the splendour of its 
 diction, the harmony and perfection of its workman- 
 ship. It is in itself a world of beauty, and the highest 
 power of word-painting and the finest gifts of word- 
 music which Shelley .possessed found in it a worthy 
 theme for their -, fullest exercise. It was written in 
 Italy, as were all the great poems of Shelley, and is 
 steeped in the light and beauty of that brightest and 
 most beautiful of lands. To Shelley nature was the 
 spirit of beauty, and he worshipped her with adoring 
 fidelity. He was not destitute by any means of that 
 minute accuracy of observation which distinguished 
 Wordsworth, but his power lay rather in those large 
 and startling effects of magnificence in nature, which 
 none but he could adequately paint. He has been 
 called the " Turner of Poetry," and the phrase is as 
 just as it is beautiful. Shelley's power, like Turner's, 
 
SHELLEY. 43 
 
 was in depicting the pomp and splendour of evening 
 skies, the weird and changeful glory of atmospheric 
 effects, the terror of tempest, those rare and more awful 
 manifestations of nature, when she puts on a super- 
 natural grandeur, and seems indeed to be alive, a spirit 
 of strength and beauty, whose rainbows blind us, whose 
 ethereal loveliness awes and masters us, whose half- 
 dreadful charms at once inspire and subdue us. 
 Majesty is the keynote of Shelley's highest poetry. 
 
 Just as Wordsworth treated nature as something 
 alive and breathing, so did Shelley, but his conception 
 of nature differed from Wordsworth's. The difference 
 is exquisitely touched by Mr. Stopford Brooke when 
 he says : " While Wordsworth made the active principle 
 which rilled and made nature to be Thought, Shelley 
 made it Love." There is a passion and sensuous 
 * warmth of imagination in Shelley's view of nature 
 which is wanting in Wordsworth's, and there is a 
 certain indefinable exultation which rlo other poet 
 possesses. He speaks of nature in the tone of a 
 victorious lover. He does more than this ; there is 
 not only exultation but exaltation in the. poetry of 
 Shelley. He seems transformed by the stress and in- 
 tensity of his passion into a spiritual form, a being of 
 fire and air, an Ariel " of imagination all compact," a 
 weird and unearthly creature who dwells among " the 
 viewless winds," and lives in the hidden heart and 
 secret place of nature. This passionate adoration of 
 nature is nowhere so apparent as in his lyrics. They 
 have the true lyrical fire and sweetness. They are 
 the perfection of music. And through them all runs 
 another element, the element of a most pathetic sadness. 
 He pours out in his lyrics the cry of his heart, with all 
 its intense yearning, its disappointment, its insufficiency. 
 
44 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 Of these feelings the famous " Ode to a Skylark " is the 
 best example, and is in itself the most perfect lyrical 
 production of modern poetry. It is sweet, strong, 
 and tender ; perfect in sentiment, perfect in expression, 
 perfect in workmanship. It is known wherever the 
 English language is known, and if every other writing 
 of Shelley's were lost, would be sufficient to give him 
 a place among the greatest lyric poets who have used 
 the English language with mastery and music. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold has hazarded the strange verdict 
 that Shelley will live by his prose rather than his 
 poetry, but the saying does more to illustrate the 
 eccentricity of the critic than to define the position of 
 the poet In poetry Shelley is described as " an 
 ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous 
 wings in vain/' but in prose Mr. Arnold describes him 
 as a master. The fact remains, however, that his prose 
 has rare qualities of force and eloquence. It reflects in 
 a singular degree the precision and purity of the great 
 classic writers of antiquity. The real value of the 
 assimilation of the great classics is the mastery of 
 language which they confer. A ripe classical knowledge 
 leads up to purity and justness of language ; it teaches 
 its students to value and discern the delicate shades of 
 meaning in which language abounds ; it confers that 
 accent of distinction upon the style of a writer, which, 
 in its highest manifestations, is, as Matthew Arnold has 
 told us, the great secret of immortality in literature. 
 Pre-eminently is this result to be observed in Shelley. 
 The English of his early romances is fustian coarse, 
 incoherent, turbid ; the results of his lifelong study of 
 the ancient classics are seen in the splendour and purity 
 of diction which distinguish his poetry, and which have 
 made his writings part of the English classics. Shelley 
 
SHELLEY, 45 
 
 was one of the finest of classical schola r s, in the sense 
 not merely that he found the daily bread of his intellect 
 in Plato, Homer, and Lucretius, but that he has in some 
 respects more perfectly assimilated and reproduced the 
 Greek spirit than any other English poet. The great 
 poets of antiquity, especially Lucretius, whose breadth 
 of view and majesty of style fascinated Shelley as an 
 undergraduate, were his daily companions, and in his 
 coat-pocket, when dead, was found a well-worn copy of 
 Sophocles. 
 
 The remoteness of theme which characterises Shelley's 
 poetry is both a gain and a disadvantage. Often the 
 thread of human interest is attenuated to, the last 
 degree. Mrs. Shelley, than whom no poet ever had a 
 nobler intellectual helpmeet, felt this, and when he wrote 
 the " Witch of Atlas " expressed her disappointment 
 that he had not chosen a theme of more general human 
 interest. But, on the other hand, it is this remoteness 
 of theme \\hich does much to invest Shelley's poetry 
 with so unique a charm. One of his biographers * has 
 well said that in naming Shelley most readers feel 
 they name a part of everything beautiful, ethereal, 
 and spiritual that his words are so inextricably inter- 
 woven with certain phases of love and beauty as to be 
 indistinguishable from the thing itself. We may say 
 so much to-day, but the practical effect of Shelley's 
 insubstantiality of theme in his own day was that he had 
 few readers, and to write without a public for many 
 years is always a serious disadvantage to a poet. It 
 represses ambition, it discourages effort. Much of 
 Shelley's depression of spirits arose from this sense 
 that he wrote in vain. u Mine is a life of failures," he 
 said. " Peacock says my poetry is composed of day- 
 
 * Vide Mrs. Marshall's Life and Letters of Mrs. Shelley. 
 
46 ThE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 dreams and nightmares, and Leigh Hunt does not think 
 it fit for the Examiner. I wrote, and the critics de- 
 nounced me as a mischievous visionary, and my friends 
 said that I had mistaken my vocation." At the time 
 of his death there was practically no sale for his works, 
 and his father only acted in accordance with the general 
 sentiment about, them when he made the suppression 
 of his posthumous poems the condition of a niggardly 
 allowance to his widow. The very expenses of the 
 publication of his posthumous poems had to be 
 guaranteed by the generosity of private friends. Is it 
 wonderful that Shelley cared little to please a public 
 who at the best studiously ignored him, or reviewers 
 who received everything he wrote with virulent scorn, 
 and were capable of writing after his death, " He will 
 now find out whether there is a hell or not " ? 
 
 That the poetry of Shelley should reflect the sadness 
 of his life is natural, but it is noticeable that, as he 
 grew older, his mind became more serene and hopeful, 
 ust as the violence of his early opinions died away 
 with years, and left him writing an admiring essay on 
 the Christ he had hated as a youth. But it is almost 
 absurd to speak of Shelley as growing old, for he died 
 at thirty. In one sense he had lived long, for he had 
 lived much, and intensity of life adds age to life not 
 less than length of days. He himself felt this, for only 
 the day before his death, when he left the house of 
 Leigh Hunt at Pisa, he said that, if he died to-morrow, 
 he would be older than his father he would be ninety. 
 What he might have done had long life been his it is 
 possible only to" conjecture. It is certain that, every 
 year he wrote, he displayed more mastery over his own 
 powers, and produced results more marvellous, in 
 themselves/ and more vvoithy of fame, than the work 
 
SHELLEY. 47 
 
 that went before them. But long life was not granted 
 him ; he died with the song on his lips, at the very 
 moment of its utmost power and sweetness. On July 
 8th, 1822, he left Leghorn for Lerici, on a sailing-boat 
 which he had bought from Byron, in company with 
 Captain Williams. No sooner had they gained the 
 open sea than a tremendous squall struck the boat, and 
 a thick darkness shut her off from the anxious watchers 
 on the shore. When the darkness lifted the boat was 
 gone for ever. A few days later the body of Shello-y 
 was found, and in his hand was still grasped trie 
 volume of Keats which he had been reading when 
 death came upon him. His body was burned, in the 
 presence of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney, on the 
 shore near Lerici. From the flame the heart was 
 taken uninjured, and was afterwards given to Mrs. 
 Shelley. The ashes were buried beside the body 
 of John Keats, at Rome, in the English cemetery, near 
 the pyramid of Caius Cestius a spot so beautiful 
 that he himself said it may well make one fall in love 
 with Death. Thus, by the tragedy of fate, within 
 eighteen months the writer of " Adonais " was laid 
 side by side with the great poet whom he had thus 
 commemorated in the most splendid elegy wh ch the 
 English language possesses. " Adonais " is less the 
 elegy of Keats than the monument of Shelley, and it 
 is of Shelley rather than of Keats that we think when 
 we read the prophetic lines : 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 
 Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 
 Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JOHN KEATS. 
 
 [Born in Moorflelds, London, October 29th, 1795. His poems first- 
 published 1817. Died in Rome, February 23rd, 1821.] 
 
 ONE of the saddest themes for consideration in the 
 literature of this century is the ill-starred life 
 and early death of four of its greatest poets. Byron 
 died by misadventure, one might almost say, at the 
 very moment when he had begun to throw off the 
 poisonous morbidity of earlier years, and certainly 
 at a time when there was no token of failing powers. 
 Shelley was drowned at a time when his genius had 
 begun to show a magnificent promise of ripening power, 
 and when his early errors had not only been amply 
 atoned for, but were repented and forsworn. Burns, 
 a'ter a long series of misfortunes, died at an age when 
 the latter poets of the Victorian epoch had scarcely 
 put forth their powers. John Keats completes the list 
 of poets of great genius and commanding influence, 
 overwhelmed by misfortune, and cut off in the very 
 prime of hope and achievement ; and in many respects 
 Keats' is the saddest history of them all. Byron, 
 Burns, and Shelley, at least, had some recognition of 
 their powers accorded them, and the two first had both 
 ample and generous awards of fame in their own time. 
 But Keats passed out of the world before the world 
 
JOHN KEATS. 49 
 
 had in the least perceived the rare spirit which had 
 been in it. Even those who were his most intimate 
 friends, Hunt and Haydon, had no commensurate 
 understanding of the height and scope of his genius ; 
 both of them lectured him pretty severely, and Hunt 
 even aimed to instruct him in style. The rare lovable- 
 ness of the man, his sweetness of temper and simplicity 
 of nature, his straightforward honesty and contagious 
 enthusiasm, they both admired and acknowledged in no 
 stinted terms of praise, but neither the painter nor the 
 poet really perceived the originality and freshness ot 
 the genius they admired. As for the outside world, it 
 was both contemptuous and indifferent. The reviews 
 of that day were full of a wicked partisanship, and the 
 criticism was venomous and brutal in the extreme. It 
 was quite enough for the Quarterly to know that Keats 
 was the friend of so prominent a Radical as Leigh 
 Hunt; such knowledge afforded ample provocation for 
 attacking him with every fair and unfair weapon it could 
 lay its hands to. Indeed, it was not so much a matter 
 of weapons as of missiles. Keats was not attacked in 
 fair fight, but was virtually mobbed off the stage. To 
 taunt a young poet with his lowly birth was an offence 
 against every canon of gentlemanly feeling, not to speak 
 of the good traditions of honourable criticism ; to tell him 
 to go back to his gallipots and stick to his pillboxes was 
 an access of brutality of which even critics in that bad 
 age were seldom guilty. Byron said he would not have 
 written that article in the Quarterly for all the world was 
 worth ; yet even Byron at an earlier period had written 
 to Murray that if he did not get some one to kill and skin 
 Johnny Keats he would be forced to do it himself. 
 
 The brief life of Keats is soon sketched. He was 
 the son of a livery-stable man, and was born on the 
 
 4 
 
50 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 29th of October, 1795, at the sign of The Swan and 
 Hoop, Finsbury Pavement, facing the then open space 
 of Lower Moorfields. His father had married his 
 employer's daughter, and appears to have been a man 
 of fine integrity, and with some charm of character. 
 He was killed when Keats was a child, and after a 
 twelvemonth his widow married again. Keats received 
 his education at a private academy at Enfield. For 
 the first part of his time there he gave no promise 
 of anything beyond athletic power; then suddenly his 
 mind seems to have blossomed into life, and he became 
 an ardent reader and student. Spenser was the first 
 poet who fascinated him, and Spenser, who has been 
 called "the poet's poet/' was a potent influence to the 
 last. On leaving school Keats was apprenticed to a 
 doctor, and began to study medicine. But he never 
 really took to it. In one of his later letters he says he 
 could never have been a surgeon. He was far too 
 abstracted for the skilful exercise of surgery, and he 
 never could have taken fees. The fact was, his mind 
 was not in his profession, and he soon left it, and began 
 to write poetry. There was a considerable sum of 
 money due to him on his mother's death, and on the 
 interest of this, and latterly on the principal, he con- 
 trived to live in a frugal way sufficient for his tastes. 
 
 He soon found friends, and the love his friends bore 
 him is very marked and touching. He was by all 
 accounts a youth of singular beauty. Mrs. Proctor 
 said, not more finely than truthfully, that his face was 
 like the face of one who had looked upon a glorious 
 sight. It was a delicate and refined face, with large 
 and sensitive mouth, the eyes a brilliant hazel, the 
 forehead low and broad, the hair auburn, and curling 
 softly; a face which once seen was seldom forgotten. 
 
JOHN KEATS. 
 
 In frame he was slightly but compactly built, and the 
 general testimony of his friends is that he always 
 struck them as one destined to long life. He was 
 full of vitality and energy, of enthusiasm and hope, 
 and had sufficient physical powers on one occasion to 
 administer a severe thrashing to a big butcher-lad who 
 was molesting a small boy. Indeed, the common idea of 
 Keats, so far as the first period of his life goes, is about 
 as far from the truth as it can well be. He was no 
 puling, sickly youth, but energetic, buoyant of spirit, 
 creating in all his friends the idea of strong vitality, 
 which was likely to ripen into vigorous old age. Cole- 
 ridge's description of him, as a slack, loosely-dressed 
 youth, with a thin nervous hand, of which the older 
 poet said when first he grasped it, " There is death in 
 that hand," was written long afterwards, when disease 
 had made serious inroads on Keats' strength. The 
 true picture of the Keats who wrote " Endymion " is of 
 a bright and brilliant youth, impressing all beholders 
 with an idea of great powers, a youth who was bound 
 to succeed in making his mark broad and deep upon 
 his times. 
 
 It is, however, not the Keats who wrote " Endymion " 
 we know most about, but the Keats who was the lover 
 of Fanny Brawne and the butt for the ridicule of the 
 Quarterly. It seems to us that there are two totally 
 distinct John Keatses the John Keats before decay 
 began, and the John Keats tortured by the sense of 
 great powers unappreciated and soon to be eclipsed 
 for ever. The impression which John Keats in the 
 days of health and hope produced upon his friends 
 we have already described. The impression one derives 
 from the study of the doomed and dying Keats is very 
 different. It is in his love-letters to Fanny Brawne, 
 
52 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 which never ought to have been published, that the 
 John Keats of tragedy is revealed. The letters are full 
 of violence, despair, jealousy : the ravings of a tortured 
 youth, pouring out without regard for himself all the 
 weakness and intemperate passion of his nature. There 
 is something pitiable in the display, something that 
 makes a sane and self-sufficient nature shrink back in 
 severe distaste. They are, in fact, the revelation of a 
 disordered nature, a nature with no strength of moral 
 fibre in it, and in this view the words of his contem- 
 poraries confirm us. Haydon, who knew him perhaps 
 better than any man, says emphatically, " His ruin was 
 owing to his want of decision of character and power 
 of will, without which genius is a curse." Nor does 
 Haydon speak in the spirit of a censorious critic. He 
 loved Keats. He says in another place, Keats had " an 
 eye that had an inward look, perfectly divine, like a 
 Delphian priestess who saw visions. Poor dear Keats ! 
 had nature given you firmness as well as fineness of 
 nerve, you would have been glorious in your maturity 
 as great in your promise ! " It is difficult to sum up 
 the impressions such words as these create, but 
 unquestionably they describe a nature in which the 
 artistic and intellectual forces were not balanced by 
 the moral forces. There is not the firmness of nerve 
 Haydon speaks of. There is something, on the 
 contrary, that strikes one as sensuous and unwhole- 
 some. Keats says of himself, he has an " exquisite 
 sense of the luxurious," and writes, "Oh for a life of 
 sensations rather than thoughts ! " There is a story 
 of his once having covered his tongue with cayenne 
 pepper, that he might appreciate more exquisitely the 
 sense of the coolness of the claret he was about to 
 drink. The story is slight, but it appears authentic, 
 
JOHN KEATS. 53 
 
 and it coincides with the impression of character which 
 Haydon's criticisms and Keats' own words convey. 
 How far the pressure of disease may account for these 
 morbid excesses it is impossible to say : but it is certain 
 that this touch of the morbid ran through all Keats' 
 later period, and occasionally gave his poetry a sort of 
 false and hectic splendour. It is a dying poet who 
 writes; and there is something of the preternatural 
 brilliance of disease in his poetry. 
 
 Turning from the poet to his poetry, there are con- 
 siderations of great interest which readily suggest 
 themselves. Keats is the youngest and last of the 
 great band of poets who laid the foundations of the 
 poetry of the century : but he is not of them. The 
 Revolution woke no echoes in his nature. He pro- 
 fessed, indeed, the most advanced democratic opinions, 
 and reverenced Voltaire ; but there is no trace either of 
 political or religious bias in his poetry. He is destitute 
 alike of love to God and enthusiasm for humanity, so 
 far as his poetry is concerned. Byron was never free 
 from the haunting presence of religious problems; 
 Byron and Shelley were both filled with the fervour of 
 the revolutionary spirit ; but in Keats there is no trace 
 of either. He had no interest in man. In the passion 
 and tragic struggle of ordinary human life he discovered 
 no food for poetry. To him poetry was a world of the 
 imagination only, a sealed and sworded paradise, a 
 realm of enchantment where only those might dwell 
 who saw visions and dreamed dreams a land of volup- 
 tuous languor, where magic music filled the air and life 
 passed like a dream, measured only by the exquisiteness 
 of its sensations and the intensity of its delights. In 
 order to create such a world, he went back to the legends 
 of ancient Greece and the stories of mediaeval life. To 
 
54 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 him the vision of modern life was tame and vulgar ; he 
 needed a realm more remote, and consequently obscured 
 by the haze of distance, in which his imagination could 
 work unhindered. The world he thus lived in was a 
 completely ideal world, jealously closed as far as he 
 could close it against the intrusion of ordinary human 
 affairs. So saturated did his mind become with the 
 imaginations of the past, that Leigh Hunt said of him, 
 " He never beheld the oak-tree without seeing the 
 Dryad." The only thought he has ever elaborated in 
 all his writings is that beauty is worthy of worship, 
 and loveliness should be worshipped for its own sake. 
 The worship of loveliness he thus substituted for the 
 worship of truth, and this seems to have satisfied all 
 the religious instincts of his nature. 
 
 Essentially this is the artist's view of life. The cant 
 of art now is that art exists for its own sake, and 
 has nothing whatever to do with morals. Of this 
 view John Keats was the true, though perhaps uncon- 
 scious, originator. He created the school of ornate and 
 artistic poetry poetry which has no human robustness 
 or passion about it, but which excels in the exquisite- 
 ness of its workmanship, and the delicacy and remote- 
 ness of its imagination. He himself said that a perfect 
 phrase delighted him with a sense of intoxication. 
 His view of poetry was that it should aim at the pro- 
 duction of perfect phrases, beautiful enough to be 
 welcomed for their own sake, apart from any thought 
 or lesson they might convey. Here is his own poetic 
 creed: " 1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine 
 excess, and not by singularity ; it should strike the 
 reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and 
 appear almost a remembrance. 2nd. Its touches of 
 beauty should be never half-way, thereby making the 
 
JOHN KEATS. 55 
 
 reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the 
 progress, the setting of imagery should, like the sun, 
 come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, 
 although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of 
 twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should 
 be than to write it. And this leads me to another 
 axiom That if poetry comes not as naturally as the 
 leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all." This 
 is, in brief, Keats' creed, and his work exemplifies it. 
 He does little to quicken the sympathies, nothing to 
 liberate the moral impulses, or to instruct the intellect. 
 He surprises us by the " fine excess " of his imagery ; 
 he weaves a fabric of phrase wonderful for its colour 
 and beauty, and he does no more. With that he is 
 content ; to dazzle us with loveliness is, according to 
 his view of poetry, a sufficient end and aim. We have 
 spoken of him as helping to lay the foundations of 
 nineteenth-century poetry : it would be juster to say 
 that he waited till the foundations were laid, and then 
 covered the superstructure with an intricate arabesque 
 of strange and gorgeous beauty. 
 
 "Endymion," the first work of Keats, reveals the 
 artistic nature in its primal struggle to realize these 
 ideals. It has nothing to teach, no thought, or scheme 
 of thought, to unfold, no real story to tell, nothing but 
 its own wealth of phrase and imagery to recommend 
 it. Of course it pretends to have a story, but as the 
 poem proceeds the story is reduced to extreme tenuity. 
 It aims, moreover, at being a love-story : but there is 
 no human vigour in its love. To read it consecutively 
 is almost impossible. The nuggets of gold lie far apart, 
 and between them are dreary intervals, where the work 
 of reading is indescribably toilsome, and the toil yields 
 but the scantiest result. 
 
56 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The cardinal fault of "Endymion" is that it is con- 
 fused and unequal, and is overlaid by excessive imagery. 
 No one felt its defects, however, more keenly than its 
 author, and no criticism could be more just than the criti- 
 cism of his own preface to it. He says, the reader "must 
 soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every 
 error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed 
 accomplished. This may be speaking presumptuously, 
 and may deserve a punishment ; but no feeling man 
 will be forward to inflict it; he will leave me alone 
 with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than 
 the failure of a great object. The imagination of a boy 
 is healthy ; and the mature imagination of a man is 
 healthy ; but there is a space of life between in which 
 the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the 
 way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted; 
 thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand 
 bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily 
 taste in going over the following pages." 
 
 Nothing can be more correct, more honest, or more 
 beautifully expressed, than this. It exactly hits the 
 cardinal fault of Keats' early poetry viz., mawkish- 
 ness. There is a desire for mere prettinesses of diction, 
 an intemperate use of ornament, a straining after verbal 
 effect at the expense of thought, a weakness of touch, 
 which were only too likely to offend the sense of critical 
 readers. But there were also passages of such rare 
 and visionary beauty, of such exquisite touch and 
 diction, that the feeling man might well hesitate to 
 inflict any very severe punishment upon a genius of 
 such unusual promise. There are few men who have 
 ever formed so correct an estimate of their own power 
 as Keats; whatever were the confessions of present 
 immaturity, he had a clear sense of his own capacity, 
 
JOHN KEATS. 57 
 
 and never doubted his ability to free himself from his 
 early errors, and achieve really noble and memorable 
 work. 
 
 In another part of this same preface he says that 
 while " Endymion " may dwindle into obscurity he will 
 be plotting and fitting himself for verses fit to live. 
 He said on one occasion, " I think I shall be re- 
 membered with the poets when I am dead/ 1 and no 
 bitterness of rebuke on the part of a venal press ever 
 dulled this clear perception of the scope and promise of 
 his own genius. " Endymion " is a confusion of beau- 
 ties and weaknesses, a tangled jungle of rich foliage, 
 but in it are some of the loveliest flowers and fruits of 
 English poetry. Its famous opening lines should have 
 arrested attention and regard : 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever : 
 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 
 Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
 
 The touching modesty of its preface should have 
 saved it from the harsh handling of a careless or hostile 
 criticism. But neither of these results followed. The 
 poem was universally ridiculed, and Keats' first offering 
 of beauty was contemptuously flung back in his face. 
 
 Like Shelley, the rapidity with which Keats' genius 
 matured is astonishing. Destiny seemed anxious to 
 atone for the brevity of the time for work by hastening 
 its advance. In the later poems of Keats there is no 
 trace of the confusion of " Endymion." " Hyperion " 
 is a fragment only, but it is second in sublimity and 
 massiveness only to the work of Milton. In " Lamia," 
 " Isabella," and the " Eve of St. Agnes" we have 
 workmanship which is so excellent that it is vain to 
 
58 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 hope that it can be excelled, and in the half-a-dozen 
 great " Odes " which Keats has written we have work 
 which the greatest of poets might have been proud 
 to claim. In the subtle magic of suggestive phrase, 
 such as 
 
 Magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn, 
 
 Keats has no master. There is a veritable enchantment 
 about these " Odes." They, indeed, surprise us by " a 
 fine excess," and intoxicate the imagination with their 
 beauty. They frequently reveal also a patient obser- 
 vation of nature, and an accuracy in describing her, 
 which is akin to Wordsworth. Some of his phrases, in 
 the delicacy and intensity of their imagination, fairly 
 rival Shakespeare. They fix themselves instantly in 
 the memory, and cannot be shaken off. And in all 
 there is a sense of romantic youth which is in itself 
 fascinating. They are the poems of adolescence, and, 
 if they want the firm vigour of manly completeness, 
 they excel in the fire and passion of young delight. 
 Nothing can be truer or finer than the closing sentence 
 of Mr. Michael Rossetti's brief biography : " By his 
 early death Keats was doomed to be the poet of youth- 
 fulness ; by being the poet of youthfulness he was 
 privileged to become and to remain enduringly the poet 
 of rapt expectation and passionate delight." 
 
 The later biographers of Keats have made it abund- 
 antly clear that the Quarterly criticism had nothing 
 whatever to do with his death. That impression is due 
 to Shelley's matchless dirge, " Adonais," and to Byron's 
 allusion in " Don Juan "- 
 
 Tis strange the mind, that fiery particle, 
 Should let itself be snuffed out by an article. 
 
JOHN KEATS. 59 
 
 The fact is, Keats bore his rejection with quiet 
 dignity and manliness. The breakdown of his health 
 was due to other causes. It began with a walking- 
 tour to Scotland, during which his over-exertion, and 
 exposure to bad weather, ripened the first seeds of 
 disease which he had inherited from his mother. 
 Then came his brother Tom's death of consumption, 
 and then his most unfortunate love affair. Love with 
 John Keats was a passion of singular intensity, and the 
 fire consumed him. He was in a constant fever of 
 thought and desire, fascinated and repelled, torn by 
 empty jealousies and ashamed of them, living in a 
 constant whirlwind of excited passion, and it was more 
 than his overtaxed strength could endure. He lived 
 two years after the publication of " Endymion," but 
 they were years of labour and sorrow. One night he 
 coughed, and then called his friend Brown to bring him 
 the candle. " I know the colour of that blood," said 
 he: "it is arterial blood. I shall die." There were 
 temporary rallies, but the mischief was too deep-seated 
 for cure. He lived to write some of the noblest poems 
 in the English language, and never had the flame of 
 genius burned so brilliantly in him as in those last brief 
 months of disease. As a last resource he went to 
 Rome, and there he died in the arms of his friend 
 Severn. "I am dying. I shall die easy ; don't be 
 frightened ; be firm, and thank God it has come," said 
 he. They were his last words. He passed quietly 
 away in his twenty-seventh year, and his remains were 
 laid in the beautiful cemetery at Rome, where, seven- 
 teen months later, all of Shelley that could be rescued 
 from the funeral fire at Spezzia was laid beside him. 
 He said his epitaph should be, " Here lies one whose 
 name was writ in water." The truer epitaph is, " Here 
 
60 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 lies one whose name is graven in adamant. 9 Or 
 perhaps we may accept the fanciful transformation 
 of his own imagery which Shelley made, when he 
 wrote : 
 
 Here lieth one whose name was writ in water ; 
 
 But, ere the breath that could erase it blew, 
 
 Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, 
 
 Death, the immortalising winter, flew 
 
 Athwart the stream, and time's mouthless torrent grew 
 
 A scroll of crystal, emblazoning the name 
 
 Of Adonais. 
 
 His influence upon the poets of his century has been 
 unique and abiding : there is scarcely a poet, from his 
 own day to the days of Tennyson and Rossetti, with 
 the solitary exception of Wordsworth, who does not 
 exhibit some trace of that influence. To them, and to 
 us, the work of this ill-fated lad, whose sun went 
 down while it was yet day, is 
 
 A thing of beauty and a joy for ever. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 [Born in Edinburgh, "mine own romantic town," August I5th, 1771. 
 First original poem, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," published 
 1805. Died at Abbotsford, 2ist September, 1832.] 
 
 AMONG the men who did most to direct the course 
 of literature in the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century the most colossal figure is certainly that of 
 Scott. At the time when Wordsworth had finally 
 renounced the world, and turned northward to the calm 
 retreats of Grasmere, Scott was girding himself for his 
 work. Scott was the lifelong friend of Wordsworth, 
 and there was much in their natures that was akin. 
 We have seen how the great force of the French Revolu- 
 tion acted on Southey and Coleridge, driving the one to 
 fierce reaction, and the other to the maze of philosophic 
 speculation. We have seen that it produced no effect 
 whatever on Keats, and that the only two great spirits 
 who remained true to its daring ideals were Shelley and 
 Byron. Wordsworth turned from its Titanic confusion 
 to the study of nature ; Scott to the study of the 
 romantic past. Indeed, it can scarcely be said that 
 Scott even turned from it in the sense in which 
 Wordsworth did, for there is no evidence that he was 
 ever fascinated by it. All that wild outburst, which 
 rilled even so calm a nature as Wordsworth's with 
 enthusiasm, and which made every chord of the world's 
 heart vibrate with its intolerable stress and passion, 
 
62 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 passed over him and left him unmoved. Scott shared 
 with Wordsworth his intense delight in nature, but 
 not his enthusiasm for humanity. It was the splendour 
 of the past rather than the thrilling struggles of the 
 present which fascinated his imagination. There was 
 a sobriety of temperament about Scott which unfitted 
 him for any active sympathy with the great movements 
 of the time in which his lot was cast. Nevertheless, 
 however unconsciously, the strong tide that was flowing 
 did affect him, and the impulse of his age was on him. 
 The result of that impulse of the age working on a 
 nature so deep and sober as his is seen in a species of 
 poetry, which was a magnificent innovation, and a long 
 line of glorious fictions, which have made him the true 
 father of the modern novel. 
 
 We have seen also that of all the great writers of the 
 dawn of the century, only two made their voices heard 
 in Europe, and achieved a cosmopolitan fame. Those 
 two, dissimilar in almost every respect, were Scott and 
 Byron. Yet few men of really great genius have been 
 so curiously limited in nature as Scott. 
 
 It was in the year 1805 the year in which Nelson 
 died in the cockpit of the Victory ; in which Austerlitz 
 was fought, and Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, 
 amid all the wild storm of trampling hosts and falling 
 kingdoms that Scott put forth his first poem, "The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel." As it was something of an 
 accident that led Scott to write novels, so it was what 
 seemed a mere happy chance that produced the 
 celebrated " Lay." Lady Dalkeith had requested Scott 
 to write a metrical sketch of a certain old legend which 
 clung to the district in which she lived. Nothing could 
 have suited the young Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire 
 better. From childhood his memory had been stored 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 63 
 
 with fantastic relics of a legendary past. Old snatches 
 of ballad-poetry, curious stories of second-sight, all the 
 odds and ends which the literary antiquary loves and 
 cherishes, were the natural heritage of Scott. The 
 grotesque, the heroic, the romantic were the diet upon 
 which his imagination had been fed. Upon the impulse 
 of this request, Scott set to work and composed a 
 spirited sketch of a scene of feudal festivity in the hall 
 of Branksome, disturbed by some pranks of a nonde- 
 script goblin. The sketch pleased him so well that 
 there flashed across his mind the idea of extending 
 his simple outline so as to embrace a vivid panorama 
 of that old border-life of war and tumult, and all ear- 
 nest passions, with which his researches in minstrelsy 
 had by degrees fed his imagination. Gradually the 
 sketch grew until it had expanded into a poem of six 
 cantos. From his friends it won little favour : from 
 the great Scotch critics open rebuke. The subject 
 seemed to them too local to win general attention, and 
 the octosyllabic verse which the poet had employed 
 entirely unsuitable for narrative verse. Both in theme 
 and metre Scott was attempting a daring innovation, and 
 innovations are rarely popular with critics. As regards 
 the metre, Scott pointed out later that it was the one 
 metre perfectly adapted for narrative poetry. He took, 
 as an example, the opening lines of Pope's " Iliad : "- 
 
 Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring 
 Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing. 
 The wrath which sent to Pluto's gloomy reign 
 The souls of mighty chiefs in battle slain, 
 Whose bones unburied on the desert shore, 
 Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore ; 
 
 and contended that the underlined adjectives were mere 
 expletives, and that the verse would be much stronger 
 
64 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 and more expressive without them. This is imme- 
 diately apparent by comparison, -and if we want further 
 proof of the adaptability of octosyllabic metre to the 
 most vivacious, terse, and resonant narrative-poetry, 
 we have it in Scott's own work. According to Byron's 
 verdict, Scott had completely triumphed over " the fatal 
 facility of octosyllabic verse," and Byron in his sub- 
 sequent poems was not slow to profit by the lesson. 
 But Scott had done more than that. He had invented 
 a new style of poetry, and had interested the world in 
 an entirely new theme. The old stories of knight and 
 lady, monastery and castle, tournament and chivalry, 
 had wholly dropped out of view, and amid the immense 
 drama of Europe as it was in 1805 men might well 
 suppose there was no room for their revival. 
 
 Scott again rekindled the love of chivalry, the old 
 admiration of the troubadour, in the English heart. 
 He brought precisely the gifts needed for his work. 
 He had no philosophic meditativeness, but he knew 
 how to tell a story. He also knew how to paint a 
 picture. The force of his verse lies in its simplicity 
 and vivid directness of phrase. His imagery is seldom 
 very original, but it is always spontaneous, and very 
 frequently is striking. The idea of the wounded day 
 bleeding in the sky, for instance, is not novel in poetry. 
 Alexander Smith speaks of " bright bleeding day ; " 
 Shakespeare impressively paints the red dawn of the 
 battle of Shrewsbury" when he says, 
 
 How bloodily the sun begins to peer 
 Above yond' bosky hill ! the day looks pale 
 At his distemperature. 
 
 But Scott has surpassed both in concentration of effect 
 when he paints the setting sun in " Rokeby ; " 
 
SIX WALTER SCOTT. 65 
 
 With disc like battle-target red 
 He rushes to his burning bed, 
 Dyes the wild wave with bloody light, 
 Then sinks at once, and all is night. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has testified how true was Scott's sense 
 of colour, and with what fidelity he describes the 
 scenery which was familiar to him. In this quality 
 his outdoor life was the secret of his power. He had 
 himself ridden over the hills his heroes scale in mad 
 flight or pursuit. By birth, by natural impulse and 
 character, he was precisely fitted to interpret all this. 
 And he did interpret it, to the immeasurable delight 
 of his readers, in the early days of this century. The 
 freshness and vivacity of his style, the newness of his 
 theme, his obvious enthusiasm for his subject, won for 
 him instant attention and fame. Fox and Pitt both 
 read the " Lay " with intense interest, and Pitt said 
 that the picture it presented was " a sort of thing 
 which he might have expected in painting, but could 
 never have fancied capable of being given in poetry." 
 Before 1805 had ended Scott was universally recog- 
 nised as the first poet of his day. 
 
 It is needless for us here to follow the subsequent 
 poems of Scott with minute description. In essential 
 respects there is little difference. In each there is the 
 same romantic interest, the same steady hand produc- 
 ing sound and excellent work, the same freshness and 
 wholesomeness of imagination and sentiment. Never 
 was a poet so entirely free from the slightest trace of 
 the morbid. His verse is like his own Scotch rivers : 
 clear, full, and pleasant, suggestive of the mountains 
 and the open sky, and filling the ear with simple music. 
 But there Scott's power as a poet ends. There were 
 other and deeper things working in men's hearts which 
 
 5 
 
66 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 he had no power to interpret. There was an intense 
 feeling abroad that it was the present and not the past 
 which was of supreme import : the natural feeling of 
 men standing in a new age, and filled with a passionate 
 hatred of its limitations, and an equally passionate 
 belief in its enormous promises. It needed Byron to 
 interpret this ; and when Byron began to lift up his 
 voice of mingled cynicism and rage, his wild cry of 
 despairing bitterness drew men's thoughts away from 
 the old chivalrous lays of Scott. The sense of the 
 time was profoundly right. Poetry which is a repro- 
 duction of the past must always bow before poetry 
 which throbs with the actuality of the present. Men 
 felt that the true romance and chivalry of life was at 
 their doors, and that it was in the present the real 
 knight must ride to the redress of wrong, and the real 
 hero bow in his solitary vigil. " The burden of this 
 unintelligible world " was being felt anew ; the pres- 
 sure of social and theological problems was increasing, 
 and men wanted other singers than Scott to move 
 their hearts and dominate their thoughts. 
 
 It is characteristic of Scott that he knew perfectly 
 well that when Byron began to write his day was over. 
 He quietly said Byron had "bet him," and he never 
 sang again. Without a touch of jealousy, with simple 
 manliness, Scott admitted that a greater poet than 
 himself had come, and instead of waging a losing 
 battle for his lost supremacy, he praised his rival, and 
 then left the arena with all the honours of war. There 
 are few men who could have done this. That Scott 
 did it, and did it e'asily, is at once a proof of the sturdy 
 manliness of his nature, and of the robust common- 
 sense and generosity which marked his character. 
 
 Scott left the field of poetry with honour and dignity 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 67 
 
 but it was only to open a new chapter in a great career. 
 He was too ambitious and too full of energy to rest 
 content under his defeat. In 1805 he had commenced 
 a story which dealt with the history of Jacobite 
 Scotland. In 1814 he took up the old MS., and 
 thought sufficiently well of it to complete it. Lockhart 
 has given a vivid and memorable account of how Scott 
 wrote it, and Lockhart's narrative has become a classic 
 quotation. Scott wrote at white-heat, and with scarcely 
 a pause. Lockhart was assisting at a party held in a 
 house which exactly faced the room where Scott was 
 writing. One of the company suddenly rose from his 
 chair and said he could " endure it no longer." What 
 he had been enduring was the shadow of a hand, 
 moving hour after hour, with rhythmic regularity, be- 
 hind the opposite window, and piling up as it wrote 
 sheet after sheet of MS. "I have been watching it," 
 he said. " It fascinates the eye. It never stops. Page 
 after page is thrown on that heap of MS. and still it 
 goes on unwearied; and so it will be till the candles 
 are brought in, and God knows how long after that. 
 It is the same every night." Lockhart suggested that 
 it was probably some stupid engrossing clerk. " No," 
 said the host; I well know what hand it is. It is 
 Walter Scott's." ' It was thus "Waverley" was written, 
 and a long series of immortal fictions, called the 
 "Waverley Novels," commenced. 
 
 To describe the "Waverley Novels" is now needless. 
 Their characteristics are well known wherever the 
 English language is spoken. There is a confident ease 
 in Scott's way of telling his story, which no other 
 writer of English fiction has ever possessed in any- 
 thing like the same degree. He has made history 
 live, and generally speaking, his historic portraits are 
 
68 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 correct. At all events they live, and bear the impress 
 of reality. His characters are as truly creations of 
 imaginative art as Shakespeare's. Scott never strains 
 after effect; he accomplishes his -greatest results by 
 the use of the simplest means, in a manner surpassed 
 only by Shakespeare, and rivalled only by Goethe. It 
 is this simplicity of the "Waverley Novels" which 
 make them so unique. In almost every case they were 
 rapidly written. " Woodstock " was the work of three 
 weeks. "The Bride of Lammermoor" was dictated 
 during the intervals of agonising pain. Apart from 
 the felicity or interest of the subject, there is little 
 difference in the quality of the work. Sometimes 
 Scott chooses a subject more suitable to his genius 
 than at other times, but with the exception of the two 
 novels written after he had become a paralytic there 
 is little difference in the genius and power displayed. 
 It is a full, rich stream, flowing on with no sense of 
 effort, with quiet strength and majesty, sinking at will 
 into a placid current, or swelling into an overwhelming 
 torrent. Until the shadow of death fell upon Scott he 
 never knew what it was to wait upon inspiration. He 
 was always ready to write, and wrote with a keen 
 sense of vigour and enjoyment which made the work 
 a pastime and delight rather than a labour to him. 
 
 If one were asked to put into a sentence what is the 
 total impression Scott himself produces upon us through 
 his writings, we should probably reply, the impression 
 of a thoroughly sound and wholesome nature. There 
 is a genial and withal sober manliness about him which 
 is very noticeable. Since his day we have had many 
 varieties of novels, but in this quality of a genial 
 humanity Scott still stands unrivalled. He has none 
 of the analytic power of George Eliot, the subtle irony 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 69 
 
 of Thackeray, the grotesque exaggeration of Dickens, 
 or the base sensationalism and tendency towards the 
 unclean which some of our latest writers have displayed. 
 The native chivalry of his character works out a high 
 and chivalrous ideal of womanhood ; his genial health- 
 fulness preserves in him a cordial and sympathetic 
 view of life. He is free alike from the taint of scep- 
 ticism and the disease of sensationalism. He does not 
 seek bizarre effects; he does not in his effort to be 
 impressive or original become grotesque. Of how few 
 can so much as this be said ? Who has not almost 
 tittered at Dumas and Victor Hugo when they have 
 sought to be most impressive, and revolted from the 
 pictures in which the horrible has been expected to do 
 the work of the sublime ? And even in the exquisite 
 analysis of George Eliot, full of compassion as it is, 
 who has not felt sometimes a sense of intolerable pain, 
 a feeling that the scalpel goes too deeply, and does its 
 work too mercilessly ? Scott has dealt with every form 
 of human tragedy, but he has done so with the large and 
 tolerant spirit of a great master. There is a massiveness 
 about his work, a completeness, a large-hearted power ; 
 he deals with his subject with a sort of gigantic ease 
 and wholeness of view, which is never unconscious of 
 its acute points of interest, but which subordinates the 
 points where George Eliot or Thackeray would have 
 paused, and to which they would have devoted all their 
 powers, to the interest of the whole. Above all he is 
 a great humorist. He is quick to see the fun of a 
 situation, and his laughter is Homeric. It is this 
 element of health in which Scott stands supreme, and 
 it is precisely this quality which we most need to-day 
 in our contemporary fiction and poetry. 
 
 Had not disaster overtaken Scott in the fulness of 
 
70 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 his fame, and shattered his fortunes in the very moment 
 of their completion, it is questionable whether the 
 world would ever have known his true greatness. His 
 works had revealed the greatness of his genius; adver- 
 sity revealed the greatness of his character. Destiny, 
 which had so far apportioned him nothing but pros- 
 perous days, with troops of friends and golden opinions 
 from all sorts of men, suddenly adjusted the balance, 
 and made sorrow the familiar of the last period 
 of his life. The spirit in which Scott faced adversity 
 was admirable. He bore his calamity with the stoicism 
 of a hero. He sat down with broken powers to pay 
 with the earnings of his pen the enormous debt of 
 117,000, which the mismanagement of others had 
 entailed upon him. He never murmured. He wrote 
 his cousin, Humphry Davy, that he defied that direful 
 chemist, Ill-luck, to overcome him. And he was true 
 to his boast. The last scenes in the life of Scott are un- 
 surpassed by anything in literature for grandeur and 
 pathos. They still live before the student of literature, 
 and they serve to reveal the genuine nobility of the 
 man. The picture of Scott fighting down decay, and 
 dying fighting, is a memorable and unforgettable one. 
 He met his end with perfect calmness. His last 
 words to his children were tinged with the spirit of 
 a true and noble piety. So, amid the mourning of the 
 world, Scott passed away, having fought a good fight, 
 and won the victory. He left behind him a splendid 
 fame, a stainless reputation, above all a great legacy of 
 imperishable genius ; and in the thousands of pages he 
 had written there was not one that he might wish were 
 blotted out when he lay upon his death-bed. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 [Born at Ottery St. Mary, Devon, October 2Oth, 1772. Poems first 
 published 1796. Died at Highgate, July 25th, 1834.] 
 
 IF the greatness of a man could be measured by the 
 estimate of his contemporaries, there is no man who 
 loomed before his age with a larger majesty of outline 
 than Coleridge. Wordsworth described him as the 
 most wonderful man he had ever known ; De Quincey, 
 as the man of most spacious intellect ; Hazlitt, as the 
 one man who completely fulfilled his idea of genius. 
 Carlyle's striking description of Coleridge in his last 
 days is likely to become as immortal as Lamb's descrip- 
 tion of " the inspired charity-school boy," who filled 
 him with wonder and astonishment, when he wrote, 
 " Come back into memory like as thou wert in the 
 dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column 
 before thee the dark pillar not yet turned, Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard ! " 
 Rarely has a man of genius received such a perfect 
 consensus of admiration from his contemporaries as 
 Coleridge. There was, indeed, about him something 
 of that tf ocean-mindedness " which he finely attributes 
 to Shakespeare ; and, apart from the fascination of his 
 eloquence, and the spell of an alluring individuality, 
 what most impressed all who knew Coleridge was the 
 
72 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 comprehensiveness of his vision, and the profundity of 
 his thought. 
 
 The noble friendship which existed between Lamb 
 and Coleridge, and the less intimate but equally beauti- 
 ful intimacy of Coleridge with Sou they and Words- 
 worth, are among the brightest chapters of literary 
 history. Coleridge first met Lamb at Christ's Hospital, 
 and the schoolboy friendship then formed lasted a life- 
 time. His acquaintance with Wordsworth and Southey 
 came later, and sprang rather out of literary comrade- 
 ship than spiritual fellowship. In one essential respect 
 Coleridge differed entirely from his great contem- 
 poraries. From first to last there was a certain 
 romantic charm about his character. He was an 
 idealist of the purest type, and never seemed at home 
 in the rough commerce of the world. Lamb humbly 
 submitted himself to the yoke of drudgery, and made 
 his literary work the luxury and solace of a life of 
 uncomplaining suffering heroically borne. He once 
 jokingly remarked that his real " works" were to be 
 found in the ponderous ledgers of the East India 
 Office, and there is something to us infinitely pathetic 
 in the spectacle of so rare a spirit as Lamb's chained 
 to the galley-oar of lifelong toil in a London office. 
 Wordsworth, with all his real and noble unworldliness, 
 had a certain shrewdness of character, which served him 
 well in the ultimate disposition of his life. Southey, 
 when once the fervour of youth, with its unconsidered 
 hopes and unfulfilled ambitions, settled down, became 
 one of the most industrious of men, toiling with a per- 
 tinacious energy in every walk of literature, and often 
 in ways that gave little scope for the exercise of his 
 true literary gift. But Coleridge ended as he began, 
 an idealist, careless of worldly fame, and unable to 
 
COLERIDGE. 73 
 
 master the merest rudiments of worldly success. He 
 had none of that natural discernment which takes a 
 correct measurement of life, and none of that natural 
 pride which preserves men from the insolence and 
 imposition of the men of this world who have their 
 portion in this life. When he left Christ's he actually 
 asked to be apprenticed to a shoemaker; and later 
 on, when he left Cambridge, he enlisted as a soldier. 
 With an unlimited faith in human nature, a curious 
 childlikeness of spirit, an imagination that clothed at 
 will the most prosaic prospects with alluring brilliance, 
 he found himself in the great streets of the crowded 
 world, as virtually a stranger to the common order of 
 human life as though he had been born upon another 
 planet. He walked in a world of dreams, and never 
 bartered them for the sordid grossness of reality. If 
 we can imagine some angelic child, or some simple 
 shepherd of Grecian myth and poetry, suddenly set 
 down in the " central roar " of London, ignorant of 
 every custom of the complex civilisation of to-day, 
 and heedless of its forces, we have a tolerably accurate 
 picture of Coleridge, as he stepped into the whirl of 
 the million-peopled life of ordinary men. He had 
 every sense save common- sense, every faculty save 
 the faculty of worldly shrewdness. He was like some 
 splendid galleon, laden with a precious argosy, from 
 whose decks there rose the unearthly melodies of 
 singing-men and singing-women, and harpers harping 
 with their harps, but at whose helm no one stood, 
 to whose course upon the widening waters none paid 
 heed. He never learned to adjust himself to his 
 environment. He drew from his lofty idealism a 
 mystic joy, which seemed ample compensation for the 
 loss of worldly honour, and ignorance of the paths 
 
74 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of worldly victory. Had the days of patronage still 
 existed, Coleridge was precisely the poet who would 
 have gained most from the protection they afforded 
 against the rude buffetings of an unsympathetic world. 
 When he left Cambridge, he was, in fact, thrown upon 
 the world, with genius indeed, with intellectual riches 
 incomparable and unique, with infinite literary enthu- 
 siasm and aptitude, but with none of those equipments 
 which enable lesser men of all grades to secure 
 advancement and success in life. 
 
 To yoke the idealist to the tasks of common life 
 is a difficult and almost impossible task, and the 
 worldly failure of Coleridge's life is mainly attributable 
 to this cause. It is only fair, however, to remember 
 that in his early career at least Coleridge did what in 
 him lay to harness his genius to the lowliest literary 
 labours. He sought drudgery as though he loved it, 
 and never complained of its degradations or penurious 
 rewards. A dreamer of dreams he might be, but a 
 selfish idler he was not. He never lost a chance of 
 work ; the fact is, he seldom had a chance. And yet 
 this statement needs modification, for while it is true 
 that he eagerly seized on every opportunity of casual 
 literary employment, when the one great opportunity 
 of competence in journalism came to him he at once re- 
 fused it. At the age of twenty-eight an offer was made 
 to him of half-shares in the Courier and Post, on con- 
 dition that he devoted himself entirely to these journals. 
 To most young men this would have been a sufficiently 
 brilliant offer, for it meant not less than 2000 per 
 annum. Coleridge rejected it, and has given us his 
 reasons for rejecting it. He would not give up the 
 country for the town, he would not spend the strength 
 of his brains on journalism, and, moreover, he avowed 
 
COLERIDGE, 75 
 
 his opinion that any income beyond 350 per annum 
 was a real evil, and one which he dared not incur. 
 Yet at this period he was able to make only a modest 
 income from journalism, and whatever mere worldly 
 prudence may suggest, there is surely something very 
 noble in Coleridge's refusal of a munificent income which, 
 according to his view of things, entailed wealth which 
 he did not desire, at the sacrifice of higher aims 
 which he could not renounce. Long afterwards, in the 
 troubled close of life, he said that poetry had been 
 for him its " own exceeding great reward." And we 
 cannot doubt that Coleridge chose wisely, with a just 
 and perfect apprehension of his own powers, when he 
 renounced journalism for literature. It was the same 
 temptation which in later days was presented to Car- 
 lyle, and was refused with the same noble promptitude 
 and decision. To both men ephemeral and anony- 
 mous success, attended by whatsoever munificence of 
 present reward, seemed odious, compared with the more 
 remote and uncertain gain of literary fame. So each 
 turned calmly to the steep ways of renunciation in 
 which genius has always found its training, and pre- 
 pared to do the one thing which he was born to do. 
 This action of Coleridge's is significant of the sincerity 
 of his nature, and reveals to us a strength of manly 
 fibre and courage not usually associated with his name. 
 The cardinal defect in Coleridge's life was in one 
 accursed habit opium-taking. The first half of his 
 life is without flaw or serious blemish. He is poor, 
 but noble thoughts console him, noble work enchants 
 him, and true love sweetens all his lot, and casts above 
 his hours of drudgery its rainbow bridge of hope. 
 Coleridge had great animal spirits, unfailing buoyancy, 
 and even " unusual physical energy." He was amiable 
 
76 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 to a fault, and, indeed, his one cardinal fault of irresolu- 
 tion sprang from the sensitive tenderness of his nature. 
 At twenty-one he had "done the day's work of a 
 giant;" he had won reputation, he had fought the 
 world at great odds, and not altogether unsuccessfully. 
 Then all changes, and what Lamb pathetically calls the 
 "dark pillar" begins to cast its gloom on Coleridge^ 
 and the brightness of the fiery column of hope begins 
 slowly to revolve, and pass away. Coleridge's first 
 taking of opium was accidental. He was recommended 
 to take for his rheumatic pains the Keswick Black 
 Drop. It acted like the distillation of an alchemist; 
 instantly his pain fled as by magic. In a few weeks 
 the habit had become a despotism; in six months 
 Coleridge was a shattered man. He was degraded, 
 and he knew it : his power of free-will was paralysed. 
 From that moment the life of Coleridge becomes a 
 tragedy. His power of thought was broken, his 
 strength for toil impaired, his joy in life poisoned, his 
 domestic peace shattered : his old bright buoyancy 
 departed, leaving only unutterable despair, the agony 
 of impotence, the spasmodic struggles of a will that 
 knows itself infirm, and which after each attempt at 
 freedom sinks lower in its corrupting bondage. 
 
 There is good reason for thinking that in the end 
 Coleridge broke his bondage, but it was not till the 
 treasuries of domestic love were closed to him, and 
 he had lost power to open those further doors of the 
 treasuries of wisdom to which his youthful genius had 
 led him. It has indeed been stupidly alleged that the 
 habit of opium-taking gave fineness and ethereal bril- 
 liancy to the poetry of Coleridge, but this is wholly 
 false. The noblest work of Coleridge was done before 
 he acquired the fatal habit. From that moment the 
 
COLERIDGE. 77 
 
 fountain of his genius became intermittent in flow, 
 and deficient in quality. No one knew it, no one felt 
 it, more keenly than he. Years after, when he again 
 met Wordsworth in the zenith of his powers, and 
 thought of his own lost opportunities, he wrote those 
 pathetic lines in which we seem to hear the sighings 
 of a breaking heart : 
 
 O great Bard ! 
 
 Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, 
 With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir 
 Of ever-enduring men. 
 Ah ! as I listened with a heart forlorn, 
 The pulses of my being beat anew ! 
 
 Of De Quincey's famous " Confessions " he says: 
 " Oh, may the God to Whom I look for mercy through 
 Christ, show mercy on the author of ' The Confessions 
 of an Opium-eater' if, as I have too strong reason to 
 believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing 
 others into the withering vice through wantonness. 
 From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been 
 free. Even to the author of that work I pleaded with 
 flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning." 
 There is no mistaking the meaning of these pathetic 
 words. If the later life of Coleridge stands out in 
 painful contrast to the earlier; if it appear desultory, 
 aimless, brilliant only with an intermittent splendour, 
 the fiery pillar only at rare intervals turning its Divine 
 radiance towards him, there is one explanation for it all 
 sad, tragic, and sufficient " the accursed drug." 
 
 What of the works of Coleridge ? It may be said 
 briefly that it is upon his poetry that the fame of Cole- 
 ridge is built. His " Friend " is full of the ripest 
 wisdom ; his lt Biographia Literaria " of isolated pas- 
 sages of great beauty ; his lectures on Shakespeare have 
 
78 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 long held their place as master-pieces of critical insight ; 
 but it is, after all, by his poetry that future genera- 
 tions will know him. The " Ancient Mariner " and 
 "Christabel" stand alone in English literature. Cole- 
 ridge has an extraordinary power of interpreting the 
 supernatural, the night-side of Nature, that weird, 
 subtle, spiritual undercurrent of life which invests with 
 mysterious significance this hard outer world. In 
 doing this he has done superbly what no other has 
 attempted with more than partial success. He possesses 
 force of imagination and felicity of epithet, and each in 
 an extraordinary degree. His words are music, and 
 his power of producing on the ear the effect of fine 
 music merely by the assonance of words is unrivalled. 
 No great poet has written less, but the best of what he 
 has written is so perfect of its kind that there can be 
 no mistaking the superscription of immortality with 
 which it is stamped. 
 
 The real wealth of Coleridge's mind, however, was 
 poured out in his conversations, and of these we have 
 but scanty examples. Yet these are enough to indicate 
 that the man was greater than anything he achieved. 
 Coleridge's conversation was an overpowering stream : 
 wise, witty, profound, embracing all subjects, astonish- 
 ing all hearers. He once asked Lamb if he had ever 
 heard him preach. " I have never heard you do any- 
 thing else," said Lamb. It was a perfectly just de- 
 scription of Coleridge's conversations. Any subject gave 
 him a text, and, once started, he would maintain for 
 hours a sort of inspired monologue, often mystical, 
 occasionally incomprehensible, but always most impres- 
 sively eloquent. He needed a Boswell, and no man 
 since Johnson would have so well repaid the assiduity 
 of that prince of eavesdroppers. The few specimens 
 
COLERIDGE. 79 
 
 of table-talk which are ours are not less marked by 
 their sarcastic incisiveness than by their luminous and 
 sorrowful wisdom. In all Coleridge's later utterances 
 the accent of suffering is very pronounced. We feel 
 that, like Dante, he is " a man who has been in hell." 
 He inspires in us a tenderness and sympathy which 
 arrest judgment, and hush the voice of censure, for 
 which there was but too much ground of justification. 
 It is impossible to think of Coleridge without a mingled 
 sense of pity and affection, and we may say of him, as 
 Mrs. Browning said of Bonaparte, but with greater 
 truth : 
 
 I do not praise him : but since he had 
 The genius to be loved, why let him have 
 The justice to be honoured in his grave. 
 
 He himself has appealed yet more effectually to our 
 sympathy in his own pathetic epitaph : 
 
 Stop, Christian passer-by ; stop, child of God, 
 
 And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod 
 
 A poet lies, or that which once seemed he. 
 
 O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C., 
 
 That he who many a year with toil of breath 
 
 Found death in life, may here find life in death, 
 
 Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame, 
 
 He asked and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same. 
 
 The faults of Coleridge's style are its occasional tur- 
 gidity and diffuseness. This, however, is most apparent 
 in his political poems, and is probably attributable to 
 the fact that Coleridge found the theme uncongenial. 
 It was in the world of pure imagination he was most at 
 home, and it was there he attained his highest literary 
 excellence. In delicate and airy fancy, not less than in 
 imaginative intensity, he has few rivals. Such a poem 
 
8o THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 as " Kubla Khan/' a mere dream within a dream, 
 may illustrate the one, and the " Ancient Mariner " the 
 other. His force as a thinker and metaphysician is a 
 waning force, but his poetic fame has never stood so 
 high as now. This result was accurately perceived 
 immediately on his death by the review that had per- 
 sistently ridiculed him for many years when it wrote : 
 " Coleridge, of all men who ever lived, was always a 
 poet, in all his moods, and they were many, inspired." 
 It is so the best poems of Coleridge still impress us, 
 and when the logician and the metaphysician weary us, 
 we turn with ever-fresh delight to the bard. The pity 
 of it is that Coleridge was so seldom the bard, and 
 so often the metaphysician ; for who would not give 
 all the prose writings of Coleridge for another twenty 
 pages of poetry like the " Ancient Mariner " ? 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ROBERT S OUT HEY. 
 
 [Born at Bristol, August I2th, 1774. Became Poet-Laureate, 1813 
 Died at Greta Hall, Keswick, March 2 1st, 1843.] 
 
 WHEN we speak of those who have wrought most 
 nobly in the field of modern English, it is 
 impossible altogether to ignore Robert Southey. That 
 there should be any temptation to do so may seem 
 somewhat strange. But the reasons are not far to seek. 
 Southey belongs to the great brotherhood of the Lake 
 Poets by force of friendship, but scarcely by force 
 of genius. To write of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 and say nothing of Southey, would be invidious and 
 unjust, yet his claims as an English master are not to 
 be mentioned in the same breath as theirs. The man 
 who was the friend of Lamb, the true and faithful 
 counsellor of Coleridge in his difficult life, and his 
 most efficient helper, the first man of his time to re- 
 cognise at its proper worth the transcendent genius of 
 Wordsworth, and to maintain his cause through evil 
 and through good report, and in like manner the 
 generous critic of Scott, at least deserves a record 
 among those who have done so much to render the 
 literature of their time illustrious. But the point of 
 divergence between these men and Southey is that, 
 while he was the more perfect specimen of the man of 
 
 6 
 
82 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 letters, and has produced the most various work, they 
 were his superiors in all that constitutes real genius. 
 Indeed it may be well doubted if Southey possessed 
 genius at all. He possessed great talents, and he used 
 them with wonderful aptitude and industry. He always 
 wrote well, but rarely with that supreme touch and 
 inspiration which give immortality to literature. He 
 presented to his age a noble spectacle of a life of 
 unsurpassed literary industry, dominated by admirable 
 purposes, and free from faults of conduct such as dis- 
 figure the fame of some of his great contemporaries. 
 Byron has used all the resources of his wicked wit in 
 holding Southey up to ridicule, but even Byron recog- 
 nised his true character when he said, " He is the only 
 existing entire man of letters." There is nothing in 
 burlesque poetry more bitter in its humour than the 
 picture Byron draws of Southey, in the "Vision of 
 Judgment," offering to write the life of Satan since he 
 had written the life of Wesley, and describing how he 
 would publish it 
 
 In two octavo volumes nicely bound, 
 With notes and preface, all that most allures 
 The pious purchaser ; and there's no ground 
 For fear, for I can choose my own reviewers. 
 
 And it must be confessed that the political changes of 
 Southey gave an unscrupulous antagonist like Byron 
 only too good ground for the still bitterer stanzas 
 
 He had written praises of a regicide ; 
 
 He had written praises of all kings whatever ; 
 
 He had written for republics far and wide, 
 
 And then against them bitterer than ever ; 
 
 For pantisocracy he once had cried 
 
 Aloud a scheme less moral than 'twas clever ; 
 
 Then grew a hearty anti-Jacobin, 
 
 Had turned his coat and would have turned his skin. 
 
ROBERT SOUTHS Y. 83 
 
 When Byron took to controversy .any weapons were 
 good enough : there was no man more adroit in throwing 
 mud, or more careful to select the most unfragrant 
 qualities of that peculiarly unwelcome missile. The 
 result of Byron's attacks on Southey is that, for vast 
 numbers of readers, Southey is only known through 
 the medium of Byron's burlesque. They see the mud- 
 spattered renegade of Byron's verse : they do not know 
 the loyal friend of Coleridge, and the perfect biographer 
 of Nelson. 
 
 It was as a poet Southey first challenged the atten- 
 tion of his countrymen, and he died wearing the bays 
 of laureateship. How is it then that his poetry has 
 so wholly fallen into desuetude to-day ? The main 
 cause lies in the fact that his poetry has no true relation 
 to human life and experience. The qualities which 
 give permanence to poetry are various. Poems may 
 be expositions of Nature, summaries of experience, 
 lessons in philosophy, vivid and ardent pictures of 
 human emotion, the quintessence of passionate hopes or 
 still more passionate sorrows. Or, even if they can 
 hardly be ranked under one or other of these heads, 
 they may still live by some curious felicity of phrase 
 which lingers on the memory and stimulates the fancy 
 or imagination. Southey's poetry has none of these 
 qualities. He has no power of phrase, none of those 
 concentrated and intense epithets which cannot easily 
 be forgotten. He has no true insight into Nature; he 
 does not know her at first hand, and is therefore unable 
 to depict her with fidelity a curious lack in the writ- 
 ings of a man who was the close friend of Wordsworth, 
 and who knew how to recognise at its proper worth 
 Wordsworth's power of revealing Nature when most of 
 his contemporaries saw nothing in his poems but idiotic 
 
8* THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 simplicity and unrestrained egoism. Nor does Southey 
 strike any true vibrating chord of deep human experi- 
 ence. There is no passion in his voice ; or, if there be, 
 it is histrionic passion shallow, stagey, and simulated. 
 He teaches nothing, he reveals nothing. His whole 
 theory of poetry was hopelessly wrong. His themes, 
 for the most part, are utterly remote from human life, 
 and his method was a loose, rambling, rhymeless metri- 
 cal arrangement ; occasionally, indeed, striking a note 
 of real melody, but for the most part little better than 
 poor prose run mad. When he would be impressive 
 he becomes bombastic; when he aims at description 
 he attains only diffuseness. He pours out an immense 
 stream of descriptive and semi-descriptive verse, as in 
 such a poem as " Thalaba," in which there is scarcely 
 one striking epithet, one gleam of real imagination, 
 one note of true poetic power. In later life Coleridge 
 read again, at the request of Thomas Hood, Southey's 
 " Joan of Arc," and this is the crushing verdict which 
 he pronounces on a poem for some of whose lines at 
 least he himself was responsible. " I was really aston- 
 ished," says Coleridge, " (i) at the schoolboy, wretched, 
 allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of 
 the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing 
 proselyte of the ' Age of Reason/ a Tom Paine in 
 petticoats, but ' so lovely and in love more dear/ ' on 
 her rubied cheek hung pity's crystal gem;' (3) at 
 the utter want of all rhythm in its verse, the monotony 
 and dead plumb of its pauses, and the absence of all 
 bone, muscle, and sinew in the single lines." The 
 latter clause of this criticism may be fairly applied to 
 all the more ambitious poems of Southey. There is no 
 virility in them. We read them with an overwhelming 
 sense of wonder at their former popularity, and we have 
 
ROBERT SOUTHEY, 85 
 
 no desire to re-read or possess them. We cheerfully 
 acquiesce in the fate that has consigned them to oblivion, 
 and we feel that no worse disservice could be done to 
 Southey's memory than to disinter them. However 
 much we may regret the spirit of Byron's brilliant 
 invective, we cannot help agreeing with him in the 
 criticism which writes down as trash the gouty hexa- 
 meters, the " spavined dactyls," and the " foundered 
 verse" of Southey's multitudinous attempts in poetry. 
 
 The chief interest of Southey's poetry, from a 
 literary point of view, is that with all its novelties of 
 rhythm it is a survival of the past. It is a curious 
 example of poetry which is modern in form, but is 
 wholly at variance with the modern spirit. It is an 
 interruption, the interpolation of a worn-out ideal, in 
 the full current of new thoughts, and new ideals of 
 poetry, which marked the beginning of the century. 
 Southey received the Laureateship on the death of Pye 
 in 1813, and although in all that concerns mere form 
 there could not be greater variance than between Pye 
 and Southey, yet essentially the poetic traditions of 
 Pye are reproduced in Southey. It was not altogether 
 a stroke of malicious satire, it was a genuine critical 
 instinct, that led Byron to identify Southey with Pye, 
 and exclaim 
 
 Pye come again ? No more no more of that. 
 
 There is the same lack of depth and freshness, the 
 same barren platitude, the same stereotyped way of 
 treating Nature, and entire deficiency of any real 
 instinct for her interpretation. To Southey Nature is 
 once more a mere collection of properties for the adorn- 
 ment of his verse. He is always on the look-out for 
 grandiose effects. If an immense collection of adjectives 
 
86 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 could interpret Nature, Southey might be her inter- 
 preter, but he entirely lacks that largeness of touch 
 which makes his verbal pictures impressive. It is said 
 that Southey regarded the rise of the ornate school of 
 poetry as a vice in art, and condemned it unsparingly. 
 We can well believe this when we remember that the 
 two chief distinctions of the ornate school of which 
 Tennyson is the undisputed master are felicity of epi- 
 thet, and exquisite fidelity in the depiction of natural 
 phenomena. Keats set the example of the one, and 
 Wordsworth of the other. But to the lessons of both 
 Southey was strikingly indifferent. Perhaps the real 
 reason of this indifference and lack of insight is to be 
 found in the character of Southey's life. He did not 
 give himself time to be a poet. He was an intensely 
 busy man : 
 
 He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose, 
 And more of both than anybody knows. 
 
 There was no touch of brooding contemplation about 
 him, no time in his laborious life for meditative calm. 
 He took up poetry in a thoroughly business-like way, 
 and applied himself to it as he would to the writing of 
 a review article, and with much the same results. He 
 writes, for instance, to one of his friends : " Last night 
 I began the preface [to ' Specimens of English Poets ']. 
 And now, Grosvenor, let me tell you what I have to 
 do. I am writing (i) 'The History of Portugal/ (2) 
 < The Chronicle of the Cid,' (3) ' The Curse of Kehama/ 
 (4) 'Espriella's Letters.' Look you, all these I am 
 writing. I can't afford to do one thing at a time no, 
 nor two neither ; and it is only by doing many things 
 that I contrive to do so much." Much of the explana- 
 tion of Southey's failure as a poet lies in this confession. 
 
ROBERT SOU THEY. 87 
 
 Poetry was not the solitary purpose of his life ; it was 
 the recreation rather than the business of his intellect. 
 And poetry, more than any other art, demands the 
 entire surrender of its votaries, and the complete dedi- 
 cation of their powers. Southey was unable to make 
 that surrender. It could not but happen, therefore, 
 that he should fall back on trite ideas and effete 
 models ; that he should fail in the accurate depiction of 
 Nature ; that he should resent the rise of a school of 
 poetry which spends infinite patience on the perfection 
 of its form ; and that, finally, his own poetry should 
 become one of the most remarkable anomalies ot 
 modern literature, and should utterly fail in securing 
 anything beyond the most ephemeral and imperfect 
 fame. 
 
 We are chiefly concerned here with Southey's claims 
 as a poet, but it will be convenient to include in our 
 survey his numerous prose contributions to literature. 
 And here, again, it may be said, Southey suffers from 
 the excess of his industry. At the best, the stream of 
 his genius was not copious : concentrated within narrow 
 bounds, it might have worn a permanent channel for 
 itself; but Southey committed the error of diffusing it 
 over an immense area, where its best qualities are 
 dissipated. He certainly wrote far more "than any- 
 body knows." Too much of his work was really a 
 superior sort of hack-work, done to order, and there- 
 fore deficient in charm and spontaneity. Who has 
 read his " History of Brazil " ? Yet it is a work of 
 great labour, and possesses many passages of real 
 eloquence and force. That impartial process of natural 
 selection which goes on in literature has by this time 
 definitely rejected almost all Southey's more ambitious 
 works, and has left us two only of his slighter works 
 
88 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 as candidates for immortality his "Life of Wesley" 
 and his "Life of Nelson." Even the first of these has 
 not the hold upon the public mind it once had ; perhaps 
 it now owes its fame mainly to the confession of 
 Coleridge, that it was the favourite of his library 
 among many favourites, that he had read it twenty 
 times, and could read it when he could read nothing 
 else. But his "Life of Nelson" still remains as the 
 most perfect piece of biography, on a small scale, which 
 modern literature possesses. Even Byron could find 
 nothing but praise for so admirable an essay of literary 
 art. Its charm lies in its perfect lucidity, directness, 
 and simplicity of style. The narrative moves with 
 quiet power, with the ease of complete mastery, never 
 once becoming dull, never surprising us by unexpected 
 and evanescent excellences, but never failing to fill the 
 ear with pleasant music, or to keep the attention at a 
 steady poise of interest. What praise can be higher 
 than to say that Southey has risen without effort to 
 the height of the most splendid story of modern 
 heroism, and has reared a fitting monument to the 
 noblest of modern patriots ? In no other work of 
 Southey's is there so much that reveals the noble 
 qualities of his mind or of his style. He writes with a 
 sense of inspiration and enthusiasm which makes his 
 story an epic. The real poetry of his soul, never fitly 
 expressed in his verse, is uttered here. There are few 
 nobler passages in the English language than the last 
 pages of this brief biography, and especially its con- 
 clusion, so laudatory and yet so just, so measured and 
 yet so triumphant, that it thrills us still like a peal of 
 trumpets, or the last notes of some majestic organ 
 requiem: "Yet he cannot be said to have fallen 
 prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to 
 
ROBERT SOUTHEY. 89 
 
 be lamented who died so full of honours, and at the 
 height of human fame. The most triumphant death 
 is that of the martyr; the most awful, that of the 
 martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero 
 in the hour of victory ; and if the chariots and horses 
 of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, 
 he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze 
 of glory." Prose like this is worth many reams of 
 Thalabas and Curses of Kehama; and long after the 
 meretricious glitter of Southey's poetry is forgotten, 
 his "Life of Nelson" will remain as one of the few 
 absolutely perfect specimens of biography which we 
 possess. 
 
 It might also be justly added that Southey's own life 
 will remain as an admirable example of a career devoted 
 to the service of literature, and characterised through- 
 out by magnanimity of mind and purity of conduct. 
 " Is Southey magnanimous ? " asked Byron of Rogers 
 when he desired to meet him in 1813. Rogers replied 
 that he could guarantee the magnanimity of Southey, 
 and the two poets met. It is true that the meeting 
 formed no real basis for future friendship. "Don Juan " 
 was soon to see the light, and much as Southey valued 
 the friendship of Byron, he dared not let that poem 
 pass without a protest against the degradation of great 
 powers and the profanation of poetry which it displayed. 
 Friendship between two men so alien was virtually 
 impossible. There was a side of Southey's character 
 which Byron was incapable of appreciating, but which 
 for us constitutes its dignity and nobleness. He knew 
 how to repress himself, how to be patient under the 
 limitations of his lot, how to practise without murmur 
 daily self-sacrifice and industry for the sake of those 
 he loved. He knew also how to appreciate qualities 
 
90 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 he did not possess ; and nothing is more beautifully 
 conspicuous in his life than this delight in the fame 
 of others. He was always ready to help with pen or 
 purse any literary aspirant, and his geniality of tem- 
 perament in this respect added no inconsiderable 
 burden to the labour of his life. He was not a great 
 man, not one of those rare men who impress us by 
 the amplitude of their powers and the splendour of 
 their achievements. But if not a great man, he was a 
 good man, with a sincere and unostentatious goodness, 
 whose outward expression was found in a life of genial 
 sympathies, of unremitting industry, of strenuous pur- 
 pose. Faults of temper we may charge him with, but, 
 as Froude says of Carlyle, in all the graver matters of 
 the law he is blameless. He set a noble example of 
 what the life of the man of letters should be ; and if 
 we cannot wholly endorse the eulogy of Landor when 
 he says, 
 
 No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven 
 To poet, sage, or hero given, 
 
 we may at least agree that the pious excellence of his 
 life justifies Landor's concluding lines, that he was one 
 who shall at the last, 
 
 . . . with soul elate, 
 Rise up before the Eternal Throne, 
 And hear, in God's own voice, " Well done ! " 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 [Born at Cocker-mouth, April 7th, 1770. Poems first published 
 1798. Became Poet-Laureate 1843. Died at Rydal Mount, 
 April 23rd, 1850.] 
 
 WE now come to the consideration of the 
 character, work, and influence of William 
 Wordsworth. In many respects, and those the most 
 essential, Wordsworth's influence is the most powerful 
 and abiding poetic influence of the Victorian period. 
 During his lifetime his fame was comparatively re- 
 stricted, and during the greater part of his career his 
 very claim to be a poet was eagerly disputed, and 
 widely and vehemently denied. Lord Jeffrey's verdict 
 that he was a drivelling idiot, and wouldn't do, has 
 become historical, and is a memorable example of 
 the ineptitude and virulence of that criticism which 
 prevailed in the palmy days of the Edinburgh Review. 
 By a curious chastisement of Fate, the ancient criti- 
 cism is chiefly remembered to-day by its contemptuous 
 hostility to Byron, its brutal attack on Keats, and 
 its undiscerning violence of hatred for Wordsworth. 
 Sydney Smith said he would be glad to be as sure 
 of anything as Macaulay was of everything, and the 
 dogmatical criticism of Macaulay was typical of the 
 criticism of the time. It possessed neither justice nor 
 urbanity; its weapons were the bludgeon and the 
 
92 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 tomahawk ; and it knew no mean between extravagant 
 laudation and merciless abuse. Some one has spoken 
 of Macaulay as "stamping" through the fields of 
 literature, and the phrase admirably pictures the 
 energetic Philistinism of the critical dogmatist. It 
 was in this spirit that England first received the 
 poetry of a man who has been, and is, one of the 
 noblest voices in the literary life of the century. The 
 critics simply " stamped " upon his writings ; and not 
 merely howled derision on them, but taught his 
 countrymen everywhere to receive his name with 
 guffaws of brutal ridicule. 
 
 In considering the works and influence of Words- 
 worth, we are bound to take full cognisance of the 
 peculiarities of his own character, and the events of his 
 own life. With all poets it is necessary to do this, but 
 with Wordsworth most of all, because everything he 
 has written is deeply coloured with his own indi- 
 viduality. He has written little that is impersonal ; 
 across almost every page there is projected the huge 
 shadow of his own peculiar personality. While other 
 poets have gone to history or mythology for their 
 themes, Wordsworth found his within himself, or in 
 the simple surroundings of one of the simplest and 
 most uneventful of lives. He brooded over the " abys- 
 mal deeps of personality," and from them he drew 
 the inspiration of his noblest poetry. Sometimes this 
 superb egotism of Wordsworth is irritating, and often 
 he becomes tedious by attaching enormous importance 
 to the very slightest influences which have helped to 
 form his mind, or the most trivial incidents which have 
 composed its record. " The Prelude," which is one 
 of his longest poems, simply describes the growth 
 of an individual mind, and among many passages of 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 93 
 
 profound thought and beauty, contains others that are 
 both tedious and trivial, and are tedious because they 
 are trivial. It is because Wordsworth always found 
 the impulse of poetry within himself that it is im- 
 possible to understand his writings without a clear 
 understanding of the significance of his life. He 
 boldly declared that he must be taken as a teacher 
 or as nothing. He was no fitful singer of an idle day ; 
 he believed he had a message to deliver, as truly as 
 ever ' ancient seer or prophet had. For this reason 
 Wordsworth fulfils, more perfectly than any other 
 modern poet, the ideal conception of the Bard. Accord- 
 ing to some philologists, " minister " and " minstrel " 
 spring from the same root, and convey the same idea. 
 The true poet is the bard, the seer, the minister ; he 
 has a Divine ordination, and is sacred by a Divine 
 anointing ; he is a consecrated spirit, selected and 
 commissioned for the performance of a Divine behest. 
 This was Wordsworth's view of the function of the 
 poet, and he endeavoured to fulfil it. This is what he 
 meant when he said that vows were made for him, 
 and that he must be considered as a teacher or no- 
 thing. This is the secret of that prophetic force which 
 throbs in his best verses, and which gives them a 
 subtle and enduring charm. They are the expression 
 of an austere and separated soul, of a spirit which 
 dwells amid inaccessible heights of devout vision, and 
 speaks with the accent of one who knows the peace of 
 lofty and satisfying purposes. 
 
 This claim of Wordsworth's to be considered as a 
 teacher or as nothing was a new claim to the critics 
 of fifty years ago, and was undoubtedly one cause, and 
 perhaps the main cause, of their prolonged and bitter 
 hostility. We shall see, hereafter, precisely what 
 
94 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Wordsworth meant by the claim, and how he has 
 built up a philosophy which is its justification. But, in 
 the first instance, the claim was based almost as much 
 upon the literary form of his work as on its philoso- 
 phic qualities, and upon a theory of literary composition 
 which he himself has stated and developed in hie 
 prefaces with great fulness. What was that theory ? 
 Briefly put, it amounted to this : Wordsworth com- 
 plained that the commonly accepted theory of poetry 
 was both false and vicious. It had practically invented 
 a dialect of it own, which was as far as possible 
 removed from the ordinary dialect of the common 
 people. It was artificial and stilted the cant of a 
 coterie and not the language of ordinary life. Its 
 spirit also was wholly wrong and mistaken : it had 
 lost hold on common life, and scorned it as low and 
 mean ; it had lost hold on Nature, because it did not 
 know how to speak of hep except in ancient rhetorical 
 phrases, which were the bronze coinage of poetry, 
 defaced by use, and whatever might once have been 
 true or just about them was now depraved and muti- 
 lated by unthinking use. Wordsworth held that there 
 was sufficient interest in common life to inspire the 
 noblest achievements of the poet, and that Nature must 
 be observed with unflinching fidelity if she was to 
 be described with truth or freshness. He asks why 
 should poetry be 
 
 A history only of departed things, 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was ? 
 For the discerning intellect of Man, 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 A simple produce of the common day. 
 I, long before the blissful hour arrives, 
 Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal hour 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 95 
 
 Of this great consummation : and, by words 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
 Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
 Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To noble raptures ; while my voice proclaims 
 How exquisitely the individual mind 
 (And the progressive powers perhaps no less 
 Of the whole species) to the external world 
 Is fitted : and how exquisitely too 
 Theme this but little heard of among men 
 The external world is fitted to the mind. 
 
 In this noble passage from the " Recluse/' the gist of 
 Wordsworth's peculiar view of poetry is to be found. 
 He announces a return to simplicity, to simple themes 
 and simple language, and teaches that in the simplest 
 sights of life and Nature there is sufficient inspiration 
 for the true poet. He speaks of nothing more than 
 what we are, and is prepared to write nothing that is 
 not justified by the actual truth of things. He sets 
 himself against that species of poetry which finds its 
 impulse and its public in theatrical passion and mor- 
 bid or exaggerated sentiment. To him the "meanest 
 flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie 
 too deep for tears," and by preserving his soul in 
 austere simplicity he aims at producing a species of 
 poetry which will affect men by its truth rather than 
 its passion, and will affect even the lowliest of men, 
 because it is expressed in the plain and unadorned 
 language of common life. 
 
 How truly Wordsworth adhered to the great prin- 
 ciples here enunciated his life and work declare, but it 
 will also be apparent that his theory of poetic expression 
 hopelessly broke down after a short trial. It may be said, 
 indeed, that occasionally even his theory of poetry itself 
 breaks down. In the attempt to be simple he becomes 
 
96 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 childish, and in his selection of the commonest themes 
 he more than once has selected themes which no 
 human genius could make poetic. In the main, how- 
 ever, the principles of thought which he enunciated he 
 strictly observed throughout a long life, and his noblest 
 effects have been produced within the limitations he 
 invented, and which he was contented to obey. But 
 when we consider the question of his literary expression, 
 we at once perceive that he does not use the language 
 of common life, nor was it possible that he should. 
 The vocabulary of the educated man is far wider than 
 the vocabulary of the illiterate, and the vocabulary of 
 the great poet is usually the fullest of all. Wordsworth 
 simply could not help himself when he used forms 
 of expression which the ploughman and pedlar could 
 never have used. It was in vain that he said : "I 
 have proposed to myself to imitate, and, as far as is 
 possible, to adopt the very language of men. I have 
 taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called 
 poetic diction as others ordinarily take to produce it." 
 In poems like " The Idiot Boy," or " The Thorn," he 
 certainly fulfils this purpose : he has so entirely suc- 
 ceeded in avoiding poetic diction that he has produced 
 verses which by no stretch of literary charity could be 
 called poetry at all. Wordsworth's noblest poetry is 
 noble in direct contravention of his own theory of 
 poetry, and is a pertinent illustration of the futility 
 of all such theories to bind men of real genius. His 
 theory is that true poetry should be merely "the 
 language really spoken by men, with metre super- 
 added," and he asks us, " What other distinction from 
 prose would we have ? " We reply that from the true 
 poet we expect melody and magic of phrase the gift 
 of musical expression which can make words a power 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 97 
 
 equal to music, in producing exquisite sensations on 
 the ear, and which is a still higher power than music, 
 because it can directly produce noble thoughts and 
 passions in the soul. If Wordsworth had only given 
 us the language of prose with metre superadded, we 
 should not be reading his pages to-day with ever-fresh 
 delight. It is because he discards his own theory of 
 poetic expression, and has given us many verses written 
 in language unmatched for purity and melody of phrase, 
 and wholly different from the " language really spoken 
 by men," that we have judged him a great poet. 
 
 When we consider the vehemence of that ridicule 
 with which Wordsworth was greeted, and the virulence 
 of that criticism with which he was pursued for nearly 
 half a century, it is necessary, therefore, to bear in 
 mind how absurd this theory of poetic expression is, and 
 how doubly absurd it must have seemed to those who 
 were the critical authorities of his day. And it must 
 also be recollected that Wordsworth pressed his theory 
 in season and out of season. The temper of mind 
 which made him attach an overweening importance to 
 the slightest incidents in his own intellectual develop- 
 ment made him also blind to the relative values of his 
 poems. He deliberately chose poems like " The Idiot 
 Boy" which were written in his worst style and 
 solemnly insisted on their significance as illustrative 
 of his theory. If he had had any sense of humour, he 
 would have perceived how absurd this was; but in 
 humour Wordsworth was singularly deficient. There 
 was a stiffness of controversial temper about him which 
 refused any parley with the enemy. The consequence 
 was that the more strenuously Wordsworth insisted 
 on the value of his worst poems, the more blind men 
 became to the supreme excellence of his best. They 
 
 7 
 
98 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 accepted his worst poems as typical of his genius, and 
 it was easy to turn them into ridicule. If poetry were, 
 indeed, only prose with metre superadded, it was 
 obvious that any prose-man could become a poet at 
 will ; and the facile retort rose to the lips that Words- 
 worth had justified his theory by writing prose under 
 the delusion that it was poetry. The astonishing thing 
 is that men of genuine critical ability were so slow to 
 recognise that among many poems which were little 
 better than prose cut up into metrical lengths, there 
 were other poems of great and enduring excellence, 
 which the greatest poets of all time might be proud 
 to claim. However, a truce has long since been 
 called to such contentions. No one cares much to-day 
 what particular poetic fads Wordsworth may have 
 advocated : the fact that has gradually grown clear and 
 clearer to the world is that in Wordsworth we possess 
 a poet of profound originality and of supreme genius, 
 and his greatness is generally recognised. It is also 
 generally recognised that, more than any other modern 
 poet, Wordsworth has expressed in his poems a noble 
 philosophy ; and it is to the study of that philosophy 
 that I invite those who would read Wordsworth with a 
 seeing eye and an understanding heart. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDSWORTH'S LIPE 
 AND HIS POETRY. 
 
 I HAVE already said that with Wordsworth, more 
 than with most poets ; the life of the poet must be 
 considered in connection with his poetry. Let us now 
 look at this subject a little more closely. Wordsworth 
 was born on the borders of that Lake Country which he 
 loved so well, at Cockermouth, on April 7th, 1770. From 
 his boyhood he was familiar with English mountain 
 scenery, and the subduing spirit of its beauty touched 
 his earliest life. He himself tells us 
 
 Nothing at that time 
 So welcome, no temptation half so dear 
 As that which urged me to a daring feat. 
 Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms and dizzy crags, 
 And tottering towers : I loved to stand and read 
 Their looks forbidding, read and disobey. 
 
 It is a vivid picture of the wild child of Nature, awed, 
 and yet exhilarated in her presence, which Wordsworth 
 paints in these lines. The boyish Wordsworth de- 
 scribed in the " Recluse " is a true boy, touched more 
 perhaps than a boy should be with a sense of mystery 
 in Nature, but not distinguished by any unwholesome 
 precocity or unnatural meditativeness. The awe of 
 
ioo THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Nature seems to have been a feeling early developed 
 in him, and it never left him. He tells us how one 
 day while nutting he penetrated into a distant solitude 
 of the wood, where the silence and sense of sacredness 
 were so profound, that he hastily retreated, with the 
 feeling that he had invaded a sanctuary. But in other 
 passages, such as the above, the idea left upon the 
 mind is of a sturdy youth, rejoicing in his strength 
 of limb and sureness of foot, and taking a thoroughly 
 healthy delight in outdoor life. He has the wholesome 
 blood of the Cumberland dalesman in his veins, and 
 loves the mountains as only those love them whose life 
 has thriven beneath their shadows ; and even as a boy 
 he learned to feel something of that healing serenity 
 which Nature breathes into the soul that loves her. 
 He felt that " whatever of highest he can hope, it is 
 hers to promise ; all that is dark in him she must purge 
 into purity ; all that is failing in him she must strengthen 
 into truth ; in her, through all the world's warfare, he 
 must find his peace ; " or, to quote his own memorable 
 words : 
 
 But me hath Nature tamed, and bade to seek 
 For other agitations, or be calm ; 
 Hath dealt with me as with a turbulent stream, 
 Some nursling of the mountains, which she leads 
 Through quiet meadows, after he has learnt 
 His strength, and had his triumph and his joy, 
 His desperate course of tumult and of glee. 
 
 The first noticeable thing, therefore, is that Words- 
 worth was a true " nursling of the mountains," and the 
 influence of natural beauty and pastoral life was one of 
 the earliest influences which shaped his mind. He had 
 no love of cities, and knew little of them. When he 
 
WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND POETRY. 101 
 
 spoke of them it was with reluctance and compassion ; 
 he brooded 
 
 Above the fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow, barricadoed ever more 
 Within the walls of cities, 
 
 for it seemed to him that cities were the natural homes 
 of sorrow, and the open fields the true abodes of peace. 
 He had a passionate love for an outdoor life, and his 
 mind naturally lent itself to that deep meditativeness 
 which is a common characteristic of those who spend 
 many hours of every day in the loneliness of Nature. 
 Strangely enough, in one who is known to fame as a 
 man of letters, it was nevertheless true that the three 
 things most difficult for him to do, to the very end of 
 his life, were reading, writing, and the toil of literary 
 composition. When he is a young man of thirty-three, 
 he writes to Sir George Beaumont that he never has 
 a pen in his hand for five minutes without becoming a 
 bundle of uneasiness, and experiencing an insufferable 
 oppression. " Nine-tenths of my verses," he writes 
 forty years later, " have been murmured out in the 
 open air." When a visitor at Rydal Mount asked to 
 see Wordsworth's study, the reply was that he could 
 see his "library, where he keeps his books, but his 
 study is out of doors." The peculiarities thus described 
 are the typical peculiarities of the sturdy dalesman, and 
 such in many respects Wordsworth was to the end of 
 his days. When he described the peasants and farmers 
 of the mountains, it was no fanciful love that attracted 
 him to them : he spoke of men whom he thoroughly 
 understood, because he was physically akin to them. 
 The sturdy fibre of his mind, his intellectual honesty, 
 his independence, his power of contemplation, his 
 sufficiency not the coarse sufficiency of the vulgar 
 
102 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 egoist, but the habitual sufficiency of a well-poised 
 and self-reliant nature all these were the distinguishing 
 characteristics of his neighbours, but touched in him 
 with a loftier spirit, and put to higher purposes. Even 
 in his face and figure in the ruggedness of the one 
 and the firmness and sturdiness of the other much 
 of this was discernible. It was a figure that showed 
 worst in drawing-rooms, as though consciously alien to 
 them ; a face that seemed almost vacant to the nimble- 
 minded dwellers in cities, but which glowed with true 
 illumination and nobility among the sounds and visions 
 of his native country-side. The mould in which Words- 
 worth was cast was a strong one. His nature was slow, 
 and deep, and steadfast : what he was at thirty he 
 practically was at seventy, save that there had been an 
 inevitable stiffening of ideas, and an equally inevitable 
 growth of self-reliant sufficiency. 
 
 Let any one try to picture to himself the leading 
 characteristics of the life of a Cumbrian dalesman, and, 
 if he pleases, let him go to the poems of Wordsworth 
 himself for materials, and he will find that the life so 
 outlined will be, above all things, independent, self- 
 respecting, and self-sufficient, frugal without parsimony, 
 pious without formality, and simple without boorish- 
 ness. It is a wholesome life of humble industries and 
 simple pleasures, and such a life was not merely to 
 Wordsworth the ideal life, but it was an ideal which 
 he himself perfectly fulfilled. And let anyone think 
 again of the sort of life which found favour with the 
 poets of his day, and the sort of life they themselves 
 lived Byron with his bitter misanthropy, Shelley with 
 his outraged sensitiveness, Keats with his recoil from 
 a sordid world to the ideal paradise of Greek mytho- 
 logy, Moore with his cockney glitter, Coleridge with 
 
WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND POETRY. 103 
 
 his remote and visionary splendour let him think of 
 this, and he will see how strange a thing it was to 
 such a world, that a Cumbrian dalesman's life should 
 have been thrust before it as an ideal human life, and 
 that, too, by a man who had himself chosen such a 
 life for himself, and had found in it tranquillity and 
 satisfaction. In that age there were only two poets 
 who had shown any genuine love of Nature in her 
 daily and common manifestations, and had written 
 verses which might have "been murmured out in 
 the open air." These were Burns and Scott, and it 
 is noticeable that for both Wordsworth felt a deep 
 attraction. In both there is a supreme healthful- 
 ness, a sense of robust enjoyment in fresh air and 
 simple sights. When Scott describes Nature it is 
 always with a true eye for colour, and Burns's poems 
 touch us by their artless rusticity not less than by 
 their artistic beauty. Wordsworth himself has told 
 us how " admirably has Burns given way to these 
 impulses of Nature, both with reference to himself and 
 in describing the condition of others ; " and it was the 
 simple humanness of the Ayrshire farmer that endeared 
 him to a poet who valued more than anything else 
 simplicity and virtue in human nature. But where 
 Wordsworth differed from all other poets of his day 
 was that he had a conscious ideal of what human life 
 might be made, through simplicity of desire and com- 
 munion with Nature, and he resolutely set himself to 
 the fulfilment of his ideal. Especially was the dales- 
 man's independence and self-sufficiency marked in him. 
 He knew what it was to be a law unto himself, and 
 found in his own nature the true impulses of action. 
 And so he writes : " These two things, contradictory 
 as they seem, must go together, manly dependence 
 
104 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 and manly independence, manly reliance and manly 
 self-reliance." And again : " Let the poet first con- 
 sult his own heart, as I have done, and leave the rest 
 to posterity to, I hope, an improving posterity. I 
 have not written down to the level of superficial 
 observers or unthinking minds." The spirit of these 
 words reveals the man, and the man so revealed could 
 only have thriven in a region where simplicity, and 
 manliness, and rugged honesty were the prime virtues 
 and common heritage of daily life. 
 
 The great turning-point in the life of Wordsworth 
 was the year 1795, when his sister Dora joined him, 
 and became henceforth the chosen comrade of his 
 intellectual life, not less than the confidant of his emo- 
 tions. The period preceding had been spent some- 
 what aimlessly, and is memorable only for the foreign 
 travel Wordsworth had indulged in, his hopes of 
 France, and his subsequent disillusionment and despair 
 Like every poet of his day, save Keats and Scott, he 
 was violently affected by the French Revolution, and 
 was caught within the whirl of its frantic fascination. 
 But with the Reign of Terror his hopes of world-wide 
 regeneration perished, and a sullen and impenetrable 
 despair fell upon him. He was indeed slow to give up 
 hope, and when England declared war upon France he 
 flamed out in indignant denunciation of what seemed 
 to him a disgraceful outrage. The effect of these 
 events on his poetry we shall best see when we come 
 to consider his patriotic poems. In the meantime, what 
 we have to observe is that in 1795 Wordsworth was as 
 unsettled as man could well be, and was without any 
 true aim or work in life. He was, to quote Mr. F. W. 
 Myers, "a rough and somewhat stubborn young man, 
 who, in nearly thirty years of life, had seemed alter- 
 
WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND POETRY. 105 
 
 nately to idle without grace and to study without 
 advantage, and it might well have seemed incredible that 
 he could have anything new or valuable to communicate 
 to mankind." It was from this state of lethargic aim- 
 lessness that Dora Wordsworth redeemed him. She 
 revealed to him the true bent of his nature, and dis- 
 covered to him his true powers. She led him back to 
 the healing solitude of Nature, where alone, as she 
 justly perceived, his mind could find a fit environment, 
 and his powers could ripen into greatness. She under- 
 stood him better than he understood himself. She 
 knew that he was unfitted for public life, or the conduct 
 of affairs, but that there was in him that which might 
 be of infinite service to the world, if fitting opportunity 
 were given for its development. And she judged that 
 nowhere so well as in the beloved environment of 
 his native mountains would that spark of ethereal fire 
 which possessed him be kindled into a living and ani- 
 mating flame. Some years were yet to elapse before 
 he finally settled at Grasmere, but they were years 
 passed in seclusion, during which he gradually gave 
 himself up to that appointed task of poetic toil, to 
 which he felt himself divinely consecrated. It meant 
 for him a practical renunciation of the world. He had 
 but the scantiest means of subsistence, and knew well 
 that such a life as he now contemplated must be almost 
 a peasant's life, lived upon a peasant's frugal fare and 
 in a peasant's mean surroundings. When he turned 
 his back upon great cities, and steadily set his face 
 toward the English mountains, he resolutely shut 
 the door upon all hopes of brilliant worldly success, 
 upon all the natural hopes of advancement in life, 
 which a man of culture and education may legitimately 
 entertain. 
 
106 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 His only guide in this most difficult hour was the 
 need and impulse of his own nature. He felt that in 
 the solitude of Nature there was peace, and there only 
 was a life of plain living and high thinking possible. 
 All he knew was that the common ideals of life did not 
 satisfy him, and he exclaimed 
 
 The wealthiest man amongst us is the best ; 
 No grandeur now in nature or in book 
 Delights us. 
 
 He had learned the great lesson of living, not for 
 things temporal, but for things eternal ; he had set him- 
 self above all to be true to his own self, and he had the 
 rare daring of being absolutely faithful to the voice of 
 this supreme conviction. Any greatness which attaches 
 to Wordsworth's character directly springs from this 
 spiritual honesty of purpose. The noblest qualities of 
 his poetry, all the qualities indeed which differentiate 
 and distinguish it, and give it a lofty isolation in Eng- 
 lish literature, were the natural result of this temper of 
 spirit and method of life. There, far from the fevered 
 life of cities, where the free winds blew, and the 
 spacious silence taught serenity; there, in the daily 
 contemplation of simple life and natural beauty among 
 his own mountains, the bonds of custom fell from 
 Wordsworth's spirit, and he became enfranchised with 
 a glorious liberty. Strength returned to him, clearness 
 and resoluteness of spirit, sanity and joy of mind. 
 The great lesson which he was consecrated to expound 
 was the nobleness of unworldly and simple life, and 
 such lessons could only be learned, much less taught, 
 by a life which was itself infinitely removed from the 
 vulgar scramble for wealth, and the insane thirst for 
 social power. It is not too much to say that it is to 
 
WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND POETRY. 107 
 
 Dora Wordsworth that England owes the precious gift 
 of her brother's genius. She recognised it when he 
 himself was dubious ; she taught him how to collect his 
 powers and develop them ; she encouraged him when 
 almost every other voice was hostile ; and, finally, she 
 taught him that serene confidence in himself, and in his 
 mission, which made him say to his few friends, when 
 the public contempt and apathy of his time seemed 
 universal and unbearable : " Make yourselves at rest 
 respecting me ; I speak the truths the world must feel 
 at last." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 
 
 WE have seen how Wordsworth began his poetic 
 career with certain clearly defined and original 
 views on the art of poetic expression. If he had been 
 a less self-contained and self-confident man, he would 
 hardly have dared to put -forth these views with such 
 perfect indifference to the current of popular taste which 
 prevailed in the beginning of the century. But the 
 truth is that Wordsworth was not a student of books. 
 De Quincey says that his library did not exceed three 
 hundred volumes, and many of these were in a very 
 incomplete condition. He was imperfectly acquainted 
 with English literature as a whole, and almost entirely 
 ignorant of the poets of his own day. He was acquainted 
 with the poetry of Scott and Southey, but he thought little 
 of it, At a moment when Byron was dazzling society, 
 and his poems were selling by thousands, Wordsworth 
 had scarcely glanced at them ; nor is there any sign that 
 the tragic force of Byron stirred so much as a ripple 
 in the calm of Wordsworth's mind. He certainly knew 
 little of Shelley, and nothing of Keats. The only poet 
 of his time who had anything to do with the shaping oi 
 his taste was Coleridge. From Coleridge he may have 
 learned something of the spell of melody, for a greatei 
 master of lyrical melody than Coleridge never lived 
 But in the main it may be said that Wordsworth stood 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTITS POETRY. 109 
 
 alone. He had no mentors he copied no models. 
 With the solitary exceptions of "Laodamia," which 
 was inspired by a re-perusal of Virgil in middle life, 
 and the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality," which 
 owes its suggestion, perhaps, to certain beautiful lines 
 of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, it is impossible to 
 trace the origin of any considerable poem of Words- 
 worth's to literary sources. The effects of this limitation 
 of literary culture in Wordsworth are twofold : we find 
 that both the great qualities and the great defects of 
 his genius are liberally displayed in his writings. A 
 solitary man possessed by a theory is sure to exaggerate 
 the importance of his theory, and to write many things 
 which he would not have written had his views been 
 corrected by a more generous commerce with the world. 
 Nothing else can account for the almost ludicrous com- 
 placency with which he calls our attention to such a 
 poem as the " Idiot Boy," and tells us he never " wrote 
 anything with so much glee." On the other hand, 
 the best poems of Wordsworth could only have been 
 written by a man nourished in solitary contemplation, 
 and indifferent to the literary standards of his time. 
 Because he owes his inspiration not to literature but 
 to Nature, he is able to rise into a region of profound 
 thought and emotion, to which the greatest of literary 
 guides could not have conducted him ; and, for the same 
 reason, all that he has written has its own distinctive 
 note, and bears the stamp of a dominant individuality. 
 
 When we endeavour to ascertain the characteristics 
 of a poet's work, what we really mean is the character- 
 istics of his style, and his peculiar moral and emotional 
 interest. Turning first, then, to the style of Words- 
 worth, it seems to be generally admitted that the period 
 in which his really memorable work was done may be 
 
no THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 limited to about twenty years (1798-1818). For what 
 Wordsworth overlooked, and what all inventors of 
 poetic theories and formulae have always overlooked, is 
 that the art of poetic expression is an indefinable gift, 
 which can neither be obtained by obedience to any 
 rules of composition, nor obscured by any defects of 
 literary culture. It is something in the poet which is 
 spontaneous and natural, which the world can neither 
 give nor take away. The absolute fulness of the gift 
 makes itself felt at once in the verses of an imperfectly 
 educated rustic like Burns; and the limitation and 
 frequent absence of the gift is equally apparent in the 
 brilliant lines of a thoroughly cultured poet like Pope. 
 When we speak of the inspiration of the poet we use 
 no vain phrase ; for that indefinable charm which 
 dwells in the poetry of a true poet is something that 
 the poet cannot produce at will, nor retain according 
 to his pleasure. It is a gift of illumination and power, 
 an inspiration which visits him irregularly, a sort of 
 diviner soul which possesses him and purges him, 
 and which is as independent even of character as it is 
 of culture or knowledge. The poet may, indeed, seek 
 to fit himself for the high tasks of the muse, as both 
 Milton and Wordsworth did; but even then it by no 
 means follows that when the lamp is cleansed and 
 trimmed the sacred flame will kindle. And in no poet 
 is the truth of these remarks more obvious than in 
 Wordsworth. During these twenty years the genius 
 of Wordsworth was in its prime. He is so far true to 
 his theory of poetry that he uses the simplest words, 
 and often chooses the homeliest subjects; but his 
 words have a compactness, a melody, a subtle charm 
 of emotion, which make them enter into the secret 
 places of the human spirit, and cling to the memory 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S POETRY, in 
 
 like an enduring fragrance. It is hard to say where 
 the charm lies ; indeed, we do not know. But we feel 
 its inspiration, we thrill before its power. The very 
 simplicity of the words, the sincerity and noble gravity 
 of the spirit which is revealed through them, fascinate 
 and attract us. But apart from all the moral influences 
 of such poems, we cannot but notice that the style of 
 Wordsworth is, during these twenty years, at its best. 
 It is direct, nervous, cogent, full of undesigned felicities, 
 and often full of lovely melody. During these twenty 
 years the genius of Wordsworth poured itself out like 
 a clear unfailing fountain, and it is almost possible to 
 say exactly where the culminating point is reached. 
 His last really great verses, in which the peculiar 
 felicities of his style are at their height, are the lines 
 "composed upon an evening of extraordinary splen- 
 dour and beauty" in the autumn of 1818. The peace 
 and splendour of the sunset pervade them. He says : 
 
 No sound is uttered, but a deep 
 
 And solemn harmony pervades 
 The hollow vale from steep to steep, 
 
 And penetrates the glades. 
 
 ***** 
 And if there be whom broken ties 
 
 Afflict, or injuries assail, 
 Yon hazy ridges to their eyes 
 
 Present a glorious scale, 
 Climbing suffused with sunny air, 
 To stop no record hath told where I 
 And tempting fancy to ascend, 
 And with immortal spirits blend ; 
 Wings at my shoulders seem to play ; 
 
 But rooted here, I stand and gaze 
 
 On those bright steps that heavenward raise 
 Their practicable way. 
 
 Wordsworth lived long and wrote much after this 
 
ii2 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 memorable evening, but his magic wand was broken. 
 Occasionally some bright gleam of that "light which 
 never was on sea or shore " falls upon his later poems ; 
 but it is intermittent and transient. He still teaches 
 and instructs us, but too often a didactic dryness has 
 succeeded the old charm of manner, and he touches 
 the old string without the old music. When the sun 
 sank that night over Rydal water, all unknown to him- 
 self the " glory of his prime " was past. The light 
 that so long had lightened him had once more flamed 
 up into a Divine brilliance, and there was something 
 pathetically prophetic of his own future in the conclud- 
 ing lines of the poem 
 
 'Tis past ; the visionary splendour fades, 
 And Night approaches with her shades. 
 
 When we ask what are the moral characteristics of 
 Wordsworth's poetry, the same difficulty of a complete 
 and sufficing answer presents itself. He excites in us 
 many emotions, but they are always pure and ennobling 
 emotions. Those who seek for coarse and violent 
 excitement must not come to Wordsworth ; they must 
 go to Byron. The Rev. F. W. Robertson has truly 
 observed that " in reading Wordsworth the sensation is 
 as the sensation of the pure water drinker, whose palate 
 is so refined that he can distinguish between rill and 
 rill, river and river, fountain and fountain, as compared 
 with the obtuser sensations of him who has destroyed 
 the delicacy of his palate by grosser libations, and who 
 can distinguish no difference between water and water, 
 because to him all pure things are equally insipid." 
 There is a gravity and sweetness in Wordsworth's 
 poems which could only spring from a noble nature, 
 ruled by the daily vigilance of duty, and dedicated to 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 113 
 
 the daily contemplation of lofty purposes. He makes 
 us feel his entire remoteness from all sordid aims and 
 debasing passions, and he calls us to a higher, a 
 simpler, a serener life. He preaches to an age corrupted 
 with sensationalism the joy that lies in natural emotions ; 
 to an age stung with the hunger for impossible ideals 
 the attainable valour and nobility of homely life ; to an 
 age tormented by insatiable thirst for riches the old 
 Divine lesson that "a man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of things which he possesseth." To the 
 worldly he speaks of unworldliness ; to the perplexed, 
 of trust ; to the victims of vain perturbation and disquiet, 
 of peace. There is an ineffable, an almost saintly 
 charm about the voice that reaches us from these green 
 solitudes of lake and mountain. He breathes consola- 
 tion and encouragement into tired hearts and failing 
 spirits. He is the apostle of peace, the minister of 
 cleansing to his time. He has nothing new or startling 
 to say : he sings of love and duty, of disciplined desires 
 and purged and regulated passions, but he speaks as 
 one who has attained and knows the secret of perpetual 
 content. He speaks 
 
 With heart as calm as lakes that sleep, 
 
 In frosty moonlight glistening, 
 Or mountain-torrents, where they creep 
 Along a channel smooth and deep, 
 
 To their own far-off murmurs listening. 
 
 Well does Mr. F. W. Myers say, "What touch has 
 given to these lines their impress of an unfathomable 
 peace ? For there speaks from them a tranquillity 
 which seems to overcome one's soul ; which makes us 
 feel in the midst of toil and passion that we are dis- 
 quieting ourselves in vain ; that we are travelling to a 
 region where these things shall not be ; that ' so shall 
 
 8 
 
114 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 immoderate fear leave us, and inordinate love shall 
 die. ' " We cannot explain the touch, but there it is : an 
 unearthly and profoundly religious charm which breathes 
 upon us in all the best poems of Wordsworth. It is, 
 in truth, the voice of a great prophet, who speaks words 
 which are for the healing of the nations. 
 
 We might illustrate these observations by copious 
 quotations from the poetry of Wordsworth, but perhaps 
 a better mode of proof is to quote the words in which 
 others, and those the foremost leaders of our time, have 
 described the power of Wordsworth over them. Ruskin 
 has said that Wordsworth is " the keenest-eyed of all 
 modern poets for what is deep and essential in Nature." 
 John Stuart Mill has written in his " Autobiography : " 
 " What made his poems a medicine for my state of 
 mind was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, 
 but states of feeling and thought coloured by feeling, 
 under the excitement of beauty. I needed to be made 
 to feel that there was real permanent happiness in 
 tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, 
 not only without turning away from, but with greatly 
 increased interest in, the common feelings and common 
 destiny of human beings." George Eliot read the 
 " Prelude " with ever-fresh delight, and declared : " I 
 never before met so many of my own feelings expressed 
 just as I should like them." It is true, indeed, as 
 Matthew Arnold has said, that 
 
 Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken 
 From half of human fate, 
 
 but that is simply saying that Wordsworth's poetry 
 has the defects of its qualities. He does not plumb 
 the depths of the more debasing and tragic passions of 
 humanity. His realism is not the new-fangled realism 
 
CHAR A CTERISTICS OF WORDS WOR Tff'S POE TRY. 115 
 
 which is fascinated only by corrupt things, but the 
 realism that dwells upon the valours and homely pieties 
 of common life. And when Matthew Arnold would 
 embody in a phrase the secret of Wordsworth's power, 
 he also bears the same testimony as Mill and George 
 Eliot, when he speaks of Wordsworth's " healing 
 power." " He contests," says Mr. R. H. Hutton, " the 
 ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent 
 humours, and often, too, with movements of incon- 
 siderate and wasteful joy;" for there is something 
 more than the steadfastness of tranquillity in Words- 
 worth : there is the steadfastness of strength. He 
 rouses us from languor, because, with all his calm, 
 there is mixed a strenuous and eager spirit, conscious 
 of a Divine mission, and bent on its fulfilment. It is 
 this moral pre-eminence of Wordsworth which is the 
 secret of his mastery over such very different minds as 
 Mill's and Ruskin's, George Eliot's and Arnold's. It is 
 largely also his moral fervour which has given him a 
 species of priesthood in literature, and has surrounded 
 his memory with a sort of sacred halo. To the passionate 
 heart of youth Wordsworth does not appeal; but as 
 life goes on, and its first fervid glow fades, men find 
 more and more how deep a well of consolation there is 
 in the writings of a poet who sang of nothing more 
 than what we are, and the long-neglected voice of 
 Wordsworth reaches us in mid-life, and haunts us with 
 its mild persistence, and cheers us with its friendly 
 hope. 
 
 To some natures, of course, Wordsworth will never 
 appeal. Macaulay could find nothing in him but an 
 " endless wilderness of twaddle," and Swinburne can 
 discern little save pompous dulness. Three great 
 writers of his own day, and only three, knew him for 
 
u6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 what he was : Scott honoured him, Coleridge loved 
 him, and Sou they praised him in the famous words 
 that there never was, and never will be, a greater poet. 
 We cannot accept this brotherly exaggeration as wholly 
 true, but clearly Southey is far nearer the truth than 
 Swinburne or Macaulay. And the more Wordsworth's 
 writings are read, the more distinctly is it felt that if he 
 is not the greatest of poets, there is no poet who has 
 given us a body of thought and emotion more human- 
 ising, more wholesome, more inspiring in its tendency. 
 That, at least, is the aim that Wordsworth set before 
 himself in his memorable criticism of his poems written 
 to Lady Beaumont in 1807. "Trouble not yourself," 
 he says, " about their present reception; of what moment 
 is that compared with what I trust is their destiny? 
 To console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, 
 by making the happy happier; to teach the young 
 and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, 
 and therefore to become more actively and securely 
 virtuous, this is their office, which I trust they will 
 faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is 
 mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves." Never 
 have the essential moral characteristics of Words- 
 worth's poetry been set forth with truer insight and 
 completeness than in this prophetic passage, written 
 in the days when no indication of fame had reached 
 him, and when, with some few honourable exceptions, 
 signal contempt was awarded him by the blind and 
 undiscerning critics who attempted to direct the taste 
 and culture of their age. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATLRE AND MAN. 
 
 I have spoken of Wordsworth as having a new 
 and original philosophy to unfold, a new and 
 individual view of Nature to expound : what then, 
 was that view ? The love of Nature is to be found in 
 all the English poets, from Chaucer downward. In 
 Wordsworth's own day both Byron and Shelley were 
 writing poems thoroughly impregnated with the love 
 of Nature. If we eliminated from English poetry all 
 the passages which deal with the charm and glory of 
 Nature, we should have destroyed all that is sweetest, 
 freshest, and most characteristic in it. What is there, 
 then, in Wordsworth's treatment of Nature which 
 differs from the poetry of those who have gone before 
 him ? It is perilous to be too positive where many fine 
 and delicate distinctions are involved ; but, speaking 
 generally, it may be said that Wordsworth differs from 
 all other poets in the stress he puts upon the moral 
 influences of Nature. To Byron, Nature was the great 
 consoler in the hour of his revolt against the folly of 
 man, and he found in her, not merely hospitality, but 
 a certain exhilaration which fed the fierce defiance of 
 his heart, and armed him with new strength for the 
 fight. To Shelley, Nature is more of a personality than 
 to Byron, but it is an ethereal and lovely presence, a 
 
iiS THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 veiled splendour, kindling sweet ardour in the heart, 
 and exercising an intoxicating magic on the mind. 
 But with Wordsworth the idea of the living personality 
 of Nature is a definite reality. He loves her as he 
 might love a mistress, and communes with her as mind 
 may commune with mind. To him she is a vast 
 embodied Thought, a Presence not merely capable of 
 inspiring delightful ardour, but of elevating man by 
 noble discipline. Take, for instance, his " Sonnet on 
 Calais Beach : " 
 
 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 
 
 The gentleness of heaven is on the sea : 
 Listen ! the Mighty Being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly. 
 
 Or take his conception of human life in the presence of 
 the everlastingness of Nature : 
 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence. 
 
 Or ponder the spirit of the well-known verses : 
 
 The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 
 Of hill and valley he has viewed j 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 
 Have come to him in solitude. 
 
 In common things that round us lie 
 Some random truths he can impart 
 
 The harvest of a quiet eye 
 That broods and sleeps on his own heart. 
 
 Or mark how he replies to the restlessness of life which 
 is divorced from habitual intercourse with Nature : 
 
WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN, 119 
 
 Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 
 But we must still be seeking ? 
 
 Nor less I deem that there are powers 
 Which of themselves our minds impress J 
 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 Into a wise passiveness. 
 
 And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings } 
 
 He, too, is no mean preacher ; 
 Come forth into the light of things, 
 
 Let Nature be your teacher. 
 
 One impulse of a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 In these verses what most strikes us is the vividness 
 of Wordsworth's conception of Nature as endowed with 
 personality "the mighty Being/' and the emphasis 
 with which he declares that Nature is a teacher whose 
 wisdom we can learn if we will, and without which any 
 human life is vain and incomplete. 
 
 An artist, who is also a teacher of art, has laid down 
 the rule that in painting landscape what we want is not 
 the catalogue of the landscape, but the emotion of the 
 artist in painting it. This is the artistic theory of the 
 Impressionist school, and it may be said that in this 
 sense Wordsworth was an impressionist. Such a poet 
 as Thomson gives us in his " Seasons " the mere 
 catalogue of Nature, and as a catalogue it is excellent. 
 If the effects of Nature were to be put up to auction, 
 no catalogue could serve us better than Thomson's 
 " Seasons." But what Thomson cannot give us, and 
 what Wordsworth does give us, is the impression which 
 Nature produces on his own spirit. He teaches us that 
 
120 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 between man and Nature there is mutual conscious- 
 ness and mystic intercourse. It is not for nothing God 
 has set man in this world of sound and vision : it is in 
 the power of Nature to penetrate his spirit, to reveal 
 him to himself, to communicate to him Divine instruc- 
 tions, to lift him into spiritual life and ecstasy. The 
 poem of " The Daffodils " is simply a piece of lovely 
 word-painting till we reach the lines 
 
 They flash upon the inward eye, 
 Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
 
 and it is in those lines the real spirit of the poem 
 speaks. There was something in that sight of the 
 daffodils, dancing in jocund glee, that kindled a joy, an 
 intuition, a hope in the poet's mind, and through the 
 vision an undying impulse of delight and illumination 
 reached him. Wordsworth does not indulge in the 
 " pathetic fallacy." He does not take his mood to Nature 
 and persuade himself that she reflects it ; but he goes 
 to Nature with an open mind, and leaves her to create 
 the mood in him. He does not ask her to echo him ; 
 but he stands docile in her presence, and asks to be 
 taught of her. To persuade ourselves that Nature 
 mirrors our mood, giving grey skies to our grief, and 
 the piping of glad birds in answer to the joy-bells of 
 our hope, is not to take a genuine delight in Nature. 
 It is to make her our accomplice rather than our in- 
 structress ; our mimic, not our mistress. Many poets 
 have done this, and nothing is commoner in current 
 poetry. The originality of Wordsworth is that he 
 never thinks of Nature in any other way than as a 
 Mighty Presence, before whom he stands silent, like 
 a faithful high-priest, who waits in solemn expectation 
 for the whisper of enlightenment and wisdom. 
 
WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN. 121 
 
 Let us turn to one of his earliest poems, the " Lines 
 composed at Tintern Abbey," July I3th, 1798, and we 
 shall see Jiow clearly defined in Wordsworth's mind 
 tfhis conception of Nature was, even at the commence- 
 ment of his career. Wordsworth was not yet thirty, 
 and had not yet recognised his true vocation in life ; 
 but,, nevertheless, all that he afterwards said about 
 Nature is uttered in outline in these memorable lines. 
 He speaks of the " tranquil restoration," the sensations 
 sweet, " felt in the blood, and felt along the heart," which 
 Nature had already wrought in him. He has peace, 
 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of song, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 The mere boyish love of Nature, when the sounding 
 cataract haunted him like a passion, he characterises as 
 one of the "glad animal movements" of the boy; now 
 he has perceived how Nature not merely works delight 
 in the blood, but flashes illumination on the soul. 
 
 For I have learned 
 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hours 
 Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
 
122 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this round earth ; and of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
 And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise 
 In Nature and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul, 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 We have only to compare this passage with such 
 poems as Byron's " Address to the Ocean/' or Shelley's 
 " Ode to the West Wind/' to see how great is the 
 difference between Wordsworth's view of Nature and 
 theirs, and how profoundly original Wordsworth's view 
 is. There is a subtle power in Wordsworth's verses 
 which seems to breathe the very spirit of Nature, and 
 to interpret her. We entirely lose sight of the revealer 
 in the revelation ; we pass out of the sphere of Words- 
 worth's mood into the very mood and heart of Nature ; 
 we feel the presence of something deeply interfused 
 through all the inanimate world. The world indeed is 
 no longer dead to us, but animate, and we feel the 
 spirit and motion of Nature like the actual contact of 
 a living and a larger soul. Wordsworth is thus not so 
 much the poet as the high-priest of Nature, and the 
 feeling he creates in us is not so much delight as 
 worship. 
 
 One effect of this ardent love of Nature in Words- 
 worth is that he excels all other poets in the fidelity of 
 his descriptions, the minute accuracy of his observation 
 of natural beauty. His eye for nature is always fresh 
 and true, and what he sees he describes with an admir- 
 able realism. His sense of form and colour is also 
 perfect, and in nothing is he so great an artist as in his 
 power of conveying in a phrase the exact truth of the 
 things he sees. When he Speaks of the voice of the 
 
WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN. 123 
 
 stock-dove as " buried among trees," he uses the only 
 word that could completely convey to us the idea of 
 seclusion, the remote depth of greenwood in which the 
 dove loves to hide herself. The star-shaped shadow of 
 the daisy cast upon the stone is noted also with the 
 same loving accuracy, and can only be the result of 
 direct observation. Nothing escaped his vigilance, and 
 his sense of sound was as perfect as his power of vision. 
 The wild wind-swept summit of a mountain-pass could 
 hardly be better painted than in this word-picture : 
 
 The single sheep, and that one blasted tree, 
 And the bleak music of that old stone wall. 
 
 We hear, as we read these lines, the wind whistling 
 through the crevices of the stone walls of Westmore- 
 land, and by the magic of this single phrase we feel 
 at nee the desolation of the scene, and we catch its 
 spirit. For, after all, it is not in the power of the most 
 accurate description of itself to create emotion in us; 
 it is the emotion of the poet we need to interpret for 
 us the spirit of what he sees, and this is just what 
 Wordsworth does for us. He scorned what he called 
 taking an inventory of Nature, and said that Nature 
 did not permit it. His comment on a brilliant poet 
 was: "He should have left his pencil and note-book 
 at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent 
 attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all 
 into a heart that could understand and enjoy. He 
 would have discovered that while much of what he had 
 admired was preserved to him, much was also most 
 wisely obliterated ; that which remained the picture 
 surviving in his mind would have presented the 
 ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in a 
 large part by discarding much which, though in itself 
 
I2 4 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 striking, was not characteristic." This was Words- 
 worth's own method. Though unsurpassed in the 
 fidelity of his observation, he never relies on observation 
 alone for his interpretation of Nature. When he has 
 observed he allows the picture of what he has seen to 
 sink quietly into the memory, and he broods above it 
 in silent joy. The result is that when the hour comes 
 to combine his materials in a poem, they are already 
 sifted for us, and are saturated with sentiment. Many 
 of the noblest passages in Wordsworth might be thus 
 described as observation touched with emotion ; un- 
 usually accurate observation touched with the finest 
 and purest emotion. 
 
 Another direct effect of Wordsworth's view of Nature 
 is his view of man. He began life with the most 
 ardent hopes for the moral regeneration of mankind/ 
 and it was only with bitter reluctance he renounced 
 them, in the frantic recoil which the excesses of the 
 French Revolution produced. From the bitterness of 
 that trouble, as we have seen, he was rescued by his 
 sister Dora, and, going back to the calm of Nature, 
 he found a truer view of mankind. He believed that 
 he had put his ringer on the real secret of the unsatis- 
 fied passions and misery of mankind when he taught 
 that man, divorced from living intercourse with Nature, 
 could not but be restless and unhappy. Man was set 
 in this world of Nature because the world of Nature 
 was necessary, to his well-being, nor were spiritual 
 sanity and delight possible without contact with Nature. 
 In this view he was confirmed when he found that in 
 the remote dales of the English Lake District human 
 life attained a robust virtue denied to the dwellers in 
 great cities. He saw that the essentials of a really 
 lofty and happy life were few, and that they were 
 
WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN. 125 
 
 found in the greatest profusion where life was simplest 
 and contact with Nature was habitual. His faith in 
 mankind returned, and man again became 
 
 An object of delight, 
 Of pure imagination and of love. 
 
 Set in his proper environment of Nature, breathing 
 clear air, looking on refreshing visions of glory and 
 delight, Wordsworth saw that man was at his best, 
 and he regarded him with genuine reverence. His 
 panacea for the healing of his country was a return to 
 Nature, and it was in pathetic reproach he wrote : 
 
 The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ! 
 
 We have given away our hearts, a sordid boon ! 
 
 There is no poet who shows so great a reverence for 
 man, as man. Lowliness and poverty cannot hide from 
 him the great qualities of heart and character, which 
 the selfish and unthinking never see. He sings the 
 homely sanctities and virtues of the poor. Human 
 nature is to him a sacred thing, and even in its frailest 
 and humblest forms is regarded with gentleness and 
 sympathy. And the real source of Wordsworth's 
 reverence for man lies in his reverence for Nature. 
 It is the constant and purging vision of Nature which 
 enables him to perceive how mean are the cares with 
 which those who are rich burden themselves, and how 
 noble, and even joyous, men can be under the stress of 
 penury and labour, if they let Nature lead them and 
 exalt them. 
 
 The spirit of this teaching is nowhere more happily 
 expressed than in the lovely lines which occur in the 
 
126 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 conclusion of the " Song at the Feast of Brougham 
 Castle/' 
 
 Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence which is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 These were the agencies which had softened, soothed, 
 and tamed the fiery heart of Clifford, and it was by the 
 same simple ministration he himself had been led into 
 settled peace. 
 
 It may, indeed, be doubted whether it is possible to 
 understand the full significance of Wordsworth's poetry 
 in any other environment than that in which it was pro- 
 duced. So at least thought James Macdonell, when he 
 wrote : " What blasts of heavenly sunshine, as if 
 blown direct from the gates of some austerely Puritan 
 Paradise ! What gusts of air, touched with the cold 
 rigour of the mountain peak ! What depth of moralis- 
 ing, touched with the hues of a masculine gloom ! 
 What felicity of diction, clothing in immortal brevity 
 of phrase the deepest aspirations of the brave ! Never 
 did I read Wordsworth with such full delight, because 
 never had I so charged my mind with the spirit of the 
 mountains which were the food of his soul." 
 
 What Burns did for the Scotch peasant, Wordsworth 
 has done for the shepherds and the husbandmen of 
 England. But he has done more than illustrate the 
 virtues of a class : from the study of peasant life, set 
 amid the splendour, and vivified by the influence of 
 Nature, he attained a profound faith in man himself, 
 and a reverent understanding of the inherent grandeur 
 of all human life. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WORDSWORTH S PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. 
 
 AN excellent and eloquent critic, Professor Dowden, 
 has spoken of Wordsworth's " uncourageous 
 elder years," and has founded the phrase upon this 
 sentence of Wordsworth's : " Years have deprived me 
 of courage, in the sense which the word bears when 
 applied by Chaucer to the animation of birds in spring- 
 time." A little reflection will, I think, show that this 
 confession of the poet hardly justifies the phrase of 
 the critic. Nevertheless, it is a general impression that 
 Wordsworth began life an ardent Radical, and ended it 
 as a staunch Conservative. If this were all, the phrase 
 might be allowed to pass, but the impression such a 
 phrase creates is that Wordsworth not merely renounced 
 his early hopes and creed, but grew apathetic toward 
 the great human causes which stirred his blood in 
 youth. Browning's fine poem of the " Lost Leader " 
 has often been applied to Wordsworth, and it has been 
 assumed in many quarters, with what degree of truth 
 we do not know, that Browning had Wordsworth in 
 his mind when he wrote that powerful and pathetic 
 indictment. However this may be, nothing is com- 
 moner than the assumption that one result of Words- 
 worth's remote seclusion from the great stress of life 
 was that he lost interest in public affairs, and cared 
 
128 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 little for the great movements of his day. Than this 
 assumption nothing can be falser. To say nothing of 
 the prose writings of Wordsworth, few poets have 
 given us a larger body of patriotic poetry, and poetry 
 impregnated with politics, than Wordsworth. Perhaps 
 it is because the finest poems of Wordsworth are those 
 that deal with the emotions of man in the presence of 
 Nature, that comparatively little interest attaches to his 
 patriotic poetry. Such poetry, however, Wordsworth 
 wrote throughout his life, and if he was not altogether 
 a political force, it is quite certain that he never ceased 
 to take a keen interest in politics. He had national 
 aims, and was full of the most ardent love of country. 
 It may be well to recall to the minds of my readers 
 this aspect of Wordsworth's life and influence. 
 
 As regards the earlier part of his life, Wordsworth 
 has left an abundant record of his thoughts in his prose 
 writings. No poet, save Milton, has written with so 
 large a touch upon national affairs, and has displayed 
 so lofty a spirit. His prose does not indeed glow with 
 so intense a passion, nor is it so gorgeous as Milton's, 
 but it is animated and inspired by the same spirit. 
 And in its more passionate passages something of 
 Milton's pomp of style is discernible something of his 
 overwhelming force of language and cogency of 
 thought. Wordsworth's tract on the " Convention of 
 Cintra" belongs to the same class of writings as 
 Milton's " Areopagitica," and while not its equal in 
 sustained splendour of diction, it is distinguished by the 
 same breadth of view and eager patriotism. Words- 
 worth has himself defined excellence of writing as 
 the conjunction of reason and passion, and, judged by 
 this test, Wordsworth's occasional utterances on politics 
 attain a rare excellence. It would have been singular 
 
PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. 129 
 
 in such an age if any man who possessed emotion 
 enough to be a poet had nothing to say upon the 
 great events which were altering the map of Europe. 
 Wordsworth from the first never concealed his opinions 
 on these subjects. He went as far as he could in 
 apologising for the errors of the French Revolution, 
 when he said truly that " Revolution is not the season 
 of true liberty." The austerity which characterised 
 his whole ' life characterises the very temper of his 
 apology for the excesses of the Revolution. He 
 shed no tears over the execution of Louis. He laments 
 a larger public calamity, " that any combination of 
 circumstances should have rendered it necessary or 
 advisable to veil for a moment the statutes of the laws, 
 and that by such emergency the cause of twenty-five 
 millions of people, I may say of the whole human race, 
 should have been so materially injured. Any other 
 sorrow for the death of Louis is irrational and weak." 
 He is even ardent Republican enough to argue for 
 equality, and to say that in the perfect state " no dis- 
 tinctions are to be admitted but such as have evidently 
 for their object the general good." This last sentence 
 strikes the keynote in much of the philosophy of 
 Wordsworth. " Simplification was," as John Morley 
 has observed, u the keynote of the revolutionary time." 
 That lesson Wordsworth thoroughly learned, and never 
 forgot. It is the very essence of the democratic spirit 
 to pierce beneath the artificial distinctions of a time, 
 and grasp the essential ; to take man for what he is, not 
 for what he seems to be ; to reverence man wherever 
 he is found, and to reverence not least the man who 
 toils in the lowliest walks of life. If this be the spirit 
 of democracy then Wordsworth kept the democratic 
 faith whole and undefiled. So far from repudiating 
 
 9 
 
130 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 the political creed of his life, he spiritualised it, and 
 lived in obedience to its essential elements all his life. 
 That in later life he manifested an incapacity for the 
 rapid assimilation of new ideas; that his notions stiffened, 
 and his perceptions failed; that he opposed Catholic 
 Emancipation and the Reform Bill, is merely to say, in 
 other words, that Wordsworth grew old. It is a rare 
 spectacle, perhaps the rarest, to see a great mind resist 
 the stiffening of age, and retain its versatility and fresh- 
 ness of outlook in the last decades of life. Wordsworth 
 was never a versatile man, and never had any marked 
 capacity for the assimilation of new ideas. But how 
 very far Wordsworth was from ever being a fossilised 
 Tory we may judge by his own saying in later life : 
 " I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have 
 a good deal of the Chartist in me." However his 
 political insight may have failed him in his apprehension 
 of the party measures of his later life, it cannot be 
 seriously questioned that Wordsworth always remained 
 true at heart to the cause of the people, and never 
 swerved in his real reverence for man as man. 
 
 The urgency of the political passion in Wordsworth 
 can be felt all through the days of the great war, and 
 perhaps the noblest record of that period is in the long 
 series of sonnets which Wordsworth wrote between the 
 years 1 803 and 1 8 1 6. In the year 1 809 he wrote scarcely 
 anything that was not related to the life of nations. It 
 was then that he apostrophised Saragossa, and lamented 
 over the submission of the Tyrolese. And if few poets 
 have written so largely on the current events of their 
 day, it may certainly be added that no poet has showed 
 a more cosmopolitan spirit. It was indeed a time when 
 England was in closer touch with the struggling nation- 
 alities of the Continent than ever before. A common 
 
PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. 131 
 
 calamity had drawn together all the peoples of Europe 
 who still loved liberty. England had never breathed 
 the spirit of so large a life as in those troublous days. 
 She had never known a period of such intense suspense 
 and united enthusiasm. The beacon-fire was built on 
 every hill ; every village-green resounded to the clang 
 of martial drill ; every port had its eager watchers, who 
 swept the waste fields of sea with restless scrutiny. 
 Children were sent to bed with all their clothes neatly 
 packed beside them, in cace the alarm of war should 
 break the midnight silence ; and invasion was for 
 months an hourly fear. It was one of those moments 
 of supreme peril and passion which come rarely in 
 the life of nations: one of those great regenerating 
 moments when factions perish, and a nation rises into 
 nobler life ; and the stress of that great period is felt 
 in every line that Wordsworth wrote. His patriotism 
 was of that diviner kind which founds itself on principles 
 of universal truth and righteousness. It was no splendid 
 prejudice, no insularity of thought, no mere sentimental 
 love of country : it gathered in its embrace the passions 
 of Europe, and pleaded in its strenuous eloquence the 
 cause of the oppressed throughout the world. This 
 breadth of view which characterised Wordsworth's 
 patriotism is its noblest characteristic. It is a catholic 
 love of liberty which gives him spiritual comradeship 
 with every man who has toiled or suffered for his 
 country. And this spirit can find no fuller exempli- 
 fication than in his noble sonnet, written in 1802, 
 
 TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 
 
 Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men ! 
 Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough 
 Within thy hearing, or thy head be now 
 Pillowed in some dark dungeon's earless den ; 
 
132 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 O miserable Chieftain ! where and when 
 Wilt thou find patience ? Yet die not ! do thou 
 Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow ; 
 Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
 Live, and take comfort ! Thou hast left behind 
 Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies ; 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee. Thou hast great allies ; 
 Thy friends are exaltations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 But catholic as Wordsworth's patriotic sympathies 
 were, the noblest expressions of his patriotism are his 
 addresses and appeals to his own countrymen. If in 
 later life he did not discern the true spirit of his times, 
 and unconsciously resisted the august spirit of pro- 
 gress, it was in part because his honest pride of 
 country grew with his growth and strengthened with 
 his age. He was loth to admit faults and flaws in a 
 form of government which seemed to meet every just 
 demand of liberty and order. Besides, the great 
 hindrance to democratic development was to Words- 
 worth, not discoverable in any error or defect of 
 government, but in the defective method of life which 
 his countrymen adopted. When he is called upon to 
 judge the political measures of his day, his touch is not 
 sure, nor his discrimination wise ; but when he estimates 
 the tendencies of the social life of England he is always 
 clear, cogent, and convincing. His social grasp is 
 always surer than his political, and his finest sonnets 
 are those in which he combines his social insight with 
 patriotic passion. Such a sonnet is this : 
 
 When I have borne in memory what has tamed 
 Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart 
 When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 
 
 The student's bower for gold, some fear, unnamed 
 
PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. 133 
 
 I had, my country ! am I to be blamed ? 
 
 Now when I think of thee, and what thou art, 
 
 Verily in the bottom of my heart 
 Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. 
 
 For dearly must we prize thee ; we who find 
 In thee a bulwark for the cause of men ; 
 
 And I by my affection was beguiled. 
 What wonder if a poet now and then, 
 
 Among the many movements of his mind, 
 
 Felt for thee as a lover or a child ? 
 
 And this is a note which is struck again and again. In 
 the hour of peril his countrymen rose to the supreme 
 daring of the occasion. What he fears is that the 
 relaxation of that intense moral strain may mean that 
 national life may lose its saving salt of lofty purpose, 
 and sink into carnal contentment and repose. " Getting 
 and spending we lay waste our powers " is the thought 
 that frequently recurs in his later poems. He fears 
 the enervation of prosperity more than the buffeting 
 of adversity. When nations are surfeited with victory 
 and peace, they are too apt to lose the Spartan temper 
 of austere devotion to their country which made them 
 great in warlike days. And why Wordsworth so often 
 recurs to this thought, is that his pride in his country 
 has no bounds. For the nation which has saved the 
 liberties of Europe to fall into inglorious self-indulg- 
 ence would be the last calamity in the possible tragedy 
 of nations. It is in the hour when such fears beset him, 
 that he appeals to " Sidney, Marvel, Harrington," who 
 
 Knew how genuine glory is put on, 
 
 Taught us how rightfully a nation shone 
 
 In splendour, what strength was that would not bend 
 
 But in magnanimous meekness. 
 
 It is then also he thinks of Milton, whose " soul was as 
 
134 THE ^ MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 a star and dwelt apart/' and invokes that mighty shade 
 which haunts the Puritan past of England 
 
 We are selfish men ; 
 O, raise us up, return to us again, 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
 
 And it is when the memory of that heroic past of 
 England is most vivid to his mind that he touches his 
 highest note of dignified and haughty pride, and scorns 
 the thought 
 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 Should perish ! and to evil and to good 
 Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung 
 
 Armoury of the invincible knights of old ; 
 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakespeare spake : the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 
 Of earth's first blood ; have titles manifold. 
 
 The patriotism of Wordsworth is not violent or 
 frenzied ; it is comparatively restrained ; but, for that 
 very reason, in the moments of its highest utterance 
 there is a depth and force in it such as few writers 
 display. When habitually calm men break the barriers 
 of reserve, there is something strangely impressive 
 in their passion. There is nothing more impressive in 
 Wordsworth, as indicative of the strength of his emo- 
 tions, than these occasional bursts of exalted patriotism, 
 and their force is heightened by the contrast they 
 furnish to his habitual serenity of temper. 
 
 There is one poem of Wordsworth's which stands 
 out in particular prominence as the greatest of all his 
 poems which express the spirit of patriotism : that is 
 the " Happy Warrior." This poem was written in the 
 year 1806, and was inspired by the death of Nelson. 
 It was in the autumn of the previous year that Nelson 
 
PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. 135 
 
 had fallen on the deck of the Victory, and the shock of 
 sorrow and consternation which passed over England 
 has never been equalled by any similar public calamity. 
 Certainly the death of no individual has ever called 
 forth so spontaneous and general a lamentation. 
 Nelson was to the England of his day the very in- 
 carnation of manly courage and heroic virtue. The 
 fascination of his name affected every class of society. 
 He seemed to sum up in himself that reverence for duty 
 which is so characteristic a feature of the English race. 
 Between Nelson and Wordsworth there could be little 
 in common, save this bond of ardent patriotism, but 
 that was sufficient to call forth from Wordsworth 
 one of his finest poems. Just as we can specify cer- 
 tain poems which constitute the high-water mark of 
 Wordsworth's genius in philosophic or lyric poetry, so 
 we can confidently take this poem as his maturest 
 word in patriotic poetry. It breathes the very spirit 
 of consecrated heroism. Some points of the poem 
 were suggested by a more private sorrow the loss at 
 sea of his brother John ; but it was out of the larger 
 emotion occasioned by the death of Nelson that the 
 poem originated. It is the idealised Nelson who stands 
 before us in these verses : 
 
 But who, if he be called upon to face 
 
 Some awful moment, to which Heaven has joined 
 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 
 Is happy as a Lover, and attired 
 
 With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired : 
 
 And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 
 
 Or if an unexpected call succeed, 
 
 Come when it will, is equal to the need. 
 
 He who, though thus endued as with a sense 
 
 And faculty for storm and turbulence, 
 
I3& THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans 
 To homefelt pleasures, and to gentler scenes. 
 This is the Happy Warrior, this is He 
 That every man in arms should wish to be. 
 
 When we read these words we are reminded of a 
 passage in the " Recluse/' in which Wordsworth tells 
 us he could never read of two great war-ships grap- 
 pling without a thrill of emulation, more ardent than 
 wise men should know. It is a passage which throws 
 a new light upon the nature of Wordsworth. If he 
 was serene, it was not because he was lethargic; if 
 he urged the blessedness of regulated passions, it was 
 not because his own heart was cold : he, too, had a 
 passionate nature and heroic fibre in him, and that 
 courageous and soldierly temper is fitly vindicated and 
 expressed in the lofty spirit of his patriotic poems. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 WHEN we put down the works of a poet, we are 
 naturally inclined to ask what the poet himself 
 was like in actual life, and to seek some authentic 
 presentment of him as he moved among men. In the 
 case of Wordsworth we have many partial portraits, 
 but it can hardly be said that we have any true and 
 finished picture. The seclusion of Wordsworth's life 
 saved him from the scrutiny of that social world where 
 every little trait of character is indelibly photographed 
 on some retentive memory, and the trifles of uncon- 
 sidered conversation are gathered up, and often repro- 
 duced after many days in diaries and reminiscences. 
 Considering the literary force which Wordsworth was, 
 few men have had such scanty dealings with the 
 literary circles of their time. If Wordsworth had died 
 at fifty, it is pretty certain that beyond the reminiscences 
 of personal friends, like Coleridge and Southey, there 
 would have been little to guide us to a true understand- 
 ing of his person and character. Gradually, however, 
 as the tide set in his favour, the quiet house at Rydal 
 Mount became more and more a place of pilgrimage, 
 and few visitors of eminence came away without noting 
 down certain impressions, more or less instructive, of 
 the great Lake Poet. 
 
138 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 First of all there come naturally the testimonies of 
 those men of letters who formed a little colony beside 
 the English Lakes, and whose names are inseparably 
 associated with Wordsworth's. Southey's sense of 
 Wordsworth's powers may be measured by his enthu- 
 siastic verdict, that there never was and never would 
 be a greater poet. Coleridge conveys his impression 
 of Wordsworth's strength of character, not less than 
 of his genius, in the pathetic lines written in the days of 
 his own eclipse and sorrow, and already quoted : 
 
 O great Bard ! 
 
 Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, 
 With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir 
 Of ever-enduring men. 
 Ah ! as I listened with a heart forlorn, 
 The pulses of my being beat anew. 
 
 The quality in Wordsworth which struck Coleridge 
 most was naturally the quality in which he himself 
 was most deficient the robustness and sufficiency of 
 the poet's nature. De Quincey, in his sketch, observes 
 cne same characteristic, and probably this was the first 
 and deepest impression which Wordsworth created. 
 He struck all who knew him as a solid, indomitable 
 man, somewhat taciturn, save when the theme inspired 
 him and the company was fitting ; a man who knew in 
 what he had believed, and knew how to stand true to 
 himself and his convictions, amid evil report and good 
 report. That there should be something of childlike 
 vanity and harmless egotism about him, was perhaps 
 the natural consequence of his lack of humour and 
 his secluded life. When Emerson visited him he was 
 much amused to see Wordsworth solemnly prepare 
 himself for action, and then declaim like a schoolboy 
 his latest sonnet on FingaPs Cave. If Wordsworth 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 139 
 
 had had any of the elements of humour in him, he 
 himself would have been too conscious of the ludicrous 
 side of the proceeding to have indulged in it. But 
 Wordsworth united in himself philosophic seriousness 
 and childlike simplicity, and was singularly insensible 
 to humour. His neighbours said they never heard 
 him laugh ; and remarked that you could tell from his 
 face there was no laughter in his poetry. He took life 
 seriously, and, to quote Mrs. Browning's fine phrase, 
 poetry was to him " as serious as life." He once told 
 Sir George Beaumont that in his opinion " a man of 
 letters, and indeed all public men of every pursuit, 
 should be severely frugal." The Puritan discipline 
 which he applied to his life moulded his character, 
 and a constant life of plain living and high thinking 
 left little room for the casual graces of persiflage and 
 banter. Of mere cleverness, the airy agility of shallow 
 brains and ready tongues, he was destitute. He was 
 not suave, not fascinating, scarcely prepossessing. But 
 if he was calm it was not with any natural coldness of 
 temperament ; his calm was the fruit of long discipline 
 and fortitude. One acute observer speaks of the fear- 
 ful intensity of his feelings and affections, and says 
 that if his intellect had been less strong they would 
 have destroyed him long ago. De Quincey in like 
 manner noted his look of premature age,* " the furrowed 
 and rugged countenance, the brooding intensity of the 
 eye, the bursts of anger at the report of evil doings " 
 the signs of the passionate forces which worked within 
 him. He himself in his many self-revelations conveys 
 the same impression of a nature hard to govern, of 
 
 * De Quincey says that when Wordsworth was thirty-nine his age 
 was guessed at over sixty. 
 
140 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 violent passions disciplined with difficulty, of wild and 
 tumultuous desires only conquered by incessant vigil- 
 ance. He bore upon himself the marks of a difficult 
 life : and it was a touch of genuine insight which led 
 Coleridge to describe him by the brief and pregnant 
 phrase an " ever-enduring man." 
 
 The picture which Harriet Martineau gives of 
 Wordsworth as she knew him in his old age does 
 not err on the side of adulation, but it cannot conceal 
 the essential nobleness of his character. Harriet 
 Martineau thought little of his writings, and says so 
 with caustic frankness. According to her view the 
 view be it remembered of an incessantly busy woman 
 Wordsworth suffered from having nothing to do ; 
 and he suffered yet more in his old age from the 
 adulation of the crowd of visitors who poured toward 
 Rydal Mount during the tourist season. To each of 
 these idle visitors, and they averaged five hundred a 
 season, Wordsworth behaved much in the same way. 
 He politely showed them round his grounds, explained 
 at what particular spot certain poems were written, and 
 then politely bowed them out. He had no reticence 
 cither in reciting his poems or talking of them ; indeed, 
 he often spoke of them in an impersonal sort of way, 
 as though they had no relation to himself, and he 
 criticised them as freely as though some one else had 
 written them. Thus, he told Harriet Martineau that 
 the " Happy Warrior " did not " best fulfil the con- 
 ditions of poetry, but it was a chain of extremely 
 valooable thoughts," a criticism which Miss Martineau 
 endorses as " eminently just." In these, and in many 
 similar proceedings, we recognise the na'ive simplicity 
 of the man. He solemnly advised Miss Martineau to 
 give nothing but tea to her visitors, and if they wanted 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 141 
 
 meat let them pay for it themselves, that having been 
 his own method of proceeding in his early days of 
 penury at Grasmere. That this frugal suggestion did 
 not spring from any inhospitable meanness is abundantly 
 evident from the larger generosities of Wordsworth's 
 life. His treatment of poor Hartley Coleridge is above 
 praise. Miss Martineau only met Hartley five times, and 
 on each occasion he was drunk. Wordsworth treated 
 him as an erring son, and when all hope of reclaiming 
 him was over, paid for his lodgings, cared for his wants, 
 and smoothed his passage to the grave. There are few 
 more touching pictures than that of the old poet standing 
 bareheaded by the grave of Hartley, on the bleak winter 
 morning when all that was mortal of that unhappy genius 
 was laid to rest in the quiet God's acre which was soon 
 to receive the dust of Wordsworth. 
 
 An equally beautiful picture is painted by Miss 
 Martineau of the poet as she often met him, " attended 
 perhaps by half-a-score of cottagers' children, the 
 youngest pulling at his cloak or holding by his 
 trousers, while he cut ash switches out of the hedge 
 for them." This little touch of nature may be paired 
 off with Mr. Rawnsley's story, of how a pastor in a far- 
 away parish was asked by a very refined, handsome- 
 looking woman on her death-bed to read over to her 
 and to her husband the poem of " The Pet Lamb," and 
 how she had said at the end, " That was written about 
 me; Mr. Wordsworth often spoke to me, and patted 
 my head when a child," and had added with a sigh, 
 11 Eh, but he was such a dear kind old man ! " Miss 
 Martineau also strongly confirms the impression of 
 Wordsworth's isolation from the main streams of life, 
 the solitary self-containedness of his character, when 
 she says that his life was " self-enclosed," and that he 
 
142 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 had scarcely any intercourse with other minds, in books 
 or conversation. 
 
 Another source of information about Wordsworth 
 is found in the reminiscences of him among the peas- 
 antry, which have been so excellently collated by 
 Mr. Rawnsley. These have a unique value as the only 
 record we possess of the impression which Wordsworth 
 created, not on cultivated minds, but on the minds of 
 the simple dales-people whose virtues he so strenuously 
 sang. The northern mind has two distinguishing 
 qualities a certain quickness of imagination which 
 finds expression in the use of singularly vivid phrases, 
 and a certain shrewd touch of humour which delights 
 in exaggerative travesty. Making allowance for these 
 conditions, we may construct a remarkably lifelike por- 
 trait from these observations of Wordsworth's humble 
 neighbours. We are face to face with Wordsworth 
 in the prime of his power and force, when, we are told, 
 he was "a plainish-faaced man, but a fine man, leish 
 (active), and almost always upon the road. He wasn't 
 a man of many words, would walk by you times enuff 
 wi'out sayin' owt, specially when he was in study. He 
 was always a-studying, and you might see his lips 
 a-goin' as he went along the road." Another speaks of 
 him as " a vara practical-eyed man, a man as seemed 
 to see aw that was stirrin'." He walked in later days 
 with "a bit of a stoop," which somewhat diminished 
 the sense of his real height, which was about six feet. 
 When he was making a poem, " he would set his head 
 a bit forward, and put his hands behint his back. 
 And then he would start a-bumming, and it was bum, 
 bum, bum, stop ; and then he'd set down, and git a bit 
 o' paper out, and write a bit. However, his lips were 
 always goan' whcale time he was upon gress walk. 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 143 
 
 He was a kind mon, there's no two words about that ; 
 if anyone was sick i' the plaace, he wad be off to see 
 til' 'em." His only recreations were walking and 
 skating. He was first upon the ice, and 
 
 Wheeled about 
 
 Proud and exulting like an untired horse, 
 That cares not for his home. 
 
 He had very little care for personal appearance. He 
 usually wore a wideawake and old blue cloak : " niver 
 seed him in a boxer in my life," says one witness with 
 pathetic reproach. He had even been known to ride in 
 a dung-cart upon his longer excursions : "just a dung- 
 cart, wi' a seat-board in front, and bit o' bracken in t' 
 bottom, comfortable as owt." He had a deep bass 
 voice, and when he was " bumming " away in some 
 remote part at nightfall, the casual passenger was 
 almost terrified. He constituted himself by common 
 consent general custodian of the beauties of the dis- 
 trict, and prevented many a copse from being cut 
 down, and superintended the building of many a 
 cottage. Not a companionable man, however. A 
 remoteness about him which awed men rather than 
 attracted them. Indeed, their one complaint about him 
 was that he had no convivial tendencies, like Hartley 
 Coleridge, who came very much nearer the rustic ideal 
 of a poet than the solitary of Rydal Mount. He was 
 "a desolate-minded man; as for his habits, he had 
 noan ; niver knew him with a pot i' his hand, or a pipe 
 i' his mouth." He "was not lovable in the faace, by 
 noa means " the face was too rugged and austere to 
 be fascinating. So one rustic observer after another 
 bears his witness, the net result being a sufficiently 
 luminous picture of a strong and somewhat taciturn 
 man, buried in his own thoughts, passing up and 
 
M4 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH 
 
 down among his fellows with a certain awe-inspiring 
 unapproachableness, and yet a man of warm heart and 
 quick sympathy ; not a cheerful man, but a man who, 
 after long battle, has won the secret of peace, and walks 
 a solitary path, clothed with silence, and winning from 
 others the reverence due to the hermit and the sage. 
 
 Stiff and awkward as Wordsworth often was in con- 
 versation, yet there were times when he created a 
 sincere admiration by his talk. Haydon says, " Never 
 did any man so beguile the time as Wordsworth. His 
 purity of heart, his kindness, his soundness of prin- 
 ciple, his information, his knowledge, and the intense 
 and eager feelings with which he pours forth all he 
 knows, affect, interest, and enchant one." But among 
 all the various literary portraits which we possess of 
 Wordsworth, there is none so subtle and so potent 
 as Carlyle's. Carlyle thought little of Wordsworth's 
 writings, but after he had met him he says : " He 
 talked well in his way ; with veracity, easy brevity, 
 and force. His voice was good, frank, sonorous ; 
 though practically clear, distinct, forcible, rather than 
 melodious; the tone of him business-like, sedately 
 confident, no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being 
 courteous ; a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his 
 mountain-breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and 
 on all he said and did. You would have said he was 
 a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself, to 
 audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered 
 itself. His face bore marks of much, not always peace- 
 ful, meditation ; the look of it not bland or benevolent 
 so much as close, impregnable, and hard ; a man multa 
 tacere loquive paratus, in a world where he had experi- 
 enced no lack of contradictions as he strode along. 
 The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 145 
 
 clearness ; there was enough of brow, and well-shaped. 
 He was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and 
 strong-looking when he stood ; a right good old steel- 
 grey figure, with a fine rustic simplicity and dignity 
 about him, and a veracious strength looking through 
 him, which might have suited one of those old steel- 
 grey Mark-gmfs, whom Henry the Fowler set up to 
 ward the marches, and do battle with the intrusive 
 heathen in a stalwart and judicious manner." The 
 last phrase recalls to us Wordsworth's confession in 
 the " Prelude " to his early love of battle-histories, and 
 thirst for a life of heroic action. A man who had not 
 had something of the fighter in him could never have 
 defied the world as he defied it. His imaginative faculty 
 made him a poet ; but under all his intellectual life 
 there throbbed the difficult pulse of a valorous restless- 
 ness, and he had in him the pith and sinew of the 
 hero. Poets have too often been the victims of their 
 own sensitiveness, but Wordsworth stands among 
 them as a man of stubborn strength, an altogether 
 sturdy and unsubduable man. " Out of this sense of 
 loneliness," a friend once wrote to Harriet Martineau, 
 " shall grow your strength, as the oak, standing alone, 
 grows and strengthens with the storm ; whilst the ivy, 
 clinging for protection to the old temple-wall, has no 
 power of self-support." Doubtless the loneliness of 
 Wordsworth's life fed his strength, and no finer image 
 than that of the oak could be found to describe the 
 resolute vigour of Wordsworth's character. He cer- 
 tainly was no weak spray of ivy clinging to a temple 
 wall ; but he never forgot the temple and its sanctities 
 notwithstanding ; and if he was an oak, it was an oak 
 that had its roots in sacred soil, and cast the shadow 
 of its branches on the doorways of the sanctuary. 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONCLUDING SURVEY. 
 
 IT is evident to the reader who has followed this 
 imperfect study of Wordsworth with any degree 
 of care that his merits and defects are alike great, and 
 in concluding our survey it is well to recapitulate 
 them. In few poets are the profound and trivial found 
 in such close proximity, and this is his chief defect. 
 Like Browning, for many years Wordsworth had few 
 readers, and consequently wrote more for his own 
 pleasure than with the artistic restraint and careful- 
 ness which the sense of public praise and criticism 
 impose. Such criticism as he received was little 
 better than insane or spiteful vituperation, and its 
 only effect was to increase in a man of Wordsworth's 
 temperament a stubborn dependence on himself. It 
 is hard to say which acts with worse effect upon a 
 poet, the adulation of an undiscerning or the apathy of 
 an indifferent public. It seems likely, however, that 
 if Wordsworth had received any public encourage- 
 ment early in life, it would have acted beneficially, 
 in leading him to perceive his own faults of style, 
 and perhaps to correct them. There are various 
 passages in Wordsworth's letters which prove that, 
 while he braced himself to endure public hostility with 
 uncomplaining stoicism, yet he would not the less have 
 
WILLIAM WORDS WOR TH CONCL UDING SURVEY. 147 
 
 valued public encouragement. But as years wore away, 
 and his circle of readers still continued to be of the 
 narrowest, he cared less and less to write with any de- 
 finite attempt to gain the public ear. He wrote for his 
 own delectation, and, as we have seen, often attached 
 false values to his poems. He failed, as every solitary 
 writer must fail, to discriminate between the perfect 
 and imperfect work of his genius. The result is that 
 to-day the perfect work of Wordsworth is hampered by 
 its association with the imperfect. His readers often 
 fail to take a just measurement of the noble qualities of 
 his genius, because it is so easy for them to pass from 
 his greatest poems to passages of verse-writing which 
 are dull, trivial, bald, and in every way unworthy of 
 him. This fact has been amply recognised by Matthew 
 Arnold, and he has endeavoured to remedy the defect 
 by his admirable selection from the works of Words- 
 worth. Few poets bear the process of selection so well, 
 and certainly none have so much to gain by it. 
 
 There is something of pathos, indeed, in the recol- 
 lection of the relation which Wordsworth bore to the 
 literature of his day. He came in the wake of Byron, 
 and uttered a note so different that it is scarcely sur- 
 prising that the multitude who read Byron had no ear 
 for Wordsworth. For every thousand who bought 
 "Childe Harold," there was perhaps one who bought 
 the "Lyrical Ballads." When contempt and hostility 
 had slowly passed into grateful recognition his fame 
 was menaced from another quarter. By that time 
 Tennyson was making himself heard, and Tennyson 
 soon passed Wordsworth in the race for fame. Words- 
 worth never knew the joy of unrivalled and indisputable 
 pre-eminence. His star rose unperceived in the firma- 
 ment \\here Byron reigned in splendour, and before 
 
148 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 the fading afterglow of Byron had left a space for his 
 modest light to spread, it was again eclipsed by the 
 growing beams of Tennyson. The one poet had the 
 vehement personality; and the other the rich and ornate 
 style, which Wordsworth lacked. Each appealed to 
 the popular ear as he did not ; the one with a more 
 masterful, the other with a more musical, note. It 
 seemed part of the irony of fate that Wordsworth 
 should nurture his heart in solitary endurance to the 
 end, and should never know what it was to reap the 
 full harvest of his toils. Perhaps also there is a law of 
 compensation at work which has ensured to Words- 
 worth a more solid fame than Byron seems likely to 
 enjoy, or Tennyson is likely to attain. The sureness 
 which we usually associate with slowness has certainly 
 marked the growth of Wordsworth's fame ; and it may 
 be confidently said that at no period since the appear- 
 ance of the " Lyrical Ballads" has Wordsworth been 
 so widely read as now. Can as much be said of 
 Byron ? Will as much be said in a hundred years of 
 Tennyson ? Of Byron at least it is true that he has 
 decreased while Wordsworth has increased. While 
 the star of Byron has gradually receded, the star of 
 Wordsworth has risen into dominance, and burns with 
 an enduring and immitigable flame. If the verdict of 
 universal criticism goes for anything, it is clear that 
 Wordsworth has come to stop. 
 
 There are, of course, some dissentients to this judg- 
 ment, but one hardly pays much attention nowadays to 
 the erratic criticisms of Mr. Swinburne, and still less 
 to Mr. Oscar Wilde when he writes contemptuously of 
 " Mr. Wordsworth," or Mr. Andrew Lang, when he is 
 good enough to inform us that he does not care "very 
 much for Mr. William Wordsworth." These are merely 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWOR TH CONCL UDING SUR VE Y. 149 
 
 the small impertinences of criticism, meant to excite 
 laughter, but likelier to inspire contempt, and in no 
 case worthy of any serious resentment. Nor can one 
 quarrel seriously with so genial a humorist as Edward 
 Fitzgerald, when he is provoked by the almost irritating 
 respectability of Wordsworth to write of him as " my 
 daddy." It is more to the purpose to recollect that 
 Coleridge placed Wordsworth " nearest of all modern 
 writers to Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind per- 
 fectly unborrowed and his own." If this be regarded 
 as the unconsidered praise of enthusiastic friendship, 
 we have also to recollect that Matthew Arnold, who 
 was always frugal in his praise, and never guilty of 
 untempered adulation, has practically endorsed this 
 verdict. With Shakespeare and Milton he will not 
 compare him, but next to these august names he ranks 
 Wordsworth as the man who has contributed most 
 to the permanent wealth of English poetry since the 
 Elizabethan age. Nor does Mr. John Morley, the latest 
 critic of Wordsworth, contest the justice of this criti- 
 cism. He cannot grant him Shakespeare's vastness of 
 compass, nor Milton's sublimity, nor Dante's " ardent 
 force of vision," but he admits Wordsworth's right to 
 comparison, and admirably states Wordsworth's pecu- 
 liar gift when he says, " What Wordsworth does is to 
 assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. Wordsworth, at any 
 rate, by his secret of bringing the infinite into common 
 life, as he invokes it out of common life, has the skill 
 to lead us, so long as we yield ourselves to his influence, 
 into inner moods of settled peace ; to touch ' the depth 
 and not the tumult of the soul ; ' to give us quietness, 
 strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do or 
 to endure." He would be a daring man who contested 
 a verdict endorsed by the three most eminent names of 
 
150 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 modern criticism, and it is pretty safe to assume that 
 on all the main issues this verdict is decisive, and is 
 not likely to be seriously impugned. 
 
 Any final survey of Wordsworth's work would be 
 incomplete without mention of what may, after all, be 
 taken as his noblest single poem, the " Ode on In- 
 timations of Immortality from Recollections of Early 
 Childhood." This poem was written when Words- 
 worth was at the prime of his powers (1803-6), and is 
 rich in his peculiar excellences. It also sums up much 
 that is most characteristic in his philosophy. The 
 starting-point of his philosophy is that man has in 
 himself all the elements of perfect life, if he will but 
 learn how to adjust himself to the environment in 
 which he finds himself: 
 
 The Child is father of the Man, 
 
 I could wish my days to be 
 
 Bound each to each in natural piety. 
 
 The evils of life spring from the perverse disregard of 
 his true instincts, to which man is prone. The child 
 loves Nature, and is happiest in contact with Nature, 
 and it is for that reason Wordsworth urges the absolute 
 need for communion with Nature in the perfect human 
 life. In the natural instincts of the child's heart we 
 have, if we only knew it, the true indications of the 
 highest possible development of human nature. They 
 are the pointer-stars by which we can measure the 
 firmament of human life, and ascertain the true bear- 
 ings and infinite courses of human destiny. But 
 behind this assumption another question lies : we ask, 
 What is there to prove to us that these instincts are 
 right, and from whence do they spring ? The answer 
 to this question Wordsworth gives in this great ode. 
 
WILL I A M WORDS WOR TH CONCL UDING SURVEY. 151 
 
 As usual, he probes the mystic depths of his own 
 experiences, and from that depth rescues the clue 
 which interprets to him the whole mystery and cir- 
 cumference of human destiny. He tells us that as a 
 child he had no notion of death, nor could he bring 
 himself to realise it as a state applicable to his own 
 being. He felt within himself the movements of a 
 spirit that knew nothing of decay or death. He even 
 felt it difficult to realise the fact of an external world, 
 so absorbed was he in the rapture of idealism. " Many 
 times," he says, "while going to school, have I grasped 
 at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of 
 idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of 
 such processes. In later periods of life I have de- 
 plored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation 
 of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the 
 remembrances, as is expressed in the lines: 
 
 Obstinate questionings 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 Blank misgivings of a Creature, 
 Moving about in worlds not recognised, 
 High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
 Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised. 
 
 He recalls the " dream-like vividness and splendour 
 which invests objects of sight in childhood," and then 
 asks : What is the interpretation of this 'sense of 
 wonder and strangeness which is the earliest recollec- 
 tion of childhood in the presence of external nature ? 
 His reply is that in the child's spiritual aloofness from 
 the world, in his sense of the foreignness of life as he 
 finds it, is the intimation of his previous existence in the 
 purer realms of spirit, and of his ultimate return to a 
 spiritual existence. He is a spirit clothed with fleshy 
 
152 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 apparel for a moment, but immortal in himself, and 
 moving through the darkened ways of mortality with 
 the primal fire of immortality burning in his heart, and 
 trembling upwards to the source from which it sprang. 
 The world is his prison-house, and the great end of 
 life is not to be reconciled to the prison-house, but to 
 retain and strengthen the Divine desires which haunt 
 him with the sense of something lost, and something 
 higher. Mere shadowy recollections they may be, and 
 yet they are 
 
 The fountain-light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake 
 
 To perish never ; 
 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 
 
 Nor Man nor Boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 
 
 This poem is the noblest of all testimony to the 
 profound religiousness of Wordsworth's spirit. It 
 breathes something more than the peace, it trembles 
 with the rapture of the loftiest piety. It purges, it 
 transforms, it exalts us. We catch a spiritual glow 
 as we listen, we see before us the unfolding vision of 
 glory beyond glory, such as he saw who stood on 
 Patmos and beheld the heavens opened, and the in- 
 finite cycles of immeasurable Divine purposes fulfilling 
 themselves. Prisoners though we be, stifled in a 
 world of sense, weighed upon with fetters of ignoble 
 custom, yet as we climb the solitary peak of contem- 
 plation where Wordsworth stands like a seer lost in 
 vision 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONCLUDING SURVEY. 153 
 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us thither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel hither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 And last, it may be noted, that in literary finish and 
 pregnancy of phrase Wordsworth never surpassed this 
 poem. It marks the complete culmination of his power. 
 Phrase after phrase, such as 
 
 Faith that looks through death, 
 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind ; 
 
 or, 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 or, 
 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears, 
 
 has passed into the currency of literature unnoticed, 
 by reason of some unforgettable quality of thought or 
 expression, which stamps itself upon the universal 
 memory. Longer poems, full of passages of memor- 
 able insight or emotion, Wordsworth has written, but 
 his great qualities find no nobler display than in this 
 poem. Nowhere does he more nearly approach to 
 " Milton's sublime and unflagging strength, and Dante's 
 severe, vivid, ardent force of vision." It is, in fact, 
 one of the few great odes of English literature, and 
 is in itself sufficient to give Wordsworth rank among 
 the few greatest poets who stand secure above the 
 transience of human taste, 
 
 the great of old, 
 
 The dead but sceptred sov'reigns, who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns. 
 
154 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Finally, we note that Wordsworth is not the poet 
 of youth, but of maturity. There is poetry, as there is 
 art, which does not dazzle us with wealth of colour, 
 but which deals in cool and silvery greys, unnoticed by 
 the taste which seeks startling and sensational effects, 
 but infinitely refreshing to tired eyes which have long 
 since turned from the sensational in resentment and 
 something of disgust. Perhaps it is not until we have 
 been surfeited with gaudy art that we learn fully to 
 appreciate this very different art. Then is the time for 
 the cool grey : then it is that these softer and soberer 
 tones of colour soothe the eye and satisfy the brain. 
 It is, in the same way, precisely when the poets of our 
 youth cease to allure us that the charm of Words- 
 worth begins to be most keenly felt. To the mature 
 man, who has wearied of the theatrical glitter of Byron 
 or the cloying sweetness of Keats, Wordsworth comes 
 like the presence of Nature herself. He does not 
 captivate the taste with casual brilliance, but he 
 subdues it with a sense of infinite . tranquillity and 
 refreshment. He satisfies the heart, he inspires and 
 stimulates the thought. We read him not once, but 
 many times, and as life advances we find that he is 
 one of the few poets we need not cast aside. He 
 ennobles and invigorates us. He advances with us 
 as we pass into those shadows which lie about the 
 doorways of mortality, and his voice never falters in 
 its encouragement and pious hope. He becomes to us 
 more than a poet he is our guide, philosopher, and 
 friend ; and when many other guides of youth are 
 shaken off, the mature mind grows more and more 
 sympathetic .to Wordsworth, and finds in him a 
 spiritual comradeship such as no other poet has it 
 in his power to give. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE HUMANITARIAN MOVEMENT IN POETRY- 
 THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 
 
 [Thomas Hood, born in London, 1798. Wrote the " Song of the 
 Shirt," 1843. Died in London, May 1845. Mrs. Browning, born 
 in London, March 4th, 1809. Died in Florence, June 29th, 1861.] 
 
 ANY survey of the poets would be incomplete which 
 did not take into account the beginnings of a 
 movement in modern literature which we may call the 
 Humanitarian Movement. If we cared to go back far 
 enough in the search for its beginnings, we should clearly 
 have to touch again upon the work of Crabbe, who 
 is in many respects the father of humanitarian realism 
 in poetry. Crabbe had no delicacy of touch and little 
 refinement of mind, but he knew how to paint his 
 pictures of the suffering poor in a broad and effective 
 fashion, which secured him both attention and fame in 
 his day. The weak point in Crabbe's work is a certain 
 vitiating touch of coarseness. He sometimes excites 
 repulsion where he means to stimulate pity. Between 
 pity and repulsion the line of demarcation is often 
 slender, and Crabbe's power of discernment was not 
 sensitive and subtle enough always to observe it. There 
 is a certain air of deliberation about his realism, and 
 sometimes a tedious accumulation of detail in his 
 method, which hide from us the genuine, honest 
 
156 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 sympathy of his nature. In a word, Crabbe lacks 
 passion. His nature is too s^w and solid to kindle 
 into white-heat, or to kindle others. It was reserved 
 for two later poets, Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning, 
 to take up the work which he began, and to do it with 
 such vehemence and passion that their writings consti- 
 tute a new era in modern poetry. 
 
 Dissimilar as Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning 
 were in many respects, yet their lives bear a close re- 
 semblance in familiarity with misfortune. Hood's life 
 was a story of hard work faithfully done ; of frequent 
 sorrows borne with brave endurance and buoyant trust. 
 His first verses appeared in a Dundee newspaper, and 
 like many other men he slid into literature rather by 
 force of circumstances than by intention and deliberate 
 dedication. Like many others, he also found that 
 literature was an excellent crutch but a bad support. 
 His knowledge of engraving and his comic genius 
 brought him bread, but the means of living were often 
 sorely scanty. At one time he was virtually expatriated 
 by commercial losses, and took up his residence in 
 Germany. With weak health, often broken by periods 
 of acute suffering, with a family which increased with 
 perplexing rapidity, with constant pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments to depress and harass him, Hood never bated 
 a jot of heart or hope ; and for those who can discern 
 the true nobleness of such a struggle as this Hood will 
 wear something of the lustre of the true hero. It was 
 not the Byronic heroism which mouths its part upon 
 the stage, and invites the public to share its secrets, 
 but the heroism of reticence, which endures and is 
 quiet. Hood obeyed Carlyle's doctrine : he consumed 
 his own smoke. He wrote no bitter, petulant, or com- 
 plaining poems. To the public his mouth was always 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 157 
 
 full of jests, and his kindly face always lit with smiles. 
 The crowd applauded his jests, but little knew how 
 heavy was the heart of the jester. Hood was not the 
 man to let them know. Perhaps with him, as with 
 Abraham Lincoln, "laughter was his vent for sorrow :" 
 if he had not laughed he would have died of a broken 
 heart or frenzied brain. He so habitually practised 
 the art of jesting at his sorrows that his son tells us 
 that even when the shadow of death had fallen on him, 
 and a sinapism of more than usual potency was applied 
 to his wasted chest, he said, smilingly, " It seems a 
 great deal of mustard for so very little meat." And 
 this life-long sorrow of Hood, this daily-enacted tragedy 
 of " despairing hope," did not make him selfish, but 
 sympathetic, and led him to look with passionate insight 
 and pity on the sorrows of others. Perhaps it needs 
 a sufferer to interpret suffering, and only a man who 
 had found how hard it was to work for bread in London 
 could have written the " Song of the Shirt." 
 
 The same story of personal suffering occupies more 
 than half of the life of Mrs. Browning. She indeed 
 was opulent enough to be above the bitter fight for 
 bread, but her troubles came in another way. Her 
 first volume was published in her seventeenth year, and 
 bore the ambitious title " An Essay on Mind." This 
 was followed by a translation of the " Prometheus 
 Bound," of ^Eschylus, in 1833, and this again by two 
 volumes of original poems in 1838-9. It was at this 
 period that the shadow of calamity was projected over 
 the life of the young poet. She burst a blood vessel, 
 and was removed in a state of extreme debility to 
 Torquay. While there her brother and two other 
 young men were drowned by the capsizing of a sailing 
 boat. This tragic event completed the prostration of 
 
158 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 the sufferer. From that hour, and for many years to 
 come, she lived the life of a confirmed invalid a life 
 that hung trembling on the borders of the invisible 
 land, and which was never lifted out of the solemn 
 shadows of eternal things. The bloom of her youth 
 was gone, and her thoughts naturally took a deeper 
 and a devotional tone. The inactivity of her body 
 seemed to stimulate her mind to redoubled exertion. 
 Her close friend, Miss Mitford, has given us in a 
 sentence a picture of the isolated and yet intense life 
 which Miss Barrett as she then was spent for many 
 years. She was " confined to a darkened chamber, to 
 which only her own family and a few devoted friends 
 were admitted ; reading meanwhile almost every book 
 worth reading in almost every language, and studying 
 with ever-fresh delight the great classic authors in 
 the original." For Mrs. Browning was one of the few 
 women who have attained to ripe and exact classical 
 scholarship, and in her day that was an attainment far 
 rarer than it is in ours. In that darkened chamber the 
 great minds of all ages held converse with her, and 
 they alone were friends who never wearied, who never 
 came too early, never stayed too long, and never were 
 denied an audience. And in that life of languor and 
 suffering her feelings were liberated, and her sym- 
 pathies educated into an almost painful sensitiveness. 
 The contact of the world's sorrow was for her like a 
 burning iron laid upon a raw place. It was impossible 
 for her to speak of it save with an accent of pathos 
 so deep as to be almost agonised. Her power of 
 pathos pervaded everything she wrote. Her verses 
 often seem to quiver and throb with the passionate 
 sympathy out of which they sprang. We hear the 
 weeping in them, we feel the yearning. There is a 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 159 
 
 sort of heart-searching power in Mrs. Browning, which 
 no other poet of our times has had. She is wholly 
 possessed with her subject, and her intensity possesses 
 and overcomes her readers. It is impossible to doubt 
 that with her, as with Hood, suffering was an educa- 
 tion. The acquaintance with grief taught her the secret 
 of comfort, the mystery of pain the secret of trust, and 
 the loneliness of life the secret of insight. It was that 
 prolonged comradeship with sorrow which instructed 
 her how to touch the springs of human sympathy with 
 so sure a hand, and led her through the avenues of 
 her own suffering into a sacrificial comradeship in the 
 sufferings of society. 
 
 At this point, however, an essential difference between 
 Hood and Mrs. Browning is evident. To Mrs. Browning 
 poetry was not so much a purpose as a passion, whereas 
 Hood's serious poetry was the rare counterfoil to his 
 comic genius. Mrs. Browning said of her life-work, 
 " Poetry has been as serious to me as life itself, and 
 life has been very serious. I never mistook pleasure 
 for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour 
 of the poet. I have done my work so far as work; 
 not as mere hand and head work apart from the 
 personal being, but as the completest exposition of 
 that being to which I could attain, and as work I offer 
 it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply 
 than any of my readers, because measured by the 
 height of my aspiration." It is feared that poor Hood 
 never had time to make poetry his life-work. His son 
 said that nothing would have surprised him more than 
 to have witnessed the publication of his "Serious 
 Poems." How finely Hood could write, when the 
 pressure of life left him a brief leisure for the higher 
 exercise of his powers, is seen in such poems as the 
 
160 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 " Haunted House," " Eugene Aram/' and in such sweet, 
 bird-like notes of lyric pathos and melody as "It was 
 the Time of Roses " and " I remember." Hood pos- 
 sessed a strong imagination, together with great noble- 
 ness of feeling and purity of diction. The "Haunted 
 House " is one of the most masterly studies in horror 
 which any literature can show. The slow, deliberate 
 piling-up of the imagery of horror, the association of 
 all that superstition can invent or cowardice can dread, 
 of all that past tragedy can accomplish or bequeath, 
 the gradual culmination of gloom and horror as the 
 poem passes to its conclusion, makes it in its way an 
 extraordinary production, such as only an artist of first- 
 rate excellence could have perfected. In the hands of 
 anyone but a master the reiteration and multiplication 
 of images of fear would have become absurd or mono- 
 tonous, but with Hood they produce the effect of 
 thickening gloom, and it is an unbearable and doomful 
 voice which utters the hoarse refrain, 
 
 O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear, 
 A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 
 
 And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, 
 The place is haunted ! 
 
 We have need to turn to poems like these to form a 
 true estimate of Hood's poems. In ardour of thought 
 and intensity of imagination he may fall very far 
 behind Mrs. Browning, but do not let us forget that 
 while Mrs. Browning had every opportunity for the 
 development of her genius, Hood's noblest powers 
 were stifled by the sordid needs of life. The kinship 
 between them was not intellectual, but moral. And at 
 one point in the development of these widely different 
 lives they touched and mingled, and for both poetry 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING.' 161 
 
 became as serious as life, and was not so. much a 
 purpose as a passion. That point of accord was the 
 humanitarian sympathy which wrung from the solitary 
 student of Greek poetry and mediaeval romance the 
 " Cry of the Children/' and from the sickly journalist 
 who must needs jest for bread the " Bridge of Sighs " 
 and the " Song of the Shirt." 
 
 Another thing worthy of notice is that it was in the 
 writings, and through the influence, of Thomas Hood 
 and Mrs. Browning, that the city in its tragic social 
 aspects became definitely annexed to the realm of 
 English poetry. The poetry of the country is easily per- 
 ceived: it needed a more discerning eye to recognise the 
 strange and moving poetry of the city. Both these poets 
 were Londoners, and so thoroughly was Hood a child 
 of the city that he might have said with a later poet : 
 
 City ! I am true child of thine ! 
 
 Ne'er dwelt I where great mornings shine 
 
 Around the bleating pens ; 
 Ne'er by the rivulets I strayed, 
 And ne'er upon my childhood weighed 
 
 The silence of the glens ; 
 Instead of shores where ocean beats, 
 I hear the ebb and flow of streets. 
 
 Hood knew the "tragic heart of towns," and was 
 almost the first of our poets to recognise in poetry 
 the social problems of great cities. Until Hood wrote 
 it may even be said that English poets had little or 
 nothing to say about cities. Poetry had haunted the 
 quiet dales of Westmoreland and the sunny heights of 
 Italy, the happy places of flowers and feasting, the 
 solemn places of tragic gloom where world-wide histories 
 had been shaped, but it had shown no appreciation of 
 the tragic miseries of great cities. Wordsworth saw 
 
 II 
 
1 62 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 no vision from Westminster Bridge but the vision of 
 the dawn adding splendour and majesty to the long 
 lines of houses and the broad sweep of flashing river. 
 Even Shelley, with all his sympathy for suffering, 
 wrote no poem directly dealing with the slow martyrdom 
 of the obscure and half- famished toilers of London. 
 He did once say, bitterly enough, that hell must be a 
 city very like London but that was all. He was the 
 child of dreams, and in his lifelong dream of social 
 reconstruction was too absorbed in the splendours of 
 hope to take minute note of the sorrows of reality. 
 But Hood lived in London, and saw day by day the 
 open secret of its misery. He lived at the beginning 
 of a new social age which was fast blotting out the 
 hamlets of England, and replacing them by an empire of 
 cities. He was face to face with the social problems 
 which overshadowed the nineteenth century ; and what 
 wonder is it that behind the woven tapestry of city 
 splendour, the outward glory and sustained dignity of 
 metropolitan life, he pierced to the silent tragedy of its 
 multitudinous lives spent in unvictorious struggle, in 
 famished drudgery, and reluctant shame ? Hood re- 
 called men from the vision of Nature to the vision of 
 man ; from the vision of man in rustic innocence to the 
 vision of man among the sordid degradations of vast 
 cities. It is now generally admitted that deterioration 
 is the Nemesis of city life, and perhaps not merely 
 deterioration of physique, but of sympathy, which is 
 a far more serious matter. Possibly Hood would not 
 have gone so far as to say that a great city is a great 
 calamity, but when he cried, 
 
 Alas ! for the rarity 
 Of Christian charity 
 Under the sun ! 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 163 
 
 he meant his rebuke to be specially applied to that 
 callous indifference to others which cities inevitably 
 breed, and his words struck the first note of a new 
 movement which is fast socialising poetry, and chang- 
 ing not merely its themes but its spirit. 
 
 And in the same spirit, if not in the same degree, 
 Mrs. Browning is also the poet of cities. She can 
 paint with Turneresque breadth and vigour the sun 
 pushing its way through a London fog, and can 
 delight in 
 
 Fair fantastic Paris ! who wears trees 
 
 Like plumes, as if man made them, spire and tower, 
 
 As if they had grown by nature ; tossing up 
 
 Her fountains in the sunshine of her squares, 
 
 As if in beauty's game she tossed the dice, 
 
 Or blew the silver down-balls of her dreams 
 
 To sow futurity with seeds of thought. 
 
 And if in her later poetry Mrs. Browning sings of 
 cities, it is clearly not because she has lost her fresh 
 and vigorous delight in Nature. Who has ever spoken 
 of Nature with more rapt intensity of joy ? She loves 
 rural England so well that she says it is 
 
 As if God's ringer touched but did not press 
 
 In making England, such an up and down 
 
 Of verdure ; nothing too much up or down ; 
 
 A ripple of land, such little hills, the sky 
 
 Can stoop to tenderly, and the wheatfields climb; 
 
 Such nooks of valleys lined with orchises, 
 
 Fed full of noises by invisible streams. 
 
 And how exquisitely she speaks of 
 
 Spring's delicious trouble in the ground, 
 Tormented by the quickened blood of roots, 
 And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves. 
 
164 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 And how perfectly she speaks also of herself, in that 
 young green world, " singing at a work apart," 
 
 As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight 
 In vortices of glory and blue air. 
 
 So lost is she in a world of symbolism, that she tells us 
 
 Every natural flower which grows on earth 
 Implies a flower upon the spiritual side ; 
 
 and withal there is about her a spiritual imaginative- 
 ness, to which the whole mystery of earth and heaven 
 lies naked and open, which is almost unmatched for 
 purity and intensity among our poets. Such a woman, 
 had she lived all her life in the home of violets, might 
 have sung only of the fragrance and delight of Nature, 
 and she had done well. But she also lived in London, 
 and London weighed upon her soul. She could not 
 rid herself of its ghastly presences, and so the hand 
 that wrote these lovely passages, which seem almost to 
 exhale the very odour of the spring, wrote also of the 
 social evil which 
 
 Slurs our cruel streets from end to end 
 With eighty thousand women in one smile, 
 Who only smile at night beneath the gas. 
 
 What it cost for a woman of such delicate sensitiveness 
 and womanly purity as Mrs. Browning to write such 
 lines as these we cannot know, but we can measure by 
 them the depth of that impression which the horror 
 of cities had made upon her spirit. And we can 
 understand also how the spectacle of wronged and 
 martyred child-life in great cities moved her not less 
 deeply, and we realise the fierce tension of almost pro- 
 phetic malediction which hurled against our vaunted 
 civilisation the reproach of our 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 165 
 
 Ragged children, with bare feet, 
 Whom the angels in white raiment 
 Know the names of to repeat 
 When they come on us for payment. 
 
 With Mrs. Browning, as with Hood, it was the force of 
 an intense sympathy which urged her to the contem- 
 plation of social wrongs, and wrung from her a song of 
 poignant sorrow, indignation, and reproach. 
 
 And again, of Hood and Mrs. Browning it must be 
 added that each is a Christian humanitarian. Bitter as 
 is the indictment which they bring against society, yet 
 neither is hopeless. Mrs. Browning sometimes writes 
 as one who " at the cross of hope with hopeless hand 
 is clinging," and tells us 
 
 I was heavy then, 
 
 And stupid, and distracted with the cries 
 Of tortured prisoners in the polished brass 
 Of that Phalarian bull, Society 
 
 I beheld the world 
 
 As one great famishing carnivorous mouth, 
 An open mouth, a gross want, bread to fill the lips 
 No more 
 
 but she also hastens to add that her despair was 
 because she 
 
 heard the cries 
 
 Too close ; I could not hear the angels lift 
 A fold of rustling air, nor what they said 
 To help my pity. 
 
 Despair springs from want of imagination, and Mrs. 
 Browning had far too vivid a vision of eternal things to 
 be pessimistic. A Divine trust, a tender resignation, 
 a clear hope in a beyond, both for the individual and 
 society, fill her writings, and Christ is in all her thoughts 
 of men, and all her hopes for the future of man, 
 
166 THE MAKERS Of MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 In her essay on "The Great Christian Poets" she 
 has said : " We want the touch of Christ's hand upon 
 our literature as it touched other dead things ; we want 
 the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the 
 souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in 
 answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our 
 humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Some- 
 thing of this has always been perceived in art when its 
 glory was at the fullest." Something of this a hope- 
 fulness in the final triumph of humanity is always 
 to be perceived in Mrs. Browning's poetry. The agony 
 of the world weighs heavily upon her. The wail of 
 its pain and desolation vibrates incessantly upon her 
 heart. She not merely hears it and feels it, but 
 actually shares it. By force of exquisite sensitiveness, 
 she seems to appropriate the sum of the world's agony 
 to herself, till it is the agony of one who not only sees 
 and sympathises with sorrow, but whose own heart is 
 literally pierced and bleeding with the rankling barbs. 
 There are poems of Mrs. Browning's which could only 
 have been written in a flood of tears, and which cannot 
 be read without tears. The intensity of her yearning, 
 her tenderness, her compassion, is almost painful. But 
 she always knows how to expound agony into renova- 
 tion. She sees the brightness of a great hope falling 
 across the world like the slanting beams of a growing 
 sunrise, and she ever points to the dawn. And although 
 Hood's work in humanitarian poetry is limited to two 
 powerful poems, and he has nothing of Mrs. Browning's 
 prophetic force and vision, yet it is clear also that 
 while he attacks society he is not unhopeful of it. The 
 Christian faith which enabled him to bear his hard lot 
 without murmur, and to say when he was dying, " Lord, 
 say, Arise, take up thy Cross and follow Me," enabled 
 
THOMAS HOOD AND MRS. BROWNING. 167 
 
 him also to believe that through the charity and sacrifice 
 of which the Cross is a type, and through that alone, 
 the healing of society would come. For in the true 
 social gospel there must always be something more 
 than vehemence, and something better than violence : 
 there must be the message and counsel of reconstruction, 
 and the hope of final triumph and millennium. 
 
 Perhaps it is a large claim to make for the writer of 
 the "Song of the Shirt" that he was unconsciously 
 a great voice in inaugurating a new movement in 
 poetry; but we have to remember that single poems 
 have more than once proved epoch-making in literature. 
 But it is certainly a valid contention in any case, that 
 the poet is frequently the secret force from which 
 national tendencies and purposes are born. 
 
 It takes a soul 
 
 To move a body ; it takes a high-souled man 
 To move the masses even to a cleaner stye ; 
 It takes the ideal to blow an inch aside 
 The dust of the actual ; and your Fouriers failed, 
 Because not poets enough to understand 
 That life develops from within. 
 
 It is the humanitarian passion of poets like Hood and 
 Mrs. Browning that do far more than we think to soften 
 life with charity, and inspire it with sacrifice and com- 
 passion. Of course both Hood and Mrs. Browning 
 were not humanitarian poets alone. Mrs. Browning 
 is the uncontested queen of English song, and her 
 work is various and wonderful. The strength of her 
 affections, the ardour of her thought, the devoutness 
 of her spirit, are qualities quite as marked as the 
 tenderness and breadth of her sympathies. But when 
 we come to estimate the most enduring force in her 
 poetry, we find it to be its humanitarian passion. It 
 
1 68 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 was that which inspired not only her "Cry of the 
 Children " and the " Song for Ragged Schools," but the 
 greatest, if the most unequal, of all her poems, " Aurora 
 Leigh." Had Hood not written the " Song of the 
 Shirt," he could have claimed no place among the chief 
 literary forces of our time. As it is, we have to estimate 
 the rare quality of his genius as much by its intimations 
 as its accomplishments. But if Mrs. Browning had 
 never written "Aurora Leigh" she would still have 
 been a great poet ; she would not have been so great 
 a poet, however, and she would certainly have missed 
 the greater portion of her fame. For it is in the power 
 of sympathy that Mrs. Browning stands supreme, and 
 the noblest outbursts of her sympathy were caused by 
 social inequalities, sorrows, and martyrdoms. It is for 
 this reason that, passing over a hundred other things 
 which might be said about her genius and her poetry, 
 we fix on this dominant aspect of her lifework, nor 
 perhaps would she have wished it otherwise. The 
 simple and sufficient epitaph which covers the dust of 
 Hood is, " He sang the ' Song of the Shirt,' " and to 
 have written the " Cry of the Children " and " Aurora 
 Leigh " is praise sufficient even for one of the most 
 rarely-gifted writers who has ever enriched the world 
 of English poetry. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 [Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 5th, 1809. "Poems by 
 Two Brothers," published by J. Jackson, Louth, 1827. "Poems," 
 chiefly lyrical, published 1830. "Poems," in two volumes 
 (Moxon), 1842. The "Princess," 1847. "In Memoriam," 1850. 
 Became Poet-Laureate in the same year. "Maud," 1855. The 
 "Idylls of the King," 1859: completed 1885. "Enoch Arden," 
 1864. Offered and accepted a Peerage, 1883]. 
 
 WHEN we come to the name of Tennyson we do 
 well to pause, for in his many-sidedness he 
 represents more fully than any other poet of our day 
 the complex thought and activities of the century in 
 which his lot has been cast. Seldom has a poet's fame 
 grown more slowly or securely, and never has a poet's 
 career been crowned with a larger degree of worldly 
 success. It is now more than half a century since his 
 first slender volume of poems appeared. At that date 
 Christopher North, otherwise Professor Wilson, and the 
 Edinburgh reviewers were in the full heyday of their 
 power, and exercised a dominance in criticism which it 
 is difficult for us to understand to-day. A new poet 
 in those days had to fear ridicule more than indifference, 
 a position which may now be said to be entirely re- 
 versed. By turning to that section of the complete works 
 of Tennyson headed Juvenilia, we can ourselves judge 
 what was the character of the claim which the young 
 poet in 1830 made upon the public attention. The 
 
170 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 volume is not merely slender in bulk, but equally slight 
 in quality. The influence of Keats is apparent every- 
 where. There is a femininity of tone and a sensuous- 
 ness of word-painting which are in the exact manner 
 of Keats. The triviality of Keats' worst style is as 
 apparent as the magic phrasing of his best. Take, for 
 instance, this stanza from "Claribel" 
 
 The slumbrous wave outwelleth, 
 The babbling runnel crispeth, 
 The hollow grot replieth, 
 Where Claribel low-lieth. 
 
 This is weak with the peculiar weakness of Keats ; 
 the straining after effect by the use of uncommon and 
 affected forms of speech. Nor do the other poems in 
 the little volume rise to anything like a high average. 
 
 There are, however, splendid indications of true and 
 genuine power amid much that is weak and imitative. 
 u Mariana " is a piece of powerful painting, done with ex- 
 cellent artistic taste, intention, and finish. Finer still is 
 the tl Recollections of the Arabian Nights." It is rich, 
 almost too rich indeed, in its colouring, but no one can 
 fail to feel the charm of words in such lines as these : 
 
 At night my shallop rustling thro' 
 The low and blooming foliage, drove 
 The fragrant glistening deeps, and clove 
 The citron-shadows in the blue : 
 By garden-porches on the brim, 
 The costly doors flung open wide, 
 Gold glittering through lamplight dim, 
 And broidered sofas on each side ; 
 In sooth it was a goodly time, 
 For it was in the golden prime 
 Of good Haroun Alraschid. 
 
 But in fineness of workmanship and depth of feeling 
 
LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 171 
 
 the " Deserted House," the " Dying Swan," and 
 " Oriana " take an easy precedence. In the second of 
 these poems there is that which goes further to ensure 
 a poet the attention of the public than anything else 
 there is distinctiveness and originality. The " Dying 
 Swan " was sufficient at once to stamp Tennyson as 
 an original poet. In its perfectly accurate depiction of 
 Nature it may remind us somewhat of Wordsworth, 
 but it is a mere suggestion, and the style is wholly 
 different. Wordsworth's has been described as the 
 pure style in poetry ; Tennyson's as the ornate. The 
 bond of likeness is in the fidelity of each poet to the 
 actual facts of Nature. Wordsworth .never drew a 
 picture of mountain solitude, or lake scenery, more 
 simply true to fact than the picture this young Lincoln- 
 shire poet gives of the great open spaces of the fen- 
 country, with their breadth of sky and far-stretching 
 solitude, which is almost desolation, and their gleaming 
 watercourses fretting everywhere, like silver threads, 
 the waste of green. 
 
 The plain was grassy, wild, and bare, 
 Wide, wild, and open to the air, 
 Which had built up everywhere 
 An underroof of doleful grey. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Ever the weary wind went on, 
 And took the reed-tops as it went. 
 
 * * # 
 
 One willow o'er the river wept 
 And shook the wave as the wind did sigh j 
 
 Above in the wind was the swallow, 
 
 Chasing itself at its own wild will, 
 And far thro' the marish green, and still 
 
 The tangled watercourses slept, 
 Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. 
 
172 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The sense of desolation is complete. It is not con- 
 veyed to the mind by a single vivid touch, in the 
 manner of Wordsworth, but by a series of cumulative 
 effects, which are equally striking. It is not wonderful 
 that a poem like this should arrest the attention of a 
 mind like Christopher North's. The first volume of a 
 poet has rarely contained anything so full of conscious 
 strength, and so complete in its mastery of the art of 
 poetry, as this pathetic picture of the Dying Swan. 
 
 Christopher North " rusty, crusty Christopher" 
 as Tennyson afterwards called him, was perhaps more 
 conscious of the weakness of the young poet than of 
 his strength. In 1832, when the famous "Blackwood" 
 criticism appeared, Wordsworth was still a rock of 
 offence to the critics, and gibes and insult had not yet 
 ceased to follow him to his solitude at Grasmere. Seven 
 years were to elapse before Oxford was to recognise his 
 greatness, eleven years before the Laureateship was 
 his, It was an unpropitious hour for poets. There 
 had come a great ebb tide in poetry, perhaps a natural 
 result of that extraordinary outburst of lyric splendour 
 with which the names of Shelley and Keats are asso- 
 ciated. Robert Southey was Laureate, and an age 
 which had enthroned Southey as Laureate might well 
 turn a deaf ear to the voice of Tennyson. Upon the 
 whole it is greatly to the credit of Professor Wilson 
 that he had discrimination enough to see anything at 
 all in the humble volume of poems by Alfred Tennyson, 
 which was sent him for review ; and he took occasion 
 to give the young poet some excellent advice, for which 
 he had the humility and discernment to be thankful. 
 
 The cardinal error of these early poems Professor 
 Wilson was keen enough to discern at once. It was 
 what he called " puerility." There was a sort of un- 
 
LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 173 
 
 wholesome sadness about them, a distasteful melan- 
 choly, a mawkishness of tone and subject. It may be 
 added that the note of restrained and tender melancholy 
 has always been one of the chief features of Tennyson's 
 poetry. It is not obtrusive, but it is pervasive ; it is 
 rarely bitter or cynical, but it is always there. It is 
 apparent in the choice of subject, even in these early 
 poems. Death and change strike the keynote of the 
 volume. Mariana " in the moated grange " cries 
 
 I am aweary, aweary, 
 Would God that I were dead ! 
 
 One of the sweetest of the songs is 
 
 Of the mouldering flowers ; 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The air is damp, and hushed, and close, 
 As a sick man's room when he taketh repose 
 An ho r before death. 
 
 The fine ballad of " Oriana " is a ballad of death, 
 and the " Dying Swan," although it rises into a voice 
 of noble music in its close, is nevertheless a poem of 
 desolation and sorrow. And over and above all this, 
 a large part of the volume, no fewer than five poems 
 indeed, are devoted to the depiction of various types of 
 womanhood. Sweetness there is in the volume, but 
 not strength ; and the sweetness is cloying rather than 
 piercing. It is not the voice of the strong and hopeful 
 man, but of the poet touched with an incurable melan- 
 choly of thought and outlook. Yet if melancholy strikes 
 the keynote of the whole, it is not less true that the 
 melody is really new and striking. The first poem 
 bears the under-title of "A Melody," and in the word 
 Tennyson shows an exact appreciation of his own 
 powers. Melodious he always is. No poet has ever 
 
174 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 had a profounder knowledge of the laws of metrical 
 music. It is the melody of his phrase that carries it 
 home to the memory, not less than its felicity. Any 
 student of Tennyson can recall at will scores of lines 
 which cling to the memory by the charm of their own 
 exquisite music. 
 
 Take such examples as these : 
 
 From " Tithonus : " 
 
 While Ilion like a mist rose into towers. 
 From " Ulysses:" 
 
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 
 
 From the " Princess : " 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees. 
 
 In these last lines there is an overpowering imagina- 
 tive charm, something almost magical in its bewitch- 
 ment, which makes us think of the words of Keats, 
 that to him a fine phrase was an intoxicating delight. 
 It is melody, the finest and most magical melody of 
 which words are capable. There is nothing in the 
 early poems of Tennyson to match such exquisite 
 phrasing as this, but there are nevertheless sure indi- 
 cations of where the real power of the poet lay. It 
 was the advent of an intensely artistic mind, palpitat- 
 ingly alive to the vision and power of beauty, touched 
 with the artist's ecstasy, and with the artist's corre- 
 sponding melancholy, keen, subtle, delicately-poised, 
 possessing the secret of loveliness rather than of rude 
 vigour; it was the advent of such a mind into the 
 world of English poetry which was signalised by 
 
LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 175 
 
 that slender volume of Poems by Alfred Tennyson, 
 published in 1830. 
 
 But bright as were the indications of poetic genius 
 in the earliest work of Tennyson, few could have dared 
 to augur from them the height of excellence to which 
 the poet has now attained. A yet severer critic than 
 Wilson was Lockhart, who reviewed the 1833 poems in 
 the Quarterly Review of that year, and it is noticeable 
 that almost every suggestion of Lockhart was here- 
 after adopted by Tennyson. He had the sense to take 
 the advice of his critics, to rid himself of puerilities, to 
 be patient, to dare to investigate and grapple with his 
 own faults, to enter upon a course of arduous labour and 
 invincible watchfulness, to practise not merely the ear- 
 nest culture of art, but also to seek the self-restraint of 
 art ; and he has fully justified their presage that he had 
 in him the making of a great poet. Poetry has not been 
 to him a pastime, but the supreme passion and toil of 
 life. Again and again he has polished and remoulded 
 his earlier poems, not always, perhaps, to their advan- 
 tage, but always with the intent of making them 
 more perfect in metrical harmony, and more complete 
 and concise in poetic workmanship. The melody has 
 grown with the years; it has become more subtle, 
 more penetrating, more magical. He has carried the 
 art of metrical construction to a height of perfection 
 never before attempted in English poetry. It is diffi- 
 cult to find a false rhyme, a slovenly stanza, or a halt- 
 ing metre in all the great bulk of his completed works. 
 As an example of the infinite laboriousness of true 
 poetic art there can be no finer example. And in 
 variety of subject he has but one rival. He has treated 
 the romantic, the antique, the domestic life of the world 
 with equal skill. History and theology, art and science, 
 
1 76 THE MAKERS OP MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 legendary lore and modern social problems find constant 
 reflection and presentment in his poetry. Some of his 
 poems are so clearly hewn that they are like mighty 
 fragments of the antique ; some treat of English peasant 
 life ; some of fairy lore, some of religious fancy, some 
 of social dreams and yearnings ; in some the theme is 
 slight, but the slightness of the theme is forgotten in 
 the excellence of the workmanship ; in some the theme 
 is as solemn as life and death, and touches issues 
 which are as old as human thought. " Rapt nuns," it 
 has been said, " English ladies, peasant girls, artists, 
 lawyers, farmers, in short, a tolerably complete re- 
 presentation of the miscellaneous public of the present 
 day," jostle one another in his picture galleries. True, 
 the cosmopolitan note of Browning is wanting ; but if 
 Tennyson has not the catholic sympathies of Browning, 
 he has succeeded in touching with the utmost felicity 
 many aspects of English life which his great rival has 
 ignored. And his mood and style are as various as his 
 themes. In such poems as " Dora " we have a Words- 
 worthian simplicity of diction, a coolness and purity of 
 colouring almost cold in its severity. In such poems 
 as " Maud " and " Locksley Hall " we have the utmost 
 elaboration of ornate imagery and effect. He can be 
 severely simple and chastely sensuous, classic and 
 grotesque, subtle and passionate, passing with the ease 
 of perfect mastery from love to dialectics, from the wail 
 of a sombre pessimism to the exaltation and rapture of 
 the triumphant lover. He can even be humorous, and 
 excellently humorous too, as in such a poem as the 
 " Northern Farmer." It is probably in this diversity of 
 gifts that the great secret of Tennyson's wide popularity 
 is to be found. He touches many classes of readers, 
 many varieties of mind. Of his limitations, his pecu- 
 
LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 177 
 
 liarities of view and outlook, his attitude to religion and 
 politics, his pervading melancholy and the causes of it, 
 we shall see more as we devote more particular attention 
 to his works ; but enough has been said to explain why 
 it is that he has won not merely wide but sound 
 popularity ; and not merely popularity, but fame and 
 success such as no other English poet has ever enjoyed 
 in the brief period during which his work was actually 
 being done, and when the fruits of success were keenest 
 to the taste, and most alluring to the ambition. 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 
 
 THE variety of Tennyson's work makes the task of 
 arranging it more than usually difficult. Certain 
 portions of his work are directly philosophical, and are 
 meant to be elucidations or solutions of some of the 
 deepest problems of humanity. Others are surcharged 
 with mournfulness, and might be called lamentations; 
 dirges over dead hopes, lost glories of chivalry, or the 
 bitter presage of future trouble travelling towards us 
 in the development of social perils. Others are purely 
 fanciful, lyrics finished with airy grace, or poems 
 breathing the enchantment of fairy lore. But such a 
 classification as this is incomplete; and fails to yield 
 the result which a just criticism desires. Broadly 
 speaking, there are certain great subjects on which 
 all true poets have something to say. These subjects 
 are nature, woman, life, politics, and religion. Nature 
 needs no definition ; under the head of woman we 
 must include all that pertains to love and chivalry; 
 under the head of life, the general view of human 
 action and society which distinguishes a poet ; under 
 politics, the poet's view of progress and the future of 
 the race ; under religion, what the poet has to say 
 about the devout longings of humanity, its sorrows and 
 their solution, the future and its promises. It will be 
 found that under this classification the works of all 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 179 
 
 great poets can be readily placed. It is the view of 
 Nature which is the distinguishing feature in Words- 
 worth ; it is the view of woman gross, carnal, callous 
 which is the damning feature in Byron; it is the 
 view of religion which lends such paramount interest 
 to the poetry of Arnold and Browning. Let us begin, 
 then, by examining what Tennyson has to say about 
 Nature. 
 
 We have already seen that to Shelley Nature was 
 something more than an abstract phrase; she was 
 something alive, a radiant and potent spirit, a glorious 
 power filling the mind with infinite delight, and drawing 
 out the spirit of man in ecstatic communion. The 
 first thing we note about Tennyson is that Nature is 
 not to him what she was to either Shelley or Words- 
 worth. He nowhere regards Nature as a living 
 presence. He at no time listens for her voice as for 
 the voice of God. To Shelley Nature was Love; to 
 Wordsworth she was Thought; to Tennyson she is 
 neither. He does not habitually regard Nature as the 
 vesture of the Highest the outward adumbration of 
 the invisible God. He does not even regard her with 
 the purely sensuous delight of Keats. And the reason 
 for this lies in the fact that the sympathies of Tennyson 
 are so various that there is no excess in any ; it is the 
 full play of an exquisitely-balanced mind that we see, 
 rather than the fine ecstasy of an enthusiastic artist. 
 To Wordsworth Nature was everything, and on the 
 solitary hills he worshipped before her altars, and in 
 the voice of the winds and waters he heard her breath- 
 ings, and caught the message of her wisdom. Apart 
 from men, in solemn loneliness, incurious about the 
 crowded life of cities, or the vast movements of the 
 troubled sea of human thought, he stood, silent and 
 
i8o THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 entranced, waiting for revelations of that Eternal 
 Power, whose splendour glowed upon the hills at 
 dawn, and whose mind uttered itself out of the starry 
 spaces of the wind-swept heavens at night. But 
 Tennyson has never professed himself incurious about 
 the progress of human opinion, or indifferent to the life 
 of cities. Wordsworth's was the priestly temperament, 
 Tennyson's is the artistic. The great drama of human 
 life has not been permitted to pass him unnoticed. He 
 has found joy in the refinements of wealth, interest in 
 the progress of society, passionate absorption in the 
 theological controversies of his time. A certain dra- 
 matic interest has always drawn him towards the tragic 
 realities of past history and of present life. He has 
 the quick eye of the scientific observer, or of the artistic 
 draughtsman, but little of the rapt contemplation of the 
 seer. Thus it follows that, while Nature perpetu- 
 ally colours his writings, he has nothing new to say 
 about her. 
 
 There is, however, one quality which distinguishes 
 his view of Nature from that of other poets, viz., 
 the scientific accuracy of his observation. Nature to 
 him is neither Love nor Thought : she is Law. He is 
 full of the modern scientific spirit. He sees every- 
 where the movement of law, and the fulfilment of vast 
 purposes which are part of a universal order. He is 
 under no delusion as to the meaning of Nature ; so 
 far from being Love, she is "red in tooth and claw 
 with rapine." The conclusions of modern science 
 Tennyson has accepted with unquestioning faith, and 
 the only factor which preserves him from an unpoetical 
 view of Nature is the religious faith, which makes him 
 perceive Nature not as a mechanical engine of fate, but 
 as a process of law leading to nobler life and larger 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 181 
 
 being. That is the mission of law : not to slay, but to 
 make alive ; not to fulfil a blind course, but to work out 
 a Divine purpose, and a diviner life for man, in those 
 far-distant cycles which eye hath not seen, nor hath it 
 entered into the heart of man to conceive. 
 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; 
 
 Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste, and calm ; 
 
 Then springs the crowning race of human kind. 
 
 In other words, Tennyson sees Nature with the eye 
 of the evolutionist, and traces through all her processes 
 the fulfilment of a Divine wisdom, which means well 
 toward man, and all that it has made 
 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 
 And one far-off Divine event 
 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 On the other hand, because Tennyson says little that 
 is new about Nature, it must not be assumed that he 
 does not love her. On the contrary, he has studied 
 her with unwearied fidelity, for which his knowledge 
 of science has probably given him sharpened instinct 
 and patience. It would be a curiously interesting study 
 to mark the wide difference between even Shelley's 
 broad generalisations of Nature, accurate as they are, 
 and the minute patience which Tennyson has devoted 
 to every little touch of depiction, in which clouds, or 
 birds, or woods are represented to us. Tennyson's 
 mind is not merely exquisitely sensitive to natural 
 beauty, but it is deeply tinged with the characteristics 
 of that scenery in which his early manhood was passed. 
 The grey hillside, the "ridged wolds," the wattled sheep- 
 fold, the long plain, the misty mornings on the fens, 
 the russet colouring of autumn this is scenery such as 
 England abounds in, and is especially characteristic of 
 
1 82 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Lincolnshire. Even more distinctly drawn from the 
 fen scenery are such lines as these : 
 
 And the creeping mosses, and clambering weeds, 
 And the willow-branches, hoar and dank, 
 And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, 
 And the silvery marish-flowers that throng 
 The desolate creeks and pools among 
 Were flooded over with eddying song. 
 
 In this single poem of the " Dying Swan," as we have 
 seen, there is an extraordinary accumulation of effects, 
 drawn from the sadness of Nature, and used with per- 
 fect skill to enhance the pathos of the picture ; and the 
 soughing of the wind in the Lincolnshire reeds is to be 
 heard in many another poem with equal sadness and 
 distinctness. 
 
 It is not without interest to remark that so great a 
 poet as Tennyson is educated not amid the wonderful 
 dawns and cloud scenery of the Lake district, but 
 under the " doleful underroof of grey " built up every- 
 where above a flat country, where no doubt the tour- 
 ist if such, indeed, ever ventures into such solemn 
 solitudes would aver that there is nothing picturesque 
 or striking. For a poet who was to express the sadness 
 and satiety of the nineteenth century, however, it may 
 be doubted if a more appropriate cradle-land could be 
 discovered. 
 
 No doubt it is in part to these natural influences 
 which surrounded his boyhood that the extraordinary 
 fidelity of Tennyson's descriptions of Nature is to be 
 attributed. Where there was little to describe it was 
 natural that the power of observation should be trained 
 to minute accuracy. Miss Thackeray tells us that he 
 once asked her to notice whether the skylark did not 
 come down sideways on the wing. This is extremely 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 
 
 183 
 
 characteristic of Tennyson's habit in the observation 
 of Nature. He never coins a false phrase about the 
 humblest flower that blows, for the sake of the felicity 
 of the phrase and at the expense of the tints of the 
 flower. He tells us precisely what he has seen. If he 
 tells us that in the spring " a fuller crimson comes upon 
 the robin's breast," and a " livelier iris changes on the 
 burnished dove/' we may be quite sure that he has 
 watched the robin and the dove, and written with his 
 eyes on them rather than on the paper. The sidelong 
 descent of the lark is a thing to be noted, that when he 
 comes to speak of it he may use a phrase that even 
 the scientific naturalist would approve. The conse- 
 quence of this fidelity to Nature is that Tennyson is 
 constantly startling us with the vivid accuracy of his 
 descriptions. We say again and again, " That is so ; 
 I have seen it," and the picture is ineffaceably stamped 
 upon the memory. Sometimes it is done with a single 
 phrase, or even a concentrated word. The writer will 
 not soon forget how throughout one autumn he was 
 haunted by the phrase, 
 
 All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom. 
 
 Again and again, as he climbed the Dorsetshire hills, 
 the line met him at the summit : for there lay the 
 death-dumb land, the long plain with its dim wisps of 
 fog already beginning to rise, without voice or sound ; 
 the stillness of the dying season like the silence of a 
 death-chamber ; and just perceptible in the near hedge- 
 row the constant drip of the dew, like the falling of 
 unavailing tears. Let anyone choose a very quiet, grey 
 day in late autumn, when there has been a previous 
 night of fog, and stand in a solitary place and listen, as 
 the night begins to fill the land, and he will feel how 
 
1 84 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 exquisite is the truth of the description of Arthur 
 coming home, and climbing slowly to his castle 
 
 All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom. 
 
 The same vivid pictorial power is illustrated in many 
 other passages which will readily occur to the Tenny- 
 sonian student. How admirable a touch of depiction 
 is this : it is the hour of sunset on the marshes, 
 when 
 
 The lone hern forgets his melancholy, 
 Lets down his other leg, and, stretching, dreams 
 Of goodly supper in the distant pools. 
 
 "A full sea, glazed with muffled moonlight/' is the 
 perfect vignette of what he once saw at Torquay ; a 
 waterfall "slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn/' a 
 sketch taken on the Pyrenees ; " a great black cloud 
 draw inward from the deep/' an etching made upon the 
 top of Snowdon. From boyhood he loved the sea, and 
 studied it in all its moods, with the result that his 
 sea-pictures are always exquisitely truthful. In those 
 hours of " wise passiveness " he marked 
 
 The curled white of the coming wave 
 Glass'd in the slippery sand before it breaks, 
 
 and how 
 
 The wild wave in the wide north-sea, 
 Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears with all 
 Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies 
 Down on a bark, and overbears the bark 
 And him that helms it. 
 
 It would be difficult for words to attain to higher 
 pictorial art than this : these two verses are two perfect 
 pictures of the summer and the winter sea. 
 
 The main point to observe, therefore, about Tennyson 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 185 
 
 is, that in him we have the scientific observer and the 
 artist, rather than the interpreter of Nature. Words- 
 worth interprets ; Tennyson describes. He is vivid, 
 pictorial, picturesque ; but he has no fresh insight into 
 the soul of things, save such as his science furnishes 
 him. But if he has no new gospel to preach us from 
 the book of Nature, we may at least rejoice in the 
 perfect finish and enchantment of his pictures. 
 
 To this it may be added that these pictures are for 
 the most part essentially English in tone, atmosphere, 
 and subject. Now and again, but with great rareness, 
 he has depicted foreign scenery, as in the " Daisy : " 
 
 How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair, 
 Was Monte Rosa, hanging there, 
 A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys 
 And snowy dells in a golden air. 
 
 And the picture is perfect both in glamour and fidelity. 
 But it is in English pictures he excels. Who that has 
 seen the land of Kent does not recognise this ? 
 
 The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
 Far shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
 Grey halls alone among their massive groves ; 
 Trim hamlets : here and there a rustic tower 
 Half lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 
 The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
 A red sail or a white ; and far beyond, 
 Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 
 
 Or who does not feel the truth of this touch of rural life 
 in England ? 
 
 The golden autumn woodland reels 
 Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. 
 
 Nor is it only such peaceful scenes as these that 
 Tennyson can invest with the magic of his art; he 
 
186 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 knows how to grasp the larger effects of Nature, the 
 mountain-gloom, the cloud-grandeur, the dawn of day 
 or night of tempest, and touch them off with an 
 imaginative skill and power of phrase which stamp 
 them indelibly on the memory. For let him who has 
 watched the pageant of the dying day say if any human 
 art could more grandly fix in words the western cloud 
 effects than this : 
 
 Yonder cloud, 
 That rises upward, always higher, 
 
 And topples round the dreary west, 
 A looming bastion fringed with fire. 
 
 Or let him who has studied the warfare of wind and 
 cloud and the wild upheaval and terror of gathering 
 tempest say if this is not a picture such as Turner 
 would have delighted to paint, and only he could have 
 painted in all its stern magnificence : 
 
 The forest cracked, the waters curl'd, 
 
 The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
 
 And wildly dashed on tower and tree 
 The sunbeam strikes along the world. 
 
 Nor could an angry morning after tempest be better 
 painted than in this one pregnant line : 
 
 All in a fiery dawning, wild with wind. 
 
 Nor could the savage splendour of Alpine fastnesses, 
 where precipice and glacier rise tier above tier, in 
 shattered beauty and unvanquishable strength, be better 
 brought home to the imagination than in this touch of 
 solemn imagery : 
 
 The monstrous ledges slope, and spill 
 Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke 
 That like a ruined purpose waste in air. 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 187 
 
 Nor has the breaking up of a stormy sky, when the 
 clouds suddenly lift as though withdrawn upon invisible 
 pulleys, and there is light at eventide, ever been repre- 
 sented better than in one of the eailiest of all these 
 poems, the immature and unequal " Eleanore : " 
 
 As thunder-clouds, that hung on high, 
 Roof d the world with doubt and fear, 
 Floating thro' an evening atmosphere, 
 
 Grow golden all about the sky. 
 
 And for imaginative intensity, such as the great Greek 
 poets would have delighted in, and indeed wholly in 
 their manner, it is hard to excel the phrase in which 
 Tithonus describes the glory of the dawn : 
 
 And the wild team 
 
 Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise 
 And shake the darkness from their loosened manes, 
 And beat the twilight into flakes of fire. 
 
 Or the farewell of Ulysses, when he cries : 
 
 Come, my friends, 
 
 Tis not too late to seek a newer world, 
 Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars until I die. 
 
 These are but random samples of the perfection to 
 which Tennyson has wrought his art in the faithful 
 and accurate depiction of Nature. Every word tells : 
 it tells because it is true, because it expresses- the 
 very spirit of the scene that he would paint, not less 
 than its external show. The labour and culture which 
 lie behind such perfect phrases as these are immense. 
 Not iRfrequently the source of some fine image is to be 
 found in some remote page of the older poets, and part 
 
1 88 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of the charm of the Tennysonian phrase is that it is 
 often reminiscent a subtle echo, as it were, of a more 
 ancient music, which does not offend but fascinate. 
 Thus the image of the " ploughed sea " is one of the 
 very oldest since the dawn of language, and the picture 
 of the dawn in "Tithonus" has its counterpart in 
 Marston's noble lines 
 
 But see, the dapple-grey coursers of the morn 
 Beat up the light with their bright silver hoofs, 
 And chase it through the sky.* 
 
 But the more enduring element of beauty in such 
 lines is their delightful truthfulness. "The sounding 
 furrows " is an exact representation to ear and eye of 
 what happens when the heaving waters are suddenly 
 smitten with the level sweep of oars. The darkness 
 trampled into flakes of fire is the precise effect of the 
 instantaneous irruption of the splendour of the dawn, 
 when the thin clouds that lie across the east are broken 
 up into floating fragments, and hang quivering, like 
 golden flames, in the lucid air, when the world lies 
 still and windless, waiting for the day. "The fiery 
 dawn/' the great burst of streaming yellow, not 
 graduated into crimson or purple, but all vast and 
 lurid, like an angry conflagration in the east, is a 
 spectacle which the seaman knows too well, when the 
 night has been " wild with wind," and the storm pauses 
 at the dawn, only to gather strength for the riotous 
 havoc of the day. It is the exact truth of Nature 
 which is fixed in phrases like these. It is the truth 
 Turner painted, the vision of the miracle of Nature 
 which he strove with infinite toil and true inspiration 
 to retain in his immortal canvases. And because it is 
 
 * Vide Lamb's Specimens of Elizabethan Poetry. 
 
TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE. 189 
 
 true art, therefore it is fine art. Much that might be 
 said of Nature, Tennyson has not said ; to much that 
 others have said he is indifferent. But this at least he 
 has done : he has approached Nature, not with the hot 
 and hasty zeal of the impressionist, but with the cool 
 eye of the consummate artist; and every sketch of 
 Nature which he has given us, whether of the common- 
 place or the extraordinary, is finished with admirable 
 skill, and has the crowning merit of absolute fidelity, 
 accuracy, and truth. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN 
 
 JUST as one of the most crucial points about a poet 
 is his treatment of NatureJ so again, his view of 
 Womanhood affords a key to the character of his 
 mind and the quality of his genius. The love-poetry 
 of the world is one of its most fascinating inheritances, 
 and ranges through many keys. Love has always 
 furnished the impulse to poetry, and has often been its 
 staple. It would be difficult to find any poet who has 
 nothing to say of love ; it would be easy to find many 
 poets who have never written exquisitely till they 
 became lovers. The new divine warmth of the heart 
 has liberated the faculties of the intellect, and has 
 given inspiration and insight to the soul. Even when 
 the warmth has been sensuous rather than divine, it 
 has not the less had some effect in the liberation of the 
 mind. Burns displays his highest genius in his love- 
 lyrics. Some of the Elizabethan poets are famous only 
 by a single stanza, or a single poem, which expresses 
 the passion of the human heart with such felicity, such 
 delicate skill, such fire and tenderness, that the world 
 cannot forget their phrases. Rossetti lives in the 
 vision of womanhood, with every sense perpetually 
 tingling to the keen delight of passion. Even Words- 
 worth kindles at the vision of love : he sees the ideal 
 woman glowing before him, not with any heat of 
 passion indeed, but with a calm and spiritual radiance, 
 
TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 191 
 
 which is to him as a sacred flame, searching the spirit 
 and purifying the heart. Perhaps the poet of our day 
 least affected by the enchantment of love is Matthew 
 Arnold. He is too reticent for passion, is too sadly 
 philospphical to sing the rapture of the lover. But 
 even Arnold has written love-verses not inspired 
 lyrics like Burns', but, nevertheless, verses which have 
 sprung from a lover's yearning. Tennyson is so far 
 from an exception that love forms the great motive in 
 all his larger poems. Everywhere he testifies to the 
 pre-eminence and influence of woman. He has been 
 an ardent student of womanhood, and has struck out 
 with admirable skill and genuine artistic feeling many 
 typical portraits of womanhood. He has mastered the 
 difficult secret of how to write voluptuously, and yet 
 retain the bloom of a delicate and almost virginal purity. 
 He knows how to be passionate, but his passion never 
 passes into that sensuous extravagance which is the 
 sign of weakness. There is always a gravity and 
 earnestness about it which preserves him from an 
 excess which becomes ridiculous. In this he stands 
 nearer to Wordsworth than to either Keats or Burns. 
 But whereas in Wordsworth woman has no command- 
 ing position, and is almost forgotten and obliterated in 
 the presence of Nature, in Tennyson woman is always 
 pre-eminent, and the fascination of woman is at least 
 as strong as the charm of Nature. 
 
 And here again we cannot help tracing the treatment 
 of woman in Tennyson's poetry to the early influences 
 which surrounded his boyhood. He was never cast 
 upon the world, to sink or swim as he could, in the 
 great seething whirlpools of sensual temptation. He 
 carried with him no evil heritage of passionate blood, 
 as did Byron ; he was not brought face to face with 
 
192 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 any daring theories of free-love, as was Shelley ; he 
 was not dependent on the coarse orgies of village 
 society for recreation, as was Burns. He breathed an 
 atmosphere of refinement from the very first. He was 
 trained by every sight and influence of early life into 
 that fastidious purity which characterises him. He 
 grew into vigour in what might be called the cloistral 
 calm of clerical life in a remote English village. The 
 baser side of human life was not seen ; the carnal mean- 
 ings of love never so much as named ; the coarser aspects 
 of passion were smothered in flowers and fragrances. 
 Behind all the love-lyrics of Tennyson one sees the 
 picture of a calmly-ordered home, where domestic love 
 moves like a shining presence, with hands busy in 
 silent ministrations, and heart full of the tenderness of 
 a pure devotion. The portrait of Tennyson's mother is 
 the key to his reverence for womanhood. It is a beauti- 
 ful and tender face, delicately moulded, lighted with a 
 spiritual radiance of sympathy and hope, and yet, too, 
 bearing pathetic traces of resigned sadness and sorrow- 
 ful experience. We can understand how Tennyson was 
 preserved from the fatality of recklessness, how it is 
 he has worn the white flower of a blameless life, and 
 has ruled himself with chivalrous regard for woman- 
 hood, when we study his mother's face. What such 
 a woman must have been in the home, and what sort 
 of home it must have been where she moved like a 
 ministering spirit, we can readily imagine. And how 
 divinely pure and penetrating may be the influence of 
 such a woman Tennyson has told us in a passage of the 
 " Princess," which might without much risk of misinter- 
 pretation be taken as a personal reminiscence. 
 
 I loved her ; one 
 Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
 
TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 193 
 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 
 No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
 In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
 Who looked all native to her place, and yet 
 On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
 Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, 
 And girdled her with music. Happy he 
 With such a mother ! faith in womankind 
 Beats in his blood, and trust in all things high 
 Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and f^ll 
 He shall not blind his soul with clay." 
 
 The first point to be noted, therefore, in Tennyson's 
 treatment of love is its conspicuous purity. It is the love 
 of the chivalrous knight, not of the Bohemian profligate, 
 which he paints. His whole conception of love is rever- 
 ential. It is a spiritual passion, not an earthly. He 
 perceives it in its spiritual working, and not in its fleshly. 
 With rare exceptions he shuns altogether the fleshly 
 aspects of love. One exception is found among the 
 early poems in the striking ballad called " The Sisters," 
 but this is an obvious imitation of the ancient ballad 
 poetry, in which passion is indeed a prime motive, but is 
 always treated with a healthy frankness. But the poem 
 partially fails as a perfect imitation of the ancient ballad, 
 simply because Tennyson cannot allude to unchaste 
 passion without a burst of terrible denunciation. 
 
 She died : she went to burning flame, 
 She mixed her ancient blood with shame, 
 The wind is howling in turret and tree. 
 
 He leaps upon the desecrator of human love with a 
 bitter wrath, and with words like the sword-flash oi 
 an avenging angel. The other great example or 
 Tennyson's treatment of the baser side of love is the 
 unlawful love of Guinevere. But even here again, he 
 manifests the same sternness of avenging purity. Not 
 
194 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 by one touch, one veiled hint or half a word, does he 
 seek to move the springs of evil concupiscence in his 
 reader. What he sees again is not the fleshly side of 
 unlawful passion, but the spiritual. From the sin of 
 Guinevere springs the ruin of an empire. Her outrage 
 upon purity is avenged in the downfall of that great 
 kingdom of chivalry which Arthur had built up with 
 infinite toil. The great purpose of that kingdom was 
 that it should be God's kingdom on earth. The work 
 of its great knights was 
 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs. 
 Their rule of conduct was 
 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds 
 Until they won her. 
 
 And now what happened ? Arthur tells her she has 
 spoilt the purpose of his life 
 
 Well is it that no child is born of thee. 
 
 The children born of thee are sword and fire, 
 
 Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws. 
 
 The carnal sin of one guilty woman has shattered into 
 utter ruin the noblest kingdom ever built upon the 
 earth. That is the one awful fact which Tennyson sees, 
 and that is the keynote to the whole poem. Where 
 other poets might have seen a subject on which they 
 could lavish all the wealth of sensuous imagery, he sees 
 not the manner of the sinning, and is not careful to paint 
 it, but the infinite consequences of the sin streaming 
 on, like a loosened flood of flame, working havoc and 
 infinite wreck upon every side. Just as it is the spiritual 
 cleansing of love which he paints when he tells us 
 
TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 195 
 
 Love took up the harp of Life, and struck on all the chords with 
 
 might, 
 
 Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music 
 out of sight," 
 
 so it is the spiritual and moral effect of the base selfish- 
 ness of unchaste passion which he describes, when he 
 paints the breaking up of the Round Table, and Arthur 
 turning sadly away to lead his disheartened hosts 
 
 Far down to that great battle in the west. 
 
 It is this perfect and pellucid purity of Tennyson's 
 mind which has enabled him to do many things impos- 
 sible to others. Take, for instance, such a poem as 
 "Godiva." A subject more difficult of handling it 
 would be hard to find. The slightest prurience of 
 thought would have been ruinous. So difficult and 
 delicate is the theme, that the merest featherweight of 
 over-description, a word too much, a shade of colour 
 too warm, a hint only of human heat, would upset the 
 balance, and turn a poem which sparkles with a crystal 
 purity into a poem brilliant only with the iridescence 
 of corrupt conception. Such a theme could not have 
 been entrusted to Rossetti ; scarcely, indeed, to Keats ; 
 absolutely not to Swinburne. To make it acceptable 
 not merely the most delicate lightness of touch was 
 needed, but the most pellucid freshness of thought. 
 Both Keats and Rossetti would have over-coloured the 
 picture, and left upon the taste the taint of an unwhole- 
 some voluptuousness. What Swinburne would have 
 made of it needs no sort of explanation. But Tennyson, 
 is able to treat it nobly, with simplicity and severity of 
 touch, and he does so in sheer virtue of his own purity 
 of heart. There is about- him something of that divine 
 quality which Guinevere discovers in King Arthur 
 
196 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The pure severity of perfect light. 
 
 He has no cunning eye to discern anything in the 
 subject which can minister to the baser man. What 
 he sees is a noble woman performing an heroic deed. 
 He describes her in imagery which clothes her as with 
 a garment of light : 
 
 She lingered, looking like a summer moon 
 Half-dipt in cloud : anon she shook her head, 
 And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee; 
 Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
 Stole on ; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid 
 From pillar unto pillar. 
 Then she rode forth clothed on with chastity. 
 
 It is the moral significance of the scene which fascinates 
 Tennyson, the spectacle of a woman sacrificing herself 
 for the people's good, and so building for herself an ever- 
 lasting name. " Godiva " is a short peom, but it is in- 
 valuable as an index to the purity of Tennyson's genius, 
 for no poet, who was not penetrated by the utmost 
 reverence for womanhood could have treated such a sub- 
 ject with such daring, or such conspicuous success. 
 
 This reverence of Tennyson for womanhood is marked 
 in all his poems, and is an influence more or less ap- 
 parent throughout his work. The early poems no less 
 than the later abound in evidence of its sincerity. 
 The very fact that somany of his poems describe 
 women, and bear the names of women, is in itself sig- 
 nificant. He bears constant testimony to the " finer 
 female sense," and is careful that he shall not offend it by 
 his " random string." Woman, as he conceives her, is 
 the divinely purifying element in human life. Chivalry 
 to woman is no mere romantic echo of the past : it is 
 the sign-manual of every noble soul. The apprehen- 
 
TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 197 
 
 sions of woman are more delicate than man's ; her in- 
 stincts are surer, her; intuition more certain, her spirit 
 more gracious, more tender, and more divine. He who 
 despises the intuitions of pure womanhood quenches a 
 light which God has set in the world for his guidance 
 and illumination. Of course this is no new doctrine, 
 either in poetry or morals. But it came upon the 
 world almost as a new doctrine in 1830. The women 
 of poetry fifty years ago the women of Byron, to wit 
 had no sign of any divine intuition about them. 
 They were warm, weak, and foolish. They never 
 exercised the slightest control over men, except the 
 sensuous control of passion. They were neither reve- 
 renced nor obeyed. They were the toys of desire, the 
 beautiful and fragile playthings of an hour. The rever- 
 ential chastity of Tennyson's treatment of womanhood 
 was nowhere found in the poetry of sixty years ago. 
 The revolution and emancipation of woman had not yet 
 come. It was easy, therefore, for writers like Bulwer 
 Lytton, throughout whose works there are very few 
 examples of reverence for woman, and in which the 
 prevalent conception of woman is debasingly gross and 
 offensive, to mock Tennyson as " school-miss Alfred." 
 It was easy to use the femininity of tone in the earlier 
 poems as a weapon of insult against him. Bulwer 
 Lytton had yet to discover that reverence for woman 
 did not imply any lack of virility in manhood. No 
 more stinging retort was ever made than the verse 
 which " Miss Alfred " fixed upon the dandy author of 
 " Pelham : " 
 
 What profits it to understand 
 The merits of a spotless shirt, 
 A dapper foot, a little hand, 
 If half the little soul be dirt I 
 
198 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 For it was not weakness of fibre which bred in 
 Tennyson a reverence for woman, but nobility of spirit. 
 And it was something more than this. It was the 
 outcome of pure training under the gracious eyes of 
 good women. The home was to Tennyson the highest 
 and noblest expression of human life. His sympathy 
 with romance and chivalry gave us exquisite sketches of 
 mediaeval thought, like the " Lady of Shalott," and finally 
 worked out the noblest series of poems in modern 
 literature, "The Idylls of the King." The same ro- 
 mantic sympathy is apparent in such a poem of fairy 
 fancy as the " Day Dream." But the strongest move- 
 ment of Tennyson's mind in the direction of woman- 
 worship is towards domestic life. It is in married love 
 the noblest blooming of love is found. It is there the 
 divinest dreams of love are realised. Happy he to 
 whom such joy is given, but the joy is not for all. 
 
 Of love that never found his earthly close 
 
 What sequel ? Streaming eyes, and breaking hearts ? 
 
 Or all the same as if he had not been ? 
 
 Not so. When Love and Duty strive together, the 
 victory is with Duty. Any love snatched in defiance of 
 Duty is not true love : because it forgets reverence to 
 womanhood, therefore it is base, and can only lead to 
 moral disintegration and corruption. Better far 
 
 Such tears as flow but once a life, 
 
 In that last kiss, which never was the last ! 
 
 For to Tennyson so supreme is the passion of reve- 
 rence for womanhood, so infinitely high and dear is 
 womanly purity, that it becomes the key to everything 
 really noble in human life, and any outrage upon that 
 is the vilest of all sin such sin as shakes the pillars 
 
''SON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 199 
 
 of society, and overthrows the majesty and might of 
 empire. Reverence for woman and reverence for self 
 go hand in hand. 
 
 Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sov'reign power, 
 Yet not for power (power of herself 
 Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by without fear : 
 And, because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 
 
 But high as Tennyson sets woman, yet he retains a 
 clear conception of the just and proper place of woman 
 in society. She may inspire and lead man, but she is 
 not equal with man. She may, indeed, govern men, but 
 it is not by the right of superior intellectual endow- 
 ment, but by the force of her nobility of soul. Her 
 passions matched with man's 
 
 Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine. 
 That is a rough and dramatic way of expressing the 
 truth, which Tennyson has worked out at large, with 
 great subtlety and skill, in the remarkable poem of 
 the " Princess." 
 
 The central point of the whole argument in the 
 " Princess " is that woman was never meant to wrestle 
 with man in the arena of intellectual pre-eminence or 
 the active business of the world. He will reverence 
 her to the utmost, but he will not abdicate in her 
 favour. In fact, his very reverence is founded on her 
 possession of certain qualities which man has in only a 
 less degree, and those qualities are the highest, because 
 they lead to the noblest results in the actual adminis- 
 tration of human life. Man rules through the brain : 
 woman through the heart. If man is to be ruled by 
 woman it can only be a spiritual rule, not an intellectual. 
 
200 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 In nothing is the reasonableness of Tennyson's mind 
 better seen than in this poem. It would have been 
 easy for him to become an impassioned advocate of 
 women's rights. On the contrary, his very reverence 
 for womanhood leads him to put certain limitations 
 upon woman's empire, which do not hinder its influence, 
 but rather intensify it. The power of woman is not 
 to be wasted in vulgar strife with men for social pre- 
 eminence : it is too rare, too subtle, too ethereal. That 
 power finds its highest exercise in moulding men to 
 morality, and penetrating nations with the spirit of 
 purity. The woman who is " slight-natured, miser- 
 able," prevents by her peevishness the growth of man. 
 There is no strife between man and woman 
 
 The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free. 
 
 They are " distinct in individualities," and the only bond 
 of common life and toil is 
 
 Self-reverent each, and reverencing each. 
 And the noble conclusion of the whole argument once 
 more leads to that vision of the perfect home which 
 never fades from the poet's heart 
 
 For woman is not imdevelopt man 
 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man 
 
 Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 
 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
 
 Nor lose the child-like in the larger mind : 
 
 Till at the last she set herself to man 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words ; 
 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 
TENNYSON: LOVE AND WOMAN. 201 
 
 Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be. 
 
 Finally, we may say of Tennyson's view of woman- 
 hood, that it is not easy to exaggerate the immense 
 service he has rendered to society by his constant 
 insistence on the nobility of purity, the Divine grace of 
 chastity. He has never glorified the wanton, or clothed 
 evil with a golden mist of glowing words. He has kept 
 his moral sense acute and sensitive, and has never 
 confused the limits of right and wrong. With a clear 
 and steady eye he has gazed upon the acts of unchaste 
 passion, but not with sympathy, not with delirious 
 yearning, not with any voluptuous quickening of the 
 pulse : but always with loathing, with hatred, with the 
 strenuous abhorrence of a noble heart, strong in its 
 virgin purity. He has known where the secret of 
 strength lay : 
 
 His strength was as the strength of ten, 
 Because his heart was pure. 
 
 There is no taint upon his page. He has followed a 
 high ideal, and has been consistent to it through a long 
 life. For him vice has had no seduction : a jealous 
 virtue has sat enthroned in the heart of his genius, and 
 preserved his mind unsullied. When we consider the 
 bulk of his work, the multitude of his readers, the 
 greatness of his influence, and when we contrast with 
 him the influence and work of such a poet as Byron, 
 we begin to understand how vast a service Tennyson 
 has rendered to the cause of righteousness by the 
 reverent ideal of womanhood he has maintained, and 
 the great example of purity which he has set. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 
 
 IT is hardly to be expected of a poet that he should 
 be required to define his views on sociology, or 
 that he should begin his work in imaginative literature 
 with any cut-and-dried social creed, which it is his 
 mission to propagate. No great poet has ever set out 
 with any such propaganda. Wordsworth and the Lake 
 poets did profess a definite creed, and drew up a state- 
 ment of their principles, but they were purely literary 
 principles. There was nothing in these principles to 
 lead the Lake poets towards any common view of 
 human life, or human society. Each took his own 
 course apart from the literary principles they professed 
 in common, and it was inevitable that he should. 
 Training, idiosyncrasy, environment, the social status 
 of the poet, the methods of his education, the oppor- 
 tunities he may have of knowing the world, or the 
 reverse all these, and a thousand other causes, contri- 
 bute to the shaping of his thought, and the consequent 
 attitude of his mind toward human life. But though a 
 poet may have no definite intention of drawing up any 
 philosophic interpretation of life, he usually succeeds 
 in doing so. He cannot help himself. He is bound to 
 furnish himself with some answer to the great problems 
 that press upon him hungrily, with a dreadful insistence, 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 203 
 
 a voice that cannot be silenced. Some ideal of human 
 society he must have, and he cannot help comparing 
 things as they are with things as he would make them. 
 It is the ideal which he ponders in his heart which 
 gives utterance to his tongue. His ideal rules him. It 
 is ever before him. He may be himself unconscious of 
 the persistence of its influence, but not the less that 
 influence is always with him, and is clearly traceable. 
 It is like a coloured glass through which the light of 
 the mind streams : every thought comes to us tinged 
 with the ideal conceptions of the thinker. When at 
 last the finished work of a poet lies before us, then 
 we perceive, and perhaps he also perceives for the first 
 time, that there is a unity and sharpness of outline 
 in his thought, which is clear and distinctive. A hint 
 there, a phrase here, a verse yonder and silently the 
 underlying thought of the poet emerges. Bone comes 
 to its bone, till at last, with every reticulation complete, 
 the skeleton rises clothed in flesh, and the ideal of 
 human life which was jealously hidden in the poet's 
 heart stands before us complete and undisguised. 
 
 Now, perhaps, the first thing that occurs to the 
 reader who approaches Tennyson from this point of 
 view is his sense of order. The tendency of his mind 
 is distinctly conservative. He hears, indeed, " the roll 
 of the ages," and he is not unconscious of the revolu- 
 tionary elements which seethe in society ; but he hears, 
 if not with unsympathetic stoicism, at least with an 
 equanimity too settled for disturbance. He is full of 
 reverence for antiquity, he is filled with an all-sufficing 
 sense of the perfection and indestructible stability of all 
 English institutions. His mind is too calm and steady 
 to be sympathetic towards the passionate revolts and 
 despairing heroisms of those who seek an immediate 
 
204 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 reform of society ; he is, indeed, too cool in temper to 
 catch the glow of such movements as these. The place 
 in which he habitually walks and meditates is like that 
 pathway which he has described in the " Gardener's 
 Daughter : " 
 
 A well-worn pathway courted us 
 To one green wicket in a privet-hedge ; 
 This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk 
 Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned ; 
 
 And over many a range 
 Of waving limes the grey cathedral towers, 
 Across a hazy glimmer of the west, 
 Revealed their shining windows. 
 
 Now what are the details of this picture ? What is 
 the effect it produces on the imagination ? The chief 
 idea it conveys is a sense of perfect order. The path- 
 way is well-worn with the feet of generations ; the green 
 wicket is framed in a perfectly neat and symmetrical 
 privet-hedge ; the lilac-bush, in its utmost joy of bur- 
 geoning and blossom, must be allowed no licence it 
 is " trimly pruned ; " and finally, as if to complete the 
 sense of well-established use, of absolute propriety, of 
 faultless order and reverent conservatism, the grey 
 cathedral walls bound the view, and the shining windows 
 seem to reflect the glory of the past. In this passage 
 we have a not inapt illustration of the strongest 
 tendency of Tennyson's mind. It is from such a neat 
 and quiet bower of peace he looks out upon the world. 
 He is a recluse, shut up with his own thoughts, and 
 weaving the bright thread of his fancy far from the 
 loud commotions of the world. He loves to surround 
 himself with influences which minister to this studious 
 calm. In the garden where he walks no leaf is out of 
 place, no grass-blade grows awry. If the world he 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 205 
 
 looks upon hardly matches the spotless propriety of his 
 retreat, yet, at least, the world shows itself upon the 
 whole a very proper and well-governed world. Acci- 
 dents will happen in the best-regulated societies, but 
 in England at all events they are blessedly rare. Our 
 roots run deep, and we stand above the shocks of time. 
 We have grey cathedrals, excellent clergy, gracious 
 noblemen, stately homes surrounded by the greenest of 
 lawns, which might almost justify the eloquent eulogism 
 of the Cambridge gardener, who remarked that such 
 turf could only be got " by mowing 'em and rolling 'em, 
 rolling 'em and mowing 'em, for thousands of years ! " 
 The axiom that " Order is heaven's first law " has been 
 fully accepted by Tennyson, and has received addi- 
 tional development : to him order is also earth's best 
 excellence. 
 
 One has only to glance through Tennyson's poems 
 of modern life to see that this criticism is neither spite- 
 ful nor unjust. He is usually found in the company of 
 lords and ladies, princesses, scholars, and generally 
 refined people, whose place in society is fully assured. 
 There are exceptions to this statement, of course, which 
 will occur to every reader. He has studied the north- 
 ern farmer to good effect, and in the " May Queen " 
 and " Dora " we have admirable pictures of country 
 life. But this does not affect the general truth of the 
 statement. Claribel, Lilian, Isabel, Mariana, are not 
 daughters of the people. Lady Clara Vere de Vere 
 certainly receives condign chastisement, but still she 
 is Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Maud lives in the stately 
 hall, and the village where her lover meets her is the 
 sort of perfect village, " with blossomed gable-ends " 
 which we only see upon a great estate. When he 
 bitterly assails a lord, it is a new-made lord, with a 
 
2c6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 gewgaw title new as his castle, "master of half a 
 servile shire," and clothed with the rank insolence of 
 recent wealth. When he alludes to trade it is with the 
 usual aristocratic contempt, and the ear of the merchant 
 
 Is crammed with his cotton, and rings, 
 Even in dreams, to the chink of his pence, 
 
 It is true that he can cry, 
 
 Ah, God, for a man with a heart, head, hand, 
 Like some of the simple great ones gone 
 
 For ever and ever by : 
 One still strong man in a blatant land, 
 Whatever they call him, what care I - 
 Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, one 
 Who can rule and dare not lie ! 
 
 But this is, after all, merely the wail of an angry 
 pessimism. It is the sort of jeremiad in which timid 
 minds usually indulge when the ancient order of 
 things seems threatened. Of true democratic feeling 
 Tennyson is singularly destitute. His leaning is all the 
 other way. It is the sustained splendour and delicate 
 refinement of aristocratic life which fascinate him. His 
 heart is with the ancient order of things, and all his 
 modern poems breathe the spirit of this sentiment. It 
 follows, therefore, that Tennyson never has been, and 
 never can be, in the true sense, a people's poet. That 
 he has written poems which the very poorest value, and 
 which might rejoice the heart of the peasant, we gladly 
 admit. Probably the " May Queen " is far and away 
 the most popular poem he ever wrote, and it is so 
 because it touches the hearts of homely people. But 
 in the main there is little for the common people in 
 Tennyson's poetry. It knocks at the door of the lady's 
 bower, but not at the poor man's cottage. Its troops of 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 207 
 
 knights and ladies, and exquisitely-dressed and admir- 
 ably-nurtured people, seem out of place amid the coarse 
 realities of grimed and toiling life. To those who stand 
 among the shadows of life, those who surfer or fight in 
 the hard battles of humanity, and feel the cruel irony 
 and mockery of circumstance, it may well seem that 
 Tennyson's laudation of order is in itself an irony, that 
 the puppets on his stage know little of the great throb- 
 bing heart of the common people, and that <their fine 
 talk is, after all, a little too finical to pierce into the 
 most secret chambers of the human memory. 
 
 A further evidence of this limitation of sympathy in 
 Tennyson is found in his treatment of social questions. 
 He does not ignore them ; he sees them indeed, and 
 some of his lines, such as the following from the open- 
 ing of " Maud," quiver with a passionate indignation : 
 
 And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head 
 Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, 
 And chalk and alum and plaster are sold the poor for bread, 
 And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 
 
 But it is not in mere denunciation of existing evils 
 that the true poet should spend himself. The true poet 
 seeks to probe the heart of the world's sorrow, and 
 we turn to him to know what verdict he can give, and 
 whether there is any hope. Tennyson has no distinctive 
 reply to such questions as these, or if any reply, it is 
 a hopeless one. He perceives the glorious growth of 
 science, he foreshadows the vast discoveries of a larger 
 age, he is sure that on the whole the world means pro- 
 gress ; but when he brings himself face to face with the 
 actual details of life lived in poverty, squalor, and crime 
 he is sullenly unhopeful. He looks upon the whole 
 question from the point of view of the comfortable 
 
208 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 burgess, not of the poor man himself who stands amid 
 the grime of the actual sacrifice. He gazes down from 
 his sunny vantage-ground of aesthetic refinement, where 
 "no wind blows roughly/' and ponders, speculates, 
 sympathises, but his philosophic calm is undisturbed. 
 He never steps down into the thick of the struggle, and 
 makes those who unjustly suffer feel that in him they 
 have a comrade and a champion. When the sudden 
 light of some glowing, some delusive hope is flung 
 across their wasted faces, he is quick to tell them that 
 the hope is delusive, and to rebuke them for their excess 
 of fond credulity. One of his characters is described as 
 running 
 
 A Malayan muck against the times ; 
 
 but when we wait to be told exactly in what his offend- 
 ing lies, we find that it simply amounts to this, that 
 he 
 
 Had golden hopes for France and all mankind. 
 
 This is typical of Tennyson's point of view of social 
 questions. There is no living heat of enthusiasm in 
 him : he is wrapped in a chilly mantle of reserve, and 
 he chills the ardent as he talks with them. When he 
 proposes a great concession to the poor, what is it ? 
 
 Why should not these great sirs 
 Give up their parks some dozen times a year 
 To let the people breathe ? 
 
 That is all : a mere act of justice, an imperfect recog- 
 nition of the truth that property has duties as well as 
 privileges ; but it is announced as though it were a 
 revolution, and as if the poet himself were astonished 
 at his own daring. Perhaps, however, the sense of 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 209 
 
 daring is not surprising when we find that the proposal 
 was made to a stalwart baronet, 
 
 A patron of some thirty charities, 
 A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
 A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none, 
 Fair-haired, and redder than a windy morn. 
 
 And, practically, this is as far as Tennyson ever goes 
 in his treatment of social questions. He does not 
 really grasp them. He does not understand the inten- 
 sity of peril, or the grave considerations of justice which 
 underlie them. He stands aloof, in the company of 
 baronets and princesses, courtly and cultured people, 
 whose life is perfumed with pleasure and cut off from 
 all intrusion of tragic misery ; those who fare sumptu- 
 ously every day, to whom poetry is an exquisite luxury 
 of the mind as fine colour is to the eye, or delicate 
 flavour to the appetite : and it is to these Tennyson 
 sings, and it is their view of life which finds the fullest 
 reflection in his poetry. 
 
 It is characteristic of the scientific spirit that it 
 rigidly attends to facts, and classifies them, finally 
 deducing from them great laws which appear to under- 
 lie and control all things. Thus, in his treatment of 
 Nature, Tennyson's love of science has worked in the 
 direction of accuracy of statement and fidelity of de- 
 lineation. But in his view of life it has checked 
 generous enthusiasm, and produced coldness of temper. 
 The survival of the fittest is not in truth a doctrine 
 likely to produce a sympathetic temper toward the 
 crippled and the unfortunate. It does indeed kindle a 
 great light in the future. It pictures the final evolution 
 of man into some unimagined state of strength and joy, 
 when he shall have attained his majority, and entered 
 
210 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 into the scientific paradise which Truth is preparing 
 for him. 
 
 So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man, 
 
 that we may well consider him not as having reached 
 his true height, but as toiling on to something higher 
 even than he dreams. But however bright may be 
 the vision of the future, the survival of the fittest is 
 poor comfort in the vast interval. It has nothing to 
 say to the halt and maimed, except that they deserve to 
 be halt and maimed. It can rejoice in the vast move- 
 ments of society which, like immense waves, carry it 
 onward to its infinite goal, but it has no compassion 
 for the lives sacrificed every day in this predetermined 
 progress. And as one turns over the pages of Tenny- 
 son, he sometimes finds himself wondering whether 
 Tennyson has ever suffered deeply. Personal suffering, 
 the agony of severed love which comes to all, he has 
 known ; but there is another form of sorrow, the sorrow 
 of early disappointment and rebuff, which does far 
 more to educate men into breadth and charity of 
 view ; and by the buffeting angels of vicissitude he has 
 been unvisited. Life may be too fortunate, things may 
 go too well with men in this world. The liquor of life 
 may corrupt with excess of sweetness ; and for lack of 
 that wholesome bitter of disappointment, which is God's 
 frequent medicine to the greatest, a man's heart may 
 stagnate in an undiscerning content. Is this absence 
 of vicissitude part of the reason for the comparative 
 limitation of sympathy which we find in Tennyson's 
 view of life ? He has been attended by worldly fortune 
 and success never before vouchsafed to any English 
 poet. How different the life that closed in sorrowful 
 isolation at Dumfries, or the life cut off by the violence 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY. 211 
 
 of tempest at Spezzia, to the close of this life in fortune, 
 fame, and peerage ! How different the plain life and 
 simple house from which came to us the " Ode on 
 Intimations of Immortality" to x the cultured life of 
 artistic ease in which the " Idylls of the King " have 
 been slowly fashioned and perfected in fastidious 
 patience ! Doubt it as we may, resent it as we do, 
 nevertheless the truth remains that those wtiose words 
 live longest in the hearts of men have " learned in 
 suffering what they taught in song." In them the 
 heart has most maintained a childlike simplicity and 
 sympathy : and to them it has been given to survey 
 life with the largest charity of hope. Is it this lack 
 of vicissitude in the life of the poet himself which has 
 dulled the larger sympathies of his nature, and narrowed 
 the range and spirit of his poetry ? Has he too long, 
 like his own Maud, 
 
 Fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life ? 
 
 It is hard to judge : but no one can be unconscious of 
 the fact of this limitation. Its causes lie partly in the 
 order of the poet's life, but mainly in the character of 
 his own mind, which is dispassionate rather than 
 ardent, philosophic rather than sympathetic, and better 
 fitted to touch with subtle delicacy the fringe of a 
 great problem than to penetrate its gloom with true 
 imaginative insight. 
 
 The final impression which we take, then, from the 
 modern poems of Tennyson is that his view of life and 
 society is dull and conventional. The greater portion 
 of his poetry consists of reproductions : reproductions 
 from the antique, from the mediaeval, from the romantic. 
 And this is in itself significant, because it shows how 
 largely he has turned his mind away from the vision 
 
212 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of the present. When he touches the mediaeval and 
 antique world he is at his best. All the graceful 
 qualities of his mind then come into play, and he 
 clothes the past with a glamour of words which soothes 
 the mind and kindles the imagination with a keen 
 delight. But in spite of all his attempts, laborious and 
 partially successful as they are, to seize the modern 
 spirit, he has failed in the main. He has nothing new 
 to say : all that he can do is to take old and well-worn 
 ideas, and clothe them with a novelty of phrase which 
 gives them fresh currency. He has little faculty of 
 piercing through the husk of the conventional to the 
 living thoughts and passions of man which throb 
 beneath. He passes by, as a careless tourist might 
 pass over a volcanic district, admiring the flowers and 
 colour, but not suspecting the angry fire which boils 
 below his feet. He finds everywhere just what con- 
 ventional opinion says }'ou ought to find : he has no 
 strength to tear aside the thin crust, and discover the 
 passionate possibilities and sad realities which are 
 decorously hidden from the thoughtless eye. He skims 
 the surface : he does not probe the depth. Divest his 
 figures of the garb of musical speech in which they 
 move, and there is nothing left but commonplace thought 
 and sentiment. Like the " passon " in the " Northern 
 Farmer," they say what they " ow't to 'a said," and we 
 come away with a convincing sense of their entire 
 respectability. They talk, in fact, very much like 
 Anthony Trollope's deans and churchmen, who look 
 out upon life with a curious mixture of sedate thought- 
 fulness and decorous conservatism. The general effect 
 they produce upon the mind is dulness. But if Tenny- 
 son's view of life is dull, and his opinions commonplace, 
 we cannot but admit that all that the art of the most 
 
TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LI PR AND SOCIETY. 
 
 213 
 
 perfect phrasing can do to cover dulness Tennyson 
 has done. He has, indeed, so dexterously concealed 
 the comparative poverty of his thought in all his modern 
 poems with the eloquence and beauty of his language / 
 that many people have not yet discovered the deception. 
 Nevertheless it is there. The fact that so few are 
 aware of it is sufficient testimony to the perfection of 
 the artistic illusion. 
 
CHAPTER XXII, 
 
 TENNYSON AND POLITICS. 
 
 JUST as we look through the completed works of a 
 poet in order to get some clue to his general view 
 of society, so also, with many poets at least, it 
 becomes necessary to ascertain their view of the larger 
 movements of life which go under the name of politics. 
 With some poets only; because some of the greatest 
 poets have worked so purely in the region of imagina- 
 tion that no outlook upon the common world has been 
 possible or permitted to them. Keats was one of those 
 who lived in a world apart, and to whom poetry was a 
 divine seclusion, which 
 
 Still will keep 
 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
 
 But Tennyson belongs to another school of thought. 
 Very early in his career he was attracted by the great 
 political movements of Europe, and the fascination of 
 politics has never left him. We have, therefore, in his 
 writings a cluster of poems, and many touches of 
 allusion and sentiment, which reveal a general attitude 
 toward politics. It will be interesting to examine these 
 poems. 
 
 In the first place no reader of Tennyson can miss 
 the note of patriotism which he perpetually sounds. 
 He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride 
 
TENNYSON AND POLITICS. 215 
 
 in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the 
 greatness of the future. And, as we have already 
 seen, this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity 
 of view. He looks out upon the larger world with 
 a gentle commiseration, and surveys its un-English 
 habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt. The 
 patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing : 
 it is meditative rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally, 
 indeed, his words catch fire, and the verse leaps on- 
 ward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as 
 the " Charge of the Light Brigade," or in such a 
 glorious ballad as the story of the " Revenge." Neither 
 of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of 
 the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid and 
 chivalrous past sink into an oblivion which only 
 shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as a 
 rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and 
 inspiring patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, 
 self-complacent. It rejoices in the infallibility of the 
 English judgment, the eternal security of English 
 institutions, the perfection of English forms of govern- 
 ment. This is his description of England : 
 
 It is the land that freemen till, 
 That sober-suited Freedom chose 
 The land where, girt with friends or foes, 
 
 A man may speak the thing he will ; 
 
 A land of settled government, 
 A land of just and old renown, 
 Where Freedom slowly broadens down 
 
 From precedent to precedent ; 
 
 Where faction seldom gathers head, 
 But by degrees to fulness wrought, 
 The strength of some diffusive thought 
 
 Hath time and space to work and spread. 
 
216 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 In these verses we have the gist of Tennyson's 
 general view of English political life. Freedom is not 
 to him a radiant spirit, flooding the world with Divine 
 splendour ; nor a revolutionary spirit, moving through 
 the thunders of war, whose habitation is cloud, and 
 smoke, and the thick darkness ; nor a Godlike spirit, 
 putting the trumpet to his mouth, and sounding the 
 Divine battle-call, which vibrates through the heart of 
 the sleeping nations, and wakens them to victorious 
 endeavour ; it is " sober-suited Freedom," a " diffusive 
 thought," a scientific growth evolving itself through 
 long ages of patient struggle, a heritage only won by 
 patience, and only kept by sobriety of judgment and 
 mutual compromise. Freedom indeed makes " bright 
 our days and light our dreams," but she also stands 
 disdainfully aloof from over-much contact with common 
 men, 
 
 Turning to scorn with lips divine 
 The falsehood of extremes. 
 
 Of the falsehood of extremes Tennyson is keenly 
 conscious. His philosophic insight perceives the peril, 
 and holds him back from any unregulated enthusiasm. 
 There is no abandonment about his patriotism. It is 
 the cool and scholastic patriotism of the moralist, not 
 the ardent patriotism of the man standing in the full 
 stream of action and moving with it. And for this 
 reason it lacks vigour, and it does not inspire men 
 with any real warmth. There is little in Tennyson's 
 patriotism that could feed the flame of spiritual ardour 
 in a time when men actually had to fight and die for 
 liberty. It is retrospective ; it gilds the past with a 
 refined glory, but it does not mould the present. It 
 immortalises the work of the fathers 
 
TENNYSON AND POLITICS. 217 
 
 The single note 
 
 From that deep chord which Hampden smote 
 Will vibrate to the doom ; 
 
 but if the work of Hampden had to be done over again 
 we should scarcely look to Tennyson for encourage- 
 ment ; and when the new Roundheads " hummed a 
 surly hymn " and went out to battle, we are pretty sure 
 Tennyson would be found with the king's armies, and 
 would be the accepted laureate of the ancient order. 
 
 There is no doubt room for this species of patriotism, 
 and it is certainly a not unpopular species. It is the 
 patriotism of the well-bred and cultured classes, of the 
 merchant who has made his fortune, the aristocrat who 
 lives in feudal security, the student or specialist whose 
 money is safely invested in the funds, and brings in its 
 uneventful dividends. Nothing is more common than the 
 praise of English institutions by men who have an im- 
 perfect sympathy with the processes by which they have 
 been created. It is the cant of after-dinner speeches, the 
 infallible note which always wakens thunders of applause 
 for the utterances of otherwise indifferent speakers. 
 Nor can we be surprised at the popularity of this kind 
 of patriotism. It produces a gentle stimulating warmth 
 of self-complacency which is very pleasant to the 
 average Englishman. It tells him what he most loves 
 to hear, that upon the whole he possesses the monopoly 
 of political wisdom, and holds the patent for the only 
 perfect form of political government. But we usually 
 find in this species of patriotism a very deficient sense 
 of present needs as compared with past glories. And 
 this is pre-eminently true of Tennyson. When he is 
 brought face to face with the actual conditions of 
 modern political life he recoils in angry dismay. It is 
 one thing to praise the British constitution in theory, 
 
218 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 it is quite another to approve it in fact. The spirit of 
 Freedom which moves in the thick turmoil of present 
 affairs is anything but "sober-suited." The phrase 
 " sober-suited Freedom " may admirably describe a 
 Freedom which has been tamed and domesticated, but it 
 does not describe the spirit of Liberty which actually 
 worked in the fiery clangour of the English civil wars, 
 or the French Revolution, or that moves in the hot 
 parliamentary encounters of to-day. Both there and 
 here, then and now, Freedom is the radiant and con- 
 straining spirit, inspiring stormy impulses and emotions, 
 trampling on ancient wrongs, ever busy and never 
 resting, carrying on the continual war for the rights 
 and heritages of man. When that actual reality of 
 what Freedom means is grasped, the mere connoisseurs 
 of a tame and domesticated Freedom, adapted to house- 
 hold uses, always fall back alarmed, and repudiate 
 Freedom in something like dismay. Tennyson does 
 not do this altogether, but the recoil is nevertheless 
 evident. He fears " the many-headed beast " the 
 people. He distrusts their instincts and impulses. 
 Their idea of liberty is not 
 
 That sober freedom, out of which there springs 
 Our loyal passion for our temperate kings. 
 
 The pulse of the democracy throbs too fast for him, 
 and liberty moves with an undignified breadth of stride 
 in these modern days. His contempt for trade breaks 
 out at every pore, and he thanks God "we are not 
 cotton-spinners all." And so it happens that while no 
 poet has had a keener patriotic sense of the greatness 
 of the past of England, yet Tennyson usually fails to 
 sympathise with the modern spirit, or to recognise the 
 real moral greatness of the modern England. We 
 
TENNYSON AND POLITICS. 219 
 
 instinctively feel that he distrusts the age, and is 
 afraid of the growth of popular liberty. There was a 
 great England once, but that was long ago: over the 
 England of to-day, too frequently in Tennyson's vision, 
 the darkness of decadence gathers, and the work of 
 slow disruption and decay is threatening, even if it be 
 not already commenced. 
 
 One result of this philosophic and tempered patriotism 
 of Tennyson is that he naturally has little sympathy 
 with forlorn hopes and unpopular causes. The men 
 who fail, the great, eager, hasty spirits of humanity who 
 fling themselves with a noble impulsiveness on the 
 spears of custom, and gather the cruel sheaf into their 
 hearts, do not fascinate him. He does not see the 
 noble side of failure, the quickening vitality of a true 
 impulse, even though it be misguided, and fail wholly 
 of attainment. The steady growth of constitutional 
 liberty, " broadening slowly down from precedent to 
 precedent," always respecting precedent, never failing 
 in a proper loyalty to the reigning classes, is a drama 
 on which he can brood with sober pleasure ; but the 
 angry uprising of the multitude to whom the bitter 
 yoke can no longer be made tolerable does not thrill 
 or inspire him. 
 
 For illustration of this mood and temper, take, for 
 instance, his attitude to France. The French Revolu- 
 tion was unquestionably the turning-point in European 
 liberty, and it has been the sad irony of history that 
 every nation has had a larger share of the spoil of 
 freedom than France herself. It has been her unhappy 
 fate to undergo the martyrdom, and Europe has reaped 
 the victory. Two great poets, Byron and Shelley, had 
 a large enough conception of liberty to be true to France 
 in the hour of her agony, and in spite of the excess of 
 
220 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 horror which made the last stages of the Revolution a 
 hideous nightmare of unbridled cruelty. Two other 
 poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, forsook her and fled. 
 It is not difficult to understand why. We can compre- 
 hend how the revulsion of horror fell on both, and how 
 in that hour of darkness the face of Liberty seemed for 
 ever obscured. But it is difficult to understand how a 
 great poet who professes a love of freedom can to-day 
 fling jeer and jest against the unhappy land whose 
 sufferings in the cause of liberty have been for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. Yet this is Tennyson's description 
 of the French : 
 
 But yonder, whiff! There comes a sudden heat, 
 The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 
 The King is scared, the soldier will riot fight, 
 The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
 A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
 Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
 In mock-heroics stranger than our own : 
 Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
 No graver than a schoolboy's barring out, 
 Too comic for the solemn things they are, 
 Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 
 
 There is nothing in this forlorn yet noble quest of 
 liberty which touches the higher note of sympathy in 
 Tennyson. His sole reflection is that such are not we, 
 and a pious pharisaic congratulation 
 
 God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, 
 And keeps our Britain whole within herself, 
 A nation yet, th^.rulers and the ruled ; 
 
 God bless the narrow seas ! 
 I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad 1 
 
 How different is this to the spirit in which Browning 
 regards the same spectacle ! To him there is a peren- 
 
TENNYSON AND POLITICS. ' 221 
 
 nial nobleness in any true impulse whose aim is lofty, 
 and its failure of attainment simply invests it with a 
 pathetic grandeur, a tragic dignity, a new claim upon 
 our honour and admiration. Failure in a great cause 
 is to Browning better than victory in a mean ambition, 
 and to perish in the right, even when the right is dimly 
 comprehended, is better than to succeed with a merely 
 conventional success. It is not through any deficiency 
 of analytical penetration that Browning does not pass as 
 shrewd criticisms as Tennyson on the national defects 
 of others, but he is better employed : it is his mission 
 to mark the good that lurks in evil, and the high ideals 
 which often penetrate and underlie even the most de- 
 fective human action. When he goes to the French 
 Revolution for a subject, it is not to find a text for 
 British self-complacency, but to catch the dying whisper 
 of the patriot's soul as it passes out of this wild earthly 
 confusion, and to report it thus : 
 
 I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
 
 A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; 
 
 And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
 
 For they fling, whoever has a mind, 
 
 Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go ! 
 In triumphs people have dropped down dead. 
 " Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 
 Me ? " God might question ; now instead, 
 Tis God shall repay : I am safer so. 
 
 The difference between the two poets is precisely the 
 difference between an insular and cosmopolitan view of 
 politics. Tennyson sounds no keen clarion of hope, he 
 is in no sense the leader of men. Men will never go 
 to him for inspiration in the dark and difficult hour of 
 national peril. But, on the other hand, it cannot be 
 
222 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 said that the general note he strikes is pessimistic. He 
 says that his faith is large in time : he anticipates the 
 hour when 
 
 The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled, 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 
 Human progress is a Divine certainty : 
 
 This fine old world of ours is but a child 
 Yet in the go-cart Patience ! Give it time 
 To learn its limbs : there is a Hand that guides. 
 
 The work of political evolution, like the work of natural 
 evolution, is slow, and asks for its development the 
 breadth of the ages. There will be widened thoughts 
 with the process of the suns ; there will be steady in- 
 crease of strength and wisdom, and growing " har- 
 monies of law." Tennyson's reverence for law is 
 complete and absorbing: it is a temper of mind nurtured 
 by his knowledge of and reverence for science. Even 
 in his treatment of so light and delicate a fancy as the 
 " Day-dream " he remembers the majesty of law, and 
 pictures how the world may 
 
 Sleep through terms of mighty wars 
 And wake on science grown to more 
 On secrets of the brain, the stars, 
 
 As wild as aught of fairy lore. 
 
 All the defeats and renunciations of to-day are but the 
 Divine discipline shaping us for a great to-morrow, and 
 far away, in the unmeasured and immeasurable spaces 
 of the future, lies a fair and renovated world. He is as 
 one who watcheth for the morning. His vision is not 
 always clear, his hope is not always strong ; and often 
 in the dark night his faith seems to suffer sorrowful 
 
TENNYSON AND POLITICS. 223 
 
 eclipse. In such hours, when we ask him, " Watcher, 
 what of the night ? " his voice is mournful and his 
 speech is bitter. 
 
 At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 
 Cry to the summit, Is there any hope ? 
 
 To which an answer peal'd from that high land, 
 
 But in a tongue no man could understand. 
 
 But it is at least a high land on which the poet stands, 
 and, confused as his reply may often be, yet he never 
 fails to see far off the promise of the future, how 
 
 On the glimmering limit, far withdrawn, 
 God makes Himself an awful rose of dawn. 
 
 And for this noble hope we thank the poet. He does 
 not fight in the ranks with us, but he foresees the hour 
 of victory. He does not stand amid the heat and dust 
 of battle ; but he that is not against us is for us. He 
 is one of those of whom Arnold speaks, one 
 
 Who hath watched, not shared the strife ; 
 
 but at least he " knows how the day has gone," and 
 he waits in patient hope for the breaking of a larger 
 dawn. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING." 
 
 WE have now come to the point in our study of 
 Tennyson where his two greatest poems, the 
 "Idylls of the King" and "In Memoriam," come into 
 review. There are, however, certain groups of poems 
 which can scarcely be passed unmentioned, and before 
 turning to the two greatest works of Tennyson it may 
 be well to glance at these. Everywhere throughout 
 Tennyson's books there are to be found exquisite 
 clusters of lyrical poems, and it may be said with 
 confidence that in this domain of poetry his power is 
 unrivalled and his excellence supreme. It is this 
 excellence which redeems " Maud," in all other respects 
 the weakest and least artistic of his long poems. 
 The " Princess," again, wearisome and dull as it 
 becomes in parts, contains three or four of the most 
 musical lyrics Tennyson has ever written, and snatches 
 of melody which will bear comparison with the finest 
 lyrics in the language. The art in which Tennyson's 
 rarest excellence lies, the art of musical expression, the 
 subtle cadence of rhythm which produces a recurring 
 and never-forgotten sweetness in the memory, is seen 
 at its very best in these short and lovely lyrics. The 
 lines in the " Princess " commencing, 
 
 The splendour falls on castle walls, 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING." 225 
 
 may be mentioned in this category as the nearest 
 approach to the effect of fine music which language is 
 able to produce, and in glamour and sweetness they 
 are unapproached by any modern poet. Of poems like 
 these nothing can be said but praise. They have gone 
 far to constitute the charm of Tennyson. They have 
 found their way into the general memory without effort, 
 by virtue of an enchantment all their own. They will 
 probably be remembered when much of his more am- 
 bitious work is forgotten. Indeed, it may be said that 
 already this process has been accomplished in part, and 
 the chief thing which preserves " Maud " from oblivion 
 is the famous garden-song, " Come into the garden, 
 Maud," one of the most finished and impassioned lyrics 
 that is to be found in the whole range of modern English. 
 In lyrical power and sweetness, in the power of uttering 
 that " lyrical cry," as it has been called, that species of 
 poem which is, in truth, not so much a poem as a cry, 
 a voice x a gust of thrilling music in this art Tennyson 
 has few rivals and no peer. 
 
 To another class of poems in which Tennyson has 
 attained high excellence he has himself given an 
 appropriate title when he calls them English Idylls. 
 The more famous is " Enoch Arden," the most 
 exquisite is " Dora." When " Enoch Arden " was 
 published great exception was taken to its method and 
 structure, and its obvious want of simplicity in diction 
 was held to disqualify its title to be called an English 
 zdyll. In subject it is purely idyllic, in diction it is 
 elaborately ornate. One of the acutest and most 
 brilliant of English critics, Mr. Walter Bagehot, has 
 pointed out the fact that in no single instance throughout 
 the poem is Tennyson content to speak in the language 
 of simplicity. The phrases are often happy, often 
 
 15 
 
226 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 expressive, but always stiff with an elaborate word- 
 chiselling. To express the very homely circumstance 
 that Enoch Arden was a fisherman and sold fish, we 
 are told that he vended "ocean-spoil in ocean-smelling 
 osier." The description of the gateway of the Hall 
 is almost pretentious in its combination of complex 
 phrases: " portal-warding lion-whelp, and the peacock 
 yew-tree." This is no doubt an excellent description 
 of tropic scenery : 
 
 The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts, 
 
 Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 
 
 The blaze upon the waters to the east, 
 
 The blaze upon his island over head, 
 
 Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 
 
 The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 
 
 The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail. 
 
 But this is not a shipwrecked sailor's description 01 
 what he would see, nor is there a single phrase such 
 as a homely seaman would be likely to use in all this 
 elaborate passage. " The hollower-bellowing ocean " 
 is a combination such as an ornate poet, anxious to 
 combine his impressions in a complex phrase, might 
 use ; but it would not by any possibility be the phrase 
 of Enoch Arden. As an English idyll, therefore, 
 " Enoch Arden " fails. As a poem of the ornate school 
 it is excellent. But in " Dora " we have the simplest 
 story of country life told in the simplest words, and 
 with an almost Wordsworthian austerity of phrase. 
 There is nothing to disturb the charm of perfect veri- 
 similitude. It is, however, a poem almost by itself. 
 Nowhere else does Tennyson work so high an effect by 
 such simple means. In the main he is an ornate poet, 
 and errs in over-elaboration of phrase. In the " Idylls 
 of the King" the same strength and weakness are 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING?' 227 
 
 always associated, and the excellence and defect run 
 side by side. As his narrative rises in passion the 
 phraseology becomes terser, clearer, less involved ; 
 when his invention slackens, and his poetic impulse 
 ebbs, he always falls back upon elaborate phrase-coin- 
 ing to cover his defect. The result is a curious com- 
 bination such as exists in no other poet. In a score of 
 pages we pass a dozen times from the noble severity 
 of Wordsworth to the fanciful conceit of Keats. It is 
 never difficult to know how the tide of poetic impulse 
 runs in Tennyson : when the impulse is strong the style 
 clarifies into nervous simplicity ; when weak, it abounds 
 in ornate decoration and scholastic word-mongering. 
 
 The " Idylls of the King " are the work of Tennyson's 
 mature manhood, and give us the ripest result of his 
 art. The history of their inception and completion 
 is curious ; it covers fifty years, beginning with a lyric ; 
 " then with an epical fragment and three more lyrics ; 
 then with a poem, ' Enid and Nimue,' which is sup- 
 pressed as soon as it is written ; then with four 
 romantic idylls, followed ten years later by four others, 
 and two years later by two others, and thirteen years 
 later by yet another idyll, which is to be placed not 
 before or after the rest, but in the very centre of the 
 cycle." Thus the world of Arthurian romance is first 
 touched in the " Lady of Shalott," published in 1832; 
 and last, in "Balin and Balan," published in 1885. 
 
 Since the completion of the " Idylls " Tennyson has 
 written little of really first-rate excellence or gravity. 
 His finest thoughts and finest lines are here. They are 
 his magnum opus, and on them his claim to fame must 
 largely rest. In the life of every great poet there comes 
 a time when a desire seizes him to accomplish some great 
 design, a poem on a scale of magnitude which shall give 
 
228 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 scope to all his qualities. As a rule such ambitions have 
 resulted in failure. Wordsworth is not known after all 
 by his " Excursion," but by his lyrics, and his " Ode 
 on Immortality." Mrs. Browning's " Drama of Exile " 
 cannot contest the awards of fame with the " Lines on 
 Cowper's Grave." The only long poem by an English 
 author which has held an uncontested place in memory 
 is Milton's " Paradise Lost," and it has been pointed 
 out that this is largely owing to the fact that it is 
 written in sections, and each section can be read at a 
 sitting. No doubt Tennyson was fully conscious of the 
 peril of his task, and the warning of these great ex- 
 amples, when he began to work upon the " Idylls." 
 He began at the end of his theme, with the " Morte 
 d' Arthur," as though to judge of his chances of success 
 by an experiment on the public taste. He was fortu- 
 nate also in the choice of a subject. In the noble myths 
 which had gathered round King Arthur there was a 
 vast field of poetry which was wholly unworked. Over 
 and above their moral and poetic elements they pos- 
 sessed a national value. For Tennyson they had 
 always had a peculiar charm; and we are told that in his 
 solitary boyhood at Somersby, a favourite recreation 
 was to enact scenes from the Round Table with his 
 brothers. These myths provided him with precisely 
 what he was least able to provide himself, a splendid 
 story, or series of stories, ready to his hand. No critical 
 reader can help noticing that in the power of pure 
 invention Tennyson is singularly weak. It is the 
 weakness of his invention which led to the vicious elabo- 
 ration of style which we have remarked in " Enoch 
 Arden." But in the old chronicle of Sir Thomas Malory 
 of the fabulous deeds of the Knights of the Round 
 Table, there is a series of stories complete in every 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING." 229 
 
 incident and detail. The chronicle is full of graphic 
 force and poetic merit. It is indeed so full of the genuine 
 elements of poetry that many persons, who have care- 
 fully read Sir Thomas Malory, refuse to think that 
 Tennyson has improved upon him. In many senses 
 he has not. He has often failed where Malory is 
 strongest, necessarily perhaps, because to make Malory 
 acceptable to modern ears it was needful to smooth over 
 a good many awkward details. But what Tennyson 
 has done is to imbue the old chronicle with new life 
 and spirit, to interpret it by a Christian insight, and to 
 apply its ancient lessons to the complex conditions of 
 modern life and thought. 
 
 Probably one reason why Tennyson chose Sir Thomas 
 Malory's famous chronicle for his greatest experiment 
 in verse was that it exactly coincided with his own 
 natural bent toward romantic allegory. We have to 
 remember the force of the pre-Raphaelite movement, 
 as it was called, if we are to understand the reasons of 
 Tennyson's choice. From the simple nature-worship of 
 Wordsworth, and the more ethereal and ecstatic nature- 
 worship of Shelley, there had come a revulsion toward 
 the glowing spectacle of mediaeval life and the chivalrous 
 bent of mediaeval thought. Just as the publication of 
 the " Reliques of English Ballad Poetry," by Bishop 
 Percy, in the end of the eighteenth century, worked a 
 revival of mediaeval sentiment, whose best fruit is found 
 in the great romances of Sir Walter Scott, so the 
 experiments of Rossetti and Morris worked a similar 
 revival in our own. Among the weird half-lights of 
 mediaeval history there lay a land of old romance, full 
 of material for the poet. Tennyson's " Lady of Shalott," 
 11 Sir Galahad," and " St. Agnes " were early experi- 
 ments in this field of poetry, and indicate how deeply 
 
2 3 o THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 he had felt its fascination. It was only natural that he 
 should pursue the clue which he had thus discovered. 
 In the mediaeval England of knight and lady, tourna- 
 ment and battle, spell and incantation, adventure and 
 romance, Tennyson found an atmosphere entirely 
 suited to his genius. It was the land of glamour and 
 enchantment. There the imagination and fancy could 
 move untrammelled. Every knight was brave and every 
 lady fair. Magnificent spectacles continually passed 
 before the imagination, and afforded a decorative artist 
 like Tennyson the finest possible opportunity for the 
 exercise of that species of art in which lie most excelled. 
 And over and above all this, there ran throughout the 
 record of the history a strong moral sentiment, a deep 
 religious bias. The fall of King Arthur's Round Table 
 was the fall of a kingdom, and the causes of its fall 
 were moral causes. In this respect it was more than 
 a mere mediaeval record : it was an eternal parable of 
 human life. It touched the moral sense in Tennyson, 
 which had always been quick and sensitive. What 
 theme was there more likely to stimulate his genius than 
 this, and more suitable for a great epic ? The greatest 
 of all themes Milton had taken, but even if he had 
 not, it was too late to write a religious epic. The 
 " Paradise Lost " could only have been written in a 
 theological age an age like the Puritan, deeply satu- 
 rated with the theological spirit. To hit the taste of 
 the nineteenth century an epic might be a morality, 
 but it needed also human sentiment and passion in all 
 their fulness. With that perfect artistic insight which 
 has rarely failed him, Tennyson saw the value of 
 his theme, and the result is that he has produced the 
 only long poem which has been read by multitudes since 
 {( Paradise Lost," and a poem which, in parts at least, 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE XING." 231 
 
 may fairly challenge comparison with the noblest work 
 of Milton. 
 
 The " Idylls of the King," as Tennyson handles them, 
 are a very different thing from the simple chronicle of 
 Malory. It is extremely interesting to compare passages 
 and see how far Tennyson has followed and where he 
 has left Malory. As regards the story itself, he has 
 inserted many poetic fancies, but he has invented little 
 or nothing. The incidents run parallel. In some 
 points, as we have said, there is a graphic force in 
 Malory which we miss in Tennyson, and the short, 
 simple words of the mediaeval chronicler produce a 
 deeper effect upon the mind than the rich and subtle 
 diction of the modern poet. It is the difference between 
 the rude but thrilling ballad-tune and the skilful varia- 
 tions made upon it by a great musical composer. In 
 Malory we think of the theme ; in Tennyson more 
 frequently of the artist. But if anyone desires to see 
 how finely a poetic fancy can breathe life into a bald 
 history, he has only to mark how faithfully Tennyson 
 has seized upon the salient points of Malory, and what 
 a wealth of artistic skill he has lavished on them. For 
 the chief fact to be observed in Tennyson's use of 
 Malory is that to the plain facts of the chronicler he 
 always gives an allegorical significance. He never 
 loses sight of the moral lesson. King Arthur stands 
 out as a mystic incarnation, a Christ-man pure, noble, 
 unerring : coming mysteriously into the world, and 
 vanishing mysteriously, according to the prophecy of 
 Merlin : 
 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 
 He is the perfect flower of purity and chivalry, and the 
 kingdom he seeks to found is the very kingdom of 
 
232 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH 
 
 Christ upon the earth. Lancelot, in many respects 
 the more subtle and powerful study, is of the earth 
 earthy, and by turns base and noble, and rightly 
 describes himself in the hour of his remorse : 
 
 In me there dwells 
 
 No greatness, save it be some far-off touch 
 Of greatness to know well I am not great : 
 There is the man. 
 
 It is round these two men and Guinevere that the great 
 interest of the poem culminates. The very over-noble- 
 ness of Arthur works disaster, and Guinevere cries : 
 
 He is all fault who has no fault at all, 
 
 For who loves me must have a touch of earth ; 
 
 The low sun makes the colour. 
 
 The pathos of the whole poem is that in Arthur we 
 have the incarnation of a high ideal which men vainly 
 strive after, and its tragedy is that men do strive vainly, 
 and that all the noble work of Arthur is undone by 
 the weakness and folly of his followers. In the lesser 
 characters of the epic the allegorical bent is more fully 
 developed. Sir Galahad is the type of glorified ascetism, 
 visionary aims, spirit triumphant over flesh, but after 
 all following wandering fires in a vain quest, and 
 " leaving human wrongs to right themselves." " Gareth 
 and Lynette " is but a variation of the story of Arthur 
 and Guinevere, and it points to the severity of struggle 
 which awaits him who overcomes the flesh. In this 
 poem the allegory is more distinct and beautiful than 
 in either of the others, and Tennyson has given us no 
 nobler conception of victory over death than this : 
 
 The huge pavilion slowly yielded up 
 Thro' those black foldings that which housed within ; 
 High on a night-black horse, in night-black arms, 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING:' 233 
 
 In the half-light, thro' the dim dawn, advanced 
 The monster, and then paused, and spake no word. 
 
 It is the King of Terrors, the spectral form of the last 
 enemy. But when Gareth rides forth to the combat, 
 and strikes the helm of his grisly foe 
 
 Out from this 
 
 Issued the bright face of a blooming boy, 
 Fresh as a flower new born. 
 
 And this is immortality, the life which springs out of 
 death. 
 
 Of the tenderness of " Lancelot and Elaine," with 
 its immortal picture of the dead Elaine sailing to her 
 last home, oared by the dumb servitor ; the grandeur 
 of the " Last Tournament," with its ever-present sense 
 of desolation ; the unapproachable pathos of " Guine- 
 vere," increasing stanza by stanza in passionate depth 
 and tragic force, till we reach the parting with Arthur in 
 the misty darkness, amid the faint blowing of the un- 
 happy trumpets ; and of the solemnity of the " Passing 
 of Arthur," with its dramatic fulness, its farewell 
 counsels of neglected wisdom, its tragic mixture of 
 human despair and mystic heavenly hope, of these 
 poems it is needless to speak, if we had to choose 
 the greatest poem of Tennyson, we should choose 
 " Guinevere ; " if the most solemnly impressive, the 
 " Passing of Arthur." Nothing which he has written 
 rivals these two, or approaches them in the highest 
 qualities of poetry. They are the mature work of a 
 great poet. They express his deepest convictions, and 
 sum up his best wisdom. Such passages as 
 
 More things are wrought by prayer 
 Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
 Rise like a fountain for me night and day ; 
 
234 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
 
 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
 
 For so the whole round earth is every way 
 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God, 
 
 or- 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world, 
 
 have already passed into the permanent currency of 
 literature. They contain noble truths nobly expressed. 
 And among the artistic lessons of the " Idylls of the 
 King " none is better worth marking than the perfection 
 of Tennyson's blank verse. Blank verse is the one 
 distinctively English measure, and the most difficult of 
 all. Apparently it is easy of attainment; in reality 
 there is nothing harder. There is no form of verse 
 which so severely tests the ear and musical faculty of 
 a great poet. Keats attempted it in " Hyperion " with 
 magnificent success, but he gave it up after that one 
 supreme effort. Wordsworth's success is only partial, 
 and there are many passages in the " Excursion " 
 which are little better than prose cut up into metrical 
 lengths. Byron never touched it without complete 
 failure. Milton only has chosen it as his supreme 
 method of utterance for epic poetry, and he has used it 
 as only a giant could use it. Next to Milton stands 
 Tennyson. He sinks far below Milton in grandeur, 
 but he excels him in musical modulation. He does not 
 fill the air with the wave-like majesty of sound and 
 movement which characterise Milton, but he soothes it 
 with an unfailing melody of phrase. It is so distinctive 
 that the merest tyro could not fail to recognise the 
 
IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING." 235 
 
 peculiar charm of Tennyson's blank verse, and distin- 
 guish it at once in any company. Often it is mannered, 
 and mannerism is always a vice. But in the finest 
 qualities of assonance and resonance Tennyson rarely 
 fails. His verse moves with perfect ease, with perfect 
 music, with perfect strength ; and apart from the charm 
 of thought and subject, the " Idylls of the King " show 
 his metrical talent in its finest operation. But the 
 theme also is great and solemn, and in the " Idylls of 
 the King," we have his noblest work, and work such as 
 the very greatest poets might have been proud to 
 produce and covetous to claim. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 
 
 WHILE Tennyson has touched, with more or less 
 success, almost every stop in the great organ 
 of poetry, yet perhaps the strongest impression which 
 ne leaves upon the mind is that he is essentially a 
 religious poet, and it is in the realm of religious poetry 
 that his noblest work is to be found. It may be said, 
 indeed, that the religious spirit pervades all that he 
 has written. He might almost be called an ecclesias- 
 tical poet, for his writings abound in references to the 
 familiar sanctities of the Church, the font, the altar, 
 the church clock measuring out the lives of men, the 
 graveyard with its yews whose roots grasp the bones 
 of the dead, the sacrament, where 
 
 The kneeling hamlet drains 
 The chalice of the grapes of God. 
 
 How deep a reverence he has had for the Bible may 
 be inferred from the fact that no fewer than three 
 hundred Scripture quotations have been discovered in 
 his poetry. He has played with agnosticism, and 
 expressed its doubts and ponderings, but he has never 
 become an agnostic. " Poetry is faith " was the saying 
 of a great critic, and assuredly without living faith the 
 highest poetry is impossible. One may fairly suppose 
 that the religious tendency in Tennyson was hereditary, 
 and every influence of his life has conserved that 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 237 
 
 tendency and strengthened it. There is a remarkable 
 passage in a recently published letter of Tennyson's, 
 which throws considerable light upon this side of his 
 character, and which it is interesting to compare with 
 Wordsworth's similar confession of his early inability 
 to realize the potency of death. The letter is dated 
 Farringford, Isle of Wight, May /th, 1874, and is 
 written in reply to a gentleman who had communicated 
 to him certain strange experiences he had undergone 
 under the effects of anaesthetics. Tennyson says : " I 
 have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but 
 a kind of waking trance (this for lack of a better name) 
 I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I 
 have been all alone. This has often come upon me 
 through repeating my own name to myself silently 
 till, all at once as it were, out of the intensity of the 
 consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself 
 seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being ; 
 and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the 
 clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, 
 where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the 
 loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, 
 but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble 
 description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond 
 words ? " 
 
 This is a perfect description of the philosophic and 
 religious dreamer, and narrates an experience commoner 
 in the East than in the West. The deduction which 
 Tennyson himself makes from his experience is that 
 it verifies the truth of the separate existence of the 
 human spirit, and that that spirit "will last for aeons 
 and aeons." Something of the same state and experi- 
 ence is described in " In Memoriam," and especially in 
 the " Ancient Sage/' 
 
238 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 And more, my son ! for more than once when I 
 
 Sat all alone, revolving m myself 
 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed 
 
 And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 
 Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs the limbs 
 
 Were strange, not mine and yet no shade of doubt, 
 
 But utter clearness, and through loss of Self 
 
 The gain of such large life as matched with ours 
 
 Were Sun to spark unshadowable in words, 
 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow world. 
 
 A poet so sensitively constituted, and liable to such 
 moments of spiritual trance as this, could hardly fail to 
 be a religious poet. To him the unseen world would 
 be an ever-present reality, and he would live as seeing 
 that which is invisible. Gazing into what he himself 
 has called "the abysmal deeps of personality," he 
 would be always conscious of the greatness of the soul, 
 and the thought of final annihilation would be to him 
 impossible. For him death would be already abolished, 
 and his vision would be of life for evermore. 
 
 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
 More life and fuller, that we want, 
 
 is his own utterance of his own desire. And from this 
 calm and steadfast belief in immortality, this infallible 
 assurance of the eternity of personal life, all that is 
 noblest and serenest in the poetry of Tennyson has 
 risen. 
 
 But from personal belief in immortality to the embodi- 
 ment of religious beliefs in religious forms, it is a long 
 step, and Tennyson has shown considerable antagonism 
 to religious forms. If we glance over his writings, 
 leaving out the " In Memoriam," which is the greatest 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 239 
 
 achievement in religious poetry which our age has pro- 
 duced, we see that he has carefully studied religious 
 problems, and has reached certain memorable conclu- 
 sions. First of all> we find in the three poems of " St. 
 Simeon Stylites," " Sir Galahad," and "St. Agnes' Eve," 
 Tennyson's statement of, and judgment upon, religious 
 mysticism. " St. Simeon Stylites " is something more 
 than a historical portrait : it is a satire upon the 
 monastic spirit and ideal of life. The figure of St. Simeon 
 on his pillar, alternately coveting and cursing the world, 
 sighing for the shade of comfortable roofs, warm clothes, 
 and wholesome food, and then dilating with pride at his 
 own heroic renunciation, as he cries : 
 
 I wake ; the chill stars sparkle, I am wet 
 
 With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost, 
 
 is a monument of all that is harshest, grossest, and 
 most repellent in the monastic ideal of life. The very 
 humility of the man is loathsome ; it is the pride which 
 apes humility. He may be all he says he is, 
 
 The basest of mankind, 
 
 From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, 
 Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet 
 For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy ; 
 
 but his depth of self-humiliation is farcical when it 
 becomes a plea for sainthood, and when the secret hope 
 of his life is that 
 
 A time may come, yea, even now, 
 When you may worship me without reproach, 
 And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones, 
 When I am gathered to the glorious saints. 
 
 The most virulent poison of monasticism is in the 
 man's blood, and one knows not which is more loathsome, 
 
240 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 the humiliation or the ambition of St. Simeon. Yet in 
 the main it is a just and true portraiture, and appearing, 
 as it did, at a time when the public mind was being 
 roused into frenzy over the revival of mediaevalism in 
 the Church of England, it was a tremendous rebuke. 
 Tennyson marks in St. Simeon his utter abhorrence of 
 the monastic ideal of life. Self-renunciation he can 
 preach, but renunciation which despises and forsakes 
 the glad activities of daily life, as in themselves foul 
 and unclean, he will not regard as other than a form 
 of ecclesiastical madness. 
 
 Nor is his sense of the imperfection of religious 
 mysticism less strong in such poems as " St. Agnes' 
 Eve " and " Sir Galahad." Just as St. Simeon expresses 
 all that is most degrading in monasticism, these two 
 beautiful poems express all that is loveliest and most 
 tender in its forms of life. In St. Simeon the mediaeval 
 religious spirit is intense self-consciousness, sinking 
 into uttermost degradation ; in St. Agnes it is renun- 
 ciation of self, rising into rapture and beatific vision. 
 It is the pure and yearning spirit of a true woman-saint 
 which sighs for the heavenly Bridegroom, and cries, as 
 the trance of ecstasy deepens into the vision of death, 
 
 He lifts me to the golden doors ; 
 
 The flashes come and go ; 
 
 All heaven bursts her starry floors, 
 
 And strovvs her light below, 
 
 And deepens on and up ! The gates 
 
 Roll back, and far within 
 
 For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits 
 
 To make me pure from sin. 
 
 The Sabbaths of Eternity, 
 
 One Sabbath deep and wide 
 
 A light upon the shining sea 
 
 The Bridegroom with His bride. 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 241 
 
 Not merely is the expression of the sentiment in these 
 verses beautiful, but the sentiment itself is beautiful. 
 It is the essence of all that is most devout in conventual 
 piety. It is the sentiment we can fancy floating forth 
 in silence from the half-opened lips of St. Helena, as she 
 sleeps on that memorable summer afternoon, in that atti- 
 tude of pathetic weariness which a great artist has so 
 exquisitely interpreted, when she sees in dreams the de- 
 scending cross, and her soul smiles to greet the solemn 
 presage of approaching martyrdom. 
 
 The picture of Sir Galahad, going forth in his pure and 
 noble youth upon his life-long quest of the Holy Grail, 
 is not less touching in its aspect of saintly consecration. 
 He, too, moves in his vision of holy things : 
 
 A gentle sound, an awful light ; 
 Three angels bear the Holy- Grail ; 
 With folded feet in stoles of white, 
 On sleeping wings they sail. 
 
 The clouds are broken in the sky, 
 And through the mountain-walls 
 A rolling organ-harmony 
 Swells up, and shakes and falls. 
 
 Then move the trees, the copses nod, 
 Wings flutter, voices hover clear : 
 " O just and faithful Knight of God, 
 Ride on ! the prize is near ! " 
 
 This is a noble picture of the religious knight, the 
 ideal knight of chivalry, but not the less his religious 
 mysticism is his weakness. This does not appear in 
 this poem, because here Tennyson only attempts to re- 
 produce in accurate form and outline what the spirit of 
 religious mysticism in the days of chivalry had to say 
 of itself, and in so far the poem is a dramatic persona- 
 tion; but when, in later life, Tennyson touches the 
 
 16 
 
242 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 same theme, it is with a difference of handling, or 
 rather a fuller handling. It is mysticism not less than 
 wrong-doing which helps to break up the knightly 
 Order of the Round Table. And this is the reproach 
 of King Arthur when he says : 
 
 Was I too dark a prophet when I said, 
 
 To those who went upon the Holy Quest, 
 
 That most of them would follow wandering fires, 
 
 Lost in the quagmire ? 
 
 And out of those to whom the vision came, 
 
 My greatest hardly will believe he saw ; 
 
 Another hath beheld it afar off, 
 
 And leaving human wrongs to right themselves 
 
 Cares but to pass into the silent life ; 
 
 And one hath had the vision face to face, 
 
 And now his chair desires him here in vain, 
 
 However they may crown him otherwhere. 
 
 That is the reply of Tennyson to religious mysticism. 
 For some it is a wandering fire, dying down at last 
 in darkness and confusion ; for some a pious cheat, a 
 beautiful delusion which in saner moments they them- 
 selves cannot accept ; for the purest spirits of all, 
 capable of the highest and devoutest religious ecstasy, 
 it is after all only something seen afar off a fitful and 
 capricious radiance, as though one dreamed he dreamed, 
 and hoped he hoped, but held no certainty or assurance 
 of either faith or vision. Its effect is to produce in 
 men that fatal " other- worldliness," which cares but to 
 pass into the silent life, and passes through the evil 
 gloom of this world with blinded eyes, leaving human 
 wrongs to right themselves. It is not the solitary 
 rapture of the idealist which helps the world, and if 
 human piety has no help in it for the world, wherein 
 lies its virtue, and what title has it to our reverence ? 
 It is, after all, a sort of sublimated selfishness, and on 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 243 
 
 that ground Tennyson condemns it, and dismisses it as 
 wholly ineffectual to meet the real needs of the human 
 soul. And it is almost with a touch of mournful scorn 
 he adds that the mystic may be crowned in other worlds, 
 but it is clear that he has neither won nor merited a 
 coronation here. 
 
 Two other poems of Tennyson deserve mention here, 
 as still further illustrating his religious attitude. In 
 the "Vision of Sin" he describes the perversion of 
 nature which follows the pursuit of carnal lusts, and its 
 bitter end in despairing infidelity and cynicism. That 
 which a man sows he also reaps, and the wages of sin 
 is death. The man he paints is already a dead man, 
 though he moves still with some ghastly semblance of 
 life. He is "grey and gap-toothed," a cold wind of 
 death comes with him, a ruined inn receives him; a 
 mocking merriment, which jeers at all things sacred 
 and Divine, is the one temper which survives in him. 
 His memory is stored only with sensual recollections, 
 leprous delights, unclean and hateful pictures. He has 
 no faith left in anything. 
 
 Friendship ! to be two in one. 
 
 Let the canting liar pack ; 
 Well I know, when I am gone, 
 
 How she mouths behind my back. 
 
 Virtue ! to be good and just 
 
 Every heart, when sifted well, 
 Is a clot of warmer dust 
 
 Mixed with cunning sparks of hell. 
 
 He has sown the wind, and reaps the whirlwind. He 
 has gone to the farthest opposite of religious mysticism, 
 and has sunk in gross and unredeemed animalism. 
 The sated voluptuary usually developes into tho aged 
 
244 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 cynic, and, having outraged purity and virtue through a 
 long life, finally brings himself to believe that neither 
 has any real existence. And it is thus, with true insight, 
 Tennyson moralises on the portrait he paints : 
 
 Then some one spake : " Behold, it was a crime 
 Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time," 
 
 for the senses carry in themselves their own secure 
 retribution. 
 
 Another said, " The crime of sense became 
 
 The crime of malice, and is equal blame ; " 
 
 And one, " He had not wholly quenched his power, 
 
 A little grain of conscience made him sour." 
 
 In the last suggestion only is there any hope, but 
 Tennyson confesses it is at best but a shadowy and 
 inarticulate hope. So far as we can see the man has 
 slain himself, and there is no escape from the retribution 
 he has merited. The failure of mysticism is great, but 
 infinitely greater is the failure of materialism ; for while 
 one errs by overstrained yearning after Divine things, 
 falling into credulous fantasy and rapture, the other 
 errs by love of carnal things, and falls at last into such 
 a depth of moral debasement that it can hardly be said 
 the spirit lives at all. The one may be crowned other- 
 where ; it is at least certain that the other is avenged 
 even here. 
 
 The other poem, which completes Tennyson's view 
 of the religious needs of life, is the " Palace of Art." 
 There is a sort of midway house which men seek, a 
 halting-place between the material and the mystical. 
 They turn from the mystical in incredulity, and revolt 
 from the carnal in disgust. They retain spiritual purity 
 and intellectual integrity, and are quick to respond to 
 the promptings of the sesthetic temper, which con- 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 245 
 
 tinually begets in them vague dissatisfactions. Why 
 not then find rest in Art ? Why not gratify the reli- 
 gious instinct in the worship of Beauty ? Is not the 
 worship of beauty the only real religion ? As for the 
 world, full as it is of unredeemed animalism, let that 
 be forsaken and forgotten, as an impure vision which 
 is best ignored and put out of sight. There is splen- 
 dour in the sunrise, glory in the flower, grace in the 
 statue, delicate suggestion and subtle pleasure in the 
 tapestry and the picture, infinite delight and solace in 
 the revelations of art ; let it be ours to seek these, and 
 find in these our peace. So the soul builds herself 
 a lordly pleasure-house wherein at ease for aye to 
 dwell. 
 
 It realizes the utmost dreams of beauty. Before it 
 streams the rainbow's "orient bow;" the light aerial 
 gallery, golden-railed, "burns like a fringe of fire;" 
 the air is sweetened with perpetual incense, and made 
 musical with the chiming of silver bells; slender shaft, 
 rich mosaic, wreaths of light and colour, "rivers of 
 melodies," singing of nightingales, and fragrance of 
 " pure quintessences of precious oils " are everywhere, 
 and it is a veritable palace of delight, which poets only 
 build, and human eyes have never seen. The world 
 lies far beneath the huge crag- platforms, and the men 
 labouring in it are as 
 
 Darkening droves of swine, 
 That range o'er yonder plain. 
 
 Creeds have ceased to perplex the mind 
 
 I take possession of man's mind and deed, 
 I care not what the sects may brawl. 
 
 I sit as God, holding no form of creed, 
 But contemplating all. 
 
246 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 And in what does it all end ? It ends in the bitter cry 
 of Vanitas vanitatum, as all such experiments must 
 always end. Dull stagnation closes on the soul, and 
 the pursuit of selfish ease ends in agonising despair. 
 Beauty becomes loathsome, and its daily vision is as a 
 fire which frets the flesh, until at last the soul exclaims : 
 
 I am on fire within ; 
 What is it that will take away my sin, 
 And save me lest I die ? 
 
 And the only answer is 
 
 Make me a cottage in the vale, she said, 
 Where I may mourn and pray. 
 
 It is a great and memorable lesson memorably 
 taught. Human responsibility cannot be ignored, 
 whether in the monastery, the tavern, or the palace of 
 art. The first duty of man is to his brothers, and that 
 is the soul of all religion. Society annexes obligations 
 to its privileges, and the one must be shared with the 
 other. These poems represent the religious attitude 
 of Tennyson, and it is an attitude eminently sane and 
 noble. They breathe the spirit of a rational and ser- 
 viceable human piety. They rebuke at once asceticism 
 and sensuality. They pierce to the essential hollowness 
 of all mere art-worship as a substitute for the worship 
 of God, and they contain teachings which were never 
 more needed than in the generation which Tennyson 
 has addressed. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 
 
 WE now come to the most distinctive, and, in many 
 essential characteristics, the greatest of Tenny- 
 son's poems, " In Memoriam." Published in 1850, it is 
 the work of his prime, and contains the most perfect 
 representation of his genius. The personal history on 
 which it is founded is well known. It commemorates 
 one of the noblest of human friendships, and one of the 
 noblest of men. Arthur Hallam, the son of Henry 
 Hallam, the celebrated historian, was born in Bedford 
 Place, London, on the 1st of February, 1811. The 
 family afterwards removed to Wimpole Street, which 
 is thus described in " In Memoriam 
 
 Dark house, by which once more I stand, 
 Here in the long, unlovely street, 
 Doors, where my heart was wont to beat 
 
 So quickly, waiting for a hand. 
 
 In October 1828 Arthur Hallam went into residence 
 at Cambridge, and it was there he met Tennyson. The 
 affection which sprang up between them must have 
 been immediate, for in 1830 we find them discussing a 
 plan for publishing conjointly a volume of poems. One 
 of Tennyson's most striking phrases in the " Palace of 
 Art," " the abysmal deeps of personality," is directly 
 borrowed from a phrase of Hallam's : " God with 
 
248 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality." It 
 was one of those rare and beautiful friendships which 
 sometimes visit the morning hours of life, in which 
 intellectual sympathy, not less than love, plays a fore- 
 most part. On the 1 5th of September, 1833, Arthur 
 Hallam lay dead. On the 3rd of January, 1834, his 
 body was brought over from Vienna, where he died, 
 and was interred in manor aisle, Clevedon Church,* 
 Somersetshire 
 
 The Danube to the Severn gave 
 
 The darkened heart that beat no more ; 
 They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
 
 And in the hearing of the wave. 
 
 There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
 The salt sea-water passes by, 
 And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
 ' And makes a silence in the hills. 
 
 When and where " In Memoriam " was conceived or 
 commenced it is impossible for us to know, but it will 
 thus be seen that seventeen years elapsed between the 
 death of Arthur Hallam and the publication of Tenny- 
 son's exquisite elegy. It is quite possible that the 
 poem was actually in process of construction during the 
 whole of this long period, for it bears in itself marks 
 of slow growth, of gradual accretion and elaboration. 
 Probably the work was begun with one or two of the 
 earlier sections, which simply bewail in poignant verse 
 Tennyson's sense of unspeakable loss, and which pos- 
 sess the solemnity and self-containedness of separate 
 funeral hymns, rather than the consecutiveness of 
 an elaborate poem. The history and character of 
 
 * In the first edition of " In Memoriam " Tennyson says in " the 
 chancel." This was not strictly correct, and is altered in subsequent 
 editions to " dark Church." 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 249 
 
 the poem sustain this view. In seventeen years the 
 anguish of the deepest sorrow must needs show signs 
 of healing. Grief grows less clamant, and more 
 meditative. It passes somewhat out of the region of 
 personal bitterness into the realms of philosophic 
 reflection and religious resignation. Time does not 
 destroy the sense of loss, but it lifts the soul to a place 
 of broader outlook and calmer vision. As we read " In 
 Memoriam" this process is clearly detailed, and there 
 is much in the structure of the poem to suggest that 
 from a few mournful verses, cast off in the bitterest 
 hour of bereavement as a solace to the wounded spirit, 
 Tennyson gradually enlarged his plan, till he had 
 woven into it all the philosophic doubts, the religious 
 hopes, the pious aspirations, which the theme of human 
 loss could suggest to a thoughtful mind and noble 
 spirit. 
 
 Concerning the general structure and character of the 
 poem, one or two things are worth remark. It differs 
 essentially from any other elegy in the English language, 
 both as to metrical arrangement and artistic colour. Eng- 
 lish literature is not rich in elegy, but it possesses in 
 Milton's " Lycidas," in Gray's famous poem, in Shelley's 
 " Adonais," and perhaps in Arnold's noble lamentation 
 for his father and his " Thyrsis," isolated specimens of 
 elegiac poetry as fine as any literature can boast. Of 
 these great elegies, Shelley's " Adonais " is the longest 
 and the noblest ; Milton's " Lycidas " the most classic 
 in gravity and sweetness; Gray's " Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard " the most perfectly polished ; Arnold's 
 " Lines in Rugby Chapel " the most effective in moral 
 view and spirit. But of the last two it will be at once 
 perceived that neither aims at the constructive breadth 
 of a prolonged poem, nor would the metrical form 
 
250 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 sustain the burden of great length. The constant evil 
 which menaces elegy is monotony, and it is the most 
 difficult to be avoided by the very nature of the theme. 
 Gray avoids it by aiming at aphoristic brevity, and 
 by polishing every phrase with the most consummate 
 artistic skill and patience. Arnold adopts for his pur- 
 pose a peculiar unrhymed metre, which stimulates the 
 ear without wearying it, but which could not be sus- 
 tained except within the limits of brevity which he has 
 set for himself. Milton is similarly brief, and " Lycidas" 
 reads more like a noble fragment of the antique than 
 an English poem written for English readers. No 
 doubt Milton's genius would have served him perfectly 
 if he had attempted a " Lycidas " of thrice the length, 
 for he has attempted no form of poetry without absolute 
 success ; but, however that may be, he was taught by 
 his artistic instincts in writing elegy to compress within 
 the narrowest limits of space his lament for the noble 
 dead. Shelley does indeed write at length, but there 
 are two things to sustain him in his daring effort ; first, 
 he uses a metre singularly pliable and resonant; and, 
 secondly, he leaves his theme at will, and weaves into 
 his poem a hundred exquisite suggestions of natural 
 beauty and imaginative vision, so that while his theme 
 is mournful his poem is often ecstatic, and monotony 
 is avoided by richness of fancy and variety of theme. 
 In what respects does " In Memoriam " differ from these 
 great masterpieces ? Wherein does its distinctive 
 charm and greatness lie ? 
 
 In the first place it differs entirely in metrical form 
 and arrangement. Properly speaking, it is hymnal in 
 form. Some of its stanzas are admirably suited for 
 Christian worship, and no doubt will appear, with slight 
 alterations, in the hymnal collections of the future. 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMO RI AM," 251 
 
 In this respect it is distinctively English, and appeals 
 strongly to English tastes. But what is there that 
 could be conceived as more monotonous than a hymn of 
 a thousand stanzas ? The hymnal form may be excel- 
 lently suited for elegy, but how is it possible to com- 
 bine a form in itself monotonous with a theme whose 
 chief peril is monotony without producing a poem 
 which would be insufferably dull and tedious ? That 
 was the problem Tennyson had to solve, and he solved 
 it in two ways. Instead of the ordinary hymnal 
 quatrain, he adopted a form, not unknown indeed in 
 English literature, but virtually new to modern readers, 
 in which the first and last and the two middle lines of 
 the verses rhyme. Anyone who will take the trouble 
 to compare these forms will at once see how greatly 
 Tennyson's variation gains in modulation and flexibility. 
 He had already attempted it in one of his earlier poems, 
 " Love thou thy land with love far brought," and had no 
 doubt been struck with its power of musical expression. 
 If, as we surmise, "In Memoriam" grew slowly from cer- 
 tain fragmentary stanzas, thrown off in the first agony of 
 grief, no doubt that was the metrical form in which they 
 were written. A form more perfect for elegiac poetry 
 could not be conceived ; but how could it be applied to 
 an elaborate poem of many hundreds of lines ? This 
 Tennyson answered by dividing his poem into short sec- 
 tions, each one complete in itself, and expressing some 
 particular thought or sentiment. It is to this division 
 of the poem, in part at least, that much of its popularity 
 must be attributed. I have already quoted the saying of 
 an acute critic that the reason why people read " Paradise 
 Lost " is that it is arranged in sections, and can therefore 
 be put down and resumed at will. This is eminently 
 true of " In Memoriam." It is a brilliant constellation 
 
252 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of short poems, held together in rhythmic order by one 
 great sustaining sentiment. We can open it where we 
 will, read as much as we wish, and put it down again, 
 without any perplexing sense of having missed the 
 poet's meaning, or destroyed his clue of thought. Of 
 course this is not the student's method of reading " In 
 Memoriam/' but it is a method often forced upon busy 
 men by the necessities of their position ; and the fact 
 that " In Memoriam " is as truly a cluster of small 
 poems as a great poem in itself, has no doubt helped its 
 popularity, and has fully justified the artistic instinct 
 which suggested its division into sections. 
 
 Another point worthy of special remark is that not 
 merely in form, but in all its colouring, " In Memoriam " 
 is a distinctively English poem. Milton's noble elegy 
 we have already spoken of as a fragment of the antique, 
 and its whole conception and spirit is severely classic. 
 Shelley goes to the same source to find inspiration for 
 his elegy on Keats. Save the passages which directly 
 touch on the unhappy fate of Keats, there is nothing in 
 the poem which is distinctively English. Its allusions 
 are classic ; its sky is the sky of Italy ; its scenery has 
 a gorgeousness of colour and a pomp unknown in the 
 grey latitudes of the north. Over the dead body of 
 Keats, Shelley builds a glorious and fantastic tomb 
 a sepulchre of foreign splendours, and the earth that 
 holds him in her bosom is a warmer and more glorious 
 earth than that land of sombre skies and grey seas 
 where his genius was suffered to blossom and decay 
 unheeded. Gray, indeed, is English ; Arnold is English, 
 but with the trace of Greek culture always perceptible ; 
 but Milton and Shelley both go boldly to the classics 
 for their inspiration, and have written elegies which are 
 English in name indeed, but classical in spirit and design. 
 
TENNYSON'S " IN MEMORIAL 253 
 
 It is the charm of " In Memoriam " that it is steeped in 
 English thought and spirit. Its sights and sounds are 
 the familiar sights and rounds of rural life in England. 
 It is England, and no other land, that is described in 
 lines like these : 
 
 Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
 Now burgeons every maze of quick 
 About the flowery squares, and thick 
 
 By ashen roots the violets grow. 
 
 Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
 The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
 And, drowned in yonder living blue, 
 
 The lark becomes a sightless song. 
 
 Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
 The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
 And milkier every milky sail, 
 
 On winding stream or distant sea : 
 
 Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives 
 In yonder gleaming green, and fly 
 The happy birds, that change their sky 
 
 To build and brood. 
 
 All the colour of the pictures drawn from life and nature 
 is English, and can be mistaken for no other. It is 
 the Christmas Eve we all have known which he thus 
 describes for us : 
 
 The time draws near the birth of Christ ; 
 
 The moon is hid, the night is still : 
 
 A single church below the hill 
 Is pealing, folded in the mist. 
 
 It is the English summer, whose mellow eventides we 
 all have rejoiced in, when " returning from afar : " 
 
 And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, 
 We heard behind the woodbine veil 
 The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
 
 And buzzings of the honeyed hours. 
 
254 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Nowhere in Tennyson's works will there be found 
 more perfect pictures of English scenery and seasons 
 executed with more artistic delicacy and skill than in 
 " In Memoriam." They are all exquisitely finished, 
 with something of the laboured patience of pictures on 
 ivory or porcelain, and each is perfect in its way. The 
 effects are often gained in single phrases, so happy, so 
 luminous, so exact, that we feel it is impossible to 
 surpass them. This, at least, is one of the qualities 
 which have made "In Memoriam" famous. It is not 
 merely a noble threnody upon a dead Englishman, but 
 it is one of the most distinctively English poems in the 
 language, expressing universal sentiments indeed, but 
 with a perpetual reference to national scenery, customs, 
 and life. 
 
 One other point should not be overlooked in esti- 
 mating such a poem as " In Memoriam." To its many 
 other great qualities, it adds one of the rarest of all 
 it is the most perfect expression we have of the 
 spirit of the age. It is a poem of the century ; indeed, 
 we may say, the poem of the century. It sums up as 
 no other work of our time has done the characteristic 
 intellectual and religious movements of the Victorian 
 epoch. Nowhere has Tennyson borrowed so largely 
 from modern science as here. The well-known lines, 
 
 Break thou deep vase of chilling tears 
 That grief hath shaken into frost, 
 
 afford an excellent specimen of these obligations ; the 
 metaphor is very beautiful, but it cannot be understood 
 without a knowledge of elementary chemistry. At first 
 this was esteemed a startling innovation, and was used 
 against him as a reproach, but if the great poet is he 
 who concentrates in his poetry the spirit of his time, 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 255 
 
 Tennyson was bound to take account of the scientific 
 tendency, which is one of the most marked features of 
 the century. But he has done more than this. He has 
 stated not merely scientific arguments and facts, but 
 also the religious doubts, the perplexities, the philo- 
 sophic difficulties of the day, with equal skill and force. 
 He has perceived the intellectual and religious drift of 
 his age with unerring accuracy. He himself has passed 
 through its various stages of doubtful illumination, of 
 dark misgiving, of agonising search for light, and lastly 
 of clear and even triumphant faith. Like another 
 poet of our time, Arthur Hugh Clough, Tennyson has 
 known what it is 
 
 To finger idly some old Gordian knot, 
 
 Unskilled to sunder and too weak to cleave, 
 And with much toil attain to half-believe. 
 
 But he has done what Clough could not do, he has cut 
 the Gordian knot, and found "a. surer faith his own." 
 The process by which he has attained this victory we 
 shall see in the analysis of " In Memoriam." In the 
 meantime, it is sufficient to observe that the hold which 
 this poem has taken on the minds of men must be 
 attributed not only to its literary genius, but to its 
 prophetic qualities. Not merely is it original in 
 metrical design, and thoroughly English in colour, but 
 it is also an interpretation of the deepest religious 
 yearnings and philosophic problems of our time, and as 
 such has become the indispensable companion of all 
 who share, and seek to understand, or to direct, the 
 intellectual life of the century. 
 
 A great poem should interpret itself, and, in the larger 
 sense, " In Memoriam " needs no comment or elucida- 
 tion. But there is another sense in which elucidation 
 is needed, and cannot but be useful. Because the " In 
 
256 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Memoriam," is, as we have seen, not merely a great 
 poem in itself, but really a series of short poems held 
 together by a common sentiment, it is not always easy 
 to perceive the thread of thought that binds each to 
 each. The transitions of thought and theme are always 
 subtle, and often sudden. The various suggestions of 
 loss crowd thickly on the mind of the poet, and it is 
 sometimes difficult to perceive the link which connects 
 them into an organic whole. It may be well, therefore, 
 to attempt, not an elaborate analysis, for that has been 
 ably done by others, but a sort of indicatory comment 
 whereby we may perceive the course and current of the 
 poem. 
 
 The opening poem of the series is an after-thought, 
 and sums up much that is said hereafter in detail. It 
 is a final confession of religious faith, " Believing 
 where we cannot prove," in which Tennyson craves for- 
 giveness for " the wild and wandering cries " of the 
 poem, which he terms " confusions of a wasted youth." 
 The poem proper then begins. From i. to v. we have 
 a statement of those common states of mind which 
 attend all great bereavements. There is a sacred- 
 ness in loss (v.) which almost makes it a sacrilege to 
 embalm the sorrow of the heart in words, and yet there 
 is a use in measured language, for at least the labour of 
 literary production numbs the pain. Then follows (vi.) 
 a beautiful and pathetic vision of what loss means to 
 others beside himself. Such a sorrow as his is not 
 peculiar : at the moment while the father pledges his 
 gallant son, he is shot upon the battle-field, and while 
 the mother prays for her sailor-lad, his 
 
 Heavy- shotted hammock-shroud 
 Drops in his vast and wandering grave. 
 
 Memory wakens (vii.-viii.), and then Fancy (ix.-x.) ; 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 257 
 
 the one recalling ended joys of fellowship, the other 
 picturing the ship that bears homeward the dead body 
 of his friend; and fancy suggests that it at least is 
 something to be spared an ocean burial, and to sleep 
 in English earth, that 
 
 From his ashes may be made 
 
 The violet of his native land. Cxviii.) 
 
 Nature is calm (xi.), but if the poet has any calm it is 
 a calm despair. Yet while he pictures the processes of 
 death, he marks it as curious that it is almost impossible 
 to believe his friend is dead. If again they struck hand 
 in hand, he would not feel it strange (xiv.), for death 
 seems unimaginable. Then again the light fades, and 
 he pictures the final obsequies and place of rest (xix.). 
 Pain may be meant to produce in him the firmer mind 
 (xviii.). Perhaps some will say that this brooding over 
 grief is unmanly, the pastime of the egotist, the vain 
 torture of a morbid mind ; to which he can only reply 
 they know neither him nor his friend. 
 
 I do but sing because I must, 
 And pipe but as the linnets sing. 
 
 (xxi.) 
 
 Again he recalls lost days, and how on the " fifth 
 autumnal slope " of those brief ended years, Death met 
 and parted them (xxii.). Let those mock who will. 
 He has no envy of those more callous of heart than he, 
 who have never known the joy of a perfect love, and, 
 therefore, cannot understand what its loss may mean. 
 A man's capacity of agony is his capacity of rapture : 
 
 I hold it true, whate'er befall, 
 
 I feel it, when I sorrow most ; 
 
 Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. 
 
258 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The time of happy family gatherings draws near, and 
 
 Christmas bells from hill to hill 
 Answer each other in the mist. 
 
 To him it is a sad time of forced mirth and empty joy. 
 But there is something in the very season that suggests 
 nobler thoughts : 
 
 Our voices took a higher range ; 
 
 Once more we sang : " They do not die 
 
 Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 
 Nor change to us, although they change. (xxx.) 
 
 That, at least, is the promise of faith, and with a cry 
 to the Divine Father, who lit " the light that shone 
 when Hope was born," the first great halting-place in 
 the poem is reached. 
 
 In the next section of the poem (xxxi.) a new line 
 of thought begins with the touching picture of Lazarus 
 redeemed from the grave's dishonours ? and seated once 
 more among the familiar faces of Bethany. During 
 those four days of sojourn in the realm of death, did 
 Lazarus yearn for human love, or miss it ? Did he 
 retain a conscious identity, and know where and what 
 he was ? If he had willed, surely he could have solved 
 all the deep mystery of death for us. But if such 
 questions were proposed to him " there lives no record 
 of reply," or, if he answered them, " something sealed 
 the lips of that evangelist," and the world will never 
 know the secrets of the prison-house. At this point 
 Tennyson begins to state and combat the doubts that 
 perplex him. Yet he half hesitates to do so. Simple 
 faith is so beautiful and rare, that he may well ask 
 himself what right he has to disturb its serenity with 
 his uneasy questionings. Let any who, after toil and 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 259 
 
 storm, think that they have reached a higher freedom 
 of truth, be careful how .they disturb the faith of simple 
 souls, who have nothing but their faith to sustain 
 them, and whose "hands are quicker unto good" than 
 ours (xxxii.). Yet we cannot help asking : " Is man 
 immortal ? " If he is not, then 
 
 Earth is darkness at the core, 
 And dust and ashes all that is. 
 
 The thought of God is lost, and the best fate were to 
 drop 
 
 Head-foremost in the jaws 
 Of vacant darkness and to cease. (xxxiv.) 
 
 In the hour of such awful questionings the heart in~ 
 stinctively turns to Christ, who wrought 
 
 With human hands the creed of creeds, 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds 
 More strong than all poetic thought. (xxxvi.) 
 
 Doubt and hope now alternate like shadow and light in 
 the poet's mind. When he sees the sun sink on the 
 wide moor, a spectral doubt makes him cold with the 
 suggestion that so his friend's life has sunk out of sight, 
 and he will see his "mate no more" (xli.). Perhaps 
 his friend is as the maiden who has entered on the 
 new toils of wedded days, and is content to forsake 
 the home of childhood : yet even she returns some- 
 times to 
 
 Bring her babe, and make her boast, 
 Till even those who missed her most 
 Shall count new things as dear as old. (xl.) 
 
 " How fares it with the happy dead ? " (xliv.) May 
 not death be in itself a new birth, the entrance upon 
 
260 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 fuller life ? (xlv.) Only it were hard to accept the 
 suggestion literally, for that would mean forgetful ness 
 of that which preceded the entrance on eternal life. 
 " In that deep dawn behind the tomb " will not " the 
 eternal landscape of the past " be clear " from marge 
 to marge ? " (xlvi.) With those who speak of death 
 as re-absorption into the universal soul he has no 
 sympathy. It is " faith as vague as all unsweet ; " it 
 means destruction of identity, and his hope about his 
 dead friend is that he 
 
 Shall know him when we meet, 
 And we shall sit in endless feast, 
 Enjoying each the other's good. (xlvii.) 
 
 With the glow of that thought burning in him he calls 
 upon the dead ever to be near him when the light is 
 low, when the heart is sick, when the pangs of pain 
 conquer trust, when the folly and emptiness of human 
 life appal him, and, finally, when he fades away on that 
 low dark verge of life which is 
 
 The twilight of eternal day. (1.) 
 
 Yet even this wish he is keen to question a moment 
 later ; do we really desire our dead to be near us in 
 spirit, and is there no baseness we would hide from 
 their purged and piercing vision ? (li.) In fact, his 
 soul has become so sick with sorrow, that he now only 
 suggests hopes to himself that he may fight against 
 them, He philosophises on his own errors of conduct, 
 but rebukes his conclusions with the fear that he may 
 push Philosophy beyond her mark, and make her 
 " Procuress to the Lords of Hell ! (liv.) Yet in the 
 moment of the uttermost darkness, full of distemper 
 and despair, he breaks forth into one of the noblest 
 confessions of faith, 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM? 261 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 
 When God hath made the pile complete. (liv.) 
 
 It is true that Nature teaches no such doctrine ; she is 
 careless of the single type, and cries, 
 
 A thousand types are gone ; 
 
 I care for nothing, all shall go. (Iv.-vi.) 
 
 Yet will he stretch lame hands of faith, and " faintly 
 trust the larger hope." Nay, it seems a sin against the 
 dead to doubt that it is for ever and for ever well with 
 them (Ivii.). The lost Arthur is in a " second state 
 sublime ; " and he has carried human love with him 
 there. Will he still love his friend on earth ? (Ixi.) 
 Will he not still love the earth and earthly ways ? 
 It is a question Emily Bronte answered in her daring 
 picture of a spirit in heaven sighing unceasingly for the 
 purple moors she loved below, until the angels in anger 
 cast her out, and she wakes, sobbing for joy, on the 
 wild heather, with a skylark singing over her. Tenny- 
 son pictures the great statesman who still yearns for 
 the village-green of childhood, and consoles himself that 
 Love cannot be lost : 
 
 Since we deserved the name of friends, 
 
 And thine effect so lives in me, 
 
 A part of mine may live in thee, 
 And move thee on to nobler deeds. (Ixiv.-v.) 
 
 He dreamed there would be Spring no more, but now he 
 perceives that his life begins to quicken again (Ixix.). 
 
 So many worlds, so much to do, 
 
 So little done, such things to be, (Ixxiii.) 
 
 is his reflection on the premature ending of his friend's 
 
262 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 life, but it also marks an awakening of purpose in his 
 own. Here again, upon the verge of another Christmas, 
 the poem seems to pause with the personal reflections of 
 the seventy-seventh section, on the possibility that what 
 he has written of his friend may never find readers, nor 
 touch any heart but his own. There is a virility and 
 spirit in this section which marks the movement of a 
 healthier mind. That he can begin to think about the 
 publication of his own verses is significant of the re- 
 kindling of human ambition in him, and is the token that 
 the lethargy of grief is broken. He has not recovered 
 his strength yet ; but the crisis of the disease is over. 
 
 From this point the poem moves in a clearer and less 
 grief-laden atmosphere ; the assurance of faith becomes 
 stronger, and a note of triumph breathes in the music, 
 gradually heightening and deepening to its majestic 
 close. He can bear now to pass in review the lost 
 possibilities of earthly felicity which were in his friend 
 (Ixxxiv.), because he has learned to believe that a diviner 
 felicity is his. He holds sacred " commune with the 
 dead," and asks 
 
 How is it ? Canst thou feel for me 
 
 Some painless sympathy with pain ? (Ixxxv.^ 
 
 He gives us a portrait of his friend ; he pictures him 
 eager in debate, a master-bowman cleaving the centre 
 of the profoundest thought, quick and impassioned in 
 oratory, 
 
 And over those ethereal eyes 
 
 The bar of Michael Angelo ; (Ixxxvii.) 
 
 that is, the deep furrow between the eyebrows,* which 
 
 * This is a disputed point. According to Dr. Gatty the reference 
 is the straightness and prominence of Hallam's forehead, in which it 
 resembled Michael Angelo's. 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 263 
 
 was indicative of individuality in the great Italian artist. 
 He recollects how he left " the dusty purlieus, of the 
 law," and joined in simple rural sports with boyish 
 glee (Ixxxix.) ; and how they talked together, and in 
 prolonged and eager converse 
 
 Discussed the books to love or hate, 
 Or touched the changes of the state, 
 Or threaded some Socratic dream. 
 
 This portraiture of Arthur Hallam is completed later 
 on, in the striking stanza of the hundred and eleventh 
 section, when Tennyson exclaims, 
 
 And thus he bore without abuse 
 The grand old name of gentleman, 
 Defamed by every charlatan, 
 
 And soiled with all ignoble use. 
 
 Again he implores his presence, and he will have no 
 fear ; for whereas he once thought of him as lost for 
 ever, now he feels his presence, "Spirit to Spirit, 
 Ghost to Ghost," and actually believes that in dream or 
 vision his friend does visit him 
 
 So word by word, and line by line, 
 
 The dead man touched me from the past, 
 And all at once it seemed at last 
 
 The living soul was flashed on mine. (xci.-v.) 
 
 It is mind breathing on mind from the past; he feels 
 that whatever is lost, that survives, and is with him 
 alway. It is true that his friend has doubted, but it was 
 honest doubt, which he defends in the famous lines, 
 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. (xcvi.) 
 
 He draws a lovely picture of a wife who lives with a 
 husband whose intellectual life is beyond her appre- 
 
264 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 hension, but who can say at least, as he has learned to 
 say, " I cannot understand ; I love " (xcvii.). It is the 
 only outcome from bewilderment ; he will follow not 
 the reason but the heart; a truth stated with yet 
 greater force and fulness in section cxxiv. : 
 
 If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
 I heard a voice, " Believe no more," 
 
 A warmth within the tfreast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up, and answered, " I have felt." 
 
 He recalls how he and his friend travelled together in 
 unforgotten summer days, and that leads to a series of 
 those beautiful cabinet pictures of scenery which lend 
 so great a charm to the poem (xcviii.-ci.). He relates 
 how he has dreamed, and saw in dreams the glory of 
 his friend ; how " thrice as large as man he bent to 
 greet us " a symbol of the larger manhood which he 
 has inherited ; and how he stood upon the deck of some 
 great ship with shining sides, that sailed o'er floods of 
 " grander space " than any earthly a pathetic reference 
 to the ship that bore his dead body home to England, 
 and again a symbol of that voyage of life on which his 
 spirit now passes through an ever-broadening glory 
 (ciii.). Then again the Christmas comes : charged 
 still with too great memories of sorrow to allow the 
 dance and wassail-song, but yet bringing a genial 
 change in him, for he has abandoned wayward grief, 
 and "broke the bond of dying use" (cv.). This 
 Christmas is spent in " the stranger's land," away from 
 home, and the bells are not the bells he knows. The 
 Christmas bells peal " folded in the mist " as before : 
 but when the New Year is near its dawning there is 
 a new music in the bells, a hope and triumph in their 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM." 265 
 
 chime, which sets his heart vibrating with a new 
 and wholesome vigour, and he breaks out into that 
 memorable apostrophe :" 
 
 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
 
 The flying cloud, the frosty light, 
 
 The year is dying in the night. 
 Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. ( cv i-) 
 
 The happy clangour of the New Year bells celebrates 
 his final emancipation from the perplexities of doubt, 
 his final recovery of healthful life, the sanctification of 
 his sorrow, the triumph of his faith. It is the anniver- 
 sary of Arthur Hallam's birth, the bitter February 
 weather, which "admits not flowers or leaves to deck 
 the banquet," yet the day shall be kept with festal 
 cheer 
 
 With books and music ; surely we 
 Will drink to him, whate'er he be, 
 And sing the songs he loved to hear. (cvii.) 
 
 He has soared into the mystic heights of perplexed 
 speculation, only to find his " own phantom singing 
 hymns ; " henceforth, he says, 
 
 I will not shut me from my kind ; 
 
 And lest I stiffen into stone, 
 
 I will not eat my heart alone, 
 Nor feed with sighs a passing wind. (cviii.) 
 
 Science, which teaches him how the world and 
 human life have grown out of the fierce shocks of 
 age-long discipline, the cleansing fire and cyclic storm, 
 may also teach him that sorrow is to man a sacred 
 discipline, and that fear, and weeping, and the shocks 
 of doom, do but batter him to shape and use (cxviii.). 
 Natural science can tell us much, but not all; we are 
 not "magnetic mockeries," nor " cunning casts in clay." 
 
266 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 There is a spiritual science also which the wise man 
 seeks to learn, and which unfolds a truer map of the 
 mysterious nature of man (cxx.). It is the reality of 
 spiritual existence that his sorrow has revealed to him. 
 Love is immortality, and through his love he has 
 already entered on eternal life. The knowledge that 
 his lost friend is really alive for evermore ; that death 
 for him has been simply emancipation and enfranchise- 
 ment; that all which he loved in him, not merely 
 survives, but is perfected in excellence, freed from all 
 human blemish or limitation, this fills him with an 
 almost ecstatic joy. In the early morning, when the 
 city is asleep, he again stands before those dark doors 
 in Wimpole Street, but it is no longer with agonised 
 upbraidings of fate. The calmness and hope of morn- 
 ing are with him, as they were with that forlorn 
 woman who long since sought her Master, when it was 
 yet early, in an Eastern garden, and found not a corpse 
 within the tomb, but a shining Figure walking in the 
 dewy freshness of the day, and he says : 
 
 And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh 
 
 I take the pressure of thy hand. (cxix.) 
 
 It is more than resignation, it is more than hope. It is 
 the voice of living certainty, of an entire and undivided 
 triumph, which lifts itself above the dark confusions of 
 the past, and sings, 
 
 Far off thou art, but ever nigh, 
 
 I have thee still and I rejoice ; 
 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice, 
 I shall not lose thee tho' I die. (cxxx.) 
 
 The long anguish has done its work in the purification 
 of the soul and the strengthening of the faith ; all the 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM? 267 
 
 bitter sounds of wailing and distress die away, and it is 
 with a perfect Hallelujah Chorus of glory in the highest, 
 and peace upon earth, that the poem ends. 
 
 There is, however, annexed to it one other section, 
 and not the least lovely ; the epithalamion on his 
 sister's marriage. We learn that this marriage took 
 place "some thrice three years" after Arthur Hallam's 
 death, but whether the bride was the sister Hallam 
 hoped to marry we have no means of knowing. This 
 epithalamion is one of those happy after-touches in 
 which Tennyson displays so perfectly his artistic skill. 
 It is suggestive of how life goes on, and must go on, 
 in spite of the gaps made in our ranks by death ; and 
 "the clash and clang" of the wedding bells, carried on 
 the warm breeze, is a noble contrast to that mournful 
 pealing of bells through the mist which is heard so 
 often in the earlier stages of the poem. The winter is 
 over and gone, the time of the singing of birds is come, 
 and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. And 
 now, whether life bring joy or sorrow, funeral chimes 
 or marriage bells, the poet has an all-sustaining and 
 purifying faith in God 
 
 That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 That " one far-off divine event " can be no other than the 
 perfecting of love in human life, the complete recogni- 
 tion by every living soul of the love of God, and the 
 final vindication of that perfect Divine love in all its 
 varied dealings with men, in things past, in things 
 present, and in things that are to come. This is the 
 vaguely sketched, yet noble vision, which crowns with 
 
268 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 spiritual glory the completion of his thought and labour. 
 He has led us through the darkest valleys of Apollyon, 
 but we reach with him the Beulah land at last. We 
 hear the trumpets pealing on the other side, and behold 
 it is morning ! Fair and sweet the light shines, and 
 heavenly voices tell us we shall walk in night no more. 
 It is morning; the morning of a deep and clear-eyed 
 faith ; and doubt and sorrow, fear and pain, are past 
 for ever. They are not forgotten indeed ; but we see 
 them now only as distant clouds touched with glories 
 of celestial colour, lying far and faint behind us on the 
 radiant horizon, transfigured and transformed by the 
 alchemy of God. The phantoms of the night are slain, 
 the anguish of the night is ended ; the true light shineth 
 with healing in its wings, and the soul rejoices. It may 
 well rejoice with joy unspeakable, for 
 
 Out of the shadow of night 
 The world rolls into light, 
 It is daybreak everywhere. 
 
 We here conclude our study of Tennyson. What 
 his ultimate position in the ranks of fame may be it 
 is impossible to decide. We are yet too fully under his 
 immediate influence for our discernment to be just, or 
 our judgment to be wise. That he is among the few 
 great creative poets of humanity, no one will assert ; 
 that he is nevertheless a poet of great and varied ex- 
 cellence, none will deny. He has been compared with 
 Milton, and has been set so high above Wordsworth, 
 that one of his critics has ventured to say that in the 
 future, when men call the roll of poets, " they will 
 begin with Shakespeare and Milton and who shall 
 have the third place if it be not Tennyson ? " But 
 Emerson, whose judgment is worthy of general defer- 
 
TENNYSON'S "IN ME MORI AM." 269 
 
 ence, has said that Wordsworth is the poet of modern 
 England, and that "otljer writers have to affect what 
 to him is natural." And that pregnant saying illu- 
 mines at once the whole question, laying bare at one 
 stroke the secret of Wordsworth's supremacy and of 
 Tennyson's deficiency. We cannot but feel that he 
 lacks the massive ease of Wordsworth and the deep 
 interior strength of Milton. If we still hesitate to grant 
 him equality with the foremost poets of his own century, 
 it is for the sound reason that while in Tennyson 
 artistic culture has never been surpassed, yet the 
 original poetic impulse is weaker in him than in either 
 of these great poets. But happily it is not necessary 
 for us to determine the rank, before we can discern 
 the genius, of our masters ; it is enough for us to re- 
 ceive with thankfulness and admiration the writings 
 of a great poet, who for sixty years has fed the mind 
 of England with visions of truth and beauty, and who, 
 through all that length of various years, has never 
 ceased to be a source of inspiration and delight to that 
 diffused and dominant race who 
 
 Speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 [Born at Camberwell, London, May 7th, 1812. "Pauline" published 
 1832. Marries Elizabeth Barrett September 12th, 1846* "The 
 Ring and the Book" published 1868. " Asolando," his last volume, 
 1889. Died in Venice, December I2th, 1889. Buried in West- 
 minster Abbey, December 3ist, l! 
 
 THE two greatest figures in the world of modern 
 poetry are Tennyson and Browning. To each 
 has been accorded old age : both have been keenly 
 alive to the intellectual and social movements of their 
 time, and have endeavoured to reflect them. Each also 
 has been an observant student of life, as all true poets 
 must be, and each has constructed a huge gallery of 
 human portraits, representing many types, and arranged 
 with artistic instinct and consummate skill. But while 
 Tennyson has proved himself the greater artist, Brown- 
 ing has proved himself the greater mind. He has 
 brought to the work of the poet a keen and subtle 
 intellect, a penetrating insight, the experience of a 
 citizen of the world, and in all things the original force 
 of a powerful individuality. The result of his artistic 
 deficiency is that he has entirely failed to obtain popu- 
 larity. He has not known how to deliver his message 
 to the popular ear, and it may be doubted if he has 
 ever cared to try. With a touch of justifiable scorn he 
 has declared that he never intended his poetry to be 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 271 
 
 a substitute for a cigar or a game of dominoes to an idle 
 man. The grace and music of Tennyson's verse have 
 compelled delight, but in Browning there is no attempt 
 at verbal music. It is with him an unstudied, perhaps 
 an uncoveted, art. When David sought to express the 
 consummate union of the opposite qualities which con- 
 stitute perfection he said, " Strength and beauty are in 
 His sanctuary." In Browning we have the strength, 
 in Tennyson the beauty. And the result of this artistic 
 deficiency, this inability to clothe his thoughts in forms 
 of grace, is, that Browning has failed in any large degree 
 to charm the ear of that wide public who care less for 
 the thought that is uttered than for the manner of its 
 utterance. 
 
 It is, however, necessary to remember another fact 
 about Browning's poetry, viz., that to the first minds of 
 the age, the men who lead and govern the world of 
 thought, Browning has been and is a potent and in- 
 spiring force. He has disseminated ideas, he has per- 
 vaded the literature of his time with his influence. He 
 has found an audience, few but fitting, and to them has 
 addressed himself, knowing that through them he could 
 effectually reach the world at large. The test of 
 popularity is at all times an imperfect test, and in 
 Browning's case is wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory 
 as an index of his true position in the literature of his 
 day. The influence of a poet is often out of all pro- 
 portion to his popularity, and is by no means to be 
 measured by the number of his readers, or the poverty 
 or copiousness of public praise. If mere popularity 
 were to become the solitary test of influence, we should 
 have to rank Longfellow above Dante, and Martin 
 Tupper above Tennyson. But while popularity is in it- 
 self a testimony to the possession of certain serviceable 
 
272 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 qualities, or a certain happy combination of qualities, 
 it fails wholly as a just measurement of the real for- 
 mative force which a writer may be able to exercise 
 upon his time, and still more hopelessly as an indica- 
 tion of the position such a writer may take up in the 
 unknown judgments of posterity. A man may catch 
 the ear of the public, and win its empty plaudits, with- 
 out touching in more than an infinitesimal degree the 
 public conscience or the public thought. 
 
 The deeper and diviner waves of intellectual life 
 indeed have more often than not owed their origin to 
 men who have quarrelled with their age, and received 
 from their contemporaries little but the thorn-cfown 
 of derision and the sponge of gall and vinegar men 
 wandering in the bitterness of exile like Dante, or starv- 
 ing in the scholar's garret like Spinoza. Most truly 
 great writers, to whom has been committed the creative 
 genius which opens new wells of thought and new 
 methods of utterance, have had need to steel themselves 
 against the indifference of their time, and to learn how 
 to say : " None of these things move me." They 
 have appealed from the contemptuous ignorance of their 
 contemporaries to the certain praises of posterity, and 
 not in vain. Where such men find readers they make 
 disciples, and each heart upon which the fire of their 
 genius falls becomes consecrated to their service. 
 Theirs it is to found a secular apostolate, a school of 
 prophets united by a common faith, and pledged by the 
 sacredness of an intense conviction to urge on the 
 teaching of the new doctrine and the new name, till 
 the world acknowledges the claim and gives adhesion 
 to the master whom they love and reverence. 
 
 Let us grant, then, that we have in Robert Browning 
 undoubtedly a great poet, but also an undoubtedly un- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 273 
 
 popular poet. With the exception of the " Ride from 
 Aix to Ghent/' the " Pied Piper of Hamelin," and the 
 tender and pathetic " Evelyn Hope/' few or none of his 
 poems have won the ear of the general public. Yet he 
 has produced no fewer than twenty-four volumes, the 
 latest of which was not long since everywhere dis- 
 cussed. No writer of our time has manifested greater 
 fecundity of genius, versatility of style, or capacity of 
 industry. Few writers have ever had a firmer faith in 
 themselves, and have trusted more fully to the secure 
 awards of time. Now that the poetry of Browning has 
 become a cult, his less known works have probably 
 found readers ; but at the time of their publication 
 few but the reviewers had the courage to read them. 
 There is a story told of Douglas Jerrold's having 
 " Sordello " sent him for review at a time when he was 
 in weak health and low spirits. After an hour's fruit- 
 less effort, he flung the book aside, crying : " My brain 
 is failing ! I must be mad ! I have not understood a 
 word." His wife then took the book up, and it was 
 agreed that upon the test of her ability to understand 
 it the question of her husband's sanity must turn. She 
 at length flung it down, saying : " My dear, don't be 
 alarmed. You're not mad ; but the man who wrote it 
 is ! " Many persons have closed " Sordello " .with the 
 same angry comment, and there are isolated passages 
 in Browning more difficult than anything in " Sordello." 
 How is it, then, that the man whose mastery of humour 
 is so finely displayed in the " Pied Piper," whose pathos 
 and power of narrative have such splendid attestations 
 as " Evelyn Hope " and the " Ride from Aix," who can 
 write with such terseness, simplicity, and vigour as these 
 poems display, is, nevertheless, to the bulk of English 
 readers a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence ? 
 
 18 
 
274 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The answer to this question is not difficult. Let it 
 at once be granted that Robert Browning can write as 
 clearly as any English poet when he likes, for he has 
 done it. Open Browning at random, and it will be 
 hard if, in half-an-hour, you do not come upon a score 
 of noble thoughts, admirably expressed in clear ringing 
 English, with delicate attention to phrase and perfect 
 adherence to the laws of construction. Yet it must be 
 owned that in the same half-hour it is quite possible to 
 alight on passages where the nominative has lost its 
 verb beyond hope of recovery, and phrases seem to 
 have been jerked out haphazard, in a sort of volcanic 
 eruption of thought and temper. What is the under- 
 lying cause of these defects of style ? 
 
 There are two main causes. The first springs from 
 Browning's theory of poetry. Browning's theory of 
 poetry is a serious one. Like all truly great artists, he 
 has uniformly recognised the dignity and responsibility 
 of art. With him poetry is not the manufacture of a 
 melodious jingle, nor the elaboration of pretty conceits ; 
 it is as serious as life, and is to be approached with 
 reverent and righteous purpose. It is, moreover, the 
 noblest of all intellectual labours, and should therefore 
 minister to the intellect not less than to the emotion. 
 Into his poetry Browning has put his subtlest and 
 deepest thought, and he uniformly puts a higher value 
 on the thought than the method or manner of its ex- 
 pression. In " Pauline," his earliest poem, published 
 in 1832, he says, with a true forecast of his own powers 
 and limitations, 
 
 So will I sing on, fast as fancies come ; 
 Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints. 
 
 With him the sense is more than the sound, the sub- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 275 
 
 stance is more than the form, the moral significance is 
 more than the rhetorical adornment. He has. some- 
 thing to say, something of infinite moment and solemn 
 import, and he is comparatively careless of how he says 
 it. He is the Carlyle of poetry : the message is every- 
 thing, the verbal vesture nothing. It is in this respect 
 that Browning's divergence from all other modern 
 poets is greatest. He is not indifferent to the art and 
 music of words, but he habitually treats them as of 
 secondary importance. Naturally, the growth of this 
 temper has led Browning into extravagances of style, 
 as it did Carlyle ; many a fine thought is hopelessly 
 embedded in insufficient and faulty phrases ; and there- 
 fore, to the mass of readers, who do not approach poetry 
 with the patient spirit of scientific research, is hope- 
 lessly lost. 
 
 The second cause of the occasional obscurity of 
 Browning's poetry is found in the condensation of his 
 style. When " Paracelsus " was published it was 
 declared unintelligible, and John Sterling, one of the 
 acutest critics of his day, accused it of " verbosity." 
 This saying of Sterling's was reported to Browning 
 by Miss Caroline Fox, who went on to ask : " Doth he 
 know that Wordsworth will devote a fortnight or more 
 to the discovery of a single word that is the one fit for 
 his sonnet ? " 
 
 This criticism filled Browning with a dread of diffuse- 
 ness, and henceforth he set himself never to use two 
 words where one would do. The result of this resolve 
 is that often he does not use words enough to express 
 his meaning. He uses one word, and expects his 
 reader to supply two. It is this which makes "Sor- 
 dello " the puzzle it is. It is a vast web of words, in 
 which the filaments are dropped, confused, tangled, 
 
276 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 like the crumpled gossamer of a spider's web hastily 
 detached and more than half-ruined by the touch of 
 carelessness. 
 
 There are beautiful thoughts and passages in 
 " Sordello," but they savour so much of bookishness, 
 and demand so much antiquarian knowledge in the 
 reader, that few are likely to disinter and appreciate 
 them. For instance, take this passage from Book the 
 Third : " Factitious humours " fall from Sordello, and 
 turn him pure 
 
 As some forgotten vest 
 Woven of painted byssus, silkiest, 
 Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted lip, 
 Left welter where a trireme let it slip 
 I' the sea and vexed a satrap : so the stain 
 O' the world forsakes Sordello : how the tinct 
 Loosening escapes, cloud after cloud. 
 
 Now what is -the picture painted here ? Analyze it, 
 and this is the result : An eastern satrap, sailing upon 
 a galley or trireme, wears a vest of byssus, dyed with 
 Tyrian purple. He lets it fall overboard, and as he 
 looks down through the clear sea sees the purple 
 dye escaping and clouding the water. So Sordello is 
 cleansed from the stain of the world. It is a very 
 beautiful illustration ; but its beauty is not perceived 
 till we recollect that purple is taken from the tuft of 
 the "whelk's pearl-sheeted lip," and that a garment 
 so dyed, if cast into the sea, throws off its colour in 
 tremulous clouds. Does any one see the meaning at 
 first sight ? And how many might read it and never 
 see any meaning in it at all ? This is an example of 
 Browning in his worst mood ; and we cannot wonder, 
 when we consider it, that simple-minded poets like 
 Charles Mackay called him the " High Priest of the 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 277 
 
 Unintelligible ; " or that Browning societies have had to 
 be invented to reduce his recondite fancies to lucidity. 
 
 These, then, are the two main sources of all that 
 is obscure in Browning's writings. The very fact that 
 for many years he was a solitary worker, writing 
 almost for his own pleasure, naturally confirmed the 
 defects of his style. The obscurity is never of the 
 thought; that, indeed, is so clear and luminous to him 
 that he seems incapable of conceiving it as confused in 
 the vision of his reader. The thought is clear as the 
 sun ; but the atmosphere of words through which we 
 perceive it is murky, and the body of the thought looms 
 through it dim and strange. And so Mr. Swinburne has 
 spoken with equal felicity and truth of Browning's faculty 
 of " decisive and incisive thought," and has said, " He 
 is something too much the reverse of obscure; he is 
 too brilliant and subtle for the ready readers of a ready 
 writer." The case cannot be better put than in the 
 words of one of his most earnest and intelligent 
 students : " He has never ignored beauty, but he has 
 neglected it in the desire for significance. He has 
 never meant to be rugged, but he has become so in the 
 striving after strength. He never intended to be 
 obscure, but he has become so from the condensation 
 of style which was the excess of significance and 
 strength." This should constantly be remembered, if 
 we are to approach Browning's poetry with the in- 
 telligence which interprets, and the sympathy which 
 appreciates. 
 
 Were Browning not a great poet it would be difficult 
 to forgive him such defects as these. We should be 
 inclined to dismiss him with the brief aphorism of 
 the Swedish poet, Tegner, who said, "The obscurely 
 uttered is the obscurely thought." But Browning is 
 
278 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 one of the greatest of poets, and has so profoundly 
 affected the thought of his time, that however the 
 ordinary reader may be repelled by the grotesqueness 
 of his style, it is eminently worth the while even of 
 that distinguished individual to endeavour to under- 
 stand him. We freely grant that poets should not 
 need interpreters; but where there is something of 
 infinite moment to be interpreted it is well to set aside 
 fixed rules and habitual maxims. Genius is so rare a 
 gift that we must take it on its own terms, and we 
 cannot afford to quarrel with the conditions it may 
 impose on us. It speaks its own language, and is 
 indifferent alike to the reproach or desire of those 
 whom it addresses. The only question for us is, 
 whether it is worth our while to endeavour to penetrate 
 the meaning and ascertain the teaching of any writer 
 who, through natural limitations or wilful indifference, 
 renders the study of his works difficult and perplexing ? 
 In the case of Browning I reply that no more re- 
 munerative study can be found than in the careful 
 reading of his works. He embodies some of the most 
 curious and pervasive tendencies of nineteenth-century 
 literature, and in subsequent chapters I shall endeavour 
 to show what Browning's teaching is, and to estimate 
 his influence in literature. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 BROWNINGS PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 
 
 ONE of the most interesting facts about Robert 
 Browning is that he has no touch of the recluse 
 about him ; he is the child of cities, not of solitudes. 
 In the writings of Wordsworth and Tennyson, dis- 
 similar as they are in many respects, there is this bond 
 of likeness they breathe the air and silence of seclusion. 
 With the one it is the silence of the mountains, with 
 the other the ordered calm of English rural life. All 
 that Wordsworth has written is steeped in the very 
 spirit of solitude, and the mighty silence of the hills 
 has lent a majesty to his conceptions an atmosphere, 
 as it were, of dignified simplicity. In Tennyson, also, 
 one is always conscious of the presence of Nature. 
 The wind that blows across his page is full of the dewy 
 freshness of green lawns and rustling trees. The city, 
 with its moil and grime, its passionate intensity of life 
 and action, is far away. He sees its distant lights 
 flaring like a dusky dawn : but he has little care to 
 penetrate its mysteries. And in most modern poets 
 the same remoteness from the passionate stress of life 
 is felt. What is true of Wordsworth and Tennyson is 
 equally true of Keats and Morris. The fundamental 
 idea in each seems to be that the life of the recluse is 
 alone favourable to poetry, and that the life of action 
 
280 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 in the great centres of civilisation is fatal to works 
 of imagination. 
 
 To this temper Browning furnishes a spendid excep- 
 tion. Born a Londoner, and proud to own himself a 
 citizen of the greatest city upon earth, it is with London, 
 Florence, and Venice that his name is imperishably 
 interwoven : not the Lake district of Wordsworth, nor 
 the Geneva of Byron, nor the Spezzia of Shelley. In 
 continental travel he is evidently more familiar with the 
 bookstalls of Florence than the snow-solitudes of the high 
 Alps. He was a familiar figure in society for many years. 
 He does not shun the crowd : he seeks and loves it. 
 The sense of numbers quickens his imagination. The 
 great drama of human life absorbs him. The glimpses 
 of pure nature he gives us are curiously few. He can 
 describe a lunar rainbow : but he saw it not among 
 the Alps, but from the dull greensward of a London 
 common. Practically, he has little to say about Nature 
 as such. When he does describe any bit of scenery 
 he does it with scientific accuracy, His pictures of 
 Italy are full of the very spirit of Italian scenery, and 
 have an almost photographic exactitude. But they are 
 the mere by-play of his mind. It is Italian life which 
 fascinates him, not Italian scenery. It is life every- 
 where that moves him to utterance, and in the crowd 
 of men, and in the tangled motives of men, and the 
 constant dramas and tragedies bred by the passions 
 and instincts of the human heart, Browning has found 
 the food upon which his genius has thriven. In this 
 respect Browning occupies an entirely unique portion 
 among modern poets. He concerns himself so little 
 with the message of nature, and so much with the 
 soul of man, that his whole poetry may be called the 
 Poetry of the Soul : its 
 
BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 281 
 
 Shifting fancies and celestial lights, 
 
 With all its grand orchestral silences 
 
 To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds. 
 
 If Wordsworth's was the priestly temperament, and 
 Tennyson's is the artistic, it may be said that Brown- 
 ing's was something broader than both : the nobly 
 human temperament, which cleaves to man, and seeks 
 to understand his hopes and fears, and judges him by 
 the standard of a catholic charity. In this respect it 
 is no exaggeration to say that Browning more nearly 
 resembles Shakespeare than any poet of the last three 
 hundred years; for we can imagine Shakespeare as 
 having moved among men with the same genial and 
 understanding sympathy, and as interpreting the men 
 of his day with an insight similar to, if broader and 
 more profound than, Browning's. 
 
 The immediate result of this temper in Browning is 
 that no poet has exhibited such variety, and this 
 variety springs from the multiplicity of subjects in 
 which he is interested His poems cover dissertations 
 on art and music, stories of adventure, strangely vivid 
 and exact reproductions of mediaeval life and thought, 
 glimpses of the authentic life of the ancient world not 
 less than of the modern, yet all touched with that pre- 
 cision which marks the student and the scholar. In 
 the company of Robert Browning you see from the 
 prosaic eminence of a London common the overthrow 
 of Sodom, and the dread vision of the Last Judgment, as 
 in the wonderful poem called " Easter Day ; " you sail 
 in Venetian gondolas witnessing the drama of passion 
 and crime; you hide with conspirators in the ruined 
 aqueducts of modern Italy ; the scene changes from the 
 Ghetto to the Morgue ; from the by-ways of London to 
 the deserts of Arabia; from the tent of Saul to the 
 
282 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 plains of " glorious guilty Babylon;" from the Shambles' 
 Gate, where the patriot rides out to death upon his 
 hurdle, to the splendid chambers of the connoisseur, 
 crowded with the spoils of Renaissance art, where the 
 Bishop orders his tomb in St. Praxed's. Nothing in 
 the drama of human life seems to escape Browning ; 
 its minutest by-play rivets his attention not less than 
 its master passions. He writes, in fact, like a citizen 
 of the world, with a shrewd, hard, piercing intelligence, 
 which goes straight to the heart of things, touching 
 them off with gentle cynicism, or laying them bare 
 with the lightning flash of inspired insight. He is 
 essentially dramatic that is to say, he habitually loses 
 himself in the individuality of the person he represents, 
 his main question being, " Now, what did this man 
 think, that he acted thus?" He frequently labours 
 with minute care to build up his picture of the man's 
 condition, till we begin to be impatient of his patience ; 
 then suddenly, with some short, sharp flash of thought, 
 the whole soul of the man is revealed as by lightning, 
 and the poem ends. What, then, is Browning's view 
 of life ? His view of religion we may conveniently 
 leave for a separate chapter. Let us ask now, What is 
 his view of life ? 
 
 The first and chief point in Browning's view of life 
 is his intense sense of the reality of God and the 
 human soul. 
 
 He glows above 
 
 With scarce an intervention, presses close 
 
 And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours. 
 
 These are the twin Pharos-lights of earthly life ; the wild 
 surge of circumstance breaks and darkens on all sides, 
 but these abide. It matters not what is lost if God be 
 found, or how much is swept down into the roaring 
 
BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 283 
 
 wells of the hungry sea of oblivion if the soul be 
 saved. 
 
 In man's self arise 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendour ever, on before, 
 In that eternal circle run by life. 
 
 In all moments of supreme passion and impulse we 
 feel how thin is that veil which shuts us from eternity. 
 The lover in the " Last Ride " utters this thought when 
 he cries, 
 
 Who knows but the world may end to-night ? 
 
 These moments of exaltation are the true index to the 
 greatness of the soul of man, and therefore are to be 
 sought and cherished above all other gain. What are 
 progress, science, knowledge, love, art, in the light of 
 these higher thoughts? They are simply so many 
 golden roads which lead to God, so many shining stairs 
 on which the half-visible shapes of spiritual presences 
 go up and down. There is a world of spirit as of sense, 
 and the gleams of spiritual knowledge which visit us 
 
 Were meant 
 To sting with hunger for full light. 
 
 Art is not to be praised for what it achieves, but for 
 what it aspires to. It is the yearning of the spirit, not 
 the skill of the hand, which gives it its real value. 
 
 Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
 
 Not God's, and not the beasts' ; God is, they are, 
 
 Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. 
 
 No English poet has written so fully upon art and 
 music, or has shown more conclusively an exact know- 
 ledge and delicate taste in both ; but no poet is less of 
 
284 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 a dilettante. Art is simply an aspiration ; when the 
 artist is satisfied with his work, then he has renounced 
 all that made his art true and worthy. The mere 
 visible results of art are worthless in themselves, and 
 the passion of accumulating them an ignoble passion, 
 if it has no higher purposes. Contempt can go no 
 farther than to picture such a connoisseur, who 
 
 Above all epitaphs 
 Aspires to have his tomb describe 
 Himself as sole among the tribe 
 Of snuff-box fanciers who possessed 
 A Grignon with the Regent's crest. 
 
 On the other hand, it is in the pursuit of true art that 
 Abt Vogler gets his vision of truth itself, and cries : 
 
 All we have willed and hoped or dreamed of good shall exist, 
 
 Not in semblance, but in itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, 
 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 
 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard. 
 
 Enough that He heard it once ; we shall hear it by-and-bye. 
 
 Upon the general text of this view of life Browning 
 perpetually engrafts other lessons. For instance, he is 
 fond of showing that it is better and grander to fail 
 in great things than to succeed in little ones. What 
 though the patriot goes out at the Shambles' Gate, 
 remembering, as he rides, the flags flung wide for him 
 a year before ? 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go ! 
 
 In triumphs people have dropped down dead. 
 " Paid by the World what dost thou owe 
 
 Me ? " God might question ; now instead 
 "Fis God shall repay! I am safer so. 
 
BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 285 
 
 So, again, in the " Grammarian's Funeral," Browning 
 puts into four terse and epigrammatic lines the same 
 truth : 
 
 This low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it ; 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 
 A point which Browning is never weary of illus- 
 trating is that to all men there come moments of half- 
 inspired insight, the keen and, perhaps, momentary 
 thrill of great impulses, and that a man's whole eternity 
 hangs upon the use of such visitations. The revelation 
 may be made in human love; it may be a vision of 
 knowledge, or of duty ; but it is imperative that when 
 such transfiguring moments come we should be ready 
 to seize them. In such Divine moments we see the 
 narrow way that leads to life eternal. 
 
 There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 
 There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
 Whereby piled-up honours perish, 
 
 Whereby swoln ambitions dwindle ; 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 Seems the whole work of a lifetime, 
 
 That away the rest has trifled. 
 
 What if it be said such moments are transient, that 
 ecstasy is rare, that such high visions fade as soon as 
 born ? The vision may perish, but the lesson it reveals 
 remains. Life which is not vivified by faith and emo- 
 tion is scarcely life at all. The worst of all woes is 
 worldliness; to sink down in tranquil acquiescence 
 before the customs of a low-pitched life, and never to 
 break through into that eternal world which invests 
 the visible world like an invisible atmosphere, this is 
 
286 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 spiritual death, and there is no death to be feared but 
 that. Why, the very grasshopper 
 
 Spends itself in leaps all day 
 To reach the sun, you want the eyes 
 To see, asjthey the wings to rise 
 And match the noble hearts of them. 
 
 Would the grasshopper, with his " passionate life " 
 change estate with the mole that gropes in his " veri- 
 table muck " ? Thus the vision of life which shapes 
 itself to Browning is the vision of a great world in 
 which the spiritual is ever in peril of being throttled 
 by the sordid. 
 
 The general issue of Browning's philosopy of life is, 
 then, that life is probation and education. Nothing is 
 of value in itself, but for what it leads to, for the help 
 that it may yield the spirit in its long battle to gain 
 enfranchisement from the flesh, and inheritance with 
 God. Just as the utmost spoil of knowledge only serves 
 to sting us with hunger for fuller light, so the utmost 
 wealth of love only reveals to us the infinite possibilities 
 of the love of God. There is " no pause in the leading 
 and the light:" 
 
 There's heaven above, and night by night 
 I look right through its gorgeous roof ; 
 For I intend to get to God. 
 
 Life has manifold sweet and pleasant uses; let the 
 odour of the April, and the freshness of the sea, the 
 miracle of science, the ineffable yearning of perfect 
 music, or the spell of perfect art, find their just and 
 proper place in the category of life ; and be accepted 
 with no ascetic scruple, but genial gratitude. But they 
 are nothing more than broken hints, by which men 
 learn the alphabet of better life. And it is because to 
 
BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 287 
 
 rest in these things is death that Browning so eagerly 
 applauds any life that flings itself away in endeavours 
 after the distant and unattainable, and is at all times 
 so merciful toward earthly failure. He loves to show 
 us that beneath the rough husk of lives which seem 
 wasted, there lies hidden the true seed of a life which 
 will one day bloom consummate in beauty. He loves 
 equally to take up some apparently successful life, and 
 pierce it with his caustic humour, and point out its essen- 
 tial emptiness with an irony so keen and stern that it 
 would be bitter were it not softened by the pathos of 
 a human-hearted pity. Above all, there is no touch 01 
 pessimism in him ; he looks undismayed above present 
 evils to the brightening of a diviner day. 
 
 Therefore, to whom turn I, but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same ? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power 
 
 expands ? 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live 
 
 as before. 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
 On the earth, the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect 
 round. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION. 
 
 HAVING said so much as I have about Brown- 
 ing's intense interest in life, it naturally follows 
 that something should be said about his attitude 
 to religion, and the spirit of his religious teaching. 
 The great poet is necessarily a great believer. The 
 faculty which pierces to the unseen, and works in 
 constant delicate contact with the invisible, is a faculty 
 absolutely necessary to the equipment of a true poet. 
 The poetry of faithlessness is an abnormal growth. It 
 has little range or vitality. It never attains to really 
 high and memorable results. When the spring of faith 
 is broken, every faculty of the mind seems to share 
 in the vast disaster. And especially do the faculties 
 of imagination, spiritual insight, and tender fancy, 
 which are the master-architects of poetry, suffer. The 
 loss of faith strikes a chill to the central core of being, 
 and robs the artist of more than half the material from 
 which the highest poetry is woven. 
 
 On the other hand, the power of spiritual apprehen- 
 sion is one of the surest signs whereby we know a 
 great poet. It is the function of the great poet to be a 
 seer and interpreter. He sees farther, deeper, and 
 higher than ordinary men, and interprets for the 
 common man what he dimly feels but does not fully 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION. 289 
 
 apprehend. It is quite possible that the message of 
 the poet, the result of his spiritual insight, may not 
 shape with our preconceived notions and theories ; 
 but where the spiritual insight is sure and real, the 
 true poet never fails to quicken insight in his reader. 
 Perhaps no man has done more in our generation 
 to quicken and sharpen the spiritual insight of men 
 than Browning. Pre-eminently he is a religious poet. 
 Religion enters into all his work, like a fragrance or 
 a colour which clings to some delicate and lovely 
 fabric, and, while occasionally subdued or modified, is 
 never lost. Browning's vast knowledge of the world 
 never degenerates into worldliness. He seeks to know 
 the world in all its aspects, all its strange and vague 
 contradictions, and seeks rather than shuns its sad and 
 seamy side. If he is an optimist it is not because he 
 is an idealist, and the most striking thing about his 
 optimism is that it thrives in the full knowledge of 
 the baseness and evil of the world. But the curiosity 
 which impels Browning to investigate the darker side 
 of life is never altogether an artistic curiosity : it is 
 a religious curiosity. What then is the net result ? 
 What are the great facts on which he builds his faith ? 
 What are the sources of the religious buoyancy which 
 is so remarkable in so thorough a citizen of the world, 
 and especially in an age when so many of the foremost 
 writers and thinkers have given themselves over to 
 agnosticism or despair ? 
 
 Now, the actual religion of a man can usually be 
 reduced to a few simple truths which are grasped with 
 entire belief, and thus become the working principles 
 of his life. Few men believe with equal conviction all 
 the various dogmas of religious truth ; but while many 
 may remain obscure, there are others which are revealed 
 
290 TH.E MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 with a vividness of light and force which constitute 
 them henceforth the pillars of a man's real life. Thus, 
 for instance, St. James has defined what pure religion 
 and undefiled meant to him in one simple and sufficing 
 formula charity and unworldliness, visiting the father- 
 less, and keeping the soul unspotted from the world. 
 So Browning has grasped, with all his force, certain 
 religious truths which appear to him the soul and 
 marrow of Christianity, and these constitute the spirit 
 of his religion. 
 
 The best illustration of the working of Browning's 
 genius in the realm of religious truth may be found in 
 such a poem as " Easter Day." This poem is a wonder- 
 ful poem in more respects than one : it is wonderful 
 in its imagery, its intensity of insight, its daring, its 
 vividness, the closeness of its reasoning, the sustained 
 splendour of its diction, the prophetic force of its con- 
 clusions. It begins with the discussion of two speakers, 
 who agree " How very hard it is to be a Christian." 
 But each speaker utters the phrase in a different sense : 
 the one finds Christianity hard as a matter of faith, 
 unproved to the intellect ; the other as a matter of 
 practice, unrealised in the life. It would not be 
 difficult to be a martyr, and find a Hand plunged 
 through the flame to pluck the soul up to God, if, 
 indeed, one could be certain of any such result ; it is 
 hard to believe on less than scientific evidence. To re- 
 nounce the world on such evidence as we have would 
 be folly. Suppose, after such renunciation, a man 
 found he had given up the only world there was for 
 him ? Then ensues the poem itself, which consists of 
 the description of a vision of the final judgment which 
 the man of faith received, and which shook him out of 
 the very web of negation in which his friend struggle?, 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION. 291 
 
 Suddenly, as he crossed a common at midnight, occupied 
 with these very thoughts, all the midnight became " one 
 fire." There shot across the dome of heaven, "like 
 horror and astonishment," 
 
 A fierce vindictive scribble of red, 
 
 And straight I was aware 
 That the whole rib-work round, minute 
 Cloud touching cloud beyond compute 
 Was tinted, each with its own spot 
 Of burning at the core, till clot 
 Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire 
 Over all heaven. 
 
 This awful vision burned away all darkness from 
 his spirit, and he knew that he had chosen not God, 
 but the World. Instantly he resolved to defend and 
 applaud his choice. God had created him to appreciate 
 the beauties of life, and he had not put aside the boon 
 unused that was lit But at that instant there came 
 a final belch of fire, and he saw God 
 
 Like the smoke 
 
 Pillared o'er Sodom when day broke 
 I saw Him. 
 
 Then God spoke. He had chosen the World; let 
 him glut his sense upon the World, but remember he 
 was shut out from the heaven of spirit. But what was 
 the World, with all its brave show of beauty ? Merely 
 one rose of God's making, flung 
 
 Out of a summer's opulence, 
 Over the Eden barrier, whence 
 Thou art excluded. 
 
 Well, then, he would choose Art, to which the voice 
 of God replies yet more sternly that Art is less than 
 
292 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Nature ; and its highest trophies the shame and despair 
 of artists, who sought therein to express the invisible 
 whole of which they perceived but a part. Then he 
 will choose Mind, the joys of Intellect ; but what again, 
 replies the Judge, is Mind but a gleam which to the 
 devout thinker 
 
 Makes bright the earth an age 
 Now, the whole sun's his heritage ! 
 
 Lastly, he perceives there is nothing left but Love, 
 and that shall be his choice. 
 
 God is : thou art the rest is hurled 
 To nothingness. 
 
 He has doubted the story of Christ because he could 
 n Dt conceive so great love in God 
 
 Upon the ground 
 That in the story had been found 
 Too much love ! How could God love so ? 
 He, who in all His works below, 
 Adapted to the needs of man, 
 Made love the basis of His plan, 
 Did love, as was demonstrated. 
 
 In that moment he saw that God's love was the 
 solution of all intellectual difficulties, and then, as he 
 lay prone and overwhelmed, 
 
 The whole God within his eyes 
 Embraced me. 
 
 So the poem ends a vision of Divine unalterable 
 love as the solution of the mystery of the universe. 
 
 The infinite issue of human choice is, again, one of 
 those strong beliefs which with Browning form the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION. 293 
 
 spirit of his religion. He reiterates persistently and in 
 many forms that any .choice which falls short of God is 
 ruinous in its sequence. For instance, the speaker in 
 "Easter Day" is taught the folly of choosing Mind by 
 perceiving that the highest genius of man is but a 
 gleam from the unexhausted sun which pours light 
 through an eternal world. But Browning, in one of 
 his greatest poems, "Paracelsus," has gone much 
 farther than this. In that poem he has shown that 
 Intellect without Love, without Morality, without Char- 
 acter, is of all forces the most perilous. Paracelsus has 
 sought to Know. What has his desire brought him 
 but bitterness and disappointment ? So poignant is his 
 sense of failure that he even cries : 
 
 Mind is nothing but disease, 
 And natural health is ignorance. 
 
 And in the final pathetic scene he derides the folly of 
 such intellectual passions as those which have consumed 
 him, and sees clearly that to Love is better than to 
 Know. 
 
 No, no ; 
 
 Love, hope, fear, faith these make humanity, 
 These are its sign and note and character, 
 And these I have lost. 
 
 Indeed, throughout his writings Browning shows 
 himself inexorably opposed to the modern theistic 
 philosophy which makes the individual the centre of 
 the universe, and steadily teaches the more ancient 
 doctrine of Him who, being rich, for our sakes became 
 poor, that we, by His poverty, might become rich 
 
 Renounce joy for my fellow's sake ? That's joy 
 Beyond joy. 
 
294 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 But this all-present sense of God's love implies also 
 such truths as communion, prayer, providence; and 
 these also are incorporated in Browning's religion. The 
 noblest example of Browning's expression of these 
 doctrines is found in the short but splendid poem, 
 " Instans Tyrannus." It is the Tyrant who speaks. 
 Out of the million or two of men he possesses there is 
 one man not at all to his mind. He struck him, of 
 course, but though pinned to the earth with the persist- 
 ence of so great a hate he neither moaned nor cursed. 
 He is nothing but a toad or a rat, but nevertheless the 
 Tyrant cannot eat in peace while he lives to anger him 
 with his abominable meekness. So he soberly lays his 
 last plan to extinguish the man 
 
 When sudden . . . how think ye ? the end 
 
 Did I say " without friend " ? 
 
 Say, rather, from marge to blue marge, 
 
 The whole sky grew his targe, 
 
 With the sun's self for visible boss, 
 
 While an arm ran across ! 
 
 Do you see ? Just my vengeance complete, 
 
 The man sprang to his .feet, 
 
 Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed 1 
 
 So 7 was afraid ? 
 
 The poem is a sort of magnificent version of the 
 familiar hymn-lines : 
 
 Strong to deliver, and good to redeem 
 
 The weakest believer who hangs upon Him. 
 
 The centre of Browning's whole world of religious 
 thought lies in his abiding sense and conviction that 
 God is Love. It reconciles him to the mysteries of 
 faith, it casts a bright Bridge of gleaming hope across 
 the profound gulfs of human error, and like the lunar 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BROWNINGS RELIGION. 295 
 
 rainbow he describes, a second and mightier bow springs 
 from the first, and stands vast and steady above the 
 mysterious portals of human destiny, on whose strain- 
 ing topmost arc he sees emerge the foot of God 
 Himself. " God is good, God is wise, God is love," is 
 the perpetual whisper of spiritual voices, floating over 
 him, and piercing with their divine sweetness the evil 
 darkness of the tortuous way he threads in tracking 
 out the strange secrets of human impulse and achieve- 
 ment. All knowledge is but the shadow of God's light ; 
 all purity and constancy of human passion but the hint 
 of His love ; all beauty but the fitful gleam of His 
 raiment as He passes us that King in His beauty 
 whose very face itself we shall at last behold in the 
 land that is very far off. If Browning stands amid the 
 ruins of that mighty city, which in a single year sent 
 its million fighters forth, and 
 
 Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time 
 
 Sprang sublime, 
 And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced 
 
 As they raced, 
 
 it is to turn at last from the vision of that domed and 
 daring palace, the splendid spectacle of power and pomp, 
 
 to cry : 
 
 Shut them in, 
 
 With their triumphs, and their glories, and the rest; 
 Love is best ! 
 
 If he considers the failing of human power in the 
 presence of death, it is only to exclaim, with a sense of 
 triumphant gladness : 
 
 Grow old along with me I 
 The best is yet to be, 
 
296 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The last of life for which the first was made ; 
 Our times are in His hand, 
 Who saith : " A whole I planned, 
 
 Youth shows but half; trust God ; see all, nor be afraid ! " 
 
 He has infinite faith in God, that His love will, in 
 ways unknown to us, work out ultimate blessedness for 
 His children, and that the world will not pass out in 
 darkness, but in the end of the ages it will be daybreak 
 everywhere. Not only is there no despair : there is no 
 touch of disheartenment even in Browning 
 
 Languor is not in his heart, 
 Weakness is not in his word, 
 Weariness not on his brow. 
 
 He awaits the revelation of eternity ; then all will 
 be made clear. The lost leader, who has forsaken the 
 great cause of progress: " just for a handful of silver 
 he left us " may never be received back save in doubt, 
 hesitation, and pain by his old comrades ; but the 
 estrangement of earth will not outlast earth 
 
 Let him receive the new knowledge and wait us 
 Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 
 
 Caponsacchi, the great and noble priest, the " soldier- 
 saint" of "The Ring and the Book," must needs 
 henceforth pass through life with the shadow of Pom- 
 pilia's sweet presence laid across his heart, and all 
 the purest aspiration of his life covered in her grave. 
 Well, is there not a further world, where they neither 
 marry nor are given in marriage ? 
 
 Oh, how right it is ! how like Jesus Christ 
 To say that ! 
 
 So let him wait God's instant, men call years ; 
 Meanwhile hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
 Do out the duty ! 
 
THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION. 297 
 
 The dying Pompilia sees how the love of souls like 
 his , interprets the meaning of the love of God, and 
 cries : 
 
 Through such souls alone 
 God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise. 
 
 Even when Browning stands in such a place as 
 the Morgue, amid the ghastliness of tragic failure and 
 despair, touched though he be with mournfulness, yet 
 this strong and living hope does not leave him, and he 
 still can write : 
 
 It's wiser being good than bad, 
 
 It's safer being meek than fierce, 
 It's fitter being sane than mad. 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 
 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass first be fetched ; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst, 
 
 Nor what God blest once prove accurst. 
 
 In other words, whatever dreary intervals there may be 
 of folly, darkness, misery, the world God blessed in the 
 beginning will roll round into the light at last ; and when 
 His purpose is complete, there will be a new heaven 
 and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 BROWNINGS ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 IN the last chapter we noticed that one of the abnor- 
 mal growths of modern poetry is a poetry of nega- 
 tion. We may add that this, in its last development, 
 has become a poetry of despair. And the source of 
 that despair is inability to receive the truths of Chris- 
 tianity. Since the advent of Goethe a movement very 
 similar to the Renaissance in Italy has passed over the 
 whole of Europe. There has been a return to Paganism, 
 concurrently with a widespread revival in art and 
 culture. The dogmas of the Church have been vehe- 
 mently assailed, and the ethical teachings of Christianity 
 disputed. The movement initiated by Goethe has 
 spread throughout the world. It has received impulse 
 from strange quarters, and given impulse in strange 
 directions. Its legitimate outcome in Germany is found 
 in the long line of great scholars who have devoted 
 indefatigable genius and patience to the work of de- 
 .structive Biblical criticism. There may appear to be a 
 wide enough gulf between the calm paganism of Goethe 
 and the vehement controversial temper of German theo- 
 logical scholarship, but nevertheless the one is a true 
 child of the other. 
 
 Added to this, there must be reckoned the extraordi- 
 nary growth of natural science during the present 
 
BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. 299 
 
 century. The minds of the greatest thinkers have 
 been riveted on the problem of the origin of things. 
 The results of their investigations have been published 
 with the hardihood and confidence of complete convic- 
 tion. In their researches as to the working of natural 
 law they have completely ignored all that is super- 
 natural. Their temper toward the supernatural has 
 been one of contemptuous indifference or embittered 
 hostility. Thus, then, two forces of immense strength 
 have been steadily at work upon the structure of re- 
 ceived opinion ; the one force, fearless rationalism, the 
 other, fearless paganism. Culture has been preached 
 as the true substitute for Christianity, Art and Beauty as 
 the all-sufficient gospels for human life. We have only 
 to turn to the literature of the last half-century to see 
 how far these influences have permeated. The essayist 
 and poet have alike conspired to preach the new doc- 
 trine. The stream of tendency thus created has sufficient 
 examples in the beautiful paganism of Keats and the 
 garrulous mediaevalism of Morris. 
 
 But there is another class of writers who have not 
 been able so easily to dismiss the great beliefs by which 
 centuries of men and women have lived and striven. 
 They have been allured, fascinated, and repelled alter- 
 nately ; they have hoped and doubted ; in their voices 
 is the sound of weeping, in their words the vibration 
 of long suffering ; for whatever attitude they may have 
 taken toward Christianity they have never relapsed into 
 reckless indifference. This eager scrutiny of religious 
 dogmas by the best and keenest minds of the age is, 
 at least, a proof that such men have been alive, and 
 even agonisingly alive, to the tremendous importance 
 of those dogmas. Poetry in the nineteenth century has 
 sought to be the minister of theological truth not less 
 
300 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 than of artistic beauty, and as a consequence the theo- 
 logical problems of the century, and in less degree the 
 scientific problems also, have been inextricably inter- 
 woven with its fine warp and woof of exquisite creation. 
 So that let what will be said about the faithlessness 
 of the nineteenth century, nevertheless the presence of 
 Jesus Christ in nineteenth-century literature is one of its 
 most remarkable and indisputable characteristics. 
 
 But the solitary issue of this intermingling of theology 
 with poetry is not perplexity or sadness. There is 
 found a very different culmination in one poet at least, 
 and that poet is Browning. Browning has attacked 
 theology with the zeal and fervour of a born disputant. 
 He is not merely a great religious poet, but is distinc- 
 tively a theological poet. He has deliberately chosen 
 for the exercise of his art the most subtle problems of 
 theology, and has made his verse the vehicle for the 
 statement of theological difficulties and personal beliefs. 
 The historical evidences and arguments of Christianity 
 have exercised upon him a deep and enduring fascina- 
 tion. In " Pauline," his earliest poem, the vision of 
 Christ has visited Browning, and he cries 
 
 Thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed, 
 
 1 have denied Thee calmly do I not 
 
 Pant when I read of Thy consummate deeds, 
 And burn to see Thy calm pure ruths out-flash 
 The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy ? 
 Do I not shake to hear ought question Thee ? 
 If I am erring, save mc madden me, 
 Take from me powers nd pleasures, let me die 
 Ages, so I see Thee ! 
 
 That vision of Christ has been not only an ever- 
 present, but an ever-growing, vision with Browning. 
 This spirit of passionate reverence for Christ, which 
 
BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. 301 
 
 Browning thus expresses in his first considerable poem, 
 is the spirit which dominates his entire writings. The 
 deepest mystery of Christianity is Christ Himself; that, 
 indeed, is its one mystery. Browning has been quick 
 to realise this, and habitually perceives and teaches, 
 with unerring keenness, that in Christ all mysteries 
 have solution, or without Him are left for ever dark 
 and impenetrable. The method of argument he pur- 
 sues is peculiarly his own. He ranks himself for 
 the moment with the Rationalist, and having detailed 
 his conclusions, goes on to probe them. For this 
 purpose dialectic skill, irony, humour, and the subtlest 
 analysis are his weapons. He refuses to be content 
 with negation ; it is not enough to say what you do 
 not believe, you must realise what you do believe. He 
 pushes back the burden of proof upon the doubter, and 
 says men have an equal right to demand the demonstra- 
 tion of a doubt as of a creed. When every shred of 
 evidence has been weighed and tested, then comes 
 the moment to ask what is left, and the final verdict 
 depends not on the letter of the evidence, but the spirit ; 
 not on any body of oral attestation, but on the soul which 
 witnesses within a man. This, with many variations 
 and differences, is, upon the whole, a fair statement of 
 Browning's method of argument, and the result is 
 never left in doubt. In "A Death in the Desert," 
 where St. John is supposed to utter his last words of 
 belief, the verdict, not indeed of the man Cerinthus, 
 who hears the great confession, but of the man who 
 adds the final note, is : 
 
 If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men, 
 Mere man, the first and best, but nothing more, 
 Account Him, for reward of what He was, 
 Now and for ever, wretchedest of all, 
 
302 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Can a mere man do this ? 
 Yet Christ saith this He lived and died to do. 
 Call Christ then the illimitable God, 
 Or lost ! 
 
 and he significantly adds 
 
 But 'twas Cerinthus that is lost. 
 
 In the " Epistle of Karshish," in which the strange 
 story of Lazarus is debated from the physician's point 
 of view, the writer finally rises into a very ecstasy 
 of faith, and the poem closes with this passionate 
 exclamation : 
 
 The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 
 So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice, 
 Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself! 
 Thou hast no power, nor may conceive of Mine. 
 But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 
 And thou must love Me who have died for thee." 
 
 It cannot be said that there is the faintest touch of 
 intolerance or scorn for honest doubt in Browning's 
 poetry. Yet no man of our days has pierced it with 
 so many telling shafts of irony and reason. He ac- 
 knowledges the difficulties of belief, and it is plain to 
 every reader that Browning has wrestled sorely with 
 the angel in the night, with that impalpable and dreadful 
 shape which has all but overwhelmed him. But the 
 morning has broken and brought its benediction. If 
 the difficulties of belief are great, the difficulties of 
 unbelief are greater. He assumes that there must be 
 many unexplored remainders in the world of thought. 
 Well, what then ? Because some things are hidden, are 
 there none revealed ? 
 
BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. 3^3 
 
 What, my soul ? See so far and no farther ? When doors 
 
 great and small, 
 Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth 
 
 appal ? 
 In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all ? 
 
 That were the last unreasonableness of ignorance, the 
 final folly of imbecility. No ; the wiser act is to trust 
 where actual knowledge fails. Faith is a very fine 
 word ; but 
 
 You must mix some uncertainty 
 With faith if you would have faith be. 
 
 If a scientific faith is absurd, and " frustrates the very 
 end 'twas meant to serve," he will rest content with a 
 mere probability 
 
 So long as there be ust enough 
 To pin my faith to, though it hap 
 Only at points ; from gap to gap, 
 One hangs up a huge curtain so, 
 Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 
 Foldless and flat along the wall. 
 What care I if some interval 
 Of life less plainly may depend 
 On God ? I'd hang there to the end. 
 
 Moreover, it is part of God's good discipline to educate 
 us by illusion ; the point of victory, the prize of the 
 high calling, perpetually recedes to the man who presses 
 toward the mark. 
 
 We do not see it, where it is 
 
 At the beginning of the race ; 
 
 As we proceed, it shifts its place, 
 
 And where we looked for crowns to fall, 
 
 We find the tug's to come that's all. 
 
 Thus the uncertainties of knowledge are in themselves 
 
304 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 a beneficent training for the spirit of man ; they sting 
 him with this Divine hunger for full light, they soften 
 him to childlike blessedness of mere trust, arid tend to 
 the more real and vivid hold upon the creed itself, by 
 shaking from it " the torpor of assurance." 
 
 No poet of our time has so consistently attacked the 
 darker and more tangled problems of human conduct. 
 He confesses that " serene deadness " puts him out of 
 temper. His sympathies, on the other hand, go out 
 irresistibly toward any sort of life, however strangely 
 mistaken or at variance with custom, which has real, 
 throbbing, energetic vitality in it. To him there is an 
 overwhelming fascination in misunderstood men, and 
 the more tangled and intricate is the problem of char- 
 acter and action the more eagerly does he approach it. 
 Not unnaturally this tendency of Browning's genius 
 has led him through many of the darker labyrinths 
 of human motive, and occasionally, as in " Mr. Sludge, 
 the Medium," the riddle has not been worth the pro- 
 longed application he has devoted to it. But in no class 
 of poems is Browning's intense religious conviction 
 more remarkably displayed. The same retreat upon 
 mere faith which he makes in subtle questions of theo- 
 logy he observes also in dealing with the mysteries of 
 human conduct. His method of treatment is twofold. 
 The majority of his poems which deal with character 
 and conduct deal with character and conduct more or 
 less imperfect. In all such cases the blemish is laid 
 bare with unerring accuracy. There are no glozing 
 words to cover moral lapses, no spun purple of fine 
 phrases to hide the hideousness of spiritual leprosy. 
 But Browning describes such lives not to display their 
 corruption, but to discover some seed of true life which 
 may yet be hidden in them. Few lives are so evil but 
 
BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. 305 
 
 that some golden threads are woven in the coarse fabric ; 
 some impulses are left which, if followed, may be the 
 clue to life eternal. 
 
 Oh, we're sunk enough, God knows ! 
 But not quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure, though seldom, are denied us 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 And apprise it, if pursuing 
 On the right way or the wrong way, 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 The " poor impulse," the one obscure, true instinct, 
 which vibrates under a smothered or sinful nature, may 
 be the starting-point towards ideal goodness. But, if 
 mar, be evil, God is good, and the soul of the universe 
 is just. Browning is bound to admit that some natures 
 seem hopelessly corrupt ; at all events he fails to find 
 the germ of renovation in them. They have chosen 
 the evil part which cannot be taken away from them. 
 They have had their choice 
 
 The earthly joys lay palpable 
 A taint, in each distinct as well ; 
 The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 
 Above them, but as truly were 
 Taintless, so, in their nature best. 
 Thy choice was earth ; thou didst attest 
 'Twas fitter spirit should subserve 
 The flesh. 
 
 When Browning confronts such natures, his second 
 method comes into play ; he falls back upon faith 
 faith in the wise order and infinite goodness of God. 
 The most marked example of this method is in that 
 splendid dramatic sketch, " Pippa Passes." No more 
 awful picture of guilt triumphing in its guiltiness, 
 
 20 
 
306 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of corruption intoxicated with the abandonment and 
 depraved joy of its own wickedness, has any poet given 
 us than the " Ottima " of that poem. There stands the 
 villa, with its closed shutters ; within it the murdered 
 man, and the guilty woman pouring out her confessions 
 of passion to the man who slew him. Can human action 
 produce a more hideous combination ? Yet the sun 
 shines fair, and " God has not said a word." Has God's 
 good government of things broken down, then ? No, 
 indeed. Pippa passes Pippa, the poor girl with her 
 one day's holiday in the whole year, yet happy, cheer- 
 ful, trustful ; and as she pauses she sings rebuke to 
 our doubts of God, and terror to the black heart of 
 Ottima : 
 
 The year's at the spring, 
 And day's at the morn ; 
 Morning's at seven ; 
 The hillside's dew-pearled ', 
 The lark's on the wing, 
 God's in His heaven, 
 All's right with the world. 
 
 It is thus Browning, like many a great spirit before 
 him, falls back upon faith in God, saying in effect what 
 Abraham said when confronted with the corruption of 
 man and the judgment of God : " Shall not the Judge 
 of all the earth do right ? " 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE. 
 
 T) ROWNING stands utterly alone in English poetry ; 
 D he has no prototype, and he can have no successor. 
 He has created his style, as he has also created his 
 readers. In almost every other poet of our day we 
 can trace the course of influences, more or less defined, 
 which have shaped the poetic form and moulded the 
 poetic thought. Browning has had no model. If we 
 except the faintest possible trace of Shelley's influence, 
 which, like an ethereal fragrance, haunts the pages of 
 " Pauline," we may say that he shows no sign of the 
 influence of any of the elder bards upon his style. He 
 is unique in his rugged individuality, the subtlety of 
 his analysis, the suggestiveness and intensity of his 
 thought, the originality of his phrases, and, if one may 
 use the term, the extraordinary agility of his intellect. 
 His intuitions go by bounds and leaps, so that it taxes 
 all our energy occasionally to keep pace with him. 
 His pages are literally crammed full of thought. All 
 the living poets of the English language taken together 
 have produced nothing like the body of thought which 
 he has produced. Moreover, of great latter day poets 
 he is the most genuine humorist when it suits his pur- 
 pose. "Humour/' it has been said, "originally meant 
 
3o3 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is 
 the very juice of the mind, oozing from the brain, and 
 enriching and fertilising wherever it falls." Humour 
 is, in fact, based on sympathy a large, genuine, noble 
 sympathy, which embraces all kinds and conditions of 
 human life like a genial atmosphere. This gift Brown- 
 ing distinctly possesses, and it explains the variety of 
 his poems. Nothing that pertains to man is foreign to 
 him. But the humour of Browning does not manifest 
 itself so much in individually ludicrous forms as in a 
 general humorous attitude toward all sorts of forms. 
 To quote a portion of the famous definition of humour 
 given by Dr. Barrow, and which, according to Mack- 
 intosh, affords the greatest " proof of mastery over 
 language ever given by an English writer," it may 
 be said of Browning's humour, " Sometimes it lurketh 
 under an odd similitude, sometimes it is lodged in a sly 
 expression, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in 
 a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly 
 retorting an objection ; sometimes it is couched in a 
 bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty 
 hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible recon- 
 ciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense." 
 
 The worst form which Browning's humour has taken 
 is in the purposed grotesqueness of his rhymes, and it 
 is impossible to suppose that some of his verses could 
 have been written without some sense on the part of 
 their author of their extraordinary ludicrousness. What 
 can one say to such verbal contortions as these : Wit- 
 anagemot rhyming to bag 'em hot, cub licks to Republics, 
 vociference to stiffer hence, corrosive to O Sieve, spirito to 
 weary toe ? Or what mortal ingenuity is equal to the 
 task of unravelling the meaning which may possibly 
 be found in such a verse as this ? 
 
BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE. 309 
 
 One is incisive, corrosive ; 
 
 Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant ; 
 Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive ; 
 
 Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant ; 
 Five . . . O Danaides, O Sieve ! 
 
 Even Browning seems to have had some conscious- 
 ness of the obscurity of his enigma, for he remarks in the 
 next verse, and his readers will heartily agree with hum- 
 On we drift ; where looms the dim port ? 
 
 One, Two, Three, Four, Five contribute their quota ; 
 Something is gained, if one caught but the import. 
 
 When Browning produces verses such as these, we 
 can hardly help suspecting him of perpetrating an 
 elaborate joke. Nor can we discern any really welcome 
 humour in the " acute nonsense." If there be humour 
 it is after the pattern of the celebrated German Baron, 
 who wished to be humorous, and accordingly took to 
 dancing on the dining-table. It is grotesque, eccentric, 
 curious, even ridiculous, but not humorous. It is 
 Browning amusing himself with conundrums, and slyly 
 laughing at the confusion of tongues they are likely to 
 produce among the critics, to say nothing of the depth 
 of imbecility to which they will reduce his friends who 
 are devoted enough to seek their " import." 
 
 It is necessary to consider Browning in these his 
 most wilful moods if we are to estimate his significance 
 as a stylist in literature. Poetry depends upon expres- 
 sion far more than prose ; it is noble thought clothed 
 in beautiful language. It is, therefore, impossible 
 wholly to disregard the defects of style, the maimed 
 metres, the verbal somersaults, the unique grotesque- 
 ness of rhyme which Browning unquestionably dis- 
 plays. It is only a great poet who could have survived 
 
3io THE MAKERS OF MODERN- ENGLISH. 
 
 such literary escapades. But having survived them, 
 in virtue of the immense genius of which they are but 
 the excrescence, they nevertheless remain as part and 
 parcel of his works, and have their influence. What is 
 the significance of Browning, then, in a literary sense ? 
 Chiefly this that he has introduced into English poetry 
 a new, strong, fresh, and intensely masculine style. 
 He is a transcendentalist in philosophy, but a realist 
 in style. No word is too common for him, no phrase 
 too hackneyed, or too idiomatic, or too scholastic, or too 
 bizarre if it will carry his thought home. Wordsworth 
 aimed at writing poetry in the language of prose, but 
 Browning has ventured further, and has used verna- 
 cular prose. He makes his men and women speak as 
 they would have spoken if alive. In this respect 
 Browning is in line with the development of his age. 
 We are becoming less idealistic and more realistic 
 every day. The modern imagination is less concerned 
 with the bright dreams of old chivalry than the present 
 mysteries of sad humanity. It finds sufficient food for 
 sorrow, wonder, faith, and passion in the things of the 
 day. It fixes its piercing gaze on man rather than on 
 Nature, knowing that he is of more value than many 
 sparrows building in the summer eaves, or many lilies 
 whitening happy hillsides in the spring. Browning is 
 the interpreter of all that is highest, noblest, and most 
 moral in this realism of to-day. His style is a protest 
 against euphemism, as his poetry is a plea for realism. 
 His significance as a man of letters is that he has 
 enlarged the possibilities of English poetry by adding 
 to it a bold, nervous, masculine vocabulary, and by 
 using it as it was never used before, save by Shake- 
 speare himself, for the analysis and portrayal of human 
 character and motive. 
 
BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE. 311 
 
 But the moral significance of Browning in literature 
 entirely eclipses the literary. Browning's literary 
 method must have its effect upon the future of English 
 poetry, and that effect will be in the direction of a less 
 trammelled and ornate, a freer and more realistic, use 
 of words. But where one reader catches some new 
 inspiration from his method, a thousand will feel the 
 overwhelming current of moral force which he has 
 created. Here is a man who has tracked Nature home 
 
 to her 
 
 Inmost room, 
 With lens and scalpel ; 
 
 who has been animated by vivid and potent interest 
 in every form of human life, every mystery of human 
 conduct; who has sought knowledge of man, alike in 
 the splendid chambers where kings live delicately and 
 in the deserts where great spirits nerve themselves to 
 strenuous heroism ; in the study of the artist, the organ- 
 loft of the musician, the garret of the toiler, the warren 
 of the outcast, the tents of great soldiers, and the cells 
 of great mystics ; among the flower-like purities of little 
 children, the shrewd schemings of characters half sordid 
 and half lofty, the soiled grandeurs of great spirits 
 overthrown, the shameful secrets of souls plunged deep 
 in infamies who has, in fact, acknowledged no height 
 too high and no depth too low for the demand of his 
 noble curiosity. And at what result has he arrived ? 
 He himself has told us 
 
 I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw and I spoke : 
 I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain 
 And pronounced on the rest of His handwork returned Him 
 
 again 
 
 His creation's approval or censure ; I spoke as I saw, 
 I report as a man may on God's work all's love, yet all's law. 
 
312 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 He alone of our great latter-day poets has performed 
 this great pilgrimage of inquiry, and has returned with 
 absolute and happy assurances of hope. He has de- 
 scended, like another Dante, through all the dreadful 
 circles of flame and darkness, amid the woe and travail 
 of mankind, but has never lost his vision of God's 
 immortal love and tenderness. Where others have 
 been overwhelmed, their voices reaching us from the 
 thick blackness only in wild cries of anguish, rage, 
 sorrow, and despair, he has stood firm, and has sung 
 out of the deeps a song of limitless faith. He has 
 passed out of the Purgatory and Inferno into the 
 Paradise. Is there any other of our great poets of 
 whom so much can be affirmed ? Is not one of the 
 latest bequests of the most melodious, famous, and 
 successful poet of our time a bequest of bitterness 
 and despair ? But where Tennyson has found food for 
 hopelessness, Browning has found the seed, if not the 
 fruit, of hope ; where the one has been overwhelmed, 
 the other has triumphed. Browning has not cast away 
 faith because creeds are confused ; nor expectation for 
 his race because the haggard human army has been 
 defeated oft and again in its onward march ; nor 
 patriotic hope because great movements and great re- 
 forms have failed, or seemed to fail to our bounded 
 human vision. He teaches that each good deed done 
 dies perhaps, but afterwards revives, and goes on. to 
 work endless blessing in the world. He believes that 
 
 To only have conceived, 
 
 Planned your great works, apart from progress 
 Surpasses little works achieved. 
 
 O, never star 
 Was lost here but it rose afar 1 
 
 And, believing thus, his voice rings out like a clarion- 
 
BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE. 313 
 
 blast of courage across the blank misgivings and con- 
 fusions of our time, and it may be said of him as it was 
 of Cromwell, " He was a strong man in the dark perils 
 of war, and in the high places of the field hope shone 
 in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in 
 others." 
 
 The significance of Browning in literature is, then, 
 that he is a strong, resolute, believing teacher, who, 
 amid the sick contentions of a doubting generation, has 
 bated no jot of heart or hope. He has had the courage 
 of his originality in creating his own style a style 
 which, for reasons already indicated, sometimes becomes 
 obscure and not seldom is eccentric, but which is, never- 
 theless, wonderfully strong, nervous, and powerful, pos- 
 sessed of a vast vocabulary, idiomatic, free, resonant, 
 and striking. He has had the courage of individuality 
 also in resisting the Agnostic tendencies of his time, 
 and amid the dismayed and doubtful has consistently 
 delivered a testimony of hope. When the arrears of 
 fame are paid, and the debts of praise are liquidated, as 
 they will be in the just hands of Time, this and every 
 succeeding generation will surely be acknowledged 
 under heavy obligations to Robert Browning. The 
 songs of mere loveliness charm us for a while, but it 
 is the outpourings and upsoarings of the strong men of 
 humanity which become the real marching songs of the 
 race in the long run. What Browning has missed in 
 melody he has gained in thought, and if he be deficient 
 in form he possesses a far nobler efficiency the inspira- 
 tion and moral power of the noble thinker. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING CONCLUDING SURVEY. 
 
 THE prevalent impression which the work of 
 Browning leaves upon the reader is twofold : he 
 makes us feel the greatness of his mind, and the in- 
 tensity and breadth of his sympathies. It is a vast 
 world of thought to which Browning introduces his 
 reader. He claims from him absolute attention, the 
 entire absorption of the neophyte, whose whole moral 
 earnestness is given to his task. Like all neophytes 
 we have to submit to a process of initiation. In the 
 world of Browning's thought there is much that is 
 strange, much that is new, much that is grotesque. 
 There is no problem of life that he does not attempt 
 to solve, no mystery of life that he is not ready to 
 explain or reconcile. He insists that we take him 
 seriously, for he himself is profoundly serious and 
 earnest. He is not a singer, but a seer. In every 
 line that he has written there is the vigorous move- 
 ment of a strong and eager intellect. If his reader is 
 incapable of sustained thought, or too indolent to rise 
 into something like intensity of attention, then Brown- 
 ing has nothing to say to him. He demands our faith 
 in him as a master-teacher ; he will work no miracle 
 for him who has no belief. Sometimes this sense of 
 the power of mind in Browning is almost oppressive. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 315 
 
 We long for a little rest in the arduous novitiate he 
 imposes on us. We feel that the vehicle he uses for 
 the exposition of his thought is unequal to the vast 
 strain he imposes on it. The verse moves stiffly 
 beneath the tremendous weight of thought. The forms 
 of poetry seem to cramp and fetter him. We feel that 
 an occasional lapse into the loose and liberated style 
 of Whitman's rhapsodies would be of equal service 
 to Browning and ourselves. No poet who has ever 
 written has ever so tired the minds of his readers. 
 If Browning had possessed a less subtle and power- 
 ful intellect, if he had held a narrower view of life, 
 he would have written with infinitely greater ease, and 
 would have doubled and quadrupled his popularity. 
 
 But the compensating gain of this breadth of view 
 is a corresponding breadth of sympathy. There is a 
 perfectly unique catholicity in his affinities. Life in its 
 shame as well as its splendour, life in its baseness, its 
 distorted aims, its tragic failures, its limitless follies, 
 is still life to him, and is worthy of his compassionate 
 scrutiny. His unconventionality is startling to ordinary 
 readers ; they never know where to find Browning, or 
 can anticipate what he will say or teach. Thus, even 
 for the Jew in the Roman Ghetto he has a good word. 
 He interprets what may be the unspoken thought in 
 the heart of many a Hebrew outcast. The Jew has 
 slain Christ, and so has missed the one vast oppor- 
 tunity of Jewish history : but is there no excuse ? Is 
 there no room for pity or apology ? This is what 
 Browning makes the Jew in the Ghetto think and say 
 and no better example of the unconventional breadth 
 of his sympathies could be found : 
 
 Thou ! if Thou wast He, who at mid-watcn came 
 By the starlight, naming a dubious Name ! 
 
316 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 And if, too heavy with sleep, too rash 
 
 With fear, O Thou, if that martyr gash 
 
 Fell on Thee coming to take Thine own, 
 
 And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne 
 
 Thou art the Judge ! We are bruised thus, 
 But, the judgment over, join sides with us ! 
 Thine too is the cause ! and not more Thine 
 Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, 
 Whose life laughs through, and spits at their creed, 
 Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed ! 
 
 The poet whose sympathies illumine the foul darkness 
 of the Ghetto and the Morgue may well be a stone of 
 stumbling and rock of offence to the careless and 
 conventional reader. 
 
 Force, faith, and thought, the vigour of a strong 
 intellect, the vitality of a victorious faith, the subtlety 
 and logic of an acute insight, are, as we have seen, 
 the dominating qualities in Browning's poetry. In so 
 much all criticism must agree ; and M. Taine, the 
 famous French critic, has recently acknowledged, not 
 only that England is far ahead of France in the great- 
 ness of her poets, but that Browning stands first among 
 modern English poets the most excellent where excel- 
 lence is greatness, the most gifted where genius is a 
 common dower. When, however, we come to particu- 
 larise certain poems as the greatest in the qualities of 
 genius, probably opinions will differ. After all, there is 
 no such thing as systematic or judicial criticism, and 
 the efforts of such criticism to systematise itself have 
 uniformly failed, and deservedly. Shakespeare defies 
 the unities of the drama, and is great in spite of them, 
 because he is the creator of a richer unity, which is 
 based on the exposition of a richer and more complex 
 life. Genius perpetually fashions new moulds for 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 317 
 
 itself, and the history of criticism is in great part a list 
 of defeats suffered by the critics at the hands of genius. 
 Criticism ascertains qualities and describes them. The 
 critic is an explorer who goes first with the lighted 
 torch into the stalactite chamber roofed with gems, 
 and in his most beneficent function only calls the 
 public to admire that which he has illumined, but not 
 created. His special preference for this or that par- 
 ticular form of beauty is, after all, his own affair, and 
 is dictated by personal taste. An agreeable man, 
 according to Lord Beaconsfield, was one who agreed 
 with him ; the poem a critic calls the best is simply 
 the one that agrees best with him. When, therefore, 
 I state the work of Browning's which seems finest, no- 
 blest, weightiest in quality, I simply specify that which 
 seems so to me, and can claim only the prerogative 
 of a personal preference. 
 
 Lord Jeffrey, in almost the only well-known passage 
 of his writings, has moralised on the perishable fame 
 of poets, and has mournfully recounted how little of 
 work famous in its day contrives ultimately to escape 
 the devouring maw of oblivion. Lovelace lives by a 
 single stanza, Wolfe by a single poem, and Jeffrey 
 was probably too generous when he pictured pos- 
 terity receiving with rapture the half of Campbell, 
 the fourth of Byron, the sixth of Scott, the scattered 
 tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent, of Southey. 
 The best way of sifting the perfect from the im- 
 perfect in Browning's work would be to ask what 
 we should care least to lose, and what we would most 
 willingly forget. If we had to submit to an ideal justice 
 for the final jurisdiction of immortality the poems most 
 likely to win him the award of age-long fame, which 
 should we choose to support the claim ? 
 
3i8 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH 
 
 When we apply this test to Browning's poetry the 
 result is soon reached. First of all stands the " Ring 
 and the Book." In force of conception, skill and 
 delicacy of treatment, subtlety of thought, purity, 
 power, and passion, the " Ring and the Book " is 
 Browning's masterpiece. Wandering in Florence, 
 Browning discovers on a bookstall an old manuscript 
 volume containing the pleadings of a murder-trial at 
 Rome in 1698. The whole case is one of those strange 
 tangles of evidence which dull people usually discredit 
 until the passions of human life flame forth, and the 
 thing is a dramatic actuality, done before their very 
 eyes. The murdered woman is Pompilia, who has fled 
 from her husband with the priest Caponsacchi ; the 
 murderer is the husband. At first sight this appears 
 merely a low drama of vicious passion and brutal 
 revenge ; but as Browning pores over the pleadings 
 and unravels the tangled skein of evidence it reveals 
 itself in a very different way. As he reads, the dark 
 shadows of crime recede, revealing in transfiguring 
 brightness the figure of Pompilia, " young, good, beau- 
 tiful," clothed upon with the raiment which is from 
 heaven, the beauty of holiness, the Divine dignity of 
 goodness, the touching, inimitable freshness and purity 
 of childlike innocence. A mere child in years, she is 
 the spoil of her husband's avarice, then the victim of 
 his malignity and disappointed cupidity, until at last 
 she flies, to save her babe's life, with the 'young priest 
 who has promised to defend her. Browning's method 
 is to let each witness tell his own tale, making the 
 written report his basis of fact, on which he casts his 
 own quick, penetrating light of interpretation. This is 
 accomplished in twelve books. The o.ne-half of Rome 
 gives its opinion, takes merely the outward appearance 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 319 
 
 of the facts, and judges Guido justified in the murder. 
 The other half of Rome accepts Pompilia's innocence, and 
 perceives that from first to last she has been a victim. 
 Then follow the chief actors in the drama. Guido 
 makes his defence the defence of a man thoroughly 
 shrewd, with more than a touch of fanaticism, alive to 
 his position, and alert to use every waft of popular 
 prejudice in his favour. After him Caponsacchi tells 
 his tale ; how he came to enter the Church, and was 
 urged by great priests to put only an easy interpreta- 
 tion on the vows which seemed to him so strenuously 
 solemn; how he came to recognise in Pompilia a 
 womanhood he had never before imagined so sadly 
 sweet, so grave, so pure, that he felt lifted into higher 
 thoughts as by the vision of a saint ; how God and 
 Pompilia kept company in his thoughts, so that when 
 the hour came that he could serve her he seized it with 
 a simple chivalry, and did it as God's plain duty, then 
 and there made clear to him. Then Pompilia herself, 
 dying fast, in broken snatches tells the story of her life. 
 Finally, the old Pope sums up the case, giving verdict 
 of death against Guido, and Guido himself pours out 
 his last despairing utterances, which reach their tragic 
 climax in the cry to his murdered wife to save him, thus 
 unconsciously witnessing to the purity he had defamed 
 and despised 
 
 Abate Cardinal Christ Maria God - 
 Pompilia, will you let them murder me ! 
 
 It is not too much to say that there is nothing like 
 this in English poetry, and for certain parts of it we 
 may claim that there is nothing since Shakespeare to 
 surpass it. The form is unique one which Shake- 
 speare would not have used but, cumbrous as it is, 
 
320 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 it exactly suits Browning. The " Ring and the Book " 
 is the work of a giant. We could spare, perhaps, the 
 pleadings of the advocates and the opinions of Rome, 
 but the speeches of the great actors in the drama have 
 the mintage of immortality upon them. Shakespeare 
 himself has given us no more exquisite creation of 
 womanhood made lovely by simplicity and purity than 
 Pompilia. She has grown like " an angel- watered lily " 
 born in polluted soil, but only the sweetness and the 
 light have been gathered up into her being, and the sin 
 of others has left no smirch on her. The spoiled and 
 blackened life of Guido only serves the better to set 
 forth the grace and dignity of her purity. Whenever 
 any of the speakers mention Pompilia, a hush of rever- 
 ence seems to fall upon their words, and even Guido, at 
 the last, turns to her in his extremity, as to a guardian 
 saint, for help. It is impossible to read her own story 
 of her life without tears. Her memories of early child- 
 hood, ever shadowed with the mysterious sense of God ; 
 her sad married life, with its silent forgiveness of hateful 
 wrongs ; the most pathetic tenderness with which she 
 describes the rapture of her motherhood ; the joy she 
 had in her babe how she seems now like that poor 
 Virgin she often pitied as a child, 
 
 At our street-corner in a lonely niche, 
 
 The babe that sat upon her knees broke off; 
 
 her sad hope that people will teach her babe to think 
 well of her when she is dead ; her acknowledgment of 
 that sense within her which makes her know that she 
 loves Caponsacchi indeed, but with that spiritual love 
 only which Christ foreshadowed as the joy of that 
 world where they neither marry nor are given in 
 marriage ; and always that deep abiding thankfulness to 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 321 
 
 God that for a fortnight He has let her have her babe 
 
 to love, 
 
 In a life like mine 
 
 A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much : 
 I never realised God's birth before, 
 How He grew likest God in being born, 
 
 all this forms one of the loveliest and most pathetic 
 creations which English poetry has ever produced. And 
 not less pathetic is Caponsacchi's account of his long 
 ride to Rome with Pompilia, and her simple wonder at 
 a kindness in him to which she was all unused : 
 
 She said a long while later in the day, 
 
 When I had let the silence be abrupt 
 
 " Have you a mother ? " " She died, I was born." 
 
 11 A sister, then ? " " No sister." " Who was it 
 
 What woman were you used to serve this way, 
 
 Be kind to, till I called you and you came ? " 
 
 And in the whole realm of English poetry it would be 
 hard to match for intensity and passion the concluding 
 passage of Caponsacchi's address to the judges, in 
 which he pictures Guido, not so much dying as " slid- 
 ing out of life," "parted by the general horror and 
 common hate from all honest forms of life," until upon 
 creation's verge he meets one other like himself, 
 
 Judas, made monstrous by much solitude, 
 
 and there teaching and bearing malice and all detest- 
 ability, indissolubly bound, the two are linked in a 
 frightful fellowship of evil, 
 
 In their one spot out of the ken of God, 
 Or care of man for ever and evermore. 
 
 The " Ring and the Book " is the most astonishing 
 work of genius of our time, and if the narrations 
 
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324 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 English literature ; and when we read it we cannot 
 wonder that one of the first organs of literary opinion 
 in England does not hesitate to set Browning close be- 
 side Shakespeare. Browning has written as grandly in 
 other poems, but nowhere has he so fully expressed the 
 scientific spirit of the time, or written with completer 
 power of thought and utterance. 
 
 In sustained splendour of thought and imagery, but 
 upon a lesser scale, "Saul" is also one of the poems 
 which men will not readily let die ; and one might class 
 with "Saul" such wonderful studies as "A Death in 
 the Desert" and the "Epistle of Karshish." In 
 " Saul " Browning has attained the rare achievement 
 of perfect form and harmony. There is a magnificent 
 music in the billowy cadences of " Saul ; " it seems to 
 rise and fall not so much to the harp of David as to 
 the melodious thunder and trumpet-calls of some great 
 organ which floods the universe with invisible delight. 
 But such poems as these owe their true greatness to 
 the thought which informs them. There is no writer 
 of our day, whether of prose or poetry, who will so 
 well repay the attention of the theological student as 
 Browning. He has so vivid a vision of invisible things, 
 so intense a grasp on spiritual facts, that he pierces 
 into the heart of religious mystery as no other man of 
 our time has done, and it is impossible to rise from a 
 course of Browning without a sense of added or invigo- 
 rated faith. The literature of Christian evidence has 
 received, in our time, no more important contributions 
 than " Easter Day " and " Christmas," the " Death in 
 the Desert" and the " Epistle of Karshish." The 
 method is Browning's own, but it is used with con- 
 summate skill and effect ; it is a sword which no other 
 man can wield save the craftsman who forged it, but 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 325 
 
 in his hand it pierces to the dividing asunder of 
 the bone and marrow of current scepticism. As poet 
 and thinker Browning secures a double advantage, and 
 annexes realms to his dominion which are not often 
 brought under the sway of a common sceptre. The 
 fashion of the world may change, and the old doubts 
 may wear themselves out and sink like shadows out of 
 sight in the morning of a stronger faith ; but even so the 
 world will still turn to the finer poems of Browning for 
 intellectual stimulus, for the purification of pity and of 
 pathos, for the exaltation of hope, and will revere him 
 who, in the night of the world's doubt, still sang : 
 
 This world's no blot for us, 
 
 Nor blank, it means intensely and means good, 
 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 
 
 Or, if the darkness still thickens, all the more will 
 men turn to this strong man of the race, who has 
 wrestled and prevailed ; who has illumined with imagin- 
 ative insight the deepest problems of the ages; who 
 has made his poetry not merely the vehicle of pathos, 
 passion, tenderness, fancy, and imagination, but also 
 of the most robust and masculine thought. He has 
 written lyrics which must charm all who love, epics 
 which must move all who act, songs which must cheer all 
 who suffer, poems which must fascinate all who think ; 
 and when 'Time hath sundered shell from pearl,' 
 however stern may be the scrutiny, it may be safely 
 said that there will remain enough of Robert Browning 
 to give him rank among the greatest of poets, and 
 secure for him the sure reward of fame. 
 
 So I close what I have to say of Browning. It would 
 be unseemly to detail what has been sufficiently evident 
 to the reader the deep indebtedness which I personally 
 
326 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 feel to Browning for the illumination and delight he has 
 afforded me. But the object of these studies would 
 not be achieved if I did not express the hope that 
 some, to whom Browning is a name and a shadow only, 
 may be led to turn from these imperfect criticisms to the 
 study of the man himself. To Browning's work I may 
 apply, without conscious impertinence, the noble words 
 spoken of the Apollo Belvidere : " Go and study it ; 
 and if you see nothing to captivate you, go again ; go 
 until you find it, for be assured it is there." 
 
 Since these criticisms were written, and while this 
 book was being prepared for the press, Robert Browning 
 has passed away. He retained to the last his genial 
 faith, his resolute optimism, his intellectual vigour and 
 subtlety. The last poem of his last volume is a sort of 
 summing up of himself and his life-work : nor could a 
 more discerning summary be found than in the words, 
 
 One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, 
 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wron** would 
 
 triumph, 
 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. 
 Sleep or wake. 
 
 Upon the announcement of his death the press was 
 flooded with reminiscences from many who had known 
 him slightly and more who had known him well, but 
 all alike testifying to his simplicity, veracity, and 
 kindliness of nature, and not less to the vigour of his 
 mind and the breadth of his human and religious 
 sympathies. " Never say of me that I am dead " was 
 one of his last recorded observations to a friend, and 
 it was eminently characteristic of the man and his 
 
ROBERT BROWNING: CONCLUDING SURVEY. 327 
 
 philosophy. He died with the knowledge that his 
 last book was a triumphant success ; and his nation by 
 common acclamation rewarded his life-work with the 
 highest honour it can accord to its illustrious dead, 
 a grave in that great Abbey which is the Campo Santo 
 of English genius. The greatest men of his generation 
 by their presence and by their pens eagerly paid their 
 tribute of honour to his genius, and it is still more touch- 
 ing to record that as his coffin was carried through 
 the streets of London many of his more obscure 
 disciples lined the streets, and cast upon it flowers 
 and leaves of laurel. He was buried on the last day of 
 the year 1889, and, to apply the words which Ruskin 
 has written on the death of Turner, we may say that 
 perhaps in the far future the year 1889 will "be re- 
 membered less for what it has displayed than for what 
 it has withdrawn " in Robert Browning. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 
 
 [Born in Laleham, December 24th, 1822. The "Strayed Reveller," 
 his first poem, published in 1848. Died in Liverpool, April I5th, 
 1888.] 
 
 FEW men of letters in our time have filled a larger 
 place in public attention than Matthew Arnold. 
 During the greater portion of his life he was in the 
 thick of perpetual controversy. He seemed to live and 
 move in the arena of contention, and delighted in its 
 keen and eager atmosphere. No controversialist had a 
 happier knack of phrase, a sharper wit, a surer thrust 
 than he. It was he who first used the word " Philistine " 
 as a term of reproach, a symbol of all that was insular 
 in politics, vulgar in manners, and ignorant in art. 
 To Dean Swift's phrase " sweetness and light " he gave 
 a new meaning and a new lease of life. He had a 
 felicitous art of picking out some expressive word and 
 charging it with wider meanings, thus making it the 
 rally ing-cry of his controversial disquisitions. It was in 
 this way that the words " lucidity " and " distinction " 
 became symbols of a literary doctrine, which he ela- 
 borated with unwearied self-satisfaction. No one feared 
 less to repeat himself than Arnold. When he had hit 
 upon a really good phrase he used it again and again, 
 and it was the reiteration of the phrase as much as its 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 329 
 
 aptness which did much to fix it in the public memory. 
 With Matthew Arnold as the essayist most thinking 
 people have an adequate acquaintance ; but, after all, it 
 was neither in literary nor controversial essays that his 
 true excellence lay. What a few regarded as certain 
 before his death has been generally admitted since, viz., 
 that all the best qualities of Arnold's genius are mani- 
 fested in his comparatively unknown poetry ; and that 
 it is by his poetry, rather than his prose, that he will 
 claim attention from the next generation. 
 
 We may even go further than this, and express a 
 regret that Matthew Arnold was ever drawn into the 
 conflicts of controversy at all. That he was a delightful 
 controversialist we all admit. The very sufficiency of 
 his egoism is amusing. He took a sort of perverse 
 delight in intellectual isolation, and lectured his anta- 
 gonists with the serene positiveness of one who was 
 perfectly convinced that he knew everything better 
 than anybody else knew anything. He is never so 
 happily ironical, so wittily satiric, so complacently sar- 
 castic, as when he is engaged in proving the general 
 obtuseness of the public, and the bright particular 
 luminousness of his own ideas. 
 
 There is indeed a touch of literary dandyism in all 
 Arnold's prose. He always figures, as some one has 
 well said, as " a superior person " talking down to the 
 intellectual incapacities of his inferiors. He is a master 
 of ironical reasoning, and loves nothing so well as to 
 put his antagonist in the witness-box, and convict him 
 out of his own mouth. He never uses the literary 
 bludgeon : he delights rather in the sharp rapier-thrust, 
 the swift retort, the quiet ironical smile which is so much 
 harder to bear than the loud, derisive laughter of a 
 Johnson or Carlyle. And so far as distinction of style 
 
330 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 can preserve what is, after all, fugitive literary work, 
 Arnold's controversial writings are safe. He has origin- 
 ality, grace, sweetness : a style of the utmost lucidity 
 and of frequent force. The paragraphs seem to move 
 with such graceful ease that we begin to fancy it takes 
 small art to produce them, until suddenly we perceive 
 the master in some felicitous or stinging phrase, in the 
 stroke of wit, or the quiet ripple of ironical humour. 
 The very audacity with which Arnold quotes himself is 
 a part of his style. He has a definite system of opinions, 
 a scale of assured axioms, and he returns to them again 
 and again as to the fundamentals of his faith. When 
 he has polished to the last degree of artistic finish a 
 definition or a phrase, it is no part of his purpose to 
 leave it in modest retirement till the discernment of his 
 reader discovers it. He has so little faith in the dis- 
 cernment of the public that he emphatically points out 
 what a perfect phrase he has invented, and, lest it should 
 be forgotten, makes it the pivot on which paragraph 
 after paragraph revolves. These and many other 
 characteristics of his prose make it delightful reading, 
 and redeem the most barren themes of theological con- 
 troversy with a casual grace. But not the less Arnold 
 was out of his true sphere in theological debate. The 
 urbanity, the coolness, the patience of the accomplished 
 critic of literature forsake him when he enters the arena 
 of theological controversy. He becomes as discourteous 
 and unreasonable as the worst type of the narrowest 
 bigot usually succeeds in being when he argues for 
 some immeasurably insignificant detail of dogma. That 
 the influence of Arnold on theology has been consider- 
 able must be granted, and his theological essays have 
 secured him an attention which otherwise he would not 
 have gained. But it is not, after all, as a theologian 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 331 
 
 that he will be remembered, nor is it as an apostle of 
 ideas, nor is it as a critic of literature. More or less 
 these are each fugitive forms of literature. But he who 
 sums up something of the spirit of an age in poetry has 
 chosen the most imperishable mould for his thoughts 
 which literature affords : and it is in his poetry that 
 Arnold best expresses his own genius, and has ren- 
 dered his highest service to the ages. 
 
 I have spoken of Arnold as an apostle of ideas, by 
 which I mean that he sowed the minds of men with 
 thoughts which have had a wide influence on the times. 
 In the same way, we may say of his poetry that it is 
 the poetry of ideas. He is a poet of the intellect, and 
 his force as a poet is purely intellectual. He has no 
 passion, no kindling flame of fervour, no heart-force ; 
 he speaks from the mind to the mind, and the grace 
 and beauty of his poetry is mainly the result of 
 intellectual art. The graces of his style do not consist 
 in those sudden intensities of sentiment or emotion 
 which clothe themselves in flashing and unforgettable 
 phrases ; they are the fine result of laborious art. He 
 never surprises us ; but he powerfully attracts us, not- 
 withstanding, with the gracious symmetry and com- 
 pleteness of his work. His gift of lucidity controls his 
 poetry as it does his prose, and the same observation 
 may be made of his gift of restraint. He never loses 
 himself in the turbulence of his own passion ; he is 
 grave, sad, deeply moved and deeply moving, but 
 always restrained. He is never obscure ; he says what 
 he has to say with admirable definiteness and precision 
 of phrase. Indeed, the definiteness is too great : it 
 affects one at times like a fault. It leaves no room for 
 the play of imagination; it requires no sympathy of 
 understanding from the reader. There is a poetry 
 
332 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 which affects us like the spectacle of a great Gothic 
 cathedral. We never really see a perfect specimen of 
 the Gothic ; we never fully exhaust it ; we never grasp 
 its whole meaning and significance. It gives us room 
 for infinite thought; it calls forth the interpreting 
 powers of our own imagination, and makes them 
 vigilant. We gaze untired into the dimness of the lofty 
 roof, where a hundred delicate branching lines of grace 
 seem to interlace and meet ; we mark " the height, the 
 space, the gloom, the glory;" a burst of sunlight 
 kindles " the giant windows' blazon' d fires ; " a passing 
 cloud darkens the vaulted aisles with awe-inspiring 
 shadows ; and in the delicate traceries of its stonework, 
 the fantastic carvings, the touches of inspired art which 
 everywhere reveal themselves to the studious eye, not 
 less than in the grandeur of it as a whole, we find food 
 for continual delight, and revelations of inexhaustible 
 significance. But there is no such mingling of mystery 
 and beauty in the poetry of Arnold. It is rather like 
 looking at some piece of perfect statuary cool, proud, 
 pure; the lines are gracious and symmetrical indeed, 
 but very definite, and requiring no help from the casual 
 spectator to interpret what is beautiful in them. It 
 may be that the Gothic delights in a barbaric splendour : 
 but it is splendour, it is the fruit of a fertile and fervent 
 imagination, and irresistibly appeals to the imagination. 
 It may be that a Greek temple, with its long lines of 
 polished columns and exquisitely modelled friezes, is 
 also beautiful: but it does not refresh the eye or 
 stimulate the mind, as does the Gothic. The Gothic is 
 the work of men who dreamed, the Grecian of men who 
 thought. Matthew Arnold never dreamed. He lived 
 a strenuous intellectual life, and his poetry is the out- 
 come of his thinking. In its own way it is perfect, but 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 333 
 
 it is not with the perfection which most delights men. 
 For in poetry as in art it is the dreamers who fascinate 
 men, who hold them spell-bound with the vision of 
 beauty, and whose spell never fails, whose charm never 
 wearies, whose power of stimulating the fancy and 
 refreshing the heart is broken by no change of time 
 or transience of ruaman taste. 
 
 From a literary point of view one of the most 
 remarkable things about Arnold's poetry is its classi- 
 cism. The rise of romanticism which so powerfully 
 affected Tennyson, and which found its fullest ex- 
 pression in Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris, did not 
 so much as touch Arnold. He trifles once with the 
 Arthurian Legends in " Tristram and Iseult," but 
 unsuccessfully. He had not the emotional abandon- 
 ment nor the warmth of imagination of the romanticist. 
 He approached in many ways nearer to the spirit of 
 Wordsworth than any other recent poet. He has 
 something of the same gravity and philosophic calm, 
 though he is far enough removed from Wordsworth's 
 religious serenity. In the last lines of the "Buried 
 Life " he recalls the very phrases of Wordsworth : 
 
 And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
 
 Wherein he does for ever chase 
 The flying and elusive shadow, rest. 
 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 
 The hills whence his life rose, 
 
 And the sea where it goes. 
 
 But in his general disapproval of modern life and 
 opinion, he was forced in literary ideals much further 
 back than Wordsworth. He drew his real inspiration 
 from the great masters of antiquity. In the preface to 
 
334 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH, 
 
 his poems published in 1854 he tells us: "In the 
 sincere endeavour to learn and practise, amid the 
 bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and 
 true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to find the only 
 sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the 
 ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted 
 in art, and we do not." We can perfectly understand 
 how a man of Arnold's temperament and culture should 
 find his only sure footing among the ancients. The 
 very lucidity and gravity of his mind inclined him, 
 if early education and culture had not, to intense 
 sympathy with the great classical authors. And the 
 result, so far as the history of modern poetry is con- 
 cerned, is remarkable. In the full stream of romanticism 
 Arnold stands immovable, turning his face away from 
 modern methods of expression and vagaries of style, to 
 those alone who, according to him, knew what they 
 wanted in art and found it. He too knew what he 
 wanted in art and found it. He wanted verse as the 
 best vehicle for his best thoughts. He had no profound 
 deeps of emotion to be broken up, or, if he had, his 
 natural reticence was too great to permit the outflow to 
 find its way into poetry. He had no violent passions 
 to which the winged words of poetry were an ecstatic 
 relief. He had not the lyrical faculty: that gift of 
 melody which enchants us by its mere musical sweet- 
 ness and beauty. But he had a message to utter, and 
 he knew how to utter it with a certain sustained and 
 stately music of phrase which was impressive. The 
 spirit of the antique penetrates and elevates all his best 
 poetry. In his "Thyrsis" he has produced one of the 
 noblest of elegies since the " Lycidas " of Milton. In 
 his " Empedocles on Etna " he has written a fine poem, 
 full of classic gravity and beauty. In his purely 
 
MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 335 
 
 didactic work, such as the memorable poems on 
 " Obermann," he has succeeded in expressing the most 
 modern of thoughts and philosophic emotions, with the 
 same classic lucidity and charm. It is only when he 
 touches the questions of the heart that he fails. There 
 he is weak, because, he has not the emotional abandon- 
 ment requisite for the finest lyrical work, and because 
 in fact his natural gift of melody was slight, and what 
 melodiousness of expression he possessed was rather 
 the laborious result of culture than of nature. 
 
 The perfect culture of Arnold reveals itself every- 
 where in the delicate and finished workmanship of his 
 verse. Whatever lack of spontaneity and emotion we 
 may accuse him of, we can find no fault with the form 
 of his work. A born critic of others, he has exercised 
 a severe vigilance over himself, and the result is an 
 admirable terseness of phrase and distinctness of ex- 
 pression. There are no metrical lapses, no slurred and 
 slovenly passages, in his poems ; he consistently does 
 his best, and is content with nothing less than the best. 
 He emphatically knows what he wants in art, and finds 
 it. He is conscious of his own limitations, and is 
 careful not to exceed them. He has the clearest pos- 
 sible conception of his own powers, and he cultivates 
 them with an unsparing studiousness. His verse 
 reminds us of some lofty upland farm, shut in by the 
 purity of snowy heights, where the soil yields a rich 
 reward, but only at the price of infinite industry. It is 
 the art and daring of man which have made the soil 
 rich ; its natural tendency is towards sterility. It is 
 cultivated to the last degree, because without watchful- 
 ness no crop were possible. All is green and beautiful ; 
 but it is not the rank fulness of Nature, it is the 
 precious gain of art. In the same way Arnold's verse 
 
336 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 impresses not with artificiality that would be a wrong 
 impression but with a sense of admiration for his art. 
 He cannot be lavish, because he is not wealthy. Nature 
 has imposed upon him the need of frugality, and he 
 shows us how culture can enlarge the comparative 
 narrowness of endowment into noble fruitfulness. And 
 the atmosphere of his verse, like the air that passes 
 over a mountain farm, is clear and cold, and almost 
 chilly. It is scarcely in human nature that the mass 
 of men should care to live in it. At the mountain's 
 foot the thick vines cluster, and the warm sunlight 
 ripples on the lake, and it is there most men prefer 
 to dwell. They love poetry full of fragrant heat, in 
 which the nightingale can sing. Arnold is too cold, 
 too severe, for those whose emotions are quick and 
 sensitive, for the young, the tender-hearted, the un- 
 wearied, whose days are filled with careless happiness. 
 But not the less it does men good to climb sometimes, 
 and sojourn in a keener air. The mountain wind also 
 has its fragrance, and it can both cool and invigorate. 
 So far as the art of poetry goes, Arnold's is a cooling 
 and invigorating presence. He recalls us to simplicity, 
 to the love of perfection for perfection's sake, to the 
 love of wisdom instead of the love of beauty : and his 
 poetry has a classic gravity of touch at all times, united 
 to a classic art of workmanship. 
 
 Yet it must not be supposed that Arnold has no 
 melody of his own, no natural freshness and distinc- 
 tion. On the contrary, there is a frequent breadth of 
 tone in his poetry, such as few of our later poets have 
 reached. It would be possible to mention many fine 
 narrative poems before we came to one half so fine as 
 Arnold's tl Sohrab and Rustum." It is one of the few 
 poems which have the stamp of perfection on them. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 337 
 
 It may not be popular, it may never be popular; but 
 those who read it once will care to have it by them, 
 and will find its solemn heroic tones deepening on the 
 ear at each fresh reading. As a specimen of modern 
 blank verse it is in itself remarkable. It has not, 
 indeed, the melodiousness of Tennyson's, but it pos- 
 sesses a stately music of its own, and has a breadth of 
 touch which Tennyson has scarcely excelled. It might 
 be too much to say that it is the finest blank verse of 
 modern times ; but it is certainly among the finest, 
 and recalls to us the severe grace of Landor in its air 
 of impressive stateliness and the purity of its diction. 
 In the concluding passage Arnold is more moved than 
 is his wont, and exhibits a power of expression which 
 many greater poets might covet. 
 
 But the majestic river floated on, 
 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land, 
 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, 
 
 Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmean waste 
 
 Under the solitary moon : he flowed 
 
 Right for the Polar star, past Orgunje, 
 
 Brimming and bright and large. Then sands begin 
 
 To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, 
 
 And split his currents ; that for many a league 
 
 The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along 
 
 Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles, 
 
 Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
 
 In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, 
 
 A foiled circuitous wanderer : till at last 
 
 The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
 
 His luminous home of waters open-3, bright 
 
 And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars 
 
 Emerge, and shine upon the Aral sea. 
 
 There is, indeed, no magical and haunting resonance 
 in these lines; but they are an admirable illustration 
 
 22 
 
338 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 of the two qualities in which Arnold most excelled, the 
 qualities of simplicity and severity. 
 
 But, after all, the best known work of Arnold, and 
 in most respects the most memorable, is that section of 
 his poetry which expresses the weariness and religious 
 disquiet of the times. It is here the deepest breathings 
 of his heart are heard. He is a spirit loosed upon the 
 sunless seas of doubt, and ever wearily scanning the 
 grey horizon for a desired but undiscovered haven. 
 He is full of an incommunicable grief, and in the effort 
 to express what he suffers, he reaches an intensity of 
 utterance which we find nowhere else in his poetry. 
 The most characteristic poems Arnold ever wrote are 
 the " Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," and the 
 "Obermann" poems. In each of these there occur 
 striking lines which have passed into current quota- 
 tions, as felicitous expressions of human thought and 
 sentiment. He accurately describes his own religious 
 position when he pictures the Greek 
 
 Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born, 
 
 and his own unsatisfied desire, mingled with a charac- 
 teristic touch of critical pessimism, when he says : 
 
 Here leave us to die out with these 
 Last of the people who believe ! 
 Silent, while years engrave the brow, 
 Silent the best are silent now. 
 
 Equally felicitous are such phrases as these : 
 
 But we, brought forth and reared in hours* 
 
 Of change, alarm, surprise 
 What shelter to grow ripe is ours ? 
 
 What leisure to grow wise ? 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD. 339 
 
 Too fast we live, too much are tried, 
 
 Too harassed, to attain 
 Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide 
 
 And luminous view to gain. 
 
 It would be easy to quote widely from this section of 
 Arnold's poetry, because in interest and expression it 
 is the most characteristic of all his work. It is indeed 
 a painful interest He cannot conceal from us that there 
 is no peace in culture. A pervading sadness and de- 
 spair are its most memorable features. There breathe 
 throughout the sadness of failure, the distress of faith- 
 lessness. Occasionally it is a deeper note than regret 
 which is struck : it is the iron chord of a militant, yet 
 despairing pessimism, which vibrates in such satiric 
 verses as these : 
 
 Creep into thy narrow bed, 
 Creep, and let no more be said ! 
 Vain thy onset ! all stands fast, 
 Thou thyself must break at last. 
 
 Let the long contention cease ! 
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese. 
 Let them have it how they will ! 
 Thou art tired : best be still. 
 
 But this belongs rather to the domain of religious truth 
 than of literary criticism. It is enough for us to note 
 lastly, concerning Matthew Arnold, that in power to 
 interpret the spirit of his age, in intellectual candour, 
 and in the prevailing sadness of all his poetry which 
 deals with modern life and thought, he is the most 
 representative man of the culture of the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century. A profound melancholy borne 
 with pathetic stoicism is the spirit of all his latter-day 
 poetry. It is the poetry of a man who has lost faith, 
 
340 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 but who passionately wishes that he could believe. It 
 is a long wail after the golden age when the cross was 
 in its first triumph : 
 
 Oh ! had I lived in that great day, 
 
 How had its glory new 
 Filled earth and heaven, and caught away 
 
 My ravished spirit too. 
 
 More than any other poet of our time, Matthew Arnold 
 is imbued with the religious spirit : but less than any 
 other who has felt the force of religious truth, has he 
 gained the secret of serenity, the mind that knows the 
 calm of certitude, the heart that rests in the tranquillity 
 of faith. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 [Born in London, May I2th, 1828. First volume of Poems appeared 
 1870, and second volume, 1880. Died at Birchington, April 
 9th, 1882.] 
 
 WITH Tennyson and Browning in the long line 
 of great modern poets there are other names 
 which cannot escape mention, and foremost is Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti. In point of quantity Rossetti has 
 added comparatively little to the store of modern 
 poetry ; his chief praise is that what he has given us 
 is distinguished by high and sustained artistic quality. 
 It may also be said that his influence on literature has 
 been out of all proportion greater than his achievement. 
 Years before he had himself published a single volume, 
 William Morris had dedicated a book to him, and both 
 Morris and Swinburne were accustomed to regard him 
 as their master. And with Rossetti also the artist was 
 inalienably associated with the poet. More than any 
 other modern he has brought the art of painting and 
 poetry both arts of expression into harmony. His 
 poems were often suggested by his pictures ; his pic- 
 tures were an expression of the same ideas which 
 dominated his poetry. Both as artist and poet his 
 position is unique, and it is a matter of somewhat 
 complex criticism to discern rightly the true bearings 
 of his work, and the exact degree of his influence. 
 
342 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 The environment of Rossetti's life explains to some 
 extent this position. He was born in an artistic atmo- 
 sphere. The whole Rossetti family were singularly 
 gifted, and probably no house in England possessed 
 such an atmosphere of artistic culture as that in which 
 Rossetti was reared. For every power of imagination 
 or fancy which Rossetti possessed there was the genial 
 sunshine of a fostering sympathy. Not unnaturally 
 the dream of the young Rossetti was to be an artist, 
 and it was as an artist he began his life. But he was 
 very soon to develop original ideas and methods in art. 
 He observed that two things seemed to have utterly 
 departed from English art, viz., the temper of religious 
 wonder, and the power of perfect fidelity and reverence 
 in following nature. In the earlier painters both these 
 great qualities were supreme. Rossetti determined to 
 reproduce them. His ideas found good soil in the en- 
 thusiasm of Millais and Holman Hunt, both of whom 
 at this time were on the threshold of their artistic 
 careers. The first outcome of this enthusiasm was the 
 formation of what was known as the Pre-Raphaelite 
 Brotherhood, and the picture of each artist bore the 
 magic letters P.R.B. The object of this brotherhood 
 cannot be better stated than in the words which 
 Rossetti used in starting the Germ, which was a small 
 magazine devoted to the exposition of the new creed : 
 " The endeavour held in view throughout the writings 
 on art," he said, " will be to encourage and enforce an 
 entire adherence to the simplicity of Nature." 
 
 Himself an Italian, with the southern sensuousness 
 of temperament, intensity of passion, and love of art, 
 when Rossetti began to write poetry these qualities of 
 nature at once manifested themselves. To the colder 
 English taste there is a warmth in the poetry of 
 
DANTE GABRIEL 'ROSSETTI. 343 
 
 Rossetti which is not always pleasant, and which to 
 the fastidious might even be offensive. English poetry 
 presents no more curious study than Rossetti's treat- 
 ment of woman. He approaches her with consistent 
 chivalry, with an almost religious reverence, and yet 
 with a frank and sensuous admiration of her mere 
 physical charms which would have been impossible 
 to a correcter taste and more masculine mind. It is 
 difficult to express the exact feeling that this peculiar 
 tendency of Rossetti's poetry excites in us. The older 
 poets, Shakespeare pre-eminently, did not scruple to 
 touch the same difficult theme with breadth and daring. 
 But what we always mark in Shakespeare is that 
 peculiar justness of vision which perceives all things 
 in their natural apportionments and adjustments ; that 
 divine innocence which can gaze without shame on 
 things which, to a prurient mind, would suggest no- 
 thing but impulses of impurity. Had Rossetti's been a 
 more masculine mind, he would have been saved from 
 certain errors of taste which -unquestionably disfigure 
 his poetry. Just as the healthy appetite rejects lus- 
 cious and over-ripe fruit, and prefers a sharper flavour, 
 so the healthy mind is soon surfeited with the over- 
 ripe descriptions of female charms in which Ros- 
 setti's sonnets abound. We turn away when Rossetti 
 lifts the nuptial curtain ; we grow tired of " emulous 
 ardours," " abandoned hair," and " flagging pulses." 
 We feel that it is bad art, if nothing else ; for true 
 art is accurate art, which does not exaggerate details 
 at the expense of general truth, and this perpetual 
 recurrence of the mind to one theme, and that a 
 morally enervating theme, is an evidence of a lack of 
 intellectual poise, of an effeminating defect of character ; 
 and it is in this moral effeminacy that Rossetti's great 
 
344 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 defect lies. One cannot speak of one who treats woman 
 with chivalrous and almost pious reverence as immoral; 
 but it must be admitted that Rossetti permits himself 
 a licence of expression which a more robust nature 
 would have rejected. His world is dominated by the 
 " eternal feminine." He sings of woman, not of man ; 
 the praise of beauty, not the praise of courage. His 
 sweetness is a cloying sweetness. When we enter the 
 world of his poetry, it is like entering that sleeping- 
 room of Rossetti's which Mr. Hall Caine so strikingly 
 describes : a funereal apartment, full of black oak 
 furniture carved in quaint designs, of velvets and 
 faded tapestries, of antique lamps that shed a drowsy 
 light upon the heavy air, a room of charms and mys- 
 teries, remote and hidden from the busy life of men. 
 At first we are irresistibly fascinated. We breathe a 
 perfumed air, and hear the sweetest music; but pre- 
 sently we begin to long for the open heavens, the fresh 
 wind, the " multitudinous laughter of the sea," the 
 reassuring tramp of human feet. Beautiful as Rossetti's 
 poetry is, we feel that it is something of an exotic, and 
 that in its supersensuousness there is something ener- 
 vating to the vigour of the taste and the fibre of the 
 moral nature. 
 
 This defect of Rossetti's poetry is probably due to 
 the fact that his life was to a large degree a morbid one. 
 The great romance and tragedy of his history lay in his 
 love and marriage. He was first attracted to his future 
 wife by her remarkable beauty ; it was a beauty of a 
 very unusual type, full of stately purity and dignity, and 
 yet characterised also by a sort of gracious sensuous- 
 ness. After an engagement of many years they were 
 married, and twelve months later she died. From that 
 hour the glory and vivacity of life were gone for Rossetti ; 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 345 
 
 he became practically a recluse, a brooding and uncom- 
 forted man, whose days were passed in the shadow of 
 the dead. How fully his wife's beauty filled his mind 
 is seen in the long array of his pictures. It was her 
 face which dominated the thirty years of his artistic toil. 
 The features of his dead wife look out of every female 
 face he painted ; she is the Francesca and the dead 
 Beatrice, the lady of love and the lady of sorrow. Into 
 her coffin he thrust his poems in token of his passionate 
 abandonment of earthly ambitions, and there for a con- 
 siderable period they remained. Later on there came 
 the terrible shadow of insomnia, and with it the con- 
 firmed habit of chloral-taking. It seemed as though 
 Rossetti had become the living embodiment of the 
 unhappy hero of Poe's poem of the " Raven." The 
 rooms he inhabited were rich with the curious collec- 
 tions of an artistic taste ; the lamplight streamed upon 
 the "tufted floor," but "just above the bust of Pallas, 
 just above the chamber-door," was seated the bird 
 of evil omen, recalling vainly in his mournful cry 
 the perished splendours of the past. Sensuous in all 
 things, Rossetti was sensuous in his grief, and culti- 
 vated sorrow as other men cultivate happiness. The 
 shadow that had fallen on his soul was " lifted never 
 more." Can we be surprised that there is a lack of 
 healthy vitality in his poems ? Melody and imagination 
 there always is ; a charm that is at once weird and 
 powerful ; a heart-piercing sadness, a gloomy force, a 
 memorable pregnancy of phrase ; but there is not the 
 robust spontaneity of a healthy mind. We are always 
 conscious of a feverish intensity and strain. The gloom 
 of sorrow is overpowering, and even when the theme 
 is not in itself sorrowful, there is something in the tone 
 of the poet's voice that lets us know that he suffers. 
 
346 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 In other words, Rossetti's poetry has a morbid taint in 
 it which is deep-rooted and pervasive, and, for this 
 reason more than any other, it has failed to lay hold of 
 the popular taste in any marked degree. 
 
 Turning from the easily discernible defects of Ros- 
 setti, we are first struck with his great power as a 
 melodist. He brings the laborious patience of the true 
 artist to his work, and is satisfied with nothing less 
 than the best which his genius can achieve. He is 
 frugal of words ; he passes them through the fieriest 
 assay of criticism that he may gain the pure gold of 
 a perfect phrase, and extract the utmost expression of 
 which language is capable. There is no slovenly work 
 in Rossetti. Indeed, his very laboriousness almost 
 impresses us like a fault at times. In his aim at preg- 
 nancy he becomes obscure ; in his love of melody he 
 becomes mannered. His mannerism lies largely in his 
 use of mediaeval forms of speech, and in his peculiar 
 scheme of rhythm. He adopts " novel inversions and 
 accentual endings," and the effect upon the reader is 
 often a somewhat painful sense of artificiality. But 
 when we have made full allowance for the mannerism 
 of Rossetti, the most hostile critic is bound to admit 
 the artistic excellence of his work. It is this point 
 that Mr. Stedman fixes on, when he says that " through- 
 out his poetry we discern a finesse, a regard for detail, 
 and a knowledge of colour and sound. His end is 
 gained by simplicity and sure precision of touch. He 
 knows exactly what effect he desires, and produces it 
 by a firm stroke of colour, a beam of light, a single 
 musical tone. Herein he surpasses his comrades, and 
 exhibits great tact in preferring only the best of a 
 dozen graces which either of them would introduce. 
 In terseness he certainly is before them all." It will 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 347 
 
 be observed that Mr. Stedman, in his criticism, cannot 
 help remembering that Rossetti was an artist as well 
 as a poet. Upon the whole it is a true instinct which 
 declines to discuss Rossetti's poetry altogether apart 
 from his paintings. The " beam of light/' and the 
 " single musical tone ; " the laborious ingenuity which 
 characterises both his pictures and his poems, sprang 
 from the common source of an intensely artistic nature. 
 In art, his carefulness of detail made him a Pre- 
 Raphaelite, in poetry an original and mannered melodist. 
 
 But the great merit of Rossetti is in the fact, that he 
 struck afresh in English poetry the note of the romantic 
 and supernatural. He reproduced the temper of 
 religious wonder which filled the mediaeval poets. 
 His " Blessed Damozel," is one of those few poems 
 which surprise and delight us at first reading, and 
 never afterwards lose their charm. It is a poem 
 absolutely original in style, sentiment, and rhythm, 
 something that stands alone in literature. The imagery 
 is new, peculiar, impressive ; the whole poem a unique 
 combination of daring and reverence, of sensuous 
 warmth and spiritual remoteness. 
 
 Two verses stand out with a peculiar vividness and 
 beauty of imagery : the description of God's house 
 
 It lies in Heaven, across the flood 
 Of ether, like a bridge. 
 Beneath the tides of day and night 
 With flame and darkness ridge 
 The void, as low as where this earth 
 Spins like a fretful midge : 
 
 and the description of the ended day 
 
 The sun was gone now ; the curled moon 
 Was like a little feather, 
 
348 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Fluttering far down the gulf ; and now 
 She spoke through the still weather 
 Her voice was like the voice the stars 
 Had when they sang together. 
 
 All the qualities of Rossetti's poetry are in this one 
 wonderful poem, which he wrote at eighteen. He 
 speaks alternately like a seer and an artist ; one who 
 is now bewitched with the vision of beauty, and now 
 is caught up into Paradise, where he hears unutterable 
 things. To him the spiritual world is an intense 
 reality. He hears the voices, he sees the presences 
 of the supernatural. As he mourns beside the river of 
 his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his visions of winged 
 and wheeling glory, and leaning over the ramparts of 
 the world his gaze is fixed on the uncovered mysteries 
 of a world to come. There is no poet to whom the 
 supernatural has been so much alive. Religious doubt 
 he seems never to have felt. But the temper of religious 
 wonder, the old, child-like, monkish attitude of awe and 
 faith in the presence of the unseen, is never absent in 
 him. The artistic force of his temperament drives him 
 to the worship of beauty ; the poetic and religious 
 forces to the adoration of mystery. 
 
 In his reproductions of the mediaeval ballad, Rossetti's 
 success varies. In common with Swinburne he was 
 powerfully attracted by the bizarre genius of Villon, 
 and the best translations we have of Villon's curious 
 ballads are his. No one has reproduced so accurately 
 the temper and spirit of the old ballad as Rossetti : 
 where he most frequently fails is in the introduction of 
 complexities of thought and fancy where the very key 
 to excellence is absolute simplicity. Perhaps he aimed 
 less at the reproduction of form than of temper. His 
 tl Rose Mary/' for instance, is a marvellous reproduction 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 349 
 
 of the mediaeval spirit; but in its elaborateness of 
 structure, its subtlety of suggestion, and its ingenuity 
 of fancy, is as far as possible removed from the direct- 
 ness of the old balladists. On the other hand, in the 
 brief and pathetic poem of " John of Tours," we have 
 the form as well as the temper of the old ballad 
 perfectly rendered. With what flashing simplicity the 
 ballad opens : 
 
 John of Tours is back with peace, 
 But he comes home ill at ease. 
 
 " Good morrow, mother." " Good morrow, son ; 
 Your wife has borne you a little one." 
 
 " Go now, mother, go before, 
 Make me a bed upon the floor : 
 
 " Very low your foot must fall, 
 That my wife hear not at all." 
 
 As it neared the midnight toll, 
 John of Tours gave up his soul. 
 
 And with what tragic directness and pathos does the 
 poem end : 
 
 11 Tell me though, my mother dear, 
 What's the knocking that I hear ? " 
 
 " Daughter, it's the carpenter, 
 Mending planks upon the stair." 
 
 " Nay, but say, my mother, my dear, 
 Why do you fall weeping here ? " 
 
 " Oh, the truth must be said 
 It's that John of Tours is dead." 
 
 " Mother, let the sexton know 
 That the grave must be for two ; 
 
350 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 " Aye, and still have room to spare, 
 For you must shut the baby there." 
 
 In work like this we have something absolutely new 
 in modern poetry. The strange world of medisevalism, 
 with all its chivalrous ardours, its awe-struck faith, its 
 simple movements of human passion, its frank revela- 
 tions of feeling, its glory and romance, lives again for 
 us. It is as though the figures on some piece of faded 
 tapestry began to move, and the gateways of their 
 quaint turreted towns opened, and gave egress to the 
 knights and ladies, the troubadours and artificers, of 
 the days of chivalry. Tennyson was touched with the 
 same spirit when he wrote the " Lady of Shalott ; " but 
 Tennyson's mediaevalism has a modern veneer of moral 
 adaptation Rossetti's is the thing itself. Tennyson's 
 is the mediaevalism of Wardour-street with Rossetti 
 we actually move again in the times of Agincourt and 
 Poictiers. 
 
 Perhaps the word which best describes Rossetti's 
 poetry is the word "glamour." In common with 
 Coleridge and Keats he possesses a curious power of 
 exciting the imagination into intensity of vision. There 
 is a sense of wizardry in the charm which Rossetti 
 wields over us. He never fails, even in his simplest 
 verses, to cast over us the spell of the supernatural. 
 He affects us powerfully by his own intensity of vision 
 and feeling, and lifts us completely out of the atmo- 
 sphere of common life into that world of subtle sensa- 
 tion and imagination in which he habitually dwelt. 
 Take, for instance, so simple a poem as " My Sister's 
 Sleep." Its theme is purely modern : it pictures the 
 dying of his sister, amid the common surroundings of 
 ordinary life. It is Christmas Eve : his mother has her 
 little work-table with work to finish set beside her. 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 351 
 
 Her needles, as she laid them down, 
 Met lightly, and her silken gown 
 Settled : no other noise than that. 
 
 But in an instant Rossetti has invested the whole scene 
 with glamour when he writes : 
 
 Without, there was a cold moon up, 
 Of winter radiance, sheer and thin ; 
 The hollow halo it was in 
 
 Was like an icy crystal cup. 
 
 Through the small room, with subtle sound 
 Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove 
 And reddened. In its dim alcove 
 
 The mirror shed a clearness round. 
 
 I had been sitting up some nights, 
 And my tired mind felt weak and blank : 
 Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank 
 
 The stillness and the broken lights. 
 
 Twelve struck, that sound, by dwindling years 
 Heard in each hour, crept oft ; and then 
 The ruffled silence spread again, 
 
 Like water that a pebble stirs. 
 
 All this is exquisitely simple, and exquisitely realistic. 
 Yet there is a subtlety, a magic, a charm of imagination 
 investing it all, which rivets the attention and fascinates 
 the fancy. It affects us like some pungent and. perva- 
 sive perfume. We may analyse the verses as we will ; 
 the essence is too volatile to be captured by any such 
 means as these. And there is the same indefinable 
 charm in all Rossetti's poetry ; a quality original and 
 bewitching, which is all his own, and is like nothing else 
 in modern poetry. " Glamour " best describes it : some- 
 thing beautiful and unearthly, that lays its restraint 
 upon us, and cannot be shaken off. It is a rare gift, 
 
352 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 one of the very rarest in English poetry, but it is unques- 
 tionably the special note of Rossetti's poetry, and the 
 real secret of his influence. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Rossetti has exercised a 
 wide influence over modern poetry, and an influence 
 that does not seem likely to decline. He set a new 
 fashion, but he did more than this: he struck a new 
 note. He has had many imitators ; many have followed 
 the fashion, but scarcely any has struck the note. 
 William Morris comes nearest in his early ballads ; 
 then perhaps Bell Scott ; lastly Mr. Swinburne. But 
 neither has the same intensity of vision and terseness 
 of diction. If Rossetti had only set a fashion of poetry, 
 if he had invented only an aesthetic craze for mediaeval- 
 ism, we might doubt the permanence of his influence. 
 All mere fashions pass away, and are forgotten. But 
 he has done much more than this. He is an original 
 poetic artist, who has produced original work. He has 
 a message, an idea, a mission to communicate. He 
 opens the closed doors of the past, and leads us into 
 fresh fields of romance. He has furnished poets with 
 a new set of artistic impulses and motives. And he 
 has exercised a wide influence on the forms of poetry, 
 in giving back to us forgotten rhythmic movements, 
 and setting an example of the most careful literary 
 workmanship. When we have made all possible de- 
 ductions for defects of taste and diction, we have still 
 left in Rossetti that rare combination of genius and 
 originality which alone can constitute the true poet, 
 and claim prolonged fame. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 
 [Born in London, April 5th, 1837. His first productions, the "Queen 
 Mother" and "Rosamond," were published in 1861.] 
 
 THERE can be no doubt that Swinburne is a fine 
 poet ; there can be as little that he is an extremely 
 unequal poet, who has not wholly fulfilled the promise 
 of his youth. His earliest poems aroused intense 
 interest and enthusiasm, and from the first his unique 
 powers received the most ample recognition. This 
 chorus of praise, however, did not last. It was suc- 
 ceeded by a fierce critical warfare, which split the literary 
 world into two camps, and liberated the most violent 
 passions. It was natural that the world should recog- 
 nise the greatness and nobility of such a poem as 
 "Atalanta in Calydon." No reproduction from the 
 antique since the " Prometheus Unbound " of Shelley, 
 had been cast in so large a mould, had struck so full 
 and lofty a note, had given such ample evidence or 
 power and skill. As an embodiment of the antique 
 spirit, in some ways it was superior even to the master- 
 piece of Shelley. It had more of classic gravity and 
 restraint, and it was almost equal in its superb power 
 of musical utterance. Nothing grander than the 
 choruses in " Atalanta" has been given us by the genius 
 of any living poet. They have fire and stateliness, 
 
 23 
 
354 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 dignity and passion, tragic depth and intensity, and a 
 certain overwhelming music of their own, which the 
 greatest masters of poetical expression might covet. It 
 was this grandeur of musical utterance which took the 
 world by storm, and roused something like amazement 
 in readers who had listened to the sweet flute-notes 
 of Tennyson, and had given up hope of any further 
 development in the art of verbal music. Swinburne's 
 music was like the full sweep of a great wind, or the 
 organ-clamour of the sea. It overwhelmed and it ex- 
 hilarated ; it came like a resistless force, before which 
 criticism was bowed and futile, and it conveyed also a 
 sense of immense power and resource in the poet. He 
 seemed to produce the most magnificent effects of dic- 
 tion without effort, and to be able to go on producing 
 them without weariness or exhaustion. The poem was, 
 indeed, the first full utterance of a poet in the first 
 freshness and glory of his genius. On the day which 
 followed the completion of " Chastelard," "Atalanta" 
 was commenced. His genius was in full flow, and it 
 seemed to his readers of a quarter of a century ago 
 that there was no point of achievement or crown of 
 fame that might not well be his. 
 
 Two years after the publication of " Atalanta in 
 Calydon " Swinburne published his " Poems and 
 Ballads." For the moment there was a shock of pained 
 surprise, and then the storm of anger and disappoint- 
 ment broke. The " Poems and Ballads " was not 
 really a new work ; it was a collection of poems, most 
 of which had been written at an earlier date. They 
 represented the " storm and stress " period of the poet's 
 development, the passionate fermenting and clearing of 
 his genius. The themes were perilous, the spirit sen- 
 suous. The entire atmosphere of the book was morbid, 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 355 
 
 if not immoral. The poet in the madness of his turbid 
 thoughts seemed to have no respect for the decencies 
 of life ; he even took a violent and savage pleasure in 
 defying them. Sensuous passion was treated with a 
 frankness unknown in modern poetry, and the reticence 
 of natural modesty was flung to the winds. The out- 
 cry that arose reproduced the passionate vituperation 
 of the attacks made on Byron. Just as Southey attacked 
 the t( Satanic School of Poetry," so another poet, of 
 about equal calibre, attacked Rossetti, and by im- 
 plication Swinburne, in an anonymous article on the 
 " Fleshly School of Poetry." * It can serve no useful 
 purpose to fight these battles over again. Foolish and 
 regrettable things were said on both sides. There, 
 however, the book stands, and its influence has been 
 widespread. The damage it inflicted on Swinburne's 
 reputation has been irreparable. Its effects are seen in 
 the productions of a swarm of minor poets, who have 
 seemed to imagine that the purveying of moral poison 
 was the highest duty of the poet, and that the nearer a 
 poet came to sheer indecency the truer was his gift. 
 Critics also arose who made it the first article of a 
 sound poetic faith that for the poet Nature had no 
 reticencies, and that in art moral considerations had no 
 weight, and were of no account. It is possible that the 
 wisdom of maturer life has often led Mr. Swinburne 
 himself to wish that he had burned some of these 
 erotic verses of his youth. The very charm and music 
 of them constitutes a perennial peril. They have a 
 secret and subtle sweetness as of forbidden fruit which 
 begets in us unspoken covetings. To read them is like 
 sitting at some enchanted feast, where lamps glitter, 
 and voluptuous music trembles on the ear, where the 
 air is heavy with odour, and the senses gradually are 
 
 * " The Fleshly School of Poetry," by " Thomas Maitland " (Robert 
 Buchanan), in the Contemporary Review for October 1871. 
 
356 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 overcome by potent charms, as the moral sense is 
 slackened, and the resoluteness of manhood is dissolved 
 in evil languor ; and it is only when the clear dawn 
 shines in, and the fresh breath of Nature wakes us 
 from our heavy sleep, that we see it is a poisoned 
 banquet we have shared, and we pay the penalty of 
 abiding disgust for the short-lived enchantment of the 
 hour. No mature man of pure life can read these 
 poems without revulsion. We may even say more : 
 that all moral considerations apart, these poems are 
 bad art. It is not true art which fixes on the sensuous 
 side of life alone, and forgets the thousandfold nobler 
 and wholesomer aspects which exist. There is nothing 
 so monotonous as sin. There is nothing that sooner 
 wearies the discerning mind than the perpetual strum- 
 ming on the one vulgar chord of fleshly affinities. 
 Sunk as man may be, he covets something better than 
 this ; and if he feed on the swine-husks he does not 
 want lyrics of the swine-trough. When we compare 
 the gravity and beauty of the " Atalanta " with the mor- 
 bid, turbid, unwholesome imagination of the "Poems 
 and Ballads," we can scarcely be surprised at the 
 vehemence of the public resentment. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that in 
 the two volumes of his " Poems and Ballads " Swin- 
 burne touches only such themes as I have alluded to. 
 There are powerful evidences of other influences than 
 those which find utterance in the erotic lyrics of his 
 unripe youth. Like Rossetti, he had carefully studied 
 the mediaeval manner, and reproduces it with great 
 effect in " St. Dorothy " and the " Masque of Queen 
 Bersabe." There is also an Hebraic influence, a close 
 observance of the vivid utterance of the Hebrew 
 prophets, which is reproduced with terrible force in the 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 357 
 
 poem "Aholibah." In the second volume of "Poems 
 and Ballads" much that was most distasteful in the 
 first volume disappears. True it contains many trans- 
 lations of Villon, whose poetry never fails to leave a 
 bad taste in the mouth, but the general tone of the book 
 is altogether stronger and more normal. The heavy 
 intoxicating fragrance of evil is still there, but is sub- 
 dued and i* in part dissipated by fresh draughts of air 
 that blow to us from the world of Nature. In pomp 
 and splendour of diction, and in richness of musical 
 harmony, both books excel. The chief characteristic of 
 the harmony is its surprising originality. New lyrical 
 effects, new and perfect rhymes, bewitching assonances 
 and undertones, meet us at every turn, and once heard 
 take possession of the memory. Music itself could 
 scarcely produce a more exquisite sensation on the 
 ear than lines like these : 
 
 If love were what the rose is, 
 
 And I were like the leaf, 
 Our lives would grow together 
 In sad or singing weather ; 
 Blown fields or flovverful closes, 
 
 Green pleasure or grey grief; 
 If love were what the rose is, 
 
 And I were like the leaf. 
 
 It is the subtle solemn music of the verse also which 
 arrests the ear in these lines : 
 
 Could'st thou not watch with me one hour ? Behold, 
 Day skims the sea with flying feet of gold, 
 With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea. 
 Could'st thou not watch with me ? 
 
 Lo, far in heaven the web of night undone, 
 And on the sudden sea the gradual sun ; 
 
358 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 Wave to wave answers, tree responds to tree. 
 Could'st thou not watch with me ? 
 
 Or, again, in this cry to the sea : 
 
 Save me and hide me with all thy waves, 
 Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, 
 Those pure cold populous graves of thine, 
 Wrought without hand in a world without stain. 
 
 Or in the passage of the Ave atque Vale, 
 
 For always thee, the fervid, languid glories, 
 Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies ; 
 Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs 
 
 Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, 
 The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave, 
 That knows not where is that Leucadian grave 
 
 That hides too deep the supreme head of song. 
 
 There are indeed here and there fine images, such as, 
 
 Behold, 
 Cast forth from heaven with feet of awful gold 
 
 And plumeless wings that make the bright air blind, 
 Lightning, with thunder for a hound behind, 
 Hunting through fields unfurrowed and unsown; 
 
 but in Swinburne it is not the imagery, and still less 
 the thought, that moves us : it is the metrical charm and 
 sweetness. Many of the highest qualities of poetry are 
 not his, but in metrical affluence he takes rank with the 
 highest; and if he have any claim to prolonged re- 
 membrance as one of the makers of modern English, 
 it is that in the grasp of his genius the English language 
 becomes so supple and sensitive that no language could 
 well excel it as a vehicle of lyrical expression. 
 
 On the other hand, it is impossible to overlook the 
 fact that Mr. Swinburne's great gift of expression is 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 359 
 
 altogether out of proportion to other gifts which are 
 necessary to permanence in poetry. Nothing can be 
 truer than Mr. Coventry Patmore's saying, that in 
 reading Swinburne's poetry it is " impossible not to feel 
 that there has been some disproportion between his 
 power of saying things and the things he has to say." 
 And so also in Ar. Patmore's description of Swinburne's 
 relation to Nature. " It must be confessed that flowers, 
 stars, waves, flames, and three or four other entities of 
 the natural order come in so often as to suggest some 
 narrowness of observation and vocabulary. For ex- 
 ample, in a passage of thirteen lines we have ' flowing 
 forefront of the year/ 'foam-flowered strand/ ' blossom- 
 fringe/ ' flower-soft face/ and ' spray-flowers.' " The 
 same fault occurs in all Mr. Swinburne's poetry. His 
 effects are kaleidoscopic : the subject is changed, but 
 the sets of words and images are always the same. To 
 have an overwhelming flow of words is one thing ; to 
 have a large vocabulary is another ; and very often Mr. 
 Swinburne's torrent of speech reminds us not so much 
 of a natural fountain whose springs are deep and 
 abundant, as of an artificial fountain, which is always 
 ready to shoot aloft its glittering spray, and always re- 
 absorbs itself for some further service; so that while 
 the fashion of the jet may differ, the water is pretty 
 much the same. He is too good an artist to let us hear 
 the creaking of the force-pump, but all the same we 
 know that it is there, and for that reason he readily 
 lends himself to imitation. His trick of alliteration is 
 soon caught, and his peculiarity of cadence proves itself 
 an artifice. Men cannot go behind Shakespeare and 
 steal the patent of his mechanism, because his poetry 
 is not a thing of mechanism, but of Nature, and has its 
 springs deep down in the living heart of things. The 
 
360 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 more mannered a poet is, the sooner is his method 
 mastered, and the sooner does he weary us ; but the 
 greatest art is always the simplest, and the noblest 
 works of art are those which are most allied to the 
 simplicity of Nature. 
 
 And, again, it is a true criticism which discovers in 
 Mr. Swinburne little genuine observation of Nature. 
 He loves Nature in a fashion, but it is not the fashion 
 of the true lover. He has not studied her with minute 
 attention, and, consequently, he tells us little new about 
 her. He has not lived in the solitary joy of her pre- 
 sence, as Wordsworth did ; he has not been subdued 
 and penetrated with her charm, as Shelley was. For 
 while Shelley's grasp of Nature was vague, yet his 
 adoration of her was passionately sincere, and his 
 sincerity atoned for his lack of detailed observation. 
 But Swinburne touches only the surface of her reve- 
 lation, and loves her rather for her worth to him as 
 artistic ware than for herself. If he had been more 
 deep-hearted and sincere in his love he would not have 
 dwelt with monotonous insistence on one or two aspects 
 of her glory, nor would thirteen lines of his poetry 
 have contained five adaptations of the same image. 
 It is the limitation of his power, or his impatience of 
 the drudgery of observation, which makes it possible 
 for. us to say that he is kaleidoscopic rather than various 
 in his artistic effects. 
 
 And, finally, he is often not so much a master of 
 words as their slave. His adjectival opulence may 
 surprise us, but it also wearies us. There is a total 
 lack of concentration in his speech. He rarely attains 
 to the art of putting in some one flashing phrase the 
 whole spirit or thought of a poem. It is this which 
 makes his dramas so essentially undramatic : he ob- 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 361 
 
 scures in a flood of gorgeous rhetoric a situation which 
 ought to concentrate itself in a sentence. His sur- 
 passing gift of melody enchants us ; but when it ends 
 we are like men who have heard a Wagnerian opera, 
 and find it difficult to recall a single air. No one is 
 so difficult to quote, because his poetry contains so 
 few lines which are distinguished by their concentra- 
 tion of phrase. He never seems to have used the 
 pruning-knife ; he flings down his opulent verses in 
 all their original unrestrained luxuriance, and not 
 infrequently mistakes abundance for opulence. He 
 surfeits us, but does not satisfy us. A prolonged 
 course of Swinburne leaves us bewildered with a 
 sense of riches, but in reality none the richer. His 
 poetry is like fairy-gold : we dream that we are wealthy, 
 but our wealth perpetually eludes us. For that which 
 makes poetry a real possession is not only the art of 
 expression, but the gift of thought, and Mr. Swin- 
 burne never was, and never will be, a thinker. We 
 always feel that he has no message, that his very 
 vehemence is a sign of weakness, and that his seeming 
 power of words conceals an actual feebleness of thought. 
 There are, of course, poets who live by their exquisite 
 power of expression alone, and who have contributed 
 little to the intellectual impulses of the world. Keats 
 was such a poet, but Keats had in a supreme degree 
 that gift of concentrated phrase which Mr. Swinburne 
 lacks. So that when we carefully consider Mr. Swin- 
 burne's claims to permanent remembrance, they are 
 all narrowed down into the fact that he is a great 
 metrical artist, and he must stand or fall upon that one 
 indisputable quality. Perhaps it seems little to say ; 
 yet when we consider how difficult it is to introduce 
 into a literature of poetry so enormous as the English 
 
362 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 any new form of expression, any metrical originality, it 
 is not so little as it appears. That, at all events, is 
 Mr. Swinburne's solitary claim ; and it is in virtue of 
 that we must rank him among those who have helped 
 to mould and develop modern English letters. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 [Born at Walthamstow, Essex, 1834. The "Defence of Guinevere" 
 published 1858. Joined the Socialistic League 1884.] 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS is the third great name 
 connected with the revival of Romanticism in 
 modern poetry. His " Defence of Guinevere," published 
 in 1858, and dedicated to Rossetti, is marked by that 
 same return to the mediaeval spirit which so strikingly 
 distinguished Rossetti, and which bore partial fruit in 
 the early poems of Swinburne. The chief thing to 
 be noticed about all three poets is that their poetry 
 disdains modern thought and purpose, and deliberately 
 seeks its inspiration in other times, and more ancient 
 sources of emotion. Rossetti alone remained absolutely 
 true to the mediaeval spirit: his last poems had as 
 distinctly as his first the impress and mould of mediaeval 
 Romanticism. Swinburne, as we have seen, did his 
 best work under the shadows of Greek Classicism, and 
 has besides grown more modern in spirit as he has 
 grown older, handling purely modern themes, as in his 
 "Songs before Sunrise," with all his early vehemence 
 and metrical skill. With William Morris the fascination 
 of present-day life is a thing of very recent growth, 
 and it can scarcely be said that it has done anything 
 to help his poetry. As a poet he has three distinct 
 
364 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 periods. First comes the period when, in common 
 with Rossetti, the fascination of ballad-romance was 
 strong upon him, and its fruit is the thirty poems 
 contained in his earliest volume. When he next 
 appealed to the public he had cast off the glamour of 
 mediaevalism, and had become an epic poet. This is 
 the period of " Jason" and the "Earthly Paradise." 
 The last period, if such it may be called, is marked by 
 an awakening to the actual conditions of modern life, 
 and is signalised by a series of " Chants for Socialists," 
 which are remarkable rather for political passion than 
 poetic power. It may be well for us briefly to glance 
 at these three periods. 
 
 William Morris's first volume, the " Defence of 
 Guinevere," is a remarkable book. It is not only 
 significant for its revival of mediaeval feeling, but also 
 for its artistic feeling, its sense of colour, its touches of 
 frank yet inoffensive sensuousness, its simplicity and 
 directness of poetic effect. As a matter of fact, the 
 question whether Morris should devote his life to art or 
 literature for a long time hung in the balance, and it is 
 only natural that his poetry should be remarkable for 
 richness of colour and objective effect. The " Defence 
 of Guinevere" is a fragment, but its very abruptness 
 and incompleteness are effective. Its involution of 
 thought, its curious touches of indirect introspection, 
 its vivid glow of colour, its half-grotesque yet powerful 
 imagery, are essentially mediaeval. Such lines as the 
 following at once recall the very method of Rossetti, 
 and bear in themselves the marks of their relationship to 
 the " Blessed Damozel : " 
 
 Listen : suppose your time were come to die, 
 And you were quite alone and very weak : 
 Yea, laid a-dying, while very mightily 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 365 
 
 The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak 
 Of river through your broad lands running well : 
 Suppose a hush should come, then someone speak: 
 
 " One of those cloths is heaven, and one is hell, 
 Now choose one cloth for ever, which they be 
 I will not tell you, you must somehow tell 
 
 Of your own strength and mightiness : here, see ! " 
 Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes, 
 At foot of your familiar bed to see 
 
 A great God's angel standing, with such dyes 
 
 Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands, 
 
 Held out two ways, light from the inner skies 
 
 Showing him well, and making his commands 
 Seem to be God's commands ; moreover, too, 
 Holding within his hands the cloths on wands : 
 
 And one of these strange choosing-cloths was blue 
 Wavy and long, and one cut short and red ; 
 No man could tell the better of the two. 
 
 After a shivering half-hour you said 
 
 " God help ! heaven's colour, the blue ; " and he said, 
 
 11 Hell." 
 Perhaps you then would roll upon your bed, 
 
 And cry to all good men who loved you well, 
 "Ah Christ ! if only I had known, known, known." 
 
 It is characteristic of mediaeval imagination to dwell 
 in the borderland of spiritual mystery, and to utter itself 
 with perfect unrestraint, much as a child speaks of such 
 things, with a fearlessness which is unconscious of 
 wrong, and a quaintness which gives a touch of sublimity 
 to what in other lips would sound simply grotesque. 
 It is precisely this frank and fascinating quaintness 
 which William Morris has admirably reproduced in this 
 remarkable poem. His description of the angel is the 
 
366 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 description of a mediaeval artist, who notices first the 
 celestial dyes upon hands and wings, and the colour of 
 the choosing-cloths, and afterwards ponders the spiritual 
 mystery of his presence. The chief quality in both 
 Morris's and Rossetti's poetry is its sensitive apprecia- 
 tion of colour ; each has carried to its furthest point 
 the art of painting in words. And just as Rossetti was 
 a painter as well as a poet, and infused into each art 
 the spirit and something of the method of the other, so 
 Morris never resigned art when he took to literature. 
 As a designer he has done more than any living man 
 to make the homes of English citizens tasteful. He has 
 always dwelt in the House Beautiful. He has dis- 
 covered in decorative art a new field for genius, and one 
 of which genius has no need to be ashamed. When the 
 history of the modern mediaeval revival comes to be 
 written, perhaps it will be found that its most practical 
 results are the art-designs of William Morris, and the 
 historian will note how the sense of colour which dis- 
 tinguishes his earliest poetry is the real quality out of 
 which the activities of his social life have sprung. 
 
 There are other poems in this slight volume which 
 are equally remarkable with the " Defence of Guinevere." 
 The " Haystack in the Floods " is one of the most 
 realistic poems in modern literature. All the troubled 
 terror of the Middle Ages, the fierce passions and hasty 
 vengeances, the barbaric strength and virility of love, 
 the popular ignorance and cruelty, are brought home 
 to us with an intense vividness in this brief poem. 
 Every line of the poem is simple and direct, and it is by 
 a score or so of natural touches of description that the 
 whole scene is put before us. It is a piece of grim 
 tragedy, painted, rather than told, with realistic fidelity 
 and force. The landscape is as clear to us as the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 367 
 
 figures of the actors ; we see the whole episode in its 
 tragic misery and rudeness when we read the opening 
 lines 
 
 Along the dripping, leafless woods, 
 
 The stirrup touching either shoe, 
 
 She rode astride as troopers do, 
 
 With kirtle kilted to her knee, 
 
 To which the mud splashed wretchedly ; 
 
 And the wet dripped from every tree 
 
 Upon her head and heavy hair, 
 
 And on her eyelids broad and fair ; 
 
 The tears and rain ran down her face. 
 
 It is so Jehane rides on into the deepening shadows 
 of fate. Her lover 
 
 Seemed to watch the rain : yea, too, 
 His lips were firm ; he tried once more 
 To touch her lips ; she reached out, sore 
 And vain desire so tortured them, 
 The poor grey lips. 
 
 But the vision she sees through the dripping forest 
 
 glades is 
 
 The court at Paris : those six men, 
 The gratings of the Chatelet ; 
 The swift Seine on some rainy day 
 Like this, and people standing by, 
 And laughing, while my weak hands try 
 To recollect how strong men swim. 
 
 One would have supposed that poetry so original and 
 powerful as this would have been sure of recognition. 
 The book, however, fell dead from the press. Little of 
 it is even now known save the spirited ballad, " Riding 
 Together." It was not until twenty-five years later 
 that the significance of this first volume of Morris's 
 was realised. By that time he had reached his second 
 period ; he had outgrown much of his early medisevalism, 
 
368 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 or rather he had " worked out for himself a distinct and 
 individual phrase of the mediaeval movement." 
 
 Eight years after his first volume William Morris 
 published the "Life and Death of Jason," and this was 
 followed in 1 868 by the first instalment of the " Earthly 
 Paradise." Of the first poem it is enough to say that 
 it is a noble epic, full of sustained narrative power, 
 but too long, and occasionally too deficient in interest, 
 to obtain the highest honours of the epic. It marks, 
 however, his emancipation from the spell of mediaeval 
 minstrelsy. He had now entered a larger world, 
 where pleasant sunlight had taken the place of tragic 
 shadows of terror, and where his genius moved freely 
 with a sense of conscious power. It was evident also 
 that his mind had developed new and unsuspected 
 qualities. The old simplicity and directness are here, 
 the old keen sense of colour is still predominant ; but 
 there is something new a gift of larger utterance, a 
 power of word-painting, . inimitably fresh and truthful, 
 a sort of child-like joy in dreams, and a corresponding 
 power of setting them forth, which interests and fasci- 
 nates us. And there is the same sort of childlike 
 delight in Nature. He sees her with a fresh eye, and 
 tells us what he sees in the simplest phrases. We 
 rarely meet an epithet which surprises us by the keen- 
 ness of its observation, or the intensity of its vision, 
 but we never meet a description of Nature that is not 
 truthful and sincere. We are never startled into de- 
 light, but we are always soothed and refreshed. " The 
 art of William Morris," said Mary Howitt, "is Nature 
 itself, rough at times, but quaint, fresh, and dewy 
 beyond anything I ever saw or felt in language." 
 
 The scenery Morris loves to paint, and which he 
 paints best, is familiar scenery ; the dewy meads, the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 369 
 
 orchards with their snowy bloom, the white mill with 
 its cosy quiet, the flower-gardens where the bee sucks, 
 and where the soft wet winds murmur in the leaves of 
 " immemorial elms." The charm of such pictures is in 
 their unintentional art, the entire absence of any effort 
 to be fine. The breaking day has been described a 
 thousand times, and often the most laboured descrip- 
 tions have been most admired ; yet there is still delight 
 to be found in so simple a sketch as this : 
 
 So passed the night ; the moon arose and grew, 
 From off the sea a little west wind blew, 
 Rustling the garden leaves like sudden rain, 
 And ere the moon had 'gun to fall again 
 The wind grew cold, a change was in the sky, 
 And in deep silence did the dawn draw nigh. 
 
 How clearly is the colourist seen also in this companion 
 picture : 
 
 The sun is setting in the west, the sky 
 
 Is clear and hard, and no clouds come anigh 
 
 The golden orb, but further off they lie, 
 
 Steel-grey and black, with edges red as blood, 
 
 And underneath them is the weltering flood 
 
 Of some huge sea, whose tumbling hills, as they 
 
 Turn restless sides about, are black, or grey, 
 
 Or green, or glittering with the golden flame : 
 
 The wind has fallen now, but still the same 
 
 The mighty army moves, as if to drown 
 
 This lone bare rock, whose sheer scarped sides of brown 
 
 Cast off the weight of waves in clouds of spray. 
 
 Sometimes there is a flash of imaginative intensity, as 
 in the lines : 
 
 And underneath his feet the moon-lit sea 
 Went shepherding his waves disorderly ; 
 
 but such touches are rare. William Morris has the 
 infrequent gift of using commonplace phrases in a 
 
 24 
 
370 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 way that is not commonplace. Tennyson would 
 scarcely deign to use so well-worn a phrase as " the 
 golden orb ; " he would probably have invented some 
 felicitous double adjective which would strike us as 
 much by its ingenuity as its truth. Morris is never 
 troubled by any such scruples. He uses the handiest 
 phrases, and somehow he makes us feel that they are 
 after all the truest. He is always pictorial, and his 
 pictures are painted with so great a breadth that the 
 absence of any delicate filigree work of ingenious 
 phrase-making is not remarked. Perhaps this also is 
 part of his charm. While almost every other poet of 
 our day aims at the invention of new phrases which 
 shall allure us by their originality, Morris is simply 
 intent upon telling us his story ; and the very absence 
 of pretension in his style fills us with a new delight, 
 and strikes us as a new species of genius. 
 
 The aim and scope of the " Earthly Paradise " 
 Morris has himself set forth in his "Apology" and 
 "L'Envoi." 
 
 Of heaven and hell I have no power to sing ; 
 
 I cannot ease the burden of your fears, 
 Or make quick-coming death a little thing, 
 
 Or bring again the pleasure of past years ; 
 
 Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears, 
 Or hope again for aught that I can say 
 The idle singer of an empty day. 
 
 Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, 
 Why should I strive to set the crooked straight ? 
 
 Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme 
 Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, 
 Telling a tale not too importunate 
 
 To those who in the sleepy region stay, 
 
 Lulled by the singer of an empty day. 
 
 In "L'Envoi" he boldly claims Geoffrey Chaucer as 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 371 
 
 his master, and sounds the same note of gentle pes- 
 simism as regards the fortunes of his own day. From a 
 moral point of view this pessimism is the most striking 
 thing about the " Earthly Paradise." He turns to 
 dreamland, and bids us travel with him into the realms 
 of faery, because he cannot unravel the mystery of 
 human life, and believes that any attempt to do so 
 can only end in bewilderment and despair. When he 
 ventures upon any counsel it is simply the old pagan 
 counsel of carpe diem. The thought of death is always 
 with him, and the true wisdom of life is to gather the 
 roses while we may. Death, the great spoliator, will 
 soon be upon us, and the days will come all too soon 
 when we have no pleasure in them. 
 
 In the white-flowered hawthorn brake, 
 Love, be merry for my sake : 
 Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
 Kiss me where I am most fair 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death ? 
 
 This is the note which sounds throughout the " Earthly 
 Paradise." Ogier the Dane, at the bidding of the fairy, 
 renounces life just when its consummation is at hand, 
 and puts aside the crown of Charlemaine, saying : 
 
 Lie there, O crown of Charlemaine, 
 Worn by a mighty man and worn in vain. 
 Because he died, and all the things he did 
 Were changed before his face by earth was hid. 
 
 Ambition, the fierce race for wealth, the battle even 
 for what seem to be great causes and sufficing ideals, 
 are all in vain, and end in disillusionment and sorrow. 
 It is better still to dream. In dreams everything is 
 
372 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 beautiful ; in actual life the sordid and the vulgar 
 intrude at every turn. It is better still to dream, 
 because dreams never disappoint us. There, at least, 
 we can forget the shadow of death and wander in the 
 meads of a perpetual spring ; and so far as dreams 
 bring the jaded mind refreshment and release it is wise 
 to dream. The imaginative faculty needs exercise as 
 well as the practical, and no full or fair life can be 
 lived where it is stunted or ignored. We are only too 
 ready to hail a singer who bids us 
 
 Forget six counties overhung with smoke, 
 
 Forget the snorting steam and piston-stroke, 
 
 Forget the spreading of the hideous town ; 
 
 Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, 
 
 And dream of London small, and white, and clean 
 
 The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green. 
 
 But, after all, he is not the highest poet who only bids 
 us dream. The highest poet is he who, knowing life 
 and death, bids us not ignore the one nor fear the 
 other, but prepares us equally for both b} r the inspiration 
 of his courage and the serenity of his faith. This 
 William Morris does not do in his greatest poems, and 
 has not sought to do. He knows the limitations of his 
 nature, and confesses his inability to sing the songs 
 which humanity has ever counted the noblest. He has 
 left to others the battles of faith and philosophy. He 
 has sought only to be the singer of an empty day, the 
 dreamer of dreams, in whose bright spells weary men 
 may rest awhile, and those who are vexed by life's 
 disasters may find a brief refreshment and repose. Nor 
 is this a slight aim nor a contemptible achievement. 
 It is something to have amid the fierce strain of modern 
 life one poet who does not excite, but soothe us ; who 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 373 
 
 does not make us think, but bids us enjoy ; who lures us 
 back again into the simplicities of childhood, and who, 
 in all his writings, has not written a page that a child 
 might not read, and has written many with so lucid an 
 art that a child might enjoy and comprehend them. 
 
 Of the third period of William Morris it is only 
 necessary to add a sentence or two. The dreamer of 
 the " Earthly Paradise" at last wakes from his dream, 
 and casts away his spells, and breaks his magic wand. 
 He discovers that the nineteenth century is not an 
 empty day, nor is it a time when any man who has 
 helpful hands may dare to be idle or unserviceable. 
 The social problem, which is the great and real pro- 
 blem of our time, has powerfully affected Mr. Morris's 
 mature life. With his socialistic harangues at street 
 corners, his " wrestles with policemen, or wrangles 
 with obtuse magistrates about freedom of speech," we 
 have nothing to do here. Here we have only to deal 
 with his work in literature, and with the exception of a 
 few spirited verses such as these : 
 
 Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the 
 
 deeds of his hand, 
 
 Nor yet come home in the even, too faint and weary to stand. 
 For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed, 
 Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no 
 
 seed. 
 Then all mine and thine shall be ours, and no more shall any 
 
 man crave 
 For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a 
 
 slave, 
 
 the socialistic propaganda has gained nothing by his 
 poetic art. Perhaps it is too late in life for Mr. Morris 
 to catch the true lyric fire of the revolutionary poet. 
 It is, however, profoundly interesting to remark how the 
 
374 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. 
 
 huge shadow of this social problem has been gradually 
 projected over the entire field of literature, politics, and 
 philosophy. What contributions Mr. Morris may yet 
 make to its solution it would be foolish to predict ; but 
 it is at least safe to say that his ultimate fame must 
 rest rather upon the work of his past than of his future. 
 No writer since Chaucer has displayed so masterly a 
 power of continuous narrative, or has rested his fame 
 so completely upon the arts of simplicity and lucidity. 
 In this he occupies a unique place among modern poets. 
 He has imitators, but he has no real competitor. He 
 has drunk deep of the well of English undefiled, and 
 has again taught the old lesson of the potency of plain 
 and idiomatic Saxon as an unrivalled vehicle of poetic 
 utterance. If he has added nothing new to the wealth 
 of metrical expression he has enriched modern litera- 
 ture by the re-coining of ancient forms of speech, and 
 by the recurrence to the free simplicity of our older 
 poetry. If he falls far behind Rossetti in the art of 
 beautiful expression, and behind Swinburne in vehe- 
 mence and lyric fire, he is the superior of both in the 
 more enduring qualities of strength and breadth of 
 style, and has a nobler inventiveness and a wholesomer 
 view of life. To be the modern Chaucer is a far 
 greater thing than to be an English Baudelaire or 
 Villon, simply because Chaucer was an infinitely 
 greater man than either, and carried in his sweet and 
 sunny nature the secret seed of a more enduring 
 immortality. This William Morris is the nearest 
 approach to Chaucer which the nineteenth century can 
 produce, or that any intervening period has produced. 
 This is much to say, but it is not too much to say of 
 the author of the " Life and Death of Jason " and 
 the " Earthly Paradise," Separated as they are by a 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS. 375 
 
 vast stretch of time, different as they are by so much as 
 five centuries of civilisation can constitute of difference, 
 still they are alike in spirit ; and Chaucer is indeed 
 the master of William Morris's art, and he is the most 
 faithful and successful of his disciples. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylcsbury.