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ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
ESSAYS OF 
 
 AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD GARNETT 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 MCMI 
 
All rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The twelve essays comprised within this volume 
 have been written at various times within the last 
 fourteen years; some without external prompting, 
 others at the invitation of editors or publishers. 
 The acknowledgment of the author's obligations 
 for permission to reprint will perhaps be best 
 made by a brief statement of the circumstances 
 attending the original publication of each essay. 
 
 The first in the volume, "On Translating 
 Homer," appeared in 1889 in The Universal 
 Review y edited by Harry Quilter, Esq. The 
 versions from the Iliad included in it were re- 
 printed in the following year along with the 
 author's dramatic poem, ''Iphigenia in Delphi," 
 published in Mr. Fisher Unwin's '' Cameo Series." 
 
 The essay on the date and occasion of "The 
 Tempest" appeared in the same periodical in the 
 same year. Its substance had been previously 
 imparted viva voce to the New Shakespeare Society, 
 
 95Si6 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 and in 1890 its arguments were re-stated in the 
 literary and critical portions of the introduction to 
 "The Tempest" in "The Henry Irving Shake- 
 speare." They found Httle acceptance in this 
 country ; mainly, as the writer conceives, from the 
 morbid prejudice against James the First preva- 
 lent in so many quarters. Abroad, however, the 
 author's view was warmly advocated by no less 
 distinguished a critic than Dr. Brandes; and the 
 essay has enjoyed the almost unique honour of a 
 translation in the Jahrbuch of the German Shake- 
 speare Society, vol. xxxv. Some improvements 
 made on this occasion are repeated in the present 
 republication. 
 
 The essay on Coleridge is the introduction to 
 the selection from Coleridge's poetical works edited 
 by the writer for Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen's 
 "Muses' Library" (1898). "Shelley and Lord 
 Beaconsfield " is a paper read to the Shelley Society 
 in 1887, a very few copies of which were printed. 
 "The Story of Gycia" was contributed to The Eng- 
 lish Historical Review for January 1 897 ; and " The 
 Love Story of Luigi Tansillo" to Vol. L of The 
 Yellow Book (1894). Four introductions follow. 
 The essay on Beckford's "Vathek" was prefixed 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 to Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen's edition of the book 
 (1893); that on Moore to the "Thomas Moore 
 Anecdotes," edited by Mr. Wilmot Harrison, and 
 published by Messrs. Jarrold & Sons in 1899; that 
 on Thomas Love Peacock to Messrs. Dent & Co.'s 
 edition of Peacock's works (1891); and that on 
 Matthew Arnold to Messrs. Ward, Lock, and 
 Bowden's edition of "Alaric at Rome, and other 
 Poems," 1896 — a volume of the "Nineteenth 
 Century Classics " edited by Mr. Clement Shorter. 
 
 The essay on Emerson was written in 1896 for 
 "The Library of the World's Best Literature," 
 edited at New York by Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. 
 That on "Shelley's Views on Art" is in fact a 
 lecture, delivered in April 1899 ^^ the house of the 
 late Lord Leighton, in aid of the movement for its 
 acquisition by the community. When the discourse 
 was printed in T/ie Anglo-Saxon Review for Sep- 
 tember 1900, everything indicative of its original 
 character was omitted, a circumstance only men- 
 tioned in apology for a didactic attitude less ap- 
 propriate to an essay than to an address ex cathedra. 
 
 It will be seen that the obligations thus involved 
 and cordially acknowledged are numerous, as is 
 inevitable in the case of a volume which, reversing 
 
 b 
 
viii PREFACi: 
 
 the antique precept, proffers "non multum, sed 
 multa." The sole bonds of union among its con- 
 tents are their belonging with but one exception to 
 the domains of literary history and criticism, and 
 their having preluded their appeal to public interest 
 by interesting the author himself. 
 
 R. GARNETT. 
 
 April 20, 1901. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON TRANSLATING HOMER i 
 
 THE DATE AND OCCASION OF "THE TEMPEST" " 29 
 
 THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 55- 
 
 SHELLEY AND LORD BEACONSFIELD ... 99 
 
 THE STORY OF GYCIA 127 
 
 THE LOVE-STORY OF LUIGI TANSILLO . . 141 
 
 BECKFORD'S *'VATHEK" 161 
 
 THOMAS MOORE 195 
 
 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 239 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 283 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 301 
 
 SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 329 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 
 
 Ever and anon the world receives from some 
 bright spirit a tiny golden book — some Longinus 
 on the Sublime, or Mill on Liberty — to which 
 little can be added, and from which little can be 
 taken away, in which the main outlines of the 
 subject are perceived to have been traced for all 
 time by the hand of a master. Such — but for a 
 few unfortunate infringements of literary decorum 
 — is Matthew Arnold's trio of lectures "On 
 Translating Homer," where the main conditions 
 of success in Homeric translation are laid down 
 with such clearness, decision, and demonstrative 
 cogency that the translator who fails through 
 neglect of them is without excuse. Let him, 
 says Mr. Arnold, be above all penetrated by a 
 sense of four qualities in his author. Homer is 
 (l) eminently rapid; (2) eminently plain and 
 direct, both in his syntax and his words; (3) 
 eminently plain and direct in his matter and 
 ideas ; and (4) eminently noble. These are in- 
 deed the four cardinal points, like the four swans 
 
4 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 which, in Pope's " Temple of Fame," upbear the 
 chariot of Pindar. 
 
 Since the publication of Mr. Arnold's lectures in 
 1 86 1 few translators of the " Iliad," it may be hoped, 
 have gone to work without pondering his precepts, 
 while the number of attempts must have astonished 
 him. He seems to think it somewhat remarkable 
 that within the last ten years before he wrote two 
 fresh translations of the " Iliad " should have ap- 
 peared in England. From 1861 to 1888, twelve were 
 published, some of which, especially those by Way, 
 Blackie, and Worsley, are in various respects an 
 advance upon anything accomplished before. And 
 yet, with all the native power of these real poets, 
 and all the aid Mr. Arnold has given them, Pope 
 is not dethroned. A version which is in many 
 respects a travesty of the " Iliad " remains the 
 national version. Landor, Keats, Shelley, Tenny- 
 son, Mr. Arnold himself, have imbued our litera- 
 ture with the Hellenic spirit, and made it notorious 
 to all that whatever else Pope may be, he is not 
 a Greek. And yet his verses continue the posses- 
 sion of the nation, while the rest are only for 
 scholars and amateurs. Surely this is not credit- 
 able. Pope's "Iliad," indeed, neither should, nor 
 can, sink into oblivion ; it will always live as a 
 great example of the energy and resource of 
 the Enghsh language. But it is not a satisfac- 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 5 
 
 tory reflection that while the standard versions 
 of most other languages approximate more or less 
 closely to the spirit of Homer, that of our own 
 is hopelessly and ostentatiously alienated from it. 
 Several reasons have been assigned, but their 
 collective force is only adequate to a partial solu- 
 tion of the problem. It is no doubt true that, 
 with all his faults. Pope is the greatest English 
 poet who has as yet essayed Homeric translation 
 on any considerable scale. It is also true that his 
 best qualities, fire and vigour, are those beyond 
 all others essential to the translator of Homer, 
 the absence of which can be compensated by no 
 other virtue, and whose presence covers a multi- 
 tude of sins. Much must also be allowed for the 
 prestige of his great name and the long period 
 during which he reigned without a rival. But all 
 these considerations scarcely account for, much less 
 do they excuse, the supremacy of a work so entirely 
 in the spirit of the age of Queen Anne, long after 
 we have learned what really is the spirit of Homer. 
 The host of translators, then, who have arisen 
 since Pope, differing among each other in so many 
 respects, agree in this, that they have failed to 
 supersede him. If any other circumstance in which 
 they all agree could be found, it might be worth 
 considering whether the latter fact did not afford 
 the key to the former. 
 
6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Is there such a circumstance ? There is. With 
 the single exception of Sotheby, who is such a 
 mere echo of Pope that Mr. Arnold justly refuses 
 his version the right to exist, Pope's successors 
 have been unanimous in one respect — they have 
 repudiated his metre. They have tried blank verse, 
 hexameter rhymed and unrhymed, ballad measures, 
 nondescripts, the metre of Spenser and the metre 
 of Scott, but never the heroic couplet. This alone 
 might justify the conjecture that the cause of 
 failure lies here, and we believe that this proposi- 
 tion can be established as firmly as is possible 
 in the case of a merely aesthetic question. To 
 effect this we must show that objections lie against 
 the metrical forms preferred by modern translators, 
 which incapacitate each and all of these from pro- 
 perly representing Homer. We must next show 
 that these objections do not apply to heroic rhyme, 
 and that the disesteem under which it labours 
 is owing to its being confounded with the parti- 
 cular form of it exhibited by Pope. This latter 
 proposition is evident when once pointed out ; but 
 Pope's form not being the one we advocate, and 
 no specimen of a freer treatment existing except 
 Chapman's antiquated version of the "Odyssey," 
 we shall be constrained to follow Mr. Arnold's 
 example, and essay translation ourselves. 
 
 It would be impossible to examine every metri- 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 7 
 
 cal form which translators may have chosen to 
 adopt, and some are manifestly incapable of being 
 discussed to any useful purpose. Supposing, for 
 instance, which we utterly refuse to admit, that 
 the ideal translation were one in the manner of 
 Spenser or of Scott, it would still be apparent 
 that a Spenserian or Scottish translation was not 
 a feat that could bear repetition. Worsley's 
 Spenserian version leaves no room for rivalry, and 
 an equally perfect example of Scott's manner, 
 should such ever be produced, will bar the way 
 against every other. These and similar forms, 
 therefore, may be left out of consideration. There 
 are only four forms at once legitimate in them- 
 selves and admitting of indefinitely varied ex- 
 periment — blank verse, the English hexameter, 
 whether on the Greek model or in Mr. Way's 
 adaptation, the ballad Alexandrine, and the heroic 
 couplet. 
 
 At first sight plain blank verse would seem the 
 easiest metre in which Homer can be translated 
 and the best adapted to reflect his dignity and 
 simplicity. It is unquestionably true that the 
 bare meaning of Homer can be better conveyed in 
 this than in any rhymed metre. But, on the other 
 hand, although blank verse is the easiest metre 
 to write, it is the most difficult to write well. 
 What is still more to the point, bad blank verse 
 
8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 is in our language a better medium for rendering 
 Homer's manner than good blank verse. The 
 reason is, that the majesty and music of good 
 English blank verse (and in skilful hands no 
 metrical form is more majestic or more musical) 
 depend in great measure upon variety of pause. 
 To be frequently varied the pauses must them- 
 selves be frequent; hence the movement of the 
 finest English blank verse is slow. Homer, on 
 the other hand, as Mr. Arnold truly tells us, is 
 "eminently rapid." To render Homer into the 
 blank verse of Milton or Coleridge, therefore, 
 is to transpose him into another key, and a key 
 as unsuitable for his subject as the burden of 
 " In Memoriam " would be for the substance of 
 " Ye Mariners of England." The Homeric hexa- 
 meter cannot be better described and exemplified 
 than in Schlegel's couplet, thus rendered by 
 Coleridge — 
 
 " Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows ; 
 Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the 
 ocean." 
 
 How does this description agree with an average 
 specimen of noble English blank verse ? 
 
 " Though ne'er yet 
 Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, 
 Enough from incommunicable dream, 
 And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought, 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 9 
 
 Has shone within me, that, serenely now, 
 
 And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre 
 
 Suspended in the solitary dome 
 
 Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 
 
 I wait thy breath, Great Parent ; that my strain 
 
 May modulate with murmurs of the air, 
 
 And motions of the forests and the sea. 
 
 And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 
 
 Of night and day, and the deep heart of man." 
 
 The ear accustomed to harmony like this will be 
 satisfied with nothing inferior, but to demand it is 
 to demand something quite un-Homeric. If, on 
 the other hand, blank verse is not thus artfully 
 solemnised with variety of cadence, it becomes mere 
 prose cut into lengths. The blank verse translator 
 of Homer, therefore, is in an inextricable dilemma. 
 If, like Cowper, he frames his verse on the Mil tonic 
 model, he may write finely, but he cannot write 
 Homer; he may give Homer's verbal meaning 
 with perfect accuracy, but he steeps it in a colour 
 most alien to its own. If, on the other hand, 
 like Lord Derby, he writes a plain, straightfor- 
 ward blank verse, neither harsh nor musical, he 
 does not, indeed, hide Homer from the reader; 
 on the contrary, he disarrays him of his singing 
 robes. 
 
 The English hexameter, advocated and exempli- 
 fied by Mr. Arnold himself, has several obvious 
 advantages. It is the best adapted of any metre 
 
10 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 to reproduce the movement of Homer's verse and 
 his syntax ; it usually admits of line being rendered 
 for line ; and it seems to be Homer's own metre. 
 It must be granted that a poet should be rendered 
 in his own metre whenever possible; but the 
 truth is, that in the case of Homer this is not 
 possible, that the English hexameter, unless when 
 converted, as Mr. Way converts it, into a semi-lyrical 
 metre, resembles the Greek as draughts resemble 
 chess, or a Jew's harp the harp hung upon the 
 willows of Babylon. The Greek hexameter con- 
 sists of two descriptions of metrical feet — the dactyl, 
 composed of one long syllable followed by two 
 short ones; and the spondee, composed of two 
 consecutive long syllables. One long syllable being 
 equal to two short ones, the time occupied by these 
 feet is the same. In English, accent takes the place 
 of metrical quantity, and the definition of the 
 dactyl becomes one accented syllable followed by 
 two unaccented ones; and of the spondee, two 
 strongly accented syllables in succession. Now 
 the English hexameter cannot, like the Greek, 
 consist of dactyls and spondees, for the conclusive 
 reason that there are hardly any spondees in the 
 language. Mr. Arnold says that " the translator 
 must learn to use spondees freely"; but, sub- 
 joins Mrs. Glasse, first catch your spondee. It 
 requires infinite care and art to bring two equally 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER ii 
 
 accented syllables together in English. How 
 difficult it is we may see by the very lines with 
 which Coleridge endeavoured to exenipHfy the 
 spondee — 
 
 " From long to long in solemn sort 
 Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot, yet ill able 
 Ever to come up with dactyl trisyllable." 
 
 In the first line not one foot is a spondee, all 
 are iambi. In the second the poet does manage 
 to get three spondees and a half together, after 
 which unexampled feat he skips with alacrity 
 into the dactyl. The place of the spondee in the 
 English hexameter is generally occupied by the 
 trochee, consisting in English of one accented 
 syllable followed by an unaccented one. Of all 
 feet this is the most saltatory (^' Trip it lightly as 
 you go. On the gay fantastic toe "), and its usurpa- 
 tion of the place of the weighty spondee bereaves 
 the measure of its dignity, and destroys the 
 isochrony, or equivalence of the feet in time, which 
 is the very life of it. " This is a galloping measure, 
 a hop, and a trot, and a gallop," says Coleridge of 
 his own hexameters. Even the dactyl, though 
 congenial to our language, is continually getting 
 transformed into something else by the conflux 
 of monosyllables in this monosyllabic tongue, on 
 which the stress will not fall as the poet means 
 it to fall. In the few specimens presented by Mr. 
 
12 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Arnold we have many such juxtapositions as 
 "Woman, I," "if like a/' "sees thy tears," none 
 of which are dactyls. The German translators, it 
 must be admitted, have succeeded well, notwith- 
 standing similar metrical disabilities,^ but they 
 have the vast advantage of a polysyllabic language, 
 which gives something of the grand roll and boom- 
 ing music of the Homeric hexameter. These are 
 the most vital points, and, in our judgment, the 
 indispensable effect can only be obtained by 
 recourse to a music unknown to Homer, the 
 music of rhyme. 
 
 Blank verse is obviously incapable of this music, 
 but is the hexameter? It is not; by simply 
 removing the last syllable we convert the English 
 hexameter into a lyrical measure of fine quality. 
 The discovery, or at least the first important 
 application of it, is Tennyson's. Scores of lines 
 in " Maud " are on this pattern — 
 
 " Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek ? " 
 
 If instead of " meek " the poet had written " placid," 
 
 ^ The German hexameter, nevertheless, has been severely 
 criticised in its own country — 
 
 " In Weimar und Jena macht man die Hexameter wie den : 
 Und die Pentameter sind noch viel erbarmlicher." 
 
 " In Weimar and Jena they write their hexameters like this : 
 And the pentameters are still more wretched affairs." 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 13 
 
 he would have given us a perfect English hexa- 
 meter; as it is, his lyrical line is nothing but the 
 hexameter, deemed so especially epic, deprived of 
 its final syllable, and made to rhyme with the next 
 line but one. Mr. Way, by far the most spirited 
 and, except Worsley, the most poetical among the 
 recent translators of Homer, has adopted this hint, 
 largely profiting at the same time by the example of 
 our great modern master of impetuous and sonorous 
 versification, Mr. Swinburne. He has immensely 
 augmented the sonority and compass of the verse by 
 giving it rhyme, which usually involves the docking 
 of the final syllable, and by no longer trying to 
 avail himself exclusively of dactyls and spondees, 
 but using anapaests or any other foot which takes 
 an equal time in pronunciation. When such feet 
 creep into a professedly dactylic hexameter the 
 effect is bad, for we know that they are there in 
 spite of the poet ; when the necessity is frankly 
 accepted it is quite another thing. Mr. Way's 
 rhymed and curtailed hexameter, which is sub- 
 stantially the metre of Mr. Morris's " Sigurd " and 
 his translation of the " Odyssey," but more con- 
 sistently polysyllabic, and hence more sonorous 
 and musical, is not only an improvement upon 
 the hexameter of the classical pattern, but also 
 upon another leading candidate for public favour, 
 the old Alexandrine or ballad metre, so frequently 
 
14 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 recommended as the best for Homeric translation, 
 and which undoubtedly possesses strong claims. 
 The superiority of Mr. Way's form, nevertheless, 
 becomes apparent upon comparison with the best 
 representatives of the ballad form, Chapman and 
 Professor Blackie — 
 
 " The spirit I first did breathe 
 Did never teach me that ; much less, since the contempt 
 
 of death 
 Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy was, 
 Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass 
 Without improvement. In the fire must Hector's trial 
 
 shine; 
 Here must his country, father, friends, be in him made 
 
 divine." 
 
 Fine lines, but whose strength is less like the free 
 sweep of the rolling sea itself than the energy of 
 the strong swimmer who buffets it. Professor 
 Blackie is smoother, but gets perilously near sing- 
 song — 
 
 " Thus he ; and stout Tydides his broad shoulders flung 
 
 around 
 A huge and tawny lion's hide that reached down to the 
 
 ground ; 
 Then seized his spear, and forth he went, and round the 
 
 warlike pair 
 Whom Nestor named, and through the camp with urgent 
 
 feet did bear." 
 
 Each of these hues might perfectly well be divided 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 15 
 
 into two, and would then appear fitter for the 
 guitar than the harp. But Mr. Way's line is like 
 the hexameter it represents, a metrical unit — 
 
 "Alas, 'tis one of the gods which abide on Olympus' height, 
 That in shape of the prophet commandeth that here by the 
 
 galleys we fight. 
 Of a truth no Kalchas is this, no bird-seer taught by a god, 
 For I followed the gleam of his ankles, the flash of his feet 
 
 as they trod, 
 When he turned him away — the signs of a God no man 
 
 may mistake. 
 Yea, and within this breast of mine is my spirit awake. 
 And it yeameth for fight, and battleward straineth yet 
 
 more than before ; 
 In my feet is the fury of onset ; mine hands are afire for 
 
 the war." 
 
 Lines like these have indeed the clash and ring of 
 the original, and half the effect is due to the happy 
 employment of rhyme. 
 
 Mr. Way has thus made a great advance upon 
 hexametric and ballad metre, and yet if, with all 
 his fire and passion, an undeniable tinge of eccen- 
 tricity detracts from the merit of his noble version, 
 the fault appears to us to lie in this very point of 
 metre. His is a dangerous form, because it almost 
 inevitably suggests to the translator that Homer is 
 more archaic than is really the case. Writing in 
 a style so nearly akin to that of the ballad, he is 
 tempted to make Homer rather a minstrel than a 
 
1 6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 poet. What would be right if he were working 
 upon the lays out of which the " Iliad " originated, 
 is wrong when one is dealing with the consummate 
 work of a great poetical artist. If the translator 
 forgets this he becomes archaic, and if he becomes 
 archaic he is lost. No translation will ever estab- 
 lish itself that is not alive with the vitality of its 
 own age. Something of an antique cast is indeed 
 essential, but it must never be forgotten that 
 Homer is a bard for all time ; and that if in one 
 sense the oldest of the. poets, he is in another the 
 youngest. The rust of antiquity, happily, has not 
 eaten very deeply into Mr. Way's diction, but the 
 charm of his version is undoubtedly impaired 
 by the constant recurrence of such oddities as 
 '^ onset - yell," " maddened up," " battle - stay," 
 " outrage-wild," ^' get them aback," and the affecta- 
 tion of such comparatively legitimate, still local or 
 obsolescent expressions as *^ garth," *' forthright." 
 These blemishes would not have existed if Mr. 
 Way had been writing in blank verse or heroic 
 rhyme; and if his metre really tends to generate 
 them, this is a heavy deduction from its incon- 
 testable merits. 
 
 We have now arrived by an exhaustive process 
 at the rhymed heroic metre, which Mr. Arnold 
 allows to be one of the possible metres for a 
 translator of Homer. We will not say the heroic 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 17 
 
 couplet, for the neglect of this noble and national 
 form of verse, not merely in translation but in 
 original composition, is probably due to its asso- 
 ciation with the couplet of Pope. Pope's versifi- 
 cation is, indeed, an affair of couplets; he strictly 
 confines the verse to the distich, and not only 
 rejects the variety he might have obtained by the 
 free use of the triplet and Alexandrine, but strives 
 to make every couplet the counterpart of its fellows. 
 If he had not been a great poet, endowed with 
 more fire and animation than any other Homeric 
 translator except Chapman and Way, the result 
 would have been a dull monotony; as it is, he is 
 spirited enough, but with the spirit of a Dryden 
 rather than of a Homer, not so much epic as epi- 
 grammatic. But why assume that Pope's polished 
 pattern has superseded every other form of the 
 heroic couplet, when it has been rejected by the 
 more distinguished of his successors? If Byron 
 copied him in the ^* Corsair," Keats went to Dryden 
 for a model when writing *' Lamia," and the ver- 
 sification of Mr. Morris's ''Jason" is nearly the 
 same as that one of the first examples of English 
 Homeric translation. Chapman's ''Odyssey." It is 
 not generally remembered that in this, his second 
 attempt, Chapman replaced the Alexandrine by 
 the heroic line, and that the greatest of English 
 critics, Coleridge, commended him for doing so, 
 
1 8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 and wished that he had executed his " Iliad " on 
 the same plan. " When/' says his editor, Hooper, 
 "the ear has become habituated to the rhythm, 
 there is a dramatic power about Chapman's 
 'Odyssey* that has not been attained by any 
 subsequent translator." It is indeed true that 
 Chapman and Morris's pattern of the heroic metre 
 (which is substantially the same as that of " En- 
 dymion "), however admirable for metrical romance, 
 does not quite attain the dignity of epic. It is too 
 picturesquely vagrant, too free and easy, carries 
 variety of pause to excess, is not sufficiently con- 
 centrated and energetic. What we want is some- 
 thing intermediate between it and the sonorous 
 passion of Mr. Swinburne's "Anactoria," unsur- 
 passable as poetic declamation, but fitter for the 
 translator of Lucan and Juvenal than of Homer. 
 Could we have such a form, varied with the triplet 
 and Alexandrine, which Dryden used so effectively, 
 and wielded by a translator not inferior to Pope or 
 Way in poetical spirit, we should have something 
 possessing all the claims to popularity which keep 
 Pope's at the head of English versions, and admit- 
 ting of strict fidelity to that Greek spirit of which 
 Pope had not the most remote perception. Nothing 
 in our language is or can be more deeply imbued 
 with this spirit than Shelley's versions of the minor 
 Homeric hymns, executed in heroic metre. It 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 19 
 
 must be admitted that the movement of the Homeric 
 verse is imperfectly represented by English heroics, 
 and that the recurring rhymes tend to confine, as 
 with river-banks, what in the original is limitless 
 as ocean. But the alternative thus presented to 
 us, the use of the English hexameter on the Greek 
 model, we have already seen to be unacceptable; 
 and if Mr. Way's semi-lyrical hexameter version 
 does not establish itself, a question which we admit 
 to be still sub judice, it will at least not easily be 
 superseded by another on the same plan. The 
 field for the translator in heroic verse is more open. 
 Of the specimens appended we shall not be ex- 
 pected to say much. It will be remembered that 
 they are mainly offered as contributions to the 
 metrical department of the subject, and that their 
 right to existence is vindicated if they are satis- 
 factory on this point alone. If we endeavoured 
 to enumerate the other requisites of a successful 
 version we should speedily affect the reader as 
 Imlac's definition of a poet affected Rasselas. Mr. 
 Arnold's four points are the main ones; for the 
 rest, the style to be recommended to the Homeric 
 translator cannot be better expressed than by 
 Pope's description of the style of Homer him- 
 self— 
 
 " A strong expression most he seemed to affect, 
 And here and there disclosed a brave neglect." 
 
20 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER OF THE HOSTS 
 
 As when on some loud coast the wind impels 
 
 The thronging waters, vast the billow swells, 
 
 And o'er all other sea a moment towers, 
 
 Then, furiously flung forward on the shores. 
 
 Curves its surmounting crest, and far away 
 
 Hurls with a roar the lavish-scattered spray : 
 
 So streamed in one huge host the gathered bands 
 
 Of Greeks incessant to the war. Commands 
 
 Their leaders gave ; silently moved along 
 
 The others ; dumb seemed all that serried throng, 
 
 So deep the awe their chieftains did inspire : 
 
 They marched, and as they marched their armour flashed 
 
 forth fire. 
 But as when, gathered in a rich man's stall. 
 Unnumbered ewes stand at the milking, all 
 With ceaseless bleats replying to their young, 
 Uproar prevailed the Trojan host among : 
 From various lands, of stranger tribes who came, 
 Unlike their accent, nor their speech the same. 
 Their bosoms blazed with fire from Ares caught ; 
 Like passion mid the Greeks Athene wrought : 
 And Terror stalked around, and with him Dread ; 
 And Strife insatiate mid the armies sped. 
 Sister and mate of Ares, who appears 
 Pigmy at first, then on the sudden rears 
 Her head in heaven's eminence, while yet 
 Her feet upon the nether earth are set. 
 There mid the hosts woe-working was she found. 
 Strewing the fire of battle all around. 
 
 THE TROJAN CAMP AT NIGHT 
 
 But they, full of high thoughts, by battle's gate, 
 Burning huge fires, all night encamping sate ; 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 21 
 
 As when the bright stars gloriously gird 
 
 The radiant moon, and aether sleeps unstirred. 
 
 And boldly stand forth headland, cliff, and grove, 
 
 And heaven immeasurable is rent above, 
 
 And every constellation manifest. 
 
 And gladness fills the gazing shepherd's breast : 
 
 So many fires 'twixt stream and navy shone 
 
 Before the massy walls of Ilion — 
 
 A thousand fires ! By each upon the plain 
 
 Sat fifty warriors, flashing forth amain 
 
 Fire from their arms, and, champing the white corn. 
 
 Their steeds stood by the cars, awaiting fair-throned Mom. 
 
 POSEIDON GOING TO THE AID OF 
 THE GREEKS 
 
 Zeus, having led up Hector and his might 
 Unto the navy, left them there to fight 
 Incessantly with toil and wear of war, 
 But turned himself his radiant eyes afar; 
 The many-steeded plains of Thrace he scanned. 
 And close-ranked Mysians, fighters hand to hand ; 
 The milk-fed Hippomolgians viewed he then. 
 And Abii, most just of mortal men. 
 But unto Ilion looked he not at all. 
 Not deeming that it ever could befall 
 That any God would aid or those who bled 
 For Troy, or who against her combated. 
 
 But great Poseidon kept not watch in vain. 
 Marvelling he marked the battle on the plain. 
 Throned upon Samothrace's woody crest, 
 Whence was the whole of Ida manifest. 
 And Troy's towers and the navy clear- exprest. 
 
22 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 There sat he, risen from the main's profound, 
 
 Grieving to see his Grecians giving ground. 
 
 And greatly wroth with Zeus. Sudden at last 
 
 He rose, and swiftly down the steep he passed ; 
 
 The mountain trembled with each step he took, 
 
 The forest with the quaking mountain shook. 
 
 Three strides he made, and with the fourth he stood 
 
 At Aegae, where is founded 'neath the flood 
 
 His hall of glorious gold that cannot fade ; 
 
 Entering therein, beneath the yoke he laid 
 
 His steeds with feet of brass and manes of gold. 
 
 Swift as the wind, and his own frame did fold 
 
 In golden weeds, and grasped within his hand 
 
 The well- wrought golden scourge, and took his stand 
 
 Behind the coursers, and immediately 
 
 Wended upon the surface of the sea ; 
 
 And all the whales and monsters knew their king. 
 
 And rose up from the bottom frolicking ; 
 
 And the sea's face was parted with a smile. 
 
 And rapidly the horses sped the while ; 
 
 The brazen axle was not wet below ; 
 
 And to the Grecian navy did they go. 
 
 ACHILLES RECOVERS THE BODY OF 
 PATROCLUS 
 
 These words swift Iris spake, then flew above. 
 And straight uprose the chieftain dear to Jove. 
 Divine Athene on his shoulders laid 
 Her many-tasselled aegis, and displayed 
 A gold cloud round his head, and caused intense 
 Efiusion of bright fire to issue thence. 
 And as aerial flame is seen afar, 
 Ascending from some isle where men of war 
 Have all day long assailed with shafts and spears 
 The lone and unassisted islanders. 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 23 
 
 But at sunsetting these along their shores 
 
 Light frequent beacons ; swift the signal soars 
 
 Summoning their neighbours in fleet ships to speed 
 
 Thither, and bring them succour in their need ; 
 
 Thus streamed the splendour of Achilles' brow 
 
 To heaven, as he arose and stood below 
 
 Behind the trench, nor with the rest did stand, 
 
 Observant of his mother's wise command. 
 
 He stood and shouted. Pallas too did swell 
 
 His shout with hers, and straight unutterable 
 
 Tumult and terror on the Trojans fell. 
 
 And as when loud war-music thrilHng clear 
 
 Rings from the clarion of a trumpeter 
 
 When a town's walls are compassed with foes. 
 
 So thrillingly Achilles' voice arose. 
 
 When then their ears rang with that brazen shout 
 
 Great dread fell on them all, the steeds about 
 
 Turned with the chariots, for they did forecast 
 
 Ruin, and they that drove beheld aghast 
 
 The fire that unabatingly was shed 
 
 By Pallas from Aeacides's head. 
 
 Thrice did Achilles lift his voice's might. 
 
 Thrice Trojans and allies recoiled in flight. 
 
 And twelve great champions, famous in the wars. 
 
 Died, pierced by their own spears and crushed by their 
 
 own cars. 
 But, triumphing, the Greeks Patroclus dead 
 Drew from amid the javelins ; on a bed 
 Bestowed the corpse ; and every Myrmidon 
 Stood by it, weeping bitter tears thereon. 
 Sadly mid these Achilles also bent. 
 Wailing his mate beloved, gory and rent. 
 Stretched on the bier, whom he himself had sent 
 With his own car and coursers to the plain. 
 But not with them had welcomed back again. 
 
24 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 ACHILLES ARMS HIMSELF 
 
 Eager Athene thus did Zeus incite 
 Yet more, from heaven she suddenly took flight ; 
 In figure like an osprey long of wing 
 She darted where the Greeks apparelling 
 Themselves in arms were stationed, there imbued 
 Achilles' breast with nectar, lest he should 
 Faint in the battle, for refreshment fain. 
 Then flew up to her father's dome again : 
 But from the ships they poured and swarmed upon the plain. 
 And thick as Zeus' cold flakes, when forth they fare, 
 Borne of the north wind through the crystal air. 
 Legions innumerable landward flowed 
 Of many-glancing helms, and mail that glowed 
 With over-lapping plates, and bossy shields. 
 And ashen spears. Their splendour from the fields 
 Flashed up to heaven, and all the earth about 
 Laughed luminous with lustre they cast out. 
 And quaked beneath the infinite footfall. 
 And high Achilles armed him mid them all. 
 Raging he gnashed his teeth, flame in his eye 
 Lightened, but on his heart weighed misery ; 
 And wrath and sadness shared him as he stood. 
 And bright Hephaestus' battle-garb indued. 
 First in his greaves his legs he did enclasp. 
 Well riveting the silver ankle-hasp ; 
 His bosom in his cuirass next arrayed ; 
 Then hung his shining, silver-studded blade 
 Athwart his shoulder ; then his shield he took. 
 Massy and huge ; whose beam was as the look 
 Of the broad moon from heaven ; or as when 
 Fire blazes on the hills where shepherds pen 
 Their flocks at night, and splendour streams to sea, 
 Discerned of them who toss unhappily 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 25 
 
 On the great waters, who may not arrive 
 
 At land, but with the wind unwilHng drive ; 
 
 Such light the fair elaborate buckler shed. 
 
 Then his huge crested helmet on his head, 
 
 Which shone as if a star his brows had crowned, 
 
 He set, and all the golden plumes around 
 
 Danced thrilling, on the helm by deft Hephaestus bound. 
 
 Then did he prove the armour, if it might 
 
 Be truly fashioned, fitting him aright. 
 
 And felt as he were winged with feathers light, 
 
 So aptly did it sheathe him. Next the spear 
 
 He grasped which Peleus anciently did bear, 
 
 Tough, long and heavy, which not any one 
 
 Of Greeks could brandish, saving him atone ; 
 
 The shaft by Chiron felled on Pelion, then 
 
 To Peleus given, doom to warrior men. 
 
 But Alcimus and bold Automedon 
 
 Wrought by the steeds, fitting the harness on. 
 
 The horses' mouths with curbs they did constrain, 
 
 And to the chariot seat drew back the rein. 
 
 Automedon then mounted, in his right 
 
 Shaking the beaming scourge. As sunshine bright, 
 
 Godlike Achilles sprang unto his side. 
 
 And loudly to his father's coursers cried : 
 
 Xanthus and Balius, Podarge's breed. 
 Bring ye this day your lord with better speed 
 Back from the field, when from the field ye fare, 
 Nor leave him, as ye left Patroclus, there. 
 
 But to him audibly his steed thus said. 
 Swift Xanthus, from the chariot, as his head 
 He on a sudden drooped, and with his mane. 
 Unloosened from the yoke-band, swept the plain. 
 For white-armed Hera gave him voice — This day, 
 Achilles, we shall save thee from the fray. 
 
26 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 But nigh at hand the hour when thou must fall, 
 
 For which accuse not thou thy steeds at all, 
 
 But Gods, and Fates who life and death dispense, 
 
 Not by our tardiness or indolence 
 
 Did Trojans strip the arms Patroclus wore. 
 
 But the bright God whom fair-haired Leto bore 
 
 Slew him among the first, yet Hector won 
 
 The glory. Fleet may we as Zephyr run, 
 
 Who fleetest among winds is famed to be. 
 
 Yet slaughter and the slayers wait for thee, 
 
 Whom shall a mortal slay, and eke a Deity. 
 
 Here ceased he, for his tongue the Furies tied : 
 
 To him Achilles wrathfully replied, 
 
 Xanthus, why bode my death ? thou need'st not so 
 
 That I must perish here full well I know. 
 
 Far from my father, from my mother far ; 
 
 Yet verily I will not cease from war 
 
 Till I have overthrown the Trojans quite. 
 
 He said, and shouting drove into the fight. 
 
 THE GODS JOIN IN THE BATTLE 
 
 But to the Gods, coming where strove these men, 
 Came strife, and with the rest they battled then. 
 And with a mighty voice Athene cried. 
 Now where the moat the rampart fortified 
 Shouting, and now the roaring main beside. 
 Ares upon his part, as storms a blast. 
 Now crying to the Trojans his voice cast 
 Forth from the citadel, and now where is 
 Callicolone by swift Simois. 
 
 Thus cheered they on the armies, their own might 
 Mingling with theirs in formidable fight. 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 27 
 
 And Zeus the sire of Gods and men dismayed 
 The heavens with thunder, and Poseidon made 
 Tremor in all the immeasurable earth, 
 And Ida where the many springs have birth 
 Quaked with her peak and every mountain-spur, 
 And Troy's towers and the navy quaked with her. 
 And nether Hades, despot of the dead, 
 Leapt from his throne and cried aloud, in dread 
 Lest earth should yawn, so strong Poseidon shook, 
 And suffer men and heavenly Gods to look 
 Into the squalor of his realm unblest, 
 Which even the undying Gods detest. 
 
 - * 
 
/ 
 
THE DATE AND OCCASION OF 
 "THE TEMPEST" 
 
THE DATE AND OCCASION OF 
 "THE TEMPEST" 
 
 In an essay on the Politics and Religion of Shake- 
 speare, published in Macmillan's Magazine for 
 January 1889, Mr. Goldwin Smith commits himself 
 to a view of the date and purpose of "The Tem- 
 pest" which will be far from commanding the 
 general assent which he seems to expect. "Who 
 Ferdinand and Miranda were," he says, " is not 
 doubtful. It appears from the manuscript of Vertue 
 that *The Tempest' was acted by John Heminge 
 and the rest of the King's company before Prince 
 Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Prince Pala- 
 tine Elector, at the beginning of the year 161 3. 
 Frederick had come over to receive his bride, the 
 Princess, who was the darling of all Protestant 
 hearts. Ferdinand, then, was Frederick, and 
 Miranda, Elizabeth." 
 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith's judgments on Shakespeare 
 are probably the result of independent study, and 
 
 he may not greatly care to acquaint himself with 
 
 31 
 
32 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 the course of Shakespearian criticism. He would 
 otherwise have been aware that the view of the 
 purpose of the drama thus propounded as self- 
 evident is supported by only two considerable 
 authorities, Tieck and Meissner; and that the date 
 of 1613, evidently essential to its acceptance, is 
 absolutely rejected by every recent editor and com- 
 mentator. The editors of last generation may have 
 been largely influenced by the alleged discovery of 
 a notice of the performance of the play in 161 1. 
 But, even since this has been admitted to be a 
 fabrication, criticism is no less unanimous in assign- 
 ing 1610 or 161 1 as the date. Such is the opinion 
 of Halliwell, Lloyd, Dowden, Grant White, Stokes, 
 Furnivall, Fleay, and Hudson. It is obvious that a 
 piece composed two or three years before the Prin- 
 cess Elizabeth's nuptials can have had no relation 
 to them ; that she cannot, in this case, be Miranda 
 or Frederick Ferdinand; that, if this be so, the 
 true interpretation of the drama must be quite 
 different from Mr. Goldwin Smith's, and that the 
 view which he almost takes for granted is, in 
 the present state of opinion, certain of unanimous 
 rejection. 
 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, nevertheless, is to our think- 
 ing perfectly right ; but proof must be found in an 
 elaborate investigation of the drama. In the follow- 
 ing remarks, the substance of which was stated 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 33 
 
 verbally to the New Shakespeare Society in January 
 1887,^ we hope to show — 
 
 1. That "The Tempest" was written for per- 
 formance before a private audience, and on occasion 
 of a marriage. 
 
 2. That the particular audience and the particular 
 marriage are known from documentary evidence, 
 and further revealed by evident allusions to the 
 personality of the bridegroom, and to the recent 
 death of Prince Henry, and by the introduction of 
 King James himself into the piece. 
 
 3. That there is additional internal evidence for 
 the date 161 3, and no evidence for any other date. 
 Our contention is substantially the same as that of 
 Tieck and Meissner, who have, however, rather 
 indicated the line of argument than elaborated 
 the argument itself. 
 
 It may, in the first place, be taken as now uni- 
 versally admitted that "The Tempest" is one of 
 Shakespeare's very latest plays. The theory of 
 Hunter, assigning the date to 1598, and that of 
 Elze, fixing it at 1604, not only have nothing solid 
 to rest upon, but are absolutely negatived by in- 
 ternal evidence. Without wishing to carry metrical 
 tests to an extreme, it is incontestable that the 
 
 ^ See the report of Mr. Moulton's remarkable paper on " The 
 Tempest," and the ensuing discussion, in the Academy for January 
 22, 1887. 
 
 C 
 
34 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 versification of Shakespeare's later dramas differs in 
 a marked manner from that of the earlier, and that 
 the versification of " The Tempest " stamps it as a 
 late play. Nor does any play bear more obvious 
 tokens of maturity in serene wisdom, intellectual 
 force, and mastery of dramatic art. The date being 
 thus approximately established on internal testi- 
 mony, it would be something more than a wonder 
 if the mention of the "still-vexed Bermoothes" 
 were a pure accident without reference to the storm 
 and shipwreck that made the Bermudas known to 
 the English public through the medium of Sylvester 
 Jourdan's pamphlet, published in October i6io. 
 Shakespeare, indeed, could derive little of his local 
 colouring from Jourdan, as the necessities of his plot 
 compelled him to transfer the Atlantic island to the 
 Mediterranean. It is nevertheless impossible to doubt 
 that Jourdan's narrative must have been familiar 
 to him. The numerous parallels produced by 
 Malone leave no room for question. The error of 
 this eminent critic is not in the identification of 
 Shakespeare's storm with the Bermuda tempest, 
 but in the gratuitous assumption that because the 
 narrative on which the play was founded was pub- 
 lished in October 1610, therefore the play must 
 have been written immediately afterwards. We 
 have, on the contrary, no right to assume the exist- 
 ence of the piece before the first notice we have of 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 35 
 
 its representation, which, as already stated, took 
 place at the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to 
 the Elector Palatine. 
 
 The proofs that " The Tempest " was actually 
 written for private representation on this occasion 
 are of the strongest. Two circumstances especially 
 suggest that it was not intended for an ordinary 
 audience : — 
 
 1. It is much below the ordinary length of a 
 Shakespearian drama. The average is three thou- 
 sand lines; "The Tempest" has only about two 
 thousand. For this, on the supposition of its having 
 been written for representation at Court at a period 
 of general festivity, there are two excellent and 
 indeed imperative reasons. The time of the 
 monarch and his guests must not be unduly en- 
 croached upon ; and the piece must not be on too large 
 a scale to be written, rehearsed, and put upon the 
 stage with great expedition. We shall see that, on 
 our theory, the entire preparation of "The Tem- 
 pest " could at most have occupied little more than 
 two months; so that there would be the strongest 
 motive to make the play as brief as consistent with 
 the due exposition of the subject. 
 
 2. For the same and kindred reasons it would 
 be an object to have as few changes of scene 
 as possible. " The Tempest " is unique among 
 Shakespeare's plays in this respect. After the 
 
36 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 brief representation of the deck of the storm- 
 tossed vessel with which the play opens, there is 
 practically but one scene ; for though the action 
 occasionally shifts from the space before Prospero's 
 cell to some other part of the island, everything 
 is avoided which might necessitate a change of 
 decoration.^ Neither is there any change of cos- 
 tume except Prospero's assumption of his ducal 
 robes in the last act which takes place on the 
 stage. In keeping with this general restraint is 
 the compression of the action, which, instead of 
 stretching over a long period as usual with 
 Shakespeare, is, as we are frequently reminded, 
 accomplished within three hours, or about the 
 time which the actual representation of the drama 
 would occupy. 
 
 The strongest argument, however, is the intro- 
 duction of two masques such as were in Shake- 
 speare's age usually presented to sovereigns on 
 occasions of ceremony. The machinery of the 
 masque in Act iii. scene 3 is much more elabo- 
 rate than would have been requisite if the scene 
 had not been introduced for its own sake. Still 
 more significant is the nuptial masque of Juno, 
 
 1 Though the scenic resources of Shakespeare's age were limited, 
 they were sufficient to be troublesome on a private stage. Tombs, 
 rocks, hell-mouths, steeples, beacons, and trees are found in lists of 
 properties. 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 37 
 
 Ceres, and Iris in the fourth act, which, when 
 the real purpose of the play is overlooked, appears 
 such a mere excrescence that it has been supposed 
 to be an interpolation. The untenableness of this 
 notion appears from two simple considerations. In 
 the first place, if the masque goes, the fourth act 
 almost disappears along with it ; this act is in any 
 case remarkably short, and can only be made of 
 due proportionate length by the dance which ensues 
 upon the masque. In the second place, the noblest 
 passage in the play is inextricably associated with 
 the masque, and stands or falls with it. It is com- 
 mon to quote — 
 
 " Like the baseless fabric of a vision." 
 
 This is incorrect; Shakespeare wrote ^^ this 
 vision," meaning the interlude which has just been 
 exhibited, to which a few lines farther on he 
 again refers as " this insubstantial pageant." Who- 
 ever wrote this speech wrote, or at least designed, 
 the masque also. If, as some maintain, the pageant 
 was interpolated by Francis Beaumont^ upon the 
 revival of the piece, Beaumont must have penned 
 one of the most inspired passages in literature, 
 
 ^ It is perfectly possible — though we see no especial reason for 
 the supposition — that Beaumont or some one else may have written 
 the interlude under Shakespeare's direction. All we need insist 
 upon is, that it belongs to the scheme of the play, and was planned 
 and prescribed by the play's author. 
 
38 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 and Shakespeare must have written a fourth act 
 of disproportionate brevity. Neither of these pro- 
 positions will find easy credit; but if they are not 
 true, Shakespeare must have had some very cogent 
 motive for introducing this apparently aimless 
 pageantry into the very heart of his drama. This 
 could be nothing else than the fact that, in one 
 point of view, ^*The Tempest" is a spectacular play 
 for the entertainment of princes and courtiers upon 
 a great occasion ; and that from another, the seem- 
 ing impertinence enabled him to stamp his piece 
 as a hymeneal drama. To condense our argument 
 to a point, this nuptial interlude is either a mere 
 idle excrescence or pregnant with significance. 
 The former it cannot be, for if it is removed the 
 fourth act tumbles to pieces, and the finest passage 
 in the drama goes along with it. If, on the other 
 hand, it has a significance, this must relate to some- 
 thing in the situation of the spectators, who must 
 have been aware of some circumstance justifying 
 its introduction, and this could be nothing else 
 than a marriage deeply interesting to some persons 
 among the audience. 
 
 This much might have been inferred if the occa- 
 sion of the first recorded performance of the play 
 had been unknown; when, however, we learn from 
 Vertue's MS. what it was, and who the audience 
 were, the purpose of the drama becomes perfectly 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 39 
 
 clear. It is not credible that so many marks of 
 a play intended for Court representation — brevity, 
 unity of time and place, a brilliant spectacle ap- 
 parently unconnected with the plot, and to which 
 nevertheless everything is made to lead up — should 
 combine in a mere revival of a play written for 
 the ordinary stage. Much less can the piece be 
 a revival of one which had already done duty as 
 a hymeneal drama, for Shakespeare never pro- 
 duced anything unfitting the occasion ; and it is 
 safe to affirm that before the espousals of Frederick 
 and Elizabeth no marriage had taken place in his 
 time to which "The Tempest" could be in the 
 least degree appropriate. Everything bespeaks a 
 royal marriage, and everything corresponds with 
 the royal marriage of 161 3. The foreign prince 
 come from beyond sea, the island princess who 
 has never left her home, the wise father who 
 brings about the auspicious consummation by his 
 policy — all found their counterparts among the 
 splendid company that watched the performance 
 on that February night. The perception of the 
 absolute appropriateness of the piece to the occa- 
 sion must have heightened their enjoyment to 
 a degree which, even with our vastly enhanced 
 reverence for the genius of Shakespeare, we can- 
 not reproduce. Every point would be new and 
 bright, every allusion would be taken as soon as 
 
40 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 made. What a smile, for instance, must have 
 gone round at Gonzalo's speech : — 
 
 " Would they believe me 
 If I should say I saw such islanders ?" 
 
 But that assembly numbered shadows as well 
 as men. **The Tempest" would hardly have ex- 
 isted in its present form, and certainly would have 
 been far from exemplifying Shakespeare's courtly 
 tact and tender humanity, but for the gloom thrown 
 upon the marriage festivities by the recent death 
 of the king's eldest son. Some attention to dates 
 will here be requisite. The first apparent allusion 
 to the marriage treaty in the State Papers is in 
 December 1611, when Frederick is named among 
 possible candidates for the Princess's hand. On 
 August 3, 161 2, the arrival of an envoy from him 
 is mentioned, ^'who has gone post-haste to the 
 King.'* But another candidate is in the field. On 
 October 9 Sir Dudley Carleton is informed that the 
 " Savoy match is nearly concluded. All approve 
 it except the churchmen." It probably had the 
 support of the Queen, who was secretly a Roman 
 Cathohc. On October 22, however, the Palatine 
 arrives in person, and is presented by the King 
 with a ring worth £iSoo. His suit must have 
 prospered immediately : for the Prince had arranged 
 to conduct his sister to Germany before his sudden 
 
THE DATE OF '^THE TEMPEST" 41 
 
 and startling death on November 6 ensuing. The 
 situation was most embarrassing for the Palatine, 
 most grievous for the Court. Death and life were 
 joint inmates of the palace, where the Prince's 
 body lay for a month ere the arrangements for 
 the public funeral could be completed. Yet the 
 bridegroom was in England, and the marriage 
 could not be long delayed. 
 
 " The funeral baked meats 
 Must coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." 
 
 On December 2 the Palatine came back to visit his 
 mistress, but the marriage must have been regarded 
 as settled somewhat earlier, for on December 10 we 
 hear of a wedding present of ;£20,ooo from Scot- 
 land. On December 27 the pair were solemnly 
 affianced. On January 6 Sir Thomas Lake writes, 
 ^* The black is wearing out and the marriage pomps 
 preparing." Among these, as we have seen, was 
 the preparation of ''The Tempest," which may have 
 been commissioned about the end of November. 
 Shakespeare thus found himself in a position as 
 trying as ever tested the dexterity of a courtier 
 or the humanity of a man. How to reconcile the 
 demands of sorrow and joy on this unparalleled 
 occasion ? To ignore the late afQiction would be 
 heartless and an insult to the King, but how to 
 recognise it without darkening the nuptial joy and 
 
42 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 suggesting omens as sinister as Marie Antoinette's 
 tapestry? In the entire range of Shakespeare's 
 art there is nothing more exquisite than the skill 
 with which he has solved this problem. The recent 
 calamity is not unrecognised; on the contrary, the 
 supposed death of the drowned prince is a most 
 vital incident, kept continually in view. But, by a 
 consummate stroke of genius, the woe is taken 
 away from Prospero, the representative of James, 
 and transferred to the house of his enemy. The 
 lost prince is duly mourned, but not by his real 
 father. James is reminded of his bereavement, but 
 it is not obtruded upon him. The sense of loss 
 mingles, a fine and almost imperceptible element, 
 with the general cheerfulness. In the end, the 
 hitherto sonless Prospero gains a son, as the be- 
 reaved James is gaining one in the Palatine ; while, 
 a compliment within a compliment, delicate allusion 
 is made to the promise of Prince Charles. If this 
 be refined flattery, it is also refined humanity. To 
 ignore it is to miss the key to the interpretation of 
 the play. We should also lose the best evidence 
 we possess of the speedy working of Shakespeare's 
 imagination; how, in quite another sense than 
 Johnson's, " panting Time toiled after him in vain." 
 The supposed death of Ferdinand is so vital a 
 portion of the plot that the play cannot have been 
 undertaken without it. We have seen, however, 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 43 
 
 that the incident which suggested it did not occur 
 until November 6 preceding the marriage, which 
 was solemnised on February 14. The representa- 
 tion must have preceded the wedding, otherwise 
 Prospero's exhortation at the beginning of the 
 fourth act to pre-nuptial chastity would have lost 
 all force. This marvellous work must accord- 
 ingly have been planned, written, and put upon 
 the stage within less than three months. Nothing 
 can give a higher idea of the activity of Shake- 
 speare's genius ; while at the same time we discern 
 cogent reasons for the comparative brevity of the 
 play. 
 
 If Frederick and Elizabeth are Ferdinand and 
 Miranda, it follows, as long ago pointed out by 
 Tieck, that Prospero is James. The conclusion 
 may appear strange and unwelcome; it met no 
 support when propounded by the present writer to 
 the New Shakespeare Society. The current con- 
 ception of James is one of a grotesque, preposterous 
 figure, more like a bat flown forth after the setting 
 of "the bright occidental star" than the sun to 
 whose arising on that occasion his accession is 
 compared by the translators of our Bible. Even 
 were this estimate well founded, to have passed the 
 sovereign by without notice in a piece written for 
 the nuptials of the sovereign's daughter would have 
 been an impoliteness which Shakespeare would 
 
44 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 never have perpetrated. But it is exceedingly 
 unjust. It was James's misfortune that his de- 
 fects were mostly of an unkingly sort, and such as 
 easily lend themselves to ridicule. Shakespeare's 
 own words are fulfilled in him : — 
 
 " All give to dust that is little gilt 
 More laud than gilt o'er-dusted." 
 
 "Those," says Mark Pattison, "whose impressions 
 of character have been chiefly derived from modern 
 histories, will find that as they become better ac- 
 quainted with contemporary memoirs their estimate 
 of James's abilities will be raised." "We are ready 
 to take a long stride beyond Mr. Pattison's eulogy," 
 comments the Quarterly reviewer, and proceeds to 
 assign excellent reasons, concluding, "That un- 
 gainly figure was the mask of a very considerable 
 personaHty. Behind those rough and lazy features 
 worked a big and versatile brain, and a most ob- 
 servant and discriminating intellect. One has to 
 take into account the irony of Nature toward him, 
 the pedantic externals of his manners and char- 
 acter." That is the point. With all his talents 
 James certainly was a pedant, and gave to all 
 about him the impression that he was fitter for 
 books than for business. And it is just this in- 
 firmity at which Shakespeare glances, in lines 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 45 
 
 which it is difficult to believe were not expressly 
 intended for the King's admonition : — 
 
 " For the liberal arts 
 Without a parallel : those being all my study, 
 The government I cast upon my brother, 
 And to my state grew stranger, being transported 
 And rapt in secret studies." 
 
 This and much else to the same effect Prospero 
 recounts without apparent suspicion how strongly 
 it tells against himself, a circumstance fatal to M. 
 Emile Montegut's specious theory that Shakespeare 
 idealised himself in Prospero. The character is 
 full of dramatic irony. Prospero is wise and good 
 indeed, but not so much of either as he thinks 
 himself. He betrays fretfulness, irritability, and 
 self-importance, reminding us of the limitations of 
 the highest humanity, and contrasting sharply with 
 his preternatural power. But these traits do not 
 lie upon the surface, and upon a broad view of the 
 character it is impossible to conceive one more 
 completely embodying James's ideal of himself, or 
 more dexterously and at the same time truthfully 
 bringing the really strong sides of his personality 
 into view. A wise, humane, pacific prince, gaining 
 his ends not by violence but by poHcy ; devoted to 
 far-off purposes which none but himself can realise, 
 much less fathom ; independent of counsellors, 
 
46 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 safely contemptuous of foes, and controlling all 
 about him by his superior wisdom ; keeping in the 
 background till the decisive hour has struck, and 
 then interfering effectually ; devoted to lawful know- 
 ledge, but the sworn enemy of black magic — such 
 was James in James's eyes, and such is Prospero. 
 
 Except in the particular of supernatural power, 
 the portrait here presented bears the strongest re- 
 semblance to another of Shakespeare's characters, 
 whose affinity to James has been already remarked 
 by Chalmers, and there is every reason to believe 
 that James was not in *' The Tempest " ideaHsed 
 for the first time. In ^* Measure for Measure " we 
 have the same controlling and supervising agent, 
 with the same ironic touch of affected mystery 
 and self-consciousness ; and, as in '* The Tempest," 
 the intention of the poet is revealed by the cir- 
 cumstances of the time. The plot of the play is 
 mainly taken from Whetstone's " Promus and 
 Cassandra," itself founded on a novel of Cinthio's ; 
 but neither in Whetstone nor in his original is 
 there the least hint of Shakespeare's central inci- 
 dent, the disguise of the Duke. What suggested 
 this incident ? The peculiar situation of the King. 
 According to unanimous opinion, and the internal 
 evidence of several passages, "Measure for Measure " 
 was written no long time after the accession of 
 James, and the accession of James was immediately 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 47 
 
 followed by a furious outbreak of pestilence. The 
 coronation took place in July 1603, "in the midst 
 of a raging plague" which drove the Court from 
 London, and James did not re-enter the capital till 
 March following. The assembling of Parliament, 
 which had been fixed for September, was neces- 
 sarily postponed, and, of course, the theatres were 
 closed. Yet the machinery of Government worked 
 as usual ; the King, absent in body, was present 
 in spirit, and the season of apparent interregnum 
 was that of one of his most characteristic measures, 
 the conference at Hampton Court. That the drama 
 contains some apologies for unpopular features in 
 James's deportment is generally admitted ; what 
 more natural than that advantage should be taken 
 of the joyful re-opening of the theatres to extenuate 
 and embelHsh his absence from the capital, and 
 represent him in the character he so much affected 
 of the wise ruler invisibly guiding events to their 
 desired consummation by his superiority of in- 
 tellect ? We are convinced that the coincidence 
 is no accident, and that the more the characters of 
 the Duke and Prospero are studied together, the 
 more apparent it will become that they were drawn 
 from the same model. 
 
 Some additional evidence in favour of the date of 
 16 1 3 should not be omitted, though we may not be 
 disposed to lay great stress upon it. The autumn 
 
48 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 and winter of 1612 were unusually tempestuous : 
 there were in particular tremendous storms on 
 October 22nd and November 4th, the latter of 
 which was especially remarked from its occurring 
 only two days before the death of Prince Henry. 
 More weight is due to the curious atmosphere of 
 discovery and colonisation which invests '* The 
 Tempest" — rather to be felt than proved, but ad- 
 mirably perceived and expressed by Mr. Watkiss 
 Lloyd :— 
 
 " The wonders of new lands, new races : the 
 exaggerations of travellers, and their truths more 
 strange than exaggeration : new natural pheno- 
 mena, and superstitious suggestions of them : the 
 perils of the sea and shipwrecks, the effect of 
 such fatalities in awakening remorse for ill deeds, 
 not unremembered because easily committed : the 
 quarrels and mutinies of colonists for grudges 
 new and old : the contests for authority of the 
 leaders, and the greedy misdirection of industry 
 while even subsistence is precarious : the theories 
 of government for plantations, the imaginary and 
 the actual characteristics of man in the state of 
 nature : the complications with the indigense : the 
 resort, penally or otherwise, to compelled labour: 
 the reappearance on new soil of the vices of the 
 older world : the contrast of moral and intellectual 
 qualities between the civilised and the savage, 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 49 
 
 and the gradual apprehension of the wondrous 
 stranger by the savage, with all the requirements 
 of activity, promptitude, and vigour demanded for 
 the efficient and successful administration of a 
 settlement — all these topics, problems, and con- 
 junctures came up in the plantation of Virginia 
 by James I. ; and familiarity with their colonial 
 dependency would heighten the sensibility of the 
 audience to every scene of a play which presented 
 them in contrasted guise, but in a manner that 
 only the more distinctly brought them home to 
 their cardinal bearings in the philosophy of 
 Society — of man." 
 
 As true as well expressed, but requiring a 
 later date for "The Tempest" than Mr. Lloyd 
 assigns. The first American settlement was only 
 made in May 1607, and by only one hundred and 
 five colonists. The Virginia company was not 
 incorporated till 1609 ; but little news from the 
 more numerous emigrants sent out by it had 
 reached England by 16 10, and it is not until 
 161 2 that *' R. J." can write, "Our colony con- 
 sisteth now of seven hundred men." In this 
 year, however, several accounts of Virginia ap- 
 peared, not always of the most encouraging 
 nature. On July 9, 161 2, Chamberlain tells 
 Carleton : " The Virginia plantation likely to 
 come to nothing, through the idleness of the 
 
50 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 English. Ten men, sent to fish for their reUef, 
 have sh'pped off to England, and fill the town 
 with ill reports about it." 
 
 " Had I plantation of this isle, my lord "... 
 " He'd sow it with nettle seed." 
 
 We may therefore, if we like, revert to the old 
 belief that in *' The Tempest" Shakespeare took 
 a formal leave of the stage, that his magic staff 
 was broken along with Prospero's, and that the 
 wondrous book drowned " deeper than did ever 
 plummet sound," was no other than his own. A 
 worthier consummation of the great magician's 
 career cannot be desired ; and though " Henry the 
 Eighth" was probably later than "The Tempest," 
 being described as a new play in June 1613, 
 Fletcher's share in it is so considerable that it 
 hardly counts. 
 
 None of Shakespeare's pieces stands so near 
 to ** The Tempest " in style, metre, and general 
 cast of thought as does ''The Winter's Tale," 
 and hardly any literary historian now doubts that 
 they were written nearly at the same time. In 
 one point of view, indeed, "The Midsummer 
 Night's Dream " presents a greater superficial 
 analogy to " The Tempest," that marvellous poeti- 
 cal invention which creates in Puck and Ariel 
 supernatural beings " more real than living man ; " 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 51 
 
 but this is not a gift indicative of any particular 
 period in Shakespeare's career. It was rather 
 an integral constituent of his genius, capable of 
 being called into activity at his will. The points 
 which really do assign " The Tempest " and " The 
 Winter's Tale " to the same period are those 
 characteristic traits of a veteran poet, a cheerful 
 and reconciled view of life, and an especial com- 
 placency in traits of girlish innocence. After 
 Imogen, also a creation of the poet's latter years, 
 Perdita and Miranda are perhaps the most attrac- 
 tive of any of his female characters. But this 
 especial charm is realised by an especial method, 
 betokening a profound acquaintance with theatrical 
 art, and a mastery only attainable by continual 
 practice. Without apparent effort he grasps a 
 character, indelibly fixed, so to speak, in the very 
 moment of disappearance. Nothing more frail, 
 fleeting, and apparently unimportant can be con- 
 ceived than Perdita and Miranda, and yet they 
 are more winning than the elaborately portrayed 
 female personages of his earliest plays. The 
 seeming artlessness is in truth the perfection of 
 art. This characteristic trait, taken in connec- 
 tion with the metrical tests, not always reliable, 
 but here convincing, establishes both the late and 
 the contemporaneous composition of both pieces. 
 It would have been needless to dwell upon a 
 
52 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 point so generally admitted if the light which it 
 throws upon the date of ^^ The Tempest " had not 
 been invariably overlooked. Editors continue ta 
 assign both dramas to 1610, and to ascribe priority 
 now to one, now to the other, as it may happen, 
 as though the question were insoluble. It admits, 
 nevertheless, of proof that "The Tempest" must 
 have been the later of the two. We have seen 
 that it cannot have been produced before the storm 
 at the Bermudas in 1610 was known in England, 
 and that there is not the smallest necessity for 
 supposing it to have been written immediately upon 
 the publication of a pamphlet which Shakespeare 
 may not have seen until long afterwards. The 
 date of '* The Winter's Tale," however, may be 
 brought within narrow limits. It is universally 
 considered to be later than " Cymbeline," and 
 ^' Cymbeline " is with equal unanimity ascribed to 
 1609 or 1 6 10. The first testimony of the existence 
 of ** The Winter's Tale " is that of Simon Forman, 
 who was present at a performance of it in May 
 161 1. The title of the piece bears no reference 
 to any incident in the action, and unquestionably 
 alludes to its production in the season of winter. 
 It must therefore have appeared soon before or 
 soon after the end of 16 10. The composition of 
 " The Tempest " could not have been begun before 
 October in this year, and the supposition of its 
 
THE DATE OF "THE TEMPEST" 53 
 
 having been written, rehearsed, acted, and with- 
 drawn between this date and Christmas is wholly 
 untenable. It is not probable that Shakespeare 
 would have commenced a new play before "The 
 Winter's Tale " had run its course, and this 
 was still on the stage in May 161 1. "The 
 Tempest," therefore, cannot have been produced 
 before the latter half of 161 1 at the earhest; and 
 the interval between this date and the end of 
 16 1 2 is assuredly not sufficient to constitute any 
 objection to the date which we have advocated. 
 
 More important, however, than the question of 
 date is the question of interpretation. If the 
 composition of any of Shakespeare's dramas was 
 prompted by an impulse from without, the know- 
 ledge of the cause is essential to the understand- 
 ing of the effect. In the present instance, if the 
 final cause of the existence of "The Tempest" 
 were, indeed, the celebration of a royal wedding, 
 much that was obscure becomes plain, much that 
 seemed plain appears in a new light. All parties 
 concerned rise in our estimation. We obtain more 
 light than ever on the ready affluence of Shake- 
 speare's imagination and the swift magic of his 
 mind's inner workings. We discover in him not 
 merely the inspiration of the bard, but the tact 
 and dexterity of the courtier, and see him more- 
 over in his proper place as the national poet, 
 
54 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 chosen to celebrate a public event of the first 
 importance. James rises in our opinion inasmuch 
 as, having to choose a chief poet, he chose so 
 well ; and Frederick and Elizabeth acquire a surer 
 title to immortality as the unconscious originators 
 of Ferdinand and Miranda than war and policy 
 were destined to bestow upon the unlucky pair 
 who lost an electorate in seeking a crown. Nor 
 is the marvel of Shakespeare's creations diminished 
 by the actual existence of their faint prototypes ; 
 nor are the serene wisdom and moral grandeur 
 of the play less admirable because it does not 
 exist for their sake, but for the sake of a young 
 couple, as even better things have existed, and 
 will exist. 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE' 
 
 The principle of this edition of Coleridge is 
 intimated by the title, which promises not his 
 poems but his poetry. He is no exception to the 
 almost universal rule that the works of even the 
 greatest poets include much which might be con- 
 signed to obHvion without detriment to their 
 reputation. Such a course, however, is neither 
 recommendable on all accounts, nor practicable on 
 all occasions. The pebble of poetry is sometimes 
 the pearl of biography; nor is it easy to recall 
 what has once been given to the world under the 
 auspices of a great name. The judgment of editors 
 cannot be implicitly trusted ; and the most judicious 
 retrenchment exposes the publisher to the charge 
 of having mutilated an author. Coleridge's wood, 
 hay, and stubble must consequently continue along 
 with his fine gold ; and, by a curious paralogism, 
 the only editions esteemed standard will be those 
 where the abstract standard of excellence is dis- 
 
 ^ The Intrcduction to the writer's edition of Coleridge's poems 
 in "The Muses' Library," published by Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen: 
 
58 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 regarded. The only alternative hitherto attempted 
 has been that of an anthology, and one has been 
 prepared by the incomparably competent hands 
 of Mr. Swinburne. Such a miniature collection, 
 however, though proffering 'infinite riches in a 
 little room," cannot include everything on which the 
 poet might rest his fame, or that the lovers of his 
 poetry would wish to have in their hands. There 
 is room for something intermediate — for an ampler 
 and more generous collection where the rule is not 
 so much the inclusion of the most beautiful as the 
 exclusion of the most defective. Coleridge is a 
 peculiarly favourable subject for an experiment of 
 this nature, for an unerring test is supplied b}^ 
 himself. His poems lie as it were in two strata, 
 which may be conveniently distinguished as 
 eighteenth and nineteenth century deposits. Much 
 of his early poetry is insignificant, not from want 
 of genius but because composed under the influence 
 of misleading and conventional precedents. Marvel- 
 lous as was his intellectual power, he was still more 
 eminent as a critic than as an original thinker ; and 
 he did not discover what a world of inspiration 
 lay around him until his meeting with Wordsworth. 
 From that time Coleridge wrote like a poet by the 
 grace of God : and all that the retrenching editor 
 need do is to cancel all poems previous to this 
 epoch, some few excepted which deserve preserva- 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 59 
 
 tion on special grounds; and to detach certain 
 '' dead leaves in the bay-leaf crown " of later 
 years, in the shape of merely trivial or occasional 
 pieces, or serious efforts to which the poet's 
 failing energies were unequal. It is also necessary 
 in an edition thus abridged to omit the original 
 and translated dramas, in themselves most worthy 
 of preservation, inasmuch as they would exact an 
 entirely disproportionate space. 
 
 Coleridge's eventful life and varied genius do 
 not admit of satisfactory treatment within moderate 
 limits. Either the man must give way to the poet 
 or the philosopher, or both of these must make 
 room for the man. Coleridge's editors have usually 
 preferred biography to criticism, and to this 
 preference literature is indebted for three very 
 able memoirs. Mr. Shepherd's is satisfactory in 
 every respect. Mr. Ashe's would be more than 
 satisfactory but for an abruptness conveying the 
 impression of want of finish, with which in fact 
 it is not chargeable. The last editor, the late 
 lamented Mr. Dykes Campbell, has excelled his 
 predecessors by the production of a perfect 
 masterpiece of condensed biography. It seems 
 useless to do again what has so recently been so 
 excellently done. We shall assume the reader to 
 be already fairly well acquainted with the leading 
 incidents in Coleridge's life, and shall refer to 
 
6o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 these merely as they illustrate his place as a poet. 
 His equally important position as a philosopher 
 does not concern us ; nor have we at present much 
 to say upon him in his character as critic — the 
 character in which, with all our reverence for him 
 as a poet, we should on the whole be inclined to 
 pronounce him most memorable. 
 
 In all these capacities Coleridge presents himself 
 eminently as a Bahnbrecher^ one who, although 
 receiving his own original impulse from another, 
 makes a way for successors. He might say with 
 his own '* Ancient Mariner " — 
 
 " I was the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea." 
 
 If the application is not precisely appropriate, it 
 is because it seems to imply more energetic action 
 and more deliberate adaptation of means to ends 
 than lay in Coleridge. He was rather an avenue 
 for invasive light than a fire-bringing Prometheus; 
 or his relation to the world of thought and poetry 
 might be even better compared with that which 
 Shelley attributes to Phoebus in his character of 
 the Sun — 
 
 " I am the eye with which the Universe 
 Beholds itself, and knows itself divine." 
 
 He was not only an exemplar of the new age, 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 6i 
 
 but its hierophant. Better than any contemporary 
 except Wordsworth, whose critical writings are too 
 much confined to the enforcement of particular 
 principles, he could expound as well as exhibit 
 the mighty change which had come over English 
 poetry since the proclamation of a new dispensa- 
 tion by the significant, though to most invisible, 
 apparition of Blake's ''Poetical Sketches" in 1783. 
 Other poets seem, as indeed they were, the un- 
 conscious productions of an age of ferment, the 
 instruments and vehicles of irresistible forces, 
 "building better than they knew." Coleridge, 
 while as immediately inspired as any of them, 
 knows better whence he has come and whither 
 he is going. His frailties and his misfortunes 
 deprived him of the glory he might have attained 
 of being the supreme poet of his age, but he 
 remains its supreme critic. In another point of 
 view he is more interesting still. Decisively as 
 he has broken with conventional poetry in his 
 more important writings, no contemporary poet of__ 
 his eank ..has ^ left sa__jnu£h- vers£_jcomposeii in 
 obedience to conventional ^ canons, an d reproduc-^ 
 tive of the tone and spirit of the preceding age. 
 This is" indeed mere accident, explicable by the 
 fact that his poetical vein flowed most freely in 
 early youth, and that, although, as he himself 
 informs us, guarded against the stock conven- 
 
62 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 tionalities by the precepts of his master at Christ's 
 Hospital, he nevertheless produced a great amount 
 of verse before he had learned to discriminate 
 between subjects proper and improper for poetr3^ 
 The result is important, for it allows the comparison 
 of the schools of the eighteenth and the nineteenth 
 century as exhibited in the same person. 
 
 Of late years a reaction in favour of the 
 eighteenth century style in poetry has been ob- 
 servable in several quarters; among other indica- 
 tions of which may be named the preference 
 recently avowed on a public occasion by no less 
 a person than Mr. Balfour. To a certain extent 
 this is perfectly legitimate, and indeed inevitable. 
 Every age treats its immediate predecessor as the 
 Roman miners treated the ore of Sardinia, gets 
 all it can out of it, and leaves a valuable residuum 
 to the ages to come. The ore, once deemed ex- 
 hausted, is taken up again, and found to be teeming 
 with unexpected wealth; hence a reaction aston- 
 ishing to the dominant school of criticism of the 
 day, but entirely sane and laudable. The revival 
 of interest in the old English drama in Coleridge's 
 time is a signal instance; and a similar revival 
 in favour of Dryden, Pope, and Addison would be 
 equally welcome. But to exalt these eminent 
 writers at the expense of their successors, to re- 
 present them as the models of taste and the 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 63 
 
 pontiffs of an orthodox creed in art from which 
 these successors have apostatised, raises quite 
 another contention, which compels us to inquire 
 of its advocates, what is their definition of poetry ? 
 Is it to them what, teste Shelley, it was to our 
 Coleridge — 
 
 " He spoke of poetry, and how 
 
 Divine it was — a light, a love — 
 A spirit which like wind doth blow 
 As it listeth, to and fro, 
 
 A dew rained down from God above ; 
 
 A power which comes and goes like dream, 
 
 And which none can ever trace — 
 Heaven's light on earth — Truth's brightest beam. 
 And when he ceased, there lay the gleam 
 
 Of those words upon his face." 
 
 Or is their ideal of poetry strong sense vigorously 
 expressed in resonant verse ? That the poetry of 
 the eighteenth century, as a whole, belongs to this 
 latter class, is evident from the fact that the injury 
 which it suffers from conversion into prose is more 
 detrimental to its form than to its spirit. Pope's sen- 
 tences, divested of their rhymes and their cadences, 
 would certainly have suffered much ; but the loss 
 would be purely one of literary form, not of the 
 spiritual aroma which they never possessed. But 
 turn Coleridge, or Shelley, or Keats into prose, 
 and we shall at once be conscious of having lost 
 
64 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 something besides literary form, and obtained an 
 infinitely less valuable residuum than the same 
 process would have given in the case of Pope or 
 Dryden. The conclusion is inevitable, that nine- 
 teenth century poetr}^ has a soul, an essence, an 
 aroma which eighteenth century poetry has not; 
 and that the panegyrists of the latter at the ex- 
 pense of the former deceive themselves in imagin- 
 ing that their homage is given to poetry, while it 
 is really rendered to intellect. 
 
 We have remarked that no writer upon Coleridge 
 need hope to render full justice to his theme. Not 
 only was Coleridge, as he has been most justly 
 termed, a myriad - minded man, but the various 
 branches of his intellectual activity so interlace 
 that it is difficult to consider him long in any 
 point of view without being insensibly led to an- 
 other. Severe limitation is necessary if anything 
 is to be effected in an essa}'^ of moderate length. 
 We shall select a vein hitherto but little wrought 
 in confining our attention to Coleridge's place in 
 poetical Hterature as the incarnate transition, so 
 to speak, from the eighteenth to the nineteenth 
 century, summing up in his own person in the re- 
 stricted field of English poetry that description of 
 spiritual evolution which Goethe has exhibited on 
 a large scale in his symbolical representation of 
 Faust's and Helena's passage from the classical 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 65 
 
 into the mediaeval age. The poetry of the eigh- 
 teenth and the nineteenth centuries lie associated 
 within the covers of his writings, and the impres- 
 siveness of the contrast is enhanced by the absence 
 of any intermediate period. The transition from 
 Coleridge's first to his second manner is almost 
 instantaneous. An accurate discrimination between 
 what, for brevity's sake, we may term his inspired 
 and his uninspired work, is of the utmost import- 
 ance to his fame as a poet. Most interesting too 
 are the inquiries under what influences this meta- 
 morphosis was effected with such suddenness ; 
 and why so brilliant an outburst was followed by 
 relapse, not indeed into his original manner, but 
 into almost absolute silence as a poet. These 
 questions cannot be overlooked, and are specially 
 appropriate for discussion in the preface to a 
 volume of selected poetry, although it may not 
 be possible to offer any entirely satisfactory reply 
 to them. The one point absolutely certain, and 
 it is one of supreme importance, is that the ver- 
 dict of the greatest of English critics, evinced by 
 the surest of tests, his own practice, has been 
 given in favour of the poetry of the nineteenth as 
 compared with that of the eighteenth century. 
 
 No greater service could be rendered to Cole- 
 ridge's poetical fame than to bring this fact clearly 
 into light. Like all his great contemporaries, except 
 
66 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Shelley, he suffers from the large proportion of 
 inferior matter among his really exquisite and 
 divine work. The same is the case with Byron, 
 Wordsworth, and Keats; but the explanation is 
 different in every instance. With Byron it is 
 mainly the fitfulness and frequent lapse of genuine 
 inspiration. It was only now and then that his 
 imagination was sufficiently ardent to fuse and 
 kindle the matter cast into its furnace. The great 
 inequality of Wordsworth may be attributed partly 
 to his having continued writing during nearly the 
 whole of his life ; partly to the inherent defects 
 of plan in his long poems ; chiefly, perhaps, to 
 the self-esteem which forbade him to conceive 
 that anything which he had touched could be 
 devoid of value. Few poets have amended or 
 tried to amend more; but few have retrenched 
 less. The cause of the inequality of Keats is 
 merely the youthful inexperience inseparable from 
 his first poetical ferment. Had he spent a life of 
 average duration in the full exercise of poetical 
 activity, the crudities of his first attempts would be 
 no more remembered than the similar extravagances 
 or insipidities of Tennyson ; but his earl}' death, by 
 magnifying their proportion to the general bulk of 
 his writings, has invested them with a factitious im- 
 portance. Coleridge's less interesting poetry might 
 also be described as the product of youthful 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 67 
 
 inexperience ; but its genesis and its substance 
 differ widely from Keats's. The latter's failures 
 are the failures of inspiration trying its unfledged 
 wings. Coleridge's shortcomings cannot be justly 
 described as failures, for they fully attain the 
 writer's standard of excellence, but that standard 
 is low. The immature Keats is an innovator and 
 iconoclast, bent on destroying the models which the 
 immature Coleridge follows with dutiful humility. 
 Keats has nothing of the eighteenth century about 
 him ; Coleridge begins as an eighteenth - century 
 poet. Keats pursues a gradual course of de- 
 velopment, harmonious and consistent with itself; 
 Coleridge undergoes a sudden conversion and a 
 complete regeneration. Hence, while Keats's " first 
 Mights," as he called them, though made by acci- 
 dent to appear more important than they really 
 are, can never be wholly dissociated from the 
 general body of his work, Coleridge's early poetry 
 need not be taken into account at all in our esti- 
 mate of his poetical genius. It greatly concerns 
 Coleridge to bear this in mind, for clearly it 
 makes the greatest difference to any writer's fame 
 whether he is regarded as the fountain of an 
 ocean of verse of the most various degrees of 
 merit, or whether our estimate of him is formed 
 entirely by a consideration of a phial of some of 
 the most quintessential poetry in the world. This 
 
68 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 is not now contested by any one. When we think 
 of Coleridge as a poet we think of '* The Ancient 
 Mariner/' of " Christabel/' of ' Kiibla Khan," of 
 ''Genevieve," of "The Nightingale" and its com- 
 panion blank verse idylls. We do not think in 
 the least of " Religious Musings," and the other 
 poems produced before the days of the Lake 
 School. But many of our ancestors thought very 
 differently. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century the taste of the eighteenth century was 
 naturally still in the ascendant, and would, in all 
 probability, have continued to rule much longer 
 but for the influence of Scott and Byron. These 
 poets, though not so deeply or truly inspired as 
 some of their contemporaries, irresistibly com- 
 manded attention by their vigour and their suc- 
 cessful extension of the sway of poetry over the 
 adjacent domain of fiction. They compelled the 
 old-fashioned critics to praise where on their own 
 principles they ought to have condemned, and thus 
 made a breach for Wordsworth and Coleridge to 
 enter in their wake, as Shelley and Keats after- 
 wards in theirs. But there was a time when the 
 criticism which had inconsistently recognised Scott 
 and Byron was so far from consenting to go any 
 further, that these productions of Coleridge which 
 afford the present age the most exquisite delight, 
 and upon which his claim to poetical greatness is 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 69 
 
 now entirely and universally based, were singled 
 out as proofs that he was no poet at all. Said the 
 Edinburgh Review : — 
 
 "Upon the whole, we look upon this publication 
 (containing ' Christabel,' ' Kubla Khan,' and 'The 
 Pains of Sleep ') as one of the most notable pieces 
 of impertinence of which the press has lately been 
 guilty, and one of the boldest experiments that 
 has as yet been made upon the patience or under- 
 standing of the public. The other productions of 
 the Lake School have generally exhibited talents 
 thrown away upon subjects so mean that no power 
 of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and 
 rendered useless by a false theory of poetical 
 composition. But even in the worst of them, if 
 we except the 'White Doe' of Mr. Wordsworth 
 and some of the Laureate odes, there were always 
 some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the thing 
 now before us is utterly destitute of value. It 
 exhibits from beginning to end not a ray of genius ; 
 and we defy any man to point out a passage of 
 poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it 
 contains, except, perhaps, the following lines, and 
 even these are not very brilliant." 
 
 If Hazlitt was really the writer of this astound- 
 ing deliverance it cannot have been wholly sincere, 
 and must have been largely inspired by spite and 
 animosity. Yet he must have felt that he was 
 
70 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 expressing an opinion not likely to provoke the 
 dissent of the generality, and in fact his review 
 passed the editorial censorship of Jeffrey, and 
 excited few complaints except from the luckless 
 victim. Men clearly perceived that a new element 
 had come into poetry irreconcilable with the tradi- 
 tional standard of excellence, and that there was 
 no room for both. Coleridge, then, has the unique 
 distinction among the poets of his time, of himself 
 exemplifying the antagonistic styles within the 
 compass of his own writings. This justifies the 
 reprint of some of his poetry, which, at first 
 sight, according to the standard of the present 
 day, hardly seems to deserve the distinction. It 
 is of quite another order to the inferior poetry of 
 Wordsworth or Byron, its inferiority is not that 
 of high power impaired by old age, or mere itera- 
 tion of a message already delivered, or of brilliant 
 talent striving to fill the place of genius, it is that 
 of genius as yet unawakened, and syllabling the 
 old tongue from ignorance of the new. Hence, 
 though worthless as poetry, it is of permanent 
 value as a document, and possesses an importance 
 far exceeding the inferior work of the poets just 
 named. We see in it what we do not see in 
 them, how men of true genius would have written 
 if the great awakenings of the Romantic School 
 and the French Revolution had never taken place, 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 71 
 
 and are able to gauge in some degree our intel- 
 lectual indebtedness to these mighty mutations. 
 The contrast is the more instructive, as the early- 
 poems are by no means unpoetical. There is 
 scarcely one which does not give evidence of 
 having proceeded from a true poet. The cause 
 of their unquestionable inferiority is the inferiority 
 of the language, not so much in particular phrases 
 as in the general cast of diction. It is as though 
 a painter had sought to express a subject which 
 required to be painted in oil through the medium 
 of water-colours. The distinction cannot be ac- 
 curately conveyed in a phrase, but we should not 
 be far wrong if we said that here, and here only, 
 Coleridge is conventional. He writes in the manner 
 which he found to prevail when he commenced 
 poetical composition. His originality had not 
 carried him to the length of fashioning a new 
 style for its expression. Individuality he certainly 
 has : one can always be sure that the poems are 
 Coleridge's and not another's; but the peculiar 
 impress of the author is much less distinct than 
 that of even so imitative a poet as Tennyson's 
 upon his early writings. The same may be re- 
 marked in a field where he was more original still, 
 his prose criticism. Coleridge's individuality may 
 always be recognised here, but it is not the robust 
 individuality of a Macaulay or a Carlyle. 
 
72 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Perhaps in this comparative inability to assert 
 himself forcibly, while lavishing the most exquisite 
 poems and the most subtle criticisms, we find the 
 secret of Coleridge's strength, as well as of his 
 weakness. Splendid as was his imagination, potent 
 as was his intellect, these were not in the highest 
 sense creative. Rather was he receptive and sus- 
 ceptible. It is significant that of all great English 
 poets he should have been the greatest critic. 
 Dryden, Wordsworth, Shelley, Arnold, all excelled 
 in this department, but all must yield the palm to 
 Coleridge. Now, although the highest criticism is 
 in a sense original, as bringing to light what was 
 previously unseen, it is unoriginal in this, that it 
 must be waked into activity by another mind. 
 Criticism, like hope, cannot live without an object. 
 It is, of course, possible that the passionate con- 
 viction of a very independent and self-sufficing 
 poet may throw him upon criticism, but he will 
 hardly, like Coleridge, take to it as a congenial 
 element. One can scarcely imagine Dante jotting 
 down criticisms on the margins of his books, 
 though his footprints might possibly have been 
 sometimes tracked by the vestiges of rent leaves. 
 Coleridge annotated everything, with most charm- 
 ing and profitable results, but in so doing showed 
 that his was one of the class of minds which 
 require to be impregnated. What he was as a 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 73 
 
 commentator, he also was in original composition. 
 He slid naturally into the style which he found 
 current around him, and required to be emanci- 
 pated from it by a mind of more inventiveness 
 and vigour, and nearer than his to the essential 
 truth of things. There can be no doubt that this 
 influence proceeded from William and Dorothy 
 Wordsworth. Coleridge's poems, in a revised 
 form and with many retrenchments, had appeared 
 very shortly before he came to know Wordsworth, 
 otherwise than by a casual rencontre. "Nothing 
 in the volume," says Mr. Dykes Campbell, "gives 
 the least hint that Coleridge's hand was already 
 on the latch of the magic casements which were to 
 open on the perilous seas sailed by the 'Ancient 
 Mariner,* and the fairy lands of ' Christabel ' and 
 *Kubla Khan.'" Neither, it may be added, is 
 there anything to suggest the less daringly imagin- 
 ative, but not less beautiful, blank verse perform- 
 ances of Coleridge's best period, "The Nightingale," 
 "Frost at Midnight," "Fears in Sohtude," and so 
 many more. The capacity for such composition 
 came to him after he became acquainted with the 
 Wordsworths. 
 
 Wordsworth assuredly did not teach Coleridge 
 out of a book, and Coleridge's regeneration can be 
 ascribed to nothing else than the perception that 
 his friend was leading where he could follow him. 
 
74 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 He came after Wordsworth as one bird might 
 follow another through an open window — a bird 
 of more gorgeous plumage certainly, though not 
 of sweeter voice. In truth a great revolution had 
 been wrought in imaginative literature, and the 
 only question was how long it would take the new 
 ideas to become dominant. It would be interesting, 
 but beyond our present scope, to trace them back 
 to their germs in Rousseau and others ; it will be 
 more to the purpose to inquire under what aspect 
 the reform presented itself to the men who initiated 
 it, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Briefly, their object 
 may be said to have been to enforce a return to 
 Nature. The most obvious announcement of this 
 principle to the ordinary reader was the revolution 
 in poetic diction, the discarding of merely conven- 
 tional poetic language, and the reversion to a natural 
 simplicity of speech which, especially in Words- 
 worth, frequently wore the semblance of baldness. 
 But this was merely a symptom : the essential fact 
 was that English poetry, with a few exceptions, 
 had drifted away from Nature, and that the 
 reformers wished to bring them together again. 
 It had ceased to be what Milton declares poetry 
 ought to be — sensuous ; and become intellectual, 
 and intellect stands a remove further from Nature 
 than sense does. Throughout Coleridge's early 
 poems there is hardly a trace of any joy in Nature 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 75 
 
 for her own sake, or any use for her except as 
 affording ornaments for human emotions and 
 abstract thoughts. Stars and flowers are indeed 
 introduced, but in such language as might have 
 been equally well used by one who had seen 
 neither. There is a total absence of that minute 
 observation which may indeed be carried too far 
 when the detail is suffered to become more im- 
 portant than the object, but which is at all events 
 welcome as a proof that the poet has seen what 
 he describes. But the later pieces are full of 
 exquisite description clearly derived from actual 
 contact with the object. He tells us in " Frost at 
 Midnight " that when a boy at school he had 
 often gazed intently at the film upon the fire- 
 bar which was supposed to announce the advent 
 of a stranger, but never before 1797 had it 
 occurred to him to find poetical worth in any- 
 thing so trivial. And now, with what felicity it 
 is introduced to heighten the impression of perfect 
 stillness ! 
 
 " The thin blue flame 
 Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ; 
 Only that film which fluttered in the grate 
 Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing." 
 
 Never until very recently had he imagined a 
 training up with Nature for himself or others. 
 
76 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Now, after deploring his own education "mid 
 cloisters dim," he exclaims: — 
 
 " But thou, my babe ! shalt wander hke a breeze 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear 
 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
 Of that eternal language, which thy God 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 Himself in all, and all things in himself." 
 
 Once more, Coleridge might at any time have 
 predicted "therefore all seasons shall be sweet to 
 thee," though it may be doubted whether he would 
 have expressed the thought so simply, tersely, 
 and musically. But it is not probable that before 
 coming under Wordsworth's influence, he would 
 have thought of so expanding it as to wind up 
 " Frost at Midnight " with a general panorama 
 in miniature of the whole year, produced by a 
 dexterous selection of striking picturesque circum- 
 stances, and enabling him to conclude the poem 
 with no less dignity than it began : — 
 
 " Whether the summer clothe the general earth 
 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 
 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
 Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE -j^ 
 
 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
 Or if the secret ministry of frost 
 Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 
 Quietly shining to the quiet moon." 
 
 The dry bones now live indeed. If we compare 
 this with even the best descriptive verse of the 
 eighteenth-century school, or such as Coleridge 
 himself was writing a year or two previously, we 
 are conscious of a great deliverance, an emergence 
 into a higher and purer region. It is not a mere 
 advance in a normal development, like the suc- 
 cessive volumes of Tennyson, but is an absolute 
 elevation of the entire poetic personality into '* an 
 ampler aether, a diviner air." Previously the poet 
 has excelled in those departments which would 
 have equally befitted a good writer of prose; his 
 present performances have so little in common 
 with prose that, were they even despoiled of their 
 metrical form, they would still be poetry. They 
 are better adapted than anything else in our 
 language to exhibit the fundamental distinction 
 between poetry in its purest form and the thought 
 or narrative whose claims to the title of poetry are 
 metrical expression and artificial diction. They 
 have thus the merit of bringing to the plainest 
 issue the question between the poetry of the 
 intellect and the poetry of the imagination. 
 Was Kingsley right or wrong in deploring that 
 
78 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 *' Pope and plain sense had gone out, and Shelley 
 and the seventh heaven come in ? " 
 
 Coleridge enables us to answer this question 
 decisively. He has set both the old and the 
 new wine before us, and we find the new better. 
 This is now undisputed. There was an admir- 
 able consistency about the Edinburgh Reviewer 
 who could see no merit whatever in Coleridge's 
 later poetry. Such a person had a perfect right 
 to prefer the poetry of the eighteenth century. 
 But this position is no longer tenable. The 
 man who seriously thought '* Religious Musings " 
 finer than *' Christabel " would not be argued 
 with, he would be ignored. All, whatever their 
 school or their sympathies, concur in allowing 
 that the poems which Coleridge composed in 
 perfect emancipation from conventional restraints 
 are much better than those which he wrote 
 while still in subjection to them. It is incon- 
 ceivable that he should have been an ordinary 
 writer as long as he composed on correct prin- 
 ciples, and inspired as soon as he began to go 
 wrong. To admit — and everybody does — the 
 vast superiority of the poetry which he produced 
 after his acquaintance with Wordsworth to that 
 which he had composed prior to that date, is 
 virtually to surrender the cause of the pseudo- 
 classic school. 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 79 
 
 This conclusion, unimpeachable as regards the 
 merits of the rival schools, may be perverted if 
 it is made an index to the personal merits of 
 their chief representatives. It does not follow 
 that Wordsworth and Coleridge were endowed 
 with more powerful minds than Dryden and 
 Pope because they have given us greater poetry. 
 From one point of view it may be argued that 
 the poet is the creature of his age — that as 
 Shakespeare himself must have found another 
 manifestation for his genius than the drama if 
 he had lived in the time of Augustus — so 
 Dryden and Pope would have been greater Cole- 
 ridges and Wordsworths if they had flourished 
 at the beginning of the- nineteenth century, and 
 vice versd. When it is considered how great a 
 Dryden Byron would have made, and what 
 curious affinities exist between the genius of 
 Pope and the genius of Tennyson, this view 
 cannot be dismissed as purely fancifulj^ It may 
 also be contended that poetical genius is not 
 the highest conceivable endowment, and that the 
 powers of reasoning and pointed expression 
 evinced in the writings of Pope and kindred 
 poets, set them above writers admittedly superior 
 to them in melody, fancy, and imagination. This 
 view deserves attention because it pervades much 
 of what is enforced and more of what is taken 
 
8o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 for granted on the subject of poetry, and is not 
 without support from the critical writings of 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge themselves. It may be 
 briefly defined as the utilitarian view of poetry, the 
 distinct preference of the prodesse to the delectare. 
 
 Is not this still the unacknowledged principle 
 of much of our poetical criticism ? Few, it must 
 be feared, care for poetry as poetry and nothing 
 else. We find poets eulogised or censured for 
 their views of fife, for their speculative opinions, 
 for the supposed influence of their writings, salu- 
 tary or otherwise, not at all for their poetry. 
 It does not seem to be recognised that poetry 
 is an entity as real and as independent of other 
 entities as form or colour are independent of 
 weight and size. It seems to be overlooked that 
 while the merit of a poem is undoubtedly en- 
 hanced if the writer's ideas are true as well as 
 poetical, just as, cceteris paribus^ the embodiment 
 of a fine conception in marble is preferable to 
 an equally fine embodiment in wax, the standard 
 of merit is not the truth but the poetry. Poetry 
 in a poem, though it can never be forgiven for 
 infidelity to the truth of nature or of human 
 nature, can exist perfectly well with a very mode- 
 rate amount of conformity to truth as ascertained 
 by the speculative intellect. The charm, other 
 than that of its verbal merits, of the induction 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 8i 
 
 to Tennyson's *' Lotus Eaters," for example, would 
 disappear if the drowsy Libyan afternoon were 
 other than the poet has painted it ; but the most 
 complete demonstration of the vanity of belief 
 in personal immortality would leave the poetical 
 beauty of ''Crossing the Bar" exactly where it 
 is. One of the great poems of the world is 
 founded upon an absurd belief, the generation 
 of the universe by the fortuitous collision of 
 atoms, yet the merit of Lucretius as a poet is 
 not in the least impaired by the fallacies of his 
 philosophy. It may be true that he would have 
 been a still better poet with a sounder cosmo- 
 gony ; but the criticism does not affect his genius, 
 but the material in which it wrought. Con- 
 versely, Plato's ♦" Republic " and Darwin's "Origin 
 of Species " would have been contemptible com- 
 positions if they had been expressed in sorry 
 verse, although their intellectual power might have 
 been exactly the same. This should be perfectly 
 obvious, yet how rarely do we see a poet judged 
 as a poet ! Wordsworth is preferred to Shelley 
 by those who regard his ideas as more profound 
 and sane than his rival's, not as a thinker or a 
 moralist, which, granting the premises, would be 
 legitimate, but as a poet. Shelley in his turn 
 is preferred to Keats, because he expressed views 
 and sympathies to which Keats was a stranger, 
 
82 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 a circumstance which indeed renders him more 
 interesting as a man and more important as a 
 writer, without in the least proving that he was 
 the better poet. Goethe endured quarantine until 
 a very obtuse set of readers tardily satisfied them- 
 selves that "Faust" was neither immoral nor im- 
 pious ; and we have just seen Shakespeare excom- 
 municated by Tolstoi for tepidity as a democrat. 
 It is quite possible to protest against such vaga- 
 ries without becoming committed to the opposite 
 and equally pernicious theory of "art for art." 
 It is by no means true that the intellectual outfit 
 of a poet and the moral purpose of his work 
 are matters of indifference. Let two writers of 
 equal genius work on the same topic, and the 
 finer work will indubitably be produced by him 
 whose moral tone is the higher, and whose moral 
 purpose is the more intense. But suppose them 
 of unequal gifts — let one be endowed with divine 
 madness from the Muses, and the other with 
 nothing but moral enthusiasm, and the work of 
 the former, whatever its shortcomings, will be 
 great and precious, and that of the other, in 
 so far as concerns its claim to rank as poetry 
 or art, absolutely worthless. 
 
 If this is the case it is obvious that the claims 
 of the Dryden-Pope school to precedence on the 
 ground of poetry are invalid, and that the supe- 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 83 
 
 riority which their admirers claim for them can 
 only be asserted, if at all, in the sphere of in- 
 tellect. This is not to affirm that Dryden and 
 Pope were not very considerable poets, but poetry 
 is not the first consideration with them. Their 
 most splendid passages owe their splendour to 
 exactly the same qualities as confer the same dis- 
 tinction upon Macaulay's prose — judicious choice 
 of words, skilful disposition of them for rhetorical 
 effect, sonorous utterance, cogent sense. All ad- 
 mirable qualities, but present in an even greater 
 degree in the Philippics of Demosthenes. We 
 cannot, therefore, accept them as models for an 
 age that follows after poetry. Their useful function 
 is the subordinate one of schoolmasters, not pre- 
 ceptors of the eternal principles of art, but power- 
 ful curbs on the extravagances of enthusiasm, and 
 monitors of the importance of good style and good 
 sense. The essential spirit of poetry cannot be 
 imbibed from any human teacher, but it can be 
 displayed, and probably no poet exhibits it so 
 clearly as Coleridge in his most exquisite poems. 
 Here we have, so to speak, the chemical rays 
 the spectrum of poetry, intense and subtle beyond 
 the rest, but less capable of being yoked to use- 
 ful ends. As the photographic power inherent in 
 the chemical ray slumbers until it falls on the 
 right material, so the charms of Coleridge's best 
 
84 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 verse are wasted on all save delicate and sensitive 
 minds, and their most fervent admirers can point 
 to no such tangible influences from them as accom- 
 pany the study of Wordsworth and Shelley. Few, 
 indeed, have more profoundly influenced their epoch 
 than Coleridge, but this influence does not proceed 
 from the best and highest, and, in truth, his criti- 
 cisms excepted, the only quite satisfactory part of 
 his literary activity, but from his comparatively 
 feeble utterances in prose, mere fragments and 
 suggestions of what he might have achieved as a 
 thinker. These have nevertheless produced im- 
 portant effects, while his really inspired and perfect 
 work has given the world little else than pleasure. 
 There cannot well be a stronger proof that the 
 place of a poet is not to be determined by its 
 conformity to an utilitarian standard. Coleridge 
 possessed a magnificent intellect, and his writings 
 have been most serviceable to mankind; yet his 
 greatest performances, those on which his fame 
 must in the main rest, are those in which there 
 is least of utility, and least of merely intellectual 
 power. We must therefore conclude that poetry 
 is neither exalted utility nor sublimated intellect, 
 but an entity of itself, distinct from and indepen- 
 dent of both, though capable of harmonious and 
 advantageous alliance with them; and must come 
 back to Shelley's definition, already cited, as 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 85 
 
 expressing the sober sense, no less than the imagi- 
 native aspect of the matter. It is, of course, evident, 
 and this Coleridge and Shelley would have fully 
 granted, that the poet cannot always dwell in a 
 realm of pure imagination, and that in proportion 
 as he stoops to sublunary things he must approve 
 himself conversant with the ordinary affairs of the 
 world. It would, for example, have been idle for 
 Goethe to have written his *' Tasso," or Shelley his 
 '* Cenci," without some knowledge of the Italy of 
 the end of the sixteenth century. But this power 
 would have been just as much needed by the 
 historian who should have essayed to present a 
 picture of the time. It is consequently not poetry, 
 but a gift essential to the manifestation of poetry 
 in certain departments, especially the dramatic. 
 It is also manifest that this faculty of vivid reali- 
 sation, although a most valuable endowment, is 
 not pre - eminently an intellectual one, since 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, the deepest thinkers 
 of their age, possessed it in but a limited 
 measure, while it is conspicuous in Scott and 
 Byron. 
 
 Coleridge sometimes persuaded himself that his 
 poetry was the product of serious and deliberate 
 effort. " With this view," he says, " I wrote 
 *The Ancient Mariner.'" This may be read in 
 the light of Mr. Dykes Campbell's dry comment 
 
86 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 on a similar asseveration, '' In Biographia Lite- 
 raria^ Coleridge gave what he was then willing 
 to believe were his reasons for writing these 
 parodies." Coleridge would have us believe that 
 he and Wordsworth had formed a scheme of joint 
 action, in which his own part would have been 
 ''to transfer from our inward nature a human 
 interest and semblance of truth sufficient to procure 
 for shadows of imagination that willing suspension 
 of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic 
 faith." Writing, however, to Davy near the very 
 time (October 1800), he accounts for the non- 
 appearance of '' Christabel " in the second volume 
 of " Lyrical Ballads " on the ground that the poem 
 was in direct opposition to the very purpose for 
 which " Lyrical Ballads " were published, which is 
 defined to be ''the application of extraordinary 
 passions to the incidents of common life." We 
 learn from the matter-of-fact and veracious Words- 
 worth that the impulse to composition, so far as 
 tangible, was the magister artisy ingenique largitor : 
 — " We had both determined to write some poetry 
 for a monthly magazine, the profits of which were 
 to defray the expenses of a little excursion we were 
 to make together." There is no reason to doubt 
 that this prosaic need actually prompted the com- 
 position of one of the most inspired poems in our 
 language, but it was the mere casual accident which 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 87 
 
 liberated forces long slowly accumulating. The 
 need returned, but the inspiration did not accom- 
 pany it. In 1800, Coleridge, by his own account, 
 was unable to make any progress with the second 
 part of ^' Christabel " until, dining out, '* somehow 
 or other " he " drank so much wine that I found 
 some effort and dexterity requisite to balance 
 myself on the higher edge of sobriety." It is to 
 be hoped that his dexterity was as successful in 
 the estimation of others as in his own. However 
 this may have been, the next day " Christabel " 
 started afresh, on a lower level than of old, yet 
 not unsuccessfully; although, ''seeing double," 
 Coleridge persuaded himself that he had written 
 twice as many verses as he really had. These 
 anecdotes are not very compatible with a precon- 
 ceived purpose either of elevating ordinary things 
 or of bestowing reality upon the creatures of the 
 imagination. Coleridge was simply a great lyrical 
 poet, who, throughout his annus mirabilis of 1797, 
 and for some time afterwards, was in a state of 
 joyous exaltation from the new world of poetry 
 which had been disclosed to him by Wordsworth. 
 As the force of the new influence waned, his powers 
 waned with it : though never entirely forsaken by 
 inspiration, he was never again the poet of that 
 glorious time. But one thing he never did, he 
 never recurred to the style of his early composi- 
 
 
88 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 tions. He always wrote as the Coleridge of 1797, 
 if fitfully and with diminished power : 
 
 " For he on honeydew had fed 
 And drunk the milk of Paradise." 
 
 The loss which English poetry has sustained 
 by the collapse of Coleridge's poetical productive- 
 ness is beyond calculation, almost beyond concep- 
 tion. He lived until 1834. If every year of his 
 life had yielded such a harvest as 1797, he would 
 have produced a greater amount of high poetry 
 than all his contemporaries put together. In so 
 far as his impoverishment resulted from actual 
 desertion by the inward impulse, no blame can 
 be imputed to him, ^* the wind bloweth where it 
 listeth." But external causes certainly co-operated, 
 which might have been eluded. One was his grow- 
 ing devotion to philosophy, and what was worse, 
 his constant indecision whether he would be a 
 philosopher or a poet. He never perceived that 
 he was, in a sense, more of a critic than a thinker, 
 and that, just as he had required a Wordsworth, 
 a man on the whole less gifted than himself, to 
 impregnate his mind with the germs of a higher 
 poetry than he had hitherto known, so his best 
 powers of thought were called forth by assent or 
 antagonism to the opinions of others, frequently 
 texts of little worth in comparison with the com- 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 89 
 
 mentary. He was not content to inscribe the 
 margins of musty folios with penetrating criticism, 
 or to lavish the unconsidered opulence of his table- 
 talk, but he was for ever planning, and persuading 
 himself that he had all but executed, some mar- 
 vellous reconciliation of all contradictory systems 
 which would leave no one any excuse for differing 
 from anybody else. This visionary project was 
 responsible for much of Coleridge's unproductive- 
 ness in poetry and other departments; preoccupa- 
 tion with it was an upas, which suffered nothing 
 else to spring up in its neighbourhood. It is 
 remarkable that two of the greatest geniuses of 
 the age were also fascinated by it, and were 
 preserved from wasting their time, one by ill- 
 health, the other by the second of the causes 
 which to so great an extent paralysed Coleridge — 
 opium. " I consider poetry," says Shelley, *^ very 
 subordinate to moral and metaphysical science, 
 and but for my health," &c. De Quincey in his 
 youth planned a philosophical treatise on a larger 
 scale than Coleridge's to which he intended to 
 devote his whole life. His talent for metaphysical 
 research was probably at least equal to Coleridge's, 
 but who that knows his caprice and fastidiousness 
 can doubt that the result would have been a mass 
 of extracts and memoranda for an unwritten book ? 
 Opium came to the rescue, bracing up De Quincey's 
 
90 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 energies by depriving him of his little independence, 
 and compelling him to work or starve. Necessity- 
 forced him upon just the kind of work which 
 suited him best. Obliged to write for periodicals, 
 the needs of the situation debarred him from the 
 endless research and dismaying prohxity so dear 
 to his natural inclinations, and enriched our litera- 
 ture with a series of cabinet pictures which would 
 have remained unfinished if attempted on heroic 
 scale. But no necessity could cure Coleridge of 
 forming schemes beyond his capacity to execute, 
 and the time wasted in dreaming over them, and 
 the discouragement and self-reproach begotten of 
 their continual failure, must be reckoned among 
 the causes which impeded the full exertion of his 
 powers. In so far as opium contributed to this 
 everlasting reverie and chronic impotence of will, 
 it was assuredly among his enemies. This need 
 not have been so; there was no fatahty in the 
 matter. Another important cause of the compara- 
 tive torpidity of Coleridge's poetical power was, 
 in our opinion, a step which he need not have 
 taken. If a period could be fixed for the duration 
 of his flourishing epoch, his pride and prime of 
 genius, it would begin with his acquaintance with 
 Wordsworth and end with his final depart from 
 Nether Stowey, June 1800. He assigned various 
 reasons for the step, but the true reason was that 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 91 
 
 given by Mrs. Sandford, ^* Coleridge would never 
 have been content to live in the West of England 
 while Wordsworth was living in the North," sup- 
 plemented perhaps by another, his admiration for 
 Dorothy Wordsworth, who would in all probability 
 have become his wife but for the unfortunate pre- 
 cipitation, under strong pressure from well-meaning 
 and much-mistaken Southey, which had already 
 made him the husband of an excellent woman 
 entirely unsuited to him. Had this union taken 
 place it is safe to affirm that Coleridge's history 
 would have been entirely different, that the finest 
 of his poems would not be exquisite fragments, 
 and that his mind would not be best discerned in 
 the mirror of other intellects. But it was too 
 late; Dorothy could now at best be but a dis- 
 turbing influence; Wordsworth's chary sympathy 
 was a poor substitute for Tom Poole; one instinc- 
 tively feels the warm, genial son of opulent Devon 
 misplaced in the stern though grand environment 
 of the lakes where Wordsworth was so perfectly 
 at home. From this time ill-health, opium, pecu- 
 niary embarrassment, domestic jars, and painful 
 estrangements increase and multiply, and although 
 Coleridge's genius remains essentially as great as 
 ever, its power of adequate manifestation dwindles 
 more and more. 
 
 The period which we have signalised as that of 
 
92 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Coleridge's most brilliant poetical activity com- 
 prises " The Ancient Mariner," " Christabel," 
 *' Kubla Khan," " Genevieve," '' The Nightingale," 
 " Frost at Midnight," ** This Lime-Tree Bower 
 my Prison," "Fears in Solitude," "Ode to France," 
 ^' Lines in the Hartz Forest," and " The Wander- 
 ings of Cain." Were these removed from his 
 works he would lose all title to be esteemed a 
 great poet. The translation of " Wallenstein " falls 
 within the same period. Never again did he rise 
 to an equal height, except in two exquisite but 
 very brief poems, the inspiration of his advanced 
 years. Still, Coleridge's long third period (1800- 
 1834) is not senility, and is not decadence. Save 
 in the two beautiful pieces just alluded to ("Youth 
 and Age," and " Work without Hope ") he remains 
 upon a lower level than of old, his wing has lost 
 the power to upbear him to the seventh heaven 
 of poetry. But within his own sphere he is still 
 perfect. If we knew nothing of him but " The 
 Garden of Boccaccio" (1828), we should still say 
 that a poet of rare elegance and charm had graced 
 the latter days of George IV. Poems more ex- 
 quisitely finished and absolutely perfect in their 
 way than "The Butterfly" (1815), and "Love, 
 Hope, and Patience in Education" (1829), will not 
 be found in English literature. They are, more- 
 over, not mere intellectual exercises, but genuine 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 93 
 
 inspirations, showing that- Coleridge's poetical 
 faculty remained undebased, though it had no 
 longer the energy for any conspicuous manifesta- 
 tion of its existence. 
 
 It will be understood that any regrets here 
 expressed for the limited and fragmentary char- 
 acter of Coleridge's performances as poet or 
 thinker have reference not to the merit of the 
 work in itself, but to its amount in comparison 
 with what it lay in him to have achieved. Any 
 one of his best poems would suffice for the 
 immortality of any poet; taken altogether, ^hey 
 place him upon an eminence inferior to none of 
 his great contemporaries. But the man's powers 
 were gigantic, and it would have been easy for 
 him to have been the central sun of the constella- 
 tion of his brilliant period. That he failed to be 
 this is perhaps as much the fault of others as of 
 himself. An ingenious attempt has been made 
 in our time to classify the souls of poets as either 
 masculine or feminine ; and although the principles 
 adopted cannot have been sound — for the impetuous 
 and indomitable Shelley is petticoated under its 
 operation — a species of sex in souls is hardly to 
 be disputed. Among the poets those may with 
 justice be described as feminine who more or less 
 require to be impregnated by contact with other 
 minds, whether spirits of old speaking through 
 
94 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 books, or spirits incarnated in living men. The 
 very sensitiveness of Keats's poetical temperament 
 rendered him in a measure dependent: he usually 
 wrote under the influence of some famous old 
 poet — first Spenser, afterwards Milton, at the last, 
 Dante. Coleridge is rarely imitative of another 
 author, but his Muse required to be wooed by 
 the sympathy of a kindred spirit. Wordsworth 
 sufficed him for a time, but sympathy alone will 
 not flourish without admiration; and although 
 Coleridge was by no means exacting, Wordsworth, 
 who thought " The Ancient Mariner " needed some 
 apology, was honestly unable to enter into the 
 airy and spiritual graces of his poetry. Dorothy 
 Wordsworth, who might have been everything to 
 him, was tied up from him by an iron knot; and 
 it is most pathetic to see Coleridge, dimly conscious 
 of his want, turning blindly about for his satis- 
 faction to the most unlikely quarters, even to Alsop. 
 He had the most sympathetic of friends in Charles 
 Lamb, but the smaller minds of his day could not, 
 with every good intention, satisfy his craving, and 
 the greater men, except Shelley, who only knew 
 him afar off, had no proper conception of his rank 
 as a man of surpassing genius. One there was who 
 might — or who might not — have supplied the lack 
 of all the rest. If Coleridge, when in Germany, 
 instead of spending his time at Hanover, had gone 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 95 
 
 straight to Weimar, the consequences might have 
 been momentous to himself and to English litera- 
 ture. It is by no means certain ; Goethe could 
 be very blind and very unsympathetic. But had 
 it proved otherwise, had he appreciated Coleridge 
 at his worth, he might by admiration, by reproof, 
 by example, above all by the contagion of a com- 
 mon interest in the highest things, have infused 
 the needful fire and confidence into him, have 
 checked his self-indulgence and self-deception, and 
 prevented the misuse of his powers. Coleridge's 
 very weakness and dependence would have in- 
 sured the triumph of Goethe's salutary influence. 
 *' Faust " would have been rendered into English 
 with as great success as " Wallenstein " ; and it 
 might have come to be said that not even Goethe's 
 '* Faust " was so great a work as Goethe's Coleridge. 
 But although Coleridge's poetical production fell 
 in quantity far below what might have been hoped 
 from him, the better portion of it surpassed all 
 reasonable expectation in its quality. Before him, 
 there seemed no probability that English poetry 
 would be enriched by " Christabel " and " The 
 Ancient Mariner." It might have been predicted, 
 especially after the appearance of Burns, Blake, 
 and Chatterton, that the reaction from the formality 
 and artificiality of the reigning taste must evolve 
 an antagonistic type somewhat resembling Words- 
 
96 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 worth's; the revival of interest in the EHzabethans 
 betokened the appearance of a Keats; and the 
 Revolution could hardly fail to find laureates of 
 the stamp of a Byron or a Shelley. But Coleridge 
 could not have been foretold; his best vein is in 
 the main independent of these and other contem- 
 porary movements ; it is quintessential poetry, and 
 that is all. As a consequence he has founded no 
 school. There are no tendencies to imbibe, no 
 mannerisms to copy. The only abiding trace of 
 his influence, perhaps, is the English blank verse 
 idyll as subsequently perfected by Tennyson, who 
 would hardly have achieved such success if, while 
 elaborating his verse to the last degree of artistic 
 polish, he had not kept his comparatively artless 
 predecessor continually in mind. It is, however, 
 the greatest of mistakes to speak of Coleridge as 
 a wasted force, the recipient of misused gifts, a 
 man who accomplished little. As a prose writer, 
 though achieving no one great work, he deposited 
 the seeds of thought in innumerable minds. As 
 a poet, to speak only of the aspect under which 
 we have principally considered him, he has shown 
 within the compass of his own writings what is 
 and what is not poetry, and forced all professed 
 admirers of poetry to consider whether she can 
 exist without inspiration, and whether in speaking 
 of poetic excellence they do not really mean the 
 
THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 97 
 
 excellence of the ethical teacher, the advocate, the 
 stylist, or some other merit equally capable of 
 manifestation in prose. It is right to honour 
 Dryden and Pope for what they were, but the 
 man who would place them along with or above 
 Coleridge as poets, must admit that he dissents 
 from the opinion of the Greeks respecting poetry, 
 and regards it as a form of intellectual exercise. 
 Coleridge's themes, except in his early and now 
 and then in his late period, are distinctly poetical ; 
 and none understand like him to create a perpetual 
 feeling of enchantment by the constant but un- 
 obtrusive employment of the most beautiful and 
 melodious words. As a painter and musician in 
 speech he is surpassed by none of his contempo- 
 raries ; and his *' Ancient Mariner" and the first 
 part of ''Christabel" are related to the bulk of 
 nineteenth-century poetry, down to the time of 
 Rossetti, as ''The Tempest" and ''A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream " are to the other plays of 
 Shakespeare.^ 
 
 ^ It has not been thought necessary to reprint the concluding 
 paragraphs of this essay, which chiefly refer to the arrangement 
 of Coleridge's poems adopted in the edition to which it was 
 originally^prefixed. 
 
SHELLEY AND 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD 
 
SHELLEY AND 
 LORD BEACONSFIELD^ 
 
 Shelley undoubtedly possessed every quality 
 necessary to constitute a perfect hero of romance, 
 and it is a matter of some surprise that writers of 
 fiction have not hitherto made more use of him. 
 It is far from improbable that he will still figure 
 in many works of imagination, but if so, it will 
 probably be as the centre of ideal groups widely 
 different from the actual environment of his life. 
 The time when his actual history could be made 
 the subject of a novel has gone by, the real inci- 
 dents of his life are too well known for the romancer 
 to tamper with, even if — which is not the case — 
 he could hope by so doing to render them more 
 romantic. There was a time of twilight, when 
 they were so obscure or variously related as to 
 invest a true history with some of the prerogatives 
 of fiction. It was then that a man of genius, whose 
 own career, if less adventurous than Shelley's 
 was even more exceptional, essayed to shadow the 
 
 ^ A paper read to the Shelley Society, 1887. 
 
102 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 poet forth to the public through the medium of a 
 romance. This was no less a person than Lord 
 Beaconsfield; and it is a matter of considerable 
 interest to ascertain how he performed his task, 
 and what qualifications he possessed in the shape 
 of special sympathy or special information. A 
 further inquiry worth making is how far his study 
 of Shelley reacted upon this remarkable man him- 
 self, and what traces, if any, it has left in his 
 writings. 
 
 It must at first sight seem a visionary endeavour 
 to establish any sort of affinity between Shelley 
 and Lord Beaconsfield. The differences between 
 the characters of the two men are so palpable that 
 they cast the actual though partial resemblance 
 entirely into the shade. The dissimilarity of their 
 respective careers is so great that it appears useless 
 to look for any likeness. We do not sufficiently 
 remember that Shelley's was merely the beginning 
 of a career, and that, though nothing could have 
 prevented Lord Beaconsfield from being a distin- 
 guished man, the particular kind of distinction he 
 attained might have been metamorphosed by cir- 
 cumstances. If the elder Disraeli had not forsaken 
 the faith of his fathers, the younger Disraeli would 
 not have entered Parliament until far advanced in 
 middle life, when the Corn Law question had been 
 solved, and there would have been no leap to 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 103 
 
 power for him from the prostrate body of Sir 
 Robert Peel, as the fox sprang out of the well on 
 the goat's shoulders. Debarred from practical poli- 
 tics, Disraeli might have given free course to those 
 revolutionary tendencies of his nature which the 
 necessities of political life suppressed, and been 
 famous as the keen, steady, and ruthless assailant 
 of many things which, as matters turned out, his 
 destiny enlisted him to defend. Shelley, on his 
 part, would very probably have entered Parliament 
 if he had lived to the period of the Reform Bill, 
 and though he could no more have been a great 
 parliamentary tactician than Disraeli could have 
 been a great poet, he would have been equally 
 eminent as an orator; his parliamentary career 
 would have been distinguished by just that persis- 
 tent indomitable resolution which made Disraeli 
 what it would never have made Shelley. If the 
 ideals of the two men seem at first sight almost 
 antagonistic, there is one very important point in 
 which they coincide. Which of the heroines of 
 modern fiction would Shelley have most admired ? 
 We learn from Peacock that his favourite among 
 the heroines he did know was Brockden Brown's 
 Constantia Dudley; and the same qualities which 
 fixed his preference on her would have guided him 
 to the Theodora of Disraeli's *' Lothair." She is in 
 truth one of the noblest creations of a modern 
 
104 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 novelist; she impersonates all the traits which 
 Shelley specially valued in woman ; she is a maturer 
 Cythna, a Cythna of flesh and blood. What is 
 equally to the point, she is her creator's ideal also. 
 Disraeli usually deals with his characters with easy 
 familiarity, and, except when he is depicting a 
 personal enemy, with amiable indulgence. He sees 
 their foibles, nevertheless, and takes care that these 
 shall not escape the reader. In Theodora alone 
 there is nothing of this. She has captivated her 
 creator, as Galatea captivated Pygmalion. There 
 is not a single touch of satire in the portrait; it 
 plainly represents the artist's highest conception of 
 woman, which proves to be essentially the same as 
 Shelley's. 
 
 More might be said on the points of contact be- 
 tween the poet and the statesman, but time is short 
 and criticism long. We must confine ourselves to 
 facts capable of verification, and consider — (i) The 
 external evidence of Disraeli's acquaintance with 
 Shelley. (2) Disraeli's estimate of Shelley as de- 
 duced from the portrait of the latter which he has 
 .2:iven in "Venetia." (3) Traces of Shelley's in- 
 fluence on Disraeli's writings. 
 
 There is one great contemporary poet whom 
 Lord Beaconsfield undoubtedly admired with en- 
 thusiasm. It is known with what eagerness he 
 exerted himself in his latter days to promote the 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 105 
 
 erection of a monument to Byron. In so doing he 
 both expressed a conviction and discharged a debt. 
 Byron had prompted *' Contarini Fleming," a higher 
 and purer ideal than "Vivian Grey." Byron had 
 seen much in his Eastern wanderings, and by his 
 " Hebrew Melodies " had constituted himself in 
 some sort the laureate of Disraeli's own race. Who- 
 ever is interested in Byron, is interested in Shelley, 
 if only as a member of the ' former's circle ; and 
 although Disraeli's knowledge of the real relations 
 of the two poets was no doubt defective, he knew 
 enough to be aware that they consorted as intel- 
 lectual peers. But in truth he had special means 
 of information. Readers of Shelley's letters will 
 remember his account of Byron's valet, Tita Fal- 
 cieri, " a fine fellow with a prodigious black beard, 
 who has stabbed two or three people, and is the 
 most good-natured looking fellow I ever saw." 
 This personage had actually come into the service 
 of the elder Disraeli. He had remained with Byron 
 until his master's death, had then commanded a 
 regiment of Albanians, and successively passed 
 into the service of the younger and the elder 
 Disraeli, closing his life in the enjoyment of otium 
 cmn dignitate as messenger at the India Office.^ 
 He was with Shelley at Lerici for a time, and is 
 
 ^ A portrait of him by Maclise will be found in Mr. Prothero's 
 edition of Byron's Letters and Journals, vol. iv. 
 
io6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 recorded to have had many anecdotes of him ; and 
 we may be sure that his master would not neglect 
 such a source of information when writing the re- 
 markable novel of which we are to speak immedi- 
 ately, in which Byron and Shelley are introduced. 
 One other Shelleyan influence on Disraeli must 
 not be omitted. This is Bulwer Lytton, intimately 
 connected with Disraeli for several years after the 
 latter's return from the East. Bulwer's estimate of 
 Shelley, though too far in advance of the period 
 to be termed conventional, was still shallow and 
 inadequate. "You evidently admire him as a 
 poet," he wrote to Jefferson Hogg, *'far more than 
 I think criticism warrants us in doing. He is great 
 in parts ; but, the * Cenci ' excepted, does not, in 
 my opinion, effect a great whole." As editor of 
 the New Monthly y however, Bulwer was the means 
 of giving Hogg's reminiscences to the world; he 
 was also on very friendly terms with Mrs. Shelley, 
 and he cannot have failed to stimulate the curiosity 
 which his friend and contributor Disraeli had already 
 begun to entertain on the subject. 
 
 To these sources of information may be added 
 another, of which it will be more convenient to 
 speak further on. 
 
 When therefore, about the middle of 1836, 
 Disraeli sat down to write " Venetia," he was not 
 ill prepared to speak of Shelley, in so far as 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 107 
 
 knowledge of his history and character went ; and, 
 as will be shown by-and-by, he possessed no 
 inconsiderable acquaintance with his writings. In 
 drawing Shelley's portrait, however, he resorted to 
 a device which may almost be said to have been 
 habitual with him. He did not wish his personages 
 to appear mere servile transcripts of reality, and as 
 invention was by no means his forte, and he 
 actually was indebted for the pith and marrow of 
 his novels to the observation of life, he was 
 accustomed to avoid this imputation by fusing two 
 characters into one, or rather by borrowing traits 
 from one personage which he somewhat in arti- 
 ficially joined on to another. Thus in '^ Endymion," 
 one of the leading characters is compounded of 
 Cobden and Bright, certainly in unequal pro- 
 portions. Having, therefore, in " Venetia" to intro- 
 duce Byron as Lord Cadurcis, and Shelley as 
 Marmion Herbert, he cuts Byron's relations with 
 Lady Byron and " Ada, sole daughter of my house 
 and heart," off from the character of Cadurcis, and 
 superimposes them upon Herbert, leaving the rest 
 unaltered, ^' The voice is the voice of Jacob, but 
 the hands are the hands of Esau " ; the situation 
 is Byronic, but the character is Shelleyan. Look- 
 ing at the character apart from the situation, we 
 find that Herbert is drawn in conformity with the 
 most orthodox Shelleyan tradition, precisely as 
 
io8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Mrs. Shelley and Trelawny and Hogg and Medwin 
 have agreed to represent the poet. Not only is 
 Shelley thus delineated with substantial accuracy, 
 but the development of his mind and the history of 
 his w^ritings are followed with a closeness which 
 shows that Disraeli has taken pains to master 
 the biographical information accessible to him. 
 The picture of Herbert's personal appearance is 
 Shelley's with a few picturesque touches super- 
 added, and representing him at a more advanced 
 age than he actually reached. " His stature was 
 much above the middle height, though his figure, 
 which was remarkably slender, was bowed; not 
 by years, certainly, for his countenance, though 
 singularly pallid, still retained traces of youth. 
 His hair, which he wore very long, descended over 
 his shoulders, and must originally have been of a 
 light auburn colour, but was now severely touched 
 with grey. His countenance was very pallid, so 
 colourless, indeed, that its aspect was almost 
 unearthly; but his large blue eyes still glittered 
 with fire." In another passage, Herbert is said to 
 have " looked like a golden phantom " — a phrase 
 which seems very likely to have been adopted from 
 some one who had actually seen Shelley. 
 
 Herbert, in his entrance upon life, is thus 
 delineated : — " Young, irresistibly prepossessing in 
 his appearance, with great eloquence, crude but 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 109 
 
 considerable knowledge, an ardent imagination, and 
 a generous and passionate soul." Like Shelley, 
 Herbert goes to Eton and Oxford, where " his 
 college life passed in ceaseless controversy with 
 his tutor." He is not expelled the University, 
 which would have interfered with the plot of the 
 novel ; but as he is supposed to have quitted it in 
 his nineteenth year, he can hardly have taken a 
 degree. Like the Shelley of Hogg's reminiscences, 
 he is described as ** a proficient in those scientific 
 pursuits which were then rare," and after leaving 
 the University secludes himself in his laboratory 
 and his dissecting-room as well as his study. 
 '' While thus engaged, he occasionally flattered 
 himself that he might discover the great secret 
 which had perplexed generations," an evident 
 allusion to " Frankenstein." He thus confirms 
 himself in all the heresies which his Oxford tutor 
 supposed himself to have shaken, and becomes, 
 moreover, "a. strenuous antagonist of marriage, 
 which he taught himself to esteem, not only as an 
 unnatural tie, but as eminently unjust towards that 
 softer sex who had so long been the victims of 
 man." But, as in Shelley's case, poetry gets the 
 upper hand of philosophy. The youthful poem 
 attributed to Herbert is a fusion of two of Shelley's 
 works. When we read that " he called into creation 
 that society of immaculate purity and unbounded 
 
no ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 enjoyment which he believed was the natural 
 inheritance of unshackled man," we are reminded 
 of " Queen Mab " ; but " the stanzas ghttering with 
 refined images and resonant with subtle symphony " 
 are a description, and a very good description, of 
 the " Revolt of Islam." With this poem also corre- 
 sponds this further trait : — " In the hero he pictured 
 a philosopher young and gifted as himself; in the 
 heroine, his idea of a perfect woman." It is added, 
 not unjustly as regards even the " Revolt of Islam," 
 but with still closer application to '^Prometheus 
 Unbound " : '' These pecuHar doctrines of Herbert, 
 which, undisguised, must have excited so much 
 odium, were more or less developed and inculcated 
 in this work; nevertheless they were necessarily 
 so veiled by the highly spiritual and metaphorical 
 language of the poet that it required some previous 
 acquaintance with the system enforced to be able to 
 discover and recognise the esoteric spirit of his 
 muse." The fate, therefore, of Herbert's early 
 writings is represented as different from Shelley's, 
 l)ut not wholly unlike what Shelley's might have 
 been if he had not begun with '' Queen Mab." *' The 
 public," it is said, '* read only the history of an 
 ideal world, and of creatures of exquisite beauty, 
 told in language that alike dazzled their fancy and 
 captivated their ear. They were lost in a delicious 
 maze of metaphor and music, and were proud to 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD iii 
 
 acknowledge an addition to the glorious catalogue 
 of their poets in a young and interesting member 
 of their aristocracy." After, however, Herbert's 
 rupture with his wife, the particulars of which, as 
 already intimated, are borrowed from the history 
 of Byron, "his works were but little read and 
 universally decried. The general impression of the 
 English public was that Herbert was an abandoned 
 being of profligate habits ; and as scarcely any one 
 but a sympathetic spirit ever read a line he wrote, 
 for, indeed, the very sight of his works was pollu- 
 tion, it is not very wonderful that this opinion was 
 so generally prevalent. A calm inquirer might 
 perhaps have suspected that abandoned profligacy 
 is not very compatible with severe study, and 
 might have been of opinion that a solitary sage 
 may be the antagonist of a priesthood without 
 denying the existence of a God. But there never 
 are calm inquirers.'* 
 
 This passage, as well as the general character 
 of the portrait, entitles, I think. Lord Beaconsfield 
 to a place among the honourable Hst of those who 
 have defended Shelley when the unfavourable 
 estimate of his character was by far the prepon- 
 derating one. In fact, hardly any exception can 
 be taken to his portrait, except its defectiveness 
 in points with which it was hardly possible that 
 he should have been acquainted. His literary 
 
112 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 estimate is less sound, yet even in its incomplete- 
 ness is in a sense welcome as proving that his 
 judgment of the man was not disabled by his 
 admiration of the poet. ''There is," he makes 
 Herbert say, " a radical fault in my poetic mind 
 and I am conscious of it. I am not altogether 
 void of the creative faculty, but mine is a frag- 
 mentary mind. I produce no whole. Unless you 
 do this you cannot last; at least you cannot 
 materially affect your species." This, it will be 
 noticed, is an echo of Bulwer's remark in his 
 letter to Hogg already quoted, and would seem 
 to indicate that the quality of Shelley's genius 
 had formed the subject of discussion between 
 Disraeli and his friend. The very conversation, 
 however, between Herbert and Cadurcis, from 
 which these observations were taken, shows that 
 if DisraeH was not a disciple of Shelley or an 
 adequate appraiser of his genius, he was yet a 
 student of his writings, for the most striking 
 passages — with a freedom which would justly have 
 subjected Disraeli to the imputation of plagiarism 
 if he had not put them into the mouth of Shelley 
 himself — are taken out of one of the least known 
 of his works. "And yet," says Cadurcis, "the age 
 of Pericles has passed away. Solve me the problem 
 why so unparalleled a progress was made during 
 that period in literature and the arts, and why 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 113 
 
 that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so soon 
 received a check and became retrograde ? " " It 
 is a problem left to the wonder and conjecture of 
 posterity," said Herbert. "Nothing of the Athe- 
 nians remains except their genius; but they fulfilled 
 their purpose. The wrecks and fragments of their 
 subtle and profound minds obscurely suggest to us 
 the grandeur and perfection of the whole." The 
 conversation is pursued for some time in the same 
 strain, and, like the above passage, is derived nearly 
 verbatim from Shelley's " Discourse on the Manners 
 of the Ancients," which was not pubhshed in an 
 authorised shape for three years after the appear- 
 ance of '^ Venetia." But a fragment, including these 
 sentences, had, in 1833, been given to the world 
 by Medwin in the Shelley Papers, and Disraeli 
 must not only have studied this little ephemeral 
 book with some care, but have had it in his pos- 
 session when he wrote '^ Venetia." A still more 
 striking quotation comes from the same source. 
 The reader of Shelley who remembers that the 
 "Defence of Poetry" was not published until 1840, 
 may well start when he comes upon one of its most 
 memorable dicta in the middle of "Venetia": "Poets 
 are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." 
 He may be thrilled, as Bertha in Tieck's wonder- 
 ful tale is thrilled, when the knight to whom she 
 has been recounting her history startles her with 
 
114 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 the name of the httle dog, Strohmian^ which she 
 has never told, for she has herself forgotten it. 
 But the explanation is simple. The remark which 
 closes Shelley's ^* Defence of Poetry " is one which 
 he frequently made in conversation, and Medwin, 
 who often heard it from him, has repeated it in the 
 Shelley Papers. Yet another citation from an un- 
 published work is also to be traced to Medwin's 
 Shelley Papers. After deploring the fragmentary 
 character of his own productions, as already men- 
 tioned, Plerbert says, ''What I admire in you, 
 Cadurcis, is that, with all the faults of youth, of 
 which you will free yourself, your creative power is 
 vigorous, prolific, and complete ; your creations rise 
 fast and fair, like perfect worlds." This is from 
 the " Sonnet to Byron," originally published in an 
 imperfect form by Medwin in the Shelley Papers, 
 where Shelley says (to use Medwin's text, the only 
 one accessible to Disraeli) : — 
 
 " My soul, which, as a worm may haply share 
 A portion of the Unapproachable, 
 Marks his creations rise as fast and fair 
 As perfect worlds at the Creator's will." 
 
 About the same time that this was written, 
 Shelley wrote to Gisborne of Byron's latest com- 
 position : *' What think you of Lord Byron now ? 
 Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 115 
 
 of God when He grew weary of vacancy, than I 
 at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise 
 of a decaying body. So I think, let the world envy 
 while it admires, as it may." Disraeli's represen- 
 tation of Herbert, then, admiring without envy the 
 more popular productions of his friend Cadurcis, 
 and awarding him an unmerited superiority of 
 genius, as well as pre - eminence in contemporary 
 reputation, is perfectly in accordance with fact. 
 Was there any source from which he could have 
 derived it besides the confused and not always re- 
 liable indications of Medwin ? I think there may 
 have been. There was a man then prominent in 
 London society, who had known B3Ton and Shelley 
 equally well, and had a perfect knowledge of the 
 sentiments they respectively entertained for each 
 other. I have been but once in the late Mr. Tre- 
 lawny's company, but that single occasion was 
 enough to convince me of the inexhaustibility of his 
 stores of Byronic and Shelleyan anecdote, and of 
 the general trustworthiness of his views of Shelley. 
 I am not sure that as much could be said of his 
 estimate of Byron, or of the members of the Pisa 
 circle in general. But in Shelley's case no spleen 
 or disappointment or fancied slight had marred the 
 original clearness of his view, and I feel as sure 
 that his report of Shelley's feelings towards Byron 
 would be mainly correct, as that Disraeli, deeply 
 
11 6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 interested in both poets as he was, must have 
 turned Trelawny's acquaintance to account. Tre- 
 lawny was intimate with DisraeU's friends, Lady 
 Blessington and Count D'Orsay, and that Disraeli 
 knew him about the time that he was writing 
 ^'Venetia," appears from a letter in his correspon- 
 dence, dated July 1836, introducing an excellent 
 bon-mot of James Smith's : " What do you think 
 of Spain ? Trelawny, who is a republican, is in 
 raptures. ^ The Spaniards,' he says, ^ are in ad- 
 vance of all countries; they have got their consti- 
 tution of 181 2.' Says James Smith, * I wish I had 
 got mine.' " 
 
 The catastrophe of " Venetia " is the catastrophe 
 of Shelley, in which Byron also is involved. The 
 scene is laid at Lerici ; the details are perfectly 
 accurate, and mainly derived from Trelawny's 
 account in Leigh Hunt's "Byron and his Con- 
 temporaries," supplemented, I imagine, with par- 
 ticulars gleaned in conversation. Byron plays the 
 part of Williams. " Lord Cadurcis was a fine 
 swimmer, and had evidently made strong efforts 
 for his life, for he was partly undressed. While 
 Captain Cadurcis leant over the body, chafing 
 the extremities in a hurried frenzy and gazing 
 intently on the countenance, a shout was heard 
 from one of the stragglers who had recently 
 arrived. The sea had washed on the beach 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 117 
 
 another corpse, the form of Marmion Herbert. It 
 would appear that he had made no struggle to 
 save himself, for his hand was locked in his 
 waistcoat, where, at the moment, he had thrust 
 the " Phaedo," showing that he had been reading 
 to the last, and was meditating on immortality 
 when he died." 
 
 It must, I fear, be admitted that " Venetia " is 
 almost the weakest of Lord Beaconsfield's novels 
 as a work of fiction, and that such interest as it 
 possesses is mainly biographical. It is so close a 
 copy of reality that the structure seems loose 
 and inartificial, and the sequence of events capri- 
 cious. The really artistic novelist is an eclectic 
 artist who chooses out of life the events susceptible 
 of treatment in fiction, and imparts to them the 
 logical concatenation which the ordinary little- 
 nesses of life obstruct or obscure. DisraeH has 
 simply copied, and except by the rather clumsy 
 device of fixing a piece of Byron upon Shelley, 
 has made hardly an endeavour to combine or 
 diversify. The domestic bereavement of Lord 
 Lyndhurst, to whom the book is dedicated, has, 
 he says, restrained him from offering any account 
 of ''the principles which had guided me in its 
 composition." This must have been a meagre 
 catalogue at best ; but the biographer redeems 
 the novelist, and he is right in claiming credit 
 
ii8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 for the endeavour "to shadow forth, though but 
 in a glass darkly, two of the most renowned and 
 refined spirits that have adorned these our latter 
 days." 
 
 There is but one of Lord Beaconsfield's works 
 in which it would be reasonable to seek for any 
 considerable trace of the influence of Shelley, and 
 in this we find it. Disraeli's " Revolutionary Epic " 
 could hardly have been produced without some 
 inspiration from the poet who had written the 
 true revolutionary epic of the age in the " Revolt 
 of Islam." Disraeli's epic bears its obhgations 
 to Shelley blazoned upon its front. Demogorgon, 
 in Milton an anarch old, had been promoted in 
 Shelley's *' Prometheus Unbound " to the rank 
 of a deity, the ultimate ground, in fact, of divine 
 existence. DisraeH adopts the idea. His Demo- 
 gorgon is the all-wise spirit before whom Magros 
 and Lyridon, the contending genii of the mediaeval 
 and the modern order, Faith and Freedom, appear 
 to plead their respective causes. The antagonism 
 of these genii is clearly derived from the Eagle 
 and Serpent of ^'The Revolt of Islam." The 
 manner in which they present themselves, it must 
 be owned, bears a somewhat burlesque resemb- 
 lance to the contention of Michael and Satan in 
 Byron's **' Vision of Judgment." Which is Michael 
 and which is Satan is hard to tell ; nor perhaps 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 119 
 
 had the author fully satisfied himself. For it is 
 a marked peculiarity of Disraeli that to the re- 
 volutionary temperament which enabled him to 
 write such audacious persiflage as the " Infernal 
 Marriage " and to draw such characters as Theo- 
 dora, he united a genuine reverence for the beauty 
 of the ancient order — its chivalry, its feudalism, 
 its monasticism; and it is to a great extent this 
 doubleness of nature which renders his works so 
 interesting, and earns pardon for two of the worst 
 defects an author can have — flippancy and mere- 
 triciousness. Magros and Lyridon plead their 
 causes before Demogorgon's throne with consider- 
 able rhetorical force, though without much poetry, 
 the entire situation presenting a perfect analogy 
 to that unfinished ^* Prologue to Hellas," in which 
 Christ and Mahomet play the same part of ad- 
 vocates, but which Disraeli cannot have seen. 
 Demogorgon informs the genii, in a line which but 
 for its lack of melody might have been borrowed 
 from Shelley, 
 
 " In man alone the fate of man is placed," 
 
 and bids them mark the career of a mortal in 
 whom, it is hinted, they will find their respective 
 aims reconciled. This is no other than Napoleon, 
 the child of a revolution yet the founder of an 
 empire. Napoleon is accordingly introduced, lead- 
 
120 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 ing the French from victory to victory up to the 
 gates of Milan; but here Disraeli's inspiration, or 
 rather the ambition which had simulated inspira- 
 tion, deserted him. He published what he had 
 written in the apparent hope that it might yet be 
 revived by popular applause, but prefaced his 
 work with a declaration which few versifiers even 
 would make, and certainly no poets : " I am not 
 one who finds consolation for the neglect of my 
 contemporaries in the imaginary plaudits of a more 
 sympathetic posterity." 
 
 The public having declined to interest itself in 
 the " Revolutionary Epic," the author redeemed the 
 pledge given in his preface, and, with or without a 
 pang, ** hurled his lyre to limbo." ^ He was, in 
 truth, no poet, and in attempting an enterprise 
 which Shelley himself would have found difficult, 
 he had absurdly misconceived both the nature and 
 the extent of his powers. Yet, notwithstanding 
 frequent bombast and frequent bathos, and every 
 possible indication of an essentially prosaic nature 
 masquerading in the garb of verse, there is a 
 freedom and largeness of treatment about the 
 '^ Revolutionary Epic " which redeems it from 
 contempt ; and at a time when imitators of Shelley 
 
 ^ He says, however, in the preface to the second edition, that in 
 1837 he corrected the poem with the intention of completing it, but 
 was prevented by his election to Parliament. 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 121 
 
 were generally copying his style alone, it is not 
 unrefreshing to find another order of followers 
 neglecting the style to lay hold of the ideas. It 
 is due to Disraeli to observe that the style of 
 his verse, if less individual than that of his 
 prose, is still distinctively his own, and that he is 
 but rarely found deliberately imitating the diction 
 of others. Though few close verbal parallels can 
 be adduced, there is, nevertheless, sufficient general 
 resemblance in particular passages to evince that 
 Shelley was not unfamiliar to him. Section 21 of 
 Book L is clearly suggested by Shelley's descrip- 
 tion of the Coliseum, which Medwin had pub- 
 lished in the Shelley Papers. A passage in Section 
 45 is copied, consciously or unconsciously, from a 
 corresponding passage in " Prometheus Unbound " ; 
 and the comparison affords an instructive example 
 of the difference between false poetry and true 
 
 poetry : — 
 
 Disraeli. 
 
 " Omens dire 
 Stmck cold the heart of man, and made all gaze 
 With silent speech upon each other's face, 
 Waiting who first should tell the thought all feared. 
 Steeples were blasted by descending fire ; 
 Ancestral trees, that seemed the types of Time, 
 Were stricken by strong winds, and in an hour 
 The growth of ages shivered ; from their base 
 Fell regal statues, fountains changed to blood, 
 And in the night lights strange and quivering scudded 
 Across the sky." 
 
122 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 " Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll 
 Around us — their inhabitants beheld 
 My sphered light wane in wide heaven ; the sea 
 Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire 
 From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow 
 Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown ; 
 Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains ; 
 Blue thistles bloomed in cities : foodless toads 
 Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled : 
 When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm. 
 And Famine ; and black blight on herb and tree." 
 
 These passages occur in the first division of the 
 *' Revolutionary Epic," where Magros pleads before 
 Demogorgon's throne in the cause of established 
 institutions. The speech of the revolutionary genius 
 Lyridon is naturally still more Shelley-like, but the 
 affinity is difficult to exhibit by any process short of 
 reading both poets, being rather one of sentiment 
 than of diction. It may be illustrated by a passage 
 from Disraeli himself — the recipe for concocting 
 punch in '* Vivian Grey," where, along with other 
 precepts more easy of observance by mortals, the 
 pupil is directed to catch the aroma of a pound 
 of tea. ^' You perceive, my Lord," says Vivian, 
 "that the whole difficulty lies in catching the 
 aroma." The aroma of " Queen Mab " is very 
 fairly caught in this portion of the '* Revolution- 
 ary Epic," but when you try to analyse it, it 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 123 
 
 evaporates : it cannot, like Browning's murex, be 
 
 made into an extract — 
 
 " flasked and fine 
 And priced and saleable at last." 
 
 We come, however, to Shelleyan diction as well 
 as Shelleyan sentiment in passages like this : — 
 
 " There too is seen, 
 Last in that radiant host yet brightest there, 
 A form that should be woman ; but methinks 
 The slave hath lost her fetters. Frank and pure — 
 From Custom's cursed taint, behold her now 
 Indeed the light and blessing of all life." 
 
 There are also frequent reminiscences of ** Alas- 
 tor." The following passage, for instance, pictur- 
 esque if it had but been original, is a curious 
 mosaic of pieces of description from that poem : — 
 
 " There was a spot, 
 It seemed the cradle of some mighty deed : 
 Tall mountains rose, with shining trees o'erspread, 
 And cleft with falling rivers, with a wind 
 Solemn, the solemn circus of the woods 
 Filling, and flinging freshness on their boughs : 
 A virgin growth, whose consecrated bark 
 No axe had grazed, but on the unsullied turf 
 For many a flowing age their fruit had fallen, 
 Spoils of the squirrel or the fearless bird ; 
 Or gentler banquet for some gentle fawn : 
 And in the centre rose a natural mound. 
 Verdant and soft, with many a flower bedecked. 
 Beauteous and bright and strange. With pious care 
 Upon this fragrant couch I placed my charge." 
 
124 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 " Alastor " was then a scarce poem, the first edi- 
 tion being exhausted, and the reprint in the Posthu- 
 mous Poems having been withdrawn. It is probable 
 that Disraeli read it in the Galignani edition, for we 
 find proof of his acquaintance with another poem 
 of Shelley's included in that edition, but at that 
 time rare in England. He says : — 
 
 " Kings and Nations 
 Gaze on each other with a blended glance 
 Of awe and doubt." 
 
 This is from "Hellas":— 
 
 " Obedience and Mutiny 
 Like giants in contention planet-struck 
 Stand gazing at each other." 
 
 Imitation, it has been said, is the sincerest 
 flattery. It is to be remembered that this practi- 
 cal appreciation of Shelley's work was manifested 
 more than two years before Disraeli began to write 
 "Venetia," and that, accordingly, we have every 
 right to consider the introduction of Shelley into 
 the novel a genuine testimony of the interest with 
 which his character and genius have inspired the 
 writer, and not the mere resource of a novelist 
 in quest of a plot. So clear a deliverance from a 
 person of Lord Beaconsfield's eminence conspicu- 
 ously marks a stage in the history of public 
 
SHELLEY AND BEACONSFIELD 125 
 
 opinion respecting Shelley. If far from coming 
 up to the claims justly advanced on Shelley's be- 
 half by the members of his own circle, or the 
 author of " Pauline/' or the young enthusiasts who 
 had taken him up at Cambridge, it is as great an 
 advance on the condescension of Moore as that 
 was on the verdict of the Quarterly Review. On 
 the whole, therefore, it is an episode in English 
 literary history to be looked back upon with satis- 
 faction. The principal gainer by it is Lord 
 Beaconsfield himself, whose imitation of Shelley's 
 poetry, if not always felicitous, at least indicates 
 discernment; and whose estimate of his character 
 proves that he had made his way through pre- 
 judice and misrepresentation to a substantially 
 accurate conception of the actual man. Putting 
 Lord Beaconsfield's personal controversies aside, 
 his dealings with men of letters as a man of 
 letters were almost invariably to his honour; and 
 this episode is among the most honourable. Yet 
 it makes for the honour of Shelley himself that 
 among the first to exhibit sensitiveness to his in- 
 fluence and appreciation of his character, should 
 have been a brilliant and original person who 
 hardly less than himself contributed to redeem 
 our age from the imputation of commonplace. 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA' 
 
 The story of Gycia has been recorded by the 
 Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his trea- 
 tise De Administrando Imperio^ and the English 
 reader may be referred to the full abstract given 
 by Finlay ("History of Greece," ii. 354-357). 
 It has been made the subject of a tragedy by 
 Sir Lewis Morris, who places or seems to place 
 its date circa A.D. 970, eleven years after the 
 death of his imperial authority in 959. This 
 oversight inspired me with the desire of ascer- 
 taining what the date actually was, an under- 
 taking of no difficulty in so far as the belief 
 of the Emperor Constantine is concerned. The 
 investigation, however, conducted me to the un- 
 foreseen and surprising conclusion that the 
 emperor's own chronology is wrong by several 
 centuries, and that the highly dramatic event 
 he records took] place in a much earlier and more 
 interesting age than that to which it is attributed 
 by him. I shall first] briefly narrate the incident 
 
 ^ Reprinted from the English Historical Review, January, 1897. 
 129 I 
 
130 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 itself, then elucidate the period at which Con- 
 stantine supposes it to have happened, and finally- 
 state my own reasons for carrying it back for 
 some centuries. 
 
 Constantine's extremely valuable work, De Ad^ 
 ministrando Imperio^ was compiled by him for 
 the instruction of his son Romanus, and may be 
 described as a compendium of the political, his- 
 torical, and geographical information most neces- 
 sary for a ruler of the Byzantine empire in the 
 tenth century. In some instances the emperor 
 — a genuine man of letters who might have been 
 an eminent author if he had flourished in a more 
 auspicious era — is allured into details not entirely 
 relevant to his subject. This is especially the 
 case when, near the end of his work, he speaks 
 of the Greek city of Cherson, in the Crimea, 
 which occupied very nearly the present site of 
 Sebastopol, and comprised within its walls the 
 ancient temple of Artemis, renowned for the minis- 
 trations of Iphigenia. He relates at considerable 
 length the wars of the Chersonites with the Sar- 
 matian sovereigns of the Cimmerian Bosporus, at 
 the eastern extremity of the Crimea, near the 
 existing city of Kertch, and in the course of 
 his narrative introduces the following striking 
 story. 
 
 The people of Bosporus, we are told, having 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 131 
 
 been worsted in war by the Chersonites, and de- 
 prived of a large portion of their territory, nour- 
 ished schemes of revenge. Affecting reconciliation, 
 they proposed to the people of Cherson that Gycia, 
 the daughter of the Chersonian chief magistrate, 
 Lamachus, should marry the son of the Bosporian 
 sovereign, Asander, to which the Chersonites con- 
 sented on condition that the bridegroom should 
 take up his residence among them and never re- 
 turn to Bosporus under pain of death. The 
 marriage accordingly took place, but Asander's son, 
 while ostensibly observing the conditions, only 
 sought for an opportunity of betraying Cherson 
 to his countrymen. After two years Lamachus 
 died, and Gycia, who inherited his great riches, 
 instituted an annual festival in his memory, feast- 
 ing the citizens at her own expense and en- 
 couraging them to public games and sports. Her 
 husband saw his opportunity, and under pretence 
 of bringing gifts from Bosporus introduced from 
 time to time a number of young Bosporians, who, 
 coming and departing on horseback, stopped on 
 their return under cover of the night, and, em- 
 barking in boats at the Lemion^ were clandestinely 
 
 1 AeifXiav, agreeing in orthography with the Greek word for 
 meadow, but evidently here denoting a haven, perhaps the harbour 
 of Balaklava. It must be either a dialectal variation of Xl/x'^u, and 
 the origin of the Tartar /iman, which frequently occurs at this day 
 in the sense of lake or inlet — e.^. Sinoi Liman (blue lake), a little 
 
132 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 brought back to Cherson and concealed in the 
 vaults of his palace. This went on for two years, 
 at the end of which two hundred Bosporian 
 youths had been collected, ready to break out and 
 fire the city on the celebration of the Lamachian 
 festival, when the Chersonites, it was expected, 
 would be overcome with wine and in no condition 
 to defend themselves. It happened, however, that 
 on the eve of the festival a little servant girl, who 
 for some transgression had been shut up in a room 
 immediately over the vaults in which the Bos- 
 porians were concealed, dropped the tip of her 
 spindle into a crevice of the floor, and, removing 
 a brick to extract it, discovered that the apart- 
 ment below was full of men. She revealed the 
 discovery to her mistress, who, having satisfied 
 herself of the fact, secretly convoked the principal 
 citizens, and instructed them to celebrate the fes- 
 tival as usual, but to prohibit the people from 
 drinking to excess; to pile combustibles around 
 the walls of the palace at nightfall ; and, as soon 
 as she herself should issue thence, to set fire to 
 these and burn the whole edifice to the ground. 
 The festival was held accordingly, Gycia herself 
 
 to the north of Kustendji — or else this very word transplanted into 
 Greek. This bit of local colouring proves that the narrative on 
 which Constantine's was founded was written at Cherson, or by 
 some one acquainted with the city. 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 133 
 
 encouraging her husband to drink freely, and ap- 
 parently setting him the example by her own 
 copious draughts from a purple cup, which in truth 
 held merely water. When he had retired to his 
 chamber with the intention of shortly sallying 
 forth with his Bosporians, Gycia came out at the 
 head of her household ; the combustibles were im- 
 mediately kindled, and the palace, with all its 
 inmates, was reduced to ashes. The Chersonites 
 wished to rebuild it at the public cost, but Gycia 
 refused, and desired that the site where treason 
 had been hatched should, on the contrary, be made 
 the receptacle of the filth and rubbish of the city. 
 Before revealing her husband's plot she had stipu- 
 lated that she herself should be buried within 
 the walls as a benefactor to the state.^ Some 
 years afterwards, under the archonship of Strato- 
 philus, son of , Philomusus (observe the names), 
 desirous of testing the faith and gratitude of the 
 Chersonites, she feigned death, and was straight- 
 way carried beyond the gates for interment in 
 the usual place of sepulture. Upon arriving there 
 she arose from her bier, and expressed her mind 
 
 ^ Intramural interment was usually forbidden by law until the 
 prevalence of Christianity, and for a considerable time afterwards. 
 One reason why it was coveted as an exceptional privilege was, no 
 doubt, the more effectual protection of the remains, the robbery of 
 graves being one of the most common and gainful branches of 
 industry in antiquity, as archaeologists know to their sorrow. 
 
134 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 towards her countrymen with such freedom and 
 volubility that they unanimously besought her to 
 desist, and accept a tomb in any quarter of the 
 city that she might select, which, to prevent further 
 misunderstandings, was constructed in her life- 
 time, and provided, for additional security, with 
 a statue of the heroine in bronze. Two bronze 
 statues had already been erected in her honour 
 in the public square. These Constantine describes, 
 and adds that to his own day if any Chersonite 
 desired to be esteemed a person of refinement 
 (</)t\6/caXo9) he would from time to time cleanse 
 the pedestals and renovate the inscriptions. 
 
 At what time does Constantine himself date these 
 transactions ? His chronology is by no means 
 strict, but an approximate answer may easily be 
 given. The first incident in the history of Cher- 
 son which he relates occurred, he tells us, in the 
 reign of Diocletian, before this sovereign had 
 taken up his residence at Nicomedia, and before 
 Constantius Chlorus had assumed the government 
 of Gaul, prior, therefore, to A.D. 292. It is a war 
 waged against Cherson by a Bosporian king whom 
 Constantine calls Sauromates, but who must cer- 
 tainly be identified with Thothorses, who ruled 
 Bosporus during the reign of Diocletian. The 
 next, the embassy of Diogenes, happened while 
 Constantine was holding his court at B3'zantium, 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 135 
 
 and consequently some time between A.D. 323 and 
 A.D. 337. The next is a war waged against Cherson 
 by Sauromates, king of Bosporus, to avenge the 
 captivity of his grandfather Thothorses under 
 Diocletian, who had interposed in the affairs of 
 the Chersonesus towards the end of the third 
 century. This Sauromates must have been the 
 successor of Rhescuporis VI., who is believed to 
 have reigned to about A.D. 342. After an interval 
 which may be conjecturally taken as about fifteen 
 years, he, or another prince of the name, renewed 
 the attempt, and lost his life. The attempt of the 
 Bosporians to avenge their disaster by the plot 
 frustrated by Gycia would no doubt be made in 
 the succeeding generation, after which, indeed, 
 Bosporus all but disappears from history. We 
 may consider, therefore, that the event was sup- 
 posed by Constantine to have occurred somewhere 
 about A.D. 380. 
 
 It must have struck the attentive reader — and 
 the impression would be strengthened if he had 
 perused Constantine's full narrative instead of this 
 necessarily jejune epitome — that the manners and 
 feelings adumbrated in Gycia's history are not those 
 of the fourth Christian century. It may not be 
 easy to point out any particular trait as obviously 
 anachronistic, but the general atmosphere would 
 be far from corresponding with that of the age of 
 
136 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Theodosius, even if Christianity had not by that 
 time become dominant in Cherson, as must un- 
 doubtedly have been the case. Christianity must 
 have been the state rehgion by the time of Gycia 
 if she really lived in the latter half of the fourth 
 century, and it would be surprising to find her 
 history without a trace of its influence. It seems 
 doubtful whether the Christianity of the day would 
 have permitted the festival she instituted in memory 
 of her father, with its dancing and merry-making; 
 certainly some kind of religious ceremony would 
 have been demanded, and we should expect to 
 have encountered bishops and priests, and to have 
 heard something of hymns and thanksgivings on 
 occasion of the deliverance of the city. Her wish 
 to be interred within the walls must have been 
 connected with that of reposing in some basilica — 
 an exceptional honour much coveted at that day 
 — and she would have had no occasion to select 
 a special place of sepulture. A Christian Gycia 
 would have asked to be buried not in the middle 
 of the city, but in the middle of the church, and 
 her interment there would have been duly recorded. 
 These anomalies go far to convince us that the 
 story belongs to pagan times, yet we should hesi- 
 tate to rely entirely on such indications. But 
 they are accompanied by one of much greater 
 strength, the absolute incompatibility of the names 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 137 
 
 of the personages with their existence in the fourth 
 century. Lamachus, Asander, Philomusus, Strato- 
 philus ! It might be too much to assert that none 
 of these names was borne by any one in that age, 
 but they unquestionably represent types by that 
 time superannuated, and their simultaneous appear- 
 ance in a narrative professedly belonging to the 
 period would alone, if it could not be shown to be 
 misdated, suffice to prove it a more recent fiction. 
 Names compounded with <f>i\o^ and o-rpaTo^y ex- 
 ceedingly frequent in the best ages of Greece, had 
 become very rare by the fourth century, and are 
 utterly out of keeping with the actual Chersonite 
 names which occur in the portion of Constantine's 
 narrative undoubtedly referring to this period — 
 Chrestus, Papias, Themistus, Byscus, Supolichus, 
 Pharnacus. Lamachus is an old Athenian name, 
 famous in the Peloponnesian war; Asander, like 
 Cassander, a Macedonian name which came in with 
 Alexander the Great. Yet both have an ancient 
 connection with Chersonite history, which will 
 assist us to determine the real date of the story. 
 
 Cherson was originally a colony from Heraclea, 
 in Pontus, the history of which city was written 
 very circumstantially by a native, Memnon. In 
 Photius's epitome of this work special mention is 
 made of one Lamachus as the most influential 
 citizen of Heraclea in the time of Mithridates, and 
 
138 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 the instrument of the ruin of his country by 
 inducing it to side with that monarch in his war 
 with the Romans. Nothing can be more probable 
 than that a name so distinguished in the mother 
 city existed contemporaneously as one of repute 
 in the daughter colony also: in the post-Christian 
 centuries, so far as we have been able to discover, 
 it is never heard. The existence of the name of 
 Asander in the neighbourhood of Cherson about 
 this time is no matter of mere conjecture ; it is the 
 name of a king of Bosporus from 47 B.C. to 16 
 B.C., whose history is known and whose coins are 
 numerous. After him it disappears, unless we can 
 believe that it crops up again suddenly near the 
 end of the fourth century. The learned, indeed, 
 in deference to Constantine, have inscribed a 
 second Asander on the roll of Bosporian kings, 
 but no coin of his has ever come to light. 
 
 The hypothesis that events ascribed to the time 
 of an otherwise unknown Asander of the fourth 
 century, but manifestly out of keeping with that 
 age, really happened in the time of an Asander 
 who unquestionably did reign over Bosporus in 
 the first century B.C., would in any case have much 
 to recommend it, but is very strongly confirmed by 
 an observation made independently by the illus- 
 trious scholar Boeckh, who, in his work on Greek 
 inscriptions, without any reference to or thought 
 
THE STORY OF GYCIA 139 
 
 of Constantine's narrative, points out that the 
 Chersonites employed a peculiar era dating from 
 either 36 B.C. or 21 B.C., more probably the former 
 year. Both these dates fall within the reign of 
 Asander. Boeckh justly remarks that this era 
 must commence with some memorable event in 
 the history of Cherson, and acutely conjectures 
 that this was the recovery of the liberty of the 
 city, which had been subject to the kings of Pontus, 
 but is known to have regained its freedom some- 
 where about this time. Asander, a viceroy of the 
 Pontic kings in Bosporus, had made himself an 
 independent sovereign by murdering his master, 
 Phamaces. Nothing can be more likely than that 
 the Chersonites would profit by the substitution 
 of a petty king of Bosporus for the powerful 
 sovereign of Pontus to throw off the yoke, or that 
 Asander would endeavour to subjugate them by 
 treachery at the first opportunity. We therefore 
 with some confidence refer the history of Gycia 
 to his reign, />. to some year between 36 and 16 
 B.C., a period agreeable to the manners depicted 
 and appropriate to the otherwise anachronistic 
 appellations of Asander and Lamachus. Nor is 
 it difficult to conjecture how the mistake may have 
 arisen. Asander was the brother-in-law and 
 successor of Pharna<:^s, and the history of his 
 plot in Constantine's work immediately follows 
 
140 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 the exploit of the Chersonite vanquisher of the 
 Bosporian king Sauromates — Pharna^^/s. The 
 similarity of these names probably led to the mis- 
 placing of the story, which, unless for some height- 
 ening of the circumstances connected with Gycia's 
 premature interment, is assuredly no fiction, as the 
 tale is destitute of the sentimental and romantic 
 colouring which a writer of a late period would 
 have imparted to it. Internal evidence shows it to 
 have been written at Cherson, or at least by some 
 one well acquainted with the city. It is probably 
 derived from some Chersonite historian or some re- 
 cord of the deeds of heroines, although the diction 
 is Constantine's own Byzantine.^ 
 
 1 A curious illustration of the changes of signification which 
 words may undergo is shown in ras deias ^tXon/itas, which in 
 classical Greek would have meant fhe rivalries of the gods^ but in 
 Constantine denotes the largesses of the emperor. 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF 
 LUIGI TANSILLO 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF LUIGI 
 TANSILLO ' 
 
 " Now that my wings are spread to my desire, 
 
 The more vast height withdraws the dwindling land, 
 
 Wider to wind these pinions I expand. 
 And earth disdain, and higher mount and higher : 
 Nor of the fate of Icarus inquire. 
 
 Or cautious droop, or sway to either hand ; 
 
 Dead I shall fall, full well I understand ; 
 But who lives gloriously as I expire ? 
 Yet hear I my own heart that pleading cries. 
 
 Stay, madman ! Whither art thou bound ? Descend ! 
 
 Ruin is ready Rashness to chastise. 
 But I, Fear not, though this indeed the end ; 
 
 Cleave we the clouds, and praise our destinies, 
 
 If noble fall on noble flight attend." 
 
 The above sonnet, one of the finest in Italian 
 literature, is already known to many English 
 readers in another translation by the late Mr. 
 J. Addington Symonds, which originally appeared 
 in the Cornhill Magazine^ and is prefixed to his 
 translation of the sonnets of Michael Angelo and 
 Campanella (London 1878), under the title of 
 "The Philosophic Flight." In his preface Mr. 
 
 1 Reprinted from "The Yellow Book," vol. i. 
 143 
 
144 ESSAYS. OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Symonds says : " The sonnet prefixed as a proem 
 to the whole book is generally attributed to Gior- 
 dano Bruno, in whose dialogue in the Eroici 
 Furori it occurs. There seems, however, good 
 reason to suppose that it was really written by 
 Tansillo, who recites it in that dialogue. Who- 
 ever may have been its author, it expresses in 
 noble and impassioned verse the sense of danger, 
 the audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers 
 of modern thought for whom philosophy was a 
 voyage of discovery into untravelled regions." Mr. 
 Symonds's knowledge of Italian literature was so 
 extensive that he must have had ground for stating 
 that the sonnet is generally attributed to Giordano 
 Bruno; as it certainly is by De Sanctis, though 
 it is printed as Tansillo's in all editions of his 
 works, imperfect as these were before the appear- 
 ance of Signor Fiorentino's in 1882. It is, never- 
 theless, remarkable that he should add : " There 
 seems good reason to suppose that it was really 
 written by Tansillo," as if there could be a shadow 
 of doubt on the matter. Gli Eroici Furori is 
 professedly a series of dialogues between Luigi 
 Tansillo, the Neapolitan poet, who had died about 
 twenty years before their composition, and Cicada ; 
 but is in reality little more than a monologue, for 
 Tansillo does nearly all the talking, and Cicada 
 receives his instructions with singular docility. 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 145 
 
 The reason of Tansillo's selection for so great an 
 honour was undoubtedly that, although born at 
 Venosa, he belonged by descent to Nola, Bruno's 
 own city. In making such free use of Tansillo's 
 poetry as he has done throughout these dialogues, 
 Bruno was far from the least idea of pillaging his 
 distinguished countryman. In introducing the four 
 sonnets he has borrowed (for there are three 
 besides that already quoted) he is always careful 
 to make Tansillo speak of them as his own com- 
 positions, which he never does when Bruno's own 
 verses are put into his mouth. If a particle of 
 doubt could remain it would be dispelled by the 
 fact that this sonnet, with other poems by Tansillo, 
 including the three other sonnets introduced into 
 Bruno's dialogue, is published under his name in 
 the Rime di diversi illustri Signori Napoletani^ 
 edited by Lodovico Dolce at Venice in 1555, when 
 Bruno was about seven years old ! 
 
 Mr. Symonds's interpretation of the sonnet also 
 is erroneous — in so far at least as that the mean- 
 ing assigned by him never entered into the head 
 of the author. The poem is certainly fully suscep- 
 tible of such an exposition. But Tansillo, no 
 philosopher, but a cavalier, the active part of 
 whose Hfe was mainly spent in naval expeditions 
 against the Turks, no more thought with Mr. 
 Symonds of "the pioneers of modern philosophy 
 
 
 \\M 
 
146 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 than he thought with Bruno of " arising and free- 
 ing himself from the body and sensual cognition." 
 On the contrary, the sonnet is a love-sonnet, and 
 depicts with extraordinary grandeur the elation of 
 spirit, combined with a sense of peril, consequent 
 upon the poet having conceived a passion for a 
 lady greatly his superior in rank. The proof of 
 this is to be found in the fact that the sonnet is 
 one of a series unequivocally celebrating an earthly 
 passion ; and especially so in the sonnet immedi- 
 ately preceding it in Dolce's collection, manifestly 
 written at the same time and referring to the 
 same circumstance, in which the poet ascribes his 
 Icarian flight, not to the influence of Philosophy, 
 but of Love : — 
 
 " Love fits me forth with wings, which so dilate, 
 Sped skyward at the call of daring thought, 
 I high and higher soar, with purpose fraught 
 
 Soon to lay smiting hand on heaven's gate. 
 
 Yet altitude so vast might well abate 
 
 My confidence, if Love not succour brought, 
 Pledging my fame not jeopardised in aught, 
 
 And promising renown as ruin great. 
 
 If he whom like audacity inspired. 
 
 Falling gave name immortal to the flood, 
 As sunny flame his waxen pinion fired ; 
 
 Then of thee too it shall be understood. 
 
 No meaner prize than heaven thy soul required. 
 And firmer than thy life thy courage stood." 
 
 The meaning of the two sonnets is fully recog- 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 147 
 
 nised by Muratori, who prints them together in 
 his treatise, Delia perfetta poesia, and adds : — 
 " Volea dire costtd che s era hnbarcato in unamor 
 troppo alto, e s' andava facendo coraggio!' 
 
 This is surely one of the most remarkable in- 
 stances possible to adduce of the infinite signifi- 
 cance of true poetry, and its capacity for inspiring 
 ideas and suggesting interpretations of which the 
 poet never dreamed, but which are nevertheless 
 fairly deducible from his expressions. 
 
 It is now a matter of considerable interest to 
 ascertain the identity of this lady of rank, who 
 could inspire a passion at once so exalted and so 
 perilous. The point has been investigated by 
 Tansillo's editor, Signor F. Fiorentino, who has 
 done so much to rescue his unpublished composi- 
 tions from oblivion, and his view must be deemed 
 to be fully established. She was Maria d'Aragona, 
 Marchioness del Vasto, whose husband, the Marquis 
 del Vasto, a celebrated general of Spanish descent, 
 famous as Charles the Fifth's right hand in his 
 successful expedition against Tunis, and at one 
 time governor of the Milanese, was as remarkable 
 for his jealousy as the lady, grand-daughter of a 
 King of Naples, was for her pride and haughtiness. 
 Fiorentino proves his case by showing how well 
 all personal allusions in Tansillo's poems, so far 
 as they can be traced, agree with the circumstances 
 
148 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 of the Marchioness, and in particular that the latter 
 is represented as at one time residing on the island 
 of Ischia, where del Vasto was accustomed to de- 
 posit his wife for security when absent on his 
 campaigns. He is apparently not aware that the 
 object of Tansillo's affection had already been iden- 
 tified with a member of the house of Aragon by 
 Faria e Sousa, the Portuguese editor of Camoens, 
 who, in his commentary on Camoens's sixty-ninth 
 sonnet, gives an interminable catalogue of ladies 
 celebrated by enamoured poets, and says, "Tan- 
 sillo sang Donna Isabel de Aragon." This lady, 
 however, the niece of the Marchioness del Vasto, 
 was a little girl in Tansillo's time, and is only 
 mentioned by him as inconsolable for the death of 
 a favourite dwarf. 
 
 The sentiment, therefore, of the two sonnets of 
 Tansillo which we have quoted is sufficiently 
 justified by the exalted station of the lady who 
 had inspired his passion, and the risk he ran from 
 the power and jealousy of her husband. It seems 
 certain, however, that the Marquis had on his part 
 no ground for apprehension. Maria d'Aragona 
 does not seem to have had much heart to bestow 
 upon any one, and would, in any case, have dis- 
 dained to bestow what heart she had upon a poor 
 gentleman and retainer of Don Garcia de Toledo, 
 the son of the Viceroy of Naples. She would 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 149 
 
 think that she honoured him beyond his deserts 
 by accepting his poetical homage. Tansillo, on 
 his part, says in one of his sonnets that his devo- 
 tion is purely platonic; it might have been more 
 ardent, he hints, but he is dazzled by the splendour 
 of the light he contemplates, and intimidated by 
 the richness of the band by which he is led. So 
 it may have been at first, but as time wore on the 
 poet naturally craved some proof that his lady was 
 not entirely indifferent to him, and did not tolerate 
 him merely for the sake of his verses. This, in 
 the nature of things, could not be given ; and the 
 poet's raptures pass into doubt and suspicion, 
 thence into despairing resignation ; thence into re- 
 sentment and open hostility, terminating in a cold 
 reconciliation, leaving him free to marry a much 
 humbler but probably a more affectionate person, 
 to whom he addresses no impassioned sonnets, but 
 whom he instructs in a very elegant poem {'' La 
 Balia") how to bring up her infant children. These 
 varying affections are depicted with extreme liveli- 
 ness in a series of sonnets, of which we propose 
 to offer some translated specimens. The order will 
 not be that of the editions of Tansillo, where the 
 pieces are distributed at random, but the probable 
 order of composition, as indicated by the nature 
 of the feeling expressed. It is, of course, impos- 
 sible to give more than a few examples, though 
 
150 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 most deserve to be reproduced. Tansillo had the 
 advantage over most Italian poets of his time of 
 being in love with a real woman; hence, though 
 possibly inferior in style and diction to such artists 
 in rhyme as Bembo or Molza, he greatly surpasses 
 them in all the qualities that discriminate poetry 
 from the accomplishment of verse. 
 
 The first sonnet which we shall give is still all 
 fire and rapture : — 
 
 I. 
 
 *' Lady, the heart that entered through your eyes 
 Returneth not. Well may he make delay, 
 For if the very windows that display 
 
 Your spirit, sparkle in such wondrous wise, 
 
 Of her enthroned within this Paradise 
 
 What shall be deemed ? If heart for ever stay, 
 Small wonder, dazzled by more radiant day 
 
 Than gazers from without can recognise. 
 
 Glory of sun and moon and silver star 
 
 In firmament above, are these not sign 
 Of things within more excellent by far ? 
 
 Rejoice then in thy kingdom, heart of mine. 
 While Love and Fortune favourable are. 
 Nor thou yet exiled for default of thine." 
 
 Although, however, Tansillo's heart might well 
 remain with its lady, Tansillo's person was neces- 
 sitated to join the frequent maritime expeditions 
 of the great nobleman to whom he was attached, 
 Don Garcia de Toledo, against the Turks. The 
 constant freebooting of the Turkish and Barbary 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 151 
 
 rovers kept the Mediterranean in a state of com- 
 motion comparable to that of the Spanish Main in 
 the succeeding age, and these expeditions, whose 
 picturesque history remains to be written, were no 
 doubt very interesting; though from a philoso- 
 phical point of view it is impossible not to sympa- 
 thise with the humane and generous poet when 
 he inquires : — 
 
 " Che il Turco nasca turco, e'l Moro moro, 
 E giusta causa questa, ond'altri ed io 
 Dobbiam incrudelir nel sangue loro ? " 
 
 With such feelings it may well be believed that 
 in his enforced absence he was thinking at least 
 as much of love as of war, and that the following 
 sonnet is as truthful as it is an animated picture 
 of his feelings : — 
 
 II. 
 " No length of banishment did e'er remove 
 
 My heart from you, nor if by Fortune sped 
 I roam the azure waters, or the Red, 
 E'er with the body shall the spirit rove : 
 If by each drop of every wave we clove, 
 
 Or by Sun's light or Moon's encompass^, 
 Another Venus were engendered, 
 And each were pregnant with another Love : 
 And thus new shapes of Love where'er we went 
 Started to life at every stroke of oar. 
 And each were cradled in an amorous thought j 
 Not more than now this spirit should adore ; 
 That none the less doth constantly lament 
 It cannot worship as it would and ought." 
 
152 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Before long, however, the pangs of separation 
 overcome this elation of spirit, while he is not yet 
 afraid of being forgotten : — 
 
 III. 
 
 " Like lightning shining forth from east to west, 
 
 Hurled are the happy hours from morn to night, 
 And leave the spirit steeped in undelight 
 
 In hke proportion as themselves were blest. 
 
 Slow move sad hours, by thousand curbs opprest, 
 Wherewith the churlish Fates delay their flight ; 
 Those, impulses of Mercury incite, 
 
 These lag at the Saturnian star's behest. 
 
 While thou wert near, ere separation's grief 
 
 Smote me, like steeds contending in the race 
 My days and nights with equal speed did run : 
 
 Now broken either wheel, not swift the pace 
 
 Of summer's night though summer's moon be brief ; 
 Or wintry day's for brevity of sun. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Now that the Sun hath borne with him the day. 
 
 And haled dark Night from prison subterrene, 
 Come forth, fair Moon, and, robed in light serene, 
 
 With thy own loveliness the world array. 
 
 Heaven's spheres, slow wheeled on their majestic way, 
 Invoke as they revolve thy orb unseen. 
 And all the pageant of the starry scene. 
 
 Wronged by thy absence, chides at thy delay. 
 
 Shades even as splendours, earth and heaven both 
 Smile at the apparition of thy face. 
 And my own gloom no longer seems so loth ; 
 
 Yet, while my eye regards thee, thought doth trace 
 Another's image ; if in vows be troth, 
 I am not yet estranged from Love's embrace." 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 153 
 
 Continual separation, however, and the absence 
 of any marked token that he is borne in memory, 
 necessarily prey more and more on the sensitive 
 spirit of the poet. During the first part of her 
 husband's tenure of office as Governor of the 
 Milanese, the Marchioness, as already mentioned, 
 took up her residence in the island of Ischia, where 
 she received her adorer's eloquent aspirations for her 
 welfare — heartfelt, but so worded as to convey a 
 reproach : — 
 
 V. 
 
 " That this fair isle with all delight abound. 
 
 Clad be it ever in sky's smile serene, 
 
 No thundering billow boom from deeps marine, 
 And calm with Neptune and his folk be found. 
 Fast may all winds by yEolus be bound. 
 
 Save faintest breath of lispings Zephyrene ; 
 
 And be the odorous earth with glowing green 
 Of gladsome herbs, bright flowers, quaint foliage crowned. 
 All ire, all tempest, all misfortune be 
 
 Heaped on my head, lest aught thy pleasure stain, 
 Nor this disturbed by any thought of me, 
 
 So scourged with ills' innumerable train. 
 New grief new tear begetteth not, as sea 
 
 Chafes not the more for deluge of the rain." 
 
 The "quaint foHage" is in the original *^ Arab 
 leaves," arabe frondiy an interesting proof of the 
 cultivation of exotic plants at the period. 
 
 The lady rejoins her husband at Milan, and 
 Tansillo, landing on the Campanian coast, lately 
 
154 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 devastated by earthquakes and eruptions, finds 
 everywhere the image of his own bosom, and re- 
 joices at the opportunity which yawning rifts and 
 chasms of earth afford for an appeal to the infernal 
 powers : — 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Wild precipice and earthquake-riven wall ; 
 
 Bare jagged lava naked to the sky ; 
 
 Whence densely struggles up and slow floats by 
 Heaven's murky shroud of smoke funereal ; 
 Horror whereby the silent groves enthral ; 
 
 Black weedy pit and rifted cavity ; 
 
 Bleak loneliness whose drear sterility 
 Doth prowling creatures of the wild appal : 
 Like one distraught who doth his woe deplore, 
 
 Bereft of sense by thousand miseries, 
 
 As passion prompts, companioned or alone ; 
 Your desert so I rove ; if as before 
 
 Heaven deaf continue, through these crevices, 
 
 My cry shall pierce to the Avernian throne." 
 
 The poet's melancholy deepens, and he enters 
 
 upon the stage of dismal and hopeless resignation 
 
 to the inevitable : — 
 
 VII. 
 
 " As one who on uneasy couch bewails 
 
 Besetting sickness and Time's tardy course, 
 Proving if drug, or gem, or charm have force 
 
 To conquer the dire evil that assails : 
 
 But when at last no remedy prevails, 
 
 And bankrupt Art stands empty of resource. 
 Beholds Death in the face, and scorns recourse 
 
 To skill whose impotence in nought avails. 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 155 
 
 So I, who long have borne in trust unspent 
 That distance, indignation, reason, strife 
 
 With Fate would heal my malady, repent, 
 
 Frustrate all hopes wherewith my soul was rife, 
 
 And yield unto my destiny, content 
 
 To languish for the little left of life." 
 
 A lower depth still has to be reached ere the 
 period of salutary and defiant reaction : — 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " So mightily abound the hosts of Pain, 
 
 Whom sentries of my bosom Love hath made, 
 
 No space is left to enter or evade, 
 And inwardly expire sighs born in vain. 
 If any Pleasure mingle with the train. 
 
 By the first glimpse of my poor heart dismayed, 
 
 Instant he dies, or else, in bondage stayed, 
 Pines languishing, or flies that drear domain. 
 Pale semblances of terror keep the keys. 
 
 Of frowning portals they for none displace 
 Except for messengers of new unease : 
 
 All thoughts they scare that wear a gladsome face ; 
 And, were they anything but Miseries, 
 
 Themselves would hasten from the gloomy place." 
 
 Slighted love easily passes from dejection 
 into rebellion, and we shall see that such was 
 the case with Tansillo. The following sonnet 
 denotes an intermediate stage, when resignation 
 is almost renunciation, but has not yet become 
 revolt : — 
 
156 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Cease thy accustomed strain, my mournful lute ; 
 New music find, fit for my lot forlorn ; 
 Henceforth be Wrath and Grief resounded, torn 
 
 The strings that anciently did Love salute. 
 
 Not on my own weak wing irresolute 
 
 But on Love's plumes I trusted to be borne, 
 Chanting him far as that remotest bourne 
 
 Whence strength Herculean reft Hesperian fruit. 
 
 To such ambition was my spirit wrought 
 
 By gracious guerdon Love came offering 
 When free in air my thought was bold to range : 
 
 But otherwhere now dwells another's thought, 
 
 And Wrath has plucked Love's feather from my wing, 
 And hope, style, theme, I all alike must change." 
 
 This, however, is not a point at which continu- 
 ance is possible, the mind must go either backward 
 or forward. The lover for a time persuades him- 
 self that he has broken his mistress's yoke, and 
 that his infatuation is entirely a thing of the past. 
 But the poet, like the lady, protests too much : — 
 
 X. 
 
 " If Lo^e was miser of my liberty, 
 
 Lo, Scorn is bounteous and benevolent, 
 Such scope permitting, that, my fetter rent, 
 
 Not lengthened by my hand, I wander free. 
 
 The eyes that yielded tears continually 
 
 Have now with Lethe's drops my fire besprent, 
 And more behold, Illusion's glamour spent, 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 157 
 
 Than fabled Argus with his century. 
 The tyrant of my spirit, left forlorn 
 
 As vassal thoughts forsake him, doth remove, 
 And back unto her throne is Reason borne, 
 
 And I my metamorphosis approve. 
 And, old strains tuning to new keys, of Scorn 
 
 Will sing as anciently I sang of Love." 
 
 Several solutions of this situation are conceiv- 
 able. Tansillo's is that which was perhaps that 
 most likely in the case of an emotional nature, 
 where the feelings are more powerful than the 
 will. He simply surrenders at discretion, retracts 
 everything disparaging that he has said of the 
 lady (taking care, however, not to burn the peccant 
 verses, which are much too good to be lightly parted 
 with), and professes himself her humble slave upon 
 her own terms : — 
 
 XI. 
 
 *' All bitter words I spoke of you while yet 
 
 My heart was sore, and every virgin scroll 
 
 Blackened with ire, now past from my control, 
 These would I now recall ; for 'tis most fit 
 My style should change, now Reason doth reknit 
 
 Ties Passion sundered, and again make whole ; 
 
 Be then Oblivion's prey, whate'er my soul 
 Hath wrongly of thee thought, spoke, sung, or writ. 
 Not, Lady, that impeachment of thy fame 
 
 With tongue or pen I ever did design ; 
 But that, if unto these shall reach my name. 
 
 Ages to come may study in my line 
 How year by year more streamed and towered my flame. 
 
 And how I living was and dying thine." 
 
158 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 There is no reason to doubt the perfect sincerity 
 of these lines at the period of their composition; 
 but Tansillo's mistress had apparently resolved 
 that his attachment should not henceforth have 
 the diet even of a chameleon ; and it is small wonder 
 to find him shortly afterwards a tender husband 
 and father, lamenting the death of an infant son 
 in strains of extreme pathos, and instructing his 
 wife on certain details of domestic economy in 
 which she might have been supposed to be better 
 versed than himself. His marriage took place in 
 1550, and in one of his sonnets he says that his 
 unhappy attachment had endured sixteen years, 
 which, allowing for a decent interval between 
 the Romeo and the Benedict, would date its com- 
 mencement at 1532 or 1533. 
 
 Maria d'Aragona died on November 9, 1568, and 
 Tansillo, whose services had been rewarded by a 
 judicial appointment in the kingdom of Naples, 
 followed her to the tomb on December i. If her 
 death is really the subject of the two poems in 
 terza rimUy which appear to deplore it, he certainly 
 lost no time in bewailing her, but the interval is 
 so brief, and the poems are so weak, that they may 
 have been composed on some other occasion. 
 With respect to the latter consideration, however, 
 it must be remembered that he was himself, in 
 all probability, suffering from disabling sickness, 
 
THE LOVE-STORY OF TANSILLO 159 
 
 having made his will on November 29. It is also 
 worthy of note that the first sonnets composed 
 by Petrarch upon the death of Laura are in general 
 much inferior in depth of tenderness to those 
 written years after the event. " In Memoriam " is 
 another proof that the adequate poetical expression 
 of grief, unlike that of love, requires time and 
 study. Tansillo, then, may not have been so com- 
 pletely disillusioned as his editor thinks. If the 
 poems do not relate to Maria d'Aragona, we have 
 no clue to the ultimate nature of his feelings 
 towards her. 
 
 A generally fair estimate of Tansillo's rank as a 
 poet is given in Ginguene's " History of Italian 
 Literature," vol. ix., pp. 340-343. It can scarcely 
 be admitted that his boldness and fertility of 
 imagination transported him beyond the limits of 
 lyric poetry — for this is hardly possible — but it is 
 true that they sometimes transcended the limits of 
 good taste, and that the germs may be found in him 
 of the extravagance which so disfigured Italian 
 poetry in the seventeenth century. On the other 
 hand, he has the inestimable advantage over most 
 Italian poets of his day of writing of genuine 
 passion from genuine experience. Hence a truth 
 and vigour preferable even to the exquisite elegance 
 of his countryman, Angelo di Costanzo, and much 
 more so to the mere amatory exercises of other 
 
i6o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 contemporaries. After Michael Angelo he stands 
 farther aloof than any contemporary from Petrarch, 
 a merit in an age when the study of Petrarch had 
 degenerated into slavish imitation. His faults as 
 a lyrist are absent from his didactic poems, which 
 are models of taste and elegance. His one un- 
 pardonable sin is want of patriotism ; he is the 
 dependent and panegyrist of the foreign conqueror, 
 and seems equally unconscious of the past glories, 
 the actual degradation, or the prospective re- 
 generation of Italy. Born a Spanish subject, his 
 ideal of loyalty was entirely misplaced, and he must 
 not be severely censured for what he could hardly 
 avoid. But Italy lost a Tyrtaeus in him. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK"' 
 
 ^'Vathek" has hitherto been regarded as an ex- 
 ception to the maxim, 
 
 " Nil sine magno 
 Vita labore dedit mortalibus." 
 
 All who have written upon it since the publication 
 of Redding's " Memoirs of Beckford/' including the 
 present editor in the ^^ Dictionary of National Bio- 
 graphy," have accepted the statement which Red- 
 ding affirms to have been made to him by the 
 author, and which there is no reasonable ground 
 for doubting to have been actually made : — 
 
 " I wrote ' Vathek ' when I was twenty-two years 
 old.2 I wrote it at one sitting and in French. It 
 
 1 Introduction to the beautiful edition of "Vathek" published 
 by Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen in 1893. 
 
 '^ He should have said twenty-one, for although the date of his 
 birth has hitherto been given as September 29, 1759, it is proved 
 to have been October i, 1760, by the contemporary notices in the 
 Public Advertiser and Genthmaii^ s Magazine. The error as regards 
 the day was probably occasioned by the celebration of his majority 
 on Michaelmas Day, which fell on a Saturday, the most convenient 
 day for a country fete. As regards the year, Redding, though he 
 correctly gives the date of this festival as 1781, was misled by a 
 
 163 
 
1 64 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 cost me three days and two nights of hard labour. 
 I never took my clothes off the whole time. This 
 severe application made me very ill " (" Memoirs of 
 WiUiam Beckford," vol. i. p. 243). 
 
 Another illusion to be resigned ! Clear evidence 
 is now attainable that although Beckford addressed 
 himself to the composition of **Vathek" in an access 
 of enthusiasm, which, when Redding conversed with 
 him, the septuagenarian may have remembered 
 more exactly than the actual time employed in its 
 production, it was, nevertheless, a work of care 
 and labour, whose production, with whatever inter- 
 ruptions, occupied several months, probably almost 
 a year. This evidence exists in Beckford's con- 
 temporary correspondence with the Rev. Samuel 
 Henley, the translator, the annotator, and, as now 
 appears, the original inspirer of ^^Vathek." The 
 letters, after being unknown for more than a cen- 
 tury, have been recently added to the magnificent 
 collection of autographs formed by Alfred Morrison, 
 Esq., of Fonthill House, who has most kindly 
 allowed the editor the free use of the as yet 
 unissued second part of the catalogue of his trea- 
 sures — no less facile princeps among catalogues of 
 autograph letters than "Vathek" among the Oriental 
 
 letter from the elder Beckford to Pitt on the occasion of Beckford's 
 christening, which is dated January 7, 1760, by an error not 
 uncommon at the beginning of a new year. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 165 
 
 tales of European writers. Of Henley we shall 
 have more to say, for the moment it will suffice to 
 state that Beckford's acquaintance with him must 
 have been formed after the young man's return 
 from his travels in 1781, and no doubt originated 
 in Henley's position as tutor of his cousins on the 
 mother's side, who seem to have lived with their 
 preceptor at Harrow. The correspondence begins 
 with a letter from Beckford of January 21, 1782, 
 which shows " Vathek " not yet in being but about 
 to be : — 
 
 " The spirit has moved me this eve, and, shut up 
 in my apartment as you advised, I have given way 
 to fancies and inspirations. What will be the 
 consequence of this mood I am not bold enough to 
 determine." 
 
 By January 29 '' Vathek " is apparently in course 
 of composition. Beckford writes : — 
 
 "I suppose, my dear sir, I am indebted to you 
 for the capital epistle which Hamilton has written 
 to me, and which amused me not a little, though 
 my imagination the evening it arrived was wrapped 
 in the thickest gloom. You are answerable for 
 having set me to work upon a story so horrid that 
 I tremble whilst relating it, and have not a nerve in 
 my frame but vibrates like an aspen. 
 
 " There will be no proceeding in our work with- 
 out many long consultations ; therefore I shall 
 
1 66 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 trouble you with myself as soon as I can escape 
 the plagues of London with any decorum." 
 
 Nothing that Beckford is known or reported to 
 have written at all answers this description except 
 "Vathek." The mental excitement into which the 
 conception instilled into his mind by Henley had 
 thrown him must have impressed his memory 
 more powerfully than the external circumstances 
 connected with the composition ; and half a century 
 afterwards he may have really persuaded himself 
 that this substantially took place during the first 
 burst of inspiration, and that all the rest was mere 
 literary pohsh. That such, nevertheless, was not 
 the case, is proved by the reliance on Henley's aid 
 expressed in this letter, and still more decisively by 
 the next in the series, April 25 : — 
 
 "My Arabian tale goes on prodigiously, and I 
 think Count Hamilton will smile upon me when 
 we are introduced to each other in Paradise." 
 
 "Vathek" is first expressly named in a letter 
 written six days afterwards. May i, which contains 
 enough of family particulars, otherwise uninterest- 
 ing, to show that the author's time cannot have 
 been exclusively devoted to his fiction : " The tale 
 of the Caliph Vathec goes on surprisingly." 
 
 In another letter, unfortunately undated. Beck- 
 ford says, " My caliph advances on his journey 
 to Persepolis, but want of time, I believe, will 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 167 
 
 force me to stop his ulterior proceedings." He 
 went abroad in May, and "Vathek" is not again 
 spoken of until January 30, 1783, when it seems to 
 have been complete in the original French text, as 
 only the episodes are mentioned : — 
 
 ** I go on bravely with the episodes of * Vathek,' 
 and hope in a few weeks to wind up his adven- 
 tures." 
 
 Beckford told Redding that the episodes written 
 for insertion in "Vathek" were three in number: 
 "The histories of Alasi and Firouz, of Prince Bar- 
 kiarokh, of Kalilah and Zulkais, who were shut up 
 in the palace of subterranean fire. He had destroyed 
 one of the MSS. as too wild, but the others might 
 one day see the light." This was in 1835, but the 
 episodes have never appeared.^ A fourth had been 
 contemplated, but probably remained unwritten. 
 The names and subjects of the episodes are indi- 
 cated in the French text of " Vathek " but not in the 
 English version, which proves that Henley had not 
 seen them. 
 
 The remainder of the correspondence, in so far as 
 it relates to "Vathek," is occupied with Henley's 
 
 ^ He read them to Rogers, who thought them "extremely fine, 
 but very objectionable on account of their subjects." — "Table- 
 Talk," p. 218. Byron, answering on March 3, 18 18, a letter from 
 Rogers of the preceding February 8, in which a visit to Fonthill 
 is mentioned, expresses a strong wish to borrow the episodes. — 
 " Letters and Journals," vol. iv. pp. 206-209. 
 
1 68 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 translation and commentary, and here a few words 
 concerning Henley himself will be appropriate. 
 The place of his birth is not known, the year was 
 1740. It is uncertain what circumstances took him 
 as a young man to America, where, in 177 1, he 
 held a professorship in William and Mary College, 
 Williamsburg, Virginia. His return to England 
 must undoubtedly have been occasioned by his 
 adherence to the loyalist cause. About 1778, 
 probably, he became a master at Harrow, and 
 Beckford's young cousins appear to have boarded 
 in his house. This procured him Beckford's 
 acquaintance. His knowledge of Arabic and Per- 
 sian enabled him to foster that innate love of 
 Orientalism against which Beckford had been 
 solemnly warned by Lord Chatham; the original 
 impulse to " Vathek " proceeded from him ; and his 
 own admiration for the work he had inspired pro- 
 duced the translation without which it would have 
 ranked among French instead of English books.^ 
 
 On May 5, 1783, Beckford married his cousin, 
 Lady Margaret Gordon, and immediately went 
 abroad with her. His first letter to Henley after 
 his departure is dated from Cologny, near Geneva, 
 November 18, 1783 : — 
 
 1 Four letters from Henley to Jefferson, all written in England in 
 1785-1786, will be found in the Jefferson Papers in the collections 
 of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. vii. vol. i. 1900. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 169 
 
 " You proposed likewise to translate * Vathec,' 
 which I left in your hands. Could I show a 
 greater mark of confidence ? You have the only 
 copy which exists of the only production of mine 
 which I am not ashamed of, or with which I am 
 not disgusted. Thank God, * Vathec ' at least 
 has produced no misunderstanding, and I may 
 still dwell upon its recollection with pleasure ; 
 but how can I endure my book of Dreams^ when 
 I reflect what disagreeable waking thoughts it has 
 occasioned us ? If you have a mind to reconcile 
 me to it, by me be assured you are not less my 
 affectionate friend than when you silenced the 
 
 1 *' Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, in a series of 
 Letters from various parts of Europe," 1783. This was the ori- 
 ginal form of Beckford's Letters of Travel. All the copies except 
 six are said to have been destroyed, and when Beckford republished 
 his Travels in 1834, the passages descriptive of his dreams were 
 entirely omitted. One of the copies preserved found its way to the 
 British Museum, and became the subject of an article by the present 
 writer in the Universal Review, which led to the restoration of the 
 omitted passages in the edition of the Travels published in the 
 "Minerva Library" by the late Mr. Bettany. From a passage 
 in Moore's Diary it appears that Beckford even then proposed to 
 reprint his Travels, and that Rogers thought he would gladly enlist, 
 and munificently remunerate Moore's services in preparing them 
 for the press. Moore, however, on grounds easily intelligible, 
 declined to have anything to do with them. Neither he nor 
 Rogers, notwithstanding, felt any scruple in stealing from the copy 
 to which Beckford allowed them access. See Lockhart in the 
 Quarterly Review, vol. li. ; Notes and Queries, 2nd series, vol. iv. 
 p. 14, and Beckford's own sarcastic allusion in the preface to the 
 edition of 1834. 
 
170 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 hiss of serpents at Fonthill. Neither Orlando 
 nor Brandimarte was ever more tormented by 
 daemons and spectres in an enchanted castle than 
 William Beckford in his own hall by his nearest 
 relations. . . . Our abode, a strange antiquated 
 mansion, with the lake fretting and tormenting 
 itself amongst loose fragments below, and a steep 
 bank jaundiced with fallen leaves above, is not 
 formed to inspire the most cheerful ideas. How- 
 ever, my spirits are tolerably lively, my health 
 good, and my mind serene. I shall bring you 
 some caliphs not unworthy to succeed your beloved 
 Vathec." 
 
 By a letter dated January 25, 1784, it would 
 appear that Henley is reading ** Vathek," but has 
 not yet begun to translate it. At the date of the 
 next letter. May 19, 1784, Beckford is again in 
 London, and Henley has obtained the living of 
 Rendlesham, in Suffolk, where he is apparently 
 about to receive as pupil a young friend of Beck- 
 ford's concerning whom the latter writes with 
 interest, and adds: — 
 
 *' Pray introduce him to * Vathec,' whom at present 
 he hardly knows by name. I suppose you are deep 
 in the [letter torn] Halls of Damnation, hearing the 
 melancholy voice of Eblis in the dead of night, and 
 catch moonlight glimpses of Nouronihar. I long 
 eagerly to read your translation, and feel more 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 171 
 
 grateful for the pains you must have taken with 
 it than I can express." 
 
 By the next letter, written from Fonthill on 
 October 19, 1784, it would appear that the 
 episodes of '^Vathek" were not yet completed, 
 but that the translation was : — 
 
 " Mr. Lane is rockifying, not on the high places, 
 but in a snug copse by the river side, where I 
 spend many an hour dreaming about my unfortu- 
 nate princes, and contriving reasonable ways and 
 means of sending them to the devil. What are 
 you about now ? Have you got a fair copy of 
 your translation ? " 
 
 The fair copy cannot have been ready, for it 
 is not until February 26, 1785, that Beckford 
 acknowledges the arrival of a portion of it: — 
 
 "Your translation has all the spirit of the 
 caliphs and their daemons. I long for the con- 
 tinuation, and hope you will soon gratify my 
 impatience." 
 
 ''^ March 21, 1.785. 
 
 " You make me proud of ^ Vathek.' ^ The blaze 
 
 1 It will be observed that Beckford here, for the first time, spells 
 "Vathek" in the accepted manner. It must be remembered that 
 the original text of the romance was French, in which language the 
 letter k is but a naturalised foreigner. Henley in his version had 
 evidently substituted k for c, as more agreeable to the genius of the 
 Oriental languages, and Beckford followed his example both in he 
 Paris and the Lausanne edition of the French original. 
 
172 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 just at present is so overpowering that I can see 
 no faults ; but you may depend upon my hunting 
 diligently after them. Pray send the continuation. 
 I know not how it happens, but the original when 
 first born scarce gave me so much rapture as your 
 translation. Were I well and in spirits, I should 
 run wild among my rocks and forests telHng 
 stones, trees, and labourers, how gloriously you 
 have succeeded. My imagination is again on fire. 
 I have been giving the last trimmings to one 
 episode, and sown the seeds of another, which I 
 trust will bring forth fruit in due season. I 
 eagerly hope you will one da}'' or other introduce 
 these plants to their English soil. We have had 
 a dismal winter, ground cracked and shrubs 
 pinched, &c., workmen numbed, but I have gone 
 on sinking my princes to hell with active per- 
 severance." 
 
 " I shall sit down immediately to revise *Vathek,' 
 and much approve of your idea of prefacing the tale 
 with some explanation of its costume." 
 
 '' April 2Z> 
 
 "I have given my attention for several days 
 past to 'Vathek,' and have made several little 
 alterations which you will not perhaps disapprove. 
 The 'Arabian Nights' will furnish some illus- 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 173 
 
 trations, particularly as to goules, &c. ; but much 
 more may be learned from Herbelot's Biblio- 
 theque Orientate and Richardson's * Disserta- 
 tions/ I know not how to make the damnations 
 you advise. I have always thought Nouronihar 
 too severely punished,^ and if I knew how, con- 
 veniently, would add a crime or two to her share. 
 What say you ? Let me know." 
 
 It would seem by the next letter, June ii, 
 1785, that the original French manuscript from 
 which the translation was made had been returned 
 in the interval: — 
 
 ''The Caliph Vathek is safe in my possession, 
 and had I not been engaged in the very manner 
 you conjecture, notice would have been long since 
 sent to Rendlesham of his arrival. 
 
 "As I have some things of importance to say 
 to you, I must beg the favour of seeing you here 
 immediately, as the preparations for our journey 
 are in great forwardness. I suppose you can 
 easily come in a couple of days, and I will detain 
 you no longer than is absolutely necessary for 
 the revisal of 'Vathek,' the selection of notes, 
 and the explanation of doubtful passages." 
 
 The visit did not take place, for, on July 22, 
 Beckford writes on the eve of departure : — 
 
 "I am surprisingly sorry at not having had an 
 ^ Every reader must have thought so too. 
 
174 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 opportunity of seeing you. ... I would send the 
 episodes, but have not a second copy. * Vathec ' 
 I have delivered to the care of Mr. Thornton. . . . 
 Leave the description of the evening scene as it 
 was originally — we have already more description 
 than we know what to do with." 
 
 The next epistle, dated from Vevay, February 9, 
 1786, strikes the first note of disagreement, and 
 indicates the rock on which Beckford's friendship 
 with Henley was to split : — 
 
 " The publication of ^ Vathek ' must be suspended 
 at least another year. I would not on any account 
 have him precede the French edition. . . . The 
 episodes are nearly finished, and the whole work 
 will be completed within a twelvemonth. You 
 must be sensible that notwithstanding my eager- 
 ness to see 'Vathek' in print, I cannot sacrifice 
 the French edition to my impatience. The antici- 
 pation of so principal a tale as that of the Caliph 
 would be tearing the proudest feather from my 
 turban. I must repeat, therefore, my desire that 
 you will not give your translation to the world 
 till the original has made its appearance, and 
 we have talked more on the subject. You may 
 imagine how I long for the moment of enjoying 
 your notes and the preliminary dissertation, which 
 I doubt not will be received with the honours due 
 to so valuable a morsel of Orientalism." 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 175 
 
 By April 13, 1786, Beckford, now returned to 
 England, had received Henley's preliminary dis- 
 sertation, and had discovered that the writer 
 laboured under the general infirmity of commen- 
 tators : " they study rather to display themselves 
 than to explain their author." His remarks evince 
 much good sense: — 
 
 " Upon my word, you pay * Vathek ' much more 
 attention than he deserves; and do you not think 
 we shall usher him too pompously into the world 
 with a dissertation on his fable and machinery? 
 Notes are necessary, and the dissertation I myself 
 should very much approve, but fear the world 
 might imagine I fancied myself the author, not of 
 an Arabian tale, but an epic poem. Supposing 
 you limit your preface and preliminary discourse, 
 I make no doubt your good taste will suggest to 
 you a light, easy style. Misses, &c., may not be 
 scared, for, after all, a poor Arabian storyteller 
 can only pretend to say Virginibus puerisque 
 canto. As for the rhapsody, it deserves to be 
 pushed, not only into the margin of the book, 
 but quite out of it. Though you have given it 
 some pointed touches, it still limps in a manner 
 to excite compassion; and as for instruction, don't 
 fancy it contains any. The river Kalismer never 
 flowed but in my brain. The nine pillars are 
 entirely my own erection, &c., &c. After this 
 
176 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 confession you will not wish, I should think, to 
 insert the poetical whine to Thelminar. I be- 
 lieve in most respects I have been discreet in my 
 costume. The domes of Shadukiam and Ambera- 
 bad you will find explained in Richardson.^ The 
 Cocknos is a bird whose bill is much esteemed in 
 Persia for its beautiful polish. See ' Persian Tales/ 
 ' History of the Sorrowful Vizir and Zelica Begum.' 
 The butterflies of Cachemire are celebrated in a 
 poem of Meschi I slaved at with Zemir, the old 
 Mahometan who assisted me in translating Wortley 
 Montagu's MS. ; but they are hardly worth a note.^ 
 I suppose you will prepare a tolerably long com- 
 ment on the Simorgue, and that most respectable 
 bird deserves all you can say of her. Soliman 
 Daki and Soliman Gian-ben-Gian will furnish 
 ample field for a display of Oriental erudition. 
 The miscellany of Eastern learning and the history 
 of Bababaloukism may partly help to enlighten 
 your researches. 
 
 1 " Oh ! am I not happy ? I am, I am, 
 
 To thee, sweet Eden, how dark and sad 
 Are the diamond turrets of Shadukiam, 
 And the fragrant bowers of Amberabad ! " 
 
 — Paradise and the Peri. 
 * This shows that part of the Oriental lore in Henley's notes 
 was supplied by Beckford himself. According to an article by 
 Mr. Parsons, in the Scots Observer for 1892, Henley insinuated to 
 Douce that Beckford derived the plot of " Vathek " from his 
 Oriental teacher. It must be hoped that there was some misunder- 
 standing, for the statement would have been mendacious. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK^' 177 
 
 "The catastrophe of Carathis had better remain 
 as you first intended. I am perfectly at a loss 
 how to deepen Vathek's damnation; and as for 
 the end where mention is made of Gulchenrouz, 
 be assured we cannot improve it. The period runs 
 admirably, and for my part, I think the contrast 
 between the boisterous caliph and the peaceable 
 Gulchenrouz not ill imagined." 
 
 The introductory dissertation never appeared, 
 and its merits or demerits must remain food for 
 conjecture. Respecting the annotations, the reader 
 of " Vathek " in this edition will be able to judge 
 for himself. It may be remarked here that a few 
 hitherto unnoticed misprints in Henley's text and 
 notes have been silently corrected, but that no 
 endeavour has been made to reduce his Oriental 
 orthography to the modern standard. 
 
 Beckford's wife. Lady Margaret Beckford, died 
 at Vevay on May 26, 1786, of miliary fever, twelve 
 days after giving birth to a daughter. On June 
 12 Henley wrote him a letter of condolence, to 
 which Beckford replied from some unnamed part 
 of Switzerland on August i : — 
 
 "I thank you for your letter of the 12th June, 
 
 and the sentiments so feelingly expressed in it. 
 
 My spirits and rest is broken, and it is with 
 
 difficulty that I hold my pen. The slow fever 
 
 which has been preying upon me almost without 
 
 M 
 
178 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 interruption since the latter end of May, has most 
 disagreeably diverted my mind from *Vathec'; 
 but upon reading over your letter, it appears you 
 had sent the MS. for my inspection. If you have. 
 Heaven knows its fate ; certainly it has not reached 
 my hands, any more than a letter to which you 
 allude as immediately preceding your last. I beg 
 you will clear up these doubts, being anxious to 
 receive your notes and illustrations. 
 
 " I fear the dejection of mind into which I am 
 plunged will prevent my finishing the other stories, 
 and of course * Vathek's ' making his appearance in 
 any language this winter. I would not have him 
 upon any account come forth without his com- 
 panions." 
 
 Everything that Beckford here pronounces im- 
 possible or undesirable was to happen. ^* Vathek" 
 did appear in both languages, and his companions 
 never appeared at all. Late in 1786,^ J. Johnson, 
 of St. Paul's Churchyard, published " The History 
 of the Caliph Vathek, an Arabian tale from an 
 unpublished manuscript, with notes critical and 
 explanatory. " ^ We can only conjecture Henley's 
 motives for so unpardonable a breach of confidence. 
 
 1 And, as the above correspondence alone would establish, not 
 in 1784, as asserted by all recent writers, who have been misled 
 by Cyrus Redding. 
 
 2 We take this title from the half-title, for the title-page has only 
 ** An Arabian Tale," &c. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 179 
 
 Cupidity was probably among the least, as the 
 emolument must have been small, and he might 
 have been deprived even of this by legal pro- 
 ceedings. Vanity was most likely a more powerful 
 agent, combined with impatience to see his labours 
 in print, and a perhaps not ill-grounded appre- 
 hension that Beckford's caprice might prevent the 
 English version from ever seeing the light. Had 
 this indeed happened, England would have lost a 
 classic without France gaining one, for the place 
 of the original text in French literature has always 
 been that of a literary curiosity. Henley's trans- 
 lation, on the other hand, though not without traces 
 of its Gallic extraction, such as the employment of 
 ''superb" instead of "proud," and mistakes such 
 as the rendering of figure by "figure," where 
 " countenance " is evidently intended, and of clous 
 by ** grape-shot " centuries before the invention of 
 artillery, is sufficiently idiomatic to have ranked 
 from the first as an English book. It does, indeed, 
 profess itself a translation, but from the Arabic. 
 " Nothing," says Henley very coolly in one of his 
 notes, "can impress a greater awe upon the mind 
 than does this passage in the original." This 
 denial of Beckford's originality must have angered 
 him even more than the breach of trust, and he 
 protested against it when publishing the French 
 text. It probably obtained little credence. Stephen 
 
i8o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Weston, an intrepid meddler with Arabic, Chinese, 
 Etruscan, and other such simple and familiar 
 languages, propounded the theory in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine that the tale had been written for 
 the sake of the notes, which he evidently deemed 
 much the more valuable. Henley,^ who may not 
 have widely dissented from this view, nevertheless 
 rejected the apparent implication that the tale and 
 the notes were by the same writer, and assured 
 Weston that the former was really and truly trans- 
 lated from a foreign language, diplomatically avoid- 
 ing the acknowledgment that this was neither more 
 nor less than French. His connection with it 
 must soon have transpired. In the British Museum 
 copy, the book is attributed to him in a manuscript 
 note, imperfectly erased by a later librarian, who 
 has substituted Beckford's name. 
 
 In what manner Henley may have sought to 
 excuse his breach of confidence to Beckford never 
 will be known. Beckford's reply, if he vouchsafed 
 any, was too withering for Henley to retain ; it does 
 not appear in the correspondence. The impression 
 produced on Beckford is best indicated by the haste 
 with which he proceeded to publish the French 
 text of his romance, both in Lausanne and Paris. 
 
 1 In the catalogue of Beckford's library appears a copy of 
 "Vathek," with manuscript notes by Weston, "correcting Mr. 
 Henley's ignorance of Arabic." 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" i8i 
 
 In issuing these he spoke in measured terms of the 
 '* indiscretion " which had occasioned the premature 
 publication of the English version, and flatly contra- 
 dicted the assertion of its Arabic origin. His anger 
 eventually subsided into contemptuous indifference. 
 When questioned by Redding he affected not to 
 know who the translator was, but admitted that " it 
 was tolerably well done," and afterwards that " on 
 the whole it did him justice." One more trace of 
 his relations with Henley exists in the correspon- 
 dence. In 1797 the latter, who had fallen into 
 embarrassed circumstances, mustered up resolution 
 to apply to Beckford for assistance, and has pre- 
 served his negative reply. It is couched in very 
 cold terms, but magnanimously abstains from 
 allusion to the appKcant's unfaithfulness, and 
 grounds the refusal on Beckford's obligations to 
 his immediate connections and dependants. Our 
 own obligations to Henley as suggester, translator, 
 and possibly preserver of '^ Vathek," are after all so 
 considerable that it is satisfactory to find reason 
 for beheving that he ultimately escaped from his 
 embarrassments. In 1805 he obtained the highly 
 important and responsible post of Principal of the 
 East India Company's College at Haileybury, which 
 he held until within a short time of his death in 
 1815. 
 Beckford's first care was now to vindicate his 
 
1 82 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 claim to originality by bringing out the French 
 version of his work. He obtained the approbation 
 of the Paris censor on January 26, 1787; and in 
 the course of the year two editions were published, 
 one at Paris and the other at Lausanne. It has 
 hitherto been impossible to determine the priority 
 of these editions, nor is the point yet perfectly 
 clear, notwithstanding the light thrown upon it 
 by the following extremely interesting manuscript 
 note, first published by Mr. Julian Marshall in 
 Notes and Queries^ April 20, 1880, written by 
 M. Chavannes, to whom the pubhcation of the 
 Lausanne edition had been entrusted by Beckford, 
 upon the title of a copy of this extremely rare 
 book, sold on March 29, 1889, in a London auction 
 room : — 
 
 ^' A la demande de M. Beckford je me suis charge 
 de corriger son manuscrit et de le faire imprimcr 
 a Lausanne. Je me suis repenti d'avoir cedd a 
 sa solicitation, Touvrage ne me paraissant ni moral 
 ni interessant. J'ai de plus des desagr^mens. M. 
 Beckford en quittant Lausanne se h^ta de le faire 
 imprimer a Paris au prejudice de I'imprimeur de 
 Lausanne, et je dus menacer M. Beckford de 
 mettre dans les papiers son infidelite,^ qui fit qu'on 
 
 ^ Mr. Marshall remarks on the oddity of this phrase, which 
 alone seems sufficient to establish that M. Chavannes' correction 
 of " Vathek " was confined to the correction of the press. 
 
BECKFOKD'S "VATHEK^' 183 
 
 arr^ta a la douane de France I'envoy de rimprimeur 
 Hignon, les trois exemplaires qu'il envoyait a Paris, 
 et M. B. se hata de dedommager I'imprimeur pour 
 ^viter la publicite." 
 
 At first sight this seems to establish the priority 
 of the Lausanne edition, which certainly was the 
 first commissioned by Beckford. But the three 
 copies sent to Paris would in all probability be 
 despatched as soon as printed, and it appears that 
 they found the Paris edition already in possession 
 of the field. They could not have been seized as 
 contraband if the French edition had not existed; 
 it is, nevertheless, possible that, although protected 
 by royal privilege, it had not actually left the press. 
 The privilege bears date August 22, and the regis- 
 tration September 4.^ It may also be the case that, 
 prior to the registration of the Paris privilege, the 
 Lausanne edition had circulated freely in France ; 
 though this seems hardly reconcilable with M. 
 Chavannes* "se hata," *Mes trois exemplaires." It 
 scarcely seems possible to determine the question 
 of priority with absolute certainty, unless it could 
 be exactly ascertained when the Swiss edition 
 reached France. That it ought to have been the 
 editio princeps is unquestionable, and Beckford's 
 
 ^ These documents are given in M. Mallarme's reprint of the 
 Paris edition. The British Museum copy of the latter, to which 
 alone we have access, does not contain them, but no doubt wants 
 a preliminary leaf. 
 
1 84 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 conduct doubtless appeared very shocking in the 
 eyes of the worthy Genevese. We, better ac- 
 quainted with "England's wealthiest son/' may 
 feel certain that the sublunary question of copy- 
 right never entered his mind, and that he did not 
 need the threat of exposure in the newspapers to 
 incline him to remedy the wrong he had inadver- 
 tently committed. It is further to be remarked 
 that the publication of the Paris edition took place 
 when Beckford was far away, he having sailed 
 for Portugal in the March preceding. 
 
 An extraordinary fact respecting these French 
 editions remains to be pointed out ; the texts do not 
 always correspond. So far as can be ascertained, 
 this has not hitherto been noticed, save by a 
 casual remark of the late Rev. W. E. Buckley in 
 Notes and Queries^ doubtless because no editor 
 till now has had both the rare Paris and the even 
 rarer Lausanne edition^ before him at the same 
 time. The discrepancies are not always important,^ 
 but they are numerous, and extend entirely through 
 the book. Their general character will be suffi- 
 ciently indicated by a brief comparative table. 
 
 ^ No copy of the Lausanne edition appears in the sale catalogue 
 of Beckford's own library. 
 
 2 The most important is perhaps the alteration of "le quatrieme 
 prince," near the end, into "le troisieme," showing that Beckford 
 had intended to write four episodes, but that the fourth was not 
 begun when publication was forced upon him. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 
 
 185 
 
 Lausanne Edition. 
 
 P. 2, 1. 6. II n'etoit nulle- 
 ment scrupuleux. 
 
 P. 2, 1. 21. A mesure 
 qu'ils etoient consumes. 
 
 P. 6, 1. 12. Pour eviter 
 d'etre noye. 
 
 P. 9, 1. 20. Ce que celui- 
 ci fit assez moderement. 
 
 P. II, 1. 6. Quoiq'il eut 
 les yeux fixes sur I'oeil 
 terrible et meurtrier. 
 
 P. 16, 1. 19. Ou lui brulera 
 jusqu'au moindre poil de la 
 barbe. 
 
 P. 23, 1. 2. La. 
 
 Paris Edition. 
 
 P. 4, 1. 2. These words 
 are omitted. 
 
 P. 4, 1. 1 5. A mesure qu'ils 
 se refroidissoient. 
 
 P. 7, 1. 7. Pour se sauver 
 d'un nouveau deluge. 
 
 P. 9, 1. 22. Celui-ci prit 
 peu de chose. 
 
 P. II. 1. I. L'ceil terrible 
 et meurtrier ne fit aucun 
 effet sur lui. 
 
 P. 15, 1. 12. Ou lui brulera 
 la barbe jusqu'au moindre 
 poil. 
 
 P. 20, 1. 2. Sur leurs bords 
 
 verdoyants. 
 
 It will be seen that no alteration is made without 
 a reason, and the same is the case with the hun- 
 dreds of others which might be adduced. All are 
 preserved in the definitive edition of 181 5, which 
 adds a few more, evidently the result of careful 
 revision. The eleven thousand steps of Vathek's 
 tower, for example, have become fifteen hundred, 
 Beckford having doubtless reflected that at a height 
 so far surpassing the clouds, cities would not have 
 been visible even as shells, or, as the new edition 
 has it, mole-hills.^ Unfortunately this handsome 
 volume is inaccurately printed, and not all the 
 misprints are corrected in the list of errata. 
 ^ Perhaps the double meaning of coqtiilles had occurred to him. 
 
1 86 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 The question now arises, which of these versions 
 is to be regarded as the more authentic text ? 
 Internal and external evidence combine to decide 
 the point in favour of the Paris edition. Its 
 variations are almost always improvements, and 
 such as could have been introduced by no one but 
 the author. They are also, as we have seen, 
 maintained in the London edition of 1815, stated 
 by Beckford himself to reproduce ^' ce petit ouvrage 
 tel que je Vai composed ''With my final revisions 
 and corrections" would have been more accurate, 
 for the Paris edition, and still more the London, 
 certainly fails to represent the book as originally 
 written. This original can only be identified with 
 the text which Henley had had in his hands three 
 years before the appearance of the French editions, 
 and upon comparison of these with his version 
 it will be found to agree far more closely with 
 the Lausanne than with the French impression. 
 Some conclusions of considerable literary interest 
 result. 
 
 1. The Lausanne text substantially represents 
 '' Vathek " as originally written. 
 
 2. Beckford gave his book a thorough revision 
 some time between placing it in the hands of 
 M. Chavannes to bring out in Switzerland, pro- 
 bably late in 1786, and his departure for Portugal 
 in 1787. This may have been before or after his 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 187 
 
 obtaining the licence of the French censor on 
 January 26, 1787, but was probably before. 
 
 3. When Henley's translation is compared with 
 the French original, it must be remembered that 
 he had not the latter before him in the form in 
 which alone it is now generally accessible. The 
 only fair comparison is with the Lausanne text. 
 
 4. Though M. Chavannes says, "Je me suis 
 charge de corriger son manuscrit," the almost exact 
 agreement of his text with that which Henley had 
 in his possession three years earlier proves that his 
 corrections, if any, must have been of the shghtest. 
 
 The pretensions of ''Vathek" as a French 
 literary composition are thus estimated by M. 
 Mallarme. After remarking that although Voltaire 
 is evidently the model, Beckford frequently appears 
 a precursor of Chateaubriand, he adds : — 
 
 " Tout coule de source, avec une limpidity vive 
 avec un ondoiement large de periodes; et I'eclat 
 tend k se fondre dans la purete totale du cours, 
 qui charrie maintes richesses de diction inaper- 
 9ues d'abord ; cas naturel avec un etranger inquiet 
 que quelque expression trop audacieuse ne le tra- 
 hisse en arretant le regard." 
 
 It only remains to be added that the Lausanne 
 edition has no notes, but that the Paris edition is 
 accompanied by a selection from Henley's. Did 
 Beckford translate these himself? 
 
1 88 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Not much need be or can be said about the 
 literary qualities of ** Vathek." Alive with un- 
 diminished vitality after a century's existence, it 
 has proved its claim to a permanent place in 
 literature by obtaining it; nor, at any period of 
 its history, has it been a book which criticism 
 could greatly help or hinder, or which allowed 
 sound criticism much scope for controversy. Its 
 beauties are by no means of the recondite order; 
 and inability to appreciate them is one of those 
 innate distastes, not for the book but its genrCy 
 against which expostulation is impotent. A man 
 may be reasoned into admiring Wordsworth, but 
 not into liking the " Arabian Nights." Criticism 
 can only be usefully exercised in analysing the 
 psychology of the author, a curious and attrac- 
 tive study. The most remarkable feature is per- 
 haps the singular doubleness of character evinced 
 throughout the book. As has been elsewhere said, 
 the peculiar distinction of ^' Vathek " is its alli- 
 ance of the fantastic and the subhme. The former 
 attains an unsurpassed pinnacle in the early scenes 
 between Vathek and the Indian; the latter almost 
 challenges comparison with Milton in the descrip- 
 tion of the hall of Eblis. Between these summits 
 lies a deep depression ; for a time the story flags, 
 seems almost in peril of becoming tedious. The 
 same doubleness pervades the whole; the book is 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 189 
 
 at once very French and very English, very 
 Oriental and very European, very frivolous and 
 very tragic, very shallow and very profound. In 
 this it represents its author, a child of the 
 eighteenth century unconsciously inspired with the 
 emotions of the nineteenth, who, as M. Mallarme 
 very justly says, in imitating Voltaire, announces 
 Chateaubriand. While few books display more 
 either of the lucidity of the eighteenth century or 
 of its sarcastic persiflage, it is equally animated 
 by the spirit of vague unrest and yearning melan- 
 choly which were to attain such proportions in 
 ** Rene " and " Childe Harold." The same is true 
 of Beckford's Travels, that remarkable picture of 
 a society on the eve of transformation. There 
 are brighter stars in the literary firmament than 
 Beckford, but few which can with equal propriety 
 be likened to the evening star and to the morning 
 star. Nor is there, probably, any modern Oriental 
 story except "Vathek" which might appear with- 
 out disadvantage in the '* Arabian Nights," with 
 Aladdin on its right hand and Ali Baba on its 
 left. Its Gallicisms, as it happens, rather help 
 the illusion, for, after modern translators have 
 done their best, it is through the English render- 
 ing of Galland's French version that these tales 
 will always be popularly known. 
 
 It seems hardly possible that it should be left 
 
190 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 to us to point out the derivation of one of the 
 most striking passages in modern English poetry 
 from " Vathek " ; but we have not met with this 
 observation as respects the catastrophe of Southey's 
 ** Curse of Kehama," a noble poem at present so 
 unjustly neglected that it may be expedient to cite 
 the entire passage: — 
 
 " He did not know the holy mystery 
 Of that divinest cup, that as the lips, 
 Which touch it, even such its quality, 
 Good or malignant : Madman ! and he thinks 
 The blessed prize is won, and joyfully he drinks. 
 
 " Then Seeva opened upon the Accursed One 
 His Eye of Anger : upon him alone 
 The wrath-beam fell. He shudders — but too late 
 
 The deed is done, 
 The dreadful liquor works the will of Fate. 
 
 Immortal he would be. 
 Immortal he is made, but through his veins. 
 Torture at once and immortality, 
 A stream of poison doth the Amreeta run. 
 And while within the burning anguish flows. 
 
 His outward body glows 
 Like molten ore, beneath the avenging Eye, 
 Doomed thus to Hve and burn eternally. 
 
 " The fiery Three, 
 Beholding him, set up a fiendish cry, 
 
 A song of jubilee ; 
 Come, Brother, come ! they sung : too long 
 
 Have we expected thee. 
 Henceforth we bear no more 
 The unequal weight ; Come, Brother, we are Four. 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 191 
 
 " Vain his almightiness, for mightier pain 
 Subdued all power ; pain ruled supreme alone ; 
 
 And yielding to the bony hand 
 The unemptied cup, he moved toward the Throne, 
 
 And at the vacant corner took his stand. 
 Behold the golden Throne at length complete, 
 And Yamen silently ascends the judgment seat." 
 
 Part of Kehama's penalty is perpetual immo- 
 bility, part of Vathek's perpetual unrest, but the 
 thought is the same — the fruition of the sinner's 
 desire is the sinner's punishment — and the virtual 
 identity of the catastrophes is obvious. Southey 
 claims originality for his story, but if he did not 
 unearth this particular incident from some nook 
 of the myriad-chambered Hindu Pantheon, he 
 must have found it in "Vathek," with which his 
 correspondence proves him to have been acquainted 
 at least as early as 1804. The three upholders of 
 Yamen's throne, moreover, are manifest though far 
 from servile copies of Soliman ben Daoud and the 
 pre- Adamite sultans. 
 
 '* After the Bastile was destroyed he came home ; 
 and in 1 79 1 visited Paris again. He was there 
 at the death of the king." Louis XVI. was exe- 
 cuted in January 1793, thus this cursory remark 
 of Redding's is an independent confirmation of 
 the following remarkable anecdote of Beckford's 
 life, which has not hitherto appeared in an English 
 
192 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 book, but will be found in the preface to the 
 catalogue of M. Brunet's library, sold at Paris in 
 1868. The writer is probabl}^ M. Potier: — 
 
 "En 1793, I'amour des livres rares et precieux 
 avait retenu a Paris un Anglais de distinction et 
 riche, William Beckford, de Fon thill Abbey, qui 
 poursuivait avec ardeur les depouilles opimes que 
 la Revolution jetait dans les rues. Chardin entre- 
 nait de frequents rapports avec le riche amateur, 
 auquel il revendait les curiosites tombees entre 
 ses mains et dont il ne voulait pas. Chardin, me 
 dit M. Brunet, ne tarda pas a savoir que les jours 
 de I'honorable sir Beckford ^taient menaces; il 
 courut chez lui et Ten informa, lui fit, seance 
 tenante, changer ses vetements contre ceux d'un 
 commis libraire, le conduisit chez Merigot, bou- 
 quiniste celebre de cette epoque, et I'y installa a 
 titre de commis. Apres quelques semaines, Chardin 
 trouva le moyen de faire delivrer un passe-port sous 
 un nom d'emprunt a sir Beckford qui put retourner 
 en Angleterre. Celui-ci temoigna genereusement 
 sa reconnoissance a son sauveur, il lui fit passer 
 tous les ans une rente de deux mille quatre cents 
 francs, qui lui fut pay6e jusque vers 1820, epoque 
 a laquelle mourut Chardin." 
 
 If M. Brunet related this story as true, he cer- 
 tainly believed it, and there seems no sufficient 
 reason for rejecting it. Its truth is indirectly 
 
BECKFORD'S "VATHEK" 193 
 
 confirmed by the amount of the i>ension stated to 
 have been bestowed upon Chardin, which seems 
 curious at this day, but would have been perfectly 
 natural in 1793, when the gold piece contained 
 twenty-four francs instead of twenty as at present. 
 A pension of 2400 francs, therefore, would have 
 been equivalent to one of a hundred louis. 
 
THOMAS MOORE 
 
THOMAS MOORE 1 
 
 It was the maxim of a great Chinese philosopher, 
 "Always be in sympathy with your age." The 
 advice, admirable in most cases, fails in that of 
 men of genius, save only in those exceptional 
 instances, such as the Italian Renaissance, or 
 the Elizabethan era, when an entire generation is 
 as it were lifted off its feet, elevated above its 
 level, and pushed forward it knows not how, by 
 the influence of an invisible power. A Michael 
 Angelo and a Shakespeare can thus be in fullest 
 sympathy with an age which they far transcend. 
 But, as a rule, the men of letters and artists, 
 especially the former, in whom a period discerns 
 the fullest response to its own requirements, and 
 whom it consequently crowns with the amplest 
 meed of popularity, fall after a while into the 
 second or even an inferior rank ; and others pre- 
 viously neglected or contemned as unsympathetic 
 with their contemporaries, are advanced to fill 
 the vacant thrones. It is also to be observed 
 that as regards these latter, the world's revised 
 
 ^ Prefixed to the " Thomas Moore Anecdotes." Jarrold & Sons : 
 
 1899. 
 
 197 
 
198 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 verdict is generally final. Seldom indeed has one 
 thus promoted been remitted to the ranks ; his gold 
 has been tried in the fire, and its worth is hence- 
 forth unquestionable. But as regards the slighted 
 favourite, there is more room for vacillation and 
 oscillation of judgment. Never, or hardly ever does 
 such a one regain the place which he originally held 
 in the world's esteem ; but depreciation is not un- 
 frequently adjudged to have gone too far, and a 
 wholesome reaction restores him to a position not 
 too remote from his former altitude. It often ap- 
 pears that the error lay after all not so much in 
 an exorbitant estimate of the man himself as in a 
 misapprehension of his rank in relation to his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 Stronger examples of this twofold reaction could 
 hardly be found than in what was once deemed 
 by far the most conspicuous light of the glorious 
 poetical constellation of the earlier decades of 
 this century — Byron; and his brilliant satellite, 
 Thomas Moore. Byron expressed the spirit of 
 his age so perfectly that few contemporaries 
 doubted or could doubt that he was its chief as 
 well as its chosen poet. At present it would be 
 hard to find a critic with any just claim to the 
 character who did not perceive and admit the great 
 superiority of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley 
 and Keats, in everything that discriminates 
 
THOMAS MOORE 199 
 
 the inspired poet from the writer of effective 
 prose ; and the reaction has proceeded so far 
 that many have even denied Byron the title of 
 poet. This absurd injustice has in its turn be- 
 gotten another reaction which will doubtless end 
 by putting Byron in his proper place, "below 
 the great" (using this adjective in its very 
 highest sense), ''but far above the good." The 
 same reaction ought in its degree to have bene- 
 fited his acolyte and biographer, Thomas Moore, 
 but this scarcely seems to have yet come to pass. 
 There is perhaps no conspicuous poet of that time 
 at present so decidedly at a discount as Moore, 
 once second in popularity to Scott and Byron 
 alone. This is most unjust. Moore is not only 
 an excellent poet and a consummate man of letters, 
 but he is a representative man in several depart- 
 ments. It happens unfortunately that none of these 
 is at present particularly in favour. It takes a 
 Swinburne or a Morris to make the metrical 
 romance palatable just now. Moore's graceful wit 
 and satire, though they can never miss admira- 
 tion, were of necessity mainly expended upon 
 themes of temporary interest. The music which 
 contributed so largely to the success of his *' Irish 
 Melodies " is now unfashionable, as the music of a 
 past generation, whatever its merits, invariably 
 seems to become. Worst of all, he has lost his 
 
200 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 rank as the national poet of Ireland, partly from the 
 emergence of new ideals among his countrymen, 
 but chiefly, it must be owned, from the discovery 
 that there is little specifically Celtic in his genius 
 except his wit and animation; and, in particular, 
 that he is totally devoid of that priceless quality, 
 *' Celtic magic." It cannot be, however, that oblivion 
 will in the long run be allowed to overtake so 
 interesting a literary figure. As the poet of the 
 Ireland of his day, and not less of Enghsh parlia- 
 mentary liberalism, Moore ought always to remain 
 a conspicuous figure in national as well as literary 
 history. It is impossible to replace him in any- 
 thing near his old position. An age that has fed 
 upon Wordsworth and Shelley, Tennyson and 
 Browning, will not be deeply moved by Moore. 
 But apart from the poets who mould opinion, and 
 are, as one of them said, ^*the unacknowledged 
 legislators of the world," an honourable place re- 
 mains for poets of the library, who embalm the 
 spirit of their own age, and hand its volatile essence 
 down to posterity in a compact and clarified form. 
 Such a poet was Moore, the best method of per- 
 petuating whose fame, apart from the actual re- 
 impression of his writings, is to show by a clear 
 account of his life and literary activity the important 
 position which he held in the worlds of letters and 
 politics of his own day. 
 
THOMAS MOORE 201 
 
 Thomas Moore was born in Aungier Street, 
 Dublin, May 28, 1779, and was the son of a 
 grocer, who gradually developed into a wine mer- 
 chant, and declined into a barrack master. Both 
 his parents were Roman Catholics, victims of the 
 unjust legislation and the still more pernicious 
 social exclusion which had come down as the ugly 
 but inevitable legacy of troubled times. Trinity 
 College, however, was open to all as a place of 
 education, though not at that period as a field of 
 honour and emolument; and Moore, who was a 
 remarkably clever and precocious boy, acquired 
 sufficient Latin at private schools, partly by extra 
 lessons from a friendly usher named Donovan, to 
 justify his matriculation there in 1794, at what 
 would now be thought the early age of fifteen. 
 Roman Catholic disabilities had been so far re- 
 moved in the preceding year as to allow Romanists 
 to practise as barristers, and it was the dearest 
 wish of Moore's mother — much the more interest- 
 ing of his parents — to see her son a counsellor. 
 Nothing, probably, would have made Moore a 
 lawyer, but he would have gained distinction as a 
 speaker notwithstanding his short figure and un- 
 heroic physiognomy ; he would have been a useful 
 adjutant to O'Connell, and his career might very 
 well have ended in an Irish judgeship. But, 
 though far from idle or dissipated, he could no 
 
202 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 more than Petrarch, Boccaccio, or Ariosto, addict 
 himself to the study of the law. His college re- 
 putation was that of a wit and an elegant scholar. 
 He translated into English verse the most difficult 
 Greek author, perhaps, with whom he was as yet 
 competent to grapple, namely Anacreon; and the 
 appellation of Anacreon Moore, the more appro- 
 priate from his cheerful and festive cast of coun- 
 tenance, adhered to him for the remainder of his 
 life. The Provost would willingly have distin- 
 guished the translator by a special reward, but 
 doubted whether the college could officially coun- 
 tenance anything "so amatory and convivial." 
 That nothing might be wanting to his character 
 as a representative Irishman, Moore struck up a 
 friendship with Robert Emmet, and would probably 
 have been drawn into the plots of the United Irish- 
 men had not Emmet scrupulously abstained from 
 soliciting him. Moore came exceedingly well out 
 of the investigation which resulted, both as re- 
 garded his own behaviour and his loyalty towards 
 more compromised persons. In 1799 he proceeded 
 to England to study for the bar at the Middle 
 Temple, taking with him his translation of Ana- 
 creon, which his University honoured by subscribing 
 for to the extent of two copies, when he had suc- 
 ceeded in making an arrangement with the London 
 publishers. It is shocking to our sense of congruity 
 
THOMAS MOORE 203 
 
 to hear of an Anacreon in quarto, but such was the 
 form of publication adopted, and there were erudite 
 notes, probably cribbed, into the bargain. The 
 success of this publication opened the way for 
 Moore's appearance as an English Anacreon under 
 the pseudonym of Thomas Little. This otherwise 
 insignificant publication is noteworthy as a warning 
 to young men of genius to be careful what they 
 publish at the beginning of their career. Twenty 
 years later it would have excited no attention, but 
 as the work of a clever young man just beginning 
 to be productive, it was taken as a sample of the 
 entire crop, and fixed a reputation for immorality 
 upon Moore entirely unsupported by his subsequent 
 writings. The same thing, mutatis mutandis, was 
 happening at the same time to Wordsworth, who 
 was making for himself a reputation with the mass 
 of the public as a childish and prosaic writer by 
 publishing a few poems where simplicity was ex- 
 aggerated into triviality in illustration of his theory 
 of poetic diction, but which critics and readers in- 
 sisted on taking as the standard of his taste and the 
 measure of his powers. 
 
 Moore's great success in English society, never- 
 theless, was but slightly attributable to his poetry, 
 and still less to his law. He was a musical vir- 
 tuoso, and, by the admission of the inimical Croker, 
 who had known him as a young man in Dublin, 
 
204 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 could not only play but sing, or rather warble, 
 bewitchingly, ^^set off by an expression of coun- 
 tenance and charm of manner the most graceful, 
 the most natural, and the most touching that we 
 have ever witnessed." He had brought over a 
 high reputation in this department from Ireland, 
 and had in particular gained the admiration of 
 Lord Moira, through whom, in all probability, he 
 obtained presentation to the Prince of Wales, then 
 very liberal, very pro-Catholic, and very ready to 
 patronise promising Irishmen. And now was wit- 
 nessed a curious phenomenon — a return to primitive 
 practice on the part of one of the most artificial of 
 modern poets. The great objection to Moore's 
 poetry is its want of nature; there is no getting 
 over that. Yet this conventional and theatrical 
 writer was doing what Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 could not do — he was reciting his own compositions 
 with musical accompaniment, just like a Scandi- 
 navian skald or a Homeric rhapsodist, and would 
 probably have been considered by Homer himself 
 as supporting the character of a sacred bard better 
 than any of the Lakers. Thus did primitive cus- 
 toms for a season revive in London drawing-rooms ; 
 and as it was probably true even then that 
 
 " Silent rows the songless gondolier," 
 
 these drawing-rooms perhaps then exhibited what 
 
THOMAS MOORE 205 
 
 could not have been found elsewhere in the civilised 
 world. 
 
 Of one of the ancient minstrels whom Moore 
 thus emulated it is recorded that '* he could harp 
 a fish out of the water." Moore surpassed this 
 feat by harping, not only fishes, but loaves and 
 fishes out of the Admiralty. In 1 803, through the 
 influence of Lord Moira, he was appointed to the 
 Admiralty Registrarship in the Bermudas, one of 
 those places which one fills, when one can, by 
 deputy. He was obliged, however, to go out and 
 take possession, which having accomplished, and 
 having installed, as subsequently appeared, the 
 greatest rogue in the islands as his locum tenetiSj 
 he returned by way of the United States and 
 Canada. The poems which he published upon 
 his return (1806), contained some illiberal attacks 
 upon America, of which Jeff^rey properly took 
 notice in the Edinburgh Review^ but in assailing 
 Moore's amatory poetry he travelled beyond the 
 record, and according to the code of the time justi- 
 fied the challenge which Moore addressed to him. 
 The incidents which grew out of this cartel, as 
 detailed by Moore himself, resemble those of a 
 comic opera, and their ludicrousness was increased 
 by the diminutive stature of the pair of combatants. 
 The denouement^ however, was what it ought to 
 have been, a firm friendship. It is remarkable 
 
2o6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 that the two most important literary intimacies of 
 Moore's life should have arisen out of abortive 
 duels. The second — which, especially as it grew 
 out of the quarrel with Jeffrey, may be mentioned 
 a little out of chronological order for convenience' 
 sake — was Moore's misunderstanding with Byron, 
 who had sneered (i8ii) at the incident of the 
 absence of the bullet from Jeffrey's pistol in a 
 manner too clearly evincing his scepticism as to 
 the presence of bullets in either weapon. Moore 
 proceeded with more temper and discretion on this 
 occasion, and the general conduct of the affair 
 does honour both to him and to Byron. Byron 
 never made a real friend after his native pride 
 had been fostered into egotism by immoderate 
 success, but his fidelity to his early intimacies 
 shows that he was not naturally incapable of 
 friendship. His intimacy with Moore came in the 
 middle period, when he was beginning to be 
 flattered and idolised, but was not yet a golden 
 image with feet of clay. His regard for Moore, 
 if not amounting to affection, was frank and 
 cordial, and assuredly disinterested. The latter 
 attribute was as difficult for Moore to sustain as 
 it was easy for Byron. But he was, in a greater 
 degree than has been generally recognised, a 
 gentleman and a man of spirit. No unworthy 
 compliance can be alleged against him; no slur 
 
THOMAS MOORE 207 
 
 ever rested upon his independence towards any 
 man, or any body of men. His attitude towards 
 Byron could not in the nature of things be com- 
 fortable or altogether dignified ; he could not love 
 him, and he could not help being horribly afraid 
 of him. The sateUites of Jupiter may revolve in 
 peace, but it is an awful thing to be the satelHte 
 of a comet which may at any moment rush off 
 into space. That Moore should have incurred 
 disfavour with advanced Liberals by seeking to 
 restrain Byron from quarrelling too openly with 
 the established order of things was natural, was 
 inevitable, but was still inequitable. It may be 
 granted that he was wrong. As a poet and an 
 intellectual force Byron was a revolutionist, or was 
 nothing. But from Moore's own point of view he 
 was right, and there is no reason to beheve that 
 his conduct was dictated by any other motive than 
 a regard for Byron's most visible interests. It 
 was much to have preserved to the last both 
 Byron's respect and his own. 
 
 When Moore presumed to demand explanations 
 from Byron the position of the two poets in popu- 
 lar esteem approximated more closely than was 
 ever afterwards the case. Byron was only known 
 by " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," which 
 had indeed produced a considerable sensation, but 
 was just the kind of performance frequently 
 
2o8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 achieved by a clever man who soon recognises 
 that his sphere is rather politics than poetry. 
 Moore's attempts in heroic verse, *' Corruption," a 
 satire, and "The Sceptic," which might be and 
 perhaps was designed as a reply to some passages 
 in Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope," had not been 
 remarkably successful, but he was already known 
 as the author of " The Irish Melodies," and although 
 the publication continued until 1834, enough had 
 already been done to give him a leading rank 
 among the lyrists of his day. Alone among them 
 all he wrote for music which he found ready to 
 his hand, and thus insured that his pieces should 
 be real songs. This great quality, which far more 
 sweet and subtle lyrists do not always attain, has 
 been made a ground of unfavourable criticism. 
 Moore's songs are said to be of little value when 
 divorced from their music. But, rejoins Professor 
 Minto, they were never intended to be divorced 
 from their music. The melody is an inte- 
 gral part of the poem, and in fact this very 
 modern poet has made a long step back towards 
 the practice of the ancients. Others no doubt 
 have done the same in isolated instances, but no 
 one has given such a corpus of song adapted to 
 music, and so completely wedded the two arts. 
 It inevitably follows that the Irish Melodies can- 
 not convey the same pleasure when merely read 
 
THOMAS MOORE 209 
 
 as when performed to their natural accompaniment. 
 Much that seems trivial has its full musical justi- 
 fication, but this the reader cannot be expected 
 to consider. Their merits as a body of national 
 minstrelsy have been variously estimated. Many, 
 undoubtedly, are only national in so far as the 
 tunes to which they are adapted are Irish. Others 
 breathe a truly patriotic feeling, which may appear 
 somewhat out of date now that Roman Catholic 
 grievances have been redressed, but was perfectly 
 legitimate in its own day. The conceits, pretti- 
 nesses, and tricks of diction which undoubtedly 
 marred the "Irish Melodies" considered merely as 
 literary compositions, do not affect this feeling, 
 which is never insincere, though the note is not 
 that of *'Who Fears to Talk of Ninety-eight?" 
 or "The Shan Van Vocht." If it is said that 
 under the then circumstances of his country 
 Moore ought to have been a rebel, such was not 
 his own view. He was a good Irishman, but 
 also a good Briton. He expected the redress of 
 Irish grievances by peaceful means, and lived to 
 see the fulfilment of most of his anticipations. 
 The political verse of Davis and others has great 
 merit in many respects, but only a small portion 
 of it has obtained acceptance as classical English 
 poetry. The proportion of Moore's melodies, on 
 the other hand, which have become household 
 
 O 
 
210 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 words, is very considerable. It will suffice to 
 name, "Go where glory waits thee," "The harp 
 that once through Tara's hall," "When he who 
 adores thee has left but the name," "Rich and 
 rare were the gems she wore," "As a beam o'er 
 the face of the waters may glow," "At the mid 
 hour of night," " Come o'er the sea," " When first 
 I met thee," and "Come rest in this bosom, my 
 own stricken deer." It cannot be affirmed that 
 there are many which owe their popularity to 
 meretricious glitter, false sentiment, or anything 
 except the felicitous marriage of good words to 
 good music. They cannot be said to be master- 
 pieces. The songs of Goethe, Heine, and Beranger 
 possess all their recommendations, along with much 
 higher ones which lay entirely beyond Moore's 
 sphere. But these are not equally national. They 
 express the national character to perfection, they 
 are not equally expressive of the national aspira- 
 tions. The competition of Burns, no doubt, crushes 
 Moore ; but one may be far behind Burns, Goethe, 
 Heine, and B6ranger, and still be an excellent poet. 
 There is another class of literature in which 
 Moore began to distinguish himself about this 
 time in which he has little competition to fear, 
 that of light epigrammatic satire. The incentive 
 to this new departure was the conduct of the 
 Prince Regent when, on coming nominally to the 
 
THOMAS MOORE 211 
 
 head of affairs through the insanity of his father 
 (181 1), he broke with his old pohtical associates, 
 and continued to govern by the aid of his father's 
 Ministers, espousing a system which he and his 
 friends had continually denounced as pernicious, 
 and repudiating all his former political convictions, 
 or what had been supposed to be such. The 
 situation was a painful one, and the Regent's 
 chief fault was that he did not sufficiently feel 
 it to be so. Had it been possible to believe 
 him actuated by principle, his conduct might have 
 been defended as wise and patriotic. Any Liberal 
 administration that could have been formed must 
 of necessity have been a very weak one, and 
 weak government at home must have paralysed the 
 nation in its tremendous struggle with Napoleon. 
 If the Prince had really subordinated private at- 
 tachments to public duty his conduct would have 
 deserved applause. Unfortunately it was not pos- 
 sible to believe that he was in truth actuated by 
 such motives, or that estrangement from his old 
 associates cost him anything. It was evidently 
 the more comfortable course for him to pursue, 
 and, neither his political nor his personal char- 
 acter entitled him to credit for higher motives. 
 Yet, whatever the motive, the action was in itself 
 right, and did not merit the obloquy with which 
 it was visited by the Whigs, infuriated by the 
 
212 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 disappointment of all their expectations, and the 
 apparent prospect of another quarter of a century's 
 exclusion from office. Moore had his own pecu- 
 liar disappointment ; he had long looked for a pro- 
 vision at the hands of Lord Moira, shortly to be 
 Marquis of Hastings and Governor-General of 
 India, the only one of the Regent's old friends 
 who had not broken with him, but who could 
 now only offer Moore a dubious provision in India, 
 whither of course he was disinclined to proceed. 
 He was now a husband and father, having married 
 the charming actress, Bessie Dyke, in 1 8 1 1 ; India, 
 therefore, was more out of the question than ever, 
 and he resigned himself to accept Lord Moira's 
 valedictory gift of fifteen dozen of wine. All his 
 social affections and intimacies, moreover, drew 
 him to take an active part against the Prince ; 
 his talents had long recommended him to the 
 brilliant society of Holland House, and he was 
 becoming the associate of Lords Lansdowne and 
 Holland, of Rogers, Sydney Smith, Mackintosh, 
 and the rest. But the chief justification for the 
 acrimonious hostihty he evinced towards a Prince 
 who had always personally treated him with kind- 
 ness, was undoubtedly his strong resentment at 
 the Prince's desertion of the Roman Catholic 
 claims, which not unnaturally overbalanced im- 
 perial considerations in the mind of an oppressed 
 
THOMAS MOORE 213 
 
 Irish Catholic. Moore's patriotism was ardent, 
 and on this point was reinforced by horror ot 
 bigotry and enthusiasm for toleration. Ere long it 
 was discovered that English literature had acquired 
 such a satirist as it had never had before, whose 
 prototype among classical writers was not Juvenal 
 or Horace, but Martial. Martial, for excellent 
 reasons, never meddled with politics, but the same 
 mordant wit which he expended upon men's 
 folly and frivolity was now found effective as 
 a political weapon. English literature had not 
 wanted something of the kind before, but the airy 
 malice of " The Twopenny Post Bag " is a great 
 advance upon the elaborate pleasantry of the 
 ^^RoUiad." It has more affinity to the esprit of 
 Voltaire, while at the same time the manner, no 
 less than the matter, is distinctively Moore's own, 
 and is substantially the same as that employed 
 on quite a different class of subject in the '* Irish 
 Melodies" and their companion amatory lyrics. 
 The merit of the songs, apart from the melody 
 of the verse, is quite as much intellectual as 
 poetical, consisting usually in the development of 
 some exquisitely graceful or pathetic idea. In 
 the satires there is a perfect shower of ideas, an 
 incessant bombardment of the enemy with pungent 
 sarcasm ; but here, as in the songs, the pleasure re- 
 ceived arises in great measure from the poet's intel- 
 
214 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 lectual force, intimated by the felicity of the thoughts 
 themselves and the rare polish imparted to them by 
 an intellectual process. Pope would probably have 
 left us much poetry like Moore's if he had been 
 endowed with Moore's lyrical faculty. 
 
 The sale of ''The Twopenny Post Bag" was 
 prodigious, but there could be no very great profit 
 upon so small a book, and the " Irish Melodies," 
 though appearing regularly and largely circulated, 
 would not keep a family whose head, under pain 
 of extinction, was obliged to appear continually in 
 the best society. Moore was compelled to under- 
 take some more extensive work; his industry and 
 independence did him honour ; but it is some shock 
 to high ideas of poetical imagination to find him 
 contracting with Longmans to give them the best 
 metrical romance that had yet been written upon 
 condition of receiving the highest price that had 
 yet been paid. This was not the way in which 
 Wordsworth or Shelley would have gone to work, 
 though Scott had followed it. So high was the 
 estimate of Moore's talent, which implies an equally 
 high estimate of his conscientiousness, that Long- 
 mans agreed to pay three thousand pounds for any 
 poem he might produce without having seen a line 
 of it Such was the origin of " Lalla Rookh," 
 generally regarded on its publication as a work 
 of the most ethereal fancy. In 1815 Moore had 
 
THOMAS MOORE 215 
 
 made such progress with it as to offer the pub- 
 lishers a sight of the manuscript, of which they 
 dedined to avail themselves. In 18 16 the unsatis- 
 factory state of business prompted a noble offer 
 from him to cancel the agreement, which the 
 publishers, with equal magnanimity, refused. In 
 18 17 the poem was pubHshed, and everybody was 
 satisfied, the publishers with the sale, the poet 
 with his honorarium, and the public with the im- 
 portant addition which seemed to have been made 
 to English literature. Earl Russell repeats the 
 verdict of his generation when, with a touching 
 confidence that his views cannot be out of fashion, 
 he writes in his preface to Moore's Diary: ^''Lalla 
 Rookh ' is the work next to the Melodies and 
 Sacred Songs in proof of Moore's title as a poet. 
 It is a poem rich with the most brilliant creations; 
 a work such as Pope always wished to write ; such 
 as Tasso might have written." On the other hand, 
 the greatest of English critics — who also, unluckily 
 for Moore, was a great and unjustly neglected poet 
 — wrote on the appearance of the poem : " I have 
 read two pages of 'Lalla Rookh,' or whatever it is 
 called. Merciful Heaven ! I dare read no more, that 
 I may be able to answer at once to any questions 
 * I have but just looked at the work.' O Robinson 1 
 if I could, or if I dared, act and feel as Moore and 
 his set do, what havoc could I not make amongst 
 
2i6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 their crockery- ware ! Why, there are not three 
 lines together without some adulteration of, common 
 English." The truth lies between these extremes. 
 The comparison of Moore with Tasso does seem 
 somewhat ludicrous, while, on the other hand, the 
 soured and splenetic feelings which impelled Cole^ 
 ridge to so severe a judgment are fully revealed 
 by his admission that he had not read more than 
 two pages of the poem he vituperates. "Lalla 
 Rookh " should be read as a whole, not because 
 it is a work of consummate art, or that it really 
 matters very much where it is opened, as because 
 it is an assemblage of small brilliancies individually 
 ineffective, but resplendent in the mass. It is not 
 a great poem, but is a great literary feat ; it has 
 no creative imagination, but much radiant fancy; 
 if the author read up Oriental lore for it, and went 
 out of his way to make niches for picturesque 
 circumstances, Southey had done the same in 
 "Thalaba" and " Kehama." The undercurrent of 
 political allegory, with constant reference to the 
 woes of Ireland, if out of place in an Oriental 
 romance, served at all events to deepen the human 
 interest. Great praise is due to the beautiful in- 
 vention of ** Paradise and the Peri," which has 
 added a new and very attractive figure to the 
 gallery of fairy mythology. 
 
 In 1 817, the year of the publication of "Lalla 
 
THOMAS MOORE 217 
 
 Rookh," Moore seemed at the pinnacle of good 
 fortune. He had scarcely taken Sloperton Cottage, 
 a delightful retreat in Wiltshire, near his friend 
 Lord Lansdowne, when a terrible blow fell upon 
 him by the defalcation of his deputy at Bermuda, 
 which rendered him liable for six thousand pounds. 
 His correspondence proves the fortitude with which 
 he bore the disaster, which elicited the most gene- 
 rous offers of help from Jeffrey, Lord Lansdowne, 
 and others. It was found advisable, however, that 
 he should for a time be out of the way, and he re- 
 treated to the Continent in 1 819. In 18 18 he had 
 begun to keep a diary, which renders the materials for 
 his life more copious and satisfactory from this date. 
 Moore's absence, with a brief interval in 1 82 1, 
 lasted until April 1822. It had been partly spent 
 in Italy, where he renewed acquaintance with 
 Byron, "grown fat, which spoils the picturesque- 
 ness of his head," partly in Paris, where he stayed 
 too long. He found himself able to arrange his 
 Bermuda difficulties without recourse to Jeffrey 
 or Lord Lansdowne, by anticipating a legacy from 
 Byron, who bequeathed him his own autobiographic 
 memoirs. On these Moore, as was no doubt in- 
 tended that he should, raised sufficient money from 
 Murray to put himself straight with the world ; but 
 he was far from foreseeing the complications which 
 this unlucky autobiography was to occasion. Upon 
 
21 8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Byron's death in 1824 his friends and Lady Byron's 
 friends were nearly unanimous in protesting against 
 the publication. It was of course admitted that 
 Moore must be compensated for the loss to him- 
 self, but this he absolutely refused to hear of, and 
 repaid the money borrowed from Murray by effect- 
 ing another loan from Longman. So far the 
 transaction was most honourable to him, but it 
 is a serious question, usually answered in the 
 negative, whether he could be justified in disap- 
 pointing the trust reposed in him by Byron, who 
 undoubtedly wished and designed the publication 
 of the Memoirs, and relied upon Moore to reaHse 
 his intention. Moore himself does not appear to 
 have seen any reason for withholding them until 
 pressure was brought to bear upon him, and it is 
 probable that the fear of giving offence and creating 
 scandal had more weight with him than he acknow- 
 ledged to himself. On the other hand, the property 
 in the Memoirs had become so intricate that it was 
 not clear that it did not vest in Murray, who desired 
 their destruction, and had the advantage of actual 
 possession. The right course would have been 
 that which Moore himself proposed, to consult all 
 parties interested, and then publish the diary with 
 erasures and omissions. He ought not, perhaps, 
 to have allowed himself to be overborne; but in 
 judging his conduct one point must always be kept 
 
THOMAS MOORE 219 
 
 in mind, that publication would have been much 
 to his own pecuniary interest, and suppression the 
 reverse, a consideration which would have great, 
 even undue influence upon one so nervously sen- 
 sitive and delicately honourable in all pecuniary 
 matters. After all, the chief cause of the unto- 
 ward fate of the manuscript was Byron's own want 
 of precision. If he had bequeathed it to Moore with 
 an absolute injunction to publish it, and the proviso 
 that in the event of his failing to do so it should go 
 to some such person as William Cobbett, the objec- 
 tions would have quickly disappeared. According 
 to Earl Russell, who had read most of it, it con- 
 tained little that could do Byron's memory, or 
 English literature, either credit or the reverse. 
 This may well be believed, for great men who 
 write their autobiographies have a trick of leaving 
 off just as these are beginning to be interesting. 
 We should probably have heard much about the 
 rake of the early Regency; something about the 
 crazes of Lady Caroline Lamb, and the insufferable 
 virtues of Lady Byron; but little of the Byron of 
 " Manfred " and " Sardanapalus," of the " Vision of 
 Judgment " and " Don Juan." 
 
 Instead of being Byron's editor, Moore was fated 
 to be his biographer. Byron's bequest had mani- 
 festly marked him out for the office, and he was on 
 the point of giving evidence of his qualifications 
 
220 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 for biography by his "Life of Sheridan," which 
 had lingered long in his hands, but eventually made 
 its appearance in 1825. If Moore was marked out 
 as the ideal author for such a book, Murray was 
 no less distinctly indicated as the only possible 
 publisher, as Moore himself had admitted by de- 
 positing the Memoirs with him. The two were 
 at open variance, but mutual interest spoke more 
 strongly than resentment; a negotiation was suc- 
 cessfully conducted through Hobhouse, and Murray 
 enabled Moore to acquit his obligation to Longman 
 by returning the two thousand guineas repaid to 
 himself, and adding two thousand pounds for 
 literary labour. The result was Moore's " Life of 
 Byron," pubHshed in 1831, his principal achieve- 
 ment as a prose writer, and which will never be 
 forgotten, even should it be superseded. An ex- 
 haustive and accurate book it certainly is not, such 
 a performance would have been absolutely impos- 
 sible at that period. But neither is it deceptive* 
 It is reticent, but not insincere. It is exactly such 
 a book as it became a man of Moore's high standing 
 to write of a generous, though erring, friend and 
 benefactor, at the time reputed the first poet of his 
 age; and if Byron himself is spared, so are his 
 adversaries. On the whole it is exactly the bio- 
 graphy which the age and the circumstances re- 
 quired ; and when the time arrives for Byron's 
 
THOMAS MOORE 221 
 
 career to be dealt with in a more fearless and 
 searching manner, and with fuller access to mate- 
 rials, it is much to be hoped that the task may be 
 performed with equal tact, delicacy, and soundness 
 of judgment. Byron's career offers great tempta- 
 tions to a realistic biographer, but although a work 
 of this class may supplement Moore, it will not 
 supersede him. As a literary performance the 
 book is entitled to high praise ; it is one to take 
 down at any time, open anywhere, and always 
 read with pleasure. It is quite true that much of 
 the charm resides in the copious use of Byron's 
 correspondence, nor could it be expected that 
 Byron at one remove should be as attractive as 
 Byron himself. An edition of Byron's works suc- 
 ceeded, able and adequate. 
 
 We must now return to Moore's literary activity 
 between the first commencement of '^ Lalla Rookh " 
 and the publication of the "Life of Byron." It 
 included many interesting productions, but nothing 
 of first-rate importance. In 18 1 5 and 18 16 had 
 appeared "National Airs" and "Sacred Songs," 
 including pieces so universally popular as "Flow 
 on, thou shining river," "Oft in the stilly night," 
 and "Sound the loud timbrel." "The Fudge 
 Family in Paris," "The Fudges in England," 
 " Rhymes on the Road," and " Fables for the Holy 
 Alliance," were satirical verses in the style ot 
 
222 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 *' The Twopenny Post Bag," and evincing the same 
 capacity for light pungent satire. The last appeared 
 in 1823, shortly after which time Moore began to 
 be a regular contributor of satirical verses to the 
 Times, receiving an annual retainer. The number 
 and the topics of his communications were left to 
 himself, and the connection continued to the mutual 
 advantage of paper and poet for many years. His 
 position as laureate of Liberalism was thus not 
 unlike that subsequently assumed by Heine, and 
 his pieces do not yield to Heine's in wit, although 
 not like Heine's spiced with poetry. During his 
 exile in Paris he had written **The Loves of the 
 Angels," a romantic poem in the style of '' Lalla 
 Rookh," the subject of which was apparently sug- 
 gested by Byron's '' Heaven and Earth." It cannot 
 be considered a very successful performance, mani- 
 festing more of the extravagance and false taste 
 chargeable upon ^* Lalla Rookh," with less of pathos 
 and fancy, and much less felicity of invention. It 
 brought the author, however, a thousand pounds, 
 and thus freed him from obligation to Lord Lans- 
 downe. *' Alciphron," a metrical Egyptian romance 
 of the Roman period, began well, but the writer 
 tired of it as a poem, and turned it into prose as 
 "The Epicurean," a striking tale, but whose un- 
 faithfulness to ancient manners drew upon Moore 
 an annihilating criticism in the Westminster Review 
 
THOMAS MOORE 223 
 
 from a real scholar, Thomas Love Peacock. It 
 is probably now best known by the highly im- 
 aginative illustrations of Turner. "Memoirs of 
 Captain Rock" (1824), and "Travels of an Irish 
 Gentleman in search of a Religion" (1834), were 
 books of a partly polemical tendency, the former 
 satirising the Irish Church Establishment in its 
 legal and social aspects; the latter vindicating 
 the Roman Catholic religion, to which Moore al- 
 ways adhered, though he brought his children up 
 as Protestants. The "Life of Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald" appeared in 1831. 
 
 Moore's latter years were full ot care and sorrow. 
 The deaths of all his children, and of his two sisters, 
 tried his affectionate spirit to the utmost, and in the 
 case of the eldest son the trouble was aggravated 
 by the youth's wildness and extravagance. He was 
 also bent beneath the burden of a work which, with 
 his usual industry and loyal determination to exert 
 himself to the utmost for his family, he had under- 
 taken without duly estimating its wearisomeness 
 and difficulty, or the incipient decline of his own 
 powers. This was the " History of Ireland," which 
 he had engaged to write for Lardner's "Cabinet 
 Cyclopaedia." "The few entertaining volumes in 
 this compilation," wrote a contemporary critic, " are 
 but like lumps of sugar thrown in to sweeten the 
 mess"; and Moore's four volumes, no sugar to 
 
224 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 anybod}^, were to him exceedingly bitter pills. In 
 truth, it was no disgrace to him to have failed with 
 a hopeless subject. The legendary history of Ire- 
 land is poetical and attractive, but taboo to the 
 serious historian; the mediaeval period illustrates 
 Milton's observation touching the wars of the 
 kites and the crows; the later history resembles 
 the scenery of the country, very fine isolated por- 
 tions only attainable by journeying across tedious 
 morasses. History has few more brilliant pages 
 than Macaulay's narrative of the suppression of the 
 Irish revolt of 1688-90; but he had lighted upon 
 an oasis ; all before and all after is uninviting for 
 many a long year. Moore, who was highly com- 
 petent to narrate a single straightforward episode, 
 was utterly unqualified to reduce the chaos of 
 conflicting statements and contemporary transac- 
 tions to order, and the effort so entirely wore him 
 out that when at length (1846) the toil of ten 
 years was completed, he could not sum up suffi- 
 cient energy to write the preface, which was added 
 by another hand. It is to this period that Earl 
 Russell's remark applies : — " The brilliant hues of 
 his varied conversation had faded, and the strong 
 powers of his intellect had manifestly sunk." His 
 mind, like Southey's, was worn out, and from the 
 same causes, domestic sorrow and excessive literary 
 toil. The wreck, nevertheless, was much less com- 
 
THOMAS MOORE 225 
 
 plete in his case than in Southey's. He continued 
 his diary until 1847, ^^^ "P ^^ 1849 was fre- 
 quently able to converse with freedom and gaiety; 
 but after a fit which visited him on December 20th 
 of that year his memory almost entirely failed, 
 although his intelligence was never totally extin- 
 guished. '' To the last day of his life," says Lord 
 John Russell, *' he would inquire with anxiety 
 about the health of his friends, and would sing, 
 or ask his wife to sing to him, the favourite airs 
 of his past days. Even the day before his death, 
 he ' warbled,' as Mrs. Moore expressed it, and a 
 fond love of music never left him but with life." 
 He died on February 26, 1852, and was buried 
 at Bromham, a village adjoining his Wiltshire 
 residence. A pension of three hundred pounds a 
 year had been most properly conferred upon him 
 in 1835, through the good offices of Lord John 
 Russell. To this a civil list pension of one hundred 
 pounds a year was subsequently added. This was 
 continued to his widow, who also obtained an 
 annuity from the investment of the sum of three 
 thousand pounds, paid by Longmans for the copy- 
 right of his " Memoirs, Journals, and Correspond- 
 ence," edited in eight volumes by Lord John Russell 
 from 1853 to 1856. 
 
 The Memoirs consist of an autobiographic frag- 
 ment by Moore himself, extending from his birth 
 
226 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 to his introduction to Lord Moira in 1799. In a 
 note written in 1833 they are stated as having 
 been commenced some years before that date, but 
 as unlikely to be completed. They are agreeably 
 written, and it is not Moore's fault if most of the 
 incidents recorded would have appeared of little 
 interest but for his subsequent celebrity. Apart 
 from this personal significance, their importance 
 chiefly consists in the illustration they afford of 
 the feelings of Roman Catholics of superior educa- 
 tion under the unjust disabilities from which they 
 then suffered, and their testimony to the con- 
 siderable mitigation of this injustice through the 
 liberality of Trinity College, Dublin. They further 
 suggest that, desirable as an endowed Roman 
 Catholic university may be in many points of 
 view, it was fortunate for Moore that no such 
 institution existed in his days. 
 
 Moore's letters, with the supplement, extend 
 from 1793 to 1847. After 1818 they become very 
 scanty, and throughout many of the best are not 
 from him, but from his correspondents. His own 
 letters in various hands must be exceedingly 
 numerous, but no pains seems to have been taken 
 to collect them except by an application from Lord 
 John Russell to Rogers, who himself selected those 
 which he deemed worthy of publication. A new 
 and more diligent biographer could probably add 
 
THOMAS MOORE 227 
 
 largely to their number, and retrieve many parti- 
 culars worthy of preservation, but he would not be 
 likely to add to Moore's fame as a letter-writer. In 
 this department of literature he is mediocre, neither 
 bad nor good, but nearer to good than bad. He 
 certainly did not, as Wordsworth affected to do, 
 make his letters dull on purpose to prevent publica- 
 tion, for he did not mind publication, and he is not 
 dull. Neither did he polish them like Pope and 
 Gray, but wrote simply and naturally like Byron; 
 and the measure of the difference is the power of 
 their minds. Byron, though incapable of severe 
 continuous thought, had a most piercing insight, 
 and almost every literary gift which a good letter- 
 writer requires — perspicuity, vehemence, playful- 
 ness, narrative and descriptive power — had been 
 vouchsafed to him in profusion. Moore possesses 
 an average stock of these endowments, but no 
 more ; hence his letters are not interesting as 
 letters, but as records of feelings and circum- 
 stances, thus their merit is not epistolary, but 
 biographical, and varies with the occasion which 
 called each forth. You can never say of any of 
 Moore's letters that in it you have Moore, but in 
 any of Byron's letters you find Byron. 
 
 The character, nevertheless, which fails to come 
 to light in a letter may be fully revealed in a diary 
 extending over a long period. The impression 
 
228 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 derived from the first entries is continually reiter- 
 ated, and after a while the person depicted becomes 
 a reality. No self-portraiture anywhere can match 
 the vividness of Pepys's, who did not aim at self- 
 portraiture in the smallest degree. Every diarist 
 but Mr. Pepys has had some reticence, and in pro- 
 portion as he has thus embellished his character for 
 himself he has obscured it for posterity. Moore had 
 neither more nor less reticence than the generality 
 of men ; we gradually come to know him, and the 
 impression deepens until our estimate of his char- 
 acter is probably not less accurate than that which 
 we have formed of Pepys's, notwithstanding Moore's 
 immeasurable inferiority in graphic force. It is a 
 pleasing and amiable picture. Moore has man}^ 
 little foibles, but no fault inconsistent with the char- 
 acter of an intellectual and high-minded man. The 
 besetting sin, as to be expected, is vanity, not im- 
 moderate, nor ungraceful, nor wholly unjustifiable, 
 and most commonly exhibited in the amiable form 
 of recording the handsome things which others have 
 said of him. There is no fatuity about his self- 
 complacency ; he is aware that he actually is entitled 
 to a prominent place among the distinguished men 
 of letters of his day, and hopes that it may be really 
 as high as people seem to think it. Scott and 
 BjTon he understands, and owns for his superiors. 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge he does not understand, 
 
THOMAS MOORE 229 
 
 yet is able to admire. Keats is only once men- 
 tioned throughout the Diary, and that in a quotation. 
 If Moore thought himself the third poet of his age 
 (and he nowhere says so), he had the full assent of 
 his editor, Lord John Russell, who deliberately 
 declares, *' When these two great men " (Scott and 
 Byron) " have been enumerated, I know not any 
 writer of his time who can be put in competition 
 with Moore." Preposterous as this judgment now 
 appears. Lord John only repeated what Moore had 
 been hearing all his life from his own circle. It 
 says much for his heart that the self-appreciation 
 which such praise could not fail to engender should 
 have been so gracious and sociable, so entirely free 
 from all taint of arrogance. Of the tenderness of 
 his affections it is needless to speak, almost every 
 page bears witness to it. 
 
 The chief interest of Moore's Diary, however, is 
 not its delineation of himself, but the intimacy into 
 which it admits us with the most refined society 
 of his day. Undoubtedly Moore's record would 
 have gained much in literary and historical value 
 if he had possessed more graphic power. It was 
 not necessary that he should paint elaborate por- 
 traits of the men he knew, but a more vivid gift 
 of representation would have enabled him to make 
 these more real to us. It would be unreasonable 
 to compare him with artists of such unique power 
 
230 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 as Carlyle or Borrow, but put even Emerson's 
 account of his interviews with Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth side by side with Moore's, and the 
 latter's inferiority is immediately apparent. Emer- 
 son has shown us the men, Moore has talked 
 agreeably about them. Regarding the Diary, how- 
 ever, not as a gallery of portraits, but as an 
 assemblage of notes and observations upon the 
 most intellectual society of Moore's time, its value 
 is very considerable. If it does not portray per- 
 sonages, it reproduces the general atmosphere. 
 We feel as if we were living in the period, and 
 well content to do so. It is a most entertaining 
 book, full of anecdotes and bon mots which have 
 lost nothing of their freshness. It has a general 
 air of politeness and urbanity, and exhibits human 
 nature to advantage, displaying a man of humble 
 birth and comparatively narrow means, with nothing 
 but his accomplishments to recommend him, en- 
 joying the intimate society of the great, without 
 servility on his part or condescension on theirs. 
 Its freedom from sensational scandal of any sort 
 is the more creditable when it is considered that, 
 commencing it as he did under the pressure of 
 his Bermuda difficulty, Moore in all probability 
 entertained from the first the idea of making it 
 serve as a provision for his family. He must 
 have heard every day stories which would have 
 
THOMAS MOORE 231 
 
 greatly enhanced its value as "copy," but there is 
 little which it would have been better to omit on 
 grounds of discretion or delicacy, and there is no 
 reason to suppose that this immunity from scandal 
 is due to the editor rather than to the diarist. 
 
 The editing of the Diary, indeed, is the least 
 satisfactory circumstance connected with it. The 
 years of its publication, 1853-56, were the most 
 unfortunate in Earl Russell's life. During part 
 of the time he was a discontented Minister, dis- 
 satisfied with the proceedings of his colleagues, 
 and chafing at his own subordinate position; 
 during the remainder he was exiled from office, 
 deserted except by his closest intimates, and the 
 object of popular dislike and disapproval. It was 
 unhkely that under the circumstances he should 
 give much attention to his editorial duties, and he 
 would have done far better to have entrusted them 
 to some competent man of letters, reserving merely 
 the prestige of his name for the title-page. As it 
 is, the original edition of the " Memoirs, Journals, 
 and Correspondence," is a monumental example 
 of slovenly editing. Earl Russell has given us 
 both too much and too little. He has allowed 
 numerous trivialities to stand which should never 
 have been printed, while he has done little or 
 nothing to retrieve the correspondence which might 
 have added so much to the interest of the book. 
 
232 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 He has made no endeavour to supply the con- 
 necting narrative upon which the light discursive 
 details of the Diary should have rested; and the 
 few insignificant notes he has added to a book 
 standing in special need of annotation are the 
 merest obiter dicta. It is a great testimony to 
 the intrinsic merits of Moore's work that it should, 
 nevertheless, have established itself as one of the 
 most generally appreciated English examples of the 
 invaluable class of literature to which it belongs. 
 This is not solely or even mainly owing to its 
 well-merited character as a store of good things, 
 or the degree into which it admits us to the 
 intimacy of so many respecting whom the world 
 is curious. It is rather from a pervading aroma 
 of geniality and urbanity which editorial short- 
 comings cannot affect. It may be said of it in 
 Moore's own words — 
 
 " You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will : 
 But the scent of the roses will cling to it still." 
 
 Earl Russell nevertheless deserves praise, in 
 literature as in politics, for the gallantry with 
 which he espouses a good cause, and the spirit 
 with which he vindicates it. This was exemplified 
 in his treatment of Croker, who, exasperated at a 
 remark in the Diary which seemed to show that 
 Moore had not rated his talents very highly, 
 
THOMAS MOORE 233 
 
 retaliated by a review of the first four volumes 
 in the Quarterly of unmatched malignity and offen- 
 siveness, but after all not so characteristic of the 
 perversion of the writer's heart as of the narrow- 
 ness of his mind. The extent to which the pettiest 
 points are laboured would seem incredible if the 
 article were not before us. The worst of the matter 
 was that the review was unquestionably, and to all 
 appearance deliberately adapted to inflict severe 
 pain on Mrs. Moore, whose innocence and bereave- 
 ment should have shielded her from the most 
 envenomed vindictiveness. Lord John Russell 
 replied by a contemptuous note in a subsequent 
 volume, which drew a remonstrance from Croker, 
 who made his case ten times worse by insisting 
 that Moore had been his friend, whence it followed 
 that he had also been Moore's. Such episodes 
 explain the general aversion for a man whose own 
 memoirs prove him to have been by no means 
 incapable of kind thoughts and kind actions, and 
 whose offences are perhaps sufficiently accounted 
 for as the offspring of excessive vanity and exces- 
 sive censoriousness. 
 
 We began by intimating that it has been Moore's 
 great misfortune to be overpraised, and thus to 
 have a character forced upon him which he was 
 incapable of supporting. The truth, however, is 
 perhaps not so much that he was personally over- 
 
234 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 rated as that his greater contemporaries were 
 unduly disparaged. If Wordsworth, Keats, and 
 the rest had been allowed their proper places, 
 Moore would have fallen naturally into his own. 
 His reputation has appeared unduly inflated when 
 it has become known that he was once esteemed 
 the third poet of his day ; if, however, we discard 
 comparisons, and look merely at performances, it is 
 undeniable that English literature has been greatly 
 enriched by him. His fame rests principally upon 
 his songs, and if not one of them is quite in the 
 first-class, it is certain that he has written more 
 deserving of a secondary rank than any other 
 English poet. By restoring the old association 
 between poetry and music he did much for both ; 
 and he is not to be judged solely by the impression 
 of his words as read from the printed page — 
 
 " Ach ! wie traurig sieht in Lettern, 
 Schwarz auf weiss, das Lied mich an, 
 Das aus deinem Mund vergottern, 
 Das ein Herz zerreissen kann ! " 
 
 As a satirist Moore stands at the head of his 
 class, and as a constructor and embellisher of 
 metrical romances he is the cleverest of the poets. 
 It is, in truth, a reproach to him to have been too 
 clever, to have been too little of an inspired bard, 
 and too much of a man of letters. He could have 
 
THOMAS MOORE 235 
 
 excelled in anything demanded by the taste of his 
 day; the one distinctively poetical endowment 
 which he really possessed was an inexhaustible 
 fount of melody. In his employment of this he 
 evinced more talent than genius ; yet he never 
 expressed a sentiment discordant with his own 
 nature, and he recognised the existence of a realm 
 of inspiration into which he was but rarely per- 
 mitted to enter — 
 
 " Many a time, on summer eves, 
 Just at that closing hour of light, 
 When, like an Eastern Prince, who leaves 
 For distant war his harem bowers, 
 The Sun bids farewell to the flowers 
 Whose heads are sunk, whose tears are flowing 
 Mid all the glory of his going : 
 Even I have felt beneath those beams 
 When wandering through the fields alone. 
 Thoughts, fancies, intellectual gleams, 
 Which, far too bright to be my own, 
 Seemed lent me by the Sunny Power 
 That was abroad at that still hour." 
 
 These beautiful lines occur very unexpectedly 
 near the beginning of " Rhymes on the Road." It 
 is also noteworthy that, in enumerating some pas- 
 sages of Wordsworth which have become household 
 words, he selects the deeply impressive *' Whose 
 dwelling is the light of setting suns." 
 
 If overvalued as a poet, Moore has been under- 
 
236 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 rated as a man. Foibles he had in abundance, but 
 compensated by captivating virtues. Chief among 
 these was a manly independence almost attaining 
 the heroic, and the more striking because Moore's 
 character is not in general one of heroic lineaments. 
 Independence is expected from a haughty Words- 
 worth or a surly Schopenhauer; its absence would 
 have been easily excused in a butterfly poet, the 
 ornament of the drawing-room. To spend a life- 
 time in the intimacy of his social superiors with- 
 out a single mortification required rare qualities, 
 the more remarkable inasmuch as his destiny com- 
 pelled him to be continually incurring obligations. 
 These he was as continually redeeming, and no 
 transaction of this nature ever involved the slightest 
 diminution of his self-respect. In truth he gave the 
 society which caressed him much more than he 
 received from it. His enjoyment of its gaieties has 
 been made a reproach to him, but most unjustly. 
 Society was his element, intercourse with the world 
 his stock-in-trade ; he and his family could not have 
 subsisted without it. He has been accused of 
 neglecting his charming wife, for whom in fact he 
 made the greatest sacrifice possible to one of his 
 tastes and habits by fixing his habitation in the 
 country, knowing that residence in London would 
 expose her to continual mortification. This entailed 
 frequent absences from her — he could not neglect 
 
THOMAS MOORE 237 
 
 society without grave injury to his and her interests 
 — but no impartial reader of his Diary can doubt 
 that London gaieties would have been more enjoyed 
 by him if his Bessy could have participated in 
 them. 
 
 Intellectually, Moore's defect is a certain small- 
 ness. He has excellent sense and spirit, but when 
 measured, even by himself, against any contempo- 
 rary of much distinction, he invariably appears the 
 shorter. He is a sound but by no means a pene- 
 trating or illuminating critic, and his observations 
 on politics and manners reveal but moderate insight. 
 He could nevertheless execute a difficult piece of 
 work like the " Life of Byron " with consummate tact 
 and skill, and until worn out by labour and sorrow 
 he rarely failed in any undertaking. If he was less 
 distinctively a poet than a man of letters, the same 
 may be said of his contemporary, adversary, and 
 yet in many respects counterpart, Robert Southey. 
 The poetry of both survives and will survive, yet 
 their better title to fame is their brilliant versatility 
 in many and various fields of literature. 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK^ 
 
 Few modern authors, whose works have survived 
 them, and whose lives have been prolonged beyond 
 the ordinary span, have so well complied with the 
 ancient precept \dde ^ccoaa^ — live by stealth — as 
 Thomas Love Peacock. The early poems which 
 bore his name attracted little attention, the novels 
 which might have made a known author famous 
 were anonymous, and their writer could not have 
 been easily identified with the Examiner of East 
 India Correspondence, a situation, its importance 
 considered, itself one of the most unostentatious 
 and impersonal in the world. The life thus 
 screened from observation offered, indeed, but 
 little to observe. Genius and the friendship of a 
 greater genius, however, have made it interesting 
 to a wider circle than the personage himself ex- 
 pected or perhaps desired. Without violence to 
 his known wishes and preferences, a brief memoir, 
 mainly founded on what his attached grand- 
 
 ^ Introduction prefixed to the writer's edition of his works, 
 published by Messrs. Dent & Co., 1891. 
 
 241 Q 
 
242 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 daughter and the editor of his collected works 
 have thought it right to relate, and supplemented 
 by a few letters and particulars in the possession of 
 the present writer, may not inappropriately minister 
 to the curiosity respecting a man of exceptional 
 character, which an edition of his choicer writings, 
 destined, as is hoped, to a wider popularity than 
 its predecessors, should not fail to create. 
 
 Thomas Love Peacock was born at Weymouth, 
 October i8, 1785. His father was a glass mer- 
 chant in London, partner of a Mr. Pellatt, pre- 
 sumably founder of the celebrated firm ; his mother 
 was the daughter of Thomas Love, formerly master 
 of a man-of-war, and whom Lord Rodney's great 
 victory had deprived of a leg. Another Love, the 
 eccentric and corpulent bookseller of Weymouth, 
 must have been a relation : so that Peacock's tastes 
 for good literature, good living, navigation, and 
 shipbuilding, seem all distinctly traceable to his 
 mother's side of the family. Of the father we know 
 nothing but his calling, and that he left his son an 
 orphan at the age of three. Mrs. Peacock went to 
 live with her father at Chertsey, and from eight to 
 thirteen Peacock was at a school at Englefield 
 Green, kept by a Mr. Wicks, of whom he wrote 
 later in life, "The master was not much of a 
 scholar ; but he had the art of inspiring his pupils 
 with a love of learning." Mr. Wicks is said to 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 243 
 
 have prognosticated his pupil's future eminence, 
 and indeed Peacock's juvenile compositions, some 
 of which have been privately printed by Sir Henry 
 Cole, exhibit just the sort of formal precocity which 
 a schoolmaster would appreciate, and are by no 
 means unworthy forerunners of " The Genius of the 
 Thames " department of his writings, while display- 
 ing nothing of the peculiar fancy and humour which 
 have given him his abiding place in literature. 
 More interesting is a prize contribution to "The 
 Juvenile Library," a magazine for youth whose 
 competitions excited the emulation of several other 
 boys destined to celebrity, among them Leigh Hunt, 
 De Quincey, and W. J. Fox. Peacock, in 1800, 
 gained the eleventh prize for an essay in verse 
 on the comparative advantages of history and bio- 
 graphy as themes of study, Leigh Hunt winning the 
 fourth. The number of the magazine announcing the 
 competition contains a coloured plate of an ourang- 
 outang, attired, in defiance of reason and nature, in 
 an apron, which may have had its influence on the 
 production of " Melincourt." 
 
 Peacock is described as at this period a remark- 
 ably handsome boy; his copious flaxen curls, 
 afterwards brown, attracted the notice of Queen 
 Charlotte, who stopped her carriage to kiss him. 
 His recollections of the royal family were kindly; 
 in his charming paper, " The Last Day of Windsor 
 
244 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Forest," he simply mentions George the Fourth's 
 exclusiveness without other than impHed censure, 
 and dwells with delight on the reverse trait in the 
 character of William the Fourth. Of his other 
 family or friendly connections, apart from his 
 grandfather's house, nothing seems to be known 
 except what may be gleaned from his paper, 
 '* Recollections of Childhood," contributed to 
 "Bentley's Miscellany," and reprinted in ^* Tales 
 from Bentley." Here we have pleasing reminis- 
 cences of an old-fashioned country-house and a 
 family life placid, uneventful, and, it must be added, 
 uninteresting to a degree impossible since the world 
 has been waked up by railways and the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 At the age of fourteen Peacock removed with his 
 mother to London, and was for a time a clerk in 
 the mercantile house of Messrs. Ludlow, Fraser, 
 and Co., Angel Court, Throgmorton Street. In- 
 defatigable in bodily exercise and the acquisition 
 of congenial knowledge, he was throughout his 
 life indolent in every other particular, and probably 
 lost little time in exchanging the counting-house for 
 the Reading- Room of the British Museum, which he 
 frequented for many years, a diligent student of the 
 best literature in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, 
 becoming in time one of the best classical scholars 
 of his day, who gained in breadth what he lost 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 245 
 
 in verbal accuracy. His circumstances, though 
 narrow, must have been independent, for in 1804 
 and 1806 he published two volumes of poetry, 
 '' The Monks of St. Mark " and " Palmyra," from 
 which profit could hardly have been expected, and 
 in 1807 he is found engaged to a young lady not 
 named, whom in the summer of that year he used 
 to meet in the ruins of Newark Abbey, about eight 
 miles from Chertsey. The interviews were ap- 
 parently clandestine, else it is difficult to imagine 
 how '* the underhand interference of a third 
 person," probably exercised in intercepting letters, 
 could have led the young lady to suppose herself 
 deserted, and bestow her hand elsewhere with a 
 precipitancy only to be paralleled by her exit from 
 this mortal scene in the following year. Something 
 probably remains untold. Whatever reason for 
 reproach Peacock may have had, her memory re- 
 mained as a tender possession with him to the last 
 hour of his life. ^* He always," says his grand- 
 daughter, **wore a locket with her hair in it, and 
 only a few days before his death he spoke of her 
 to me, saying that he had been dreaming of dear 
 Fanny, that she had come to him in the night in his 
 sleep, and he expressed himself as greatly pleased 
 with the dream, remarking that it had for some 
 weeks frequently recurred." 
 
 Thirty-five years after his loss, Peacock's feelings 
 
246 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 in connexion with the scene of his early attach- 
 ment found expression in some most beautiful 
 verses, especially admired by Tennyson, which, 
 as his poetry, outside his novels, will not be re- 
 printed in this edition, may find a place in the 
 memoir : — 
 
 NEWARK ABBEY. 
 
 " I gaze where August's sunbeam falls 
 Along these gray and lonely walls, 
 Till in its light absorbed appears 
 The lapse of five-and-thirty years. 
 
 If change there be, I trace it not 
 In all this consecrated spot : 
 No new imprint of Ruin's march 
 On roofless wall and frameless arch : 
 The woods, the hills, the fields, the stream. 
 Are basking in the selfsame beam ; 
 The fall, that turns the unseen mill. 
 As then it murmured, murmurs still. 
 It seems as if in one were cast 
 The present and the imaged past. 
 Spanning, as with a bridge sublime. 
 That fearful lapse of human time, — 
 That gulf unfathomably spread 
 Between the living and the dead. 
 
 For all too well my spirit feels 
 The only change that time reveals. 
 The sunbeams play, the breezes stir. 
 Unseen, unfelt, unheard by her. 
 Who, on that long-past August day, 
 Beheld with me these ruins gray. 
 
 Whatever span the fates allow 
 Ere I shall be as she is now, 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 247 
 
 Still in my bosom's inmost cell 
 
 Shall that long-treasured memory dwell, 
 
 That, more than language can express, 
 
 Pure miracle of loveliness, 
 
 Whose voice so sweet, whose eyes so bright. 
 
 Were my soul's music and its light ; 
 
 In those blest days when life was new, 
 
 And hope was false, but love was true." 
 
 Disappointment and bereavement may have dis- 
 posed Peacock to try a change of life, and his 
 friends, as he hints, thought it wrong that so 
 clever a man should be earning so little money. 
 In the autumn of 1 808 he became private secretary 
 to Sir Home Popham, commanding the fleet before 
 Flushing. His preconceived affection for the sea 
 did not reconcile him to nautical realities. " Writ- 
 ing poetry," he says, '' or doing anything else that 
 is rational, in this floating inferno, is next to a 
 moral impossibility. I would give the world to be 
 at home and devote the winter to the composition 
 of a comedy." He did write prologues and ad- 
 dresses for dramatic performances on board the 
 Venerable: his dramatic taste then and for nine 
 years subsequently found expression in attempts 
 at comedies and pieces of a still lighter class, all 
 of which fail from lack of ease of dialogue and the 
 over-elaboration of incident and humour. He left 
 the Venerable in March 1809, and is shortly after- 
 wards found engaged in a pedestrian expedition to 
 
248 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 discover the source of the Thames, which probably 
 suppHed inspiration sufficient for the completion of 
 the most elaborate, after " Rhododaphne," of his 
 longer poems, ^^ The Genius of the Thames," which 
 he had meditated in 1807. It was published in 
 1 8 10. There is a surprising contrast between 
 these more ambitious undertakings and the lyrics 
 scattered through his novels, on which his repu- 
 tation as a poet entirely rests. The latter are so 
 graceful, simple, and naturally melodious, that they 
 might seem to have come into being of their own 
 accord. The former are works of labour and re- 
 flection; they compel admiration of the author's 
 powers of mind, and in " Rhododaphne " his sym- 
 pathy for the vanished beauty of Hellas occasionally 
 exalts vigorous writing into poetry. Otherwise 
 they are best described by the passage from Plato, 
 so admirably translated by himself in illustration 
 of Shelley, with entire unsuspiciousness of any 
 personal application : — 
 
 ^* There are several kinds of divine madness. 
 That which proceeds from the Muses, taking pos- 
 session of a tender and unoccupied soul, awakening 
 and bacchically inspiring it towards songs and other 
 poetry, adorning myriads of ancient deeds, instructs 
 succeeding generations ; but he who, without this 
 madness from the Muses, approaches the poetical 
 gates, having persuaded himself that by art alone 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 249 
 
 he may become sufficiently a poet, will find in the 
 end his own imperfection, and see the poetry of his 
 cold prudence vanish into nothing before the light 
 of that which has sprung from divine insanity." 
 
 In January 18 10 Peacock made his first expedition 
 into North Wales. He was there as late as August, 
 as appears from the last of several letters given in 
 Sir Henry Cole's privately printed '^Biographical 
 Notes." In April 181 1 he was on the point of 
 returning to London, as shown by the following 
 hitherto unpublished letter. We do not know 
 whether he had spent the whole intervening period 
 in the country, or had made a second visit. The 
 letter, like the others, is addressed to his friend 
 and publisher — Hookham : — 
 
 "Machynlleth, April % 181 1. 
 " Your letter arrived on Sunday morning. I then 
 gave my landlord the bill and walked up to the 
 parson's, as I could not leave the vale without 
 taking leave of Jane Gryffydh — the most innocent, 
 the most amiable, the most beautiful girl in exist- 
 ence. The old lady being in the way, I could not 
 speak to her there, and asked her to walk with me 
 to the lodge. She was obliged to dress for church 
 immediately, but promised to call on the way. She 
 did so. I told her my intention of departing that 
 day, and gave her my last remaining copy of the 
 
250 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 "Genius." She advised me to tell my host. I 
 did so, and arranged matters with him in a very 
 satisfactory manner. He will send my remaining 
 bills under cover to you. As I told him my design 
 of walking home through South Wales, he will 
 probably not send them for three weeks. If they 
 arrive before me, which I do not think they will, 
 have the goodness to lay them quietly by. This 
 is coming off with flying colours. I then waited 
 my lovely friend's return from church, took a final 
 leave of her, started at three in the afternoon, 
 and reached Dolgelly — eighteen miles — at eight. 
 Yesterday morning I walked through a succession 
 of most sublime scenery to the pretty little lake, 
 Tal-y-llyn, where is a small public-house, kept by 
 a most original character, who in the triple capacity 
 of publican, schoolmaster, and guide to Cadair Idris, 
 manages to keep the particles of his carcase in 
 contact. I ascended the mountain with him, seated 
 myself in the Giant's Chair, and ** looked from my 
 throne of clouds o'er half the world." The view 
 from the summit of this mountain baffles descrip- 
 tion. It is the very sublimity of Nature's wildest 
 magnificence. Beneath, the whole extent of 
 Cardigan Bay; to the right, the immense chain 
 of the Snowdonian mountains, partly smiling in 
 sunshine, partly muffled in flying storm: to the 
 left, the wide expanse of the southern principality, 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 251 
 
 with all its mountain summits below us. This 
 
 excursion occupied five hours. I then returned 
 
 to Minffordd Inn, as he calls it, took some tea, 
 
 and walked hither through a romantic and beautiful 
 
 vale. The full moon in a cloudless sky illumined 
 
 the latter part of my march. I shall proceed to 
 
 Towyn this morning, having promised Miss Scott 
 
 to call at her uncle's seat on my way to England. 
 
 From Towyn I shall proceed to Aberystwith, and 
 
 from thence to the Devil's Bridge at Hafod. From 
 
 one of these places I will write to you again. 
 
 ^*I have a clean shirt with me, and Luath, and 
 
 Tacitus. I am in high health and spirits. On 
 
 the top of Cadair Idris I felt how happy a man 
 
 may be with a little money and a sane intellect, 
 
 and reflected with astonishment and pity on the 
 
 madness of the multitude. 
 
 '^T. L. Peacock." 
 
 In 18 12 Peacock published another elaborate 
 poem, **The Philosophy of Melancholy," and in 
 the same year made the acquaintance of Shelley: 
 according to his grand-daughter and Sir Henry 
 Cole at Nant Gwillt, near Rhayader, in Radnor- 
 shire. But this is a mistake. Peacock tells us 
 himself, in his memoir of Shelley, that he did not 
 behold this romantic spot ^ until after Shelley had 
 
 ^ Now (1901) on the point of subiViersion in connection with the 
 Birmingham water supply. 
 
252 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 quitted it, when he went on purpose to view it : 
 he also says that he *' saw Shelley for the first 
 time just before he went to Tanyrallt," whither 
 Shelley proceeded from London in November 1812 
 (Hogg's ''Life of Shelley," vol. ii., pp. 174, 175). 
 The medium of introduction was no doubt Mr. 
 Thomas Hookham, the publisher of all Peacock's 
 early writings, whose circulating library ministered 
 to Shelley's intellectual hunger for many years. 
 He had sent " The Genius of the Thames " to 
 Shelley, and in the ''Shelley Memorials," pp. 
 38-40, will be found a letter from the poet, under 
 date of August 18, 18 12, extolHng the poetical 
 merits of the performance, and with equal exaggera- 
 tion censuring what he thought the author's mis- 
 guided patriotism. Personal acquaintance almost 
 necessarily ensued, and hence arose an intimacy 
 not devoid of influence upon Shelley's fortunes 
 both before and after his death, and which has 
 made Peacock interesting to many who would not 
 otherwise have heard of his name. At the risk of 
 some digression, it will be most convenient to 
 treat the subject in this place. 
 
 Though neither sufficiently ardent nor sufficiently 
 productive to rank among famous literary friend- 
 ships, the friendship of Shelley and Peacock was 
 yet interesting both in itself and its results. With- 
 out it we should not have perused Shelley's 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 253 
 
 matchless descriptive letters from Italy, almost 
 rivalling his poetry in beauty, yet genuine letters, 
 not rhapsodies. As authors, the two men re- 
 mained almost entirely unaffected by each other's 
 writings. Not a trace of direct influence can be 
 found in the style of either : but the superiority 
 of '^ Rhododaphne," written during the period of 
 their intimacy, to Peacock's other elaborate poems, 
 justifies the inference that Shelley was performing 
 his usual office for his friends of impregnating 
 their brains; while on his own part he took from 
 Peacock the idea of a poem on the suicide of 
 Otho, which proved abortive. He justly censured 
 Peacock's style in poetry as framed by the canons 
 of the ^' exact and superficial school," but fully 
 appreciated the merit of his prose. " I know not," 
 he says, speaking of "Nightmare Abbey," "how 
 to praise sufficiently the lightness, chastity, and 
 strength of the language of the whole." He natur- 
 ally desiderated more moral earnestness. " Is not 
 the misdirected enthusiasm of Scythrop what Jesus 
 Christ calls the salt of the earth ? " This craving 
 for definiteness of purpose made him prefer " Mehn- 
 court" among Peacock's novels, in which few will 
 agree with him. Peacock, on his part, gave, during 
 Shelley's life, no indication of a just perception of 
 the latter's place among poets, unless it was such 
 to inform him, on occasion of the publication of 
 
254 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 " Adonais/' that *' if he would consider who and 
 what the readers of poetry are, and adapt his 
 compositions to the depth of their understandings 
 and the current of their sympathies, he would 
 attain the highest degree of poetical fame." After- 
 wards, however, he wrote of Shelley's genius as 
 " unsurpassed in the description and imagination 
 of scenes of beauty and grandeur ; in the expres- 
 sion of impassioned love of ideal beauty; in the 
 illustration of deep feeling by congenial imagery; 
 and in the infinite variety of harmonious versifi- 
 cation." He will command the assent of most 
 readers, though not ours, when he adds, *'What 
 was, in my opinion, deficient in his poetry, was 
 the want of reality in the characters with which 
 he peopled his splendid scenes." These passages 
 occur in the contribution to Shelley's biography 
 which he published at an advanced period of his 
 life, and which must be alluded to here if only 
 to give the present writer an opportunity of retract- 
 ing criticism from his own pen which he now feels 
 to have been unjust and uncharitable, but which 
 he cannot feel to have been inexcusable. That 
 Peacock totally mis-stated the matter of Shelley's 
 separation from Harriet is as clear to him as ever ; 
 but any suspicion of wrong motives has been dis- 
 pelled by more intimate acquaintance with his 
 character, and in particular with the moral im- 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 255 
 
 possibility under which he laboured of relinquishing 
 any opinion which had once become a conviction. 
 In fact, the real point at issue continues to be 
 misapprehended by almost every one who writes 
 upon the question. It is exceedingly simple. If 
 Shelley forsook Harriet for Mary merely because 
 he liked Mary better, he cannot be justified by any 
 code of morality. If, after an insanable breach 
 with Harriet, he transferred his affections elsewhere, 
 his conduct, right or wrong, would have had the 
 approbation of Milton. It is certain that such a 
 breach had occurred before Shelley had seen Mary ; 
 and it is equally certain, without any groundless 
 aspersion of Harriet's conjugal fidelity, that the 
 fault was not Shelley's. 
 
 For some years, except for an anecdote in the auto- 
 biography of J. A. Roebuck, the course of Peacock's 
 life is only known from its connection with his illus- 
 trious friend. In the winter of 1813 he accompanies 
 Shelley and Harriet to Edinburgh : throughout 
 the winter of 18 14-15 he is an almost daily visitor 
 of Shelley and Mary at their London lodgings. 
 In 181 5 he shares their voyage to the source of 
 the Thames. " He seems," writes Charles Clair- 
 mont, a member of the party, **an idly-inclined 
 man ; indeed, he is professedly so in the summer ; 
 he owns he cannot apply himself to study, and 
 thinks it more beneficial to him as a human being 
 
256 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 entirely to devote himself to the beauties of the 
 season while they last; he was only happy while 
 out from morning till night." During the winter 
 of 1 815-16 Peacock was continually walking over 
 from Marlow, where he had established himself 
 sometime in this year, to visit Shelley at Bishop- 
 gate. There he met Hogg, and ^* the winter was 
 a mere Atticism. Our studies were exclusively 
 Greek." The benefit which Shelley derived from 
 such a course of study cannot be overrated. Its 
 influence is seen more and more in everything 
 he wrote to the end of his life. The morbid, 
 the fantastic, the polemical, fade gradually out of 
 his mind; and the writer who had begun as the 
 imitator of the wildest extravagances of German 
 romance would, had not his genius transcended 
 the limits of any school, have ended as scarcely 
 less of a Hellene than Keats and Landor. 
 
 In 181 5 '* Headlong Hall" was written, and it was 
 published in the following year. With this book 
 Peacock definitively takes the place in literature 
 which he was to maintain throughout his life, with- 
 out substantial alteration or development beyond the 
 mellowing which wider experience and increasing 
 prosperity would naturally bring. The wine was to 
 be the same, but improved by keeping. Of Pea- 
 cock's general characteristics as an author we shall 
 have to speak hereafter. It need only be said 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 257 
 
 here that " Headlong Hall " signalises his literary 
 emancipation as decisively as another and far more 
 important book written in the same year indicates 
 the emancipation of a far greater genius. ^'Alastor" 
 proclaimed Shelley's discovery that the bent of his 
 genius was not to the didactic ; and " Headlong 
 Hall" showed no less decisively Peacock's final 
 recognition of his deficient appreciation of form, 
 and the futility of his endeavours to construct a 
 comedy. What he had to do was to give plot and 
 accurate delineation of character to the winds, 
 make his personages typical rather than individual ; 
 throw them together pell-mell and let dialogue and 
 incident evolve themselves from the juxtaposition, 
 and the result would be that original creation the 
 Peacockian novel, which may be described as the 
 spirit of comedy diffused in exemption from the 
 restraints of the stage, like gas liberated by the 
 disintegration of a solid. 
 
 In 1 816 Shelley went abroad, and Peacock was 
 the recipient of his beautiful descriptive letters 
 from Switzerland. He would appear to have been 
 entrusted with the commission of providing the 
 Shelleys with a new residence, and it is not sur- 
 prising that he should have fixed them near his 
 own abode at Great Marlow. They settled there 
 in December. The climate was more congenial 
 
 to Peacock's constitution than to Shelley's ; but 
 
 R 
 
258 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 the choice cannot be considered wholly unfortu- 
 nate, for the beautiful river scenery reappears 
 transfigured in some of the most splendid passages 
 of the '' Revolt of Islam," which Shelley composed 
 during his residence, partly, as he himself says, 
 where 
 
 " With sound like many voices sweet, 
 Waterfalls leapt among wild islands green," 
 
 partly, as Peacock tells us, " on a high prominence 
 in Bisham wood, where he passed whole mornings 
 with a blank book and a pencil." His note-books 
 show that Peacock at this time received an annuity 
 of ;^50 from him, which, if gossip in Miss Mitford's 
 correspondence may be trusted, he repaid by driv- 
 ing away uninvited guests who would have eaten 
 Shelley out of house and home. ** MeHncourt " 
 was published at this time ; and " Nightmare 
 Abbey " and " Rhododaphne " written. The former 
 book, constructed on the same lines as ^' Headlong 
 Hall," but a great advance upon it, is supposed to 
 contain a portrait of Shelley, but the resemblance, 
 if any, is most superficial. *' Rhododaphne," by 
 far the best of Peacock's more ambitious poems, 
 enjoyed the signal but barren honour of a review 
 from Shelley's pen. Shelley is said to have assured 
 the author that Byron professed himself willing 
 to have fathered it, but we have not found the 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 259 
 
 passage in his letters. Before these works were 
 published in 18 18 Shelley was again on the wing, 
 and Peacock and he were never to meet again. 
 Restlessness and embarrassment, says Peacock, 
 were the causes of the emigration, but there were 
 others, personified in Godwin and Byron. Pea- 
 cock's fidelity as a correspondent (*' this is the 
 third letter," he says on June 14, " that I have 
 written since I received one from you ") was 
 repaid by the magnificent series of letters from 
 Shelley descriptive of Italy, which only ceased 
 when, in the summer of 1819, he found himself 
 settled in the comparatively uninteresting city of 
 Leghorn. Peacock's own letters to Shelley are the 
 principal authority for his life at this time. On 
 May 30, 1 81 8, he says, not speaking by the spirit 
 of prophecy : — 
 
 " I have no idea and no wish remaining to leave 
 Marlow at all, and when you return to England 
 you will find me still here, though not perhaps 
 in the same house. I have almost finished * Night- 
 mare Abbey.' I think it necessary to make a stand 
 against the encroachments of black bile. The 
 fourth canto of ' Childe Harold ' is really too bad. 
 I cannot consent to be auditor tantum of this 
 systematical poisoning of the mind of the reading 
 public." 
 
 On July 19 he reports : — 
 
26o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 " I have changed my habitation, having been 
 literally besieged out of the other by horses and 
 children. I propose to remain in the one I am 
 in now till death, fortune, or my landlord turns 
 me out. It is cheap, and exceedingly comfortable. 
 It is the one which Major Kelley lived in when 
 you were here, facing the Coiting Place, in West 
 Street. [This '* coiting place " still exists.] The 
 weather continues dry and sultry. I have been 
 very late on the river for several evenings, under 
 the beams of the summer moon, and the air has 
 been as warm as the shade by day, and so stiU 
 that the tops of the poplars have stood, black in 
 the moonlight, as motionless as spires of stone. 
 If the summer of last year had been like this, 
 you would not, I think, be now in Italy ; but who 
 could have foreseen it ? Do not think I wish to 
 play the tempter. If you return to England, I 
 would most earnestly advise you to stay the winter 
 in a milder climate. Still I do speculate on your 
 return within two years as a strong probability, 
 and I think where you are Hkely to take up your 
 abode. Were I to choose the spot I would fix 
 you on one of the hills that border this valley. 
 The Hunts would plant you at Paddington. Your 
 own taste, and Mary's, would perhaps point to the 
 Forest. If you ever speculate on these points among 
 yourselves, I should be glad to understand the view 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 261 
 
 you take of them. It is pleasant to plant cuttings 
 of futurity, if only one in ten takes root. But I 
 deem it a moral impossibility that an Englishman 
 who is not encrusted either with natural apathy 
 or superinduced Giaourism, can live many years 
 among such animals as the modern Italians. 
 There is nothing new under the political sun, ex- 
 cept that the forgery of bank-notes increases in 
 a compound ratio of progression, and that the 
 silver disappears rapidly; both symptoms of in- 
 extricable disarrangement in the machinery of the 
 omnipotent paper-mill." 
 
 ''August 10, 1 818. 
 
 " I do not find this brilliant summer very 
 favourable to intellectual exertion. The mere 
 pleasure of existence in the open air is too ab- 
 sorbing for the energies of active thought, and 
 too attractive for that resolute perseverance in 
 sedentary study to which I find the long and 
 dreary winter so propitious. To one who has 
 never been out of England, the effect of this season 
 is like removal to a new world. It is the climate 
 of Italy transmitted to us by special favour of 
 the gods ; and I cannot help thinking that our 
 incipient restoration of true piety has propitiated 
 the deities, and especially hoc sublime candens quod 
 vocamus omnes Jovem. For the most part, my 
 
262 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 division of time is this : I devote the forenoon 
 to writing ; the afternoon to the river, the woods, 
 and classical poetry; the evening to philosophy 
 — at present the Novum Organon and the Histoire 
 Naturelle^ which is a treasury of inexhaustible 
 delight. My reading is, as usual at this season, 
 somewhat desultory. I open to myself many 
 vistas in the great forest of mind, and recon- 
 noitre the tracts of territory which in the winter 
 I propose to acquire." 
 
 There is enough evidence of studying and sail- 
 ing at all hours of the day in a little diary kept 
 at this time, and privately printed by Sir Henry 
 Cole, but not much of writing in the forenoon, 
 though literary projects were not laid aside. 
 '^ Could not read or write for scheming my 
 romance — rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, 
 maids, kings, and banditti dancing before me like 
 a masked ball." This was "Maid Marian," "a 
 comic romance of the twelfth century," he tells 
 Shelley on November 29, "which I shall make 
 the vehicle of much oblique satire on all the op- 
 pressions that are done under the sun." As, 
 excepting three chapters, it was entirely composed 
 in 18 18, it must have made very rapid progress. 
 A great change in Peacock's life was impending. 
 In the above quoted letter he says, " I have heard 
 no more of the affair which took me to London 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 263 
 
 last month. I adhere to my resolution of not 
 going there at all, unless particular business should 
 call me, and I do not at present foresee any that 
 is likely to do so." On December 15, he de- 
 scribes himself as "rooted like a tree on the 
 banks of one bright river." But on January 13, 
 1 8 19, he writes from 5 York Street, Covent 
 Garden : '' I now pass every morning at the India 
 House, from half-past ten to half-past four, study- 
 ing Indian affairs. My object is not yet attained, 
 though I have little doubt but that it will be. 
 It was not in the first instance of my own seek- 
 ing, but was proposed to me. It will lead to a 
 very sufficing provision for me in two or three 
 years. It is not in the common routine of office, 
 but is an employment of a very interesting and 
 intellectual kind, connected with finance and legis- 
 lation, in which it is possible to be of great ser- 
 vice not only to the Company, but to the millions 
 under their dominion." It would appear that the 
 East India Company had become aware that their 
 home staff was too merely clerical, and had de- 
 termined to reinforce it by the appointment of 
 four men of exceptional ability to the Examiner's 
 office, including Peacock and James Mill. The 
 circumstances of the appointment of Mill, who 
 did apply, and who experienced many obstacles 
 on account of the censure of the Company in his 
 
264 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 " History of British India," are narrated in Pro- 
 fessor Bain's biography, pp. 184, 185. His salary 
 is said to have been £800 a year ; we do not know 
 whether Peacock received as much. The latter's 
 appointment is said by Sir Henry Cole to have 
 been owing to the influence of Peter Auber, the 
 Company's secretary and historian, whom he had 
 known at school, though probably not as a school- 
 fellow. Mill appears to have undergone no pro- 
 bation; Peacock did, but the test papers which 
 he drafted were returned to him with the high 
 commendation, " Nothing superfluous, and nothing 
 wanting" — another proof that a poet and a novehst 
 may be a man of business. Peacock's name does 
 not appear in the official list until 1821, when 
 his position was improved : but already, by March 
 9, Leigh Hunt tells Shelley: "You have heard, 
 of course, of Peacock's appointment in the India 
 House; we joke him upon his new Oriental 
 grandeur, his Brahminical learning, and his in- 
 evitable tendencies to be one of the corrupt, upon 
 which he seems to apprehend Shelleian objurga- 
 tion. It is an honour to him that prosperity sits 
 on him well. He is very pleasant and hospi- 
 table." These hospitalities must have been exer- 
 cised in lodgings: for we learn from Hogg that 
 it was on July I, 18 19, that Peacock slept for the 
 first time in "a house in Stamford Street (No. 18) 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 265 
 
 which, as you might expect from a Republican, 
 he has furnished very handsomely." His mother 
 continued to reside with him, and the household 
 soon received an addition in the person of Jane 
 Gryffydh, henceforth Peacock, the Cambrian irap- 
 devo^ ovpeal^oLTO^, iprj/jLaBc GVvTpo(j>o^ vX-t;, whom, 
 as we have seen, he had pronounced, so long ago 
 as 181 1, ''the most innocent, the most amiable, 
 the most beautiful girl in existence." He had 
 never seen or communicated with her since, and 
 it says much for the depth of the impression he 
 had received and his own constancy that on 
 November 29 he should have addressed her as 
 follows : — 
 
 " It is more than eight years since I had the 
 happiness of seeing you : I can scarcely hope that 
 you have remembered me as I have remembered 
 you : yet I feel confident that the simplicity and 
 ingenuousness of your disposition will prompt you 
 to answer me with the same candour with which 
 I write to you. I long entertained the hope of 
 returning to Merionethshire under better auspices 
 than those under which I left it; but fortune 
 always disappointed me, continually offering me 
 prospects which receded as I approached them. 
 Recently she has made amends for her past un- 
 kindness, and has given me much present good, 
 and much promise of progressive prosperity, which 
 
266 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 leaves me nothing to desire in worldly advantage, 
 but to participate it with you. The greatest 
 blessing this world could bestow on me would be 
 to make you my wife : consider if your own feel- 
 ings would allow you to constitute my happiness. 
 I desire only to promote yours ; and I desire only 
 you, for your value is beyond fortune, of which 
 I want no more than I have. The same circum- 
 stances which have given me prosperity confine 
 me to London, and to the duties of the depart- 
 ment with which the East India Company has 
 entrusted me; yet I can absent myself once in 
 every year for a few days; if you sanction my 
 wishes, with what delight should I employ them 
 in bringing you to my home ! If this be but a 
 baseless dream, if I am even no more in your 
 estimation than the sands of the sea-shore — yet 
 I am sure, as I have already said, that you will 
 answer me with the same candour with which I 
 have written. Whatever may be your sentiments, 
 the feelings with which I now write to you, and 
 which more than eight years of absence and 
 silence have neither obliterated nor diminished, 
 will convince you that I never can be otherwise 
 than most sincerely and affectionately your friend." 
 Sir Henry Cole thinks this ^'the model of a 
 reasonable offer of marriage." Romantic would 
 seem a more appropriate term, unless Peacock had 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 267 
 
 entirely satisfied himself that Miss GryfFydh had 
 not in the interim acquired a wooden leg, like the 
 young lady wooed under similar circumstances in 
 one of Theodore Hook's tales. Shelley observed 
 with more justice: '*The affair is extremely like 
 the denouement of one of your own novels, and as 
 such serves to a theory I once imagined, that in 
 everything any man ever wrote, spoke, acted, or 
 imagined, is contained, as it were, an allegorical 
 idea of his own future life, as the acorn contains 
 the oak." Jane Gryffydh's acceptance of the pro- 
 posal may also be thought to have evinced courage, 
 but there was probably no more choice of wooers 
 at Maentwrog than of wigs on Munrimmon Moor. 
 She might also have been convinced of his con- 
 stancy if she could have seen the MS. of an 
 unfinished and unpublished romance, "Sir CaH- 
 dore," written in 18 16 or 1 817, and to be included, 
 it is hoped, in this edition ; in which she is depicted 
 with loving partiality amid a highly genial but at 
 the same time highly uncongenial environment — 
 a fairy islet in an ocean of strong ale. The 
 marriage took place on March 20, 1820. "Mrs. 
 Peacock," says Mrs. Gisborne, "seems to be a 
 very good-natured, simple, unaffected, untaught, 
 pretty ish Welsh girl." 
 
 The following years were not eventful. In 1820 
 Peacock published in OUier's "Literary Pocket 
 
268 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Book " the '^ Four Ages of Poetry," a clever para- 
 dox, inspired by disappointment at his own failure 
 to command attention as a poet, but memorable 
 for having provoked Shelley's "Defence." On 
 June 3, 1821, he tells Shelley, ''I have paid 
 Grayhurst and Harvey for the plate which you 
 had in 181 3, and which finally remained in Harriet's 
 possession, £4^, including interest." In October 
 he acknowledges the repayment of this sum by 
 Shelley, and mentions the birth of *^a charming 
 little girl (now eleven weeks old), who grows and 
 flourishes delightfully in this fumose and cinereous 
 atmosphere." In the same letter he says, "I 
 should not like your Indian project " (Shelley's 
 letter respecting this is lost, it must have been 
 suggested to him by Medwin), "which I think 
 would agree neither with your mind nor body, if 
 it were practicable. But it is altogether impossible. 
 The whole of the Civil Service of India is sealed 
 against all but the Company's covenanted servants, 
 who are inducted into it through established grada- 
 tions, beginning at an early period of life. There 
 is nothing that would give me so much pleasure 
 (because I think there is nothing that would be 
 more beneficial to you), than to see you following 
 some scheme of flesh and blood — some interesting 
 matter connected with the business of life, in the 
 tangible shape of a practical man : and I shall 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 269 
 
 make it a point of sedulous inquiry to discover 
 if there be anything attainable of this nature that 
 would be likely to please and suit you." Excel- 
 lent advice, if Shelley had not been a great poet ! 
 Shelley's death in the ensuing July put an end to 
 all projects of this nature, and in the absence of 
 the co-executor, Lord Byron, the duties of the 
 executorship devolved upon Peacock. One vexa- 
 tious circumstance gave Mary Shelley intense 
 annoyance, and became the occasion of much 
 mischief — the loss of a box of papers deposited 
 in Peacock's care when the Shelleys quitted 
 Marlow, and very improperly left by him in the 
 keeping of Shelley's landlord Haddocks on his 
 own removal to London. Maddocks, who was 
 now in desperate circumstances, refused to restore 
 them, pretending that they were collateral security 
 for a debt, and while Peacock hesitated about 
 taking legal proceedings they disappeared, and 
 have been the source of most of the Shelley 
 forgeries which for a long time infested the auto- 
 graph market. 
 
 In 1822 ^'Maid Marian," begun in 1818, was 
 completed and pubhshed. '' A beautiful little 
 thing," says Mrs. Gisborne on April 28, ^* but it 
 has not taken yet. Oilier says the reason is that 
 no work can sell which turns priests into ridicule." 
 It was, however, soon dramatised with great success 
 
270 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 by Planche, and enjoyed the honour of translation 
 into French and German. Peacock's salary was 
 now ;^iooo a year, and in 1823 he acquired the 
 residence at Lower Halliford, which continued his 
 predilection to the end of his Hfe. It was formed 
 by throwing two cottages together. In March 1823 
 another daughter was born, whose death in January 
 1826 called forth these affecting lines, still to be read 
 upon the gravestone in Shepperton Churchyard : — 
 
 " Long night succeeds thy little day ; 
 O blighted blossom ! Can it be 
 That this gray stone and grassy clay 
 Have closed our anxious care of thee ? 
 
 The half-formed speech of artless thought 
 That spoke a mind beyond thy years ; 
 
 The song, the dance, by nature taught ; 
 The sunny smiles, the transient tears ; 
 
 The symmetry of face and form, 
 The eye with light and life replete ; 
 
 The little heart so fondly warm ; 
 The voice so musically sweet : 
 
 These, lost to hope, in memory yet 
 
 Around the hearts that loved thee cling. 
 
 Shadowing with long and vain regret 
 The too fair promise of thy spring." 
 
 " My grandmother," writes Peacock's grand- 
 daughter, " was inconsolable for the loss of this 
 little child, Margaret ; she fell into bad health, and 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 271 
 
 until her death in 1852 she was a complete invalid. 
 Very soon after Margaret's death my grandmother 
 noticed a little girl in its mother's arms, at the door 
 of a cottage on Halliford Green; she was much 
 taken with the child, seeing in it a strong likeness 
 to the little one she was so sorely grieving after; 
 she coaxed the little girl, Mary Rosewell, into her 
 own house by a promise of some cake, and dressed 
 it in her lost child's clothes. My grandfather, on 
 his return from town, looked in through the dining- 
 room window as he passed round to the door of his 
 house, and seeing the child standing on the hearth- 
 rug in the room, he was so struck by its likeness to 
 Margaret that he afterwards declared that he felt 
 quite stunned, for the moment believing that he 
 really saw her again before him. My grandparents 
 finally adopted the child, Mary Rosewell, whose 
 family had lived for generations much respected in 
 the neighbourhood, and a most devoted and un- 
 selfish adopted daughter she always proved to be." 
 
 Peacock's life was protracted forty years longer, 
 but the incidents in it worthy of record are but few. 
 " Paper Money Lyrics," and the inimitable satire 
 on Sabbatarianism beginning, " The poor man's sins 
 are glaring," were written about this time. In 1829 
 came "The Misfortunes of Elphin," and in 1831 
 *' Crotchet Castle," the most mature and thoroughly 
 characteristic of all his works. More might have 
 
272 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 followed, but in 1833 he was visited by the heaviest 
 sorrow of his life, the death of his mother. It 
 should have been foreseen, as Mrs. Peacock was 
 born in 1754, and the effect upon Peacock showed 
 the weak side of his philosophy of life, the obstinate 
 refusal to look beyond the present day. " He often 
 said that after his mother's death he wrote nothing 
 of value, as his heart was not in the work." A 
 severe illness followed in 1835, t)"^ i^ 1836 his 
 official career was crowned by his appointment as 
 Chief Examiner of Indian Correspondence, in suc- 
 cession to James Mill. The post was one which 
 could only be filled by one of sound business 
 capacity and exceptional ability in drafting official 
 documents : and Peacock's discharge of its duties, 
 it is believed, suffered nothing by comparison either 
 with his distinguished predecessor or his still more 
 celebrated successor, Stuart Mill. It is much to be 
 regretted that so little is known of the old India 
 House, or of its eminent occupants in their official 
 capacity. It does not seem to have afforded an 
 employment of predilection to any of them. When 
 Peacock's books came to be sold, it was observed 
 that hundreds of volumes relating to India, presents 
 or perquisites of office, were left religiously uncut, 
 and the same is said to have been the case with 
 those of MacCulloch, James Mill's predecessor. 
 Stuart Mill's autobiography avoids the subject 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 273 
 
 entirely, except for one memorable passage acknow- 
 ledging the invaluable benefit he derived from the 
 official collar, and the necessity of running in team 
 and harness. Nearly all our insight is derived from 
 Professor Bain's most interesting account of his 
 visit to Stuart Mill at the India House, for the little 
 way it goes altogether illuminative, as Carlyle would 
 have said. Peacock has let in a little light in 
 another direction : — 
 
 "a day at the INDIA HOUSE. 
 
 " From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven ; 
 From eleven to noon, think you've come too soon ; 
 From twelve to one, think what's to be done ; 
 From one to two, find nothing to do ; 
 From two to three, think it will be 
 A very great bore to stay till four." 
 
 But if there were intervals of idleness, owing 
 chiefly to the long interruptions of the mails while 
 yet the Red Sea route was not, there were also 
 serious duties and emergencies calling for the dis- 
 play of practical statesmanship. Peacock's occupa- 
 tion seems to have principally lain with finance, 
 commerce, and public works. The first clear 
 glimpse we obtain of its nature is the memorandum 
 prepared by him at the request of a Director 
 respecting General Chesney's projected Euphrates 
 expedition, and reprinted in the preface to the 
 
 S 
 
274 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 General's narrative as a tribute to its sagacity.^ 
 The line of inquiry thus prescribed was followed 
 up, and, after the production of an article in the 
 Edinburgh Review for 1835, and much valuable 
 evidence'before Parliamentary Committees, resulted 
 in the construction under his superintendence of 
 iron steamboats designed to demonstrate his view 
 of the feasibility of steam navigation round the 
 Cape, a view propounded and steadfastly adhered 
 to when Dr. Lardner was denying the possibility 
 of a steam voyage even to America. Not only 
 was the voyage successfully made, but the boats, 
 arriving at the time of the Chinese war, ren- 
 dered valuable service in naval operations. It is 
 noteworthy, nevertheless, that he opposed the no 
 less practicable undertaking of navigating the Red 
 Sea by steam, whether from conviction or from 
 deference to the supposed interests of his em- 
 ployers. It fell to his lot in 1834 ^nd 1836 to 
 advocate these interests in two very unpopular 
 cases before the committees respectively appointed 
 to inquire into the grievances of Mr. Silk Bucking- 
 ham and the Company's salt monopoly. In neither 
 instance, however, had he to do any violence to 
 
 1 "Read the memorandum the Chairs gave me respecting the 
 application of steam navigation to the internal and external com- 
 munications of India. It has been prepared carefully and ably, and 
 is very interesting." — '* Lord EUenborough's Diary," December 21, 
 1829. 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 275 
 
 his sense of justice: he knew that Mr. Buckingham 
 was an adventurer; that the people of Liverpool 
 merely wanted to appropriate the Company's 
 monopoly to themselves; and that, odious as a 
 tax upon a prime necessary of life may appear, 
 it is preferable to financial derangement. His 
 evidence on both these occasions is most interest- 
 ing reading ; it reveals powers and accomplish- 
 ments which could not otherwise have been 
 suspected, insomuch that it may be truly said 
 that he who does not know it does not know 
 Peacock. No barrister could have surpassed the 
 lucidity and cogency with which he establishes his 
 case against Mr. Buckingham ; and the evidence 
 before the Salt Committee evinces an equally 
 remarkable ability for mastering intricate details 
 and rendering them intelligible to others. The 
 Company were always generous masters, and it is 
 not surprising that in the case of so useful a servant, 
 a salary, handsome in itself, but inadequate to his 
 free habits of expenditure, should have been fre- 
 quently supplemented by extraordinary gifts. 
 
 For many years after his appointment as Chief 
 Examiner Peacock's authorship was in abeyance, 
 with the exception of operatic criticisms contri- 
 buted to the ExaTfiineVj and an occasional article 
 in the Westminster Review or BentUys Miscellany. 
 To the former he had, so long previously as 1827, 
 
276 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 contributed a review of Moore's "Epicurean/' by 
 far the best criticism he ever wrote, utterly anni- 
 hilative of the book as a delineation of antique 
 manners, while leaving it the credit to which it is 
 justly entitled on the score of fancy and pictu- 
 resqueness. Subsequent contributions, including 
 a review of the biographies of Jefferson, and the 
 plea of laudator temporis acti for old London 
 Bridge, though characteristic, were much less 
 remarkable. In 1837 ''Headlong Hall," "Night- 
 mare Abbey," "Maid Marian," and "Crotchet 
 Castle" appeared together as vol. Ivii. of Bentley's 
 Standard Novels. In 1852 he lost his wife, whose 
 memory he honoured with an affecting Latin 
 epitaph. About the same time, taste or leisure 
 for authorship returned, and he commenced a 
 series of contributions to Fraser's Magazine with 
 the first, and most interesting, paper of his 
 " Horae Dramaticae," a delightful restoration of 
 the "Querolus," a Roman comedy, probably of 
 the fourth century. Many other papers followed, 
 of which the three on Shelley were by far the 
 most important ; but the review of Miiller and 
 Donaldson's " History of Greek Literature " was the 
 ablest and most characteristic. One little essay 
 of singular charm, " The Last Day of Windsor 
 Forest," written out fairly for the press but never 
 printed, was rescued from oblivion by the present 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 277 
 
 writer, and published in the National Review. 
 Peacock had in the interim retired from the India 
 House on an ample pension (March 29, 1856). 
 Throughout i860 his last novel, *'Gryll Grange," 
 continued to appear in Erasers Magazine. Though 
 not so nearly on a par with his other works as has 
 been sometimes asserted, it is still a surprisingly 
 vigorous performance for a man of his years. The 
 volatile spirit of humour has indeed mainly evapo- 
 rated, but the residuum is anything but a caput mor- 
 tuum. The principal note of senility is, as in the 
 second part of " Wilhelm Meister," the serious re- 
 spect paid to ceremonial mummeries which previously 
 would only have been introduced to be laughed at. 
 
 Peacock died at Lower Halliford, January 23, 
 1866, and is buried in the new cemetery at Shep- 
 perton. In penning this memoir, we seem to have 
 unconsciously depicted much of his character, and 
 his writings will do the rest. It will, nevertheless, 
 be well to record some traits, which might not 
 readily be collected from either, in the simple and 
 affectionate words of his grand-daughter : — 
 
 " In society my grandfather was ever a welcome 
 guest, his genial manner, hearty appreciation of 
 wit and humour in others, and the amusing way 
 in which he told stories, made him a very delightful 
 acquaintance; he was always so agreeable and so 
 very witty that he was called by his most intimate 
 
278 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 friends the 'Laughing Philosopher,' and it seems 
 to me that the term 'Epicurean Philosopher/ 
 which I have often heard applied to him, describes 
 him accurately and briefly. In public business my 
 grandfather was upright and honourable; but as 
 he advanced in years his detestation of anything 
 disagreeable made him simply avoid whatever 
 fretted him, laughing off all sorts of ordinary calls 
 upon his leisure time. His love of ease and kind- 
 ness of heart made it impossible that he could be 
 actively unkind to any one, but he would not be 
 worried, and just got away from anything that 
 annoyed him. He was very fond of his children, 
 and was an indulgent father to them, and he was 
 a kind and affectionate grandfather; he could not 
 bear any one to be unhappy or uncomfortable about 
 him, and this feehng he carried down to the animal 
 creation ; his pet cats and dogs were especially 
 cared for by himself, the birds in the garden were 
 carefully watched over and fed, and no gun was 
 ever allowed to be fired about the place. After 
 he retired from the India House he seldom left 
 HaUiford ; his life was spent among his books, 
 and in the garden, in which he took great plea- 
 sure, and on the river. May-day he always kept 
 in true old EngHsh fashion; all the children of 
 the village came round with their garlands of 
 flowers, and each child was presented with a new 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 279 
 
 penny, or silver threepenny or fourpenny piece, 
 according to the beauty of their garlands ; the 
 money was given by the Queen of the May, always 
 one of his grand-daughters, who sat beside him, 
 dressed in white and crowned with flowers, and 
 holding a sceptre of flowers in her hand." 
 
 Peacock's position in the intellectual world was 
 intended by him to have been expressed by the 
 motto on his seal : " Nee tardum opperior, nee 
 prsecedentibus insto " ; but the first half of the 
 precept was insufficiently observed by him. In- 
 justice, however, is done to him by those who call 
 him a mere Pagan ; he allowed English, French, 
 and Italian a place among the great literatures 
 of the world, and his unreasonable prejudice 
 against German at all events prevented his taking 
 trouble to acquire what would not after all have 
 suited him. His knowledge of the literature he 
 did relish was exceedingly accurate, but his re- 
 productions of antique models have neither the 
 antique form nor the antique spirit, and he cannot 
 escape the reproach, common with exact scholars, 
 of anathematising in a modern what he admired in 
 an ancient. Tennyson he could never appreciate, 
 and of Keats he says in a letter to Shelley, " I 
 should never read * Hyperion ' if I lived to the age 
 of Methuselah." His tepidity towards Byron and 
 Shelley arose rather from antipathy in the strict 
 
28o ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 etymological sense than from insensibility: we 
 have seen his deliberate verdict on Shelley, and he 
 says in a letter to him, " ' Cain ' is fine, ^ Sardana- 
 palus * finer, 'Don Juan ' best of all." But the milder 
 beauties of Wordsworth and Coleridge were fairly 
 recognised by him. His own strongest predilec- 
 tions were naturally for the humourists, and rather 
 for the genial extravagance of Aristophanes and 
 Rabelais, or the polished wit of Voltaire and 
 Petronius, than the moody bitterness of writers 
 like Swift. Urbane philosophers like Cicero, or 
 romantic narrators like Boiardo, held, however, an 
 almost equal place in his esteem. He mace a 
 particular study of Tacitus, from whom he learned 
 the pregnant brevity that renders both writers such 
 valuable models to an age whose worst literary 
 fault is diffuseness. 
 
 Peacock's own place in literature is pre-eminently 
 that of a satirist. This character is not always a 
 passport to goodwill. Satirists have met with much 
 ignorant and invidious depreciation, as though a 
 talent for ridicule was necessarily the index of an 
 unkindly nature. The truth is just the reverse : 
 as the sources of laughter and tears lie near to- 
 gether, so is the geniality of an intellectual man 
 usually accompanied with a keen perception of the 
 ridiculous. Both exist in ample measure in Pea- 
 cock, whose hearty and sometimes misplaced 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 281 
 
 laughter at what he deemed absurd is usually 
 accompanied with a kindly feeling towards the 
 exemplars of the absurdity. The only very notice- 
 able instance of the contrary is the undoubtedly 
 illiberal ridicule of the Lake poets in his earlier 
 writings ; still there is sufficient evidence elsewhere 
 of his sincere admiration of their works. Brougham 
 he certainly abhorred, and yet the denunciation of 
 him in " Crotchet Castle " has hardly more of in- 
 vective than the gibes at the " modern] Athenians." 
 Add to this geniality a bright fancy, a lively 
 sense of the ludicrous, a passion for natural beauty, 
 strong sense, occasionally warped by prejudice, 
 genuine tenderness on occasion, diction of singu- 
 lar purity, and a style of singular elegance, and 
 it will be allowed \\\2Xy prima facie ^ Peacock should 
 be popular. That he has nevertheless been only 
 the favourite of the few is owing in a measure 
 to the highly intellectual quality of his work, but 
 chiefly to his lack of the ordinary qualifications 
 of the novelist, all pretension to which he entirely 
 disclaims. He has no plot, little human interest, 
 and no consistent delineation of character. His 
 personages are mere puppets, or, at best, incarna- 
 tions of abstract qualities, or idealisations of dis- 
 embodied grace or beauty. He affected to prefer 
 — perhaps really did prefer — the pantomimes of 
 ** the enchanter of the south " to the novels of 
 
282 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 " the enchanter of the north " ; and, by a whimsical 
 retribution, his own novels have passed for panto- 
 mimes. '^ A queer mixture ! " pronounced the 
 Saturday Review, criticising " Gryll Grange," and 
 such has been the judgment of most. It will not 
 be the judgment of any capable of appreciating 
 the Aristophanic comedy of which, restricted as 
 their scale is in comparison, Peacock's fiction is, 
 perhaps, the best modern representative. Nearly 
 everything that can be urged against him can be 
 urged against Aristophanes too ; and save that his 
 invention is far less daring and opulent, his Muse 
 can allege most of " the apologies of Aristophanes." 
 When he is depreciated, comparison with "another 
 novelist usually seems to be implied, but it would 
 be as unfair to test him by the standard of Miss 
 Austen or Miss Edgeworth, as to try Aristophanes 
 by the rules of the New Comedy. A master of 
 fiction he is not, and he never claimed to be; 
 a satirist, a humourist, a poet he is most un- 
 doubtedly. Were these qualities less eminent than 
 they are, he would still live by the truth of his 
 natural description and the grace and finish of 
 his style : were even these in default, the literary 
 historian would still have to note in him the first 
 appearance of a new type, destined to be fre- 
 quently imitated, but seldom approached, and 
 never exactly reproduced. 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD' 
 
 The incontestable importance of Matthew Arnold's 
 place in English poetical literature arises not merely 
 from the beauty of much of his poetry, but from 
 his peculiar distinction as one of the few eminent 
 English poets who are enrolled among the legis- 
 lators of their art, not more by the indirect 
 influence of their metrical compositions, than by 
 the authority universally accorded to their critical 
 utterances. Coleridge, the most penetrating critic 
 Britain ever possessed, is too casual and desultory 
 to rank among legislators, and the two poets who 
 admit of most profitable comparison with Arnold in 
 this respect are Dry den and Wordsworth. Each 
 of the three had definite convictions on the subject 
 of poetry which he exemplified in his own practice ; 
 and each, along with error and exaggerated truth, 
 contributed elements to the formation of a poetical 
 ideal which can never be ignored. To a certain 
 extent Arnold's work was a corrective of that of 
 
 ^ Introduction to " Alaric at Rome, and other Poems," by Matthew 
 Arnold, published by Messrs. Ward, Lock, & Bowden : 1896. 
 
 28s 
 
286 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Wordsworth, the great emancipator of English 
 poetry. In overthrowing a merely conventional 
 orthodoxy, Wordsworth had inevitably given some- 
 what of a shock to those great models and eternal 
 principles by whose corrupt following this conven- 
 tionalism had been engendered. It was Arnold's 
 mission to restore the balance, inculcating alike 
 by example and precept the cardinal doctrines of 
 antiquity, that form is of equal importance with 
 matter, and that the value of a poem consists 
 more in the force and truth of the total impres- 
 sion than in isolated fine thoughts sparkling forth 
 in the heat of composition. This, substantially, 
 was Matthew Arnold's critical gospel, a deliver- 
 ance interesting as an episode in the eternal strife 
 between Classic and Romantic, and valuable as a 
 corrective of tendencies inherent in the English 
 genius. This is not generally architectonic, it 
 overwhelms with affluence of thought and imagery, 
 but the shaping hand is too often absent. Arnold 
 thought that much of the characteristic English 
 indifference to form arose from indiscriminate ad- 
 miration of Shakespeare; but the truth is that 
 while fancy, passion, and reflection come to gifted 
 Englishmen by nature, the sense of symmetry 
 usually has to be engrafted upon them. We are 
 a nation of colourists, and great colourists, except 
 by determined efforts, rarely became good draughts- 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 287 
 
 men. Arnold's admonition, therefore, was most 
 serviceable, it may be ranked with Wordsworth's 
 protest against the conventionalities of his day, 
 and was perhaps even more valuable; for while 
 Wordsworth assailed an aberration which in course 
 of time would have corrected itself, Arnold de- 
 nounced ingrained vice and besetting sin. It was, 
 moreover, eminently seasonable, appearing in 1853, 
 when there did seem a real danger of EngHsh 
 poetry becoming an assemblage of purple patches 
 upon a core of perishable wood, the very definition 
 of a scarecrow. This did not, however, arise, as 
 Arnold thought, from a special infirmity in the 
 age, whose imperfections he greatly exaggerated, 
 but from the abuse of what was best in it. The 
 infinite significance of even the humblest human 
 life was beginning to be recognised as it had 
 never been before, but a discovery invaluable in 
 the social sphere had not unnaturally generated 
 the dangerous artistic heresy that what is good 
 enough for a novel is also good enough for a poem. 
 The year 1853, the date of Arnold's memorable 
 preface, was also the period, not indeed of the 
 culminating, but of the too exclusive influence of 
 Shelley and Keats, who were receiving their long 
 withheld recompense with usury. These great 
 poets, in their more mature productions, rather 
 surpass than fall short of the ordinary English 
 
288 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 standard of symmetrical construction, but their 
 architecture is obscured by the splendour of their 
 painting, and too many had come to confound the 
 art of poetry with the art of phrasing. To such 
 Matthew Arnold's remonstrance came like an 
 exorcism, and its weight was greatly enhanced 
 by the method of its delivery; not poured as 
 from a vase into the turbid torrent of periodical 
 criticism, but prefixed as a confession of faith to 
 a volume of poetry designed for and destined to 
 endurance. 
 
 It is a great reinforcement to the weight of 
 poetical criticism when the critic is himself a re- 
 cognised poet. The Goddess of Wisdom herself 
 is not recorded to have lectured to the Muses, 
 and the precepts of mere prose writers, however 
 excellent, have something of the air of instructions 
 to Hannibal in the art of war. Even Aristotle 
 qualified for his Poetics by writing a song, and a 
 very good one. Arnold, when he came forward in 
 1853 to discourse on poetry, could produce suffi- 
 cient credentials as the author of two poetical 
 volumes of great though unequal merit, " The 
 Strayed Reveller, and other Poems" (1849); and 
 '* Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems" (1852). 
 Neither of these, however, as we shall see pre- 
 sently, sufficiently exemplified the particular prin- 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 289 
 
 ciples which he chiefly desired to enforce. His 
 argument would have wanted the weight which 
 theory derives from conformity to practice, if, upon 
 the repubhcation in 1853 of such of these poems 
 as he then cared to preserve, they had not been 
 accompanied by another so completely exemplifying 
 his views respecting the supreme necessity of per- 
 fection of form, dignity of subject, unity of action, 
 and sobriety of treatment that it might have been 
 written to illustrate them. Great poems, never- 
 theless, cannot be composed to order, and it is 
 much more probable that the preface grew out of 
 the poem than the reverse. 
 
 No subject could better than ^'Sohrab and 
 Rustum " have enabled Arnold to exempHfy his 
 own precepts : — " Choose a fitting action, penetrate 
 yourself with the feeling of its situations; this 
 done everything else will follow." This exhorta- 
 tion, indeed, is insufficiently limited and defined. 
 The action must be not only abstractedly fitting 
 for a poet to undertake, but the poet must fit the 
 action. Coleridge, perhaps, would have made no 
 more of " Sohrab and Rustum " than Arnold would 
 have made of *^ The Ancient Mariner " ; and when 
 at a later period Arnold endeavoured to dramatise 
 the story of Merope, the unanimous voice of 
 criticism informed him that although the subject 
 was undeniably fitting, and the poet adequately 
 
290 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 penetrated by it, *^ everything else" had not 
 followed. But '' Sohrab and Rustum " suited him 
 to perfection, for it is an heroic action whose 
 greatness consists not in its grandeur, but in its 
 pathos. Pathos is the note of all his best poems, 
 there is hardly one of them which is not more 
 or less an appeal for compassion on account of 
 the character of the incident described, or some 
 human or spiritual sorrow, or some real or imagi- 
 nary distress of the age. No more affecting inci- 
 dent than the involuntary death of a son by his 
 father's hand can be found in history or fiction, 
 and it especially impressed Arnold, from that 
 strength in liim of the parental instinct revealed 
 by his recently published correspondence. What 
 he received intimately he reproduced vividly, and 
 the conduct of his story and the tissue of his 
 diction are masterpieces of judgment. Nothing, 
 he rightly perceived, can be more essential to the 
 impressiveness of a story of profound pathos than 
 that it should be told in the simplest language, 
 yet unreHeved simplicity throughout a long narra- 
 tive must wear an aspect of poverty, perhaps even 
 of affectation. The general homeliness of the ex- 
 position, therefore, is occasionally interrupted b}' 
 elaborate similes, little poems in themselves, and 
 involving close and accurate word-painting. These 
 for a moment suspend, but do not divert, the 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 291 
 
 reader's attention to the main action, whose pathos 
 goes on deepening with every Hne, until there is 
 no modern poem, with perhaps the exception of 
 Tennyson's "Edward Gray," that it is so difficult 
 to read without tears. Arnold, nevertheless, saw 
 that, although the impression of unrelieved tragedy 
 created by such poems as " Edward Gray " may be 
 right in a lyric, it would be amiss in an epic, and, 
 since the situation itself could not be modified, he 
 has mitigated it by the majestic concluding passage 
 describing the course of the Oxus, emblematic of 
 the greatness of Nature in comparison with the 
 accidents of man's brief career, and, at its termina- 
 tion, of the sea in which human joys and sorrows 
 are finally swallowed up. 
 
 Besides " Sohrab and Rustum," the volume of 
 1853 contained another poem of length and im- 
 portance, of an earlier date of composition, whose 
 unlikeness to *' Sohrab " adds to the probability that 
 the writer's high and just estimate of the latter 
 poem had much to do with moulding the doctrine 
 of his memorable preface. " Tristram and Iseult " 
 is exceedingly unlike "Sohrab" in everything but 
 poetical beauty, and entirely fails to produce that 
 total impression which Arnold propounds as the 
 chief object of the poet. While the action of 
 "Sohrab" is transparently clear, that of "Tristram 
 and Iseult " is so confused that it would be difficult 
 
292 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 to make out the subject of the poem if this were 
 not already known. The merits are entirely of 
 detail, and these are most conspicuous in the third 
 part, an appendage to the poem which would never 
 have been missed if it had never existed, but with 
 which no one would now consent to part, so many 
 and exquisite are its beauties. The strength of 
 parental feeling is again visible in the description 
 of the children at play, to be matched only by that 
 of the sleeping children in Part I. The story of 
 Vivien's enchantment of Merlin is admirably told, 
 but, unlike the similar episode of the river in 
 "Sohrab and Rustum," is a mere ornament with 
 no vital relation to the poem. 
 
 "Tristram and Iseult" had been published in 
 1852 along with "Empedocles on Etna," which 
 failed to reappear in the 1853 volume. Arnold 
 explains its withdrawal by saying that he had 
 come to look upon this powerful representation 
 of the discouragement of a philosopher compelled 
 to surrender the healthy objectivity of the early 
 Greeks as over-morbid and monotonously painful. 
 " Everything is to be endured, nothing is to be 
 done." There is truth in the self-criticism, but 
 after all there seems no reason why a poet may 
 not paint a dejected mood in a long soliloquy, 
 especially when this is broken by such exquisite 
 lyrics as the songs of Callicles, which are among 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 293 
 
 the loveliest examples in our language of descrip- 
 tion blent with lyrical emotion. The poem was 
 ultimately restored to a place in the author's works 
 at the intercession of Robert Browning. 
 
 Arnold's poems of later date than 1853, having 
 no place in this edition, do not, strictly speaking, 
 concern us; but the two most important cannot 
 well be omitted from any general review of his 
 work, especially as the principal, *' Balder Dead," 
 has received much less praise than it deserves. It 
 is astonishing to find so competent a critic as Mr. 
 T. H. Ward, and one who might so easily have 
 been forgiven for a partial judgment, apparently 
 doubting whether ^' Balder Dead " " has a distinct 
 value of its own." It seems to us impossible to 
 allow any considerable interval between this poem 
 and ''Sohrab and Rustum"; the style is very 
 similar, the action of each equally noble and affect- 
 ing ; the conduct of either story equally admirable ; 
 the interspersed similes equally happy and care- 
 fully worked out; the pathos of the respective 
 situations much on a level, and affording almost 
 equal scope for the tenderness which, even more 
 than depth of thought, is Arnold's strong point as 
 a poet. It may, indeed, be said that the manner 
 and diction of ^' Balder " are even more Homeric 
 than those of "Sohrab and Rustum," while, con- 
 sidering the peculiarity of the locality and the 
 
294 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 action, they might with propriety have been less 
 so; it is also true that there are more lapses into 
 the prosaic, and more lines deficient in metrical 
 effect. These defects, however, are very inconsider- 
 able in comparison with the general impression of 
 godhke grandeur and human pathos. ^' Thyrsis," 
 after " Balder " the most important of Arnold's later 
 poems, is an elegy on his friend Arthur Clough, 
 not, certainly, a '^Lycidas," or an "Adonais," but 
 rich in beauties both of thought and description. 
 It is somewhat marred for the general reader by 
 a circumstance which probably enhances its charm 
 for Oxonians, the numerous local allusions which 
 endear the poem to those familiar with the scenery, 
 but fall flat when not understood. The note of 
 personal affection is unmistakable, and it may be 
 from over -jealousy for his friend's repute and 
 his own that Arnold's poem smells somewhat of 
 the lamp, and hardly produces so much effect as 
 a simpler composition, the exquisite poem on the 
 deaths of his brother and his sister-in-law, full of 
 rich local colouring, and not too local. 
 
 With these exceptions, and his dignified but 
 frigid tragedy of '* Merope," the chief part of 
 Arnold's poetical work was composed by 1853, 
 and is comprehended in three volumes, one mainly 
 a reprint. There is nothing extraordinary in the 
 gradual impoverishment of his poetical vein, which 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 295 
 
 had never been remarkable for affluence. His 
 criticisms and private letters betray a limited 
 sympathy with his poetical predecessors and im- 
 mediate contemporaries, which, since it assuredly 
 was not in the slightest degree inspired by envy 
 or unworthy jealousy, can only be interpreted as 
 betokening an undue preponderance of the critical 
 instinct, fatal to the enthusiasm required for con- 
 tinuous productiveness in poetry. The teeming 
 soul is enthusiastic and lavish of admiration, for 
 only so can it sufficiently respond to the innumer- 
 able impressions, physical and spiritual, through 
 which alone it is possible to sustain incessant 
 poetical activity. Arnold's intellectual force and 
 intellectual interests never waned, but were diverted 
 more and more from the sphere of creation to the 
 sphere of criticism ; in which, however, so novel 
 and striking were his views and so original his 
 method of developing them, that he almost became 
 a creator. He laid English literature, in particular, 
 under the greatest obligation by his two golden 
 little books, '' On Translating Homer," and '^ On 
 the Study of Celtic Literature." His own attempts 
 at Homeric translation, indeed, were by no means 
 fortunate, but this in no respect detracts from the 
 value of his criticism. His more ambitious prose 
 writings have permeated modern English thought, 
 and furnished it with a new and most beneficial 
 
296 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 element; it may be added, that in effecting this 
 they have parted with their own individuaUty, and 
 will soon exist rather as a tint than as a substance. 
 This is merely to say that they were admirably 
 suited for their time, of which his poems are com- 
 paratively independent. We entirely agree with 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison, that Arnold's fame will 
 mainly rest upon his poetry, and that it will be 
 durable, pure, and high. We have mentioned his 
 most conspicuous productions, but those which we 
 have not mentioned, or even a few of them, would 
 suffice for an enviable poetical reputation. The 
 development of his mind, nevertheless, as shown 
 in the chronological sequence of his poems (ob- 
 scured by the classified arrangement adopted in 
 his own edition) is not in the direction of poetry. 
 In the finest productions in his first volume Q^ The 
 Strayed Reveller," '' The Forsaken Merman," '' My- 
 cerinus") the poetical impulse is dominant, the 
 treatment is healthy and objective, spiritual striv- 
 ings and questionings, though the pieces are really 
 inspired by them, are kept in the background. The 
 finest poems in the second volume, on the other 
 hand ("Memorial Verses," "The Buried Life," 
 "The Youth of Nature," "The Youth of Man," 
 above all "A Summer Night"), come from within. 
 They are not less admirable than their prede- 
 cessors, but they indicate the waning of that joy 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 297 
 
 in external things without which it is most difficult 
 to keep the flame of poetry alight, especially when, 
 like Arnold, one is tried by the demands of a re- 
 sponsible and harassing official position. 
 
 If we were called upon to indicate Arnold's place 
 upon the roll of English poets by comparison with 
 one of accepted fame, we should seek his nearest 
 parallel in Gray. Both are academic poets, the 
 dominant note of each is a tender and appealing 
 pathos, each possessed a refinement of taste which 
 in some measure degenerated into fastidiousness, 
 and tended to limit a productiveness not originally 
 exuberant. If they are to be judged by their 
 strongest performances, the palm must indisputably 
 be given to Gray, for Arnold has nothing that can 
 be equalled with the immortal " Elegy." If, on the 
 other hand, diversity of excellence is to be the 
 criterion, he infinitely surpasses his prototype : who 
 would, however, have written much more, and even 
 better, if he had enjoyed Arnold's unspeakable ad- 
 vantage of living after the second great age of 
 English poetry instead of before it. It may not 
 be unreasonable to predict that posterity will 
 place them nearly on a level. In venturing this 
 prophecy, full allowance has been made for the 
 inevitable deduction from Arnold's charm when, 
 in the general mutation of things, he shall have 
 ceased to represent contemporary thought and 
 
298 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 feeling. He is perhaps the most characteristic 
 representative that the blended religion and scep- 
 ticism of our exceptional epoch have had, and he 
 will be invaluable as a document for the literary 
 and philosophical historian of the future. But for 
 this very reason he must some day cease to be a 
 vital force in the present, and must rely upon his 
 strictly poetical merits, independent of any refer- 
 ence to the spiritual conflicts of his day. That 
 these merits will preserve his name, we have no 
 doubt whatever. His first charm, to our mind, 
 is depth of pathos ; and in the next place beauty 
 of description, exquisite but not obtrusive. An 
 analysis of his best poems will show that pathos 
 is hardly ever absent ; he is almost invariably 
 representing some sorrow, actual or ideal, but 
 always most tenderly felt and deeply realised. 
 Sohrab, Rustum, Balder, Hoder, Iseult, Mycerinus, 
 Empedocles, the Forsaken Merman, the Sick King 
 of Bokhara, the Modern Sappho — what a gallery 
 of pathetic figures ! The note of sorrow, whether 
 for himself or for mankind, rings equally from 
 nearly all the personal poems; it is his unique 
 distinction to have been at the same time so 
 elegiac and so manly. His descriptive passages 
 are delightful for their grace and accuracy, but 
 not brilliant, like Tennyson's glowing canvas; or 
 forcible, like Browning's intense etching; their 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 299 
 
 charm is rather that of delicate water-colour. His 
 fondness for unrhymed lyric, arising probably from 
 defect of musical volume in his poetical constitu- 
 tion, sometimes, as Froude remarks, renders his 
 ''fine imaginative painting" merely *Uhe poetry of 
 well-written, elegant prose." It is hardly neces- 
 sary to add that Arnold is before all things the 
 poet of culture, and that, though his pathos usually 
 appeals to the universal feelings of the human 
 heart, the appeal will seldom find an echo in un- 
 cultivated or semi-educated readers. For example, 
 the beautiful final stanza of that beautiful poem 
 '' On the Rhine " : 
 
 " Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm ! 
 Those blue hills too, this river's flow. 
 Were restless once, but long ago 
 Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow : 
 Their joy is in their calm," 
 
 will be lost upon him who does not know that 
 the hills which border the Rhine were at one time 
 volcanoes. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 '^Noteworthy also," says Carlyle, "and ser- 
 viceable for the progress of this same individual, 
 wilt thou find his subdivision into generations." 
 
 It is indeed the fact that the course of human 
 history admits of being marked off into periods, 
 which, from their average duration and the impulse 
 communicated to them by those who enter upon 
 adolescence along with them, may be fitly deno- 
 minated generations, especially when their opening 
 and closing are signalised by great events which 
 serve as historical landmarks. No such event in- 
 deed, short of the Day of Judgment or a universal 
 deluge, can serve as an absolute line of demarcation ; 
 nothing can be more certain than that history and 
 human life are a perpetual Becoming; and that 
 although the progress of development is frequently 
 so startling and unforeseen as to evoke the poet's 
 exclamation — 
 
 " New endless growth surrounds on every side, 
 Such as we deemed not earth could ever bear ; " 
 
 this growth is but development after all. The 
 
 303 
 
304 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 association of historical periods with stages in the 
 mental development of man is nevertheless too con- 
 venient to be surrendered ; the vision is cleared and 
 the grasp strengthened by the perception of a well- 
 defined era in American history, commencing with 
 the election of Andrew Jackson to the Presidency 
 in 1828 and closing with the death of Abraham 
 Lincoln in 1865, a period exactly corresponding 
 with one in English history measured from the 
 death of Lord Liverpool, the typical representative 
 of a bygone political era, in the former year, to 
 that of Lord Palmerston, another such represen- 
 tative, in the latter. The epoch thus bounded 
 almost precisely corresponds to the productive 
 period of the two great men who, more than any 
 of their contemporaries, have stood in the conscious 
 attitude of teachers of their age. With such men 
 as Tennyson and Browning, vast as their influence 
 has been, the primary impulse has not been 
 didactic, but artistic ; Herbert Spencer, George 
 EKot, Matthew Arnold, and others, have been 
 chiefly operative upon the succeeding generation ; 
 Mill and the elder Newman rather address special 
 classes than the people at large; and Ruskin and 
 Kingsley would have willingly admitted that, how- 
 ever eloquent the expression of their teaching, 
 its originality mainly consisted in the application 
 of Carlyle's ideas to subjects beyond Carlyle's 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 305 
 
 range. Carlyle and Emerson, therefore, stand 
 forth hke Goethe and Schiller as the Dioscuri of 
 their period ; the two men to whom beyond others 
 its better minds looked for guidance, and who had 
 the largest share in forming the minds from which 
 the succeeding generation was to take its com- 
 plexion. Faults and errors they had ; but on the 
 whole it may be said that nations have rarely 
 been more fortunate in their instructors than the 
 two great English-speaking peoples during the 
 age of Carlyle and Emerson. Of Carlyle this 
 is not the place to speak further ; but writing on 
 Emerson, it will be necessary to exhibit what we 
 conceive to have been the special value of his 
 teaching; and to attempt some description of 
 the man himself in vindication of the high place 
 claimed for him. 
 
 It has been said of some great man of marked 
 originality that his was the sole voice among many 
 echoes. This cannot be said of Emerson's ; his age 
 was by no means deficient in original voices. But 
 it may be said with truth to have been the chief 
 vocal utterance in an age of authorship. It is a 
 trite remark that many of the men of thought 
 whose ideas have most influenced the world have 
 shown little inclination for literary composition. 
 The president of a London freethinking club 
 in Goldsmith's time supposed himself to be in 
 
 U 
 
3o6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 possession of the works of Socrates, no less than 
 those of Tully and Cicero, but no other trace 
 of their existence has come to light. Had Emer- 
 son lived in any age but his own it is doubtful 
 whether, any more than Socrates, he would have 
 figured as an author. " I write," he tells Carlyle, 
 *' with very little system, and, as far as regards 
 composition, with most fragmentary result — para- 
 graphs incomprehensible, each sentence an infinitely 
 repellent particle." We also hear of his going 
 forth into the woods to hunt a thought as a boy 
 might hunt a butterfly, except that the thought 
 had flown with him from home, and that his 
 business was not so much to capture it as to 
 materiaHse it and make it tangible. This peculiarity 
 serves to classify Emerson among the ancient sages, 
 men like Socrates and Buddha, whose instructions 
 were not merely oral but unmethodical and unsys- 
 tematic ; who spoke as the casual emergency of the 
 day dictated, and left their observations to be col- 
 lected by their disciples. An excellent plan in so 
 far as it insures the endowment of the sage's word 
 with his own individuality; exceptionable when a 
 doubt arises whether the utterance belongs to the 
 master or the disciple, and, in the case of diametri- 
 cally opposite versions, whether Socrates has been 
 represented more truly by the prose of Xenophon 
 or the poetry of Plato. We may be thankful that 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 307 
 
 the spirit of Emerson's age, and the exigencies of 
 his own affairs, irresistibly impelled him to write ; 
 nevertheless the fact remains that with him Man 
 Thinking is not so much Man Writing as Man Speak- 
 ing, and that although the omnipotent machinery 
 of the modern social system caught him too, and 
 forced him into line with the rest, we have in him 
 a nearer approach to the voice, apart from the dis- 
 turbing and modifying effect of literary composition, 
 than in any other eminent modern thinker. This 
 annuls one of the most weighty criticisms upon 
 Emerson, so long as he is regarded merely as an 
 author — his want of continuity and consequent 
 want of logic. Had he attempted to establish a 
 philosophical system, this would have been fatal. 
 But such an undertaking is of all things furthest 
 from his thoughts. He does not seek to demon- 
 strate : he announces. Ideas have come to him 
 which, as viewed by the inward light, appear im- 
 portant and profitable. He brings these forward 
 to be tested by the light of other men. He does 
 not seek to connect these ideas together, except in 
 so far as their common physiognomy bespeaks their 
 common parentage. Nor does he seek to fortify 
 them by reasoning, or subject them to any test save 
 the faculty by which the unprejudiced soul discerns 
 good from evil. If his jewel will scratch glass, it is 
 sufficiently evinced a diamond. 
 
3o8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 It follows that although Emerson did not write 
 most frequently or best in verse, he is, as regards 
 the general constitution of the intellect, rather to be 
 classed with poets than with philosophers. Poetry 
 cannot indeed dispense with the accurate observa- 
 tion of nature and mankind, but poetic genius 
 essentially depends on intuition and inspiration. 
 There is no gulf between the philosopher and the 
 poet ; some of the greatest of poets have also been 
 among the most powerful of reasoners ; but their 
 claim to poetical rank would not have been im- 
 paired if their ratiocination had been ever so 
 illogical. Similarly, a great thinker may have no 
 more taste for poetry than was vouchsafed to 
 Darwin or the elder Mill without any impeachment 
 of his power of intellect. The two spheres of 
 action are fundamentally distinct, though the very 
 highest geniuses, such as Shakespeare and Goethe, 
 have sometimes almost succeeded in making them 
 appear as one. To determine to which of them a 
 man actually belongs, we must look beyond the 
 externalities of literary form, and inquire whether 
 he obtains his ideas by intuition, or by observation 
 and reflection. No mind will be either entirely 
 intuitive or entirely reflective, but there will usually 
 be a decided inclination to one or other of the 
 processes; and in the comparatively few cases 
 in which thoughts and feelings seem to come to it 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 309 
 
 unconsciously, as leaves to a tree, we may consider 
 that we have a poet, though perhaps not a writer of 
 poetry. If indeed the man writes at all he will 
 very probably write prose, but this prose will be 
 impregnated with poetic quality. From this point 
 of view we are able to set Emerson much higher 
 than if we regarded him simply as a teacher. He 
 is greater as the American Wordsworth than the 
 American Carlyle. We shall understand his posi- 
 tion best by comparing him with other men of 
 genius who are poets too, but not pre-eminently 
 so. In beauty of language and power of imagina- 
 tion, John Henry Newman and James Martineau, 
 though they have written little in verse, yield to 
 few poets. But throughout all their writings the 
 didactic impulse is plainly the preponderating one, 
 their poetry merely auxiliary and ornamental; 
 hence they are not reckoned among poets. With 
 Emerson the case is reversed : the revealer is first 
 in him, the reasoner second; oral speech is his 
 most congenial form of expression, and he submits 
 to appear in print because the circumstances of his 
 age render print the most effectual medium for the 
 dissemination of his thought. It will be observed 
 that whenever possible he resorts to the medium 
 of oration or lecture; it may be further remarked 
 that his essays, often originally delivered as 
 lectures, are very like his discourses, and his 
 
3IO ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 discourses very like his essays. In neither, so far 
 as regards the literary form of the entire composi- 
 tion, distinguished from the force and felicity of 
 individual sentences, can he be considered as a 
 classic model. The essay need not be too severely 
 logical, yet a just conception of its nature requires 
 a more harmonious proportion and more sym- 
 metrical construction, as well as a more consistent 
 and intelligent direction towards a single definite 
 end, than we usually find in Emerson. The orator 
 is less easy to criticise than the essayist, for oratory 
 involves an element of personal magnetism which 
 resists all critical analysis. Hence posterity fre- 
 quently reverses (or rather seems to reverse, for 
 the decision upon a speech mutilated of voice and 
 action cannot be really conclusive) the verdicts of 
 contemporaries upon oratory. "What will our 
 descendants think of the Parliamentary oratory of 
 our age?" asked a contemporary of Burke's, ^'when 
 they are told that in his own time this man was 
 accounted neither the first nor the second nor even 
 the third speaker ? " Transferred to the tribunal of 
 the library, Burke's oratory bears away the palm 
 from Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; yet, unless we 
 had heard the living voices of them all, it would be 
 unsafe for us to challenge the contemporary verdict. 
 We cannot say, with the lover in Goethe, that the 
 word printed appears dull and soulless, but it 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 311 
 
 certainly wants much which conduced to the 
 efficacy of the word spoken: — 
 
 " Ach ! wie traurig sieht in Lettern, 
 
 Schwarz auf weiss, das Lied mich an, 
 Das aus deinem Mund vergottern 
 Das ein Herz zerreissen kann ! " 
 
 Emerson's orations are no less delightful and 
 profitable reading than his essays, so long as they 
 can be treated as his essays were intended to be 
 treated when they came into print; that is, read 
 deliberately, with travellings backward when needed, 
 and frequent pauses of thought. But if we con- 
 sider them as discourses to be listened to, we shall 
 find some difficulty in reconciling their popularity and 
 influence with their apparent disconnectedness, and 
 some reason to apprehend that, occasional flashes of 
 epigram excepted, they must speedily have passed 
 from the minds of the hearers. The apparent 
 defect was probably remedied in delivery by the 
 magnetic power of the speaker; not that sort of 
 power which ''wields at will the fierce democracy," 
 but that which convinces the hearer that he is 
 listening to a message from a region not as yet 
 accessible to himself. The impassioned orator 
 usually provokes the suspicion that he is speaking 
 from a brief. Not so Emerson : above all other 
 speakers, he inspires the confidence that he declares 
 
312 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 a thing to be, not because he wishes, but because 
 he perceives it to be so. His quiet, unpretending, 
 but perfectly unembarrassed manner, as of a man 
 with a message which he simply delivers and goes 
 away, must have greatly aided to supply the 
 absence of vigorous reasoning and skilful oratorical 
 construction. We could not expect a spirit com- 
 missioned to teach us to condescend to such 
 methods; and Emerson's discourse, whether in 
 oration or essay, though by no means deficient in 
 human feeling or of the "blessed Glendoveer" 
 order, frequently does sound like that of a being 
 from another sphere, simply because he derived his 
 ideas from a higher world ; as must always be the 
 case with the man of spiritual, not of course with 
 the man of practical genius. It matters nothing 
 whether this is really so, or whether what wears 
 the aspect of imparted revelation is but a fortifying 
 of the natural eye, qualifying it to look a little 
 deeper than neighbouring eyes into things around. 
 In either case the person so endowed stands a 
 degree nearer to the essential truth of things than 
 his fellows; and the consciousness of the fact, 
 transpiring through his personality, gives him a 
 weight which might otherwise seem inexplicable. 
 Nothing can be more surprising than the deference 
 with which the learned and intelligent contempora- 
 ries of the humble and obscure Spinoza resort to 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 313 
 
 his judgment before he has so much as written a 
 book. 
 
 This estimate of Emerson as an American 
 Wordsworth, one who like Wordsworth not merely 
 enforced but practically demonstrated the proposi- 
 tion that — 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, j 
 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can," 
 
 is controverted by many who can see in him 
 nothing but a polisher and stringer of epigram- 
 matic sayings. It is impossible to argue with 
 any who cannot recognise the deep vitality of 
 " Nature," of the two series of essays first pub- 
 lished, and of the most of the early orations and 
 discourses ; but it may be conceded that Emerson's 
 fountain of inspiration was no more perennial than 
 Wordsworth's, and that in his latter years it was 
 mainly his gift of epigrammatic statement that enabled 
 him to avoid both the Scylla and the Charybdis of 
 men of genius whose fount of inspiration has run 
 low. In some such cases, such as Wordsworth's, 
 the author simply goes on producing, with less and 
 less geniality at every successive effort. In others, 
 such as Browning's, he escapes inanity by violent 
 exaggeration of his characteristic mannerisms. 
 Neither of these remarks applies to Emerson : he 
 
314 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 does not, in ceasing to be original, become insipid, 
 nor can it be said that he is any more mannered 
 at the last than at the first. This is a clear proof 
 that his peculiarity of speech is not mannerism 
 but manner; that consequently he is not an arti- 
 ficial writer, and that, since the treatment of his 
 themes as he has chosen to treat them admits of 
 no compromise between nature and rhetoric, he 
 has the especial distinction of simplicity where 
 simplicity is difficult and rare. That such is the 
 case will appear from an examination of his earlier 
 and more truly prophetic writings. 
 
 Of these, the first in importance as in time is 
 the tract "Nature," commenced in 1833, rewritten, 
 completed, and published in 1836. Of all Emer- 
 son's writings this is the most individual, and the 
 most adapted for a general introduction to his 
 ideas. These ideas are not in fact peculiar to 
 him; and yet the little book is one of the most 
 original ever written, and one of those most likely 
 to effect an intellectual revolution in the mind 
 capable of apprehending it. The reason is mainly 
 the intense vitality of the manner, and the trans- 
 lation of abstract arguments into concrete shapes 
 of witchery and beauty. It contains scarcely a 
 sentence that is not beautiful — not with the cold 
 beauty of art, but with the radiance and warmth 
 of feeling. Its dominant note is rapture, like the 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 315 
 
 joy of one who has found an enchanted realm, or 
 who has convinced himself that old stories deemed 
 too beautiful to be true are true indeed. Yet it 
 is exempt from extravagance, the splendour of the 
 language is chastened by taste, and the gladness 
 and significance of the author's announcements 
 would justify an even more ardent enthusiasm. 
 They may be briefly summed up as the statements ; 
 that Nature is not mechanical but vital ; that the | 
 Universe is not dead but alive ; that God is not | 
 remote but omnipresent. There was of course ' 
 no novelty in these assertions, nor can Emerson 
 bring them by a hair's-breadth nearer demonstra- 
 tion than they have always been. He simply re- 
 states them in a manner entirely his own, and 
 with a charm not perhaps surpassing that with 
 which others had previously invested them, but 
 peculiar and dissimilar. Everything really Emer- 
 sonian in Emerson's teaching may be said to 
 spring out of this little book : so copious, how- 
 ever, were the corollaries deducible from principles 
 apparently so simple, that the flowers veiled 
 the tree; and precious as the tract is, as the 
 first and purest draught of the new wine, it 
 is not the most practically efficient of his 
 works, and might have missed its aim if it had 
 not been reinforced by a number of auxiliary 
 compositions, some produced under circumstances 
 
3i6 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 which could not fail to provoke wide discussion 
 and consequent notoriety. The principles unfolded 
 in "Nature" might probably have passed with 
 civil acquiescence if Emerson had been content 
 with the mere statement ; but he insisted on carry- 
 ing them logically out, and this could not be done 
 without unsettling every school of thought at the 
 time prevalent in America. The Divine omnipre- 
 sence, for example, was admitted in words by all 
 except materiahsts and anti-theists ; but if, as 
 Emerson maintained, this involved the conception 
 of the Universe as a Divine incarnation, this in 
 its turn involved an optimistic view of the universal 
 scheme totally inconsistent with the Calvinism 
 still dominant in American theology. If all exis- 
 tence was a Divine emanation, no part of it could 
 be more sacred than another part — which at once 
 abolished the mystic significance of religious cere- 
 monies so dear to the Episcopalians ; while the 
 immediate contact of the universe with the Deity 
 was no less incompatible with the miraculous 
 interferences on which Unitarianism reposed its 
 faith. Such were some of the most important 
 negative results of Emerson's doctrines; in their 
 positive aspect, by asserting the identity of natural 
 and spiritual laws, they invested the former with 
 the reverence hitherto accorded only to the latter, 
 and restored to a mechanical and prosaic society 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 317 
 
 the piety with which men in the infancy of history 
 had contemplated the forces of Nature. Substan- 
 tially, except for the absence of any definite rela- 
 tion to literary art, Emerson's mission was very 
 similar to Wordsworth's; but by natural tempera- 
 ment and actual situation he wanted the thousand 
 links which bound Wordsworth to the past, and 
 eventually made the sometime innovator the patron 
 of a return towards the Middle Ages. Emerson 
 had no wish to regress, and, almost alone among 
 thinkers who have reached an advanced age, 
 betrays no symptom of reaction throughout the 
 whole of his career. The reason may be that 
 his scrupulous fairness and frank concessions 
 to the conservative cast of thought had left him 
 nothing to retract or atone for. He seems to have 
 started on his journey through life with his con- 
 servatism and liberalism ready made up, taking 
 with him just as much of each as he wanted. 
 This is especially manifest in the discourse "The 
 Conservative" (1841), in which he deliberately 
 weighs conservative against progressive tendencies, 
 impersonates each in an imaginary interlocutor, 
 and endeavours to display their respective justi- 
 fication and shortcomings. Nothing can be more 
 rigidly equitable or more thoroughly sane than 
 his estimate ; and as the issues between conser- 
 vatism and reform have broadened and deepened. 
 
3i8 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 time has only added to its value. It is a perfect 
 manual for thoughtful citizens desirous of under- 
 standing the questions that underlie party issues, 
 and is especially to be commended to young and 
 generous minds, liable to misguidance in proportion 
 to their generosity. 
 
 This celebrated discourse is one of a group 
 including one still more celebrated — the address 
 to the graduating class of Divinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, published as ''The Christian Teacher" 
 (1838). This, says Mr. Cabot, seems to have 
 been struck off at a heat, which perhaps accounts 
 for its nearer approach than any of Emerson's 
 other addresses to the standard of what is usually 
 recognised as eloquence. Eloquent in a sense 
 Emerson usually was, but here is something which 
 could transport a fit audience with enthusiasm. 
 It also possessed the power of awakening the 
 keenest antagonism; but censure has long since 
 died away, and nothing that Emerson wrote has 
 been more thoroughly adopted into the creed of 
 those with whom external observances and material 
 symbols find no place. Equally epoch-making in a 
 different way was the oration on "Man Thinking," 
 or "The American Scholar" (1837), entitled by 
 Dr. Holmes "our intellectual declaration of inde- 
 pendence," and of which Mr. Lowell says, "We 
 were socially and intellectually moored to English 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 319 
 
 thought till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a 
 chance at the dangers and glories of blue water." 
 In these three great discourses, and in a less 
 measure in " The TranscendentaHst " and '* Man 
 the Reformer" (both in 1841), America may boast 
 of possessing works of the first class, which could 
 have been produced in no other country, and which 
 — even though, in Emerson's own phrase, wider 
 circles should come to be drawn around them — 
 will remain permanent landmarks in intellectual 
 history. 
 
 These discourses may be regarded as Emerson's 
 public proclamations of his opinions; but he is 
 probably more generally known and more inti- 
 mately beloved by the two unobtrusive volumes 
 of Essays originally prefaced for England by 
 Carlyle. Most of these indeed were originally 
 delivered as lectures, but to small audiences, and 
 with little challenge to public attention. It may 
 be doubted whether they would have succeeded 
 as lectures but for the personal magnetism of the 
 speaker; but their very defects aid them with the 
 reader, who, once fascinated by their beauty of 
 phrase and depth of spiritual insight, imbibes their 
 spirit all the more fully for his ceaseless effort to 
 mend their deficient logic with his own. Like 
 Love in Dante's sonnet, Emerson enters into and 
 blends with the reader, and his influence will often 
 
320 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 be found most potent where it is least acknow- 
 ledged. Each of the twenty may be regarded as 
 a fuller working-out of some subject merely hinted 
 at in " Nature " — statues, as it were, for niches left 
 vacant in the original edifice. The most important 
 and pregnant with thought are *' History," where 
 the same claim is preferred for history as for the 
 material world, that it is not dead but alive ; ** Self- 
 reliance," a most vigorous assertion of a truth 
 which Emerson was apt to carry to extremes — 
 the majesty of the individual soul ; *' Compensa- 
 tion," an exposition of the Universe as the in- 
 carnation of unerring truth and absolute justice; 
 "Love," full of beauty and rapture, yet almost 
 chiUing to the young by its assertion of what is 
 nevertheless true — that even love in its human 
 semblance only subserves ulterior ends; "Circles," 
 the demonstration that this circumstance is in no 
 way peculiar to Love — that there can be nothing 
 ultimate, final, or unrelated to ulterior purpose, 
 nothing around which, in Emersonian phrase, you 
 cannot draw a circle; "The Over-Soul," a prose 
 hymn dedicated to an absolutely spiritual religion ; 
 "The Poet," a celebration of poetry as co-extensive 
 with imagination, and in the highest sense with 
 Reason also; "Experience" and "Character," 
 valuable essays, but evincing that the poetical 
 impulse was becoming spent, and that Emerson's 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 321 
 
 mind was more and more tending to questions of 
 conduct. The least satisfactory of the essays is 
 that on *'Art/' where he is only great on the 
 negative side, Art's inevitable limitations. The 
 sesthetical faculty which contemplates beauty under 
 the restraints of Form was evidently weak in him. 
 
 *' Representative Men," Emerson's next work of 
 importance (delivered as lectures in 1845, Pub- 
 lished in 1850), shows that his parachute was 
 descending; but he makes a highly successful 
 compromise by taking up original ideas as re- 
 flected in the actions and thoughts of great typical 
 men, one remove only from originality of exposi- 
 tion on his own part. The treatment is necessarily 
 so partial as to exercise a distorting influence on 
 his representation of the men themselves. Napo- 
 leon, for example, may have been from a certain 
 point of view the hero of the middle class, as 
 Emerson chooses to consider him; but he was 
 much besides, which cannot even be hinted at in 
 a short lecture. The representation of such a hero, 
 nevertheless, whether the character precisely fitted 
 Napoleon or not, is highly spirited and suggestive ; 
 and the same may be said of the other lectures. 
 That on Shakespeare is the least satisfying, the 
 consummate art which is half Shakespeare's great- 
 ness making little appeal to Emerson. He appears 
 also at variance with himself when he speaks of 
 
322 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Shakespeare's existence as *' obscure and profane," 
 such a healthy, homely, unambitious life being pre- 
 cisely what he elsewhere extols as a model. The 
 first lecture of the series, **Uses of Great Men," 
 would seem to have whispered the message more 
 vociferously repeated by Walt Whitman. 
 
 Emerson was yet to write two books of worth, 
 not illumed with *' the light that never was on sea 
 or land," but valuable complements of his more 
 characteristic work, and important to mankind as 
 an indisputable proof that a teacher need not be 
 distrusted in ordinary things because he is a mystic 
 and a poet. "The Conduct of Life" (185 1), far 
 inferior to his earlier writings in inspiration, is yet 
 one of the most popular and widely influential of 
 his works, because condescending more nearly to 
 the needs and intelligence of the average reader. 
 It is not less truly Emersonian, less fully im- 
 pregnated with his unique genius; but the themes 
 discussed are less interesting, and the glory and 
 beauty of the diction are much subdued. Without 
 it we should have been in danger of regarding 
 Emerson too exclusively as a transcendental seer, 
 and ignoring the solid ground of good sense and 
 practical sagacity from which the waving forests of 
 his imagery drew their nutriment. It greatly pro- 
 moted his fame and influence by coming into the 
 hands of successive generations of readers who 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 323 
 
 naturally inquired for his last book, found the 
 author, with surprise, much nearer their own 
 intellectual position than they had been led to 
 expect, and gradually extended the endorsement 
 which they could not avoid according to the book 
 to the author himself When the Reason and the 
 Understanding have agreed to legitimate the pre- 
 tensions of a speculative thinker, these may be con- 
 sidered stable. Emerson insensibly took rank with 
 the other American institutions ; it seemed natural 
 to all that without the retractation or modification 
 of a syllable on his part, Harvard should in 1866 
 confer her highest honours upon him whose address 
 to her Divinity School had aroused such fierce 
 opposition in 1838. Emerson's views, being pure 
 intuitions, rarely admitted of alteration in essence, 
 though supplement or limitation might sometimes 
 be found advisable. The Civil War, for instance, 
 could not but convince him that in his zeal for the 
 independence of the individual he had dangerously 
 impaired the necessary authority of government. 
 His attitude throughout this great contest was the 
 ideal of self-sacrificing patriotism ; in truth it might 
 be said of him, as of so few men of genius, that you 
 could not find a situation for him, public or private, 
 whose obligations he was not certain to fulfil. He 
 had previously given proof of his insight into 
 another nation by his '^ English Traits," mainly 
 
324 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 founded upon the visit he had paid to England in 
 1847-48, a book to be read with equal pleasure and 
 profit by the nation of which and by the nation for 
 which it was written ; while its insight, sanity, and 
 kindliness justify what has been said on occasion 
 of another of Emerson's writings : — '^ The ideologist 
 judges the man of action more shrewdly and justly 
 than the man of action judges the ideologist." This 
 was the secret of Napoleon's bitter animosity to 
 " ideologists " : he felt instinctively that the man 
 of ideas could see into him and through him, and 
 recognise and declare his place in the scheme of 
 the universe as an astronomer might a planet's. 
 He would have wished to be an incalculable, 
 original, elemental force; and it vexed him to feel 
 that he was something whose course could be 
 mapped and whose constitution defined by a mere 
 mortal like a Coleridge or a De Stael, who could 
 treat him like the incarnate thought he was, and 
 show him, as Emerson showed the banker, ^' that 
 he was also a phantom walking and working 
 amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a 
 question or two beyond his daily questions to find 
 his soUd universe proving dim and impalpable be- 
 fore his sense." 
 
 The later writings of Emerson, though exhibit- 
 ing few or no cases of mental decay, are in general 
 repetitions, or at least confirmations, of what had 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 325 
 
 once been announcements and discoveries. This 
 can scarcely be otherwise, when the mind's pro- 
 ductions are derived from its own stuff and sub- 
 stance. Emerson's contemporary, Longfellow, could 
 renovate and indeed augment his poetical power by 
 resort in his old age to Italy ; but change of environ- 
 ment brings no reinforcement of energy to the 
 speculative thinker. Events, however, may come 
 to his aid ; and when Emerson was called before 
 the people by a momentous incident like the death 
 of President Lincoln, he rose fully to the height of 
 the occasion. His last verses, also, are among his 
 best. We have spoken of him as primarily and 
 above all things a poet ; but his claim to that great 
 distinction is to be sought rather in the poetical spirit 
 which informs all his really inspired writings than 
 in the comparatively restricted region of rhyme and 
 metre. It might have been otherwise. Many of 
 his detached passages are the very best things in 
 verse yet written in America ; but though a maker, 
 he is not a fashioner. The artistic instinct is 
 deficient in him ; he is seldom capable of combining 
 his thoughts into a harmonious whole. No one's 
 expression in verse is better when he aims at con- 
 veying a single thought with gnomic terseness, as 
 in the mottoes to his essays ; few are more obscure 
 when he attempts continuous composition. Some- 
 times, as in the admirable stanzas on the Bunker 
 
326 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Hill dedication, the subject has enforced the due 
 clearness and compression of thought ; sometimes, 
 as in the glorious lines beginning, " Not from a vain 
 or shallow thought," he is guided unerringly by a 
 divine rapture ; in one instance at least, " The 
 Rhodora," where he is writing of beauty, the in- 
 stinct of beauty has given his lines the symmetry 
 as well as the sparkle of the diamond. Could he 
 have always written like this, he would have been 
 supreme among American poets in metre ; as it is, 
 comparison seems unfair both to him and to them. 
 
 What we have to learn from Emerson is chiefly 
 the Divine immanence in the world, with all its 
 corollaries, no discovery of his, but re-stated by 
 him in the fashion most suitable to his age, and 
 with a cogency and attractiveness rivalled by no 
 contemporary. If we tried to sum up his message 
 in a phrase, we might perhaps find this in Keats's 
 famous '^Beauty is truth. Truth beauty," only 
 while Keats was evidently more concerned for 
 Beauty than for Truth, Emerson held an impartial 
 balance. These are with him the tests of each 
 other; whatever is really true is also beautiful, 
 whatever is really beautiful is also true. Hence 
 his especial value to a world whose more refined 
 spirits are continually setting up types of aesthetic 
 beauty which must needs be delusive, as discordant 
 with beauty contemplated under the aspect of 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 327 
 
 morality; while the mass never think of bringing 
 social and political arrangements to the no less 
 infallible test of conformity to an ideally beautiful 
 standard. Hence the seeming idealist is of all 
 men the most practical; and Emerson's gospel of 
 beauty should be especially precious to a country 
 like his own, where circumstances must for so 
 long tell in favour of the more material phases of 
 civilisation. Even more important is that aspect 
 of his teaching which deals with the unalterableness 
 of spiritual laws, the impossibility of evading Truth 
 and Fact in the long run, or of wronging any one 
 without at the same time wronging oneself. Happy 
 would it be for the United States if Emerson's 
 essay on " Compensation " in particular could be 
 impressed upon the conscience, where there is 
 any, of every political leader ; and interwoven with 
 the very texture of the mind of every one who 
 has a vote to cast at the polls ! 
 
 The special adaptation of Emerson's teaching 
 to the needs of America is, nevertheless, far from 
 the greatest obligation under which he has laid 
 his countrymen. His greatest service is to have 
 embodied a specially American type of thought 
 and feehng. It is the test of real greatness in a 
 nation to be individual, to produce something in 
 the world of intellect pecuHar to itself and in- 
 defeasibly its own. Such intellectual growths were 
 
328 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 indeed to be found in America before Emerson's 
 time, but they were not of the highest class. 
 Frankhn was a great sage, but his wisdom was 
 worldly wisdom. Emerson gives us, in his own 
 phrase, morality on fire with emotion — the only 
 morality which in the long run will really influence 
 the heart of man. Man is after all too noble a 
 being to be permanently actuated by enlightened 
 selfishness; and when we compare Emerson with 
 even so truly eminent a character as Franklin, we 
 see, as he saw when he compared Carl^de with 
 Johnson, how great a stride forward his country 
 had taken in the meantime. But he could do for 
 America what Carlyle could not do for Great 
 Britain, for it was done already; he could and 
 did create a type of wisdom especially national, 
 as characteristic of the West as Buddha's of the 
 East. 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 
 
 Shelley's attitude towards fine art is not one of 
 the most significant or the most important aspects 
 of his mind, but, even as a single element in a 
 rich intellect, it possesses sufficient interest to 
 justify independent treatment, and it is instructive 
 in a high degree if regarded as an illustration of 
 the manner in which poets and men of letters in 
 general look upon art, which is not that in which 
 artistic production is usually contemplated by the 
 artists themselves. 
 
 Shelley's views on art, it need not be said, are 
 in no respect authoritative. Their value — and they 
 have considerable value — is not derived from any 
 profound aesthetic knowledge or study on the part 
 of their promulgator. He is quite unlike Goethe, 
 who corrected the immaturity of his first instinctive 
 impressions of art by a strenuous course of study, 
 and by much actual practice in artistic production. 
 Goethe, consequently, is listened to with deference 
 as one who has taken pains to qualify as a con- 
 noisseur. Were he living now, the most dis- 
 
 331 
 
332 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 tinguished of contemporary artists would resort 
 to him with something of a tremor, and feel elated 
 or depressed in proportion as his verdict upon 
 them was favourable or the reverse. Shelley would 
 be consulted, not as an oracle, but as a mirror. 
 The artist would not expect to be enhghtened by 
 his dicta; but he would instruct himself by dis- 
 covering the impression he had produced on a 
 mind so sensitive, acute, and sincere. Shelley 
 never criticises contemporary artists ; but our per- 
 ception of the merits of the Greeks and the men 
 of the Renaissance is vivified by discovering how 
 they are regarded by him and such as he. 
 
 One caution, however, is essential. Shelley 
 would have been a better art critic in our day 
 than he could be in his own. The revival of a 
 feeling for pure Hellenic art in Europe may be said 
 to date from the public exhibition of the Elgin 
 marbles in England, which occurred as Shelley was 
 on the point of leaving his country never to return. 
 Up to that period Greek art could not be under- 
 stood, simply because no one knew what it was. 
 The classical tradition, which quite rightly laid it 
 down that Greece had exemplified the perfection 
 of art, inevitably ascribed this character of per- 
 fection to the best works then attainable, which 
 were not, properly speaking, Greek, but Graeco- 
 Roman, many of them works of great merit, but 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 333 
 
 as secondary and imitative as any modern pro- 
 ductions modelled upon antique examples. In like 
 manner, the inferior Italian painters were ranked 
 by public opinion much nearer to the great masters 
 than would now be permitted, and the tourist 
 visited Italy under an obligation to adore Guido 
 and venerate Guercino. This remark is less appli- 
 cable to literature, because literature possessed 
 the models which art wanted. Unlike the Elgin 
 marbles, the literary masterpieces of antiquity were 
 already in men's hands, and required nothing but 
 insight to be appreciated. It is true that the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in their 
 blind veneration for anything and everything 
 classical, had put the Latin imitators too nearly 
 on a par with their Greek prototypes, but sounder 
 views were already beginning to spread. Shelley 
 himself was one of the few to whom this long- 
 delayed insight had been granted. With little aid 
 from art or aesthetics, he was, together with 
 Goethe, Keats, and Landor, busy in dispelling 
 former conventions, whether by the incomparable 
 ease and grace of his direct translations from the 
 classical originals, or by the spirit of myth and 
 personification which he imported from these into 
 his original verse. The same Hellenic spirit would 
 have made him a regenerative force in art if his 
 archaeological equipment had been more complete. 
 
334 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 It is not easy to say whether Shelley had re- 
 ceived any technical instruction in art ; but, as 
 drawing - masters were in his day frequent orna- 
 mental appendages to the graver studies pursued 
 or supposed to be pursued in schools public and 
 private, it is likely that he had. If this had 
 proceeded far, it is probable that he would have 
 made some attempts to sketch the beautiful scenery 
 and imposing ruins that so often overcame him 
 with admiration in his foreign travels ; but the 
 only recorded effort in any respect analogous is 
 a portrait from memory of a goblin which had 
 visited him in a bad dream. When, nevertheless, 
 he fell into a reverie over the composition of 
 poetry, his hand would wander over his note- 
 book and aimlessly delineate trees, boats, or 
 human countenances, the latter sometimes of a 
 strangely Blake-like character. A few of these 
 have been worked up into elaborate drawings, 
 displaying weird invention and considerable faculty 
 of draughtsmanship. Of his ability as a colourist 
 nothing can be said, for he never possessed a 
 paint-box, and if he had, his drawings seem the 
 vague impulse of a passing mood, which would 
 have vanished before the exertion of depicting it. 
 The fine feeling for colour displayed in his poems, 
 however, leads to the conclusion that his occasional 
 criticism upon painters as colourists must deserve 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 335 
 
 respect. Yet it may not be without significance 
 that his most elaborate aesthetic utterances concern 
 a department of art which in his day entirely dis- 
 pensed with colour — sculpture. 
 
 Shelley's art criticisms may be divided into three 
 classes — those which, whether with a view to pub- 
 lication or not, he wrote down with deliberate care; 
 those which occur casually in his letters ; and, lastly, 
 passages in his poetry. The first section are, of 
 course, the most important ; but they are solely 
 concerned with sculpture. It would seem probable 
 that he recorded his observations on sculpture in 
 Rome in a note-book which has been lost ; but 
 three passages, on the Arch of Titus, on the " Lao- 
 coon," and on a Borghese vase, were fortunately, 
 though probably inaccurately, transcribed by Cap- 
 tain Medwin, a great snapper-up of unconsidered 
 trifles. According to him, the more important 
 notes on Florentine sculpture were written down 
 in the gallery itself, " in a burst of enthusiasm." 
 These, too, Medwin copied, and with his usual 
 inaccuracy ; but Mr. Buxton Forman has fortu- 
 nately been able to restore the text from an 
 authentic manuscript. 
 
 Shelley's note on the " Laocoon " is especially 
 interesting because it brings him into conflict with 
 Byron. " Byron," he says, " thinks that Laocoon's 
 anguish is absorbed in that of his children, that 
 
336 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 a mortal's agony is blending with an immortal's 
 patience. Not so." The allusion is to the cele- 
 brated description in ** Childe Harold " : — 
 
 " Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 
 Laocoon's torture dignifying pain — 
 A father's love and mortal's agony 
 With an immortars patience blending ; vain 
 The struggle ; vain against the coiling strain 
 And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 
 The old man's clench ; the long envenomed chain 
 Rivets the living links, the enormous asp 
 Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." 
 
 Shelley, on the contrary, thinks that — 
 
 " Intense physical suffering, against which he 
 pleads with an upturned countenance of despair, 
 and appeals with a sense of its injustice, seems 
 the predominant and overwhelming emotion, and 
 yet there is a nobleness in the expression, and a 
 majesty that dignifies torture." 
 
 No one will question that Shelley was right, 
 Byron did not, in this instance, " compose with 
 his eye upon the object." The feelings which he 
 attributes to Laocoon rather belong to the elder 
 boy, of whom Shelley writes : — 
 
 " His whole soul is with — is a part of — that of 
 his father. His arm extended towards him, not 
 for protection, but from a wish as if instinctively 
 to afford it, absolutely speaks. Nothing can be 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 337 
 
 more exquisite than the contour of his form and 
 face, and the moulding of his Hps that are half 
 open, as if in the act of — not uttering any unbe- 
 coming complaint, or prayer, or lamentation, which 
 he is conscious are alike useless, but — addressing 
 words of consolatory tenderness to his unfortunate 
 parent." 
 
 "In the younger child," Shelley adds, *' sur- 
 prise, pain, and grief seem to contend for mastery. 
 He has not yet arrived at an age when his mind 
 has sufficient self-possession or fixedness of reason 
 to analyse the calamity that is overwhelming him- 
 self and all that is dear to him. He is sick with pain 
 and horror. We almost seem to hear his shrieks." 
 
 This description alone would suffice to establish 
 Shelley's claim to speak on works of art, in so far 
 as the interpretation of the artist's purpose and 
 the delineation of the effect on the spectator are 
 concerned. Technical criticism is a different 
 matter ; yet few will contradict Shelley when he 
 declares that " every limb, every muscle, every 
 vein of Laocoon expresses with the fidelity of 
 life the working of the poison." At the same 
 time, while thus enthusiastic, he anticipates, in 
 another place, the objections that have been made 
 to this famous work, by expressing a fear that it 
 may be thought to transcend the modesty of 
 nature ; that is, since its perfect truth to nature 
 
338 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 cannot be questioned, that it pertains to the pro- 
 vince of painting rather than to that of sculpture. 
 Such criticism, even if somewhat fastidious, proves 
 that a higher and purer ideal has been revealed to 
 us, since even so consummate a critic as Lessing 
 took the name of Laocoon as the title of his own 
 treatise on the laws of art, as though it symbolised 
 something absolutely faultless. It may, indeed, 
 be faultless in its own sphere; but the Elgin 
 marbles and the MeUan Venus have taught us 
 that there is something higher ; and this Shelley, 
 who had barely seen the marbles, and had never 
 seen the as yet undiscovered Venus, divined as 
 by an infallible instinct. It is as though modern 
 art had been thought to have culminated with 
 Rembrandt in the absence of any knowledge of 
 the works of the Italians. The place and merits 
 of the " Laocoon " must of late have become better 
 understood through the discovery of the Pergamene 
 sculptures of the wars of the Gods and the Giants, 
 near in period and akin in spirit. 
 
 The Arch of Titus does not afford very much 
 material for aesthetic criticism, and Shelley's com- 
 ment upon it is mainly descriptive. Let us for 
 a moment interrupt the sequence of these notes 
 by citing his observation upon the figures of 
 Victory sculptured upon the arch, from a letter 
 written about the same time : — 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 339 
 
 " Their lips are parted : a delicate mode of 
 indicating the fervour of their desire to arrive at 
 the desired resting-place, and to express the eager 
 respiration of their speed. Indeed, so essential 
 to beauty were the forms expressive of the exer- 
 cise of the imagination and the affections con- 
 sidered by Greek artists, that no ideal figure of 
 antiquity, not destined to some representation 
 directly exclusive of such a character, is to be 
 found with closed lips." 
 
 Excluding one most beautiful piece of landscape 
 description, a general view of Florence, Shelley's 
 Florentine notes number no less than fifty-six- 
 Many of these, however, are but bare memoranda 
 of the subject of a statue, or brief anathemas on 
 the misdoings of some miscreant restorer. It 
 would, nevertheles, be impossible here to enter 
 upon all or nearly all of those which deserve 
 serious attention. We must be content with ex- 
 tracts from a few of the more important — enough, 
 however, to demonstrate Shelley's artistic en- 
 thusiasm and the general superiority of his judg- 
 ment to the standard of his day. 
 
 None of the Florentine antiques aroused Shelley 
 to so high-wrought a pitch of enthusiasm as a 
 statue of Pallas, and most interesting it would be 
 to learn whether the charm it exerted upon him 
 was objective or subjective. Is it really a work 
 
340 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 of such merit ? or did it merely mirror the im- 
 passioned feeling of the poet? — 
 
 " The face uplifted to heaven," he says, " is 
 animated with a profound sweet and impassioned 
 melancholy, with an earnest, fervid, and disin- 
 terested pleading against some vast and inevitable 
 wrong ; it is the joy and the poetry of sorrow, 
 making grief beautiful, and giving to that nameless 
 feeling which from the imperfection of language 
 we call pain, but which is not all pain, those feel- 
 ings which make not only the possessor but the 
 spectator of it prefer it to what is called pleasure, 
 in which all is not pleasure." (In the " Defence 
 of Poetry," Shelley speaks of " that delight which 
 is in the grief of love.") " It is," he continues, " in- 
 deed divine, as Wisdom pleading earnestly with 
 Power, and invested with the expression of that 
 grief because it must ever plead so vainly." 
 
 This is a favourite idea with Shelley. In the 
 first draft of his ** Hellas," Christ appears to plead 
 before the Father for Greece against Islam; and 
 Shelley elsewhere apostrophises Liberty as 
 
 " Last of the intercessors 
 Who 'gainst the crowned transgressors 
 Pleadest before God's love." 
 
 By a curious anomaly this effigy of Pallas was 
 in Shelley's time placed upon a Bacchic altar,. 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 341 
 
 adorned with reliefs of Maenads, whose whirling 
 forms, perhaps conventional enough, Shelley in- 
 vests with the tumultuous sublimity of his own 
 imagination : — 
 
 " The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by 
 drunkenness and producing something beyond in- 
 sanity, seems to have caught them in its whirl- 
 winds, and to bear them over the earth as the 
 rapid volutions of a tempest bear the ever-changing 
 trunk of a waterspout, as the torrent of a mountain 
 river whirls the weeds in its full eddies. Their 
 hair, loose and floating, seems caught in the tem- 
 pest of their own tumultuous motion." 
 
 It is interesting to find this idea repeated in his 
 " Epipsychidion " : — 
 
 " When some heavy tress 
 The air of her own speed has disentwined." 
 
 The note concludes with a remark, not aesthetic, 
 but historico-philosophical and deeply true : " A 
 monstrous superstition only capable of existing in 
 Greece, because there alone capable of combining 
 ideal beauty and poetical and abstract enthusiasm 
 with the wild errors from which it sprang." Speak- 
 ing of the effects of the naturalisation of Bacchic 
 worship in Rome, which compelled the Senate to 
 suppress it, he adds : ** The strict morals of the 
 Romans sustained a deep injury little analogous 
 
342 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 to its effects upon the Greeks, who turned all 
 things — superstition, prejudice, murder, madness — 
 to Beauty." 
 
 Modern taste might not entirely sanction Shelley's 
 enthusiasm for the "Niobe" ; but certainly this group 
 possessed the power of inspiring in him the finest 
 language, and awakening the deepest thoughts. 
 After speaking of the " careless majesty " stamped 
 upon the countenance as upon "the rare master- 
 pieces of Nature's creation," he adds : — 
 
 " Yet all this not only consists with, but is the 
 cause of, the subtlest delicacy of that clear and 
 tender beauty which is the expression at once of 
 innocence and sublimity of soul, of purity and 
 strength, of all that which touches the most re- 
 moved and divine of the strings of that which 
 makes music within my thoughts, and which shakes 
 with astonishment my most superficial faculties." 
 
 In strong contrast with this eulogy is the con- 
 demnation of Michael Angelo's "Bacchus," which, 
 though extolled for its fine workmanship, is con- 
 demned as deficient in that unity which, as Shelley 
 acutely remarks, could not well be conceived as 
 pertaining to Bacchus in an age when his divinity 
 was not realised. It is, indeed, true that, from 
 the influence of degrading associations compara- 
 tively unknown to the ancients, we find it easier 
 to realise the divinity of the Goddess of Harvests 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 343 
 
 than that of the God of the Vintage, and easier 
 still to recognise the divine attributes of a Muse 
 or a Grace, an Apollo or a Venus. It must be re- 
 membered, in partial vindication of Michael Angelo, 
 that this statue was an early work, which renders 
 its technical merit the more remarkable. Adding- 
 ton Symonds, who entirely confirms Shelley's 
 criticism, says it is the best representation con- 
 ceivable of a drunken young man. Two others 
 of the notes are highly interesting, not so much 
 from their aesthetic importance as from their 
 adumbration of circumstances in Shelley's own 
 history. The group of '^ Bacchus and Ampelus " — 
 " figures walking as it were with a sauntering and 
 idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, 
 as expressed in the motions of their delicate and 
 flowing forms," reminds him of the only delightful 
 part of his own school experiences : ** Just as 
 you may have seen (yet how seldom from their 
 dissevering and tyrannical institutions do you 
 see !) a younger and an elder boy at school walk- 
 ing in some remote grassy spot of their playground 
 with that tender friendship towards each other 
 which has so much of love." When, again, he 
 speaks of a statue of iEsculapius, '^ with the fore- 
 finger in an attitude of instruction" and "the 
 gentle smile of the benevolent lips a commentary 
 upon the instruction," he must be thinking of 
 
344 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 Dr. Lind, the good physician who befriended him in 
 boyhood, and whom he has immortaHsed in '^Prince 
 Athanase" and "The Revolt of Islam." 
 
 These notes on the Florentine sculptures are the 
 only formal and deliberate appearance of Shelley in 
 the character of an art critic. His views must 
 otherwise be collected from expressions in his 
 letters, chiefly relating to works of art which have 
 recently come under his observation, and from 
 detached passages in his poems. He was not one 
 of those poets whose temperament is in a super- 
 eminent degree artistic, limiting the phrase, as it 
 often is limited, to taste for pictorial or plastic 
 art. His sympathies were rather with the art of 
 music. Whether his taste as a musician was 
 sound it is impossible to pronounce, but he un- 
 questionably derived a more rapturous pleasure 
 from audible than from visible art; and though 
 his own songs are, it is understood, not always 
 the best adapted to the requirements of the com- 
 poser, it is admitted that his command of verbal 
 harmonies was superior to that of any poet of 
 his age, Coleridge perhaps excepted. It seems 
 probable, however, that not a little of the delight 
 which imaginative poets of warm affections derive 
 from music may be attributed to the circumstance 
 that music, from its close association with the 
 performer, imparts a human element of interest 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 345 
 
 in which the other arts are necessarily deficient. 
 As Omar Khayyam's cupbearer must be not only 
 a minister of wine, but also a cypress-slender 
 minister, so the music, vocal or instrumental, 
 when performed by the right sort of person, bor- 
 rows enchantment from the beaming eyes, flowing 
 tresses, and snowy fingers of the performer, which, 
 in a sense different from that intended by Shelley, 
 " teach witchcraft to the elemental strings." It 
 may be doubted whether Jane Williams's guitar 
 would have rung so sweetly in Shelley's ears if 
 Jane Williams had not touched it, to the accom- 
 paniment, moreover, of Mediterranean moonlight. 
 Still, with every allowance for the effect of these 
 accessories, it remains true that Shelley was pre- 
 eminently of a musical nature, with a joy in all 
 flitting and evanescent effects of air, sound, and 
 cloud, and light and shadow : rather ethereal than 
 plastic. His analogue among painters is Turner 
 rather than Raphael, and when he treats of painters 
 we shall see that his favourites are those whose 
 charm chiefly consists in expression, and who 
 exhibit the deepest spirituality. 
 
 Criticism, even when most scientific, is so largely 
 a matter of subjective impression that nothing less 
 than an oracle could authoritatively tell us how 
 far Shelley's eulogies on some of the Italian 
 painters are to be regarded as founded on a 
 
346 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 discriminating judgment, and how far the beauties 
 he discerned were but the effluence of his own 
 impassioned feeling. It must be remembered that 
 he approached the shrine of Guido with a greater 
 disposition to admire than would be possible in 
 our day. In our time, indeed, many a young man 
 would deem that he proved his sensitiveness to 
 the finer shades of culture b}' refusing to look at 
 anything later than the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. It was so different in Shelley's time that 
 he must be held to have exhibited considerable 
 independence of judgment by declaring that, for 
 all the unanimity of connoisseurs in favour of 
 Caracci, he cannot admire him. On the other 
 hand, he wanted the assistance which a truly 
 enlightened connoisseurship might have afforded 
 him. The early Florentine school, in particular, 
 was little known. There was no one to direct 
 Shelley's attention to Masaccio or Filippo Lippi, 
 much less to Sandro Botticelli, a painter in whom 
 he must have greatly delighted had he been 
 acquainted with him. He did not, indeed, like 
 Goethe, accord scarcely a day to Florence in his 
 anxiety to reach Rome; his stay there was long, 
 and his investigation of its sculpture at all events, 
 as we have seen, very thorough. But his know- 
 ledge was in many respects very defective, and 
 he never became saturated either with the spirit 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 347 
 
 of Italy or with the spirit of Renaissance art to 
 anything like the same extent as another illustrious 
 poet who for a long time made Italy his home — 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 The first pictures of importance which Shelley 
 saw in Italy were those at Bologna, described in 
 his letter to Peacock of November 9, 181 8. Here 
 Guido dominates; but one of the two specimens 
 of Correggio which Shelley saw "gave me," he 
 says, "a very exalted idea of his powers." The 
 subject is "Christ Beatified," and it must be fine 
 indeed if it is as fine as some portions of Shelley's 
 description : — 
 
 "The whole frame," he says, "seems dilated with 
 expression ; the countenance is heavy, as if weary 
 with the weight of the rapture of the spirit ; the 
 lips parted, but scarcely parted, with the breath of 
 intense but regulated passion; the eyes calm and 
 benignant; the whole features harmonised in 
 majesty and sweetness. The sky is of a pale 
 aerial orange, like the tints of latest sunset; it 
 does not seem painted around and beyond the 
 figure, but everything seems to have absorbed 
 and to have been penetrated by its hues." 
 
 A remark by Shelley on a picture of Guido's re- 
 presenting the " Rape of Proserpine " — " Proserpine 
 casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes to 
 the flowers she has left ungathered in the fields 
 
348 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 of Enna " — reminds one of his own song on Proser- 
 pine and the mention of Enna in his " Arethusa." 
 The picture was probably not without influence on 
 the former of these exquisite compositions ; but he 
 has more to say on another whose subject must 
 have been infinitely less congenial to him. It is 
 Guido's picture of Samson drinking water out of 
 an ass's jawbone, in the midst of the slaughtered 
 Philistines. Here it is remarkable and character- 
 istic to observe how Shelley turns aside from the 
 principal figure — the triumphant Hebrew Hercules 
 — to the pathetic figures of the overthrown Philis- 
 tines, treated, as it would seem, by Guido in a 
 spirit of tenderness congenial to his own : — 
 
 "One prone, with the slight convulsion of pain 
 just passing from his forehead, whilst on his lips 
 and chin death lies as heavy as sleep. Another 
 leaning on his arm, with his hand, white and 
 motionless, hanging out beyond. In the distance 
 more dead bodies, and, still further beyond, the 
 blue sea and the blue mountains, and one white 
 and tranquil sail." 
 
 This introduction of the distant sail into the 
 picture was an exquisite touch of poetry in the 
 painter, and was not lost upon the poet. Such 
 a touch, indeed, would, in the eyes of the poet, 
 redeem even a bad picture. Shelley, when judging 
 of a work of art, inevitably places himself at the 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 349 
 
 poetic point of view — that is, he put feeling and 
 expression as conspicuously into the first place as 
 the great master of oratory put delivery. We have 
 seen that while he had quite sufficient aesthetic per- 
 ception to appreciate the technical excellences of 
 Michael Angelo's ** Bacchus," these do not in his view 
 redeem the cardinal offence of its misconception of 
 the spirit of the Greek myth ; so that, if the two had 
 been positively incapable of combination, he would 
 have craved truth to poetry even at the expense 
 of fidelity to nature. This, of course, cannot be 
 the view of the artist himself, with whom technical 
 rather than spiritual excellence must be the first 
 consideration ; for the latter he shares with the 
 poet, while technical mastery is his own peculiar 
 differentia^ the one endowment which gives him 
 his place in the ministry of the Beautiful. It must 
 not be thought, however, that Shelley's conception 
 of the office of art is in any respect didactic. He 
 does not look for sermons in sculpture, though he 
 might, with Shakespeare's duke, have found them 
 in unsculptured stones. He merely regards the 
 expressiveness and spirituality which he desider- 
 ates, when they are to be had, as the spontaneous 
 efflux of the artist's nature, and unquestionably he 
 who unites a nature thus productive to technical 
 mastery must stand higher than the mere crafts- 
 man. Only in one place does Shelley attribute 
 
350 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 didactic efficacy to a picture, and then to a dis- 
 agreeable one. After remarking that he can take 
 no pleasure in Guercino's pictures, he adds that 
 one is unquestionably powerful, but the power is 
 of a repulsive sort. It is an ideal representation 
 of the founder of the Carthusians : — 
 
 ^' I never saw such a figure as this fellow. His 
 face was wrinkled like a dried snake's skin, and 
 drawn in long hard lines; his very hands were 
 wrinkled. He looked hke an animated mummy. 
 He was clothed in a loose dress of death-coloured 
 flannel, such as you might fancy a shroud might 
 be after it had wrapped a corpse a month or two. 
 It had a yellow, putrified, ghastly hue, which it 
 cast on all the objects around, so that the hands 
 and face of the Carthusian and his companions 
 were jaundiced by this sepulchral glimmer." 
 
 And the moral which Shelley derives from the 
 delineation is by no means that intended by the 
 painter: *'Why write books against superstition 
 when we may hang up such pictures?" 
 
 In one point Shelley — here in advance of his 
 age — sympathises with the general modern feeling. 
 He looks upon the restoration of a work of art as 
 at best a necessary evil. " It made me melancholy," 
 he says, " to see that they had been varnishing and 
 restoring some of these pictures," though he must 
 have admitted this to be sometimes necessary, as in 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 351 
 
 the case of such as had been pierced by the French 
 bayonets. This leads him into reflections which 
 will find an echo in the mind of every artist : — 
 
 " How evanescent are paintings, and must neces- 
 sarily be ! Those of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, 
 and perhaps they bore the same relation to Homer 
 and iEschylus that those of Guido and Raphael bear 
 to Dante and Petrarch. There is one refuge from 
 the despondency of this contemplation. The material 
 part, indeed, of their work must perish, but they 
 survive in the mind of man, and the remembrances 
 connected with them are transmitted from genera- 
 tion to generation. The poet embodies them in his 
 creations ; the systems of philosophers are modelled 
 to gentleness by their contemplation ; opinion, then 
 legislation, is infected with their influence; men 
 become better and wiser; and the unseen seeds 
 are perhaps thus sown which shall produce a plant 
 more excellent than that from which they fell." 
 
 It will have been noticed that Shelley here names 
 Guido and Raphael in the same breath. It will be 
 remembered that he had not seen much of Italian 
 art at the period when this letter was written. 
 Experience of the masterpieces of Rome and Flo- 
 rence doubtless greatly affected this estimate of 
 Guido in so far as it was relative ; but the sunny 
 cheerfulness of such performances of Guido's as his 
 "Aurora" on the one hand, and the tender senti- 
 
352 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 ment of his Madonnas and Magdalens on the other, 
 must always have exerted a pecuHar charm upon 
 Shelley. He probably came to see in Raphael the 
 perfection of what he had admired in Guido, while 
 perhaps Raphael may have been even a little too 
 academic. Perhaps Correggio would, on the whole, 
 have been more attractive to him than any other 
 painter if only Correggio had preserved a larger 
 infusion of that poetical, as distinguished from 
 merely pictorial, feeling which imparts such value 
 to the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgione, and 
 the earlier Titians. Unfortunately, Shelley had 
 few opportunities of becoming acquainted with the 
 Venetian school in its poetical prime, or with the 
 intensely spiritual art of Umbria. To one very 
 great artist he may appear unjust, and yet his 
 verdict on Michael Angelo is that of the generality, 
 although his expressions are stronger. He concurs 
 with most persons in condemning the celestial com- 
 partments of Angelo's " Last Judgment," but admits 
 that '* every step towards Hell approximates to the 
 region of the artist's exclusive power." His great 
 objection to Michael Angelo is his deficient sense 
 of beauty; but this verdict was delivered without 
 any acquaintance with Michael Angelo's drawings, 
 and before having seen his sculptured figures of 
 "Day" and ** Night." The precipitate judgment, 
 however, elicits the profound remark : "To want 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 353 
 
 a sense of beauty is to want the sense of the 
 creative power of mind. What is terror without 
 a contrast with and a communion with loveliness ? 
 How well Dante understood this ! Dante, with 
 whom this artist has been so presumptuously com- 
 pared ! " And after a harsh, though not wholly 
 unjust, criticism of the " Last Judgment " as a sort 
 of Titus Andronicus in painting, he turns to the 
 more congenial tenderness of Titian's ''Danae" and 
 Guido's '' Magdalen." 
 
 Architecture was always interesting to Shelley, 
 and he is always interesting upon it; but he is 
 almost destitute of technical knowledge, and can 
 only speak of the general impression. Milan 
 Cathedral fascinated him, as it was afterwards to 
 fascinate Tennyson ; but the elder poet seems most 
 impressed with the exterior, the younger with the 
 interior features of the edifice. 
 
 "The effect of it," says Shelley, "piercing the 
 solid blue with those groups of dazzling spires, 
 relieved by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, 
 or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered 
 among those clustered shapes, is beyond anything 
 I had imagined architecture capable of producing." 
 
 Tennyson, on the other hand, though praising 
 the "mount of marble, the hundred spires," does 
 not stand on the earth and gaze up to them like 
 Shelley, but looks beyond them as he stands among 
 
354 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 them, and celebrates what he beholds in a mar- 
 vellous stanza : — 
 
 " How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair 
 Was Monte Rosa, hanging there 
 A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys 
 And snowy dells in a golden air ! " 
 
 This is not the cathedral, but the view from the 
 cathedral. The interior, which is pronounced by 
 Shelley of a more earthly character, evokes Tenny- 
 son's highest enthusiasm : — 
 
 " O the chanting quires ! 
 The giant windows' blazoned fires I 
 The height, the space, the gloom, the glory ! " 
 
 Shelley thought this interior had the aspect of 
 *' some gorgeous sepulchre," but excepted one nook, 
 "a solitary spot behind the altar, where the light 
 of day is dim and yellow under the storied window, 
 which I have chosen to visit and read Dante there." 
 
 With St. Peter's, the interior especially, Shelley 
 is disappointed, as is said to be usually the case 
 upon first visits, admitting, however, the magni- 
 ficence of the fagade, and that the whole is *^an 
 astonishing monument of the daring energy of 
 man." The truth would seem to be that this 
 creation of the later Papacy, standing in the midst 
 of a city, had neither the association with history 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 355 
 
 nor the association with nature necessary to 
 captivate a taste untrained to the perception of 
 architectural principles, of which, however, he is 
 not wholly ignorant, as appears from his praise of 
 the just proportions of the Pantheon. When he 
 very greatly admires architecture it is generally in 
 connection with its natural environments, and hence 
 he is peculiarly delighted with ruins. It rejoices 
 him to think that, ^'unlike the inhabitants of the 
 Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient 
 Pompeians could contemplate the clouds and the 
 lamps of heaven, could see the moon rise high 
 behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, 
 trembling with an atmosphere of golden vapour, 
 between Inarime and Misenum." 
 
 From his account of the ruins of the temple of 
 Paestum, though fully sensible of their intrinsic 
 sublimity, he appears more impressed by "the 
 effect of the jagged outlines of mountains, through 
 groups of enormous columns on one side, and on 
 the other the level horizon of the sea." It is 
 needless to cite his famous description of the Baths 
 of Caracalla, in his day so overgrown with ivy and 
 self-sown shrubs and wild flowers as to have be- 
 come almost an object of nature. In a similar 
 spirit, although while writing of a sublime piece 
 of sculpture, Shelley does not omit to celebrate 
 the combination of irresistible energy with perfect 
 
356 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 loveliness in the equestrian figures of Castor and 
 Pollux, he remarks that *' they are seen in the blue 
 sky of Italy, overlooking the city of Rome, and 
 surrounded by the light and music of a crystalline 
 fountain." 
 
 The direct references to works of art in Shelley's 
 poems are not very numerous, and are usually 
 concerned with sculpture rather than painting. 
 In " The Revolt of Islam " the emancipated 
 nations erect a marble pyramid adorned with three 
 sculptured images symbolising Equality, Love, 
 and Wisdom. In "Marianne's Dream" a marble 
 portal is — 
 
 " Filled with sculptures rarest 
 Of forms most beautiful and strange, 
 Like nothing human." 
 
 And in "Prometheus Unbound" there are two 
 lines on sculpture so frequently quoted for their 
 justice and beauty as to have become almost pro- 
 verbial : — 
 
 " Praxitelean shapes, whose marble forms 
 Fill the hushed air with everlasting love." 
 
 But there is one poem entirely devoted to a 
 single picture, one whose character was specially 
 adapted to fascinate the imaginative spirit of 
 Shelley : no other than the " Medusa " in the Ufifizi 
 Gallery at Florence, attributed to Leonardo da 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 357 
 
 Vinci, a subject which we have most of us lately 
 seen treated by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The 
 first stanza reads : — 
 
 "It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 
 
 Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine. 
 
 Below, far lands are seen tremblingly. 
 Its horror and its beauty are divine. 
 
 Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie 
 
 Loveliness, like a shadow, from which shine, 
 
 Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, 
 
 The agonies of anguish and of death." 
 
 This poem is, perhaps, the only one in which 
 Shelley has deliberately set himself to translate a 
 picture into verse, and he is, perhaps, open to 
 the charge of having adhered too closely to his 
 original. He wrote at Florence, either with the 
 picture actually before him, or, at least, with a 
 very vivid impression of it upon his recollection. 
 Keats's similar translation in " Endymion " of 
 Titian's " Bacchus and Ariadne," which, as it was 
 not then placed in a public gallery, he had pro- 
 bably had but few opportunities of contemplating, 
 is more successful, because less anxiously modelled 
 upon an original. A much more remarkable in- 
 stance of the effect of a picture in inspiring Shelley 
 is that portrait, genuine or otherwise, of Beatrice 
 Cenci by Guido, which in a manner compelled him 
 to write his tragedy of the " Cenci." Yet there is 
 
358 ESSAYS OF AN EX-LIBRARIAN 
 
 nothing in the play from which it could be surmised 
 that Shelley had ever seen the portrait. 
 
 We find in Shelley, then, as good an instance as 
 we are ever likely to encounter of the judgments 
 on fine art passed by a person of rare gifts, en- 
 dowed beyond most men with penetrative insight 
 and with delicacy as well as intensity of feeling, 
 but devoid of the technical equipment of a pro- 
 fessional art critic. Of the literary value of such 
 judgments there can be no question; they bring 
 beautiful things before the mental sight when the 
 originals are inaccessible. Their practical value 
 to artists is more disputable. Artists are apt to 
 resent the interposition of outsiders, feeling, as of 
 course they have every right to feel, that the 
 merit of a picture largely depends on a knowledge 
 of a number of technicalities, only to be acquired 
 by study and practice beyond the sphere of the 
 connoisseur. In the writings of the pre-Raphaelite 
 school we may discern some impatience at the 
 interposition of Mr. Ruskin, an artist rather than 
 an amateur, but one who had never absolutely en- 
 rolled himself in the brotherhood by sending his 
 pictures to an exhibition and affixing a price to 
 them. This feeling is most natural; no man con- 
 scious of having undergone a severe novitiate likes 
 to be criticised by one who has exempted himself 
 from such an ordeal. Artists should remember. 
 
SHELLEY'S VIEWS ON ART 359 
 
 however, two things : one, that the fame and the 
 less iUustrious rewards for which they strive 
 depend upon the award of a public outside the 
 limits of their profession, and that it is greatly to 
 their advantage that this public opinion should be 
 regulated by intellects of the calibre of a Shelley's 
 or a Ruskin's; secondly, which is even of more 
 importance, that a merely professional standard 
 must necessarily become a merely academical stan- 
 dard, and that a merely academical standard is in 
 the long run synonymous with convention, stagna- 
 tion, and inanity. The creative mind must be kept 
 flexible, prehensile, fluid; and this object is often 
 best attained by criticisms which, if sometimes 
 imperfect for want of exact knowledge and technical 
 accomplishment, at all events reveal to the artist 
 what a world of thought and feeling lies outside 
 the sphere of rule and tradition, and may often 
 delight him with the conviction that he has builded 
 better than he knew. Guido, we may be sure, 
 had Httle notion that a Cenci tragedy lay in his 
 Cenci portrait. In the world of art, as elsewhere, 
 poets, to borrow Shelley's great saying, are in 
 the last resort *^ the unacknowledged legislators of 
 mankind." 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co. 
 Edinburgh 6r* London 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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