M: 
 
 m: 
 
 
 t-' 
 
 -'^'<^i 
 
 m. 
 
 
 m^ i S:^M, ^,^ . 
 
 mm 
 
GATHERED LEAVES 
 
-/^.y^^£Z. 
 
GATHERED LEAVES 
 
 FROM THE PROSE OF 
 MARY E. COLERIDGE 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR BY 
 EDITH SICHEL 
 
 ' Light was your touch upon the shadowy earth ; 
 You loved it well, yet knew it little worth ; 
 Each mood you loved that changing nature brings, 
 And yet, and yet— you loved diviner things.' 
 
 Bernard Holland. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 1910 
 
MARY'S FRIENDS 
 AND MINE 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 I SHOULD like to acknowledge with gratitude the kindness 
 of the Editors of the CornhiU Ma^'az'me and the Times. 
 and that of Sir Herbert Stephen, in allowing me to 
 repiint contributions (stories, essays, and passages from 
 articles) from the CornhilL the Literary Supplement of 
 the Times, and from the Rejfector, which is now out of 
 print. In the case of other extinct periodicals I have 
 done my best to get permission to reproduce contribu- 
 tions, and, in the cases in which I got no response, I 
 have taken for granted that I can give no offence by 
 republication. It has seemed best to arrange the 
 contents of the volinne in chronological order, for the 
 sake of those who like to follow the growth of the 
 author's mind and character. 
 
 Edith Sichkl, 
 
 Fiib. 7th, 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MARY COLERIDGE .... 
 
 STORIES— 
 
 UNTER DKN LINDEN .... 
 
 THK KING IS nEAn, U»N(; laVE THE KING 
 
 THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALL 
 
 THE FRIENDLY FOE 
 
 THE LADY ON THE HILLSIDE 
 
 THE SNOW IS COMING 
 
 THE CITY OF BYBLOS 
 
 THE CONSCIENTIOUS SECHKTAItV 
 
 CATS IN COUNCIL . 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 i7 
 53 
 G3 
 
 79 
 104 
 120 
 125 
 140 
 142 
 
 ESSAYS- 
 
 HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS . 
 
 . 147 
 
 ON NOISES 
 
 . 1(58 
 
 SIORE WORLDS THAN ONE 
 
 . 173 
 
 THE MAKING OF HEROINES 
 
 177 
 
 travellers' TALES .... 
 
 . 181 
 
 MRS. GASKELL 
 
 186 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH .... 
 
 194 
 
 THE WILL TO DIE .... 
 
 . 211 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COLLECTlOxX OF PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND 
 
 DIARIES 217 
 
 UNPUBLISHED POEMS- 
 
 LINES 281 
 
 GRIEF AM) DEATH 281 
 
 TO O.VE WHO WAS NURSING A BLIND FATHER . . 282 
 
 TO 282 
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND ....... 283 
 
 TO TIME THE COMFORTER ...... 283 
 
 APPENDIX- 
 NOTES OF THE TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY . . 287 
 POEM : MARY COLERIDGE ...... 337 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 For most people there is a beginning and an end. It is 
 important to recall that they were born, and that they 
 died at such and such a date. But to say of Mary 
 Coleridge that she was born in September 1861, that she 
 lived nearly forty-six years, and died in August 1907, 
 means little. She was never of any age, and excepting 
 that as life went on she grew and ripened, she was 
 much the same at twenty as at forty. She seemed 
 to belong to eternity rather than to time, and the 
 years had hardly power to touch her. Her nature was 
 woven of many complex threads, seeming to cross each 
 other, yet forming a fine, close tissue. She was all 
 poet, and three-quarters saint ; she was holy, without 
 the faintest tinge of puritanism ; she was merry, 
 without injury to her holiness. The background 
 of her spirit was pensive, rather shrinking, often sad ; 
 but she delighted in gaiety and generally made a 
 gay impression, because she possessed the rare gift of 
 being in love with the moment, and was easily amused 
 by things and people. Fantastic she was to excess, and 
 there were hours when she let her fancies, light as thistle- 
 
2 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 down, take her anywhere so long as she need not tread 
 on solid earth. And yet she could be shrewd and sober 
 of judgment in a way that surprised even her intimates. 
 
 It might be thought that such opposite elements 
 would have given either a broken, or a bewildering im- 
 pression. But that was not so. The impression left by 
 Mary Coleridge was one of unity. All her various, 
 sometimes paradoxical qualities were covered, linked 
 together, by her unique force of loving. It lent colour 
 to all her faculties ; it caught colour from them. Her 
 fancy was a loving fancy ; her loves were often fantastic. 
 Rich and poor, the stupid and the intellectual, children 
 and old people, all sorts and conditions, had they been 
 asked what she was like, would have differed on many 
 points, but in this they would have been agreed — that 
 the chief feeling conveyed by her presence was the sense 
 of this power of love. It was essentially love for the 
 individual. Any clashing or massing she rejected ; it 
 almost irritated her. She disliked philanthropy, she said 
 she disliked the poor, and yet there were many poor 
 women who counted among her closest friends. In the 
 same way, respect of persons offended her ; she took 
 every one solely upon his merits. Intellectual scorn was 
 in her eyes among the cardinal sins, and she was more 
 prone to invest a dull acquaintance with romance than to 
 seek one out because he was brilliant. 
 
 As she was always the same from childhood onwards, 
 it has seemed needful — for the sake of those who did not 
 know her — to preface any pages concerning her with 
 some attempt, however inadequate, to catch a fleeting 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 3 
 
 likeness of her inner nature. For her life, from the out- 
 set, was the life of the spirit, her adventures (they were 
 many and romantic), the adventures of the soul. As a 
 child she was delicate and shrinking, the prey of an 
 almost painful sensitiveness. It was only her love for 
 those nearest to her — her father, her mother, her one 
 sister, and an unmarried aunt who lived with them — that 
 could dominate her diffidence. Perhaps this timidity 
 drove her the more quickly into that world which was 
 really her home, the world of the imagination. There 
 she was always bold, even daring, and no one knew that 
 the fair-haired, rather pale-faced little girl who could 
 hardly come into a room without suffering was far away 
 with Harry Hotspur, or dreaming of Sir Gawain and Sir 
 Lancelot, or sailing with Drake to El Dorado. 
 
 These first years of life are seldom happy ones to a 
 highly-strung child. For they are the time when reason 
 and imagination — unprotected imagination — run parallel 
 and never meet. Reason was not Mary Coleridge's 
 strong point, and imagination was, so she suff'ered. In 
 after times she never, she said, 'lived over again' her 
 childhood. ' I was," she wrote, ' such a numb, unliving 
 child, that all that period of my life is vague and 
 twilight, and I can recall scarcely anything except the 
 sharp sensations of fear that broke the dull dream of my 
 days. So soon as I began to awake to life, my childhood 
 fell away from me.'' Books were from the first her con- 
 solation. Long before she was in her teens she began to 
 read Shakespeare, to read and feel him with a poet's 
 instinct. Her life was changed from that moment. She 
 
4 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 learned to know men and women through him years 
 before she knew them thi-ough life. Scott, too, enchanted 
 the days of her early girlhood. She was one of the lead- 
 ing spirits among a circle of eager children, who met to- 
 gether every Saturday to act the Waverley novels. Those 
 vi^ho saw her will never forget her in the part of Ivanhoe, 
 tall, pale, lanky, reed-like, her fair hair tucked beneath her 
 helmet, a dish-cover for shield in her hand, swaying as 
 she charged the Templar, who, robed in a nightgown 
 adorned with a red tape cross, parried her blows with the 
 rest of the dining-room plate. When she acted she lost 
 her shyness, though she did not act particularly well. 
 But one of the puzzling inconsistencies of this frail, 
 secluded being was that she was always dramatic in con- 
 ception, and, from the beginning, loved strong effects in 
 literature and in life — sometimes, in her ardour for 
 romance, even mistaking sensation for drama. She could, 
 however, only act a hei'o when disguised. And when she 
 was herself again, she returned to the region familiar 
 to her, a pensive place of silvei-y tints and half-lights and 
 delicate shadows, rather melancholy, but melancholy 
 from presentiment more than from experience. A little 
 poem that she made when she was thirteen years old 
 might almost have been written in an odd moment at 
 any time of her existence. It is called — 
 
 A BALLADE OF AUTUMN 
 
 Life is passing slowly. 
 
 Death is drawing near. 
 Life and Death are holy, 
 
 What have we to fear ? 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 5 
 
 Faded leaves are falling, 
 
 Birds are on the wing. 
 All that dies in Autumn 
 
 Lives again in Spring. 
 
 The quiet and distinction of her gift are as visible here 
 as in her maturcr work. There are no striking images, 
 no youthfid crudities. Restraint and discretion were her 
 heritage. 
 
 What was perhaps more remarkable than her imagina- 
 tion — for many children are imaginative — was her quickly 
 developed power of scholarship. When she was about 
 twelve, the shape of the Hebrew letters attracted her, 
 and she begged her father to teach her the language. 
 By the time she was nineteen she was well versed in it, 
 as well as in German, French, Italian ; and a little later 
 she became a keen reader of Greek. She was not one of 
 those literary scholars who make only for a general 
 impression, for colour more than for form. She was the 
 most careful of students, allowing no detail to be 
 neglected, accurate and reverentially cautious, with a 
 real love for the niceties of learning. 
 
 In this path a great influence was soon brought to bear 
 upon her. When she was thirteen, she came into contact 
 with her father's friend, William Johnson, better known 
 as William Cory, the author of lonica, a poet and scholar 
 of no common order. The Coleridges were spending the 
 summer with him at Halsdon, near Torrington, in 
 Devonshire ; William Cory easily detected the rare 
 gifts in his friend's little daughter, and ^s easily 
 knew how to draw them out. Mary's shyness melted 
 
6 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 before him, and there were morning assignations in the 
 garden, before breakfast, while the birds and flowers were 
 their sole company. To the end she loved cyclamen and 
 irises, because they were favourites of his. Soon he 
 became her guide in reading, in the marshalling of know- 
 ledge, and tlius it was that she formed the friendship 
 which perhaps most coloured her intellectual life — the 
 friendship of which she has left the record now printed 
 among these pages. He had awakened in her a longing 
 to know, which spread itself out in all directions. 
 
 She began studying for herself, she steeped herself in 
 poetry, in history. She was always an ardent partisan. 
 A contemporary of those years remembers an expedition 
 with her and some other girls to Westminster Abbey to 
 see the waxen figures of the kings and queens there. 
 Historical discussion waxed hot. Mary Coleridge was 
 full of Charles i. Impartiality was a crime in her eyes, 
 and there was no more loyal hater of Cromwell than she 
 was. She asked her comrade on which side she stood. 
 ' Neither,' replied the stolid philosopher of fifteen — ' I 
 think there was a bit of truth on both sides."" ' And 
 it made me dislike you for months,' Mary Coleridge said 
 thirty years afterwards. 
 
 The same combatants had another pitched battle over 
 Shelley. At seventeen, Mary could not endure him — at 
 twenty-seven, she adored him. In these earlier days 
 her friend was his votary and talked of nothing but 
 Prometheus Unbound \ but Mary's tender conscience 
 was offended by his lawlessness, her -taste bewildered by 
 his dizzy raptures. Ten years later, the two had changed 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 7 
 
 parts ; the friend indicted hini for selfish idealism — Mary 
 defended him on the plea of his goodness to his kind. 
 
 In those younger years, she not only felt, she began 
 to think. There are three little summaries of different 
 philosophies written by her at sixteen, which show a 
 grasp of mind not common so early in life. Two of 
 them handle Berkeley and Locke ; the third, concerning 
 Descartes, is worth giving. 
 
 ' Cartesian Credo 
 * I believe that it is possible to doubt of everything ; 
 because the evidence of our senses often deceives us (as 
 in sleep, sickness, etc.), but this doubt of my own is the 
 only thing I find doubtless, therefore I conclude that I 
 am a thinking being and that because I think I exist 
 (to doubt being the same as to think). I believe in the 
 immateriality of my soul, because I find that neither 
 place nor any other idea of matter is essential to the 
 thinking part of me ; and I believe in God, firstly, because 
 I find in this thinking part of me a very strong and 
 perfect conception of my Creator ; and secondly, because 
 it is impossible that something should be produced out 
 of nothing, and I have already found that I am a 
 thinking being, therefore that I am something. I 
 believe also that God is good, because I find in myself 
 inclinations to goodness, and happiness in it, which no 
 evil could have produced, and I believe material things 
 are really so, because if God is good it is at least 
 highly improbable that He would continually deceive 
 me, even for my good. I also conclude that it is wrong 
 
8 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 to attempt to define things which can be far more clearly 
 conceived ; to these belong doubt, thought, and existence. 
 'May 6th, 1878.' 
 
 It was no wonder that all her teachers adored her, 
 and, long after school-days, remembered the essays that 
 she wrote for them. Among those she cared most for 
 was Professor Hales, who lectured on English Literature 
 at King's College for Women. He it was who first set 
 her feet in the fields of Elizabethan drama, and sent her 
 to pasture on the brown folios in the libraries of the 
 South Kensington Museum. To him she owed many 
 golden hours, absorbed in Ford and Webster and 
 Massinger. By herself now, also, she plunged into 
 Homer and Euripides. But here she was not long left 
 alone. When she was three and twenty, her old friend, 
 William Cory, became her master. With him, and with 
 some chosen companions, she read Plato and Theocritus, 
 read, and learned with Greek many other things which 
 she herself has chronicled, such things as left an indelible 
 impression on her mind. 
 
 ' I should have been well content to read all my life 
 long,' she wrote of this time in a later diary — 'With 
 such an appetite did I set out that all books resolved 
 themselves for me into one huge volume, and although 
 blindly conscious even then that I should never live to 
 finish it, I was wild to begin it, not as wise people do, 
 here and there, but everywhere that every one had begun 
 it before me. The fruits of the tree -of Knowledge are 
 various ; he must be strong indeed who can digest all 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 9 
 
 of them. I was vainly endeavouring to get my teeth 
 through the sour apple of science, to crack the hard nuts 
 of philosophy, when all that I was really fit for was to 
 gather up the stray blossoms that fell in spring." . . . 
 
 But the sour apple had its uses. The desire for know- 
 ledge gradually built up a solid screen between her and 
 her fears. The distresses of childhood had passed away, 
 and youth had begun. Between fifteen and twenty-five 
 she enjoyed many things, although her dread of society 
 continued. 
 
 ' You would study life to some purpose among all 
 these folks,"' she wrote from Homburg in these early 
 days to a friend ; ' but things interest me more than 
 people . . . and as I no more understand life than I 
 understand arithmetic (indeed it often seems to me 
 very much like twice one is two, which no one has ever 
 yet made clear to me) I run away from it to the old 
 deserted Schloss, with its carved yew-trees and stiff- 
 backed dahlias and sunflowers, and background of soft 
 blue hills and firs and chestnuts. To-night there was 
 a glorious sunset there, and it reminded me of what 
 you said about Nature's gradual changes. Quite true — 
 except as to the moon, and goodness gracious, can't she 
 startle one every now and then, and gleam at one out 
 of boughs in a white passion of rage, just when one 
 least expects it ! I don't feel sure of the sun, but there 
 is not the faintest doubt that that moon was once a 
 woman, she is the most human thing in creation. . . . 
 Haven't you sometimes felt inclined to run away anywhere 
 out of reach of those dreadful eyes, with all the 
 
10 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 expression frozen out of them ? Somebody treated her 
 very badly, depend upon it.' 
 
 There is so much of Mary Coleridge's youth in this 
 extract that it tells more about her than any description, 
 and so do the passages that follow : 
 
 'After all, what do I know of the world? Beyond 
 the fact that I have lived in it twenty-six years — nothing. 
 I have not even learnt its alphabet. Thirteen years at 
 least out of the twenty-six have I lived in books, and 
 yet I understand them not much better. Dorothea's 
 marriage with Ladislaw is as great a mystery to me as 
 the existence of capital punishment. I have not 
 imagination enough to understand fact, nor experience 
 enough to comprehend fiction. Certain moments in my 
 own life or that of others stand out clearly like mountain 
 tops that have caught the sunrise, while the valley below 
 is still in darkness.' 
 
 'L. is here . . . but she wears such beautiful white 
 frocks, and they fit her so exquisitely, that I feel rather 
 afraid of her when we meet before the Cursaal, and read 
 my Jowett's Plato (vol. i.) in a humble background, 
 for fear she should find it out (which she did the very 
 first night).' 
 
 ' It 's rather funny that you and Ella and I should 
 all be at " the Republic " at the same time ; E. wrote 
 ecstatically about it the other day, and she isn't much 
 given to ecstasies by letter. Its •extraordinary modern- 
 ness strikes me, just as it does you. Even Homer and 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 11 
 
 Shakespeare, who are equally " not of an age, but for 
 all time" with Plato, seem to speak from a distance, 
 but one can hardly persuade oneself that Socrates is 
 not in the next room. And no one but Plato gives 
 one in perfection that absolutely delightful sensation 
 of laughing not from amusement, but from sheer happi- 
 ness, just as a child laughs, because it's alive and the 
 sun shines. I wonder if all laughing began so? I 
 suppose it did. Primitive man didn't understand a 
 joke, very likely."' 
 
 ' When I am reading, Conscience comes and says, " You 
 know you ought to be writing. What business have you 
 to enjoy, when you have never worked ? What work but 
 this can you do ? " When I am talking, ditto. When I am 
 dreaming, just the same. The book I mean to write is 
 sometimes big and sometimes little. The only remarkable 
 thing about it is that it never will identify itself with 
 the book I am actually writing at the moment.' 
 
 Somebody said of Mary Coleridge that she was ' like 
 the tail of the comet S.T.C" 'I have no fairy god- 
 mother,' she once wrote, ' but lay claim to a fairy great- 
 great-uncle, which is perhaps the reason that I am 
 condemned to wander restlessly around the Gates of 
 Fairyland, although I have never yet passed them.' 
 All the same, she was well within the magic fence, 
 and the likeness to her great-uncle is no imaginary one. 
 It comes out, perhaps, most in a certain weird quality 
 of her imagination — in the love for the strange and the 
 unearthly — which haunted her from childhood onwards. 
 
12 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 ' Have you ever read Ye legend of ye Mandrake ? I 
 hit on it the other day, and it pleased me mightily. If 
 you want to uproot a mandrake — why you ever should 
 want to uproot it does not appear — you must go to the 
 place where its grows, very early on a Friday morning, 
 taking with you a black dog and having your ears care- 
 fully stopped with cotton wool, so that you cannot hear 
 its deathly shriek during the operation. Then you must 
 dig all round it in a square ; then you must take a piece 
 of string and fasten one end to the mandrake and the 
 other end to the black dog's tail ; then you must run for 
 your life, and the black dog will run after you, dragging 
 the mandrake up along with it. It goes without saying 
 that the black dog dies of the shrieks, but that doesn't 
 matter.' 
 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth might have talked en- 
 thusiastically of the mandrake on some moonlight even- 
 ing at Alfoxden — more seriously than their follower, as a 
 possible subject for a poem, and with Coleridge half 
 believing all the time. His great-niece's love of wizardry 
 remained ; it took shape in her poems years after : in 
 ' Master and Guest,' and in ' The Witch,' and 
 ' Wilderspin.' 
 
 Nearly all her early stories are coloured by this taste, 
 and these stories are many. They were written any- 
 where and anyhow — chiefly on the backs of old copy- 
 books, for economy's sake. Imagination was plentiful in 
 those days and pocket-money was scarce. Rut her real 
 ambition at this date was not to' be a writer, but a 
 painter, and she worked pretty hard at drawing. Her 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 13 
 
 delicate, accurate water-colour sketches remain to record 
 her talent. Like all else, they are the expression of her- 
 self, more real in this way than as works of art. But no 
 one who saw pictures with her could doubt that an artist 
 was looking, with an artisfs power of enjoyment. All 
 her life she had a passion for painting and for talking it 
 over. Yet it was not her true medium ; literature was, 
 and she found it out. 
 
 She lived at the hour that suited her. ' Bliss was it in 
 that dawTi to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.' 
 Perhaps most people could say that of their youth, but 
 for her it was peculiarly true. The late seventies and 
 early eighties were a generous time for the young. 
 Smart criticism and epigrammatic humour had not yet 
 come into fashion ; hero-worship was the virtue in vogue, 
 and there still were gods to worship. It was the day of 
 the power of Browning and Tennyson, of Carlyle and 
 Ruskin and George Eliot. Big ideas were moving, fit 
 to kindle the spirit of youth. The once derided Pre- 
 Raphaelites had become a recognised influence. Watts 
 was a reigning force in art. William Morris was inspir- 
 ing social reforms — a poet's attractive reforms. Furniture, 
 wall-papers, even dress became part of the general 
 ferment. Toynbee Hall was a new venture, and the idea 
 that science was poetic, and that natural law was recon- 
 cileable with supernatural power was not as yet the axiom 
 of many pulpits. The rising generation of those days 
 was too busy entering doors to stop and knock at them. 
 Its children may have been extravagant, but they gave 
 themselves, and had no morbid fear of being absurd. 
 
14 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 Into all this life and movement Mary Coleridge threw 
 herself. She did so in the company of congenial com- 
 rades. They all acknowledged the same gods, and yet 
 their discussions were endless. 
 
 Foremost in their talk came the name of Robert 
 Browning. The rest envied Mary, because he went 
 to her parents' house, although she was too shy to 
 speak to him. To the end he was the poet who came 
 first with her. Not that she excluded Tennyson, whose 
 beauty she felt to the full — felt and worshipped. But 
 Browning was an influence in her life ; his conceptions of 
 love and death, of faith and unfaith, his conviction that 
 to miss good was worse than to do evil, all this expressed 
 for her her inmost beliefs. Her notes, delicately written 
 on the margin of the volume, make an excellent com- 
 mentary on Sordello ; and in her copy of Pauline she 
 has given at the sides of the pages every different 
 version of the lines, collected with infinite trouble in the 
 Library of the British Museum. Paracelsus^ the Drama- 
 tic Lyrics, Men and Women, the plays, she knew from 
 cover to cover. They warmed her with their fire. 
 
 And then there were the Pre-Raphaelites. Mary was 
 always their fervent votary. When the Fine Arts first 
 exhibited Mr. Graham's collection of Rossettis, her 
 excitement was intense. Four of that little band of 
 girls still remember the stories they wrote in competi- 
 tion upon the picture, ' How they met Themselves,' and 
 how Mary's eerie tale held them spell-bound. They 
 remember, too, how at other seasons it was the stage 
 that filled their minds — and for them the stage of 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 15 
 
 those years meant the Lyceum, meant Irving and Ellen 
 Terry. 
 
 This was no bad thing for a Shakespeare scholar like 
 Mary, and the papers she wrote then upon the drama 
 show that her powers of criticism became quickened. 
 They were among the first things she published, and 
 came out under a noni de plume, in a magazine called 
 The Theatre. 
 
 Her days were full. Friendship and literature made 
 her happy, friendship at this moment, in particular, for 
 others of her companions pursued art, and one of them 
 had also begun to write. To Mary, her friends' doings 
 were a romance ; no one believed in them as she did. In 
 them she lived vicariously. Through them she gained 
 experience, and she enlarged it by her own imagination. 
 Thus existence was idealised for her, although it was not 
 always serene. Like other poets, slie continued to have 
 many moods. The sense of beauty which gave her so 
 much joy on good days, was her torment on bad ones. 
 
 ' It 's a dreary day,' she wrote from Broadstairs, ' and 
 I'm self-discontented. When F. is self-discontented, she 
 thinks of Charlotte Bronte, and says sternly to herself, 
 " You fool ! " But I don't derive much satisfaction from 
 that form of rebuke. The sea is no colour, the sky is no 
 colour, the houses are uglier than no colour. I have 
 reduced all my possible courses of action in the future 
 to four, and whichever I elect to follow, I am quite sure 
 that the three others immediately seem to be preferable. 
 What a mockery is Free Will under such circumstances ! 
 I declare I very nearly wish I had a governess.' . . , 
 
16 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 And yet if that day a gleam had shone upon the 
 waters, or if she could have found a green field to sit in, 
 her mood would have changed. She was as changeful as 
 the sea she so adored. No one was more affected by 
 Nature, The wind lashed her, the sunset calmed her, the 
 snow excited her, to the hills she looked for help. She 
 did not wish to ' receive but what she gave ' ; she liked 
 Nature to be a power outside her, infusing into her the 
 joy, the peace, that she did not always possess. She 
 never felt that power more than in Northumberland. 
 Northumberland haunted her : she loved its stern moods, 
 its summer richness, its Border sights, its strong romance. 
 In the house of her dear Quaker friends, the Hodgkins, 
 where she stayed every year from this time forwards, she 
 learned her Northumberland in the best way. For Dr. 
 Hodgkin, the historian, was her guide, and he made even 
 wayside stones alive with old story. The sea-girt castle 
 of Bamborough, so. long the Hodgkins' home, seemed 
 made for her. She delighted to sleep in her turret 
 chamber there, or to pass, as she once did, a memorable 
 night on its tower, watching the moon set and the sun 
 rise over the wide sea. She had other Northumbrian 
 friends, to whom she paid yearly visits. Those to the 
 family of Sir Andrew Noble provided her with some of 
 her best memories, most of all when they lived at Chill- 
 ingham, another home of her dreams. 
 
 Strike, Life, a happy hour, and let me live 
 
 But in that grace ! ^ 
 I shall have gathered all the world can give. 
 
 Unending Time and Space. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 17 
 
 Bright light and air — the thin and shining air 
 
 Of the North land. 
 The light that falls on tower and garden there, 
 
 Close to the gold sea-sand. 
 
 So begins the second of the three poems that she called 
 'Chillingham."' 
 
 But her visits there were in later years. 
 
 She was only twenty-two when sorrow came to her. 
 The aunt died who shared her home, who had been 
 her friend and her counsellor. And the first contact with 
 death — the first shock to the permanence of things — is 
 like none other. It was bound to change her sensitive 
 being, to alter her outlook. And it did so in a strange 
 way. To most young people Death comes as the King of 
 shadows. To her, a dreamer of dreams, Death intensi- 
 fied reality — it made life more concrete, even while it 
 made it more painful. And the next few years were 
 filled with family troubles which left their mark upon her 
 spirit. They were years that went to the making of 
 many of her poems. 
 
 Not long after this, Mary Coleridge first read 
 Tolstoy, and there began for her a struggle which 
 lasted her lifetime. It concerned her attitude towards 
 the poor, which was like that of no one else. She 
 was not born to work among them. There was no 
 touch of Dinah Morris about her, still less of the 
 organised worker. But the thought of the poor seldom 
 left her. She was penetrated by the Christian ideal, the 
 conception of true equality, born of love. It was part of 
 her deepest being; it was part of her familv heritage. 
 
18 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 Most believers in Ciiristian ideals are over-apt to substi- 
 tute a kind of tender patronage for the brotherhood once 
 preached in Judaea. Mary Coleridge, more humble and 
 more candid, saw things in a different light. She took 
 for granted that men should stand on one spiritual level ; 
 that the existence of a soul, alike in beggar, philosopher, 
 and king, was the brevet of equality appointed by the 
 King of kings to carry an authority annulling all distinc- 
 tions. Without this equality in notions of truth and 
 honour, she found real intercourse impossible. Philan- 
 thropic institutions, however splendid, left her cold and 
 uninterested. They allowed no room for the play of 
 personality, without which she felt depressed and in- 
 effectual. When she began to work among the poor, it 
 was this kind of friendship she was seeking. It was long 
 before she gave up the search. Here and there she 
 found exceptions ; but she was duped and disappointed 
 times out of number, and each time seemed to her a 
 mere accident. And it was a profound disappointment 
 when at last it dawned upon her that her hope could not 
 be realised — that the obstacle to true equality lay, not 
 only in the rich, but in the poor themselves. She saw 
 things as they were, unblinded by the philanthropic 
 exaltation which idealises sin and suffering ; unconsoled 
 by the formulae with which modern science explains away 
 evil. Ugliness and coarseness repelled her ; she shrank 
 from the contact of vice. It was not that she did not 
 see the virtues of poverty; she could be profoundly 
 moved by the meekness, and the kindness, and the 
 courage that she sometimes witnessed — by ' the quiet. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 19 
 
 unconscious majesty of their endurance,"' to use words of 
 her own. But she had learnt her lesson. The poor, she 
 now felt, could not be her brothers as she meant them 
 to be. 
 
 We are uot near enough to love^ 
 
 I can but pity all your woe ; 
 For wealth has lifted me above, 
 
 And falsehood set you down below. 
 
 If you were true, we still might be 
 
 Brothers in something more than name ; 
 
 And were I poor, your love to me 
 
 Would make our differing bonds the same. 
 
 Love never comes but at love's call. 
 
 And pity asks for him in vain ; 
 Because I cannot give you all, 
 
 You give me nothing back again. 
 
 And you are right with all your wrong. 
 
 For less than all is nothing too ; 
 May Heaven beggar me ere long, 
 
 And Truth reveal herself to you. 
 
 So she wrote later in life. The gulf was always there 
 for her, but she believed that others than herself might 
 bridge it over. It was Tolstoy, the Tolstoy of the 
 Parables, who, in these older days, taught her how, and 
 made her see with his eyes. He showed lier that wrong 
 would never grow right till we practised the gospel 
 precepts literally, and began to try and lead the divine 
 life of love for all. It was the idea of larger love which 
 attracted her, for love was the one authority she always 
 acknowledged as supreme. Duty forbade her to leave 
 home, so that the problems of living among the poor 
 
20 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 were spared her. But for a long time she doubted 
 whether she ought to write, instead of giving her time 
 to working in some more active way for her kind — 
 doubted and suffered in the process. Then she decided 
 it in her own way. 
 
 ' Tolstoy is a short cut, and I don't like short cuts to 
 goodness,' said a friend in discussing the matter. ' That 
 is not what keeps me,"* answered Mary ; ' I feel that 
 Tolstoy is right, but that very few people are strong 
 enough to lead the perfect life ; I know that / am too 
 weak, I could not live like that. But it is my own weak- 
 ness which holds me ; it is no fault of Tolstoy's."* 
 
 This ' call ' to a wider Christianity was the only kind 
 of ' call ' that really appealed to her. For ' vocations,' 
 cloistral or otherwise, that meant separation from human 
 affection, she felt a kind of dismayed respect, but she did 
 not understand them. She often thought them wrong. 
 
 ' It grieves me very much to feel that you feel that you 
 are taking a lower path in coming back. Our Lord did 
 not tell every one to go and evangelise. He did not tell 
 Lazarus to, for instance, nor any of that family ; nor 
 does He seem to have made it the theme of many of his 
 discourses, except to the disciples. It will seem to me 
 that He wants us to do what He gave us the power to 
 do — not things that are against nature. I know you 
 think that nature ought not to count — that faith should 
 be everything — and that everything can be done by 
 faith. And I see this side of it also. So that I feel 
 most deeply for you about it. Oiily I think Love is a 
 safe guide, and that, God being Love, we may always 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 21 
 
 yield to love without going wrong. It seems to me 
 that you are yielding to love.' 
 
 Thus she wrote to one she cared for, who wished to be 
 a missionary, but was prevented. The words represented 
 her creed. Later, she went further towards a solution. 
 She always showed a genius for teaching, had from 
 earliest days taught needy pupils ; and now she found in 
 this pursuit a means of sincere intercourse with those 
 below her. She sought out the working-girls who wished 
 to learn, and their wish created an equality. For years 
 she had a class at home ; from 1895 onwards she taught 
 at the Working Women's College. Of her lessons and 
 her influence in that place there will be cause to speak 
 hereafter. 
 
 The disregard of her literary work, compared with any 
 kind of service to her fellows, only increased a natural 
 inclination. She could not take her writing seriously. 
 She was too humorous and too humble to do so. ' I 
 shall always go on writing, because it amuses me so,' was 
 the conclusion of her moral questionings, when debating 
 her right to make books at all. She would write in odd 
 corners, in odd postures, at odd moments — anyhow, so as 
 to escape detection. She would allow every one to 
 interrupt her. Any bore in human form who made a 
 claim upon her seemed to her more important than what 
 she was about. Indeed, to those who knew that her art 
 would have profited by more respectful treatment, her 
 self-neglect was often provoking. And, apart from this, 
 Nature had handicapped her in her character of author. 
 She suffered from a constitutional secretiveness about her 
 
22 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 work wl)ich made her, the most truthful of beings, have 
 recourse to innocent fibs, to any subterfuge, rather than 
 reveal what she was writing — even to those who were 
 nearest to her. Coleridge, we are told, used suddenly to 
 hide himself in London for weeks together from his 
 family. His great-niece had the same need for conceal- 
 ment. A question about her books would make her 
 miserable — in early days to the point of tears. And 
 although success helped her to be less nervous, it did not 
 do away with this strange habit. To the last she dis- 
 liked allusion to her books, and could hardly answer 
 questions about them. This was in personal intercourse. 
 As soon as she was alone with pen and paper, and could 
 not see the person she was addressing, she did not much 
 mind what she said. She was capable of the most 
 surprising boldness by letter, and of nonplussing self- 
 betrayals to the public. She could even write to authors 
 unknown to her such praises as would have killed her to 
 pronounce. They were, so to speak, confidences to the 
 pillar-post, and once they were in that receptacle, she did 
 not care. 
 
 Self-confidence, however, grew with success, and it was 
 not long before success came. But it did not follow upon 
 her first published novel. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, 
 which appeared in 1893. The book, a reckless fantasia, 
 the record of seven young men"'s adventures, was too wild 
 an attempt to take with the public, and was more or less 
 of a failure — a failure crowned by one laurel, the praise 
 of Stevenson. And the laurel remained green when the 
 failure had faded from her memory. She printed nothing 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 23 
 
 again until 1896. In 1895, the poet, Robert Bridges, 
 was staying in the house of a relation who was also a 
 friend of Mary Coleridge. He happened to pick up 
 from the table a little volume of manuscript verse that 
 was lying there, to glance at it, to find himself arrested. 
 The poems, he said, must see the light ; he wanted to 
 know who had written them. This was his introduction 
 to their author, the beginning of a friendship which 
 became one of the chief refreshments of her life. And 
 her visits to him and his family, at Yattenden first, then 
 near Oxford, were among the events she loved to dwell 
 upon. She was an ardent admirer of Bridges'' work ; 
 she could hardly believe that he cared for anything of 
 hers. Perhaps he alone could have persuaded this hider 
 of her talents to give her poems, the record of years, in 
 any form to the public. He did so, and they proceeded 
 to enjoy much intercourse over the manuscript. From 
 him she received criticism and technical training such as 
 she had not had before, and the result was the slender 
 grey paper book, Fancy's Following, by ' Anodos,' 
 printed by the Daniel Press, and possessed by compara- 
 tively few, but precious to those who do possess it. She 
 explains the source of her pseudonym in the pages of an 
 old diary, while speaking of her resolve to keep a 
 journal. 
 
 'For the piece, it shall be just my daily life, the life 
 behind the scenes, and the audience shall sit at the 
 back, and for the Dramatis Personae I will myself 
 represent them, for of what other do I know anything.? 
 and lest this / should grow troublesome and impor- 
 
24 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 tunate, I will christen myself over again, make George 
 Macdonald my godfather, and name myself after my 
 favourite hero, Anodos in Phantasies. ... If Anodos 
 dies or gets married, the work will be discontinued ; 
 no one writes diaries in Paradise. If not, vogue la 
 galere.'' 
 
 But if she were on no road, as the name she chose 
 suggests, it was because she had stepped aside into the 
 pathless meadows of poesy. None who know such 
 haunts can miss the real poet's note of her verse — the 
 fresh sincerity of her inspiration — the often gem-like 
 choice of her words — and the subtle, quiet music of her 
 metres, usually simple ones, but beautiful in their 
 delicate interlacings. 
 
 Fancy's Following^ and its successor, Fancy's Guerdon^ 
 brought her appreciation from those whose opinion she 
 valued. And among them was another poet besides 
 Bridges, with whom she had sometime since formed a 
 friendship. This was Canon Dixon, the friend of the 
 Pre-Raphaelites, the lyrical mystic, about whom Mary 
 wrote one of her most charming essays. ' The Hermit of 
 Warkworth,' in Non Sequitur. With him she also 
 corresponded, chiefly on poetic matters. 
 
 It is interesting that she learned to know both these 
 poets mainly through correspondence. She had made 
 acquaintance with them on her own merits, and that 
 created an equality which did away with her shyness. 
 
 ' Fancy's Guerdon contained several of the poems in Fancy^s 
 Following, besides a good many new ones. It was published by Elkin 
 Matthews. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 25 
 
 Whereas with such great men as Browning and Tennyson, 
 who saw in her but her father's daughter, she formed no 
 personal relation. Vivid and detailed are her descriptions 
 of Tennyson's talk and of his reading, to which she had 
 the chance of listening on many visits to Farringford, 
 but there she was too timid to reveal herself — she 
 remained an unobserved spectator. 
 
 Her poems were followed, in 1897, by her historical 
 romance, The K'lTig with Two Faces^ which had 
 immediate success and suddenly brought her reputation. 
 She herself told a friend in India the story of how it 
 came to be written, and the account is worth quoting, 
 because it gives a notion of the odd quality of her 
 creativeness. 
 
 ' About four years ago, one night when all the rest 
 had gone to bed, the first chapter came into my head, 
 and I scribbled it down, only putting letters for the 
 different men, because I couldn't be bothered to find 
 names. Why they were there — for whom they were 
 waiting — what they wanted to kill him for — I couldn't 
 imagine. It bothered me dreadfully. When I'd written 
 about a page and a half, I stopped, but it almost made 
 me feel ill to know that I coiddnt go on. I should think 
 a kettle might feel like that, if it wanted to boil 
 and couldn't. However, it was no use ; so I put it aside. 
 Some time afterwards I came on the story of Ribbing in 
 the memoirs of Alexandre Dumas, pere, who was the 
 bosom friend of his son, and all at once it flashed across 
 me that this was the man. So I went on, and showed 
 the beginning to two people who didn't care for it, and 
 
26 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 to three people who did, and the three people who did 
 were very encouraging and pulled it through somehow. 
 . . . When I had done nearly half, a new Life of 
 Gustav III. came out, and I had to make any number of 
 alterations. ... At last it got itself finished, and the 
 committee struck out two purely historical chapters at 
 the end (most interesting I thought they were — they 
 were all by the best authorities).' 
 
 Her first chapters were genei-ally conceived in tliis 
 manner, and a distinguished writer once said of her 
 that if a volume were made of her ' Beginnings "" she 
 would rank as a genius of the first order. But her 
 creativeness was incomplete. It almost seemed as if she 
 had not enough talent to support and sustain her genius. 
 Yet that her imagination rang true there was striking 
 proof. The novel was read by the Swedish Minister, 
 whose wife was a descendant of the heroine ; and he was 
 startled to find in the account of her, an incident con- 
 cerning her affairs which, as he thought, was known to 
 none — was, indeed, only discoverable in certain private 
 family papers. He had underrated the power of 
 creative insight, and the author was enchanted. 
 
 The King was succeeded, in 1899, by The Fiery 
 Dawn; and, in 1900, came her volume of Essays, Non 
 Sequitur — to some the prose work of hers they love the 
 best. Nineteen hundred and five brought The Shadow 
 on the Wall, an early story revived, and printed to get 
 money for her poor; and, in 1906, she gave us the 
 maturest of her novels, The Lady on the Draxving-room 
 Floor, a fascinating gossamer web of fact and fancy, of 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 27 
 
 human insight and poetic oversight, of graceful drollery 
 and shadowy melancholy. And in the final year of her 
 life she was busy over a mediaeval romance, which 
 remained unfinished on her writing table, together with 
 the last completed pages of a short life of Holman Hunt 
 — the modem painter who, perhaps, most kindled her 
 enthusiasm — written at his own request for a series of 
 Artists' Biographies. 
 
 But the work by which her name will live, the per- 
 fected collection of her poems (two hundred and twenty- 
 seven of them, including the original forty-five), did not 
 appear till after her death. They were found in note- 
 books and in letters, in odd corners here, there, and 
 everywhere — these revelations of her innermost life ; 
 now deep and still, like the reflections in a pool, with 
 here and there a trembling when the winds of thought 
 swept over her ; now more like a meteoric flash, quick, 
 brilliant, lost in mist, before those who looked had 
 grasped its presence. 
 
 Of her prose it is harder to speak. Her novels were 
 the novels of a poet, and this was her weakness and her 
 strength. In her writing she showed the same wilful 
 love of mystification that she showed in her life. Will- 
 o'-the-wisp-like, she would lead her reader the unkindest 
 and crookedest of dances ; anywhere to avoid walking 
 straight. This perversity, added to a natural inability 
 to construct, often made her stories obscure, and the 
 plots very hard to follow. And then she had an almost 
 paradoxical conviction of the fictitiousness of fact. 
 ' Unreality attracts certain minds, as money attracts the 
 
28 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 miser, rank the base-born, heroic death the young. The 
 unreal denizens of that world are to some people dearer 
 than flesh and blood. Not to all. " So natural, so real," 
 say the people who live in world No. 1, when they read 
 story-books; but they speak falsely. Life is not a 
 story-book, or no stories need ever be written. . . . 
 There is nothing so inconsistent, so inartistic as reality. 
 Humorous it may be and pathetic — more humorous and 
 more pathetic than any story that was ever written — 
 but quite without that strange power of pleasing, and 
 satisfying, which is the property of things and people 
 that never were." These words of hers are the keynote 
 of her writing. They represent her constant conviction. 
 But since she handled common things and human beings, 
 it often led her astray ; and criticism which would be 
 unfair if she had only dealt in irresponsible fancy, is 
 sometimes justified by her airy treatment of the real. 
 On the other hand, the glamour of romance, the atmo- 
 sphere of gallant paradox, the challenge from the Unseen 
 to the seen, lend a charm, all their own, to her pages. 
 Whether or no she could draw a man, whether or no her 
 women live, life lives in her books — life, as she saw it, with 
 the eyes of her pure quixotic spirit, by the light of her 
 gay and nimble wit. And over every volume she wrote 
 are scattered sayings, beautiful and helpful, words that 
 enlighten and suggest, thoughts, impressions, that haunt 
 us by their unconscious daring. 
 
 It was a surprise, and a happy one, that Mary 
 Coleridge enjoyed her success, although she did not 
 enjoy allusions to it. Her shy manners melted before 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 29 
 
 it. She no longer came into a room apologetically — her 
 presence gained a certain repose. And she began to 
 like accepting invitations. 
 
 ' I \e become very conceited,' she wrote ; ' E. is not so 
 conceited as I am, though she has been to see the 
 descendants of her book, and they all . . . put on 
 grand silk blouses in her honour. . . . She has never 
 got over the fact that she bicycled down to them and 
 appeared in a humble bicycling skirt. Now I appeared 
 to mine robed in green and gold, with a Gainsborough 
 hat.' It was, indeed, the best result of her growing 
 reputation that her work put her into touch with the 
 many minds to whom it appealed. It made friends for 
 her outside her immediate circle, less distinguished than 
 Bridges and Dixon, but stimulating to her intellect. 
 Some were interesting, others were not, but often Mary 
 did not know the difference. At all times of her life 
 she had an unaccountable faculty for finding the dull 
 and dowdy delightful, and full of strange attractions. 
 Nor was this due to any Christian motive, but only to 
 her power of falling in love — and falling in love faith- 
 fully. You could never tell whom Mary would like, 
 or whom she would dislike, and as for the reasons of 
 her feelings, they baffled herself as much as others. 
 Her tastes and prejudices flowed in a whimsical channel, 
 which seemed to lie quite apart from the rest of her 
 gentle nature. If asked why she expressed antipathy or 
 sympathy, she would only reiterate her verdict, she 
 could not explain it. And sometimes it was not the 
 dull people, but the frivolous, whom she liked incon- 
 
30 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 sistently. Charming manners often had to do with 
 it. They seldom failed to conquer her. Even with 
 characters in books it was the same, and in youth, when 
 she was reading WWielm Meister, her favourite woman 
 was Philine, the light and feather-brained little actress ; 
 she could not endure the Schmie Seele^ with all her 
 noble aspirations. 
 
 There was, it is true, one kind of person she almost 
 invariably liked. It was dangerous to bring her within 
 earshot of an egoist, for egoists always captivated her. 
 She never found them out, and she thought them the 
 most fascinating beings. The more they made use of 
 her, the more fascinating she thought them. It was 
 partly because she was selfless and enjoyed devotion to 
 others. But it was also because she worshipped vitality 
 and a strong consciousness, the forces she longed for and 
 missed in herself; forces which egoists possess, even 
 although they may only lie in a strong consciousness of 
 self. Mary Coleridge often wore herself out in the 
 service of amiable despots, doing things for them that 
 any drudge could have done as well, and thinking all 
 the time what exceptional beings they were. 
 
 But to old friends and to new alike, what a friend 
 she was ! Those who had her friendship knew well that 
 there was nothing like it. In a way that was hers alone, 
 she lived the life of the heart. Her friends'' existences 
 were hers. She did not share their joys and sorrows — she 
 identified herself with them ; so much so, that she hardly 
 distinguished them from her own, and thus, unknown to 
 herself, they went on furnishing her with the experiences 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 31 
 
 she lacked. Some, indeed, of her poems that seem the 
 most intimately personal give a false impression of 
 wishes and sufferings she never had. They are inspired 
 by what happened to those she loved — by feelings and 
 episodes sometimes serious, sometimes transient, but 
 intensified by her imagination. It was always the 
 imagination of the heart, not the head. She had no 
 curiosity, only sympathy. To have a success shared by 
 I\Iary Coleridge was a revelation of generosity. Any 
 triumph of those she cared for intoxicated her — there is 
 no other word ; the embarrassment she felt when she 
 herself was praised was compensated for by her delight 
 in the praise she heard of others. And as with their 
 happiness, so with their grief. She was a lyre over 
 whose responsive strings every emotion swept, making 
 music. The letters that she wrote to those in sorrow are 
 among the few that say the unsayable. She could not 
 be conventional ; she never tried to comfort ; she knew 
 that what is called ' getting over ' a loss is the worst 
 part of it. She feared to handle the unseen, and shrank 
 from the glibness of religious commonplace. But all her 
 words were transfused by a light from within that was 
 kindled by faith in God. 
 
 About the little chambers of my heart 
 
 Friends have been coming — going — many a year. 
 
 The door stands open there. 
 Some, lightly stepping, enter ; some depart. 
 
 Her own lines best describe her friendships. 
 
 One secret of her power was that to each inmate of 
 
32 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 those chambers she gave such a devotion that it seemed 
 as if he were her only friend. ' There 's nobody to say 
 just the things you say ; there's nobody to whom I say 
 just what I say to you. One bit of my heart is all dried 
 up "* — so she wrote to a friend who was abroad, but she 
 might have used the words to any one absent member of 
 her spacious commonwealth. 
 
 As she grew older, there were many young people who 
 ' lightly stepped '' in and out, with the confidences and 
 merriment of youth : maidens whom she taught, and, 
 towards the end, young men who came to her for literary 
 criticism, for sympathy of all sorts. They filled her life 
 with fresh interest. ' I could not do without new friend- 
 ships — they refresh me,*" she said two months before she 
 died. And then there were the children she loved. 
 She had a profound reverence for childhood, and it 
 sometimes made her shy of them, till they, in turn, were 
 shy of her. But when her diflSdence vanished, there was 
 no one they loved better ; and those whom she enchanted 
 by her stories, or those rarer and more favoured ones 
 whom she took with her to see pictures and statues and 
 to listen to her wonder-tales about them, are not likely 
 to forget what she told them, or to lose her image from 
 their hearts. 
 
 So she lived, surrounded by those she loved. Yet it 
 must not be supposed that she was constantly dependent 
 upon companionship. She could not get on without 
 solitude. ' It has been wonderful ; solitude is so ex- 
 citing,'' was her comment on a long time of loneliness 
 which her friends had dreaded for her. Her quickened 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 33 
 
 imagination had possessed her ; thronging fancies had 
 been her guests. 
 
 As to her relations to books, they were much like her 
 relations to people. To books she gave the same kind 
 of criticism — wayward, enthusiastic, unreasoned. She 
 seldom went back upon a judgment, because it was 
 based upon something instinctive, stronger than herself, 
 which made her unconvertible. She was fond, as has 
 been seen, of powerful or strange effects in literature, and 
 was surprisingly a modern in her likings. In life, she 
 shrank from violence — in art it often gave her pleasure. 
 She welcomed Renoir and Monet with delight, and found 
 in them nothing that puzzled her. And she hailed Ibsen 
 in a day when very few acknowledged him. These 
 advanced tastes of hers stood out in unexpected contrast 
 to the almost old-fashioned modesty and self-restraint of 
 her character — in contrast, also, to her admiration for 
 the Pre-Raphaelites. But she was always many-sided, 
 and, in her, the love for one kind of art did not preclude 
 an equal love for another. Her modernness did not inter- 
 fere with her classicism, but she had a great mistrust of 
 any grooves and of any academic shibboleth. Yet, 
 catholic though she was, you could never wholly count 
 upon her. You might bring her a poem that you would 
 have sworn she would care for, you might enjoy the 
 prospect of sharing it with her and then be met by a 
 disappointing blank. She was probably put oft' by some 
 heaviness, or off'ended by some detail ; for it was another 
 of her peculiarities that detail often struck her first, 
 sometimes to the injury of main outlines. 'I always 
 c 
 
34 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 remember kittens and balls of worsted instead of the big 
 things/ she wrote — ' It is a terrible mistake to be born 
 with such a capacity for seeing details that you never 
 see anything else. And even the details generally belong 
 to something I don't think they belong to.' All these 
 qualities made her a stimulating, but not a safe literary 
 counsellor. The reviews that she wrote for the Montlily 
 Review and Guardian^ and, from 1902 onwards, for 
 the Times Literary Supplement^ are always charming 
 bits of herself and sometimes good pieces of criticism. 
 But unequal though she was as a reviewer, she never 
 failed to be a fine and sane j udge of all that was really 
 great, of all that was really petty. And when set on 
 some special task, such as advising a fellow-writer, her 
 pronouncements gave new light and lent fresh impulse. 
 For herself, she avoided criticism, because she knew how 
 impossible it was, however she might wish it, to alter 
 what she had written — at least as far as her stories were 
 concerned. In verbal matters, and in poetry, she could 
 sometimes change, and she would do so, when she could, 
 with the best will in the world, although she knew very 
 well how to hold her own, with a breezy power of 
 resistance. And no one was stricter or more con- 
 scientious with herself. She corrected and re-corrected 
 and re-wrote, with a scrupulous perseverance. 
 
 Music was the taste that developed last in her. Her 
 love for it was growing when she died. She always 
 cared for opera, and it was characteristic of her that 
 she early became spell-bound by Wagner. But here the 
 poetry counted, perhaps, for more than the music. Her 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 35 
 
 sister's playing first revealed Beethoven to her — late in 
 the day — and, after him, Brahms. And gradually music 
 expressed for her things that nothing else could express. 
 
 Voice of the stars wlien earth arose from sleep, 
 And Light, the Eldest Child of God, was horn 
 
 And flashed his beams across the shining deep. 
 Voice of the Angels, ere the ruddy morn 
 
 Had clomb the Palestinian mountains steep. 
 
 While drowsy shepherds watched beside their sheep. 
 
 These lines are called ' Music ' in her note-book. 
 
 One of the pleasures that she most enjoyed, but 
 seldom indulged in, was travel. In her youth she went 
 yearly to Germany, and Germany, the land of fairy-tale, 
 was well suited to her fancy. But, as with most poets, 
 it was Italy that possessed her. She was never in Rome, 
 but once she went to Florence and Perugia, and once 
 she saw Venice. She was with her great friends, the 
 Fuller-Maitlands, and that holiday worked magic in her 
 imagination. 
 
 For the rest, she shall speak for herself, in two letters 
 from abroad. The first is written in 1893 from Perugia. 
 
 ' I am off my head with happiness. I feel as if I 'd 
 come not to a Fatherland but to a Motherland that 
 I had always longed for and never known. How I am 
 ever to leave it I don't know. How I am ever to be 
 happy anywhere else I can't think. " Here will I dwell, 
 for I have a delight therein." . . . We went to Assisi 
 yesterday. . . . The little black Delia Robbia of St. 
 Francis, its dim eyes gazing out of the darkness where 
 the darkness of death fell upon him, struck me more 
 
36 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 than anything else ; if I had had five minutes alone 
 there, my own eyes would have spoken to his in tears. 
 The white Nativity on the other side of the church 
 fills the very name of Santa Maria degli Angeli with 
 light. Heavenly joy and divine sorrow, that is indeed 
 a House of God which holds them both. Of the pictures 
 here, I love best the stiff Bonfigli Pieta. ... I am also 
 deeply attached to the jam-tart angel, and to two of 
 Caporali's, and to a charming ox with his paws curled 
 round St. Luke's Gospel. ... I stood on the steps (of 
 the Cathedral) this morning and tried to fancy Fra 
 Bernardino preaching from that little open pulpit and all 
 the excited people crying in the Piazza. One seems to 
 have travelled far away not only in space but in time. 
 It would surprise me much less to meet Benedict xi. 
 round the corner than it would to see Oscar Wilde.' 
 
 The second letter came from the Romischer Kaiser, 
 at Freiburg im Breisgau. 
 
 ' This is the dearest, queerest little city. Whenever 
 any one dies or gets married they build a little pink 
 tower and as likely as not, they roof it with bright green 
 tiles. The troops are always manoeuvring, the Grand 
 Duke is always having a birthday, or the Patron Saint 
 a Festival. The streets bubble and splash with running 
 streams and fountains — the lovely Cathedral broods on 
 its nest of gabled houses like a great bird — in the stuffy 
 but charming theatre Tannhiiuser and Wilhelm Tell 
 are crowned with wreaths of German asters. The priests 
 are very nice indeed and wear neat violet sashes. This 
 house was built in 1408. All sorts of emperors, Roman 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 37 
 
 and otherwise, appear to have stayed in it. If they get 
 such excellent Windbeutel as we do, I 'm sure I don't 
 wonder.' 
 
 Three years before this letter was written, the 
 Coleridges"' close family circle was broken up. In 1898 
 Mary's mother died, leaving her more than ever the 
 companion of the father she so adored. She, he, and 
 her sister formed an indivisible trio. No one ever dared 
 to think of them apart. But outside the well-loved 
 home Mary had suffered painful losses. Many of her 
 friends were older by a generation than herself, and one 
 by one they had passed away. Then, within her own 
 household, came the dangerous illness of her sister, and 
 again she was face to face with death. The blow did 
 not fall and her dearest was spared to her, but the deep 
 distress of the suspense left its ineffaceable traces. All 
 these things made her think even more constantly about 
 the subjects that had always haunted her — about the 
 mystery of dying and the hidden problems beyond death. 
 Her poems show us how omnipresent such thoughts 
 became with her. ' This world grows more and more 
 shadowy, and the other world more real as I grow older,' 
 she said to a friend not long before she died ; and when 
 cares thickened round her it sometimes seemed as if she 
 could no longer bear the strain of mortality except by 
 flight into the world of the imagination. A spiritual 
 imagination — and one which is better described by that 
 attribute than by the word religious. For thougli Mary 
 Coleridge was religious, and deeply so, no four walls 
 
38 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 could contain her faith. It was diffused throughout her 
 being — her work, her play, her tears, her laughter. She 
 was imbued with a mystical sense of the divine in human 
 life, and although a beautiful service appealed to her in 
 church, more than all in a cathedral, she disliked any 
 ritual in daily existence, any set times even for devotion, 
 any hard and fast rule for conduct — and most when 
 such rules interfered with natural habits and affections. 
 ' Don't you find the Life of Pascal very depressing ? ' 
 she wrote, 'Saints who object to their sisters kissing 
 them puzzle me more than a murder." But the more 
 she disregarded formulas, the more deeply did she care 
 for the truth behind them. Born into the Church of 
 England, she remained in it; she was loyal to its 
 traditions, and loved, as she said, to kneel where her 
 forefathers had knelt. But as she grew older, faith 
 seemed to her larger than any set of beliefs ; the life of 
 Christ more vital than Christianity. 
 
 ' I went . . . this morning to hear the Bishop,' runs a 
 letter, 'and at the end of nearly two hours of him, 
 felt how much better the time would have been employed 
 readino- to an old woman in Yeoman's Row or looking 
 at pictures in the National Gallery. . . . All the de- 
 testableness of modern words cannot spoil the Gospel. 
 I took to that when the Bishop failed this morning, 
 and wondered how people can love things about it 
 better than the thing itself.' 
 
 The last words are characteristic. She was hardly 
 ever severe, but she was so towards those who put a 
 strained interpretation on central facts and thus stretched 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 39 
 
 the bounds of orthodoxy. Herself a Christian, she had 
 a fellow-feeling for heresies and heterodoxies, so long 
 as they were straiglitforward. But the assumption of 
 figurative meanings in the place of simple truths, the 
 evasion of facts in religion by means of high-flown fancy, 
 seemed quibbling in her eyes, and the glib envisagement 
 of faith which they encouraged more false than either 
 the rigours of dogmatism, or the arid ethics of Herbert 
 Spencer. 
 
 For Mary Coleridge had known doubts. She had 
 suffered from them often. And so she always had 
 sympathy with those who did not get beyond doubts, 
 and felt a strong attraction for writers who, like Amiel, 
 could analyse them with delicacy and reverence. But 
 hers were not the doubts of modern thought ; they were 
 the fears — the misty fears — of a poet. Sometimes they 
 closed in upon her for a little, and she seemed like one 
 who moved through thronging shadows and fought them 
 with a silver sword. Imagination came to her help 
 and brought her through ; the same imagination that 
 plunged her in, leading her to places that she never 
 meant to reach. For it was more daring than she knew. 
 The poet in her was bolder than the woman, and there- 
 fore there were conflicts in her soul. Yet the poet it 
 was that came to the rescue. 
 
 What am I? Next door to nothing, but a point in boundless 
 
 space ; 
 Made of something tliat I know not, masked and witnessed 
 
 by a face, 
 (aught and firmly held together by a Body and a Mind, 
 With Eternity before it, and Eternity behind. 
 
40 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 What is walking, runniug, leaping to the joy of airy flight? 
 
 What is sight beside the seeing in the Infinite of sight ? 
 
 AVhat were knowledge, what were wisdom, were I wise and 
 
 when I knew ? 
 Truth itself were Truth no longer, if a man could prove it true. 
 
 It was thus that she continued to achieve belief. The 
 lamp of her faith might flicker in the wind, but it never 
 went out ; it was held by a steady hand. And if the 
 flame was not fiery, it was pure. ' If I die, I am going to 
 God," the words were among the last she spoke. 
 
 It has seemed needful to say as much, because her 
 poems have sometimes given a wrong impression. She 
 got in verse relief from doubts that pressed upon her, 
 and so she constantly gave them voice. Whereas that 
 central belief in God and the soul which never faded 
 from her, which made itself felt in her presence, and gave 
 her that kind of glowing humility unlike any other — this 
 remained as her treasure and her strength, and found 
 expression much more rarely. 
 
 She never dealt in heroics; yet perhaps she envied, 
 
 although she did not share, the single vision of the 
 
 fanatic. Gordon was the hero she chose — Gordon who 
 
 served man and gave himself and obeyed no law but that 
 
 of his soul. 
 
 O mighty spirit, whither art thou fled ? 
 No mate was found in all the world for thee ; 
 Whom hast thou chosen for thy company 
 In all the shadowy regions of the dead ? 
 
 So she wrote of the man who was both saint and daring 
 adventurer, enthusiast, and humorist. He summed up 
 much that she herself would have liked to be. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 41 
 
 It is difficult to give even the most inadequate idea of 
 Mary Coleridge's soul. It is as difficult to give any true 
 impression of her appearance — of the fair hair, the small 
 head, the long swaying figure, which stooped rather 
 forwards when she moved, or when she talked with self- 
 forgetfulness. She looked very much like one of the 
 women in Blake's pictures. Her form had the same 
 quality of intangibleness — her step seemed to tread upon 
 air. And she also bore a resemblance to a certain lady 
 of Fra Angelico's — slender, devout — who, full of a gay 
 spirituality and seated on the ground with her companions, 
 is bending towards a preacher in a pulpit and drinking in 
 his words with her soul. She would have looked well in 
 that dress of early Florence, better still, perhaps, in 
 Blake draperies. As it was, she hardly knew what she 
 had on, although picturesque clothes on others delighted 
 her. Whatever ornaments she wore were characteristic. 
 Many of her best jewels she had sold to help the poor, 
 but she never parted with any that her friends had given 
 her. To her they were symbols, not ornaments. And 
 there were others, emblems of old associations, that were 
 always part of her person. All who knew her will 
 remember the coral charm against the evil eye that had 
 dangled since her childhood from her watch-chain. Rings 
 she would have none of; she said they fettered her; nor 
 would they have suited her hands, ' those little spirit- 
 hands of hers,' delicate yet strong. They were as signi- 
 ficant as her eyes — blue eyes with gleams of grey, rather 
 observant than dreamy. Her dreaminess was expressed 
 more by her mouth, but that too was very mobile : some- 
 
42 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 times still and rather sad, sometimes gay with a little 
 amused smile, full of a droll indulgence ; or eager with that 
 other kind of smile, responsive, expectant, which lit her 
 face when you told her of something you admired, and 
 she had caught your pleasure almost before you had 
 expressed it. Yet when all is said, one can but return 
 to the word ' spiritual '' as the only one that describes her, 
 body and soul. 
 
 For while she did this lower world adorn^ 
 Her body seem'd rather assumed than born ; 
 So rarified, advanced, so pure and whole, 
 That body might have been another's soul. 
 
 Those lines of a seventeenth-century poet seem made 
 for Mary Coleridge. 
 
 It was perhaps because there was this unity about her 
 that her diffident presence seldom failed to make a strong 
 impression, even upon those who had only seen her once. 
 Many of these of every class wrote to say so after her 
 death. ' She was good,'' said the landlady of some 
 lodgings where she had stayed. — 'No, she wasn't; she 
 was something much better than good.' And nowhere 
 was the impression stronger than in the Working 
 Women's College, where, for her last twelve years, on 
 Tuesday evenings, she held a class on English literature.^ 
 How she kindled their tired minds, after their long day's 
 work, with the love of prose and poetry, was a feat in 
 itself. But more wonderful still was the way she won the 
 
 1 For a while, at the outset, she taught EngUsh grammar, but she was 
 glad when a vacancy in a teachership allowed her to undertake the class 
 for hterature. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 43 
 
 confidence of all these varied characters, and thus, with 
 them, hridged over every barrier, affecting the nature of 
 each, firing all with the love of goodness. When she 
 died, the class was given up altogether. Her pupils 
 would not learn from any one else. 
 
 Her last illness seized her with a sharp suddenness. 
 She had gone, as she did every year, with her father and 
 sister to Harrogate. She had been feeling low and 
 tired. One afternoon she had been left at home upon a 
 sofa, only wanting repose. When her family came back 
 from a walk, they found her radiant, absorbed in Shake- 
 speare. 'Life is worth living," she said, ' as long as there 
 is King- Lear to read."" 
 
 Then there came severe attacks of jiain — a needful 
 operation — and the end. That end was like herself. She 
 knew that she was dying, and she remembered to send her 
 love to all the household, even to the ' odd man.' She 
 had visions on her bed, of roses, of a bird, larger and 
 more beautiful than any she had ever seen. To the last 
 she showed her love of grace and beauty. And to the 
 last she also kept her graciousness. To her, life and 
 death were of one texture. 
 
 ' I see no object in this detestable flight of Time,'' she 
 once wrote — ' Where 's he flying to ? Why should we 
 pretend to like it ? Birthdays now seem to me to be 
 like the lamp-posts along a road, when you are nearing 
 the end of a long, dark, delicious drive, and however tired 
 you may be, are still absolutely uninclined to make the 
 effort of getting out of the comfortable home of a 
 carriage, and settling yourself in a new house. I like 
 
44 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 temporary conditions, and the freedom of them. I can 
 hardly remember any drive — even to the house of celestial 
 people — to the end of which I was not sorry to come, for 
 the moment. And " Forever" is such a big house. Not 
 that I think like this always or often. For the most 
 part, I don't remember my own getting old at all, other 
 people's getting older is so much worse.' 
 
 The 'long dark delicious'' journey is over and she has 
 reached that ' big house ' of rest. The chill autumn 
 vapours will not reach her : she cannot grow old. 
 
STORIES 
 
UNTER DEN LINDEN 
 
 ' No," said Sophy, the cousin of Mr. Cocks-Danvers. 
 
 ' Yes, please,' said Mr. Cocks-Danvers, the cousin of 
 Sophy. 
 
 It is perhaps as well to state definitely, at the outset, 
 the exact degree of their relationship. They were 
 seconds, twice removed. 
 
 Whenever Sophy wanted to take a walk alone with 
 Mr, Cocks-Danvers, she remembered this. 
 
 Whenever Sophy's papa said that he objected to the 
 intermarrying of relations, Mr. Cocks-Danvers forgot it. 
 On the present occasion he had forgotten it altogether. 
 But certain other memories came between him and the 
 words that he wanted to say, as they had come between 
 over and over again during the last few years of his life. 
 
 And this was fortunate for Sophy's papa. 
 
 ' Well ! ' said Sophy, weighing out her words slowly, 
 as if every one of them were an item in a long list of self- 
 sacrifices, ' if you will — make me tell you — what I really 
 and truly think of it ' 
 
 ' Why on earth should I want to hear what you don't 
 really and truly think of it, Sophy ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know ! You are very rude to imply that 
 I should tell stories. But then it's literary to be rude, is 
 it not ? Literary men in books generally are, especially 
 
48 STORIES 
 
 to the heroine. Why should we talk about our thoughts 
 at all ? Silence is golden.' 
 
 ' Give me change then ! I want the silver.' 
 
 ' The plot is magnificent,"' Sophy observed — ' It reminds 
 me of one of Stevenson's best, only there's a something 
 about it that Stevenson has not got. And your sense of 
 humour is quite delightful, Charles, and it never leaves a 
 bad taste in one's mouth like some of the jokes in those 
 horrid Plain Tales from the Hills. And the description 
 of the tiger hunt kept me awake for hours last night.' 
 
 ' My dear Sophy, I once had the felicity of overhearing 
 an interview of yours with your cook. When I heard 
 you say " The entree was a great success," I wished for 
 one distracted moment that I had been that happy per- 
 son. When you added, " But as for the sweet things,'''' I 
 thanked my stars that I was not ' 
 
 ' Even her second cousin, twice removed ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, hang that cousinly business. Won't you begin 
 upon the sweets at once ? Suspense is cruel. Skip my 
 general superiority to Robert Louis and Rudyard, and 
 come to the point at once ! ' 
 
 ' Well, then,' said Sophy, ' if you must have it, the 
 love-making is all wrong. People don't make love in 
 that way.' 
 
 ' How on earth do you know ? ' 
 
 ' You don't understand women,' said Sophy. 
 
 ' No,' said Charles, with more asperity than the occa- 
 sion seemed to call for. ' And upon my soul, I 'm glad 
 I do not ! I thought I understood one woman, anyhow. 
 But I believe they are all alike, and they're all humbugs. 
 There is not one that really says what she means.' 
 
 ' Of course not,' said Sophy. ' She would be a man if 
 she did. Besides, the story happened last September, 
 
UNTER DEN LINDEN 49 
 
 and you have described her in a dress just like the one I 
 was wearing when I saw you the first time three years 
 ago. How could that possibly be right ? It is the sort 
 of thing a critic would come down upon like a sledge- 
 hammer.'' 
 
 ' Do you think he would notice such a little slip ? ' 
 said Charles dubiously. 
 
 ' Not if he were a he ; but he 's very often a she nowa- 
 days. And they write in the Saturday and the AthencEum 
 and everywhere ! You really must alter the dress.' 
 Charles considered her attentively. 
 
 ' Can't I stick her into the gown you Ve got now ? ' he 
 asked. 
 
 ' That only shows how perfectly inane the cleverest 
 men are/ said Sophy. ' I always thought you had an 
 eye for these things. So you have, in a way. You 
 recollect most wonderfully. But don't you see that to 
 expose a woman in the future is as great a mistake as to 
 muffle her up in the past ? She is never behind the age ; 
 but if she's a nice woman, she is never before it.' 
 ' And you don't think Celia a nice woman ? ' 
 ' Not at all,' said Sophy, with emphasis. 
 ' Good heavens, Sophy, I thought she was exactly like 
 you ! ' 
 
 ' Did you ? How strange ! ' 
 
 ' Of course, when I conceived the character, I had no 
 idea that any one had ever proposed to you.' 
 
 ' Who told you any one had ? ' she cried indignantly. 
 ' You yourself. You said people did not make love in 
 that way. It is clear to the meanest intelligence that 
 somebody must have made love to you in another.' 
 
 Sophy contemplated the branches of the lime-tree 
 under which they were sitting, and repressed an unfemi- 
 D 
 
50 STORIES 
 
 nine desire to whistle. After all, the frankest woman in 
 the world is an impenetrable mystery to the most subtle- 
 minded man ; and Charles was not even so subtle as 
 Sophy thought him. 
 
 ' I want to know what happens in the next chapter,'' 
 she said. ' Tell me the end of the story ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, I Ve not worked it out yet. It 's very difficult to 
 invent an original ending.' 
 
 ' It must be very difficult indeed," said Sophy, sympa- 
 thetically. 'That is the worst of stories, they're all so 
 like each other. Men's women are never anything else 
 but men and women, whether it's India, or the High- 
 lands, or Whitechapel. A man falls in love with a 
 woman, a woman falls in love with a man, and then they 
 marry or don't marry, or they die, or one of them dies 
 and the other does not. I should make Celia die if I 
 were you." 
 
 ' What crime has she committed,' said Charles, ' except- 
 ing that she tried to be like you, Sophy, and failed ? Is 
 it not rather hard to pass sentence of death on her for 
 that .P No, I shall make Middleton die ! ' 
 
 ' And leave me a widow ! ' said Sophy. ' What a shame ! 
 Widows' weeds are most dreadfully unbecoming. Venus 
 herself could not look well in them. No, please don't 
 kill Middleton, whatever you do ! I rather — like him.' 
 
 ' You don't behave as if you did,' said Charles, looking 
 at her so steadfastly that he compelled her to turn and 
 look at him. ' But if I could, I would rather give the 
 story a good ending.' 
 ' Why, may I ask ? ' 
 
 ' Woe does not sell well. The publishers object to it. 
 Would it be quite impossible for me to end with a 
 wedding, do you think .^ ' 
 
UNTER DEN LINDEN 51 
 
 ' Quite impossible, if you let Celia go on in that way. 
 But she never would have gone on in that way. That's 
 what vexes me. Men think women are such donkeys. 
 How could you make her believe that he had acted 
 dishonourably ? ' 
 
 ' How could she help believing it, when he told her 
 himself?' 
 
 ' Just the very reason why she would not have believed 
 it!' 
 
 ' But she saw it with her own eyes.' 
 
 ' The evidence of the senses,' said Sophy pompously, 
 ' is allowed on all hands to be worthless. They are 
 always deceiving us.' 
 
 ' I suppose you admire Shakespeare's Troilus for refus- 
 ing to credit his eyes when they told him that Cressida 
 was false. I must confess that always appears to me 
 overstrained. And then he had to believe them in the 
 end, you know. Love may be blind, but he's not so 
 blind as all that.' 
 
 ' I never read Troilus and Cressida,'' said Sophy in the 
 tone of one who proclaims a virtuous action, ' therefore I 
 cannot judge. But a person who believes ill of a friend 
 is just as mean as mean can be.' 
 
 ' Ahem ! ' said Charles, and he hummed the first lines 
 of a song : 
 
 ' I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more. 
 
 It was a man who wrote that undoubtedly. But can you 
 say he was wrong, even with that obvious dis(]ualifica- 
 tion .? ' 
 
 ' Rubbish ! ' said Sophy. ' You don't love a man be- 
 cause he is good ; you love him because you love him. 
 
52 STORIES 
 
 Why did Middleton like Celia ? Because she had a soup 
 kitchen, and taught in the Sunday school, I suppose ?' 
 
 ' No, it was not exactly that,'' said Charles ; ' but 
 Sophy, if — if I change all this to please you, if I make 
 Celia do what no woman in her senses would do — will 
 you ' 
 
 ' Will I what ? ' 
 
 ' Be Celia and — accept Middleton ?' 
 
 ' But you are not Middleton,"" said Sophy, and this 
 time it was the look in her eyes that drew her cousin's 
 round to them. 
 
 ' Yes, but I am. I always wanted to tell you, Sophy. 
 Bat I 'm a fool. I could not. I thought you 'd hate me 
 for it. It was before I knew you."" 
 
 ' You did tell me," said Sophy. ' Do you think I did 
 not understand what kept you silent these three years ? 
 I always wanted to tell you that I did not mind — much,"* 
 
 It was borne in on the mind of Sophy's papa, as he 
 entered the Lime Walk at that moment, that he was too 
 late to make any new observations about the intermarry- 
 ing of cousins. 
 
LONG LIVE THE KING 53 
 
 [1890] 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING^ 
 
 It was not very quiet in the room where the king lay 
 dying. People were coming and going, rustling in and 
 out with hushed footsteps, whispering eagerly to each 
 other ; and where a great many people are all busy 
 making as little noise as possible, the result is apt to 
 be a kind of bustle, that weakened nerves can scarcely 
 endure. 
 
 But what did that matter.? The doctors said he 
 could hear nothing now. He gave no sign that he 
 could. Surely the sobs of his beautiful young wife, as 
 she knelt by the bedside, must else have moved him. 
 
 For days the light had been carefully shaded. Now, 
 in the hurry, confusion, and distress, no one remembered 
 to draw the curtains close, so that the dim eyes might 
 not be dazzled. But what did that matter ? The doctors 
 said he could see nothing now. 
 
 For days no one but his attendants had been allowed 
 to come near him. Now the room was free for all who 
 chose to enter. What did it matter ? The doctors said 
 he knew no one. 
 
 So he lay for a long time, one hand flung out upon the 
 counterpane, as if in search of something. The queen 
 took it softly in hers, but there was no answering pressure. 
 ^ From /^are Bits, September 1890. 
 
54 STORIES 
 
 At length the eyes and mouth closed, and the heart ceased 
 to beat. 
 
 ' How beautiful he looks,' they whispered one to 
 another. 
 
 When the king came to himself it was all very still — 
 wonderfully and delightfully still, as he thought, wonder- 
 fully and delightfully dark. It was a strange, unspeakable 
 relief to him — he lay as if in heaven. The room was 
 full of the scent of flowers, and the cool night air 
 came pleasantly through an open window. A row of 
 wax tapers burned with soft radiance at the foot of 
 the bed on which he was lying, covered with a velvet pall, 
 only his head and face exposed. Four or five men were 
 keeping guard around him, but they had fallen fast asleep. 
 
 So deep was the feeling of content which he experienced 
 that he was loth to stir. Not till the great clock of the 
 palace struck eleven, did he so much as move. Then he 
 sat up with a light laugh. 
 
 He remembered how, when his mind was failing him, 
 and he had rallied all his powers in one last passionate 
 appeal against the injustice which was taking him away 
 from the world just when the world most needed him, he 
 had heard a voice saying, ' I will give thee yet one hour 
 after death. If, in that time, thou canst find three that 
 desire thy life, live ! ' 
 
 This was his hour, his hour that he had snatched 
 away from death. How much of it had he lost 
 already ? He had been a good king ; he had worked 
 night and day for his subjects; he had nothing to fear, 
 and he knew that it was very pleasant to live, how 
 pleasant he had never known before, for, to do him 
 justice, he was not selfish ; it was his unfinished work 
 
LONG I.TVE THE KING 55 
 
 that he grieved about when the decree went forth 
 against him. Yet, as he passed out of the room where 
 the watchers sat heavily sleeping, things were changed 
 to him somehow. The burning sense of injustice was 
 gone. Now that he came to think of it, he had done 
 very little. True that it was his utmost, but there were 
 many better men in the world, and the world was large, 
 very large it seemed to him now. Everything had grown 
 larger. He loved his country and his home as well as 
 ever, but in the night it had seemed as if they must 
 perish with him, and now he knew that they were still 
 unchanged. 
 
 Outside the door he paused a moment, hesitating 
 whither to go first. Not to the queen. The very 
 thought of her grief unnerved him. He would not see 
 her till he could once more clasp her in his arms, and 
 bid her weep tears of joy only because he was come 
 again. After all, he had but an hour to wait. Before 
 the castle clock struck twelve, he would be back again 
 in life, remembering these things only as a dream. He 
 sighed a little to think of it. 
 
 ' All that to do over again some day,' he said, as he 
 recalled his last moments. 
 
 Almost he turned again to the couch he had so lately 
 left. 
 
 ' But I have never yet done anything through fear,' 
 said the king. 
 
 And he smiled as he thought of the terms of the 
 compact. His city lay before him in the moonlight. 
 
 ' I could find three thousand as easily as three,' he 
 said. ' Are they not all my friends ? ' 
 
 As he passed out of the gate, he saw a child sitting on 
 the steps, crying bitterly. 
 
56 STORIES 
 
 ' What is the matter, little one ? ' said tlie sentinel on 
 guard, stopping a moment. 
 
 ' Father and mother have gone to the castle, because 
 the king's dead,' sobbed the child, 'and they've never 
 come back again ; and I 'm so tired and so hungry ! 
 And I've had no supper, and my doll's broken. Oh! 
 I do wish the king were alive again ! ' 
 
 And she burst into a fresh storm of weeping. It 
 amused the king not a little. 
 
 'So this is the first of my subjects that wants me 
 back ! ' he said. 
 
 He had no child of his own. He would have liked to 
 try and comfort the little maiden, but there were other 
 calls upon him just then. He was on his way to the 
 house of his great friend, the man whom he loved more 
 than all others. A kind of malicious delight possessed 
 him, as he pictured to himself the deep dejection he 
 should find him in. 
 
 ' Poor Amyas ! ' he said. ' I know what I should be 
 feeling in his place. I am glad he was not taken. I 
 could not have borne his loss.' 
 
 As he entered the courtyard of his friend's house, 
 lights were being carried to and fro, horses were being 
 saddled, an air of bustle and excitement pervaded the 
 place. Look where he might, he could not see the face 
 he knew so well. He entered at the open door. His 
 friend was not in the hall. Room after room he vainly 
 traversed — they were all empty. A sudden horror took 
 him. Surely Amyas was not dead of grief? 
 
 He came at length to a small private apartment, in 
 which they had spent many a happy, busy hour together ; 
 but his friend was not here either, though, to judge by 
 appearances, he could only just have left it. Rooks and 
 
LONG LIVE THE KING 57 
 
 papers were tumbled all about in strange confusion, and 
 bits of broken glass strewed the floor. 
 
 A little picture was lying on the ground. The king 
 picked it up, and recognised a miniature of himself, the 
 frame of which had been broken in the fall. He let it 
 drop again, as if it had burnt him. The fire was blazing 
 brightly, and the fragments of a half-destroyed letter 
 lay, unconsumed as yet, in the fender. It was in his 
 own writing. He snatched it up, and saw it was the 
 last he had written, containing the details of an elaborate 
 scheme which he had much at heart. He had only just 
 thrown it back into the flames when two people entered 
 the room, talking together, one a lady, the other a man, 
 booted and spurred as though he came from a long 
 distance. 
 
 ' Where is Amyas ?'' he asked. 
 
 ' Gone to proff'er his services to the new king, of course,' 
 said the lady. ' We are, as you may think, in great 
 anxiety. He has none of the ridiculous notions of his 
 predecessor, who, indeed, hated him cordially. The very 
 favour Amyas has hitherto enjoyed will stand in his way 
 at the new court. I only hope he may be in time to 
 make his peace. He can, with truth, say that he utterly 
 disapproved of the foolish reforms which his late master 
 was bent on making. Of course, he was fond of him in a 
 way ; but we must think of ourselves, you know. People 
 in our position have no time for sentiment. He started 
 almost immediately after the king's death. I am sending 
 his retinue after him.' 
 
 ' Quite right,' said the gentleman, whom the king 
 now knew as one of his ambassadors. ' I shall follow 
 him at once. Between you and me, it is no bad thing 
 for the country. That poor boy had no notion of states- 
 
58 STORIES 
 
 manship. He forced me to conclude a peace which 
 would have been disastrous to all our best interests. 
 Happily, we shall have war directly now. Promotions 
 in the army would have been at a standstill if he had 
 had his way.' 
 
 The king did not stay to hear more. 
 
 ' I will go to my people,' he said. ' They at least 
 have no interest to make peace with my successor. He 
 will but take from them what I gave."' 
 
 He heard the clock strike the first quarter as he went. 
 He was, indeed, a very remarkable king, for he knew 
 his way to the poorest part of his dominions. He had 
 been there before, often and often, unknown to any one ; 
 and the misery which he had there beheld had stirred and 
 steeled him to attempt what had never before been 
 attempted. 
 
 No one about the palace knew where he had caught 
 the malignant fever which carried him off. He had a 
 shrewd suspicion himself, and he went straight to that 
 quarter. 
 
 'Fevers won't hurt me now,' he said laughing. The 
 houses were as wretched, the people looked as sickly and 
 squalid as ever. They were standing about in knots in 
 the streets, late though it was, talking together about 
 him. His name was in every mouth. The details of his 
 illness, and the probable day of his funeral, seemed to 
 interest them more than anything else. 
 
 Five or six men were sitting drinking round a table in 
 a disreputable-looking public-house, and he stopped to 
 overhear their conversation. 
 
 ' And a good riddance, too ! ' said one of them, whom 
 he knew well. ' What 's the use of a king as never spends 
 a farthing more than he can help ? It gives no impetus 
 
LONG LIVE THE KING 59 
 
 to trade, it don't. The new fellow's a very different 
 sort. We shall have fine doings soon.' 
 
 ' Ay ! ' struck in another, ' a meddlesome, priggish sort 
 of chap, he was, always aworritting us about clean houses, 
 and such like. What right 's he got to interfere, I 'd like 
 to know ? ' 
 
 ' Down with all kings ! says I,' put in a third ; ' but if 
 we're to have 'em, let 'em behave as sich. I like a young 
 fellow as isn't afraid of his missus, and knows port wine 
 from sherry.' 
 
 ' Wanted to abolish capital punishment, he did ! ' cried 
 a fourth. ' Thought he 'd get more work out of the 
 poor fellows in prison, I suppose ? Depend on it, there 's 
 some reason like that at the bottom of it. We ain't so 
 very perticular about the lives of our subjects for nothing, 
 we ain't ' ; an expression of opinion in which all the rest 
 heartily concurred. The clock struck again as the king 
 turned away ; he felt as if a storm of abuse from some one 
 he had always hated would be a precious balm just then. 
 He entered the state prison, and made for the condemned 
 cell. Capital punishment was not abolished yet, and in 
 this particular instance he had certainly felt glad of it. 
 
 The cell was tenanted only by a little haggard-looking 
 man, who was writing busily on his knee. The king had 
 only seen him once before, and he looked at him 
 curiously. 
 
 Presently the gaoler entered, and with him tiie first 
 councillor, a man whom his late master had greatly loved 
 and esteemed. The convict looked up quickly. 
 
 ' It was not to be till to-morrow,' he said. Then, as if 
 afraid he had betrayed some cowardice, ' but I am ready 
 at any moment. May I ask you to give this paper to my 
 wife ? ' 
 
60 STORIES 
 
 ' The king is dead,' said the first councillor gravely. 
 ' You are reprieved. His present majesty has other views. 
 You will, in all probability, be set at large to-morrow.'' 
 
 ' Dead ? ' said the man with a stunned look. 
 
 ' Dead ! ' said the first councillor, with the impressive- 
 ness of a whole board. 
 
 The man stood up, passing his hand across his 
 brow. 
 
 ' Sir,' he said earnestly, ' I respected him. For all he 
 was a king, he treated me like a gentleman. He, too, 
 had a young wife. Poor fellow, I wish he were alive 
 again ! "" 
 
 There were tears in the man's eyes as he spoke. 
 
 The third quarter struck as the king left the prison. 
 He felt unutterably humiliated. The pity of his foe was 
 harder to bear than the scorn of his friends. He would 
 rather have died a thousand deaths than owe his life to 
 such a man. And yet, because he was himself noble, he 
 could not but rejoice to find nobility in another. He 
 said to himself sternly that it was not worth what he had 
 gone through. He reviewed his position in no very self- 
 complacent mood. The affection he had so confidently 
 relied upon was but a dream. The people he was fain to 
 work for were not ripe for their own improvement, A 
 foolish little child, a generous enemy, these were his only 
 friends. After all, was it worth while to live ? Had he 
 not better go back quietly and submit, making no further 
 effort ? He had learnt his lesson ; he could ' lie down in 
 peace, and sleep, and take his rest.' The eternal powers 
 had justified themselves. What matter though every 
 man had proved a liar ? The bitterness had passed away, 
 and he seemed to see clearly. 
 
 Thick clouds had gathered over the moon, and the cold 
 
LONG LIVE THE KING 61 
 
 struck through him. All at oucc a sense of loneliness 
 that cannot be described rushed over him, and his heart 
 sank. Was there really no one who cared — no one.^ 
 He would have given anything at that moment for a look, 
 a single word of real sympathy. He longed with sick 
 longing for the assurance of love. 
 
 There were yet a few moments left. How had he 
 borne to wait so long ? This, at least, he was sure of, 
 and this was all the world to him. He began to find 
 comfort and consolation in the thought ; he forgave — in- 
 deed he almost forgot — the rest. Yet he had fallen very 
 low, for, as he stood at the door of his wife's room, he 
 hesitated whether to go in. What if this, too, were an 
 illusion ? Had he not best go back before he knew ? 
 
 ' But I have never yet done anything through fear,' 
 said the king. 
 
 His wife was sitting by the fire alone, her face hidden, 
 her long hair falling round her like a veil. At the first 
 sight of her, a pang of self-reproach shot through him. 
 How could he ever have doubted ? 
 
 She was wearing a ring that he had given her — a ring 
 she wore always, and the light sparkled and flashed from 
 the jewel. Except for this, there was nothing bright in 
 the room. 
 
 He ardently desired to comfort her. He wondered 
 why all her ladies had left her. Surely one might have 
 stayed with her on this first night of her bereavement ? 
 She seemed to be lost in thought. If she would only 
 speak, or call his name ! But she was quite silent. 
 
 A slight noise made the king start. A secret door in 
 the wall opened, the existence of which he had thought 
 was known only to himself and his queen, and a man 
 stood before her. 
 
62 STORIES 
 
 She put her finger to her lips, as though to counsel 
 silence, and then threw herself into his arms. 
 
 ' You have come,"* she said — ' Oh, I am so glad ! I had 
 to hold his hand when he was dying. I was frightened 
 sitting here by myself. I thought his ghost would come 
 back, but he will never come back any more. We may 
 be happy always now,' and drawing the ring from her 
 finger, she kissed it, weeping, and gave it to him. 
 
 When midnight struck, the watchers wakened with a 
 start, to find the king lying stark and stiff, as before, but 
 a great change had come over his countenance. 
 
 ' We must not let the queen see him again,"" they said. 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALL 63 
 
 THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALL 
 
 A fua(;ment 
 
 ' I DoxV believe in him,'' said a girl. 
 
 ' I do,'' said a man. 
 
 They were standing at the Guildhall, in front of 
 Millais"' picture of ' The Enemy sowing Tares.' The 
 words were forced from them by the overmastering 
 power which a work of art exerts over certain natures, 
 the tyrannical convincingness of an assertion compelling 
 instant negation or consent. To each the other's voice 
 came only as the utterance of that opposite half of self 
 which speaks in the deliberations of those who are vividly 
 conscious of the process of thought and emotion, 
 
 ' If you do believe in him,"* Althea said, using the 
 pronoun as she often used it when talking to herself for 
 another form of the word /, ' what becomes of the power 
 of God ? ' 
 
 ' If you don''t believe in it, can you not see that God 
 is not God alone, but the devil ? ' 
 
 ' If you do believe in him,"' said Althea again, ' you 
 shrink from fathoming the depths of evil in yourself.' 
 
 'If you don't believe in it, there is no refuge left but 
 suicide.' 
 
 For the first time Althea, conscious that a discordant 
 note had been struck in this curious duet, turned her 
 
64 STORIES 
 
 eyes from the illustration of the parable to look at her 
 fellow-performer. 
 
 Suicide. 
 
 Her quick womanish fancy had far more ghastly 
 illustrations before it in a moment. She was obliged to 
 look at him to dispel them. 
 
 And as she looked, he seemed so very unlike the 
 central figure of her fancy, drowning, shooting, stabbing, 
 poisoning itself, that she could not restrain a smile, and 
 having smiled, she quickly blushed, recollecting who 
 she was, what she had said and where, and moved 
 away. 
 
 Nevertheless, though she stood long before ' The 
 Wheel of Fortune,' apparently in rapt contemplation, 
 what she saw all the time was still ' The Enemy sowing 
 Tares,' and the man who believed in it. 
 
 Distance does more than lend enchantment to the 
 view. At a few feet from the object of interest it is 
 proper to indulge in observations that would be most 
 improper within an inch of him. 
 
 There was no one else in the room, as it happened. 
 
 The object of interest had not once turned his eyes on 
 Althea; they were still fixed in a long, critical stare. 
 He was the mildest and most inoffensive-looking of 
 mortals, dressed with that prim correctness which annoys 
 the feminine mind by showing too much of the sincerest 
 form of flattery. 
 
 ' As neat as a new pin,' flashed through her brain. 
 
 His red hair made it yet more annoying; red hair, 
 when perfectly smooth, looks aggressively red. He held 
 a minute magenta pencil in his hand, with which he was 
 marking his catalogue. She hated magenta. With the 
 deliberateness that marked most of his actions, he made 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GHH.DHALL 65 
 
 two small crosses on either side of the name of the 
 picture, and closed the list, 
 
 ' It is like/ she heard him mutter. 
 
 And turning neither to the right nor to the left he 
 stepped cautiously down the staircase — he was near- 
 sighted evidently — and passed out by the exit from the 
 great room below. 
 
 Althea smiled at herself for watching him, though she 
 had taken her notes with such scrupulous care that no 
 one watching her could possibly have been aware of 
 what she had been doing. Then she returned to the 
 study of the picture which had provoked her first 
 comment. 
 
 The management of light struck her imagination 
 forcibly, the thick, lurid glow across the sky, and on the 
 i-iver. 
 
 ' The light that is in it is darkness," she said to herself. 
 Also, the gleam upon the evil teeth. * Seeking whom he 
 may devour."" 
 
 She passed beyond the sphere of quotation, and 
 became absorbed in an effort to realise to the full the 
 intense malignity of hands and feet, of face and form. 
 
 ' What a picture that girl is," said a young man, 
 entering the room, to a lady who accompanied him. 
 ' Innocence watching the Serpent. Look at the purity 
 of her forehead.' 
 
 * You men are very unobservant,' said the lady in low, 
 sweet tones of bell-like resonance. ' I am much deceived 
 in that face, if it be not "something better than innocent." 
 At any rate, it expresses the innocence of pride that 
 will not, rather than of guilelessness that cannot, know 
 anything of temptation. Pride is stamped upon every 
 feature. Do you not see the haughty arching of the 
 
66 STORIES 
 
 nose, the magnificence of the brow, the stately manner in 
 which that raven hair is brushed back, and will not 
 condescend to cover so much as the hard edge of it with 
 a curl ? Her very pose is as regal as if she were a queen, 
 deciding on the merits or demerits of her prime minister.' 
 
 ' Speak lower, dear,' he said. 
 
 The warning was not unneeded, her dulcet tones were 
 far more penetrating than his own tolerably loud and 
 cheerful voice. 
 
 But Althea was not listening ; she had forgotten her- 
 self for once. A strange procession passed before her. 
 Devils of all ages and descriptions, he-devils and she- 
 devils, — for the DeviPs Grandmother from the door of 
 Ratisbon Cathedral led them on — came dancing, skipping, 
 leaping, tumbling, grinning, helter-skelter along the 
 floor. They scrambled up the frame. There was Blake's 
 Devil out of Job. 
 
 ' Why is he first ? ' she thought confusedly — ' He 's 
 not the oldest.' 
 
 And even as she thought, he flung himself down with 
 a grand gesture of despair and vanished, not into air, 
 into the Enemy. 
 
 The others hung and swung, jeering and leering at her 
 from the corners. 
 
 The fantastic creatures of Orcagna, Angelico, Botti- 
 celli were there, armed with their little prongs and forks, 
 and Dante's devils came, and those that Luther fancied 
 sitting upon the roof at Worms. After them, Milton's 
 Lucifer flashed swift as black lightning at noon before 
 her. She bowed her head for an instant. 
 
 When she looked up he was gone. 
 
 Mephistopheles stood in his place, and grinned. He 
 vanished also, and she was left alone with the Enemy. 
 
THE DEVII. AT THE GUH.DHALL 67 
 
 ' All gone/ she said, ' but that one stays, I did not 
 know he was so many/ 
 
 It was as if the wickedness of many generations gleamed 
 in the eyes of one, 
 
 ' We are not children any longer ; grotesques have no 
 terror for us. We are not Puritans any longer ; we don't 
 think pride and beauty must be cast into the Pit. We 
 are not poets any longer ; we don't think Pessimism is 
 revolt against God, And the Devil is dead, and the 
 Foul Fiend, and Satan, but there is left the Enemy. All 
 gone, but that one stays,' 
 
 The stuff of which those words are made passed through 
 her mind inarticulately, 
 
 ' How he clutches his bag of seed ! If I had not 
 known, I should have thought it was a miser hugging 
 his gold,' 
 
 She rose and went her way, full of thought. 
 
 But when she reached the glass doors, and the umbrella 
 stack, she paused. The prospect out of doors was not 
 encouraging by any means. All the pigeons had flown 
 away. The sky was overclouded, and the rain had begun. 
 Worse than all this, she discovered that she had put 
 astray the little bit of metal entitling her to claim her 
 own umbrella. 
 
 Now Althea is a person compact of nervous suscepti- 
 bilities. The state of the weather affects her almost as 
 much as the toothache, or the electric light in a certain 
 house that she knows. She is, in fact, a human barometer, 
 and human barometers in London have a very bad time 
 of it, inasmuch as Set Fair is not a frequent condition of 
 the instrument. 
 
 What was she to do ? How was she to get back that 
 umbrella.^ Of all things, she hated speaking to an 
 
68 STORIES 
 
 official. Nevertheless, an inward conflict took place in 
 her. If she lost that umbrella, she had no spare cash to 
 invest in another. 
 
 ' But perhaps the man will not believe what I say. 
 And after all, I can send my grandfather for it to-morrow. 
 It won't matter this afternoon,' 
 
 Much as she disliked going without it, she disliked 
 making an appeal for it even more. She gazed along the 
 dreary street as piteously as if she were a cat that 
 objected to wetting its feet. As she stood hesitating, 
 she fancied that the two men in charge were looking at 
 her and wondering why. She had the morbid dislike of 
 some unconventional people to appear to be engaged in 
 any action, no matter how trifling, that is not perfectly 
 conventional. There was no help for it. Out she must 
 go. She closed the door at once behind her. 
 
 As she went down the dripping pavement, she stared, 
 with desperate longing, at a cab. She had no shillings 
 to fling away, and this is not an age when beauty in 
 distress appeals to the heart of man. Helen herself 
 would have to pay eighteenpence to get across Troy, 
 
 Althea's self-esteem sank lower at every step. Her 
 skirt, do what she would with it, was becoming draggled. 
 Her hat was spoiled. Every omnibus going in the direc- 
 tion in which she wished to go was crowded, and she 
 could not breathe in a crowd. 
 
 Oh, from what little causes great -effects proceed ! The 
 fairy fingers of a child may fire a cannon tliat would have 
 made old Jupiter quake to hear his thunder outroared. 
 
 Althea was netting wet, and had no umbrella. There- 
 
THE DEML AT THE GUILDHALL 69 
 
 fore she cried aloud in a voice of wild, Promethean rebel- 
 lion against the powers that be. She wanted light, she 
 wanted warmth and wealth and beauty all around, she 
 wanted leisure to occupy herself with herself, she wanted 
 slaves to do her bidding, and to do it silently. In every 
 one there is. counteracting the desire for self-preservation, 
 an innate longing for the poison that would destroy, and 
 she was no exception to tlie rule. Nor did she strive to 
 quell her longing. She did not feel the comic element 
 in it. 
 
 The seriousness of her nature sent the veriest trifles 
 down to the depth of tragedy, and connected them with 
 the sternest issues of life. She never laughed at any- 
 thing. Had she committed murder, had she been dis- 
 figured by the small-pox, she could not have come nearer 
 despair. The gloom of her mind reacted on her physi- 
 cally, and she became conscious of the most intense 
 weariness. 
 
 She was on the point of giving up her purpose and 
 returning home, when it struck her with the force of an 
 old conviction renewed by circumstance, that what we do 
 not do to-day we must inevitably do to-morrow. She 
 had no confidence in the future, nor was she in the habit 
 of looking to it to help her out of the present. Rather 
 she dreaded it as a sort of Pharaoli that would compel 
 her, if she did not now make bricks with straw, presently 
 to make bricks without it. She did not live by impulse, 
 and she despised those who could. She reckoned with 
 her taskmaster beforehand, and she perceived that in this 
 instance, if she did not work at once, the reckoning would 
 go against her. So she set her face resolutely, in spite of 
 rain and darkness, towards the goal she had in view. 
 
 It was not driving rain, to whip and sting and inform 
 
70 STORIES 
 
 her with the spirit of resistance ; it was the heavy lead- 
 like fall of rain when there is thunder in the distance. 
 It was not the romantic darkness of night in the city, 
 but the monotonous, prosaic soaking out of colour in the 
 day-time, unrelieved by a single star or by so much as a 
 jet of gas in the streets. 
 
 Althea's impatience of the intolerable discomfort of it 
 all became so lively that she could not have struggled 
 harder with another person in opposition than she did 
 with herself. For one brief second, on the opposite edge 
 of the road, from a turning that would have led her 
 home, she paused. Then she quickened her pace, and 
 striking down into a side street, came, after a few 
 minutes., to a dingy little jeweller"'s shop, in the window 
 of which a few old coins and musty silver brooches were 
 displayed. 
 
 Twice she walked past the door, and could not make 
 up her mind to enter it, but the third time, with slow 
 and lingering steps, she did so. 
 
 A dwarfed and swarthy man sat working in the 
 window. He knew that she had passed. He had an eye 
 for beauty. Each time, so soon as she had gone beyond 
 him, he lifted his eyes, letting them fall again directly 
 she turned round. It was not the first time he had seen 
 her. The instant she crossed the threshold, he became 
 absorbed in his work. 
 
 A mirror hung upon the wall in front of him, and he 
 was thus enabled to watch her movements without 
 appearing to do so. 
 
 She seated herself and waited quietly. 
 
 He took no notice of her. 
 
 Becoming impatient, she moved her chair, so that it 
 made a noise upon the ground. 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GUH^DHALL 71 
 
 He raised his eyebrows slightly as he bent still lower 
 over the diamond ring on which he was engaged. 
 
 He was determined to hear her voice before he moved, 
 and presently he heard it. 
 
 ' Is Signor Brunetti at home ? Can I speak to him ?' 
 
 Brunetti rose leisurely, put the ring into a box with 
 great deliberation, settled the nest of cotton wool round 
 it, unfastened and folded up the apron that he wore. 
 Nervous though she might be, Althca was not altogether 
 impatient ; so soon as she felt sure that she had arrested 
 his attention, she was soothed rather than irritated by 
 watching these manoeuvres. As he came opposite her on 
 the other side of the counter, his eyes had a dull gleam 
 in them like some of the jewels that he set. 
 
 ' Giacomo Brunetti is at your service, Madam."" 
 
 Spite of his ugly diminutive form, the jeweller spoke 
 with the graceful action and in the gracious speech of 
 one not born in an island where courtesy is held to be 
 effeminate. Insensibly she liked his deference. She 
 preferred to be called ' Madam "* because it had a more 
 euphonious echo than ' Miss." Homage delicate enough 
 not to offend her fastidiousness was always grateful. But 
 she was too much taken up with the affair in hand to 
 care about prolonging this pleasure. 
 
 ' I do not wish to speak here,' she said, as she glanced 
 furtively at the window looking to the street. ' Is there 
 no private room ? ' 
 
 ' Madam does me too great an honour in condescending 
 to use it." 
 
 He drew aside a dusty, red portiirc at the other end of 
 the shop, and opened a door behind. 
 
 As she paused on the threshold, she was struck with 
 a sound as of tiny aerial hammers, smiting the air all 
 
72 STORIES 
 
 round her. It was only the ticking of fifty or sixty 
 clocks, clocks of all sizes, shapes, and periods, that 
 covered walls and floor. An eight-day clock stood in 
 one corner ; over the face of it there was engraved in 
 brass the legend iempiis fngit. Fir cones swung to and 
 fro in soft and even undulation. Hobgoblins were cling- 
 ing to the end of golden chains, their ruddy cheeks under 
 their peaked red heads puffed out with these perpetual 
 gymnastics. A cuckoo opened the door of the wooden 
 cottage wherein he liyed, and called the quarter just 
 above her head ; a silvery chime rang from a silvery 
 tower ; a trumpeter in scarlet walked out of a castle 
 gate, and, blowing one blast of shrill, cock-like defiance, 
 straightway retreated ; two giants, about the height of a 
 finger, struck Avith their clubs the bell of a cathedral 
 built for fairies. 
 
 She could not help smiling. 
 
 ' What is that?' she said, taking the seat he placed 
 for her beside a table near the door, in the centre of 
 which stood a specimen of goldsmith's work, the dainty 
 form of which was obvious even to eyes so inexperienced 
 as hers. 
 
 The goldsmith shrugged his shoulders. ' You are 
 pleased .? ' 
 
 ' I have never seen anything more beautiful. But I do 
 not understand the design." 
 
 Brunetti laughed noiselessly. 
 
 ' It is but an imitation. And yet in some sort it comes 
 straight from the hands of the great master of our craft 
 and of other crafts besides ours. It- is of the same age. 
 Let him describe it in his own words.' 
 
 So saying, Brunetti unlocked a drawer in the table, 
 and took out a silver casket, richly chased with Cupids. 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALL 73 
 
 \Vitliiii it lay a book bound in ivory, with a carbuncle at 
 each of the four corners. The restless light in the stones 
 flashed hither and thither as he held it. It seemed to 
 open of itself at the place that he wanted, for he began 
 to read aloud at once. ' Agreeable to the account already 
 given of the model, I had represented the sea and the 
 earth both in a sitting posture, the legs of one placed 
 between those of the other, as certain arms of the sea 
 enter the land, and certain necks of the land jut out into 
 the sea. The mannei- in which I designed them was as 
 follows : I put a trident into the right hand of the 
 figui'e that represented the sea, and in the left a bark of 
 exquisite workmanship, which was to hold the salt ; under 
 this figure were its four sea-horses, the form of which in 
 the breast and forefeet resembled that of a horse, and all 
 the hind part from the middle that of a fish ; the fishes' 
 tails were entwined Avith each other in a manner very 
 pleasing to the eye, and the whole group was placed in a 
 striking attitude. This figure was surrounded by a 
 variety of fishes of different species and other sea animals. 
 The undulation of the water was properly exhibited, and 
 likewise enamelled with its true colours. The earth I 
 represented by a beautiful female figure holding a cornu- 
 copia in her hand, entirely naked, like the male figure ; 
 in her left hand she held a little temple, the architecture 
 of the Ionic order and the workmanship very nice ; this 
 was intended to put the pepper in. Under this female 
 figure I exhibited most of the forest animals which the 
 earth produces, and the rocks I partly enamelled and 
 partly left in gold. I then fixed the work on a base of 
 black ebony of a proper thickness ; and then I placed 
 four golden figures in more than mezzo-relievo ; these 
 were intended to represent Morning, Noon, Evening, and 
 
74 STORIES 
 
 Night. There were also four other figures of the four 
 principal winds, of the same size, the workmanship and 
 enamel of which were elegant to the last degree."* 
 
 Brunetti turned back to the title-page, and showed 
 Althea the portrait of Benvenuto Cellini. 
 
 There was something inexpressibly congenial to her in 
 the mobile, mischievous face of the artist, as he looked 
 back over his shoulder out of the wild age of the Renais- 
 sance, out of those fathomless depths of humanity which, 
 to us, appear almost inhuman. She drew the salt-cellar 
 towards her, and let her fingers rest upon the head of 
 Night. She was in touch with all the brilliant Court 
 that once had sat at table and applauded. She saw the 
 King, magnificent and debonnair, the splendid Lords and 
 Ladies in bright apparel. She revelled in the new fancy- 
 ing of the boundless luxury and pride that could employ 
 the foremost genius of its time to design its meanest 
 utensils. 
 
 ' Delightful ! ' she said involuntarily. 
 
 ' And yet the man was a perfect devil,"* observed 
 Brunetti. 
 
 She shrank at the sound of the word. 
 
 Again, as he glanced up at her, those eyes flashed the 
 hard gleaming of a gem. She wished she had not left 
 the shop. The thought recalled to her the business about 
 which she had come. She unclasped a bracelet that she 
 was wearing and held it towards him. 
 
 ' I want to dispose of that," she said shortly. ' How 
 much would you give me for it ? ' 
 
 He took the bracelet in his hand, and examined it 
 closely. It was made of gold, where the band was 
 broadest four stones were set — an emerald, a ruby, an 
 opal, a sapphire. 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALE 75 
 
 ' I have been told they make a word,"' .she said, ' but I 
 do not know what it is/ 
 
 'An r, an r, an o, an ,v, the word is "E/ja)?,""^ lie said 
 promptly. 
 
 ' What does that mean ?' 
 
 ' I cannot tell you.' 
 
 Again she did not like his manner. 
 
 ' You knew the word,' she said. 
 
 'It is often given us to engrave, but we are poor, 
 unlearned artisans. The letter of it for us, the spirit 
 for those we serve ! ' 
 
 ' How much is it worth ? ' she repeated. 
 
 ' Nothing at all.' 
 
 ' You will not take it then ? ' she spoke with some 
 eagerness. 
 
 He touched the stones one by one thoughtfully, and 
 seemed to pause. 
 
 'The stones are not of any value. All I can do is to 
 weigh it and give you the worth of the gold which I 
 could melt and use.' 
 
 ' Weigh it ! ' she said, with an imperious gesture. 
 
 He fetched a pair of scales, and did so cautiously twice 
 over. 
 
 ' I will allow you £5 for this bracelet just as it is.' 
 
 She was disappointed but would not show it. ' Madam 
 desires to exchange it for some other ornament, doubt- 
 less ?' he inquired. 
 
 ' I do not want to exchange the bracelet for another. I 
 want the money.' 
 
 ' In that case I regret to be obliged to tell Madam that 
 I can only have the pleasure of offering her four pound 
 ten shillings.' 
 
 ' Love. 
 
76 STORIES 
 
 ' Very well. Give me the money at once.'' 
 
 The goldsmith appeared surprised. He crossed to the 
 other side of the apartment, and turning his back on her, 
 opened a tall desk that stood in one corner, and began to 
 rummage among the contents. 
 
 ' The room is very hot,' she said to herself, and rising 
 noiselessly, she set the door half open, returning to her 
 seat with stealthy, fast steps so that Brunetti did not 
 perceive she had stirred. 
 
 Some one else did, however. 
 
 This was a young man who had entered the shop a 
 few minutes before, and was waiting until such time 
 as the master of it should reveal himself. The sudden 
 opening of the door, as he leant over the counter 
 examining some trinket he had a mind to buy, shot through 
 a ray of sunshine that startled him. Following the ray 
 in its passage, his eyes fell on the mirror, and there he 
 saw reflected the girl wliom he had only a short time since 
 admired at the Guildhall. 
 
 The rain had ceased as suddenly as it began, and the 
 poignant light of the sun, when it is nearing the West, 
 smote straight upon her. She appeared to him like the 
 pale, resplendent vision of warfare. Her shadowy hair 
 was yet more beautiful against the crimson wings of cloud 
 behind. Her deep eyes caused to glow in him the high 
 enthusiasm of one who sees in strife only the making of 
 victory. Quickly she fastened the bracelet upon her 
 slender wrist, and raised it reverently, as it were, to her 
 lips ; more quickly still she unclasped it and laid it on 
 the table before her. 
 
 The master of the shop returned, and counted down 
 some money. The young man waiting was offended. 
 Between deformity and beauty what a strange link was 
 
THE DEVIL AT THE GUILDHALL 77 
 
 this ! Nevertheless he watched the mirror with unfailing 
 interest. The girl dropped the money, coin by coin, into 
 her purse, and rose to go. As she did so, the man spoke, 
 clutching his bargain. 
 
 * Vou have bought the knowledge. Shall I tell you the 
 meaning of the word now ? ' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 He laid his hand upon her arm. 
 
 Perhaps the spectator of the scene could hardly have 
 explained to any one why this action sent through him a 
 shudder of disgust. 
 
 ' Hullo ! ' he shouted. ' Is anybody coming .'' ' 
 
 The vision broke and fled on either side of the mirror. 
 
 Althea swept past him, the faintest flush upon her 
 cheek. 
 
 The little goldsmith stood behind the counter, and 
 made a courteous gesture of the head that would not 
 have misbecome a noble. 
 
 ' Give me the bracelet that lady sold to you,' he said 
 impetuously. 
 
 ' What bracelet ? ' asked the goldsmith, feigning 
 astonishment. 
 
 'The bracelet that is lying on the table in there." 
 
 He pointed to the door. 
 
 ' My kind patron is in this instance mistaken. I did 
 not buy it from the lady. It is a very valuable piece 
 of work. I was but showing her a detail of the con- 
 struction if, for one moment, the gentleman will permit 
 me.' 
 
 He sidled towards the door, but his interlocutor was 
 too swift for him, and laid hands on the bracelet before 
 he had crossed the threshold. 
 
 'There!' said he, contemptuously throwing a cheque 
 
78 STORIES 
 
 already signed upon the counter. ' Good afternoon, don't 
 tell more lies than you can help ! ' 
 
 He hurried out of the shop. 
 
 The goldsmith looked at the cheque, saw that it was 
 one for a hundred pounds, payable at Child's Bank, and 
 chuckled.^ 
 
 ^ This story was never finished, nor is there any clue as to how the 
 author meant to develop it. 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 79 
 
 [1898] 
 THE FRIENDLY FOE ' 
 
 ' Not for a moment,"' said the Count, with great dignity, 
 ' did I suppose so/ 
 
 I thanked him. 
 
 He pressed my hand. 
 
 There followed one of those awkward pauses which 
 are apt to follow on a supreme moment. He had just 
 informed me that he did not for an instant suppose that 
 I preferred any consideration before honour. The wind 
 was driving the rain against my window as if it were a 
 human thing that must be chased from the wide world 
 without. The flames were leaping up the chimney, as 
 if they owned some kinship with the wind and were 
 rushing to meet him. I wanted to be alone, to enjoy 
 the uproar in peace. How to get rid of the Count I 
 did not know. Why the Count insisted on staying, 
 I did not know. As he was going to shoot me, or I was 
 going to shoot him, at eight o'clock the next morning, 
 it seemed to me that this was waste of time ; but you 
 cannot make a remark of that kind to a guest, and he 
 happened to be in my room. 
 
 ' Let me ask you one thing ! ' said the Count. ' You 
 are a generous enemy. Though not in your first youth, 
 you are younger than I am, and you have not been out 
 before. I would not take you at a disadvantage. Do 
 you believe in the soul's future ? 
 
 1 From T/ie CornhilL March 1898. 
 
80 STORIES 
 
 •A most unnecessary question," I said lightly. 'In 
 a few hours one of us will have answered it for good 
 and all/ 
 
 He frowned. 
 
 ' You do not believe in it. I am reduced to a most 
 unpleasant extremity. Unless you can reassure me upon 
 this point, it is impossible for me to fight you. Unless 
 I fight you, I am dishonoured.' 
 
 ' Why should it be impossible ? ' I asked. But that 
 the Count was by birth and breeding a perfect gentle- 
 man I might have suspected his courage. 
 
 *It gives me an unfair advantage,' lie said, gazing 
 steadily at me out of his deep-set eyes. 'You fight, 
 believing death is death. I fight, believing death is 
 birth. I know something of your chivalrous nature. If 
 I kill you, I, in my own opinion, set free a soul. If you 
 kill me, you, in your own opinion, commit murder. I 
 would not have you tortured in after life by this re- 
 flection. Once more I tell you, it is impossible for me 
 to fight unless you give me some assurance. Once more 
 I ask you. Do you believe in eternal life ? ' 
 
 ' I am fully sensible of your kind consideration for my 
 feelings, but permit me to observe that I do not see 
 what right you have to ask that question.' 
 
 ' You decline to answer it ? ' 
 
 ado.' 
 
 'Then our affair is settled. I also decline to fight.' 
 
 He bowed, and walked towards the door. 
 
 ' Stay ! ' I cried. ' What are you going to do ? ' 
 
 He laid his hand upon a pistol. - 
 
 ' No,' I said. ' Why ? ' 
 
 ' You leave me no other choice.' 
 
 It was absurd of me to object to his shooting himself 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 8l 
 
 when I had no objection whatever to shooting him with 
 my own hand if I could. But it was just this one phrase 
 // / could that made a difference. The alternative was 
 too cold-blooded; I felt bound to prevent it. 
 
 'Could it not be arranged ?' I spoke nervously, 
 
 only to gain time, in the confusion of the moment. 
 
 ' You are not the man I took you for,' he said. 
 
 This time he did not bow as he turned towards the 
 door. 
 
 ' You do not seem to be aware,' I remarked, ' that you 
 are exposing me to a sense of blood -guiltiness far more 
 onerous than that which you deprecate. If I am to 
 be a minderer, at least allow me to feel that I did the 
 deed myself, not that I compelled some one else to do it. 
 Do you think tiiat you are treating me fairly .? You put 
 a premium upon lies. You leave no other course open 
 to me. By all that is held most sacred I swear to you 
 that I believe in eternal life.' 
 
 And rising, I laid my hand upon my heart. 
 
 ' Sir,' said the Count sternly, ' would you die with 
 a falsehood on your lip ? You do not believe it .'' ' 
 
 ' No,' I said, ' I do not. I merely wished to show you 
 to what extremes you are driving me. But you are 
 right. Between gentlemen this sort of thing is a mistake, 
 even in jest. You do not leave this room till you have 
 promised to fight me to-morrow ! ' and I threw myself 
 across the door. I was the younger and the stronger 
 man. 
 
 With perfect gravity the Count sat down in an 
 armchair. The wind was howling more loudly than 
 before ; the flames had sunk lower. 
 
 I became conscious of the absurdity of the situation. 
 Nothing short of flood, fire, or earthquake could put an 
 
 !■■ 
 
82 STORIES 
 
 end to it in a fitting manner. There we were bound to 
 stay till we died of starvation, unless one or the other 
 would compromise his dignity. As the llittle I knew of 
 the Count made me feel certain that nothing would 
 ever induce him to compromise his, I compromised 
 mine. 
 
 * Count,' I said, ' this is a ridiculous position for both 
 of us. ]\Iy presence causes you an intolerable gene^ and 
 yours, the whole night through, would scarcely be agree- 
 able to me. Let us consider the thing dispassionately. 
 You will not fight me because I do not hold an opinion 
 which you, rightly or wrongly, hold to be necessary for 
 my future happiness, if I live ; i.e. you do not object to 
 kill me, because you think no one can die, but you do 
 object to poison the remainder of my mortal existence. 
 If you do not fight me, you will shoot yourself, for you 
 would be unable to survive your honour. That is the 
 case on your side. Now for mine. I have an instinctive 
 dislike of suicide, either for mvself or for any one else 
 whom I respect. It may be a mere prejudice, but so it 
 is. If, therefore, you blow out your brains, it will 
 seriously affect my peace of mind, inasmuch as I shall 
 consider myself to a certain extent responsible. But 
 fair fight is another thing altogether. It is now five 
 o'clock. According to ovu* agreement we meet at eight 
 to-morrow morning. I shall need at least five hours"' 
 sleep beforehand, or I shall not take steady aim. Allow- 
 ing full time to dress, breakfast, and get to the rendez- 
 vous^ I ought not to go to bed later than two. Between 
 five o'clock this evening and two to-morrow morning 
 there are nine hours. Now, these nine hours I will 
 promise you, on my word of honour as a gentleman, 
 to spend on the investigation of a question that does 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 83 
 
 iu)t iiiteixst inc in the least, and on which, but for you, 
 I should never, in the whole course of my life, have 
 spent nine minutes — if you, on your part, will promise 
 lo meet me at eight to-morrow. If, by that time, I can 
 answer your (|ucsti()n in the affirmative — and I know 
 already that it is not by words alone that you will judge 
 whether I speak the ti'uth — well and good ! Let us 
 light ! Whichever way the duel ends, you will have the 
 satisfaction of thinking that I have gained a belief which, 
 but for you, I should not even have wished to gain. If, 
 on the contrary, I retain my present scepticism, we will 
 shoot ourselves instead of each other. Voila tout! It 
 is a pity : the country will lose two possible defenders 
 instead of one, but I do not see how that can be helpeil. 
 Is it a bond ? Will you meet me at eight ? 
 
 The Count rose from his chair : his eyes shone. 
 
 ' I have the greatest pleasure in accepting yoiu- gener- 
 ous proposal,' he replied, ' more especially as I am (}uite 
 convinced that no one could study this question for 
 nine hours without answering it as I myself have been 
 taught to answer it. As for the method of study, that of 
 course nuist be left to yourself. The " Phaidon " of 
 Plato ' 
 
 ' No,' I said carelessly, moving away from the door to 
 let him pass. ' ]My tastes are not philosophical. I shall 
 sit by the fire for three hours, and think it over in my 
 own way. (I dare not engage that my mind will not 
 wander to other subjects. La Girouette danced adorably 
 in the ballet last night.) Then, if you have no objection, 
 I shall dine out and go to a ball, the invitation for 
 which I accepted some time ago, so that my absence 
 would be remarked : and, when the clock strikes eleven, 
 I shall betake myself to my confessor. If serious 
 
84 STORIES 
 
 reflection, if the sight of the vanities of this world, if the 
 consolation of religion, all put together, cannot persuade 
 me to believe in the immortality of the soul, it will be 
 a hopeless affair indeed ; for I am sure nothing else 
 could/ 
 
 The Count sighed, 
 
 ' It is a strange way to take,"* he said ; ' but let no man 
 judge for another. I myself was led to believe by a 
 series of events which, to any other than myself, 
 would appear almost incredible. I pray that you may 
 be rightly directed. In the meantime I wish you good- 
 night. I shall not retire to rest before two o'clock.' 
 He bowed again and went out. 
 
 When he was gone I threw myself down in the chair 
 which he had occupied, that I might enjoy to the full 
 the luxury of being alone. The Count's presence had 
 become a hideous oppression to me during the last 
 quarter of an hour. I had felt as if he would never go 
 — as if he were a nightmare, as if he were the Old Man 
 of the Sea, as if he were a whole crowd of people in 
 himself, and made the room stuffy. I ran to the window 
 and flung it open ; the wind rushed in and puffed the 
 curtains out, and rioted amongst my books and papers, 
 bathing me, body and soul, in freedom. I heaped up 
 faggot after faggot, and stirred them into a blaze that 
 might have set the chimney on fire. Then, between 
 wind and flame, down I sat, according to contract, to 
 consider that part of myself which was more subtle than 
 either. 
 
 I found it to the full as difficult as I had expected. 
 The old arguments were no newer. ' We should like to 
 go on living very much. Therefore we think we shall. 
 But as we really do not know, we will not die till the 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 85 
 
 last possible moment." They came to little more than 
 that, so it seemed. As I was without this strong pre- 
 possession in favour of life, I failed to recognise their 
 cogency. Besides, to have that man going on for ever ? 
 I had a strong prepossession in favour of his extinction, 
 even if it necessarily included my own. I loved myself 
 less than I hated him. Not that I had any reason to 
 hate him. He was everything that he should be, which 
 gave a sort of zest to my abhorrence, reduced it to a fine 
 art — made it essential, not a mere accident. Our 
 natures were antagonistic. I could have forgiven another 
 for murdering me more easily than I could forgive him 
 the fact of his existence in the same universe with 
 myself. He jarred upon my every nerve. My eyes 
 rebelled at the sight of his face, my ears at the sound of 
 his voice, the touch of his hand caused an electric shiver 
 of repulsion. He annihilated all but the animal part of 
 me ; when he was in the room I knew his dog had more 
 of a soul than I. And, by the strangest freak of fancy, 
 it was this man who, more than any one I ever met, had 
 the faculty of conjuring anything like it out of me, who 
 insisted not only on my believing it was there, but that 
 it woidd go on being there for ever and ever. 
 
 ' No, Count,' I said, as I watched the sparks go up 
 the chimney; 'keep your immortality to yourself! I 
 would not share it with you for the asking,'' and through 
 my mind there flashed the old emblems of the transitori- 
 ness of life — the dream, the shadow, the morning mist, 
 the snowflake, the flower of the grass, the bird flving out 
 of the darkness, through the lighted hall, into the dark- 
 ness again. I was reassured concerning its momentary 
 character. ' And yet,"" I said to myself, ' the Count has 
 a very strong will. If any man had the power to insist 
 
86 STORIES 
 
 on living, in defiance of all the rules of Nature, that man 
 would be the Count. Perhaps it is his excessive vitality 
 which is burdensome to ephemeral creatures like myself. 
 It is as if he absorbed their proper part whenever he 
 came near them." 
 
 So thinking, I took out my pistols and cleaned them, 
 not without a certain pleasure. I had had enough of my 
 own society by the time the clock struck eight, and was 
 well inclined to seek that of others. 
 
 The dinner to which I was invited was given by 
 Princess X., who lived in an apartment on the third floor 
 of the Hotel Z. She was going to a dance that night — 
 the same that I meant to attend — and the party before- 
 hand would be, she informed me, quite a small one, 
 consisting only of myself and a few intimates. It so 
 happened that I was rather late. Seeing the door of the 
 lift open, I got in. The darkness had prevented me 
 from noticing that in one corner there was already 
 something that looked like a downy ball of white, with 
 a very small head coming out of it. I would fain have 
 beaten a retreat, but it was too late ; the porter stepped 
 in after me and we began to ascend. 
 
 'Oh ! ' said the little lady, with a gasp, putting out a 
 small white hand to catch hold of me. I am afraid 
 that I did not attempt to reassure her. It was all over 
 in a minute. 
 
 The lift stopped. I made way for her to get out. 
 She turned round to me, smiling and blushing. 
 
 'I beg your pardon,"* she said, 'I never have been in 
 one before. It is so unlike anything else — when you are 
 not accustomed. I suppose you also are going to dine 
 with Marramc ? ' 
 
 ' I have not the pleasure of calling the Princess X. 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 87 
 
 Marraine,"" I replied ; ' but if she has the pleasure of 
 calling you her godchild, we are bound for one destina- 
 tion. Allow me to ring the bell/ 
 
 As she passed into the hall, the cleai'er light shone, 
 for a moment, on her soft brown curls, and glanced, 
 reflected, in her mirthful eyes. 
 
 We entered the drawing-room ahnost at the same 
 moment. As the Princess rose to make us acquainted, 
 she laughed again and said quickly : 
 
 ' No, no, Marraine, it is too late. I was introduced by 
 the lift, as the greatest coward this gentleman has ever 
 known, quite three minutes ago.' 
 
 The Princess took her hand. 
 
 ' Well ! well ! ' she said, ' was there ever such a 
 naughty debutante ? It is a pity, as you took each other 
 up so pleasantly, that you cannot take each other down 
 also. But there I must interfere."' 
 
 ' It is cruel of you, Princess. Fate was much kinder. 
 But,' — I turned to the younger lady — ' may I presume 
 to ask your hand for the first dance.?' 
 
 ' You may,' she said merrily ; ' but I hope you know 
 what you are asking. It is the first dance that I have 
 I'ver given any one." 
 
 ' Where is your father .'' ' asked the Princess. 
 
 ' Kept at home by a letter from the Prime Minister, 
 He begs that you will excuse him ; for nothing else 
 would he have given up this party. He is coming later 
 on, to take me home. I hope he will not come till very 
 late indeed, if that is all he cares for. He did not feel 
 sure that it was meet for me to go out to dinner alone, 
 even to the house of my godmother, but he said that he 
 did not want to disappoint you, and I think,'' she put 
 in candidly, though very demurely, ' he did not want to 
 
88 STORIES 
 
 disappoint me either. I should have died of vexation if 
 I had had to stay at home.' 
 The Princess laughed. 
 
 ' That makes it serious. And seriously, my love, you 
 are quite right. Unless one is dead or dying, one should 
 keep one's dinner engagement. And, while I think of 
 it,' she added, addressing herself to me, ' I must 
 positively engage you to dine with me to-morrow. I 
 expect the Prime Minister, and I cannot be left alone to 
 entertain him. Eight o'clock, do you hear ? He will 
 have to leave early, so mind you are in time.' 
 
 ' To hear is to obey. Unless I am dead or dying I 
 will keep my dinner engagement.' 
 
 ' I think I am sure of you then. You never looked 
 better in your life.' 
 
 ' Dinner is on the table,' said the Princess's butler. 
 The ground floor of the hotel had been engaged for 
 the dance. The fiddles were already striking up when I, 
 in company with the other gentlemen of the party, 
 entered the room. My promised partner was standing 
 beside the Princess, busily inscribing the names of 
 various aspirants on her card. I thought she might be 
 better employed inscribing mine, and said so. She gave 
 me the card, and I availed myself of the vacant spaces 
 that appeared on it. 
 
 ' Quick, quick ! ' she cried. ' There is the music ! 
 Are you not longing to be off'.?' 
 
 Dancing varies inversely as the character of the lady 
 who dances. With her it resembled nothing so much as 
 flight. She scarcely seemed to touch the ground with 
 her feet, she was as light as one of the feathers on her 
 cloak. The music mounted to my brain as we went 
 whirling round and round together. I felt as though I 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 89 
 
 were a spirit cliasing another spirit. I forgot everything 
 else, and when it stopped I could not have told whether 
 we had been dancing hours or moments. I had begun 
 in another state of existence. 
 
 'Ah !' she said, 'your step goes well with mine."' 
 
 How I filled up the intervals when I was not dancing 
 with her I do not know. Once, while we were standing- 
 together in the recess formed by a window, a great moth 
 How in and made for the lighted candelabra over our heads. 
 There was a quick change in her. 
 
 ' O save it, save it ! ' she cried, clasping her little hands 
 together in wild distress. 
 
 I caught the creature in my handkerchief and let it 
 out again. When I returned to her she was pale and 
 trembling. 
 
 ' He is quite safe," I said. ' Do not be unhappy ! 
 After all, what would it matter if he did burn himself.? 
 In pioportion, he would have lived much longer than we 
 shall.^ 
 
 ' No, no,' she said. ' ^Ve live for ever.' 
 
 Her words sent a thrill of recollection through me. 
 
 ' Do we .? "" I said in a gentler voice. ' If you tell me 
 so, I will believe it.' 
 
 ' Why yes, of course we do ! ' she said. ' I never heard 
 any one say that we did not. Shall we finish this 
 dance ? ' 
 
 It was the last op})ortunity that I had of talking to 
 her. I think I was engaged in conversation with some 
 one else when, later on in the evening, I heard her 
 pleading tones close behind me. 
 
 ' Only one more ! O let me stay for only one 
 more ! "■ 
 
 In an instant she was at my side. 
 
90 STORIES 
 
 ' I must go,' she said. ' I must have one more dance 
 before I go. I do not know where my partner is.' 
 
 It was irresistible, though I had a humiliating sensation 
 that she asked nie only because there was no one else at 
 hand. She broke away just when the delirium of enjoy- 
 ment was at its height. 
 
 ' No longer ! ' she cried. ' Not a moment more ! That 
 was perfect. Good- night ! ' 
 
 She made me a tricksy sign of adieu with her fan, 
 and tripped away ; she could hardly help dancing as 
 she moved. 
 
 I stood bewildered for a moment, then rushed to the 
 door that I might see her as she passed to her carriage. 
 She was leaning on her father s arm as she went down 
 the steps. The link-man raised his torch to guide them, 
 and a sudden glare of light showed me the features of 
 the Count. 
 
 I drew a long breath. 
 
 ' It is as well that I am going to fight that man 
 to-morrow,' I thought. ' If not, he would inevitably 
 have been my father-in-law. In the first place, I have 
 not enough to marry upon ; in the second, we should 
 have made the little thing miserable between us.' 
 
 The wind detached a fragment of her swansdown cloak. 
 I stooped and picked it up. 
 
 Practically speaking, the disposition of my time had 
 been in no degree influenced by the Count's grotesque 
 requirement. I had intended all along to stay at home 
 until eight o'clock, to dine with the Princess X., to go to 
 the dance, and to visit the dearest iiiend that I had in 
 the world. He was a Dominican monk, of great learning 
 and acuteness, resident in the monastery of S. Petrox, 
 about half a mile off. We were old schoolfellows, and, 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 91 
 
 though our ways of life were very different, he had never 
 lost the ascendency over me which, as a boy, he had 
 understood how to gain. 
 
 He was busy reading when I entered his cell ; he laid 
 his finger on his lips, to show nic that I must not 
 interrupt him. 
 
 After a long pause, he closed the great volume 
 reverently and asked me wjiat I wanted at that time 
 of night. 
 
 * I want an immortal soul.' 
 
 ' Curious ! "* he remarked, pushing his spectacles up on 
 his forehead, 'I have just been studying the question 
 of the soul.' 
 
 ' Well ! what is the result of your investigations ?"* 
 
 ' My friend,' returned the Dominican, ' what would it 
 avail were I to tell you ? I know your mind upon these 
 subjects.' 
 
 ' That is more than I know myself, then — more than 
 I should ever have wished to know but for a sti'ange 
 occurrence.' 
 
 I told him all the circumstances of my conversation with 
 the Count, — not mentioning his name, of course. 
 
 ' You have helped me at many a difficult pass before 
 now,' I said. ' Help me again. Pour out the contents 
 of that great volume upon my head ! ' 
 
 ' You would be as wise as you were before. I know 
 you, am'ico mio. You own no teacher save experience.' 
 
 ' What is the experience that can make a man believe 
 in that of which he has none ? Tell me, that I may 
 seek it.' 
 
 ' Is there any one in the world of whom you are really 
 fond ?' said the Dominican. 
 
 For the fraction of a second I hesitated. 
 
92 STORIES 
 
 ' Forgive the question ! It is of no importance. 
 There is one way by which you can be brought to 
 believe, but it may cost you your life. Are you willing 
 to risk it ? ' 
 
 ' I am bound to preserve my life until to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 ' So far I can guarantee it, if you are careful to obey. 
 For the rest, you are indifferent ? Well and good ! 
 Understand that I, on my part, am running a great 
 risk for your sake. If what I am about to do were 
 to become known, I should incur excommunication. 
 My fellow-churchmen would say that I was endangering 
 a soul within the fold to save one that is without. So 
 be it ! You are my friend. You are, I know, an 
 actor of some experience. Do you think that you could 
 personate me ? ' 
 
 ' With your instructions, I have no doubt that I 
 could." 
 
 He rose, and took from his cupboard a priest's robe 
 and a little cap. 
 
 ' You have just recovered from an illness ; you must 
 wear a heretta. You are close shaven ; that is well. 
 Under the heretta your hair is not too long. Be sure 
 to recollect that you are still subject to cold — that you 
 must on no account take it off. Before we go any 
 further, oblige me by taking an oath — a solemn oath. 
 First, that, whatever may happen, you will attempt no 
 resistance ; secondly, that you will never reveal the 
 names of those amongst whom I am going to send you, 
 nor any of the circumstances which you may be called 
 upon to witness. Before you swear, reflect ! The posses- 
 sion of a secret of this kind implies considerable danger. 
 Is it worth the risk .? ' 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 93 
 
 'A strange question for one of your calling lo ask I' I 
 retorted ; ' I am no priest, but I think it is.' 
 
 'Is there anything in the world that you hold sacred ?" 
 said the Dominican. 
 
 I drew the bit of swansdown from its resting-place, 
 profaning the one true sentiment that was in me with a 
 laugh. As for my friend, he never even smiled. 
 
 ' That will do ! "• he said. ' Swear upon tliat ! ' I 
 did so. 
 
 'You are now a penitent before me. I have heard 
 your confession. I am about to absolve yoii. Take 
 accurate note of everything that I say, and reproduce 
 my words, as nearly as you can, when you are called in 
 to the death-bed ."* 
 
 'You spoke to me as if I were a woman,' I observed, 
 when he had finished. 
 
 ' You are quite right,' said the monk. ' Now let us 
 reverse the parts. Do you absolve me, as if I were a 
 Avoman ! ' 
 
 'I repeated the form of words which he had just gone 
 through. 
 
 '■Evviva!' he said, when I had done. 'You might 
 have been born in a cassock.' 
 
 At the same moment I heard the hooting of an owl 
 in the garden below. He started, and looked at the 
 clock. 
 
 ' Late ! ' he said. ' That is the carriage. We have 
 not a moment to lose. Let me recommend you to 
 keep silence from the time you leave these doors to 
 the time when you are set down again. If you say 
 a word more than is necessary, I will not answer for 
 the consequences. I shall await you here on your re- 
 turn. Remember your oath. Then, bending forward 
 
94 STORIES 
 
 as if he feared the very walls would hear, he added 
 ill a whisper : 
 
 ' Talce no refreshment in that house.'' 
 
 He touched the back of a volume of the Via Media 
 as he spoke ; part of what had appeared to be the book- 
 case sprang open and disclosed a winding stair. Without 
 another word, he pointed down it, taking a light to 
 show me the way. At the last turn of the steps he 
 left me. 
 
 I felt the cold breath of the night lifting my hair. 
 Then I was suddenly seized and blindfolded ; whether 
 by two or more persons I could not be sure, for I was 
 taken by surprise in the darkness. Determined to 
 adhere to the prescribed conditions of the adventure, I 
 made no sound and I heard a whisper : 
 
 ' No need to gag him, he has his cue.' 
 
 In a moment strong arms had lifted me and were 
 carrying me along — over the grass, as I judged, for 
 there was no ring of footsteps. I was let down gently 
 enough upon the seat of a carriage, and away we went 
 like the wind. How long it took, which way we went, 
 whether there was any one else in the carriage, I have 
 no idea. A steady hand must have held the reins. We 
 were going at a breakneck pace, yet we never encountered 
 the smallest obstacle, nor did I even feel a jolt. Thus 
 was I whirled along through the night, as little able to 
 see as if I had been sleeping. 
 
 We stopped at last. I was helped out, and guided, 
 as I judged by the mouldy smell, into some cellar or 
 disused passage, at the end of which there were steps. 
 Presumably, they led up into a house, for when we trod 
 on level ground again, the atmosphere was dry and 
 warm, and, to my great surprise, I heard the tones of a 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 95 
 
 piano in the distance, familiar tones at the sound of 
 which my heart beat, though it was a minute before I 
 recollected that I had heard them last as I was leaving 
 the ball-room. We went up many stairs, down many more 
 and up again, the sounds growing more and more distinct 
 as we advanced. They ceased abruptly, the bandage 
 was removed, and I found myself standing alone in a 
 tiny room, lit by one small red-shaded lamp. I tried 
 the door, but it was locked ; mysterious, for I had heard 
 no turning of the key ! A piano stood open, but there 
 was no music upon it. A book lay on the sofa, as if 
 some one had just tossed it down there. On the outer 
 side there was no window at all ; in the other wall was 
 a recess, formed by three little windows of painted glass, 
 through which a light from below shone dimly, by way 
 of the jMadonna and two attendant saints. 
 
 I waited a long time, but no one came. The stillness 
 grew oppressive. I threw myself on the sofa, and tried 
 to read, but the air was heated and magnetic — it seemed 
 to thrust itself between me and the lines. I looked at 
 the first page of the book to see if there were any indica- 
 tion of the owner, but there was none. I then tried 
 several others, all with the same ill success. Clearly they 
 had been read with much affection, for they were often 
 marked with a pencil: but there was never any name in 
 the beginning, and from one or two of them the fly-leaf 
 had been removed. 
 
 On a sudden the light reflected from below went out ; 
 the saints became indistinguishable. 
 
 My curiosity got the better of me. I resolved, come 
 what would, to open one of those windows ; to have 
 nothing but a pane of glass between me and the unknown 
 was too strong a tem])tation. I pressed with all my 
 
96 STORIES 
 
 strength against the woodwork of the centre one : there 
 was a slight, a very slight, yielding ; it seemed to give 
 on darkness. I moved the lamp cautiously, so as to 
 concentrate its beams upon the chink, and pressed again. 
 For an instant I caught sight of the dark figure of a 
 man, bending over a table, in front of a fireplace, far 
 down below. Then the window gave an ominous creak. 
 I closed it, and sat breathless. Whether the man had 
 heard .f' I inclined to think that he must have. Presently 
 there were footsteps outside. 
 
 ' In half an hour,"" said a man''s voice. 
 
 ' In half an hour," said a woman's. 
 
 It was music echoing a discord. The key turned in 
 the lock ; the little lady of the swansdown cloak entered, 
 and shut the door behind her. I cannot now conceive 
 my feelings at that moment ; but I had just presence of 
 mind enough to recollect that I should be turned out if 
 I did not sustain my part. We saluted each other in 
 the usual way, and she knelt down before me. For the 
 first time it darted through my mind that she was 
 going to make a confession — and to me ? A strong 
 repugnance to hear overcame every other consideration. 
 If I could mock that creature, I must be a fiend in- 
 carnate. Yet how, with safety to my friend — and to 
 myself — prevent her ? I took a step backward. She 
 raised her eyes appealingly. I frowned and turned 
 away. 
 
 'This is some jest,' I said sternly. ' I was sent for to 
 attend a deathbed. Take me to the penitent."" 
 
 ' It is I that am dying.' 
 
 'Are you mad?' I demanded. 'Many a time 
 have I seen death ; never with eyes and cheeks like 
 these.' 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 97 
 
 ' He that has not an hour to live is no nearer death 
 than I am. I shall not see the sun rise to-morrow.' 
 
 She spoke with such conviction that I staggered back, 
 reeling under the shock. 
 
 ' You are ill,' she said solicitously, rising from her 
 knees. ' Holy Virgin, what shall I do ? Help ! help ! ' 
 
 I summoned all the strength of mind that I possessed. 
 
 'Do not call, my daughter! It is only a passing 
 weakness. The way hither is long. I am but lately 
 recovered from a severe indisposition. Let me rest ! ' 
 
 Some excuse of this kind I think I made. Whatever 
 it was, she accepted it, and stood watching me for a 
 minute or two. Then, seeing that I was better, she 
 said, with great gentleness : 
 
 'It was not good to send you out on such a wild 
 night as this. You should have stayed at home and 
 slept. It grieved me so to see that I have made you 
 ill. I did not think of this when I asked my father to 
 send for a priest. I have hardly ever been allowed one, 
 but you are very like some one that I have seen — I 
 cannot feel as if you were a stranger. I could believe 
 anything that you said — I know I could. Are you glad 
 to think how greatly it comforts me to see you ? ' 
 
 ' I would give the remnant of my years, if that could 
 be of any service to you,' I said, striving not to say it 
 too fervently. 
 
 She was quiet for a moment; — then, drawing a chair 
 close to the sofa on which I had fallen back, she 
 resumed. 
 
 ' I will not weary you with making a long confession. 
 I think I can say what is on my mind better like this. 
 I trust your face.' 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 G 
 
98 STORIES 
 
 'It is a dreadful thing. At first I thought I dared 
 not say it to any one. It was wicked of me even to 
 think it." 
 
 She hid her face, 
 
 ' But you, you are older ; you may not have very long 
 to live either. Things look so different then. If you 
 said it, I could believe it, I know I could,' 
 
 Once more she hesitated. The wind had risen again 
 in all its fury, and was howling outside the window. 
 
 ' Satan tempts us,"* she said. 
 
 ' Yes,' I said, ' Satan tempts us.' 
 
 She turned her face away, clasped her hands tightly, 
 and went on. 
 
 ' I do not know how to say it. It was like this. I 
 was at a dance, and very happy. I think I never was 
 so happy in my life. I never danced with any one 
 before. There came a moth, and it was going to burn 
 itself. He saved it ;. and then he said, " What matter 
 if it had died, for we were all like moths." There is 
 nothing more.' 
 
 ' He told a lie.' 
 
 ' I knew it, I knew it,' she said. ' Say that ! Look at 
 me as you say it ! Say : " I believe we live again." ' 
 
 ' I believe that we live again,' I said solemnly, answer- 
 ing her gaze with perfect truthfulness. The anguish 
 passed away ; the strained hands loosened. She bent 
 her head and closed her eyes. When she spoke again, 
 she said in a whisper : ' It is all well. How good of you 
 to come ! He said he would believe it, if I told him, I 
 could not tell him. He made me feel as if I did not 
 know. If I could only — will you say this to him for me ? 
 Ah, no ! I forgot. You must never tell any one.' 
 
 ' You shall tell him yourself,' 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 99 
 
 A light, first of wonder, then of the happiness of those 
 who see a vision, dawned in her eyes. I was still half in 
 heaven with her, when the Count entered. She told him 
 that I had been ill — that I ought not to have eome out 
 at night. 
 
 ' I am greatly obliged to you for your kindness.' The 
 Count addressed himself to me with a graceful, though 
 condescending bow. 'The Abbot is informed of the 
 reasons for which secrecy is imperative,' he continued. 
 I feel sure that you will hold me excused. But we 
 must not suffer you to go hence without a draught of 
 wine.' His daughter went before him. 
 
 I followed, down the dark staircase into a hall — tiie 
 same evidently as that into which I had peeped from the 
 window of the boudoir. It lay in darkness now ; even 
 the fire burned low. The Count carried a lamp. 
 
 Strange figures, stranger faces, met my eyes. Goat- 
 footed creatures were driving airy chariots over my head ; 
 Cupids and Fauns and things half man, half beast or 
 bird, were at their wildest revelry around me. Here 
 stood riiomme arme, his visor up, nothing but vacant 
 blackness behind it. There, two colossal heads, man and 
 woman, leered at each other. Garlands of carved fruit 
 and flowers, amidst whicii squirrels, monkeys, and little 
 owls were playing, wreathed pillar and post of the stair- 
 case by which we iiad come down. No two were 
 alike. 
 
 In front of the fire stood a table; on it a tray of 
 polished brass, holding a flask of fine Venetian work and 
 some glasses. 
 
 He seated himself in silence. I did the same. 
 
 A French clock on its bracket struck, or rather tolled, 
 an hour after midnight. 
 
100 STORIES 
 
 Lifting his dark eyes, the Count fixed them steadily 
 upon me. 
 
 I feared his recognition too much to meet them, for he 
 and I had looked each other in the eyes once before. It 
 is impossible to mask the soul when she is sitting at her 
 open windows. But he had no suspicion. 
 
 ' In the course of your life,' he said, ' you have, no 
 doubt, seen many strange things.' He waved his head in 
 the direction of the grotesques. ' Did you ever, if I may 
 ask the question, see a house furnished in this way 
 before ? ' 
 
 ' Never.' 
 
 ' Could it have been so furnished by any reasonable 
 man ? ' 
 
 ' A poet 't ' I said tentatively. 
 
 The Count shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' There are no poets in the family.' 
 
 I kept silence. 
 
 ' The man shot himself. His son built the little room 
 up above. It has no window to the front. There his 
 wife lived until her death.' 
 
 He glanced up at a portrait on the wall, the features 
 of which strongly resembled his own. 
 
 ' No one knows what became of him.' 
 
 As he spoke, he pulled a silk tassel which hung by a 
 long slender cord from the ceiling. A thousand lights 
 flashed out. The heart of every carven rose became a 
 heart of flame, stars glowed among the vine and pome- 
 granate, eyes of fire shone from the grotesque heads. 
 The lights, the faces, the flowers' and fruit all round 
 wreathed themselves into the first letter of the name of 
 my enemy. Everywhere it was written. A wave of fresh, 
 vigorous hate surged over me. 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 101 
 
 * Have you ever seen an apartment lighted in this 
 manner before ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' I must confess that it appears to me fantastic, though 
 very beautiful.'' 
 
 'We were not speaking of the effect, I think. It is 
 unusual ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly.' 
 
 'The invention is due to the father of the present 
 owner. He fell by his own hand.' 
 
 ' And the present owner ? ' I said. 
 
 The Count's expression changed. He looked at his 
 daughter, who had seated herself on a low couch by the 
 fire. She did not appear to be listening ; but he lowered 
 his voice. 
 
 ' The present owner has one child — now in the flower 
 of her youth. She does not know the dreadful fate of her 
 ancestors. She has only been told thus much — that at 
 the age of seventeen she will pass into another life. She 
 feels no fear, since she is going to the mother whom, as a 
 babe, she lost. Of the exact moment and manner of her 
 death she has been kept in ignorance until within an hour 
 of it. Nothing has frightened, nothing has distressed 
 her. Pure and unspotted as she came to him, he that 
 best loves her desires to send her back to that heaven 
 which is more real to her than earth, to that heaven 
 which will save her from knowing — as, but for him, she 
 must infallibly know — that this earth is a hell. Is he 
 right ? ' 
 
 ' No,' I said, witii a certain assurance. ' He is mad.' 
 The Count started ; but on the instant he was calm 
 again. 
 
 'That makes the fifth generation,' he said, as if to 
 himself. ' In the eyes of ignorant persons he may be 
 
102 STORIES 
 
 mad perhaps. Is it not the truest sanity to prevent these 
 horrors from cuhninating in a sixth ? I cannot but 
 approve his judgment."' 
 
 He turned towards the girl. She raised her face to his. 
 I saw that it was white as marble. I thought that she 
 was going to faint. Instinctively I seized the flask and 
 poured out some of the wine. 
 
 'Well thought of!' said the Count. 'The Church, 
 however, comes first — even before a lady.' 
 
 He made a sign to her. 
 
 ' You need refreshment more than I,' she said, offering 
 me the glass, 
 
 I took it from her, not thinking what I did. And yet 
 some word of hers recalled a word spoken before. 
 
 ' Refreshment ! ' 
 
 Take no refreshment in that house. 
 
 I had but tasted. For the moment my senses still were 
 clear. I saw the Count sprinkle drops from a phial on to 
 his handkerchief and give it to the little lady. I saw her 
 fall back softly on the couch. 
 
 Her father watched with rapt attention. The swans- 
 down cloak that she had worn was hanging over the back 
 of a chair. Suddenly he tore a bit of it away and held 
 it to her lips. The light down never stirred. 
 
 I thought that I called out, but heard no sound. 
 There was a weight of lead upon my eyes — the air was 
 thick with fog. I fought with might and main to get to 
 her. I could not stir a step. I could not even see her now. 
 
 Making one last effort to move, I missed my footing 
 and fell — fell, as it seemed, into a yawning gulf that 
 opened suddenly before me — fell down and down and 
 down into the fathomless depths of that slumber wherein 
 we spend the half of existence. 
 
THE FRIENDLY FOE 103 
 
 But Lethe had been meted out unevenly ; to her the 
 sleep that knew no earthly morrow — to nie the sleep that 
 ended in a few hours, leaving the rest of life a dream. 
 
 On the day after, I met the Count at eight o'clock in 
 the morning. At eight o'clock in the evening I kept my 
 dinner engasiement. 
 
104 STORIES 
 
 [1898] 
 THE LADY ON THE HILLSIDE ^ 
 
 MeadowSj tho" your flowers are bright, 
 
 Tho' you laugh, your laugh is light. 
 
 For the maid is rarer far 
 
 Than your sweetest garlands are. — Melka(;eh. 
 
 ' For my part,' said Michele, 'I do not admire the 
 Duchess of Milan's daughters." 
 
 ' Whose daughters do you admire.'" asked one of the 
 others. ' Not Heaven's own, I think ! I would not be 
 the woman that you wed. Were she as fair as \'enus, 
 you would cast her very perfection in her teeth, because 
 it left you nothing to wish for.' 
 
 ' You speak truly, O wise young man ! Perfection is 
 none the less a vice because it is a vice that few are 
 capable of practising. That which satisfies and does not 
 stimulate the soul of man is but a snare of the Arch- 
 enemy." 
 
 ' If that be so, the sooner we all marry the Graiae the 
 better. They had but one eye between them, and they 
 were always saying, " Oh, the old days were better than 
 the new!" It must be truly edifying to contemplate 
 the dissatisfaction in the soul of man that would result 
 from such an union. Yet have I heard you swear that 
 an ugly woman was not a woman at all.' 
 
 ' He does not know what beauty i>,' chimed in 
 1 From The Conihill, June 1898. 
 
THE LADY ON THE HILLSIDE 105 
 
 Guaniieri da Castiglionchio. ' He thinks so much about 
 it that he never has time to see it. "He that obscrveth 
 the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds 
 shall not reap." Paint your ideal beauty for us, Master 
 Michelel (You will perceive that he cannot do it.) 
 What is she like.^' 
 
 They were leaning over a parapet on the Lung' Arno, 
 between the Ponte Vecchio and the Bridge of the Four 
 Seasons. Michele rested his chin upon his hand, and 
 spoke thoughtfully, 
 
 ' She is tall and slender, and her head is set upon her 
 neck like that of a violet on its stem. The colour in her 
 check is but a roseleaf dropped on lilies.' 
 
 ' Hear him ! ' cried Ercole. ' She is not flesh and blood at 
 all — this creature of roses and lilies ! You might as well 
 marry Cantica Canticoruni. More detail, say I! What 
 is her forehead like t — though I can tell without telling ! " 
 
 ' It is high and white.' 
 
 ' I thought so. The eyebrows ? ' 
 
 ' Perfect arch — so faintly marked that I am almost 
 wrong to call it dark.' 
 
 ' The nose .'' It is a little nose, of course .'' ' 
 
 'The distance between it and the upper lip is perhaps 
 a thought longer than with most women.' 
 
 'I should never know this angel of yours if I were to 
 meet her. What sort of hair has she .^ ' 
 
 Here Guarnieri interrupted. 
 
 ' You must not tax his powers too far. Even the 
 excellent hero of that excellent English comedy you 
 showed me the other day, when he has numbered all the 
 gifts that must unite in the person of his mistress, decides 
 that her hair shall be " of what colour it please God. 
 
 ' Nay, nay,' Michele said. ' I know the colour of her 
 
106 STORIES 
 
 hair — a dark auburn. It is twisted in rippling lines like 
 those the waves make out at sea beyond Pisa — it takes 
 as many ever-varying forms as flame."' 
 
 '"The Fair One with the Golden Locks'" was nothing 
 to this lady.' 
 
 ' Your description reminds me too much of Medusa, 
 said Ercole. ' There is something serpentine about hair 
 that looks as if it were endued witii separate life. And, 
 except for this, Guarnieri is right. You have given no 
 details that can be recognised. To quote again his 
 favourite barbaric author — 
 
 ' " How shall I your true love know ? " ' 
 
 ' By her motion,"* Michele said, so fervently that his 
 three friends looked up surprised ; ' for she moves like a 
 goddess. By her voice, for, when she speaks, you hear 
 the singing of the spheres."" 
 
 'Is she a fool?' inquired Guarnieri, 'A woman that 
 looks like one of the Celestials generally is. She is a fool, 
 of course .'' ' Michele smiled mysteriously. 
 
 ' She is wise,"" he said. ' She has been taught wisdom,"" 
 
 ' Then she will never marry you, my fine fellow ! ' 
 
 ' Why not.'*"' Michele asked quickly. 
 
 ' Why, indeed .'' "" queried Ercole. ' A wise maid knows 
 a wise man when she sees him."" 
 
 'That does she not,"" cried Guarnieri. 'You, O 
 Michele, are the wisest man of your years in Florence, 
 for you have never been known to miss anything on 
 which you had set your heart, and you have never been 
 known to praise it when you had won it. You could 
 tell us tales, if you would (nay, do not frown ! who said 
 you would .f^), of the fairest and most famous dames of 
 our city. But for all that, Diotima her very self, if she 
 
THE LADY ON THE HUXSIDE 107 
 
 wedded, would rather wed Ajj^ostino here, who has a 
 heart and no head — who fiohts anybody that dares to 
 mention a hidy said so much as " Good mornino;" to him, 
 unless he does it on his knees.' 
 
 ' Dear me ! '' said Ercole. ' How exceedingly foolish ! ' 
 
 ' It is a kind of folly that women prefer to wisdom/ 
 
 ' Ah, well ! You ought to know, Castiglionchio. I 
 have heard it said that you yourself are more of a woman 
 than a man." 
 
 'By whom?' said Guarnieri angrily. 
 
 ' By the fair Riccarda di Ser Pace da Certaldo, whom 
 Heaven preserve ! I am bound to add that she said she 
 liked Agostino much better.' 
 
 Guarnieri laughed. 
 
 ' Oho ! Sits the wind in that (juarter ? But Madonna 
 Iticcarda is privileged. If she speaks to me with her 
 eyes, as she did the last time I saw her, she shall be 
 forgiven the sins of her lips. By the way, Michele, there 
 is one thing that you have not told us yet, anent this 
 mistress of yours. Has she good eyes .^ ' 
 
 Michele did not answer immediately. When he did, 
 his voice shook. 
 
 ' May I descend to the lowest circle of the lowest 
 Inferno, if ever I speak of them ! ' he said. 
 
 A momentary pause followed. 
 
 Ercole had meant to laugh, but he checked himself. 
 
 Guarnieri frowned. 
 
 A sudden outbreak of sincerity, when no one expects 
 it, is disagreeable to the nerves as lightning at noon in 
 clear weather. There was some one, it appeared, and 
 Michele was fond of her. Michele's friends had nothing 
 to say. 
 
 Only one of them remained at his ease — one who had 
 
108 STORIES 
 
 not spoken before, but listened, sitting upon the parapet. 
 He was the youngest of the group — scarcely past boy- 
 hood indeed. Now he came to the rescue. 
 
 ' You will be late for the Masque, all three of you,' he 
 said. ' The bells rang nine long ago.' 
 
 ' The boy speaks well,' cried Ercole. ' Come, come 
 Guarnieri ! Stir those thin legs of thine, or iSIonna 
 Riccarda will have something to say to thee, and I am 
 much mistaken if she does not say it with her lips and 
 her eyes also ! Are not you coming, Agostino ?' 
 
 'Not I.' 
 
 ' And you, IVIichele ? " It is best to be off with the 
 old love before you are on with the new." ' 
 
 ' No doubt ! ' Michele said. ' I will join you later on 
 in the evening. Do not wait for me.' 
 
 The two friends drew off, singing a light song as thev 
 went : 
 
 Quel die mi nega amor, 
 Spero dal mio furor ; 
 Se nou gradito fu il mio bel foco, 
 Del fier cielo le furie iuvoco, 
 Nel mio dolor. 
 
 So soon as they were out of sight, Michele laid his 
 hand on Agostino's shoulder. 
 
 ' You should have gone with them. You are young.' 
 
 ' Why should I go .^ I have no lady-love. You should 
 have gone, Michele. You have many.' 
 
 ' Do you think so?' 
 
 Agostino turned round and looked at him. 
 
 ' No,' he said slowly. ' You have one.' 
 
 ' I have had many lovers,' Michele said, ' but now the 
 time is come to love. I have sought the whole world 
 over ; now at last I have found. Yes, there is one. I 
 
THE LADY ON THE HH.LSIDE 109 
 
 have talked with her many times. I have instructed her 
 in the ways of wisdom. On the wild hillside, where she 
 lives, she sees no man except her father. When first I 
 spoke to her of love, she stared and started like a 
 frightened thing. In three days' time I go to wed her. 
 You only understood — you only saw. I do not want 
 those chattering geese to know. Keep my secret, sweet 
 friend, and wish me well ! "" 
 
 All the rest of his life Agostino remembered that 
 moment — the double sparkle of the lights upon the 
 Ponte Vecchio, bright up above, softened in the waters ; 
 the shadowy fisherman in his shadowy boat, raising his 
 cage-like net of gossamer ; the still, dreadful moon, hung 
 like a fiery disc in the deep, quiet sky. 
 
 ' In seven days,' he said, ' I also leave my home, not to 
 return thither. I kno-.v not why I am going. I shall 
 not seek as you have sought. When the hour strikes, I 
 think that I shall find without seeking. Tell this to no 
 one, Michele, but keep my secret and wish me well ! "* 
 
 Agostino blushed as he spoke. To himself he seemed 
 to have made a great confession. Michele scarcely heard 
 it, nor did it strike him that he too had received a 
 confidence. 
 
 Seven days later Agostino rode up the Via delle Belle 
 Donne. He was gaily dressed in a suit of white satin 
 and silver. 
 
 ' The bridegroom ! The bridegroom ! ' the little 
 children in the streets shouted after him ; and he lifted 
 his cap good-naturedly, as if he were the duke himself. 
 
 The old men shrugged their shoulders as he passed. 
 
 'The fool!' said they; 'however, youth is always 
 young.' 
 
no STORIES 
 
 Agostino was in the mood to think every one beautiful. 
 The children were Holy Innocents, the old men Solomons 
 in all their glory. And, indeed, if there be any place 
 where a man may defend the foolishness of feeling happy 
 because the sun shines, Florence, in the month of May, 
 is that place. 
 
 Agostino had few memories, and his hopes were still 
 vague and indefinite, airy thoughts that were bound to 
 nothing on earth and lost themselves in the blue. He 
 was not compelled to build upon the future because the 
 past lay in ruins. His life hitherto had been gentle. He 
 lived it fearlessly, seeing no evil ; wanting nothing because, 
 when desire is not yet awakened, a very little will satisfy 
 one who has it in him to desire the whole world. 
 
 He was on his wav now to find out for himself Avhat 
 the world looked like beyond the walls of Florence, 
 moved by no discontent, but by that restlessness in the 
 blood which, at the season when Nature teaches her 
 winged children to build houses, stings the children of 
 men to forsake theirs, and to seek in travel the new life 
 that the wandering creatures find in rest. He could 
 hardly forbear singing aloud as he rode. 
 
 A flood of light bathed the stern palaces, and opened 
 the buds of all the climbing plants along the walls and 
 round the windows. The streets were like a shifting 
 garden. Every girl whom he met carried a sheaf of 
 blossoms. A child, like a big flower in red from top 
 to toe, stole out from the shadow of one of the dark 
 doors, looked up to a window and Idssed his hand to the 
 roses there, then laughed a roguish laugh and ran across 
 the bridge. 
 
 Agostino had not made up his mind in what direction 
 he was going ; he followed the child. 
 
THE LADY ON THE HILLSIDE 111 
 
 The goldsmiths on the Ponte Vecchio had set forth all 
 their toys. Every counter flashed ; the small black 
 booths were afire with brightness. The flood beneath 
 had turned jeweller — diamonds were sparkling on the 
 troubled Arno. The child looked down and clapped his 
 hands, dancing for joy. 
 
 One of the goldsmiths at the farther end, who dealt in 
 magic rings — toadstones and such brown ware — glanced 
 up at Agostino somewhat wistfully as he passed. 
 
 ' A fine young man ! "* he murmured, ' and going to his 
 bridal.' 
 
 Agostino did not hear the words; if he liad, they 
 would have sent him hotly on his way. But he saw 
 the look, and, being sorry that any one should wish for 
 anything in vain from him on such a morning, he stopped. 
 
 ' Hola, sir shopman of the sad countenance ! Where 
 is the brightest jewel in your window ? ' 
 
 ' It is not far to seek,' the man said, smiling, and 
 showed him a ring of seven fire-opals. 
 
 ' That is a rainbow,' said Agostino. ' I want only the 
 sun.' 
 
 ' Nay, Cavaliere,' the man said ; ' what is a lainbow 
 but the sun shining on rain, making it sunshine 
 too ? ' 
 
 Agostino laughed, counted out the price (for he was 
 careful), and hid the ring beneath his satin vest. The 
 child had disappeared meanwhile. 
 
 ' I have lost my guide for a bit of finery,' said Agostino 
 to himself. 'No matter! I shall find him again when I 
 need him. The world is full of guides who do not know 
 whither they are going.' 
 
 As he spoke, a scarlet butterfly fluttered down from 
 the branches of a tall lilac that overtopped the wall, and 
 
112 STORIES 
 
 flew in zigzags on before him, like a flower blown loose 
 from its stem. 
 
 ' My guide for me," laughed Agostino, and followed. 
 
 The butterfly led him out of the city and far along 
 the road to the mountains. After a while he lost it 
 in the new green and the old grey of a rough olive, and 
 then he followed the windings of the path. He had 
 never in his life ridden so far on this side of the city, 
 for he was of a home-keeping disposition, and during his 
 childhood and early youth cared for valleys and mountains, 
 trees, birds, and living creatures, only when he could look 
 at them through the eyes of poets and story-tellers. 
 Often had he been angered because older men bade him 
 ' lift up his eyes unto the hills,' when they were fixed on 
 snowy alps, on dazzling peaks, and pinnacles of ice taller 
 than any outside the covers of a book. Nevertheless, his 
 books of late had left him lacking somewhat. They did 
 not hold, as heretofore, the six days of creation and an 
 eternal Sabbath besides. 
 
 One day the spring wind rustled the pages that he 
 could not read, and spoke to him louder than Petrarch. 
 One day the sun struck down on them, so that the black 
 and white danced before his eyes, and looking up he saw 
 the sun. 
 
 Now, for the first time, he gazed about him, and felt 
 as though a veil had lifted ; as long as the sky were 
 blue he could never again be altogether sorrowful. His 
 books were old compared with the immortal youth of 
 trees ; the passion that had set him on fire for love and 
 bravery grew chill beside the warmth of this ancient 
 light. What was beauty itself, frozen into a form of 
 words, to the changing, singing, shining beauty of the 
 earth in springtime ? While he read he had often been 
 
THE LADY OF THE HILLSIDE 113 
 
 troubled by a longing to see the magician who painted 
 such marvellous pictures ; but now the fulness of content 
 was his — he had no desire to behold the author of this 
 book. 
 
 *• Pure Homer ! ' he said, recalling dimly something that 
 he had felt when he heard learned men questioning if 
 Homer were one person or many, and wondered why they 
 thought it worth while. 
 
 As for his friends, he needed them not. The absence 
 of the dearest of them was gain rather than loss. Now 
 that he lived alone and free, he knew — how well he 
 knew ! — that they had often left him lonely, that the 
 very closeness of their attachment kept him in prison. 
 Here there was no friendship : he and the world were 
 one. 
 
 He had come to the outskirts of a wood by now ; the 
 trees were scattered apart at short distances from each 
 other. As he rode under one of them his cap caught 
 on a bough. Staying a moment to right it, a little 
 song close to his ear stopped suddenly, and peeping in 
 he saw among the fresh green leaves and buds a nest on 
 which a tiny brown bird sat with twinkling eyes. He 
 let the bough go softly, not to frighten her, and waited; 
 but the song did not begin again, and he rode on, deep 
 in thought. Where was her mate.^ It vexed him to 
 have sent a thrill of fear, even unconsciously, through 
 any heart, when he himself was full of joy. The sight 
 of the bird seemed to have snapped a cord, and the vague 
 yet eager longing which had driven him forth from the 
 city quickened and grew and burst its bonds. 
 
 As he set spurs to his horse and went galloping through 
 the forest, it appeared to him that the world fell away 
 on either side leaving him in an undreamed-of solitude. 
 
114 STORIES 
 
 What were these long-lived trees to him ? Their trunks 
 were covered with moss when he was born ; they would 
 but wear a little more when he was dead. What were 
 these woodland creatures? They had their loves and 
 sorrows quite apart. 
 
 He had flung his arms around the world ; vast as it 
 was, it could not fill them. It failed him as his friends 
 had failed him. It was not many that he needed ; it 
 was not all. Certain words spoken a week ago took 
 form and shaped themselves in his mind : ' There 
 is one.'' 
 
 And there, in the full, golden light of morning, lay a 
 girl, clothed from head to foot in a long robe of green. 
 Quite still she lay, and seemed asleep. There was no 
 colour in her cheeks. 
 
 How long he stood there gazing, after he had dis- 
 mounted from his horse, he did not know. He, who 
 had never feared anything, was filled with fear, which 
 cast him down into depths of humility that his religion 
 had never fathomed. He bent his head, shading his 
 eyes with his hand ; when he drew it away again it 
 was wet. 
 
 ' God made you,' he said. 
 
 Her long white hands, thrown loosely one upon the 
 other, held a letter between them. Her head was 
 cushioned upon a hillock of moss : the soft bright hair 
 fell like a fairy cloak on either side of her, and glistened 
 where it caught the sun. At her feet, on the edge of 
 her robe, lay a little long-haired dog, his furry squirrel's 
 tail curled over his back, his sharp nose resting on his 
 paws, and his eyes shut. 
 
 Both figures were perfectly still. It was only sleep 
 that had ({uieted the dog : was it something else that 
 
THE I.ADY OF THE Hn.LSn:)E 115 
 
 kept the lady without motion? Tlie holy and joyful 
 fear in him changed into terror at the thought. 
 
 With hushed steps coming nearer, he knelt upon the 
 ground by her side, and, bending over, listened. There 
 was no breath. When, trembling at his own audacity, 
 he laid his hand upon her bosom, it did not heave. 
 Trembling still more, he touched her hand. Just such 
 a chill had struck through him when he touched that of 
 a statue. 
 
 The letter had fallen to the ground. As he picked it 
 up he perceived that the cover of it bore this inscription : 
 ' To the Wayfarer.' The writing was delicate and fine, 
 but stiff. Wonder grew upon him as he broke the seal 
 and read : ' O ! thou, who findest without seeking, bury 
 me as thou hast found me, for the love of that love for 
 which I am dead.' Agostino folded it up again carefully, 
 so that the paper bent to the same lines, and laid it next 
 his heart. 
 
 It was not possible to do anything while the heat 
 lasted, and he sat down to watch. Hunger and thirst 
 were forgotten. In his long vigil of the day he tasted 
 that perfect happiness which kills all bodily need. 
 
 The rays of the sun were slantwise when the dog 
 awoke, and, running farther up the hill among the trees, 
 began to bark. Loth to go, yet dreading an alien 
 presence, Agostino rose (juickly and followed it for some 
 time. The trees thinned out again as they neared the 
 summit, and down the rough mountain-path a man came 
 riding slowly and wearily. Could Agostino have avoided 
 meeting him he would have done so, but there was no 
 help for it ; his very impatience to be back again told 
 him that he must wait. 
 
 As the man came nearer, he recognised with a dim 
 
116 STORIES 
 
 feeling of surprise, the castdown features of Michele, 
 and was recognised in his turn. 
 
 Michele reined in a tired steed and said bitterly : 
 
 ' Well met, Agostino ! Is the time come to love ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ! "■ Agostino said. 
 
 ' You make short work of it ! '' I have been seeking 
 for years. When I saw you but a week since, you had 
 not yet begun the search,"' 
 
 ' No,"' Agostino said, ' I have found."* 
 
 He spoke as though afraid to say it, and yet Michele 
 heard. 
 
 ' What is the lady like ? ' he asked scornfully. 
 
 ' AVhat is she like ? ' said Agostino, as though he were 
 trying to remember. ' She is tall and slender. Her 
 forehead is high and very white, and the arched eye- 
 brows are faintly marked, soft and dusky. Her hair is 
 a dark auburn with rippling lines in it, like those the 
 waves make out at sea beyond Pisa."" 
 
 He scarcely recollected that he had heard these words 
 before, nor did they seem to him like that which he 
 had seen ; they rose to his lips of themselves, as it 
 were. 
 
 Michele's eyes flamed, and he laid his hand on the 
 hilt of his sword. 
 
 ' Wretch ! ' he cried aloud. ' You have stolen her.' 
 
 ' AVhat do you mean r ' said Agostino, who cared 
 little. 
 
 * You have stolen all that was mine in her, down to 
 the very words in which I treasured it. Those were 
 mine, and you heard them."' 
 
 ' Are you mad ? ' Agostino inquired. 
 
 ' Not mad, but like to be. Forgive me, sweetest 
 friend ! Your words were as a knife in an open wound. 
 
THE LADY OF THE HHXSn^E 117 
 
 I luive risked all upon one venture, and have lost. So 
 you are happy ? "" 
 
 ' Tell me why you are not."" 
 
 Michele turned his face away, that Agostino might 
 not see the flush of shame that reddened it. He spoke 
 as one whose speech costs him so many moments out of 
 life to utter. 
 
 ' When I reached her father's home three days since, it 
 was to hear that she had left it. She told me once 
 before that she would not wed me, because she did not 
 love me, and without love she held it sin to wed. The 
 very day I came she disappeared. She left no clue, 
 we ransacked all the neighbourhood in vain. I have 
 wandered everywhere seeking ' 
 
 ' And I have found her,' said Agostino. 
 
 Michele's sword flashed from its sheath. 
 
 ' Where is she .'' ' he shouted. 
 
 Agostino pointed back to the wood. 
 
 ' Give her to me ! ' Michele cried, ' or, by the powers 
 of hell " 
 
 Agostino straightened his back against the trunk of 
 a stone-pine, and prepared to defend himself. 
 
 'I will not give her up," he said. ' Ei'p/yK-a — I have 
 found her.' 
 
 And he saluted. 
 
 Michele flew at him like a wild cat. 
 
 He was flghting, for the first time in his life, with 
 reckless fury, while his opponent was cool and collected, 
 and .so composed in mind that he compared the gleam of 
 the steel, burnished by the evening light, to a severed 
 sunbeam, darting hither and thither. They had fought 
 but a round or two when he broke his rival's 
 weapon. 
 
118 STORIES 
 
 Agostino, standing over him, let him feel the touch 
 of the sword-point at his throat. 
 
 ' Whose is the lady now ? ' said he. 
 
 ' Mine."* 
 
 For a long moment neither moved. All the life in 
 Michelels veins seemed to be concentrated in the one 
 spot where he felt the prick of the steel. 
 
 ' Once more, for the last time,' said Agostino. ' Whose 
 is the lady now ? ' 
 
 * Mine.' 
 
 ' Then,' said the other, ' you are worthy, and I will 
 take you to her. Come ! ' 
 
 Too much surprised to speak, Michele rose and 
 followed, and Agostino led him to the clearing among 
 the trees. 
 
 There lay the lady. 
 
 Michele turned to Agostino. 
 
 ' Has she spoken ? ' 
 
 ' I have never heard her voice.' 
 
 He flung himself upon the ground, his whole frame 
 shaken with the violence of his grief. Then he turned 
 angrily to Agostino. 
 
 ' You have killed her ! ' he cried. 
 
 For all his answer Agostino drew forth the letter, and 
 put it into Michele's hand. 
 
 ' She was so weary that she could not live,' he said. 
 ' She did not know the way. She wandered hither and 
 thither, seeking to reach Florence. Here, of her weari- 
 ness, she died. Look at her little dog ! The creature 
 is half starved.' 
 
 Michele gave back the letter, nor did he speak for 
 many minutes. 
 
 'O Agostino!' he cried at last, 'if you had only seen her!' 
 
THE LADY OF THE HILLSIDE 119 
 
 Agostino did not answer. He was longing to be alone 
 again. 
 
 ' Since death has taicen her from both of us ' 
 
 Michele stooped, as though to kiss her, but the other 
 man drew his sword and held it between. 
 
 ' No,' he said briefly, ' not that.' 
 
 There was something dangerous in his look. 
 
 Michele raised himself and uncovered his head. 
 
 ' To-morrow," he said, ' we will do her the last honours. 
 She was a lady of birth."" 
 
 Agostino bowled. 
 
 The sun was all but sunk behind the mountains, 
 when he took the dog in his arms, and rode back to the 
 last village that he had left outside Florence. 
 
 The stars were bright when he returned on foot alone, 
 and a strong sweet scent breathed from the pines. He 
 drew the ring from his finger, and placed it solemnly on 
 hers with solemn words. 
 
 Then he lay down beside her in the darkness. 
 
 Whether he dreamt awake or sleeping, he did not 
 know, but all that night he spent in dreams, that she, 
 sleeping her sleep unbrokenly, dreamed also of him. 
 
 He had brought with him the few things that were 
 needful. 
 
 Before the sky was grey with dawn he dug her grave. 
 Before he laid her in it, as he looked at her for the last 
 time, he bent and kissed her on the eyelids twice. 
 
 * For I have never seen her eyes,' he said. 
 
 The birds began to sing as he smoothed the earth 
 over her. 
 
120 STORIES 
 
 [1898] 
 
 THE SNOW IS COMING ^ 
 
 It is a long while since anything happened in this world 
 for the first time. The first time the sun shone — the 
 first time the snow fell — these things are not matter of 
 record. By good luck, the first time is always recurring, 
 especially in London. What Londoner does not re- 
 member the first time the sun shone again after a fog 
 that lasted a week "^ And when the first snow falls the 
 cockneys do not take it as if they were country folk. 
 Strange excitement comes over them at the mere thought 
 of sooty London dressed in white. A few go about 
 quoting Mr. Robert Bridges, who alone of poets has 
 understood them on this point ; and the rest quote him 
 without knowing. 
 
 I had not accounted to myself for it ; but an unusual 
 stir in my blood moved me to run, to shout, or sing, or 
 behave in a manner that might have caused the police 
 to interfere, as I went along the streets one evening in 
 early winter. The gas-lamp is in itself a signal for the 
 enjoyment of Londoners. They may be half asleep all 
 day, but with the yellow dawning of those myriads of 
 stars a glow of warmth quickens them. So much the 
 better, if there should be a moon to make faces among 
 the chirnney-tops ! (There was a moon that night.) If 
 ' From The Cornhill, December 1898. 
 
THE SNOW IS COMING 121 
 
 the snow be on the way, and the air tense with the 
 expectation of it, the nerves awake and sting the languid 
 soul into pleasure, 
 
 I turned down a poor alley to visit an acquaintance 
 there — an Essex woman who talks about ' threadling"* 
 her needle, and supposes the plural of 'house' to be 
 * housen.' She is married to a sailor who sails the seas 
 no more. He sometimes tries to explain to me the 
 geography — or seagraphy — of a ship. I never under- 
 stand it, but I have learned to talk about ' the ryals ' 
 and * the main-topgallon,' whatever that may be. 
 
 'The snow is coming ! "" I said to his wife, with as 
 much exultation as if I said ' The Queen is coming ! '' 
 
 ' Yes, miss,' she said, 'and coals is one-and-threepence 
 a hundred, and they '11 go up.' She glanced at the sky. 
 
 What a pity it is to have a financial interest in the 
 weather ! I felt ashamed because I had none. I remember 
 Mrs. Ewing's heroine, who poked the fire ' expensivelv,' 
 and sighed a little — and smiled also — to think that I 
 could poke mine as often as I liked. Then I went to the 
 South Kensington Museum, to look for a spinning-wheel. 
 
 The policeman and the man at the entrance were 
 divided in their minds as to whether a spinning-wheel is 
 a piece of furniture or a machine. If it is a piece of 
 furniture, yes, you will find it there ! If it is a machine, 
 no, you will never find it unless you go across the road. 
 Not feeling inclined to go across the road, I chose to 
 consider it furniture. 
 
 Past one half and then the other of the column of 
 Trajan, through the old tapestry-room, down the narrow 
 corridor of snow-men and snow-women bequeathed to us 
 by the Greeks and Romans, I went ; and reached at last 
 the place where chairs and tables, and beds and cabinets 
 
122 STORIES 
 
 and mirrors, ranged with forlorn regularity, show what 
 beautiful homes people had once. There was never a 
 spinning-wheel among them, I listened for the ghostly 
 hum of it in vain. 
 
 Tired out after a long search, I sat down to rest on the 
 pedestal of a cupboard. 
 
 The gallery was quite deserted, except for a woman of 
 middle age, who seemed willing neither to go nor to stay. 
 Something fidgety and wistful about her compelled one 
 to notice her movements. She went to and fro with 
 rapid, uncertain steps, making indefinite pauses before 
 the object of her consideration — trying to leave it, as 
 it were — alwavs returning. The magnetic force that 
 attracted her seemed to reside in a wooden cradle. There 
 was nothing particular about it ; it was not like the 
 cradle of the Earl of Derwentwater, which stood near by 
 — three black feathers that had once been golden still 
 waved stiffly over the head. It was just a wooden cradle 
 — nothing more, nothing less. Yet she came back again 
 and again, as if she could not tear herself from the spot. 
 She was a well-favoured person, fresh and weather-beaten, 
 as though she had lived much in the open air. Her 
 dress was so neat that the shabby material of it did not 
 at first strike the eye ; would not perhaps have struck 
 me at all but for the fact that she wore woollen gloves. 
 She was clearly a single woman ; I could have told that 
 bv the vague suddenness of motion which is common to 
 those who are much by themselves, and have not to think 
 of disturbing other people in the room. 
 
 ' You, here ! ' she said, addressing a policeman as he 
 went by. ' Mine is much better than that,' and she 
 pointed to the cradle. Her accent was good, but she 
 spoke rather too loud for a lady. 
 
THE SNOW IS COMING 123 
 
 'Indeed, Miss?' said the guardian of law and order, 
 witli great politeness. He knew as well as I did that she 
 was Miss and not Mrs. 
 
 'Mine is old; it's been in our family from father to 
 son, and all that kind of thing,' she went on. ' The 
 iMuseum \s given £6 for that. Do you think, now, they 
 would give me .i?6 for mine? The carving on mine's 
 much better. I know, because I'm an artist. That's 
 not good art at all. Now mine's Elizabethan.' 
 
 ' Maybe, Miss. Couldn't say. We ain't got but one 
 or two specimens.' 
 
 ' I've half a mind to do it,' she said, in quick, excited 
 tones. ' It's awfully cold. I believe the snow's coming. 
 I 'm sick to death of London lodgings ; there isn't room 
 to swing a cat in them. I 'd better by half have a fire to 
 sit by. And I could always come and see the cradle 
 here, couldn't I ? They wouldn't take it away ? I could 
 always come and see it ? I could come and see it every 
 day if I liked.' 
 
 The policeman reassured her as to this, and moved on. 
 Now, I thought, she would surely go. But she did not. 
 She waited until the policeman was out of sight, when 
 she took a biscuit from her pocket and began to eat care- 
 fully and furtively, making as few crumbs as possible. It 
 was her afternoon tea, I supposed, and she was taking it 
 here for the sake of the warmth. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' I began. ' I heard you say just 
 now that you had a beautiful old cradle. I happen to 
 know a lady who is fond of such things. I feel sure that 
 she would give you i?10 if you would be so kind as to 
 dispose of it to her.' 
 
 ' No,' she said, without a moment's hesitation. ' I 
 wouldn't part with it, not to any private individual. It 
 
124 STORIES 
 
 was my mother's, and my mother^'s mother-s before her. 
 I wouldn't let it go except to here. And I wouldn't do 
 that, only the snow 's coming. But I can come and see 
 it here every day — every day — ^just as if it was in my 
 own room.' 
 
 There was a refreshing absence of gratitude about her ; 
 she did not even say ' Thank you.' I turned away. 
 
 The streets were brighter, the air tingled more fiercely 
 than ever as I went home ; but I felt glad no longer 
 because the snow was coming;. 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 125 
 
 [1S90] 
 
 THE CITY OF BYBLOS 
 
 ' Ich liabeeiiieii kurioscu Respect vor dem Biicliermaclien, weil 
 icli ini Lebeii iiie eius macheu konnte. ' — Micuakl Haui'tmanx. 
 
 It lies behind a large lending library. When I had 
 walked through several miles of novels, I came at last 
 to the City. It had a very remarkable appearance, for 
 the houses were built entirely of books. Very pretty 
 houses they were too (though somewhat square), the 
 colouring bright and varied, the name of the owner in 
 gold letters over every door. In the midst of them 
 stood a vast Cathedral, every stone of which was a work 
 on Theology. A number of very uneven Steps to the 
 Altar led up to it. I must say, it looked rickety, for 
 not one of the stones exactly fitted the other, but strange 
 to say, they told me the sj)ire was the safest part. 
 Standing far down below, I naturally could not see the 
 names of books so far above me, but I was told that 
 those of the most elevated chai-acter had by a natural 
 process risen to the top ; the Weathercock had veered 
 about considerably in early life, but had now for a long 
 time pointed due South. There was much to admire in 
 the Architecture. The Lives of the Saints would have 
 made exquisite Gothic doorways, but that they con- 
 tradicted each other so much in detail. The gargoyles, 
 which were cut out of controversial pamphlets, were 
 
126 STORIES 
 
 making diabolical faces, but the stained-glass windows, 
 being the work of poets, were exquisitely transparent, 
 and formed indeed the most harmonious part of the 
 Cathedral. The East window had been painted by 
 Keble, and round the border ran this legend : The 
 Christian Year. I got in with some difficulty. The 
 dust that was flying about almost choked me, and I 
 found it quite impossible to do more than speculate as 
 to the construction of the interior. However, as it 
 seemed to be of no particular Age or Style, that mattered 
 the less. 
 
 'We think it our duty to tell you ' began the 
 
 Cathedral, all the books speaking at once. But they 
 all spoke very loud, and they all said something quite 
 different, so that at last, unable to distinguish anything 
 in such a Babel, I walked sorrowfully away. 
 
 'Why can't you keep them quiet?' I said to the 
 Verger, a decent-looking man, clothed in black, who 
 had opened the door for me with a Kcij to the Interpreta- 
 tion of TJie Holy Scripture. 
 
 ' It's all very well to talk,' he said despondently, ' but 
 they are the most ill-mannered books in the world. They 
 can't endure each other. I assure you, when any repairs 
 have to be executed, the row is ([uite deafening. Only 
 a year or two ago, when one of the buttresses showed 
 signs of giving way, and we propped it up with Farrar's 
 Eternal Hope., they made such a noise, that I thought 
 they would have brought the whole building about our 
 ears. — It's very odd though,' he continued, 'I let in a 
 man the other day, and when he came out again, he 
 told me he heard them all singing the Hallelujah Chorus, 
 but when I asked the books about him afterwards, they 
 said he was a Jew, Turk, Infidel and Heretic' 
 
THE CITY OF BVBLOS 127 
 
 'They are the very strangest books in the world,' I 
 said, giving him sixpence. ' Thank you. AVhich is the 
 main thoroughfare ? ^ 
 
 ' Whichever you like,' he rejoined. ' It really doesn't 
 matter in the least. But most people think it 's through 
 the Cathedral.' 
 
 I knew, however, that if I ventured to cross the thresh- 
 old the Cathedral would begin talking again, and besides 
 I considered the Verger's last remark very professional, 
 so I left him on the steps, and diving into a side alley, 
 went my own way, without asking any one else's. It is a 
 curious place. Every house is a shop, and every other 
 inhabitant is a Sandwich Man. The brothers and sisters 
 of the Sandwich Men keep the shops, and as it is all done 
 in a family way, the profits are enormous. They have a 
 few first cousins, who are conjurers, and I came upon one 
 of these at the first street corner I turned. He was his 
 own Sandwich Man, and he was shouting at the top of 
 his voice : ' Tricks of the trade ! Tricks of the trade ! 
 Tricks of the trade ! A peimy for my thoughts ! A penny 
 for my thoughts ! Who'll buy .'' ' whereupon he immedi- 
 ately sat down on a mat and vanished. ' A penny for 
 your thoughts indeed ! ' I said contemptuously ; ' I don't 
 think much of that. Mr. Isaacs taught it me long ago.' 
 The performance took ])lace in Queer Street, just outside 
 a very odd-looking shop with a number of hearts hung 
 up in the window. 
 
 'There's a great demand for them just now,' said the 
 shopman, ' specially women's. Mrs. Carlyle's is a fortune. 
 Keats's fetched a good price some little while ago. 
 Shelley's was said to be too light ; didn't realise anything 
 like Harriet's and Mary Wollstonecraft's. I 've heard it 
 denied that Wordsworth ever had any to speak of, but 
 
128 STORIES 
 
 that 's not true, for I sold it myself over this very counter. 
 George Eliofs was large but not juicy. Charlotte Bron ' 
 
 ' Oh hush ! "* I said, interrupting him, ' it really does 
 distress me very much. I have heard of a lady long ago, 
 who *' locked her heart in a gowden case, and pinned it 
 wi' a siller pin." Are there no ladies who do this now, or 
 no gentlemen to keep the key of the case for them ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said the shopman, ' they mostly put them into 
 envelopes, and the gentlemen break them open. One or 
 two may have been kept in diaries here and there, but 
 that ""s not so common.' 
 
 ' I never did approve that fashion of wearing your heart 
 on your sleeve, for all the daws to peck at,' I observed. 
 
 ' You don't understand,' rejoined the shopman, 
 ' They 're not alive, my dear Sir. The Dead Heart is 
 a stock piece everywhere.' 
 
 ' I remember a fair Queen of France,' I said, following 
 up the dim ])oetical association of certain words, ' whose 
 dead heart was really locked in a golden case, with these 
 words inscribed on it : — 
 
 Eu ce petit vais.seau 
 De fill or et moude 
 Repose uu plus ^i-and coeur 
 Que oncque dame eut au monde. 
 
 ' She was a Queen of Hearts in her day, but I never 
 heard that she let any one into her own.' 
 
 ' Indeed,' cried the shopman eagerly, ' it must be very 
 valuable. Could you give me an idea where it is to be 
 found ? ' 
 
 ' Why, no ! ' said I, ' I couldn't. But you can have 7ny 
 heart if you like. It 's very tender. How much are you 
 prepared to offer ':! ' 
 
 ' Thank you, sir,' replied the shopman politely, but 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 129 
 
 rather coldly, ' it wouldn't be of the sliohtest use, at least 
 not while you Ve alive, you know. Besides, I couldn't 
 take your word. If it Is so very tender, you may have lost 
 it, and then I should make a better bargain with some one 
 else. I don''t sav you wish to deceive.'' 
 
 Considering this last remark impertinent, we left, my 
 heart and I. 
 
 The next shop was full of little bottles containing a 
 pale grey liquid, and a signboard, with ' Old Morality "" 
 printed on it in very big letters, swung to and fro over 
 the door. I felt confused. ' Surely it must be " Old 
 Mortality" spelt wrong,' I thought, 'they read so much 
 in this city, that they've forgotten how to spell,' but no 
 such thing. 
 
 'Taste and try, 
 Before yoti Ituy,' 
 
 said the shopman unctuously. 
 
 ' It 's not very good,' I said, making a wry face. 
 
 ' No ? ' he returned in an inquiring tone. ' That 's 
 because the bottle you tasted came from Paris. Gallic 
 Salt they call it. Some people say it 's not Morality at 
 all. Kept too long. Gone bad, you know. But the 
 French declare it's the real thing, and they're the best 
 chemists in the world. They say it's too strong to go 
 down everywhere, but only the other day I heard some 
 young English ladies were taking it in the form of 
 Lectures.^ Try a little Russian. You '11 find it very good, 
 mixed with steel. Tolstoi's recipe is the best.' 
 
 ' No, thank you,' said I. I had had enough of the 
 French. ' Do you find it answers from a business point 
 of view, to keep a shop of this kind ? ' 
 
 ^ See Prospectus of King's College Lectures to Ladies for the last term 
 of 1889. 
 
 I 
 
130 STORIES 
 
 'Mine,' said the Apothecary, puffing himself out to his 
 proudest proportions, ' mine is the most thriving business 
 in Queer Street. Small doses sell best of all. You don't 
 want too much of it in a book, you know, but a little you 
 must have. It 's the vinegar in the salad. Of course 
 there are people who make books without it, but unless 
 they happen to be Ouida, it doesn't pay. And even 
 Ouida would have sold much better, if she'd only had 
 a dash of it. Try our celebrated Milk and Water 
 Morality. It 's as sweet as sugar ; children like it. You 
 don't look very strong. You won't be happy till you 
 get it. The authoress of We Two writes, ' / Jiiid it 
 invaluable.'' 
 
 I shook my iiead and touched a little bottle of pills. 
 
 ' Those are the bitter pills of Melancholy,' he explained, 
 ' But they 're not much the fashion now. Iron 's the 
 thing. " A tonic sadjiess," and all that, you know.' 
 
 As I was not in the humour for a tonic sadness, I left 
 the shop. A big Menagerie was coming down Queer 
 Street. Lions and tigers, warranted to sell again admir- 
 ably, might be booked for Christmas, I was informed. 
 Fairies were on view within, and there was a witch or 
 two. 
 
 ' But I can't recommend them, sir,' said the literary 
 Barnum, shaking his head. ' They 're not what they used 
 to be. The race has degenerated sadly. Even an infant of 
 two years old don't believe in them any longer. As for 
 trees that isn't trees, and shadows with eyes to them, and 
 that sort of performance, there 's only George MacDonald 
 can do it, and you can't keep them on stock for one 
 customer. Mr. Anstey bought a Black Poodle here the 
 other day ; I can show you the exact ditto, if ' 
 
 But at this moment a Polar Bear broke loose from the 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 131 
 
 Menagerie, and caused considerable commotion among 
 the Sandwich Men, who began rushing hither and thither 
 in wild alarn). 
 
 ' It's very provoking,\said the Manager, arming him- 
 self with a lasso. ' Can you w ait a moment ? I shall 
 have to go after that animal. He's sure to get into some 
 book he's not intended for, and then there'll be the 
 deuce to pay. He '11 be wanted all over the place for 
 Voyages to the North Pole and the first chapters of Lives 
 of Lord Nelson, in a week or two, and he 's a dead loss to 
 me if I can't catch him. Good gracious me ! The beast '11 
 be into that china shop ! ' 
 
 This last observation was levelled at the head of a 
 wild bull, who had taken advantage of the ungenerous 
 conduct of the Polar bear, to effect his escape like- 
 wise. 
 
 'I'll look after the bull,' said I. 'You tackle the 
 bear.' 
 
 It seemed the kindest, though not the bravest thing to 
 do. By the time I had reached the china shop, however, 
 the wild bull was gone, and the shopman was sitting, 
 like Marius at Carthage, in the midst of a heap of ruins, 
 the fragments of a bit of Sevres porcelain in his hand. 
 
 'If you want any more Ballades in Blue China,'' he 
 observed savagely, ' you must sing them yourself.' 
 
 'I suppose you think I'm Andrew Lang,' I returned, 
 ' but I 'm not.' 
 
 ' I never supposed you were anything of the kind,' said 
 this rudest of the inhabitants of Byblos. 
 
 ' Oh, Austin Dobson ! Austin Dobson, oh ! To think 
 such a thing should have happened in an old-established 
 shop that was an old-established shop in the days of 
 Charles Lamb ! ' 
 
132 STORIES 
 
 I left him there lamenting, and passed on. As the 
 next shop had Modes et Robes over the door, I thought 
 it must be more of a place for ladies, and was about to 
 go further, when the Modiste herself came out and 
 implored me to enter. She sold the most incongruous 
 costumes quite impartially. Frocks for girls just out of 
 the schoolroom, suits of armour a la Vandyke, the 
 tempestuous petticoats of the danseuse, the hat and 
 gaiters of the Dean, were here mingled together in 
 picturesque confusion, and just as I was about to express 
 my surprise, I heard a cry of ' Old Clo,' and a wild and 
 weary man with a hooked nose came in, and upset a 
 number of helmets and battle-axes on to the floor. 
 
 ' But the latest fashion is IT^S,' said the Modiste, 
 ' plain black with very long ruffles. Mr. R. L. Stevenson 
 bought some here the other day, and expressed himself 
 very well satisfied; he said they became the Master of 
 Ballantrae admirably. You don^t happen to have one 
 of your heroes with you? We are at liberty just now, 
 and I should be happy to accommodate him. There's 
 a fitting-room upstairs, and you can have tea while 
 you wait.' 
 
 ' Alas ! ■■ I said, ' I have seen many heroes, but I could 
 never make one." 
 
 ' Couldn't you really ? ' said the dressmaker sympatheti- 
 cally. ' Well now, suppose you try ! It 's not in the 
 least difficult, provided you have good clothes. The 
 clothes are half the battle. Why, a bunch of feathers 
 will do, so you arrange them properly. I've known a 
 hero that was a very great success with no more clothes 
 on than that. He hadn't a stitch of lace to bless himself 
 with. But lace is very much worn still. There was 
 quite a rage for it after the first appearance of Mr. John 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 133 
 
 Inglesant. Rags are fashionable too — for the East End. 
 We Ve got a rag and bone department next door. But 
 perhaps you 'd rather get your hand in on a heroine. 
 They 're as easy as easy ! There must be a certain style 
 about the hero, even if he does wear plain black, but 
 there needn't be any whatever about the heroine, in fact 
 it makes her all the more charming to have none. 
 What can be prettier than a simple white muslin ? 
 Gentlemen's ladies always wear white muslin, and ladies' 
 gentlemen black velvet. Or if you'd prefer a little more 
 trimming, what do you say to a satin cloak — of the very 
 faintest, palest wood-beetle green?' Ifs very effective, 
 if you give the young lady " ashen hair." If she follows 
 it up well, and has "a glove-like waist that seems 
 without a wrinkle and made of whitest kid," and if 
 " her shoulders peep more snowy " over it, I should also 
 advise a frothy train of rippling. That would be enough 
 to get her into the best magazine going. No ? Well, 
 we've got a lot of baby-linen over from Paris, too. I 
 expect Monsieur Alphonse Daudet in every minute. But 
 would you like to have first choice .'* There 's a very 
 good toyshop over the way; you'll find the baby-dolls 
 extremely cheap. There's a sale going on just now. 
 And they can walk and talk, and shut their eyes, and 
 do everything.' 
 
 Too thankful to escape from the Modiste on any 
 pretence, I dashed across the street into the toyshop. 
 It was very gay indeed outside, the walls consisting 
 wholly of the covers of children's books, but within it 
 was anything but lively. There was a whole row of 
 Little Lord Fauntleroys sitting in arm-chairs, with one 
 of their legs tucked under them, and looking unutterably 
 bored. 
 
134 STORIES 
 
 ' Are you a bloodthirsty tyrant ? ' they all said with 
 the sweetest smile, putting their legs down with one 
 accord. 
 
 I had almost said, ' What a very impertinent little boy 
 you are, to ask such a question ! ' but they did it with 
 such engaging innocence that I was quite disarmed, and 
 besides, my attention was attracted by half a dozen 
 Sarah Crewes, who were trying to get the orphan out 
 of Our Mutual Friend to play with them. But the 
 orphan seemed inclined to be anything rather than 
 Sarah Crewe''s mutual friend. 
 
 ' No,"* he said, with the air of a child more tlian 
 double his age, ' I \e got to die so soon, it really is 
 not worth while. Besides, what ""s the use of it .'' 
 Nobody ininds in the least. I 'm not a fashionable 
 little boy any longer."" 
 
 Here he began to. die straight off in front of me. 
 Unable to endure the sight, I turned away, but it was 
 only to read in the pathetic eyes of twenty little 
 Leonards the Story of their Short Lives. 
 
 ' Boots and black beetles ! "" I cried — it was an oath 
 that I remembered to have seen in a work adapted for 
 the young, so I was not afraid of shocking them. 
 ' What a horrible place this is ! Are there no children 
 alive anywhere ? '' 
 
 ' Oh, but we 're much more touching when we die ! ' 
 they said in eager chorus, ' and we sell so much better ! ' 
 
 ' I was misunderstood besides,"' added the most moving 
 of the whole lot. ' You 're misunderstanding me now. 
 I ""m going to die."* 
 
 ' Oh, please don't ! ' I entreated ; but his eyes had 
 already begun to close, and a deathly pallor overspread 
 his countenance. 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 135 
 
 'There are soniG children that never die round there,'' 
 he said faintly, pointing to another department, and a 
 few minutes afterwards he expired. 
 
 I was much tempted to stay and speak to Gavroche, 
 whom I had noticed playing with a gun on the doorstep, 
 but the immediate vicinity of Froggy and his little 
 brother prevented me, and before I had time to get out, 
 a cheerful little girl with long, wavy curls ran up to me, 
 and said abruptly : 
 
 'How does the wind look when it doesn't blow?' 
 
 ' j\ly dear,' I said, ' you may ask interesting questions, 
 but you have a strong American accent, and I 'm sure I 
 shouldn't know how to manage you. You will find 
 everything that you need to know about the wind in 
 The Child's Guide to Useful Knowledge, and whatever is 
 not in The Child's Guide to Useful Knoidedge, no little 
 
 girl should want to "" 
 
 But here another little girl, exactly like the first, except 
 that she was not at all cheerful, suddenly flung herself into 
 my arms, and bursting into sobs, exclaimed passionately : 
 
 ' When will you come back again, 
 Papa, Papa?' 
 
 'Didn't I do it nicely?' she added the next minute, 
 smiling at me through her tears. ' Will you engage me, 
 and put me into a book ? ' 
 
 ' Very nicely indeed,' I replied, ' I almost wish I really 
 were your papa and could come back again, but as I 'm 
 not, and as I haven't the least desire to put you into a 
 book, I think you'd better get down, my dear.' 
 
 I set her on her feet, and again turned to the door, 
 but was again withheld by all the Little Lord Fauntleroys, 
 who said plaintively : ' Won't you put me into a book, 
 
136 STORIES 
 
 and let us be naughty just for once ? We don't know 
 what it 's Hke. It would be something quite new.' 
 
 ' My lords ! ' I said sternly, for I beheld in them the 
 future aristocracy of England, 'you don't know what 
 you're asking. Lords never are naughty,' and I departed. 
 I heard the voice of a baby that could only just speak, 
 remarking, 'I'se Popsy-Wopsy' somewhere around my 
 feet, and babies of that age are specially calculated to 
 drive bachelors mad. There were two shops over the 
 way, one bearing the inscription Howells and James, 
 where I understood from the advertisements there were 
 several good heroines on view, and one for the sale of 
 language. ' Wardour Street English is cheap to-day,' I 
 read over a bundle of the sort of expressions that begin 
 with ' By my halidome ! ' ' Useful ' was stuck up over a 
 packet of remarks in French, German, and Italian, the 
 grammar of which certainly never cost any one much. 
 ' Very moderate ' on a parcel of the very moderate number 
 of quotations, without which it is apparently impossible 
 to produce either a volume of sermons or a modern 
 romance. The sight of ' Nature red in tooth and claw ' 
 scared me away at once. 
 
 I did not feel inclined to enter Howells and James's, 
 it sounded too much like a shop I knew already. There 
 were a good many hei'oes and heroines standing idle 
 in the market-place, but I did not take to any of 
 them, though several of them off'ered themselves on 
 advantageous terms. 
 
 ' Where are the rest of you ? ' I said ; ' you are not all 
 here. I miss " the old familiar faces."' 
 
 ' They 've been turned out to grass,' responded a 
 stray baronet, ' they thought it would keep them fresher. 
 They're sitting on a hundred gates all round a square 
 
THE CITY OF BVBLOS 137 
 
 Held until tli(."y Ve wanted again, because they 've got 
 no style. There was a paper about it in The Cornhill. 
 You ouglit to have known that, if your reading had been 
 up-to-date/ 
 
 I considered him nearly as rude as the owner of the 
 china shop, but at that moment my attention was 
 distracted by the passing of a processi(m of four of the 
 Sandwich Men, carrying two beautiful books on litters. 
 They were both very white, but I thought that was 
 simply due to the fact that they were bound in parch- 
 ment, until I heard some one say that one of the books 
 had been murdered and the other seriously hurt. The 
 men who had ciiarge of the book that was still alive set 
 down their burden at the door of a hospital, where it was 
 taken in by kind nurses, and put to bed in a great big 
 ward with several others, whereupon, to my great surprise, 
 they all began to talk at the tops of their voices. 
 
 'Will it recover.'''' I said in an awestruck whisper. 
 
 'Well ! ' said one of the nurses, 'it's been badly wounded 
 by the critics, but I think it 11 do if we can only talk 
 long enough and loud enough. They always die of 
 neglect in the end — never of wounds.' 
 
 ' And how long will it be, supposing it does recover .'' ' 
 
 'Oh, three months in town perhaps, and six in the 
 country,' said the cheerful nurse. ' But it's in a critical 
 state just now, and you really must not interrupt me.' 
 
 She began to talk again as hard as she could, and I 
 stopped my ears, and ran away out of the hospital, down 
 the street after the murdered book. They carried it 
 outside the walls to a great desolate cemetery, where 
 nothing grew but faded laurel. If I had done no other 
 work for the rest of my natural existence, I never could 
 have counted the graves that it contained. There was 
 
138 STORIES 
 
 not a single monument, not a stone over any one of 
 them. I remembered the nurse's words : ' They always 
 die of neglect.' There was not even a wreath of 
 everlastings anywhere to be seen. Here and there in 
 odd corners men with long nails were scratching in the 
 ground like ghouls. 
 
 ' Those are the antiquaries," said the gravedigger, ' they 
 come here pretty often, and sometimes they unearth a 
 thing or two, but not much. It is believed that treasure 
 does exist in the shape of buried wisdom. But how dieth 
 the wise book ? As the foolish, and there 's a deal of folly 
 buried here. They're very busy over the Elizabethan 
 corner just now.' 
 
 I turned away, sick at heart, and quitted the cemetery. 
 A broad road went past it, and I walked along it for some 
 time, until I happened to meet a Sandwich Man, and asked 
 him where it led to. 
 
 'Down to the river of Lethe,' he said, 'you're quite 
 close to it now, but you could never hear it, it flows 
 so silently. Some people call it the stream of Time, 
 but the old name is the best. They say it will flood 
 the cemetery by and by. All the books get there 
 sooner or later, only a few of them make the tour of 
 the world first. Most of them take the direct road, as 
 you see.' 
 
 They were hurrying past me as he spoke, big books, 
 little books, serious and frivolous, pretty and ugly, wise 
 and ridiculous, they were all wobbling along as fast as 
 they could go, down to the river. 
 
 ' Stop, stop ! ' I cried. (There were so many that I 
 knew amongst them, and they had been such good 
 friends to me ! Only one or two that I had never read, 
 and the very names of which were unknown to me, were 
 
THE CITY OF BYBLOS 139 
 
 going leisurely the other way. I redoubled my exertions 
 to save my friends.) 
 
 'Come back, come back!' I cried, 'you'll all be 
 drowned ! Make the tour of the world first ! "" 
 
 Rut not one of the books seemed to hear me, and a 
 thing in twenty-nine editions bumped itself up against 
 me, screaming out, ' I 'm the successful book of the 
 season. I shall be there first. Hootity-tootity-too ! ^ 
 
 I felt so much annoyed with the silly, conceited thing, 
 that I held my peace, and then, out of the varying cries 
 around, out of the distant shouts of the Sandwich Men, 
 out of the washing of the waves of Lethe, there rose a 
 warning voice that said in words that I had heard long 
 ago in my childhood, ' Of making many books there is 
 no end.' 
 
140 STORIES 
 
 THE CONSCIENTIOUS SECRETARY 
 
 There lives in Bond Street a Secretary, a little pale, 
 gentle man, with long thin fingers and eyes that see 
 nothing close to them. Every one likes him, but no one 
 keeps him long. He is never out of employment, for he 
 is always engaged as soon as he appears, but he has a 
 new master every few weeks. No one, however, says any- 
 thing against him. His testimonials would fill a volume : 
 everywhere it is stated that his handwriting is excellent, 
 his character a perfect model. 
 
 ' Why then did you not keep him ?'' I inquired of his 
 thirty-first employer, a solid, red-faced business man, 
 comme il y en a tant. For some reason or other, he did 
 not like answering my question. He rose — put his hands 
 in his pockets — went over to the window, looked out at 
 nothing — whistled — came back again. He is of those 
 who are obliged to tell the truth because they have no 
 imagination. I had only to wait. 
 
 ' Because,'' he said, ' he always dots his Ts and crosses 
 his fs twice over. I wouldn't say anything against him 
 for .^100, you know. He's the best little fellow in the 
 world. But he always dots his I's and crosses his t\ 
 twice over.' 
 
 ' What can be the reason of such an odd habit ? ' I 
 asked. 
 
THE CONSCIENTIOUS SECRETARY 141 
 
 My friend sighed. 
 
 ' He says it 's for the ^ood of posterity. We don't see 
 so well as our grandfatiiers did, and our grandchildren 
 won't see so well as we do, and we are bound to give 
 them every chance. He would rather not dot an i at all 
 than not dot it twice over. I dare say he is right. We 
 think too little about the future nowadays. But it takes 
 time, and time is money.' 
 
 When my friend says ' Time is money,' he thinks he 
 has said everything there is to say about time. The rest 
 of the employers think j ust the same. 
 
142 STORIES 
 
 [1907] 
 CATS IN COUNCIL 
 
 Two cats were once enjoying The Merchant of Venice 
 together. 
 
 One was a stage cat. The actors and actresses were 
 very fond of her, and she often sat in the prompter's 
 box, on first nights especially. 
 
 ' I acted once myself ! ' she said in a confidential 
 whisper aside to her friend. ' It was in Romeo and 
 Juliet. I have every sympathy with young love, and all 
 my warmest feelings are stirred when the jeune premier 
 knows how to climb like a cat, as Romeo does. But they 
 talked about a lark and a nightingale until my mouth 
 watered. It always does, you know, when I hear people 
 say " What larks ! '"' I thought there really must be a 
 bird or two in that very stiff green tree that grows out- 
 side all the windows in Verona : so I ran across the stage 
 as fast as ever I could. You have no conception of what 
 it is to be on the stage. I never knew before what 
 nervousness was. All those opera-glasses fixed upon 
 one, all those restless, flashing human eyes ! But I was 
 a succes fou. With one scrabble of my paws, without 
 even blotting a line, I changed a tragedy into a comedy. 
 Every one laughed — even Romeo and Juliet, poor dear 
 young things ! ' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said the parlour cat, who came from South 
 
CATS IN COUNCIL 143 
 
 Kensington, and had attended Shakespeare Readings. 
 She thought it rather a vulgar story really. 
 
 Still they were both cats of superior education, and 
 a good play was an intellectual treat to both. It was 
 caviare to them in tlie sense in which a good play was 
 caviare to the Prince of Denmark, not to the general. 
 
 ' V^ery odd,' said the patroness of the stage, ' how 
 much there is in the work of Shakespeare that is of the 
 deepest interest to cats. I sometimes think he must 
 have been a cat himself. Every inch of fur on my tail 
 stands on end when I hear the sentinel say, as he walks 
 up and down at Elsinore, " Not a mouse stirring ! " 
 I know the little wretches. Depend upon it, there 
 were six at least in the cellarage under his very nose, 
 if he had only sniffed. Hamlet knew that well enough. 
 " A rat — a rat in the arras ! " That was what he was 
 thinking of the whole time. That was why he went 
 mad. It is a very strange thing that the critics should 
 never have thought of it. He had so much of the cat 
 in him, had Hamlet ! ' 
 
 ' If they had half the sense of smell that we possess, 
 everything would have been found out long ago,' said 
 the parlour cat. ' To my mind. The Merchaiit of 
 Venice was written entirely to prove that men are 
 not aware of the value of cats. When Shylock says 
 that some men cannot bear "a humble, necessary cat" 
 any more than a harmless necessary Jew, he says a thing 
 that must go straight to the heart of every cat, from 
 the first cat that caught fish in Egypt downwards.' 
 
 ' I disagree with you there,' said the stage cat. * I am 
 inclined to think that our first ancestress, who is now 
 drinking the cream of Paradise, came from Persia.' 
 
 ' You may be right,' said the parlour cat, with a 
 
144 STORIES 
 
 magnificent wave of her tail, and a velvet claw half 
 unsheathed. ' We were talking about Shakespeare, I 
 think. Did it ever occur to you that the " green-eyed 
 monster" must have been a very big cat that was called 
 jealousy ? The word green proves it, without a doubt. 
 Who ever saw a green-eyed dog or a green-eyed horse ? 
 " Monster" is very gratifying also. It is amazing to find 
 what an idea men have of our size. Lord Roberts, for 
 instance ! He cannot sit in the room with me. He is a 
 little man, of course. He has conquered a great many 
 other men, of course ; but he cannot conquer his aversion 
 to cats. It must be because he thinks they are so big. 
 He can't dislike green, as he comes from Ireland.' 
 
 ' I thought we were talking about Shakespeare," 
 murmured the stage cat suavely. Her eyes were not so 
 good a green as those of the parlour cat. 
 
 The parlour cat stared at her for five minutes without 
 blinking, and then pretended nothing had been said, and 
 went on where she left off. 
 
 * A harmless, necessary cat ! ' she said. ' O my dear, 
 how pathetic it is ! "" II liy a pas de chat necessaire. 
 There is no such thing as a necessary cat, not even 
 though Shakespeare thought there was ! We can all 
 be dispensed with, even the best rat-catcher amongst us. 
 I buried a friend of mine the other day, a gentleman 
 most eminent in his profession, and what do you think ? 
 They replaced him next day with a mouse-trap ! ' 
 
 ' Did they indeed ? "* said the stage cat, with deep 
 sympathy, ' The play in Hamlet, ' the play that was 
 written in very choice Italian, if you remember, was 
 called The Mouse Trap.'' Shakespeare knew, what 
 man better ? that everything goes wrong in a family 
 where they have mouse-traps instead of cats. He was a 
 cat himself, I feel quite sure of if 
 
ESSAYS 
 
[1884] 
 
 HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS i 
 
 The world is getting daily more democratic, and it is 
 possible that we may soon arrive at that golden age of 
 Socialists and Quakers which is to turn us all into 
 Citizen this, and Friend the other. Still there are cer- 
 tain members of the aristocracy who will never even then 
 be asked to don the boimet-roiige, who will still exist to 
 remind a free, equal, and fraternal world that there were 
 once such things as kings and princes, and such-like futile 
 distinctions between man and man. Their crowns will 
 be as fresh then as on the day they wore them first, their 
 courts as noble as before ; for they cannot be got to talk 
 the vulgar tongue, and they shall live for ever and ever, 
 these grand aristocrats, most of whom never lived at all. 
 
 Strange that a prince who can make dukes by the 
 dozen for the five years of his lifetime, should after that 
 be at the mercy of a king-maker, whose style is generally 
 plain Mr., and who can make nothing, not even money ! 
 Yet so it is, and the poet king-makers are very tyrannical 
 in their choice of candidates. 
 
 Who is Shakespeare's ideal monarch ? Not Alfred the 
 Good, who first taught England how to read ; not 
 Edward i., who made her feel that the strength of her 
 strength was unity, but that expensive hero who plunged 
 her into one of the most unjustifiable and, in the end, 
 1 From T/iC Theatre, September 1884. 
 
148 ESSAYS 
 
 most fatal wars she ever undertook, to satisfy his own 
 hungry ambition. 
 
 Queens in all ages and amongst all classes have been 
 popular ; as theirs will probably be the last of all titles 
 to die out in the actual world, so theirs is the first in the 
 world of poetry and plays. By the grace of William 
 Shakespeare, Esq. (and others), they are, and always will 
 be. Queens, Defenders of the Faith, within their dominions 
 supreme. 
 
 Others there are too, not less noble, Indies in the great 
 sense of the word, on whom their two lumdred years and 
 odd sit lightly, who claim the homage due to them as 
 justly now as in the days of old, and prominent among 
 these is the wonderful lady, whom AVebster imaged to 
 himself somewhere about the year 1612, and whom he 
 called, in default of any Christian name that could 
 properly express her, simply the Duchess — ' The Duchess 
 ofMalfi.' 
 
 The age of ugly heroines had not set in when she was 
 born. We see her first as a young and beautiful widow, 
 hated by her grasping and envious brothers. Prince 
 Ferdinand and the Cardinal, distrusted by her mean, sus- 
 picious courtiers, loved only by the very few who knew 
 her well. As to her relations with her dead husband, 
 Webster observes a significant silence. Shakespeare 
 would almost certainly have noticed them, and shown 
 how they re-acted on the true crisis of her life, just as he 
 touched on Romeo's sentimental love for Rosaline, before 
 he saw Juliet ; but Webster leaves us to draw our own 
 conclusions from the bare fact that he says nothing — 
 good, bad, or indifferent. It is often so with him ; he 
 leads us to infer whatever it does not suit him to express, 
 and his principal figures stand out all the more clearly 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 149 
 
 for their dark background. He is reticent even about 
 his hero, the steward, unwilling to put him forward, lest 
 the Duchess should suffer so much as a momentary 
 eclipse. Excepting for his beautiful description of her 
 in Act I., Antonio speaks seldom and briefly ; enough to 
 show us that he is a perfect gentleman, and not enough 
 to show us much more, but for certain wonderfully fine 
 little touches, in which the love that he keeps under lock 
 and key peeps forth and will not be hidden. We can 
 fancy the eloquent silence of such a man, how he would 
 throw himself heart and soul into the Duchess's accounts, 
 and keep her books as they were never kept before ; how 
 she, a sensitive, highly strung woman, could not fail to 
 note this dumb devotion, and rate it at its true value. 
 All this is matter of long standing, when the play begins. 
 Webster had no business with the soft uncertain hints of 
 early love ; his passions are all grown-up, like his 
 characters. Young though she be in years, the Duchess 
 is old in prudence, and in that absence of girlish coquetry, 
 which leads her, knowing that Antonio will never woo 
 her of his own accord, to place the ring herself upon his 
 finger. It is one of the most ungrateful tasks in the 
 world to depict a woman making the first advances to a 
 man ; even Shakespeare achieved a very doubtful triumph 
 with such a character as Helena in AWs Well that Ends 
 Well. 
 
 There is something absolutely repugnant to good taste 
 about the leap-year lady. All the more wonderful for 
 its refinement is the scene in which the Duchess of Malfi 
 declares her love. All the struggles that it cost her, all 
 the womanly shame wiiich almost chokes her utterance at 
 the last moment, are in those few words, spoken to her 
 maid, Cariola, before Antonio enters. 
 
150 ESSAYS 
 
 ' Good dear soul, 
 Leave me ; but place thyself behind the arras^ 
 Where thou mayst overhear us. Wish me good speed. 
 For I am going into a wilderness 
 Where I shall find nor path nor friendly clue 
 To be my guide.' 
 
 She had told no one what she meant to do, driven to do 
 it by the intolerable loneliness of her position, knowing 
 that even Cariola would not dare to approve her — but do 
 it she must and would. Pretending that she wants to 
 make a will, she questions Antonio (rather vaguely) about 
 the state of her finances. 
 
 ' Ant. I '11 fetch your grace the particulars of your 
 
 Revenue and expenses. 
 DucH. Oh, you 're an upright treasurer ; but you mistook. 
 
 For when I said I meant to make inquiry 
 
 What 's laid up for to-morrow, I did mean 
 
 What 's laid up yonder for me. 
 Ant. Where .'' 
 
 DucH. In Heaven, 
 
 I 'm making my will (as 'tis fit princes should) 
 
 In perfect memory ; and I pray, Sir, tell me 
 
 Were not one better make it smiling thus. 
 
 Than in deep groans and terrible ghastly looks, 
 
 As if the gifts we parted with procured 
 
 That violent distraction ? 
 Ant. Oh, much better. 
 
 DucH. If I had a husband now, this care were quit.' 
 
 Here after the Elizabethan manner, they fence a little 
 with puns on the word ' will,' Antonio counselling her 
 to marry again, and to give her husband all, even her 
 * excellent self." 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 151 
 
 ' DucH. St. Winifred, that were a strange will. 
 Ant. 'Twere stranger if there were no will in you 
 
 To marry again. 
 Ducn. What do yon think of marriage .'' 
 
 Ant. I take it as those that deny purgatory; 
 
 It locally contains or heaven or hell. 
 
 There 's no third place in 't. 
 DucH. How do you affect it ? 
 
 Ant. My banishment, feeding my melancholy, 
 
 Would often reason thus. 
 DucH. Pray let us hear it. 
 
 Ant. Say a man never marry, nor have children, 
 
 W^hat takes that from him ? Only the bare name 
 
 Of being a father, or the weak delight 
 
 To see the little wanton ride a cock-horse 
 
 Upon a painted stick, or hear him chatter 
 
 Like a taught starling. 
 DucH. Fie, fie, what 's all this ? 
 
 One of your eyes is blood-shot ; use my ring to't. 
 
 They say 'tis very sovran ; 'twas my wedding ring. 
 
 And I did vow never to part with it 
 
 But to my second husband. 
 Ant. You have parted with it now. 
 
 DucH. Yes, to help your eyesight. 
 
 Ant. You have made me stark blind. 
 
 DucH. How ? 
 
 Ant. There is a saucy and ambitious devil. 
 
 Is dancing in this circle. 
 
 DuCH. 
 
 Remove him. 
 
 Ant. 
 
 How? 
 
 DucH. ' 
 
 rhere needs small conjuration when your finger 
 
 May 
 
 do it ; thus : is it fit ? 
 
 
 [S/ie puts the ri)i<>: on hisjiiiger. 
 
 
 He Kneels. 
 
 Ant. 
 
 What said you ? 
 
 DuCH. 
 
 Sir! 
 
152 ESSAYS 
 
 This goodly roof of yours is too low built ! 
 I cannot stand upright in't, nor discourse 
 Without I raise it higher. Raise yourself 
 Or, if you please, ray hand to help you ; so. 
 Ant. Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness 
 That is not kept in chains and close-pent room, 
 But in fair lightsome lodgings, and is girt 
 With the wild noise of prattling visitants. 
 Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure. 
 Conceive not I 'm so stupid, but I aim 
 Whereto your favours tend ; but he 's a fool 
 That, being a-cold, would thrust his hands in the fire 
 To warm them. 
 
 So long as she leaves him room to doubt for an instant 
 whether she can live without him, he will not take 
 advantage of her confession. In generosity, at least, he 
 is her equal. As he says himself : — 
 
 Were there not heaven nor hell, 
 
 I should be honest ; I have long served virtue, 
 
 And never ta'en wages of her. 
 
 But his grave and noble rejoinder only fires her still 
 more, and, with an outburst of magnificent, appealing 
 scorn, she flings all vain equivocation to the winds : — 
 
 The misery of us that are born great ! 
 
 We are forc'd to woo, because none dare woo us : 
 
 And as a tyrant doubles with his words. 
 
 And fearfully equivocates, so we 
 
 Are forced to express our violent passions 
 
 In riddles, and in dreams, and leave the path 
 
 Of simple virtue, which was never made 
 
 To seem the thing it is not. Go, go, brag 
 
 You have left me heartless : mine is in your bosom ; 
 
 I hope 'twill multiply love there : you do tremble. 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 153 
 
 Make not your heai-t so dead a piece of flesh. 
 
 To fear more than to love me ; Sir, be confident. 
 
 What is it distracts you ? This is flesh and blood, sir ; 
 
 'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster 
 
 Kneels at my husband's tomb. Awake, awake, man, 
 
 I do here put off all vain ceremony. 
 
 And only do appear to you a young widow. 
 
 I used but half a blush in 't. 
 
 Bless Heaven this sacred Gordian, which let violence 
 
 Never untwine. 
 Ant. And may our sweet affections, like the spheres. 
 
 Be still in motion. 
 DucH. Quickening, and make 
 
 The like soft music. 
 
 It would be difficult anywhere to surpass this scene, 
 beginning with delicate raillery, half feigned to hide the 
 passion underneath, ending in words that leave us doubt- 
 ful with Cariola, ' whether the spirit of greatness, or of 
 woman, reign most in her."" 
 
 The second act is the weakest and least interesting in 
 the play. The sudden illness of the Duchess, accom- 
 panied by other untoward circumstances, raises suspicion 
 at Court, and on the night of the child's birth a 
 treacherous courtier, Bosola, who has sold himself to 
 Prince Ferdinand and the Cardinal, picks up a scheme 
 of its nativity which Antonio had carelessly dropped. 
 By this clumsy expedient the brothers are made aware 
 of their sister's condition, though still ignorant of the 
 child's father. It seems as if the genius of Webster, 
 overpowering when at its height, lost itself in the petty 
 details of an intrigue which many inferior men might 
 have rendered less cumbersome. His very wealth of 
 imagination stifles him. The simplest and most apparent 
 
154 ESSAYS 
 
 things cannot be discovered without an altogether dis- 
 proportionate outlay of time, tricks and trouble. It is 
 like cracking a walnut with the proverbial sledge-hammer. 
 Nor does he sufficiently explain the envy of the brothers, 
 since, even had their sister died a widow, her son by her 
 first husband (whose existence seems to have been con- 
 veniently forgotten further on), must, one would think, 
 have succeeded to the dukedom. Of course it may be 
 said that Webster wrote in the first place for the stage, 
 and that on the stage effect is everything and causes 
 matter little ; but it is certainly strange that he took 
 no pains to correct this and other inaccuracies of the 
 same kind, when ' The perfect and exact Copy, with 
 diverse things printed, that the length of the Play would 
 not beare in the Presentment,'' was afterwards given to 
 the public. 
 
 A few years of happiness behind the curtain, and the 
 tragedy begins again. The Duchess is now the mother 
 of three children ; strange rumours are rife about her in 
 the Court, but nothing certain has yet been discovered, and 
 no one suspects the cold, discreet Antonio. A charming 
 scene of light, graceful banter, while Cariola is brushing 
 her lady's hair, shows us how free they are from any 
 sense of peril. While she is still speaking, Antonio steals 
 away unnoticed into an inner chamber, taking Cariola 
 with him, for the fun of making her angry. 
 
 DucH. Doth not the colour of my hair 'gin to change? 
 When I wax grey, I shall have all the Court 
 Powder their hair with arras to be Hke me. 
 You have cause to love me ; I entered you into my heart 
 Before you would vouchsafe to call for the keys .... 
 For know, whether I am doomed to live or die, 
 I can do both like a prince. 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 155 
 
 Siuldenly Ferdinand bursts upon her, dagger in hand. 
 She meets his frantic and violent abuse with a cjuiet 
 declaration that, as she is married already, it docs not 
 and cannot apply to her, and when his fury rather 
 inrceases than subsides, she tries to reason with him in 
 the gentle persuasive tones that would naturally befit a 
 sister pleading with an angry brother. He is her twin 
 brother, her old playfellow ; surely to him she may speak 
 as she would deign to speak to no one else. She herself 
 gets a little angry, only a little, that he should insult 
 her, as if she had committed some great crime by follow- 
 ing the dictates of her nature : 
 
 Why should only I, 
 Of all the other princes of the world, 
 Be cased up like an holy relic ? 
 I have youth and a little beauty. 
 
 It is difficult to explain Ferdinand's excessive brutality 
 excepting on the ground that he is rather mad already, 
 and the audience must be nearly as glad as the Duchess 
 when at length he rushes from the room, bidding her 
 expiate her dishonour by killing herself with the dagger 
 that he leaves behind him. Her one thought is how to 
 shield Antonio. She will dismiss him instantly and 
 roughly from her service, following him afterwards in 
 secret as soon as the coast is clear. She has just time 
 to warn him before Bosola enters the room, and she 
 begins to act — unfortunately to over-act — her part, 
 Antonio, taking the cue, submits with well-assumed 
 dignity, but the practised courtier, comprehending the 
 whole situation at a glance, only allows him to escape 
 that he may win the heart of the Duchess by his pre- 
 tended indignation at the way in which she dismisses her 
 
156 ESSAYS 
 
 old servant. What could be more straightforward and 
 uncourtierlike than his sharp reproof? — 
 
 For know an honest statesman to a prince 
 
 Is like a cedar planted by a spring. 
 
 The spring bathes the tree's root, the grateful tree 
 
 Rewards it with his shadow ; you have not done so. 
 
 It gains the Duchess in a moment. With the royal 
 generosity of a nature that can do nothing by halves, 
 she at once confides to him everything, and yields to his 
 treacherous counsel that she should go on pilgrimage to 
 Loretto, the better to colour her flight. There is a 
 cunning little touch of character in Cariola''s objec- 
 tion : — 
 
 In my opinion 
 She were better progress to the baths at Lucca, 
 Or go visit the Spa in Germany, for, if you will believe 
 
 me, 
 I do not like this jesting with religion. 
 This feigned pilgi'image. 
 
 The maid is an excellent foil for the mistress every- 
 where ; timid and conventional, where she is bold and 
 independent ; distrustful, when she is confident ; able to 
 hope, when she despairs ; faithful and loving always, the 
 very type of an ordinary nature desperately bound to 
 follow a much higher one, which it cannot understand. 
 
 Of the many strange things in this play, nearly as 
 original in its faults as in its beauty, tbe scene at Loretto 
 is one of the strangest — being indeed no scene at all, 
 but merely an elaborate dumb-show, by which the 
 Cardinal and various other people decree the banishment 
 of the Duchess and her family to the accompaniment 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 157 
 
 of ' a ditty,"' the authorship of which is modestly dis- 
 claimed by Mr. John Webster in the mar<;in. As it is 
 not a very striking ditty, we are not surprised at this: 
 but the marvellous pathos of the scene which follows can 
 only heighten our wonder that he should have turned 
 what might have been the central point of his drama 
 into a mere bit of pantomime. Of course Bosola over- 
 takes the fugitives, and the Duchess is made to accompany 
 him back with two of her children, while Antonio and 
 the eldest are suffered to escape. 
 
 DucH. I know not which is best. 
 
 To see you dead or part with you. Farewell, boy, 
 Thou art happy that thou hast not understanding 
 To know thy misery ; for all our wit 
 And reading brings us to a truer sense 
 Of sorrow. In the Eternal Church, sir, 
 I do hope we shall not part thus. 
 
 Ant. Oh, be of comfort. 
 
 Make patience a noble fortitude. 
 And think not how unkindly we are us'd, 
 Man (like to cassia) is prov'd best being bruis'd. 
 
 DucH. Must I, like to a slave-born Russian, 
 Account it praise to suffer tyranny .'' 
 And yet, O Heaven ! thy heavy hand is in 't. 
 I have seen my little boy oft scourge his top. 
 And compar'd myself to 't : nought made me e'er go right, 
 But Heaven's scourge-stick. 
 
 Ant. Do not weep. 
 
 Heaven fashion'd us of nothing, and we strive 
 To bring ourselves to nothing. Farewell, Cariola, 
 And thy sweet armful. If I do never see thee more, 
 Be a good mother to your little ones. 
 And save them from the tiger. Fare you well. 
 
 DucH. Let me look upon you once more, for that speech 
 
158 ESSAYS 
 
 Came from a dying father. Your kiss is colder 
 
 Than that I have known an holy anchorite 
 
 Give to a dead man's skull. 
 Ant. My heart is turned to a heavy lump of lead. 
 
 With which I sound my danger. Fare you well. 
 DucH. My laurel is all withered. 
 
 Can we not hear the very tones in which they speak, 
 les larmes dans la voix, she with her books and flowers 
 and little children, he with his masculine dislike of tears, 
 and dim, heavy foreboding of worse evils to come .'' 
 Surely the fable about a salmon and a dog-fish with 
 which the act concludes must have been one of those 
 things which were omitted during ' the presentment.' 
 What actress would ever risk marring the effect of an 
 intensely pathetic scene by such a queer bit of humour 
 as this ? — 
 
 A salmon, as she swain unto the sea. 
 
 Met with a dog-fish, who encounters her 
 
 With his rough language : Why art thou so bold 
 
 To mix thyself with our high state of floods } 
 
 Being no eminent courtier, but one 
 
 That for the calmest and fresh time of the year 
 
 Dost live in shallow rivers, rank'st thyself 
 
 With silly smelts and shrimps, and darest thou 
 
 Pass by our dog-ship without reverence .- 
 
 O (Quoth the salmon) sister, be at peace. 
 
 Thank Jupiter we both have passed the net. 
 
 Our value never can be truly known 
 
 Till in the fisher's basket we be shown : 
 
 In the market then my price may be the higher. 
 
 Even when I am nearest to the cook and fire. 
 
 So to great men the moral may be stretched : 
 
 Men oft are valued high when they are most wi-etched. 
 
 We cannot imagine that the gifted Mrs. Betterton, 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 159 
 
 who played the part in 1678, ever allowed herself to go 
 so far, though perhaps Master R. Sharpe, the first 
 Duchess on record, may have managed it. 
 
 But now the plot thickens, the stage grows dark, the 
 voices sink to a whisper, as the numbered hours pass 
 quickly on to doom. Still the Duchess bears her im- 
 prisonment nobly, still her brother's cruelty has not 
 availed to break her spirit. If she will not die naturally, 
 she must be tortured to death ; so much the better. 
 Ferdinand comes to visit her in the darkness (having 
 sworn never to see her face), and holds out, for her lips 
 to kiss, a dead hand, which he feigns to be that of her 
 husband. Bosola shows her 'behind a traverse' the 
 bodies of Antonio and her children (' fram'd in wax, by 
 the curious master in that quality, Vincentio Lauriola "'). 
 No cry, no lamentation does she utter. The sight 
 freezes the blood in her veins, she cannot faint, nor 
 weep away her ice-bound anguish ; nothing but death 
 can help her : — 
 
 Bos. Come, you must live. . . . 
 
 DucH. Good comfortable fellow, 
 
 Persuade a wretch that's broke u{)on the wheel 
 
 To have all his bones new set, intreat him live 
 
 To be executed again. Who must despatch me .'' 
 
 I account this world a tedious theatre, 
 
 For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will. 
 Bos. Come, be of comfort, 1 will save your life. 
 DucH. Indeed I have not leisure to attend 
 
 So small a business. 
 
 I will go pray. No : I '11 go curse. 
 
 She speaks wildly, yet with a certain restraint that 
 never lets us forget she is ' Duchess of MalH still."' Once 
 before, when she was helping her husband to escape. 
 
160 ESSAYS 
 
 she quoted Tasso, now she remembers Portia. In her 
 old artificial life alone in the Court, books had been her 
 only reality ; now in the tremendous realities of her own 
 life they came back to her. Wonderful indeed is this 
 picture of a mind hovering on the edge of madness, yet 
 still intact : — 
 
 DucH. What hideous noise was that ? 
 
 Car. 'Tis the wild concert 
 
 Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother 
 
 Hath placed about your lodging : this tyranny 
 
 I think was never practised till this hour. 
 DucH. Indeed I thank him ; nothing but noise and folly 
 
 Can keep me in my right wits, whereas reason 
 
 And silence make me stark mad ; sit down. 
 
 Discourse to me some dismal tragedy. 
 Car. O 'twill increase your melancholy. 
 DucH. ■ Thou art deceived, 
 
 To hear of greater grief would lessen mine. 
 
 This is a prison ? 
 Car. Yes : but thou shalt live 
 
 To shake this durance off. 
 DucH. Thou art a fool. 
 
 The robin red-breast and the nightingale 
 
 Never live long in cages. 
 Car. Pray dry your eyes. 
 
 What think you of, madam ? 
 DucH. Of nothing. 
 
 When I muse thus, I sleep. 
 Car. Like a madman, with your eyes open .'' 
 DucH. Dost thou think we shall know one another 
 
 In the other world ? 
 Car. Yes, out of question. 
 
 DucH. O that it were possible we might 
 
 But hold some two days' confei'ence with the dead, 
 
 From them I should learn somewhat I am sure 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 161 
 
 I never shall know here. I '11 tell thee ;i miracle ; 
 I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow. 
 Th' heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass. 
 The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad : 
 I am acquainted with sad misery, 
 As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar ; 
 Necessity makes me suffer constantly. 
 And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now ? 
 Car. Like to your picture in the gallery ; 
 A deal of life in show, but none in practice : 
 Or rather like some reverend monument 
 Whose ruins are even pitied. 
 
 Even yet she has not suffered enough. The madmen 
 are let loose into the room to play their horrid gambols 
 before her sleepless eyes, and deafen her with their 
 wild songs and shrieks. As they are retiring, Bosola, 
 disguised as an old man, enters to dig her grave. 
 Apparently she recognises him after the first moment, 
 for her dignified 
 
 Am I not thy duchess ? 
 
 would seem to recall the former passages between them. 
 She has lost all sense of fear — nay, even of that solemn 
 awe which sometimes takes the place of fear at the last 
 hour. Nothing shows the intensity of her grief more 
 than her complete indifference : — 
 
 DucH. And thou comest to make my tomb ? 
 Bos. Yes. 
 
 DucH. Let me be a little merry. 
 
 Of what stuff wilt thou make it ? 
 Bos. Nay, resolve me first, of what fashion .'' 
 DucH. What ! do we grow fantastical in our death-bed ? 
 
 Do we affect fashion in the grave ? 
 Bos. Most ambitiously ; princes' images on their tombs do 
 
 not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray up to 
 
 L 
 
162 ESSAYS 
 
 heaven ; but with their hands under their cheeks (as if 
 
 they died of the toothache). They are not carved with 
 
 their eyes fixed upon the stars ; but as their minds were 
 
 wholly bent upon the world, the self-same way they seem 
 
 to turn their faces. . . . 
 
 [A coffi,7i, cords, and a bell, produced. 
 
 Here is a present from your princely brother, 
 
 And may it arrive welcome, for it brings 
 
 Last benefit, last sorrow. 
 DucH. Let me see it. 
 
 I have so much obedience in my blood, 
 
 I wish it in their veins to do them good. 
 Bos. This is your last presence chamber. 
 Car. O my sweet lady. 
 DucH. Peace ; it affrights not me. 
 
 It is the ' nothing can hurt me now ' of Marie Antoinette. 
 Calmly she listens to her dirge, assisting at her own 
 funeral before she dies. The naive horror of it strikes 
 chill, like a deep expression on the lips of a child : — 
 
 DIRGE 
 
 'Hark, now everything is still ; 
 
 This screech-owl and the whistler shrill. 
 
 Call upon our dame aloud, 
 
 And bid her quickly don her shroud. 
 
 Much you had of land and rent ; 
 
 Your length in clay's now competent. 
 
 A long war disturb'd your mind, 
 
 Here your perfect peace is sign'd. 
 
 Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping } 
 
 Sin, their conception ; their birth, weeping. 
 
 Their life a general mist of error. 
 
 Their death a hideous storm of terror. 
 
 Strew your hair with powders sweet, 
 
 Don clean linen, bathe your feet ; 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 163 
 
 And (the foul fiend more to check) 
 
 A crucifix let bless your neck. 
 
 'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day ; 
 
 End your groan, and come away. 
 C\H. HencCj villains, tyrants, murderers: alas! 
 
 What will you do with my lady .'' Call for help. 
 DucH. To whom ? to our next neighbours ? They are mad 
 folks ! 
 
 Farewell, Cariola. 
 
 I pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy 
 
 Some syrup for his cold ; and let the girl 
 
 Say her pray'rs ere she sleep. Now what you please ? 
 
 What death ? 
 Bos. Strangling. Here are your executioners. 
 DucH. I forgive them. 
 
 The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' the lungs, 
 
 Would do as much as they do. 
 Bos. Doth not death fright you } 
 DucH. Who would be afraid on't, 
 
 Knowing to meet such excellent company 
 
 In th' other world .-^ 
 Bos. Yet methinks 
 
 The manner of your death should much afflict you ; 
 
 This cord should terrify you. 
 DucH. Not a whit. 
 
 W' hat would it pleasure me to have my throat cut 
 
 With diamonds .'' or to be smothered 
 
 With cassia ? or to be shot to death with pearls ? 
 
 I know deatli hath ten thousand several doors 
 
 For men to take their exits ; and 'tis found 
 
 They go on such strange geometrical hinges 
 
 You may open them both ways : any way (for Heaven's 
 sake) 
 
 So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers 
 
 That I perceive death — now I 'm well awake — 
 
 Best gift is they can give or I can take. 
 
164 ESSAYS 
 
 I would fain put off my last woman's fault ; 
 
 I 'd not be tedious to you. 
 
 Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength 
 
 Must pull down heaven upon me. 
 
 Yet stay, heaven's gates are not so highly arched 
 
 As princes' palaces ; they that enter there 
 
 Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death, 
 
 Serve for mandragora to make me sleep. 
 
 Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, 
 
 They then may feed in quiet. 
 
 \They strangle her kneeling. Ferdinand enters. 
 Ferd. Is she dead .-* 
 
 Bos. She is what you would have her. 
 
 Fix your eye here. 
 Ferd. Constantly. 
 
 Bos, Do you not weep } 
 
 Other sins only speak, murder shrieks out. 
 
 The element of water moistens the earth. 
 
 But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. 
 Ferd. Cover her face — mine eyes dazzle — she died young. 
 
 She was beyond fear, but her woman's nerves remained 
 to her ; she felt they must give way if the strain lasted 
 much longer. She had borne the cries of the madmen, 
 but she could not bear this ' whispering ' about her ; it 
 made her nervously eager for the last horrible moment. 
 Rest, rest was all she wanted ; let them give it her 
 quickly. 
 
 A modern writer would have had the play end here in 
 the silence and darkness of the chamber of death, but 
 Webster and Co. were not artists in the modern sense of 
 the word. Their villains were not mere bits of wicked- 
 ness contrived to throw into relief the virtues of the 
 innocent and then sink back into the nothingness from 
 which they came, but flesh and blood, and as such to be 
 
HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS 165 
 
 punished, at the risk of outraging the moral fecHngs of 
 the audience. Furthermore, they saw that after any 
 dreadful deed the world went on its way very much as 
 usual ; that a curtain did not fall for ever on the perpe- 
 trators of it ; that the vacant place was filled up some- 
 how ; and it was this great truth of continuity which they 
 sought to impress by leading our thoughts on to the 
 future. It shows a change in the temper of the English 
 people that the last scene of Hamlet should never be 
 acted now. In those old days the fall of a monarch was 
 nothing compared to the fall of monarchy, which would 
 have thrown too deep a shadow even for tragedy. At 
 any cost there must be a successor to the throne. The 
 Duchess of Malfi i\x\^h both these conditions. It would 
 be tedious to follow the web of plot within plot which 
 gradually brings about the mutual murder and assassina- 
 tion of the Cardinal's mistress, of Antonio, of the Car- 
 dinal himself, of Ferdinand, and of Bosola, but there is 
 one exquisite scene in which Antonio, walking uncon- 
 sciously near to his wife's grave, is made to hear the echo 
 taking her voice : — 
 
 Del. Hark, the dead stones seem to have pity on you, 
 
 And give you good counsel. 
 Ant. Echo, I will not talk with thee, 
 
 For thou art a dead thing. 
 Echo. Thou art a dead thing. 
 Ant. My Duchess is asleep now. 
 
 And her little ones, I hope, sweetly. O Heaven, 
 
 Shall I never see her more ? 
 Echo. Never see her more. 
 Ant. I marked not one repetition of the Echo 
 
 But that ; and on a sudden a clear light 
 
 Presented me a face folded in sorrow ! 
 Del. Your fancy merely. 
 
166 ESSAYS 
 
 How well the old playwrights understood that sense of 
 foreboding, the very existence of which many people in a 
 less robust age are willing to call in question ! 
 
 The CardinaPs last soliloquy over his Dante has a 
 touch of grimly irresistible humour that reminds one of 
 the fantastic devils of some ancient German artist : — 
 
 1 am puzzled in a question about hell. 
 
 He says in hell there 's one material fire, 
 
 And yet it shall not burn all men alike. 
 
 Lay him by. How tedious is a guilty conscience ! 
 
 When I look into the fishponds in my garden 
 
 Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake 
 
 That seems to strike at me. 
 
 On the whole, my Lord Ferdinand, with his laugh, ' like 
 a deadly cannon that lightens ere it smokes,"* is excelled 
 in wickedness by my Lord Cardinal, who never laughs at 
 all. Ferdinand had the grace to go mad after his sister's 
 death at any rate, but the Cardinal seems to have felt no 
 ill effects whatever, except the trifling little vision afore- 
 said. 
 
 Quiet and brief are the closing words of this great 
 tragedy. No sentimental moralising, no weak appeal to 
 pity, no feeble buttressing about of virtue with paste- 
 board-angels ; by her own right she stands. 
 
 Mal. Oh, sir, you come too late. 
 
 Del. I heard so, and 
 
 Was arm'd for 't ere I came. Let us make noble use 
 
 Of this great ruin, and join all our force 
 
 To establish this young hopeful gentleman 
 
 In 's mother's right. These wretched eminent things 
 
 Leave no more fame behind 'em than should one 
 
 Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow ; 
 
HER GRACE THE DUCHESS 167 
 
 As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts 
 
 Both form and matter ; I have ever thought 
 
 Nature doth nothini^- so great for great men 
 
 As when she's pleas'd to make them lords ol' truth. 
 
 Integrity of life is fame's best friend. 
 
 Which nobly (beyond death) shall crown the end. 
 
 We know almost nothing of the life and death of John 
 Webster. No monument, however humble, rises over his 
 tomb, no Mc jacet points to his last resting-place. It 
 was Thomas Middleton who, with a true prescience of 
 the things that pass away and the things that endure, 
 wrote over his friend's ' maisterpeece "■ : — 
 
 Thy Epitaph only the 'I'itle bee, 
 
 AVrite Dutchesse, that will fetch a teare for thee. 
 
168 ESSAYS 
 
 [1886] 
 
 ON NOISES! 
 
 It is an open question whether musicians are fonder of 
 noise than other people. They themselves would, per- 
 haps, answer it in the negative. ' So noisy ! "' is considered 
 one of tlieir very severest verdicts; and if an unmusical 
 person happens to like something they disapprove of, 
 they will often give this as the reason, being apparently 
 of opinion that noise has nothing to do with music, 
 properly so called. Yet what is music itself but the 
 art of making a refined -kind of noise, subject to certain 
 rules ? Music which can be only taken in by the eye, 
 and is audible to the mind alone, remains unintelligible 
 excepting to a few. No doubt those few hear melodies 
 more wonderful than any that ever were ' by mortal 
 finger struck.' I have heard a composer say that the 
 more keenly he felt the delight of writing out the music 
 that was in him, the more keenly he disliked the instru- 
 ments, which were a kind of unhappy mean between the 
 pure beauty of his own conception, and the ignorance of 
 those who could only be made to know it through their 
 ears. We need not much regret the deafness of Beethoven ; 
 and it is most unnecessary to pity Sebastian Bach because 
 his greatest work was never performed during his life- 
 time. Still, it remains true that to the world in general 
 music that is not heard is nothing. It might just as 
 1 From The Musical World, i886. 
 
ON NOISES 169 
 
 well not exist. Certainly this is hard on the composer. 
 He cannot sj)eak to us directly, as every other artist 
 can ; he must speak through others, and his best speech 
 may fail, because others (or their instruments) have not 
 good voices. It is just conceivable that in future ages 
 men may come to read music as many of them have come 
 to read plays, and to say, with a superior air, ' Oh, do 
 you really like to go and hear Fidelio ? It is so vulgarised 
 
 by (the Tietjens of the period), I much prefer to 
 
 study it at home.'' That will be a golden age for com- 
 posers, if any chance to exist ; but more likely they will 
 all have disappeared just as the ungrateful world is ready 
 to do them the most absolute justice. Meanwhile, let 
 us make noises, and be happy. It is such a nice, human 
 thing — noise ! Surely it was a happy dispensation 
 which married it to the most abstract of all the arts. 
 There are times when it is inconvenient; there are times 
 when it is agonising. The squeak of a slate pencil, a 
 pig, a violin in the hands of a young gentleman of tender 
 age — one's nerves thrill at the bare recollection. 
 
 Still, taking it all in all, what should we do without 
 it? Even the squeak of the violin is dear to the heart 
 of the young gentleman who perpetrates it. Even the 
 pig finds it a relief to his feelings to express them in 
 that unutterably hideous sound. The slate pencil alone 
 would seem to be equally hated of gods and men. People 
 who are not mothers can scarcely be expected to feel it, 
 but it is actually asserted on credible authority, that the 
 sweetest music to a mothers ear — even if she has a good 
 one — is the cry of her newborn infant. And the cries 
 of people in the streets, who were not infants, delighted 
 that quietest of spirits, Charles Lamb. 
 
 True, there was one man, Schopenhauer, the grim 
 
170 ESSAYS 
 
 philosopher, who hated women, who hated noises also — 
 did not merely pretend to hate them as some do, but 
 hated them with a good, honest, downright hatred. He 
 said they murdered his thoughts. He accused them, also, 
 of murdering the thoughts of five other great people, viz., 
 Brentano, Kant, Goethe, Lichtenstein, and Jean Paul. 
 He went so far as to say that complaints of them were 
 to be found in the biographies or personal recollections 
 of almost all great writers. His description of the suffer- 
 ings he underwent from the cracking of whips would melt 
 the heart, even of a cabman. He said it cut right 
 througli his meditations, like a sword dividing the head 
 from the body. ' That such an infamous thing should 
 be tolerated in any town is barbarous and unjust in the 
 extreme ; all the more, as it could easily be avoided by 
 ordering the police to see that there was a knot at the 
 end of every lash. . . -. If I were in authority, I would 
 establish a permanent nexus idearum between the crack- 
 ing of whips and flogging, in the heads of the drivers.'' 
 Poor Schopenhauer ! Was it not enough for him to see 
 everything en. )ioir, but must he hear it en noir also ? 
 The violent slamming of doors also troubled him greatly. 
 He would have sympathised with that printer who, not 
 being acquainted with the expression ' banging gales,' as 
 applied to rent, misprinted a sentence in one of the news- 
 papers, ' The cause of all the mischief in Ireland is the 
 banging gates.'' 
 
 Infinite silence hath a magnificent sound also in the 
 mouth of Carlyle, but if, in a future life he should be 
 found inhabiting the Moon Circle of Paradise, that 
 absolutely soundless sphere, he will perhaps have modified 
 his opinions. Outside our own selves, there is nothing 
 so pleasant, so genial, so friendly, as a noise. The 
 
ON NOISES 171 
 
 sounds, even more than the sights we are accustomed 
 to; the familiar voices, even more than familiar faces, 
 pass into our very being, and become one with us. Those 
 wiio have lived by the sea, or in some great city, cannot 
 forget the strange murmur wherever they may go. They 
 listen for it instinctively ; they miss it, scarcely knowing 
 what they miss, till they return to it again. Sometimes 
 they will tell you they cannot sleep, because everything 
 is so quiet. And then, there is the romantic side of 
 noise. Echo will lend it the curious charm that reflection 
 lends to an ordinary object. The sighing of the wind 
 among the trees, the whisper of the waves in a shell — 
 how these have set a poet's fancy going. Others have 
 loved the crackling of the fire on a frosty evening, the 
 monody of the tea-kettle, the chirp of the cricket on the 
 hearth. But if there was one who more than any felt the 
 full charm of all those different noises, little and great, 
 which make the chorus of life, that one was the first 
 musician of his day — the first composer, too, who claimed 
 distinctly for himself the title of poet. The whirr of a 
 spinning-wheel, the tap of a cobbler's hannncr, the cracked 
 notes of an old watchman, he did not fear to spoil his 
 daintiest music with such things as these. He loved the 
 ringing strokes of the sledge upon the anvil ; his burning 
 thoughts kept tune with them. Prisoning the fire in his 
 wand, like another Prometheus, he let the flames burst 
 forth again to make a rosy ring around his sleeping lady, 
 or flashed them in lightning through the tempests that 
 only he could raise. Not in vain had he watched the 
 Wild Huntsman, and heard the rain fall lightly on the 
 forest leaves ; and to the storm and stress of nature 
 without, joining the storm and stress of the fiery nature 
 within him, he sent his Walkyries riding abroad upon 
 
172 ESSAYS 
 
 the very wings of the wind. The rush and dash of waves, 
 the cabu flowing of a river, the gradual rising of a flood — 
 who could portray it as he could ? Yet, perhaps, the 
 dearest thing to him was the noise of birds singing, the 
 hum of insects whirring, stirring, buzzing in a wood. 
 ' Under the greenwood tree. Who loves to lie with me .'' ■* 
 sang Shakespeare. It was Wagner who loved to lie there 
 too, and listen. Avaunt, ye geographers ! Siegfried and 
 Orlando wandered in the same forest. 
 
MORE WORLDS THAN ONE ITS 
 
 [1888] 
 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE i 
 
 'Tea, in cups with handles and saucers, was handed 
 round by servants in black dress suits, with white ties." 
 
 Who would have thought it possible to describe a 
 tea-party in a new and striking manner ? Yet Miss 
 Bird has done it. If she had lived when tea cost nine- 
 teen shillings a pound, she could not have pictured a 
 gathering in honour of that beverage with more origin- 
 ality. We almost feel as if we were reading about some- 
 thing we had never heard of before. We are in Japan 
 with her for the moment. European tea is a strange 
 and foreign thing. We are not accustomed to it in cups 
 with saucers and handles to them. 
 
 People who are at all sympathetic by nature are often 
 curiously influenced by their surroundings. It is said 
 that an Englishman who has lived long in the East, away 
 from his fellow-countrymen, sinks at last into the very 
 depths of Oriental degradation. Lady Hester Stanhope 
 was an odd person. As things were, Mr. Kinglake 
 enjoyed his visit to her, but he could hardly have enjoyed 
 it anywhere but in the East. Live in a Cathedral town 
 for a week and you will come to feel that the Dean is the 
 most important person in England, and that the one object 
 of life is not to be late for Evensong at the Minster. 
 1 From The Reflector, March 1888. 
 
174 ESSAYS 
 
 But these are only temporary phases of existence. We 
 may go once in a way to Japan, the desert, or the Cathe- 
 dral town, but they are not ours to frequent as we will, 
 whenever we get too dull for ourselves, and are driven to 
 seek refreshment elsewhere. What matter? there are 
 three whole worlds at our disposal : the world that is, of 
 which we know something; the world that will be, of 
 which we know nothing ; and the world that never was 
 and never will be, about which we know everything. 
 Some live entirely in one, some in another ; the happiest 
 people have the range of all three. At one time or the 
 other we have most of us inhabited the third. We have 
 made fortunes and friends in it, we have married wives 
 in it, we hold a great deal of Spanish property there. 
 Sometimes we go thither under feigned names. There 
 have been Dukes of Wellington who never fought at 
 Waterloo, and bloodless victories over nobody and 
 nothing, the results of which were unspeakably gratifying 
 to the winner of them. There have been picture-gal- 
 leries, theatres, libraries, racecourses in tiiat world, the 
 like of which was never seen below. It is a lovely world, 
 all rose and rainbow colour. Everything is possible 
 there, and everybody succeeds. It is a kind of practical 
 workaday heaven, to which we go without even the 
 expense of being good beforehand. Many of the women 
 there are men and all men are heroes. The right 
 person does the right thing always. There are no fogs. 
 
 Unreality attracts certain minds, as money attracts the 
 miser, rank the baseborn, heroic deatli the young. The 
 unreal denizens of that world are to some people dearer 
 than flesh and blood. Not to all. ' So natural, so real^ 
 say the people who live in world No. 1, when they read 
 story-books ; but they speak falsely. Life is not a story- 
 
MORE WORLDS THAN ONE 175 
 
 book, or no stories need ever be written. Who wants to 
 read when he is at the play ? There is nothing so incon- 
 sistent, so inartistic as reality. Humorous it may be, 
 and pathetic — more humorous and more pathetic than 
 any story that was ever written — but quite without that 
 strange power of pleasing and satisfying, which is the 
 property of things and people that never were. A may 
 die, B may marry, C may get an appointment in China ; 
 but the health of dear Di Vernon never gives me one 
 day's uneasiness, Rose Jocelyn will let me ride with her 
 when I will, Dorothea Brooke is always at home to me. 
 It may be thought that this society is too exclusively 
 feminine. The lovers of these ladies might no doubt be 
 as interesting as they are, if I cared to visit them ; but I 
 do not. A feeling of jealousy comes over me. I know I 
 could have made every one of the sweet creatures (and 
 how many more besides ?) happier than that conceited 
 fop Frank Osbaldistone, that free-and-easy weathercock 
 Will Ladislaw, that irreproachable tailor-gentleman 
 Evan Harrington. Luckily there is safety in numbers. 
 I sometimes pass them all in review, wondering which I 
 should have chosen had fortune given me a choice in any 
 world except the third. Beatrice frightens me a little, 
 but when I think of her at the other end of my dinner- 
 table, Browning, Leighton, and Mr. Gladstone listening 
 delightedly to her remarks, I am a proud and happy man. 
 Rosalind would be perfection for a week in the New 
 Forest at Easter. Portia would mean exile. One can- 
 not imagine her out of Belmont ; but she would be a 
 charming winter wife. Miss Harriet Byron is too good 
 for me. I do not aspire to such a saint. But the 
 naughty and fascinating Lady Charlotte G. might take 
 me to Church to-morrow, even after I had fully con- 
 
176 ESSAYS 
 
 sidered the awful responsibility of becoming Sir Charles 
 Grandison's brother-in-law. Elizabeth Bennet I cannot 
 away with. I would not have married her to save my 
 life, or on a desert island. Emilia in The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho had, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, too great a 
 tendency to drop into verses addressed to a bat. Nor is 
 it possible to care much about his own heroines, except- 
 ing always the aforesaid Di Vernon, and Green Mantle in 
 Redgauntlet^ to whom I would willingly offer, in the 
 words of Heine — 
 
 ' Das vvenig Herz das mir gelassen 
 Ihre Vergangerin im Reich. i 
 
 ' ' The Greeks, sir, had a great respect for the Number Three,' said 
 my friend, when I read him this essay. He also quoted a remark of 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes about length, breadth, and height. 
 
THE MAKING OF HEROINES 177 
 
 [1888] 
 
 THE MAKING OF HEROINES i 
 
 I BKLiKVE I am quite capable of being a hero : but 
 so far as I know, I am not one ; and I want to have 
 some good way suggested to me of occupying that 
 desirable position. After all, this, if any, is the age 
 when Sancho Panza (or Mrs. Panza for that matter) 
 seems to have a good chance of enjoying, at all events 
 for a time, the position and reputation which even Don 
 Quixote found so hard to obtain in days when chivalry 
 had already gone out, and interviewers had not yet come 
 in. Everybody must have noticed that celebrated people 
 nowadays, especially celebrated ladies, have nearly as 
 many lives as a Kilkenny cat. They are born, they are 
 married, they die over and over again, in the columns of 
 newspapers and in the pages of biographers. Even 
 before their natural decease, they very often live in a 
 world of looking-glass, which reflects all their most 
 important actions — or their least important, as the case 
 may be — for the benefit of the outside world. 
 
 It was not always so. Mrs, William Shakespeare's 
 sufferings may, in her different sphere, have equalled 
 Mrs. Carlyle's, and she may have been just as cross and 
 just as clever, but no one of her husband's friends was 
 entrusted with the unpleasant duty of describing her 
 conjugal adventures for the edification of posterity. We 
 
 1 From The Reflector, March i8S8. 
 M 
 
178 ESSAYS 
 
 know next to nothing of those much-to-be-pitied young 
 women, the daughters of Milton, and what little we do 
 know does not redound to their credit. Had they but 
 lived a couple of hundred years later, we should, no 
 doubt, have possessed an interesting work entitled ' The 
 Real John Milton,' of which they were the suffering 
 heroines. Let all downtrodden wives and daughters of 
 the genus irrHabilc vatum take courage ! Their day was 
 long in coming, but it has come at last. A strong 
 character must that be indeed which can stand the glare 
 of light thus flung on it from all sides. The results of 
 different treatment are sometimes as perceptible as those in 
 varying portraits of the same person. One artist is per- 
 fectly convinced that the eyes were pale blue ; another 
 would go to the stake for the opinion that they were dark 
 brown. It is a rare thing when the subject is too striking 
 to admit of any mistake. 'Mrs. Gaskell, Mr. Reid, and Mr. 
 Birrell are three very different people, but Charlotte Bronte 
 is much the same in all their pictures. It has been wittily 
 said, that every individual stands really for three — him- 
 self, the self he thinks himself, and the self somebody 
 else thinks him. She seems to have been one of the 
 very few who cherish no illusions on their own account 
 and permit none to be cherished by others. She had 
 one good strong self, and she stuck to it, and stamped it 
 indelibly upon her every word and action. 
 
 What befalls celebrated people invariably after their 
 death, and frequently during their life, befalls common- 
 place people only at rare intervals and at certain crises. 
 Few of us have strength of mind enough to make heroes 
 of ourselves, but once or twice at least, in the course of 
 our existence, events make heroes of us in our own 
 despite. The first Mrs. Dombey, had she ' made an 
 
THE MAKING OF HEROINES 179 
 
 effort/ would never have been the first Mrs. Dombey. 
 Cireu instances, we know, rendered it impossible, and 
 those circumstances made her immortal ; but she is only 
 cited as an extreme case. Woman is, as a rule, quicker 
 to take advantage of her life than man ; she is less 
 passive. Man at a crisis — unless it be a crisis of war — 
 is a stupid thing. He either makes a fool of himself, or 
 allows the world to make a fool of him, from which fate 
 woman is preserved by her innate self-respect, and by a 
 certain capacity which she possesses for making the most 
 of emotion. A bridegroom is either the silliest or the 
 most miserable of mortals, but marriage can always 
 make a heroine out of the least heroic of women. She 
 is the centre of attraction, for the time being. Every- 
 thing is forgiven her, on account of the ordeal through 
 which she has to pass. Her married friends pity her. 
 Her unmarried friends envy either her or the bridegroom, 
 as the case may be. Her will is law. Her prospects 
 and her presents are the subject of conversation among 
 all her acquaintance. She is obliged to take the opinion 
 of the whole household, from Grandmamma down to the 
 lady's maid, as to the fit of her wedding-gown. No one 
 spares her blushes about the ring. Every one says ' Poor 
 tiling ! ' — if the height of the bride does not absolutely 
 forbid it, ' Poor little thing ! ' The borderland between 
 Miss and Mrs., especially the extreme verge of the 
 borderland, has an odd fascination. Some people, like 
 Racine, always cry at a wedding. Sir Tiiomas Browne, 
 we know, thought it a far more solenni thing than death. 
 It is, at any rate, a crisis, whether from the lady's maid's 
 point of view or Racine's. 
 
 Some are made heroes of (most unwillingly) by a fire 
 a burglary, a mad dog, or the small-pox. It is a mistake 
 
180 ESSAYS 
 
 to suppose that success ever makes heroes. A certain 
 element of melancholy is almost always needful. The 
 Archbishop of Canterbury is not a hero, unless he has 
 to go to prison. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is 
 not a hero, unless he is compelled to offer up his lofty 
 position on the altar of his country. 
 
 It is appalling to think how full the world is of inter- 
 mittent, involuntary, nameless and numberless heroes 
 and heroines. I know at least nineteen, and my 
 acquaintance is limited. I have never yet been a hero 
 in my own person, but I comfort myself with the old 
 saying, ' While there is life, there is hope." 
 
TRAVELLERS' TALES 181 
 
 [1891] 
 TRAVELLERS^ TALES ^ 
 
 That the Spring is the season for wandering, who that 
 has ever understood the signs of the times will doubt ? 
 The Winter is house-keeping time — house-keeping time 
 in town, if possible — with fires, and lamps, and books. 
 The Summer is garden time, among the roses and straw- 
 berries. The Autumn is too sad to think about at all. 
 But the Spring is the time to wander, ' Try something 
 new ! ■■ says the old earth, and jjuts out all her new flowers 
 and leaves to tempt us, and to fill us with strange melan- 
 choly, that is more than half longing — a kind of home- 
 sickness for distant lands. The very air tells us, in soft 
 balmy whispers, how the myrtles and orange-trees are 
 blossoming over the sea ; the swallows come again, from far, 
 far away, ' und ich, ich schnlire den Sack und wandei^e,' 
 
 Once more the fleavenly Power 
 
 Makes all thing-s new. 
 
 The old earth has something of the tenderness and beauty 
 of a young mother. 
 
 There are few things more delightful than travelling, 
 to those who really enjoy it. But people are born 
 travellers, as they are born poets, painters and musicians. 
 ' Thursday''s bairn hath far to go,** says the old rhyme, 
 and 'l'hursday"'s bairn, and Thursday's bairn only, enjoys 
 ^ From The Monthly Packet, August 1S91. 
 
182 ESSAYS 
 
 it. Some men might go from the world's beginning 
 north (I do not know why, but I am quite sure the world 
 began north) to the world's end south, and never get out 
 of England the whole time. For unless you travel in 
 the spirit as well as in the body, you get but a little 
 way ; and there are people (Pnte and I for example) who, 
 scarcely stirring from their own fireside, have yet gone 
 further than many a ' 'mercial ' that knows Bradshaw by 
 heart. Even an undeveloped genius for travelling will 
 do wonders. What did not the hero and heroine of 
 Their Wedding Journey accomplish, by the mere deter- 
 mination to treat their native land as if it were a foreign 
 country ? 
 
 What fine fellows are the great explorers, from 
 Columbus to Greeley ! AVith what magnificent chivalry 
 do they go forth to fight the sun, the sea, the snow, 
 that they may win new lands, new light for the world ! 
 My lady Science hath her martyrs among them, not 
 saints indeed, but men as grand, as brave and as enduring. 
 The traveller is certainly not a martyr ; yet doth he feel 
 a little sting of the same spirit within him, and his small 
 discoveries are to him an America. For to travel any- 
 where intelligently is to discover for yourself, if not for 
 any one else ; and the Undiscovered Country lies not only 
 in the heart of Africa, nor round the Poles. Who, for 
 instance, discovered Yorkshire before Charlotte Bronte ? 
 
 There are people who ought to be paid to travel, they 
 do it so well. Miss Bird ^ is one of, these. She is such 
 
 ^ Now, however, this lady has a more than dangerous rival in the 
 author of A Social Departure. The vivid, yet reposeful effect of certain 
 aspects of Eastern colouring, — the freshness, and the familiarity of 
 certain aspects of Eastern life, — are described with still greater delicacy 
 in a small, unpretending volume, recently published, called Pilgrims hi 
 Palestine. 
 
TRAVELLERS' TALES 183 
 
 excellent company in Japan, that we could almost find it 
 in our hearts, even at the end of her two fat volumes, to 
 wish she had stayed there a month longer. Hers are no 
 sentimental journeys ; she does not burst into lyrics, and 
 nobody ever tries to murder her ; but she has good eyes, 
 and she uses them. And then Miss Bird is such a 
 charming name for a traveller ! Fate clearly had some- 
 thing to do with it. Heresy though it be to say so, her 
 travels are much better reading than Goethe"'s. The 
 strange influence that Italy exercised over him is to be 
 learnt from other sources ; but if he fled to her like a 
 lover, he described her like the coldest of connoisseurs. 
 He — and George Eliot after him — seem to have been 
 afflicted with a tendency to rival the best guide-books in 
 their possession that is perfectly maddening. If it were 
 not for Kennst du das Land, and for the pictures of 
 Florence in Romola, they certainly might have been paid 
 to stay at home. One sighs to think what poor Frau von 
 Stein had to wade through, every time that she got a 
 letter. Heine, on the other hand, was an ideal traveller. 
 Perhaps the nightingales sing a thought too often, and 
 the moonlight is now and then excessive, but still his is 
 the magic music, and whither he goes we follow him, as 
 the children followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Some 
 people, in whom one might have suspected the latent 
 traveller, disappoint one terribly. Of this number is 
 Hawthorne, whose note-books are redeemed from the 
 utter flatness of Goethe's and George Eliofs only by 
 those occasional odd touches that make everything that 
 he wrote characteristic. What does he think of in the 
 Louvre ? He does not seem to care for one of the great 
 pictures. He passes ' Mona Lisa' by — ' Mona Lisa,' 
 whom he alone of all men, since Leonardo, could have 
 
184 ESSAYS 
 
 understood. Instead, he fancies grimly, what a scene 
 there would be, if all the dead came back to claim his or 
 her own relic, — the dagger — the bracelet — the brooch, — 
 from its particulai- glass case. 
 
 French, Germans, Americans, see things with very 
 different eyes. Kinglake is the most English of travellers. 
 The chivalry, the detestation of humbug, the quiet, 
 practical, foolhardy courage of a typical English gentle- 
 man, are all represented in Eothen. Who that has ever 
 read that wonderful book, can forget the whirl of feeling 
 about the Virgin Mary — the passing of the other English- 
 man on camel-back, in the desert, without a word, — the 
 wilful risk of life, merely for the excitement of staying in 
 a plague-stricken city ? These things are, in their way, 
 national. Perhaps only the English can understand 
 them. Laurence Oliphant, at his best, gives one the 
 same delightful sensations.- 
 
 ' There is a sense, of course, in which all true books are 
 books of travel. ' So writes the traveller, whom, of all 
 others, he that goes forth with eyes eager to see, would 
 choose for his companion. Modestine was a happy 
 animal, if she had but known it. Treasure Island is a 
 good book, but some people would give ten Treasure 
 Islands for one Inland Voyage. It seems almost a pity, 
 that any one who can describe real life thoroughly well 
 should ever do anything else. There are so many who 
 can fly — a little ; so few who know how to talk, or how 
 to manage a boat in print. Here is at last a writer of 
 fiction, whose journeying is something more than an 
 inferior episode in his novels. He is himself his own 
 best hero; we would rather know what he thinks and 
 feels, we would rather hear what gi'ieved, amused, en- 
 dangered him, than anything else that he can tell us. 
 
TRAVELLERS' TALES 185 
 
 Dickens, who could make a hero, tragic or comic, out of 
 any one, had not this faculty, or had it not in perfection. 
 In the Italian notes, for instance, we cannot but feel that 
 he would rather be telling, and we would much rather 
 be hearing, a story. Either he bored himself, or else he 
 did not pay us the compliment of being quite frank with 
 us, and put on spectacles, when he wanted to see things 
 for the public. So, too, Scott's diary, deeply interesting 
 when he speaks of himself in private, becomes positively 
 dull when he takes a voyage — I suppose, because he then 
 wrote consciously for others, 
 
 Stevenson is very matter-of-fact about his mental 
 experiences. Apparently — 
 
 He thinks it something- less than vain, 
 What has been done, to do again. 
 
 All roads, it is said, lead to Rome ; but Robert Louis's 
 do not. He goes to odd little out-of-the-way places, and 
 he goes in queer ways of his own, that are not in the 
 least dangerous or extraordinary, but only very amusing. 
 He takes a donkey or a canoe. The deliberate cheerful- 
 ness with which he surmounts every difficulty rises 
 unconsciously to the level of courage, and the reader is 
 surprised and altogether delighted to find that, while he 
 thought he was merely laughing, he is really admiring. 
 And then Stevenson has plucked out the heart of the 
 matter. ' To travel hopefully,'' says he, "is better than 
 to arrive.' 
 
186 ESSAYS 
 
 [1906] 
 MRS. GASKELLi 
 
 Al:most a hundred years have passed away since Mrs. 
 Gaskell was born, and the lustre of her fame is yet 
 undimmed. She was no wild poet of love among the 
 moors like Charlotte Bronte, no learned professor of the 
 analytical arts and sciences like George Eliot ; but the 
 special graces of womanhood are hers rather than theirs, 
 and it was not without reason that Dickens called her 
 his ' Scheherazade,' for the innate gift of storytelling is 
 greater in her than in her sisters. Charlotte Bronte 
 swept the world away in the storm of her passion ; 
 George Eliot conquered it with the power of under- 
 standing; Mrs. Gaskell forced it to weep for pity, 
 charmed it with the sunny wit of a lady who was never 
 in all her life mistaken for a man, even when she signed 
 herself Cotton Mather Mills, Esq. She did not write 
 at first because she must, but because she would. The 
 sufferings of the poor had entered into her soul like 
 iron. She felt them as Dickens and Kingsley felt them ; 
 she threw her strength into a mighty effort for peace — 
 not on compulsion — for Christianity, not for compromise. 
 The fairness and sweetness of Mary Bay-ton make it 
 the noble thing it is. She never for an instant would 
 admit that bitterness could be right. She did not 
 justify the bitterness of the poor, though she pointed 
 ' From the Times Literary Supplement, 14th September 1906. 
 
MRS. GASKELL 187 
 
 out to tlic rich what had caused that bitterness. It is 
 not only by taking a gun and shooting some one that a 
 man breaks the connnandnient, 'Thou shalt do no 
 murder' : yet, if he breaks it thus, he makes himself the 
 equal of the man who has let another starve, and both 
 alike must pay in blood the awful penalty of hatred, 
 both alike must be brought to acknowledge that love is 
 the only power that can rule the world. A strange 
 subject, this of ' forgiveness."' With one sternly ironical 
 reference, ' Oh, Orestes ! you would have made a very 
 tolerable Christian of the nineteenth century ! '' Mrs. 
 Gaskell takes us back to the dead-alive conviction of 
 the ancient world, still walking ghost-like in the midst 
 of us, that justice is vengeance; in the light of her own 
 unquenchable faith she leads us on to see that justice is 
 forgiveness. She never imagined anything more true to 
 human nature at its highest than this bending of the 
 spirit of one heart-broken father to the spirit of another, 
 in stricken, reverent submission to the Father of all. 
 
 Perhaps it was reserved for a woman to show that, in 
 women guiding their conduct by the Bible, forgiveness may 
 become, as it raroly becomes in men, an instinct. Electra, 
 in the old world, urged on Orestes ; the idea of forgiving 
 her mother never entered her heart. Desdemona not only 
 forgave the Moor her death, but tried, with her last 
 breath, to take the guilt of it upon herself. Shakespeare 
 clearly held that, when a woman loves, forgiveness is 
 involuntary, she does not even think of it; but what 
 would Desdemona have felt towards any one who had 
 killed Othello? Isabella's forgiveness of Angelo, the 
 would-be murderer of her brother, in Measure for 
 Measure, is the result of thought, of pity for his 
 betrothed, of resolution — it is not instinctive. 
 
188 ESSAYS 
 
 ' They'll know it sooner or later, and repent sore if 
 they 've hanged him for what he never did,' replied Job. 
 
 ' Ay, that they will. Poor soul ! May God have mercy 
 on them when they find out their mistake ! ' 
 
 So says Jane Wilson, mother of the accused Jem in 
 Mary Bartoii, without any consciousness of the sublimity 
 of her words. Mrs. Gaskell might have taken for her 
 motto the name of one of Tolstoy's most delicate short 
 stories, ' Where love is, there is God also ! ' In her 
 unending compassion, in her love of the gentleness of 
 the frail and the old, in her clear condemnation of 
 violence as a remedy, her scorn of military prowess, she 
 resembles the great Russian more closely than any of 
 her countrymen. But he was still to come ; and, though 
 she afterwards withdrew them — it may be from a sensitive 
 feeling that they revealed too much of her inmost heart — 
 she found in Uhland's words a link to fasten to her 
 work the memory of two spirits. 
 
 Mary Barton was begun, by her husband's earnest 
 desire, to relieve her own mental sufferings after the 
 death of her little son. Terrible indeed must have been 
 the thoughts from which the thoughts that gave it birth 
 were a relief! The men and women who were writing 
 about the dreadful year of "'48 had great courage. They 
 did not fly from the most agonising problems of life 
 and conduct. They stood up and faced them— not with 
 the indifferent calm of the student, careful only to note 
 and compare, but with the enthusiasm of the Church 
 militant. They recognised the fact that these problems, 
 although so troublesome, are for the most part expressed 
 in simple terms. They were not so much concerned 
 about the form of religion a man ought to belong to, or 
 which woman he ought to have married, as they were 
 
MRS. GASKELL 189 
 
 about whether he did or did not understand the words 
 of Christ — whether he was or was not doing his duty in 
 that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call 
 him. Humour — imagination — elocjuence — they did not 
 use these gifts I'or their own solace, they pressed them 
 into the service of those who had none. ' To my think- 
 ing, them that is strong in any of God's gifts is meant 
 to help the weak ! ' Job Legh expresses the thought of 
 all the leading writers of that time. As the sonnet, 
 which had been as a lute for lovers, became in Milton's 
 hands a trumpet, so the novel, which had been once 
 (and was to be again) a toy, became in theirs a sword 
 with which to fight in the cause of the oppressed. Away 
 — but only for a time — went the dashing, s{)lashing 
 fellow with the white plume, that we are all so fond of! 
 Thackeray wrote a novel without a hero ; Dickens took 
 a child for his; Charlotte Bronte made a heroine out of 
 a poor little plain governess ; George Eliot showed how 
 much more gentlemanly than a gentleman a carpenter 
 might be. Mrs. Gaskell, more daring than any of them, 
 rivalling Victor Hugo's choice of a convict, as she lay 
 sick and sad upon her sofa, took an assassin. She called 
 the book at first ' John Barton ' ; and of the living, 
 moving characters on that wonderful canvas he is the 
 first to arrest our attention, the last that we could forget. 
 Small wonder is it that an Oldham labourer should have 
 taken his children regularly to look at the house where 
 she lived who thus could read the heart of the Avork- 
 ing man, who thus could turn all hearts towards him ! 
 From the moment when we meet him at the stile and he 
 takes Jane Wilson's baby, to the moment when he dies, 
 forgiven, in the arms of the man whose only son he 
 has murdered, loving and pitying sympathy follows him 
 
190 ESSAYS 
 
 step by step. Some of his words strike on the conscience 
 now like hammers : — 
 
 ' When I was a Httle chap they taught me to read, and 
 then they never gave no books.' 
 
 'It's not much lean say for myself in t'other world, 
 God forgive me ; but I can say this, I would fain have gone 
 after the Bible rules, if I 'd seen folk credit it.' 
 
 ' I would go through hell fire, if I could but get free from 
 sin at last.' 
 
 ' It was not long I tried to live Gospel-wise, but it was 
 liker heaven than any other bit of earth has been.' 
 
 Apart from its own intrinsic interest, the first con- 
 siderable work of a great novelist awakens our curiosity 
 for the hints it may contain of future excellence. Jem's 
 first sight of John Barton after his disappearance, going 
 to the pump to fetch a j ug of water — that vision of the 
 murdering, not the murdered man, haunts memory like 
 the spectre that it really is. The woman who wrote 
 this could not have found any great difficulty in writing, 
 as she afterwards did, one of the best ghost stories in 
 existence, the ' Old Nurse's Story,' and the finer parts of 
 that unequal study, ' The Poor Clare.' We might have 
 known, too, that no hero of hers could be really base. 
 She held a brief for the heroism of everybody as against 
 the heroism of a favoured few. We might have known 
 that her heroines would be, for the most part, maidenly, 
 pretty, wayward creatures, with their hearts in the right 
 place. ' It is but a day sin I were young,' says the old 
 woman, trying to comfort the heartbroken girl in ' Half 
 a Life-time Ago ' with the reflection that life is short ; 
 and the poetry of this, and of many other faithful 
 servants, may be, to some slight extent, foreshadowed by 
 the old nurse in Mary Barton. But we could never 
 
MRS. GASKELL 191 
 
 have foreseen the great ladies of the old regime, the 
 doctors, the ministers, the enchanting spinstcrhood pre- 
 sided over by Miss Galindo and Miss Deborah Jenkyns, 
 who were to charm us in Cninford, in the far less popular 
 but just as perfect picture, Mr/ Ladij Ludluza, and once 
 again in Wives and Daughters. ]\lr. Gray, in the second 
 of these three works, meets and beats Amos Barton, 
 ]\Ir. Gilfil, and Mr. Tryan on their own ground. We 
 say it with hesitation — we are not unaware of the 
 indignant protest likely to follow — but still we assert 
 that we should greatly have preferred his ministrations. 
 And if, for ourselves, we had the joy and privilege of 
 calling in a doctor from the realms of fiction whenever 
 we are not quite well, it would be Dr. Gibson, and not 
 the husband of Rosamund Lydgatc, for whom we sent. 
 There is barely the shadow of a doctor, there arc no 
 clergy at all, in Mary Barton. Perhaps the symmetrical 
 scheme of the work, the strong, sharp contrast of 
 employers and employed, did not admit of people in 
 an intermediary position. The grande dame, naturally, 
 did not exist in Manchester. 
 
 It might be, if we had to choose our favourite cliar- 
 acter from this long gallery. My Lady Ludlow whom 
 we should select. There are no such ladies now. You 
 might search England through, from end to end, and 
 never find the like of this lovely, beneficent little old 
 despot. What need of heroes, or of heroines either, if 
 she be there? There are certain words that never must 
 be mentioned in the ancient house where she lives, with 
 the five ' young gentlewomen ' who are to her instead of 
 her dead daughters, and the twenty old servants to do 
 the work of the twenty other old servants who are too 
 old to do any work at all. * Musk ' is one of these words. 
 
192 ESSAYS 
 
 She cannot abide such a vulgar and common odour. 
 Lavender and woodrofFe are her favourite perfumes — 
 lavender and woodroffe and the scent of decaying straw- 
 berry leaves in the autumn, noted by Bacon for its 
 fragrance, and cherished by her because only a nose 
 of gentle birth can detect it. What would she have 
 done in these days of Board Schools and of cheap 
 literature, she who had sheltered the victims of the 
 French Revolution and believed that it would happen 
 over again in England if the children of her tenants 
 were taught to read ! How beautiful she is in her 
 gracious tyranny, in her courtly, determined opposition, 
 in the rigid reserve of her strong feelings, in the end- 
 less outgoing of her generous heart to those who are in 
 distress ! Etiquette itself becomes a kind of worship 
 with such a centre. The sorrow that plunged the 
 village into mourning comes to us like a personal 
 sorrow when Mr. Gray goes up to her to break to her 
 the death of her only son — 'and she had been the joy- 
 ful mother of nine ! ' The sky is darkened because she 
 sits, a whole month long, in a black room, with lamps 
 and candles, seeing no one except her maid, reading 
 nothing except the names of all her children on the 
 first page of the family Bible. AVe breathe again as soon 
 as she comes back to rule her little kingdom. When 
 she conferred a favour it was always as though she 
 asked it ; and she ' never forgave by halves." AVhen she 
 sends for a destitute, one-legged sailor to manage her 
 property we tremble for her justification, we feel she 
 must be right, we trust her as she trusts herself and him, 
 through all the mistakes of the first year. Certainly it 
 was hard upon her that a Baptist baker, a person of no 
 social standing whatever, should so contrive that his 
 
MRS. GASKELL 193 
 
 fields were in much better condition than hers. Even 
 Miss Galindo only partially softened her heart towards 
 this person. 
 
 ' I daresay/ said Miss (Jalindo, ' he would have been born 
 a Hanbury, or a lord, if he could. ... It was his mis- 
 fortune, not his fault, that he was not a person of quality 
 by birth.' 
 
 ' That 's very true/ said my lady, after a pause for con- 
 sideration, ' but, although he was a baker, he might have 
 been a Churchman.' 
 
 Dear Miss Galindo ! She ' often thought of the post- 
 man's bringing her a letter as one of the pleasures she 
 should miss in heaven"* — a reflection which occurred to 
 Dr. Johnson also, when he was talking to Bozzy. But it 
 will never do to begin about Mrs. Gaskelfs old maids. 
 They are as inexhaustible as Rembrandt's Jews. Let 
 us end rather with a friendly counsel to every one who 
 does not already own these ' unappropriated blessings ' to 
 purchase them at once. 
 
194 ESSAYS 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH! 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, when first she saw the light of day, 
 was a great disappointment. She was a girl — she ought 
 to have been a boy. 
 
 Why ought she to have been a boy ? To fight Scot- 
 land, on one side and Ireland on the other — France and 
 Spain over the water. Why ever all these countries 
 were the enemies of England, it would take me too 
 long to tell. But you- must remember, please, that 
 they were — four strong enemies, Ireland, Scotland, France 
 and Spain. 
 
 We are every one of us made up of a great many 
 different people. Elizabeth was made up of her grand- 
 father, who was cautious and prudent, of her father, 
 who was impetuous and charming, of her mother, who 
 was vain, had a high temper, and never cared what she 
 did, so that she got her own way. The impetuous and 
 charming father very soon grew tired of the vain, light- 
 minded mother, and cut off her head. If four step- 
 mothers can make up for one real mother, then the 
 baby Elizabeth was not to be pitied ; but can they ? 
 At first she was so badly off that she had not even 
 clothes enough to wear. In later life she more than 
 made up for this deficiency, for she wore a new dress 
 ^ A lecture given to some working-girls. 
 
ELIZABETH 195 
 
 every day, 365 dresses in a year. She liked to be 
 painted as a goddess. When she appeared as a 'mere 
 woman "* it was in a dress all over eyes and ears to 
 show that she could see and hear everywhere — which, 
 after all, was not quite like a mere woman. There 
 were always two opinions about her. People who 
 admired her called her Gloriana, Oriana, The Virgin 
 Queen, The Maiden Queen, Great Elizabeth, and Good 
 Queen Bess. People who did not admire her called her 
 a serpent and a viper. 
 
 At the time when she was young, it was quite a new 
 idea that little girls ought to be taught as well as little 
 boys, and her impetuous and charming father was very 
 full of it. So she learnt many things, useful and orna- 
 mental too. She was only six when she gave her little 
 brother, Edward, a cambric shirt that she had made 
 herself. She learnt to write a most beautiful hand. 
 When we see her faded old yellow letters now, we wish 
 that we could write like that. Slie could talk to learned 
 men in Latin and Greek, to Frenchmen in French, to 
 Italians in Italian. Our dear old Queen Victoria liked 
 to stop an organ-grinder, if she met one when slie was 
 out driving, to show that she could talk to him in 
 Italian : and Queen Elizabeth — it is one of the few 
 points that they have in common — was very fond of 
 showing off this accomplishment. Strange : but we have 
 all of us these little vanities. She was but eleven years 
 old when she wrote a letter in Italian to the last of the 
 four stepmothers. She was taught to dance most wonder- 
 fully too — she went on dancing when she was over seventy 
 — and she could play and sing. There were no pianos 
 then. Her favourite instrument was called, appropriately, 
 the virginals. 
 
196 ESSAYS 
 
 After the very disagreeable experience of having too 
 few clothes when she was a baby, Elizabeth, as a girl of 
 twenty, underwent the still more disagreeable experience 
 of having too httle liberty — of being shut up in prison. 
 Her brother was dead. Her half-sister, Mary, who was 
 queen now, was afraid that she wished to be queen. 
 No doubt she did, but she was much too clever to say 
 so. When next you go to the Tower of London, please 
 ask the warder to show you Traitors Gate. Through 
 this gate every one who was thought to be a traitor to 
 the queen had to pass — and to pass through that gate 
 was very often the first chapter of a story that ended 
 with somebody's head rolling away from somebody's body 
 on to a scaifold. ' I am no traitor ! ' Elizabeth said 
 proudly, when she was carried thither one wet Palm 
 Sunday. One of the lords in attendance offered his 
 cloak to keep her fronr the rain, but she put it back 
 ' with a good dash,' and setting her feet on the first step 
 of the stair, she said, ' Here landeth as true a subject, 
 being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs, and before 
 Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friend but 
 Thee alone.' Afterwards she was in prison in the 
 country, at Woodstock, instead of being in prison in 
 London. Her gaoler, a gentleman named Bedingfield, 
 was very strict ; when she was going to be removed 
 somewhere else, she took a diamond for a pen, and 
 amused herself with scratching on a window-pane a 
 little imaginary talk between them. Bedingfield speaks 
 the first line : 
 
 ' Much suspected by me : 
 Nothing proved can be, 
 
 Quoth Elizabeth^ prisoner.' 
 
 When she became queen, she told Bedingfield that, if 
 
ELIZABETH 197 
 
 she ever wanted any one safely kept in prison, she should 
 give that person to him. Was he pleased, do you think, 
 or was he not? A double-edged compliment like that 
 was very much in her line. Even her enemies — even 
 the people who called her a serpent and a viper — con- 
 fessed that she had ' a spirit full of incantation,"* by 
 which, I suppose they meant that she charmed them 
 somehow, even while they detested her. At that time 
 she was 'pleasing rather than beautiful,' tall and well- 
 proportioned, her complexion somewhat olive ; in her 
 portraits she is always dazzlingly fair, but then she 
 would not allow any shadows to be painted on her face, 
 and as a child she is said to have smashed all the looking- 
 glasses she could find because they did not make her 
 pretty enough. She had beautiful eyes, full of spirit 
 and sparkle, 'and above all a beautiful hand,'' which she 
 liked to show. Her curly hair was of a light auburn, 
 and her nose was like the beak of an eagle. Far away, 
 in a great old library at Durham, hangs a picture of her 
 half-sister Mary, and I have heard it said that any one 
 who happens to be sitting in the room while parties of 
 visitors are being shown through, may hear very different 
 opinions expressed about this likeness. ' Ah, poor suffer- 
 ing, deeply religious lady ! Looks like a perfect saint,"* 
 says one man. ' the horrid, cruel bigot ! Looks like 
 a hateful fiend!' says another. So I do not know 
 whether you would have thought Elizabeth beautiful or 
 not. It would have depended on your opinion of what 
 she did, I think, for ' handsome is that handsome does."* 
 If you had been a child you might have liked her, she 
 was always kind to children. 
 
 When her enemies tried to puzzle her with questions, 
 to bewilder her, to prove that she held wrong views about 
 
198 ESSAYS 
 
 the Supper of the Lord, she wrote one verse which is worth 
 all the rest of her poetry put together. 
 
 Christ was the ^Vord and spake it. 
 He took the Bread, and brake it. 
 And what the Word doth make it. 
 That 1 believe, and take it. 
 
 Elizabeth was staying at Hatfield (where Lord Salis- 
 bury, who is of the same family as her great minister, 
 Cecil, Lord Burghley, now lives), when the news arrived 
 that her sister, Mary, was dead — that she was queen. 
 Did she show how happy she was ? Did she come flying 
 up to London ? Not a bit of it ! She was much too 
 clever. She sent a messenger to find out whether it was 
 true. But before that messenger could get back again — 
 and we may be sure that he rode as fast as his horse"'s legs 
 could carry him — the lords of the council had found their 
 way to Hatfield and greeted this young lady of twenty- 
 three as their sovereign mistress. She fell upon her knees. 
 ' This is the Lord's doing,"" she said, ' and it is marvellous 
 in our eyes.' 
 
 From the first she showed clearly enougli that she 
 meant to rule by the love of her people. She often 
 appeared amongst tliem, she travelled hither and thither, 
 and visited this town and that, she smiled with pleasure 
 when they cheered, she encouraged them to come in 
 crowds about her, she made them beautiful speeches. 
 She led them to feel that she cared for tlieir approval. 
 If they disapproved strongly of anything she did, she 
 altered her conduct. Only on one point did she hold 
 her own. They were excessively anxious that she should 
 marry. And she was excessively anxious that she should 
 not. 
 
 Her brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, proposed to 
 
ELIZABETH 199 
 
 marry her. It would be quite easy, he said. She would 
 only have to ask the Pope to forgive her for not having 
 been a Roman Catholic before. She took a month to 
 think about it — decided that it was not so easy after 
 all — and said, No thank you. 
 
 Afterwards, at different times, there were hovering 
 about the throne an Archduke of Austria, a Prince of 
 Sweden, two of the sons of the King of Prance, one of 
 whom she called ' her little French frog ' (she used to wear 
 a brooch made like a frog that he had given her), a 
 Scottish Earl, a great English nobleman. Lord Leicester, 
 who had an unenviable reputation for poisoning people 
 he was tired of, and built the loveliest Almshouses in the 
 world, which are still to be seen with dear old men in 
 them at Warwick. She liked their admiration, and all 
 the beautiful presents they gave her. She would not say 
 Yes and she would not say No, She was just like the 
 White Owl in the Fairy Story. ' What shall I do ? I 
 have promised to marry them all.'' 
 
 ' Here is a great resort of wooers and controversy 
 among lovers,' wrote Lord Burghley. 'Would to God 
 the Queen had one, and the rest honourably satisfied." 
 
 The Spanish Ambassador, as was natural, expressed 
 himself still more strongly : ' This woman is possessed 
 with a hundred thousand devils, and yet she pretends 
 to me that she would like to be a nun, and live in a cell, 
 and tell her beads from mornin<]j to nioht."' 
 
 ' I have had such a torment with the Queen's majesty 
 as an ague hath not in five fits abated me,' says poor 
 Lord Burghley again. And we can fancy how bad it 
 must have been when the Queen's majesty condescended 
 to inform him, 'I will have here but one mistress, and 
 no master.' 
 
200 ESSAYS 
 
 I am sorry to say that when people are very vain, they 
 often grow very jealous too. Elizabeth was extremely 
 anxious to believe what all her lovers told her — that she 
 was the most beautiful princess in the world ; but she 
 found it difficult, because there was another very 
 beautiful Queen close by, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scot- 
 land, and all her courtiers said that she w^as the most 
 beautiful princess in the world. One day she asked the 
 ambassador from Scotland, ' Which is the most beautiful, 
 the Queen of Scotland or myself?" That is the kind of 
 question that never should be asked, even by Queens. 
 The poor ambassador was very much put to it. At last 
 he found a safe answer. 'My mistress is the most 
 beautiful lady in Scotland," said he, 'and your majesty 
 is the most beautiful lady in England.' But Gloriana 
 was not going to let him off like this. 'Which is the 
 tallest.''"' she inquired. There the ambassador felt quite 
 happy, for Mary of Scotland was the tallest. ' Then,' 
 said Queen Elizabeth, ' she is too tall, for I myself am 
 neither too tall nor too short. And can Queen Mary 
 play on the virginals.? Does she play well.''' 'O yes,' 
 the ambassador said, ' she plays pretty well for a Queen.' 
 After dinner, Elizabeth arranged that he should be 
 brought in, by chance as it were, just as she was playing 
 herself, and playing very well indeed. She let him listen 
 for a few minutes, and then she jumped up, very much 
 surprised, pretended to strike him with her hand, and 
 said she was not accustomed to })lay before men, she only 
 did it when she was alone, so that she might not feel too 
 sad. But — since he had contrived to hear them both — 
 did Mary play better than she did, or did she play better 
 than Mary ? The ambassador was obliged to say that 
 she played the best, but by this time he had had enough 
 
ELIZABETH 201 
 
 of" conipaiisons, which might be rejected in Scotland, 
 and he asked leave to go back. Elizabeth insisted on 
 keeping him two days longer, however, that she might 
 show off' her dancing. She could not miss such a chance 
 of finding out wiiether she or the Queen of Scotland 
 would be looked upon as the best partner at a ball. The 
 ambassador answered that Mary of Scotland 'danced 
 not so high nor so disposedly as she did.' And what 
 that means, goodness only knows. 'Oh, how I wish I 
 could see her!" Elizabeth said; 'quietly yoi^' know, with- 
 out any fuss.' 'Why not?' rejoined the ambassador. 
 ' Why should not your majesty disguise yourself as a 
 page, and come back to Scotland with me ? ' Whereupon 
 Elizabeth heaved a sigh, and said, oh ! if she only could. 
 
 The Queen of Scotland was not so particular about 
 marrying as Queen Elizabeth. She married three times 
 — each time more unhappily than the last- quarrelled 
 with her great nobles — Hed into England. She was 
 bound to be Queen of England, if Elizabeth died, and 
 many a great English nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk 
 among the rest, aspired to be her fourth husband. But 
 they were all afraid to mention the subject before 
 Elizabeth; and Norfolk, at the bare idea of it, 'fell 
 into an ague, and was fain to get him to bed without 
 his dinner.' Remarkable how many people got the ague 
 when they had anything to say to the Queen ! 
 
 This Duke of Norfolk, finding that he dared not woo 
 openly, made a plot to marry Queen Mary. Off' went his 
 head ! 
 
 There is no doubt that, even in prison, where Elizabeth 
 took good care to keep her, she was extremely dangerous, 
 especially when the Pope excommunicated Queen Eliza- 
 beth, which made it lawful for any Roman Catholic to 
 
202 ESSAYS 
 
 murder her. There were plots everywhere — plots among 
 her own servants. Those who loved her — those who saw 
 that Protestant England was growing and thriving under 
 her wise rule — those who dreaded the most terrible con- 
 fusion if she died — urged her to put Mary Stuart to 
 death, ' I cannot put to death the bird that has flown 
 to me for succour from the hawk,' she said. She kept the 
 bird in a cage — in several different cages — for nineteen 
 years. One man after another tried to get her out. One 
 man after another failed. One head after another rolled 
 on the scaffold. 
 
 Meanwhile, in France, the Massacre of St. Barthol- 
 omew took place, and nearly all the French Protestants 
 were murdered. Queen Elizabeth put on mourning 
 when she received the French Ambassador, and all the 
 court were robed in black. It was, Lord Burgiiley told 
 him, the most dreadful deed that had been done since 
 the Crucifixion. The Protestants of England became 
 still more alarmed about the life of their Queen, and an 
 association was formed to protect her. At last the 
 Queen's council urged upon her, that she must put Mary 
 to death. There could be no safety, either for her or 
 for England, while that beautiful bird lived. 
 
 'The life of Mary is the death of Elizabeth — the 
 death of Mary is the life of Elizabeth."' 
 
 Elizabeth hesitated — shifted her ground — said she 
 would — said she would not — hoped Mary would die of 
 herself — wished some one would murder her without 
 being asked to do so. Elizabeth was like a certain king 
 in Shakespeare who ' would not play false, and yet would 
 wrongly win.' But we cannot get rid of our perplexities 
 in this way. Mary Stuart went on being perfectly well, 
 and nobody tried to kill her. On the contrary, they 
 
ELIZABETH 203 
 
 tried to kill Elizabeth. At last her mind was made up. 
 Even then she tried to lay all the blame on others. 
 She could not endure to think that her people would 
 call her what she really was — unjust and cruel. Nothing 
 can ever make a wrong deed right. She had no business 
 to take the life ot* the bird that had fled to her for 
 succour. 
 
 iVIary of Scotland had iieard a sound of hammers in 
 the hall of the Castle of Fotheringay, where she was 
 imprisoned, and as she heard it, the picture of a scaffold 
 rising crossed her mind — but she could not believe it. 
 ' Day had followed day, and she heard no more.' ' The 
 blow, when it came at last, therefore came suddenly."* 
 Lord Shrewsbui-y and the Earl of Kent brought her 
 the news. 
 
 Philip of Spain, the brother-in-law who had proposed 
 to marry Elizabeth, made up his mind, now that Mary 
 Queen of Scots was dead, and her son a Protestant, to 
 conquer England for himself. Never mind, said Queen 
 Elizabeth's sailors, 'Twelve of her Majesty's ships are 
 a match for all the galleys in the King of Spain''s 
 dominions.' Then was there a rush and stir through- 
 out the realm of England. Then was there racing and 
 chasing everywhere. Then were the beacon-fires lighted 
 upon a hundred hills. The Armada is coming ! The 
 Armada is coming ! And from the whole of England 
 there rose a mighty shout of No ! 
 
 It was Lord Howard of Effingham who commanded 
 our fleet against the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Com- 
 mander of Spain. The winds and the waves fought 
 upon our side — and Drake, the glorious sailor who had 
 sailed round the world in three years in the Golden 
 Hind, and sunk the great big ships of Spain, and 
 
204 ESSAYS 
 
 brought back to the Queen ^^^75,090 and the jewels that 
 she wore in her crown at a state banquet after Phihp 
 had complained of his behaviour. She said the Golden 
 Hind was to be kept for ever in memory of him, and 
 she gave him a little golden ship that is still an heirloom 
 in the Drake family. The ladies of Spain were so much 
 afraid of Drake that one of them said she dared not go 
 in a boat with the King himself upon the water, lest 
 Drake should capture her. They said he had a magic 
 mirror in which he could see always whatever the King 
 of Spain did. He carried indeed the magic mirror of 
 imagination, which enables people to see many things. 
 In among the great big heavy lumbering vessels he sent 
 a few old ships (no crews at all) that he had set on fire 
 — and the great big heavy lumbering vessels blazed up, 
 and sank. 
 
 ' He blew with His breath, and they were scattered." 
 So ran the inscription upon the medal struck for the 
 Armada, giving the glory to God alone. It was indeed 
 a mighty deliverance. 
 
 Great things Queen Elizabeth did — great things she 
 left undone. The Dutchmen, who rebelled against her 
 brother-in-law, Philip, invited her to be their Queen. If 
 she had accepted the invitation, it is probable that the 
 Boer War would never have been fought. But she was 
 very prudent. She was an excellent housekeeper. She 
 did not think that she had money enough to fight the 
 battles of Holland as well as those of England, and 
 she declined the proposal. All the people of England, 
 she said, were her husbands — perhaps she did not care 
 to have thousands of Dutch husbands as well. She sent 
 the Earl of Leicester to take care of them ; but the only 
 result of that was that England lost the bravest and 
 
ELIZABETH 205 
 
 best of all her knights, Sir Philip Sidney, the one man 
 who dared to speak the truth to her without getting 
 an ague. She became more and more of a tyrant. Even 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, the gallant who fh'st attracted her 
 attention by spoiling a beautiful new cloak that she 
 might not have muddy shoes — the brave discoverer who 
 discovered potatoes, and tobacco, and a new province 
 in America, which he called Virginia in honour of 
 the Virgin Queen — even Sir Walter Raleigh was very 
 much afraid. 
 
 * Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,' he wrote 
 one day — as usual upon a window— as usual, I suppose, 
 with the point of a diamond. There were so many 
 diamonds about the world just then. And the queen 
 took another, and underneath ' Fain would I climb, but 
 that I fear to fall," she wrote : ' If your heart fail you, do 
 not climb at all."' Needless to say that Raleigh did 
 climb — but he fell, whether his heart failed him or no. 
 His friend Spenser sang of Elizabeth as the Fairy 
 Queen. When Spenser died, and was buried in West- 
 minster Abbey, it is said that all the other poets went 
 to the funeral and dropped their pens into his grave. 
 There lies, for all we know, the pen of Shakespeare. 
 Shakespeare lived longer than Queen Elizabeth. He 
 paid her a magnificent compliment in the Midsummer 
 NigJifs Dream, when he said that the God of Love had 
 no power to wound her, for, however hard he might try, 
 ' still the imperial votaress passed on, in maiden medita- 
 tion, fancy-free.' 
 
 But as the years went on he saw the imperial votaress, 
 the Fairy Queen, grow very old and wrinkled, very 
 capricious and cruel, and when she died he did not 
 pretend to mourn for her. 
 
206 ESSAYS 
 
 For the last years were not the best. After the years 
 of plenty came the years of famine. She did not like to 
 think she was growing old — we none of us do. When 
 the Bishop of St. David's preached before her on the 
 text, ' Lord, teach us to number our days, that we 
 may apply our hearts unto wisdom,' she did not thank 
 him as was her usual custom when the sermon was 
 over. No, no ! ' Yon might have kept your arithmetic 
 for yourself,' said she ; ' but I see that the greatest 
 clerks are not the wisest men.' 
 
 Lord Burghley died; and it was long before she 
 could mention his name without tears. She seems to 
 have cried very easily, by the way, judging from the 
 large number of persons who enjoyed the privilege of 
 seeino- her weep. When she was really in deep distress, 
 she did not cry, I think, she sighed. A kinsman of hers, 
 Robert Carey, says that he heard her sigh a few days 
 before her own death, 'forty or fifty great sighs,' just 
 as she sighed after the death of the Queen of Scots. 
 Buro-hley was dead, but still she had his son — the son 
 whom she had made Sir Robert Cecil — to help her. 
 
 Leicester was dead, and a new favourite reigned, the 
 Earl of Essex, but he was very disobedient, and though, 
 after his fits of naughtiness, he said he was like 
 Nebuchadnezzar, content to eat grass like an ox and 
 be wet with the dew of heaven, till it should please her 
 Majesty to restore him to his understanding, she could 
 not make him thoroughly subservient. She did not 
 want him to eat grass like an ox, she Avanted him to do 
 what she told him to do, and as he would not — off went 
 his head ! The people here in London loved him. He 
 had tried to win them to come with him to the Queen, 
 but when the moment arrived, they all got the ague. 
 
ELIZABETH 207 
 
 Nevertheless they could not forgive the Queen for cutting 
 off' his head. She began to lose the thing that she cared 
 for most of all — the love of her people. Once more she 
 made them a magnificent speech. 
 
 ' It was Elizabeth's last great triumph.'' The world 
 was passing away from her. They tried to flatter and 
 to amuse her as of old. ' When thou dost feel creeping 
 time at thy gate,' she said to her godson, who had been 
 writing verses for her, 'these fooleries will please thee 
 less." It was then that Robert Carey found her sitting 
 on cushions on the floor sighing heavily. What was she 
 thinking of? Not of Hatfield, not of Tilbury, not of 
 the glorious days at Kenilworth when Leicester feasted 
 her, not even of Essex and his rebellion and his doom. 
 Before her eyes there stood that awful scaffold at 
 Fotheringay — the woman, the sister Queen, the bird 
 which had fled to her for succour and died. 'Then, 
 upon my knowledge, she shed many tears and sighs, 
 manifesting her innocence that she never gave consent 
 to the death of that Queen.' In vain did Carey try to 
 comfort her. Next day was Sunday, and she had ordered 
 a room to be prepared for her to go to chapel. Long 
 the courtiers waited; she did not come. At last one of 
 the grooms of her chamber came out. She was not able 
 to go so far as to the great room. She would have 
 .service in the private room close by. There cushions 
 were laid for her. 
 
 Four days and nights she lay upon her cushions, 
 neither eating nor sleeping, suffering from restlessness 
 and thirst. She was weary of life, and yet slie shrank 
 from death. The Lord Admiral Howard, the person 
 who had most influence, was sent for. He came and 
 knelt beside her, kissing her hands, imploring her with 
 
208 ESSAYS 
 
 tears to take some food. After a long while she let 
 him give her a little broth ; and then, encouraged by 
 success, he ventured to urge upon her that she should 
 go to bed. 
 
 ' If you saw such things in your bed,' she said, 'as I see 
 when I am in mine, you would not persuade me." 
 
 At last Cecil appealed to her in the name of her 
 people. 'To content the people,' he said, 'your Majesty 
 must go to bed.' At this all her old spirit returned. 
 ' The word must is not used to princes,' said she. ' Little 
 man, little man, if your father had lived, you durst not 
 have said so much, but you know I must die and that 
 makes you presumptuous.' Cecil was bidden to go — and 
 all the rest, except Howard. ' My lord, I am tied with a 
 chain of iron about my neck,' she murmured. Worse 
 and worse she grew — more and more silent, speaking only 
 twice or thrice in the twenty-four hours— at last, for one 
 long day and night, remaining utterly silent, her finger 
 in her mouth, her 'rayless eyes' open. Her ladies could 
 hardly stand the strain. 
 
 The Archbishop and her chaplains came to her. He 
 told her that she ought to hope much in the mercy of 
 God. Her piety — her zeal — the admirable work that 
 she had done — and so on and so on. ' My lord,' she 
 said, ' the crown, which I have borne so long, has given 
 enough vanity in my time. I beseech you not to increase 
 it in this hour, when I am so near my death.' Long and 
 late he remained, praying by her ^ide. At last he left 
 her; she sank into a deep sleep from which she never 
 awakened. ' A few hours later Robert Carey was riding 
 hard along the North Road,' to be the first to tell the 
 son of Mary Stuart that he was king. 
 
 It was a strange thing to stand in Westminster Abbey 
 
ELIZABETH 209 
 
 between the grave of Mary Stuart and the grave in which 
 Elizabeth was laid by the side of her own half-sister, 
 Mary. If she had never lived — had never reigned — 
 London would not have been what it is to-day, and every 
 one of us here in this room to-night would have been 
 different. Every church, every chapel, would have borne 
 a different character. The river would not have been 
 crowded, as it is to-day, with those great ships that are 
 the road to another England across the seas. The shops 
 would not have been as they are now — nor the city. Up 
 to Elizabeth's time business was carried on in the open 
 street, or — a curious place for it — in the nave of St. PauTs 
 Cathedral. In her time Sir Thomas Gresham built the 
 Royal Exchange, and asked her to come and open it. 
 Londoners, as a rule, are not fond of new inventions, and 
 he could not feel sure whether he would be successful in 
 letting the new shops that he had built all round. So 
 he went, cunning man (lie was the sort of man that 
 Elizabeth could understand), to the leading shopkeepers 
 and told them that, if they would be so kind as to come, 
 and put out their wares in the windows, and light a few 
 candles in honour of Her Majesty's condescension in 
 appearing there, to make everything look prosperous and 
 bright and pretty, he would let them have the shops 
 rent-free for a year. Of course they came — of course 
 they lighted the candles, of course they availed them- 
 selves of the kind permission to stay a year rent-free, of 
 course at the end of the year they did not want to leave, 
 they took the shops on — and you know — or perhaps you 
 do not know — what land is worth now in the city. If 
 Queen Elizabeth had never lived and reigned, we should 
 not have had an excellent Poor Law. Whenever we go 
 against it, poverty grows more, whenever we observe it, 
 o 
 
210 ESSAYS 
 
 poverty grows less. If Queen Elizabeth had never lived 
 and reigned, Shakespeare would never have written as he 
 did, and you would not have been going to see — as I 
 hope you do sometimes go to see — A Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream, Macbeth, Henrij V., and many another wondrous 
 play. If Queen Elizabeth had never lived and reigned, 
 Sir Walter Scott would not have written KcnUicorth, a 
 novel that you have all read, I am sure, or one that you 
 all mean to read some day — a finer novel than any one 
 alive could write now. Would that we had kept the 
 Great Eliza's love of music, and the love of it in the 
 England of her day ! In every little barber's shop there 
 hung two instruments upon the wall, so that one customer 
 and another might amuse himself singing and playing 
 while the other was shaved or had his hair cut. I am 
 afraid she and her people would not have thought much 
 of music-halls and musical comedy ; they liked better 
 music than that, and prettier words too. 
 
 ' So passes away the glory of the world ! ' As a dream 
 — as a shadow — as the tinkling sound of the thin and 
 delicate old music of Queen Elizabeth's day. ' Death lays 
 his icy hand on kings.' They are gone, but none of the 
 merciful forgetfulness that will shroud your name and 
 mine is permitted to throw a veil over the ill that they 
 have done. Terrible are their responsibilities. If they 
 have failed and fallen, what are we that we should judge ? 
 We cannot but shudder at the cruelty of Elizabeth — we 
 cannot but disdain her monstrous vanity. When we 
 have done shuddering at her and despising her, let us 
 remember that it was she who made England what it is 
 — and she who set the great example of love towards her 
 native land — and she who fired the hearts of men to fight 
 for justice. 
 
THE WILL TO DIE 211 
 
 THE WILL TO DIE^ 
 
 ' A MAN would die,' said Bacon, 'though he were neither 
 valiant nor miserable, onely upon a wearinesse to doe the 
 same thing so oft over and over/ 
 
 Therein he betrayed the ennui that is, at times, the 
 portion of the wise, evening himself with the world-weary 
 sage of ' The thing that hath been, it is that which shall 
 be,"" Perhaps also there spoke in him the venturesome 
 restlessness of the age of Elizabeth, when no man could 
 be content without a new kingdom to conquer, and to 
 sit still was not to live at all. In every age men of other 
 ages abound ; and the attitude of mind is by no means 
 inconceivable now. 
 
 The people who want to die — and there are many — 
 do not, as a rule, want to die because they are intoler- 
 ably tired of doing over and over again the two or three 
 things which are necessary to human existence. They 
 want to die because their friends have died, or because 
 they cannot endure the responsibility of their actions, or 
 because they are out of health. 
 
 One of the most profound interpreters of the time, 
 Henrik Ibsen, inculcates firmly the love of darkness. It 
 is light, says he, that makes men discontented. Darkness 
 is natural to him as water to a fish ; if he could but 
 
 ' Fragmenls from an Essay called by this name. Date unknown. 
 
212 ESSAYS 
 
 remain in his own element, he would be better off'. A 
 natural reaction, after the thirst for light that led to 
 the discoveries of science in recent years ! ' Dark with 
 excess of bright,"" mortal eyes turn away gladly to night, 
 mystery, death. The end of too much knowledge, too 
 easily acquired, is, as it always has been, satiety and 
 shamed self-consciousness. O for a black veil to hide us 
 from ourselves, and from each other ! ' Welcome, Sister 
 Death ! ' And yet is she welcome ? No ; for some, 
 though they dread neither agony nor extinction, fear — 
 that worst fearing of all — they do not know what. 
 
 . . . We are constrained to admit that Bacon must 
 be overwhelmingly in the right when he says that there 
 is no passion so weak but it will conquer the fear of 
 death. Curiosity, so doctors tell us, conquers it in almost 
 every case with which they deal. Now this is a good, 
 robust passion, accountable for many crimes and for much 
 heroic behaviour ; but the instance given by Bacon is 
 curious. Many Romans, it appears, after the Emperor 
 Otho had taken his own life, killed themselves out of 
 piti^ — a passion which, with characteristic phlegm, he 
 calls the weakest of all. Surely this was but a local, 
 temporary scorn of Man's enemy. At Rome the 
 Almighty had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ; 
 it was held honourable there. Compassion for Otho 
 would not, maybe, have led his adherents to go so far, 
 if they had not hoped that they might win fame, a hope 
 which is at all times powerful %yith the human race, 
 seeing that it is rooted in one of our deepest foundations 
 — vanity. The indignant contempt of Queen Victoria, 
 had any one proposed to honour her demise after this 
 fashion, may be imagined ; yet she was far more widely 
 and deeply loved than Otho could have been. There was 
 
THK WILT. TO DIE 213 
 
 a debate upon the subject among the native adorers of 
 Nicholson, when he fell at Delhi. Four of them elected 
 to die because he had died ; they wished to serve him in 
 the under world, A fifth, with wise comprehension of 
 the man, asserted that this would make him angry — that 
 it would be a more acceptable tribute to Nicholson if 
 they worshipped Nicholson's God. And he went to seek 
 Christian instruction. 
 
 That rapture in the contemplation of Death which is 
 found so often in the young, and in those persons 
 dowered with eternal youth who are the first to embrace 
 new forms of religion, depends in great measure on the 
 state of the blood. Reason has little to do with it. We 
 are not martyrs because we are convinced. ' I do not 
 believe in God. I know Him.' 
 
 Grand as the death of a man ' drunken with God "■ 
 must be, we are more moved as we grow older by the 
 quiet jests and courtesies of the balanced mind that 
 refuses to make either a fast or a feast of the occasion. 
 ' Pity that should be cut that hath never committed 
 treason,"' said Sir Thomas More to his beard as he put it 
 out of the way of the executioner; and the little Socratic 
 joke in tune with the whole life of a leading scholar of 
 the Renaissance, gives us rarer delight than the high 
 ecstasy of that Marian martyr on the other side who 
 went dancing into the flames. 
 
 After all, Romans and Greeks are not so distant. 
 Their opinions were often like our own — strong, but by 
 no means clear. Our politicians, our more liberal Church- 
 men, would converse with Plato or with Cicero on terms 
 of easier mutual understandino; than with the Ninth 
 
S14 ESSAYS 
 
 Louis. Our women would sympathise with Alcestis more 
 readily than with St. Elizabeth. In the Middle Ages 
 the feminine element overpowered every other. The 
 position of women became wholly unnatural. The noblest 
 men turned themselves into women, like Francis of Assisi. 
 The noblest women became nuns. 
 
 There are among poets of the younger school some 
 who conceive of death as a condition of gray, weary, 
 dream-like exile, neither wholly material nor yet free 
 from the bonds of matter — a condition in which ghosts 
 are more familiar than souls, good or bad. 
 
 Milton, who believed that a spirit was something more 
 solid than a man, would not have understood this. Nor 
 would Dante, who held that the spirit is the man, and 
 the bodily form a mere accident. They lived in periods 
 differing greatly one from the other, yet alike in a certain 
 Puritanical severity that compassed life round with 
 restrictions. They indemnified themselves with the 
 glorious liberty of the sons of God in the life to come. 
 
 Hezekiah had not the slightest doubt that death was 
 a great evil, and many a Christian who says of his 
 departed friend ' Poor So-and-So ! ' echoes the feeling of 
 Hezekiah. A natural instinct overbears his logic. 
 
COLLECTION OF PASSAGES FROM 
 LETTERS AND DLVRIES 
 
 '\ 
 
COLLECTION OF PASSAGES FROM LETTERS 
 AND DIARIES 
 
 I.— From 1882 to 1897 
 
 1882. 
 ' Whom the gods love die young ' and whom they hate 
 die old, but whom they honour, these they take up to 
 their eternal habitations in the ripe summer time of 
 existence. 
 
 1883. 
 To-morrow — double Janus-headed to-morrow — bless- 
 ing and curse of frail liumanity. But for thee, the pleasure 
 of to-day would be Heaven, but for thee, to-day "'s load of 
 misery could not be borne, but for thee, we should be 
 immortal, and but for thee, I should make my will this 
 instant. What art thou ? Nothing — here in Time, where 
 all is to-day. Everything in that eternity which is but 
 a succession of To-morrows. 
 
 188.3. 
 
 In the midst of nnich trouble, much doubt, much fear, 
 many failings, I feel a steady gladness in the thought 
 that I am drawing nearer to that end which must be 
 
218 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 great, to that beginning which must be as a flood of 
 light after darkness. 
 
 Goethe conquers one''s admiration, willing or unwilling, 
 step by step, and leads one down, down into what seem 
 to be depths of thinking, till suddenly the stars begin 
 to shine ; but with Schiller it is morning, and people 
 are still young, and death is only what it is to the 
 young, a glory and a hope. All his tragedies together 
 are joyous, compared to the gay bits of Wilhclm Meiftcr. 
 
 1884. 
 
 To-night men save the lost and preach for life the 
 Gospel of Destruction. To-night men sit at ease and 
 drink away their very souls to Satan. To-night men's 
 hearts are broken, and men's fortunes are made. To- 
 night men pause upon the verge of crime unspeakable 
 and climb to the triumphant height of heroes. To- 
 night men die and are bom. To-night also the stars 
 are shining and the winds at peace. 
 
 1886. 
 
 They err who say that without love is no joy. There 
 is a joy of the intellect with which the heart has nothing 
 to do. It is like a little ray of candle-light by which 
 darkness becomes visible. But the joy of love is sun- 
 shine. 
 
 It was delightful to hear of your looking out at the 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 219 
 
 stars for sympathy when you felt low, and getting better 
 directly ; they have so often comforted me. They are 
 the blessedest, most soothing influences. Theirs is the 
 only brightness that never jars. How odd, to think 
 that a lot of great big blundering worlds, first-cousins 
 to our own, should have that power to quiet one. 
 
 1887. 
 Surely Shelley wasn't quite such a wretch as you think 
 him ? It seems to me that Godwin evilangelized him so 
 very successfully that one can only pity him, not con- 
 demn him for many of his misdeeds ; they were errors 
 of judgment rather than sins. Of course that cannot 
 be said of all. He was terribly wrong, — yet, do you 
 know, sins and all, he never repels me for a moment, 
 as does a man like Carlyle, for instance, whose life is 
 moral, but whose character is utterly immoral, being 
 grounded in selfishness and intolerance ; or like Words- 
 worth, who was false to the ideal of his youth for want 
 of faith. Mary is a dreadful bore with her eternal ' Read 
 Greek' and her journal. She reminds me oddly of 
 Sarah Coleridge, in whose letters I can see no charm 
 whatever. They are both so Englishwomanly. They 
 certainly have imagination, and when they set it to 
 work it works successfully. I love Phantasmion, I dare 
 say I should love Frankenstein. But it does not play 
 about in their ordinary writings or lend any grace to 
 their lives. It is all cold. 
 
 1888. 
 Dove sono i bet mornent't^' Sometimes we lose the 
 
220 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Present Tense of life altogether. For Anodos this 
 morning is last night. Last night he was up in the 
 Gallery at Covent Garden, happy as a god, listening to 
 Figaro, and tho' he has been to bed in the interval, 
 there he still is, and there he is likely to remain. 
 Figai-o gives him the same kind of pleasure as The 
 Merchant or As You Like It. Perfect comedy is 
 almost too beautiful to laugh at, as perfect tragedy is 
 'too deep for tears.' Much of it is a joy of pure 
 sensation, like riding or swimming, for those who have 
 not been trained to understand music, but there are 
 things which inspire a feeling beyond all definition. 
 Poetically it reminds me of Chaucer, it is so simple, 
 youthful and vigorous. 
 
 April is the month of lovers' quarrels between the 
 Earth and the Sky, and an engagement is nothing 
 without them. May is the month for Confirmations. 
 The soft pink-and-white girlish faces under their floating 
 veils look like a cloud of May blossoms, and not inaptly 
 might those youthful vows be called ' The Promise of 
 May.' Marriage is for hot June, and Death for cold 
 December. 
 
 ' June may be had by the poorest comer.' It is God's 
 alms to the poor. He feeds them .with the sweet air, 
 He clothes their naked bodies with the warmth of the 
 sunshine. I never feel inclined to be charitable in June. 
 It seems to me that Heaven has taken it off my hands, 
 and I am sorry for no one. Old women who sit all day 
 long at street corners move me not. Vagrant families 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 221 
 
 provoke only a smile. Little boys without any boots 
 make me feel rather envious. Anybody who is well 
 enough to be out anywhere deserves not pity. 
 
 Talk of myriad -minded Shakespeare. Why, the com- 
 monest man breathing has many, many more than a 
 myriad minds. I am a different person every twelve 
 hours. I go to bed as feminine as Ophelia, fiery, en- 
 thusiastic, ready to go to the stake for some righteous 
 cause. I get up the very next morning, almost as mascu- 
 line as Falstaff, grumbling at Family Prayers. Is it 
 possible for me to believe that I am really the hero of 
 the night before ? Personal identity ? People are fools 
 that doubt it ? Upon my word, I think we are much 
 greater fools to believe in it. It is only the stupid 
 transitory flesh in which we walk about that makes us. 
 We believe it for others, not for ourselves. 
 
 Anodos has over and over again been conscious, both 
 for good and evil, that he was being rented by a spirit 
 not his own, and when his body goes to sleep, he is in 
 all probability animating another one at the Antipodes. 
 Of course he cannot be found out in this Box and Cox 
 arrangement ; he cannot even find out himself . . . 
 Nature is ever economical, and souls are her very dearest 
 commodity. It probably takes her as long to manu- 
 facture even a baby's soul, as it does to turn out ten 
 elephants. 
 
 June 1888. 
 If Anodos had a boy (which, thank kind heaven ! he 
 
222 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 has not), he should go to Eton. Windsor Castle teaches 
 a better kind of rovalty than can be learnt in courts, and 
 to love a river is to love poetry in one of its most visible 
 forms. 
 
 8rd June 1888. 
 Anodos had in his early youth a great liking for 
 sermons. Not that he ever understood or remembered 
 them, but the taste of them was sweet to his palate. 
 It is not so now. He left Church this morning especially 
 to avoid one. Outside the birds held Morningsong, and 
 the wind that bloweth where it listeth preached out of 
 St. John's Gospel, ' Thou canst not tell whence it 
 Cometh." It might have been crisping the waves, 
 ruffling the heather, scattering the powdery snow upon 
 some distant Alp, before it folded its great wings, and 
 fluttered peacefully down into that London Churchyard. 
 .... I incline to think that it is not three people who 
 make a congregation, but one. Alone, I am a host in 
 myself; oppressed on every side by masses of yawning 
 fellow-Christians, how can I be devout ? (I am not.) 
 Even if they are not yawning, what is the feverish 
 excitement of a crowd hanging on the rhetoric of the 
 local Vicar to the quiet Apocalypse of a solitary person 
 under the sky among trees .'' ' The heavens declare the 
 glory of God : and the firmament showeth His handi- 
 work." After all, even a Cathedral declares the glory 
 of Man. 
 
 Ju/y l.st, 1888. 
 To worship God in silence is noble ; it shows the 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 223 
 
 poverty and unworthiness of speech, by exalting thought 
 above it. In the finest silence of all, ' Thought is not ; 
 in enjoyment it expires,'' and the worship of joy is the 
 worship of angels. But to worship God with impromptu 
 words is ignoble, for unconsidered speech is the least that 
 a man can offer. 
 
 July 'Ind, 1888. 
 Roman remains depress me. It seems so impossible to 
 reconstruct people out of them. If there is nothing 
 tangible left of us but sixpences and shillings, and fonts, 
 and kitchen saucepans, and sanitary arrangements, how 
 will the New Zealander that sits on the ruins of St. Paul's 
 ever know what we were like ? A Roman hairpin is 
 something. It helps one just a little towards a lady. 
 
 J III 11 -lUt, 1888. 
 Solitude affects some people like wine. They must not 
 take too much of it. It flies to the head, and they 
 become intoxicated. Too much society is far better 
 for a man than too little. Abstractions become real, 
 realities abstract, to an over-contemplative person. Odd 
 that it was Peter, the least, not John the most contem- 
 plative of the three chosen Disciples, who cried out to 
 stay for ever upon the Mount of Transfiguration, because it 
 was good for him to be there. But many an active- 
 minded man since has over-estimated the glory of con- 
 templative hero worship, and lived to rue the day when 
 he built a tabernacle on a mountain for some ideal master 
 of his, and refused to come down. The true masters are 
 not they that will live in such tabernacles. 
 
224 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 July 23rd, 1888. 
 I suppose the most undramatic people in the world 
 have a tendency to act somewhere, somehow. You 
 cannot divide the world into actors and non-actors. 'Tis 
 everi^ man that 's a player. Only they play to different 
 audiences, some to other men, some to women, some to 
 themselves, some to God. Gordon was always finding 
 himself out at it, and hissing the performer. It is this 
 which gives his Journal and his letters their unique 
 character. He knew, and he forced himself to say that he 
 knew, he would rather have so many soldiers at his 
 command than trust God to look after him. Most men 
 are unconscious actors. This rare man knew when the 
 mask stiffened over the natural face. We are so well 
 accustomed to the acting, that when some sudden event 
 interrupts it, and people are themselves for a minute or 
 two, we always say they are in an unnatural state. 
 Lovers, being absorbed in each other, sometimes forget 
 to act for weeks together. Civilised humanity found it 
 impossible to stand this, and invented the honeymoon. 
 
 Auff. SOth, 1888. 
 
 No moon, but multitudes of stars. E and I, 
 
 walking along the cliff, lay down on our backs to look at 
 them. What strange things people are pitied for ! I can 
 imagine nothing more divine than ^drowning on a night 
 like that. It is the sort of death a god would choose, if 
 he could die. Not so our God in the midnight noon of 
 
 Calvary. E talked about the motherliness of the 
 
 sea. ' Yes,' I said, 'it's a comfort to think that to her 
 the oldest of us are babies.' But I was much too happy 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 225 
 
 for anything of that kind. ' Thought was not, in enjoy- 
 ment it expired.' Those monumental stars, homes of 
 poets for ever. The eyes of David, Phito, Sliakespeare, 
 rested where ours rest now. They shone through the 
 three kingdoms of the dead for Dante. Goethe looked 
 at them, writing his Faust. There was music afterwards 
 — ' Glory to God in the Highest.' 
 
 Oct. 31.SY, 1888. 
 Why are a man's words bound to be true, when half 
 his deeds at least are sure to be false ? 
 
 Nov. 3rd, 1888. 
 There is delightful freemasonry in a fog. Ignorant 
 people will always help each other. Half knowledge is 
 very conununicable ; not so knowledge. 
 
 Dec. ISth, 1888. 
 We give more truth to those we hate than to those we 
 love. To the latter we are our souls only, the part and 
 not the whole, or some entirely fictitious person, invented 
 for their benefit, a person who always likes what they 
 like and never sets tired. 
 
 Sept. 4//t,1889. 
 
 It seems to me nothing should be done, when you are 
 
 not in the mood for it, except Duty. ' Love me, or 
 
 leave me alone.' People who are always in the mood for 
 
 Duty make Saints, and people who are often in the mood 
 
 f 
 
226 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 for it, Heroes. They live con amore; the rest of us 
 only par condescendance — which is not the way to get 
 on. Their own life keeps them warm. They are not so 
 dependent as the rest of us upon some other. Perhaps 
 they have never felt the imperious longing for an echo, 
 however faint, so only it were true, of their own existence, 
 that makes some people lonely. Millions of people dead, 
 not one the same, millions alive now, not one with so 
 much as an eye the same as mine, millions to come, all 
 different. 
 
 Nov. 28th, 1889. 
 How far away we are from each other. Two walls of 
 flesh between me and the nearest person on earth ! Even 
 the eyes mysterious. I look, and see two little pictures 
 of my outward self, when all I long for is the image of 
 the other soul at those windows ; and then, we may 
 reduce our bodies to the same pace, sit, walk, run evenly 
 together, but how seldom will the mind run in couples ! 
 My neighbour's mind has wings, and reaches the goal 
 before I have so much as seen it, or mine is half-way to 
 another goal by mistake, while my neighbour is labouring 
 to explain where it is that he wants to go to. 
 
 June 2nd, 1890. 
 How many a born king spends, his whole life in the 
 pursuit of asses for want of some kind prophet to tell 
 him he is a head and shoulders taller than other people ! 
 
 I have been reading Hazlitt with even keener pleasure 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 227 
 
 than I meant to get out of him. It seems to me the 
 critics of those days were flesh and blood compared to 
 the airv-fairy creatures that carry on the trade now. 
 They iiad much more sohd beef atid mutton books to fall 
 back upon. The background of their minds was Shake- 
 speare and Spenser, not Slielley and Keats, and somehow 
 one feels the difference in the downright cut-and- thrust 
 manliness of tlieir style. It's not so dainty of course, but 
 I can't help thinking it will yet manage to outlive Mat 
 Arnold and Andrew Lang. They certainly didn't fight 
 as one that beateth the air. 
 
 Ibsen's delicate way of unfolding character seems to me 
 wonderful, and a man that thoroughly understands a 
 woman was a very great man indeed. There are two or 
 three people who can tell stories about her, and one or 
 two who can put her into a book without killing her 
 during the process, but how few can get her alive on to 
 the stage not laughing only, not crying only, but doing 
 both, and that not hundreds of years ago in blank verse, 
 but dressed in the latest fashion, and talking prose. 
 
 March UtJi, 1891. 
 GhosU, The Light that Failed, and a sermon fifty-six 
 minutes long, all in the course of one week, would be too 
 much for the patience of a female Job. I am perfectly worn 
 out with realism and the want of it. I wish it were rather 
 less the fashion in literature and rather more the fashion 
 in church. Anent Ghosts, I don't know what to say. I 
 always begin by respecting any one or anything that 
 knocks me down, so on Friday night I was sure it must 
 
228 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 ' make for righteousness.' On Saturday morn, when I 
 had got over the dizziness, but was still aching mentally 
 all over from the pain of it, I didn't feel quite so sure, 
 and by Saturday eve I felt nearly sure that it made for 
 the very reverse. . . . 
 
 A dull, stunned sensation still clings to me. The fruit 
 of the modern Tree of Knowledge is certainly very nasty ; 
 it may ' make one wise,' but it is not ' a thing to be 
 
 desired.' E says Gliosis is like a Greek play, because 
 
 no catastrophe happens on the stage. I can't feel that. 
 It seems to me rank where a Greek play would be strong. 
 There's a good deal of heredity in (Edipiis, and the 
 subject is quite as revolting, but the difference of treat- 
 ment prevents one frorii feeling it in the same way. The 
 Greeks are wild to kill themselves because they have out- 
 raged convention, the Scandinavians are wild to kill con- 
 vention, because it has outraged them. No, I don't think 
 I 've put it fairly for the Greeks. 
 
 Jnlp 23rd, 1891. 
 These wonderful late nights and early mornings, when 
 there is nothing to be seen but the sky, no sound but the 
 sea, no distinction but of sun or riioon, fill all my mind 
 for the time being, and drown the very thought of self. 
 There is no struggle to be rid of it, no slaying of it first 
 and rising above it. It goes. I feel so near to God, that 
 there is no need to pray, any more than if I were one of 
 His birds. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 229 
 
 Ma;i 4fli, 1892. 
 AVhcn we were out. this afternoon, we saw the larks 
 descending to the ground, almost without a flutter of 
 their wings, as if they flew upon their singing. Some 
 people's lives are like that ; they progress by harmony 
 rather than movement. 
 
 Whether we love each other because we are like or 
 because we are different, or — as I am far more inclined to 
 believe — for no reason whatever, which is as much as to 
 say for some reason so deep that the mind of man cannot 
 fathom it — is a (juestion to whicli I never find any answer 
 that satisfies me. For I think it's very seldom that we 
 are alike really, any two of us. The points at which we 
 touch are almostinfinitesimal compared with the vasttracts 
 of difference. In the beginning love is often helped by 
 tiie fancy that it detects a similarity which does not 
 exist, but by the time he has found out his mistake he is 
 far too happy to care anything about such a trifle as 
 that. 
 
 July VMh, 1894. 
 One gets a hunger for certain faces and to feel a certain 
 
 kind of love round one. That of the 's is all sheltering 
 
 and spoiling and yet it strengthens one, and drives one's 
 worst self right away. I can't think how they do it. It 
 is the very High Art of Love. There is an art of it, I 'm 
 certain. Some people never get beyond being brilliant 
 amateurs, and some are good serious students, always 
 learning their lessons in it, but without any original taste. 
 How funny an exhibition of us would be if we were all hung 
 
230 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 up as each otlier's ' Works "* ! Here a bit of character 
 moulded by this one, there another moulded by that one, 
 each with its own stamp on it. 
 
 April 28th, 1895. 
 I longed for something to draw me out of myself, not 
 to sink me down into it. If it 's lovely, it 's lovely, but if 
 it"'s not, ifs a good deal worse than nothing to me. Just 
 during the last few minutes, these words flashed into my 
 mind out of emptiness, ' Surely, the Lord was in this place 
 and I knew it not." That pleased and rested me. On 
 the Mount of Transfiguration only can we say, ' Lord it 
 is good for us to be here,"* but of almost every bit of 
 life we might say, ' The Lord was in this place,"* and 
 even if we do not know it at the time, it is something 
 to know it after. 
 
 July 1806. 
 
 I wonder if people who have a garden enjoy it so 
 absurdly as Londoners enjoy one flower ? The great 
 
 tiger-lily that L ^s father brought wastes my time 
 
 almost as well as a fire in winter. 
 
 ' Pure lilies of eternal peace," indeed ! This one 's a 
 real tiger. As for the four little sunflowers in two pots 
 on the leads — or sunleaves rather, for the flowers lie yet 
 in the dark abyss of the future,-^— they have given me 
 many a ' green thought in a black shade." And I become 
 unfriendly to the Sun himself, if I think he is scorching 
 them, and beseech the winds of Heaven that they visit 
 them not too roughly. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 231 
 
 Mephisto would have had me by the wrist often 
 enougii, I have said to so many moments of life, ' Stay, 
 thou art fair ! ' In solitude — a deux — even a trois. (To 
 be happy in threes is, I believe, a great test of the capa- 
 city for being happy at all.) Only they never stayed. 
 And you have as much chance of finding the same 
 moment again as the same mortal. Joy is a host of 
 happinesses, each quite unlike all the rest. A thud 
 behind me. Only the lily falling to bits. I did so want 
 
 her to stay till to-morrow, so that the St. T s might 
 
 see her. But she won't stay. She is fair. 
 
 March 2lst, 1897. 
 There's one desire I never can resist — a longing to 
 break the great black root, a lump of coal, and free the 
 golden flower within. What if people do call it pro- 
 saically 'poking the fire from the top'? 
 
 March '29th, 1897. 
 To catch the sun and keep him in a book — what a 
 hopeless business ! Yet never twice the same clouds 
 gather round him touched with the same colours; it is 
 human to grasp at them. 
 
 Thy sua, that Adam saw, that the last man shall see. 
 
 Shining on thousands also shone on me. 
 
 And one white flower of Thine born yesterday 
 
 To wither in a sunny week away, 
 
 Sweet to me only, to none other sweet, 
 
 Seat up its honied fragrance at my feet. 
 
 A fragment of grey cloud showed against the gold disk 
 
232 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 like a headless cross. Then the disk was striped by little 
 swords and daggers of light — light upon light. 
 
 For me the hero of the hour is that Duke of Parma 
 who besieged Antwerp in the days when people wore 
 ruffs. He dedicated the siege to the Virgin Mary and 
 named one of his forts after her and one after his king. 
 ' Oh, for half an hour of Alexander in the field ! ' the 
 soldiers used to cry ; and wherever he went thev won. 
 Alexander Farnese was his magnificent, ruff-like name. 
 I am also more in love with Sir Philip Sidney than ever. 
 He died of a wound in the thigh, and as he lay dying, he 
 asked them to sing him a song called The BroAen Thigh 
 that he had made ! So funny — so pathetic, somehow. 
 And he was always telling the other people, who were in 
 agonies of tears, that he didn^t mind in the least — in fact 
 he rather liked it. Have you ever read Motley ? It is 
 so fascinating. And then one turns to the Daily Tele- 
 graphy and there is the Kaiser giving the King thirty-two 
 hideous silver-gilt baskets designed by himself — ugh ! (I 
 never do say ugh ! but it 's a comfortable word to write 
 — so much disgust in it.) 
 
 How curious that personal touch is in the great French 
 historians. Is it for want of that that ours are such dry 
 stuff in comparison ? Michelet falls ill of overwork. 
 ' J^ai ahattu trop de rois,'' and he does another enchanting 
 volume. Qualifications absolutely necessary for a good 
 historian: 1. Imagination; 2. Prejudice; 3. the power 
 of writing your own biography at the same time. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LE'lTERS AND DIARIES 233 
 
 How dull is the Life, of Dean Church ! How much 
 worse than dull the Life of Dr. Pusey ! I think the devil 
 writes religious biography. There's much more real 
 religion in the Bacchae of Euripides, which is simply 
 glorious — a sort of Greek Salvation Army business, all 
 drums and cymbals and ecstasy. Macaulay says he 
 hasn't the least idea whether Euripides meant to run up 
 or run down fanaticism, but ifs one of the finest things 
 going. The revel of vine and ivy and bryony and wind 
 — blown torches and roofless rocks and wild delirious joy 
 in freedom and music and open air — is quite intoxicating. 
 Then there 's Bacchus himself, the god come down in the 
 likeness of man, the men of Thebes refusing to under- 
 stand, obstinate not to worship him, punished accord- 
 ingly. There's no real tipsiness as far as I can make 
 out. The Hallelujah Lasses get drunk on the wine of 
 the spirit, not the wine of the grape. 
 
 II.— Fkom 1897 TO 1907 
 
 When you spoke about sex the other night, I didn't 
 think much about it, but to-day I did, and I know now 
 that I didn't feel with you, and that it does seem to me 
 to be an eternal distinction. I don't think we are separ- 
 ate only in body and in mind, I think we are separate in 
 soul too, and that a woman's prayer is as different from a 
 man's as a woman's thought or a woman's hand. I can- 
 not think of souls that are not masculine or feminine . . . 
 but just as the negation of sex is inconceivable to me, 
 so is its unification ; I cannot think that we shall be men 
 as well as women, and men women as well as men. If we 
 do not retain sex I don't see how we can retain identity. 
 
S34 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Male and female we were created ; it is of the very 
 essence of our nature. 
 
 E and I went to the National Gallery on Saturday. 
 
 We looked at many pictures, but we thought at six — the 
 three ideal Knights — Giorgione's, Raphael's, Velasquez's, 
 two Madonnas, and Botticelli's ' Assumption of the 
 Virgin.' Certainly Botticelli was one of those who saw 
 ' Heaven opened,' though it thrills one to think how 
 Heaven has widened and widened since the day that he 
 finished his last golden circle of stars. 
 
 Woman with a big W bores me supremely. How 
 <yvvrj would have puzzled the beautiful concrete Greeks. 
 It is a mere abstraction born of monks and the mists of 
 the North. A woman I know, but what on earth is 
 Woman ? She has done her best to spoil history, poetry, 
 novels, essays, and Sir Thomas Browne and Thoreau 
 are the only things safe from her ; that's why I love 
 them. 
 
 I have been reading Amiel all day, out in the garden, 
 where every blade of grass shone like a little sword, and 
 in the chalk hollows and on the cliff over the sea. It 
 would be better for me if I did not understand him so 
 well perhaps. He ought to have been a woman and 
 married Thoreau. Thoreau is the masculine half of him, 
 and he would have just had courage enough to say yes to 
 the right person, though he never proposed to the right 
 person himself for fear she should happen to be the 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 235 
 
 wrong. Perhaps it was not even for fear of that. To 
 have asked the question, 'Is it worth while?' is to have 
 answered it in the negative. He accuses himself of 
 cowardice, Tirmditc ; the word comes over and over again. 
 But was it really fear ? Was it really anything stronger 
 than indifference to all life except that of his own intellect.'' 
 I don't know. ' Nothing venture nothing have.' Better 
 he had married recklessly three times, like Milton, and 
 generally wrong. As a critic, ' il a toutes les inteUigence.s 
 de la tctc ct dit caiir.'' It is exquisite. I couldn't help 
 being pleased to find that Mozart twice reminded him of 
 Plato, that books angered and soothed him as if they 
 were people, that his will-lessness depressed him more 
 than their wilfulness depresses others. 
 
 Amiel's power of drowning himself in the existence of 
 another, whether that other be God or a daisy, is very 
 wonderful. He seems to have retained mentally some of 
 that strange power of transformation that a child experi- 
 ences before it is born. He identifies himself not that 
 he may love better, but that he may understand more ; it 
 is a very unusual kind of sympathy. 
 
 I read some of Medea ; it stiffens one's mind to do a 
 bit of Greek. Classic folk despise Euripides, but after all 
 he was Milton's man. Medea is thoroughly fin de siecle ; 
 says she would rather go into battle three times than 
 have a baby once, pitches into men like anything. But 
 there's too much Whitechapel about her. How are you 
 to be seriously interested in a woman who has murdered 
 her mother and boiled her father-in-law before the play 
 begins ? So different from the gentle Pha,'dra, and the 
 wonderful Antiiione and Helen. 
 
236 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Wc have got about fifty books, and if it were not for the 
 extraordinary duhiess of the Popes, I should be perfectly 
 happy. Why is no Pope interesting except the Papa of 
 Caesar Borgia ? Nuns are charming, monks fascinating, 
 even an Archbishop may please, but the minute a man 
 becomes a Pope he thinks of nothing but Bulls and 
 Councils and slanging the Emperor of the period. I 
 take a personal interest in the Anglo-Saxon nuns of the 
 ninth century, because if I had happened to be born then 
 instead of in the nineteenth, I should have had to enter 
 a convent from the impossibility of getting books any- 
 where else. They were obliged by their abbesses to 
 read two hours a day, and they wore fringes (for which 
 the bishops had them up), and corresponded with St. 
 Boniface, or any other saint they could find, in bad 
 Latin, and went to Rome on pilgrimage whenever they 
 were tired of one another, and were dreadfully afraid of 
 meeting Saracens there. Five hundred of them once 
 danced for joy on the grave of a novice-mistress whom 
 they hated, till the earth sank in half a foot, and the 
 Abbess condemned them to fast three days on account of 
 the hardness of tlieir hearts. My opinion is that un- 
 married ladies had a high old time of it in those days. 
 
 Nothing has such deadly power to corrupt as un- 
 alloyed virtue. 
 
 I have spent the whole day murdering flowers. Phil- 
 anthropy is like your sins, it finds you out. There was I 
 sitting in the verandah this morning, reading of Michelet, 
 wishing no ill to any one, when by comes nice, good Mrs. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 237 
 
 and inquires whether I wouldn't like to go and help 
 
 her pick cowslips to be sent up to the flower-girls in 
 the worst street of London, Having broken my back 
 for two hours over this performance (in the course of 
 which I made many reflections on the nature of cowslips 
 and of nice, good women), I calculated that I must have 
 earned about 3d. towards the hat or flannel-petticoat of 
 Spitalfields. I should have had quite two shillings worth 
 of pleasure out of Michelet. From a money point of 
 view it doesn't pay. However I dklommagtd myself by 
 gathering an enormous bunch of flowers afterwards for 
 home-consumption. 
 
 Yesterday F. and I were gathering primroses. One of 
 the dearest things about Nature to me is her secrecy. 
 There were all those thousands of yellow stars, and yet if 
 we had waited a year she would no more have let us see 
 the exact moment at which every bud changed to a 
 flower than she would have told us the very point at 
 which Celia left off being a baby and grew into a child. 
 
 How I do love the tossing and kissing and crushing of 
 the waves. Ifs like the encounter of strong-hearted 
 friends, half play, half warfare, and half surrender ; O 
 dear ! I forgot there couldn't be three halves to a thing. 
 
 The result of leaving children to the guidance of 
 nature is so very dreadful ; and the men and women 
 who say they live according to nature are even more 
 intolerable than the children. If I follow nature, I 
 
238 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 scream when I have a tooth out, I eat eleven strawberries 
 when there are twelve on the table, I come down late 
 to breakfast, there's no end to the inconvenient things 
 that I do. Is it dreadfully Philistine to say these 
 things ? I am not — as you see — in love with nature — 
 no doubt because I do live in accordance with nature 
 myself. But I don't think the result charming. 
 
 If it turns out that the world is the Church, and 
 the Church is the world, why, the Sinners must just 
 forgive the Saints and the Saints must learn to stand 
 being forgiven. 
 
 (From Treworlas) 
 I hardly ever write — -and never read. After all, tlie 
 earth was made before books. 
 
 On Wednesday I heard Prof. Flinders Petrie on The 
 Development of Research in Egypt. A thousand years 
 were as a day, and one day as a thousand years. It was 
 wonderful to hear him tossing time about like a magician. 
 There on the table stood a little chipped vase that was 
 6000 years old. And he went back to 9000 b.c. It 
 appears that we have not improved in weaving since 
 5000. He spent last winter high up on Sinai, with nine- 
 teen other diggers, five days from their food supply, in 
 the freezing cold, unearthing an Egyptian temple. The 
 Egyptians used to go there to look for turquoise, and 
 there they set up numbers of ' pillars,' like the one that 
 Jacob set up at Bethel when he had not known ' that 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 239 
 
 there was a God in this place,"* and there the Inspectors 
 of the works prayed for oracular dreams to guide them 
 to a vein of turquoise. A very superior way of mining 
 to ours in South Africa, I think. I don't wonder that 
 they found the treasures of the earth — that they made 
 lovely use of them when found. They leant on the 
 Eternal, and there is something of eternity visible in 
 their work. I don't believe people will find and rejoice 
 in diamonds from the De Beers mine thousands of years 
 hence. The earth will take her own again — and quite 
 right too. Only that which is earth returns to the earth. 
 
 How is it that people with beautiful minds can always 
 write such lovely things about dull, leaden, wildly foolish 
 sleep, that robs us of nearly half our little life, and 
 makes such fools of us that we are ashamed to think of 
 what it did, when we are awake ? (This is a little bit 
 of private, personal spite, because I never have any good 
 dreams.) I don't like sleep. I'm not the friend of 
 sleep. I 've slept too much. I passionately admire old 
 Sir Thomas Browne — 
 
 O come that day when I shall never 
 Sleep again, but wake for ever. 
 
 Though it is an imagination beyond imagination to 
 conceive — and terrible as ' No night there' — of which, it 
 is, I suppose, a rendering. As for its being the cure of 
 mortal woes, they 're always twice as bad when one wakes 
 up — it's mere opium. Beddoes was right, in his beauti- 
 ful little Dirge, when he wrote first — 
 
 If thou wilt ease thine heart 
 Of love and all its smart. 
 Then sleep, dear, sleep ! 
 
240 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 and then — 
 
 But wilt thou cure thine heart 
 Of love and all its smart, 
 Then die, dear, die ! 
 
 I wrote out lately four Sonnets on Sleep, four great big 
 Sonnets, by Griffin, Daniel, Sidney, Drummond, respec- 
 tively. 
 
 The first verse of this [a poem sent her] reminds me 
 sweetly of three of Sidney's lines — 
 
 Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 
 A chamber deaf to noise and blind to li^ht, 
 A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
 
 The rosy garland a\ ould be rather in the way ? I 'm 
 glad you haven't got that. Yours is a most beautiful 
 little dear poem, I think. I delight in it all except verse 
 two, which is not equal to the rest. Somehow I don't 
 care about the sky 'teeming' with fancies, and would 
 any one want a gnome in a garden ? The flowers 
 wouldn't ! 
 
 When I had finished it [Stevenson on ' The South 
 Seas,'] I seemed to hear Mr. Cory say again, ' Poor 
 fellow ! Knows no Latin and Greek ! How I should 
 like to teach him!' Never in any other book of his 
 did the thought come across me. I never minded 
 whether he knew Latin and Greek or not. But now 
 I feel dimly, somehow or otlier, that if he had been a 
 classic, he Avould not have lost the fine edge of his 
 refinement out there — he would not have allowed him- 
 self one or two coarse and bloodthirsty touches which I 
 think Mr. Cory would not have liked. It is curious, 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 241 
 
 how often I find myself referring and deferring to what 
 I faney his judgment would have been about some book. 
 And how unsafe to speculate! For one could never 
 tell. Besides the terrific knowledge, he had that 
 vein of caprice which seems to me sometimes to mark 
 out all the really great critics — men who were poets 
 before they turned to criticism — men like Sir Philip 
 Sidney, Charles Lamb, Mat Arnold, FitzGerald and 
 
 I am delighted with your beautiful Yeats letter. Yes, 
 what an elf of thouo-ht he is ! 
 
 Are you fond of Motley.? IVe been besieging 
 Antwerp over again. I shall never get over it, that 
 that rocket did not go up to tell the fleet at Lille that 
 the fire-ship Hope had broken Parma^s bridge. How 
 magnificent, the dead commander leading the Old 
 Spa.nish Legion to victory on the narrow dyke between 
 the two seas ! ' In that superstitious age ' — says Motley 
 — but it made me think of Mr. Cory. ' I don't know 
 what he means,'' he said once, quoting a great passage 
 of Ruskin from Modern Painters about the ghostly 
 Brethren leading the Roman Soldiers. He said it as if 
 he were pleased not to know. 
 
 Ah, but how often the great ghosts of their dead have 
 cheered the Roman Catholics on to win ! There does not 
 seem to be that power of resurrection in Protestantism, 
 though we have our fire-ships of Hope. And the dead 
 prevail, against fire even. 
 
242 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Shakespeare has no conscience about the people his 
 second heroines marry. That Oliver and Celia match 
 was a bad business. But nothing to Claudio and Hero. 
 
 Now you will think me a worldling — I am — but you 
 made me feel sorry a little for the ' large and fashionable 
 congregation.'' There are sad hearts under fashionable 
 clothes as well as under rags. There were Kings in the 
 Bible whose prayers were heard, as well as beggars .'* 
 Why may we not 
 
 Go tog'ether to the Kirk 
 In a goodly company ? 
 
 There is something in the mere fact of numbers when 
 they sing — when they are silent — that makes the Hymn 
 or the prayer different from that at home — more inspirit- 
 ing to some people and less of an effort. And though 
 Our Lord said so much about private prayer He went 
 often to the pubHc service in the Temple or the 
 Synagogue, and did He not mean us to learn from His 
 life as well as from His words ? I do not care for 
 crowded services — nor for frequent services of any kind 
 — but there was a time when I did, and I understand 
 the feelings of tliose who do, and who like to worship 
 among people of like kind with themselves rather than 
 among the bewildering poor who are different in cleanli- 
 ness and different in taste — or in a loneliness the 
 heights and depths of which ' they cannot always 
 measure. 
 
 . . . We did homage to Velasquez together at the 
 Guildhall. What an elfin thing the influence of genius 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 243 
 
 is ! Half the little girls in London have turned into 
 little Spanish Infantas, because their mammas think it 
 can he done with a bow on the side of the head. 
 
 I know so little about Pandora. She had a box with 
 a lot of troubles in it, and Hope at the bottom, hadn't 
 she ? They didn't look upon Hope in the Pauline way ? 
 as a virtue? It certainly seems more like a gift. 
 
 Christian artists have blinded Justice, but they never 
 blinded Hope, which makes one think they believed in 
 the luunan race more than /Eschylus did. 
 
 The difficulty in teaching about death is, it seems to 
 me, that you must make the teaching transcendental, 
 and yet, if the child is fully inspired with the thought 
 that it is ' The entrance to a better life,'' — and a child 
 believes that so very easily and readily — the first time 
 it comes across death at close quarters, it will be so 
 utterly unprepared for the horror of it — for the shock 
 of the inconsistency of passionate grief — funerals — mourn- 
 ing — that it will run the risk of losing belief altogether. 
 I know it was so with me. 
 
 I've just been to see a most exciting picture by Piero 
 di Cosimo (the Renaissance painter in Romola, you 
 know — there are only about 15 of his w'orks extant). 
 It's the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapitha* out 
 of Ovid, and they say every detail of the passage is 
 
244 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 rendered. I never knew there were lady Centaurs. I 
 was deeply touched by one lovely dear, half of her a 
 white horse and half of her a beautiful gold-haired lady 
 with lilies, mourning over a Renaissance gentleman 
 Centaur who has had the good taste to die in her 
 arms. She has a lovely ear like a shell, just fringed 
 with fur, as if she didn't quite know whether it were 
 human or not. 
 
 How much more agreeable sporting ladies would be 
 if they were only half a horse in body as well as in 
 mind ! The rollicking fun of part of the picture is 
 most remarkable — and the terrific enjoyment of the 
 struggle. One Centaur has pulled up an altar to throw, 
 and the incense is still smoking on it. Another is 
 tugging at the trees to uproot them. All this gorgeous 
 stuff to be seen for nothing. You just walk in, and 
 intelligent men hum round you and give you printed 
 descriptions. How cheap the best things are ! 
 'Tis ouly Heaven that is given away. 
 
 'IVe just been thinking how wonderfully Milton — 
 the insatiable knower — recommends Temperance in know- 
 ledge even, in that passage about the Trees of Life and 
 of Knowledge in Bk. iv. — 
 
 Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill. 
 I shouldn't have known beforehand that he would 
 think it was ' bought dear.' 'Tis^ a hard question, even 
 now. 
 
 After all, ' We're all going to Heaven, and Vandyck's 
 of the company.' We mitst remember that, if we're 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 245 
 
 Christians, we of all people must have least to do with 
 despair. 
 
 {After seeing Hamlet at Stratford). Benson's delivery 
 of the great speeches was admirable. At the end he 
 strugo-les up to the throne (i la Forbes Robertson and 
 then falls into Hjratio's arms and dies there, falling 
 forward. I don't care for this ; I suppose somebody 
 will elect to die standing on his head next. And I don't 
 care for the business of tangling the King in a fishing-net 
 before he stabs him. No. Nobody fights like Sarah, 
 and nobody dies like Forbes. When I'm in Heaven, I 
 shall order a week of performances of Hamlet thus : 
 J/o«., Benson; JW*., Forbes; Wed. and T/«/r., Irving; 
 Fr'i. and Sat., Sarah. Ellen Terry to be Ophelia always. 
 ^Vill you come too .'' 
 
 Falmouth. 
 I thought of you last night as I sate in the dusk on 
 our tiny lawn, and watched the stars twinkle out and 
 the lights of the ships. This is a fairy place. You see 
 the boats gliding about over the blue water like moths and 
 great white butterflies, and never a man do you see. 
 You see the lamps at night and never a man to light 
 them. One poor old steamer lies just opposite our 
 windows, and has lain there for ten months, forlornly 
 waiting for a cargo that doesn't come, with only two 
 men, the captain and the bo'sun. . . . They have the 
 gift of fernseed, they walk invisible, we have not seen 
 them once. Round the corner lies Falmouth. 
 
246 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 TiTi See. 
 What an odd thing is the ' lust of the eyes.' Some- 
 times, if everything is ugly, I can't feel gay in the least, 
 however comfortable it is ; and here, where I suj)pose the 
 cold and the damp really are uncomfortable, I can't 
 succeed in minding them at all, because there's a hill 
 that appears and vanishes at the end of the lake, and 
 because of the floating spectres of mist shifting and 
 drifting among the fir-trees, and because of the changing 
 paths down hither and thither over the landscape. It is 
 all very well to read when the others are there, but if 
 I am alone for five minutes even, I can hardly tear 
 myself from the window. It is never the same, and it is 
 always beautiful. 
 
 Dorset. 
 I hardly ever touch a book or a pen. The sky is 
 greater reading than the Bible, the sea than Shakespeare. 
 The words have not been born tliat could describe what 
 I feel. ' I was dumb and opened not my mouth, for it 
 was thy doing.' Funny, what waste of time all doing 
 seems by the side of being ! And yet I know that the 
 least little thing done is better than all this fine dream- 
 ing. . . . Words cannot express my aversion from every 
 form of industry. 
 
 Bamborough. 
 
 All day we sat in the golden ragwort, the swallows 
 
 flying close to us, watching the gulls, the terns, the 
 
 dunlins and the hovering hawks. I can't tell you how 
 
 beautiful it was. When the moon rose we sat and 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 247 
 
 watched her in the doorway. What is there that 
 ihanns one so in the mere rising and falHng of tides ? 
 
 A marvellous thing it is to any one standing for the 
 first time in the gold and crimson spangled darkness on 
 that part of the Tower Rridge that behaves like other 
 bridges, to watch the signal spots of red at the mast of 
 some tall ship, to mark a slender rope stretched, to hear 
 a bell rung, slowly, and in an instant to see the solid 
 centre of the bridge heave up, unresting and unhasting, 
 so gradually that not a tiny pebble on it moves, so 
 unceasingly that the twined shadows of the railings fall 
 every second into new lacework — to see it fill the arch 
 like the vast and mystical curtain that hid the veiled 
 image in the temple — to see it once more drop again, in 
 the same soft and stately manner, without a sound, to 
 meet its other half. 
 
 Hknfield, Sussex. 
 I think the Sleeping Beauty and Co. must have fallen 
 asleep in this place and infected the neighbourhood. I 
 fall asleep all day long. And I dream a horrid dream 
 about a flying fish that I 've got to catch, all covered 
 with brown fur, and the minute I 've caught it, it flies 
 away down Portland Road. Everything is very beautiful 
 — sleepily beautiful, not dreamily. The robins are dis- 
 tracting; they hop from bough to bough among the 
 apple-trees, and answer each other singing — 
 
 Their words are words. 
 
 Our words, 
 Ouly so much more sweet. 
 
248 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 There's a lonely church too, with processions of yews 
 walking about and about it, and yellow roses twined 
 among them ; and as you go through, a rose will kiss 
 your cheek and leave a drop of dew there. 
 
 Charmouth, Dorset. 
 This is such a lovely place, and every moment stolen 
 from sea and sky seems to be wasted. I lie out on the 
 cHfF, the great blue over, the great blue under, and 
 watch a wee butterfly hang like a flower on a bit of dry 
 grass. And then the sun sets behind the hills in a pale 
 gold and red sky, and the sea catches the red and gold, 
 and the soft headlands lie ghostly grey between. . . , 
 Perhaps nothing thrills us that is not or has not been in 
 some way human ! . . . The least little scrap of ruin 
 would make it different. A light in a cottage window 
 — and there you are ! But I don't feel as if I could want 
 anything different just now and here. I love to drown 
 — to forget all about human beings — not to know I 'm 
 a woman. . . . The other want comes back of course ; 
 but while it 's away — and when the sun shines — what an 
 adorable place the world is ! 
 
 We have been having a discussion about ' old ancient ' 
 things. I never can feel the age of mountains ; it does 
 not impress me in the least, and I don't think age, 
 unconnected with anything human, is impressive. After 
 all, the earth that makes the road in 12 Cromwell Place 
 is just as old as they are, in reality. Of course the 
 oldest building is an infant in comparison with the 
 youngest and most babyish mountain, but then it is old 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 249 
 
 collectively with the age of all the hands that have 
 touched it, the ages that have seen it, the hearts that 
 have beat in it. A mountain will be as young as ever 
 at the last day. There 's no pathos of age except where 
 it touches humanity. 
 
 Snow mountains have never fascinated me. Switzer- 
 land seems to me to have got no heart. I just admire 
 it, but I don't love it in the least. I would fifty times 
 rather be in the Black Forest, or among the soft blue 
 hills of Savoy. 
 
 Scenery is all very well . . . but I 'm a stranger 
 among mountains. I am at home in the flat, skiey land. 
 More to me are the lonely gracious trees that can grow 
 as they like, than the trees that have to grow as the 
 mountains like. And I hate a wall that says ' You 
 can't see the sun yet,"* and ' Now you shan't see the sim 
 anv more.' 
 
 (Fkom the Lake Country.) 
 The hills about the place are alive. Sometimes 
 they're not hills at all, but mist that has taken a 
 fancy to look like that, sometimes they lie asleep, some- 
 times they die and vanish, sometimes they spring 
 and lift themselves, sometimes they are low and little, 
 sometimes they turn giants, sometimes they are pink 
 and gold, like the Holy Land. They only obey one 
 rule so far as I can make out, and that is, ne\ er to be 
 two minutes the same. ... I sit and think of nothing. 
 
250 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 I feel as if my whole body were my eyes, as if I never 
 wanted it to be anything else. . . . Wordsworthian 
 animals abound. All the cows and sheep look as if they 
 knew the Ode to hniiiortal'ittj by heart. I 'm sure they 
 are all inmiortal. Sometimes they look as if they were 
 going to recite Betty Foij^ but then I run away. 
 
 I can't tell you what the sunsets are here. l*ink 
 clouds and silver moon — gold clouds and a gold moon — 
 grey clouds and no moon — it does not matter in the 
 least. The quiet, solemn feeling of gladness sweeps over 
 one like a great wave. It buries all the restlessness, all 
 the anxiousness, all the vanity. And at night there is 
 the wide sky— sometimes a few stars that are friends, 
 sometimes hosts upon hosts of lonely strangers with 
 them. 
 
 (Ok Knakksboro'.) 
 It was an elfin town last night, a red round ball of 
 lightless sun sinking away behind the slender, delicate 
 trees. There, and there only, the hours pass. Here 
 [Harrogate] they stand still. 
 
 Light has such different ways with it ; in some places 
 it lies, in some it falls, in some it strikes. . . . 
 
 I\e just been reading Tennyson's Love and Duty over 
 again. What a marvellous thing it is ! No event, no 
 character, nothing on earth to explain ; only those two 
 tremendous words fighting it out together in perfect 
 silence. And what a deep, fine feeling, to end it with 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 251 
 
 dawn, not with the night and stars, as a meaner poet 
 would ahnost certainly have ended. 
 
 As to reason and feeling, they are always pulling me 
 different ways, and I really don't know what to make of 
 them. Do you think they are the man and woman 
 faculties in us P Feeling seems to me the highest, but 
 many people would say just the reverse. Feeling goes 
 higher and deeper, is at the same time more instinctive 
 and animal, and more divine, and takes a short cut 
 where reason goes a very long way round ; but reason 
 is stronger, more reliable because it's more permanent, 
 and not so apt to make terrific mistakes. If it comes to 
 a fight between the two I follow the former nine times 
 out of ten . . . And nine times out of ten I go wrone. 
 
 The law of love, which is freedom ; if we could only be 
 ruled by that ! But alas, too often, even where people 
 love, and love intensely, they won't obey love's perfect 
 law ! Still I do think there is a strong tendency now 
 to see that that is the only thing that can bring a man 
 ' peace at the end.' The very abhorrence of the word 
 ' Dutv,' which some people affect, shows it. 
 
 No plav in the world comes near Hdynlct, of course ; 
 nothing ever could. I 'm tempted to think I love the 
 sonnets more than all the plays, Hamlet included. But 
 this is Hat heresy — and only to be said in a whisper. 
 
 I've been re-reading The Tempcsty which reminded me 
 
252 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 of some words by Bell Scott (tlie only words I ever saw 
 in a book that recalled my own childhood to me) to the 
 effect that childhood is not an earthly Paradise, but an 
 enchanted island, full of strange noises and haunted by a 
 Caliban. 
 
 There are some words that are like a flight of steps 
 that end in mid-air, and there is nothing but the sky 
 above them. Poetry is, by its very derivation, making, 
 not feeling. But the odd thing is, I think, that what 
 is most carefully made often sounds as if it had been 
 felt straight off, whereas what has been felt carelessly 
 sounds as if it were made. 
 
 IVe been reading Rossetti's letters, and Matthew 
 Arnold's. There's just this difference between them, 
 that Rossetti was a poet, and Matthew Arnold was a man 
 who wrote poetry. Qua poetry, it does not matter in the 
 least, but qua letters, Rossetti beats Matthew Arnold into 
 a cocked hat. It's funny to find the dividing line so 
 marked in their prose. But the Vailima Letters beat 
 them both, and most others into the bargain. Stevenson 
 was a poet who couldn't write poetry, but could and did 
 live it. 
 
 The Venetian pictures at the New Gallery are dis- 
 tracting. ... It's just like ' A Toccata of Galuppi's.' 
 
 ' Dear dead women, with such hair too ! What 's 
 become of all the gold ?' For they are dead, dead, dead, 
 as dead as the dodo. Take off their armour and their 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 253 
 
 beloved little Quickly caps, and the Generals, and the 
 Admirals and the Doges would translate into nineteenth 
 century English quite easily; but we have lost those 
 ladies for evermore. We never could be so broad as that, 
 however hard we tried, nor so brown-eyed and red- and 
 golden-haired. They couldn''t be revived, not if we 
 wore their clothes at twenty masquerades. They have no 
 souls whatever to speak of, but oh ! you never saw such 
 fascinating coins ! There are three that are not coins, 
 by the way — a perfect Magdalen carrying a chalice, that 
 used to be called ' St. Barbara,' and is St. Barbara if 
 she's St. anything — and a lovely Lotto, whose soft grey 
 eyes are as refreshing as dew in the golden hazel and 
 amber gleaming of all the rest — and a tall, mysterious, 
 bushy-locked Lady Professor of Bologna, with her 
 hand resting on a skull. She's thinking unutterable 
 things you long to know. Some people think she must 
 be a man, because she's so tall; but she has little soft 
 white hands, and the way she stands is a woman's way, 
 not a man's. It is the strangest, most dream-like feeling, 
 to be in the midst of these silent and secret lives, these 
 faces that are so many sealed books. There is a much 
 larger proportion of portraits than usual, so that it has 
 the effect of a little world, complete in itself, not in- 
 terrupted by too many excursions into the other. You 
 have to say to yourself Poiw, nan dormo, like the 
 marble cupid, with bandaged eyes, in the Hall. The 
 fountain bubbles away, surrounded by a well of red 
 marble, covered with angels and flowers, and black 
 Othello pages stand round, and the very lanterns that 
 lit the Doge's barge when he went to marry the Adriatic 
 hau"- over it. 
 
254 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 ... Is it not Tintoretto who makes the Tempter a 
 young and beautiful man ? I always have wanted to see 
 that picture at Venice. In Tissot's he was an old and 
 hideous brown man, holding up two stones whicli had a 
 ghastly look of skulls about them. The Temptation on 
 the roof of the Temple was very fine — the Evil One 
 a kind of spider\s web of shadow behind, everywhere — 
 nowhere — at once. (Millais' Evil One sowing tares is 
 the finest I ever saw, I think, for concentrated rage, envy, 
 baseness, love of evil for evil.) The more one thinks of it, 
 the more impossible it seems to depict such a spirit con- 
 flict at all. But there arc things that Art is bound to try, 
 and never to accomplisli, and the very effort after them, 
 given that it is the highest effort of the imagination, 
 interests more than success. Blake might have succeeded 
 in a moment of inspiration that most people would have 
 called madness. 
 
 Words could not say how deeply I agree that they are 
 but a very superficial part of language. Where so much 
 is played, painted, looked, touched, felt, they do seem 
 inadequate; and it is quite true that, very often, you 
 might as well try to paint a piece of music as to explain 
 a picture. Still, there are certain limits, it seems to me, 
 within which one art may lawfully help another, and such 
 a description as Pater's, for instance, of Mona Lisa, 
 shows literature as the hand-maid of Leonardo. The 
 fine arts are all fine ladies, and they cannot replace each 
 other or lay down the law for each other, but they may 
 excliange courtesies now and again ? 
 
 Socrates was my earliest love, and, all things considered, 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 255 
 
 I think he'll be my latest. There ""s something of marble 
 in all the loftiest Greek characters. But it 's the cold- 
 ness of perfect calm, of })erfect dignity — not the icincss 
 of pride, and that makes all the difference. 
 
 I believe the Elizabethan sense of love and friendship 
 was much stronger and more sensitive, and closer to the 
 Victorian, than anvthin<>- in between. 
 
 I am with you. I am with you. I am with you 
 about Clarissa Harhicc. It is one of the most wonderful 
 of novels — thoroughly unhealthy, don't you tliink ? I 
 found it was a favourite with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, 
 and was not at all surprised. It seems to me one of the 
 few books that are like an experience, you are not cjuite 
 the same after you have read it as you were before. 
 Richard Feverel is another. Resurrection is another. I 
 suppose there 's nothing to compare with it for minute- 
 ness except The Ring and the Book ; but The Ring and 
 the Book goes in for ' goodness,'' and not for ' virtue,' 
 and what a difference that makes ! 
 
 IIow difficult I find it to think of anything just now 
 except Port Arthur ! It is odd to find oneself in such 
 ardent sympathy with an alien race against whites. . . . 
 My heart goes out to Togo. For one thing, I am so 
 much obliged to him for having such a short and cheerful 
 name. Ito, in his two-storied country house, with his 
 black-silk-haired wife and quiet little maid-servants, and 
 his four pet storks in a cage by the sea, I adore. A bus 
 
256 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Alexiev ! But for the Tzar I have infinite pity — not 
 
 understanded of H , who thinks him a weakling. So 
 
 he is, but it is a tragic position for a man strong enough 
 to desire peace with all his heart, not strong enough to 
 enforce it, obliged to be the figurehead of War, and go 
 to church in public, and pray Heaven for what he knows 
 is accursed. 
 
 The Blake pictures in Ryder Street are amazing. I 
 think he and Turner are the greatest things we have 
 ever had in the way of paint. But as a rule I refrain 
 from mentioning him — as I refrain from mentioning 
 Gordon — because I am always told he was mad. Un 
 fou qui meurt 7ioics legue un Dicu. I remember you 
 had a passion for that cry of Beranger's too. I am all 
 on the side of madmen. 
 
 Rodin's Penscur, the big statue, is rather gigantic 
 than great I think — but great too. He thinks with 
 everything — his great groping feet think. Only the 
 hands hang slack — which is true to thinking nature. 
 The only statue that he reminds one of is Michael 
 Angelo's Penseroso — but Rodin's is a rough man, not 
 born to think, thinking because he must, and not because 
 he would. 
 
 I don"'t know whether you would like the fat new Life 
 of Dumas by Davidson ? It was a great excitement to 
 me, but then I'm 'a Dumasser of the first class' — and 
 I rather think you're only of the second. Have you 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 257 
 
 read all the three great series, as well as the ten volumes 
 of Memoirs right through, and when you came to the 
 end did you wish there were at least ten volumes more? 
 That is the test. As for this Life, the first part consists 
 of the Memoirs watered down and spoilt, but the rest, 
 after 'thirty-two, when the Memoirs stop, is very amus- 
 ing. He bought a vulture and towed it along by 
 a rope, and called it Jugurtha. Afterwards it took to 
 a tub, and then it was called Diogenes. When I get to 
 Heaven (perhaps i/" might be a more suitable beginning) 
 Dumas is the first person I shall ask for. And I shall 
 ask him to bring all his five hundred children. 
 
 I am still struggling with Wahrheit unci Dichtung. It 
 reminds one of 
 
 Crabbed age and youth 
 Cannot live together. 
 
 He 's always saying, Once I was young, and I did this — 
 and then he gives an old man's reason for it. The 
 result is not a charming portrait like that which Lewes 
 gives, but a horrid composite photograph of both his 
 ages. Nothing lives except Frederike and the two 
 daughters of the dancing-master. Odd that another 
 man could write Goethe's life so much better than he 
 could himself! As an autobiographer he really is not 
 in it with Benvenuto Cellini or Dumas ph-e. I suppose 
 poets do not know what they are made of, they 're made 
 of such very funny stuff. 
 
 We have just come back from a lonely little grey 
 church, sunk in a churchyard blue with speedwell, and 
 
258 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 largely attended by swallows. Every Sunday afternoon 
 the Vicar catechises the children there, like a Christian 
 Socrates. It's the most charming- thing to hear. What 
 an art that is, to ask questions in such a way that the 
 people asked positively burn with the desire to answer. 
 Out fly the little hands all over the place, and they can 
 hardly wait their turns, they're so eager. 
 
 I went to see Celia at her gymnastics yesterday. But 
 I am old-fashioned, and hate the hideous actions and 
 the ugly language. Why am I forced to behold twenty- 
 six lovely children squatting like little toads, and tum- 
 bling down on mats and swarming up ropes like cabin- 
 boys ? Why have they got to be told to ' Face the 
 ribs ! ' and ' Forward the Trunk ! ' The trunk — how 
 horrible ! I hope and trust you don't tell Helen to 
 forward her trunk .? It made me long for Chassee, 
 Croisee, and ' Set to your partner ! ' and the elegant, 
 ' Now my dears, draw in the Sash ! ' instead of that 
 odious, telegraphic form of address, as if every word 
 cost a half-penny. 
 
 Yesterday, H read out Yeats' Death of CnchulUn, 
 
 and then I asked for Sohrah and Rustiim to compare. 
 There are touches in Yeats that Mat Arnold can't 
 beat, but the father and son ar^e much finer in Mat 
 Arnold, and no two lines of the Yeats dwell with one like 
 
 Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. 
 
 And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. 
 
 But how Mat Arnold does crib ! My stars and garters ! 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 259 
 
 that hyacinth straiglit bang out of Virgil is a bold 
 one ! 
 
 I am acting temporary Gamp to a dear little cousin who 
 is down here all alone in a big empty house, separated 
 from her children — three of whom have Scarlatina in 
 barracks nine miles off — because she is expecting another 
 little stranger in February. We live like two men in a 
 lighthouse, avoided by every one, though she has been 
 here by herself for about a month. She sings me Songs 
 of the North, so that every evening about nine-thirty I 
 become a furious Jacobite, and meditate profoundly on 
 the advantage it gives a cause if you can call it ' Charlie,'' 
 or ' The Grand old Man,** or ' Joe."" I wish we had a 
 Christian name for Free Trade. ' Wha wadna die for 
 Cobden ?' doesn't come off somehow. And Macedonia 
 would be much the better if the title were not so long. 
 ^Vhen I am prepared to shed the last drop of blood in 
 niv body for the Stuarts, she leaves off, and we fall back 
 upon The Slaves of the Padishah. Really Jokai is an 
 extraordinary boon in the midst of a world full of Gamp 
 Gampant and Scarlatina. If there were a prize for the 
 maddest novel in the world, I should back this one. It 
 begins about twenty times over, and every beginning goes 
 one better than the last. It begins with the Sultan and 
 a gourd full of ducats — it begins with a magnificent 
 wedding and a fine triangular duel — it begins with a 
 monastery and a monk who can hold a freebooter up in 
 the air with one hand — it begins with a merchant who 
 has maidens to sell, and firmly declines to sell the most 
 beautiful maiden of all — it begins with — but perhaps you 
 may be a little tired of hearing what it begins with. And 
 
260 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 it never ends with anything at all. My conviction is, 
 that we shall still be at the beginning of it when Dooms- 
 day comes upon us — and quite happy. 
 
 (Of April.) 
 The lark sings Vespers, the buds promise that they will 
 flower to-morrow. The promise of this time of year 
 is, I think, even more beautiful — if anything can be more 
 beautiful — than the tender, brighter promise of the May 
 — certainly than the fulfilment of the ' high Midsummer 
 pomps ' in June. I love the tracery of the bare boughs — 
 the light veils of green — the song of the more joyous, less 
 passionate birds before the nightingale has come. 
 
 (Of the Chapel designed by Mrs. Watts at Compton, Surrey.) 
 It is a Cemetery Chapel, but the cemetery is a small 
 one, there are very few graves in it as yet, they lie on the 
 slope of a hill, yews growing along the pathway that 
 winds up through the trees, and at the top sits the 
 Chapel in a corner, tall, angular, high-shouldered, the 
 grave of Watts just beyond, the lilies withered, three 
 wreaths of bay, of palm, of golden leaves. It is built of 
 red brick, with curious terra-cotta reliefs of strange 
 spiritual forms, knots, twined and twisted signs. Far 
 away there are soft blue hills, and almost up to the door 
 comes a field of poppies, after your own heart. The door 
 looks Norman in the distance — ifs a kind of second 
 cousin of the lovely little door at Bamborough — but when 
 you come close, it has, I think, something of a Moorish 
 effect, from the rich linear decoration. There 's a little 
 pierced belfry above the roof in which the bell swings 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES ^Ol 
 
 clear. The whole effect is beautiful — wonderfully living, 
 I think, because there is such variety, and no two 
 ornaments are alike. You open the door and stand in a 
 dark circle of the most intense colour. (The windows, 
 lancets, are of clear j^lass, very high, tall, narrow.) It 
 seems like a little daughter of St. Mark's. Angels, angels 
 everywhere — angels alternately showing their faces and 
 their backs — all with long, shield-like wings, meeting in 
 a point under their feet, all their hands touching and 
 swinging mystic bells. Round about, golden letters are 
 traced — ' The souls of the righteous are in the hand of 
 God," and ' Day unto day uttereth speech.'' I looked in 
 vain for ' Night unto night." Lovely cherub heads adorn 
 the ceiling. There is a tall candlestick in gesso like the 
 angels, with ' The candle of the Lord ' and four little 
 figures — a figure of Body carrying a shield with a naked 
 child on it. Mind with a lantern, Soul with a butterfly, 
 Will (the priest) with a wheel. I can't describe the rich 
 gloom, the glowing enamel-lit darkness, the peacock flash 
 here and there round a cherub head, the gleamy mother- 
 of-pearl. There is a golden altar, richly wrought. Above 
 it a small painting, a hooded, heavily draped woman — 
 Death, I suppose — brooding over a globe which she holds 
 in her hand. I don't know what I wanted (have been 
 trying in vain to think ever since), but it was not that. 
 It gives me a curious feeling of vague disappointment. 
 What did I want ? 
 
 There are no words at all over the beautiful old- 
 fashioned lych-gate, when one looks up instinctively, 
 thinking to see ' I am the Resurrection and the Life.' 
 
 Close to the chapel outside is a recumbent cross of red 
 stone, in the same style, over the grave of a woman, at 
 the foot Courage, at the head Amo, on the arms Amav'i 
 
262 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 and Amabo, round it some Emersonian George Elioty 
 inscription about hearts that beat with the world's great 
 heart not being able to die. Curious, how one resents 
 the modern look and the modern sound of words like that 
 in such a place. Have they got it in them to grow old and 
 full of silence ? Will they, two or three hundred years 
 hence, sound as Jeremy Taylor sounds to us now > If 
 there had been only the three words : 
 
 I have loved. 
 
 I love. 
 
 I shall love, 
 that cross would have been perfect. 
 
 I cannot help wanting statues in a Cathedral. It 
 is our fault if we bother about who they are. ... Is 
 not one conscious of a want ? Surely they are the most 
 beautiful ornaments of all ? Mere transitory men and 
 women are too slight. You want stone men and women 
 to humanise the stone — men and women that will last, and 
 connect all the fleeting generations at their feet. You 
 want to see faces, just as you want to hear music — no, 
 not just as, but in a different way ! Does it not say 
 something for statues too, that the Greeks, the great 
 sculptors, adorned their buildings thus, and the mediaeval 
 people, the great builders, did the same 't 
 
 Fve got so much fresh air into me that I can't 
 write. Do you know the feeling ? You are so contented 
 that you are dumb; everything in you is satisfied. How 
 different it is from the rapture of happiness of people who 
 understand each other I So incommunicable too ! You 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 263 
 
 can never make any one else understand that you have 
 been in heaven. They think you \-e cold, or you Ve by 
 yourself, or you haven't got a chair to sit on, or some- 
 thing. 
 
 O blessed loneliness ! 
 
 O lonely blessedness ! 
 
 A hermit-crab am I by nature, and shall be, to the end 
 of my days. And yet the human kind is a very good kind, 
 and kindly human too. The little church here is sweet. All 
 day it stands open, and you can run in when you like and 
 see the sun shine through the wings of Angels. The 
 power to do that is more to me than many services. 
 
 I sj)ent a happy hour with a friend . . . among the 
 old water-colours at Agnew's. Oh ! how I love those old 
 water-colours. Did anybody ever understand English 
 elms and English rivers — slow, sleepy things— as De Wint 
 did ? He is a late passion with me, and a very strong 
 one. In the days of my youth when I wanted fairy-tales, 
 I had no eyes for him. Golden and blue and grey Turners 
 there are too. O ! we want these delights of London 
 here. We can't get on in the dark without them. 
 
 . . . Hippolijtus was exquisite. Such a pathetic 
 Phaedra — tall, dark, willowy, throwing her white veil 
 over her head in a way that showed one the ancient 
 queenliness of the familiar kitchen-grief gesture of the 
 apron. How charming was the old belief that all wrong 
 passion was the work of the gods, so that you could 
 always be profoundly sorry for every one and never felt 
 shocked or angry. The love-charm of the Middle Ages is 
 
264 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 less majestic somehow — more of a toy, and, to my sur- 
 prise, more hard to believe in. I felt a compassion for 
 Phaedra that I do not feel for Iseult. It is greater to be 
 the victim of ' The Cyprian ' than to be the victim of a 
 stupid, well intentioned other woman. Then Hippolytus 
 selbst is such a glorious character. And the scene 
 between father and son, the scene for that kind of thing, 
 not even faintly approached even by Sohrah and Ri(stum, 
 though I am very fond of them too. 
 
 It was so satisfying to be calmed dov/n by those perfect 
 choruses after every harrowing moment. They did some- 
 thing that an opera, and a play apart, can never do. 
 
 ... I have rapidly come to believe that construction 
 is not nearly so important as people think. It is to a 
 book what morality is to a person. But there are 
 delicious books without any construction at all, and 
 delicious people with no morality. I wrote this letter on 
 top of a 'bus last night when all the lamps along the 
 Brompton Road were flashing gold and mauve and 
 crimson. Hence, you perceive, its brilliant incoherence. 
 
 We read d'Annunzio, — Paolo e Francesca^ which is 
 desperately hard, and I peg away at his poems. But it 
 is rather like Heine with the wit left out, and I get tired 
 of his being so tired of everything. Still he is very 
 beautiful ^ But Plato would never have let him go near 
 the Republic. 
 
 He must have been a very Dantesque man that wrote 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 265 
 
 Revelation. I should think Daute made for him first of 
 all when he reached Paradise. I am beginning to wonder 
 seriously whether it is worth while for a woman of nearly 
 forty-two to read anything except St. John and 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 IIow^ I do like The Descent of Man \ . . . The way in 
 which beasts, birds and fishes, all make love to each other 
 is quite delightful. Fishes appear to be the most 
 romantic wooers, but there don't seem to be any constant 
 lovers, as far as I can make out, except pigeons, bull- 
 finches and wild duck. Tame ducks immediately take 
 several brides. 
 
 The tortoise has all C.'s heart. She rubs his shell with 
 globe-polish. He seems to me to be such a very curious 
 result of a diet of flowers. He eats nothing excepting an 
 occasional buttercup, yet there he is, the prosiest animal 
 you can conceive. It is as if a city man were to read 
 nothing but Yeats and Austin Dobson,and yet remain a 
 city-man. 
 
 1 have fallen deeply in love with the Eastern weapons 
 at Hertford House. They remind one of the armoury iu 
 that wonderful and awful poem of Browning's ' A For- 
 giveness." They flicker in their shape like flames, and the 
 gleaming jewellery sets off the horror of them with the 
 daintiest beauty. Even the weapons of the Renaissance 
 are curiously straight and dull and devious after these. 
 The cold moony glitter of steel everywhere fills one with 
 dreams. 
 
266 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 Some time ago you wrote me a beautiful letter out of 
 a garden. I waited for another garden to answer it. It 
 seemed to me as if a garden ought to answer what a 
 garden had said. But though I was twice in an ideal 
 garden — once when it was beautiful with all the aid that 
 man could give, a place that had been an old tilting- 
 ground and now lies bright with flowers disposed after the 
 Italian fashion, like a jewel among the Northumbrian 
 moors — once in a place where it was beautiful with 
 scarcely any aid from man, just a wild tangle of flowers, 
 trees, bushes, ivy, clematis and an old wall — though it 
 was twice the place, it was never the time, for the sun 
 and I rarely happened to go there at the same hour, and 
 when we did, I could not resist looking at him. And 
 now the season of gardens is over, antl tiie strange season 
 of the tracery of bare boughs is about to begin and I 
 cannot delay any longer. . . . 
 
 I liked so much the thought that you had, that we may 
 ' some dav go with the bloom and be with it always'' ; for 
 spring is to me the dearest of all seasons, and I grudge 
 every day of it as it passes. Autumn is a fine colourist, 
 and winter etches even better than Whistler could, but 
 there is nothing like the spring — 
 
 And I called down a blessing 
 
 On the blossom of the May, 
 Because it comes in beauty. 
 
 And in beauty blows away. 
 
 Do you know any of Yeats'' poems ? I am afraid of 
 boring people with them, they seem to me so beautiful 
 with the pathetic, tremulous beauty of Irish airs. The 
 trees led you to the poets, and the poets to sympathy — 
 and I was so glad to find that you identified it with ima- 
 gination. Imagination only makes frost-work unless 
 it is compact of sympathy. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 267 
 
 Certain ages, like certain people, are never understood 
 by certain others. To those who like angels to be all 
 white, and devils all black, the confusion of such a period 
 as the Renaissance is merely horrible. It bewilders and 
 distresses them to find that even Savonarola played a 
 double game; they can see no celestial justice in the fact 
 that even Lucrezia Borgia, when she became a Duchess, 
 was rather good.^ 
 
 Conduct Avas, to an extent undreamed of now, the 
 theme of public discussion. Every one got up every 
 morning with the impression that everything was an 
 open question, and there were very few family secrets, 
 because there were very few actions left of which any 
 one felt ashamed. . . . They have vanished, those rulers 
 exceeding magnifical, who made the most of both worlds. 
 Their Golden Roses are lost, their palaces — even Belri- 
 guardo, the fairest palace in Italy — are gone. But the 
 Golden Rose of their art and their poetry blooms yet in 
 the Muses"' Garden, and Fancy builds the famous walls 
 again whenever she sighs over to herself the soft-sounding 
 name of Ferrara.^ 
 
 How absurd to suppose that seeing ourselves as others 
 see us should give pain ! It is to see ourselves as others 
 see us that we provide ourselves with looking-glasses, that 
 we have our portraits painted and our photographs taken, 
 that we rush to plays by Mr. Pinero. 
 
 Art is an odd thing, isn't it? Ifs almost the only 
 thing that seems to me to remain unchanged throughout 
 one's life, and it does away with all possibility of hell, and 
 ^ From The Times Literary Supplement, - Ibid. 
 
268 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 all necessity of heaven. You forget the dead too, and yet 
 you know it is no treason to forget them there. And you 
 forget yourself. 
 
 I am so glad you have not got any books. Never, O ! 
 never, begin to have any ! If you do, they all marry each 
 other, and increase at the rate of half a library per annum. 
 Then, when you have lived in the house forty-five years 
 they have all got grand-children, and there is no room in 
 the house for anything else whatever. 
 
 (From Dresden.) 
 Whether the Raphael Madonna still speaks Italian 
 I do not know, for speak to me she will not. The 
 truth is, I don't love her as much as I used to, and I 
 believe she knows it. Tlie Rembrandts are overpowering, 
 especially ' Manoah's Sacrifice.^ Manoah and his wife 
 are kneeling together, rapt and humble, he a shade more 
 humble, she many shades more rapt, her eyes closed, 
 and the contrast of their folded hands enough to make 
 one cry. There is an ineffable loveliness about her robes 
 of blended white, soft yellow, and deep red. What a 
 marvellous instrument red is, and how various in the 
 hands of the great masters ! It means such different things 
 with Titian, Diirer, Millais. 
 
 It drives me mad when people call Rhodes 'an 
 Elizabethan,' and say he is like Drake, of all people. 
 Drake wouldn't have touched him with a pair of tongs ; 
 at least I hope not. I am pulled up in my want of 
 charity by remembering that Gordon distinctly liked 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 269 
 
 and wanted him ; but would he have liked and wanted 
 him now ? 
 
 We read the Life of Dickens of an evening. There 
 is much that attracts, and something that repels me 
 about him ; I think, for one so deep in feeling, he was 
 curiously superficial in thought. But what a wealth of 
 genius ! How it comes tumbling, bubbling out in his 
 private letters ! He doesn't care how often he misses, 
 because he knows he'll hit just as often, and so he has 
 iiis fling at every subject in the universe. And he lives. 
 
 I delight in the new metres [in Robert Bridges'' 
 Demeter\ though ... I often come to grief over them. 
 I 've been reading Tennyson's Dcmcter, which is lovely in 
 its own way, but much less deep. The mother and 
 daughter are altogether human. Well, so they are in 
 the new one! but there's just that strange touch of 
 remoteness — of far-away divinity — that makes it all 
 different. Don't you love the crystal crown and the 
 purple robe, and the grandeur of innocence ? People 
 are so apt to think it is only simple ; they forget 
 the awful dignity of it. There's a beautiful sonnet 
 of Charles Lamb's that brought that home to me 
 
 (Of Shakespeare.) 
 I stayed at home and read Txco Gentlemen of Verona. 
 What a distracting play it is . . . why did I never find 
 it out when I read it before ? That's the charmina: thing 
 
270 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 about great writing, it ""s never the same twice over. When 
 you come back to a place that you haven't been to for 
 years I can't quite make up ray mind whether it is most 
 comforting or provoking to find it exactly the same, 
 after all the Continental changes that one fancies have 
 occurred in the geography of oneself. But when you 
 come back to a play, you come back to find all the 
 people saying perfectly different things in perfectly 
 different voices. It seems odd that the women should 
 be so much more cunningly drawn than the men. How 
 many Julias one has known, gentle, jealous, generous, 
 egotistic women, with a dash of vanity ! Silvia is much 
 more romantic really, though she doesn't go the length 
 of a page's dress. She never thinks about her reputation, 
 she doesn't strike the balance of her charms enthusiastic- 
 ally, like Julia. But she knows instinctively that one 
 romantic person will help another, and that there's a 
 sort of Freemasonry of sentiment, and it's this that 
 makes her little relation with Sir Eglamour so pretty. 
 I feel sure, too, it 's her pure romance that makes her 
 care for Julia, whom she has never seen, merely on 
 account of her sad story, and makes her give her picture 
 to Proteus in the most inconsistent way, when she sees 
 through him the whole time. I don't understand 
 Valentine's speech in the last Act about giving up his 
 rights in her to Proteus. It jars one. What did it 
 mean ? That Valentine cared much more for that calf 
 Proteus than Proteus did for him is evident. But to go 
 that length — and the very minute after he had found out 
 Proteus's treachery ! Of course, active, manly men are 
 very oddly influenced sometimes by men with a greater 
 gift of flowing speech. But nothing can make it seem 
 natural. I suppose it is natural, or it wouldn't be there. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 271 
 
 I am reading Troilus and Cressida over again, very 
 slowly, inch by inch, scene by scene. ' Turn it about and 
 turn it about for there ''s everything in it,' the Rabbis 
 used to say of the Bible. One turns it about and turns it 
 about and it is there ; everything in Shakespeare, except 
 the Bible. Even Robert Browning is there 
 
 'Things won are done. Joy's soul lies in the doing.' 
 
 I should have thought that was R. B.'s if I had met it 
 ' howling in the wilderness,' as S.T.C. said of a line of 
 Wordsworth's. And this is not much less like him : 
 * In the reproof of chance. Lies the true proof of men ' ; 
 only it is better said. How repulsively Cressida is 
 introduced. . . . She repels me even more than 
 Cleopatra. . . . who is on too big a scale for one to mind 
 much. 
 
 {AlVs Well that Ends Well) I thought Helena was 
 magnificent in Act i. — that she might be reckoned as 
 one of those women who have ever proposed for men 
 and kept their charm — the two others being Webster's 
 Duchess of Malfi (she had to, because, though a perfect 
 gentleman, he was only her steward) and (but this is a 
 far cry, because it's a much slighter thing altogether, 
 and she hadn't much charm to keep) Cherbuliez's Sarah, 
 in Aprh Fortune Fa'ite. 
 
 It's impossible to feel that the Duchess loses dignity 
 for a single instant. She's far more beautiful than 
 Helena. After Act i., it seemed to me Shakespeare 
 fought shy of the real problem, and lost himself and her 
 in a maze of tiresome intrigue. But I believe S. T. 
 Coleridge thought the subject impossible. . . . How much 
 
272 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 more delicately and poetically Hero manages her plot to 
 catch Beatrice, than the men theirs for Benedick. The 
 thing that passes me is how she could possibly forgive 
 Claudio all in a minute like that. Claudio is impossible. 
 The only point in his favour is that Benedick solidly 
 liked him. I suppose he was a good soldier. And he 
 does have one or two exquisite things to say. ... I 
 don''t think Beatrice would have been the true heart 
 she is if she had not yielded so quickly. Besides, I am, 
 in my heart of hearts, almost certain that she did care 
 before. He certainly did . . . The gi'ayide dame is not 
 often a coquette, whatever else she may be ; there were 
 more grandes dames in Shakespeare's days than there 
 are now, I imagine, and women had not been taught 
 so carefully that it was modest to pretend they did not 
 feel what they did. ... I think Measure for Measure 
 is one of the finest things that Shakespeare ever did, 
 even among his marvels. ... I don't quite know how 
 to bear Isabella's terrible explosion of wrath when 
 Claudio reveals his baseness. It hurts like steel ; and 
 yet, what else could she have said.? The one blot on 
 the play is that it is a play at all, and therefore Isabella 
 is obliged to countenance the horrid truth about poor 
 Mariana. The real Isabella could not have borne 
 the thought of any woman being married to Angelo, 
 
 To-morrow week I am goings to see Hamlet and 
 Macbeth — where Shakespeare never saw them — at Strat- 
 ford. By the way, is it not a delusion that Henry V. 
 is his model King.? He makes him cold, heartless, cruel 
 — infinitely less attractive to women than Hotspur. 
 Can't think why everybody adores him, just on the 
 
PASSAGES FROU LETTERS AND DIARIES 273 
 
 strength of Crispin''s day, and forgets his treatment of 
 FalstafF, Katlierinc, his own father, and the prisoners. 
 
 They didn't deal in ideal men in the days of 
 Elizabeth. They were extremely practical — and so is 
 Henry V. Still they had a tendency to consider in a 
 practical way what Heaven would think of them and 
 their doings — one sees it in Henry's prayer ; he knew his 
 cause was bad the whole time. 
 
 We went to Macbeth the other day. Glorious ! It 
 sent me on for a week. Funny — that all those daggers 
 and ghosts and witches and things should leave one 
 perfectly reconciled and happy and stroked the right 
 way. But what a very stupid woman Lady Macbeth 
 really was ! Fancy thinking that other people would 
 think that two men would commit a murder and then go 
 (juietly to sleep, each one having just arranged his blood- 
 stained dagger neatly on his pillow, for every one to see. 
 
 One can never be unhappy oneself without knowing 
 that all griefs are (in a way) relations. And the uncer- 
 tainty of one is the uncertainty of all. Then the comfort 
 that must come is the comfort of all, too. They do 
 bear it, they are helped to bear it. I think, more and 
 more, that the unity of men is most wonderful — and the 
 Unity that underlies, that overarches all. 
 
 I think witii you about the way Silence prompts one 
 to worship ; I suppose it is the voice of God calling. 
 To be silent means to feel oneself alone. ' And there is 
 no place so alone, which He doth not fill.' 
 
 s 
 
274 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 In the Abbey and at the Temple they sang, In didci 
 Jnh'ilo. ' Would that we were there ! ' Don"'t you love 
 it ? And how I wish I were somewhere where you could 
 be decently good without fighting people all round. 
 I really would like to be good, only I hate fighting 
 people. Why is it such a desperately difficult business ? 
 Would that we were there ! 
 
 It is as difficult to be humble as it is easy to despair. 
 Despair's a very conceited thing, but I might as well 
 hope to be Michael Angelo as to be humble. The grace 
 of the lowliest is only given to the highest. 
 
 Death is become a more practical thing now it is 
 palpably so much nearer than in the days when I 
 thought it was going to happen to-morrow. But it 
 seems much farther ofl^', as practical things do. 
 
 (OK THE DEATH OF JOACHIM ) 
 
 To me, when a great light like that becomes a star, 
 there is a most strange mingled feeling of intense thank- 
 fulness to have been allowed to be near it here — of quiet 
 triumph in the course finished — of unspeakable grief at 
 the loss, and fear lest that which was completely un- 
 deserved should never again be granted me. 
 
 If Robert Browning could grow old — think what a 
 vouth his must have been — surely we can. With love 
 round us, and death before us, how can life ever be 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 275 
 
 commonplace ? I know I think it can sometimes. And 
 then I deserve — to die ? No, to live to be ninety. 
 
 Here is , writing to me as to whether there is any 
 
 room for angels ' in our new conceptions of earth and 
 heaven.' Our new conceptions ! If earth and heaven 
 are not going to be any better than that, welcome the 
 lu'ant. I for one can't conceive any heaven that I 
 shouldn't be tired of in a month ... I suppose it's 
 because she 's such an angel herself that she thinks they 
 can't be dispensed with so easily. 
 
 I don't think you would have disliked the allusion to 
 Peter warming himself, if you had heard it. It was 
 casual and passing — no stress was laid on it. Perhaps, 
 without meaning to do so, I gave it undue importance 
 from the fact that it appealed to me because I am myself 
 the slave of warmth, and have so often neglected a duty 
 because I was mesmerised by the fire. 
 
 I don't (juite understand you about Pilate. Surelv his 
 strength, at any rate, was not ' to sit still.' He sat still 
 and washed his hands, and it was all wrong. If he had 
 ' put a decisive act between himself and temptation,' he 
 would have seized his chance. What he did was the 
 weakest thing he could do, not the strongest. It is only 
 when sitting still is the hardest, most difficult course, 
 that there is strength in it ? Again I sym]iathise. I have 
 so often made my own temptations much harder in the 
 end, because I did not pluck up courage enough to do the 
 decisive act, when I knew it ought to be done. A\'e arc 
 not taught that we should let the temptation get as bad 
 
276 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 as possible before we try to do anything ; else why should 
 we pray ' Lead us not into temptation "" ? 
 
 More and more as life goes on I feel as if one of the 
 big temptations of it were to rest content with negative 
 ease and freedom from worry, and to forget that that 's 
 only the body of happiness and not the soul. Looking 
 into the fluffy white heart of an oleander, the other day, 
 a kind of rapture at its uselessness came over me, at the 
 divine heedlessness of anything but glory and beauty at 
 the making of it. 
 
 Self-sacrifice is the noblest thing in the world, but to 
 sacrifice other people even for the very noblest things is 
 as wrong as persecution. 
 
 I was thinking of Mat Arnold's Buried Life only the 
 other day. It has the beautiful strangeness, still more 
 the beautiful familiarity of the truth of art to the truth 
 of life. The greatest artist could not understand it if 
 he had never lived it. It would have been double-Dutch 
 to Goethe. Therein you and I have the advantage. 
 What a funny thought ! Hush ! 
 
 Two or three times I have had that awful overwhelm- 
 ing horror of death ; but it has always passed, and 
 though I daresay it may come again, I don^'t mind so 
 much now because I think it has more to do with the 
 body than with the mind, and is not a reasonable thing. 
 
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 277 
 
 As YO" say so beautifully about our life, so it is with 
 that part of it which we call death, 'we are in God's 
 hands.' There viu.st be something dreadful in the 
 thought of the change. Our Lord felt that more even 
 than many men and women do — but I cannot think the 
 change itself, when it comes, will be dreadful. There 
 are so many worlds to see — all the stars. And more 
 and more, as they search space, they find there is not 
 such a thing anywhere, no emptiness, only more stars, 
 more worlds. x\nd don't you sometimes have the feeling 
 that we could see much better if we did not have to look 
 through eyes, if we were all sight ? . . . 1 used to feel 
 as if we could never know each otlier again and must get 
 lost and be, as you say, ' different,' but as I grow older, it 
 seems that love is to the soul what life is to the body, 
 and if there 's any meaning at all in the soul's life it 
 must mean that life never ends. I don't know. We are 
 all in the dark about it. But Hope is Hope none the 
 less because she is blindfold. Only when some one dies, 
 all thoughts are swept away and all reasons, and feeling 
 is left alone ; and we can only feel desolation and — God. 
 
 We read William James ... I cannot make out the 
 subconscious self. For three-fourths of a big volume he 
 proves in the most conclusive way that it's a fool, and 
 then he seems to say it's — God. V. says this is very 
 helpful — ^^just as wonderful as Evolution and sure to be 
 the Science of to-morrow. If so, I am very glad I live 
 to-dav. 
 
 It comes to me that what we seem to need we are not 
 
278 PASSAGES FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES 
 
 given. Joy cannot be born of necessity. There is need 
 of patience and need of peace, but no cry of need will 
 bring joy. 
 
 I lay for some time letting the sky wake me. From 
 the bed you see nothing but sky. It was not ' the body of 
 heaven ' in his fulness, it was a thin wash of faint, almost 
 transparent blue. I began to think how tremendous it 
 woidd be to go out on a morning like that and stand 
 alone with God, conscious that the earth-life would never 
 rush in dividingly. Savonarola was in my mind — and 
 that bit of Johannes Agricola. ' For I intend to get to 
 God. For 'tis to God I speed so fast.' All that I felt 
 passed into one deep human longing, I don't know how 
 or why, except that below the surface all feeling seems to 
 be one. There came those words, ' We never know what 
 God is till we have given up something for him.' I have 
 given up nothing and don't feel called to, and am as 
 happy as can be. 
 
UNPUBLISHED POEMS 
 
UNPUBLISHED POEMS 
 
 LINES 
 
 Stay with me, happv Day ! 
 Fly not away ! 
 Dost tliou think, when thou art fled, 
 I shall but love thee better, being dead ? 
 Not so, not so ! 
 To-morrow I shall say, 
 ' 'Twas lonoj ago ! — 
 He lies, for ever shorn of rainbow wings. 
 Among forgotten things." 
 
 GRIEF AND DEATH 
 
 Deep joy was mine, I owned a fountain fair 
 That watered with its soft refreshing dew 
 The plants and flowers that in my garden grew 
 And made them spring and bud and blossom there 
 
 And boasting of the world without, I spake, 
 ' Come sit within my honeysuckle bowers. 
 And breathe the sweet scent of my lily flowers, 
 And listen to the song the waters make." 
 
 Strong grief was mine, I gat me forth alone, 
 Into my garden dry and bare I stept, 
 And laid me down upon the grass and wept. 
 No ear, divine or human, heard my moan, 
 For joy bids welcome all the guests that come. 
 But sorrow hath no voice — Despair is dumb. 
 
282 UNPUBLISHED POEMS 
 
 TO ONE WHO WAS NURSING A 
 BLIND FATHER 
 
 The other day 
 I thought and thought and evei- thought again, 
 How, while I sat in joy, apart from men, 
 In perfect joy of sun and sea and air, 
 You sat within the reach of nothing fair. 
 In darkness with the darkened. Then and there 
 Intolerable pity broke in prayer 
 Hushed by a whisper those wild words above: 
 * How dar'st thou pity whom I greatly love/ 
 
 TO 
 
 Dear, you are on the road to fame. 
 And I, upon no road at all ; 
 But wander where men's voices call, 
 This way and that ; no two the same. 
 And thou wilt make thyself a name 
 To captivate and to enthrall. 
 And when the dusky years shall fall, 
 To live in characters of flame. 
 Yet to one goal our footsteps tend. 
 Though diversely they wander here. 
 Where we begin will be our end, 
 And I, the nameless, do not fear 
 That thou wilt e'er forget, my friend. 
 How once we called each other Dear. 
 
UNPUBLISHED POEMS 283 
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND 
 Now when the sweet sunny weather 
 Quickens all that once was dead 
 
 I remember how we two, 
 
 You and I, I and you, 
 Wandered about the streets together, 
 Reading the books that had to be read, 
 Saying the things that cannot be said. 
 
 The world was young, and we were younger 
 In those bright forgotten days, 
 
 I remember how we two, 
 
 You and I, I and you, 
 Read and read for the spirit's hunger. 
 Walked in the old familiar ways, 
 Talked and talked for each other''s praise. 
 
 The world is young, but we are older, 
 Many a book we shall read no more — 
 
 I remember how we two, 
 
 You and I, I and you, 
 Vowed that love should not grow colder. 
 That we would love as we loved before, 
 And the years should make us love the more. 
 
 TO TIME THE COMFORTER 
 
 Dumb Comforter of woes ! 
 
 The depths of whose deep comfort no one knows ; 
 
 Whose consolations on the spirit steal 
 
 More gently than Love's gentlest word ; and heal 
 
 Where Love falls back affrighted ; only life 
 
 Proves Thee the Comforter of mortal strife. 
 
 Of all that doth begin and end — that He 
 
 May speak in thy dread silence endlessly ! 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTES OF THE TABLE TALK OF 
 WILLIAM CORY 
 
 AT SOIME caiEKK CLASSES WHICH HE tiAVE FOR 
 
 MARY COLERIDGE and Otheks 
 
Those who knew William Cory, the poet who gave us lonica, 
 the historian who wrote The Outlines of English History, still 
 more, the inspired teacher, the erratic scholar of genius, 
 may in these notes of his talk get again some likeness of the 
 man they knew. They will recall his posture, as with a 
 kind of fierce but timid abruptness, he uttered the words 
 here recorded, sitting deep in his arm-chair, his head, so like 
 that of Cicero, bent forward, his hand over his eyes — a habit 
 of his due as much to shyness as to short sight — until, 
 warmed by his subject, he would suddenly raise them and 
 an unforgettable flash of intellect electrified and enlightened 
 his companions. 
 
 Such notes as these are bound to be disjointed, partly 
 because so much which they recount concerned the lesson 
 and what arose from it — more than this, because of William 
 Cory's miraculous power of teaching twenty things at once 
 which seemed to have nothing to do with the subject on 
 hand. So that you were in the midst of the French Revolu- 
 tion or the law about English Juries, when you thought you 
 Avere learning the First Aorist or mastering some dates in 
 Greek history. And this quickness of his never left you 
 bewildered; indeed it made you clearer than before, a 
 result helped by his rich gift for illustration, for analogy. 
 His own comparison of the Greek tongue to a })lant with 
 tendrils growing one from the other well describes his 
 way of teaching, and the fashion in which his ideas and 
 images sprang spontaneously each from each, making a 
 unity out of many things. Mary Coleridge wrote down his 
 words as she caught them, at the Greek classes that he held 
 for her and three or four others, and she often caught them 
 brokenly, without the links that bound one topic to the 
 next. To preserve the living freshness of her account, I 
 have added no explanatory comments excepting where the 
 connection between passages seemed absent. And this 
 Prefatory Note is only written for the sake of such as have 
 never seen him, and so have no memory of his person to 
 lend force to their impression of his talk. 
 
 Editoh. 
 
NOTES OF THE TABLE TALK OF 
 WILLIAM CORY 
 
 Feh. 3r(f, 1886.— Snowing hard, when E and I 
 
 got to the Swiss Cottage, so we took a hansom, saying, 
 or trying to say, the verb %pa&) as we went along. 
 
 ' "'"'' XP*}/*^ '•> what i.v the creature doing 't ' said E 
 
 dreamily, in sore anxiety of mind as to whither the man, 
 who did not know his way, would drive us next. It 
 sounded like a new kind of interjection. 
 
 Mr. Cory opened the door ; he was surprised to see us 
 — offered us brandy, hot water, etc. 
 
 ' What have you given him ? The fare 's 2s. Settled 
 bv regulation. (An extra 6d. bestowed.) Remember, 
 that 's for your horse.' 
 
 The lesson was on Xenophon's Memorab'/lia, Lib. i., 
 cap. L 
 
 TrXtjBovai]'; dyopa<;, when the market-place was full, i.e., 
 at 110071, rather at 9 a.m. A friend of mine from Japan 
 told me that they have no market or place, or public, 
 open-air place of meeting and discussion there at all. 
 The Japanese are tame. They were well tamed 250 
 years ago. When I was at Corfu, I used to see the 
 people there, men and women, as they went to their 
 work in the morning, gathering together and talking, 
 just as they did at Athens. 
 
 K6a-fio<; : 1st meaning (as of mundus) Order. 
 
288 NOTES OF THE 
 
 avdyicaL^ — -Jbrccfi in plural (* violences '' in Balin and 
 Balaii). Xenophon means to express that Socrates did 
 not get into a scrape with the people of Athens by con- 
 tradicting the poptdar belief that each particular thing 
 had been created by a special god at the beginning. 
 ' Who did get into a scrape ? "* 
 
 Blank silence. 
 
 ' Diagoras. A most interesting man. You'll find all 
 about him in Grote. (Grote was a splendid fellow him- 
 self; loved the truth.) Once, when he was out at sea, a 
 storm came on, and the sailors wanted to throw him 
 overboard — make a Jonah of him — saying that the storm 
 had been sent because he was an atheist. He pointed 
 to all the other ships that were tossing about on the 
 waves, and asked them if they thought that all those 
 had atheists on board them.'' 
 
 [^1 propos of people iiot being able to make winds and 
 waters, however much they knew.] It is not true that 
 knowledge of how a thing is made is useless unless you 
 know how to make it ; but in some cases the double 
 knowledge is ours. We can now make ultramarine instead 
 of having to cut up lapis lazuli for it. 
 
 iTTi-ylrTjcj^Lo-aL, put it to the vote. The reason you ladies 
 have no votes is that you can't fight. There's your 
 friend, the cabman ; I'm afraid he'll be your enemy by 
 the time you 've done. 
 
 The gods Jcnora everything ahoays. If Socrates really 
 believed this, there was no particular force in it, because 
 it was universal. The very essence of belief in divine 
 communication is, that it should happen at some times 
 and not at others. 
 
 KaXo^ KCL'yado'i means a perfect gentleman — everything 
 that one would wish one's son to be. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 289 
 
 Religion can only be taught by the example of a life, 
 not by texts nor precepts. Empedocles was a great 
 teacher. Matthew Arnold worked him up into a 
 poem. 
 
 E said she had read it. 
 
 I am gratified to hear it. Very few people have. 
 When it first came out it fell so flat that this ill success 
 of his second work quite damped Mr, Arnold's genial 
 courage. I met him afterwards, and he was pleased to 
 hear that a few people at Cambridge had liked it. 
 Abelarcl was another great teacher. 
 
 Many great teachers are mythical, you know. Luther 
 is not, but then he does not appear quite so amiable. 
 Socrates wonders that any one possessing virtue should 
 take money for teaching. 
 
 X^'-piv eiSevai is the common expression for to be grate- 
 ful. There is no proper equivalent for our ingratitude ; 
 dyvcofMoa-vvi] is not the same thing. There's a little 
 touch of vulgarity in the thought of any reward at all. 
 Modern times have gone further. There was a person 
 called S. T. Coleridge, wdio lived at Highgate, who wrote 
 some lines about giving out light like the sun, whether it 
 is absorbed or reflected. 
 
 Unless the cultivation of virtue he corruption is not 
 very brilliant wit on Xenophon's part. Homely worsted 
 stocking compared with the shot silk of Plato. 
 
 We use few Perfects except the word ought. Such 
 words are only curiosities in English, but practical things 
 in Greek. There is frightful over-substantiving in 
 English. If you look at an account of a meeting in a 
 newspaper, and the resolutions passed, almost all the 
 verbs seem to have disappeared. 
 
 There was a rotten and superstitious way of learning 
 
290 NOTES OF THE 
 
 by heart the Greek verbs that govern the genitive. A 
 man called Coleridge/ a great teacher, was horrified to 
 find I didn't know it. All those things are far better 
 learnt by observation. Attic is the clipping of the 
 Ionic. 
 
 SiaTpi^ci) is rub away, spend time, live— then essai/, 
 from the idea of rubbing away time while writing. 
 
 8iadpv7rr6/jL€vo<; one of the most amusing words we 
 have — To break in pieces, break down, pat with the 
 hand, enervate. Tryphena and Tryphosa. 
 
 [Here came the ' conclusion applied to the case of 
 Critias and Alcibiades.'] 
 
 Alcibiades was a smart young gentleman, nephew of 
 Pericles, a beautiful person. The Athenians had that 
 respect for blood which is innate in man. We like the 
 historical nephews of famous historical uncles. There is 
 Mr. Trevelyan in our own day — not that we care much 
 for that. Alcibiades went with his pet quail to pay 
 a large contribution for some national purpose ; he 
 belonged to a rich family. All the Athenians applauded. 
 The quail flew away. Every one who was there rushed 
 to try and catch it for him. 
 
 E . ' And did they catch it ? ' 
 
 ' Some one had that honour.' 
 
 I said I thought it strange that Xenophon should say 
 of Critias and Alcibiades that, being young, they were 
 probably most ungrateful. 
 
 ' Yes, it 's a curious word. If yo^u don't get gratitude 
 then, you won't get it afterwards.' 
 
 [Our gratitude, being young, was constantly too much 
 for us. Payment, when it was proposed by our elders, 
 had been shortly and sternly refused. At the very first 
 ^ Edward Coleridge, tutor at Eton College. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY. 291 
 
 lesson Mr. Cory took occasion to exemplify some rule of 
 grammar by this sentence : ' I love to teach without 
 being paid for it.' 
 
 We used to bring a bunch of llowers for Mrs. Cory 
 sometimes. I took irises, knowing that he was very fond 
 of them. I never see them now without thinking of him. 
 The cyclamen was another favourite. He had a gold 
 brooch made for ' Madam ' in the form of one, but it 
 looked heavy. 
 
 The repetition of a number of words of tlie same kind 
 bored him, and he would cut short our translation by 
 saying: 'The band as before!' in imitation of the 
 Vicar who declined to read ' the cornet, flute, liarp, 
 sackbut,'' etc., in Daniel over and over again.] 
 
 ..." The Scotch used to be the great people for 
 style. I learnt about it first from Blair's Lectures. 
 Nowadays it's supposed to come of itself — to be a gift 
 — and so it is — with a few people. 
 
 There are different ways of saying Yes — <^T]fxl irdvv [lev 
 ovv, etc. The Romans got on without it. In modern 
 Greek it is fiakiara, a very heavy word. Is the German 
 Na used for No ? I have just been reading the life of a 
 man who said he could not enter the German Army 
 because all soldiers had to be confirmed, and when he was 
 asked if he believed the Faith, he could not say Ja, as he 
 did not believe a word of the preparation, ' Say Na ! ' 
 said the Minister who had prepared him. And the Na 
 passed unnoticed among the crowd of Jas ! You must 
 emancipate yourselves from the word become, when you 
 translate [ ? ]. You cannot say of soldiers fighting : 
 They became brave men ; it nmst be ' proved themselves.' 
 
 . . . The Greeks had an office for seeing to the respect- 
 ability of foreigners ; a proper citizen became responsible 
 
292 NOTES OF THE 
 
 for every one. Modern nations would do well to imitate 
 this — especially the Swiss. 
 
 Xenophon was himself a renegade, a traitor ; but some 
 people are very hard upon him. He was disgusted with 
 the Athenians for their treatment of Socrates. He had 
 his son brought up in Sparta. Demosthenes was a 
 political saint and consistent to the last. Xenophon was 
 not. Theognis lived at Megara, near Athens. He was 
 a vehement Tory — hated Democrats. The early politics 
 of Greece are woven into his poems and those of Solon. 
 
 aZoKiixo<i is disapproved of — ' castaway ' in the Bible, 
 where it should be translated unquarified ; the image is 
 taken from citizenship — shows St. Paul's knowledge of 
 politics. 
 
 The Roman word for rvpavvo'^ is Dictator. When a 
 Dictator prolonged his power indefinitely, like Julius 
 Caesar, he was said to be Rex — a term of horror. The 
 whole doctrine of Constitutional Government is : You 
 must show cmtse — either before or after what is done for 
 the nation. Sometimes, of course, you have to do the 
 thing first and ask leave afterwards. The Greeks had 
 graduated taxation, about which people fuss so now, and 
 they don't seem to have minded it." 
 
 [Before the lesson ended, something turned his mind to 
 Henry Bradshaw (Fellow of King's), Cambridge, and the 
 friend of William Cory as of so many others. — Ed.] 
 
 ..." Hospitality was innate in him. He never had 
 to learn it as other people have. ' He gave as an open 
 stream gives its water to every one that comes, because 
 he could not help it." 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM COHY 293 
 
 March M—May 19, 188G 
 
 PLATO"'s ' APOLOGY ' 
 
 "Such easy, trickling talk ! In Plato it is all talk and 
 not artificial speech. This is his art. Few men can 
 make a long period grammatically ; others are carried 
 away by their grammar to say things they never meant 
 to. A friend of mine once said to me : ' Plato is like a 
 vegetable."' The sentences grow ; they are like delightful 
 things with tendrils. The position of the words is the 
 delightful thing ; the constant surprises. The man you 
 have got in the first few lines is already remarkable. 
 Socrates is not a humorist — not a wit — he delights in 
 playing. He was no martyr; there was no touch of 
 inspiration in his simple resolve to stay at his post. It 
 was just obedience to law. I know no man so interesting 
 to the imagination who did so little attitudinising. 
 There are plain acts and transcendental. The captain 
 who refused to give up the keys of his magazine to the 
 mutineers and tossed them into the sea was not courting 
 death. He merely stuck to law and didn't care. The 
 man who saved a lieutenant from being hung off Spithead, 
 by putting his own head into the noo.sc, acted transcen- 
 dentally. Both were heroes. 
 
 The germ of an Established Church is in the demand 
 of Socrates to be maintained as a public preacher. If he 
 had conducted a Dialogue with them in his own way, 
 they would have talked perhaps for an hour and a half, 
 and then only arrived at one point. . . . 
 
 The time allowed for speaking was measured by a 
 water clock. Rather hard when a man was speaking for 
 his life ! It is very curious to think that he had to speak 
 to 500 people. 
 
294 NOTES OF THE 
 
 6 Tra? XP^^°^ (^^*^ rvkole of time), the right expression 
 for eternity. If there is a ridiculous thing in modern talk 
 it is the distinction between time and eternity. 
 
 If we were disposed to be very hard on Socrates, we 
 might say it was a pity, when he spoke of those whom he 
 hoped to meet in the other world, that he mentioned 
 people like Palamedes and Ajax, whose injuries he wished 
 to compare with his own, instead of those who were 
 really worth knowing ; but here we get a really character- 
 istic bit. 
 
 av€^era(7To<; /Slo';, life — nncriticiscd — by oneself as well 
 as othei's. There is nothing more central and cardinal 
 than this in all the writings of Plato. Self-knowledge is 
 got by talking to others ; certain people whom one 
 happens to know once or twice in one's life serve 
 as a kind of touchstone. Happiness consists in right 
 thinking. 
 
 Socrates is to. /xerecopa t^povrtarrj'^, a transcende)ital 
 speculator — what Aristophanes called 'an air-treader,' 
 and Napoleon ' ideologue ' — a doctrinaire in politics. 
 ' None of your metaphysicians ! ' George iii. said. In 
 The Clouds the two Xor^ou, the better and the worse, 
 are personified. Aristophanes represents the common 
 sense of Athens. As the enemy of Socrates, he is of 
 course our enemy. Common sense lapsed between the 
 entry of the barbarians into Rome and the middle of 
 the last century. It was re-discovered by Johnson — 
 ' None of your cant, Sir ! ' 
 
 The ancients were always striving after cosmogony, 
 ' No, gentlemen, I assure you I have nothing to do with 
 these things," says Socrates. It was a waste of time. 
 See Mill's Logic. Nearly two hundred years after — 
 time of the second Punic War — came Archimedes. One 
 
TABLl-: TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 295 
 
 hundred and sixty years ufter, Lucretius, contemporary 
 of" Julius Caesar, Seventy-three years after, Pliny, with 
 his Encyclopedia. The Schoolmen, puzzling themselves 
 over such questions as ' How many angels could dance 
 on the point of a needle ? ' were their legitimate suc- 
 cessors — as it were, grinding at a mill, with nothing 
 but wind in it. But there is no doubt they exercised 
 their minds in this way as schoolboys exercise theirs 
 with Euclid. 
 
 The worth of literature depends on the power of a 
 book to exalt the character of an individual or a 
 nation. Scott did this. Literature is not worth much 
 at present. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Robertson, Hume (who envied Robertson) 
 and Gibbon (who envied both) were masters of English 
 style. 
 
 The French talk in crystals and Avrite in crystals. 
 The Greeks sometimes did and generally did not. The 
 Latins cling to a rule till it becomes almost monotonous ; 
 the Greeks have no sooner made one than they delight 
 in breaking it and kicking up their heels. Some of the 
 Greek words are transparent. It is like chemistry — you 
 can see the idea forming. Some of them catch hold of 
 one's mind like creeping plants. 
 
 The Greeks at one time hated the sound of m- ; such 
 a word as Krjvcro<i (census) in the New Testament would 
 have been a monster to them. Tidel^ is an escape from 
 TiOev^. We are most unfortunate in the words relation^ 
 connection in-la-ic. I wish they could be changed ; but 
 not even Gladstone can do that. Fancy having to call 
 your sister-in-law a relation ! The Latins were happier 
 with their comanguUieus and affinis. w is the sign ot 
 
296 NOTES OF THE 
 
 O ! as the Latins did. The participle is like ivy — it must 
 grow over a trunk. If we can"'t find the trunk, we must 
 imagine it."" 
 
 [When we went wrong, our master would say : ' I 'm 
 afraid you must sit in sackcloth and ashes for that ! ' 
 When we were right, he would say, as if he were pleased : 
 'You've been taught," or 'it does you credit I"" very 
 rarely : ' If you can make out that for yourself, you 
 needn't come up to Hampstead.' Then we were very 
 happy when we went down the hill to the station, how- 
 ever cold it might be. And the next week we would be 
 there on the stroke of the clock. — ' What feverish 
 
 punctuality ! ' M , who came all the way from Eton, 
 
 occasionally took a hansom, but she always dismissed it 
 a few doors off, for fear there should be comments on 
 the luxuriousness of the habit. The first thing that we 
 saw on entering the hall was a water-colour sketch of 
 the Piraeus. Terrible accounts of fires, cut out from the 
 newspapers, were stuck up all about, as a warning to the 
 servants not to be careless. The dining-room was used 
 as a study. As Spring came on, a budding elm-tree 
 outside made it pleasant ; and there was always a bird 
 in a cage, and sometimes a blue kitten, who distracted 
 our minds. I do not know that Mr. Cory was so fond 
 of the kitten, but he was very fond of the bird. ' He 's 
 happy. He does not know that he will die.'] 
 
 ..." The Imperative is the root of all verbs. A baby 
 uses first an Interjection, then an Imperative. Its ' Da ' 
 always means ' give it to me.' Reduplication is simply 
 stuttering. It is most evident in the Imperative because 
 that is the most impatient mood. The secret of con- 
 versation is the comparison of notes and not strife. It 
 is waste of time to finish our sentences ; we should suggest 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLL\M CORY 297 
 
 by them, as when we (|Uote, or say the first words of a 
 Psalm. We make too many bow-wow speeches. 
 
 elptovela — originally the dissembling of oie^s own 
 powers. 
 
 Xarpda is the higher form of 6pr]aKeia, that ' pure 
 religion and undefiled' of which St. James speaks. Some 
 object to the use of dprjcrKeia in that verse ; others like 
 it. How great must the Christian religion be, if the 
 mere dprjaKela, the outward and visible sign of the 
 Xarpela, is this ! 
 
 The Tlieaetetus always seems to me the great example 
 of the clumsiness of your true hero-worshipper — the 
 donkey playing at being a la])-dog, eh ? — what Jesse 
 Ceilings is to Chamberlain. Two of Socrates' dearest 
 friends — Simmias and Cebes — were Tiiebans. Interesting, 
 because they must have overcome their national hatred 
 to learn of him. The Spartans fought the Athenians 
 like gentlemen, but the Tiiebans fought them like wild 
 beasts. There was a pretty poem by Edwin Arnold 
 about a young man of Megara. I made it into an 
 exercise." 
 
 [Later on, Mr. Cory gave it to me. Here it is, just as 
 he tore it out. But it was far more beautiful as he told 
 it, his voice breaking.] 
 
 EXERCISE LXXXV 
 
 Juvenis Megarensis 
 
 There was iiear Athens a town called Megara. The 
 nearer they are the more do cities quarrel. Tiie enmity 
 between the Athenians and Megarians was for some years 
 so great that, if any Megarian came across the frontier, 
 he was put to death by the Athenians. 
 
 A few days after the war between these cities began, 
 
298 NOTES OF THE 
 
 Socrates was sitting at night on the bank of the Ilissus, 
 near the plane which used to give him shade by day. 
 Hearing a noise he raised his head, breaking off his 
 meditation. Then he saw a lad stretched before his 
 feet, panting. He recognised a pupil called Apodemus 
 of Megara. The lad said, ' Oh, master, be quick ; con- 
 verse with me; tell me what you did not plainly tell 
 when you talked with the others. The watchmen of 
 your people are pursuing me ; the laws of your people 
 condemn me to death for daring to come hither. Teach 
 me what you know about the soul of man.' 
 
 Then did the master clear up that which he had left 
 doubtful about the second life. 
 
 The moon broke through the clouds, and when the 
 light was shed on the bank, Socrates saw Apodemus 
 pressing his side with his hand, and blood flowing 
 through his fingers. The watchmen came up too late. 
 
 [There followed a tamer tale of enthusiasm for 
 knowledge. — En.] 
 
 ..." A pretty little bit of English History — how the 
 peasants near Cambridge turned out to resist the build- 
 ing of an anatomical Museum and Whewell sallied forth 
 against them at the head of the Undergraduates. 
 
 Banishment is not known to English law. Lord 
 Durham was told he had made a great mistake, because 
 he banished a man from Canada to Bermuda. 
 
 The precedent for Socrates'' case is that of Diagoras, 
 the Melian, who suffered as a (nrfkifr}^} He is supposed 
 to have been a very innocent person, by no means an 
 atheist. They were mistaken in their heat. 
 
 We have three investigations in England — before the 
 jMagistrate, the Grand Jury and the Pett>' Jury. All 
 ^ i.e. posted as infamous. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 299 
 
 that is more important in politics than in criminal 
 matters, because people get excited over politics and 
 condemn straight oft". See S. T. Coleridge's Piccolomini. 
 The Athenians, with their great and beautiful freedom, 
 did not always wait to wash a thought in many waters — 
 in other words, to read the bill twice — before they voted. 
 They voted too quickly, but in the great historic instance, 
 when, in a tit of anger, they had voted a general massacre 
 of the people of Mitylenc, they changed their minds and 
 repented. There is nothing in Grecian History like the 
 history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I 
 do not know whether you will agree with me, but I think 
 the thirty tyrants were worse than Robespierre and the 
 Terrorists, for they were not afraid of each other and 
 they had the Spartans to back them up. They had been 
 brutalized by the long war. The early plays of Aristo- 
 phanes (The Achartiians, etc.) are gay and mirthful, but 
 we can trace in their increasing bitterness the hardening 
 of heart of the people. The last three — with female names 
 — are scarcely read now. In The Acharnians he glorified 
 his BijfMO'i, his parish, as Sophocles glorified his in the 
 Oedipus Coloneus. A man cared more about his hrjfio^ 
 than his ^vX-q or trihe. There were about one hundred 
 and sixty (Smith says one hundred and ninety) hrjixoi. 
 There were originally ten tribes, but two more were 
 added after the Macedonian Conquest, when the popula- 
 tion increased to 500,000 — which is still under that of an 
 English county. 
 
 Democracy is abolition of privilege, equality of citizens. 
 It is opposed to Oligarchy, not to Aristocracy, which 
 may perfectly co-exist with it. Pericles was picked out 
 for thirty years by the will of the people. ' Justum ac 
 tenacem, etc' This was quoted by John de Witt upon 
 
300 NOTES OF THE 
 
 the rack ; it is therefore sacred to all politicians. Grote 
 was the first man who explained constitutional morality. 
 Young men used to be sent to Edinburgh, to Dugald 
 Stewart, for wisdom ; he taught political economy and 
 regenerated it. 
 
 There is a contrast between Tlie Maccabees and the 
 last struggle of Greek heroism. The courage which is at 
 its last gasp is always tremendous. There was a legend 
 that the Athenians were seated in the theatre when the 
 news of Syracuse arrived. Strangers were present. They 
 had all lost sons, brothers, and friends in the defeat, but 
 sooner than betray their grief they sat the whole play 
 out, letting the fox gnaw them. If true, it beats the 
 Spartans. A grand thing — the national pride ! " 
 
 May 26--- June 16, 1886 
 Cnrro 
 
 [On May 26, E. S., M. C, and I began the Crito. 
 Mrs. Cory — 'Madam' as she was always called to 
 us — was giving some one a lesson in needlework in 
 the next room. We talked about the Athenian 
 maidens, the ipyaartvaL, the way they spent their 
 time weaving the TreVXo? of Athene for the festival 
 of IlavaO^jvata — some standing at their looms, some 
 telling stories to the rest.] 
 
 . . . "There was one of them — a -delightful girl — her 
 epitaph says : ' She was a delightful companion at xcool- 
 work, and always chattering.^ 
 
 The very beginning of the Crito — ' Is it not yet early ? ' 
 — is a stroke of art ; it shows us that Socrates was not 
 agitated, that he slept perfectly well. It was "opdpo^ 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 301 
 
 ^adv<i when Crito came to the prison, deep dawn — 
 literally deep hvilight — the beautiful time when the birds 
 are singing and the sky is not yet clear. Word- 
 mongering boys were misled by the classics to credit 
 the hen-birds with song, because in Latin they were 
 ■philomela and alanda, etc. I was prohibited by my sight 
 from being a close observer of Nature. 
 
 ' To-morrow, Socrates, you must end your life,"* says 
 Crito. That he needn't have said ; I think it shows a 
 little want of taste. The Italians, I believe, are famous 
 for avoiding any allusion to the ugly event. 
 
 Morning dreams have a certain horrible reality, because 
 we wake directly after. Cicero refers to this in his 
 Essay on Divination. 
 
 In the Crito the arrangement of sentences is not 
 merely grammatical, but musical. Lysias — Plato's con- 
 temporary — has none of that life, sparkle, rattle. Greek 
 prose generally is disappointing. Except Herodotus, no 
 prose author, after Plato, gives me much pleasure. 
 Demosthenes does now and then — but more from the 
 downright character of the man himself which shines 
 through. After him, Thucydides. 
 
 There ai'e numbers of Greek words beginning with crvv. 
 If you try to write English, you are haunted by woids 
 beginning with con. 
 
 The Greeks expect you to be on your mettle when 
 you read their books : op^avia is the story of an 
 orphan.^ One of the few discoveries I have made in 
 the course of my long and weary life is, that it does 
 not mean orphanhood. (pXvapCa — a kind of plausible 
 intellectual humbug, talked not by a stupid but by a 
 silly man. 
 
 ^ He seems to be alluding to Plat. CriL, 45 D. 
 
302 NOTES OF THE 
 
 The Greeks looked on Very middling ! (fieTpKOTara) 
 as a good expression ; we think it a bad one. . , . 
 
 Philosophers must have new words, but it* there were 
 not absolute anarchy in this country, they would submit 
 them to a scholar — keep out of the vile Greek words at 
 which the Greeks would have shuddered. Their language 
 is a perfect magazine. The Romans went to it just as 
 we do. In the days of Diocletian — about 310 — they 
 delighted in Greek terms. 
 
 Greeks and Romans were particularly fond of such 
 expressions as walking through a thing, when they meant 
 narration. Discourse is running to and fro. . . . 
 
 Going to the Olympian Games would be a deoypla, some 
 religion in it, but chiefly fun and curiosity. Horace tells 
 you about the Corybantes; all his cooked-up enthusiasm 
 does not move the reader in the least. The Athenians 
 would not often have such spectacles. They were too 
 licentious. Cybele's was a rowdy religion. Athene"'s was 
 the respectable one. 
 
 The Roman rulers had a horror of these things. People 
 who joined in such worship were severely punished. 
 There was an attempt to stop it in the second Punic 
 War. All this explains the persecution of the Christians, 
 not by a Nero but by such a man as Marcus Aurelius — 
 a conscientious man — a reader of Plato. They thought 
 Christianity would destroy family life and all the 
 disciplina Romana. Pliny — about eighty years after 
 Christ and seventy before Marcus .Aurelius — said the 
 Christians were good, orderly people, but their worship was 
 conducted at night, and this drew suspicion upon them. 
 
 'Why do you care so much about the world's opinion ? ' 
 Socrates says to Crito. ' You must weigh people, not 
 number them." 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 303 
 
 They do not talk as we do of honour and conscience. 
 Al8(i)<i is the word expressing the great Greek quality 
 which is the foundation of honour ; and the other thing 
 which restrains you (e.g. keeps you from throwing a 
 stone too hard lest it rebound on you) is Nemesis, 
 retnbution. They are not exactly moral ideas, but 
 sentiments of the mind, from which moral ideas arise. 
 Read Mallock's beautiful translation of the chorus from 
 the H'lppohjtus in The New Republic. 
 
 What we look upon as the most absolute law of all, 
 the Greeks looked upon as anarchy. Tyranny was to 
 them a human earthquake. This feeling was revived in 
 France. Amyofs Plutarch — Clement Marofs Psalms — 
 were the rage. Philippe de la Noue was that sort of 
 character. Cardinal de Retz said that our Montrose 
 was like one of Plutarch's heroes. Catherine of Russia 
 is absolute power tempered by assassination and 
 epigrams. 
 
 ' You deliberately stuck to Athens as a limpet 
 sticks to a rock,' Socrates says to himself. Ifs very 
 amusing that he should be chaffing himself here about 
 his stay-at-home ways — just at the end of his life, 
 too. There is a jolly Greek proverb: AeiXr] ivl rrrvd/jiii/c 
 ^€cS(o — ifs a poor thing to spare the dregs of a cash. 
 This is Tennyson's Uhjsses. That 's one of the poems that 
 do affect character — not like those of the confectionery 
 school. Socrates might have argued too that it would 
 be wretched for his disciples to see him dependent on 
 casual kindness and stripped of all his dignity. Dying, 
 he left them an honoured name. He could not have 
 escaped." 
 
304 NOTES OF THE 
 
 J^me \6—July 28 and October Q— December 22, 1886 
 
 Phaedo 
 
 " Phaedo says of those who were with Socrates on this 
 last day of his life, that they sometimes laughed, some- 
 times wept. 
 
 It seems strange that they should have laughed. 
 I^aughing at a man and laughing with him are very 
 different actions. The laugh of sympathy and enjoy- 
 ment is a moral thing; it saves men from going mad. 
 English men laugh more than Greek ; if two or three of 
 them are together and they do not, it 's a sure sign that 
 something is wrong. Women are not like this ; Homer 
 says of one that she laughed with tears in her eyes. A 
 hard laugh is very horrible. It was one of the things 
 that troubled me most at Eton, to hear the boys laughing 
 in that way. . . 
 
 Later on, the word ein'yeKdaa'i is used of Cebes. It 
 may mean smile. I'm inclined to think this gentleman 
 didn't laugh. I'd rather he didn't. A laugh would 
 have been rather a discord, unless it was a very low, 
 soft ripple. 
 
 Xanthippe beat her breast for sorrow. What made 
 people do that.^ They say a child will beat a chair 
 against which it has hurt itself. I don't know. I never 
 saw it. Animals don't do that kind of thing. I once 
 tried to get a dog out of a trap that had hurt it, and 
 it bit my hand. There is a new theory that burnt 
 moths do not suffer. It's more like the devil than 
 anything that I know — the botheration of a possessed 
 moth. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 305 
 
 It is amusing that Socrates should have had the child 
 brought to him in prison — and he doesn't seem to have 
 had much feeling for it. 
 
 He is one of those rare people who enjoy youth for its 
 own sake, its freshness and flexibility, not for the sake 
 of its flattery. We have nothing like it. Dr. Johnson 
 and S. T. Coleridge were poor copies. Bennet Langton 
 flattered, and none of the young men who came up to 
 Highgate talked much themselves. , . 
 
 iraaa ■^V)(r) a6dvaro<i — All soul is indestructible, says 
 Phaedrus. Plato would not have denied the immortality 
 of animals and plants. It is impossible to mark off' man 
 from the rest. There is no break anywhere, though there 
 may be, and are, gaps in the record . The power of motion, 
 as a test for distinguishing animals from vegetables, has 
 been proved useless. The sum of spirit is constant ; that 
 the sum of matter was constant had been proved before 
 Plato. Pre-existetice — lem-ning is recollection — it's the 
 prettiest fantastic notion, but he doesn't make much of 
 it. We say ' Self-evident,' where he says all this. When 
 a child says to you, ' Silly — to tell me that,' it is self- 
 evident to him that two and two make four; but it is 
 extremely difficult to sec how and when the knowledge 
 comes. I suppose no one ever watclied a child more 
 closely than I did ray little man for the first three 
 years of his life, yet I could not find out when these 
 things began to dawn upon him. Questioning must 
 be fair, of course — XIXaTroi/i/cw? not /S&)/io\o;i^&)9. 
 
 As Olympiodorus says. You must not try to catch your 
 victim out, like the interrogator of that unfortunate 
 man who, when asked whether he did not admit that 
 two and two make four, at length replied in desperation, 
 ' Not till I know what you are going to infer from it.' 
 u 
 
306 NOTES OF THE 
 
 Diagrams were originally things that were drawn 
 across on a table of sand. The inconvenience of it was 
 that you could not take the sand-table with you. ' I 
 will bring you this man from the dust and the little 
 stick,' says Cicero. A pidvere is not J'ro7n the dead, as 
 one would imagine, but from the sayid-tabk, and the 
 little stick was the stick with which diagrams were drawn. 
 This man is Archimedes, whose tomb Cicero discovered 
 and identified by means of the figures of a sphere and 
 cylinder^ on it — an antiquarian find which greatly 
 delighted him. Archimedes lived two hundred years 
 after Socrates, in the sunset of the Athenian glory. 
 
 Aristotle, the grandson of Socrates, by intellect, was 
 taught by Plato, and taught Alexander. Demosthenes 
 was the last Greek who enjoyed freedom. Rome over- 
 threw the brutes of Macedonians, but in the end she 
 had to overthrow Greece herself. Seventy years after 
 the death of Archimedes, Aemilius, the second Africanus, 
 (juoted Homer at the fall of Carthage. But Rome 
 treated Greece as a man treats a lady, and ' Conquered 
 Greece conquered Rome,' says Horace. . . . Antisthenes 
 was the original founder of the Stoics. "Whatever earnest- 
 ness there was in him survived in them. They influenced 
 the Roman character and law. Wonderful — so strong a 
 people receiving so much from those they overcame ! The 
 Greeks admired the Romans too. The Epicureans lay 
 alongside the Stoics. Wherever Calvinism has been, 
 there the country has strengtiieneq. The Greek Stoic 
 books have all perished, happily for us. Epicurus was 
 the favourite philosopher of gentlemen . . . Athens has 
 the full credit of being the mother of the Stoics. They 
 were the Church — the Franciscans, so to speak — the 
 ^ Cic. Tusc. 23 and 64. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WHJJAM CORY J^07 
 
 solid result of Platonisin. Their central notion was 
 Virtue, not the immortality of the Soul, etc. The "^roa 
 YloiKiXi} {painted Lo^-ghi — not Torch) was their place of 
 meeting, where they walked up and down talking, as we 
 did in the cloisters at Cambridge when it rained. Zeno 
 studied Socrates from the books which his father brought 
 him back, when he went to trade with Athens. Zeno 
 and Sphoerus connect Socrates with Cleomenes, 240 «.c. 
 else you can't account for the Spartan getting those high 
 notions. Cleomenes, and his brother, Agis, were some- 
 thing like the Gracchi at Rome, 120 b.c. Agis persuaded 
 the people to restore the Spartan monarchy, to throw off' 
 the authority of the Ephors. It was like the restoration 
 of the Mikado in Japan. He appealed to the good old 
 mythical laws of Lycurgus — which probably never existed 
 — tis, in after times, Englishmen appealed to the Witan 
 — to the law of Edward the Confessor — to the Parliament 
 of Simon de Montfort. Agis was a George — a Socialist — 
 a retrograding transcendentalist like the Emperor Julian 
 and the late King of Prussia (the brother of the present 
 man). Levelling up was his plan. All ardent reformers 
 arc on the edge of anarchy at any time. They wish the 
 world to be free — yet their plans could only be carried 
 out by our giving up our freedom. He was hanged with 
 his mother and his grandmother. (Women were great 
 at Sparta; they had immense property.) It reminds one 
 of the old saying : ' The blood of the martyrs is the seed 
 of the Church."' 
 
 Pythagoras and his disciples anticipated Christ; they 
 were persecuted after Pythagoras's death. Marcus 
 Aurelius (whose real name was Antoninus) was the 
 latest of the Stoics — ' the last Rose of summer.' He 
 gives thanks for his teachers — most of all for his mother, 
 
308 NOTES OF THE 
 
 who was a religious woman. His son, Commodus, was 
 a wretch, and the worst of it Avas, the poor father knew 
 it, and had the strength of mind to disinherit him. 
 But he thought a bad successor would be better than 
 a disputed succession. He had the honour of causing 
 the death of some of the sweetest people who ever lived 
 — the Lyons Martyrs, Blandina, etc. The link in the 
 catena connecting him with the Stoics is Epictetus, 
 whose book — dry reading now — influenced him more 
 than anything else. 
 
 The ' spiritual man '' of St. Paul is Plato's philosopher. 
 Unworldliness is philosophy. 
 
 The Greeks did not get beyond Panhellenic patriotism. 
 ' Our glory is that we have spent more money for all the 
 Greeks put together than any State ever spent for itself.' 
 What Demosthenes means by 'glory'' is the keeping off 
 of the barbarians on behalf of all the Greeks. Lucretius 
 says the right thing is to pity every one who is weak. 
 Thafs the outside of what you can get one hundred 
 years before Lucan. . . 
 
 Epicurus, too, was a good soul ; invented pleasure 
 gardens — not gin, nor brandy, nor anything of that kind. 
 
 Chillingworth, the Cudworth School, tried to revive 
 Platonism in their lives, but I won't undertake to say 
 they were of the slightest importance. Any one who 
 did so now would be a tepid prig. Darwin and Paraday 
 were the two philosophers of my day; Clerk Maxwell 
 was too odd. 
 
 Malesherbes, the advocate of Louis xvi., is described 
 as ' fearing nothing — hoping nothing — interested in 
 everything that is good.' Nor was he without im- 
 agination. After the trial, he found the king very 
 mournful. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM COllY 309 
 
 Thk Kixo. — "What am I to do for those poor clerks 
 who laboured so hard for me ? I have nothing where- 
 with to reward them." 
 
 Mai.eshkkbes. — " Emhrasscz-lcs ! " 
 
 If you want to find something that looks like an anti- 
 cipation of modern thought — Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, 
 etc. — read the Phacdrus. You can't talk of the soul and 
 the body as if they were flour and sugar ; all this is im- 
 possible to the modern mind. When a man like Mr. 
 Shorthouse brings out Platonism again, as if it could still 
 be taught, it 's an anachronism. Plato's soul is a sort of 
 person — a captive woman. 
 
 The Fathers of the Early Church delighted in such 
 passages of the Pliaedo as get near the Manichaean doc- 
 trine of the evil of matter — Manes ; asceticism ; the 
 people who didn't wash and stood on pillars. 
 
 Note the difference between Plato and Wordsworth in 
 the great Ode, One says that all our life we are recover- 
 ing the ideas we lost at our birth ; one, that all our life 
 we are losing them. 
 
 Faraday's forces would have delighted Plato ; they 
 seem to be something like his ideas. 
 
 Such is the power of rhetoric over the mind, and such 
 the charm of language, that men cannot free themselves 
 from metaphors. Doctors icill speak of ' Nature.' Cebes' 
 doctrine runs on all fours with the modern doctrine of 
 the conservation of forces. We sayjbrce where we used 
 to say matter. This is the raft on which we are floating 
 now ; it may upset, of course. 
 
 The other Dialogues are full of the eristic Sophists, 
 etc., with whom Socrates had contended all his life. One 
 charm of the Phaedo is, that there 's so little hostility in 
 it. He just refers to them, but very tenderly. 
 
310 NOTES OF THE 
 
 Except now and then in a dream, tliinking is not 
 possible for any length of time without words, ^ His 
 intellect is in a state of purity,' says Plato — and the 
 word means literally, tested by the sun. The Greeks had 
 a fantastic notion that the sun exposed everything, 
 which we should call a fallacy of observation. The sun 
 does not show the purity of a thing — it corrupts it. 
 Deianeira found out the poisoned shirt by exposing it to 
 the sun. True chemistry is only 110 years old. It 
 began with Cavendish, Priestley, Lavoisier, There is a 
 quarrel between France and England as to the first 
 discoverer of water. 
 
 yeveai^ does not represent our idea of creation as dis- 
 tinct from making:, indeed they seem to have had no 
 word for it. Theologians would tell you that no one 
 but Jehovah had a right to say / avi. 
 
 It is a pitiable thing to think that the old Athenians 
 had no glass to look through. Strange, that in Greek 
 books there should be no reference to the stars as an 
 image of stability ! To the Greeks they were merely 
 decors (Zwingli seems to have been the first person who 
 noticed them poetically. There is not much of it even 
 in Milton ; he decorates with the Pleiades.) They glorify 
 the al67]p, almost worship it. The drjp would be within 
 Ruskin's firmament roof. There was nothing beyond. 
 . . . Nonsense about vaults and ' heaven-pointing spires' ; 
 they point down. But I fancy the ancients really did 
 look upon the sky as a sublime dish-cover. At first ' the 
 harmony of the spheres' meant the distances between 
 them ; then, from a misunderstanding of the word ' har- 
 mony,' people thought they made a jolly noise as they 
 went round. 
 
 It is piteous to think that Socrates wasn't up to what 
 
TAIJLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 311 
 
 the meanest child knows now about the formation of the 
 leaf and the like. He had never seen through a micro- 
 scope. What he ought to have done is this. He should 
 have gone down on his knees and looked at a toadstool, 
 or gone to Egypt and watched a pumpkin all day long, 
 as he wouldn't have minded doing in his rigidity. I 
 have no patience with a man Avho ties such knots as he 
 does sometimes. Surely you may see one horse that is 
 bigger than another and say so, without going home and 
 making yourself unhappy about it. 
 
 Plato speaks about the mummies of Egypt. How did 
 he come to know about them ? Had he been talking to 
 some traveller ? He employs the same word that is used 
 for pickling ; embalm is certainly more handsome. He 
 wrote for clever people. Wonderful, how they ever made 
 out those old manuscripts — all written in one line. Iso- 
 crates says that Spartans may have a book, if they 
 can find anybody to read it to them ; that is the 
 Athenian Pharisee sneering at the Lacedaemonian publi- 
 can. Plato must have looked over and corrected his 
 manuscript. Strange, that the ancients should have 
 stopped just on the brink of the great discovery of print- 
 ing, when they were so fond of seals ! Perhaps they liked 
 their writing, or thought it a good occupation for their 
 slaves. We know exactly how books were published in 
 Rome. Some one read aloud, and 600 slaves wrote it 
 down. Martial's Epigrams were sold for sixpence a 
 copy. 
 
 . . . Each great author is a new literary sense. People 
 cannot conjecture what it is like, nor how big it is. 
 Every book should be a key to reading other books. 
 Phaedo has the perfection of urbanity of style, as Mat- 
 thew Arnold would say. Again, there is the Greek taste 
 
312 NOTES OF THE 
 
 for draggle-tail — Baxter-ing — ' the last words of Mr. 
 Baxter ! ' Plato never finishes the sentence where we 
 should. Perhaps it soothed the mind. Oddly enough, 
 those who do finish where we should — Lysias and Iso- 
 crates — are the very authors who bore us most in Greek. 
 
 The arrangement of words is beautiful. Even Tenny- 
 son, who knows more about it than any one, has to itali- 
 cise now and then, to give the right emphasis. . . . 
 
 It is by persisting in discovering antecedents that we 
 shall be happy in future life — if we continue reading 
 Plato. . . . 
 
 Infinite trouble have I taken, explaining the uses of 
 the word av to generations — now hoary-headed dotards, 
 most of them, who know no Greek at all. 
 
 Having learnt a little Greek, as you have now — about 
 twopence-halfpenny worth — you might read Chrysostom 
 and the New Testament. Any one who takes an interest 
 in going to church ought to." 
 
 [I think he was rather surprised to hear that we gene- 
 rally did read the New Testament every day. He said 
 he had tried Revelation with some boys ; found it impos- 
 sible — too barbarous. We were warned against popular 
 error — the Constantinople creed — vulgarly called the 
 Nicene.] 
 
 ''^ Simon means snub-nosed. I have sometimes thought 
 I could trace a dislike of his own name in St. Paul's 
 writings. Paulus Aemilius glorified it for the Romans. 
 
 KciOapfxa is a victim slain for a jzistijication. At the 
 QapyijXia, or feast of Apollo and Artemis, the most 
 worthless criminals were beaten down to the shore with 
 fig-sticks, to show their vileness, and thrown into the 
 sea. So, too, there were human sacrifices at Rome, though 
 Macaulav could not believe it. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 313 
 
 Generally, the Greeks had little idea of mental uncer- 
 tainty. There is a little hit of Homer— very unlike the 
 rest of him— about Castor and Tollux — that used to 
 haunt me as a boy. It describes the feeling. 
 
 ' This way and that dividing the swift mind,' as Tenny- 
 son savs. So young Neoptolenuis in the PMloctdes 
 hesitates whether to behave shabbily — as ITlysses bids 
 him — or no. 
 
 ' Take to the oars when you can't manage the sails ! ' 
 says Menander. We have lost him and we mourn for 
 Menander. He produced on the Romans the same effect 
 as France on the English in Charles ii.'s time. 
 
 Plato speaks of the nightingale, the swallow, the hoopoe, 
 as singing-birds. There were nightingales in a grove near 
 Athens. One would not naturally select the swallow for 
 its singing; most likely they noticed the way it twittered 
 before it left for tiie winter. All the Athenians loved it, 
 for it brought them news that the winter was over, and 
 they could change their bread and figs for fresh green 
 vegetables and have nettles for dinner. The boys used 
 to go from house to house singing the Swallow Song. 
 The hoopoe is the King of Birds in Aristophanes. 
 
 There is an aviary in the Theaetctus. The birds are 
 the ideas. You have them in the cage in your possession, 
 but you must put your hand in if you want to get 
 hold of them. 
 
 He says the brain and the spinal marrow form the 
 medium through which the soul acts on the body. 
 Odd, the way memory is roused in a dream by touch ! 
 
 In the Laxvs man is called ' the plaything of the gods.' 
 Rather painful — a thing for a bitter old man to say. 
 
 . . . The association of ideas was taught by Locke 
 (time of Charles ir.) — one of those people who invented 
 
314 NOTES OF THE 
 
 good sense — the second great teacher of the Whigs after 
 Hooker (time of Elizabeth). Locke was supposed to 
 have defeated Filmer, but Filmer's ideas have come up 
 again lately. John Morley in his Life of Romsemi is 
 nearer Filmer than Locke. 
 
 ... Be careful not to interchange words that appear 
 to be synonymous. One of the Christian Socialists, who 
 prided themselves on being loose thinkers, wrote a 
 pamphlet arguing that profit was wrong, because profit 
 and advantage were the same thing, and it was wrong 
 to take advantage of another ! I only saw Mansfield ^ 
 once, but I could never forget it. ' Happy were those 
 who knew him in this life — happy will those be who 
 know him in the next ! '' said Kingsley. 
 
 In the Meno, virtue is said to come deia fioipa, hy a 
 divine institution. I thought about it for many years. 
 Then I appealed to a philosopher, who confirmed me 
 when I said that virtue was a question of degree. The 
 philosophical Pharisee is bad. ' I thank God that I am 
 not as those other politicians are.' No feeling for the 
 poor dear people who give themselves up for the public 
 good ! I prefer Henry iv. to many Platos. There were 
 two attempts to assassinate him after his change of 
 religion. The first man only succeeded in wounding 
 him on the lips. His Protestant friend, d'Aubigny, 
 said to him, ' Sire, you have denied your God with your 
 lips, and He has smitten you on your lips. When you 
 deny Him with your heart, He will smite you through 
 your heart.' Ravaillac did. 
 
 Landor wrote a Dialogue between Diogenes and Plato. 
 I never liked Landor much. He expatriated himself; 
 no man should do that without the strongest reason. . . . 
 1 [Charles Blackford Mansfield (1819-1855).] 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 31. 5 
 
 apfivXi) is a strong, clumsy boot ; Kodopvo^, bii.skhi, 
 fitted eithei- foot. But the Greeks were not so particular 
 about their boots as they were about their helmets. 
 
 Attire is a word of excjuisite charm for me : 
 ' And ye shall walk in silk attire. 
 
 [The talk iiere took a fresh turn. Mr. ('ory digressed 
 into poetry. — En. ] 
 
 " You know Matthew Arnold's Scholar Gipsy? He'll 
 be remembered by that — and Thyrsis — when all the rest 
 are gone." 
 
 [Then before we knew where we were, he took us back 
 to the classics. — En.] 
 
 " The Romans had no good word for smell ; odorari 
 comes only once in Horace. 
 
 An iiria-Ta.T'r]'; regulates your actions, but a SecrTTor?;? 
 can buy and sell you. No Greek admitted a SecrTTOTT??, 
 no one indeed, except a slave. Happily we have kept 
 the meaning of that word. 
 
 i\7)6c, iXaOi, he kind, is used as a farewell to the gods 
 where '^alpe, be happy, or eppoiao, be thou strong! is used 
 to mortals. Our goodbye is God be with you! We can't 
 help looking ahead. Everything we say is prospective, 
 not retrospective. It "s one of the most curious laws of 
 our nature apparently. 
 
 In Greece, if you see the sun set, you always think of 
 ' Socrates. So you do, if you see a bit of green grass ; but 
 I did not ; nothing but green in the distance — and that 
 was blue. 
 
 March 'A—July, 1887 
 
 AKTIGOXK 
 
 [The lesson began with a discourse upon Iambics. — En.] 
 ..." The French wrote Alexandrines with no caesura 
 
316 NOTES OF THE 
 
 as far back as the fourteenth century. Look at Bertrand 
 du Guesclin. You should put things together which 
 run parallel, but are not acquainted with each other — 
 that 's the amusing thing to do in history. Books only 
 give you things which are connected. Petrarch lived 
 at the same time as Bertrand du Guesclin, yet there is 
 no sense of monotony in him. The founders of the 
 Royal Society were at work in CromwelTs life- 
 time. . . . 
 
 We are the children of the Romans and the grand- 
 children of the Greeks. Of course it is crossed in us by 
 the influence of the Hebrew. The Greek cadences give 
 us the keenest pleasure — almost more than our own ; 
 at least we agree more about them. I expect I should 
 not easily find any one in London who would agree with 
 me that the most beautiful cadences are to be found in 
 The Soldier s Di-eam. We enjoy our pi-ose more than 
 the Greek, grand though it be. Latin prose is beautiful, 
 but too cosmetic. 
 
 The Norman scribes spoilt our Anglo-Saxon spelling 
 for ever — gave us an inheritance of trouble. 
 
 . . . How widely different is the French taste from our 
 own ! Yet, in the days of Edward i. and Philip the 
 Fair, England and France were gee-ing like two horses 
 in an omnibus. They read the same books — trash that 
 nobody can get through now-a-days. Their lawyers were 
 strengthening the crown in the same way, delighting to 
 show that they were sharper than the- ecclesiastics. The 
 letters of Heloise, the nun, to Abelard are the only in- 
 teresting thing in the five hundred years from Boethius 
 to Petrarch. The only book of the Middle Ages which 
 is still read eagerly and spontaneously is Thomas a 
 Kempis. The works of Ubertino and others were 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 317 
 
 swallowed up by it — it was an Aaron"'s rod. I know that 
 many people find interest and pleasure in Dante. I do 
 not. I read him from a sense of duty, and feel virtuous 
 afterwards. I have lately dragged myself through 
 Paradise Lost — thought it was a good thing to do on 
 Sunday afternoons. Very fine, but very heavy. Felt 
 when I had done 
 
 What a good boy am I ! 
 
 There were plums, of course." 
 
 [And so back to the play. — Ed.] 
 
 What a fuss at the beginning of the W^atchman's 
 speech! All this means, ^ Enter Phylax out of breath.'' 
 The Greeks had no stage directions, so they were obliged 
 to put them all into the text, which led to every kind of 
 niaiseric. 
 
 i) KaTel')(e rov vskvv is the most monstrous enjauihonent 
 I ever saw. It makes me think that Sophocles was very 
 young at the time, and didn^t revise for a second edition. 
 There are many passages in Antigone that show a want 
 of art. Sophocles was not yet master of his tools. He 
 speaks of defxi^, decree, doom. In the old days there was 
 no distinction between legislation and Judicature. With 
 us, judges only make law in the sense of making the 
 minor premiss. The major premiss is — That no stealing 
 is lawful; the judge says, 'The pickpocket has stolen, 
 and therefore he must go to prison.' 
 
 Sophocles was chosen to lead the army on account of 
 Antigone. As a boy he took part in the thanksgivings 
 after Salamis. He acted Nausicaa — looked handsome — 
 threw the ball so charmingly ! This was in his own play. 
 Antigom is very rough — yet he had written many plays 
 before he won the prize with her. Euripides wrote an 
 
318 NOTES OF THE 
 
 Antigone-^ in his version she marries Haenion. Though 
 there is nothing perhaps so subhme as Aeschylus, 
 Sophocles was a far better playwright than either 
 Aeschylus or Euripides. Ladies should be interested in 
 Antigone and Ismene, because they are the forerunners 
 of Minna and Brenda — of Caroline, the most delightful 
 of all heroines, and Shirley. Antigone is an ange 
 farouche ; she never uses Vocatives nor speaks to Kreon 
 by a title, as Ismene does. Ismene is an amiable creature ; 
 she suddenly plucks up her spirit, and surprises the world 
 by running her neck into the halter. Nothing is more 
 famous — nothing has been more fascinating to young men 
 — than Antigone's answer to Kreon. It was so when I 
 was young. Uncommonly good writing just there — 
 pointed and brilliant to the last degree ! 
 
 Sophocles was a contemporary of Pericles. He saw 
 the Parthenon in its beauty — the Propylaea — the entrance. 
 There is a little Temple still which is perfect but for one 
 Caryatid, who is in the British Museum. When you 
 marry the Prime Minister you can have her sent back. 
 They have had to put up a sham one. I doubt if 
 they would wish for the Elgin Marbles themselves ; 
 the curse of Minerva should have lighted upon Lord 
 Elgin ; they could not restore them, they could only 
 put them into a Museum — but they ought to have 
 the Caryatid. These figures of women bearing burdens 
 were types of the women who sneaked and let the 
 Persians in. 
 
 The meeting of Jocasta and Oedipus is one of the most 
 powerful, vigorous things in any literature. In Theo- 
 critus, Tiresias is a sort of dear old country clergyman. 
 Jocasta hanged herself: it was etiquette for ladies to 
 do so. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM COKV .'U9 
 
 Honour was understood in the days of Cavaliers and 
 Koundheads. 
 
 ' I could not love tliee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more ! ' 
 
 What Lovelace sang of, Spencer, Lord Sunderland, 
 
 did;^ 
 
 [After this he led us, by what path I forget, to charity, 
 and its administration. — Ed,] 
 
 ..." To think we should have come to this — that a 
 Sister, writing to the papers, complains of ' the loveless 
 charity ' of workhouses ! That should be a contradiction 
 in terms. It was a pretty letter — but there may be a 
 seamy side. I saw a workhouse at Colchester, where 
 every one seemed to be perfectly happy. The only things 
 they wanted were soft woollen balls for the children : I 
 sent tiiem those. But they were the roc''s egg — there 
 was nothing else left to wish for. . . . 
 
 Kopo';, fuhiess of bread, brings on v^pt,<;, insolence, 
 which brings on drrj, infatuation, or ruin. All three 
 degrees were summed up in Napoleon. It was his i//3/3t? 
 which broke the heart of Louisa of Prussia, and made 
 him shoot the bookseller. Campbell, at a great dinner, 
 gave out the toast Napoleon to his literary brothers. 
 Great satisfaction. ' Gentlemen, he was our best friend, 
 he shot a publisher.'' Loud applause. The Russian 
 campaign was aTrj. . . . 
 
 It is one of the most curious things in language that 
 our Bravo ! should come direct from jSpa^eiov, a prize in 
 the games ; the Avord is found in the New Testament. 
 Another curious thing : Franz Thimm, the bookseller, 
 derives his name, not from the German (where th is rare) 
 but from the Greek 0v/m6^ which, he says, means power. 
 
320 NOTES OF THE 
 
 Putting one thing and another together, I think it 
 likely that I know as much Greek as Franz Thimm, but 
 I didn''t dispute the point with him. He says tiie word 
 is on Greek coins, which have been found along the Baltic 
 and are now in the British Museum ; the Greeks went 
 up there for amber. He has a contempt for French 
 and English, which is edifying. . . . 
 
 The beginning of the State is the family. Insurrection 
 is justified when the State begins to trample on it, so I 
 side with Antigone. As a young man, I used to side 
 with her altogether ; now I see there 's something to be 
 said for Kreon. I once suggested as a motto Hominum 
 opus pulchen'hnum civ'itas — l^dWicrrov iariv epyov av- 
 dpcoTTcov TToXt?. I was flattered by Herbert Paul, who 
 said — ' I always thought that was Cicero.'' . . . 
 
 AVhat an awful state of things in Matabeleland, South 
 Africa ! There the tyrant sits at home, making rain and 
 working magic. When he goes out to receive his people, 
 if he sees any one whom he suspects of witchcraft, he hurls 
 his asseghai at him, and the others just take up the 
 body and bury it. He has a sort of Janissary guard 
 called Impis, recruited from the children of hostile tribes, 
 when he has killed their fathers and taken captive their 
 mothers. I hope we shall punch his head some day. 
 
 In the chorus on Man, Sophocles inverts the order, 
 and the hunter comes before the agriculturist. No 
 matter ! He was not bound to give a history of the 
 human race. There is an excellent sketch of such a 
 history in Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, written for the 
 cripple boy, poor little Lockhart, who never lived to 
 profit by it. It is taken from Adam Smith, who is 
 seldom read now. Curious that one should owe to Scott 
 one's first glimpse into these things ! He had that rare 
 
TABLE TAIJv OF WILLIAM CORY fiSl 
 
 gift of explaining- his own knowledge to others. Thou- 
 sands of people have knowledge, hut cannot communicate 
 it. I was delighted — so was Herbert Paul — with a quota- 
 tion at the end of a light article on Novels, in Tlic 
 Century : ' Ulysses is gone away, and he will never come 
 back again.' Scott was just like the Wanderer whose 
 wonderful stories kept the people of Ithaca sitting up all 
 night. 
 
 It is difficult to give the whole force of man in his 
 manhood and valour. . . . 
 
 Honey, wine, and milk formed the triple libation. 
 Electra cut off her hair as well. Some years ago it was 
 discovered that there was actually a pipe from the house 
 into the grave, and that offerings were poured down it. 
 
 Their great idea was to keep up the sacrifices. Of 
 course, Sophocles and Euripides took cognisance of this, 
 as Matthew Arnold takes cognisance of the Church of 
 England. It was part of the normal state of things ; but 
 Euripides, at any rate, did not believe in it. Aristo- 
 phanes attacked him for undermining faith. The three 
 libations are still customary. 
 
 We hear of bowls headed or crowned with wine ; but 
 I \w afraid the Greeks were not acquainted with anything 
 so good as champagne or pale ale. 
 
 Horace, when he's going out for a lark, says, 'Lm 
 going to revel like the Edonians.'' They were the first 
 to enjoy the grape. They liked getting drunk. 
 
 Stringed instruments were holy, wind instruments 
 rowdy. 
 
 The Greeks got their food from Thrace. Thev couldn't 
 live without it, any more than we could live without 
 America. Agricultural countries are seldom or never 
 extirpated. The Greeks pounced on certain spots (By- 
 
322 NOTES OF THE 
 
 zantium, for instance) and occupied them, just as we 
 occupy Sierra Leone ; the Genoese went all over those 
 regions afterwards. It would be a great country, if it 
 were not for the stupid Turks. Turks had not been 
 heard of in the days of Alfred. They are Mongols. We 
 know them first in Turkestan. They dared not cross the 
 Hellespont ; they were kept back like witches, hundreds 
 of years, by the running water. They didn't take Con- 
 stantinople till after the founding of Eton. . . . 
 
 It is assumed that, if the body remain unburied, the 
 dogs will eat it. Very little about tame dogs in Greek 
 — nothing in the Bible. The dogs in Constantinople 
 ate a sailor who fell down drunk in the streets one night. 
 Everybody is obliged by law to take a lantern to protect 
 himself against them. 
 
 Traitormis gams. Money-making is the most innocent 
 of occupations. Most unfairly, KepSo<;, gain, the most 
 creditable thing in the world, comes to mean in the 
 Tplured gahifid p7-ocesses, and hence cheating'. . . . 
 
 They say Plato spent a long time over the first ten 
 words of The Republic. 
 
 I, 523, ovTOi avve-y^Oeiv^ dX\a av/j,(j)iXe2i' €(j)vv. Myers 
 translates it, 
 
 ' Love, and not liatred, I was born to share.' 
 
 I never could do it so well as that. 
 
 II. 354, 5, Kal (f)66<y/ia koI avefxoev (^povrjixa koX darv- 
 vofiov; 6pyd<i. Uttered sounds — flakes of thought — ' strains 
 that sway the town,' I rendered it in my translation. 
 It is a crescendo:, utterance — soaring thought — power 
 of expression for others. Tennyson would be the very 
 man to put it into victorious English. Tempered strains ; 
 I delight in the word temper. It is a great blessing to 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 323 
 
 the British, that healthy pow tr of heino- aiij;rv in season. 
 Goschen has it. Few Frenchmen have. 
 
 I am not an Englishman before the days of Eliza- 
 beth. I'm a Frenchman or a Scot. I don't care about 
 the battle of Agincourt except in Shakespeare. The 
 making of Shakespeare's mind was like the making of 
 the world. . . . 
 
 Hallam says tiiere was no interesting literature between 
 Plutarch and Heloise. . . . 
 
 Enter Antigone. Here is the very girl — hkr ive cmighi. 
 Thafs touching. How terrible is the pathos of Esme- 
 ralda in Notre Dame de Paris ! I cannot read it in some 
 moods. If they go on much further, we shall tear our- 
 selves to bits with grief. I can't bear to read about 
 Humphrey in Mlmnderstood. . . . 
 
 [Here the bird in the window .sang so loud tliat he 
 had to be taken down. Mr. Cory could not sec well, 
 frightened him rather, and was full of pity for him, in 
 the midst of all the grammar. 'Poor little fellow — but 
 did you ever see a Future Optative before .^'] . . . 
 
 June 8. 
 
 [We did not get through as much as usual, because 
 we went for an hour and a half's walk instead. Saw the 
 Pond — the W^est Heath — Amy Laud (so called from an 
 affectionate descent of one of Andrew's lady schoolfellows 
 
 upon him), Alice Heath (after pretty Alice P ) — 
 
 Hawthornden, in honour of the poets — W^alter's Lawn — 
 Constable's tree — W^ild Wood (where Chatham was con- 
 fined) — Spaniard's Road — Jack Straw's Castle, abode of a 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, socialists, pantisocratists, who lived 
 without any servants — the part where Richardson lived 
 
324 NOTES OF THE 
 
 — Keats'" Walk (he fought a butcher boy and conquei-ed 
 him) — houses of people who made their money by soap, 
 blue, stationery — a Church (Evangelical). 'The Gospel, 
 as they understand it, forbids them to have good music, 
 so we go elsewhere. They 've built a good place for 
 entertainments, which shows that there is still public 
 spirit left.' • • .] 
 
 At one point there was talk of invasion. 
 
 Here I flood the Russians at Harper's Ferry. That 's 
 a secret that has been told me. The people at the Staff 
 College know it. Here, I tell the natives of Hampstead, 
 we must make a last stand. 
 
 [We spoke about his life in College at Eton. ' No meat 
 — mutton, at least — for three months. We used to fire 
 batteries. I was sent to get ammunition, being looked 
 upon as the steady man who had cash ; I could not have 
 been of much use in any other way. ^Ve killed a frog 
 once.' 
 
 He laughed very much, when he found that M liad 
 
 stolen a bit of broom, in spite of all his warnings about 
 the penalty of forty shillings ; but said he wouldn't tell. 
 Only just caught our train. I had no tea, because he 
 was talking about heraldic lilies, and foi'got to pour it 
 out till too late. . . . The American War came on at 
 tea-time.] 
 
 " We behaved as badly as possible — rejoiced in the 
 dissension — helped the South whenever we could. One 
 of my pupils remonstrated with me after I had paid my 
 subscription to the Society for the Emancipation of 
 Slaves — said it was the first time in his life that he had 
 felt ashamed of me. At first the South had it all her 
 own way. Then, when I was travelling in Scotland, a 
 man came up to me and said, ' Vicksburg is taken. I'm 
 
TABLK TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 3^5 
 
 so glad.' ^Vc were as pleased to see eaeli other as two 
 Englishmen meeting in a strange country. Grant and 
 Lee came together when it was all over — Lee beautifully 
 got up — Grant poor and shabby ; but instead of going 
 at once to business, they sat down and began talking 
 about the old days when they had both served together 
 in Mexico. 
 
 It was one of Gladstone's good deeds, that he wiped 
 t)iit the memory of our wickedness by settling the Ala- 
 bama Question, and paying the three millions. He 
 examined me for the Newcastle ; ])eautiful eye — sweet 
 voice — modest manner — asked me what .sacrdfero meant 
 — seemed pleased when I answered right. Yet, even a 
 few years later, he began to show signs of the cloven 
 hoof. I was in the House one night when his young 
 Secretary, Stafford Northcote, made a cold, timid, care- 
 ful speech on Education. It was the first speech of his 
 that made any mark. ... It would have been kind in 
 Gladstone, w^ho spoke directly afterwards, to take some 
 little notice of it ; but he never made the slightest 
 allusion. I heard that Stafford Nortlicote was dee])ly 
 disappointed. 
 
 I have parted with every book I ever had from Glad- 
 stone. One I sold to go down to Devonshire to vote 
 against him. The bookseller said he had given too much 
 — he couldn't get as much as thirty shillings for it again 
 — but when I told him what use I had put the money to, 
 he said it was all right and he didn't mind. 
 
 Jime 15. 
 [The conversation turned on a poem of Swinburne's 
 and an article on Newnham in The Nineteenth Century.'] 
 " I've read Swinburne's Jubilee Ode three times. Too 
 
326 NOTES OF THE 
 
 long — but the passage about the seals beautiful. In the 
 chorus on the power of Love 
 
 vLKa S' ivap<y}}<i ^\€(f)dpcov ifi€po<; evXeKTpov 
 vvfKpa^;, Twv fieyaXwv irdpehpo^ iv dp-)(al'i 
 0ea-/xa)V' d^a-)(0'i 'yap epbiral^eL deo^ 'Ac^poStVa. 
 vvv K yBt} 'yo) KavTO<; deafiMV 
 e^o) (j)epo/jiae, raS' opwi' . . . 
 
 it' s very interesting that Sophocles should pass away 
 from the luxury of a bit of Swinburne to that solid 
 analogy. 
 
 ' When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought "" shows 
 that Shakespeare was brought up as a lawyer — but then 
 it 's a stroke of genius."" 
 
 June 29. 
 
 [This was just after the Jubilee. On the day Mr. 
 Cory had stayed at home aiid read Beanchamp^' Career. 
 —Ed.] 
 
 " George Meredith is the greatest genius we have, next 
 to Tennyson. 
 
 [He meant to escort Andrew to the Naval Review. . . . 
 He wrote us out a long list of the lives of different Naval 
 commanders, and searched the house for ever so long for 
 a copy of Peter Simple for me to take home and read.] 
 
 " Your education has been neglected. You ought to 
 have read it long ago. I lived on Parry as a boy." 
 
 [M went liome with The Life of Commodore Good- 
 enough. 
 
 Odd tasks were recommended from time to time.] 
 
 " If you wish for celebrity, you had better re-edit the 
 arpco/xaTeU of Clement of Alexandria." 
 
 [Another day it was the Life of Ulrich von Hutten.] 
 
 " If I were a girl, I wouldn't marry any one who was not 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY mi 
 
 a volunteer — unless he were prevented by shortness of 
 sight, or something of that kind. It's the only Ihini; 
 that saves us from conscription." 
 
 November 17 1887—1888 
 
 I'HILOCTKTKS 
 
 The Autliorised Version goes on translating <^dp^foi\, till 
 it becomes perfectly nauseous. In the case of the Epistle 
 to the Romans, it makes the argument hopelessly confus- 
 ing. I recommend total abstinence. 
 
 [7ap, for^ was indeed as a red rag to a bull, when we 
 were having our lesson. So was aXX«, Imt ; IChXa, was 
 not hut — it was Noi it was Do'. — it was a gesture 
 — it was a shake of the head.^ Kai was So. KaXcof 
 \iy€t<; was Ver^ good ! parfaitcment in ' waiter and 
 chambermaid French."' ] 
 
 ..." The Imperfect gives itself no airs, but humbly 
 follows the Present, For the root, look to the second or 
 Strong Aorist. Tiiere's a wonderful bit of cursing with 
 an Optative in AjcLv. There was an old scholar, George 
 Kennedy. A friend Faber, a very poetical man, who 
 afterwards turned R.C., came into the room once, and, to 
 his surprise and joy, found him reading the New Testa- 
 ment, which was unusual. But all the old fellow said 
 was, ' Rum fellow, Luke ! uses av with the Future 
 Optative ! ' 
 
 [Here a verbal disquisition brought him to the 
 Parable of the Unjust Steward. — Ed.] 
 
 " The story is ironical. I cannot understand it other- 
 wise. The unjust steward had feathered his nest, and 
 ^ A Greek could do nothing williout gesticulation. 
 
328 NOTES OF THE 
 
 went to live comfortably with the farmers. It\s the 
 lowest form of Christianity. . . . 
 
 All Presents have an inceptive power. / teach you 
 means / try to teach you. ' The half of my goods I give 
 to the poor ■■ — I give means / "will give. That "'s the most 
 curious discovery I ever made. 
 
 ... In some parts of England loherehy is used for 
 xchereaa. 
 
 ' I know nothing by myself is against myself.'' 
 
 . . . One is tempted to use the Psalms to bring out the 
 strength of the Greek chorus. I wish I knew the 
 Penitential Psalms by heart. I shouldn't be at a loss for 
 language. . . . 
 
 The Homeric alBeta-d' aWi'jXov^; is the very principle of 
 military cohesion. 
 
 I used to think that Philoctetes, clearing away the 
 weeds before the shrine, might be an allegory — that he 
 was a reformer — but I have quite given that up. 
 Neoptolemus leaves us in doubt as to his crime, and I 
 believe Sophocles thought it more artistic. Some one 
 told the head of your family there was no moral in The 
 Ancient Mariner, and he said there was too much : it 
 should have been like one of The Arabian Nights. 
 Great things do happen from hidden causes. Virgil tells 
 of people who came from a town founded by Philoctetes.'"' 
 
 [I said I did not like the tone of Neoptolemus, when 
 he said that ' men must bear the lot given them by the 
 gods,' and it was ' not right that anybody should forgive 
 or pity those who, like Philoctetes, had voluntarily 
 incurred misfortune.'] 
 
 I think Sophocles means you to feel, at this point, that 
 Neoptolemus is becoming an authority : he shows the 
 development of the character. I must say I like books 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 329 
 
 which set young men above old. They are so much 
 better. Goodness begins to decHne after 25 — cleverness 
 after 30 ; at 40 oi- 50 the clouds of vanity gather. It 
 came to me while I was reading — I suggest it with 
 dittidcnce — that Neoptolemus is like Bedivere. 
 
 Ther^ ?s is a mixture of the snob, the bore, and the 
 cad. Llysses was more sure than the other man, 
 Diomed, that he would get the bow of Philoctetes. 
 They are hke Paul and Barnabas ; one was the speaker, 
 one the active man. I don't suppose Barnabas talked 
 much — he looked majestic. 
 
 1. 1420, dddvajov dpeTi-jv ea-)(ov, 6i<i irdpeaO^ opiiv. 
 
 ' / rcon hnmojial virtue^ r/.y ijon may sec, says Hercules, 
 much finer than glory. It makes one think he was 
 transfigured. His poor body had been spoilt when he 
 entered Heaven. Hebe came with the Ann-ita cup of 
 immortality. 
 
 1. 503, iraOetv jjukv ev, iradelp Sis Odrepa. 
 
 Odrepa, the other things, is a euphemism for KUKd, 
 evil things — as my friend Herbert said, when he wrote 
 home, a little before his death, ' If you don't send the 
 money, they will do the other thing,'' meaning of course 
 that the brigands, who had taken him prisoner, would 
 kill him. There were three friends. The fourth was a 
 good fellow too — a foreigner, I think. When the 
 brigands settled to let one of them go, to arrange about 
 ransom, knowing of course that he would never come 
 back again, the lot fell to Vyner; but he made Lord 
 Muncaster go in his place, because he was a married 
 man. He died in his stead. They have a memorial of 
 him at Oxford. ' To the dear memory of Reginald 
 Vyner,' it begins. No man was more devoted to me 
 than Herbert. 
 
330 NOTES OF THE 
 
 [Of the difficult passage 836 — 838 every one ' fiad a 
 dream, had an interpretation,"' and each of us was very 
 much pleased with lier own. Mr. Cory heard us out, 
 and then said quietly, 'I hope you Ve all contented. I 
 give it up. . . / 
 
 We talked about words such as ixoXwv put in only 
 to fill up the line. I said there was a good deal of that 
 sort of thing in Tennyson's Harold.^ 
 
 "There may be. I should be very proud, if I had 
 written Harold. There ""s a great deal too much of it in 
 Shakespeare ; he says everything. Lc secret d^emmyei\ 
 c'est tout dire. Sophocles beats him in self-restraint ; 
 thafs his elpoovela. But Shakespeare wrote for the 
 stage, and you have to sacrifice a good deal to explain 
 everything to an audience. I approve of Henrij IV. — 
 not of Lear. Lear's such a fool in the beginning, I 
 can't take any interest in him. I delight in the audience 
 at a French play in London. De Musset's Caprice and 
 his Caprices de Mai-iannc are wonderful ; Herbert Paul 
 agrees with me. The fellow who acted Fritz in La 
 Grande Duchesse made me cry. I suppose I was the 
 only person in the house who did." 
 
 His last words to M were these : 
 
 [' Tell your father my English is getting better since 
 I gave up associating only with the brutal sex, and took 
 to ladies.'] 
 
 [After a later lesson. — Ed.] . . . 
 
 [He had been unhappy about politics.J 
 
 Ichabod is written on my front. If they carry Home 
 Rule, I shall go and live at Zurich." . . . 
 
 [Sometimes we discussed the novel of the day.] 
 
 " Plato should have written novels like George Eliot's. 
 I am delighted with Beggars All. I think it better. 
 
TABLE TALK OF VVILLLAM COin :}31 
 
 for a Hist work, than the Saiu;s uf Ckr'ual Life. The 
 writer is not an English girl ; I found that out for 
 myself. 
 
 [In a Ht of enthusiasm for Tolstoy, we presented 
 Mr. Cory with La Guerre et la Paix, but he was not 
 enthusiastic — except about the story of the peasant and 
 his little dog. Andre, he said, is a stately person.] 
 
 ..." I am myself a Dumasser of the first class. Have 
 you ever read Ascanio ? I propose to found a Dumas 
 Society for printing thirty of his best works properly, 
 without pages left out and wrong spelling. I cannot 
 read L.es deux Diane. Now^ and then he is horribly 
 bloodthirsty; there's one unforgivable passage. I can- 
 not understand Stevenson's preference for Ri-agehmne. 
 If ever we meet, I should like to have it out with him. 
 Poor dear fellow ! he knows no Greek. How I should 
 like to teach him ! — I recommend the Henry iv. series. 
 Henry iv. is like David — plenty of faults, but you can't 
 help loving them. You see that every one that came 
 near them did. Dumas'" Memohs are wonderful stuff'." 
 
 ' I should like to read them." 
 
 ["There's no reason you should."'] 
 
 [Some one spoke of the glorious sunsets there were 
 ci few years ago.] 
 
 Thirty-seven thousand people destroyed ! Rather n 
 high price to pay for a firework. It's a nightmare to 
 think that some day the earth will be too full for the 
 number of people on it. . . . 
 
 The first poets I cared about were Campbell {not 
 Scott) — Byron — Euripides." 
 
 [It grieved us that he cared not at all about Browning, 
 though — without knowing the author — he had copied 
 into his manuscript book — 
 
332 NOTES OF THE 
 
 ' Oil, the little more, aud how much it i.«, 
 And the little less, and what worlds away I ' ' 
 
 For Swinburne's Bothiocll he professed great admira- 
 tion.] 
 
 " The King\s Tragedy, The White Ship, are natural 
 and wholesome. My audacious friend, Furnivall, took 
 mc to see him in ''59. Rossetti was in his prime 
 then. . . . Thafs a very sad Sonnet in Christina's last 
 volume; I suppose she alludes to him.'" 
 
 [He was very much astonished to find that I had never 
 read the Vita Nuova. Even more astonished was Mr. 
 ('ory to find tliat I had never read Bacon''s Wisdom qf 
 the Ancients. But this was nothing to liis bewilderment 
 when T told him that I knew nothing whatever about 
 the battle of Fontenoy. He could not speak for some 
 minutes ; then he said : 
 
 ' It was a great shock to me — your saying that.'J 
 
 Nov. 28, 1889. 
 
 It was freezing cold at Hampstead — a wind that 
 pierced like daggers ; but, though it took my breath 
 away, so that once or twice I could hardly get on up the 
 hill, the pain in my hands called up such a keen, live 
 spirit of resistance, that I almost enjoyed it. Mr. Cory 
 made me sit in an arm-chair on one side of the fire — he sat 
 in an arm-chair on the other — and we read The Cyclops 
 in Love. The lilies and poppies were all the lovelier 
 for the snow on the ground. We talked about Evelina. 
 
 ' Rather milk and water morality, isn''t it ? My grand- 
 mother liked it — but there I think my grandmother was 
 hopelessly mistaken. She was young when it came out; 
 
 ' This particular verse seems to be a favourite with the classically 
 minded. I have heard Tennyson quote it — and Mr. Bridges. 
 
TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 333 
 
 that makes all the difference. ... I U)ve Cowpei' . . . 
 I was brought up on him ; my mother used to make me 
 learn him by heart . . . My mother and my grand- 
 mother loved him, I never heard of Milton. I read all 
 the Edinburghs and Quarterlies through.' 
 
 Dec. 5. 
 
 I went into the sitting-room to warm myself at once 
 this morning. . . . 
 
 He told me curious things about the books they liked 
 in the Middle Ages. 
 
 'They liked their history and theology at second hand 
 — in a portable shape — in sandwiches, so to speak. 
 They didn't read Livy; they read Valerius Maximus. 
 Hradshaw told me, he had never seen the catalogue of 
 a Mediaeval Librarv that had not got N'alerius Maximus 
 in it.' 
 
 I translated eap 6po)cra Nvxei'a, Nucheia looking- at the 
 Spring'. 
 
 ' No! it means w'lth the spring hi her ei/es. It 's the most 
 beautiful thing you can say of any one. I very seldom 
 see eyes. I did last night. I saw Spring in the eyes of 
 my wife — the eldest of my four daughters, as she is gener- 
 ally supposed to be ! ^ We went to a penny concert.' 
 
 ^f(lrch 14, 1890. 
 I had not gone to Hampstead for some time, and on 
 the last occasion we had fought, because I prefer Shelley 
 to Keats. 
 
 ' An ounce of Coleridge is worth a pound of Shelley. 
 Keats haunts one.' 
 
 ' The three Miss Grahams were there. 
 
384 NOTES OF THE 
 
 'Shelley haunts me,' I said. 
 
 ' What haunts you ? ' 
 
 I mentioned something on the spur of the moment — I 
 forget what. 
 
 ' Oh, the short things ? ' 
 
 ' No,' I said boldly, ' hits of Prometheus haunt me 
 too — 
 
 " My soul is an enchanted boat" 
 
 for instance.' 
 
 'The Shelley Society have asked me to write a paper 
 on Shelley's scholarship. I shall expose their idol. I am 
 like Balaam the other way round ; they call me in to 
 bless, and I shall curse. People should read Johnson's 
 lives of the Poets ; that 's the antidote for a love of 
 Shelley.' 
 
 When I went back yesterday, he told me tiiat he had 
 finished his paper, and had given it to Mr. Furnivall, the 
 night before. Mr. Furnivall said it was more sympathetic 
 than he expected, and asked leave to send it to a lady 
 at Meran (as I understood) who edits a magazine and 
 is always asking him for copy. 
 
 * She doesn't pay of course. I told him, if he wanted it 
 for a London magazine, I should have to dress it up a 
 little. I took great pains with it. Shelley was not a 
 scholar at all. He was a schoolboy broken off. He 
 shows it by his choice of the St/mpo.mn/i, which is easy — 
 for Plato — and then he makes a mistake a schoolboy 
 would not have made about the meaning of irore. He 
 picks up things here and there. ' Weave the song ' was 
 an expression he got from the use of vcpaivo). Out of 
 deference to you I looked out 
 
 My soul is an enchanted boat. 
 
TAin^E TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 335 
 
 ' Do you remeinher the second line ? ' 
 
 'No; 
 
 My soul is an enchanted boat, 
 AVhich, like a sleeping swav. 
 
 ' I can't stand a thini; like that/ 
 
 June 5. 
 
 'Was that you wiping your shoes?' said Mr. Cory. 
 ' Very virtuous of you ! I thought it was an attack on 
 the house.' 
 
 He laughed merrily when he found that I had 
 brought him a Hermes, .sent by Mrs. Wayte, and a 
 box of ginger. 
 
 ' Hm ! there's some intellect in that face. J^ooks as 
 if he were going to beat the child. Very much obliged 
 for the ginger; it will be acceptable when Andrew 
 comes home. My mother used to eat ginger in church.' 
 
 iiept. 17. 
 
 The Sage sent me a message: 'Tell Miss Coleridge 
 that I've been reading /)a7ti^, and that I think he's a 
 cobbler beside Virgil.' 
 
 I felt son-y when he moved from Canon Place to the 
 little house in Pilgrim Lane. The drawing-room, though 
 very pretty, was darker. We were not so gay as we 
 were up on the hill. I missed the familiar pictures on 
 their own walls — the little maid going to bathe for the 
 first time and hesitatnig, half frightened, half resolute, 
 on the steps of the machine — Iris — Mary of Orange as 
 a child — Diana — the water colour of a girl, her hat 
 thrown ofi', sitting pensively before an organ. 
 
 May 2C, 1892. 
 
 A post-card came ; ' I am too ill for " The Birds." Uad 
 Job.' 
 
336 TABLE TALK OF WILLIAM CORY 
 
 Last week we were reading with him as usual, and 
 hurried off' to catch the train. I wish now we had 
 missed it. He promised to sliow me some great passage 
 in Thierry (I think it was). I thought I would remind 
 him of it next time. 
 
 June 1. 
 
 I saw him for the last time. He spoke to me about 
 his own people. 
 
 ' My father was ten years older than my mother. He 
 let her fall out of his arms when she was a baby. Pick- 
 ing her up, he said, ' Never mind, darling ! I '11 marry 
 you some dav."" And he kept his word, returning to her 
 after ten years of India. In the meantime she had been 
 wooed by a lover who used to ride over to present her 
 with the quartos of Scott's poems, as they came out.' 
 
 He was deeply interested in • a new History of Persia, 
 and in Cadwallader Bates' History of Northumberland, 
 and made Mrs. Cory show them both to me. His face 
 was altered. He looked ill. 
 
 ' He is much better to-day,' Mrs. Cory said, when I 
 went in. 
 
 ' No,' he said quickly, ' I don't expect to be much 
 better.' 
 
 He died at 1 a.m. on the 12th June. 
 
MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 Thk hour had conie ; you could no longer stay, 
 Swiftest and brightest Spirit of our day ! 
 Een now we saw and touched thee; vanished quite, 
 A cloud received thee, hidden from our sight. 
 
 Here, in this garden, you were oft-times seen. 
 These forest paths, and in these meadows green ; 
 You loved the beauty of our cheerful Kent, 
 Yet the grey North land gave your soul content. 
 That dim, pathetic, soft-illumined sky. 
 The sun vague-gleaming through uncertainty, 
 No tone too definite, no outhne clear. 
 All symbolised your spirit-atmosphere ; 
 And none, like you, with magical command, 
 Evoked the Genius of Northumberland, 
 Save one keen poet, ' into buoyant order 
 Reining his rhymes,' along the northern border. 
 
 The London streets, their colour and their throng. 
 
 Did to the mirror of your mind belong. 
 
 And there you learnt, as in no other place, 
 
 The woes, joys, passions, of your suffering race, 
 
 And to your poorer sisters gave a part 
 
 Of your wide knowledge and your generous heart. 
 
 Light was your touch upon the shadowy earth ; 
 You loved it well, yet knew it little worth ; 
 Each mood vou luved that changing nature brings, 
 And yet, and yet — you loved diviner things. 
 Y 
 
338 MARY COLERIDGE 
 
 IMany there be who may not live again. 
 
 Because they lose their souls and live in vain ; 
 
 But those earn life more rich than that of men 
 
 Who their one talent multiply to ten ; 
 
 And, if the Christian teaching we receive, 
 
 We '11 you in fair companionship believe, 
 
 Where radiant Angels, strong, and clear, and free. 
 
 As their fit compeer gladly welcome thee ; 
 
 Those brighter saints, who, by the finest change. 
 
 Transmuted passion to a nobler range. 
 
 In whom, on earth, ripened the heavenly seed, 
 
 Because, contemplative, they loved indeed. 
 
 And, above all, the Mai-y, who adored 
 
 That wondrous guest, her brother's friend, the Lord ; 
 
 Heart near akin to thine, she chose to give 
 
 Her very life, not only means to live. 
 
 True as the steel that to the magnet flies. 
 Tender as sunset light in August skies, 
 Fine as the edge of a Damascus blade. 
 Strong as a man, and gentle as a maid, 
 So was your verse, and, Mary, so were you. 
 Farewell, dear Spirit, tender, strong, and true ! 
 If, in a lovelier world, we meet again. 
 Joyful will be the awaking out of pain. 
 
 BERNAKU HOLLAND. 
 
 Primed by T. and A. Constable, Printeib to His Ma 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 ^^^ STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 w,l/be assessed for failure to r^urn 
 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 LD21-100m-12,'43 (8796s) 
 

 
 ««-., 
 * 
 
 
 
 ;.t '';^' 
 
 vr K"-:'