UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
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 REVIEWS AND ESSAYS IN 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS 
 
 LONDON : YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN 
 NEW YORK : 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND 
 BOMBAY : 53, ESPLANADE ROAD 
 CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
 
 REVIEWS AND ESSAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. DUNCAN C. TOVEY, M.A. 
 
 Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge ; editor of " Gray and his 
 Friends " ; " Thomson's Poetical Works," etc. 
 
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 LONDON 
 
 
 GEORGE 
 
 BELL AND 
 
 1897 
 
 SONS
 
 chiswicjc press: — CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 i * * . ». J . * . .TOOK5 COURT, CHANC5Ry,UA»lE',«HftJpON,. 
 
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 To M. T. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 In dedicating this volume to you, I presume upon 
 the kindness which has placed at my disposal the 
 sketch (signed with your respected initials) with which 
 it concludes. 
 
 That sketch, Madam, is like the solitary Tangerine 
 orange (floating at the top in a little lake of syrup) 
 which the lamented Corney Grain was wont to recom- 
 mend to the young hostess as a simple but sure note 
 of distinction for the otherwise conventional trifle. 
 
 The critic, in his paltering fashion, dissects and dis- 
 sects, destroying the vital principle which he is en- 
 deavouring to discover — and then you come, and 
 presto ! the victims revive, quickened by a breath so 
 kindred that they mistake it for their own. 
 
 That through you I am enabled " to adorn my page," 
 great boon as it is, is among the least of those many 
 boons which entitle me to subscribe myself, 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Your obliged and grateful servant, 
 
 D. C. Tovey. 
 
 J 9P 

 
 PREFACE 
 
 THOUGH the following papers are reprinted, by 
 kind permission, from the " Guardian," it is right 
 to say that that journal is in no way responsible for 
 the opinions here expressed. 
 
 The paper on the Teaching of English Literature is 
 written with considerable exaggeration, not so much of 
 fact as of tone. The writer is himself as guilty as any 
 of those whom he impugns ; and states a problem of 
 which he can only offer a partial and tentative solution. 
 His excuse for vehemence must be, that there is so 
 much clamour upon educational questions at the 
 present day, that, in order to be heard, it is necessary 
 to shout. 
 
 Some remarks upon certain characteristics of the 
 eighteenth century, borrowed for the writer's life of 
 Thomson, appear now in their original setting in the 
 Essay on Gay.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Teaching of English Literature .... i 
 
 More's Utopia 22 
 
 Fuller's Sermons 39 
 
 Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield 51 
 
 Arnold's Last Essays 7 1 
 
 Edmund Waller 88 
 
 John Gay 115 
 
 Ossian and His Maker 138 
 
 Coventry Patmore 156 
 
 Elizabethan Poetry 169 
 
 A Cambridge Reminiscence 182
 
 REVIEWS AND ESSAYS IN 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 IT would be perhaps too much to say that we have a 
 profound mistrust of the value of examinations in 
 English Literature ; but we have a rooted conviction 
 that in any of the forms in which they are conducted by 
 the Universities at present, they are producing a de- 
 finite mischief. Take for instance the Cambridge Local 
 Examinations. That passionate pursuitof accuracyand 
 precision, that deep-rooted suspicion of anything that 
 savours of vague discursive generalization (so often a 
 cover for ignorance), which as a rule distinguishes the 
 University of Cambridge, is in these examinations 
 brought to bear upon a subject which can only be 
 adequately treated upon lines which give ample scope 
 for these or equally glaring blemishes, and enable 
 those who have no real taste, judgment, or knowledge 
 to indulge in unlimited nonsense. It is possible for 
 
 example to ask for a comment on the dramatic purpose 
 
 B
 
 2 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 and meaning of Othello's " Put out the light and then 
 — put out the light ! " and the question may produce 
 one or two sensible answers which as a test of literary 
 capacity or promise would be far more convincing 
 than the result of any amount of cram work. But on 
 the other hand it has produced, and that not from a 
 schoolboy, but from an undergraduate, the answer, 
 " Othello says this, dallying with the extinguisher." 
 It is much safer and easier to ask for the meaning and 
 derivation of a word, the evidence for the date of a 
 play, the source from which the plot has been derived, 
 or the point of an allusion. But what is the result of this 
 method ? That hundreds of boys' schools, hundreds 
 of high schools for girls all over the country in eager 
 competition, anxious to advertise the number of their 
 successes achieved in the Cambridge " Locals " are 
 busy months and months beforehand, getting by heart 
 the notes and introduction to the prescribed play of 
 Shakespeare in the Clarendon Press Series. The notes 
 and introduction, be it remembered, not the text ; that 
 is the last thing thought of. 1 The able editor, Mr. 
 Aldis Wright, who has perhaps done more than any 
 living man to make the careful study of Shakespeare 
 possible and the meaning of Shakespeare clear in this 
 portable and inexpensive form to a large number of 
 his countrymen, must find the sweets of success alloyed 
 
 1 There is abundant circumstantial evidence against the young 
 lady who is accused of having fastened down the text with a piece 
 of elastic because it interfered with her reading the notes. 
 
 A candidate has been found to affirm that the notes to a par- 
 ticular play were written before the text.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 3 
 
 with some bitterness if he knows that in the minds of 
 the rising generation he has absolutely ousted the 
 great genius whom he has illustrated so well. It is 
 the firm conviction of many schoolboys that Euclid is 
 the work of Euclid's best-known editor ; and if it is 
 not proved already to their satisfaction that Shake- 
 speare is the work of Mr. Aldis Wright it will " go 
 nigh to be thought so shortly," and will be a matter 
 of critical and absolutelydemonstrable certainty even to 
 some adults in generations yet unborn. Of the reams 
 of paper at this moment in the world and replenished 
 from year to year, inscribed with a perfectly faithful 
 reproduction of Mr. Aldis Wright's notes, it is highly 
 improbable that nothing will survive the wreck of 
 ages. And if one such document so survives it will by 
 many be held to establish beyond question or cavil 
 that Mr. Aldis Wright wrote Shakespeare. 1 There 
 are intelligent persons now who assign that exploit to 
 Bacon on the extremely slender evidence afforded by 
 
 1 This was written in 18S6. For Dr. Aldis Wright's editions, 
 those of Mr. Verity, which contain more aesthetic criticism, are 
 now from time to time prescribed for these examinations. It is 
 worse to cram opinions than to cram explanatory details. One 
 and the same play is set for junior and senior students, the only 
 difference being that the paper set for the seniors is supposed to 
 be the harder. It is not thus that graduation should be attempted. 
 All that can be expected of young minds — whether they be called 
 senior or junior — is that they should be able to construe their 
 Shakespeare, tell the story of the play, and describe in their own 
 language the characters of the dramatis persona. But a senior 
 student might be [expected to read more than one play in the 
 year.
 
 4 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 his " Promus," evidence which is but dust in the balance 
 compared with the irresistible inferences which will be 
 drawn from a paper which may contain absolutely 
 nothing of Shakespeare, and yet will explain some of 
 the most difficult passages which have been attributed 
 to his hand. 
 
 But, it may be asked, must not the candidate at 
 any rate read the text in order to understand the 
 plot ? By no means always. Let us suppose, for 
 example, that " As You Like It " is set as the play for 
 examination. The story in Lodge's novel is substan- 
 tially the same as the plot of the play, and this story 
 is given at all necessary length in the introduction. 
 But most of the characters bear different names, and 
 hence when any details of the plot of " As You Like 
 It " are asked for, half of the several thousand 
 examinees, instead of Orlando write Rosader, instead 
 of Oliver Saladyne, the usurping Duke appears in 
 their papers as Torismotid, the banished Duke as 
 Gerisviond. And the probability is that this is re- 
 garded as quite a trifling error for which some 
 examiners might deduct a mark or two and others 
 none at all. It would indeed require an act of courage 
 beyond the reach of any single man to do the ab- 
 solutely right thing upon this unmistakable evidence 
 of " the cloven hoof," and condemn the whole mass 
 of worse than useless rubbish without further notice 
 to the flames. The shriek of horror and protestation 
 which would rise up from half the middle-class schools 
 in the kingdom at this wholesale destruction of "the
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 5 
 
 labour of the long year " would be overwhelming and 
 irresistible, nor in fact would the University be justified 
 in punishing so severely the educational blunders 
 which its methods had encouraged. 
 
 The only way to lead young minds to a real 
 knowledge of Shakespeare is to induce them to love 
 him. This is a much more difficult task than is 
 commonly supposed, and even Charles and Mary 
 Lamb have achieved but a partial success in attempt- 
 ing it. Its difficulty has increased since their day, 
 because counter-attractions have enormously multi- 
 plied. Even with no such temptations in the way, to 
 appreciate Shakespeare when he is easiest requires in 
 most cases the experience of life ; to interpret him 
 when he is hardest taxes the resources even of practised 
 and subtle understandings. Yet the spirit of Shake- 
 speare can be caught by many adults and some young 
 people simply by reading Shakespeare ; and, this 
 first step achieved, the exacter study of his text 
 becomes a labour of love. We know an excellent 
 man of business who has much of Shakespeare by 
 heart, and whose comments upon his genius and his 
 characters, if less ambitious than those of some erudite 
 Germans, are at least as sensible, who makes use of 
 various annotators and of Schmidt's " Shakespeare 
 Lexicon " in a way which would gratify the heart of 
 the most rigid of examiners. 
 
 The study of English Literature in middle-class 
 schools might be expected ultimately to exercise a re- 
 fining influence — or, at any rate, to expurgate some of
 
 6 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 the forms of speech which are transforming, but by no 
 means beautifying the English language. How far 
 the methods by which this study is promoted are on 
 the way to produce this result in the long run may be 
 guessed by the fact that a goodly proportion of the 
 candidates who are examined in the " Merchant of 
 Venice " will tell us that " the leaden casket contains 
 Portia's photo." — and one of them has been known to 
 state on the strength of the song which has been cleverly 
 adapted as a baker's advertisement, that Shakespeare 
 uses " fancy " in the sense of " fancy bread." The boy 
 imbued with letters (save the mark ! ) on such a system 
 sometimes developes into the undergraduate, who in 
 his Little-go — we cite a fact — writes his translation 
 from the Greek of the New Testament, " He did not 
 many wonderful works there on a/c of their unbelief." 
 These instances may be straws, but they are straws 
 which show which way the wind is blowing. Demos 
 is well represented now at Cambridge, no less than in 
 the local centres to which Cambridge extends her in- 
 fluence, and so is that other king named Dinos, the 
 mechanical principle, who has expelled Zeus. When 
 Dinos cross-questions Demos he leaves vulgarity un- 
 checked ; and the disgusted Spirit of Literature, always 
 something of a truant, and only with the greatest tact 
 and management to be beguiled into a formal exami- 
 nation, goes off elsewhere. 
 
 The truth is that the philologers are masters of this 
 field. This is the danger of all examinations in litera- 
 ture ; it is the inevitable result of such examinations
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 7 
 
 when conducted on a large scale. It is impossible to 
 estimate the relative merits of several thousand boys 
 and girls if a subject is proposed as a test of their taste, 
 or their incipient love of letters ; it is easy enough to 
 do so, if it is proposed as a test of their memories and 
 their knowledge of the meaning of words or phrases. 
 But let us cherish no illusions. We have as little 
 chance of recommending literature to the youthful 
 mind by these disintegrating processes as the sim- 
 pleton in the old Greek story had of selling his house 
 by carrying about a brick of it as a sample. 
 
 Again, we have the highest respect for Grimm's 
 Law, yet we cannot at times repress a sigh for the 
 good old days before this terrible instrument of tor- 
 ture was placed in the teacher's or examiner's hand. 
 Armed with the mighty mace of giant Gritnm, the 
 modern philologer is abroad in the land like a new 
 iconoclast, smashing to pieces all the most precious 
 monuments of literature. The time may have gone 
 by when a lecturer on Wordsworth could devote two 
 or more lectures to the analysis of the poet's name by 
 means of this formidable implement. But there still 
 exists, we believe, an edition for the use of schools of 
 the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," which is prefaced by 
 a faithful statement of the " Law." There, at any 
 rate, if we may adapt Milton, 
 
 " That tremendous engine at the door 
 Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." 
 
 Down before it goes Sir Walter with all his chivalry,
 
 
 8 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 and minstrel and moss-trooper are pounded to a 
 mummy for the imagination of the schoolboy for ever. 
 We do not much care to know what was the precise 
 educational aim in this particular case. We are sure 
 that these and kindred efforts can have but one prac- 
 tical result. It is quite possible that some promising 
 young soul, if the modern schoolmaster would but 
 leave him alone, might be caught by the swing and 
 rush of heroic verse, and inspired with a genuine 
 enthusiasm. But his tormentor interferes, and seizes 
 him almost literally by the throat in the middle not 
 only of sentences but of words and syllables, and all 
 the poor boy's poetic life is squeezed out of him as 
 surely and under the same absurd circumstances as the 
 vital spark was extinguished in the vanquished com- 
 batant in " The Critic," who would have added 
 " — nity " but was forced to leave the victor to add it 
 for him. We can picture the scene. The boy is 
 reading or reciting from the " Lady of the Lake " : 
 
 " Unwounded from the dreadful close 
 But breathless all Fitz " 
 
 " Stop, Jones ! what is the meaning and derivation of 
 the prefix Fitz ? " And having disposed of Fitz, the 
 tyrant proceeds to demolish James and all the Ja- 
 cobean dynasty, Jacob (with a plunge into Old and 
 New Testament history), Jacopo, Giacomo, Iachimo, 
 I ago (annexing here all the territory between Venice 
 and Compostella with an expedition across the At- 
 lantic if time permits, and all the range of literature
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 9 
 
 from Shakespeare to the Acta Sanctorum), Jaques 
 (with Shakespeare again and a good casus belli and 
 plea for invading France in the Jacquerie and Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau), and Yakoob Khan (with a con- 
 spectus of contemporary events in Afghanistan, and a 
 general sketch of the history of the British Empire in 
 India). 
 
 If there are some who may accuse us of exaggerating 
 here we comfort ourselves with the certain knowledge 
 that there are many long-suffering persons, old and 
 young, who are aware that this is " ower true a tale," 
 and that a teacher who should follow the plan here 
 just faintly indicated would be very generally re- 
 garded as a person of some resource who might always 
 be trusted to " make a lesson." The man that does 
 these things should be punished like false Sextus. He 
 
 should 
 
 " see strange visions 
 Which none besides may see," 
 
 even as already, thanks to philology 
 
 " strange sounds are in his ears 
 Which none may hear but he." 
 
 The pure Spirit of Poetry whom he has outraged 
 
 should sit beside his bed through the watches of the 
 
 night and 
 
 " sing of great old houses 
 And fights fought long ago," 
 
 and his tongue should cleave to the roof of his mouth 
 in unavailing struggles to interrupt her " sweet voice 
 and low," and bid her derive, and parse, and construe.
 
 io THE TEACHING OF 
 
 She should sing her immortal song this time quite to 
 the end, and he should be compelled to listen ; she 
 should sing it 
 
 " until the east was grey, 
 Then, pointing to her bleeding breast, 
 Should shriek, and flee away." 
 
 We have before us an edition of the first book of the 
 " Excursion " " for the use of schools." In the first 
 three lines we are pulled up in the notes four times. 
 Of these four interruptions one is made in order to 
 derive " landscape," the other to explain " downs " 
 which we are told mean " high flats. For the meaning 
 of flat compare (passage quoted) Milton's ' Paradise 
 Lost,' bk. iv., 252 ; for the meaning oi height, compare 
 (passage quoted) Gower ' Confessio Am./ bk. iv." 
 
 What man with a brain and a heart would not watch 
 with interest mixed with anxiety a boy who should be 
 led by a taste and " natural piety " beyond his years to 
 read such a poem as the " Excursion " ? The gentle 
 creature should be watched and guarded, but in this 
 matter he should be dealt with very tenderly. He 
 should be sent out to play that he might be as like 
 other boys as possible, in the possession of the health 
 and elastic spirits and manly fortitude which he is sure 
 to need more than others in the petty persecution to 
 which a character so exceptional is likely to be exposed; 
 but the same kind eye and voice should help him to 
 remain as unlike them as God meant him to be in the 
 things of the mind. The fragile little craft should be 
 carefully steered between the Scylla of morbid and
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE n 
 
 unsociable priggishness, and the Charybdis of athletic 
 twaddle and small talk which hopelessly engulphs 
 every other topic in the modern schoolboy's imagina- 
 tion. The sanctuary of that soul where a little cultus 
 is maintained which is not far from the worship of the 
 Highest should be guarded by discretion and tact, and 
 a policy of non-interference apparent rather than real, 
 with occasional private hints of sympathy and the 
 most marked absence, at any rate, of any official en- 
 couragement of that tyrannous inanity which is not 
 only sublimely satisfied with itself, but would reduce 
 everything abnormal in the boy-world in which it reigns 
 supreme to its own dead level. But Dis aliter visum. 
 This is but guerilla warfare in the judgment of the 
 modern and omnipotent drill-sergeants of the human 
 mind. To temper the premature love of poetry in the 
 few and to excite it in the many there is but one and 
 the same sovereign method — it is to pack both the few 
 and the many into the same anatomical museum and 
 show them her skeleton. We have as good a right as 
 another, even though that other were a German, to 
 discover the true meaning of Hamlet ; and Hamlet is, 
 in our judgment, the prototype and prophecy of the 
 new pedagogue in 
 
 " inky cloak 
 And customary suit of solemn black " — 
 
 improving before his youthful audience the dry bones 
 of the dictionary and bidding these dry bones get them 
 to the chamber of my lady Poesy, and tell her " let her 
 paint an inch thick yet to this favour she must come."
 
 12 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 We take up next to the book which started these 
 reflections a little volume so like it in shape and size 
 and binding that the one might easily be mistaken 
 for the other. It is a selection of scenes from the 
 " Electra " of Euripides by Mr. Arthur Sidgwick. Mr. 
 Arthur Sidgwick has given a new impulse, a new lease 
 of life to the study of Greek as a necessary element in 
 public school education. He has headed a revolt 
 against that treatment of the Greek and Latin classics 
 in schools which has made them nothing but a peg on 
 which to hang the lessons of the grammar and the 
 dictionary. 1 He has not neglected those lessons ; he 
 has put them in a concise and practical form, with 
 a striking absence of those ponderous technicalities 
 which are in some quarters considered to be necessary 
 to intellectual discipline. This kindly interpreter 
 between great minds and little ones tries to make the 
 scenes of Attic tragedy and comedy alive once more 
 in the schoolroom by giving gestures to the characters 
 and tones to their voices. The tragic tale, judiciously 
 shortened, can now be read to its climax in one school 
 term instead of being discarded when half told for 
 another, to the utter ruin of all possible interest in the 
 development of the plot. The effect and, we believe, 
 the intention of all this is at once to excite an interest 
 
 1 The schoolboy who translated 
 
 o; y$n to. t' lovra t« t' liTTOfxtva Trpo T tovra, 
 
 "who knew both the present and the future and the future 
 perfect" is a typical and suggestive instance of the occasional 
 results of this method.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 13 
 
 in the theme, and to make that interest combine with 
 sound and sufficient grammatical knowledge as a guide 
 to the meaning expressed in an extremely difficult 
 language. Of all incentives to acquiring an unknown 
 tongue, strong curiosity is the most potent, and a man 
 with no linguistic ability has often been known to 
 master under this impulse a language in which he can 
 find the best treatment of the subjects in which he is 
 most keenly interested. And as no man can be a 
 perfect scholar who is without the intellectual curiosity 
 which includes a literary interest in the masterpieces of 
 the ancient world, so many a mind perhaps incapable 
 of the highest scholarship may be won to a certain 
 measure of scholarship by the same attraction. But 
 here is the point of this apparent digression. If Mr. 
 Sidgwick's method is right, the method of the editor 
 of Wordsworth's "Excursion " must certainly be wrong. 
 If in order that the spirit of literature may be seized 
 it is right to economize the treatment of words and 
 structure even in an unknown tongue, it must be wrong 
 to multiply impediments of this kind in a tongue 
 perfectly familiar. The difficulty which the young 
 find in Wordsworth lies not in Wordsworth's language, 
 but in the immaturity of the youthful mind, and a boy 
 who in order to understand the " Excursion " really 
 needs an explanation of such words as " downs " 
 and " landscape " ought to be studying not the " Ex- 
 cursion," but the horn-book. But the truth is we are 
 beginning the reign of pedantry in English just when 
 we are dropping it in Greek. And, oddly enough,
 
 14 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 these diametrically opposite movements seem to be 
 part of the same educational effort, and appear in the 
 same form and from the hands of the same publishers. 
 Messrs. Rivington will, we are sure, excuse us for com- 
 paring them to Penelope, who was a most virtuous and 
 industrious person. But we must point out to them 
 that all the educational web which they are weaving in 
 the daylight of Mr. Arthur Sidgwick they are undoing 
 in the dark night of some at least of their editors of 
 the English Classics. And they have not Penelope's 
 excuse ; for their object should be to attract juvenile 
 and, at present, by no means ardent suitors, whilst hers 
 was to repel suitors more mature and importunate. If 
 these two lines of effort which they are encouraging 
 simultaneously meet with the success which both are 
 equally adapted to achieve, we predict a singular result. 
 It will be of paramount importance what subjects we 
 select for study in Greek literature, whilst for English 
 literature this consideration will be of absolutely no 
 importance whatever. As the philological method of 
 interpretation, fostered by teachers and examiners be- 
 cause it is the easiest to manage, prevails more and 
 more, it will gradually dawn upon the schoolmaster 
 that to go to Scott and Wordsworth for the nails by 
 which to fasten the " anatomy " of language is to 
 travel rather far. By the time that he has learnt on 
 the one hand to open the youthful mind to the fascina- 
 tions of dramatic art in the pages of Euripides and 
 Aristophanes, he will have discovered on the other 
 that he has the raw material of verbal criticism ready
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 15 
 
 to his hand in the songs of the nursery. Common 
 sense and economy will combine to encourage a method 
 of instruction in "English Literature" which, while 
 differing in no essential respect from that which he is 
 at present pursuing, will outrage no sentiments of re- 
 verence, will beget no life-long antipathy to letters, and 
 will require no other machinery than a black-board 
 and a piece of chalk ; and he will gently lead his 
 pupils from the study of pathos in the " Alcestis " 
 and of wit and humour in the "Knights" to the 
 exposition of " Ba Ba Black Sheep," by the aid of 
 Grimm's law. 
 
 There are few well-trained classical scholars who 
 do not occasionally regret that the habit of minute 
 attention to words and structure begotten by the long 
 discipline through which they have passed mars their 
 power of reading continuously, and consequently of 
 contemplating the total effect of the great works of 
 ancient literature. They may try to forego this habit 
 for a while, to read Homer with no thought of Homer's 
 many commentators, and without turning to the 
 Lexicon for the meaning of a word which they may 
 chance to have forgotten ; but this comparative 
 holiday of the mind hardly to be won over Homer 
 becomes harder still to procure over yEschylus, and 
 quite impossible over Thucydides. The acquired 
 conscience, like the innocent mania of Johnson and De 
 Morgan for touching all the railings, keeps teasing 
 till it gets its rights, and the haunting word or note is 
 hunted up after all, just as after a hesitating pause and
 
 16 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 shuffle on the pavement, the omitted railing is re- 
 visited and religiously touched. We are not assailing 
 the system which, if attended by this drawback, has 
 produced so many accurate and subtle minds, but we 
 submit that the intellect is not always to be curbed 
 with bit and bridle, " like horse and mule which have 
 no understanding," and that even horses and mules are 
 sometimes sent out to grass. Modern literature is the 
 playground of the mind which has received its special 
 discipline elsewhere. The difficulties of language 
 which we multiply in Greek and Latin we ought, at 
 any rate, to minimize here. In particular, young and 
 promising scholars should be encouraged to draw 
 from the " fresh woods and pastures new " of English 
 literature which are open to them, without any fence 
 or hedge of linguistic difficulty, the quickening spirit 
 which they may infuse into the dry bones of classical 
 study and make them live again. Much that they 
 have to learn in the schoolroom is only not pedantry, 
 because it is discipline ; that they should approach 
 Scott and Wordsworth l in the same way is pedantry 
 without excuse. If this sort of thing goes on, if the 
 
 1 There is abundant reason for annotating Milton or Shake- 
 speare, or Spenser or Chaucer. There is ample justification for 
 such an edition as the selections from Burke, with the excellent 
 commentary of Mr. Payne in the Clarendon Press Series, as 
 well as for the edition of Pope's " Essay on Man," and "Satires," 
 by Mr. Mark Pattison. There is, in short, good reason for 
 editing with explanatory notes every book the meaning and 
 spirit of which cannot be seized without them. But such edi- 
 tions as we name are just as necessary for adults as for boys.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 17 
 
 rigid educationalist is allowed to say, like a new 
 iEneas, boasting this time of suffering not endured 
 but inflicted by himself — 
 
 " Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?" 
 
 the persecuted human spirit will nowhere find asylum, 
 but, as Cicero says to Marcellus, wherever we are, we 
 shall be equally in the power of the conqueror. 
 
 We remember with gratitude and affection one 
 eminent scholar, who, by precept and example, 
 illustrated that combination of discipline and play of 
 thought which, perhaps because it is so rare already, 
 we are doing our best to make rarer still. The late 
 W. G. Clark advised a young student, by way of 
 bettering his style of translation, to read Clarendon 
 and Jeremy Taylor, and he was accustomed to preface 
 his lectures to freshmen by suggestive remarks, ex- 
 pressed with the easy grace which distinguished all he 
 said, which just indicated the fact that there was 
 another goal beyond that of verbal criticism. He 
 would link, for example, the ancient and the modern 
 world by points of contrast or comparison, citing an 
 instance of a modern simile from a now forgotten 
 poet, Alexander Smith, who compares the flux and 
 reflux of the sea to a bridegroom, who, admiring his 
 bride — 
 
 " Falls back a space to see how fair she be, 
 Then straight runs up to kiss her," 
 
 and pointing out how foreign is such a fancy to the 
 simpler and severer spirit of ancient poetry. 
 
 C
 
 18 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 Why should it be so generally assumed as it is in 
 practice that there is no via media between dilettantism 
 and pedantry in the treatment of English literature ? 
 There is the historical method, of all methods, in our 
 judgment, the most fruitful and satisfactory. The late 
 Professor J. S. Brewer, in his lectures at King's 
 College, London, almost invariably treated literature 
 in close connection with history, explaining the 
 literature of every epoch by the light of the movements 
 and tendencies of which it was the expression. These 
 lectures were not, we believe, considered to " pay " for 
 the purposes of any examination held outside the 
 walls of the college. But there are many, if we 
 mistake not, who owe that solid and profound scholar 
 a debt of gratitude for habits of thought which are 
 more and better than any temporary success. A good 
 historian with a love of letters — and these two qualifi- 
 cations are in practice inseparable — is an excellent 
 teacher of English literature ; his feet are always on 
 solid ground, and his head is never in the clouds. 
 The spirit of the age as exhibited in the world of 
 action he finds reflected in the world of thought, and 
 he starts at any rate with a clear and distinct mental 
 picture, to the main outlines of which we may always 
 confidently trust. There are no more instructive lessons 
 in the elements of criticism than the chapters on litera- 
 ture in the pages of our great historians ; some of these 
 may be men with limited sympathies, and there may 
 be depths, especially in poetry, which they make no 
 attempt to sound, but as a rule they speak what they
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 19 
 
 see and know, and of things really to be seen and 
 known. 
 
 There is a certain contempt now in vogue, especially 
 among schoolmasters, for manuals of English literature. 
 To our thinking these works are among the most satis- 
 factory of the efforts which have been made to impart a 
 knowledge of the subject. There are many books which 
 it is no disgrace not to have read, but which it is dis- 
 creditable not to know something about. We would 
 rather boys did not read Swift, and we should think little 
 of the wisdom and discretion of any one who put into a 
 boy's hands the " Tale of a Tub." But it is not well 
 that any one should pass as an educated man who 
 does not even know as much about Swift's place 
 in literature as these manuals will tell him. No one is 
 to be blamed for not having read "The Vision of 
 William concerning Piers the Plowman," but the scope 
 and significance of that poem, and the epoch to which 
 it belongs, should be known by everybody. It is as 
 justifiable to get our knowledge about many books at 
 second hand as it is to learn many facts of history 
 without searching the State papers. This concession 
 is made to the limitations of the mind and the brevity 
 of human life in every other study except that of 
 literature. There alone we seem to admit no com- 
 promise between the minutest examination of parti- 
 cular authors and a stupendous affectation of original 
 research of the widest compass, sometimes attended 
 with results at once absurd and deplorable. 
 
 But, above all, let the schoolmaster encourage play
 
 20 THE TEACHING OF 
 
 of mind and do something to keep the mind's play- 
 ground wholesome. Men despise the old days when 
 the soul was fed on Latin verses, and those days are 
 gone past recall. Nevertheless the New Zealander 
 who is to discover so many relics of our ruined 
 civilization, whilst he will find very few evidences 
 indeed that the English boy was capable of thought 
 or imagination on his own account in the year 1886, 
 if he lights upon a mouldering copy of the " Musae 
 Etonenses," may find the indications which he misses 
 for 1886 discoverable in abundance for the period 
 between 1796 and 1833. This was not because of the 
 Latin verse, which, as the vehicle of thought, is a trick 
 which can be acquired by practice by very unthinking 
 minds. But the food on which the spirit of the public 
 school boy is nourished has at all times been only very 
 partially supplied in the classroom. And if at this 
 present epoch he is too often in mind a child, when he 
 ought to begin to be a man, it is because his parents 
 and the public insist at the same time that he shall be 
 a splendid animal, andithat his mental powers shall be 
 frittered away upon every branch of knowledge under 
 the sun, with methods necessarily imperfect but often 
 needlessly mechanical. The first of these conditions 
 he fulfils completely to their satisfaction and his own ; 
 against the second his mind rebels with a reaction 
 either voluntary or involuntary. The little leisure 
 which is left to him after the one duty has been con- 
 scientiously fulfilled, and the other dealt with at best 
 in a spirit of compromise, he devotes to the records of
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 21 
 
 athletics, the perusal of the society journals, and the 
 reading, often so edifying, which he can enjoy in the 
 daily papers. His novel, if he ever reads a novel, has 
 been described by the typical title "The Blue-nosed 
 Bandit : a Tale of Blood, in three vols., bound in 
 yellow." What power have Scott and Dickens and 
 Thackeray over a mind on which this terrific outlaw 
 exercises his ghoul-like fascinations ? An eminent 
 schoolmaster of a past generation thought " Pickwick " 
 and " Punch " were vitiating the taste and checking 
 the reflective powers of the young of his time. Few 
 boys now can appreciate " Pickwick," and we shall not 
 be suspected of exact agreement with all Mr. Punch's 
 judgments when we say that we sincerely wish that 
 our boys were capable of enjoying his wit and humour. 
 The ocean of bad taste which is now deluging them 
 will soon sweep away from their minds the last traces 
 of his amiable reign. It is an ocean which needs a 
 strong breakwater to keep it out, and it is quite beyond 
 the control of any pedagogic Mrs. Partington with her 
 philological mop.
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 1 
 
 THE problem of More's opinions is in some respects 
 so intricate that it is not surprising that there 
 should be but scant consensus on the subject. Yet we 
 confess that we see little or nothing, at least in his 
 " Utopia," that is not explicable as the conclusion, true 
 to the standpoint for the time being assumed, of a 
 comprehensive and severely logical mind. Of his 
 actions indeed, and of his subsequent opinions, a some- 
 what different account must be given. Here he un- 
 doubtedly suffered through the official position which 
 was forced upon his retiring and meditative disposition, 
 through the influence of the monarch whose character 
 he penetrated, and whose despotic authority he had 
 rejected in speculation but often in practice obeyed 
 against the grain, through a contempt for the judgments 
 and convictions of the unlettered (the common error 
 of learning at that time), resulting in a line of conduct 
 towards these which contrasted not only in fact but 
 in spirit with his theoretical advocacy of liberty of 
 thought ; and through the violence of civil and religious 
 reformers, which threw him into a reactionary attitude 
 
 1 "Sir Thomas More." By W. H. Hutton, B.D. Methuen.
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 23 
 
 and made him a zealous advocate of impugned doctrines 
 and institutions which had possessed at one time but 
 little attraction for him. Nor when he answered a 
 coarse attack upon the religious orders, can he have 
 forgotten that he had himself in his " Utopia " lent 
 much countenance to the plainer speech of vulgar men 
 on the subject. The desire which he himself at one 
 time entertained for monastic seclusion was quite com- 
 patible with the conviction — reasonable or otherwise — 
 that these institutions had been multiplied to excess, 
 and fostered much idleness to the detriment of the 
 State. We are of opinion that the whole of the 
 " Utopia " is to be taken, with differences indeed of 
 standpoint, quite seriously. And if any parts of it 
 have a direct purpose, these, it is admitted, are such as 
 comment upon European, and particularly English, 
 institutions. It is More, and only ostensibly Raphael 
 Hythlodaye, who exclaims (near the beginning of the 
 second book), " How great and how idle a company is 
 there of priests and religious men, as they call them," 
 unless we are to suppose that More thus wantonly in- 
 sinuates, without controverting, an opinion which he did 
 not himself entertain on an important topic of the day. 
 To the same purport is one of the liveliest passages in 
 the first book — the conversation in which Hythlodaye 
 professes to have taken part at Cardinal Morton's table. 
 There a proposal is made by a certain jesting parasite 
 or scoffer that all beggars shall be distributed and 
 bestowed into houses of religion, the men to be made 
 lay brethren and the women nuns. Whereupon a
 
 24 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 certain friar, graduate in divinity — albeit "a man of 
 grisly and stern gravity," enters into the spirit of the 
 thing, and insists that some provision shall be made 
 also for friars. " Why," said the jester, " that is done 
 already, for my lord himself (the Cardinal) set a very 
 good order for you when he decreed that vagabonds 
 should be kept strait and set to work ; for you be the 
 greatest and veriest vagabonds that be." Upon which 
 the friar could not refrain himself from chiding, scold- 
 ing, railing, and reviling ; and in the course of his heat 
 this graduate in divinity gives samples of his skill in 
 the application of Scripture, of which this one shall 
 suffice : 
 
 " If many scorners of Helizeus, whiche was but one bald 
 man, felt the zeal of the bald, how much more shall one 
 scorner of many friars feel, among whom be many bald 
 men ? " " And we have also," he adds, " the Pope's Bulls, 
 whereby all that mock and scorn us be excommunicate, 
 suspended and accursed." 
 
 The scene is Erasmus's " Encomium Moriae," in 
 little ; the method of Erasmus dramatized ; Folly set 
 to work to anatomize folly, and to bring into view the 
 indolence and arrogance of these men, the perverse 
 and barbarous ingenuity of their pretensions to learn- 
 ing, and the abuse of the highest spiritual authority in 
 championing them. If, as Mr. Hutton tells us (some- 
 what boldly, as we think), More's views were through- 
 out his life in substantial accordance with those of 
 Erasmus, this was emphatically the case in the days of 
 the " Utopia" and " Encomium." It is strange indeed
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 25 
 
 to note how these fraternal minds went for a time pari 
 passu. Perhaps even More's unfinished devotional 
 treatise " Memorare Novissima " was suggested to his 
 mind by Erasmus's " Enchiridion Militis Christiani." 
 Perhaps, on the other hand, a comparison might 
 bring out a characteristic difference between these two 
 kindred spirits. In the " Enchiridion " the man of 
 letters, and even the dialectician, is almost as much in 
 evidence as the Christian moralist. Writing in Latin, 
 Erasmus never forgets the Latinist, and his extreme 
 classicism of language and allusion gives to his book a 
 semblance of unreality which perhaps does not belong 
 to it. The point of contact between the two books is 
 their simplicity on the doctrinal side ; but More's sin- 
 cerity strikes home because he writes in his native 
 tongue ; in this province, on the other hand, as in his 
 elaborate and pungent satire, Erasmus leaves on us 
 the impression of mental rather than moral force. It 
 is harder to distinguish the two men in intellect than 
 in temperament up to the point at which temperament 
 and circumstances come into play, and investigation 
 would disclose many resemblances indicating their 
 close community in thought and study. One harmony 
 between "Utopia " and the " Colloquies " has especially 
 struck us — the reconciliation of the Epicurean theory 
 of pleasure with religion : 
 
 " The Utopians," says More, " reason of virtue and 
 pleasure. ... In this point they seem almost too much 
 given and inclined to the opinion of them, which defend 
 pleasure, wherein they determine either all or the chiefest
 
 26 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 part of man's felicity to rest. And (which is more to be 
 marvelled at) the defence of this so dainty and delicate an 
 opinion they fetch even from their grave, sharp, bitter, and 
 rigorous religion. For they never dispute of felicity or 
 blessedness, but they join unto the reasons of philosophy 
 certain principles taken out of religion. . . . Those prin- 
 ciples be these and such like; that the soul is immortal, 
 and by the bountiful goodness of God ordained to felicity; 
 that to our virtues and good deeds rewards be appointed 
 after this life, and to our evil deeds punishments." 
 
 In the last of his "Colloquies" Erasmus makes Hedo- 
 nius maintain with success that, " Nulli magis sunt 
 Epicurei quam Christiani bene viventes." This view 
 is familiar enough now, but it was, possibly, More who 
 first gave it definite expression, and the best evidence 
 that it was startling is the pains which Erasmus sub- 
 sequently took to pretend that the opinion was that of 
 the person of the dialogue, and not his own. Erasmus 
 is generally, we believe, more successful in attack than 
 in apology ; his defence of the "Colloquies," in this and 
 in other particulars, might be called disingenuous, if it 
 were not transparent. More, in the very form of his 
 " Utopia," leaves himself everywhere a much safer locus 
 poenitentiae ; in the land of Nowhere his mind was at 
 large, whatever restrictions his faith might impose on 
 it ; his delicate but effective irony could there work at 
 will. What could be more pointed, and at the same 
 time more unassailable, than the simple statement that 
 the Utopians " have priests of exceeding holiness, and, 
 therefore, very few ? " And whilst we have all admired
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 27 
 
 a thousand times the scene in which Gulliver rouses 
 the wrath and disgust of the Brobdingnagian, by de- 
 scribing the skill of Europeans in the invention and 
 use of weapons of destruction, it may be questioned 
 whether More, less vigorous and less misanthropic 
 than Swift, is not more adroit and practical in his 
 picture of the Utopian methods of war. Here let us 
 quote Mr. Hutton's effective summary, which well ex- 
 plains More's real drift : 
 
 " The Utopians abhor war, and fight only in defence of 
 their own country, or to defend some oppressed nation. 
 They fight also, by preference, with cunning, to avoid blood- 
 shed. They offer large bribes for the assassination of the 
 chiefs of their adversaries, and for treason among their 
 enemies. Here the inference was obvious. If these actions 
 seemed a detestable contrast to the lofty morality of the 
 Utopians, much more was it a dishonour to a Christian 
 Government to engage in such intrigues as at that very time 
 Henry VIII. was carrying on in Scotland. An equally severe 
 condemnation is employed in the Utopians' employment of 
 mercenaries. It could have needed no acute intelligence to 
 recognize the Swiss — whom the King was then employing 
 — in the Zapoletes, ' dwelling in wild woods and high 
 mountains,' who basely hire themselves to the highest bidder, 
 and whom it would be well if war had utterly destroyed." 
 
 In no way could More have better exhibited his 
 intense horror of war than in his picture of it as 
 practised by a peace-loving but severely logical people. 
 Still more scathing, as a censure upon European 
 politics, and yet, as Mr. Hutton remarks, without any-
 
 28 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 thing which authority could reprehend, is the beautiful 
 irony with which the Utopians are represented as — 
 
 " Making no leagues, chiefly because that in those parts of 
 the world leagues between princes be wont to be kept and 
 observed very slenderly. For here in Europe, and especially 
 i?i those parts where the faith and religion of Christ reigneth, 
 the majority of leagues is everywhere considered holy and in- 
 violable; partly through the justice and goodness of princes, 
 and partly at the reverence and motion of the head Bishops. 
 Which, like as they make not promises themselves but they 
 do very religiously perform the same, so they exhort all 
 princes in any wise to abide by their promise, and them 
 that refuse or deny so to do, by their Pontifical power and 
 authority they compel thereto. And surely they think well 
 that it might seem a very reproachful thing if, in the leagues of 
 them which by a peculiar name be called faithful, faith should 
 have no place. But in that new-found part of the world 'V- 
 
 things, he goes on to say, are very different. There 
 kings and princes practise a crafty dealing which those 
 who advise them to it would be the loudest to con- 
 demn in private men ; as if justice was something far 
 under the dignity of kings ; or as if there were two 
 justices, one meant for the inferior sort of people, the 
 other a princely virtue of more majesty and liberty 
 " to which nothing is unlawful that it lusteth after." 
 " There could be no clearer reprobation," says Mr. 
 Hutton, " of any difference between political and 
 individual morality." 
 
 We know of no reason for believing that More ever 
 altered his opinions on questions of political justice or 
 of social life ; due regard being had to his function as
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 29 
 
 administrator of the laws as they then stood. But 
 when Mr. Hutton, in commenting on the " Dialogue," 
 of which the first edition appeared in 1529, tells us 
 that " There is no reason to assume that More's views 
 had changed since he wrote the ' Utopia,' and the 
 distinct declaration of them in his controversial works 
 seems to prove that no importance is to be attached 
 to the ideal picture of religion in the happy island " 
 he seems to us to say too much. It is surely 
 paradoxical to suppose that a deeply religious man, 
 writing under one and the same disguise, meant much 
 when he treated of morals and justice, and nothing at 
 all when he treated of religion. We quite understand 
 Mr. Hutton to mean that More's own doctrinal 
 opinions were always fixed. Yet, however this may 
 be, Mr. Hutton's statement certainly obscures the fact 
 that More's theory of toleration quite fell to pieces. 
 If he could maintain, after his resignation of the 
 Chancellorship, that heresy, being a great crime 
 against God, deserved a severe punishment from the 
 secular power, he certainly departed from the sugges- 
 tive wisdom of King Utopus. When More writes of 
 him : " Though there be one religion which alone is true, 
 and all other vain and superstitious, yet did he well 
 foresee (so that the matter were handled with reason 
 and sober modesty) that the truth of the 1 (its) own 
 power would, at the last issue, out and come to light " : 
 he is surely not only stating but commending that 
 
 1 The version of Robynson, who does not know " its."
 
 3 o MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 opinion, and urging it indirectly, as the right policy 
 for the one true Church. It is scarcely necessary 
 to remark that this is in the very spirit of Erasmus, 
 and with that spirit More certainly ceased, both in 
 practice and in theory, to be " in substantial accord- 
 ance " on this important topic. The excesses of all 
 kinds which he traced to the progress of the religious 
 revolution led him to reconsider the whole question, 
 and to abandon what was once a first principle to him. 
 Having to execute measures of repression, he was 
 glad to persuade himself that these were in accordance 
 with his conscience, as well as with his official duty. 
 We have seen it stated that " Utopia " was motived by 
 More's desire to make his convictions quite clear to 
 his royal master before becoming bound to his service. 
 This, if it be so, gives a serious colour to every 
 speculation in the work which has a bearing upon a 
 present state of things, and prevents us from accept- 
 ing Hallam's suggestion that the book is one of those 
 which men of genius throw off in gaiety of heart, 
 though we may readily admit that it was written 
 without much suspicion of the new power of literature 
 to set ideas fermenting in the world at large. The six- 
 teenth century offers in this respect a striking parallel 
 to the eighteenth. Both More and Montesquieu sat 
 in their studies and satirized and speculated with- 
 out suspecting that they were sowing a crop for 
 Smithfield or the guillotine. For this pardonable 
 blindness More paid a severer penalty than Erasmus, 
 his colleague in emancipating the mind ; both were
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 31 
 
 aghast at the extravagances to which the freedom of 
 thought which they advocated had given birth ; but 
 only More had to visit these with imprisonment and 
 death. 
 
 We believe that More's strongest revolt was against 
 schism rather than heresy. Mr. Hutton, if we do not 
 mistake, would make his primary conviction from first 
 to last the idea of the unity of Christendom, the 
 Universal Church. When he clearly saw that this 
 was menaced, he took alarm and abandoned the hope 
 which he had once cherished with Erasmus of a 
 Church which should admit great variety of opinion 
 without rupture. The Utopians are represented as 
 Monotheists of various sorts, among whom Christianity 
 has only begun to spread. But we cannot believe 
 that because they are not Christians the picture of the 
 unity in worship which they achieved was without 
 significance or suggestion. It was obvious and safe so 
 to describe them that censure or admonition might 
 fall only indirectly upon Christian authorities, and 
 the moral might be admitted or disclaimed according 
 to circumstances. But we select one instance, out of 
 several, in which " they which do not agree to Christ's 
 religion " must certainly be supposed to read a lesson 
 to those who do : 
 
 "One of our company in my presence was sharply 
 punished. He, as soon as he was baptized, began against 
 our wills, with more earnest affection than wisdom to reason 
 of Christ's religion, and began to wax so hot in his matter, 
 that he did not only prefer our religion before all other, but
 
 32 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 also did utterly despise and condemn all others, calling 
 them profane, and the followers of them wicked and devilish 
 and the children of everlasting damnation. When he had 
 thus long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, 
 accused him, and condemned him into exile, not as a 
 despiser of religion, but as a seditious person and a raiser up 
 of dissension among the people." 
 
 The only forces which the Utopians permitted in 
 the propagation of religion were argument or per- 
 suasion, and prayer ; they immediately and severely 
 repressed not only violent methods, but violent 
 language in a religious cause. A signal instance of 
 this is a Catholic using in Utopia the language 
 common in Europe about heretics, and promptly 
 punished in consequence. Here the drift is quite 
 unmistakable. And so also, we believe, is the drift 
 of those passages which describe the common worship 
 of their various sects. They point to that unity in 
 diversity which More then believed to be possible in 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 These side glances at the religious life of Christen- 
 dom, as More knew it, are not altogether reproachful. 
 The dim light which the Utopians preferred in their 
 churches, " because they thought that overmuch light 
 doth disperse men's cogitations," More himself knew 
 and loved ; with " the unhurtful and harmless kind of 
 worship " in " frankincense and a great number of wax 
 candles and tapers " which pleased them, he himself 
 was pleased. Mr. Hutton is undoubtedly right in 
 maintaining that their sacerdotal vestments and the
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 33 
 
 homage paid to the priests as they enter the church 
 have a significance like that of the Catholic ritual. 
 The point of difference is only evidence of More's 
 minute attention to consistency. He has described 
 the Utopians as despising and abhorring gold, and 
 making it a badge of infamy, and gems and precious 
 stones but toys and trifles for children. It was there- 
 fore necessary that he should describe their priests as 
 clad in colours excellent in workmanship rather than 
 materials, and precious because of the pains and skill 
 which devotion had expended upon them ; and, be- 
 sides, More thus has an opportunity of hinting how 
 much more real an offering such labour is than the 
 easy and indolent profusion with which wealthy men 
 in Europe brought their gifts to the altar. And we 
 agree with Mr. Hutton that no inference as to More's 
 view on the place of images and pictures in Catholic 
 worship can be drawn from the bare statement that 
 the Utopians " have no image of any god in the church, 
 to the intent it may be free for every man to con- 
 ceive God by their religion after what likeness and 
 similitude they will." It should, indeed, be obvious 
 that this is a necessary corollary to the statement 
 that the church was the meeting-place for common 
 worship between sects whose symbolism, when they 
 worshipped apart, varied with no limitation whatever. 
 In fact, thus much More expressly states : " The 
 common sacrifices," he says, " be so ordered that they 
 be no derogation nor prejudice to any of the private 
 sacrifices and religions." Further, we agree with Mr. 
 
 D 
 
 i
 
 34 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 Hutton that the opinion of the Utopians makes 
 nothing against celibacy as the rule of the Roman 
 priesthood, or against fasting as practised by the 
 faithful and by More himself. Nay, it seems to us 
 that More's language points the other way. Of the 
 " religious " in Utopia, one sect is single, the other 
 married. The Utopians, says More, count the married 
 the wiser, but the other the holier : 
 
 " Which in that they prefer single life before matrimony, 
 and that sharp life before an easier life, if herein they 
 grounded upon reason they would mock them. But now 
 forasmuch as they say they be led to it by religion, they 
 honour and worship them." 
 
 In other words, the Utopians were guided in the 
 main by the wisdom and reason of nature ; but they 
 had the candour to acknowledge that there might be 
 a mode of life dictated by a higher inspiration. As 
 we have seen, in view of a future state of blessedness 
 to be attained by it, there was no inconsistency be- 
 tween the practice of this " grave, sharp, bitter, and 
 rigorous religion " and the favourite philosophy of 
 Utopia. We believe, indeed, that More really enter- 
 tained, with Erasmus, this seeming paradox, and that 
 his gently expressed wonderment is only an ironical 
 disguise. The whole passage in which the life of these 
 rigid ascetics is sketched proves that More would have 
 been patient enough of the ignorance of the Monks, 
 but that he believed them to be lazy. His Utopian 
 celibates, who care nothing for learning, nor " give 
 their mind to any knowledge of things, utterly forsake
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 35 
 
 and eschew idleness," and undertake all the unpleasant 
 and hard and vile work which other men refuse. And 
 More's real sympathy with the principle of monas- 
 ticism could scarcely be more effectively shown than 
 in the words describing the conversion of the Utopians 
 to the Christian faith : 
 
 " I think this was no small help and furtherance in the 
 matter that they heard us say that Christ, instituted, among 
 His, all things common, and that the same community doth 
 yet remain among the Tightest Christian companies." 
 
 There is nothing, we believe, in the whole of the 
 " Utopia " that is not explicable, either as indirect 
 comment or counsel, or as a picture of the best con- 
 clusions of unassisted human reason. If the Utopians 
 are allowed under the extremest circumstances, and 
 then only by the advice and with the sanction of the 
 priests and magistrates, to seek a voluntary death, 
 this is surely because More himself had determined 
 that the wisdom of nature pointed no other way ; and 
 he limits the practice to cases to which the Socratic 
 figure of the soldier deserting his post does not apply, 
 — to sufferers not able to do any duty of life, who, by 
 " overliving " their own deaths, are noisome and irk- 
 some to others and grievous to themselves. It is, 
 however, here, if anywhere, that More's expressed dis- 
 approval at the end of the work of some of the 
 Utopian institutions must apply, although he shows 
 pretty clearly that he means us to draw no inferences 
 from that general disclaimer, for to the particular in-
 
 36 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 stance at which he professes to stumble, the com- 
 munity of goods and the prohibition of money, this 
 notorious contemner of pomp and splendour both in 
 office and in private life objects, with fine irony, that 
 thus " all nobility, magnificence, worship, honour, and 
 majesty, the true ornaments and honours, as the com- 
 mon opinion is, of a commonwealth, utterly be over- 
 thrown and destroyed." 
 
 The " Utopia " is best understood by admitting 
 that More had a gift, possessed only by the greatest of 
 religious minds, the Pascals and Newmans of the 
 world, the power to follow with a measure of sympathy 
 the workings of the intellect in the natural man. 
 It is the most beautiful flower and fruit of the new 
 humanism planted in the safe soil of the Catholic 
 faith. The liberal culture by which More so abundantly 
 profited enabled him to abstract himself from his 
 beliefs, and to convey lessons, otherwise difficult and 
 dangerous to deliver, through the picture of a wise 
 and understanding people, with no guide but the 
 dictates of right reason, with a theistic creed accepted 
 as the conclusion of that reason and as a satisfaction 
 of their emotional needs, and a persuasion no less 
 reasonable that the Being Whom they worshipped 
 heard and answered prayer, and could and did make 
 revelations of His will which had a greater claim to 
 the obedience of individual souls than the wisdom 
 which sufficed for the ordinary guidance of life. We 
 are convinced that, whatever details, of the least im- 
 portance, More embroidered on this framework repre-
 
 MORE'S UTOPIA 37 
 
 sent his own convictions both as a thinker and a 
 Catholic, and that we can discover there in harmonious 
 fusion the nominalist, 1 the utilitarian, the socialist, and 
 the devout and orthodox Christian. If the book is 
 not a prophecy of the future, it is at least a prophecy 
 of opinion. Nor was there aught, save one thing, in 
 all his subsequent life which can be said, upon a com- 
 plete view, and with due regard to the functions he 
 was called upon to discharge, to be at variance with 
 the beautiful dream which has made him immortal in 
 the world of thought. If he punished Protestants only 
 for the violence of their language, he acted in accord- 
 ance with the practice of the Utopians, except that 
 his action here was perforce one-sided, and therefore, 
 though from causes beyond his own control, unjust. 
 But we think we could prove, if we had space, that his 
 zeal against heresy pushed him to greater activity even 
 than his office required. 
 
 It is part of his character that if he was once assured 
 that such active zeal was a duty, he would violate his 
 own gentle and humane nature to display it. The 
 man who, as Mr. Hutton finely says, " laid down his 
 life rather than surrender what he again and again 
 admitted to be but an opinion," to whom " almost 
 alone among his contemporaries the conclusions of 
 the intellect seemed no less sacred than the chastity 
 of the body," and who " died rather than tarnish the 
 whiteness of his soul," was little likely to shrink from 
 
 1 " Utopia," p. 107, ed. Lumby. Camb. Univ. Press. 
 
 X»jOOj
 
 38 MORE'S UTOPIA 
 
 obloquy when called upon to act from conviction. Yet 
 so essentially benign was his spirit, so sad his destiny 
 when once entangled in the policies of an evil time, 
 that every adverse sentiment about him is lost in love, 
 regret, and pity. An irony less gentle than that with 
 which he has played for generations about the hearts 
 of men forced this soul, all conscience and duty, spite 
 of shrinkings and forebodings, into the toils of the 
 moral monster whose opinions shifted with his passions, 
 and who first taught his victim the doctrine which he 
 beheaded him for believing. And Rome has done 
 well to proclaim More a saint, though canonization 
 is sometimes but the poor and tardy amends which 
 Churches make when they have inflicted upon other- 
 wise blameless lives the only stains which posterity is 
 able to discover.
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 1 
 
 OF all our many English writers whom it is 
 customary to designate as quaint, perhaps Fuller 
 exhibits a quaintness which savours least of antiquity, 
 of affectations now quite obsolete. The invariable 
 note of that Euphuism, of which so many of our prose 
 writers, until the formation of a classic style, had 
 some trace, was an excess of illustration, not natural 
 and spontaneous, but far-fetched and studiously 
 ingenious. Lyly, its prototype, exhausts the animal 
 and vegetable kingdom to enhance a truism. Burton 
 accumulates epithets and multiplies quotations, until 
 it is these, and not his theme, that engage the amused 
 and bewildered mind. Sir Thomas Browne is never 
 happy unless he can express a thought, in itself 
 simple, in the form of an enigma. But Fuller's wit 
 and fancy have their race, the flavour of the soil from 
 which they spring ; they belong essentially to a 
 character, uncommon in all ages, yet not limited to 
 any age ; to a combination of quick imagination with 
 a sympathetic temper, hitting upon resemblances too 
 
 1 "The Collected Sermons of Thomas Fuller." J. E. Bailey 
 and W. E. A. Axon, Gresham Press.
 
 40 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 remote for ordinary observation, yet not too abstruse 
 to be understood and enjoyed at once. Hence a 
 quaintness such as Fuller's is a recurrent, not an 
 extinct, phenomenon. A clever matron of to-day, 
 when " flitting," found a temporary refuge, with her 
 family, under the hospitable roof of a neighbour, and 
 said to him on entering, " I am afraid you will say, 
 * Gad, a troop cometh.' " We have found this witticism 
 twice anticipated by Fuller in the volumes before us. 
 In South, as in Fuller, we have that happy medium 
 of wit, which is the true salt of it, as preserving it 
 from corruption. But South's wit is often marred by 
 its asperity, and never more than faintly coloured by 
 imagination. On the other hand, as Lamb finely 
 says, " Fuller's conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped 
 in human feeling and passion ; " and we recognize 
 almost instinctively that he who called negroes " the 
 Image of God cut in ebony," must have had much of 
 the milk of human kindness. These phrases are a 
 revelation of the inner man, and in the hand of such 
 as Fuller the pen is as expressive as the facial muscles. 
 His loftier fancies, in like manner, deserve to live, 
 because they are really poetic, they have something 
 emotional in them ; our first impulse on reading them 
 is to say, not "How ingenious!" but "How beautiful!" 
 And thus Lamb refuses to call the often-quoted 
 passage about the ashes of Wiclif " a conceit " ; he 
 truly pronounces it "a grand conception." As a 
 master of style, Fuller seems to combine with 
 characteristic moderation various attributes — parti-
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 41 
 
 culam undique decerptam — of which his great con- 
 temporaries afford more exaggerated examples. He 
 has something of Milton's vigour in controversy ; if 
 his manner falls short of Milton's Demosthenic force, it 
 lacks also his un-English structure, his gloom, and 
 his acerbity ; and when Fuller is most uncom- 
 promising there is in him that touch of humour which, 
 at least in conversation, is even now held to excuse a 
 pungent repartee. His " Truth Maintained " is a 
 temperate document ; yet, being arraigned for the 
 judicious statement that "a Church and a Reformation 
 will be imperfect, do the best you can," he cannot 
 help retorting " I said it, and I say it againe ; it was a 
 Truth before your Cradle was made, and will be one 
 after your Coffin is rotten." This is a trifle brutal ; 
 but we feel that it has been prompted not by animosity, 
 but by the temptation of a telling antithesis. Milton's 
 moods are few and always severe ; like other great 
 men, he sinks terribly low, as if in proportion to his 
 gravity, when in an effort to be popular he sinks at 
 all. With Fuller the style is always the man ; a man 
 of many moods, yet none of them ill-natured. And so 
 the expansive picture-writing of Jeremy Taylor is 
 almost within the compass of his art, as when he 
 says : 
 
 " As Hills, the higher, the barrener ; so men, commonly 
 the wealthier, the worse; the more Honour, the less Holi- 
 nesse. And as Rivers, when content with a small Channel, 
 runne sweet and cleare; when swelling to a Navigable 
 Channel, by the confluence of severall Tributarie Rivulets,
 
 42 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 gather mudde and mire, and grow salt and brackish, and 
 violently beare downe all before them ; so many men, who in 
 meane Estates have been Pious and Religious, being advanced 
 in Honour and enlarged in Wealth, have growne bothe 
 impious and prophane towards God, cruell and tyrannical 
 over their brethren." 
 
 If he has not Barrow's exhaustiveness, he has a far 
 more vivid imagination, and with something of 
 Barrow's copiousness of language, he marshals his 
 forces better. As in this : 
 
 " Let us all provide for that perfect Reformation in the 
 world to come ; when Christ shall present the Church his 
 Spouse to God his Father, Without spot, coming from man's 
 corruption, or wrincle, caused by times continuance, When 
 we shall have a new Heaven and a new Earth, wherein shall 
 dwell Righteousnesse : With judgements reformed from error, 
 wills reformed from wilfulnesse, affections reformed from 
 mistaking their object, or exceeding their measure ; all powers 
 and parts of soule and body reformed from sin to sanctity." 
 
 In these and a thousand passages we find, at some 
 point or other, Fuller's invariable mark of distinction, 
 the charm of antithesis. Lamb, whom nothing escapes, 
 has noted with what admirable address Fuller has 
 employed this perpetual balance in his account of 
 Henry de Essex, where it beguiles us into compassion 
 for a fate which never, perhaps, engaged much 
 sympathy before, the fate of a coward. Yet, with all 
 the effect of art, the contrasts which he delights to 
 make are not artificial ; they are in nature, in human 
 life, as he viewed it, and in himself; and the form in
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 43 
 
 which he presents them is the result not only of a 
 quick apprehension and facile ingenuity, but of large 
 sympathies aided by the clear vision of a world in 
 which the colours of good and evil are inseparably 
 mingled. 
 
 We might almost surmise that Fuller's best fancies 
 owe as much to his character as to his intellect, from 
 the fact that he sometimes repeats them ; for we soon 
 tire of thoughts which are so little natural to us, that 
 we have to cudgel our brains to get at them ; and the 
 merely artificial creatures of the mind are never our 
 companions. If Fuller more than once employs the 
 thought " Conscience is the Attorney- General of the 
 King of Heaven in our Hearts, to press the evidence 
 after the Indictment," it is because this seems to him, 
 once for all, to be the best expression of a felt truth, 
 and he will not go beyond it in search of a novelty 
 more ingenious but less exact. And when Waller 
 writes : 
 
 " The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decayed, 
 Lets in new light through chinks which time has made, 
 Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become 
 As they draw near to their eternal home," — 
 
 we are surprised to find in him of all men a conceit 
 thus steeped in human and religious feeling. Lamb 
 has noted the resemblance to Fuller's words about St. 
 Monica ; but the truth is this is a favourite child of 
 Fuller's genius, born as early as 1633. In a sermon 
 then preached at Cambridge, and repeated often else- 
 where, he says of the righteous :
 
 44 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 " Grace by custome is made another nature unto them, 
 especially toward the latter end of their lives : partly because 
 their soules do steale a Glymps, Glance, or Pisgah-sight of 
 heaven through the Clefts and Chinkes of their Age- or sick- 
 nesse-broken bodies; and partly because, as all motion is 
 swiftest the neerest it comes to the Center, so they, the 
 neerer they draw by death to heaven, God's Spirit and all 
 goodnesse groweth more quick and active in them." 
 
 The temptation to find a plagiarism where there is 
 no more than a parallel, is often misleading, yet it is 
 perfectly possible that Waller either heard or read 
 these words, in an age when worldlings often listened 
 to sermons, and the horizon of the pulpit was wider 
 than it is now. On the other hand, when Fuller says 
 in the same discourse " It is the greatest misery that 
 one has once been happy," the resemblance to Dante 
 is probably due to no other cause than the same im- 
 pression made at different epochs upon a thoughtful 
 mind by the vicissitudes of a troubled world. 
 
 " All truths," says Fuller, " have Eagle's eyes," and 
 if his thoughts can face without flinching the sunlight 
 of long experience, it is because they have in them the 
 strength of vision which belongs to perennial truth. 
 His deepest prejudices were perhaps anti-Papal ; yet 
 this does not prevent him, when it was dangerous to 
 say so, from maintaining that no just offence is to be 
 given to the Papists ; or from defending this opinion 
 in a passage which is nothing less than statesmanlike : 
 
 8 ' Know, Sir," he writes, "that besides those Papists in 
 England and Ireland to whom you say the Parliament hath
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 45 
 
 proclaimed an irreconcileable war, there be also many of 
 their Religion in Spaine, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, 
 &c, all Europe over, with whom the Parliament hath not as 
 yet professed open hostility, and to these no offence must be 
 given. The eye of all Christendom is upon us ; the Sea 
 surrounds, but doth not conceale us. Present Papists read 
 the text of our actions, and their posterity will write com- 
 ments upon them : we cannot, therefore, be too wary." 
 
 Again, in the interpretation of many parts of Old 
 Testament history we in these days are often en- 
 cumbered with the help that modern criticism offers 
 towards the solution of a moral doubt, and have to 
 confess ourselves disgusted with the transparent artifice 
 which tries to smother up a difficulty in a phrase. 
 When Milman explains the incident of " the enemies 
 of Elijah struck by fifties with lightning," by saying, 
 " The prophets had been infected by the ferocity of 
 the times ; " the merest child can see that he is 
 absolutely incoherent ; and that to those who accept, 
 as he does, the narrative as true, the suggestion that 
 its central fact was altogether due to the working of 
 human passions, must be absurdly false. Far more 
 sane, consistent, and reverent, while not less true to 
 that better spirit of which Christians are, is Fuller's 
 comment, which has at least the permanence which 
 belongs to a faith at unity with itself : 
 
 " Elijah, who cursed the Captaines with their fifties, could 
 cause fire to come down on them from Heaven. It appears 
 that his curse was pronounced without malice, because in- 
 flicted by a miracle. It is lawfull for such to call for fire,
 
 46 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 who can make fire come at their call ; and would none 
 would kindle discord on Earth, till they first fetcht the 
 sparks thereof from Heaven." 
 
 And, whilst we are not now concerned with Fuller's 
 doctrinal tenets, it is worth while to notice that his in- 
 clination is to survey controversy in its length and 
 breadth, and historic consequences in something of 
 the humane and judicial spirit of Hooker, and there- 
 fore its less sinister aspects do not escape him. He 
 reminds us, as Newman has reminded us, that heresies 
 may turn to profit in " clearing of truth " : 
 
 " Her old Evidences which have been long neglected will 
 then be searched and found out ; her rusty Arguments will 
 be scoured over and furbished up. Many will run to and 
 fro, and knowledge shall be increased. Those which before 
 shooting at the Truth, were over, under, or wide, will now, 
 with the left-handed Gibeonites, hit the mark at a haires 
 breadth, and faile not : Many parts of true Doctrine have 
 bin slenderly guarded, till once they were assaulted by 
 Heretikes : and many good Authors in those points which 
 were never opposed, have written but loosely, and suffered 
 unwary passages to fall from their posting pens. But when 
 theeves are about the countrey, every one will ride with his 
 sword and stand on his guard : when Heretikes are abroad 
 in the world, Writers weigh each word, ponder each phrase, 
 that they may give the enemies no advantage." 
 
 Even when he would be most severe he seems to 
 divert the shaft when he intends to point it, by some 
 gentle touch which turns the eye elsewhere, as when 
 he says : " As children used to say, they love Father
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 47 
 
 and Mother both best : so let us hate Heresies and 
 Schisms both worst." And when Mr. John Saltmarsh 
 Pastor of Hesterton, Yorkshire, attacking Fuller's 
 Sermon of Reformation, affirms, in that queer Puritan 
 phraseology, which was often so curiously infelicitous, 
 that " We may have Beames and Radiations and 
 Shootings which our Fathers had not," it is with a 
 kind of whimsical sadness that Fuller seizes upon an 
 opening which would be obvious even to a man of less 
 ready wit in 1643 : 
 
 " For Beames and Radiation of knowledge," he says, " I 
 have delivered my oppinion • but as for Shootings, God 
 knows we have many, such as our Fathers never had. God 
 in his mercy cease such Shootings, or else in his Justice 
 direct the Bulletts to such markes as in truth have been the 
 troublers of our Israel." 
 
 A temper so remote from fanaticism, an under- 
 standing so clear as his, was unable to lose, in 
 enthusiasm for a cause, the sense of the horrors with 
 which its struggles were accompanied. Surveying the 
 whole arena with impartial eyes he cannot see the 
 generic differences between the combatants which we, 
 who judge from typical examples, are accustomed to 
 find; hedoesnoteven see, with Chillingworth/'publicans 
 and sinners on the one side and scribes and Pharisees 
 on the other." In his " Fast Sermon on Innocents' 
 Day," preached at the Savoy in 1642, he was on very 
 treacherous ground ; his audience may have been for 
 the most part in sympathy with him ; but his undis- 
 guised loyalty and conspicuous powers must have
 
 48 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 made him already an object of suspicion to the 
 authorities then dominant in the capital. Neverthe- 
 less it is the boast of superior godliness on the Par- 
 liamentarian side that he is deprecating, and he seems 
 to be addressing Roundheads rather than Royalists, 
 when he says : 
 
 " The general hindrance (to Peace) is this : — The many 
 national sinnes of our kingdome being not repented of. I 
 say of our kingdome, not of one Army alone. Thinke not 
 that the King's Army is like Sodome, not ten righteous men 
 in it (no, not if righteous Lot himselfe be put into the 
 number) ; and the other Army like Zion consisting all of 
 Saints. No : there be drunkards on both sides, and swearers 
 on both sides, and whoremongers on both sides ; pious on 
 both sides, and prophane on both sides ; like Jeremies figges, 
 those that are good are very good, and those that are bad are 
 very bad in both parties. I never knew nor heard of an 
 Army all of Saints, save the holy army of Martyrs ; and those, 
 you know, were dead first; for the last breath they sent forth 
 proclaimed them to be Martyrs." 
 
 The novelist and even the historian have found an 
 easier theme in the strong contrasts between the 
 Wildrakes and the Sergeants Bind-their-Kings-in- 
 Chains, between Laud and Hugh Peters, than in the 
 many lights and shades which belong to every great 
 national struggle, as to the most trivial scene of human 
 life. Whether we condemn or praise the Fullers and 
 the Falklands in days of storm and stress, it is from 
 these, the men whose proper province is thought 
 rather than action, the Hamlets of a world out of
 
 FULLER'S SERMONS 49 
 
 joint, who look about them with doubt and misgiving 
 amid the tragic scenes in which they are compelled to 
 take a part, without the stern joy of the warrior or the 
 fiery zeal of the partisan to blind them, from these 
 that we must learn that the strife of passions or 
 principles on the large scale is like the encounter of 
 two mighty floods, each of which bears along with it 
 to the final collision a mingled mass of things precious 
 and things vile. It is good sometimes for those who 
 would know the whole truth to converse with the 
 divisions of Reuben in which there are great search- 
 ings of heart, and even with Asher whilst he abides in 
 his breaches. At the battle of Edgehill, Harvey, the 
 discoverer of the circulation of the blood, sits under a 
 hedge with the two young princes in his charge, and 
 reads a book, until an impertinent " bullet of a great 
 gun " disturbs him. The picture may serve as a type 
 of the gentler influences and humanities in evil days 
 working still amid the whirlwind and the fire which 
 menace but cannot destroy them. It is at once rest- 
 ful and helpful to turn the mild light of literature upon 
 history, and thus to discover beautiful and unexpected 
 amenities in fierce times, and a culture or a piety 
 which acknowledged kindred spirits irrespective of 
 faction. Let us modify, for instance, the severe and 
 contemptuous judgment of Clarendon upon Sir John 
 Danvers, the regicide, by the pages before us, which 
 remind us that he was an indulgent stepfather to 
 George Herbert, and, even in the crisis which has 
 tarnished his name, the friend and protector of Thomas 
 
 E
 
 50 FULLER'S SERMONS 
 
 Fuller. He was one of the only two civilians in that 
 strange assize whom the King recognized as known 
 to him before the troubles, indeed " he had been gentle- 
 man of the Privy Chamber to Charles, when Prince of 
 Wales " ; and his part should have been as unwel- 
 come to him as it was certainly ungracious. The 
 strange companionship between him and Fuller is 
 perhaps none the less pleasant to contemplate, because 
 it is perplexing. His needs and his ambitions may 
 have confused his motives, and yet left him a genuine 
 sympathy with a man whom the times might sadden, 
 but could not corrupt or beguile. We have linked 
 once already Fuller's name with Falkland's ; and we 
 cannot better close the remarks suggested by these 
 volumes than with some words of Fuller in which the 
 sad, despondent accents of Falkland's last days seem 
 to be anticipated : 
 
 " If I should chance to be stricken dumbe, I would with 
 Zacharia make signes for table bookes and write that the 
 name of that which I desire above all earthly things is Peace."
 
 LETTERS OF THE 
 EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 1 
 
 CHESTERFIELD is now known chiefly as an 
 educator of youth ; and in that character he does 
 not shine. So different is his moral standpoint from 
 our own, that we can scarcely conceive a state of society 
 in which such precepts could have been read by any 
 class of people without some sense of repulsion. Nor, 
 although Lord Carnarvon is of a different opinion, 
 were we able to discover in the later letters addressed 
 to the godson any indications of a change of tone. If 
 his suggestions then were never quite so profligate, it 
 must be remembered that his second pupil was only a 
 child ; the presence of the old leaven is for all that 
 unmistakable. We are convinced that there was no 
 reformation. The old man had begun to weave a new 
 web for the godson seven years before the son received 
 his last admonitions ; and it would be an easy, but 
 rather painful task, to prove in detail that the fabric of 
 the garment, by no means a garment of righteousness, 
 
 1 "Chesterfield's Letters." Edited by Dr. Bradshaw. (Son- 
 nenschein.)
 
 52 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 which he provided for both his disciples, was of the 
 same material. How, indeed, could it be otherwise ? 
 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh ; 
 and Chesterfield's heart, naturally generous, was in 
 some respects vitiated by the tolerance of his age for 
 immorality in high places, and by a theory of life 
 hard, narrow, and cynical. " To talk of natural affec- 
 tion is talking nonsense," he says. He remarks that 
 a parent and child who had never met before would 
 not recognize one another at their first meeting, and 
 he considered this a conclusive proof of his general 
 thesis. Women, in his judgment, were to be trifled 
 with, but never seriously consulted ; creatures for whom 
 no flattery was either two high or too low. At the 
 age of fourteen, the son, certainly with some warrant, 
 thought to please the father by speaking unfavourably 
 of that sex ; the only rebuke which he received was a 
 reminder " from history " that men had done much 
 more mischief; and the child is advised "not to trust 
 either more than was absolutely necessary." He warns 
 his son, and his godson afterwards, that they may pos- 
 sibly merit his aversion; and that if once he quarrels 
 with them, he will never forgive. Perhaps one result 
 of this admonition was that the son married without 
 his father's consent, leaving a widow and two children. 
 But Chesterfield's practice was more amiable than his 
 theory in this instance. If he received Mrs. Eugenia 
 Stanhope coldly, he treated both her and her boys 
 with essential kindness; and if he relapsed into the 
 same severe tone with his godson, it was perhaps
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 53 
 
 because an old man's language is often less flexible 
 than his heart. 
 
 It is wonderful that a man who attributed the in- 
 firmities of his age in part to the excesses of his youth 
 should not have been, if not more positive in prevent- 
 ing, at least more guarded against suggesting vice, 
 where the propensities of the young are so apt to take 
 a hint from their elders for the worse. But the truth is 
 that, for all his superior insight, deteriova sequi was for 
 him not so much a blemish as a necessity ; what men 
 of his rank and degree of culture habitually did was a 
 law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not. 
 His Letters serve a better purpose than that for which 
 he designed them ; they are a standing evidence of 
 the danger of that common theory which regards 
 certain vices as inevitable. * Carefully as he watched 
 his son's career, there was one part of the temptations 
 to which youth is exposed, in which he sometimes 
 gave a general encouragement to evil, whilst as to 
 particular instances he deliberately and avowedly re- 
 mained in ignorance. He calls him in one place, but 
 with not the slightest evidence of censure, a dissipated 
 young man of twenty ; yet it is clear that the lad's 
 leading propensity was to study ; his father is mani- 
 festly alarmed lest his education in the manners and 
 graces, in which he was certainly sadly lacking, should 
 be further impeded by his devotion to his book, and it 
 is, therefore, all the more remarkable that he should 
 have chosen for his governor the Rev. Mr. Harte, of 
 whose social qualities Chesterfield thought very little,
 
 54 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 who was, in fact, if we may infer anything from the 
 manner in which he speaks of him, just one of those 
 awkward scholars upon whom he is never tired of 
 pouring contempt. But the awkwardness of the pupil, 
 whatever it may have been, was not the awkwardness 
 of a stupid lout ; Boswell, a most competent observer, 
 remembered him as the Resident at Dresden, and de- 
 clares that though he could not boast of the graces, 
 he was, in truth, a sensible, civil, well-behaved man. 
 One of his faults is more often found combined with 
 intelligence than with dullness ; his father blames him 
 as critical and disputatious ; proof that independent 
 observation and study were more to him than parental 
 advice. One instance of this remains : on a set of 
 political precepts which his father had inclosed to him 
 was found written in Philip Stanhope's handwriting, 
 " Excellent maxims, but more calculated for the meri- 
 dian of France or Spain than of England." It may 
 be that he here puts his finger upon the real defect of 
 a statesmanship rather acute than robust ; more sym- 
 pathetic with foreign than domestic modes of thought, 
 and consequently perhaps more really successful, as it 
 certainly won a greater reputation, in dealing with 
 Irish than with English politics. Chesterfield writes 
 in 1758 : "I am glad you have connected your nego- 
 tiations and anecdotes ; and, I hope, not with your 
 usual laconism." Laconism, when it is critical, is some- 
 times a formidable weapon ; and he may have had 
 some uncomfortable inklings of its possible strength. 
 Perhaps we made too much of this one spark from
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 55 
 
 a small and long-extinguished fire ; but it is some- 
 times given us to guess the general texture of a mind 
 from a very few threads. At any rate, we cannot help 
 feeling a little pathetic interest in this somewhat 
 shadowy figure, whose failings have been registered 
 am ply, and probably with exaggeration ; whose troubles, 
 and perhaps better affections, only come to us through 
 the refrigerating medium of his father's correspond- 
 ence ; who certainly underwent some humiliations 
 through the circumstances of his birth ; and who, in a 
 more democratic age, or wherever social and courtly 
 influences were no bar to intrinsic worth, might have 
 played, if not a more conspicuous, at least a more 
 useful and congenial part. 
 
 Well read in Latin and Greek, in French, Italian, 
 and German literature, the son remained a rugged 
 Englishman to the last. Chesterfield not only wrote 
 well, but almost thought, in French ; his criticism both 
 of life and letters is on the French model ; his English 
 idiom is tainted from the same source, not, perhaps, so 
 much from affectation as from mere habit. We can 
 scarcely turn a page without encountering such Gal- 
 licisms as — 
 
 " The best scholar of a gentleman ; it is equal to 
 me ; your whole turns upon the company you keep ; 
 in the public; upon your subject ; profit of it; of the 
 one side and of the other ; the affairs of its interior ; to 
 give the French the change? 
 
 Even in the limited intellectual pabulum in which 
 he indulged himself his habitual choice was more
 
 56 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 limited still ; it is easy to see in what pastures he 
 delighted to feed ; thus the statement that " all atten- 
 tions are repaid, though real obligations are not," is 
 characteristic of a man bred upon Rochefoucauld and 
 Voltaire. The self-sufficiency which so often mars 
 even the best French criticism Chesterfield exhibits in 
 a ludicrous degree. The only Italian poets worth 
 reading are Ariosto and Tasso ; Dante, he says, he 
 could never understand, and, therefore, had done with 
 him, fully convinced that he was not worth the pains. 
 Of Voltaire's " Siecle de Louis Ouatorze," he says that 
 " Weak minds will not like it, even though they do 
 not understand it ; which is commonly the measure of 
 their admiration." It would have been well for his 
 own reputation as a critic if he had been guilty of 
 this weakness instead of another weakness still more 
 contemptible. His remarks upon Greek literature are 
 curious and, in their way, instructive, as illustrating 
 both the condition of these studies in his time and the 
 bias of his own mind. As his boy, at the age of 
 sixteen, desired an establishment in England in pre- 
 ference to a foreign appointment, he jocularly sug- 
 gests that he should become a Greek professor at 
 one of our Universities, a very pretty sinecure, re- 
 quiring very little knowledge — " much less, I hope, 
 than you have already" — of that language. Greek 
 ought to share some part of every day : not the 
 Greek poets, the " catches " of Anacreon, or the " tender 
 complaints " of Theocritus, or " even the porter-like 
 language of Homer's heroes," but Plato, Aristoteles,
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 57 
 
 Demosthenes, and Thucydides. Yet of Plato, as of 
 Cicero, he remarks that " It is their eloquence only 
 that has preserved and transmitted them down to us 
 through so many centuries ; for the philosophy of them 
 is wretched, and the reasoning part miserable." 
 
 This being his estimate of these great writers, it is 
 not surprising that, at the convenient season, the study 
 of them is put in proper subordination to more serious 
 pursuits. The ruling ambition survives even in our 
 ashes, and as a Cambridge Don of considerable 
 classical acquirements, but also a good cricketer in his 
 day, is said to have declared, " I would rather hit a 
 good smack to leg than write Plato ; " so Chesterfield 
 affirms " I had rather that you were passionately in 
 love with some determined coquette of condition (who 
 would lead you a dance, fashion, supple, and polish 
 you) than that you knew all Plato and Aristotle by 
 heart." An account which he gives of Berkeley's 
 philosophy is, of course, sad rubbish, and it is scarcely 
 necessary to say that he repeats the common cant of 
 the connoisseur of his generation about the rude, un- 
 cultivated genius of Shakespeare, whom a better 
 education would have saved " from many extrava- 
 gances and much nonsense." We suspect that he 
 would have said much more to the same purpose if 
 the world had not already made up its mind on the 
 subject. How small a place Shakespeare really had 
 in his thoughts is, perhaps, manifest from a single 
 instance. He has occasion to introduce the Earl of 
 Huntingdon to Madame du Boccage, and he presents
 
 58 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 him as a descendant in the direct line of that " Milord 
 Hastings " who plays so considerable a part in the 
 tragedy, which the lady has doubtless read, of " Jane 
 Shore." It is almost impossible not to fret, even when 
 one laughs, at an egotism so narrow and even stupid 
 as Chesterfield's about certain departments of culture. 
 He held music in sovereign contempt, as an occupa- 
 tion quite unfit for a gentleman ; it is not even, like 
 painting and sculpture, a liberal art, although to his 
 disgust it is beginning to be thought so. A gentleman 
 who loves music will get his piping and fiddling done 
 for him ; if he does it for himself he puts himself in a 
 very frivolous and contemptible light. The vulgariz- 
 ing effect of such trivial pursuits would, it appears, be 
 seriously detrimental to the refining influence of the 
 sedulous endeavours, so religiously inculcated, to break 
 the Seventh Commandment. Perhaps we have said 
 more than enough of the moral shortcomings revealed 
 in this collection, but we must quote one instance of 
 social insincerity which a comparison of letters brings 
 to light. Madame de Cursay, mother of Madame de 
 Monconseil, had been seriously ill. Chesterfield tells 
 the daughter that his son had informed him of this 
 circumstance with the keen concern that gratitude 
 ought to inspire, assures her that he had shared her 
 pistes alarmes, and that he shared also her rejoicing 
 at the convalescence, "je ne dis pas d'une mere, 
 mais d'une amie si chere." To his son he writes in 
 response to the letter telling him of the old lady's 
 illness :
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 59 
 
 " If old Cursay goes to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, I 
 cannot help it; it will be an ease to our friend, Madame 
 Monconseil, who, I believe, maintains her, and a little will 
 not satisfy her in any way " 
 
 This duplicity is characteristic of the manners of an 
 age which regarded directness and plain honesty of 
 speech as a note of bad breeding ; in strong contrast 
 with our own time, when brusqueness is a polite art, 
 and elaborate courtesy is a trifle vulgar. According to 
 Chesterfield only a John Trot would say to a newly- 
 married man, " Sir, I wish you much joy ; " or to a 
 man who has lost a son, " Sir, I am sorry for your 
 loss ; " a well-bred man will advance with warmth, 
 vivacity, and a cheerful countenance to the one, and, 
 embracing him, will say, " If you do justice to my 
 attachment to you, you will judge of the joy that I 
 feel upon this occasion better than I can express it ; " 
 whilst to the other he will adopt a grave composure of 
 countenance and a lower voice, and say, " I hope you 
 do me the justice to be convinced that I feel whatever 
 you feel, and shall ever be affected when you are 
 concerned." 
 
 Not only our present manners but our present 
 speech would have seemed vulgar to Chesterfield. 
 We note, after Dr. Bradshaw, that to him " sensible " 
 meant "sensitive," its present use, according to Johnson, 
 being restricted to " low " conversation. Chesterfield 
 apologizes for using the vulgar expression, " The will 
 will be taken for the deed." " To be in high spirits " he 
 describes as a silly term then becoming fashionable.
 
 60 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 All proverbs and trite sayings, such as " Tit for tat," 
 or " What is one man's meat is another man's poison," 
 he held in special abhorrence. The son is cautioned 
 not to use " namely " because it is Scriptural. Chester- 
 field would have scorned the man who professed him- 
 self obleiged, instead of obleeged to him. Pronunciation 
 has the ups and downs of two buckets in a well ; the 
 vulgarism of one generation is the standard usage of 
 the next, and vice versa. But Chesterfield's authority 
 has prevailed on one point. When Johnson published 
 the " Plan for his Dictionary," he was told by Chester- 
 field that the word great should be pronounced so as 
 to rhyme to state, whilst Sir William Yonge affirmed 
 that it should rhyme to seat, and that none but an 
 Irishman would pronounce it grait ; when, as he says, 
 the best speaker in the House of Lords, and the best 
 speaker in the House of Commons thus differed 
 entirely, the wise lexicographer represented both 
 sounds as equally defensible by authority, and gave 
 instances of both from English verse. 
 
 Chesterfield's very limited acquaintance even with 
 the writings of that Augustan age, as it is strangely 
 called, which was well within the range of his life, is 
 strikingly exhibited in his description of humour. To 
 him, as to us, the humourist is he who seizes and 
 depicts, not he who is guilty of the absurd or whimsical ; 
 and to this effect he writes to some anonymous French 
 lady, in correction of the Abbe le Blanc's " Lettres 
 d'un Francois" in 1745. We have little doubt that 
 the Abbe derived his notion of the word from a
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 61 
 
 literature then scarcely more than thirty years old ; 
 at any rate, he could easily have justified himself from 
 the " Spectator " — a strange shifting of the point of 
 view within one generation. From these letters we 
 discover that " unwell " was in the middle of the 
 last century an Irishism, to describe a middle 
 state between health and sickness ; while many a 
 careless speaker now may be comforted to know that 
 the great Chesterfield is guilty of writing " between 
 you and I." 
 
 Narrow as was Chesterfield's scope in the province 
 of letters, it must in fairness be admitted that upon 
 his own ground he is often clear-sighted enough. His 
 criticism of the French writing fashionable in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, its affectations, its 
 neologisms, its quest of Vesprit, invito, Minerva, is 
 probably quite just ; like Ixion, he says, such writers 
 embrace a cloud instead of the goddess they are pursu- 
 ing ; he was right in preferring to all this the luminous 
 and effortless precision of Voltaire. He cleverly says 
 in French of a certain writer of the galimatias in 
 vogue, that — 
 
 " God never meant men to think after that fashion, any 
 more than He meant them to walk on their hands with their 
 feet in the air, although, by persevering effort, they have 
 succeeded in doing both the one and the other." 
 
 His lucidity and point, unmistakably of French 
 origin, excited the surprise and admiration, and even 
 perhaps the genuine envy of the French correspondents 
 on whom he returned their own native products with
 
 62 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 increase ; and the same traits frequently enliven his 
 English letters. Count Sinzendorf, for instance, the 
 Imperial Minister, left the Hague one Sunday morn- 
 ing, declaring with an air of mystery that he was going 
 to see some of the province and might possibly go to 
 Spa : " But for my own part," writes Chesterfield to 
 Lord Townshend, " as I know the gentleman, I do not 
 believe the mystery is upon account of the journey, 
 but I rather believe that he takes the journey for the 
 sake of the mystery." 
 
 More severe still is his sarcasm on that mad-brained 
 and most uncomfortable creature, the father of 
 Frederick the Great, who made his son swear, among 
 many other things, that he would never believe the 
 doctrine of predestination ! " A very unnecessary de- 
 claration," says Chesterfield, " for anybody who has 
 the misfortune of being acquainted with him to make, 
 since Providence can never be supposed to have pre- 
 ordained such a creature ! " 
 
 His abilities in this way were more amiably exer- 
 cised in playing lightly with the infirmities of his old 
 age ; to his well-known mot, " Tyrawley and I have 
 been dead these two years, but we do not wish it to be 
 generally known," we might add his willingness to 
 part with his " hereditary right " to deafness " to any 
 Minister to whom hearing is often disagreeable, or to 
 any fine woman, to whom it is often dangerous." In 
 spite of his own urgent advice, " abstain carefully from 
 satire," it is impossible that he could have kept this 
 dangerous power constantly under control ; and there
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 63 
 
 is probably some truth in Lord Hervey's statement 
 that " from his propensity to ridicule he was rather 
 liked than loved." 
 
 When Chesterfield proposed a certain name to 
 George II., and the monarch angrily said, "I would 
 rather have the devil," the Minister reminded him 
 that the personage he preferred must be addressed 
 in the commission as " our trusty and well-beloved 
 cousin." George may have laughed, but we have a 
 suspicion that the ready humour here displayed was 
 not always really acceptable to a king in whose com- 
 position, according to Chesterfield, everything was 
 little, who loved to act the king but mistook the part, 
 and in whom the Royal dignity shrunk into the 
 Electoral pride. It is to Chesterfield's honour, perhaps, 
 that in spite of his acknowledged grace of manner he 
 was not successful as a courtier. He avowed a pro- 
 found mistrust of George II., based, it may be, in part 
 upon those conversations, in which he affirms the 
 character of kings is best discovered. He imputes 
 to him the same treachery which stained the greater 
 name of Marlborough ; he more than insinuates that 
 the failure of the expedition to Brest was brought 
 about by Court intrigue ; and speaks of the bugbear of 
 a French invasion, kept alive, he says, regardless of 
 grammar, by " I know who, and I know why." Great 
 as were his own merits as a politician, he was able to 
 despise, but unable to dispense with some of the 
 practices of a corrupt time ; he writes that " his son 
 will be brought into Parliament without opposition,
 
 64 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 but not gratis ;" and ten years later he assists in a 
 negotiation by which the young man, who, as resident 
 in an official position abroad, could not possibly have 
 discharged his duty as a member of the House of 
 Commons, is to vacate his seat " for a valuable con- 
 sideration, meaning money." This more than acquies- 
 cence in certain arrangements as necessary evils is 
 characteristic of the man ; and we trace at once 
 cynicism and irony in his style when, in attempting to 
 give some notion of the delays and absurd difficulties 
 that arose in a negotiation with the United Provinces — 
 
 "Represent to yourself," he writes, "an English Minister 
 endeavouring to carry a point by the single merit of the point 
 itself, without the assistance of reward and punishments, 
 through what patriots would call an independent and un- 
 biassed House of Commons — that is, an assembly of people 
 influenced by everything but by the Court, and then judge 
 how soon and how easily it would pass ! " 
 
 He himself suffered by the methods which he here 
 describes. In 1732 he opposed Walpole's Excise 
 scheme, and was in consequence deprived of his white 
 staff; yet at a later date he recommends to Newcastle 
 vindictive proceedings of much the same kind as the 
 only way to secure a stable administration. On the 
 topic of clemency there is indeed a strange incongruity 
 between Chesterfield's language on various occasions, 
 due rather to the fact that, whether through conviction 
 or prejudice, the circumstances seemed to him to be 
 radically different, than to any vicissitudes in a temper 
 so controlled and equable as his. His mild but firm
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 65 
 
 administration of Ireland was marred by no trepida- 
 tion. He was told one morning that the people of 
 Connaught were rising. He took out his watch and 
 said simply, " It is nine o'clock, and certainly time for 
 them to rise." Yet at the very same date he was 
 using, with respect to the rebels in Scotland, language 
 so savage that if we did not know the man we should 
 certainly attribute it to the anger which not uncom- 
 monly goes hand in hand with panic. Had the 
 " Butcher " Cumberland been under his instructions he 
 might fairly have pleaded that he had not exceeded 
 them. " Let the Duke put all to fire and sword." 
 " The Commander-in-Chief should be ordered to give 
 no quarter, but to pursue and destroy the rebels 
 wherever he finds them." So wrote a wise and sym 
 pathetic ruler, who in his general correspondence ex- 
 hibits a disgust, then uncommon among statesmen, 
 even at such horrors as are inevitable in any form oi 
 warfare. 
 
 Chesterfield's Lord-Lieutenancy was of brief dura- 
 tion, and from it we cannot discover how far he would 
 have been able to grapple with immediate public 
 dangers, which never in fact troubled him during his 
 stay in Ireland. His interest in that country did not 
 terminate with his office, and he was wont, on the 
 strength of his Lieutenancy, to call himself an Irish- 
 man ; he maintained a constant correspondence upon 
 Irish affairs with Dr. Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford, 
 (who had formerlybeen his chaplain at the Hague), with 
 Mr. Thomas Prior, and with Alderman Faulkner, a 
 
 F
 
 66 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 gentleman who answers exactly to Mr. Boffin's de- 
 scription of Mr. Silas Wegg as "a literary party 
 with a wooden leg." 1 At times Chesterfield's tone 
 in these letters is more cheerful than we could have 
 anticipated ; and did we not remember how low 
 was his estimate of our English education, especially 
 at Westminster, then perhaps our representative 
 school, we should be surprised at his conviction 
 that the state of schools and of university education 
 in Ireland was better than ours ; just as we stumble 
 at his more general declaration, made, it is true, at 
 a time of great national despondency here, that the 
 prospects of Ireland were more hopeful than those 
 of England ! But Cassandra is never long absent 
 from the elbow of the Irish historian or statesman. 
 The extravagance and dissipation which Chesterfield 
 regretted in 1746 Burke was still regretting fifty 
 years later : " Except in your claret," writes Chester- 
 field, "which you are very solicitous should be two or 
 three years old, you think less of two or three years 
 hence than any people under the sun." 
 
 With a laudable zeal to promote Irish industries, 
 he urges the manufacture of glass bottles : " Consider- 
 ing," he says, " the close connection there is between 
 bottles and claret, I should hope that this manufacture, 
 though your own, may meet with encouragement." He 
 suggests that every Irishman should make as many 
 
 1 This leg Foote had the inhumanity to ridicule upon the 
 stage. He was properly punished by an accident which led to 
 the amputation of his own.
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 67 
 
 bottles as he empties. He was keenly alive to the 
 mischiefs of civil disabilities for the Irish Romanists ; 
 and would have them tied down " by the tender but 
 strong bonds of landed property." But his great merit 
 is that he saw the necessity of moral as well as me- 
 chanical reform ; and it is this insight that prompts 
 him to exclaim, " When Ireland is no longer de- 
 pendent upon England, the Lord have mercy upon it." 
 If we regret that with him, as with most politicians of 
 his day, the peasantry of Ireland are much in the 
 background, we must note at the same time his de- 
 claration, when the Whiteboys in 1764 had been 
 troublesome, that " if the military force had killed half 
 as many landlords it would have contributed more 
 effectually to restore quiet." 1 At a time when the 
 Lord-Lieutenants were generally governed by the 
 dominant faction, and secured their own peace and 
 ignoble ease by keeping that satisfied, he resolved " to 
 take trouble upon himself," and haughtily refused to 
 be the " first slave " of a set of unscrupulous and greedy 
 placemen. If expediency led him to insist on the 
 dangers to Ireland of " starting points which ought 
 never to have been mentioned at all," his determina- 
 tion to see things with his own eyes marks one of the 
 best elements in his character. He had, besides, that 
 cosmopolitan temper, so much needed, and yet so 
 lamentably wanting in our past treatment of the Irish 
 
 1 He adds : " The poor people in Ireland are used worse than 
 negroes by their lords and masters, and their deputies of deputies 
 of deputies."
 
 68 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 problem. His contempt of the pride of birth was no 
 pretence ; and he was certainly equally exempt from 
 the pride of race. In one sense the most aristocratic 
 of aristocrats, good society meant for him not neces- 
 sarily well-born, but always well-bred and accom- 
 plished people ; and his strict inculcation of courtesy 
 to servants and inferiors was part of a humane spirit, 
 which acknowledged no natural inferiority, whether of 
 social status l or of nationality. He notices with 
 censure the contempt of historians for humanity in 
 general, and no Socialist orator in Trafalgar Square 
 could more strongly denounce the ambition of crowned 
 heads, whose principal business, according to him, was 
 the extermination of their fellow-creatures. When he 
 waxes hot upon this theme he sometimes sacrifices 
 truth to epigram. " Happy were it for England," he 
 exclaims, " happy for the world, if there were not 
 great kings in it," forgetting that the weakness of 
 monarchs has caused at least as great miseries as their 
 power. 
 
 Of his prescience much has been written. He saw, 
 long before a storm was suspected, the cloud small as 
 a man's hand which was to gather into the French 
 Revolution. He guessed the incapacity which, at least 
 for many generations, the French people exhibited for 
 Constitutional government. "Vous savez faire des 
 barricades mais vous n'eleverez jamais des barrieres," 
 
 1 Occasional expressions notwithstanding. " Gout," he says, 
 " is the distemper of a gentleman, whereas the rheumatism is 
 the distemper of a hackney-coachman or chairman."
 
 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 69 
 
 he says in words which read rather like history than 
 prophecy. He foretold the extinction of the temporal 
 power of the Papacy; yet to long-sighted people things 
 remote are often more visible than things near, and 
 on the eve of England's second heroic age he seems to 
 have had scarcely any suspicion of the commanding 
 genius of Pitt, whom nevertheless he helped to his 
 brilliant ascendancy. He was an able diplomatist, 
 and these letters would enable us, if we had space, to 
 give detailed instances of his skill. He did not disdain 
 to bring his social qualities into the game ; and often 
 by means of badinage discovered some things which he 
 wanted to know. His methods of policy were in every 
 direction quiet and unobtrusive ; thus he boasts that 
 it was his resignation of the Secretaryship of State 
 that made the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, by opening 
 people's eyes to the imminent dangers of the war. He 
 had the invaluable art of concealing his ignorance 
 with dexterity ; his most famous achievement is per- 
 haps the reform of the Calendar, yet he declares that 
 of all the substantial part of his brilliant speech upon 
 that measure he did not himself understand a word. 
 Long before his decease he wrote as one for whom the 
 idle dream of this world was over ; yet he emerged 
 from his obscurity to urge with success upon the king 
 that alliance between Pitt and Newcastle, which was 
 the first step to the restoration of our prestige abroad 
 through a series of glorious triumphs by land and sea. 
 A safe reputation such as his has a peculiar fascina- 
 tion, because it leaves so much room for conjecture.
 
 70 CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS 
 
 More adventurous characters give the historian many- 
 more topics for praise or blame, but the colours in 
 which they are painted are fast and clear, and specula- 
 tion is displaced by some positive judgment where 
 men have done all that it was possible for them to do. 
 The Chesterfields of politics leave us problems none 
 the less interesting because they are insoluble ; and 
 we are constantly asking, though with no prospect of 
 reply, whether their reserve was due to self-knowledge 
 or to magnanimity, and whether, if they would, they 
 could have achieved more.
 
 ARNOLD'S ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 
 
 Second Series 
 
 IT is not too soon to try to estimate Matthew Ar- 
 nold's work as a critic. Long before his too early- 
 death he had done for us all he could. He had given 
 vogue to modes of thought and judgment which were 
 once rare amongst Englishmen. He would have dis- 
 claimed, with some repugnance, the suggestion that he 
 had a method. But if he had not a method, he had a 
 mystery, an open secret, the habit of seeing every 
 object before him in a perspective of wide culture and 
 observation. He taught us to have this aim, and, 
 given the requisite breadth and knowledge — 
 
 "Most can raise the flower now 
 For all have got the seed." 
 
 That " World Literature " which was the dream of 
 Goethe, a literature exempt from the prejudices and 
 eccentricities which national isolation begets, and 
 always making mute appeal to a tribunal, if not cos- 
 mopolitan at least European, has through Matthew 
 Arnold become more possible for us. In many cases, 
 therefore, it became easy to foresee what Matthew
 
 72 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 Arnold would say, if not exactly how he would say it. 
 But there was, besides, in his criticism a personal 
 element against which, for a thoroughly just judgment, 
 it is always necessary to be on our guard. It gave him 
 currency, it made him delightfully readable ; we would 
 not have missed it for the world. Let it amuse us ; 
 " we are none of us," he would himself say, " likely to 
 be lively much longer," and some of the gaiety of 
 criticism is already eclipsed with him. But let us 
 remember that wherever this personal element appears 
 there is no longer the single eye, and the mark is not 
 always hit. 
 
 In one direction, indeed, this personal element 
 covered a very large extent of ground. He claimed 
 for culture an empire which it never could achieve 
 without a complete change of character. He had, we 
 believe, a sincere sympathy with the devoted labourer 
 in the work of social reformation, but he often dis- 
 sembled his love, and, to a world oblivious of nice 
 distinctions, he seemed like a well-dressed stranger 
 criticising the workman in the gravel-pit below for the 
 inevitable soils and tatters of his clothes. The motto 
 which Mr. Frederic Harrison has chosen for his dia- 
 logue on " Culture " : 
 
 " The sovereign'st thing on earth 
 Was parmaceti for an inward bruise," 
 
 suggested a picture, consolatory to the wounded 
 feelings of many a Hotspur in the battle of life. We 
 take up Matthew Arnold's last volume and we light 
 upon this :
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 73 
 
 " The ' scientific system of thought ' in Wordsworth gives 
 us at last such poetry as this, which the devout Words- 
 worthian accepts : 
 
 ' O for the coming of that glorious time 
 
 When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 
 
 And best protection, this Imperial Realm, 
 
 While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
 
 An obligation, on her part, to teach 
 
 Them who are born to serve her and obey ; 
 
 Binding herself by statute to secure, 
 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains, 
 
 The rudiments of letters, and inform 
 
 The mind with moral and religious truth.' 
 
 Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production of 
 these un-Voltairian lines must have been imposed on him as 
 a judgment ! One can hear them being quoted at a Social 
 Science Congress ; one can call up the whole scene. A 
 great room in one of our dismal provincial towns ; dusty air 
 and jaded afternoon daylight ; benches full of men with 
 bald heads and women in spectacles ; an orator lifting up 
 his face from a manuscript written within and without to 
 declaim these lines of Wordsworth ; and in the soul of any 
 poor child of nature who may have wandered in thither, an 
 unutterable sense of lamentation, and mourning, and woe ! " 
 
 Now this is amusing, and possibly true and ad- 
 mirable, as a piece of literary criticism ; but would 
 not any one who did not know the writer and the field 
 of survey which he claimed for himself, suppose that 
 we had here a fastidious czstkete, a spirit altogether 
 too delicate, too much impressed by external uncome- 
 liness, to deal with questions of moral evil at all ?
 
 74 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 Alas ! the centres of so much moral ugliness are apt 
 to be themselves ugly, land too much working or 
 thinking about these things commonly ends in bald 
 heads and spectacles ; but to serious minds, who re- 
 member that poetry is often stimulating and fruitful 
 out of all proportion to its aesthetic merit, Matthew 
 Arnold's criticism upon this particular passage of 
 Wordsworth will inevitably, to the obscuring of all 
 that he really wishes to convey, suggest the reflection 
 that what with the children of nature whom he desires 
 to multiply and the children of nature who multiply 
 themselves only too fast, bald heads and spectacles 
 are likely to be on the increase among us. We must 
 add that if, as Matthew Arnold is never tired of telling 
 us, literature is " a criticism of life " ; if " the strongest 
 part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry " ; 
 if we are one day to learn to say, " Poetry is the 
 reality, philosophy the illusion," the province of poetry 
 is by these propositions made so wide, the task com- 
 mitted to her so enormous, and all her extant ap- 
 paratus so insufficient for her pressing needs, that even 
 the inferior parts of her workmanship which find 
 favour with "'those bold bad men,' the haunters of 
 social science congresses," will prove very serviceable. 
 But the truth is that the propositions of enormous 
 reach, which the great critic was accustomed to use, are 
 many of them unworkable dogmas, at many points 
 more demonstrably false than the articles of any 
 theological creed. He has contrasted literature and 
 dogma; but literature herself abounds in dogmas, which
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 75 
 
 are only saved from sceptical attack because too much 
 is not at present claimed for them. " Beauty is truth ; 
 truth beauty," says Keats ; and we accept this now as 
 a stimulating and fruitful saying, giving a worthy aim 
 to men's efforts in art or letters, fixing men's eyes 
 upon remote but glorious possibilities, and perhaps 
 suggesting the faith that in some sphere beyond our 
 present ken the identity is already complete. But 
 conceive this bright fancy, so potent whilst it is left at 
 large in the province of the imagination, yet so ab- 
 solutely dogmatic in form, urged as a rule for the 
 practical guidance of life, and proclaimed by the high 
 priests of culture in all the churches of the future as 
 " the serious one thing needful " ; and what a revolt 
 against it there will be among poor mortals, who can 
 never be long oblivious of tangible or historic facts ! 
 Truth is often ugly ; beauty is often illusion ; these 
 are counter-propositions which can scarcely be denied 
 even by the most transcendental mind. Inoperative 
 now, what powerful solvents they will then be, in com- 
 bination with the fear, not unwarranted by experience, 
 that beauty accepted for truth may mean for fallible 
 and impressionable men grace without morals ! And 
 the refinements and distinctions, however just and 
 true, by which these objections may be obviated, will 
 inevitably seem to be at least as sophistical and far- 
 fetched as the subtleties of any theologian in defence 
 or explanation of some doubtful and difficult text. 
 Matthew Arnold, 1 criticising a passage from 
 
 1 Mixed Essays. A French Critic on Milton.
 
 76 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 Macaulay's Essay on Milton, says of it, " Substantial 
 meaning such lucubrations have none." We are 
 almost inclined to thank him for teaching us that 
 word. The passage to which he applies it is indeed 
 painfully rhetorical, and, after the manner of youthful 
 rhetoricians, precision is sacrificed to rhetoric. The 
 statement that " Milton wrote in an age of philosophers 
 and theologians " implies a distinction between Milton 
 and Dante, which, apart from the context, is wholly 
 misleading. Such antitheses as "the material or 
 immaterial system," "philosophically in the wrong, 
 but poetically in the right," betray the ambitious but 
 inexperienced penman. So we have written ; and 
 the words shall stand, as an evidence how far implicit 
 trust in Matthew Arnold may betray us. We must be 
 on our guard, he tells us, against the devout Words- 
 worthians. We must be on our guard, experience 
 proves, against the antagonists of Macaulay. Vulner- 
 able as he is, he has assuredly some protecting genius 
 who smites them with obliquity of vision at the moment 
 of attack. One accuses him of bad scholarship, and 
 makes a gross blunder in grammar in a familiar 
 passage of Greek. Another sets him right about 
 Claverhouse, and begins by giving Claverhouse the 
 wrong Christian name. Another accuses him of 
 garbling, and leaves off a crucial passage in the 
 middle. And here we have Matthew Arnold charg- 
 ing him with no meaning, and omitting from the 
 words which he adduces to prove his charge every 
 indication of their real purport. To use a vulgar but
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 77 
 
 expressive figure of speech the passage has been 
 simply "gutted." It is, as we discover at once on 
 turning to the essay itself, Johnson who is really 
 responsible for the antithesis between the " material " 
 and the " immaterial system." He says, " the poet 
 should have secured the consistency of his system by 
 keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the 
 reader to drop it from his thoughts." To which 
 Macaulay in effect replies that this was impossible ; 
 that the tendencies, the modes of thought belonging 
 to Milton's time, forbade it ; that a sort of compromise 
 was necessary, if the poet was to engage " that half- 
 belief, which poetry requires." Matthew Arnold cites 
 with approval M. Scherer's dictum that " the funda- 
 mental conceptions of Paradise Lost have become 
 foreign to us." Well, Macaulay's dictum is that 
 Dante's conceptions of the spiritual world had become 
 foreign to the age of Milton. Why is the one dictum 
 wisdom and the other foolishness ? 
 
 On the other hand, Matthew Arnold himself is 
 constantly offering us the semblance of thoughts 
 which dissolve into airy nothings the moment we 
 attempt to give them " substantial meaning " : 
 
 " Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, the sup- 
 posed fact ; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now 
 the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything ; 
 the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry 
 attaches its emotion to the idea ; the idea is the fact. The 
 strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious 
 poetry."
 
 78 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 How can we help retorting here that this is sheer 
 nonsense; that "substantial meaning such lucubrations 
 have none " ? " Our religion has materialized itself in 
 the fact." Assuredly this implies a gradual deteriora- 
 tion ; an undue prominence given, in process of time, 
 to the fact, as compared with the ideas which the fact 
 may be supposed to symbolize. The historic truth, of 
 course, is that our religion from the very first, and 
 then most ardently, " attached its emotion to the fact " 
 or " the supposed fact." But for this it would have had 
 no existence. The disease, if disease it is, is congenital ; 
 nay, the very life of " our religion " (if by " our religion " 
 is meant Christianity) has been one "long disease." 
 This is so obvious that we are forced to suppose that 
 " our religion " means something less determinate — is, 
 in fact, another name for the religious emotions of 
 mankind, which, in as far as they are distinctively 
 Christian, have been " materialized." But then, " the 
 strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious 
 poetry." " Its unconscious poetry," observe ; that 
 poetry effortless, spontaneous, which flourishes every- 
 where in an atmosphere of beautiful legend, accepted 
 with implicit belief. But so little is this unconscious 
 poetry independent of the fact — that is, of course, of 
 belief in the fact — that when " the fact fails it," in 
 plain English when men cease to believe their legends, 
 their poetry is no longer unconscious, no longer 
 intensely emotional, no longer in any proper sense 
 religious. They pass consciously from belief to make- 
 believe, and Matthew Arnold would fain tempt us to
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 79 
 
 take make-believe for belief. But " surely in vain is 
 this net spread in the sight of any bird." The poetry 
 for which " the idea is everything," the poetry which 
 is content to take the idea for the fact, when the fact 
 fails it, may have every quality save one ; but it has 
 no religion in it. It may add much to the refinement 
 of life, but it has little controlling power over conscience 
 or conduct. The emotions which it excites are al- 
 together too superficial, too consciously aesthetic or 
 artistic, too much the result of a deliberate surrender 
 to illusion, to supply motive or principle. If these are 
 truisms, so much the worse for the vague but pre- 
 tentious generalities which the mere statement of 
 truisms can explode. " The house is falling about 
 your ears ; but never mind, it is still to all intents and 
 purposes a commodious mansion, for you can still 
 make a picture of it," is scarcely a parody of the sweet 
 and reasonable message which, in this and similar 
 passages, the Apostle of Culture conveys to the 
 Christian world. 
 
 And then that talk about " a world of illusion, of 
 divine illusion," surely, as he would himself say, 
 " imposed " upon the contemner of philosophy " as 
 a judgment" — the abstract character, without the 
 method, of metaphysics ; the voice the voice of a 
 cautious and discerning Jacob, but the hands the 
 hands of a wild and rambling Esau, gathering from all 
 quarters his incongruous spoil ! That the phenomenal 
 world is a world of divine illusion, we are quite 
 prepared to believe ; albeit it is an opinion which
 
 80 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 certainly owes its acceptance to the philosophy which 
 we are told is probably itself illusive. What else 
 there is anywhere which can properly be called 
 "divine illusion," we are unable to conceive. We know 
 no sense in which the illusion, whatever it may be 
 which belongs to the world of human thought and 
 emotion, can be said to be divine. Yet what is " the 
 rest " of which Matthew Arnold speaks above, if not 
 the whole world of nature and human life, exclusive 
 of the ideas which poetry thence gathers ? Definition, 
 indeed, is as difficult as respiration in these high 
 latitudes ; what Barrow says of wit is in place here — 
 we might as well attempt " to make a portrait of 
 Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air." 
 " We must take," as Macaulay would say, " what mean- 
 ing we can get and be thankful." Or, better, we must 
 take concrete instances, and try to gain from these 
 some interpretation of a language at present too much 
 in the void. The Ariels of literature will, of course, 
 protest against any Philistine Sycorax who attempts 
 to fasten them thus as " within a cloven pine." But 
 they can expect no deliverer, if they are thus fixed, 
 not for refusing to serve us, but for pretending to be 
 executing supernatural ministries, while they are only 
 carrying out earthly behests. We open upon a passage 
 like this in the same essay from which we made our 
 last quotation : 
 
 " The world of Chaucer is fairer, richer, more significant 
 than that of Burns ; but when the largeness and freedom of 
 Burns get full sweep, as in 'Tarn o' Shanter,' or, still more,
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 81 
 
 in that puissant and splendid production ' The Jolly Beg- 
 gars,' his world may be what it will, his poetic genius 
 triumphs over it. In the world of ' The Jolly Beggars ' 
 there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is bes- 
 tiality ; yet the piece is a superb poetical success. It has 
 breadth, truth, and power which made the famous scene in 
 Auerbach's cellar, of Goethe's ' Faust,' seem artificial and 
 tame beside it." 
 
 T«' Tai/Ta irpbg AioWov ; what have these things to do 
 with those solemn words which seemed to announce a 
 new cultus ? Poetry, superb poetry, sublimated out of 
 a coarse and bestial life — the thing is, we suppose, 
 conceivable to the aesthetic mind which knows nothing 
 of moral scruples, and whether in Murillo's " Beggar 
 Boys " or in Burns's " Jolly Beggars " is prepared to 
 praise the efficient rendering of dirt ; but what a 
 transition we have made in the space of a few pages ! 
 We seemed to have passed, as the traveller in Italy 
 passes, through the portico of a ruined temple into a 
 hovel. It is not enough to reply that the transition 
 is delicately managed ; that Matthew Arnold has 
 previously told us that Burns's moralizing lacks that 
 " accent of high seriousness, born of absolute sincerity," 
 which we find in Dante. For all this, he too clearly 
 shows us that the image of his idolatry has feet of clay. 
 For, given that with " high seriousness " or without it, 
 on themes the most exalted and themes the most 
 sordid and vile, superb poetry is possible ; and what is 
 the inference? Clearly that the imaginative faculty 
 may select and glorify, but does not create the elements 
 
 G
 
 82 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 which give to poetry whatever of moral force she 
 possesses, and that where moral fibre is wanting, it is 
 not in poetry to supply it. 
 
 Matthew Arnold indeed betrays some uneasy con- 
 sciousness of a truth so obvious that a criticism so 
 comprehensive as his could not fail to encounter the 
 proofs of it at a thousand points. Voltaire has said 
 that " no nation has treated in poetry moral ideas with 
 more energy and depth than the English nation." 
 And our critic begins by telling us, what few will need 
 to be told, that Voltaire " does not mean by ' treating in 
 poetry moral ideas ' the composing moral and didactic 
 poems." Certainly not ; but between this and the 
 next stage there is perhaps more than one halting-place 
 which he passes unnoticed. For Voltaire means, it 
 appears, " the noble and profound application of ideas 
 to life." Whether Voltaire, among whose deficiencies 
 we cannot reckon a want of lucidity, would have ac- 
 cepted this amplification of a meaning, perfectly in- 
 telligible if his words are taken in their ordinary sense ; 
 whether this is not one of several instances of a tanta- 
 lizing trick, practised by Matthew Arnold to perfection, 
 by which the more nebulous notions of to-day are read 
 into the clear, if limited, thinking of a previous age, we 
 shall better see as we proceed : 
 
 " He means the application of these ideas under the con- 
 ditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic 
 truth. If it is said that to call these ideas moral ideas is to 
 introduce a strong and injurious limitation, I answer that it 
 is to do nothing of the kind, because moral ideas are really
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 83 
 
 so main a part of human life. The question, How to live, is 
 itself a moral idea, and it is the question which most interests 
 every man, and with which, in some way or other, he is per- 
 petually occupied. A large sense is, of course, to be given 
 to the term moral. Whatever bears upon the question, 
 ' How to live ' comes under it : 
 
 ' Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but, what thou liv'st 
 Live well ; how long or short, permit to heaven.' 
 
 In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once per- 
 ceives, a moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles 
 the forward-bending lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover 
 arrested and presented in immortal relief by the sculptor's 
 hand before he can kiss, with the line : 
 
 ' For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair — ' 
 
 he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says that — 
 
 ' We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep, — ' 
 
 he utters a moral idea." 
 
 " Every one perceives " that there is a moral idea in 
 the third of these quotations scarcely less obvious than 
 that of the first. But observe how comfortably the 
 passage in which it is difficult to find any suggestion 
 which can be reasonably called moral, is " sandwiched " 
 between the first and third. That line of Keats an 
 example of the kind of thing Voltaire meant when he 
 spoke of the English treatment of moral ideas in
 
 84 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 poetry ! The notion is almost grotesque. There is 
 nothing, we may be sure, in the whole of the " Ode on 
 a Grecian Urn," which he would have called either dis- 
 tinctively moral or distinctively English. Even if we 
 use the term moral in the " large sense " which we are 
 expected to give to it, we are puzzled to discover in 
 what way the words, 
 
 " For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair," 
 
 bear upon the question, " how to live." We are only 
 conscious that we have been presented with a monster 
 balloon of theory, and that our morality is expected 
 to become gaseous in order to inflate it. 
 
 We may be thought to have given a disproportionate 
 treatment to the ethical side of Matthew Arnold's 
 criticism. Yet we have certainly not given it more 
 consideration than he would expect for it, and if we 
 were free to discuss it at much further length, he sup- 
 plies us with abundant material. His intellectual 
 convictions and his moral sympathies had made an 
 armistice which he persuaded himself, and tried to 
 persuade the world, might be the basis of a lasting 
 peace. But habits of mind such as his end legiti- 
 mately in Renan, and only anomalously in Matthew 
 Arnold. A not unkindly Nemesis made this great 
 enemy of anomalies and provincialism himself an 
 anomaly peculiarly insular and English. This son of 
 religious England could never " forget his own people 
 and his father's house," and was quite incapable of 
 the frank, if regretful, abandonment of earlier pre-
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 85 
 
 possessions which brought his French contemporary 
 to the spiritual condition of the Parisian gamin. He 
 put himself therefore in that middle place " to God and 
 to His enemies alike displeasing," which to be tenable 
 required either more faith or less. He never realized 
 what Renan well knew, that the word " illusion " is a 
 baneful spell, which, for the soul that has learned to 
 utter it, reduces the beautiful form and voice of religion 
 to a gibbering phantom. He never patiently thought 
 things out in these greatest questions of the present 
 and future ; and the effect — if it is not the cause — 
 is that he believed it possible to keep without vital 
 inconsistency, and the consequent despondency or 
 cynicism, the head with the Goethes and Heines and 
 George Sands, and the whole world of modern pagans, 
 and the heart with the saints. It was a freak of later 
 Greek sculpture to combine the face of Hermes with 
 the thews and sinews of Hercules. This bizarre fancy 
 has more than one parallel among the eccentricities of 
 modern thought. 
 
 Matthew Arnold found no pleasure in the new- 
 fangled substitutes for religion. Having tasted the old 
 wine he did not desire the new ; he said (but with the 
 air of a connoisseur licensed to find fault) " the old is 
 better." His fault-finding however must be admitted, 
 even by those who admire him most, to be occasionally 
 very random and slipshod work. Here is a palpable 
 instance : 
 
 "'Duty exists,' says Wordsworth, in the 'Excursion'; 
 and then he proceeds thus :
 
 86 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 
 
 ' . . . . Immutably survive, 
 For our support, the measures and the forms, 
 Which an abstract Intelligence supplies, 
 Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not.' 
 
 And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is 
 a sweet union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinter- 
 ested lover of poetry will feel that the lines carry us really 
 not a step farther than the proposition which they would 
 interpret ; that they are a tissue of elevated but abstract 
 verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry." 
 
 We will let " the disinterested lover of poetry " say 
 what he pleases about these lines in their poetic 
 character ; nor is this the place to defend them as a 
 fragment of philosophy. But the news that they add 
 nothing to our notions of human obligation is too good 
 to be true ; we should like some other security for this 
 than our critic's autocratic extravagance of speech. 
 He has had much to do, in his quality of critic, with 
 people who found a basis for duty less immutable than 
 that proposed by Wordsworth ; and these people were 
 not always to his taste. " What a set ! What a world ! " 
 he exclaims of the sordid, vapouring, irresponsible 
 company into which poor Shelley threw himself. It is 
 just the sort of comment which was needed ; in these 
 days how thankful we ought to be for a critic, and that 
 one of the greatest of critics, who is capable of these 
 instincts of repulsion and has the courage to express 
 them in a word, conscious though we may be that 
 proximity has something to do with this aversion, and 
 that the shock which is acute when it comes from
 
 ARNOLD'S LAST ESSAYS 87 
 
 quarters so near home, is slight enough from the longi- 
 tude of Paris or Weimar. But assuredly Matthew 
 Arnold did not owe to literature, or even " culture," 
 his power to resist the glamour with which literature 
 too often invests questionable morals ; and even his 
 prejudice in favour of" manners, tone, dignity," belongs 
 to wholesome traditions the place of which genius 
 itself cannot supply. His last volume contains some 
 of his most characteristic work, but we hesitate to say, 
 with his editor, " his best." His best and surest work 
 in criticism was his earliest ; the very best of all is 
 perhaps to be found in his verse. But that is often 
 most interesting which is least faultless ; and these 
 last essays of his graceful pen, in spite of the many 
 instances they afford of personal preference, trying 
 with but partial success to base itself on principle, will 
 be welcome to all who have enough freedom of mind 
 to be fascinated even by the eccentricities of a rarely 
 gifted spirit.
 
 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 THAT Waller revolutionized English poetry is 
 neither a new nor a true discovery. It was 
 announced as long ago as 1690 in a Preface to the 
 second part of his poems, attributed with every prob- 
 ability to Atterbury. Here we find it stated that 
 Waller " was the first that showed us our tongue had 
 beauty and numbers in it." Here we read that he 
 was the first to correct what has, in these latter days, 
 been called the " overflow " in heroic verse. The 
 verses of the men before his time, we are told — 
 
 " Ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout 
 a whole copy, like the hooked atoms that compose a body in 
 Des Cartes. There was no distinction of parts, no regular 
 stops, nothing for the ear to rest upon ; but as soon as the 
 copy began, down it went like a larum incessantly ; and the 
 reader was sure to be out of breath before he got to the end 
 of it ; so that really verse, in those days, was but downright 
 prose tagged with rhymes. Mr. Waller removed all these 
 faults, brought in more polysyllables and smoother measures, 
 bound up his thoughts better, and in a cadence more 
 agreeable to the nature of the verse he wrote in ; so that 
 wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived the 
 little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with them."
 
 EDMUND WALLER 89 
 
 This is Atterbury, as we conceive of him ; dogmatic 
 and lucid ; but too little painstaking to be exact. 
 Waller's praise was sung with more discrimination by 
 Dryden, in 1699. He says indeed that "our numbers 
 were in their nonage until Waller and Denham 
 appeared." But in the same valuable document, the 
 Preface to his Tales, he writes that the " learned and 
 ingenious Sandys " was — 
 
 "The best versifier of the former age : if I may properly 
 call it by that name, which was the former part of this con- 
 cluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished 
 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth : great masters in our 
 language : and who saw much farther into the beauties of 
 our numbers than those who immediately followed them. 
 Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Waller of 
 Fairfax ; for we have our lineal descents and clans, as well 
 as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that 
 the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that 
 he was begotten by him 200 years after his decease. Milton 
 has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original; 
 and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller 
 own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the 
 Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. 
 Fairfax." 
 
 In 1620, when Waller was but fourteen, " the learned 
 and ingenious Mr. Sandys " had written lines which, if 
 we modernize the spelling, we might easily pass off 
 upon the unwary reader as Pope's heroics. And in 
 spite of Pope's obligations to the large genius of 
 Dryden, it is to his early delight in Sandys's translation
 
 90 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 of the Metamorphoses that he owed that ease and 
 harmony of numbers which was his from first to last. 
 Indeed, though he declared that "he had learnt versi- 
 fication wholly from Dryden's works," it is certain 
 that there was in Dryden's form much that he could 
 not, and more that he would not, imitate. This is a 
 question which any reader may determine for himself. 
 The ear which has grown accustomed to the smooth 
 heroics, whether of Waller or of Pope, is conscious of a 
 regime less precise in the structure of Dryden's lines, 
 the licence of his rhymes, the frequency of his triplets 
 and Alexandrines. In fact, though Pope tells us that 
 
 " Dryden taught to join 
 The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine," 
 
 to be strictly accurate, there was much of this which 
 Dryden could not teach ; gifts native, individual, in- 
 communicable, which cannot be formulated, and which 
 have little to do with the technique and mechanism of 
 poetry. But if ever any process was inevitable when 
 once the utility of that form of verse for the treatment 
 of particular themes was recognized, it was the develop- 
 ment of the heroic couplet into the shape which we 
 know, with something more than satiety, as character- 
 istic of eighteenth-century literature. In attributing so 
 much to Waller, Atterbury (perhaps even Dryden to 
 some extent) is influenced by the overwhelming 
 ascendancy which this measure had already achieved ; 
 it pervaded literature for him and clouded the past.
 
 EDMUND WALLER 91 
 
 In an age the horizon of which had been narrowed by 
 domestic conflict, an age in which the present was all- 
 engrossing, it had become the characteristic form of 
 serious poetry, the weapon of satire ; of religious and 
 political controversy, in which verse was enlisted, to 
 an extent hitherto unknown ; it had even for a while 
 usurped the tragic stage and those remoter topics, 
 such as Cowley's Davideis, in which the vexed human 
 spirit sought a refuge from the pressure of realities in 
 ideal scenes. One great independent soul, dwelling 
 apart like a star, was above the reach of the prevailing 
 epidemic. The homage of the Tory High Churchman 
 Atterbury for the Republican Puritan Milton is in it- 
 self a charming incongruity ; but it loses none of its 
 fascination by the manner in which it is displayed. 
 He commends Milton's phrase "the troublesome 
 bondage of rhyming " ; he points to Milton's trium- 
 phant use of freedom ; he hopes for " some excellent 
 spirit to arise that has leisure enough, and resolution 
 to break the charm " under which poetry is at present 
 laid. " But this," he adds, " is a thought for times at 
 some distance. The present age is a little too war- 
 like : it may perhaps furnish out matter for a good 
 poem in the next, but it will hardly encourage one 
 now. Without prophesying, a man may easily know 
 what sort of laurels are like to be in request." All 
 this is excellently said ; and betrays some inkling of 
 the truth that circumstances, rather than individual 
 choice, determine the fashions, as well as the persons 
 that come to the front in literature from time to time.
 
 92 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 "The present age is too warlike"; the experiment 
 required peace, leisure, security ; a mind not absorbed 
 in the things of the hour. It is clear that, though he 
 mentions with praise the meagre and inefficient efforts 
 of Roscommon in blank verse, he has here in mind its 
 fitness for some far larger achievement. Yet how 
 strangely this comes after a regret that Waller never 
 adopted it ! Rhyme, Atterbury says, must, whether 
 it will or no, take its place among the things which 
 Cicero called lepida et concinna, which cito satietate 
 afficiunt aurium sensumfastidiosissimum: 
 
 " This Mr. Waller understood very well ; and, therefore, 
 to take off the danger of a surfeit that way, strove to please 
 by variety and new sounds. Had he carried this observation, 
 among others, as far as it would go, it must, methinks, have 
 shown him the incurable fault of this jingling kind of poetry, 
 and have led his later judgment to blank verse ; but he 
 continued an obstinate lover of rhyme to the very last ; it 
 was a mistress that never appeared unhandsome in his eyes, 
 and was courted by him long after Sacharissa had been for- 
 saken." 
 
 Why did it not occur to Atterbury, when he was 
 saying this so prettily, that it was just because Waller's 
 province was the lepida et concinna that rhyme was 
 his fittest instrument ? A Waller without rhyme is as 
 inconceivable as a " Paradise Lost " with it. His most 
 serious thoughts are shaped in pretty fancies, seldom 
 without a touch of epigram. He carefully nursed his 
 somewhat slender stock of these. But whether he 
 writes in his earlier days to his Amoret —
 
 EDMUND WALLER 93 
 
 " And as pale sickness does invade 
 
 Your frailer part, the breaches made 
 
 In that fair lodging, will more clear 
 
 Make the bright guest, your soul, appear " — 
 
 or whether, in old age, without a compliment, and with 
 
 more of the sad earnestness of a truth felt as well as 
 
 seen, he pens with trembling hand the words which 
 
 we all know : 
 
 " The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 
 Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made " — 
 
 it is surely impossible not to acknowledge that thus 
 and no otherwise could the thing have been said, 
 considering the thought itself, the times, and the 
 man. 
 
 The assumed archaism of Spenser and Fairfax, like 
 the real archaism of Chaucer, obscured in the seven- 
 teenth century the truth that more had been achieved 
 already in the way of melodious verse, than that or 
 the succeeding century could hope to rival. In Dry- 
 den's " Preface," Waller is the poetical son of Fairfax, 
 and could we but disabuse our minds of the notion 
 that the history of methodized verse is the history of 
 the heroic couplet, this pedigree would at once dispose 
 of the view which makes Waller, whose mind was 
 carried, with movements as smooth and facile as his 
 verse, along the stream of circumstance, the author of 
 a sort of poetical coup d'etat. It is known now that to 
 all intents and purposes the heroic couplet had been 
 brought to a high degree of perfection by Chaucer 
 about 250 years before Waller had written a line; it
 
 94 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 is one of Dryden's venial errors that he did not 
 acknowledge this, although he admitted that "they 
 who lived with Chaucer, and some time after him, 
 thought him musical," and that "he who published 
 the last edition of him would make us believe the 
 fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten 
 syllables in a verse where we find but nine." This 
 was, in fact, a weapon once bright and keen, which 
 had grown rusty in the poetical armoury for want of 
 frequent use. The great masters of harmony among 
 the Elizabethans had neglected it ; having, we believe, 
 a truer insight into its limitations than most of their 
 successors. The truth is that without the enjambe- 
 ment or " overflow " rhymed heroics are a bondage ; 
 and with it they are to many readers now the least 
 pleasant to the ear of all the well-known forms of 
 verse. Surely though we may read with some sym- 
 pathy the protest of Keats against what he calls — 
 
 " A schism 
 Nurtured by foppery and barbarism," 
 
 and the folk who — 
 
 " Swayed about upon a rocking-horse, 
 And thought it Pegasus," 
 
 we may regret that to make his attack upon these 
 cavaliers he should have chosen to mount a steed of 
 the same description, only with the rockers out of 
 joint. Bulwer Lytton's onslaught on contemporary 
 verse was perhaps tinged with old-fashioned prejudice, 
 but the parody in " Kenelm Chillingly " scarcely
 
 EDMUND WALLER 95 
 
 exaggerates the distressing effect of this particular 
 form of the modern reaction. On the rare occasion on 
 which Shakespeare seriously and continuously employs 
 the heroic couplet he perhaps instinctively limits the 
 overflow, which it was impossible, in view of effective 
 dramatic expression, altogether to avoid. Anyone 
 may test this by comparing the rhymed with the un- 
 rhymed portions of "Midsummer Night's Dream"; and 
 in the soliloquy of Friar Laurence, at the beginning 
 of the third scene of the second act of " Romeo and 
 Juliet," there is not an instance of enjambement in the 
 whole space of thirty lines. These lines, taken sepa- 
 rately, are neither more nor less harmonious than 
 those of the sonnets, or of the prologue to the same 
 act, with which they may easily be compared, nor are 
 the rhymes much better or much worse ; and therefore 
 if their combined effect is less pleasing, we are led to 
 find the reason of this discrepancy in the fabric of the 
 verse itself, which calls for a greater sacrifice of the 
 pregnant sense than the poet was willing to make. 
 Each line of the heroic couplet ends with a challenge, 
 so speedily taken up that we cannot help noticing 
 when the challenge is inadequately met. Thus in — 
 
 " Many for many virtues excellent 
 
 None but for some and yet all different " — 
 
 we have a rhyme certainly not more defective than 
 this from the sonnets : 
 
 " Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you, 
 Drink up the monarch's plague, ihisflattery,
 
 96 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, 
 And that your love taught it this alchemy ? " 
 
 And yet it is probable that most ears will be more 
 keenly conscious of defect in the first than in the second 
 instance. But our illustration has a farther bearing. 
 When Atterbury says, " Mr. Waller brought in more 
 polysyllables," he means in the body, not the ex- 
 tremity of the line ; the whole tendency of the im- 
 provement, real or supposed, in this kind is to limit 
 the use of polysyllables in rhyme, and above all to 
 banish their concurrence. Here we have a second 
 enervating influence. ' A kind of verse thus doubly 
 restricted, if an impediment to the natural utterance 
 of thought, is fatal to the effective utterance of passion. 
 This is in part the account of the brief and long- 
 forgotten reign of rhymed verse upon the English 
 stage, as compared with its continuous ascendancy in 
 the French tragic drama, amid all vicissitudes of taste 
 and schools, from Corneille to Victor Hugo. We 
 open Corneille at random, and find abundance of 
 couplets like this : 
 
 " Reste du sang ingrat d'un epoux infidele 
 Heritier dune flamme envers moi criminelle." 
 
 As we find also abundance like this : 
 
 " Otez-moi done de donte 
 Et montrez-moi la main qu'il faut que je redoute." 
 
 We have here something more than the licence 1 of 
 Chaucer and Shakespeare combined ; and assuredly 
 
 1 A friend has inferred from this that I suppose such rhymes 
 to be a licence in French; that was not at all my meaning.
 
 EDMUND WALLER 97 
 
 no great " bondage " to the poet. But the favourite 
 line of the days of Dryden and of Pope was a 
 " bondage " ; at once the effect and the cause of a 
 narrow range of thought. Pope tells us, with admir- 
 able satire, of the men who — 
 
 " Ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 With sure returns of still expected rhymes ; 
 Where'er you find ' the cooling western breeze ' 
 In the next line, it ' whispers through the trees ;' 
 If crystal streams ' with pleasing murmurs creep ' 
 The reader's threatened (not in vain) with ' sleep.' " 
 
 He little suspected that the time was to come when he 
 himself would be charged with making poetry " a mere 
 mechanic art." And surely it is not by the novelty of 
 his rhymes that he delivers us from the sense of the 
 inevitable and the recurrent ; his subtle genius does 
 not escape these trammels, but only wears them with 
 a difference. Dryden, as we think, is not in the direct 
 line of this insensible servitude ; the " two coursers " 
 which Gray bestows upon him are a little restive; and 
 sometimes give a stimulating shock to his " car." On 
 other grounds than this it is impossible to class Dryden, 
 and his wide sympathies and affinities, with the pre- 
 cision which some modern criticism affects. To talk 
 of " the school of Dryden and Pope " is above all mis- 
 leading. He who wrote the " Annus Mirabilis " and 
 the verses on Anne Killigrew grasps Cowley with his 
 left hand and Milton with his right. He sometimes 
 passes without hesitation from the province of pure 
 poetry or the truth of nature to that large domain of 
 
 H
 
 98 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 "wit," as our ancestors called it, which tempted irre- 
 sistibly so many ingenious minds. But this temptation 
 is limited to no age and no school. The much-abused 
 terms of " classical " and " romantic," in whatever sense 
 we may employ them, are here an unprofitable dis- 
 tinction. Is Spenser a romantic poet ? Addison (but 
 who now reads Addison ?) tells us that, like Milton, 
 Spenser has a genius much above that sort of ingenuity 
 which pushes to extravagance the metaphoric use of 
 words. Is Waller a classic poet ? Addison again 
 tells us that Mr. Waller — as Ovid also among the Latin 
 writers — has a great deal of it. And the truth is that 
 there is in almost all literature this tendency towards 
 " conceits," and their fitness must be judged of by a 
 sense at once finer and healthier than a formal criticism 
 can bestow. We may agree with Dryden that Ovid's 
 Dido to ^Eneas is a poor rival to the fourth ^Eneid ; 
 without denying that ingenuity has here some charm. 
 And it is not criticism, but the experience of life that 
 must tell us at last whether sad or sick men play 
 nicely with their names like Ajax or John of Gaunt, 
 and whether we hear truth to nature or fanciful ex- 
 travagance when Laertes says — 
 
 " Too much of water has thou, poor Ophelia, 
 And therefore I forbid my tears." 
 
 And, again, what can Pope himself reply, or we reply 
 for Pope, to surly Dennis, when he objects that in the 
 encounter between the ladies and the beaux in the 
 " Rape of the Lock," " We have a real combat and a
 
 EDMUND WALLER 99 
 
 metaphorical dying " ? The charge is true : this is an 
 egregious example of metaphor displacing truth, and 
 that after a very dramatic and objective fashion : 
 Addison, nay the " Essay on Criticism " itself, is here 
 set at naught. Dennis is right ; but the world is 
 pleased ; for Pope is never tedious and does not go 
 beyond the licence which the reader is willing to con- 
 cede him. And has there ever been a time, since our 
 literature was in any sense vital, when there was not 
 the critical sense, generically the same which Pope and 
 Addison exhibit in a highly developed form, insisting, 
 as they insisted, on sobriety and restraint ? Chaucer's 
 " Host of the Tabard " sums up, in very trenchant 
 fashion, the corrective function of criticism when he 
 interrupts " The Rime of Sir Thopas " with 
 
 " No more of this for Goddes dignitee." 
 
 The same literature supplies the bane and the anti- 
 dote. The Elizabethan euphuism encountersits satirist 
 in Shakespeare, its critic in Gabriel Harvey, its counter- 
 foil (as well as censor 1 ) in Sir Philip Sidney. Later on 
 we find Ben Jonson uttering a timely warning against 
 a new form of extravagance when he advises that " it 
 is fit to read the best authors to youth first, and those 
 the openest and clearest, as Sidney before Donne." 
 And if that " Son of Ben Jonson," George Morley, the 
 future Bishop of Winchester, gave, as we are told, 
 counsels in literature to Waller, we have another 
 evidence that the spiritual succession of good sense was 
 
 1 See " Apologie for Poesie," p. 68, Arber's reprint.
 
 ioo EDMUND WALLER 
 
 never interrupted, in spite of a transient fashion. Let 
 us concede, though it is a large concession, that in 
 Waller what our forefathers called " wit " predominated 
 over poetry. His merit is that he knew how to manage 
 this faculty ; that he did not, like Cowley, play with 
 figures and semblances, until the thing to be signified 
 was almost lost from sight. To him belongs that 
 chastened sort of fancy, of which we have the perfect 
 flower in the " Rape of the Lock." It is unlikely per- 
 haps that Pope could ever have seen the pretty lines 
 " Upon a Lady's Fishing with an Angle," which we 
 thank Mr. Thorn Drury for printing for the first time ; 
 but when we read — 
 
 " Each golden hair's a fishing line, 
 Able to catch such hearts as mine," 
 
 who can help thinking of the ever-memorable couplets : 
 
 " With hairy springes we the birds betray, 
 Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey, 
 Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare 
 And beauty draws us with a single hair " ? 
 
 But here is another parallel, of quite a different genus 
 which can hardly be accidental. Gray had certainly 
 read the lines : 
 
 " Great Julius, on the mountain bred, 
 
 A flock perhaps, or herd, had led, 
 
 He that the world subdued had been 
 
 But the best wrestler on the green. 
 
 'Tis art and knowledge which draw forth 
 
 The hidden seeds of native worth ; 
 
 They blow those sparks, and make them rise 
 
 Into such flames as touch the skies."
 
 EDMUND WALLER 101 
 
 His Hampden, and Cromwell, 1 and Milton, like 
 Waller's Caesar, perish in obscurity through lack of 
 the " ample page " of knowledge. The thought is 
 exactly the same, but how different the context in 
 which it occurs ! Zelinda, " that fairest piece of well- 
 formed earth," whose resolve to wed " none but a 
 prince" is the theme on which Waller blends this 
 serious thought with the praise of her eyes, was prob- 
 ably never anything but the "shadow of a shade"; this 
 is not the setting in which we expect to find those 
 touches which make us realize the pathos of human life. 
 The poets of this generation were too often like the 
 voyagers in Browning's " Paracelsus," who set up their 
 splendid shrines and statues upon a bleak and desolate 
 rock. Waller's powers would certainly be in higher re- 
 pute, but for the trivial or transitory interests to which 
 he gave them. The court poet pays dearly for his 
 courtliness at last. He bestows the best of his experi- 
 ence upon perishable or unprofitable matter, and we 
 are surprised rather than pleased to find not the fly 
 in amber, but amber in the fly. It was a theory of 
 Waller's, fathered no doubt by his circumstances and 
 his consequent practice, that the poet's sphere was one 
 in which real emotion had no place. " He wrote," he 
 tells us, " with high conceit " when he was free, but — 
 
 " Who will describe a storm must not be there. 
 Passion writes well, neither in love nor fear." 
 
 1 From the Mason MS. of the "Elegy" we find that Gray 
 originally wrote " Caesar " for " Cromwell," as he wrote " Cato" 
 and "Tully"for "Hampden" and "Milton."
 
 102 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 His famous answer to Charles II., " Poets, sir, succeed 
 better in fiction than in truth," was not, we see, alto- 
 gether an impromptu. We may smile at Johnson's 
 scorn of Waller's frivolous topics ; we may attribute it 
 to the fact that he was, above all, a moralist ; but his 
 censure marks also the clearer conviction of a genera- 
 tion for whom the age of patronage had happily passed 
 away, that poetry if it is to last long must be deeply 
 rooted in real feeling ; must have, if not serious, at 
 least adequate aims. 
 
 Want of sincere feeling is the secret of Waller's 
 principal defect, the discrepancy between the separate 
 parts of each poem, so that very few of them form a 
 perfect whole, and those such as " Go, lovely Rose," or 
 the verses " On a Girdle," among the shortest. For 
 sincerity, though by no means a guarantee for a sus- 
 tained level of achievement, is at least a great stimulus 
 in this direction. Cowley's perverse ingenuity is most 
 conspicuous where he has set himself, with no real 
 passion, to write his " Mistress " as a fashionable task ; 
 and he gets rid of almost all his extravagance in his 
 " Elegy on the Death of William Hervey," and of 
 much of it in those original verses, the fruit of genuine 
 experience, which he inserts in his Essays. Analog- 
 ously, we believe that if Waller's themes had been 
 chosen by him with more spontaneity, and in a more 
 independent spirit, we should find fewer instances in 
 his pages of incongruity and bathos. As it is, some of 
 his best lilies have all the appearance of "ideas for 
 verses " kept in reserve for any " copy " to which they
 
 EDMUND WALLER 103 
 
 might be made to fit. We have quoted, in our first 
 example of Waller's manner, the most serious thought 
 of his life, both in its earliest and in its latest form. 
 But in that earliest form it is linked with a trumpery 
 pagan simile so utterly out of keeping that it is a sin 
 even to quote it in such a connection. Poets who 
 work after a different fashion suffer when we pluck 
 choice passages from the context, and serve them up 
 as elegant extracts ; in Waller's case, this is often the 
 best service we can render his fame. For instance, 
 take these lines " On the Picture of a Fair Youth after 
 he was Dead " : 
 
 "As gathered flowers, while their wounds are new, 
 
 Look gay and fresh, as on the stalk they grew : 
 
 Torn from the root that nourished them, awhile 
 
 (Not taking notice of their fate) they smile, 
 
 And in the hand which rudely plucked them, show 
 
 Fairer than those that to their autumn grow ; 
 
 So love and beauty still that visage grace ; 
 
 Death cannot fright them from their wonted place. 
 
 Alive the hand of cruel Age had marred 
 
 Those lovely features, which cold Death has spared." 
 
 This is very beautiful ; but we have stopped in time, 
 just before Waller tells us that it was no wonder 
 that the young man " sped in love so well " when he 
 had breath to tell "his high passion," and no other 
 business than " to persuade that dame " whose mutual 
 love advanced him so high that heaven was but the 
 next step. And the truth is that we have but quoted 
 one of Waller's cherished images ; he has used it, with 
 but a slight variation adapted to the circumstances, in
 
 104 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 his address, A la Malade, the lovely Amoret, whom 
 heaven " solicits," he says — 
 
 " With such a care 
 As roses from their stalks we tear, 
 When we would still preserve them new 
 And fresh, as on the bush they grew." 
 
 Again, Waller never wrote prettier verses than the 
 opening lines in the poem " Of the Queen " : 
 
 " The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build 
 
 Her humble nest, lies silent in the field; 
 
 But if the promise of a cloudless day, 
 
 Aurora smiling, bids her rise and play, 
 
 Then straight she shows 'twas not for want of voice, 
 
 Or power to climb, she made so low a choice ; 
 
 Singing she mounts ; her airy wings are stretched 
 
 Towards heaven, as if from heaven her note she fetched." 
 
 But if we would remain pleased we must not read 
 much farther. We are in the descending scale. Her 
 Majesty's admirers are weaned from all meaner affec- 
 tions ; they are like a traveller who has mistaken the 
 glow-worm for a diamond, and " casts the worthless 
 worm away " when better informed by the sunshine ; 
 royalty, hitherto in the character of Aurora, next be- 
 comes a surgeon : 
 
 " She saves the lover, as we gangrenes stay, 
 By cutting hope, like a lopped limb away, 
 This makes her bleeding patients to accuse 
 High Heaven" — 
 
 and the reader to accuse something else. We have 
 attributed to Waller a certain measure of that good
 
 EDMUND WALLER 105 
 
 sense which is indispensable to any poetry which is to 
 be read from generation to generation ; but these 
 instances are enough to show us how partial in him 
 the triumph of good sense was ; once started on a 
 simile, he knows, better than most of his contem- 
 poraries, when to stop ; he is scarcely better in- 
 structed than the poets of the so-called metaphysical 
 school when not to begin. He makes no endeavour 
 after that uniformity of tone, which in all great poets 
 is an instinct, and in many minor poets a conscious 
 aim. That maxim, " Survey the whole," which Pope 
 pleads in arrest of judgment on particular blemishes, 
 is equally valid as a preventive ; we recognize better 
 what was the really solid service rendered to our 
 literature by that epoch which he and Addison in- 
 terpret for us, when we see poems so finished and 
 graceful in some respects as Waller's subject to such 
 collapses of structure. Waller knew the word" bathos" 
 and its meaning ; he knew the opening lines of the 
 " Ars Poetica," and all about the "purpureas pannus" 
 yet often enough in a set of his verses the "purpureas 
 pannus " is the one noteworthy thing. What is more, 
 to Dryden also and to Atterbury the " Ars Poetica " 
 was a kind of Decalogue ; yet they do but praise 
 Waller for his choice of words and ease of numbers, 
 and betray (so far as we are aware) no suspicion of 
 the radical defect which we have noted. Atterbury is 
 content to look back upon the reign of Charles II. as 
 the Augustan age of English; and Waller himself, with 
 his characteristic economy of thought, and not, we may
 
 106 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 be sure, without some notion of his own contribution 
 to the desired result, twice tells us that — 
 
 " Our lines reformed, and not composed in haste, 
 Polished like marble, would like marble last." 
 
 The words of Persius : 
 
 " Quis populi sermo est ? Quis enim ? nisi carmina molli 
 Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per leve severos 
 Effundat iunctura ungues " — 
 
 exactly express the measure of success which Waller 
 aimed at achieving and his admirers thought he had 
 achieved, neither the artist nor his judges supposing 
 that much remained to do, and that something more 
 is necessary for sculpture than the material and the 
 polish. 
 
 The office of the professional mourner or panegyrist 
 lends itself too readily to bathos, which is often only 
 the transition from utterances which, however applied, 
 were once conceived in real feeling, to taskwork exe- 
 cuted in a more frigid mood. Waller had a genuine 
 sense of beauty, and especially of Nature's loveliness 
 in little things ; in this respect he has something of 
 Herrick's bias; something also, in treating such objects, 
 of Herrick's skill. But he very often makes us think 
 of a miniature-painter who has set to work upon too 
 large a canvas, and displaying only on a part of it his 
 special aptitude, fills in the rest with some coarser and 
 cheaper kind of dexterity, which he has also at com- 
 mand. Waller has touches of real tenderness — at least, 
 so they impress us. When creatures young and
 
 EDMUND WALLER 107 
 
 beautiful perish, or are ready to perish, he seems 
 possessed with genuine pity for their fate ; a nature 
 essentially kindly, combined assuredly with experience, 
 to write for " the tomb of the only son of the Lord 
 Andover " the lines : 
 
 " Like buds appearing ere the frosts are passed, 
 To become man he made such fatal haste, 
 And to perfection laboured so to climb, 
 Preventing slow experience and time, 
 That 'tis no wonder Death our hopes beguiled, 
 He's seldom old that will not be a child." 
 
 We should be sorry to think that here he is advantaged 
 by that " fiction " which he professed to think neces- 
 sary to poetic success. Here as elsewhere Waller's 
 thought is epigrammatic ; but epigram does not ex- 
 clude pathos. Perhaps fancy was never more touch- 
 ingly employed than in those lines of Martial on the 
 youthful charioteer, whose thread, he says, Lachesis 
 cut, because, counting his palms of victory, she mis- 
 took him for an old man. Such a thought would have 
 been welcomed by Waller, who deplores in very 
 kindred strains — 
 
 " The learned Savile's heir, 
 
 So early wise, and lasting fair, 
 
 That none except her years they told 
 
 Thought her a child, or thought her old." 
 
 The present generation, with its rather Pharisaic 
 discourse about " high seriousness " in the matter of 
 poetry, needs to be reminded that wit, in its old- 
 fashioned sense, had once a larger province than we
 
 108 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 are disposed to give it ; that it could be graceful in 
 tears as in laughter ; and bore its part in interpreting 
 the severer aspects of man's destiny. In one of those 
 pleasant oases with which Porson skilfully relieved 
 the monotony of textual criticism he reminds us that 
 the figure of the eagle slain by an arrow winged with 
 his own feathers (with which Waller, after his manner 
 addresses a lady " singing a song of his composing ") 
 was anticipated by the sombre muse of ^Eschylus. 
 We will not then blame Waller for devoting his 
 characteristic gift to elegy ; nor would this use of it 
 even seem false in tone, but that it is employed on the 
 same occasion to pay an incongruous tribute to the 
 living. He is at his best and at his worst in com- 
 pliment ; at his best because no one can turn a com- 
 pliment more gracefully ; at his worst because he 
 never knows when a compliment is out of place alto- 
 gether. We are dangerously near to the disgust which 
 on certain themes pretty make-believes always inspire, 
 when, addressing " the Lord Admiral, on his late sick- 
 ness and recovery," he says of the brother and sister 
 of the convalescent that — 
 
 "As lilies overcharged with rain, they bend 
 
 Their beauteous heads, and with high heaven contend, 
 
 Fold thee within their snowy arms, and cry — 
 
 ' He is too faultless, and too young, to die ! ' " 
 
 Let us repeat that bathos was at this time an 
 epidemic for which the preventive, if known, was 
 neglected. This will help us to understand why 
 Waller, who can write of the Lady Rich —
 
 EDMUND WALLER 109 
 
 " Some happy angel, that beholds her there, 
 Instruct us to record what she was here !" — 
 
 can also write in the same context — 
 
 " That horrid word, at once like lightning spread, 
 Struck all our ears — The Lady Rich is dead ! " 
 
 From this to the couplet from an unsuccessful prize 
 poem on the " Recovery of the Prince of Wales " — 
 
 " Hour after hour the electric message came, 
 1 He is not better ; but is much the same ' " — 
 
 is surely but a step. Pope has a great tenderness for 
 Waller, yet he cannot help including in " Martinus 
 Scriblerus on the Bathos " the example — 
 
 " Under the tropics is our language spoke 
 And part of Flanders has received our yoke." 
 
 But a less friendly critic might have cited many 
 another instance. In the absence of critical warnings, 
 there was one pitfall, into which Dryden, as well as 
 Waller, sometimes tumbles, in the custom of treating 
 contemporary events historically in verse. In the 
 Duke of York's sea-fight with Opdam, the Earl of 
 Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr. Boyle were killed 
 at the Duke's side by a volley ; this was a fact too 
 important to be omitted, and so Waller writes — 
 
 " Three worthy persons from his side it tore, 
 And dyed his garment with their scattered gore." 
 
 Much as, according to Macaulay, one of the many 
 poetasters on the Battle of Blenheim invites us to —
 
 no EDMUND WALLER 
 
 " Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
 And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 
 Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 
 
 Even Addison's " Campaign " is by no means free 
 from this blemish, though, if we would judge of this, 
 we must read not the instances given with apologetic 
 malice in Pope's " Martinus Scriblerus," but the speci- 
 men over which Dick Steele, with a tenderness in- 
 spired by wine and friendship, hiccups in a certain 
 chapter of " Esmond." 
 
 When Aubrey tells us of those courtiers who made 
 Waller tipsy at Somerset House so that " at the water- 
 stayres he fell downe, and had a cruel fall," he adds 
 that, "'Twas pitty to use such a sweet swan so in- 
 humanely." Something of the same compunction ought 
 to be felt by the critic when he anatomizes in cold 
 blood this sweet swan's cygnets. When much has 
 been said about him in the seventeenth century and 
 something in the nineteenth which savours of exaggera- 
 tion, it is useful to try to fix his real place and merit. 
 We have seen that we must not attribute to him a 
 great importance in the history of English metre ; 
 even in the heroic couplet which he undoubtedly 
 helped to popularize, he did not, as Johnson remarks, 
 dispense with expletives ; and in such lines as 
 
 "At otice they promise what at once they give," 
 
 and 
 
 " Resolved to conquer, or resolved to die," 
 
 we have feeble efforts after that antithetic manner in 
 which a later generation achieved a not very valuable
 
 EDMUND WALLER in 
 
 success. It is far more serviceable to realize what he 
 was in the substance of his verse and the character of 
 his thoughts. We cannot difference him from his 
 contemporaries in the terms of any school. Like the 
 metaphysical poets he abounds in hyperbole, conceits, 
 far-fetched resemblances ; his distinctive mark is that 
 in the use of these he is more dexterous, more finished, 
 restrained, concise. You cannot go much further than 
 to say, that only while the hand of sleep closes the 
 eyes of royalty can the sun boast itself " the brightest 
 thing that shines " ; but having uttered his daring 
 paradox Waller is contented to have done with it. 
 To connect Westminster Abbey with the summit of a 
 volcano was a hazardous experiment such as Cowley 
 would have delighted to make. Waller has made it ; 
 the House of Parliament where "all our ills were 
 shaped " stood hard by ; yet the temple was un- 
 harmed : 
 
 " So snow on yEtna does unmelted lie, 
 
 Whence rolling flames and scattered cinders fly ; 
 
 The distant country in the ruin shares ; 
 
 What falls from heaven the burning mountain spares." 
 
 There is a certain art here employed to disguise 
 from us the remoteness of the analogy ; we feel that 
 at the same date almost any other of our minor poets, 
 if the same fancy struck him, would have laboured to 
 excite our wonder how any mortal man could have 
 thought of such a resemblance at all. Again, Waller 
 is an accomplished man ; an Etonian and a King's 
 man, he is an elegant Latin verse-writer, though when
 
 ii2 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 we remember that in his rendering of one of his own 
 English poems, skilful as it is, he makes the substan- 
 tive " laurea " a neuter plural, we cannot call him 
 exact ; and, like the metaphysical poets, he makes 
 great use of whatever learning he possesses for the 
 purpose of his song. In particular he deals, like them, 
 with notions of science ; but with a truer, because a 
 more sober, ingenuity than theirs. The accident that 
 he knew less than they combines with a better instinc- 
 tive taste than theirs to make him give us such lines 
 as these " To the Mutable Fair " : 
 
 " The formal stars do travel so 
 
 As we their names and courses know, 
 
 And he that on their changes looks 
 
 Would think them governed by our books ; 
 
 But never were the clouds reduced 
 
 To any art ; the motions used 
 
 By those free vapours are so light, 
 
 So frequent, that the conquered sight 
 
 Despairs to find the rules that guide 
 
 Those gilded shadows as they slide." 
 
 And though Johnson affirms that he is there " too 
 much of a Copernican," what strikes us yet more is 
 the finished adroitness, with which in praise of " De 
 Mornay's eyes " he tells the sun — 
 
 " Well does this prove 
 
 The error of those antique books, 
 
 Which made you move 
 
 About the world ; her charming looks 
 
 Would fix your beams, and make it ever day, 
 
 Did not the rolling earth snatch her away."
 
 EDMUND WALLER 113 
 
 In fact there is an air of simplicity about Waller's 
 boldest strokes ; he delivers them as if they were the 
 most natural things in the world. He is, perhaps, as 
 ambitious as any other of his day to display whatever 
 erudition he possesses ; happy therefore in his com- 
 parative ignorance ; for learning in his time encum- 
 bered the wings of poetry ; and there was only one 
 song-bird, and that song-bird Milton, whom it helped 
 to fly. 
 
 There is one praise of Waller which no critic should 
 omit, for, considering the nature of so many of his 
 themes and the age in which he wrote, it is specially 
 honourable to him, and throws the best and latest 
 aspect of his character into high relief. If in the 
 volume before us we have all that he ever wrote it 
 must be acknowledged that, though often trivial, he is 
 singularly free from vicious suggestions, and that in 
 the old man's regrets for his wasted powers we are to 
 read nothing more than a wish that he had given them 
 to those religious meditations which are the subject of 
 his last poems, and of his longest, that " Of the Divine 
 Love." His literary reputation has suffered from 
 association with less respectable names, from certain 
 strange and almost inexplicable episodes in his political 
 career, and from the impression, thence in part derived, 
 that he was a man of defective moral sense. In the 
 reaction towards a purer tone in letters which Steele 
 and Addison helped to bring about, his fame as a 
 writer suffered from that injustice which, according to 
 Macaulay, the British public, in its periodic fits of 
 
 I
 
 H4 EDMUND WALLER 
 
 morality, always inflicts ; and the innocent " Verses 
 on a Girdle " were actually selected for censure. The 
 history of the plot which goes by his name shows that 
 he proved weak and ignoble under the fear of death ; 
 that he was dissolute when he was for a while a 
 widower has been affirmed of him, and is possibly 
 true ; but he was an affectionate husband and father, 
 and there is evidence that in his latter years the man 
 was much respected and even beloved. If in turning 
 his mercurial pages we do not expect to find any 
 sense of the seriousness of life, let it be to his credit 
 that it is there ; that even there " are tears for sad 
 events and the estate of mortal men touches the soul." 
 A transcript of the lines entitled " Of the last Verses 
 in the Book " is headed " The last verses my dear 
 ffather made," and let this little domestic tribute be 
 for us as a volume of forgotten praise in a region to 
 which history and criticism have no access, while we 
 copy, for their unmistakable note of sincerity, the 
 words to which Waller's title refers ; — 
 
 "Wrestling with death, these lines I did indite: 
 No other theme could give my soul delight. 
 O that my youth had thus employed my pen ! 
 Or that I now could write as I wrote then ! 
 But 'tis of grace, if sickness, age, and pain 
 Are felt as throes, when we are born again ; 
 Timely they come to wean us from this earth, 
 As pangs that wait upon a second birth."
 
 JOHN GAY 
 
 IF Gay were living now, what, considering his 
 powers and the character of his gift, would be his 
 place among men of letters ? We have some data for 
 a comparison, at least in one department ; for that 
 light and airy creation, the English comic opera, of 
 which he gave the earliest example, is once more 
 in fashion. The immortality of the di minorum 
 gentium of literature is often less the result of genius 
 than of a fortunate choice of theme. In this respect 
 Gay has been more than usually happy. He is the 
 prototype of a class of writers still in vogue ; he is the 
 describer also of scenes and manners and customs 
 which still have no remote interest for all English- 
 men. Again, like La Fontaine and (if we may be 
 pardoned an association so incongruous in other 
 respects) Dr. Watts, Gay has conquered by stooping ; 
 and the author of " The Hare with Many Friends " 
 lives with the historian of " Le Lion et le Moucheron " 
 and the panegyrist of the little " Busy Bee." 
 
 The present age would perhaps rank Gay lowest 
 in that kind of writing in which, in his own time, 
 he achieved a phenomenal success. The " Beggar's
 
 n6 JOHN GAY 
 
 Opera" is very coarse homespun compared with the 
 
 dainty fabrics which have come from the loom of 
 
 Mr. W. S. Gilbert. Both artists have the merit of 
 
 a naive simplicity ; but we are on a lower plane of wit 
 
 and humour altogether when we pass from the delicate 
 
 satire of 
 
 " When everybody's somebody 
 Nobody's anybody " — 
 
 to— 
 
 " Since laws were made for every degree 
 To curb vice in others, as well as in me, 
 I wonder we ha'nt better company 
 Upon Tyburn tree." 
 
 Or— 
 
 " How happy could I be with either, 
 
 Were t'other dear charmer away ; 
 But while you thus tease me together, 
 
 To neither a word will I say 
 But tol de rol," etc. 
 
 These strains, so captivating to Dukes and 
 Duchesses in 1728, are better suited, for a continuance, 
 to the taste of Tony Lumpkin's friends, or of the 
 lustige Gesellen in Auerbach's cellar. Of the "Splendid 
 Shilling " of John Philips Johnson has said, with much 
 truth, that " the merit of such performances begins and 
 ends with the first author." He might have said the 
 same of the "Beggar's Opera" considered as an 
 attempt to set Newgate on Parnassus. 
 
 Yet in one respect the songs of the "Beggar's 
 Opera," of " Polly," and of the " What-d'ye Call It ? " 
 have a certain interest for the critic. They are an 
 early symptom of a desire for a little more ease in
 
 JOHN GAY 117 
 
 eighteenth-century verse. Not by any means a serious 
 reaction ; the stately heroics or Alexandrines were no 
 more to be discarded than wigs and shoe-buckles. 
 The lyrist himself sometimes seems tickled with a 
 sense of his own absurdity; and we think of a company 
 of highly dressed personages enjoying a game of Puss- 
 in-the-Corner, or Blind Man's Buff. The story of 
 Cowper (to Unwin, August 4, 1783), on the joint 
 authorship of the ballad in the " What-d'ye Call It ? " 
 is questioned by Mr. Underhill, although Cowper 
 professes to speak on good authority. It is not 
 difficult of credit, and it is quite in keeping with the 
 vein in which the thing, as we suppose, was done, 
 that " the most celebrated association of clever fellows 
 this country ever saw — Swift, Arbuthnot, Pope, and 
 Gay — united their strength and abilities in the com- 
 position of a song." Only, when Cowper adds that 
 they " did not think it beneath them," he perhaps 
 gives the business too serious a nuance for the humour 
 in which we conceive it to have been undertaken. 
 " Let us lend friend Gay a hand," we can fancy these 
 greater gods saying, bursting in upon the little fat 
 poet who is racking his brains in that most painful of 
 all tasks, the quest of things sprightly or naive. 
 Arbuthnot, the satirist with little acrimony, and Swift, 
 the satirist with much, were both, we may be sure, 
 letting their wits take a holiday on this occasion. 
 Pope too, the youngest and the most malicious 
 member of this strange confederacy, must certainly 
 have enjoyed this opportunity of indirectly mocking
 
 u8 JOHN GAY 
 
 the pastoral simplicity of Ambrose Philips once more. 
 Is it possible to conceive such a junto capping verses 
 over a love-sick maiden without banter ? We rather 
 picture them rolling in their chairs to the sing-song 
 measure as each contributes his couplet or quatrain : 
 
 " The merchant robb'd of pleasure 
 
 Sees tempests in despair ; 
 But what's the loss of treasure 
 
 To the losing of my dear ? 
 Should you some coast be laid on 
 
 Where gold and di'monds grow, 
 You'll find a richer maiden, 
 
 But none that loves you so." 
 
 Gay alone here was pursuing something like his 
 proper trade ; but for the rest, if they had a hand in it, 
 it was with the unextinguishable laughter proper to 
 such an Olympus. 
 
 We a little incline to believe Cowper's tradition, 
 because this particular ballad has a quite extraordinary 
 character of simplicity, which, successful as it is, savours 
 of a jest. It may, of course, be altogether by the same 
 hand that wrote " Sweet William's Farewell to Black- 
 eyed Susan." The first half of the century, as Cowper 
 says, was rich in kindred productions, a fact quite 
 compatible with the other fact, that they were not 
 undertaken with much " high seriousness." The poet 
 " buckled to " his epic, which men have forgotten, but 
 he " threw off" his ballad, which they remember. Who 
 now knows anything of Glover's Leonidas ? But, at 
 least for historians and note-makers, " Hosier's Ghost"
 
 JOHN GAY 119 
 
 still walks. So does " Margaret's Ghost," whom Mallet 
 raised again ; and she takes her revenge now upon the 
 faithless sex by betraying schoolboys into false quan- 
 tities in their attempts to translate her into Latin 
 elegiacs. Mallet's " Amyntor and Theodora," to whom 
 he gave epic dignity and so many blank verses, are 
 the real ghosts now ; the merest shadow of a shade. 
 Tickell's monody on the death of Addison is praised, 
 but, with the exception of two lines, scarcely re- 
 membered ; but his " Lucy and Colin " may continue 
 for some time yet to draw tears, perhaps not very 
 sentimental, in the classroom. Cowper, with a judg- 
 ment pleasantly coloured by affection, affirms that 
 Vincent Bourne's renderings of these ballads of Tickell 
 and Gay and Mallet are more beautiful than the 
 originals, and surpass all that Ovid and Tibullus have 
 left behind them. Discounting as much as we please 
 from this opinion, we shall always have the residuum 
 that these things are translatable because they deal 
 with the emotions which are always with us, on the 
 safe plane of common — that is to say, universal, sense. 
 Let us not forget that Addison, with that insight 
 into first principles which is the critic's "harvest of 
 the quiet eye," had, as early as 171 1, in two papers 
 upon " Chevy Chase," noted that the secret of the 
 vitality and power of the songs of the people lies in 
 their truth to the permanent elements of human nature. 
 He exhumes Sidney's acknowledgment that the old 
 song of Percy and Douglas, though sung but " by some 
 blind crowder," " moved his heart more than with a
 
 120 JOHN GAY 
 
 trumpet " ; and he dissents from Sidney's judgment 
 on " the rude style and evil apparel " of the song, etc. 1 
 Sidney is here, perhaps, hampered by those academic 
 prejudices which expect literature to be ornate. His 
 own practice was not extravagant ; but the euphuism 
 of his generation and its various developments were 
 bound to end in the conceits of the metaphysical poets 
 and a fashion of self-conscious, ambitious, elaborate 
 effort. Addison's retrospect is upon a literature which, 
 sharing as he did the dominant taste in architecture, 
 he calls, by way of disparagement, Gothic ; and he 
 sets himself, in defiance of ridicule, to prove an epic 
 dignity, the majestic simplicity of a Parthenon, in 
 " Chevy Chase." But it may be doubted whether the 
 result of these endeavours to recommend "nature" 
 was at all commensurate with their courage. The 
 simplicity of the ballad was a relief, but it was not 
 business ; there was, perhaps, throughout the eighteenth 
 century a feeling, latent rather than expressed, that 
 anything great and serious must be announced with a 
 certain pomp of manner. We see traces of this in 
 Johnson's " Lives of the Poets." What is written 
 with directness and without obvious pains, especially 
 if it lacks a definite moral, he is disposed to slur ; he 
 thinks of all such verses what he says of Swift's, that 
 " they offer little upon which the critic can exercise 
 
 1 Addison did not know, what Percy made clear, that the 
 ballad, in the form in which he knew it, was a later version. 
 The "Chevy Chase " which Sidney had heard is the first of the 
 " Reliques."
 
 JOHN GAY 121 
 
 his powers." Indeed, after the publication of the 
 " Reliques " he had sniffed the coming breeze, and 
 snorted with a derision which found vent extempore in 
 parody — 
 
 " As with my hat upon my head 
 
 I walked into the Strand, 
 I there did meet another man 
 
 With his hat in his hand." l 
 
 Yet undoubtedly, as far as Gay survives, he owes 
 his vitality in part to the modesty of aim, the apparent 
 directness, pleasing still, because not spoiled by 
 obsolete affectations, which is found in some of his 
 songs, and which helps to make so much of ballad 
 poetry immortal. In his heroics Gay is unsuccessful 
 just as far as he is ambitious. Whatever pleasure these 
 gave to his own generation was the pleasure men find 
 in seeing trivial things (the word is oddly in place 
 here) versified. The lady who, as he tells us, advised 
 him — 
 
 " No more let trifling themes your muse employ 
 Nor lavish verse to paint a female toy," 
 
 was no wise monitress. The " female toy " is the 
 " Fan," and Gay's " Fan," if not a success, enables us 
 at least to fix the limits of his imaginative powers. 
 It scarcely conveys the right impression to say, with 
 Mr. Austin Dobson, that it is " unreadable " ; it is the 
 
 1 On another occasion, when he thought he could beat 
 Percy's version of " Rio verde," etc., he betrays his epoch com- 
 pletely — " Confused in mutual slaughter" is part of his ren- 
 dering.
 
 122 JOHN GAY 
 
 second and third books that betray the inexhaustible 
 spinner of conventional verse. The first should have 
 an interest for us, because in it (perhaps even in the 
 others to some extent) are resemblances to the " Rape 
 of the Lock," and it seems at first sight to the credit 
 of Pope, and an evidence of the engaging character of 
 Gay, that the " Fan " excited the interest instead of 
 the jealousy of the poet, whose malice was on the alert 
 against rivals so little formidable as Ambrose Philips 
 and Tickell. Let us quote from Gay's description of 
 the work of the Cupids, published on the 8th of 
 December, 1713 : 
 
 " A different toil another forge employs ; 
 
 Here the loud hammer fashions female toys, 
 
 Hence is the fair with ornaments supplied, 
 
 Hence sprung the glittering implements of pride ; 
 
 Each trinket that adorns the modern dame 
 
 First to these little artists owed its frame. 
 
 Here an unfinish'd di'mond crosslet lay, 
 
 To which soft loners adoration pay; 
 
 There was the polish'd crystal bottle seen, 
 
 That with quick scents revives the modish spleen ; 
 
 Here the yet rude unjointed snuff-box lies, 
 
 Which serves the rallied fop for smart replies j 
 
 There piles of paper rose in gilded reams, 
 
 The future records of the lover's flames ; 
 
 Here clouded canes 'midst heaps of toys are found, 
 
 And inlaid tweezer cases strew the ground. 
 
 There stands the Toilette, nursery of charms, 
 
 Completely furnish'd with bright beauty's arms ; 
 
 The patch, the powder-box, pulville, perfumes, 
 
 Pins, paint, a flatt'ring glass, and black lead combs." 
 
 Who can help thinking of Belinda's toilet here?
 
 JOHN GAY 123 
 
 But the superior artist first published those new- 
 touches to his delightful poem on March 2, 17 14. On 
 the other hand, Gay's " diamond crosslet " — 
 
 " To which softs lovers adoration pay," 
 
 The " clouded canes " ; and the snuff-box — 
 
 " Which serves the rallied fop for smart replies ; " 
 
 are feeble reminiscences of that cross, which in 171 2 
 Belinda already — 
 
 " wore 
 Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore ; " 
 
 and of the armoury with which Sir Plume was 
 furnished, the " clouded cane " which he nicely 
 "conducted" and the box which he rapped to 
 emphasize his demand for the restoration of the hair. 
 It is not often that literature offers us examples of two 
 poems so coincident in date and cognate in theme, 
 which so well exemplify the difference between genius 
 and mere dexterity. The two friends must have been 
 cognisant each of the other's work ; but there could 
 be no rivalry between them. The same materials in 
 the hands of the one receive life and movement, point 
 and grace ; in the hands of the other, they are little 
 more than an amusing inventory. But let us not deal 
 too unkindly with Gay, because he thus serves, as Pope 
 no doubt foresaw, as a foil. The whole work is indeed 
 overladen with classic and other lumber, and "paint- 
 ings " of " the enamelled green." But if it had ended 
 with the first book, we should perhaps have been con-
 
 124 JOHN GAY 
 
 tented to say of it that it was on the whole a pretty 
 little poem, and that, in the phrase of old-fashioned 
 criticism, the invention of the fan from the tail of Juno's 
 peacock was natural and probable. Yet we should 
 judge, after Johnson, who discusses part of this great 
 question as it appears in " Trivia " with due impressive- 
 ness, that this kind of invention was not Gay's forte. 
 A modern reader dismisses such matters in more 
 summary fashion ; and is satisfied with finding the 
 history of the " patten " mildly entertaining, and the 
 origin of the shoeblack disgusting. The main interest 
 of " Trivia " was always in its realities ; men of that 
 day, as of all days, delighted to read the life they knew 
 well described with some appearance of art. The mere 
 photography of prose needed to be coloured with 
 malice and innuendo, as in Swift's " Polite Conversa- 
 tion " or " Directions to Servants." For Gay the pomp 
 of verse and occasional similes served the same pur- 
 pose of amusing. There was a great and acknowledged 
 resemblance between Swift and Gay in these " touches 
 of things common " ; we can scarcely add " till they 
 rose to touch the spheres." Swift had anticipated Gay 
 in " Morning " and in the " City Shower," selecting — 
 after his fashion — London life at its dirtiest moment. 
 The misanthrope and the man of " mild affections " 
 had both of them the eye of a Dutch painter, the 
 humour and the coarseness of the Dutch caricaturist ; 
 and Swift liked to suggest congenial subjects to his 
 " brother of the brush." But there is a great part of 
 n Trivia " which, divested of its mock heroic tone,
 
 JOHN GAY 125 
 
 would pass simply for useful information ; we can con- 
 ceive the country squire making it his text-book in the 
 prospect of a visit to London ; the comic notion of an 
 index, which Gay had already adopted in " The 
 Shepherd's Week," may in "Trivia" have served a 
 purpose not altogether burlesque. What directions 
 are more useful than those which tell men where to 
 get the best food ? On the other hand, what simpler 
 than to say, " Buy your mutton in Newgate Market, 
 your beef in Leadenhall, your veal in St. James," etc. ? 
 But the utility of such counsels is not impaired in the 
 form : 
 
 " Shall the large mutton smoke upon your boards ? 
 Such Newgate's copious market best affords. 
 Would'st thou with mighty beef augment thy meal ? 
 Seek Leaden-hall ; St. James's sends thee veal ; 
 Thames-street gives cheeses ; Covent-garden fruits ; 
 Moor-fields old books ; and Monmouth-street old suits. 
 Hence may'st thou well supply the wants of life, 
 Support thy family, and clothe thy wife." 
 
 A curious feature of " Trivia " on this practical side 
 of it is its minute particularity in the article of clothing. 
 One cannot help thinking of Gay's apprenticeship to 
 a silk-mercer : " How long he continued behind the 
 counter," says Johnson, " or with what degree of soft- 
 ness and dexterity he received and accommodated the 
 ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, 
 cannot be known." But his occupation left its traces 
 both in his person and in his pen. At the close of 
 171 3 he is banteringly described by Pope to Swift as,
 
 126 JOHN GAY 
 
 " An unhappy youth, who writes pastorals during the 
 time of divine service ; whose case is the more deplor- 
 able, as he hath miserably lavished away all that silver 
 he should have reserved for his soul's health on button's 
 and hoops for his coat." Surely the origin of this 
 spruceness is not far to seek. And the wear suitable 
 for every season is described in " Trivia " with an 
 exactitude which we could scarcely find except among 
 experts. Thus of coats in winter he writes : 
 
 " Now in thy trunk thy D'oily habit fold, 
 
 The silken drugget ill can fence the cold ; 
 
 The frieze's spongy nap is soak'd with rain, 
 
 And showers soon drench the camlet's cockled grain, 
 
 True Witney broadcloth with its shag unshorn, 
 
 Unpierced is in the lasting tempest worn." 
 
 Indeed, this learning proved too profound for the 
 general reader, and in a note to a later edition Gay 
 explains that Witney is a town in Oxfordshire. With 
 the same precision he describes the risks of soiling 
 which vary with the attire ; he who wears the " reverend 
 gown " must beware especially of contact with the 
 barber, the perfumer, and the baker ; those who walk 
 in " youthful colours " must avoid the chimney-sweep, 
 the small-coal-man, the dustman, the chandler, and 
 the butcher. 1 The fop and the miller are also a danger, 
 
 1 We are reminded of poor Kit Smart's wonderful simile : 
 
 " Thus when a barber and a collier fight 
 The barber beats the luckless collier white j 
 The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack, 
 And big with vengeance, beats the barber black;
 
 JOHN GAY 127 
 
 for from both a powder, though of different sorts, is 
 apt to fly. A certain side of the business life of 
 London is known to him after an intimate and peculiar 
 fashion ; under his guidance we enter the linen-draper's 
 in wintry weather, and find the shop ladies keeping 
 themselves warm with battledore and shuttlecock from 
 counter to counter, while the needles lie useless in the 
 half-whipt muslin ; and passing out, we go into Covent- 
 garden, where the glaziers and truant 'prentices and a 
 motley crowd are playing football with such vigour 
 that we look about us for shelter. 
 
 We get from " Trivia " the impression of a street-life 
 rougher, scarcely less noisy, but more leisurely, than 
 the street-life now. We feel that almost all the perils 
 of the day in the London of 17 16 might have been 
 avoided by a few civil conventions and the most rudi- 
 mentary police. But government was not paternal in 
 those times, and educated its public only as old Mr. 
 Weller educated Sam. Even correction was boisterous, 
 and Gay, always solicitous for the outward man, advises 
 you to give the pillory a wide berth, lest the turnips 
 and addled eggs designed for the " perjured head " 
 should salute your own. Man, the unit, was all in all 
 in encountering these perils ; when the bully cocked 
 his hat as you approached him, it was for your firmness 
 and resolution to decide whether he or you went into 
 
 In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread, 
 And beats the collier and the barber red; 
 Black, red and white in various clouds are tossed, 
 And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost."
 
 128 JOHN GAY 
 
 the muddy kennel. The post, fitting counterpart in 
 the London of the eighteenth century to the long rows 
 of Hermes busts in an Athenian street in the days of 
 Pericles, or the tall lamp-posts of to-day, was at once 
 your danger and your safeguard ; if you were heedless 
 in your walk or impertinently curious you were sure 
 to run against it ; but it was the only, though very in- 
 sufficient, barrier between you and chariots, waggons, 
 and sedan-chairs. These last often intruded ; for the 
 chairmen were, it is well known, a burly and aggressive 
 generation ; supported by the insolent footmen who 
 escorted with torches the great dame to midnight 
 assemblies, they trespassed within the limits with im- 
 punity ; and the poet often knocked his knees against 
 the poles of chairs left standing at the doors. But 
 sometimes, as in the pass of St. Clement Danes, the 
 pedestrian found himself — 
 
 " Where not a post protects the narrow space," 
 
 and pushed his way stooping under the low penthouses, 
 whilst beside him waggoners slashed at each other 
 from their high seats, or fought with fists afoot ; and 
 blaspheming drovers urged the frightened cattle through 
 the press. With a little more intensity and purpose 
 Gay might be called the Hogarth of the pen ; he 
 leaves on you the same impression of squalor and in- 
 sufficient light. The rails in the squares are lined 
 with rows of whining beggars ; but the man who stops 
 to listen to a piteous plaint at night is likely to be 
 felled to the ground by the crutch which has moved 
 his compassion. The link-boys were often in league
 
 JOHN GAY 129 
 
 with these dissemblers, and helped them to rifle your 
 pockets after extinguishing the light. Queer forms of 
 theft were in vogue, especially at nightfall. If you 
 turned into a crowd your sword was apt to be stolen 
 from its scabbard, or your wig removed from your 
 head by a boy carried in a basket. A worse terror 
 were the Mohawks, whose prototypes the old blind 
 indignant bard of " Paradise Lost " had in mind, in his 
 darkness and solitude when he wrote of — 
 
 " luxurious cities, where the noise 
 Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers 
 And injury and outrage, and when night 
 Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 
 Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." 
 
 These Mohawks, of whom Swift wrote to Archbishop 
 King in 17 12 that they were " still very troublesome, 
 and every night cut somebody or other over the face, 
 and commit a hundred insolent barbarities," were " still 
 very troublesome " in 17 16 ; the more innocent 
 " Nicker" was still breaking windows with half-pence. 
 To remedy these mischiefs watchmen shook their 
 lanterns, and gathered at this signal for a promiscuous 
 running-in, from which it was possible to escape by 
 feeing the palm. 
 
 " Happy Augusta ! law-defended town," 
 
 exclaims Gay, without the slightest touch of irony. 
 He counted himself blessed because he was not liable 
 to be stabbed, and because London churches gave no 
 sanctuary to murderers. Perhaps this comfortable 
 optimism, this complete absence of the " divine discon- 
 
 K
 
 130 JOHN GAY 
 
 tent," may help to account for the fact that, for so 
 many years afterwards, the capital was still suffering 
 from the spasmodic energy of its guardians, evils worse 
 than the good-natured supineness of Dogberry and 
 Verges. In 1742, as Horace Walpole tells us, it was 
 given to these gentlemen to anticipate in London the 
 horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. They swept, 
 without distinction, six-and-twenty women of the 
 poorer classes into St. Martin's Roundhouse. " One 
 poor wretch said that she was worth eighteen-pence, 
 and would gladly give it for a glass of water, but in 
 vain ! " Six victims died of suffocation, one a poor 
 creature who was returning home late from washing : 
 " The same men, on the same night, took up Jack 
 Spencer, Mr. Stewart, and Lord George Graham, and 
 would have thrust them into the roundhouse with the 
 poor women if they had not been worth more than 
 eighteen-pence ! " 
 
 We must compare Horace with Juvenal, or Gay's 
 " Trivia " with Johnson's " London," if we would realize 
 how diverse are the moods that are called up by the 
 same scenes, the same bricks and mortar. Johnson's 
 imitation is more than an ingenious exercise to turn a 
 penny ; in his " injured Thales " the indignation of 
 Umbricius after many centuries flames up anew. Yet, 
 strange as it seems, as we look at that famous third 
 satire once more, it is Gay rather than Johnson that 
 we ask to supply us with the external counterpart to 
 the life of old Rome ; the chariots rattling past each 
 other in the narrow street ; the herds brought to a
 
 JOHN GAY 131 
 
 standstill, whilst the drovers shout and curse ; the 
 civic magnate in his palanquin speeding to pay early 
 court to the wealthy ; even the huge waggon groaning 
 beneath the weight of the quivering pine is balanced 
 in Gay's picture, though the dapper Londoner has no 
 tragic climax to the overturning of his ponderous 
 beam, no middle-class Hector crushed beneath it and 
 forgotten, whilst the unsuspecting household is pre- 
 paring for his return. Perhaps neither " London " nor 
 " Trivia " will ever be much read any more ; yet 
 " Trivia " has the better chance, for human indignation 
 does not burn like fire for ever, but curiosity is an en- 
 during passion. Gay is the more likely to profit by 
 that irony of literary history which gives men signifi- 
 cance through their very lack of earnest purpose. Time, 
 an ally not subject to casualties, works with those who 
 are content to describe things as they are, and show us 
 the men of their own generation " in their habits as 
 they lived " ; the stars in their courses fight a battle for 
 their fame ; in the retrospect of posterity an imagina- 
 tion more potent than theirs make ghosts grow vivid 
 in proportion as bodies crumble into dust. 
 
 Gay's imagination worked slowly, as he found when 
 he set himself to invent fables. " How comes friend 
 Gay to be so tedious ?" (meaning dilatory) writes Swift 
 to Pope. " Another man can publish fifty thousand 
 lies sooner than he can publish fifty fables." We 
 are assured that these fables are Gay's sole title to the 
 position which he has held among English writers for 
 a century and a half; he is then, one among many
 
 132 JOHN GAY 
 
 instances of the immortality achieved by pleasing the 
 simplest minds ; the immortality of Bunyan and Defoe, 
 of La Fontaine and La Motte Fouque ; the real as dis- 
 tinguished from the literary or esoteric immortality 
 even of Swift. And yet, as Mr. Austin Dobson and 
 Mr. Underhill remind us, Gay's fables are not exactly 
 masterpieces. One naturally compares him with La 
 Fontaine, but the comparison at once suggests a very 
 essential difference. For La Fontaine really seems to 
 live the life of his creatures, and to give them just the 
 articulate speech which, if they could, they would use. 
 " By Jove," says an impertinent squireen, in one of 
 Trollope's novels, to the Irish parson who has been 
 describing with unerring precision the course which 
 the fox must have taken, and the motives which must 
 have guided him, " I believe you were once a fox 
 yourself." To fit the same theory of transmigration to 
 La Fontaine we should have to suppose that he was 
 once the whole animal kingdom. Of this versatility 
 Gay has no trace. 1 Read the fable of " The De- 
 generate Bees," for instance, and vexed at a silly 
 
 1 We must except his monkeys. They are not so happily 
 imagined as the monkeys in the "Jungle Books," but their con- 
 ceit is well rendered : 
 
 "how fantastic is the sight 
 To meet men always bolt upright, 
 Because we sometimes walk on two ! 
 I hate the imitating crew ! " 
 
 But the power to give characteristic speech to the animal world 
 was not largely bestowed in the interval between La Fontaine 
 and Rudyard Kipling.
 
 JOHN GAY 133 
 
 disguise which amounts to nothing more than the 
 mention of a hive and some cells, you will ask angrily, 
 " Why bees f " There is really more of personation 
 in Gay's " Pins and Needles " than in his living things. 
 The main purpose of his menagerie is to depreciate 
 man ; and a curious and systematic reader, who should 
 take Gay seriously, would discover that the only animal 
 upon whom man can look down from a higher moral 
 elevation is — of all creatures in the world — the turkey. 
 Gay belongs to a fashionable school, in which there 
 was but one sincere professor ; and even the terrible 
 earnestness of Swift was as powerless as the affecta- 
 tion of the rest to disturb the latent satisfaction of 
 humanity. Most of those extremely comfortable 
 people, who placed their own species in the most un- 
 favourable contrast with the brute creation, would have 
 opened their eyes wide could they have lived into the 
 generation which at the close of the century did its 
 utmost to make their meaning good. The monotonous 
 abundance of these opinions was an evidence how 
 lightly they were held ; the seed might fructify some 
 day, but for the present " it sprung up quickly because 
 it had no depth of earth." It is customary to think 
 of the eighteenth century as somewhat limited in its 
 scope ; but it is probable that no period ever offered 
 so many counsels of perfection to men. In these 
 days, when dietary questions have assumed a gravity 
 which almost tempts us, against our better know- 
 ledge, to transfer the mechanism of thought to the 
 gastric regions, one laughs when one thinks of poets
 
 134 JOHN GAY 
 
 mostly corpulent, and almost to a man self-indul- 
 gent, supplying texts to the vegetarians who now 
 preach with religious fervour the new cidtus of St. 
 Cabbage. Thackeray complains that his " Mrs. Spec " 
 considers cold mutton the natural food of man. But 
 nothing seems to excite the disgust of the austere 
 epicures who loved turtle soup and patt-de-foie-gras 
 whenever they could get it, so much as the fact that 
 man eats mutton. It was all part of a general hypo- 
 crisy, innocent because too simple to deceive a baby. 
 The good lady who professed to discover from the 
 writings of Thomson, who was lazy, dirty, and luxuri- 
 ous, that he was an early riser, a " great swimmer and 
 rigorously abstinent," was clearly a soul sent pre- 
 maturely to earth ; she was meant to have been born 
 in the nineteenth century, somewhere near Rydal 
 Mount. It was a widespread epidemic which we are 
 here noting. There was so much make-believe in the 
 talk of all classes and callings that a man of downright 
 character like Johnson was apt to laugh at professions 
 of public sentiment of any kind. Johnson said — 
 " When a butcher tells you that his heart bleeds for 
 his country, he has, in fact, no uneasy feeling." These 
 were, according to him, notions that helped to amuse 
 the people, and keep off the taedium vitae. Perhaps 
 a man who had seen the pressing dangers of '45 re- 
 garded by a menaced public with a mixture of supine- 
 ness and curiosity, might be excused for holding firmly 
 to the opinion which he gave to Goldsmith for his 
 " Traveller " :
 
 JOHN GAY 135 
 
 " How small, of all that human hearts endure 
 The part that laws or kings can cause or cure ! " 
 
 The American colonies, which he prophesied would 
 never revolt, must have supplied him with uncomfort- 
 able evidence that in politics the gaseous may become 
 solid ; the French Revolution, which taught the same 
 lesson, he did not live to see. But his memory might 
 furnish him with many facts to strengthen his views 
 or prejudices as to the insignificance of sentimental 
 discontents. In particular he knew exactly the 
 practical value of declamations (including his own) 
 against courtiers and pensioners ; he showed it by 
 accepting a pension. Such generalities courtly circles 
 could appraise like the rest of the world ; they could 
 easily smile at a language which each man there 
 might be employing in his turn. Thus Gay wrote 
 his fables for the young Duke of Cumberland, the 
 future " hero " of Culloden, whom, according to him, 
 the nation saw — 
 
 ..." Grieve to hear distress 
 
 And pant already to redress," 
 
 and whom he reminds that — 
 
 " Cowards are cruel ; but the brave 
 Love mercy and delight to save ; " 
 
 and the freedom with which he talked about Court 
 servilities and intrigues excited, Swift tells us, some 
 comment ; but the Court itself, we are inclined to 
 think, regarded all such impersonal satire as the 
 merest effervescence ; no more likely to bias the mind 
 of the young Prince than that early admonition to
 
 136 JOHN GAY 
 
 clemency was likely to touch his heart in after days. 
 We quite believe that the post of Gentleman Usher to 
 the little Princess Louisa, which Gay rejected with so 
 much scorn, was by no means offered him as a slight, 
 but rather as a recompense, which was considered to 
 be nicely proportioned to the value of his counsels. 
 
 This plump Antaeus had no strength but when he 
 touched earth ; no feebler verses were ever scribbled 
 by any poet of name than his " Contemplation on 
 Night," or " Thought on Eternity." But his character, 
 if quite unsuited to these high themes, was amiable 
 and affectionate, and the nearest approach to a work 
 of genius which he left behind him is the description 
 of the men he knew, as given in " Mr. Pope's Welcome 
 from Greece." If Goldsmith's " Retaliation " did not 
 come between us and this earlier poem, we should be 
 more alive to the merits of Gay's genial and lively 
 sketch. What obese and hearty people he makes 
 strutting before us, with just a distinguishing touch 
 here and there that we may know them apart ! Disney, 
 with his queer exclamation, " Duke ! " invented, we 
 suppose, to avoid profane swearing ; Jervas, the robust 
 and debonair ; Dartneuf, gay joker : 
 
 " And wondering Maine so fat, with laughing eyes 
 (Gay, Maine, and Cheney, boon companions dear, 
 Gay fat, Maine fatter, Cheney huge of size)." 
 
 Above all, visible as in a votive picture : 
 
 " Honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches." 
 
 But it is time to take leave of Gay. We have said,
 
 JOHN GAY 137 
 
 perhaps, more than enough to show that he was for- 
 tunate in his epoch, and that gifts such as his in our 
 day, when there is so much competition for the honour 
 of amusing us, would have given him a place much 
 lower than that which fortune has assigned him. But, 
 if we cannot " beat our pensive bosoms " over him, as 
 Pope bids us on pain of being excluded from the 
 number of "the worthy and the good," we may, at 
 least, admit him to be worth a little more than the 
 flippant epitaph he composed for himself, and treat 
 his memory with the good-humoured indulgence 
 which his friends extended to his life.
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 1 
 
 WE are convinced that the " Poems of Ossian " 
 are a gigantic fraud. It is not necessary to 
 know Gaelic, or to have studied even in translation the 
 genuine relics of Gaelic poetry, to make this assertion. 
 We will admit that there are real fragments of this 
 poetry embedded here and there in the huge mass of 
 Macpherson's publications. But we do not acquit a 
 man of dishonesty because he passes a few good half- 
 crowns amid hundreds of his own coinage. We know 
 that this is a necessary trick of the game, and part of 
 the prudential wisdom of knavery. 
 
 We do not say that Macpherson began with im- 
 posture. His reluctance (at Moffat in 1759) to translate, 
 at the request of Home, the author of " Douglas," the 
 few fragments of Erse song which he then professed to 
 know, was probably quite genuine. It was innocent, 
 as far as it arose from his own imperfect knowledge of 
 Gaelic ; it was as objectionable as several other parts 
 of his character, as far as it was due to his egregious 
 vanity, and what he chose to call his " Highland pride, 
 alarmed at appearing to the world only as a translator." 
 We readily admit that the conceited lad thought that 
 
 1 "Life and Letters of James Macpherson.'' Bailey Saunders. 
 1894.
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 139 
 
 the wretched rhymes he had already published, still- 
 born though they fell from the press, were a better 
 title to fame than honest pains bestowed upon the old 
 poetry of his native hills. The meagre results of 
 strictly honest work in this direction would never have 
 satisfied his soaring genius, and even when he had 
 " translated " two epics he spoke of his achievement 
 with all the vainglory of original authorship. 
 
 We have Macpherson's own statements that of 
 old documents he had the smallest possible supply : 
 " Scarce any manuscript to be followed, except, indeed, 
 a very few mutilated ones in a kind of Saxon characters, 
 which was [as] utterly unknown to the Highlanders as 
 either the Greek or Hebrew letters." This is what he 
 says when, towards the end of his life, he is defending 
 his design of publishing his Gaelic "originals " in Greek 
 (!) characters. But we need scarcely quote his evidence 
 for a fact admitted by his apologists. It is, however, 
 of importance that what he himself meant by the 
 " originals " should be clearly ascertained. By his own 
 showing the great bulk of what he published as the 
 poems of Ossian was taken down from oral recitation. 
 By his own showing, therefore, when he talked of the 
 originals of " Fingal " and " Temora," he could not, in 
 honesty, have meant much more than manuscripts in 
 Gaelic, quite recently written, corresponding with the 
 English which he printed. Such manuscripts, even if 
 they were complete, and even if they corresponded 
 word for word with "Fingal," "Temora," "Berrathon," 
 and all the rest, were absolutely worthless, as Johnson
 
 HO OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 declared, as evidence for the antiquity of these poems. 
 We are giving nothing away if we admit that all the 
 Gaelic of " Fingal " was on show in Becket's shop in 
 this form "in the year 1762 for the inspection of the 
 curious." The fact by itself does not even suffice to 
 prove that Macpherson, or any of his correspondents, 
 had heard any part of " Fingal " said or sung in the 
 Highlands or the Hebrides. 
 
 It is not surprising that the public, however curious, 
 made no response to the invitation to inspect in a 
 bookseller's shop documents not three years old, 
 utterly meaningless to the many who could not 
 read them, and quite unconvincing to the few who 
 could. That no one took the pains to visit the shop 
 and discover, by ocular demonstration, that the 
 evidence offered for "Fingal" there was nothing 
 more than this, is a sign of an age not very searching 
 in criticism of this kind. But that through this neglect 
 judgment went by default we utterly deny. Judgment 
 so far must be pronounced upon the evidence ; and it 
 is the witness himself who, in effect, tells us that his 
 evidence from written documents was worthless. 
 
 But even this worthless evidence was withheld for 
 "Temora." The indifference of the public to the 
 " originals " of " Fingal " made, according to Macpher- 
 son, any such pains to secure credit for his new venture 
 superfluous. He therefore contented himself with 
 publishing, with " Temora," a specimen of the Gaelic ; 
 and for that purpose fixed upon the seventh book. 
 We have a significant hint of the manner in which
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 141 
 
 this specimen was produced. One of Macpherson's 
 helpers was the Laird of Strathmashie, and of him Mr. 
 Bailey Saunders tells us that — 
 
 "On his death in 1767 a manuscript is said to have 
 been found amongst his papers, containing the Gaelic of 
 the seventh book of 'Temora' in his handwriting, with 
 numerous alterations and corrections, and headed ' First 
 rude draft of the seventh book of " Temora." ' " 
 
 Let us keep clearly in mind what we learn or infer 
 from Macpherson himself as to the composition of 
 this poem. It is made up almost entirely of fragments, 
 taken down from recitation. These are placed by him 
 in their proper sequence, and so combined that they 
 form one narrative poem. 1 The epic thus formed is 
 then divided by him into eight books. The division into 
 books is the last stage in the process. 
 
 It was therefore when the work was structurally 
 quite complete that Strathmashie was thus engaged 
 upon it. And what had he before him ? A complete 
 seventh book in Gaelic, or a complete seventh book in 
 English? If the manuscript was Gaelic that, and not 
 his manuscript, was the " first rude draught." Nor 
 could it have been so very " rude " after all. It 
 consisted ex hypothesi of what had been so put 
 
 1 There are lyric passages in the text of " Temora " obvious to 
 any reader, and commented on by Macpherson. These lyric 
 portions cannot amount to anything like a tenth part of the 
 whole poem. But he claims that he had originals for all the 
 narrative part of the epic as well, and in fact points out the 
 difference in style, in the original, between the narrative and the 
 lyric portions !
 
 142 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 together by Macpherson himself that it made, in 
 Gaelic, an intelligible section of a complete and in- 
 telligible story. If it is urged that the Gaelic as 
 offered to Strathmashie was difficult, how had Mac- 
 pherson been able to understand each separate 
 fragment, and to assign it to its place in the epic? 
 Macpherson was admittedly no good Gaelic scholar. 1 
 If he could understand his "originals " it was because 
 they were easy to understand, and the alterations 
 which an expert would need to make in the manuscript 
 which Macpherson submitted to him would involve no 
 great thought or trouble. This " first rude draft of the 
 seventh book of Temora, with numerous alterations 
 and corrections," can be reconciled only with one 
 supposition. Strathmashie was making a translation 
 from Macpherson's English. He was not revising, he 
 was composing, the Gaelic. He was translating into a 
 language, which, however well he may have known it, 
 he could seldom have had occasion to write, and its 
 literature consisted in reality only of a few scattered 
 lyrics, with the phraseology of which he had to bring 
 his version into some sort of harmony. His task was 
 not unlike that of the good Greek scholars who year 
 after year at Cambridge write a Greek ode after the 
 
 1 He once, Mr. Saunders says, wanted to ask a bard whether 
 he knew any poems about the Fingalians, but the words he 
 used really meant, "Do the Fingalians owe you anything?" 
 The man replied that if they did the bonds were lost, and he 
 believed that any attempt to recover them at that time of day 
 would be unavailing. Macpherson was foolish enough to be 
 offended.
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 143 
 
 manner of Sappho, or the achievement of Professor 
 Jebb in rendering a poem of Browning's into the Greek 
 of Pindar. Under such conditions, " numerous altera- 
 tions and corrections " are inevitable even to the most 
 practised hands, before the composition is ready. We are 
 not surprised, therefore, that the Laird of Strathmashie's 
 manuscript bore evidences of great searchings of heart. 
 Nor is it wonderful that the published specimen con- 
 tained, according to the Committee of the Highland 
 Society, some imperfections and modernisms. If these 
 " modernisms " were in manuscripts made from recita- 
 tion, which Macpherson handed to Strathmashie, what 
 becomes of the argument for the antiquity of Mac- 
 pherson's Ossian, based upon the conservative vigour of 
 oral tradition in the Highlands ? And above all, the 
 bona fides of the translator being the question at stake, 
 what had he to do but to produce the Gaelic materials, 
 just as he received them or took them down, out of 
 which he constructed this seventh book ? He did 
 not, because he could not, do this. If there were such 
 materials their very paucity would have convicted him 
 of fraud. 
 
 Mr. Bailey Saunders considers it very unlikely that 
 Macpherson could have written the twenty thousand 
 lines of Ossianic poems in the brief period of three and 
 a half years. To us it is far more difficult to believe 
 that, however numerous his correspondents may have 
 been (and their number does not, perhaps, diminish 
 the difficulty), he collected in that brief period, mainly 
 from recitations heard in various parts of the High-
 
 144 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 lands, the same great mass of Gaelic, translated all 
 that mass, after avowed disputes as to the meaning of 
 many passages, and found for each contribution its 
 exact place in a series of twenty-one poems, two of 
 which are epics, and almost all of which are tales, and 
 very coherent tales too, corresponding in structure, 
 with marvellous fidelity, to the arguments which Mac- 
 pherson has prefixed to them. Such a feat of con- 
 structive criticism has no parallel in literary history ; 
 it is the work of more than one lifetime ; that it should 
 have been so rapidly, yet so completely, performed, 
 transcends all belief. In the alternative, that the great 
 bulk of these poems was of Macpherson's own com- 
 position, we see no difficulty whatever, after the pub- 
 lication of the " Fragments." The real business was 
 to find or make legends, plots, episodes. The great 
 Ossianic manner once formed could be reproduced ad 
 infinitum. It was, in Hamlet's phrase, as easy as 
 lying ; to which, indeed, it bore no small resemblance. 
 We do not quite agree with Johnson that " many men, 
 many women, and many children could have written 
 Ossian." But we certainly believe that many men, 
 and many women, given a few Gaelic names and a tale 
 to tell about them, could, after one perusal of " Fingal " 
 or "Temora," turn out a poem which, bating perhaps 
 the felicities which appear at very rare intervals in Mac- 
 pherson's compilation, and prove that he had some 
 poetic gift, would pass for Macpherson-Ossianic. In- 
 deed, that excellent lady, Mrs. Ann Grant, of Laggan, 
 when, in 1788, she described with mingled delight and
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 145 
 
 horror Macpherson's return to his own country, had 
 caught the style to perfection : 
 
 " The bard of bards," she writes, " who reached the mouldy 
 harp of Ossian from the withered oak of Selma, and awakened 
 the song of other times, is now moving, like a bright meteor, 
 over his native hills ; and while the music of departed bards 
 awakens the joy of grief, the spirits of departed warriors lean 
 from their bright clouds to hear." 
 
 She could have gone on like that for ever, without 
 being much more tedious than her original. In fact, 
 nothing that we have ever come across rivals these 
 poems for monotony ; in this we shall be contradicted 
 by no one who has made, as we have made, the dread- 
 ful experiment of reading them from the first page to 
 the last. The monotony is exactly what we should 
 expect from a youth of excellent abilities, some poetic 
 gift, and some reading, shrewd enough to know that 
 to be safe he must not be venturesome, must avoid 
 that sort of particularity which gives character and 
 interest to old epic poetry, and which either proves the 
 date of a poem or betrays the forger. Very seldom 
 does Macpherson depart from the convenient vague- 
 ness in which he was secure. It was indeed somewhat 
 venturesome to make his Ossian talk of Caracul (for 
 Caracalla) four years before that nickname was given, 
 and though it was urged by Dr. Whittaker, in general 
 no partisan of Macpherson, that the poet would 
 naturally speak of a man by the name by which he 
 came to be generally known, this apology is scarcely 
 satisfactory. The defeat of Caracul is in part the 
 
 L
 
 146 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 theme of Comala, one of the most extravagant and 
 impossible of the shorter poems ; a piece dramatic in 
 structure, including five " persons " and a chorus of 
 bards ; and we remark, in passing, that it seems highly- 
 improbable that it should have been obtained, in its 
 present form, from recitation. " This poem," Macpher- 
 son tells us, "is valuable on account of the light it 
 throws on the antiquity of Ossian's compositions. 
 The Caracul mentioned here is the same with Cara- 
 calla, the son of Severus, who in the year 211 com- 
 manded an expedition against the Caledonians." Now, 
 early in this very year (February 4) Severus died at 
 York ; and from the poem it appears that he was still 
 alive at the date of the battle ; we infer, therefore, that 
 " the son of the king of the world " made this invasion 
 beyond the northernmost limits of the empire, and 
 sustained a crushing defeat, in the depth of winter, and 
 this, too, at the very crisis of his fortunes, his father 
 dying, and his brother and rival Geta, the favourite of 
 the soldiers whose lives were thus rashly thrown away. 
 That Roman history should know nothing of such an 
 event at such a time, nay, that the succession to the 
 empire should not have been affected by it, is a very 
 remarkable circumstance. That Severus was prepar- 
 ing for a summer campaign against the Caledonians 
 when his career was cut short by death is another fact 
 which renders this premature expedition altogether 
 incredible. We may, therefore, safely infer that at any 
 rate Macpherson's A.D. 2 1 1 must be wrong. It may be 
 urged that though Macpherson was so far in error, the
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 147 
 
 poem may refer to a previous campaign. To this the 
 best answer is the poem itself, of which Macpherson 
 has perfectly interpreted the drift. It speaks of the 
 defeat of the Romans as a final deliverance, which 
 caused " the wings of their pride " to " spread in other 
 lands." We may dismiss with contempt, or something 
 worse, Macpherson's impudent pretence that this name 
 " Caracul " establishes the antiquity of his Ossian. Yet 
 no other pretence is tenable. Ossian is describing a 
 victory won by his own father. The name of the 
 defeated prince could not be for him derived from 
 historic literature. And even if we attribute the poem 
 to some later bard, — if among barbarous tribes penitus 
 toto divisos orbe, the name of a hostile leader survives, 
 it is because it has been caught from contact with the 
 invaders and retained in a form more or less corrupt. 
 That the name " Caracalla " could never have been 
 heard, or thus transmitted, by the victorious barbarians, 
 has been shown. If, therefore, Caracul is Caracalla, it 
 would be hard to fix for " Comala " a date at all com- 
 patible with the remote antiquity claimed for that poem ; 
 we must trace it to the dawn of historic study in the 
 North. But be it remembered that, as Blair says, these 
 poems must be anterior to the establishment of the clan 
 system (itself very ancient), for they contain no men- 
 tion of it. This is a perfectly true inference from their 
 contents ; and therefore Macpherson was more saga- 
 cious than some of his defenders in claiming for them 
 a very early date, and attributing them to Ossian him- 
 self. He committed himself, however, in this instance
 
 148 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 by being too particular. He justifies exactly the sus- 
 picion Gray derived from his letters, which were, he 
 says, " calculated (one would imagine) to deceive, and 
 yet not cunning enough to do it cleverly." ' 
 
 It would be interesting could we know more of the 
 way in which Macpherson dealt with the few old 
 documents that came into his hands. We can quite 
 believe that "he parted very reluctantly with what- 
 ever he had succeeded in obtaining." One or two 
 ancient manuscripts were a very necessary addition to 
 the display of evidence in Becket's shop. But beyond 
 the statement of Mr. Macneill, Minister of Hovemore, 
 in South Uist, that " the original of ' Berrathon ' was 
 contained in an important manuscript which, with 
 three or four more, Macmhuirid in his presence gave 
 to Macpherson, who bound himself in writing to return 
 them," we have found nothing in Mr. Bailey Saunders's 
 book to connect old MSS. with Macpherson's Ossian. 
 Of the value of this testimony our readers are as com- 
 petent as ourselves to judge. What was the antiquity 
 of the " important " manuscript, and how far it cor- 
 
 1 It was urged that "caracul" really means in Gaelic "fierce- 
 eyed," and that Macpherson was only mistaken in identifying 
 the name with Caracalla. If there was a "son of the king of 
 the world " known to his contemporary Ossian as " Caracul," 
 and afterwards called in another part of the world, and with a 
 perfectly different signification, " Caracalla," the coincidence is 
 certainly startling. It is scarcely necessary to say that by 
 Ossian is meant Macpherson's Ossian, the Ossian in whom 
 Macpherson believed, the Ossian whose date he approximately 
 assigned, the contents of all the Ossianic poems published by 
 him squaring far better with that "floruit'' than with any other.
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 149 
 
 responded with " Berrathon," are, we suppose, questions 
 now beyond solution. But an extract supplied by 
 Mr. Saunders, from the journal of John Mackenzie, 
 on July 22, in the year (apparently) 1789, may assist 
 our judgment a little : 
 
 "Went at one o'clock to Putney-common, to Mr. Mac- 
 pherson. He said he had been searching in an old trunk 
 upstairs, which he had with him in East Florida, for the 
 original of ' Berrathon.' That he feared it was in an im- 
 perfect condition, and that part of it was wanting, as of 
 ' Carthon ' ; that he had only put together a few lines of it, 
 and those not to his own liking ; that he had tired of it after 
 a short sitting." 
 
 We suppose that this was not the "important manu- 
 script " itself which Macpherson had bound himself in 
 writing to " return." On any hypothesis, however, we 
 find by " combining," as the editor of the " Eatanswill 
 Gazette " would say, " our information," that the 
 English of " Berrathon " lacks any sort of warrant. 
 Another fact of very distinct significance Mr. Saunders 
 relegates to a footnote. He tells us in the text that 
 the Macdonalds had great difficulty in getting back 
 from Macpherson the " Red Book " upon which the 
 family set great store. But we learn also from the 
 note on p. 131 that Campbell, of Islay, who examined 
 this book in 1873, " found no poem in it which could 
 be the original of any part of Macpherson's Ossian." 
 
 It would be tedious, even if we had space, to pro- 
 duce all the indications which these pages afford, 
 pointing to one and the same conclusion. We are
 
 150 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 simply amazed at the facility with which, up to the 
 first years of the present century, every one at all 
 deeply interested in the subject, except, perhaps, David 
 Hume and Gray, assisted, unwittingly, at a great 
 process of concoction. Even John Mackenzie, who, 
 as secretary of the Highland Society, might have 
 known his real duty better, seems to have virtually 
 helped (by way of furnishing " originals ") to turn 
 Macpherson's English into Gaelic ; and Blair, who 
 was Macpherson's great voucher with the British 
 public, and professed to have seen him at work, 
 laboured, according to his protege, under " much want 
 of information on the subject " when he opposed the 
 project of printing the Gaelic in Greek characters, and 
 by his own acknowledgment knew nothing of that 
 language. To make the good or ill fortune of Mac- 
 pherson's evidences complete, we are told that his 
 MS., at one time in the Advocates' library, unaccount- 
 ably disappeared, and that his diary, " which is said to 
 have contained some information as to the collection 
 of the poems, was stolen, probably by a servant, shortly 
 after Sir David Brewster's death in 1868." 
 
 Strangely as John Mackenzie himself went to work, 
 it is perfectly clear that the Highland Society, though 
 their conclusions were timidly and feebly expressed, 
 could, only forty years after Macpherson's labours, 
 find no such connected tales as he published, nothing 
 in fact but fragmentary lyrics — of which no one 
 questions that he made some use. That they found 
 " no one poem the same in title and tenour with his
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 151 
 
 publications " is unaccountable if we are to believe 
 that he found, even for his many shorter poems, the 
 raw material of coherent fables ; for even when the 
 body of a song is lost, the last thing to perish is some 
 indication of its general drift. Moreover, Macpher- 
 son's defenders are inconsistent with themselves in 
 attributing such great effects to the official discourage- 
 ment of Gaelic. The tenacious patriotism which 
 could retain through many centuries the substance 
 (bating the necessary links) of twenty thousand lines, 
 could scarcely, in forty years, have so far yielded to 
 foreign pressure as to retain no vestige of those 
 memories except in a few fragments. 
 
 Again, we differ from Mr. Saunders, inasmuch as 
 we believe that Macpherson, with his " Highland 
 pride," reveals clearly enough his ambition, even in 
 connection with Ossian, to figure as an original genius. 
 What else is to be made of such expressions as 
 these ? — 
 
 " Without vanity I say it, I think I could write tolerable 
 poetry ; and I assure my antagonists that I should not trans- 
 late what I could not imitate." " A translator who cannot 
 equal his original is incapable of expressing its beauties." 
 
 What is the " profound truth " which Mr. Saunders 
 supposes this second sentence to contain ? Taken by 
 itself it is either false or a mere truism. If it means 
 that none should translate a poet but those who can 
 rival him in creative power, it means that Homer and 
 Dante should have remained untranslated. Interpreted 
 by the first sentence, and by the high place on Par-
 
 152 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 nassus which Macpherson gives to his Ossian, its 
 significance becomes quite plain. It is Macpherson's 
 way of telling the world, " These are works of un- 
 rivalled genius, but I could rival them if I pleased." 
 Conscious that he was the real author of efforts which 
 passed for sublime, he was specially galled by a defence 
 of their genuineness, based on his supposed incompet- 
 ence to produce them ; and he coveted the honour 
 and glory of a poet of the first rank, without the odium 
 which attached to those literary rascals, his countrymen 
 Bower and Lauder. 
 
 We cannot agree with Mr. Saunders that there is 
 " as good a case for the authenticity of the Ossianic 
 poems as for that of the Edda or the Nibelungenlied," 
 but if we could believe that " the old writers who gave 
 those works to the world " had only the same quantum 
 of material as came into the hands of Macpherson we 
 should still question, from a moral point of view, his title 
 to rank with them. Every writer has a duty to his age, 
 and to the standard of candour and fidelity which his 
 own generation prescribes ; and Macpherson's was an 
 age critical in everything except — and it was a lucky 
 exception for him — the skill of the expert in detecting 
 imposture. 1 Though he never could have become so 
 
 1 This is advisedly written. Psalmanazar, Bower, Lauder, 
 were clumsy impostors, and it required no great skill to detect 
 them. That part of the confutation of Chatterton which is based 
 upon a knowledge of the earlier stages of our language belongs 
 in the main to the present century. That there should have 
 been so much of this sort of brigandage in the eighteenth century 
 indicates an inefficient police.
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 153 
 
 important a figure as he thought himself, we are con- 
 vinced that he would have achieved a fame in litera- 
 ture quite as great and much less sinister if he had 
 been more honest. His promise must not be esti- 
 mated by his early rhymes ; for these are Aberdonian. 
 Yet they are not a whit worse than Thomson's, at the 
 same period of life. Of his blank verse, Mr. Saunders 
 tells us that " it betrays the study of classical models 
 rather than any capacity for direct observation," but 
 this is precisely what we have noted in several de- 
 scriptive passages in Ossian, otherwise sufficiently 
 striking, which seem to betray themselves by a certain 
 incongruity. Be that as it may, when in "The Hunter" 
 Macpherson writes: 
 
 "... Now and then the breathing breezes sigh 
 Through the half-quivering leaves, and, far removed, 
 The sea rolls feeble murmurs to the shore " — 
 
 we have just the sort of scenic effect in which his 
 Ossian abounds. And let any one read that fragment 
 of a Norse tale which in his Preface (1773) Mac- 
 pherson first gives in his Ossianic prose, and then in 
 the conventional rhymed heroics of his day and it will 
 be seen with what facility he could pass from the one 
 manner to the other. He is probably at his best in 
 some dramatic touches, such as he perhaps really 
 found in the fragment that fascinated Gray — 
 
 "Are these his groans in the gale ? 
 Is this his broken boat on the shore ? " 
 
 or such as he more probably invented in " Croma " :
 
 154 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 
 
 " I gave my arm to the (blind) king j he felt it with his 
 aged hands. The sigh rose in his breast, and his tears came 
 down. ' Thou art strong, my son,' he said, ' but not like the 
 King of Morven.'" 
 
 We are not inclined to depreciate the abilities of 
 any man who could so notably influence the literature 
 of Europe, and captivate for a while the greatest 
 European minds. Whatever was the source of Mac- 
 pherson's imagery, he gave it for a time the charm of 
 novelty, and, floated on the stream of romance, his 
 large but unsubstantial craft carried a little valuable 
 freight. We do indeed suspect that the "sounding 
 shells," of which he had so plentiful a stock, are 
 nothing but the classic testudo adopted by him for a 
 drinking-vessel ; but now and then he has fared better 
 with his merchandise ; his heroes for example who 
 " hum surly songs " may be the musical ancestors 
 of the Roundhead in Tennyson's " Talking Oak." 
 Though it was not, pace Mrs. Barrett Browning, 
 " mountain winds that swelled out " Ossian's vest, but 
 in the main the breath of James Macpherson, that 
 breath had some little power. Some permanent re- 
 sults of the Ossianic movement may be traced 
 even in the later literature which boasted a com- 
 plete emancipation from its influence. His be- 
 setting sin is, as we have said, monotony ; there is a 
 terrible facility for the young poet in dealing with the 
 elementary forces of nature, and, if he is encouraged, 
 he is certain to abuse it ; even the sun in such hands 
 palls upon us, and before we close " Ossian," we have
 
 OSSIAN AND HIS MAKER 155 
 
 a perfectly Satanic hatred of his beams. Yet the 
 fault itself, under all the circumstances, was necessary 
 to an ephemeral success, for that which is fragmentary 
 has but little vogue ; and one of the lessons of this 
 strange episode in the history of literature is that the 
 world, even the discerning world, is influenced by 
 mere volume, and receives impressions not only of the 
 reason but of the imagination, by dint of much re- 
 petition.
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 1 
 
 IN these volumes we may study one of the most 
 striking apparent contrasts which English litera- 
 ture has ever exhibited. Whether the contrast will 
 please or not will depend, in a measure at any rate, 
 upon the bias and temperament of the reader ; but the 
 critic will find his first and perhaps his principal plea- 
 sure in noting it, and drawing from it such instruction 
 as he may. 
 
 It is possible that many of those who know Coventry 
 Patmore mainly, if not only, as the author of the 
 " Angel in the House," have inferred that the genius 
 which lavished its wealth so profusely upon the felici- 
 ties of domestic life was capable of a more ambitious 
 theme. Not of course that we are inclined to dispar- 
 age a subject which, as long as it is the poet's function 
 to discourse — 
 
 " Of man, of nature, and of human life," 
 
 must be one of the very worthiest. But in this instance 
 we recognize a self-imposed limitation ; a range of 
 thought and feeling conditioned by the surroundings 
 of a particular and highly cultivated class. These re- 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore. Poetical Works. 2 vols. 1886.
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 157 
 
 finements upon emotions themselves refined belong to 
 a society carefully guarded from the troubles and 
 dangers which are necessary to heroic action or passion. 
 Censorious criticism calls the " Idylls of the King " a 
 boudoir epic ; but the term belongs less unquestionably 
 to the " Angel in the House " and " The Victories of 
 Love." The boudoir epic of the last century was " The 
 Rape of the Lock," and we are conscious of a growth 
 in seriousness and a changed conception of the function 
 of poetry, when we reflect that we now demand some 
 moral purpose from our poets even when their material 
 is most artificial and luxurious. 
 
 It will seem to some readers a sort of sacrilege to 
 bring such poems as Coventry Patmore's into any 
 relation with the obsolete literature of satire and 
 badinage. Yet their epigrammatic character is certainly 
 a heritage from a very different past. With a position 
 almost unique in literature, and with a strong character 
 of originality, Coventry Patmore nevertheless is what 
 he is partly by wide and careful study. Sometimes, 
 indeed, not only the art, but the thought itself, is 
 borrowed. The lines in "Tamerton Church Tower": 
 
 " A Mary in the house of God, 
 A Martha in her own," 
 
 have long ago passed into a proverb. Few people, we 
 imagine, know that this beautiful epigram has been 
 passed on to our poet through the frivolous hands 
 of Horace Walpole, who found an epitaph ending 
 "Mundo Martha, Maria Deo." Yet the thought,
 
 158 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 however he came by it, belongs to Coventry Patmore of 
 right, so germane is it to that faculty of antithesis 
 in which he is a consummate master, and which he 
 exercises generally with great refinement and little 
 exaggeration. 
 
 We have spoken of a self-imposed limitation in 
 Coventry Patmore's work. The power of seizing and 
 describing character which he exercises, within those 
 limits, in his earlier poems gave promise of the sym- 
 pathetic treatment of character in a wider choice from 
 all sorts and conditions of men. At least the faculty 
 was there ; the bar to its use would be, if anything, 
 the lack of the same interest in men in the mass. 
 Now, the lower classes of society, as far as they appear 
 at all in the " Angel in the House," bask in the rays 
 reflected upon them by their social superiors. As long 
 as they remain in this ^wtfjz-feudal relation they are 
 respectable, though ungrammatical, objects of interest. 
 The prattle of the housekeeper faithfully represents 
 this character : 
 
 "Well, Mr. Felix, Sir, I'm sure 
 
 The morning's gone off excellent ! 
 I never saw the show to pass 
 
 The ladies, in their fine fresh gowns 
 So sweetly dancing on the grass 
 
 To music with its ups and downs. 
 We'd such work, Sir, to clean the plate," etc. 
 
 Here a certain graphic power is observable — the 
 same power which we notice in " The Girl of All 
 Periods " and " Olympus " — but conditioned here by
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 159 
 
 the form and subject of the ? poem. The question 
 which Coventry Patmore's subsequent writings suggest 
 is whether his sympathies are not permanently ham- 
 pered by the prejudice of class. With refined thought, 
 and wide sympathies, and the poet's eye for the world 
 of nature, we should have the elements of great poetry 
 ready to hand. What is it then that makes us feel 
 that "The Unknown Eros," etc., so great a contrast, 
 as we said at the outset, to Coventry Patmore's earlier 
 poems, as belonging more distinctly to the literature 
 of power, falls short of the same measure of success in 
 its own province ? His theme, in both of its main 
 aspects, is a noble one ; comparable, indeed, to Dante's. 
 He has his Florence and his Beatrice ; his degenerate 
 countrymen ; his earthly love foreshadowing a love 
 celestial and ideal. Dante is an evidence that it is 
 possible for genius to make political and even personal 
 antipathies immortal. But Dante has done this by a 
 faculty quite independent of the passion which sets it 
 to work ; the man " who had seen hell," and Purgatory 
 to boot, had a tremendous machinery at his command. 
 He does not succeed by making us share his animosi- 
 ties ; rather the terror and pity which he excites are 
 all in the interest of his victims. We care nothing for 
 the merits of Guelph or Ghibelline, or the sins of Pope 
 Nicolas III. or Boniface VIII. ; the excessive partiality 
 of Simon of Tours for the eels of Bolsena has but a 
 curious interest for us. There is, besides, in Dante, 
 always something of the judicial tone ; and he con- 
 demns his dearest friends to the severest penal fires.
 
 160 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 But a modern poet, with a kindred intensity of con- 
 viction, has an uphill task if his readers are not at the 
 outset in sympathy with him. The commencement 
 of the poem " 1867" — 
 
 " In the year of the great crime 
 When the false English Nobles and their Jew, 
 By God demented, slew 
 The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong" — 
 
 which has appended to it the note : 
 
 " In this year the middle and upper classes were disfran- 
 chised by Mr. Disraeli's Government, and the final destruc- 
 tion of the liberties of England by the Act of 1884 rendered 
 inevitable " — 
 
 is the statement of a particular view of very modern 
 politics, a statement crude in itself, and needing an 
 explanation, which, however, is cruder still ; a direct 
 slap in the face to perhaps two-thirds of Coventry 
 Patmore's readers, by way of encouraging them to do 
 justice to what follows. This is a drawback to which 
 the poet himself is something less than indifferent ; 
 we, who are but looking on, and trying to estimate his 
 work on purely critical grounds, cannot but see that it 
 is a drawback of a very serious kind. For the indig- 
 nation that finds its vent in poetry must interest us 
 either because we share it, or because it makes appeal 
 to a moral truth deeper than the occasion which 
 excites it, or because it is manifested in the plastic 
 power of a great imagination, presenting scenes which 
 fascinate us when judgment and sympathy are inert
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 161 
 
 or even adverse. Thus the Hebrew Prophet lives still, 
 as the witness to a righteousness independent of time 
 and place, for those who have a very imperfect acquaint- 
 ance, or no acquaintance at all, with the circumstances 
 of his mission ; Dante lives because his Heaven and 
 Hell and Purgatory have been made almost visible to 
 our eyes, and he has made us believe for a while that 
 what we have seen there are the judgments of God, 
 little as we care now for Dante's opinions, his loves or 
 hates ; even Juvenal, though we are quite indifferent 
 to the character of Domitian, will live as long as men 
 continue to read with pleasure the proceedings of the 
 council gathered round the gigantic turbot, and can 
 admire the fierce burst of scorn with which that scene 
 is closed. What conditions of success analogous to 
 these does Coventry Patmore start with ? When the 
 decadence of England is a fact manifest to all men, 
 how many will attribute it precisely to " the disfran- 
 chisement of the upper and middle classes by Mr. 
 Disraeli's Government in 1867, and the final destruc- 
 tion of the liberties of England by the Act of 1884 " ? 
 And yet that this, and nothing but this, is the explana- 
 tion of our downfall, Coventry Patmore assures us, in 
 a passage which we will quote at length, because it 
 seems to us to summarize his political creed : 
 
 "Ah, Land once mine 
 That seem'd to me too sweetly wise, 
 Too sternly fair for aught that dies, 
 Past is thy proud and pleasant state, 
 That recent date 
 
 M
 
 162 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 When, strong and single, in thy sovereign heart, 
 
 The thrones of thinking, hearing, sight, 
 
 The cunning hand, the knotted thew 
 
 Of lesser powers that heave and hew, 
 
 And each the smallest beneficial part, 
 
 And merest pore of breathing, beat 
 
 Full and complete, 
 
 The great pulse of thy generous might, 
 
 Equal in inequality, 
 
 That soul of joy in low and high ; 
 
 When not a churl but felt the Giant's heat, 
 
 Albeit he simply call'd it his, 
 
 Flush in his common labour with delight, 
 
 And not a village-maiden's kiss 
 
 But was for this 
 
 More sweet, 
 
 And not a sorrow but did lightlier sigh 
 
 And for its private self less greet, 
 
 The whilst that other so majestic self stood by ! 
 
 Integrity so vast coidd well afford 
 
 To wear in working many a stain 
 
 To pillory the cobbler vain 
 
 And license madness in a lord. 
 
 On that were all men well agreed; 
 
 And, if they did a thing, 
 
 Their strength was with them in their deed, 
 
 And from amongst them came the shout of a king." 
 
 The corruptions by which a nation is ruined are of 
 long standing, and particular enactments are their con- 
 sequences and not their causes. If we understand this 
 passage aright, up to a recent date all Englishmen 
 were agreed that the integrity secured by the governing 
 classes could safely tolerate the excesses of the aristo- 
 cracy, whilst it punished the free expression of opinion 
 on the part of the artisan. It would be easy to dis-
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 163 
 
 prove the fact of this consensus of opinion ; still easier 
 to expose a theory so crude as this, or to denounce a 
 moral standard so ignoble and invertebrate. But it is 
 sufficient to say that no great poetry can be built upon 
 such a foundation ; that the theme being what it is, all 
 the art, were it ten times as great as it is, employed in 
 embellishing it would be worse than thrown away. 
 The topic is worthy of the political and literary capacity 
 of Theodore Hook ; the morality would have been 
 warmly applauded by the followers of the Prince 
 Regent. When greater gifts are enlisted in such a 
 service we can only exclaim with Jaques, " O know- 
 ledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched 
 house ! " Let the poet regret, if he pleases, the trans- 
 ference of power ; let him anticipate, by representing 
 as already full-grown, the evils which every change 
 accomplished without social convulsion, only gradually 
 develops ; let him idealize the past, and put a nimbus 
 round the heads of the privileged few, and he may 
 compel our admiration, if not our assent ; but it is an 
 artistic blunder of the worst kind to foist the mad but 
 licensed lord and the conceited and pilloried cobbler 
 into this goodly company ; to mingle harsh realities 
 with pleasant fictions, to tempt us to dream and 
 suddenly shake us up to think. It is as if some 
 unkind hand were to introduce into Mr. Dicksee's 
 " Passing of Arthur " the sketch of a Mohawk fighting 
 a watchman. And who can help reflecting, at our 
 poet's instigation, that the stains here noted as acci- 
 dental and negligable were radical defects in our
 
 1 64 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 " vast integrity " ; that he who tells the now " out- 
 lawed Best " : 
 
 " Know 'twas the force of function high 
 In corporate exercise, and public awe 
 Of Nature's, Heaven's, and England's law 
 That Best, though mixed with Bad, should reign 
 Which kept you in your sky !" 
 
 should be the last to suggest that a system based upon 
 this principle could afford to license a contempt of that 
 virtue which is its very essence ? The naive revelation 
 of a class-feeling at the very point where a lofty 
 morality should supersede it deprives these poetical 
 jeremiads of any weight or impressiveness ; they are 
 Latter-day Pamphlets in which spleen and bitter con- 
 tempt, and a prejudice essentially vulgar, have usurped 
 the place of moral earnestness. Rhadamanthus, though 
 his methods are not ours, though, as Virgil tells us, he 
 first punishes and then hears, may be an august and 
 venerable figure ; but a Rhadamanthus in plush in- 
 spires no reverence or respect. 
 
 Compare for a moment Coventry Patmore with a 
 poet whom we should credit with less imaginative 
 power. Cowper's theme is also often the decadence 
 of England ; and, whilst we do not call " Expostula- 
 tion," or " Truth," or the " Progress of Error " great 
 poems, we maintain that they possess the essential 
 character of prophecy, in attacking corruption at its 
 root and source ; and that the cardinal error of de- 
 ploring change whilst palliating the servile toleration 
 of vice in high places, which must always make change
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 165 
 
 at last inevitable, was an error from which taste and 
 good sense and deep conviction kept Cowper wholly- 
 free. 
 
 We could easily show by quotations that the feeling 
 which we here note is predominant in these poems ; 
 but that it is really characteristic will be manifest from 
 this, that it makes its appearance in a region of thought 
 where we should least of all expect it, and where it is 
 even shockingly incongruous. The worship of the 
 Virgin Mother will have, let us admit it freely, a 
 fascination for the human spirit as long as gentleness, 
 compassion, purity, and all the other graces that 
 contribute to form the ideal of perfect womanhood can 
 thus be enshrined and hallowed. The range of poetry 
 is not circumscribed by doctrine, and it is not always 
 the poetry of Roman Catholicism — often in this direc- 
 tion rhapsodical and sensuous — that has presented this 
 worship in its most attractive light for thoughtful and 
 cultivated minds. And certainly we know no parallel 
 to the strange mixture of celestial ecstasy and very 
 mundane scorn which Coventry Patmore offers us in 
 such poems as " The Child's Purchase." He seems to 
 have taken as his model the tone and sentiment of 
 " Sir Lob " in " Tamerton Church Tower " : 
 
 " I hate the herd that vulgar be 
 And, O, the stars are fair ! " 
 
 Surely, no loose, unlettered hind of Paganism ever 
 praised the gods more amiss than this Christian and 
 cultivated poet, for whom the parable of the Pharisee
 
 1 66 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 and the Publican would seem to be a dead letter. Let 
 
 us hear him : 
 
 " Chief stone of stumbling ; sign built in the way 
 
 To set the foolish everywhere a-bray ; 
 
 Hem of God's robe, which all who touch are heal'd ; 
 
 To which the outside Many honour yield 
 
 With a reward and grace 
 
 Unguess'd by the unwash'd boor that hails Him to His face, 
 
 Spurning the safe, ingratiant courtesy 
 
 Of suing Him by thee ; 
 
 Ora pro me ! " 
 
 We despair of representing in words the impression 
 which this sad medley of blessing and cursing has 
 made upon us. We have said that we know no parallel 
 to it. We beg pardon ; the parallel is to be found in 
 the last lines of Browning's " Soliloquy of the Spanish 
 Cloister," 
 
 " 'St, there 's vespers ! Plena gratia 
 Ave, Virgo / Gr — r — r, you swine ! " 
 
 There are other poems in the same series — " Eros 
 and Psyche," " De Natura Deorum," and " Psyche's 
 Discontent " — the ethical scope and poetic value of 
 which we feel quite unable to discern, and of which 
 therefore the less said by us the better. There are 
 again poems more within our compass, the pessimistic 
 tone of which we find it hard to reconcile with any 
 Christian creed. Such is the short poem, " Magna est 
 Veritas " : 
 
 " Here in this little bay, 
 
 Full of tumultuous life and great repose, 
 
 Where, twice a day, 
 
 The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 167 
 
 Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, 
 
 I sit me down. 
 
 For want of me the world's course will not fail : 
 
 When all its work is done, the lie shall rot ; 
 
 The truth is great, and shall prevail, 
 
 When none cares whether it prevail or not." 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from these to those poems in 
 which, in spite of a certain fierce exaggeration, we dis- 
 cover a true corrective and guiding principle. As in 
 this from " The Two Deserts," which quaintly enforces 
 a favourite theme of our poet's, the happiness of limi- 
 tation : 
 
 " Put by the Telescope ! 
 
 Better without it man may see, 
 
 Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight, 
 
 The ghost of his eternity. 
 
 Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye 
 
 The things which near us be, 
 
 Till science rapturously hails, 
 
 In the minutest water-drop, 
 
 A torment of innumerable tails. 
 
 These at the least do live. 
 
 But rather give 
 
 A mind not much to pry 
 
 Beyond our royal-fair estate 
 
 Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great. 
 
 Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are, 
 
 Pressing to catch our gaze, 
 
 And out of obvious ways 
 
 Ne'er wandering far." 
 
 And certainly we have never met with anything in 
 literature more full of a pathetic desiderium than the 
 poem called " Departure," more instinct with tender-
 
 168 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 ness and compassion for the heart of childhood than 
 the " Toys." These things will live, for it is the 
 universally human which prevails in poetry, and 
 through this alone can poetry give weight to prejudices 
 in their own nature personal or ephemeral. In as far 
 as the poet forgets this he succeeds in spite of himself, 
 and only by virtue of that divine gift which no perverse 
 use can make altogether fruitless.
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON 
 
 MORE LYRICS FROM ELIZABETHAN 
 
 SONG-BOOKS 
 SIDNEY'S ASTROPHEL AND STELLA 
 
 THE rich abundance of imagery, the copious 
 vocabulary, the varied music of the Elizabethan 
 time was a common possession. These gifts, all or 
 some, belonged to men not remarkable for depth of 
 thought — to writers who had "more copie than weight," 
 but who were possessed of that quick eye for resem- 
 blances and analogies which the author of " Euphues " 
 exhibits even more strikingly than the author of 
 " Hamlet." What is still more noticeable, they belong 
 to men who are in literature only the shadow of a 
 shade — who, though they were themselves — 
 
 " Faithful prophets who spake as beseemed the god and his 
 shrine," 
 
 have hardly escaped that long night which buries 
 those who have had no sacred bard to sing their praises. 
 How many, beyond the privileged circle of professed 
 students of literature, have heard, for instance, of
 
 170 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 Edmund Bolton ? Yet Edmund Bolton could write 
 
 thus : 
 
 " As withereth the primrose by the river, 
 As fadeth summer's-sun from gliding fountains, 
 As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever, 
 As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains ; 
 So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers, 
 The rose, the shine, the bubble and the snow 
 Of praise, pomp, glory, joy (which short life gathers), 
 Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy. 
 The withered primrose by the mourning river, 
 The faded summer's-sun from weeping fountains, 
 The light-blown bubble vanished for ever, 
 The molten snow upon the naked mountains, 
 Are emblems that the treasures we uplay 
 Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away. 
 
 " For as the snow, whose lawn did over-spread 
 Th' ambitious hills, which giant-like did threat 
 To pierce the heavens with their aspiring head, 
 Naked and bare doth leave their craggy seat ; 
 When as the bubble, which did empty fly 
 The dalliance of the undiscerned wind, 
 On whose calm rolling winds it did rely, 
 Hath shipwreck made, where it did dalliance find ; 
 And when the sunshine which dissolved the snow, 
 Coloured the bubble with a pleasant vary, 
 And made the rathe and timely primrose grow, 
 Swarth clouds withdrawn (which longer time do tarry)— 
 Oh what is praise, pomp, glory, joy, but so 
 As shine by fountains, bubbles, flowers, or snow?" 
 
 Shakespeare himself, we are tempted to say, could 
 scarcely have written finer lines than — 
 
 " Th' ambitious hills, which giant-like did threat 
 To pierce the heavens with their aspiring head," 
 
 or —
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 171 
 
 " The dalliance of the undiscerned wind." 
 
 And that eclectic method, favoured by Matthew 
 Arnold, which assumes that the great masters of song 
 could put into a single phrase a note of distinction by 
 which they may be recognized, is hopelessly ship- 
 wrecked against such instances, which, coming in fact 
 from those who are least in fame, might well have 
 come from the very greatest. And who is "Ignoto" 
 who subscribes that lovely invocation of the " Shepherd 
 to his Flowers " : 
 
 " Your honours of the flowery meads I pray 
 You pretty daughters of the earth and sun " ? 
 
 Not Ralegh, as Mr. Bullen assures us, and, therefore, 
 possibly one of those many other men of practical 
 endeavour at this time, over whose life's course the 
 spirit of poetry breathed not as a trade-wind, but as 
 an occasional zephyr. One great fascination of col- 
 lections such as " England's Helicon," or the " Lyrics 
 from Elizabethan Song-books," of Mr. Bullen, is the 
 suggestion of an undercurrent of genius, to which 
 nothing now testifies but the bubbles on the surface ; 
 of a tribe of intellectual, but somewhat lazy giants, 
 who bore about with them in court or camp great 
 powers for the most part dormant or inert, but displayed 
 upon occasion with as much vigour and facility as if 
 they were in constant exercise. It is an age in which 
 literature has not yet acquired the traditions of a craft, 
 an age in which none are experts, but all are experi- 
 mentalists, and the drama alone is moulded and con- 
 ditioned by popular appeal. The scholar and courtier
 
 172 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 has, at such a time, every advantage, except that signal 
 
 advantage which a solicitude for posthumous fame 
 
 can alone secure. If Shakespeare himself had little or 
 
 nothing to do with gathering together " his sugred 
 
 sonnets among his private friends," how many men 
 
 even more careless and with less expectation than his 
 
 that— 
 
 " Not marble nor the gilded monuments 
 Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime," 
 
 may have sunk in those shipwrecks of time, after which, 
 in Landor's phrase, "hen-coops and empty barrels 
 bob upon the surface under a serene and smiling sky, 
 while the graven or depicted images of the gods are 
 scattered on invisible rocks " ? 
 
 Our Edmund Bolton has hardly escaped " on broken 
 pieces " to land. We confess to knowing nothing 
 more about him than Mr. Bullen tells us, or his own 
 unconscious revelation of himself in his verse suggests. 
 " One of the most learned men of his time," he wrote 
 "The Elements of Armories," and an interesting treatise 
 called "Hypercritica." He accompanied Buckingham 
 on his journey to Spain in 1623. He "laboured to 
 establish a Royal Academy or College of Honour ' for 
 the breeding and bringing-upof the nobility and gentry 
 of this kingdom.' " We might conjecture that in social 
 status and intellectual mould he resembled Spenser — 
 more fortunate than Spenser in his life, but less secure 
 of immortality. A certain sad dignity belongs to his 
 style even in his lighter hour of song. He is religious 
 also, and we should like to believe that the author of
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 173 
 
 the beautiful Carol on the Nativity was a precursor of 
 Milton in the spirit as well as in the letter : 
 
 " ' For lo ! the world's great Shepherd now is born, 
 A blessed babe, an infant full of power ; 
 After long night uprisen is the morn, 
 Renowning Bethlem in the Saviour. 
 
 Sprung is the perfect day 
 
 By prophets seen afar ; 
 
 Sprung is the mirthful May 
 
 Which winter cannot mar.' 
 In David's city doth this sun appear. 
 Clouded in flesh ; yet, shepherds, sir. we here ? " l 
 
 We owe to Mr. Bullen the rescue from oblivion of a 
 remarkable poem by some unknown master-hand, the 
 reading of which has had much to do with our re- 
 flections upon the uncertainty of literary fame. We 
 are not surprised that Mr. Bullen writes, " I doubt 
 whether it would be possible for me to have lost 
 memory of that poem if I had ever seen it in print. 
 Verse so stately, so simple, so flawless is not lightly 
 forgotten." We suspect him of wonder that so noble a 
 
 1 We have assumed with Mr. Bullen that "E. B." in "England's 
 Helicon " is always Edmund Bolton, although his name is only 
 once subscribed in full. It would not be a less suggestive fact 
 if " E. B." were quite unknown to us. There is a " W. S." in 
 " England's Helicon," who is not William Shakespeare but 
 William Smith, author of " Chloris ; or, the Complaint of the 
 Passionate Despised Shepherd," 1596. The initials, W. S., 
 have been a prolific source of error, not always, we may conjec- 
 ture, undesigned. Besides standing for William Shakespeare, 
 they have stood for William Smith and perhaps for Wentworth 
 Smith, and, according to Mr. Fleay, for Shakespeare's brother 
 actor, William Sly.
 
 174 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 poem could have been so long unknown ; perhaps 
 even of doubt whether the case is really so. We, at 
 any rate, shall have no right to censure him, if this 
 treasure which he unearths from the Christ Church 
 MSS. should prove to be of less obscure origin than he 
 supposes. It was set to music by John Ford ; the 
 abruptness of the opening either indicates that it is a 
 fragment, or belongs to the dramatic character which 
 marks it throughout : 
 
 "Yet if his majesty, our sovereign lord, 
 
 Should of his own accord 
 
 Friendly himself invite, 
 
 And say, ' I'll be your guest to-morrow night,' 
 
 How should we stir ourselves, call and command 
 
 All hands to work ! ' Let no man idle stand. 
 
 Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall, 
 
 See they be fitted all ; 
 
 Let there be room to eat, 
 
 And order taken that there want no meat. 
 
 See every sconce and candlestick made bright, 
 
 That without tapers they may give a light. 
 
 Look to the presence : are the carpets spread, 
 
 The dais o'er the head, 
 
 The cushions in the chairs, 
 
 And all the candles lighted on the stairs ? 
 
 Perfume the chambers, and in any case 
 
 Let each man give attendance in his place.' 
 
 Thus if the King were coming would we do, 
 
 And 'twere good reason too ; 
 
 For 'tis a duteous thing 
 
 To show all honour to an earthly King, 
 
 And after all our travail and our cost, 
 
 So he be pleased, to think no labour lost. 
 
 But at the coming of the King of Heaven
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 175 
 
 All's set at six and seven : 
 
 We wallow in our sin, 
 
 Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. 
 
 We entertain Him always like a stranger, 
 
 And as at first still lodge Him in the manger." 
 
 The religious poet, we know, is at this time seldom 
 so dignified when he moves with so much life as he 
 does here — a quibble is the Cleopatra for which he 
 must be content to lose the ear of a modern world less 
 disposed to be " punned into salvation." Here, for 
 instance, is a bard we doubt not as earnest as Herbert, 
 but with more than Herbert's quaintness : 
 
 " My sins are like the hairs upon my head, 
 And raise their audit to as high a score. 
 
 In this they differ : they do daily shed, 
 But ah my sins grow daily more and more : 
 
 If by my hairs thou number out my sins, 
 
 Heaven make me bald before that day begins." 
 
 But sometimes the touch of quaintness is more gentle, 
 and the thought developed is more than an idle play 
 of fancy, as in this (from John Danyel's " Songs for 
 the Lute, Viol, and Voice," 1606) : 
 
 " If I could shut the gate against my thoughts 
 And keep out sorrow from this room within, 
 Or memory could cancel all the notes 
 
 Of my misdeeds, and I unthink my sin : 
 How free, how clear, how clean my soul should lie, 
 Discharged of such a loathesome company ! 
 
 Or were there other rooms without my heart 
 That did not to my conscience join so near, 
 
 Where I might lodge the thoughts of sin apart 
 That I might not their clam'rous crying hear ;
 
 176 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 What peace, what joy, what ease should I possess, 
 Freed from the horrors that my soul possess ! 
 
 But O my Saviour, Who my refuge art, 
 
 Let Thy dear mercies stand 'twixt them and me, 
 
 And be the wall to separate my heart 
 So that I may at length repose me free ; 
 
 That peace, and joy, and rest may be within, 
 
 And I remain divided from my sin." 
 
 If we prefer the serious muse, it is because she tells or 
 suggests more than her lighter-minded sisters. For 
 instance, how well the following memento mori, with its 
 
 " Vivat Eliza for an Ave Mary " 
 
 discloses the story of one who has lived on through 
 shifting and hazardous times into a changed world : 
 
 " Time's eldest son, Old Age (the heir of ease, 
 
 Strength's foe, Love's woe, and foster to devotion) 
 Bids gallant Youth in martial prowess please ; 
 
 As for himself, he has no earthly motion, 
 But thinks sighs, tears, vows, prayers, and sacrifices 
 As good as shows, masques, jousts, or tilt-devices. 
 Then sit thee down and say thy Nunc Dimittis 
 
 With De Profundis, Credo, and Te Deum; 
 Chant Miserere, for what now so fit is 
 
 As that or this, Paratum est cor Meum f 
 O that thy saint would take in worth thy heart ! 
 Thou canst not please her with a better part. 
 When others sing Venite Exultemus 
 
 Stand by and turn to Nolo Aemulari J 
 For Quare fremuerttnt use Oremus 
 
 Vivat Eliza for an Ave Mary, 
 And teach those swains that live about thy cell 
 To sing Amen when thou dost pray so well."
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 177 
 
 Flattery of Elizabeth is not often, except in Shake- 
 speare, so pleasingly managed, and hardly ever so 
 temperate, as here ; we cannot say, as a rule, that the 
 courtier-poet is " happiest in fiction." Conceive that 
 " gracious creature," Sidney, descending to this in the 
 character of Therion, a forester, contending in song 
 with Espilus, a shepherd, for the May- Lady : 
 
 " Two thousand deer in wildest woods I have ; 
 Them can I take but you I cannot hold ; 
 He is not poor who can his freedom save 
 Bound but to you, no wealth but you I would, 
 But take this beast if beasts you fear to miss, 
 For of his beasts the greatest beast he is. 
 {Both kneeling to her Majesty.) 
 
 Espilus — 
 Judge you, to whom all beauty's force is lent 
 
 Therion — 
 Judge you of Love to whom all love is bent." 
 
 This is not the Sidney whom we know; theAstrophel, 
 the vicissitudes of whose love for Stella we can study 
 anew in the pretty volume, so ably edited by Mr. 
 Pollard. This " In Memoriam " of unavailing love is 
 worthy of the man of high and chivalrous courage who 
 wrote the letter on the French match. In Sidney's 
 sonnets we trace the course of a passion whose only 
 rival, whilst hope remains, is the patriotic fire that 
 longs for active service in the field. The moral might 
 at times be Lovelace's : 
 
 " I could not love thee, dear, so much 
 Loved I not Honour more." 
 
 Nowhere has the ennobling power of a manly and 
 
 N
 
 178 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 worthy affection been better described than in his 
 words — 
 
 " If that be sinne which doth the manners frame, 
 Well staid with truth in word and faith of deed, 
 Readie of wit, and fearing nought but shame ; 
 If that be sinne which on fixt hearts doth breed 
 A loathing of all loose unchastitie, 
 Then love is sinne, and let me sinfull be." 
 
 And, when hope is gone, the struggle is never 
 ignoble, never undignified; the higher influences pre- 
 vail, and a purer ideal at last succeeds — " Splendidis 
 longum valedico nugis" is the motto which closes the 
 record, when he takes farewell of earthly passion : 
 
 "... let that light be thy guide 
 In this small course which birth draws out to death, 
 And think how evill becommeth him to slide, 
 Who seeketh heav'n, and comes of heavenly breath. 
 Then farewell, world ; thy uttermost I see : 
 Eternall Love, maintaine thy life in me." 
 
 Sidney is the most dramatic of sonneteers. In this 
 capacity Shakespeare and he change places. Even 
 if we suppose, with Mr. Gerald Massey, that Shake- 
 speare only occasionally writes in his own person, he 
 uses his art to conceal his art, to mystify rather than 
 to embellish, and the result is an effect the reverse of 
 dramatic. But Sidney is constantly revealing to us 
 the life in which he moved, the entourage of that 
 secret passion which he bore about in the midst of 
 it. He wins the prize in the tourney, in the judg- 
 ment not only of his own countrymen, but of some
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 179 
 
 sent, as he says in a phrase which concentrates the 
 very spirit of chivalry, "from that sweet enemy France." 
 Those who are skilled in horsemanship attribute 
 his success to this ; the townsfolk praise his strength ; 
 jealous rivals assign all to luck; some say that his 
 prowess is hereditary both on the father's and the 
 mother's side ; Sidney hears it all ; he alone knows 
 the reason : 
 
 " Stella lookt on, and from her heav'nly face 
 
 Sent forth the beames which made so faire my race." 
 
 He describes a lover's impatience in words which, 
 with a very slight change of form, might easily pass as 
 an excerpt from some Shakespearean scene : 
 
 " Be your words made, good sir, of Indian ware 
 That you allow me them by so small a rate ? 
 Or do you cutted Spartanes imitate ? 
 Or do you meane my tender eares to spare, 
 That to my questions you so totall are ? 
 When I demand of Phoenix Stella's state, 
 You say, forsooth, you left her well of late : 
 
 God, thinke you that satisfies my care ? 
 
 1 would know whether she did sit or walke ; 
 
 How cloth'd ; how waited on ; sighd she or smilde 
 Whereof, with whom, how often did she talke ; 
 With what pastime time's journey she beguilde ; 
 If her lips daignd to sweeten my pore name. 
 Say all : and all well sayd, still say the same." l 
 
 Sometimes he moves as a knight of the rueful 
 
 & j 
 
 1 Cf. Rosalind, in "As You Like It," iii. 2, 231 sq. : "What 
 did he when thou sawest him ? What said he ? How looked he? 
 Wherein went he ? Did he ask for me f " etc., etc.
 
 180 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 
 
 countenance among the bright festive gatherings of 
 the court, and is held to be proud and reserved — 
 
 " Because he oft in darke abstracted guise 
 Seemes most alone in greatest companie." 
 
 He is teased about the current questions of the day : 
 
 " How Ulster likes of that same golden bit 
 Wherewith my father once made it halfe tame ? 
 If in the Scotch court be no weltring yet ? 
 These questions busie wits to me do frame : 
 I, cumbred with good maners, answer do 
 But know not how : for still I thinke of you." 
 
 He begs the politician who discourses to him 
 
 " Of courtly tides, 
 Of cunning fishers in most troubled streames 
 Of straying wayes, when valiant errour guides," 
 
 to take his wisdom 
 
 "To them that do such entertainment need." 
 
 His heart, he says — 
 
 " — confers with Stella's beames 
 And is even irkt that so sweet comedie 
 By such unsuted speech should hindred be." 
 
 We had much more to say, if space permitted. We 
 have taken only a partial survey of these treasures. 
 We have wandered among the wealth which Mr. 
 Bullen and Mr. Pollard have shown us once more, as 
 a visitor to some noble mansion, who prefers the 
 statuary to the Dresden china. Yet the shepherds and 
 shepherdesses of the Elizabethan era, though they do 
 plight their troth " before god Pan, and then to Church,"
 
 ENGLAND'S HELICON, ETC. 181 
 
 are not wholly an anachronism. The city has not yet 
 absorbed literature, its dust and dirt have not yet 
 choked up in Euterpe's flute all the stops which echo 
 the native sounds of the fields and woodlands. Many 
 a reveller at the Mermaid could have held discourse 
 with Perdita amid her flowers, and knew well, when 
 and where to find those 'pretty daughters of the earth 
 
 and sun ' — 
 
 " The daffodils 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses 
 That die unmarried ere they can behold 
 Bright Phcebus in his strength ; bold oxlips and 
 The Crown Imperial." 
 
 We are still some distance from the days once so 
 bright and brilliant, but now like some " banquet-hall 
 deserted" where the candles are flickering in the 
 sockets, when dissolute beaux and frivolous women of 
 fashion monopolized the names of pastoral song. 
 Daphnis and Mopsus still carry with them the aroma 
 of the country, though sometimes, alas ! of the stable. 
 Nature, with her ever-fresh sources of inspiration, is 
 nearer to men here, even in their dreams of a life 
 wholly fanciful and unreal, than she condescends to 
 be to the brilliant epigrammatist of a later day, whose 
 Daphnis has gone to the town, whence no charms can 
 bring him back again, whose Chloe reads Rochester, 
 whose Phyllis has taken to paint and patches, and 
 whose Mopsus is a Mohawk. 
 
 N 2
 
 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 
 
 THIS happened in Brown's rooms at Trinity in 
 1865. Dalston mentioned some lines in that 
 strange poem, Bailey's "Festus," where a certain 
 country is compared to 
 
 " A worm divided into parts 
 That sprouts forth heads and tails but grows no hearts." 
 
 " Absurd ! " cried Brown, a ' natural science " man, 
 and prosaic — " This is the vis formativa natures, with 
 a vengeance." 
 
 " I don't care whether it's true or not," said the more 
 imaginative Dalston ; " I think the idea is suggestive." 
 
 " So suggestive," said Merton with a strange twinkle 
 in his eye, " that it is the merest commonplace among 
 the poets." 
 
 Dalston : " Indeed ? I thought I knew my poets 
 pretty well, but I don't remember meeting with it 
 elsewhere." 
 
 Merton : " I'll undertake to produce half-a-dozen 
 instances out of my own reading, by this time to- 
 morrow, if you'll come to my rooms then." 
 
 Merton was a strange creature ; very versatile and
 
 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 183 
 
 various ; no one knew the limits of his powers or 
 knowledge. He was a complete puzzle both to friends 
 and examiners. He was the counterpart of Robert 
 Browning's "Waring" in some respects, with a tinge 
 of Shakespeare's " Puck," which made him not less 
 mysterious, but perhaps more agreeable. He dis- 
 appeared at once when he took his degree, and 
 whether he became an Avatar in Vishnuland we have 
 never heard. 
 
 We went to his rooms according to appointment, 
 and he took down Milton at once from his shelves. 
 " Now," he said, " we'll begin with Milton, and the 
 fight in heaven with the rebel angels : 
 
 " Cloven in twain by the Archangel's sword, 
 Each half became a fiend instinct with life 
 Malignant, such the vital energy 
 They hold in common with the worms of earth." 
 
 He rapidly shut the volume and replaced it. " Ah !" 
 said Dalston, " that is Milton all over — ' instinct with 
 life malignant,' though it is strange that I did not 
 remember it." But by this time Merton had opened 
 Wordsworth, and was reading from the " Wanderer " 
 
 " ' See, sir,' he said, 
 And pointed to the ground beneath our feet, 
 ' Yon cloven worm that, writhing now in pain, 
 (Unwished-for sight, yet fraught with meaning high) 
 Soon, touched by Nature's healing hand, shall live 
 Doubly henceforth, each half a separate whole 
 Rejoicing twofold in the tempered beam 
 Of this declining sun that, even now
 
 1 84 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 
 
 Shining obliquely o'er the radiant earth, 
 (Radiant as with the fond departing smile, 
 Not all devoid of sadness of a friend 
 Who goes, nor till the morrow may return) 
 Seems but . . . etc.' " 
 
 Wordsworth, The Wanderer. 
 
 " Well," he broke off, " I suppose you've had enough 
 of that ? " 
 
 " I should think so," said Brown. 
 
 " I confess," said Dalston, " that I have often skipped 
 in reading the ' Excursion.' " 
 
 " Well, but you haven't skipped, I suppose, in read- 
 ing ' In Memoriam,'" answered Merton, putting Words- 
 worth away and beginning to read : 
 
 " If knowledge be of things we see 
 Then thou and I may meet no more, 
 Since Nature from an endless store 
 
 Supplies each new deficiency : 
 
 " With complex form increasing still 
 And out of endless phases wrought, 
 She blindly works as one self-taught 
 
 Nor cares for unity of will : 
 
 " But still to separate purpose turned 
 
 In divers fragments of the whole, 
 
 As myriad orbed atoms roll 
 Where once a mighty Planet burned : 
 
 " In loftiest grade, in lowliest form, 
 
 She works like one who strives for gain, 
 Gleaning from ruin and from pain 
 
 In shattered globe, in severed worm.
 
 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 185 
 
 "Yet, turning from her soulless face, 
 
 I raise my eyes as one who hears 
 
 A voice of trust beyond the years, 
 Re-echoed from the vast of space." 
 
 We noticed that Dalston looked very puzzled and 
 uneasy during the reading of this passage, but Merton's 
 rapidity of action and recitation did not allow much 
 discussion, and he briskly took down a Byron and 
 began : 
 
 " So he abandoned hope in earth or heaven, 
 And took the downward plunge, nor cursed his fate, 
 But with loud song and reckless laughter driven 
 He scoffed at bale or bliss, seeming elate 
 And fearless, while from every succour riven 
 Sheer to the depth he dropt, and Sin and Hate 
 Wove their dark meshes round him, yet his life 
 Failed not but fiercely waged redoubled strife — 
 
 * # # # # 
 
 Like the cleft worm that dies not : (asking pardon 
 And trusting I may make my meaning clear 
 By the suggestion) fetch one from your garden, 
 Though it may turn, divide it without fear, 
 And by the morrow's sun each half will be 
 As neat a worm as you would wish to see." 
 
 It was Sunday evening. The chapel bell was 
 already ringing and we should be getting on our sur- 
 plices in another minute. 
 
 " Now," says Merton, ' for Shakespeare, 'Comedy of 
 Errors ' : 
 
 " ' Dromio of Ephesus. Marry, sir ! he could make neither 
 head nor tail of my reasonings, being, in respect of this, less 
 wise than the worms that shall one day feed on him.' "
 
 1 86 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 
 
 " One minute more," says Merton. " Dalston, I 
 know, reads Dante." Shakespeare went up, and down 
 came the Commedia. 
 
 Purs:atorio : 
 
 'fc. 1 
 
 " Or di Lettor, s' io non fu in forse miso, 
 Questo udendo, ed il parlare oscuro, 
 E siccom' al vermo ch' e per colpo diviso, 
 Io guardando pur all' alto muro, 
 D'un dubbio troncato due si fanno : 
 Ond' io, Maestro, il senso tuo m'e duro. 
 Ed egli a me. . . ." 
 
 In another moment we were scudding across the 
 great court like the flakes of cloud severed from the 
 main rack. " You couldn't find another anyhow," 
 whispered Dalston to Merton as we went in. 
 
 " Wait till to-morrow," said he. 
 
 Dalston was going fishing the next day. On opening 
 the tin box where he had put his bait, he found it all 
 abstracted save one bisected worm. 
 
 In the lid of the box a paper, neatly inserted, con- 
 tained these words In Merton's writing : 
 
 " Puir worm thou'rt coupit clean i' twain, 
 An' ilka writhin' end seems fain 
 Wi' mony a warstle to complain, 
 
 My mair than brither, 
 A head ane end maun male' again, 
 
 A tail the tither ! " 
 
 Burns. 
 
 Moreover Merton, who had gone down that morn- 
 ing, left at the porter's lodge an envelope addressed to
 
 A CAMBRIDGE REMINISCENCE 187 
 
 Dalston containing, to complete the series, the follow- 
 ing selection from Robert Browning : 
 
 " My friend, you trust too much. Listen to this : 
 
 That hand you vow has will and power to set 
 
 Starved Ugolino and his dying sons 
 
 In breezy banquet hall at royal feast, 
 
 The outstretched hand you think has strength to draw 
 
 Laocoon from the straining serpent-folds, 
 
 The hand, I say, you follow through the world 
 
 May startle you with sudden flick i' the face 
 
 (Blue bruise for blessing on your reverent brow), 
 
 Turn key again on Ugolino's boys 
 
 With their blind father in the hungry tower, 
 
 Enwreath that other group with added coils 
 
 Fresh sprouted from the lately-severed rings 
 
 Of growth persistent, — 'tis the way o' the worm. 
 
 Grub in your garden, man. The fact will speak." 
 
 M. T.
 
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