.
 
 LITERATURE AND ITS 
 
 PROFESSORS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS PURNELL 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 BELL & DALDY, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 
 AND 186, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1867.
 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 HE Author avails himself of this oppor- 
 tunity to express his obligation to Mr. C. 
 R. Newman, for many literary and intellectual 
 benefits received from him during several years. 
 
 It is right to add that a portion of what is here 
 presented to the reader has already appeared in 
 print.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 : 
 PINION" of themselves. Social Status. Prizes 
 
 open to them. Their decreasing Import- 
 ance. Reflected Greatness. Tradition to 
 be abandoned . 
 
 II. CRITICISM. 
 
 Its Imperfections. Its Discrepancies. Jealousy and Fa- 
 vouritism. Its slight Weight. Not a matter of 
 Taste. Its essential Characteristic. Its true Func- 
 tion. Its Aim. Extenuating Circumstances. Mi- 
 nute Fault-finding 14 
 
 III. THE PROVINCE or THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 The Foreign Correspondent. Club Gossip. Objections 
 to it. Its Advantages. Its Opponents. Its Scope 
 and Limits 
 
 34
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 IV. LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Functions of the Philosopher. The Philosopher v. the 
 Statesman. Mr. Mill as a Statesman. Mr. Mill's 
 Principles. Mr. Mill's Claims. Their Success. 
 Dangers to themselves 47 
 
 V. LITERARY HERO- WORSHIP. 
 
 What is a Great Man ? Variety of Opinions. The Two 
 Classes of Heroes. The Thinker and the Actor. 
 Esteem due to Great Men. Sincerity and Earnest- 
 ness. Popular Appetite for Heroes. Its detrimental 
 Effect 63 
 
 VI. ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 False Standards. Judging from Appearances. Illegiti- 
 mate Conclusions. Literary Verdicts. Precept and 
 Practice. Books not a true Criterion. Distinctions 
 to be observed . . . . . . . .81 
 
 VII. THE MEDIAEVAL MAN OF LETTERS. 
 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 The See of St. David's. Born in Pembrokeshire. His 
 Family. Educated for the Church. Effect of the 
 Murder of Becket. Appointed Legate for Wales. 
 Made Archdeacon of Brecknock. Elected Bishop of
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 FAGF. 
 
 St. David's. Retires in Disgust. His Influence at 
 Court. His Appearance at Eome. The Mediaeval 
 Man of Letters. Topographia Hibernian His Lite- 
 rary Ability. Giraldus and the Irish. Unfairly 
 criticised. Self Portraiture. His Opinion of him- 
 self. Wales in the Thirteenth Century. His true 
 Motives. Refuses several Bishoprics. His Influence 
 in State Affairs. His frank Nature. His love of 
 Order and of Law ....... 96 
 
 VIII. T MONTAIGNE. 
 
 Retires from Court. His Essays. Representative of the 
 Renaissance. His Coarseness. His Frankness. His 
 Literary Rank. His Religious Views. His Toler- 
 ance. His Scepticism 145 
 
 IX. THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A STATESMAN. 
 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 Civil and Religious Liberty. First Advocate for Reli- 
 gious Liberty. Goes to New England. Settles at 
 Salem. Suffers Persecution. Flies to the Indians. 
 Settles in Rhode Island. Obtains a Charter. Co- 
 lonial Differences. Chosen President of the Colony. 
 His Literary Productions. His Character. His 
 Tolerance. His Claim upon our Regard . . . 164
 
 x CONTENTS. 
 
 X. THE LITERARY MAN AS ESSAYIST. 
 STEELE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Duties of a Biographer. Unity necessary. His Episto- 
 lary Correspondence. Broken Resolves. Compared 
 with Addison. His Rank as a Man of Letters . .192 
 
 XI. STERNE. 
 
 His Character misrepresented. His Sincerity. His Sus- 
 ceptibility. Reception in London. Scandals. His 
 Relations with Women. His Wife and Daughter. 
 His Grossness. How derived. Uncle Toby. Con- 
 scious of his Genius. Source of his Power . . 205 
 
 XII. THE LITERARY MAN AS SATIRIST. 
 SWIFT. 
 
 His Power and Fame. His View of the Literary Calling. 
 His Pride. Was no Humourist. His Personal Cha- 
 racter. Magnanimity. In Society. His Relations 
 to Men of Rank. His Philosophy. Shakespeare and 
 Swift 231 
 
 XIII. THE LITERARY MAN AS PATRIOT. 
 MAZZINI. 
 
 Patriotism. What is our Country ? Tendency of Civili- 
 zation. Importance of the Literary Man. His Cha-
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 racier. English Notions concerning him. His Prin- 
 ciples and Aim. His Views impolitic . . . 253 
 
 XIV. DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 Home and Foreign Travel. The Picturesque. Kage for 
 Historical Relics. Origin of the Sentiment. Its 
 Effects. Its Influence on Art. Decay a Type of 
 Beauty. Modern Growth of View-hunting. Scenery 
 and Antiquities. Use and Abuse of the Pursuit . 271
 
 LITERATURE AND ITS 
 PROFESSORS. 
 
 i. 
 
 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 ITERATURE is a term which has, 
 like many others, been wrested from 
 its original meaning. At one time 
 it was supposed to have something 
 to do with learning ; but step by 
 step it has been degraded, till at length it has 
 become synonymous with writing ; and now every 
 person, who describes current events or reports 
 another's speech, or gives us his opinion about a book 
 or a picture or a poem, claims to be a man of let- 
 ters. Just as the taking a shilling from a person 
 in a red coat makes a soldier of Hodge, so, it seems, 
 does the printing of his opinions make a man free of 
 the republic of letters. From the moment when his 
 production appears in a book or periodical publica-
 
 2 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 tion he occupies a new position he has attained to 
 the dignity of an author. He allows his hair to grow 
 long, and thenceforth becomes a man of genius by 
 profession. As a consequence, the area of literature 
 has been so extended, and books have become so 
 numerous, that the most resolute reader finds himself 
 unable to make himself acquainted with a tithe of 
 what issues from the printing-press; works are 
 publicly advertised as guides and pioneers through 
 the chaos which has resulted from the overabun- 
 dance of the literary faculty ; and plans have at 
 various times been suggested by distracted students 
 for lessening the pernicious effects upon our litera- 
 ture of the shoals of books that are weekly added to 
 our stock. Amongst other proposals, I have seen 
 without surprise that, for the benefit of our per- 
 plexed descendants, there should be an annual as- 
 sessment, and that every copy of all worthless works 
 should be ruthlessly burnt. Some such scheme seems 
 warrantable ; is, at all events, worthy of considera- 
 tion, notwithstanding the obvious difficulties that 
 would be encountered were it seriously proposed. 
 
 Literary men notoriously entertain a very exalted 
 opinion of their calling. They profess to consider it 
 so important in its nature and results, as to entitle it 
 to a rank far in front of most others ; and they would 
 even lead us to infer from their writings, that a
 
 OPINION OF THEMSELVES. 3 
 
 sort of sacredness attaches to the very humblest of 
 its professors. Some of them, indeed, boldly main- 
 tain that the man of letters is, now-a-days, " your 
 true king of men ; " whilst there is none but imagines 
 himself to be a component part of that band of illu- 
 minati which is said to form, by some unexplained 
 and inexplicable arrangement, a fourth estate within 
 the realm, superior to, and regulating the rest. They 
 all seem to be persuaded, that by printing his notions 
 a man acquires a degree of importance to which he 
 would not be entitled had he abstained from sending 
 
 O 
 
 them to the press. 
 
 Ostensibly the man of letters does not, it is true, 
 demand so much consideration as the professor of 
 theology, who prefixes to his name a notice calling 
 upon us to do him reverence ; but he is sufficiently 
 forward in magnifying his office and functions. His 
 pretensions will be found to permeate our literature, 
 sometimes openly avowed, sometimes by sublime 
 innuendo. They were openly and with much indig- 
 nation expressed by more than one critic of a recent 
 volume of poems, wherein the editor had mentioned 
 that the poet had renounced letters for more import- 
 ant matters. The critics did not, of course, question 
 the accuracy of the statement made by the editor, 
 but their censures were directed against his implied 
 assertion, that any pursuit is to be considered of
 
 4 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 more importance than that in which they are them- 
 selves engaged. On the other hand, in their treat- 
 ment of Mr. Disraeli, to whom they bear the same 
 relation as the young divines of the time of Charles 
 the Second bore to Hobbes of Malmesbury, writers 
 exemplify these pretentious by innuendo. Ambition 
 to become a statesman is surely not reprehensible, 
 nor, as Mr. Disraeli's novels professedly deal with 
 political matters, is it strange to find in them a hero 
 whose aim is the acquirement of senatorial distinc- 
 tion. The author of " Coningsby " may think that 
 delivering a speech or performing an action is as 
 dignified a proceeding as criticising it ; but it is well 
 known, even to those who are only moderately familiar 
 with modern literature, that his critics are of con- 
 trary opinion. They characterize the aim he imputes 
 to his heroes as of a gross nature, and the reward he 
 makes them covet as far beneath the dignity of right- 
 thinking men. 
 
 This undue assumption of superiority and exalta- 
 tion of their own calling may constantly be detected 
 in numerous other forms throughout our literature. 
 A large proportion of our public writers assume a 
 boldness that is sometimes more than amusing. No 
 sense of decency restrains the arrogance of their 
 pretensions. With pen in hand, they seem to be 
 different men from what they are in ordinary times.
 
 SOCIAL STATUS. 5 
 
 There is then nothing too great for their attempt. 
 With politics they are more conversant than pro- 
 fessed politicians ; if they write on morals, they 
 pronounce judgment as if they had been favoured 
 with a special revelation from heaven for the occa- 
 sion ; on social manners, les petites morales, they 
 dogmatise with a confidence they would not venture 
 to exhibit in the presence of their friends ; and, even 
 in novels, they irrelevantly discuss legislation, law, 
 divinity, military and naval matters, and every other 
 subject under the sun, with the airs of a referee, and 
 in a manner which plainly indicates their conviction 
 that the faculty they possess of being able to put their 
 observations into print is identical with that of being 
 able to form correct judgment on men and things. 
 
 Whilst, however, literary men thus magnify their 
 office, they lament that, even from those who ac- 
 knowledge the high rank claimed for the printing of 
 opinions, they, the individual representatives of the 
 practice, fail to receive the personal consideration 
 to which they believe themselves entitled. Their 
 complaint is, doubtless, in some degree true ; but the 
 reason, I venture to remark, is not that usually 
 given and generally accepted. 
 
 Thackeray was fond of attributing the personal 
 disesteem, in which men of letters are sometimes 
 held, to a tradition that dates from the time of Swift
 
 6 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and Pope. " It was Pope, I fear," he says, " who 
 contributed more than any man who ever lived to 
 depreciate the literary calling. It was not an un- 
 prosperous one before that time, as we have seen ; at 
 least there were great prizes in the profession which 
 had made Addison a minister, and Prior an ambas- 
 sador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swift all but a 
 bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that 
 libel of the Dunciad. The condition of authorship 
 began to fall from the days of the Dunciad ; and I 
 believe in my heart that much of that obloquy which 
 has since pursued our calling was occasioned by 
 Pope's libels and wicked wit." In the interval that 
 divided Pope from Johnson men of letters undoubt- 
 edly laboured under a cloud, and found it impossible to 
 emerge into that pleasant official sunshine which had 
 warmed the hearts of their immediate predecessors ; 
 but even then the supply equalled the demand, and 
 if nothing we are proud of, except what came from 
 the men who owed their culture to the era of Queen 
 Anne, can be referred to this gloomy period in our 
 literary annals, we must attribute the result to other 
 causes than the publication of a clever satire. Men 
 hitherto had relied on patrons for the countenance 
 which led to ultimate reward. But already in France, 
 as well as in England, private encouragement had 
 become only occasional; a new system was about to
 
 PRIZES OPEN TO THEM. 7 
 
 arise; and patrons that paid for dedications, either 
 in money or places had become scarce. " Men of 
 " quality have mended that fault," says Asmodeus, 
 " and thereby done acceptable service to the pub- 
 e< lie, which before was continually pestered with 
 " wretched performances; the greatest part of the 
 " books being formerly written for the lucre of their 
 " dedications." In England, moreover, there was 
 special cause for the departure at this juncture 
 from the established usage of long generations. 
 Neither George the First nor George the Second 
 could speak English, and as few Englishmen spoke 
 German, the language of the court became, of ne- r 
 cessity, a kind of bastard Latin. The sovereign /^_ 
 despised the literature of which he was himself igno- 
 rant, and the court was too polite not to follow the 
 example of the sovereign. If, then, literary men had 
 not learned to wean themselves from the system that 
 had prevailed, with good results, from the time of 
 Aristotle to their own day and there was then little 
 hope of successful endeavour by other means how 
 could it be expected that literature could thrive ? 
 
 The presumption that the great prizes are no 
 longer within the reach of the class amidst which 
 they fell in the days of Anne, is as groundless as 
 the notion that the profession of letters was ruined 
 by Pope and his Dunciad. A literary man's chance
 
 8 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 of success is as great now as it ever was. It is true 
 he does not, nor should he, obtain political and eccle- 
 siastical preferment solely by virtue of the literary 
 ability he may have evinced ; but if he possesses the 
 qualifications which in this country are expected of 
 aspirants to posts of dignity and high emolument, 
 his literary merit will undoubtedly aid him in the 
 accomplishment of his desires. The truth is, literary 
 men have lost no opportunity they ever possessed of 
 advancing themselves ; but, on the contrary, have 
 attained to positions they had not hitherto occupied. 
 Against Addison, who became Secretary of State, may 
 be placed Mr. Disraeli, who has become leader of the 
 House of Commons ; and if Swift became " all but 
 a bishop," by reason of his literary abilities, we have, 
 at the present moment, two archbishops who would, 
 I think, have had less chance of the great prefer- 
 ment they enjoy had they not displayed eminent 
 literary ability. From an organized literary guild 
 or the establishment of an academy, were the idea 
 practicable, I can anticipate little benefit either for 
 literature or its professors. Its decrees would be 
 inoperative, however unanimously concocted. "What 
 would be the effect, then, of the legislative measures 
 of a board, composed of literary homoeopaths, allo- 
 paths, apprentices, vendors of patent medicines, one 
 is quite unable to predict. Every man's literary
 
 THEIR DECREASING IMPORTANCE. 9 
 
 power is proportioned to his desert, and so is his 
 personal weight. If he is endowed with those per- 
 sonal qualities which fit for social intercourse, what 
 is to prevent him exercising them and gaining the 
 influence he covets ? But, from a delusion, incom- 
 prehensible by others, that something is owing from 
 society to their vocation as a vocation, the most 
 meagrely equipped professors are disappointed at not 
 receiving the consideration that is due only to those 
 of their brethren, who, to the highest literary culture, 
 have united successful literary performance. They 
 consequently blame the public for their own non- 
 success, or sit down to revile Mr. Tupper, partly 
 because they have never read his productions, but 
 chiefly because his books have gone through a pro- 
 vokingly large number of editions. 
 
 There is, however, a specific reason, not usually 
 considered, for the continually decreasing importance 
 of literary men. Those who write books are so nume- 
 rous that they are no longer prodigies in the eyes of 
 their neighbours. What all can do none reverences. 
 Even the poet is fast losing the prestige that once 
 attached to his office; and there are signs that the 
 time is not far distant when he will be regarded in a 
 light not different from that in which any other of 
 the world's workers are regarded. The aim and 
 object of art being to give pleasure, the artist,
 
 10 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 whether he expresses himself in words, or on canvas, 
 or in marble, must learn to renounce the high pre- 
 tensions he successfully advanced when he really 
 discharged the functions of a teacher. The sooner 
 he sees the necessity for this, the better will it be 
 for us and for him. If a man has anything to say, 
 let him say it in the clearest and most direct way he 
 is able. The manner is unimportant. A well-dressed 
 man must not be confounded with a good man. 
 What is said will more and more become of greater 
 importance than how it is said ; and the advance 
 made in civilization by our generation will hereafter 
 be judged by the value we attach to the form of a 
 speaker and writer. Metrical composition is no longer 
 required to enable us to preserve what is worthy 
 of preservation, any more than plays are necessary 
 to teach us history, or pictures to give us a narrative 
 of the chief events in the Scriptures. People have 
 already ceased to consider a writer synonymous with 
 a wise man ; and although they still express surprise 
 that Sir Thomas Browne or Sir Matthew Hale, and 
 other of our elder writers, were unable to see impro- 
 priety in customs common to their day, and thus im- 
 plicitly avow their disappointment that those worthies 
 were not better than the time in which they lived, 
 similar illogicality is seldom exhibited with respect 
 to men of our own era. Nobody now expects Mr.
 
 REFLECTED GREATNESS. 11 
 
 Dickens to be in advance of his age because he is 
 the most popular author of the time. But nume- 
 rous writers still delude themselves with the belief 
 that they are intellectually superior to those who ab- 
 stain from writing, and demand recognition accord- 
 ingly. Men who write elaborate essays " concerning " 
 nothing, or, in tortuous phraseology meant for style, 
 spin out nothing " concerning " everything, cannot 
 reasonably, however, expect the reward due only to 
 great achievements in literature, simply because they 
 belong to the same profession as those who have 
 accomplished them, any more than a small retail 
 tobacconist in Whitechapel can expect the social 
 importance of a wholesale dealer in the city. And 
 yet they do. 
 
 When the elder Dumas, appearing as a witness 
 before a court of justice, was asked his profession, he 
 is reported to have said, in a tone of modesty that 
 did not conceal his magnificent self-conceit, " Mon- 
 sieur, je dirais auteur dramatique, si je n'etais dans 
 la patrie de Corneille." Whereupon the President, 
 with true French irony, replied, " Mais, Monsieur, 
 il y a des degres," a reply that is, unfortunately, as 
 applicable to not a few English men of letters as to 
 the gorgeous Frenchman. 
 
 I never heard of a poor money-lender flattering 
 himself he was a millionaire because he was of
 
 12 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 the same profession as the Rothschilds ; and yet the 
 humblest private in the ranks of literature believes 
 that, by a kind of reflected greatness, he participates 
 in the glory that has been achieved by his illustrious 
 predecessors and contemporaries. He insists upon 
 claiming flattering recognition for merits not his own, 
 and expects applause solely because he belongs to the 
 army in which others have victoriously fought just 
 as I have seen in the streets the master of an im- 
 mense mastiff taking to himself the attention and 
 admiration meant by passengers for the powerful 
 brute he was leading by a string. 
 
 The pretence that the literary calling is more 
 sacred than others, or should be regulated by dif- 
 ferent maxims from those by which men of any other 
 profession are guided, is a tradition derived from 
 past ages, and, as might be supposed, originated with 
 literary men themselves. At one time, however, it 
 had foundation on fact. The priesthood were the 
 sole literary men. Its members united in their per- 
 sons the writing and the sacred functions. They 
 alone were clerks. It was not, therefore, unreason- 
 able they should require and receive the respect due 
 from ignorance to obvious and transcendent supe- 
 riority. But nobody will seriously maintain that a 
 similar reason exists in our time for its continuance, 
 since, to speak with designed discretion, the clergy
 
 TRADITION TO BE ABANDONED. 
 
 13 
 
 are certainly not more intelligent than the laity, nor 
 are those who print their opinions better informed 
 than those who do not. It would be for the interests 
 of literature and of literary men themselves that the 
 pretence should now be abandoned.
 
 II. 
 CRITICISM. 
 
 HE number of literary men having in- 
 creased to such a degree as to include 
 almost everybody with literary tastes, 
 it is manifest that all who are addicted 
 to being clever could not advantageously employ 
 themselves in original composition ; their genius, 
 therefore, with convenience to themselves, and it is 
 thought with advantage to the public, has taken a 
 critical direction. Their activity chiefly displays it- 
 self in criticism ; the age, in literature, as in other 
 matters, is nothing if not critical. Seeing the com- 
 petition that within these circumstances must neces- 
 sarily exist, it is not unreasonable to expect the art 
 to have reached the degree of perfection of which it 
 is susceptible. But it is notorious that it has made 
 only a slight advance in that desirable direction. 
 Although more than two hundred years have now 
 elapsed since what may be called the invention of
 
 ITS IMPERFECTIONS. 15 
 
 periodical criticism by Denis de Salo and his foot- 
 man, little progress seems to have been effected in 
 it, as far as England is concerned. In Germany 
 and, only in a less degree, in France it has under- 
 gone great improvements ; but, as all who pay atten- 
 tion to its development among ourselves cannot fail 
 to notice, its condition in this country is most de- 
 plorable. This misfortune is, no doubt, partly owing 
 to the exigencies of daily or weekly publication. 
 The press, like time and tide, waits for no man ; 
 and it will not be denied that the views of a man 
 who writes with the printer at his door must neces- 
 sarily be hastily and prematurely expressed. But 
 it is chiefly due to the false notion entertained by 
 critics of the aim and objects of the art they profess, 
 and to the fact that they form their judgments from 
 a local and temporal point of view instead of from a 
 universal and permanent. Criticism, regulated by 
 fashion, must be inoperative, just as the creative lite- 
 rature of every age, disfigured by such a blemish, 
 has become inoperative. 
 
 Practising critics, when they do not philosophise 
 from their own idiosyncracies, become advocates of 
 a cause. They found their opinions on what is inci- 
 dent, and not permanent. They are without an 
 intelligible and trustworthy standard whereby to 
 test the merit of works that come before them ; but
 
 16 CRITICISM. 
 
 grope their way to the misbegotten verdicts with which 
 we are undeservedly distracted. And so it happens 
 that the history of our literature abounds in well- 
 remembered examples of their ridiculous blunders. 
 So near-sighted, indeed, have been the majority of 
 them, that one age has seldom ratified the verdicts 
 delivered by its predecessor; and, in innumerable 
 instances, reversals of judgment have taken place 
 during the lifetime of the critics by whom they 
 were pronounced. It is well known that according 
 to the Scottish reviewers and their friends, who, at 
 the beginning of our century, stormed the strong- 
 holds of literary criticism, and infused into the pro- 
 fession an amount of confident assertion that has 
 since appeared astounding Wordsworth was a dolt, 
 Southey a common-place rhymester, Coleridge a 
 madman, and Byron a writer whose productions were 
 unhealthy rubbish or worse. Opposed to these not 
 over-cautious arbiters of literature were other arbi- 
 ters equally certain on the other side. Such sorry 
 discordance is, unfortunately, still occurring, and 
 will continue to occur so long as criticism is founded 
 on principles dependent on fashion. 
 
 Of the flourishing condition of musical, dramatic, 
 and fine arts' criticism I shall not now venture to 
 pronounce. From presumably competent persons I 
 hear, on all hands, loud and deep complaints of its
 
 ITS DISCREPANCIES. 17 
 
 shortcomings and overgoings. What most con- 
 cerns us at present, however, is this that, here in 
 England, there is I may venture to say so without 
 claiming for myself exclusive information little 
 real literary criticism. We get opinions instead ; and 
 week by week there is opportunity of being amused 
 at the wide diversity between them. Except in rare 
 instances, when an author appears of such transcendent 
 merit that not the worst critic in England can gain- 
 say his genius, two verdicts on a book are seldom alike. 
 One writer informs his reader that the work under 
 his review is the most powerful he has ever read ; 
 another, that he has examined it with great care, and 
 cannot find a line he could conscientiously praise. 
 
 It is very commonly, and, to judge from these dis- 
 crepancies, not unreasonably believed that friendly 
 bias or personal malice influences the tone of the 
 critic, and prompts him to praise or disparage the 
 work he is reviewing. When party feeling rose high, 
 this probably was the case; but I conclude, from 
 accurate attention to facts, that the belief is now 
 rarely well gi'ounded. Critics do not at the present 
 day, as they did at the commencement of the cen- 
 tury, attack a writer they have never seen simply 
 because he belongs to a coterie with which they are at 
 enmity, or from which they have themselves been 
 excluded. Personality has fortunately ceased to be an 
 
 C
 
 18 CRITICISM. 
 
 observable feature in our literature. The time when 
 the personal peculiarities, or moral qualities, or 
 obscure birth of an author influenced the judgment 
 formed of his works has happily gone by never, let 
 it be hoped, to re-appear. One may still detect occa- 
 sional revival of the custom ; but the improved taste 
 of the public mind preserves us from the risk of being 
 subjected to that truculent, openly-avowed sort of dis- 
 dainful personality which in the last generation cha- 
 racterized the writings of our predecessors. It now 
 displays itself only at long intervals, and in a very 
 modified form ; it is latent ; keen ; usually directed 
 against a rival and friend; and is meant less for 
 readers than for the edification of him at whom it is 
 aimed. With the prevailing belief that criticism 
 owes its present deplorable state to the frequency 
 with which critics suffer their judgment to be 
 swayed by personal feeling I am not inclined to 
 agree. Prudential reasons, if nothing higher, act as 
 a too influential check upon the display of jealousy 
 or favouritism. In rare instances, bias with regard 
 to the writer reviewed undoubtedly regulates the 
 proportion of praise and blame awarded to his book 
 the editor or critic being content to sacrifice the 
 legitimate influence of his paper for the sake of gra- 
 tifying his predilections, just as there are theatrical 
 managers who are ready to withdraw a successful
 
 JEALOUSY AND FAVOURITISM. 19 
 
 piece from the bills because, being actors as well as 
 managers, their role is not sufficiently prominent to 
 gratify their inordinate self-love. A journal regu- 
 lated by feeling would not, however, exist for six 
 months; and this is so well known to press mana- 
 gers that such literary wrong-headedness as would 
 make the attempt is daily becoming less frequently 
 exhibited. Indeed, were I to judge solely from my 
 own literary experience, I should say it has entirely 
 ceased. I have more than once reviewed books by 
 men whom I have known to be in feud with the 
 editor of the journal in which my criticism would 
 appear ; but no hint has, even implicitly, ever been 
 given me as to the treatment it was desired the 
 works should receive. On the contrary, I am happy, 
 for the honour of English critics, in being able to 
 recal numerous instances of a quite contrary ten- 
 dency. Authors not unnaturally are apt to suppose 
 every notice of their works that is not laudatory is 
 designedly disparaging, and the public side with 
 them in abusing the two or three journals which 
 persistently and consistently refuse to be of so 
 angelic a nature as to be able to detect merit in the 
 books that week after week are offered for their 
 imprimatur; but in the present state of literature 
 amongst us there is unfortunately little opportunity 
 for the manifestation of undue severity. Excessive
 
 20 CRITICISM. 
 
 leniency, rather, is the vice with which periodical 
 criticism can with more justice be charged. In ad- 
 dition to the tendency inhering in some minds, to deal 
 tenderly with one who, in demanding their judgment 
 upon himself makes them his patrons and benefactors, 
 there is the incidental probability that the critic of a 
 work is personally known to the author, or that he 
 has succumbed to the importunities he was sub- 
 jected to by the author's friends. The experienced 
 eye at once detects the criticism that results as, 
 indeed, it was meant to be detected. The praise is 
 abundant, but provokingly vague ; the censure is 
 deferentially advanced ; the whole criticism is so in- 
 determinate that it might be applied to almost any 
 book in the language. Potentialities and not per- 
 formance is the theme. We read of the author 
 having evinced " decided indications of possessing 
 marvellous power;" of much to be found in the work 
 that cannot fail to exert " direct influence on the 
 age;" of the critic not being surprised to hear 
 " great things of Mr. Author hereafter ;" and of the 
 great delight he has for the present in " cordially 
 recommending the work to his readers ;" how it is 
 "the book of the season." Even here, however, in 
 his dishonesty, the critic is too honest to point out 
 defects as beauties, or indicate specific but imaginary 
 merits. He contents himself with overlooking short-
 
 ITS SLIGHT WEIGHT. 21 
 
 comings and expressing a hope that the author's 
 future works will be better than that he is reviewing, 
 and will not disappoint the expectations he has 
 formed from this. 
 
 If, then, we may in great measure credit critics 
 with the first requisite of criticism, the avoidance of 
 partialities, and acquit them of the discredit of ex- 
 hibiting malice and undue commendation in their 
 judgments how are we to account for the low con- 
 dition of their art in England ? How is it that the 
 weight exercised by critical opinion is so slight that 
 it is unappreciable ? Readers, finding it impossible to 
 consult every book, in order to ascertain the commo- 
 dity they want, are obliged to resort to the critical 
 reviews for assistance, and the assistance is in such 
 matter equivalent to directions. What we call cri- 
 ticism has, I am aware, enormous power. It can 
 sell off an edition of a book ; by reiterating praise (or 
 blame) it can send a book through several editions ; 
 it can spoil the sale of a book it ignores. Critics, 
 however, confound the power they possess of selling 
 a book with the ability to determine its merits. They 
 deceive themselves but not their readers; each of 
 whom, while conscious that the opinion of his guide 
 does not influence himself in forming his verdict, 
 still believes that it influences others, and thus 
 favours the delusion that power is weight. Authors,
 
 22 CRITICISM. 
 
 smarting under the effects of a severe or inadequate 
 review, accuse their critics with being self-appointed 
 instructors. For the reproach that underlies the 
 accusation there is not the least ground. By pur- 
 chasing his journal the public, or that section of it 
 which forms his constituency, sanctions, as far as it 
 can sanction, the reviewer's assumption of judicial 
 functions ; and the author, by personally sending his 
 work, or by directing his accredited agent, the pub- 
 lisher, to act for him, implicitly enters into an agree- 
 ment that an opinion should be pronounced; tacit 
 and implied only but still morally as binding as 
 would be a more formal agreement to submit it to 
 arbitration. When the decision of the referee is 
 adverse, there is, within these circumstances, no valid 
 cause for complaint. On the other hand, by abstain- 
 ing from sending a copy of his work the author 
 makes indirect declaration that he declines to submit 
 to the customary ordeal. In this case I do not see 
 that the critic has the right of interference. Duty to 
 his customers, if he has only that plea, will not ex- 
 cuse the obtrusion of his opinion where it is not 
 asked. The question is, however, of little moment. 
 The number of deserving books that appear and of 
 these almost all of late years have been by non-pro- 
 fessional authors, who have made special study of 
 certain branches and confined their attention thereto
 
 NOT A MATTER OF TASTE. 23 
 
 is so few that there is seldom need to look beyond the 
 works themselves in order to discover a motive for 
 the unfavourable verdicts complained of. Let a re- 
 viewer be severe, and the chances that he is right 
 will be in proportion to the severity of his criticism. 
 Journalism that resolutely confined itself to the con- 
 sideration of deserving productions would flourish 
 not like a tree planted by the rivers of waters. 
 
 The deplorable diversity of opinion of which I 
 have complained is, I think, less the result of wilful 
 perversity than of misconception on the part of critics 
 as to their true function, and of ignorance as to 
 their true method. They regard criticism as only an 
 art, and refuse to recognize it as a science. It never- 
 theless has its methods and its laws; and all judg- 
 ments founded on true principles principles which 
 have been successfully enunciated by more than one 
 German writer would necessarily be symphonious. 
 English writers, however, will not see this. They think 
 criticism to be a matter of taste, and not a matter of 
 knowledge ; and, if they conceive themselves to be 
 men of taste, give their opinions fearlessly, having 
 no misgivings that they are right. If a book is bad, 
 they feel it is bad ; but are utterly unable to tell us 
 wherein it is defective. Their procedure is as varied 
 as are their verdicts. Some deal out half praise and 
 half blame, and think they deserve commendation for
 
 24 CRITICISM. 
 
 their judicial fairness. Others, of whom Lord Ma- 
 caulay was a conspicuous example, are little more 
 than elegant precis-writers. They give themselves 
 the airs of men who can say on a dozen pages what 
 the poor author could not say on a hundred, and do 
 not review the book before them at all, but re-de- 
 scribe the subject-matter. The majority, however, are 
 not so magnanimous. They regard themselves as the 
 police of the republic of letters, and, like the police, 
 seem to feel personal interest in a conviction. They 
 accordingly devote themselves to the detection of 
 blemishes; employ their ingenuity on the rectifica- 
 tion of a date, or the orthography of a name, or the 
 discovery of plagiarism; or proceed to elucidate some 
 minor detail with which they happen to be ac- 
 quainted, but of which they imagine their author to 
 be ignorant, because he has not said all that could be 
 said on the point. 
 
 From what has been advanced no one will fail to 
 see that English criticism reposes on a false esti- 
 mate of its office and scope, and that its professors 
 evade their legitimate functions. We do not require 
 from them more than is necessary. With the cur- 
 rent notion, which demands from the reviewer of a 
 book a knowledge co-extensive with the author, I 
 do not agree. It would be equally unreasonable to 
 require a judge at Nisi Prius to be acquainted with
 
 ITS ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC. 25 
 
 the innumerable subjects upon which he adjudicates. 
 It is, of course, well for him to have a decent ac- 
 quaintance with the subject-matter, and what had 
 previously been written thereon ; but the essential 
 characteristic of his profession is judicial, and it is 
 no part of his duty to give the subject-matter from 
 his own point of view. This would be dissertation, 
 and not criticism. 
 
 It is obviously impossible, in most instances, for 
 the reviewer to be as well acquainted with the sub- 
 ject-matter of the book as the author who has made 
 it a special study, and devoted years, perhaps, to its 
 production ; but the complete knowledge possessed 
 by the original writer is not required to enable him 
 to ascertain whether what was undertaken by the 
 author has been satisfactorily accomplished, any more 
 than it is necessary for me to serve apprenticeship to 
 a cabinet-maker, in order to discover whether the 
 chair I occupy answers the end designed in being a 
 comfortable seat. What we need in a critic, in 
 addition to the power of writing intelligibly, is a 
 judicial mind trained for the particular purpose of his 
 profession. It would, in my opinion, be disastrous 
 to the best interests of literature to insist, as is fre- 
 quently done, upon the reviewer having a more com- 
 plete acquaintance with the subject than the writer 
 he is reviewing. Even the belief that the critic is
 
 26 CRITICISM. 
 
 expected to possess this extraordinary knowledge is 
 injurious, inasmuch as it tempts him to assume a 
 virtue if he has it not. Artists are even more per- 
 emptory than authors in their demands for " experts" 
 as critics, and are loud in their denunciations of what 
 they indignantly term "presumptuous patrons" and 
 "committees of taste." Men who have themselves 
 failed as practical artists they disparage, without con- 
 sidering that, as in Goethe's case, some acquaintance 
 with the technicalities of art-practice does not weaken 
 a man's insight, or impair his critical faculty. If 
 Phidias had been under the necessity of propitiating 
 a jury of expert Phidiases, and Michael Angelo of 
 submitting his designs to Raphael, or his other com- 
 petitors and rivals, instead of to their several unpro- 
 fessional patrons and critics, the result would pro- 
 bably be less satisfactory to artists and ourselves 
 than it is. Dramatic criticism, seldom performed by 
 ignorant patrons, is, we know, almost entirely confined 
 to the experts; and instances have occurred when men, 
 by the necessity of the system, have been obliged to 
 criticise their own plays. I see no valid reason why 
 the plan should be adopted in literature. Reviews of 
 works of fiction, of poems, of the various branches of 
 science, performed by men specially interested in the 
 several departments, have usually been failures ; the 
 writers having either treated the subject anew from
 
 ITS TRUE FUNCTION. 27 
 
 their own point of view ; or praised and condemned 
 on ground utterly unintelligible by the reader, in 
 whose service and for whose benefit they professed 
 to work. If we could combine the expert with the 
 critic if, that is, we could unite special faculties 
 with perfect knowledge it would be a desirable con- 
 summation. Until that is attainable, we must either 
 abolish criticism, or cease to blame the reviewer be- 
 cause his knowledge is inferior to the man on whom 
 he is in judgment. Literary questions are not the 
 only questions that must be relegated to the laity 
 for final decision. 
 
 Criticism, as I conceive it, has to do solely with 
 the disposal of the materials, and but incidentally 
 with the quality of the materials themselves. In 
 fine, it should concern itself with the method of an 
 author, and not with the elucidation of the subject. 
 
 The critic should be guided in his decision by cer- 
 tain fixed and intelligible principles. Above all, he 
 should know no more of the author than is revealed 
 to him by the work under his review. Women who 
 write are so well aware of the disadvantage to which 
 a revelation of their sex would expose them, that 
 they not unnaturally resort to innumerable expe- 
 dients for the purpose of keeping themselves un- 
 known. Most readers will remember with pain the 
 earnest entreaty made to a famous critic by poor
 
 28 CRITICISM. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte, that he would discuss her book 
 without reference to her sex, and the indignation she 
 exhibited upon finding that her entreaty had been 
 disregarded. A critic, who has unofficially become 
 acquainted with the personality of an anonymous 
 author, has several temptations to use his knowledge. 
 In the first place, he is enabled to make discoveries 
 which exhibit his penetration, and thus secure jour- 
 nalistic as well as personal advantage. He is enabled 
 to show such skill in the selection of illustrative pas- 
 sages to support his views as to the sex or condition 
 of the author, that he imposes upon the reader, and 
 appears " to possess very unusual insight." His un- 
 official knowledge will almost invariably be found to 
 colour his verdict. He becomes what may be called a 
 shirt-collar critic ; deducing his conclusions, not from 
 the evidence before him, but from his personal 
 knowledge of the author. If the latter moves in a 
 humble sphere, some passage will be discovered that 
 proves his ignorance of the usages of society ; if he 
 belongs to the upper classes, something will be found 
 to indicate that he is unacquainted with the habits 
 and feelings of some of the characters he has endea- 
 voured to represent. The discussion of anything 
 further than what is derivable from the book is, I 
 humbly submit, for here I know I have against me 
 general opinion a gross transgression of the ethics
 
 ITS AIM. 29 
 
 of criticism. Such discussion may interest the 
 reader; it may gratify the author himself that his 
 progress should be traced from the first public exhi- 
 bition of his genius to his triumphant conquest of all 
 difficulties, and his assumption of general approbation; 
 but this, like many other interesting experiments, 
 is not within the limits of criticism, and should be 
 eschewed by the reviewer whose duty lies in scru- 
 pulously confining himself to a consideration of the 
 particular work he is reviewing. I do not think it 
 will be denied in theory that every book should be 
 judged absolutely and not relatively either with 
 respect to the author's position at some former 
 period, or to the circumstances of its production. By 
 dramatic critics the opposite practice is pursued. 
 One of the most eminent of them has avowed to me 
 (and his statement is confirmed by the practice of 
 the whole body) that he always regards a performance 
 from (t the point of view of the House " where the 
 actor appears. If,for instance, Cholmondeley Lascelles, 
 (ne Smith), who is a very mediocre actor, played 
 with applause at a small uncritical east-end theatre, 
 where even he is a " star," the critic would pro- 
 nounce favourably on the successful performance. 
 If, on the other hand, Cholmondeley performed the 
 same character at Drury Lane, he would esteem it 
 hia duty to denounce the attempt as an impertinence.
 
 30 CRITICISM. 
 
 The pursuance of this " point of view'' sadly affects 
 the importance and power of dramatic criticism ; 
 and is equivalent to a reviewer criticising a book, 
 not on its absolute merits, but from " a publishing- 
 firm point of view." A work of trifling merit, pub- 
 lished by an unknown tradesman were the same 
 principles applied to literary as to theatrical criti- 
 cism would be tenderly treated, whilst the same, 
 issued from one of our great publishing houses, 
 would be abused as unworthy of the literary fame of 
 the establishment. Such a practice does, however, 
 prevail; not alone with respect to the selection of 
 books for review, but in some degree with respect 
 to the mode of their treatment. But it takes a dif- 
 ferent direction. A work coming from an eminent 
 firm is sure to receive greater consideration than if it 
 had been the venture of an ignoble bibliopolist. By 
 such practice the very first principle of criticism 
 is completely violated. Everything foreign and ir- 
 relevant should be kept external. There must be 
 no extenuation of shortcomings. Let it not be urged, 
 in favour of a work and in mitigation of its faults, 
 that the writer was environed with disheartening 
 difficulties during its composition, or that, being a 
 peasant, his meagre and defective education precluded 
 him from participating in the advantages usually 
 possessed by authors. The self-taught man, debarred
 
 EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 31 
 
 in his youth from the attendant privileges of a royal 
 road to learning, is notoriously disposed to over-value 
 his hard-earned acquirements, and to disparage the 
 easily-won achievements of those for whom a clearer 
 path had been made. But the judicious critic is 
 wholly free from such bias. Were he called on to 
 judge a man's enterprise, and estimate the extent 
 and power of his resolution, it would be fit for him 
 to take into consideration extenuating circumstances ; 
 but his office being to judge of results per se, it 
 would be unfair to those who have not had disadvan- 
 tages to surmount, if he were to judge a production 
 by the difficulties of the producer. The productions 
 of a man must not be over-rated because he is a 
 prodigy. Literature has no concern with prodigies. 
 We do not think the Iliad the first of epics because 
 we say Homer was blind, or the Divine Comedy 
 great because its author was an unfortunate exile. 
 Posterity has short recollection, and declines load- 
 ing its memory with the names of horses that would 
 have won the race had they not been over- weighted. 
 It can remember only winners. If the work of A, 
 the prodigy, is not intrinsically of superior excellence 
 to that of B, who has had no difficulty to contend 
 against, in any estimate we are called on to form of 
 him, he should not be credited with the result he has 
 accomplished, plus the difficulty he has triumphantly
 
 32 CRITICISM. 
 
 encountered. So prevalent is this method, especially 
 in the treatment of poetry, that temporary success 
 has been secured for works that deserved utter and 
 instantaneous oblivion, solely because their authors 
 were considered prodigies. Armless street artists 
 procure halfpence for chalk drawings executed with 
 their feet on the pavement. It is the devious skill 
 of the draughtsman, however, and not the beauty of 
 his production that attracts patrons. 
 
 But to leave general for specific sins of current 
 criticism, I notice as a cardinal defect the ten- 
 dency habitually manifested by reviewers to con- 
 sider the minute details of a work to the exclusion 
 of its general whole. I do not decry the obvious 
 advantages to be derived from able detection and 
 representation of latent beauties, and from the dis- 
 covery and due appreciation of new gifts of expres- 
 sion in an author ; or of a faculty showing itself in 
 an unusual and unexpected form. But I beg to insist 
 that a part is not the whole. The detection of the 
 beauties and defects of passages is not a review of a 
 work. Upon the critic is imposed a higher duty. 
 Gross errors in detail notoriously heighten the 
 effect of some of the most famous sculptures that 
 remain to us ; and so in literature, the impression in- 
 tended to be produced by the author is frequently 
 and designedly intensified by similar means.
 
 MINUTE FAULT-FINDING. 33 
 
 The best books in every language abound in the 
 gravest faults. Were a critic, then, to fasten on 
 transparent defects, and conclude that the book is 
 poor, or to deduce, from beauties he has discovered, 
 that it is deserving of praise, he has his business yet to 
 learn. It is true there may be defects of detail which, 
 by destroying congruity, ruin art. Had the Venus 
 de Medici the lips of a negress, it would cease 
 to give pleasure; and the substitution in some of 
 Shakespeare's plays of blemishes less glaring than 
 those by which they are distinguished, would have 
 the effect of destroying the efficaciousness of what is 
 now congruous. In criticism regard must be had 
 to the combination attempted by the author, and his 
 success or failure must be explained. Beauties and 
 blemishes should be massed, for it is the sum of the 
 impression produced by a writer that is the criterion 
 of his powers. I do not say the general effect should 
 blind the critic to the existence of partial defects 
 and beauties ; I merely remind him that he should 
 consider them partial defects and beauties, and nothing 
 more. He must not judge of a work as a cheese- 
 man tests his cheese by tasting it.
 
 III. 
 
 THE PROVINCE OF THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 HE practice of writing anonymously in 
 newspapers and literary journals is so 
 generally followed in England, that, to 
 omit reference to it in any work, how- 
 ever humble, that has literature for its subject-matter, 
 would be inexcusable. There is little need, however, 
 to say much, since the scope and limits of anonymous 
 writing have often been discussed, and more than 
 once, I believe, been accurately defined. They may 
 be briefly stated thus. In matters of fact the name of 
 the writer is essential; in matters of opinion in 
 questions, that is, that are to be decided by argu- 
 ment the writer may give his name or withhold 
 it, as seems fit to himself. For instance, if the 
 Teheran correspondent of the Illuminator tells us 
 that the King of Persia has been intriguing with
 
 THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. 35 
 
 Russia, or has killed his favourite wife, or has set fire 
 to his palace, or charges him with any other scanda- 
 lous proceeding, we have right to demand the name 
 of the writer. We have right to say to him, " Off 
 " with your mask, Mr. Correspondent, let us see 
 " who you are ; let us know what are your means 
 " of information ; give us the opportunity to ascer- 
 " tain if you are trustworthy, and have no sinister 
 " motive for your communication. It is not suffi- 
 " cient for the conductor of the Illuminator to know 
 " this. Everybody to whom you address yourself 
 " that is to say, all your readers have right to be 
 " equally well informed." The publication of the 
 name would bring us double advantage. It would 
 tend to repress the exuberant egotism of the corres- 
 pondent, and have the effect of curtailing the redun- 
 dancies of his communications. Were we, literally, 
 to believe him, the foreign correspondent of a 
 newspaper should be at once the happiest and most 
 miserable man in existence. He is intimately ac- 
 quainted with the secrets of foreign governments ; 
 nothing of importance " transpires " without his cog- 
 nizance ; indeed, the representative of majesty itself 
 has fewer opportunities of learning the origination 
 and progress of events, and not half the ability to 
 use the information when it is acquired. In the 
 social life of the capital to which he is accredited, he
 
 36 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 is facile princeps. He is killed with incessant kind- 
 nesses and attentions of the fashionable world; he 
 has to ruin his health by agreeable excesses in which 
 he is encouraged by the most agreeable companions ; 
 and, to crown all, he is enabled to enjoy the supreme 
 felicity of giving himself the airs of martyrdom in 
 the columns of the newspaper he represents. What 
 state can be more enviable than his ? A king retired 
 from business excites our pity, how much deeper, 
 then, should be our commiseration with the news- 
 paper correspondent who has relapsed into common 
 life ? Why he obtrudes upon us a narrative of his per- 
 sonal confidences, furnishes us with a catalogue of his 
 whims, tells us how he relaxes himself, and what he 
 eats, drinks, and avoids, is a question not easily 
 answered. Even the word " gossip" is degraded 
 when applied to his daily sermon ; for it is not idle 
 talk but offensive pretension that is generally placed 
 before us. The legitimate and only cure for this 
 state of things is a disclosure of the writer's name, so 
 that those to whom he addresses himself may have 
 the means of ascertaining whether the chronicler is to 
 be implicitly trusted, or whether his confidences and 
 revelations are to be taken with many grains of salt. 
 Even at home, where greater facilities for verifi- 
 cation exist, the same information as to authorship is 
 desirable. If a writer in the Illuminator charges
 
 CLUB GOSSIP. 37 
 
 himself with the responsibility of giving a daily or 
 weekly report of what is being done at the principal 
 Clubs, or of gossiping about literary and political 
 notabilities ; if he reveals the secrets of studios, pub- 
 lishing houses, and cabinet councils, we ought to 
 have his name. "We ought to know who he is that 
 frequents the Clubs, and carries off what he hears 
 therein. We should like to ascertain whether the 
 unpublished book which he announces as about to 
 create a great sensation is by himself or a member 
 of his family ; whether the information he has given 
 touching the dissolution of Parliament has been de- 
 rived from a member of the Cabinet, or from the less 
 trustworthy medium of the porter's hall. Here, his 
 credibility is at stake he is dealing with facts 
 his name is essential. But, on the other hand, when 
 the same gentleman in a leading article discusses 
 politics tells us that he considers Mr. Disraeli an 
 adventurer in politics, and Lord Russell a great states- 
 man it is his own affair, and he has right to shield 
 himself under the anonymous ; he is dealing with 
 arguments, and not with facts ; the force of his 
 reasoning can be neither strengthened nor weakened 
 by the revelation of his identity. To the reader it 
 is a matter of perfect indifference whether he gives 
 or withholds his name. 
 
 Clearly just, however, as this limitation must
 
 38 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 appear to all who consider the matter dispassion- 
 ately, the question is constantly re-opened by public 
 speakers and by writers in the press. Among 
 those who favoured signed articles was the late 
 Lord Herbert, who believed that for the mission 
 of public instruction anonymous writing in the 
 newspapers is a great disadvantage. " It puts on 
 " a par," he argued, "in point of weight and 
 " authority, the most scrupulous and the most un- 
 " scrupulous writer, the most exact and the most 
 
 " inexact If we knew who the writers 
 
 " were, we should know, in the case of a man whose 
 " character is established, that everything he says 
 (f might be taken for gospel, while we should also 
 " know in another case that the writer was neither 
 " so accurate in his statements nor so careful in 
 " sifting his facts. I think we should derive great 
 
 " advantage from such a state of things 
 
 " Then, again, there is something in the English 
 " character that dislikes secrecy. Men are ashamed 
 " to a certain extent of writing anonymously, and if 
 " they do so, they conceal it. I have known many 
 " gentlemen take a leading part in public writing ; 
 " but I have always found them unwilling to admit 
 " or to be known as writers of such and such ar- 
 " tides. They don't like the impression which would 
 " be produced if they were known as anonymous
 
 OBJECTIONS TO IT. 39 
 
 " writers. In the House of Commons an impression 
 " prevails that a man who can speak in his own 
 " name upon any question takes an unfair advantage 
 " if he says something under cover of an anonymous 
 " article." 
 
 Something very similar to this has been urged by 
 Mr. Thomas Hughes, M. P. " Our readers," says 
 that gentleman,* " would derive the greatest benefit 
 " [from the abolition of the anonymous system], for 
 " they would pretty soon take our measure, and 
 " would read the lucubrations of some of us, and 
 " skip those of others : just as they treat the 
 " speeches of our brethren of the third estate of the 
 " realm already. (By the way what right have we 
 " of the fourth estate to such an advantage over 
 " them? The greatest bore in the House is not 
 " allowed to shout in a feigned voice from behind a 
 " door.)" 
 
 One can scarcely imagine objections of so little force 
 as these could have possibly been advanced in seri- 
 ousness against the anonymous system. A writer is, I 
 presume, to be tested by the quality of his arguments, 
 and not by our opinion of his character. If Lord 
 Herbert correctly represented the prevailing impres- 
 sion of the House of Commons, his announcement 
 
 * Macmillaris Magazine, December, 1861.
 
 40 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 gives us a sad opinion of the liberality of members of 
 Parliament. When a man becomes the representa- 
 tive of an English borough he surely is not to be 
 debarred from advancing, by the most powerful 
 means within his reach, principles which, from the few 
 opportunities he can have of being " on his legs " in 
 the House, he could only feebly advance by speech. 
 Mr. Hughes's notion implies that his readers are un- 
 able to take his measure till they become acquainted 
 with his name. I hope, for the sake of his admirers, 
 that the estimate he has formed of their capacity is 
 false. The parenthetical assertion that anonymous 
 writing is equivalent to a shout in a feigned voice 
 behind a door is more curious than true, and does 
 not demand serious comment. The author of an un- 
 signed article in a newspaper speaks in his natural 
 voice as truly as he who prints in name in flaming 
 capital letters. It is his personality and not his 
 opinion, or unfeigned voice, that is concealed. 
 
 The subject has engaged the pen of Mr. Anthony 
 Trollope, too, who appears, however, to be only a 
 semi-believer in the benefits that are promised from 
 the total abolition of anonymous writing. He thinks 
 " any one can understand that a leading article in 
 " the Times must be written as a part of a combined 
 " whole. It must support certain views to which 
 " the Times is committed. It must be subject to,
 
 ITS ADVANTAGES. 41 
 
 " and compatible with, the prevailing spirit of the 
 " Times. That is the valid reason for anonymous 
 " writing in political journalism ; but no such reason 
 " operates in regard to magazine articles." In peri- 
 odical literature he believes the public should have 
 the means afforded them of knowing " what they 
 get" for their sixpence, shilling, two shillings, or 
 five, and thinks " it is absurd to argue that readers 
 " should judge by the matter and not by the name 
 " of the writer." People differ as to what it is 
 absurd to argue, and I have the misfortune to be one 
 of those who think it right that readers should judge 
 of the matter by the matter. What does it signify 
 to us who it is that occupies a dozen pages of 
 our magazine with fiction? or pens the critique or 
 the stanza? or gives us his opinion about politics, 
 or religion, or art? Not the most powerful name 
 on earth can make twaddle anything but twaddle ; 
 nor can the absence of a man's name lessen the 
 weight of his sentence. It is singular that the very 
 number of the magazine* in which Mr. Trollope 
 discusses the subject contains convincing evidence of 
 the wholesomeness of the limits I would assign to 
 anonymous writing. " In this Review of ours," 
 says Mr. Trollope in the concluding sentence of his 
 
 * Fortnightly Review, July, 1865.
 
 42 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 article, " we intend to try what signatures will do 
 " for us. Our editor will, at any rate, not be 
 " ashamed of putting forward the names of his con- 
 " tributors; and we, on our part, will not be 
 " ashamed to put forward our names under his 
 " authority." After this frank avowal of a frank 
 intention we know what to expect. On the page 
 facing Mr. Trollope's name is an article on " Public 
 Affairs." Now, if it is desirable that any communi- 
 cation should be signed by the writer it is that in 
 which public men and public events are freely criti- 
 cised. One of our statesmen is accused of attempt- 
 ing to lead his party to commit political suicide; 
 another is said to have resigned his seat in a " fit of 
 petulance," and his objection to being a Treasury 
 dependant is sneered at. Members of Parliament are 
 spoken of as "a" Mr. Blank, and the "notorious" 
 Mr. Blank ; and an unfortunate Cabinet minister is 
 described as " born in narrow-mindedness, he has 
 " grown mature in it, and he will never change." 
 The whole is characterized by the same taste. 
 Every other article has the writer's name scrupu- 
 lously appended to his communication. But here, 
 when we anxiously turn over the pages to see who is 
 the author, no name appears ; when we are desirous 
 of learning whether we are listening to Snug the 
 joiner or to the Royal beast, to the Bishop of Oxford
 
 ITS OPPONENTS. 43 
 
 or to Mr. Pifken the curate, our curiosity is piqued 
 and not satisfied. 
 
 Fortunately, in this country, no decision on this 
 point at which disputants may arrive is binding upon 
 others. As a result, the greater portion of current 
 literature is anonymous ; and the obvious and legiti- 
 mate advantages of the practice are so great that 
 men of letters will, doubtless, continue to oppose any 
 modification that may be proposed to them, either 
 by following the example of French writers, and 
 signing every article that contains an expression of 
 opinion, or of American journalists who print on the 
 face of their newspapers the names of proprietors 
 and editors. The opponents of the anonymous sys- 
 tem necessarily agree with me in requiring the names 
 of a writer in matters of fact ; but they decline to 
 agree with my limitation. They insist also upon the 
 critic and the writer on public affairs affixing their 
 names to their productions, complaining that, under 
 the present system, an article is influential in propor- 
 tion to the reputation of the paper in which it appears, 
 and not, as they would have it, in proportion to the 
 status of the writer. In some measure I agree 
 with the validity of their complaint, but I must 
 altogether dissent from the remedy proposed of sub- 
 stituting the authority of a name for the authority of 
 a paper. In both cases the influence would be de-
 
 44 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 rived from an illegitimate source, as the consideration 
 should be, not " Who says it ? " but " What is said ? " 
 If the arguments adduced by a writer are judicious, 
 it is a matter of complete indifference by whom they 
 are advanced, and I therefore think it an imperti- 
 nence in any writer to suppose his name can give 
 additional weight to a sound conclusion. If the pub- 
 lic persist in attaching fictitious importance to anony- 
 mous writing, and give to opinion the weight of fact ; 
 if they take Jones's unsigned crudities to be more 
 valuable than they would, had that gentleman's 
 name appeared as the author ; if they like illu- 
 sion, the fault is clearly with them. It can hardly 
 be supposed that, within these circumstances, Jones 
 would voluntarily relinquish the advantage to be 
 derived from writing anonymously. If, on the other 
 hand, Jones thinks his opinion would derive addi- 
 tional weight from declaring his name, or is fearful 
 of receiving more influence than he deserves if he 
 abstains from avowing it, we have no fault to find 
 with him. He is free to choose. There is a class 
 of writers, however, who would not permit him the 
 choice. They themselves " the champions of a free 
 press" affix their names to what they write and 
 call upon others to do the same. Their pretence is 
 that the proceeding gives a guarantee of good faith, 
 and prevents a man from saying anonymously what
 
 ITS SCOPE AND LIMITS. 45 
 
 he feels indisposed to say openly. In reality, how- 
 ever, their practice arises from an undue estimate of 
 their own importance, and springs from the same 
 source as that which induces vulgar persons to cut 
 their initials on seats and to deface with their names 
 monuments and places of public resort ; it is usually 
 called personal vanity. For my part, I believe it to 
 be no disadvantage to literature that a writer within 
 the province that has been already indicated-^-should 
 have the opportunity of saying anonymously what he 
 would be indisposed to say openly. If A, who is a 
 critic, knows B, the author of a volume of very 
 indifferent poems, he would not like to sit down and 
 say the truth of poor B's book, were he obliged to 
 affix his name. But he could do this anonymously 
 without, I think, being justly liable to the charge of 
 cowardice or want of friendship. It is allowable for 
 him to maintain his social relations with B, and yet be 
 honest in his calling in not thinking B's poetry good. 
 If, however, he had to affix his name and expressed 
 his disapprobation of the work, the poet would forth- 
 with tax his memory to ascertain what he could have 
 done to offend the critic, never supposing a writer to 
 whom he is personally known could speak except in 
 laudatory terms of his work. 
 
 To resume. Questions of policy or principle, of 
 art and science, of literature, of morals questions
 
 46 
 
 THE ANONYMOUS. 
 
 which have to do with argument are within the 
 province of the anonymous. Questions of fact, de- 
 pendent upon evidence and the credibility of wit- 
 nesses, are without the province.
 
 IV. 
 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 NGLISHMEN are reputed to be a prac- 
 tical people. No revolution in their his- 
 tory has been the result of a desire on 
 their part to effect constitutional changes 
 in order to obtain some contingent theoretical advan- 
 tage. They are said to pride themselves on their 
 inability to be influenced by an idea. Indifferent to 
 abstractions, they are moved solely by practical, which 
 mostly mean physical, reasons. Sometimes, indeed^ 
 out of a confused sense of duty, they attempt to act 
 from other considerations, as on the occasion of the 
 tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth. But it is in 
 vain. The living Garibaldi will ever be more influ- 
 ential than the dead Shakespeare. Whatever they 
 may profess to the contrary, however, they feel half 
 ashamed of their stolidity. When rallied by their 
 more enlightened friends on account of their inacces-
 
 48 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 sibility to advanced ideas in politics, they excuse 
 themselves with the plea that the ideas have re- 
 ference to what they do not understand, and decline 
 to become converts till they are in a position to test 
 the validity of the ideas in their own practical way. 
 
 At this moment they have the unusual good-fortune 
 to be presented with a cardinal opportunity of apply- 
 ing their favourite test. An eminent literary man, 
 and one of the most prominent of the advanced philo- 
 sophers, is a candidate for a seat in Parliament, and, 
 having expressed his views on practical politics, he 
 has furnished them with the means of examining his 
 ideas when applied to a subject with which they con- 
 ceive themselves to be familiar. 
 
 I have no desire to undervalue the high func- 
 tions of the philosopher. In any estimate of the 
 practical man, as compared with the man of thought, 
 I agree with Mr. Emerson, that the ordering of a 
 bale of goods from Smyrna to New York, or the 
 running up and down to procure a company of sub- 
 scribers to set going ten thousand spindles, or any 
 other practical action, is not to be preferred to a life 
 of contemplation. But I hold that the life of con- 
 templation is an altogether different thing from the 
 ordering of goods ; that it requires in those by whom 
 it is undertaken a different set of faculties ; bespeaks 
 a different training and a different experience ; that
 
 FUNCTIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHER. 49 
 
 success in one department depends upon the exercise 
 of qualities of mind different from those which pre- 
 sumably and really make a man successful in the 
 other ; that, in a word, the theoretical is wholly dis- 
 tinct from the practical. The philosopher has to 
 do with the discovery and elucidation of right prin- 
 ciples of conduct. His function is to reason out 
 what he conceives to be the best course for mankind. 
 His attempts are directed to the discovery of a fixed 
 standard of morals. He has in his calculations no 
 respect for idiosyncrasies. To him the agriculturist 
 of Suffolk is as the iron worker of Wales; the 
 Catholic of Munster as the Protestant of Kent. He 
 propounds theories. But theories, even should they 
 be correct, are not the most essential requisites in a 
 legislator. No government that could be devised 
 can be universally applied. So few are the general 
 principles that have been ascertained, that regard 
 must be had in legislation to the circumstances of 
 the particular government. The condition of affairs 
 must be thoroughly mastered ; the aspect of the 
 times and the temporary disposition of the nation 
 must be considered. The mood of a people is evan- 
 escent, and, therefore, what is expedient to-day may 
 be pernicious to-morrow. These popular barome- 
 trical changes the generator of correct principles is 
 incapacitated from dealing with. He deals with 
 
 E
 
 50 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 men as if they were counters of fixed value, whilst 
 in practical legislation such a course would produce 
 dangerous consequences. Here principles must vary^ 
 to be in harmony with the governed. It would ob- 
 viously be injudicious, for instance, to apply the same 
 laws to ourselves as to our Indian fellow-subjects, or 
 to ourselves at one time as at another. At the present 
 moment every Londoner is, politically speaking, in 
 the possession of complete personal liberty ; circum- 
 stances, however, may at any time arise when it will 
 be found necessary to suspend the habeas corpus. 
 Now the philosopher would, to judge from his ante- 
 cedents, be an unfit person to determine the moment 
 when the changed relations between the governors 
 and the governed have reached the point to make 
 the suspension necessary and salutary. For this 
 duty another class of man intervenes. This is the 
 statesman. He does not profess to be guided by 
 absolute right and wrong is doubtful, indeed, if 
 there is an absolute right and wrong but his con- 
 duct is regulated by what is called Expediency. He 
 makes a choice, that is, of what he judges to be the 
 least of several evils. The philosopher, on the other 
 hand, whose profession is to discover what is right, 
 persists in advocating what is right, and disdains to 
 concern himself with what is expedient. By a priori 
 reasoning he has gone and discovered, for example,
 
 PHILOSOPHER AND STATESMAN. 51 
 
 that every man and woman who can read and write 
 should have a voice in governing the country. The 
 practical man tells us such a notion, if carried into 
 effect, would be dangerous to the State. Which of 
 them is right ? 
 
 Of the philosophers, the candidate for Westmin- 
 ster, Mr. John Stuart Mill, has for a long time been 
 considered one of the most eminent. He is what, in 
 the slang of his admirers, is termed " the greatest 
 thinker" of the age. In strict accuracy he can only 
 be credited with being the most eminent of the per- 
 forming thinkers, of those, namely, that print their 
 thoughts on philosophical questions; just as poor 
 Tom Sayers who, by the exaggeration of friends, 
 was said to be the best man at fisticuffs in England 
 was only the best of the ten or twelve that bat- 
 tered each other for the delectation of the public. 
 But, admitting Mr. Mill's eminence in the direction 
 and to the extent claimed, is it expedient for him or 
 for us that he should hold a seat in Parliament ? 
 
 All who appreciate the fact that the destiny of 
 organized nature is amelioration, will agree that it is 
 highly advantageous for the public that men are 
 found to devote themselves to abstruse speculations, 
 for the purpose of discovering the form and processes 
 of this amelioration ; and that it is well for the public 
 to acknowledge their obligation. I must, however,
 
 52 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 in the interests of literature, dissent from the form 
 in which that acknowledgment is, in Mr. Mill's case, 
 attempted to be made. Those of this gentleman's 
 admirers who are connected with Westminster have 
 invited him to come forward as a candidate for their 
 city. They evidently belong to that class of minds 
 which considers a man eminent in one department to 
 be equally well fitted for any other, and they esteem 
 a seat in Parliament to be the most appropriate re- 
 ward for transcendent merit of all kinds. Hence the 
 increasing number of successful lawyers, soldiers, 
 gold-diggers, and tradesmen, that are returned to the 
 House of Commons. In Mr. Mill's favour, however, 
 they urge that he is not only a theorist, but has 
 written very successfully on practical subjects ; that, 
 in short, he has, in numerous instances, looked at 
 things from the same point of view as ordinary men. 
 I reply So have all newspaper editors; but neither 
 they nor the public would benefit by their translation 
 from their editorial chairs to the benches of the 
 House of Commons. Mr. Mill, however, I venture, 
 with much diffidence, to think is more than most 
 eminent men unfitted for those benches. Fortu- 
 nately, it is within our power to test his validity to 
 the claim of being a statesman. He takes the oppor- 
 tunity, in reply to some questions put to him by his 
 supporters, of expressing his earnest hope that they
 
 MR. MILL AS A STATESMAN. 53 
 
 intend " to include in their adhesion the principle of 
 " an individual appeal by circular to every elector, 
 " laying other names before him as well as mine, 
 " and requesting him to select from among them, or 
 " from any others, the person or persons whom he 
 " would wish to be brought forward as candidates." 
 Could any request be more illogical and trifling? If 
 Mr. Mill were an autocrat, to whom lists of candidates 
 had to be submitted for approval, he would deserve 
 high respect for the generosity by which his conduct 
 was dictated ; but as it happens that the electors are 
 competent to elect almost any able-bodied English- 
 man, I fail to see his object in recommending the 
 proceeding. For his supporters to issue, under their 
 sanction, and explicitly with their recommendation, 
 the names of other candidates, would, if it meant 
 nothing, be a silly farce ; if it meant anything, it 
 would militate against their own interest, inasmuch 
 as they would be setting up rivals to their own can- 
 didate. They have already decided, by their selec- 
 tion, that Mr. Mill, in their opinion, is the fittest 
 man to be their representative ; and now they are 
 naively requested by that gentleman to announce to 
 the constituency that there are others they consider 
 equally eligible. The document to which this re- 
 commendation forms the preamble is all that was 
 wanted by the stolid Englishman to enable him to
 
 54 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 see the deep gulf that separates the " great thinker" 
 from the statesman. It is divided into ten heads. 
 With some of them all men will agree; but the 
 most important of them are characterized by a strange 
 boldness that is astonishing, even coming from a phi- 
 losopher. I can only indicate their tendency. 
 
 With respect to Reform, Mr. Mill would confer 
 the suffrage upon every man and woman who can 
 read and write and do Rule of Three. This plan is 
 very simple and intelligible. It would almost give 
 equal power to everybody in the State noses would 
 count. But not so. It is evident that, by counting 
 of noses, the lower orders, who in every country 
 have the most, would inevitably outnumber the other 
 orders ; so he would impose restraints by allowing 
 minorities to be represented that is, he would, by 
 skilfully devised checks, in effect bring the repre- 
 sentation to where it is. Noses would be neutralised. 
 He prefers a mixed system of direct and indirect 
 taxation. So do we so does the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer ; but practical men are needed to deter- 
 mine how far each mode can safely be pursued. His 
 views with respect to intervention in the internal 
 affairs of another country are unique he will not 
 interfere unless others had interfered. He is of opinion 
 that on account of religion there ought to be no dis- 
 abilities. This I believe, to be unwise, If the
 
 MR. MILL'S PRINCIPLES. 55 
 
 principles of the religionists are noxious, disabilities 
 should certainly be imposed ; if they are dangerous 
 to the State, or are immoral, they ought to be re- 
 pressed. His most important paragraph, however, 
 relates to the ballot, which he opposes, on the ground 
 that the elector is a trustee of the non-elector. The 
 onus probandi clearly lies with him ; but, although 
 he is emphatic in his assertion, he gives no reason for 
 his belief. Is it possible he thinks it a first principle ? 
 The aim and object of the franchise he appears alto- 
 gether to misapprehend. I have to offer him two 
 reasons for differing from him. If the voter were a 
 trustee of the non-voter, the latter cestui que trust 
 could exercise legal supervision over him, and 
 would have the power of calling him to account for 
 his actions ; secondly, by conferring on a man the 
 privilege of voting, the object of the Constitution is 
 simply to get from him his opinion of the merits of the 
 candidates, and, therefore, he is a representative of 
 himself alone.* 
 
 * Let us suppose there are three brothers with votes. A, 
 who is a retired tradesman, and independent of the commercial 
 influences of the town in which he resides, wishes to record his 
 vote openly, believing his example will be followed by many who 
 have good opinion of his judgment ; he is, of course, enabled 
 to do so. B, however, who is a small shopkeeper with trade rela- 
 tions, does not wish to give his vote in public. Some of his cus-
 
 56 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 I do not believe Mr. Mill to be a man of aspir- 
 ing vein. His intellectual underlings, by persuading 
 him that he will best serve his country by entering 
 Parliament, have, I am confident, done him injury. 
 There is no occasion for him now, any more than here- 
 tofore, to impound his wisdom. He can still enunciate 
 his views through the press more appropriately and 
 with an effect more commensurate with their value 
 than he is likely to do by his voice in the House of 
 Commons. As far as the merits of the opposing 
 candidates have been disclosed, he may make as good 
 
 tomers imagine that, by purchasing his tea and coffee, they make 
 it necessary for him to think as they do in politics, and will cease 
 to deal with him if he practically differ from them. Others 
 who buy of him their eggs and bacon, think that therefore his 
 views should coincide with theirs. Were they, then, to dis- 
 cover, at election-time, that his principles were opposed to 
 what they profess, they would assuredly discontinue their cus- 
 tom. It happens that the tea-and-coffee customers favour one 
 candidate, and the eggs-and-bacon customers his rival. What 
 is poor B to do ? He is anxious to vote ; but he knows that he 
 will lose half his profits were he to exercise his privilege. Not 
 being fully assured, however, that there is intimate connection 
 between politics and eggs-and-bacon, he wishes to retain his 
 customers, and to give his vote. He demands permission to 
 vote by ballot. C, the third brother, is at a distance of two 
 hundred miles from his home on the day of election ill at the sea- 
 side. Although he is desirous of voting, it would be greatly incon- 
 venient, and perhaps dangerous, for him to undergo the fatigue
 
 ME. MILL'S CLAIMS. 57 
 
 a legislator as any of them ; but I am unable to see 
 in what respect he is their superior. When what is 
 best in theory becomes coincident with what is prac- 
 ticable in legislation, salutary consequences may 
 result from the election of such a man as Mr. Mill. 
 It will then be time to invite " the greatest thinkers 
 of the age" to the direction of affairs. Mr. Mill has, 
 doubtless, rendered great services to the science of 
 politics, and Mr. F. W. Newman and others are will- 
 ing, on this account, to accept " his large mind," 
 notwithstanding its aberrations. But this condonation 
 
 of a long journey. Why should not he register his vote with 
 the returning officer of the town in which he temporarily re- 
 sides, and thus declare his choice of candidates ? I know no 
 valid reason why each of the brothers should not vote in the 
 manner most convenient to himself. If, as I assert, the right 
 to vote has been conferred on him in order to obtain his views 
 on public affairs, it is of little importance how he delivers his 
 opinion whether openly, as is the present custom ; or by bal- 
 lot, as is practised in clubs and other private societies ; or by 
 certified papers sent through the post, the plan adopted in the 
 election of members for the universities. It surely is unneces. 
 sary for him to appear in person and at a certain place. 
 
 To compel a man to vote by ballot in the election of a mem- 
 ber of Parliament, as is proposed by the Ballot Society, is so 
 manifestly unjust and tyrannical, that there is little fear of the 
 bill, annually introduced into Parliament, being carried. Why 
 should A be deprived of the legitimate influence exercised by 
 his example, because B requires the protection of secrecy ?
 
 58 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 appears to me unreasonable as unreasonable as it 
 would be to appoint a man teacher of arithmetic who 
 deliberately propounds the notion that two and two 
 make five. The admirers of Mr. Mill should find 
 another way of rewarding him than by sending him 
 to the House of Commons. 
 
 Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Mill has 
 served for one session in Parliament has been for 
 that period the six-hundred-and-fifty-eighth part of a 
 king ; with what result to the high reputation he had 
 deservedly earned as a philosopher all of us have 
 cause to lament. I could never bring myself to 
 believe it would be well for us if philosophers were 
 kings, and kings philosophers. Much better will it 
 be, I presume, for each class to remain in its own 
 sphere, mindful of the maxim, " Ne sutor ultra cre- 
 pidam." As was predicted, he has been less suc- 
 cessful as a politician than was anticipated by his too 
 sanguine friends. Liberal organs of public opinion, 
 which at the time of the contest were over-hard upon 
 those who opposed his candidature, and urged upon 
 the constituency the duty of rejecting any man pos- 
 sessing only the ordinary qualifications, for one of 
 Mr. Mill's conspicuous and exceptional merits, have 
 latterly confessed their disappointment. I am not 
 eure whether the two I quote were among the num- 
 ber of Mr. Mill's more enthusiastic backers, but I
 
 THEIR SUCCESS. 59 
 
 subjoin their remarks, as they furnish us with the 
 opinions of very influential and presumably educated 
 writers as to the degree of success achieved by one 
 of our wisest men of letters who has deserted his 
 study for the senate. 
 
 " The old saying, that no man can safely be called 
 " fortunate until death has placed him beyond mis- 
 " fortune's reach," says the Saturday Review, <( seems 
 " in some danger of receiving a painful illustration 
 " in the career of Mr. Mill. The contrast between 
 " Mr. Mill the philosopher and Mr. Mill the politician 
 ' is deplorable, but it is really a question whether it 
 " is not even more ludicrous. It is so absurdly sug- 
 " gestive of Moliere's inimitable scene in which the 
 " innocent M. Jourdain calls in his ' Maitre de 
 " ' Philosophic' to calm the dispute raging between 
 " his other masters as to the merits of their respective 
 " arts. The philosopher begins by referring the 
 " disputants to Seneca's masterly treatise on t Anger,' 
 " and assuring them that in this world there is no- 
 " thing worth striving for but * la sagesse et la vertu ;' 
 " but in less than five minutes, to M. Jourdain's 
 " horror and amazement, he is furiously pommelling 
 " and being pommelled all round. The British nation, 
 " struck by Mr. Mill's writings, summons him, amid 
 " loud acclamations, into its Parliament as the great 
 " philosopher of the age, and innocently congratulates
 
 60 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 " itself on having among its advisers at least one man 
 " who understands the virtues of moderation and self- 
 " control ; and, on the first grave crisis which calls 
 " for both, is amazed to find him the blindest and 
 " most furious of partisans. Moliere deliberately 
 " intended to make philosophers ridiculous, but this 
 " can scarcely be the intention of Mr. Mill. And 
 " yet his appearance at the Agricultural Hall the 
 " other night might almost furnish grounds for 
 " even this supposition. We admit that this asso- 
 " ciation between Mr. Mill's philosophy and his 
 s( speeches is not strictly logical. The 'Represen- 
 " * tative Government' and the ' Essay on Liberty 
 " would remain exactly what they now are if their 
 " author were in open Parliament to pull Mr. Dis- 
 " raeli's nose, or offer to ' take off coats' with Mr. 
 " Wai pole. But, logical or illogical, it is the way of 
 " the world to measure the value of what a man says 
 " or writes by its practical estimate of his character." 
 " We are half inclined to regret," says the Pall 
 Mall Gazette, " that philosophers are not, like cler- 
 " gymen, excluded from the House of Commons. 
 " Philosophers are beyond price, but philosophy is 
 " frail, and party-politics are seductive. And as ' good 
 " ' things corrupted are the worst,' so philosophers, 
 " when they are once off the poise, are apt to rush 
 " into intolerance with the fury of renegades. Mr.
 
 DANGERS TO THEMSELVES. 61 
 
 e Mill's late exhibitions illustrate this very pro- 
 " vokingly. As Liberals, we regret this, because 
 " whereas formerly in Mr. Mill's alliance we had the 
 " sentence of a judge in our favour, we feel that we 
 " have now, so to say, only the protestations of an 
 " advocate. But we are deeply sorry for the trans- 
 " formation on other grounds too. Henceforth) 
 " when Mr. Mill writes of social or political mat- 
 " ters, even his old admirers will read him with mis- 
 " giving. What he would write would be in too 
 " flagrant contradiction to his present practice. But, 
 '' indeed, just now the philosophical faculty has 
 < departed. He is a lost philosopher. . . . . 
 
 " No doubt Mr. Mill receives large compensation 
 " of a kind in his political importance. But what a 
 " falling off there must be in philosophical temper if 
 " such compensation can ever be sufficient! He has 
 " given up to party, and party in its pettiest sense, 
 " what was meant for mankind. All that abstraction 
 " and disinterestedness which gave him authority has 
 " vanished. He is no longer umpire, but a party to 
 '' the squabble. Instead of hardly condescending 
 " laudari laudatis instead of the cold proud atti- 
 " tude which seemed to show he thought it almost 
 " too mercenary even to accept the esteem of the 
 " estimable we see Mr. Mill now readily * helping 
 " ( to make a mob,' and apparently rewarded quite to
 
 62 LITERARY MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 " his taste by a popularity which would have once 
 " seemed to him misconception, if not an insult. Of 
 " course Mr. Mill has not suddenly ceased to be a 
 " clever man ; but his words now have no more than 
 " their own weight, and that weight is not always 
 " great. The false oracle is detected by the false 
 " prosody. It is not only the philosophical temper 
 " which is impaired in Mr. Mill, but the logical 
 " cogency. The fallacies he has been all his life 
 " exposing he now finds very handy weapons." 
 
 The writers I have quoted so well express what 
 all feel who are interested in the well-being of the 
 literary class, that I need not add one word to their 
 testimony. Mr. Mill's political career will not have 
 been fruitless if it has had the effect of convincing 
 his admirers that the literary character and the poli- 
 tician are not necessarily identical, and of dissipating 
 the injurious notion that philosophers should be kings 
 and kings philosophers.
 
 V. 
 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 JHE present age, often accused of scep- 
 ticism, shows itself to be, in some 
 respects, fully as credulous as any of 
 its predecessors. Without stopping here 
 to multiply examples in support of this assertion, it 
 will be sufficient to instance the firm belief it. dis- 
 plays in the doctrine of hero-worship. Nor is this 
 belief professed merely by the vulgar and illiterate. 
 It is extensively current even among the intellectual 
 and the refined ; it has found its way into books ; it 
 forms the text of some of the most popular works in 
 our language ; it is echoed in every direction ; and, 
 in fine, has become so prevalent, that if one should 
 venture to doubt the existence of " great " men, one 
 would be regarded much in the same light as if one 
 were to question the reality of one's own existence, 
 or deny that all men are mortal. " It is natural to
 
 64 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 " believe in great men," writes Mr. Emerson. " No 
 " sadder proof can be given by a man of his own 
 " littleness," says Mr. Carlyle, " than disbelief in 
 " great men it is the last consummation of un- 
 " belief." There can be no doubt, then, of the 
 existence of this belief. It is notorious that public 
 opinion selects certain personages to occupy the 
 highest place in its regard, and upon them confers 
 the title of (t great men." And in making out the 
 list of what are termed great men, public opinion 
 appears to be actuated by a spirit of the utmost im- 
 partiality. It liberally selects names from almost 
 every country under the sun, esteeming none too 
 remote or too insignificant to furnish a representa- 
 tive. Even China has Confucius ; and Switzerland, 
 small as she is, is credited with Tell, notwithstanding 
 that hero labours under the somewhat serious dis- 
 qualification of never having existed in the flesh. 
 The praise of liberality does not, however, exclu- 
 sively belong to the nineteenth century. It must be 
 shared with the eighteenth, which was even more 
 lavish in the bestowal of this title. It was with it 
 Voltaire paid his physician, Tronchin ; and upon 
 losing Madame Chatelet, as he could not in good 
 French call her grande femme, it is still grand 
 homme (great man) that we find him styling her, 
 when, in writing to the King of Prussia, he says,
 
 WHAT IS A GREAT MAN? 65 
 
 " I have lost a friend of five-and-twenty years' 
 " standing, a great man who had but one fault 
 " that of being a woman."'* 
 
 We have now established with certainty the ex- 
 istence of a belief in " great " men ; let us next as- 
 certain, if we be able, what is a great man ? Let 
 us see what constitutes a great man, and discover 
 wherein he is like ordinary men, and wherein he 
 differs from them. 
 
 But it is here, at the very point where the inquiry 
 becomes of some value, that we are fated to meet 
 with disappointment. In former ages no doubt ex- 
 isted as to the meaning of the term. It was con- 
 ferred only upon a man of exalted social or official 
 rank the Xerxes, the Alexander, the Cassar. In 
 ancient Rome, no one could have thought of calling 
 Virgil and Horace great men, because they were 
 poets, even though he entertained a higher opinion 
 than we of their literary merits. The term was 
 confined in its application solely to those who were 
 powerful by reason of their influential relations to 
 the State, or of their social rank. And down so 
 far as to the time of our own Elizabeth it had, 
 I believe, the same confined signification. Thus 
 limited, the term had a just, precise, and well- 
 
 * Bungener " Voltaire and his Times" 
 F
 
 66 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 known meaning. But now that the traditional and 
 ordinary idea of a great man has been abandoned, 
 and the title indiscriminately and capriciously con- 
 ferred upon other grounds, it has lost its significance 
 and become utterly unintelligible. Almost every- 
 body professes to believe in great men as decidedly 
 as he believes, say, in sky-rockets. But the basis of 
 his belief in the one case must be essentially different 
 from what it is in the other; for almost everybody 
 knows what a sky-rocket is, can describe one, and is 
 able to recognize one when he sees it ; whilst, as to 
 what constitutes a great man, there are irreconcile- 
 able varieties of opinion. No two persons will be 
 found to give the same definition of a great man, or 
 (what is the same thing in amount) agree upon those 
 to whom the title shall be applied. Many, affecting 
 catholicity in their views, make out a long list; 
 others, more particular in their choice, select only a 
 few for the honour ; while some are so fastidious as 
 to exclude all names but those of two or three of the 
 most famous personages that have ever lived. Nor 
 is this the sole difficulty that besets our inquiry. 
 There is another and a more formidable one. Not 
 only are we presented with a variety of lists, but 
 each list in itself varies in accordance with the dif- 
 ferent stages of its owner's mental culture. No man 
 pretends to be in possession of a list that is perma-
 
 VARIETY OF OPINIONS. 67 
 
 nently fixed. Now, a name is added thereto ; now, 
 it is displaced or degraded; and now, again, it is 
 struck out altogether, to make room for another 
 which is thought to be more worthy of honour. The 
 heroes of a man's youth are no longer heroes in his 
 manhood, and the names he most esteemed in the 
 prime of life come to be regarded with indifference 
 in his declining years. 
 
 It plainly rests with those who have an idea of a 
 " great " man and call upon us for our belief, to 
 prove the existence of such a thing, or at least to 
 enlighten us as to the meaning of the term. They 
 do neither, however. The widest possible diversity 
 of opinion exists amongst them, and every attempt 
 on our part to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion 
 must therefore, of necessity, be fruitless. Mr. Carlyle 
 who appears to be regarded, and to regard him- 
 self, as the high-priest of hero-worship contends 
 that earnestness and sincerity constitute a hero ; and, 
 accordingly, his " great " men, let them differ ever so 
 widely in other points, are yet all sincere and earnest 
 men. One may be a despot, another a staunch 
 opponent of absolutism ; this may be an apologist 
 of Catholicism, that other its deadliest enemy but 
 in one respect they are all alike : they are eminently 
 distinguished for earnestness and sincerity. If we 
 turn from Mr. Carlyle's idea of a great man to that
 
 68 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 of his American admirer, Mr. Emerson, we shall 
 have another, and a widely different definition. Mr. 
 Emerson supposes a great man to be " one who has 
 " a large stomach," " one of great affinities, who 
 " takes up into himself all arts, sciences all know- 
 " ables as his food; who can spare nothing; who 
 " can dispose of everything." Such a man we con- 
 fess never yet to have known for the assertion that 
 " Plato, like every great man, consumed his own 
 " times," is manifestly incorrect and such a man is 
 an impossibility. Mr. Ruskin also believes in great 
 men, and is of opinion that the " first test of a great 
 " man is humility." Not that he therefore supposes 
 a great man to be ignorant of his greatness : " For," 
 says he, " all great men not only know their busi- 
 " ness, but know, usually, that they know it ; only 
 " they don't think much of themselves on that ac- 
 " count." Professor Ranke, again, the historian of 
 the Popes, contributes a fresh notion. In speaking 
 of Alfred he indignantly asks, " What right has he 
 " to be styled ' the Great?' That title belongs only 
 " to those who have fought, not merely for private, 
 " but, at the same time, for great general interests." 
 Such are some of the various opinions entertained 
 in reference to the subject of our inquiry. I have 
 quoted these authors only because they are those 
 whose works happen to be by me whilst I am writ-
 
 THE TWO CLASSES OF HEROES. 69 
 
 ing. Were I to quote as many more, they would be 
 found to differ amongst themselves quite as much as 
 these. They might all agree that there is such a 
 thing as a " great man :" but here their agreement 
 will end ; they will be at issue on the meaning of the 
 term ; they will all use the word in widely different 
 senses. 
 
 The progress of our inquiry has, thus far, been but 
 slow ; or, rather, it has been in a backward direction. 
 We are, in fact, at the very point from which we 
 started. Can it be, then, that this term spoken so 
 trippingly on the tongue, and falling so easily from 
 the pen has, after all, no idea to correspond with 
 it in the mind ? Are we to conclude that it has no 
 meaning, and that it is constantly used without being 
 understood? We shall see. 
 
 Speaking broadly, there appear to be two classes 
 of men to which general opinion is willing to assign 
 the highest and most honourable title in its power to 
 bestow. First, there are those in whom certain ac- 
 tive, masculine qualities are developed in a very 
 high degree, and successfully made patent to the 
 world. In this class (to take notable examples) are 
 Dante and Napoleon. These men are " great " in 
 the worldly sense of the term. Next, there are those 
 who are esteemed great in proportion to their good- 
 ness, and the beneficial effect they have exercised on
 
 70 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 human virtue and human happiness. In this latter, 
 which is the theological sense, Washington is a 
 greater man than Napoleon, and John Howard, or 
 the inventor of lucifer-matches greater than either. 
 Now, whilst admitting that Dante was a great 
 poet, and Napoleon a great warrior, one must, at the 
 risk of being characterized as "a critic of small 
 " vision," and " a promoter of spiritual paralysis," 
 confess one's inability to perceive how any greatness, 
 except of this partial kind, can justly be claimed for 
 either of them. And that no man is "great," other 
 than in this partial sense, may be deduced from the 
 simple consideration that no man can be an exemplar 
 of all greatness. An instance will make the meaning 
 clearer. Let us take, as our example, the first 
 Napoleon. Here is one whom all classes of hero- 
 worshippers will most readily agree to admit into their 
 several lists of heroes ; he was as great a man, they 
 say, as any that ever lived. Without derogating in 
 the least degree from the just fame of this celebrated 
 character, and crediting him with the possession of 
 all his rare and brilliant qualities, we cannot concede 
 to him the title of " great man." He was no poet, 
 no artist, no orator, no philosopher, no handicrafts- 
 man; or, if he was, and more, he was much ex- 
 celled as such by many of his contemporaries for 
 whom the title is not claimed. He was a military
 
 THE THINKER AND THE ACTOR. 71 
 
 man, had pre-eminently the genius of a soldier, and 
 possessed all the various qualifications requisite for 
 the successful carrying on of war. But this does not 
 constitute a great Man; it makes only a great 
 Soldier. There may be some, too indolent to per- 
 ceive any difference between these expressions, who 
 will object that I am playing upon words that it is 
 a mere verbal dispute and that to call a man a 
 great warrior is substantially the same as to call him 
 a great man. But the dispute is something more 
 than a dispute about words ; it is essentially a dispute 
 about things. If it be admitted that the qualities 
 that appeared in Napoleon are the identical qualities 
 that constitute a great man, it must follow that war- 
 riors only are to be called great men ; and it must 
 follow that Dante, and such as he, who were in 
 possession of none of these qualities, have no right 
 to the title. If, instead of Napoleon, we make Dante 
 our example, we shall of course arrive at a similar 
 conclusion. Grant that Dante's qualities are those 
 that give a man a claim to be called great, and you 
 exclude Napoleon, and all who have not been poets. 
 Both these men we have mentioned are pre-eminent 
 in their several departments, and it has been sug- 
 gested to me that, after all, this only is meant by the 
 term one, namely, who has been successful in ar- 
 riving at the first place in his particular walk. The
 
 72 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 great man "must be good of his kind," says Mr. 
 Emerson ; " able men do not care in what kind a 
 " man is able, so only that he is able." This test is 
 intelligible it would admit Mr. Thomas Sayers and 
 M. Blondin, and would not exclude even Mr. Bar- 
 num. But few hero-worshippers will consent to adopt 
 it. Lord Macaulay, one of the most eminent of them, 
 repudiates it. In one of his essays, he says : " Homer 
 " is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, 
 " Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of 
 " dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly 
 " the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of 
 " biographers. Many of the greatest men that 
 " ever lived have written biography. Boswell was 
 " one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he 
 " has beaten them all." This dictum is elegantly 
 and plainly expressed ; the meaning cannot be missed 
 but, is it just? If Homer is a great man, because 
 decidedly the first of epic poets, why, it might be 
 asked, should Boswell be precluded from occupying 
 a similarly elevated position, seeing that, notwith- 
 standing he has for competitors many of the greatest 
 men that ever lived, he is the first of biographers, 
 and has in his calling immeasurably surpassed them 
 all ? The essayist, however, did not see the difficulty, 
 or, seeing it, he evaded it ; he was too brilliant to be 
 expected to be accurate.
 
 ESTEEM DUE TO GREAT MEN. 73 
 
 Not only, however, are we called on to believe in 
 great men, but, it seems, we must esteem them, or we 
 shall suffer penalties. " Our religion is the love and 
 " cherishing of these patrons," say all true worship- 
 pers; " woe be to him who believes not!" But just 
 as we have seen these professors to be guilty of 
 a provoking ambiguity and want of accuracy in 
 the definition they give of their patrons, so now, in 
 demanding our esteem for them, we shall find they 
 are equally unreasonable. We are ordered to esteem 
 " great " men for the qualities they possess ; but if 
 we require a reason for doing so, we get no reply. 
 And can we hope for any that is satisfactory ? The 
 qualities that go to make up a man's greatness, 
 whatever they be, are gifts, are accidents just as 
 health, wealth, or strength are gifts. " He is great," 
 Mr. Emerson confesses, " who is what he is from 
 " Nature;" and again, in speaking of Shakespeare, he 
 says, " His principal merit may be conveyed in 
 " saying, that he of all men best understands the 
 " English language, and can say what he will. Yet 
 " these unchoked channels and floodgates of expres- 
 " sion are only health, or fortunate constitution." 
 Qualities of the intellect are as much gifts as per- 
 sonal comeliness is a gift, or as a healthy constitution 
 is a gift. They are external to the man, and esteem 
 is no more due to him for the possession of the one
 
 74 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 than it is for the other. Why, then, should we esteem 
 him ? Riches are admirable ; but are we to give our 
 esteem to the man who is rich ? Health and beauty 
 are admirable ; but are we to tender our respect to 
 the healthy and beautiful ? Mr. Carlyle's synonyme 
 for greatness has even fewer claims on our esteem than 
 these have. Heroism, he tells us, is sincerity ; we 
 must reverence the sincere. Before, however, ten- 
 dering to any man our reverence, we should first 
 ascertain what his principles are; we should know 
 whether they are good or bad whether conducive 
 to the happiness or misery of mankind. Sincerity, 
 in itself, is a quality neither to be commended nor 
 blamed. It matters not how sincere or conscientious 
 a man may be in his opinions ; it matters not how 
 earnest he may be in his conduct : if the opinions 
 are erroneous, and the conduct noxious, on what 
 ground can esteem or respect with any justice be 
 claimed for the possessor? Yet it constantly hap- 
 pens that men treat with consideration the advocates 
 of a principle they believe to be false and wicked, 
 solely on the ground of their presumed conscien- 
 tiousness. Mr. Bright, for instance, is admitted to 
 be a sincere and earnest man. Competent autho- 
 rities, however competent by reason of education, 
 long acquaintance with affairs of State, personal ex- 
 perience, and intimate knowledge of our history
 
 SINCERITY AND EARNESTNESS. 75 
 
 deny his right to be considered a statesman, and 
 look upon his principles as dangerous. What course, 
 then, should they naturally pursue in reference to 
 Mr. Bright? Not, surely, any course that would 
 tend to elevate him in public opinion. Yet this is 
 the very course they follow. On their last accession 
 to office, Mr. Bright' s chief opponents, the Conser- 
 vatives, retaining as firmly as ever their decided 
 objections to the honourable member's policy, thought 
 fit, in more ways and on more occasions than one, to 
 express their high esteem for the honourable member 
 himself. And why ? Why, because Mr. Bright is 
 distinguished for earnestness in advocating the very 
 doctrines they most condemn. The measure of esteem 
 is, I presume, proportioned to the earnestness of the 
 advocacy ; if, then, the advocacy should turn out to 
 be successful if, that is to say, the party should 
 be overtaken by political death, the esteem should 
 rightly be doubled. Again, there is no doubt that 
 Mary Tudor was eminently sincere in her religious 
 professions there can be no doubt that she was 
 equally earnest in their propagation; but how can 
 we esteem her personally, whilst we are forced to 
 disavow her tenets and reprobate her conduct ? To 
 do so would plainly be irrational. Now this is what 
 Mr. Carlyle in numerous instances does. Such a 
 course, as might be supposed, leads him into incon-
 
 76 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 sistencies and contradictions. It leads him also to 
 commit positive acts of injustice; it leads him, 
 amongst other things, to speak of the poet Byron 
 with contempt, and to celebrate the ploughman 
 Burns as a king of men. 
 
 It must now be clear that the popular notion of a 
 " great" man is liable to many and serious objections; 
 that, in fact, if we consider rightly, it has no more real 
 existence than those famous " general terms " which 
 formed so prominent a feature in the philosophy of 
 Plato, but in which there have long since ceased to be 
 a believer. It must be equally clear that the only 
 sense in which a man can justly be called great is in 
 the sense suggested above that, namely, which cre- 
 dits him with being supreme in his particular depart- 
 ment or departments. This view of the question has 
 much to recommend it. Whilst leaving room for 
 asserting that Dante was an eminent poet, and Bacon 
 an eminent philosopher, it would confine the mean- 
 ing of the term to its proper limits, and would prevent 
 the senseless comparisons instituted between "great" 
 men who have often nothing in common except their 
 humanity. And it is productive, indirectly and in- 
 cidentally, of other benefits. It would put an end to 
 the presumption that success in one line or pursuit 
 indicates power for success in all lines or pursuits, 
 and render impossible the absurd and unjust cen-
 
 POPULAR APPETITE FOR HEROES. 77 
 
 sures people are in the habit of passing upon a man 
 eminent in one department for disappointing their 
 expectations in not being eminent in another depart- 
 ment. What complaint is more frequently heard 
 than that of some hero-worshipper who expresses his 
 surprise at the " great " Napoleon's many littlenesses 
 of character under captivity ; or at the cowardice of 
 Cicero when pursued by the emissaries of Antony ? 
 A juster estimate of the pretensions of either of these 
 celebrated men would have dissipated all surprise. 
 It would have made it clear that the former, who 
 was a soldier and man of action, never advanced 
 any claim to be considered a moral philosopher ; and 
 that the latter, who was a philosopher, is not to be 
 blamed for not having the qualities of a soldier. But 
 this distinction it is impossible for the hero-worship- 
 per to make. He looks for a " whole man " whose 
 faculties are co-ordinate, whose function it is to be 
 great a man who is excellent in every circum- 
 stance and in all respects a Brahmin of the race. 
 
 Nothing less than this in a man will, it seems, 
 satisfy the strong popular appetite for hero-worship. 
 Ignorant people, in all ages, require some tangible, 
 some personal, representative of the qualities they 
 admire. They cannot see a principle until it is 
 personified they cannot discriminate between the 
 qualities and their possessor ; and as, of old, Deme-
 
 78 LITERARY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 trius the silversmith made gods for the people of 
 Ephesus, so to-day Mr. Carlyle, or somebody else, 
 supplies the public exigency with respect to heroes. 
 People cry for gods, and there is never wanting an 
 Aaron to gratify their wishes. They add the cubits 
 to a man's stature, and then pay their money to see a 
 giant they have themselves created. Nor does it much 
 matter to hero-worshippers what the claimants for 
 their regard may be " Scourges of God," or, " Dar- 
 " lings of the human race," only they must make a 
 great noise, or have a great noise made for them ; let 
 them be but " sufficient " men, whether of sword, or 
 of tongue, or of pen, and they cannot fail to be 
 apotheosised. 
 
 A " great " man, indeed, is nothing more than one 
 who has achieved a great reputation ; his " greatness" 
 being in the ratio of his fame. So we find Swift 
 making the avowal to Bolingbroke that all his en- 
 deavours to distinguish himself arose from want of a 
 great title and fortune, that he may be used like a 
 lord by those who had an opinion of his parts ; for, 
 he adds, " the reputation of wit or great learning 
 " does the office of a blue riband, or of a coach and 
 " six horses," that is, it carries power. The favour- 
 ite design of Napoleon also was to make a great 
 noise. " A great reputation," he says, " is a great 
 " noise ; the more there is made, the farther off it is
 
 ITS DETRIMENTAL EFFECT. 79 
 
 " heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations 
 " all fall ; but the noise continues and resounds in 
 " after ages." He was right, and he made a great 
 noise accordingly ; he is the best-heard man of all 
 times. 
 
 Much and very general abuse has been showered 
 upon the celebrated valet who was not able, like the 
 rest of the world, to see in his master a great man. 
 I have often tried to be very indignant with him, 
 but whenever I made the attempt, it must be con- 
 fessed that my rage refused to rise. It always 
 struck me there was too much to be said in the 
 fellow's favour. Clearly the valet did not regard his 
 master as a hero ; but how can he be blamed ? His 
 master had never come before him in the character. 
 In breaking the shell of an egg, or in buttoning his 
 braces, there is little room for the display of the 
 heroic side of a man's character. This the poor valet 
 had never witnessed. Must we abuse him, then, for 
 not regarding; as a hero a man who to him has never 
 
 o o 
 
 exhibited himself as a hero? Shall we not rather 
 praise him for being wise enough not to see a hero 
 before he appears ? 
 
 This exaltation of heroes this sycophantic homage 
 to great names repeated from generation to genera- 
 tion till they are depressing has become detrimental 
 to the best interests of humanity. It breeds habitual
 
 80 LITEEAEY HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 contempt in one class of people for the pursuits and 
 actions of another ; it tends to encourage the absurd 
 popular notion of some " coming man," who, in any 
 emergency, is expected to set things right ; it tends 
 to discourage the recognition and ready acceptance 
 of the fact that association, organization, and divi- 
 sion of labour, are the truest means that can be 
 adopted for the material and moral progress of man- 
 kind ; it praises the past at the expense of the pre- 
 sent ; in a word, it is an incubus upon civilization 
 itself.
 
 VI. 
 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 attainment of correct judgment on 
 men and things is proverbially a difficult 
 task. The readiest disposition to arrive 
 at a true issue concerning the simplest 
 event in every-day life is very frequently altogether 
 ineffectual. Some mental bias, unrecognized, per- 
 haps, by the sufferer himself, will have the effect 
 of shunting a man off the right track, and divert- 
 ing his mind from the solution which afterwards 
 he will clearly perceive was the true one. So com- 
 mon, indeed, are errors in judgment, that most men 
 admit their liability to them, and many even pride 
 themselves upon the readiness with which they avow 
 their mistake when it has been discovered. There 
 are directions, however, in which this admirable 
 temper is no longer manifested. A man, however 
 deferential he may be in other respects, is prone 
 
 G
 
 82 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 to esteem, as of highest trustworthiness, the opinion 
 he forms of the moral and intellectual qualities of 
 another. The conclusion at which he arrives 
 notoriously liable from its difficulties to be un- 
 founded is, however, precisely that on the correct- 
 ness of which he is most disposed to place reliance. 
 In whatever else he may be defective, he has a 
 knowledge of character. A knowledge of character, 
 just as a knowledge of politics and religion, comes, 
 he thinks, by nature; and he who runs may read. 
 In this respect he believes himself to be infallible. 
 He will take your measure whilst you stand. 
 
 There is some truth in this conceit. A man could 
 not, it is clear, get on without the occasional exercise 
 of discrimination, and some sort of reliance upon his 
 own capacity in judging. Without being an official at 
 the Mint, he knows he can tell a good shilling from 
 a counterfeit. He is, of course, sometimes right ; but 
 he is inclined to believe himself never wrong. In 
 other matters he does not display this excessive self- 
 confidence. Unless specially trained, he would not 
 pretend, for instance, to discuss the merits of a race- 
 horse; or to decide upon the authenticity of a doubt- 
 ful picture ; or to treat one of his friends afflicted 
 with some dangerous malady. Herein he would con- 
 fess his inability. But the slightest acquaintance with 
 his neighbour is sufficient for him to make himself
 
 FALSE STANDARDS. 83 
 
 familiar with the quality of his neighbour's intellect. 
 His penetration in this direction is as boundless as 
 that of the Duchess de la Ferte, who once confessed 
 to Madame de Stael, " It is strange, but I find nobody 
 " except myself always in the right." 
 
 What country linen-draper, or pot-house politi- 
 cian, when the merits of a statesman are discussed, 
 but will undertake to estimate his ability to a T ? 
 What young templar, as yet inexperienced in the 
 sensation derived from the touch of a confiding 
 client's handsel-guinea, but will exactly tell you the 
 capabilities and deficiencies of the several judges, as- 
 sign to each of them his relative merits at law and 
 equity, and supplement his information, if you will, 
 by cataloguing every silk gown according to its worth? 
 We might find examples of this arrogance in every 
 profession. In literature it is offensively prominent ; 
 but, whether he confesses it or not, almost every 
 human being fancies himself able to measure, if only 
 by rule of thumb, those with whom he is brought in 
 contact, or to whom he thinks it worth while to apply 
 his attention. Every one may be candid enough to 
 own his practical inferiority to him whom he thus un- 
 hesitatingly criticises. He is free to confess he cannot 
 write poems like A, or novels like B, or paint like C, 
 or lead the House of Commons like D ; yet, by some 
 peculiar process, inexplicable, I believe, even to him-
 
 84 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 self, he is firmly convinced that whatever judgment 
 he has formed of the intellectual rank of these per- 
 sons, and consequently of their performances, is in- 
 variably and unassailably correct. Indeed, the very 
 readiness with which he recognizes his own infe- 
 riority is an incentive to self-esteem, and tends to 
 make him set a higher value on the discrimination 
 he has exhibited in thus discovering their superiority 
 to himself. Strange as it may appear, he possesses a 
 sort of inner judgment which applauds the insight he 
 has displayed in the decision. His favourite axiom is 
 slightly varied from that of the elder Shandy's " An 
 " ounce of one man's judgment is worth a ton of other 
 " people's." 
 
 Notwithstanding this reliance commonly placed by 
 a man on his own judgment, innumerable instances 
 of false verdicts are well known. Some of these have 
 been pronounced by men from whom better things 
 were to be expected. We all remember Coleridge 
 meeting at table one of noble brow and sober demean- 
 our, and immediately concluding that his vis-a-vis was 
 a man of parts. Afterwards, when the gravely-com- 
 ported diner expressed his delight at the appearance 
 on the table of apple dumplings, he forfeited the good 
 opinion of the illustrious opium-eater, who thereupon 
 pronounced the man to be a fool. Can anything be 
 imagined more unjust ? Coleridge in both instances
 
 JUDGING FROM APPEARANCES. 85 
 
 judged on insufficient evidence ; and in both in- 
 stances he was undoubtedly wrong. In the first 
 place for judging a man to be wise from his outward 
 behaviour and personal appearance, and next for sud- 
 denly abandoning his first impression and considering 
 him a fool because he exhibited a liking for apple dump- 
 lings. In reality nothing had occurred by which the 
 man's intellect could be measured. From what had 
 happened only his taste could fairly be ascertained. 
 
 Such verdicts, however, founded, as this by Cole- 
 ridge was, on insufficient evidence, are the rule and 
 not the exception. Men are prone to form their judg- 
 ments of each other by the cut of their coat or the 
 fold of their shirt collar, and to gauge one's capacity 
 by the manner in which one enters a drawing-room 
 or carries one's head in the street. But such a test 
 is almost invariably found to be defective. The 
 mental and moral character of a man seldom exhibits 
 itself in such form. The external signs from which 
 the inference is drawn frequently depend in no de- 
 gree upon natural disposition, but upon habit i. e. 
 the external force to which a man has been subjected 
 or upon the position, perhaps accidental and only 
 temporary, he happened to occupy at the time when 
 the judgment was formed. I need not waste the page 
 by enumerating examples. You may to-morrow see 
 half a dozen guardsmen, all unhesitatingly bold
 
 86 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 fellows, all self-contained, all equally steady; yet 
 had you seen any one of them twelve months ago, 
 you would, probably, have seen a waddling, loutish 
 ploughboy, as indecisive in his movements as the most 
 timid country maiden when walking along the streets 
 on her first visit to London. Nor is this unsatisfac- 
 tory way of judging, followed only by ordinary men 
 and confined in its application to the concerns of 
 every-day life. It pervades our literature ; and the 
 recorded instances of men who have suffered from its 
 effects, are too numerous to be mentioned. Ex ungue 
 leonem appears to be the favourite maxim of an Eng- 
 lishman's criticism. 
 
 As we have seen, there is a general tendency to 
 make a man a hero for the successful exhibition of 
 some one desirable quality. If he has acquired cele- 
 brity as a poet, his opinion of a great-coat is likely to 
 be taken in preference to that of an unknown writer ; 
 or, if he is renowned as a general, his testimony con- 
 cerning a piano-forte is more highly prized than that 
 of an obscure subaltern, although the latter may be a 
 connoisseur in musical instruments, and the general 
 be ignorant of the difference between a bassoon and 
 a cornet-a-pistons. So, for the possession of some 
 undesirable quality, or the absence of what is con- 
 ceived to be an element of greatness, there is a 
 disposition to credit him with being a fool. Such
 
 ILLEGITIMATE CONCLUSIONS. 87 
 
 inferences are usually erroneous. On the other 
 hand, there are occasions when the process this 
 drawing a general conclusion from a partial examina- 
 tion may, to some extent, be legitimately employed. 
 If, for instance, a friend assured us of his belief that 
 twice seven makes fifteen, we want no further proof 
 of his ignorance of figures, but are justified in saying 
 he is no arithmetician. It would, however, be very 
 unfair were we to infer anything more. If, again, 
 our friend confessed he derived pleasure from the 
 discourses of Boanerges, all we could legitimately 
 conclude would be that he was deficient in good taste ; 
 or, if he thought his tailor an authority in political 
 economy, that his political education had been neg- 
 lected. A man may like Boanerges, and be a first- 
 rate cook, and he may admire his tailor, and yet be 
 an excellent market-gardener. A certain portion of 
 the public, however, and their representatives in the 
 press, do not acknowledge this limitation. 
 
 I recollect, some years ago, a member of Parlia- 
 ment for one of the metropolitan boroughs made a 
 sad slip in his history. Honourable gentlemen smiled 
 at the error, as was natural. But outside of the 
 House the blunder became a matter of serious im- 
 portance to the unfortunate member. Mr. Punch, 
 especially, was very severe upon him. That gentle- 
 man (who himself, probably, would have failed to
 
 88 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 answer five out of every nine historical questions 
 that one might easily put to him) reminded us week 
 after week of the gravity of the offence. From this 
 lapsus linguae he deduced that the unlucky culprit 
 was I won't say a pickpocket but almost anything 
 as bad.; and whenever, under emergencies, fun was 
 wanted, he took down his telescope, peered into it the 
 wrong way, and then proceeded to give us his repre- 
 sentation of the member for Finsbury with his queer 
 notions of English history. 
 
 We must look to the same source for this undue 
 appreciation as for the undue exaltation mentioned in 
 the last chapter. Men instinctively like the exercise 
 of power, especially in intellectual subjects ; and, 
 having in their nature a fixed amount of praise and 
 blame, they must expend it with risk of consequences. 
 Most frequently they do this capriciously, or are 
 guided in making their decision by some accidental 
 fact ; but they must expend it, and it is fortunate for 
 him who wishes to earn their applause if some lucky 
 accident should occur to dispose them in his favour. 
 It is proverbial that human nature, after too highly 
 praising a man, revolts against its own verdict, ignores 
 its favourite, and in time comes to depreciate him in 
 the proportion it previously exalted him. Examples 
 in our literary history will occur to everybody. The 
 popular treatment of Byron is a case in point. In-
 
 LITERARY VERDICTS. 89 
 
 stead, however, of depreciating the idol they have set 
 up, it occasionally happens that men console them- 
 selves with vilifying some would-be idol that comes 
 before them. But whether exercised upon one 
 person or upon two, this duality of passion co-ex- 
 isting simultaneously at all times must inevitably 
 be expended. It happens, however, that, instead of 
 applying the wrong end of the telescope at one time 
 to one man and the right end at another, they content 
 themselves with directing the right end towards the 
 one man and the wrong to another. In the latter case 
 their feelings of praise and blame are excited and 
 exhibited contemporaneously. 
 
 One might fancy there is no room in literary 
 matters for the display of these feelings ; but litera- 
 ture here, as in most other respects^ is a faithful 
 reflex of the society in which it is produced and to 
 which it is addressed : and the way in which literary 
 verdicts are returned is notoriously and disgracefully 
 wrong. The cardinal fault seems to be that of esti- 
 mating a writer and ranking him according to the idea 
 formed of him as a man ; or, if he is dead, from what 
 his contemporaries said of him personally whilst he was 
 alive. This judging an author from the man, or, what 
 is as unjust, the judging the man from the supposed 
 revelations of himself in his works, is obviously a defec- 
 tive way of judging. Few men are the same in books
 
 90 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 as they are in conversation. A friend of the late John 
 Stirling tells me that promising author's works are 
 infinitely inferior to his conversation, and we, there- 
 fore, who are acquainted with him only through his 
 published writings, are surprised to find so much 
 said of him, and so high a rank assigned to him by 
 those to whom he was intimately known. His 
 physical debility and want of robust temperament 
 stood in the way of his performance. The younger 
 Hallam will readily occur to the reader as another, 
 who, like Sterling, was greater in capacity than in 
 energy. The clear insight of these men, known to 
 friends, was conspicuously absent in their books. On 
 the other hand, excellent literary performance does 
 not insure adequate recognition of merit when^per- 
 sonal greatness is absent. If, for example, one man's 
 writings were ever superior to another's in wisdom 
 and in form, in intellect and in art, they are those of 
 Goldsmith to what were produced by Johnson. And 
 yet what is the result? We know the one was 
 through life and the echo of that eighteenth-cen- 
 tury applause still lingers in our ears universally 
 regarded as Dr. Minor, whilst the other, seen through 
 the right end of the telescope, was everywhere hailed 
 as Dr. Major. The idea men formed of Goldsmith's 
 work was perhaps insensibly influenced by what they 
 had heard or knew of Goldsmith's life. Volatility
 
 PRECEPT AND PRACTICE. 91 
 
 or stupidity being considered to be the mark of a 
 fool, it is thought the volatile man, or the stupid man, 
 must manifest himself in all he undertakes, and that 
 his peculiar failings and virtues will unconsciously 
 betray themselves in his writings. The public look 
 for homogeneity in a man, and consistency between 
 his character and opinions. They conceive it pos- 
 sible, not only to determine a man's mental ability 
 from his deportment, but to infer his moral character 
 from his literary productions. They will not see 
 that the literary character and the personal character 
 may be antipodal, and should be judged apart. A 
 man must practise what he preaches, or his gospel 
 will be disbelieved and his sincerity questioned as 
 well by the upper vulgar as by the lower. This 
 was so well known to Steele, that, upon relinquish- 
 ing the publication of the Tatler, he gave as the 
 true cause for the discontinuance of its publication, 
 the discovery by the public of its author. " I con- 
 sidered," said he, on taking leave of his readers, 
 " that severity of manners is absolutely necessary 
 " to him who would censure others ; and for that 
 " reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask." 
 Steele might have discontinued his publication from 
 prudential motives ; but in recognizing the illogical 
 disposition of his readers, he appears to have himself 
 acted illogically. The public he addressed resemble
 
 92 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 those ladies who fear tobeintroduced to their favourite 
 author, lest a personal knowledge of the man may 
 spoil the high opinion they have formed of his works. 
 They would probably consider a man insincere who 
 argued against drunkenness, whilst he himself was 
 a confirmed drunkard, and fancy what he said to be 
 less true than if uttered by a teetotaller. 
 
 A man's nature is composed of so many various 
 and often conflicting elements, that it is impossible 
 to deduce his true character from the revelation of a 
 single phase. We shall be puzzled to discover 
 which is the predominant that colours and modifies 
 the rest. The popular mind, shared in to a great 
 degree by men of letters, is disposed to infer a 
 man's character, not from his ordinary action and 
 every-day conduct, but from some unusual and ex- 
 traordinary exhibition, altogether at variance with 
 his usual behaviour. If he exhibits himself in some 
 exceptional way, it is supposed that thereby he has 
 shown his true nature. Should he once in a life- 
 time act in a manner contrary to his usual custom 
 treat his neighbour ungenerously, or behave meanly 
 his friends at once, and with no further evidence in 
 support of their view, conclude that they obtain 
 a glimpse of his true character, when in reality he 
 was only acting under altered circumstances. The 
 discordancy which results from his nature meeting
 
 BOOKS NOT A TRUE CRITERION. 93 
 
 the unfamiliar conditions, and unsuccessfully at- 
 tempting to adjust itself, is only temporary ; but it 
 is taken to be indicative of the whole man a particu- 
 lar circumstance is thus regarded as the index of a 
 complete nature. 
 
 Books are even a less safe criterion than excep- 
 tional variation in conduct. In works produced by the 
 exercise of the art-faculty, the author displays only 
 his intellectual power, and sometimes merely the aes- 
 thetic side of it. In proportion as he progresses as 
 an artist will he be enabled skilfully to conceal even 
 this from his reader. If his sympathy is wide and 
 deep, and easily aroused, he can portray what is 
 foreign to him with as much accuracy as if he were 
 describing his individual nature. His greatness and 
 his success will, indeed, be in the ratio of the ability 
 he possesses to make his representations strictly 
 objective. Accurate resemblance, then, between the 
 man and his book is missing. Intellectual sincerity 
 is exhibited ; but we search in vain for that conform- 
 ity between practice and precept which we have 
 been usually taught to expect. In forming our esti- 
 mate of a man's character, were we strictly to confine 
 ourselves to a consideration of his literary produc- 
 tions, we should be under the necessity of re-writing 
 the lives of most of our great authors. Luckily, ex- 
 ternal materials exist which enable us to gain a much
 
 94 ON TAKING A MAN'S MEASURE. 
 
 more trustworthy portraiture of them, than it is pos- 
 sible to obtain from their works. Horace wrote 
 verses we esteem licentious ; and the author of " The 
 " Christian Hero" produced a work in which the vir- 
 tues are admirably set before us in their true light. 
 Did we know no more of these worthies than is to be 
 derived from their several productions, our opinion 
 of the two men would, I presume, be different from 
 what it is now. We find that the little Roman 
 satirist, although he had a big paunch, and his hair 
 was grey before its time, was no roue, and was the 
 last man to go out at midnight and whistle at the 
 door of a deceitful mistress. Nor, unhappily, was 
 the author of "The Christian Hero" a perfect 
 model of the virtues he sets up in that work for our 
 imitation. We cannot take the measure of either by 
 what he himself has furnished. In the case of 
 Horace, all that we can safely infer is, that he writes 
 as if he were what he pretends to be ; and, in the 
 case of Steele, that he aspired to what he was unable 
 to be. 
 
 I conclude, then, that a clear and broad distinc- 
 tion should be made in any estimate we have to form 
 of a man, between his life and his opinions. If I 
 have to criticise a book, it does not concern me what 
 its author was. I have to do with his precepts, and 
 not with his practice. If he has aided my culture,
 
 DISTINCTIONS TO BE OBSERVED. 95 
 
 and given me advanced views of life which he him- 
 self was unhappily unable to exemplify in his own 
 person, my thanks are equally due to him for the 
 benefit and the discovery; and I credit him with 
 being a wise man. If, on the other hand, I concern 
 myself about his life, my estimate should not be 
 modified by the value of what he has produced. If 
 he was a bad man, I must not ignore or extenuate 
 his faults because his works are of highest excellence. 
 The Ayrshire ploughman was a very great poet, but 
 a very unwise man. Goethe was a very wise man, 
 but a very mean artist.
 
 vn. 
 
 THE MEDIAEVAL MAN OF LETTERS, 
 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 |N May, A.D. 1176, shortly before Whit- 
 suntide, the canons of St. David's hur- 
 riedly assembled in their cathedral for 
 the purpose of nominating a successor 
 to their diocesan, David Fitz-Gerald, who had just 
 died. Entering the Chapter-house, they proceeded 
 to their deliberations with bolted doors ; and, after 
 long and anxious debate, unanimously fixed on Ge- 
 rald de Barri, nephew to the late bishop, a young 
 man who had not yet completed his twenty-ninth 
 year, as their nominee to the vacant see. Thereupon 
 the conference came to an end ; the doors of the 
 Chapter-house were flung open ; and the Te Deum, 
 that had been raised, was greedily caught up by the 
 impatient crowd without. 
 
 The reason for this secresy, and for this selection, 
 may be stated in a few words. From the days of its
 
 THE SEE OF ST. DAVID'S. 97 
 
 patron Saint to the time when, by the settlement of 
 Normans in South Wales, the way was prepared for 
 the introduction of foreigners into Welsh sees, St. 
 David's had been in possession of archiepiscopal pri- 
 vileges. It was the Holy Sepulchre of Wales. Two 
 visits to its shrine were esteemed as efficacious as 
 
 one to Rome itself: 
 
 " Roma semel quantum, 
 Bis dat Menevia tantum." 
 
 Its privileges had now been lost ; the see was 
 included in the province of Canterbury, and every 
 attempt made by the Welsh to regain ecclesiastical 
 independence had signally failed. The clergy at the 
 commencement of the turbulent reign of Henry II. 
 had conceived hope of freeing themselves from cano- 
 nical subjection to England. But Henry was too 
 politic to be a voluntary party to their design. Nor 
 was he to be moved to their purpose by persuasion, 
 or by entreaty, or by money : " As long as I live," 
 said he, " I will never furnish a head for rebellion in 
 Wales by giving the Welsh a metropolitan." He 
 well knew that the first Norman kings in subjugat- 
 ing Wales had failed to subdue it ; that its people 
 threw off the yoke and carried devastation into the 
 English borders; that the severest measures of re- 
 pression devised had been ineffectual against them ; 
 and that every effort made to check rebellion by 
 
 H
 
 98 GIR ALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 opposing chieftain to chieftain had been utterly un- 
 successful. He decided, therefore, upon adopting 
 measures of a different nature from what had hitherto 
 been pursued. He resolved to rule Wales not by 
 its chieftains, but by its clergy ; not Welshmen, but 
 Normans, should be appointed to the various sees ; 
 not patriots, but courtiers, should be the means of 
 all promotion. In pursuance of this design he was 
 inexorable; to the highest ecclesiastical posts he 
 advanced men whose interests were widely or alto- 
 gether distinct from those of the people, and who 
 were totally unfitted by birth, education, and incli- 
 nation for the duties that belonged to their high 
 office. From Henry, then, it was hopeless to expect 
 a concession of metropolitan privilege to St. David's. 
 But the clergy did not therefore despair. Disap- 
 pointed in their hope of obtaining a metropolitan in 
 name, what was to prevent their having for a bishop 
 one who would be a metropolitan in effect one who, 
 by reason of his princely lineage, extensive and pro- 
 found learning, undoubted talents, and tried courage, 
 should be able successfully to cope with the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ? Their scheme seemed not 
 impracticable ; the man who, above every other, was 
 thought to possess the requisite qualifications, was at 
 hand ; all they waited for was fit occasion to put into 
 execution their well-pondered project. At length
 
 BORN IN PEMBROKESHIRE. 99 
 
 the much-coveted opportunity came. Bishop Fitz- 
 Gerald died ; and the Chapter at once, and unhesi- 
 tatingly, and without even apprising the king, or his 
 justiciary, of the vacancy that had occurred, unani- 
 mously elected Gerald de Barri to fill the see of St. 
 David's. 
 
 The bishop-elect sometimes termed Giraldus 
 Sylvester, but best known to us by his literary 
 title, GIKALDUS CAMBRENSIS was undoubtedly 
 one of the foremost men of the twelfth century. 
 Thierry ranks him with Thomas Becket; and to no 
 one who has made himself acquainted with the par- 
 ticulars of his strange career will that position seem 
 too elevated. His undaunted self-assertion and 
 determined perseverance ; his unwearied industry, 
 activity, and energy of character ; his many romantic 
 adventures ; his numerous and varied literary pro- 
 ductions; and, above all, the disappointments he 
 experienced during a long and eventful life, made 
 him a remarkable man in the eyes of his contempo- 
 raries ; and the interest with which his life and career 
 were regarded by them has not ceased even now, but 
 increases year by year as his motives become more 
 apparent, and a more thorough acquaintance is formed 
 with his works. He is the best representative of a 
 mediaeval man of letters. 
 
 Giraldus was a native of Pembrokeshire, where he
 
 100 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 first saw the light in the year 1147. But it happens 
 that although he was born in Wales, and styled him- 
 self " Cambrensis," he cannot with rigorous accuracy 
 be considered a Welshman. The stranger, who, to- 
 day, traverses the principality, and finds with sur- 
 prise at its furthest extremity a district inhabited by 
 a people whose vernacular is English, would have 
 found there much the same phenomenon in the 
 middle of the 12th century ; he would have found, as 
 he will still find, that if speaking generally a line 
 were drawn from east to west through the centre of 
 Pembrokeshire, it would divide that county into 
 two totally distinct regions ; he would have found on 
 the north of this line a people speaking the Welsh 
 language, and having the well-defined characteristics 
 of the Welsh race, whereas on the south the inha- 
 bitants would be unable to speak a word of that 
 language, and would possess a physiognomy that 
 proclaimed them to be of a different race from that 
 of their neighbours in the hill-country ; he would 
 have found, in fine, on the one side, sons of the soil, 
 and, on the other, a mixed population of foreigners. 
 These latter, again, he Avould have discovered were 
 composed partly of Anglo-Normans, who, soon after 
 the Conquest, had subjugated that portion of the 
 country, and partly of colonists from Flanders, who 
 had been planted among them " to be a barrier and
 
 HIS FAMILY. 101 
 
 " an assistance " against their restless and watchful 
 foes the Welsh. 
 
 It was on the south of this line, then, in the dis- 
 trict spoken of, even in his time, as Anglia Trans- 
 wallia, that Giraldus was born the exact place being 
 the Castle of Manorbeer, at that time, as at the pre- 
 sent day, one of the most picturesque spots in Britain. 
 By birth he was fortunate. His family were people 
 of exalted rank, and exercised considerable influence, 
 as well at the remote English court as over the affairs 
 of the district in which they resided. His father, 
 William de Barri, was a Norman Baron, and enjoyed 
 the favour of the English monarch ; by his mother, 
 who was the descendant, through the famous Lady 
 Nesta, of Rhys-ap-Tewdwr, he was closely allied to 
 the Welsh princes ; the see of St. David's was held 
 by his uncle ; the line of the De Barri, with their 
 direct and indirect kindred, were the chief instru- 
 ments in the conquest of Ireland under Strongbow. 
 Favoured by such circumstances, it will create no 
 surprise to find that he aspired to play a conspicuous 
 part of the transactions of his time. But the direc- 
 tion towards which his aspirations tended was not 
 perhaps what will be very generally anticipated ; for 
 he resolved, at an early age, upon entering the 
 Church. Even as a child he showed a decided pre- 
 dilection for the ecclesiastical profession. The castle
 
 102 GIEALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 of Manorbeer is on the coast ; within a stone's throw 
 is the Irish Sea, and on its shore the young De 
 Barri, whenever they could escape from the mono- 
 tony that reigned within the castle walls, were in the 
 habit of amusing themselves. Here each of the 
 boys manifested his peculiar bent. The two elder, 
 we are told, were accustomed to construct mimic 
 forts and castles in the sand, but Giraldus, it was 
 observed, invariably amused himself with the erec- 
 tion of churches and monasteries. His father, who 
 appears to have been a man of judicious and good 
 understanding, perceiving, by this and other indica- 
 tions, the inclination manifested by his youngest son, 
 was delighted at the boy's disposition, and partly 
 in joke, partly no doubt with a belief the prediction 
 was not unlikely to be fulfilled used to style him 
 " The little bishop." To regard ecclesiastical bene- 
 fices as hereditary property had become fashionable 
 in Wales; why then should the great preferment 
 held by the family pass away into the hands of stran- 
 gers? Why should it not be retained by a De 
 Barri? His three other sons would embrace the 
 profession of arms Giraldus should be spared to 
 the Church. The desire was not beyond the possi- 
 bility of accomplishment. The boy was accordingly 
 removed from the wild rocks, and hazel groves, and 
 fishponds, and dovecots, of his childhood, and trans-
 
 EDUCATED FOR THE CHURCH. 103 
 
 ferred to the care of his uncle, the prelate, who 
 readily undertook the superintendence of his edu- 
 cation. At first the young noble was slow at learn- 
 ing; and, subsequently, more than once, according 
 to his own confession, he exhibited decided incli- 
 nation wholly to abandon the pursuit upon which 
 he had entered, and to follow that which the heat of 
 the Crusades, and the restless spirit of the times, 
 pointed out as more suitable for a youth of his high 
 degree. But these indecisive fits were only temporary. 
 Encouraged by the bishop (just as we might suppose 
 an uncle in our own day, who has rich livings in his 
 gift, would be likely to encourage his nephew) and 
 reprimanded for his idleness by the episcopal chap- 
 lains, he afterwards applied himself with so much 
 diligence, that, when he left his uncle's roof, he had 
 mastered all his instructors could teach him, and had 
 surpassed most of his contemporaries in the learning 
 of his time. 
 
 Paris was then emphatically " the city of letters." 
 It was the first and greatest of universities. Students 
 flocked thither from all parts of Christendom ; its 
 schools furnished opportunities of forming friendships 
 that could not have been formed elsewhere ; and if 
 any of its students became famous in after life, they 
 were almost sure of being known personally to the 
 rest of their famous contemporaries. Its professors
 
 104 GIRALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 were of European reputation, and often excited en- 
 thusiasm in their hearers equal to what we ourselves 
 have seen excited by Cousin or Villemain. What was 
 published from the chairs, moreover, had a circulation 
 more immediate and quite as extensive as that which 
 the printing press is able to afford for it included the 
 whole of the learned world. It was to Paris, there- 
 fore, that Giraldus repaired, after leaving his uncle, 
 to pursue those higher branches of study for which 
 it seems his own country afforded no facilities. He 
 tells us that he placed himself under the most effi- 
 cient teachers, and he appears to have been a very 
 assiduous student, and to have made rapid progress 
 in theology, philosophy, and the canon law for he 
 obtained great reputation as a lecturer. Of his three 
 years' residence in Paris we know little. When, 
 about A. r>. 1172, he returned to this country, he was 
 a young man of twenty-five years. With a hand- 
 some person, a tall and commanding presence, of 
 high rank, and possessed of all the learning and 
 accomplishments of his time, he could well hope, had 
 he chosen, to make no mean figure in the profession 
 of arms, and to achieve conquests in a field generally 
 far more agreeable to one of his age than any in the 
 domain of theology. But he had now fully and 
 definitely determined upon the profession he would 
 follow. He would be a soldier, it is true, but it
 
 EFFECT OF THE MURDER OF BECKET. 105 
 
 should be a soldier in the army of the Church Mili- 
 tant ; he would make conquests, too, but they should 
 be in and for the Church alone. To an ambitious 
 man with less resolution or to a resolute man with 
 less ambition than he possessed, the Church would, 
 at that moment, have offered little inducement. It 
 was passing through a great crisis. It was engaged 
 in a struggle, wherein, in the person of its chief 
 champion, it had received a deep wound. 
 
 The blood of Thomas Becket had just been shed 
 on the altar at Canterbury, and the foul act was 
 regarded by all friends of the Church as one of a 
 series of measures that were designed to be enforced 
 for the reduction of the power and pretensions of 
 the clergy. The astonishment of all Europe at the 
 audacity of the crime which had been perpetrated 
 by barbarous nobles, at the suggestion of a barbarous 
 king, had not yet subsided ; and upon the mind of 
 a young man just about to be ordained the fatal 
 incident must have made deep impression, and sug- 
 gested the expediency of reconsidering his determi- 
 nation. Giraldus, however, did not pause. Besides, 
 even had he been inclined to sacrifice his own hope, 
 was he prepared to disappoint the expectations of 
 relatives and friends, who, from his childhood, had 
 been accustomed to look upon him as their future 
 bishop? No; it could not be thought of; it was
 
 106 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 plainly incumbent upon him to endeavour to fulfil at 
 once their hope and his own desire. He took orders, 
 therefore ; and, as might be expected, at once ob- 
 tained considerable pieferment. But he was not 
 content with a fixed locality. His active mind could 
 not rest within the narrow limits of a parish or 
 monastery. In anticipation he already regarded 
 St. David's as his, and, like a man who is heir pre- 
 sumptive to some rich inheritance which through 
 long neglect had fallen into disorder, he was anxious 
 to redress the abuses of the diocese against the time 
 when he himself should succeed to its control. And 
 these abuses were then many and great. The clergy, 
 he observed, amongst other irregularities of which 
 they were guilty, for the most part married ; sons, 
 on the death of their fathers, succeeded to livings 
 not by election, but by inheritance ; and " if a bishop 
 " attempted to institute a stranger, the whole family 
 " were up in arms against institutor and instituted." 
 The laity, too, were troublesome. The people of 
 Pembroke and Cardigan refused tithe of wool and 
 cheese, and the Flemings had even been able to 
 procure from the king exemption from archiepiscopal 
 jurisdiction. Giraldus, resolved to repress such 
 enormities, with much indignation betook himself to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, at that time Legate 
 of the Holy See, and directed his attention to the
 
 APPOINTED LEGATE FOR WALES. 107 
 
 scandalous proceedings. The archbishop, delighted, 
 it appears, with the zeal of the young churchman, 
 sends him back into Wales armed with the legatine 
 authority ad hos excessus et alios quos ibi invenerit 
 emendandos. 
 
 The new legate was not long idle. He first 
 applied himself to the refractory tithe-payers, whom 
 he soon succeeded in bringing to submission. No 
 man, however, is a prophet in his own country ; and 
 Pembrokeshire was not, and is not, in this respect 
 much in advance of the rest of the world. Whilst 
 Giraldus was discharging the duties of his office in the 
 Priory at Pembroke, the high sheriff to show con- 
 tempt for him and his authority insolently carried 
 off eight yoke of oxen belonging to the monastery, 
 and, on being required to restore them, added insult 
 to injury by threatening repetition of such ungracious 
 conduct. Giraldus, of all men the least likely to 
 submit to this unbecoming and outrageous behaviour, 
 menaced the offender with instant excommunication ; 
 but the sheriff laughed at the idea of the king's officer 
 being excommunicated in his own castle by a young 
 ecclesiastic, and showed no sign of repentance. 
 
 The legate, however, like his compatriot, Picton, 
 in after years, was one of those who, whenever they 
 threaten, mean to perform to the full, even if the per- 
 formance involve more serious consequences than were
 
 108 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 likely to follow from the act meditated by Giraldus. 
 Having thrice summoned the sheriff to restore his 
 plunder and thrice without effect he thereupon 
 convened the monks and clergy, and forthwith 
 solemnly executed sentence of excommunication 
 against William Karquit, high sheriff of Pembroke. 
 His bravery, on this occasion, was rewarded as it 
 deserved to be. On the day following, conscious of 
 his success, he left Pembroke, and took himself off 
 across country to Llawaden Castle, one of the seats 
 of his uncle the prelate, overhanging the Eastern 
 Cleddy. Hither he was followed by the crestfallen 
 and repentant culprit, who, now making humble sub- 
 mission to Giraldus and restoring the plunder, was 
 birched ; and then and not till then received the 
 absolution for which he had come. Next came the 
 turn of the clergy. As he had selected one in high 
 authority to be an example for the obstinate laity, 
 so now the young commissioner resolved to choose 
 an equally suitable victim to be a warning for contu- 
 macious churchmen. There happened at the time to 
 be at Brecknock an aged archdeacon, who lived in 
 open concubinage ; that is to say, he had a wife 
 whom he refused to put away at the bidding of 
 Giraldus. Upon this the latter, finding that not only 
 were his advice and remonstrances vain, but that the 
 clerical old sinner ventured to defend the propriety
 
 MADE ARCHDEACON OF BRECKNOCK. 109 
 
 of his course of life, and presumed even to abuse 
 his adviser, resorted to means similar to what had 
 been found so effectual with the king's sheriff. He 
 unhesitatingly suspended the archdeacon, and after- 
 wards deprived him of his benefices. 
 
 When Giraldus, in A. D. 1175, resigned his extra- 
 ordinary powers into the hands of the archbishop, 
 the primate, in order to show approbation of the 
 manner in which the commission had been executed, 
 presented him with the preferment of the deposed 
 archdeacon. The new office afforded a wide field 
 for energetic exertion, and his activity knew no 
 bounds. He traversed the country in all directions 
 to make himself acquainted with existing abuses, and 
 then set himself to reform them. At one time the 
 Flemings troubled him, at another disputes among 
 the clergy engaged his attention ; but he was equal 
 to every emergency. This period of his life is an 
 example that may be followed with advantage. 
 Disregarding all personal discomforts, he spared 
 himself no inconveniences, but, on the contrary, fre- 
 quently incurred considerable risk from bad roads, 
 robbers, storms, swollen floods, and personal foes, in the 
 performance of the duties to which he had been called. 
 His zeal knew no bounds. The Church never had 
 a more vigorous champion to enforce her rights. He 
 was unwearied in rectifying abuses. In carrying out
 
 110 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 reforms he could not help making many enemies ; 
 but he always displayed a desire to conciliate when 
 conciliation appeared to be for the interest of justice. 
 His promotion to the archdeaconry entailed on him 
 many difficulties. One of the most formidable was 
 an attempt made by the Bishop of St. Asaph to 
 invade the rights of St. David's. A new church 
 erected on the borders of the diocese of St. Asaph 
 became the subject of dispute between the bishop of 
 that see and the chapter of St. David's. The pre- 
 late had determined on the following Sunday to 
 dedicate the church, and thus substantiate his claim. 
 But the archdeacon was not the man to be vanquished. 
 He goes to the church', orders the bells to be rung in 
 token of investiture, celebrates mass, and then, having 
 left his retinue in the church to keep it and bolt 
 the doors, he sallies forth and meets the bishop, who 
 has just arrived to find himself out-manoeuvred. 
 Then there was an ecclesiastical battle, as acrimo- 
 nious almost as any that have been fought in our 
 own day. The bishop threatened to excommunicate 
 the archdeacon ; but Giraldus, having commanded 
 the priests and the clergy, whom beforehand he had 
 attired in their stoles and surplices, to come forth from 
 the church with cross and lighted candles, suddenly 
 faced the bishop, and solemnly excommunicated all the 
 enemies of St. Asaph. The bishop and his attendants
 
 ELECTED BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S. Ill 
 
 thereupon mounted their horses and fled, pursued and 
 pelted by the rustics, who had mustered in crowds 
 to witness the strange ecclesiastical encounter. 
 
 It was in the midst of such conspicuous and suc- 
 cessful services to St. David's as these that his uncle 
 Fitz-Gerald died, and the choice of the canons called 
 him, as we have seen, to fill the vacant see. 
 
 This event was the crisis in his life the grand 
 object of his existence. To this his whole previous 
 efforts had been directed, and from this his whole 
 future exertions were to take their colouring. Giral- 
 dus, as I have said, was unanimously elected. Here, 
 then, and at an age when he was yet capable of en- 
 joying the realization of his ambition, he was so for- 
 tunate as to complete it. The predictions of his 
 family and the high hopes of friends were fulfilled, 
 and fulfilled so soon, so easily, and so much as a 
 matter of course, as scarcely to be even credited. The 
 expeditiousness of the transformation, and the very 
 simplicity of the process that converted him from an 
 archdeacon to a bishop, seemed to one of his tem- 
 perament to be cause for alarm. At the time of the 
 election he was at St. David's, and that same night 
 he began to survey his position. To his calmer 
 judgment the act of the chapter appeared to be too 
 precipitate ; the royal assent to the nomination had 
 not been obtained ; the whole proceeding would be
 
 112 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 regarded as an insult to the royal dignity. Influenced 
 by this consideration, he resolved on the following 
 morning to renounce the election. But he was too 
 late, for the king had heard from another source of 
 what had happened. Henry, as we know, was not a 
 man of amiable disposition, and any attempt to out- 
 wit him he was not inclined to tolerate. He dreaded 
 in Giraldus another Thomas Becket. He was very 
 wroth (multum excanduit, says the bishop elect), and 
 vowed vengeance against all concerned. As for the 
 nomination he could not think of accepting it. Giral- 
 dus, it is true, was well fitted by learning, zeal, and 
 irreproachably good character for the episcopal chair. 
 He fulfilled the principal requirement exacted by the 
 early Norman kings, who, in the distribution of eccle- 
 siastical preferment, were well aware of the strength 
 to be derived from a clergy attached to them by a 
 community of interests he was Norman. But, alas ! 
 he was also Welsh ; connected by marriage with the 
 Welsh princes ; by birth a De Barri ; of an ambi- 
 tious stock altogether. Henry asks advice of the 
 bishops ; they unanimously urge the nomination of 
 Giraldus : but the king, who secretly betrayed his 
 fear, is of a different opinion. After silently and 
 patiently listening to all that was said, he rejects their 
 counsel, and swears he would banish every one who 
 had taken part in the matter. " As they have allowed
 
 RETIRES IN DISGUST. 113 
 
 " me no share in the election, I will take care they 
 " shall have no part in the promotion." No sooner 
 had the chapter of St. David's learnt the result of 
 their unlucky act than they repented ; and, to save 
 their livings and avert the king's anger, professed 
 profound sorrow for their presumption, promising 
 meekly to accept whomsoever the king liked. Giral- 
 dus held his peace, and only that he secretly urged, 
 first the papal legate, and then the archbishop, to use 
 his influence that the appointment should be conferred 
 on a man of good character, and acquainted with the 
 language and habits of the people over whom he was 
 called to preside took no part in what was being 
 done. At length Peter de Leia, " a certain black 
 " monk of the Cluniac order," and Prior of Wenlock, 
 whom the canons had never seen, and whose name 
 only they knew, was elected in the presence of the 
 king at Winchester ; and Giraldus, finding by ex- 
 perience that his exhortations to support the inde- 
 pendence of St. David's and evade the oath of sub- 
 jection to the archbishop, were altogether lost upon 
 the new bishop, collected his books, and set out in 
 disgust for Paris, to devote himself assiduously to the 
 study of the Imperial Constitutions and the Decretal. 
 We know little of him at this period of his career. It 
 appears that, like Thomas Becket, he intended to have 
 completed his studies at Bologna; but the design 
 
 I
 
 114 GIRALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 was unromantically frustrated : for finding his remit- 
 tances irregular, and pressed by numerous creditors, 
 lie abandoned his intention, and, regardless of the 
 danger he incurred, after an absence of several years 
 returned to England. This was about A. D. 1180. 
 He at once hastened into Wales, where he found 
 things in a worse condition even than he had ex- 
 pected. Peter de Leia, fallen out with his clergy, had 
 deserted his post, leaving his diocese to take care of 
 itself. By the advice of the archbishop, prompted 
 probably by Giraldus, Peter was induced to nominate 
 the latter administrator during his absence of the 
 affairs of the see. But this friendly arrangement 
 was not of long continuance. The bishop, without 
 previous warning, having suspended certain of the 
 canons and archdeacons of St. David's, and refused 
 to revoke his sentence, Giraldus sided with the chap- 
 ter, and representing to the archbishop the illegality 
 of the proceeding, procured a reversal of the sentence. 
 He did more. Rejecting all attempts at reconcilia- 
 tion, he convened at St. David's a synod, and by his 
 influence was able to enforce restitution of all the 
 lands that had been alienated by the bishop, and to 
 annul the illegal interchanges that had been made 
 between the canons. He appears not to have lost 
 his influence with the king, for in the year 1 184 he 
 was nominated king's chaplain, and invited to court ;
 
 HIS INFLUENCE AT COURT. 115 
 
 and when the expedition to Ireland was planned, he 
 was selected as the companion and counsellor of 
 Prince John. Afterwards, in 1188, when Henry 
 assumed the cross at Gisors, he accompanied Baldwin 
 and Ranulph de Glanville, the justiciary, into Wales 
 his presence being thought a guarantee of the good 
 faith of England. His services, successfully exerted 
 in these offices, should undoubtedly have procured 
 for him the object of his desire ; the death of the 
 king in the next year, however, dissipated hope of such 
 reward. When the event occurred Giraldus was in 
 France, whence he was sent into Wales, to prevent, 
 by his personal influence, any disturbance that might 
 arise from the change. But the reward for which 
 he thirsted, and which would not have been too great 
 for the eminent services he had rendered the English 
 crown, did not come. He had, it is true, been of- 
 fered an archbishopric in Ireland, and through the 
 interest of his former pupil, Prince John, Bangor and 
 Llandaff were afterwards proposed for his acceptance. 
 All these, however, he refused, there being no station 
 or office he coveted save one. In July, 1198, Peter 
 de Leia died, and there seemed another chance of his 
 obtaining this. The chapter of St. David's, thinking 
 perhaps that Richard would be more tractable than 
 his father, had the courage once more to nominate 
 the great champion of their see. Giraldus expressed
 
 116 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 no desire for the honour, and disregarded for a 
 long time the solicitations and importunities of his 
 friends. At length he consented, the chapter having 
 previously dispatched to Hubert, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and justiciary, their letters, in which Giraldus 
 was nominated. Hubert, however, who had de- 
 signed the see for one of his friends, refused to accept 
 the nomination. Then commenced a long and acri- 
 monious struggle which lasted for years. Giraldus, 
 now that he had again embarked in the cause, was a 
 stubborn antagonist, and the canons held out man- 
 fully. Two of them hastened to Normandy to pre- 
 sent themselves to King Richard. That restless 
 sovereign was not to be found ; and when, after many 
 journeyings, they discovered his whereabouts, they 
 received at the same time intelligence of his death. 
 The new king, John, whom they met on their return, 
 heartily acknowledged the services of his former tutor 
 the archdeacon, and promised to ratify his appoint- 
 ment, and give them letters to the justiciary not to 
 molest the canons in their election. Giraldus, about, 
 at last, to gain his end, now transferred himself from 
 Lincoln, whither he had retired in ill humour, to St. 
 David's, and there, on the 29th of June, he was again 
 elected with great solemnity. 
 
 The new prelate was urged to ignore the preten- 
 sions of Canterbury, and to proceed to Home to be
 
 HIS APPEARANCE AT ROME. 117 
 
 consecrated by the sovereign pontiff himself. Mean- 
 while, however, the canons received a command to 
 elect as their bishop the prior of Lanthony, who 
 would, otherwise, be sent down to them already con- 
 secrated. This was enough. John's meanness was 
 apparent. Giraldus, who before was lukewarm, now 
 roused himself for the contest that was inevitable ; 
 and, taking hearty leave of his brother Philip, whom 
 he loved much, and to whom he constantly refers in 
 terms of endearment, resolved to go to Rome. Six 
 days before the expiration of the time allowed the 
 canons for making choice he set out on his journey, 
 and, skirting Flanders and Hainhault through Ar- 
 dennes, thence into Champagne and Burgundy, he 
 crossed the Alps, and, after many vicissitudinous ad- 
 ventures, arrived in Rome at the latter end of Novem- 
 ber. Alexander III, then pope, who received him 
 with much graciousness, gave him many friendly in- 
 terviews, and Giraldus was beginning to anticipate 
 successful issue from his mission, when a hitch oc- 
 curred. In the middle of December, a courier from 
 Canterbury brought letters containing the arch- 
 bishop's version of the dispute. Then commenced an 
 acrimonious contest. It was apparent that the suit 
 would be tedious. Giraldus seemed to make ground ; 
 but then, so did the agents of Canterbury. In the 
 person of Alexander the Church was complaisant to
 
 118 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 excess. She had received her eminent son and 
 champion with distinction. But pontifical media- 
 tion resulted, as usual, in her own triumph ; she fre- 
 quently sided with the weak, but never until she had 
 ascertained that the weak was about to become strong ; 
 she invariably awaited the crisis, being ever ready 
 to issue formal commissions on any disputed point, 
 but always delaying her decision till the question 
 had decided itself; she never refused to afford ac- 
 commodation, but only when accommodation was 
 not disadvantageous to her own pretensions. What 
 could the supreme pontiff do in this dispute ? To 
 oblige both parties he at length offered to refer the 
 election to a commission of the judges in England, 
 entrusting to Giraldus in the interim the adminis- 
 tration of the temporalities and spiritualities of the 
 see. The suit was wearisome and heartrending. 
 Giraldus incurred many dangers and made several 
 unsuccessful journeys to Eome. At last the dispute, 
 when it had reached almost the dimensions of rebel- 
 lion in Wales, was terminated by the pope quashing 
 the nomination of St. David's and of Canterbury, 
 leaving to either party to recommence it de novo. I 
 need not say that Giraldus was disinclined to renew 
 the contest. His struggle for the independence 
 of the see had failed, but not before all the powers 
 of Church and State had been brought to bear
 
 THE MEDIEVAL MAN OF LETTERS. 119 
 
 against him. He seems finally to have become re- 
 conciled to the king and the archbishop, and is said to 
 have ended his days in peace. The date of his death 
 is unknown. He himself tells us that in his seven- 
 tieth year he was engaged upon his treatise, " De 
 "Principis Instructione." He probably died soon after. 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the career of Giraldus 
 I have abridged from the admirable Introduction to 
 the works of this extraordinary man, now being edited 
 by Professor Brewer for the series of Chronicles and 
 Memorials published under the direction of the 
 Master of the Rolls. 
 
 The rewards of literature were as precarious, and 
 the fate of a man of letters often as lamentable in 
 the twelfth century as they are in the nineteenth. 
 Then, as now, effort frequently failed to secure for 
 an author the applause to which he believed himself 
 justly entitled ; and then, as now, the disappointed 
 aspirant was forced to console himself with visions of 
 posthumous fame to compensate contemporaneous 
 neglect. Of this, Giraldus Cambrensis is a conspi- 
 cuous example. He was a voluminous writer; his 
 works consisting of history, biography, topography, 
 poems, letters to eminent men, prefaces, dedications, 
 charges to his clergy, and works on divinity are of 
 cardinal importance to the student of our history ; he 
 confines his attention to what, from his position and
 
 120 G IE ALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 opportunities, he, of all men, was most competent to 
 undertake. The best picture of the state of society in 
 England during the latter half of the twelfth century- 
 is to be found in his pages. Yet his literary labours, 
 although properly estimated by the learned of his 
 time, were never crowned with adequate reward. To 
 his earliest production, the well-known " Topographia 
 " Hibernige," a result of his tour with Prince John, we 
 are indebted for all that is known of Ireland during 
 the whole of the middle ages. " It is," says Mr. 
 Brewer, " the solitary text book from which all 
 " writers in succession to the present day have 
 " derived their accounts of that country previous to 
 " its final conquest by England. It may be con- 
 " sidered as the prototype of those numerous pro- 
 " ductions which, under the different names of foreign 
 " scenes and incidents, personal recollections, sketches 
 " of different lands, have occupied so large and im- 
 "portant a space in the literature of Europe since 
 " the reformation." This famous work is divided by 
 the author into three books. In the first he gives 
 an account of the physical features of the island and 
 the history of its remarkable productions ;* the second 
 
 * As a specimen of the author's credulity, and of the state 
 of ornithological knowledge in his time, I give an extract : 
 " There are," he says, " in this country, a great number of
 
 TOPOGRAPHIA HIBERNI3E. 121 
 
 he devotes to the marvels of the land ; and in the 
 third he narrates the first peopling of Ireland, and 
 describes the manners, dress, and condition of the 
 inhabitants. " The History of the Conquest of 
 " Ireland,'' that followed the " Topographia," and 
 
 " birds called barnacles, and which nature produces in a manner 
 " that is contrary to the laws of nature. These birds are not 
 " unlike ducks, but are somewhat smaller in size. They make 
 "their first appearance as drops of gum upon the branches of 
 " firs that are immersed in running waters ; and then they are 
 " next seen hanging like sea-weed from the wood, becoming 
 " encased in shells, which at last assume in their growth the 
 "outward form of birds, and so hang on by their beaks until 
 " completely covered with feathers within their shells, and when 
 " they arrive at maturity, they either drop into the waters or take 
 " their flight at once into the air. Thus, from the juice of this 
 " tree, combined with the water, are they generated, and receive 
 " their nutriment until they are formed and fledged. Ihavemany 
 " times with my own eyes seen several thousand of minute little 
 " bodies of these birds attached to pieces of wood immersed in 
 " the sea, encased in their shells, and already formed. These, 
 " then, are birds that never lay eggs, and are never hatched from 
 " eggs ; and the consequence is, that in some parts of Ireland, 
 " and at those seasons of fasting when meat is forbidden, bishops 
 " and other religious persons feed on these birds, because they 
 " are not fish, nor to be regarded as flesh. And who can marvel 
 " that this should be so ? When our first parent was made of 
 " mud, can we be surprised that a bird should be born of a tree ?" 
 Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis. Bonn's Antiqua- 
 rian Librai-y.
 
 122 GIEALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 generally considered the most valuable of the author's 
 works, is a masterly production in every respect. 
 Judged even by the most advanced canons of criti- 
 cism, it is surpassed bjf no work of its kind in exist- 
 ence. Giraldus, closely allied to that heroic little 
 band by whom the eventful conquest had been 
 effected, and consequently impressed with a high 
 sense of the importance of his undertaking, had 
 opportunities of obtaining information at first hand, 
 which, with his acute habits of observation and his 
 clear judgment, he was so well able to turn to the 
 best account. The "Itinerariurn Cambria?," in which 
 he recorded his progress through Wales to preach 
 the third Crusade, and the " Descriptio Wallias," con- 
 taining most interesting particulars of the condition 
 of his native country in the twelfth century, are, in 
 their way, of equal value. In studying any of these 
 works, the reader is conscious that his author is a 
 man who thoroughly understands the subject about 
 which he is treating. Others may surpass him in 
 describing state pageantries and narrating minute 
 formalities of outside shows ; but in his pages we 
 see men free from the constraints of all pomps and 
 ceremonies. With him we feel ourselves under the 
 guidance of one, who, to the learning of a monk, added 
 the knowledge and acute intelligence of a man of the 
 world, without being himself a worldling; of one who
 
 HIS LITERARY ABILITY. 123 
 
 had not dissipated his years in the retirement and 
 amidst the routine of a monastery, but had made the 
 grand tour, so to speak, and had personal knowledge 
 of what he describes ; a real clear-headed, observant, 
 outspoken man ; one of ardent and impetuous nature, 
 it is true, but sensible withal ; judicious ; not too trust- 
 ful ; and, in everything he wrote, of the strictest 
 veracity. On the occasion of his completing his 
 " Topographia," Giraldus revived a practice pursued 
 in our own day to excess. A great feast was 
 given at Oxford, and the work was publicly read by 
 its author. The enthusiasm on all sides was great, and 
 among the numerous compliments paid to Giraldus, 
 Robert Beaufoy, a canon of Salisbury, composed an 
 " Encomium Topographise,'' and his friend and coun- 
 tryman, Walter Mape, addressed him in most eulo- 
 gistic terms. Contemporary criticism, however, was 
 not altogether of this pleasant nature. He had his 
 detractors as well as his admirers, and their attacks, 
 which he attributed to malignant jealousy, gave him 
 much pain. As frequently happens, too, he appears 
 to have suffered neglect as well as abuse ; for he 
 complains that his dedications of the "Topography " 
 to King Henry II, and of the " Conquest," to his 
 successor, were ungraciously received by both princes. 
 In these two works the Irish were painted in colours 
 that have endured. Giraldus describes them as being
 
 124 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 utterly barbarous ; ignorant of the rudest arts ; un- 
 skilled in the commonest form of agriculture ; idle 
 to an enormous degree ; quarrelsome ; and attached, 
 priests and people, to the excessive use of strong 
 drinks. In attributing to physical causes their im- 
 provident habits, he anticipates the conclusion of our 
 own time, when men have begun to see that the 
 great tide of emigration, ebbing and flowing under 
 their eyes, is as much the effect of physical causes as 
 are the rise and fall of the Atlantic ocean itself, and 
 that no legislative enactments will enable a country, 
 suitable only for pasture, to maintain so large a 
 population as if it were subject to agriculture. He was 
 the first to disparage the Irish character, and give 
 the people that unsavoury repute among their fellow- 
 subjects, from which they have not been able, in six 
 hundred years, to free themselves. He it is who 
 must be credited with having been the first to fashion 
 our current estimate of the nation ; and for this he 
 will never be forgiven. The " Topography " and 
 " Conquest" have been the objects of much abuse ever 
 since their appearance. As early as 1603, when Cam- 
 den first printed them, they met with a storm of dis- 
 approbation, which has not yet altogether ceased. An 
 Irishman, who styled himself Gratianus Lucius, but 
 who was in reality a Dr. Lynch, wrote a work, pub- 
 lished in 1662, in reply to what he terms the virulent
 
 GIEALDUS AND THE IRISH. 125 
 
 calumnies of Giraldus, and which, with singular 
 modesty, he entitles " Cambrensis Eversus." This 
 refutation has been issued in two volumes by the 
 Celtic Society, and the reader who enjoys a treat of 
 the sort, will find therein some of the most precious 
 bits of abuse that were ever penned, even by a 
 patriot. The doctor deals his blows with merciless 
 severity. He gives no quarter and asks for none. 
 Beginning with the title, he places Giraldus in a 
 dilemma. If he knew not that topography means a 
 description of any place whatsoever, and chorography, 
 which is the term he should have employed, a descrip- 
 tion of an extensive region, he was an ignorant pre- 
 tender to scholarship. If he did, and used the term 
 designedly, he was malicious, and insulted Ireland 
 by purposely and contemptuously classing her among 
 gardens, meadows, parks, and other places of confined 
 dimensions. But his dislike to the title of the work 
 is mild in comparison with the disgust he avows for 
 the work itself. He accuses Giraldus, " against whose 
 ff tongue heaven itself is no asylum," with being dis- 
 qualified in every possible respect for writing on Ire- 
 land, and charges him with being ignorant of geo- 
 graphy " the first rule of which is to proceed from 
 " west to north, and north to south." Besides, he was 
 not a native, and, being an enemy to the natives, he 
 was not the right man in the right place. He is, in a
 
 126 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 word, charged with every sin of commission and omis- 
 sion it is possible for an author to commit. When the 
 doctor becomes explicit he is extremely severe and 
 amusing. Every portion of the work under his re- 
 view is industriously abused ; but it is to the marvel- 
 lous stories in the second " distinctio," or book, that 
 he takes especial exception. Here he can speak from 
 personal knowledge, and consequently has his enemy 
 under disadvantage. When in the Munchausen vein 
 Giraldus tells, among other strange stories, of an island 
 in Connaught where dead bodies remained unburied 
 and were exempt from putrefaction. At this the 
 Irishman turns upon his adversary, shows that the 
 present state of the island does not agree with the 
 description, abuses him for his credulity, and con- 
 cludes with the avowal of his own opinion that Giral- 
 dus had mistaken Aran for Inisgluair, in which latter 
 place he candidly confesses bodies do not decay, 
 " but even the hair and nails grow, so that one would 
 " recognize his grandfather !" Again, Giraldus tells 
 
 o o o j 
 
 us it was reported that a controversy, whether Man 
 belonged to Britain or Ireland, was decided in the 
 following rather unusual way : Venomous reptiles 
 were brought there on trial, and these having been 
 found to live, the island was unanimously adjudged 
 to be the possession of Britain. Commenting on this 
 story, the Irish critic seriously complains, not of the
 
 UNFAIRLY CRITICISED. 127 
 
 credulity of Giraldus, but of bis disingenuousness in 
 concealing- tbe names of tbose who raised and con- 
 
 O 
 
 eluded the controversy, and for neglecting to give the 
 date of their adjudication. " The brand of infamy," 
 exclaims the doctor, " clings to him in his grave." He 
 considers the author's apology for introducing such 
 legends into his work equivalent to confession of guilt. 
 But what does Giraldus say ? " I do not desire," he 
 remarks, " that everything I write should be readily 
 " believed, for except what came under my own obser- 
 <e vation, or what could be easily ascertained, my own 
 " belief in my narrations is not fixed and unhesitating. 
 " I give them without myself pronouncing on their 
 " truth or falsehood." This candid confession is, one 
 would think, everything that could be expected from 
 the historian ; but it was unavailing with his patriotic 
 adversary. The feud between Giraldus and the 
 Irish, which has prevented the nation not only from 
 treating our author's memory with ordinary respect, 
 but even from seeing the most transparent merits in 
 his great works, is, I suspect, doomed to be eternal. 
 The " History of the Conquest of Ireland" is criticised 
 and abused much in the same manner, the doctor as- 
 suming that Ireland never was conquered, and thus 
 at the very outset disposing of the value of a treatise 
 which concerns itself about an event which did not 
 actually occur.
 
 128 G1EALDUS CAMBEENSIS. 
 
 These celebrated productions were frequently 
 copied by the mediaeval chroniclers, and were the 
 earliest of our author's works to be reproduced by 
 the printing press. Others, however, are perhaps 
 read with greater interest by some classes of students. 
 For the most part composed during a late period of 
 his life, they are of a biographical nature, and derive 
 their value from the true insight they give us into the 
 man, and the stirring times in which he flourished. 
 That entitled " De Rebus a se gestis " furnishing 
 an account of the author's career to about the fif- 
 tieth year of his age ; the " Invectionum Libellus," 
 undertaken by desire of Innocent III. as a reply by 
 Giraldus to calumnies brought against him by his 
 enemies in Rome ; the " Gemma Ecclesiastica," an 
 eloquent address to his clergy ; the " Symbolum 
 Electorum," containing his letters, poems, and 
 speeches, together with other writings bearing on the 
 great dispute between Canterbury and St. David's, 
 are all characterized at once by sound scholarship and 
 sound sense. In the composition of his works the 
 author sat down resolved and in this respect it were 
 well if all authors would imitate him to write about 
 what he of the men then living knew best. He gives 
 us an account of the life and opinions of one with 
 whom he was on most intimate terms; who was of 
 exalted station ; who had mixed on equality with
 
 SELF PORTRAITURE. 129 
 
 popes and princes; who was the bosom friend of 
 some of the most eminent men of the age ; who had 
 formed acquaintance with events, not by means of 
 uncertain echoes reaching him through the doors of 
 a remote monastery, but from opportunities that be- 
 longed only to one who was an active participator in 
 the strife and fascinating excitements of the time ; 
 who had visited court, camp, college, and cell, and 
 who was able to describe with masterly touches what 
 he had heard and seen and felt with unusual acute- 
 ness. Of the aims, and successes, and failures of 
 this man, who, I need not say, was the writer himself, 
 he presents us with an impartial account, detailing 
 the thoughts and the events of his life without reser- 
 vation, and with absolute frankness. It is for the 
 quality of ingenuousness and for the freedom he dis- 
 played in his communications I most value him. 
 Everything he has written is coloured by his own 
 personality. He despised the petty courtesies pre- 
 valent during his time, and was not ashamed to assert 
 himself in all his productions. He is the central 
 figure of each. I know no more agreeable reading, 
 even for those with whom reading is a mere habit, than 
 is to be found in the various works of Giraldus. He 
 practised every species of literature, and succeeded 
 in all. His historical books combine the excellen- 
 cies of Herodotus, Mandeville, Mr. Robert Curzon, 
 
 K
 
 130 GIEALDtTS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 and the "Arabian Nights ; " and the personal revela- 
 tions he has left us are as entertaining as those of 
 Mr. Samuel Pepys. Many a Joe Miller may be 
 traced to his pages, and many a clever story, attri- 
 buted to the invention of the Renaissance, will be 
 found to have been told by him three hundred years 
 before. The language he employs in each of his 
 works has the merit of being invariably suited to the 
 subject,and shows its author not only to have mastered 
 all the knowledge of his own time, but to have been 
 intimately acquainted with the best models of anti- 
 quity. Mr. Brewer, a good authority, does not think 
 his style purer than that of William Malmesbury, or 
 so pure as that of John Salisbury and there is no 
 doubt that his writings are sometimes disfigured with 
 quips, and cranks, and puns, and alliterations jarring 
 on modern ears and repugnant to modern taste ; but 
 when the subject or the occasion requires elevation 
 in the style, it is not absent. There is then a stateli- 
 ness, a dignity, a conscious force of expression which 
 is not surpassed, if indeed it is at all equalled, by any 
 other of the post-classical writers. 
 
 The character and genius of Giraldus have never 
 had full justice done them. The latest editor of his 
 works, following in the steps of his predecessors, lays 
 too much stress on the vanity exhibited by our author. 
 To this one trait in the character of Giraldus he re-
 
 HIS OPINION OF HIMSELF. 131 
 
 peatedly invites the attention of the reader ; he is 
 not satisfied with simple statement of the fact ; he 
 reiterates it, and seems to delight in every opportu- 
 nity that offers of indulging himself with a sly joke 
 or humorous remark on the subject. I do not here 
 wish to say that Giraldus was free from self-esteem 
 bordering upon vanity. There can be no doubt he had 
 an exalted opinion of himself, and was not indifferent 
 to the approbation of his fellow men. But who aims 
 at writing a poem, or painting a picture, or making a 
 statue, or composing a mass, solely for his own satis- 
 faction and gratification? Why should not a man 
 work for love of praise as well as for love of bread 
 and cheese? Why not satisfy his mental appetite 
 as well as his digestive organs ? The motive, whether 
 concealed or expressed, is in each instance gratification 
 of self through the applause of others. The old maxim, 
 yi/wOt <rauTo>, however, seems no longer to hold good. 
 At the present day a man who does not desire to be 
 thought indecent, must know not himself, not his 
 capabilities, not his capacity but only his weaknesses 
 and shortcomings. Genius, we are told, is unconscious, 
 is modest, is self-depreciatory. If you are a genius 
 you must not know you are a genius you must not, 
 at all events, say you are, or thenceforth you cease 
 to be regarded in that character. The world may 
 acknowledge your ability and pay court to you ; but
 
 132 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 the moment in which it perceives that your judgment 
 in the matter agrees with its own, and that, equally 
 with itself, you are able to appreciate your gifts or 
 attainments, it resents the coincidence of opinion, and 
 you subside into a man of inferior parts. But it is not 
 for accomplishing great things, or for regarding them 
 in their proper light, that you are thus condemned. 
 It is for saying you see them, and thereby arousing 
 the self love of public opinion, which delights in the 
 sole exercise of its power of praise and blame, and 
 does not wish its function to be shared in by the 
 recipient of its favour, or its award to be taken as a 
 matter of course. Self-depreciation by manner or 
 by direct assertion is notoriously the best method of 
 procuring from others favourable opinion of one's own 
 merits. The most successful performer in any de- 
 partment, by avowing himself a tyro in his art, and 
 comparing himself to children on the sea shore, &c, 
 pays a tribute to others which will be returned a 
 thousand-fold by their exuberant esteem. On the 
 contrary, if he should so far forget his interest as to 
 represent himself to be what they have already ad- 
 judged him to be, he is at once disadvantageously com- 
 pared with some superior imbecile, and dethroned from 
 the pinnacle upon which he had perhaps unwillingly 
 been exalted. Giraldus, unfortunately, as well for his 
 success during life as for his reputation after death,
 
 WALES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 133 
 
 did not appreciate this fact. He declined to affect the 
 humility he did not feel. Not content with silently 
 knowing that his abilities were great, he allowed his 
 contemporaries and posterity to perceive the estima- 
 tion in which he himself held them. Are we alto- 
 gether to condemn in a man the manifestation of this 
 supreme self-consciousness ? I think not. Horace 
 boasted that his work would be are perennius ; Cicero, 
 that he was the second founder of Rome. If either of 
 these saw he was able to do what the whole world 
 besides considered worth doing, and did it, I fail to 
 perceive what impropriety there was in his confessing 
 the achievement. All that a candid criticism can 
 fairly require is proof that a man really is what he 
 pretends to be, and possesses the gifts and attainments 
 of which he boasts. If we test the life of Giraldus in 
 this spirit, we shall find he had just cause for his self- 
 assertion, and that he was one who really redeemed 
 the pledges he gave. 
 
 His country was, in the 13th century, little re- 
 moved from barbarism. The laity he represents as 
 being governed by their passions; addicted to the 
 worst immoralities ; utterly uncivilized. The clergy, 
 little better, were poor, and rude, and avaricious; 
 neglectful of their duties, ignorant of the elements 
 of theology and literature, and not free from some of 
 the worst vices with which he charges their flocks.
 
 134 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 Books well known in other countries were unknown 
 among them; and he gives such instances of their 
 amusingilliterateness as could not, I hope, have been, 
 even in the 12th century, parallelled elsewhere. One 
 priest, he tells us, went to his bishop and promised 
 him in Latin two hundred eggs ; he meant to have 
 said ducenta ova : but from his ignorance of the lan- 
 guage, he said ducentas oves two hundred sheep. 
 When the two hundred fresh eggs were brought to the 
 bishop on the following day, his lordship perempto- 
 rily refused them, and, insisting on the literal fulfil- 
 ment of the promise, extorted from the bad Latinist 
 two hundred fat wethers. Another priest, in his 
 sermon on St. Barnabas' day, informed his congrega- 
 tion that St. Barnabas was a good and holy man, though 
 he was a robber, quoting, in support of his assertion, 
 the passage, "now Barrabas was a robber." Of abbots 
 and bishops, who were equally liable to similar blun- 
 ders as those which characterized the inferior mem- 
 bers of the hierarchy, he gives a very unflattering 
 account. He complains that all the bishops trans- 
 planted in his days from England into Wales were 
 overreaching, rapacious, always pretending the great- 
 est poverty, begging at the abbey doors in England, 
 haunting the Exchequer to obtain larger emoluments 
 by augmentation or translation, and, in consequence, 
 that their authority had completely fallen into con-
 
 HIS TRUE MOTIVES. 135 
 
 tempt. This state of things he was sincerely anxious 
 to correct. But it was impossible for him to effect 
 his reforms so long as St. David's was subject to 
 Canterbury, and Norman kings, to support their 
 rule, bestowed ecclesiastical preferment only on men 
 of their own race ; men who were unable to speak 
 the language of the people, or to feel the slightest re- 
 gard for their interests. This persistent determina- 
 tion to become bishop of St. David's has been severely 
 blamed by writers to whom his motives have not, I 
 think, been clearly understood. The ambition of 
 Giraldus, usually regarded as vulgar self-seeking, 
 seems to me to have taken its direction, less from a 
 desire of personal aggrandizement, than from a patri- 
 otic instinct to benefit his native land by the rectifi- 
 cation of the grievous abuses to which it was subject. 
 Surely no ambition can be more justifiable or praise- 
 worthy than this. There was also another and, doubt- 
 less, a more personal influence at work in directing 
 his attention to St. David's the desire, namely, of 
 occupying an influential position in the district where 
 he was born, and wherein he was best known. This 
 is a desire from which the healthiest minds have not 
 been free. Sir Walter Scott, we know, thought 
 less of the fame he had acquired by his writings than 
 of the reputation he derived from being considered 
 the laird of Abbotsford. To Stratford-on-Avon it
 
 136 G1RALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 was that, having done his appointed work, Shake- 
 speare leaving behind him, as of little account, his 
 reputation as playwright repaired with the hope of 
 being a man of consideration in the place which had 
 given him birth. Nor is the feeling confined to 
 churchmen and men of letters. Hastings, ruling 
 with regal splendour millions of Asiatics, was, we 
 are told, for ever thinking of the home of his fathers, 
 and planning how he, too, should one day be Hast- 
 ings of Daylesford, and exercise the limited but sweet 
 authority possessed by his ancestors. In Wales and 
 in Ireland this feeling is, perhaps, even more common 
 and more intense than it is elsewhere. We daily see 
 in these countries the son of humble parents, upon 
 receiving ordination, almost invariably selecting for 
 the scene of his ministration his native town or county, 
 notwithstanding the slights and indignities he is sure 
 to meet with from the squireens and diminutive local 
 magnates ; but the disappointments he experiences at 
 one end of the social scale are, he thinks, compen- 
 sated by the importance he exercises upon the other, 
 and he resolves to accept the position with all its 
 inconveniencies. In Giraldus this sentiment appears 
 to have been more than usually strong. He was, more- 
 over, of the highest rank ; and, as has been ex- 
 plained, from his childhood had been looked upon aa 
 the future bishop of the diocese. To fail, therefore,
 
 REFUSES SEVERAL BISHOPRICS. 137 
 
 was in his case to confess weakness as well as to ex- 
 perience disappointment. It is true he had oppor- 
 tunity of consoling himself by accepting several 
 bishoprics that were successively offered him. But 
 all these he resolutely and unhesitatingly refused. 
 Just as Swift had set his heart upon an English 
 bishopric, so did Giraldus yearn for the desolate see 
 of St. David's. This was no caprice, but a life-long 
 passion ; the central essential aim of his existence ; 
 the hope to which his whole being had been attached 
 from his earliest youth. And what was the bishopric 
 for which this ambitious man rejected others of greater 
 emolument ? Here are his words, which are as ap- 
 plicable now as they were in his day : " A stony 
 " and barren headland, neither clothed with woods, 
 " nor adorned by waters ; visited only by storms and 
 " winds." But although the place was not then more 
 desirable than now as a residence, it is manifest that 
 he cherished hopes of compensating these disadvan- 
 tages by the satisfaction he would derive from ele- 
 vating the see to its pristine dignity and power. 
 Giraldus was the first to insist that the clergy should 
 know the vernacular, and in this as well as in nume- 
 rous other respects, proved himself to have been well 
 acquainted with the principles on which all church 
 reforms should be based. When he became the ac- 
 cepted champion of the Welsh section of his country
 
 138 GIR ALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 who desired the independence of St. David's, he 
 accepted the trust in all singleness of purpose, as is 
 proved by his own confession, by his exhortation to 
 the new bishop to evade the oath of subjection, as 
 well as by constantly expressed solicitations for the 
 interests of the see and its clergy. From the outset 
 he avowed this to be his object, and that he intended 
 to adhere to it through evil as well as good report. 
 His failure, therefore, is not to be wondered at. 
 Having enemies interested in opposing him, he neither 
 cloaked his design, as a less conscientious man would 
 have done; nor, as a more crafty man, having re- 
 vealed it, did he attempt to appease his adversaries 
 by a show of submission. He boldly avowed his 
 object; so in the fierce struggle that ensued the 
 civil power proved too strong for him, as in the case 
 of Becket, and as in the ultimate issue it has always 
 proved too strong for the champions of ecclesiasti- 
 cism. There is no need to seek another cause for 
 his defeat than that stated by himself the king's 
 fear that increased power would make him dangerous 
 to English supremacy. For the notion currently en- 
 tertained that he exaggerates the power and_ influence 
 he was capable of exerting, I can find no ground, 
 either in his own writings or in contemporary re- 
 cords. 
 
 Self-assertion is so distasteful to English readers,
 
 HIS INFLUENCE IN STATE AFFAIRS. 139 
 
 and so unusual in English writers, that its presence 
 is generally considered indicative of falsehood. But 
 Giraldus is another example of the fallacy of the 
 popular saying that boaster and liar are synonymous 
 terms. He believed that diffidence was a hindrance 
 to bold attempts, and that men of talent who give 
 way to the disposition often grow old without know- 
 ing their powers. Avowing his admiration of those 
 who, before their path in the future was yet plain, 
 resolved on making it their chief aim to leave behind 
 them some memorial whereby they might live in 
 after times, he boldly expressed his determination to 
 emulate them ; and I think it will be conceded that 
 he has achieved no equivocal success. In affairs his 
 influence was even greater than he himself believed 
 it to be. To insure a good reception for Prince 
 John in Ireland it was he that was sent as his com- 
 panion ; when the Crusade was preached in Wales, 
 his presence was considered essential to the suc- 
 cess of the mission ndeed so unsettled was the 
 country, I doubt whether an English prelate and 
 justiciary would have ventured through the land with- 
 out his countenance and support and afterwards, on 
 the accession of Richard I, he was dispatched from 
 France to his native land for the purpose of repress- 
 ing the outbreak that was apprehended from the 
 change. Nor was his influence less when exerted
 
 140 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 against the king than it was when employed in his 
 favour. During the great contest for the indepen- 
 dence of St. David's, his partisans had become so 
 numerous that the whole country was, as appears 
 from the Patent Rolls, in a ferment ; non solum pax 
 partium vestrarum immo totius regni nostri tranquillitas 
 turbaretur. (5 JOHN, memb. 7. No. 32.) Although, 
 however, he cannot justly be censured for unduly 
 exalting himself, it must be admitted that it would 
 have been better, as well for his peace of mind as for 
 the success of his schemes, if he had condescended to 
 imitate the example of those around him, and exhi- 
 bited more worldly prudence in his relations with the 
 supreme powers. Had he consented to debase him- 
 self, he would doubtless have been rewarded with 
 ultimate exaltation. But he was no sycophant. Of 
 all the eminent men of his time, he appears to have 
 been the most sincere, and acted throughout in har- 
 mony with his own nature. The presence of this 
 great tall figure was a protest against the licentious 
 court of Henry crowded, according to a contempo- 
 rary, with jesters, singers, gamesters, pastry cooks, 
 bankrupts, mummers, barbers, spendthrifts, and 
 others of a similar class, and in which, if you would 
 learn the movements of the king, you must apply to 
 vintners and loose women. His very outspokenness, 
 and the self-esteem he exhibited, were unmistakeable
 
 HIS FRANK NATURE. 141 
 
 manifestations of a sincere nature. His fellow- 
 countryman, the acute Walter Mape, saw, and sati- 
 rized, the vices of churchmen and courtiers ; but he 
 looked upon them with the eye of one who did not 
 much disapprove, and his satires, severe enough, 
 leave an impression that, after all, they were pro- 
 duced more for the gratification of a facetious nature 
 than for the profit of those who were the objects of 
 his urbane censure. Some men possess that rare and 
 desirable gift a habit of supreme frankness which 
 lessens the effect of their shafts, and enables them 
 to say unpleasant truths without being considered 
 personally offensive. Men of this kind are either 
 extremely artless, or masters of that consummate art 
 which enables them effectually to cloak their animus, 
 and renders it impossible for an ordinary bystander 
 to determine whether annoyance is meant, or that 
 the sally is ill-timed but unintentional. In the one 
 case he is regarded as a cynic ; in the other, as a 
 well-meaning man, whose unfortunate manner must 
 be pardoned on account of his well-known sincerity. 
 Disagreeable criticism is in both cases unwelcome, 
 but the object of the attack is unwilling to resent 
 what comes from the latter, as if it had proceeded 
 from the former. Nevertheless the disagreeable re- 
 mark produces the same effect uttered by the one as 
 by the other, just as unpalatable medicine is equally
 
 142 GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 efficacious when given in honey as if administered in 
 its native state, and has the advantage, moreover, of 
 not being succeeded by nausea in the patient. Giral- 
 dus was generally regarded as a well-meaning man, 
 and, in his bluff Welsh way, was permitted to say 
 things no one else would have dared to utter ; things, 
 notwithstanding, which proved his moral courage to 
 have been as unbounded as his physical bravery. 
 He never failed to express his opinion manfully. 
 The Church of Rome was notoriously venal, and on 
 his first introduction to Innocent he did not fail to 
 let that prelate know he was acquainted with this 
 fact. " Others give you money," he said, " I offer 
 " you only books ;" or, to quote his punning sen- 
 tence, Pr&sentant vobis alii Libras, sed nos Libros. 
 And in his dedication to John of his " Conquest," 
 he tells that monarch some home truths, under the 
 phrase, " permit me to offer you some advice," which 
 must have surprised his former pupil by his freedom 
 of speech. In these cases no offence Avas meant, and 
 no offence could be taken. " My habit of outspoken- 
 " ness," he used to say, " is natural to Welshmen 
 " like myself; we can neither alter it, nor get rid 
 " of it." But there were times (as in his early con- 
 tests with the sheriff of Pembroke and the bishop of 
 St. Asaph) when his bark was followed by a terrible 
 bite, and when he took care that there should be no
 
 HIS LOVE OF ORDER AND OF LAW. 143 
 
 mistake as to his intention to wound. What chiefly 
 characterized him, however, is his love of order, of 
 precedent, of law. He was essentially the type of a 
 mediaeval churchman, even more than of a mediaeval 
 man of letters. The indications that manifested them- 
 selves on the white sands of Manorbeer at the first 
 page of his life accompanied him to the close of his 
 days. He loved the Church, and followed her pre- 
 cepts ; requiring, at the same time, that others over 
 whom he had control, should likewise do so. None 
 more than he differed from some of her teachings. 
 He doubted whether sins could be remitted by 
 pontifical indulgence. Clear-sighted enough to see 
 the inconveniencies from enforced celibacy of the 
 clergy, he shows that neither in the Gospels nor in 
 the apostolical writings is to be found any prohibition 
 against their marriage ; but so long as the restriction 
 remained he would not permit his clergy to keep 
 their focaria in peace, but would extirpate them 
 root and branch. 'Tis great pity to require in 
 your ministers such a sacrifice ; but no man is com- 
 pelled to be a churchman, and if the vow is volunta- 
 rily made by the candidate for ordination, he must 
 abide by it, and maintain the strictest observance of 
 discipline. Keep your promise ; be true to yourself: 
 was the tenour of his whole life-teaching. Do you 
 obey, for then only may you expect obedience
 
 144 GIEALDUS CAMBRENSIS. 
 
 from others. Look not upon the Church as de- 
 signed for your convenience if you are of it, you 
 must be faithful to it and to its teachings. He was 
 himself faithful, and He expected others to be as 
 faithful as himself. 
 
 He was at once a genuine churchman and a 
 genuine man of letters.
 
 VIII. 
 
 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 LES=S * S HE fame of Montaigne is on the increase. 
 The " Essays " have been translated 
 
 into the languages of all civilized 
 nations, and edition after edition has 
 been called for and exhausted in each. They 
 have not in any country had for readers what 
 is known as the general public, but have obtained 
 only what Mr. Emerson calls a chosen circulation 
 namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of 
 the world, and men of wit and generosity. There 
 are signs, however, that the appreciation is extend- 
 ing in the old world and the new ; cheap editions of 
 his great work are issued, and the manner in which 
 they have been received may fairly be taken as in- 
 dicative that the Essayist is becoming known to 
 readers who hitherto were acquainted only with his 
 name. In France there are men who make the 
 old Gascon the study of their lives, who devote 
 
 L
 
 14G MONTAIGNE. 
 
 themselves to the elucidation of his writings, and 
 who quarrel over the interpretation of one of his 
 phrases with as much zest, if not with as much 
 acrimony, as scholars among ourselves quarrel over 
 the meaning of a passage in Shakespeare. Since the 
 revival of letters no French writer has exercised so 
 much influence upon our own literature. The Shake- 
 speare Plays contain passages almost literally ex- 
 tracted from him,* and ever since the appearance of 
 the translation by Florio into English, all who have 
 made the study of man their theme exhibit in their 
 writings undoubted traces of familiarity with his 
 speculations. If he is not known at first hand so 
 well as he should be, he is well known at second. 
 
 * By the favour of the Head of the British Museum I have 
 examined the autograph, said to be of Shakespeare, in the copy 
 of Florio's Translation belonging to that Institution. Sir 
 Frederick Madden, in Archceologia, vol. xxvii. p. 113, has 
 described this autograph, and given an interesting history of 
 the volume as far as it is known. It is now thirty years since 
 Sir Frederick made his communication to the Society of Anti- 
 quaries, and expressed his unhesitating belief in the authenti- 
 city of the signature, and he tells me he is still of the same 
 opinion. There is no questioning the authority of so eminent 
 a Palaeographer. I must mention, however, that not a tittle of 
 external evidence exists to support the belief that the volume 
 was Shakespeare's, " and is the only book which we certainly 
 " know to have been in the poet's library."
 
 RETIRES FROM COURT. 147 
 
 Men who are ashamed to quote him, because he is 
 reputed to be a sceptic, have no hesitation in appro- 
 priating his thoughts. I have heard a sermon by 
 Montaigne from one of the most orthodox pulpits in 
 London. 
 
 Montaigne was thirty-eight years old when, in 
 1571, tired of courts and public employments, but 
 rich in twenty years' experience of the ways of men 
 in court and camp, he retired to his chateau in Peri- 
 gord. Neither by circumstances nor temperament was 
 he fitted to make a great figure in the barbarous, 
 cruel, and deceitful court he had abandoned ; and it 
 was without much regret at rising from the game he 
 had left, that he sat down in quiet indifference to all 
 things, to conclude the remainder of his life, already 
 more than half past, in the agreeable and peaceful 
 abode he had inherited from his ancestors. Here and 
 now, then, with his wife and numerous retainers upon 
 whom to vent his ill-humour when he should begin 
 to pine for past pleasures, he really began to live. 
 Hitherto he had been in school. The time for me- 
 ditation had at length come, and the scholar, feeling 
 desirous of ascertaining what progress he had made 
 in his studies, seriously began to interrogate himself. 
 
 To the question Que sguis-je ? he was continually 
 asking himself, we have for answer the three books 
 which form the famous " Essays."
 
 148 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 Most of his biographers pretend to see Montaigne 
 thinking in these " Essays," and fancy they come 
 upon a man in undress. They esteem him the 
 frankest of autobiographers the most outspoken of 
 all philosophers and writers. But can you believe 
 them ? Is he so ingenuous as they report ? The 
 work is full of original and selected thoughts on in- 
 numerable subjects, but it can scarcely be said to 
 contain one predominant thought. He had no 
 theory to establish. In painting himself the writer 
 necessarily expounds his philosophy ; but he is so 
 whimsical and inconsistent, and contradictory, that 
 the difficulty of ascertaining his central idea is insu- 
 perable. What was written in one mood has the ap- 
 pearance of sincerity, yet it is utterly different from 
 what, with equal sincerity, he sets down on the same 
 subject in another. His powers of observation were 
 of the highest order, and had been judiciously exer- 
 cised ; what he had seen clearly he could express 
 boldly ; there is little opportunity for the dullest reader 
 to mistake his meaning; but his digressions are so 
 numerous, and occur so frequently, that the writer 
 himself often forgets, or pretends to forget, the text 
 from Which he is preaching. When you begin a 
 chapter you do not know what is coming. The 
 '' Essay on Lame People," for instance, is devoted 
 to an attack on miracles. He exaggerates, is para-
 
 HIS ESSAYS. 149 
 
 doxical, and despises the technicalities and accuracies 
 of any learning. It would be possible to string 
 together scores of his likes and dislikes, of his 
 opinions on men and things, and of curious personal 
 revelations, without getting a very accurate portrait 
 of the essayist himself. It is, therefore, useless 
 to attempt the discovery of his leading doctrine. 
 Indeed, I do not suppose he had any cut-and-dry 
 theory of morals or of man's destiny. He did not 
 set himself to satirize human nature ; nor did he at- 
 tempt to flatter the vanity of men by deriving their 
 descent from angels. To such questions he was in- 
 different. Sound philosophy, he thought, was that 
 which best insured sound health. " The most evi- 
 " dent token and apparent sign of true wisdom," says 
 he, " is a constant unconstrained rejoicing." He 
 could not, therefore, understand why a man should 
 fashion his belief to the customary, or conform to 
 what is suitable for another and not for himself. 
 Let every man's philosophy be in harmony with his 
 own nature, and then for him there will be uncon- 
 strained rejoicing. If he knows only by hearsay, let 
 him confess it, and not profess what he does not un- 
 derstand. As for himself, he shows in all he says 
 that he was influenced by some such consideration 
 as this. He was a brave doubter. Mrs. Grundy 
 does not seem to have had any terrors for him.
 
 150 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 Through the fences Custom had set up he boldly 
 trotted his horse ; but he had no desire to widen the 
 gaps he had made ; certainly not to tear down the 
 fences themselves. What Sir Thomas Browne calls 
 " scenical and accidental differences/' did not impress 
 him. Kings and mountebanks are equally men, and 
 one of his great pleasures was to teach those who in 
 his time regarded the recovered classical authors as 
 something more excellent than their contemporaries, 
 that the great writers of antiquity were men of like 
 passions with themselves ; that they had natural 
 wants like themselves; and like themselves would 
 have acted under any given circumstance of life. 
 
 Montaigne is to be regarded as at once the product 
 and representative of the Renaissance. Rabelais 
 wrote as a mediseval monk would have written. He 
 looked upon things from the same point of view as 
 all acute minds had been looking upon them for ten 
 centuries. In the productions of Walter Mape, whilst 
 we miss the tedious buffoonery of the Frenchman, 
 the same theme, the same spirit, the same fervid 
 satire are to be detected as characterize Pantagruel 
 and the Garyantua, and it will excite no surprise to 
 say, that the author of these romances has become a 
 modern more by reason of the licentious exuberancy 
 of his vocabulary than by virtue of his inherent 
 worth. Montaigne, on the other hand, was the first
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE RENAISSANCE. 151 
 
 great exponent of the new classical spirit which had 
 just reached France from beyond the Alps, and of 
 which his predecessors knew nothing. The age of 
 examination and doubt had replaced the ages of faith, 
 and although in point of time he came a few years 
 after the events from which we are accustomed to 
 date the change, he was contemporary with the be- 
 ginning of modern thought, popularized the new 
 ideas, and became their chief representative. He was 
 a Roman before he was a Frenchman. His queer old 
 father, to make him a good Latinist, took care that 
 he should not 'hear a word of his native tongue till 
 he was able to speak in the language of Cicero. In- 
 fluenced by peculiar views of education, he selected 
 a tutor who was unable to speak French, and the 
 domestics were strictly forbidden from uttering a 
 syllable of the vernacular in the child's presence. 
 Silence or Latin was the alternative he enjoined 
 upon all. It would occasion no surprise if the future 
 essayist had grown up to be a dolt, surfeited with 
 the good things of which he had been forced to take 
 too much ; but Montaigne knew the value of the re- 
 covered learning, and he knew also the best things that 
 had been produced in his own time. He knew, more- 
 over, how to use both. Ben Jonson was not far 
 wrong when he classed him among those wits that 
 " turn over all books, and are equally searching in
 
 152 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 " all papers, that write out of what they presently 
 " find or meet, without choice ; by which means it 
 " happens, that what they have discredited and im- 
 " pugned in one week, they have before or after 
 tf extolled the same in another. Such are all the 
 " essayists, even their master Montaigne. These, 
 " in all they write, confess still what books they 
 " have read last ; and therein their own folly, so 
 " much, that they bring it to the stake raw and un- 
 " digested : not that the place did need it neither ; 
 " but that they thought themselves furnished and 
 " would vent it." What he wanted, indeed, he took 
 without hesitation, and was never particular whence 
 he procured the straw, so that it was capable of being 
 made into good bricks. " If I wish to give an ap- 
 " pearance of reading to this ' Essay on Physiog- 
 " nomy,' " says he, " I have only to stretch out my 
 " hand and take down a dozen books consisting of 
 " extracts strung together. A single German pre- 
 " face would supply me with a store of learning." 
 And he has certainly availed himself of the plan, 
 for the reader will have difficulty in some of the 
 essays in discovering what is meant to be considered 
 original and what borrowed. 
 
 Towards the decline of his life at a time of age, 
 however, when with us statesmen and lawyers are 
 considered young men the little fellow, in
 
 HIS COARSENESS. 153 
 
 several of his essays, and notably in that on some 
 verses by Virgil, is solicitous to tell us that he is 
 going to be naughty. He is careful to warn us of 
 what is coming, and deprecates blame by giving us 
 examples of others before him who have been as 
 naughty as he intends to be. " Fallen into the ex- 
 " treme of severity, more peevish and more unto- 
 " ward," he purposely gave way to licentious allure- 
 ments, and, now and then, permitted his mind to in- 
 dulge " in wanton and youthful conceits,'' for the 
 purpose of recreating itself. He wishes us to under- 
 stand that, hitherto, he had defended himself from 
 pleasure. Wisdom, however, has her excesses, 
 " and is not less in need of moderation than madness. 
 " Therefore, for fear I should dry, shrivel up, and be- 
 " come ponderous by prudence, in the intervals which 
 " my sufferings grant me, I gently turn aside and 
 " escape from the sight of that stormy and cloudy sky 
 " which spreads before me ; which, thank God, I con- 
 " sider without affright, but not without application 
 " and study." So he wilfully turns away from serious 
 matters, and ceases for a time to contemplate the 
 tempestuous sky which constantly lowered before 
 him. He amused himself and the reader with re- 
 membrances, of his youthful days; and youthful 
 tricks, long since forgotten, were brought up to 
 the session of sweet silent thought. " For my part,"
 
 154 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 says he, " I am displeased with thoughts not to be 
 " published, and am resolved to dare speak whatso- 
 " ever I dare do ; and thoughts that cannot be pub- 
 " lished displease me. The worst of my actions and 
 " conditions does not seem to me so ugly as the 
 " cowardice of not daring to confess it." We look for 
 great things after this avowal, but at last and 
 this is to his praise he is never very naughty ; 
 but only very coarse. If he is at fault, he is to be 
 blamed, not for calling a spade a spade, but for 
 making a spade the subject of his discourse. Those 
 who dislike to hear things called by their names 
 must not sit under our Gascon preacher. He does 
 not, however, excite the passions; this was not his aim. 
 He is writing about man as man, and will not abstract 
 
 O 9 
 
 that which belongs to him as member of a Religious 
 Tract Society from that which belongs to him in 
 common with the other animals. He hates a way- 
 ward and sad disposition that glideth over the 
 pleasures of his life and fastens and feeds on 
 the miseries. He will be no voluntary martyr. He 
 loved life and cultivated it, and lamented nothing 
 that gave pleasure. " I do not regret the necessity 
 " of eating and drinking, and should think myself 
 " wrong in desiring that necessity to be less." He 
 did not claim for us too high an origin. " We may 
 " mount upon stilts if we will, for on stilts we
 
 HIS FRANKNESS. 155 
 
 " are still obliged to use our legs ; and on the highest 
 " throne in the world we place what we place on the 
 " lowest stool. The finest lives, to my mind, are those 
 " which do agree with the common and human model 
 " with order, without miracle, without extra- 
 " vagance." 
 
 This is not contemptible philosophy. 
 
 Montaigne's personal confessions are as inaccurate 
 as those of Goethe ; but he has been so communica- 
 tive and so explicit in speaking of himself, that if we do 
 not know him we know more about him than we do of 
 most other men. 
 
 He has the credit of being the frankest of all 
 writers. He talks so much about himself that you 
 may be tempted to fancy he gives you a photo- 
 graph of his peculiarities. But do you believe in the 
 sincerity of his continual self-depreciation ? When 
 he takes you by the button, and, on tip-toe, jabbers 
 away in a loud, shrill voice, sometimes rather 
 too long-windedly, about his inability to dance, 
 or swim, or fence, or wrestle like other people, do 
 you believe he is despising himself for this ?* When 
 
 * " Of addressing, dexteretie, and disposition, I never had 
 " any, yet am I the son of a well disposed father, and of so 
 " blithe and merry a disposition, that it continued with him 
 " even to his extreamest age. He seldome found any man of
 
 156 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 he confesses his ignorance of the value of the 
 coinage, and of the difference between barley and 
 oats, or tells you he could not understand why leaven 
 is put into bread, or how the apple gets into the 
 dumpling, and therefore considers himself a lumber- 
 headed old fool, do you take him at his word ? Of 
 all these things he was undoubtedly ignorant. But 
 could not any of the retainers on his estate have en- 
 lightened him on these heads, and do you suppose 
 Lord Michael de Montaigne, as Florio styles him, of 
 
 " his condition, and that could match him in all exercises of 
 " the body ; As I have found few, that have not out-gon me, 
 " except it were in running, wherein I was of the middle sort. 
 " As for musicke, were it either in voice, which I have most 
 " harsh, and very unapt, or in instruments, I could never be 
 " taught any part of it. As for dancing, playing at tennis, or 
 " wrestling; I could never attaine to any indifferent sufficiencie; 
 " but none at all in swimming, in fencing, in vauting, or in 
 " leaping. My hands are so stiffe and nummie, that I can 
 " hardly write for myselfe, so that what I have once scribled, 
 " I had rather frame it a new, than take the paines to correct 
 " it ; and I reade but little better. I perceive how the audi- 
 " torie censureth me : Otherwise I am no bad clarke, I cannot 
 " very wel close up a letter ; nor could I ever make a pen. I 
 " was never good carver at the table. I could never make 
 " readie nor arme a Horse : Nor handsomely array a Hawke 
 " upon my fist, nor cast her off, or let her flie, nor could I ever 
 " speake to Dogges, to Birds, or to Horses. The conditions of 
 " my body are, in fine, very well agreeing with those of my 
 " minde." On Presumption. Florio's Translation.
 
 HIS LITERARY RANK. 157 
 
 the noble order of St. Michael, and one of the Gen- 
 tlemen in Ordinary of the French King's Chamber, 
 could feel satisfaction in knowing what was fitted only 
 to be known by them ? 
 
 The literary worth of an author is, I think, to be 
 estimated more by the extent than by the weight of 
 his influence. There are writers who appeal only to 
 a limited class, or fail to influence men except at a 
 certain period of life. Wither and George Herbert, 
 for instance, in poetry, and Sir Thomas Browne in 
 prose, address but a very select class of minds. Their 
 adherents, men of cultivated taste, admire them with 
 an intensity that is never displayed towards writers 
 who have become universal favourites ; but to the 
 general public they are scarcely known. It must 
 not, however, be supposed, that because the common 
 run of readers are unable to appreciate what men of 
 higher intellectual rank admire that the fault is 
 altogether with the former. The best books are 
 those, which, appealing at once to the vulgar and the 
 refined, are welcomed by both. Their authors have 
 no partisans because all are on their side, and excite 
 no enthusiasm because they are never slighted. They 
 are the classics of all languages. Although it would 
 be incorrect to say that Montaigne occupies a posi- 
 tion among them, he differs from such writers as 
 those I just now named in one very important par-
 
 158 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 ticular. He numbers amongst his admirers the 
 whole of the intellectual class in every civilized 
 country, whilst admiration for them is confined to 
 men with idiosyncrasies. He is the most catholic 
 of all writers. His views and opinions are so varied 
 and multifarious, that no man of culture can read 
 him without finding himself reflected in the page. 
 An odd volume of Cotton's translation of the 
 " Essays " falling into the hands of Mr. Emerson, 
 " newly escaped from college," was the origin of that 
 gentleman's admiration for the Essayist. " It seemed 
 " to me," he confesses, " as if I had myself written 
 " the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke 
 " to my thought and experience."* 
 
 * This appears to be the case with others besides Mr. Emer- 
 son. The late Bayle St. John, in his Biography of the Essayist, to 
 which interesting work I acknowledge obligations, very correctly 
 remarks : " The Montaigne of Pascal and Malebranche is an 
 " esprit fort of the seventeenth century ; the Montaigne of Bayle 
 " is a gentlemanly sceptic ; the Montaigne of the Voltaireans is a 
 " scofler ; the Montaigne of the Abbe Laborderie is a Capuchin 
 " Friar ; the Montaigne of Mr. Emerson is Mr. Emerson him- 
 " self ; the Montaigne of Dr. Payen is the property of Dr. 
 " Payen ; and the Montaigne of M. Griin is a Prefet of the 
 " Gironde." 
 
 In taking the measure of Montaigne, his biographers uncon- 
 sciously furnish us with the means of taking their own.
 
 HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 159 
 
 Enough, however, is revealed to enable us to per- 
 ceive not only his disposition and habits, but his re- 
 ligious and moral mood. He was, I think, eminently 
 religious ; that is to say, he possessed in a high degree 
 the religious sentiment from which all religions spring. 
 His dissatisfaction with the various visible and formal 
 manifestations of this sentiment was not active, but 
 negative. He could not conscientiously have sub- 
 scribed to the articles of any Church, or assented even 
 to the spirit of the popular religion. Whilst, how- 
 ever, alienating himself, in a sense, from the Church 
 of his fathers, and discrediting the dogmas preached 
 by its ministers, much remained which he seems 
 deeply to have cherished. He cherished her ancient 
 services; her solemn litanies and gorgeous masses 
 were as dear to him as they were to others. Had 
 you accused him of hypocrisy in this you would have 
 done him wrong. He resembled men among ourselves, 
 no longer members of the established religion, who 
 confess themselves to be influentially and beneficially 
 affected by its services, to whom church bells are " the 
 " sound nearest heaven," and church prayers as balm 
 of Gilead ; who, whilst unable to assent to the articles 
 of membership, still term themselves sons of the 
 Church, and would fight, if need were, in her behalf, 
 against what they consider the bigotry and narrow- 
 mindedness of the sects. It was dogmatism and not
 
 160 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 devotion he resisted. By ordering the celebration 
 of mass in his chamber at the end, he cannot be said 
 to have contradicted the tenour of his life, which was 
 eminently pacific. He never broke with the Church, 
 but had so far sanctioned her practices as to have 
 spent fifty crowns at Loretto shrine, and upon 
 leaving, he presented a rich ex-voto. He disliked 
 Protestantism, because of its protests ; but he could 
 not understand martyrs on either side, willingness 
 to die being, in his eyes, no compensation for fanati- 
 cism. Religion he regarded as metaphysical specula- 
 tion, and to kill or maim a man because he dissents 
 from your conclusions as excess of folly. For that 
 self-assertion which manifested itself in striving after 
 converts, he had no patience; nor did he understand 
 how men could devote their lives to the attempt of 
 fashioning the world to their own ideas by painful 
 coercion. His convictions were not strong enough to 
 make him an active partisan in any cause ; he neither 
 wept at the follies, frailties, and vicissitudes of life 
 like Heraclitus, nor, on the other hand, did he think 
 too highly of man and his destiny. Even when he 
 did good he confesses to have been influenced by 
 no higher a motive than that of pleasing himself. 
 When they said a man must forget himself for his 
 neighbour he did not understand them, and considered 
 the precept was made more in favour of a man's neigh-
 
 HIS TOLERANCE. 161 
 
 bour than of himself. He had no wish to take sides. 
 He avowed his readiness to bring a candle to St. 
 Michael and another to the dragon. During the 
 troublous times of the league he kept himself square. 
 There are people who will not understand that a man 
 may constitute his own party. They want him to 
 declare himself for themselves or their opponents, and 
 will not forgive him if in some matters he acts with 
 them, and in others on the opposite side. No doubt 
 Montaigne is liable to be termed what we now call a 
 trimmer. Indeed, as he confesses, during his life- 
 time some called him Guelf and others Ghibelline. 
 But he was indifferent to the distinctions that existed 
 between the parties, and was most sincere in his in- 
 difference. To the gospel of labour preached of late 
 he would have been no convert. Labour for its own 
 sake he thought a curse, and he well knew the 
 derivation of the word indolence. What he did he 
 accomplished by fits and starts. " Whosoever will 
 " make use of me according to myself let him employ 
 " me in affairs that require vigour and liberty ; that 
 " have a short, a straight, and therewithal a hazardous 
 " course. . . If it be tedious, crafty, laborious, 
 " artificial, and intricate, they shall do better to ad- 
 " dress themselves to some other man." Fond of his 
 own way, he would not be hurried in doing it ; would 
 
 M
 
 162 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 not be bothered even for duty. Railways and punctual 
 starting of express trains would have killed him.* 
 
 Montaigne is the type of every man of culture at 
 a certain stage of his development. He looked upon 
 mankind, and chiefly upon himself, diversely: and 
 the conclusion to which he came is the same as that 
 to which others had come before. He thought all 
 is vanity and vexation of spirit. Everyone of us 
 knows this ; but most of us desire to forget it, or will 
 not choose to remember it. Montaigne does not 
 deceive himself. He never gives himself the air of 
 one who is going to reveal secrets. You want to learn 
 what Is ? He cannot satisfy you. You must go to 
 others ; he can, at the most, only tell you what is not. 
 It is possible that organization is tending to perfection ; 
 but he does not know it. He is not sure even of im- 
 mortality, and carefully abstains from saying that he 
 is. Indeed, with respect to this and the other great 
 problems that interest us, he had no view at all, and with 
 
 * " I am extrearnele lazie and idle, and exceedingly free, 
 " both by nature and art. I would as willingly lend my 
 " blood as my care. I have a minde free and altogether her 
 " owne ; accustomed to follow her owne humour. And to this 
 " day never had nor commanding nor forced master. I have 
 " gon as farre, and kept what pace pleased me best. Which 
 " hath enfeebled and made me unprofitable to serve others, 
 " and made me fit and apt but onely for my selfe." On Pre- 
 sumption. Florio's Translation.
 
 HIS SCEPTICISM. 163 
 
 unusual wisdom did not, I suspect, think it necessary 
 to have one. Many before and since his time have 
 troubled themselves with these questions, and for 
 certitude have experienced only doubts. Some there 
 are who eliminate these doubts by main force ; or, 
 without having them resolved, consent for their peace 
 of mind to believe them soluble, and thenceforward 
 arrogantly assume that the opinions they have aban- 
 doned were unsound. This " bridging the gulf," 
 as it is termed, confers on them, they suppose, the 
 right to believe they have performed a stage of 
 progress. A man who has once doubted, but doubts 
 no longer, gives himself a patronising air of supe- 
 riority. " Ah ! my dear friend," says he, "I once 
 " had doubts as you have ; but happily they have 
 " disappeared. All the depths and shoals of modern 
 '' thought are familiar to me, and now I feel sure 
 " footing. I have successfully bridged the gulf." 
 But does it follow that he who changes sides neces- 
 sarily goes from darkness to light? If change of 
 opinion were in itself progress, the popularity and 
 influence of such a writer as Montaigne would 
 never be much. Before we can decide what is 
 truth, we must have an undisputed criterion. Mon- 
 taigne will be perennial because his subject is peren- 
 nial.
 
 IX. 
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A STATESMAN. 
 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 |HE real meaning of the terra religious 
 liberty seems, even at the present day. 
 to be but imperfectly understood. When 
 Earl Russell and others refer to their 
 exertions in the cause of civil and religious liberty, 
 they doubtless consider these two terms as applying to 
 two separate principles; and in this light they are very 
 generally regarded. Little consideration, however, 
 is needed to enable us to perceive that the connection 
 between civil and religious liberty is of the most in- 
 timate nature ; that the one is comprehended in the 
 other ; that the one is, in fact, a portion of the other. 
 If a man is in possession of civil liberty if, that is 
 to say, he is free to think and act in all respects as 
 he chooses, provided he thereby inflicts no wrong on 
 the person or estate of another it is manifest that
 
 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 165 
 
 he also enjoys religious liberty, which implies the 
 right to think and act in some respects as he chooses. 
 Hence., to talk of giving a man civil and religious 
 liberty is much as if one were to speak of granting 
 him a passport for all the countries of Europe and 
 for Spain, or of permitting him to read all Shake- 
 speare's plays and the Merchant of Venice. But al- 
 though the term is thus misapprehended, the thing 
 signified is not itself unknown or ill understood. In 
 England at least, and wherever our race predomin- 
 ates, the state no longer uses the power at its disposal 
 to repress or interfere with the religious opinions of its 
 subjects; that portion of civil liberty known as "liberty 
 " of conscience" generally the last to be conceded 
 is now enjoyed by all ; and the doctrine, that none is 
 to be persecuted on account of his opinions on matters 
 of religion, is happily universally entertained. 
 
 This noble doctrine is the growth of modern times 
 and of our own land. In Christianity, it is true, the 
 doctrine in question may be said to inhere ; but from 
 the moment when Christianity, in the person of 
 Constantine, found itself in possession of power, the 
 doctrine had not been asserted; it had not ex- 
 hibited itself in the operative working of the reli- 
 gion ; it lay latent ; it had never been revealed. 
 Many favourable opportunities for discovering it had 
 presented themselves, and more than once did it seem
 
 166 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 about to be detected; but on each occasion it was over- 
 looked. It was overlooked even at that great upheav- 
 ing of the nations at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, when men, with minds unhinged, prepared for 
 almost any change, went hither and thither know- 
 ing that something was wrong, but knowing not 
 what. The uneasy feeling that had been excited 
 found rest in change of opinion without having 
 lighted upon a change of principles. Luther, Cal- 
 vin, Knox, and their associates, whilst endeavouring 
 to acquire for themselves the right to think and act 
 in matters of religion according to the dictates of 
 their own consciences, all regarded themselves as the 
 sole depositaries of truth, and thought it their solemn 
 duty to suppress, even by force, if necessary, what 
 in their judgment was false doctrine in others. They 
 were, in fact, guided by the very principle against 
 which they contended in others ; and they defended 
 conduct exhibited by men of their party which they 
 were the first to condemn in their opponents. In 
 England, no sooner had the Protestant party under 
 Cranmer succeeded in establishing the right of pri- 
 vate judgment for itself as against the Church of 
 Rome, than it proceeded to deny the right to others ; 
 and, afterwards, the very men who had suffered 
 severe persecution for their opinions were amongst 
 the most eager to inflict similarly severe persecutions
 
 ADVOCATE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 167 
 
 upon those from whom they dissented. The Scotch 
 commissioners in London remonstrated in the name 
 of their national Church against " sinful and ungodly 
 " toleration in matters of religion ;" the whole body of 
 the English Presbyterian clergy protested against 
 the schemes of Cromwell's party, and solemnly de- 
 clared that " they detested and abhorred toleration ;" 
 Richard Baxter, the most eminent of nonconformist 
 divines, avowed that he " abhorred unlimited liberty, 
 " or toleration for all ;" even John Milton's scheme 
 of toleration was to have excluded Roman Catholics 
 from its benefits ; and in that of Lord Baltimore, 
 lauded for the unusual liberality of its provisions, 
 only persons professing belief in the Divinity of 
 Christ were to share in the civil advantages of the 
 colony he founded. Men contended ostensibly for 
 free expression of opinion ; it was in reality for the 
 supremacy of their own opinion. The liberty at 
 which they all aimed was to have been the privilege 
 of themselves alone. 
 
 The honour of being the first advocate for full 
 and absolute liberty of conscience belongs to Roger 
 Williams a man of heroic character, of catholic 
 spirit, of inflexible principles ; a man, moreover, who 
 throughout a long life was himself guided by the 
 principles he professed, wrote books in their defence, 
 founded a state in accordance with them, and subse-
 
 168 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 quently embodied them in the laws he framed. Of 
 the early life of this very remarkable man few me- 
 morials exist. Numerous lives and memoirs of him 
 have been written ; he has formed the subject of 
 academical discourses and review articles; poems 
 have been composed in his honour ; places have been 
 called after his name ; and his posthumous honours 
 have been many and great. Till his arrival in Ame- 
 rica, however, only the scantiest information touch- 
 ing his life is to be gleaned. After that event par- 
 ticulars are plentiful. The Life by Dr. Romeo El- 
 ton (Providence, 1853), from which I abridge the 
 following particulars, may be recommended to those 
 who feel interested in the man. The son of a Welsh 
 farmer, Williams was born in the year 1606, in Car- 
 marthenshire, at a place called Conwyl-Caio, where 
 for many generations his ancestors had resided. At 
 an early age, he was removed to London, and was 
 there fortunate enough to attract the favourable no- 
 tice of Sir Edward Coke, " who," says the daughter 
 of that eminent lawyer, "' seeing so hopeful a youth, 
 " took such liking to him, that he sent him in to 
 " Sutton's Hospital." Of this institution now 
 known as the Charter House he was elected a 
 scholar on the 25th of June, 1621, and three years 
 afterwards, having obtained an exhibition, he went 
 to Oxford, and entered at the Welsh College (Jesus).
 
 GOES TO NEW ENGLAND. 169 
 
 This was on the 30th of April, 1624. How long he 
 remained at the university is uncertain, since the 
 records of his college furnish no evidence of his hav- 
 ing taken a degree. Upon leaving, he was admitted 
 to orders, and, as is presumed from a statement he 
 makes in one of his works, he discharged the duties 
 of the ministry somewhere in Lincolnshire. 
 
 The conflict that from the days of Elizabeth had 
 existed between the prelatical party and the Puritans 
 was at this period becoming more and more violent 
 the former being determined to enforce strict uni- 
 formity, and the latter being as equally determined 
 to resist the enforcement. Roger Williams inclined 
 in opinion to the side of the Puritans, and, moreover, 
 had already advocated the doctrine which immor- 
 talises his name that the civil power hath no juris- 
 diction over the conscience. In the clash of party 
 strife, therefore, he could not hope to escape the 
 unfriendly notice of those to whom such opinions 
 and such a principle were obnoxious. Nor did he. 
 Professing the tenets of the Puritans, he suffered the 
 persecutions to which the expression of those tenets 
 rendered him liable ; and finding it hopeless to expect 
 to be suffered to preach in peace, he resolved to seek 
 that liberty which was denied to him in the country 
 of his birth amid the wilds of America, whither large 
 numbers of his brethren had gone before.
 
 170 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 The grief he felt at leaving may be learned from 
 a letter he addressed in after years to the daughter 
 of Sir Edward Coke. " Your dear father," he says, 
 " was often pleased to call me his son ; and truly it 
 " was as bitter as death to me when Bishop Laud 
 " pursued me out of the land, and my conscience 
 " was persuaded against the national church, and 
 " ceremonies, and bishops, beyond the conscience of 
 " your dear father I say it was as bitter as death to me 
 " when I rode Windsor way to take ship at Bristow, 
 " and saw Stoke House, where the blessed man was ; 
 " and I then durst not acquaint him with my con- 
 " science and my flight." He embarked with his 
 wife at Bristol in the Lion, Captain William Pierce, 
 and, after a tempestuous voyage of sixty-six days, 
 sailed into Boston harbour on the 5th day of Feb- 
 ruary, 1631. 
 
 His arrival in the New World is recorded in the 
 Journal of Governor Winthrop, and appears to have 
 occasioned much joy to the churches of the infant 
 colony. But he was soon to discover that the grand 
 idea he announced when he first trod the shores of 
 New England that the civil magistrate had no right 
 to interfere in matters of conscience would meet with 
 no echo in the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers, and 
 that the " lords brethren" of Massachusetts were as 
 intolerant as the " lords bishops" of England. A
 
 SETTLES AT SALEM. 171 
 
 few weeks after his arrival, he accepted an invitation 
 to become assistant-pastor of the church of Salem, 
 and commenced his ministry there ; but having de- 
 clared his opinion that " the magistrate might not 
 " punish a breach of the Sabbath, nor any other 
 " offence that was a breach of the first table," the 
 civil authority immediately interfered to prevent his 
 settlement. The church, however, persisted; and 
 on the same day on which the magistrates at Boston 
 were assembled to express disapprobation of this, 
 and to desire the church to forbear any further pro- 
 ceeding, he was duly elected a minister at Salem. 
 But his residence there was destined to be of short 
 continuance. The church, in disregarding the wishes 
 and advice of the authorities, by calling him to be 
 their pastor, drew upon themselves the displeasure 
 of the magistrates ; and so high rose the storm 
 of persecution, that before the close of the summer, 
 Williams was obliged to seek residence elsewhere. 
 He accordingly left Salem, and went to the colony 
 at Plymouth, " where," says Governor Bradford, 
 " he was freely entertained among us according to 
 " our poor ability." Two years afterwards, how- 
 ever, being invited to return, he complied with the 
 request, and resumed his ministerial labours in Au- 
 gust, 1633. But the inflexibility of his principles, 
 and his determination to exhibit them when needed,
 
 172 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 soon furnished the magistrates and ministers who 
 were opposed to him with many opportunities for re- 
 newed hostility. At one time they met to take into 
 consideration a treatise in which he had disputed 
 their right to the lands they possessed, because 
 they had not compounded with the natives ; now 
 they charged him with having preached upon the 
 duty of females to wear veils in religious assemblies ; 
 and now, again, complained that, in consequence of 
 his preaching, " Mr. Endicott cut the cross out of 
 " the military colours, as a relic of popish supersti- 
 " tion." 
 
 The controversy between him and the civil and 
 ecclesiastical heads of the colony was clearly nearing 
 a crisis. Having expressed his opinion that the 
 taking of an oath was an act of worship, and that 
 " no man ought to be forced to perform this any 
 " more than any other act of worship," he was sum- 
 moned in April, 1635, to appear at Boston. The 
 court on this occasion desisted from proceeding ; but 
 in the following July he was again cited to answer 
 certain charges brought against him at the general 
 meeting then in session. 
 
 The most serious of these charges was of a frivo- 
 lous nature. The accused was impeached for having 
 maintained the " dangerous " opinion, that " the ma- 
 " gistrates ought not to punish the breach of the first
 
 SUFFERS PERSECUTION. 173 
 
 " table, otherwise than in such cases as did disturb 
 " the civil peace." This doctrine was considered by 
 all present to be most pernicious ; the ministers 
 who had been invited to attend and give their advice 
 thought the colony should rid itself of a man who 
 maintained that the civil magistrate might not inter- 
 meddle " even to stop a church from heresy and 
 " apostacy ; " none agreed with the accused, whose 
 opinions were " adjudged by all, magistrates and 
 " ministers, to be erroneous and very dangerous." 
 " After long debate," says Governor Winthrop, who 
 wrote at the time, and recorded the proceedings in 
 his Journal, " time was given to him and the church 
 " at Salem to consider of these things till the next 
 " general court, and then, either to give satisfaction 
 " to the court, or else to expect the sentence." The 
 church of Salem obstinately adhered to their pastor, 
 and avowed their readiness to suffer the consequences 
 of their contumacy. The next general court was 
 held in October, when Roger Williams was again 
 summoned for the last time ; " all the ministers in 
 "the Bay being desired to be present." "Mr. 
 " Hooker," Governor Winthrop says, " was chosen 
 " to dispute with him, but could not reduce him from 
 " any of his errors. So, the next morning, the court 
 " sentenced him to depart out of our jurisdiction 
 " within six weeks all the ministers, save one, ap-
 
 174 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 " proving the sentence." The health of Williams 
 was greatly impaired by his severe trials and exces- 
 sive labours, and he procured permission to remain at 
 Salem till spring. But the court having meanwhile 
 received information that he could not refrain in his 
 own house from uttering his offensive opinions to 
 which, it seems, " he had drawn above twenty per- 
 " sons " ! resolved to send him to England by a 
 ship then lying in the harbour ready for sea. He 
 refused to obey their summons to attend the court 
 at Boston, but the magistrates were determined not 
 to be defeated, and immediately despatched a small 
 sloop to Salem, with a commission to the captain to 
 apprehend, and carry him on board the ship that 
 was about to sail for England. 
 
 When the officers came to his house, however, 
 "they found he had gone three days before, but 
 " whither they could not learn." 
 
 The principal Indian tribes occupying New 
 England, when it was first settled by the English, were 
 the Pokanokets, who inhabited the territory of the 
 colony of Plymouth ; the Narragansetts most faith- 
 ful to the English of all the New England tribes 
 who held dominion over nearly all the territory which 
 afterwards formed the colony of Rhode Island, in- 
 cluding the islands in the Bay, and a portion of Long 
 Island ; the Massachusetts, who dwelt chiefly about
 
 FLIES TO THE INDIANS. 175 
 
 the bay which bears their name ; and the Pequods 
 and Mohicans by far the fiercest and most warlike 
 of the New England savages who occupied the 
 greater part of what is now the state of Connecticut. 
 In the middle of January, 1636, in the coldest month 
 of a New England winter, Roger Williams forced 
 to leave behind him his wife and young children, and 
 escape in secresy and haste fled from the tyranny 
 of those men, who, under the name of Pilgrim Fa- 
 thers, receive the undeserved sympathy of posterity, 
 and sought refuge amidst primeval forests inhabited 
 only by beasts of prey, and those savage tribes whose 
 names I have just enumerated. Tradition has much 
 to relate of this period of his life ; but a letter of his, 
 written thirty-five years after, furnishes authentic 
 information of that time " when," says he, " I was 
 " sorely tossed, for one fourteen weeks, in a bitter 
 " winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did 
 " mean." It appears that he made his way through 
 the desolate wilderness to Massasoit, sachem of the 
 Pokanokets, who dwelt at Mount Hope, near the 
 spot on which the town of Bristol, Rhode Island, 
 now stands, and who occupied the country north- 
 wards as far as Charles River. This famous Indian 
 chieftain had known Williams at Plymouth, and on 
 many occasions had received from him tokens of 
 kindness. It was now his turn to confer benefit ;
 
 176 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 and the aged sachem was ready. He received Wil- 
 liams graciously, and granted him a tract of land on 
 the Seekonk river, which separates Massachusetts 
 from Rhode Island. Here, then, the friendless 
 exile, who was soon joined by several of the people 
 of Salem, began to build and plant. But this terri- 
 tory was within the limits of the Plymouth colony, 
 and he received intelligence from his friend, Gover- 
 nor Winslow, that he had " fallen into the edge of 
 " their bounds." Thereupon, he embarked, with 
 five others, in a canoe, and proceeded down the river 
 in search of another resting-place, where the secular 
 arm should have no dictation in the concerns of reli- 
 gion. Passing round the headlands now known as 
 India Point and Fox Point, he ascended the river that 
 runs on the west side of the peninsula, to a spot near 
 the mouth of the Mooshausic. Here, in the spring- 
 time of 1636, Williams landed; and here, on the 
 slope of the hill that rises from the river, began the 
 first settlement of Rhode Island a state which, in 
 the words of its founder, should surely be " a shelter 
 " to persons distressed for conscience." He called 
 the place Providence, in remembrance of God's pro- 
 vidence to him in distress. 
 
 Through his intimacy with several of the Indian 
 chiefs, Williams was enabled to purchase the neces- 
 sary lands for his new colony. His house and lands
 
 SETTLES IN RHODE ISLAND. 177 
 
 at Salem he was obliged to mortgage, in order to 
 make additional presents and gratuities to the 
 sachems ; and, consequently, he removed his wife 
 and family immediately to the new settlement. He 
 was the sole negotiator with the Indians, and the 
 legal proprietor of the territory which they had ceded 
 to him, and which, as he remarked, " was as much 
 " his as any man's coat upon his back." He might 
 have secured the proprietary of his colony by a pa- 
 tent from England, and thus have exercised a con- 
 trol over its government, and amassed wealth for 
 himself and family ; but his views being eminently 
 unselfish, he chose rather to found a state where all 
 civil power should be exercised by the people, and 
 where there might be " a shelter for persons dis- 
 " tressed for conscience." The infant community 
 prospered apace, and was rapidly increased by the 
 arrival of persons from other colonies, and from 
 Europe, who fled from persecution. 
 
 The banishment of Roger Williams, and the vo- 
 luntary exile of many of his adherents, did not, it 
 seems, put an end to the contentions in Massachu- 
 setts Bay. 
 
 The people were displeased at the prosperity of 
 the settlements at Providence and on Rhode Island. 
 Incensed at the reception accorded to the citizens 
 they had . expelled, they seized an opportunity to
 
 178 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 order that if any one of the inhabitants of Providence 
 should be found within the jurisdiction of Massachu- 
 setts he should be brought before the magistrates. 
 This, however, was only the prelude of what was to 
 follow. In 1642, shortly after Providence and Rhode 
 Island had regularly organized a government, and 
 had, true to the principles of their chief founder, 
 passed a special act, that " that law concerning liberty 
 " of conscience in point of doctrine be perpetuated,'' 
 the colonists of New England, alarmed by reports of 
 hostile designs on the part of the Indians, adopted 
 vigorous measures of defence. In the year follow- 
 ing, the first confederacy of the colonies was formed, 
 and articles of union were signed at Boston by the 
 commissioners of the four colonies of Plymouth, 
 Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven, 
 under the name of " the United Colonies of New 
 " England." Neither Providence (notwithstanding 
 that its founder had more than once, by his personal 
 influence, saved the English settlements from the 
 fury of the Indians), nor the neighbouring colony on 
 Rhode Island was invited to join ; and when after- 
 wards they made application for admittance, it was 
 refused. The reasons alleged were trivial, but they 
 were found to be insuperable. The excluded colo- 
 nies were therefore exposed to many inconveniences 
 and dangers, and left with no defence, except that of
 
 OBTAINS A CHARTER. 179 
 
 their own citizens. Their increasing prosperity, 
 their exclusion from the confederacy, and the declara- 
 tions of enemies, that they had no legal authority for 
 civil government, led the inhabitants to appoint a 
 committee with instructions to procure a charter 
 from the mother-country. The agency was accepted 
 by Williams, who accordingly, in June, 1643, em- 
 barked at New York for his native land. 
 
 The state of affairs in this country was not unfa- 
 vourable to the accomplishment of the mission with 
 which he came intrusted. The nation was convulsed 
 by the civil war ; King Charles had fled from Lon- 
 don ; and the parliament, who were in possession of 
 the legislative and executive authority, were disposed 
 to strengthen themselves by conciliating the colonies 
 of America. From the commissioners who had been 
 appointed to regulate the affairs of the colonies, 
 Roger Williams aided by the influence of his early 
 friend, Sir Harry Vane obtained with little trou- 
 ble, for the colony of Rhode Island, a charter, which 
 conveyed to the inhabitants the most ample powers 
 to adopt such a form of civil government as they 
 should by free consent agree to. As soon as he had 
 accomplished the object of his mission, Williams re- 
 embarked for America. He landed at Boston, Sep- 
 tember 17, 1644, and the news of his arrival having 
 preceded him, the inhabitants of Providence met
 
 180 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 him at Seekonk with a fleet of canoes to welcome his 
 return, and to convey him home in triumph. The 
 form of government eventually adopted, after con- 
 siderable delay and discussion, in a general assembly 
 of the people of the colony on the 19th May, 1647 
 required the annual election of a president and four 
 assistants, in whom the executive power was vested. 
 The code of laws was mainly taken from those of 
 England, and concludes with these memorable words : 
 " And otherwise than thus, what is herein forbidden, 
 " all men may walk as their consciences persuade 
 '' them every one in the name of his God." 
 
 Williams, probably to conciliate the other towns, 
 cheerfully yielded his claims to the office of president, 
 and accepted the subordinate post of assistant for the 
 town of Providence. As might be anticipated, from 
 the various materials of which they were composed, the 
 several towns of the colony did not quietly coalesce in 
 one form of government, and Williams's skill and 
 delicacy were taxed to their utmost extent in har- 
 monizing the discordant elements. One of the 
 chief causes of his disquietude at this time were the 
 proceedings of William Coddington, the principal in- 
 habitant of the settlement on Rhode Island, who, 
 oemg attached to the party of the king, was disposed 
 to promote Royal authority in the colony. Codding- 
 ton having persuaded a faction to unite with him,
 
 COLONIAL DIFFERENCES. 181 
 
 first attempted to obtain admission for the island set- 
 tlements into the league of the New England colo- 
 nies ; but having failed in that effort, he went off 
 to England, and succeeded in procuring from the 
 council of state a commission, constituting him go- 
 vernor for life of the islands of Rhode Island and 
 Canonicut. When he returned in 1651, bringing 
 with him his new charter, great excitement was pro- 
 duced in the settlements. Other troubles, moreover, 
 arose in addition to these internal dissensions. Mas- 
 sachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut all of whom 
 were opposed to the heroic state that persisted in pro- 
 claiming liberty of conscience for all men, irrespec- 
 tive of creed asserted claims to portions of the 
 colony ; the Indians, too, now began to commit depre- 
 dations, and to offer insults which the individual 
 settlements were too feeble to punish, and which the 
 commissioners of the United Colonies refused to 
 redress. In this crisis, when it was apparent that 
 their safety lay only in a union of all the towns, John 
 Clarke, a man of liberal education, courteous manners, 
 and the original projector of the settlement on the 
 island, was induced to proceed to England to pro- 
 cure the repeal of Coddington's commission, and the 
 confirmation of Williams's charter. From reluctance 
 to leave his large family, as well as from his inability 
 to sustain the necessary expense, Williams, who was
 
 182 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 urgently importuned to accompany Clarke, and co- 
 operate in the accomplishment of this important 
 object, at first declined to accept the trust, but in the 
 end he was prevailed on, and accordingly once more 
 crossed the Atlantic. 
 
 Williams on this occasion remained in England for 
 nearly three years. Since he had last visited the 
 kingdom, great events had occurred ; an ancient 
 monarchy had been subverted, and the supreme 
 authority was now vested in a Council of State. 
 The application made by the two commissioners met 
 with opposition from many quarters; but an order 
 was at length passed to annul Coddington's commis- 
 sion, and to confirm the former charter. 
 
 Leaving Clarke behind, Williams returned to his 
 colony in the summer of 1654. During his absence, 
 the general assembly which met at Providence ad- 
 dressed to him a letter, in which they " humbly con- 
 " ceived that, if it be the pleasure of our protectors 
 " to renew our charter, it might be the pleasure of 
 " that honourable state to invest, appoint, and em- 
 " power yourself to come over as Governor of this 
 " colony, for the space of one year, and so the go- 
 " vernment to be honourably put upon this place, 
 " which might seem to add weight for ever hereafter 
 " in the constant and successive derivation of the 
 " same." Roger Williams took no steps to procure
 
 CHOSEN PRESIDENT OF THE COLONY. 183 
 
 his election ; but on the first general election, held 
 on the 12th of September, he was chosen President of 
 the colony. During the term of his office, he made 
 efforts to establish more friendly relations with the 
 neighbouring colonies, especially with Massachusetts, 
 and succeeded in obtaining some of the privileges for 
 which he had long contended. Upon his retirement 
 from office, he declined being a candidate for re- 
 election. He did not, however, neglect any oppor- 
 tunity to promote the interests of his fellow-citizens, 
 honourable mention of his name frequently appears in 
 the records both of the town and colony. His death 
 occurred in May, 1683, in his seventy-eighth year; 
 and " he was buried," says Callender, " with all the 
 " solemnity the colony was able to show." There 
 is no portrait of him extant. 
 
 During his last visit to England official duties 
 brought him into, frequent intercourse with the emi- 
 nent individuals who then wielded the power of the 
 state. He renewed his friendship with Sir Harry 
 Vane, and enjoyed the hospitality of that statesman 
 at his country seat ; he secured the powerful influence 
 of Cromwell for his colony ; and, what is of more 
 interest for us, he often passed his hours of leisure 
 with John Milton, " who, 1 ' he says, " for my Dutch I 
 " read him, read me many more languages." It was 
 during this visit a curious episode occurred. He was
 
 184 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 acquainted with Mrs. Sadlier, the daughter of his 
 early patron, Sir Edward Coke. The letters that 
 passed between them are preserved in the library of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, and exhibit Williams's 
 character and tone of rnind in a very favourable 
 light. The lady, who was opposed to the existing 
 order of things, and was not backward in confessing 
 her disapprobation, would not so much as look at one 
 of Williams's works which he sent to her; and, 
 upon being desired to read a book by another author, 
 she wrote a remarkable letter to Williams, from 
 which I quote what follows, as it gives us her opinion 
 of one of the most remarkable men of the time: " For 
 " Milton's book, that you desire I should read, if I be 
 " not mistaken, that is he that has wrote a book of 
 " the lawfulness of divorce ; and, if report says true, 
 " he had at that time two or three wives living (!). 
 " This, perhaps, were good doctrine in New England, 
 " but it is most abominable in Old England. For his 
 " book that he wrote against the late king, you should 
 " have taken notice of God's judgment upon him, 
 " who stroke him with blindness ; and, as I have 
 " heard, he was fain to have the help of one Andrew 
 " Marvell, or else he could not have finished that 
 " most accursed libel. God has begun his judgment 
 " upon him here his punishment will be hereafter in 
 " hell. But have you seen the answer to it ? If
 
 HIS LITERARY PRODUCTIONS. 185 
 
 " you can get it, I assure you it is worth your 
 " reading." 
 
 It was during this visit of three years that Williams 
 gave to the press those works in which he has clearly 
 expounded the noble principle for which he suffered, 
 and which is the most endurable memorial of his 
 name. The views he himself professed of theologi- 
 cal affairs are not very attractive ; may, indeed, be 
 characterized as almost repulsive in their nature. 
 His writings are amongst the dreariest of the dreary 
 productions that appeared during the commonwealth. 
 Everything he wrote, if we except his philological 
 work, " A Vocabulary of the Narraganset Language," 
 designed to facilitate intercourse between the Indian 
 tribes and their white neighbours is occupied with 
 considerations of minute and unimportant points of 
 controversy, which, let it be hoped, have now 
 altogether ceased to be of interest to intelligent men. 
 He hated popery and prelacy ; was an interpreter of 
 prophecy ; and saw in the events of the day fulfil- 
 ment of some of the most abstruse problems of the 
 Apocalypse. Thoroughly convinced of the soundness 
 of his own views, and unable to see how others could 
 reasonably dissent from his favourite notions, he was 
 ever ready " to discuss, debate, dispute, either by word 
 " or writing, with whom, or before whomsoever the 
 " present debate concerns, with all Christian meek-
 
 186 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 " ness, and due submission." He must have been one 
 of the most troublesome and irrepressible disputants 
 that figured in the controversial battles of the day. 
 His merit, however, does not lie in this direction, but 
 consists exclusively of the consistency with which 
 through life he advocated the important doctrine we 
 associate with his name. Not only in " The Bloody 
 " Tenent of Persecution," where he has discussed it 
 at length ; but in season and out of season, in every- 
 thing he wrote, did he avow his belief that the 
 opinions of one man do not concern another, and that 
 the state has no right to interfere with the religious 
 views of its subjects. I have before me a quarto 
 publication of thirty-six pages, printed at London, 
 " in the second Moneth, 1652," and entitled, " The 
 " Hireling Ministry None of Christ's, or A Discourse 
 " touching the Propagating the Gospel of CHRIST 
 " JESUS. Humbly Presented to such Pious and 
 " Honourable Hands, whom the present Debate 
 " thereof concerns. By Roger Williams, of Provi- 
 " dence, in New England." In the 'Epistle Dedi- 
 catory, the author informs his readers, that having 
 been engaged in several points of the same nature 
 " in my former and later endeavours against that 
 '' Bloody Tenent of Persecution for cause of con- 
 " science ; and also having been forced to observe 
 " the goings of God, and the spirits of men, both in
 
 HIS CHARACTER. 187 
 
 " Old and New England, as touching the Church, 
 " the ministry and ordinances of Jesus Christ, I did 
 " humbly apprehend my call from Heaven not to 
 " hide my candle under a bed of ease and pleasure, 
 " or a bushel of gain and profit ; but to set it on a 
 " candlestick of this publike profession, for the bene- 
 " fit of others, and the praise of the father of all 
 " lights and Godliness." 
 
 The pertinacity of the man in this respect is, in- 
 deed, surprising, and it is worthy of remark, that 
 although he believed himself to have had a call from 
 heaven, he never, in the least degree, exhibited a 
 disposition to coerce others, or forcibly bring them to 
 profess the views he himself entertained on any sub- 
 ject. Men who have " a call" usually act otherwise. 
 They become persecutors, being just as ready to in- 
 flict martyrdom as to suffer it. To me it has always 
 been a matter of wonder that a man of Williams's 
 way of thinking should have been in advance of the 
 age in which he lived, inasmuch as his nature, as far 
 as I have been able to discover it from his life and 
 works, appears to have been composed of all the 
 elements that go to form a bigot. He thoroughly 
 believed in himself, and could not conceive that 
 others, when they differed from him, could be in the 
 right; he possessed that eager, restless, obtrusive 
 disposition, which suffers no opposition, and will
 
 188 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 acknowledge no defeat. He had, moreover, the 
 power in his newly-founded state to enforce, with 
 some degree of success, uniformity of opinion. 
 But there is no evidence that he ever made the 
 attempt. He consistently abode by the principles for 
 which he contended from the day when he first en- 
 tered the ministry. 
 
 If the man who reveals to us a new and beneficent 
 moral principle occupies a higher place in our regard 
 than he who discovers a new universe in Lyra, or 
 tells us what are the constituent elements of the 
 moon, Roger Williams is entitled to a very exalted 
 position. The doctrine he announced was the want 
 of his age. The spirit of compromise had prevented 
 its propagation at the Reformation, and down to 
 his day no one had been able to make the 
 great discovery. He was the first to proclaim it, 
 and, being a man of one idea, like all men of one 
 idea who devote their lives to a cause, he had im- 
 mense influence in his generation. That one member 
 of the community should legally be roasted to death 
 for holding opinions at variance with the rest was to 
 him as horrible as it is to ourselves. There are at 
 least two sides to every question. He knew too 
 much of human nature to suppose all men in a nation 
 think alike on religious matters, and was well 
 aware that constraint and restraint effected by the
 
 HIS TOLERANCE. 189 
 
 civil power could result only in outward manifesta- 
 tions of conformity. All attempts to place limita- 
 tions to liberty of conscience, whether made by his 
 opponents, or by his co-religionists, he strenuously 
 denounced. He would have no sliding-scale of 
 toleration, but contended for free and absolute 
 liberty. He never lost sight of a great principle. 
 His own opinions may be ill founded ; his doctrines 
 in religious matters may shock people of refinement; 
 his style of argumentation may put at defiance all 
 the rules of elegant composition; but he does not 
 desire to impose his views upon others, or force them 
 to read the books in which he has enunciated them. 
 All are free to choose for themselves. They may 
 worship Baal if they please he would not interfere 
 with the rites he desired that every man should 
 worship his Gods without molestation. He was our 
 first advocate for unlimited toleration. The ancients, 
 it is true, permitted liberty of religious worship to 
 its fullest extent. To the Greek the same truth was 
 discoverable under all forms of worship,* and the 
 
 * I ain reminded of the condemnation of Socrates. There is 
 little doubt that the philosopher was attacked chiefly on political 
 grounds. His connection with the oligarchy was sufficient 
 cause for his arraignment by Anytus who had been their chief 
 opponent, and the prime agent in the revolution by which they 
 were overthrown. The charge of impugning the state religion,
 
 190 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 Romans, from political motives, recognized every re- 
 ligion that was held by their subjects, or had been 
 introduced into the metropolis. Christians formed 
 an exception to their usual toleration, because, from 
 the nature of their faith, they would not and could 
 not suffer ways of thinking different from their own. 
 In self-defence, therefore, other religionists were 
 forced to attempt the extinction of the creed, not 
 because nova, but because malefica, as Suetonius puts 
 it. From the time when Theodosius made penal 
 laws against the Manicheans, to the time of Roger 
 Williams, every sect that sprung up and demanded 
 
 and corrupting the youths a crime not referring to the minds 
 of these youths, but to a capital offence then as now was 
 brought forward to strengthen the case of the prosecution. 
 The indictment was well framed. The opinions of the philoso- 
 pher on religion could not have been so heinous an offence as 
 to warrant death in a state which permitted the free discussion 
 of men who explained away the Gods and their providence, 
 and investigated the origin of the ideas they represented with 
 a licence that is not tolerated in our day in England. One has 
 great difficulty in understanding the sympathy that, from the 
 time of Plato to that of the latest writer who has made the 
 famous supper the subject of his discourse, has been bestowed 
 upon Socrates. If Socrates believed himself to have been un- 
 justly condemned, as he professed, he should unhesitatingly 
 have taken advantage of the means provided by his friend Crito 
 for escape, and evaded his doom. By submitting to the execu- 
 tion of an unjust sentence he was himself a party to injustice.
 
 HIS CLAIM UPON OUR REGARD. 191 
 
 the adhesion of mankind had threatened those who 
 declined to comply with its invitation. " Believe or 
 " perish," was the motto of each. The founder of 
 Khode Island was the first to preach the old doctrine 
 to the new civilization; and it is for this that his 
 name and memory should be held in grateful remem- 
 brance by all generations.
 
 X. 
 STEELE.* 
 
 HE author of the latest memoir of Steele, 
 who thinks, and thinks justly, that 
 Thackeray, in his " Esmond," has carica- 
 tured him, and, " for the sake of being 
 " graphic and dramatic," has given the reader the 
 general impression of his being a sort of Captain Cos- 
 tigan,isan apologist and advocate of the worthy knight. 
 His work is an attempt to reproduce the age of Queen 
 Anne " through the medium of a life of " Steele." 
 The animus is undoubtedly good; but we fear the at- 
 tempt must be considered unsuccessful, inasmuch as 
 it has resulted in very unsatisfactory performance. 
 It will furnish those who are altogether unacquainted 
 with the history of England and its literature during 
 the period treated with a large number of facts re- 
 lating to eminent persons and great affairs which 
 
 * Sir Richard Steele, Memoir of the Life and Writings of. 
 By H. R. Montgomery.
 
 DUTIES OF A BIOGRAPHER. 193 
 
 cannot fail to be of value. It is a collection of very 
 useful materials, that in a second edition may be 
 turned to good account. But to the student of the 
 period to him who is already familiar with so im- 
 portant an.d critical a period in our annals as the 
 reign of Queen Anne it can in its present form 
 have but the slightest interest. He will find in its 
 pages nothing that will be new ; and what is old will 
 lose all interest, by reason of the inefficient treatment 
 it has received. 
 
 What is above all things required in a biographer 
 is the power of forcibly bringing before the reader 
 the individual whose life he has undertaken to write. 
 He must abstract that which belongs to him in com- 
 mon with others, and present only the result. There 
 must be no generalities, no stringing together of ill- 
 selected epithets, no incongruities in the present- 
 ment ; but the portrait must preserve all the charac- 
 teristics of the original. Few men are able success- 
 fully to do this. Mr. Carlyle, in his "History of the 
 " French Revolution," has proved himself to be one 
 of the great masters of the art. Some of his portraits 
 are marvellous for the vigour with which they are 
 conceived and represented ; they have all the distin- 
 guishing marks of having been drawn from the life ; 
 and although, we believe, several of them, in very 
 important particulars, bear but the faintest resem- 
 
 o
 
 194 STEELE. 
 
 blance to the particular personages with whose 
 names they are labelled, each of them seems to have 
 the merit of being a real portrait of somebody. We 
 feel there are real men and women before us, and 
 are ready to be convinced that we see the texture of 
 their skin, and hear the sound of their voices, and 
 know the phraseology in which they are about to 
 address us. The reader will be disappointed if he 
 expects to find in this work manifestations of so 
 desirable a power as that possessed by Mr. Carlyle. 
 And it has another defect. It is now usually agreed 
 that a biography should confine itself to the actions 
 and fortunes of the individual ; everything that does 
 not bear upon the development of his character or 
 course of life should be excluded, and the successive 
 events should be so narrated as to enable the reader 
 to have a true portraiture of the man. In these 
 memoirs, however, there is no individuality. From 
 the seven hundred pages which form the two volumes, 
 he will not derive so distinct a notion of Steele, or 
 any of his contemporaries, as he now possesses of the 
 fictitious De Coverley from the few papers devoted 
 to that hero in The Spectator. The work is a made- 
 up work. It contains too much and too little. As a 
 whole it is sadly deficient in the unity essential to 
 such a work as this. 
 
 Not only have we biographies of the persons who
 
 UNITY NECESSARY. 195 
 
 wrote for the several publications with which Steele 
 was connected "a group of sketches around the 
 " central figure " but, " in accordance with the ex- 
 " pressed aim of the design," we are presented with 
 sketches of those to whom the several volumes of 
 the works were dedicated. Nor is there the least 
 art displayed in the grouping or presentment of the 
 figures that pass before us. The people who are in- 
 troduced are introduced on the slightest pretext. A 
 casual allusion to a name, or its occurrence in corres- 
 pondence, will evoke its former owner and trot him 
 through a dozen pages. The author has failed to 
 give us an intelligible picture of the age, or a striking 
 portrait of the man, but instead thereof offers discon- 
 nected memoirs and world-famous anecdotes. We 
 have the old story of the loves of Swift, and are told, 
 in the words often employed before, how one day, 
 entering the room where Vanessa was sitting, " with 
 " that terrible look which he assumed when angry, 
 " he flung down a packet on the table and strode 
 " out without uttering a word ; " how a bullying 
 lawyer, provoked by the great Dean's keen satire, 
 called at the Deanery to revenge himself, and having 
 sent up his name as Serjeant Bettesworth, was met 
 by the Dean, who calmly demanded the name of the 
 regiment to which he belonged ; that when " Gulli- 
 " ver's Travels " appeared, a master of a vessel said
 
 196 STEELE. 
 
 " he knew Gulliver well, but that he lived at Wap- 
 " ping, and not at Rotherhithe ; " how King "William 
 taught the famous Irish parson to cut asparagus. 
 Once again, we read in these volumes the fate of the 
 unfortunate Budgell, and have Pope's stinging lines 
 on the event; of the quarrel between Pope and Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montagu ; of Wycherley making 
 acquaintance with the Duchess of Cleveland, and of 
 his marriage with the Countess of Drogheda; of 
 Congreve's friendship with the Duchess of Marlbo- 
 rough, and the fantastic way in which her Grace, 
 after the death of the poet, is said to have preserved 
 his memory by inviting to her table, as a constant 
 guest, " an automaton model of him in ivory " and 
 of scores of similar stories, as well known to ordinary 
 readers as the Nelson Column to the porter at 
 Northumberland House. The author's insight into 
 character may be learned from the expression of his 
 belief that when Steele left the University without 
 a degree, and enlisted in the Horse Guards, " great 
 " admiration of the character of King "William had 
 " something to do with it ; " and his taste and fair- 
 ness from the regret he avows that Steele was not 
 equally wise in his generation with " the Reverend 
 " Dr. Swift, who had gone such lengths in doing the 
 " foul work of party, to earn the wages of mercenary 
 " apostacy." Our author's opinion of the Dean may
 
 HIS EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE. 197 
 
 be right ; but surely he is here doing in the case of 
 Swift what he complains of others doing in the case 
 of Steele. 
 
 In addition to the fundamental faults we have in- 
 dicated, the work contains minor defects, too nu- 
 merous to be mentioned, the nature of which may be 
 inferred from what has been already said. Incorpo- 
 rated with the text, however, and by far the most 
 useful portion of the work, are the letters reprinted 
 from " Steele's Correspondence," published in 1809, 
 by Nichols, from the originals in the British Mu- 
 seum. These are invaluable records. Some of them 
 are addressed to Swift, Pope, and other literary 
 friends ; but by far the greater number are to Lady 
 Steele. They are the shortest epistles in existence, 
 and all of a character.* The writer was always in a 
 hurry, and always excusing his delay in returning 
 home. " The coach is passing, and I can say no 
 " more ; " "I am drinking a pint of wine, and will 
 " come home forthwith ; " "I put myself to the 
 " pain of absence from you at dinner by waiting to 
 " speak to Salkeild ;" "I have received money, but 
 
 * There is great variation in the style and caligraphy of the 
 original letters. Some were evidently composed with the most 
 deliberate neatness, whilst others bear unmistakable signs of 
 having been written in great haste, and probably after the 
 writer had seen the third bottle brought on the table.
 
 198 STEELE. 
 
 " cannot come home till about four o'clock" such 
 is the tenor of them all. We suspect, however, 
 from numerous indications, that it was not always 
 solicitude for his wife and dread of her prolonged 
 anxiety that induced him to write so frequently. 
 We fear Lady Steele was in the habit, like a foolish 
 wife, of seeking her husband when in company. 
 More than once he writes, " Do not send after me ;" 
 " I shall be ridiculous,'' and he complains that he 
 must always be giving her an account of every 
 minute of his time. His eternal want of money was 
 a great misery to him, and, to judge from these let- 
 ters, we cannot help thinking, in opposition to most 
 men, that the seemingly cheerful demeanour of our 
 saucy-faced Captain too frequently concealed trouble 
 and dimness of anguish. " If the man who has my 
 " shoemaker's bill calls, let him be answered that I 
 " shall call on him as I come home. I stay here," 
 he adds, " to get Johnson to discount a bill for me, 
 " and shall dine with him for that end. He is ex- 
 " pected at home every minute." When his wife 
 went to Carmarthen, to her native place, leaving 
 him in charge of the daughter afflicted with small- 
 pox, he writes : " We had not when you left us an 
 " inch of candle, a pound of coal, or a bit of meat 
 " left in the house ; but we do not want now." And 
 she, with her Welsh ways, and her Welsh advisers,
 
 BROKEN RESOLVES. 199 
 
 was perpetually worlcllying, complaining of what he 
 owed her, and urging him to get money. He, poor 
 fellow, felt the reproach keenly. His little notes are 
 a series of promises to mend his means. " I do as 
 " you advise," he says ; " court and converse with 
 " men able and willing to serve me ;" and, again, 
 upon being reminded by her of the ingratitude he 
 had experienced : " I have as quick a sense of the 
 " ill-treatment I have received as is consistent with 
 " keeping up my own spirit and good humour." He 
 reproached her at first by innuendo ; but once or 
 twice he fairly lost temper, and wrote in rage. " In 
 " the name of God," he exclaims, " have done with 
 " talk of money !" But his rage was of short dura- 
 tion, and in his next note he was on his knees, a 
 doating husband, writing to his wife to put on her 
 mask and come to Somerset stairs, or desiring her to 
 take a coach and " come to this lodgings," or feeling 
 such interest in her appearance as to request her to 
 " look a little dressed, or everybody will be enter- 
 " tained but the entertainer." 
 
 He was ever most sanguine, and had, withal, a 
 knack of hoping rarely equalled. He tells his wife, 
 in one letter, that she, her servants, and children, 
 shall be better provided for than any family in 
 England; and in another in high spirits at the 
 anticipated success of a scheme for bringing live fish
 
 200 STEELE. 
 
 to the London market that he hoped in " a post or 
 " two to give an account of a thing that will bring a 
 " great sum of money." " I shall soon be a clear man," 
 and, " I am in a fair way to be a great man," was the 
 burden of his daily song. Do we need more than 
 these brief notes furnish to know the man Steele ? 
 What occasion is there for a list of his debts, of the 
 offices he held, of the comedies he wrote, of the bottles 
 he drank, of the houses he inhabited ? 
 
 To institute comparison between famous personages 
 is a favourite employment as well with impulsive 
 critics as with the general public. The comparisons 
 are in most instances provokingly puerile. Accurate 
 thinkers regard each man as good of his sort, and 
 with them, therefore, there could arise no dispute 
 as to which is the greater. For the advocate of 
 the one to dispute the .claims of the other would 
 manifestly be absurd; they wisely content them- 
 selves with crediting each with being what he is. 
 English readers, however, and intelligent English 
 writers, are not satisfied with this. They pit one 
 man against another, with whom, in reality, he has 
 no points of similarity, or, if he has, they are due to 
 circumstance, and not to nature. 
 
 Steele and his coadjutor, Addison, are thus 
 usually classed together to be compared, and are 
 seldom compared without being classed. Each has
 
 COMPARED WITH ADDISON. 201 
 
 his advocates and partisans, among whom are to be 
 numbered well-known authors, some favouring Steele 
 to the disadvantage of Addison, and some deprecia- 
 ting Steele and obscuring his reputation for the sake 
 of glorifying Addison. Thackeray and Lord Mac- 
 aulay are the most eminent who have declared in 
 favour of the Right-honourable gentleman ; while, 
 Coleridge, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and, 
 more recently, Mr. Forster, seem, on the other hand, 
 to incline to the side of the knight. 
 
 But Steele's backers are not very resolute in sup- 
 port of their champion. The majority of readers and 
 writers find it difficult to conceive a " great " man 
 made of such stuff as he. They look for strong 
 character in their heroes ; and this disposition influ- 
 ences the idea they form of a man's writings. Dig- 
 nity of attitude, gravity of countenance, and, in some 
 degree, conformity between opinion and action, are 
 indispensable for securing their applause. If Mr. 
 Ketch's arguments for the abolition of capital pun- 
 ishments are ever so unassailable, they discredit them, 
 because the preacher's mission makes it occasionally 
 necessary for him to act contrary to his opinion. 
 Like Hermotimus, an interlocutor in one of Lucian's 
 Dialogues, who became a convert to the Stoic philo- 
 sophy solely because he observed its professors were 
 serious in demeanour, they regard levity in manner
 
 202 STEELE. 
 
 as indicative of shallowness in intellect. It is not 
 surprising, then, that the reckless and irresolute 
 Steele, whose career was a solecism in morals, does 
 not obtain the praise he merits. From the time of 
 his leaving college without a degree, to the day of 
 his death on the banks of the Towy, at the age of 58, 
 an old man before his time, he was the victim of his 
 own temperament. He was completely incapable of 
 restraining himself. He was genial, good-natured to 
 excess, fond of good society, and, to use the words of 
 Lady Mary W. Montagu, like Fielding, so made 
 for happiness, that it is a pity he was not immortal. 
 But happiness never came. In politics and in the 
 business of life he was equally unsuccessful. Even in 
 affairs of the heart, in which, as might be supposed, 
 he had his share, he does not seem to have prospered. 
 The " perverse " widow (widows, as De Coverley and 
 more of us have experienced, are too often " per- 
 verse ") left a wound in his heart that, we suspect, 
 was never quite healed. Indeed, as Charter-house 
 boy, collegian, soldier, lover, pamphleteer, gazetteer, 
 Parliament man, patentee, inventor of fish machines, 
 and father of a family, poor Sir Richard failed to 
 reach the personal success he promised himself. He 
 was a brave adventurer, but he never had the luck 
 to secure a great prize ; or, having secured it, he 
 was unable to retain it. And the reason is plain.
 
 HIS RANK AS A MAN OF LETTERS. 203 
 
 He failed, as all others have failed who attempted 
 to eat the grape and drink the wine. 
 
 But to abstract the author from the man and, 
 logically, this is the only way to judge him whose 
 sole claim to notice is a literary claim Steele must 
 take high rank as an English man of letters. Neither 
 he nor Addison was, it is true, a man of the highest 
 culture. Neither took a commanding view of litera- 
 ture or of life. Both were inferior in range to Swift, 
 whose vision, blurred and bleared as it was, included 
 humanity itself, whilst their horizon was very con- 
 tracted, the aim of both being avowedly limited to 
 satirizing the conventions by which they were sur- 
 rounded, and to framing characters of domestic life. 
 They held the mirror up to Fashion and not to 
 Nature. At best they were tea-table moralists, and 
 in their homilies we miss the force we look for in 
 sermons addressed to more stormy audiences. For 
 his share in the work, Addison partly from grace of 
 style, and partly, no doubt, by reason of his greater 
 specific gravity has undoubtedly secured the larger 
 share of credit, and although their polish has a ten- 
 dency to make his writings appear weak, the under- 
 lying thought, or semi-thought, is for the most part 
 more vigorous than what appears in his friend's 
 essays. The one derived his insight from direct ex- 
 perience ; the other considered our nature by aid of
 
 204 STEELE. 
 
 reflected experience, and, paradoxical as the assertion 
 may sound, saw deeper, and further, and clearer. 
 But the praise of Steele is far higher than that 
 of Addison. He was one of those whose writings 
 are said to be greater than the writers. He planted 
 a seed of revolution in our literature, thereafter, as 
 we all know, to bear abundant fruit. " Bickerstaff " 
 must be credited with the honour due to an inventor. 
 He gave a new form to our literature ; or, as it is 
 quaintly put by one of his contemporaries, " his 
 " writings have set all our wits and men of letters 
 " upon a new way of thinking."
 
 STERNE. 
 
 LTHOUGH much has been written on 
 Humour, and very many acute observa- 
 tions have been made on its nature and 
 functions, every formal attempt to de- 
 fine what it is has proved to be signally unsuccessful. 
 Each definition has the demerit either of excluding 
 men who are admittedly entitled to be ranked among 
 the humourists, or of being so comprehensive as by its 
 terms to embrace not only writers distinguished for 
 their humour, but others whose claims to the honour 
 will be generally disallowed. The difficulty of de- 
 termining the true nature of humour and of discri- 
 minating it from the other kinds of literary produc- 
 tion to which it is germane, is, indeed, very great. 
 Addison, whilst treating the subject in one of the 
 " Spectators," expressed his opinion that it is much 
 easier to describe what it is not, than to say what it 
 is. He had before him Cowley's well-known defini-
 
 206 STERNE. 
 
 tion of wit. But, declining to adopt the method he 
 approved, he was bolder than Cowley, and proceeded 
 to give his own notions on the subject, " after Plato's 
 " manner, in a kind of allegory." Without pronounc- 
 ing on Addison's success, and having no desire myself 
 to hazard a new definition, I may, I think, venture 
 to express my belief that, however much they differ 
 in manner, the great masters of humour must be 
 divided, with respect to their matter, into two well- 
 defined classes. The one, making the conventionali- 
 ties his subject, deals with the affairs of every-day 
 life. The minor morals form his topics. He has 
 to do with what is incidental in human affairs ; the 
 fashions, the foibles of individuals, the eccentricities 
 of society are the theme of his discourse. He is con- 
 cerned with what is transient, and his influence 
 ceases with the phase of civilization of which he has 
 been the exponent. The other is the humourist of 
 nature. He deals by choice with the old Adam that 
 leavens us. The beggarly elements in our composi- 
 tion are his favourite topic. His attention is not 
 confined to what is dependent upon fashion for its 
 interest, but is directed to our natural and permanent 
 passions. He is tolerant; does not satirize folly 
 (indeed, he believes nothing human can justly be 
 considered folly); and his sympathy is so wide-em- 
 bracing that he is lenient even with what we term the
 
 UTS CHARACTER MISREPRESENTED. 207 
 
 vicious propensities of our nature. It is in the latter 
 class that Sterne must undoubtedly be placed. 
 
 There is a reigning idea concerning this incom- 
 parable humourist of which the late Mr. Thackeray 
 may be taken as the most eminent exponent. That 
 writer, who in this instance seems to have judged 
 men and things from a no higher point of view than 
 that of a shrewd Charter-house boy, believed to the 
 night of his death that Laurence Sterne was a great 
 jester and not a great humourist a charlatan, who 
 brought out his bit of carpet, spread it, and tumbled 
 on it for the amusement of bystanders, without him- 
 self sharing in the mirth he created, and without 
 caring much whether it was mirth or sorrow he pro- 
 duced, so long as halfpence, in the shape of applause, 
 came tumbling in upon the performer. And not 
 only in this explicit portraiture he has left us of 
 Sterne, but in every story the great novelist pro- 
 duced, did he manifest inability to appreciate or 
 even, I think, to apprehend a character like that 
 of Yorick. He could not and this, to me, appears 
 to be his cardinal defect as a novelist bring himself 
 to believe it possible for a man to be double-minded 
 in a good sense as well as in a bad ; and whenever ho 
 conceived or attempted to delineate an individual oi 
 the order to which Sterne belonged his representa- 
 tion is glaringly unreal and unartistic. Such defec-
 
 208 STERNE. 
 
 tive representation, whenever produced, is partly 
 owing, of course, to want of intellectual insight in the 
 critic ; but in a greater degree is it due to moral 
 obliquity to a deficiency of tolerance for what is 
 beyond the area of his own experience and custo- 
 mary horizon. A man who exhibits himself, either 
 in literature or in society, in two obviously antago- 
 nistic relations, is thoughtlessly condemned for insin- 
 cerity. His critics conclude that one or other phase 
 of his character must necessarily be fictitious. They 
 do not conceive that it is possible for both to be 
 genuine, and for the man in each case to be true to 
 his own nature. 
 
 For one who is not always the same, as well in 
 letters as in life, men avow their aversion. Cor- 
 diality to-day and coldness to-morrow they cannot 
 understand, and will not suffer. They require a man 
 to be " genuine ;" and how can he be genuine who is 
 at one time cordial and at another indifferent, or 
 worse ? The censure resulting from this conviction 
 is levelled against a whole class of writers; but 
 Sterne, perhaps more than any other, suffers from 
 this defective way of judging. Is he pathetic in the 
 presence of suffering in the brute creation and at the 
 same time guilty of ill-treating his nearest relatives? 
 His pathos is obviously assumed. Does he weep at 
 the recital of woe by the lips of a stranger whilst his
 
 HIS SINCERITY. 209 
 
 imprudence is the occasion of deeper misfortune 
 among members of his own family ? Be assured that 
 his tears are crocodile tears, springing from no 
 genuine feeling, but mechanically produced as a bit 
 of harlequinade for the delectation of the gentle 
 reader. To this view of Sterne I cannot bring 
 myself to assent ; and prolonged acquaintance with 
 his productions serves only to confirm me in the 
 belief of his absolute sincerity. Sterne, however, is 
 in some degree liable to the implied censure. Men 
 of sensitive nature like his find relief in making 
 their feelings objective and contemplating them at a 
 distance. In this process there is for them refined 
 happiness akin to that felt by people who derive 
 comfort from the act of confession only in their case 
 the confession is made openly to the public and not 
 confided to the ears of a priest. His critic would have 
 us believe that Sterne, finding his tears infectious, and 
 that they brought him a great popularity, designedly 
 exercised the lucrative gift of weeping, utilised it, 
 and cried on every occasion. I know no reason why 
 a man should not utilise his sensations as well as his 
 reflections, and publish " Sentimental Journies" as 
 well as " Snob Papers ;" nor can I see why he 
 should be abused for the one more than for the other. 
 Let us be thankful for both. Sterne was not a whole 
 man. He was an " episodical " character ; one of those 
 
 p
 
 210 STERNE. 
 
 whose "component parts" are so ill-assorted that they 
 never come to fit well together. The very tempera- 
 ment, however, that made him sympathize with a dis- 
 tressed and unknown wayfarer would make him suffer 
 acutely and resent warmly the want of a sympathetic 
 and conciliatory spirit in a cold-hearted wife. The 
 sympathy and the resentment were connate. But 
 people talk of him as if affection could be excited at 
 will, and its direction and force regulated with as 
 much precision as it is possible to regulate the direc- 
 tion and force of a jet of New River water. "With 
 peremptory solicitude they make out a list of those 
 whom you must love and those whom it is improper 
 for you to love. Sterne, by first disregarding their 
 list, and then by disregarding them, had the misfor- 
 tune to acquire their permanent ill-will. He went 
 his own way. What was congruous with his nature 
 alone affected him ; and he too had the courage to 
 seem to be in his works what he was in his life. 
 
 There are men, such as Johnson, who are not 
 affected by another's mental grief, and are unable to 
 understand why any healthy, well-fed man can 
 ever be miserable. An unfortunate woman who is 
 hungry even Johnson could carry home and feed in 
 his chambers : but for the heart suffering from un- 
 requited love, or sick with hope deferred, it was 
 impossible to have aroused his active sympathy.
 
 HIS SUSCEPTIBILITY. 211 
 
 Sterne, on the other hand, was so susceptible as to 
 be more sensibly affected by ideal sorrow than by 
 material misfortune. In disclosing his nature, how- 
 ever, he made no pretence of being regulated by 
 principles of philanthropy. Distant misery did not 
 disturb his equanimity. He confessed that the figur- 
 ing to himself millions of his fellow-creatures in 
 slavery did not influence him. But the sight of 
 one solitary captive in his prison was ever enough 
 to arouse his sympathy and make his heart bleed. 
 Even the mechanical notes of a starling, attempting 
 its deliverance, was enough to awaken his affection 
 for "they were true in tune to nature." The 
 generosity that " endowed not the arts and sciences 
 " but gave to the decayed artist," was what he prac- 
 tised with admirable consistency. 
 
 Insincerity, however, is not his only crime. Two 
 other vices, shamelessness of life, and want of deli- 
 cacy in his writings, are charged against our incom- 
 parable humourist. He was, they say, at once a bad 
 man and an immoral author. There is obviously 
 something to support the accusations ; but there is 
 also much to be said in mitigation of them. A good 
 deal of Sterne's character was unconsciously derived 
 from the circumstances of his early life and training, 
 and to these we must refer most of what we condemn. 
 The facts of his career if we except his being swept
 
 212 STEENE. 
 
 under a mill water-wheel, and shot out on the other 
 side unharmed are not of a very eventful nature. 
 Nevertheless, when at the age of eleven he was 
 entered at the Halifax grammar-school, he had un- 
 doubtedly experienced more of life's buffe tings and had 
 seen more of its vicissitudes than any of his young 
 companions. Born in a barrack, the son of a poor 
 marching lieutenant, he was carried by his mother 
 after the regiment from native Clonmel to York ; 
 from York to Dublin ; thence to Exeter ; then a se- 
 cond time to Dublin ; back to Bristol ; once more to 
 Ireland ; tossed about in the Channel ; in danger more 
 than once of the miserable packet going down with 
 her freight; suffering all kinds of privations and 
 misery for years. In all these journeys, voyagings, 
 marches, the poor mother and her children had 
 hard times of it. When young Laurence's enforced 
 wanderings ceased he was eleven years of age. His 
 cousin, a Yorkshire squire, placed him first at school, 
 and afterwards at Jesus College, Cambridge, where 
 he remained till his ordination ; his uncle obtained for 
 him the living of Button and a prebendal stall in 
 York ; and so he was set up in the world. When he 
 became a famous author, further advancement was 
 afterwards expected, but none came. He lived and 
 died a country parson. He was always Yorick. 
 There can be no doubt his life was not in strict
 
 RECEPTION IN LONDON. '213 
 
 keeping with the character of a clergyman as we now 
 conceive it to be. But parsons in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury were not generally exemplars of all the virtues. 
 I find they gambled, hunted, drank port wine, 
 ate to repletion, and had red noses ; but, notwith- 
 standing this habit, they were not supposed to forfeit 
 their position as respectable members of society. 
 Sterne, by his temperament, was preserved from the 
 orthodox virtues of his cloth. His delicate or- 
 ganization was always on the verge of coming to an 
 end. Blood-vessels in the lungs were periodically 
 giving way and bringing him to death's door. His 
 existence was a struggle with disease. He had 
 to fly more than once for life; but, cheerful even 
 with death at his heels, he could not abstain from 
 enjoying himself in his own way. When the first 
 volumes of " Tristram " had converted the obscure 
 Sutton incumbent into the famous author, what a 
 pleasure it must have been for the poor, lean, 
 hectic, invalid to escape for a while from the 
 atmosphere of York, loaded with local preten- 
 sions, and to receive his triumph here in London. 
 Bond Street was a happy promotion from the York 
 coteries, and the incense burnt for him by the 
 best in the land compensated the personal dis- 
 putes and pompous formalities of the county fami- 
 lies. The town circles into which he was intro-
 
 214 STERNE. 
 
 duced must have seemed paradise when he com- 
 pared them with those he had left, wherein " repu- 
 " tations are sent out of the world by distant hints, 
 " nodded away, and cruelly winked into suspicion." 
 His sojournings in London were the occasion of 
 much scandal. With his frail frame he could not 
 stand what his robust friends were able to endure 
 with impunity. Strong men who could draw, and 
 did draw, upon their constitutions for six times the 
 amount poor Yorick ever ventured upon, were 
 not ashamed to reproach Yorick with excess. Our 
 author's delicate relations with women especially 
 have subjected him to much censure. But for the 
 most part . I believe the charge undeserved. He 
 possessed that frankness of manner which never fails 
 to ingratiate its possessor, and was one of those who 
 are able to form an acquaintance of seven years' 
 strength at the first introduction. Life, he con- 
 tended, was too short to be long about the forms of it. 
 In one respect he resembled his own La Fleur, who 
 carried a passport in his looks ; and, although lean 
 and haggard, he possessed that insinuant presence 
 which makes a man successful no less among women 
 than among men. He was indiscreet ; but to judge 
 him by strictest canons of morality, he will not be 
 found guilty of active wrong. It was a necessity, 
 however, of his nature always to have in his head
 
 SCANDALS. 215 
 
 some Dulcinea. " It has ever been one of the sin- 
 " gular blessings of my life," he writes, partly in 
 play and partly perhaps unconsciously avowing his 
 real feeling, " to be almost every hour of it miserably 
 " in love with some one." This was true. And he 
 pretended to think that a man who had not a sort of 
 affection for the whole sex was incapable of loving a 
 single one as he ought. To arouse his sensibility it 
 was necessary that he should have an object at hand; 
 and he generally took the nearest, believing himself, 
 by some special grace, to be recognized on the lady's 
 side, privileged to make his court to any woman he 
 pleased. Is it to be wondered at when he could pay 
 such compliments to the sex?* But it must not be 
 
 * " There are three epochs in the empire of a French woman. 
 She is coquette then deist then devotee. The empire during 
 these is never lost she only changes her subjects. When 
 thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the 
 slaves of love, she re-peoples it with the slaves of infidelity, 
 and then with the slaves of the Church. 
 
 " Madame de V was vibrating betwixt the first of these 
 
 epochs ; the bloom of the rose was fading fast away ; she ought 
 to have been a deist five years before the time I had the 
 honour to pay my first visit. 
 
 " She placed me upon the same sofa with her, for the sake 
 of disputing the point of religion more closely. In short, 
 
 Madame de V told me she believed nothing. 
 
 " I told Madame de V it might be her principle, but I 
 
 was sure it could not be her interest to level the outworks,
 
 216 STERNE. 
 
 inferred that his love makings were very serious, or 
 had criminal result. There is, at least, no evidence 
 to convict him of ever having abused the agreeable 
 privilege he claimed for himself; for although some 
 of his actions were equivocal, and some of the letters 
 he sent to his fair friends such as none of us would 
 now think of writing to female acquaintances, they 
 are certainly not the actions or the letters of a man 
 who is guilty of having betrayed the confidence he 
 had evoked. It is quite possible to account for his 
 conduct, reprehensible it may be, without conceding 
 that in his intercourse with the sex he ever deli- 
 
 without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers 
 could be defended that there was not a more dangerous 
 thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist that it was 
 a debt I owed to my creed not to conceal it from her that I had 
 not been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her but I had 
 begun to form designs ; and what is it but the sentiments of 
 religion and the persuasion they had existed in her breast 
 which could have checked them as they rose up ? We are not 
 adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand, and there is need of 
 all restraint, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on 
 us but, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand it is too too 
 soon 
 
 " I declare I had the credit all over Paris of imperverting 
 
 Madame de V . She affirmed to Monsieur D and the 
 
 Abbe M , that in one half hour I had said more for revealed 
 
 religion than all their encyclopaedias had said against it. I was 
 
 listed directly into Madame de V 's coterie and she put 
 
 off the epoch of deism for two years." A Sentimental Journey.
 
 HIS RELATIOXS WITH WOMEN. 217 
 
 berately transcended due bounds. I cannot value 
 that man's judgment or knowledge of women who 
 would deduce a different conclusion from the notes 
 he sent to " Eliza," and which, above all, are thought 
 to bear unmistakeable evidences of his baseness. 
 The famous passage in one of his letters to this lady 
 proposing that, in the event of his wife's death, Eliza 
 should take her place, is evidently a bit of pleasantry 
 on the part of the writer, meant and accepted as such. 
 He well knew that in all probability his wife would 
 survive him ; and that there was little opportunity of 
 seeing his fair Indian friend again. The truth 
 seems to be, as he tells us, that he, like many more, 
 derived comfort from the attentions and delicate flat- 
 teries of the other sex ; and being, as others have 
 been, not strong enough to renounce them, he over- 
 indulged himself in the exquisite luxury he derived 
 from contemplating his happy situation. 
 
 A worthless man, as severe moralists term him, 
 could never have obtained the good will of so many 
 of his contemporaries as Sterne did. He was valued 
 by all his acquaintances, and his circle included the 
 best in the land. He was able to boast that he 
 never lost a friend. Nor was he without a more 
 valuable reward than public applause. Everybody 
 whose society is courted in fashionable circles, who is 
 fortunate enough or unfortunate enough to be treated
 
 218 STERNE. 
 
 as a lion in society, must desire some retreat where 
 he is no longer regarded as the illustrious author, or 
 statesman, or soldier, but as a close friend whose 
 defects are observed as well as his merits ; where his 
 true dimensions are taken, and where he is at home 
 without ceremony, and on terms of close intimacy 
 with every member of the household. Such a trea- 
 sure Sterne was so fortunate as to have possessed in 
 the Jameses of Gerrard Street, a family by whom he 
 was esteemed as much as he was courted by others. 
 In their circle he used to eat his Sunday dinner 
 during his stay in town; to them he used, like a spoiled 
 boy, to confide his innermost secrets; and from 
 them he took advice that would have been unpa- 
 latable coming from others. They had great regard 
 for him, and it was to them he looked for protection 
 of his child when he was gone. In every emergency, 
 present and prospective, we find from his letters he 
 put trust in their generous and disinterested kind- 
 ness. To inspire the good will of such people as his 
 friends appear to have been, is in itself, one would 
 think, sufficient proof that he deserved it. 
 
 The coolness that existed between him and his 
 wife has been adduced as a proof of his want of true 
 sensibility; but even here there is little to warrant 
 the adverse view of his character. It was better for 
 both that they should live apart. Their tempers
 
 HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER. 219 
 
 were incompatible, and there is much to excuse his 
 want of ardent love for the lady. He was, however, 
 always solicitous for her ease and comfort; always 
 considerate of her happiness ; and when they lived 
 apart he must often have pinched himself to provide 
 means for her separate establishment. On her side 
 I can find no conciliatory attempt ever made by the 
 lady; no desire to make her husband feel that any 
 effort of his to please her had been successful : but, 
 on the contrary, she seems to have been one of those 
 women, specimens of which existed till very recently, 
 who derive gratification from the feeling that they have 
 reason for regarding themselves as martyrs. As for 
 his daughter Lydia, who accompanied her mother in 
 all her wanderings, no one pretends that Sterne did 
 not love the girl with intense fondness. The letters that 
 he sent her are among the most delicate and charm- 
 ing I have ever read ; full of the tenderest affection ; 
 of most playful humour, (and of the same kind, too, 
 as that he produced for the readers of his works, not- 
 withstanding he never dreamed of having them 
 printed), and bearing obvious proof of the deep 
 interest he took in everything that related to her 
 interest and happiness. Indeed, .1 know nothing 
 more affecting than these letters, except it be the 
 fact, that the poor girl was forced, after her father's 
 death, to dispose of his correspondence by reason of her
 
 220 STERXE. 
 
 poverty. These letters, none of which the writer 
 ever thought would see the light, but upon which 
 rests most of the abuse to which his memory has been 
 subjected, if they prove Sterne to have been neither 
 " fat nor modest," cannot be accepted as evidence 
 that he had a corrupt heart, or was a sorry jester. 
 On the contrary, they afford irrefragable evidence of 
 the reverse. 
 
 Sterne's aim in writing, or, as he puts it, the ends 
 he proposed to himself in commencing author were, 
 not to be fed, but to be famous, and the hope of 
 doing the world good by ridiculing what he thought 
 deserving of ridicule or of disservice to sound learn- 
 ing. The aim is undoubtedly good. As we all 
 know, he attained the former object has he not also 
 succeeded in the latter ? On the appearance of the 
 first volumes of " Tristram," his too sensitive friends, 
 influenced not so much, I think, by their tone as by 
 the personalities they contain, remonstrated with 
 him. A medical friend writing from London 
 Yorick had the same contempt for doctors as Mon- 
 taigne and Moliere lets him know that "the general 
 " opinion of the best judges, without exception," was 
 that " it cannot be put into the hands of any woman 
 " of character;" and this charge of indelicacy started 
 simultaneously with the appearance of the works 
 has ever since been brought against them. I confess
 
 HIS GROSSNESS. 221 
 
 I would not put the book into a lady's hands any more 
 than I would recommend Lempriere ; and yet Lem- 
 priere is not a bad book. The exploits of gods and 
 goddesses, of demi-gods and heroes, were a little 
 coarse in their nature, and are given with a freedom 
 that makes them not the fittest reading for our wives 
 and sisters. Sterne is not mean ; is not ungenerous; 
 he does not cease to excite pity for everything that 
 has life and suffers : but we in England are a pecu- 
 liar people, and are presumed to be so combustible a 
 society that the tender passion must not be mentioned 
 except in so far as it leads its votaries to St. George's, 
 Hanover Square. It alone of all human wickedness 
 is to be tabooed in literature. We may place in the 
 hands of women of character tales wherein murder is 
 scientifically performed ; wherein the exact processes 
 of thieving are revealed ; wherein backbiting and 
 reviling one's neighbour are exhibited as fine arts : 
 but anything like an allusion to the amorous propen- 
 sity of our nature except the economic issue to 
 which I have adverted is clearly and obtrusively 
 kept before the constant attention of the reader 
 is visited with critical disapprobation. That Sterne 
 did not think his writings had an immoral ten- 
 dency is sufficiently proved by his making con- 
 fidants of his wife, of his beloved child, and sub- 
 mitting what he wrote to some of his intimate female
 
 222 STERNE. 
 
 acquaintances whom he most respected. He even 
 had thoughts of submitting them to the Archbishop, 
 whereby he hoped to close the mouths of his clerical 
 revilers at York. He doubtless discovered he was 
 improper ; but he persisted in the belief he was just, 
 and his critics wrong ; influenced by the same spirit as 
 that which tempts us to tease a known prude or puri- 
 tan. He knew, moreover, that nothing he wrote was 
 capable of exciting unhallowed passion in the other 
 sex. His most subtle innuendoes are for men ; any 
 latent meaning could be discovered only by those 
 who had experienced what it aims to disclose. His 
 books are essentially men's books. But people in 
 their censure are like the Paris landlord who gave 
 Yorick notice to quit because Madame de R.'s young 
 woman had visited him in the evening, and thus 
 overthrew the credit of his house. This practical 
 censor would not have minded had twenty girls 
 visited his lodger, provided only it had been in the 
 morning. 
 
 This capital charge of grossness made against 
 Sterne has, however, some kind of foundation ; for 
 it must be confessed his was not the chastest pen. 
 But there is much to be said for him. When he 
 wrote, only a few years had elapsed since ladies 
 visited theatres in masks ; and even in circles he was 
 familiar with, a freedom of manners prevailed of
 
 HOW DERIVED. 223 
 
 which the general reader has little notion. True it 
 is, Addison had already written, and Goldsmith was 
 his contemporary. He did not form himself upon 
 such models, nor upon the new literature which 
 reached Yorkshire, but upon preceding writers. He 
 was bred in past fashions of thought, and, like Mon- 
 taigne, dared to write what he dared to think. This 
 can happen only to few writers. Some men refuse 
 to be moulded by surrounding ideas, or rather, they 
 are moulded by ideas derived from their favourite 
 authors, and remain uninfluenced by those current 
 among their intimate associates. These occasional 
 natures, adhering to past manners and past modes of 
 thought, may be compared to the old bucks of the 
 last generation, whom we sometimes see in our 
 streets, strutting about in the costume of their youth, 
 and descanting on the superiority of the manners 
 that distinguished the Regency. Sterne, by force of 
 circumstances, by the life he led as an impression- 
 able boy in barracks, by the queer companionship 
 into which he was forced in after-life, became satu- 
 rated with a mode of thought from which he could 
 not free himself, and, being a Humourist, he was 
 able to reproduce himself in his works. We profit 
 by his gift. The gentler moods and the tenderest 
 passions of humanity have had in him their appro- 
 priate and best interpreter, his divining rod having
 
 224 STERNE. 
 
 revealed treasure so recondite as to have remained 
 unobserved by others. 
 
 In " Tristram Shandy," in the " Sentimental 
 " Journey," in his Sermons, in his Letters, we see the 
 revelations of an exceptional nature, fed upon proper 
 nutriment, and manifesting itself with genuine and 
 triumphant delight. What a novel is " Tristram 
 " Shandy ! " It is true we have something more than 
 the conventional proprieties. No such gallery of 
 worthies, however, had ever before been painted; 
 and none such will ever again be presented to our 
 notice. Other writers concoct their situations, and 
 then ingeniously adapt their puppets to the prede- 
 termined scheme, as if there were a regularly con- 
 structed plot in every Shandy family. They erect a 
 house, and then provide suitable furniture for the 
 building. Sterne worked with a different aim. He 
 had furniture of quaint but rarest fashion, and was 
 indifferent as to where he should house it so long as 
 he was able to fix it somewhere in the edifice. A 
 set of gentler human creatures was never before col- 
 lected under one roof. Nothing, it is true, was well 
 hung; the creaking door, always unswung, was 
 never repaired ; the dispute begun was never ended. 
 It was a queer family, in which things were apt to 
 take a sinister turn ; but every member of it becomes 
 an especial favourite with all who have passed an
 
 UNCLE TOBY. 225 
 
 hour under their roof, and, once known, none is ever 
 again forgotten. The family resemblance is amaz- 
 ing; all are Shandean: but to each has been assigned 
 a well-defined individuality by which he is recog- 
 nized. With inimitable strokes, Toby, the well-be- 
 loved, is discriminated from his brother, the elder 
 Shandy. Different in every respect, and yet how 
 like ! The one is single-minded ; the other, " who 
 " accounted for nothing like anybody else," of an 
 acrid humour. The one had such " a stabbing way 
 " with him in his disputations that in less than half- 
 " an-hour he invariably had the whole party against 
 " him ; " the other, patient of injuries, was of a 
 peaceful, placid nature ; had scarce heart enough to 
 retaliate upon a fly that had annoyed him, and 
 answered an argument by whistling half-a-dozen 
 bars of " Lillebullero." Is there any character in 
 our literature better delineated, stronger in the ele- 
 ments of particularity, more loveable, more worthy 
 of love than Uncle Toby? Mr. Fitzgerald, to 
 whom all admirers of Sterne are much indebted for 
 his recent volumes, incidentally compares him with 
 Sir Roger de Coverley, and Parson Adams; but 
 neither of these worthies is comparable with him, 
 inasmuch as their creators in the several delinea- 
 tions deliberately station themselves on a moral 
 elevation which necessarily prevents them from exhi- 
 
 Q
 
 226 STEENE. 
 
 biting that complete sympathy with their characters 
 which is apparent in every line of Sterne's inimitable 
 creation. He who tells us the heart out of which 
 sprang " Tristram Shandy" was a vain, shallow, canting 
 heart, is not a critic in whom we ought to feel our- 
 selves disposed to put explicit trust. Then there is 
 Trim, the model of a faithful servant and friend, 
 whose devotion is so great that he would willingly 
 hammer out his last half-crown to gratify a single 
 wish of his master; Slop, who always " evaded the 
 " question;" Yorick, Susanna, the Widow Wad- 
 man all are conceived and developed with a pathos 
 that now for a hundred years has made them dear 
 friends of the public, and will continue to make 
 them favourites with our grandchildren in the next 
 century. And do you seek a moral in this wonderful 
 story ? Learn, then, that all of us have eccen- 
 tricities ; that all of us are afflicted with hobbies, and 
 that it is unwise for one man to laugh at his neigh- 
 bour's folly, seeing that his own is just as ridiculous. 
 Sterne was conscious of his genius. What they 
 said of his works losing their popularity he disre- 
 garded. Nor did he doubt of immortality. In his 
 dedication to Pitt, he tells the great commoner how 
 he is to behave, " by taking this book (not under 
 " your protection it must protect itself; but) into 
 " the country with you." " As my life and opinions
 
 CONSCIOUS OF HIS GENIUS. 227 
 
 " are likely to make some noise in the world," says 
 he, in another place, " and, if I conjecture right, 
 " will be no less read than the Pilgrim's Progress 
 " itself, I find it necessary to consult every one a 
 " little in his turn." The idea of going down to 
 posterity in company with Bunyan is one of the 
 most characteristic in his works, and is to be matched 
 for quiet irony only by himself in that passage in 
 the Preface to his Sermons where he acquaints 
 the reader that " the sermon which gave rise to the 
 " publication of these, having been offered to the 
 " public as one of Yorick's, he hopes the most serious 
 " reader will find nothing to offend him in his contin- 
 " uing these volumes under the same title. Lest it 
 " should be otherwise," he proceeds, " I have added 
 " a second title-page with the real name of the 
 " author. The first will serve the bookseller's pur- 
 " pose as Yorick's name is possibly of the two 
 " the more known and the second will ease the 
 " minds of those who see a jest and the danger 
 " which lurks under it, where no jest was meant." 
 A Dr. Ferriar has written a book to show up 
 Sterne. He has proved by addition and subtraction 
 that Yorick's wit was borrowed from his predecessors, 
 and his learning filched from sources long since for- 
 gotten. 1 have not read the doctor's book, but there 
 doubtless is much truth in what he says. Few men
 
 228 STERNE. 
 
 are born with an intuitive knowledge of the ancients 
 and their works. One must get all one knows from 
 somewhere, and a quotation is equally effective when 
 taken from Burton as from Horace. A thorough 
 examination will triumphantly show, that, although 
 his treasury may contain some base foreign coin, all 
 the genuine pieces are from his own mint, and un- 
 mistakably bear the image and superscription of him 
 by whom they were issued. But his great success is 
 due less to wit and learning than to his power of 
 exciting the reader's sympathy. This may in some 
 measure be seen in the Sermons, which are among the 
 best in our language ; but more especially is it to be 
 seen in the " Sentimental Journey," where he had 
 full scope for the exercise of his peculiar powers. 
 His was the loving eye that could see where all was 
 darkness to others. The learned Smelfungus pro- 
 nounced everything barren from Dan to Beersheba, 
 " for every object he passed was discoloured or dis- 
 " torted." He, on the contrary, interesting his heart 
 in everything, would have found in a desert some 
 object to call forth his affections. The compass of his 
 observation was wide, and he had a penetration with 
 which he is not usually credited. The French, who 
 have made this w r ork their own, and several editions 
 have appeared among them, say he is the only 
 Englishman who has ever understood them. It will
 
 SOURCE OF HIS POWER. 229 
 
 be found, moreover, that this sympathy has a different 
 source from what is produced by the exhibition of 
 suffering on the stage, or in the works of most other 
 humourists. There the spectator, or reader, is moved 
 because he is made to contemplate himself in the 
 situation represented. "When, for instance, Don 
 Quixote suffers indignities, when his bones are bro- 
 ken and his teeth knocked down his throat, our 
 sympathies are excited in a greater degree, perhaps, 
 than for any other hero of fiction. We feel the 
 strokes of his assailant ; every blow that falls upon 
 him falls also upon us, and we are kept in a constant 
 state of apprehension for the safety of the unfor- 
 tunate knight. But why are we indignant at the 
 treatment he receives ? Is it not because our expe- 
 rience being superior to his we are able to anticipate 
 the desperate issues that will come ? Even Falstaff, 
 whose transcendent social qualities must receive our 
 admiration, occasions in us no spontaneous affection, 
 no unconscious sympathy. We feel what we feel, 
 and we know why. Our pity is largely interfused 
 with a sense of our own superiority. We are never 
 entirely en rapport with him. He bears the same 
 relation to Uncle Toby as the man at whom you 
 laugh bears to the man with whom you cannot help 
 laughing. In company with Sir John you feel much 
 as Prince Hal and his rollicking companions felt ; in
 
 230 STERNE, 
 
 presence of Uncle Toby you yourself become Shan- 
 dean. Sterne's magic art is superior to that of all 
 his predecessors. He does not excite emotions in 
 us. We suffer them in company with him ; we feel 
 merely because he himself feels. Although his lite- 
 rary merits in other directions are great, in this 
 particular excellence he has no equal. He is the 
 greatest and most genuine of our humourists.
 
 XII. 
 
 THE LITERARY MAN AS SATIRIST. 
 SWIFT. 
 
 E are first introduced to Swift at the 
 famous coffee-house in Covent Garden 
 kept by Button, and frequented by the 
 gentlemen who were termed " the wits." 
 These wits, one of them tells us, had for several 
 successive days observed in the coffee-house a strange 
 clergyman, who seemed utterly unacquainted with 
 any of them, and whose custom it was to lay his hat 
 down on a table, and " walk backward and forward 
 " at a good pace for half an hour, or an hour, without 
 " speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to 
 (e attend to anything that was going forward there. 
 " He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at 
 " the bar, and walk away without opening his lips." 
 The wits, as may be supposed, were greatly fluttered 
 by the apparition ; for, having observed this sin-
 
 232 SWIFT. 
 
 gular behaviour for some time, continues the nar- 
 rator, " they concluded him to be out of his senses, 
 " and the name that he went by among them was 
 " that of ' The mad parson.' " One evening as Mr. 
 Addison and the rest of the wits were observing this 
 
 O 
 
 strange character, they saw him cast his eyes several 
 times on " a gentleman in boots, who seemed to 
 " be just come out of the country ; " and at last, " in 
 " a very abrupt manner; without any previous sa- 
 " lute," for Swift even then did not fashion him- 
 self to the decorums " asked him if he remembered 
 " any good weather in the world." The gentleman 
 in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the 
 country, after staring a little at the oddity of the 
 question, answered that he " remembered a great 
 " deal." " That is more than I can say," rejoined 
 the questioner. " I never remember any that was 
 " not too hot or too cold ; too wet or too dry. But, 
 " however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of 
 " the year it is all very well." The spectators of 
 this scene, who had quitted their seats to get nearer 
 the interlocutors, were, we are told, more than ever 
 confirmed in their opinion of the strange parson's 
 madness. 
 
 Such was the first appearance of Jonathan Swift 
 on the scene where afterwards he was to be the 
 moving spirit. He lived from 1667 to 1745, having
 
 HIS POWER AND FAME. 233 
 
 for contemporaries six English sovereigns. But 
 though the days of his existence exceeded three- 
 score years and ten, he cannot be said to have flour- 
 ished during the whole period. At the height of his 
 career, however, he was the most important figure 
 of the time. Although he never held office, he was 
 so powerful as a statesman that the sovereign with 
 her friends conspired against him ; and so high a 
 notion was entertained by the people of his power that 
 they believed, had he chosen, he could have brought 
 in the Pretender and placed the crown upon his head. 
 At one time grand juries ignored bills at his dicta- 
 tion, and a whole nation would have risen as one 
 man to defend him from the assaults of his enemies. 
 In the literary world he exercised as much influence 
 as in the political ; and so highly was he esteemed 
 that the leader of the wits who had named him " the 
 " mad parson " afterwards pronounced him to be 
 " the greatest genius of the age." Nor is his post- 
 humous reputation inferior to what he enjoyed during 
 his lifetime. All men of education are acquainted 
 with his works ; and anecdotes are recorded of him 
 by people who have never read a line he wrote, and 
 are ignorant whether he flourished in the time of 
 George IV. or of Boadicea. Alas ! is there anything 
 in history more sad than the end of this imperious 
 intellect ? The closing years of his life were passed
 
 234 SWIFT. 
 
 under the shadow of superhuman misery.* " Good 
 " bye ; God bless you, and I hope I shall never see 
 " you again," were the terms of his parting bene- 
 diction. For three years he was dumb, and deaf, and 
 mad. Then came that release he had longed for. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the fame and power he ac- 
 quired, and all the volumes that have been written 
 about him, the occurrences best known in the lives 
 of most of us are in Swift's case disputed. His 
 life is still a mysterious problem. Where was he 
 born ? who was his father ? did he marry ? who was 
 his wife ? were questions not answered during his 
 life, and are only half-answered at the present day. 
 That he was born in Dublin and educated in Dublin 
 University ; that he came to England in Revolution 
 year, and lived except for a short time, when he 
 returned to his native land for ordination as secre- 
 tary with Sir William Temple ; that after the death 
 of that nobleman he went over to Ireland with Lord 
 Berkeley in the capacity of chaplain and private 
 secretary, and, being superseded in the latter post, 
 accepted as compensation the rectory of Agher and the 
 
 * His food had to be cut up for him, and he would not eat 
 in the presence of others. Body and mind were decaying. One 
 of his eyes swelled to the size of an egg, and at times it was 
 with difficulty that five attendants could prevent him tearing 
 it out.
 
 HIS VIEW OF THE LITERARY CALLING. 235 
 
 vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan ; and that he 
 afterwards became Dean of St. Patrick's, in the posses- 
 sion of which preferment he died is all well known. 
 We know, too, that he wrote famous books, and that 
 the influence he exercised over the political events of 
 his time was unparalleled. But with his domestic 
 history we cannot pretend to be acquainted. There 
 are theories to account for the sceva indignatio he 
 exhibited through life, theories to explain his mad- 
 ness, theories to clear up the relationship that sub- 
 sisted between himself and those gentle women 
 whose names he has made immortal. But can we 
 regard any of them as satisfactory ? Does not the 
 explanation itself require explaining ? 
 
 Swift's view of the literary calling was not a very 
 high one. He had no desire to be classed among 
 
 O O 
 
 men of letters, but used literature as a means to an 
 end. Like Shakespeare, he exhibited little interest 
 in the success of his most important works, but 
 allowed them to take their course, satisfied if they 
 were effective, and served the purpose of the hour. 
 The most original, facile, and versatile writer of the 
 period, he had no literary jealousies. He was even 
 without the ordinary vanity of the author regarding 
 his productions, and seldom looked at a work after 
 he had sent it to the printer. To Pope he gave per- 
 mission to correct, burn, or blot what he liked ; and,
 
 236 SWIFT. 
 
 at Addison's suggestion, forty lines of " Baucis and 
 Philemon" were altered, forty were added, and forty 
 entirely erased. For the applause of the public, 
 whom he regarded as his inferiors, he cared not in 
 the least. He wrote for the immediate ends he had 
 in view to turn out a Ministry and replace them 
 by his friends, or to shelter his own party when in 
 office from the assaults of their opponents. Of his 
 transcendent merit as a man of letters we need not 
 here speak. His prose has received commendation 
 from all sides ; and if we cannot admit he was a great 
 poet, we must agree with Scott that he possessed the 
 highest gift of a poet imagination. His intellect 
 was the richest in England ; he could rhyme with 
 the best of them ; he had imagination beyond them 
 all. With the chief requisites for the successful cul- 
 tivation of the art, he ought to have been a great poet. 
 How comes it, then, that he has left us nothing that 
 we can place beside the accredited masterpieces of 
 poesy ? I believe the true reason is, that he was too 
 proud to exercise the gift he possessed. If others 
 chose to talk in metaphor, to use similes, to say what 
 they do not mean, or mean more than they say, they 
 were welcome to follow the bent of their inclination, 
 as is their duty. For himself, his pride would not 
 suffer him to attempt the sublime or the beautiful, 
 and perhaps in his heart he despised what we call
 
 HIS PRIDE. 237 
 
 sublimity and beauty. I suspect he would have been 
 ashamed had he been regarded by his friends as " Dr. 
 " Swift, the great poet." " Cousin Swift," said Dryden 
 to him, " you will never be a poet;" and he was 
 right. Swift's appropriate vehicle was prose, and his 
 power herein was so great that every line he wrote 
 told materially in favour of any cause he espoused. 
 The side to which he gave the weight of his pen was 
 almost sure of being victorious. Johnson truly says 
 that for a time he dictated the political opinion of 
 England. But it must not be supposed that he was 
 a hireling. One of the ministers having once ven- 
 tured to offer him pecuniary remuneration for his 
 services, he regarded the proposal as an insult, and 
 was deaf to all entreaties to be reconciled till he had 
 received from the offender the utmost satisfaction. 
 " If we let these great ministers pretend too much," 
 he writes in the Journal to Stella, " there will be no 
 " governing them. He promises to make me easy, if 
 " I would but come and see him ; but I won't, and 
 " he shall do it by message, or I will cast him off." 
 Afterwards the same statesman proposed to him to 
 become his chaplain ; but the appointment was de- 
 clined. " I will be no man's chaplain alive," he said. 
 There was a prize, however, which it seems he 
 coveted. He would have liked to have been an 
 English bishop. Strange how terribly high is the
 
 238 SWIFT. 
 
 value placed on official rank in a settled country like 
 ours ! We see Swift running backward and forward 
 from Ireland to England to earn a bishopric. He 
 could pacify a nation, or rouse it to the verge of re- 
 bellion ; he could procure the appointment of others 
 to the ecclesiastical bench, but he was unable to seat 
 himself thereon. Mitres were not for such as he, 
 but were reserved for men of more accommodating 
 nature. An insatiable soul like Swift's would not 
 have been satisfied with a bishopric had he obtained 
 it; but he regarded professional promotion as the 
 outward sign given by society of its formal recogni- 
 tion of a man's merits and approval of his work ; and 
 so he was indignant at being passed over for men 
 whose claims he considered to be far inferior to his. 
 
 He has been enrolled among the humourists. If 
 the playfulness of the cat with a mouse between her 
 teeth can be termed humour, then was he rightly so 
 classed. In the time before fancy and imagination 
 were desynonymized such a vague description might 
 have been allowable ; but now, we, who pride our- 
 selves upon our greater accuracy, decline to bestow 
 upon the fierce genius who painted for us the ter- 
 rible picture of the Yahoos the title of humourist. 
 His theme is identical with that of the humourist, 
 only he regards it in a different light, uses it in a 
 different way, and for a different purpose. The
 
 WAS NO HUMOURIST. 239 
 
 materials, too, that he employs are the same, but the 
 fabric he turns out is totally different from what is 
 produced by the other. That tenderness which with 
 the ludicrous is the element that forms what we call 
 humour, is altogether missing in Swift. We find 
 no trace in him of the quality. He was essentially 
 a satirist. He was never an adept at being sprightly. 
 In making the town laugh, he was himself serious ; 
 and I fancy the last reader who amused himself with 
 the hideous fun in Gulliver laughed under restraint, 
 much as a traveller would laugh at a joke from the 
 highwayman who presented a pistol at his head 
 through the carriage window. He is the greatest 
 master of satire that has appeared on the earth, and 
 no humourist. For the way in which he employed 
 his great abilities in this line he has been severely 
 blamed ; but when we consider that an epigram from 
 him could kill a man's fortune, it is greatly to his 
 honour that he so seldom employed his tremendous 
 power upon individuals. One of his critics calls his 
 striking when he had an opportunity, " striking in 
 " the dark," as if, forsooth, he ought to have struck 
 when no opportunity offered. If a man takes offence, 
 but does not think it worth while to remember it,, 
 what is the use of his taking offence ? With Swift 
 the offence lasted till it was expiated or avenged ; 
 but the notion that the reason he struck in the dark
 
 240 SWIFT. 
 
 was because he feared to strike in the li^ht is not 
 
 O 
 
 warranted by fact. To call Swift coward and sneak 
 " if you had met him like a man he would have 
 " quailed before you/' says his critic, " and years 
 " after written a foul epigram about you " is pretty 
 much like saying that water does not wet, or fire 
 burn. Why, Swift was the bravest man of his 
 time. A hundred instances of his courage are on 
 
 O 
 
 record. He was not intimidated by threats of per- 
 sonal violence, nor did he quail when a reward was 
 offered for his head by a Government not indisposed 
 to have caused his ruin. Upon the appearance of 
 the Drapier's fourth letter, the printer was thrown 
 into prison, and proclamation was issued promising 
 300 for the discovery of the author. Even then 
 the Dean was not appalled, but acted as a kind, con- 
 siderate, and brave gentleman would have done.* 
 
 * " He went to the levee of the Lord-Lieutenant, burst 
 through the circle with which he was surrounded, and, in a 
 firm and stern voice, demanded of Lord Carteret the meaning 
 of these 'severities against a poor industrious tradesman, who 
 had published two or three papers, designed for the good of 
 his country.' . . . Two other anecdotes occurred, which 
 served to show the bold, stern, and uncompromising temper of 
 the Dean. The first is well known. A servant, named Robert 
 Blakeley, whom he entrusted to copy out and convey to the 
 press the Drapier's Letters, chanced one evening to absent 
 himself without leave. His master charged him with treachery,
 
 HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER. 241 
 
 What are we to say to the personal character of 
 the man? are we to admire that? For myself, I 
 think I can detect in Swift great goodness of nature, 
 and kindness more than in most men usually re- 
 puted kind. He never exhibited meannesses like 
 those reported of Pope and Addison. He could 
 confer favours by a word, and it was always grati- 
 fying to him to be able to oblige men of letters 
 without distinction of rank or party. Money and 
 influence were equally at their service. The recorded 
 instances of his kindnesses are, indeed, numberless. 
 All his friends benefited by his favour. Thackeray 
 thought he must be a bad man if you would not like 
 to live with him. Even if this criterion of a man's 
 worth were admitted, Swift will not hold a low place 
 in our esteem. 
 
 His agreeable qualities are notorious to readers 
 of the memoirs of the time. His friends concurred in 
 believing that his goodness was equalled only by his 
 
 and, upon' his exculpation, insisted that at least he neglected 
 his duties as a servant, because he conceived his master was in 
 his power. ' Strip your livery,' he commanded, ' begone from 
 the Deanery instantly, and do the worst to revenge yourself 
 that you dare do.' The man retired, more grieved that his 
 master doubted his fidelity than moved by this harsh treat- 
 ment. He was replaced at the intercession of Stella; and 
 Swift afterwards rewarded his fidelity by the office of verger 
 in the cathedral of St. Patrick's." SCOTT'S Life of Swift. 
 
 R
 
 242 SWIFT. 
 
 genius.* In the quarrel between him and Steele he 
 displayed, in a letter to Addison, unapproachable 
 greatness. He there propounds a view of friendship 
 as chivalrous as that of the lover who, in deference to 
 the wishes of his mistress, avowed his disbelief that she 
 had kissed a rival whom he himself had seen her kiss. 
 " What if I did not [do the mean action of which he 
 had been accused] ? Steele," he says, " should not 
 have thought I did it, if he could possibly think I did 
 not," is the tenor of the communication. He never 
 denied the charge brought against him, disdaining to 
 do that although he was innocent. Throughout the 
 whole dispute he showed magnanimity and tender- 
 
 * " He relieved the necessitous, he supported the de- 
 pendent, and insisted that more distinguished genius should 
 receive from his powerful friends that kindness and distinction 
 to which it is so well entitled. Congreve, a Whig in politics, 
 and who apprehended being deprived of his office under gov- 
 ernment, was treated by Harley, at Swift's request, with such 
 marked regard and assurance of protection, as excited his 
 astonishment, while it allayed his apprehensions. . . . He 
 obtained also for the amiable Parnell that prompt attention 
 which is most flattering to the modesty of merit. At courts he 
 contrived that the lord-treasurer should make the first advances 
 to the man of letters, and thus, as he boasts to Stella, made the 
 minister desire to be acquainted with Parnell, not Parnell with 
 the minister. Pope, who was now labouring on his Homer, ex- 
 perienced that warm and effectual support which is acknow- 
 ledged in the preface to the Iliad. ... It was by Swift's
 
 MA GNA NIMITY. 243 
 
 ness of the very highest order. It was impossible 
 for him, the most influential politician of the time, to 
 treat Steele always with that kindness he would will- 
 ingly have exhibited towards him in literary matters. 
 In the only work to which he ever put his name he 
 did speak in very complimentary terms of his friend. 
 But when Steele entered the political arena, his toes 
 necessarily came in Swift's way. Indeed, neither he 
 nor the great Mr. Addison was intended by nature 
 to be kings of men. They were not unworthy men 
 of letters. The one was a sort of inventor in litera- 
 ture, and the other was, at once, a bright exemplar 
 and a good performer. Both had benefited morals 
 
 interest that Gay was made known to Lord Bolingbroke, and 
 obtained his patronage. Arbuthnot, although he needed not 
 our author's recommendation, having established himself by 
 his professional merit, enjoyed, in the most intimate degree, the 
 pleasure and advantage which were afforded by his society. 
 Berkeley, afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Cloyne, owed to 
 Swift those introductions which placed him in the way of pro- 
 motion. ... In like manner he recommended Howe to a 
 post under government, and although Prior, with whom he 
 lived in strict intimacy, had no occasion for his services during 
 the reign in which he flourished as a political character of emi- 
 nence, yet, in that which followed, he received, during his dis- 
 tresses, the most effectual support from Swift's experienced 
 friendship. ... In short, as he expresses it in his Journal 
 to Stella, he found himself able to forward the interest of every 
 one, excepting only his own." SCOTT'S Life of Swift.
 
 244 SWIFT. 
 
 as well as letters. But what did they in politics? 
 It is not surprising that when either of them went 
 out of his way and met a lion in the path, that the in- 
 evitable consequences followed. In literature, which 
 was their proper field of action, the great Dean would 
 have helped them given them hints (and the authors 
 of the " Tatler" and the " Beggar's Opera" were not 
 the only men who knew how valuable were hints 
 from him), written for them for nothing handed 
 over to them the profits of his own works, have done 
 any acceptable service for their benefit, but let 
 them not square themselves against him in the po- 
 litical ring, or they must not complain of the bruises 
 they receive in the fray. 
 
 The men who knew him best and they were the 
 most eminent of the day, loved him best, and we 
 know that beautiful and accomplished women sacri- 
 ficed their lives to be near him. All who have heard 
 of Swift have heard of Stella and Vanessa, so there 
 is no need for me to repeat their story, and I refer to 
 the subject only for the purpose of mentioning that 
 as there is no proof (or likelihood, indeed !) that 
 Stella was married to Swift, the charge frequently 
 made against the Dean of having indulged himself 
 in the society of the one whilst he was irrevocably 
 bound to the other must fall to the ground. This 
 haughty intellect could not, however, suffer the
 
 IN SOCIETY. 245 
 
 conditions of ordinary friendships. He claimed to 
 impose his own. This he has clearly expressed, 
 where we should least expect to find it, in a letter 
 to his early love, " Varina," in reply to a notification 
 that she at least would not dislike to live with him. 
 He there demands to know, before promising to wed 
 her, whether she would engage to follow the method 
 he should point out for the improvement of her 
 mind; whether she could bend all her affections to 
 the same direction which he should give his own, 
 and so govern her passions, however justly pro- 
 voked, as at all times to resume her good humour 
 at his approach ; and whether she could account the 
 place where he resided more welcome than courts 
 and cities without him. He certainly sometimes 
 exacted too much. We are told how at Lord Bur- 
 lington's her ladyship, to whom he had not been 
 introduced, having refused to sing, he said she 
 should sing, or he would make her ; how, to try a 
 man's temper, he bade him drink the lees of a bottle 
 of wine ; and how he introduced himself to a curate 
 as his new "master." A thousand and one such anec- 
 dotes are related of him by Mrs. Grundy, who shrugs 
 her wrinkled old shoulders at the shocking effrontery 
 of the Irish parson, who showed no respect for the 
 forms and ceremonies of conventional life. His 
 manners were, in truth, not always of the most
 
 246 SWIFT. 
 
 
 
 amiable description, and it is not to be denied that 
 he could never have been improved even by the best 
 society, inasmuch as he would not take its impress, 
 but gave to it the seal of his own personality. Not 
 of an affirmative . nature, he was invariably found 
 with the " noes," and never strove to imitate the 
 fashion. Some called his behaviour eccentric; others, 
 who thought they saw deeper, were disposed to at- 
 tribute it to affectation ; but they agreed that his 
 conduct was offensive. 
 
 It is, however, satisfactory to find the whole of his 
 biographers and critics concur in one matter. They 
 all admit that he was ever ready to make amends by 
 his civilities for any rudeness of which he had been 
 guilty. The author of " The English Humourists," 
 in referring to his rough manners and kind deeds, 
 asks, " If you were in a strait, would you like such 
 "a benefactor?" and confesses he thought he would 
 rather have had " a potato and a friendly word from 
 " Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean 
 " for a guinea and a dinner." I do not know if the 
 reader is of the same mind, but it is reasonable to 
 suppose that a man in distressed circumstances would 
 appeal to one who could succour him. Swift knew 
 how "those devils of Grub Street authors" spent 
 their earnings, and he never omitted to take advan- 
 tage of an opportunity that offered to lecture them
 
 HIS RELATIONS TO MEN OF RANK. 247 
 
 for their spendthrift ways. But he relieved them 
 though he bullied them. And hadn't he the right to 
 bully them for their imprudence ? What was the 
 good, then, of their slinking off for sympathy and a 
 potato ? A potato would not pay the rent for which 
 they were pressed ; would not put a shawl on their 
 wives' shoulders, or provide shoes for the naked feet 
 of their little ones. No! the great Dean knew 
 better than that, and acted from his superior know- 
 ledge. 
 
 Much abuse has been heaped on him for the ar- 
 rogance of putting himself on equality with men of 
 exalted rank or office. The accusation shows, I 
 think, inherent weakness in the nature of those who 
 make the charge. If they did not feel it was a great 
 honour to be on terms of intimacy with a duke, or a 
 minister of state, they would not make so much of it. 
 Many readers will have observed the effect in a circle 
 if one of the company happens to repeat anything 
 he had heard from one of higher rank than that of 
 which the party is composed. All resent the men- 
 tion of the circumstance ; they really are hurt, and 
 feel it to be a rebuke upon themselves that the 
 speaker should have been more fortunate than they 
 in his invitations. Their self-love is wounded, and 
 in retaliation they attempt to heal it by accusing the 
 author of their smart of being unduly impressed by
 
 248 SWIFT. 
 
 rank. There is a story told of a literary gentleman 
 who, returning from some nobleman's house where 
 there had been no fish for dinner, remarked upon the 
 omission to a party of whom Jerrold was one. That 
 wit thereupon administered what is regarded as an 
 apt and deserved reproof to the guest who had ven- 
 tured to complain, by suggesting that probably they 
 had eaten all the fish upstairs. If a man dates his 
 letters from Windsor Castle during his stay there he 
 is sneered at ; but if he speaks of his residence in 
 Islington he escapes animadversion. Why should men 
 of letters, whose importance is derived neither from 
 wealth nor rank, censure one who really despised 
 what they themselves profess to undervalue ; who 
 appraised the diamond star on a peer's breast no more 
 than a horse-shoe, and who did not esteem an ac- 
 quaintance because he was wealthy any more than 
 he did because he was healthy ? Indeed, this arro- 
 gance in his treatment of the great partly arose 
 from dread lest men should suppose that he was given 
 to flattery. The Lord Treasurer heard ill with the 
 left ear and so did Swift, but the latter " dared not 
 " tell him that I am so, for fear he should think that 
 " I counterfeited to make my court ; " and this, too, 
 it was that made him when at court " affect to turn 
 " from a lord to the meanest of his acquaintances." 
 Not by inheritance did he derive his rank, so he knew
 
 HIS PHILOSOPHY. 249 
 
 that men who are unacquainted with such a nature as 
 his would accuse him of giving undue importance to 
 fictitious distinctions if they had seen him deferential. 
 He was aware that although a duke might dress in 
 shabby habiliments without losing his position, a man 
 of his rank is expected to observe the convention- 
 alities. So he must have been aut Ccesar aut nullus, 
 and as he could not afford to be nullus, he did not 
 understand why he should not be Caesar and send 
 for the Lord Treasurer as well as the Lord Trea- 
 surer send for him. He would make the reputa- 
 tion of wit and great learning do the office of a blue 
 riband or a coach and six. Are we to blame him ? 
 
 Our chief concern, however, is with his philosophy. 
 What are we to think of that ? Those whom he be- 
 nefited by his countenance or injured by his scorn 
 and bitterness are gone. The influence of his per- 
 sonal character has long ceased to be felt. But his 
 books what of them? Are they such as we can 
 honestly commend ? Is humanity the better because 
 they were written and are immortal ? 
 
 It is well sometimes to be taught our true place in 
 the economy of the universe. There are plenty of 
 writers ready to flatter our vanity, by insisting that we 
 are only a little lower than angels. For more than 
 a thousand years it had been reported and believed 
 that all things were created for our especial benefit.
 
 250 SWIFT. 
 
 Sun and stars, moon and planets, were designed with 
 a view to serve us ; every flower that sheds its per- 
 fume grows and brightens for our gratification ; and 
 the inferior animals were sent expressly for our use. 
 Against this view of the matter Swift lifted up his 
 voice. He proclaimed to mankind that they are as 
 these animals, these insects, this lichen as the low- 
 est thing that has life ; liable to the same conditions, 
 subject to the same end. People, mistaking the ar- 
 tificial and accidental for the real and permanent, had 
 misnamed our functions and instincts. What is the 
 result of culture and experience they confounded with 
 what is essential to our nature, and had come to re- 
 gard the uncustomary as identical with the unnatural. 
 They had begun to forget themselves. The mission 
 of Swift was to remind men of their origin and end. 
 He stripped them of their artificial trappings as effec- 
 tually as the storm strips the drowned sailor, and 
 ruthlessly showed them to themselves in all the de- 
 formity of their necessitous nakedness. The Foplings 
 and Chloes and Lady Bettys of the time were shocked, 
 of course. Beaux and oglers discredited his views, 
 not because they believed them false, but because 
 they felt them to be degrading, and Society ever since 
 has treated their propagator as a bold, impious, and 
 distempered madman. 
 
 Shakespeare and Swift may be classed together as
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND SWIFT. 251 
 
 the two who of all men of letters obtained clearest 
 insight into the intricacies as well as the artificialities 
 of our nature. Both knew the full extent of its 
 weaknesses and imperfections, and neither cared to 
 withhold his knowledge from the world. But how 
 differently this experience affected the two men. In 
 all he wrote it is clear that " The Dance of Death" 
 in Stratford Church left deep and permanent im- 
 pression on Shakespeare's mind, and that the Skele- 
 ton was ever present, disquieting his imagination. 
 By virtue of a happy temperament, however, he 
 was able to suppress the disgust he felt, and he loved 
 our nature with all its imperfections, and partly, per- 
 haps, because of its imperfections. To him there was 
 " some soul of goodness in things evil." But the 
 other would not or could not forget that evil is an 
 ingredient even of good, and to him the uses of this 
 world seemed " weary, stale, flat and unprofitable." 
 Finding men ashamed of their infirmities he was in- 
 dignant, and felt pleasure in reminding them of what 
 things they least desired to remember. He would 
 not take the estimate they had formed of themselves, 
 and refused to admit that by subduing other animals 
 they had thereby taken themselves out of the category, 
 or that their boasted intellect is acted on by a higher 
 force than that which makes fire burn or a tree 
 propagate its kind. He was the hardest hitter that
 
 252 SWIFT. 
 
 ever penned a line. Is it wonderful, then, that his 
 views, and the manner in which he presented them, 
 are unpalatable, and that men should decline to ac- 
 cept his theory ? People applaud a play that exposes 
 the worst features of their character, if in the end 
 virtue is rewarded and vice punished. Indeed, they 
 prefer a drama of that sort to another in which there 
 is nothing but virtue served up for their entertain- 
 ment. Show them their nature vicious if you will, 
 only let the vice be occasional and accidental, not 
 permanent and radical, and they are satisfied. 
 
 If the aim of satire is rightly defined to be the 
 correction, by exposure, of vice and folly, it must 
 be admitted that Swift, the most powerful of all 
 satirists, fails, because he satirized what it is impos- 
 sible to correct. 
 
 " Qui vitia odit homines odit" 
 
 was the conclusion at which he had arrived, and he 
 boldly satirized our nature itself. Yet, in spite of 
 this limitation, he has performed a vast and perma- 
 nent service by making people behold themselves 
 in a light wherein they seldom care to regard them- 
 selves, but in which it is well they should sometimes 
 be seen.
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE LITERARY MAN AS PATRIOT. 
 MAZZINI. 
 
 OVE for one's native soil, and desire for 
 personal consideration in the place of 
 one's birth, are sentiments which 
 though proveably not innate have been 
 found to exist very extensively in every race that 
 has hitherto attained to the dignity and advantages 
 of a settled mode of life. Moreover, they are not 
 confined to vulgar minds, but have exercised a pre- 
 dominating influence over some of the noblest men 
 that ever lived. The privilege of triumphal entry 
 into one city has been held sufficient reward for the 
 conquest of great countries, and the huzzas of an 
 enthusiastic multitude have effectually drowned the 
 echo of the innumerable groans of slaughtered fo- 
 reigners. To such minds as are thus influenced, 
 exile, whether voluntary or enforced, is a misfortune
 
 254 MAZZINI. 
 
 to be evaded at any cost. Their happiness is centred 
 in their country. In the twelfth century, as we have 
 seen, Giraldus Carabrensis, the most eminent man of 
 his age, roamed up and down Europe venting his 
 rage, and bearding kings and popes for keeping him 
 from the see of St. David. He had been offered an 
 archbishopric, and the choice of more than one 
 bishopric ; but he would accept nothing whilst the 
 throne of the miserable little city in which he had 
 been bred was withheld. Prolonged absence from 
 Florence poisoned the life of Dante, and undoubtedly 
 shortened the great poet's existence. These men 
 were influenced by the feelings that influenced Jacob 
 when he charged his sons to bury him in the field 
 of the Hittite. " There they buried Abraham and 
 ee Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Re- 
 " becca his wife ; and there I buried Leah." 
 
 This attachment to locality this belief that 
 Abana and Pharpar are better than all the waters of 
 Israel is not in itself Patriotism ; but it is obviously 
 the source whence it springs, and on which it feeds. 
 The sentiment is repeated on a large scale; men 
 mass their feelings ; and the result is what has been 
 termed " greatest of virtues " by the ancients, and is 
 even now highly esteemed. After all, what does 
 this sentiment mean ? By chance, or agreement, or 
 compulsion, an imaginary cordon is thrown around a
 
 PATRIOTISM. 255 
 
 certain district, whereupon all within the circle are 
 regarded as compatriots, while those who remain 
 without are treated as enemies. The history of our 
 own country affords us an eminent instance of the 
 ill effect of such an arrangement. There were once 
 seven Englands. The England which had its head- 
 quarters at "Winchester did not consider itself un- 
 patriotic when it made war upon the England repre- 
 sented by Canterbury, or that at Canterbury while 
 it acted similarly towards those whose capital was at 
 York. At length, however, a persistent course of 
 unpatriotic attempts at fusion was successful, and 
 these seven Englands eventually became one. From 
 that time it was no longer regarded patriotic in the 
 Englishman at Durham to make aggression upon the 
 Englishman at Dorchester ; the attempt would have 
 been civil war then. But there was consolation for 
 him. Across the northernmost river was the land 
 of an enemy from whom he might still honestly steal, 
 and whom he might still conscientiously kill. In 
 time that land, too, became an integral part of Eng- 
 land, and consequently legitimate patriotism could 
 no more discharge itself within the four seas; it 
 must thenceforth exercise itself only against distant 
 countries. 
 
 The tendency of events is indefinitely to enlarge 
 the area enclosed by the cordon to which we have
 
 256 MAZZINL 
 
 alluded. The tendency of patriotism, ancient and 
 modern, has, on the contrary, been invariably to 
 maintain it as it is, or to restore it to the limits it 
 occupied at some former time. The attitude of Bel- 
 gium in view of French invasion is a manifestation 
 by that country of its desire to accomplish the one. 
 Polish insurrections, Irish conspiracies, and the re- 
 cent action of the American slave States, are con- 
 spicuous instances of attempts at effecting the other. 
 It frequently happens that a man disposed to be 
 patriotic, and willing to take upon himself respon- 
 sible action, finds it impossible to determine his 
 course by the current maxims of patriotism. This 
 may arise from either of two causes he may have 
 doubts as to where his country is, or he may be un- 
 able to determine what it is. A well-known instance 
 of doubt, arising from the former, is presented in the 
 case of " Stonewall " Jackson, at the outbreak of the 
 late contest in America. Jackson was by profession 
 a soldier, owing allegiance to a country that stretched 
 across a vast continent. He had no inclination to be 
 false to this country. One day, however, he found 
 that the inhabitants of an area of 70,000 miles had 
 resolved to sever themselves from the rest of the 
 community; and he, having been born in the dis- 
 trict, considered it his duty as a patriot to join them, 
 notwithstanding his disapproval of the course they
 
 WHAT IS OUR COUNTRY? 257 
 
 had adopted. Were we to carry the principle from 
 which he acted to its legitimate and logical conclu- 
 sion, its absurdity would be apparent. If, now, in- 
 stead of an area of 70,000 miles, one of 35,000 only 
 were to disengage itself, he would consider himself 
 morally bound to partake of its secession ; and if his 
 native county afterwards desired to withdraw itself 
 from the diminished area, he would still conceive it 
 to be his duty to offer her his services. Such an 
 idea of patriotism would inevitably lead to political 
 annihilation. 
 
 Of the difficulty of discovering what is your 
 country, an example is to be found at the period 
 of the French Revolution. Chateaubriand, returning 
 from his American travels, found France distracted. 
 The King had been sacrificed, and "the patriots" 
 were in possession of supreme power. Princes, 
 nobles, and ecclesiastics had been forced to fly. 
 Chateaubriand could not remain inactive ; he has- 
 tened to consult Malesherbes. Old France, to whom 
 he owed fealty, and with whom were his affections, 
 was beyond the Rhine. Should he join his friends 
 and relatives who had congregated at Coblentz ? 
 This was the question. After much consultation 
 they decided it in the negative, assigning as their 
 reason that to act otherwise would be to act unpa- 
 triotically ! If one's country consists of rocks and
 
 258 MAZZINI. 
 
 rivers only, they would have been undoubtedly right. 
 But if, as we believe, a man's country is made up of 
 his associations, of his personal liberty, and of the 
 constitution under which he was born and had lived, 
 Chateaubriand was wrong in considering those who 
 retained possession of the soil and of the temporary 
 direction of affairs as the representatives of his native 
 land. His France was no longer in her accustomed 
 place. He carried his country in his knapsack. 
 
 Atone time these old-fashioned notions of patriot- 
 ism, the notions which drill-sergeants and so-called 
 patriotic songs have made familiar, were of service. 
 The consciousness of belonging to a nation that had 
 achieved great things cast a sort of reflected great- 
 ness upon each citizen, and may have had the effect 
 of inciting him to emulate his predecessors. But 
 divisions of mountains and rivers and frontier garri- 
 sons are no longer so effective as formerly, and will 
 in time be altogether dispensed with. Improved 
 means of intercommunication, a more diffused know- 
 ledge of foreign languages, and more extensive busi- 
 ness transactions with men of other lands, are gra- 
 dually preparing the way for the total suppression 
 of nationalities. We shall feel less regret at the 
 ultimate disappearance of patriotic feelings when we 
 are able to bring ourselves to consider they are 
 merely the effect of cultivated prejudices ; that they
 
 TENDENCY OF CIVILIZATION. 259 
 
 are customary, not rational; and that in desiring 
 their extinction we are in strict accord with the spirit 
 of modern civilization. 
 
 This spirit aims at homogeneity and centraliza- 
 tion, through the absorption of the weaker by the 
 more powerful. It is manifested in social life by the 
 increasing number of joint-stock companies, trade 
 unions, associations, and by the organization of opinion 
 and of labour. It is equally apparent in politics. On 
 the other side of the Atlantic it developes itself with 
 greater rapidity than on this. The failure to effect 
 a disruption of the States in union was inherent in 
 the attempt, and there seems to be no well-grounded 
 fear that the effort now being made to confederate 
 those provinces that possess independent governments 
 will be unsuccessful. In Europe, which in ancient 
 times was united under one government by the Ro- 
 mans, and more than once in the middle ages par- 
 tially united by intermarriage of sovereigns, the 
 tendency would seem at the present moment to have 
 been checked, except so far as regards Italy. Greece 
 was made independent of Turkey ; Belgium sepa- 
 rated, to its great loss, from Holland ; and under the 
 pretext of furnishing them with independence, Aus- 
 tria and Prussia have wrested Schleswig and Hoi- 
 stein from Denmark. Germany itself still remains a 
 comical triacontarchy, split up into as many states
 
 260 MAZZINI. 
 
 as there are days in the month ; but it is very pro- 
 bable her late action will hereafter have the effect of 
 diminishing the number of her petty rulers in a 
 way they little expect. 
 
 We believe, however, this halt to be only tempo- 
 rary. The smaller states, which dread the loss of 
 their nationalities, should therefore learn in time to 
 look with complacency upon what is inevitable, and 
 to see good in the coming evil. Scotland, Ireland, 
 and Wales once patriotically resisted union with 
 England. They have long since seen, however, 
 that the loss of independent government is amply 
 compensated by the greater benefit they derive from 
 participating in the enlarged and more vigorous 
 action of a more powerful state. Local self-govern- 
 ment is less important to a people than good govern- 
 ment all required is, that the worse should give way 
 to the better. What difference does it make to a 
 people whether the centre of ministerial action is 
 here, a mile off, or in St. Petersburg, 2,000 leagues 
 away, if only that action is wholesome and effica- 
 cious ? For Russia, however, to annex England 
 would be a retrograde step, and should be resisted. 
 But who will say that it would not be a benefit for 
 Turkey to be placed under the control of one of the 
 great European powers, or that the Mexicans would 
 not be more prosperous if their country were formally
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE LITERARY MAN. 261 
 
 annexed to the United States, or quietly submitted 
 to the protection of France ? 
 
 The aim of Christianity is identical with the ten- 
 dency of civilization. Its endeavour has been to 
 make the world one fold under one Shepherd ; the 
 convert to Christianity was to become completely 
 denationalised. Some are of opinion that in this 
 respect it has failed to accomplish its mission, just as 
 Rome failed permanently to effect it by conquest. 
 Philosophy, we are told, has now set itself the task 
 of directing and regulating the feeling from which 
 it is to flow, and it remains to be seen how swift and 
 complete will be its preparation for " the Parliament 
 " of Man, the Federation of the World." 
 
 One of the most important agents at the present 
 day in effecting the coming change being necessarily 
 the man of letters, it becomes a matter of universal 
 interest how he views the situation. What and 
 where is the goal to which he would direct and 
 hasten society, and what and where are the means 
 he would employ for reaching it, are, therefore, ques- 
 tions of paramount importance. Of those who, for 
 several years past, have offered themselves as leaders 
 of the new thought, Mr. Mazzini, being a man of 
 action and of letters, is at once one of the most emi- 
 nent, and most influential; and his utterances are 
 consequently entitled to a higher degree of consider-
 
 262 MAZZINI. 
 
 ation than we should be disposed to pay to one of 
 meaner rank and lower aspirations. 
 
 Mr. Mazzini is probably the most maligned man 
 in all Christendom. He has been persistently tra- 
 duced by those who have not taken the trouble to 
 make themselves acquainted with the principles of 
 which he is the apostle ; and has had the misfortune 
 more than once to be misinterpreted even by those 
 who incline to favour his cause. His career has 
 been vicissitudinous in the highest degree. He began 
 life, at an early age, as a man of letters, and it is to 
 literature, we believe, he chiefly devotes himself still. 
 But between the year 1828, in which, full of high 
 hopes, he established the Indicatore Genovese, and 
 the present time, when he confesses his soul to be 
 dead to happiness, and withered by sorrows, delusions, 
 and ingratitude, he has more than most men ex- 
 perienced sundry and manifold changes of fortune. 
 Driven from his native land on account of his opinions, 
 he takes up his abode at Marseilles ; ordered to quit 
 French territory, he seeks and finds refuge in Swit- 
 zerland ; returning thence into Italy, he is thrown 
 into prison ; escaping, he is again at Marseilles ; then 
 in London ; then, upon the outburst of the last French 
 Revolution, in Paris; then once more in Italy; 
 then, a second time, obliged to fly to Switzerland. 
 At length, Rome having declared herself a Republic*
 
 HIS CHARACTER. 263 
 
 we find htm in the Eternal City Triumvir, ruler, 
 dictator ; organizing the army of the State ; re-ar- 
 ranging its finances ; establishing its foreign relations ; 
 and seeking to settle its disordered domestic affairs. 
 But his season of power was of short duration. After 
 ninety days the city was crushed by the cannon of a 
 foreign nation, and the Triumvir is once more an 
 exile. During the whole of this time, however 
 sorely tried as he must have been in the furnace of 
 affliction Mazzini is not known to have misdemeaned 
 himself. According to the testimony of those most 
 competent to speak, he has remained pure-minded, 
 faithful, unselfish, truthful in the highest degree. 
 
 Why this man enthusiastic, and possessing sur- 
 prising vigilance, is a terror to the Courts of Eu- 
 rope, by whom he is not unjustly regarded as the 
 petrel of revolution, is not difficult to be understood. 
 Why he continues to be depreciated and defamed in 
 England is less clear. His unpopularity in this 
 country cannot arise from dislike of his opinions ; or 
 his lieutenant, Garibaldi, who shares them, would 
 not have experienced the treatment he received from 
 us during his visit. This general this hand which 
 had come to rejoin its head was honoured during 
 his stay in England with unprecedented attentions. 
 Professional men, men of letters, Parliament men and 
 noblemen attended his levies ; Cabinet Ministers un-
 
 264 MAZZINI. 
 
 dertook the charge of his health ; and even the heir 
 to the throne, representing Majesty itself, did not 
 think it indecorous to pay him court. The streets 
 through which he made his entry were thronged by 
 an enthusiastic people; his outgoings and ingoings 
 whilst amongst us were minutely chronicled by news- 
 papers ; and terms were employed in reference to 
 him that would be too eulogistic if applied to the 
 most famous heroes of antiquity. And yet this 
 general obtained the success which brought him such 
 unexampled honours by no eminent display of politi- 
 cal sagacity or military ability. The enemy against 
 whom he went out proved to be a secret friend ; and 
 he entered the capital of the kingdom he invaded, 
 as an English tourist would enter it, in a carriage 
 and pair. He was victorious solely because he was 
 regarded by the Italians as the representative of the 
 doctrines professed and preached by Mazzini. 
 
 How comes it, then, that the master is disparaged 
 whilst the pupil is caressed ? That Joseph Garibaldi 
 is esteemed whilst Joseph Mazzini is abhorred? 
 We believe there are two reasons for this inconsis- 
 tency. In the first place, apart from the disavowed 
 and disproved charge of being a patron of assassina- 
 tion, Englishmen accuse the triumvir of habitually 
 inciting others to undertake dangers in which he de- 
 clines to participate. The accusation is undeniably
 
 ENGLISH NOTIONS CONCERNING HIM. 265 
 
 true ; but the inference sought to be drawn from the 
 fact is as invalid as would be an imputation of cow- 
 ardice against our War Minister for sending a regi- 
 ment into action whilst he inhumanly* smoked his 
 cigar in Pall Mall. Mr. Mazzini, like the Minister 
 of War, is a civilian ; and, like him, probably believes 
 that for thirteenpence-halfpenny a-day a thousand 
 men may be found better qualified than himself to 
 shoulder a rifle and endure the fatigues of a cam- 
 paign ; whilst, without much vanity, he may con- 
 scientiously suppose that neither of the thousand 
 could serve his country so effectually as he by counsel 
 and direction. In the second place, and chiefly, 
 Englishmen are unable to appreciate Mazzini, from 
 their inability to perceive a principle until it becomes 
 embodied. They must have a personal representa- 
 tive of the qualities they admire, and must see an 
 idea applied before they venture to approve it. Our 
 press is never more happy than when it has the op- 
 portunity of ridiculing a nation that can be so silly 
 as to go to war for " an idea ; " and our House of 
 Commons, generally regarded as an intelligent as- 
 sembly, is never more unanimous than when it votes 
 against " abstract questions." Honourable members 
 are not indisposed to entertain " questions ;" indeed, 
 they rather like " questions," and flatter themselves 
 they understand " The Mexican Question," or " The
 
 266 MAZZINI. 
 
 " Eastern Question," or " The Timbuctoo Question." 
 But the principle that covers any of these, that com- 
 prehends it and all similar questions, they resolutely 
 refuse to discuss and entertain. They regard abstract 
 resolutions with deeper abhorrence than that with 
 which a Jew is said to regard pork. 
 
 Mr. Mazzini, on the other hand, claims notice as 
 the originator and champion of certain principles, 
 which he carries to their extremest consequences. 
 He has no wish to be considered a statesman in our 
 sense of the term. Unlike his countryman Paolo 
 Sarpi, who preferred waiting for events, and "drawing 
 " from them the greatest possible profit for his ideas, 
 " to all attempts to determine their course and create 
 " facts through ideas," he aspires to be something more. 
 He desires to be an Initiator; to be classed, not 
 among those who, " taking in at one glance all the 
 " elements, all the forces, actually in operation, 
 " know how to bring them into play, and to put them 
 " in a favourable position for drawing from them 
 " the grandest results which they are capable of 
 " yielding" but with them " to whom enthusiasm 
 " and the energy of conviction communicate the 
 " power of setting in motion that unused activity, 
 " that surplus of hidden strengh, which exists in the 
 " men of every age." In a word, he would create 
 the future by the force of Ideas.
 
 HIS PRINCIPLES AND AIM. 267 
 
 We respect the men who bring us principles more 
 than those who confine themselves to the consideration 
 of " questions." They take higher rank in the 
 hierarchy of benefactors. But to ensure our esteem 
 it is necessary their principles should be sound. 
 We do not believe those entertained by Mr. Maz- 
 zini on politics, literature, and art to be sound. 
 We agree with the current notion of Englishmen re- 
 specting their merits ; we do so, however, not because, 
 like them, we dislike broad principles, but because 
 we conceive the principles to be false. The most 
 important deduction Mr. Mazzini makes from his 
 well-known tenets is the necessity for the unifi- 
 cation of Italy, with Rome as its capital, and the 
 establishment of a Republican form of government. 
 This is the mastering idea of his life. Herein he has 
 ever been consistent. The views indicated in his 
 earliest publication, under the pretence of literary 
 discussion, he has continued to enunciate ever since 
 through evil report and good ; in the press ; in con- 
 versation ; in preparing insurrections ; in the day of 
 his success; in exile. The triumph of this idea 
 would, he conceives, make his country once more 
 great, glorious, and free. We do not believe this. 
 We believe the freedom and happiness of a people 
 are not the result of their political institutions, but 
 that their political institutions are, in great degree, the
 
 268 MAZZIN1. 
 
 result of their own temper and aspirations. The Go- 
 vernment of no people, left to themselves, can remain, 
 for any length of time, out of harmony with the sum of 
 the wishes and requirements, and deserts, of the go- 
 verned. Mr. Mazzini cannot be unaware that Rome 
 was once the capital of Italy as well as of the world, and 
 that even then the Peninsular was not united. During 
 the Middle Ages again, at the end of the thirteenth 
 century, the country was split up into independent 
 governments ; yet the several States possessed power 
 and enterprise which all Europe could not match. 
 Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Florence were rivals ; but they 
 were each great. During the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, as Mr. Mazzini must well know, European 
 commerce was almost entirely in the hands of the 
 Italians. His countrymen were the bankers of Eu- 
 rope, and the great carrying-people between the East 
 and West. The shores of the Mediterranean were 
 lined with their vessels and war-galleys, and the in- 
 fluence of their counsels was felt throughout Christ- 
 endom. Yet the country was then less united than it 
 is now. The truth is, Italy was formerly great from 
 causes, moral and physical, which no longer exist 
 within her limits. The elements of success are now 
 wanting in her, and all attempts to make her equal 
 her former exalted state by any political changes 
 that can be devised will inevitably result in failure.
 
 HIS VIEWS IMPOLITIC. 269 
 
 Nor does Mr. Mazzini confine his principles to 
 action ; he applies them equally to literature and art. 
 In his writings, now in course of publication, his 
 method of application is clearly seen. Literature, 
 with him, is the means to an end, and that end " an 
 " appeal to the youth of Italy to create a country for 
 " themselves by force of arms." He complains that 
 previous to his time writers of the Romantic School 
 devoted themselves to objective art, and not to what 
 he avers to be his sole merit, " declaring themselves 
 " for liberty against oppression." His notions of art, 
 too, are similarly vicious. He is of opinion that the 
 special aim of art is " to excite mankind to reduce 
 " thought to action." Just as English critics would 
 make Art the handmaid of Religion and Mo- 
 rality, he would make her the handmaid of Revolu- 
 tion. Two errors, he tells us, threaten art the 
 theory that it is an imitation of Nature, and the theory 
 that has created the formula of " Art for art's sake." 
 " The first would deprive it of all spontaneous indi- 
 " vidual life ; the second break the link that binds it 
 " to the universe." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for us to say we differ from 
 Mr. Mazzini's notions of art and literature as widely 
 as we differ from his political principles. He surely 
 mistakes the function of literature, if he would make 
 it a vehicle for direct political action. We hold that
 
 270 MAZZINI. 
 
 to do this would be to degrade literature. During 
 the War of Independence in Germany, people were 
 constantly in the habit of blaming Goethe for not 
 raising his voice against Napoleon, just as the Italian 
 now blames the literati of his country for not inter- 
 rogating " the thought of the epoch in the nation." 
 In opposition to this view, we commend to the atten- 
 tion of Mr. Mazzini, and such as would make litera- 
 ture the vehicle for direct political action, the reply 
 of Goethe, than whom no one in this century better 
 understood the function of literature.* The same 
 eminent writer's observations on the functions of 
 art also may be studied by them with advantage at 
 the same time. Goethe contended, as we do, that art 
 would no longer be art if deprived of an aim and object 
 of its own, and that to deprive it of these would be 
 to deprive it of its legitimate influence and power. 
 
 * " How could I write songs of hatred without hating ! How 
 could I, to whom culture and barbarism are alone of importance, 
 liate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, 
 and to which I owe so great a part of my own cultivation ? 
 Altogether, national hatred is something peculiar. You will 
 always find it strongest and most violent when there is the 
 lowest degree of culture. But there is a degree where it 
 vanishes altogether, and where one stands, to a certain extent, 
 above nations, and feels the weal or woe of a neighbouring 
 people, as if it had happened to one's own." ECKERMANN'S 
 Conversations ivith Goethe, Vol. II., OxenforcTs Translation.
 
 XIV. 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 OFTEN wonder who first left his home 
 for change of scene, or migrated to the 
 seaside ; not on business, but from 
 business ; not for the purpose of residing 
 there, but as a bondjide visitor. What were his 
 belongings ? Was he a bachelor or a married man ? 
 Did he carry his carpet bag, or was he himself carried 
 in a coach, and accompanied by a train of attendants ? 
 Was he able to dine upon eight hundred a year, or 
 did he require twice that amount to do so satisfac- 
 torily ? Whoever and whatever he was, none can 
 justly deny to him the title of great social reformer, 
 or refuse to his now numberless followers the right 
 when his name shall have been discovered of 
 erecting an appropriate statue to his memory. 
 
 Before his time people resided constantly at home,
 
 272 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 and had no desire to leave it. Life with them passed 
 away without the worry and turmoil of our day, and 
 change of scene was not so much as thought of for 
 its own sake. Such is not now the case. There 
 certainly are men to be found who, like Dr. Johnson, 
 from choice reside in London all the year, and who 
 think green lanes to be all very well in their way, 
 but would consider them greatly improved were they 
 paved. These, however, are the exceptions. The 
 vast majority have long since become disciples of our 
 great social reformer, and cheap and expeditious 
 travelling is daily increasing their number. All 
 who have means, and can make opportunity, now 
 habituate themselves to their annual " run" spend 
 a portion of the year away from their every-day oc- 
 cupations and feel aggrieved if they are prevented 
 from doing so. All who are able to go, do go. 
 Some seek the sea-side, some settle amidst the rural 
 scenery of our home-land, and some wander in fo- 
 reign countries. Now I do not underrate foreign 
 
 O O 
 
 travel. On the contrary, I value it very highly ; 
 agreeing with Bacon, that in the younger sort it is 
 a part of education ; in the elder, a part of experi- 
 ence. But I think its advantages are usually over- 
 estimated. Home travel, however, is too often 
 thought commonplace ; and, with the vulgar, an 
 object is interesting in proportion to its distance or
 
 HOME AND FOREIGN TRAVEL. 273 
 
 the difficulty of its attainment. " ( You have been 
 < ( in France ? ' said my gentleman, turning quick 
 " upon me with the most civil triumph in the world. 
 " So," says the author of " Tristram Shandy," " I 
 " went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen 
 " shirts and a pair of black silk breeches, and " 
 and the " Sentimental Journey " is the result. For 
 " France" read " North Pole," " Interior of Africa," 
 or " Chimborazzo,'' and the scene is taking place 
 to-day. People crave to see what others have not 
 seen, to visit where others have not visited. A be- 
 wildering desire, which is extending itself amongst 
 all classes, possesses them to pass by the ordinary 
 in search of the extraordinary ; and many suppose 
 they find it when they arrive at the uncommon. 
 By them 
 
 " Omne ignotum pro magnified est." 
 
 Hence they climb the loftiest and most arduous 
 mountains penetrate the most impenetrable deserts 
 explore the sources of unknown rivers and then 
 " turn quick upon you with the most civil triumph 
 '' in the world." 
 
 This activity seems to arise from two causes; 
 love of scenery, and veneration for the past. For 
 the exercise of both sentiments England furnishes 
 abundant scope. She possesses scenes of beauty 
 
 T
 
 274 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 matchless in other lands ; hills of admirable propor- 
 tions smiling pastures smooth streams rivers of 
 sweetest beauty. In largeness of scale the scenery 
 of these islands is admittedly inferior to what is to be 
 found elsewhere. It can boast no Himalaya Moun- 
 tains, no Mississippi river, no Niagara Falls. But 
 it abounds in qualities of which the intellect and 
 senses never tire ; and in the elements of rural beauty 
 is incomparable. There is, moreover, infinite va- 
 riety. Britain is not only a country of lawns and 
 parks and stately avenues. She has wild moorlands 
 of vast extent, heaths of melancholy aspect, track- 
 less hills as desolate as can be found elsewhere. 
 Then, what a coast ! Here, lined with cliffs of im- 
 posing grandeur bare, rugged, precipitous ; there, 
 masses of blown sand, extending inland for great 
 distances, form themselves into an endless number of 
 hills and valleys, whose inner slopes are covered 
 with luxuriant vegetation. In one direction sub- 
 merged forests, attesting the power of volcanic forces 
 in former times ; in another, green meadows, or 
 cornfields, smiling with golden harvests, run down to 
 the very water's edge Ceres, as fabled of old, un- 
 able to escape the importunities of Neptune. Lack- 
 ing mountains that crush the senses, and plains that 
 bewilder, it still possesses the agreeable, happy me- 
 dium in which alone can be found that feature which
 
 THE PICTURESQUE. 275 
 
 has been named the Picturesque. And yet scores of 
 persons go abroad for what lies at their very doors, 
 and is to be found with but very little seeking. 
 The other day I met, at Ghent, a Londoner who had 
 distinguished himself by " making a hole in ^100," 
 and by penetrating as far as Vienna and Prague, 
 without the knowledge of any continental language. 
 He was a licensed victualler in search of the pic- 
 turesque, and had determined upon visiting Prague 
 because his wife, who accompanied him, had so willed 
 it. Her only knowledge of that town was derived 
 from a piece of music termed " The Battle of Prague ; " 
 and from some odd association of ideas she had be- 
 come firmly convinced that Prague was the most 
 picturesque city in the world. The gentleman " did 
 " not care much for the mounseers," but with the 
 scenery everywhere, after he had left these shores, 
 he expressed himself as being delighted " nothing 
 " like it in England, sir !" This was his opinion of 
 the England he had never seen. As with him, so 
 with the majority. The view borrows enchantment 
 from distance, and strangeness in character, customs, 
 and costume, adds largely to the enjoyment. 
 
 The other source of preference for travelling on 
 the Continent is the belief very generally entertained 
 of the vast superiority to our own land of other 
 countries in interesting associations. But historical
 
 276 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 and poetical associations are not wanting in England. 
 Where can an Englishman find a country so full of 
 them as his own ? The land is pregnant with stirring 
 memories, and nowhere can more striking sugges- 
 tions be presented to his mind. He may, if he 
 choose, inspect and examine the religious and sepul- 
 chral monuments of those who preceded him in the 
 land 1800 years ago may enter the very caves and 
 holes of the earth which were their homes. He 
 may tread the ground now, perhaps, waving with 
 cornfields, under which are engulphed cities which 
 were built, long centuries ago, by Roman hands, in- 
 habited by Roman citizens, and called after Roman 
 names. He may find numberless memorials of his 
 far-off Saxon ancestors, and traces of that invasion 
 which gave them foreign masters. He may wander 
 without impediment through grim fortresses, now 
 slowly crumbling into decay, but which at one time 
 were the habitations of those who pursued 
 
 " the good old plan, 
 
 " That they should take who have the power, 
 " And they should keep who can." 
 
 He cannot fail to be frequently reminded, too, of 
 that bloody contest, which we name Roses War, 
 and which was characterized by as much treachery 
 and shocking barbarity as any that the Continent 
 can boast. Then, again, he will frequently come
 
 RAGE FOR HISTORICAL RELICS. 277 
 
 upon the scene of one or other of those conflicts 
 which took place when Naseby, Worcester, and 
 Marston Moor were names as often on men's lips 
 as Alma, Inkermann, or Balaclava have been of late. 
 There remain to this country more perhaps of these 
 monuments than to any other. We have castles, 
 abbeys, priories, crosses, and cathedrals in abund- 
 ance; each a reminder of other days, each possessing 
 its traditional story. In one place will be pointed 
 out the room in which was born the first Tudor; 
 in another the royal chamber "in which is King 
 " Charles's window." Here are the remains of that 
 splendid pile which was erected and richly endowed 
 by William the Conqueror, in commemoration of the 
 battle which delivered over to him a kingdom ; there, 
 those of that other in which the last Stuart came to 
 the resolution of flying from his indignant subjects. 
 This is the spot where, for the last time, stood a 
 knight proclaiming himself ready to "answer all 
 " comers " at tilt and tourney ; on this, for the first 
 time, was the printing-press set going on its errand 
 in England. These ruins are the cast aurelia shells 
 out of which the nation emerged into her modern 
 existence. Whilst inhabiting these, her energies 
 were concentrated upon the nutritive functions, econo- 
 mising her resources for future use ; now, her power 
 of active movement is illimitable and irresistible.
 
 278 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 Some one has said that were all written records of 
 our history destroyed, the chief incidents could yet 
 be ascertained from our language. In like manner, 
 were we to interpret aright the teachings of one of 
 these broken walls, we should have a most instruc- 
 tive lesson, and such a one as is seldom to be found 
 in books. Each is a type of the struggle between 
 Old England and New. When we enter it we are 
 conscious that our tread is on a system, and that 
 we are surrounded by an epoch in stone. Its situa- 
 tion is, in most instances, in harmony with its fallen 
 condition. It is out of the vulgar gaze. Silence 
 surrounds it, and to reach it we have to pick our 
 steps through a thorny path, brushing aside the 
 underwood that has completely choked up the moat 
 of former times a solemn contrast with the time 
 when every road, for miles around, led hitherward 
 to the baron's residence. Then all was bustle and 
 activity ; now, the sound of the armourer is dumb ; 
 the inner and outer ward are both deserted; the 
 donjon-keep has not been tenanted for centuries ; 
 " the voice of the people is heard no more. The 
 " stream of Clutha is removed from its place by the 
 " fall of the walls ; the thistle shakes there its lonely 
 " head ; the moss whistles to the wind. Desolate is 
 " the dwelling of Moina." 
 
 Washington Irving has recorded the delight ex-
 
 ORIGIN OF THE SENTIMENT. 279 
 
 perienced by an American upon beholding, for the 
 first time, the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun 
 with ivy. He was from a land to which time had 
 left no such legacies. What would not America 
 give in exchange for these heirlooms of the race ? for 
 what is birth without its proper pedigree ? Even a 
 horse, with ever so valuable qualities, has infinitely 
 more worth to most eyes when his pedigree is trace- 
 able to illustrious ancestors. You treat the descend- 
 ant of " Hero " or " Flying Childers," though de- 
 graded to the plough, with greater regard than his 
 work-mate, notwithstanding his inferior qualities. 
 And that picture you have in your gallery, and on 
 which you set great store, would it be worth so much 
 by half nay, faded and dimmed as it is, would you 
 even give it house-room did you not possess in 
 your escritoire convincing proof of its being the pro- 
 duction of a master ? Or, to ask a more pertinent 
 question, would you, my lord, set so high a value 
 upon yourself as you do, were you not encouraged 
 by that curious tree that hangs against the wall of 
 your library? Well, these ruins of Old England, 
 scattered over the land, are the genealogical tree of 
 our race. Not the truest pedigree, for that is to be 
 looked for elsewhere, but symbols of splendid reality. 
 The origin of the sentiment is not obscure. 
 
 There is, it would appear, in the mind of man, a
 
 280 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 principle which prompts him to regard, with some 
 degree of pleasure and veneration, these relics of 
 departed days, or the scene of any remarkable by- 
 gone transaction. And this principle, whether na- 
 tural or inherited, or to whatever cause due, is 
 found to be so prevalent as to be esteemed universal. 
 It is named the sentiment of Veneration. Its birth 
 has been traced to a lofty source, and many an 
 encomium has, at different times, been bestowed 
 upon it by writers not unknown to fame. But an 
 examination of the claims upon which their eulogies 
 are based will indubitably lead to the discovery that 
 its descent is not to be boasted of its parentage by 
 no means so honourable as is represented. At the 
 best, Veneration is but the daughter of Wonder and 
 Fear. The savage, we are told, when first he beheld 
 the steam-ship doing battle with the winds of heaven, 
 and overcoming, as appeared to him, the laws of the 
 Great Spirit, was filled with wonder, and bent the 
 knee in reverence. Afterwards, however, when the 
 novelty of the spectacle had worn itself out when 
 ignorance had given place to knowledge he con- 
 templated the same object with the utmost uncon- 
 cern. Wonder vanishes at the approach of know- 
 ledge ; when there is no longer any fear, veneration 
 also takes its departure. But although the sentiment 
 springs from no such high lineage as is mostly
 
 ITS EFFECTS. 281 
 
 claimed for it, it yet forms an important element in 
 human nature, and is extremely beneficial in human 
 affairs. This it is which makes men conservative of 
 the past, and cautious of change in the future ; forms 
 the basis of chivalrous loyalty ; and is a prime source 
 of all religious feeling. It is seen in democratic 
 states equally with aristocratic, and if in the former 
 the objects upon which it is exercised differ, it is not 
 for that the less visible there. Things are mutable, 
 and those now reverenced will one day disappear, 
 but only to be succeeded by others. Reverence 
 itself is seldom lost. 
 
 To this sentiment, love of fame is the complement. 
 There have never been wanting a few select minds 
 who have declined subjecting themselves to either of 
 these influences, and have proved themselves superior 
 to both. But the majority of mankind have, in all 
 ao-es, shown themselves not otherwise than solicitous 
 
 O y 
 
 to set apart certain opinions and objects as suitable 
 for their veneration; and to supply the demand 
 created by this exigency, there has been no lack of 
 candidates. Ambition, that infirmity of noble minds, 
 is ever as ready to offer " something that the world 
 " will not readily let die," as the world is to receive 
 what is offered for its acceptance. Thus, we see, men 
 have perpetually striven to transmit their names to 
 times far distant from their own. With toil and
 
 282 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 care they have erected monuments which they ima- 
 gined are to endure through all ages. In every case 
 the end in view is the same the having themselves 
 in remembrance hereafter. 
 
 To England the times gone by have bequeathed a 
 prodigious number of such legacies, and in no nation 
 has reverence for the past taken deeper root than in 
 ours. The feeling manifests itself in a vast variety 
 of ways. We call our country " Old" England, and 
 are proud of her age. When we typify the English- 
 man, do we not delight to do so by picturing him as 
 a gentleman somewhat advanced in years? Are we 
 not predisposed to bestow a larger share of support 
 upon an old-established " institution " than upon its 
 newly-started competitor, however favourable the 
 auspices under which the latter sprang into existence, 
 however satisfactory its guaranty of success may be? 
 Our houses of business which have been " established 
 " for upwards of a century," take care to advertise 
 that fact, and they find their account therein. The 
 bar parlour of the Old Three Crowns is much more 
 likely to be found filled on an evening than the 
 smoking-room of the New Inn on the opposite side 
 of the way, notwithstanding the fact of the bever- 
 ages to be obtained at the latter being, in all respects, 
 equal to those of its rival. 
 
 Old age with us is allowed to count honours, 
 where youth is not permitted the privilege.
 
 ITS INFLUENCE ON ART. 283 
 
 The same sentiment has a demonstrative influence 
 on Modern Art, where it shows itself in a tendency 
 to look upon Age and Decay as a legitimate field for 
 the display of artistic skill, and to regard them as 
 types of the beautiful, or at least as useful accessories 
 to Beauty. Hence a man in rags is thought to be 
 a much more interesting subject for the pencil than 
 another in goodly raiment ; a rude thatched cottage, 
 with children, dirty and in tatters, playing in the 
 adjoining kennel, is chosen for representation in pre- 
 ference to a decent dwelling-house ; a narrow, sombre 
 street, composed of gable-ends, tottering, irregular, 
 and many-coloured by the hand of Time, is held in 
 greater esteem than ever so stately a terrace of mo- 
 dern mansions although this is built without an ar- 
 chitectural blemish, and with an elegance to which 
 that has no pretensions. Especially in regard of me- 
 diaeval ruins, those glorious examples of grandeur in 
 decay, does this tendency display itself. To light 
 upon " a really fine old ruin " will an artist travel 
 many a league, over highway and byway, through 
 unfrequented parts, enduring much fatigue ; and 
 when at length he reaches the object of his search, 
 the pleasure he experiences compensates every toil. 
 He "jots down the really fine old ruin," carries it 
 away in his portfolio, and, if he is a master in his art, 
 will find a purchaser as ready to buy as he to sell.
 
 284 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 This disposition to rank decay as a type of the 
 beautiful is, I presume, a peculiarity of modern Art. 
 We do not find it to have existed in ancient Greece. 
 She, too, looked back with reverence to the Past, 
 and saw there much to admire. But it was courage, 
 strength, and length of days never decay. To be 
 beautiful was with her to be young, fresh, joyous 
 above all, to be young. And in modern Art it has 
 been developed only in late years. The ruin has not 
 always been considered an object of beauty, and cer- 
 tainly at the beginning of its decline not even an 
 object of interest. 
 
 A not uninteresting subject for inquiry would be, 
 when did it first of all come to be regarded as such ? 
 
 The ordinary mind is disposed to look upon the 
 time of the origination of any social change which 
 is destined seriously to affect posterity as one of 
 tumult, anxiety, and confusion. It overlooks the 
 fact that those who were spectators of the event in 
 its birth had not the same means of seeing its mag- 
 nitude as we who are witnesses of it in its results. 
 It would be an error to suppose that the western 
 voyage of Columbus, which gave his age a new world 
 or the Renaissance of Art and Religion or the 
 invention of printing affected men in the manner, 
 and to the extent, we are liable to imagine, and 
 think it ought to have affected them. The actors
 
 DECAY A TYPE OF BEAUTY. 285 
 
 are ever too near their action to see its effect. Be- 
 sides, things are gradual in their processes ; men, in 
 time, get used to all exceptional conditions, and 
 forget to consider them exceptional. It is only the 
 Partingtons of society who wonder how it was pos- 
 sible for the ancients to " carry on," seeing they had 
 no bread and butter, no tea and coffee, no gas, no 
 tobacco and seltzer water, no railways and electric 
 telegraphs, no lucifer matches and penny newspapers. 
 Thus it fares with our representative old ruins. 
 When the castles were dismantled by order of Parlia- 
 ment, " lest they might be held by disaffected per- 
 " sons," the event excited, in the contemporary 
 mind, ideas and emotions by no means kin to those 
 we are apt to imagine. To us, at this distance of 
 time, that would appear to have been a period of 
 melancholy and universal excitement, when the ten- 
 ants of the strong fortress migrated to the modern 
 dwelling-house ; and equally so that other, when the 
 time-honoured old abbey was abandoned, when the 
 performance of matins was rudely interrupted, when 
 the monk had to abandon his teaching, and the lay- 
 brother his gardening operations, all because the 
 king's grace had seen fit to change his wife and his 
 religious opinions. But even these events were soou 
 regarded as matters of course, and men went on their 
 way to follow, as usual, their several avocations.
 
 286 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 Castle and abbey, widowed of their grandeur, lay 
 unheeded, their chief importance consisting in their 
 capacity to furnish material for the erection of other 
 and meaner building?. 
 
 A long time elapsed before they were looked upon 
 in any other light. Scott, it undoubtedly was, who 
 elevated them to rank as objects of veneration. He 
 it was who, by giving the general mind a turn in the 
 direction of mediaeval antiquities, first secured for 
 these souvenirs of Old England the interest which 
 they now inspire. Others before him may have felt 
 an archaeological concern in them, but he it was 
 who popularized the feeling, and gave it additional 
 stimulus, by endowing them with poetic beauty. 
 Thenceforth they became sanctified relics of chivalric 
 and monastic glories. At the same time it was that 
 the pursuit of scenery as a diversion, and the descrip- 
 tion of scenery as a form of literary activity, first 
 became fashionable in England. 
 
 So universal among us has view -hunting now 
 become, and, as a consequence, so numerous are the 
 interpreters of Nature, that the present generation 
 has difficulty in believing that little more than half 
 a century has elapsed since descriptive literature 
 began to be in vogue. A correspondent of a literary 
 journal, in giving an account of a curious duodecimo 
 volume upon which he had lighted, supplies us almost
 
 MODERN GROWTH OF VIEW-HUNTING. 287 
 
 with the very year. The work consisted of two let- 
 ters, which had been privately reprinted by Words- 
 worth from " The Morning Post," and the blank leaf 
 contained, in the poet's handwriting, the following 
 passage : " A relative of mine, about thirty years 
 " older than myself, being congratulated on the great 
 " advantage she must have had in being brought up in 
 " the romantic county of Cumberland, said, * Don't 
 " ( think about it ; when I was young there were no 
 " ' lakes and mountains.' " The date on the flyleaf is 
 " Rydal Mount, August 18, 1845." Wordsworth was 
 born in 1770. His youth may therefore be considered 
 as having been spent in 1790 ; so that if we take thirty, 
 from that year, we shall have 1760 as the proximate 
 date at which the picturesque was unknown in this 
 country. People of education and culture, presum- 
 ably occupying the same rank in life as those who 
 now go into ecstasies in the presence of fine scenery, 
 had then not begun to regard lakes and mountains 
 otherwise than they are now regarded by untutored 
 rustics. Sensibility to the external forms of nature 
 is, indeed, of modern growth. Among the ancients 
 that people who of all nations were endued with per- 
 ceptions of beauty the most intense have left us in 
 their literature no descriptions of scenery, except by 
 way of simile, intended to heighten our interest in 
 human action and events. Although they deified
 
 288 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 Nature, they had no sense of what we now term the 
 picturesque : the feeling manifested by the moderns 
 towards scenery being by them transferred to the 
 " spirit " which they imagined presided in mountain, 
 wood, and stream.* It has been thought that the 
 founders of their cities could not have been without 
 a sense of beauty in the selection they made of the 
 several sites. But although the ruins are now in per- 
 fect harmony with the scenery amidst which they are 
 situate, the original builders were influenced in their 
 choice by no considerations of beauty, but were 
 guided solely by considerations of strength. They 
 had no more notion of being picturesque than the 
 Dutch had whilst forming their canals. The authors 
 of republican Rome, too, who were perfectly igno- 
 rant that the representation of external nature, either 
 by painting or by narrative, would give pleasure or 
 be of interest to others, have left us nothing whereby 
 we are able to discover what sort of impression was 
 made upon them by the scenery with which they 
 were surrounded. To them, as to their Greek pre- 
 decessors, the work of man's hand was more interest- 
 ing than the bend of a river, the bosom of a lake, 
 or the snow-capped head of a mountain. 
 
 * " Pinea Irachia cum trepidunt audio canticulum ZepTiyri."- 
 MARTIANUS CAPELLA, quoting some unknown writer.
 
 SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES. 289 
 
 Representation of scenery first came into fashion 
 in a civilization similar to our own, landscape painting, 
 according to Pliny, having been invented in the 
 time of Augustus by S. Tadius.* It will be re- 
 marked that, among the Romans as among ourselves, 
 almost simultaneously with this desire for the repre- 
 sentation of external nature arose the taste for an- 
 tiquities. Just as people began to see beauty in 
 Gothic art and Gothic architecture, hitherto despised, 
 at the time when they first felt pleasure in landscape, 
 so in Rome, within similar circumstances, there 
 sprang up a race of collectors, among whom, we 
 are told, was C. J. Caesar, who bought up paintings, 
 of old masters (tabulas operis antiqui), bronzes, en- 
 graved gems, &c. with as much avidity as the most 
 enthusiastic connoisseur of our own day. The 
 taste fell, however, with the Empire. During the 
 middle ages what we may call the sense of scenery 
 was lost ; and in our elder writers, at the period of 
 
 * " S. Tadio, divi August! setate qui primus instituit amoenis- 
 simam parietum picturam ; villas, et porticus, et topiaria 
 opera, lucos, nemora, collis, piscinas, euripos, amnis, littora, 
 qualia quis optaret ; varias ibi obambulantium species aut 
 navigantium, terra que villas adeuntium asellis aut vehiculis : 
 jam piscantis, aucupantis aut venantis aut etiam vindemi- 
 antis." PLINY., II. N., xxxv. 10 (Jan's Edition). The old 
 reading for S. Tadius was Ludius. 
 
 U
 
 290 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 the Renaissance, there is no trace of its having been 
 recovered. Shakespeare has been praised for the 
 beauty of his descriptive passages, and the absence 
 of stage scenery in mV time has been given as the 
 reason for his excellence in this respect. References 
 to the plays, however, will clearly show that even 
 he has never attempted a sustained description of 
 the outer world. The famous passage in "Lear," 
 with reference to Dover cliff, may be taken as an 
 example and a proof. Here we find the allusions 
 entirely subjective, having reference to sensations 
 naturally produced in the mind by vast height. If 
 we come nearer our own time, we shall find the 
 same lack of the feeling. The " great " people who 
 performed the Grand Tour never thought of putting 
 their heads out of the carriage window to admire 
 scenes that have since become famous for their 
 beauty or grandeur. They went to see man and 
 his ways, and it did not occur to them to record 
 their impressions of the country through which they 
 travelled to find him. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, who deprecates description of scenery 
 for its own sake, and disapproves of "euphuistic 
 " gallantries with nature," supposes that first in the 
 " Sorrows of Werter " the practice came decisively 
 into use. A writer in the " North British Review," 
 on the other hand, claims for Patrick Graham,
 
 USE AND ABUSE OF THE PURSUIT. 291 
 
 author of " Sketches of Picturesque Scenery on the 
 " Southern Confines of Perthshire," 1806, the honour 
 of having been the founder of our British school of 
 professional tourists and describers of Nature. There 
 can be no doubt, indeed, that view-hunting had its 
 origin somewhere at the end of the last century, for 
 it must have been rampant at the time when Dr. 
 Syntax's tour appeared to burlesque it. The Wa- 
 verley Novels undoubtedly increased the mania, and 
 the love of out-door life and the spirit of adventure 
 which distinguish the English seem likely to per- 
 petuate it among us. Since the time of Scott, the 
 number of descriptive books, in poetry and prose, is 
 almost too great for calculation. I might give chap- 
 ters of " euphuistic gallantries " (which, for any 
 value they possess, may well have been put into a 
 page), and so make a little book a big one ; but what 
 need is there of examples ? Every modern reader 
 is well acquainted with the school. 
 
 View-hunting has been named a vice ; and in no 
 way, except by rantings on female loveliness, has 
 more vain admiration been thrown away than in 
 speaking of the beauties of Nature. It has been 
 said with truth that this over-admiration both of 
 nature and woman is derived from the young; 
 that is, it is founded, not on facts, but on a conjec- 
 ture of facts, before the facts have been ascertained.
 
 292 DESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 When the conjecture is discovered to be wrong, the 
 sentiments which have been based on it ought pro- 
 perly to be corrected ; but, unfortunately, this is not 
 done, and the false idea is kept, cherished, and trans- 
 mitted. View-hunting and view-describing, how- 
 ever, are useful in a measure even necessary just 
 as literary criticism is useful. Since you have not 
 the good fortune to be possessed of that Eastern 
 carpet, seated on which you might, by a wish, trans- 
 port yourself whither you desire, and thus judge of 
 each scene for yourself, you must suffer yourself to 
 be guided or directed by others. It is to be hoped, 
 however, that the view-describer will, in his rhap- 
 sodies, strictly confine himself within proper limits, 
 and not pretend to derive from his pursuit more than 
 it is obviously capable of yielding. He should be 
 careful not to discredit by his extravagancies the 
 only form of literature the moderns can claim as 
 their own invention. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : PRINTED BV WHITTINQHAM AND WJLKINS, 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
 
 LECTURES ON POETRY 
 
 DOYLE

 
 LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 1868 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR F. H. DOYLE, Bart., M.A., B.C.L. 
 
 Late Fellow of All Souls' 
 
 PROFESSOR OF POETRY 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1869
 
 
 OXFORD: 
 
 BY T. COMBE, M.A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A., 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN giving these Lectures to the world, I believe I am 
 only taking a usual step, and one that is expected of 
 Oxford Professors, more or less, by that University. I 
 need only then ask my readers to bear in mind that they 
 are lectures, to be heard, as ancient Pistol says, ' with 
 ears' not subtle disquisitions to be meditated upon in 
 a quiet study. They have therefore been thrown into a 
 key more rhetorical and familiar than I should otherwise 
 have adopted, and are rather, to use Aristotle's phrase, 
 epideictic orations than argumentative essays. I must add 
 that for five -and -twenty years and more, I have done 
 nothing as an orator, except to mumble now and then 
 a few words, against my will, at a wedding breakfast. It 
 follows that these compositions must be, in point of tone 
 and style, necessarily tentative. Indeed, one reason for 
 not putting off publication till a greater number of them 
 had heaped themselves up, is, that the sooner any cor- 
 rigible defects and mistakes are pointed out to me (and
 
 Vi PREFACE. 
 
 I dare say I shall find critics obliging enough to meet 
 my wishes in that respect), the less delay will there be, on 
 my part, in reconsidering the whole subject, and in mend- 
 ing, so far as I can, the errdr of my ways.
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 i 
 WHEN any one steps into the place of a poet and 
 
 critic such as Mr. Arnold, he naturally feels somewhat 
 awkward in undertaking his new functions. e lf it 
 had not been,' he fancies his hearers saying to them- 
 selves, c for the inconvenient restrictions by which this 
 Professorship is hampered, we might have kept, with 
 all the tact and power superadded which arises out 
 of a long experience, our man of genius. Now, how- 
 ever, he is forced, for us at least, into an unnecessary 
 silence, in order that another may speak another, 
 who has, no doubt, much of his business yet to learn, 
 and who, even when he has learnt it, is not likely 
 to give out anything half so good as that to which 
 his predecessor has accustomed us/ 
 
 And yet, perhaps, if we suppose the founder of this 
 Chair to have been actuated, in limiting its tenure, by 
 reason and not by caprice; there is something, even 
 
 f*
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 though it may involve temporary failures and occa- 
 sional disappointments, to be said for such a limita- 
 tion. Criticism, to speak roughly, for I am not aiming 
 at any logical division, is of two kinds the criticism of 
 knowledge, and the criticism of sympathy. The critics 
 who know, of whom Aristotle may be taken as the type 
 and representative, judge mainly by the intellect j and 
 any great leader of that school, if he be, in his degree, 
 worthy to follow in the steps of his master, throws, 
 like the noon-day sun, a broad and equal illumina- 
 tion over all the departments of his subject alike. 
 But as the lovelier tints of colouring, and the more 
 pathetic lights, are due to those narrowing rays which 
 fasten upon their own domain, so is there a criticism 
 of the sympathies specially worth having, wherever 
 those sympathies are specially interested. It therefore 
 might be not unreasonably hoped, and not unwisely 
 attempted, to accumulate the most delicate insights, 
 and the liveliest sensibilities of different minds, so 
 that, converging from opposite quarters, they should 
 coalesce into a perfect whole. For an unbroken suc- 
 cession of Aristotles it is vain to hope. But thus, 
 it might be possible to build up, limb by limb, a 
 great body of doctrine of doctrine, keen with that 
 intensity, which the wide critic is apt to want, and
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 all-embracing in that width, which no passionate 
 critic is likely to attain to, unless he be one of 
 those rare men, whom the world waits for through 
 centuries of expectation. In this manner it ought 
 to result, that the poetry of thought and the poetry 
 of passion that which belongs to the present and 
 that which is reflected from the past, that which is 
 of home growth, and that which rises up among other 
 habits of thought, and takes its shape from a different 
 national character should, in their turns, be ade- 
 quately interpreted and discussed. 
 
 If this way of looking at the office of Poetry Pro- 
 fessor, and at the objects which he has to set before 
 himself, be, under ordinary circumstances I mean, 
 a right and convenient one, he should, I think, take 
 the earliest opportunity (as I hope to do on the present 
 occasion) of opening himself frankly and freely to his 
 audience. It seems to me therefore desirable, before 
 I enter into any details of criticism, before I praise 
 one poet or disparage another, that my general view 
 as to the nature of the poetical imagination, as to its 
 uses and its dangers, as to the manner in which it 
 acts for itself, and reacts upon the character at large, 
 should be known to those for whom such criticisms 
 of detail are intended. All this I believe to be 
 
 B 2
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 desirable, not only for you who hear, but also for 
 me who speak. These questions go so deep into the 
 roots of life, they have been so often disputed about, 
 and still remain so incompletely solved, that I, for 
 one, am not going to dogmatize thereon. I can but 
 state plainly, and without affectation, what I think 
 and feel. I can but promise that, being at least as 
 anxious to learn as I am willing to teach, the objec- 
 tions which will rise up against any theories of mine, 
 as they have risen up against the theories of men 
 to whom I should not dream of comparing myself, 
 shall be examined (if I know my own mind) with an 
 attention unvexed by prejudice, and only eager for the 
 truth. 
 
 So complete, indeed, is the discordance of senti- 
 ment, as to all these matters, between rival instructors, 
 who alike claim the highest authority, that even before 
 entering upon the actual subject of this address, I have 
 to go a step back, and to fight, as it seems, for my very 
 existence here, by undertaking the defence of Poetry 
 itself. Against whom you will say, Qjfif vituperavit ? 
 Ay, that is the question; not against men up to 
 their necks in business stockbrokers, bankers, and 
 the like not against the family of that typical 
 clerk
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 ' Foredoomed his father's soul to cross, 
 Who pens a stanza when he should engross,' 
 
 but against writers of the highest genius, who could, 
 as far as we can judge, equip, out of their rich and 
 powerful imaginations, an ordinary poet or so, with- 
 out much feeling the loss. Against such high autho- 
 rities, in a word, as Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin. 
 I am not clear at this moment whether Mr. Carlyle 
 has ever put his hatred of verse-making on record, 
 in any formal shape- but it may be gathered from 
 any one of his writings. Everybody knows how 
 he confides, at uncertain intervals, to the eternities 
 and immensities his bitter regret, that men of noble 
 faculties, like Tennyson and Browning, should have 
 become entangled, under some evil star, in the 
 meshes of rhyme, instead of devoting themselves to 
 I do not exactly know what but to something or 
 anything else. Mr. Ruskin, however, in one of his 
 most characteristic passages, announces himself to the 
 universe as admitting but two orders of poets. Both 
 of these, according to him, must be first-rate in their 
 range, though their range be different, and with poetry 
 second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed 
 to trouble mankind. c There is quite enough of the 
 best/ says he, much more than we can read or enjoy,
 
 6 LECTURE I. 
 
 in the length of a single life, and it is a literal wrong 
 or sin to encumber us with inferior work.' e l have 
 no patience/ he now proceeds (by way of encourag- 
 ing and inspiring the bards of the future), 'with the 
 apologies made by young pseudo-poets, that they be- 
 lieve that there is some good in what they have 
 written ; some good if there is not all good, there is 
 no good. If they ever hoped to do better, why do 
 they trouble us now?' If these views were correct, 
 the first thing to strike me in this place, would be 
 that a conscientious Poetry Professor must have a 
 dreadful time of it. His mission he must look upon 
 as wholly negative j his motto could only be, ' Preven- 
 tion is better than cure.' His duty would summon 
 him to rise up early and late take rest, to run hither 
 and thither, saying to this undergraduate, 'Writing 
 for the Newdegate? Have you no principles?' To 
 that bachelor of arts, c What ! at your age contend- 
 ing for the triennial Religious Poem ? Do you not 
 know that you are guilty of a literal sin ? ' He must 
 consider himself, in short, elected for the purpose of 
 proctorizing generally the haunts of song, and of hunt- 
 ing up meditated stanzas, in the act of concoction, like 
 an Irish exciseman on the track of an illicit still. 
 Happily for me, I do not feel bound to incur any
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 such onerous responsibilities. I differ entirely from 
 every one of the sentences quoted above, and the very 
 last position, which I should think of taking up, would 
 be that of a critical Canute, who plants his foot upon 
 the brink of the advancing age, and says to the rising 
 tide of genius, as it rolls shoreward under an irre- 
 sistible impulse from within, c You know you should 
 not come here/ 
 
 I have said that Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin 
 are possessed of rich, I might have added of almost 
 inexhaustible, imaginations j I suspect, however and 
 it makes them all the greater if I am right in my 
 conjecture that for neither of their minds is it abso- 
 lutely the dominant or master faculty. Now I think 
 we shall find, that whenever this is the case, whenever 
 other gifts and talents (equally admirable, perhaps,) 
 have the power, and, indeed, in some sort, the right 
 to struggle against the rule of the formative imagina- 
 tion, the result is not a genuine poet, at least not 
 a genuine poet of the normal type j but a thinker, or 
 a rhetorician, or a critic in verse. One test of this 
 I believe to be, that when such a man has recourse 
 to poetry, that he may embody and communicate 
 what he thinks and feels he finds himself moving, 
 no matter with what degree of vigour and energy, in
 
 8 LECTURE I. 
 
 an element which is not his most natural one; his 
 thoughts do not flow as freely as they should; his 
 metaphors do not kindle and rush upon him with their 
 usual affluence and splendour. He differs, in short, 
 from the real singers by this, that for him the pressure 
 of rhythm and the law of measured words weighs down 
 like a fetter, instead of uplifting as a wing. Hence a 
 certain distrust of poetry itself; hence, unconsciously, 
 I dare say, something like a contemptuous bitterness 
 against smaller men, who, amid the stumbling-blocks 
 and intricacies which have half baffled their superiors, 
 go twittering about, more comfortable, and more at 
 home, than, in the opinion of the giants, they have any 
 business to be. 
 
 Setting, however, all this aside, and taking Mr. 
 Ruskin's utterances for what they are worth, without 
 attempting to explain their origin, let us examine them 
 in turn, and endeavour to ascertain their real value. 
 
 First, Mr. Ruskin admits only two orders of poets. 
 Of the higher order, he names Homer, Dante, Shake- 
 speare ; of the lower, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Keats. 
 Nothing can be better; but how is he to get his 
 chosen ones ? It seems to me that what he desires 
 is to gather the perfect fruit without any blossoms 
 competing beforehand; without any previous rise or
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 struggle of the sap. He may have been somehow 
 or other clothed by Apollo with a special mission 
 to move about among undeveloped rhymesters, and to 
 pronounce at once, by the help of some diviner in- 
 stinct, 'This poet-grub is a pseudo-grub, be careful 
 that his wings are cut hereafter. This one again is of 
 royal spirit, let him be put into a royal cell; feed 
 him upon honey-dew j make him drink the milk of 
 Paradise, and train him up, without any disturbance 
 from importunate rivals, into a bard proper.' But 
 unless something of this kind can be done (as bees in a 
 difficulty, under the impulse of their unerring instinct, 
 fix upon the very one they want, out of a multitude of 
 seemingly undistinguishable little creatures, and feed 
 it up into an unexceptionable queen), we must, I fear, 
 be content to take our poets as they arise, according 
 to the methods in which nature usually supplies them. 
 Now, we all know the story of Brummel's valet coming 
 down-stairs with an unshapely mass of crumpled neck- 
 cloths under his arm j and how, on being asked what 
 on earth he was about? he replied, not without a 
 tincture of becoming pride, 'These are our failures.' 
 Meanwhile, the successful tie above was, I may say, 
 the poet of muslin, a consummation and a flower which 
 had emerged out of some thirty dishevelled existences.
 
 10 LECTURE I. 
 
 Or, to take another illustration, if you go into a 
 china manufactory, you may see the workman carefully 
 shaping, out of the same raw material, bowls, and jugs, 
 and vases, but the form of this one is not perfect, the 
 paste of that other is too thin to stand the trial of 
 fire. But come, here is a third; surely that will do? 
 No, not quite yet. There is a half imperceptible flaw 
 somewhere, which renders it unfit to bear the required 
 stress and strain. And thus they are all of them 
 mercilessly kneaded up again into chaos, till the eye 
 and hand of the artist have taught themselves to work 
 in harmony together, and the structure, sufficient at 
 last, receives that delicate texture, and imbibes those 
 glowing colours, which often last on without a blemish, 
 when bulkier and stronger, and apparently more im- 
 portant productions have rotted, or crumbled, or rusted 
 into ruin. I recollect standing at Worcester long 
 ago, amid work that was thus going on, and saying 
 to myself, in rather a melancholy mood, This is the 
 way in which Nature gets her poets. She has to mal- 
 treat rather savagely a great deal of very respectable 
 clay in the process, but I make no doubt that the clay, 
 sooner or later, finds its proper place in some other 
 condition : and, after all, THE POET is THERE.' 
 
 Of course I must not be taken as meaning seriously
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. II 
 
 to say that this is the actual method according to which 
 illustrious men are compounded and turned out of the 
 laboratory of Nature. What I do mean is, I trust, suffi- 
 ciently obvious, the rather that it has often enough been 
 insisted on before I mean that they belong to their 
 time and are but specimens selected out of a multitude 
 which clusters around them. A thousand influences co- 
 operate with, a thousand accidents combine to impress 
 each original mind, and nearly the same influences co- 
 operate with, and nearly the same accidents combine 
 to impress myriads of other minds and other tempera- 
 ments, separated from the nobler ones by narrower 
 or broader lines of demarcation. I hope I may say 
 it without irreverence, 'they that run in the race 
 run all, but one only receiveth the prize/ Mr. Ruskin 
 would forbid the race. Is he sure that, having done 
 so, he could always secure the prize for the most 
 deserving? The very great are apt sometimes in 
 youth to outgrow their strength, to exhibit more of 
 struggle and contortion and awkwardness than some 
 symmetrical rival, who is a better master of his genius, 
 because his genius was never born to rise so high, 
 and therefore never strives and ferments with such 
 irregular and intermitting power. All this, however, 
 has been brought home to the feelings and common-
 
 12 LECTURE I. 
 
 sense of mankind by the world-famous story of the 
 Ugly Duck, so that 1 need not enlarge upon the 
 subject. I will content myself with reminding Mr. 
 Ruskin, that even if he could succeed in establishing 
 his prohibitory decrees, and in beating down free-trade 
 so far as poetry is concerned, he might still find himself 
 self-baffled in the end, by the defeat of his own object, 
 and the suppression of his own swan. 
 
 The second proposition to which Mr. Ruskin de- 
 mands our assent is this : that as there is more first- 
 rate poetry than can be read or enjoyed in the length 
 of a single life, the attention of the world ought to 
 be concentrated upon that, and the lyres of all meaner 
 minstrels impounded at once, as you take away a gun 
 from a poacher. Whether this be quite the case, 
 unless he include in his corpus poetarum that huge 
 Calmuck Epic, of which every polite person among 
 the Calmucks is expected to know by heart forty-eight 
 books, at least, out of the three or four hundred which 
 lie open to his memory, I do not think it necessary 
 to inquire, because it is wholly irrelevant to the 
 matter in hand. He himself has told us, elsewhere, 
 with his usual eloquence, that the artist (and it really 
 matters not a jot whether such artist be poet, painter, 
 sculptor, or musician) becomes great, and earns his
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 13 
 
 glory, by being the man of men, the contemporary 
 among contemporaries in his own day. He embodies 
 their aspirations, he interprets their vague yearnings, 
 he soothes their sorrows, he gives a voice to the 
 dumb struggle of their passions, he lives, as they do, 
 in the life of the present, instead of striving to create 
 a future as yet unfelt by them, or to reawaken a past 
 which they have forgotten. Now the complicated 
 influences, which act upon our own time, may be less 
 noble and less fruitful than those which acted upon the 
 fellow-citizens of Dante or of Shakespeare, but still 
 they have a nobility which belongs to themselves, and 
 are entitled to bear their own natural fruit. This 
 again brings us back to what I said before, that we 
 must get our poets as we can, according to the methods 
 which nature is determined to employ. 
 
 There is a dismal theory of the universe, that all 
 the uncountable suns throughout space are smoulder- 
 ing down, gradually, but surely, into one perpetual 
 night. More cheerful astronomers, however, are to 
 be found, who encourage a hope that this is not 
 altogether so; that what seems to us a void, is 
 filled everywhere with dormant seeds of being with, 
 as it were, a diffused and impalpable vapour of heat 
 and light and energy. So that everywhere, the great
 
 14 LECTURE I. 
 
 stars perish not, but are endowed with mysterious 
 powers for drawing forth, and condensing, and assi- 
 milating to their own essence, the spirit of universal 
 life which lies floating around them wherever they 
 go; and for repairing, in this manner, the over- 
 flowings of incessant waste, from fountains of ever- 
 lasting renovation. To this movement (if there be 
 such a movement) of the heavens through space, we 
 can perhaps liken the progress of Poetry through Time. 
 At one season it may rejoice as a giant to run its 
 course, in harmony with noble materials of inspira- 
 tion, and with the heart of some great age ; at another, 
 it may have to toil across poorer and thinner regions 
 of thought. But always, whether the element in which 
 it moves be rich or poor, it is driven, by the law of 
 its existence, to get as much life as it can for itself 
 out of the surrounding atmosphere, or else to starve 
 and die. 
 
 It is therefore idle to talk of the great writers of old, 
 as being enough for the world, and that without any 
 addition to their numbers. Men of mature age may 
 return to them with delight, and interest themselves 
 by observing how and where the poets who enchanted 
 their boyhood approach to, and how and where they 
 fall short of these, the acknowledged masters of their
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 15 
 
 common art. But there is a yearning instinct in the 
 youth of each generation, the mother, I believe, of all 
 true poetry, which seeks ever to find in the songs 
 which it loves and dwells upon, the reflection of its 
 own passions and the echo of its own thoughts. In 
 proportion as those passions are worth reflecting, and 
 those thoughts are worth echoing, in that proportion, 
 I apprehend, does the poetry of any particular time or 
 country establish itself among the lasting possessions 
 of mankind j but whether it be ephemeral or whether 
 it be immortal, have it you must. 
 
 We now come to the remarkable dictum that unless 
 the poetry of any poet be all good, it is none of it good. 
 Surely this is a hard saying, and the lantern of 
 Diogenes must be put into requisition, if we hope 
 to find a writer of verses who is fit to live. Is all 
 Shakespeare good? is all Homer good? is all Dante 
 good ? He must be an unflinching partizan who could 
 answer these questions in the affirmative. Even, 
 however, if we put aside such Di Majores, as soaring, 
 in a region of their own, beyond the reach of criticism, 
 I, for one, am not prepared to give up Lochiel and the 
 Battle of the Baltic, the Last Man, and O'Connor's 
 Child, and the Mariners of England, and some twenty 
 other of Campbell's odes, because he wrote much
 
 1 6 LECTURE 1. 
 
 hardly above mediocrity, and not a little which is 
 hopelessly below par. I am not prepared to blot out 
 the story of Margaret, and Lucy Gray, and Tintern 
 Abbey, and the countless exquisite compositions which 
 must occur to all who hear me, because Wordsworth 
 was once ill-inspired enough to write, in honour of the 
 Border damsel who saved her lover by the sacrifice 
 of her own life, some flat, poor stanzas, which begin 
 thus 
 
 'Sweet Ellen Irwin, when she sat 
 
 Upon the braes of Kirtle, 
 Was lovely as a Grecian maid 
 Adorned with wreaths of myrtle.' 
 
 And that on Scottish ground, too, and with the pas- 
 sionate music of the old lyrical cry ringing in his 
 ears 
 
 'I wish I were where 'Helen lies; 
 Night and day on me she cries ; 
 Oh that I were where Helen lies, 
 On fair Kirkonnel lea. 
 
 Curst be the heart that thought the thought, 
 And curst the hand that fired the shot, 
 When in my arms Burd Helen dropt, 
 And died to rescue me. 
 
 Oh, think na ye my heart was sair, 
 When my love dropt down and spak nae mair; 
 I laid her down wi' mickle care 
 On fair Kirkonnel lea.
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. I/ 
 
 As I went down the water side, 
 None but my foe to be my guide, 
 None but my foe to be my guide, 
 
 On fair Kirkonnel lea, 
 I lighted down my sword to draw, 
 I hacked him in pieces sma", 
 
 On fair Kirkonnel lea. 
 
 I would my grave were growing green, 
 A winding-sheet drawn o'er my e'en, 
 And I in Helen's arms were lying 
 On fair Kirkonnel lea. 
 
 I wish I were where Helen lies; 
 Night and day on me she cries ; 
 And I am weary of the skies 
 Since my love died for me.' 
 
 Now it may be said that I am dissecting words 
 somewhat captiously: this might be so, if I thought 
 Mr. Ruskin any nearer the truth in the spirit of these 
 criticisms, than he is in the letter of them. As to their 
 form, that, no doubt, is comparatively unimportant. 
 
 When he says that poetry not first-rate adds 
 altogether to human weariness, in a most uncom- 
 fortable manner, I may imagine that I catch the 
 tones of a famous voice, whose natural accent is a 
 Scottish one a voice which belongs not so much to 
 Mr. Ruskin as to an elder if not a better dogmatizer. 
 I may think that even if Mr. Ruskin be the appointed 
 heir of our well-known Chelsea Elijah, it might have 
 
 c
 
 1 8 LECTURE I. 
 
 been more discreet to wait, before wrapping himself 
 in the familiar mantle, until the prophet in pos- 
 session had let it drop. But I am quite willing to 
 acknowledge that a man may state his case crudely 
 and violently, and yet be right in the main. Can we 
 say this, however, in the present instance ? Honestly, 
 I think not. After all, people must be educated, or 
 must educate themselves, through the capacities they 
 have, and not through those which they have not. 
 Accordingly, one boy cannot write a letter to a school- 
 fellow without scribbling horses, and huntsmen, and 
 little wiry terriers, all over the paper ; another steals 
 down in the grey of the morning, with his nightgown 
 still on, to pick out tunes upon the pianoforte before 
 it is wanted for those inevitable scales; a third, in 
 my day, used to know Marmion and the Bride of 
 Abydos, now he knows the Idylls of the King by 
 heart, and delights himself with flabby imitations of 
 Tennyson, or Byron, or Scott. Now, if you say to the 
 first of these lads, f You will never become a Raphael 
 or a Titian, and therefore never let me hear of your 
 touching a pencil again; 3 to the second, 'Do you 
 suppose you can hereafter rival Beethoven or Mozart ? 
 keep therefore away from the pianoforte, or conse- 
 quences which I should deplore will be the result;'
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 19 
 
 and to the third, c You are not a Shakespeare no, 
 nor even a Tennyson therefore, if ever you stumble 
 on a rhyme again, you must instantly be flogged j ' you 
 would, in my opinion, be going altogether the wrong 
 way to work. Instead of clearing the mind, as you 
 intend, for the ordinary purposes of life, you only sour 
 the temper and darken the understanding with the 
 dust and smoke of an extinguished faculty. 
 
 Leave, then, the young verse-makers alone j some of 
 them, not always those whose apparent promise first 
 meets the eye, are about to stand forth as the genuine 
 poets of the on-coming time. In others, the impulse 
 will gradually wear itself out, but not until it has 
 imparted to the intellect a certain elasticity and glow 
 of colour, which tends to heighten its attractiveness, 
 and to increase its general power. But there is a 
 third class, not usually of great importance, members 
 of which, nevertheless, are lifted every now and then 
 by the force of circumstances, and under the pressure 
 of awakened passion, out of and above themselves ; so 
 that we get high poetry from men who are not really 
 high poets, and owe more than one of those 
 
 ' Jewels, five words long, 
 That on the stretched forefinger of old Time 
 Sparkle for ever ' 
 
 C 2
 
 20 LECTURE I. 
 
 to writers, either wholly unknown, or at least com- 
 paratively obscure. For instance, what have we to 
 do with Colonel Lovelace ? He was a gallant soldier, 
 without question, famous for personal beauty among 
 his contemporaries, able, popular, and accomplished; 
 but so were many others then, who are now totally 
 forgotten. If the times had been smooth, he would 
 have gone on glittering at the Court of Charles I, and 
 polishing up his love ditties, till he got tired of that 
 work, with very little interest for us. But the times 
 were not smooth. Civil war swept down as a sword, 
 cutting family ties and old affections asunder. Then 
 came the partings, c such as press the life out from young 
 hearts ' the despairing appeals from sisters and sweet- 
 hearts and mothers and wives, encountered with a re- 
 sistance equally despairing on the part of brothers and 
 lovers and husbands and sons. And I say that the 
 spirit of England is stronger, and the literature of 
 England richer even unto this day, because Colonel 
 Lovelace was able to stand forth, for Puritan and 
 Loyalist alike, out of the multitude of gentlemen and 
 men of honour to stand forth and fix in living 
 words that answer to such appeals, which has to be 
 given by all true men, and accepted by all true women, 
 as implacable and final for evermore :
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 21 
 
 'Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, 
 
 That from the nunnery 
 Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind 
 To war and arms I fly. 
 
 True, a new mistress now I chase, 
 
 The first foe in the field, 
 And with a stronger faith embrace 
 
 A sword, a horse, a shield. 
 
 Yet this inconstancy is such 
 
 As thou, too, shalt adore; 
 I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 
 Loved I not honour more.' 
 
 A manly sentiment indeed, certain to live on with 
 the English language in its own manly words words 
 not unworthy to rank close up with that first great 
 utterance of unselfish public duty, which yet speaks to 
 the soul of man across the silence of three thousand 
 years 
 
 fls oliavbs &pi<TT05, afj.wtffl)ai irtpl Trarpijs. 
 
 But observe, if Colonel Lovelace's verse -making 
 tendencies had been sternly repressed, this poem would 
 never have seen the light. He is rather a voluminous 
 author, and wrote a good deal, which nobody reads 
 or is likely to read now j but he learnt thereby to use 
 language as a tool, and to put his thoughts into shape. 
 Had he not cultivated poetry as an art, before it seized 
 upon him as an inspiration, the feeling would have 
 been there for him, as it was there for many others
 
 22 LECTURE I. 
 
 who gave it no permanent expression j but it must 
 have fallen back like a broken wave into the depths 
 of his own heart, and the literature of England would 
 have been all the poorer by the absence of one of its 
 poetical gems. 
 
 Up to this point I hope that we have gone on to- 
 gether. We all, I hope, agree in thinking, first, that 
 the course of poetry cannot be stopped by proscribing 
 future poets j secondly, that however desirable it might 
 be to have none but great writers, we cannot get these 
 except by a process of natural selection out of the 
 crowd of smaller men j and that, thirdly, each succes- 
 sive age will, without dethroning older potentates, 
 possess itself of its own sworn interpreters and guides. 
 Therefore it was that the tribes of Hellas, amid the 
 petty cares and struggles of a duller age, yearned to hear 
 of those heroic days, when their forefathers, led on by 
 children of the gods, established for ever the distinction 
 between the barbarian and the Hellene. Accordingly 
 the songs of Homer, which this yearning of theirs had 
 half created, were received at feast and game with 
 unfading enthusiasm, whereas recitations from the 
 philosophical poetry of Wordsworth would have fallen 
 idly and without music on their ears. Therefore the 
 patriarchs of Arabia, smitten by their overwhelming
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 23 
 
 sense of the personality of God, and the utter nothing- 
 ness of men, bowed down before the glorious inspira- 
 tion of Job, with hearts which echoed every word of it 
 back. But the wide and tolerant gentleness of Shake- 
 speare they would probably have resented as a personal 
 affront. 
 
 Different, however, as are the forms which at 
 different times poetry has put on, they seem for the 
 most part to be derived from a single source that dis- 
 satisfaction, I mean, with what is present and close at 
 hand, which is one of Nature's silent promises to the 
 heart, one stimulus to the advancement of our race, 
 one evidence of the abiding greatness of man. Even 
 when the poet plunges headlong into lower elements, 
 and prostitutes his genius by investing frivolous plea- 
 sures or animal passions with his draperies of beauty 
 and grace, it is but an angry recoil from the pressure 
 of the Infinite the c desire of the moth for the star,' 
 driven back upon itself, and maddened by its bitter 
 disappointment. The imagination, indeed, not con- 
 fined to poetry, but under the name of Hope, ' as broad 
 and general as the casing air/ has well been called by 
 some old writer Simonides, I think the nurse of life. 
 But who this nurse of life actually is, and what her 
 exact position with reference to the mental faculties
 
 24 LECTURE I. 
 
 may be, is quite another question. A great deal 
 has been thought and published upon the subject, by 
 men eminent in different degrees, and at different 
 times. They have, however, hitherto failed to land us 
 in any definite conclusion. 
 
 Now, the first point to lay down, in order that we 
 may escape from the mystification of mere words, 
 seems to be that we must distinctly recognise as a 
 fact that everybody possesses some imagination. We 
 call one man imaginative as we call another muscular ; 
 not meaning thereby that weaker persons are without 
 the same muscles, but only that they do not impress us 
 with a special sense of their existence. I say this, 
 however, with some doubt, and as it were tentatively, 
 because there are critics of high authority who, when 
 they speak of the imagination, connecting it with such 
 names as Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare, speak of it 
 in terms which might lead us to suppose that they look 
 upon it as a separate faculty, by no means to be found, 
 even as a germ, in average human creatures, but re- 
 served for the peculiar favourites of Heaven. Just as 
 the power of Samson, if I may follow up the analogy 
 glanced at above, was infused into him, and him 
 alone, by a Divine influence from on high, whilst 
 that of Hercules, however gigantic, was the same
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 25 
 
 in kind as the power of other men, 'diffused and 
 manacled in joint and limb, and founded on the brittle 
 strength of bones/ Now this view of theirs may be 
 the right one. The larger cannot of course be com- 
 prehended by the smaller, and we know that there are 
 shades of emotion rising up in many minds, quite 
 naturally, which are wholly unintelligible to the rest 
 of mankind. For instance, there is that strange state 
 of feeling which seems to itself to recognise as familiar, 
 places, persons, and expressions never seen or heard 
 before. Upon some this weighs with such persistency 
 and vividness of impression, that its absence from the 
 souls of others surprises and bewilders them, whilst to 
 those who have it not, the assertion of its existence is 
 met by half-incredulous astonishment ; so much so that 
 we might almost fancy that the former, according to 
 Plato's theory, were in the middle of their preordained 
 transfigurations, whilst the latter were only entering 
 upon their earliest phase of life. In like manner, the 
 higher imagination may be some such peculiarity, only 
 rarer in its manifestations, and belonging to the in- 
 tellectual, rather than to the emotional side of human 
 character. I can only say that, as at present advised, 
 I can see no reason for supposing so. But if it be, it 
 would seem hopeless, even for the possessors thereof, to
 
 26 LECTURE I. 
 
 analyse, and explain to the world of common sense, the 
 nature of their incommunicable faculty. Voltaire's 
 inhabitants of Saturn and Sirius, with their seventy-two 
 and their thousand senses respectively, might as well 
 attempt to make clear to the earth-born pigmy, whom 
 they pitied as they talked, the secret of their com- 
 plicated organisations. If, then, we are to examine 
 this question at all, we must assume that it is within 
 the ordinary jurisdiction of mankind, and take for 
 granted, at present at least, that, vast as may be the 
 difference between one imagination and another, it is 
 still but a difference in degree, and not in kind. 
 
 There is, however, a new and original hypothesis, 
 which it would be wrong to pass over in silence : that 
 hypothesis, I mean, which has been advocated by Mr. 
 Dallas, in his essay on c The Gay Science,' with great 
 ingenuity and zeal. He has done good service to all 
 who busy themselves with investigation of mental phe- 
 nomenon, by accumulating and discussing a number 
 of recorded instances, in which the intellect is known 
 to have worked, for the most part unconsciously, at 
 times when the bodily frame was laid asleep. In this 
 state it produces out of that work results sometimes 
 natural to the producing mind, as when Coleridge, in 
 an opium dream, created Kubla Khan- or as when a
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 27 
 
 lawyer, with his eyes shut, in the middle of the night, 
 builds up an elaborate opinion on some point of law j 
 but in other cases, again, other results wholly foreign 
 to it and unexpected, as when persons, ignorant of 
 music whilst awake, pour out in sleep their unre- 
 membered strains, imitating with accuracy and skill 
 certain melodies which have, somehow or other, forced 
 themselves in upon a latent sensibility of the brain. 
 This latent sensibility, when thus called into action, 
 Mr. Dallas describes as c the hidden soul/ and identi- 
 fies it with the creative imagination. Since his book, 
 which promises to be an interesting and a valuable 
 one, is but half completed, it would be premature to 
 condemn this theory, which may be reinforced by fresh 
 arguments and additional explanations. But I must 
 frankly confess that I do not understand it now. I 
 do not see how the great works which are meditated 
 and wrought out in full day-light, with a perfect con- 
 sciousness both of the means employed and of the ends 
 they are directed to accomplish, can be referred to 
 the hidden soul. Nor, again, do I perceive in what 
 manner the organised memory and methodical arrange- 
 ment of facts, by the help of which a barrister grapples 
 with his point of law, whether he grapples with it at his 
 chambers or on his bed, can be ranked under the faculty
 
 28 LECTURE I. 
 
 of the imagination. Nay, it appears to me, as far 
 as I can judge, that the hidden soul, which no doubt, 
 for most men (Mr. Dallas, I think, has established that 
 position), is more active than they could readily be- 
 lieve, executes its labours very much as the unhidden 
 soul executes hers, at other times. I do not think it 
 unlikely that some here, when boys at a public school, 
 may have done Latin verses in a dream. I have, I 
 know, more than once though I never could remember 
 anything higher up than the last two. But they, and 
 I suppose their predecessors, were framed without any 
 mysterious agency at all they were framed by the 
 same soul precisely, whatever that may be, which is 
 set apart for the manufacture of fifth-form longs and 
 shorts in an ordinary after twelve j nor could I ever 
 discover that they were appreciably better, or appre- 
 ciably worse, than if I had hammered them out upon 
 the normal quarter of paper, whilst sitting at an 
 orthodox desk. I settled the matter for myself in 
 a careless sort of way, by supposing that different 
 portions of the brain were unequally asleep, and that 
 those portions nearest to wakefulness might exercise 
 their energies, more or less, without breaking that bond 
 which was yet enchaining the senses and the limbs. 
 Nor does it seem to me that the accidental circum-
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 29 
 
 stance of my remembering how I was engaged, instead 
 of, as is perhaps more frequently the case, forgetting 
 it altogether, can in any way affect the character of 
 the mental operation itself.* At the same time, I 
 readily admit that Mr. Dallas is an earnest student 
 on all such subjects, and a conscientious thinker; I 
 therefore wait with some impatience to hear if he has 
 anything to add to his mental speculations. Mean- 
 while, I adhere to Shakespeare's much simpler creed 
 that, 
 
 * The last time when this happened to me (not very many years ago) 
 may be worth record, as illustrating the instantaneous effects of a change 
 in the mental attitude during sleep. I found myself one morning at 
 Mrs. Holt's again, bent over the well-remembered wooden desk, and 
 writing verses, for which my tutor was waiting, upon Spring. I got 
 on smoothly enough till I came to this couplet, 
 
 ' Emicat omnis ager renovato flore rosarum, 
 Et passim herbosa nube virescit humus.' 
 
 Here my critical faculty came into play, I doubted about 'herbosa 
 nubes,' but so completely was I the Eton boy once more that I put 
 the doubt aside by saying, ' Oh, I think it will do, and if my tutor does 
 not like it, he may alter it, and be hanged to him' (an improper speech 
 of Philip asleep, for which Philip awake begs pardon of the excellent 
 Provost of King's) ; but the little shift of thought, involved in this, 
 woke me instantly with the two lines in question on my lips. The 
 preceding ones had drifted irrecoverably (without, I fancy, leaving the 
 world much poorer) into the abyss of space; if no such hitch had 
 occurred, my belief is that I should have roused myself, at my usual 
 hour, without any memory of the transaction at all.
 
 30 LECTURE I. 
 
 ' As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name.' 
 
 From this point of view, the first constituent element 
 of the imagination seems to be a particular form of 
 memory, which presents its facts in groups, with all 
 their attendant circumstances and details retraced to 
 the life. It stretches out, as it were, into a spiritual 
 gallery, holding and exhibiting a long series of pictures 
 gathered from the past ; one man recollects that such 
 a thing has happened, another exactly how it happened, 
 and this last kind of recollection is, no doubt, one of 
 the main foundations on which the imagination has 
 to rest. If we join to this a power of unlimited com- 
 bination out of all the contents of such a gallery, 
 a power, as Shakespeare calls it, of bodying forth from 
 the endless variety of things known, the forms of 
 things unknown, and of turning them, by the help of 
 language, into shapes we have before us, I think, the 
 imaginative faculty in the rough. I do not, however, 
 say that he who possesses, or is possessed by such a 
 faculty, is therefore a poet. I understand that mathe- 
 maticians require a high degree of it to deal, for 
 instance, with the dimensions and configurations of 
 space, and probably with other parts of their science.
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 31 
 
 There is also the musical imagination, of which I am 
 not qualified to speak j but, as far as my observation 
 extends, music is more akin to mathematics than to 
 poetry. 
 
 The radical difference, however, which separates 
 the poetical imagination proper from other forms 
 of the same faculty from those, at least, which deal 
 with articulate words, is that it is essentially and above 
 all things suggestive. A mathematician may have to 
 conceive the starry life and desert chasms of the 
 universe by a mental gift, such as that which Dante 
 put forth to drag before the inner eye his maps and 
 ground-plans of hell but when he comes to communi- 
 cate the result of these far-stretching speculations, he 
 has to unwind his story, link by link, and to pause 
 at every step. The rhetorician may clothe what he 
 has to say in purple and fine linen. He may dazzle 
 all around him by the splendour of his diction ; but 
 still the object and duty of his art is to unfold and 
 enlarge upon, and to hammer in, by repeated strokes, 
 what he wishes to impress upon his audience. He 
 leaves as little as possible to be supplied from within 
 by any mental action of theirs j and the reason is clear, 
 namely, that as the particular business of eloquence is 
 to hurry the listener along with the speaker, any one
 
 32 LECTURE 7. 
 
 who stops to feel his own feelings, and to think his 
 own thoughts, becomes entangled in them, and is left 
 behind. But the poet, on the other hand, is con- 
 tented to touch a chord, which then vibrates at will, as 
 its own sensitiveness may dictate; and according to 
 the number and intensity of the vibrations awakened, 
 legitimately awakened I mean, is the poetical power 
 shown. 
 
 The poet, of course, ought also to be an artist, and 
 must not overdo his work, or overstrain the attention 
 of his readers ; so that passages of repose, and mixed 
 passages of rhetoric and poetry, or of thought and 
 poetry, are often well and wisely introduced into any 
 considerable work j but they do not, so far as it is 
 a poem, constitute its essence. So, again, the rheto- 
 rician, when the ears of his crowd are caught, and their 
 hearts are hot within them, may often heighten the 
 effect of his appeals by a rapid flash of poetry ; but any 
 speaker who, instead of expatiating upon topic after 
 topic as they arise in their order, should flit quickly from 
 one delicate suggestion to another, after the manner of 
 a poet, as an orator would be certain to fail. To 
 illustrate what I mean, let us take two well-known 
 passages from Jeremy Taylor. I choose a prose writer 
 to quote from, because the naked limbs, disjecti
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 33 
 
 are easier to operate upon in the way of anatomy. 
 Every one knows the famous paragraph in which he 
 compares the swift passage from youth to age, and 
 from life to death, with the opening, the blooming, and 
 the fading of a flower : ' But so I have seen a rose 
 newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first 
 it was fair and full with the dew of heaven as a lamb's 
 fleece ; but when a ruder breath forced upon its virgin 
 modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe 
 retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline 
 to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age, till at 
 night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, 
 it fell into the portion of weeds and worn-out faces.' 
 Now the thought here is obvious enough, not to say 
 commonplace. The comparison of the life of man to 
 the flowers of the field can hardly have been an original 
 simile much later than the age of Jubal. The whole 
 beauty of the passage, a rhetorical beauty, consists in 
 the exquisite accumulation of details, which must drive 
 the meaning of this well-known metaphor home to the 
 sense of the dullest peasant, and force him to acknow- 
 ledge that the likeness is a real one. But, again, let 
 us take this other sentence : c I have read of a fair 
 young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to 
 be painted, but put off the importunity of his friends 
 
 D
 
 34 LECTURE I. 
 
 by giving way that, after a few days' burial, they might 
 send a painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, 
 draw the image of his death to the life/ The Bishop 
 then proceeds to enumerate, rhetorically, the ghastly 
 circumstances of that condition, but he concludes, and, 
 as it were, locks his sentences together by a touch of 
 the purest poetry, and c so he stands painted among his 
 armed ancestors ! ' His armed ancestors ! That single 
 word, that short epithet, builds up for us in an instant 
 a feudal castle, frowning with all its towers above the 
 Danube or the Rhine, with its wide halls, its sounding 
 corridors, its stately picture-galleries filled with the 
 masterpieces of Albert Durer, of Holbein, and the like. 
 We know further how, in the midst of men and women 
 who seemed to move and breathe along its walls, that 
 fearful shadow in the midst was even then mocking 
 at their false pretences to life. We know how the 
 bereaved mother and forlorn sisters knelt continually 
 beneath, praying for the repose of the dead, and how 
 the shuddering vassals crossed themselves as they 
 passed. We know all this j but we read it by a light 
 which lives and spreads within, as soon as it has 
 been kindled for us from without. And therefore I go 
 on to say that we feel ourselves to be in the presence 
 of a great rhetorician, no doubt, but also in that of
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 35 
 
 a genuine poet. Nay, so completely does the inner- 
 most poetry of a line lie in the soul, and not in the 
 outward form of words, that the very same passage 
 may be high poetry or simple prose according to the 
 suggestions which it involves. When Ariel, in answer 
 to Prospero's inquiries as to how it is possible that the 
 affections of a man injured as he had been should be 
 touched by the misery of his foes, replies at once, 'mine 
 would, sir, were they human/ nothing can be more un- 
 pretending than this brief speech considered as to its 
 form of expression j but what interminable insights 
 does it not open out into the world of spirits, and the 
 infinite gradations of being! 
 
 Again, to use a more modern instance, Robert 
 Browning's Duke of Ferrara, in that wonderful little 
 tragedy of his, c My Last Duchess,' dismisses the 
 terror-stricken envoy from his future bride's father, in 
 the following words : 
 
 ' Taming a sea-horse thought a rarity 
 Which Glaus of Innspruck cast in bronze for me.' 
 
 If we are to suppose this quiet observation to be ad- 
 dressed to some fair-haired English Milordo who, with 
 the medieval equivalent for Murray in his hand, had 
 blundered up against a courteous Italian prince, it 
 would be absolute, not to say rather bald prose j but 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LECTURE I. 
 
 coming, as it does, at the end of that dreadful series of 
 hints, through which the ambassador must convey to 
 the new wife, if he takes any interest in his own life, 
 without implicating the Duke of Ferrara, e woe to him 
 ir" he does this,' a warning not to be mistaken ; it 
 is lighted up by a terrible significance from within. 
 We shudder to feel that if the innocent bride-elect 
 lifts a finger or raises an eyelash except in harmony 
 with the unspoken bidding of her lord, the grave which 
 holds the beautiful original of one veiled portrait has 
 room for her also, and that the picture-galleries of 
 Ferrara even yet are not without available space j and 
 acknowledge heartily, with how slight a motion of his 
 hand, the man of real genius can create an imperishable 
 dramatic effect. 
 
 And this brings us to another question much dis- 
 cussed and open to much discussion the comparative 
 merits of the vigorous grasp, as opposed to the impal- 
 pable touchings of the poetical imagination. There 
 can be no doubt that where the vigorous grasp of 
 a subject is possible, such a grasp should always be laid 
 upon it ; but there are regions of poetry, perhaps the 
 very highest, beyond the reach of the human eye, except 
 through fluctuating glimpses and visionary hints. And 
 a grander dream of suggestion may visit the heart of
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 37 
 
 an intelligent disciple, where the poet catches, or half 
 catches, an evanescent ray from lights behind the sun, 
 than if he had measured his distances and counted up 
 his materials with the precision of an architectural 
 draughtsman. When Alfred Tennyson in his c ln 
 Memoriam' attempts to rest on the cheering belief 
 that the soul of his friend, and of my friend, was 
 removed for high purposes and events j and utters his 
 passionate longing for faith, in these sublime words : 
 
 ' The wish, that of the living whole 
 No life may fail beyond the grave ; 
 Derives it not from what we have 
 The likest God within the soul? 
 
 ' Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life ; 
 
 ' That I, considering everywhere 
 
 Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
 And finding that of fifty seeds 
 She often brings but one to bear; 
 
 ' I falter where I firmly trod, 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God:' 
 
 he would not, so far as I am concerned, have im- 
 proved his picture by telling us that the stairs in 
 question were of white marble, as if they had been
 
 1 8 LECTURE I. 
 
 hewn out of the quarries of Carrara ; and that each of 
 the steps was twice as large as those which led up to 
 St. Peter's Church at Rome. 
 
 We now come to a much contested point on which 
 it would ill become me to pronounce a confident 
 opinion, in the face of such thinkers as Coleridge, as 
 Wordsworth, as Ruskin, not to speak of others; the 
 distinction, I mean, deep and vital, which they profess 
 to have discovered between the fancy and the imagina- 
 tion. It would ill become me, I say, to pronounce 
 a confident opinion, but at the same time, as I am 
 bound here to be perfectly frank and open, 1 must at 
 once state, and, in venturing upon such a statement, 
 I am happy to find myself fortified by the high authority 
 of Mr. Dallas, that I cannot accept their conclusions. 
 To begin with the etymology of the words, though 
 I lay no more stress thereon than it deserves (it 
 indicates at least the original belief of mankind), 
 'imagination' is simply Latin for c fancy;' 'fancy' 
 merely Greek for e imagination.' In spite of this, how- 
 ever, I am by no means insensible to the convenience 
 of classing those inward pictures which spring up in 
 light minds, or at least in lighter moods of mind, apart 
 from those which embody the nobler and stronger forms 
 of passion and of thought.
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 39 
 
 To that extent, therefore, I willingly recognise the 
 distinction which our English language, according to 
 its later arrangement, establishes between them. To 
 any further extent I do not recognise it. I believe 
 that the picturesque procession of Queen Mab, which, 
 in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare formed for the delight 
 of his hearers, and which is usually presented to us as 
 an admirable instance of poetic fancy, was seen by 
 Shakespeare according to precisely the same laws of 
 inward vision, as were called into action when Dante 
 beheld those dilating flakes of fire which fell slowly 
 upon the enemies of God, as the snow falls heavily 
 among the Alps, without a sound. And yet I suppose 
 none would deny that the Italian lines to which I refer 
 compose a fine imaginative picture. Shakespeare from 
 his memory, his reading, his powers of observation and 
 combination, blended together one set of images into 
 a bright and sparkling whole. Dante, from his memory, 
 his reading, his powers of observation and combina- 
 tion, blended together another set of images into a 
 gloomy and impressive whole. But I say the modus 
 operand! was in both cases exactly the same. Two 
 separate faculties were no more needed to call into 
 life these two separate poetical creations, than we, 
 under the laws of the physical world, need two retinas,
 
 40 LECTURE I. 
 
 one framed for glancing at a fire-fly, and the other for 
 contemplating a fixed star. 
 
 To me, indeed, it seems that the upholders of the 
 opposite theory would do well to examine themselves, 
 so as to learn whether they have kept before their 
 judgment with sufficient steadiness a truth which no 
 one disputes in words, but which may often be, in the 
 haste and tumult of thought, practically forgotten. 
 Namely, that however expedient, however desirable 
 we may consider it in discussions of this sort to talk 
 of memory and imagination and humour and fancy, 
 as if they were independent and self-existing sub- 
 stances, they are, after all, intimately and indis- 
 solubly united in one homogeneous mind. The com- 
 posite life within is always one thing, and acts in- 
 variably in one mass. Like Wordsworth's cloud, 'it 
 moveth altogether, if it move at all/ Hence the 
 reason and humour of an imaginative man contain 
 elements which the reason and humour of an un- 
 imaginative man do not contain; hence also the 
 imagination of a humourist and logician is interpene- 
 trated by logic and humour, and the mind acts as a 
 whole under the combined influence of these three 
 separate forces. Above all does one imagination 
 differ from another, according to the proportions in
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 41 
 
 which a certain energy and glow of soul is mixed up 
 with it. 
 
 And here, unless I deceive myself, is the true prac- 
 tical difference between what the English people 
 choose now to call by the Greek name of fancy, and 
 what they prefer to speak of under the Latin name 
 of imagination. Imagination is fancy with ardour 
 of thought, and heat of passion burning through it. 
 Fancy is imagination, playing as the northern light, 
 and glittering without intensity and without warmth. 
 Nay, so absolutely, from my point of view, is this 
 the case, that the very same work of art may appear 
 to one critic fanciful, and to another imaginative, 
 according as they respectively perceive, or overlook, 
 in it the presence of passion. For instance, Mr. 
 Ruskin, in one of those eloquent passages which make 
 us proud of the English language, is giving due honour 
 to his favourite painter Tintoretto. In the course 
 of his panegyric, he presents to us, as the crowning 
 glory of that illustrious artist, his almost superhuman 
 imagination. A picture of Christ crucified is the one 
 upon which, above all others, he delights to dwell. 
 In this the fickleness of the Jews, and indeed the 
 evanescent character of all mere human love, is sym- 
 bolized by an ass's colt in the background, such a one,
 
 42 LECTURE I. 
 
 we may presume, as the Saviour had ridden upon a 
 few days before, feeding now upon withered palm- 
 leaves, the same, no doubt, which had been strewed, 
 in their freshness, across the triumphal path of the 
 accepted Messiah. Now I feel sure that Mr. Ruskin 
 is here perfectly right, but neither can I hesitate to 
 believe, that the mighty Venetian of whom he speaks 
 grew more and more inflamed by an overmastering 
 impulse of sympathy as he brooded over his own work. 
 The divine face of the suffering Mediator, visible 
 only to him, must have pressed in upon his heart and 
 filled it with a living glow of affection. Out of a re- 
 action from this he must have flung upon his canvas, 
 with all the magic power of genius, a fiery scorn and 
 an inspiring hatred against those cowards who had 
 deserted and those miscreants who had betrayed the 
 Son of God. And thus arose, for all time, that which 
 Mr. Ruskin has recorded as the sublimest achievement 
 of imagination, yet accomplished by any painter-poet, 
 among the sons of men. Otherwise, if we suppose 
 the like point introduced by one of colder tempera- 
 ment into a picture on the same subject, as a stroke 
 of art, it might well be considered as too clever, too 
 ingenious, too much under the same conditions of 
 thought as Hogarth's happy incident of the spider's
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE. 43 
 
 web woven across the poor-box, to be classed with the 
 highest efforts of man's creative intelligence. In a 
 word, I should say definitively that it was fanciful, 
 and not imaginative. 
 
 I stated, at the opening of this Lecture, that one 
 of the subjects which it might be expedient to discuss 
 was, what are the effects which imagination indulged 
 tends to produce upon the character at large ? I have, 
 however, trespassed upon your attention too long 
 already, and must content myself by indicating my 
 belief that the use of the imagination, as a moral 
 element, is to fight against selfishness. This it ought 
 to do, by giving life to an intelligent sympathy with 
 the thoughts and emotions of others ; whilst the danger 
 to which it exposes men is, that if they give way to 
 the habit of looking 'upon the world as a stage, and 
 on all its men and women as merely players/ the 
 heart may grow cold, even whilst the understanding 
 is enlarged. It is obvious, however, that this is a 
 matter which would require, if any justice is to be 
 done to it, a lecture to itself. I shall therefore put 
 it by for the present, and conclude by thanking you 
 for the patience and attention with which you have 
 listened to this somewhat ill-organized discourse.

 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY,

 
 LECTURE II. 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 
 
 WHEN Monsieur De Talleyrand, if Monsieur De 
 Talleyrand it were who is the author of the well-known 
 saying, amused an ultra-civilized company of wits and 
 diplomatists by telling them that speech was first given 
 to man in order that he might conceal his thoughts, it 
 is probable that he had in his mind Parisian French, 
 Queen's English, very choice Italian, Attic Greek, 
 Ciceronian Latin, and the like : that kind of diction, 
 in a word, to which are liable, more or less, most of 
 those books that no gentleman's library ought to be 
 without. One main reason, in the opposite direction, 
 which leads me to speak here of provincial poetry 
 and provincial poets, is my belief that this celebrated 
 sarcasm does not apply to those rustic dialects which 
 have never diluted themselves, like the expanding 
 circles of a pond, over the wide surface of literary com-
 
 48 LECTURE II. 
 
 monplace. The words in use among uneducated men 
 are (I imagine) but few ; they accommodate themselves 
 to the every-day topics and elementary passions which 
 make up the daily life of the village or the farm. The 
 same subjects of conversation, if conversation it can be 
 called, recur at the same times, from week to week, 
 from month to month, from year to year. And the 
 talk of the alehouse, or the blacksmith's shop, seldom 
 passes out far beyond them. Hence when a labourer, 
 still more when a labourer's wife, happens to possess 
 an energetic understanding, a lively imagination, or 
 a vehement temper, she has to struggle up to eloquence 
 by making all the language within reach bend under 
 her till it cracks. Every phrase is, as it were, double- 
 shotted with meaning. Vivid metaphors are pressed 
 into their place, not to decorate a sentence, not to 
 round a period, but, with the true object of all such 
 illustrations, to quicken and fortify the sense. She 
 pounces upon them, and drags them towards her from 
 every quarter, so that she may bridge over the shortest 
 road home to the hearts and intellects of her audience. 
 Such a woman I met not so very long ago in one of our 
 northern districts. She was boiling up with eager 
 wrath against an oppressive squire, who, according to 
 her, had treated a deserving tenant with shameless
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 49 
 
 injustice. It was clear that pour out her emotions 
 upon somebody she must; and perhaps it occurred to 
 her that I, as a stranger and a bird of passage, was 
 a safer confidant than any of her particular friends. I 
 know nothing of the facts of the case, and therefore 
 neither acquit nor condemn the supposed delinquent. 
 Her story, at any rate, ran thus: The tenant in 
 question was one who, like Tennyson's Northern Farmer., 
 had a passionate sense of his duty to the land. If she 
 represented him truly, he worked early and late, paying 
 his rent to a moment, and improving his fields with 
 a zeal that never slackened, not so much in the hope of 
 conciliating his landlord, or of increasing his worldly 
 substance, as to feel his life keen within him, and to 
 satisfy the natural instincts of his soul. But though 
 admirable in these respects, he was not altogether the 
 discreetest of men, or, as she put it, c He wor an 
 oonhandy kind of chap, who let his toongue wagg in 
 pooblic-hoose/ Now this ill-advised wagging of the 
 tongue, in that dangerous part of the hamlet, un- 
 happily set in motion certain scandals, of which it is 
 unnecessary to say more, than that the lord of the 
 manor objected to their public discussion among his 
 humbler neighbours. Some pickthank contrived to let 
 the little great man know what had taken place, and 
 
 E
 
 50 LECTURE II. 
 
 he, so she informed me, was ungenerous enough to 
 wreak a mean revenge. All this she flung forth in 
 her fiery Yorkshire, which crackled and rung as she 
 gave it out, (Yorkshire, compared with which my 
 pottering dictionary-English is as the outer to the inner 
 rainbow,) and ended her impassioned declamation (of 
 the truth or justice of which, I repeat, I know nothing) 
 in the following words : ' He broake him in no time at 
 a'. He blaacked him reet awaY Now you or I should 
 probably have said, he never rested till he had accom- 
 plished his ruin, or some such platitude. This woman, 
 however, had but little of such Norman-English at com- 
 mand. From her very poverty she was compelled to 
 make herself rich. From her very incapacity to find 
 ordinary words, strong enough to hold her meaning, 
 she was forced into a noble image ; at least by the 
 power of that phrase, c He blaacked him reet awa',' 
 she has left, sculptured on my imagination ever since, 
 the form of her sorrowing friend, walled round, without 
 a gleam of sunshine, by the darkness of despair, buried 
 alive, so to speak, under the gloom of his unmerited 
 misfortunes. 
 
 On another occasion, a stalwart ploughman, be- 
 lieving in himself, and honourably conscious that he 
 never gave less than a day's work for a day's wages,
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 51 
 
 refused to acknowledge any obligation to a master, for 
 whom, neither in point of ability nor in point of 
 character, did he feel any respect, and compressed his 
 burst of resolute independence into the following weighty 
 sentence: c l'se neither debt-bound, nor awe-bound 
 till him.' Again, a quaint old gardener, whom 1 knew 
 well, took the measure of his master, a clever but 
 indolent man, in these words: c Sir Thomas is nae 
 fule, but he's t' ignorantest mann as is; he knows 
 nought about ought.' The same worthy, complaining 
 to a married woman, one of the daughters of the house, 
 that his walls got no rest from busy little fingers (he 
 never, even in a dream, considered the fruit as 
 belonging to anybody but himself), she endea- 
 voured to console him, by pointing out that in both 
 generations, her's and the next, the family had over- 
 flowed with girls. ' We might,' she said, ' have been 
 all boys, and where would you have been then ? ' But 
 he, deeply meditating on these things, shook his head, 
 and replied, c Na, lass ; na, then, I should have got 
 shut on you whiles.' In plain English, I should have 
 got rid of you, except when you were at home for the 
 holidays. He felt, much as a Sicilian or North African 
 of old might have preferred a flying inroad of pirates 
 or Moors to the steady exactions of his Roman Pro- 
 
 E a
 
 52 LECTURE II. 
 
 consul, that, with the public school for an ally, he 
 could endure a transitory storm of boys, if only he were 
 spared the constant tribute levied upon him by perma- 
 nent young ladies. Now, such massive bits of ver- 
 nacular speech, wherever we light upon them, teach us 
 that a non-literary tongue may, within certain limits 
 (narrow enough no doubt when compared with the 
 larger aims of language), possess advantages peculiar to 
 itself. The principal of these seems to be that a 
 vigorous mind has to impress a portion of its own 
 strength and life upon the few forms of utterance 
 which constitute its whole vocabulary ; otherwise 
 there would not really be enough of them to get on 
 with at all. On the other hand, men brought up 
 mainly upon words, men who have all the conven- 
 tional expressions and accredited phrases from the 
 elegant extracts ready at call, are apt to be over- 
 whelmed by their allies ; they are apt, sometimes even 
 when there is real power, to be embarrassed and 
 weighed down by great lumps of commonplace diction, 
 much of which, like the copper money that hampered 
 poor Correggio to death, has but little, except bulk and 
 abundance, to recommend it to mankind. Dr. Johnson, 
 for instance, if he had been born in Yorkshire or 
 Dorsetshire, and had published his imitations of Juvenal
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 53 
 
 in either of these dialects, would never, 1 am sure, 
 have started off in the tenth satire with so vague and 
 futile a personification as 
 
 ' Let observation, with extensive view, 
 Survey mankind from China to Peru.' 
 
 The high road of the national language we will con- 
 sider, if you please, as built to sustain the pressure of 
 the whole English mind to find room for the passage 
 up and down of all great thoughts, all wide-reaching 
 imaginations, all stormy passions, which enter into our 
 national life. But still there may be certain shy graces 
 of idiom and feeling which, like wild roses, or thorn- 
 blossoms, or lilies of the valley, are more likely to be 
 found among the nooks and windings of a Devonshire 
 or Dorsetshire lane. When, therefore, poems full of 
 beauty and power, like Mr. Tennyson's c Northern 
 Farmer,' or the lyrics of Mr. Barnes, are given to the 
 world, it would be a mistake to consider them as origi- 
 nating in mere whim and caprice on the part of their 
 authors. We have heard that when my friend Lord 
 Houghton read the c Northern Farmer ' to his tenants, 
 and ex-constituents, round about Ferrybridge and Ponte- 
 fract, they rose at him as one man, shouting together, 
 e That caps a',' and begged to be informed a recogni- 
 tion of merit which speaks volumes for the right-
 
 54 LECTURE II. 
 
 hearted population north of Trent where the book, 
 which contained so fine a poem, might be summarily 
 bought ? I do not wish to step out of my province, but 
 I cannot help remarking, that our statesmen, having 
 first opened wide the doors which were formerly locked, 
 and removed the shutter-bars originally intended to 
 protect the house, are now making haste to tell us that 
 they know little of the crowds sure to swarm in ; but 
 that it is everybody's instant business to educate them, 
 so that they may not push. If this be so, the story 
 which I have just told indicates that there are veins of 
 feeling still unworked, modes of access to the deeper 
 thoughts and emotions of our fellow-countrymen yet 
 almost unexplored j and these, as a step in the right 
 direction, it may be as well to occupy at once. If, 
 therefore, in order to commence the poetical part of 
 the people's parliamentary education, we need no more 
 than that a channel should be cleared out for those 
 well-springs of speech, any one of which might have 
 been the main feeder of our English tongue if men, 
 whose daily thoughts and words are too remote from 
 those of our established poets to be in any degree im- 
 pressed by them, are yet to be reached and taught, so 
 far as poetry can be made a teacher, by the help of 
 their native dialects, the fact, I apprehend, is an
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 55 
 
 important one. Under such circumstances we cannot, 
 I am sure, be ready enough to hail Mr. Barnes, 
 Mr. Waugh, and other labourers in the same field, with 
 due reward, ample honour, and immediate recognition. 
 Nay, even if we put aside such practical aims, as foreign 
 to the scope of a professorship like this; from a philo- 
 logical point of view such labours are full of interest 
 and value. By turning up the subsoil about the roots 
 of our language, we may strengthen the trunk, and 
 possibly enrich some of the branches with unexpected 
 fruit. If, to descend to minutiae if, by the help of pro- 
 vincial poets, we could recover for ordinary use such 
 adjectives as 'silvern,' etc. recover them, I mean, 
 without worrying our readers by any sense of pedantry 
 or strangeness (nothing is worth that), we should get 
 rid of a defect in idiom to which we have been hurried, 
 through our metropolitan impatience of delay. When 
 substantives, such as 'silver' and the like, are thus put 
 upon double duty, I think it is a mark of poverty, or 
 stinginess, in the establishment to which they belong ; 
 reminding us somewhat of Moliere's c Avare/ in which, 
 as we know, Harpagon's cook was his coachman also ; 
 but I do not think we should, on that account, have been 
 tempted to accompany the miser in a drive, and I am 
 sure that we should have refused, one and all, his
 
 56 LECTURE II. 
 
 invitations to dinner. It is an odd instance, by the 
 way, of the unequal manner in which time and custom 
 act upon language, that whereas ' silvern ' has drifted 
 entirely, or all but entirely, out of reach, so that 
 Mr. Tennyson rightly personifies the evening star as 
 c Sitting under silver hair with a silver eye/ the corre- 
 sponding epithet 'golden' still keeps its head above 
 water, though somewhat hardly pressed. We talk of 
 a gold watch, gold plate, and so on, but we write about 
 golden hair, golden hours, golden children, and the like j 
 though what c golden children ' may mean is not so easy 
 to say 'possibly the German equivalent for what we 
 call yellow-boys,' as I once heard suggested to a student 
 of Schiller's lyrics, who stuck at the phrase. Instances 
 of this kind are numerous enough : one word perishes, 
 another, apparently with no particular reason for out- 
 lasting it, lives on. Now a good deal of light may be 
 thrown upon the language if we search, among the pro- 
 vincial varieties of speech, for these vanished or vanish- 
 ing forms and idioms. Though any one of them would, 
 I am sure, repay investigation, the Dorsetshire variety 
 in which most of Mr. Barnes's poems are written, is 
 the one which it is most natural for me to examine at 
 present. Its participles want the hard final g of ours : 
 for instance
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 57 
 
 ' The light of waves a runnen there 
 
 Did play on leaves up over head, 
 And fishes scaly sides did gleam, 
 A darten on their shallow bed.' 
 
 Now, upon the whole, I do not prefer this gram- 
 matical form to our own- the English last syllable 
 lends itself better to a keen and ringing melody, and 
 carries within itself a greater appearance of strength. 
 But sometimes, where graceful sentiment is aimed at, 
 where pathos, in its lighter aspects, is what we re- 
 quire as in some rustic idyll or tender song if we 
 could only give the Dorsetshire participle a brevet and 
 local rank, to act as Queen's English for the nonce, 
 we should, I think, be richer in point of diction than 
 we are. Still more do I envy Mr. Barnes his old plurals 
 in -?, such as housen, cheesen, furzen. Everybody 
 knows what an intrusive, ubiquitous creature is the un- 
 manageable English y. Every one who writes verses has 
 been bothered about s pure and f impure. And though 
 we Britons have to put a bold face upon the matter, 
 and to maintain that the cacophony in question does 
 not signify at all j it is only because we cannot help 
 ourselves, and have given up all hope of a remedy. 
 Now if once more in accordance with Horace's 
 dictum that l multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere ' 
 we could call back from oblivion and disuse that
 
 58 LECTURE II. 
 
 valuable termination in -?, it is impossible to say 
 what metrical triumphs might not be achieved. We 
 might even hope to allay, if we could not wholly 
 quench, the disembodied hiss which floats round a 
 church, whenever the school children pause in their 
 hymn. I fear greatly, however, that this cannot now 
 be done; I fear that a language, so long as it lives, 
 must roll on like a river, which becomes broader, and 
 deeper, and of greater importance, at each stride of its 
 onward course; separating hostile kingdoms perhaps, 
 or bearing huge three-deckers down to the sea; but 
 which yet, alas! also leaves behind, at every bend, 
 more and more, the flower-crowned banks and spark- 
 ling purity of its parent brook. Nay, to the annoyance 
 of literary men, I believe that whenever Horace's 
 anticipations are realised, whenever his proposed re- 
 naissance does take place, it takes place as a necessity, 
 and not as a luxury of language. I doubt whether Mr. 
 Tennyson, with all his genius, and all his popularity, 
 could re-awaken one strong preterite which has really 
 lapsed; whilst railway navvies, with a sublime un- 
 consciousness, like that of the brewer's horse, who 
 undertook (through a godfather, I admit) to draw a 
 thousand inferences at once, have disinterred, and 
 brought into daily use, the sound old English verb
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 59 
 
 c to shunt ' a verb which had slept, somewhere or other, 
 like the annual toad of our coal-mines, since it was 
 last alive and awake for poets who flourished before 
 Chaucer. 
 
 If, however, determination can do anything if the 
 laws of human speech are in any degree to be influ- 
 enced by the human will here is a proper occasion 
 for its exercise. Men more sanguine than I am 
 might think that the power of varying our hissing 
 plurals, by a recurrence to the old plurals in -en which 
 yet linger in the provinces, is not absolutely lost and 
 gone. If so, let us hope sooner or later to see sports- 
 men shooting their fifty brace of grousen on the iath 
 of August, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli fighting out 
 their differences in full housen, and young ladies en- 
 gaged for twenty successive dancen, even from the 
 time of this present Commemoration. But no, alas ! 
 volat irrevocable <verbum^ all I can say is, if it were 
 possible to accomplish successfully this literary feat, 
 he who accomplished it would deserve 4000, ay, 
 from the most economical of governments much 
 better than the gentleman who patented that method 
 of punching holes between postage-stamps, which to 
 me, I speak humbly as a blind and awkward man, 
 appears a success only for the inventor.
 
 60 LECTURE II. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on the possible philolo- 
 gical value of such poetical studies, because I find that 
 among young people who are at first disposed to admire 
 the exquisite lyrics of Mr. Barnes, this admiration is 
 followed at once by a hot fit of wrath, and a sense 
 of being cheated, as soon as they discover that he 
 is a scholar and a gentleman. A popular writer De 
 Quincey, I think tells a story of his ill success in 
 lending c The Vicar of Wakefield ' to his landlady's 
 daughter, somewhere among the Westmoreland lakes. 
 At first, the girl took intense interest in the tale, 
 accepted the dramatis personae as real men and women, 
 and loved and hated them with all the proper emphasis 
 of youth; but, alas! suddenly it was revealed to her 
 that the book was a work of fiction. Now that was 
 a portent, the idea of which had never crossed her 
 innocent mind. Accordingly she became furious at 
 the supposed deception, looked upon De Quincey as 
 bankers look upon a man who has tried knowingly to 
 utter a forged bill of exchange ; and, as for Goldsmith, 
 if she could have resuscitated him, and had her will, 
 she would have consigned him to Appleby jail as a 
 rogue and a vagabond, for obtaining sympathy under 
 false pretences Just so fared the unfortunate Mr. 
 Barnes, at the hands of those to whom I refer. Oh !
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 6 1 
 
 said they, he is a gentleman after all, is he? Oh! we 
 thought he was a ploughman. Oh! we don't care a 
 bit about his poetry now. I endeavoured to convince 
 them they were entirely in the wrong- but of that 
 strategical operation I have always observed that, 
 however skilfully and zealously it may be undertaken, 
 it is apt, with regard to young and old alike, to fail 
 of success in the most unaccountable manner. With 
 you, however, who are not committed to any opinions 
 on the subject, I hope to do better. Now, when a man 
 of great natural genius, like Burns (God forbid that I 
 should call Burns a provincial poet j but I may perhaps 
 be allowed to use him for purposes of illustration), 
 thinks and feels, and writes what he thinks and feels, 
 in one dialect, after having been imperfectly educated 
 in another, he is apt to attach a fictitious value to the 
 long words and polyglot phrases which he may have 
 gathered from his dialect of education. Let us take 
 an instance : when Burns, in one of his most charac- 
 teristic outbursts, carries us off our critical feet by this 
 lyrical impulse 
 
 ' Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears 
 Her noblest work she classes, oh ! 
 Her 'prentice hand she tried on man, 
 And then she made the lasses, oh !' 
 
 the spirit, grace, and sparkling originality of the two
 
 62 LECTURE II. 
 
 last lines charm us away from examining the two first ; 
 but, if we refuse to listen to the voice of the charmer, 
 it cannot be denied that the conception of nature, 
 classing her lovely dears, is an intrusion, what geolo- 
 gists call a ' fault/ of school English, cutting awkwardly 
 across the vein of his inborn Scottish idiom. But 
 when a scholar like Mr. Barnes, who, besides being 
 thoroughly acquainted with the way of thinking, and 
 the way of talking, which prevails in his native dis- 
 trict, adds research to that familar knowledge, traces 
 the expressions which he finds about him home to 
 their proper origin, and looks at them by the light of 
 comparative philology, this criticism does not apply. 
 Such a man, when he writes, can trust himself safely 
 to the impulses of his own mind, and will probably 
 give us better Dorsetshire, better Yorkshire, better 
 Scotch, as the case may be, than the clever peasant 
 or artisan who has learnt but little outside his native 
 tongue, and therefore overvalues that little. Such a 
 peasant is in danger of fancying that he rises above 
 himself, whenever he inserts, among his own idioms, 
 a word of four syllables derived from the Latin when- 
 ever, to recall an old Joe Miller, he edifies his village 
 hearers by using that blessed word Mesopotamia/ 
 Having thus endeavoured to persuade you that you
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 63 
 
 are not bound to despise Mr. Barnes, because, instead 
 of being an ignorant man of genius, he is a learned 
 man of genius, I shall now proceed to call your atten- 
 tion to the poems which he has written. I do not 
 mean to confine myself to him altogether; but he 
 merits our particular attention. Mr. Barnes, with 
 an accurate estimate, I think, not so much of his 
 own powers, as of the powers and resources of his 
 Dorsetshire Doric, has confined himself to the lyrical 
 interpretation of such simple emotions as arise out 
 of the simple drama of an average country life. I 
 refer this absence of ambitious aim, in his little 
 odes, to the nature of his dialect, rather than to any 
 deficiency in himself; because I do not choose to 
 believe, though some such assumption is constantly 
 made, that the art of doing one thing very well im- 
 plies that you are to do everything else particularly 
 ill. We all remember Horace's encomium, which 
 strikes us now as such an inadequate one 
 
 ' Molle atque facetum 
 Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rare Camoenae.' 
 
 It is clear that he looked to Varius as the heroic 
 bard of the time, and never suspected for a moment 
 that in his ingenious asthmatic friend, who wrote
 
 64 LECTURE II. 
 
 such graceful verses about ploughs, and olives, and 
 bees, and Corycian old men, lay hid the author of 
 the national epic. But whatever Mr. Barnes' reasons 
 may be want of power, want of will, or a scientific 
 measurement of the capabilities and non-capabilities 
 of his own provincial tongue as a fact he has 
 attempted nothing inconsistent with the character 
 which he has assumed that, namely, of a small Dor- 
 setshire farmer. He dwells lovingly upon the lights 
 and shadows which play among the wooded coverts 
 of his native hills, upon the bells of his village 
 church, upon the dear old mill : 
 
 'Oh, joy betide the dear old mill, 
 My neighbour play-mate's happy home, 
 With rolling wheel and leaping foam 
 Below the overhanging hill. 
 
 Where wide and slow 
 
 The stream did flow, 
 And flags did grow, and lightly flee, 
 Below the grey-leaved withy tree; 
 Whilst clack, clack, clack, from hour to hour 
 Did go the mill by cloty Stour.' 
 
 I must here pause to explain the word c cloty' the rather 
 that it illustrates something which I said, at the outset 
 of this lecture, as to the compensations which belong 
 to a non - literary language ; I mean, that when a 
 peasant speaks of anything within the circle of his
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 
 
 daily occupations, he gives it, as a distinguished friend 
 of mine acutely observed to me, a special name to 
 itself. A sheep, for instance, of a certain age I am 
 sure I do not know of what age which we should 
 describe at length, he pithily calls a tegg. A yellow 
 water-lily, to put which clumsily before our readers 
 we require three words, he marks off at once as a 
 clote/ whilst the river upon whose breast it lies float- 
 ing, becomes, for him, the doty Stour.' And thus he 
 condenses into two syllabes a rural picture which it 
 would take, I believe, two lines to paint in English 
 proper. To return, however, as the French proverb 
 has it, to our teggs, Mr. Barnes does his work among 
 the ordinary scenery, the ordinary joys and sorrows of 
 a commonplace English county. And here his posi- 
 tion, as we must admit, contrasts unfavourably with 
 that of Burns. Burns had a proud national history to 
 appeal to ; there were, in every direction, national 
 sensibilities, founded on a haughty sense of blood and 
 of race, ready to answer such an appeal ; whereas any- 
 thing emphatically English is somewhat out of Mr. 
 Barnes' reach, because what he has undertaken to 
 deliver is, not the universal English, but the local 
 Dorsetshire mind. However, even in a common- 
 place English county, love and death are as busy as 
 
 F
 
 66 LECTURE II. 
 
 over the regions beyond, and the true poet, having 
 them to deal with, requires but little else. More- 
 over, paradoxical as it may seem to say so of one 
 who uses such a dialect, Mr. Barnes has done much 
 to atone for a certain inevitable monotony in the 
 choice of his subjects a limitation of ideas and 
 images, forced upon him through the narrowness of 
 the path which he has chosen to tread by cultivating, 
 in the execution of his short poems, a most exquisite 
 finish of style. He has felt, I think very justly, that 
 anything like slovenliness of diction, metrical harshness, 
 nimiety (if I may use a word which I am sure I have 
 seen somewhere) would be more intolerable in him, 
 than in writers who make use of average English 
 like the rest of us. Accordingly, as a rule, his little 
 pieces exhibit a delicate grace and a completeness not 
 unworthy of Horace. It is time, however, to allow 
 our poet to speak for himself. Some of the poems 
 are short comic dialogues, intended to set forth, in 
 that form, the characteristic features, as they appear 
 to him, of his Dorsetshire neighbourhood. But what- 
 ever merit they may possess from that point of view, 
 they do not strike me as being among his happier 
 efforts, and in no degree approach to the grim pathos 
 and dramatic humour of the ( Northern Farmer.' It is
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 
 
 through his own pathos however, but pathos generally 
 of the lighter and more sentimental kind, that he takes 
 his proper rank a high rank, I think, among contem- 
 porary writers of verse ; and indeed, though I say this 
 as generally true, it would be unfair to deny that he 
 sometimes rises into a higher mood, and gives way to 
 deeper impulses of feeling and of thought. I propose 
 now to read to you one or more of his shorter poems, 
 premising only that I shall read them so as to be under- 
 stood. The Dorsetshire dialect, I am happy to say, 
 admits of this without difficulty; in a more northern 
 one, it could perhaps hardly have been managed. 
 Indeed, except where the local word is used as a 
 rhyme, nothing is lost by transferring Mr. Barnes' lines 
 into our common tongue they pass, without an effort, 
 into good and simple English. In the following little 
 ode, for instance, which he calls ' The Echo,' if you will 
 only bear in mind that 'slooe' is the Dorsetshire form 
 of our ' sloe,' and ' sheen' of the verb c to shine,' you 
 have ready for your ears some beautiful English verses. 
 
 THE ECHO. 
 
 ' About the tow'r an' churchyard wall, 
 
 Out nearly overright our door, 
 A tongue ov wind did always call 
 Whatever we did call avore. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 LECTURE II. 
 
 The vaice did mock our neames, our cheers, 
 
 Our merry laughs, our hands' loud claps, 
 An' mother's call " Come, come, my dears " 
 
 my dears; 
 Or " Do as I do bid, bad chaps" 
 
 bad chaps. 
 
 ' An" when o' Zundays on the green, 
 
 In frocks an' cwoats as gay as new, 
 We walk'd wi' shoes a-meade to sheen 
 
 So black an' bright 's a vull-ripe slooe, 
 We then did hear the tongue ov air 
 A-mocken mother's vaice so thin, 
 " Come, now the bell do goo vor pray'r" 
 
 vor pray'r; 
 
 " 'Tis time to goo to church ; come in " 
 come in. 
 
 1 The night when little Anne that died 
 
 Begun to zicken, back in May, 
 An' she, at dusk ov evenen-tide, 
 
 Wer out wi' others at their play, 
 Within the churchyard that do keep 
 
 Her little bed, the vaice o' thin 
 Dark air, mock'd mother's call " To sleep " 
 
 to sleep; 
 
 " 'Tis bed time now, my love, come in " 
 
 come in. 
 
 ' An' when our Jeane come out so smart 
 
 A-married, an' we help'd her in 
 To Henry's newly-varnish'd cart, 
 The while the wheels begun to spin,
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 69 
 
 An' her gay nods, vor all she smil'd, 
 
 Did sheake a tear-drop vrom each eye, 
 The vaice mock'd mother's call, " Dear child " 
 
 dear child; 
 " God bless ye evermwore ; good bye " 
 
 good bye.' 
 
 The four last lines of the third stanza are, in my 
 judgment, exquisite above the rest : 
 
 ' Within the churchyard that do keep 
 
 Her little bed, the vaice o' thin 
 Dark air, mock'd mother's call " To sleep," 
 
 to sleep ; 
 
 " 'Tis bed time now, my love, come in," 
 
 come in.' 
 
 The manner in which this ominous echo, 'come in,' 
 breathing forth, upon the doomed child, its phantom-like 
 summons from her future home within the grave, yet 
 softens itself into the likeness of a mother's voice call- 
 ing her child to sleep, can hardly be too much admired. 
 It imparts a spiritual grace to the whole poem, and 
 teaches us, better than many sermons, how that place 
 within the churchyard is, after all, but a place of quiet, 
 c where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary 
 are at rest.' In spite, however, of the charm and im- 
 pressiveness of this affecting stanza, Mr. Barnes feels 
 that to finish thus would react, with too much solem- 
 nity, on the primal conception of this little piece, and
 
 70 LECTURE II. 
 
 so jar upon his fine artistic perceptions ; he there- 
 fore skilfully rounds off these suggestions of his 
 memory by introducing, after the burial, a bridal, 
 wherewith to end ; but still, in order to chime in 
 with . the key-note from which he started, it is not 
 the glow of triumphant love, nor the joyous revel of 
 the wedding-bells, to which he invites our attention, 
 but the gentle regrets and natural tears of the maiden, 
 as she departs, into a new home, from her mother's 
 clinging embrace. He leaves us, therefore, cheered 
 with a gleam of brightness and a touch of pleasure, 
 
 but the brightness, in order that it may not be out of 
 > 
 
 harmony with his original theme, is a subdued one, 
 and the pleasure not without melancholy. 
 
 The next poem which I shall read to you is 'The 
 Rose in the Dark,' p. 32 ; in this case, it is unneces- 
 sary to make any preface at all. 
 
 THE RWOSE IN THE DARK. 
 
 1 In zummer, leate at evenen tide, 
 
 I zot to spend a moonless hour 
 'Ithin the window, wi' the zide 
 
 A-bound wi' rwoses out in flow'r, 
 Bezide the bow'r, vorsook o' birds, 
 An' listen'd to my true-love's words.
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 7 I 
 
 ' A-risen to her comely height, 
 
 She push'd the swingen ceasement round; 
 
 And I could hear, beyond my zight, 
 The win'-blown beech-tree softly sound, 
 
 On higher ground, a-swayen slow, 
 
 On drough my happy hour below. 
 
 ' An' tho' the darkness then did hide 
 The dewy rwose's blushen bloom, 
 He still did cast sweet a'ir inside 
 
 To Jeane, a-chatten in the room ; 
 An' though the gloom did hide her feace, 
 Her words did bind me to the pleace. 
 
 ' An' there, while she, wi' runnen tongue, 
 
 Did talk unzeen 'ithin the hall, 
 I thought her like the rwose that flung 
 
 His sweetness vrom his darken'd ball, 
 Tthout the wall, an' sweet's the zight 
 Ov her bright feace, by mornen light.' 
 
 Every one, 1 think, will agree with me in looking 
 upon this as a country love-idyll exquisite of its kind. 
 It is also a good instance of Mr. Barnes' fine taste 
 in knowing when and where to stop, in discerning 
 how much poetical embroidery a little incident of this 
 kind will bear, so that he may not overwork his sub- 
 ject, or overload it with ornament. c The Snowy 
 Night' is a companion picture to the c Rose in the 
 Dark,' only somewhat keener and livelier in point of 
 colouring: it carries with it a Christmas sparkle of
 
 72 LECTURE II. 
 
 December stars, instead of the fragrant gloom of a 
 breathless evening in June. No preliminary instruc- 
 tion is needed, except that you ought to be told the 
 meaning of the Dorsetshire word 'lew' it means 
 c screened/ ' sheltered/ 
 
 A SNOWY NIGHT. 
 
 ' "Twer at night, an' a keen win' did blow 
 
 Vrom the east under peale-twinklen stars, 
 All a-zweepen along the white snow ; 
 
 On the groun', on the trees, on the bars, 
 Vrom the hedge where the win' nissled droo, 
 
 There a light-russlen snow-doust did vail ; 
 An' noo pleace were a-vound that wer lew, 
 
 But the shed, or the ivy-hung wall. 
 
 ' Then I knock'd at the wold passage door 
 
 Wi' the win'-driven snow on my locks; 
 Till, a-comfen along the cwold vloor, 
 
 There my Jenny soon answer'd my knocks. 
 Then the wind, by the door a-swung wide, 
 
 Flung some snow in her clear-bloomen feiice, 
 An' she blink'd, wi' her head all a-zide, 
 
 An' a-chucklen, went back to her pleace. 
 
 ' An" in there, as we zot roun' the brands, 
 
 Though the talkers wer mainly the men, 
 Bloomen Jeane, wi' her work in her hands, 
 
 Did put in a good word now an" then. 
 An' when I took my leave, though so bleak 
 
 Wer the weather, she went to the door, 
 Wi' a smile, an" a blush on the cheak 
 
 That the snow had a-smitten avore. '
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 73 
 
 The last poem with which I shall trouble you is 
 c The Turnstile.' In this you have only to be tolerant 
 of goo ' for c go ' and c overjayed ' for c overjoyed.' 
 
 THE TURNSTILE. 
 
 ' Ah ! sad wer we as we did peace 
 The wold church road, wi' downcast feace, 
 The while the bells, that mwoan'd so deep 
 Above our child a-left asleep, 
 Wer now a-zingen all alive 
 W ' t'other bells to meake the vive. 
 But up at woone pleace we come by, 
 'Twere hard to keep woone's two eyes dry ; 
 On Stean-cliff road, 'ithin the drong, 
 Up where, as vo'k do pass along, 
 The turnen-stile, a-pa'inted white, 
 Doo sheen by day an* show by night. 
 Vor always there, as we did goo 
 To church, thik stile did let us drough, 
 Wi' spreaden earms that wheel'd to guide 
 Us each in turn to t'other zide. 
 An' vu'st ov all the train he took 
 My wife, wi' winsome ga'it an' look ; 
 An* then zent on my little maid. 
 As skippen onward, overjay'd 
 To reach agean the pleace o' pride, 
 Her comely mother's left han' zide. 
 An* then, a-wheell-n roun', he took 
 On me, 'ithin his third white nook. 
 An' in the fourth, a-sheaken wild. 
 He zent us on our giddy child. 
 But yesterday he guided slow 
 My downcast Jenny, vull o' woe,
 
 74 LECTURE 11. 
 
 An" then my little maid in black, 
 
 A-walken softly on her track ; 
 
 An* a'ter he'd a-turn'd agean, 
 
 To let me goo aiong the leane, 
 
 He had noo little bwoy to vill 
 
 His last white earms, an' they stood still.' 
 
 Now this little poem, as a representation of quiet 
 sadness sadness not yielding to despair, but never- 
 theless clouding the common daylight, and tinging 
 each familiar object with the shadow of its own black- 
 ness, is, so far as I can judge, unsurpassed in its way. 
 At the same time, I own that I have some diffi- 
 culty in assigning to such a poem its proper place 
 on the scale of poetic excellence. A pathetic wail, 
 like the one I have just read, like Mrs. Hemans' 
 c Graves of a Household,' like many others which you 
 will easily recall, is sure of producing its full effect 
 sure, I may say, of becoming an universal favourite. 
 A critic, no doubt, may find it hard to determine how 
 much of its influence is derived from instincts which 
 are alive in all hearts at all times, from sympathies 
 which tremble at a touch ; and how much from the 
 real genius shown by its author but, whatever he 
 may decide, we may feel sure that he will not be 
 listened to, especially by the young, who have rather 
 a turn for playing with sorrow, as children play with
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 75 
 
 fire until they have been burnt by it. Accepting, 
 accordingly, their verdict for the present, I think we 
 may fairly claim for c The Turnstile ' a high place in 
 the very first rank of such charming compositions. I 
 might multiply my quotations from Mr. Barnes inde- 
 finitely. Out of his three volumes, in the Dorsetshire 
 dialect, many selections might be made of equal merit 
 with the above j still, I think those which I have cited 
 are characteristic specimens of the poet j so that a just 
 notion may be drawn from them, both of what he 
 usually aims at, and how he has succeeded in his 
 attempts. At the time, moreover, when I began to 
 turn this lecture over in my mind, several laudatory 
 articles referring to him, which have recently appeared, 
 were still unwritten. I do not, however, regret the 
 labour which I have given to the subject; he deserves, 
 unless I deceive myself, all and more than all, the 
 notice which he has obtained ; and I am happy to find 
 the conclusions, at which I had arrived in this matter, 
 fortified by the unanimous concurrence of so many able 
 critics. It is surely no light praise for an author, by 
 one and the same work, to render valuable services 
 to philology, and to secure, without requiring a particle 
 of indulgence on any ground of dialect, the renown 
 of a distinguished poet.
 
 76 LECTURE II. 
 
 There are other provincial poets, besides Mr. Barnes, 
 of whom it might be proper to say something, notably 
 Mr. Waugh, whose beautiful lyric 'Come Home to 
 the Children and Me,' has made its way into the 
 hearts of his keen-minded Lancashire fellow-country- 
 men. It is not, however, so easy to read off into 
 English as the Dorsetshire idylls of Mr. Barnes, and 
 therefore I shall not attempt it; the rather that I 
 wish to call your attention to a much older ballad, 
 which connects itself with some interesting specula- 
 tions as to the manner in which epic poetry is born, 
 and grows. I mean the well-known legend of Chevy 
 Chase. Not only is this a provincial poem, but it is 
 written, says Bishop Percy, in the broadest and coarsest 
 northern dialect; at a time, too, when that northern 
 half of England, if compared with the southern and 
 western counties, was insignificant in point of wealth 
 and population. And yet men found these rugged 
 verses so full of fire and authentic force so gallantly 
 do they appeal to the strong English pulses that beat 
 in Northumberland and in Cornwall alike, so rich are 
 they in all those qualities which make war noble that 
 in a hundred years or so after its first publication, this 
 rough Border lay was stirring the heart of Sir Philip 
 Sidney like a trumpet, and taking its place, no longer
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 77 
 
 provincial, among the recognised trophies of our English 
 literature. I say of our English literature, because, 
 though I am aware that there exists a Scottish version 
 of the tale, for me a single stanza decides the pro- 
 prietorship at once : 
 
 ' Our Scottish archers bent their bows, 
 
 Their hearts were good and true, 
 At the first flight of arrows sent 
 They four-score English slew.' 
 
 Now this is a manifest, I may add a most unskilful 
 adaptation and distortion of the lines. The spear or 
 the axe, not the \>ow, was notoriously the Scottish 
 weapon. We all must remember the gasp of patriotic 
 despair through which Sir Walter Scott describes the 
 pitiable equipment of his Hebridean archers, before 
 
 the fight of Flodden: 
 
 'but oh! 
 
 Short was the shaft and weak the bow 
 To that which England bore.' 
 
 Again, when Marmion, the grave and cautious am- 
 bassador from England, is taunted by James IV, and 
 endeavours, in his answer, to check those unbridled 
 passions of the king which are hurrying him to instant 
 war, how does he proceed ? Why, his warning begins, 
 his warning ends, with an ominous allusion to the 
 invincible arrows of England :
 
 7 8 LECTURE II. 
 
 ' Much honoured were my humble home, 
 If thither brave King James should come ; 
 But Nottingham bas archers good, 
 And Yorkshire jnen are stern of mood, 
 Northumbrian prickers wild and rude ; 
 And many a banner shall be torn, 
 And many a knight to earth be borne, 
 And many a sheaf of arrows spent, 
 Ere Scotland's king shall cross the Trent.' 
 
 Whether, however, this stern old song be in its 
 original form Scotch or English, matters little. Both 
 nations have a right to be proud of it. Earl Douglas 
 frankly offers to peril his life, so that the blood of 
 meaner men may not be spilt in his private quarrel. 
 Earl Percy leans upon his hand 
 
 ' And sees the Douglas de ; 
 Then takes the dead man by the hand, 
 
 And says, woe is me for thee. 
 To have saved thy life, I'd have parted with 
 
 My landes for years three; 
 For a better man, nor of heart, nor of hand, 
 not in all the north-countree.' 
 
 And so these two champions stand always together 
 on the same level in our affections. They represent 
 equally the highest form of middle-age chivalry, the 
 highest type, I hope I may add, of our English cha- 
 racter. Nor has that type, I trust, died out as yet 
 upon our English soil.
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 79 
 
 I have heard, on the authority of an eye-witness, 
 how in one of the fiercest and most dubious of our 
 Peninsular struggles, a young French officer, superb 
 of stature and brilliant in horsemanship, after rallying 
 and remodelling his scattered brigade, came down, 
 with the aspect of Henry of Navarre, waving a white 
 handkerchief two lengths in front of that plunging 
 cloud of cavalry which threatened to sweep the motion- 
 less battalions before it into headlong ruin. But no, 
 the English squares were too firmly rooted, the English 
 volleys too true. Among the first who dropped, under 
 their withering impact, was the gallant Frenchman. 
 His baffled followers at once melted away into defeat. 
 Still, even then, our advancing soldiers, with the light 
 of victory on their brows, and the white heat of battle 
 burning in their veins, bent for a moment in sadness 
 over the stately form of their fallen foe, and muttered 
 gloomily to each other, c Poor gentleman, what a pity ! ' 
 I could not but feel, when this anecdote was first 
 told to me, that these men also, though the technical 
 period of chivalry may be gone for ever that these 
 men also were born English knights, spiritual heirs, 
 as we well may call them, to the generous Percy, 
 and his high-hearted Northumbrian bard. It was not, 
 however, so much to remind you of the merits of this
 
 80 LECTURE II. 
 
 familiar poem, merits which the criticism of Addison 
 in the 'Spectator' has ratified for all generations of 
 Englishmen, as to make some remarks upon its epic 
 character, that 1 have referred to it here. In the first 
 place, we shall find that it sprung as it were from the 
 soil, among the ancestral woodlands of those knights 
 whose heroism it proclaims, whilst it deplores their 
 untimely fate. In the next place, we may remark that 
 the author, though he deals with real men and real 
 manners, is careless altogether about the actual truth 
 of his facts j he kills people who were not killed, con- 
 fuses one skirmish with another, and treats accurate 
 chronology with placid contempt. And yet how wrong 
 we should be, (having historical access to other sources 
 of information, we are sure of that,) if we denied that 
 there was a substantial basis of well-grounded belief 
 below this old Border song. The persons introduced 
 into it, the events described, the known national results 
 with which it manages to connect itself, all inform us 
 that there lurks a vanished history beneath, as certainly 
 as the rose-tinted clouds, that hang over the sunken 
 sun, testify to the previous existence of daylight. 
 
 And here, if I may be permitted to digress for a 
 moment, I would add that the same conclusion is to 
 be arrived at, through mistier labyrinths of doubt, and
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 8l 
 
 with a fainter confidence of having really landed our- 
 selves at the goal, if we compare the Arthurian Tales 
 with the monkish chronicle of Nennius. In that 
 writer's bitter invective against Mael-Gwyn, who has 
 on reasonable suggestions been identified with the le- 
 gendary knight Lancelot, we discern a faint outline 
 of the glorious personal qualities, as well as of the 
 characteristic faults, which blend themselves into the 
 impressive portrait, as drawn for us by his poets, of 
 that mediaeval Achilles. It seems as if eminent men 
 left an ineffaceable mark upon their times, as if, how- 
 ever completely the truth of history may be over- 
 shadowed and blotted out by bewildering myths and 
 traditions however absolutely the truth of circum- 
 stances may perish, the truth of character nevertheless 
 will survive. 
 
 To go back, however, to Chevy Chase. In the reigns 
 of Elizabeth and James I, the patriotism of England 
 became intensified in all directions, particularly in the 
 Scotch direction ; the men of Devon and of Somerset 
 would be as keen against the c daughter of debate,' or 
 the poisoner Kerr, as any native of Bamboroughshire or 
 Otterburn ; so that the glowing stanzas of Chevy Chase 
 would make a welcome for themselves, in any part of 
 England, as soon as they were understood. In order, 
 
 G
 
 82 LECTURE II. 
 
 however to get this opening for them, the language had 
 to be somewhat changed, and immediately the required 
 adapter arose. We have", as it happens, the two di- 
 minutive Iliads ready at hand, and whenever we please 
 can compare them together. We see how the younger 
 poet has dealt with the older, and accordingly may 
 conjecture, if we choose, how such a process is apt to 
 take place at other times. It must be confessed that, 
 in this instance at any rate, the poem is not improved 
 by it. I once travelled by rail in the same carriage 
 with an enthusiastic and impassioned French cook; 
 for three mortal hours did he hurl at my head a 
 divine and conspicuous Philippic against the besotted 
 Philistinism of the British kitchen-maid. Would that 
 there had been, in my seat, to listen sympathetically, 
 instead of me my eminent predecessor. Among other 
 profound truths, this artist explained with overwhelm- 
 ing eloquence, and at great length, how the outer leaves 
 of lettuces, celery, and the like imbibe from the sun 
 and the life-giving air a higher flavour and a finer 
 energy than those which are shrouded within ; but 
 though, Cassandra -like, he everlastingly warned and 
 adjured, the infatuated young woman in question 
 would, under some foolish pretext of cleanliness or 
 tidiness or immemorial custom, keep on trimming
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 83 
 
 and maiming their vegetables in spite of him. Some- 
 what after their fashion, the re-caster of Chevy Chase 
 into English, whilst removing the rough border out- 
 side and husk, has pared away a little of its native 
 freshness and pith a little of that spirit and wild 
 fragrance which it had drunk in from the self-sown 
 forests and heather-clad fells of the North. But after 
 all there is not much to complain of, all the best 
 verses, all the happiest images, all the most striking 
 thoughts, are substantially reproduced. There is but 
 one observation, I think, sufficiently important in 
 itself to call for a critical observation the modern 
 re-adjuster gives way to a momentary impulse of 
 national spite, from which the old warrior-minstrel 
 was wholly free. The spurious lines, I admit, have 
 great force : 
 
 ' And the Lord Maxwell in likewise, 
 
 Did with the Douglas die, 
 Of twenty hundred Scottish spears 
 
 Scarce fifty-five did fly; 
 Of fifteen hundred Englishmen 
 
 Went home but fifty-three, 
 The rest were slain in Chevy Chase, 
 
 Under the greenwood tree.' 
 
 These lines, I have said, are forcible and full of 
 spirit ; but still I am glad that the genuine Northum- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 LECTURE II. 
 
 brian harper knew better than to fail in respect 
 towards such gallant adversaries, of whom he had 
 already said, 
 
 ' Hardier men, nor of heart nor of hand, 
 Were not in ChristianteV 
 
 His closing picture is, I think, at once simpler and 
 more noble in its simplicity than that of his south- 
 country interpreter. According to him, both parties 
 alike, after struggling on with unflinching courage 
 throughout the long summer day, cease fighting, and 
 that only from utter exhaustion, when the moon rises 
 and the vesper-bell begins to sound : 
 
 ' They took off on either hand 
 
 By the light of the moon, 
 Many had no strength to stand 
 
 On Cheviot the hills aboone: 
 Of fifteen hundred archers of Inglonde 
 
 Went away but fifty and three, 
 Of twenty hundred spearmen of Skotlonde 
 
 But five and fifti.' 
 
 And now, before I conclude, seeing that I hold a 
 brief for provincial poets in general on this occasion, 
 I should like to ask you a question : Is there no other 
 well-known lay, besides c The Hunting of the Cheviot,' 
 which started into life among outsiders and refugees?
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 85 
 
 no other which, though careless of historical facts, yet 
 from the impressive truth of its characters, above all 
 from the noble proportions and intense life of the 
 central one, gives sufficient evidence of a basis of 
 history beneath? no other which, though it dealt with 
 alien traditions, and celebrated the triumphs of a clan 
 beaten and dispossessed by Sparta, stirred, neverthe- 
 less, the heart of a Spartan Sir Philip Sidney like a 
 trumpet? Under his auspices it insinuated itself 
 gradually into every corner of the land into the 
 metropolitan cities and the remotest colonies alike. 
 Its provincialism sloughed itself away as the serpent 
 sloughs its skin : it became national, it became a bond 
 of union, it became a kind of Bible to all who spoke 
 any one of the numberless dialects of Hellas. And 
 now this old ^Eolic ballad, which began its career as 
 the Hellenic Chevy Chase of some obscure Smyrniote 
 rhapsodist or rhapsodists, stands forth to endless genera- 
 tions as the poem of the world. I can easily imagine 
 the disgust of the fashionable Court minstrels, from 
 Argos and Mycenae and Corinth and Lacedaemon, who 
 thought it a stretch of condescension when they attended 
 the festivals of meaner states, at their unexpected re- 
 ception. They came to see and to conquer; but the 
 beautiful maidens of Delos and the other .^Egean isles
 
 86 LECTURE II. 
 
 turned away from their brand-new Dorian hexameters 
 to listen, delightedly, to 'that blind old fiddler from 
 Chios, who sings about those effeminate ^Eolian princes 
 and their trumpery Asiatic expedition. 3 Some one of 
 them, perhaps, may have anticipated, more or less, the 
 candour of Monsieur Falconet, who, after comparing the 
 beauties of his own faultless model for Peter the Great's 
 equestrian statue, with the countless defects of that in- 
 ferior animal upon which Marcus Aurelius sits, an em- 
 peror for ever, above the steps of the Capitol at Rome, 
 stopped, took a pinch of snuff, and ended his lecture 
 thus : c t cependant, Messieurs, il faut avouier que cette 
 vilaine bete est vivante, tandis que la mienne est morte.' 
 In some such spirit, possibly, the laureate of Temenus, 
 or the favourite rhapsode of Cresphontes, may have 
 checked the sneers of those hangers-on and parasites 
 by whom he was sure to be surrounded. He may have 
 said to them, Nay, nay; you are too hard on the 
 old man: there is often something fine in what he 
 declaims ; and could he correct himself of that horrible 
 habit of dropping his h's, and of the other vulgar Ion- 
 isms which disfigure his style, I am certain that I could 
 make something of him.' Oh, sacred but forgotten 
 poet, I have no doubt that you could. He, however, 
 has managed to do without you, and has made some-
 
 PROVINCIAL POETRY. 87 
 
 thing of himself so much, indeed, that we who are 
 not provincial poets look upon him as the light of the 
 past, the creator of Hellas, the bard of bards, the in- 
 exhaustible well-head 
 
 ' A quo, seu fonte perenni 
 Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.' 
 
 But were I Mr. Barnes, Mr. Waugh, or any member 
 of their special literary guild, I should insist upon con- 
 templating him from a different point of view I 
 should claim him as my particular ava avbp&v as 
 the captain and patron-saint, if I may so speak, of 
 my own poetical brotherhood j and, if ever a hostile 
 critic were ill-advised enough to decry my pretensions 
 by saying, ' After all, you do not write English j you 
 are only a provincial poet,' I should reply, without 
 hesitation, 'True, so I am; so also in his day was 
 Homer/

 
 DR. NEWMAN'S 
 'DREAM OF GERONTIUS.'
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 DR. NEWMAN'S 
 'DREAM OF GERONTIUS: 
 
 A POET is not always interesting to his readers 
 exactly in proportion to his artistic eminence. The 
 distinction drawn by Wordsworth at the opening of the 
 c Excursion,' between what he calls c the vision and the 
 faculty divine' and what he calls the accomplishment 
 of verse, does not apply itself only, as he applies it there, 
 to those who write and to those who refrain altogether 
 from writing. It enters also into our comparative esti- 
 mate of certain different classes among literary men. 
 With regard to some, we should say, that what they 
 give to the world is, more emphatically, an exhibition of 
 talent, of intellectual brilliancy, of pure literary power j 
 whilst, as to others again, we cannot but feel that their 
 efforts come upon us as suggesting something more, as
 
 92 LECTURE III. 
 
 outpourings from unsounded depths within the cha- 
 racter, as irrepressible utterances of the hidden soul. 
 
 Now, in the earlier stages of society, the true and 
 born poet was not looked upon, I apprehend, as a 
 literary man at all j he belonged to a race apart (avev 
 fj.avia$ ovbels TTOITJTTJS), and was ranked accordingly among 
 prophets rather than among authors ; he was a favoured 
 servant upon whom a precious burden was laid; a chosen 
 interpreter, to whom noble messages were entrusted 
 messages which he was driven, under the pressure of 
 a self-consuming enthusiasm, to communicate in music 
 to man. But as civilisation rolled down from those 
 august heights and clouded solitudes, where, according 
 to the common belief of nations, her original fountain- 
 head derived itself from God; as she flowed into 
 a thousand circulating channels, and fertilised new 
 ground, the arts of life gradually assumed a more 
 practical and definite form. When this took place, 
 the poet was, in a great degree, unmantled and dis- 
 crowned perhaps at present I ought rather to say, was 
 disestablished and disendowed ; he had, whatever the 
 proper phrase may be, to retire into the background. 
 Sophists, rhetoricians, orators, and statesmen all thought 
 that they could teach the people how to live and what 
 to wish for, much better than solemn old gentlemen
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 93 
 
 who kept crooning their mystic hexameters, in har- 
 mony with the motions of a staff. Philosophers, in 
 their turn, maintained that the right to bore mankind 
 with discussions about ro ez> and the pure reason, was 
 indisputably theirs j whilst historians made it clear 
 that the necessary twist could be given to facts more 
 succinctly and more plausibly in prose than in verse. 
 Poetry, therefore, though it still continued to live and 
 to please, ceased to be that exhausting burthen, that 
 painful wrestling with the powers of the universe, by 
 which its earlier votaries were at once ennobled and 
 overwhelmed. Still, however, some rays from the re- 
 tiring sun-god were refracted around the image of the 
 bard j and, even to this day, there lingers a belief, true 
 or false, that when a poet, real, original, and unmis- 
 takeable, rises upon us, his genius, his inspiration, as we 
 call it, is something special, something differing not in 
 degree but in kind from any inspiration which urges 
 on the orator, the statesman, or the mathematician. 
 When, therefore, we turn to our present imaginative 
 writers, who come forward as artists and creators to 
 enchant us with the graces and varieties of a beauti- 
 ful literature, a half thought crosses the mind now and 
 then whether the harp which they have inherited 
 retains all her original strings j whether the chord of
 
 94 LECTURE III. 
 
 mystery which at first gave a tone of strange power and 
 earnestness to the whole instrument, has not somehow 
 or other relaxed itself, and silently mouldered away. 
 If, then, at such moments we find in our path some 
 lonely and single-minded searcher after wisdom, 
 
 ' Whose soul is like a star, and dwells apart,' 
 
 if we find one for whom life is no arena upon which 
 brilliant accomplishments may be displayed, or glitter- 
 ing crowns of victory arrived at no place for easy 
 pleasure, or even the most innocent self-indulgence, 
 we are surprised and startled into reverence. - We, 
 perhaps, may be wasting our time in frivolous pleasures 
 or unsubstantial pursuits j but, to him, his life has 
 ever proved a problem which all the years of it are 
 too short to solve an arid desert massed up with 
 mirages and phantoms, through which he has to 
 struggle, in order that he may bring himself face to face 
 with his own ideal of the truth. Such a man and 
 I call Dr. Newman such a man if he writes verses, 
 writes them because he cannot help himself j the 
 travail of his heart must come out somehow, or else it 
 will tear him to pieces ; and in his restlessness he dis- 
 covers that verse, for him, is the natural outlet of 
 feeling. From his thoughts any idea of mere literary
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 95 
 
 success is a thousand leagues away. The subjects 
 which he chooses are not those most susceptible of 
 poetical embellishments. No j they are his own doubts 
 and struggles, the glimpses of light and the oppressions 
 of darkness which alternately cheer and sadden his un- 
 participated existence. To put it better than I can, he 
 grapples, not as an imaginative exercise, but in deadly 
 earnest with 
 
 ' Those obstinate questionings 
 Of sense, and outward things, 
 Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realised: 
 High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
 Doth tremble, like a guilty thing surprised.' 
 
 From such a man we may be as far removed in 
 spirit and in feeling as if he were an inhabitant of the 
 Dog-star ; but still we find ourselves, whenever we meet 
 him, in the presence of something unquestionably 
 noble. Moreover, if we regard him as a poet, though 
 others may delight us more, though his intellectual 
 gifts for that particular purpose may be comparatively 
 unimportant, still the fibre of intensity is always alive 
 within him; and over him the sense of intercom- 
 munion with something higher and deeper than man 
 
 ' Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave 
 A presence that is not to be put by.'
 
 96 LECTURE III. 
 
 It is not wonderful, therefore, if we think sometimes 
 that he may be united to the rapt singers and prophets 
 of old by links of feeling, and touches of privilege, 
 which obtain no entrance into more brilliant souls j 
 it is not wonderful, therefore, if we pause sometimes 
 to consider whether it be not to such as him, rather 
 than to such as them, that we ought to look for any 
 fragments of the lost and forgotten tune, for any last 
 faint echoes upon earth from that primeval melody 
 which arose in heaven when the morning stars sang 
 together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' 
 
 Now, if the distinction I have here taken be a sound 
 one if Dr. Newman, by some delicate thread of con- 
 nection, be affiliated to the older instincts, and the 
 more prophetic half of the poetical character if for 
 him the imagination be not an intellectual plaything, 
 not a mere musical instrument, but the appointed 
 spiritual energy by the help of which he raises himself, 
 at intervals, to glance over the imprisoning walls of 
 sense and matter into the spiritual world beyond 
 then surely he deserves from us, as a man of high 
 and unusual nature, the most attentive consideration. 
 
 1 am not here, of course, to claim for him a literary 
 station as high as if he were a Tennyson or a Browning j 
 or, indeed, to deny that Tennyson, throughout his c In
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 97 
 
 Memoriam ' and elsewhere probably, is visited by that 
 remoter and more authentic inspiration of which 
 I have been speaking j but still, for Tennyson, as for 
 others, 
 
 ' The rainbow comes and goes, 
 
 And lovely is the rose; 
 The moon doth with delight 
 
 Look round her, when the heavens are bare; 
 Waters on a starry night 
 
 Are beautiful and fair; 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth, 
 
 Albeit he know, where'er he go, 
 That there has passed away a glory from the earth.' 
 
 For Dr. Newman, on the other hand, the inaccessible 
 muse Urania is almost his only patroness j from her 
 eight earthlier sisters he gets hardly any assistance. 
 Nay, unless I misconceive his philosophy, he scarce 
 believes in any real rose, in any actual rainbow ; the 
 stars themselves are little more than phantom lights, 
 visionary flashings of that great dream, woven between 
 the soul and God, which men agree here to call for 
 the moment our visible and material universe. Now 
 to us, originally of coarser texture, and who have 
 knocked about the world ever since, who have gone 
 sessions, squabbled with attorneys as revising bar- 
 risters, and done work for the Poor Law Board, much 
 of this is almost inconceivable. The children and 
 
 H
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 champions of compromise, we undergo a sense of in- 
 significance and degradation which creeps into the 
 marrow of our bones when, as in the c Apologia/ we 
 stumble upon a man who, really and earnestly sincere, 
 has lived always in, for, and by the spirit alone. His 
 love of truth is so keen, so subtly keen, that the will 
 answers to every breath of logical impulse, just as our 
 telegraph-wires acknowledge the lightest pulsations of 
 an electric current. We may gasp with astonishment, 
 when we find that a casual phrase of St. Augustine's 
 has upset, as if it were a house of cards, some cherished 
 theory which the labour of years had gradually wrought 
 into shape; we may smile when we perceive how 
 simple, how child-like in many ways was that powerful 
 mind, beneath whose sway the hearts of so many c were 
 moved to and fro, as the trees of the wood are moved 
 by the wind ; ' but still the more we know, the more 
 we honour the man, the more do we accept him as 
 a strange, an abnormal, a solitary, but still as a 
 beautiful soul. Among other matters, more important 
 no doubt, but less within my province, if we read his 
 poetry, we read it with affectionate respect, not so 
 much because it is exquisite in point of art, as be- 
 cause it is essentially spontaneous, spiritual, and deep. 
 A good deal of it, doubtless, awakens no echo in our
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 99 
 
 sympathies, it does not speak to us, possibly because 
 our sense of hearing is not of the requisite compass j 
 but we all of us, in our degree, have been vexed and 
 harassed by inward struggles ; we. all of us have known 
 the weight of darkness upon our life, and therefore we 
 can all feel that in this prayer this cry for light, 
 there is an intense reality and truth which lend to it 
 no ordinary charm : 
 
 THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD. 
 
 ' Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 
 
 Lead Thou me on! 
 The night is dark, and I am far from home 
 
 Lead Thou me on ! 
 
 Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene, one step enough for me. 
 
 I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou 
 
 Shouldst lead me on. 
 I loved to choose and see my path, but now 
 
 Lead Thou me on! 
 
 I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, 
 Pride ruled my will : remember not past years. 
 
 So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still 
 
 Will lead me on, 
 O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 
 
 The night is gone; 
 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile 
 Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.' 
 
 I have entered upon these preliminary details, and 
 H 3
 
 IOO LECTURE III. 
 
 dwelt upon the inborn peculiarities which Dr. Newman 
 himself has disclosed to us, because all his poems, 
 c Gerontius' among the rest, grow out of his whole 
 character. They are the expressions of a nature, not 
 the developments and elaborations of an art. It is 
 remarkable how, more than once, in his 'Apologia,' 
 this strange man recurs, with something like fear, to 
 a haunting sense that all the outward aspects of matter 
 are phantasmal and unreal: a sense which seems to 
 have been about his path and about his bed from early 
 childhood. I have known the same feeling, or one 
 like it, in others. I have known men, yes, and young 
 children also, with such an impression, seldom given 
 out, but always on cross-examination found to be 
 lurking at the heart. We poco-curanti who think 
 life too short to be wasted on metaphysics, and who 
 refute Berkeley in the style of Dr. Johnson, by kicking 
 at a stone or a foot-ball, are apt, whenever we run up 
 against such weird mystics, to feel dissatisfied with 
 ourselves and every one else. We may go on further- 
 more to reflect (though that Buddhist creed implies the 
 unimportance rather than the unreality of matter) how, 
 at this very day, the absolute majority of mankind 
 believe, under ancestral traditions beyond a date, in the 
 transmigration of souls, and grow thereupon still hotter
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' IOI 
 
 and more flurried and more uncomfortable. We have 
 even been known, for a quarter of an hour, to question 
 whether all wisdom and all knowledge of human nature 
 has condensed itself, as to time, within the latter half 
 of this nineteenth century; and as to space, within 
 some twenty streets round about Piccadilly and Pall 
 Mall. Luckily for our peace of mind this unnatural 
 modesty does not last long But even when we have 
 recovered our legitimate self-esteem, it may not be 
 without profit to study the effect of such anomalous 
 temperaments upon religion, upon politics, upon life. 
 Our present business is with literature with poetry, 
 indeed more especially the poetry of Dr. Newman. 
 Now, original as he is, he cannot, any more than 
 smaller men, escape from the conditions of his age. 
 When he first became known, the influence of Words- 
 worth was perhaps at its highest ; there was a surfeit 
 of Byron; there had been a reaction from Scott; 
 Tennyson, as yet, was below the horizon. I should 
 therefore expect to find, as one result of Dr. Newman's 
 scepticism with regard to matter, that he would remain 
 comparatively unaffected by much in Wordsworth that 
 produced a deep impression upon others. I should 
 have previously imagined, for instance, that Dr. New- 
 man would be somewhat hard and cold to the beauty
 
 102 LECTURE III. 
 
 and influence of the outer world. I think, upon ex- 
 amining this point, that these anticipations of mine 
 are realised more or less. We all know, at any rate, 
 what the opposite tendency the tendency, I mean, to 
 see life in everything, and to spiritualise for himself all 
 the manifestations of matter have produced for us in 
 Wordsworth. It has indeed so informed his poetry, 
 that in spite of a religion keen, unintermitting and 
 profound, he has been grumbled at by sound divines as 
 a Pantheist. Speaking, however, not as a theological 
 but only as a poetical critic, this is a heresy, if Words- 
 worth were a heretic, which I cannot bring myself to 
 regret; under that stimulus he pursues Nature as if 
 she were his mistress, and colours every description of 
 her with a living glow of love. Dr. Newman, on the 
 other hand, so far as I can judge from the book which 
 I hold here, is not much interested in what for him 
 has but little reality, and dwells but seldom on the 
 earthly outside of things with any warmth of personal 
 affection. Now this, in my judgment, is a grave 
 defect. I think a want of sensuousness in a poet (and 
 I say so openly, because the poetry of abstract thought 
 is not likely to be undervalued at present,) fatal to 
 very high eminence in that department of literature. 
 Wordsworth, it may be said, has clothed deep and
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 103 
 
 original views with enduring poetry. True; but he 
 was enabled to do so just because he united a character 
 peculiar in its passion, no doubt, but still intensely 
 passionate, with a great faculty of thought : 
 
 ' The sounding cataract 
 Haunted him like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colours and their forms, had been to him 
 An appetite, a feeling, and a love.' 
 
 And therefore it is that the dry bones scattered about 
 the 'Excursion' and the 'Prelude' have had strength 
 given them to stand up on their feet and live. Nay, 
 without referring again to what Wordsworth says of 
 himself, how is it that Coleridge describes the inspira- 
 tion of his friend ? 
 
 An orphic song indeed, 
 
 A song divine of hfgh and passionate thoughts, 
 
 To their own music chanted.' 
 
 It is this double refraction of passion and of thought, 
 fused into one flash of blended light, which gives their 
 life and character to his poetical diamonds; but still 
 it is in the passion rather than in the thought, if we 
 could but disentangle them, that we should find, I 
 believe, the quickening spirit of the gem. Hence I 
 think Dr. Newman in his earlier poems has suffered 
 somewhat by assigning too much weight to Words-
 
 104 LECTURE III. 
 
 worth's power of thought, without sufficiently taking 
 into account the more poetical and less imitable qua- 
 lities by which it is relieved. The same criticism 
 may be directed with even more propriety against 
 other esteemed writers who have enlisted, during the 
 last thirty years, in the 'Wordsworth's own Cumber- 
 land meditators ;' they may knit their brows like their 
 illustrious colonel, but they cannot mimic the beat- 
 ings of his heart.' 
 
 I once knew of two young ladies, both fond of 
 poetry both Wordsworthians to the tips of their 
 fingers. The first had drunk in so deeply her poet's 
 views of intercommunion with the life of the universe 
 views which suffered nothing to lie for him inert and 
 dead that in her universal sympathy she even out- 
 Words worthed Wordsworth ; she could not rest till she 
 had clothed her very gowns with a personal identity and 
 an individual character. She baptized them accordingly, 
 as fast as they came home from her milliner, with sono- 
 rous names of heroes and of kings. Hence a girlish 
 friend sitting with her was startled by the sudden 
 irruption of a stern though affectionate maid : * Now, 
 Miss, you have gone and torn Castor, and Pollux is as 
 dirty as the ground; you have nothing left for Sunday 
 but old Lysander, and yet, you know, I told you over
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 105 
 
 and over again how wrong you were to leave Superbus 
 behind/ Her rival inclined to the austerer side of the 
 Great Man's intellect, and was found to have jotted 
 down in her commonplace book the following awful 
 entry : c Resolved, for the future, to think clearly, com- 
 prehensively, and profoundly on all subjects/ This at 
 the first aspect may appear the more noble proceeding, 
 but I am convinced that if they intend to follow as 
 poetesses in the steps of their master, the gownswoman 
 of the two was in the right. 
 
 Nay, even as far as that master himself is concerned, 
 I will make a clean breast of it, and confess that in 
 spite of the width of thought and glow of feeling 
 which distinguish him from his numberless imitators, I 
 hardly look upon him as taking rank among the nor- 
 mal summits in the orthodox range of Parnassus, but 
 rather as standing, with respect to such mountain 
 brothers of song, like a peak of Teneriffe, apart, and 
 unsympathising and alone. 
 
 To return, however, to our immediate subject. Any 
 comparative insensibility to the beauty of nature, or to 
 those outward aspects which stimulate the imagination 
 of the passionate and sensuous poet, is in the c Dream 
 of Gerontius ' of less importance. The region through 
 which it moves is filled with the dry colourless light of
 
 106 LECTURE III. 
 
 infinity, and not by those fluctuating rays which tinge 
 our human atmosphere. I should say, therefore, that 
 Dr. Newman, in grappling with such an awful subject 
 as immortality and the state of the soul after death, 
 had chosen well for himself; if such a statement did 
 not somewhat imply that this fine poem had originated 
 in an artistical pursuit of literary excellence, instead 
 of springing up spontaneously out of the innermost 
 fountains of a deeply religious mind. 
 
 However this may be, the massiveness of thought, 
 the purity of feeling, and the austere grandeur of 
 imagination which distinguish Dr. Newman, find 
 here an appropriate place. In a more secular poem, 
 I should expect that, either from the natural bias of 
 his understanding, or perhaps from the collapse of all 
 slighter emotions under the pressure of intense thought, 
 a certain dryness and stiffness of style would have 
 made themselves felt, and felt disadvantageously. Dr. 
 Newman, however, is here dealing with high matters, 
 fitted to call forth that deep-seated zeal and fire which 
 always lay in the heart of his character a zeal and fire 
 which, in their instinctive rebellion against his pre- 
 conceived plans for being calm and tranquil and 
 reserved, often lend a subtle and peculiar charm to 
 his writings. Besides, what I have called above an
 
 C THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 107 
 
 austere imagination, that is, a faculty of which the 
 business is to conceive and body forth great architec- 
 tural wholes of thought, without frittering itself away 
 on the details of ornamentation, is the only form 
 of the imaginative intellect suitable to a drama so 
 solemn as c Gerontius ;' and, in that respect, Dr. New- 
 man is eminently strong. 
 
 And now I must ask your pardon, if I detain you 
 at this point for a moment, by a short analysis of 
 the poem which we are examining. I can hardly 
 doubt that every one of you is at least as well ac- 
 quainted with it as I am myself. But still, the old 
 maxim that half the failures in love, in war, in 
 trade, in every department of life, have as their cause 
 the taking things for granted, claims a hearing, 
 and must be attended to. Gerontius,' then, is a re- 
 ligious drama which describes a dying Catholic, not 
 apparently a man of any special or exceptional holi- 
 ness, but one who has struggled worthily through a 
 long series of years, and is now before the gates 
 of Death. He still is, as he ever has been, a 
 dutiful and pious son of his mother Church ; but 
 his senses are shaken by pain, and by his human 
 terror of the grave his senses, moreover, half spiri- 
 tualized as the strength of the flesh ebbs away from
 
 108 LECTURE III. 
 
 them, detect on the air around and in the soul within, 
 hostile and malignant emanations bent to poison his 
 latest breathings, and to beat down that sacred hope 
 which falters more and more as it approaches its 
 fulfilment. Still he is supported against these unseen 
 enemies by faith; and when his earthly destiny has 
 accomplished itself, departs in peace. Immediately he 
 finds that he is borne along by some protecting power, 
 through sneering demons and sympathising angels, up 
 to the Throne of Judgment itself. The dramatic ele- 
 ment is made up of a colloquy between him and this 
 glorious creature to whom he has been entrusted. In 
 order, however, to make head against the monotony 
 which would ensue if this were all, the dialogue, as it 
 proceeds, is from time to time relieved by the choral 
 hymns of the seraphs whom they pass, interrupted by 
 the malevolent utterances howled at by them by demons, 
 who would fain impede their progress; and solemnly 
 closes with a lyrical valediction sung by that immortal 
 guide over the awe-stricken soul; which then is left, 
 after having been at once cheered and blasted by a 
 single glimpse of the Most High, to cleanse itself from 
 those disfiguring stains which forbid its immediate 
 entrance into heaven. Of the doctrines involved in 
 this striking production it is unnecessary to say more
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 109 
 
 than that there is nothing, except the bare idea of 
 purgatory. (a theological and not a poetical blemish), 
 which need prevent any Christian, or, indeed, any one 
 who believes in the providence of God, from valuing it 
 according to its deserts. It is built mainly upon those 
 noble foundations which were laid eighteen hundred 
 years ago, and which are still the common inheritance 
 of Christendom, the common centre of our European 
 civilisation. 
 
 It is probable, indeed, that the first idea of com- 
 posing such a dramatic work may have been suggested 
 to Dr. Newman by the Autos Sacramentales of Spain, 
 and especially by those of the illustrious Calderon j but, 
 so far as I can learn, he has derived hardly anything 
 from them beyond the vaguest hints, except, indeed, 
 the all-important knowledge that a profound religious 
 feeling can represent itself, and that effectively, in the 
 outward form of a play. I may remark that these 
 Spanish Autos of Calderon constitute beyond all ques- 
 tion a very wonderful and a very original school of 
 poetry, and I am not without hope that, when I know 
 my business a little better, we may examine them im- 
 partially together. Nay, even as it is, Calderon stands 
 so indisputably at the head of all Catholic religious 
 dramatists, among whom Dr. Newman has recently
 
 110 LECTURE III. 
 
 enrolled himself, that perhaps it may not be out of 
 place to inquire for a moment into his poetical methods 
 and aims, in order that we may then discover, if we 
 can, how and why the disciple differs from his master. 
 Now there is a great conflict of opinion as to the 
 precise degree of merit which these particular Spanish 
 dramas possess. Speaking as an ignorant man, I should 
 say that, whilst those who disparage them seem rather 
 hasty in their judgments, and not so well informed as 
 could be wished, still the kind of praise which they 
 receive from their most enthusiastic admirers puzzles 
 and does not instruct us. 
 
 Taking, for example, the great German authority on 
 this point, Dr. Lorinzer, as our guide, we see his poet 
 looming dimly through a cloud of incense, which may 
 embalm his memory, but certainly does not improve our 
 eyesight. Indeed, according to him, any appreciation 
 of Calderon is not to be dreamt of by a Protestant. 
 c Even learned critics/ says he, 'highly cultivated in 
 all the niceties of aesthetics, are deficient in the know- 
 ledge of Catholic faith and Catholic theology without 
 which it is impossible properly to understand Calderon/ 
 And yet, without being Greeks we feel the Iliad, without 
 being Parsees the Shahnama comes home to us, without 
 being Mahometans the songs of Arabia quicken our
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' Ill 
 
 pulses with their lyrical impulse and fire; Berserker 
 poets, Hindoo poets, even Chinese poets speak a lan- 
 guage not unintelligible to our ears : 
 
 ' One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.' 
 However true, therefore, these Teutonic dicta may 
 be, we cannot be expected patiently to acquiesce in 
 them. Dr. Lorinzer then goes on to say, 'that old 
 traditions which twine round the dogma like a beautiful 
 garland of legends, deeply profound thoughts expressed 
 here and there by some of the Fathers of the Church, are 
 made use of with such Incredible skill and introduced so 
 appositely at the right place , that (I presume) even ordinary 
 imaginations are awakened to the charm of the poetry, 
 even ordinary understandings roused up to enter into 
 the depth of the thoughts. 3 Oh, no ! I beg your pardon, 
 I have misread the learned German. He does not 
 finish his sentence in that way at all. What he does 
 really say is this, c are made use of with such incredible 
 skill, and inserted so appositely at the right place, that 
 frequently it is not easy to guess the source from 
 whence they have been derived.' The learned German's 
 notion of incredible dramatic skill, and exquisite appo- 
 siteness of introduction, seems to be that the exercise 
 of these high faculties should leave spectator or reader, 
 as the case may be, in hopeless perplexity and con-
 
 112 LECTURE III. 
 
 fusion. According to this method of reasoning, the 
 logical objection against Calderon ought to be taken 
 thus, that though often most meritoriously difficult, 
 he falls short of absolute perfection in this, that it is 
 sometimes possible to understand his meaning. Never- 
 theless, these scenes so unfathomably profound, these 
 sublime enigmas, which exact, like the handwriting on 
 the wall, a specially inspired interpreter to decypher 
 them, were composed in the first instance to gratify, 
 and did gratify, the uneducated populace of Madrid. I 
 should like to have Calderon himself up, even for half 
 an hour, if it were only that he might criticise his 
 critics. 
 
 At the same time, Dr. Lorinz,er's knowledge of his 
 subject is so profound, and his appreciation of his 
 favourite author so keen, that for me, who am almost 
 entirely unacquainted with this branch of literature, 
 formally to oppose his views, would be an act of 
 presumption of which I am, as I trust, incapable. I 
 may, however, perhaps be permitted to observe, that 
 with regard to the few pieces of this kind which in 
 an English dress I have read, whilst I think them not 
 only most ingenious but also surprisingly beautiful, 
 they do not strike me as incomprehensible at all. 
 We must accept them, of course, as coming from the
 
 THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 113 
 
 mind of a devout Catholic and Spanish gentleman who 
 belongs to the seventeenth century ; but when once 
 that is agreed upon, there are no difficulties greater than 
 those which we might expect to find in any system of 
 poetry so remote from our English habits of thought. 
 There is, for instance, the ' Divine Philothea, 3 in other 
 words, our human spirit considered as the destined 
 bride of Christ. This sacred drama, we may well 
 call it the swan-song of Calderon's extreme old age, 
 is steeped throughout in a serene power and a mellow 
 beauty of style, making it not unworthy to be ranked 
 with that (Edipus Colonseus which glorified the sun- 
 set of his illustrious predecessor; but yet, Protestant 
 as I am, I cannot discover that it is in the least ob- 
 scure. Faith, Hope, Charity, the five senses, Heresy, 
 Judaism, Paganism, Atheism, and the like, which 
 in inferior hands must have been mere lay figures, 
 are there instinct with a dramatic life and energy 
 such as beforehand I could hardly have supposed 
 possible. Moreover, in spite of Dr. Lorinzer's odd 
 encomiums, each allegory as it rises up is more neatly 
 rounded off, and shows a finer grain than any of the 
 personifications of Spenser; so that the religious effect 
 and the theological effect intended by the writer are 
 both amply produced yes, produced upon us, his
 
 114 LECTURE III. 
 
 heretical admirers. Hence, even if there be myste- 
 rious treasures of beauty below the surface, to which 
 we aliens must remain Mind for ever, this expressipn, 
 which broke from the lips of one to whom I was 
 eagerly reading the play, 'Why, in the original, this 
 must be as grand as Dante,' tends to show that such 
 merits as do come within our ken are not likely to 
 be thrown away upon any fair-minded Protestant. Dr. 
 Newman, as a Catholic, will have entered, I presume, 
 more deeply 'still into the spirit of these extraordinary 
 creations : his life, however, belongs to a different era, 
 and to a colder people. And thus, however much he 
 may have been directed to the choice of a subject 
 by the old mysteries and moralities (of which these 
 Spanish autos must be taken as the final development 
 and bright consummate flower), he has treated that sub- 
 ject, when once undertaken by him, entirely from his 
 own point of view. Gerontius' is meant to be studied 
 and dwelt upon by the meditative reader. The autos of 
 Calderon were got ready by perhaps the most accom- 
 plished playwright that ever lived, to amuse and stimu- 
 late a thronging southern population. 'Gerontius' is, 
 we may perhaps say for Dr. Newman in the words 
 of Shelley, 
 
 ' The voice of his own soul 
 Heard in the calm of thought,'
 
 ' TH E DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 115 
 
 whilst the conceptions of the Spanish dramatist burst 
 into life with tumultuous music, .gorgeous scenery, 
 hurrying processions, and all the pomps and splen- 
 dours of the Catholic Church. No wonder, therefore, 
 that our English auto, though composed with the same 
 general purpose of using verse, and dramatic verse, to 
 promote a religious and even a theological end, should 
 differ from them in essence as well as in form. There 
 is room, however, for both kinds in the wide empire 
 of Poetry, and though Dr. Newman himself would be 
 the first to cry shame upon me if I were to name 
 him with Calderon even for a moment, still his 
 mystery of this most unmysterious age will, I believe, 
 keep its honourable place in our English literature 
 as an impressive, an attractive, and an original pro- 
 duction. 
 
 If we proceed to examine it in detail, I think, 
 though I speak diffidently, that the finest thing- it 
 contains is the early soliloquy of Gerontius when 
 he finds himself, as he believes at first, alone with 
 infinity. The whole of this speech is so real and 
 so plausible, that we accept it at once as the natural 
 continuation of his earthly career, and seem to feel 
 with him that his actual position, however new and 
 previously unimagined, has nothing in it to awaken 
 
 i 2
 
 Il6 LECTURE III. 
 
 either surprise or confusion. I will now, with your 
 permission, read it to you at length : 
 
 . 
 ' I went to sleep ; and now I am refresh'd, 
 
 A strange refreshment : for I feel in me 
 
 An inexpressive lightness, and a sense 
 
 Of freedom, as I were at length myself, 
 
 And ne'er had been before. How still it is ! 
 
 I hear no more the busy beat of time, 
 
 No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse; 
 
 Nor does one moment differ from the next. 
 
 I had a dream; yes; some one softly said 
 
 " He's gone ;" and then a sigh went round the room. 
 
 And then I surely heard a priestly voice 
 
 Cry " Subvenite ;" and they knelt in prayer. 
 
 I seem to hear him still; but thin and low, 
 
 And fainter and more faint the accents come, 
 
 As at an ever-widening interval. 
 
 Ah ! whence is this ? What is this severance ? 
 
 This silence pours a solitariness 
 
 Into the very essence of my soul ; 
 
 And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet, 
 
 Hath something too of sternness and of pain, 
 
 For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring 
 
 By a strange introversion, and perforce 
 
 I now begin to feed upon myself, 
 
 Because I have nought else to feed upon. 
 
 Am I alive or dead? I am not dead, 
 
 But in the body still ; for I possess 
 
 A sort of confidence, which clings to me, 
 
 That each particular organ holds its place 
 
 As heretofore, combining with the rest 
 
 Into one symmetry, that wraps me round, 
 
 And makes me man; and surely I could move,
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 
 
 Did I but will it, every part of me. 
 
 And yet I cannot to my sense bring home 
 
 By very trial, that I have the power. 
 
 'Tis strange ; I cannot stir a hand or foot, 
 
 I cannot make my fingers or my lips 
 
 By mutual pressure witness each to each, 
 
 Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke 
 
 Assure myself I have a body still. 
 
 Nor do I know my very attitude, 
 
 Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.' 
 
 The rest of the work is much in the same key as 
 the above : it is grave and subdued as to tone, some- 
 what bare of ornament, but everywhere weighty with 
 thought. It is written also with Dr. Newman's usual 
 mastery over the English language, and moves along 
 from the beginning to the end with a solemn harmony 
 of its own. I am here referring to the blank verse j 
 the speeches rather. The lyrical portions (with the 
 exception of two, on which I shall touch by-and-by) 
 are, in my judgment, less successful. The strains as 
 they flow forth from the various ranks of angels are 
 not, if I may use a somewhat pedantic word, differen- 
 tiated by any intelligible gradations of feeling and of 
 style, and, indeed, do not move me much more than 
 those average hymns which people, who certainly are 
 not angels yet, sing weekly in church. The inter- 
 locutory blasphemies of the demons are still worse.
 
 Il8 LECTURE III. 
 
 I cannot help pronouncing them to be mean and 
 repulsive. 
 
 I am aware that here there is room for a wide 
 difference of opinion j I know that German critics of 
 renown will tell you that the fiends of Dante or of 
 Tasso are more to be admired than those of c Paradise 
 Lost/ But, though I do not wish to enter into any 
 abstract discussions on the nature of good and evil, 
 or on the metaphysical effects consequent on utter 
 alienation from God, I yet feel that, poetically speak- 
 ing, what they say is not true. I stand here in an 
 English University, as an Englishman an English 
 Philistine, if you will' and profess myself, on that 
 head at least, incurably Miltonic. I do not forget 
 that another class of thinkers, very different from 
 German critics, have arrived, by a separate road, at 
 something like the same conclusion, and that our 
 Miltonic Hades has been condemned by intelligent 
 English divines. The silent valley where the lost 
 spirits sing 
 
 ' With notes angelical to many a harp ;' 
 
 the intellectual pleasures reserved for them when they 
 reason high 
 
 ' Of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute ;'
 
 ' THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 119 ' 
 
 the noble palace, for which 
 
 ' The blazing cressets, fed 
 With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
 As from a sky,' 
 
 are thought of, as opening avenues to something more 
 like comparative happiness, than is consistent with the 
 appointed prison-house of misery and sin. Excellent 
 men, therefore, speak of such fine imaginations as 
 dangerous and deceitful ; just as if these sublime visions 
 of our great Puritan poet had lent some colour of 
 plausibility to the hypothetical plans of that Yankee 
 pedlar who, on being asked, when he returned from a 
 business tour in Texas, what kind of a place it was, 
 is said to have replied, c Wall, stranger, if Hell and 
 Texas both belonged to me, I should sell Texas.' Now, 
 whatever may be the moral or theological force of 
 these objections, upon me as a poetical critic, and 
 nothing more, they do not tell with any weight. When 
 I look at the question from my own point of view, I 
 think that if you degrade one who was 
 
 ' Of the first 
 If not the first Archangel,' 
 
 into an imp, you destroy, to our apprehensions, his 
 personal identity at once; he is no longer the same 
 being; no longer an antagonist powerful enough to
 
 120 LECTURE III. 
 
 dispute with Michael j no longer the centre of the 
 hostile system a spiritual anti-sun, as it were, raying 
 out that darkness which maintains to the end its fierce 
 though unequal battle against the immeasurable light. 
 
 Nay, even if Milton had never existed, I should still 
 consider the fiendish shapes of the e Inferno/ who are 
 like nothing so much as the harsh ushers and malignant 
 young bullies of an ill-conducted private school, to be 
 wanting altogether in dignity and effect. 
 
 I sympathise with both clauses of Wordsworth's 
 noble line 
 
 ' Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains ; ' 
 
 and therefore I turn away, not without a sense of 
 relief, from Dr. Newman's gibbering devils, to the 
 melancholy grandeur with which Byron, in his c Heaven 
 and Earth/ reproduces our Miltonic idea of a fallen 
 
 spirit : 
 
 ' Son of the saved, 
 When thou and thine have braved 
 The wide and warring element, 
 Shall thou and thine be happy ? No ! 
 Thy new world and new race shall be of woe. 
 * * # * 
 
 And art thou not ashamed 
 
 Thus to survive, 
 
 And eat, and drink, and wive, 
 With a base heart so far subdued and tamed 
 As even to hear this wide destruction named V
 
 c THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 121 
 
 Who would outlive their kind 
 . Except the base and blind? 
 
 ' There is not one who hath not left a throne 
 
 Vacant in heaven, to dwell in darkness here, 
 Rather than see his mates endure alone. 
 Go, wretch, and give 
 
 A life like thine to other wretches live! 
 And when the annihilating waters roar 
 
 Above what they have done, 
 Envy the giant patriarchs then no more, 
 And scorn thy sire, as the surviving one, 
 
 Thyself for being his son.' 
 
 In justice to Dr. Newman, however, I must admit 
 that the passage wherein the guardian angel explains 
 to Gerontius why the hellish outcries by which they 
 are assailed are now ineffective and contemptible, is 
 finely conceived and vigorously expressed : 
 
 ' In thy trial-state 
 
 Thou hadst a traitor nestling close at home, 
 Connatural, who with the powers of hell 
 Was leagued, and of thy senses kept the keys, 
 And to that deadliest foe unlock'd thy heart. 
 And therefore is it, in respect of man, 
 Those fallen ones show so majestical. 
 But, when some child of grace, Angel or Saint. 
 Pure and upright in his integrity 
 Of nature, meets the demons on their raid, 
 They scud away as cowards from the fight. 
 Nay, oft hath holy hermit in his cell, 
 Not yet disburden'd of mortality, 
 Mock'd at their threats and warlike overtures;
 
 122 LECTURE III. 
 
 Or, dying, when they swarm'd, like flies, around, 
 Defied them, and departed to his Judge.' 
 
 The two rhymed pieces \vhich stand out from all the 
 others as deserving of high commendation are, first, 
 the final utterance of Gerontius after his momentary 
 interview with the hidden power of God : it is full of 
 a sad and yearning melody, well calculated to infuse 
 into our hearts the lesson which Dr. Newman designed 
 it to convey. The other lines to which I referred are 
 those which contain the farewell of the guardian angel, 
 who, in a strain of solemn and tender pensiveness, fitly 
 closes the drama. It may suffice, perhaps, if I read the 
 former of these two, which, upon the whole, I prefer : 
 
 'Take me away, and in the lowest deep 
 
 There let me be, 
 And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, 
 
 Told out for me. 
 There, motionless and happy in my pain, 
 
 Lone, not forlorn, 
 There will I sing my sad perpetual strain, 
 
 Until the morn. 
 There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, 
 
 Which ne'er can cease 
 To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest 
 
 Of its Sole Peace. 
 There will I sing my absent Lord and Love : 
 
 Take me away, 
 
 That sooner I may rise, and go above, 
 And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.'
 
 C THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.' 12$ 
 
 1 think I have now said all that I had to say about 
 the 'Dream of Gerontiusj' but perhaps I may venture 
 to add, in conclusion, that little as I sympathise with 
 the actual opinions, or even with the methods of 
 reasoning which characterise Dr., Newman, it has 
 nevertheless been a real pleasure to me to recall the 
 days of my youth, and to feel that he deserved then, 
 and has ever since continued to deserve, the admiring 
 reverence with which he filled the men of my genera- 
 tion. He has bared his heart before the crowd, and 
 all who will may see how true, and pure, and tender 
 a heart it is. 
 
 There may be others whom we looked up to like- 
 wise, who have surrendered their souls to a bitterer 
 antagonism and a more hostile xeal ; who pain us, 
 now and then, by assuming a somewhat unsympathetic 
 demeanour by seeming to undervalue the memories 
 that lie behind them, and the ties which they com- 
 pelled themselves to break. If such there are, it is not 
 for us to blame them j we know too well how keen the 
 edge of these disputes, how envenomed the spirit of 
 these religious differences, is and ever must be ; but 
 though we blame nobody, it is still lawful for us to 
 rejoice, that one the most eminent of his class, should 
 not, in spite of an unwavering devotion to his new
 
 124 LECTURE III. 
 
 creed, even wish to forget the years when he worked 
 and flourished at Oxford j that by him^ at any rate, the 
 old influences are yet spoken of with genuine respect, 
 the old friends with undiminished affection j that of 
 him, at any rate, we may yet fairly say, in words which 
 are hacknied no doubt, but hacknied only because 
 they cannot be improved upon 
 
 ' Cum talis sis, utinam nosier esses."
 
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