- x>:x>oco::.;x>;xx.< II. BATES. i THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS BY CATHARINE MERRILL WITH IMPRESSIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF THE AUTHOR BY MELVILLE B. ANDERSON, AND WITH SOME WORDS OF APPRE- CIATION FROM JOHNMUIR THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS, INDIANAPOLIS COPYRIGHT 1902 THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY <^- THESE ESSAYS HAVE BEEN GATHERED TOGETHER BY THE CATHARINE MERRILL CLUB IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING MEMORY OF HER WHOSE NAME THE CLUB BEARS. CONTENTS Catharine Merrill Page BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 1 IMPRESSIONS AMD REMINISCENCES. MELVILLE B. ANDERSON 6 WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND. JOHNMUIR 32 The Man Shakespeare and Other Essays THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN His WORKS 41 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME 66 THE RAINBOW. A MEMORY 90 LITERARY CRITICISM 92 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN A<;K 114 JOHN FOSTER 123 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 134 THE GENERAL ; A CHARACTER SKETCH 158 MARTYRS TO FAITH 162 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY 195 CATHARINE MERRILL BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE Catharine Merrill was born at Corydon, In- diana, on January 24, 1824. Her father, Sam- uel Merrill, was Treasurer of State, and a few months later, when he removed the treasury to the new capital, Indianapolis, he took with him to their new home in the wilderness his house- hold, including his little daughter. The father, Samuel Merrill, was a scholarly man, educated at Dartmouth College, and a classmate and friend of Thaddeus Stevens. He came of Vermont Puritan stock, and his marked Puritan traits of honesty and reverence for re- ligion he transmitted to his daughter. One of his strongest characteristics was a love for books THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS that amounted almost to a passion. It was nat- ural that Samuel Merrill should add to his du- ties as Treasurer of State the congenial task of instructing the younger folk, for whose educa- tion the new community had made no provision. He was the pioneer schoolmaster, and his home library became a veritable circulating library for the use of pupils and neighbors. Mr. Mer- rill's first school was held in his own house near the site of the Grand Hotel. Later he bought an eighty-acre farm, extending from what is now Tenth street, near the City Hospital, to North Indianapolis, along the Michigan road. Then the well-remembered Merrill home was built in Merrill street. In this home the family lived for perhaps forty years. Here were en- tertained many of the distinguished men who visited Indianapolis. Henry Ward Beecher made his home at the old place for several months until a permanent home could be found. Here, during antebellum days, Frederick Doug- lass was a guest. The site is now occupied by a public school known as the Catharine Merrill School. As the public duties of the father multiplied, 2 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE the daughter, who had been his favorite pupil and a comrade in his studies, began to take upon herself the training of the minds of the younger generation in the little town. Her pupils of those early days speak of that school as an ideal one. The children belonged to the friends of the teacher. The girls were put upon honor in everything. Nothing was so severely punished as an untruth. With the love in which her pu- pils held her went also respect that knew no fear. Confident of her sympathy, they took to her their little sorrows and their trials. A pupil of that earlier day, recalling the little school, has said : "I can never forget the prayer she lifted up every morning, nor her reverent reading of the Bible lesson. She impressed us as if she were speaking to some great and good friend to whom she could open her heart." Before the war this school was in the base- ment of the Fourth Presbyterian Church at the southwest corner of Market and Delaware streets. From here it was taken to a point near where the Commercial Club building stands. Close by the school was a hospital for confeder- 3 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ate prisoners. Here she used to go to nurse the sick and read to them. Later she followed her brother and others of the family to the South and entered into the hospital service as an army nurse. A later location for her school was at Alabama and Market streets. She no- ticed the women in the jail near by and visited them, giving them clothes and teaching them to sew. From the interest that was aroused in this way was started the Home for Friendless Women. For a time she taught at Cleveland, whither a number of her Indianapolis pupils followed her. Miss Guilford, who taught there with her, became her lifelong friend, and Con- stance Fennimore Woolson was one of her pu- pils. In 1861 she returned from two years of study in Germany to lend what help she could to the cause of the Union and to take up again the school which her friend, Ellen Cathcart, had so well conducted in her absence. The Civil War with the sacrifices and the suffering it caused became so much a part of her life that she commenced to write a history of the share her own state had had in that struggle, 4 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE and in 1866 she published "The Soldier of In- diana in the War for the Union." In 1869 Ovid Butler, the chief benefactor of the college that now bears his name, endowed the Demia Butler chair of English Literature, and invited her to fill it. She accepted the call and continued in the faculty of the Northwest- ern Christian University and later of Butler College until 1885, when she yielded to the urgent demand of old and new pupils and re- sumed her private classes in the city. These classes she was enabled to teach until April, 1900. In her college work she was always help- ful, giving herself to the culture of character as fully as to the training of the intellect, and allotting to honor and manliness as high a place in the curriculum as she gave to scholarship. She found time while she was not occupied with her classes to prepare the essays and addresses which she read to the literary clubs and popular audiences of her own and other cities, and a series of literary criticisms which were given to the press. After a brief illness she died at her home in Capitol Avenue on May 30, 1900. 5 CATHARINE MERRILL: IMPRESSIONS AND REMI- NISCENCES Whatever may be the value of the pieces col- lected in the present volume, the reader should be assured that they yield no adequate concep- tion of the noble personality behind them. It is true that all writing is in some sense a reve- lation of character; and in proportion as the writer's temperament goes into his work is that work autobiographical. But Catharine Merrill was not primarily a writer. Her favorite mode of self-expression was conversation, and her life is written large in the good works she prompted or performed., and in the characters of her pu- pils. Her letters must bear the stamp of her temperament much more distinctly than such occasional writings as these. There is, indeed, a printed book, now well-nigh forgotten, which is a precious memorial of this great, modest soul. It may surprise some who thought they knew her well to be informed that she was, more than a generation ago, the author of a book of fifteen hundred pages. It is entitled 6 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS "The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union/' These two stout octavo volumes do not bear the author's name, and one might have known her a lifetime without hearing her men- tion them. Into this work she threw her heart. She was impelled to write it by the same mo- tive that impelled her to visit the sick, to com- fort the afflicted, to teach the poor. It is simply one of her many good works. "The Indiana Soldier" is largely a record of the sacrifices and sufferings of individuals. A thousand minute details, of a kind generally deemed beneath "the dignity of history," are here set down. The book is full of trustworthy anecdotes from the letters or the lips of eye- witnesses. The execution is unequal ; there are marks of haste, yet there are unmistakable evi- dences of talent. Obviously, the modest author was not actuated by literary ambition. Her pur- pose was the humane and patriotic one of com- memorating the sacrifices and heroism of com- mon men in the service of a common idea. She is a humble Plutarch, or, better, a Plutarch of the humble. Much of the matter is still very stirring, and it will surely grow more fascinat- 7 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES ing from the touch of the great romancer, Time. To those of us who saw her only in the latter half of her life, Miss Merrill is known as the loving student and devoted teacher of English literature. The book I have been speaking of suggests, among other things, how broad was the basis of her love of literature. She would have shrunk from being called either a woman of letters or a philanthropist. The former word suggests professional accomplishments that were beside her aim, and the latter a certain strenuousness that would have shattered her. She was very far from being an organizer of "movements" or a trampler of platforms. She cared neither to agitate nor to fulminate. She was simply interested in folks, and that in a warm human fashion that was more convincing than a string of resolutions. Goethe's life maxim, "do the thing that lies nearest," was the guide of her conduct. Her way to and from school, in the earlier days, led her past the jail, where she saw the forlorn faces of women at the barred windows. She might have found in her full and laborious life an excuse for going by on the other side. It must have cost a strug- 8 gle to a woman of her refinement to go among those poor outcasts, but they lay beside her path. She did what she could for them. Her similar self-devotion during the Civil War is recorded. Indianapolis was then a great encampment, a hospital, and a prison. In her efficient unobtrusive way, Miss Merrill was a leader of the helpful women of the city; a leader rather by setting the rest the example of doing what was needful than by talk and exhortation. Thus, before becoming the his- torian of Indiana's share in the War for the Defense of the Union, she had taken her full part in the great struggle. One of the most valued friendships of her life grew out of her habit of visiting the sick and the unfortunate. When Mr. John Muir, then a poor and unknown wanderer, was confined for months to a dark room by a cruel accident and was threatened with total blindness, the visits of Miss Merrill and her little niece were his solace. Inasmuch as life was vastly more interesting to her than books, it is but natural that she should have valued literature primarily as a "criticism of life." To her mind the vital books 9 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES were not so much the most beautiful works of art as those which tell us most about man and are the most helpful in the art of right living. After the great dramatist and some of the great novelists, I think she liked best the memoirists and letter-writers. She once said, almost apolo- getically: "I am very fond of this gossiping sort of literature, Miss Edgeworth, Caroline Lamb, etc." In her conversation Miss Merrill was as charming a gossip as any of them, and she had all the natural gifts of an excellent letter-writer. It has not been my privilege to see any of the letters she must have written in that period of her life which fell before the Civil War; a collection of them might prove a revelation. After she accepted a professorship she must have been too busy for extended let- ter-writing, and, in her later years, which were her ripest and richest, her eyesight well-nigh failed her. The ideal letter is the product of a more leisurely age than ours. It must have the abandon of conversation, modulated by a certain selection of phrase wherein the pen has the advantage of the tongue. The modern toiler to whom the pen is an instrument of live- 10 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS lihood is forced to have recourse to the conven- tional forms of epistolary short-hand. Of course one who gave herself, as she did, to every call of human need, must have had to write many letters, and more and more as the circle of her influence and of her friends wid- ened. Her letters are of her very self, abound- ing in good sense, good humor, and kindly sympathy. Temperamentally discursive, she would run on a little while, and then, just as her soul was fairly kindling to the game, would be checked by "the bars of circumstance." To her friends at a distance her letters were al- ways a little touch of her out of the night. What letters, one repeats, she must have written when Indianapolis was a village and the de- mands upon her nerves less exacting. Conversation was the solace of her life; in- deed, it is not too much to say that her conver- sation was the solace of many lives. When not weighed down by the griefs and calamities of those about her (personal ills she always seemed to carry lightly), she was one of the most com- panionable of human beings. Her mind was full and retentive, her faculty of observation 11 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES quick, her sense of humor quietly alert, while her flow of thought and anecdote was never marred by inapt expression. By no means was she one of those tiresome women commonly described as ''brilliant:" one who bestrides a hobby, who is nothing if not audacious, and whose epigrams grate like a file. She was not militant, she never posed, and had not the slightest ambition to shine. It is of course impossible to give any notion of her conversa- tion to strangers. She impressed those with whom she talked as a large-souled woman, with sanity, sympathy, humor, the gift of speech, and the rarer gift of listening. She was an eloquent listener. She was most patient with her in- feriors and was seldom visibly bored. She did not share that form of social cowardice which makes us shrink from the charge of the rider of a hobby ; but she would not permit others to be overridden by such cavalry. She was a skilful moderator of conversation and knew how to give it a Democratic character. She seemed to learn from everyone, because she had the tact to draw from everyone the thing he knew. In conversation, as in life, she was apt to consider 12 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS the interest of others before her own; indeed, she made everyone feel that his interests were hers. She was as incapable of saying an unkind thing as of saying anything not in good taste. The ignorant and the timid never left her presence feeling cowed or crushed. Did some well-mean- ing person falter forth a commonplace, Miss Merrill would contrive to throw such a light upon it as to make it shine. This she would do with such courteous self-effacement that her obscure interlocutor might well feel somewhat exhilarated by the distinguished part he was playing. Thus she drew from everyone his best and gave a setting to many a rough dia- mond. If Miss Merrill was a charming gossip, no one drew more firmly the line between gossip and scandal. From scandal her pure soul turned with loathing; but the little humors that give a spice of comedy to human inter- course were her delight. There was, however, seldom a shade of satire certainly never of sarcasm in anything she uttered. She had a rare tact for giving a kind turn to her fun. She gave the impression that she considered 13 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES herself rather more open to ridicule than an- other. She had many a genial reminiscence of the class-room. In one of her letters I find the following, hastily scribbled in a cramped hand at the foot of a full page: "I had my freshmen read 'Lycidas.' After they had studied and studied it, one said: 'What does this mean Warbling with eager thought his Doric lay'? I explained. He said: 'I thought lay was a verb that his Doric lay on the ground beside him.' He smiled at his mis- take; so did I." After that, one is not surprised when she remarks that this class preferred "The Vanity of Human Wishes" to "Lycidas." There was another good story, which I am unable to give in her own words, of a full-grown young man from the forests of the Wabash who stumbled over the word infant. He professed not to understand the word, and "allowed" that he had never seen the thing. "Surely, Mr. N.," urged the teacher reassuringly, "surely, you must have seen an infant ?" "I may have saw one, ma'am," he conceded, "but," he added with solemn conviction, "I didn't know it!" 14 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Our kindly friend might have adopted the motto of the old Roman poet, "Nothing human is alien to me." Her mind had something of the alchemy attributed to the great poets, by virtue of which trifles become things of price. This was because her vision of human life was so large that she saw the filiation of things. What to the man of narrow view might seem nugatory was seen by her to be related to some phase of human experience. Miss Merrill's conversation bore the stamp of her simplicity and strong sincerity. She dealt in no tricks of phrase, nor did her speech es- pecially abound in striking or quotable sayings. The original element in her conversation was herself rather than her phrase. She used to complain of a defective verbal memory and made, perhaps, fewer literary quotations than might have been expected. Any want of mem- ory for words was, however, more than com- pensated by her remarkable memory for thoughts and things. Her speech had a certain elemental plainness, like water and air. She seemed to draw from copious wells of her own rather than from the fountain in the public 15 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES square. One felt that she spoke of what she had seen and known, rather than of what she had heard and read. Her reading was a fuel perfectly consumed; it did not go in as coal and come out as smoke. Books were not so much the tools with which she worked as the food wherewith she satisfied her hunger. The scholar requires eternal vigilance lest for him books take the place of thought nay, of life itself. That vigilance relaxed, the scholar de- generates into the pedant. To our friend books were a daily necessity of the mind, but she had the wisdom and strength to make them tribu- tary to clear thinking and right living. Catharine Merrill's fine, wide culture offers the most signal and cheering example of the educative power of English literature. No one could talk with her for half an hour without feeling that her culture was liberal; yet she was not widely read in the literature of any language except her own. She was habitually reticent concerning her accomplishments, and she doubtless owed something of her discipline of mind to her early linguistic training as well as to her considerable acquaintance with Ger- 16 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS man. I can, however, be doing her no great wrong in assuming that all that was most val- uable in her literary equipment was derived from her reading of English authors. As all rivers flow into the sea, so all literatures con- tribute to enrich the English. One who knows it well must know something of all. Certainly her knowledge of English literature was ac- complishment enough for one life, and for genuine culture worth more than all that col- leges and universities can give. Of robust faculty and enquiring mind, she was early introduced to the best books by her cultivated father, and her reading was supplemented by fruitful and well-directed activity seldom so absorbing as to preclude leisure for study. She always felt her limitations more keenly than was need. Speaking of reading Dante, she writes : "I feel actually ashamed to end my life with- out it ; but then I can't read Homer, nor trace the footsteps of the Creator in the rocks, neither could I talk with Solomon, if I should ever meet with him, of the flowers of the field and the hyssop on the wall !" 17 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES If she be to-day with the spirits of Dante and Homer and Solomon, one may fancy her as having quite as much in common with each of them as they with one another; at all events, one cannot doubt that the creator of Portia and Imogen will find a charm in the society of Catharine Merrill. I like to think of her as bringing together in the gardens of Elysium such stranger spirits as those of Mme. de Se- vigne and Wordsworth herself the discoverer of a common bond. The literary preferences of a wise reader are always instructive. She once said to me that she had read the whole of Scott a great number of times, how many I dare not affirm. Had it been twice, the statement would have been impressive to one who had found life too short for a single reading of the complete works of that great but diffuse author. As her fondness for Scott implies, her interest in life and char- acter predominated over her sense of art. This may account for her apparent lack of literary ambition. With the temperament of the artist she might have enriched our literature and so have exerted a wider influence; but could she 18 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS have been as balanced and sane as we knew her to be ? However, we may answer that ques- tion, no one who knew her can for a moment regret that she was not a literary producer, or anything else than what she was. She loved the serene, humane, liberalizing writers; Shakespeare was naturally her prime favorite. Once she wrote : "I have re-read the whole of Shakespeare this summer for variety and novelty." Again: "I am studying Burke this summer, and love him. The largeness, the magnanimity of his nature makes one lift one's eyes and hopes. Eeal greatness is inexpressibly refreshing." Goethe, unfortunately, never took hold of her so vitally ; probably she did not begin Ger- man early enough to be able to read him in her more plastic years. Of noteworthy American authors, Poe interested her least; nor was Emerson especially stimulating to her. Her preference for Wordsworth was marked; I think she would have been willing to sacrifice all that Keats ever wrote for the "Ode to Duty." To carry this subject further would be likely to lead to confusion, inasmuch as the 19 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES conversations with her in which these prefer- ences were exhibited occurred many years be- fore her death. Meeting her from time to time after the lapse of years, I noticed that she had entered upon new fields of reading, so that her literary interests were by no means stationary. Shortly before her last illness she had too tardily begun to set down her ripest judgments upon books in a series of articles for a news- paper. The chief fruit of this, her latest lit- erary activity, was the paper upon "The Man Shakespeare." It was said of the late M. Edmond Scherer that he judged books with his character rather than with his intelligence. Perhaps the saying is quite as true of our modest friend as of the distinguished French critic. Her well-consid- ered thoughts were put forward with a grave sincerity that carried conviction. The things she said might have sounded trite from another ; but in her accent and bearing was that which assured us of being in the presence of reality. No thought fully realized can seem common- place. It may be that to strangers some of the essays in the present volume will appear of 20 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS somewhat loose and uneven texture. Their value to us who knew her and loved her con- sists, not so much in their special message, as in their suggestiveness of her who wrought them "in a sad sincerity." What is it to us if the sentences are sometimes disconnected jot- tings ? They are but posts bearing the invisible wires charged with thrilling and messageful currents. As we read she comes back to us, a beautiful presence, and we are penetrated by her grave, sweet tones. It is a very blessed thing that the noblest woman we have known should thus live for us in these pages, "to a life beyond life." In a very real sense she is here; her presence illuminates all; her char- acter is gloss and comment. It is certainly to be regretted that she could not herself have prepared for the press a volume of her maturest essays. This book is primarily for those who loved her. Even the stranger, however, if not unsympathetic, may find his account in some of these unpretending essays and sketches. He will not forget that the author was first and last a teacher her instru- ment the spoken word rather than the pen 21 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES and will not look for the continuity and finish that stamp the work of the professional writer. The quality and value of her work might be very well illustrated by a contrast between the paper on "The Man Shakespeare" and Walter Bagehot's essay on the same subject. The latter is obviously the work of a master of the pro- fession of letters: the ripe fruit of a full, vigorous, genial intelligence. In the wide circle of his musings, Bagehot encounters the shadowy figure that we call Shakespeare and undertakes to endow it with human traits. The sketch is soon made, and the prolific artist proceeds to employ his affluent brush upon another canvas. Miss Merrill's essay, on the other hand, if also in one sense an occasional product, is really a collection of choses vues, things seen through- out a life of loving intercourse with Shakes- peare. A few weeks before her death she recalls some of these impressions, and notes them down with a trembling hand. The thoughts derive peculiar interest from being those of a sagacious woman. Shakespeare owes much of his great- ness to the circumstance that he had so much of the woman in him, whereby he was all the 22 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS greater as a man. This gives peculiar interest to the interpretations of Shakespeare by noble women. No man has spoken of him with more insight than has been shown by women: Lady Montague, Mrs. Jameson, Fanny Kemble, Lady Martin. Catharine Merrill lacked many of the advan- tages enjoyed by such women. Not that her circle was undistinguished, for, in the course of her long life, she enjoyed the intimacy of many persons of eminent character and attainments. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that she missed, for the most part, the stimulating en- counters afforded by intercourse with leading spirits at a great center of culture. Living at a great capital, Miss Merrill might well have been more productive in a literary way; she would not necessarily have been wiser, nor is it likely that she would have known her Shakes- peare any better. What she has to say of him is marked by her own sagacity, sincerity, and sympathy, and forms an instructive addition to the gallery of portraits of him drawn by women who knew and understood him. I have never known another woman who, 23 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES upon intimate acquaintance, made an impres- sion of such pure spirituality. It is rather dif- ficult to imagine how her nature would have been modified by different outward relations. In her teaching she emphasized the truth that wifehood and motherhood are the normal con- ditions of a woman's life; and one feels that she would have been as exemplary in that sphere as in the one she chose. Possibly such a life might have narrowed her influence. It was marvelous how entirely she transcended the limitations that commonly hedge about unmar- ried women (and men too) as they advance in years. So far from involving impairment of sympathy, the life she led made her sympathies wider, if not deeper, than they could otherwise well have been. With a greater endowment of sympathy she could scarcely have held her own in the world. Looking backward and upward upon her entire life, as we can now, we feel it to be one beautiful harmony, unthinkable other- wise. In one of her letters she quotes Mrs. Jameson's fine saying: "Mary stood by the cross, saw her son die, and went with John and lived." It is well that Catharine Merrill's 24 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS fortitude should have been spared such a test. As it was, she suffered far too much. What personal griefs were to others, such vicarious griefs were to her. Wherever sorrow came to her notice, she needed no command to impel her to "weep with them that weep." In her sympathy there was no alloy of wordy ex- hortation; it was the throbbing of a bruised and bleeding heart. The following extracts from her letters need no comment : "That lacerating pity we have for others is the most grievous thing in life " 'All for pity I could die.' "How many times I have said that little line of Spenser's to myself, because it seemed to express the last anguish of pity. One comes out of sorrow a changed being, with fewer small interests, and wider, deeper sympathies. So it elevates and enriches, or so it should. We are certainly the better for disappointment and trouble, unless we are wilful and rebel- lious." Again: "I love you and mourn with you; this is all. Every day I think of you, some- 25 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES times all day long. I know well what it is to carry a grave in one's very heart. It is a sore burden, a heavy weight, and so cold." To a father whose only daughter had died at the age of ten years : "All day long and all night, too, since I heard of your sore bereavement, I have borne your sorrow in an already heavy heart. * * * The friendship of father and daughter has al- ways been a favorite topic with me ; there have been such notable instances, and there are such peculiar grounds of love. There are hours when I cannot use my eyes in reading ; consequently my mind wanders off in fancies; and I had many a pretty thought [of the companionship of father and daughter]. Now she would be a gently wild creature of twelve years, " 'The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door'; "Now blooming and fair and responsive at sixteen and eighteen; and far on in life the bright, soft star of declining years." Charitable and indulgent to others as she was, Miss Merrill's self-discipline, both moral and intellectual, was severe. "She was rigid 26 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS with herself," are the simple words of one who knew; how rigid few of us can do more than guess. In no wise an ascetic, she spared her- self almost as little as did her name-saint of Siena. Her self-discipline was enlightened and purposeful. She would not permit her duties to conflict and was capable of dropping upon the ready shoulders of others a burden that overtaxed her; but only that she might devote herself with single-minded consecration to her peculiar tasks. She was distinguished for un- wearying attention to details: a mark, not in- deed of genius, as has been asserted, but of greatness. Moments were golden to her, yet she gave her moments and her hours without stint and without complaint, to little things and to little people. She liked to be able to meet people on their own ground. "Miss Merrill had a great respect for sewing," is the eulogy pronounced upon her by a seamstress. She once wrote me about a detailed course of study for young girls, which she thought of publish- ing. She had copied the considerable mass of material many times with her own hand for the benefit of individuals; and she was much sur- 27 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES prised when once "a generous lady" insisted on paying her for her trouble. "I used the seven dollars for the benefit of poor students, and was grateful for it." The simple words are full of pathos to one who thinks of her limited strength and failing eyesight. Perhaps there is not one of her wide circle of friends and pupils but could recall some individual instance of this kind. If she was taxed and drained by her devoted helpfulness, one never heard of it from her. There was doubtless an inner reward. She was very happy in her work and often said: "I feel that I receive more than I give." She enjoyed watch- ing the unfolding of the minds of her pupils, as she enjoyed the growth of her flowers; nor did she seem to take more credit to herself for the one than the other. Notwithstanding the heavy burdens she bore, her life was on the whole a happy one, and she clung to it. She always referred to death with shrinking; I think she fully felt its horror. Yet she looked forward with serenity to an eternal reunion with all she loved. The following words from 28 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS an old letter seem to indicate that her religion was substantially identical with what Lord Shaftesbury called the religion of all sensible men: "One would be a fool not to grow more thoughtful with experience and observation in this involved, perplexing and perplexed, dis- tressful, and yet if you get up high enough happy and beautiful world. It is hard to be- lieve/ says Tennyson, *but harder not to be- lieve/ It is a mystery, but all we have to do is to behave ourselves. That is hard enough." Of course the impressions that I have here set down touching this large and admirable character make no pretense to completeness or finality. During the last twenty years of Miss Merrill's life I saw her but at long intervals. Time which has deepened my veneration for her has washed out of my memory many of those little details of act and word that give reality to a portrait. Her personality lies in my memory in large, simple outlines, like a land- scape at twilight. I know that she never ceased to grow, and that she had the art of making new friends in old age. Some one of those whose 29 CATHARINE MERRILL: REMINISCENCES privilege it was to live near her to the last and who has the requisite material at command, should write in detail the story of her life. "The Catharine Merrill biographical material, so rich in scenery, history, art, literature, and big, warm, all-embracing sympathy, written as it should be written, would be literature, a cheering, charming, helpful book for every- body." These words, which I take the liberty to quote from a private letter from Mr. John Muir, may stimulate some one to undertake a task so useful and delightful. Acquaintance with such a character tends to build up the most helpful kind of faith. Nothing can be more reassuring. Those who had the good fortune to know a human being so large and excellent should take pious care that her memory does not fade with the passing of the lives of those she immediately touched. Certainly none who knew her can ever forget her; but, as she chose to be a teacher rather than a writer, her influence, though intense, was comparatively restricted. Shall there not be an authentic record that such a beautiful life was actually lived? 30 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS In particular, we should like to know more of the first half of her life. Unsupported by the evidence such a book should contain, it is very difficult to speak adequately of her without incurring the suspicion of extravagant lauda- tion. So, instead of tinkling the cymbals of eulogy, let me quote in conclusion the simple words of one of her pupils, words to which all who knew her will warmly assent: "There is nobody like her no one else so serene and fine, so calm and so full of feeling." MELVILLE B. ANDERSON. 31 WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND Miss Merrill was the first friend I found in Indiana, and one of the kindest, wisest, and most helpful of my life. I first met her about thirty-five years ago through a letter of intro- duction from Professor J. D. Butler, when I was studying plants and rocks around Indian- apolis. Knowing how shy I was, and fearing I might not deliver his letter he took pains to tell how rare and good she was in heart and mind, and to assure me that at first sight all bashful misery would vanish, for none better than she knew that "a man's a man for a' that." And so it proved. She became interested in my studies, loaned me books, and I soon learned to admire her scholarship, keen, sane, kindly criticism, the wonderful range of her sympathies, her kindness in always calling at- tention to the best in the character of any one under discussion living or dead, and her weariless, unostentatious, practical benevolence 32 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS in smoothing as she was able the pathways of others and helping them up into wider, brighter, purer living. But it was in a time of trouble, then drawing nigh, that I learned to know her well. While at work in a mill my right eye was pierced by a file, and then came the darkest time of my life. I was blind for months and the blindness threatened to be lasting and complete. She came to my dark- ened room an angel of light, with hope and cheer and sympathy purely divine, procured the services of the best oculist and the children she knew I loved. And when at last after long months of kindness and skill she saw me out in Heaven's sunshine again, fairly adrift in the glorious bloom of the spring, her joy was as great as my own. And in her beautiful life how many others has she lifted up, cheered and charmed out of darkness into light! Few have left the world so widely beloved, and it is not easy for those who knew her to speak of her without apparent excess. She was tall, rather frail looking, with broad brow and wonderful eyes, a countenance glow- 33 WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND ing with, kindness and as free from guile as a child's. She was an admirable scholar, with perfect mental independence, and her heart was one of the kindest and least selfish I ever found. Those who knew her best loved her best, and almost worshiped her. Everywhere she was welcomed like light in social gather- ings, clubs and camps, homes and schools, asy- lums, hospitals, churches and jails; for she was a natural teacher and helper, a bearer of others' burdens, brightener of others' joys. None could be near her without being made better. One was lifted and strengthened simply by see- ing her. The weary and troubled went to her as the thirsty to a well. Her home was a cen- ter of heart sunshine. Like a stream with deep fountains she was a friend on whom we could depend, always the same, steady as a star. And like streams and stars in their flowing and shin- ing she seemed wholly unconscious of the good she was doing. However important the work in hand she never appeared to be in a hurry or laboring beyond her strength. In the midst of striving crowds she seemed calm, gaining her ends with apparent ease. She followed the 34 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS well-beaten roads of humanity with the enthu- siasm and freshness of perception of the ex- plorer in new fields. Before her all embracing sympathy obstacles melted. Humble, devout, reverent in presence of life's mysteries, her faith in the final outcome of good never varied, while humor and common sense preserved her from extravagance of opinion and language. She had a profound knowledge of human nature, and her judgment and sagacity in prac- tical affairs enabled her not only to give good advice, but to get things done; love and sym- pathy giving wonderful insight. Her eye took in all humanity, studying characteristics of states and nations as well as individuals in every walk of life, tracing springs of action through all concealments as an explorer traces the fountain heads of rivers, searching out ways of being good and doing good, never discour- aged, leaving results to be as God pleased; bow- ing in storms like a slender plant and springing up again; rejoicing in all truth, especially happy when she discovered something to praise in what seemed only evil, some good motive where only bad ones had been known. 35 WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND Though, always busy, valuing each day as it came out of eternity, she always had time for others, as if she had no pleasures or pains of her own, no temptations to fight against, no perturbing passions. She made her way through the scrambling, fighting, loving, hat- ing, suffering, rejoicing world with no more apparent perplexity or effort than the world itself displays in making its way through the heavens. She had a rare gift of teaching, and most of her life was devoted to it. An enthusiastic student and lover of literature, she kept inspir- ingly close to the minds of her scholars and easily led them to do their best, while her downright, steadfast, glowing goodness gained their hearts. Above all she was a builder of character, teaching the great art of right- living, holding up by word and example the loftiest ideals of conduct, fidelity to conscience and duty, and plain unchanging foundational righteousness as the law of life under whatever circumstances. And these noble lessons went home to the hearts of her pupils. Conservative, believing in hard work, follow- 36 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ing Heaven's ever old, ever new, love-lighted ways, placing no dependence on plans for get- ting something for nothing comfortable in- ventions for abolishing ignorance and sin machinery for hoisting humanity to spiritual heights, salvation by ballots, etc., she never-, theless welcomed new ideas with hospitality, eager to discover something useful in new plans however little they promised, humbly hoping and groping through life's sad cloudy places as best she could, holding fast the good as she was able to see it, under whatever garb, steadied by a rare sanity and robust commonsense applica- ble to every situation. And this breadth and steadiness of mind, combined with immeasur- able sympathy, bound her scholars to her through life. No wonder they never forgot her. "To know her was a liberal education." Nothing in all her noble love-laden life was more characteristic than its serenity. Of the showy reformer crying aloud in the confidence of comfortable ignorance there was never a trace. Going about humbly among all sorts of people she did what she could of the good that was nearest, preaching without sermons, in- 37 WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND formal as sunshine, her whole life a lesson of faith, hope and charity. Though I saw hut little of her after the first year or two in Indiana, her gracious influence, not easily put into words, never lost its charm. Go where I would in my long, lonely wanderings "the idea of her life would sweetly glide into my study of imagination," and so, I doubt not, it was with her friends near and far. She never grew old. To her last day her mind was clear, and her warm heart glowed with the beauty and enthusiasm of youth. In loving hearts she still lives, and loving hearts are her monument. JOHN MUIR. 38 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS Three hundred years ago the man who was destined to shed a new and abiding glory over literature and over life walked the streets of London unrecognized, unknown and uncon- scious. No prophet and no sage had stood by his cradle and no record had been made of the unfolding of the young existence; no scholar had directed his education, nor was there ever a Boswell, or a Trevelyan, or a Froude, or a revering son to cherish his words and to pry into his letters. His was the common lot to pass away like a tale that is told. The very agony of curiosity discovers scarce a fact besides dates of christening, marriage and death, with deeds of purchase and sale. Can we not, then, find out by his works what manner of man this was? It is both common sense and Holy Scripture thus to do. But we are told it is useless to try; that Shakespeare is so entirely the artist, he must, as man, for- 41 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS ever elude our touch and our sight. Milton's soul betrays itself even in the choice of a sub- ject. The honest, happy heart of Walter Scott appears in every canto of his poems, and in every chapter of his novels. All down the list of English authors, from Chaucer to Lowell and Howells, we see the man in the book his aims and purposes, hopes and fears, loves and hates, his habits and manners, his politics and his religion, his friends and his foes; but so obscure is Shakespeare's cipher that the inter- preter sees in it what he will, and claims the man for whatever he himself is Papist or Protestant, atheist or fatalist, rioter or solid citizen, royalist and aristocrat, or republican or democrat. Even in trifles Shakespeare seems noncom- mittal. Smoking was the fashion, and the new fashion set by the admired Ealeigh; scores of London shops sold tobacco; all the writers of the day, from serious Spenser to jovial Ben Jonson, from the king to the water poet, cen- sure or commend the American weed all but one; Shakespeare never mentions it. Did he smoke in those wit combats in the Mermaid, or 42 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS did he not ? When he returned to his home in Stratford, did he find in his pipe consolation for gay society, or was he denied the soothing influence? Here, as in questions of greater import, the answer is according to the inclina- tion of the respondent. Nobody knows. Nobody can make any positive affirmation in regard to the habits of Shakespeare. Behind the mask of tragedy or of comedy the man seems to baffle the shrewd and to laugh at the wise. To try to snatch away the mask, or even to peep under it, smacks of audacity. Yet perhaps this is all a superstition, and though not so easily or so thoroughly read as others, still the man in his larger features may be recognized in what he did. At all events, one may make the attempt. That conclusions from the same premises should be different and even opposite is due to the character of the time, and to the com- prehensive, impartial mind of the poet, as well as to the idiosyncrasies and limitations of the investigator. The current of public interest was nearing a tremendous crisis ; questions were rising of wider and higher importance than any that had ever yet disturbed the English mind. 43 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS In the political and spiritual change involved in church affairs there was a moral interreg- num. Men were fiercely taking sides. Dissen- sion and severance threatened national, re- ligious, social, and even domestic life. One man, and perhaps only one, found the broad bottom on which stood together Puritan and Anglican, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic, the nascent republican and the full-grown be- liever in the divine right of kings, the scholar, the sage, the child and the fool the basis where are all the elements that in various combina- tions form individual life, character, and action. A nature so broad that it embraced all in knowl- edge was so deep that it included all in love. The head and the heart are really the same one living thing, and not two. Shakespeare, the myriad-minded, was necessarily the large- hearted, the myriad-hearted, so thoroughly comprehensive of all, that each partisan finds himself included, and is able to cut out his own field of belief. But in spite of this comprehen- siveness, this many-sidedness, Shakespeare had his own character and his own opinions. And he had not only the genius to understand and to 44 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS love, but the courage of the day, shown by other men on the high seas and in the desperate bat- tles of France, and Spain, and Holland, and in the no less desperate council chamber of Eliza- beth. He exerted it in his own sphere, in opposition to rules of the classics, creating an imaginary world according to the laws of the real world, holding the mirror bravely up to nature. He was not rapid and brilliant; he felt his way at first, handling his tools cautiously, and coming slowly to their full and free use. This slowness of development was in contrast with the rush and spring of the impetuous Marlowe. Though in "Love's Labor Lost," probably Shakespeare's first play, and "Hamlet," written in the maturity of his powers, there is a mighty difference, careful examination of the work be- tween shows that for years the progress of the poet was slow and steady. What Cecil said of Raleigh might, I am sure, have been said of Shakespeare "He can toil terribly." Next to actual experience and observation, Shakespeare probably found in history, judg- ing by the direction his early labors took, the 45 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS most strengthening and inspiring intellectual food. Perhaps history is generally the most improving of all studies. Its humanity relieves it from the dryness, the hard exactness and the tendency to technicalities belonging to the pure sciences. Even the study of law is narrowing. Even the study of theology, strange as this may seem, is hardening. "The proper study of mankind is man." It was man that Shakes- peare studied, finding history, after real life, of most absorbing interest. The dead pages of dry chronicles were alive to him. He read there the thing, not mere names and dates; he read causes, results, meanings, characters, in all their involutions, evolutions, revolutions, complexi- ties and mysteries. He took insight, imagina- tion, sympathy, to the pages of history, and gathered there food for his genius. He thought profoundly, reflecting on the relation of one to the whole, of the whole to one, of all to God, and of God to all. He saw that beauty, and royalty, and riches, and genius, and glory, and life itself, are lighter than feathers in the scales of justice ; that as surely as there is sin there is retribution; that the innocent are often swal- 46 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS lowed up with the guilty; that, though the greatest effects may follow the slightest causes, there remains an indestructible moral order; that goodness can not fail; that truth, though it speak with the voice of Cassandra, and no man may believe it, will forever stand. In the living tide of which he formed a part he saw the same growth, the same action and interaction of character, the same appalling vicissitudes of fortune that made the attraction of history. "Not of an age, but for all time," he still reflected current thought and feeling; he sympathized with contemporary actors, with the explorers of the high seas, the colonizers of new worlds, with English soldiers in foreign lands, with patriot statesmen at home. He understood the bright, brave, hard queen on the throne, the bright, brave, bad queen in the prison and on the scaffold. Sometimes an extraordinary burst of sunlight or a fierce gleam of lightning for a moment opens to common eyes the secret chambers of another's life such moments Shakespeare held, making the tran- sient flash a lasting day. In all Shakespeare's works are proofs of a 47 SHAKESPEARE AS REPEALED IN HIS WORKS lively, country boyhood. Twenty laborious years in London did not efface the remembrance of the beautiful and bountiful landscape of central England, the soft flowing and silvery river, the wide grain fields, the grassy meadows, the noble woods and the low line of undulating hills. Montaigne's father had his infant son woke on each new day, not to the rude sounds of bustling business, but to strains of softest music, in order that peace and joy and harmony might be infused into the very stuff of the soul. Happy the child that in his first breathings, his fancies and dreams and plays, in his first, wondering acquaintance with this marvelous world, hears nature's music the murmur of waters, the rustle of leaves, the whisper of breezes, the singing of birds. Only one who in childhood had learned the wild flowers, wild birds and forest trees, and who retained the keen edge of childish impressions, could speak of them and their kindred with Shakespeare's knowledge and affection. His touch is like a caress; he names the pretty creatures of the wood as if he kissed them. Only one who had felt a child's rapture in the sights and sounds 48 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS of spring could give the delicate strokes that mark his allusions to the season: " When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight: " when the "daffodils come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty." He well knows the willow, "that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." The Avon is fringed in many places with willows, and the man remembered what the boy had noted, that the hoary underside of the leaf was reflected in the water. Nobody felt with more devotion of spirit the general aspect of the world of nature than did Milton "The nodding horror of the shady wood," the solemnity of "the gray-hooded even, like a sad votarist in palmer's weed," "the dingle," "the bushy dell," "the bosky bourn," and "every flower that sad embroidery wears;" but the city poet's allusions and descriptions have not the sharp shining edge that marks the effusions of the poet who was born in the little country town of Stratford and wandered 49 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS as a boy through the meadows, fields and vil- lages roundabout. " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows." sang Shakespeare; sang, too, of "violets dim, but sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes or Cytherea's breath." Chaucer knelt 'TTpon the smale, softe, sweete gras" to see the unclosing of the daisy, which ''blissful sight softened all his sorrow." His note is like that of the greater and later poet, Shakespeare. "If music be the food of love, * * * That strain again * * * Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!" The healthiest and happiest hearts are grounded in this sympathy with the natural world. Without it, Shakespeare would still be a great poet, but he would not be "Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, warbling his native wood notes wild." The wits and poets of the century after Shakespeare wondered at the simplicity and dulness of his women. He had, indeed, no place for the brilliant society woman; but he had 50 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS evidently, early in his life, somewhere seen, known and loved the truest and highest type of womanhood. Mary Arden, the youngest but one of nine or ten sisters, by her father's will made executrix of his considerable estate, may have possessed strength of character, as well as gentle blood. Anne Hathaway may have been a woman to fascinate for life. Johnson, D'Israeli, Lord Eussell and many others loved devotedly women with whom there was even greater disparity of age than existed between Shakespeare and Anne. However the poet gained the knowledge, he knew the nature of women. He also knew children and was the first to introduce them into literature. Before him the little martyr whose fame Chaucer sings, and a boy with a magic mouth, are the only children in English story. With Shakespeare, they come trooping to the stage of life. Noble little tragic beings they are, mostly, but we have also the child who is full of frolic and fun. The great poet honored women and loved children. Mark Twain says that when he thinks out a good thing in his study it is so real to him that 51 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS then and there he has his laugh. Dickens de- clared that he so agonized over his works that he could not rid himself of the personages his teeming brain created. All through the months of labor on "The Old Curiosity Shop," Little Nell haunted him. If he walked along a coun- try road he saw her gathering flowers in a meadow; if he sat on a bench to rest he saw her there, comforting the old man; when he threaded his way through the crowded street she slipped her little hand into his hand and lifted her confiding eyes to his face; when he turned into an alley she met him at the corner or looked over his shoulder. Everywhere and always he saw the dear face that his own fancy had made a real thing. So, and doubly so, Shakespeare must have been attended. Imagine him at his desk setting Glendower and Hot- spur going, making Falstaff not only witty him- self, but the cause of wit in others; hearing Dogberry urge: "Oh, that I had been writ down an ass!" If Mark Twain can laugh at Huckleberry Finn, fancy the merriment of the creator of Holofernes, and Dull, and Moth, and Sir Toby, and Malvolio, and Maria, and Verges, 52 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS and Dogberry, and Prince Hal, and Falstaff, as they disputed and bragged and capered about him at his desk, or strutted and staggered and larded the lean earth, as he walked the streets ! Perhaps it was in the parks about Stratford, or in the hunting grounds near London, as he rested beside the "brawling brook" where "The green leaves quiver in the cooling wind, and make chequered shadows on the ground," that these creations of his brain thronged about him in the greatest number. There he held the lists and saw fell Mowbray and haughty Boling- broke checked by the cry: "The King hath thrown his warder down." There King Harry, in his young wisdom, held council of state. But thicker than warriors or statesmen would come in his happy moods the gay figures of fantastic comedy. The bright and airy Rosalind would comfort the weaker vessel and allow the fool to comfort her. The gay Beatrice and the merry Benedick would sharpen their wits upon each other and be caught in their own toils. The woods would be full of the playful and the beautiful. Shakespeare's mirthfulness em- braces everything of the laughter-loving and 53 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS laughter-producing sting, satire, philosophic irony, flashing wit, playful jest, gentle humor and also coarse, indecent fun. Custom then permitted a freedom of lan- guage and allusion that would now be intoler- able. Words in some instances have changed their meaning, and are more gross now. Other playwrights were worse than he. But even after these allowances, it must be admitted that the master spirit of the time, the greatest genius of our English race, was sometimes guilty of pandering to the coarse demands of the pit, or to the vile taste of the court, or possibly of grossly indulging his own sense of the ludicrous. Yet, though stooping to indecency, Shakes- peare never excused frivolity. He represents the flippant soul as capable of treachery and murder. His exuberant, abounding mirthful- ness is seldom unmixed mirthfulness. There is nearly always a shadow in the background. The fun may grow fast and furious, but through it all, or after it all, comes an awful sense of responsibility, or a fearful moment of retribu- tion. The seriousness of life is never long absent from Shakespeare's thoughts. In the 54 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS midst of scenes of mirth he is aware of the shadow of death, or mistake or shame. And there came a time, apparently, when he was not a mere looker on and sympathizer, when his own sunny soul was clouded over and tempest- tossed. Whether he suffered disappointment in the character of one he loved or ingratitude's thankless tooth, or slander's venomed spear, or the heavy burden of others' woes, we can not know. We know only that for some reason his soul went down into the grave, yet not to death, for he now struggled to solve urgent but in- solvable questions. The dark time passed, leav- ing the terrible yet magnificent creations with which he thronged "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Timon," and though he never more flashed out in wild wit and mirth, he was again happy and playful. We can trace in Shakespeare's work his esti- mation of the bonds of kinship, friendship, society and religion ; of all, indeed, of the ties that bind man to his fellows and to his God. Kindred are bound by "holy cords which are too intrinse to unloose." A child's duty to her father is a "holy duty." A spasm of filial love 55 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS holds back the hand of a murderer. The daugh- ter's heart breaks with tenderness as she bends over the father's unconscious form. Marriage is "a contract of eternal bond of love, confirmed by mutual joinder of the hands, attested by the holy close of lips." Never does Shakespeare find carelessness in regard to domestic bonds attractive. The last ties to be severed by wick- edness are the ties between husband and wife. Until they are maddened by crime, Macbeth and his wife retain their affection; then she, consumed by one thought, dies alone, and he gives her but a passing word: "She should have died hereafter." Fidelity of any kind the dramatist loves to honor. The mere mention of their names brings to mind the friendship of Antonio and Bassanio, Valentine and Proteus, Celia and Rosalind, Beatrice and Hero, Horatio and Ham- let, the devotion of old Adam to young Orlando, of Pauline to Hermione, Emilie to Desdemona, of the fool to Lear,, and of Kent to Cordelia. Only one in whose own royalty of nature friend- ship and faith were planted deep could have so nobly told the noble story of their loves. In 56 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS his thirtieth sonnet we have Shakespeare in his own person bemoaning the loss of friends and turning with sure faith and with love that wants consolation to the friend who remains. He had great capacity for trust, utter freedom from low-born and low-bred suspicion, and yet was so wise ! He might have been mistaken some- times; he never could be unappreciative or unforgiving. And how compassionately would his large heart perceive mistake or error ! How generously his hand would snatch the humbled spirit from a cruel world or from its own cruel despair! How he would believe in the sorely wounded soul, and with what refinement of love he would infuse consolation, hope and courage ! Peradventure for a friend some would even dare to die. Such a friend Shakespeare must have been. He hated "ingratitude more in man than any taint whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood." With scorn of scorn he rebuked back-wound- ing calumny. " 'Tis slander, Whose edge Is sharper than the sword; whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath 57 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie All corners of the world: kings, queens, and state, Maids, matrons nay, the secrets of the grave This viperous slander enters." The burial song of the two royal boys in the mountains " Fear no more the lightning- flash, Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; Fear not slander, censure rash, Thou hast finished joy and moan" is only less sad than the saddest lines: "Done to death by slanderous tongues;" "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." Shakespeare's vilest char- acter is not Claudius, who murders his brother, marries his brother's wife, and cheats his broth- er's son; nor Macbeth, whose cruel heart con- demns to death king and kinsmen, friend and fellow soldier, woman and child. His vilest character is not the murderer, it is the slan- derer, "whose tongue is set on fire of hell." lago is "slanderous as Satan." Shakespeare, with his keen enjoyment of the placid country, of the stirring city, of friend- ship and society, and wit and wine, and the pomp of circumstance, probably dreaded the thought of dying, and it may have been that 58 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS he spoke from his own quivering heart when he represented a reckless youth, arrested in the midst of revelry hy sentence of death, as crying out : Death is a fearful thing ! " To die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod. * * * Or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and uncertain thought* Imagine howling! 'Tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life, That age, ache, penury and Imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death." Who that knows vigorous, powerful, intense life, does not shrink from the thought of the glazed eye, the dull, cold ear, the narrow bed heaped with heavy earth? As the touch of a corpse was a horror to the ancient Israelite and unfitted him for the holy service of the temple, so to intense vitality is the suggestion of death. There is such a vast and awful gulf between life and death. Hamlet's soliloquies are Hamlet's. Yet they may represent a doubting state of the author's mind. "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine un- belief," was the prayer of one who knew his 59 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS soul to be the battlefield of opposing powers of faith and of fear, of hope and of despair, of doubt and of assurance. There were, "ob- stinate questionings" in the poet's mind, and he was shaken "with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls" ; but he worked unswervingly ac- cording to the great principles of the moral world. No other uninspired writer has shown with such power the writhings of a wounded conscience. No other has shown so plainly, to use the words of Lowell, that "One sin forever involves another, and that the key that unlocks forbidden doors to our will or passion, leaves a stain on the hand that may not be so dark as blood, but that will not out." No other has more forcibly held up to our view a merciful Eedeemer. "Why, all the souls that are, were forfeit once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy." No other has shown so well that, though in- nocence and virtue may be cast down, they can not fail ; that the memory of the just is blessed ; that the name of the wicked shall not live ; that 60 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS there are times when the kingdom of heaven can be taken only by violence. When we see a princess, delicate and tender as the blossoms of early spring, bearing herself in deep and terrible abandonment with pa- tience, with common sense, with resolute cour- age; when we see a determined girl play the part of a learned physician and of a lonely pilgrim to save the man she loves from a dis- solute life; when we see divorced wives and disgraced queens and dishonored lords deport themselves with queenly or with lordly dignity, we receive a just and generous inspiration. When we see that, relentless as fate, the poet brings swift and dire retribution on those who fail to meet the demands of their situation, we recognize justice in its power and its ter- ror. Prospero, tempted from affairs and the du- ties of state by his love of books, loses his duke- dom. Hamlet, perplexed among conflicting claims, dies a failure. Othello, who, spite of the most damning evidence, ought to have be- lieved in the fair Desdemona, doubts and is lost. Claudio fails in the hour of trial, Leo- 61 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS natus fails, Macbeth fails. Angelo shamefully fails. Thus Shakespeare weighs his characters, while he seems only to be allowing them to live according to the inventions of their own hearts. On our first reading we scarcely know, more than they, that they are in a state of trial. It is only when we pause and reflect, that the pro- found gravity of situation and circumstance presses upon us. Then, as the seemingly strong and noble yield to the tempter and go down to ruin, we almost feel the throb of the great heart of their creator. The same powerful subject is dramatically treated by both Shakespeare and Milton in "Antony and Cleopatra" and in "Samson Agonistes." Before the opening of his drama Milton's hero has been brought to shame, cap- tivity and blindness, and has revolted against the blandishments of the siren. In prison, and in chains, his soul rises to its native height, and though he falls the victim of Delilah's wiles, he snatches triumph from the jaws of defeat. The tenderness, sympathy, scorn, re- lentless justice, with which Shakespeare treats that mighty ruin, Mark Antony, who before our 62 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS eyes, swiftly slides down the slope of self-indul- gence to the pit of perdition, make a picture still more awful. In "Samson Agonistes" the poet speaks with a judicial severity that can not be misunder- stood; in "Antony and Cleopatra" the drama- tist's tone of mocking irony deceives the unthinking. Yet Shakespeare was no mocker. Not Milton himself was more strict when pun- ishment was to be meted out. But he had what Milton had not, sympathy for every variety of human nature, a sympathy born of the heart, which in estimate of character is more discern- ing than the head. In both these great poets, so nearly contem- porary, there is always a certain heroism, a glorious patriotism and devoted love for their England the "precious stone set in the silver sea," a noble trust in humanity and a lofty hope for the race. Byron makes us feel that the world is disorderly, licentious, cruel and fierce. Jt has been well said that the earth peopled with Byron's heroes Giaours, Laras, Cains, and Don Juans would be a hell. Fancy, on the other hand, a world of Cordelias, Kents, Edgars, 63 SHAKESPEARE AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS Violas, Portias ! Shakespeare is happy with the happiness of a sweet, healthy spirit, "radiant," Carlyle would say, "with pepticity." Byron is miserable; the whole head and heart are sick, and he satirizes and jeers and hates. Through all the stir and tumult of life, Shakespeare sees law and order, the thread of duty binding day to day; confusion only when this thread is broken or tangled or lost. Both Shakespeare and Byron acknowledge a divinity that shapes our ends. One makes the acknowledgment with awe ; the other shakes his fist in the face of the Almighty ! We rise from Shakespeare with re- newed interest in life, with renewed love for our kind, with renewed courage and strength, with gratitude to the interpreter of our mysteri- ous world (obscure though his own understand- ing of the mystery often is), and with wonder and admiration for his mighty powers. We close Byron penetrated with the greatness, the awfulness of his genius, yet with faith unset- tled, hope bewildered, with some feeling of repugnance and with almost an infinite pity. Some read in Shakespeare's works that he had no faith in God; none deny that he had 64 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS faith in man; if you trust your brother, can you not trust God? When I heard it said with reverence by a reader of the great dramatist, "He knew what was in man as no other knew except Jesus Christ," I thought of Hazlitf s report of the conversation on the persons one would wish to have seen. '"There is only one other person I can ever think of after this," con- tinued Lamb. "If Shakespeare were to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him, but if that Person were to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of His garment." " Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth. Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant, loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more, So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men. And Death once dead, there is no more dying then." 65 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME On the 12th of April, 1861, an intensely excited crowd in Indianapolis waited all day- long for a telegraph despatch, no business at- tended to, nothing thought of but the coming message. The interest of months, the absorbing thought of weeks had culminated in a passion of anxiety something decisive, something ter- rible was coming. But even yet there was an inconsistent, contradictory feeling of incredu- lity, of mocking, and of hope. At ten o'clock at night the despatch came: "Sumter has fallen." The crowd was abso- lutely still, and, with all the preparation of sus- pense, surprised. Rebellion, rebellion was what it meant; and that rebellion meant madness was every man's thought. But there was another message: "Mr. Lin- coln will issue a proclamation to-morrow call- ing for seventy-five thousand volunteers." The crowd broke into a fierce shout. These auda- cious southern sons of the Republic should 66 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS learn what it was to defy just and lawful au- thority. That memorable Saturday was followed by a memorable Sunday. Not that any new thing occurred; all was new; life itself was new. That 12th of April revealed to men what their country was to them. In the insult to the high and just power of government, each man had been knocked down and trampled on. When the flag rose and swelled in the air, and dripped and drooped along the staff, a great and terrible pain throbbed in every heart; a strange, new- born, passionate, wounded, outraged love of country. The military institutions of Indiana con- sisted of a Quartermaster-General and an Adjutant-General, who were paid about one hundred dollars a year. Perhaps the whole state might have furnished arms for a single regiment ; and possibly it might have mustered five independent companies of militia. But pro- visions and materials for war were absolutely lacking. There were, of course, no knapsacks, no haversacks, no canteens, no tents, and there was no money. In Indianapolis there was noth- 67 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME ing that smacked in the least of war except a poor little powder house somewhere in the sub- urbs, and the contents of that were meant for war on birds and squirrels. In twenty years the finances of Indiana had not been so low. The members of the Legislature and other state officers had been paid from the school fund, so empty was the treasury. The Executive department seemed in as bad a condition. The Governor, a tried and trusted man, had been put in the United States Senate, and had left the chief authority in the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor, a person named Morton. Who knew anything about Morton? But before the President's proclamation was out this new man had sent agents abroad for arms, and five minutes after the President's call for volunteers the Indiana Governor's call for In- diana's part of the seventy-five thousand was thrilling along the wires. If you have read the "Lady of the Lake" you remember that when Eoderick Dhu and Fitz James stood on the desert mountain, as much alone as if they were the only men in all the Highlands, at a whistle from Eoderick: 68 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS " Instant, thro* copse and heath, On right, on left, above, below, Sprung up at once the lurking foe: As if the yawning hill to heaven A subterranean host had given." Thus Governor Morton's call was responded to. Fifteen thousand men answered. More than eight thousand came streaming into Indian- apolis, and trooped, shouting, through shouting crowds to the spot assigned them for a camp, the grove north of the city, named at once "Camp Morton," for the man suddenly the best known personage in the state. This spot was selected because of its beauty, healthf ulness and convenience. It contained thirty-six acres, was high and dry, could be easily supplied with wells of cold, pure water, and could be readily drained by means of a stream which ran through one end. Tall, spreading trees lightly shaded a blue-grass carpet, bordered in the fence corners with wild flowers. Flowers and grass never again spread over those acres. The volunteers were nearly all young men, and though many were clerks, lawyers, doctors and mechanics, the majority were farmers. It may be true that they who own land love their country best. INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME The story, as told by their mother, of two country boys in the 7th Eegiment, which was one of the first to be formed in Camp Morton, shows a little of the love and manliness that went into the army. These two young men were away from home, at work on a neighbor's farm, when the call reached them. It was on a Saturday (the 19th). The younger put his name down first on the enlistment roll. He was a good boy, said his mother, but he was thoughtless, and he had a weak chest; so the elder, partly for his country but partly for his brother, enlisted, too. He was twenty years old, steady and religious; his mother was not uneasy about him, nor was she uneasy about the younger, for had he not his brother to care for him, and was it not a good cause? They did not come home on Saturday nor on Sunday; she "reckoned" they could not tell her. And they went away without a goodby, except in a letter which some one brought her the same morning. But from Indianapolis, they sent her their daguerreotype and another letter which the mother read so often that she could say it by heart, beginning with the date and 70 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ending with "Yours till death." "I wander around these hills," she said, "day and night, thinking about these two boys, for they are all I have, and wondering if they will ever come home again." Thousands of such boys were there in Camp Morton, while far away on the farm, often by the fireside of a lonely cabin, the mother, in plaintive voice, told the tale of their enlistment. Sometimes, as the war went on, the neighbors told of long, unrepining sor- row, of the light in the eyes gone out, of the fire on the hearth quenched. The volunteers were the best army material in the world, but they were only material; to turn them into soldiers was no easy task. It is a fact that "right" and "left" had to be explained by "haw" and "gee" for some of the country boys. In some cases, it is said, officers ordered wisps of straw wound around one foot, of hay about the other, and the drilling began easily with, "Hay-foot! straw-foot!" One of these slow, dull men of whom I personally knew burst out into a full blown hero in his first battle. His bearing, from that of an awk- ward booby, became dignified and soldierly. 71 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME He entered into the full meaning of patriotism, and into the full heritage of his soul, when he saw himself face to face with death. He was only one of many. The very dullest intellect may have sleeping behind it a glorious soul. To learn subordination was even harder than to learn military tactics. When a man had to go to another, not a bit better, possibly, than himself, and with whom he had perhaps been "hail fellow," and ask if he might go "down street," it filled him with consternation and wrath. He sometimes rebelled on the spot, and did not feel less rebellious when he was locked up in the guard house. In those first days everybody knew everything that took place at Camp Morton and public opinion was usually with the delinquent. No doubt the poor fellow had left a good home where he had luxuries of the table, soft beds, and freedom and fun to his heart's content; where there were few temp- tations, where his mother and his father had been his familiar friends and he had never dreamed of obeying anybody. The hardest lesson, therefore, was to obey, but, though more natural to command, neither was this easy. A 72 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS man had to know something in order to drill a squad. Three or four elderly officers had been trained in West Point, and three or four more had been in the Mexican War. These, and books on military discipline, were in demand. All who aspired to become officers studied Har- dee's "Tactics." " They conned their books, but grasped them tight And studied, morning, noon and night." The delay necessary for drill was repugnant to the feelings of the volunteers. A tremendous impatience tugged at their heart-strings, and tingled to their finger ends. They stretched their limbs and doubled their fists, they set their teeth and loudly declared they were spoil- ing for a fight. "Eight ! Left ! Shoulder arms !" The war would be over and no glory for In- diana ! But the outspoken anger of these was light in comparison with the sullen wrath of those who were obliged to go back to their homes because the number was restricted to six thousand. Some actually cried. Governor Morton urged on the cabinet the danger of dampening enthusiasm, and his policy at length prevailed. In May and June new calls were 73 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME made ; and in August all restrictions on volun- teering were removed. The Governor's test in appointing officers was the energy and ability with which men had pursued their own busi- ness, and he made few mistakes. When 1861 closed, Indiana had sixty thou- sand men in the field ; and the numerous camps around Indianapolis were still full. Our sol- diers were no better or no braver than men from other states, but they were the tallest men in the army, and were fine, frank, manly fellows. Their way of speaking to all they met, said to be a habit more common among the country people of Indiana than of any other state, was very pleasant. The feeling between soldiers and citizens was friendly and free. The blue coat was an introduction to general good will. Our hands, our houses, our hearts were open to our soldiers. And people did not tire of liberality. The war was no sixty-day affair, as had been promised. It went on and on and recruiting went steadily on. The troops in town, though always changing, were never gone. The streets were always thronged. In a little more than four years, Indiana gave to the army more 74 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS than two hundred thousand men ; not counting fifty thousand who, from time to time, were called into service to repel invaders and to defend the southern border. The town was full of noise and bustle, fire and fun, and feeling of every kind. The rub-a-dub of the drum, the wail of the fife, the tramp and rush of infantry and cavalry, the rattle and rumble of artillery ; the cheers that went up day and night cheers of welcome, cheers of greeting, cheers of fare- well the singing everywhere and at all hours of the "Star Spangled Banner" "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" or "John Brown's Body;" the red, white and blue, not only in the flags that were flying in the camps, over the hospitals, through all the streets, in the churches and in the homes, but in dress and in ornaments ; the blue coats, the brass buttons and epaulets, the fuss and feathers, the public receptions, the flag presentations all made such life and stir as probably Indianapolis will never again see. The shouts deep in the night, when some long train was starting off with its closely packed living freight towards the danger of the front, had a tremulous, penetrating, wild sort of pathos; 75 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME and the songs at night were more thrilling than in the day. The city was not only busy and bustling, it was growing. From eighteen thousand the population became seventy-five thousand, though this increase, of course, was not all permanent. All sorts of business flourished, from house building and woolen manufacture, to photo- graphing ; that is, from necessities to luxuries. An arsenal was established which sometimes employed five hundred persons. In 1861 there had been prepared at the arsenal, ninety-two thousand rounds of artillery ammunition, and twenty-one million nine hundred and fifteen thousand five hundred rounds of ammunition for small arms. The little hospital, started with much grumbling a few years before, was not half large enough, and an addition much larger than the original was built. Indianapolis was the center of the State Sanitary Commission, the first organization of the kind in the United States, which supplied the soldier everywhere, by means of agents em- ployed without wages or salary or any pecuniary remuneration, with whatever the government 76 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS failed to furnish for his comfort and advantage in the hospital, in the camp, on the march or on the field. Alfred Harrison, of this city, was treasurer, and, with Mr. Hannaman and Mr. Merritt, chiefly, though many others were en- gaged, dispensed four hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars. They visited every field after each important battle, taking with them every- thing that sick, wounded or sound soldiers might need. In hospitals they gave advice, con- solation and refreshment. Northwest of the town they built a large and commodious chapel for the soldiers who, at that distance, were tempted to stay away from the city churches. The sanitary goods were furnished by private contribution. Women canned fruit for the sol- diers. They knit socks and mittens for them, often placing a little ball for darning and a little letter of kindness and encouragement in the toe of a sock. They scraped lint and pre- pared bandages. They worked for men they never had seen as they worked for their own sons. Housekeeping suffered. The call to give a dinner to a regiment passing through town on its way to the front, or to one that had just 77 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME arrived, was as promptly obeyed as it was per- emptory. Hastily filling their baskets with the best in pantry or cellar, women ran to the rail- way station and joyfully served at tables. Our country and its danger, our soldiers and their hardships pressed not as a weight, but as a motive to constant and untiring exertion. The men who could not go to the field urgently and earnestly supported the soldiers. All the powers of Governor Morton's fine mind were in strenuous toil. He lived but for the country and the army. Already his health was breaking, but he could not sleep nor rest without being assured that all was done that could be done. It was no uncommon thing to see him enter the Union station at midnight, at one, two or three in the morning, that he might satisfy himself as to the comfort of the troops waiting there for transportation. This friend of the soldiers rests now in Crown Hill, with the sleeping heroes stretched beside him. At first, with the principal moving cause, patriotism, were mingled a wild love of adven- ture and a proud and scornful joy in the pros- pect of speedy victory, and of a glorious home- 78 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS coming. But soon the dark side of war showed itself. The hospital, with its extensive addi- tions, was crowded with sick and wounded sent up from the southern battlefields. Often and often a long narrow pine box on the pavement in front of the express office gave a shudder to the lively, passing throng. For in every box was a dead soldier, one who had gone out bloom- ing and brave, with a high heart and hope. The tidings of battle it mattered little whether of victory or defeat, for one is only less terrible than the other turned the very light into darkness. The first rumor some- times was that ten thousand had fallen; and we thought of the ten thousand homes, plunged into sudden sorrow; ten thousand mothers, or wives, or sisters, or little children whose happi- ness was blasted. We heard of our soldiers starving among the mountains of Tennessee, freezing on the plains of Missouri and slowly tortured to death in the prison pens of Libby and in Andersonville. Never went up to Heaven more fervent prayers for country and its heroes, than rose from closet and from fam- ily altar. 79 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME Some twenty or thirty women went from town as hospital nurses. One of these, an idol- ized and indulged daughter, wrote thus to her parents: "The work is only hard and sad be- cause it is so terrible to see these brave fellows suffer. I want to do it above everything. I never was half so happy in my life. It is the best blessing that God ever gave me, to let me come and help in the only way a woman can. If I may only have this work until the war is over, and the strength to do it, I shall never complain of anything again. I would buy the privilege with the happiest hour and memory I have." The most pitiful spectacle that Indianapolis ever saw was in 1862, on the anniversary of Washington's birthday, and the two following days. It was the arrival of several thousand prisoners after the surrender of Fort Donelson, gray old men and slender boys, with sad, lack- lustre eyes and haggard faces. Over butternut- dyed woolen "wa'muses" they wore quilts, blankets and strips of carpet. They carried frying-pans or tea-kettles, crackers and bacon, bundles or meal bags, stuffed with clothing or 80 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS bedding. They were thrifty small farmers from town and landless squatters from the pine hills of Mississippi, accustomed to a climate where roses bloom all the year round. They had suf- fered greatly lying in rifle-pits day and night, in rain and snow, with little food and no shelter during the entire siege. They were humiliated by the surrender, distressed by their distance from home, full of fears for their future, ex- hausted, without energy to wash themselves, despondent to the last degree, and almost with- out vitality. One-tenth of them had frozen hands or feet. Pity and curiosity, and only pity and curiosity, were on the faces which gazed on the prisoners, wearily dragging themselves to Camp Morton, relinquished to them because it was the largest and most secure of the camps. Everything possible was done for their health and comfort, yet many were at once attacked with pneumonia or kindred disease. One hun- dred and forty-four died the first month. As the city hospital and the camp hospital would not accommodate all the sick, three or four buildings in the center of the town were appro- priated to their use. They were under the charge 81 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME of Doctors Bobbs, Bullard, Dunlap, Jameson and Fletcher. Inspectors from Washington at regular intervals examined the camp and hos- pitals. Dr. Bullard's hospital was the old post- office, near the corner of Meridian and Wash- ington streets. The Doctor asked me, among other women, to help in getting it ready, as he wished not to lose an hour or a minute. We sewed up the beds, made "comforts," cut the eagle off new Federal uniforms and sewed black buttons on, spread blankets and heated bricks to put at the feet of the sick as they came from camp. We continued from that time to do what we could. One of our members, a young woman, asked her mother for a pillow to give to a Mississippian, who had complained that his head was too low. "I can't give you one," was the reply, "I stripped the house for our sick soldiers in Kentucky; you have stripped it since for the rebels, and really there is nothing left." "Then I'll give him my pillow," said the daughter. So she carried her pillow to the hospital and herself slept with a folded blanket under her head. One of the saddest sights of the war was that 82 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS presented by the prisoners from Fort Donelson, but the most pitiable was the return to the army of arrested deserters. In the single month of December, 1862, more than two thousand de- serters were taken back through Indianapolis alone. This was inconsistent with the enthu- siasm of patriotism that led men into the army. But it is no new thing to turn back after put- ting the hand to the plow. Garibaldi, when he was recruiting his forces in Italy, said : "I offer you hunger, thirst, cold, want, wounds, death who will choose these for liberty, let him follow me." Our officers were not so frank. Indeed they had not the experience. In every civil war there are two parties, smaller in number than those actively engaged, and each sympathizing with the enemy. In the South were Union people; in the North, were eecessidnists. So far as they could and dared, the secessionists of Indiana thwarted every plan of Governor Morton. Political opposition was supported by conspiracy. A day was appointed for a general uprising. Rebel officers were at the Bates House, in disguise, of course, to take command. Arms for the conspirators arrived. 83 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME The alert Governor, however, opened the boxes, finding, not only arms, but a fuse nearly a mile long, and "Greek fire" for conflagration. The "Knights of the Golden Circle" were balked. But conspirators never represent, or can repre- sent an American party. Honest difference of opinion must exist often, but will never seek to hide itself under a black mask or behind treach- erous smiles. In the summer of 1863 we had another fright; this time from the outside. It was Wednesday, the 8th of July, and the evening was as peaceful and as silent as if "no war or battle's sound was heard the world around," when suddenly came a loud clank of the alarm bell. Then there was a minute, or five min- utes, of deathly stillness. Another stroke! Another awful hush ! Then a clang, and clangor and clamor, a roar and uproar of bells every- where. When the bells stopped the air was filled with the stir of a mighty multitude. All the town was streaming towards the Bates House. I can yet hear Governor Morton's ring- ing voice from the Bates House balcony. "John Morgan is coming. He has crossed the Ohio. 84 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS He is in Indiana. H'e has with him four or five thousand horsemen and artillery. Or- ganize without delay. Go at once to your wards !" John Morgan was a wild Kentucky trooper, with a wilder troop at his heels. Burning barns was fun as well as policy to this band; clearing out ovens and pantries, stealing horses and money, were necessities of war and their business. The banks sent their gold and most of their currency to New York; the bank of the state cancelled twenty-three thousand dollars of its own issue and shipped two hundred and sixty thousand dollars in gold and currency. People concealed their valuables and hurried to enlist. Within three days thirty thousand men were organized into regiments, twenty thousand coming in from the country, although it was harvest time. University Park, all the central streets, and Virginia Avenue to the Union station were crowded with men who, at the call, had dropped everything and caught up their knapsacks. At three in the morning of the llth the alarm bell gave notice of immedi- ate danger. The citizen soldiers were hurried 85 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME off. But John Morgan fled away and his pur- suers came home and disbanded, and few were the worse for the raid. In spite of victories now and then, some of them of very great importance, the refusal of the Legislature to give help, the discovery of treachery in our own town, the continuance of the war, the constant call for troops and money, had a depressing effect. The popularity of the mournful song, "When this cruel war is over," was an indication of a decrease in vigor and buoyancy of feeling. "After all," came the thought to many minds, "was not the struggle to prove a failure? Was not our noble coun- try, the hope of the world, falling to pieces?" Never again, if our Union failed, would men be able to establish a free government. With our hopes would be blasted the prospects of man- kind. And we were growing hopeless. When the hundred-days' men were called out, it seemed a dying effort, though the call met cheerful response. Our town never saw a finer regiment than her own, the 132nd. It was not the flower of the town that had long before been carried away but the men were brave and 86 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS true. It pierced Indianapolis to the heart when, after a few days of drill and business, for many were held in the toils of business until the last moment, the regiment, on the 21st of May, 1864, was ordered off. In the short period of a hundred days' service, and hard service it was, some died, without whom, to this day, our lives have been poorer. But the darkest hour is just before dawn. While the hundred-days' men guarded bridges and roads and mountain passes, Sherman made his magnificent march to the sea. Thomas scat- tered the enemy in the southwest before him. Grant took Fort Fisher, Petersburg and Rich- mond, and prevailed on Lee to surrender. April 15th, 1865, was a fair and joyful day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and cloudless. Such a day should usher in only happiness. A single sentence put out the light : "President Lincoln has been assassinated!" There had been talk of assassination of Gov- ernor Morton, and he had been shot at one midnight as he left the heavy labors of his office. Bnt we had not really believed. Assas- sination in our country seemed impossible. Yet 87 INDIANAPOLIS IN WAR TIME the President was assassinated. He had lived through the terror and struggle. He had died in the hour of triumph. A few days later the murdered man lay in state in our old capitol; on the arch over his head, "Sic transit gloria mundi," and thou- sands upon thousands passing his bier. On the blackest of nights, the body was carried away through a lane of motionless soldier torch- bearers. On the 3d of June, 1865, peace was pro- claimed. The troops returned to Indianapolis, and were mustered out, regiment by regiment. The summer and fall were a continual jubilee. But the web of our life is of mingled threads; the bright may dazzle, but the black is there. As the regiments marched up from the Union station men and women stood here and there along the streets with eyes fixed on the flutter- ing flag, and tears pouring over their sad faces. Deaf to the welcoming shouts, blind to the re- joicing crowd, they saw shadowy figures follow- ing the flag, dim faces that would smile on them no more. The living were welcomed home with uni- 88 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS versal joy; the dead were remembered with unspeakable sorrow. But the sorrow was indi- vidual; the joy was general, for the country was saved ! The country that above all others was the hope, and is the hope, of the world. " She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, She of the open soul and open door With room about her hearth for all mankind! Oh beautiful! My country, ours once more! Among 1 the nations bright beyond compare! What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee?" It may be that none of you will be called to die or to suffer for our country, but it is some- thing to live worthily. It is a debt you owe to those who saved this fair land. 89 THE RAINBOW A MEMORY A swift, rushing April shower was just over, when the school in the hewed-log, one-roomed schoolhouse on Maryland street had its recess. The sky was of deepest blue, and all across the vault of heaven was a vivid rainbow. It stood out like a thing built apart from the sky above and the earth below. The boys and girls, as they streamed out, cheered the rainbow, and with loud laughter hurrahed for the pot of gold. They were merrier than ever when the teacher's little daughter, the youngest child in school, consented to go in search of the pot of gold. To reach it she must climb a rail fence of appalling height, with long, fiercely-pointed rails at every corner, and must find her way across a newly-plowed field that looked almost as wide as the world. The boys cheered her on and the girls helped her up the first rails. Hand over hand, foot cautiously following foot, at last she reached the dizzy top, and 90 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS dared to look down. On one side was the vast field, on the other encouraging friends, far be- low and far off. Step by step, rail by rail, bravely she climbed down and ventured out in the sticky mud. Half way across the field she felt the thrill of a great and sudden change. She looked up. There was no rainbow. She looked back. There were no children. There was nothing in the world but emptiness and silence, no color above, only a cold, gray sky; no sound, nor sight on earth only a vast solitude. 91 LITERARY CRITICISM Apples lying long in a cellar among coarse vegetables lose their native taste and smell. Most things are subject to the influence of association. Though of good family and reputable history, certain words have lost their original characteristics, and have gathered to themselves a foreign flavor and a bad odor. "Politics" is of honorable origin and good con- nection; yet our wise men are trying either to oust it from the language or to sink it irrecover- ably, and to exalt to the seat of honor the newly invented "civics," making the latter represent the science of government, teach the citizen's duties and responsibilities, and inspire an hon- est, vigorous patriotism. Though this is per- haps the only organized attempt on record to banish or degrade a word, it is no new thing for the honest laborer of one generation to become the base villain of another. "Censure," the impartial judge of the seven- teenth century, stands by the whipping-post in 92 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS the eighteenth. "Criticism" slipped into the judicial chair when "censure" dropped out of it; but "criticism" has brought on itself unmeas- ured obloquy, at one time playing the part of the venal Hastings, at another of the bullying Coke, and again of the murderous Jeffreys. Swift called critics rats, dogs, wasps, and all the other bad names he could think of. Steele, not especially rich in the language of invective, thought the critic the silliest of mortals. Wordsworth set criticism down as an inglorious employment. Even Scott had few good words for critics ; and Mrs. Oliphant calls them "born conservators of the sneers of all the ages." Shelley heaped curses upon the reviewer, who in the "Hang, Draw and Quarterly," as the new critical magazine of his day was called, had added a pang to the death throes of Keats; if he had not, as was at the time generally be- lieved, even put an end to the youthful poefs life. "Miserable man," cried Shelley; "You, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God." He goes on in naming verse : 93 LITERARY CRITICISM "Live, thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! Live! Fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! Remorse and self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow; And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt as now." Kirke White's young life, too, was saddened, and perhaps shortened, by criticism of the same character. Byron said: " 'Tis strange, the mind, that very fiery particle. Should let itself be snuffed out by an article." Strange it is, but true, that little airy noth- ings made by a breath can stab with murderous force. The principle with these savage critics seems to be that none is fit to live who is not able to bear in the infancy of his genius the windy top of Mount Taygetus, or, in the childhood of his efforts, the blood-drawing thongs of the priests of Artemis. Disgrace has been brought on criticism not more by its severity than by its eccentricity. The vagaries of authoritative opinion would lead to the conclusion that there is no standard of excellence. Atterbury exhorted Pope to put Samson Agonistes into civilized costume. For- 94 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS tunately for his own fame, the little peppery author of the Dunciad withstood the flattering proposal to reconstruct that grand production of our most sublime poet. Dryden, less modest, tagged rhymes to Paradise Lost. Johnson cen- sured the harshness of Collins and the obscurity of Gray. Congreve could not understand the dullness of Shakespeare's women. Wolcot ridi- culed Dryden's Alexander's Feast. Walpole wrote, "'She Stoops to Conquer* is a very wretched comedy;" and he spoke of its author as "that silly Dr. Goldsmith." Wordsworth held in slight esteem "Scots wha hae wi Wal- lace bled." Christopher North thought Ten- nyson a sighing, wordy fop. Hume declared that the tragedy of Douglas would outlive Hamlet. Lord Loughborough, when a motion was made in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland to prohibit the attendance of church members at the theatre, asserted that four lines of the tragedy of Douglas had in them as much power for good as was in all the sermons produced by the genius of the whole Scotch church. It is fortunate for those who are easily led 05 LITERARY CRITICISM that these doctors of literature do not by any means agree among themselves. To Macaulay Horace Walpole was a mere affected, preten- tious, worldling; Walpole was to Carlyle "a. radiant spirit." Arnold "assaying" Byron's work: " Examining it, and testing it, and weighing, Proved the gems are pure, the gold endures; While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy, 'The stones are paste, and half the gold alloy.' " Byron said that he and Scott, Wordsworth and Campbell, were all wrong, one as much as another; that Rogers and Crabbe alone of con- temporary poets were free from the errors of the day; and that the present and the next generation would finally be of this opinion. Lord Holland thought Crabbe the greatest genius of modern poets. Lord Melbourne said Crabbe degraded every subject he handled. Neither Holland nor Melbourne had any respect for Wordsworth. Lies always rot; but, says some one, "they often do their evil work before they rot." There is no doubt that many a young writer of the first quarter of the nineteenth century was dis- couraged by the forbidding tone of the review- 96 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ers; and that of those who persevered many were restrained and depressed. The finger of scorn, though it was despised and defied, and though it could not crush Skiddaw, could and did make Wordsworth egotistical, self-conscious, and self-assertive, his manners contrasting very unfavorably with the modest, good-humored ease of the readily-appreciated Scott. The great poet, however, held on the even tenor of his way, guided by his intellectual conscience, and in the end commanded respect and lifted his readers to the level of appreciation. But it was the hoary head of an old man that was crowned with honors on that stirring day at Oxford, too late for blood to burn, for cheek to flush, or heart to beat high. He conquered a peace, and for others than himself. Never again, there is reason to hope, can a rollicking set of young men, however keen their wits, venture name and fame in the excitement of vivisection. Whetted knives and sardonic grins are out of style in literature as they are in society. Ignorance is the key to the most serious mis- takes that have occurred in the history of criti- cism. Gray was obscure because the readers of 97 LITERARY CRITICISM his day, intimate with Virgil, Horace, and Terence, were ignorant of the history of their own country and ignorant of their ignorance. Wise in their own conceit, puffed up with their narrow learning and by mutual admiration (always a dangerous thing), these same critics hounded poor Chatterton on to his death; and, in destroying that desolate hoy, robbed our his- tory, if the fruit is to be guessed by the blos- som, of a brilliant chapter in its literature. "Ignorance," says a French writer, "which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is itself in matters of literature a crime of the first order." No thoughtful reader calls a book obscure without much pondering and hesitation. Goethe says, "He who would reproach an author with obscurity, ought first to make an examination of himself to be sure that he is inwardly clear. A very clear handwriting may not be legible by twilight." Coleridge puts it thus : "When we meet an apparent error in a good author, we are to presume ourselves ignorant of his under- standing, until we are certain that we under- stand his ignorance." 98 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Stupidity is one phase of ignorance. Though promised a silk gown for each one of Scott's novels she would read, and though very happy in the possession or the prospect of such attire, a young lady who appeared very well in society declared after several attempts at reading them, that Scott's novels were so dull she could not get through one. I have heard the following bits of discourse : "I don't like Howells." "Why?" "Oh, I don't know. I just don't like him." "Maybe you have no taste for that sort of thing. You would rath- er read history, biography, essays, philosophy, poetry?" "Goodness, no. I like history some- times, a little. Dickens' History of England has some real good chapters in it. Don't you think so ? Biography ? Yes, if it's interesting. I can't think of any I ever read, though. Essays? now and then. Novels? always." "Then you ought to like Howells." "Well, I don't." "I can't bear Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Why ?" "Oh, I'm a Democrat." "That has as much to do with it as the color of your hair." "No more? Well, I never read it, so I can't give any better reason." 99 LITERARY CRITICISM One might as well argue with butterflies and breezes. Prejudice is twin-sister of ignorance, and is worse because it has in it a decided element of falsehood. Hume thought Home greater than Shakespeare, because Hume and Home and Douglas and Norval were all Scotchmen. The story is told of a certain Scotch laird, that a few years after the battle of Waterloo he took his family, for economy and education, to Tours, in France, where, about 1832, he was visited by an old neighbor who had never be- fore been on the continent. The laird hos- pitably entertained his friend, showing him the curiosities of the city, until they came to some- thing which, though very interesting, he could not explain. <f Do ask this person to tell us about it," urged the visitor. "Na, na ; nathing of the kind," said the laird, "for I maun tell you that I hate the French people, and I hate their language. And hae I not hauden weel aff not to hae picked ony o' it up in fourteen years?" Prejudice is a stupendous bulwark against knowledge. Ignorance, stupidity, caprice, prejudice, are 100 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Samson's foxes, tied tail to tail with a fire brand in the midst ; but not for the destruction of the Philistines. There is no appreciation without sympathy. Milton's most sublime conceptions do not make the mathematician thrill as do the propositions that lead with the precision and exactness of line and measure through the ethereal regions from sphere to sphere and light to light. The mathematician, therefore, is not the critic for Paradise Lost. Pope looked with surprise and suspicion on the delight that Handel's music gave to London society; he asked Bolingbroke, a passionate lover of music, if this were not all affectation. He that hath no music in his soul is not the critic for the Messiah. Eepelled by his dislike of the horrible, Scott could find nothing to enjoy in Dante; neither could the easy, joy-loving soul of Leigh Hunt; and Voltaire declared that the great poem of the Middle Ages was little better than the cries of a raving maniac. It is a secret, subtile, mystic cord that binds together the souls of writer and reader; or it is one of those aerial 101 LITERARY CRITICISM pontoons De Quincey speaks of, over which thought runs to thought and soul to soul. Per- haps many a pining prisoner heard the wander- ing minstrel under his tower ; to one alone did the twang of Blondel's harp give hope and the promise of liberty. Criticism is as legitimate as is any kind of weighing, measuring, or judging. The tests, of course, belonging to the soul, not to the sense, are in more danger of being misapplied. The subject of a literary work is worthy the first consideration; is, indeed, of supreme im- portance. Many a genius has only his labor for his pains, because the subject over which he has toiled is in itself unworthy. Two bloody, brawny women engaged in fierce combat is a subject that degrades the brush and the canvas, that is unworthy of the efforts of genius, and that offends the refined taste, whatever may be the artist's knowledge of anatomy and his skill in depicting passion. Blood and brawn are not esthetic. Phineas Fletcher's noble genius was cast away on "The Purple Island." Swift wasted wit on the grossest themes. One class of novelists makes infamous choice of subjects ; 102 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS another picks out the narrow and the trivial. There are preachers who, like the old school- men, discuss with infinite pains things beyond the pale of human knowledge, or without the pale of human sympathy. An author's interpre- tation, it is true, may lift the common, though never the unclean, into the region of art; Benlinda's ringlet forever shines a constella- tion; the Dean's broomstick and the Philoso- pher's whistle are among the unforgettable; and Cowper's sofa is immortal. If the author has chosen a worthy subject, the next consideration is the prevailing and pervading thought. Sometimes the Bible, or Shakespeare, or any author under consideration may give line or sentence in which the motive is embodied. Though the verse may not have been in his mind, it has been suggested that the inspiring thought of Johnson's noble poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," is, in the Psalmisf s words, "He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul." Tennyson's "Palace of Art" is an application to intellectual and esthetic selfishness of the story of a certain rich man, "So is he that layeth up treasure for 103 LITERARY CRITICISM himself, and is not rich toward God/' It is easy to find a Scriptural text for each of Shakes- peare's tragedies. The great dramatist is said to comprehend all men, but there is One who knows still better what is in man. Prof. Dow- den, who is a sincere and an especially sympa- thetic critic, says, "The happiest moment in the hours of study of a critic of literature is when, seemingly by some divination, but really the result of patient observation and thought, he lights upon the central motive of a great work." When the key is once in hand, the analysis of a literary work is easily made and the relation of subordinate parts to each other and to the whole is easily discovered. There are readers who get scattered ideas from a work without being able to see its wholeness, its oneness. They are like the measuring worm that, for all its pains, its stretchings out and its doublings up, has no notion of the traversed sleeve. " In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts Is not the exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tls not a Up or eye we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all." It is certain, however, that one can not appre- ciate the whole without a study of the parts, nor 104 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS can one appreciate without some knowledge of style. "Bead the rules of dramatic poetry," advised a friend, as James Ralph was setting himself to work to write a play. Ralph smiled and replied, "Shakespeare writ without rules." Only to a couplet of the Dunciad does the self- satisfied dramatist owe such immortality as he gained : " Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls. And makes night hideous answer him, ye owls." It is well for lesser geniuses, whether of poet or critic, to "know the rules." Though, as it is possible to speak elegant English without being able to repeat a line of grammar, so, with the rules at the tongue's end, one may have neither sense nor taste to make proper application. But knowledge of style is not enough; be- yond knowledge is 'the feeling that is partly a gift, partly the result of training. When Thomas Chalmers was three years old he was missed one evening after dark, and was found alone in the nursery, walking up and down and saying to himself, "0 my son, Absalom! Absalom, my son, my son!" Baby though he was, he felt the mysterious beauty of style, and 105 LITERARY CRITICISM all unconsciously was developing nature's pre- cious gift and training himself to sway the heart of Scotland. Not mere training, not grammar, nor logic, nor rhetoric, nor school, can take the place of familiarity with the excel- lent. To learn by heart has a better meaning than to commit to memory. Let names and dates and rules and boundary lines be com- mitted to memory, although that treacherous faculty too often betrays ; but let the beautiful words of the great thinkers be stamped forever on the heart. The false sentiment will never be entertained as the true where such lines as these are at home: " And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass Into her face;" Or- " Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way." Or- " Look how the floor of heaven Is thick in-laid with patines of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we can not hear it." 106 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS The heart in which such lines ring and sing is attuned to harmony. Lofty sentiments set to noble music, they not only form a test for liter- ary worth, but they are in themselves spiritual riches, which, told over and over as the miser tells his gold, add a grace and a glow to pleas- ure, give sweetness to toil, softness to sorrow, and dignity to the commonness of daily life. The delicate force that lies in the accurate use of words is one of the elements of a good style. It is ungrateful as well as unappreciative to neglect the beauties of our mother-tongue. Much of the polished precision of the French language is due to the determination and per- sistence of its great authors, including its great critics. An hour before his death, Malherbe roused himself to reprove his nurse for the use of an incorrect word. His confessor repri- manded him ; but the dying man insisted that it was his duty to defend to the death the purity of his native language. It is only by the accu- rate use of words that we can communicate truth. The weightiest consideration as to the value of a book lies in its influence on character and 107 LITERARY CRITICISM life. If it make the world wider, life more interesting and more inspiring, the temper sweeter, the heart more sincere, the manners more gentle ; if it impart to the intellect some- thing higher and more vivid; if it make one stronger, wiser, better; if it "console the afflicted, add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; if it teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous" if it do all or any of this, then it has high merit. One of the most interesting things to the student of literature is the revelation of the author in his work. At what does he laugh? Shakespeare never laughs at sin nor at holiness nor at frivolity, and he shows that the frivolous are often the criminal. Over what does the author weep? What does he admire? What does he love? Does he look at man and at things with fresh eyes and a fresh soul? Are his five gateways of knowledge wide and wide open? The delight that Milton took in forms and colors, in the voices of nature, in all melo- dies and harmonies, in fragrance, in touch and 108 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS in taste, in force and softness and grace, shows a keen and wholesome vitality. So far from detracting from the enjoyment of a literary work close critical study gives it a zest. There is a little affectation in Andrew Lang's self-pity. "It is a cruel thing," he says, "that where all the rest love, you can only ad- mire; where all the rest are idolaters, you may not hend the knee, but must stand apart and beat upon your breast, observing, not adoring a critic." More sincere and more correct are the words of Saintsbury: "Of the critical in- tent, one thing can be said with confidence that the presence and the observation of it, so far from injuring the delight of reading, add to that delight in an extraordinary degree. It heightens the pleasure in the perusal of the best by transforming a confused into a rational appreciation." The critic's responsibility is threefold to himself, to the reader, and to the writer. Slov- enly and false work of any kind tells on char- acter. Superficial judgment, hasty and ill- informed opinion, blunt the power of discrimination and dull the sense of right. 109 LITERARY CRITICISM Always to do one's best insures not only peace of mind but continued growth. The courage of one's own convictions gives self-respect and dignity. The censure of small critics may never offend, and may never mislead; all the same, it should be honest. The critic is guide and interpreter. Joubert says: "To accustom mankind to pleasures which depend neither upon the bodily appe- tites nor upon money by giving them a taste for the things of mind, seems to me, in fact, the one proper fruit which nature has meant our literary productions to have." The critic directs attention to the beautiful, the noble, and the good. He points out meanings, excel- lences, glories; opens out mysteries; shows, too, blunders, blots, and blemishes that the inexperienced and the untraveled in the world of books might not for himself discover. He does for the reader what the sister of nature's great poet did for him. " She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; ***** A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy." Every traveler knows the sickness of the heart that comes from learning too late what he has 110 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS missed. Perhaps his profane thoughts were wandering to trifling personal affairs while he stood all unawares on places sacred to God love and to human love the very spot, perhaps, where the venerable Latimer lifted up a cheer- ful voice amid fagot and flame; or where the beautiful Mary and the princely Maximilian exchanged troth and kisses in the faces of the loving and loyal city, and so turned the current of European history. A guide or a guide-book saves the uninformed traveler (and who can be informed of everything?) such heart-pangs of regret. The critic, I repeat, is a guide. We hold in grateful remembrance the hand that planted the tree that shades our door, or trained the vine that yields us grapes, and we owe grateful reverence and love to him who made for us a good book "who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares." We owe nothing for the "books that are no better than wolves in sheep's clothing." We owe it to none to call ugliness, beauty; awkwardness, grace; false- hood, truth, or wrong in any way, right. Black is black, crooked is crooked, wrong is wrong, whatever the reason, wherever the place. Ill LITERARY CRITICISM It is not necessarily presumption for the small to measure and judge the great. In one of Tolstoi's novels a handsome old peasant is asked what he thinks of the Emperor's procla- mation of war about which everybody is talking. "Why should we think ?" he answers smilingly ; "our Emperor will think for us. He knows what to do." In the Empire of Letters any- body who claims any sort of citizenship must think. It is not an empire, it is a republic, and all have the franchise. That only a Shakes- peare can fully and perfectly measure a Shakes- peare is no reason why any one may not make a study of Shakespeare, and, so far as he can, measure and master the mighty work of the mightiest of minds. The student's failure may mark his own littleness, but the effort tends to lift him above and beyond his narrow limita- tions. "Their works drop groundward," says Andrea del Sarto, of the artists, who, inferior to him in workmanship, had still an inspiration to which he was a stranger, " Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me." 112 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS The greatest of writers would not smile, un- less with happy pride, to see the unpracticed student reaching toward his thought, and try- ing to discover the secret of his higher life. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp." 113 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN AGE [This essay and the one following, on "John Fos- ter," are the only ones completed of a series begun by Miss Merrill during the last year of her life. The two were published at the time in the Indianapolis News.] In beginning a series of papers on English literature, it seems proper to confine myself to one period, and, for a time, to one class in that period. There has been no narrowness in the taste of the nineteenth century. History nourishes as it never before nourished; science, in ceasing to be the antithesis of poetry and the antagonist of religion, has become popular and familiar; biography fills libraries; essays occupy many pages in the magazines, and, to the world, still crying, "Tell me a story!" a thousand pens respond, "Here is your story !" In this century, too, is an eagerness to read actual life, life more real than the realistic novel, more real than biography itself; and a 114 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS generous consent accords to the world a tran- script of the actual in the form of private let- ters and unstudied work of the kind really not work, but literary play. It is well. It may be gossip, but gossip is not the worst thing! Words, like characters, usually retain, through the vicissitudes of their career, something of their original stamp. "Godsib" means a rela- tion, not a relation in blood, but in God; and the godsib, or gossip, in the first use of the word, assumed a sacred and tender responsibility at the beautiful rite of baptism. It therefore has claim to respectability in so far as it has but a neighborly, sympathetic interest in the affairs of others. In its first and proper meaning, it is distinct from scandal and free from frivolity. Personal literature, such as memoirs, letters and diaries, is a fine kind of gossip. It touches the springs of humor, pathos and the kindly curiosity that is one form of the love of human- ity. It gratifies the desire to know the concrete. Its very unconsciousness of being literature gives it the charm of artlessness. When you see the author at his desk, at his fireside, when you hear his table-talk, when in silence and sym- 115 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN AGE pathy you read his intimate letters you sun yourself in his friendship. The soul has its friendships quite dissevered from time and space. Tears came into the eyes of Dr. Thomas Arnold once when he heard John the Apostle disparaged in favor of St. Paul. He would not diminish the glory of Paul, but he loved John. Until lately, English literature was almost devoid of epistolary correspondence, of any- thing, indeed, that savored of personal dis- closure. English nature seemed too reticent or too proud, too cold or too indifferent to let the public get a peep behind English walls. Though it might be all dust and desert without, all roses and fountains within, the tired way- farer should have no whiff of fragrance or drop of coolness. Added to this reserve was an ex- treme carelessness in regard to the preservation of papers. Letters passing from hand to hand were worn to rags, and the more bulky forms of this literature, if they escaped fire and sword, division of families, removals, and the all- destroying bookworm, mildew, and dust, were hidden, perhaps lost, in a dark shelf of an un- explored library. But libraries have been 116 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS searched, and their treasures exposed. The islanders have grown cosmopolitan. No longer satisfied with a slightly contemptuous enjoy- ment of French wit, veracity and candor, they have, within the last hundred years, not only published private papers, which they have drawn from obscure corners and crannies, they are now handing out to the lovers of the past and of the curious their own reminiscences. And Americans, though possessing even a greater share of Anglo-Saxon aversion to pub- licity, because of greater sensitiveness to ridi- cule, arising possibly from vanity, added to a sort of childlike pain and anger at being touched even Americans have yielded to the current. There is something of fashion -in thought as well as in dress. A thing once be- gun and commended goes on with increasing force. The oldest series of English letters that we have are the Paston letters. According to Hal- lam, the historian of the middle ages, these letters supply a precious link in the chain of the moral history of England. John Selden, eminent scholar, lawyer and patriot of the sev- 117 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN AGE enteenth century, says in his grave table-talk: "Take a straw and throw it up into the air. You shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well." The fifteenth century, notwithstanding the four great events that give it a fame beyond other centuries the invention of printing, the discovery of America, the flight of learning from the falling and fallen Greek empire, and the rise of the Medici, generous patrons of art and learning was everywhere a time of tumult and turmoil, and, so far as thought is concerned, it was a day of small things. Especially was this the case in England, which was cruelly trampled and torn by the wars of the Roses and other disturbances connected with the disputed royal succession. In the century after Chaucer one really great English book was written. It is in this dark hour before dawn that we have the "precious link." Nearly five hundred years ago lived a family, Paston by name, that had made its way up from serfdom in the peasantry to the possession of 118 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS lands, learning, position and titles. The thou- sand letters of this family that have come to light were written from 1424 to 1506, and were published at intervals between 1787 and 1875. They take us at once into the family life, show- ing us the boy's horseback journey to Eton with servant and bandbox, his attempts at Latin verse, and his very boyish appeal to an elder brother, whom he addresses as "Bight Keverend and Worshipful," for money, new clothes and a holiday. They also show the girl at home, knocked down and beaten black and blue be- cause she is loath to marry the man her father has selected for his son-in-law. Except some slight sympathy for a dispossessed or murdered statesman, they evince little interest in public affairs, show little public spirit, no elevation of thought and feeling, and much activity in legal squabbles, with a surprising knowledge of law. Something of this last we have in the English- man's respect for law, though the knowledge of the Pastons seems chiefly to have been used in order to gain or retain possession of land. On the whole, these letters give an exceed- ingly interesting, though not beautiful, picture 119 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN AGE of family life before improvements in agricul- ture and manufactures, increase of commerce, prevalence of education and means of travel, both at home and abroad, had developed mod- ern comfort, intelligence and refinement. It may be a question, however, whether the Pas- tons reflect the character of the times in which they flourished or show the persistence of cer- tain family traits. All these people, so long gone, all who have left a record written with fingers that have long been dust, preach us sermons, however careless their words, however they may have thought only of themselves. They did not mean to write for us, but they can not escape the law written in bone and blood, as well as in Revela- tion, "No man liveth unto himself." Even if their letters are destroyed, they stamp their race with their vices or their virtues. The last of the Pastons, a selfish and dissolute Earl of Yarmouth, died in 1732. Here and there has escaped the hazards of time and chance and change a letter that bears news of the envied occupants of high places. For some hundreds of years near the throne 120 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS meant near the scaffold, and proud hearts bent themselves to humble petitions. When life was held by a thread which the tyrant's breath could break, it was as dear as it is now; perhaps dearer. That is most pre- cious which may be gone in a moment. Of all the letters written by lordly men who laid their heads on the block, but one remains that shames the memory of the writer. Lady Jane Grey, girl though she was, walked bravely to her doom ; the letter of her father-in-law, Duke of Northumberland, is the letter of an abject, cringing coward. Letters, as much as conduct, and more than spoken words, show character. Many of the diaries, autobiographies and let- ters, written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not published, as a general thing, until the nineteenth, are charming reading. One could scarcely spend a more delightful hour than with Lucy Hutchinson, or sweet and wise Dorothy Osborne. Pepys and Evelyn, Fanny Burney, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Mary Granville Delany, Cowper, are as ready to amuse, entertain, teach, as if they reached us a warm, living hand of welcome. And Horace 121 PERSONAL LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN AGE Walpole is not so bad, spite of flippancy, cyni- cism and worldliness. He liked Hannah More, and one must have a degree of goodness to like the good Hannah. He was a friend of America when the vulgar English mind had only scorn for the colonials ; he was faithful to the inter- ests of his wretch of a nephew, and he took pains with his letters, for which lovers of wit should he grateful. It is a shame, after enjoy- ing the privileges of desk and fireside, to turn and look at the entertainer. No letters equal Charles Lamb's; but Lamb and his contemporaries, as well as all who went before them, not belonging to the Victorian Age, are not to be considered here. 122 CATHARINE MKKRILL AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-SEVEN JOHN FOSTER 1790-1843 [This and the preceding essay belong to an Incom- plete series begun by Miss Merrill during the last year of her life.] II "A lumbering wagon laden with gold." It is in these words that Robert Hall describes his great fellow-laborer in the Baptist church a church which, according to the view of other denominations, "was made up of extremes, one or two mountains and a good many molehills." John Foster was one of the mountains. He may be classed with the Victorians in right of the last six years of his life, and because the world was slow in making his acquaintance. It may be added now that the world is ready to hand him over to oblivion. Yet he should be remem- bered if only for his "Essay on Decision of Character." Nobody would select his letters or his diary as models. They are too unworldly, too im- personal, too solid, too intellectual, too finished 123 JOHN FOSTER and formal, and too like the eighteenth century in style. They have no lightness of touch, no playfulness, no sparkle of any kind. But they are golden in originality of thought and illus- tration, in discrimination of character, in solid sense, in sincerity, in the highest wisdom, in an intense love of nature, and a passionate love and pity for mankind. John Foster was born in the parish of Hali- fax, in Yorkshire. His parents were old; they seem always to have heen old, perhaps as the result of lives of extreme frugality and toil. They were grave, reserved and cold in manner, industrious and righteous, meditative and prayerful, feeling their obligations both to this world and the next. Yet the father seemed to see something beyond the common in his little son, and sometimes unbent so much as to put his hand on the head of the four-year-old boy and say, "This head will one day learn Greek." The child was taught implicit, unquestioning obedience, and very early to do his share of farm labor and weaving. He was lonely, dreamy and silent. Words, of which he did not hear many, had a strange fascination for him. He brooded 124 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS over their sense, and over their sound when he did not know their sense. The word "chal- cedony" attracted him, the names of ancient heroes were music to his ears. "Night" brought up suggestions of horror, and the time of going to bed was an awful season of each day. The word "hermit" would, in a moment, transport him to a solitary hut, surrounded by trees and rocks and streams, with a garden of radishes and an aged man in the door. Among the few books in the house the live- liest seems to have been Young's "Night Thoughts." The boy lived the poem, often pondering over the formal lines. These in- fluences gave him a sort of aloofness of manner and feeling which remained with him through life. His language, when he did talk, was that of a book of Young or of some volume of sermons. The neighbors called him an old- fashioned boy. Later in his life it is said that none who knew him could avoid being im- pressed by "the extraordinary unworldliness which pervaded his character and imparted to it an indescribable dignity." Thus the solitari- ness of his childhood had its favorable side. By 125 JOHN FOSTER a neighboring clergyman the boy was prepared for a small Baptist college, the immense ad- vantages of the great English universities being meanly denied to dissenters. He became a preacher in the denomination in which he had been reared, and had pastorates in the small villages of Frome and Downend. He sometimes had but forty hearers to ser- mons that were full of noble thoughts. And of these forty some were so ignorant as to think their preacher spoke in riddles. After several years, on account of an affection of the throat, he confined himself to writing essays and criti- cal reviews. He married a woman whom he dearly loved. He had five children, the oldest of whom, an only son, died at the age of fifteen. It is said that while he was dying the boy looked with amazement at his father's agonized face, and exclaimed, "Why, father, I didn't know you loved me so !" It is a pitiful story. I hope it is not true. But who is so blest, or, it may be, so cursed, as not to be torn by remorse when a beloved one goes away forever ? In one of his letters he speaks of the pleasure 126 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS he has in his children's noisy play; in another, of the sweetness of returning to his home after a few days' absence. "I most entirely believe that no man on earth has a wife more fondly affectionate, more anxious to promote his happiness or more de- pendent for her own on his tenderness for her." He is cautious, however, and after speaking with confidence of his future happiness, he adds, "but I am old enough to be well aware how many people who are wiser than myself would laugh at the romantic cast of such a pre- sumption, and shall therefore keep the notion to myself." Twenty-four years of married life only in- creased his affection and esteem. He ascribed to his wife's influence the mental improvement that he had made in these years, and declared with truth that she gave him the most of the happiness that had been his. His reserve continued to the end to be a sort of iron band about his life. After the death of his wife he wrote, "If conventional usages did not come obstinately in the way, my in- finite preference would be that the last offices 127 JOHN FOSTER should be performed at the midnight hour in perfect silence, and with no attendance besides the parties interested." When the last hour came to him it found him alone. If there was a death struggle none witnessed it. On the night before he had posi- tively forbidden entrance to his room. About six o'clock in the morning a kind old servant entered on tip-toe. He was dead. "His arms were gently extended and his countenance was as tranquil as that of a person in a peaceful sleep." As a critic, John Foster was as clear, definite and decided in his letters and diary as in the criticisms, written for publication. He did no slovenly work. Of Shakespeare he writes : "He had percep- tions of every kind; he could think every way. His might be compared to that monster the prophet saw in his vision, which had eyes all over." Of Burke : "His sentences are pointed to the end instinct with pungent sense to the last syllable. They are like a charioteer's whip; which not only has a long and effective lash, 128 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS but cracks and inflicts a still smarter sensation at the end. They are like some serpents of which I have heard it vulgarly said that their life is fiercest in the tail." Of Coleridge: "He is the poet that will overstep all his contemporaries. * * * He is a marvelously original and subtle thinker. * * * It is wonderful in looking back over a few hours of his conversation to think what a quantity of original speculation he had uttered in language incomparably rich in orna- ment and new combinations." One of Foster's friends says of him that with- out apparent consciousness he was often on the edge of wit. He gets over the edge; though his wit is always of a grave kind. He once called the world an untamed and untamable animal. "But you are a part of it," retorted a gentleman. "Yes, sir, a hair upon the tail." The piety of Alexander, Emperor of Russia, was often spoken of in English public meet- ings with approval and admiration as if there were peculiar merit in the acknowledgment of his Maker by so great a model. "He must be a very good man," said one of these ardent ad- 129 JOHN FOSTER mirers to Foster. "Yes, sir/' was the reply, "a very good man, very devout; no doubt he said grace before he swallowed Poland." The following sentences approach wit in their condensation of good sense and their epigram- matic form: "Many an enamored pair have courted in poetry and after marriage lived in prose." "Her mind is a wardrobe, in which hangs nothing but grudges." "Her passions are like a little whirlwind round and round, moving, active, but still here." "He is vigilant without suspicion and dis- criminating without fastidiousness." "His diction is not the clothing of his senti- ments it is the skin, and to alter the language would be to flay the sentiments alive." "He is neither vulgar nor genteel, nor any compound of these two kinds of vulgarity. His manners are a part of his soul, like the style of a writer of genius. He makes you think neither of clown nor of gentleman but of man." "The person who gives us most the idea of ample being interests us most." 130 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS "If a Frenchman and an Englishman were shown a dozen persons and under the necessity of choosing one of them to talk an hour with, the Frenchman would choose the first in the row and the Englishman the last." "Some people's religion is for want of sense ; if they had sense they would have no religion, for their religion is no more than prejudice superstition." "Spent part of an hour in the company of a handsome young woman and a friendly little cat; I could more easily make society of the cat." "Why should a man read an inferior book at the very time he might read one of the highest order?" "One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire." "You have not sufficiently a grand command- ing principle of seriousness to persuade and harmonize the total of your habits." Certain ladies he designates as "mere am- bulating blocks for millinery/' Of a very bad child he says: "I never saw so much essence of devil in so small a vessel." 131 JOHN FOSTER Foster took a warm interest in political affairs, and was always on the side of progress. In 1830 he writes: "Very great changes have been done in recent times. America set free; Greece, humiliation of the Mohammedan em- pire; the Catholic emancipation, and a great part of the world put in a state of mobility; ominous, all may hope, of prodigious and ac- celerated changes." Foster's studies of individual character are remarkable for grasp of comprehension and sharpness of discrimination. I never saw a more careful and complete delineation of a child than his of a little girl three years old. Exceedingly interested as he was in the things of this world, his thoughts loved better to dwell on the other and higher life. He strove to fit himself and he strove to fit others for that ideal, heavenly good. Archbishop Whately says: "There are some minds which seem so thoroughly to fit into this life and to be so satisfied with it that we almost are tempted to doubt whether they have any of the elements of a future existence. There are others again who make themselves so little at 132 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS home in this world that the wonder is how they came here; they seem to be the natural nurslings of immortality, and their soul con- tinually flaps its wings against its earthly pris- on-house, like a caged eagle. So it was with John Foster. In thinking of him transplanted as he now is to a more congenial world, our first involuntary reflection is that he is free; that his spirit has put off its burden, and is escaped from what to him was little better than a dungeon." As has been shown, this is not quite fair. John Foster was extraordinarily interested in this world, in its natural scenery, in its animals, and especially in the character and destiny on the earth of humanity, and He loved his friends with a very great love. He was a great soul. To read his thoughts, to understand his senti- ments, to appreciate his efforts to better hu- manity, simply to come near him, as near as his peculiar nature allows, is elevating. It is well to touch the hem of the garment of those who are even imperfectly great and good. THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE On a certain occasion when pride and ambi- tion seemed to be getting the better of the poor men who followed Jesus, He called to Him, and took in His arms a little child and said unto them, ''Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." Of this blessed little one, who on this one occasion served as a living text, we know nothing more. He may have lived on to weary age; he may have ended his life's little story in the one scene; he still for- ever looks out from the printed page, a type and vision of the meekness that shall inherit the earth in the coming golden age. It is a characteristic of the Bible that chil- dren are often recorded as actors in the great world-drama. The wild outcast of the desert, with his forlorn mother; the gentle son of the haughty Sara, the quarrelsome twins, the fa- vored boy with his garment of many colors the youngest of the twelve brothers and the 134 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS darling whose loss would bring the father's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; the fair infant weeping in his cradle of bulrushes, the little prophet, whose lonely yet happy mother yearly made him a pretty coat and a loving visit; the faithful shepherd boy guarding his flock and singing to his harp under the stars, the prince king by right of inheritance hid- ing from his cruel grandmother; the resolute boys who, in a luxurious court, trained them- selves to frugality and hardship; the high- spirited pupil of Gamaliel, the docile child whose fidelity to his training and to ancestral character throws a halo round the names of Lois and Eunice; the wondrous Boy who dis- coursed with the great scholars in the Temple, and amazed them; all these and others have their story told in the Scriptures. The Divine Man calls repeated attention to the child, showing always that it should be the highest ambition of manhood to regain the in- nocence of childhood. That the charm of these stories was felt and acknowledged is proved by baptismal names descending with the genera- tions. Yet men of genius received no suggestion 135 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE from their general acceptance, and did not busy their thoughts with the state of childhood. Chaucer, the most artless of poets, a lover of humanity and nature, has one child hero, St. Hugh of Lincoln, seven years old. He had learned from an elder boy in the school to sing "Alma Eedemptoris Mater" (0 nursing mother of Jesus). " The swetnesse hath his herte perced so Of Cristes mooder, that to hire to preye He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye." Unfortunately, the way to school led through Jewry, and there little Hugh was murdered and his body thrown into a pit. He was the only child of his mother, and she was a widow. " This poure wydwe awaiteth al that nygth After hir litel child, but he cam noght," At last the boy is found, dead, but still sing- ing, " And, for the worship of his mooder deere, Yet may I synge, O Alma, loude and cleere." It is strange that with this fair beginning there should be no more stories of children for nearly, or quite, two hundred years. The little martyr's history is repeated with variations, and in an old tale a boy with a magic mantle ap- 136 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS pears ; but the mantle, not the boy, is the point of interest. Ballads were made, and were sung by high and low, but scarce a word of child- hood is found in them, except in one, the "Babes in the Wood," which Addison describes in 1711 as "one of the darling songs of the common people." Educational books were written, es- pecially rules and directions as to deportment. Aylmer, the king in an old poem, giving direc- tions for the education of the prince, says : " Teach him to harp With his nayles sharp, Before me to carve, And of the cup serve." It is said indeed, that English children were, in the civilization of their manners, a hundred years in advance of the children on the con- tinent. It may be, but I scarcely think it, from the rules that are given for their behavior. Erasmus tells "a chylde of noble bloude and singular hope not to rough his hair like a wild colt, nor lick dishes, for that is the prop- erty of cats." Other books have much more primitive directions. Children were things to be made and formed, not to be accepted in their native state. They were pinched and pulled, 137 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE beaten and knocked down; their very heads were broken. Lady Jane Grey, the possible, even probable, heir to a throne, in her child- hood wrote, "I am so cruelly treated, I am so disordered, that sometimes I think myself in hell." The severities, showing as they do, a strong belief in natural depravity and in the power of discipline, could hardly help detracting from the romance of childhood. There were other influences affecting and casting a restraint upon literature of every kind; wars, heresies, persecutions, almost a disorganization of so- ciety; nowhere the peace and quiet loved by student and artist. And childhood was really an undiscovered region. This, in itself, is much ; for even in the field of imagination men are like sheep, one following another. The stuff for fancy's play could but remain a while longer what it had been gallant knights, beau- tiful ladies, lonely hermits, horrible hobgoblins, terrible dragons. At last a man came who had kept intact his child heart, as some wonder of a day might keep the dewy brightness of dawn through all 138 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS the changing hours. He saw the innocence and artlessness; the meekness and weakness and strength of childhood; its roguishness, its witchery, its preternatural acuteness, its fond flatteries, its wanton wiles, its ineffable charm. It is impossible that Shakespeare should have had other than a most affectionate heart; and in the nest at home, which he took pains to make soft and pleasant, were three little ones; and one was like her father in wit. The only son died at the sweet, bright age of eleven. This boy must have been often in the father's mind, as his magic called again to life the hap- less boys of history or put into form the crea- tions of his own brain. His children, not so numerous, are still as various as his men and women. He knows the child whose whole being seems love. Under the sunshine of kindness, such a one blooms and flourishes, an embodied joy ; in the shadow of unkindness or of sorrow, his life withers away. The tender child may have a hero's courage. The little Macduff teases his unhappy mother, but, when the assassin appears, with his dying breath cries to her to run away. Shakespeare 139 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE does not despise the natural boy. The Roman Martins who races after a butterfly and tears it to pieces, would rather see swords and hear drums than look upon a school master. An- other little Koman, Lucius, is the brave, faith- ful, patient attendant of the sad Brutus. The capacity a child has for suffering, the degree to which a little heart may be wrung with anguish, appears in the gentle and meek Prince Arthur. " I would that I were low laid In my grave. I am not worth this coll that's made for me. ******* O, this will make my mother die with grief." The bloody and thunderous tragedy of Eich- ard III. is softened by the character and de- meanor of the two little princes, Edward and York. "So wise, so young," they passed on to their doom. Shakespeare has some belief in inherited character. The two stolen sons of Cymbeline grew up in the savage wilderness yet were "as gentle as zephyrs blowing below the violet." So Perdita, brought up in a shepherd's hut, shows a right royal spirit when, after being in- 140 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS suited and threatened by the mighty King of Bohemia, she exclaims : " I was not much afeard." The last and daintiest touches of the magi- cian's genius were given to Miranda. Words- worth's poem " Three years she grew In sun and shower," seems Shakepeare's own conception of this maiden of fifteen. " She shall be sportive as the fawn That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs; And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm Of mute insensate things. The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mold the maiden's form By silent sympathy." We may almost say that as children came into English literature with Shakespeare, they went out of it with Shakespeare. His mantle fell upon none. Yet Milton wore a gracious singing robe of his own, and would fain have written something to inspire young Englishmen to nobler living, but he had fallen on evil times. 141 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE The mystical genius of Henry Vaughan, the Welshman, recognizes the mystical nature of childhood in more than one poem, and clearly in that which is the forerunner of Words- worth's greatest : " Happy those early days, when I Shined in my angel infancy! * * * " When on some gilded cloud, or flower, My gazing soul would dwell an hour. * * * " Oh, how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train. * * * " Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return." These lovely lines fitly wind up the Eliza- bethan period; indeed, they reach out, a point of light into the darkness that had now set in. Again, nearly two hundred years went by before the child became an important figure in any production. Here and there, on historic pages, gleams for a moment some sweet young face, as of the Princess Elizabeth, who died broken-hearted after the execution of her father; or the poor little, abused Duke of Gloucester, heir to the English throne, beaten 142 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS and cuffed, and marched about and tyrannized over, until his little life faded away; or the blind daughter of the imprisoned and perse- cuted Bunyan. He writes of her, "Poor child, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy por- tion in this world though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee." Everywhere were children, on village greens, in country gardens, at the poor man's board, at the rich man's fireside, in schools, in fields, at work, at play, busy as bees, bright as butter- flies, frolicsome as lambs everywhere except in literature, always the mirror of the thought and feeling of its time. The children, too, had fallen on evil times wild, witty, dazzling, but un- wholesome times. Nature as a study was un- known; humanity as humanity, unrecognized. The poets who figure in "Johnson's Lives," did not allow little feet to join the stately march, or the riotous dance of their lords and ladies. The corrupt dramatists had no entrance to the fairy land of childhood. Pope's few lines about the child are petty " Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; 143 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite." The kind heart of Gray, later than Pope, is filled with pity by the view of boys at their games : "Alas! regardless of their doom, The little victims play." He then enumerates the future passions, and the miseries that lie in wait for the little vic- tims. Compare with Pope and Gray, Words- worth's tender address to Hartley Coleridge in which he, too, has forebodings. "O blessed vision! Happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many fears, For what may be thy lot in future years." Swift, the just, forceful writer of English prose, in ghastly irony commends to the starv- ing Irish, as the most delicate and satisfying of roast meats, an infant of one or two years. Steele and Sterne each has a single sentence re- lating to child life that does honor to his heart. Addison and Locke write on education, but few others seem to think of children. Even books of deportment, so common in the period be- tween Chaucer and Shakespeare, are rare. 144 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Things that have been come again; light be- gan to dawn, and life to stir before the dawn. On the one-cent counter of a bookshop may now sometimes be found a little story in simple, beautiful English, with gaudy illustrations, from Newbury's publishing house. The tale is probably from Goldsmith's pen. It is a pity that one of the first stories of childhood should be so little known. One of the sweetest and most loving poems is Cowper's "0 that those lips had language." The poet lives over the first day of his childish sorrow, a sorrow that had never left him during the fifty years that had since passed. In his "Tirocinium" he gives a powerful contrasting picture of his bitter ex- perience at school. Cowper had yet many years to live when, "Piping down the valleys wild, piping songs of pleasant glee," came the poet, William Blake. " On a cloud I saw a child, And he, laughing, said to me: 'Pipe a song about a lamb/ " And so the poet piped of lambs and fairies and flowers, and of the various things that make up the "Songs of Innocence." 145 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE Maria Edge worth is no mean writer; nor is Thomas Day, though his "Sanford and Merton" lives more as a type of the practical in educa- tion, than for its literary merit. I should be lacking in gratitude did I not name Joanna Baillie, one of the delights of my childhood; and there are others who deserve mention. The sun of the Eighteenth Century set in glory. How fair a day the red sky promised, not the most sanguine could foresee. Foremost in the radiant group that looked with the poet's eye of boundless love on that glowing eve, and on the rosy dawn of the new day, were the high- spirited Scott, and the high-thinking Words- worth. Scott's love of children is shown in some of his poems, and in some of his novels, but nothing that he writes is so tender as his friendship with Marjorie Fleming. He wrapped her in his plaid as a shepherd his lamb, and gave himself up to her wiles and witcheries. She was a strong-hearted creature, looking into life and duty with an earnestness becoming the country-woman of Knox ; giving herself to fun, frolic, and mischief with an abandon natu- ral to the country-woman of Burns. Her little 146 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS life (she died before she was nine) had its own troubles, but her greatest plague, she writes when she is about six, is her multiplication; and the "most devilish thing is eight-times- eight, and seven-times-seven ; it is what nature itself cannot endure." They used strong lan- guage in those days. Dr. John Brown describes her as she appeared at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's. She came in a sedan chair. When the top was raised, there sat Marjorie in white, her eyes gleaming. Scott, bending over her in ecstacy, said, "Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you." When his company had looked, he lifted her up and marched, to his seat with her on his stout shoulder. That night was never equalled, said they who knew Scott. Marjorie and he were the stars; Scott showing her off, and being often rebuked by her for his inten- tional blunders. Wordsworth sought out "fresh woods and pas- tures new." He devoted and dedicated himself to nature, humanity, man as man, of every degree, of every age and condition. As for children, he took up the story where Shakes- peare had dropped it, and studied them as per- 147 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE haps even Shakespeare had not. People laughed at the idiot boy and Alice Fell. Let them laugh. Once they laughed at everything that came from Wordsworth's pen. Most human beings are half asleep when they travel the first stage of their journey, or they fall asleep soon, and forget their impressions; though now and then for a moment a wandering remembrance "from the dark and backward abysm of time" strikes a sudden new life into the soul. Words- worth not only remembered his childhood; he kept his early self in his heart, a living and sacred thing. Of set purpose, he studied the processes and experiences of growth and devel- opment in himself and in his boyish companions, in his children and in the children of the cot- tagers about them. Ascribing to natural objects a high, if not supreme influence, he says : " The fairest of all rivers loved To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And, from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flowed along my dreams. * * * ******* Made ceaseless music that composed my thoughts To more than infant softness." Of his mates, he says they were: 148 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS "A race of real children; not too wise, Too learned, too good, but wanton, fresh, And bandied up and down by love and hate; ******* Yet yielding not In happiness to the happiest on earth." In a little poem which represents nature as adopting a child, he shows how beauty, grace and stateliness are given by breeze and tree and faun and brook and murmuring sound. The mystic union of living things we find in the "Kitten and Falling Leaves." He studies the characteristics of his daughter, three years old. This happy creature, the little Catharine, that filled "the air with gladness and involuntary songs," died when she was four, and left in the house such a blank and stillness that even De Quincey could not bear it. The first night of his visit to Wordsworth, after her death, he spent in the churchyard lying beside her grave. As if she had been a princess or a famous beauty, Wordsworth says of the little daughter of a basket maker: " Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray; And when I cross'd the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child. 149 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE " No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor, The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!" He goes on in simplest, tenderest way to tell her fate lost on the moor. He lingers in talk with the little cottage girl on the river Wye. " Her eyes were fair, and very fair; Her beauty made me glad." How perfect the lines that everybody knows : " My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! " The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." The poem that crowns Wordsworth with glory, the poem that crowns the Nineteenth Century "Intimations of Immortality" is most fitly a poem of childhood. " 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; But yet I know, where'er I go. That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 150 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS " Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing boy;" Gratitude and joy for obstinate questions, for high instincts and for the sympathy the human heart has with nature : " O joy that in our embers Is something that doth live. That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!" These, regret, inquiry, gratitude and joy, form the thread of which the golden web of this poem is woven. All of Wordsworth's great powers meet here, felicity of phrase, the artist's creative ability, the rapture of mysti- cism, the ecstasy of adoration. He soared so high that his eagle eye cowered, and in mid flight he sank to earth. It was only after two years that he rose again, into that rarer air striking the former note with, " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" If there is anything in prose nearer perfection 151 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE than are parts of De Quincey's Autobiography, I do not know it. I give two or three sentences from his "Affliction of Childhood." He was six years old, and was alone in the room with his dead sister. "One large window was wide open through which the sun of midsummer at mid-day was showering down torrents of splendor. The sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the ex- press types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of life. "Whilst I stood a solemn wind began to blow the saddest that ever ear heard. It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortal- ity for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow solemn memo- riam." Coleridge knows and expresses the charm of helpless infancy. Southey recognizes it. Chris- topher North, in his stories, depicts with much sentiment children of Scottish martyrs. 152 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Charles Lamb in his gentle, pathetic, humor- ous, fantastic sentences, as different as possible from the gorgeous style of De Quincey, pays loving tribute to children. "The Prince of Chimney Sweepers" ! How merry, how rollick- ing, how pathetic and tender it is! "I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks poor blots innocent blacknesses." The best part of the essay is the story of the little creature who, tired with his tedious ex- plorations, and lost among the intricacies of the lordly chambers of Arundel Castle, crept be- tween the sheets of the Duke's bed, laid his black head upon the pillow "and slept like a young Howard." Lamb moralizes from Cymbeline : " Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney sweepers come to dust." It is a curious thing that the Poetry for Chil- dren, by Charles and Mary Lamb, published in 1809, went soon out of print, and was almost forgotten. Fifty years later not a copy could be found in England. In 1877 a copy dis- covered in Australia was sent over the seas and republished. At the same time two copies that 153 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE had been reprinted in 1821, in Boston, were found. The most of these little poems are simply rhymed lessons, yet many of them are real poetry. Byron and Shelley had no open sesame into the innocence and seclusion of childhood. Neither had Keats, but he was scarcely out of boyhood himself. Leigh Hunt and Hood have the password. Indeed, nearly every writer who has reached any degree of eminence, since the great men of the lake region and their circle of friends, with thousands who dwell in the low places of literature, serving their day and pass- ing out with their day, have skirted about or explored within the fair gardens and the mis- leading labyrinths of childhood. Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, have made children an important and excellent part of their work, Thackeray bearing the palm. His Ethel and Olive, his little Henry Esmond and Beatrix, his Dennis Duval, his Georgie Osborn and Eawdon minor, are creatures equal to Shakespeare's children ; and different from and more complete than the similar attempts of any other novelist. He loved all children. The 154 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS closing verse of "The White Squall" speaks a tender remembrance of his own : " I thought as day was breaking My little girls were waking, And smiling and making A prayer at home for me." Longfellow, Whittier, Hawthorne, Lowell, Tennyson, Barry Cornwall, Robert and Eliza- beth Browning, Stevenson, Whitcomb Riley, have "airy tongues that syllable the names" of dainty and sweet childhood. Barry Cornwall and Mrs. Browning moved the forces of govern- ment in behalf of childhood, and the beautiful words of all are cherished in grateful hearts. There is no more pathos, no more tenderness, no more sweetness, in Browning, than in some others; not so much humor, but there is a sort of solemnity of sentiment that distinguishes him. That God does not judge of character or service as man judges, is with him a frequently recurring thought, even in the poems about children : " Morning, evening, noon and night, 'Praise God!' sang Theocrite. Then to his poor trade he turned, Whereby the daily meal was earned." He was happy, yet he wanted to praise God in 155 THE CHILD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE a greater way as "the Pope at Rome praises God from Peter's dome." So the angel Gabriel took his place on his working bench, and Theo- crite, first preparing himself by study and prayer, became the most devout of Popes, but God said: " I miss my little human praise." So he went back to his trade and his simple song of praise. One day, walking alone in a wood, Browning thought what might be the influence of one who walked thus alone through life ; and so formed in his brain the story of Pippa, the little silk- winder; not the story of her life, but of her one holiday. Before she goes out to enjoy her day, she repeats the New Year's hymn begin- ning, "All service ranks the same with God"; and after she comes back from her wanderings in the evening, having all unawares saved more than one soul, too tired to utter any prayer but "God bless me," she sinks upon her bed and falls asleep, murmuring the first lines of the morning hymn: " All service ranks the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: There is no last nor first." 156 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS It is right and fair to represent the child as grappling with, and grasping great truths. With lifted brows, with wondering eager eyes, the new comer looks out upon the world, and up to the sky. It is all strange, miraculous, in- explicable; but it is home; it is his Father's house, and he is not afraid. 157 THE GENERAL: A CHARACTER SKETCH About fifteen years ago, there appeared in one of the upland valleys of California a shaggy, yellow-haired, long-bearded, tall, spare personage from Tennessee, bearing the orna- mental title of general. He came not so much for health as for the repose of a soul at odds with the world. On a steep declivity of the out- lying mountain which forms the northern wall of the valley, he built two cabins, some little distance apart, one for his wife, who seldom honored the place with her presence, the other for himself. The loft of his cabin was his sleep- ing apartment ; his bed, protruding through the wall in order that, while his body was safely under cover, the nobler part of him might be visited by the stars and fanned by the moun- tain breeze. In his downstairs room and around his always open door his comprehensive hos- pitality welcomed not only man but birds, squir- rels, rabbits, weasels, mountain-rats, kangaroo- rats, coyotes, gophers, even skunks. 158 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Against the outer wall of the now deserted and ruinous cabin stands to this day a moun- tain-rat's high, dome-like citadel also deserted, a sort of memorial of the little time when nature's social union was restored. The General, however, had no respect for the feelings of the young apple orchard in the midst of which he had fixed his dwelling. He tried to make the trees bloom and bear at the same time like oranges. He trained their branches down in order to root them like banyans. The sturdy apple trees suffered somewhat from the torture to which they were subjected, but they persisted in growing according to their own sweet nature. The General was courteous and ceremonious to an extreme verging on the pompous. On his lips the English language grew statelier than itself. He gave to things their most high- sounding names. The ramshackle buggy of the kind Doctor, who had no practice because no- body was ever ill, the General always spoke of as the Doctor's chariot. He was much given to oratory and was fond of theatrical displays. 159 THE GENERAL : A CHARACTER SKETCH When the famous singer, Miss Yaw, was in Los Angeles he invited her to his place and hoisted her to a lofty ledge, where she good- naturedly sang her sweetest to an admiring and grateful group from the valley. With labor heyond belief he set up a liberty- pole one Fourth of July on an almost inac- cessible height, where it could not possibly stand. He planted trees on this same height where they could not possibly live. But good and kindly deeds as well as brave words and eccentric acts are cherished in the hearts of the neighbors who lived hundreds of feet below his lonely cabin. With incredible toil he once dragged trees up from the ravine behind the first mountain ridge and down to the lowest part of the valley two miles away, and planted them to serve for temporary shade before a cabin in which there was to be a wed- ding. Besides putting up an outside adornment of wreaths and arches, he covered the floor, ceiling and wall with roses. The lovely bride on whom the celestial rosy red was radiated "looked like an angel," wrote an English woman who was present. Perhaps nobody felt more 160 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS pleasure in the scene he had done so much to beautify than the kindly General. For several nights at one time he lay on the ground before a house in which two young girls were sleeping alone, their parents having been unexpectedly called away. He had come two long, steep, stony miles each evening to keep an unrecognized watch over beings too innocent even to feel fear. The General belongs to the past of the Cali- fornia valley. The wild creatures of the moun- tain have forgotten him. Only a fading mem- ory lingers in the kindly homes of the valley. His mountain cabin is deserted. He is gone from there, no one knows whither. No message has come from him; no word of his welfare. Where his restless feet are wandering none know. But wherever he may be in Honduras or Nicaragua, in Greece or Afghanistan he must remain the same generous, chivalrous, pompous, unreasonable, ridiculous gentleman, whom the valley knew, and laughed at, and loved. MARTYRS TO FAITH One of the most self-indulgent, and, in consequence, one of the most hard and cruel of the English kings, suddenly finding himself at the door of death, felt the mists clear away from his vision and the scales drop, from his eyes. Looking back on his own path, he saw that unworthy thoughts and frivolous talk the "evil communications" that corrupt good manners had taken the pith out of him, had unmanned him and made him what he was. Looking forward on what he supposed would be the path of his little son, he advised that none but good and wise men should sit at meals with the young prince; that the entertainment should be the reading aloud of noble stories; and that communication at all times in the youth's presence should be of virtue, honor, knowledge, wisdom, deeds of worship and re- nown. On this principle was begun the training of that remarkable boy, who was smothered in London Tower by his treacherous uncle, Richard Third. It is a good principle, and not only for the training of children. It is well for men and women to read noble stories and to talk of deeds of worship and renown. Precept is good, but the living example is better. Industry and intelligence are admirable. Courage Is noble. Patience is saintlike. Steadfastness, fortitude, faith, are sublime. We may acknowledge all this, yet go into the world and fail in courage, patience, forti- tude, faith, every virtue. But it is scarcely possible that an acquaintance with the greatly good, an inti- mate knowledge of their unpretending heroism, a sym- pathy with their unselfish sorrows and their lofty joys, will not refine and elevate our lives. Far away from us, remote in space, remote 162 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS in time, widely separated, too, from each other in habits, customs and language, were the three peoples whose melancholy but inspiring story I shall try to tell. It was midwinter in the Christian world in the beginning of the thirteenth century. The time was disorganized, confused, distressed, im- poverished. The Crusades had done much evil, and apparently no good. The mighty Catholic church, already venerable, seemingly eternal, for it stood and grew and strengthened while kingdoms rose, lived their little term and fell, the mighty Catholic church, as yet undivided (the seamless garment of Christ it called itself), was at the summit of its power. It was a well constructed government, an organized, orderly state, with vast wealth at its command, with every means to enforce its power, claiming to be infallible in doctrine, immaculate in purity, divine in wisdom. In the papal chair sat the greatest of the popes, a young man not yet forty; a sincere, severe, lofty-souled man, named Innocent by the cardinals who elected him because of his blameless life. With the cold clear eye and 163 MARTYRS TO FAITH steady hand of one who knows no personal bias, as far from human sympathy as only a priest or an angel may be, Innocent III. defended the weak, punished the wicked, excommunicated kings, laid kingdoms under interdict; and, above all, suppressed free thought. Like a blighting frost his breath fell on the tender leaves of a too early spring. It was as if they had never been. This greatest, wisest, purest of popes, this Innocent in name and life, instituted the first and worst persecution in the history of the Christian church. So unfit is the best of men for divine power. The latest, hardest lesson the world has learned is tolerance of opinion. Men read the Bible, such men as could read, hundreds of years, without seeing that if the Holy Book teaches anything, it teaches charity. In general, toleration was, and so remained un- til the seventeenth century, as much an undis- covered thing as America before Columbus sailed westward. Innocent proudly felt himself the vicegerent of God; and proudly asserted that the seam- less garment should not be rent while his hands 164 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS held it. It was not. He lacerated and muti- lated the body, but he kept the garment whole. Auricular confession had before this time been voluntary. Innocent's long head saw in it a means for strengthening and tightening eccle- siastical power. He therefore made it an obli- gation, thus binding, by finest and strongest threads, not states, nor dioceses, nor parishes, but every individual soul throughout Christen- dom, to the church. From that day to this the Confessional has been, while the most silent, the most secret, at the same time the strongest of churchly ties; invisible, impalpable but om- nipotent. A spirit of inquiry, however, was astir. Not even the Confessional could suppress it. Too often the lives of priests were in flagrant viola- tion of the principles they preached. Every- where the wealth of the church, its pomp and pride, were in striking contrast with the poverty and humility of the first apostles. The new thought and life found first and fullest expression in the lovely lands which lie on the shores of the Mediterranean between the Pyrenees and the Rhone ; where the old Roman 165 MARTYRS TO FAITH civilization, with its bridges and its roads, its laws and its order, lingered longest; where the elements of feudalism were most mild and bright; where the commercial and intellectual power of the Jew, the elegant and artistic re- finement of the Moor, were acknowledged and honored. To the harmonious blending of these various influences was due a spirit of enterprise that developed commerce and manufactures, an in- dustry that made the most of fertile plain and hill; a chivalry less harsh, perhaps less noble, than the chivalry of the North; a liberty that went hand in hand with loyalty, a tolerance that allowed every shade of belief and almost every degree of disbelief. Men of learning translated the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular, and scattered them abroad. The people, the most intelligent in the Christian world, read the translation and, in consequence, denied the su- premacy of the pope, and the right of priests to intrude between the soul and its God. In denial, in protesting against the Church of Eome, the people were one; but in the doc- trines they accepted there was almost every 166 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS variety, and in mode of life everything from asceticism to sensuality. They were a lively people, a people of poets and musicians the first poets of modern times. They danced and sang and laughed. Their cities were alive with business; their valleys and slopes were green with olives and vines. A fertile soil and a balmy air encouraged and rewarded labor. And labor itself was enlivened by mirth and song. Lords and princes, like peasants and citizens, were merry and musical and independent. Youth feels itself immortal. Languedoc was young. It felt its life in every limb. It laughed audaciously in the face of the surly preacher. In vain, priests, at least such as did not dance and sing with the multitude, exhorted and wept, entreated and threatened and cursed. They were only laughed at for their pains. Suddenly, the gay, bright, musical world grew dark and still. Men and women disap- peared and were seen no more. Whispers of imprisonment and of torture fired the blood of the high-spirited Gothic Romans, for such, in origin, were these inhabitants of southern France not Frenchmen in language or cus- 167 MARTYRS TO FAITH toms. They took up arms against the See of Rome. The Pope proclaimed a new Crusade, declar- ing that he who died in France at war with the heretic would as certainly secure a place in Paradise as he who died in Palestine at war with the infidel. It is a mystery that wicked men should want to go to Heaven, in whose pure atmosphere they could not feel at home. But the wicked men of that day were fully con- vinced that there was a bad place yawning to receive them; that there they would burn for- ever and forever unless some great good deed of their own, or of another bought by them- selves, would open to them the gates guarded by Saint Peter. Moreover, the Pope promised to the Crusaders the lands and castles and goods and moneys of the heretics. Add to these inducements the fact that hu- man nature is narrow, that it loves to persecute, and we have a strong union of motive in the new Crusade; hate of an opponent, love of wealth, fear of hell, the promise of Heaven, a promise that did not require weary journeys over seas and deserts. Southern France lay at 168 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS their very doors. From every quarter of Chris- tendom men thronged to the banners of the church. A hundred thousand and more ruffians prepared to carry out the papal decree. The Albigenses, called from Albi, the city in which they, as heretics, first or most numerously appeared, manfully stood their ground and their princes stood by them. Jane Plantagenet, the wife of Count Raymond of Toulouse, a woman who possessed the best qualities of the great Plantagenet family, hastened to Nor- mandy to beg aid of her brother Eichard. The lion-hearted was just dead. No help nor hope was to be had in Normandy. Weary and heart- sick, the Lady Jane lay down and died. She was buried beside her brother. This was the beginning of woes to Count Eaymond. He who fought against Rome beat his head against a wall. Impoverished, humili- ated and discouraged, Raymond lived to see fair daylight go out from the sunny valleys of the South. The Albigensian war was the first great re- ligious war between Christians who equally pro- fessed to accept Christ as the Son of God and 169 MARTYRS TO FAITH the Saviour of the world. And it was the most atrocious. Fire and water were called to the aid of the sword, and the sword was a butch- er's axe. The persecutors were intensely reli- gious. More than once bishops and legates stood chanting, "Come, Holy Spirit," while a tumultuous massacre proceeded, offering to the God whose name is love, bloodier sacrifices than had ever been laid on heathen altars. During the progress of the war, the Catho- lics of the country had united with the Albi- gensians to save the land from devastation, so that for awhile it was as much a patriotic as a religious war. After the successful storming of the city of Beziers, the Catholic commander said to the Abbot Arnold: "We are ready for the massacre, but how shall we know Christian and heretic apart?" The question perplexed the Abbot. There was no time for the sum- moning of witnesses, no time for trial; the soldiers of the church were straining like blood- hounds in the leash. He cut the knot. "Slay them all," he said ; "God will know His own !" So all were slain, twenty thousand soldiers and citizens, Catholics and heretics. 170 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS The Lady Geralda, whose virtues troubadours sang, long and stoutly maintained the defence of the town of Lavaur. At last she surren- dered. Kefusing to be converted on the spot, she was thrown into a well. The whole gar- rison of Mountlaur was hanged. But one eye was left in a company of a hundred soldiers in Iram ; that, with mock mercy, the captain per- mitted to be saved in order that its owner might direct the march of his blind band. The Vis- count of Beziers, a nephew of Count Raymond, a gallant youth, when he was offered pardon, nobly declared he would rather be flayed alive than desert the least of his subjects. The church had no place for the generous youth, and would allow him no place in the world. He died in a dungeon at the age of twenty-four. Of what use is it to repeat these things? Of what use to open the grave and expose the agonies of the dead long buried there? It is that heroism may be honored a heroism no dangers could daunt, no terrors could appal, no anguish could subdue. The Albigensian war was active and bitter more than forty years. It dragged along nearly 171 MARTYRS TO FAITH a century. But at last it came to an end. The Albigenses were wiped off the face of the earth ; with them their refinement, their music, even their sweet language ; the language of love, not of war, though it was the tongue of a gallant people. The Troubadour who had lived through battle and siege, pestilence and famine, laid down his sword, took up again his guitar, and found refuge in the court of Aragon. But his fingers and his brain had lost their cunning ; his heart was broken. So powerful and so deadly in its power is a bad government. England and France, had they known their own interests, would have reached out a helping hand to the persecuted; instead, they answered to the call of the persecutor. While putting shackles on free thought in the South, they riveted the chains that already bound them to a foregin power. No man knows whether Christian doctrine in its purity was preserved on Alpine heights from the time of the apostles, whether it was carried to the mountains by Albigensian fugitives, or scattered there by the missionaries of Peter 172 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS Waldus, the Lyonese merchant. Certain it is that at a very early date, before Luther, before Huss, before even Wyclif, Christianity in its pristine simplicity existed in these remote re- gions; that when the light was removed from Asia and was quenched at Eome it still burned on the tops of the mountains between Italy and France. It is a wild and dreary region. The hollow roar of falling waters never ceases. Every stream is a torrent and certain death to the traveler whose unwary foot slips on its edge. Avalanches come crashing down from sky-reach- ing heights. The houses, low, small, with stones on the roofs to keep the roofs from blowing away, look like ruins or heaps of stones, not like dwellings. All is poverty within, and, ex- cept in the few short weeks of summer, all is desolation without. If anywhere in the world men might live in peace, unenvied and undis- turbed, that spot would seem to be in the Alpine regions of Piedmont. But no place is so poor, no spot so sacred that malice may not enter. The Waldenses, or Vaudois, as they are as often called, at an earlier date than is known read the Bible in their own tongue. Their dili- 173 MARTYRS TO FAITH gence in studying and their zeal in imparting the Holy Word knew no restrictions. They car- ried it hidden in bales of goods when they traveled as merchants, and sought opportunities to leave it in castle, palace and convent. Whit- tier makes the Vaudois teacher the subject of a short poem. He describes the Alpine merchant as selling to a lady silks and pearls, then de- claring that he has a wonderful pearl he has not yet shown her. The lady has lightly turned away, but her attention is arrested and she says : " 'Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou trav- eler gray and old And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count thy gold.' The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre book, Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took. 'Here. Lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee! Nay, keep thy gold I ask it not, for the word of God is free.' The hoary traveler went his way, but the gift he left behind Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high- born maiden's mind. And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the low- liness of truth And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth, And she hath left the gray old halls where an evil faith had power, The courtly knights of her father's train, and the maidens of her bower; 174 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales, by lordly feet untrod. Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God." And this is no fiction of the poet. Ladies of high degree did sometimes (often it could not be), lay aside silken robes and leave lordly halls that they might study the Word of God, and direct their lives by that Word. Obedience to civil law the Waldenses held to be a religious duty. When they could not pay taxes regularly on account of the disturbances of war, they set aside money to be ready for payment, although none but harsh and incon- siderate rulers would have required taxes from so poor a people. They were brave, responding with alacrity to every summons to join their sovereign's army. They were altogether good subjects. Yet, notwithstanding they were law- abiding and law-defending men, the history of the Waldenses during nearly three hundred years is the history of a peaceable and intelli- gent people, with stern, unswerving faith, now resisting and now enduring atrocious persecu- tion. About the year 1400, on Christmas day, when 175 MARTYRS TO FAITH in all the great cathedrals of Christendom, cathedrals that are poems in stone, sacred and solemn poems to the glory of God when in all these great and beautiful churches, choirs were singing, "Peace on earth, good will to men," the inhabitants of the little valley of Pragela, in Piedmont, were flying for their lives. Through snow and bitter winds they climbed to higher Alps, pursued by cruel, cursing soldiers. That night while Christendom resounded with the praises of the Babe of Bethlehem, and mothers in happy homes, looking in the innocent faces of their little ones, wondered not that the Saviour of the world took the form of an infant that Christmas night, four score infants per- ished with the cold. When morning dawned, the babies and their mothers lay dead together on the bleak mountain. Many generations of shuddering parents told the story of this fearful night to their shuddering children; and the frozen infant lips that had formed no earthly words seemed to utter words of heavenly pa- tience and faith. In the valley of the Soyse, the inhabitants, three thousand in number, everyone knowing 176 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS how to read and write, and nearly every child able to give a reason for his faith, were driven into caves and smothered by fires built in the entrances. The valley that had been filled with happy life, and had hummed and sung with in- dustry, was made as silent as the grave. The mill and the cottages fell to ruin. The little gardens and fields, wrested with almost super- human toil from the cruel rock, went back to waste and desert. No human sound, nothing but the ceaseless babble of water broke the still- ness. Not an inhabitant was left in the valley. During a fiercely fought battle, the women and the children kneeling on the rocks in the sight of both parties, lifted up their hands and voices and besought the aid of Heaven. The Lord's ear was not deaf, nor his arm shortened. He inspired the defenders of hearth and home and faith with a might and skill they never before had known. They sent their arrows with unerring aim; they hurled stupendous rocks crushing down terrible steeps. At last a fog, wrapping the hills in a deeper obscurity than even darkness, brought confusion and defeat on the intruders. 177 MARTYRS TO FAITH In 1655 an edict of the Duke of Savoy com- manded the inhabitants of all the valleys and plains and mountain slopes, except of five val- leys, the names of which were given, to be con- verted to the Holy Catholic Church within three days. The valleys excepted were small, already crowded, and far up the Alps. Snow lay in all the passes; high waters covered the plains. It was midwinter, the season the persecutors generally chose for their cruel work, that what man might leave undone, nature, with a relent- less hand, should accomplish. The Waldenses could not escape over the high waters and the ice to some friendly land. So they turned their courageous steps to the re- gions of eternal snow. They were followed by a force of fifteen thousand soldiers, many of them Irish Eomanists who had taken part in the ter- rible massacre of 1641 ; that massacre of which Green says : "Tales of horror and outrage, such as maddened our own England when they reached us from Cawnpore, came day after day over the Irish Channel/' The bestial and fiendish pursuers followed the flying Vaudois into caves and dens. No pen 178 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS may write, no voice may tell, the horrors they enacted. The mountain echoes were of mingled sighs, cries and curses. The mountain streams were red and choked with blood. To far Protestant shores the story was wafted. The heart of England was "moved more than with a trumpet." Milton spoke for his countrymen when he cried out in impassioned strains for vengeance : " Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Are scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones Forget not: In thy book, record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks! Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe." Never was Oliver Cromwell greater than when his lion-heart kindled with pity for his poor brethren of the Alps. He wept. He ap- pointed a day of humiliation and prayer. He sent money two thousand pounds from his own purse, a larger sum collected from the churches. He refused to sign a treaty with 179 MARTYRS TO FAITH France until the French king had promised pro- tection to the Vaudois. He directed his Latin secretary to write for help to all the Protestant states of Europe. He sent an ambassador to threaten with war the Duke of Savoy. This ambassador, Sir Samuel Morland, ad- dressed the Duke in the bold spirit of the Lord Protector. Specifying some of the cruelties that had been committed, he broke off in the midst with, "What need I mention more? If all the tyrants of all times and ages were alive again, they would be shamed to think they had devised nothing but what might be esteemed mild and humane in comparison with these actions. Meantime, angels shudder, men are angered, heaven itself seems to be astonished with the cries of dying men, and the very earth to blush, being discolored with the blood of so many in- nocent persons. Do not Thou, most high God, do not Thou take that vengeance which is due to such enormous crimes. Let thy blood, Christ, wash away this slaughter !" The impassioned address was heard in silence, and the letters the ambassador delivered were received in submission. A stop was thus for a 180 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS time put to open persecution. But it is only within the present generation that the Vaudois have been allowed to send their children to school, and to have equal rights with the Catho- lic citizen. What fidelity is that which through centuries of persecution, on bleak and wind-swept rocks, cut off from the abode of helpful men, could still hold fast to the truth ! The Truth " Life of whate'er makes life worth living 1 , Seed-grrain of high emprize, immortal food, One heavenly thing, whereof earth hath the giving." It is impossible to say what the state and the Italian church have lost by refusing the services of the best members of both church and state. The world has gained an eternal example of steadfastness, of moderation and of purity, a richer legacy to humanity than all the gifts of conquerors, kings, or scholars. The last of the three peoples, whose story I am telling, lived in a remote Austrian province, lying on the northeastern slope of the Tyrol mountains. Salzburg is celebrated for its beauty. It is beautiful, with a wild airy grace, 181 MARTYRS TO FAITH peculiar to Alpine regions. Through the swift Salzach and other rushing mountain streams, it sends its tribute from glacier and from crys- tal lake to the Danube. Its rugged rocks give stingy foothold in cracks and crannies or on some lofty bit of plain, to forests of fir, to free, upspringing larches and to gigantic, solitary chestnuts ; and they nourish the softest mosses, and the most lustrous flowers. In the valleys and on the acclivities are sweet clover, blue- bells, crocuses, pansies that might be the nurs- lings of a city gardener ; wild thyme, called by the peasants the Virgin Mary's flower, that gives out under the mountain climber's foot, re- freshing, invigorating odors. Far up the heights is the forget-me-not, with almost im- palpable petals of heaven's own blue, and the Alpine rose, a celestial red. Higher yet is the brown brunella, with its patient foot in the snow, and still higher is the edelweiss, which the chamois hunter proudly puts in his hat as a boast of the dangers he has dared. The province derives its name from its salt mines. It is a citadel of rock salt. Vast mines with white pavements, white walls and white 182 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ceilings, with winding passages and high wide halls, sparkle in the light of lamps, burning forever where day never comes, and resound with hammer and chisel, or the hollow roar of blasting powder, where no noise of the outside world ever penetrates. Vast caverns perforate the hills with black chambers where never ray of sun or lamp, and never sound of life reaches. It is in one of these, according to the story, that fiery Barbarossa, locked in the chains of an enchanted sleep, awaited the long delayed res- toration of German unity; waited till his red beard grew through the marble table that sup- ported his head. As I said, Salzburg was formerly an ecclesias- tical sovereignty. Its Archbishops, in peace, ranked with kings, and in war figured with gen- erals. The inhabitants were chiefly peasants, obedient and peaceable, but accustomed to wrest their subsistence from the cruel rock; to go down to awful depths, and up to dizzy heights ; to stand face to face with death above and below; they were also thoughtful, self-reliant, fearless and true. Hardship, toil, struggle, alone may break the spirit of men, but when 183 MARTYRS TO FAITH they are united with danger, form the soul of man to freedom. The time has been when liberty found no shelter in all the world, but in the mountains of the Swiss, and behind the dikes of the Dutch. The mountaineers and the miners of Salz- burg pondered on the teachings of the Bible given to them either by the Waldenses or by the disciples of Huss. They contrasted the lowliness of Jesus with the loftiness of the Archbishop and his priests. They sought and found a more excellent way than was sought or found by the lords and scholars of the empire, and this in spite of cord and stake and pool and dungeon. During three centuries their history bears a general resemblance to that of the Wal- denses. After a tempest of persecution for one genera- tion, or two or even three, they lived quietly, observing ecclesiastical forms; then zealous missionaries discovered heresy, and persecution recommenced. They were driven into exile, while their children were locked up in convents and brought up as nuns and monks. 184 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS About the year 1700 the Archbishop flattered himself that the word of God was rooted out of the land. But as if carried by winds and by birds, the seed again grew in the remotest nooks, on apparently inaccessible heights ; in stillness, without teacher or preacher, new communities built themselves up. They met at night in the depth of forests, and while sentinels stood on the outskirts, they dug from the earth their beloved Bibles and read and prayed. When the rocks walled them about and they were high above traitor and spy, they even indulged in a song. At length inquisitors discovered that the peasants neglected to make use of a greeting prescribed by the Pope, with the promise of two hundred absolutions from purgatory for every utterance on ordinary occasions, and two thou- sand years for its use on the death bed. Following up this clue as indicative of dis- belief in purgatory, the inquisitors were satisfied that heresy was alive. The Archbishop in wrath declared, "I will clear the heretics out of my land, if I have nothing left but thorns and thistles." 185 MARTYRS TO FAITH On the last day of October, 1731, he issued a proclamation to the purport that the heretics must leave the country within, eight days, with the exception of property holders, who might have a respite of three months. Of course sales could be made only on the terms of the pur- chaser and many a land owner was forced to abandon house and ground, worth from five thousand to fifteen thousand dollars. Many a one left a hundred cattle standing in his stables. The early winter had already whitened the land, when the exiles, staff in hand, set out on their pilgrimage. They came down from the mountains, out from the valley, up from the mine, from under the very walls of the Arch- bishop's palace, thirty thousand in number. They themselves were amazed, and their princes were astounded. But the latter did not relent. With streaming eyes and, it is said, with groans and cries, the exiles looked their last on their beloved fatherland. But we may well believe that not one of the sad-hearted throng would have laid by his dusty shoes and taken up his residence in the palace of his persecutor. 186 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS With slow and melancholy movement, the broken procession of pilgrims and wanderers, passed out of Austria, into reformed and mod- ern Germany. At once the wonderful train became a triumphal procession. Bells sent forth peals of welcome. Cottagers stood by the road- side and showered blessings. Princes opened the doors of their palaces and offered their warmest seats, their softest beds. Preachers made the exiles the theme of pulpit discourse. Preachers and laymen alike were inspired to lead holier lives. "Where shall they go ? What shall be done with them?" were questions promptly answered. George Second of Eng- land offered them homes in America. The English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, besides making large remittances to Germany, sent over, from 1733 to 1735, more than one hundred and fifty of the exiles to the English colony in Georgia, where they settled by themselves at Ebenezer, on the Savannah. Our country boasts noble blood, but the Puri- tans of New England, the Huguenots of the Carolinas and of New Jersey, the Quakers of 187 MARTYRS TO FAITH Pennsylvania, have not a more heroic history than have the Tyrolese of Georgia. All the kings and states of northern Europe offered homes, but no sovereign was so able to give a convenient and accessible asylum, as was the king of Prussia. Frederic William did not lose his opportunity. Harsh he might be, and was, to his skeptical and wayward children, but he was gentle and generous to those who suf- fered for a principle. Moreover, he was a prac- tical man and saw in this sudden expulsion of the best peasants of Austria, a means of re- cuperating Lithuania a Prussian province, which had of late years been ravaged and dev- astated by pestilence three hundred thousand people having died of disease and famine, fifty- two towns and hundreds of thousands of acres having gone to waste. He sent commissioners, therefore, to look up Salzburgers, now wander- ing in the cold uplands of Bavaria, or still streaming out of the borders of Austria, and to invite them to homes in Lithuania. He di- rected that those who accepted his invita- tion should move in small bodies by different routes, and he needlessly exhorted all German 188 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS princes to be kind, and "not hinder them and me." In the cold, raw days of February, one of the first companies of the refugees, three hundred and thirty-one in number, moved towards the little town of Nordlingen in Bavaria, there to await the Prussian commissary. The towns- people, led by their two chief clergymen, went out to meet them, finding them, men, women and children, with their ox carts and baggage wagons, awaiting in the open fields, an invita- tion to the town. "Come in, ye blessed of the Lord, why stand ye without?" said one clergy- man in words of Scripture, for no mere human words seemed fitting. The strangers followed into town, and into the church, where one of the clergymen addressed them from the text : "And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife or chil- dren, or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundred fold, and shall inherit eternal life." The other from the verse : "Now the Lord hath said unto Abraham, 'Get thee out of thy coun- try, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." 189 MARTYRS TO FAITH What preaching that must have been! The word of Christ and the living example! Here were men that knew the pleasures of accumula- tion, the pride of possession, yet had forsaken houses and lands; who felt cold and hunger like any other, yet had given up fire and shelter and food ; whose hearts loved like other human hearts, yet had turned away from friend and kindred. The blessed words from the pulpit comforted the pilgrims; and inspired the citizens, who stood lovingly around, with yet more eager de- sire to act the part of generous hosts. Wittenberg the Wittenberg of Luther, of Shakespeare's Hamlet, of Marlowe, and of Goethe's Faust; the cradle of the Reformation, the nurse of the New Learning, the Mecca, the Rome and the Jerusalem of the Reformers of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries the little old town of Wittenberg remembered its name and its fame when the strangers ap- proached its gates. It was on a Saturday after- noon, the third of May. Through their narrow and crooked streets the Wittenbergers poured. They took their stand on the banks of the Elbe, 190 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS and there, in solemn expectation, they waited. Just before the sun set, at half past six, a cloud of dust arose from the south. Emerging from the cloud came a motley throng such as Goethe describes in the little idyl, Hermann and Dorothea families and fragments of families, stretching from hill to hill, beyond the reach of the eye. All were on foot, except a few aged and sick, who were divided among eleven wagons laden also with household goods. When they had crossed the river, the strangers, their steps adapted to their weary children's feet, sang the trustful old German hymn, beginning, "All is well that our God does." When that was ended, still moving on, they struck up Luther's grand psalm, "A great stronghold our God is still." The university students, at least a thousand in number, falling into line, added their clear young voices. The lofty solemn strains rose and swelled through the listening streets as the exiles marched calmly on, and the towns- people wept tears of passionate pity. One day the pilgrims gave to rest in the town of sacred memories, then they again took 191 MARTYRS TO FAITH up the line of march. Seven hundred miles more brought them to the gates of Berlin, where royalty in the persons of the Prussian king and queen honored itself by meeting them and giv- ing them welcome. Five hundred more long miles, and the wanderers found their new coun- try. Cottages and fields, stock and implements of husbandry were all ready for them. Under the industrious hands of the new set- tlers the waste blossomed, flocks whitened the hillsides, towns grew, trade flourished. Lithua- nia became the garden spot of Prussia. As for Salzburg, the beautiful mountain land that had been robbed of her noble off- spring, her glory departed with her honest peasants. Her farms, her villages and her mines fell to ruin. The thorns and thistles the Archbishop preferred to heresy yielded so poor a revenue that the state was unable to resist the encroachments of Austria, of Bavaria and of Napoleon, and it sank, after eleven hundred years of magnificence as a principality, into a meager and impoverished dependence. Like their predecessors and contemporaries in the government of heretics, the Archbishops 192 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS sacrificed their country to narrow and bitter prejudice. Austria, we might think, had re- ceived a lesson she would remember. Contigu- ous to Salzburg, and on the west, is the wide and lovely valley of the Ziller the Zillerthal, the pride of Tyrol, with its meadows and fields, its beautiful white villages, farm houses and man- sions, and its churches with their slender spires, so in harmony with the mountain scenery. From this peaceful valley were driven out in 1838, after eight years' persecution, between four hundred and five hundred of the hand- some, happy peasantry, among the most intelli- gent and industrious of Austrian subjects. Two hundred of them were property holders. They carried with them into Prussia, which again offered shelter and home, not only their indus- trious and upright characters, but fifty thou- sand dollars, although they left as much more due them in their native valley. Whatever may be said of the devotion of the Catholic church to its principles, of the self- abnegation of associations and of individual members, and much may and ought to be said of these things; as a church it certainly has 193 MARTYRS TO FAITH to bear a sad and guilty burden of persecution. It is to this unstatesmanlike and unchristian persecution that we owe the story of the Albi- genses, the Waldenses and the Salzburgers. While that lives, who shall doubt that the soul of man is akin to God ? 194 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY It is sometimes said that he who can have the select society of all the centuries should be satisfied without any other. And it is true that a library has certain advantages over actual living association. Books cost little, compara- tively. They can be handled without gloves, without finery. They require no etiquette, no conventionality. You may stand, you may walk, you may sit, you may recline carelessly and enjoy the company of the greatest. You may be candid to the utmost extent of candor without causing offense. You may be effusively delighted without exciting a suspicion of flat- tery. It is true that the best society and the most accessible may be found in a library. Here the solitary and the sorrowful, the disappointed and the erring, the betrayed and the deserted, the unthanked benefactor, the young who are sensi- tive to the limitations of poverty, the old who have neglected to repair their friendships, the 195 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY slow who have been left behind, the weary, the over-burdened, may find company, solace, stimulus. It is true, also, that the happy and the strong may find in the library increase of happiness and strength. But it is also true that the bright creations of genius cannot fill the place of living, warm human beings even to the scholar, even to the poet who in his library weaves with his own the thoughts, the dreams, the fancies of his intellectual equals. That lonely man "whose soul was like a star and dwelt apart," in his age and poverty and blindness, in the desertion of friends and the contempt of foes, felt that the climax of his sorrow was the deprivation, or limitation, of intercourse with his kind. He says : "Not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; * * * from the cheerful ways of men Cut off." Addison's old-fashioned hero, Sir Koger de Coverley, has little resemblance to Milton ex- cept in his love of humanity. Let me recall Addison's description of Sir Roger at the theatre : 196 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS "As soon as the house was full and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another and partake of the same common entertainment." Can we not see that honest old face beaming with benevolence? Human nature stands on a substratum of love in spite of the fret and fury of the untoward circumstance. The baby in his cradle quivers with delight, his fingers and his toes begin to curl and play at the sound of another baby's voice. What is prettier than a child of four or five years absorbed in contemplation of another child, lips apart, eyes unwinking, head fixed in its pose? All through the seven ages the passion for association with his kind reigns over the heart. Standing forlorn, like a sentinel left to guard the outpost of a vanished army, the aged man finds comfort in the tender presence of a little child. With gentle patience and equal pity they both await the broadening of their twi- 197 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY light into day. A Timon seeks solitude and curses his kind only because his heart is lacer- ated by ingratitude. His hate is the reverse side of love. A mediaeval saint lives forty years in the desert because humanity's first and last passion is extinguished by a morbid selfishness that would save his own soul if all the world were lost. If a man love God he must love his brother also. On this love is founded civilization. The word civilization means the art of living to- gether. When this useful art becomes a fine art, civilization passes into society. Apply the tests by which poetry, the first of the fine arts, is tried, and see how far the figure holds good. "Poetry is the language of perfect discre- tion," is Lowell's rather curious definition. "It is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," says Wordsworth. "It is the accent of high beauty and power," says the critic Arnold. In its substance and matter is the high seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity. It has a constant union of simplicity with greatness and something besides that words can- 198 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS not define, that analysis cannot detect, an inter- fusing, subduing, uplifting, charming power that only concrete examples may show. Ideally, society is the poetry of civilization, therefore it is, that society is the finest thing the mere world affords. "Evenings like these are worth a pilgrimage," said Lady Dunstan after a dinner with Diana of the Crossways. Amiel, the Swiss scholar, writes of an evening of social intercourse: "There was not a crease in the rose leaf. Let us hail as an echo from Heaven these brief mo- ments of perfect harmony ." It must be acknowledged that society does not often reach this perfect harmony. Why ? Is so much required? Yes; much is required and must be interwoven with the nature, so inter- fused into the very blood as to become an integral part of the whole. Why is it that society so seldom attains to this perfect har- mony? It is because of the imperfections of individuals who constitute society and of the homes on which it rests. American society, like the American state, is especially individual. Yet it presents a 199 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY singular anomaly, inasmuch as individualism, if it mean originality, is rare. The self pre- served in its integrity throughout a full and natural development, in all its simplicity and yet with the complexity of high and fine culti- vation, is the individualism that may and must exist in good society. To be oneself is to be brave. It requires thought to have convictions, and courage to hold them ; to have and to hold are not always the same. For the latter, a cer- tain strength of grasp is necessary, and not only distinctness and fixedness are essential, but a certain alertness, a tactful recognition of the variety in harmony. "Why dawn't thee letten Mrs. Grundy alone," says farmer Ashfield to his wife. "I do verily believe when thee goest to t'other world the vurst question thee'll ax '11 be if Mrs. Grund/s there." The question, "What will people say ?" is the knell of courage, and the soul without courage has neither truth nor beauty. Good sense and common kindness are essen- tials of society. Of course every sensible per- son uses every opportunity for gaining knowl- 200 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS edge and for drawing wisdom from knowledge. "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Good sense shuts out every sort of eccentricity for- wardness, backwardness, loud talk, self-con- sciousness, too much of a thing, too little of a thing. Good sense knows the Golden Mean. Good sense keeps clear of all affectation, all artificiality, all desire for effect. It preserves the individuality, originality, selfhood. A kind of politician known a half a century ago was called a "dough-face." Good sense forbids the dough-face in society. Each man must do his own thinking. None must be ashamed when there is no cause for shame, proud when there is no reason for pride. Therefore, society re- quires courage, but a courage that may be yoked with lamblike gentleness. Society is soft and smooth, smiling and graceful. It is so kindly that it is almost, not quite, caressing. Pains- taking is still another element. Some one said to Charles James Fox, who was carving at a dinner table with his usual ease, grace and precision, "How does it come that you do so many things and such different things so well ?" "It is because I am a very painstaking man," 201 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY said Mr. Fox. "I put a book beside me when I first carved and studied the art." In all games of skill Fox excelled. In ora- tory none came near him, except Pitt and Burke. In conversation, he was above all. It might almost be said that no man excelled him in anything. Without something of this genius for taking pains, society as well as the indi- vidual, is unfinished and slovenly. "Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting/' says the wisest of the uninspired. Individuality is to be preserved at every cost, and friendship is too noble and too sacred a thing to be played with. Yet one should not be too particular or too laborious. Among the thousand good things in Mrs. Browning's "Love Letters," I find the fol- lowing: "Lord Bacon did a great deal of trifling besides the stuffing of the fowl, * * * and, in fact, all the great work done in the world is done just by the people who know how to trifle. * * * When a man makes a prin- ciple of never losing a moment, he is a lost man. Great men are eager to find an hour, not to avoid losing a moment." Some think there is a preservative in ex- 202 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS clusiveness. To me it is ridiculous, almost ser- vile. Of course, one must choose one's friends and associate with the congenial. But to catch up our skirts, toss back our heads and turn a scornful face is unbecoming, to say the least. As I pass through Indianapolis, north and south, east and west, and see the hundreds and hundreds of pleasant homes, of pretty children, of fine-looking men and women, I often recall Shenstone's sigh when, looking over the map of England, he exclaimed, "How many pleasant people are here whom I shall never know." Continued growth or improvement is a law of the individual, consequently of society. Without growth there is no life. Living things <7rott',dead things decay. "The good die young," is often said; say, rather, "The young die good." It is not the early spring, but the late summer that disfigures the earth with thistles, nettles and other noxious weeds. Every one who has had long observation of life and litera- ture knows how great may be the change, how complete, in the progress of years, may be the transformation of character as well as of ap- pearance. A great artist made a pair of con- 203 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY trasting paintings "Innocence" and "Guilt" an interval of twenty-five years having elapsed between the two. Unawares, he had painted two portraits of the same individual. Inno- cence had become guilt. Is that not enough to frighten one? "Death is not the worst thing," said a wise old lady to me when I had partially excused Victor Hugo's glorification of a lie. "Death is not the worst thing." No, it is not. Some- times it is better to die than to live. After they have reached a certain maturity, men and women who have hitherto felt a measure of anxiety and responsibility for themselves too often fold their hands, and, with satisfied eyes, view and review the shortcomings of their neighbors. The arch enemy of humanity seizes the luckless moment and drops into the un- guarded soil the seeds of envy, jealousy and all unrighteousness. When a woman finds herself calculating that such and such an attention will bring her or her children into notice, will be an advantage in some way to her or hers, it is time for her to beware. She is entering the cave of petrifaction whence there is no 204 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS egress to the free airs of heaven. It is not neces- sary to be a member of any special circle, but it is necessary to preserve one's integrity of soul. The very seat and center of all life is the heart, and it is the heart that is earliest neg- lected and most persistently left out of the reck- oning. Now and then we see a man with fine powers, fine education, fine opportunities, frit- ter his precious life away in trivial, futile, passing interests. Without a clear perception of the distinction between right and wrong the man, it is true, may go sadly astray. The sense of right, with the courage to put it into word and conduct, is grit, is granite. No one is respectable without it, no one is disreputable with it. Still, it is not the moral sense I mean here, but the feeling heart. Hawthorne, in some respects the embodiment of the puritanism he abjures, is the great American teacher, his lessons gently flowing through parable and allegory, or cutting and burning in direct precept. The sum of his teaching is: "The heart the heart. Purify that inward sphere and the many shapes of evil 205 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY that haunt the outward, and that now seem almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord ; but if we go no deeper than the intellect, and strive with merely that feeble instrument to discern and rectify what is wrong, our whole accom- plishment will be a dream." It is common to see the mind cultivated, the manners guarded, the health nursed, the dress cared for, the heart ignored. It is said of one of the most learned of women that she has abso- lutely no sense of natural ties the holy ties that Shakespeare calls "too intrinse to un- loose;" that she has none but a philosophic idea of the gentle and self-abnegating emotion of love. History records of the most intel- lectual family that ever lived, a family whose rise is ranked among the four great events of the century that invented printing and dis- covered America, that it was as lacking in heart as it was abounding in mind. A great gulf may lie between mind and heart. He whose aim in life is to build himself up widens and deepens this gulf. He rises, and the society that accepts him is pulled down by his weight. 206 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS "There is nothing on earth," said Luther, "so sweet as the heart of a woman in which pity dwells." The tenderness that softens the fiery eye, that subdues the fervor of the voice, that withdraws out of sight and out of mind con- sideration for self this compassion, to use the scriptural word, this fine sympathy it is that makes it possible to have such a social evening as Amiel describes. In the really great soul, simplicity and sincerity dwell by the side of lowliness of mind. We all may name examples of individuals, coming within our own observation, that form good society, and still more examples that we have met in our reading. Burke said of Mrs. Delany that she was the best bred woman in Europe. He might, perhaps, have left the word "bred" out and said only "best," she was so good. One smiles to read Mrs. Barbauld's notice of Joanna Baillie : "I saw her at church looking as innocent as if she never had written a line." Mrs. Edgeworth says of Scott: "He is one of the best bred men I ever saw, with all the exquisite politeness which is of no particular school or country, but which is of all coun- 207 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY tries ; the politeness which rises from good and quick sense and feeling, which seems to know by instinct the character of others. As I sat beside him I could not believe he was a stranger and forgot he was a great man. Two years ago, in California, I spent a week in the house of an old lady of ninety years She had seen many vicissitudes. Born in Eng- land, educated there in a boarding school, and spending there her early married life, she had later lived in Wisconsin on a great farm that required to be cleared, and had then drifted to the Pacific coast, where, lately, she ended her days. Every evening at eight o'clock she would take the hand of her devoted daughter, and, turning to each of us with a little curtsy and a kindly smile, would bid us good night and wish we might sleep well. She could not forget the manners of a refined society, even though the enfeebled memory compelled her to say, "Ellen, what are the names of my sons?" Among the advantages possessed by the young mothers of early days in Indianapolis was the acquaintance and friendship of one who had had so wide and varied an experience that at 208 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS forty or fifty she was regarded and always spoken of as old. "Old" Mrs. McDougall has lain in her grave many and many a year, but her stately figure, her gracious manners, her wise, witty, humorous, intelligent, altogether charming discourse, will never be forgotten by even the child who had the good fortune to know her. She chatted as genially with a laundress over methods of washing and starch- ing and about early reminiscences as with the general or clergyman or the traveled lady who sought her company, no touch of condescension in the one case, no hint of self -consciousness in the other. She was interested in humanity at large and in little. She was a queenly woman with experience, advice and luminous anecdote at the service of her young neighbors. "It is pleasant to be grateful even to the dead," says Lowell. Between that day and this many a woman of whom any circle at any time might be proud has spent her sweet and modest life in Indianapolis, and made her home the home of the virtues and the graces. After all, it is the home next to personal character that is of import in our making and 209 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIETY maintaining a lofty and refined atmosphere. If, for the sake of society, the home is neg- lected or deserted, society is no longer a bless- ing, nor is it even a joy. The individual pre- serves his mental integrity by doing his own thinking and maintaining a sense of justice and candor. The home stands upon a foundation of peace, is built up by purity and love, is illumined by innocent gayety, is warmed by tender sympathy, is strengthened by wide in- telligence. Society must have these same ele- ments peace, purity, love, gayety, S3 r mpathy, intelligence. Into the soul we cannot look. In the home we may not pry. One is secret, the other sacred. Of society, we have a right to demand that it be open to inspection, even in its motives. Simplicity, with the kind of greatness that everybody can have, the greatness that means a heart large, yet too small for anything that is base, is a mark for good society and a pillar for its support. "The longer I live," says Ten- nyson, "the more I value kindness and sim- plicity among the sons and daughters of men." 210 mas ! in; ; - - > : ; - . i ' : 11 ijHi liilil llpiiiif : '.H I i i!l I ass