Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Browning 
 
 A STUDY IN HUMAN FREEDOM 
 
 BY 
 SOLOMON F. GINGERICH, A.M., Ph.D. 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 
 
 GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 
 
 ANN ARBOR, MICH. 
 I9II 
 
Copyright 
 
 Solomon F. Gingerich 
 
 1911 
 
 ^^ /gCtZt^e^h^ 
 
 \ 
 

 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 For the material on Wordsworth in this book I have 
 borrowed with absolute freedom from a volume I pub- 
 lished on Wordsworth a few years ago. 
 
 It is well nigh impossible for me to Indicate my in- 
 debtedness to the many writers on the poets here treated. 
 I shall only say that my indebtedness to them is great. 
 For direct personal help in preparing and revising the 
 manuscript, and reading proof, I wish to express my 
 'thanks to Professors I. N. Demmon and Louis A. Strauss 
 of the University of Michigan. 
 
 S. F. G. 
 
 rfi05^22 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Wordsworth and His Times 31 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 Wordsworth : Memory and Will 48 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 Wordsworth : Freedom and Mysticism 74 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Wordsworth : Art and Freedom 96 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Tennyson and His Times 1 13 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Tennyson : Memory and the Mystic Element 129 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Tennyson : Freedom and Law 146 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Tennyson : Art and Law 165 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Browning and His Times 176 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Browning : Passion and Will 192 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Browning: Freedom and Transcendentalism 211 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Browning : Art and Liberalism 235 
 
 Conclusion 247 
 
 Appendix 255 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The spirit of freedom is a treasure of inestimable 
 price to the human mind. Everywhere and at all times 
 the love of freedom asserts itself — politically, socially, 
 but most of all, individually. But our individual free- 
 dom, which underlies social and political freedom, has its 
 roots directly in the will. And the experience of the will 
 — the act of striking an attitude, of choosing an alterna- 
 tive, of meeting a situation with an undivided self, which 
 gives a positive sense of freedom — this is the thing in us 
 that is most distinctively and intimately human. Since 
 this experience is human and universal, and since poets 
 are wont to deal with things human and universal, it 
 were strange if they did not reflect in their work a sense 
 of will and a spirit of freedom. They do so, and they 
 "awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate 
 sense" of these qualities. 
 
 The poet's method of appealing to the sense of will 
 is most often indirect, but if the poet be of a volitional 
 type, as \\'ordsworth, or Browning, he sometimes appeals 
 to it directly. When he does so, his poefry may impress 
 us as declamatory rather than poetic. The objection, 
 however, is not to the volitional appeal, but to the bald- 
 ness of the method of expression. More often the appeal 
 is veiled in metaphor, and may be finely poetic. For 
 instance, the line, 
 
 '"Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,'" 
 
 has often and justly been praised for the fineness and 
 originality of the metaphor, while the simple beauty and 
 superior power of the line just preceding it. 
 
 'Wordsworth, "Elegiac Stanzas." 
 
lO INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "I love lo see ihe look with which it braves," 
 
 has been passed by unnoticed. Here the volitional ap- 
 peal, veiled by the slight though exquisite figure expres- 
 sed in look and braves, is poetic and effective. We are 
 glad that the castle has a look with which it can brave 
 the destroying elements. Its heroism unobtrusively 
 takes hold of us, and the effect is bracing. Most often, 
 however, the volitional appeal is wholly indirect, and lies 
 in the texture and spirit of the poem as a whole, such a 
 poem, for example, as the "Charge of the Light Brigade." 
 It is because of this indirectness of the volitional ap- 
 peal in poetry that comparatively little has been written 
 abqjat it in literary criticism. 
 
 \ (Poetry is fundamentally the expression of personalit;^j^^> 
 Ibut tEe central and most important element in personality 
 is the will. Where there is a weak and nerveless will 
 there can be no strong and rich personality. Where there 
 is a strong will and a noble soul, there personality abounds. 
 The human will is beset with dangers — dangers, for in- 
 stance, of imperiousness and sterility; — but when these 
 dangers are avoided and the will acts normally, it em- 
 bodies the noblest elements of the human mind and fur- 
 nishes to us our deepest organ of response to the truth 
 of things. In the "Prelude" and in the "Excursion" 
 Wordsworth frequently attests to the sublimity of mind 
 possessed by the poor and those in the common walks 
 of life. The Leech-Gatherer in "Resolution and Inde- 
 pendence" has neither knowledge nor culture, and is 
 devoid of romantic feelings. What he does possess, how- 
 ever, is the power of self-sustenance, which flouts de- 
 spair, which bears up against adversity, and which turns 
 sorrow into pleasure and contentment. And Wordsworth 
 could have laughed himself to scorn to find "in that de- 
 
INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 crepit man so firm a mind." Far more than we are con- 
 scious of, this firmness of mind resides at the core of 
 human personahty.* 
 
 It is certain that purely intellectual conceptions are 
 of less importance to poetry than the energy of will. It 
 has been said, for example, that "Paradise Lost" is a 
 monument to dead ideas, and that it lacks human inter- 
 est. The first part of this count may perhaps be accepted, 
 but hardly the second. No doubt Milton's theological 
 ideas, as ideas, are of little interest to us, but the vast 
 volitional energy stored up in the poem makes it genu- 
 inely human. Its imaginative sublimity is the natural 
 and harmonious outgrowth of a volitional personality. 
 This poem is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit," 
 the song of a man with sword begirt to do mighty battle, a 
 man who, "with danger compassed round," sang with 
 "mortal voice unchanged to hoarse or mute." The human 
 interest in the poem lies in the indomitable energy of its 
 creator's mind, and not in its intellectuality. The 
 energy of will, closely bound up with personality, 
 is a more vital force in poetry than intellectual concep- 
 tion s.f 
 
 There are indefinable elements in the will ; and since 
 this is so it is impossible to give a complete or accurate 
 definition of it. We can proceed with sufficient clearness, 
 however, by considering what is, so to speak, the raw 
 material of which it is made, and by giving a partial defi- 
 nition. The lower ground work of our will lies in our phys- 
 ical reflexes, our impulses and instincts, our sensations 
 and crude perceptions, in the clash between converging 
 physical desires, in the unformed subconscious tendencies 
 
 *See Note i, Appendix, 
 t See Note 2, Appendix. 
 
I a INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in us, vaguely pulling us hither and thither, in the oc- 
 casional emergence into consciousness of this welter of 
 unformed matter. This mass of experience furnishes 
 the lower content and outer material for the will, and 
 brings it to the very door of the outer and nonconscious 
 world ; yet this does not constitute the will itself. On a 
 higher level the material of our will consists in the con- 
 flict of our desires other than the physical, in our higher 
 aspirations and longings, in the conflict both of our pas- 
 sions and of our knowledge regarding things prudential, 
 ethical, aesthetical, and religious. These things, again, do 
 not constitute the will; they form the inner and higher 
 material for the will. The will itself is an independent, 
 self-directing, self-developing, but otherwise indefinable 
 power in us — (it requires a pure act of believing and not 
 at all of knowing to accept this statement) — which lies 
 back of the things that have been described as the mater- 
 ial upon which it works. This material is conditioned by 
 heredity and environment, but behind it there is an in- 
 crement of will, however small, that is absolutely inde- 
 pendent of heredity and environment ; else, where were 
 the freedom? The will is the power "existent behind all 
 laws," that makes laws, that selects and arranges and 
 harmonizes our lower impulses and our higher aspira- 
 tions, our passions and our knowledge; the power that 
 organizes and unifies our personality. The will thus in 
 its inmost circle ranges over the whole gamut of con- 
 scious life — from the physical to the transcendental, from 
 the natural to the mystical, from the finite to the infinite, 
 from the lowest physical desire to the highest and finest 
 essence of spirit in us that can give rise to conscious 
 aspirations. 
 
 But there are those who do not consider the will to 
 have this self-directing and self-developing power, who 
 
INTKOdL'CTION. 13 
 
 deny the freedom of the human will. Such hold that 
 consciousness is a mere cerebration of cells, the product 
 of a materialistic evolution, and that freedom, so-called, 
 is an illusion, a product of man's foolish fancies. Poets, 
 however, like religionists, almost unanimously take for 
 granted the existence of man's freedom. They hold 
 implicitly that there is in consciousness a power inde- 
 pendent of heredity and environment, and that this 
 power, deep in the heart of man, gives man, in all ages 
 and under all circumstances, an everlasting assurance of 
 freedom. However strongly St. Paul may, when his 
 logical faculty is active, reason about predestination, it 
 is quite evident that "whosoever will" is the watchword 
 written over the whole face of the Hebrew scriptures, 
 including for the most part the writings of St. Paul him- 
 self ; and perhaps in the advice of Tennyson, at the close 
 of the poem "De Profundis," that we should attempt to 
 find 
 
 Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought 
 
 Not matter, nor the finite-infinite, 
 
 But this main-miracle, that thou art thou, 
 
 With power on thine own act and on the world — 
 
 perhaps in this advice there is an expression of what lies 
 very close to the inner core of all high poetic truth. It is 
 not for the poets to argue the theory of freedom ; and 
 Milton in "Paradise Lost" and Chaucer in "Troilus and 
 Criseyde" make sorry work of it when they attempt the 
 argument. But it is of inestimable importance to the 
 poet's work that it hold implicitly the theory of freedom 
 and awaken in us an intimate sense of the spirit of free- 
 dom. 
 
 The first and simplest reason why the poet usually 
 assumes the principle of freedom in his work is that the 
 assumption is implied in the conduct and in the practical 
 
14 INTRODUCTION'. 
 
 beliefs of all men. True poetry alvva3'S has the roots 
 of its growth imbedded in the soil of common experience. 
 Poetry deals most generally with personal experience, 
 and with the instincts, feelings, and volitions of men. 
 Whatever else a great poetry may deal with, it deals first 
 of all with the abiding and universal experiences of the 
 heart and mind and soul — with the whole life of man. 
 Life, it has been urged by various and competent critics, 
 is the proper subject matter of poetry. But three-fourths 
 of life, it has been said upon high authority, is made up 
 of conduct. It may, however, be added that at least 
 three-fourths of conduct consists in the proper exercise 
 of the will. And thus the will — its exercise, its power, 
 its freedom — is a good half of life. Nor is this by 
 any means an overstatement of the will's importance in 
 the every-day experience of living. It is an understate- 
 ment rather. If the race is ever going to be saved, 
 it must first strongly will to receive salvation. We are 
 in a constant state of probation, and life is full of choices. 
 We are forever at the parting ways — we can and must 
 choose at every moment between alternatives, either great 
 or small, momentous or trivial. We must choose be- 
 tween reading a book or taking a walk, between wearing 
 an overcoat or carrying an umbrella, between vocation 
 and vocation, truth and falsehood, idealism and pessim- 
 ism, religion and no religion. Each choice closes up that 
 which has been a possibility hitherto, but also opens up 
 new possibilities. Now, poetry seizes, more powerfully 
 than science or philosophy, upon this practical phase of 
 life and renders it concretely, and thereby purifies and 
 strengthens our powers of choice. Lear makes his choice 
 imperiously at the opening of the play, and the conse- 
 quences of it are mercilessly followed out through his 
 whole career. The Satan of "Paradise Lost" makes of 
 
INTKODUCTIOX. I5 
 
 necessity a virtue, declares it is better to reign in Hell 
 than serve in Heaven, and, by choosing and striving to 
 attain this ideal and by exercising an unconquerable 
 energy of will, gathers much glory unto himself. Certain 
 it is that the assumption of the will's free choice has not 
 merely a speculative interest for philosophers but has 
 tremendous issues in the common afifairs of life. And 
 since the p©et keeps his ear close to the tlirobbing heart 
 of humanity he assumes, as human beings practically 
 assume, the freedom of the will to be one of the funda- 
 mentally true things both in his faith and in his practice. 
 Another and higher reason — an artistic reason — why 
 the poet does not find himself at variance with the prin- 
 ciple of freedom but embraces it as the law of his life is 
 that in the art of poetry, as in kindred arts, the highest 
 function of the artist is creation, of "widening nature 
 without going beyond it," of enlarging the sphere of life 
 and freedom. We demand from the poet enough con- 
 tact with the actual to make us sure we are on solid 
 ground, but we also demand new idealizations and crea- 
 tions that seem to us reasonable and worth while. The 
 miracle of the art is that while the poet makes us feel 
 that he has both feet planted solidly on this earth and 
 that he is dealing with the deepest verities of actual and 
 concrete experience, the poet's pen at the same time 
 
 Gives to airy nothing 
 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 This is what Macaulay calls "the art of employing words 
 in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imag- 
 ination," and the truth that results is, for Macaulay, the 
 "truth of madness."- As thougii the imagination were a 
 
 'Essay, "Milton." 
 
1 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 faculty easy to be deceived, and as though all other kinds 
 of truth except common sense truth were madness ! No, 
 the imagination sees straight, and the truth it finds is not 
 the truth of madness but of creation. Poetry indeed pro- 
 duces an illusion, not on the imagination, but on com- 
 mon sense. Our common sense ideas find expression 
 by means of our logical reason in forms other than poetry. 
 Our feelings and volitions find expression by means of 
 imaginative representation in poetry. And when, in 
 reading poetry, we reach a certain imaginative intensity 
 the imaginative representation seems illusory to the 
 common sense element in us; but when with our imagin- 
 ation active we read a piece of scientific writing the work 
 seems illusory to the imagination. The one strand in 
 us may thus seem unreal to the other, and vice versa. 
 Common sense is the truth of our habitual matter-of- 
 fact reactions. Imaginative truth is the truth of unusual 
 moments of insight and creation, — a divine inspiration, 
 as Plato calls it. And in this highly imaginative and 
 creative process the poet feels that he is in a world where 
 creation is still going on and that he is a participant in the 
 act itself. He feels what philosophers sometimes insist 
 upon, namely, that the world itself is still in the process 
 of making, as it has been ever since the beginning 
 of time. The philosopher arrives at this idea by the- 
 orizing about it, while the poet, on the contrary, feels 
 its truth as a thing in his immediate experience, to which 
 his whole passional nature gives assent. 
 
 The poet's experience is something like that of the 
 musician in Browning's "Abt Vogler," who finds (seventh 
 stanza) there is in the moment of creation a will behind 
 all laws that made the laws themselves, and that this gift 
 of will has been given to man, who therefore can frame 
 out of three sounds "not a fourth sound, but a star," 
 
INTRODUCTION'. I J 
 
 that is, he can create. Each tone in our scale, he says, is 
 a very common thing — "it is every where in the world," 
 — but wiien this commonplace tone is taken and mixed 
 with two in the musician's thought, there is produced an 
 absolutely new thing — a creation ! "Consider and bow 
 the head !" In order to heighten the conception of his 
 own art the musician contrasts his own achievement with 
 that of the poet. liis own art is above law, but the poet's 
 is "all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws." On 
 the basis of creation, however, the two arts are identical. 
 And in their highest moments of inspiration v^-e claim 
 for the poets the same gift that Browning's musician 
 claims — the gift of creation. Since the poet possesses 
 this gift, he becomes conscious of the power of spiritual 
 energy and spiritual freedom in the universe, of the fact 
 that he himself possesses a will "existent behind all 
 laws" that has the power to inform and to create. And 
 he knows, therefore, in his own person the truth of the 
 freedom of his will. 
 
 To state this truth in physiological terms, the poet 
 in his higher inspirations and in the act of creation lives 
 in that region of his brain that is plastic, as yet unformed 
 — free. Here are not many obstructions in the way of 
 pre-existent, habitual reflexes. Here is nothing of those 
 few simple and treadmill operations of t!ie mind char- 
 acteristic of the matter-of-fact persons who seem not to 
 know their capability of alternative choices. But here 
 the mind, lifted as by inspiration above these treadmill 
 operations, by one element of its power, perception, dips 
 down into them and seizes upon common and matter-of- 
 fact experience as a solid base upon which to rear its 
 structure ; and by the other element of its power, imagina- 
 tion, penetrates the cloudland of the unknown and flashes 
 forth, by its own lightnings, unexpected vistas of hither- 
 
1 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to unknown and uncreated truth — truth charged with the 
 thunder roll of new harmonies and new melodies. Thus 
 the brain, drawing its material from two opposite poles 
 of our experience, "adverse, each from the other heaven- 
 high, hell-deep removed," shoots together new combina- 
 tions of truth — sometimes ingenious, sometimes start- 
 ling, sometimes with a vast economy and compression of 
 experience, but always radiant with new born heavenly 
 light and always drenclied with the stuff reported by 
 the senses, fresh from tlie v.orkl of fact and actualit}'. 
 Here is God's plenty by way of evidence that the brain 
 in its higher rounds is plastic and the will free. To doubt 
 now is impertinence. It is onl}^ wdien the heavy-handed 
 philosopher, for intellectual and logical reasons, demands 
 that through a chain of causations each act must have 
 had a sufficient preceding impingement, and that this im- 
 pingement must have had a cause farther back, and so 
 forth ad infinitum, that the question of freedom is at all 
 attacked. When one's head is in an attitude to enjoy pure 
 logic and is anxious for logic-chopping, it is always safe 
 to take the side of determinism, predestination, and 
 eternal necessity ; but when one is in a practical frame of 
 mind and takes counsel v\dth the heart, one must insist 
 on the freedom of the v/ill. Thus according to the 
 practical beliefs of all men and according to the deep- 
 est experience in his ovvn personality, the poet finds 
 the verification of his conviction that man is a free moral 
 agent. 
 
 Now, what has this unique and indefinable power to 
 do with the production of poetry? In the first place, if 
 poetry is anything it is concrete and passionate. It is full 
 of sensation and again sensation, full of sounds and 
 sights. It has primitive freshness, flesh and blood quali- 
 ties, oftentimes quite muscular and virile, at other times 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 9 
 
 delicate and sensitive — but always sensuous. On the 
 other hand, poetry draws just as freely from the purely 
 transcendental and spiritual qualities of our experiences, 
 the highest and most relincd of which we are capable. 
 The things of sense whicli form its ground work become 
 refined and are lifted up to a purified and lofty level. 
 The body of sense, under the formative power of poetry, 
 becomes, as it were, the temple of refined spirits. Now 
 the power which draws these remote ends of our being 
 together in a poem, which saves the things of sense from 
 going the w^ay of the world and transforms them into 
 vessels fit to hold the precious essence of divinity, is the 
 power of will. This, then, is what will has to do with the 
 production of poetry. It is the power which penetrates, 
 which restrains, which expands, and which elevates. 
 
 It may be urged, nevertheless, that however strongly 
 a poet may believe in the freedom of the will, poets gen- 
 erally are notoriously weak in the exercise of their indi- 
 vidual wills. It must at once be granted that in special 
 cases there are some grounds for this objection. The case 
 that comes to mind first of all as an illustration 
 is that of Robert Burns — one of the most beau- 
 tiful lyric singers in the world and the most way- 
 ward and weak-willed of the sons of men, it is said. 
 There is indeed a considerable portion of his poetry 
 that one might fairly wish otherwise and the failure of 
 which one can trace directly to his weakness. But there 
 are two things to be said on the point of the weakness — 
 that poets more than odicr men are besieged by tempta- 
 tions of the sort to which Burns was a victim, and that 
 the will in some men seems to work intermittently. We 
 have just seen that sensuousness and passion are the 
 outer materials wath which the poet must deal. And if 
 he is not especiall}^ gifted witli the will to restrain, direct, 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and control passion and sense, he is very liable to 
 abuse them. But Robert Burns was determined to write 
 poetry, and particularly ennobling and highly moral 
 poetry. His will to write poetry was at most times quite 
 steadfast. Long he pondered and often he improvised, 
 and in the heart and will of him he was genuine. He was 
 insistent on producing some good poetry for his country : 
 
 Ev'n then a wish, (I mind its power), 
 A wish that to my latest hour 
 Shall strongly heave my breast; 
 That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
 Some usefu' plan, or beuk could make, 
 Or sing a sang at least.^ 
 
 In speaking of some favorite passages from Young and 
 from Thomson, Burns says, "Though I have repeated 
 them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood 
 and steel my resolution like inspiration," and the thought 
 of one of these passages is : 
 
 What proves the hero truly great 
 Is never, never to despair.* 
 
 The result of these aspirations, endeavors and resolves 
 was high and pu;-e poetry — ^the product indeed of a 
 sturdy, determined will of a Scotchman, blessed with the 
 gift of song. And yet his will sometimes faltered. There 
 were indeed days and months continuously when the will 
 unfalteringly carried the man forward in paths of virtue, 
 self-restraint, and high achievement; but suddenly when 
 the will was ofif guard and seemed strangely paralyzed 
 and helpless, there came a vast inundation of passion 
 flooding the life of the man into hopeless confusion and 
 self-abasement. The senses were master. The mind 
 
 ""Answer to Verses Addressed to the Poet." 
 ^Thomson and Mallet, "The Masque of Alfred." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 succumbed to the power of the lowest material his haii'l 
 wrought in. But the man repented, and rose again, and 
 again there were days and montlis of high endeavor and 
 the production of poetry instinct with will, energy, moral- 
 ity, and freedom. 
 
 The aberrations of will in Burns do not invalidate but 
 rather confirm the statement that strong will power is an 
 essential element in high and serious poetry. It is this 
 power, on the one hand, that saves the feelings from senti- 
 mentality, that gives dignity and manliness to human life, 
 and that 
 
 Raises man aboon the brute 
 
 And mak's him ken himsel' ;' 
 
 and tlie power, on the other hand, by which the artist 
 draws his whole rich passional and spiritual nature 
 within the scope of a single short poem or even into 
 the expression of a single sententious phrase or line and 
 makes us feel a peculiar tension of compression and 
 charged energy that we are wont to call style. And 
 though a few men like Burns reveal the anomaly of an 
 unusually pow^erful will and of a will that seems dis- 
 eased dwelling in the same breast, the steadfastness and 
 lofty purpose of Milton, the singlemindedness and high 
 endeavors of Wordsworth, the victorious war cry and 
 death-defying spirit of Browning, and like qualities in 
 a host of other poets, ought to shame us into silence 
 regarding a few of their weaker brethren and ought to 
 convince us of the vast importance to life and poetry 
 of the freedom of the will and the sense of freedom in 
 the lives of our poets. 
 
 But a second and more serious objection may be 
 made to the importance here attached to this principle 
 
 "'The Tree of Liberty." 
 
2 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in poetry. It may be urged that poetry in particular 
 demands spontaneity, naturalness and effortless flow- 
 ing rather than conscious energy of will. And this 
 objection leads us directly to the heart of our subject. 
 An act of will is at one and the same time the most 
 simple and the most inexplicable of all the characteris- 
 tics of our mental life. To ask a man to choose between 
 two alternatives offered him is to ask something that 
 the simplest can understand. But to explain the act 
 rationally when the choice is once made is as yet an 
 impossibility and has thus far defied all science and 
 philosophy. Yet, however inexplicable the act is, we 
 all feel in our practical experience that we know pre- 
 cisely what it is to make choices, and we know that we 
 are bound to go on making choices as long as we live. It 
 is not enough that I will to be good or will to be true 
 today. I must will the same today and tomorrov\r and 
 always. It is not enough to will to write poetry today 
 but it must be willed again and again. And the power 
 of will when exerted, healthily and not narrowly, in one 
 direction is the power to accumulate and increase will en- 
 ergy. The will gains strength by continued persistence 
 in a thing; it gathers power and volume like a rolling 
 snow ball. In poetry especially, the will, working in 
 and through and by means of passion and imagination, 
 does not grow sterile but remains healthy and flexible. 
 And what is the spontaneity and the flowingness that 
 critics speak of but the result of accumulated will ener- 
 gies suddenly unlocked under favorable circumstances? 
 Does not the story of Burns, to which allusion has al- 
 ready been made — his v/illing to write poetry, his re- 
 peating favorite passages ten thousand times, his turn- 
 ing out poems while at the plow tail, his improvizations, 
 his ponderings, — does not this story illustrate the true 
 
INTRODUCTION'. 23 
 
 nature of any product that may be called spontaneou'i 
 and natural? Is not the poetry of Keats which is sen- 
 suous in a remarkable degree and which yet has, ac- 
 cording to ]\Iatthcw Arnold, Hint and iron in it, an illus- 
 tration of spontaneity and flowingness? "My heart is 
 now made of iron" Keats writes to Fannie I^rawne 
 when he is in the midst of a poetic deliverance. The 
 iron and flint is in him because he willed single-heartedly 
 to see and to love "the principle of beauty in all things" 
 and to set about in an iron-hearted fasliion to realize 
 his ideal. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the iron in 
 one's constitution that produces spontaneity in the thing 
 to which one lays his hand ; and conversely, the spon- 
 taneity required in poetry does not invalidate but rather 
 confirms the statement that will power is one of the 
 chiefest active faculties of the mind in the production 
 of poetry. 
 
 To state the same truth somewhat diiTerently, when- 
 ever the will acts forcibly in a single direction it puts 
 into action subconscious and allied powers whose ac- 
 tivities may finally surpass the will's own. This surplus 
 of energy thus produced, like the overtones in music, 
 tends to enrich the product, give it spontaneity, and 
 cover up, so to speak, the original moving power itself. 
 To give a simple illustration from personal experience, 
 I have for a long time been planning to write this chap- 
 ter. I have long and persistently held my mind to it 
 against conflicting interests. For many days the hand 
 refused to put down the words, but at last its work began. 
 Since then at times the words have come in floods faster 
 than the hand could put them down ; and sometimes 
 when I wished to stop the activity of forces thus set 
 in motion, they persisted in spite of my efforts. Although 
 the original conception of the chapter has been adhered 
 
24 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 to, yet many unforeseen and subconscious forces have 
 worked themselves in and have enlarged the context. 
 And thus whatever spontaneity there is in a production, 
 is either the result of previous persistent will efforts or 
 of the under-current forces set in motion by those 
 same eft'orts. Most of second-rate poetry no doubt can 
 practically be accounted for in this way. Have given 
 a person reasonably developed and intelligent as a human 
 being and reasonably poetic by nature, and if he wills 
 to produce poetry, wills to ponder the idea of it as Burns 
 pondered it, there is no reason why he should not be a 
 poet of no mean order. The whole lesson of Words- 
 VN^orth's "Prelude" is that a poet's mind can be had for 
 the making, although Wordsworth himself, to be sure, 
 was more than a second-rate poet. There exists, at any 
 rate, no contradiction between volitional energy and 
 spontaneity as far as the making of poetry is concerned, 
 but, on the contrary, the latter seems either a direct or 
 an indirect result of the former. 
 
 There are, however, far greater things than spon- 
 taneity in great poetry, and the will has greater func- 
 tions to fulfill. If the will in the commonest acts of 
 life is an inexplicable power to us, it becomes ten times 
 more inexplicable when we view its action in connection 
 with higher experiences than the ordinary. No doubt 
 the most important functon of the will is to surrender 
 itself worthily to what it conceives a higher will. In hyp- 
 nosis it is not the scatterbrain who is easily hypnotized 
 but it is the one who can concentrate his mind upon a 
 single spot of nothing and hold it there until it is numb 
 enough to be subjected to the will of the experimenter. 
 Likewise it requires a strong and unified will to make 
 a complete self-surrender to a higher will, and to ex- 
 perience the joy of finding its own power enlarged and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 enriched. But in this act of will there is involvefl the 
 essence of mystery, indeed one may say of all mystery : 
 
 Our wills are ours, wc know not how ; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine." 
 
 How our wills can become one with another power — 
 whether that power be conceived as God, or Spirit of 
 the Universe, or the Spirit of Beauty, or the Oversoul, 
 or the Absolute — this is the question of questions, the 
 mystery of mysteries. Thus the will — this most com- 
 mon of all our experiences — becomes the door through 
 which we enter directly to the deepest mysteries of being. 
 We need but to will to turn our faces toward the mys- 
 terious and inexplicable of life and imagine ourselves 
 m some sort of union or communion with it to be made 
 keenly conscious of the indefinable powers of person- 
 ality and being. And this is precisely wdiat a very large 
 body of the greater sort of poetry attempts to do. 
 
 There are many minor poets and scientific and prac- 
 tical-minded thinkers who shut themselves for the most 
 part away from the indefinable and inexplicable. Since 
 it lies in the power of all men's wills to do so, it is a mat- 
 ter of their choice. They deal with emotions and ordi- 
 nary concepts concretly and abstractly, widi visible and 
 conceptual objects, with demonstrable laws and possi- 
 ble intellectual attainments, but steadfastly refuse to 
 follow anything that they consider chimerical. Tlie 
 ambitious poet, however, files from sense matter di- 
 rectly to the incommunicable and the indefinable. Like 
 Milton, the poet is content to soar with no middle flight 
 in his adventurous song. He aspires to lay his hands 
 
 'Tennyson, "In Menioriam," Prologue. 
 
26 INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 On that golden key 
 That opes the palace of eternity' 
 
 And, strangely enough, or rather naturally enough, the 
 poet feels with more keenness than other men the pres- 
 ence of a power that disturbs him "with the joy of ele- 
 vated thoughts," of a power not himself but wholly other 
 than himself, of a will higher than his own which he 
 has in all ages been in the habit of invoking to his aid. 
 He is like Wordsworth who early in youth felt the power 
 of poetry come upon him: 
 
 I made no vows, but vows 
 Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
 Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
 A dedicated Spirit.^ 
 
 The poet is like the musician in "Abt Vogler" who felt 
 that after he himself had done his best in rearing his 
 structure the emulous powers of heaven yearned down 
 to aid him. Novel and unexpected splendors seemed to 
 burst forth and grow familiar and mingle with his own 
 splendors; balls of blaze, meteor-moons, and wander- 
 ing stars of heaven became one with the earth, obliter- 
 ating for him time and space and the distinctions of 
 higher and lower; and "there was no more near nor far" ; 
 there was a surrender of his will to the will of the in- 
 finite. Thus the poet feels in his own will the presence 
 of the "Stern Lawgiver" that "wears the Godhead's 
 most benignant grace" and that "preserves the stars 
 from wrong." 
 
 Sometimes the poet is merely interested in this power 
 empirically and describes a process of mind, as Words- 
 worth's description of the way in which he enters into 
 
 '"Comus." 
 '"Prelude," Bk. IV. 
 
IXTRODUCTIOX. 7^ 
 
 union with and sees into the "hfe of things," in "Tintern 
 Abbey," (Hnes 35 to 40) ; or as Shelley's most exquisite 
 description of the way in which his mind long active in 
 cognition finally became passive, and while in a trance, 
 which was not a slumber, a vision was rolled in upon 
 his brain : 
 
 But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold 
 Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem 
 The cone of night, now they were laid asleep 
 Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem 
 
 Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep 
 
 Of a green Apennine : before me fled 
 
 The night; behind me rose the day; the deep 
 
 Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, 
 When a strange trance over my fancy grew 
 Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 
 
 Was so transparent that the scene came thro' 
 As clear as when a veil of light is drawn 
 O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew 
 
 That I had felt the freshness of that dawn, 
 Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair, 
 And sat as thus upon that slope of lawn 
 
 Under the self same bough, and heard as there 
 The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold 
 Sweet talk in music thro' the enamoured air, 
 And then a vision on my brain was rolled." 
 
 Or as Carlyle's description, not in poetic measure but 
 poetically, of the way in wdiich his mind passed from an 
 indifferent attitude to a positively assenting at^titudc 
 toward the infinite God through the act of surrendering 
 his will: — "Here, then, as I lay in that center of indiffer- 
 ence; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into 
 a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, 
 and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. Tlie 
 
 '■'The Triumph of Life." 
 
2 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (Selbst- 
 todtung), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's 
 eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." When 
 his eyes are thus unsealed and he beholds the visible ob- 
 jects of nature, he puts the question, "What is Nature?" 
 and answers: — "Why do I not name thee God? Art 
 not thou the 'Living Garment of God?' O Heavens, is 
 it, in very deed, He, then, that ever speaks through thee ; 
 that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? 
 Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that 
 Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over 
 my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in 
 Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little 
 child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tu- 
 mults ; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too- 
 exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is 
 not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; 
 but godlike, and my Father's I"^*' And it may be added 
 that this, the moral act of self-surrender and the keen 
 consciousness that personality pervades the universe, and 
 that "through every star, through every grass-blade, 
 and most through every Living Soul the glory of a pres- 
 ent God still beams," — that this is the essence of high 
 poetry and of mystery. 
 
 The poets, however, do not merely give an empirical 
 description of the way in which their minds enter into 
 union with a higher power, but they attempt to render 
 their conceptions of it in concrete forms. And as each 
 poet differs somewhat from his fellows, each one in 
 his own way has given a different report of what it 
 means to him. He has bodied it forth concretely in 
 a thousand forms. He has given the Uncreated a hab- 
 
 "" Sartor Resartus," Bk. II, Chap. IX. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 itation and a name. Sometimes the dominant tendency 
 in ilic rendering is theological, sometimes naturahstic, 
 or morahstic, or pantheistic, or transcendental, or mys- 
 tical, but always more or less transcendental and mys- 
 tical. For the heart of both mysticism and transcendent- 
 alism lies in the intensity and power with which we will 
 to face the mysterious and the indefinable within us and 
 around us and in the intensity and power with which in 
 the end we surrender ourselves to the mysterious and 
 the indefinable. 
 
 There is a sort of criticism which identifies the trans- 
 cendental and the mystical with the vague, and thinks it 
 has condemned a poet when it shows that his poetry runs 
 into transcendentalism and mysticism. This is rather 
 loose and dubious criticism, to say the least. Of course, 
 poetry must be passionate and concrete, but it ought 
 also to be suggestive; and it is possible for it to be the 
 most suggestive when it is the most concrete, the most 
 inexhaustible and indefinable when it has the clearest 
 definition. Even Shakespeare's great characters, natur- 
 alistic and overwhelmingly real as they are, possess inex- 
 haustible and indefinable spiritual powers. Though they 
 are overcome by fate, they impress us as havng free 
 souls that are at one with the spiritual freedom of the 
 universe. From such well-springs of spiritual freedom 
 flow the powers of transcendentalism and mysticism, and 
 in such a foutain-head great poetry has its source. Grant- 
 ing that a poetry remain sufficiently passionate and con- 
 crete, a true measure of its greatness is the measure of 
 the depth with which it reveals the transcendental, the 
 mystical, the indefinable and spiritual elements of being. 
 
 The purpose of this book is to study the poetry of 
 Wordsworth, of Tennyson, and of Browning, respect- 
 ively, from the points of view indicated in the preceding 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 pages. We shall see, first, how the power of will and 
 the spirit and theory of freedom have entered into the 
 making of their poetry; and secondly, how the surren- 
 der of their wills to a higher will led them into the region 
 of the transcendental and the mystical, and how each 
 characteristically bodied forth his vision of spiritual 
 freedom and personality; and thirdly, what ethical and 
 artistic estimates may be made of their respective per- 
 formances from the point of view of our inquiry. The 
 study is to be made in the light of a few fundamental 
 characteristics of the times in which each lived — in the 
 light of the action and reaction of the times upon the 
 character and of the character upon the times. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 WORDSWORTH AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 What then are the chief characteristics of the times 
 and the vital quahties of character with which we must 
 begin our study of Wordsworth ? The times were chiefly 
 rewlutionary : men were making radical attempts to re- 
 adjust society on a higher level, which produced wide- 
 spread social unrest; and men were seeking greater 
 personal liberty, which tended to emphasize the differ- 
 ences of personal opinion. This is not intended to be in 
 any sense a complete statement of the characteristics of 
 the times. One needs but to glance at the literature 
 dealing with this period to see the futile attempts of 
 writers to express in single phrases the forces then at 
 work. Some of the phrases include so much that they 
 are vague; others are so specific that they do not in- 
 clude enough. "A time of growing intolerance of 
 antiquated and artificial forms," a time of "reac- 
 tion against eighteenth century civilization." of a 
 "return to nature," of "simplification." a time of 
 'the "recreation of mediaevalism," of the "redis- 
 covery and vindication of the concrete," a time 
 of "a sudden increase of the vital energy of the 
 species," a time of "growth in the notion of the brother- 
 hood of man," a time of "the strengthening of the na- 
 tional consciousness of the different nations of Europe," 
 
32 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 — all these are partial failures and partial successes ; 
 they fail to give an adequate conception of the times, 
 they succeed in expressing some important aspect of 
 them. The complexity of the forces then at work makes 
 it well nigh impossible to express those forces in a single 
 phrase. And our own statement claims only to point out 
 such aspects of the times as have the most important 
 bearing on the development of Wordsworth's experiences 
 regarding the power of will and the principle of mys- 
 ticism. 
 
 Yet the forces included in our statement are among 
 the most permanent of the times. While many of the 
 others, such as a "return to nature" and the "rediscov- 
 ery and vindication of the concrete," have done their 
 work, those included in our statement have still not 
 spent their energy, even though a hundred years span the 
 time between then and now. Our times are still revolu- 
 tionary, only in a milder sense. Though our methods of 
 work are dififerent from those of a hundred years ago, 
 we have not abated our zeal to readjust social conditions. 
 Though we may not proclaim personal liberty as vehem- 
 ently as men did of old, yet the divergence of the ex- 
 pression of personal opinion is greater than ever, and 
 is ever widening. The times of Wordsworth initiated 
 and gave a tremendous impetus to two forces that char- 
 acterize the whole of the nineteenth century, the forces, 
 namely, of increased efficiency and adjustment of organ- 
 ized society, and the widened powers and range of per- 
 sonal liberty. 
 
 The revolutionary forces of those days were by no 
 means confined to the settlement and readjustment of 
 political problems. They invaded all the departments of 
 human afifairs, even the affairs of practical religion. In 
 a preface to a sonnet written in 1827, Wordsworth makes 
 
HIS TIMES. 33 
 
 this suggestive statement, — "Attendance at church on 
 prayer-days, Wednesdays and Fridays and holidays, 
 received a shock at the Revolution. It is now, however, 
 happily reviving." Tiie spirit of revolution was in the 
 atmosphere, and it found its way into every nook and 
 corner of town and hamlet : 
 
 'Twas in truth an hour 
 Of universal ferment ; mildest men 
 Were agitated ; and commotions, strife 
 Of passion and opinion, filled the walls 
 Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds/ 
 
 Dominant in all the activities of the times was the note 
 of an equilibrium less secure than in the period of time 
 preceding, of an old anchorage breaking up, of malad- 
 justments and instabilities, and at the same time, of 
 promises and potencies of a slow but ever higher devel- 
 opement. By the shock of the Revolution, men were 
 compelled to revert to first principles, to explore all 
 natures in order to find the law that governs each. And 
 when, in the presence of danger, a man sinks deeply into 
 himself to discover the grounds upon which to think and 
 act, he not only finds his own opinions to diverge from 
 those of others, but he also gathers courage for his own 
 convictions. Such was the experience of Wordsworth 
 in the time of the Revolution. But while the insecure 
 equilibrium and the maladjustments of the times en- 
 couraged and reinforced the expression of personal expe- 
 rience, they also tended to produce the excesses of indi- 
 vidualism, false perspectives of life, wild theories, and 
 unattainable ideals. They account in part, it has been 
 alleged and rightly, for the incoherencies of Shelley and 
 the terrific convulsions of Byron. But do they not also 
 
 '"Prelude," Bk. IX. 
 
34 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 in part account for the "amazing inequalities" in Words- 
 worth that have been the wonder of critics from that 
 day to this? It is the misfortune, or the fortune, of the 
 great and the good to understand the burdens and the 
 sorrows of a people and to bear those burdens and sor- 
 rows in their own hearts. (Is it not indeed by virtue 
 of this sympathetic understanding and this burden-bear- 
 ing that posterity gives them the title of great and good?) 
 And when those burdens are exceptionally heavy and 
 those sorrows profoundly deep, they leave their scars 
 in the characters of even the greatest. As our theme 
 unfolds, we shall watch the dramatic interplay of the 
 spirit of the times and the character of the man until 
 we arrive at the volitional and mystical attitude toward 
 life that is at once characteristic of the man and a natural 
 outcome of the troubled times in which he lived. 
 
 Since we have now before us the chief characteris- 
 tics of the times, let us next consider the qualities of mind 
 that were native to Wordsworth and that remained a 
 personal possession with him through life. The powers 
 that were given to him by nature and inheritance were 
 the powers of passion wth extreme sensitiveness, and 
 volition with a moral predisposition. Like our statement 
 for the spirit of the times, this is not intended to be a 
 complete formulation of all Wordsworth's excellent gifts 
 of mind. Besides these, for example, he possessed an 
 imagination that was not only "essentially scientific, and 
 quite unlike the fancy that decorates and falsifies fact to 
 gratify an idle mind with a sense of neatness and ingenu- 
 ity," but an imagination that was penetrating and con- 
 templative and that saw, in a very great measure, the 
 "soul of truth in every part" of the objects of its vision. 
 But this penetrating imagination in Wordsworth was 
 peculiarly the product of the more elemental powers of 
 
HIS TIMES. 35 
 
 sensitiveness, passion, and volition. At any rate, it is 
 the combination of these elemental powers which furnish 
 the nucleus of his moral and intellectual being and give 
 th e key to his character. 
 
 /^Tn writing to a friend in 1792, the sister of Words- 
 worth says, — "William has . . a sort of violence of af- 
 fection, if I may so term it, which demonstrates itself 
 every moment of the day, when the objects of his afifec- 
 tion are present with him, in a thousand almost imper- 
 ceptible attentions to their wishes, in a sort of restless 
 watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a ten- 
 derness that never sleeps.''- With keen penetration she 
 points out the basic elements in the character of her 
 brother.] "Restless watchfulness," "a. tenderness that 
 never sleeps," and "violence of afifection" are the chief 
 qualities of it. And this characterization accords re- 
 markably with Wordsworth's description of his own 
 childhood given to his intended biographer many years 
 later. He says, "I was of a stiff, moody, violent temper." 
 Allowing for some freedom in the use of terms, these 
 characteristics may be respectively dignified (as, indeed, 
 they were dignified in \\^ords worth's manhood) into 
 volition, sensitiveness, and passion. The stiffness of 
 temper of his childhood grew into the "restless watch- 
 fulness" of his youth, and matured into that thorough- 
 going volition which directed the events of his whole 
 after-life ; the moodiness of his childhood grew, under 
 the forming agency of the will, into the "tenderness that 
 never sleeps" of his youth, and flowered into that exqui- 
 site sensitiveness characteristic of his whole subsequent 
 career; while the violent temper of his childhood grew 
 into the"violent affections" of his youtii, and, tempered by 
 
 "Taken from a letter quoted by Myers in "Wordsworth." 
 
36 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 the influence of a masterful will, finally bore fruit a 
 hundred fold in deep and thoroughly subdued literary 
 passions. 
 
 Passion, sensitiveness, volition — these were the pow- 
 ers that were with him when a child hidden away among 
 the silences of the Westmoreland hills, long before the 
 terrible rumblings of the French Revolution broke upon 
 his ears. Wordsworth attests to the possession of them 
 in his childhood: 
 
 I cannot paint 
 What then I was. The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
 •An appetite ; a feeling and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, nor any interest \ 
 
 Unborrowed from the eye.^ 
 
 There were not only "aching joys" and "dizzy raptures" 
 with the child, but he w as strangely sensitive to all ob- 
 _J_e£tSx_^ Before he was ten years old he would range 
 through half the night among the mountain slopes and 
 on the "open heights where woodcocks run along the 
 smooth green turf," and would ply his anxious visita- 
 tion: 
 
 Sometimes it befell 
 In these night wanderings, that a strong desire 
 O'erpowered my better reason, and the bird 
 Which was the captive of another's toil 
 Became my prey; and when the deed was done 
 I heard among the solitary hills 
 Low breathings coming after me, and sounds 
 Of undistinguishable motion, steps 
 Almost as silent as the turf they trod.* 
 
 '"Tintern Abbey." 
 ^"Prelude," Bk. I. 
 
HIS TIMES. 37 
 
 This not only expresses the child's sensitiveness of mind, 
 but also reveals the germ of a moral disposition. The 
 silent steps, the sounds of undistinguishable motion, and 
 the low breathings coming after him were due mainly 
 to the deed he had committed. In speaking of a time 
 before he was seventeen, he says : 
 
 PnU let this 
 Be not forgotten, that I still retained 
 My first creative sensibility ; 
 That by the regular action of the world 
 My soul was unsubdued.' 
 
 By his creative sensibility and by his strength of will he 
 very early in youth kept his soul from being subdued 
 "by the regular action of the world." And in the earliest 
 of those days his strong will, similar to that of other 
 boys with strong wills, manifested itself in the form of 
 wilfulness and even stubbornness. His mother once 
 told an intimate friend of hers that the only one of her 
 five children about whose future life she was anxious 
 was William, and that he would be remarkable either for 
 good or for evil. But the force of moral conviction in 
 his constitution was easily sufficient to save him from 
 his mother's anxious fears and to give him not only the 
 will to live, but to live morally, to realize the better alter- 
 native of his mother's prophecy, and become remarkable 
 only for good. 
 
 These same powers of passion, sensitiveness, and vo- 
 lition were with him in his youth. If any further testi- 
 mony than that of his sister, which is clear and unmis- 
 takable, is needed, it can be found in his early attitude 
 toward the French Revolution. It especially illustrates 
 his volitional activity. We all know how differently we 
 
 '"Prelude," Bk. II. 
 
38 WORDSWORTH, 
 
 are affected by two characters, one of whom orders the 
 activities of his life toward some definite end and always 
 moves in a straight line when the direction is once chos- 
 en, and the other of whom is frequently at variance with 
 himself and is easily turned from any course by accident 
 or circumstance. The first impresses us as having, the 
 latter as lacking, will and volition. Now, Wordsworth, 
 whose temperament from childhood was somewhat "stiff," 
 was very slow in choosing a direction of activity, but when 
 it was once chosen, he held to it with a tenacity equalled 
 by very few men. As the "Prelude" shows and as Myers 
 in his book on Wordsworth has well demonstrated,^ 
 Wordsworth for a time accepted the French Revolution 
 as a matter of course, without being deeply stirred. 
 But even after he was thoroughly aroused and his "in- 
 most soul was agitated," and he could almost 
 
 Have prayed that throughout earth upon all men 
 
 The gift of tongues might fall, and power arrive 
 From the four quarters of the winds to do 
 For France, what without help she could not do, 
 A work of honour — " 
 
 even then he was slow to throw himself into the cause. 
 He checked and interrogated his emotions. It was his 
 wont always to hold his emotions in restraint. He would 
 not decide blindly, he would wait for light : 
 
 A mind whose rest 
 Is where it ought to be, in self restraint, 
 In circumspection and simplicity, 
 Falls rarely in entire discomfiture 
 Below its aim, or meets with, from without 
 A treacherv that foils it or defeats.' 
 
 •"Prelude," Bk. X. 
 ^"Prelude," Bk. X. 
 
HIS TIMES. 39 
 
 But finally, when he felt sure of the worthiness of the 
 cause, he gave himself, not partly or stintingly, but whole- 
 heartedly to it. He was then for France, out and out. 
 Resolute and single-minded, he stood ready to serve her 
 at any cost. What a shock then his moral and sensitive 
 nature must have sustained when a little later his hopes 
 for France were blasted ! Wordsworth was a man who 
 accepted great human issues seriously. He believed in 
 what truth he possessed as few men believe in truth. 
 And when once in his life he was compelled to witness 
 the complete failure of his highest hopes, it was only by 
 a slow and painful process that he readjusted himself 
 to another course. Had his desire to see the truth vic- 
 torious been less intense, had the issues at stake in 
 France been taken to heart less seriously, had his will 
 in the matter been less strong, he would have passed 
 through the moral crisis with correspondingly greater 
 ease. The deep impression this crisis made in his life 
 is proof of Wordsworth's tenacity of mind and unex- 
 celled volitional and moral temper in youth. 
 
 But these same powers of passion with sensitiveness, 
 and volition with a moral predisposition, were with him 
 in his mature years and manifest themselves in his best 
 works. Though we cannot pluck the heart out of 
 Wordsworth's mystery, it is quite certain that it lies in 
 the direction of his wonderful sensitiveness to the simple 
 and elemental forces of life, his insight into them, his 
 firm grasp on them, and his power of compelling the 
 reader to feel them, colored as they always are by his 
 own moral disposition. The following familiar passage, 
 
 I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 
40 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things — * 
 
 does not primarily owe its strength and wonder to any 
 new and original philosophical conception underlying 
 it. The conception that there is a unified and living 
 spirit 'back of all things and in and through all things is 
 as old as the thinking race. But this passage owes its 
 uniqueness and fame almost wholly to the mysterious 
 vitality of volition. The power of it is due to the inti- 
 macy of the presence, to the fact that the presence dis- 
 turbs one's inmost being. One is compelled to feel the 
 motion and the spirit that impels all things. If there is any 
 new philosophical conception here at all, it is the concep- 
 tion of vital movment — of attributing volition to the 
 "goings-on of the universe." It should be remembered 
 that the chief part of Wordsworth's definition of a poet 
 makes him "a man pleased with his own passions and 
 volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the 
 spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate 
 similar volitions and passions as manifested in the 
 goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to 
 create them where he does not find them."^ And this 
 passage of poetry is an illustration of his definition. It 
 deepens immeasurably one's sense of the sublime ener- 
 gies of volition — volition in the vast spaces of the uni- 
 verse without and in the heart and mind of man 
 within. Wordsworth's grasp on the elemental pas- 
 sions and volitional energies of life was the grasp of a 
 
 ^"Tintern Abbey." 
 
 "Preface to "Lyrical Ballads." 
 
Ills TIMES. 41 
 
 giant; and the passionate and volitional life that springs 
 from his poetry gives that poetry its chief distinction. 
 
 There is also an undercurrent of motion in his poetry 
 which gives it a peculiar distinction ; it seems to be a 
 sublimation of activity, but expressed with such a strong 
 grasp on reality that its force is extremely effective. 
 In the little poem, "She Was a Phantom" there is drawn 
 a woman that is "a spirit, yet a woman too :" 
 
 She was a Phantom of delight 
 When first she gleamed upon my sight. 
 
 This character does not impress one with the quali- 
 ties of color, concreteness, flesh and blood, and the like, 
 for she is too phantom-like and sublimated to possess 
 these qualites. But she impresses one with a very dif- 
 ferent kind of reality. She gleams upon one's sight. 
 There is intensive movement inherent in 
 
 Her household motions light and free, 
 And steps of virgin libert3% 
 
 and the vitality of her motions is directly felt as a reality 
 by the reader. She is 
 
 A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
 
 To warn, to comfort, and command. 
 
 She is at once the embodiment of spiritual sublimation 
 and reality, and her power over us lies in the complete 
 fusion of these two opposite forces in her character by 
 means of the mysterious vitality and intensity of the 
 poet's volition. * 
 
 In the great lyrical poetry of Wordsworth, then, 
 there is not simply the purely lyrical strain which arises 
 from a mood or a feeling, but there is in it a union of 
 
 *See Note 3, Appendix. 
 
42 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 feeling and force, of mood and self-control, of emotion 
 and volition. 
 
 And the will has two functions to fulfill in the pro- 
 duction of Wordsworth's poetry. He himself says that 
 "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feel- 
 ings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tran- 
 quillity; the emotion is contemplated, till, by a species of 
 reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an 
 emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject 
 of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself 
 actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful com- 
 position generally begins and in a mood similar to this it 
 is carried on." First, the will, by a species of reaction, 
 whips a recollected emotion into a state of excitement, 
 and then the overflow of the powerful emotion thus 
 excited must be held under restraint as it enters into 
 the making of a poetic composition. Though this theory 
 for the production of poetry is by no means true for the 
 production of all successful composition, it is certainly 
 a careful and exact transcript of what took place in the 
 conscious part of Wordsorth's own mind. 
 
 Since this is not merely the description of an intel- 
 lectual process, but involves the activities of passion and 
 volition as well as intellect, it ofifers an excellent insight 
 into Wordsworth's whole nature and character. His 
 was a life of continuous "high endeavors" at "plain liv- 
 ing and high thinking," conscious and purposive. To 
 everything he did he imparted a touch of volition. Even 
 his "wise passiveness" requires a certain mental alert- 
 ness that does not belong to a lazy man since it presup- 
 poses more or less conscious effort. In the early days 
 -of Wordsworthian criticism Aubrey De Vere, in an elo- 
 quent essay, showed that Wordsworth's nature was pas- 
 sionate. He says : — "The whole of Wordsworth's nature 
 
HIS TIM lis. 43 
 
 was impassioned, body and spirit, intellect and imagina- 
 tion." What aroused the critic was the fact that since 
 Wordsworth was so completely the master of his pas- 
 sions unsympathetic critics had alleged that he did not 
 possess any. In Wordsworth's mature years the will al- 
 ways dominates the feelings. "There is volition and 
 self-government in every line of his poetry," says Hutton, 
 and there is likewise volition and self-government in 
 every act of his life. It is with him as though there 
 were a great underground reservoir of passion. But 
 the reservoir is so deeply and firmly set in adamant that 
 an explosion is impossible. 
 
 There is something of the wariness of a logician in 
 Wordsworth's statement: "Had I been a writer of love- 
 poetry it would have been natural for me to write with 
 a degree of warmth which could hardly have been ap- 
 proved by my principles, and which might have been 
 undesirable for the reader." Like the logician who is, 
 more than others, conscious of the limitations of logic, 
 Wordsworth the man of volitions and self-government 
 is constantly aware of the limits of the power of self- 
 control; and like the logician again who is forever deal- 
 ing with matter that is refractory to logic, W^ordsworth is 
 always dealing with forces that lie just outside of his 
 control, with intuitive impulses, with acts in which "we 
 associate ideas in a state of excitement." with half con- 
 scious forces that are defiant to the subordination of 
 the mind yet do not overwhelm its conscious self-posses- 
 sion. In close juxtaposition to a passage in the Fourth 
 Book of the "Prelude," in which he emphasizes the in- 
 dependent, self-directing and creative power of the Soul. 
 there is this passage, which tells of half-conscious in- 
 fluences to the finer influx of which his sensitive "mind 
 lay open to a more exact and close communion:" 
 
44 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Around me from among the hazel leaves, 
 
 Now here, now there, moved by the straggling wind. 
 
 Came €ver and anon a breath-like sound, 
 
 Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog, 
 
 The off and on companion of my walk; 
 
 And such, at times, believing them to be, 
 
 I turned my head to look if he were there; 
 
 Then into solemn thought I passed once more. 
 
 With the soul's subordination of powers Hke these — 
 pervasive yet only half-conscious — Wordsworth was con- 
 stantly dealing, but with the passion of love, which is 
 sufficiently strong and self-conscious to require a degree 
 of warmth in treatment that could hardly be approved 
 by his principles, and which is likely to invade the power 
 of self-control, he refused to deal directly. Though he 
 acknowledged that 
 
 Love, blessed Love, is ever3'where 
 The spirit of my song," 
 
 3-et he preferred to keep so far from the borderline ot 
 conflict between passionate love and self-control that he 
 would always be absolutely sure of the supremacy of the 
 latter. But he who would aspire to fathom the depth 
 of the human soul and at the same time remain human- 
 hearted, must also be willing to sound its tumult. Words- 
 worth, however, consistently refused to do the latter, 
 which resulted not only in a distinct loss of human- 
 heartedness, but also in the gain of a certain conscious 
 self-mastery which is at once the source of both his 
 weakness and his strength. 
 
 A precaution must be thrown out at this point. It is 
 not here intended to convey the idea that Wordsworth's 
 best and most characteristic poems were the product 
 
 'The Poet and the Caged Turtledove." 
 
HIS TIMES. 45 
 
 wholly of self-directed efifort and the "conscious con- 
 quests of insight." There is at bottom no contradic- 
 tion in saying that there is volition and self-government 
 in every line of his poetry and that at the same time 
 nature not only gave him the matter of his best poems 
 but also wrote his poems for him. For it may be con- 
 ceived that a richly endowed mind may have a great 
 variety of instinctive and spontaneous qualities and still 
 possess a more than usual amount of self-consciousness 
 and self-government. Self-possession and spontaneity 
 are not mutually exclusive, but may both abound in a 
 genius of a volitional type. This seems to be the truth in 
 the case of Wordsworth. His strength, from this point 
 of view, lies in the happy co-operation, at rare moments, 
 of self-possession and spontaneity. This co-operation is 
 so difficult to attain that we should not expect Words- 
 worth to attain to it always, but to fail at times, as indeed 
 he does, on the side of spontaneity. How these uncon- 
 scious and spontaneous elements are wrought into 
 artistic structures we may never know from the very fact 
 that they are unconscious and spontaneous. In his 
 prefaces to his poems Wordsworth does not make enough 
 allowance for the part they actually play in the makng 
 of his poetry. But in those same prefaces, on the other 
 hand, he gives the most accurate and profound descrip- 
 tion of what took place consciously in his own mind, and 
 in so far the prefaces are invaluable, not only as a 
 criticism of the conscious side of his art, but as giving us 
 excellent insights into his character. 
 
 By the strenuous exercise of the power of passion 
 and will Wordsworth developed an unusually strong 
 spirit of personal liberty and acquired a complete mas- 
 tery of his senses. When, in his mature years, he looked 
 back over the passionate life of his childhood, he felt that 
 
46 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 he had lived too much the life of the senses. He says 
 in the "Prelude:" 
 
 I speak in recollection of a time 
 When the bodily eye, in every stage of life 
 The most despotic of our senses, gained 
 Such strength in fne as often held my mind 
 In absolute dominion." 
 
 He very kindly and genially ascribes his mind's redemp- 
 tion from this thralldom to the powers of nature, and 
 suggests that if he cared to enter upon abstruser argu- 
 ment, he could "unfold the means which nature studious- 
 ly employs to thwart this tyranny." Whatever the 
 agency by which this tyranny was thwarted, it is quite 
 certain that by the time he was writing the "Prelude" 
 his own mind had become a safe-guard against any such 
 tyranny, and that too, without the agency of natural 
 forces. Just as he resisted the power of passionate love 
 to master his will, so he carefully guarded against the 
 despotism of the senses and even looked back with a 
 jealous eye upon their despotism in his childhood. He 
 had now shaken oflf the domineering habit of the senses : 
 
 I had known 
 Too forcibly, too early in my life, 
 Visitings of imaginative power 
 For this to last : I shook the habit off 
 Entirely and forever, and again 
 In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand, 
 A sensitive being, a creative soul." 
 
 And he had now become the example of his own text : 
 
 Man, if he do but live within the light 
 
 Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad 
 
 His being armed with strength that cannot fail." 
 
 ""Prelude," Bk. XII. 
 ""Prelude," Bk. XII. 
 ""Prelude," Bk. IV. 
 
HIS TIMES. 47 
 
 With a mind that was sensitive and creative and that con- 
 stantly Hved in the light of high endeavors, Wordsworth 
 had attained a high vantage ground from which to ex- 
 plore nature and human life. He was like a man on a 
 high eminence over-looking a broad expanse of country. 
 The slightest change of position presents views of objects 
 remote from each other and varied in kind and nature. 
 He was like the Solitary of his own "Excursion," who in 
 the wilds of America, 
 
 Having gained the top 
 Of some commanding eminence, which yet 
 Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys 
 Regions of ' wood and wide savannah, vast 
 Expanse of unappropriated earth, 
 With mind that sheds a light on what he sees; 
 Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun. 
 Pouring above his head its radiance down 
 Upon a living and rejoicing world !" 
 
 And thus, with a mind that shed light on what it saw and 
 that was as free as the sun and oftentimes as lonely as 
 the sun, Wordsworth had attained to a perfect self-mas- 
 tery and to a large and glorious freedom. 
 
 We have now seen that the spirit of the times was rev- 
 olutionary and that men attempted to readjust society on 
 a higher level and sought greater personal liberty. We 
 have also seen that Wordsworth possessed the powers of 
 passion with extreme sensitiveness, and volition with a 
 moral predisposition, and that by the exercise of these 
 powers in a time of revolution and of liberty-seeking he 
 attained to an excellent self-mastery and a glorious per- 
 sonal freedom. 
 
 "'Excursion," Bk. III. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WORDSWORTH : MEMORY AND WILL. 
 
 Wordsworth's theory of freedom accords with his 
 strong sense of personal freedom in actual experience, 
 which we have just described. As early as his first col- 
 lege vacation he had learned that the immortal soul has 
 the God-like power to inform, to create, and to mould her 
 environment : 
 
 I had inward hopes 
 And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed, 
 Conversed with promises, had glimmering views 
 How life pervades the undecaying mind; 
 How the immortal soul with God-like power 
 Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep 
 That time can lay upon her.* 
 
 He had also made careful observation of 
 
 Those passages of life that give 
 Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, 
 The mind is lord and master — outward sense 
 The obedient servant of her will." 
 
 And at a much later time, when writing the "Excursion,"* 
 he observed that 
 
 '"Prelude," Bk. IV. 
 '"Prelude," Bk XIL 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 49 
 
 Within the soul a faculty abides, 
 That with interpositions, which would hide 
 And darken, so can deal that they become 
 Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt 
 Her native brightness.* 
 
 This free power of the mind, he says, sets forth and mag- 
 nifies virtue, and saves the soul "from palpable oppres- 
 sions of despair." In the opening of the Ninth Book of 
 the "Excursion" he says that this principle of freedom 
 subsists in all things : 
 
 Whate'er exists hath properties that spread 
 
 Be3'ond itself; from link to link, 
 
 It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds. 
 This is the freedom of the universe. 
 
 But he adds that "its most apparent home" is in the 
 human mind. And when the outward facts of life — the 
 fact, for example, that men, who in the morn of youth 
 defied the elements, must vanish — seem to deny that 
 freedom has its most apparent home in the human mind, 
 we are still intuitively to "feel that we are greater than 
 we know" : 
 
 Be it so ! 
 Knough, if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; 
 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go. 
 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower 
 We feel that we are greater than we know.* 
 
 The mind of man has the power to create and to inform; 
 it is lord and master of outward sense, it can feel its 
 faith in freedom, it can will to believe, and can go on 
 forever living in the light of this faith. According to 
 this philosophy knowledge is relegated to a second place. 
 
 '"Excursion," Bk. IV. 
 •"After-thought." 
 
50 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Knowledge is great, but love, hope, faith, feeling, power 
 of will, freedom — these are greater. 
 
 But just as freedom has its most apparent home in 
 the human mind, so Wordsworth finds the human mind 
 the best home for his poetry. By the power of his will, 
 he focused his feelings and imagination with great inten- 
 sity upon the life within, upon memory, instincts, per- 
 ception, moral power, etc. Penetrating deep into his own 
 heart he there found revealed the fact of God, immor- 
 tality, and freedom. 
 
 Among these inner powers there is none that he dwells 
 on more intensely than the power of memory ; and from 
 the extraordinary frequency with which allsuions are 
 made to his childhood in his poetry it is quite evident that 
 the memories of his childhood were one of the objects 
 of his experience upon which his will focused his feel- 
 ings and imagination. But from tlie fact that he scarcely 
 ever alludes to the time of his life between his childhood 
 and maturity that is so fraught with important issues 
 in the formation of character, we are convinced that he 
 took slight interest in "the naked recollection of that 
 time." To be sure in the Books from the Third to the 
 Sixth, inclusive, of the "Prelude," in which poem he 
 deliberately sets out to trace the growth of a poetic mind 
 from childhood to maturity there is considerable said 
 about adolescence and maturing youth. But even here, 
 especially in the Fourth and Fifth Books, he has a tend- 
 ency often to slip back into the period of "our simple 
 childhood," which "sits upon a throne that hath more 
 power than all the elements." Again and again he re- 
 turns to this point of view. Even in the Eighth Book, 
 where according to the natural evolution of the poem he 
 should have passed this period, he not only g^ves a long 
 retrospective view of that time when nature was "prized 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 5I 
 
 for her own sake" and became his joy, but he describes 
 the quahty of childhood fancies at great length. In the 
 Twelfth and Thirteenth Books, w'here one would think 
 surely he had done with the subject, he turns upon it 
 more strongly than ever in his attempts to explain the 
 mystery of imagination and taste. He exclaims, 
 
 Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth 
 Proceed thy honors. I am lost, but see 
 In simple childhood something of the base 
 On which thy greatness stands." 
 
 In fact, with the exception of the Seventh Book, which 
 is perhaps the dullest in the "Prelude," and the Ninth, 
 Tenth and Eleventh Books, into which political consider- 
 ations enter, the "Prelude" continually eddies about the 
 idea of childhood and never really passes beyond it. 
 
 Outside his inner communings with himself and nature 
 which he had begim in his childhood, Wordsworth has 
 little to say about his college life and vacations that is 
 instructive and inspiring. He says somewhat indiffer- 
 ently : 
 
 Companionships, 
 Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all. 
 We sauntered, played, or rioted ; we talked 
 Unprofitable talk at morning hours; 
 Drifted about along the streets and walks, 
 Read lazily in trivial books, went forth 
 To gallop through the country in blind zeal 
 Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast 
 Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars 
 Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.' 
 
 It is highly instructive to contrast this allusion to sailing 
 boisterously "on the breast of Cam" and letting the "stars 
 
 *"Prelude," Bk. XII. 
 '"Prelude," Bk. III. 
 
52 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 come forth perhaps without one quiet thought," with the 
 description in the First Book of the "Prelude" of saiHng, 
 when a boy, in an "elfin pinnace" which left 
 
 Behind her still, on either side, 
 Small circles glittering idly in the moon 
 Until they melted all into one track 
 Of sparkling light. 
 
 It was not only the boisterous sailing on the breast of 
 Jam but the companionships, idle talk, trivial books, 
 senseless horsemanship — these were all matters of in- 
 difference to him; and these indifferent things produced 
 a sort of gap in the otherwise continuousness of his life. 
 A link between his childhood and manhood was lost, 
 which void gave rise to a sense of double consciousness : 
 
 So wide appears 
 The vacancy between me and those days 
 Which yet have such self-presence in my mind 
 That, musing on them, often do I seem 
 Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself 
 And of some other Being.' 
 
 It is a simple fact of psychology that when any memory 
 images are voluntarily recalled and are brooded over they 
 become more vivid and lifelike than ordinary memory 
 images, and can be made as vivid and lifelike as the im- 
 ages of immediate perception. It seems that Words- 
 worth, following somewhat the line of least resistance, 
 voluntarily vivified the "remembrance of those long past 
 hours" of childhood at the expense of the memories of 
 adolescent years; and that as a consequence, the aggre- 
 gate memories of childhood stood in his mind somewhat 
 
 '"Prelude" Bk. II. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 53 
 
 apart from tlie images of immediate perception, so that 
 he simultaneously felt conscious of himself and some 
 otlier Being. 
 
 Tlie fact, however, that Wordsworth voluntarily viv- 
 ified the memories of childhood is not a fact of sufficient 
 weight to account for this strangely divided conscious- 
 ness. There is a deeper cause for it. There was another 
 force that wrought in conjunction with his will toward 
 the same end. That force was the great external fact of 
 Wordsworth's late youth and early manhood, the fact, 
 namely, of the French Revolution. During his adolesc- 
 ent years and up to the dawn of his interest in the Rev- 
 olution, he was much given to introspective tendencies.'/ 
 In the parts of the "Prelude" relating to this period of 
 time, are many passages that speak of the "reasonings 
 of the mind turned inward." It was his wont to sepa- 
 rate himself from his companions and allow his "mind to 
 turn into herself." He early discovered that 
 
 Caverns there were within my mind which sun 
 Could never penetrate.' 
 
 But in early days of youth this tendency toward intro- 
 spection may easily become abnormal, and there is a 
 slight touch of the morbid in some of Wordsworth's 
 youthful moodiness. There existed in his mind, he 
 says, at this time, 
 
 A treasonable growth 
 Of indecisive judgements, that impared 
 And shook the mind's simplicity.* 
 
 He slightly overstrained tiie instrument of introspection 
 that was to do such effective work in later years. This 
 
 •"Prelude," Bk. III. 
 •"Prelude." Bk III. 
 
54 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 excess, however, can easily be overlooked in the light of 
 the fact that he now also perfected this instrument for 
 future use. 
 
 But when, in his twenty-second year, Wordsworth 
 became vitally alive to the agitation, the sorrow, and the 
 terror of the Revolution, he was completely, though sjow- 
 ly, taken out of himself. His mind turned from within, 
 outward : 
 
 I gradually withdrew 
 Into a noisier world, and thus ere long 
 Became a patriot; and my heart was all 
 Given to the people, and my love was theirs." 
 
 And when later he was at the point of leaving France, he 
 assures us that he would 
 
 I At this time with willing heart 
 
 ' Have undertaken for a cause so great 
 Service however dangerous." 
 
 And the only reason why he did not perform this "ser- 
 vice however dangerous" was that he was peremptorily 
 called home by his guardians. His summons home, how- 
 ever, did not lessen his enthusiasm for the cause of the 
 Revolution but rather heightened it. It is a common ex- 
 perience that a man's enthusiasm for a cause is height- 
 ened when his hands are tied so that he cannot play the 
 part in it he has espoused in his heart. 
 
 Wordsworth had been at Orleans and had learned 
 the local and national characteristics of the French. He 
 had been at Blois and for three months had associated 
 intimately with Beaupuy, who opened his mind to the 
 real issues of the Revolution. He had seen the hunger- 
 
 ""Prelude," Bk. IX. 
 ""Prelude," Bk. X. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 55 
 
 bitten girl and the heifer, which incident greatly enforced 
 the arguments of Beaupuy that a benignant spirit was 
 abroad to destroy sucli poverty ; and Wordswortli's deep- 
 est chords of sympathy were touched. He had accepted 
 the September massacres as a necessary violence during 
 a revolution, for, as he explained a little later, "a tijne of 
 revolution is not a season of true liberty." He had been 
 in""JParis and hacP'^assed the prison where the unhappy 
 Monarch lay," and that night in a liigh and lonely room 
 he had felt most deeply in what world he was, what 
 ground he trod on, and what air he breathed. He thought 
 of the September massacres ami of the Monarch in the 
 prison, and conjured up similar scenes from "tragic fic- 
 tions or true history." "And in this way," he says, 
 
 I wrought upon myself, 
 Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried. 
 To the whole city, "Sleep no more."" 
 
 He had clearly perceived that the forces at work in the 
 Revolution did not arise in a day and were not the har- 
 vest of "popular government and equality ;" but he clear- 
 ly saw 
 
 That neither these nor aught 
 Of wild belief engrafted on their names 
 By false philosophy had caused the woe, 
 But a terrific reservoir of guilt 
 And ignorance filled up from age to age, 
 That could no longer hold its loathsome charge, 
 But burst and spread in deluge through the land." 
 
 What he did not perceive as clearly at this time was that 
 it would take as many ages for the reservoir of guilt and 
 ignorance to disappear as it had been in filling up from 
 
 ""Prelude," Bk. X. 
 ""Prelude." Bk. X. 
 
56 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 age to age. He had, on the contrary, looked for the im- 
 mediate appearance of a new and glorious era of liberty .j 
 .' He had also revolved in his mind "how much the des- 
 tiny'of man had still hung upon single persons;" and if 
 perchance he himself were destined by providence to 
 lead the people through the present crisis, he would not 
 thwart the designs of providence, but would be ready 
 for the sacrifice. Reluctantly indeed, then, did he obey 
 the summons that called him back to England. When 
 once at home, he was unable to act, but was given much 
 time to meditate. Then it was that the full power and 
 the spirit of the Revolution reverberated through his 
 whole sensitive nature. His senses and feelings and 
 moral being were as alive to the issues of the Revolu- 
 tion as they had ever been to the forces of nature. He 
 was filled with the highest hopes and the most sanguine 
 aspirations; but these hopes and aspirations were soon 
 doomed to disappointment. It was only a few months 
 after this that England declared war against the French 
 Revolutionists, and Wordsworth's moral nature was given 
 its first great shock: 
 
 No shock 
 Given to my moral nature had I known 
 Down to that very moment; neither lapse 
 Nor turn of sentiment that might be named 
 A revolution, save at this one time ; 
 All else was progress on the self-same path 
 On which, with a diversity of pace 
 I had been travelling; this a stride at once 
 Into another region." 
 
 But the stride was not as swift as one would surmise 
 from this passage. Wordsworth's affections for his na- 
 tive country and his native soil were of slow growth 
 
 ""Prelude" Bk. X. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 57 
 
 and were deeply rooted. And slowly and painfully his 
 alienation wrought itself into his character. 
 
 But a second shock was awaiting him. It came when 
 the French Revolutionists took aggressive steps in sub- 
 duing the efforts made for liberty in Switzerland. France 
 herself was abandoning the cause of human liberty, and 
 Wordsworth's sympathies were alienated: 
 
 Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense 
 For one of conquest, losing sight of all 
 Which they had struggled for." 
 
 Cut off from sympathy with his own country and with 
 the country whose cause he had espoused, he was thrown 
 back into himself more violently and more completely 
 than he had been taken out of himself. For a number of 
 years his depression was as great as his hopes and as- 
 pirations had been high. Were all his aspirations for 
 the relief of suft'ering humanity vain and foolish? Were 
 there no grounds at all for the confidence he placed in 
 human good? Was he, then, utterly wrong in his social 
 and political ideals, and was life after all nothing but an 
 empty mockery? These questions demanded answers. 
 For Wordsworth there were just one method of finding 
 answers to them and of escaping from his depression, the 
 method, namely, of associating with the simple life and 
 society of his early surroundings. Unfortunately this 
 method was remote from his thoughts at first and he 
 attempted another way of escape. He tried to find solace 
 for his tempest-tossed soul in the speculative philoso- 
 phies of his day : 
 
 This was the time, when, all things tending fast 
 
 To depravation, speculative schemes — 
 
 That promised to abstract the hopes of Man 
 
 "Prelude," Bk. XI. 
 
58 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth 
 Forever in a purer element — 
 Found ready welcome." 
 
 But in that speculative scheming which promised to ab- 
 stract the hopes of Man out of his feelings Wordsworth 
 was wholly outside of his natural sphere. Perhaps none 
 of the world's great geniuses have been more helpless 
 than Wordsworth in mere abstract speculation. Here 
 he was not only "out of the pale of love," his sentiment 
 ^'soured and corrupted, upwards to the source," but he 
 was really doing violence to his nature, his affections, and 
 his powers. And the result of this prolonged experience 
 was that he lost 
 
 All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, 
 Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, 
 Yielded up moral questions in despair." 
 
 This was the "soul's last and lowest ebb," and he turned 
 for a time to the study of abstract science with the faint 
 hope that his mind might be drawn away from the dark 
 moral questions that had haunted it. 
 
 But now he had come to live with his sister, and her 
 companionship, together with the surroundings of simple 
 life and nature, began to be a healing balm to the wounds 
 of his mind, and gradually, as by inches, he recovered 
 from his depression. As the process went on, memories 
 of his early childhood joys, sweet and strong, came troop- 
 ing into his mind. Associations with familiar haunts of 
 childhood vividly recalled many memories that had been 
 these years slumbering but half consciously in his mind. 
 In the presence of these new joys of childhood memo- 
 
 ""Prelude," Bk. XI. 
 ""Prelude." Bk. XI. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 59 
 
 ries, the immediate past became almost a blank to him. 
 His voluntary indifference to his college experiences and 
 the tragic reaction of his interest in the Revolution 
 wrought together to cut his life, as it were, in twain, and 
 the days of his childhood stood out in bold relief from the 
 rest of his life. They were now the only memories of 
 the past that he could associate with all that he held most 
 dear. Separated from him in point of time, they stood 
 in his mind as an aggregate whole distinctly apart from 
 his ideas and images of immediate perception. "So wide 
 appears the vacancy between me and those days," it will 
 be remembered the passage runs, "that often do I 
 seem two consciousnesses, conscious of myself and of 
 some other Being." What a unique and interesting bit 
 of psychology is this when viewed in the right perspect- 
 ive! 
 
 Since the experiences of childhood were the only ex- 
 periences that had not played him false he would cling 
 to them as to life, and with that frugality of mind which 
 loses no opportunities, he would turn them to the best 
 account. So he cherished them and nurtured them all 
 back to life, and they became to him a living reality. 
 It is not to be wondered at, then, as he came back into 
 the same surroundings and atmosphere in which he had 
 \ spent his passionate life of childhood, and heard the 
 1 same sounds and saw the same sights over again whicli 
 1 he had seen and heard in tliose early days, that he 
 would make one of his characters in a poem say: 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears. 
 My heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 Which in those days I heard : — '* 
 
 "The Fountain." 
 
60 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 nor that in many another poem written soon after his 
 recovery from the depression of the Revolution his mind 
 would constantly slip back to the time of childhood, which 
 he now believed held the key to the secret of the pro- 
 foundest meanings of life: 
 
 Our childhood sits, 
 Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne 
 That hath more power than all the elements, 
 I guess not what this tells of Being past, 
 Nor what it augurs of the life to come." 
 
 It was in this way that the remembered instincts and 
 intuitions of childhood were made to stand out distinctly 
 in his consciousness and to furnish to his will a direct 
 path to the eternal. 
 
 II. 
 
 \^ Since Wordsworth's life of childhood v/as almost 
 wholly a life of love for natural objects, his return to 
 the memories of childhood was simultaneous with his 
 returning interest in nature. Hence these two experi- 
 ences of his are inextricably bound up with each other, 
 and we only speak of them separately for the purpose of 
 exposition. In his essay on Wordsworth's Ethics, Les- 
 lie Stephen says, "The great problem of life, that is, as 
 he conceives it, is to secure continuity between the pe- 
 riod at which we are guided by half-conscious instincts, 
 and that in which man is able to supply the place of those 
 primitive impulses by reasoned conviction. This is the 
 
 "Prelude," Bk. V. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 6l 
 
 thought which comes over and over again in his deepest 
 poems and round which all his teachings center." : It 
 would perhaps be more accurate to say that a great many 
 poems written soon after his recovery from the depress- 
 ing effects of the French Revolution, touch upon this 
 idea; that in the light of the unfoldment of Wordsworth's 
 character and the revolutionary times through which he 
 had just passed, it was peculiarly necessary for him to 
 attempt a unity of the two ends of his life that had been 
 almost broken asunder; and that, instead of attempting 
 to find a continuity between the instincts of childhoqd 
 and the reason of man as such, Wordsworth, who had 
 been thoroughly convinced of the absolute hollowness of 
 rationalism and of all abstract speculation, was really at- 
 tempting either to transcend reason or to level it down to 
 the basis of childhood experiences themselves. Words- 
 worth was now wholly on the side of the intuitionists, and 
 he would give no cjuarter to the rationalists. He carried 
 the revolutionary method and spirit with him. Though 
 he may have become a "lost leader" from the political 
 point of view, he had no intentions of giving up revolu- 
 tionary leadership in other fields. He fell back upon his 
 personal experiences as a basis for operation. He be- 
 lieved that the experiences of his childhood were valid 
 and he would dare to make the most of them. •^ 
 
 Here Wordsworth comes into harmony with the 
 movement in English Literature called the Romantic 
 movement. The Romantic movement can in general be 
 defined only in negative terms. If there was one quality, 
 however, that all the leaders of the movement possessed, 
 it was the insistence on the expression of liberty and per- 
 sonal experience. These experiences were as varied as 
 the individuals engaged in the movement, and that is 
 why the movement has no other important quality com- 
 
62 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 men to all its leaders. But this spirit of insistence on 
 the expression of personal experience gave Wordsworth 
 the courage of his convictions; and had it not been so, 
 perhaps those strange and beautiful raptures of his child- 
 hood would have never been brought to light. It must 
 not be supposed, however, that he was acting with a con- 
 scious gusto in the matter. He was being deeply moved 
 by the spirit of his times, and his conscious will wrought 
 in harmony with that spirit. He was in dead earnest. 
 The robe of the prophet had now fallen upon him. He 
 had become a mystic and a seer. He was now formulat- 
 ing his poetic principles both in prose and in verse. He 
 had said that the poet, like the prophet, has "a sense that 
 fits him to perceive objects unseen before." His mind 
 ranged down the scale of thought to the instincts and 
 impulses of childhood ; it ranged up the scale through 
 reasoning to a transcendental experience. And these 
 two remote ends of experience, he felt, met in a harmony 
 of truth in one's immediate experience of memory, or 
 recollection. And so the memories of childhood, which 
 had been rejected by the builders, became one of the 
 foundation stones in his experiment of life. 
 , These memories of childhood, then, were for Words- 
 worth no mere poetic imaginings, but they stood in his 
 mind as a living reality. They were for him the source 
 of joy, freedom, and intimations of immortality. In late 
 years once, it is true, in a very scientific and unpoetic 
 frame of mind, Wordsworth declared that in his child- 
 hood he was of a "stiff, moody, violent temper." No 
 doubt this is scientifically and unpoetically accurate. But 
 according to his theory now, there was beneath this 
 moody and unbending self, another and deeper self in 
 the child, not tainted with original sin but invested with 
 glorious and heavenly attributes ; and the experiences of 
 
MKMORV AND WII.I,. 63 
 
 this deeper self of the child furnished the material for 
 the will and memory to act upon. It cannot be stated 
 too early that one of the characteristics of the mystic is 
 that he insists upon the validity of immediate experience. 
 Wordsworth, it will be remembered, said that an early 
 emotion may be contemplated in tranquillity "till, by a 
 species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, 
 and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the 
 subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does 
 itself actually exist in the mind." His will, focusing his 
 feelings upon some past experience, produces an emotion 
 that does actually exist in the mind and has immediate 
 validity. In this sense, a memory image or an imaginat- 
 ive picture is as valuable to the mind as an actual per- 
 ceptive image. This is characteristic of much of Words- 
 worth's experience. Witness one of many examples that 
 might be given: 
 
 That very day, 
 
 From a bare ridge we also first beheld 
 
 Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved 
 
 To have a soulless image on the eye 
 
 That had usurped upon a living thought 
 
 That never more could be.^ 
 
 The "living thought" is to be valued more than the "soul- 
 less image on the eye." The important point to seize is 
 that a memory image is to be valued for its own sake. So, 
 upon the most sacred experiences of his past, Words- 
 worth long and earnestly focused his feelings and imag- 
 inative thouglit until, around these experiences as a cen- 
 ter, there irradiated a dome of light which he called the 
 golden age, heaven, immortality. These glorified present 
 memory experiences which had their concrete basis in 
 
 '"Prelude," Bk. VI. 
 
64 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 childhood were what Wordsworth prized. They brought 
 him joy, a deep sense of freedom, and intimations of 
 immortahty. 
 
 Immortahty is at best a vague and shadowy thing for 
 us here below. We can never do more than speculate 
 about it on this side the grave. We can only have inti- 
 mations of it. We can see it only, so to speak, through 
 a key hole ; and there are many key holes ; and it mat- 
 ters little which we choose. Naturally we choose that 
 which appeals most to our experiences. Wordsworth 
 chose the key hole of his childhood experiences. Long 
 and earnestly he peered through it into the shadowy and 
 invisible world. Often he thought "of Eternity, of first, 
 and last, and midst, and without end," and of "life, death, 
 eternity ! momentous themes ;" and he could not guess 
 what our childhood, our simple childhood "tells of Being 
 past, nor what it augurs of the life to come." Joy, free- 
 dom, intimations of immortality — these are substantial 
 results in the experiment of life. And since our child- 
 hood, which "sits upon a throne that hath more power 
 than all the elements," is the substantial basis upon which 
 they rest, the memories of childhood have absolute valid- 
 ity in Wordsworth's scheme of life. 
 
 On the question of the ultimate meaning and validity 
 of Wordsworth's theory of childhood memories, critics 
 differ. Because of the personal nature of the question, 
 tempermental differences will enter into the opinions of 
 those who judge. Perhaps the only point upon which 
 there can be an agreement of opinion is that a number 
 of passages, as, for instance, the eighth stanza of "Inti- 
 mations of Immortality," taken singly cannot be accepted 
 at their face value. They must be considered as polem- 
 ical and exaggerated statements of a well enough defined 
 principle that underlies them. The reason for these ex- 
 
MEMORY AND Wir.I.. 65 
 
 aggerations lies in Wordsworth's revolutionary zeal in 
 opposing abstract speculation and logical reason, in his 
 vigorous defence of a doctrine opposed to cold-hearted 
 science, that "false secondary power by which we multiply 
 distinctions/' Not that he was opposed to scientific 
 facts as facts. No one was a closer and more careful 
 observer of the habits and conduct of animals, children, 
 and mature human beings. But the whole energy of his 
 mind was leveled against dry scientific and speculative 
 systems ; and in his fervor to state his own positive con- 
 victions, he fell into making exaggerated statements. In- 
 cident to these exaggerations, there is sometimes a lack of 
 clearness to distinguish between childhood experiences 
 and the memories of those experiences. When cleared of 
 its exaggerations and its ambiguity, the doctrine is essen- 
 tially a doctrine of recollection, which resolves itself real- 
 ly into the simplicity of a psychological method rather 
 than the dignity of a philosophical system. The child is 
 not really the philosopher, in esse, but is the philosopher, 
 in posse. He possesses fresh and divine potencies which, 
 if conserved and transmuted by the power of volition, 
 will constitute the solid substance in the experience of 
 the philosopher that is to be. 
 
 Reduced, then, to its normal proportions, what is the 
 ultimate meaning and validity of this doctrine? Here it 
 is that the widest difference of critical opinion prevails, 
 and perhaps will always continue to prevail, due mainly 
 to personal preferences. It all depends upon the point 
 of view. To the hard-headed reasoner there is little 
 in this doctrine that commends itself. He w^ill insist that 
 it must be submitted to the arbitrament of scientific fact. 
 It is certain that in childhood there is a great deal of 
 impotence. The perceptive faculties are not trained. 
 The imagination is crude. Thougiit is embryonic. To 
 
66 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 be sure, in childhood there is innocenc}- and sweetness. 
 But it is the innocency of ignorance and the sweetness of 
 inexperience. Besides in some types of childhood, at 
 least, there is plenty of anger, spiteful jealousies, wrang- 
 ling, screaming, and getting red in the face. And it is 
 precisely the memory of these sharp and thorny exper- 
 iences that rankles in the mind in after years. True in- 
 deed is all this, Wordsworth would reply. He himself 
 had visitings of those moodier hours. He had experi- 
 enced all the manifest weaknesses of childhood. He would 
 not write himself down a polished and philosophical 
 little scholar. He would not put a false veneer on the 
 facts. They are written large in the "Prelude," so that 
 he that runs may read. But deeper and more vital facts 
 than these Wordsworth also found in his childhood. His 
 childhood, at bottom, he discovered was a vconderful 
 compact of instincts and impulses that defied all analy- 
 sis. There were gleams of light at opportune times. 
 There were occasional flashes of insight into the life of 
 things. His soul, like every other serious soul, had known 
 its god-like hours : 
 
 There's not a man 
 That lives who hath not known his god-Hke hours, 
 And feels not what an empire we inherit, 
 As natural beings in the strength of Nature.^' 
 
 It does not require the occult wisdom of a philosopher 
 to distinguish between these higher moments of inspira- 
 tion and the lower moods of sullenness. It lies within 
 the power of every individual's will and memory to re- 
 create the exalted moments of life until they are lived 
 over again in the mind. This, then, may become a uni- 
 versal method of life and a panacea for its ills. 
 
 '"Prelude" Bk. III. 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 67 
 
 There is. however, a still more serious objection to 
 be made from the standpoint of scientific fact. Our per- 
 spective of childhood naturally tends to become untrue. 
 There is a natural inclination in us to give additional 
 colors to the joys and pleasures of the past. In his zeal 
 to revive his memories of childhood experiences, Words- 
 worth did not guard against the possible deception that 
 some of them might have been "called to life by after- 
 meditation." And, therefore, he unconsciously drifted 
 into an attitude toward his childhood experiences that is 
 essentially unscientific and seems to be based on prejudice. 
 To a disinterested person this natural inclination of the 
 mind can easily be illustrated from experience. I remem- 
 ber the school-house in ■which I attended school as a 
 child. It was the largest school-house in the neighbor- 
 hood. To me it seemed spacious indeed. I always carried 
 an idea of its spaciousness with me. Some years after 
 I had left the school-house I came back to it. Then it ap- 
 peared to me not spacious, but small and dingy. My 
 memory image that I had carried with me these years 
 was shattered. ]\Iost of our early memory images, if 
 they could be tested likewise, would be shattered. From 
 the scientific standpoint, then. Wordsworth seemed to take 
 a prejudicial position, for he deliberately chose not to 
 have his memory images shattered. l.>ut he would not, of 
 course, defend this position from the standpoint of prej- 
 udice ; he would defend it from the standpoint of sub- 
 jective experience. He would not have the vision from 
 within invaded and outdone by the outward facts of 
 hfe: 
 
 We have a vision of our own ; 
 
 Ah I why should we undo it?" 
 
 ""Yarrow Unvisited.'' 
 
68 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 The immediate psychic entity in the form of a memory 
 image was to him as valuable as the original experience 
 from which that memory image took its rise. Though 
 showing a reverent attitude toward the outward and 
 verifiable facts of science, he showed a greater reverence 
 for the immediate facts of consciousness. Whether an 
 imaginative picture, or a memory image, or a transfused 
 or interfused presence, the inner fact of consciousness 
 held priority of validity in his mind. And at this point, 
 Wordsworth, the mystic, parts company with those who 
 insist on objective standards of scientific accuracy to de- 
 cide what is true reality. It is exactly on these grounds 
 of difference that critics are divided as to the ultimate 
 value of Wordsworth's theory of childhood memories. 
 
 This same divergence, based on two widely different 
 methods of approaching the problems of life, is mani- 
 fested in the criticism on the famous "Ode on Intima- 
 tions of Immortality." The conclusion, it may be argued, 
 that there is a future life, is based on the hypothesis that 
 heaven lies about us in our infancy, which latter hypothe- 
 sis, being the major premise, ought to be an incontro- 
 vertible fact — a thing which most of us are quite un- 
 willing to admit. Wordsworth reasons in a circle and 
 there is no logical foundation for his thought. So says 
 the man of logical thought and of scientific accuracy. 
 On the other hand, it may be argued that in the immortal 
 life which is a new state of existence, there may be a 
 complete transcendence of our known order of time. 
 Accordingly then, in eternity there is no such thing as 
 time. Before and after, past and present, are terms not 
 in the vocabulary of angels and the immortals. 
 
 This idea is presented more clearly in a passage in 
 the Fourteenth Book of the "Prelude." One night after 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 69 
 
 a glorious vision from the top of a mountain in which 
 Wordsworth says 
 
 The Moon hung naked in a firmament 
 Of azure without cloud, and at my feet 
 Rested a silent sea of hoary mist — 
 
 after this vision had partially dissolved into air, it ap- 
 peared to him the "type of a majestic intellect": 
 
 There I beheld the emblem of a mind 
 That feeds upon infmity, that broods 
 Over the dark abyss, intent to hear 
 Its voices issuing forth to silent light 
 In one continuous stream. 
 
 And like unto this majestic intellect that feeds upon in- 
 finity and that broods over the dark abyss, are the higher 
 minds of human beings when inspired, which minds live 
 in a world of life, 
 
 By sensible impressions not enthralled. 
 
 But by their quickening impulse made more prompt 
 
 To hold fit converse with the spiritual world. 
 
 And with the generations of mankind 
 
 Spread over time, past, present, and to come, 
 
 Age after age., till Time shall be no more. 
 
 Just as time — past, present, and to come — is nothing 
 to the inspired mind that can hold lit converse with the 
 spiritual world, so our known order of time seems to be 
 transcended in the Ode in which Wordsworth reached 
 his highest point of inspiration. We have here, then, 
 practically nothing to do with pre-existence and future 
 life as such — it is simply one ever-present eternal state. 
 And why should not the stray gleams of the pure white 
 light of childhood intimate to us, as strongly as does any 
 other phase of our experience, the life immortal? 
 
70 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Or, waiving the point of actual transcendence of time, 
 and granting that the poem is of a sufficiently earthly 
 mould to have remained within the regular mudane order 
 of time, we can still maintain that Wordsworth's grounds 
 are perfectly tenable from the intuitionist's or mystical 
 standpoint. The fulcrum, so to speak, upon which the 
 mind turns from pre-existence to the future life, is not the 
 objective experience represented in the child, but the 
 subjective immediate memory experience of the poet. 
 From the standpoints of tone, feeling, motive, and mean- 
 ing of the poem as a whole, the passage, 
 
 O joy! ttiat in our embers 
 Is something that doth live — 
 
 is much more nearly at the core of it than the passage, 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. 
 
 In after years Wordsworth explained to his readers that 
 he had used the theory of pre-existence merely as a de- 
 vice, making the best of it that he could as a poet.* Some 
 have said that the explanation was due to the weakness 
 of old age; it would be more fair perhaps to say that it 
 was due to the sanity of old age. Leslie Stephen says 
 Wordsworth took unnecessary pains in making the ex- 
 planation. It may be so, but judging from the extraordi- 
 nary proneness of human beings to clutch at something 
 outward and objective, something away from themselves, 
 as a basis for reasoning and faith, Wordsworth's admoni- 
 tion is not at all superfluous. He publicly said of the 
 theory that "it is far too shadowy a notion to be recom- 
 mended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts 
 of immortality." But in spite of his disclaiming all 
 rights to the theory, critics have again and again foisted 
 
 *See Note 4, Appendix. 
 
MEMORY AND WILI.. ?! 
 
 it upon him as thougli there were something distinctly 
 Wordsworthian in it. 
 
 In short, Wordsworth's theory of childhood memo- 
 ries has constantly been discussed as though the ques- 
 tion of origin were the prime question to decide. Un- 
 doubtedly the whole trend of modern thought on the 
 question of origin is to explain the marvellous illumi- 
 nations that come to children as the reverberations of 
 past life in its physical and psychical evolution. A mod- 
 ern scientist, Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who of all living men 
 has perhaps collected the largest number of facts con- 
 cerning childhood and adolescence, speaks like a poet, yet 
 speaks with the authority of science when he says, — 
 "Whatever soul-stuflf may or may not be, it is most sus- 
 ceptible and responsive to all present influences, and also,, 
 in a yet far deeper sense, most pervaded with reverbera- 
 tions from an innumerable past ;" and again, — "We are 
 influenced in our deeper, more temperamental dispositions 
 by the life-habits and codes of conduct of we know not 
 what innumerable hosts of ancestors, which like a cloud 
 of witnesses are present through our lives ; and our 
 souls are echo chambers in which their whispers rever- 
 berate."-^ No doubt the pre-existent theory must grad- 
 ually give way to the more scientific theory. Nor does 
 this latter theory in any way degrade the value and mean- 
 ing of childhood memories. For the theory in question 
 is influenced by a second trend of modern thought, the 
 trend namely, to distinguish sharply between two kinds 
 of judgments — existential and spiritual. The first is a 
 judgment of origin, the second of value. Since these 
 two judgments are independent of each other, the value 
 of a thing cannot be determined by its origin, whether 
 
 '"Aolcscence," Vol. II, Chap. X. 
 
72 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 that origin be lowly or high. Whether the child is a 
 product of a long physical and psychical evolutionary 
 process, or whether its soul conies directly from a state 
 of spiritual pre-existence, its present spiritual experience 
 Tias precisely the same value. "By their fruits ye shall 
 know them, not by their roots." And with this latter 
 conception Wordsworth was thoroughly in harmony. 
 Whatever we may believe about the origin of child life, 
 and whatever Wordsworth may have believed, it was "a. 
 sense of the indomitableness of the spirit" in him as a 
 child, and much more the sense of the volitional and in- 
 domitable spirit in him as a man, which he felt was free 
 and which would not and could not die, that gave life and 
 genuineness to the Ode. The fame of the Ode cannot 
 rest on any judgment concerning the origin of child life. 
 Although Wordsworth was intellectually curious 
 enough to wish to know the origin of life, his chief inter- 
 est centered in the operations of his will and memory up- 
 on his childhood experiences, for the purpose of pro- 
 ducing an immediate excitation in his mind. And, in the 
 moment of inspiration, he joined the memories of in- 
 stinctive and impulsive childhood with an experience that 
 transcended reason and time. But this new experience 
 defies any sensible and rational explanation, says the man 
 of a scientific temper of mind. Be it so ; and since it 
 must be so, men of this temper of mind will always find 
 in Wordsworth a rock of ofifense, after a certain point 
 has been reached. They will find a permanent satisfac- 
 tion in Jefifrey's and Macaulay's common sense way of 
 dealing with Wordsworth. On the other hand, men 
 whose temperaments are like that of Wordsworth will al- 
 ways rate the man and his doctrine of childhood memo- 
 ries extremely high. The intensity with which he focus- 
 ed his mind upon his childhood experiences, and the still 
 
MEMORY AND WILL. 73 
 
 greater intensity witli which he penetrated the mysterious 
 truths of consciousness to which the memories of those 
 experiences were an inlet, will be to these critics but a 
 natural complement to his extraordinary grasp on the 
 essential and fudamental facts of every day life, and to 
 his power of extracting out of the very pain and sorrow 
 and tumult of that life, deep pleasure, joy, and an abiding 
 sense of spiritual freedom. 
 
 We have now seen that Wordsworth believed in the 
 creative power and the freedom of the human mind, and 
 that he resolutely turned his face toward the deep and 
 the mysterious in man and the deep and the mysterious 
 in the world. We have seen that he found a path directly 
 to the eternal through the power of his will acting upon 
 his childhood memories. We have also seen that the 
 experiences of childhood that had value for him were 
 those that were bound up with his interest in nature. 
 We have had abundant proof that, in his effort of recol- 
 lection to produce an intense excitation in his mind, there 
 was present a deep strain of what is called the mystical. 
 We are now prepared to take this principle of mysticism 
 more fully into account. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WORDSWORTH: FREEDO.AI AND MYSTICISM. 
 
 By the volitional intensity and the innerness of the 
 experience of recollection, Wordsworth produced in him- 
 self a deep strain of the mystical. But when he connect- 
 ed outward sense perceptions to the memory of child- 
 hood experiences there was present a still deeper strain 
 of the mystical ; and when he attached a moral value to 
 this double experience of memory and sense, as in "Tin- 
 tern Abbey," the full tide of the mystical was on. 
 
 The general outline of thought in "Tintern Abbey" 
 is as follows : — First, the picture of the mind is revived. 
 The landscape, the plots of cottage-ground, the orchard- 
 tufts, the groves and copses, the hedge rows, "little lines 
 of sportive wood run wild," the pastoral farms, the 
 wreathes of smoke, — all these beauteous forms, through 
 a long absence, had not been to the poet as a landscape to 
 a blind man's eye, but had frequently been partially re- 
 vived in his mind. But now, as he stood in the very pres- 
 ence of the beauteous forms themselves, the memory of 
 them was revived in full measure. Secondly, there is a 
 development of immediate sense perceptions — percep- 
 tions of 
 
 The meadows and the woods, 
 And mountains; and of all that we behold 
 
FRKHDOM AND .MYSTICISM. 75 
 
 From this green earth, of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear, — both what they half create, 
 And what perceive. 
 
 And thirdly, a moral value is given to this double expe- 
 rience of memory and sense perceptions. "Therefore am 
 I," he says, 
 
 Well pleased to recognize 
 In nature and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the crisis following his 
 overwrought interest in the Revolution, Wordsworth 
 considered that his soul had attained its "last and lowest 
 ebb" when, "wearied out with contrarieties," he "yielded 
 up moral questions in despair." But it is fair to ask 
 whether Wordsworth actually gave up moral cjuestions 
 completely. It is to be suspected rather that his nature 
 so imperatively demanded tnoral solace that he could not 
 give up the moral problem at all. No doubt for a time 
 he made conscious efforts to avoid the contrarieties of 
 moral issues ; but even "The Borderers," which was writ- 
 ten in his despondency, is much greater as a study in the 
 moral nature of man than as a pla}'. He makes Mar- 
 maduke, the young hero of the play, say to Oswald, his 
 tempter : 
 
 Young as I am, I might go forth a teacher, 
 And you should see how deeply I could reason 
 Of love in all its shapes, beginnings, ends ; 
 Of moral qualities in their diverse aspects; 
 Of actions, and their laws and tendencies. 
 
 And so Wordsworth really never ceased reasoning about 
 love in all its shapes, of moral qualities, and of actions ; 
 and the poems written immediately after his recovery 
 
76 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 are steeped in moral sentiment. In the poem "To my 
 Sister" the mind is made to "drink at every pore the 
 spirit of the season" and the heart to take its temper 
 from the day, and both heart and mind are attuned to the 
 highest law of morals — the law of love. In "Expostula- 
 tion and Reply" the powers of nature — "this mighty sum 
 of things forever speaking" — give energy and self-con- 
 trol to the mind that submits to them in a wise passive- 
 ness. And in "The Tables Turned" Nature blesses our 
 hearts and minds with spontaneous wisdom and with 
 truth^^ Thus these poems all possess an unmistakable 
 moral temper, and the source of their strength lies in their 
 extracting moral nurture from the "blessed power that 
 rolls about, below, above," from drawing upon the "ready 
 wealth" of nature and allowing her to be the teacher. It 
 may be, as Morley would have it, that to some persons im- 
 pulses from vernal woods cannot teach anything of moral 
 evil or of good ; but they greatly err who maintain that 
 Wordsworth did not find this the prime source of moral 
 strength. What happened to Wordsworth, then, is not 
 that he gave up the consideration of moral questions, 
 Vv'hich was impossible to a nature like his, but that he 
 ceased to look for moral strength in the social and polit- 
 ical philosophies of his day. And, thrown back upon the 
 dignity and strength of his own inner life, he revived the 
 memories of childhood, joined them to outward sense 
 perceptions, and in that double process, rediscovered 
 himself — his moral nature. 
 
 From thenceforth those memory and sense impres- 
 sions became the vehicle of expression for his inner mor- 
 al life. It was through his reaction, therefore, on the 
 French Revolution that Wordsworth's eyes were opened, 
 and that his peculiar moral principles were formulated. 
 And, carrying the revolutionary method and spirit with 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 77 
 
 him, he would teach men the new principles. He would 
 readjust society on a new and simple basis, on the basis of 
 the primal affections and moral strength derived through 
 memory and sense from the powers of nature. Tims, 
 with the intensity and whole-heartedness characteristic 
 of Revolutionary leaders. Wordsworth became the proph- 
 et and leader of a new moral and revolutionary move- 
 ment. 
 
 ?3ut this synthesis of memory images, sense percep- 
 tions, and a moral idea by a mind that is volitional and 
 passionate, is eminently productive of a mystical state 
 of mind. When the inner moral world, exalted un<ler 
 the influence of memory, is voluntarily drawn into 
 unity with the outer world the mystical always results. 
 The reason is that this activity of tlie mind produces a 
 sense of inncrness and intensity, and a sense of spiritual 
 freedom; and these qualities are the life of mysticism. 
 There are therefore some mystical tendencies in every 
 human being ; but they are more marked in some individ- 
 uals than in others. In Wordsworth they were by nature 
 unusually strong. The native powers of his mind — sen- 
 sitiveness, passion, and volition — were well fitted to de- 
 velop the mystical. In his earliest childhood, too. he un- 
 wittingly made elaborate preparations to bring on the 
 mystical state. 
 
 Again, in some periods of history more than in others 
 the spirit of the times favors the development of the 
 mystical. The age of Pope, for example, with its aver- 
 sion to passion, and to any union of the inner and the 
 outer life, was decidedly unfavorable to its development. 
 If. in that age. a young person Avere possessed by nature 
 with strong mystical tendencies the spirit of the times 
 would help him to hush them up. would deaden them for 
 him. and finally destroy them. This is why no great 
 
78 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 mystic appeared in the age of Pope. The age of Words- 
 worth, on the contrary, with its revolutionary tendencies, 
 with its efforts at the readjustment of society in new and 
 strange ways, with its insistence on personal freedom, 
 and with its powerful emphasis on personal convictions, 
 was emphatically favorable to the development of the 
 mystical. What the spirit of the times did for Words- 
 worth was to encourage him to bring to light and to per- 
 fect the elaborate mystical practices of his childhood. In 
 tracing their development, then, we must recur again to 
 the experiences of his childhood. 
 
 One precaution, however, is necessary at this point. 
 It is not profitable to trace this development closely in 
 the sequence of time. For the mystical proper, that is, 
 the pure mystical state, is not developed gradually in the 
 mind and then permanently possessed. It is rather a state 
 of mind that is arrived at occasionally, and held trans- 
 itorily, and with irregular recurrence. It is altogether 
 too intense and strained to be permanently possessed. 
 What is more important, therefore, is to note in its devel- 
 opment, the degree of intensity it has reached at any giv- 
 en point, and the different stages of its development 
 marked by those degrees of intensity. 
 
 The simplest rudiment of mystical experience is based 
 upon the most common experiences of humanity, and 
 is developed out of them. It deals with 
 
 Unshaped half-human thoughts 
 
 Which solitary Nature feeds 
 
 'Mid summer storms or winter's ice.^ 
 
 Strange, unshaped, half-human thoughts come to all of us 
 and out of them the will builds its mystic temple. The 
 
 "Teter Bell." 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 79 
 
 heart of the mystic, on the basis of common experience, 
 tends to 
 
 Luxuriate with indifferent things, 
 
 Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, 
 
 And on the vacant air.' 
 
 The following characterization of Peter Bell is univer- 
 sally recognizable, yet it expresses such rigidity and fix- 
 edness of attention that it unmistakably possesses the 
 rudiment of the mystical experience: 
 
 There was a hardness in his cheek, 
 There was a hardness in his eye, 
 As if the man had fixed his face, 
 In many a solitary place, 
 Against the wind and open sky P 
 
 These passages represent the most common experiences, 
 but they also possess the germ of the mystical conscious- 
 ness, the suggestion of deeper strains of fixed attention. 
 They represent the very beginnings of the mystical state 
 of mind. 
 
 When, however, the kindliness that is wasted "on 
 stocks and stones, and on the vacant air" becomes more 
 intense, when the face that is fixed "in many a solitary 
 place, against the wind and open sky" becomes more 
 passionately fixed, then a higher and more distinct stage 
 of the mystical presence is recognizable, and it becomes 
 more clearly separated from other experiences. Not only 
 did Wordsworth as a lover fix his eye upon the moon 
 that descended to Lucy's cot, but when he came home 
 from school on vacation and lay down in his accustomed 
 bed he tells us with what fixedness he aforetimes had 
 gazed upon the moon : 
 
 '"Nutting." 
 "'Peter Bell." 
 
80 WORDSWORTH, 
 
 That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind 
 Roar, and the rain beat hard ; where I so oft 
 Had lain awake on summer nig'hts to watch 
 The moon in splendour couched among the leaves 
 Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood ; 
 Had watched her with fixed eyes while to and fro 
 In the dark summit of the waving tree 
 She rocked with every impulse of the breeze.* 
 
 Even the grave of a dead companion is of sufficient in- 
 terest to arouse the active bnt mute gazing tendency : 
 
 The grassy churchyard hangs 
 Upon a slope above the village school. 
 And through that churchyard when my way has led 
 On summer evenings, I believe that there 
 A long half hour together I have stood 
 Mute, looking at the grave in which he lies !' 
 
 Not only do we learn that Wordsworth "gazed and gaz- 
 ed" at the daffodils, but often "gleams of sky and clouds 
 and intermingling mountain tops, in one inseparable glory 
 clad," bring on the rapt gaze : 
 
 On the fulgent spectacle 
 That neither passed away nor changed, I gazed 
 Enrapt." 
 
 In the above passages the common qualities are volitional 
 activity, fixed attention, and deep stirrings of the feehngs. 
 They are well on the way toward the distinctly mystical 
 consciousness. 
 
 A representative passage of a more highly developed 
 stage — a stage in which sense perceptions begin to pale 
 in the intense light of memory and vision, and in which 
 
 ^"Prelude," Bk. IV. 
 '"Prelude," Bk. V. 
 ^"Prelude," Bk. X. 
 
FREICDO.M AXD MYSTICISM. 8l 
 
 the moral and spiritual idea is present — is the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 I would stand. 
 If the night blackened with a coming storm, 
 Beneath some rock, listening to notes that arc 
 The ghostly language of the ancient earth, 
 Or make their dim abode in distant winds. 
 Thence did I drink the visionary power ; 
 And deem not profitless those fleeting moods 
 Of shadowy exultation.' 
 
 And the reason why he Hstens so intensely and deems 
 the exercise profitable is that the "soul retains an obscure 
 sense of posssible sublimity," and that it is through such 
 an exercise that the sense of its sublimity is heightened. 
 Here memory, sense perceptions, and the moral idea are 
 beautifully brought together. Likewise in the exquisite 
 passage : 
 
 Oh, then, the calm 
 And dead still water lay upon my mind 
 Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky. 
 Never before so beautiful, sank down 
 Into my heart, and held mc like a dream I' 
 
 In the following passage the light of sense goes out 
 altogether under the volitional intensity of the inner 
 gaze, and the outer world of reality becomes "an unsub- 
 stantial faery place:" 
 
 And sate among the woods 
 Alone upon some jutting eminence, 
 At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale, 
 
 Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude 
 
 Oft in these moments such a holy calm 
 Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes 
 
 •"Prelude," Bk. II. 
 '"Prelude," Bk. 11. 
 
82 WORDSWORTH, 
 
 Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw- 
 Appeared like something in myself, a dream, 
 A prospect in the mind.* 
 
 And likewise in the passage, 
 
 But to my conscious soul I now can say — 
 "I recognize thy glory :" in such strength 
 Of usurpation, when the light of sense 
 Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed 
 The invisible world, — ^^ 
 
 the light of sense goes out with a flash, and, in a flash, 
 the invisible world, a new order of moral and spiritual 
 truth, is revealed; physical sense is transcended, and we 
 have duly arrived at the mystic's rapturous state of mind. 
 Just at the vanishing point of the senses is where the 
 mystical proper, the pure mystical, begins. And the 
 completest expression of the highest stage of it is found 
 in a passage in "Tintern Abbey." To the beauteous 
 forms that through a long absence had not been to him 
 like a landscape to a blind man's eye, Wordsworth says 
 he owed a gift of sublime aspect, the gift of 
 
 That blessed mood, 
 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood. 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
 Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In bod}', and become a living soul : 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 "Prelude," Bk. II. 
 ""Prelude," Bk. VI. 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 83 
 
 The critics have been loud in their praise of tliis 
 famous passage. Stedman, for example, speaks of it as 
 having been produced when Wordsworth's vision pene- 
 trated the quintessence of nature, and when he was "in 
 his very highest mood." One wonders whether after the 
 burden of the mystery and tlic heavy and tlie weary 
 weight of all the imintcUigible world is lightened, and 
 after the motion of our human blood is almost suspended 
 and we are laid asleep in body — whether then our being 
 is in the proper condition to enter the very highest exper- 
 ience known to man. One wonders what actually is seen 
 when "we see into the life of things." One naturally asks 
 ^vliat are the fruits for life of such a rare experience. 
 Wordsworth himself is wholly in doubt about the value 
 of the experience and its consequent results, for he im- 
 mediately adds : 
 
 If this 
 
 Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft 
 
 How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 
 
 O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods. 
 
 and we again suddenly find ourselves in an intelligible 
 world. 
 
 In fact what has generally been considered contempla- 
 tion par excellence is contemplation in excess. After 
 having committed the excess, Wordsworth's essential 
 sanity makes him retract immediately and take more easily 
 tenable grounds. The passage, however, is a profound 
 and delicate rendering of a possible and somewhat un- 
 usual mood. The description of the process by which the 
 mind enters into this mood is delicately accurate. First 
 the ordinary burdens of life are removed, and the mystery 
 of the unintelligible world is lightened. That is, since 
 there is no absoluteness but only relativity of knowledge 
 of our ordinary life, that knowledge is renounced as an 
 
84 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 unintelligible world of knowledge. Categories of thought 
 are given up, all distinctions of grades and degrees are 
 obliterated, and what remains is a sort of abstract 
 mood without a concrete counterpart. Next the human 
 blood, smelling entirely too much of earthiness, is sus- 
 pended in its action, the body is laid asleep, and the soul, 
 having transcended physical experience, enters into the 
 '"blessed consciousness of unutterable reality." 
 
 The result of this intense excitation of the mind is 
 to produce two qualities of mysticism, namely, the noetic 
 quality and the quality of ineffability. According to the 
 first, "we see into the life of things." These states of 
 mind are "states of insight into the depths of truth un- 
 plumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illumina- 
 tions, revelations, full of significance and importance."^^ 
 According to the second quahty — inefifability — the experi- 
 ence in this state of mind remains inarticulate. "The 
 subject immediately says that no adequate report of its 
 
 contents can be given It cannot be imparted or 
 
 transferred to others." For lack of a sufficient number 
 of points of connection with ordinary life and of adequate 
 terms of expression the mystic can never communicate to 
 others the wonderful truths which he beholds. 
 
 To put the description of the process in other words, 
 the necessary conditions for producing this extraordinary 
 state of mind seem to be the the mental acts of forcing the 
 feelings to divest themselves of their ordinary contents 
 of concrete material and the imagination of its ordinary 
 intellectual content, and to fix themselves upon some ab- 
 stract point — which point in some mysterious way begins 
 to illuminate under the focus of the feelings and the im- 
 
 " James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," in chapter on 
 Mysticism. 
 
FRKEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 85 
 
 agination. Under the strained conditions into wiiich t!ie 
 will has forced the feelings and the imagination a new 
 order of truth is generated by them, great gleams of light 
 flash out in a thousand directions from the radiating 
 centre, vast strata of wonderful truth are revealed. But 
 when the illuminating process has once fairly set in, the 
 will, which has been the chief power at work thus far, 
 is temporarily held in abeyance, and for a short time the 
 subject "sees into the life of things." 
 
 It is a long way from the point where the heart rath- 
 er indifferently wastes "its kindliness on stocks and ston- 
 es, and on the vacant air" to the point where its experi- 
 ence is so intense that it sees, or thinks it sees, "into the 
 life of things."' We have traced out a number of more 
 or less distinct intermediary stages. We have seen that 
 the very highest stage is for the most part a moral and 
 intellectual abstraction ; yet it always held a certain charm 
 for W'ordsworth : 
 
 Mighty is the charm 
 
 Of those abstractions to a mind beset 
 
 With images and haunted by herself, 
 
 And specially delightful unto me 
 
 Was that clear synthesis built up aloft 
 
 So gracefully.'" 
 
 His mind, haunted as it was by concrete images, delighted 
 to penetrate through the images and build up a clear syn- 
 thesis aloft and gracefully out of the inner meanings and 
 abstractions suggested by these images. Almost con- 
 stantly, however, Wordsworth remained just below the 
 very highest stage of the mystical. His method seems to 
 have been to force his way as near to it as possible with- 
 out losing the vitailty of passion and of concrete repre- 
 
 ="Prelude," Bk. VI. 
 
86 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 sentation. Here, in the next to the highest stage of the 
 mystical, where the hght of sense does not quite go out, 
 where ordinary intelHgible distinctions remain, Hes the 
 most distinctive and the most soHd part of his work. 
 Here is where the synthesis of memory images, sense per- 
 ceptions, and the moral idea, is most effectively made. It 
 is on this level of the mystical that Wordsworth must be 
 tested. 
 
 II 
 
 The power of volition, of self-control, which is true 
 freedom, and the power of deep and intuitive feelings, 
 feelings of love, faith, joy, rapture — these are the foun- 
 dation stones of Wordsworth's mysticism. The union 
 of these powers is the union of what is highest in man — 
 self-control and freedom — and of what is best in child life 
 • — passionate love, faith, joy and rapture. V^olition and 
 self-control save the feelings from sentimentality. Thus 
 Wordsworth attained to a high dignity of life and at the 
 same time retained the simplicity of a child. Though the 
 union of these powers can hardly attain to the name of a 
 philosophic system of thought, yet the powers themselves 
 are grounded deep in the common heart of man. They 
 are little influenced by the accidents of time or place, or 
 by the force of environment. It is for this reason that 
 after a century (the nineteenth century) of prodigious 
 efforts to lay bare the heart of nature and to discover her 
 laws, of a vast collocation of facts concerning her, giving 
 us new and profound insights into her mysterious work- 
 ings, the treatment of her by Wordsworth is still fresh 
 "with points of morning dew'' and has lost scarcely any of 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 87 
 
 its meaning and vitality. With the grasp of a giant, 
 Wordsworth seized upon the permanent and fundamental 
 qualities of man. tlie qualities of volition and passion, at 
 a point where man is not an object apart from the vast 
 forces that surround him and play upon his life, but at 
 a point where he is essentially in harmony with the forces 
 that are constantly "breathing grandeur upon the hum- 
 blest face of human life." 
 
 Why, then, should there be any question as to the 
 meaning and validity of Wordsworth's mystical synthesis 
 of memory images, sense perceptions, and the moral idea? 
 The question of doubt is not usually raised with regard 
 to the foundation upon wdiich it rests, — although that 
 may be questioned, too, — but with regard to the particular 
 synthesis Wordsworth built on that foundation. Is the 
 way of memory and the senses the true way of life? 
 Does moral virtue really flow from the heart of external 
 nature into the heart of man? Is not this synthesis of 
 memory, sense, and the moral idea a factitious synthesis, 
 and is it not true that the quicker we get rid of the illu- 
 sion the better? Many great and wise men have been 
 against Wordsworth on this score. We have seen in our 
 study of childhood memories and the "Intimations of Im- 
 mortality" that critics were temperamentally divided on 
 the question of the validity of those memories. But here 
 the temperamental differences are more highly accentuat- 
 ed. Here are represented two widely different ways of 
 approaching some of the most important problems of 
 life — the common sense way and the mystical way. The 
 common sense way holds in contempt the intuitions, the 
 dreams, and the raptures of the mystic. The mystic way 
 seems to subvert into strange and interfusing presences 
 the facts of every day life that ought to be taken as a 
 matter of course. And perhaps between these two ways 
 
88 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 of thinking, and especialy of feeling, no reconciliation 
 can ever be made. The only thing that can be done is 
 to show, with as much sympathy as possible, how far 
 reasonableness will be on the side of Wordsworth's way 
 of feeling about the important facts of life involved in his 
 synthesis. 
 
 It has just been said that since the powers of volition 
 and passion, which are made the ground work of Words- 
 worth's mysticism, are deeply grounded in the heart of 
 man, they are not much influenced by the accidents of 
 time or place, or by the force of environment. But not so 
 with the particular synthesis he built on that ground 
 work. That was due mainly to the accidents of his times 
 and to his particular environment. Have given the man, 
 his early surroundings, and the peculiar circumstances 
 of his life, and the result must be this particular synthe- 
 sis. Mysticism manifests itself in outward expression in 
 many forms. Mysticism is intuitive, deeply subjective, 
 close to the very inner core of life, to the very "beatings 
 of the human heart." But it craves outward expression ; 
 and just because it is so deeply from within, its outward 
 expression differs in different individuals. Men do not 
 differ much in their statement of an outward fact of life, 
 say, of the law of gravitation. It is objective and ver- 
 ifiable. But in the expression of an inner experience a 
 man must recur to some form of pictorial or symbolic 
 language. Pie must work by hints and suggestions; and 
 the mystic experience on its way to outward expression 
 may take diverse courses. Cathedrals, angels, seraphs, 
 symbolism ready made from the Bible, may serve as a 
 channel of expression for the different hierarchial stages 
 of mystical excellence, as in Swedenborg. Nature may 
 even be mystically interpreted in terms of Biblical sym- 
 Ijols, as in Newman. In speaking of the angels, Newman 
 
FREKDOM AND MYSTICISM. 89 
 
 says. "Every breath of air and ray of light anrl heat, 
 every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their 
 garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces 
 see God."^'' And the Catholic Church, with its hierarchy 
 of oflficers and its ritualistic forms of worship, may serve 
 as an outward embodiment of the religious and mystical 
 consciousness. So in Wordsworth, different from Swe- 
 denborg and from Newman respectively, the objects and 
 powers of external nature furnished the embodiment and 
 means of expression of his mystical and religious con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 But the tone in which we have just been speaking of 
 the mystics and their symbols is by no means the tone in 
 which they themselves speak. The precise difificulty witli 
 them is that they take themselves and their symlx)ls with 
 absolute seriousness ; and this is what alienates the crit- 
 ics. Swedenborg's religion to him is the true religion. 
 Catholicism to Newman is the only right religion. And 
 Wordsworth feels that he actually draws unbounded 
 moral and religious strength from the heart of external 
 nature. The synthesis stands in his mind as an absolute 
 fact, and admits of no doubt. It is not the result of 
 imagination so called, but of bare and unaided vision. 
 Undoubtedly any and all of these mystics make too great 
 claims for their particular formulas as means of the de- 
 velopment of character and life. They are too insistent 
 in making their particular cures the panacea for all ills. 
 A specific formula cannot have universal validity. The 
 method of each one, and of Wordsworth especially, is 
 a little too exclusive. Moral strength does not flow so 
 exclusively from external nature. Is it not possible that 
 from the atmosphere enveloping religious ceremonies — 
 
 ""Apologia." 
 
90 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 great cathedrals, elaborate rituals, accumulations of his- 
 toric associations — moral strength may flow into the 
 mind as effectively as from external nature? And is it 
 not true that these systems need not be mutually exclu- 
 sive? With these limitations in mind, let us see what 
 may be said in favor of Wordsworth's mystical synthe- 
 sis in particular. 
 
 First, we cannot really exclude the forces of nature 
 from us if we will. Whatever transcendental qualities 
 man may possess, he has evolved out of the very heart 
 of nature, and is completely enveloped by her through 
 his whole life. He is fortunate if he can live where he 
 can tread the solid earth and can see the sky overhead. 
 It is not disputed that men, for their moral as well as their 
 physical well being, should live in wholesome sunshine 
 and in the presence of blowing breezes a good part of 
 their lives. These are the primal necessities of life, and 
 just as Wordsworth in his poetry would use "a selection 
 of language really used by men," so in the appropriation 
 of primal necessities he would use a strictly selective pro- 
 cess. He would not be blind to the destructive power of 
 "the lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves," 
 but he would select the best portion of natural influences. 
 He would not all his life breathe the murky atmosphere 
 of a great city, but would choose to let the "motions of 
 delight that haunt the sides of the green hills" touch 
 his life. He would allow the brooks, muttering "a busy 
 noise by day, a quiet sound in the silent night," the waves 
 and the groves, to play upon his life and mould his charac- 
 ter. All this we must let Wordsworth himself tell in his 
 own incomparable "selection of language really used by 
 men" : 
 
 Ye motions of delight, that haunt the sides 
 Of the green hills : ye breezes and soft airs. 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 9I 
 
 Whose subtle intercourse with hrcatliing llowers, 
 
 Feelingly watched, might teach Man's haughty race 
 
 How without injury to take, to give 
 
 Without oflfence; ye who, as if to show 
 
 The wondrous influence of power gently used. 
 
 Bend the complying heads of lordly pines, 
 
 And, with a touch, shift the stupendous clouds 
 
 Through the whole compass of the sky; ye brooks, 
 
 Muttering along the stones, a busy noise 
 
 By day, a quiet sound in silent night; 
 
 Ye waves, that out of the great deep steal forth 
 
 In a calm hour to kiss the pebbly shore, 
 
 Not mute, and then retire, fearing no storm; 
 
 And you, ye groves, whose ministry it is 
 
 To interpose the covert of your shades, 
 
 Even as a sleep, between the heart of man 
 
 And outward troubles, between man himself, 
 
 Not seldom, and his own uneasy heart: 
 
 Oh ! that I had a music and a voice 
 
 Harmonious as your own, that I might tell 
 
 What ye have done for me." 
 
 This indeed sounds beautifully mystical, but it may be- 
 come a practical reality to any man. At least, no man is 
 capable to judge what nature can or can not do for him 
 until he has given her, at her best, a fair and reasonable 
 chance. 
 
 Secondly, it lies within the power of a man's will to 
 make Wordsworth's mystical synthesis his own. Al- 
 though his method may not be exclusive of all others 
 it will work if one but gives it a chance. If one put him- 
 self in the way of it, it will produce character of a high 
 order. To start with, Wordsworth demands manliness, 
 that is, humility and courage, of every individual. Then 
 one must use his zi'ill — this is W^ordsworth's peculiar les- 
 son. One must will witii mental alertness, not with men- 
 
 ^"Prelude," Bk. XH. 
 
92 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 tal laziness, to give himself up, not passively, but "in a 
 ivise passiveness" to the powers that are forever speak- 
 ing. For the majority of human beings it is a very hard 
 task to be wisely passive in the presence of great and en- 
 during objects. It is vastly easier to engage in a constant 
 round of aimless, nervous and scattered activities, which 
 really is mere passiveness. There is, therefore, a wide 
 difference between mere passivity and wise passiveness. 
 And when that difference is taken fully into account, the 
 combination of a moral idea and the life of the senses is 
 not as factitious as it may seem. 
 
 In the third place, there is nothing degrading in the 
 life of the senses themselves when under proper restraint. 
 It is only when they are made an end in themselves that 
 they are not elevating. It is not only the will that puts 
 a restraint on the life of the senses, according to Words- 
 worth, but memory also has an important purifying pow- 
 er. The tone of much criticism on Wordsworth's inter- 
 pretation of nature is as though he held that power of 
 hig^h morals comes only and immediately from and 
 through the senses. This is essentially unfair to Words- 
 v^'orth's interpretation. For the power of memory, as we 
 have already seen, plays an important part in Words- 
 worth's scheme of things. It is not only what the eye and 
 ear perceive but what they half-create that gives value to 
 an experience with nature. And the half -creating power of 
 the mind lies in previous experiences conserved and car- 
 ried forward by means of memory and volition, and 
 present in every act of the mind. "What want we?" he 
 asks in the "Recluse" : 
 
 Have we not perpetual streams, 
 Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields, 
 And mountains not less green, and flocks and herds, 
 And thickets full of songsters, and the voice 
 
FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 93 
 
 Of lordh' birds, an unexpected sound 
 
 Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, 
 
 Admonishing the man who walks below 
 
 Of solitude and silence in the sky? 
 
 These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth 
 
 Have also these, but nowhere else is found, 
 
 Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found 
 
 The one sensation that is here ; 'tis here, 
 
 Here as it found its way into my heart 
 
 In childhood, here as it abides by day. 
 
 By night, here only; or in chosen minds 
 
 That take it with them hence, where'er they go, 
 
 — 'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense 
 
 Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, 
 
 A blended holiness of earth and sky. 
 
 Something that makes this individual spot, 
 
 This small abiding-place of many men. 
 
 A termination, and a last retreat. 
 
 A center, come from wheresoe'er you will, 
 
 A whole without dependence or defect, 
 
 IMade for itself, and happy in itself. 
 
 Perfect contentment, Unity entire. 
 
 The "one sensation" that found its way into Words- 
 worth's heart in childhood and that resides in chosen 
 minds that take it with them wherever they go, possesses 
 a power to purify and hallow the present life of the sens- 
 es. And when "the sense of majesty, and heauty, and 
 repose, a blended holiness of earth and sky" join with 
 the power of memory, not only to purify and hallow, but 
 to restrain and control the life of the senses — do we not 
 have here a synthesis, mystical though it be, that com- 
 mends itself to our sense of reason? 
 
 The final test, however, of Wordsworth's mysticism 
 is the test of the foundation upon whicii its synthesis 
 rests. It is "the mind of man," Wordsworth says, tliat is 
 "my haunt, the main region of my song." The mystical 
 experience, after all, is mainly a subjective experience, 
 
94 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 whatever outward expressions and connections it may 
 have. Wordsworth, says Emerson, "alone in his time, 
 treated the human mind well, and with an absolute trust." 
 And it was a trust in the mind's power of self-direction 
 and self-support, — its power of will. We have already 
 seen that in the production of poetry the will has two 
 functions to fulfill — to reproduce by a species of reactions 
 a former emotion and to hold under restraint the new 
 emotion. In the process of life the will has still greater 
 functions to fulfill. First of all by the doctrine of rec- 
 ollection, it is to conserve and transmute all that is val- 
 uable of former experiences. Secondly, it is to hold the 
 eyes and ears, heart and mind, close to the bosom of 
 mother earth: 
 
 Long have I loved what I behold, 
 
 The night that calms, the day that cheers; 
 
 The common growth of mother earth 
 
 Suffices me — her tears, her mirth, 
 
 Her humblest mirth and tears.^° 
 
 And thirdly, the heart must "watch and receive." Man 
 is to "live within the light of high endeavors," and when 
 he does so, he "daily spreads abroad his being armed 
 with strength that can not fail." 
 
 But when the will does its work intensely and pas- 
 sionately, then, by the stress of feeling, the experience is 
 carried along through the different mystic stages, and it 
 becomes more and more subjective and intuitive, more 
 and more inexplicable. And, like chemicals that will act 
 and form new combinations after a certain intensity of 
 heat has been reached, so the will and the passions, coun- 
 teracting and re-enforcing each other, both strongly and 
 highly wrought, beat out new combinations of high char- 
 
 '""Peter Bell." 
 
FREEDOM AND MVSTICISM. 95 
 
 acter. This is the ground work of Wordsworth's mysti- 
 cal synthesis, and it is soHd ground work — as solid and 
 enduring as the heart of man itself. Born of a time of 
 revolution which stirred the vital energies and deepest 
 personal convictions of men, it yet bears the stamp of an 
 original and masterful nund. It is a truth arrived at not 
 by the calculating and analytical methods of a philoso- 
 pher, but by the demands of an intuitive and sensitive 
 nature charged with volitional and moral earnestness. 
 It is no doubt wrong to call this a system of philosophy — 
 it is rather a method of practice in the fundamental terms 
 of human life. It is when Wordsworth is dealing with 
 this original stuff of human nature that he rises above 
 tlie accidental inlluences of his times and identifies him- 
 self powerfully with those forces in men that are per- 
 manent and enduring, 
 
 Their passions and their feelings, chiefly those 
 Essential and eternal in the heart.^° 
 
 It is here that he penetrates deepest into the heart of 
 man and farthest into the mysteries of eternal being, 
 and produces in the mind the most intimate sense of 
 moral and spiritual freedom. It is here too that his ut- 
 terances, in the words of Lowell, "have the bare sinceri- 
 ty, the absolute abstraction from time and place, the im- 
 munity from decay, that belong to the grand simplicities 
 of the Bible."" 
 
 ""Excursion," Bk. I. 
 " Essay, "Wordsworth." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORDSWORTH: ART AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Wordsworth always and primarily had before him 
 the purpose of writing poetry about man, nature, and 
 childhood, however completely that purpose may have 
 been obscured at times by social, political, or metaphys- 
 ical interests. The poetry, to be sure, was to be philo- 
 sophical poetry. It was to deal with new and original 
 kinds of matter. It was to reform the tastes of readers 
 and was to create a special taste for itself. It was to be 
 an enduring kind of poetry and was to teach mankind 
 enduring lessons. And, with these distracting interests, 
 the only reason it proved to be genuine poetry is that 
 Wordsworth was at bottom a genuine artist. We have 
 seen that he, for the most part, renounced the purely 
 mystical, that he dispensed with the pleasure of build- 
 ing charming abstractions through the concrete images of 
 the outer world, and with seeing "into the life of things." 
 We shall now see that he renounced the pleasure of the 
 pure mystic because of artistic purposes, because his 
 deepest impulse of life was the artistic impulse. "Faith," 
 says E. Recejac, "identifies mind with its object in a way 
 that artistic reflection can never do. When we. reflect 
 we find that we get the feeling of love, joy, being, from 
 within, and then we picture them as belonging to all sorts 
 of things : but in the mystic state, the consciousness and 
 
ART AND FKEKDOM. 97 
 
 the world meet directly in a world that transcends them 
 both — in God who at once contains them and carries the 
 sense of their affinities to the highest point. It is this 
 meeting of the inner life of the spirit and the outer life 
 which leaves behind every aesthetic effect."^ In the 
 purely mystic consciousness, then, the inner and outer 
 life meet in such close affinity that the artist, who must 
 work in concrete imagery, pictures, colors, etc., in order to 
 be effective, cannot find expression for the purely mysti- 
 cal experience. The pure mystic may indeed be able to 
 "see into the life of things," as he says, but it does not 
 help the artist, for he has no way of representing what 
 he sees, and, as has just been said, representation is es- 
 sential to the artist. 
 
 Wordsworth, then, gave up for tlic most part the 
 mighty charm of abstraction because he chose to be a 
 poet primarily and not a mystic. But for this very same 
 reason, namely, that he chose to be a poet, \\'ordsworth 
 carried the mystic experience, by the intensity of will 
 and passion, to as near the vanishing point of the senses 
 as possible. Volition and high passion are not only the 
 means by which character is beaten into shape, but they 
 are essential to the production of great and enduring po- 
 etry. And in the last analysis it will be seen that, for 
 Wordsworth, the chief function of childhood memories, 
 sense perceptions, and the moral idea taken together, is 
 to furnish material for purely artistic purposes. 
 
 Poetry may deal with common things and the com- 
 mon affairs of life, but it must deal with them more in- 
 tensely than their commonness would suggest. Shakes- 
 peare, to use a familiar example, could deal with the 
 common affairs of English life, but his great characters 
 
 * "The Bases of the Mvstic Consciousness." 
 
98 WORDSWORTH, 
 
 are filled with the mystery of power and with the inten- 
 sity of high passion. Macbeth feels his heart knocking 
 at his ribs and clutches at air-drawn daggers in his de- 
 lirium. Othello is wrought upon by green-eyed jealousy 
 until he is thrown into a trance. Hamlet is familiar with 
 states of rapturous ecstacy. Lear, driven into the storm 
 by the heinous wickedness of his daughters, is stirred to 
 mountain peaks of passion. We do not call these ex- 
 periences mystical because so many other elements — 
 elements of mind derangement, which is permissible in 
 drama, elements of acting and dramatic efifects, etc., — en- 
 ter into them. But they have essentially the same source 
 with the mystical experiences. Wordsworth believed the 
 truth could be found in the commonest things right be- 
 fore one's eyes. But the penetration, the vision necessary 
 to discover the truth there really created new values for 
 them. Wordsworth wrote poems about common objects, 
 but the poems do not especially have the element of com- 
 monness in them. His poems about children are not for 
 children; they are for m.ature minds. His poems about 
 peasants are not to be fully appreciated by peasants. The 
 intensity of treatment removes the poems a great dis- 
 tance from the objects treated. 
 
 Again this intensity of treatment gave little chance 
 for ornamental display. It made the language of his po- 
 etry as simple as that of common people. Wordsv^^orth 
 found vv^hen the holy passion was stirring that simple 
 language would best express his feelings, just as Lady 
 Macbeth, in the night walk scene, when she was charged 
 with the greatest possible intensity, found (that is, the 
 poet found for her,) simple language best suited to her 
 purpose. To produce the greatest poetry, then, with 
 common subjects, the poet must use power and intensity, 
 and must express himself in the simplest language. 
 
ART AND FRIiEDOM. 99 
 
 Tlic chief question with Wordsworth, however, was 
 how to carry this mystic and poetic intensity to the higli- 
 est point without losing control of it and without losing 
 the vitality of concrete representation. One aid to this 
 end was the use he made of the material furnished by 
 the memories of his childhood. These memories satisfy 
 the requirements of realistic depiction, for they have 
 their basis in concrete experience, in the personal expe- 
 rience of the poet himself. But they are not wholly dom- 
 inated by the concrete. They are easily detached from 
 time and place and lend themselves to romantic strange- 
 ness and to spiritual and mystic interpretation. Words- 
 worth's sincerity and realism prevented him from going 
 outside of his personal experience for his poetic material, 
 from entering a region as remote from the personal as 
 that, say, of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." But 
 his desire for strangeness and wonder led him, so to 
 speak, to the rim of his personal experience. The remote 
 ends of the real and the mysterious met together in the 
 memories of his childhood, which could readily be sub- 
 limated into a spiritual experience. Wordsworth, it may 
 be said in passing, was in almost every respect the oppo- 
 site of Scott. But in one respect they were alike, which 
 likeness at the same time involves a contrast. They 
 both lived much in the past. Scott's past was historic 
 feudalism; Wordsworth's past was his own childhood. 
 Scott saw the beautiful and ideal side of feudalism ; 
 Wordsworth saw the beautiful and ideal side of child- 
 hood. Each conceived his past in some sort of reality. 
 Scott built a castle on the principle of feudalism ; Words- 
 worth built a castle, too, with his inheritance of the past 
 — a castle not made with hands. 
 
 But the perfect fusion of realism, spiritualization, and 
 mystery into an artistic unity of intense power is a feat 
 
lOO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 beyond the strength of ordinary mortals. It requires a 
 strict fidelity to the outward facts of life, a subtle and 
 penetrating insight into their inward and intuitional mean- 
 ing, and a voluntary intensity of mind which can be sus- 
 tained alone by deep and genuine feelings. Although ex- 
 haustive treatment in the way of illustration can not be 
 entered upon here, yet one illustration, which is at once 
 the most beautiful and the most perfect, must be given. 
 It is the poem "To the Cuckoo," a poem which Words- 
 worth himself placed first in merit among his shorter 
 productions. The idea of mystery which pervades and 
 miderlies the whole poem is slightly suggested in the first 
 stanza : 
 
 blithe New-comer ! I have heard, 
 
 1 hear thee and rejoice. 
 
 O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, 
 Or but a wandering Voice? 
 
 In the next stanza the mystery is more pronounced, and 
 the situation and the immediate sense perceptions of the 
 poem are given, but at the close of these stanzas there 
 is again a suggestion of mystery slightly stronger than 
 the first: 
 
 While I am lying on the grass 
 Thy twofold shout I hear, 
 From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
 At once far off, and near. 
 
 Though babbling only to the Vale, 
 Of sunshine and of flowers. 
 Thou bringest unto me a tale 
 Of visionary hours. 
 
 In the next stanza the mystery is more pronounced, and 
 the "even yet" suggests that this impression of mystery 
 had been experienced before : 
 
ART AND FREEDO^i. tOi 
 
 Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! 
 
 Even yet thou art to me 
 
 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
 
 A voice, a mystery. 
 
 And then suddenly the whole scene, as by magic, is 
 thrown back to "those recollected hours that have the 
 charm of visionary things," and romantic strangeness is 
 added to mystery : 
 
 The same whom in my school-boy days 
 I listened to; that Cry 
 Which made me look a thousand ways, 
 In bush, and tree, and sky. 
 
 To seek thee did I often rove 
 
 Through woods and on the green; 
 
 And thou were still a hope, a love ; ' 
 
 Still longed for, never seen. 
 
 And now the scene is suddenly brought back to the im- 
 mediate present, producing that subjective transforma- 
 tion w^hich the spell of childhood memories always 
 wrought upon Wordsworth : 
 
 And I can listen to thee yet; 
 Can lie upon the plain 
 And listen, till I do beget 
 That golden time again. 
 
 And this potent charm of inward delight makes the or- 
 dinary outward world of reality fade into "an unsub- 
 stantial faery place:" 
 
 O blessed Bird! the earth we pace 
 Again appears to be 
 An unsubstantial, faery place; 
 That is fit home for Thee. 
 
I02 V WORDSWORTH. 
 
 This is perhaps the finest example of the perfect harmony 
 of sense-perceptions, childhood memories, spiritualiza- 
 tion, and mystery that can be found in the language. And 
 it is chiefly the potencies of childhood memories and vo- 
 litional penetration that deepen and vitalize the meaning 
 of the ordinary cry of an ordinary bird, and create in the 
 soul an inward Hght and joy and freedom of such intense 
 reality that the outward world seems to float in a fsery- 
 like and unsubstantial substance. 
 
 Another essential aid in carrying the mystic intensity 
 to a high point without going beyond the power of 
 poetic representation, is to deal v/ith primary and fun- 
 damental passions of human nature. The simple and 
 most permanent passions of the heart are capable of being 
 stretched farthest before breaking. Like the physical 
 heart, they are so deeply inwrought intO' the very struct- 
 ure of our being that they continue beating faithfully as 
 long as life lasts: 
 
 There is a comfort in the strength of love; 
 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else 
 Would overset the brain, or break the heart.^ 
 
 In the "Affliction of Margaret," the subdued self-control 
 of the character is matched only by the intensity of her 
 feelings. The surface is calm, but there are stirrings to 
 depths unfathomable: 
 
 I look for ghosts ; but none will force 
 Their way to me : 'tis falsely said 
 That there was ever intercourse 
 Between the living and the dead ; 
 For, surely, then I should have sight 
 Of him I wait for day and night, 
 With love and longings infinite. 
 
 '"^lichael." 
 
ART AND FREEDOM. I03 
 
 My apprehensions come in crowds; 
 I dread the rustling of the grass; 
 The very shadows of the clouds 
 Have power to shake me as they pass : 
 I question things and do not find 
 One that will answer to my mind ; 
 And all the world appears unkind. 
 
 Shakespeare's art was to create a storm of passions and 
 then ride successfully on the waves. Wordsworth's art 
 was to create deep undercurrent stirrings of the waters, 
 but to retain a perfect calm on the surface. 
 
 Another essential aid in carrying the mystic intensity 
 and rapture to a high point without passing into abstrac- 
 tion, was the investiture of the material universe with 
 spirituality and movement. Everything for him, Words- 
 worth says in the "Prelude." "respired with inward mean- 
 ing." Everything was transfused with a living spirit. 
 All the objects of nature, great and small, remote and 
 near — rocks and flowers and birds and trees, the very 
 air we breathe, the very earth upon w^hich we tread, the 
 pageantry of earth and sky, "the broad ocean and the 
 azure heavens spangled with kindred multitudes of stars" 
 — all are, before our very eyes, transfused by the "bless- 
 ed power that rolls about, below, above." We are made 
 to feel that we ourselves are "rolled round in earth's diur- 
 nal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees." Charged 
 with mystical intensity, but void of mystical excess, 
 Wordsworth intensifies, with naturalness and spontaneity, 
 the world round about us until it becomes a new world 
 for us. He makes it a transfusing and animating pres- 
 ence that mingles with our works and pours its living 
 spirit about us. This conception gives suppleness and 
 mobility to the imagination and keeps it whole. And the 
 
•104 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 mystic intensity of it is thereby carried to a high point 
 without losing the vitahty of concreteness. 
 
 His method as the result of his artistic aim was pro- 
 ductive of many artistic effects that are characteristically 
 Wordsworthian. It led him, for example, to renounce 
 the conventional language of the poets, to brand all ex- 
 trinsic ornament as unnecessary and insincere, and to de- 
 pend absolutely upon the concreteness of the thing he 
 was talking about for poetic representation. He consid- 
 ered that every object, however minute, was itself suf- 
 ficient for the stimulation of the senses. But h^'- his in- 
 tense penetration upon minute objects of life and nature 
 he steeped those objects in a splendor not really their 
 own and produced an original kind of idealization in his 
 poetry. For extrinsic ornamentation commonly used by 
 other poets he substituted visions of universal nature and 
 the power of his own spirit. In a sonnet, for example, in 
 "which he addresses a brook he has these words : 
 
 I would not do 
 Like Grecian Artists, give thee human cheeks, 
 Channels for tears ; no Naiad should'st thou be — ■ 
 (Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints nor hairs: 
 It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee 
 With purer robes than those of flesh and blood, 
 And hath bestowed on thee a safer good ; 
 Unwearied joj% and life without its cares. 
 
 In like manner the sweet and simple "Highland Girl" is 
 ■identified with the spirit of her surroundings : 
 
 Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, 
 
 Sweet Highland Girl! from thee to part; 
 
 For I, methinks, till I grow old, 
 
 As fair before me shall behold. 
 
 As I do now, the cabin small, 
 
 The lake, the bay, the waterfall ; 
 
 And Thee, the Spirit of them all ! 
 
ART AND FREEDOM. 105„ 
 
 In one of the *'Lucy" poems he makes the Spirit of Na- . 
 ture say of Lucy : 
 
 "Myself will to my darling be 
 
 Both law and impulse : and with me 
 
 The Girl, in rock and plain, 
 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 
 To kindle or restrain. 
 
 "She shall be sportive as the fawn 
 That wild with glee across the lawn 
 
 Or up the mountain springs; 
 And her's shall be the the breathing balm. 
 And her's the silence and the calm 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 "The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her; for her the willows bend; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the storm 
 Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 "The stars of midnight shall be dear 
 To her; and she shall lean her ear 
 
 In many a secret place 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 And beauty born of murmuring sound 
 
 Shall pass into her face." 
 
 The bfook, the tree, the child — small and common objects, 
 indeed — are thus seen simply but also intensely by the 
 poet. And as a result of that simple and intense penetra- 
 tion the poet reflects in these objects visions of universal 
 nature and the power of his own spirit. To particularize 
 from the last of the illustrations just given, the child seen 
 thus simply and intensely, suggests, not by way of com- 
 parison, but by means of the poet's direct seeing, pictorial 
 
Io6 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 visions of floating clouds, bending willows, moving 
 storms, midnight stars, and dancing rivulets, that subtly 
 mould her life into shape; and the whole poem similarly 
 suggests that the divine spirit of the poet himself inter- 
 penetrates that subtle power of nature which serves as 
 law and impulse to kindle or restrain the child and which 
 lends balm and grace and beauty to her spirit. This ar- 
 tistic method and aim, together with his use of childhood 
 memories, with his firm grasp upon fundamental pas- 
 sions of hardy human characters, and with his attributing 
 movement and moral power to the sense world in which 
 we live, makes Wordsworth successful not only in carry- 
 ing mystic intensity to its utmost in poetry but in giving 
 us in his own poetry solid substance and actuality on the 
 one hand, and, on the other, intense and highly wrought 
 idealizations. 
 
 That Wordsv/orth always aims to produce idealiza- 
 tions he seems to deny in his "Elegiac Stanzas" on the 
 death of his brother John. This denial, however, is made 
 on the grounds of mysticism rather than on the grounds 
 of poetry. It is due, no doubt, to Wordsworth's mystic 
 earnestness in taking the world he has half-created as 
 the world of absolute reality. We have seen, however, 
 that the light of the pure mystic's faith is too intense 
 for the attainment of artistic and poetic efifects, and it is 
 best to be somewhat skeptical, from the standpoint of the 
 poet's art, after a certain point of intensity has been 
 reached. Let us first get the poem itself before our 
 minds. The poem was suggested by a picture of Peele 
 Castle in a storm. The poet begins: 
 
 I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile ! 
 Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee : 
 I saw thee ever}^ daj^ and all the while 
 Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea. 
 
ART AND FREEDOM. IO7 
 
 After telling in the next two stanzas *'ho\v perfect was 
 the calm," he continues: 
 
 Ah! then, if mine had been the Painter's hand 
 To express what then I saw ; and add the gleam, 
 The light that never was, on sea or land, 
 The consecration, and the Poet's dream ; 
 
 I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile, 
 Amid a world how diflfcrent from this ! 
 Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; 
 On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 
 
 The gleam of light that was to be added, it may be ex- 
 plained, was to be "borrowed from the youthful poet's 
 dream." After telling how, in the fond illusion of his 
 heart, he would have painted t'ne picture, he says: 
 
 So once it would have been, — 'tis so no more; 
 I have submitted to a new control; 
 A power is gone, which nothing can restore ; 
 A deep distress hath humanized my Soul. 
 
 And in tlie conclusion: 
 
 Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone. 
 Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind ! 
 Such happiness, wherever it be known. 
 Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind. 
 
 But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer. 
 And frequent sights of what is to be borne! 
 Such sights, or worse, as are before me here, — 
 Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 
 
 The point in the poem to seize is that henceforth to at- 
 tain to happiness the poet means to present reality only, 
 to welcome "frequent sights of what is to be borne." 
 Since he has submitted to a new control, he means to 
 paint pictures not as they might be, but as they are in 
 
I08 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 reality. He means to dispense with the poet's dream, 
 and thereby, it is impHed, with the power of idealization. 
 And this conception is in harmony with his definition 
 of imagination in the Fourteenth Book of the "Prelude," 
 which was written about the same time as the "Elegiac 
 Stanzas." There he explains that imagination, in truth. 
 
 Is but another name for absolute power 
 And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, 
 And Reason in her most exalted mood. 
 
 And what he means by "Reason in her most exalted 
 mood," it must be remembered, is passion. This he ex- 
 plains in the Fifth Book of the "Prelude," where he speaks 
 of 
 
 Adamantine holds of truth 
 By reason built, or passion, which itself 
 Is highest reason in a soul sublime. 
 
 We have, then, in volition which is "absolute power," in 
 passion which "itself is highest reason," and in insight 
 which is sensitive and sympathetic vision — in these we 
 have the ingredients of the imagination. And this, it 
 may be added, is, for all practical purposes, an accurate 
 description of the conscious elements of Wordsworth's 
 imagination. And we have noted in an earlier chapter, it 
 is peculiarly true of Wordsworth that his imagination is 
 the product of the elemental powers of volition, passion, 
 and sensitiveness. 
 
 The chief point of interest for us here, however, 
 is that this conception of the imagination has its limita- 
 tions, that when the poet tries to substitute what he feels 
 to be the facts of absolute reality for imagination he 
 goes beyond the limits of the power of poetic represen- 
 tation. It is all very well for a mystic who sees the ab- 
 solute facts of reality in his symbols or even in a deep 
 
ART AND FREEDOM. IO9 
 
 distress that has humanized his soul, to disparage the 
 poet's imagination that is "housed in a dream" and that 
 loves to build an ideal castle 
 
 Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; 
 On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 
 
 But the mystic's sense of absolute reality, carried to its 
 logical sequence, places the poet's art in a false light. 
 For, in his substitution of the supposed facts of absolute 
 reality for imagination, he encroaches upon and limits 
 the poet's power of idealization and creation. The poet 
 can never avpid being a creator, for that is his highest 
 function. He is no doubt to try to see things as they 
 are, but it is equally important that he should create new 
 values for those things, and the mystic's ideal of absolute 
 reality is an impossibility in a world where creation is 
 going on. Are not the "Elegiac Stanzas" themselves, 
 from the artistic standpoint, a refutation of the mystic's 
 theory? Let us place side by side two stanzas from the 
 poem, one from the earlier part, in which he tells how he 
 once zi'oiild hare painted the picture, and one from the 
 latter part where the picture is given in reality : 
 
 A Picture had it been of lasting ease, 
 Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; 
 No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, 
 Or merely silent Nature's breathing life. 
 
 * 5i: * * * 
 
 And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, 
 
 I love to see the look with which it braves, 
 
 Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, 
 
 The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. 
 
 Are not both of these stanzas creations? Do they not 
 both have the added gleam, tiie "consecration and the 
 poet's dream?" And does not the first possess as much 
 reality as the latter, and is it not just as legitimate as a 
 
no WORDSWORTH. 
 
 poetic creation? Wordsworth's poetic art defies his mys- 
 tic theory; and though in theory he was often a pure 
 mystic, in practice he was a genine creative artist. The 
 poet in him prevailed over the mystic. But the conflict 
 and the renuciations which it brought with it were bound- 
 lessly fruitful. For out of the struggle between the mys- 
 tic, who by the intensity of pure vision would have his 
 "eye on his object" and would see "into the life of 
 things," and the poet, who, bound by his art, must find 
 words and concrete imagery in which to express his 
 thoughts, there was born a synthesis of the actual and 
 the ideal, of solid substance and idealization, that led the 
 poet a long way toward, yet somewhat on the hither side, 
 of absolute truth and absolute reality. 
 
 In the Second Book of the "Prelude," which was 
 written considerably earlier than the Fourteenth and the 
 "Elegiac Stanzas," Wordsworth, in tracing the growth of 
 his poetic mind, gives a less mystical and a more just ac- 
 count of the poet's idealizing power: 
 
 An auxiliar light 
 Came from my mind, which on the setting sun 
 Bestowed new splendour : the melodious birds, 
 The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on 
 Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed 
 A like dominion, and the midnight storm 
 Grew darker in the presence of my eye: 
 Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence, 
 And hence my transport. 
 
 Here the eye is on the object and it also idealizes the ob- 
 ject. This is in accordance with the facts of realistic de- 
 piction and poetic creation, together with the power of 
 intensifying by mystical vision. 
 
 The power of the mind by which this unity of ideality 
 and actuality is effected is penetration, or vision. The 
 
ART AND FREEDOM. 1 1 1 
 
 measure of the mind's power is the measure of the tension 
 we feel resulting from the attempt to express the univer- 
 sal in the particular, the ideal in the actual. The whole 
 history of Wordsworth's literary life may be summed up 
 as a constant and persistent endeavor to substitute this 
 power of vision for imagination as ordinarily conceiv- 
 ed, to put himself at once at the center of eternal being 
 and at the center of his own life, and to make those cen- 
 ters, not imaginatively but actually, identical. To at- 
 tain this end completely, however, is an impossibility for- 
 ever, for it is always by a leap of imagination that the 
 final identity is made. Perhaps in the ''Ode to Duty" 
 more nearly than anywhere else, Wordsworth attained to 
 this identity by pure vision,' as, for example, in the fol- 
 lowing eight lines where he draws the power of the inner 
 and personal life into identity with the "Stern lawgiv- 
 er"' of the outer world: 
 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh 
 and strong. 
 
 To humbler functions, awful Power! 
 I call thee: I myself commend 
 Unto thy guidance from this hour; 
 Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 
 
 But even in these lines the transition from the thought 
 in the first four to that in the last four is made by a leap 
 of the imagination. Thus the very last step in the attempt 
 at any such identity is an imaginative step, and the re- 
 sult obtained is the result almost, but not wholly, of pure 
 vision. Yet it is precisely by such an aim (even though it 
 is not ideally attainable) and by such an intensely mys- 
 
1 1 2 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 tical conception of existence that in his poetry Words- 
 worth, with penetration and power, has drawn together 
 sense and soul, 'body and spirit, earth and heaven, has 
 given us soHd substance and intense ideahzations, has 
 made us deeply aware of the mind's forces of moral and 
 spiritual Freedom, and has won the distinction of de- 
 pending more than any other poet on the power of un- 
 aided vision — the power of volitional penetration. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TENNYSON AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 In the annals of English Literature Tennyson has not 
 only been Wordsworth's most natural mystical successor 
 but his greatest successor as a theorizer on the principle 
 of free-will. But this likeness, of course, involves deep 
 i and serious contrasts. Wordsworth, for example, gave us 
 \poetry charged with mystical intensity, while Tennyson 
 Vor the most part described objectively some of our mys- 
 tical qualities. Wordsworth exercised in his "high en- 
 deavors" the power of free-will concretely, while Tenny- 
 son theorized about free-v.-ill poetically. Although Ten- 
 nyson was never able to penetrate behind the veil as far 
 as Wordsworth and victoriously render a reason as a man 
 who had seen with his own eyes the splendor and gran- 
 deur of the eternities, yet the man who could write — 
 
 Moreover, something is or seems, 
 That touches me with mystic gleams. 
 Like glimpses of forgotten dreams — 
 
 Of something felt, like something here; 
 Of something done, I know not where; 
 Such as no language may declare — ' 
 
 possessed a sweetness and grace, a flexibility of mind that 
 could adjust itself to a variety of impressions, which was 
 denied his more strenuous and giant-like elder brother. 
 
 '"The Two Voices." 
 
114 te;nnyson. 
 
 And although Tennyson could never draw God, the moral 
 law, and the power of free-will into a union with as strong 
 a hand as Wordsworth has done in the "Ode to Duty," 
 yet his statement of the same truth — 
 
 But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire, 
 And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness, 
 A cloud between the Nameless and thyself, 
 And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, 
 And climb the Mount of Blessing — ^ 
 
 cleaves a pathway directly to the Alount of Blessing by 
 means of the will with subtle clearness and remarkable 
 poetic fidelity. The thing to say is not that one man was 
 superior or inferior to the other, (except, of course, when 
 specific and definite points of view are given) but that 
 they are widely different. The difference between 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson is to be measured alone by 
 the difference of two separate periods of time and by 
 two very different personalities. What, then, are the chief 
 characteristics of the times and the vital qualities of char- 
 acter with which we must begin our study of Tennyson? 
 To find a brief statement of the characteristics of the 
 age which mark the formative years of Tennyson's life 
 seems, at first sight at least, impossible. It may be con- 
 tended that if there ever has been an age in human history 
 marked by diversity and variety of tendencies and move- 
 vients it was the age of Tennyson. It was an age of 
 insistence on personal freedom, individuality, self-realiza- 
 tion, specialization — resulting in endless varieties of indi- 
 vidual views, — an age of free scientific investigation, of 
 discovery, of the application of discovered truth to prac- 
 tical life problems, hence an age of reconstruction, of 
 breaking up traditions and fixed customs, an age of re- 
 
 ^"The Ancient Sage." 
 
HIS TIMES. 115 
 
 adjustment in politics, morals, religion, society ; it was 
 also an age of bold speculation, ranging from the lowest 
 materialism to the purest transcendentalism, an age of 
 new imaginative flights, of "Sartor Resartuses" and "In 
 Memoriams" and Rabbi Ben Ezras" — how shall we put 
 all this and much more in any comprehensible statement 
 or give any adequate description of it? There may be 
 some truth indeed in the contention that in the develop- 
 ment of the human race — in its movement forward to 
 that "Far off divine" event to which our poet has des- 
 tined it, — the wonderful nineteenth century marks the 
 period when, in the diversity of individual demands and 
 achievements, the spirit of the times has become so subtle, 
 complex, and diversified that it will always be impossible 
 to sum up its chief characteristics. What will be true 
 more likely, however, is that, in a century or two hence 
 when the dust and smoke of the nineteenth century shall 
 have cleared away and men shall have been able to attain 
 a right perspective of the period, this age will not be 
 more complex nor very different from many other ages 
 of human history, and that there will be, as in other ages, 
 a few fundamental characteristics that mark it and that 
 prove how the human heart and mind vary but little and 
 develop but little from age to age. It is a notorious fact 
 that in human history each age has an unjust and 
 a most distorted notion of the age closely preceding it. 
 The age of Pope had an unjust notion of the age of 
 Shakespeare. The age of Wordsworth had a very dis- 
 torted notion of the age of Pope. Our notion of the 
 early part of the nineteenth century may have thus far 
 been unjust and distorted, and it may be possible that this 
 distortion lies in the notion of its marvelous complexity. 
 To be sure we can not as yet obtain an ultimate view of 
 it, but if the ultimate view lies in the direction of sim- 
 
Il6 TENNYSON. 
 
 plicity perhaps we ought to begin to simplify our own 
 conceptions. Would it not be sufficient to say that the 
 age of Tennyson is characterized by an intense love for 
 facts, for concrete facts, by an insatiable desire to verify 
 the implications of facts as affecting theory and faith, 
 and by the reaction of theory and faith upon facts? In 
 short, the most serious and most important struggle that 
 was going on in the age of Tennyson — a struggle that is 
 constantly going on in the human race but which was ac- 
 centuated into a tremendous conflict by peculiar circum- 
 stances — was the struggle simply between fact and faith. 
 The age of Wordsworth was an age of beginnings, of 
 youthful exuberance, of awakening to the value of con- 
 crete facts on the one hand and to the power of wonder 
 and admiration on the other. It was an age, for instance, 
 which demanded to see a perfect nation and a perfect so- 
 ciety in the immediate concrete, and to enjoy the wonder 
 of seeing it suddenly precipitate itself out of the air and 
 become an actuality — a tangible fact. This is why 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very heaven !^ 
 
 Yet these precipitations were destined not to be as 
 sudden as the people imagined. The adjustment of abso- 
 lute fact with trascendental faith was a far greater and 
 much more difficult task than they ever dreamed of, and 
 the reactionary effect on the French Revolution and on 
 Romanticism was to awaken them to this sober truth. 
 But when the hand was once put to the plow there was 
 no turning back. Men demanded facts and they set them- 
 selves to work as seriously as ever man has done to find 
 facts and to adjust their implications and applications to 
 the conditions of society and to life. 
 
 '"Prelude," Bk. XL 
 
HIS TIMES. 117 
 
 But this adjustment made sad inroads into the grounds 
 upon which men rested tlieir faith. There are in man 
 instincts and intuitions, fecHngs and vohtions which h.e 
 can not account for, and the highest and deepest of which 
 he has always held sacred — so sacred that he instinctively 
 repels any cold analysis and dissection of them. There 
 is also an ingrained materialism in the mind which can 
 only admit facts which are tangible; and this latter ten- 
 dency had its full swing in the age of Tennyson. The 
 inundations it made upon matters hitherto given to faith 
 were simply appalling. There was now an endless citation 
 of facts, an arrangement and classification of facts on an 
 enormous scale, a formulation of laws and systems. The 
 facts of astronomy swung the center of the universe 
 from this earth somewhere into the milky way. The cor- 
 relation of forces was applied to consciousness as well as 
 to physics and chemistry. The facts of biology were as 
 fascinating and seemed to have as great a practical bear- 
 ing on life as the facts of the soul. The evolutionary 
 principle, itself based on a vast collection of facts and 
 revealing the ruthlessness of nature in the destruction 
 of things unfit to survive, struck a blow at faith in the 
 goodness of God. Bible miracles in general were held 
 to be the product of superstitious beliefs, since miracles 
 can not be facts that demonstrate law. Scientific ma- 
 terialism explained higher phenomena by lower ones and 
 left the destinies of the world to the mercies of its blinder 
 forces. It blandly set forth its vision of the last state 
 of the universe: 
 
 Then star nor sun shall waken, 
 Nor any change of light; 
 Nor sound of waters shaken, 
 Nor any sound or sight : 
 Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, 
 
Il8 TENNYSON. 
 
 Nor days nor things diurnal; 
 Only the sleep eternal 
 In an eternal night.* 
 
 And enthusiastic but shortsighted prophets were not 
 wanting who boldly declared that facts would soon claim 
 the whole of experience and explain away all mystery, 
 and who politely bowed religion, imagination, and poetry 
 out at the back door. But there were those also who held 
 firmly that the world of facts included only a small part 
 of our experience and that the deepest and most perma- 
 nent need of our breasts was an unseen and spiritual or- 
 der; that however greatly the world of facts might be ex- 
 tended and enlarged by investigation and discovery there 
 was, in man's inner nature, in the inexpugnable citadel 
 of man's soul, a center of being far beyond the reach of 
 facts, and, in the powers outside, where, on the fringe of 
 things, logical thought expires and speech drops into si- 
 lence, there was the center of Nescience; that it lay in the 
 power of man's will to invoke from those centers power 
 and truth and light whose rays when thus set ablaze 
 would light up and irradiate the whole world of brute 
 facts with a new significance and a splendor not really 
 their own ; and that in the process of willing these centers 
 into activity the centers themselves would draw nigh to 
 each other — the finite and the infinite — and behold ! man 
 would stand face to face with his God ! 
 
 In this world, however, of incompleteness and of im- 
 perfections in character, where we seem to belong to two 
 distinct orders of being, the power of faith can never hold 
 in solution all the items of fact ; no absolute adjustment of 
 faith and fact can ever be made. The only way this ad- 
 justment can be made approximately, it has been suggest- 
 
 ^Swinburne, "The Garden of Proserpine.' 
 
HIS TIMES. 119 
 
 ed, is through the power of the will. If a given individ- 
 ual has a keen sensitiveness to facts and their various im- 
 plications and is also conscientious concerning the purity 
 of his faith, these powers are sure to bring conflict into 
 his soul. And if his will is not as strong as either his 
 sensitiveness to fact or his conscientiousness in faith he is 
 sure not to be able to make a satisfactory adjustment. 
 This state of mind is clearly revealed in much of the 
 poetry of Matthew Arnold, who fell upon the "iron 
 time of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears" — the iron 
 time of Tennyson. Such random passages as the fol- 
 lowing prove it : 
 
 And on earth we wander, groping, reeling; 
 Powers stir in us, stir and disappear. 
 Ah ! and he, who placed our master-feeling, 
 Fail'd to place that master-feeling clear. 
 
 We but dream we have our wish'd-for powers, 
 Ends we seek we never shall attain. 
 Ah! some power exists there, which is ours? 
 Some end is there, we indeed may gain ?* 
 
 We do not what we ought. 
 
 What we ought not, we do. 
 
 And lean upon the thought 
 
 That chance will bring us through ; 
 
 But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers. 
 
 Yet, even when man forsakes 
 
 All sin, — is just, is pure. 
 
 Abandons all which makes 
 
 His welfare insecure, — 
 
 Other existences there are which clash with ours.' 
 
 '"Self-Deception." 
 ""Empedocles." 
 
320 TENNYSON. 
 
 Next to a weak and nerveless will, the most fatal thing 
 to poetry is a divided v/ill and the clash between our de- 
 sires and affections resulting from it. If there is any be- 
 ing on earth whose eye should be single it is the poet. In 
 his essay on Burns, what is it that Carlyle fixes upon as 
 the prime cause of Burns' final failure in life? It is the 
 lack of a firm religious faith and singleness of aim. "The 
 wedge will rend rocks, but its edge must be sharp and 
 single; if it be double, the wedge is bruised in pieces and 
 will rend nothing." The, f atality-of this.tgith is nowhere 
 better illustrated than in the poetry of Arthur Hugh 
 Clough, a contemporary of Arnold and Tennyson. It is 
 rather pitiful to read his thirteen stanzas of the first part 
 of "Easter Day," which has for its refrain "Christ is not 
 risen," and then to read the three feeble stanzas compos- 
 ing the second part which has for its refrain "Christ is 
 risen;" and to see how in this poem and in much else he 
 has written he calls on us to "Hope Evermore and Be- 
 lieve," but makes us conscious of the fact that his own 
 heart and v/ill are far from achieving anything of the 
 hope which he offers. Had Clough lived in an age 
 in which there had been no insatiable thirst for facts 
 whose implications undermined the grounds of faith he 
 would no doubt have written far higher and more heroic 
 poetry. The faith which a poet must possess must not 
 necessarily be an absolutely true one, (for who can say 
 what that one is?) but it must be a faitJi, so that the feel- 
 ings can be unified, the imagination kept whole, and the 
 will undivided. Because of the impotence of our minds, 
 this faith can never hold in solution all the items of fact ; 
 but the more items it so holds, the firmer and more per- 
 manent will be this synthesis of faith and fact. In the 
 age of Tennyson there was such an inundation of new 
 facts that only the firmest and most flexible minds 
 
HIS TIMES. I2L 
 
 could adjust even a part of these facts to their faith and 
 could construct on the basis of this adjustment a higher 
 and sublimer faith. 
 
 Since we have now the essential characteristics of 
 the times before us, let us see what were the chief qual- 
 ities in Tennyson that fitted him to be the representative 
 of these times. That Tennyson possessed passion and 
 sensitiveness sufficiently to produce great poetry has 
 never been questioned by anyone, as it had been in the 
 case of Wordsworth. What one is mostly aware of in 
 such a poem as "Rizpah" is the aroused and abandoned 
 f eeHngs of the character ; and this is eminently typical of 
 Tennyson's art. Tennyson throws himself with complete 
 abandon into the story or the theme of his poem. Although 
 the passion in Tennyson sometimes runs near the senti- 
 mental and the ranting it is never superficial "There is al- 
 ways method in his abandon. Those who hold that Ten- 
 nyson is too sentimental to be considered seriously have 
 certainly never observed the method with care. 
 
 In the portrayal of passion Tennyson always holds a 
 middle course. Passions may be ranged on a scale from 
 the superficial hysterical to the central feelings that lie 
 too deep for tears. Tennyson avoids the extremes of the 
 scale — the one extreme because the passions there are su- 
 perficial, the other because he is not the master of the 
 profoundest emotions of the human breast. The passions 
 in his poems are such as can be understood by the com- 
 mon man, but also such as require some effort from the 
 common man to comprehend fully. That is, though he 
 appeals to popular sentiment he tends everywhere to lift 
 that sentiment above itself. The "Miller's Daughter" is 
 on the level of the enjoyment of the most untutored, while 
 "Ulysses" approaches the realm of lofty and concentra- 
 ted art that lifts the soul above the commonplace. But 
 
122 TENNYSON. 
 
 within the range fitted to his genius Tennyson gives an 
 ahnost infinite variety of impressions. Among the great 
 number of his poems there are none that exactly repeat 
 each other in sentiment. The dehcacy of his perceptions 
 makes the finest and most varied shades in his sentiments. 
 The quahty of sensitiveness — his sensitiveness to all 
 influences, the quality that expresses itself in the state- 
 ment "I am a part of all that I have met" — ^is the quality 
 that makes Tennyson peculiarly the representative of his 
 age. He seems to have been susceptible to all the winds 
 that blev^ from all quarters, and to have responded to all 
 of them. Wordsworth from his childhood was deeply 
 sensitive to the elemental powers, the great central forces 
 of being, but lover of nature that he was, he needed the 
 influence of his sister to teach him the beauties of the 
 small and detached objects of nature, Tennyson needed 
 no one to teach him the delicacies of perception. His 
 sensitiveness did not have the depth of Wordsworth's but 
 it could take in a greater variety of impressions. His mind 
 was a delicate instrument that responded to and register- 
 ed in itself the smallest and subtlest impressions that 
 came to it from the widest varieties of sources. It re- 
 sponded to the political and social activities of the age, 
 to the scientific and religious movements, to the skeptical 
 and also the mystical elements in those movements, to the 
 classical forms and themes of the past, to the romantic 
 tendencies of the present, to the beauteous phenomena 
 of nature, to man as man and also to man as a social 
 being. It absorbed something from all these and other 
 sources, but not "overmuch" from any one of them. Not 
 only in choosing art forms but in selecting subject matter 
 for poetry Tennyson in method was eclectic. And his 
 mind, sensitive to all influences, was genuinely and deeply 
 cultural, in the best sense of that term. 
 
HIS TIMES. 123 
 
 Tliat Tennyson had a subtilizing intellect has hardly 
 been sufficiently emphasized by the critics ; for his perfect 
 mastery of technique, his florid style, his capability of 
 fine phrasing, of saying each thing in the poetic way, has 
 permitted him to reason more in verse than is generally 
 suspected in him or tolerated in other poets. In "In Me- 
 moriam," for example, there are many patches of intel- 
 lectual subtilty, little pieces of intellectual logic that re- 
 mind one of Pope; with this difference that the phrasing 
 itself in Tennyson is often in strikingly concrete form and 
 that his intellectual truth is placed in a richly ornamental 
 setting and is surrounded with a dreamy mist of beauty. 
 
 That Tennyson possessed unusual energy of will is 
 debatable. It is certain that he did not possess as indomit- 
 able a will or as victorious a faith as either Wordsworth 
 or Browning. It is equally certain, on the other hand, 
 that he did not possess as weak a will as some have 
 charged him with, the will, for instance, that might be 
 inferred to belong to the speaker of the lines — 
 
 O weary life! O weary death! 
 O spirit and heart made desolate! 
 O damned vacillating state ! — 
 
 which stand at the conclusion of one of Tennyson's early 
 dramatic poems. Nor did he allow himself to be severed 
 from poetry simply because great poetry demands a uni- 
 fied will and a clear and delinite assumption of faith in 
 the unseen, as did Matthew Arnold apparently when he 
 laid poetry aside and found satisfaction in the more mat- 
 ter-of-fact business of prose-writing and acting the 
 part of the man of the world. Even though Tennyson 
 faltered often where he had lirmly trod he nevertheless 
 "beat his music out." He felt that life was a genuine 
 fight; and he fought the fight manfully; he squared his 
 
124 TENNYSON. 
 
 experience with his highest hght of truth ; he worked not 
 "without a conscience or an aim ;" he clung to "the mighty- 
 hopes that make us men" and taught others to chng to 
 them ; he beHeved in individual responsibility, and never 
 hesitated to take his share of it upon himself : 
 
 Yet none could better know than I, 
 'How much of act at human hands 
 The sense of human will demands 
 By which we dare to live or die." 
 
 He saw clearly, too, that the reconciliation between fact 
 and faith lay in the mediating but inexplicable power of 
 the will. So that the point to which he comes oftenest 
 and in which he can find genuine reconciliation and peace 
 without surrendering manhood or paltering the truth, is 
 the statement of 
 
 "This main-miracle, that thou art thou, 
 
 With power on thine own act and on the world."^* 
 
 This sense of human free-Vvdil "by which we dare to 
 live or die," this power which we have on our own acts 
 and on the world is a miracle, the "main-miracle" of life. 
 Suppose historical miracles be satisfactorily proved to be 
 superstitions, suppose all the forces of the outer world 
 be explained by mechanical and evolutionary law, yet 
 here in the inner circle of our being, springing up in the 
 very midst of mechanical and evolutionary law, there is 
 an independent, self-developing, self-directing power, 
 v;hich does not belong to the category of lav/ and which 
 defies all analysis. In this citadel of one's soul one can 
 do battle, if need be, with the whole world. This is one 
 
 ""In ^Icmoriam," Poem, LXXXV. 
 
 '"De Profundis." 
 
 *See Note 5, Appendix. 
 
HIS TIMES. 125 
 
 of "the mighty hopes that make us men ;" and Tennyson 
 never surrendered it, but used it in his experience as a 
 great meditating power between fact and faith. 
 
 Evidence is not wanting that Tennyson, in his youth, 
 had something of the iron in him that characterized Keats 
 when making a poem. This evidence is furnished by the 
 manner in which Tennyson received the harsh criticism 
 of the reviewers of his poetry in 1833. After pointing 
 out some definite and important changes that Tennyson 
 made in a poem as a result of Lockhart's criticism, severe 
 and exasperating in the extreme but true as far as the 
 faults were concerned, Van Dyke, in his book on Tenny- 
 son's Poetry, adds : "Now a poet who could take criticism 
 in this fashion and use it to such good purpose, was cer- 
 tainly neither weak nor wayward. Weighed in the bal- 
 ance, he was not found wanting but steadily growing. 
 He would not abandon his art at the voice of censure, 
 but correct and perfect it, until it stood complete and 
 sound beyond the reach of censure." This method of 
 self-criticism and this determination as touching his pur- 
 pose of becoming a great poet shows the volitional and 
 iron side of the man's nature. 
 
 But Tennyson was almost morbidly sensitive to the 
 implications of the new facts of his age and he was ex- 
 tremely conscientious in matters of faith. And the true 
 measure of his will lies in the measure of the power to 
 harmonize these diverse tendencies. It was no small 
 achievement in Tennyson to produce harmony here. He 
 considered this to be one of the chief concerns of his life 
 — an achievement that would require time ; and it did 
 require time. There are plenty of falterings by the way- 
 side, and he who looks to those alone may well agree with 
 Professor Corson that Tennyson's poetry is "an expres- 
 sion of the highest sublimation of the skepticism which 
 
126 TENNYSON. 
 
 came out of the eighteenth century" and that "In ]\Iemo- 
 riam" in particular "may ahnost be said to be the poem of 
 nineteenth century skepticism."* But as it is es- 
 sentially unfair to determine the worth of a thing by 
 judging it in its making, so it is essentially unfair to 
 judge a struggle with doubt while it is in progress. We 
 care not what stage of progress a man may be in, but we 
 do care about the direction he is facing. Moreover, in a 
 poem that has something of epic movement in it, we must 
 be sure to take in the swing of the movement. If, for ex- 
 ample, one should judge the Book of Job by the passage 
 — "Behold I go forward, but he is not there; and back- 
 ward, but I cannot perceive him ; on the left hand where 
 he doth work, but I can not behold him: he hideth him- 
 self on the right hand, that I cannot see him," — and should 
 forget to notice in the conclusion the passage — "I had 
 heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine 
 eye seeth thee" — he would surely have misread the work. 
 And it is certain that "In Memoriam" must be read in 
 the same spirit of epic movement as the Book of Job. 
 It is the attainment in the end, the spiritual achievement, 
 rather than the struggle, by which the work is to be judg- 
 ed. And the achievement with Tennyson is victory, vic- 
 tory before he had attained his fortieth year : 
 
 O living will that shalt endure 
 
 When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
 
 Rise in the spiritual rock, 
 
 Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 
 
 That we may lift from out of dust 
 A voice as unto him that hears, 
 A cry above the conquer'd years 
 To one that with us works, and trust, 
 
 ' "An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry." 
 
HIS TIMES. 127 
 
 Witli failh that comes of self-control, 
 The truths that never can be proved 
 Until we close with all we loved. 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul." 
 
 Tennyson explains that what he meant by the first 
 line of this poem was the human will as distinguished 
 from the divine. It is our ordinary everyday will, the 
 will by which we make our choices between alternatives, 
 the will that selects ideas and gives direction to our 
 thought, that cultivates some feelings and avoids others, 
 that motivates and gives guidance to our actions, that har- 
 monizes and unifies our personalities, — it is this will that 
 is the enduring part of us, that purifies our deeds and 
 lifts us above time into eternity, that gives us a lasting 
 hold on faith in the truths we cannot prove "until we close 
 with all we loved, and all w^e flow from, soul in soul." 
 xA.nd through the remainder of his life and in all of his 
 later poetry Tennyson maintained this faith with an 
 unfaltering will. Even in "Ulysses," a poem written be- 
 fore 1842, we hear the cry of a strong man coming to him- 
 self. Tennyson himself says that the poem was written 
 more with his feeling of the loss of Arthur Hallam up- 
 on him than many of the poems in "In ^lemoriam." 
 But here the feeling of loss has already been transformed 
 into the feeling of constructive energy. Like "Lycidas," 
 the poem gives a passionate but disinterested outlook 
 upon life of a young man roused to deep thought as he 
 stands by the grave of one of his fellows. One can hear 
 the voice of the poet in the undertones of the poem. One 
 can hear it mingle with the voice of Ulysses as he address- 
 es his mariners who had ever taken the sunshine and the 
 thunder with jolly welcome : 
 
 '"In Memoriam," Poem, XXIV. 
 
128 TENNYSON. 
 
 Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die. 
 
 To succeed greatly a poet must have large artistic ideals, 
 must possess ground work of positive faith in the worth 
 of human life, and must have the energy of human will 
 to endeavor unceasingly, against all distracting interests, 
 to attain his artistic and ethical ideals, to "smite the 
 sounding furrows" until he die. A will of this sort — if 
 not the greatest in power, at least fine in quality — belong- 
 ed to Tennyson : 
 
 That which we are, we are, — 
 One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TENNYSON: MEMORY AND THE MYSTIC 
 ELEMENT. 
 
 I. 
 
 Although Tennyson did not possess as intense and 
 penetrating a power of will as Wordsworth, he avoided 
 some of the excesses of sterility, arbitrariness, and lack 
 of humor accompanying the too strenuous exercise of 
 will. He retained comparatively a greater mobility in his 
 thought and feeling and more humor in his life and 
 works, though there is neither an overabundance of hu- 
 fmor nor a lack of arbitrariness to be found even in him. 
 \\'ordsworth, we have seen, fixed his mind somewhat ar- 
 bitrarily upon the experiences of his childhood, and by the 
 power of will and memory reproduced in himself an im- 
 mediate mystical experience which he thought had value 
 as giving to us suggestions or intimations of immortality. 
 Tennyson, in common with Wordsworth, was possessed 
 with the same romantic "Passion of the Past." It ex- 
 pressed itself less arbitrarily in him than in Wordsworth 
 and therefore less definitely and more flexibly. It was 
 not so directly the memory of our childhood instincts and 
 intuitions that was "a master of light of all our see- 
 ing" as with Wordsworth, but it was the more general 
 memory of certain god-like experiences of the past, and 
 his passion for tliem, by which he could perceive 
 
130 TENNYSON. 
 
 The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day- 
 Strike on the Mount of Vision.^ 
 
 In our study of Wordsworth we saw that the bare- 
 ness of his interest in his college days and the moral 
 shock sustained from the French Revolution set his boy- 
 hood experiences before him in bold perspective, and 
 made him recur to them in an unusual way for moral 
 support and for poetic material. When Tennyson was 
 twenty-four he received a similar moral shock that pro- 
 duced somewhat similar effects. To a mind as sensitive 
 and as capable literally of being haunted as Tennyson's 
 it is hard to conceive how great was the shock of the 
 death of his fellow student and most intimate friend. 
 Then, too, there are times wdien an idea, or a theory, 
 takes hold of people's minds like an obsession. The 
 thing seems to be infectious. Such an idea was the ma- 
 terialistic notion that man is not immortal, which, borne 
 on the wings of scientific progress, now swept through 
 the thoughts of the English people with ungovernable rap-, 
 idity. Tennyson was caught in the spirit of it for a time. 
 It seized hold of him and unmanned him. Such an idea 
 is always doubly and trebly powerful when it is connected 
 with some specific personal fact. The fact of his friend's 
 sudden death and the fact of grave men's grave doubts 
 as to the permanence of anything human or divine were 
 easily sufficient to plunge the young poet into utter de- 
 spair, to make him aware suddenly of the happiness of 
 past days, and conscious that those days were irrevocably 
 past, and to make him long all the more poignantly for 
 them. No wonder that the finest lyrics of a great lyric 
 poet— "Break, Break, Break," and "Tears, Idle Tears"— 
 should have their chief motive in the infinite longing for 
 
 ^"The Ancient Sage." 
 
TH& MYSTIC ELEMENT. I3I 
 
 the touch of a vanished hand and in an indescribable 
 yearning for the days that are no more. In each case 
 Tennyson gives himself completely to the emotion of the 
 poem ; and there is no consolation in either. The only 
 relieving elements are the exquisite beauty of the imagery, 
 language, and music; yet the ultimate service of these is 
 to enhance the poignancy of the grief. In Wordsworth's 
 lyrical songs that express yearning there is always an un- 
 der current movement of resistance to the yearning itself. 
 Xo matter how much Wordsworth longs for the radiance 
 that is forever taken from his sight he 
 
 Will grieve not. rather find 
 Strength in what remains behind,^ 
 
 while Tennyson voluntarily and whole-heartedly sur- 
 renders himself to the yearning or to the emotion of grief. 
 Even this abandon is the abandon of a strong soul; and 
 we are soon to see the poet on the way to recovery from 
 the severe shock. 
 
 It was natural that during the process of his recovery 
 from the loss of his friend he would produce one of his 
 longest poems in memory of that friend, that in the poem 
 itself there would be a thousand backward glances, not 
 to his early boyhood days, but to the days of love and 
 glorious companionship, days of walking "beside the 
 river's wooded beach," of reading "the Tuscan poets on 
 the lawn," of divinely singing "old Philosophy on Argive 
 heights." of "threading some Socratic dream,"" days when 
 the first raptures of conscious authorship were at their 
 height, when 
 
 Thonght leapt out to wed with Thought 
 Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.' 
 
 ""Intimations of Immortality." 
 '"In Memoriam," Poem, XXIII. 
 
132 TENNYSON. 
 
 Tennyson deepens immeasurably the pathos in the poem 
 by contrasting endlessly, in the subtlest ways imaginable, 
 the happiness of his "four sweet years" of friendship 
 to the emptiness of the days of mourning that followed. 
 It was natural that he should idealize that friendship, and 
 all the objects associated with it, as, for instance: 
 
 And all we met was fair and good, 
 And all was good that Time could bring, 
 And all the secret of the Spring 
 Moved in the chambers of the blood.* 
 
 It was natural, too, that the poet's scientific and some- 
 what skeptical spirit should make him perfectly conscious 
 of this idealizing tendency, and aware that the past will 
 always win a glory from its being far 
 
 And orb into the perfect star 
 
 We saw not when we moved therein." 
 
 If Tennyson is sometimes dangerously near the senti- 
 mental he is never naive. The scientific spirit which help- 
 ed to plunge him into unutterable woe also taught him to 
 distinguish between the dream that has orbed itself into 
 a perfect star and the fact that the star really was never 
 seen when he moved within the orb of it. Wordsworth 
 had a vision of the past which he would not undo, but 
 upon which he would build a constructive creation. Ten- 
 nyson's fancy and his scientific temper made him set 
 about to meditate between the dream and the fact. And 
 the result in "In Memoriam" is the expression of a deep 
 human grief and the fanciful and pictorial idealizing of 
 past facts and associations that gave rise to that grief. 
 
 *"In Memoriam," Poem, XXIII. 
 '"In Memoriam," Poem, XXIV. 
 
Tllli; MYSTIC ELEMENT, I33 
 
 But there was another order of memory in Tenny- 
 son distinct from and above the memory of days that 
 have been and never more can be. This order was the 
 memory of more than mortal things, of something that 
 touched him with mystic gleams, of a transcendental 
 world of experience. It was this memory that led to the 
 same inner mystical experiences — confessedly beyond the 
 power of words to render adequately — that were for 
 Tennyson, as for W'ordsworth, the proof and seal of his 
 faith in immortality. 
 
 In "The Poet," written as early as 1830, Tennyson 
 conceived the poet not only 
 
 Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
 The love of love, 
 
 but he imagined the poet to possess mystic insight both in- 
 to the secret of his own soul and into the "marvel of the 
 everlasting will:" 
 
 'He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill. 
 
 He saw thro' his own soul, 
 
 The marvel of the everlasting will, 
 
 An open scroll, 
 
 Before him lay. 
 
 This no doubt is a youthful over-statement of the might 
 of a poet's mind, for Tennyson himself was soon to learn 
 and to teach in his poetry that there are a few things in 
 the universe that even the prophetic mind of a poet can- 
 not sec through, and that one of these things is the marvel 
 of the everlasting will, lx)th the will of man and the 
 will of God. But in the same edition in which "The 
 Poet" was published was another poem entitled "The 
 JMystic," in the following lines of which we have suggest- 
 ed to us what it was that the poet "saw thro' :" 
 
134 TENNYSON. 
 
 Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones: 
 Ye knew him not; he was not one of ye, 
 Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn : 
 Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, 
 
 The still serene abstraction 
 
 Always there stood before him, night and day, 
 Of wayward vary-colored circumstance 
 The imperishable presences serene. 
 Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound, 
 Dim shadows but unwaning presences 
 Four-faced to four corners of the sky. 
 
 What the young poet "saw thro' " most clearly was the 
 fact that behind this immediate world of form and sense 
 and sound there is another world of colossal and imper- 
 ishable presences "without form, or sense, or sound," even 
 though this world, as we shall see, was "far, far away." 
 And no poet's mind, excepting Wordsworth's perhaps, 
 has ever been more constantly haunted by these pres- 
 ences than was the mind of Tennyson. 
 
 But Tennyson both for artistic and scientific reasons 
 scarcely ever attempted, as boldly as Wordsworth, to 
 render these presences directly ; but he described them 
 objectively and by suggestion. So persistently did he do 
 this that there is hardly a page of his poetry that does not 
 show some traces of these "imperishable presences." 
 Constantly and in endless variety and in "wayward 
 vary-colored circumstance" there hover about his poetry 
 mystic gleams and mystic voices and mystic worlds and 
 mystic laws — "the law within the law," "that true world 
 within the world," "a deep below the deep, and a height 
 beyond the height," "the lone glow and long roar," "far- 
 folded mists and gleaming halls of morn," "from the 
 great deep to the great deep," "echoes roll from soul to 
 soul, and grow forever and forever, "an arch where- 
 thro' gleams that untravel'd world whose margin fades 
 
THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. I35 
 
 forever and forever," "the Holy Grail all over covcr'd 
 with a luminous cloud," and arm cloth'd in white samite, 
 mystic, wonderful," a city "built to music, therefore nev- 
 er built at all, and therefore built forever," truths "deep- 
 seated in our mystic frame." "that mystery where God-in- 
 man is one with man-in-God," — but one cannot go on 
 forever with the "glimpses of forgotten dreams" that 
 Tennyson's poetry awakens in one and that haunt one's 
 fancy and echo and re-echo in one's feelings like heavenly 
 music, now "faintly, merrily — far and far away" like the 
 "horns of Elfland faintly blowing" and now vast as "with 
 the roll of ages" that carry one to "the utmost bound of 
 human thought" and also to the inner "deeps of person- 
 ality," reverberating and again reverberating, faintly 
 enough to be sure but nevertheless reverberating, the 
 central sentiment: 
 
 Speak to Him. thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit 
 
 can meet — 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and 
 
 feet." 
 
 That Tennyson considered the powers of memory 
 and of will to be the chief powers that enter into the 
 mystical experience, and that they are the chief powers 
 that do enter into it, is not difficult to prove. In the mys- 
 tical state there always seems to be present a sudden 
 feeling of having experienced something like it before, 
 only something more heavenly and god-like ; as if at some 
 indefinite past time a divine gleam of light had been giv- 
 en one by which he had power to lay hold on the unseen. 
 To all mystics the faculty of memory is a divine faculty 
 because directly by means of it they enter into their states 
 of rapture. Tennyson explains that, if memory is merely 
 
 'The Higher Pantheism.*' 
 
13^ TENNYSON. 
 
 of time, and the body and mind of man is of matter, it 
 would not be possible for men to conceive an order of 
 •being above the material: 
 
 For memory dealing but with time, 
 
 And he [man] with matter, could she climb 
 
 Beyond her own material prime?" 
 
 To this power of memory which receives "glimpses 
 of forgotten dreams" there must be added the power of 
 will. In a letter recorded in the "Memoir" Tennyson 
 says: "A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, 
 quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This 
 has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name 
 several times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were 
 out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, 
 the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away 
 into boundless being." The intensity of mental attention, 
 the act of repeating a name, the power of fixing the 
 mind on a definite object, — in this case the poet's own 
 personality, — these represent the power of will in bring- 
 ing on the mystical state. 
 
 The most elaborate account in poetry that Tennyson 
 has given us of this state is found in the ninety-fifth 
 poem of "In Memoriam" wherein the powers of memory 
 and will are clearly set forth. After recounting how his 
 friends and himself had spent an evening in singing he 
 tells how in his heart he desired to be alone and to read 
 the letters of the dead Arthur : 
 
 But when those others, one by one, 
 Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
 And in the house light after light 
 "Went out, and I was all alone, 
 
 '"The Two Voices." 
 
; THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. 1 37 
 
 A hunger seized my heart ; I read 
 
 Of that glad year which once had been, 
 
 In those fallen leaves which kept their green, 
 
 The noble letters of the dead. 
 
 Then, when the silent-speaking words began to break the- 
 silence, he recounts how the energy and power of his love, . 
 defying change to test his worth, responded to the faith 
 and vigor and boldness of his friend's words until his 
 friend out of the past seemed to touch him in the pres-- 
 ent: 
 
 And strangely on the silence broke 
 
 The silent-speaking words, and strange 
 
 Was love's dumb cry defying change 
 
 To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 
 
 The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell 
 On doubts that drive the coward back, 
 And keen thro' wordy snares to track 
 Suggestion to her inmost cell. 
 
 So word by word, and line by line. 
 The dead man touch'd me from the past 
 
 After thus having wrought on his emotion and will over 
 the letters of his friend, he felt a sudden mystic trans- 
 formation coming on, the light of sense went out, and a. 
 new order of being was revealed: 
 
 And all at once it seemed at last 
 The living soul was flash'd on mine. 
 
 And mine in this was wound and whirl'd 
 About empyreal heights of thought. 
 And came on that which is, and caught 
 The deep pulsations of the world, 
 
 ^■Eonian music measuring out 
 
 The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance — 
 
 The blows of Death. 
 
138 TENNYSON. 
 
 "Vague words!" the poet himself ejeculates, and vague 
 enough they are, but the experience itself however poorly 
 described carries an unquestioned conviction with it to 
 the mind of the poet. In the "Memoir'' it is recorded 
 that this kind of experience was "not a confused state, 
 but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, 
 the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where 
 death was an almost laughable impossiblity, the loss of 
 personality (if so it were) seemed no extinction but the 
 only true life." And the poet adds in the record, "I am 
 ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said that 
 the state is utterly beyond words?" Professor Tyndall 
 reports Tennyson to have said of this state, "It is no neb- 
 ulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, asso- 
 ciated with absolute clearness of mind." 
 
 Another elaborate description of this state is found 
 in the "Ancient Sage." In the latter part of the poem 
 the sage answers the skeptical youth, who reads from 
 a scroll that it is vain to tell him "Earth is fair when all 
 is dark as night," by saying in part: 
 
 The doors of Night may be the gates of Light; 
 For wert thou 'born or blind or deaf, and then 
 Suddenly heal'd, how wouldst thou glory in all 
 The splendors and the voices of the world ! 
 
 But the youth insists that men are 
 
 Worms and maggots of to-day 
 Without their hope of wings ! 
 The' some have gleams, or so they say, 
 Of more than mortal things. 
 
 Then the sage replies by emphasizing the fact that strange 
 but convincing memories of the indefinite past teach him 
 far higher things than the common experiences of to-day : 
 
THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. I39 
 
 To-day? hut what of yesterday? for oft 
 
 On me, when boy, there came what then I calTd, 
 
 Who knew no books and no philosophies, 
 
 In my boy-phrase, "The Passion of the Past." 
 
 The first gray streak of earliest summer-dawn. 
 
 The last long strife of waning crimson gloom, 
 
 As if the late and early were but one — 
 
 A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower 
 
 Had murmurs, "Lost and gone, and lost and gone!" 
 
 A breath, a whisper — some divine farewell — 
 
 Desolate sweetness — far and far away — 
 
 What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy? 
 
 I know not, and I speak of what has been. 
 
 Thus much for the power of memory. From this point 
 the sage describes the way in which his mind focused it- 
 self on the word that was the .symbol of himself until it 
 brought on the mystic state: 
 
 And more, my son ! for more than once when I 
 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
 
 And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 
 Melts into heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 
 Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self 
 
 The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 
 Were sun .to spark — unshadowablc in words, 
 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. 
 
 But to the youth who still insists that 
 
 Idle gleams will come and go, 
 But still the clouds remain; — 
 
 the sage replies : 
 
 And idle gleams to thee are light to me; — 
 
 and the final advice of the sage to the youth is that he 
 should climb the ^Nlount of Blessing, 
 
140 TENNYSON. 
 
 Whence, if thou 
 Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest — beyond 
 A hundred ever-rising mountain lines. 
 And past the range of Night and Shadow — see 
 The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
 Strike on the Mount of Vision. 
 
 Thus through the inward workings of the will upon the 
 memory of more than mortal things there is produced 
 in the mind a sense of the sudden enlarging of the per- 
 sonaHty, of coming in contact with the deep pulsations of 
 the world, of losing the self and passing into the Name- 
 less, a sense of Spiritual Freedom in the heart of man and 
 in the heart of the universe. 
 
 II 
 
 It may be urged that the ninety-fifth poem of "In 
 Memoriam" and the "Ancient Sage" are not fairly rep- 
 resentative of Tennyson's large body of poetry. But we 
 are here concerned with some of the spiritual sources 
 from which that poetry has its rise and with something 
 of the ground work upon which it rests. And these sourc- 
 es and grounds are defined in the poems we have analy- 
 zed. What Tennyson does in these poems is to describe a 
 mood of the mind at the point where the mind feels that it 
 comes upon "what is;" and though the poems may be 
 exceptional the experience which underlies them and out 
 of which they are wrought, is of inestimable importance 
 to the poet. 
 
 This experience has validity in refuting the material- 
 istic claim that there is no life beyond the life of the sens- 
 es, and in assuring the truth of our faith in immortality. 
 At the point in the poem "Two Voices" where the poet 
 
THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. I4I 
 
 really takes heart against the voice of the skeptical spirit, 
 he says : 
 
 Who forged that other influence, 
 
 That heat of inward evidence, 
 
 By which he doubts against the sense? 
 
 To this no skeptical philosophy can successfully reply, 
 for, to doubt against the sense is to believe in something 
 other than sense, and the heat of inward evidence 
 gives assurance of that belief. It makes man's heart 
 forebode a mystery, which he names Eternity. 
 
 But this fact of Eternity nature does not reveal to 
 man: 
 
 That type of Perfect in his mind 
 
 In Nature can he nowhere find. 
 
 Indeed, it is not in the sense world and in nature that 
 Tennyson finds an answer to the skeptical spirit, nor the 
 assurance of immortality. He frankly accepts the mate- 
 rialistic interpretation of sense and nature as a vast mech- 
 anism based on chance happenings, and he needs some- 
 thing other than sense to give him a positive faith. Words- 
 worth found passions and volitions everywhere in the 
 goings-on of the universe, living entities in nature, and 
 from thence low breathing instincts and emanations that 
 have a regenerative power on the human mind ; a moral 
 spirit that flows through all things, that transcends nature 
 yet manifests itself in sense; an organic whole, instinct 
 with power and vitality and especially valid to the mind 
 when flowing through the channel of memory. Tenny- 
 son, on the contrary, found no such life in the senses. 
 The sense world was for him a piece of soulless ma- 
 chinery ; and it was his business as the poet of his age 
 to meditate between this dark aspect of physical sense 
 and a traditional and inherited faith. 
 
142 TENNYSON. 
 
 Thus according to this view there can be no low 
 breathing instincts and intuitions in external nature that 
 have deep and subtle correspondences with our own ex- 
 periences. To be sure, external nature may be used not 
 only to reflect, as a looking glass, the varying moods of 
 man's temper, but also to take on, in a fanciful way, what- 
 ever mood the poet wishes to give her. But be sure, Ten- 
 nyson would say, never make the naive mistake of sup- 
 posing there is any real correspondence between the spirit 
 of external nature, if it have any spirit at all, and the 
 grief and despair and happiness of man's spirit. The 
 correspondence is only fanciful and ornamental. 
 
 Again, the evolutionary law of selection played havoc 
 with the old idea of design in nature. In olden times it 
 was supposed that the fact, for example, that water, when 
 crystallizing, became lighter and rose to the surface in- 
 stead of sinking beneath and thereby preventing all the 
 water from freezing, showed absolute proof of a wise 
 and beneficent providence who designed the same ; that 
 the wing of a bird was designed and specifically fitted to 
 the bird's flying; that the eye was specially designed to 
 transmit rays of ether to the brain, etc. But the new wis- 
 dom said that the lightness of the ice was due to one 
 happy chance that involved in the process a thousand dis- 
 astrous possibilities ; that if arrested development had not 
 set in just when it did thousands of creatures that do not 
 have wings now might be blessed with them and be as 
 free as the birds ; that we might have a thousand senses, 
 all as glorious as the sense of sight, or we might have 
 none, but by the slightest accident or chance we have 
 survived with five senses. Thus, according to this wis- 
 dom, a poet might be ridiculed for basing any serious po- 
 etic representation on the principle of design in external 
 
THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. I43 
 
 nature. Tennyson declares himself quite emphatically 
 on this doctrine: 
 
 I found Him not in the world or sun, 
 Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye.' 
 
 Nor did he fnid him in any other old-fashioned or intel- 
 lectualized dogma : 
 
 Nor thro' the questions men may try 
 The petty cob-webs we have spun.* 
 
 Indeed nature seems to be, in certain of her aspects, 
 in open strife with God, and to lend man evil dreams. 
 She, of herself, is blind, because she works by the law of 
 chance. She is pitiless, because she has no feeling for 
 the individual. She is malignant, for she not only de- 
 stroys the individual 'but also the type, and mocks man's 
 moral and religious aspirations. Tennyson makes exter- 
 nal nature say to man: 
 
 'So careful of the type?' but no. 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, 'A thousand types are gone ; 
 I care for nothing, all shall go. 
 
 'Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
 I bring to life, I bring to death; 
 The spirit does but mean the breath : 
 'I know no more." 
 
 External nature, according to Tennyson, has neither the 
 power to reveal God to the soul nor to convince man of 
 his immortality, and to a man in deep waters as regards 
 faith she sounds like 
 
 An ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep." 
 
 "'In Alemoriam," Poem CXXIV. 
 ""In Memoriam," Poem LV'I. 
 ""In Memoriam," Poem CXXIV. 
 
144 TDNNYSON. 
 
 And yet "this round of green, this orb of flame," 
 this "fantastic beauty," is not absolutely godless. There 
 is indeed a god behind the external world but he is not 
 directly responsible for its blind forces and ruthless de- 
 structiveness. He can be seen only by glimpses and far 
 away splendors, for he plays about the surfaces only of 
 external nature. As behind a far away summer cloud 
 the lightning plays softly in a quiet summer evening, so 
 on the farthest edges of this vast external universe mystic 
 gleams, "green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn," 
 vie with each other in splendid and brilliant display and 
 
 Vast images in glimmering dawn, 
 
 Half shown, are broken and withdrawn." 
 
 Though these glimmerings hover only about the outer 
 surface of the great contour of the universe and tend to 
 fade away into misty indistinctness, they are of much im- 
 portance to the mind of the poet. For the poet joins them 
 in his experience to the heat of inward evidence that has 
 its roots in the power of an exalted and transcendental 
 memory and makes them bear testimony to the fact of 
 immortality. 
 
 It is barely possible to explain this memory as the 
 memory of a pre-existent state. At the point in the "Two 
 Voices" where the poet waxes strong against the skepti- 
 cal voice, he says. 
 
 As here we find in trances, men 
 Forget the dream that happens then, 
 Until the}' fall in trance again ; 
 
 So might we, if our state were such 
 
 As one before, remember much. 
 
 For those two likes might meet and touch. 
 
 ""The Two Voices." 
 
THE MYSTIC ELEMENT. 1 45 
 
 This explanation, however, is only tentative. Tennyson 
 feels that these memories may be memories of pre-exist- 
 ent life, or they may not. We cannot be sure. But there 
 is one tiling upon which the poet has positive conviction, 
 namely, tliat he is deeply conscious of strange presences, 
 such as no language may declare, which are bound up 
 with an inner sense of memory and will. It is this ex- 
 perience in the "Two Voices" that keeps his horizon 
 from becoming dark, that makes him apprehend a labor 
 working to an end, tiiat causes him to hear a Heavenly 
 Friend. It is this experience, joined with a picture of 
 human love in the poem, tliat gives him final victory and 
 makes him rejoice. 
 
 This mystic memory, then, serves as a mediator be- 
 tween the fact of scientific materialism and the fact of 
 immortality. It refutes the view that there is no life 
 •beyond the life of the senses, and serves as a seal to our 
 faith in immortality. Immortality is at best a shadowy 
 thing for us here below. But when the idea of it once 
 finds lodgment in our minds its claim upon us is well 
 nigh boundless. Grant its reality and it becomes sover- 
 eign in the mind. And it matters not on how minute, or 
 trivial, or vague a fact or circumstance it rests for its 
 verification to our consciousness. It can be confidently 
 said that had Tennyson not had this inner experience of 
 the memory of more than mortal things he would have 
 remained in the "slough of despond" and would have 
 given us the poetry that brings the eternal note of sad- 
 ness in and that tends to settle in despair. He would hard- 
 ly have attained to that joy and positive faith that a man 
 must possess when he aspires to become the represen- 
 tative poet of a nation and a race. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 TENNYSON : FREEDO^I AND LAW. 
 
 The central basis upon which Tennyson built a posi- 
 tive faith was the power of will and the principle of free- 
 dom grounded thereon. Even though he could not find 
 God in world or sun, in eagle's wing or insect's eye, it 
 does not follow that he did not find Him at all. On the 
 contrary, the ardency of his seeking was rather intensi- 
 fied as a result of its being narrowed in direction; and 
 while the scientific views he held regarding external na- 
 ture narrowed the natural and mystic tendencies of his 
 experience, they tended to direct him to seek for the 
 truth that cannot die more directly within the soul. And 
 he found that truth in the "marvel of the everlasting will" 
 and in the miracle of the power of free-will in man. 
 
 But the theory of evolution and the facts of science 
 in general and scientific materialism in particular placed 
 strict conditions and limitations on Tennyson's notion of 
 the power of freedom as well as on his conceptions of 
 external nature. It is easy to see how a planet in its me- 
 chananical and unvarying course through the heavens is 
 governed by a fixed and unchangeable law. It is even easy 
 enough to see how a plant, or an animal, is governed by 
 the same principles of unvarying law in its growth and 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 1 47 
 
 mechanical round of activities. It is easy moreover, says 
 Scientific Materialism, to see how man, who is simply 
 more complex in his make-up and shows more outward 
 deviations and variations but is ultimately of the same 
 material which composes animal plant and star, — ^how 
 man is subject precisely to the same inexorable law, and 
 that his free-will is an utter delusion. When one passes 
 from the outer world of mechanical law that obviously 
 guides a planet in its course to the inner world of man's 
 soul, as he thinks of it, he is more and more impressed 
 that this law should obtain throughout. At what par- 
 ticular point does it cease to obtain? is the question that 
 is decidedly the most difficult to answer. 
 
 Now, Tennyson is duly impressed with the fact of 
 the orderliness and the mechanical fixedness of the uni- 
 verse in which we live. He surrenders to it as much as 
 any poet dare surrender. He surrenders the stars and 
 all the hosts of heaven to absolutely blind but unchange- 
 able forces : 
 
 A star that with the choral starry dance 
 Join'd not, but stood, and standing saw 
 The hollow orb of moving Circumstance 
 Roll'd round by one fix'd law.' 
 
 And societies and nations are to adjust themselves to 
 something that is very much like this admirable "Cir- 
 cumstance roll'd round by one fix'd law." An ideal land 
 is 
 
 A land of settled government, 
 
 A land of just and old renown.' 
 
 And the people who dwell in such a land are those who 
 have learned 
 
 '•'The Palace of Art." 
 '"You Ask Me." 
 
148 TENNYSON. 
 
 To live by law, 
 Acting the law they live by without fear.' 
 
 Although this ideal of law by which societies and 
 governments are to exist enters very largely into Ten- 
 nyson's poetry, it is quite evident that if the principle of 
 inexorable law be carried through the whole of man's 
 experience man becomes as mechanical and soulless as 
 the stars that run blindly through the heavens ; a web will 
 be woven across his soul as surely as it is "woven across 
 the sky," a ghastlier cry will come out of the waste places 
 of his soul than from the "waste places" of external na- 
 ture and the "godless deep." Tennyson realizes that he 
 is caught in the mesh of his own weaving, or rather in 
 that which was woven for him by his social and scientific 
 environment. He saw, more clearly than most men see, 
 how deep the contradiction really is between the postu- 
 late that man's soul is immortal and free and the assump- 
 tion that "nothing is that errs from law." Though he saw 
 the contradiction between freedom and absolute fixed- 
 ness, he sometimes fell into Charybdis in order to avoid 
 Scylla. One of the mightiest efforts, however, in his 
 work as a poet was to make the passage successfully — to 
 mediate between the ideas of freedom and fixed law, be- 
 tween personal power and impersonal force. He surren- 
 ders much, indeed, to fixedness but he cannot, and never 
 does, surrender all. Even the will of man itself is in- 
 voked to mediate: 
 
 Thy will, a power to make 
 This ever-changing world of circumstance. 
 In changing, chime with never-changing Law.* 
 
 But the fact that man has the power of freedom in a 
 
 '"CEnone." 
 
 *"To the Duke of Argyll." 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 1 49 
 
 world of "never-changing law" involves no contradiction 
 really. The thing itself is a miracle, a great and forever 
 indissoluble mystery. And even though man can never 
 know or explain the mystery, he is to believe that there 
 is ''never-changing Law" and to believe, and to act on the 
 belief, that there is free-will in himself. 
 
 Now, of course, the will is not boundlessly free, for 
 the material upon which it acts is conditioned by the 
 powers of heredity and environment. The only thmg 
 absolutely necessary to postulate is that somewhere at 
 the innermost circle of our being (however small that 
 circle is, and in Tennyson's estimation it is exceedingly 
 small in our present state of development) there is a 
 self-directing and absolutely independent power. And 
 within this very small margin man must work out his sal- 
 vation with fear and trembling. According to the dis- 
 closures of scientific truth, however, this work of the 
 self-developing and self-enlarging process of the will, 
 will take aeons of time. Man's little margin of freedom, 
 which is the proof of his manliness, his immortality, and 
 his far ofi ultimate success, must not take liberties in in- 
 terrupting suddenly or unexpectedly the orderliness and 
 fixedness of "never-changing Law." It has already tak- 
 en aeons of time for man to attain the little increment of 
 freedom which he now possesses, and it will take further 
 aeons to touch him into final shape: 
 
 Alan as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of 
 
 ages, 
 Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?' 
 
 Man's will is thus progressively free, and attains to a 
 larger circle of freedom by slow degrees. Tennyson says, 
 
 "'The Making of Man." 
 
I50 TENNYSON. 
 
 "Man's Free-will is but a bird in a cage; he can stop at 
 the lower perch, or he can mount to a higher. Then that 
 which is and knows will enlarge his cage, give him a high- 
 er and a higher perch, and at last break off the top of his 
 cage, and let him out to be one with the Free-will of the 
 Universe." And this is the adjustment, the mediation 
 between the theory of freedom and the scientific theory 
 of orderly developement. In accordance with this idea 
 the solid earth 
 
 In tracts of fluent heat began, 
 And grew to seeming-random forms, 
 The seeming prey of cyclic storms, 
 Till at the last arose the man; 
 
 Who throve and brancli'd from clime to clime, 
 The herald of a higher race. 
 And of himself in higher place, 
 If so he type this work of time 
 
 Within himself, from more to more; 
 Or, crown'd with attributes of woe 
 Like glories, move his course, and show 
 That life is not as idle ore, 
 
 But iron dug from central gloom, 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears. 
 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears, , 
 
 And batter'd with the shocks of doom 
 
 To shape and use ° 
 
 It is thus that man seemingly has arisen out of the cos- 
 mical order of the universe, that somehow he has become 
 the herald of a higher race, that he now somehow has the 
 god-like power to "type this work of time wdthin him- 
 self" and to grow "from more to more," that he has at- 
 
 'In Memoriam," Poem, CXVIII. 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. I5I 
 
 tained a certain slender margin of freedom and can grad- 
 ually enlarge this margin; and that he is called upon in 
 this life to enlarge it, to 
 
 Arise and fly 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; 
 Move upward, working out the beast 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 But the general fixedness of things in this world 
 makes it impossible for any one generation of people 
 to enlarge materially the margin of free-will and the 
 sphere of freedom. If one generation enlarge them but the 
 most fractional, infinitesimal part of an enlargement, it 
 has indeed done well. The only thing one can say con- 
 fidently about the race is that as a whole it is facing 
 in the right direction ; and it is precisely this fact that is 
 the source of Tennyson's optimism. The bird, how- 
 ever, is as yet far from breaking ofif the top of the cage. 
 It has not always mounted to the higher perch, therefore 
 that which is and knows could not enlarge its cage. The 
 race has not only too much of the ape and tiger in it 
 at present to become one with the free-will of the Uni- 
 verse but it is also afflicted with taints of blood and sins 
 of will — it has not done its positive best. So that the 
 final consummation of universal freedom can only be 
 hoped for in some "far-ofif divine event, to which the 
 whole creation moves :" 
 
 O, yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 
 
 ""In Memoriam," Poem, CXVIII. 
 
^52 TENNYSON. 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
 'That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete/ 
 
 The most conspicuous element that enters into this 
 theory of freedom and marks its pecuHarity is the ele- 
 ment of time. Time, to be sure, is a purely man-made af- 
 fair and its order is not applicable to Deity : 
 
 For was, and is, and will be, are but is. 
 
 And all creation is one act at once. 
 
 The birth of light; but we that are not all, 
 
 As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 
 
 And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 
 
 One act a phantom of succession. Thus 
 
 Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time.* 
 
 That is from the "Princess," and likewise from the "An- 
 cient Sage" we learn that 
 
 With the Nameless is nor day nor hour ; 
 
 Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, 
 
 Break into "Thens" and "Whens" the Eternal Now. 
 
 Though God is the Eternal Now and transcends altogeth- 
 er the time category, human beings on this planet must 
 needs live and work out their salvation in the order of 
 <» time. In the age of Tennyson the truths of science 
 I brought home to men's minds in a new and impressive 
 \ way the immensity of time and the vastness of its accom- 
 \panying mystery — space. The fact of time, for instance, 
 /filled Carlyle's soul with wonder and dumb awe: — "That 
 j^reat mystery of Time, were there no other; the illim- 
 itable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, 
 rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide. 
 
 "'In Memoriam," Poem, LIV. 
 * Part Third. 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. ISJ 
 
 on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, 
 like apparitions, which arc, and then are not: this is for- 
 ever very literally a miracle ; a thing to strike us dumb, — : 
 for we have no word to speak about it." This same fact 
 greatly enamoured Tennyson's imagination. His mind' 
 was constantly haunted by the vast deep 
 
 Where all that was to be, in all that was, 
 Whirl'd for a million aeons thro' the vast 
 Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light.' 
 
 To tlie imagination of Tennyson time is long and art is. 
 fleeting : 
 
 The fires that arch this dusky do^ — 
 
 Yon myriad-worlded way — 
 
 The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze, 
 
 World-isles in lonely skies. 
 
 Whole heavens within themselves, amaze 
 
 Our brief humanities. 
 
 And so does Earth ; for Homer's fame, 
 
 Tho' carved in harder stone — 
 
 The falling drop will make his name 
 
 As mortal as my own.'" 
 
 But instead of impressing his mind with awe and 
 wonder as Carlyle's this fact of time's immensity g^ve 
 Tennyson's imagination scope and freedom to build vis- 
 ions of the future greatness of man. Though the will 
 of man be hampered by original evil — 
 
 Perchance from some abuse of Will 
 
 In worlds before the man 
 
 Involving ours — '" 
 
 *''De Profundis." 
 
 '" Epilogue to "Charge of the Heavy Brigade. 
 
154 TENNYSON. 
 
 and though the general absence of plasticity and the 
 presence of fixedness in all things make against the idea 
 of any rapid progress, the race neverthelss can, if it is 
 facing in the right direction, arrive at the fullest reali- 
 zation of universal freedom in the latter ages of the 
 world. It is the profound conviction of this possibil- 
 ity — for it is still only a possibility if man is free to 
 choose — that animates the clarion call of Tennyson in 
 the "Locksley Hall" of his youth: 
 
 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, 
 
 forward let us range, 
 Let tlie great world spin forever down the 
 
 ringing grooves of change. 
 
 And it is the profound conviction of this same possi- 
 bility that animates the clarion call of Tennyson in the 
 "Locksley Hall" of his old age: 
 
 Follow you the star that lights a desert 
 
 pathway, yours or mine. 
 Forward, till you see the Highest Human 
 
 Nature is divine. 
 
 Follow Light, and do the Righit — for man 
 
 can half-control his doom — 
 Till you find the deathless Angel seated in 
 
 ■the vacant tomb. 
 
 This last passage suggests another phase of our sub- 
 ject. We have thus far been discussing freedom as a 
 social and racial phenomenon. But it has a most impor- 
 tant personal side. Even though the noble race of the 
 far-off future, with its battle flag furled "in the Parli- 
 ament of man, the Federation of the world," is to attain 
 to a universal freedom such as we in no wise possess at 
 present, it does not follow that individuals of the present 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 1 55 
 
 generation are, for that reason, condemned to destruc- 
 tion ; these are only a little less fortunate than those of 
 the future race and these now and here can attain to a 
 direct personal immortality. In the immortal state we 
 are not to remerge into the general soul of things which 
 is "faith as vague as all unsweet," hut we are to retain 
 our personal identity : 
 
 Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside ; 
 And I shall know him when we meet." 
 
 It must be remembered, too, that in the order of exis- 
 tence above us there is no order of time whatsoever. 
 That state transcends time, and from its point of view 
 there is no difference in time in our various arrivals in 
 its state even though we are separated here by aeons of 
 time. There it is an "Eternal Now." "With the Name- 
 less is nor day nor hour." This is the w-ay of all the 
 mystics. To lay hold on personal immortality, then, we 
 need only the smallest increment of free choice ; for in our 
 wills, however conditioned by the fixedness of the ma- 
 terials on which they work, we can even here transcend 
 time — however vast in its extent in this order, — and be 
 one with the Eternal. For this world of time after all is 
 a dream world and our wills are the only reality. This 
 fact is communicated to the unbelieving youth by the 
 Ancient Sage: 
 
 But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours, 
 
 Nor take (thy dial for thy deity, 
 
 But make the passing shadow serve thy li'ill. 
 
 Thus personal as well as social freedom and immortal- 
 ity is assured us. 
 
 ""In Mcmoriam," Poem, XLVII. 
 
156 TENNYSON. 
 
 II 
 
 Now, however encompassed by narrow limits our 
 wills may be and however strongly scientific facts may 
 make against the theory of freedom itself, it is vastly 
 important to believe that we are free. Life, in short, is 
 not worth living if we do not believe this. Tennyson, it 
 is said, wrote at the end of the poem "Despair:" "In 
 my boyhood I came across the Calvinistic Creed, and as- 
 suredly however unfathomable the mystery, if one can- 
 not believe in the freedom of the human will as of the 
 Divine, life is hardly worth having." For, what is a man 
 more than a beast or a stone, if both while he is living 
 and while dust and ashes, he is to be whirled through 
 eternities of time by a blind and inexorable force which 
 has no pity nor sympathy, which cares nothing for indi- 
 viduals nor types, which destroys fifty seeds in bringing 
 one to bear, which knows only that the spirit means 
 but breath, which shrieks against man's creed of personal 
 love and personal life, which blows man about the desert 
 dust and seals him within the iron hills; — but peace; 
 come away: this is after all an earthly song. Man must 
 have and does have a personal and transcendental will 
 which stands absolutely apart from and independent of 
 the dead and mechanical and impersonal forces which 
 run the external universe. This will is free, indomitable, 
 and never-dying. It has direct business with the Eternal. 
 It can retain its identity or it can surrender itself, or what 
 is more, it can perform the miracle of doing both things at 
 once. It needs no intermediary or intercessor. It can 
 make its own intercessions and perform miracles by 
 prayer. "Alore things are wrought by prayer than this 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 157 
 
 world dreams of." It ends in marvel, wonder, and mir- 
 acle — it is indeed the "main-miracle" of life. "A thing 
 to strike us dumb," Carlyle would say, "for we have no 
 word to speak about it." However feeble one's speech 
 may be, "if one cannot believe in the freedom of the hu- 
 man will as of the Divine, life is hardly worth having." 
 
 In fact, what is true of Tennyson's poetry is this; 
 that parallel to the idea of law that plays such a promi- 
 nent part in his poetry there runs the idea of the mystery 
 of free-will. To say that the idea of law is the central 
 idea of Tennyson's poetry is to utter a half-truth. The 
 other half is the truth that freedom is written over the 
 whole face of this poetry. In the "Idylls of the King" 
 we learn that 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfills himself in many ways, — 
 
 that is, according to law and outward orderliness here 
 below ; and it is also written in the "Idylls" that 
 
 Man is man and master of his fate, 
 
 and that the purpose of these "Idylls" is that of 
 
 Shadowing Sense at war with Soul, 
 Ideal manhood closed in real man. 
 
 In "In Memoriam," where all things tcrrcstial are repre- 
 sented as moving off slowly, grandly, and orderly, as if 
 with the "roll of the ages," to some "far-off divine event," 
 there is written at the beginning of it 
 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things — 
 
 and at the close of it that there is the living will which 
 shall endure after other things have suffered dissolution, 
 and which shall vouch for us 
 
158 TENNYSON. 
 
 The truths that never can be proved 
 Until we close v^ith all we loved, 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul. 
 
 Likewise in the "Ancient Sage" man is admonished to 
 avoid the swamp of voluptuousness and to lay his up hill 
 shoulder to the wheel and climb the Mount of Blessing; 
 and in the latter 'Xocksley Hall" to follow light and do 
 the right until his human nature itself be transformed 
 into the divine. "I have heard that there is iron in the 
 blood and I believe it," says Gama in the "Princess." 
 And it is just this quality of iron, of personal energy 
 and personal freedom, that makes Tennyson's poetry 
 something more than the subject matter for scholarly 
 research with a view to learn what the age of Tennyson 
 thought and felt. It is this that makes his poetry an in- 
 vigorating tonic to our souls and that saves the poetry it- 
 self from vacillation and mere virtuosity. It is this, in 
 short, that makes it live in the hearts of men. Again 
 and again when Tennyson seems to falter at the stagger- 
 ing notion that the blind destructiveness of external na- 
 ture and the rigidity of mechanical law make sad inroads 
 into the sanctity of man's soul, he falls back with renew- 
 ed energy upon the main strength of manhood, the 
 strength of will : 
 
 O, well for him whose will is strong! 
 
 He suffers, but he will not suffer long; 
 
 He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. 
 
 For him nor moves the loud world's random mock. 
 
 Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, 
 
 Who seems a promontory of rock. 
 
 That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, 
 
 In middle ocean meets the surging shock. 
 
 Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd." 
 
 i="Will." 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 1 59 
 
 Life is a fight; it is a fight for virtue, and the glory of 
 virtue is not only to fight and to struggle but the eternal 
 glory, which is really something higher than glory, of 
 forever going on : 
 
 Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the 
 
 wrong — 
 Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she; 
 Give her the glory of going on, and still to be." 
 
 But now, if life is not worth the having unless one 
 can believe in the freedom of the human will as from the 
 Divine, what is the best and highest evidence on which 
 such a faith may rest? that is, when one is driven to 
 extremities by the hard materialistic facts of this present 
 world, what is the ultimate experience from which no 
 higher appeal can be made? Tennyson says that if mate- 
 rial facts and the colder parts of reason would urge us to 
 "believe no more," 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 Stood up and answer'd "I have felt."" 
 
 That is, after facts and reason have been given due rec- 
 ognition there is an experience that goes beyond these, 
 an experience that fact and knowledge cannot modify 
 and can never repudiate. But what is this experience? 
 Simply nothing other than a volitional feeling — the mys- 
 tical experience we have already described, "the clearest 
 of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of 
 the weirdest, utterly beyond words:" 
 
 " "Wages." 
 
 ""In Memoriam," Poem, CXXIV. 
 
l60 TENNYSON. 
 
 And iwhat I am beheld again 
 What is, and no man understands ; 
 And out of darkness came the hands 
 That reach thro' nature, moulding men." 
 
 No man can ever understand how the "I am" can behold 
 the "what is," how they can call to each other and hear 
 the calls, and how the latter can mould the former; but 
 so it is written in the tablets of the heart and so it is for- 
 ever. And this stone that has been cast aside by the build- 
 ers has become the head of the corner. This is the ex- 
 perience from which there is no higher appeal — the feel- 
 ing act, namely, that man is free and immortal and that 
 he is under lasting obligation to exercise his freedom for 
 his own salvation and for the salvation of the race. It 
 is this experience and this alone that denies agnosticism, 
 fatalism, and determinism and all other hard and nega- 
 tive isms whatsoever. It is this experience and this alone 
 that forever denies the absolute reign of mechanical and 
 impersonal law, and it is only as a miracle that we can 
 conceive free-will and law working harmoniously togeth- 
 er in this world. This is Tennyson's mediation between 
 fact and faith. 
 
 In his remarkable essay on Tennyson Professor Dow- 
 den says in substance that the idea of law enters largely 
 into Tennyson's poetry, and he is right ; that mysticism 
 does not enter in overmuch, and he again is right, though 
 only in a certain sense ; and that Tennyson depends chief- 
 ly "on a great development of knowledge, especially sci- 
 entific knowledge" for the future redemption of the race, 
 which is a blunder on the part of our critic. About 
 the time Tennyson wrote the first "Locksley Hall," it 
 is true, he did entertain great hopes for the race on the 
 
 ' "In Memoriam," Poem, CXXIV. 
 
FRKEDOM AND LAW. l6l 
 
 basis of scientitic knowledge. But surely some allowance 
 should be made for his youth ; for the man, who penned 
 the one hundred and fourteenth poem of "In Memoriam," 
 not in the lirst blush of youth nor yet in the dotage of old 
 age but in the very prime of life, squarely denies the 
 position taken by our critic. There he says that knowl- 
 edge "cannot fight the fear of death," that "she is the 
 second, not the first," and that, cut loose from love and 
 faith, she is "but some wild Pallas from the brain of de- 
 mons." No, the man who wrote this poem in his mature 
 years certainly cannot be charged with putting his trust 
 in scientific knowledge for the redemption of the race. 
 To be sure it is quite true that one of the central ideas 
 with Tennyson is that of "self-reverence, self-knowdedge, 
 and self-control." But why should a man exercise self- 
 reverence if it is not because there is something really 
 miraculous inside him which demands his reverence? 
 And is not the power of self-control also based on the 
 miracle of free-will? And is not therefore self-knowl- 
 edge a knowledge of the mysterious in us, and an order 
 of knowledge wholly diflr'erent from scientific knowl- 
 edge? There is no doubt that Tennyson held that the 
 development of wider scientific knowledge will accom- 
 pany the self-development of the will and the increase of 
 freedom. But the all-important thing to see is that sci- 
 entific knowledge is to be only an accompaniment and by 
 no means the cause that shall bring greater self-control 
 and broader freedom to the race of the future. This is 
 a most vital distinction. 
 
 It is quite true, as has been stated, that in his early life 
 Tennyson put great faith in scientfic knowledge ; and it 
 is also true that through all his life he felt under obliga- 
 tion to give that knowledge the most favorable hearing 
 and to square his experience with it — not to "make his 
 
l62 TENNYSON. 
 
 judgment blind." But if in his career of many years 
 there is any change in his attitude toward truth and hfe 
 represented in his poetry, that change is this : that, where- 
 as in the first "Locksley Hall" he based his optimistic 
 faith on scientific knowledge and man's determination to 
 move forward, in "In Memoriam" he questioned and 
 criticised the scientific basis and found it wanting, and 
 placed correspondingly more emphasis on the living will 
 of man as the true basis ; and lastly in the "Locksley 
 Hall" of his old age he repudiated the scientific basis and 
 accepted the 'basis of man's power of acting as a free 
 moral agent. In the latter poem his faith is practically 
 as optimistic as in the earlier poem but the basis upon 
 Which that optimism rests has swung from scientific 
 knowledge to man's power and freedom simply to follow 
 light and do the right. For, in this latter poem he asks : 
 
 Is it well that while we range with Science, 
 
 glorying in the Time, 
 City children soak and blacken soul and sense 
 
 in cit}^ slime ? 
 
 No, it is not well; but if man, instead of ranging with 
 Science, learn to trust in his own freedom and in God 
 there is as much as ever to be hoped for. Before earth 
 can gain her heavenly-best, man must learn to keep the 
 foutain of his will from being poisoned and a "God must 
 mingle with the game :" 
 
 Ere she [Earth] gain her heavenly-best, a God must 
 
 mingle with the game. 
 Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither 
 
 see nor name, 
 
 Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, 
 
 the Powers of 111, 
 Strewing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains 
 
 of the will. 
 
FREEDOM AND LAW. 1 63 
 
 In the development of Tennyson's faith the penduhnn 
 has swung slowly but surely from faith in scientific 
 knowledge to faith in the fact that "man is man and 
 master of his fate." 
 
 The faith of Tennyson was a "compound of many 
 simples" and as a faith it was, for poetical reasons as well 
 as religious, a thousand times better than no faith. It was 
 a faith of his time and served him and many of his gen- 
 eration well ; and because of its many-sidedness and com- 
 promising nature as well as for its manly strength, it 
 serves persons of a certain type very well to this day. 
 But its limitations and shortcomings are only too evident. 
 The thing to be pointed out here, however, is that, wheth- 
 er for praise or for blame, it was mediating rather than 
 cieative. Its chief weakness lies in this: to conceive free- 
 will as based purely on miracle and to conceive law as 
 based on fixed mechanism, and then to bring these two 
 conceptions into the world of common sense side by side, 
 has a tendency to arouse one's sense of contradiction. 
 Sometimes the poet, in his insistence on miraculous free- 
 will flies straight in the face of mechanical law, and again 
 in his insistence on mechanical law he flies straight in the 
 face of free-will. It is a perilous path he Dursn^s, and 
 one must not penetrate too far below the surface if one 
 does not wish to become conscious of the anomaly of 
 miracle and fact jostling each other so closely in the 
 world of common sense. See, for instance, how Carlyle 
 deals with this same formula. Carlyle carries not mere- 
 ly tlie idea of free-will, but mechanical law, law of cus- 
 tom, and facts great and small, into the realm of the mi- 
 raculous and the wonderful. "There is," he says, "an in- 
 finite significance in fact." Is it the fact of time? I' 
 is a "veritable miracle." Is it as insignificant a fact 
 as the stretching forth of your hand? He says: "Were 
 
l64 TENNYSON. 
 
 it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand, and 
 clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth 
 my hand, and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing 
 it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to 
 fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or 
 in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the 
 true inexplicable God-reveaHng Miracle lies in this, 
 that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have a 
 free force to clutch aught therewith ?"^^ With Carlyle 
 the whole world is all miracle. Whatever one may think 
 of this conception and its implications, the conception 
 itself gives a unified attitude toward the world, and the 
 author of it possesses the constructive and creative mind. 
 But Tennyson, even in such an impassioned and freedom 
 ringing poem as "De Profundis" feels that he must stand 
 with one foot on "changeless law" and with the other on 
 freedom. In English poetry Tennyson is the great com- 
 promiser between many views, the great mediator between 
 facts and visions, between materialistic truth and relig- 
 ious truth, between personal freedom and impersonal law. 
 
 ""Sartor Resartus,' Bk. Ill, Chap. VIII. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TENNYSON : ART AND LAW. 
 
 This principle of mediation had a wide influence on 
 Tennyson's art ideals and art powers. It produced, for 
 example, a large number of phrases and compound words 
 that attempt to state a medium position and that are char- 
 acteristically Tennysonian. Such as, "finite-infinite," 
 "numerable-innumerable," "mystic middle state," "new 
 things and old co-twisted," "half-reveal and half-con- 
 ceal," "not like to like but like in difiference," "the false- 
 hood of extremes," "changed by still degrees," "not swift 
 nor slow to change," "manhood fused with female grace," 
 "in my grief a strength reserved," "souls that balance 
 joy and pain," "oh, sweet and bitter in a breath," "I fal- 
 ter where I firmly trod," "and faintly trust the larger 
 hope," "equal-poised control," "man can half-control his 
 doom," — and this list might be indefinitely enlarged. 
 
 This mediating principle not only produced Tennyson- 
 ian phrases that attempt to express both sides of a truth 
 at once, but it had a moulding power on the larger aspects 
 of his thought, and produced certain mechanical qualities 
 of style. The incident in which an English statesman m 
 the interests of conservatism, quoted the passage which 
 speaks of England as a land of settled government, 
 "where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent 
 to precedent," and in which he was answered by another 
 
l66 TENNYSON. 
 
 statesman, who, in the interests of HberaHsm, quoted the 
 passage which speaks of Victorian statesmen "who knew 
 the seasons when to take occasion by the hand and make 
 the bounds of freedom wider yet," — this incident illus- 
 trates the balanced way in which Tennyson expresses the 
 opposite sides of a subject and yet "avoids the falsehood 
 of extremes." He sings the deeds of war, but is an advo- 
 cate of peace. He expresses the "calm despair and wild 
 unrest" that alternately possessed his heart at the death 
 of his friend, yet he counts it "crime to mourn for any 
 over-much." He would offset meditation wnth action, 
 and would balance religious fervor with skeptical wis- 
 dom. It is very difficult to state his views on any sub- 
 ject, because there are so many modifications to make. 
 And a large part of Tennyson's practice of polishing his 
 verse, was the practice of making it say more precisely 
 the qualifying and compromising thing he had in mind. 
 This practice, which, on the mental side, is mechanical 
 rather than spontaneous, accounts in a large measure for 
 the mechanical qualities of style in his work of which 
 many readers complain. Take, for instance, the follow- 
 ing stanza from the eighty-fifth poem of "In Memoriam:" 
 
 I woo your love : I count it crime 
 
 To mourn for any overmuch ; 
 
 I, the divided half of such 
 
 A friendship as had master'd Time. 
 
 The poetry that qualifies the amount of mourning one is 
 to allow himself, and that divides a friendship into two 
 equal parts, certainly tends to be mechanical rather than 
 spontaneous and creative. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no phrase more common in Ten- 
 nyson than the phrase "more and more" with its numer- 
 ous variations. Everything in the universe is produced 
 
ART AND LAW. 167 
 
 by slow degrees, and Tennyson doubts not that "through 
 the ages one increasing purpose runs." It follows that 
 nothing in the world can be static, and also that notliing 
 can be suddenly transformed. This scientific conception 
 has a powerful influence on Tennyson's ethics of art. 
 By this principle he cannot send his characters as deeply 
 into the valley of soul making as he otherwise could. A 
 character is not made, or should not be made, in the in- 
 stant, by some powerful birth-pang. This is not the way 
 of "changing by still degrees." A character may give 
 vent to wild and almost hysterical passion, but he does 
 not come out of a critical experience radically different 
 from what he was at entering, except by slow degrees. 
 Though the progress of individuals and of mankind de- 
 pends on the miracle of man's free-will, yet the miracle 
 must work itself out by an orderly progression. It is 
 pleasing to the fancy to perceive lines of progression radi- 
 ating everywhere through the universe, and the scientific 
 mind can enjoy the poetry that reflects these progressions. 
 Yet the ultimate effect of this conception is to limit the 
 art powers of the imagination. It tends, for instance, to 
 hamper the imagination when it is engaged in creating a 
 great character undergoing a sudden and profound spir- 
 itual transformation. 
 
 But this principle of mediating between the fact of 
 scientific materialism and the fact of mystical and relig- 
 ious faith had a deeper influence on Tennyson's art than 
 the influences we have thus far been considering. Ten- 
 nyson, we have seen, was a genuine mystic who found the 
 substance of faith in the miracle of free-will and in the 
 direct personal experience it can have of God. But in 
 his eflForts to meet the scientific facts and not ignore the 
 scientific postulates of his day, he surrendered the ex- 
 ternal world of nature to mechanical law, and the world 
 
l68 TENNYSON. 
 
 of plant and animal life as well as the outer world of man 
 to 'the same law for the most part, although he recognized 
 that God had begun to fulfill himself in all the doings of 
 man. And in this surrender he was robbed of much po- 
 etical material for the expression of his mystical nature. 
 
 In the case of Wordsworth we have seen that all this 
 was appropriated to use in his poetry. Although Words- 
 worth renounced the highest mystical experiences which 
 go beyond the power of concrete representation, he found 
 that everywhere in all the world of eye and ear there 
 were living pulsations. Joining these to the power of 
 memory and the moral idea, he constructed a new syn- 
 thesis, investing it with the mystery of vital movement 
 and literally producing a creation. This creation has at 
 once solid substance and intense idealizations. "All the 
 mighty world of eye and ear — both what they half-create 
 and what perceive," all the highest powers of man, all 
 the simplest qualities of a child, go into the making of this 
 synthesis. Wordsworth made all these forces subservient 
 to his experiences in the immediate present ; so that this 
 half-objective and half-created world, possessing deep 
 correspondences of the inner and the outer life, and shot 
 through with mystical tendencies, was not a mere fanciful 
 fabrication but was in substance the very breath of his 
 life, the very stuff of his being. If Wordsv/orth is rob- 
 bed of this synthesis he is robbed of the props upon which 
 his life and experience rest. Wordsworth was a genuine 
 mystic poet. 
 
 It would naturally be supposed that Tennyson, 
 who was equally susceptible to mystical and religious in- 
 fluences and who was as inveterate a lover of -nature as 
 Wordsworth, would make a somewhat similar construct- 
 ive or creative use of the mystical experiences in the 
 realm of external nature, that he would use the objects 
 
ART AND LAW. I69 
 
 and powers of external nature as the embodiment and 
 means of expression of his mystical consciousness. Not 
 so, however. The age of Tennyson was too wise ; the 
 world of the senses must be surrendered to the category 
 of mechanical law. It required nothing short of the 
 strongest and highest creative power to make plastic and 
 to pour into an original poetic mould the vast store of 
 raw facts and the stern laws which men deduced from 
 them in the age of Tennyson. Susceptible as he was to 
 scientilic facts. Tennyson could not, if he would, take in 
 the great outer world of eye and ear and spiritualize it 
 until the whole should flow, as it were, through him in 
 dilating measure of regenerative moral and religious pow- 
 er. No, the terrible specter of mechanical law, of an 
 evolutionary unfoldment widening "with the process of 
 the suns," of a principle of natural selection with its 
 possiblities of chance happenings and its direful disclos- 
 ures of "Nature red in tooth and claw," — this spectre, 
 dread and austere, stood like a two-handed engine "ready 
 to smite once and smite no more" the naivete and simple 
 dignity of a Wordsworthian conception of nature. So 
 that Tennyson was a mystic without the natural medium 
 for the expression of his mystical consciousness. 
 
 There were, nevertheless, a number of things left to 
 do in the direction of external nature. The first was to 
 treat the world of our immediate sensations not as an or- 
 ganic whole instinct with vitality and power but to treat 
 those sensations in their varying and beautiful physiologi- 
 cal manifestations as an ornament to poetry. And Tenny- 
 son never wearies in describing the shifting scenes of sea 
 and wave, and sky and cloud, and wood and wold, and leaf 
 and bud, with a hand that surpasses the cunning of all 
 other hands, whatsoever. Another thing to do was to 
 make nature reflect, in a fanciful way, the varying moods 
 
lyo TENNYSON. 
 
 of man's temper or to make her take on whatever mood 
 the poet wished to give her. And a third was to treat 
 those sensations that come to us from the distant hori- 
 zon of things and that he beyond the reahn of scientfic 
 analysis as mystical manifestations of divinity, messen- 
 gers of a higher life of freedom, immortality, and God; 
 for. 
 
 On the glimmering limit far withdrawn, 
 God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.^ 
 
 Just as there are two orders of memory in Tennyson, 
 — the memory of every day things and the memory of 
 more than mortal things, — so there are two orders of 
 sensations — the sensations of ordinary life and nature 
 around us and the sensations that come from the "high 
 land" that "ranges above the region of the wind" and 
 that extends 
 
 Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, 
 Beyond all thought into the heaven of heavens." 
 
 In Wordsworth there was only one order of memory 
 and one order of sensations. For Wordsworth grasps 
 the things of memory and sensation at a point where they 
 are but a part of an universal and spiritualized whole. 
 This indicates that Wordsworth is a more thorough-going 
 and a more profound mystic than Tennyson, and that 
 Tennyson, on the other hand, is a more popular mystic. 
 For it requires at once the strength of the whole mind 
 to grasp Wordsworth's universals; while the common- 
 sense element in us responds to Tennyson's every day 
 memories and sensations and the fanciful element in us 
 responds to his mystic gleams. More readers can follow 
 
 ^ "The Vision of Sin." 
 
 ' "The Princess," Conclusion. 
 
ART AND LAW. I7I 
 
 Tennyson with ease than Wordsworth. Tennyson ap- 
 peals especially to a matter-of-fact mind endowed with a 
 lively fancy. 
 
 The facts we have been considering in this chapter 
 also explain why Tennyson, perhaps more than any other 
 modern poet, has made use of what Ruskin calls the 
 "pathetic fallacy." Near the close of his own treatment 
 of the subject Ruskin says: "I cannot quit the subject 
 without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the 
 pathetic fallacy, Avhich I have come upon in 'j\Iaud ;' " 
 and had he looked further in "Maud" he would have 
 found many more instances to hand : 
 
 All night have the roses heard 
 
 The flute, violin, bassoon ; 
 
 All night has the casement jessamine stirred 
 
 To the dancers dancing in tune. 
 
 Of course, the roses did not hear the music, nor did 
 the jessamine respond to the dancing in fact, nor did 
 hundreds of other natural objects Tennyson mentions in 
 this and other poems do in fact what he says they do. 
 The explanation of why Tennyson makes the roses listen 
 to the music does not lie in the fact, as some persons 
 have thought, that the speaker in the poem tends to be 
 somewhat hysterical and is carried away by his feelings. 
 For Tennyson makes frequent use of the same method in 
 poems where the speaker is not supposed to be hysterical, 
 as in numerous cases in "In Memoriam." Nor does Rus- 
 kin's explanation that the poet feels strongly, thinks 
 weakly, and sees untruly, either go to the root of the mat- 
 ter or do justice to Tennyson. 
 
 The explanation why Tennyson uses the pathetic fal- 
 lacy extensively lies in the facts we have already hinted, 
 the facts, first, that he was an unusually great lover of 
 
172 TENNYSON. 
 
 nature, and second, that he conceived the inner forces 
 of nature as a lifeless piece of machinery, and thirdly, 
 that his poetic fancy was always strong and active. He 
 would describe accurately the objects of nature in their 
 physiological beauty. He would boldly and deliberately 
 adopt the poetic method of making the objects of nature, 
 which for him had no imaginative or spiritual life,refiect 
 or take on fancifully whatever mood he chose to give 
 them. He would use them purely as a convention in art, 
 and would have it understood that no one is to be so fool- 
 ish as to suppose that the rose really heard any music or 
 the jessamine stirred to the dancing. He would set his 
 human characters in the most beautiful natural surround- 
 ings and in that kind of nature environment that, by an- 
 alogy and only by analogy, would be most directly in har- 
 mony with the moods or the spiritual experiences of his 
 character. When, in "In Memoriam," he wishes to express 
 the feehng of "calm despair," he surrounds us with the at- 
 mosphere of an unusually calm day; when he wishes to 
 express the 'wild unrest that lives in woe" he surrounds 
 us with a night of high winds, curling waters, and crack- 
 ing forests. Two lines from the thirtieth poem and two 
 lines from the seventy-eigth poem of "In Memoriam" set 
 side by side will illustrate his method: 
 
 A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, 
 And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. 
 
 The silent snow possess'd the earth, 
 And calmly fell our Christmas-eve. 
 
 Not only do his calms and storms, and his clouds and 
 snows help to reflect and express the human mood, but 
 very often his "rose weeps" and his "lily whispers" and 
 both his rose and lily once lay awake all night sighing for 
 the coming of the dawn and a woman. It is not that 
 
ART AND LAW. I73 
 
 Tennyson thinks weakly or sees untruly, but it is simply 
 that he has deliberately chosen objects of nature that 
 he loved as a vehicle of expression, a mode of represent- 
 mg the human feelings. 
 
 The justification for this method is that it is a legiti- 
 mate convention of art, and that it made Tennyson suc- 
 ceed better than he could have succeeded in any other 
 way. He succeeded in retaining and reflecting to the full 
 in his poetry the wondrous physiological beauty in which 
 our world is clothed. He retained, too, a strict regard for 
 the scientific laws and the scientific postulates of his day, 
 which were something like ultimate truths to him. He 
 may not have believed absolutely that nature is soulless, 
 for Tennyson believed nothing overmuch ; but he cer- 
 tainly never allowed himself to say that the Eternal Soul 
 is clothed in a brook with purer robes than those of flesh 
 and blood. He would not outrage the scientific formula 
 so flagrantly. And in his insistent use of the convention 
 of making nature reflect the moods of man he succeeded 
 in showing new uses to which the convention can be put. 
 Within the limits of these ideals in the treatment of na- 
 ture Tennyson has never been surpassed, and, it is safe 
 to say, will never be superseded. 
 
 There are, however, objections to this art, for it does 
 not represent the highest nor the deepest way to treat 
 nature. One objection is that this kind of treatment be- 
 comes tiresome. When King Lear is driven out into the 
 night and made shelterless by his daughters it is no doubt 
 a fine stroke of the artist to make the night rage with a 
 tempest at the point of time where the tempest in Lear's 
 breast has reached the limit. But if Shakespeare there- 
 upon were to create a physical tempest every time his hero 
 experiences a conflict in his soul the art would become 
 tedious, and the convention obtrusive. Because a thing 
 
174 TENNYSON. 
 
 is successful in art once, is not a sufficient warrant that 
 it may be used repeatedly. And this is the weakness in 
 Tennyson as regards the convention in question. 
 
 But there is a still deeper objection to this art. In his 
 zeal for scientific truth and respect for scientific postu- 
 lates Tennyson lost rather than gained for art power and 
 art truth. He surrendered too easily to the spectre of 
 mechanical law. In a world where a man has free and 
 creative power it is not well to surrender too easily to 
 such postulates as fixed mechanism and rigidity of 
 law, for they are at best but postulates. It cannot be 
 known whether nature has a soul or whether she has 
 not. But a poet, one thinks, ought to take advantage of 
 the doubt and give her one. In a world where a man can, 
 if he chooses, turn a swamp or a bog into a beautiful 
 lake and transform its shores into a loveliness that makes 
 the weary seek it for rest and peace, it certainly ought to 
 be admitted that a poet can make similar and far more 
 wonderful transformations in the art of poetry. No man 
 will die for a dogma or a postulate. But men must have 
 life, and it is the business of a poet "to come that they 
 might have life, and that they might have it more abun- 
 dantly," — passionate, volitional, and imaginative life. A 
 poet, in the interests of this life, must create it where he 
 does not find it and must reclaim the "waste places" of 
 existence, and make them, if they do not so naturally, 
 breathe out the spirit of life and the spirit of God. 
 
 We saw that Wordsworth attempted to substitute ab- 
 solute reality for the imagination so called, and partially 
 failed. He makes too great claim for the vision of ab- 
 solute reality and does not allow enough for the free play 
 of fancy. Tennyson seems to err on the other side. He 
 does not claim enough for the creative and informing 
 power of the imagination. He permits it to be tethered 
 
ART AND LAW, 175 
 
 and heninicd in by scientific law and postulate, and escapes 
 more often into the world of fancy than is either necessary 
 or desirable for the highest art power and art truth. He 
 is too ready to admit that our little systems have their 
 day and cease to be, too ready to admit that man 
 
 Knows himself no vision to himself 
 Nor the high God a vision f 
 
 too ready to admit that these things are beyond the power 
 of imagination and pictorial art. Tennyson never quite 
 bursts out in the full-orbed power of imaginative vision. 
 Yet the deepest source of imaginative and creative 
 freedom does not lie mainly in the artist's treatment of the 
 external world, but in his treatment of the mind of man. 
 No poet of any considerable power, not even Words- 
 worth, would claim to be first of all a poet of external 
 nature. He would claim to be a poet of human nature. 
 The deepest question is not. How has he treated external 
 nature? but, How has he treated the mind of man, — its 
 spiritual powers, its largeness of soul, its sorrows and its 
 hopes, its fulness of life, its freedom? And Tennyson 
 treated the human mind and human character well. He 
 presented many notable character studies. Ulysses, Tith- 
 onus, Guinevere, and a host of others, speak absolutely for 
 themselves. He said well many things about the varying 
 moods of man's temper. He portrayed, with beauty and 
 power, many of the aspects of his own inner and deeper 
 experiences. And he always clung to the fact of the in- 
 ward greatness of the mind — its freedom and immortal 
 power, power on its own acts and on the world. 
 
 '•The Holy Grail." 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BROWNING AND HIS TIMES. 
 
 Among English poets Browning is the greatest psy- 
 chologist of human souls, not of all kinds and types of 
 souls but of those chiefly that are charged with vast pas- 
 sion and boundless energy and will, souls at bottom much 
 like the soul of Browning himself. How these souls 
 combined the finite with the infinite in their experiences ; 
 how they "with the narrow mind, must cram inside their 
 finite God's infinitude ;" how they aspired and attained 
 or how they aspired and failed ; how they made their 
 choices in the greatest and most serious crises of their 
 lives, when alternatives of vast importance presented 
 themselves on the instant, when a wrong choice was 
 fraught with the most dire consequences and when the 
 right choice involved the greatest gain both from the 
 world finite and the world infinite, when there was a clear 
 inner consciousness of absolute freedom in making a 
 choice ; — how these souls then and thus made their choic- 
 es and exercised their wills is the inspiring theme of the 
 major and more enduring part of Browning's poetry. 
 
 With this central idea as the burden of his poetry it 
 will be seen at once that the scientific postulates which 
 obtained generally in the days of Browning and with 
 which Tennyson mediated so valiantly all his life, were 
 of little importance to the mind of Browning. Browning 
 did not ignore the scientific facts of the age, but he subor- 
 dinated the facts of science to matters of infinitely greater 
 
HIS TiMi;s. 177 
 
 concern and made them but a single and unimportant 
 stone in his e(Hfice of hfe and truth. It has already been 
 suggested that the scientific postulates of Browning's day 
 are but postulates, and as such can be disposed of in more 
 ways than one. Take, for instance, the postulate of law 
 based on the idea of mechanism and see how Carlyle deals 
 with it: "But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she 
 be constant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not the 
 Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable 
 rules?" And Carlyle's answer in part is: "Laplace's book 
 on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets, 
 with their Satellites, g^-rate round our v/orthy Sun, at a 
 rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he 
 and the like of him have succeeded in detecting, — is to me 
 as precious as to another. But is this what thou namest 
 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World ;' 
 this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's 
 Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some 
 paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls had been — look- 
 ed at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; 
 so that we can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, 
 their Why, their What, being hid from us. as in the sign- 
 less Inane? 
 
 "S3'Stem of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is 
 his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of 
 quite infinite expansion; and all Experience therof limits 
 itself to some few computed centuries, and measured 
 square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this 
 our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: 
 but who knows what deeper courses these depend on ; 
 what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epi- 
 cycle revolves on? To the Alinnow every cranny and 
 pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek 
 may have become familiar: but does the Minnow under- 
 
178 BROWNING. 
 
 Stand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade- 
 winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's EcHpses ; by all which 
 the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, 
 from time to time (f»i-miraculously enough) be quite 
 overset and reversed ? Such a Minnow is man ; his Creek 
 this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his 
 Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course 
 of Providence through .^ons of yEons."^ This is the 
 characteristic way of Carlyle. To one who is anxious to 
 know whether the mechanical law which obviously ob- 
 tains in the heavens is the "ultimate angels' law," Car- 
 lyle says that it may be the ultimate law or it may not be. 
 He refers one to the fact of the "infinite depth" and the 
 "infinite expansion" of Nature, the "signless inane," 
 the "immeasurable All," and the Mysterious Course of 
 Providence," admonishes one to cease prating about 
 things one cannot understand, to possess one's soul in si- 
 lence, and above all to wonder and to worship. 
 
 Now Browning's way of dealing with the "never- 
 changing Law" of the external universe is not only pro- 
 foundly characteristic of Browning but shows him in his 
 proper contrast to Carlyle in one sense and to Tennyson 
 in another. With Browning this mechanism of the heavens 
 is not a thing especially to wonder at as with Carlyle, nor 
 yet a dead thing given over to blind forces as with Tenny- 
 son, but it is a machinery to give the soul its proper bent : 
 
 He [God] fixed thee 'mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance. 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 
 To give thy soul its bent. 
 Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.'* 
 
 ' "Sartor Resartus," Bk. Ill, Chap. VIII. 
 
 ^"Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 
 * See note 6, Appendix. 
 
HIS TIMES. 179 
 
 "The starry state of the broad skies" is but "needful 
 furniture for Hfe's first stage:" 
 
 What was the world, the starry state 
 Of tlie broad skies, — what, all displays 
 Of power and beauty intermixed. 
 Which now thy soul is chained betwixt, — 
 What else than needful furniture 
 For life's first stage ?^ 
 
 Though the meclianism of the heavens which is to 
 help life in its first stages can by no means be the "ulti- 
 mate angels' law," it still serves another purpose besides 
 giving the soul its proper bent. It serves as a screen to 
 ward ofif somewhat the inundations of God's inflow of 
 power and love and will which would otherwise be too 
 great for man to bear. Just as Moses of old could not 
 see God face to face but must needs draw a veil over his 
 face, so the visible creation is meant to hide God's efful- 
 gence sufficiently for man to remain alive : 
 
 Naked belief in God, the Omnipotent, 
 Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much 
 The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. 
 It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare. 
 Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth ; 
 I say it's meant to hide him all it can.* 
 
 In our highest and ideal moments our volitional and 
 passionate natures, our instincts and intuitions suddenly 
 rising into consciousness, demand for their highest satis- 
 faction a correspondence or communion with a Being 
 outside ourselves, a Being with a far greater yearning 
 to commune with us than we have to commune with Him, 
 a Being, in short, with infinite and Iwundless yearning. 
 
 ""Easter Day." 
 
 * "Bishop Blougram's Apology." 
 
l8o BROWNING. 
 
 and with infinite and boundless energy of will. And for 
 the satisfaction of our higher soul states Browning has 
 created the situation in which there is such a Being, 
 and then has interposed the visible creation between that 
 Being and ourselves in order to allay the ecstasy of his 
 communing power with us and bring the communion it- 
 self within our ability to endure. This indeed is a radical 
 conception. It explains in part why Browning has been 
 called a barbarian, why he has been charged with con- 
 fusing our sense of reason and confounding the very 
 commonest of our logical thoughts. Because Words- 
 worth conceived the external universe invested with 
 moral power and had felt that power flow through him- 
 self and through all things, he has been charged with 
 building up a factitious synthesis, with subverting the 
 facts of everyday life into strange and mystic presences. 
 But Browning is more radical than Wordsworth. Words- 
 worth conceived the outward show of sky and earth as a 
 good conductor through which the moral power of the 
 Eternal Being might flow into the heart of man. Brown- 
 ing had the audacity to conceive this same external ma- 
 chinery as a bad conductor, so that the inflow of power 
 and love should not be overwhelmingly great and de- 
 structive. 
 
 In the interests of volitional and passionate life we 
 have attempted to justify Wordsworth's delight in the 
 "volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on 
 of the universe" and his principle of creating them where 
 he did not find them. And if one should be asked why 
 not on this same basis justify, if not the greater origi- 
 nality, at least the greater audacity of Browning, the an- 
 swer must be: most certainly he is to be justified. Was 
 it not Portia in the "Merchant of Venice" who felt the di- 
 lating excess of Love to such a degree that she prayed. 
 
HIS TIMES. iSl 
 
 love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy; 
 
 In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess; 
 
 1 feel too much thy blessing : make it less, 
 For fear I surfeit; — 
 
 and do not all the greater souls of great literature not only 
 dilate with this intensity of passion and energy of power, 
 but also make the objects about them dilate with the 
 same passion and power? Did not the Christ of the He- 
 brew Scriptures come that he might fill life to overflow- 
 ing, and did he not have a constant vision of the Face of 
 his Father shining through the visible face of the uni- 
 verse? And are then the art of Shakespeare and the re- 
 ligion of Christ false because they contain these concep- 
 tions? They are rather eternally true because by these con- 
 ceptions they rise to the highest possible demands the 
 human heart can ever make upon them. In fact, Words- 
 worth's theory about intuitions, passions and volitions, 
 which lies at the basis of these conceptions, is a true one ; 
 and Browning is in no idle sense the fulfillment of some 
 of Wordsworth's deepest prophetic utterances concern- 
 ing the future of poetry. This point is so important that 
 it will be taken up later at a different angle. It has been 
 cited here merely to show Browning's artistic and relig- 
 ious attitude toward external nature and toward the sci- 
 entific spirit of his times. 
 
 Again, let us take the idea of time which so filled the 
 soul of Carlyle with wonder and so enamoured the imag- 
 ination of Tennyson. Wordsworth's and Tennyson's 
 conceptions of time were very much alike. They both 
 conceived God as transcending the order of time; they 
 both thought that "our weakness somehow shapes the 
 shadow, Time," and that in our very highest moments of 
 experience we can transcend it. But Tennyson is very 
 much more emphatic than Wordsworth on the idea that 
 
1 82 BROWNING. 
 
 with the Nameless there are no 'Thens' and 'Whens' but 
 only an "Eternal Now," and he is also far more deeply- 
 impressed with the mere immensity of time's range and 
 with what may be accompHshed by the race in time, even 
 though time itself is shaped by our own weaknesses. Now, 
 to Browning the idea that time may possibly be a subject- 
 ive phenomenon is no argument against its reality; it 
 cannot for that reason be a mere shadow. Nothing is 
 shadowy that comes out of the brain of man because man 
 himself is a creative soul and therein shows himself Hke 
 God, being only a little lower in the scale. And a single 
 moment of experience in the soul's action may be so infi- 
 nitely important that the moment is infinity itself. Brown- 
 ing "crams" and "packs" so much of the infinite into the 
 finite that there remains no great difiference between the 
 two; the infinite is but an extension of the momentous 
 finite. Browning is not impressed by the mere fact of ex- 
 tended time even though it stretch beyond any power of 
 measurement ; time is only of interest so far as it has to 
 do with the making of a soul. 
 
 Thus, the scientific postulates of law based on mech- 
 anism, the mechanical nature of the external universe, 
 and the immensity of time, all of which pressed Tennyson 
 so hard in his attempt to hold to a personal faith, were 
 completely subordinated by Browning to interests of 
 greater concern and became indeed only an unimportant 
 stone in his edifice of life and truth. And the spirit of 
 the times served Browning not so much in giving him 
 new material to work on as in ofifering him a foil upon 
 which to react, and then to build independently his own 
 creative structure. Outwardly, at least, this seems true. 
 In the deepest sense, however, it may be that Browning 
 is far more vitally related to the inner spirit of his times 
 than even Tennyson. The age in which we are living is 
 
HIS TIMES. 183 
 
 as much a scientific age as that of Tennyson and Brown- 
 ing. We are as of old hungering and thirsting for sci- 
 entific facts. The laboratories of our universities are 
 resounding with the word of fact more persistently than 
 ever, and hopes are still entertained to outdo Nature at 
 last and force her to give up her secrets. Science, in the 
 words of Browning, even now 
 
 Encourages the meanest who has racked 
 Nature until he gains from her some fact, 
 To state what truth is from his point of view. 
 Mere pin-point though it be.^ 
 
 But however vast the scientific edifice of the nineteenth 
 and twentieth centuries may become, however brilHant 
 may be our discoveries of facts as a result of both phys- 
 ical and psychical research, it will no doubt remain true 
 that the highest demands of the soul shall not be satisfied 
 by anything found in this edifice or in the facts which go 
 into its building, and that the counter tendency shall be 
 to augment the soul's demand for "peace, plenty, and pow- 
 er"' wiiich is so strongly expressed by the popular litera- 
 ture of the day that plumes itself as being scientific but 
 is at heart transcendental and mystical ; and that, as in the 
 course of time the limitations of scientific fact and scien- 
 tific truth shall become more clearly demonstrated, this 
 mystical tendency which is at present somewhat blindly 
 stirring the common heart of humanity shall flow out 
 into a broader sea than has hitherto been known in the 
 history of the world ; in which day it shall be seen that in 
 strictly modern times Tennyson, with his insistence on 
 "the mighty hopes that make us men," was the first faint 
 voice of this spirit, and that Browning, with his insist- 
 ence that the "ultimate angels' law" is that of 
 
 "Francis Furini, Parleyings with." 
 
l84 BROWNING. 
 
 Indulging every instinct of the soul 
 
 There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing — ° 
 
 was the first full-throated voice of that spirit and was 
 for that reason the true representative of the inner life 
 and spirit of his time and generation. Who can say? 
 
 Since we have now seen Browning's relation to the 
 spirit of his times, let us consider briefly what were the 
 essential qualities of his character. No one but a critic 
 who supposes that Browning was first of all a philoso- 
 pher and that his intellectual casuistry was the most im- 
 portant thing about him would deny the statement that 
 Browning possessed the deepest of literary passion and 
 sensitiveness. Those of us who believe him to have been 
 a poet first of all believe him to have possessed the poetic 
 passion in the highest degree accompanied with the ut- 
 most richness in sensitive response to color and sight 
 and all objects of sense. Take, for instance, a passage 
 (one out of hundreds of similar passages from his poetry) 
 from "The Last Ride Together" and see how the poet ex- 
 presses an intense inner passion joined with exquisite 
 sensitiveness to the power and beauty and glory of the 
 outer world of sense: 
 
 Hush ! if you saw some western cloud 
 All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed 
 By many benedictions — sun's 
 And moon's and evening star's at once — 
 And so, you, looking and loving best. 
 Conscious grew, your passion drew 
 Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, 
 Down on you, near and yet more near. 
 Till flesh must fade for heaven was here ! — 
 Thus leant she and lingered — joy and fear! 
 Thus lay she a moment on my breast. 
 
 "A Death in the Desert." 
 
HIS TIMIiS. 185 
 
 This is not at all sensual, but richly sensuous, and spir- 
 itual. The passion is outspoken and powerful. The pas- 
 sions in Browning are elemental, exuberant, and swelling. 
 There are not many undertones and gradations in them. 
 In such a poem as "Love among the Ruins" the passion 
 runs in an almost subconscious undercurrent, while the 
 lover is descanting on his surroundings. But in the 
 climax of the poem the passion suddenly becomes aware 
 of itself, and bursts out full-blown, strong, too full even 
 to speak, producing a powerful effect : 
 
 When I do come, she -will speak not, she will stand, 
 
 Either hand 
 On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 
 
 Of my face, 
 Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech 
 
 Each on each. 
 
 There are no fine shadings, no secondary qualities of the 
 passion given. The passion is deeply impulsive and en- 
 ergetic, primary and fundamental, and is not worldly- 
 wise. All this is truly characteristic of Browning in both 
 his works and his life. 
 
 What is true of Browning's passion is also true of 
 his sense perceptions, especially those of color. He has 
 an eye for primary colors, and especially those that are 
 stimulating to the senses — red and green, yellow and 
 blue. In "Love Among the Ruins" the "domed and dar- 
 ing palace shot its spires up like fires," red and gorgeous; 
 and there never was such plenty and perfection of green 
 grass elsewliere. The girl, too, had "eager eyes and yel- 
 low hair" — yellow like those of Porphyria, "one long 
 yellow string" of hair. In "Home-Thoughts, from tlie 
 Sea" the "simset ran, one glorious blood-red, recking into 
 Cadiz Bay," and Trafalgar lay "bluish 'mifl the burning 
 waters." In "De Gustibus — " Browning speaks of "the 
 
l86 BROWNING. 
 
 great opaque blue breadth of sea without a break." A 
 rich profusion of colors, primary and massive, Brown- 
 ing gives in his poetry. 
 
 Joined to this predilection for the fundamental pas- 
 sions in man and to this sensitiveness to primary colors 
 and sights in nature, there was in Browning a quick, voli- 
 tional, muscular alertness of the eye that saw all the sharp 
 angles and forms of every object at once. In "Easter 
 Day" he calls attention to the "enwrapping rocky niche" in 
 which the lizard sleeps ; in "By the Fireside" to the ferns 
 that "fit their teeth to the polished block" and to the "fai- 
 ry-cupped elf-needled mat of moss;" and in "De Gustibus 
 — " to "one sharp tree" that is "red-rusted, rough iron- 
 spiked," and to a castle that is "precipice-encurled, in a 
 gash of the wind-grieved Apennine." It may be said 
 that Browning's infinite has very hard work to get itself 
 realized in so angular and sharply defined a finite as his. 
 Or, that his finite must aspire with great aspiration to- 
 ward the infinite to be absorbed in it. It may be said, too, 
 that this keenness of sight for the sharp forms in nature 
 joined with a certain nimbleness of mind accounts in a 
 large measure for Browning's intellectual and analytical 
 fame of traditional criticism. 
 
 Browning was such a veritable fighter all his days 
 that it seems superfluous to state that he possessed an un- 
 usual tenacity of will and great moral and spiritual en- 
 ergy. The following passage from "Rabbi Ben Ezra" 
 might well serve as a text for Browning's whole life: 
 
 Then, ■welcome each rdbuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rougli, 
 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand 'but go ! 
 
 Be our joys three-parts pain ! 
 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 
 Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! 
 
HIS TIMES. 187 
 
 And the last thing he wrote proves that he kept up his 
 victorious war cry to the very end. There he describes 
 himself as 
 
 One who never turned his back but marched breast 
 
 forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong 
 
 would triumph, 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
 No, at noonday in the bustle of man'^. work-time 
 
 Greet the unseen with a cheer ! 
 Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
 "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, — fight on, fare ever 
 
 There as here !"' 
 
 And on the first of these stanzas Browning himself com- 
 ments: "It almost looks like bragging to say this, and 
 as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and 
 as it's true, it shall stand." And certainly no one can wish 
 it canceled or doubt its utter sincerity. 
 
 It is important to note that though Browning possess- 
 ed the union of intense passion and energy of will his 
 character did not become immobile and sterile as did 
 that of Wordsworth. Tlie first and main reason for this 
 no doubt is that Browning, contrary to the popular con- 
 ception of him, was by nature, and remained to the last 
 of his days, genuinely simple and human-hearted. His 
 boundless enthusiasms, which are so characteristic of 
 youth — "half a pang and all a rapture," "all a wonder 
 and a wild desire," — his unmeasured admiration for Shel- 
 ley, his intense interest in and defense, both in turn and 
 at the same time, of such men as diverse in their inter- 
 
 "Epilogue to Asolando." 
 
l88 BROWNING. 
 
 ests and views as Thomas Carlyle, Walter Savage L,an- 
 dor, John Ruskin, and John Stuart Mill, his endless cu- 
 riosity about all things under the sun, his head-long de- 
 votion to paints and color and canvas in order to learn 
 at first hand the technicalities of painting, his similar am- 
 ateur devotions to sculpture and music, his helplessness in 
 putting a sentence into its straightforward and natural 
 order of English, his naive wonder at individuals who 
 seemed to have no capacity to understand his poetry, his 
 plunging into the middle of a Renaissance story or Medi- 
 eval legend with the expectation that the reader would at 
 once understand all the foregone conclusions — these, and 
 many more things like them, give evidence that Brown- 
 ing was at bottom always delightfully simple and human- 
 hearted. In the days of Wordsworth there was a strong 
 movement toward simplicity, and Wordsworth accepted 
 the movement consciously, and consciously ordered his 
 life on the principle of "plain living and high thinking." 
 Besides, he attained childlike simplicity only as a result 
 of the most important reactionary crisis his life had 
 ever known. The strenuousness and mystic intensity of 
 it tended to harden and solidify his character. He attain- 
 ed to simplicity at the cost of a certain aloofness of char- 
 acter and arbitrariness of decision. In later days when 
 simplicity had run its course the tendency toward com- 
 plexity and artificiality ran high. And upon this time 
 came the militant, but simple and elemental soul of 
 Browning. Accepting whole-heartedly the life of all 
 classes, in the true spirit of democracy and with the un- 
 dying enthusiasm of youth, Browning retained natural- 
 ness and flexibility, humor and whole-heartedness in his 
 character. 
 
 Another reason wh}^ Browning's intense passion and 
 energ}' of will did not solidify and sterilize his character 
 
HIS TIMES. 189 
 
 was that he possessed a genuinely optimistic temper. 
 Browning's optimism, as all men's optimism, no doubt 
 was largely influenced by his temperament. Chesterton 
 says it was wholly due to his temperament. In his book 
 on Browning he says : "Any one will make the deepest 
 and blackest and most incurable mistake about Brown- 
 ing who imagines that his optimism was founded on any 
 argument for optimism." Now this is not the deepest 
 and blackest and most incurable mistake one can make 
 about Browning, just as many other things are not super- 
 latively deep and black and incurable that Chesterton 
 says are superlatively so in that brilliant though highly 
 colored work of his on Browning; yet in this instance 
 there doubtless would be a mistake. But these two things 
 in particular are to be noted, first, that no man ascribes 
 his philosophy of optimism to the conditions of his tem- 
 permanent, and second, the number and kind of unusual 
 or extraordinary circumstances that may surround him 
 and the choices he makes in his reactions on them are im- 
 portant and determining factors in his optimism.The great 
 crisis in Wordsworth's life was his reactionary experi- 
 ence with the French Revolution. His soul was plunged 
 into utter despair from the coils of which he slowly 
 wound himself, until at last he could speak with a deep 
 and over-flowing joy of the goodness of life. The great 
 crisis in Tennyson's early life was the death of Arthur 
 Hallam. This fact filled Tennyson's sensitive and imagi- 
 native soul with agony and despair, from which state of 
 mind he gradually escaped until he too could speak with 
 assurance that human life in the main is good and sweet 
 and true. The great crisis in Browning's early life was 
 his elopement and marriage with Elizabeth Barrett. And 
 though this was accomplished with the most anxious and 
 serious experiences a man can meet, it immediately re- 
 
19© BROWNING. 
 
 suited in a long series of the deepest and profoundest 
 joys a man can know. Thus from childhood to the age 
 of forty-nine Browning's life was a life of continuous 
 and unbroken joy and optimism. When Browning was 
 forty-nine Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. But a man 
 at forty-nine will meet a calamity differently than at 
 twenty-four. Though the spiritual changes wrought in 
 Browning by this calamity were great, his heart had been 
 steeled for it. And it tended to make him all the more a 
 fighter, unwilling to have his eyes bandaged by death, but 
 anxious to fight "the 'best and the last," to "taste the 
 whole of it," "to bear the brunt" bravely, as he says in 
 the immortal "Prospice." Wordsworth and Tennyson 
 each had his happiness taken from him in early manhood 
 and slowly each recovered that joy and unity of spirit that, 
 a great poet must possess before he can be the mouth- 
 piece of a nation or a race. Browning simply never had 
 that joy and unity of spirit taken from him, and conse- 
 quently was never compelled to struggle for it strenuous- 
 ly, as were Wordsworth and Tennyson. 
 
 Wordsworth based his optimism mainly on the power 
 of the mind to reproduce through memory and will the 
 exalted moments of the past, especially those of child- 
 hood, and make them live in the present. Tennyson bas- 
 ed his optimism on the miracle of the living will that shall 
 endure and the orderliness of human life in general, with 
 the faith that the power of will and freedom shall be 
 "more and more" in the world. Browning characteris- 
 tically based his optimism on the continuous and almost 
 infinite energy of passion, on the power of our souls to 
 make their own destiny, and on the fact of the incom- 
 pleteness of life here below, which latter point, we shall 
 see later, has far reaching consequences. Thus, Brown- 
 ing's simplicity and human-heartedness, his enthusiastic 
 
HIS TIMES. 191 
 
 and optimistic temper which was in harmony with both 
 his theory of optimism and his practical experiences of 
 Hfe, tended to keep his intense passions and energy of 
 will from solidifying and sterilizing themselves, and made 
 it possible for these latter forces to express themselves 
 in such poetry of passion and energy and power as falls 
 short only of the poetry of the greatest masters. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 BROWNING: PASSION AND WILL. 
 
 On the question of the freedom of the will, which 
 is the fundamental question at issue in these pages, the 
 attitudes of Wordsworth and Browning respectively are 
 very much alike and stand in contrast to the attitude of 
 Tennyson. Wordsworth held that there is a free creative 
 spirit in all things. Even in the meadow-flower and in 
 the forest-tree this principle of inner self-direction finds 
 expression : 
 
 How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? 
 Because the lovely little flower is free 
 Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold; 
 And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree 
 Comes not by casting in a formal mould, 
 But from its ozvn divine vitality.^ 
 
 And this principle of universal freedom is in all things, 
 for whatever exists has properties that spread beyond 
 itself — "this is the freedom of the universe." But the 
 "most apparent home" of this freedom is in the mind 
 of man, for even in the hour of defeat we are to "feel 
 that we are greater than we know." Man indeed is "a 
 sensitive being, a creative soul." 
 
 '"A Poet!— He Hath Put His Heart to School." 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 193 
 
 Tennyson, on the contrary, would say tliat the mead- 
 ow-flower is not free down to its root and there is no spe- 
 cial divine vitality in a forest-tree. Much less than in 
 an eagle's wing or an insect's eye can one find the power 
 of div^inity in meadow-flowers and forest-trees. All these 
 products of creation are given over to blind forces, fixed 
 and impersonal laws. It is a hard matter indeed to be con- 
 vinced that the will of man himself is not wholly subject 
 to these same blind and impersonal forces. Tennyson 
 concludes, however, that man's will is free in a measure 
 and in a progressive form ; and, in his efforts to deter- 
 mine the limits of its freedom Tennyson reasons on this 
 subject in his verse more directly than either Wordsworth 
 or Browning; that is, on this subject he is more nearly a 
 technical philosopher than Wordsworth or Browning. 
 Wordsworth is filled with the spirit of child-like simplic- 
 ity; Browning is possessed with the eternal aspirations 
 of youth ; Tennyson is wise. 
 
 As has been suggested, Browning, like Wordsworth, 
 without attempting to define any limits, makes the as- 
 sumption of freedom in man boldly and without reserve. 
 But there is this difference in their views ; that whereas 
 Wordsworth emphasized the freedom that exists in the 
 external universe along with the freedom in man, Brown- 
 ing emphasized the freedom alone that exists in the soul. 
 For Browning there was no great virtue in the idea as 
 to whether there is freedom or not in the external uni- 
 verse apart from the passions and volitions of man ; be- 
 cause the soul, if it acts decisively in the great moments 
 of life that come upon it, finds that this world is pecul- 
 iarly fitted to its needs : 
 
 How the world is made for each of us ! 
 How all we perceive and know in it 
 Tends to some moment's product thus 
 
194 BROWNING. 
 
 When a soul declares itself — to wit, 
 'By its fruit — the thing it does !* 
 
 The all-important and all-absorbing thing in thi'? life is 
 what the soul wills to do and what it does ; and they are 
 tremendous powers that the soul possesses, and they are 
 far-reaching consequences that it produces. Wordsworth 
 indeed said that the soul is free and has creative power, 
 but Browning emphasized this fact to an unusual degree. 
 For Browning man was only a little lower in the scale 
 than the Being who made him — "a God though in the 
 g' rm." He "repeats God's process in man's due degree :" 
 
 Man, bounded, j-earning to be free, 
 May so project his surplusage of soul 
 In search of body, so add self to self 
 By owning what lay ownerless before, — 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
 That, although nothing which had never life 
 Shall get life from him, be, not having been. 
 Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
 Something with too much life or not enough. 
 Which, either way imperfect, ended once : 
 An end whereat man's impulse intervenes. 
 Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive. 
 Completes the incomplete and saves the thing. 
 .... Such man's feat is, in the due degree, j^ 
 
 Mimic creation, galvanism for life, f 
 
 But still a glory portioned in the scale.^ 
 
 To repeat God's process, to resuscitate, to regenerate, to 
 add self to self, to start the dead alive, to mimic creation, 
 to reclaim the waste places of existence and to clothe 
 them with life and vitality — these are the free and regal 
 powers of the soul. And in the full possession of our 
 god-like' powers and the gift of freedom we are to 
 
 ^ "By the Fireside." 
 
 ' "The Ring and the Book." Bk. I. 
 
PASSION AND WILL. I95 
 
 Rejoice we are allied 
 
 To that which doth provide 
 
 And not partake, effect and not receive !* 
 
 On a question which may be considered a corollary to 
 the one just discussed, the question of restraint and dis- 
 cipHne that the will should exercise upon our lives, the 
 attitude of Browning stands in strong contrast to the at- 
 titudes respectively of Wordsworth and Tennyson. In 
 his persistent refusal to sound the tumult as well as th^ 
 depth of the soul, Wordsworth gained somewhat in self- 
 mastery and lost a great deal in human-heartedness. Ten- 
 nyson's ideal was that of a man who could live by the 
 'faith that comes of self-control," a man "wearing the 
 white flower of a blameless life." Wordsworth and Ten- 
 nyson both felt that there were many tumultuous things 
 in our social and private lives, in the life of the senses, 
 in the life of intellectual liberalism, in the life of spiritual 
 indulgence, upon which our wills should exercise a stren- 
 uous self-control and the power of restraint. Now, 
 Browning's robustious nature had little in common with 
 what he considered this "ghastly smooth life, dead at 
 heart:" 
 
 And so I live, you see, 
 
 Go through the world, try, prove, reject. 
 
 Prefer, still struggling to effect 
 
 My warfare; happy that I can 
 
 Be crossed and thwarted as a man. 
 
 Not left in God's contempt apart. 
 
 With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, 
 
 Tame in earth's paddock as her prize." 
 
 This willingness to be crossed and thwarted as a man, 
 this militant attitude of facing forward and moving for- 
 
 * "Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 "'Easter Day." 
 
196 BROWNING. 
 
 ward is not only to be highly preferred to an easeful state 
 of lethargy and ghastly smoothness, but it is to be kept up 
 to the very end and to be carried forward by the means 
 of seeking the hardest places and taking no thought of 
 the risks and dangers. Like David the Shepherd Boy, one 
 is to take the hardest place, to refuse heavy and cumber- 
 some armament and to depend on the Lord of Hosts for 
 victory. Like Browning himself, one is to be a fighter : 
 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last ! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore. 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 
 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness and cold.* 
 
 For, in thus boldly facing the worst in the great crisis, 
 defeat shall suddenly be changed into victory, pain into 
 peace, darkness into light, and light into love which is 
 best: 
 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 
 The black minute's at end. 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again. 
 
 And with God be the rest!' 
 
 What though our joys be three parts pain, it is our busi- 
 ness here to fight the good fight with joy on our lips and 
 gladness in our souls. And this leads us directly to the 
 heart of Browning's experience with life and his ideas of 
 passion and will. 
 
 * "Prospice." 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 1 97 
 
 Against Wordswortli's and Tennyson's ideals of self- 
 control and restraint Browning emphasizes what may ])e 
 called the principle of gain. The chief function of the will 
 in Crowning is to exercise itself so as to attain to the 
 greatest possible gain. Let it first be understood that 
 man belongs to two kingdoms — the kingdom of heaven 
 and the kingdom of earth, — and that as long as he is in 
 this life he has no right to renounce either; then the 
 cardinal question with regard to every possible experi- 
 ment of life is the question of the Bishop in the Apolog}^ 
 "Where's the gain?" And the opposite question of los- 
 ing is hardly worth considering. "Lose? Talk of loss 
 and I refuse to plead at all," says one of Browning's char- 
 acters, and this is almost literally true of Browning him- 
 self. His scheme of life is a scheme of endless addition. 
 "Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend — never contract:" 
 
 I say that man was made to grow, not stop ; 
 
 That help he needed once, and needs no more, 
 
 Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn : 
 
 For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. 
 
 This imports solely, man should mount on each 
 
 New height in view ; the help whereby he mounts, 
 
 The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall. 
 
 Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. 
 
 Alan apprehends him newly at each stage 
 
 Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done; 
 
 And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.' 
 
 Let man never cease striving, but ever aspire, and all 
 things shall be his. And the "all things" of Browning 
 are really inclusive. "There shall never be one lost 
 good:" 
 
 What entered into thee. 
 
 That was, is, and shall be.' 
 
 '"A Death in the Desert." 
 '"Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 
198 BROWNING, 
 
 Is it a question of those immature instincts and aspira- 
 tions that rise up in us so beautifully in youth and tend 
 to die away in the light of later experiences, or of those 
 thoughts and escaped fancies which do not mature into 
 words or substantial acts? They shall all help to swell 
 the man's amount and count in the final and ultimate es- 
 timate of his worth : 
 
 All instincts immature, 
 All purposes unsure, 
 That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
 amount : 
 
 Thoughts hardly to be packed 
 
 Into a narrow act. 
 Fancies that broke through language and escaped; 
 
 All I could never be, 
 
 All, men ignored in me, 
 This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
 shaped." 
 
 Likewise the temptations of life exist but to give 
 the soul a chance to be triumphant : 
 
 Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
 Aijd master and make crouch beneath his foot. 
 And so be pedestalled in triumph?^" 
 
 And doubts and unbelief are conditions that help faith to 
 steady its nerves and stand calm in its victory : 
 
 Faith means perpetual unbelief 
 Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot 
 Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe." 
 
 Similarly is it with falsehood. Though we are to 
 fight falsehood to the death we are not to make the very 
 
 ° "Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 
 '""The Ring and the Book." The Pope. 
 
 " "Bishop Blougram's Apologj'." 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 199 
 
 serious mistake of supposing that no truth is mixed with 
 falsehood. On the contrary, there is truth at the center 
 and in the heart of all things, and falsehood is external. 
 Falsehood therefore must be forced to yield up fact and 
 truth. And when one penetrates through the shell of 
 falsehood to where truth lies and 
 
 Truth, displayed i' the point, Hashes forth everj'where 
 r the circle, manifest to soul, though hid from sense, 
 And no obstruction moie affects this confidence, — 
 When faith is ripe for sight, — whj^ reasonably, then 
 Comes the great clearing up ; — 
 
 for truth then in this great clearing up shall appear only 
 the more radiant and heavenly for having been so inter- 
 mixed with and encased in falsehood. An important 
 item in Browning's optimism is the fact that he believed 
 that falsehood is an appearance, while truth is a reality, 
 and that the former must be of some ultimate service to 
 tlie latter. Thus temptation, doubt, and falsehood are 
 conditional existences for our souls to exercise themselves 
 upon and grow strong; and all our immature instincts, 
 imsure purposes, thoughts unrealized in action, escaped 
 fancies, all of whicli at their best represent but begin- 
 nings in this life, are to be added unto us in the final es- 
 timate of our soul's worth. Life is thus an endless addi- 
 tion, extension, and expansion, and the will is to exercise 
 itself not in the way of restraint and self-control but in 
 such a way as to attain to the greatest possible gain ; not 
 negatively but positively, always positively. 
 
 '" "Fifine at the Fair." 
 
200 BROWNING. 
 
 II 
 
 In this conception of life no doubt the crucial prob- 
 lem is the problem of the indulgence of the senses and the 
 passions. Is it not true, after all, that the greater and 
 more substantial gain comes by means of restraint and 
 self-control rather than by the way of additions, expan- 
 sions, and free indulgence? Browning's answer to this 
 question is unique and forceful, whatever else one may 
 think of it. It must be granted, first of all, that sense 
 and passion are in us for use, that they are, in fact, the 
 chief powers in us that give life its significance. A man 
 is, for instance, to use his eyes to see and his ears to hear, 
 and a man who has no passion for home nor country, no 
 passion for the traditional past nor the living present, has 
 certainly at best but a very low and meagre existence, 
 whatever other attainments he may have. 
 
 The real and significant problem then is : What is the 
 greatest capacity to which sense and passion can attain? 
 Under what conditions can the fullest capacity of the 
 senses be obtained without detrimental results? The 
 senses can attain to their fullest capacity when 
 the soul is most energetic in spiritualizing their 
 activities. That is, the senses are most free to indulge 
 themselves when they are polarized by the power of the 
 soul, for they can then indulge themselves rightly. The 
 eye can see best physically when the heart feels most 
 spiritually; and also conversely, the heart can feel most 
 spiritually when the eye sees best physically. The will 
 power of the soul acts upon the body and saves it 
 from destruction. The will power of the body acts upon 
 the energies of the soul and saves it to the uses of this 
 world. The greater capacity of the soul increases the ca- 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 20I 
 
 pacity of the body and the greater capacity of the body in- 
 creases the capacity of the soul, and by the power of will 
 the whole being faces forward and there is constant ex- 
 pansion and no need of restraint. The negations of the 
 decalogue, restraint, are superseded by the positive forces 
 of "power, love, and will." Man is to be a thoroughly 
 healthy and exceedingly live animal, and a powerfully 
 quickening spirit that aspires up to God. The red-blue 
 blood is to tingle through one's whole being and dilate the 
 whole soul : 
 
 Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up 
 
 to rock, 
 The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the 
 
 cool silver shock 
 
 Of the plunge in a pool's living water 
 
 How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to 
 
 employ- 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses forever 
 
 in joy !" 
 
 And the soul on the other hand is to energize and spir- 
 itualize the whole body of sense : 
 
 Rejoice that man is hurled 
 From change to change unceasingly, 
 His soul's wings never furled !" 
 
 The soul carries the body from change to change and 
 
 All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps fle?h more, now, than flesh 
 helps soul !''■ 
 
 Therefore man not only "gathers earth's whole 
 good into his arms," but heaven's good also, for 
 if he try to pack the infinite into the finite he shall finally 
 
 " "Saul." 
 
 ""James Lee's Wife." 
 
 " '"Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 
20i BROWNING. 
 
 be with God in his heaven, one of the elect soldier-saints 
 
 who 
 
 Burn upward each to his point of bliss — 
 
 Since, the end of life being manifest, 
 
 He had burned his way thro' the world to this.^* 
 
 But woe betide the soul that does not keep the equi- 
 librium of animal activities and soul aspirations, that re- 
 nounces either earth or heaven. To the one who re- 
 nounces heaven for the mere beauty and power of this 
 world, the terrible and stern decree is : 
 
 Thou art shut 
 Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 
 Thy sense upon the world; 'tis thine 
 Forever — take it !" 
 
 And the one who renounces, while living in this world, 
 the things of sense and the associations of this life is 
 equally condemned, as, for instance, Sordello who, in his 
 striving for infinite power, forgot the earthly conditions 
 of this life and became too pale and feverish and ghost- 
 like for this world or the next : 
 
 And thus bereft, 
 Sleep and forget, Sordello ! In effect 
 He sleeps, the feverish poet — I suspect 
 Not utterly companionless. 
 
 When the senses and passions are aroused, flesh and 
 spirit glorifying each other, and the crisis of life is at 
 hand, the soul is doomed if it does not make its choice 
 according to its highest impulse, even though at odds with 
 the slipshod and superficial conventions of society. This 
 is shown in the poems "Youth and Art" and the "Statue 
 and the Bust" and in many another poem of Browning. 
 
 '" "The Statue and the Bust." 
 " "Easter Day." 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 203 
 
 And tliis failure to will mightily and act positively at the 
 bidding of both the soul and the tlesh is really the only 
 condeninable act in life; but it is severly condemnable. 
 It is an irredeemable tragedy, worse than death. 
 
 But when one wills mightily and acts positively at 
 the bidding of the soul and the flesh, one's wdiole being 
 is instantly ennobled, transformed in the very act, en- 
 larged and forever glorified. The action may, indeed, re- 
 sult directly in tragedy, but it is still a success with mis- 
 fortune in this life but with greater gain in another life: 
 
 Make tlie low nature beUer by your throes! 
 Give earth yourself, go up for gain above !^' 
 
 The very heart of the "Ring and the Book" is the fact 
 that Caponsacchi and Pompilia by choosing to follow 
 their higher impulses at the risk of their lives, are there- 
 by intsantly ennobled, made spiritually free, and are for- 
 ever justified in the hearts of those who hear their story. 
 Browning exhausts all the powers of his art to give 
 Guido and conventional society free and full power to 
 do their worst, and at the same time to show that this 
 hero and heroine are not merely lifted above the sus- 
 picion of guilt, but are. by the very acts of passion and 
 devotion that aroused that suspicion, transformed, en- 
 nobled, saved to a higher life. 
 
 Now, the flesh represents the lowest parts of our ex- 
 perience and the soul the highest parts. They represent 
 the extremes, the poles, of our being. There is a mid-re- 
 gion in our being made up of the prudential, intellectual 
 and logical faculties of our natures. It is the "What 
 knows" in us, as explained in "A Death in the Desert." 
 But Browning, contrary to all popular conceptions of him, 
 scarcely ever appeals to this phase of our natures. He 
 
 ""James Lee's Wife." 
 
204 BROWNING. 
 
 irradiates it indeed with glory and light from the power 
 of the flesh below it and the power of the soul above it; 
 but he seldom appeals to it for its own sake. "Where 
 the heart lies, let the brain lie also." And Browning's 
 heart lies in the regions of the flesh and the soul. Let us 
 save, Browning would say, the remote ends of our lives to 
 good and gainful purposes, and the mid-region of the in- 
 tellect will take care of itself. Thus he dips downward into 
 the primitive freshness of physical and bodily activities 
 and penetrates upward into soul aspirations and soul ex- 
 periences, and draws matter together into an equilibrium 
 from these two diverse sources. And the power by which 
 this is done may be called the power of will, or energy ; 
 and the tension produced in our being by the living power 
 of the soul in the flesh and of the flesh in the soul may be 
 termed, using the word in a broad sense, passion. And 
 when the will makes this passion to expand itself and 
 face forward in g'athering the goods of earth and heaven 
 we have the program for life — a perfectly simple and 
 comprehensible program, which is to produce constant 
 additions and gains to self and to make forever for more 
 abundant life. 
 
 But the conditions of a great soul are that it have high 
 passions compounded of sense and spirit and that it have 
 the power of willingness to press forward and to take 
 the greatest risks. These obvious demands on the part 
 of a great soul either in literature or in life seem to have 
 escaped the notice of some critics who study Browning 
 ostensibly for philosophical purposes. In his essay on 
 Browning, entitled "The Poetry of Barbarism," Professor 
 Santyana, in the interest of what he calls "intelligence" 
 and "contemplation," is sorely grieved because Browning 
 draws the hero of "In a Gondola" as one that has 
 enough passion and will and energy to be willing and even 
 
PASSION AND WILI,. 205 
 
 happy to die for the sake of love; and he incidentally 
 holds the poet up to scorn because he makes another char- 
 acter in another drama, in explaining to his mistress the 
 motive of his faithful services as a minister of the queen, 
 say: 
 
 She thinks there was more cause 
 
 In love of power, high fame, pure loyalty? 
 
 Perhaps she fancies men wear out their lives 
 
 Chasing such shades 
 
 I worked because I want you with my soul." 
 
 Our critic admits that Browning never allows the passion 
 to sink into sensuality and that in his hands it always re- 
 mains passion. What offends him in particular is that 
 /le passion does not rise into contemplation ana mat the 
 hero of "In a Gondola" is not intelligent enough to 
 know that it is not absolutely necessary for him to die. 
 "But had that hero known how to love better and had he 
 had enough spirit to dominate his love, he might perhaps 
 have been able to carry away the better part of it and to 
 say that he could not die." This demand on the part of our 
 critic for prudence and rationality in the passion of love, 
 the demand that lovers in tragic drama turn philosophers, 
 is rather exasperating, to say the least. One might as 
 well expect a soldier in the midst of battle suddenly to 
 leave his post as he bethought himself on the fundamental 
 truth that peace is better than war. One might as well ex- 
 pect Othello to sue for divorce and obtain an honorable re- 
 lease from wedlock. Could not Othello have foreseen that 
 his decision to kill Desdcmona would involve his own 
 ruin and destruction, granting even that the representa- 
 tions of lago were absolutely true? We might say, then, 
 with our critic that had Othello only "had enough spirit 
 
 "Tn a Balcony." 
 
206 BROWNING. 
 
 to dominate his love he might perhaps have been able 
 to carry away the better part of it and to say that he could 
 not die." And one wonders what our critic really means 
 by insisting that the poet should have thrust prudence, 
 rationalization, and contemplation into the tragic scene 
 of "In a Gondola." Characters like Othello and this 
 hero of Browning take no thought of death. They hold 
 their own lives at a penny-worth price. They are tilled 
 with high passion, breaking the barriers of common pru- 
 dence, and with the energy of will daring the utmost and 
 taking the greatest risks. 
 
 A poet who would treat such characters successfully 
 must not be measured by rule of thumb. He must be 
 granted liberties. It is the prerogative of the great to 
 take liberties, if they only take them in a great way. 
 Shakespeare took liberties, and for many generations he 
 was accounted a barbarian, especially by those of the pru- 
 dential and philosophical type. They considered his po- 
 etry the "fruit of the imagination of an intoxicated sav- 
 age." But in the course of time it dawned on them that 
 Shakespeare took his liberties in a great way, and he was 
 thenceforth considered a genius and a gentleman instead 
 of a barbarian. It ought to begin to dawn upon the minds 
 of men, one thinks, that Browning took his liberties in 
 a great way and that he too is a genius an J a gentleman 
 instead of a barbarian. 
 
 Again, a great poet bids fair to be immortal, — that is, 
 to be read and known for all time. But to reach nil 
 races and all times he must touch the springs of being 
 that have their sources deep in our primal natures, t'^e 
 central and permanent qualities of man, the passion, for 
 instance, of love in its original and primitive strength. 
 And Browning has indeed done well to strike deep into 
 our primitive natures, to give us characters that dare to 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 207 
 
 love in the old-fashioned 'way, that dare to die for love 
 if need be, and that sing their experience in impassioned 
 verse, as does the hero of "In a Gondola." 
 
 There is also a criticism to the effect that Browning's 
 passionate and strenuous characters have no deep sense 
 of self-denial, of renunciation, and of dependence on a 
 Higher Being, and that Browning himself mistakes self- 
 indulgence for self-realization. There may be some truth 
 in this contention, but the point has been over-empha- 
 sized. For the principle of expansion, as Browning uses 
 it, works in two directions. The more one wills to do the 
 more one is aware of and feels dependent on a power out- 
 side himself. The old man in "Rabbi Ben Ezra" strives 
 and learns and dares, welcomes the rebuffs of life, re- 
 joices he is allied to that which doth provide and not par- 
 take, starts out once more on adventures brave and new, 
 and is not afraid. Yet this man most deeply feels that 
 our times are in God's hand, that amid the changes of 
 this earth his own "soul and God stand sure," that he is 
 in constant need of an infinite power: 
 
 But I need, now as then, 
 Thee, God, who mouldest men. 
 
 However strenuous Browning's characters may be, they 
 are almost universally deeply religious in the sense of 
 being dependent upon powers vastly greater than them- 
 selves. 
 
 And from this standpoint again. Browning is justified 
 in his attitude toward external nature and the forces out- 
 side himself. For when a character feels rising up from 
 within a well-spring of passionate and volitional life he 
 will ascribe some of this life to the external universe, and 
 the source of it to a Life outside himself that is greater 
 than he. And this Life may be literally and verily there. 
 
208 BROWNING. 
 
 Thus, in the poem, "Saul," David, rushing out into the 
 darkness after the great moment in which he aroused 
 King Saul from his lethargy and proclaimed the new law 
 of Love, felt that the whole universe was beating with 
 emotion in harmony with his own ; and that there was 
 a power outside himself that was aiding him : 
 
 I know not too well how I found my way home in 
 
 the night. 
 There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and 
 
 to right, 
 Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the 
 
 aware : 
 I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strug- 
 
 glingly there, 
 As a runner beset by the populace famished for 
 ; news — 
 
 Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell 
 
 loosed with her crews; 
 And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled 
 
 and shot 
 Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: 'but 
 
 I fainted not. 
 For the Hand still impelled me at once and support- 
 ed, suppressed 
 All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy 
 
 behest, 
 Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank 
 to rest. 
 The external universe may be as mechanical and imper- 
 sonal as Tennyson said it was, but when life and love and 
 passion and power are in the heart and are "by the pain- 
 throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss," then the 
 external universe itself becomes pliable and plastic and 
 
 God is seen God 
 In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 
 the clod."" 
 
 " "Saul." 
 
PASSION AND WILL. 209 
 
 Some critics have said that Browning rarely attributes 
 emotions to the stars and makes God commingle with the 
 activities of the external universe itself, and that gener- 
 ally he speaks of the external universe as existing inde- 
 pendently. But the essential point here to seize is that, 
 whether the external universe be conceived as a piece of 
 machinery to give the soul its bent, or as a screen which 
 is to hide God's effluence from us somewhat, or as being 
 such a piece of machinery or screen, the spirit 
 of God shines through it and seems to commin- 
 gle with it, — whatever way it be conceived, the 
 point to seize is that David's moment of expe- 
 rience in this poem of "Saul" was an exceptional 
 one and that to Browning the external universe itself 
 is never a fixed thing but something flexible and plastic 
 to the influence of conscious beings — God and man. 
 
 The external universe may indeed be conceived as the 
 habit of God in reflex and mechanical action. There is 
 ordinarily not much consciousness of any sort in it, but 
 God can renew his consciousness in it at will. Just as a 
 man may keep throwing a ball in a purely reflexive and 
 unconscious manner and as he may, on the other hand, 
 become thoroughly alive in mind and body in the throwing 
 of the ball, so God who usually represents the mechanic. 
 cal side of his acts in the external universe may in favor- 
 able moments renew his ancient rapture and intenser life 
 
 the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
 His ancient rapture."' 
 
 " "Paracelsus." 
 
2IO BROWNING. 
 
 Likewise in "By the Fireside" the powers were at play 
 in the forests at the propitious moment and mingled two 
 souls together: 
 
 The forests had done it ; there they stood ; 
 We caught for a moment the powers at play ; 
 They had mingled us so, for once and good, 
 Their work was done — we might go or stay, 
 They relapsed to their ancient mood. 
 
 And man in his higher moments can also renew his own 
 raptures on the hither side of the external universe. In 
 fact, it is man and not the outward and visible world that 
 God himself is primarily interested in, and it is God and 
 not his outward works that man is primarily interested 
 in; and when man's own deeds glorify himself, as in 
 David's case, his own face shines through to God and 
 God's face shines through to him, and the world between 
 becomes an iridescent medium. The outer world, 
 moreover, always receives its significance from 
 the fact that God's face shines from behind it and 
 through it, that the life in the world seems to be walled 
 about with disgrace until God's smile is seen shining 
 through a human face : 
 
 Such a starved bank of moss 
 Till, that May-morn, 
 Blue ran the flash across: 
 'Violets were born ! 
 
 Sky — what a scowl of cloud 
 Till, near and far, 
 Ray on ray split the shroud : 
 Splendid, a star ! 
 
 World — how it walled about 
 Life with disgrace 
 Till God's own smile came out: 
 That w^as thy face !'" 
 
 "The Two Poets of Croisic." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 BROWNING: FREEDOM AND TRANSCENDENT- 
 ALISM. 
 
 We have now seen that Browning laid great stress 
 on the power of free choice in the soul, the self-directing, 
 creative, and expansive power of it ; that he held that 
 if a man can only take the right attitude toward life, 
 in which all the activities of body and mind and soul are 
 employed, there need be no restraint laid on these ac- 
 tivities ; and that by the principle of gain life may be made 
 a process of constant growth, addition, and expansion. 
 But a deeper and more fundamental principle than any of 
 these — a principle closely bound up with these in their 
 practical working, a principle which finds the fullest and 
 most frequent statement everywhere in Browning's po- 
 etry, — is the principle of tiie incompleteness of the world 
 and the imperfections of man. It is the purpose here in 
 particular to point out. wliat seems never to have been 
 clearly pointed out before, the relation this principle has 
 to tlie principle of the freedom of the will. Why does 
 Browning everywhere in his poetry never tire of inveigh- 
 ing against the '"finished and finite clods, untroubled by 
 a spark," and of constantly insisting on the facts that "a 
 man's reach should exceed his grasp" and that on the 
 
212 BROWNING. 
 
 earth are "the broken arcs," if it is not that, outside 
 of the suggestions of immortahty which they contain, 
 they suggest that this universe is not a block universe 
 and its system not a closed system; that this world is not 
 so absolutely fixed and predestined in its existence as it 
 has heretofore seemed, but is hung together more or less 
 loosely with many possiblities of improvement, and that 
 man with his power to repeat "God's process in man's 
 due degree" and with his resuscitating and creating pow- 
 ers is a co-partner with God and is mightily responsible 
 for the future wellbeing and final winding up of the 
 world ? 
 
 In his remarkable book on "Pragmatism," Professor 
 William James says: "Suppose that the world's author 
 put the case to you before creation, saying: 'I am going 
 to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the per- 
 fection of which shall be conditional merely, the condi- 
 tion being that each several agent does its own "level 
 best." I offer you the chance of taking part in such a 
 world. It's safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real 
 adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It 
 is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be 
 done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust 
 yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the 
 
 risk?' There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most 
 
 of us which such a universe would exacly fit. We would 
 
 therefore accept the offer It would be just like 
 
 the world we practically live in ; and loyalty to our old 
 nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world 
 proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living 
 way." Had Professor James had Browning's conception 
 of a rational world in mind he could not have described 
 that conception more accurately, for Browning believed 
 that the world we live in is just such an unfinished and im- 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 213 
 
 perfect world as Professor James describes, a world 
 hanging in tiie balance and depending for its salvation 
 on whether men will do their 'level best' in pulling it 
 through. Even the external world of nature is full of 
 these imperfections and gross misfits. When Childe 
 Roland turned aside into that ominous tract which hides 
 the Dark Tower he found 
 
 Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim, 
 Now patches where some leanness of the soil's 
 Broke into moss or substances like boils ; 
 Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him 
 Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim 
 Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. 
 
 But in spite of the grotesque and terrifying objects that 
 lay in this ominous tract Childe Roland did his 'level best' 
 to find the Tower. He found it, and blew his slug-horn 
 as a token of his victory. Similar misfits, incongruities, 
 and improbabilities exist in the essence of a man's relig- 
 ious faith: 
 
 So, I would rest content 
 With a mere probability, 
 But, probable; the chance must lie 
 Clear on one side, — lie all in rough, 
 So long as there be just enough 
 To pin my faith to, though it hap 
 Only at points : from gap to gap 
 One hangs up a huge curtain so, 
 Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 
 Foldless and flat along the wall. 
 What care I if some interval 
 Of life less plainly may depend 
 On God? I'd hang there to the end.* 
 
 All the way in life from the blotches and patches of 
 the scrubby things of external nature to the wrinkled 
 
 * "Easter Day." 
 
214 BROWNING. 
 
 folds in one's religious faith there is much that is incon- 
 gruous, imperfect, and unfinished. To enforce an in- 
 stance from the passage just quoted, our faith is vital 
 only in spots ; in other spots it is quite dry and arid. Some 
 parts of our experience seem to depend directly on God; 
 others only probably. Only so much of our faith as has 
 been made vital is really worth while. And it is made 
 vital by what the soul does, for the "soul declares itself 
 by "the thing it does." Browning's realism is well shown 
 here. He will call the dead parts of faith dead and not 
 live, even at the risk of making the whole of it look scrap- 
 py and incomplete. And when the dry husks of faith 
 are thus shorn away by this insistent realism, then there is 
 really free play. Then the soul can go on vitalizing it- 
 self by its acts ; it can increase the vitality of those parts 
 of its faith that are already vital ; it can then grow and di- 
 late and expand, as Browning said that it can. Professor 
 James again has a passage to this same effect: "our acts, 
 our turning places, where we seem to ourselves to make 
 ourselves and grow, are the parts of the world to which 
 we are the closest, the parts of which our knowledge is 
 the most intimate and complete. Why should we not 
 take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the 
 actual turning-places and growing places which they seem 
 to be, of the world — why not the workshop of being, 
 where we catch fact in the making, so that nowhere may 
 the world grow in any other kind of way than this?" The 
 conditions are that the world be imperfect and unfinished, 
 full of open gaps and wrinkled folds, that man be a co- 
 partner with God in straightening it out and moving it 
 forward, that he be really in "the workshop of being, 
 where we catch fact in the making," that he mimic cre- 
 ation and add self to self as Browning says; then there is 
 something like genuine freedom in this life, for man's 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 2l5 
 
 acts have power to vitalize and expand life and truth; 
 and they add something to the sum total of existence. 
 This is bracing, indeed. 
 
 In fact the world can easily be conceived as being 
 too nearly fixed in its state, based on too exact laws, like 
 the laws of geometry, to permit any free play in its sev- 
 eral parts, and to encroach on real freedom. In the poem 
 "Easter Day" an imaginary speaker is made to say : 
 
 I would fain 
 'Conceive of the Creator's reign 
 As based upon exacter laws 
 Than creatures build by with applause. 
 In all God's acts — (as Plato cries 
 He doth) — he should geometrize. 
 
 "I see," interrupts the poet himself at this point: 
 
 You would grow as a natural tree, 
 Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. 
 The world is so perfect and entire, 
 Quite above faith, so right and fit ! 
 Go there, walk up and down in it ! 
 No. 
 
 Indeed no ! Browning does not choose to walk up and 
 down in so smug and perfect and finished a little world 
 where everything occurs with geometrical precision and 
 exactness. For what is a man more than a tree or a rock 
 if the universe executes itself in him with the same pre- 
 ciseness and mechanical exactness as 't seems to do in 
 these objects ? If man have the power to aspire upward to 
 heaven and to wish to escape the gulf of "infernal laugh- 
 ter," 
 
 Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, 
 
 Man's face, have no more play and action 
 
 Than joy which is crystallized forever, 
 
 Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?' 
 
 " "Old Pictures in Florence." 
 
2l6 BROWNING. 
 
 A world of geometrical precision, of crystallized joy, and 
 of petrified grief is not the world to be chosen to walk in. 
 Yet to walk in a world opposite from this is not easy 
 but very difficult. It was not ease, however, that Brown- 
 ing was seeking; it was freedom. And it is hard to live 
 in a world not perfect nor entire, in a world of uncertain- 
 ties, dangers and risks. "It is hard," as Browning says, 
 "to be a Christian." One must be willing to pay the price 
 that freedom demands. It is hard, however, to see just 
 what the price is, and how freedom can be obtained at all. 
 In this same poem of "Easter Day" Browning puts the 
 difficulty point blank : 
 
 And certainly you name the point 
 
 Whereon all turns: for could you joint 
 
 This flexile finite life once tight 
 
 Into the fixed and infinite, 
 
 You, safe inside, would spurn what's out, 
 
 With carelessness enough, no doubt — 
 
 Would spurn mere life : but when time brings 
 
 To their next stage your reasonings, 
 
 Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink 
 
 Nor see the path so well, I think. 
 
 How this flexible and finite world can fit tightly into the 
 fixed and finished — this is the central and crucial problem 
 and does indeed make one's eyes wink and fail to see the 
 path clearly. 
 
 And thus we come full circle to the problem toward 
 which the discussion on Tennyson gravitated. Tennyson 
 said that a large part of this universe of existence, say 
 three-fourths of it, is in a state of permanence and fixed- 
 ness. The other fourth, which is the all-important mar- 
 gin — the inner life of man — is free, based on the principle 
 of miracle. This was Tennyson's explanation of man's 
 freedom and his mediation between fact and faith. But 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 217 
 
 Browning struck a far deeper blow for liberty. In his 
 opposition to scientific materialism and fixedness in gen- 
 eral, Browning, roused like a lion in his lair, came for- 
 ward to assert with all the strength that was in him that 
 man in his highest moments becomes aware that all the 
 postulates of geometrical fixedness and determinism can 
 be made pliable and plastic, that the whole world is mal- 
 leable as though it were just in the process of making, 
 that man who is a "God though in the germ" has no mean 
 but a free and independent part in making it ; and that 
 the imperfections in man and the gaps and terrible misfits 
 in the external world which produce groanings unutter- 
 able, the incompleteness without and within man, prove 
 positively that he has plenty of free play for the exercise 
 of his god-like gifts, and that the soul has a vast deal to 
 accomplish here below. The shortcomings, then, of this 
 life and of this world are not fatal things in themselves 
 but are the one means of offering a great possiblity to 
 man — the possibility of endless improvement on them and 
 saving them to higher things. There is, of course, an in- 
 grained tendency in us to sink in the scale — to become 
 "finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark." But 
 this is death to the soul. Dauntless courage and high 
 emprise alone can save us from that. j\Ian must accept 
 this life strenuously and robustiously. He must be willing 
 and anxious to take great risks and to bear the suspense 
 of uncertainties. \'ast alternatives lie before him. It re- 
 quires the energy of will to attain the higher alternative: 
 
 Let a man contend to the uttermost 
 
 For his life's set prize, be it what it will I' 
 
 In this direction lies salvation. and, without being a Brown- 
 ingite, one may well ask, what other way is there? And 
 
 "The Statue and the Bust." 
 
2l8 BROWNING. 
 
 when a soul has chosen the better part and contended to 
 the uttermost, it is secure against all powers whatsoever, 
 because for it forever 
 
 God's in his heaven — 
 All's right with the world !* 
 
 Broadly speaking, the difference in spirit between 
 ancient civilization in general and Greek civilization in 
 particular on the one hand, and modern civilization on 
 the other, is that whereas the ancients had a keen sense 
 of Nemesis, of an inexorable fate, of determinism, of 
 fatalism running through all things, men of modern civi- 
 lization have a keen sense of free-will and freedom, the 
 sense that truth rises from within and that the soul is 
 master of its own fate. In the scientific movement, how- 
 ever, of the nineteenth century and of the present, with 
 its endless classifications and tabulations, with its minute 
 analytical processes, with its vast increase of geometrical 
 exactness and completeness, there has been a strong ten- 
 dency to emphasize the spirit of fatalism of the ancients ; 
 yet the counter-tendency toward freedom has been and is 
 a growing tendency. Out of all the fatalistic philoso- 
 phies of the ancients, out of the very heart of ancient civ- 
 ilization there rose one figure, stalwart, vast, colossal, su- 
 perhuman in its dimensions, that cried the deepest cry 
 of the human scul and expressed its deepest need: 
 "What shall it profit a man, if he shall giin the whole 
 world, and lose his own soul?"' and ''JVJ.owcvcr zciJl shall 
 drink of the water of life freely," declaring once for all 
 the soul's worth an J asserting its supreme power of mak- 
 ing its own free choice. Out of the heart of the nine- 
 teenth century civilization there rose a figure, stalwart and 
 
 * "Pippa Passes." 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 219 
 
 vast, that struck ringing blows for the soul's worth and 
 the soul's freedom on the new and modern basis of the 
 world's incompleteness and man's imperfections. .\nd 
 perhaps since the days of Christ there has been no one 
 who has more persistently and dauntlessly asserted the 
 energ}' and power and freedom and central importance of 
 the soul of man than has Robert Browning. 
 
 Having this deep affinity with the religion of Christ 
 It is but natural that Browning should have directly ac- 
 cepted the person of Christ in his personal religion and 
 should have made one of his characters in a poem say 
 to another: 
 
 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! mj^ 
 
 flesh, that I seek 
 In the Godhead! I seek and I land it. O Saul, it shall 
 
 be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like 
 
 to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever : a Hand 
 
 like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See 
 
 the Christ stand.* 
 
 And that he should have in his own person spoken of 
 the Face of Christ that grows upon one rather than van- 
 ishes, of 
 
 That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
 
 Or decomposes but to recompose, 
 
 Become my universe that feels and knows !' 
 
 ' "Saul." 
 
 ' "Epilogue to Dramatis Persona?." 
 
220 BROWNING. 
 
 11 
 
 Browning's idea of truth is of a piece with his idea 
 of will and freedom, and it is at once realistic and tran- 
 scendental. Browning practiced the same realism on 
 truth as he did on faith. As some parts of our faith are 
 more vital and other parts less vital and some dead, and 
 as we must pare away the less vital and dead at the risk 
 of incompleteness, so truth to us is truth only to the de- 
 gree that it has been vitalized by our experience. Truth 
 is a term almost synonymous with experience. Brown- 
 ing's idea of it is in open conflict with Clough's famous 
 lines: 
 
 It fortifies my soul to know 
 That, though I perish, Truth is so.'' 
 
 Browning does not deny that there may be an objective 
 standard of truth, but what he insists on in particular is 
 that truth in order to be live truth must have an expe- 
 riencer, one who practices it ; otherwise truth is dead and 
 barren : 
 
 Whom do you count the worst man upon earth? 
 Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more 
 Of what right is, than arrives at birth 
 In the best man's acts that we bov/ before: 
 This last knows better — ^true, but my fact is, 
 'Tis one thing to know, and another to practice. 
 And thence I conclude that the real God-function 
 Is to furnish a motive and an injunction 
 For practicing what we know already.^ 
 
 Truth is vitalized by practicing what we know ; the "soul 
 declares itself" by 'the thing it does" — let this never be 
 forgotten ; it is only by experienceing it that truth has 
 any practical worth ; we are constantly in the act of mak- 
 
 '"It Fortifies My Soul to Know." 
 * "Christmas Eve." 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 221 
 
 ing truth ; and the real God-function is to furnish a motive 
 to practice what we already know, to make truth alive by 
 practice. 
 
 But motives lie in the heart and in the feelings, and 
 it is by the dictates and demands of the heart that we 
 determine what we will have our truth to be : 
 
 The human heart's best; you prefer 
 
 Making that prove the minister 
 
 To truth ; you prove its wants and needs, 
 
 And hopes and fears, then try what creeds 
 
 Meet these most aptly, — resolute 
 
 That faith plucks such substantial fruit 
 
 Wherever these two correspond." 
 
 It is the heart — its wants and needs, its hopes and fears 
 — that is the selecting agent in vitalizing truth ; an agent 
 in whose selections and directions we are to put absolute 
 faith. "Talk of logic and necessity and categories and the 
 absolute and the contents of the whole philosophical ma- 
 chine-shop as you will, the only real reason I can think 
 of why anything should ever come is that some one zvish- 
 cs it to be here. It is demanded, demanded, it may be, to 
 give relief to no matter how small a fraction of the 
 world's mass. This is living reason, and compared with 
 it material causes and logical necessities are spectral 
 things."" The heart indeed is best. Its wishes and de- 
 mands come nearer to living reason and living 
 truth than "logic and necessity and categories and the ab- 
 solute." Intuitive truth is far more vital than logical 
 truth. In attempting to describe on the witness stand 
 the way in which a new and important truth came to him, 
 one of Browning's characters in "The Ring and the Book" 
 says: 
 
 "Easter Day." 
 
 William James, "Pragmatism." 
 
aai BROWNING. 
 
 "Thought?" nay Sirs, what shall follow was not thought: 
 
 I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard. 
 
 I have stood before, gone round a serious thing. 
 
 Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close. 
 
 As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar, 
 
 God and Man, and what duty I owe both, — 
 
 I dare to say I have confronted these 
 
 In thought : but no such faculty helped here. 
 
 I put forth no thought, — powerless, all that night 
 
 I paced the city : it was the first Spring. 
 
 By the invasion I lay passive to. 
 
 In rushed new things, the old were rapt awav.^" 
 
 Thus the heart can intuitively arrive at a conclusion — 
 a new and satisfying truth — which logic miserably fails 
 to reach at all. 
 
 Browning, moreover, completely reverses the concep- 
 tion that truth is to be acquired from without, and makes 
 the truth to proceed outward from an inmost center with- 
 in us. This is a central position with Browning, and is 
 in full harmony with the conception that the soul of man 
 is free and creative, self-directing and self-developing, 
 independent of heredity and environment: 
 
 There is an inmost center in us all, 
 Where truth abides in fulness ; and around. 
 Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
 This perfect, clear perception — which is truth. 
 A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
 Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know. 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without." 
 
 But truth is also and in far fuller measure in the Heart 
 of God : 
 
 *' Caponsacchi. 
 ""Paracelsus." 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 223 
 
 The truth in God's breast 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 
 Though he is so bright and we so dim, 
 We are made in his image to witness him.'" 
 
 And vvlien wc try to express the idea of these two pas- 
 sages in one, that is, when we attempt to draw the center 
 of truth in God into harmony with the center of truth in 
 ourselves, we get the following : 
 
 Truth inside, and outside, truth also ; and between 
 Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is permanence. 
 The individual soul works through the shows of sense, 
 (Which, ever proving false, still promise to be true) 
 Up to an outer soul as individual too; 
 And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the fixed, 
 And reach at length, 'God, man, or both together mixed.'" 
 
 And God's very Self thus comes so near to our self that 
 
 He glows above 
 With scarce an intervention, presses close 
 And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours."" 
 
 And this reminds us of Wordsworth and the truth 
 of mysticism, for the heart of mysticism lies in the effort 
 of a man to put himself at once at the center of his own 
 being and at the center of God's being and make those 
 two centers, not imaginatively, but actually, identical. 
 And this is what Browning attempts to do in these pas- 
 sages. Yet Browning is not strictly speaking a mystic. 
 lie is characteristically Browning and not Wordsworth, 
 The last three passngcs quoted are exceptional rather than 
 typical, and throughout his poetry as a whole Browning 
 is far less concerned about the mystic union of God and 
 man than about the nature of man himself. Though man 
 aspires up to God with boundless aspiration, yet he keeps 
 
 "Christmas Eve." 
 Fifine at the Fair." 
 "Lr.ria." 
 
224 BROWNING. 
 
 his own identity intact. He remains flesh and blood all 
 the while. It is not the whole of the infinite that interests 
 Browning but just so much of the infinite as can be cram- 
 med and packed into finite man. So Browning may be 
 called, if distinction in terms may be made, a transcen- 
 dentalist rather than a mystic; a transcendentalist, first, 
 because for him the basis of truth lies in our inner intui- 
 tions, passions, and volitions rather than in logical catego- 
 ries, and secondly, because he concerns himself mainly 
 with these same intuitions and passions and volitions, 
 their nature and their development, rather than with the 
 mystic union of God with man. 
 
 The dift'erences between transcendentalism and mysti- 
 cism are on the surface and in the intonations of the 
 words. There are no fundamental differences between 
 them. They are both born of the will. They are both 
 characterized by intensity and innerness. Mysticism is 
 generally reserved to express the greater degree of inten- 
 sity and innerness. Transcendentalism remains within 
 the bounds of the articulate, while mysticism tends to 
 hover about the points where speech drops into silence. 
 Transcendentalism concerns itself with man's inner life 
 of passions and volitions, while mysticism is concerned 
 with the union of this inner life with the life of God. 
 Transcendentalism emphasizes the present and looks to- 
 ward the future, while mysticism has a passion for the 
 past. Mysticism, however, annuls the past by transcend- 
 ing time, and lives in the present. Transcendentalism 
 may be called realistic mysticism. 
 
 Browning's mystical tendencies, which we have term- 
 ed transcendentalism, take two directions. Far more 
 interesting than the mystic union of God and man, is the 
 union of soul with soul and the soul of man with the soul 
 of Christ w^ho was an earthly character. And these tw^o 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 225 
 
 things are profoundly characteristic of Browning. Tlicy 
 show his strong sense of rcahsm. The characters of men 
 and tlie character of Christ are tangible objects, and one 
 can deal with them in a tangible way. Browning always 
 insists on dealing with objects tangibly and on calling 
 things by their right names. He insists on calling a pas- 
 sion a passion and not something else, a dead 
 feeling a dead one and a quickened feeling a 
 quickened one, no matter what radical or liber- 
 al conclusion this resolute realism may lead to. 
 But however realistically one may deal with the intui- 
 tions, passions, and wills of men, these qualities are 
 forever the substance of idealism and transcendentalism. 
 We may say, then, that Browning dealt realistically with 
 transcendental matter; and no doubt this statement is 
 very near the truth in spite of its being a paradox. 
 
 Truth is not only actualized experience, and from 
 within and intuitive, but it is highly personal and trans- 
 cendental. Each person's truth is different from every 
 other person's, just as each person is different from every 
 other person. "Never," says Browning, "shall I believe 
 any two souls were made similar:" 
 
 Take the least man of all mankind, as I ; 
 Look at his head and heart, find how and why 
 He differs from his fellows utterly." 
 
 As man differs utterly from his fellows, so his truth, 
 vitalized in his experience, dift'ers likewise. What is 
 truth to one may be darkness to another. Thus in the 
 poem "My Star" this is most beautifully enforced: 
 
 ""Epilogue to Dramatis Personoe." 
 
226 BROWNING. 
 
 All that I know 
 
 Of a certain star 
 
 Is, it can throw 
 
 (Like the angled spar) 
 
 Now a dart of red, 
 
 Now a dart of blue ; 
 
 Till my friends have said 
 
 They would fain see, too, 
 My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
 Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 
 They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
 What matter to me if their star is a world? 
 Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. 
 
 Thus trtith is intensely personal and depends for its dis- 
 closure upon the experiencer. 
 
 But, however much man differs from his fellows and 
 however much one man's truth differs from another's, 
 souls need each other here below in love and friendship 
 and must possess each other. In this direction truth, in 
 its greatest power, lies, for here man has his deepest 
 and most vital experiences. Love is better than states- 
 manship, soldiership, poetry, sculpture, or music. Brown- 
 ing tells us in "The Last Ride Together;" it is truly 
 the greatest thing in the world. "Love is best," emphat- 
 ically. It cannot be doubted that the attraction which 
 souls here in the flesh have for each other was the deep- 
 est of all the deep and varied interests of Browning. 
 
 These experiences of soul union are highly intuitional 
 and mystical and are. at their deepest, utterly beyond the 
 power of words. Science and philosophy can express 
 many truths of life that point toward the inner core of 
 experience. Poetry can strike an attitude of mind and 
 render an experience that comes far nearer the inner 
 core of experience than that which science and philoso- 
 phy can render. But the inner experience of soul attrac- 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM, 227 
 
 tion goes far beyond the power of poetry to communi- 
 cate. Every creature can boast two soul-sides, one open 
 to the world and communicable, the other open only to 
 love and incommunicable : 
 
 God be tlianked, the meanest of his creatures 
 Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
 One to show a woman when he loves her! 
 
 This I say of me, but think of you. Love! 
 
 This to you — yourself my moon of poets! 
 
 Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder. 
 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you ! 
 
 There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 
 
 Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
 
 But the best is when I glide from out them, 
 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight. 
 
 Come out on the other side, the novel 
 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of. 
 
 Where I hush and bless myself with silence.'* 
 
 It is easy enough to give praise to a poetess. Any one 
 may "dare to phrase it," but that is the world's side of her. 
 When, however, one is in love with a poetess and crosses 
 a step or two of dubious twilight and feels the spell of 
 silent silver lights and darks undreamed of it is far better 
 for one to hush and bless himself with silence: 
 
 Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 
 Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 
 Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 
 Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom !'" 
 
 Browning indeed sang it in his brain, in his experience, 
 but not in his poetry, for the deepest experience of love is 
 inarticulate. And Browning never attempted to give 
 utterance to the inarticulate. The heart can never unlock 
 itself fully. Nor even did Shakespeare unlock his heart: 
 
 'One Word More." 
 
228 BROWNING. 
 
 'With this same key [Sonnet] 
 Shakespeare unlocked his heart,' once more ! 
 Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!" 
 
 Now, love, which is intensely personal and which is 
 the deepest essence of truth, is also the essence of the life 
 of Christ, for Christ 
 
 Himself conceived of life as love, 
 Conceived of love as what must enter in, 
 Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved/* 
 
 And since love is the deepest essence of truth and since 
 Christ conceived of life as love and entered into mystic 
 union with "each soul he loved," it can be conceived that 
 
 The acknowledgement of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 
 
 These are the words of the dying John in the Desert, but 
 they harmonize with Browning's own words about the 
 Face of Christ which never vanishes but grows, and has. 
 Browning says. 
 
 Become my universe that feels and knows ! 
 
 Browning's religion was neither traditional nor or- 
 thodox. It was highly individualistic. The two funda- 
 mental principles of the soul — Love and Power — Christ 
 realized to the full in his life. Browning arbitrarily but 
 enthusiastically seized upon these principles and made 
 them his own. He had no deep sense of sin and 
 of the necessity of redemption. He consequently did not 
 make much of the principle of redemption, which plays 
 such an important part in traditional and orthodox Chris- 
 
 " "House." 
 
 ""A Death in the Desert." 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 229 
 
 tianity. But he felt the deepest affinity with the person 
 of Christ through the agency of Love and Power, and 
 made these fundamental soul elements the basis of his 
 religion. 
 
 Alan thus is the measure of all things terrcstial for 
 Browning. With him we are plunged into the world 
 within; but we find it a very large world indeed, a world 
 of deep and inexhaustible well springs of life, of impris- 
 oned splendors, pent up, ready to burst out as in a deluge 
 and escape, "radiance vast, to be elicited ray by ray," "new 
 dreamed energies," "power and love and will" with an 
 "unmeasured thirst for good," intuitions, passions and 
 volitions, vast and boundless. This world is also large 
 enough to contain many and great imperfections. Im- 
 mature instincts, unsure purposes, embryonic thoughts, 
 escaped fancies, foolish dreams — these are all inextri- 
 cably mixed up with the other soul goods and give them 
 plenty of work to do and plenty of free play. And truth 
 to Browning is just so much of these forces, mature or 
 immature, sure or unsure, embryonic or otherwise, as 
 get themselves realized in experience. Truth may be de- 
 fined as the amount of work which the soul does, the 
 additions to being that it makes, the expansions and the 
 dilations. Truth is defined in the terms — abundant life 
 and freedom. 
 
 What are Browning's ideas of God and immortality? 
 They are just what we would naturally expect after 
 having examined his ideas of truth and freedom. There 
 is through the whole of his poetry a continual and pas- 
 sionate insistence on faith in immortality and the need of 
 God in the soul, accompanied by vague and indefinite 
 notions as to the conditions of immortality and the na- 
 ture of God. The mere fact that the heart passionately 
 demands immortalitv is abundant reason to believe that 
 
230 BROWNING. 
 
 it is to have immortality. This is a living reason and 
 ought to be convincing. Passion and love, energy and 
 power, are such good things in themselves that they ought 
 to continue forever, so that this world cannot be the "be 
 all and end all" of life. The more that a man feels that 
 he is a "God though in the germ" and the more he is at 
 the same time conscious of vast imperfections, the more 
 he will demand another world than this for the full real- 
 ization of himself. Besides, those souls that have chosen 
 >vorthily and loved passionately but have, on account 
 of unfortunate circumstances or ill-fitted environment, 
 tailed here in love and achievement, as for instance, the 
 speaker in "Evelyn Hope," may possess themselves in 
 patience and look to another world for the things they 
 missed on earth. Again, the imperfections of this life 
 certainly suggest beginnings of a larger life to be carried 
 on otherwise : 
 
 On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect 
 round. 
 
 And thus God and immortality are abundantly assured 
 to the soul. 
 
 On the vagueness and indefiniteness of Browning's 
 notions of God and immortality much might be said, but 
 the statements here must be brief. From such poems as 
 "Evelyn Hope" and "The Last Ride Together" it is not 
 very certain whether in heaven the immortals are given 
 in marriage or are not given in marriage ; and this is emi- 
 nently typical of all that Browning has to offer on the 
 subject of immortality as a state for the blessed. In like 
 manner God is sometimes conceived as the all-complete, 
 infinite perfection, and as never changing, and sometimes 
 again as in a state, like ourselves, of realizing his own 
 possibilities. God is indeed omnipotent, omnipresent, and 
 
TKANSCKNUUNTALISM. 23I 
 
 omniscient, and yet man may possibly "worst e'en the 
 Giver in one gift" and "o'ertake God's own speed in the 
 one way of love." Though from the dread Sabaoth"strcam 
 the worlds, life and nature," yet man's own aspirations 
 and imperfections and sacrifices may contain something 
 that arouses the jealousy of the Divine Mind. And thus 
 the contradictions of indefiniteness run. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, the problem heretofore men- 
 tioned as the crucial problem, how the flexible finite can 
 be tightly fitted into the fixed and infinite. What is 
 Browning's solution of it? His solution consists mainly 
 in substituting something else for it and ignoring the 
 problem proper. That is, he insists on the flexibility and 
 changeableness of the finite and concerns himself little 
 with the fixedness of the infinite. The infinite as a whole 
 is uninteresting; only so much of it is interesting as 
 can be actualized in finite experience. In fact, 
 such terms as the fixed, infinite, neverchanging 
 law, the absolute, predestination, are little more than so 
 many names to Browning. They do not make for free- 
 dom. They are not vitalized in his experience and there- 
 fore are no living truth to him. Browning would say it is 
 enough to know that the world here and now is imperfect, 
 changeable, flexible, malleable and flowing, and that man's 
 soul forever yearns up to God, that man is free and that 
 he can exercise his love and power and will, his resusci- 
 tating and regenerating powers, in moulding the world 
 and in determining his own destiny. And beyond that — 
 "With God be the rest:" 
 
 Enough now, if the Right 
 And Good and Infinite 
 Be named here.'" 
 
 ' "'Rablii Ben Ezra." 
 
232 BROWNING. 
 
 Browning thus takes a genuinely realistic, flesh and 
 blood attitude toward things finite, flexible, and incom- 
 plete, but a very colorless attitude toward things fixed 
 and rigid, the unchangeableness of law. And the reason 
 for it is plain. One who insists on the idea that every 
 man "differs utterly from his fellows," that each one's 
 truth and each one's God is materially different from that 
 of his fellows, and that each individual is endowed with 
 something like the God-creating power of adding self to 
 self, is driven, by strict logic at least, to hold something 
 of a pluralistic rather than a monistic view of the uni- 
 verse, that there are creative energies in the world inde- 
 pendent of each other. This is the logic of the situation, 
 and if Browning were a technical philosopher he would 
 have to take some such position. But Browning is not 
 a technical philosopher and does not follow the strict log- 
 ic of the situation. His intuitions and imagination teach 
 him otherwise, and he always takes the monistic view. 
 Yet the sum total of things which involve one Faith, one 
 never-changing Law, and one God, are feebly dealt with 
 by him. Feebly because the greatness and absolute diver- 
 sity of gifts which he generously distributes to so 
 many creatures give him a weak hold on the entirety, 
 the wholeness, and the unity of all things. Browning's 
 system, if we may use such a dry word in this place, is 
 decidedly an open system where there is great room for 
 endless expansion and freedom ; and expansion and free- 
 dom are the things for which he pre-eminently stands. 
 
 The best parts about any great poet's system, as far 
 as he has any such thing, is that it is not only inarticu- 
 late but that it is open. This is necessary in order to give 
 free play to the poet's creative energy. Wordsworth's 
 system was especially an open system; but Browning's 
 was more decidedly so. Browning, like all poets, was in 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 233 
 
 love with existence, but existence in the concrete, and 
 concrete objects that seem free and independent. And 
 these free and concrete objects of the universe are so 
 various in kind and infinite in number that they will not 
 fall into any closed or complete system. The fundament- 
 al ideas of system are unity, harmony of parts, likeness 
 of pattern, and a fixed principle lying underneath and 
 running through all. And against this idea of fixed prin- 
 ciple freedom rebels. Browning's "all's love, yet all's 
 law" means mainly that all's love and freedom. It means 
 the indulgence of 
 
 Everj- instinct of the soul 
 There where law, life, joy, impulse, are one thing !^ — 
 
 which is pronounced to be "the ultimate angels' law." 
 Browning has by no means shown how the flexible finite 
 fits into the fixed infinite. How such diverse things as 
 good and evil can exist in the same universe and have 
 their source in the same author, how impersonal law 
 and personal freedom, how predestination and free-will, 
 how^ fixedness and flexibility can ever be harmonized in 
 a world of fact, — these problems have not been solved by 
 Browning. We should not expect him, nor any other poet, 
 to solve them. We should expect him to take a character- 
 istic attitude toward thcni ; and a characteristic and con- 
 sistent attitude Browning has taken. Every man, be he 
 philosopher, poet, or practical man of affairs, takes, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, an attitude toward them. We 
 are hoping they may be solved sometime in the future. 
 The race does not despair of such things. But it is enough 
 in these pages to know that however weakly he dealt with 
 
 "A Death in the Desert." 
 
234 BROWNING. 
 
 the unity and sum total of things, Robert Browning has 
 given by far the most powerful exposition in modern 
 times of the soul's individual worth and power, and of 
 man's boundless energy and freedom. * 
 
 * See Note 7, Appendix. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BROWNING: ART AND LIBERALIS:^!. 
 
 Bro\vniiig_wiis..^ liberal in art. as well as iii liis.pliil- 
 osoph3^ of life. He was not s ^ti&lied with the conven- 
 tional_forms of art and proceeded to create new forms. 
 He was dissatisfied with the usual metrical schemes for 
 poems and e^^ierioieDted with new meters. He was dar- 
 ing in the use of phraseology that is heard in common 
 speech and that is often near the improper. He took 
 liberties with sentence construction by suppressing the 
 less important words for the sake of condensation, and 
 by collocating words in unusual ways. He w as a_ liberal 
 in in troducing commonplace associations of life into his 
 poetry and TTruTgTng in concrete imagery that is not tra- 
 ditionally considered beautiful. 
 
 Xll'5ilSl?.J?'s_work_shows irregularities and sometimes 
 unpardonable license, tliemain effec t of it has been to 
 show the variety of uses to which our metrical system can 
 be piut, lo enlarge the range of the English language in 
 expression, to give wider scope to the use of concrete 
 objects in poetry, to make poetry approximate more near- 
 ly to the real and detailed things of life than has been 
 supposed to be possible, and to save to poetry such things 
 as pins, axes, crowbars, umbrellas, creaking pianos, blind 
 horses, and ragged thistle-stalks, wjtli which some of our 
 most common and sometimes deepest affections are as- 
 sodated. ~ 
 
236 r.ROVVNIXG. 
 
 This realistic attitude in Browning towarH things 
 actual is matched only by his transcendental attitude 
 toward those same things. It is only when they can be 
 set to the music of life that they are of value. It is only 
 when they can be made to associate with a life that is 
 filled with passion and power that they become signifi- 
 cant. It is only when this life itself can be made to ex- 
 pand and dilate that it can be saved to art and to truth. 
 Poetry is the art by which we give a new and higher eval- 
 uation to both the outer and inner life of things. The 
 finite everywhere, — and the finite of Browning always 
 means something very realistic and often something very 
 homely, — must partake of the infinite. It must be filled 
 with the power and glory of heaven, like Boehme's rose, 
 celebrated in the verse of some stout John of Halber- 
 stadt : 
 
 He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes, 
 And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, 
 Over us, under, round us every side, . . . 
 Buries us with a glory, young once more, 
 Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.^ 
 
 This way of conceiving a thing at once as actual and 
 ideal, realistic and transcendental, of exercising the see- 
 ing eye upon it with great definiteness, and yet perceiving 
 in it inexhaustible life and beauty without allowing it to 
 lose its identity one whit — this is an absolute requisite 
 for great art. Let great art be realistic if it pleases, (and 
 it is often terribly realistic in no juggling sense of that 
 term, more truly than the art that calls itself realistic), 
 but it must also be creative and idealizing. There is no 
 contradiction in the seeming paradox that it can be at 
 
 ^ "Transcendentalism." 
 
ART AND LIBERALISM. 237 
 
 once the most realistic and the most transcendental. It 
 has a hunger for facts and also for new idealizations. 
 And it is large enough to represent in itself a great deal 
 of both. It is really dilating and expansive, for it pos- 
 sesses abundant life. There perhaps has never been an 
 actual human character in the Anglo-Saxon race, unless 
 it were Shakespeare himself, with as full a life of power 
 and will and passion as, say, the character, Othello. So 
 that though this character makes an impression on us of 
 actuality, of flesh and blood qualities, he impresses us 
 too as having something additional, the created energy 
 and power the artist gave him — something more than 
 fact. 
 
 But the largeness of mould into which great art casts 
 its characters and the passion and will and freedom 
 which it displays and the liberty it takes confound the 
 prudent and the wise. It shatters their little matter-of- 
 fact systems to pieces. Dying for love, and happily too, 
 as some of Browning's characters do, seems in the eyes 
 of these persons an outrage to humanity. No doubt the 
 smug and learned pharisee was astounded beyond all 
 measure at the extraordinary liberties the Teacher took 
 who first uttered the words "Ye have heard that it hath 
 been said. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine 
 enemy. But I say unto you. Love your enemies, bless 
 them that curse you," etc., for this seemed to reach the 
 extreme limit of imprudence and to be against all tradi- 
 tion and convention. No doubt the prudential and the 
 compromising have little sympathy for poor Desdemona 
 in the play who blessed him that cursed her and who 
 meekly submitted to her fate and died for love without as 
 much as raising a hand to assert her rights and dignity as 
 a woman. No doubt prim makers of systems feel like 
 clenching their teeth at such similar perversions of their 
 
238 BROWNING. 
 
 systems as are implied in the following suggestions of 
 Browning on the secret of becoming a master of men: 
 
 Resolve, for first step, to discard 
 Nine-tenths of what you are! To make, you must be 
 
 marred, — 
 To raise your race, must stoop, — to teach them aught, 
 
 must learn 
 Ignorance, meet halfway what most 3^ou hope to spurn 
 r the sequel So may you master men.° 
 
 To brush aside traditions and conventions, to assert 
 the maxims of the simple which confound the wise, to 
 insist on stooping in order to rise, to penetrate through 
 the show of things into things themselves, to reach the 
 original sources of life and love and to find life and love 
 in abundant overflow, to live for love rather than for 
 ^ fame, to will mightily to die for love if need be — these 
 are the paradoxical but inspiring ideals of the masters of 
 life and of men. It is first eminently worth while to be- 
 come thoroughly alive — alive in body and brain and 
 ^ mind and soul, and then to accept cheerfully the con- 
 
 sequences that this kind of living may bring. Alive in 
 two senses — ^in the common, practical sense of living and 
 in the idealistic creative sense, which is dilating and ex- 
 pansive. And to meet these latter and higher demands 
 of life the artist is constantly impelled, as Wordsworth 
 said, to create intuitions and passions and volitions in 
 the universe where he does not find them. And in the 
 interest of more abundant life, Browning is a grand ful- 
 fillment of the statement of Wordsworth. By the sheer 
 power and intensity of passion and will Wordsworth in 
 his best moments penetrated the hearts of men and the 
 universe more deeply perhaps than Browning ever did. 
 
 '-^ 
 
 ^ "Fifine at the Fair.' 
 
ART AND LIBERALISM. 239 
 
 But his penetration was intensive rather than broadly 
 universal, and in this sense he himself is the best fulfill- 
 ment of his own statement. Yet Wordsworth's great 
 moments were comparatively few, and the restraints he 
 placed on life in many directions prevented the forces of 
 sense and passion from bursting forth into energy and 
 power in any flood-tide in his poetry. Brmvjiing, on 
 the other hand, wiilr gr-eater sustained energy, with his 
 principle af_fl£sli_and_ soul equilibrium, and his princi- 
 ple of gain and expansion, made the pent up intuitions and 
 passions and volitions of the soul dilate with energy and 
 power that have something of Shakespearean magnitude 
 about them. Browning was a genuine liberal in art. 
 
 But this full flood-tide of passion and energy in 
 Browning is precisely what alienates some critics. They 
 say he has no reticence, no reserve, that his imagination 
 does not exercise a selective power in repressing the ugly 
 and seizing the beautiful, and that his style is too profuse 
 to show any economy of attention. Such criticism tends 
 to obscure the issue. For what is the state of the case 
 with Browning? LtOok at the long series of dramatic 
 monologues like "Saul," "Cleon," "Abt Vogler," "Rabbi .^ 
 Ben Ezra," "My Last Ducliess," etc., and find anywhere in 
 literature from a single hand an equal amount of poetic 
 matter condensed into so narrow a space. It may be 
 said tliat these poems are the very quintessence of econ- 
 omized expression. Of the dramatic monologue Profes- 
 sor E. Johnson writes : "The introduction of a second 
 person acting powerfully upon the speaker throughout, 
 draws the latter forth into a more complete and varied 
 expression of his mind. The silent person in the back- 
 ground, who may be all the time master of the situation, 
 supplies a powerful stimulus to the imagination." This 
 condensed art form, which is a favorite with Brownmg, 
 
240 BROWNING. 
 
 I furnishes an offset to the fulness of life of his characters. 
 Browning's own art ideal is expressed in Andrea's de- 
 scription of art in "Andrea del Sarto:" 
 
 Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 
 Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see. 
 Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 
 / Above and through his art — for it gives way. 
 
 To fill a form so full of expanding life that the life in it 
 tends to reach above and through the form and make the 
 form itself give way — this is Browning's ideal of art. 
 -^"^ And when this ideal is attained, as it frequently is in 
 Browning, it insures to us three of the most satisfying 
 and enduring qualities of style — iinaginativ^ force, ex- 
 pressiveness, vitality. Such qualities of style we find in 
 their highest form in, for example, "Saul." The wild 
 joys of physical living, the vast aspirations arising from 
 a noble willingness to do and die for another, the engen- 
 dering powers of spiritual love, the shaking of the very 
 heavens themselves with this new instrument of love — 
 these powers, vividly conjured up from the infinite depths 
 of life and compressed within the narrow compass of the 
 poem, give a powerful stimulus to the imagination, de- 
 mand and attain a wonderful expressiveness from the 
 language itself, and make the poem deeply vital through- 
 out. The tension produced between the swelling life 
 within and the form in which it is contained makes the 
 poem sensitive and alive at every point. It gives the 
 poem life, individuality, independent existence, makes of 
 it a creation — a creation that can take care of itself in 
 this world as well as can any other created thing upon 
 which has been bestowed the gift of life. 
 
 The dramatic monologue of Browning achieves com- 
 pression, expressiveness, and vitality in another way. 
 
ART AND LIHKRALISM. 24 1 
 
 Browning is not concerned with the whole life history 
 of a soul. There are all kinds of experiences that are 
 barren in their influence on character, and these are pass- 
 ed over in silence. There are others that are fruitful. 
 They may be trivial, but they are significant. The fruit- 
 ful and significant experiences, chiefly those associated 
 with the mind in a state of excitement, or those connected 
 with a central and critical experience of the character, 
 are seized upon and rendered in the monologue.J Brown- 
 ing seizes his character at a point where he can watch 
 the inner "play and action"' of his mind, where he "catch- 
 es fact in the making," where he can press close to the 
 character's inner experience, where he can see back over 
 his character's earlier career and see what former expe- 
 riences cast their shadows on the present, where he can 
 take a look into his character's future and get glimpses of 
 what is to be. It is precisely at that nexus where thought 
 enters into action that we receive a flashlight of personal- 
 ity, a revelation of human motive and conduct. It is 
 there that we get the deepest insight into human charac- 
 ter. And Browning, working in this deeper stratum of 
 human nature, flashes forth in vivid and expressive lan- 
 guage the wonders he has seen. 
 
 Though Browning is not interested in the whole life 
 history of his character, he is interested in the whole of 
 his character's experience at the point from which 
 he has chosen to view it. He tries to render the 
 whole of the single experience, and this fact explains the 
 subtilty and complexity of Browning's art. A single ex- 
 ample must sufifice. In "Andrea del Sarto" where An- 
 drea is criticising Rafael's painting, Andrea says: 
 
 That arm is wrongly put — and there again — 
 A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, 
 Its body, so to speak: its soul is right. 
 
242 BROWNING. 
 
 He means right — that, a child may understand. 
 Still, what an arm ! and I could alter it : 
 But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 
 Out of me, out of me! 
 
 It must be remembered that Andrea is under the stress 
 of excitement. It is a serious situation he is confronting 
 with his wife, and it is of great moment that he persuade 
 her. In this condition, his mind becomes conscious, as 
 any mind would, of everything — important and unimpor- 
 tant, momentous and trivial. He sees the fault in the 
 arm at one instant, and in the same instant he sees that 
 the soul is right. Swiftly his mind turns again to the 
 faulty arm and back once more to the soul of the picture. 
 He sees everything at once and tries to express every- 
 thing at once. And the swift movement of mind that 
 Browning displays in rendering not a part but the whole 
 of a character's experience at a given time, has earned 
 for Browning the fame of an analytical thinker. But 
 note what the thinking consists in. There is to be render- 
 ed, first, not a logical proposition, but a per- 
 sonality under the stress of excitement. Andrea 
 is distinctly not a proposition but a character in 
 a critical emotional and volitional state. Second- 
 ly, the so called analysis is not made abstractly 
 but concretely. First the arm, then the soul, and then 
 "the insight and the stretch !" What a fine metaphor in 
 the word "stretch !" And this is the poetry of insight, 
 not of logical and scientific thought. And this is the 
 way, not of intellectual analysis, but of poetic represen- 
 tation. The result is concentrated, expressive, vital po- 
 
 I etry. 
 
 V^ When a character is under the stress of excitement 
 and is facing a serious situation he not only is conscious 
 of all the trivial and momentous things connected with 
 
,5"// — 77 -/^^>" 
 
 ART AND LIBERALISM. 243 
 
 his experiences and career, but he also is conscious of his 
 own imperfections and his own soul freedom. He feels 
 that he is overwhelmingly unable to cope with the situa- 
 tion confronting him; yet he feels a free moral power 
 within himself that makes him worthy to overcome. And 
 this fact of human nature furnishes Browning with a 
 lesson in art as well as a lesson in morals. Browning 
 preferred early Italian art to Greek art because the for- 
 mer gives a sense of man's strivings and imperfections 
 and a sense of man's spiritual freedom, while the latter 
 does not. After observing the strength and rounded 
 beauty of Greek statues in "Old Pictures in Florence," 
 he says. 
 
 Growth came when, looking your last on them all, 
 You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day 
 And cried with a start — What if we so small . 
 Be greater and grander the while than they? 
 Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? 
 In both, of such lower types are we 
 Precisely because of our wider nature; 
 For time, theirs — ours, for eternity. 
 
 To-day's brief passion limits their range; 
 
 It seethes with the morrow for us and more. 
 
 They are perfect — how else? they shall never change: 
 
 We are faulty — why not? we have time in store. 
 
 The Artificer's hand is not arrested 
 
 With us ; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished : 
 
 They stand for our copy, and, once invested 
 
 With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished. 
 
 'Tis a life-long toil till our lump he leaven — 
 The better! What's come to perfection perishes. 
 Things learned on earth, we shall practice in heaven ! 
 Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. 
 Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto! 
 
244 BROWNING. 
 
 Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, 
 Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) "O !" 
 Thy great Campanile is still to finish. 
 
 In the opening of this poem the poet one warm March 
 day "looked over the aloed arch of the villa-gate" that 
 confronted the valley where Florence lay out on the 
 Mountain-side, and said that 
 
 Of all I saw and of all I praised, 
 The most to praise and the best to see, 
 Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised : 
 But why did it more than startle me? 
 
 What more than startled him was the fact that although 
 Giotto had finished a smaller work, he had here planned 
 so magnificently that he could not finish what he had 
 planned, and that this unfinished work was higher and 
 greater than the finished. And in the same way when 
 the poet thinks of the finish and the perfection of 
 Greek statues he cries "with a start — What if we so small 
 be greater and grander the while than they?" and then 
 asks whether Man "shall have no more play and action 
 than joy which is crystallized forever, or grief, an eternal 
 patrifaction?" It was not crystallized joy and petrified 
 grief, as represented in Greek art, that Browning wanted, 
 but it was play and action, freedom ! and a sense of the 
 eternal. So he gives the early Italian painters their 
 "guerdon and glory for daring so much, before they well 
 did it," and for giving man, through their art, a sense 
 of imperfection and a sense of freedom. 
 
 But can this principle of imperfection and of freedom 
 be applied to the making of a poem? Is it worth while 
 to plan a poem, as Giotto did his bell-tower, so magnifi- 
 cently that it cannot be completed ? Is it true that a poem 
 may, in its formal elements, be "rough-hewn and no wise 
 
ART AND HUliRALISM. 245 
 
 polished" and still be art? These questions are too large 
 to be answered in full here, but a few things may be said 
 about them. Granting, for the sake of the argument, 
 what has already been implied, that there exists an 
 antithesis between form and content in poetry, we may 
 say that the principle in question may be measurably 
 applied to form. Take "Old Pictures in Flor- 
 ence," for instance. The main theme embodied 
 concretely in tlic unfinished bell-tower is stated in the 
 beginning, the middle, and the end of the poem. The 
 details from the old pictures in Florence amplify the 
 main theme of the poem. The stream of thought in the 
 poem flows through a well-defined and unmistakable 
 channel. Yet the borders of the stream are "rough- 
 hewn," and the stream is constantly threatening to over- 
 flow its banks. It has the power to make and to modify 
 its own channel, well-defined as that may be. The con- 
 tent of a poem must have power to break through and 
 mould its form at will. We are here easily deceived by 
 words. Forms at their best are but imperfect. Harmony 
 and symmetry are but relative things. "Paradise Lost" 
 has harmonious numbers, but could it have been possible 
 for any one to make it harmoniously symmetrical 
 throughout? Are there not great irregularities in "King_^ 
 Lear?" For the sake of bringing the "invisible full into 
 play," does it not let the symmetrically "visible go to the 
 dogs?" The engendering and torrential passion and en- 
 erg}^ of the play constantly l)reak through the boundaries 
 of imperfect form, enlarge the truth without violating it, 
 and reveal an art higher than the merely visible. This, or 
 something like this, was the faith and, in a measure, the 
 practice of our great modern liberal in art. 
 
 If it is not impossible to convince men that tlie princi- 
 ple of imperfection and of freedom can be applied to the 
 
246 BROWNING. 
 
 formal elements of a poem, it ought to be possible to 
 convince them that it can be applied to the contents of a 
 poem. The universal feeling of our imperfections and 
 the universal sense of our spiritual freedom when we 
 betake ourselves to the deeper levels of our being, ought 
 to be a sufficient guarantee of truth for the highest poetic 
 representations. But we will let Browning's superb half- 
 men, his Andreas and Cleons and Norberts and the rest, 
 with their aspirations and imperfections, their god-like 
 powers and unsure purposes, their faiths diversified by 
 doubts, with their half-free souls aspiring to be more 
 free, answer for themselves. These characters, better 
 than any others in literature, give us the sense both of 
 man's spiritual shortcomings and of man's spiritual free- 
 dom. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 In an essay on "Reflex Action and Theism" Professor 
 William James, to whose teachings the spirit of these 
 pages owes not a little, writes as follows : "From its 
 first dawn to its highest actual attainments, we find that 
 the cognitive faculty, where it appears to exist at all, ap- 
 pears but as one element in an organic mental whole, and 
 as a minister to higher mental powers, — the powers of 
 
 will It is probable that to the end of time our 
 
 power of moral and volitional response to the nature of 
 things will be the deepest organ of communication there- 
 with we shall ever possess Certain it is that the 
 
 acutest theories, the greatest intellectual power, the most 
 elaborate education, are a sheer mockery when, as it of- 
 ten happens, they feed mean motives and a nerveless will. 
 And it is equally certain that a resolute moral energ)', no 
 matter how inarticulate and unequipped with learning its 
 owner may be, extorts from us a respect we should never 
 pay were we not satisfied that the essential root of hu- 
 man personality lay there." These are fitly spoken 
 words; and are the simple truth. The fact is that the 
 essential root of human personality lies in the will. It is 
 the exercise of this power that makes us men and God- 
 like. It is this power that we rely upon and draw from 
 all tlie days of our lives. It is the power by which we 
 can make or mar the beauty or worth of our daily living, 
 in the lowly walks of life, or in the highest walks of life. 
 It is the power by which we face and select alternatives 
 
248 CONCLUSION. 
 
 and so far determine our destiny. We have had alterna- 
 tives before us as children and shall have them the last 
 days of our lives; and thus we constantly exercise our 
 wills. The power of will is the central power of person- 
 ality. 
 
 And passion, if it takes on the form of love, filial, 
 or parental, or conjugal love, love for home, or country, 
 or friends; if it takes on the form of devotion, devotion 
 to a cause, a principle, or truth, or right; if it is deep- 
 seated and not shallow, central and not peripheral, sub- 
 dued and not hysterical, and if it is under the central 
 power of the will, passion is one of the worthiest elements 
 of our natures. It is the element that gives zest, mean- 
 ing, tone, color, and substance to life. It is the second 
 great power of personality. There are two things we 
 have with us always — our passions and our wills. 
 
 And poetry, more than science or philosophy, poetry, 
 which ever keeps its ear close to the common heart of 
 humanity and its common joys and sorrows, its choices 
 and failures, its choices and successes, enshrines these 
 experiences in the substance of its work. It awakens 
 and purifies the passions; it arouses and nerves the will. 
 And great poetry, which is great art and creative, enlarges 
 the volume of passion and will and energy in created 
 characters, and effects through pity and terror the puri- 
 fying of our passions and the strengthening of our wills. 
 
 Morley finely says of Wordsworth : "The trait that 
 really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his poetic 
 contemporaries, and ranks him, as the ages are likely to 
 rank him, on a line just short of the greatest of all time, is 
 his direct appeal to will and conduct." A similar trait, the 
 appeal to will and a sense of freedom in man, also ranks 
 Browning, as the ages are likely to rank him, just short 
 
CONCLUSION. 249 
 
 of the greatest of all time. And Tennyson, according to 
 the gifts that were given him, sang nobly and well of 
 
 One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
 
 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.' 
 
 Moreover, the fact of moral responsibility rests di- 
 rectly on the fact of volitional and spiritual freedom. 
 Moral responsibility is exactly commensurate with moral 
 freedom, and both have their roots in the will. Since 
 freedom and responsibility arise from the same source 
 in our natures aestheticians can never successfully sepa- 
 rate freedom in art from the responsibility which the 
 fact of freedom entails. Wordsworth and Tennyson and 
 Browning respectively look their share of responsibilities 
 commensurate with the moral and spiritual freedom to 
 which they had attained. Each came as a teacher as well 
 as a singer to his generation. Each took the plain man's 
 view that a man is as responsible for what he says in po- 
 etry as for any other act of life. Each held that of the aes- 
 thetic strain and the moral strain in human nature the 
 latter is the deeper seated and that the former must be 
 grounded in the latter. It cannot be doubted that the 
 steady moral purpose which characterizes the efforts of 
 these poets helps to account for the large and substantial 
 output of work of each, and gives their works a solidity 
 that sets them apart from the works of the rest of the 
 English poets of the nineteenth century. 
 
 But it may be urged that the sense of moral respon- 
 sibility in these poets forced them to give expression to 
 moral platitudes that are detrimental to poetry. It must 
 be admitted that such is the case in their less happy mo- 
 ments. Should the}', then, have attempted to lessen or 
 
 ^ "Ulysses." 
 
250 CONCLUSION. 
 
 override their sense of moral responsibility? Certainly 
 not. Such a course savors distinctly of shallowness and 
 insincerity. Out of weakness these poets, in their happier 
 moments, perfected strength, — 'the strength of volition. 
 For itheir volition, when intensive and penetrative, and 
 sustained by passion, produced a strain of spiritual free- 
 dom and moral sublimity, a vision of a higher wisdom, 
 in their poetry, which never could have been produced 
 had they not had a deep sense of moral responsibility. 
 
 Wherever the will is vigorously exercised there is 
 always a healthy glow of life. There is reformation, 
 growth, and expansion. Where it is not vigorously exer- 
 cised there is lethargy, retrogression, and degeneration. 
 There come times in the history of the race as in the life 
 of an individual when lassitude, relaxation, and retrogres- 
 sion seem natural and inevitable. But they are seasons 
 Ihat do not abide with us any great length of time. They 
 are perhaps only seed time for a greater harvest. At any 
 rate, the tide soon turns toward the strenuous and ardu- 
 ous and high enterprise, for it is in this direction that 
 salvation lies ; and the call of our greater poets is not in 
 vain. 
 
 But if the social conditions are normal, as the tide 
 rises and men act courageously and feel the strength of 
 their wills, they feel inevitably the need of a higher will 
 than theirs. This need is felt increasingly at the same 
 ratio that the strength of will is felt increasingly. When 
 a man enacts the greatest power of self-direction, he man- 
 ifests the strongest spirit of self-surrender; when he be- 
 comes the most conscious of his own actual and individ- 
 ual power he becomes the most conscious of inexplica- 
 ble and indefinable powers within him and around him 
 and above him.. Thus in his highest experiences he exer- 
 cises complete self - direction and absolute self - 
 
CONCLUSION. 251 
 
 surrender at one and the same moment. This is a 
 paradox, but one of the deepest and truest paradoxes of 
 life. 
 
 When, in this paradoxical state of self-direction and 
 self-surrender, the will does its work intensely and in- 
 wardly, it makes a man "aware of his life's flow," aware 
 of his own soul's passion and freedom. He then experi- 
 ences the power and freedom of creating, and the joy 
 of living. He becomes a creative artist, with a divine 
 function. 
 
 But this intense and inner experience of the will and 
 the passions, giving as it does a sense of freedom to the 
 soul, is the fountain head of the great poetry of all ages. 
 The experience is always transcendental and, in its in- 
 tenser moments, always mystical. Though the spirit of 
 transcendentalism and mysticism is often disregarded by 
 the lesser poets, it is universally cultivated by the greater 
 poets as the source of their highest inspiration. This 
 spirit is the soul's assurance of freedom, and the love of 
 spiritual freedom is as old as the race. This love is the 
 prime desire of all races. It inspired the Hebrew prophet 
 and the Greek rhapsodist; it inspired the blind Milton and 
 the greater of our modern poets. Wordsworth, the mys- 
 tic, found the universe and the soul of man filled with 
 the power of spiritual energy and freedom. Browning, 
 ' the transcendentalist, found that in the wills and passions 
 of men there was free and creative power enough to 
 build new worlds. And Tennyson, though cautious and 
 critical and strongly influenced by the idea of impersonal 
 law, still found that life would not be worth living if one 
 could not believe that the soul of man is free and immor- 
 tal. This main miracle of our lives, this mystical and 
 transcendental experience of spiritual freedom, is neces- 
 sary to all the higher inspirations of poetry. 
 
252 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The transcendentalism and mysticism the world cares 
 for and will not let die is that which grips and moves the 
 mind. The chief power of the mind which it affects 
 is the will. Its mysteriousness is ineffective if it does 
 not touch the will. The pure transcendentalism of Shel- 
 ley, for example, has all the good qualities that transcen- 
 dentalism in poetry can possess, save one. The abstract 
 mysteriousness of Shelley has no force on the will. It 
 lacks grasp and convincing power. For this reason the 
 poetry most characteristic of him vvill always be the po- 
 etry for the select few. The mysterious, on the other 
 hand, in Wordsworth, or in Tennyson, or in Browning, 
 connects itself deeply with the volitions of the soul. It 
 seizes hold of men not merely because it is mysterious or 
 fascinating but because it forces them to discover them- 
 selves on the deeper levels of their being. It unlocks for 
 them their own hidden energies of mind and soul, and 
 makes them aware of the inheritance of spiritual free- 
 dom which is theirs. And this is one of the most im- 
 portant functions of poetry. 
 
 And it may be added that, since this inner and spirit- 
 ual freedom is an abiding quality in human nature, poet- 
 ry, which alone can render it, is a thing of the future 
 as well as of the past and the present. There is nothing 
 inherent in our social progress to destroy the power of 
 poetry. Our social progress may tend to change the out- 
 ward forms of poetic expression, — may make certain 
 kinds of imagery and certain forms obsolete. But it 
 cannot destroy or change the inner spirit of poetic sub- 
 stance. The spirit of transcendentalism and mysticism 
 is not dead. The sense of spiritual freedom in the race 
 is not weakened. The power of its spiritual energy is 
 not waning. If there be science, it shall fail; if there be 
 
CONCLUSION. 253 
 
 philosophy, it shall fail ; fail to express, with intensity 
 and with innerness, the fundamental passions of the 
 heart and volitions of the soul. These always have been 
 and always will be reserved for the great art of poetry. 
 So that poetry is a thing of the future as well as of the 
 past and the present. 
 
 Though many minor singers exist in every age and 
 generation, poetic geniuses are rare. There have per- 
 haps not been as many in the world as there have been 
 centuries of human history. If, therefore, we cannot 
 at the present time, point to a great living genius of poet- 
 ry, let us not suppose he has forever vanished from the 
 earth. It is reasonable to expect that within a century 
 he will be with us again. And when he does come he will 
 find in the hidden forces of man and the world and in 
 the deeps of his own being abundant material for poetic 
 expression. He will find that neither Wordsworth, nor 
 Tennyson, nor Browning, nor any other poet, has ex- 
 hausted the well springs of moral and spiritual life to 
 which the human mind has access. Let us hope, there- 
 fore, that his coming may be soon. Let us hope even that 
 he is already born in our midst, and that we may live to 
 see him vindicate anew the immensity of the future of 
 poetry : 
 
 Ah, that brave 
 Bount}' of Poets, the only royal race 
 That ever was, or will be, in this world ! 
 They give no gift that bounds itself and ends 
 r the giving and the taking: theirs so l)reeds 
 r the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes 
 The man who only was a man before, 
 That he grows godlike in his turn, can give — 
 He also : share the poets' privilege, 
 Bring forth new good, new beauty, from the old.' 
 
 Browning, "Balaustion's .Xdventure." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Page II. Note i. It is not intended in this book to 
 depreciate the vakie of emotions in poetry. If the will 
 is the first power of personality certainly the "emotions, 
 chiefly those essential and eternal in the heart" are a 
 close second. But the will and the emotions are comple- 
 mentary to each other, not antagonistic. The will pre- 
 vents the emotions from becoming maudlin and the emo- 
 tions prevent the will from becoming sterile. The emo- 
 tions give tone and color and substance to the will and the 
 will gives dignity and distinction to the emotions ; and 
 the two together constitute the most important powers 
 of personality and therefore the chiefest material for 
 poetry. 
 
 Page II. Note 2. It seems that in life, too, as in po- 
 etry, the energy of will is a more vital force than intel- 
 lectual conceptions. Professor Dewey in his Psycholog}', 
 for instance, says : '"There is possible no knowledge with- 
 out attention. Attention involves the discrimination of 
 sensations from each other, and the identification of some 
 one group of these sensations with self — in short, an act 
 
 of choice The process of knowledge is a process 
 
 of volition ;" and Professor William James, as quoted in 
 this text on page 247, says that the cognitive faculty 
 is but one element in the larger powers of will. 
 
 Page 41. Note 3. Perhaps tlie most favorite words 
 of Wordsworth, especially during tlie period of his great- 
 est literary production, are tlie words "motion" and 
 "gleam" with their various adjectival and verbal forms, 
 
256 APPENDIX. 
 
 together with words of kindred meaning — words at once 
 dynamic and volitional. In addition to the examples 
 given in the text, a few more must suffice: 
 
 To cut across the reflex of a star 
 
 That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed 
 
 Upon the glassy plain. 
 
 Even then I felt 
 Gleams like the flashing of a shield. 
 
 And add the gleam, 
 The light that never was, on sea or land. 
 
 Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea 
 We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand. 
 
 Now is crossed by gleam 
 Of his own image, by a sunbeam now 
 And wavering motions sent he knows not whence. 
 
 Sounds of undistinguishable motion — 
 
 No motion but the moving tide, a breeze — 
 
 All the shadowy banks on either side 
 
 Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still 
 
 The rapid line of motion. 
 
 Ye motions of delight that haunt the sides 
 Of the green hills. 
 
 From the blessed power that rolls 
 About, below, above. 
 
 No motion has she now, no force; 
 She neither hears nor sees; 
 Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, 
 With rocks, and stones, and trees. 
 
 Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense — 
 
 On the first motion of a holy thought — 
 
 And all the tender motions of the soul — 
 
APPENDIX. 257 
 
 Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought 
 That givest to forms and images a breath 
 And everlasting motion. 
 
 Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 
 
 This list might very easily be extended. From it we see 
 that Wordsworth, in a very pectiliar sense, attributes vital 
 movement, not only to all the objects of the otiter world, 
 but also to the senses, the thoughts, and the soul of man, 
 and even to God. And the mere act of pronouncing re- 
 peatedly the words "gleam" and "motion" and "roll" in 
 the sense Wordsworth uses them, gives a healthy and 
 voluntary thrill to the soul. 
 
 Page 70. Note 4. The device which the pre-existent 
 idea was to serve was no doubt that of giving largeness 
 of movement to the poem. There is indeed something of 
 epic movement in it. This effect is produced mainly 
 by the device of conceiving the soul as existing in an im- 
 measurable past, coming "in trailing clouds of glory" to 
 the present, and sweeping through the present into the 
 meastireless future. This conception produces in the 
 reader a sense of vast movernent and a sense of the su- 
 periority of the soul over things of time. Any criticism 
 that ignores Wordsworth's explanation and makes more 
 of the pre-existent idea than a poetical device is likely to 
 be unsound. 
 
 Page 124. Note 5. To prove that this point is really 
 as important as indicated here one needs only to turn to 
 the testimony of the "Memoir" where Free-will is spoken 
 of as the "main miracle, apparently an act of self-limi- 
 tation by the Infinite, and yet a revelation by Himself of 
 Himself." "Take away the sense of individual responsi- 
 bility and men sink into pessimism and madness." etc. 
 
258 APPENDIX. 
 
 Vol. I, pages 316, 317, etc. Moreover, there are many 
 passages in Tennyson's poetry besides those quoted in this 
 book which emphasize the importance of the point, but 
 the following single passage from Q^none must suffice 
 as illustration : 
 
 My vigor, wedded to thy blood, 
 Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God's, 
 To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks. 
 Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow 
 Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, 
 Circled thro' all experiences, pur«e law, 
 Commeasure perfect freedom. 
 
 That the goddess of wisdom should pronounce this pas- 
 sage adds to its significance. For the end of wisdom is 
 perfect freedom that is attained by the power of endur- 
 ance and the power of will circling through all experi- 
 ences. 
 
 Page 178. Note 6. This and many other quotations 
 from Browning that follow are taken from his dramatic 
 monologues. It would certainly be wrong to identify 
 the mind of Browning with the minds of some of the 
 speakers in these monologues, as, for instance, the speak- 
 er in "My Last Duchess." Yet it seems not to be wrong 
 to quote from such a poem as "Rabbi Ben Ezra" in order 
 to state an attitude of mind of Browning. This difiference 
 of selection seems to be determined by two principles of 
 criticism. The first principle is that, as in life we tend to 
 identify a man with his best deeds and his solidest think- 
 ing, so in literature we tend to identify the poet with his 
 greatest and noblest characters, or at least, with the finest 
 qualities in such characters. The best part of a poet's 
 mind is bequeathed to his best characters. The second 
 principle is that we tend to identify the mind of a poet 
 with the ideas that recur oftenest in his work as a whole. 
 
APPENDIX. 259 
 
 We do this not only because they recur but because those 
 that do recur have a vitality about them that makes us 
 feel that they are characteristic of the author. I have 
 tried to use these principles in my citations from Brown- 
 ing's dramatic monologues. 
 
 Page 234. Note 7. Since no room was given in the 
 main discussion to Browning's views on political liberty a 
 word may be said about them in this note. His views 
 were individualistic and liberal. They are well summed 
 up in the lines of a poem written in answer to the ques- 
 tion, "Why I am a Liberal?" 
 
 But little do or can the best of us: 
 That little is achieved through Liberty. 
 Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus. 
 His fellow shall continue bound? Not I, 
 Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss 
 A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why." 
 
 This is intensely personal, and one wonders why Brown- 
 ing did not have a greater sympathy for Wordsworth's 
 political patriotism which, too, was intensely personal and 
 at bottom very much like Browning's. What Words- 
 worth finely says of Alilton was true of himself and of 
 Browning: 
 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea : 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. 
 
 For Wordsworth there was one decree "that by the soul 
 only, the Nations shall be great and free." And Brown- 
 ing grounded his sense of political freedom on this same 
 basis. 
 
 Wordsworth, however, felt there were many radical 
 and liberal movements that did not contribute to the free- 
 dom of the soul ; and to such movements he was opposed. 
 Browning, on the other hand, hoped that larger freedom 
 
260 APPENDIX. 
 
 would result from practically every liberal political 
 movement. Here the differences between the two were 
 so great that the younger poet was unable to appreciate 
 the position of the elder. Wordsworth was a conserva- 
 tive, who believed that movements toward political free- 
 dom must be of a fundamental and slow growing sort. 
 Browning was a liberal, who believed that such move- 
 ments must be aggressive and radical. And Tennyson, 
 whose views have been discussed in their proper place, 
 was a conservative-liberal, who expressed ideas adapted 
 to practical politics.- 
 
INDEX 
 
 "Abt Vogler," i6, 26, 239. 
 
 "Adolescence" 71. 
 
 "Affliction of Margaret," 102. 
 
 "After-thought," 49. 
 
 "Ancient Sage, The," 114, 130, 
 
 138, 140, 152, 155. 158. 
 "Andrea del Sarto," 240, 241. 
 "Answer to Verses Addressed 
 
 to the Poet," 20. 
 "A Poet!— He Hath Put His 
 
 Heart to School," 192. 
 "Apologia," 89. 
 Arnold, Alatthew, 23, 119, 120, 
 
 123. 
 
 B 
 
 "Balaustion's Adventure," 253. 
 
 "Bases of the Mystic Con- 
 sciousness, The," 97. 
 
 Beaupuy, 54. 
 
 "Bishop Blougram's Apologj'," 
 179. 197, 198. 
 
 "Borderers, The," 75. 
 
 Brawne, Fannie, 23. 
 
 "Break, Break, Break," 130. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 
 190. 
 
 Burns, 19, 22, 24, 120 
 
 Byron, 33. 
 
 "By the Fireside," 186, 194. 210. 
 
 Calvinistic Creed, 156. 
 
 Carlyle, 27, 120, 152, 157, 163, 
 177, 181, 188. 
 
 "Charge of the Heavy Brig- 
 ade, The," 153. 
 
 "Charge of the Light Brigade, 
 
 The," 10. 
 Chaucer, 13. 
 Chesterton, 189. 
 "Cliilde Roland," 213. 
 "Christinas Eve," 220, 223. 
 "Cleon," 239. 
 Clough, 120, 220. 
 "Comus," 26. 
 Corson, 125. 
 
 D 
 "Death in the Desert, A," 184, 
 
 197, 203, 228, 233. 
 "De Gustibus— ," 185, 186. 
 "De Profundis," 13, 124, 153, 
 
 164. 
 "Despair," 156. 
 De Vere, Aubrey, 42. 
 Dewey, 255. 
 Dowden, 160. 
 
 "Easter Day," 120, 179, 186, 
 195, 202, 213, 215, 216. 
 
 "Elegiac Stanzas," 106, 109 . 
 
 Emerson, 94. 
 
 "Empedocles," 119. 
 
 "Epilogue to Asolando," 187. 
 
 "Epilogue to Dramatis Pers- 
 onae," 219, 225. 
 
 "Evelyn Hope," 230. 
 
 "Excursion," 10, 47, 49, 95. 
 
 "Expositulation and Reply," 76. 
 
 "Fifine at the Fair," 199, 223, 
 
 238. 
 "Fountain, The," 59. 
 
262 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Francis Furini, Parleyings 
 
 witli," 183. 
 French Revolution, 33, 36, 37, 
 
 53, 61, ^6. 
 
 "Garden of Proserpine, The," 
 118. 
 
 H 
 
 Hall, G. S., 71 
 Hallam, Arthur, 127, i8g. 
 'Higher Pantheism, The," 135. 
 "Holy Grail, The," 175. 
 "Home-Thoughts, from the 
 
 Sea," 185. 
 "House," 228. 
 Hutton, 43. 
 
 "Idylls of the King," 157. 
 "In a Balcony," 205. 
 "In a Gondola," 204,205, 207. 
 "In Meni'oriam," 25, 123, 124, 
 
 126, 127, 131, 132, 136, 140, 
 
 143, 150, 151, 152, 155, 157, 
 
 159, 160, 161, 162, 171, 172. 
 "Intimations of Immortality," 
 
 64, 68, 131, 256. 
 "It Fortifies My 'Soul to 
 
 Know," 220. 
 "Introduction to the Study of 
 
 Robert Browning's Poetry," 
 
 126. 
 
 James, William, 84, 212, 214, 
 
 247, 25s. 
 "James Lee's Wife," 201, 203. 
 Jeffrey, 72. 
 Job, Book of, 126. 
 Johnson, E., 239. 
 
 K 
 
 Keats, 23, 125. 
 "King Lear," 245. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 188. 
 "Last Ride Together, The," 
 
 184, 226, 230. 
 Lockhart, 125. 
 
 "Locksley Hall," 154, 160, 162. 
 "Locksley Hall, Sixty Years' 
 
 After," 154, 158, 162. 
 "Love Among the Ruins," 185. 
 Lowell, 95. 
 "Lucy," 105. 
 "Luria," 22},. 
 "Lycidas," 127. 
 "Lyrical Ballads," Preface to, 
 
 40. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, 15, '/2. 
 
 "Making of Man, The," 149. 
 
 "Masque of Alfred," 20. 
 
 "Maud," 171. 
 
 "Memoir," 136, 138, 257. 
 
 "Merchant of Venice, The,'' 
 
 180. 
 "Michael," 102. 
 
 "Miller's Daugliter, The," 121. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 188. 
 Milton, II, 13, IS, 21, 25, 259. 
 Morley, 26, 248. 
 Myers, 35, 38. 
 
 "My Last Duchess," 239, 258. 
 "My Star," 225. 
 "Mystic, The," 133. 
 
 N 
 
 Newman, 88. 
 "Nutting," 79. 
 
 O 
 
 "Ode to Duty,' iii, 114. 
 
 "CEnone," 148, 258. 
 
 "Old Pictures in Florence, 
 
 215, 243, 245. 
 "One Word More," 227. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 263 
 
 "Palace of Art, The," 147. 
 
 "Paracelsus," 209, 222. 
 
 "Paradise Lost," 11, 13, 14, 245. 
 
 "Peele Castle," 106. 
 
 "Peter Bell," 78, 79, 94. 
 
 "Pippa Passes," 218. 
 
 Plato, 16. 
 
 "Poet, The," 133. 
 
 "Poet and the Caged Turtle- 
 dove, The," 44. 
 
 Pope, 123. 
 
 "Pragmatism," 212, 221. 
 
 "Prelude," 10, 24, 26, 33, ;i6, 37, 
 38, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 
 54. 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 66, 
 68, 80, 81, 82, 85, 91, 103, 108, 
 no, 116. 
 
 "Princess, The," 152, 158, 170. 
 
 "Prospice," 190, 196. 
 
 R 
 
 "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 186, 195. 
 
 197, 198, 201, 207, 231, 239, 
 258. 
 
 Recejac, E., 96. 
 
 "Recluse, The," 92. 
 
 "Reflex Action and Theism," 
 247. 
 
 "Resolution and Independ- 
 ence," 10. 
 
 "Rime of the Ancient Marin- 
 er, The, 99. 
 
 "Ring and the Book, The," 194. 
 
 198, 203. 
 "Rizpah," 121. 
 Ruskin, 171, 188. 
 
 Santyana, 204. 
 
 "Sartor Resartus," 28, 164. 
 
 "Saul," 201, 208, 219, 239, 240. 
 
 Scott, 99. 
 
 "Self E>eception," 119. 
 
 Shakespeare, 29, 97, 103, 173, 
 
 181. 206, 227. 
 Shelley, 27, 33. 
 "She Was a Phantom," 41. 
 
 "Sordello," 202. 
 
 "Statue and the Bust, The," 
 
 202, 217. 
 Stedman, 83. 
 Stephen, 60, 70. 
 Svvedcnborg, 88. 
 Swinburne, 118. 
 
 "Tables Turned, The," 76. 
 "Tears, Idle Tears," 130. 
 Thomson, 20. 
 "Tintern Abbey/' 27, 36, 40, 74, 
 
 82. 
 "To a Highland Girt," 104. 
 "To My Sister," 76. 
 "To the Cuckoo," 100. 
 "To the Duke of Argyll," 148. 
 "Transcendentalism," 236. 
 "Tree of Liberty, The," 21. 
 "Triumph of Life, The," 27. 
 "Troilus and Criseyde," 13. 
 "Two Poets of Croisic, The," 
 
 210. 
 "Two Voices, The," 113, 136, 
 
 140, 144, 145. 
 Tyndall, 138. 
 
 U 
 "LHysses," 121, 127, 249. 
 
 V 
 
 Van Dyke, 125. 
 
 "Varieties of Religious Exper- 
 ience," 84. 
 "Vision of Sin, The," 170. 
 
 W 
 
 "Wages," 159. 
 
 "Whv I am a Liberal?", 259. 
 
 "Will" 158. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 35. 
 
 Y 
 
 "Yarrow Linvisited," 67. 
 "You Ask Me," 147. 
 Young, 20. 
 "Youth and Art," 202. 
 
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