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 AMONG THE 
 
 GREAT MASTERS OF LITERATURE
 
 AMONG 
 THE GREAT MASTERS 
 
 By 
 Walter Rowlands 
 
 Among the Great Masters of Drama 
 Among the Great Masters of Warfare 
 Among the Great Masters of Literature 
 Among the Great Masters of Music 
 Among the Great Masters of Painting 
 Among the Great Masters of Oratory 
 
 , handsome cover design, boxed separately or 
 in sets 
 
 DANA ESTES & COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 
 Estes Press, 2i2 Summer Street, Boston
 
 The Mitre Tavern. 
 
 From painting by Eyre Crowe.
 
 Among the Great 
 
 Masters of Literature 
 
 Scenes in the Lives of Great Authors 
 
 Thirty-two Reproductions of Famous Paintings 
 with Text by 
 
 Walter Rowlands 
 
 Boston 
 
 Dana Estes & Company 
 Publishers
 
 Copyright, igoo 
 BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY 
 
 Colonial 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
 Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
 
 5T0
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HOMER i 
 
 SAPPHO 10 
 
 VIRGIL 20 
 
 DANTE 28 
 
 PETRARCH 40 
 
 BOCCACCIO 48 
 
 TASSO 53 
 
 CHAUCER 60 
 
 MORE 67 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 7 2 
 
 WALTON 84 
 
 MILTON 94 
 
 DEFOE . 105 
 
 SWIFT 113 
 
 POPE 123 
 
 STERNE 135 
 
 CHATTERTON MS
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 JOHNSON 152 
 
 GOLDSMITH 162 
 
 BURNS . . 171 
 
 CH ARTIER 1 80 
 
 MOLIERE 1 86 
 
 VOLTAIRE . . . . , . 193 
 
 DIDEROT 201 
 
 SCHILLER 210 
 
 GOETHE 217
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE MITRE TAVERN . . . Frontispiece 
 
 HOMER 8 
 
 SAPPHO 17 
 
 VIRGIL, HORACE, AND VARIUS AT THE 
 
 HOUSE OF MAECENAS .... 22 
 
 DANTE MEETING MATILDA .... 28 
 
 DANTE AND BEATRICE . . . . 35 
 THE PRESENTATION OF PETRARCH AND 
 
 LAURA 45 
 
 BOCCACCIO 53 
 
 TASSO AT FERRARA 58 
 
 CHAUCER AT THE COURT OF EDWARD III. 62 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER . 68 
 
 SHAKESPEARE BEFORE SIR THOMAS LUCY. 72 
 SHAKESPEARE READING BEFORE QUEEN 
 
 ELIZABETH ...... 78 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES . 80
 
 List of Illustrations. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS PUPIL ... 92 
 MR. OLIVER CROMWELL OF ELY VISITS 
 
 MR. JOHN MILTON .... 90 
 MILTON DICTATING " PARADISE LOST " TO 
 
 HIS DAUGHTERS 103 
 
 DEFOE IN THE PILLORY . . . .110 
 
 SWIFT AND STELLA 115 
 
 THE REJECTED POET 132 
 
 YORICK AND THE GRISETTE . . . 141 
 
 CHATTERTON 145 
 
 DOCTOR JOHNSON IN THE ANTEROOM OF 
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD . . . .160 
 
 THE FIRST AUDIENCE 169 
 
 BURNS IN EDINBURGH, 1787 . . .171 
 THE MEETING OF BURNS AND SCOTT . 175 
 ALAIN CHARTIER AND MARGARET OF SCOT- 
 LAND 181 
 
 MOLIERE AND HIS COMPANY . . . 187 
 THE ROUND TABLE OF FREDERICK THE 
 
 GREAT 196 
 
 LA LECTURE CHEZ DIDEROT . . . 202 
 
 SCHILLER AT WEIMAR 210 
 
 NAPOLEON I., GOETHE, AND WIELAND . 218
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE compiler desires to acknowledge his 
 indebtedness for aid generously given by Mr. 
 George E. Layton, Secretary of the National 
 Art Gallery of New South Wales, and by 
 Mr. Charles M. Hardie, of Edinburgh, in 
 securing the pictures of Chaucer and Burns.
 
 " FOR there was Milton like a seraph strong, 
 Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild ; 
 And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song, 
 And somewhat grimly smiled. 
 
 " And there the Ionian father of the rest; 
 
 A million wrinkles carved his skin ; 
 A. hundred winters snow'd upon his breast, 
 From cheek and throat and chin." 
 
 TENNYSON, The Palace of Art.
 
 AMONG THE GREAT MASTERS 
 OF LITERATURE. 
 
 HOMER. 
 
 " PERADVENTURE it is not to be marvelled 
 at," says Plutarch, " if in long process of time 
 (fortune altering her effects daily) these 
 worldly events often fall out one like an- 
 other. . . . Thus, of the two famous Scipios, 
 the Carthaginians were first overcome by 
 the one, and afterwards utterly destroyed by 
 the other. Thus the city of Troy was 
 first taken by Hercules, for the horses that 
 Laomedon had promised him ; the second 
 time by Agamemnon, by means of the 
 great wooden horse ; and the third time by
 
 2 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Charidemus, by means of a horse that fell 
 within the gate and kept the Trojans from 
 shutting it in time. And thus, after two 
 sweet-smelling plants, two cities, los and 
 Smyrna, were named, the one signifying the 
 Violet, and the other Myrrh. It is supposed 
 that the poet Homer was born in the one and 
 died in the other." 
 
 Smyrna has perhaps the better claim to 
 the honour of being the birthplace of Ho- 
 mer, but Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, 
 Argos, and Athens dispute the palm with her. 
 
 " Seven cities now contend for Homer dead 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread.'- 
 
 The Homeric hymn to the Delian Apollo, 
 once ascribed to Homer himself, says, in the 
 fine translation by Henry Nelson Coleridge, 
 the nephew and literary executor of the poet 
 Coleridge : 
 
 " Virgins ! farewell and oh ! remember me, 
 Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea,
 
 Homer. 3 
 
 A helpless wanderer, may your isle explore, 
 And ask you, maids, of all the bards you boast, 
 Who sings the sweetest and delights you most ? 
 Oh ! answer all : ' A blind old man, and poor 
 Sweetest he sings and dwells on Chios' rocky 
 shore.' " 
 
 Antipater of Sidon wittily solved the prob- 
 lem, doubtless to his own satisfaction at least, 
 thus: 
 
 " From Colophon some deem thee sprung, 
 
 From Smyrna some, and some from Chios ; 
 These noble Salamis have sung, 
 
 While those proclaim thee born in los ; 
 And others cry up Thessaly 
 The mother of the Lapithae. 
 
 * Thus each to Homer has assigned 
 The birthplace which just suits his mind. 
 
 " But, if I read the volume right, 
 
 By Phoebus to his followers given, 
 I'd say they're all mistaken quite, 
 And that his real country's heaven ; 
 While for his mother, she can be 
 No other than Calliope."
 
 4 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Concerning the old singer's blindness, Sir 
 John Denham wrote: 
 
 " I can no more believe old Homer blind 
 Than those who say the sun has never shined : 
 The age wherein he lived was dark ; but he 
 Could not want sight who taught the world to see.' 
 
 And as to his grave, one ancient poet 
 asseverates : 
 
 " Blest Isle of los ! On thy rocky steeps 
 The Star of Song, the Grace of Graces sleeps." 
 
 It would scarcely be expected that this 
 little book should set forth, much less at- 
 tempt to decide, the still unsolved problems 
 of Homer's career, questions which once 
 engaged the intellect of a Gladstone, among 
 others. 
 
 However, if ever, these questions may be 
 settled, they probably did not much concern 
 those artists who have vied with the writers 
 in their lavish tributes to Homer, pen and
 
 Homer. 5 
 
 pencil alike seeking to do their utmost in 
 honour of the " Father of Poetry." 
 
 Raphael, in his fresco of " Parnassus," in 
 the Vatican, wherein Apollo, seated under 
 laurels and surrounded by the Muses, 
 plays upon a violin, has portrayed Homer 
 as singing, with hand outstretched and 
 face uplifted, inspired by the music of the 
 God. 
 
 The eminent French painter, Baron 
 Gerard, executed a picture of the blind old 
 poet standing, a majestic figure, on the rocky 
 shore of Chios, listening, as if entranced, to 
 the rythmic roar of the waves. One hand is 
 raised to heaven, and the other rests on the 
 shoulder of his guide, a girl of tender years, 
 who seems about to lead him away in search 
 of shelter. 
 
 It is a repetition in paint of Coleridge's 
 pen-picture of 
 
 " that blind bard, who on the Chian strand, 
 By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
 
 6 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
 Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea." 
 
 Ingres depicted him, on a ceiling in the 
 Louvre, almost as a god, seated before a 
 temple, and crowned by the Universe, with 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey at his feet, while 
 the great men of all times offer him their 
 homage. Pindar raises his lyre, Herodotus 
 burns incense, Phidias proffers his inspired 
 chisel, and Alexander the Great holds out the 
 casket in which he deposited his copy of the 
 Iliad. Sappho and Horace are among the il- 
 lustrious ones there, Virgil introduces Dante, 
 and Apelles conducts Raphael, while Michael 
 Angelo, Tasso, Shakespeare, La Fontaine, 
 Mozart, Poussin, and Molidre also find place 
 amid the mighty minds assembled in praise 
 of Homer. 
 
 Kaulbach, in one of his wall paintings in 
 the New Museum at Berlin, represents him 
 with lyre in hand approaching the Grecian
 
 Homer. J 
 
 shore in a boat steered by the Cumaean sybil, 
 while Thetis and the Nereids arise from the 
 sea to listen to his song. On the shore are 
 gathered the great men of Greece, Hesiod, 
 ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes^ 
 Pericles, and many more ; and in the air above 
 float the three Graces, Apollo and the Muses, 
 and the gods of Olympus. 
 
 Delacroix enriched the cupola of the 
 Library of the Luxembourg Palace with a 
 painting of a scene in Elysium wherein 
 Homer appears receiving Dante, who is 
 presented by Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and 
 Lucan being near by. 
 
 Bouguereau, in a picture which once 
 adorned the gallery of A. T. Stewart, the 
 New York dry goods millionaire, and is 
 now in the Layton Art Gallery at Mil- 
 waukee, shows the venerable bard attacked 
 by the dogs of some rude peasants and being 
 led away by his youthful guide. 
 
 A striking conception of the theme is fur-
 
 8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 nished by Lecomte du Nouy, a distinguished 
 French artist, in his triptych which appeared 
 at the Salon in 1882. The central portion 
 of this fine work portrays the aged poet, 
 resting, while beside him sleeps the boy who 
 guides his wavering footsteps. It is night, 
 and around him reposes a templed city, but 
 Homer, with hand on his beloved lyre, and 
 face uplifted to the stars, wakes and com- 
 poses his immortal lines. The right-hand 
 panel of the triptych typifies the Iliad, with 
 the goddess of Discord brandishing torch and 
 spear above the dead body of a fallen king ; 
 and in the left section appears Penelope, the 
 faithful spouse of Ulysses. She carries in 
 her arms the portrait and the bow of her 
 absent hero, while behind is seen the tapes- 
 try by means of which she evaded the impor- 
 tunities of the suitors, and at her feet sits the 
 favourite dog of Ulysses. 
 
 Jules Jean Antoine Lecomte du Nouy 
 was born at Paris in 1842, and studied art
 
 Homer 
 
 From painting by Lecomte du Nouy.
 
 Homer. 9 
 
 under Gleyre and Gerome, winning a second 
 Grand Prize of Rome in 1865. His de"but at 
 the Salon had been made in 1863 with " Fran- 
 cesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta in Hell." 
 His pictures are seldom seen in the United 
 States, but many Americans will recall his 
 " Bearers of Bad News," a striking episode 
 of the times of the Pharaohs, in the Luxem- 
 bourg, which gained him a medal in 1872. 
 The " Homer " triptych was shown at the 
 Paris Exposition of 1889, together with 
 "Rameses in His Harem," and a silver 
 medal was bestowed on the artist at that 
 time. Previous to painting it, he had pro- 
 duced a " Homer Begging," which is now 
 in the Museum of Grenoble. He deco- 
 rated the Chapel of St. Vincent de Paul, in 
 the Church of the Trinity at Paris, with a 
 painting of " St. Vincent de Paul Converting 
 Galley-slaves."
 
 io The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 SAPPHO. 
 
 OF the life of Sappho, the most celebrated 
 of all women poets, we know but little. 
 So many centuries have passed since she 
 wrote the poems which have made her name 
 immortal, that hardly any authentic records 
 of her history survive. She was probably 
 born in Mitylene, one of the great centres of 
 Greek civilisation, and the principal city of the 
 island of Lesbos, in the ^Egean Sea. Mity- 
 lene, once classed by Horace with Rhodes, 
 Ephesus, and Corinth, now but a decaying 
 Turkish village, is built upon a rocky prom- 
 ontory with a harbour on either hand. Be- 
 hind it the wooded hills, thickly clothed with 
 silvery olives and darker pomegranates, rise 
 to meet the bases of the loftier mountains 
 from whose heights "you look eastward upon 
 the pale distances of Asia Minor, or down 
 upon the calm ^Egean, intensely blue, amid
 
 Sappho. 1 1 
 
 which the island rests as if inlaid in lapis 
 lazuli." 
 
 The dates of the birth and death of Sappho 
 are lost, but she is thought to have been 
 at the zenith of her fame about the year 610 
 B. c. We know that she divided with her 
 distinguished fellow countryman, Alcaeus, 
 the leadership of the ^Eolic school of lyric 
 poetry, and that she was the centre of a 
 circle of accomplished women, who looked 
 up to her as a teacher. It should be said 
 here that the yEolians had to some extent 
 preserved the ancient Greek manners, and 
 their women enjoyed a distinct individual 
 existence and moral character. They evi- 
 dently shared in the general high state of 
 civilisation, which not only fostered poetical 
 talents of a high order among women, but 
 encouraged in them a taste for philosophical 
 reflection. 
 
 The legend which asserts that Sappho 
 put an end to her existence by leaping into
 
 12 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 the sea from the rock of Leucadia (the cliff 
 is known to this day as " Sappho's Leap "), 
 because of an unrequited attachment for a 
 beautiful youth named Phaon, 1 does not rest 
 on any firm historic ground. Sappho is 
 supposed to have married a wealthy man, 
 who left her a widow while she was still 
 young. 
 
 She was the admiration of all antiquity, 
 as is witnessed by her contemporary Solon, 
 the great lawgiver, who, hearing one of her 
 poems recited, exclaimed that he would not 
 willingly die until he had learned it by heart. 
 
 Plato hailed her as the tenth Muse : 
 
 " Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine ; 
 A tenth is Lesbian Sappho, maid divine." 
 
 Strabo says he knew "no woman who in 
 any, even the least degree, could be com- 
 
 1 Phaon, a boatman of Mitylene, having ferried Venus 
 disguised as an old woman over into Asia, without charge, 
 was presented by the goddess with a small box of oint- 
 ment. As soon as he had rubbed himself with this, he 
 became one of the handsomest of men.
 
 Sappho. 13 
 
 pared to her for poetry." Plutarch speaks 
 of the grace of her poems acting on her lis- 
 teners like an enchantment. Others called 
 her " the female Homer," and she was fre- 
 quently styled " the Poetess," just as Homer 
 was "the Poet." Of her numerous works, 
 only fragments remain. The following, trans- 
 lated by Ambrose Philips, is one of the long- 
 est and best known : 
 
 " Blest as the immortal gods is he, 
 The youth who fondly sits by thee, 
 And hears and sees thee all the while 
 Softly speak and sweetly smile ! 
 
 " 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, 
 And raised such tumults in my breast ; 
 For while I gazed, in transport tost, 
 My breath was gone, my voice was lost. 
 
 M My bosom glowed ; the subtle flame 
 Ran quick through all my vital frame ; 
 O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung ; 
 My ears with hollow murmurs rung. 
 
 * In dewy damps my limbs were chilled ; 
 My blood with gentle horrors thrilled ;
 
 14 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 My feeble pulse forgot to play, 
 I fainted, sank, and died away ! " 
 
 Another fragment an epitaph on a 
 favourite maiden says : 
 
 " This dust was Timas' ; ere her bridal hour 
 She lies in Proserpina's gloomy bower ; 
 Her virgin playmates from each lovely head 
 Cut with sharp steel their locks, their strewments for 
 the dead. " 
 
 Among the translators of Sappho, whose 
 theme is generally love, may be found Tom 
 Moore, Swinburne, Rossetti, Sir Edwin Ar- 
 nold, J. Addington Symonds, and Thomas 
 Went worth Higginson. 
 
 We have spoken of Alcaeus, the inventor 
 of Alcaic verses, as Sappho was of Sapphic. 
 " These two will always be united in fame as 
 the joint founders of the lyric poetry of 
 Greece, and therefore of the world.", 
 
 Alcaeus is said to have paid his addresses 
 to Sappho, as the Greek poet Hermesianax 
 sings :
 
 Sapp/io. 1 5 
 
 And well thou knowest how famed Alcaeus smote 
 Of his high harp the love enlivened strings, 
 And raised to Sappho's praise the enamored note, 
 Midst noise of mirth and jocund revellings : 
 Aye, he did love that nightingale of song 
 With all a lover's fervor." 
 
 Alcaeus spent much of his life amid polit- 
 ical convulsions, in which he was prominent, 
 and his songs are not only of love, but also 
 of war, as is the one we here present : 
 
 " Glitters with brass my mansion wide ; 
 The roof is deck'd on every side 
 
 In martial pride. 
 
 With helmets ranged in order bright 
 And plumes of horse-hair nodding white, 
 
 A gallant sight 
 Fit ornament for warrior's brow 
 And round the walls, in goodly row, 
 
 Refulgent glow 
 
 Stout greaves of brass like burnish'd gold, 
 And corslets there, in many a fold 
 
 Of linen roll'd ; 
 
 And shields that in the battle fray 
 The routed losers of the day 
 
 Have cast away;
 
 1 6 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Eubcean falchions too are seen, 
 With rich embroider'd belts between 
 
 Of dazzling sheen : 
 And gaudy surcoats piled around, 
 The spoils of chiefs in war renown'd, 
 
 May there be found. 
 These, and all else that here you see, 
 Are fruits of glorious victory 
 
 Achieved by me." 
 
 Sir William Jones, in his " Ode in Imita- 
 tion of Alcaeus," shows us the Greek poet 
 attaining a loftier height. These noble lines, 
 though well known, can scarcely be too often 
 quoted. 
 
 " What constitutes a state ? 
 Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, 
 
 Thick wall, or moated gate ; 
 Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned ; 
 
 Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
 Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 
 
 Not starred and spangled courts, 
 Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride : 
 
 No men, high-minded men, 
 With powers as far above dull brutes endued, 
 
 In forest, brake, or den,
 
 Sappho. 
 
 From painting by Lorenz Alma Tadema.
 
 Sappho. 17 
 
 As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; 
 
 Men, who their duties know, 
 But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain ; 
 
 Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
 And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain ; 
 
 These constitute a state ; 
 And sovereign Law, that with collected will 
 
 O'er thrones and globes elate, 
 Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill 
 
 Smit by her sacred frown 
 The fiend Dissension like a vapour sinks ; 
 
 And e'en the all-dazzling Crown 
 Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks." 
 
 In Alma Tadema's painting of " Sappho," 
 the figure of Alcaeus is of equal importance 
 with that of the poetess. Clothed in a gar- 
 ment of pale rose, he sits opposite her, and 
 accompanies on his lute the fervent words of 
 his song. 
 
 Sappho, leaning on a stand which holds 
 the wreath, bound with ribbons, that is the 
 crown of poets, listens with absorbed interest 
 to this not unwelcome tribute of praise and 
 love. She wears a robe of green and gray,
 
 1 8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 and violets are bound in her deep black hair. 
 Beside her stands her daughter Clefs, and 
 above may be seen three pupils of her school. 
 The dazzling white marble of the exedra is 
 relieved against the dark stone pines, through 
 which we see the rich blue southern sea and 
 sky. 
 
 This work, one -of the artist's masterpieces, 
 was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 
 1 88 1, and is now in the celebrated collec- 
 tion of pictures left by William T. Walters 
 of Baltimore, which also holds other can- 
 vases by this eminent Dutch-English painter. 
 As every art-lover knows, Alma Tadema's 
 fame rests most securely upon his marvel- 
 lous reproductions of the life of ancient 
 Greece and Rome, especially to be studied 
 in such important examples of his genius as 
 "The Vintage Festival," "The Picture Gal- 
 lery," " The Sculpture Gallery," " A Roman 
 Emperor," "An Audience at Agrippa's," and 
 " Hadrian in England." These and others
 
 Sappho. 19 
 
 such as these have earned for him both 
 gold and glory, and the sobriquet of the 
 "Archaeologist of artists." Nearly half of 
 his life has been spent in England, he 
 was born in Holland in 1836, and one 
 of his latest honours came to him in 1899, 
 when he received the gift of knighthood 
 from Queen Victoria. Emerson said that 
 in England, "Not trial by jury, but the din- 
 ner, is the capital institution," and so it was 
 natural that, soon after this recognition of 
 Alma Tadema's merit, some scores of his 
 friends and admirers enthusiastically greeted 
 him at a banquet given in his honour in 
 London. 
 
 It is worthy of note that he is the third 
 painter from the Low Countries to attain 
 knighthood at the hands of an English sov- 
 ereign, the first two being Peter Paul Rubens 
 and Anthony Van Dyck.
 
 2O The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 VIRGIL. 
 
 ENGLAND'S greatest poet laureate, in 
 the lines which he wrote at the request of 
 the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary 
 of Virgil's death, addresses him as 
 
 " Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and 
 
 vineyard, hive and horse and herd ; 
 All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a 
 
 lonely word." 
 
 Tennyson, in thus referring to the great 
 Roman singer, had in mind his Georgics, 
 those poems on the labours and enjoyments 
 of rural life, which are generally thought to 
 be his most complete work. 
 
 It is said that the Georgics were written 
 at the request of Maecenas, the friend and 
 patron of Virgil, in the hope of encouraging 
 the veteran soldiers, to whom land had been 
 given in return for their services, in the
 
 Virgil. 2 1 
 
 peaceful occupation of cultivating their 
 farms. Virgil hated war, and in this 
 work endeavoured to enthrone labour in 
 its place. How far he succeeded is ques- 
 tionable. 
 
 "It would be absurd to suppose," says 
 Dean Merivale, " that Virgil's verses induced 
 any Roman to put his hand to the plough, 
 or take from his bailiff the management of 
 his own estates ; but they served undoubt- 
 edly to revive some of the simple tastes and 
 sentiments of the olden time, and perpetu- 
 ated, amid the vices and corruptions of the 
 Empire, a pure stream of sober and inno- 
 cent enjoyment." 
 
 The Georgics were begun in the year 
 37 B. c. and occupied seven years of the 
 poet's time. Haste was far from Virgil's 
 way, Tennyson sings of him as 
 
 " Old Virgil, who would write ten lines, they say, 
 At dawn, and lavish all the golden day' 
 To make them wealthier in his readers, eyes."
 
 22 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 The poem was dedicated to Maecenas, and 
 the distinguished French artist Jalabert has 
 given us a fine picture of Virgil reciting it to 
 his noble patron in the presence of Horace 
 and Varius. Jalabert, a pupil of Paul Dela- 
 roche, painted this canvas in Rome and sent 
 it to the Salon of 1847, where it received a 
 medal, and, becoming the property of the 
 French nation, is now in the Luxembourg. 
 It shows us Virgil standing, tablets in hand, 
 in the act of reading, next him being seated 
 the 'poet Horace, ivy-crowned, while Varius 
 leans against the pedestal of a great sculp- 
 tured vase, and the generous Maecenas sits 
 on the right. The scene appears to be at 
 the beautiful villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, the 
 favourite summer resort of the Romans of 
 that day. We know not which portion of 
 his famous work the poet is supposed to be 
 reciting, but can easily believe it to be those 
 lines from the apostrophe to Italy in the 
 second book of the Georgics :
 
 Virgil, Horace, and Miriaus at the House of Maecenas. 
 
 From painting by Charles Kraii9oks Jalabert.
 
 Virgil. 23 
 
 M Such the land which sent to battle Marsian footmen 
 
 stout and good, 
 Sabine youth, and Volscian spearmen, and Liguria's 
 
 hardy brood ; 
 Hence have sprung our Decii, Marii, mighty names 
 
 which all men bless, 
 Great Camillus, kinsmen Scipios, sternest men in 
 
 battle's press ! 
 Hence hast thou too sprung, great Caesar, whom the 
 
 farthest East doth fear, 
 So that Mede nor swarthy Indian to our Roman lines 
 
 come near ! 
 Hail, thou fair and beauteous mother, land of ancient 
 
 Saturn, hail ! 
 Rich in crops and rich in heroes ! thus I dare to wake 
 
 the tale 
 Of thine ancient land and honour, opening founts 
 
 that slumbered long, 
 Rolling through our Roman towns the echoes of old 
 
 Hesiod's song." 
 
 "Living as he did in the highest society 
 of the capital, where he was very popular, 
 Virgil never forgot his old friends ; and it is 
 pleasant to read that he sent money to his 
 aged parents regularly every year. So highly
 
 24 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 was he esteemed by his own contemporaries, 
 that on one occasion when he visited the 
 theatre, the whole audience is said to have 
 risen in a body and saluted him with the 
 same honours which were paid to Augustus. 
 It is as much to his honour that Caligula 
 should have ordered all his busts to be 
 banished from the public libraries, as that 
 St. Augustine should have quoted him alone 
 of heathen authors, in his celebrated 'Con- 
 fessions.' " 
 
 It was Virgil who introduced Horace, 
 lately despoiled, like himself, of his paternal 
 property, to Maecenas, whose favour and 
 protection he enjoyed to the end of his life. 
 From Maecenas, Horace received the present 
 of a modest estate in the Sabine country, 
 a slight gift for the rich and powerful minis- 
 ter to bestow, but beyond price to the poet, 
 who so loved a country life, and was never 
 weary of singing the praises of his Sabine 
 farm.
 
 Virgil. 25 
 
 Like Virgil, neither a sycophant nor a para- 
 site, Horace had a real and lasting affection 
 for his patron Maecenas, to whom, many 
 years before they were parted by death's 
 cold hand, he addressed these verses : 
 
 " Why wilt thou kill me with thy boding fears ? 
 
 Why, O Maecenas, why ? 
 Before thee lies a train of happy years ; 
 
 Yes, nor the gods nor I 
 
 Could brook that thou shouldst first be laid in dust 
 Who art my stay, my glory, and my trust ! 
 
 " Ah, if untimely fate should snatch thee hence, 
 
 Thee, of my soul a part, 
 Why should I linger on, with deadened sense, 
 
 And ever aching heart, 
 A worthless fragment of a fallen shrine ? 
 No, no, one day shall see thy death and mine ! 
 
 " Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath ; 
 
 Yes, we shall go, shall go, 
 
 Hand linked in hand, whene'er thou leadest, both 
 The last sad road below ! " 
 
 And in truth it was but a few months after 
 Maecenas had left this life behind him that
 
 26 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 he was followed by Horace, who was laid to 
 rest in a corner of the Esquiline, close to the 
 tomb of his dear friend and patron. 
 
 Virgil's recommendation of Horace to Mae- 
 cenas was seconded by Varius, celebrated as 
 a writer of epic poetry, and for his tragedy 
 of "Thyestes." He was one of those ap- 
 pointed by Augustus to revise the ^Eneid, 
 and is spoken of by Horace in the following 
 lines : 
 
 " Maecenas, Virgil, Varius, if I please 
 In my poor writings these and such as these, 
 If Plotius, Valgius, Fuscus will commend, 
 And good Octavius, I've achieved my end." 
 
 Maecenas, whose name has became prover- 
 bial for a munificent friend of literature, was 
 of the highest patrician blood, claiming de- 
 scent from the old Etruscan kings. The 
 confidential adviser and minister of Augus- 
 tus, he was also a man of great general 
 accomplishments, well versed in the literature 
 of Greece and Rome, a lover of the fine arts
 
 Virgil. 27 
 
 and of natural history, and a connoisseur of 
 gems and precious stones. His great wealth 
 enabled him to gratify these various tastes, 
 and his chief relaxation from the cares of 
 statesmanship was in the society of men of 
 letters. To gain admittance to his social 
 circle was a coveted privilege, for not only 
 was this in itself a mark of distinction, but 
 his parties were well known as the pleasantest 
 in Rome. 
 
 Like many of the men of his time who 
 were eminent in affairs, Maecenas wrote much 
 and on various topics, but with only partial 
 success. He shone far more as appreciator 
 than as originator. His magnificent palace 
 on the Esquiline hill was built where the 
 church of Santa Maria Maggiore now stands, 
 and commanded a superb view. From its 
 lofty tower Nero is said to have witnessed 
 the spectacle of Rome in flames beneath him. 
 No trace of it or of the patrician villa at 
 Tivoli now remains, and he who represented
 
 28 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 the great Augustus in his absences from 
 Rome and negotiated the peace of Brun- 
 dusium with Antony, is best remembered 
 by the lines of the poet to whom he had been 
 kind, Horace, the son of a slave. 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 THIRTEEN centuries had passed since the 
 death of Virgil when the lofty imagination of 
 Dante chose him as its guide through the 
 realms of hell. The two poets, having made 
 an end of their journey of terrors and reached 
 Purgatory, continue until they perceive a 
 stately dame walking along alone. Dante 
 says: 
 
 " And there appeared to me . . . 
 A lady all alone, who went along 
 Singing and culling floweret after floweret, 
 With which her pathway was all painted over." 
 
 A grateful sight, indeed, to eyes which 
 had so lately looked on the torments of the
 
 Dante Meeting Matilda. 
 
 From painting by Albert Maignan.
 
 Dante. 29 
 
 damned in the black gulfs of the Inferno. 
 This lady, debonair and calm, is Matilda, who 
 acts as Dante's guide through the Terrestrial 
 Paradise, after the departure of Virgil and 
 before the appearance of Beatrice. 
 
 Dante accosts her, and they converse 
 together while walking along on either side 
 of the stream of Lethe, the river of oblivion, 
 which forms the boundary between Purgatory 
 and Paradise. Dante is afterward drawn 
 through the waters of Lethe by Matilda, who 
 then leads him to Beatrice, first, however, 
 showing him the vision of a mystical pro- 
 cession, in the midst of which Beatrice is 
 seen, crowned with olive and wearing a flame- 
 coloured robe, a green mantle, and a white 
 veil. She is represented as standing on a 
 chariot, with angels singing and strewing 
 flowers over her. 
 
 The commentators on Dante by no means 
 agree as to the identity of Matilda, but per- 
 haps the most generally accepted theory is
 
 3O The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 that she is meant for the great Countess 
 Matilda of Tuscany, the friend and ally of 
 Pope Gregory VII. in his warfare with the 
 Roman Empire, and the munificent benefac- 
 tress of the Holy See by the bequest of her 
 lands to the Church. 
 
 Matilda, daughter of Boniface III., Duke of 
 Tuscany, and Beatrice of Lorraine, was born 
 in 1046, and in 1063 was wedded to Godfrey, 
 eldest son of her mother's second husband. 
 Becoming a widow in 1076, she married, in 
 1089, Guelf of Bavaria, from whom she was 
 divorced in 1095. It was at her mountain 
 castle of Canossa that the excommunicated 
 Emperor Henry IV. submitted to Gregory 
 VII., and performed a bitter and humiliating 
 penance lasting three days, in January, 1077. 
 The warlike countess died childless, in 1115, 
 at the age of sixty-nine, and lies buried in 
 the Vatican. 
 
 The French artist, Maignan's, fine painting 
 of Dante's encounter with Matilda was first
 
 Dante. 3 1 
 
 shown at the Salon of 1887 and was purchased 
 by the state, which had previously bought 
 his picture of the " Departure of the Norman 
 Fleet for the Conquest of England in 1066." 
 His painting of the dying sculptor, Car- 
 peaux, is now in the Luxembourg, and his 
 "Sleep of Fra Angelico," " Birth of the Pearl," 
 and "Voices of the Tocsin," well attest his 
 possession of those gifts which justify the 
 choice of a painter's career. Maignan's 
 "Birth of the Pearl" and "William the 
 Conqueror" were included in the display of 
 French art at the Chicago Exhibition of 
 1893. 
 
 Should any reader think an apology needed 
 for including in a book of this scope an illus- 
 tration showing Virgil and Dante together in 
 the underworld, we answer that we think it 
 allowable because, to those who know Dante's 
 great work, the imaginary journey of the two 
 poets through the Inferno seems not less an 
 actual happening than the great Florentine's
 
 32 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 banishment from his native city, or his sojourn 
 in exile with Can Grande at Verona. 
 
 The tender blossoms of the May-time, such 
 as fell in Purgatory athwart the path of the 
 dark poet of hell and his fair guide-to-be, 
 met joyous greeting from the festival-loving 
 Florentines every recurring spring. 
 
 It was on a May day in the year 1274, 
 that Folco Portinari, one of the chief citizens 
 of Florence, and father of the lady whom 
 Italy's greatest poet has immortalised, gave a 
 feast to his friends. Among the guests who 
 shared his hospitality was Alighiero Alighieri, 
 accompanied by his son Dante, of the age of 
 nine, who then saw Beatrice Portinari for the 
 first time. In his " Vita Nuova " (" The New 
 Life ") Dante says : " She appeared to me at 
 the beginning of her ninth year, almost, and 
 I saw her, almost, at the end of my ninth year. 
 Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble 
 colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled 
 and adorned in such sort as best suited with
 
 Dante. $$ 
 
 her very tender age. At that moment, I say, 
 most truly, that the spirit of life, which hath 
 its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the 
 heart, began to tremble so violently that the 
 least pulses of my body shook therewith ; and 
 in trembling it said these words : ' Ecce deus 
 fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi. 1 
 ... I say that, from that time forward, 
 Love quite governed my soul." The poem 
 goes on to tell how, exactly nine years later, 
 "the same wonderful lady appeared to me, 
 dressed all in pure white, between two gentle 
 ladies older than she. And passing through 
 a street, she turned her eyes thither where I 
 stood, sorely abashed ; and by her unspeak- 
 able courtesy, which is now guerdoned in the 
 Great Cycle, she saluted me with so virtuous 
 a bearing that I seemed then and there to 
 behold the very limits of blessedness. The 
 hour of her most sweet salutation was cer- 
 
 1 Here is a deity stronger than I ; who, coming, shall 
 rule over me.
 
 34 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 tainly the ninth of that day ; and because it 
 was the first time that any words from her 
 reached mine ears, I came into such a sweet- 
 ness, that I parted thence as one intoxicated." 
 The following sonnet, translated, as are 
 the other selections from the " Vita Nuova " 
 here given, by D. G. Rossetti, describes again 
 the salutation of Beatrice : 
 
 " My lady looks so gentle and so pure 
 
 When yielding salutations by the way, 
 
 That the tongue trembles and has naught to say, 
 
 And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure. 
 
 And still, amid the praise she hears secure, 
 
 She walks with humbleness for her array ; 
 
 Seeming a creature sent from heaven to stay 
 
 On earth, and show a miracle made sure. 
 
 She is so pleasant in the eyes of men 
 
 That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain 
 
 A sweetness which needs proof to know it by ; 
 
 And from between her lips, there seems to move 
 
 A soothing spirit that is full of love, 
 
 Saying for ever to the soul, ' O sigh ! ' " 
 
 Henry Holiday's picture of Dante meeting 
 Beatrice was suggested by another portion
 
 Dante and 'Beatrice. 
 
 From painting by Henry Holiday. 
 

 
 Dante. 35 
 
 of the poem, wherein is related how she, 
 because of a false rumour which had reached 
 her concerning Dante and another lady, de- 
 nied him her greeting. In the painting the 
 poet is shown as having just crossed the 
 Ponte S. Trinita, when he meets Beatrice 
 and two friends coming along the Lung' Arno 
 from the Ponte Vecchio. This ancient 
 bridge, having been washed away by a flood 
 some years before, had been recently rebuilt, 
 and forms the principal feature in the back- 
 ground of the picture. The lady on our left, 
 whose hand rests on Beatrice's shoulder, and 
 who looks toward the poet so "stern of 
 lineament," is supposed to be the Monna 
 Vanna referred to by him in one of his son- 
 nets as being an intimate friend of his lady's. 
 " Dante and Beatrice " was first exhibited 
 at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1883, and is now 
 the property of the Walker Art Gallery of 
 Liverpool, where may also be seen Rossetti's 
 picture of " Dante's Dream." Its author, an
 
 36 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 English artist, is probably best known for 
 his work in stained glass, not a few of his 
 windows being in the United States. 
 
 Every one knows something of the purely 
 platonic love of Dante and Beatrice, but some 
 readers may not know that, in his " Vita 
 Nuova," the poet relates how, being at a cer- 
 tain marriage festival in Florence, at which 
 Beatrice was also present, he was seized with 
 a sudden strange trembling, and became 
 greatly troubled. Rossetti says : " It is diffi- 
 cult not to connect Dante's agony at this 
 wedding feast with our knowledge that, in 
 her twenty-first year, Beatrice was wedded to 
 Simone de' Bardi. That she herself was the 
 bride on this occasion might seem out of the 
 question from the fact of its not being in any 
 way so stated : but on the other hand, Dante's 
 silence throughout the 'Vita Nuova' as 
 regards her marriage (which must have 
 brought deep sorrow even to his ideal love ) 
 is so startling that we might almost be led to
 
 Dante. 37 
 
 conceive in this passage the only intimation 
 of it which he thought fit to give." 
 
 Beatrice died, aged twenty-four, on the 
 9th of June, 1290, and amid his laments, 
 Dante has some curious things to say about 
 the recurrence of the number nine in con- 
 nection with her. 
 
 Among his comments we find : " This num- 
 ber was her own self : that is to say, by simili- 
 tude, as thus : The number three is the root 
 of the number nine ; seeing that without the 
 interposition of any other number, being mul- 
 tiplied merely by itself, it produceth nine, as 
 we manifestly perceive that three times three 
 are nine. Thus, three being of itself the 
 efficient of nine, and the Great Efficient of 
 Miracles being of Himself Three Persons ( to 
 wit : the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Spirit), which, being Three, are also One, 
 this lady was accompanied by the number 
 nine to the end that men might clearly per- 
 ceive her to be a nine, that is, a miracle,
 
 38 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 whose only root is the Holy Trinity. It may 
 be that a more subtle person would find for 
 this thing a reason of greater subtilty : but 
 such is the reason that I find, and that liketh 
 me best." Dante's poem on the death of Bea- 
 trice is more to our liking than these mystical 
 phrases, and includes this beautiful stanza : 
 
 " Beatrice is gone up into high heaven, 
 The kingdom where the angels are at peace ; 
 And lives with them, and to her friends is dead. 
 Not by the frost of winter was she driven 
 Away like others ; nor by summer heats : 
 But through a perfect gentleness, instead. 
 For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead, 
 Such an exceeding glory went up hence, 
 That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire, 
 Until a sweet desire 
 Enter'd Him for that lovely excellence, 
 So that He bade her to Himself aspire : 
 Counting this weary and most evil place 
 Unworthy of a thing so full of grace." 
 
 Carlyle says : " I know not in the world an 
 affection equal to that of Dante. It is a ten- 
 derness, a trembling, longing, pitying love,
 
 Dante. 39 
 
 like the wail of ^Eolian harps, soft, soft ; like 
 a child's young heart ; one likens it to the 
 song of angels ; it is among the purest utter- 
 ances of affection, perhaps the very purest 
 that ever came out of a human soul." 
 
 "Whom first we love, we seldom wed," 
 and Boccaccio tells us that about a year after 
 the death of Beatrice, Dante was married to 
 Gemma Donati, a lady belonging to one of 
 the most powerful families of Tuscany. By 
 her he had several children, among them 
 a daughter, whom he named Beatrice, in 
 memory of his blessed "lady of all gentle 
 memories." 
 
 Henry Sewell Stokes, a little-known Eng- 
 ish poet, wrote this sonnet about the second 
 Beatrice : 
 
 " Twas in Ravenna Dante's daughter dwelt, 
 Under the shadow of St. Stephen's tower, 
 Poor and forlorn, her name the only dower 
 From him beside whose tomb she often knelt. 
 Florence, repenting late, compassion felt, 
 And thence one day a stranger came with gold,
 
 40 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Which to the nun, so saintly and so cold, 
 
 He proffered smiling, while his heart did melt. 
 
 No other than Boccaccio brought the gift, 
 
 Who as a son revered and loved her sire ; 
 
 And when she did her hood all meekly lift 
 
 To render grateful answer and retire, 
 
 He by the father's portrait knew the child, 
 
 And wept, as she returned her thanks and smiled." 
 
 PETRARCH. 
 
 LIKE Dante, Petrarch loved for many 
 years, with a pure and virtuous affection, one 
 who was the wife of another, and unlike 
 Dante, he remained faithful to the memory 
 of his lady all his life. 
 
 At twenty-two years of age, he visited 
 Avignon, and first beheld Laura de Noves, 
 then in her eighteenth year, in the church of 
 the nunnery of St. Claire. Her beauty kin- 
 dled a flame in the ardent soul of the young 
 poet, which time was powerless to subdue, 
 but which he expressed only in his verse.
 
 Petrarch. 41 
 
 Laura married Hugues de Sade, a gentleman 
 of Avignon, and is not known ever to have 
 bestowed on Petrarch any favours exceeding 
 those of self-respecting friendship. He was 
 not a visitor at her home, nor did he see her 
 except at mass, or at the brilliant levees 
 of the pope, yet she for ever remained the 
 controlling influence of his life. 
 
 The brilliant author of "An Englishman 
 in Paris" gives us a striking picture of Pe- 
 trarch's passion in the following lines : 
 
 "Love not only led, but followed him 
 everywhere ; love was part of himself. In 
 the sombre forest, by the babbling brook, 
 under the burning sun of Provence, or 
 toward the close of the day, when twilight, 
 calm and serene, seemed to invite sweet rev- 
 eries, at all hours, in all spots, Laura's lover 
 was always the same. Ever giving the rein 
 to his imagination, he fruitlessly sought in 
 nature a balm for his sufferings; the still, 
 small voice of his heart brought him back to
 
 42 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 the adored image and closed his eyes to the 
 beauty of the landscape, or if, for a moment, 
 it beguiled him into bestowing a more than 
 cursory glance at the valleys stretched at his 
 feet, at the mountains rearing their wooded 
 crowns above him, at the flowery plains, 
 golden with the setting sun, and melting into 
 one with the horizon, at the clouds sailing 
 aloft, in every object he beheld something of 
 Laura. In the amber corn he saw her blond 
 tresses, in the murmur of the rustling leaves 
 he heard the sound of her footsteps ; the low 
 chant of the brook, whose limpid spray kissed 
 the yellow sand, reminded him of the velvety 
 accent of her voice. Often swayed by the 
 illusion, he spoke to Laura as if she were 
 near him, and was surprised that her answer 
 fell not upon his ear. Thus travel, instead 
 of calming, instead of curing him, increased 
 his trouble and agitation. Each morn he 
 left the shelter where he had passed the 
 night ; each morn he took up his pilgrim's
 
 Petrarch. 43 
 
 staff ; new horizons unrolled themselves be- 
 fore his eyes; he chastised, almost broke, 
 his body with fatigue, but could not succeed 
 in driving from his heart the image of the 
 adored one; until, tired of the perpetual 
 struggle, he began to regret the very air 
 Laura breathed, the paths her foot pressed, 
 the protecting hedges behind which he had 
 hidden himself to watch her beauteous front, 
 the cherry lips which a jealous veil in vain 
 concealed from the eager curiosity of the 
 lover. He even regretted the reproaches, 
 the impatience, the anger he had read in 
 her looks. His sufferings, with which he 
 had taunted Heaven as with so many injus- 
 tices, now returned to his memory like bliss- 
 ful moments, like hours of delight, for which 
 he should have been grateful ; and he craved 
 pardon of God for having blasphemed, for 
 having misprized his happiness, and heart 
 and mind humbly craved from his Maker a 
 repetition of the torturing ecstasy.
 
 44 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 "Such, be it remembered, is the digest, 
 culled from his own compositions, of Pe- 
 trarch's intro- and retrospect of his daily 
 martyrdom, varied by beatific, we might say 
 apocalyptic, visions." 
 
 From the many journeys which he made to 
 Italy, to Spain, and to Flanders, he always 
 returned to his home at Vaucluse, near 
 Avignon, and to Laura. She died in 1347, 
 during the poet's absence, but he always 
 cherished her image in his heart and dedi- 
 cated many lines to her dear memory, long 
 after she had gone from earth. 
 
 " Once more, ye balmy gales, I feel ye blow ; 
 Again, sweet hills, I mark the morning beams 
 Gild your green summits ; while your silver streams 
 Through vales of fragrance undulating flow. 
 But you, ye dreams of bliss, no longer here 
 Give life and beauty to the glowing scene ; 
 For stern remembrance stands where you have been, 
 And blasts the verdure of the blooming year. 
 O Laura ! Laura ! in the dust with thee, 
 Would I could find a refuge from despair !
 
 The Presentation of Petrarch and Laura. 
 
 From painting by Vacslav Brozik.
 
 Petrarch. 45 
 
 Is this thy boasted triumph, Love, to tear 
 A heart thy coward malice dares not free ; 
 And bid it live, while every hope is fled, 
 To weep, among the ashes of the dead ? " 
 
 In the picture which Brozik has painted 
 of these two famous lovers, if we may 
 thus class the lady who accepted, but did not 
 requite the homage of the poet, we are 
 shown a spacious and richly furnished apart- 
 ment in the chiteau of the popes at Avignon. 
 
 i 
 
 The seat of the pontifical government had in 
 1309 been transferred from Rome to Avi- 
 gnon, because of the increasing civic and 
 national dissensions which distracted the 
 Eternal City. Clement VI., a Frenchman, 
 in whose reign Rienzi made his noble, but 
 unavailing, attempt to restore to Rome her 
 ancient republican form of government, 
 was the fourth of the Avignon popes. It 
 is he whom we see standing in the centre of 
 the painting, between Petrarch and the newly 
 elected emperor, Charles IV. Charles, the
 
 46 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 son of the blind old king, John of Bohemia, 
 who had fallen fighting valiantly at Crecy, 
 was a generous protector of literature, and 
 founded universities at Vienna and Prague. 
 As a ruler, however, he fell far short of per- 
 fection, being too subservient to Clement, 
 and so much occupied in aggrandising him- 
 self and his family that he neglected his 
 kingly duties. Charles gained the nickname 
 of the " Pope's Kaiser " because he owed his 
 election as emperor to Clement, who nomi- 
 nated him without consulting the electors, and 
 excommunicated his rival, Louis of Bavaria. 
 Avarice was his chief failing, and he was 
 said to have bought the empire by wholesale, 
 to have held it as a usurer, and to have sold 
 it at retail. It was he who, in 1356, pub- 
 lished at Nuremberg the famous "Golden 
 Bull," which was thenceforth the fundamental 
 law of the German Empire. Though he ex- 
 hibited nothing of the knightly spirit of his 
 father, he was a personable king enough,
 
 Petrarch. 47 
 
 and at the time of our picture was about 
 thirty years old, being some three years 
 younger than Petrarch. 
 
 Brozik, a Bohemian artist and a pupil of 
 Piloty, has painted several large canvases 
 of a similar type to the " Presentation of Pe- 
 trarch and Laura," in which a crowd of figures 
 in picturesque costumes are skilfully dis- 
 posed amid surroundings of a richly deco- 
 rative nature. He won a second-class medal 
 at the Paris Salon of 1878, with his " Embassy 
 of King Ladislas at the Court of Charles VII. 
 of France," which is now in the National Gal- 
 lery of Berlin. Another huge and sumptuous 
 work of this nature is his " Columbus at the 
 Court of Ferdinand and Isabella," arguing in 
 favour of his proposed voyage in search of a 
 new continent, which was given to the Met- 
 ropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a 
 few years ago, by Mr. Morris K. Jesup. 
 The city of Prague, in whose School of Fine 
 Arts he was once a pupil, owns Brozik's
 
 48 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " Condemnation of John Huss by the Council 
 of Constance, 1415," and one of his latest 
 achievements, shown at the Salon of 1900, 
 is the "Proclamation of George Podiebrad 
 as King of Bohemia, 1457." 
 
 BOCCACCIO. 
 
 "FROM Dante through Petrarch to Boc- 
 caccio, from Beatrice through Laura to La 
 Fiammetta, from woman as an allegory 
 of the noblest thoughts and purest striv- 
 ings of the soul, through woman as the 
 symbol of all beauty, worshipped at a 
 distance, to woman as man's lover, kindling 
 and reciprocating passionate desire," writes 
 Symonds, and this is the path we have 
 followed. 
 
 Boccaccio's Fiammetta (" Fiammetta " is an 
 affectionate epithet meaning " little flame ") 
 was in reality Maria d' Aquino, who is sup- 
 posed to have been a natural daughter of
 
 Boccaccio. 49 
 
 Robert of Anjou, King of Naples. Like 
 Laura, she was married (in this case we 
 know not who her husband was), and Boc- 
 caccio, like Petrarch, first saw his love in 
 church, that of San Lorenzo at Naples, 
 on the morning of an Easter eve. Although 
 we have scarcely any reliable information as 
 to the actual relations between Boccaccio and 
 his lady, there is no doubt that she willed a 
 powerful influence upon his mind and heart. 
 " She certainly inspired him to compose the 
 principal Italian works of his early man- 
 hood. . . . Even in his masterpiece, the 
 " Decameron," composed when her influence 
 was clearly on the wane, he pays her hom- 
 age. In fact, he chose her for his Muse, 
 as poets in those days were wont to choose 
 one lady around whose image they allowed 
 their thoughts and sentiments to crystallise 
 nntil the vision became for them something 
 between a reality and an ideal." 
 
 Th*s beautiful sonnet, which Boccaccio
 
 50 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 addressed to Fiammetta, Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti has translated : 
 
 " Round her red garland and her golden hair 
 I saw a fire about Fiammetta's head ; 
 Thence to a little cloud I watch'd it fade, 
 Than silver or than gold more brightly fair; 
 And like a pearl that a gold ring doth bear, 
 Even so an angel sat therein, who sped 
 Alone and glorious throughout heaven, array'd 
 In sapphires and in gold that lit the air ; 
 Then I rejoiced as hoping happy things, 
 Who rather should have then discern'd how God 
 Had haste to make my lady all his own, 
 Even as it came to pass. And with these stings 
 Of sorrow and with life's most weary load 
 I dwell, who fain would be where she is gone." 
 
 Rossetti says : " There is nothing that 
 gives Boccaccio greater claim to our regard 
 than the enthusiastic reverence with which 
 he loved to dwell on the 'Commedia' and 
 on the memory of Dante, who died when 
 he was seven years old. This is amply 
 proved by his ' Life of the Poet and Com-
 
 Boccaccio. 5 1 
 
 mentary on the Poem,' as well as by other 
 passages in his writings, both in prose and 
 poetry." 
 
 In 1373, when Boccaccio was sixty years 
 old, some citizens of Florence obtained per- 
 mission from the government to found a chair 
 for the public reading and exposition of the 
 " Divine Comedy," and Boccaccio was ap- 
 pointed the first reader. He began to 
 lecture in the church of San Stefano on 
 October 23d and occupied the professorship 
 until the spring of 1375. 
 
 We quote here his sonnet upon Dante : 
 
 ' Dante am I, Minerva's son, who knew 
 With skill and genius (though in style obscure) 
 And elegance maternal to mature 
 My toil, a miracle to mortal view. 
 Through realms tartarean and celestial flew 
 My lofty fancy, swift-winged and secure : 
 And ever shall my noble work endure, 
 Fit to be read of men, and angels too. 
 Florence my earthly mother's glorious name : 
 Step-dame to me, whom from her side she 
 thrust,
 
 52 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Her duteous son : bear slanderous tongues the 
 
 blame : 
 
 Ravenna housed my exile, holds my dust : 
 My spirit is with Him from whom it came, 
 A Parent envy cannot make unjust." 
 
 Boccaccio, the great prose-writer of "the 
 three founders of modern literature," all of 
 whom were Florentines, not only revered 
 Dante, but his most intimate friend was 
 Petrarch, to whom in 1359 ne sent a c Py 
 of the "Divine Comedy" transcribed with 
 his own hand. The news of Petrarch's 
 death was a severe blow to him, and it was 
 but a few months ere he followed his old 
 friend upon that journey from which none 
 return. 
 
 Symonds says : "The author of the 'Decam- 
 eron ' was one of the most brilliant story- 
 tellers whom the world has seen ; and telling 
 stories formed a favourite pastime with gentle- 
 men and women of the fourteenth century." 
 It being remembered that Boccaccio died
 
 'Boccaccio. 
 
 From painting by A. CassiolL
 
 Tasso. $3 
 
 long before the invention of printing, it will 
 readily be seen that Signer Cassioli, the 
 distinguished Italian painter, has full warrant 
 for representing him as telling a merry tale 
 to a company of delighted listeners in some 
 noble house. 
 
 Cassioli was a historical painter whose life 
 lay between the years 1838 and 1891, and 
 who was a professor in the Florence Acad- 
 emy of Fine Arts. He painted numerous 
 historical works, but is probably better 
 known to the general public by his picture 
 of "Mary Stuart and Rizzio," and of "Fran- 
 cesca da Rimini," and by this one of Boc- 
 caccio entrancing an admiring audience, with 
 whom the great novelist smiles in sympathy. 
 
 TASSO. 
 
 Two strongly contrasted scenes from the 
 life of Tasso are familiar to us, and it is 
 seldom that we see one represented without
 
 4 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 recalling the other. In the first the poet, 
 still young but of wide renown, is a gentle- 
 man of the household at the brilliant court 
 of his patron, Alphonso II. of Este, at 
 Ferrara. In high favour, with the duke, 
 he is also honoured by the intimate ac- 
 quaintance of the two unmarried sisters of 
 Alphonso, the beautiful and accomplished 
 Princesses Lucrezia and Leonora, and re- 
 cites to them upon completion the succes- 
 sive cantos of his great epic poem of 
 "Jerusalem Delivered" and other produc- 
 tions of his muse. Legend, in this case 
 with some historic foundation, asserts that 
 the poet nourished an ardent passion for 
 the Princess Leonora. 
 
 The second scene shows us the unhappy 
 Tasso confined as a madman in a cell, in 
 the hospital of St. Anna, where he was 
 kept a prisoner for seven years, the beauti- 
 ful Leonora dying in the second year of his 
 imprisonment.
 
 Tasso. 55 
 
 From his gloomy madhouse the high- 
 souled poet addressed some most moving 
 appeals to the princes whose favour had 
 been bestowed on him in happier days. 
 
 " Oh, miserable that I am," he breaks out 
 in a letter to Scipio Gonzaga, " I had de- 
 signed to write two epic poems of most 
 noble and glorious argument, four tragedies, 
 of which I had already formed the plan, and 
 many works in prose, on subjects of highest 
 beauty and greatest advantage to human 
 life : and so to unite eloquence with phi- 
 losophy as to leave of myself an eternal 
 memory in the world, and I had set before 
 myself a most exalted measure of glory and 
 honour. But now, oppressed beneath the 
 weight of such intolerable calamities, I 
 abandon every thought of glory and honour, 
 and most happy should I count myself if, 
 without suspicion, I could only allay the 
 thirst by which I am continually tormented ; 
 and if, as one of the ordinary race of men,
 
 56 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 I could in some poor cot spend my life in 
 liberty; if not sane, which I cannot more 
 be, yet at least no more in such agonising 
 weakness ; if not honoured, yet at least not 
 abhorred ; if not with the rights of men, 
 yet at least with those of brutes, who in 
 the rivers and the fountains can freely 
 quench their thirst, with which (and it 
 eases me to reecho it) I am all on fire. 
 Nor do I now so much fear the greatness 
 of my anguish as its continuance, which 
 ever presents itself horribly before my 
 mind, especially as I feel that in such a 
 state I am unfit to write or labour. And 
 the dread of endless imprisonment fear- 
 fully increases my misery, and the indig- 
 nity to which I must submit increases it, 
 and the foulness of my beard, and my hair, 
 and my dress, and the filth, and the damp, 
 annoy me ; and, above all, the solitude af- 
 flicts me, my cruel and natural enemy, by 
 which, even in my prosperity, I was often
 
 Tasso. 57 
 
 so troubled, that in unseasonable hours I 
 would go and seek or find society." 
 
 Another touching cry for aid is the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 TO THE PRINCESSES OF FERRARA. 
 
 " Fair daughters of Re'ne'e ! my song 
 
 Is not of pride and ire, 
 Fraternal discord, hate, and wrong, 
 Burning in life and death so strong, 
 
 From rule's accurst desire, 
 That even the flames divided long 
 
 Upon their funeral pyre. 
 But you I sing, of royal birth, 
 
 Nursed on one breast like them ; 
 Two flowers, both lovely, blooming forth 
 
 From the same parent stem, 
 Cherished by heaven, beloved by earth, 
 
 Of each a treasured gem ! 
 
 " To you I speak in whom we see 
 
 With wondrous concord blend 
 Sense, worth, fame, beauty, modesty, 
 
 Imploring you to lend 
 Compassion to the misery 
 
 And sufferings of your friend.
 
 58 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 The memory of years gone by, 
 O, let me in your hearts renew, 
 
 The scenes, the thoughts, o'er which I sigh, 
 The happy days I spent with you, 
 
 And what I was, and why secluded ; 
 
 Whom did I trust, and who deluded ? 
 
 Daughters of heroes and of kings, 
 
 Allow me to recall 
 These and a thousand other things, 
 
 Sad, sweet, and mournful all ! 
 From me few words, more tears, grief wrings, 
 
 Tears burning as they fall. 
 For royal halls and festive bowers, 
 
 Where, nobly serving, I 
 Shared and beguiled your private hours, 
 
 Studies and sports I sigh ; 
 And lyre, and trump, and wreathed flowers; 
 Nay, more, for freedom, health, applause, 
 And even humanity's lost laws ! 
 
 " Why am I chased from human kind? 
 
 What Circe in the lair 
 Of brutes thus keeps me spell-confined ? 
 
 Nests have the birds of air, 
 The very beasts in caverns find 
 
 Shelter and rest, and share 
 At least kind nature's gifts and laws.
 
 7asso at Ferrara. 
 
 From painting by Ferdinand Barth.
 
 Tasso. 59 
 
 For each his food and water draws 
 From wood and fountain, where 
 
 Wholesome and pure and safe it was 
 Furnished by Heaven's own care; 
 
 And all is bright and blest, because 
 Freedom and health are there ! 
 
 * I merit punishment, I own ; 
 
 I erred, I must confess it ; yet 
 The fault was in the tongue alone, 
 
 The heart is true. Forgive ! Forget ! 
 I beg for mercy, and my woes 
 
 May claim with pity to be heard ; 
 If to my prayers your ears you close, 
 
 Where can I hope for one kind word 
 In my extremity of ill ? 
 
 And if the pang of hope deferred 
 Arise from discord in your will, 
 For me must be revived again 
 The fate of Metius and the pain. 
 
 " I pray you, then ; renew for me 
 
 The charm that made you doubly fair, 
 In sweet and virtuous harmony 
 Urging, resistlessly, my prayer; 
 With him for whose loved sake, I swear, 
 I more lament my fault than pains, 
 Strange and unheard of as they are. "
 
 60 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 The artist, Ferdinand Earth, who has 
 painted our picture of Tasso, is a German, 
 and was a pupil of the famous Piloty. His 
 most noted picture is one depicting the 
 casket scene from "The Merchant of 
 Venice," but his " Paganini in Prison " is 
 also a work worthy of regard. 
 
 CHAUCER. 
 
 JOHN OF GAUNT, the fourth son of Edward 
 the Third and the good Queen Philippa of 
 Hainault, was the firm friend and patron 
 of two great Englishmen, John Wyclif, the 
 first translator of the Bible into English, and 
 Geoffrey Chaucer, "the morning star of 
 English poetry." John, called of "Gaunt" 
 because he was born at Ghent, in Flanders, 
 which the common people so pronounced, 
 married Blanche, daughter of the Duke of 
 Lancaster, through whom that title later 
 came to John. At her decease, Chaucer
 
 Chaucer. 61 
 
 wrote his poem on " The Dethe of Blaunche 
 the Duchesse." John of Gaunt's second 
 matrimonial alliance was with Constance, 
 a princess of Spain, after whose death he 
 espoused Catherine Swynford, the sister of 
 Chaucer's wife, who was one of the ladies- 
 in-waiting of Queen Philippa, was named 
 Philippa, and was, probably, herself a native 
 of Hainault. 
 
 Chaucer held office of one kind or another 
 under three kings, Edward III., Richard II., 
 and Henry IV., and was several times sent 
 abroad on diplomatic missions. On one of 
 these occasions he spent some time in Italy, 
 and is thought to have met Petrarch. 
 
 Ford Madox Brown, a Pre-Raphaelite 
 painter, though never actually a member of 
 the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and 
 an artist too little known in the United 
 States, sent to the Royal Academy, in 1851, 
 a painting which he named " Chaucer at the 
 Court of Edward III."
 
 62 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 This remarkable work was purchased a 
 number of years later for the National Art 
 Gallery of New South Wales, at Sydney, 
 where it now hangs, and recalls to the Colo- 
 nial or the visitor from England's shore two 
 of her ancient glories a brightening one of 
 letters and a fading one of arms in its 
 presentment of Chaucer and of the Black 
 Prince. 
 
 Our description of the picture is based 
 upon the painter's own words in the cata- 
 logue of his pictures exhibited in London in 
 1865. The poet is supposed to be reading 
 these lines from the " Legend of Custance," 
 told by the man of law in the " Canterbury 
 Tales : " 
 
 " Hire litel child lay weping on hire arm, 
 And kneling pitously to him she said, 
 Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee no harm. 
 With that hire coverchief of hire hed she braid 
 And over his litel eyen she it laid, 
 And in hire arme she lulleth it ful fast, 
 And unto the heven hire eyen up she cast."
 
 Chaucer at the Court of Edward III. 
 
 From painting by Ford Maclox Brown.
 
 Chaucer. 63 
 
 John of Gaunt, in armour and richly bla- 
 zoned tabard, stands next to Chaucer, and 
 beneath a stately Gothic canopy sits Edward 
 III. His queen, the good Philippa, is dead, 
 and the bold-faced lady on his right is Alice 
 Ferrers, who had been attached to her train, 
 and for whom the old king evinced a foolish 
 passion, "a cause of scandal to the court, 
 such as, repeating itself at intervals in history 
 with remarkable similarity from David down- 
 ward, seems to argue that the untimely death 
 of a hero may not be altogether so deplora- 
 ble an event." The historians say that this 
 mercenary favourite took the very ring from 
 Edward's finger as he lay dying, and left him 
 to be pillaged by his faithless servants. The 
 fair lady on the king's left hand, who wears a 
 coronet, is Joan, called the "Fair Maid of 
 Kent," only daughter of Edward of Wood- 
 stock, Earl of Kent. She was a widow when 
 she married her cousin, Edward the Black 
 Prince, by whom she became the mother of
 
 64 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Richard II., who is seen in the picture as a 
 child at her knee. " There had been much 
 opposition to their union, but the prince 
 ultimately had his own way." The hero of 
 Crecy and Poitiers, supposed to be in his 
 last illness and much emaciated, leans on 
 his wife's lap and listens intently to the 
 poet's lines. 
 
 Seated beneath these royalties are various 
 personages suited to the time and place. 
 By the fountain a young troubadour from 
 the south of France, half jealous and half 
 admiring, looks up to Chaucer ; on his 
 left two ladies listen to an ecclesiastic, 
 who points mockingly to the jester, for- 
 getting his part in rapt attention to the 
 reader ; next him two dilettante courtiers 
 are learnedly criticising, the one in the 
 hood being meant for the poet Gower, 
 Chaucer's friend. Lastly, on the left, a 
 youthful squire whispers soft words to his 
 mistress,
 
 Chaucer. 65 
 
 Chaucer thus describes him : 
 
 "... a younge" Squire, 
 A lover and a lusty bacholer, 
 With locke's crull, as they were laid in press, 
 Of twenty year of age he was I guess. 
 Of his stature he was of even length, 
 And wonderly deliver and great of strength ; 
 And he had been some time in Chevachie, 
 In Flandres, in Artois, and in Picardy, 
 And borne him well, as of so little space, 
 In hope to standen in his lady's grace. 
 Embroidered was he, as it were a mead 
 All full of freshe" flowers white and red. 
 Singing he was or fluting all the day. 
 He was as fresh as is the month of May, 
 Short was his gown, with sleeve's long and wide ; 
 Well could he sit on horse, and faird ride. 
 He couldd songe"s well make, and indite, 
 Joust, and eke dance, and well pourtray and write, 
 So hot he lovdd, that by nightertale 
 He slept no more than doth the nightingale. 
 Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable, 
 And carved before his father at the table." 
 
 Many other minor characters are intro- 
 duced, and there is a wealth of detail which
 
 66 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 escapes the eye in our necessarily small re- 
 production. Sitting on the ground being 
 common in those days, rushes were strewn 
 to prevent the gentlemen from spoiling their 
 fine clothes. 
 
 The head of Chaucer was studied from the 
 poet-painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and that 
 of the troubadour is a portrait of his brother, 
 William Michael Rossetti, distinguished as a 
 writer and critic, who married one of the 
 artist's daughters. 
 
 Ford Madox Brown died in 1893, having 
 passed three score years and ten, after a life 
 of hard and high-aimed work, but illy repaid 
 in wealth or fame. The National Gallery 
 owns his picture of " Christ Washing Peter's 
 Feet," presented soon after his death by a 
 number of friends and admirers ; " Elijah 
 and the Widow's Son " is in the South 
 Kensington Museum ; Birmingham has that 
 pathetic page of life which the artist called 
 " The Last of England," and Manchester
 
 More. 67 
 
 the Carlylean "Work," in which is intro- 
 duced the figure of the " Sage of Chelsea." 
 The great cotton city also possesses, in her 
 noble town hall, Madox Brown's striking 
 series of wall paintings, illustrating the his- 
 tory of Manchester, the work of the last years 
 of this strong and original master. 
 
 MORE. 
 
 OF all the great ones whose lives were cut 
 short on Tower Hill by the headsman's axe, 
 few, if any, are more worthy of our reverence 
 than Sir Thomas More, who met death there 
 in 1535. Once Lord High Chancellor of 
 England, he suffered because his conscience 
 forbade him to acknowledge the validity of 
 Henry's marriage to Anne Bullen, or to rec- 
 ognise the king's supremacy as head of the 
 Church. 
 
 Apart from his connection with Henry 
 VIII., More is better known to-day through
 
 68 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 his friendship with Erasmus and Holbein 
 than by his writings. Of these, the most 
 famous is the political romance of " Utopia," 
 which describes an imaginary island where 
 everything laws, politics, morals, institu- 
 tions, and so on is perfect. 
 
 A singularly happy man in his home-life 
 was More, and deeply attached to his chil- 
 dren. He had but one son, John, but re- 
 joiced in three daughters, of whom his 
 favourite was the eldest, Margaret, noted 
 for learning and virtue, and who resembled 
 her father most in looks as well as in mind. 
 She married William Roper, " a man of good 
 fortune and blameless morals, and with an 
 inclination to learning," who wrote an invalu- 
 able biography of Sir Thomas. In it he 
 describes the episode which the artist has 
 painted of More and his daughter in prison. 
 Roper says : 
 
 " Sir Thomas More being now prisoner in 
 the Tower, and one daye looking forth at his
 
 Sir Thomas [More and His Daughte 
 
 From painting by J. R. Herbert.
 
 More. 69 
 
 window, saw a father of Syon and three 
 monkes going out of the Tower to execution, 
 for that they had refused the oath of suprem- 
 acy ; whereupo, he, languishing it were with 
 desire to beare them company, said unto his 
 daughter Roper, then present, Looke, Megge, 
 doest thou not see that these blessed fathers 
 be now going as cheerfully to theyr deathes as 
 bridegrooms to theyr marriage ? by which thou 
 mayst see (myne owne good daughter) what 
 a great difference there is between such as 
 have spent all theyr dayes in a religious, hard, 
 and penitential life, and such as have in this 
 world like wretches (as thy poore father here 
 hath done) consumed all theyr tyme in pleas- 
 ure and ease.' " 
 
 After Sir Thomas More's trial, "as he 
 came to Tower wharf, his dearest daughter, 
 Margaret, pushed her way through the sym- 
 pathetic crowd and past the guard which 
 surrounded him, and flung herself into his 
 arms, not able to say any word but ' Oh, my
 
 /O The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 father ! Oh, my father ! ' He was still calm 
 enough to give her his blessing 'and many 
 goodly words of comfort.' ' Take patience, 
 Margaret,' he said, ' and do not grieve. God 
 has willed it so. For many years didst thou 
 know the secret of my heart.' They had 
 already parted once, when she ran back and 
 threw her arms around him. 'Whereat he 
 spoke not a word, but carrying still his 
 gravity, tears fell from his eyes : yea, there 
 were very few in all the group who could 
 refrain thereat from weeping, no, not the 
 guard themselves.' " 
 
 More's latest biographer, Hutton, states 
 that no certain record of his burial is pre- 
 served, and it is not positively known whether 
 his body lies in the chapel of the Tower, or 
 in the old parish church in Chelsea, where he 
 worshipped. According to the barbarous 
 usage of the time, his head was set upon 
 a pole on London Bridge, from whence tra- 
 dition says his daughter Margaret recovered
 
 More. 7 1 
 
 it, and carefully preserved it until her death, 
 in 1544, when it was buried with her at 
 Chelsea. 
 
 In his " Dream of Fair Women," Tennyson 
 refers to this legend of Margaret More, when 
 be speaks of 
 
 " Her, who clasp'd in her last trance, 
 Her murdered father's head." 
 
 John Rogers Herbert, the English Royal 
 Academician who painted " Sir Thomas More 
 and his Daughter," which is in the National 
 Gallery, died an octogenarian in 1890. Dur- 
 ing his long life he produced many pictures, 
 including the " Brides of Venice" and " St. 
 Gregory Teaching his Chant." He often 
 essayed religious themes, among which should 
 be mentioned the fresco in the Houses of 
 Parliament, representing " Moses Bringing 
 the Tables of the Law from Sinai to the 
 Israelites."
 
 72 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ONE of the most persistent traditions re- 
 lating to the Bard of Avon is that which 
 accuses him of being at least once in his life- 
 time a poacher. The story goes that, when 
 Shakespeare was about twenty-one, he, in 
 company with some other wild young men, 
 made a midnight raid on the grounds of Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, at Charlecote Park, near 
 Stratford, in search of deer, and that the 
 poet was so unfortunate as to be captured by 
 the keepers, while his companions escaped. 
 In the morning he was brought before the 
 worshipful Sir Thomas for examination and 
 punishment, but the legend is wholly silent 
 as to what penalty was inflicted upon him. 
 Whatever this may have been, Shakespeare 
 revenged himself by writing a stinging pas- 
 quinade in rhyme, and affixing it to the park 
 gate at Charlecote. The persecutions which
 
 Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy. 
 
 From painting by Thomas Brooks.
 
 Shakespeare. 73 
 
 thereafter followed the poet at Sir Thomas's 
 hands hastened, tradition asserts, the depart- 
 ure of Shakespeare from Stratford to Lon- 
 don, whither he betook himself the following 
 year, in 1586. 
 
 However much or little truth lies within 
 this legend, it is certain that the poet had Sir 
 Thomas Lucy in mind when he drew the un- 
 flattering picture of the country magistrate, 
 Justice Shallow, in the " Merry Wives of 
 Windsor," and in the Second Part of " King 
 Henry IV." This is proven by the allusion 
 to the family arms of the Lucys, who bore 
 upon their shield three luces (or full-grown 
 pikes). The first words in the " Merry 
 Wives" are spoken by Shallow, conversing 
 with Slender and Sir Hugh Evans. He says : 
 
 " Sir Hugh, persuade me not ; I will make 
 a Star-chamber matter of it : if he were 
 twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not 
 abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.
 
 74 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Slender. In the County of Gloster, jus- 
 tice of peace and coram. 
 
 Shallow. Ay, cousin Slender, and cust- 
 alorum. 
 
 Slender. Ay, and ratolorum too ; and a 
 gentleman born, master parson ; who writes 
 himself armigero. 
 
 Shallow. Ay, that I do ; and have done 
 any time these three hundred years. 
 
 Slender. All his successors, gone before 
 him, hath done 't ; and all his ancestors, 
 that come after him, may : they may give 
 the dozen white luces in their coat. 
 
 Shallow. It is an old coat." 
 
 In " Henry IV." Shakespeare gives an 
 inimitably lifelike picture of an old man brag- 
 ging of the exploits of his lusty youth. Shal- 
 low begins : 
 
 " I was once of Clement's inn, where, I 
 think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.
 
 Shakespeare. 75 
 
 Silent. You were called lusty Shallow 
 then, cousin. 
 
 Shallow. By the mass, I was called any- 
 thing ; and I would have done anything, in- 
 deed, and roundly too. There was I, and 
 little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black 
 George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and 
 Will Squele, a Cotswold man ; you had not 
 four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of 
 court again. Then was Jack Fal staff, now 
 Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas 
 Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. 
 
 Silent. This Sir John, cousin, that comes 
 hither anon about soldiers ? 
 
 Shallow. The same Sir John, the very 
 same. I saw him break Skogan's head at 
 the court gate, when he was a crack, not 
 thus high : and the very same day did I fight 
 with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, 
 behind Gray's inn. Jesu ! Jesu ! the mad 
 days that I have spent! and to see how 
 many of mine old acquaintance are dead !
 
 j6 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Silent. We shall all follow, cousin. 
 
 Shallow. Certain, 'tis certain ; very sure, 
 very sure : death, as the Psalmist saith, is 
 certain to all; all shall die." 
 
 In justice to Sir Thomas, the Squire of 
 Charlecote, who seems, as a Puritan magis- 
 trate, to have sometimes annoyed the poet's 
 parents about matters of religious observance, 
 we must quote the epitaph he wrote upon 
 his wife, who died five years before him : 
 
 " Here entombed lyeth the Lady Joyce 
 Lucy, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charle- 
 cote, in the County of Warwick, Knight, 
 daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Acton, of 
 Sutton, in the County of Worcester, Esquier, 
 who departed out of this wretched world to 
 her heavenly kingdome the tenth day of Feb- 
 ruary, in the year of our Lord God 1595, of 
 her age LX and three. All the time of her 
 life a true and faithfull servant of her good
 
 Shakespeare. 77 
 
 God, never detected of any crime or vice ; in 
 religion most sound ; in love to her husband 
 most faithfull and true ; in friendship most 
 constant ; to what was in trust committed to 
 her most secret ; in wisdome excelling ; in 
 governing of her house and bringing up of 
 youth in feare of God that did converse with 
 her, most rare and singular. A great main- 
 tainer of hospitality ; greatly esteemed of her 
 betters ; misliked of none unless of the envious. 
 When all is spoken that can be said, a woman 
 so furnished and garnished with virtue, as 
 not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled 
 by any. As she lived most virtuously, so 
 she died most godly. Set down by him that 
 best did know what hath been written to be 
 true. THOMAS LUCY." 
 
 This touching tribute stands upon a mar- 
 ble slab set in the wall of Charlecote Church 
 above the tomb whereon lie life-size effigies 
 of the faithful pair, carved in alabaster, she
 
 78 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 in the dress of a lady of the Elizabethan 
 period, and he in armour, both with hands 
 clasped in prayer. 
 
 One of the numberless anecdotes about 
 Shakespeare, of whom we know so little that 
 can be actually proven, says that Queen 
 Elizabeth was so charmed with his concep- 
 tion of the character of Falstaff, as shown 
 in " Henry IV.," that she commanded the 
 author to represent him in one play more, 
 and to show him in love, and the result of 
 this royal behest was seen in the " Merry 
 Wives of Windsor." Whether this tale be 
 authentic or not, we know that both " Good 
 Queen Bess " and her successor, James I., 
 were lovers of Shakespeare's plays, and fre- 
 quently ordered them to be presented before 
 them, on some of which occasions it is prob- 
 able that the poet himself acted one of his 
 own parts. He may also at some time have 
 read from one or other of his works before 
 Elizabeth.
 
 Shakespeare Reading before Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 From painting by Eduard Ender.
 
 Shakespeare. 79 
 
 Walter quotes the following anecdote : " He 
 was personating on one occasion the charac- 
 ter of a king in the presence of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, at Richmond, who, in walking across 
 the stage, the honoured place in those days 
 for the higher portion of the audience, dropped 
 her glove as she passed close to the poet. No 
 notice was taken by him of the incident ; and 
 the queen, desirous of knowing whether this 
 procedure was the result of mere inadver- 
 tence, or a determination to preserve the 
 consistency of his part, moved again toward 
 him and again let her glove fail. Shake- 
 speare stooped down to pick it up, saying, 
 in the character of the monarch he was 
 personating : 
 
 " And though now bent on this high embassy, 
 Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove.' 
 
 "He then retired from the stage, and 
 presented the glove to the queen, who is 
 reported to have been highly pleased."
 
 8o The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
 Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel," 
 
 said old Polonius to Laertes, and the writer 
 of those lines had among his friends some of 
 the most eminent men of his time. These 
 genial and congenial spirits often met at 
 the famous old Mermaid Tavern in Cheap- 
 side, and formed a group such as John Faed 
 has imagined in his picture of " Shakespeare 
 and his Contemporaries." 
 
 The persons who comprise the upper group 
 of three on the left hand of the picture are 
 " Silver-tongued Sylvester," the translator of 
 Du Bartas and assistant of King James, in the 
 " Counterblast to Tobacco ; " Camden, the 
 traveller and author of " Britannia ; " and 
 Dorset, Lord High Treasurer, author of 
 " Gorboduc " and part author of the " Mirror 
 for Magistrates." Below them we see "the 
 learned" John Selden, who wrote "Table 
 Talk," and at his right hand sit Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, the famous dramatists.
 
 Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. 
 
 From painting by John Faed.
 
 Shakespeare. 8 1 
 
 Beaumont, in his poetical " Letter to Ben 
 Jonson," wrote those oft-quoted lines : 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble and so full of subtile flame, 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life." 
 
 Next to Fletcher is Lord Bacon (wearing 
 his hat), "the wisest, brightest, meanest 
 of mankind ; " and then comes Ben Jonson, 
 " Rare Ben," sitting next to Shakespeare, the 
 two close friends together. In the verses 
 prefixed to the folio of 1623, Jonson apos- 
 trophises him as " My Shakespeare." James 
 Russell Lowell says : 
 
 " ' My Shakespeare,' Milton called him, echoing Ben; 
 ' My Shakespeare,' he to all the sons of men." 
 
 Old Thomas Fuller, in his " Worthies of 
 England," speaks of the combats of wit 
 between "Rare Ben" and "Gentle Will,"
 
 82 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 comparing them to "a Spanish galleon and 
 an English man-of-war : Master Jonson, like 
 the former, was built far higher in learning ; 
 solid but slow in his performances. Shake- 
 speare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in 
 bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with 
 all tides, tack about, and take advantage oi 
 all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
 invention." 
 
 Nearly hidden behind the head of Jonson 
 is that of Daniel, who wrote a history of the 
 wars of York and Lancaster, and the face 
 seen just above Shakespeare's is that of John 
 Donne, poet and preacher, who died Dean of 
 St. Paul's. Brave Sir Walter Raleigh stands 
 by Shakespeare's side, and leans on the 
 shoulder of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of 
 Southampton, the friend and patron of our 
 poet, who dedicated to him his " Venus and 
 Adonis " and " Rape of Lucrece.' Below 
 him sits Cotton, founder of the Cottonian 
 Library, now in the British Museum, and
 
 SJiakespeare. 83 
 
 beside Cotton is Thomas Dekker, the play- 
 writer, who completes this group of the men 
 who added so much to the glory of 
 
 " The spacious times of great Elizabeth." 
 
 The painter of this scene, John Faed, a 
 Scotch artist, is hardly as well known as 
 his brother Thomas, whose pictures of 
 homely rural life, such as "The Mitherless 
 Bairn" and " My Ain Fireside," have been 
 so deservedly popular. John Faed has in- 
 clined more to the production of historical 
 works, as, for instance, " Catherine Seyton," 
 " The Morning before Flodden," " Blenheim," 
 and "Washington at Trenton." A third 
 artist-brother, James Faed, engraved the 
 picture of " Shakespeare and his Contempo- 
 raries," and the plate was dedicated to Mr. 
 W. W. Corcoran, the benevolent American 
 banker, who owned the original painting, now 
 forming part of the collection of pictures in 
 the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington.
 
 84 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 WALTON. 
 
 AT least two of Shakespeare's friends, men 
 whom the artist has shown in the group of 
 " Shakespeare and his Contemporaries," 
 Ben Jonson and Doctor Donne, were also 
 friends of gentle Izaak Walton, the " Father 
 of Angling." 
 
 One writer points out that we know little 
 more about much of Walton's life than we do 
 of Shakespeare's. Both were natives of the 
 Midlands, Walton having first seen the light 
 in 1593, in Stafford, a town less than fifty 
 miles, as the crow flies, from Stratford-on- 
 Avon. Of his parents, very little knowledge 
 exists ; of his education, none. He seems to 
 have got to London when about twenty, and 
 it is known that he was in business there, 
 later, as a linen draper, and that he had a 
 shop in Fleet Street. He retired from trade 
 when he was about fifty, and spent the rest
 
 Walton. 85 
 
 of his life at Stafford, or in Winchester, 
 where he died in 1683, and lies buried in the 
 Cathedral. Walton, at one time or another, 
 wrote excellent biographies of Doctor Donne, 
 Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George 
 Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson, but his long 
 life of ninety years produced no other such 
 book as the " Compleat Angler," first pub- 
 lished in 1653, the year that saw the dissolu- 
 tion of the Long Parliament, Walton being 
 then sixty years old. 
 
 In 1676 appeared the fifth edition of the 
 book, with an addition on fly fishing, by 
 Charles Cotton, a brother angler and adopted 
 son of Walton's. Walton was himself a bait- 
 fisher, and had but little proficiency in angling 
 with a fly. 
 
 Cotton, an ardent Royalist, like old Izaak, 
 who had been a friend of his father's, was born 
 in 1630, and died in 1687. He was the son of 
 a gentleman, had travelled on the Continent 
 when young, and had classical attainments,
 
 86 The Great Masters of Literature* 
 
 but no profession, preferring literary pursuits. 
 A brilliant and versatile genius, and what is 
 better still, one who is described as " cheerful 
 in adversity," loyal to his friends, kind to the 
 poor, and a devoted husband, handsome in 
 person, sometimes improvident, a lover of 
 good company, a poet and the friend of poets, 
 such as Lovelace and Suckling, Cotton must 
 have been the beau-ideal of a Cavalier. He 
 wrote a burlesque poem called " Scarronides," 
 "Lucian Burlesqued," and a "Voyage to 
 Ireland in Burlesque," among other things, 
 and several translations, the best being one 
 of Montaigne's essays, which has been called 
 "a masterpiece of that kind." He was 
 skilled in horticulture as well as in angling. 
 In the same year that the " Compleat 
 Angler," with Cotton's treatise, was issued, 
 he built the famous fishing-house on the 
 Dove, on which his initials are blended with 
 those of his friend Walton. "In him," says 
 Cotton, "I have the happiness to know the
 
 Walton. 87 
 
 worthiest man, and to enjoy the best and 
 the truest friend any man ever had." " So 
 the two friends became closely linked to- 
 gether in a renown that will last while rivers 
 run." 
 
 Andrew Lang, himself a lover of fishing, 
 says of the " Compleat Angler : " " The 
 charm of peace, content, good-will to men ; 
 the love of green old England, where still the 
 milkmaids sang, despite religious and political 
 revolution, inform that delightful work, which 
 is like a fragrant flower in the sternest chap- 
 ter of English history." 
 
 Let us read one or two extracts culled 
 from its pages. 
 
 Here is Piscator's argument that angling 
 is an art : 
 
 "Oh, Sir, doubt not but that Angling is 
 an art ; is it not an art to deceive a Trout 
 with an artificial Fly ? a Trout ! that is more 
 sharp-sighted than any Hawk you have 
 named, and more watchful and timorous
 
 88 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 than your high-mettled Merlin is bold ? and 
 yet, I doubt not to catch a brace or two to- 
 morrow, for a friend's breakfast : doubt not, 
 therefore, Sir, but that angling is an art, and 
 an art worth your learning. The question is 
 rather, whether you are capable of learning 
 it ? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men 
 are to be born so ; I mean, with inclinations 
 to it, though both may be heightened by 
 discourse and practice ; but he that hopes 
 to be a good angler must not only bring an 
 enquiring, searching, observing wit, but he 
 must bring a large measure of hope and 
 patience, and a love and propensity to the art 
 itself ; but, having once got and practised it, 
 then doubt not but angling will prove to be 
 so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like 
 virtue, a reward to itself." 
 
 And here he shows how fishermen were 
 found deserving of the favour of the Lord : 
 " And, doubtless, this made the prophet 
 David say, 'They that occupy themselves in
 
 Walton. 89 
 
 deep waters, see the wonderful works of God : ' 
 indeed such wonders, and pleasures too, as 
 the land affords not. And that they be fit 
 for the contemplation of the most prudent, 
 and pious, and peaceable men, seems to be 
 testified by the practice of so many devout 
 and contemplative men, as the Patriarchs and 
 Prophets of old ; and of the Apostles of our 
 Saviour in our latter times, of which twelve, 
 we are sure, he chose four that were simple 
 fishermen, whom he inspired, and sent to 
 publish his blessed will to the Gentiles ; and 
 inspired them also with a power to speak all 
 languages, and by their powerful eloquence 
 to beget faith in the unbelieving Jews ; and 
 themselves to suffer for that Saviour, whom 
 their forefathers and they had crucified ; and, 
 in their sufferings, to preach freedom from the 
 incumbrances of the law, and a new way to 
 everlasting life ; this was the employment of 
 these happy fishermen. Concerning which 
 choice, some have made these observations :
 
 90 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 "First, that he never reproved these, for 
 their employment or calling, as he did the 
 Scribes and the Money-changers. And, 
 secondly, he found that the hearts of such 
 men, by nature, were fitted for contempla- 
 tion and quietness ; men of mild, and sweet, 
 and peaceable spirits, as indeed most Anglers 
 are: these men our blessed Saviour, who 
 is observed to love to plant grace in good 
 natures, though indeed nothing be too hard 
 for him, yet these men he chose to call from 
 their irreprovable employment of fishing, and 
 gave them grace to be his disciples, and to 
 follow him, and do wonders ; I say four of 
 twelve. 
 
 "And it is observable, that it was our 
 Saviour's will that these four fishermen 
 should have a priority of nomination in the 
 catalogue of his twelve Apostles, as namely, 
 first St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, and 
 St. John ; and, then, the rest in their order. 
 
 " And it is yet more observable, that when
 
 Walton. 91 
 
 our blessed Saviour went up into the mount, 
 when he left the rest of his disciples, and 
 chose only three to bear him company at his 
 Transfiguration, that those three were all 
 fishermen." 
 Hear the 
 
 "ANGLER'S SONG." 
 
 " Man's life is but vain ; for 'tis subject to pain, 
 
 And sorrow, and short as a bubble ; 
 
 'Tis a hodge-podge of business, and money, and 
 
 care, 
 And care, and money, and trouble. 
 
 "But we'll take no care when the weather proves 
 
 fair; 
 
 Nor will we vex now though it rain ; 
 We'll banish all sorrow, and sing till to-morrow, 
 And angle, and angle again." 
 
 And our last quotation shall be Walton's 
 benediction, which he fitly puts at the very 
 end of his book. 
 
 "And so, let everything that hath breath 
 praise the Lord ; and let the blessing of St.
 
 92 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Peter's Master be with mine. And upon all 
 that are lovers of virtue ; and dare trust in his 
 providence ; and be quiet ; and go a Angling." 
 Mr. Sadler, in his admirable picture of 
 Walton and his pupil, gives us the two 
 friends just as one may fairly imagine them 
 to have been, Cotton with his long love- 
 locks and lace ruffles, brave in fine clothes, 
 learning from his beloved master. Thus 
 they sit 
 
 " Beneath the spreading tree 
 In ease and jollity, 
 And summer weather ; 
 Having no other wish 
 Then thus to calmly fish 
 And talk together." 
 
 The artist is an Englishman, who in the 
 earlier part of his career made himself pecul- 
 iarly the painter to delight anglers by many 
 good pictures of fish and fishermen, some- 
 times a mediaeval monk who has landed a 
 finny prize, or a tableful of friars discussing

 
 I^aak Walton and His Pupil. 
 
 From painting by Walter Dendy Sadler.
 
 Walton. 93 
 
 a big salmon, and then a line of modern 
 anglers on a river-bank indulging in a fishing- 
 match, or the like. Of late years, though, 
 Mr. Sadler has changed his note, and 
 paints with equal acceptance pages of life 
 wherein sentiment and humour are pleas- 
 antly mingled, a " Darby and Joan " 
 toasting each other over their walnuts and 
 wine, old, but tender and loving still ; or an 
 attractive widow, with some gallant old beaux 
 dangling after her ; and scenes reminiscent 
 of the days of stage-coaches, of country 
 taverns and "Mine host," of old-fashioned 
 gardens and old-fashioned lovers. 
 
 As we recall them, we cannot but say that 
 Walter Dendy Sadler well deserves the suc- 
 cess he has won.
 
 94 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE died when Milton was but 
 seven years old, but they are in a special 
 manner connected through the noble tribute 
 to the great dramatist which the great poet 
 wrote in 1630, and which was prefixed to the 
 folio of 1632. 
 
 " What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones 
 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
 
 Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 
 
 Under a stary-pointing pyramid ? 
 
 Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
 
 What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? 
 
 Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
 
 Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 
 
 For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art, 
 
 Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 
 
 Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 
 
 Those Delphic lines with deep impression took ; 
 
 Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving, 
 
 Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; 
 
 And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, 
 
 That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.''
 
 Milton. 95 
 
 But the Englishman with whom John 
 Milton is most associated in our minds is 
 Oliver Cromwell, whose secretary he was, 
 and the mouthpiece of those words which 
 did so much for religious liberty and so 
 much to make the name of England re- 
 spected abroad as never before. Of Crom- 
 well Milton wrote, some twenty years after 
 penning his homage to the Bard of 
 Avon : 
 
 " Cromwell, our chief of men, who, through a cloud 
 
 Not of war only, but detractions rude, 
 
 Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, 
 
 To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, 
 
 And on the neck of crowned fortune proud 
 
 Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, 
 
 While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued, 
 
 And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, 
 
 And Worcester's laureate wreath. Yet much remains 
 
 To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
 
 No less renowned than war ; new foes arise 
 
 Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains; 
 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw."
 
 96 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 David Neal, in the picture to which he 
 gave the name of "Mr. Oliver Cromwell of 
 Ely visits Mr. John Milton," has brought 
 these two together at a time before the 
 climax of their careers, when Milton still 
 saw, and Cromwell had not assumed control 
 of England. The poet sits at the organ, and 
 the future Protector, who has entered, the 
 room unseen by Milton, listens to the music 
 he is evoking, perhaps some air by the 
 poet's friend, Henry Lawes, the composer, 
 who wrote the music for the songs in 
 "Comus," and to whom Milton addressed 
 one of his sonnets. 
 
 The painting of Cromwell visiting Milton 
 was completed in 1883, and, after being 
 exhibited in Germany, and England, was 
 brought to this country. Its author was 
 born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1838, and 
 worked as a draughtsman in San Francisco 
 for several years, but most of his life since 
 early manhood has been spent in Munich,
 
 Mr. Oliver Cromwell of Ely Visits Mr. John Milton. 
 
 From painting by David Neal.
 
 Milt 
 
 on. 
 
 whither he went in 1861 to study art. At 
 first he received instruction from the late 
 Chevalier Ainmuller, a distinguished artist in 
 glass painting, whose daughter he afterward 
 married, but later he became a pupil of 
 Piloty. He painted numerous portraits and 
 ideal heads, and several interiors from St. 
 Mark's and Westminster Abbey, and at the 
 Royal Academy of 1874 his picture of 
 " James Watt " was bought by the then 
 Lord Mayor of London, Sir Benjamin Phil- 
 lips. His best known work is the " First 
 Meeting of Mary Stuart and Rizzio," painted 
 in 1876, which gained the gold medal of the 
 Bavarian Royal Academy, and has been 
 widely exhibited and much reproduced. It 
 found a purchaser in a well-known American, 
 Mr. D. O. Mills, then of San Francisco. 
 
 Milton's blindness, which had been for a 
 long time growing, became total in 1652. 
 Professor Masson, in his truly monumental 
 work on Milton, quotes from the poet's
 
 98 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " Second Defence for the English People," 
 written in reply to an anonymous libel 
 published in London in 1654, under the 
 title of "Cry of the King's Blood to 
 Heaven against the English Parricides." 
 In the "Second Defence," whose author 
 called himself "John Milton, Englishman," 
 Milton speaks at some length of being up- 
 braided by his enemies with his personal 
 appearance and blindness. He says : 
 
 "I wish I could gainsay my brutal adver- 
 sary in like manner as to the fact of my 
 blindness ; but I cannot, and must there- 
 fore bear that reproach. It is not miser- 
 able to be blind ; the misery would be in 
 not being able to bear blindness. But why 
 should not I bear that which every one 
 ought to be prepared to bear in some 
 tolerable manner if it should happen to 
 him, that which may happen too in the 
 natural course of things to any human 
 being alive, and has happened, as I know,
 
 Milton. 99 
 
 to some of the best men known in history. 
 (Here an enumeration of some of the most 
 illustrious blind persons of history or legend, 
 Tiresias, Phineus, Timoleon of Corinth, 
 Appius Claudius, Caecilius Metellus, the Vene- 
 tian Dandolo, the Bohemian Ziska, the theo- 
 logian Jerome Zanchius, the Patriarch Isaac, 
 perhaps also the Patriarch Jacob ; ending 
 with a reference to the man blind from 
 birth whom Christ cured, and whose blind- 
 ness, as Christ declared, was not owing to 
 any sin of his or any sins of his parents.) 
 . . . As for me, I call thee to witness, O 
 God, the searcher of the inmost heart and 
 of all thoughts of men, that, though I have 
 often and with all my ability inquired into 
 this very matter seriously with myself, and 
 - explored all the recesses of my life in the 
 search. I am at this moment conscious to 
 myself of no action of mine, either recent 
 or long past, the atrocity of which can have 
 caused for me, more than others, or de-
 
 IOO The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 servedly brought upon me, this calamity. 
 As to what I have at any time written 
 (since the Royalists think I am now suffer- 
 ing retribution on that account, and make 
 their boast accordingly), I call God like- 
 wise to witness that I never wrote any- 
 thing of which I was not at the time 
 persuaded, and of which I am not still 
 persuaded, that it was right, true, and 
 pleasing to God, and that I did it not from 
 any prompting of ambition, gain, or glory, 
 but solely for reasons of duty, honour, and 
 loyalty to my country, nor for the libera- 
 tion of the State only, but also and more 
 especially for the liberation of the Church. 
 (Here occurs the statement that his blind- 
 ness had been brought on, or hastened, by 
 his deliberate perseverance in his "Defensio 
 Prima pro Populo Anglicano " in spite of the 
 warning of his physicians.) . . . Let the 
 calumniators of God's judgments ... be 
 assured that I neither regret my lot nor
 
 Milton. IOI 
 
 am ashamed of it, that I remain unmoved 
 and fixed in my opinion, that I neither feel 
 nor believe myself an object of God's anger, 
 but actually experience and acknowledge 
 his fatherly mercy and kindness to me in 
 all matters of greatest moment. . . . God, 
 the less we are able to behold anything 
 else than himself, deigns on that very 
 account to regard us the more tenderly 
 and kindly. ... To all this I add that my 
 friends also cherish me, study my wants, 
 favour me with their society, more assidu- 
 ously even than before, and that there are 
 some from whose lips I can hear, in my 
 walks, those words of true friendship spoken 
 by Pylades to Orestes, and by Theseus to 
 Hercules. . . . Moreover, the highest men 
 also in the Commonwealth, inasmuch as 
 they know that it was not in the midst of 
 sluggish ease, but in my full activity, and 
 when I was among the foremost in incur- 
 ring all hazards for liberty, that my eye-
 
 IO2 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 sight deserted me, do not themselves desert 
 me ; but reflecting on the chances of human 
 life, they favour me, indulge me, as one who 
 has served out his time, grant me vacation 
 and rest. If I have any honourable distinc- 
 tion, they do not strip me of it ; if any 
 public office, they do not take it away ; if 
 any emolument therefrom, they do not re- 
 duce it, kindly judging that, though I am 
 not so useful now as I have been, the pro- 
 vision for me ought not to be less ; in short, 
 treating me with as much honour as if, ac- 
 cording to the custom of the Athenians of 
 old, they had decreed me public support for 
 my life in the Prytaneum." 
 
 The great epic of " Paradise Lost," pub- 
 lished in 1667, was the labour of Milton's 
 blind years, the whole work having been 
 dictated to his daughters. Of these, he had 
 three, all the children of his first wife, Mary 
 Powell. Anne, born in 1 646, was the oldest, 
 and then came Mary, and lastly, Deborah.

 
 Milton Dictating " Paradise Lost " to His 
 Daughters. 
 
 From painting by Michael Munkacsy.
 
 Milton. 103 
 
 Milton's only son, John, died when but an 
 infant, in 1652, the year of his father's com- 
 plete loss of sight, and the year also of his 
 mother's death. 
 
 In Munkacsy's famous painting of " Mil- 
 ton Dictating Paradise Lost to his Daugh- 
 ters," the youngest is seen working at her 
 embroidery, next her stands Mary, and the 
 oldest child is bending forward to catch more 
 surely the precious syllables falling from the 
 lips of the blind poet. This striking canvas 
 was first shown to the public at the Paris 
 Exposition of 1878, where it gained for its 
 author the signal distinction of the Medal of 
 Honour, and an assured fame. It was pur- 
 chased by an American, Mr. Robert Lenox 
 Kennedy, of New York, who presented it to 
 the Lenox Library of that city. 
 
 Michael Munkacsy's life was one of many 
 vicissitudes. Born in Hungary, in 1846, he 
 lost both parents while very young, and was 
 adopted by an aunt. This kindly relative
 
 IO4 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 was, however, soon after murdered by thieves 
 who broke into her house at night and stole 
 everything, leaving the little Michael again 
 desolate. He was then befriended by an 
 uncle, who unfortunately lost his property, 
 and this made it necessary for young Mun- 
 kacsy to seek work ; so he became a joiner's 
 apprentice and in time a journeyman, and 
 worked hard and long. A taste for drawing 
 showed itself in him, and he found his voca- 
 tion to be that of an artist. After many 
 struggles and privations, he was enabled to 
 study under Knaus at Dusseldorf, and finally 
 won success with the " Last Day of the Con- 
 demned," which he sent to the Paris Salon 
 of 1870, and which was bought by an Amer- 
 ican, Mr. Wilstach, of Philadelphia. Eight 
 years later the " Milton " appeared, and then 
 came the world-famed " Christ before Pilate" 
 and "Christ on Calvary," the "Mozart Con- 
 ducting his Requiem," and many other works 
 which added to his increasing renown and
 
 Defoe. 105 
 
 prosperity. Married to a beautiful and 
 wealthy lady of title, honoured by commis- 
 sions from the government of his native land, 
 and apparently without a wish ungratified, 
 a terrible calamity put an end to all. His 
 reason gave way, and, after lingering in an 
 asylum for two or three years, Munkacsy 
 died insane in May, 1900. 
 
 It is of interest to know that the painter 
 of Milton himself suffered for months at one 
 time in his life from partial blindness. 
 
 DEFOE. 
 
 ONE of Defoe's biographers, Thomas 
 Wright, begins his preface in this pithy 
 manner : 
 
 " With the personality of no eminent man 
 of letters of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries is the public less familiar than with 
 that of Daniel Defoe. 'Robinson Crusoe' 
 has been read to tatters, 'The Shortest
 
 106 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Way' even has been taken down and 
 dusted ; but of the man who wrote them 
 the great world knows nothing, except, per- 
 haps, that he had a hooked nose and was put 
 in the pillory." 
 
 The pillory in some form or other, such 
 as the stretch-neck, which confined the head 
 only, appears to have existed in England 
 from before the Conquest, and was not 
 abolished until 1837. I* became in time 
 the usual method of punishing libellers. To 
 a popular favourite, it was scarcely a punish- 
 ment at all, but those who had incurred the 
 ill will of the people were sometimes so ill 
 used by the mob as to cause death. 
 
 A noted victim of the pillory was William 
 Prynne, the Puritan pamphleteer, whose cele- 
 brated " Histrio-mastix," attacking the stage, 
 was issued in 1632. Queen Henrietta Maria 
 and her ladies having about this time taken 
 part in the performance of Walter Mon- 
 tague's "Shepherd's Paradise," a passage
 
 Defoe. 107 
 
 in Prynne's book was thought to reflect on 
 them, and Star-chamber proceedings were 
 instituted against its author. After passing 
 a year in the Tower, he was sentenced to 
 be imprisoned for life, to be fined ,5,000, 
 and to lose both ears in the pillory. Five 
 years later (it is evident that the sentence 
 of perpetual imprisonment had been re- 
 mitted) Prynne's "News from Ipswich," 
 directed against Wren, Bishop of Norwich, 
 brought him before the court, and he was 
 again sentenced to be imprisoned and fined, 
 to stand in the pillory, and be branded on the 
 cheeks with the letters S. L., which stood for 
 Seditious Libeller. But nothing could tame 
 Prynne, and he forthwith wrote some verses 
 asserting that S. L. meant Stigmata Laudis. 
 The infamous Titus Gates, who invented 
 the so-called " Popish Plot " to massacre the 
 Protestants, burn London, and assassinate 
 Charles II., and gained wealth by revealing 
 it, must have been well acquainted with the
 
 io8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 pillory. He was tried for perjury in 1685, 
 found guilty, and sentenced to be twice 
 whipped and stand in the pillory annually 
 at certain specified times and places. A 
 portrait of him was published at this period 
 which was inscribed " Oats well thrash *t." 
 
 "The Shortest Way with Dissenters," a 
 famous tract of Defoe's, appeared anony- 
 mously in 1702, and caused an immense 
 sensation. On its face an argument for the 
 employment of the severest measures against 
 the Dissenters, it was really a satirical imita- 
 tion, hardly exaggerated, of the furious invec- 
 tives of the Tories against their opponents. 
 At first its irony was unseen, and both sides 
 were deceived. The High Church party 
 hailed this strengthener of their hands with 
 delight and the Dissenters were correspond- 
 ingly depressed, but the truth soon leaked 
 out and the tables were turned indeed. 
 The Whigs laughed prodigiously, the Tories 
 raged.
 
 Defoe. 109 
 
 The Earl of Nottingham, one of the Sec- 
 retaries of State and Defoe's bitter enemy, 
 traced its authorship to him, and a reward of 
 50 was offered for his apprehension. The 
 pamphlet was burned in New Palace Yard by 
 the common hangman, both its printer and 
 publisher were arrested, and Defoe was finally 
 found and imprisoned. His trial came off 
 at the Old Bailey early in July, 1703, and 
 Defoe, acting on his counsel's mistaken 
 advice, quitted his defence and threw him- 
 self upon the mercy of the queen. The 
 result was a sentence of marked severity. 
 He was condemned to pay two hundred 
 marks, to stand three times in the pillory, 
 to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure, 
 and find sureties for his good behaviour for 
 seven years. 
 
 In accordance with this, Defoe stood in 
 the pillory on the last three days of July, 
 J 73 on the 2gth, before the Royal Ex- 
 change in Cornhill ; on the 3Oth, near the
 
 no The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Conduit, in Cheapside ; and on the 3 1 st, at 
 Temple Bar, in which last situation our artist 
 has pictured him. But the future author of 
 the immortal " Robinson Crusoe " had little 
 reason to feel abashed, for a crowd of 
 admirers gathered around the pillory, and, 
 instead of being bombarded with such un- 
 savoury missiles as dead cats, rotten vege- 
 tables, and stale eggs, bunches of flowers 
 were flung to him. " The pillory itself was 
 adorned with garlands, and tankards of ale 
 and stoups of wine were drunk in honour 
 of the darling of the Whig mob. . . . The 
 daring ' Hymn to the Pillory ' which Defoe 
 had written, and which was hawked about 
 at the time, added to the enthusiasm.". It 
 begins : 
 
 " Hail, hieroglyphic state machine, 
 Contrived to punish fancy in. 
 Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, 
 And all thy insignificants disdain. 
 Exalted on the stool of state 
 What prospect do I see of sovereign fate ? "
 
 Defoe in the Pillory. 
 
 From painting by Eyre Crowe.
 
 Defoe. 1 1 1 
 
 Certainly these lines would serve to show 
 that Defoe was no poet, nor was he, though 
 he wrote a great amount of rhyme, and seems 
 to have plumed himself on his skill at verse 
 making. Because of long detention in jail, 
 his business of the tile works, in which he 
 was the principal shareholder, was ruined, and 
 he suffered a loss of about .3,500. To use 
 his own words, "Violence, injury, and barbar- 
 ous treatment demolished him and his under- 
 taking." On the other hand, he gained 
 something, not so tangible as money, but 
 of lasting use and worth. His biographer, 
 Wright, plausibly holds that the eighteen 
 months Defoe spent in Newgate, as one 
 result of " The Shortest Way," were of the 
 greatest value to him, for there he gathered 
 among his fellow prisoners invaluable material 
 for the wonderful realistic works which he 
 afterward produced. As a political prisoner 
 Defoe could keep himself apart from the 
 crowd of thieves, highwaymen, coiners, and
 
 112 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 pirates who thronged the prison, but we 
 know that he did not always do so. He 
 often went among them, and laboured with 
 them for their good, conveying to the igno- 
 rant and the wicked that moral and religious 
 instruction which he knew so well how to 
 adapt to their capacities. 
 
 The first picture exhibited at the Royal 
 Academy by Eyre Crowe, a pupil of Paul 
 Delaroche, was " Master Prynne Searching 
 the Pockets of Archbishop Laud in the 
 Tower," and to this representation of the 
 notorious occupant of pillories succeeded 
 many works of a historical nature, several 
 of which have been engraved. Some of 
 them are " Holbein Painting Edward VI.," 
 " Milton Visiting Galileo in Prison," " Luther 
 Posting his Theses on the Church-door of 
 Wittenberg," "Charles II. Knighting the 
 Loin of Beef," and " Goldsmith's Mourners." 
 Crowe was elected an associate of the Royal 
 Academy in 1876.
 
 Swift. 113 
 
 An interesting episode in his life occurred 
 in 1852, when he accompanied Thackeray, 
 as his secretary, on his lecturing tour to the 
 United States. Some forty years afterward 
 Crowe published an account of the trip, in a 
 most interesting book, called "With Thack- 
 eray in America," which is illustrated with 
 many of Crowe's amusing sketches of life in 
 our ante-bellum days. 
 
 SWIFT. 
 
 THAT " King of Book Collectors," Robert 
 Harley, Earl of Oxford and Queen Anne's 
 chancellor and secretary of state, managed 
 to "secure to his own service two of the 
 greatest intelligences of his time," Defoe 
 and Swift. Though both of them worked 
 and wrote for Harley, they were far from 
 friendly to each other. 
 
 "An illiterate fellow, whose name I for- 
 get," was one of the gibes which were flung
 
 H4 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 at Defoe by Swift, with the almost brutal 
 scorn which was part of his character. " As 
 fierce a beak and talon as ever struck, as 
 strong a wing as ever beat, belonged to 
 Swift," says Thackeray. 
 
 He says, also, "The brightest parts of 
 Swift's story, the pure star in that dark and 
 tempestuous life of Swift's, is his love for 
 Hester Johnson." " Stella," Swift named 
 her, and her sad story is familiar to every one 
 who knows the life of the author of " Gulli- 
 ver's Travels." When the young Irish stu- 
 dent first went to England, in 1688, he 
 was received into the htmse of Sir William 
 Temple, at Moor Park, in Surrey, as aman- 
 uensis and reader, Lady Temple being in 
 some way related to Swift's mother. Sir 
 William, a man who had been in his day the 
 ambassador of kings and had refused the 
 office of secretary of state, preferring to 
 devote himself to literary pursuits and his 
 beloved gardens, had, doubtless, plenty of
 
 Swift and Stella. 
 
 From painting by Margaret Dicksee.
 
 Swift. 1 1 5 
 
 work for young Jonathan Swift to do. The 
 Temple family included little Hester Johnson, 
 then about seven years old, whose mother, 
 a widow, was some sort of a housekeeper at 
 Moor Park. The child's education was for 
 several years confided to the Irish secretary, 
 and many hours they must have passed to- 
 gether, engaged as in Miss Dicksee's charm- 
 ing picture, in the wainscoted room, with 
 plenty of books about, and the daylight 
 shining through the leaded glass on the gold- 
 fish and the flowers, and on the proud yet 
 melancholy face of Swift and the fair, pure, 
 young girl whom he taught, and whom he 
 loved in later years. 
 
 Sir William Temple died in 1699, and left 
 a thousand pounds to Stella, then about 
 eighteen years of age. Swift had got a 
 living at Laracor, near Dublin, and thither 
 Stella, accompanied by Mrs. Dingley, a re- 
 spectable elderly woman with a small income, 
 went to live, in lodgings not far from Swift.
 
 1 1 6 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 He was often away in London in the follow- 
 ing years, and during these absences the 
 ladies occupied his parsonage or his lodgings 
 in Dublin, removing to their own rooms upon 
 his return. " In these absences from home 
 he wrote Stella almost daily, keeping a jour- 
 nal-letter which he despatched regularly, and 
 giving the fullest account of all he said, heard, 
 or did. This is the Journal to Stella. . . . 
 The letters are charming, gossiping love- 
 letters, charming enough for any man to 
 write, a man even who had a sound, whole- 
 some human heart in his bosom. One can 
 fancy poor Stella gloating over them, extract- 
 ing the fondness as a bee honey, sleeping 
 with them at night under her pillow, and 
 carrying them about with her by day." 
 
 Here is one of Swift's letters to "Stella- 
 kins," as he sometimes calls her : 
 
 " Here I must begin another letter, on a 
 whole sheet, for fear saucy little M. D. should 
 be angry and think that the paper is too little.
 
 Swift. 117 
 
 I had your letter last night, as I told you 
 just and no more in my last ; for this must 
 be taken up in answering yours, saucebox. I 
 believe I told you where I dined to-day ; and 
 to-morrow I go out of town for two days to 
 dine with the same company on Sunday. I 
 heard that a gentlewoman from Lady Gif- 
 fard's house had been at the coffee-house to 
 inquire for me. It was Stella's mother, I 
 suppose. I shall send her a penny-post let- 
 ter to-morrow, and continue to see her with- 
 out hazarding seeing my Lady Giffard, which 
 I will not do until she begs my pardon. . . . 
 " Here is such a stir and bustle with this lit- 
 tle M. D. of ours : I must be writing every 
 night. I cannot go to bed without a word to 
 them ; I cannot put out my candle till I've bid 
 them good-night. O Lord ! O Lord ! . . Well, 
 you have had all my land journey in my second 
 letter, and so much for that. So you've got 
 into Presto's lodgings ; very fine, truly. We 
 have had a fortnight of the most glorious
 
 ii8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 weather on earth, and still continues. I hope 
 you have made the best of it. 
 
 " Stella writes like an emperor. I am afraid 
 it hurts your eyes ; pray take care of that, 
 pray, Mrs. Stella. 
 
 " Cannot you do what you will with your 
 own horse ? pray do not let that puppy, Parvi- 
 sol, sell him. Patrick is drunk about three 
 times a week, and I bear it, and he has got the 
 better of me ; but one of these days I shall 
 positively turn him off into the wide world, 
 when none of you are by to intercede for 
 him. . . . 
 
 "'Write constantly?' Why, sirrah, do I 
 not write every day and twice a day to M. D.? 
 Now I have answered all your letter, and the 
 rest must be as it can be. I think this 
 enough for one night ; and so farewell till 
 this time to-morrow." 
 
 Unfortunately, none of Stella's letters to 
 the dean have been preserved. The only 
 memento of her found among his effects was
 
 Swift. 119 
 
 a raven tress marked in his hand, " Only a 
 woman's hair." In Mrs. Oliphant's beautiful 
 words, it was : 
 
 " Only all the softness, the brightness, the 
 love and blessings of a life ; only all that the 
 heart had to rest upon of human solace ; only 
 that, no more." Poor Stella had then been 
 in a better world than this for seventeen 
 years. 
 
 Swift is said to have married her, secretly, 
 and in a formal manner only, in 1716, some 
 dozen years before her death, but the fact 
 of this union is disputed, and no positive 
 evidence of it exists. 
 
 Another Hester, Miss Vanhomrigh, had a 
 large part in Swift's life of failures, and with- 
 out doubt truly loved him. She hoped for 
 marriage with him, and certainly had some 
 reason for her aspirations, but the dean 
 "a bachelor from conviction," Vandam calls 
 him would have preferred to live and die 
 unmarried. Hearing some rumour of his pri-
 
 I2O The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 vate union with Stella, Vanessa, as Swift 
 calls Miss Vanhomrigh, wrote to her, ask- 
 ing the relation she bore to Swift. Was 
 she his wife? Stella did not answer, but 
 enclosed the letter to Swift, who took it and 
 went at once to Marley Abbey, where 
 Vanessa lived. Bursting in to her presence, 
 with an awful look he flung the letter on the 
 table, and went away without a word. Va- 
 nessa never saw him again, but died in a few 
 weeks of a broken heart. 
 
 The story of Stella and Vanessa still re- 
 mains untold " to the depths." No one knows, 
 and probably none will ever know, all the 
 truth. There is some mystery which hides 
 it from our view. 
 
 Why did Swift not marry Hester Johnson? 
 or, if he did marry her, why was not the union 
 acknowledged ? 
 
 The two who knew best, perhaps the only 
 ones who ever knew, lie near each other in 
 St. Patrick's, silent in death as in life.
 
 Swift. 1 2 1 
 
 Swift died insane after several years of 
 impaired intellect, in 1745, "having lived till 
 seventy-eight in spite of himself." 
 
 Let Thackeray sum up his life, who can 
 do it so well ? 
 
 "And yet, to have had so much love, he 
 must have given some. Treasures of wit and 
 wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man 
 have locked up in the caverns of his gloomy 
 heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom 
 he took in there. But it was not good to 
 visit that place. People did not remain 
 there long, and suffered for having been 
 there. He shrank away from all affections 
 sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both 
 died near him, and away from him. He 
 had not heart enough to see them die. 
 He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan ; 
 he slunk away from his fondest admirer, 
 Pope. His laugh jars on one's ears after 
 seven score years. He was always alone, 
 alone and gnashing in the darkness, except
 
 122 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 when Stella's sweet smile came and shone 
 upon him. When that went, silence and 
 utter night closed over him. An immense 
 genius ; an awful downfall and ruin." 
 
 The father of Miss Dicksee, to whom we 
 owe " Swift and Stella," was a well-known 
 English artist, and her brother, Frank Dick- 
 see, who wears the honours of a Royal Acad- 
 emician, long ago scored a distinct success 
 with his delightful picture of "Harmony," 
 now in the Chantrey collection. 
 
 Her first picture to gain recognition by 
 being hung "on the line" at the Royal 
 Academy, was, we believe, one taken from 
 Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith." Miss 
 Dicksee's other canvases, to mention but 
 the best known ones, are "The First Audi- 
 ence Goldsmith and the Misses Horneck," 
 "A Sacrifice of Vanities" (from the "Vicar 
 of Wakefield "), " Sheridan at the Linley's," 
 "The Child Handel," and "Miss Angel 
 introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds," a
 
 Pope. 123 
 
 quintette of successes well deserved by 
 this sympathetic and graceful painter. 
 
 POPE. 
 
 " WITHOUT love," says Thackeray, " I can 
 fancy no gentleman." 
 
 Pope was a good and devoted son, and a 
 faithful friend to some, to Garth, Arbuth- 
 not, Bolingbroke, and Peterborough, but 
 does not seem to have been blessed with 
 the gift of loving. One of his biographers 
 says : " The best prescription Pope's spiritual 
 physician could have given was the love of 
 a good and sensible woman." Such a love 
 unfortunately never came to Pope. Sickly 
 and deformed, his appearance would fe apt 
 to excite pity in a kindly woman's soul, and 
 
 " Of all the paths that lead to woman's love 
 Pity's the straightest." 
 
 In Pope's case, however, this result did not 
 follow.
 
 124 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 He essayed a lover's part more than once, 
 and especially so with Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu, though we cannot believe that his 
 heart was really engaged. 
 
 Lady Mary was a personality, a character, 
 to whom we owe some deservedly famous 
 letters. Her father was Evelyn Pierrepont, 
 afterward Duke of Kingston, and she was 
 born in 1689. Her mother died when the 
 little girl was but three years old, and she 
 seems to have been left to grow up largely 
 in her own way, with no regular education. 
 
 Her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, 
 relates : " A trifling incident, which Lady 
 Mary loved to recall, will prove how much she 
 was the object of Lord Kingston's pride and 
 fondness in her childhood. As a leader of 
 the fashionable world, and a strenuous Whig 
 in party, he of course belonged to the Kit- 
 Kat Club. One day, at a meeting to choose 
 toasts for the year, a whim seized him to 
 nominate her, then not eight years old, a can-
 
 Pope. 125 
 
 didate, alleging that she was far prettier than 
 any lady on their list. The other members 
 demurred, because the rules of the club for- 
 bade them to elect a beauty whom they had 
 never seen. 'Then you shall see her,' cried 
 he ; and in the gaiety of the moment sent 
 orders home to have her finely dressed and 
 brought to him at the tavern, where she was 
 received with acclamation, her claim unani- 
 mously allowed, her health drunk by every 
 one present, and her name engraved in 
 due form upon a drinking-glass. The com- 
 pany consisting of some of the most eminent 
 men of England, she went from the lap of 
 one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms 
 of another, was feasted with sweetmeats, 
 overwhelmed with caresses, and, what per- 
 haps already pleased her better than either, 
 heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled .on 
 every side. Pleasure, she said, was too 
 poor a word to express her sensations ; they 
 amounted to ecstasy ; never again, through-
 
 126 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 out her whole future life, did she pass so 
 happy a day. Nor, indeed, could she ; for the 
 love of admiration, which this scene was cal- 
 culated to excite or increase, could never 
 again be so fully gratified ; there is always 
 some allaying ingredient in the cup, some 
 drawback upon the triumphs of grown people. 
 Her father carried on the frolic, and, we may 
 conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her 
 picture painted for the club-room, that she 
 might be enrolled a regular toast." 
 
 One of her dearest friends, in girlhood, was 
 Anne Wortley, whose brother, Edward Wort- 
 ley Montagu, a scholar, and the friend of 
 Addison and Steele, met Lady Mary, and was 
 struck by her intelligence and wit. Later 
 they fell in love with each other, and, 
 because of the opposition of Lady Mary's 
 father, eloped, and were married in 1712. 
 Four years later Wortley Montagu was sent 
 to Constantinople as ambassador to Turkey, 
 and remained there with his wife until 1718,
 
 Pope. 127 
 
 when he was recalled. It was while living in 
 the East that Lady Mary inquired into the 
 method of inoculation for the smallpox prac- 
 tised by the Turks, which was afterward 
 courageously introduced by her into England. 
 From Constantinople, too, she corresponded 
 with the Princess Caroline, with Congreve 
 and Pope, among others. Here is a portion 
 of one of Pope's letters to Lady Mary at this 
 time : 
 
 " My eyesight is grown so bad that I have 
 left off all correspondence, except with your- 
 self; in which methinks I am like those 
 people who abandon and abstract themselves 
 from all that are about them (with whom they 
 might have business and intercourse), to 
 employ their addresses only to invisible and 
 distant beings, whose good offices and favours 
 cannot reach them in a long time, if at all. 
 If I hear from you, I look upon it as little 
 less than a miracle, or extraordinary visita- 
 tion from another world ; it is a sort of dream
 
 128 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 of an agreeable thing, which subsists no more 
 to me ; but, however, it is such a dream as 
 exceeds most of the dull realities of my life. 
 Indeed, what with ill health and ill fortune, 
 I am grown so stupidly philosophical as to 
 have no thought about me that deserves 
 the name of warm or lively, but that 
 which sometimes awakens me into an imag- 
 ination that I may yet see you again. Com- 
 passionate a poet who has lost all manner of 
 romantic ideas, except a few that hover about 
 the Bosphorus and Hellespont, not so 
 much for the fine sound of their names, as to 
 raise up images of Leander, who was drowned 
 in crossing the sea to kiss the hand of fair 
 Hero. 
 
 " You tell me the pleasure of being nearer 
 the sun has a great effect upon your health 
 and spirits. You have turned my affections 
 so far eastward that I could almost be one of 
 his worshippers ; for I think the sun has more 
 reason to be proud of raising your spirits
 
 Pope. 1 29 
 
 than of raising all the plants and ripening all 
 the minerals in the earth. It is my opinion 
 a reasonable man might gladly travel three or 
 four thousand leagues to see your nature and 
 your wit in their full perfection. What may 
 we not expect from a creature that went out 
 the most perfect of this part of the world, 
 and is every day improving by the sun in the 
 other. If you do not now write and speak 
 the finest things imaginable, you must be 
 content to be involved in the same imputa- 
 tion with the rest of the East, and be con- 
 cluded to have abandoned yourself to extreme 
 effeminacy, laziness, and lewdness of life. 
 
 "I make not the least question but you 
 could give me great tclaircissements upon 
 passages in Homer, since you have been 
 enlightened by the same sun that inspired 
 the Father of Poetry. You are now glow- 
 ing under the climate that animated him ; 
 you may see his images rising more boldly 
 about you in the very scenes of his story
 
 i 30 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 and action ; you may lay the immortal work 
 on some broken column of a hero's sepul- 
 chre, and read the fall of Troy in the shade 
 of a Trojan ruin. But if, to visit the tomb 
 of so many heroes, you have not the heart 
 to pass over that sea where once a lover 
 perished, you may at least, at ease in your 
 own window, contemplate the fields of Asia 
 in such a dim and remote prospect as you 
 have of Homer in my translation. I send 
 you, therefore, with this, the third volume 
 of the Iliad, and as many other things as 
 fill a wooden box, directed to Mr. Wortley. 
 Among the rest, you have all I am worth, 
 that is, my works ; there are few things in 
 them but what you have already seen, except 
 the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which 
 you will find one passage that I cannot tell 
 whether to wish you should understand or 
 not. 
 
 " The last I received from your hands was 
 from Peterwaradin ; it gave me the joy of
 
 Pope. i$i 
 
 \ 
 thinking you in good health and humour ; one 
 
 or two expressions in it are too generous ever 
 to be forgotten by me. ... I have had but 
 four of your letters ; I have sent several, and 
 wish I knew how many you have received. 
 For God's sake, madam, send to me as often 
 as you can, in the dependence that there is 
 no man breathing more constantly or more 
 anxiously mindful of you. Tell me that you 
 are well ; tell me that your little son is well ; 
 tell me that your very dog (if you have one) 
 is well. Defraud me of no one thing that 
 pleases you, for whatever that is, it will 
 please me better than anything else can 
 do." 
 
 The quarrel between Pope and Lady Mary 
 took place not many years after the return 
 of the Montagus to England. Its cause 
 seems impossible to determine ; its result 
 was an interchange of bitter attacks upon 
 each other in prose and verse, not creditable 
 to Lady Mary, and very discreditable to the 
 
 S
 
 132 The Great Masters of Literature, 
 
 sensitive, suspicious (and spiteful) poet, who 
 certainly did not act as a gentleman should 
 have done. 
 
 Mr. Frith, in his painting of the " Rejected 
 Poet," has followed the story which affirms 
 that Pope made a serious declaration of love 
 to Lady Mary,, and was answered only by a 
 fit of laughter, which wounded his vanity 
 past cure. 
 
 The painter, in his delightful "Autobiog- 
 raphy," gives an interesting account of his 
 experience with the purchaser of this pic- 
 ture. 
 
 " An incident occurred in connection with 
 this picture that is worth recording, as show- 
 ing the way artists are sometimes treated by 
 their so-called patrons. A collector, of 
 a somewhat vulgar type, had long desired 
 me to paint a picture for him. I showed him 
 the sketch, and to prove the culture of the 
 gentleman, I may mention the following 
 facts :
 
 The Rejected Poet. 
 
 From painting by William Powell Frith.
 
 Pope. 133 
 
 " ' What's the subject ? ' said he. 
 
 " ' Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Pope,' 
 said I ; ' the point taken is when Pope makes 
 love to the lady, who was married at the 
 time, and she laughed at him.' 
 
 " ' The Pope make love to a married woman, 
 horrible!' 
 
 " ' No, no, not the Pope, Pope the poet ! ' 
 
 " ' Well, it don't matter who it was ; he 
 shouldn't make love to a married woman, 
 and she done quite right in laughing at him ; 
 and if I had been her husband, I should ' 
 etc. 
 
 "'Very well,' said I, 'as you don't like the 
 subject, we will say no more about it. I 
 will paint you something else.' 
 
 " ' Oh no,' was the reply ; ' I like to see a 
 woman laugh at a man that makes an ass of 
 himself. I'll take it. . . .' 
 
 " In due time the picture was finished, and 
 highly approved by my learned friend, who, 
 I discovered afterward, had never read a line
 
 134 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 of Pope, or, indeed, even heard of him. . . . 
 He died long ago. His pictures were sold at 
 Christie's, where 'Pope and Lady Mary' 
 fetched twelve hundred guineas." 
 
 Few painters have ever won wider popu- 
 larity for their works than has been ac- 
 corded to William Powell Frith, R. A., 
 now an octogenarian. His most famous 
 picture is "The Derby Day," now in the 
 National Gallery (bequeathed by Jacob 
 Bell, the old friend, and once the fellow 
 student, of the painter) ; his " Railway Sta- 
 tion " and the " Marriage of the Prince of 
 Wales " (the latter lent by the queen) were 
 at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, 
 in 1876; his "Road to Ruin" and "The 
 Race for Wealth" (the last-named was at 
 Chicago in 1893) must also be mentioned 
 in this group of representations of modern 
 life on which his fame mostly rests. Frith 
 has, however, painted many works in another 
 branch of art, such as "Claude Duval,"
 
 Sterne. 135 
 
 " Coming of Age," " Hogarth at Calais," 
 " Scene from Goldsmith's ' Good-natured 
 Man,' " now in the Sheepshanks Collection 
 at South Kensington Museum, and "The 
 Last Sunday of Charles II." 
 
 STERNE. 
 
 THE " Sentimental Journey " of Laurence 
 Sterne was intended to be composed of 
 sketches of his tour through Italy, but he 
 died soon after completing the first part, 
 which describes only episodes that took place 
 in France. The book was published in 1 768, 
 the year of the author's decease. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott says that "Yorick, the 
 lively, witty, sensitive, and heedless parson, 
 is the well-known personification of Sterne 
 himself, an<j, undoubtedly, like every por- 
 trait of hiiiself drawn by a master of the 
 art, bore a strong resemblance to the 
 original."
 
 136 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 It was in Paris that the susceptible Yorick 
 encountered the fair glove-dealer, whom New- 
 ton has painted for us. 
 
 We will let Sterne himself tell the story : 
 " Pray, madam,' said I, ' have the good- 
 ness to tell me which way I must turn to go 
 to the Opra Comique.' 
 
 " ' Most willingly, monsieur,' said she, lay- 
 ing aside her work. 
 
 " I had given a cast with my eye into half a 
 dozen shops as I came along, in search of a 
 face not likely to be disordered by such an 
 interruption, till, at last, this hitting my fancy, 
 I had walked in. 
 
 " She was working a pair of ruffles, as she 
 sat in a low chair on the far side of the shop, 
 facing the door. 
 
 " ' Tres-volontiers, most willingly,' said she, 
 laying her work down upon a chair next her, 
 and rising up from the low chair she was sit- 
 ting in, with so cheerful a movement and so 
 cheerful a look that, had I been laying out
 
 Sterne. 137 
 
 fifty louis d'ors with her, I should have said, 
 'That woman is grateful.' 
 
 "'You must turn, monsieur,' said she, 
 going with me to the door of the shop, and 
 pointing the way down the street I was to 
 take; 'you must turn first to your right 
 hand, mats, prenez garde, there are two 
 turns, and be so good as to take the second, 
 then go down a little way, and you'll see a 
 church ; and when you are past it, give your- 
 self the trouble to turn directly to the right, 
 and that will lead you to the foot of the Pont- 
 Neuf, which you must cross, and there any 
 one will do himself the pleasure to show 
 you.' 
 
 " She repeated her instructions three times 
 over to me, with the same good-natured pa- 
 tience the third time as the first; and, if 
 tones and manners have a meaning, which 
 certainly they have, unless to hearts which 
 shut them out, she seemed really interested 
 that I should not lose myself.
 
 138 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 "I will not suppose it was the woman's 
 beauty (notwithstanding she was the handsom- 
 est grisette, I think, I ever saw) which had 
 much to do with the sense I had of her cour- 
 tesy ; only I remember, when I told her how 
 much I was obliged to her, that I looked 
 very full in her eyes, and that I repeated my 
 thanks as often as she had done her instruc- 
 tions. I had not gone ten paces from the 
 door before I found I had forgot every tittle 
 of what she had said ; so, looking back, and 
 seeing her still standing in the door of the 
 shop, as if to look whether I went right or 
 not, I returned back to ask her whether the 
 first turn was to my right or left, for that I 
 had absolutely forgot. 
 
 " ' It is impossible ! ' said she, half laughing. 
 
 " ' 'Tis very possible,' replied I, ' when a 
 man is thinking more of a woman than of 
 her good advice.' 
 
 " As this was the real truth, she took it, as 
 every woman takes a matter of right, with a
 
 Sterne. 1 39 
 
 slight curtsey. ' Attendez /' said she, lay- 
 ing her hand upon my arm to detain me whilst 
 she called a lad out of the back shop to get 
 ready a parcel of gloves. ' I am just going 
 to send him,' said she, 'with a packet into 
 that quarter ; and, if you will have the com- 
 plaisance to step in, it will be ready in a 
 moment, and he shall attend you to the 
 place.' So I walked in with her to the far 
 side of the shop ; and, taking up the ruffle 
 in my hand which she laid upon the chair, 
 as if I had a mind to sit, she sat down her- 
 self in her low chair, and I instantly sat 
 myself down beside her. 
 
 "'He will be ready, monsieur,' said she, 
 'in a moment.' 
 
 " ' And in that moment,' replied I, ' most 
 willingly would I say something very civil 
 to you for all these courtesies. Any one 
 may do a casual act of good nature, but a 
 continuation of them shows it is a part of 
 the temperature. . . .'
 
 140 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " She was going to say something civil in 
 return, but the lad came into the shop with 
 the gloves. 
 
 "'Apropos,' said I, 'I want a couple of 
 pairs myself.' 
 
 " The beautiful grisette rose up when I said 
 this, and, going behind the counter, reached 
 down a parcel and untied it ; I advanced to 
 the side over against her ; they were all too 
 large. The beautiful grisette measured them, 
 one by one, across my hand ; it would not 
 alter their dimensions. She begged I would 
 try a single pair, which seemed to be the 
 least. She held it open, and my hand 
 slipped into it at once. 
 
 " ' It will not do,' shaking my head a little. 
 
 " ' No,' said she, doing the same thing. 
 
 " There are certain combined looks of sim- 
 ple subtlety, where whim, and sense, and 
 seriousness, and nonsense are so blended 
 that all the languages of Babel, set loose 
 together, could not express them ; they are
 
 Yorick and the Grisette. 
 
 From painting by Gilbert Stuart Newton.
 
 Sterne. 141 
 
 communicated and caught so instantaneously 
 that you can scarce say which party is the 
 infector. I leave it to your men of words 
 to swell pages about it ; it is enough in the 
 present to say again, the gloves would not 
 do ; so, folding our hands within our arms, 
 we both lolled upon the counter ; it was nar- 
 row, and there was just room for the parcel 
 to lay between us. 
 
 " The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at 
 the gloves, then sideways to the window, 
 then at the gloves, and then at me. I was 
 not disposed to break silence, I followed 
 her example ; so I looked at the gloves, then 
 to the window, then at the gloves, and then 
 at her, and so on alternately. 
 
 " I found I lost considerably in every at- 
 tack ; she had a quick black eye, and shot 
 through two such long and silken eyelashes 
 with such penetration that she looked into 
 my very heart and veins. It may seem 
 strange, but I could actually feel she did.
 
 142 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " ' It is no matter,' said I, taking up a 
 couple of the pairs next me, and putting 
 them into my pocket. 
 
 " I was sensible the beautiful grisette had 
 not asked above a single livre above the 
 price. I wished she had asked a livre more, 
 and was puzzling my brains how to bring the 
 matter about. 
 
 " ' Do you think, my dear sir,' said she, 
 mistaking my embarrassment, 'that I could 
 ask a sou too much of a stranger, and of a 
 stranger whose politeness, more than his want 
 of gloves, has done me the honour to lay him- 
 self at my mercy ? M'en croyez-vous capa- 
 ble?' 
 
 " ' Faith ! not I, ' said I ; ' and if you were, 
 you are welcome." 
 
 "So, counting the money into her hand, 
 and with a lower bow than one generally 
 makes to a shopkeeper's wife, I went out, 
 and her lad, with his parcel, followed me." 
 
 An English gentleman, Mr. Robert Ver-
 
 Steme. 143 
 
 non, in 1847, presented the National Gallery 
 with the munificent gift of over one hun- 
 dred and fifty pictures of the British school. 
 Among them are the originals of three re- 
 produced in this book, Herbert's " Sir 
 Thomas More and his Daughter," Ward's 
 "Doctor Johnson in the Anteroom of Lord 
 Chesterfield," and Newton's "Yorick and 
 the Grisette." 
 
 Gilbert Stuart Newton was born in Hali- 
 fax, N. S., in 1793, his parents having gone 
 thither from Boston at the time the British 
 evacuated that city. Upon his father's death, 
 his mother brought the boy back to Boston, 
 where his talent for art having already shown 
 itself, he studied for a time under his uncle, 
 the celebrated portrait painter, Gilbert Stuart. 
 He visited Italy in 1817, and then went to 
 London, and became a student at the Royal 
 Academy. One of his first pictures to at- 
 tract attention was "The Forsaken," exhib- 
 ited at the British Institution in 1821, and
 
 144 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 now belonging to the Boston Museum of 
 Fine Arts, to which it was bequeathed by 
 that generous friend of art, the late Thomas 
 Gold Appleton. 
 
 Newton became an Associate of the Royal 
 Academy in 1 828, and was elected a full mem- 
 ber in 1832. His "Portia and Bassanio" 
 belongs to the South Kensington Museum, 
 and his "Abelard" is in the Diploma Gal- 
 lery of the Royal Academy. Other works 
 by Newton are "The Importunate Author," 
 "Macbeth," "Shylock and Jessica," "Lear 
 and Cordelia," and " The Vicar of Wakefield 
 Restoring his Daughter to her Mother." 
 His mind was clouded for several years be- 
 fore his death, which occurred in 1835. 
 Newton enjoyed the friendship and esteem 
 of Charles Robert Leslie and Washington 
 Irving. His drawing was weak, but his 
 pictures are fine in sentiment and colour. 
 Allston said, " Newton's colour is magical"
 
 . 
 
 Chatterton. 
 
 From painting by Henry Wallis. 
 
 '
 
 Chatterton. 145 
 
 CHATTERTON. 
 
 THE opening scene of the tragedy of 
 Thomas Chatterton's short, yet wonderful 
 life was a garret, and in a garret he died. In 
 one the Bristol Bluecoat boy delighted to 
 shut himself on holiday afternoons, and pore 
 over the ancient manuscripts which taken 
 by his father from the old Treasury House 
 of the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe he 
 found among the waste wreckage of the attic. 
 In the other, the dawn of a London day 
 shone on him lying dead, poisoned by his 
 own hand, not yet eighteen years old, but 
 driven by neglect and want to self-destruc- 
 tion. The proud and confident spirit which 
 had entered the great city but four short 
 months before had failed, and could not 
 longer endure the ruin of its hopes. 
 
 When his lifeless body was discovered, the 
 floor of the room was strewn with the frag-
 
 146 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 ments of his writings which he had destroyed 
 in his last hours. 
 
 Among them were, doubtless, some of 
 those attempts at reproducing the verse of 
 Chaucer's day, with which Chatterton so 
 often occupied his precocious genius. 
 
 He claimed to have discovered, among the 
 old parchments in the parish chests of Red- 
 cliff e Church, a collection of poems written 
 by a priest of Bristol, named Thomas Row- 
 ley, who flourished in the fifteenth century, 
 and had for his good friend and patron one 
 William Canynge, a rich merchant and bene- 
 factor of Bristol city, as whose mayor he 
 served for more than one term. Canynge is 
 a genuine historical character, but it seems 
 to be a fact that the poet-priest existed only 
 in Chatterton' s fertile fancy, and that he 
 himself wrote the poems which he ascribed 
 to Rowley. 
 
 Seven years after the death of the boy- 
 poet, these pieces were first published in a
 
 Chatterton. 147 
 
 collective form, and then began a bitter and 
 long-continued controversy as to their authen- 
 ticity. Critics and antiquaries on one side 
 stoutly maintained that the Rowley poems 
 were actually the work of the old parish 
 priest, and equally learned men on the other 
 side warmly asseverated that no such man 
 ever lived, and that the verses owed their 
 existence to Thomas Chatterton alone. 
 
 If the proud, misguided boy, stubbornly 
 refusing any help that hinted at charity, 
 could have received but a tithe of the sum 
 spent for printer's ink in this "battle of the 
 books," England might have added another 
 great name to her greatest ones. Even as 
 it is, 
 
 " Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, 
 The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride," 
 
 as Wordsworth called him, can never be forgot- 
 ten. Both his sad story and his wondrous gifts 
 forbid oblivion for Thomas Chatterton.
 
 148 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Faultless he was not, either in his life or 
 his work, but he was only seventeen when he 
 died. 
 
 His corpse was "carried, unwept, un- 
 heeded, and unowned, to the burying-ground 
 of the workhouse in Shoe Lane," but all 
 traces of his grave are now lost, the cemetery 
 having been obliterated to form Farringdon 
 Street Market. A monument to Chatterton 
 was erected in Bristol seventy years after his 
 death, and still stands near the beautiful 
 church of St. Mary Redcliffe, whose muni- 
 ment-room furnished the ancient parchments 
 which were so much to the strange boy. 
 More lasting tributes, however, are those 
 paid to Chatterton by his brother poets, Shel- 
 ley, Coleridge, Keats, and Rossetti, and many 
 another name of high renown. 
 
 His masterpiece, the "Tragedy of Ella," 
 written at sixteen years, contains this beauti- 
 ful lament :
 
 Chatterton. 149 
 
 " O, sing unto my roundelay ! 
 
 O, drop the briny tear with me ! 
 Dance no more at holiday, 
 Like a running river be. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 " Black his hair as the winter night, 
 
 White his neck as the summer snow, 
 Ruddy his face as the morning light ; 
 Cold he lies in the grave below. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 " Sweet his tongue as throstle's note, 
 
 Quick in dance as thought was he ; 
 Deft his tabor, cudgel stout ; 
 O, he lies by the willow-tree ! 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 " Hark ! the raven flaps his wing 
 In the briered dell below ;
 
 1 50 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Hark ! the death-owl loud doth sing 
 To the nightmares as they go. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 " See the white moon shiaes on high ; 
 Whiter is my true love's shroud, 
 Whiter than the morning sky, 
 Whiter than the evening cloud. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 " Here upon my true love's grave, 
 
 Shall the garish flowers be laid, 
 Nor one holy saint to save 
 All the sorrows of a maid. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree. 
 
 With my hands I'll bind the briw* 
 
 Round his holy corse to grt; 
 Elfin-fairy, light your fires, 
 Here my body still shall b 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tre
 
 Chatterton. 151 
 
 u Come with acorn cup and thorn, 
 
 Drain my heart's blood all away ; 
 Life and all its good I scorn, 
 Dance by night, or feast by day. 
 My love is dead, 
 Gone to his death-bed, 
 All under the willow-tree." 
 
 Writer, traveller, discoverer, and artist, 
 Henry Wallis can, in these last days of the 
 century, look back on a life of seventy years. 
 Art he studied in the Royal Academy schools, 
 and then at Paris in the studio of Gleyre, the 
 painter of " Lost Illusions," and the teacher 
 of Whistler and Du Maurier. "Chatter- 
 ton," which was on the Academy walls in 
 1856, and is doubtless Wallis's best-known 
 picture, having been finely engraved by Old- 
 ham Barlow, has now happily become, through 
 bequest, the property of the British nation. 
 " Back from Marston Moor " (a young soldier 
 of Cromwell's returning home), "Found at 
 Naxos," "The Despatch from Trebizond," 
 and " Timon and Flavius," are titles which
 
 The Great Masters of Literaturt. 
 
 the painter has given to some of his works. 
 "Across the Common" and "The Stone- 
 breaker " were sent to the Philadelphia Ex- 
 hibition in 1876. In water-colours, Henry 
 Wallis has done many good things, notably 
 in illustration of " The Merchant of Venice." 
 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 POOR Chatterton had hoped for the assist- 
 ance of Horace Walpole, who posed as a 
 patron, and Johnson addressed to Lord Ches- 
 terfield the " Plan of his Dictionary," in the 
 expectation of receiving some assistance in 
 the undertaking. Both authors were disap- 
 pointed, and both retaliated, Chatterton, 
 by satiric flings at Walpole as " Baron 
 Otranto " and " Horatio Trefoil," and John- 
 son, by his famous letter to Chesterfield, 
 written on the completion of the dictionary. 
 
 Leslie Stephen, in his monograph on the 
 great lexicographer, says :
 
 Johnson. 153 
 
 "Johnson was naturally annoyed when the 
 dignified noble published two articles in the 
 World, a periodical supported by such po- 
 lite personages as himself and Horace Wai- 
 pole, in which the need of a dictionary was 
 set forth, and various courtly compliments 
 described Johnson's fitness for a dictatorship 
 over the language. Nothing could be more 
 prettily turned ; but it meant, and Johnson 
 took it to mean, I should like to have the dic- 
 tionary dedicated to me : such a compliment 
 would add a feather to my cap, and enable 
 me to appear to the world as a patron of 
 literature as well as an authority upon man- 
 ners. 'After making pert professions,' as 
 Johnson said, ' he had for many "years taken 
 no notice of me ; but when my dictionary 
 was coming out, he fell a scribbling in the 
 World about it.' Johnson, therefore, be- 
 stowed upon the noble earl a piece of his 
 mind in a letter which was not published till 
 it came out in Boswell's biography.
 
 154 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " ' MY LORD, I have been lately in- 
 formed by the proprietor of the World 
 that two papers, in which my dictionary is 
 recommended to the public, were written 
 by your lordship. To be so distinguished 
 is an honour, which, being very little accus- 
 tomed to favours from the great, I know not 
 well how to receive, or in what terms to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 " ' When, upon some slight encouragement, 
 I first visited your lordship, I was overpow- 
 ered, like the rest of mankind, by the en- 
 chantment of your address, and could not 
 forbear to wish that I might boast myself, le 
 vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre, that I 
 might obtain that regard for which I saw the 
 world contending ; but I found my attend- 
 ance so little encouraged that neither pride 
 nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. 
 When I had once addressed your lordship in 
 public, I had exhausted all the arts of pleas- 
 ing which a wearied and uncourtly scholar
 
 Johnson. 155 
 
 can possess. I had done all that I could, 
 and no man is well pleased to have his all 
 neglected, be it ever so little. 
 
 " ' Seven years, my lord, have now passed 
 since I waited in your outward room and 
 was repulsed from your door ; during which 
 time I have been pushing on my work through 
 difficulties of which it is useless to complain, 
 and have brought it at last to the verge of 
 publication without one act of assistance, 
 one word of encouragement, and one smile 
 of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, 
 for I never had a patron before. 
 
 "'The Shepherd in "Virgil" grew at last 
 acquainted with Love, and found him a native 
 of the rocks. 
 
 " ' Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks 
 with unconcern on a man struggling for life 
 in the water, and when he has reached the 
 ground encumbers him with help ? The no- 
 tice which you have been pleased to take of 
 my labours, had it been early, had been kind ;
 
 156 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, 
 and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary, and 
 cannot impart it ; till I am known, and do 
 not want it. I hope it is no very cynical 
 asperity not to confess obligations where no 
 benefit has been received, or to be unwilling 
 that the public should consider me as owing 
 that to a patron which Providence has enabled 
 me to do for myself. 
 
 " Having carried on my work thus far 
 with so little obligation to any favourer of 
 learning, I shall not be disappointed though I 
 should conclude it, should loss be possible, 
 with loss ; for I have been long wakened from 
 that dream of hope in which I once boasted 
 myself with so much exultation, my lord, 
 
 " * Your lordship's most humble, 
 
 most obedient servant, 
 
 "<SAM. JOHNSON.' 
 
 "The letter is one of those knock-down 
 blows to which no answer is possible, and
 
 Johnson. 157 
 
 upon which comment is superfluous. It was, 
 as Mr. Carlyle calls it, 'the far-famed blast 
 of doom proclaiming into the ear of Lord 
 Chesterfield and, through him, of the listen- 
 ing world, that patronage should be no 
 more.' " 
 
 Of this letter Johnson said it was "ex- 
 pressed in civil terms, but such as might 
 show him that I did not mind what he said 
 or wrote, and that I had done with him." 
 
 Johnson afterward exchanged the word 
 " garret " for " patron " in his " Vanity of 
 Human Wishes," so that the lines now read : 
 
 " There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail." 
 
 A warm supporter of authority in princi- 
 ples, Johnson was at the same time noted for 
 his personal independence and self-respect. 
 He believed, also, that the scholar's life lev- 
 elled all differences of rank. In 1767, George 
 III., who had bestowed a pension upon the
 
 158 The Great Masters of Literature, 
 
 doctor, expressed a desire to see him, and the 
 inimitable Boswell tells of the interview 
 with extreme complacency. "The king 
 asked whether he was writing anything, 
 and Johnson excused himself by saying 
 that he had told the world what he knew, 
 for the present, and had ' done his part as a 
 writer.' ' I should have thought so, too,' 
 said the king, 'if you had not written so 
 well.' 'No man,' said Johnson, 'could have 
 paid a higher compliment ; and it was fit for 
 a king to pay, it was decisive.' " 
 
 But the approval of a king moves us little 
 compared with reading of the kindly charities 
 of "Surly Sam," so rough outside, some- 
 times, but so tender within. Mrs. Thrale 
 said that "he loved the poor as she never 
 saw any one else love them, with an earnest 
 desire to make them happy. His charity 
 was unbounded ; he proposed to allow him- 
 self one hundred a year out of the three 
 hundred of his pension ; but the Thrales
 
 Johnson. 159 
 
 could never discover that he really spent 
 upon himself more than seventy pounds, 
 or at most eighty pounds." 
 
 We will not leave him without repeating 
 the story of his penance for disobeying his 
 father. 
 
 While staying at Lichfield, he was missed 
 one morning at breakfast, and did not return 
 till night. " Then he told how his time had 
 been passed. On that day fifty years before, 
 his father, confined by illness, had begged 
 him to take his place to sell books at a stall 
 at Uttoxeter. Pride made him refuse. 'To 
 do away with the sin of this disobedience, I 
 this day went in a post-chaise to Uttoxeter, 
 and going into the market at the time of high 
 business, uncovered my head and stood with 
 it bare an hour before the stall which my 
 father had formerly used, exposed to the 
 sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency 
 of the weather ; a penance by which I trust 
 I have propitiated Heaven for this only
 
 160 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 instance, I believe, of contumacy to my 
 father.' If the anecdote illustrates the 
 touch of superstition in Johnson's mind, it 
 reveals, too, that sacred depth of tenderness 
 which ennobled his character." 
 
 In Fifty Years of English Art," Hodg- 
 son speaks of the " period in English history 
 when the great lexicographer held the same 
 position with artists that trumps do with 
 whist players ; the rule was, when in doubt 
 about a subject, play Doctor Johnson." Evi- 
 dently the painter of our picture of the 
 doctor awaiting Chesterfield's pleasure had 
 heard of this trick, for his first success was 
 won in 1843, with a picture of "Blinking 
 Sam " reading the manuscript of the " Vicar 
 of Wakefield." Two years later, Ward sent 
 to the Royal Academy the painting we 
 reproduce. 
 
 Its background reveals the figure of Lord 
 Chesterfield receiving a visitor, having just 
 parted with those on the right, a group
 
 Doctor Johnson in the Anteroom of Lord 
 Chesterfield. 
 
 From painting by Edward M. Ward.
 
 Johnson. 161 
 
 formed of a lady of the highest fashion, pre- 
 ceded by her black page, and attended by a 
 very "Lord Foppington," who seems to jest 
 with her at the expense of the waiting com- 
 pany. Among these, the burly form of John- 
 son fronts us, and the others include a comely 
 widow lady with her pretty boy, an old soldier 
 with a wooden leg, a parson yawning at the 
 window, and a sporting squire, whip in hand. 
 This picture is in the National Gallery 
 together with the "Disgrace of Clarendon," 
 "The South Sea Bubble," and "James II. 
 receiving the news of the landing of the 
 Prince of Orange." Its painter, Edward 
 Matthew Ward, R. A., who produced many 
 works of the class known as historical anec- 
 dote, committed suicide in 1 879, his mind be- 
 ing unhinged through disease. Eight frescoes 
 by him adorn the corridor of the House of 
 Commons, the most successful being the 
 " Last Sleep of Argyle," and the " Execution 
 of Montr ose."
 
 1 62 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 WHEN Goldsmith first came to London, in 
 1756, the year after Johnson had finished his 
 dictionary, he was " penniless, friendless, and 
 forlorn," but at the time of our picture, he is, 
 as we see, opulent for him. 
 
 For this is a dozen years later, and his 
 play of "The Good-natured Man" has just 
 been brought out at Covent Garden Theatre, 
 and is, on the whole, a success. Johnson had 
 written the prologue, and the two friends, 
 with the faithful Boswell, are dining together 
 in a cozy nook at the " Mitre " in Fleet Street, 
 and talking over the first performance. 
 
 A pleasant sight they make in the quaint 
 old tavern ensconced near the fire, with the 
 doctor, as usual, doing most of the talking. 
 But then it was talk worth listening to, and 
 there was a great soul behind it. A true 
 friend, too, was Samuel Johnson, and to none
 
 Goldsmith. 163 
 
 more than to Goldsmith, who often needed one. 
 Boswell gives us the doctor's account of how 
 he once helped the generous and improvident 
 Irishman. He says : " I received one morning 
 a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was 
 in great distress, and as it was not in his 
 power to come to me, begging that I would 
 come to him as soon as possible. I sent him 
 a guinea and promised to come to him directly. 
 I accordingly went to him as soon as I was 
 dressed, and found that his landlady had 
 arrested him for his rent, at which he was in 
 a violent passion. I perceived that he had 
 already changed my guinea and had a bottle 
 of Madeira and a glass before him. I put 
 the cork into the bottle, desired he would be 
 calm, and began to talk to him of the means 
 by which he might be extricated. He then 
 told me that he had a novel ready for the 
 press, which he produced to me. I looked 
 into it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady 
 I should soon return, and having gone to a
 
 164 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought 
 Goldsmith the money ; and he discharged his 
 rent, not without rating his landlady in a high 
 tone for having used him so ill." This book 
 was the "Vicar of Wakefield." But we are 
 straying from our scene. 
 
 Goldsmith is finely arrayed in a new suit 
 which Mr. Filby, the tailor, has provided for 
 the evening of the production of the comedy, 
 which put ^500 in the author's pocket. 
 Four hundred of this sum he immediately 
 spent on the lease and furnishing of a set of 
 chambers in Brick Court, Middle Temple, and 
 used a good part of the remainder in giving 
 jolly entertainments there to his friends. It 
 is said that the learned Blackstone, then en- 
 gaged on his famous " Commentaries " in the 
 rooms below, was at times nearly driven mad 
 by the uproar. 
 
 In these rooms, six years later, Oliver Gold- 
 smith died. He was buried in the Temple 
 churchyard, and Johnson wrote his epitaph,
 
 Goldsmith. 165 
 
 in which is the well-known line saying 
 that he "touched nothing that he did not 
 adorn." 
 
 This is, however, not to be found over 
 Goldsmith's grave, but on his monument in 
 the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, 
 where the two friends were walking one day 
 when Johnson quoted Ovid's line : 
 
 " Forsitan et nostrum nomen tniscebitur istis. n 
 " Perhaps our name may be mingled with these." 
 
 Johnson lies in the abbey near the monu- 
 ment to Goldsmith, of whom he said : " Let 
 not his frailties be remembered ; he was a 
 very great man." 
 
 Certainly nothing but his goodness was 
 remembered by the humble mourners who 
 filled the staircase of Brick Court on the day 
 of his funeral, "women without a home, 
 without domesticity of any kind, with no 
 friend but him they had come to weep for ; 
 outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city,
 
 1 66 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 to whom he had never forgotten to be kind 
 and charitable." 
 
 Eyre Crowe, the painter of the diners at 
 the " Mitre," has also placed on canvas this 
 scene at Goldsmith's funeral. 
 
 Many of the happiest hours of the later 
 years of Goldsmith's life were spent in the 
 company of the Horneck family. Mrs. Hor- 
 neck, the widow of a certain Captain Hor- 
 neck, was related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
 Burke was the guardian of her two daughters, 
 so it was natural that they should become 
 acquainted with Doctor Goldsmith. The 
 two girls, Catherine and Mary, were, in 1 769, 
 when they first met our author, nineteen and 
 seventeen years old. In the following year, 
 the three ladies and Goldsmith took a little 
 Continental tour together, during which he 
 wrote to Reynolds from Paris : " I will soon 
 be among you, better pleased with my situa- 
 tion at home than I ever was before. And 
 yet I must say that, if anything could make
 
 Goldsmith. 167 
 
 France pleasant, the very good women with 
 whom I am at present would certainly do it. 
 I could say more about that, but I intend 
 showing them this letter before I send it 
 away." 
 
 "The Jessamy Bride" was Goldsmith's 
 playful nickname for Mary Horneck, and 
 her sister he called "Little Comedy." 
 These nicknames are preserved in a bit 
 of jocular verse, written by Goldsmith, in 
 reply to an invitation to dinner at Doctor 
 Baker's : 
 
 " Your mandate I got, 
 You may all go to pot ; 
 Had your senses been right, 
 You'd have sent before night; 
 As I hope to be saved, 
 I put off being shaved ; 
 For I could not make bold, 
 While the matter was cold, 
 To meddle in suds, 
 Or to put on my duds ; 
 So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, 
 And Baker and his bit,
 
 1 68 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 And Kauffman beside, 
 And the Jessamy bride, 
 With the rest of the crew, 
 The Reynoldses two, 
 Little Comedy's face, 
 And the Captain in lace. 
 
 Tell each other to rue 
 
 Your Devonshire crew, 
 
 For sending so late 
 
 To one of my state. 
 
 But 'tis Reynolds's way 
 
 From wisdom to stray, 
 
 And Angelica's whim 
 
 To be frolick like him. 
 But alas! your good worships, how could they be 
 
 wiser, 
 
 When both have been spoiled in to-day's Adver- 
 tiser?" 
 
 Another bit of pleasant fooling is Gold- 
 smith's answer to a rhyming letter from Mrs. 
 Bunbury (once Catherine Horneck), asking 
 the poet to visit them at Barton, the family 
 seat in Suffolk. He says : 
 
 " You begin as follows :
 
 The First Audience. 
 
 From painting by Margaret Dicksee.
 
 Goldsmith. 169 
 
 w ' I hope, my good doctor, you soon will be here, 
 And your spring velvet coat very smart will appear, 
 To open our ball the first day of the year.' 
 
 "Pray, madam, where did you ever find 
 the epithet 'good' applied to the title of 
 doctor ? Had you called me learned doctor, 
 or grave doctor, or noble doctor, it might be 
 allowable, because they belong to the pro- 
 fession. But not to cavil at trifles, you talk 
 of my spring velvet coat, and advise me to 
 wear it the first day in the year, that is, in 
 the middle of winter, a spring velvet in the 
 middle of winter ! ! ! That would be a sole- 
 cism indeed ; and yet, to increase the incon- 
 sistence, in another part of your letter you 
 call me a beau ; now, on one side or other, 
 you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can 
 never think of wearing a spring velvet in 
 winter ; and if I am not a beau why then 
 that explains itself." 
 
 Miss Dicksee has imagined Goldsmith as 
 reading to the Misses Horneck the manu-
 
 170 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 script of "She Stoops to Conquer," which 
 was produced at Covent Garden in 1773, 
 and made a great hit. Fortunate girls, in- 
 deed, to be the first introduced to Miss Hard- 
 castle and Tony Lumpkin. 
 
 Catherine Horneck married Bunbury, " the 
 graceful and humourous amateur artist of 
 those days," and the " Jessamy Bride " wedded 
 one Colonel, afterward General, Gwyn, four 
 years after Goldsmith's death. A lock of 
 his hair was taken from the coffin and given 
 to Mary Horneck, who always kept it, though 
 she lived to be very old. Hazlitt once met 
 her in Northcote's studio, and says she talked 
 of Goldsmith with recollection and affection 
 undimmed by time. She was still beautiful 
 in old age, and Hazlitt says : " I could almost 
 fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, 
 looking round with complacency." 
 
 Surely the gentle, kindly poet would be 
 pleased with Miss Dicksee's picture of him 
 and his charming girl friends,
 
 Burns in Edinburgh, ij8j. 
 
 From painting by Charles M. Hardie.
 
 Burns. 171 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 " AFFLICTION'S sons are brothers in distress, 
 A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss ! " 
 
 These familiar lines of Burns are found in 
 his poem of "A Winter Night," which was 
 first printed in the earliest Edinburgh edition 
 of his works. Our artist describes Burns in 
 the act of reciting this poem to a gathering 
 of literary people at the Duchess of Gordon's 
 in Edinburgh, in 1787. 
 
 The most prominent personage in the scene, 
 after the poet, is the fair, witty, and eccentric 
 hostess, Jane, Duchess of Gordon, noted as a 
 leader of society and fashion in Edinburgh, 
 and also for her efforts in raising a regiment 
 of Highlanders from the Gordon tenantry for 
 her eldest son. The beautiful Duchess of 
 Devonshire is said to have kissed those elect- 
 ors who would promise to vote for her can- 
 didate, and the Duchess of Gordon, we are
 
 172 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 told, bestowed a kiss on each recruit for the 
 famous " Gordon Highlanders." 
 
 Leaning on the back of her chair is " Peggy" 
 Chalmers, whom Burns praised in two songs, 
 and next her stands Miss Burnett, the beauti- 
 ful daughter of Lord Monboddo. She died 
 at an early age, of consumption, and the poet 
 wrote an elegy upon her. 
 
 The venerable man sitting at the extreme 
 right of the picture is Doctor Blacklock, the 
 blind poet, whose letter to the Rev. George 
 Laurie, the poet's friend, caused Burns to 
 forego his intention of emigrating to the West 
 Indies, and to seek success in Edinburgh. 
 
 In Burns's " Epistle to Doctor Blacklock " 
 occur the beautiful lines : 
 
 " To make a happy fireside clime 
 
 To weans and wife ; 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 The gentleman in uniform, beside pretty 
 " Peggy " Chalmers, is the Earl of Glencairn, a
 
 Bums. 173 
 
 kind friend and patron of the poet, whose 
 " Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn " con- 
 cludes thus : 
 
 " The mother may forget the child 
 
 That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ; 
 But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 
 And a' that thou hast done for me ! " 
 
 Seated next Glencairn is the accomplished 
 and eccentric judge, Lord Monboddo, above 
 whose head is seen that of Alexander Nas- 
 myth, the artist, who had Burns for one of 
 his sitters. Behind Nasmyth is Creech, the 
 celebrated Edinburgh publisher who issued 
 Burns's poems, and was also the recipient of 
 a rhymed epistle from him. Standing with 
 arms folded is Henry Mackenzie, author of 
 "The Man of Feeling." William Tytler of 
 Woodhouslee, who wrote a book in defence of 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, sits with hands on the 
 table, and next him is Doctor Blair of " Rhet- 
 oric " fame. Behind Burns is Adam Ferguson, 
 the distinguished metaphysician, the old lady
 
 1/4 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 next him being the Dowager Countess of 
 Glencairn. Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, 
 sits beside her, his handkerchief in his right 
 hand, and behind is seen Harry Erskine, the 
 eloquent and witty advocate, leaning over the 
 chair of one of the players at the card-table. 
 
 It was during Burns' s stay in Edinburgh at 
 this period that he and the young Walter 
 Scott met for the only time in their lives. 
 As the great novelist has himself recorded 
 the episode, it would be inconsiderate to use 
 any words but his own in describing it : 
 
 " As for Burns I may truly say Virgilium 
 vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen, in 1786- 
 87, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had 
 sense and feeling enough to be much inter- 
 ested in his poetry, and would have given the 
 world to know him ; but I had very little 
 acquaintance with any literary people, and 
 still less with the gentry of the west country, 
 the two sets whom he most frequented. Mr. 
 Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of
 
 The Meeting of Burns and Scott. 
 
 From painting by Charles M. Hardie.
 
 Burns. 175 
 
 my father's. He knew Burns, and promised 
 to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had 
 no opportunity to keep his word ; otherwise 
 I might have seen more of this distinguished 
 man. As it was, I saw him one day at the 
 late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where 
 there were several gentlemen of literary repu- 
 tation, among whom I remember the cele- 
 brated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we 
 youngsters sat silent, looked, and listened. 
 The only thing I remember, which was 
 remarkable in Burns's manner, was the effect 
 produced upon him by a print of Bunbury's 
 representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, 
 his dog sitting in misery on one side, on 
 the other, his widow, with a child in her arms. 
 These lines were written beneath : 
 
 " Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
 Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; 
 
 Bent o'er her babe, her eyes dissolved in dew, 
 The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
 
 Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
 The child of misery baptised in tears."
 
 1 76 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " Burns seemed much affected by the print, 
 or rather the ideas which it suggested to his 
 mind. He actually shed tears. He asked 
 whose the lines were, and it chanced that 
 nobody but myself remembered that they 
 occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, 
 called by the unpromising title of ' The Jus- 
 tice of Peace.' I whispered my information 
 to a friend present, who mentioned it to 
 Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a 
 word, which, though of mere civility, I then 
 received and still recollect with very great 
 pleasure. 
 
 " His person was strong and robust ; his 
 manners rustic, not clownish a sort of dig- 
 nified plainness and simplicity, which received 
 part of its effect, perhaps, from one's knowl- 
 edge of his extraordinary talents. His fea- 
 tures are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's 
 picture ; but to me it conveys the idea that 
 they are diminished, as if seen in perspec- 
 tive. I think his countenance was more
 
 Bums. 177 
 
 massive than it looks in any of the portraits. 
 I would have taken the poet, had I not known 
 what he was, for a very sagacious country 
 farmer of the old Scotch school, i. e., none 
 of your modern agriculturists, who keep 
 labourers for their drudgery, but the douce 
 gudeman who held his own plough. There 
 was a strong expression of sense and shrewd- 
 ness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I 
 think, indicated the poetical character and 
 temperament. It was large, and of a dark 
 cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) 
 when he spoke with feeling or interest. I 
 never saw such another eye in a human head, 
 though I have seen the most distinguished 
 men of my time. His conversation expressed 
 perfect self-confidence, without the slightest 
 presumption. Among the men who were the 
 most learned of their time and country, he 
 expressed himself with perfect firmness, but 
 without the least intrusive forwardness ; and 
 when he differed in opinion, he did not hesi-
 
 178 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 tate to express it firmly, yet at the same time 
 with modesty. I do not remember any part 
 of his conversation distinctly enough to be 
 quoted ; nor did I ever see him again, except 
 in the street, where he did not recognise me, 
 as I could not expect he should. He was 
 much caressed in Edinburgh, but (consider- 
 ing what literary emoluments have been since 
 his day) the efforts made for his relief were 
 extremely trifling. 
 
 " I remember, on this occasion, I thought 
 Burns's acquaintance with English poetry was 
 rather limited, and also that, having twenty 
 times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of 
 Fergusson, he talked of them with too much 
 humility as his models ; there was, doubtless, 
 national predilection in his estimate. This 
 is all I can tell you about Burns. I have 
 only to add that his dress corresponded 
 with his manner. He was like a farmer 
 dressed in his best to dine with the laird. 
 I do not speak in malam partem, when I say
 
 Burns. 179 
 
 I never saw a man in company with his 
 superiors in station and information more 
 perfectly free from either the reality or the 
 affectation of embarrassment. I was told, 
 but did not observe it, that his address to 
 females was extremely deferential, and always 
 with a turn either to the pathetic or humour- 
 ous, which engaged their attention particularly. 
 I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon re- 
 mark this. I do not know anything I can add 
 to these recollections of forty years since." 
 
 In the painting of the meeting between 
 Burns and Scott, the artist has placed Pro- 
 fessor Ferguson, the host, at the fireside ; 
 Dugald Stewart is seated behind the young 
 Scott ; and then come Dr. Joseph Black, 
 Adam Smith, who wrote "The Wealth of 
 Nations," taking snuff, John Home, author of 
 the once popular tragedy of Douglas, whose 
 " Young Norval " is not yet forgotten, and, 
 lastly, Dr. James Hutton, the geologist. 
 
 These two admirable illustrations of the
 
 180 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 life of the Ayrshire bard were both painted 
 by Charles M. Hardie, a Scotch artist, who 
 has also produced other works on the same 
 theme, and to whom every lover of Burns 
 should be grateful. 
 
 CHARTIER. 
 
 WHEN, in 1743, Voltaire's "Me>ope" 
 received its first performance, the enthusiasm 
 of the audience was extreme. 
 
 " The pit was mad," wrote the poet to one 
 of his friends. " They cried to the duchess 
 (his old friend, the Duchess de Villars) to 
 kiss me, and they made so much noise that 
 she was obliged at last to do it, by the order 
 of her mother-in-law. I have been kissed 
 publicly, like Alain Chartier by the Princess 
 Marguerite of Scotland, but he was asleep, 
 and I was awake." 
 
 The eminent French poet of whom Vol- 
 taire spoke is doubtless better known to
 
 Alain Chartier and Margaret of Scotland. 
 
 From painting by Pierre Charles Comtfc
 
 Chartier. 181 
 
 English readers through the kiss given him 
 by the beautiful and unfortunate Margaret of 
 Scotland than by his verse. The story is 
 that one day the poet fell asleep in the palace 
 while composing, and Margaret, coming by, 
 graciously bestowed a kiss upon him, saying 
 in justification that it was not the man she 
 saluted, but the mouth from whence had come 
 so many beautiful sentences. 
 
 Chartier, who, by the way, was called the 
 ugliest man of his day, enjoyed an extraor- 
 dinary reputation during his life for wit, 
 taste, and eloquence, and was esteemed the 
 greatest ornament to the court. He is styled 
 the most distinguished French man of letters 
 during the fifteenth century, and Miss Cos- 
 tello, in her book on the early poetry of France, 
 calls him "a poet of whom any age and 
 country might be proud." She says : " The 
 tenderness, eloquence, and beauty of his com- 
 positions place him in the first rank, and 
 indeed many of those on whom the French
 
 182 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 found their poetic fame, and distinguish in 
 their 'Parnasse,' would scarcely be considered, 
 by other nations, as worthy to approach him. 
 His faults are those of his age, his beauties 
 are his own, and those who followed did not 
 scruple to adopt much of his style and many 
 of his ideas." 
 
 He was secretary to both Charles VI. and 
 Charles VII., and was sent by the latter as 
 one of an embassy to James I. of Scotland, to 
 ask the hand of his eldest daughter Margaret 
 for Charles's son, the dauphin Louis, who 
 afterward became Louis XI. of France. 
 The match was finally made, after much delay, 
 and the boy and girl Louis was but thirteen 
 and Margaret younger still were married 
 at Tours in 1436. Louis, whose detestable 
 character is notorious, never liked his Scottish 
 bride, and their union was a most unhappy 
 one. We see him in our picture, approach- 
 ing behind his young wife and sneering at her 
 impulsive action.
 
 Chartier. 183 
 
 Margaret, who had noble qualities, found 
 some consolation in poetry, which she studied 
 under the direction of Chartier. The dau- 
 phin's dislike and neglect, however, caused 
 her to fall into a state of melancholy, 
 and her health became weakened. While in 
 this sad condition, she took a chill, which 
 developed into inflammation of the lungs, and 
 of this disease she died in a few days. When 
 she lay dying, some of her attendants tried to 
 recall her thoughts to life, and the pleasures 
 which might yet be in store for her, but she 
 turned from them in disgust, exclaiming, 
 " Fie on the life of this world ! Speak to me 
 no more." And thus saying, so died, in 1445, 
 aged only about twenty years. 
 
 Chartier makes numerous allusions in his 
 poems to one whom he dares not name, to 
 whom his duty and homage are due (doubt- 
 less referring to Margaret), and laments 
 with pathos the early death of his beloved 
 mistress.
 
 184 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 We quote some of his lines of this nature 
 
 ' Yes, I must cease to breathe the song, 
 At once must lay my harp aside ; 
 No more to me may joy belong, 
 It withered when my lady died ! 
 In vain my lips essay to smile, 
 My eyes are filled with tears the while ; 
 In vain I strive to force my lays 
 Back to the dreams of former days v 
 Let others sing, whom love has left 
 Some ray of hope amidst their grief, 
 Who are not of all bliss bereft, 
 And still can find, in verse, relief. 
 The thoughts, by fancy beauteous made, 
 All now are changed to endless gloom, 
 And following still my dear one's shade, 
 Sleep with her in her early tomb ! 
 
 " 'Twas all the joy the world could give, 
 To serve her humbly and alone ; 
 For this dear task I seemed to live, 
 And life to me all summer shone. 
 All that I sought in Fortune's store 
 Was thus to love her evermore 1 
 I thought my state a Paradise 
 More bright than I have words to tell,
 
 Chartier. 185 
 
 When those fair, soft, and smiling eyes 
 A moment deigned on mine to dwell : 
 It seemed far better thus to me 
 To live, although no hope were mine, 
 Than monarch of fair France to be, 
 And this existence to resign." 
 
 Our picture of Alain Chartier and Margaret 
 of Scotland was sent to the Salon of 1859 by 
 Pierre Charles Comte, a well-known French 
 artist, who has received many medals and 
 other honours. His " Henry III. and the 
 Duke of Guise "is in the Luxembourg, and 
 his " Scene at Fontainebleau Costume of 
 Louis XI." belongs to the Corcoran Gallery 
 at Washington. Several paintings by Comte 
 are owned in this country, the galleries of the 
 late A. T. Stewart and W. H. Vanderbilt 
 having included works by him. 
 
 At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadel- 
 phia, in 1876, Comte was represented by a 
 picture of gypsies exhibiting dancing pigs 
 before the sick Louis XI. Louis, the wily 
 rival of Charles the Bold, was very fond of
 
 1 86 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 hunting and of animals, especially of those 
 which were rare, or trained to perform any 
 uncommon feats, and the painting shown at 
 Philadelphia is not the only one in which 
 Comte has described this king's hobby. 
 
 Other pictures by him show the crowning 
 of the dead Inez de Castro (Mrs. Hemans 
 has told the story in verse), Charles IX. 
 visiting the wounded Coligny, the coxcomb 
 king, Henry III., among his monkeys and 
 parrots, the pleasure-loving Francis I. and 
 the Duchess d'Etampes in the studio of 
 Benvenuto Cellini, and Joan of Arc at the 
 coronation of Charles VII. 
 
 MOLlfeRE. 
 
 MLLE. POISSON, one of the actresses in 
 Moliere's company, has recorded the fact 
 that, when the great dramatist read a new 
 piece to his troupe, he liked to have children 
 present, that the actors might study the effect
 
 {Moliere and His Company. 
 
 From painting by Gaston Melingue.
 
 Molihe. 187 
 
 of his work upon the fresh and unspoilt 
 intelligences of the young listeners. 
 
 It is thus that the artist has shown Moliere 
 to us, in the full flow of his animated recital, 
 and with all his hearers, both old and young, 
 absorbed and delighted. Among them must 
 be seated Armande, the charming young bride 
 of Moliere, who was married to him at seven- 
 teen, he being then forty. Few of such 
 marriages result happily, and Moliere's was 
 no exception to the rule. 
 
 In a scandalous publication, professing to 
 be a biography of Armande Moliere, may be 
 found a remarkable account of a conversation 
 between her husband and an old friend, 
 which, however suspicious may be the medium 
 through which it reaches us, has in it the very 
 ring of truth. 
 
 Moliere says : " I took my wife, so to speak, 
 from the cradle ; I brought her up with care. 
 ... I persuaded myself that I could inspire 
 her with sentiments which time should not
 
 1 88 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 destroy, and I neglected nothing to attain 
 this end. As she was still very young when 
 I married her, I saw no evil inclinations in 
 her, and I believed myself a little less unfor- 
 tunate than most of those who come under 
 similar engagements. Neither did I give up 
 my cares after marriage ; but I found so much 
 indifference in her that I began to perceive 
 that all my precautions had been useless, 
 and that the feeling she had for me was very 
 far from that which I had desired to make 
 me happy." 
 
 Armande was beautiful, talented, graceful, 
 witty, but she was also a coquette, and worse. 
 Her husband showed how fully he had 
 awakened from the bright dream in which 
 her affections were all his own, when he wrote 
 to his friend Rohault a letter which ends : 
 "I am the most wretched of men, my wife 
 does not love me." Poor Moliere ! 
 
 His play of " The Misanthrope," perhaps 
 the greatest of all his works, reveals his woes.
 
 Molttre. 1 89 
 
 In it Alceste, a later Timon, loves Ce"limene, 
 a heartless coquette. It should be remem- 
 bered here, that these two parts were 
 repeatedly acted by Moliere himself and his 
 wife. Alceste discovers that the coquette 
 has deceived him, and loves him as little as 
 she does his rivals. All these rivals, however, 
 make the same discovery by the same means, 
 Ce"limene having unwisely confided her opinion 
 of each to the other ; and the lady is thus 
 caught in a trap, and exposed to the furious 
 reproaches of one after another, all now 
 as bitter as they were formerly flattering. 
 At last the injured gallants withdraw, leav- 
 ing her with Alceste, the most deeply injured 
 of all. And now a fleeting impression is made 
 upon the heart of Ce"limene herself. She bids 
 her wounded lover, 
 
 " Reproach me as you please: I have done wrong 
 I do not hide it; and my heart confused 
 Offers to you no vain apology. 
 Of all the others I despise the rage,
 
 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 But your resentment is too reasonable. 
 I know how guilty I must seem to you 
 How all combines to prove I have betrayed 
 Your faith, and given you too just cause for hate, - 
 Hate me, then I consent. 
 
 ALCESTE. 
 
 " Ah, can I, traitress ? 
 Can I thus vanquish all past tenderness ? 
 And howsoever ardently I long 
 , To hate you, will my heart do't and obey me ? 
 
 To Eliante and Philinte. 
 
 " You see how far unworthy passion goes : 
 You are the witnesses, how weak I am ; 
 But yet, to say the truth, you know not all, 
 For further depths remain, and you shall see 
 How vain it is to call us wise, and how 
 Each man at heart, being man, is always fool. 
 
 To CJlimine. 
 
 " Yes, false one, yes, I can forget your faults, 
 Excuse your errors in my inmost soul, 
 Cover them with the gentle name of weakness, 
 Vice of the age which has betrayed your youth ; 
 If only with your heart you will consent 
 To flee the world with me, to follow now
 
 Molttre. 191 
 
 Into the wilds where I have vowed to live ; 
 Thus only can you, in the eyes of men, 
 Repair the evils you have done, and thus 
 After those scandals which great hearts abhor, 
 I yet may be allowed to love you still. 
 
 CLIMENE. 
 
 " What, I ! renounce the world ere I am old 
 Go and be buried in your wilderness 1 
 
 ALCESTE. 
 
 " If your soul answer mine, what want we more ? 
 Is not my love enough for your content ? 
 
 CELIMENE. 
 
 " At twenty solitude is terrible. 
 No ; I have not a soul so great, so strong, 
 As to content myself with such a fate. 
 But if my hand would satisfy your wish, 
 And marriage " 
 
 " No," cries Alceste, convinced at last 
 of his folly. "This refusal has done more 
 than all the rest. Since you are not able to 
 find all in me as I to find all in you, I refuse, 
 and free myself from your unworthy chains.
 
 192 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 May you be happy," he adds, turning to his 
 sympathetic friends ; " for me, betrayed on 
 all sides, overwhelmed with injustice, I must 
 escape from this gulf, and in some distant 
 part of the earth find a shelter where a man 
 of honour may be free to live." 
 
 Moliere died suddenly, an hour or two after 
 a performance of his " Malade Imaginaire," in 
 which play, as Argan, the hypochondriac, he 
 had, strangely enough, counterfeited death as 
 a means of proving the affection of his wife, 
 B61ine. He was only fifty-one years old. 
 
 Gaston Melingue, the French artist from 
 whose brush came our picture of Moliere 
 reading, has painted another episode from the 
 life of the great actor-dramatist, showing him 
 dining at his villa in Auteuil with some of 
 his famous friends, Racine, La Fontaine, 
 Boileau, and Chapelle. This picture, which 
 gained him an Honourable Mention at the 
 Salon of 1877, is m tne art museum at Sal- 
 ford, England. Melingue's other works,
 
 Voltaire. 193 
 
 several of which are in French provincial 
 museums, include " General Daumesnil at 
 Vincennes," "Hoche in 1789," "An Episode 
 of the Siege of Lille, 1792." "Joan of Arc 
 and Baudricourt," and "La Tour d'Au- 
 vergne." 
 
 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 " FRANCE has been considered thus far as 
 the asylum of unfortunate monarchs ; I wish 
 that my capital should become the temple of 
 great men," wrote Frederick the Great to 
 Voltaire in 1743, when inviting him to make 
 his home at Berlin. Seven years before, 
 Frederick, then Prince Royal of Prussia, had 
 written his first letter to Voltaire, beginning 
 that famous series which lasted, with some 
 interruption, over forty years, until the death 
 of the poet, seven years after, Voltaire 
 took up his abode at the Prussian monarch's 
 court.
 
 194 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 " Friedrich is loyally glad over his Voltaire ; 
 eager in all ways to content him, make him 
 happy; and keep him here, as the Talking 
 Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden 
 Water of intelligent mankind; the glory of 
 one's own court, and the envy of the world. 
 Will teach us the secret of the Muses, too ; 
 French Muses, and help us in our bits of 
 literature ! ' ' These two, who first saw each 
 other in the flesh in 1740, met for the last 
 time in March, 1753, when the "Prince of 
 Scoffers " bade farewell to Berlin, after his 
 quarrel with Frederick about Maupertuis. 
 
 The " Letters " of this distinguished mathe- 
 matician and president of the Berlin Academy 
 had been ridiculed by Voltaire in his " Dia- 
 tribe of Doctor Akakia," and both Maupertuis 
 and the king, his patron, were offended. 
 
 And so there came an end to the notable 
 intimacy between these two great men ; an 
 end to the poet's corrections of the monarchs' 
 writings, Frederick valued his victories at
 
 Voltaire. 195 
 
 less than his verses ; an end to the mutual 
 compliments and to the generous favours 
 which the king showered upon Voltaire. 
 
 What a gap his departure made in those 
 supper parties about Frederick's " Round 
 Table " at Sans Souci palace, where Voltaire 
 shone easily first. Hear Carlyle anent these : 
 " Not to mention the suppers of the king : 
 chosen circle, with the king for centre; a 
 radiant Friedrich flashing out to right and 
 left, till all kindles into coruscation round 
 him ; and it is such a blaze of spiritual sheet- 
 lightnings wonderful to think of ; Voltaire 
 especially electric. Never, or seldom, were 
 seen such suppers." At these meals, the com- 
 pany, sometimes numbering as many as seven- 
 teen, though usually limited to ten, began to 
 gather at nine ; at half-past that hour the 
 meal was served, and at midnight the king 
 withdrew. Not even the wit or wisdom of 
 Voltaire could keep the methodical Frederick 
 from his bed more than five minutes. 
 
 \
 
 196 TJu Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 In Menzel's painting of the brilliant assem- 
 blage, the king sits in the centre with his face 
 turned toward Voltaire's keen profile on his 
 right. General von Stille, one of the only 
 two Germans present, besides Frederick, sits 
 between Voltaire and the king, and behind 
 the poet is seen the head of George, Lord 
 Marshal Keith, a Scotch nobleman who was 
 at different times the ambassador of Prussia, 
 at the courts of Spain and France. Keith 
 had served under Marlborough when a young 
 man, but, being a Jacobite and concerned in 
 the uprising of 1715, had to fly to the Con- 
 tinent, and was attainted and his estates for- 
 feited to the Crown. After various changes 
 of fortune, he became attached to Frederick's 
 court, and although, when pardoned by George 
 II. for his share in the rebellion of 1715, he 
 visited Scotland, he returned to Berlin by Fred- 
 erick's invitation and ended his life there. 
 
 His more famous brother, James, Field- 
 Marshal Keith, sits on the king's left hand.
 
 The Round Table of Frederick the Great. 
 
 From painting by Adolf Menzel.
 
 Voltaire. 197 
 
 This Marshal Keith, another Jacobite who 
 fled after Preston, and flourished abroad, 
 was one of Frederick's most able and trust- 
 worthy generals, and was killed at the battle 
 of Hochkirch, where the Prussians were 
 defeated by Daun. This was in 1758, a sad 
 year for Frederick, who lost not only Keith 
 and Hochkirch, but his favourite and dearly 
 loved sister, Wilhelmina. He sorrowed much 
 over Keith, had his body conveyed to Ber- 
 lin and reinterred with all honours in the 
 Garrison Church there, and in after years put 
 up a statue to him in the Wilhelm Platz. 
 
 Next to the brave marshal we see Algarotti, 
 leaning forward so as to lose nothing of Vol- 
 taire's words. Francesco Algarotti, a man 
 of taste, wit, and learning, sometimes styled 
 the "Swan of Padua," was the son of a rich 
 Venetian merchant. He had visited Voltaire 
 at Cirey when but a young man, and inter- 
 ested him in a project of putting Newton's 
 " Principia " into a series of Italian dialogues
 
 1 98 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 for ladies, which Algarotti afterwards com- 
 pleted and published at Paris. Frederick 
 created him a Prussian count in 1740 and 
 was his friendly patron for many years. 
 Algarotti laboured for the reform of Italian 
 opera, and gained the reputation of an 
 authority upon painting, sculpture, and archi- 
 tecture. He wrote " Letters on Painting," 
 and was employed at one time to procure 
 pictures for the Royal Gallery at Dresden, 
 and among his purchases now there are 
 the famous Madonna of the Meyer Family, 
 by Holbein, and the " Chocolate Girl " of 
 Liotard. 
 
 He died at Pisa in 1764, and lies buried in 
 the Campo Santo there, beneath a monument 
 erected by Frederick the Great, on which is 
 inscribed 
 
 " Hie jacet Algarottus, sect non omnts" 
 
 Beside Algarotti is seated another German 
 soldier, Count Rothemburg, and at his left 
 may be noticed La Mettrie, reader and pen-
 
 Voltaire. 199 
 
 sioned companion to Frederick, a Frenchman 
 who was by turns author, physician, material- 
 ist, atheist, and teller of stories. He is con- 
 versing with the Marquis d'Argens, another 
 French writer, who had lived a gay and 
 adventurous life in youth, and, gaining Fred- 
 erick's attention by some romances which he 
 wrote, was invited to enter his service. One 
 of his chief duties was to aid in enticing to 
 Berlin those Frenchmen of talent whom the 
 King of Prussia wished to have about him. 
 
 Such was the circle which Menzel has so 
 marvellously characterised, an odd, cosmo- 
 politan gathering which well shows Frederick's 
 preference for Frenchmen in that it does not 
 include a single name honoured in German 
 literature. 
 
 In 1815, the same year that brought forth 
 Meissonier, whose brush so often paid homage 
 to Napoleon, was born Adolf Menzel, the 
 painter of Frederick the Great. Menzel's 
 "Round Table of Frederick at Sans Souci,
 
 2oO The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 1750," fitly finds a home in the National 
 Gallery of Berlin, with his picture two 
 masterpieces together of "A Flute Con- 
 cert at Sans Souci," showing Frederick per- 
 forming on his favourite instrument. The 
 artist has also depicted that monarch at the 
 defeat of Hochkirch, a notable battle-piece, 
 and in some other situations, and has illus- 
 trated with many most admirable and inimi- 
 table designs both Kugler's history of the 
 life of Frederick and a sumptuous edition of 
 his voluminous writings in verse and prose, 
 the latter task being commissioned by King 
 Frederick William IV. Not content with 
 these astonishing achievements, which con- 
 tain the result of as much study and re- 
 search as would occupy the lifetime of some 
 artists, Menzel has also produced a large 
 work on the " Army of Frederick the 
 Great," a monograph which re-creates not 
 only its uniforms, trappings, and weapons, 
 but also its men.
 
 Diderot. 201 
 
 Numerous works in oil, besides these already 
 spoken of, have come from this remarkable 
 painter's hand, notably that one known as 
 " Modern Cyclops," a scene in an iron foundry, 
 now in the Berlin National Gallery, but we 
 will not try to enumerate them. Suffice it to 
 say that in Menzel the world wisely honours an 
 artist truly original, one of the greatest of his 
 time. 
 
 DIDEROT. 
 
 IT is pleasant to know that Meissonier 
 greatly admired Menzel' s art, and obtained for 
 him the cross of the Legion of Honour in 
 1867, when the German artist sent some pic- 
 tures to the Paris Exhibition. Menzel could 
 not speak French, and Meissonier knew no 
 German, but it is told that they were so 
 delighted with each other's artistic gifts that 
 during Menzel' s stay they were rarely seen 
 apart, although their whole conversation was 
 limited to repeated pressures of the hand and
 
 2O2 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 mutual exclamations of admiration. An odd 
 spectacle they must have presented, as Meis- 
 sonier was a little man with a big head, and 
 Menzel is even shorter of stature than the 
 French artist. 
 
 Voltaire, who once wrote to Diderot, "I 
 am eighty-three years of age, and I repeat 
 that I am inconsolable at the thought of 
 dying without ever having seen you," did 
 not meet him until the last year of his own 
 life, but he did much for the Encyclopaedia, 
 that great work which Diderot brought to its 
 conclusion alone. 
 
 We have seen Voltaire beside Frederick 
 painted by Menzel ; let us look for a moment 
 at Diderot painted by Meissonier. Here, in 
 one of the painter's masterpieces, we see the 
 philosopher seated in his library reading to 
 some friends, among whom are three artists, 
 Chardin, renowned for his success in " still 
 life," Joseph Vernet, the marine painter, and 
 Vanloo. Who were the persons Meissonier
 
 La Lecture che% Diderot. 
 
 From painting by J. L. E. Meissonier.
 
 Diderot. 203 
 
 intended to represent by the other three 
 listeners is not recorded, but we can well 
 imagine them to have been D'Alembert, 
 Diderot's cooperator on the Encyclopaedia, 
 Holbach, author of the " System of Nature," 
 which was imputed to Diderot, and Grimm, 
 Diderot's closest friend. 
 
 Diderot may be gratifying his artist friends 
 with a first hearing of one of his annual 
 criticisms on the exhibition of paintings in the 
 Salon, the first of which was written in 1759. 
 
 John Morley, in his admirable book on 
 Diderot, writes interestingly of these reviews. 
 
 He says : " It is impossible, in reading how 
 deeply Diderot was affected by fifth-rate 
 paintings and sculpture, not to count it 
 among the great losses of literature that he 
 saw few masterpieces. He never made the 
 great pilgrimage. He was never at Venice, 
 Florence, Parma, Rome. A journey to Italy 
 was once planned, in which Grimm and 
 Rousseau were to have been his travelling
 
 204 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 companions ; the project was not realised, and 
 the strongest critic of art that his country pro- 
 duced never saw the greatest glories of art. 
 If Diderot had visited Florence and Rome, 
 even the mighty painter of the ' Last Judg- 
 ment,' and the creator of those sublime figures 
 in the New Sacristy at San Lorenzo, would 
 have found an interpreter worthy of him. 
 But it was not to be. ' It is rare/ he once 
 wrote, ' for an artist to excel without having 
 seen Italy, just as a man seldom becomes a 
 great writer or a man of great taste without 
 having given severe study to the ancients.' 
 Diderot at least knew what he lost." 
 
 For Watteau, Diderot cared little. "I 
 would give ten Watteaus," he said, " for one 
 Teniers." 
 
 Greuze, of all the painters of the time, was 
 Diderot's chief favourite. " Diderot was not 
 at all blind to Greuze's faults, to his repeti- 
 tions, his frequent want of size and amplitude, 
 the excess of gray and of violet in his colour-
 
 Diderot. 205 
 
 ing. But all these were forgotten in trans- 
 ports of sympathy for the sentiment. As we 
 glance at a list of Greuze's subjects, we per- 
 ceive that we are in the very heart of the 
 region of the domestic, the moral, * Vhonntte? 
 the homely pathos of the common people. 
 The death of a father of a family, regretted 
 by his children ; The death of an unnatural 
 father, abandoned by his children ; The 
 beloved mother caressed by her little ones ; 
 A child weeping over its dead bird ; A para- 
 lytic tended by his family ; or, The fruit of a 
 good education. Diderot was ravished by 
 such themes." 
 
 " Diderot, as a critic, seems always to have 
 remembered a pleasant remonstrance once ad- 
 dressed at the Salon by the worthy Chardin to 
 himself and Grimm. ' Gently, good sirs, gently ! 
 Out of all the pictures that are here, seek 
 the very worst ; and know that two thousand 
 unhappy wretches have bitten their brushes in 
 two with their teeth, in despair of ever doing
 
 206 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 even as badly. Parrocel, whom you call a 
 dauber, and who for that matter is a dauber, 
 if you compare him to Vernet, is still a man 
 of rare talent relatively to the multitude of 
 those who have flung up the career in which 
 they started with him.' And then the artist 
 recounts the immense labours, the exhaust- 
 ing years, the boundless patience, attention, 
 tenacity, that are the conditions even of a 
 mediocre degree of mastery." 
 
 Morley says : " The one painter whom 
 Diderot never spares is Boucher, who was an 
 idol of the time, and made an income of fifty 
 thousand livres a year out of his popularity. 
 He laughs at him as a mere painter of fans, 
 an artist with no colour on his palette save 
 white and red." 
 
 " Diderot's special gift," according to Mor- 
 ley, " was the transformation of scientific crit- 
 icism into something with the charm of 
 literature. Take, for instance, a picture by 
 Vien:
 
 Diderot. 207 
 
 " ' Psyche approaching with her lamp to sur- 
 prise Love in his sleep. The two figures are 
 of flesh and blood, but they have neither the 
 elegance, nor the grace, nor the delicacy that 
 the subject required. Love seems to me to 
 be making a grimace. Psyche is not like a 
 woman who comes trembling on tiptoe. I do 
 not see on her face that mixture of surprise, 
 fear, love, desire, and admiration, which ought 
 all to be there. It is not enough to show in 
 Psyche a curiosity to see Love ; I must also 
 perceive in her the fear of awakening him. 
 She ought to have her mouth half open, and 
 to be afraid of drawing her breath. 'Tis her 
 lover that she sees, that she sees for the 
 first time, at the risk of losing him for ever. 
 What joy to look upon him, and to find him 
 so fair! Oh, what little intelligence in our 
 painters, how little they understand nature ! 
 The head of Psyche ought to be inclined 
 toward Love ; the rest of her body drawn 
 back, as it is when you advance toward a
 
 2o8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 spot where you fear to enter, and from which 
 you are ready to flee back ; one foot planted 
 on the ground, and the other barely touching 
 it. And the lamp ; ought she to let the light 
 fall on the eyes of Love ? Ought she not to 
 hold it apart, and to shield it with her hand 
 to deaden its brightness ? Moreover, that 
 would have lighted the picture in a striking 
 way. These good people do not know that 
 the eyelids have a kind of transparency ; 
 they have never seen a mother coming in 
 the night to look at her child in the cradle, 
 with a lamp in her hand, and fearful of 
 awakening it." 
 
 The picture of Diderot reading was one 
 of the works completed by Meissonier in 
 1859, an d belongs to Baron E. de Rothschild. 
 
 Its author, Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, 
 died at the age of seventy-five, in 1891, full 
 of honours. It is not necessary to recount 
 these, it should be enough to say that the 
 French have already erected two statues to
 
 Diderot. 209 
 
 him, one in Poissy, where he had a country- 
 house, and one in Paris, outside the Louvre. 
 Meissonier's " Friedland, 1807," a picture 
 showing Napoleon at the zenith of his glory, 
 is one of the artist's most famous works, and 
 also one of his largest, small dimensions 
 being the rule with his canvases. It belongs 
 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 
 York, having come there from the sale of 
 A. T. Stewart's collection in 1887, where it 
 was purchased by Judge Hilton, who gave 
 it to the museum. Mr. Stewart is said to 
 have paid the painter the large sum of 
 sixty thousand dollars for this picture. The 
 triumphant "1807" has its contrast in 
 "1814" (owned in France), where we see 
 the emperor on his white charger, at the 
 head of his staff, slowly retreating before 
 the enemy over snow-covered roads. 
 
 The last work exhibited by Meissonier 
 before his death was another Napoleonic 
 episode, " Jena, 1806." Of the many
 
 2io The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 other pictures he produced, the most famous 
 are "La Rixe" (which Napoleon III. gave 
 to Prince Albert in 1855, and which now 
 belongs to Queen Victoria), "The Portrait 
 of the Sergeant," "The Sign Painter," and 
 " Solferino," the latter being in the Luxem- 
 bourg. 
 
 SCHILLER. 
 
 SCHILLER is reading his tragedy of " Don 
 Carlos " to the little court of Weimar, of 
 which the central figure is Duke Karl Au- 
 gust, a liberal patron of literature. Around 
 the duke are grouped his family, and behind 
 him stand Goethe and Wieland. The former 
 lived at Weimar for over fifty years, until his 
 death in 1832, and was buried there, beside 
 Schiller, in the vault of the Grand Dukes of 
 Saxe-Weimar. Together in life and death, 
 the illustrious pair are again united in a well- 
 conceived bronze group by Rietschel, which 
 was erected, in 1857, in front of the theatre
 
 Schiller at Weimar. 
 
 From drawing by Wilhelm Lindenschmit.
 
 Schiller. 2 1 1 
 
 at Weimar, and portrays the two poets stand- 
 ing side by side. 
 
 It is easy to imagine what pleasure Schiller 
 must have experienced in reciting his tragedy 
 to such friendly and appreciative listeners as 
 the artist has grouped before us. 
 
 We may suppose the poet to be reading 
 the moving scene between Philip II. and 
 Don Carlos, in the second act of the play. 
 
 KING. 
 
 I am alone! 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 You have been so till now. Hate me no more, 
 And I will love you dearly, as a son : 
 But hate me now no longer ! O ! how sweet, 
 Divinely sweet it is, to feel our being 
 Reflected in another's beauteous soul ; 
 To see our joys gladden another's cheek, 
 Our pains bring anguish to another's bosom, 
 Our sorrows fill another's eye with tears ! 
 How sweet, how glorious is it, hand in hand, 
 With a dear child, in inmost soul beloved, 
 To tread once more the rosy paths of youths, 
 And dream life's fond illusions o'er again I
 
 212 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 How proud to live through endless centuries, 
 
 Immortal in the virtues of a son; 
 
 How sweet to plant what his dear hand shall reap ; 
 
 To gather what will yield him rich return, 
 
 And guess how high his thanks will one day rise ! 
 
 My father, of this earthly paradise 
 
 Your monks most wisely speak not 
 
 KING. 
 
 O, my son, 
 
 Thou hast condemn'd thyself, in painting thus 
 A bliss this heart hath ne'er enjoyed from thee ! 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 Th' Omniscient be my judge ! You till this hour 
 Have still debarr'd me from your heart, and all 
 Participation in your royal cares. 
 The heir of Spain has been a very stranger 
 In Spanish land a prisoner in the realm 
 Where he must one day rule. Say, was this just, 
 Or kind ? And often have I blush 'd for shame, 
 And stood with eyes abash'd, to learn perchance, 
 From foreign envoys, or the general rumour, 
 Thy courtly doings at Aranjuez. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Thy blood flows far too hotly in thy veins. 
 Thou wouldst but ruin all.
 
 Schiller. 213 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 But try me, father ! 
 
 'Tis true my blood flows hotly in my veins. 
 Full three and twenty years I now have lived, 
 And nought achieved for immortality. 
 I am aroused I feel my inward powers 
 My title to the throne arouses me 
 From slumber like an angry creditor; 
 And all the misspent hours of early youth, 
 Like debts of honour, clamour in mine ears. 
 It comes at length, the glorious moment comes 
 That claims full interest on the entrusted talent 
 The annals of the world, ancestral fame, 
 And glory's echoing trumpet urge me on. 
 Now is the blessed hour at length arrived 
 That opens wide to me the lists of honour. 
 My King, my father ! dare I utter now 
 The suit which led me hither ? 
 
 KING. 
 
 Still a suit? 
 Unfold it 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 The rebellion in Brabant 
 Increases to a height the traitor's madness 
 By stern, but prudent, vigour must be met. 
 The Duke, to quell the wild enthusiasm,
 
 214 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Invested with the sovereign's power, will lead 
 An army into Flanders. O, how full 
 Of glory is such office ! and how suited 
 To open wide the temple of renown 
 To me, your son ! To my hand, then, O King, 
 Entrust the army ; in thy Flemish lands 
 I am well loved, and I will freely gage 
 My life, for their fidelity and truth. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Thou speakest like a dreamer. This high office 
 Demands a man and not a stripling's arm. 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 It but demands a human being, father : 
 And that is what Duke Alva ne'er hath been. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Terror alone can tie rebellion's hands : 
 Humanity were madness. Thy soft soul 
 Is tender, son : they'll tremble at the Duke. 
 Desist from thy request. 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 Despatch me, Sire, 
 
 To Flanders with the army dare rely 
 E'en on my tender soul. The name of Prince,
 
 Schiller. 
 
 The royal name emblazoned on my standard, 
 Conquers where Alva's butchers but dismay. 
 Here on my knees I crave it this the first 
 Petition of my life. Trust Flanders to me. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Trust my best army to thy thirst for rule, 
 And put a dagger in my murderer's hand I 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 Great God ! and is this all is this the fruit 
 
 Of a momentous hour so long desired ! 
 
 Oh, speak to me more kindly send me not 
 
 Thus comfortless away dismiss me not 
 
 With this afflicting answer, oh, my father 1 
 
 Use me more tenderly, indeed I need it. 
 
 This is the last resource of wild despair 
 
 It conquers every pow'r of firm resolve 
 
 To bear it as a man this deep contempt. 
 
 My ev'ry suit denied : Let me away 
 
 Unheard and foil'd in all my fondest hopes, 
 
 I take my leave, now Alva and Domingo 
 
 May proudly sit in triumph where your son 
 
 Lies weeping in the dust. Your crowd of courtiers, 
 
 And your train of cringing, trembling nobles, 
 
 Your tribe of sallow monks, so deadly pale, 
 
 All witness'd how you granted me this audience.
 
 216 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 Let me not be disgraced O, strike me not 
 
 With this most deadly wound nor lay me bare 
 
 To sneering insolence of menial taunts ! 
 
 " That strangers riot on your bounty, whilst 
 
 Carlos, your son, may supplicate in vain." 
 
 And as a pledge that you would have me honour'd, 
 
 Despatch me straight to Flanders with the army. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Urge thy request no further as thou wouldst 
 Avoid the King's displeasure. 
 
 CARLOS. 
 
 I must brave 
 
 My King's displeasure, and prefer my suit 
 Once more, it is the last. Trust Flanders to me I 
 I must away from Spain. To linger here 
 Is to draw breath beneath the headsman's axe: 
 The air lies heavy on me in Madrid. 
 Like murder on guilty soul a change, 
 An instant change of clime alone can cure me. 
 If you will save my life, despatch me straight 
 Without delay to Flanders. 
 
 KING. 
 
 Invalids, like thee, my son, need to be tended close 
 
 And ever watched by the physician's eye. 
 
 Thou stay'st in Spain the Duke will go to Flanders.
 
 GoetJte. 217 
 
 The late Wilhelm Lindenschmit, who 
 designed " Schiller at Weimar," was a painter 
 of history, and professor at the Royal Acad- 
 emy of Munich. His most notable produc- 
 tions are several pictures illustrative of the 
 life of Luther, one of which, " Luther and the 
 Reformers at Marburg, 1529," was formerly 
 in the Powers collection at Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 The Leipsic Museum owns his " Ulrich 
 Von Hutten at Viterbo in 15 16, fighting with 
 five Frenchmen who had jeered at the Em- 
 peror Maximilian." Lindenschmit died in 
 1895. 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1808, Napoleon and 
 Alexander I. met at Erfurt. The Kings of 
 Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Westphalia, and 
 their queens, with many other princes and 
 dignitaries, added to the magnificence of the 
 scene, but a still higher lustre was imparted
 
 21 8 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 by the presence of Germany's greatest 
 scholars and men of letters. 
 
 Among them was Wieland, the " German 
 Voltaire," then an old man of seventy-five, 
 with whom Napoleon held a long conversation 
 upon literature, history, and philosophy. Amid 
 other queries, the emperor asked the author 
 of "Oberon" his stock question, "Which 
 has been the happiest age of humanity ? " 
 and was pleased when the aged poet said that 
 it was impossible to give a reply, because 
 "good and evil, virtue and vice, continually 
 alternate ; philosophy must emphasise the 
 good and make the evil tolerable." 
 
 But the victor of Austerlitz talked with a 
 greater than Wieland during his stay at 
 Erfurt. Goethe, then in his sixtieth year, 
 visited Napoleon, at the request of the latter. 
 At that time, and long afterward, the poet 
 considered the emperor not only the greatest 
 power, but the greatest idealist, in the world. 
 Twenty years later, Goethe said to Ecker-
 
 Napoleon /., Goethe, and Wieland. 
 
 From painting by E. E. Hillemacher.
 
 Goethe. 219 
 
 mann, " Napoleon was the man ! His life was 
 the stride of a demigod. That was a fellow 
 whom we cannot imitate." 
 
 According to Goethe's own account of the 
 interview, given in his "Annals," the great 
 soldier's first words to him were, " You are a 
 man ! " Goethe says : 
 
 "I was ordered to the presence of the 
 emperor at 1 1 A. M. 
 
 " A stout chamberlain, a Pole, intimated to 
 me to stay. 
 
 " The crowd removed. 
 
 " Presented to Savary and Talleyrand. 
 
 " I am called to the cabinet of the emperor. 
 
 "At the same moment Daru sends in his 
 name, and is at once admitted. 
 
 " I therefore hesitate. 
 
 " Am again called. 
 
 " Step in. 
 
 " The emperor sits at a large round table, 
 taking breakfast ; at his right stands Talley- 
 rand at some distance from the table ; at his
 
 220 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 left, rather near, Daru, with whom he con- 
 verses on the contribution affairs. 
 
 " The emperor nods to me to come forward. 
 
 " I stand at becoming distance from him. 
 
 " Having looked at me attentively, he said, 
 ' Vous tes un homme! 
 
 " I bow. 
 
 ' He asks, ' How old are you ? ' 
 
 " ' Sixty years.' 
 
 " ' You carry your age well. 
 
 " ' You have written tragedies ? ' 
 
 " I answered what was necessary. 
 
 " Here Daru took up the word. In some 
 measure to flatter the Germans on whom 
 he had to work so much woe, he spoke 
 of German literature ; being also well con- 
 versant with Latin and himself editor of 
 Horace. 
 
 " He spoke of me in much the same way as 
 my patrons in Berlin might have spoken ; at 
 least, I recognised in his words their mode of 
 thought and sentiment,
 
 Goethe. 221 
 
 " He then added that I had translated from 
 the French, and that Voltaire's ' Mahomet.' 
 
 "The emperor replied, 'It is not a good 
 piece,' and set forth with great detail how 
 unsuitable it was for the conqueror of the 
 world to make such an unfavourable descrip- 
 tion of himself. 
 
 "He then turned the conversation on 
 * Werther,' which he seemed to have studied 
 thoroughly. After various very pertinent 
 remarks he pointed out certain passage, and 
 said, Why have you written so ? It is not 
 according to nature,' opening up his meaning 
 at large, and setting forth the matter with 
 perfect accuracy. 
 
 " I listened to him with an expression of 
 pleasure, and with a smile of gladness 
 answered that I, indeed, was not aware that 
 any person had made me the same reproach ; 
 but I found his censure quite correct, and 
 confessed that in this passage there was 
 something demonstrable as untrue. Only, I
 
 222 The Great Masters of Literature, 
 
 added, it might perhaps be pardoned the 
 poet if he made use of an artifice not easily 
 to be discovered in order to produce certain 
 effects he could not have accomplished in a 
 simple, natural way. 
 
 " The emperor seemed satisfied with this, 
 returned to the drama, and made very impor- 
 tant remarks, in the manner of a criminal 
 judge who contemplates the tragic stage with 
 the greatest attention, having deeply felt the 
 deviation of the French theatre from nature 
 and truth. 
 
 " He then referred to the fate-plays with dis- 
 approval. They had belonged to a darker time. 
 * What/ said he, ' have people now to do with 
 fate ? It is politics that is fate.' 
 
 " He next turned again to Daru, and spoke 
 with him of the great contribution affairs. I 
 retired a little, and came to stand just at the 
 corner where, more than thirty years ago, 
 along with many a glad hour, I had also 
 experienced many a sad one, and had time to
 
 Goethe. 223 
 
 remark that to the right of me, toward the 
 entry door, Berthier, Savary, and yet another 
 person stood. Talleyrand had removed. 
 
 " Marshal Soult was announced. 
 
 " This tall figure, with a profusion of hair on 
 his head, entered. The emperor inquired 
 jocularly about some unpleasant events in 
 Poland, and I had time to look around me 
 in the room, and to think of the past. 
 
 " Here, too, was the old tapestry. 
 
 " But the portraits on the walls were van- 
 ished. 
 
 " Here had hung the likeness of the Duchess 
 Amalia in masquerade dress, a black half- 
 mask in the hand, the other likenesses of 
 governors and members of the family, likewise 
 all gone. 
 
 "The emperor rose, went up to me, and 
 by a kind of manoeuvre separated me from 
 the other members of the row in which I 
 stood. 
 
 " Turning his back to those, and speaking to
 
 224 The Great Masters of Literature. 
 
 me in a lower voice, he asked whether I was 
 married ? have children ? and other personal 
 matters of usual interest. In the same man- 
 ner, likewise, he inquired after my relations 
 to the princely house, after the Duchess 
 Amalia, the prince, the princess, etc. I 
 answered him in a natural way. He seemed 
 satisfied, and translated it into his own lan- 
 guage, only in a somewhat more decisive style 
 than I had been able to express myself. 
 
 " I must remark, generally, that in the whole 
 conversation I had to admire the multiplicity 
 of his expressions of approval, for he seldom 
 listened without some response, either nod- 
 ding reflectively with the head or saying 
 ' Out,' or ' Cest bien ' or such like. Nor must 
 I forget to mention that when he had finished 
 speaking, he usually added, ' Qu'en dit M. 
 Got?' 
 
 " And so I took the opportunity of asking 
 the chamberlain by a sign whether I might 
 take leave, which he answered in the affirma-
 
 Goethe. 22$ 
 
 live, and I then without further ado took my 
 departure." 
 
 Hillemacher's painting of the meeting of 
 these great ones was sent to the Salon of 
 1863. Its artist, who died in 1887, was a 
 pupil of the veteran Cogniet, and painted 
 many episodes of historic interest. The 
 French government purchased his "Confes- 
 sional in St. Peter's, at Rome, on Easter 
 Day," painted in 1855. He has produced a 
 great number of pictures, including "The 
 Entrance of the Turks into St. Sophia in 
 1453," "The Young Turenne," "Ceres in 
 Search of Proserpine," "Antony and Cleo- 
 patra," " Tarpeia," and " Philip IV. and Velas- 
 quez." 
 
 THE END.