studies in Religion
^ and Literature
W.S. Lilly
I
LIBRARY
OF THE
University of California.
Class
U1^
I
Studies
in
Religion and Literature
Works by the Same Author
ANCIENT RELIGION AND MODERN
THOUGHT. {Out of print.)
Chapman and Hall.
CHAPTERS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY.
{Out of print.)
Chapman and Hall.
A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION.
{yd
EStion.)
Chapman and Hall.
ON RIGHT AND WRONG.
{Zrd
Edition.)
Chapman and Hall.
ON SHIBBOLETHS.
Chapman and Hall.
THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Chapman and Hall.
ESSAYS AND SPEECHES.
Chapman and Hall,
CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN
CIVI-
LIZATION.
Chapman and Hall.
THE GREAT ENIGMA. {Out of print.) John Murray.
FOUR ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
{Out oj print.) John Murray.
FIRST PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS. John Murray.
RENAISSANCE TYPES. Fisher Unwin.
INDIA AND ITS PROBLEMS. Sands.
Studies
in
Religion and Literature
William Samuel Lilly
Honorary Fellow of Peterhousc, Cambridge
■ Weite Welt und breites Leben,
Langer Jahre redlich Streben,
Stets geforscht unH stets gegriinilet,
Nie geschlossen, oft geriindet,
Altestes bewahrt mit Treue,
Freundlich aufgefasst das Neue,
Heitren Sinn und reine Zwecke,
Nun, man konimt wohl eine Strecke !"
GOETHK.
London : Chapman & Hall, Ld.
1904
TO
Sir HUBERT EDWARD HENRY JERNINGHAM
K.C.M.G.
My dear Jerningham,
With your kind permission, I inscribe your
name on the first page of this book, as a tribute
to an undimmed friendship extending through all
the years in which the papers here brought together
were written.
I am, my dear Jerningham,
Most sincerely yours,
W. S. LILLY.
ATHEN.tUM Club,
October lo, 1904.
219197
Advertisement
Of the Studies brought together in this volume,
the first, second, fifth, sixth, and ninth appeared
originally in the Fortnightly Review, the third in the
Pilot, and the eighth in the Nineteenth Centtiry. I
now reclaim them by the courteous permission of
the proprietors of those publications. The fourth is
reprinted from my Chapters in Etiropean History,
and the seventh from my Ancient Religion mid
Modei'u Thought — works which have been long out
of print. All have been carefully revised, and, to
some e.xtent, rewritten.
Contents
I
PAGE
WHAT WAS SHAKESPEARE'S RELIGION? . . . . i
II
THE MISSION OF TENNYSON 31
III
A GRAND OLD PAGAN 53
IV
A FRENCH SHAKESPEARE 82
V
A NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAVONAROLA . . . .155
VI
CARDINAL WISEMAN'S LIFE AND WORK . • .179
VII
THE MEANING OF TRACTARIANISM 218
VIII
CONCERNING GHOST STORIES 271
IX
THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS 285
Summary
I
WHAT WAS SHAKESPEARE'S RELIGION?
PACK
Is there any sufficient reason for attributinj^ to Shakespeare orthodox
Protestantism? i
What " orthodox Protestantism " was in Enghmd in Shakespeare's
time 3
That Shakespeare conformed to it, occasionally, is most probable.
But what evidence is there that he gave any real assent to it ? . 4
His plays, although assuredly not designed to inculcate the tenets
of this or that school in theology, in philosophy, in politics,
doubtless reflect, more or less clearly, his mental attitude
towards the problems of the day : the times in which he lived
mirrored themselves on his translucent and serene intellect . 5
The plays usually cited for Shakespeare's Protestantism are Kiu}^
John, Henry VI., and Henry VHI. The passages so relied on,
examined 10
Those passages are really not proofs of Shakespeare's Protestantism,
but signs to the contrary 19
His treatment of the Protestant clergy of his time ... 19
His yearning fondness for the Old Faith 20
His mention of Evening Mass 23
His acquaintance with the philosophy of the Catholic school . 26
An ancient tradition that he was " reared up " a Catholic . 28
" Church Papists " 29
Davies's statement, " He dj'ed a Papist," though of small authority,
not improbably true 30
II
THE MISSION OF TENNYSON
Tennyson, //^^ English poet of the nineteenth century . . -31
What was his chief lesson to his generation and to the generations
that should come after ? 33
Poetry not merely a pleasing play of fancy : but the most legitimate
and the easiest, as well as the most beautiful, instrument of
education ■;4
xii Summary
Poetical inspiration : the poets of a nation its truest prophets , . 35
Tennyson's acute sensibility to the intellectual and spiritual, the
social and political developments of the times in which he lived 37
Tennyson's sympathy with the scientific movement characteristic
of his age 38
The vast progress of the physical sciences not unmixed gain. One
result of it the effacement, to a very great extent, of the true
idea of law from the popular mind 39
A distinctive characteristic of law is necessity : and for the very
notion of necessity we must pass to an order of verities
transcending the physical 40
Law is of the will and of the intellect : it is a function of reason . 41
Tennyson's witness to the true conception of law : he felt that the
mechanical philosophy offered to him in the name of physical
science was utterly inadequate to life : he found in the laws of
man's spiritual and moral being, the solution of " the riddle of
this painful earth" 43
On those laws he based his Theistic belief ... 44
his ethical creed . ... 48
his political principles .... 49
III
A GRAND OLD PAGAN
Walter Savage Landor : one of the most striking personalities in the
literary history of the nineteenth centurv 53
The Man ' 55
The Literary Artist 63
The Literary Critic 71
IV
A FRENCH SHAKESPEARE
The place of Honord de Balzac in French literature ... 82
He is not only the greatest master of French romantic fiction, but
the exponent of French life under the Empire, the Restoration,
and the Monarchy of July. He claims to be not a mere teller
of stories, but the historian of a civilization. And it is thus
that he is considered in this Study 88
Plan of his CoinMie Hiimaiiie ........ 94
His Pire Goriot the best introduction to it 96
His estimate of Parisian life 115
of Provincial life ........ 122
of Country life 128
The picture which he presents sombre and terrible. Is it true ? . 135
Balzac's competency and honesty 135
Balzac's realism . . . ■ '^yi
Summary xiii
Balzac aspired to do something more than paint the types and
conditions of nineteenth-century civilization, and to seize its
latent meaning. He sought also to judge it . . . ,141
He finds society sick of egoism : the moi-hianahi the only thing
left by the Revolution 142
The course of events since his death in 1850 has gone far to justify
his political views .145
His religious views . . . . . . . . . .146
The charge of immorality brought against the Comedie Humaine . 149
Balzac's philosophical views 153
The Comedie Huniainc the true expression of the society in which
its author lived, and which found in him " its most original,
most appropriate, and most penetrating historian " . . . 153
V
A NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAVONAROLA
F^licite de Lamennais unquestionably among the great names of
the last century . -155
And a true exponent of its Z^//^'r/.v/ 155
His childhood and youth 156
Realizes that his true vocation was to wriie 158
Strained relations between Pope Pius VII. and Napoleon . . 158
Lamennais's first book, L' I^tat de P^glise en France, sounds the
noteof opposition to State control of Religion .... i6l
The Essay on Indifference 163
His La Religion consideree dans ses Rapports avec POrdre politique
et social 164
The true account of the '■ Gallican Liberties " 165
His Des progres de la Revolution et de la o;uerre contre P^glise . 167
The Society of St. Peter . . . '. 168
The Avenir 169
The French Episcopate hostile to Lamennais 170
His journey to Rome with Lacordaire and Montalembert . 171
The Affaires de Rome 171
The Encyclical Mirari Vos 173
Lamennais's last twenty years and death 173
How far time has vindicated, and is vindicating, his views . . 173
His mistakes and their source 176
May be termed the Savonarola of the nineteenth century . . 177
VI
CARDINAL WISEMAN'S LIFE AND WORK
Merits of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman 179
Wiseman's boyhood and youth 182
Impressions left on him by his four years of student life in Rome . 184
His leading principles, thoughts, and aims 185
XIV
Summary
Publishes his Horca Syriaca in 1827, which gives him a European
reputation, and is appointed first Professor of Oriental Lan-
guages at the Roman University, and then Rector of the
English College in Rome . . . . . . .186
The English College under his presidency 187
Is deeply influenced by Father Ignatius Spencer .... i88
His Lectures on the Connexioti between Science and Revealed
Religion . 189
Visits England in 1835 190
Condition of Catholics in England at that time . . . .191
Lectures at the Sardinian Chapel and at Moorfields Church . . 193
Abatement of anti-Catholic prejudice brought about by his Lectures 194
Appointed President of Oscott, and consecrated Bishop . . . 195
His influence on the Oxford Movement 195
His devotion to the poetry and symbolism of the Catholic Liturgy . 198
The restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy in England . . . 199
Wiseman created a Cardinal, and appointed Archbishop of West-
minster 202
The Pastoral " From without the Flaminian Gate " . . . 202
His career as Archbishop and Metropolitan 203
Dr. Manning's influence with him 206
His estrangement from his Chapter, the great bulk of the clerg},
and most of his brother Bishops, in his declining days . . 208
His death 212
Some observations upon Cardinal Manning 213
VII
THE MEANING OF TRACTARIANISM
The Tractarian Movement best studied in the person and action
of its leader 218
Strong individuality of John Henry Newman's works . .219
Condition of religious thought in England in his early days . 220
John Wesley and his work 222
The Evangelical party 223
Newman's first religious impressions ...... 224
The gradual opening of his mind ... ... 225
The nucleus of the Tractarian party 227
The Intellectual Revolution in England 228
The influence of Coleridge 229
The philosophical basis of the Tractarian Movement 230
John Keble and the Christian Year 231
The Tracts for the Times 234
The idea of the Tractarian Movement 236
The progress of the Tractarian Movement 237
Newman's defence of the Tractarian Movement .... 238
National feeling and the Tractarian Movement .... 239
The Anglican Bishops and the Tractarian Movement . 240
Summary xv
PAGE
The collapse of the Tractaiian Movement 241
Newman's secession 243
Thomas Arnold 247
What Tractarianism has done for the Church of England . . 248
What it has done for the Catholic Church 250
Newman's work in the Catholic Church 251
Newman's controversial activity 254
His consistency from first to last ....... 256
Tractarianism in relation to the great question of the day . . 262
Newman holds informal inference to be the true method in religious
as in other inquiries • 263
Conscience the great internal Prophet of Theism .... 264
The No of the world and human history 265
Difficulties of Theistic belief 266
The probability of a Revelation 267
If there is a Revelation, where should we look for it ? . . . 268
Christianity and the Catholic Church 269
The chief significance of Tractarianism 270
VIII
CONCERNING GHOST STORIES
Two points to be considered :
I. Are not many Ghost Stories true ?
II. If they are or may be true, what can be the harm of telling
them? 272
It is quite easy to deny tales of apparitions on the a priori ground . 272
But the a priori argument against apparitions of the departed
resolves itself into the doctrine " Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque
mors nihil" 273
This doctrine is probably not widely held in England. The prc-
vaihng opinion in this country is that " the dead, when they
depart hence, do not cease to exist : that they remain, but
without the /^j/ita/ means of approach towards us and correspon-
dence with us," and that the phenomenal universe is but a
veil hiding from us spiritual realities 274
The question is. Can any communication reach us from beyond
that veil ? 274
The evidence for an afiirmative answer to this question seems
overwhelming .......... 274
Schopenhauer's view 277
But allowing that Ghost Stories are, or may be, true, is the telling
them to be accounted a harmless amusement ? . . . . 279
To a science of the supernatural we shall never attain by human
industry, because the subject is too obscure, the instances are
too conflicting and contradictory : the causal tiexics is beyond us 28 1
The mystery of death is impenetrable to us ; and the inference for
those who believe in a Divine ordering of the world is that our
ignorance is best for us 281
XVI
Summary
Men's curiosity is insatiable, but it is not always wise : there are
things as to which it is better not satisfied ....
Christianity has ever reprobated soothsaying, consulting the stars,
magic, and similar arts — even though not false — as rash intrusions
into the Secret of the King, by-paths to things beyond flesh and
blood, avenues to ill, not to good, leading not to sane and safe
knowledge, but to bewilderment, illusion, and despair
A longing to pry into the mysteries of the grave, a token of in-
tellectual and spiritual decay
And the subject too full of sacred and solemn mystery to be
prostituted to a topic for idle talking
283
IX
THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS
Vast extent of the Ludicrous ; Barrow's account of it . . . 287
Catalogue of the varieties of the Ludicrous 289
Most of the varieties present no special difficulties ; but four, viz.
Humour, Wit, Bulls, and Parody, require some consideration.
Remarks upon them 290
National characteristics 296
Can we define the Ludicrous ? What Plato, Aristotle, the School-
men, Herbert Spencer, and Schopenhauer have written on this
subject, considered 299
What is the function of the Ludicrous ? What end does it serve in
human life ? 306
Studies in Religion and
Literature
WHAT WAS Shakespeare's religion ?
(I)
The question, " What was Shakespeare's religion ? "
has been asked by a multitude of critics, and has
received widely differing answers. The latest is to
be found in Mr. Churton Collins's Studies in Shake-
speare, a volume which is assuredly a very important
contribution to the subjects with which it deals. On
every page of it is evidence of wide and sound
scholarship, and of great critical acumen. But its
chief value seems to me to lie in the evidence which
it offers that Shakespeare "was not merely a fair
Latin scholar," but possessed an "extensive knowledge
of the classics both of Greece and Rome." Mr.
Churton Collins is most felicitous in the arguments
with which he supports this hypothesis. I venture to
think, however, that he is less happy in the answer
which he gives to the question, " What was Shake-
speare's religion ? " He tells us that " the attitude of
E
2 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i-]
Sophocles towards the conventional creeds of Athens '
— an attitude which he describes as implying a recog-
nition of "the wisdom of orthodoxy" — "is precisely
that of Shakespeare towards Protestant Christianity."
Again, he parallels "the orthodox Polytheism" of
Sophocles with "the equally orthodox Christian
Protestantism of Shakespeare," adding, "To Sophocles
had descended a religion which, whatever may have
been the sentiments of the vulgar, had, as accepted
by the more enlightened, been purged of its grosser
superstitions : and what preceding poets and philo-
sophers had effected for the religion of Sophocles, the
Reformation had effected for that of Shakespeare."
Once more we read, " Both " [Montaigne and Shake-
speare] "are practically theistical agnostics, but both
reverence, for the same formal reason, Christianity :
the one as embodied in Roman Catholicism, the other
as embodied in Protestantism." I am not quite sure
that I understand what is meant by " theistical agnos-
tics ; " but this is not the point upon which I wish to
dwell. I wish rather to inquire whether there exists
any sufficient reason for attributing to Shakespeare
sympathy with, or reverence for, "orthodox Pro-
testantism."
(II)
Now, it may not be superfluous to consider, at
starting, what Mr. Churton Collins means by "ortho-
dox" Protestantism. Lutheranism, Calvinism, and
Zwinglianism, to mention no other varieties, all
[i.] Orthodox Protestantism 3
claimed that adjective. There would seem to be no
standard of Protestant orthodoxy. But I suppose we
may safely hold that in Mr. Churton Collins's volume,
** orthodox" Protestantism denotes the amalgam of
the three forms just mentioned of anti-Catholic
Christianity, whereof the Thirty-nine Articles, im-
posed the year before Shakespeare was born, and the
two Books of Homilies, are a kind of compendium.
As a matter of fact, indeed, it is rather to the Homilies
than to the Thirty-nine Articles that we should go for
a revelation of "the mind of the Church of England"
(as the phrase is) in Shakespeare's time. Those
documents represent, most accurately, the ethos of
the religious innovators, claiming the name of Re-
formers, who branded the Catholic Church as the
whore of Babylon, and the Pope as antichrist, and
claimed for themselves that they were preachers of
righteousness to "a world drowned in abominable
idolatry " till " Gospel light first dawned from Bullen's
eyes" upon the awakened conscience of Henry VHI.
And so in the Third Part of the Sermon of Good
Works we read, " Honour be to God, who did put
light in the heart of His faithful and true minister of
most famous memory. King Henry the Eighth, and
gave him the knowledge of His Word, and an earnest
affection to seek His glory, and to put away all such
superstitious and pharisaical sects " (viz. the Religious
Orders) "by antichrist invented, and to set up again
the true Word of God and glory of His most blessed
Name." That was the sum and substance, according
to most accredited Anglican Reformers, of the
4 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
ecclesiastical revolution initiated by Henry VI II., and
completed by Elizabeth. Of course, theologically
considered, it passed through several phases. Henry
VIII. probably continued to hold well-nigh all Catholic
doctrines, except the Supremacy of the Pope, after his
revolt from Rome. On the death of that Prince, the
direction of the movement fell chiefly into the hands
of Cranmer, who, whatever his own religious con-
victions — if, indeed, he had any^ — favoured first Luther-
anism, then Zwinglianism, and, lastly, Calvinism. In
the reign of Elizabeth, " Calvinism," as Dean Church
observes, " nearly succeeded in making itself master in
the English Church ;" ^ and he justly points to Whit-
gift's "Lambeth Articles," in 1595, as evidence of this
assertion. That is what " orthodox " Protestantism
meant in England in the days of Shakespeare ; a
Puritan scholasticism of the most arid and arbitrary
kind, based on the narrowest interpretation, or rather
misinterpretation, of isolated Biblical texts, void of
philosophy, void of poetry, void of profundity ;
passionate in its hatred of the ancient faith, and
prostituting the sanctions of religion to the service
of secular tyranny. That Shakespeare outwardly
conformed to it, at all events occasionally, is most
probable. But what evidence is there for believing
that he gave any real assent to it, whether from
political or other motives? that he preferred its
uncouth superstitions to the charming Aberglaube of
medieval piety .^ for holding — to put the point in
Archbishop Trench's words — that "he was the child
1 Pascal and other Sermons., p. 76.
[i.] The Teaching of the Poets 5
of the English Reformation"? that "he was born of
its spirit" ?
(Ill)
For hght upon this question let us turn to Shake-
speare's plays. And here a caveat must first be
entered. Shakespeare's plays of course tell us some-
thing about himself. How could it be otherwise ?
For they are his truest self. But it appears to me
that we should be very chary of attempting to draw
from them the inference that he desired to inculcate
any tenets of this or that school, in theology, in
philosophy, in politics. I assuredly do not believe
that when he addressed himself to the composition of
his dramas, there were present to his mind definite
theses, of any kind, which he wished to teach. He
was a poet in the strictest sense of the word. And a
poet is not a professor veiling his prelections in verse.
No doubt every great poet is a great teacher. But
his teaching is as the teaching of Nature herself:
unpremeditated, unreasoned, undefined : like the sound
of the sea, or the* fragrance of flowers, or the sweet
influences of the stars. Like Nature, poets — accord-
ing to Plato's most true dictum — utter great and wise
things which they do not themselves understand.
The songs of Apollo are as inspired as his oracles.
The poet, *' soaring in the high reason of his fancy,"
\ like the priestess on her tripod, speaks not of himself.
i Schelling has put it very well : " The artist, however
full of design he is, yet, in respect of that which is the
6 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
properly objective in his production, seems to stand
under the influence of a power which separates him
from all other men, and compels him to declare and
represent things which he does not himself properly
see through." Again. Shakespeare's genius was essen-
tially dramatic. It was his function to "hold up the
mirror to Nature." His whole mind and thought
are merged in his creations. He does not so much
speak through them. They speak through him. He
surrenders himself to the inspiration of his art. Once
more. It is quite certain that he regarded his plays
as works to be acted, not to be read. He composed
them not for posterity, but for the audiences which
should come to see them. It was otherwise with his
poems. But I do not believe that when writing his
dramas it once crossed his mind that he was making
a permanent addition to the literature of his country ;
still less that he was enriching it with its greatest
treasures. His object was to serve the purpose of the
hour, and to produce good acting plays. With what
incomparable ability he achieved that object is still
evident, vast as is the difference between the con-
ditions of dramatic representation in his days and in
ours. In the pursuit of it, he used the materials of
others with a freedom which in this age would rightly
be judged scandalous, and, as Heine ^ puts it, would
1 The passage is well worth quoting : " Und gar Shakespeare selber,
wie Viel entlehnte er nicht seiner Vorgangern ! Auch diesem Dichter
begegnete es, dass ein sauertopfischer Pamphletist mit der Behauptung
gegen ihn auftrat ' das Beste seiner Dramen sei den altern Schriftstellern
entwendet.' Shakespeare wird bei dieser lacherlichen Gelegenheit ein
Rabe genannt welcher sich mit den fremden Gefieder des Pfauen ge-
schmackt habe. Der Schwan von Avon schwieg, und dachte vielleicht
[i.] The Charge of Plagiarism 7
have smiled at the charge of plagiarism. Landor well
observes : " He is more original than his originals ; he
breathed upon dead bodies, and brought them into
life." Life ! Yes ; his creative power is like that of
Nature herself. He teems with vitality. The pro-
digality of his creations, all different, all distinct, all
durable, overwhelms us. Not less astonishing is his
neglect of them when he had once called them into
being. Here, too, it was with him as it is with the
Mighty Mother : " I care for nothing ; all may go."
He took no part, and apparently no interest, in the
publication of such of his plays as were printed in his
lifetime. He seems to have been quite unconcerned
as to what became of them after his death. They are
not so much as mentioned in his Will.
It appears to me, therefore, that Mr. Richard
Simpson, of whom more presently, greatly errs in
crediting Shakespeare with "a design of presenting
the great questions of his age with what he conceived
to be the best method of their solution ;" and that Mr.
Churton Collins is quite without warrant in represent-
ing him as "the ally of the Ministers of Elizabeth and
James," "employing the drama as a commentary on
current State affairs, and a direct means of political
education." But no doubt the times in which he lived
mirrored themselves on his translucent and serene
intellect, and his mental attitude towards the problems
of his day is more or less clearly reflected in his dramas.
in seinem gottlichen Sinn, ' Ich bin weder Rabe noch Pfau ! ' und weigte
sich sorglos auf den blauen Fluthen der .^oesie, manchmal hinauflachelnd
zu den Sternen, den goldenen Geda ike i des Himmels." — Shakespeard s
Mddchen und Franen : Schlussworf
8 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
Let us endeavour to see, then, what his plays tell us
as to his feelings regarding the great religious question
of that age. Were his sympathies — I think that is
the right way of putting it — with the old religion of
England, or with the new ?
In briefly pursuing this inquiry I shall make free
use of the materials accumulated by the highly gifted,
but little known, scholar mentioned just now, the late
Mr. Richard Simpson, concerning whom a word or
two must be said in passing. Mr. Simpson devoted
his singularly acute and accomplished intellect, for
many years, to the study of Elizabethan literature,
and attained to a wide and exact knowledge of it not
surpassed, probably not equalled, by any of his con-
temporaries. This may seem a strong assertion. But
I think that his writings published in the Transactions
of the New Shakespeare Society in 1874-75, alone
sufficiently warrant it. For some years he was editor
of a magazine called The Rambler, justly described
by a very competent critic in the Times as " one of
the most learned and interesting periodicals of the
Nineteenth Century ;" and in 1858 he contributed to
it three papers, in which he maintained the view that
Shakespeare was probably a Catholic. Eight years
afterwards, a French writer, M. Rio, well known for
his work on Christian Art, took up this theme, and
pursued it at great length, and with more enthusiasm
than judgment. In January, 1866, an article from
the pen of the late Lord Stanhope — then Lord Mahon
— appeared in the Edinburgh Review, in which both
Mr. Simpson and M. Rio were severely dealt with,
[i.] "Angry Zealots" 9
and were characterized as " angry zealots." Lord
Mahon apparently was as ill acquainted with the
character of those writers as with the subject dis-
cussed in his essay. M. Rio, a Liberal Catholic, a
friend of Montalembert, with whom he strongly
sympathized, most assuredly was not a zealot in the
sense meant by Lord Mahon ; moreover, he was a
man of peace, a man of mild and benign disposition.
Mr. Simpson, if not altogether " slow to wrath " when
provoked, most assuredly had not written his Rambler
articles in anger. He, too, was a Liberal Catholic —
and something more indeed ; " liberalissimus " was an
epithet not unjustly appHed to him. We read in Mr.
Gillow's very learned Bibliographical Dictionary of
English Catholics, "In matters ecclesiastical he was
frequently in conflict with the provincial authorities.
. . . He helped Mr. Gladstone while writing his
treatise on 'Vaticanism,' and the curious leaning of
that famous pamphlet is thus largely accounted for."
Mr. Simpson was moved by the attack on him
in the Edinburgh Reviezv to undertake the composi-
tion of a reply, which soon grew into a somewhat
bulky treatise. He died in 1876, without having
carried into execution his intention of publishing it.
Father Sebastian Bowden, of the Oratory, derived
largely from his manuscript the materials for a volume
entitled The Religion of Shakespeare, which appeared
in 1899, and deservedly attracted much notice. I
am indebted to the kindness of Abbot Gasquet for the
loan of Mr. Simpson's papers, and for permission to use
them in pursuing the inquiry which I have undertaken.
I o What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
(IV)
What warrant, then, is there in Shakespeare's
plays — there is admittedly none in his poems — for his
alleged Protestantism ? Do they manifest antipathy
to the old religion and sympathy with the new ?
The plays usually cited in evidence of Shake-
speare's Protestantism are King John, Henry VI.,
and Henry VIII. In King John, that monarch is
made to deliver himself as follows to Cardinal Pan-
dulph, the Legate of Innocent III., sent to call the
King to account for refusing Stephen Langton
admission to the See of Canterbury, and for appro-
priating its revenues : —
" What earthly name to interrogatories
Can task the free breath of a sacred king ?
Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous,
To charge me to an answer, as the pope.
Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England,
Add thus much more, — That no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ;
But as we under Heaven are supreme head.
So, under him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand :
So tell the pope ; all reverence set apart.
To him, and his usurp'd authority."
Now, as Father Sebastian Bowden very justly
remarks, there is no warrant for attributing to Shake-
speare these opinions, congruous enough in the mouth
of a royal villain. " John's anti-Catholic speeches no
more prove Shakespeare a Protestant than the fool's
[i.] Pandulph 1 1
saying in his heart, * There is no God,' makes David
a sceptic." Again, Pandulph's denunciation of the
King is to some a conclusive proof of Shakespeare's
Protestantism.
" And blessdd shall he be, that doth revolt
From his allegiance to an heretic ;
And meritorious shall that hand be call'd,
Canonized and worshipp'd as a saint,
That takes away by any secret course
Thy hateful life."
Father Sebastian Bowden is of opinion that the
argument in favour of Shakespeare's Protestantism
based on this passage is of some weight — he proceeds
to give answers to it, for which I must refer my
readers to his own pages — because " Here it is
Pandulph, the Legate himself, who is giving utterance
to the very doctrines attributed to the Church by its
enemies." Attributed to the Church by its enemies!
But, as a matter of fact, sentiments not practically
distinguishable from those put by Shakespeare into
the mouth of Pandulph were professed by devoted
friends of the Church, and, what is more, were
acted upon by them, as the celebrated royal murders
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sufficiently
show.^ Even the great name of Suarez may be cited
^ It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark that Protestants of all
kinds in that age practised and defended the assassination of rulers
whom they considered wicked or unjust. Even " the mild Melanchthon "
in one of his letters prays God to inspire some valiant man with a
resolution to remove Henry VIII. " AngHcus tyrannus CromweUium
interfecit et conatur divortium cum Juliacensi puella. Quam vere dixit
ille in Tragcedia non gratiorem victimam Deo mactari posse quam
tyrannum. Utinam alicui forti vero Deus banc mentem inserat." Quoted
by Cardinal Hergenrdther, Catholic Church and Christian State, vol. ii.
p. 259 (Eng. Tr.).
1 2 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
in defence of one species of tyrannicide. We read
in that divine's Disputatio de Bello, that the slaying
of an unlawful usurper by a private individual is
allowable when the conditions of a just warfare are
present, when no other means can be found for being
rid of him, and when the consequences of his death
will not be worse than the tyranny itself — a doctrine
surely not in itself unreasonable. A legitimate ruler
deposed by the Pope was held by many to be in the
like case with an unlawful usurper, on the ground
that when so deposed he had ceased to be a legitimate
ruler. Suarez, in his Defensio Fidei, applies himself
indeed to limit and safeguard this doctrine, and lays
it down that a deposed prince may not be killed by
any private person, at once [statim), or unless that
was specifically provided for in the sentence, or
another sentence or command to that effect should
be given. But we cannot ignore history, which does
not proceed by syllogism. Suarez was not writing in
Utopia. Distinctions between legitimate ruler and
usurper, " non statim " and the rest, were little
regarded in those savage and turbulent times. It is
certain that a plot against Elizabeth, in which her
death by violence was contemplated, much engaged
the attention of Ridolfi, the agent of St. Pius V. And
in Gabutio's ^ account of that Pontiff, given by the Bol-
landists, we are told that he meditated her " removal."
^ He writes, " Cogitabat illam malorum omnium sentinam, seu ut
appellabat ipse flagitiorum servam, de medio tollere, si minus posset ad
sanitatem revocari." Gabutio's work is a translation of an earlier Italian
Life by Catena, and the word in the original which is rendered by " de
medio tollere " is " levare."
[i.] King yohn 13
I find no sort of warrant for Shakespeare's alleged Pro-
testantism in his depicting this matter truly, as it was,
by attributing to Pandulph the sentiments in question.
But again. The play of King John, as we have
it, is an adaptation by Shakespeare of an earlier
drama, The Trotiblesome Reign of King Johi. The
authorship of that work is uncertain. Mr. Courthorpe
regards it as a juvenile composition of Shakespeare
himself. I confess that the arguments by which he
supports that view — they will be found in an Appendix
to the fourth volume of his admirable History of
English Poetry — seem to me quite unconvincing ;
and certainly the weight of critical authority is over-
whelmingly against him. The question is too long
to discuss here ; nor is its discussion necessary for
my present point, which is this : The Trotiblesoine
Reign of King John — whether composed by Shake-
speare himself (which I do not believe) in a youthful
fit of Protestantism, or by another — teems with
virulent anti-Catholic passion and prejudice. " It was
written," as Mr. Simpson succinctly says, "to glorify
Protestantism and vilify the ancient faith ; " it is
adorned by ribald stories of friars and nuns ; and it
puts into John's mouth a prophecy of the coming of
Henry VIII., a hero —
" Whose arm shall reach unto the gates of Rome,
And with his feet tread down the strumpet pride
That sits upon the chair of Babylon."
All this disappears from the play of King John, as
Shakespeare recast it. Mr. Simpson truly remarks,
" Every sentence in the old play which reflected upon
14 What was Shakespeare's Rehgion ? [i.]
any Catholic doctrine, or misrepresented any Catholic
practice, he has swept out." I may observe, in
passing, that the anti-Catholic bitterness which in-
forms The Troublesome Reign of King John, abun-
dantly appears in the works of the English dramatists
contemporary with Shakespeare. This surely renders
the absence from his writings of abuse and ridicule
of the ancient faith all the more remarkable and
significant.
The next proof of Shakespeare's Protestantism
which we have to examine is derived from his picture
of Cardinal Beaufort, in Henry VI., and of Cardinal
Wolsey, in Henry VIII. First, as to Cardinal
Beaufort. I put aside the question how far the First
Part of Henry VI. is really Shakespeare's work, and
will assume, for my present purpose, that he is fully
responsible for it. Cardinal Beaufort, then, is repre-
sented in the play — not unjustly, though with many
errors of detail — as a wicked and worldly prelate, and
is in one passage taunted by Gloucester, who threatens
to trample on his Cardinal's hat, with having given
to courtesans "indulgences to sin." The phrase,
naturally enough, suggests to the Protestant mind the
scandals which led to Luther's revolt ; but, as a
matter of fact, Cardinal Beaufort's " indulgences "
were not ecclesiastical documents at all ; they were
merely licences of immunity to certain privileged
houses of ill-fame within his jurisdiction. They were
not licences to commit sin, as the documents vended
by Tetzel are popularly, but erroneously, supposed to
have been. There is no trace of Protestantism here.
[i.] Cardinal Wolsey's Brown Wench 15
As little Is there in the line in He7iry VIII.
referring to the story that Cardinal Wolsey was,
upon one occasion, surprised in flagrante delicto with
" a brown wench." But here let me quote a vigorous
passage, in which Mr. Simpson deals with the charges
against the two prelates.
" The charges are all personal : there is only one line which
seems to give countenance to the prejudice that Catholicism
gave indulgences to sin. But this line refers, absolutely and
wholly, to certain dens of infamy in Southwark, from licensing
which the Bishops of Winchester drew some small part of
their income, to the scandal of the age. For Shakespeare to
put this reproach into Gloucester's mouth was both historically
probable and morally right, even though he were a professed
Catholic. For every one must own that it is one thing for a
secular government to tolerate, and even to regulate such
dens, as Shakespeare might be supposed to recommend by
implication, in Measiire for Measure, and another for them to
be a source of income to a bishop.
" With regard to Wolsey, his faults were really those which
English Catholics had most reason to curse, and which they
did curse accordingly. It is nonsense to suppose that Shake-
speare's feelings must have been opposed to Catholicism
because he refers to Wolsey's 'brown wench,' for it was an
allusion which all the Catholics of his day permitted them-
selves to make. What religion do most of the writers profess
who give us the scandalous stories about Mazarin, Richelieu,
Retz, and Dubois? Of what religion were the people of
France when they drew up the famous supplication against
Boniface VIII., wherein they call the Pope by an opprobrious
name that a witness in a police court would refuse to utter ?
What religion did Cardinal Fisher profess when he granted
that the lives of Popes and Cardinals were, possibly, more
than diametrically opposed to that of Christ, in their eager-
ness for money, their vainglory, their luxury and lust, by
1 6 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
which the name of Christ is everywhere blasphemed — 'But
this,' says he, * only confirms our argument ' (Fisher, 0pp.,
p. 1370. Ed. Wiceburg, 1597) ; — or More, when he wrote his
epigram on Bishop Posthumus —
' Picesul es, et merito prcefectus, Posthume, sacris,
Quo magis in toto non fuit orbe sacer ; '
or Petrarch, when he wrote his famous letter about the French
Babylon (Avignon), with its scandalous stories of Po7itificalis
lascivia, and of the hircina libido of Cardinals (Epist. sine
tit. XVI.) ; or Campion, when he spoke of Wolsey as * a man
undoubtedly born to honour, I think some prince's bastard,
no butcher's son, exceeding wise, fair-spoken, high-minded,
full of revenge, vicious of his body, lofty to his enemies . . .
thrall to affections, brought-a-bed with flattery, insatiable to
get, and more prince-like in bestowing . . . never happy till
his overthrow' {Hist, of Ireland, Bk. 2, c. 9, printed in Holin-
shed's Chronicles), or as 'vir magnificentissimus, iracundus,
confidens, scortator, simulator ' ? "
Another proof of Shakespeare's sympathy with
the new order in religion, an evidence of his orthodox
Protestantism at one time much relied on, is derived
from the Fifth Act of King Henry VIII. , where
Cranmer is made to prophesy, at the baptism of
Elizabeth :
" In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants ; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours :
God shall be truly known "
This, as Mr. Simpson correctly observes, ** is the
only piece of unquestionable Protestantism in Shake-
speare's plays." But there is a general consensus of
the most authoritative critics — Mr. Churton Collins is,
I think, the only considerable dissentient — that the
[i.] A Piece of Unquestionable Protestantism 17
Fifth Act of Henry VIII., with the exception of
Scene I., is not Shakespeare's at all ; that it is an
addition of Fletcher's. Lord Mahon, indeed, writing
in the Edijiburgh Review, lays it down, that the
addition "must have been made with Shakespeare's
full sanction," that "not a line could have been
inserted without Shakespeare's assent." But why ?
Here Lord Mahon is "most ignorant of what he's
most assured." There is no sort of evidence for the
proposition which he so confidently affirms. The
presumption is strongly the other way, if we consider
that — as has been pointed out in an earlier page —
Shakespeare seems not to have troubled himself at all
about the fate of his plays when they had once been
produced,^ and that Fletcher would have no more
scruple in altering his work than he had displayed in
altering the work of other playwrights. The genuine-
ness of this Act is rejected on the grounds of its metre,
style, and evident disconnection with the four preced-
ing Acts. Only the last-mentioned of these grounds
can be glanced at here : and, in my judgment, it alone
is quite conclusive. Pope justly remarks in his
Preface, "To the life and variety of character which
we find in Shakespeare must be added the wonderful
preservation of it, which is such throughout his plays,
that had all the speeches been printed without the
very names of the persons, I believe we might have
supplied them with certainty to every speech." Now,
^ Moreover, the probability is that he had parted with all his theatrical
property to Alleyne in April, 1612— a year previously to the representation
of Henry VI 11. before King James I.
C
1 8 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
the Fifth Act of Henry VIIT. is informed by a per-
fectly different ethos from the rest of the play. In
the first four Acts, the afflictions, the virtues, and the
patience of Queen Katharine, one of Shakespeare's
noblest and most touching types of womanhood, are,
as Mr. Spedding observes, "elaborately exhibited."
"Our whole sympathy," Father Sebastian Bowden
truly points out, " is evoked exclusively on behalf of
the deposed Queen, and our indignation is aroused at
the shameless wrong done her. Yet Henry, the per-
petrator of this iniquity, the ruthless sacrificer of a fine
and noble wife for a licentious caprice, euphemistically
termed his conscience, Anne, his accomplice in the
evil deed, *a spleeny Lutheran,' and Cranmer, the
servile minister of their passions, under the cloak of
religion, are all three, without explanation, repentance,
or any justifying cause, crowned in the Fifth Act with
the full blaze of early glory and the promise of happi-
ness." "It is," to quote again Mr. Spedding, "as
though Nathan's rebuke to David had ended not with
the doom of death to the child just born, but with a
promise of the felicities of Solomon." I add that
Henry VIII., in the first four Acts, is a very different
person from the monarch held up to veneration, in the
pulpits of the Established Church, by the Book of
Homilies; "the faithful and true minister of God,"
endowed with "knowledge of His Word, and an earnest
affection to seek His glory." He is, in Father
Sebastian Bowden's well-chosen language, "a melo-
dramatic, arrogant, oily hyprocrite, and his perpetual
cry almost serves to characterize him —
[i.] Henry VIII. 19
" ' Conscience, conscience,
Oh, 'tis a tender place ; and I must leave her.' "
Mr. Simpson writes : " Dr. Dollinger once told
me that he thought the play of Henry VIII. to be a
striking evidence of the Catholic opinions of Shake-
speare. This, I think, will appear to be a just view
to any one who takes the trouble to reflect what kind
of a thing Decker, Munday, or Marlowe, or the author
of the Troublesome Reign, would have made of it.
Any one of them would have made the Reformation
the heroic act of his reign; would have made Katharine
and her daughter Mary pale before Anne Boleyn and
her daughter Elizabeth ; would have glorified the
Seymours ; and would have made the drama as tall a
bully to the Catholics as the monument on Fish Hill
was before its lying inscription was hacked out."
(V)
Mr. Simpson, then, does not seem to speak too
strongly in maintaining that the passages commonly
adduced as proofs of Shakespeare's Protestant sym-
pathies " are rather signs to the contrary." It should
be noted, too, that his treatment of the Protestant
clergy of his time is by no means respectful, which,
perhaps, is not to be wondered at. But on this subject
let us hear Mr. Thornbury — a very strong Protestant —
who, in Shakespeare s England, writes as follows : —
" The Elizabethan chaplain held an anomalous position :
he was respected in the parlour for his mission, and despised
20 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
in the servants' hall for his slovenliness ; he was often drunken
and frequently quarrelsome ; now the butler broke his head
in a drinking bout, and now the abigail pinned cards and
coney-tails to his cassock. To judge from Sir Oliver Martext
and Sir Hugh Evans, the parish priests of Shakespeare's day
were no very shining lights, and the poet seems to fall back,
as in Romeo and Juliet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
on the ideal priest of an earlier age. It is indeed true that
he always mentions the Old Faith with a certain yearning
fondness." ^
Yes ; it is true that Shakespeare " aWays mentions
the Old Faith with a certain yearning fondness : " the
expression is well chosen. In Henry V. he gives us
a well-nigh perfect type of a Catholic hero, all whose
public acts bear a religious impress, " who believes in
Purgatory ; in alms-deed, prayer, fasting, pious founda-
tions, as satisfactory works for the souls detained
there ; " and " whose Catholic faith and worship appear
like the flowers of true devotion, not the weeds of
superstition." In Friar Lawrence, we have "one of
his kindliest creations." " In Much Ado About
Nothing^' writes Mr. Knight, " it is the Friar who,
when Hero is accused, vindicates her reputation with
as much sagacity as charitable zeal. ... In Measure
for Measure the whole plot is carried on by the Duke
assuming the reverend manners and professing the
active benevolence of a Friar. In an age when the
^ Vol. i. p. 211. There can be no doubt that the Lollard "martyr,"
Oldcastle, is satirized in the character of Falstaff, whose name seems to
have been substituted, Mr. Courthorpe writes, "in consequence of the
protests of the living descendants of Oldcastle, backed, no doubt, by the
Puritan faction." — History of English Poetry, vol. iv. p. 113.
[i.] Decisive Evidence 21
prejudices of the multitude were flattered and stimu-
lated by abuse and ridicule of the ancient ecclesiastical
character, Shakespeare always exhibits it so as to
command respect and affection." ^ In As You Like
It, "an old religious man," a hermit, it is, by whom
the usurping Duke
"... was converted,
Both from his enterprise, and from the world."
In AlVs Well that Ends Well^ we find— more
daring still — a tribute to one of the most beautiful and
touching doctrines of Catholicism in the recognition
of the power of the Blessed Virgin's intercession.
" What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband ? he cannot thrive,
Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear.
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest justice."
"Whose prayers are these?" Mr. Simpson asks;
and he well replies, " Not those of Helen, but of one
greater than an angel, whose prayers God delights to
hear and loves to grant. This is exactly the way in
which Catholics speak of the Blessed Virgin ; and the
lines will not apply to any but her. The testimony is
brief but decisive ; Shakespeare in these lines affirms
distinctly, if not intentionally, one of the most
characteristic doctrines that distinguishes the Catholic
from the Protestant community."
1 Biography of Shakespeare, p. 183.
2 It is notable, as Mr. Simpson has pointed out, that Shakespeare has
with perfect propriety put into the mouth of the Clown — designated by
his mistress " a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave " — a few anti-Catholic
scurrilities which are found in this play.
22 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
Again. In Meastire for Measure, the ethos of the
play is strikingly Catholic. The whole fable is in-
formed by an idea quite alien from the Protestant
mind; that idea of the surpassing excellence and
sacrosanct character of virginal chastity, which Mr.
John Morley calls "the medieval superstition about
purity."^ Isabella, the votarist or postulant of St.
Clare, is Shakespeare's noblest type of womanhood,
commanding the reverence even of the dissolute Lucio,
as "a thing ensky'd and sainted," and imposing a
bridle on his undisciplined tongue. Though he
follows the worse things, he knows and respects the
better. Not so that accomplished critic, Hazlitt,
looking at the matter from the ordinary Protestant
standpoint. His comment is that he is not "greatly
enamoured of Isabella's rigid chastity;" that he has
not " much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely
good at another's expense." And it must be confessed
that if judged by the latest — and presumably the most
perfect — system of Protestant morals, Isabella s virginal
constancy is indefensible. ** Totality of life in self, in
offspring, and in fellow-men," is Mr. Herbert Spencer's
criterion of most highly evolved conduct ; of conduct
superlatively ethical. Such totality Isabella would
certainly have achieved by compliance with Angelo's
desire ; and therefore, I suppose, her non-compliance
stands condemned by the Spencerian rule of right and
wrong. In Angelo, I observe, we have a striking
example of the type of character too frequently en-
gendered by Puritanism, which is merely Protestantism
^ Voltaire, p. 152.
[i.] Catholic Imagery 23
turned sour ; of that repulsive amalgam of prudery
and profligacy exhibited, from time to time, by chosen
vessels of what is now called "the Nonconformist
Conscience."
But to catalogue the evidence of Shakespeare's
** yearning fondness for the Old Faith," scattered
throughout his works, would require a volume. And
indeed the task has been excellently accomplished by
Mr. Simpson, as may be seen from the pages of Father
Sebastian Bowden's work. It well warrants him in
saying : " The readiness and aptitude with which
Shakespeare avails himself of Catholic imagery are
manifested again and again ; he puts before us temples,
altars, priests, friars, nuns, the Mass, sacrifices, patens
of gold, chalices, incense, relics, holy crosses, the
invocation of Saints and Angels, the sign of the Cross,
the sacraments of Baptism, Penance, Holy Eucharist,
Extreme Unction, details of the ritual, as, for instance,
the Benedictio Thalami. All these, and many other
Catholic rites and usages, are introduced with a
delicacy and fitness possible only for a mind habituated
to the Church's tone of thought." ^ And here would
seem to be the proper place for remarking upon a
passage which many writers have held to be evidence
to the contrary : among them Lord Mahon, and a far
weightier critic, Edmond Scherer. I mean the line in
Romeo and Juliet, where mention is made of evening
Mass.
" Are you at leisure, holy Father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening Mass ? "
^ Page 12.
24 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
"Evening Mass!" says Lord Mahon ; "it is as
absurd as to talk of evening breakfast." Well, the
answer is, that here again Lord Mahon's assurance
sprang from ignorance. Evening Mass is now prac-
tically unknown in the Catholic Church. In Shake-
speare's time it was common enough. To live is to
change ; and Catholicism, which has been very much
alive during the nineteen centuries of its existence,
has given evidence of its vitality by changing a great
deal. To mention only two instances. The most
popular devotion among Catholics, after the Our
Father, is the Hail, Mary. Now, the second part of
the Hail, Mary, as it is at present universally said in
the Western Church — the precatory part — was added
to the Angelic Salutation in the sixteenth century.
The rite of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,
which, next to the Mass, is the most popular service,
dates from the same period. As to evening Mass, I
will quote Father Sebastian Bowden, who, founding
himself on Mr. Simpson's learned observations, and
supplementing them, writes as follows : —
"According to Liturgical writers, there was great latitude
in ancient times as to the hour of Mass. The time for
celebration changed, Strabo ^ says, with the character of the
feast. It might be before noon, about None, sometimes at
Vespers, and sometimes at night. And Martene^ gives
notice of solemn Masses said on fast days at three o'clock,
in Lent in the evening, and at night at Christmas, Easter
Eve, St. John Baptist, and days of Ordination. As for low
Masses, he says, ' we think they were said at any hour that
^ De Rebus Ecclesiasticis, c. 23.
2 De Antiqnis EcclesicB Ritibus, lib. i. c. 3, art. iii.
[i.] Evening Mass 25
did not interfere with the high Mass.' Of this he gives
several examples, and then concludes : * This shows that low
Mass might be said at any hour — dawn, 8 a.m., noon, after
None (3 p.m.), evening, and after Compline (night). Even to
this day (1699), in the church of St, Denis, the Bishop says
the solemn Mass for the Kings of France in the evening, and
in the Church of Rouen, on Ascension Day, Mass is often
said in the evening.'
"St. Pius V. (1566-72) discountenanced and prohibited
afternoon and evening Masses, But the isolation of the
English clergy, owing to the then difficulty of communication,
might have withheld from them the knowledge of this law
for some considerable time.^ It was so slow in penetrating
Germany, that it had to be enforced by various councils, e.g.
Prague in 1605, Constance in 1609, Salzburg in 1616.
Cardinal Bona (1672) seems to say that in his time high Mass
was sung in Lent, and on Vigils at 3 p.m. instead of sunset,
the ancient time.^ And the remarkable thing is this, that
according to the testimony of the Liturgical writer, Friedrich
Brenner,^ Verona was one of the places in which the forbidden
custom lingered even to our own century. After quoting the
precepts against it, he says, ' Notwithstanding, evening Masses
are still said in several Italian churches, as at Vercelli on
Christmas Eve by the Lateran Canons, at Venice by the
same ; moreover, in the Cathedral of Verona, and even in the
Papal Chapel at Rome,' Since, then, notwithstanding the
Papal prohibition, the custom of having evening Masses
lingered in Verona for nearly three centuries after Shake-
speare's day, it becomes most probable that in his time it was
a usual occurrence in England. But whether it were a usual
occurrence in England or not, it was certainly so in Verona.
To assert, then, as so many have done, that Shakespeare's
mention of an evening Mass argues in him an ignorance of
^ Navarr,, Zz^. de Orat., c. 21, n. 31, et Enchirid. Confess.^ c, 25, n. 85.
2 Rer. Liturg., lib. ii. pp, 182-186 (Paris, 1672).
^ Geschichtliche Darstellung der Verrichtitng der Eticharistie (Bam-
berg, 1824), vol, iii, p. 346.
26 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
Catholic customs, is to convict oneself of the very ignorance
falsely ascribed to the poet. Afternoon and evening Masses
were, as we have seen, frequently celebrated. It is, however,
a remarkable coincidence that in Verona, the scene of Shake-
speare's evening Mass, the custom of celebrating late Masses
lasted longer than in any other city."
(VI)
I think I have said enough in support of my con-
tention that Shakespeare's sympathies were with the
old religion of England, not with the new. Heine's
keen intellect does not seem to have been at fault
when he reckoned it "a piece of good fortune that
Shakespeare came just at the right time," before " the
Puritans succeeded in rooting up, flower by flower, the
religion of the past;" when "the popular belief of
the Middle Ages, Catholicism, destroyed in theory,
yet existed in all its enchantment in the feelings {im
Gemilthe) of men, and upheld itself in their manners,
fashions, and intuitions."^ So Carlyle appears to have
been well warranted in accounting Shakespeare " the
noblest product of Middle- Age Catholicism."^ It was
of course on its sesthetic side that the old religion
chiefly appealed to him. What Mr. Courthorpe has
truly said of Pope, applies equally to him, that "he
shunned the disputatious element in the region of
faith." Still, he manifests — as is shown clearly in the
volume compiled by Father Sebastian Bowden — a
^ Shakespeare's Miidchen tmd Frauen : Einleitung.
^ Lectures 07i Heroes^ Lect. III.
[i.] The Thomist Philosophy 27
very considerable acquaintance with the philosophy of
the Catholic school ; nay, not only an acquaintance
with it, but a predilection for it. " He is distinctly
Thomist," Father Sebastian Bowden points out, "on
the following points : his doctrine of the genesis of
knowledge and its strictly objective character; the
power of reflection as distinctive of rational creatures ;
the formation of habits, intellectual and moral ; the
whole operation of the imaginative faculty."^ But
more. That deep and vivid apprehension of the
supremacy of law, which we may call the basis of
the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and which, I
may observe, dominated the mind of St. Augustine, is
the underlying thought of Shakespeare's dramas.
Mr. Churton Collins is assuredly well warranted in
attributing to him " the recognition of Universal Law,
divinely appointed, immutable, inexorable, and
ubiquitous, controlling the physical world, controlling
the moral world, vindicating itself in the smallest facts
of life, as in the most stupendous convulsions of nature
and of society."
(VII)
And now, if from Shakespeare's works we turn to
the little that we know of his life, what does it tell us
about his religion ? Not much. It is certain that his
youth was passed amid Catholic influences, for there
seems no room for reasonable doubt that his father
^ P. 34. I must refer my readers to Father Sebastian Bowden's work
for instances.
28 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
was " a Popish recusant," and suffered many things as
such.^ In Mr. Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary,
mention is made of a very ancient CathoHc tradition
that he was " reared up " by an old Benedictine monk,
Dom Thomas Combe, or Coombes, from 1572. This
is the more probable as it would account for the
knowledge which he possessed of things Catholic, and
especially of Catholic philosophy. That he was
married in a Protestant Church, that his children were
baptized in a Protestant Church, and that he was
buried in a Protestant Church, proves nothing about
his religious opinions or practices. There can be no
question that those who welcomed the change in
religion and those who detested it, earnest Protestants
and zealous Catholics, resorted alike to the clergy of
the Anglican Establishment, during many years after
the accession of Elizabeth, for baptism, marriage, and
burial.^ Nor is this surprising. Baptism is held by
Catholics to be vaHd, if the matter and form are duly
applied, whether administered by lay or cleric, Protes-
tant or Papist. In marriage, the parties themselves
are the ministers of the Sacrament. The Burial of
the Dead is one of the corporal works of mercy which
may be performed by any one. There is no evidence
that Shakespeare practised the Catholic religion during
' As to this see chapter ii. of Father Sebastian Bowden's work,
2 Dr. A. W. Ward seems, therefore, ill founded when he writes {Hist,
of Etiglish Drmnatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 41, note, 2nd Ed.) : " Inas-
much as all Shakespeare's children were baptized at the Parish Church,
there is at least no doubt as to which form of faith he professed," unless
we take the word " professed " in a very restricted sense. Of course,
none of Elizabeth's subjects dared openly to practise the rites of the
Catholic religion.
[i.] "Church Papists" 29
his lifetime. Whatever may have been his private
leanings towards it, I think it probable that he occa-
sionally attended the Protestant services prescribed
by law. *' There was in his days," writes Mr.
Simpson, "a. recognized class of Catholics called by
Anglicans * Church Papists,' and by their stricter
brethren, ' schismatic Catholics,' who were faithful to
the Catholic creed, but would not risk absenting them-
selves from Protestant worship." We must remember,
however, that, as Mr. Simpson quaintly puts it, "the
vagabond Bohemian life of the actor removed him
from the sphere of ecclesiastical inspection. It was
labour in vain to look after his religion. The companies
of players were chartered libertines, tolerated panders
to sinful cravings, men whose absence from Church
was rather desired than disliked. Such was the official
view of the stage common to Puritanical beadledom
and the Anglican dignitary." The social status of
actors at that period was certainly very low. It is
notable that Shakespeare, when obtaining a grant of
arms, caused it to be made to his father instead of to
himself, although he was by far the richer man. " No
prosperity," writes Mr. Simpson, "could wash out the
taint of the motley ; the actor grown gentleman was
still a monstrosity, something unnatural, undefined,
outside the beaten track of law and custom."
The only positive statement as to Shakespeare's
religion that has come down to us is a note added by
the Rev. Richard Davies, Rector of Saperton, in
Gloucestershire, till 1 708, to the biographical notice of
Shakespeare in the collection of the Rev. William
30 What was Shakespeare's Religion ? [i.]
Fullman : " He dyed a Papist." The precise date of
this note we do not know, but it was written subse-
quently to 1688 — more than seventy years after
Shakespeare's death. Nor do we know where Davies
obtained the information. All we do know is that he
had access to some trustworthy traditions, since he
was the first to mention the connection between
Shakespeare's clodpate Justice and Sir Thomas Lucy.
Davies' entry is probably what Mr. Halliwell Phillipps
has called it, " the casual note of a provincial hearsay."
But Mr. Simpson's contention that Shakespeare's
opinions were CathoHc, and " that, with such opinions,
he probably would, if he had the opportunity, die a
Papist," does not seem excessive. More than that we
cannot say. It is to me satisfactory that we can say
so much. It is pleasant that there is, at all events,
some reason for thinking that he did not set out on his
journey to the " undiscovered country," " unhousel'd,
disappointed, unanel'd ; " that the ancient faith, whose
sweetness and power he had felt and confessed in a
day of trouble and of rebuke and of blasphemy, was
the minister of God to him for good in his supreme
hour, and brought him peace at the last.
II
THE MISSION OF TENNYSON
(I)
I PROPOSE to Speak to you this afternoon about a poet
who seems to me tJie English poet of this age of ours :
the poet who will, in the event, hold much the same
predominant position in English literature of the nine-
teenth century as Pope holds in English literature of
the eighteenth century. There are perhaps only two
poets who could dispute that position with Tennyson
— Wordsworth and Browning. Wordsworth, I think,
soared occasionally to greater heights than Tennyson
ever attained — notably in his Ode ojt Immortality, and
in his Ode to DtUy. But, on the other hand, he cer-
tainly descended often to depths — depths of desultory
drivel, I had almost said — to which Tennyson never
sank. Nor are his great gifts such as to win for him
a very wide circle of readers. A philosophic student
of nature and of the human heart, his verse appeals to
"fit audience but few." Tennyson's range — I shall have
^ This Lecture, delivered from a few notes at the London Institution
on Monday, Dec. 7, 1896, is now printed from the shorthand writer's
report, with such corrections as seemed necessary.
32 The Mission of Tennyson [ii.]
to speak of this hereafter — was much wider. Brown-
ing appears to me to sink, too frequently, much lower
than Wordsworth ever sank. And a vast quantity of
his poetry is hopelessly marred by want of form. I
trust I shall not seem unjust to this highly-endowed
man. I yield to no one in admiration of such verse
as that which he has given us in Rabbi Ben Ezra and
Pippa Passes. But I confess that he often reminds
me of Horace's description of Lucilius. That fluent
veteran, it appears, would frequently perform the feat
of dictating two hundred verses " stans pede in uno,"
a phrase the precise meaning of which has exercised
the critics a great deal, but which we may render with
sufficient accuracy ** as fast as he could." And, Horace
adds, as the turbid stream flowed along, there was
much which one could wish away — " quum flueret
lutulentus erat quod tollere velles." I confess — I
hope I shall not shock any one here very much — that
a good deal of Browning's verse appears to me little
better than random doggrel, while the so-called
philosophy which it is supposed to set forth is largely
mere bombastic rhodomontade on subjects which the
poet had never taken the trouble to think out. If
ever there was a writer who darkened counsel by
words without knowledge, it was Browning.
Far otherwise is it with Tennyson. He appears
to have laid to heart that most true dictum that poetry
is the loftiest expression of the art of writing. " The
art of writing," note : which recalls the lines of Pope —
" True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learnt to dance."
[ii.] Supreme Art 33
There is not a poem of Tennyson's — or there is
hardly one — which is not the result of prolonged
meditation and prolonged labour : the outcome of the
supreme art which veils itself in the achievement.
His work is classical in the best sense of the word :
classical in its nicety, purity, beauty of expression. If
you take up Pope's Essay on Criticism — and I know
of no more valuable aid to judgment on the subject
with which it deals — and test Tennyson's work by the
rules and precepts so admirably given there, you will
find that they bear the test singularly well. To give
one instance merely, I suppose there is no poet — I, at
least, know of none — who has so felicitously carried
out the rule, "the sound must seem an echo to the
sense." Consider, for example, those lines in the
Princess —
" Sweeter thy voice ; but every sound is sweet :
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn.
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees."
So much must suffice to indicate, in the briefest
outline, and as if by a few strokes of the pencil, some
of the reasons which lead me to think that Tennyson
will survive as the English poet of our century. But
my concern, this afternoon, is with what he has said
rather than with his way of saying it ; with his
message rather than with his manner. I wish to
put before you what, as it seems to me, was his chief
lesson to his generation, and to the generations that
should come after.
34 The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
For poetry, which is really such, is something more
than a pleasing play of fancy, an instrument of high
intellectual enjoyment. There appears to be, at the
present day, a superstition in certain quarters that
poetry has nothing to do with moulding the manners
and the morals of human society ; that it has no
influence over the religion, the philosophy, the passions
of men. That seems to me a great error. I think
Joubert uttered a profound truth when he observed
that poetry should be the great study of the philosopher
who would really know man. Consider the poety of
ancient Greece, for example. It contains the thought
of a whole people. The soul — yes, and the details of
the life — of the Hellenic race are there. Hence it
was, I suppose, that Aristotle was led to speak of
poetry as "more philosophic and more seriously true
than history." It is better fitted for the exposition of
the higher verities. There can be no doubt that poetry
is not only the most beautiful, but also the most legiti-
mate and the easiest instrument of education, in the
highest sense of the word. It is the most amiable
means of building up character. And this the great
poets have ever felt. '* I wish to be considered a
teacher or nothing," Wordsworth wrote. And assuredly
such was the feeling of Tennyson. That verse of his,
" Poets whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world,"
sums the matter up.
But we may go further than that, as, indeed, the
[ii.] The Prophetic Vision 35
title which I have given to this Lecture indicates :
" The Mission of Tennyson." Yes ; I hold that every
great poet has a mission, in the proper sense of the
word. He is marked off from his fellows of the race
of men by what Cicero calls, " magna et divina bona,"
great and divine endowments, which are distinct from
temperament, from environment, from evolution, from
heredity ; which you cannot sum up in a formula, or
explain by analysis ; and as the highest and truest of
which we must reckon what Krause calls Schauen:
vision, intuition. He is a seer ; the man whose eyes
are opened ; he speaks that which he knows, he testifies
that which he has seen soaring in the high reason of
his fancy. He speaks not of himself. Wordsworth
has admirably expressed this in some lines of the
Prelude —
" Poets, even as Prophets, each with each
Connected in a mighty scheme of truth,
Have each his own peculiar faculty :
Heaven's gift."
These words seem to me true to the letter, and
worthy of being deeply pondered. They might well
supply a theme for my whole Lecture. In passing, I
may point out that Wordsworth himself affords a
striking illustration of them. His divine gift, his
peculiar faculty it was to draw out, as no poet had
drawn out before, as no poet has drawn out since, the
mystic sympathy between external nature and the soul
of man ; and to point to that path into the transcen-
dental which we may find, by means of this, in the
phenomena of the visible universe. There is, indeed,
36 The Mission of Tennyson [11.]
as the old Greeks used to say, something inspired in
all of us. Even ordinary virtue, which has the praise
of men, is of divine inspiration, Plato teaches in the
Meno. In all our best thoughts, our best works, surely
we must be conscious, if we reflect, of a nonself which
works with us and upon us. But it is the privilege
and the peril of those gifted souls who alone can be
called, in the highest sense, artists, to experience this
influence in far ampler measure than the other sons of
men. Hence the ancients regarded a kind of posses-
sion as their distinctive note. " Divine madness,"
Plato calls it, and Cicero, " poetic fury." And one of
the deepest thinkers of these later times writes : " The
artist, however full of design he is, yet, in respect of
that which is the properly objective in his production,
seems to stand under the influence of a power which
separates him from all other men, and compels him to
declare or represent things which he himself has not
completely seen through, and whose import is infinite."
Do you tell me that these words of Schelling are
mysticism ? I know they are. But I know, also,
that they are true. And they are especially true of
the poet. " Poets even as prophets." Yes ; poets
are prophets, in the proper sense of the word. " Mes-
sengers from the Infinite Unknown, with tidings to us
direct from the Inner Fact of things." "We see not
our prophets any more," lamented the Hebrew patriot
at a dark period of the history of his people. A dark
period, indeed : the darkest, surely, when the prophetic
vision is quenched ; when the prophetic word is mute ;
when not one is there that understandeth any more.
[ii.] The Teacher's First Gift 37
Yes : the poets of a nation are its true prophets ; and
indeed St. Paul, as you will remember, recognizes this
when he speaks of one of the bards of Hellas as a
prophet of their own. So a saintly man of these later
days, the venerable Keble, in dedicating to Words-
worth those charming volumes of Preelections, speaks
of him as truly a sacred seer : " viro vere vati sacro."
And with reason. Assuredly, Wordsworth is, in some
respects, the highest of modern prophets.
(Ill)
So much may suffice to vindicate the tide of this
Lecture, and to indicate the scope of it. I wish to
speak this afternoon of the mission of Tennyson to
his age. Now, the first gift required in any one who
would teach his age is that he should understand it.
Perhaps the great reason why the pulpit exercises so
little influence, comparatively, among us, is that the
vast majority of preachers are out of touch with the
age. They occupy themselves Sunday after Sunday —
to use a phrase of Kingsley's — in combating extinct
Satans. Far otherwise was it with Tennyson. One
of his most remarkable gifts was his acute sensibility
to the intellectual and spiritual, the social and political
developments of the times in which he lived. Words-
worth speaks of " the many movements " of the poet's
mind. Few minds, perhaps, have moved so quickly,
so far, and in so many directions, as Tennyson's.
Nothing human was alien from him. It has been
38 The Mission of Tennyson [11.]
remarked by one of his critics, " He is at once meta-
physician and physicist, sceptic and theologian, demo-
crat and aristocrat, radical and royalist, fierce patriot
and far-seeing cosmopolitan ; and he has revealed to
the age the strange interaction of these varied charac-
ters, and how the beliefs and passions of each modify,
and are modified by, those of all the others."
One of the most striking characteristics of the age
has been the stupendous progress achieved by the
physical sciences. I need not dwell upon what is so
familiar. And, indeed, only an encyclopaedia could
deal even with the outlines of so vast a subject. But
the spirit in which the physicist works has greatly
contributed to our progress in provinces of the human
intellect lying outside his domain. It has impressed
upon the minds of men this great truth, that every-
where the way to knowledge is to go by the facts,
testing, verifying, analyzing, comparing, inducting.
And in proportion as this lesson has been laid to heart,
by investigators of all kinds, have their researches
been rich in real results. Now, with this scientific
movement, so eminently characteristic of our times,
Tennyson was deeply in sympathy. I do not know
that he was profoundly versed, as an expert, in any
branch of physical science. But he followed from the
first, with the closest attention, the achievements of
the masters in all its fields. And his verse teems with
evidence of the completeness with which he had
assimilated their teaching, and made it his own. Thus,
to give one example merely, you remember those
noble lines in In Memoriam, which so admirably
[ii.] Loss and Gain 39
sum up the conclusion of an important chapter in
geology—
" There rolls the deep where grew the tree ;
O Earth, what changes thou hast seen !
There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
" The hills like shadows melt, they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands ;
They fade like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves, and go."
But the vast progress of the physical sciences of
which I have been speaking, and which appealed to
Tennyson so powerfully, has not been unmixed gain
— as he well knew. One result of it has been the
establishment of a sort of dogmatism of physicists, not
less oppressive than the old dogmatism of theologians.
There has been a tendency, and more than a tendency,
to assert that outside the boundaries of physical science
we can know nothing ; that its methods are the only
methods of arriving at truth ; a tendency to restrict
our ideas to generalizations of phenomena, to erect
experimental observation into the one criterion of
certitude, to treat mental and moral problems as mere
questions of physiology : in a word, to regard the laws
of matter as the sole laws. And this has issued in
the effacement, to a very great extent, of the true idea
of law from the popular mind.
Let me explain what I mean. And here I would
beg of you to favour me with your closest attention.
For what I am immediately about to say — though I
shall employ the simplest and least technical language
40 The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
that the subject allows — will not be so easy to follow
as a leading article in a newspaper, or a page in a
novel. If, then, we keep strictly within the domain of
physics, we have no right to speak of law at all. The
mere physicist cannot get beyond ascertained sequences
and co-ordinations of phenomena. A distinctive
characteristic of law is necessity. And necessity — the
notion we express by the word " must " — has no place
in pure physics. Its place is taken by the word ** is."
In strictness, what the physicist calls natural laws, are
merely hypotheses which have gradually won their
way into general credit, by explaining all the facts
known to us, by satisfying every test applied to them.
They have not the character of absolute certainty.
Only those laws are absolutely or metaphysically
certain which are stamped upon all being, and there-
fore upon the human intellect : which are the very
conditions of thought, because they are the conditions
under which all things and all beings, even the Being
of Beings, the Absolute and Eternal Himself, exist.
I am far from denying — indeed, I strenuously affirm —
that there is a sense in which necessity may be pre-
dicated of physical laws. But for that sense — nay, for
the very notion of necessity — we must quit the proper
bounds of physical science : we must pass to an order
of verities transcending the physical ; to what Aristotle
called TO, ixera tol <j>vaLKa, to metaphysics ; that is to
say, to supersensuous realities, to the world lying
beyond the visible and tangible universe. I need not
go further into that now. I have said enough for my
present purpose, which is that every physical truth is
[ii.] A Dreary Dogmatism 41
necessarily connected with — or rather takes for granted
— some metaphysical principle. Law is of the will
and of the intellect. And will and intellect are not
the objects of the physical sciences. ** That which
doth assign unto everything the kind, that which doth
moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint
the form and measure of working — the same we term,
a Law," says Hooker, summing up, in his judicious
way, the Aristotelian and scholastic teaching on the
matter. But the dreary dogmatism of a certain school
of physicists has brought this august conception into
discredit. I say " dreary dogmatism," for even the
most highly endowed of the school which I have in
view are open to this charge. To speak of one of the
most considerable of them, for instance ; the late
Professor Huxley, so admirably clear and cogent and
convincing when dealing with subjects within his own
domain, becomes amazingly confused and incoherent and
depressing in discussing purely philosophical questions.
The general result of this dogmatism has been to
diffuse widely a belief that there is nothing in the
universe but matter and force, or, at all events, nothing
that we can know ; and that ascertained sequences or
co-ordinations of phenomena are the only laws we can
attain to. Hence it has come to pass that laws which
are really such, have, in the eyes of a vast multitude,
lost their true character. Thus we are told by a
writer much in credit, that the laws of ethics are merely
generalizations from experiences of utility : a doctrine
the effect of which is to unlaw them — if I may borrow
a word from Carlyle — for experiences of utility cannot
42 The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
possibly do more than counsel : they can lay no
necessity upon us to do what they indicate as desirable.
But the essence of a moral law is necessity ; is what
Kant calls its categorical imperative, indicated by the
word " ought." On the other hand, things are dignified
as laws which are not laws at all in the proper sense
of the word. For example, what are called laws of
political economy are mere statements of probabilities
of action by free agents, and imply no necessity.
I beg of you not for one moment to imagine that
in insisting upon this matter I am indulging in mere
logomachy, in unprofitable disputation about words.
The question is concerning the idea of law — an idea
of the utmost practical importance. The doctrine that
''the universe is governed, in all things great and
small, by law, and that law not the edict of mere will,
but identical with reason, or its result," is no mere
abstract speculation, that men may hold or reject, and
be none the better or the worse for holding or rejecting
it. It is a doctrine fraught with the most momentous
consequences in all relations of human life. And that
because of a reason set forth by Euripides more than
two thousand years ago : I borrow Bishop Westcott's
version of his words —
" For 'tis by law we have our faith in Gods,
And live with certain rules of right and wrong."
Law is, as Aquinas calls it, " a function of reason."
Lose the true idea of law, and you derationalize the
universe and reduce it to mere senseless mechanism.
You lay the axe to the root of man's moral life here.
[ii.] The True Conception of Law 43
You shut off the vision of the Great Hereafter of
which man's moral Hfe here is the earnest and the
pledge. And then is realized the picture which
the great ethical poet of the last century has put
before us —
" Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And, unawares, morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private dares to shine,
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine.
Lo, thy dread empire, chaos ! is restored ;
Light dies before thy uncreating word.
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all. '
(IV)
Now, it seems to me to have been Tennyson's
mission to meet this tendency of the age of which I
have been speaking by witnessing to, by insisting on,
the true conception of law. That was the great work
given him to do, in his day and generation, and to do
in his own manner ; not as a philosopher, not as a
critic, not as a preacher, but as a poet. It is the lot
of poets " to learn in suffering what they teach in song."
Tennyson, as I have said, was emphatically of his age.
And the physiological speculations wherewith phy-
sicists invaded the province of philosophy, and broke
the dogmatic slumber of ancient orthodoxies, at one
time troubled and perplexed him. But it may be
truly said of him, as he said of his dead friend —
44 The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
" He fought his doubts, and gathered strength,
He would not make his reason blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind,
And laid them ; thus, he came at length
" To find a firmer faith his own :
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone."
Let me indicate briefly how he found that firmer
faith.
Tennyson possessed not only a most keen and
sensitive mind, tremulously susceptible to the intel-
lectual movements of his age ; he possessed also the
piercing vision, the direct intuition of the Prophet
into the constitution and needs of human nature. He
felt that the mechanical philosophy offered to him in
the name of physical science was utterly inadequate
to life. And he turned from the macrocosm to the
microcosm ; from the universe without him to the
universe within him. He found in the laws of man's
spiritual and moral being the solution of " the riddle
of this painful earth." On those laws he based his
Theistic belief, his ethical creed, and his political
principles. Let me indicate this in the barest outline
— it is all that is possible to me now — leaving you to
fill in the details, if you think well to do so, by your
own study of his works.
(V)
First, then, as to Tennyson's Theism. A thinker
contemporary with him, but belonging to a very
[ii.] Atheism and Agnosticism 45
different school, has remarked, "It is indeed a great
question whether Atheism is not as philosophically-
consistent with the phenomena of the physical world,
taken by themselves, as a doctrine of a creative and
governing power." The term " Agnosticism " had not
been invented when these words were spoken by John
Henry Newman before the University of Oxford more
than half a century ago. It appears to me to meet a
distinct want. Littr6 defines an Atheist as one who
does not believe in God, But the tendency of late
years has been to narrow the meaning of the word ; to
confine it to those who expressly deny the Theistic
conception. The word " Agnosticism " has been coined
to describe the mental attitude of doubt, suspension of
judgment, nescience regarding that conception. It
applies more correctly than the word " Atheism " to a
class, considerable not only from their numbers, but
for their intellectual endowments and their virtues.
It appeared to Tennyson that to shut us up in physical
science, to confine our knowledge to matter and force,
and ascertained sequences or co-ordinations of phe-
nomena, is to doom us to Agnosticism. You remember
the verses in which he has told us this. Familiar as
they are, I shall venture to quote them. For they
are as beautiful as they are familiar. Custom cannot
stale them.
" That which we dare invoke to bless,
Our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt,
He, They, All, One, within, without,
The Power in darkness, whom we guess.
" I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye,
46 The Mission of Tennyson [ir.]
Or in the questions men maj'^ try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun.
" If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice ' Believe no more,'
And heard an ever breaking shore,
Which tumbled in the godless deep.
" A voice within the breast would melt,
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath, the heart
Rise up and answer, ' I have felt.' "
You see, he appeals to the laws of man's spiritual
nature for light upon this momentous question ; those
first great spiritual laws, the denial of which is the
essence of Agnosticism. Tennyson discerned with
Spinoza that the primordial law of being is being ;
that the fundamental want of man is to prove, affirm,
augment, his own life.
" 'Tis hfe, whereof our nerves scant.
Oh, life, not death for which we pant,
More life and fuller that I want."
Man lives under the law of progress which is the
striving after perfection, and of which the highest
expression is the quest of the All-Perfect. Hence
those " cethereal hopes," as Wordsworth speaks, which
are part and parcel of us; "those mighty hopes
which make us men," Tennyson calls them, in words
which seem to me true to the letter. The intellect, as
Plato teaches, testifies that the ideas of truth, goodness,
beauty, justice, belong to an order of absolute principles,
anterior and superior to man, and is compelled by an
architectonic law of its own being, to refer the complete
[ii.] The Desire of the Infinite 47
realization of those principles to the Ultimate Reality,
which it therefore contemplates as To 'Epwfjievov the
Altogether Lovely, the Object of all desire. Towards
that Supreme Object, human nature tends ; necessarily
tends by virtue of the law written on the fleshly tables
of the heart. Despite the limitations of his being, man
tends towards the Infinite, because the Infinite is in
him. The desire of the Infinite is, I say, a law under
which he is born. He may resist, he may violate that
law, as he may resist and may violate any other law
of his being; for the eternal hands that made and
fashioned him, while —
"... binding nature fast in fate.
Left free the human will."
This is his princely and perilous prerogative, the very
essence of his personality, in virtue of which he is
" man and master of his fate ; " this is —
"... that main miracle that thou art thou ;
With power on thine own act, and on the world."
But the law, whether obeyed or disobeyed, remains —
witnessing to the Sovereign Good, the Everlasting
Righteousness, the Supreme Object of Rational Desire
which is the True End of man. Through " a dust of
systems and of creeds," this vision of this Ineffable
Reality shone out for Tennyson undimmed ; the light
of life to him, without which it were better to —
"... drop headlong in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease."
4^ The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
(VI)
Such was Tennyson's Theism. But it is on this
great spiritual law of progress that his ethical creed
also rested. The surest law of man's nature we must
account it, according to that saying of Plato, " I find
nothing more certain than this — that 1 7nust be as good
and noble as I can." " Must." Necessity is laid upon
us. This is that law of which Butler speaks : *' The
law of virtue that we are born under." Tennyson has
formulated it in his own way as being to —
" Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."
I find Tennyson peculiarly and completely English in
his cast of thought. He is distinguished, in the high-
est degree, by what I regard as the dominant English
characteristic — reverence for duty as the supreme law
of life : the subordination of all ideals to the moral
ideal. You remember how in one of his earliest
poems — Qifione — he tells us —
" Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
How he indicates us the rule of life —
" . . . to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear,
And because right is right, to follow right."
The thought was always with him. But in the
Princess, in the Palace of Art, and the Vision of Sin,
he brings before us this law of life : a law in the proper
[ii.] Conscience made Flesh 49
sense transcendental, as transcending the limits of
space and time : a law of absolute universality, as are
all moral laws that are strictly such : valid for all
rational beings in all worlds. Again, in the Idylls of
the King, this law is the dominant thought. Arthur,
as I remember a famous German critic once remarked
to me, is conscience made flesh and dwelling among
us. And the primary precept of the heroic monarch
to his glorious fellowship of the Table Round is to
"reverence their conscience as their king." And,
here I would remark in passing, how finely Tennyson
has vindicated that higher law of the relations of the
sexes, wrought into our civilization by Christianity,
and embellished by chivalry, which contemporary
Materialism burns to abrogate. With Tennyson the
passion of sexual love, refined and idealized — human-
ized in a word — is a chief instrument of our ethical
life : its office —
' . . . not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thoughts and amiable words,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
(VII)
Once more. Those great ethical laws which
dominate private life should, Tennyson held, be the
laws of public life also ; a truth much dimmed just
now in the popular mind : nay, may we not say, well-
nigh effaced from it } I was mentioning to an accom-
plished friend, a short time ago, that I had it in
5© The Mission of Tennyson [ii.]
intention^ to write a book on First Principles in
Politics: a sort of sketch of, or introduction to, the
laws of human society. He replied, " My dear fellow,
there are no first principles in politics, there are no
laws of human society ; it is all a matter of expediency,
of utility, of convention, of self-interest." This is an
expression of that lawlessness, that loss of the idea of
law, whereof I spoke just now. And its last develop-
ment in the public order is the doctrine which substi-
tutes the caprice of the multitude for what Shakespeare
calls "the moral laws of nature and of nations."
Tennyson discerned, clearly enough, that this doctrine
of the absolute and indefeasible authority of what is
called "the people," that is, of the numerical majority
of the adult males of a country, is really a doctrine of
anarchy ; that it means the triumph of the passions
over the rational will ; whereas the true theory of the
state, whatever its form, means the triumph of the
rational will over the passions. I cannot go into this
matter further on the present occasion. But I may
observe that Tennyson's political teaching from first
to last seems to me perfectly consistent. I know of
no difference of principle between Locksley Hall and
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. At the end as at
the beginning of his career, Tennyson was the loyal
worshipper of Freedom, which he justly terms —
"... leather of the lawless crown
As of the lawless crowd."
^ These words were spoken in 1896. The book has since been
published, and I may note that some portion of the argument as to the
true idea of law pursued in this Lecture finds place in its First Chapter.
[ii.] The Special Danger of the Age 5 i
Freedom, the very first condition of which is servitude
to law. The years as they went by stripped him of
many of his illusions, but they strengthened his grasp
upon his principles.
This then was, as it seems to me, the Mission of
Tennyson : to bring home to us the supremacy and
universality of law. The exaltation of the materialist
and positive element in life, the depreciation of the
spiritual and moral element, is the special danger of
our age : a danger arising out of its special greatness.
There is one and only one antidote to this danger ;
the apprehension of law issuing from the nature of
things which is rational ; the first fact in the universe,
though invisible, impalpable, imponderable : most
real, indeed, because most spiritual. It seems to me
that Tennyson has given us the groundwork of a
philosophy of life which will never be overthrown,
because it is based upon this eternal adamant. And
his verse is a fitting vehicle for his august message.
The dignity of his diction corresponds with the dignity
of his doctrine. He possesses, in ample measure, that
charm to quell the commonplace which we find in the
great classics, and notably in the foremost poets of
Greece and Rome. His poetry is a perpetual Sursum
Corda — ever lifting up our hearts to what is noble
and pure, and to the Eternal Source of all nobleness
and all purity. He has told us in lines unsurpassed,
as Taine thought, by any writer since Goethe, for calm
and majesty, how " The old order changeth, giving
place to the new." Yes ; the old order changeth.
We live amid "a dust of systems and of creeds."
52 The Mission of Tennyson [n.]
Much has gone during the last hundred years which
men once thought durable as the world itself. Much
more is going. What is the prospect ? To Tennyson
one thing at all events was clear : that neither worthy
life for the individual, nor social health for the body
politic, is possible unless we live by something higher
than ascertained sequences or co-ordinations of phe-
nomena ; unless we appeal to some holier spring of
action than the desire of a remembered pleasure.
"This ever changing world of changeless law," he
sings in one of his poems. Amid the constant flux of
all things, the law of the universe does not change.
It is necessary, immutable, absolute, and eternal. Nor
does the power of man's will change :
" A power to make
This ever changing world of circumstance,
/ In changing, chime with never changing law."
Ill
A GRAND OLD PAGAN
(I)
There are few more striking personalities in the
literary history of the nineteenth century than Walter
Savage Landor. There are few more interesting
volumes — to me, at least — than the eight in which
Mr. Forster has given us his life and works. Not
all his life, indeed. Some of the more disagreeable
incidents of it have, very properly, been omitted or
attenuated. And not all his works ; for his Latin
poems — some of them of extreme beauty — no place
has been found in this collected edition, and some
English compositions of, at all events, much vigour,
are missing. But Mr. Forster, when he published his
volumes, more than a quarter of a century ago, doubtless
thought he had brought together as much of Landor
as the public would want. And the event has proved
that he was right. Their purchasers were not very
numerous. Their readers were, probably, fewer still.
I suppose most people who know anything about
Landor owe their knowledge to the little work con-
tributed by Mr. Sidney Colvin to the series of English
54 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
Men of Letters. An admirable little work it is,
written with the sympathy which is the first condition
of success in such an undertaking, and with the scholar-
ship of which its accomplished author has made such
full proof upon so many other occasions. Admirable,
too, is the volume of Selections, also by Mr. Colvin, in
the Golden Treasury series. But " melius est petere
fontes quam sectari rivulos." And I should be curious
to know how many readers there are of Landor's own
volumes. Yet Mr. Colvin does not exaggerate when
he says, " If there is any English writer who may be
compared to Pascal for power and compression, for
incisive strength and imamnative breadth too-ether in
general reflections, and for the combination of con-
ciseness with splendour in their utterance, it is certainly
Landor. " True Landorians," he adds, " may be
counted on the fingers." I do not know whether I
may claim to be numbered among that elect. But I
remember vividly how I came under Landor's spell
when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, more
years ago than I care to recall ; and whenever I take
up a volume of his now — as I frequently do — the spell
is upon me as strongly as of old. Hence I am glad of
the present opportunity to write something about him.
I shall first speak of the Man, Then I shall discuss
the claims of the Literary Artist. And lastly I shall
endeavour to indicate the singularly high place which,
in my judgment, he holds as a Critic.
[ill.] Storm and Tempest 55
(II)
Landor enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a very
long life. Born in 1775, he survived till 1864, wearily
enduring, when his fourscore years were passed, the
doom which, in his own pathetic words, generally
overtakes those who exceed the usual space of
existence,
"... the loss
Of half their faculties, and half their friends."
From first to last his life was passed in storm and
tempest. He had to leave his school at Rugby for
libelling the headmaster in Latin verse. He went to
Oxford, where he was known as "the mad Jacobin,"
and was rusticated for firing a charge of shot — " by
way of a practical joke " — into rooms contiguous to his
own. Next he quarrelled with his father — a good and
indulgent father, apparently — and turned his back
upon the paternal abode, as he declared, "for ever."
When he came into his fortune, on his father's death
in 1805, ^6 purchased the Llanthony estate in Wales,
and, in no short time, was engaged in bitter feuds with
all his tenantry and all his neighbours, and, as his
biographer expresses it, " turned the whole country
side into a hostile camp." Then, after being involved
in a labyrinth of lawsuits, he had to quit the country,
a sadder but not a wiser man, leaving behind him his
young bride, whom he had married after a few hours'
acquaintance at a ball, and who found him the most
trying of spouses. This was in 1814. In a. year
56 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
Mrs. Landor, with a praiseworthy sense of wifely duty,
determined to make another trial of conjugal life, and
joined her husband at Tours. Then they went to
Italy, and dwelt for three years at Como. Their
residence there was brought to an end by what Mr.
Colvin calls "a characteristic incident." "An Italian
poet, one Monti, had written some disparaging verses
against England. Landor instantly retorted with his
schoolboy weapons, and printed some opprobrious
Latin verses on Monti, who summoned him before the
local courts on a charge of libel. Thereupon he wrote
to threaten the magistrate with a thrashing. For this
he was ordered to quit the country." He next estab-
lished himself at Pisa, where he abode for three years
in comparative peace. Thence he went to Florence.
The eight years he spent there were full of quarrels
with the British Embassy, the City Magistracy, and
indeed with all the people of the place, for whose
character and habits he conceived, and liberally ex-
pressed, a sovereign contempt. His landlord, a noble-
man of ancient lineage, had the misfortune specially
to displease him, and was violently expelled from his
dwelling. In 1829 he left Florence for Fiesoie, where,
through the kindness of a friend of large fortune and
literary tastes, he acquired the Villa Gherardesca, in
the grounds of which was " The Valley of the Lilies,"
so pleasantly described by Boccaccio — one of his very
favourite authors — in the Decameron. The begrinninof
of his residence in this delightful spot was signalized
by a violent quarrel with the Tuscan police, whom, on
inviting their assistance for the recovery of some lost
[hi.] His Last Libel 57
plate, he had assured of his profound conviction that
they were radically dishonest and hopelessly incom-
petent. It was the beginning of a trouble which ended
in a police order expelling him from Tuscany, an order
which, however, was practically cancelled through the
intervention of the Grand Duke. He then enoraored
in a dispute with the owner of the neighbouring
property about a right of water, which — a threatened
duel being obviated by the judicious intervention of
friends — resulted in protracted litigation, " the case
being tried and retried in all the courts of Tuscany."
In 1837 his home suffered another disruption. His
wife, he said, made it unendurable to him. But the
testimony of his own brother, who was devoted to him,
shows that it was he, rather, who made the home
unendurable to his wife. He came to England, and,
after wandering about for some time, settled alone at
Bath (1837). There "he found friends after his own
heart, and lived for twenty years, passing, with little
abatement of strength, from elderly to patriarchal age."
Legal proceedings consequent upon a libel of a
peculiarly atrocious kind, published by him against a
lady who had offended him, caused him abruptly to
quit that city in 1858. He betook himself to Florence,
where he remained till his death in 1864. Among
his latest visitors was Mr. Swinburne. Scholars will
remember the singularly beautiful Greek verses pre-
fixed to Atalanta in Caledon, in which the young poet
— whose high gifts were just beginning to receive
recognition — celebrated the memory of the deceased
master. Hardly less beautiful is the single sentence
58 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
of English prose in which "with equal affection,
reverence, and regret " he inscribes in front of his
work "the highest of contemporary names."
Such, viewed from one side, is the brief epitome
of Landor's life. But, curiously enough, it was a side
the very existence of which he seemed never to suspect.
I know of no more curious exhibition of self-ignorance
than that which is afforded by his verses summing up
his long career, as he conceived of it, when he was
nearing its end —
" I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ;
Nature I loved ; and next to nature, art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life ;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart."
" I Strove with none." He strove with every one.
From first to last his attitude towards the human race
was that of Goliath of Gath : " Give me a man, that
we may fight together." I remember a lifelong friend
of his, now no more, who said to me, " One of the
things I am proudest of is that Landor and I never
quarrelled ; it was not for want of readiness on his
part." An Achillean man we must account him ;
wrath the very essence of him ; impiger^ iracundus,
inexorabilis, acer. From this point of view we can
hardly regard him as completely sane. But, indeed,
is any man completely sane ? Is there not profound
truth in the Stoic paradox Omnes insanire f To
pursue that inquiry now would take us too far. Certain
it is, however, that high intellectual gifts are ever
accompanied by some want of intellectual balance.
Pope well puts it —
[in.] " Das Ewig Weibliche " 59
" Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
Landor's irascibility was unquestionably abnormal.
The Italians used to say of him, " Tutti gV Inglesi sono
pazzi ; ma questo poi ! " But beneath this morbid
irascibility there lay many noble qualities and the
kindest of hearts. The other three lines of his verse
which I have just cited paint him veraciously. He
was a true lover of Nature, and that in the widest
sense. For her inanimate majesty and beauty he had
a tender, a sort of personal affection, as his writings
supply ample evidence. He delighted in children, and
was delightful to them. "His feeling for the feminine,"
as Mr. Colvin demurely puts it, was ever strong.
" My imagination," he wrote to Robert Browning,
quite late in life, " has always been with the women, I
mean the young, for I cannot separate that adjective
from that substantive." I have no doubt that Browning
echoed the sentiment, and thought it did his corre-
spondent honour. Anyhow, from first to last, Landor
fully exemplified the truth of the words, " Das ewig
weibliche zeiht uns hinan." To the very end, talking
nonsense to a pretty girl seemed to him the most
delightful of occupations. Of the lower animals he
was a great lover. Cruelty to them was, in his eyes,
the chief of sins, if not the only sin. Field sports he
gave up early in life. "It is hard to take away what
we cannot give," he wrote, "and life is a pleasant
thing — at least to birds. No doubt the young ones
say tender things to one another, and even the old
ones do not dream of death." During his eight sunny
6o A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
years at Fiesole we hear much in his letters of "the
great housedog Parigi, the cat Cincirillo, and of the
difficulty of keeping him from the birds ; of a tame
marten, for whom, when he died, his master composed
a feeling epitaph ; of a tame leveret, and all manner of
other pets." And what Landorian has not pictured to
himself Pomero, the small white Pomeranian dog, with
the eager bright eyes, who was the cherished com-
panion and consoler of the old man's loneliness at
Bath ? There are hardly any of his letters written of
that period without mention of Pomero. Take as a
specimen the following extract from one addressed by
him to Mr. Forster, after a brief absence from his
house : " At six last night I arrived, and instantly
visited Pomero en pension. His joy on seeing me
amounted to madness. His bark was a scream of
delight. He is now sitting on my head, superintending
all I write, and telling me to give his love." "With
Pomero," writes Mr. Sidney Colvin, in a charming
page — which I must unfortunately abridge — " Landor
would prattle in English and Italian, as affectionately
as a mother with her child. Pomero was his darling,
the wisest and most beautiful of his race. The two
together, master and dog, were to be encountered
daily on their walks about Bath and its vicinity, and
there are many who perfectly well remember them :
the majestic old man, looking not a whit the less
impressive for his rusty and dusty brown suit, his
bulging boots, his rumpled linen, or his battered hat ;
and his noisy, soft-haired, quick-glancing, inseparable
companion."
[in.] Trees and Flowers 6i
Hardly less dear to Landor than his animal pets
were trees and flowers. One of his earliest projects
was to plant two million cedars on his estate at Llan-
thony. He would not fell a tree or pluck a flower
unnecessarily. " Old trees," he writes, in his grand
style, " are the only things that money cannot command.
Rivers leave their beds, run into cities, and traverse
mountains for it ; obelisks and arches, palaces and
temples, amphitheatres and pyramids rise up like ex-
halations at its bidding ; even the free spirit of man —
the only great thing on earth — crouches and cowers
in its presence. It passes away and vanishes before
venerable trees." And among his verses there are few
more beautiful than those in which he has expressed
his feeling about flowers. I agree with Mr. Colvin
that their " delicacy and grave unobtrusive sweetness "
have seldom been surpassed. Here are a few of
them —
" 'Tis, and ever was, my wish and way
To let all flowers live freely, and all die
(Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart)
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose : the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
And not reproached it : the ever-sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold.
Nor is this mere poetic rhapsody. He meant it.
As Charles Dickens observed, "He always said and
wrote his mind." There is a story worth recalling in
this connection, of his having upon one occasion, at
Fiesole, thrown his cook out of window in a paroxysm
of wrathful displeasure. The man fell — no great
62 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
distance — upon a flowerbed. " Good God ! " exclaimed
Landor, " I forgot the violets ! "
There is just one word more which I must say
upon Landor's self-portraiture. He describes himself,
in the verses quoted above, as loving art next to
nature. And this is true. He did love art well — but
not wisely. Here, as elsewhere, his practical judgment
was at fault. I remember once expressing my admira-
tion of a beautiful picture in the collection of that
friend of his and mine mentioned just now — the one
friend with whom he never quarrelled — who replied,
" Yes, it is a charming little bit : Landor gave it
to me; it is the only good picture he ever had."
He was busy buying pictures all his life. But he
seemed quite incapable of distinguishing a daub from
a masterpiece. In his dealings with the dealers, as
with the rest of the world, he displayed a singular
incapacity for seeing facts. He was as far removed as
is well conceivable from the Greek conception of the
ijypovLixo'; : rather he was what Sophocles calls airopo'i
eVl (j>p6viiJia. His claim to have " warmed both hands
before the fire of life " may, in a sense, be admitted.
But it must be added that he sadly burnt his fingers
in the process. And, no doubt, he was ready to
depart when he wrote those lines. He confronted the
King of Terrors with Stoic fortitude. He, too, had
the conviction of the Roman poet, " Non omnis moriar."
That the work accomplished by him in his sixty-eight
years of literary activity would last as long as the
English language, he never doubted. Of that work I
go on to speak.
[ill.] Time's Balance 63
(III)
With his merely critical work I shall deal later on.
Just now let us consider his contributions to pure
literature.
It is a remark of his own : " The balance in which
works of the highest merit are weighed, vibrates long
before it is finally adjusted : even the most judicious
men have formed injudicious opinions of the living."
The balance in which Time has been weighing Landor 's
works has been vibrating for half a century. Perhaps
it is now finally adjusted. At all events, this much is
certain — that Landor holds a place assured and unique
in English literature ; the place anticipated in his
own prophetic words : ** I shall have as many readers
as I desire to have in other times than ours : I shall
dine late, but the dining-room will be well lighted ;
the guests few and select." Landor here displays a
self-knowledge in which he was usually wanting, and
a sounder judgment than that which was exhibited by
many of his saner friends ; a judgment which careful
consideration of his writings amply warrants. Take
his Imaginary Conversations, the most widely read, as
I suppose, of his works during his lifetime. They
possess in ample measure that " emphatic and decla-
matory eloquence " which Mr. Colvin claims for them.
They are lighted up by the coruscations of that non
imitabile fulmen which Southey describes Landor as
wielding. They abound in passages which are most
admirable specimens of majestic and opulent English.
64 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
They are pregnant with thought, clothed in the tersest
and most expressive diction. The mellow wisdom of
the antique world breathes through them. But all
this appeals to the highly cultivated few. Is there in
them that creative energy and that vivid picturesque-
ness which appeal to the uncultivated and half-cultivated
many ?
Some of the most considerable critics among his
contemporaries thought there was. Thus Julius Hare
affirmed that they contain creations comparable only
to Sophocles or Shakespeare ; and Hazlitt, that the
historical figures they evoked were transformed with
nothing short of the very truth and spirit of history
itself. Well, we may now confidently say that Julius
Hare and Hazlitt were wrong. Landor's genius was
not creative, neither was it historical. I remember a
highly gifted and highly irreverent undergraduate at
Cambridge likening the Imaginary Conversalions to
the talk of the ventriloquist who converses with him-
self in the Punch and Judy show. It is not a
similitude which I should use ; but, at all events, it
adumbrates a truth. Landor's speakers all think the
same kind of thoughts and employ the same kind of
language. There is no real give and take in their
utterances ; there is no dramatic element. It could
not be otherwise with Landor's intense egoism, or, as
Mr. Forster euphemistically puts it, " strong sense of
his own individuality." The speaker, whether he
bears the name of Cicero or Pericles, of Plato or
Diogenes, of Penn or Peterborough, is really Landor,
and does but develop the characteristics of Landor's
[ill.] The Imaginary Conversations 65
mind. Now, Landor's mind was cast in an antique
mould. He was, as I shall have occasion to observe
later on, a classic born out of due time ; and hence,
no doubt, it is that, as Wordsworth remarked, his
classical conversations are the best. The modern
ones are inferior just in proportion to their modernity.
Take, for example, the conversation between Pitt and
Canning, which I could wish, for Landor's sake, had
been consigned by his editor to oblivion. Even the
conversation between Bossuet and the Duchesse de
Fontagnes, one of Louis XIV.'s girl mistresses, which
Mr. Forster so much admires, seems to me frigid and
forced. How false a note is that which he strikes
when he makes her say, " His Majesty held my hand
and sat still, when he might have romped with me
and kissed me." Romped ! Imagine the Grand
Monarque, even in his small clothes and without his
periwig, romping ! And that at the mature age which
he had attained, when he had made Marie Angelique
a Duchess.
I freely concede, or, rather, strenuously maintain,
that everywhere, or almost everywhere, in the Im-
aginary Conversations, there are fine passages. For
example, in this of Bossuet and the Duchesse de
Fontagnes, now before me, how austerely grand are
some sentences which are put into the Bishop's
mouth : —
" We say that our days are few, and saying it we say too
much. Marie Angelique, we have but one ; the past are not
ours, and who can promise us the future ? This in which we
live is ours only while we live in it. The next moment may
F
66 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
strike it from us. The next sentence I would utter may be
broken and fall between us. The beauty which has made a
thousand hearts to beat at one instant, at the succeeding has
been without pulse and colour, without admirer, friend, com-
panion, follower. She by whose eyes the march of victory
shall have been directed, whose name shall have animated
armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its
crevices and minsrles with its dust."
Very fine indeed is this, though it is not Bossuet.
It is then, I think, precisely because Landor's
genius is neither creative nor historic, that he will
always appeal to a small circle of readers, as he him-
self anticipated — " fit audience, but few." I have
been speaking specially of his Imaginary Conversations,
but the same judgment holds good of all his longer
poems. The most considerable of these is Gebir, of
which Southey, and, what is more significant, Shelley,
were enthusiastic admirers. And so were Words-
worth, Charles Lamb, and many other of the greatest
of that time. I wonder how many people now admire
it as they did, and prove their admiration by perusing
it as they did. In such matters one must judge
for oneself and think for oneself. The authority of
great names avails little. For myself then, I frankly
own that, very sensible as I am of the exquisite work-
manship in Gebir, I have always found it difficult to
read. Nor does the difficulty decrease with every
fresh perusal. Lately, I put the poem into the hands
of a friend who has a fine taste in English literature,
and he read it carefully and conscientiously through.
" What do you make of it ? " I asked, when he had
[hi.] Nude Statues 67
finished. " I am searching for an epithet," he replied.
I suggested " Magniloquent." " Well," he rejoined,
" I should rather say stilted ; but it contains noble
lines." No doubt it does contain noble lines. " Fine-
sounding passages," to quote Charles Lamb, there are
in all Landor's longer poems. There are, indeed,
many such. But there is no beating pulse of life in
them ; there is no strongly impressed and strongly
impressing character. Landor's own theory was that
in poetry the passions should be " naked, like the
heroes and the gods." He has laboured with much
skill so to represent them, and, in a way, he has
succeeded. But he has given us nude statues. They
are most carefully chiselled after the noblest classical
originals ; but they are cold, they are colourless, they
are not flesh and blood ; and so they appeal only to
the few — to those who possess minds cultivated and
prepared to appreciate them : who are able to look at
them in the same way as that in which trained aesthetic
eyes survey and understand the Farnese Hercules or
the Belvedere Apollo.
But if from Landor's longer poems we turn to the
shorter, our judgment, as it seems to me, must be very
different. In these less ambitious productions, he has
attained a very high degree of excellence ; and it is
a kind of excellence which may be appreciated without
the special culture needed to appreciate such a work
as Gebir. I do not think he has been surpassed by
any English poet in what may properly be called
eidyllia ; epigrams, the old Greeks termed them ;
** carvings, as it were, on ivory or gems," to use his
68 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
own most happy phrase. I will give a few specimens
of them. What can be prettier in its way than this to
a child ? —
" Pout not, my little Rose, but take
With dimpled fingers, cool and soft.
This posy when thou art awake.
Mama has worn my posies oft.
•* This is the first I offer thee,
Sweet baby ! Many more shall rise
From trembling hands, from bended knee,
Mid hopes and fears, mid doubts and sighs.
" Before that hour my eyes will close,
But grant me, Heaven, this one desire
In mercy, may my little Rose
Never be grafted on a briar."
Great favourites of mine are the following verses
on Catullus : —
" Tell me not what too well I know
About the Bard of Sirmio ;
Yes, in Thalia's son.
Such strains there are as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
With nectar, and runs on."
In a different vein does the muse celebrate the
Duke of York's statue : —
" Enduring is the bust of bronze.
And thine, O flower of George's sons,
Stands high above all laws and duns.
As honest men as ever cart
Conveyed to Tyburn, took thy part.
And raised thee up to where thou art."
And now I will give four lines which I think
Landor never surpassed ; a regal compliment paid in
perfect verse : —
[ill.] Eidyllia 69
" IVky do I smile ? To hear you say,
* Ojie vionth, and theji the shortest day ! '
The shortest, vvhate'er month it be,
Is the bright day you pass with me."
Regal, too, are the complimentary strains in which
he celebrates Lady Hamilton, though they exhibit less
completely the ars celare artem : —
" Long have the Syrens left their sunny coast,
The Muse's voice, heard later, soon was lost.
Of all the Graces, one remains alone,
Gods call her Emma, mortals Hamilton."
I must not omit to cite certain verses on Lord
Melville, — they were probably suggested, I may
observe, by a saying of *' Touchstone " in As You Like
It — which Mr. Colvin considers the most weighty and
pointed of all Landor's epigrams : —
" God's laws declare
Thou shalt not swear,
By aught in Heaven above or earth below.
' Upon my honour,' Melville cries.
He swears and lies.
Does Melville then break God's commandment ? No."
I will next quote something of another kind, which
may help, so to speak, to take away the taste of this
sacra indignatio. Was anything more exquisite in its
kind ever written than the following inscription for a
statue of Love ? —
" Mild may he be, and innocent to view.
Yet who on earth can answer for him ? You
Who touch the little God, mind what you do.
" Say not that none has cautioned you ; although
Short be his arrow, slender be his bow.
The king Apollo never wrought such woe."
70 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
The last example of Landor's smaller verse which
I can give, and I have a special reason for giving it,
is a quite perfect translation — so it seems to me — of a
well-known passage in Moschus : —
" Ah ! when the mallow in the croft dies down,
Or the pale parsley or the crisped anise,
Again they grow, another year they flourish.
But we, the great, the valiant and the wise,
Once covered over in the hollow earth.
Sleep a long, dreamless, unawakening sleep."
I remember a critic who enjoyed a great reputation
— he is now no more, and I will not mention his name
— complaining of Landor's ** laboured artificiality."
It is a most unhappy phrase. Landor's style is in the
truest sense natural. It is part and parcel of him ;
the expression of the personal qualities specific to him,
that is, of his genius. It is his proper Hterary manner :
and manner is the transpiration of character. He wrote
as he did because he was what he was. Steeped in
the literature of Greece and Rome — especially Rome
— he thinks after the manner of that antique world,
and writes in its manner. It was more real to him
than the world in which he lived. In extreme old
age, when his memory was failing, he would sometimes
be at a loss for an English word, but never for a Latin
one. Mr. Forster speaks happily when he says : " In
Landor we have antiquity itself rather than the most
scholarly and successful presentment of it." I cited,
just now, his English rendering of certain very beau-
tiful verses of Moschus. I will now ask the reader
whose Greek is sufficient for these things, to compare
it with the original.
[in.] A Faint Possible Theism 71
Ay, aX, Tal fioKaxai fiev iirav Kara Kairov 6\wvTai,
"H to x^wpa a4\iua, t6, t' evdaAes ovKov &vriQov,
"fffrepov av (iiovTi, Kol els eras aWo (pvovTi'
""AfM/ies S', 01 fMeya.\oi Kal Kaprepol ^ ffo<pol ivSpes,
'OTrnSre irpara 0dv(»fx.es, avaKooi iv xQovL KoiXa
EuSojUes eu /uoAa fxaKphv a.Tepfj.ova vr]ypiTov tnrvov.
I venture to say that Landor's lines are as utterly
Greek in ethos as are those of the Greek poet himself.
" That Grand Old Pagan," Carlyle called him, aptly
enough. The eighteen centuries of Christianity hardly
existed for him. It would be difficult to find a passage
in his writings which displays one specifically Christian
aspiration, emotion, or sentiment. He protests, indeed,
that he is *' not indifferent to the benefits that litera-
ture has, on many occasions, derived from Christianity."
But his own feeling was, as he expressed it, that
"mythologies should be kept distinct." A faint
possible Theism seems to have constituted his own
creed. " When we go beyond the unity of God," he
writes, " who can say where we shall stop ? The
human mind is then propelled into infinite space, and
catches at anything from a want of rest."
(IV)
It remains to speak of Landor as a literary critic.
Pope begins his Essay on Criticism by declaring —
" 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill."
I do not pretend to decide the question which Pope
leaves unsolved. But I have always held that sound
72 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
literary critics are far less numerous than sound men
of letters. In fact, the critic is, as often as not, an
unsound man of letters, and an unsuccessful. So it
was in Pope's day, and so it is in our own : —
" Some have at first for wits, then poets past,
Turn'd critics next, and proved plain fools at last."
But when we charge our critics with folly, we have
not said the worst of them. A man cannot help being
a fool. We must hold — in spite of Determinists — that
he can help being a knave. Now, unquestionably,
knavish tricks are the stock-in-trade of an exceeding
great multitude of critics of the smaller kind. How
common it is, for example, to find them passing judg-
ment upon books which they evidently have not read.
I remember pointing out to one such that he had
attributed to an author precisely the contrary of what
that author had written. " Why, you can't have turned
over the pages of the work!" I exclaimed. "Well,"
he replied, ** I smelt it." But even the better kind
of critics are often very slenderly equipped with the
qualifications necessary for their task. A passage in
which Landor animadverts upon the ways of "our
reviewers and magazine men," is unfortunately as true
now as when it was written.
" To discover a truth and to separate it from a falsehood, is
surely an occupation worthy of the best intellect, and not at
all unworthy of the best heart. Consider how few of our
countrymen have done it, or attempted it, on works of
criticism ; how few of them have analyzed and compared.
Without these two processes there can be no sound judgment
[in.] Literary Criticism 73
on any production of genius. We are accustomed to see the
beadle limp up to the judge's chair ; to hear him begin with
mock gravity, and to find him soon dropping it for his natural
banter. He condemns with the black cap on ; but we dis-
cover, through its many holes and dissutures, the uncombed
wig. Animosity, or perhaps something more ignoble, usually
stimulates rampant inferiority against high desert."
Now Landor himself possessed, in a remarkable
degree, most of the qualities necessary for a literary
critic — vast knowledge, refined taste, incorruptible
honesty, and sound sense when his masterful prejudices
did not thwart it. And it is in the domain of literary
criticism that some of his best work was done. I say
literary criticism, for in other departments his judg-
ments are of small value. In politics, for example, his
opinions are a curious medley of schoolboy Liberalism,
aristocratic Republicanism, and autocratic egotism. I
remember only one political dictum in the whole of
his works worth quoting, but that one, indeed, is of
the highest value : " A mob is not worth a man!' So,
in matters pertaining to religion, his utterances are
singularly inept. How should it have been otherwise
when, as I pointed out just now, he surveyed the
modern world, in which we live and act, from the
standpoint of antique paganism ? Christianity is for
him simply a system of morality : its mystical element,
its transcendental side, he ignores, or dismisses, like
the Greeks in St. Paul's time, as foolishness. Nay,
of its Founder he makes small account. '* It appears
to me," he says, in the person of one of his puppets,
" that there was more Christianity before Christ than
74 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
there has been since." Similarly, in philosophy, he is
like a blind man with a looking-glass. He sees nothing
in it. He does not even know what it is. " This is
philosophy," he declares, "to make remote things
tangible, common things extensively useful, useful
things extensively common." Now, this is no more
philosophy than it is geometry. And so, in one of
his Imaginary Conversations, by way of rebuke to
Plato, whom he had indeed read, but without the
seeing eye or the understanding heart, he makes
Diogenes say, " I meddle not at present with infinity
or eternity ; when I can comprehend them I will talk
about them : " a saying which luminously reveals the
limitations of his own mind.
Far otherwise is it when we come to the domain
of pure literature. Here Landor speaks as one having
authority, and not as the scribes of superficial shib-
boleths. Occasionally, indeed, passion and prejudice
blind his vision and pervert his words. But even
then it is worth while to listen to him, for there is
always a reason, though it be a perverted reason, for
what he says. His very mistakes in things literary
he might have called in Dante's phrase, ** i miei non
falsi errori." I suppose what we should now count
among the most conspicuous of his mistakes is his
according so high a place to Southey. He ranked
him not only above Byron, but above Wordsworth
also. "Wordsworth," he declared, "has not written
three poems so excellent as Thalaba, The Curse of
Kehama, and Roderick!' At the present time, we
may venture to say, confidently, that this judgment is
[ill.] Southey 75
wrong. But it is well to remember that Landor held
it in common with some of the most eminent of his
day and generation. I remember Cardinal Newman
expressing himself to me very similarly. Southey
had unquestionably high gifts. Perhaps we under-
value him as much as his contemporaries overvalued
him. For myself, I confess I agree with Mr. Forster:
" Besides many minor poems, which will live with the
language, and ballads which are masterpieces of fan-
tastic beauty, the longer poems would seem to have
fallen into unmerited neglect. . . . It is certain that
for many subtle and pleasing varieties of rhythm, for
splendour of invention, for passion and incident sus-
tained often at the highest level, and for all that raises
and satisfies wonder and fancy, there will be found in
Thalaba, Kehama, and Roderick passages of unrivalled
excellence ('perfect,' even Byron thought)." To this
let me add that Landor's heart had been won by
Southey's enthusiastic admiration of and unsparing
devotion to himself. He was a no less good lover
than hater. And here I must introduce a most
characteristic extract from a letter of his to Mr.
Forster, written in 1845. He was then seventy, it
will be remembered : —
" A lady here, a friend of yours, has been lecturing me on
my hostility to Wordsworth. In the course of our con-
versation I said what I turned into verse half an hour ago, on
reaching home. No writer, I will again interpose, before
transcribing them, has praised Wordsworth more copiously
or more warmly than I have done ; and I said not a syllable
against him until he disparaged his great friend and greatest
76 A Grand Old Pagan [m.J
champion, Southey. You should be the last to blame me for
holding the heads of my friends to be inviolable. Whoever
touches a hair of them I devote diis inferis, sed rite.''
So much — too much, perhaps — as to Southey.
For the rest, Landor's literary judgments are almost
alv^rays as sound as they are admirably expressed,
whether he treats of English, French, or Italian
writers, or of Greek and Roman. Of all his Imaginary
Conversations those included by Mr. Forster in the
fourth volume, under the title of Literary Men — a vile
phrase, by the way — delight me most, and especially
the Southey and Porson, the Abb6 Delille and Walter
Landor, the Milton and Marvel, the Johnson and
John Home Tooke, the Southey and Landor Dia-
logues. The reader who has any taste for "the
dainties that are bred in a book," may satisfy it to the
full in these admirable compositions. What can be
better than this upon the two chief immortals of
English literature ? "A great poet represents a great
portion of the human race. Nature delegated to
Shakespeare the interests and direction of the whole.
To Milton was given a smaller part, but with plenary
power over it; and such fervour and majesty of
eloquence were bestowed on him as on no other
mortal in any age." And how striking — though we
may find it a trifle hyperbolical — is the sentence with
which he concludes : " A rib of Shakespeare would
have made a Milton ; the same portion of Milton all
poets born ever since." I add, parenthetically, that
notwithstanding this magnificent eulogy, Landor was
no indiscriminating admirer even of the most illustrious.
[in.] Felicities 'jj
He holds — to cite his own words — that while abasing
our eyes in reverence to so great a man as Milton, we
should not close them. And in some exceedingly-
acute pages he points out the blemishes of the mighty-
master who so strongly appealed to him : how strongly
may be gathered from his own testimony : —
" At line 297 [of Paradise Lost, Book IV.] commences a
series of verses so harmonious that my car is impatient of any
other poetry for several days after I have read them. I mean
those which begin —
* For contemplation he, and valour formed,
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace.'
and ending with —
' And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.' "
It is difficult to tear oneself away from these fasci-
nating pages. But, in truth — to use a phrase of
Southey's — feUcities flash from Landor whenever he
uses his pen as a critic. What could be better than
this: "In Wordsworth's poetry there is as much of
prose as there is of poetry in the prose of Milton " ^
Or this, on Tennyson's Maud: "What other (than
Tennyson) could have written this verse — worth many
whole volumes — 'the breaking heart that will not
break' ? Infinite his tenderness, his thought, his
imagination ; the melody and softness, as well as the
strength and stateliness of his verse " ? Or this on
Swift: "What a writer! Not the most imaginative
or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith, had the
power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever
78 A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
he meant to say" ? Or this on Johnson : " His tur-
gidity was not affected ; it was the most natural part
of him" ? Admirable, too, and original, are those
words of his concerning the Bible : " A book which,
to say nothing of its holiness and authority, contains
more specimens of genius than any other volume in
existence."
But Landor's critical faculty was employed as
happily on Greek and Roman literature, on Italian
and French, as on English. I am not sure, by the
way, that I should say French. There his prejudices,
to some extent at all events, marred his work. He
disliked the French people. They had falsified the
hopes which, like so many ardent spirits, he had enter-
tained of their Revolution. And their language, with
all its elegance and prettiness, did not appeal to him.
He found it wanting in strength and stateHness, as,
indeed, it is. Pre-eminently the tongue of social
intercourse, it is ill-adapted for lofty thought or deep
emotion. Landor went so far as to apply to it the
epithet "miserable." Pascal, he held, was great in
despite of it. But in the language and literature of
Italy he delighted. It was not until he was in middle
life that he learnt Italian. He acquired it very slowly,
and at first astonished his hearers by the oddities of
his pronunciation and speech. But, at the last, he
mastered it thoroughly, and spoke and wrote it with
the utmost correctness and, indeed, elegance. Some
of his Italian verses possess a high degree of excellence,
and his criticisms on the masters of Italian literature
are models of delicate and acute perception. I suppose
[hi.] Much in Fewest Words 79
Boccaccio, the precursor of the New Paganism, ap-
pealed to him most strongly — as was natural. " In
the vivacity and versatility of imagination, in the
narrative, in the descriptive, in the playful, in the
pathetic, the world never saw his equal, till the sunrise
of our Shakespeare. The human heart through all
its foldings vibrates to Boccaccio." Such is Landor's
judgment on that fascinating writer. I think it sub-
stantially true, although, of course, his demerits are as
conspicuous as his merits. On Petrarch, or Petrarca,
as he chose to call him — wrongly, as it seem to me,
for an English tradition of half a dozen centuries is
not to be set aside for mere euphony — he has many
admirable pages. As a specimen of how much he
could express in fewest words, take the following
sentence, in which ends what he has to say upon the
poet's most beautiful Triumph of Death : "He who,
the twentieth time, can read unmoved this canzone,
never has experienced a love which could not be
requited, and never has deserved a happy one." With
Dante he is less in sympathy. How should he have
had much fellow-feeling with the great poet of
Catholicism, the spokesman of the Middle Ages ?
Still, he has left us much lucid and suggestive criti-
cism of this supreme master : pages which no student
of the Divine Comedy can afford to neglect. How
completely he fell at times under the spell of that
great enchanter one short extract may suffice to
show : —
" All the verses that were ever written on the nightingale
I
8o A Grand Old Pagan [m.]
are scarcely worth the beautiful triad of this divine poet on
the lark : —
' La lodoletta che in acre si spazia,
Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta,
Dell' ultima dolcezza che la sazia.'
In the first of them, do you not see the twinkling of her
wings against the sky ? As often as I repeat them my ear
is satisfied, my heart (like hers) contented."
To deal adequately with Lander's criticism of
Greek and Roman authors would require a volume.
Here I can only mention his admirable paper on
Catullus, quite the best thing ever written, so far as I
know, upon this most graceful and winning of the
Latin poets — who, by the way, is something more
than graceful and winning : Landor rightly claims,
"he often is pathetic, and sometimes is sublime."
But I must remark in conclusion that Landor, unlike
many admirable scholars, could make good use of the
things new and old stored in the rich treasury of his
mind. He was more than a scholar : he was a thinker,
and his reading of the lessons which his learning had
taught him is often excellent. As an instance of this —
not the best indeed, but the shortest which occurs to
me — take the following passage : —
" It is very amusing to trace the expressions of different
nations for the same thing. What we half a century ago
called to banter, and what, if I remember the word, I think I
have lately heard called to quiz, gives no other idea than that
of coarseness and inurbanity. The French convey one of
buzz and bustle in persiffler ; the Italians, as naturally, one
[III.] Things New and Old 8i
of singing, and amusing and misleading the judgment, by
canzonare, or as Boccaccio speaks, uccellare ; the Athenians
knew that the graces and childhood had most power of this
kind upon the affections, and their expressions were xitpuvTitnv
and TratSewfti;."
IV
A FRENCH SHAKESPEARE
(1)
I SUPPOSE the time has at last arrived when the
position of Honore de Balzac in the literature of his
country may be considered as permanently fixed.
The dictum of the ancient sage, " Call no man happy
before his death," applies with peculiar force to the
writers of books. Nothing is more untrustworthy
than the estimate of an author formed by his con-
temporaries — even by the most clear-sighted and
highly gifted of them. Nothing more strikingly
illustrates human fallibility than the gradual modifica-
tions often observable in such estimates, modifications
not unfrequently amounting, in the long run, to a
complete revolution of opinion. Take Sainte-Beuve
for example : and assuredly he is a signal example
of a man uniting in a high degree the endowments
which are the requisite equipment of those who
aspire —
" to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name."
[iv.] Earlier Criticism 83
Soundness of judgment, refinement of taste, power of
intellectual diagnosis, and delicacy of touch were his
in ample measure; in no less ample measure in 1834
than in 1852. And yet what a difference had come
over his estimate of Balzac in those eighteen years 1
The earlier criticism ^ amounts to little more than this,
that the great novelist is a clever charlatan. It
describes him as a magnetizer, an alchemist of thought,
the professor of an occult science, ''equivocal, not-
withstanding his proofs," — and among the "proofs"
then before the world, it should be remembered, were
some of his greatest works, Eugenie Grandet, La
Recherche de rAbsohc, Le Mddecin de Canipagne, Le
Colonel Chabert, Gobseck, — " with a talent often start-
ling and fascinating, not less often questionable and
illusory." And, again, " In the invention of a subject,
as in the details of his style, M. de Balzac's pen is
facile, unequal, risky ; he makes his start, proceeds
for a while at an easy foot-pace, breaks out into a
gay gallop, and lo ! all at once down he comes : then
picks himself up and jogs on again until his next
tumble." And once more: "As a literary artist,
M. de Balzac is wanting in purity and simplicity, in
precision and definiteness. He retouches his outlines
and overloads them : his vocabulary is incoherent and
exuberant ; his diction is ebullient and fortuitous ; his
phraseology is physiological ; he affects terms of
science, and runs every risk of the most motley assort-
ment of colours." Let us now turn to the criticism
1 It appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes of November, 1834, and
is republished in Portraits Contemporains^ vol. ii.
84 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
which appeared eighteen years later.^ Here we find
Balzac characterized as certainly the most inventive,
and among the most fecund, in his walk of literature ;
his ** rich and luxuriant nature," " his excellence in
depicting character," " the manifold skill, the delicate
and powerful seductions," which make his works a
"rich and varied heritage," are fully acknowledged;
and his style is pronounced to be " fine, subtle, flow-
ing, picturesque, and boldly original." Sainte-Beuve's
later estimate was the sounder, and it is the more
creditable to him to have formed and expressed it,
because, not to speak of his personal reasons — and
they were good reasons — for regarding Balzac un-
favourably, the minds of the two men were cast in
very different moulds, and their tastes formed upon
quite other standards. But, curiously enough, the
first clear recognition of Balzac's true rank in French
literature proceeded from one even further removed
from him than was Sainte-Beuve, in genius, character,
and sympathies. It is not easy to exaggerate the
loathing with which the horrible pictures of depravity,
the nude expositions of vice in the Comddie Huinaine,
must have filled the pure soul of Lamartine, "most
chaste, most divine of French poets," as he has been
happily called. Yet he judged its author — and the
judgment was received with a storm of indignation
— to be superior to Moliere in fecundity, although
^ In the Co;is/ihe/ionne/ oi September 2, 1852. It is reprinted in the
second volume of the Causeries die Limdi. It must not be supposed
that this article is unqualified eulogy. Sainte-Beuve's recognition of merit,
always discriminating, is something more than discriminating when there
is question of Balzac.
[iv.] Later Criticism 85
inferior in literary style.^ The storm has long passed
away, but the judgment remains, and Time has set
his seal to it. Balzac's place among the classics of
France is securely established as the greatest master
of romantic fiction his country has produced : and his
supremacy is not merely French but European. It
is not too much to affirm of him that he is, in his own
domain, what Tacitus is among historians, Michael
Angelo in the arts of design, and Dante among poets.
Indeed, in the truest sense of the word, all three of
these great masters are poets. For what is poetry
but creation ; its essence the power of producing or
reproducing living beings, not merely as true as those
of the world of experience, but a great deal truer ?
In the mere mechanism of diction, Balzac is, of course,
as far as possible removed from Tacitus. Laboured
expansion is the main note of the one, laboured con-
ciseness of the other. But in realistic power, in the
skill with which the movements of the mind and the
passions are exhibited working under the veil of social
phenomena, in the cold, scientific exposition of the
terrible truth of things, there exists as striking a
resemblance between the two writers, as there exists
between the civilizations which they set themselves
1 I take it that the general estimate of Balzac's style is much higher
now than was possible in Lamartine's time, when the old classical, and,
if I may say so, somewhat pedantic tradition was still in full force. It
would be impertinent for an Englishman to speak in any but the most
diffident tone upon such a question. I will therefore merely refer to
Taine's admirable pages on " Le Style de Balzac " in his N'otiveaux Essais
(pp. 98-1 16), where the conclusion arrived at is " Evidemment cet homme
savait sa langue ; meme il la savait aussi bien que personne : seulemen t
11 1'employait k sa fagon."
86 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
to paint. Nay, they have in common many of the
same faults. There is in both the same crudity of
colouring, the same obscurity of thought, the same
redundance of ideas, the same lack of simplicity and
ease. '' Tacite creuse dans le mal," observes Fenelon.
The same may be said of Balzac. Nor is the analogy
between Balzac and Michael Angelo less real and
striking. Both were anatomists of supreme excellence
— the one of the body politic, the other of the corporal
frame. And, in both, profound knowledge was united
to and subserved a marvellous gift of idealization,
whence resulted those colossal types, whose effect
upon the mind is such as no servile copying of the
living model, no direct imitation of the seen and
actual, can ever produce. There can be no question
of the excesses into which Michael Angelo*s science
led him — excesses patent to the most superficial critics
and inimical to the popular appreciation of his great-
ness. Balzac's ej^cesses are of exactly the same kind.
To the parallel which exists between Balzac and
Dante I shall have occasion to return hereafter. I
here merely note that the gifts which enabled the
novelist to body forth the terrestrial Inferno ^ of
nineteenth-century France, closely resemble those
which inspired the medieval bard to recount what he
had seen among the nations of the dead. It has
been happily observed by Lord Macaulay : " The
^ " Ce Paris, qualifid d'antichambre de I'enfer, ce qui est vrai pour
bien des gens, meme pour les dcrivains qui le ddcrivent." — Letter to the
Abb6 EgU : CEuvres, vol. xxiv. p. 403. My references are made to the
Edition Difiniti-ve^ Paris, 1869-76.
[iv.] Inebriated with his Work 87
great source of the power of the Divine Comedy is
the strong beUef with which the story seems to be
told. . . . When we read Dante, the poet vanishes
— we are Hstening to the man who has returned from
the • valley of the dolorous abyss,' we seem to see
the dilated eye of horror, to hear the shuddering
accents with which he tells his fearful tale." " On a
repute a outrance," Chasles remarks, "que M. de
Balzac etait un observateur, un analyste ; c'etait
mieux ou pis ; c'etait un voyant." And so Sainte-
Beuve —
" Balzac was, so to speak, inebriated with his work. From
his youth up, he lived in it and never left it. That world,
half the result of observation, half of creation, in all senses
of the word, those persons of all sorts and conditions whom
he had endowed with life, were confounded for him with the
world and the persons of real life. The men and women of
the external world were but a pale copy of his own creations
whom he used to see, to quote, to talk with, upon every
occasion, as acquaintances of his own and yours. So power-
fully and distinctly had he clothed them with flesh and blood,
that once placed and set in action, he and they never left one
another. They all encompassed him, and in moments of
enthusiasm would circle about him, and drag him into that
immense round of the Comedie Humaine, which, but to look
at in passing, makes us dizzy, an effect that its author was
the first to experience," ^
* Causeries du Lu7idi,vo\. ii. p. 451. His sister, Madame Surville,
writes : —
" II nous contait les nouvelles du monde de La Comedie Hujnaine,
comme on raconte celles du monde veritable.
" Savez-vous qui Fdlix de Vandenesse dpouse ? Une demoiselle
de Grandville. C'est un excellent mariage qu'il fait Ik : les Grandville
sont riches, malgrd ce que mademoiselle de Bellefeuille a cout^ k cette
famille.
88 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
Dante, as we read, grew lean over his Divine
Comedy. Balzac wrote his Comedie Hmname "not
only with his thought, but with his blood and with his
muscles," ^ and died at fifty, his robust frame absolutely
worn out by the prodigality of his intellectual toil.
(11)
Such then by general, I do not of course say uni-
versal, consent would appear to be the position of
Honore de Balzac in the literature of France. The
most inventive brain which his country has ever pro-
duced, he holds, in this respect, among French writers
the place which Shakespeare holds among ourselves.
Perhaps, indeed, it is not temararious to assert that
he is, upon the whole, the nearest approach to a
Shakespeare, the best substitute for one, that the
genius of his country allows. But the point of resem-
blance between him and Shakespeare with which I
am more particularly concerned in this Study, and
" Si quelquefois nous lui demandions grace pour un jeune homme en
train de so perdre ou pour une pauvre femme bien malheureuse dont le
triste sort nous interessait :
" Ne m'dtourdissez pas avec vos sensibleries, la vdritd avant tout ;
ces gens Ik sont faibles, inhabiles, il arrive ce qui doit arriver, tant pis
pour eux !
" II chercha longtemps un parti pour Mademoiselle Camille de
Grandlieu, et rejetait tous ceux que nous lui proposions.
" Ces gens ne sont pas de la meme socidtd, le hasard seul pourrait
faire ce mariage, et nous ne devons user que fort sobrement du hasard
dans nos livres : la realitd seule justifie I'invraisemblance ; on ne nous
permet que le possible, a nous autres ! " — CEiivres, vol. xxiv. p. xxxix.
^ " II n'dcrit pas seulement avec sa pure pensde, mais avec son sang
et ses muscles." — Causeries du Ltindi^ vol. ii. p. 448.
[iv.] Portraiture 89
which brings me to my proper subject, is not inven-
tion. Shakespeare is not merely the great poet of
human nature in all time. He is also the most faith-
ful exponent of English life in the sixteenth century.
From this point of view, his works are documents of
history possessing the highest value. It was the work
of this supreme intellect, among so much else, to
catch in his magic mirror the principal types of the
civilization of his times, and by a divine gift to fix
them in his pages, ineffaceable for ever. The men
and women who in stately procession troop through
the plays of Shakespeare, whether they masquerade
in Homeric chlaina and peplos, in Roman toga and
stola, in medieval mail and wimple, are all of his
own age, for he knew no other. Heine, as we
saw in a former page, reckons it a piece of right
good fortune that Shakespeare came just when he
did, before the Puritans had "rooted up, flower
by flower, the religion of the past ; " while " the
popular belief of the Middle Ages — Catholicism —
destroyed in theory, yet existed in all its enchant-
ment, in the spirit of humanity, and upheld itself in
the manners, fashions, and intuitions of men." His
plays give us a picture of society, with its medieval
order still subsisting, and illuminated by the last rays
of the setting sun of chivalry. They are, in Heine's
admirable phrase, " a proof that merry England once
really existed," blooming with light and colour and
joy, which have long passed away. The work of
portraiture which Shakespeare did for sixteenth-
century England accidentally and by the way, Honore
90 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
de Balzac set himself deliberately to do for nineteenth-
century France, as it existed under the Empire, the
Restoration, and the Monarchy of July. There is as
great a difference between the spirit in which the two
artists worked, as in the effect which they produce
upon us. In one we have the unconscious power
which is a token of the richest exuberance of health ;
in the other, the restless striving and panting endea-
vour which speak of a fevered brain and a diseased
heart. In Shakespeare there is a pervading freshness,
as of mountain air — a perfume, as of " sweet spring,
full of sweet days and roses." In Balzac we breathe
an atmosphere which may be likened to that " Egyp-
tian gale " issuing from the Bath ball-room, whose
pestilential vapours, so nearly fatal to Mr. Matthew
Bramble, have received all too minute description and
analysis from the learned pen of Tobias Smollett.
It would seem to be " evident to any formal
capacity," that in judging of an author's works, the
purpose which he avows in writing them ought not
to be overlooked. The purpose assigned may not,
indeed, be the true, the chief, or the sole purpose
intended, and most certainly will not have been the
only purpose served. Our words once uttered, still
more, once printed, are no longer ours. Books have
an existence and a career of their own, quite inde-
pendent of the writer's volition. Still, no criticism
can be fair, or really scientific, which neglects the
account an author himself gives of his end and aim.
Thus, if we would judge rightly of the Waverley
Novels, it is important to remember that their author.
[iv.] A Canon of Criticism 91
in dedicating them to George IV., intimates their
function as being to " amuse hours of relaxation, or
relieve those of languor, pain, and anxiety," and
deems that " the success they are supposed to have
achieved " in these respects '* must have so far aided
the warmest wish of his Majesty's heart, by contri-
buting, in however small a degree, to the happiness
of his people." Theophile Gautier, less modestly, in
his preface to a book^ where, indeed, modesty has no
place, declares the use of a novel to be twofold —
namely, to put certain thousands of francs into the
pocket of the author, and to supply more amusing
reading than is offered by the organs of utilitarianism,
virtue, and progress in the journalistic press. No
doubt Honore de Balzac, a professed man of letters,
felt the force of Dr. Johnson's dictum, " For we that
live to please, must please to live." But he did not
regard his pen as a mere instrument for making
money ; nor was it his aim to titillate the popular
taste, or to pander to the prurient instincts of man-
kind. *' One day," he writes, "people will know that
no two centimes have found their way into my purse
which have not been hardly and laboriously gained ;
that praise and blame have been quite indifferent
to me ; that I have constructed my work in the midst
of cries of hate and discharges of literary musketry ;
and that I proceeded in it with a firm hand and an
unswerving purpose." ^ When, indeed, Balzac said that
' Mademoiselle de Maupin.
^ Letter to Madame Hanska: CEtivres., vol. xxiv. p. 381. Madame
Surville tells us, " L'amour qu'il avait pour la perfection et son profond
respect pour son talent et pour le public lui firent peut-etre trop travailler
* 92 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
praise or blame were quite indifferent to him, he must
not be taken quite hterally ; no man ever more keenly-
hungered after fame ; but it is absolutely true that he
kept his purpose steadily before him, never suffering
himself to be turned aside from it arbitrio popularis
aurcB ; and that he was content to leave his literary
reputation to Time, the great judge/ " Construire
son oeuvre " was his abiding thought, and, as I have
said, that work was to paint the civilization of his age.
This was the great idea of his literary life. At
first, as he tells us in the Introduction to his Comidie
Humaine, the project floated before his mind like a
dream, vague, unsubstantial, illusory — "a chimera
smiling on him, just showing a glimpse of its woman's
face, and then spreading its wings, and taking its
flight back to its fantastic heaven." But in time the
vision took shape, proportion, substance. To embody
a great image of the age in which he lived, of its men,
its women, and its things, that is, of its persons and of
ce style. . . . Ce n'dtait qu' apres avoir corrigd successivement onze ou
douze dpreuves d'une meme feuille qu'il donnait le bon a tircr, tant
attendu par les pauvres typographes tellement fatigues de ces corrections,
qu'ils ne pouvaient faire chacun qu'ime page de suite de Balzac. Pendant
qu'il demandait tant d'dpreuves de la meme feuille at que ses corrections
diminuaient de beaucoup le prix de ces oeuvres, on I'accusait de tirer k la
page et de faire du mercantilisme ! " — Ibid., p. Ixix.
1 His sister tells us that he would console her in the following terms
when she was distressed by attacks made upon him : " Etes vous simples
de vous attrister ! les critiques peuvent-ils rendre mes ceuvres bonnes ou
mauvaises ? laissons faire le temps, ce grand justicier ; si ces gens se
trompent, le public le verra un jour ou I'autre, et I'injustice profite alors h.
cclui qu'ellc a maltraitd ; d'ailleurs, c&s giierillcros dc Part touchent juste
quelquefois, et en corrigeant les fautes qu'ils signalcnt, on rend I'oeuvre
meilleure ; en fin de compte, je leur dois de la reconnaissance." — OEuvres,
vol. xxiv. p. Ix.
[iv.] The Historian of a Civilization 93
the material representations in which their thoughts
found expression, such was the dream which gradually-
developed into a project, and then was ever before
him as a fixed idea. To make the inventory of vices
and virtues, to bring together the chief phenomena
of the passions, to choose the most salient facts of
society, to paint character, to compose types by
uniting homogeneous traits, and thus to write that side
of the history of the times which professed historians
so often overlook — this is the account that he gives
of the task to which he set himself. Of the vastness
of that task he was fully conscious. Of his power to
execute it he never for a moment doubted. Human
nature is infinitely varied. Chance is the greatest
romancer in the world : " pour etre fecond il n'y a
qua I'etudier." Irrefragable patience and invincible
courage would, indeed, be required. But with their
aid he should achieve a monumental work upon nine-
teenth-century France ; such a work as the world in
vain desiderates upon the civilizations of ancient
Athens, Rome, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, India, "le
tableau de la societe moulee sur le vif, avec tout son
bien et tout son mal."^ This is the character in which
Balzac presents himself in the introduction to his
great work ; not as a mere teller of stories, but as the
historian of a civilization. And it is thus that I
propose now to consider him.
^ (Euvres, vol. i.: Avafit-Propos,-^.'] .
94 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
(Ill)
The Comddie Httmaine as we have it (for with
Balzac's other writings I am not at present concerned)
is incomplete. Out of the one hundred and fifty
tales of which it was to have consisted, only eighty
were written. Then in the maturity of his powers and
the fulness of his success, with the " fair guerdon," so
long hoped for, just gained, the " blind Fury with
the abhorred shears " made her inexorable apparition,
cutting short the " thin spun life " with the too vast
enterprise which hung upon it. But the fragment of
his gigantic design which remains to us is colossal,
filling, as it does, in the Sdition definitive of his works,
seventeen royal octavo volumes, each containing some
six hundred and fifty closely-printed pages. His
novels, as he ultimately arranged them, are grouped
under six divisions, " Scenes," as he terms them, of
life's poor play. First come the Scenes de la Vie
Privie ; then the Scenes de la Vie de Province, Paris-
ienne, and Politique ; and, lastly, the Semes de la Vie
Militaire, and de la Vie de Campagne. The classifica-
tion appears to be to some extent arbitrary. It is
difficult to see why a story like Modeste Mignon
should not appear among the Scenes of Provincial
Life, or a story like Une Fille d'Eve in the Scenes of
Parisian Life, as well as in the Scenes of Private Life,
to which these two tales are assigned by the author.
Balzac insists, however, that the groups correspond
to certain general ideas. His Scenes of Private Life,
[iv.] A Colossal Fragment 95
he tells us, represent infancy, youth, and their faults,
as the Scenes of Provincial Life depict the age of
passions, of calculation, of interest and ambition ; while,
again, the Scenes of Parisian Life offer a picture of
the taste, the vices, and all the choses effrmees excited
by the civilization peculiar to capitals, where the
extremes of good and evil meet. Each of these
divisions, he maintains, has its local colour ; and local
colour with Balzac means a great deal. Then, after
painting social life thus under its three ordinary
aspects, he passes on to the exceptional existences of
political life ; thence to Scenes of War, the most im-
perfect of all his divisions ; and, lastly, to Scenes of
Country Life, which he describes as being, in some
sort, the evening of the " various day " through which
he has travelled. Lastly, to serve as epilogue, he
gives us his Etudes Philosophiques, where he is by
way of exhibiting the causes of all the effects, of
painting the ravages of thought, sentiment by senti-
ment. These are the frames, or rather galleries, to
use his own expression, in which he proposed to set
the multitude of existences born of his creative brain
— the two or three thousand salient figures of an
epoch which are, as he says, the sum of the types
presented by every generation. Each of his novels
is complete in itself. But many of the principal
actors come upon the stage again and again in the
different stories. As in the real world, we see them
in the several periods of human life, in the varied
hues of circumstance, in the different relations and
multiform aspects of social existence. This incessant
96 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
reintroduction into his tales of the same characters,
so severely censured by many of his earlier critics,
was a necessary part of Balzac's plan. And it is a
signal proof of his consummate genius that it was
possible for him thus to give currency to the coinage
of his brain. Not only are his characters so strongly
cast that once seen they are never forgotten, but, by
an illusion which might have seemed beyond the reach
of art, the verisimilitude of his work is increased by
their frequent reappearance. It is as natural to us
to come constantly in his stories upon Rastignac and
Canalis, Du Tillet and Nucingen, De Marsay and
Montriveau, Madame de Beauseant and Madame
d'Espard, the Duchesse de Langeais and the Duchesse
de Carigliano, as it is to find the same princes, cour-
tiers, and magistrates, great ladies of the court,
pr6sidentes and bourgeoises^ wits, warriors, and finan-
ciers, reappearing volume after volume in St. Simon's
immense M(^moires.
The best introduction to the ComMie Htmiahie is
Le Pere Goriot, because in it we meet, in the earliest
stages of their career, many of the principal person-
ages who reappear in the subsequent scenes. It is
also one of the best examples of the author's powers,
and is, perhaps, the most widely known of his com-
positions. Le Pere Goriot ! Who that has read this
terrible story, which holds among Balzac's novels the
same place as King Lear among Shakespeare's plays,
has not felt himself, from the first, in the grasp of the
great enchanter ? You " cannot choose but hear " as
he unfolds to you a tale far more weird and horrible
[iv.] Le Pere Goriot 97
than that wherewith the Ancient Mariner held spell-
bound the wedding-guest. It is worth while to
translate the page with which he introduces it —
*' Madame Vauquer, nee de Conflans, is an old woman who
for forty years has kept at Paris a pensmi boiirgeoise in the
Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevi^ve, between the Quartier Latin
and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. This boarding-house,
known under the name of the Maison Vauquer, receives alike
men and women, young and old, and never have slanderous
tongues found occasion to attack the morals of so respectable
an establishment. It is true that for thirty years no young
person was ever seen there ; and, indeed, for a young man to
bring himself to live there, his family must make him a very
slender allowance. In 18 19, however, at about which period
this drama opens — a poor young girl happened to be residing
there. Discredited as is the word ' drama ' by the perverted
and tortuous way in which it has been lavished in these days
of dolorous literature, I must needs make use of it here ; not
indeed that this history is in the true sense dramatic ; but
perhaps when it is ended, some tears may have been shed
over it, intra muros et extra. Will it be understood outside
Paris ? One may doubt it. The peculiarities of this scene,
full of detail and local colour, can hardly be appreciated, save
between the biittes of Montmartre and the heights of Mont-
rouge, in that illustrious valley of plaster ever ready to fall,
and gutters black with mud ; that valley full of real sufferings,
of joys often false, and ever in so terrible a whirl of excite-
ment, that only something quite abnormal can produce a
more than momentary sensation. Still, one meets there,
from time to time, with sorrows to which the agglomeration
of virtues and vices lends grandeur and solemnity. At the
view of them egoism and self-interest pause and are touched
with pity ; but the impression thus produced is evanescent,
like the savour of a delicious fruit quickly eaten. The car of
civilization, like that of Juggernaut, although there are hearts
H
98 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
less easily ground to powder than the rest, which for a
moment retard it and clog its wheel, soon breaks them, and
proceeds on its victorious course. Just so will you do : you
whose white hand holds this book : you who plunge into the
soft depths of your easy-chair, saying to yourself, ' This may
amuse me, perhaps.' After having read the story of the
secret misfortunes of P^re Goriot, you will dine with an
excellent appetite, attributing your insensibility to the author,
taxing him with exaggeration, charging him with poetry.
Ah ! be assured this drama is no fiction, no romance. All
is true : so true that each may recognize the elements of it
in himself : in his own heart, perhaps."
This is, as it were, the overture. The curtain
draws up and discloses the Maison Vauquer, " situated
in the lower part of the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve,
at the spot where the ground sinks towards the Rue
d'Arbalete by so sudden and stiff a descent that
horses rarely go up and down it." "This circum-
stance," the novelist continues, "if favourable to the
silence which reigns in the streets perched between
the dome of the Val-de-Grace and the dome of the
Pantheon, two edifices which change the state of the
atmosphere by the yellow tone they give it, casting
everything Into shade by the several tints thrown
from their cupolas. The pavements are dry : there
is neither water nor mud in the gutters : grass grows
along the walls. Even the lightest-hearted passer-by
becomes grave there. The noise of a carriage Is an
event : the houses are melancholy, the walls prison-
like. A stray Parisian would see there only middle-
class boarding-houses or institutions, abodes of poverty
or ennui, of moribund age or joyous youth enforced to
[iv.] A Wealth of Description 99
toil. No quarter of Paris is more horrible, nor, let us
add, less known. The Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve,
above all, is like a frame of bronze, the only one con-
gruous with this narrative, for which no colours are
too sombre, no ideas too sad, to attune the mind, as
when the light of day grows less and less, and the
song of the guide dies away, what time the traveller
descends to visit the catacombs. Apt comparison !
Who shall decide which is the more horrible spectacle
— withered hearts or empty skulls ! "
The Maison Vauquer is the catacomb to which
Balzac guides his readers in Le Pcre Goriot : and he
proceeds to lavish upon it his usual wealth of descrip-
tion, until the ignoble boarding-house stands before
our eyes in its squalid completeness as vividly as it
stood before his. Stroke after stroke paints for us its
exterior, and then he brings us to the glass door
armed with the shrill alarm-bell. We peep through
before we enter, and see the arcade painted in green
on the wall, and the statue of Cupid with all the
varnish peeling off. Then we go in and make our
way to the sa/o7i. We survey its well-worn horsehair
chairs, its empty grate, and chimney-piece adorned
with ancient artificial flowers and vulgar clock in bluish
marble, its barred windows, and walls hung with paper
representing scenes from Te/emac/ms, with the classical
personages coloured, and meanwhile our nostrils are
saluted with that **odeur de pension," for which human
speech has no one epithet : " elle sent le renferme, le
moisi, le ranee ; elle donne froid ; elle est humide au
nez ; elle penetre les vetements ; elle a le gout d'un
loo A French Shakespeare [iv.]
salle ou Ton a dine; elle pue le service, I'office,
Thospice." Still this room is elegant and perfumed,
as a boudoir should be, compared with the salle d
manger^ where we are introduced to Madame Vauquer
and her pensionnaires — Madame Vauquer with her
cat, her face fresh as a first autumn frost, her nose
like a parrot's beak, her wrinkled eyes, her fat dimpled
hands, her expression varying from the grimace
peculiar to ballet-dancers to the sour scowl of the
usurer, her little tulle cap with a band of false hair
all awry, her slippers down at heels, whose whole
person explains the boarding-house, just as the board-
ing-house implies her person. Her pensionnaires are
seven in number. Poor Victorine Taillefer, mother-
less, and disowned by her wealthy father, with her
kind guardian, Madame Couture, who takes her to
Mass every Sunday and to confession every fortnight,
so as, at all events, to make a good girl of her. M.
Poiret, who seems to have been one of the donkeys
of our great social mill, some pivot upon which had
turned public misfortunes or scandals ; one of those
men of whom, as we see them, we say, "And yet such
people must be ! " Mademoiselle Michonneau, with
her chilling white aspect, her stunted, menacing form,
her shrill, grasshopper-like voice : Vautrin, the man
of forty, with dyed whiskers, large shoulders, ample
chest, great muscular development and deep bass
voice, whose features, streaked with premature
wrinkles, are significant of a hardness out of keeping
with his supple and engaging manners ; always gay
and obliging, but somehow inspiring every one with
[iv.] Types loi
dread, his eye seeming to go to the bottom of all
questions, all consciences, all feeling ; knowing all
about everything — ships, the sea, France, foreign parts,
business, men, events, the law, the hotels, the prisons ;
ever ready, if a lock happened to be out of order, to
put it right with the remark, " Ca me connait 1 " He
is really an escaped convict in disguise, known at the
galleys as " Trompe-la-Mort," and is one of the most
powerful and terrible of Balzac's creations. Then we
have Eugene de Rastignac, with his Southern face,
his fair complexion, black hair and blue eyes, his
manner and air speaking of gentle birth ; the pure
and sacred affections of his home life still strong in
his heart, as yet uncorrupted. He is reading for the
bar, and living meanwhile upon the twelve hundred
francs a year which his family, as poor as noble,
contrives with the greatest difficulty to send him.
Then, lastly, there is Pere Goriot, who had come to the
pension in 1 813 with jewellery and plate and a well-
furnished wardrobe ; taking the best aparte^nent in the
house, and paying his hundred francs a month for it
with the air of a man to whom a few louis more or
less were matter of indifference ; his hair daily
powdered by the hairdresser of the neighbourhood,
and indulging in the best snuff regardless of expense.
He was M. Goriot in those days, and a person of
consideration. But gradually his jewellery and plate
disappear ; his fine raiment wears out, and is not
replaced ; he moves from the first floor to the second,
and then after a time to a garret on the third. His
hair is no longer powdered, and his snuff-box is no
OF
I02 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
longer used. The light of prosperity dies away from
his face ; it grows sadder every day ; it is the most
desolate of all that are seen round that wretched table.
His pension sinks to forty-five francs a month, and his
consideration sinks in proportion. He is now known
familiarly as Pere Goriot, and is regarded as an excel-
lent subject for the wit of the other boarders — " une
pauvre creature rebutee, un souffre-douleur sur qui
pleuvaient les plaisanteries." Handsome women have
been observed to visit him now and again, and he is
generally supposed to have ruined himself by clan-
destine vices. These are the inmates of Madame
V 2^u(\u&y' s pension^ but there are certain pensionnaires
externes who for the most part subscribe only to the
dinner, which costs thirty francs a month. The most
notable among them is Horace Bianchon, a student at
the hospital, and one day to be a great light of medical
science. He is a special friend of Rastignac and a
very favourite character of Balzac's.
It is the hour of dSjeilner at the Pension Vauquer.
The boarders are assembling in the fetid salle a
manger, and young Rastignac comes in from his law
class, full of a ball to which he had been on the
previous night, at the house of a very great lady,
Madame de Beaus^ant, to whom he is related. He
had met there a lovely Countess, a perfectly divine
creature, of whom he gives a glowing description, and
— will they believe it ? — he is quite sure he has seen
her that very morning alone and on foot in the by no
means fashionable neighbourhood of the Rue des
Ores. "No doubt she was going to pay a visit to
[iv.] Voila les Parisiennes 103
Gobseck the money-lender," Vautrin suggests ; and
then he adds, making a shrewd guess upon the
strength of a bit of information he had surreptitiously
picked up, " Your Countess is called Anastasie de
Restaud, and lives in the Rue du H elder. Rummage
in the hearts of the women of Paris, and you will find
the usurer there in the first place, the lover only in
the second." Rastignac is astonished, and, strange to
say, Pere Goriot looks uneasy. " Ah, yes," Vautrin
further remarks, " yesterday at the top of the wheel
at the Duchess's ; to-day at the bottom of the ladder
at the discounter's. Voild les Parisiennes. If their
husbands can't supply means for their luxe effre^iee,
they sell themselves ; if they can't do that, they would
disembowel their own mothers to find wherewithal
to make a show. Connu, Conmt ! " In the course
of the day Rastignac goes to call upon Madame de
Restaud, whom he finds with her husband and
M. Maxime de Trailles (for in this mdnage there
is a mariage d trois), and is well received, upon the
strength of his relationship to Madame de Beauscant,
until he happens to pronounce the name of Pere
Goriot, whom he had noticed leaving the house by
the back stairs as he was entering it. The effect is
like that which is fabled to have been produced by
the Gorgon's head. Shortly afterwards Eugene de
Rastignac takes his leave, very much astonished and
very much out of conceit with himself, and pays a
visit to his cousin, Madame de Beauseant, who is
herself in trouble. For three years there has existed
between her and the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto what
104 -^ French Shakespeare [iv.]
Balzac calls "una de ces liaisons innocentes qui ont
tant d'attraits pour les personnes ainsi liees qu'elles
ne peuvent supporter personne en tiers," and now
M. d'Ajuda- Pinto is about to be married. All Paris,
except Madame de Beaus^ant, knows that the banns
are to be published next day, and while Rastignac is
there the Duchesse de Langeais calls and enlightens
her dear Clara's ignorance in the true spirit of the
candid friend. The young man listens to a page of
biting epigrams hidden under the affectionate phrases
of the two women, and receives the first lesson of his
Parisian education. Then he tells them of his own
misadventure at Madame de Restaud's, and learns
from Madame de Beauseant that the lovely Countess
is Pere Goriot's daughter. There is another daughter,
Delphine, married to the Baron de Nucingen, a rich
Alsacian financier ; the father is passionately devoted
to both, and both are ashamed of him, and have
denied him.
" Deny their own father ! " Eugene exclaims in
horror.
" Yes," Madame de Beauseant explains ; " their
own father, and a good father too, who has given
each of them five or six hundred thousand francs to
make them happy and to marry them well, keeping
for himself an income of some eight or ten thousand
crowns, for he supposed that his daughters would
always be his daughters, that he would have two
homes, where he would be adored and taken care of.
In two years his sons-in-law banished him from their
society as though he were the lowest of wretches."
[iv.] The Philosophy of the Beau Monde 105
And then the Duchess takes up the tale. This old
vermicelli-maker — Foriot, Moriot, or whatever his
name is — had been president of his section during
the Revolution, and had laid the foundation of his
fortune, after the manner of the patriots of that
period, by selHng flour at ten times its cost price.
His one passion was love of his daughters, whom he
adored, and for whom he made great marriages.
Under the Empire his sons-in-law tolerated him.
But when the Restoration came, how could " this old
'93" be endured in the salon of the noble or the
banker ? The old man discerned that his daughters
were ashamed of him, and he sacrificed himself for
them. He banished himself from their homes, and
when he saw them content, he knew that he had
done well. He had given them everything ; for
twenty years he had lavished his love upon them ; in
one day he had surrendered to them his fortune.
The lemon well squeezed, they had thrown the rind
into the streets. " We see it every day," the Duchess
continues, "and in every relation of life," glancing at
her friend. " Notre cceur est un tresor ; videz-le d'un
coup, vous etes mines." " It is an infamous world ! "
Madame de Beauseant exclaims. " Infamous ! no,"
the Duchess replies. "It goes its own way, that is
all. The world is a slough ; let us try to remain
above it."
The Duchess takes her leave, and Madame de
Beauseant, who is in the humour for moralizing,
discourses to Eugene upon Parisian society, its cor-
ruption, its vanity, and its pitilessness. The more
io6 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
coldly you calculate, the greater will be your success.
You are either an executioner or a victim. Such is,
in substance, her parable. A little later M. Vautrin
unfolds to the student his philosophy of life, which
does not materially differ from that of the great ladies.
He agrees that Paris is a slough, and a very curious
slough, where those who get splashed in a carriage
are respectable people (one thinks of Carlyle's
" gigmen "), and those who get splashed on foot are
rascals. *' Have the misfortune to take some trifle
off a hook, and you are set on high in the dock as a
curiosity. Steal a million, and you are pointed out
in salons as a virtue. And you pay thirty millions of
francs a year to police and magistrates to keep up
that morality. Charming!" That virtue and vice
are mere names, is the cardinal point in the simple
system of this sage of the galleys. " Do you know,"
he asks Rastignac, "how you make your way here
in Paris ? By the dazzle of genius, or the address of
corruption. Mere honesty is of no use whatever."
And he adds, parenthetically, " I don't speak to you
of those poor helots who, all the world over, work
away without getting any recompense for their toil.
I call them God Almighty's ragamuffins. There you
have virtue in the full bloom of its idiocy : yes, and
beggary with it. I can see from here the face those
fellows will make if God should play us the bad
joke of staying away from the Last Judgment." The
actions which lead to the hulks, he maintains, are of
precisely the same nature as those which lead to the
most sublime heights of political or military life. His
[iv.] The Philosophy of the Hulks 107
last counsel is, " Don't be more tenacious of your
ojDinions than of your word. When there is a demand
for them — sell them. A man who boasts of never
changing his opinions is like a man who should under-
take always to go in a straight line — a simpleton who
believes in infallibility. There are no such things
as principles ; there are only events : there are no
such things as laws ; there are only circumstances.
A wise man embraces events and circumstances to
shape them to his own ends. If there were such
things as principles and fixed laws, would nations
put them on and off as we change a shirt ? A man
is not called upon to be wiser than a whole people.
The man who has rendered the least service to
France is a fetish, highly honoured because he has
always seen things in red : the utmost he is good for
is to be put in the Conservatoire among the machines,
labelled La Fayette : while the Prince, whom every
one throws a stone at, and who despises humanity
enough to spit in its face {pour lui cracker au visage)
as many oaths as it asks for, has prevented the parti-
tion of France at the Congress of Vienna : he has
deserved crowns : people throw mud at him." Such
are some of the pleadings of M. Vautrin ; and the
cynicism of the world, as he makes acquaintance with
it, teaches the young man the same lesson which had
revolted him when it came from the coarse lips of the
disguised convict. The novelist traces with supreme
skill how, by a sort of fatality, the least events of
Rastignac's life combined to urge him to the career
*' where, as on the field of battle, he must slay or be
io8 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
slain, deceive or be deceived ; at the barrier of which
he must lay down his conscience, his heart, put on a
mask, use men pitilessly as pieces of the game, and,
as at Lacedsemon, seize fortune unobserved to merit
the crown." The contrast between the splendour of
the great world into which he has found his way
through his cousin Madame de Beauseant, and the
squalor of the Maison Vauquer, overpowers him.
His imagination inspires his heart with a thousand
bad thoughts. He sees life as it is : law and morality
impotent among the rich, and wealth the " ultima
ratio mundi." " Vautrin is right," he says to himself;
" fortune is virtue." Vautrin, indeed, has taken rather
a fancy to him, and is willing to serve him more
effectually than by mere precept. Poor Victorine
Taillefer's modest eyes have revealed to that terrible
observer the tender interest with which the handsome
young man has inspired her. Why should they not
make a match of it ? He charges himself with her
fortune, a modest percentage on which Rastignac will
hardly grudge him. And so, assuming the role of
Providence, he arranges a duel in which Victorine's
only brother is killed by a military bravo, whereupon
she becomes the heiress to the millions of her father,
who hastens to reconcile himself to her. Rastignac
shrinks back with horror from the alliance so con-
siderably planned, and just at that moment Vautrin
is arrested as an escaped convict, through the agency
of Mademoiselle Michonneau, and returns to the
galleys for a season.
Meanwhile Rastignac has met in society Delphine,
[iv.] The Last Drop of Bitterness 109
Baronne de Nucingen, Pere Goriot's second daughter,
a young and beautiful woman married to a great
capitahst whom she loathes, not without good reason,
and just deserted by De Marsay, the king of dandies
and a leading politician in the ComMie Humaine.
The intimacy between Delphine and Rastignac soon
becomes of the closest kind, to the enthusiastic delight
of Pere Goriot, who likes Eugene, and wishes " Fifine"
to be happy in her own way. Illimitable love for his
daughters has swallowed up all sentiments of morality
and religion in the " old '93," or, rather, supplies
their place, for he seems never to have had any, and
he devotes almost all that remains of his pecuniary re-
sources to furnishing a suite of rooms for his daughter's
lover! In the mean time Madame de Restaud has
been ruined by Maxime de Trailles. An inveterate
gambler, he has given bills for a hundred thousand
francs, which he has been unable to meet, and to
extricate him from the hands of his creditors, Anastasie
has sold the family diamonds to Gobseck. Naturally,
her husband has discovered the transaction. At the
same time, Delphine is at variance with the Baron de
Nucingen about her fortune. These troubles of his
daughters are the last drop of bitterness in the old
man's cup, and he is struck down by serous apoplexy.
There is to be a great ball next day at Madame de
Beauseant's, to which, through Eugene's influence with
his cousin, Delphine has been invited, to her unspeak-
able delight. Hitherto the Faubourg St. Germain
has been closed to her, though her sister is received
there, and she has been devoured by jealousy. " She
no A French Shakespeare [iv.]
would lick up all the mud between the Rue St. Lazare
and the Rue de Crenelle to enter my drawing-room,"
Madame de Beauseant had said to Rastignac. "If
you present her to me, you will be her Benjamin ; she
will adore you." Madame de Restaud is to appear at
the ball, and in order to silence the tongues of the
world, if possible, is to wear — for the last time — the
famous diamonds which her husband has ransomed
from Gobseck ; but her couturiere, who has got wind
of Anastasie's troubles, declines to send home a
certain robe lam6e until a thousand francs are paid for
it. The Countess is in despair. She goes to her
father, and the old man drags himself from his sick-
bed and crawls off to Cobseck to raise the money.
Rastignac comes in and finds him exhausted by the
effort. " I have sold six hundred francs' worth of
forks and spoons and buckles," he explains : " then
I made over my annuity for one year to old Cobseck
for four hundred francs, paid down. Bah ! I can live
on dry bread : that was good enough for me in my
youth, and may serve the turn again. Anyhow, my
Nasie will have a fine time to-morrow night. She
will be smart. I've got the thousand-franc note
there under my pillow. It warms me up to have
there, under my head, what will give pleasure to poor
Nasie." In the evening of the next day the old man
is evidently sinking. Eugene leaves him to the care
of Bianchon, and goes to Delphine, whom he finds
" coiffee, chausee, n'ayant plus que sa robe de bal a
mettre." She is astonished that he is not in evening
dress. He is astonished that she thinks of going to
[iv.] An Ocean of Mud iii
the ball. But she will not listen to him, and sends
him off in her carriage to make his toilette as soon as
possible, and come back to take her to Madame de
Beauseant's. He went off to dress, the narrative
continues, making the saddest, the most discouraging
reflections. The world seemed to him an ocean of
mud, in which a man sank up to his neck if he once
set foot in it. He had seen the three great ex-
pressions of Society : Obedience, Struggle, and Revolt ;
the Family, the World, and Vautrin. And he dared
not take his part. Obedience was tiresome : Revolt
impossible : Struggle doubtful. The education which
he is receiving is already bearing its fruits. Already
his love is tinged with egotism. His tact enables him
to see into Delphine's heart. He feels she is capable
of going to the ball over her father's body. And he
has neither the strength to reason with her, nor the
courage to displease her, nor the virtue to quit her.
As he drives to the Hotel de Beaus^ant with this
beautiful and elegant woman, he is silent and moody.
Delphine asks him what ails him. He replies, " The
death-rattle of your father is in my ears," and he
recounts with the warm eloquence of youth "the
ferocious action" to which Madame de Restaud's
vanity had urged her, and the crisis which Pere
Goriot's last act of devotion had brought on.
Delphine's tears fall ; but she quickly dries them.
" Je vais etre laide, pensa-t-elle."
While his daughters are dancing, Pere Goriot
lies dying. I do not know anything in literature
more full of horror than the account of that death.
112 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
Bianchon watches by him through the night. The one
thought in his wandering mind is of his daughters.
He calls them by their names. He says a thousand
times, " Elles dansent ! Elle a sa robe." " II me faisait
pleurer, le diable m'emporte ! " Bianchon confesses
to Rastignac, who comes in when the next day is
well advanced, his mind full of the splendour of the
fete of the previous night. He sits down at the foot
of the dying man's pallet in that squalid garret, and
listens to his wandering talk. For Pere Goriot to
die is never again to see his daughters. That for
him is hell. But he has served an apprenticeship to
it since their marriage ! And then he goes back to
the old days in the Rue de la Jusienne, when they
were children — " quand elles ne raisonnaient pas."
Ah, why could they not always remain little ! He
has given them all he had, and they leave him to die
alone. Had he kept his money, they would be there :
they and their husbands and their children — tears in
their eyes and kisses on his cheek. Money gives
everything : even daughters. And then he recalls
the early days of their married life, when there was
always a place for him at their tables, and he was a
welcome guest, and their husbands treated him with
consideration, for he still had the air of a man who
possessed something. Ah, how well he remembers
the first time when a look of Anastasie's told him that
he had uttered some bitise which humiliated her !
The pain of dying is as nothing to the pain which
that look gave him. And Delphine, too ! Even
Delphine grew to be ashamed of him. Since the day
[iv.J Le Plus Horrible des Mensonges 1 1 3
that their eyes ceased to shine upon him, it has been
all winter for him. Annoyance, humiliation, insult —
he has swallowed all ! " Venez, venez, mes cheries,
venez encore me baiser, un dernier baiser, le viatique
de votre pere, qui priera Dieu pour vous, qui lui dira
que vous avez ete de bonnes filles, qui plaidera pour
vous ! " They come not. Anastasie is in the midst
of a terrible dispute with her husband ; Delphine
has taken cold at the ball, and is afraid of a " fluxion
de poitrine." Bianchon and Rastignac lift the old
man up to adjust him in his miserable bed. His
eyes no longer see ; but their hot tears dropping on
his face wake up a gleam of consciousness in him.
He thinks they are his daughters. " Nasie, Fifine,"
he cries, and seizes convulsively the young men's
hair. "Ah, mes anges!" he murmurs; and, with
these words, he passes away. "Sentiment supreme
que le plus horrible, le plus involontaire des mensonges
exaltait une derniere fois ! "
Pere Goriot has a pauper's funeral. Bianchon
buys his coffin at the hospital. It is purchased there
at a cheaper rate. Eugene places on his breast a
medallion which the old man always wore next his
heart. It contains locks of his daughters' hair when
they were children, innocent and pure, " et ne raison-
naient pas," as he said in his agony. A priest, a
choir-boy, and a beadle attend to the devotional
part of the interment, a service of twenty minutes
— a psalm, the Libera, the De Profundis — "as much
as could be had for seventy francs in times when
religion is not rich enough to pray gratis." Two
114 ^ French Shakespeare [iv.]
empty carriages, with due blazonings, represent the
old man's sons-in-law, who have left the two young
men to pay expenses. The day is falling. A damp,
depressing twilight is setting in. Rastignac looks at
the grave which the gravediggers are filling up, and
drops into it the last pure tear of youth. From the
high ground of the cemetery he surveys Paris, where
the evening lights are just beginning to shine. His
eyes rest almost greedily between the column of the
Place Vendome and the dome of the Invalides, where
lives the beau monde which he had wished to enter.
He says grandiosely, " A nous deux maintenant ! "
And by way of opening his campaign against Society,
he goes to dine with Madame de Nucingen.
(IV)
Le Pere Goriot is a good specimen of Balzac's
best work. Nowhere is his observation keener, his
colouring bolder, his diagnosis more divinatory. No-
where do we find in more ample measure what Sainte-
Beuve happily calls " cette efflorescence de la vie par
laquelle il donne a tout le sentiment de la vie et fait
frissonner la page meme." And, as Taine justly
observes, while each character is marked by the
strongest individuality, and removed as far as possible
from the general conceptions, the pure abstractions
which metaphysical novelists muffle up with the
names and conditions of men, who does not discern
through the details which constitute personality and
[iv.] Sic itur ad Astra 115
make up life, an abridgment of one great side of the
history of the age — nay, of the perennial history of
the human heart ? The story leaves Rastignac at the
threshold of his career. He plays a great part in the
ComMie Humaine, and at last rises to be Minister and
Peer of France. There is a passage in the Peau de
Chagrin, in which he unfolds for the benefit of a friend
the lessons taught him by his experience. What fools
call intrigue and moralists dissipation — well, he has
found that it pays. Fit for everything and good for
nothing, as lazy as a lobster, he attains all his ends.
The world takes a man at his own valuation. Push
yourself enough, and it makes room for you. Puff
yourself enough, and it believes in you. Dissipation
is a political system. Reckless extravagance (vianger
sa fortujie) is a speculation, an investment of capital
in funds, pleasures, protectors, acquaintances. The
merchant risks a million, toils for twenty years, and
ends, very likely, in bankruptcy without a shilling or
a friend. The man of the world who knows its secret
springs turns them to his own profit, and meanwhile —
lives. Should he lose his money, he has friends,
reputation, yes, and money too, to fall back on. Such
is the real morality of the age as Rastignac has learnt
it. Probity in men ! The De Marsays and Nucingens,
the De Trailles and Du Tillets, have taught him at
what to rate it. Modesty in women ! Delphine and
Anastasie, nay, the Duchesse de Langeais and the
Vicomtesse de Beauseant being judges, is it not a
virtue fastened on with pins ? These are among the
most notable types of Parisian society in Balzac's
1 1 6 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
pages. The Duchess is the chief figure in a novel
which bears her name. Madame de Beauseant is the
wretched heroine of La Femme Abandonnde. Madame
de Restaud, sadly changed since Eugene first saw her
in the brilliancy of her beauty and guilty happiness,
plays the principal part in the exceedingly powerful
tale called Gobseck, where we behold the usurer at his
trade. De Marsay, Du Tillet, De Trailles, and Nu-
cingen with his marvellous patois, are familiar figures
in the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, where a whole
story, La Maison Nucingen, is devoted to an exposition
of the devices by which the Alsatian capitalist preys
upon society.
But Balzac aspired to paint the life of the great
capital in all its aspects.^ The demi-monde is depicted
by him no less fully and vividly than the heau monde.
The Parisian courtesan, with her furious thirst for
every species of swift gratification, her mania for de-
struction, her absolute blindness to the morrow, her
concentration of her existence in the passing hour,
lives for us in the person of Coralie, of Florine, of
Esther. Not less vivid is his picture of the bourgeoisie;
and it is to two characters drawn from this class,
M. and Madame Marneffe, that we must go for the
most terrible types of cynical corruption : they are
peerless in their infamy.
" Unutterable, abominable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned ; "
the putrescent atmosphere in which they exist seems
^ " J'aurai peint le grand monstre moderne sous toutes ses faces." —
CEuvres, vol. xxiv. p. 382.
[iv.] La Vie Litteraire 117
to hang about one's clothes and one's hair, nay, to
penetrate to one's bones. One's impulse after reading
of them is (in Carlyle's phrase) to bathe one's self in
running water, put on change of raiment, and be
unclean until the even. Balzac's picture of Parisian
journalism is a fitting complement to his pictures of
Parisian lust. In the one, as he says,^ we have the
corruption of the flesh ; in the other the corruption of
the intellect. " Obscene, disgusting, brutal, cut-throat,"
were the epithets applied by Charles Dickens to
the newspapers of the United States in 1843. Fifty
dollars, as he judged, would at any time convert
malicious misrepresentation into sickening praise.
Balzac, writing of the French press in the same
year, expresses himself in very similar terms. But
the description which Etienne Lousteau, himself a
journalist, gives of " la vie litteraire " to young Lucien
de Rubempre, of whom we shall see more presently,
is, on several accounts, worth quoting. Slightly ab-
breviated, it is as follows : —
" ' Outside the world of letters . . . there is not one single
person in existence who is acquainted with the horrible
Odyssey by which is reached what we must call — according
to the diverse kinds of talent — popularity, fashion, reputation,
fame, celebrity, public favour, those different rungs of the
ladder which lead to glory, and are never a substitute for it.
This fame, object of such ardent desire, is almost always a
prostitute, crowned. Yes ; for the lowest departments of
literature, she is like the poor girl who shivers at the corners
of the streets ; for the literature of the second class she is the
kept mistress who comes from ill-famed purlieus of journalism,
^ See his letter to Madame Hanska : CEnvres, vol. xxiv. p. 380.
1 1 8 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
and to whom I serve as a useful friend ; for the happy h'tera-
ture of success she is the courtesan, insolent and brilliant,
who has her own luxuriously furnished apartment, pays taxes,
is at home to fine gentlemen, treats and evil entreats them,
has her liveries, her carriage, and can keep her hungry
creditors waiting. Ah! those to whom she is, as she was
once to me, and now is to you, a white-robed angel, with
many-coloured wings, a green palm in one hand, in the other
a flaming sword, with something in her at once of the mytho-
logical abstraction which lives at the bottom of a well, and of
the poor virtuous girl in the banishment of a suburb, whose
only riches are gained in the clear light of virtue by the efforts
of a noble courage, and who soars back to heaven with a
spotless character — when she does not die stained, polluted,
violated, and forgotten, with a pauper's funeral ; — these men,
with brain circled in bronze, and with hearts still warm under
the snows of experience — they are rare in the place which
you see at your feet,' said he, as he pointed to the great city,
from which the smoke was rising at the decline of day.
' They are few and sparse among this fermenting mass, rare
as true love in the world of passion, rare as honestly gained
fortunes in the world of finance, rare as in journalism a man
unstained. The experience of the first man who told me
what I now tell you was thrown away, and mine will doubt-
less prove useless to you. Ever, year by year, does the same
impulse drive hither from the provinces an equal, not to say
increasing, number of beardless ambitions, which, with proudly
raised head and haughty courage, rush onwards to the assault
of Success — that Princess Tourandocte, so to speak, of the
Arabian Nights, whose Prince Calaf each of them intends to
be. But not one of them guesses the riddle. All fall into
the ditch of misfortune, into the mud of the newspaper, into
the swamps of bookmaking. They pick up, wretched beggars,
materials for biographical notices, made-up paragraphs, penny-
a-lining news in the journals, or books ordered by logically-
minded dealers in inked paper, who prefer a bctise which can
be had in a fortnight to a masterpiece which takes time
[iv.] "Behold my Sores" 119
before it is ready for sale. These caterpillars, crushed
before they become butterflies, live on shame and infamy,
equally ready to bite or to puff a rising talent, at the command
of a Pasha of the Cotzstitutiojinel, the Quotidienne, or the
Debats, at a signal given by publishers, at the request of a
jealous comrade, nay, often even for a dinner. Those who
surmount these obstacles forget their ignoble beginnings. I,
who now talk to you, for six months wrote articles, into which
I put the flower of my intellect, for a wretch who said they
were his, and who, on the strength of these specimens, got a
place as redacteiir of a feuilleton : he did not take me into
partnership, he did not even give me five francs, and yet I
am obliged to give him my hand and to press his.'
" 'And why ? ' said Lucien, proudly.
" * I may want to put ten lines in his feuilleton^ coldly
replied Lousteau. ' In a word, my dear fellow, it is not work
that is the secret of making a fortune in literature, but turning
to account the work of others. The newspaper proprietors
are the contractors — we are masons. Accordingly, the more
pronounced a man's mediocrity, the more rapidly he gets on ;
he can swallow any amount of dirt, put up with anything,
and flatter the little mean passions of literary sultans. . . .
I pity you. In you I see what I once was, and I am sure
that in one or two years you will be what I am now. You
will believe that there is some secret jealousy, some personal
interest, at the bottom of these bitter counsels ; it is not so ;
they are dictated by the despair of the damned, who can
never more leave his hell. No one dares put into words what
I wail forth to you with the agony of a man struck to the
heart, and crying like another Job upon his dunghill, " Behold
my sores." '
"'Whether I strive in this arena or elsewhere, strive I
must,' said Lucien.
" ' Know then,' continued Lousteau, ' this struggle will be
one with no breathing space if you have talent, for your best
chance would be in having none. The austerity of your
conscience, now pure, will give way before those in whose
I20 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
hands you will see your success He ; who could give you life
with a word, and who will not say that word ; for, believe me,
the successful writer is more insolent, more harsh to new-
comers, than the most brutal publisher. Where the book-
seller only sees a loss, the author dreads a rival ; the former
shows you to the door, the latter crushes you. To produce
noble works, poor boy, you will dip your pen deep into the
tenderness, the vital sap, the energy of your heart, and you
will spread it all out in passions, in sentiments, in phrases !
Yes, you will write instead of acting, you will sing instead of
fighting, you will love, you will hate, you will live in your
books ; but when you have kept all your riches for your style,
your gold and your purple for your characters, while you walk
the streets of Paris in rags, happy in having sent out into the
world a being named Adolphe, Corinne, Clarisse, Rene, or
Manon, invested with all the attributes of real existence^ —
when you have ruined your own life and your digestion in
giving life to this creation, you will see it calumniated, be-
trayed, sold, banished into the lagoons of oblivion by the
journalists, — buried by your best friends. Can you look
forward to the day when your creation will start up out of
sleep, awakened — by whom ? when ? how ? There is a mag-
nificent book, the pianto of unbelief, Obermann, which roams
in solitude about the desert of the shops, and which the book-
sellers therefore call in irony a nightingale ; ^ when will its
Easter come .? No one knows.' . . .
" This rude outburst, uttered with the varying accents of
the passions which it expressed, fell like an avalanche of snow
into the heart of Lucien, and left there an icy cold. He re-
mained standing, and silent for a moment. At last his heart,
as though stimulated by the horrible poetry of difficulties,
1 I do not profess to translate "en rivalisant avec I't^tat civil" — a
phrase eminently characteristic of Balzac, and properly untranslatable :
for what meaning would be conveyed by the words, " in rivalry with the
registration of the State " ?
'-^ Rossignol is a slang term used in trade to signify a piece of stale
goods.
[iv.] Better Aspects of Parisian Life 121
broke out. He grasped the hand of Lousteau, and cried : ' I
shall triumph ! '
" ' Good,' said the journalist ; * another Christian who goes
down into the arena to give himself to the beasts.' "
Let us not pass away from Paris without noting
the better aspects of its life, which the noveHst has
not ignored, but which, it must be owned, bring into
stronger rehef the dark portions of his picture : his
sketch of true and tender conjugal love in Madame
Jules; of commercial honesty in the shopkeeper Cesar
Birotteau ; of inflexible integrity, both political and
literary, in the republican D'Arthez ; of high j^rofes-
sional honour, and devotion to right and justice, in the
notary Derville. Nor, again, let us forget that small
band of religious persons in L' Envers de rHistoire
Contemporaincy whose self-sacrificing devotion, whose
prayers and tears go up for a memorial to heaven
from the midst of a society gangrened by corruptions
parallel to those of the Cities of the Plain. It would
be hard to find a more gracious example of fervent
piety and charity divine than is exhibited by Madame
de la Chanterie, and those holy and humble men of
heart, M. Alain, M. Nicholas, M. Joseph, the Abbe
de Veze, who pursue, under her direction, their work
and labour of love in self-chosen obscurity. Their
daily text-book is The Imitation of Christ ; and they
live in the spirit of its precept, " Ama nesciri et
pro nihilo reputari." In their presence "the great
Inquisitor of human nature " lays aside his functions.
He is content to stand as it were with doffed hat and
reverentially raise the curtain, to give us in these
122 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
" Freres de la Consolation " a glimpse of a better
world — even in Paris.
(V)
Balzac has pointed it out as " one of the great
wounds of our modern society," that nineteenth-century
France is divided into two great zones — Paris and
the provinces ; the provinces jealous of Paris ; Paris
taking no thought of the provinces, save to demand
money of them.^ The tale, called Ilhtsions Perdues,
may be regarded as the bridge which, in the Comidie
Htmiaine, connects the two zones. Its hero, Lucien de
Rubempre, is a young man of Angouleme, whose real
name is Chardon. His father, who had once been a
surgeon-major in the Republican armies, had subse-
quently earned a living as a chemist, and had married
the last survivor of the illustrious family of Rubempre,
a girl of great beauty, whom he had miraculously saved
from the scaffold in 1793. The chemist's premature
death, upon the eve of a great discovery, had reduced
his widow and two children to poverty. She makes
her living as an acco^icheuse. Her pretty daughter,
Eve, gains fifteen sous a days by working for Madame
Prieur, blanchisseuse de fin. All the money the two
women can possibly save from their narrow earnings
is devoted to Lucien, who inherits his father's talent
* La Muse du Dipariefne7it : Q£uv}'cs, vol. vi. p. 401. He adds, truly
enough : " Autrefois Paris dtait la premiere ville de province, la cour
primait la ville ; maintenant Paris est toute la cour, la province est toute
la ville."
[iv.] Provincial Society 123
and his mother's beauty, and is one of the most
promising students in the College of Angouleme. He
has formed there a close friendship with David
Sechard, a noble type of " persistive constancy," of
solid virtue, of inexhaustible tenderness, brought into
strong relief by the sordid avarice of his father, the
drunken old printer, who deceives and swindles his
son, and nearly ruins his prospects in life. Both David
and Lucien are in a true sense poets, but after a different
kind. David's timid, melancholy, meditative nature
finds its poetry in Eve, whose sweet blue eyes tell a
true tale of candour, purity, and patience. His love
is, as Balzac expresses it, d Fallemande : deep, long,
unspoken because of its very profundity, and import-
ing a life's devotion. " Le nunc et semper et in secula
seculorum de la liturgie," the novelist finely observes,
"est la devise de ces sublimes poetes inconnus dont
les oeuvres consistent en de magnifiques epopees
enfantees et perdues entre deux coeurs." Lucien's
nature, cast in another mould, aspires ardently to fame.
His poems find vocal expression, and attract the notice
of Madame de Bargeton, a somewhat mature Delilah
of literary tastes, who leads society in the noble
quarter of Angouleme. Lucien's vanity is naturally
flattered by the attentions of this great lady, who is
quite willing to act as his Muse. She predicts a
brilliant future for him ; and by way of starting him
in it, gives a grand evening party, where he is to read
his verses. He repairs to it full of hope. All the
notabilities of Angouleme are there : the Bishop and
his Vicar-General ; Madame de Chandon, a rival
124 -^ French Shakespeare [iv.]
queen of the provincial beau monde, and her husband,
a " ci-devant jeune homme," " encore mince a quarante-
cinq ans et dont la figure ressemblait a un crible ; "
M. de Saintot, President of the Society of Agriculture,
a well of science — only empty — and his wife, a large,
solemn, and extremely pious woman, but an unpleasant
partner at cards, whose name of Elise is inappro-
priately diminished by her friends into Lili ; M. de
Barton, the amateur singer, and M. de Brebian, the
amateur painter in sepia, with their wives, two ladies
consumed by the desire to appear Parisiennes, whose
toilettes .offer an exposition of colour outrageously
bizarre ; M. le Comte de Senonches, a mighty hunter,
and Madame de Senonches, with M. du Hautoy in
attendance ; the Baron de Rastignac — Eugene's father
— and Madame la Baronne, with their two charming
daughters ; and others over whom I must not linger.
The Prefect and the General are the last to arrive
and close this gallery of provincial celebrities, of whom
Balzac gives life-like portraits. Angouleme society
does not share Madame de Bargeton's enthusiasm for
budding bards, and is more astonished than delighted
at the introduction of the young roturier into its
august circle. The good Bishop, indeed, is an excep-
tion, and makes kind inquiries about the young man,
which some of the more mischievous of the guests
resolve to turn to their own purposes. M. de
Rubempre, they tell the excellent Prelate, really dis-
plays a promising gift of poetry, and is much indebted
to the help given him by his mother in his literary
labour. The Bishop notes the fact with the benevolent
[iv.] A Lost Illusion 125
intention of saying something agreeable to Lucien,
and, should occasion offer, of making some pleasant
reference to his mother. The plotters, of course, take
care that occasion shall offer. Lucien repeats some of
his verses. Monseigneur compliments the young man
upon them. "We cannot too highly honour," he
observes, " those noble spirits into which God casts
one of His rays. Yes," he continues, "poetry is a
sacred thing ; but, alas ! poetry is suffering. Think
of the silent nights of which those lines you admire
are the fruit ! Reverence and love the poet, almost
always unfortunate in this life, but no doubt to be
placed by God among His prophets in another. This
young man is a poet," and he lays his hand upon
Lucien's head. " Do you not see the fatal sign
imprinted on his fine forehead ? " Lucien is full of
gratitude for this episcopal recognition, and rccs on
to speak, poet-like, of "the sublime travail to which
we owe creations more authentic than those of actual
existence," of the long gestation in the brain of the
ideas which are to assume form and live among men.
" Your accouchement must be laborious," cunningly
observes M. du Hautoy, carrying on the figure.
" Fortunately you have your excellent mother at
hand to assist you," adds the Bishop, seeing his
opportunity.
Thus does Lucien lose his first illusion. He walks
away from Madame de Bargeton's heated salon with
rage in his heart and the fires of his ambition burning
only the more fiercely for his discomfiture ; and, as
he wends his way towards his miserable dwelling at
126 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
the east end of Angoul^me, he sees David and Eve
walking- together on the bank of the Charente in the
tranquil felicity of their young love ; enjoying, as only
happy youth can enjoy, the fresh yet warm air of the
summer night, the perfume of the flowers, the splen-
dour of the heavens ; the poetry of Nature responding
to the poetry of their own hearts, and interpreting
it for them. Balzac is a master of the transitions,
the artistic value of which he knew well. By-and-by
Lucien goes to Paris, the true home of genius, as
every one agrees, and there such of his illusions as
had remained soon disappear. He learns that *'il y
a des impots sur tout : on y vend tout : on y fabrique
tout — meme le succes." In time he meets Vautrin
under a different aspect from that in which we saw
the terrible figure of this " Cromwell of the galleys "
in the Maison Vauquer ; and the strange, eventful
history of the two extends through another tale of
considerable length and full of pictures of quite
appalling vice, terminating congruously with the
young man's suicide. I gladly turn aside from the
contemplation of Lucien de Rubempres career, to
note the marvellous completeness with which, in
the earlier portion of the Ilhtsions Perdties, the con-
ditions of life in Angouleme in the first quarter of
this century are brought before us. This wealth of
description, a special note of Balzac's work, is dis-
played in the greatest perfection in his Provincial
Scenes. What can be happier, for example, than his
picture of the Maison Claes, in its sombre, old-world
dignity, or that of the Maison Rogron, in the colour
[iv.] A Doctor in Social Science 127
less cold of its bourgeois vulgarity ? or his account of
Tours in Ursule Mir'duet or of Old Brittany in Biatrix?
It is not enough for him to show us merely the men
and women who are his typical creations as they act
and speak in the various circumstances and periods
of their lives. Far more than this is necessary for us
to know them as he would have us know them. He
would that we should be perfectly acquainted with
all the surroundings in which they exist ; the towns,
the streets, the houses, the very furniture and gar-
ments in which they live and move and have their
being; the viands they eat, the wines they drink,
the books they read. He knew well that the ''hidden
man of the heart" leaves his impress upon every
detail of exterior existence. He knew, too, that the
accidents of life (as we speak) not only express us,
but also to a great degree form us. Do they not go
largely to make up life ? They explain not only
what a man is, but why he is what he is : " For
such as we are made of, such we be." Hence the
minuteness, the breadth, the completeness of the de-
scriptive detail which Balzac deemed essential to his
purpose, and in which he is absolutely unique. He
called himself " a doctor in social sciences." He was,
as Taine well expresses it, *' an archaeologist, an up-
holsterer, a tailor, a marchande d la toilette, a broker,
a physiologist, and a notary, all in one. The immen-
sity of his erudition almost equalled the immensity
of his subject." It must be owned that occasionally
his descriptions become absolutely oppressive in their
thoroughness. One is ready to sink as the most
128 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
exact and elaborate account of it may be raiment
or furniture fills page after page. There is justice in
Sainte-Beuve's complaint, " il d6crit trop." But it is
true, too, as that critic adds, " Lorsqu'il plagait dans
un roman ces masses d'objets qui, chez d'autres eussent
ressemble a des inventaires, c'etait avec couleur et
vie ; c'etait avec amour. Les meubles qu'il decrit ont
quelque chose d'anime ; les tapisseries fremissent."
As the Illusions Perdties connect the two great
zones into which Balzac finds French life divided, so
in Le Curd de Village we pass from the provincial
town to the country. The story opens at Limoges,
in the shop of a dealer in old iron, " un nomme
Sauviat," who in the troublous times of the Revolu-
tion had amassed a fortune, the demolished chateaux
and convents having thrown upon the market an
abundance of the materials in which he trafficked.
The two sentiments strongest in the old tinker and
his wife are a sense of religion and love of their
daughter. They have hazarded their lives for the
Catholic faith in the evil days of the Terror; they
give their lives every day to little Veronica. It is a
pretty picture which Balzac draws of *' La Petite
Vierge," as the neighbours call her, reading night
after night to her father and mother the Lives of the
Saints^ the Lcttres cdifiantcs, and other books which
the priest lends her, old M6re Sauviat knitting the
while, and calculating that she thus saves the price of
the oil that burns in the lamp. Then comes the
fatal day when Paul et Virginie first falls into the
girl's hands, and awakens in her a whole world of
[iv.] Country Life 129
ideas and emotions which lend a new sweetness and
a new language to the flowers ; which show her fresh
beauties in the heavens ; and unspeakable depths of
mystery in the gorgeous sunsets, in the pure splen-
dour of the dew-bathed mornings, as she gazes on
them from the banks of the Vienne. One of the little
islands in the river becomes in her fantasy the ile de
France of Bernardin de St. Pierre's tale — the scene
of an idyll which her imagination weaves for herself.
Alas ! it is to play a very different part in her tragic
story. Round the figure of this young girl Balzac
groups the life of Limoges. There is the banker,
Graslin, whom she marries ; there are the Bishop
and his secretary, the Abbe Gabriel de Rastignac,
Euo^ene's brother ; Monseiofneur s two Vicars-General,
Dutheil and De Grancour ; and excellent M. Grosse-
tete and his wife, persons of consideration in the city.
Then we have the miser Pinguet, upon whose mys-
terious murder the story hinges, and the Avocat-
General, the Vicomte de Granville, a conspicuous
character in the Co77iMie Humaine, who devotes him-
self, with all the energy of a rising official, to the
detection of the murderer. From Limoges the tale
proceeds to the village of Montegnac, where we make
acquaintance with the excellent parish priest, M.
Bonnet. The Abbe Bonnet is an admirable study of
what Balzac calls that " mens divinior, that apostolic
tenderness which lifts the priest to a higher level
than other men, and makes of him a divine being."
Gabriel de Rastignac, whose curiosity is aroused by
finding such a man in such a place, asks him why he
K
130 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
embraced the ecclesiastical state ? " Je n'ai pas vu
d'etat dans la pretrise," he begins his reply: "je
ne comprend pas qu'on devienne pretre par des
raisons autres que les indefinissables puissances de la
vocation ; " and then follows an account, unfortunately
too long to be quoted here, of how it was that he
became a priest. And again, when the Bishop's young
secretary, upon whom the shadow of a mitre already
rests, puts the question, " And do you really like being
here ? " he answers, " Yes : if God will, I shall die
Cur6 of Mont^gnac. I could wish that my example
had been followed by distinguished men who supposed
that they were doing better by becoming philan-
thropists. Modern philanthropy is the curse of
society. The principles of the Catholic religion
alone can cure the maladies from which the body
politic is suffering. Instead of describing the disease
and spreading its ravages by elegiac laments, each
should have put his hand to the work by entering as a
simple labourer into the Master's vineyard. My task
is far from complete. It is not enough to moralize
people whom I found in a frightful state of impious
sentiments. I wish to die in the midst of a genera-
tion entirely convinced."
*' A frightful state of impious sentiments." In
Les Paysans Balzac applied himself to the full por-
traiture of that state. His object, as we read in the
dedication, was to tell the startling truth {l' effrayante
viritS) about this class, the anti-social element created
by the Revolution which — "a Robespierre with one
head and twenty millions of arms " — will, as he judges,
[iv.] Modern Philanthropy 131
one day swallow up the bourgeoisie as the bourgoisie
has swallowed up the noblesse. In it he asks the
legislator, not of to-day but of to-morrow, to accom-
pany him to the fields, and to study the permanent
conspiracy of those whom we still call weak against
those who think themselves strong ; of the cultivator
against the capitalist. " Instead of fawning upon
kings, as in former ages," he observes, ''writers now
fawn upon the masses. Crime has been made
poetical ; tears are drivelled over assassins ; the proU-
tariat is well-nigh deified." " In the midst of this
vertige ddmocratique,'' he asks, " is it not urgent to
paint the peasant as he is ? not the simple child of
Nature presented in the idylls of those who have
never contemplated him except through a Parisian
opera-glass ; not the virtuous and uncorrupted son of
toil, fawned upon by demagogues who traffic in his
passions and his blood ; " but " cet infatigable sapeur,
ce rongeur qui morcelle et divise le sol, le partage, et
coupe un arpent de terre en cent morceaux, convi6
toujours a ce festin par une petite bourgeoisie qui fait
de lui, tout a fois, son auxiliaire et sa proie," It was
one of the author's last works. He was engaged upon
it, he tells us, for eight years, during which he took
it up and put it aside a hundred times. He judged it
the most considerable of the volumes which he had
resolved to write.
The plan of this story is simple enough. As is
usually the case in Balzac's novels, there is hardly
any plot in it. One of Napoleon's generals, the Comte
de Montcornet, shortly after the Restoration, buys
132 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
a magnificent estate in Burgundy, and goes to reside
upon it with his young wife. The story opens with
an admirable account of this beautiful property, Les
Aigues it is called, in the form of a letter to a friend
in Paris from Emile Blondet, a journalist who fre-
quently appears in the Com6die Humaine. He has
gone to pay a visit to the Count and Countess just
after they have entered upon the possession of their
domain, and finds himself in a delightful spot where
nature and art are united without the one spoiling
the other ; where art seems natural and nature is
artistic. He expatiates upon the charms of the
chateau, which he feels must have been built by a
woman or for a woman : " un homme n'a pas d'id^es
si coquettes." And then there is the park, with its
dark overhanging woods, full of beautiful walks by the
running brooks. Nature with its stillness, its tranquil
joys, its facile life, casts a spell upon him. " Oh voila
la vraie litterature," he exclaims ; " il n'y a jamais de
faute de style dans une priairie ; le bonheur serait de
tout oublier ici, meme les D^bats," Such is the place
which the Comte de Montcornet has purchased, and
where he goes to live with the full intention of
discharging all a landlord's duties. The peasants,
insatiable in their greed for land, are bent upon
making his residence there impossible, in order that
the estate may be broken up into small lots ; and
they attain their object by the most horrible brutality
and the most monstrous chicane. In the background
there is the vile figure of the usurer Rigou, an apostate
Benedictine, married " in the year I. of the Republic "
[iv.] The French Peasantry 133
to a maidservant of the Cure ; he has for some years
held the office of Mayor, and naturally poses as the
champion of "the principles of '89," and the enemy of
the Church. This bourgeois Heliogabalus exercises
over his neighbourhood a more than feudal tyranny.
The peasants, who are in his debt for money advanced
to them to buy land beyond their means, are as serfs
who unsuspectingly render to him veritable corvees.
They are only too glad to cut and carry his wood, his
hay, his grain, if thereby they may obtain from him
time for payment of interest; nay, they patiently
submit to his exercise of a droit dtc seigneur in con-
sideration of retarde^nents de pour suites. His house-
hold is made up of his wife, the bomie Annette, and
Jean the gardener, and the business of these three
persons is to minister to his desires ; the least move-
ment of his bushy eyebrows plunges them into mortal
disquietude. Annette, " vrai chef d'oeuvre de beaute
fine, ingenieuse, piquante," is a handmaid in the
patriarchal sense ; the tenth of a succession of M.
Rigou's Hagars. The meat and poultry, wines and
liqueurs, vegetables and fruit, which supply his table
are of exquisite quality. He has carried to perfection
the science of egotism, of sensual gratification in all
its forms. He is a Lucullus without display; a
voluptuous skinflint. The peasantry are his tools.
Unseen, he pulls the strings and they carry out his
designs. The Comte de Montcornet's steward is
murdered ; and the Count himself has the narrowest
escape from the same fate. He gives up the unequal
contest. Les Aigues are sold, and the greater part of
134 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
the estate falls into Rigou's hands. The chateau is
pulled down ; the land parcelled out for la petite
culture. Fourteen years afterwards Blondet travels
by the place on his way to the prefecture to which
he has been nominated, and finds it altered beyond
recognition. The mysterious woods, the avenues of
the park, have been cleared away ; the country is like
a tailor's paper patterns. The peasant has entered
as conqueror into possession ; the property is divided
into more than a thousand lots; the population has
tripled, and is lodged in lath-and-plaster dwellings
which arise on all sides. " And this is progress ! "
exclaims Emile Blondet. In strong contrast to Rigou
we have M. Benassis, the country doctor, who is the
principal figure in another scene of country life, called
after him Le Midecm de Campagne, Another and a
better " Man of Ross," he is quoted by M. Alain in
VEnvcrs de VHistoire Conteniporaine, as one of the true
great men of the age. " He has left his name written
on a canton. He has conducted a whole country from
savagery to prosperity, from irreligion to Catholicism,
from barbarism to civilization." The Freres de la
Consolation set him before them as a standard and an
encouragement, a monument and a lesson.
(VI)
So much must suffice by way of glance into the
Comidie Humaine. Inadequate as must needs be anyj
such view of a work which is in itself an epitome,
[iv.] A Sombre and Terrible Picture 135
enough perhaps has been said to convey some faint
conception, at all events of the outlines, of the picture
which it presents. It is a sombre and terrible picture ;
what there is in it of goodness and truth, of religion
and virtue, but serving to render more visible the
surrounding darkness. Nor is it possible to mistake
its general signification. It exhibits to us a society
which has got rid of the ideas of man's free-will and
moral responsibility, and has decided, in reversal
of St. Augustine's dictum, that life is "voluptatis
tempus non sanitatis : " a society which, putting aside
religion as a fable too idle for investigation, and purity
as a disease, — " a new malady brought into the world
by Christ," — works out the logic of the passions to its
monstrous conclusion ; a society believing, indeed, in
the gratification of the senses while it lasts, and
regretting it when it is gone, but with no other beliefs
or regrets, and dominated (in Shelley's phrase) by
" that principle of self of which money is the visible
emanation." The question with which I am specially
concerned here is whether this is a true picture. Does
the Comedie Httmaine possess the character which
Balzac claimed for it ? May the student of man and
of society turn to it for the living image of manners in
France during the first half of the nineteenth century ?
Is it an authentic document of the most important
department of the history of our times ? or is it a mere
" tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing " "i
In weighing the testimony of a witness, two points
mainly have to be considered : Is he competent and is
he honest ? Balzac's competency would hardly seem
136 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
to be open to doubt. It is somewhere remarked by
Lessing that the only historian really worthy of the
name is he who grapples with the history of his own
times ; and he refers to the word IcrToip in support of
this view. Balzac lived in the midst of the society
which he essayed to paint. He applied himself
diligently to the study of it under all its aspects.
He set down nothing on hearsay. He spoke that he
knew and testified that he had seen. Nor can there
be any question as to his power of appreciating
the phenomena which he discerned. His marvellous
faculty of observation is indeed conceded on all
hands. It may be said of him, in the fullest meaning
of the words, that "he brought an eye for all he
saw." He brought, too, imagination to idealize, and
will to realize, what he saw. Then, as to his honesty :
Is there reason for impugning it ? Are there grounds
for believing him to have distorted the facts which he
professes to record ? Certainly there is upon the face
of his work no trace of passion or prejudice. His
tone is everywhere calm and unperturbed. He leaves
upon the mind the impression, not of a partisan,
but of a savant. He regards with equal eye a Rigou
and a Benassis. He exhibits the same care and con-
scientiousness whether he is delineating with supreme
delicacy of touch an embodiment of wifely devotion
in Madame Claes, or painting with his great bold
strokes in Valerie Marneffe the most repulsive type
of feminine corruption which human literature con-
tains. Even in his worst characters he sees anything
that there is of good, and faithfully sets it down.
[iv.] True and False Realism 137
The terrible Vautrin is a devoted friend. The hardly
less terrible Gobseck has his own standard of probity,
and acts up to it. Esther and Coralie are the very
victims of passionate love ; love steeped in animalism,
it is true, but love still. Balzac was fond of suggesting
a parallel between himself and Napoleon ; and, in truth,
with much else there is this in common between them,
that the great novelist in the realms of imagination,
like the great Emperor in the sphere of politics and
war, looked upon mankind without either love or
hate, pity or contempt, as mere pieces in the game of
life. In its sublimest heights or in its lowest depths,
angelical in purity or bestial in concupiscence, human
nature is to Balzac merely a subject, and, in another
sense from that of Terence, he thinks nothing that
appertains to it foreign from him. But he denies,
with earnest indignation, as a calumny, the assertion
that his characters are mere inventions. They are
real men and women, he maintains, drawn from the
life ; such as one elbows every day in our decrepit
civilization.^
Not, indeed, that his work was a mere vulgar tran-
script from the world around him. He claimed for it a
merit beyond that of the professed historian as being
more truthful. "J'ai mieux fait que I'historien : je
suis plus libre." ^ Balzac is a realist, if you will ; but
a realist in quite another sense from that in which the
epithet applies to certain writers of the present day,
1 See Madame Surviile's Notice Biographique prefixed to his corre-
spondence. (Etivres, vol. xxiv. p. Ixv.
2 Avant-Propos : CEtivres, vol. i. p. lo.
138 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
who seek in his great name a sanction for their coarse
studies from the shambles and latrines of human
nature. There is as much difference between his
work and — let us say — M. Zola's, as there is between
a portrait by Holbein or Titian and a cheap photo-
graph. The one is a mere lifeless imitation ; in the
other, beneath the external lineaments, the hand of
the artist has " divinely found " the man. Balzac is
immeasurably removed from the naturalism of which
I speak — a naturalism which is the very contrary of
the natural, because even when materially true it is
artistically false. "Art," as Balzac himself says, "is
idealized creation." The ideal is the highest truth.
Gozlan relates a conversation between him and the
famous detective Vidocq, which it may be worth while
to quote, because it brings out forcibly what I am
here insisting upon.
Vidocq had observed, " You are in error, M. de
Balzac, in relating stories of another world, when the
real (la rdalitS) is there, before your eyes, close to your
ears, under your hand."
" Ah, you believe in the real," Balzac replies.
** You are charming. I should not have thought you
so 7iaif. The real ! Tell me something about it, for
you have just returned from an expedition into that
fine country. But come now, it is we artists who
create the real.''
"No, M. de Balzac."
"Yes, M. Vidocq. Now look at this fine Mon-
treuil peach. That is the real. What you would call
real grows wild in the woods, upon a wild stock.
[iv.] General Conceptions 139
Well, it is absolutely worthless, that wild peach of
yours, small, sour, bitter, uneatable. Now look at the
real peach, which I hold in my hand, as a hundred
years of cultivation have made it, with cuttings to
right and left, transplantlngs into dry or light soil, and
due graftings ; this peach, as one eats it, perfuming
the mouth and the heart, this exquisite peach is our
creation, and it is the only real peach. Just so it is
with me. I obtain the real in my novels, as Mon-
treuil obtains it in peaches. 'Je suis jardinier en
livres.'"^
The metaphor may be carried further. Balzac
is not a gardener devoted to the production of any
one species of fruit or flower. It is not only men, but
man, that he seeks to present ; not isolated types, but
a society. His garden is a microcosm. He aspired
to the name of historian, and he knew well that
history is a science. It is a profound observation of
Aristotle that " he who really wishes to be master of
his especial craft, and to grasp it in its entirety, must
work his own way up to the highest general concep-
tions, and, in so far as they admit of determinate
knowledge, make himself master of them, since it is
with general conceptions that science is concerned."
Balzac, probably, had never heard of this canon of the
Stagirite, but he had fully appropriated and laid to
heart the truth which it contains. *' II a saisi la
verite," M. Taine remarks, "parcequ'il a saisi les
ensembles ; sa puissance systematique a donne a ses
peintures I'unite avec la force ; avec I'interet la
1 Balzac Chez Lui, p. 215.
140 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
fidelite." There can be no question that the object to
which his vast and varied powers were unswervingly
appHed, the object to which his life was given, was to
make his Comedie Humaine what, according to Cicero,
comedy ought to be : " imitationem vitse : speculum
consuetudinis ; imaginem veritatis."
And if from Balzac we turn to his contemporaries,
there is a consensus of the weightiest testimony
that the Comedie Htmiaine does in truth possess this
character. A great cloud of witnesses might be cited
in corroboration of Balzac's testimony as to the moral
and spiritual characteristics of his age. But enough
has been said, I think, to justify the conclusion that he
is the witness of truth — that in his Coinddie Humaine
we have, as George Sand sorrowfully confesses, " the
hard and sad reality of contemporary men and
things."
(VII)
Balzac's conception of his work included, however,
more than the delineation of the social and moral
phenomena of his age : more, too, than the exhibition
of the ideas and passions expressed in those phenomena.
Th^ophile Gautier has called him " the Dante of the
Co7nSdie Httmaine ;" and so he is, in the fullest sense
of the phrase. The great Florentine poet is for us
not only the exponent of the theology, philosophy,
morality, politics, of the men of his generation, initiat-
ing us into the heart of their mystery, and unravelling
[iv.] Social Pathology 141
for us the riddle of their lives ; he is also their judge,
giving sentence upon persons and events according to
his reading of the eternal and unchanging law which
ever rules in human affairs, and which carries with it
its own penal sanctions. So Balzac aspired to do more
than to paint the types and conditions of nineteenth-
century civilization, and to seize the meaning hidden
in the immense assemblage of figures, of passions, of
events. " Enfin," he writes, " apres avoir cherche, je
ne dis pas trouve, cette raison, ce moteur social, ne
fallait-il pas mediter sur les principes naturels et voir
en quoi les societes s'^cartent ou se rapprochent
de la regie eternelle du vrai, du beau ? " ^ A task
of might truly, but the fitting complement of his
design. Let us briefly see after what manner he has
executed it.
And here let me note, in passing, a strange
misapprehension into which many of his critics
have fallen ; among them, one of the most con-
siderable, Taine. Balzac, as Taine judges, finds
passions and interests the motive principles of the
world. He finds society a conflict of self-seeking,
where force, guided by craft, is triumphant ; where
passion pierces silently and violently the dykes
opposed to it ; where the received morality consists
in the apparent respect for conventionalities and the
law.^ This is undoubtedly true ; but it is not the
whole truth. Balzac does not recognize this as the
normal condition of human society ; on the contrary,
^ Avant-Propos : CEiivres, vol. i. p. 6.
^ Noiiveaiix Essais, p. 155.
142 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
he regards it as an abnormal condition. He holds
the world to be "out of joint;" sick of a malady
which he defines as egoism ; and his ComSdie Humaine
may be truly described as a vast disquisition upon the
pathology of this malady, an exhibition of it, as he
observes, " in its thousand forms." He finds it at
the very root of the public order of France, and
accounts it the enduring cause of his country's dis-
asters. '' Le moi kumain," he says, " is the only thing
the Revolution has left us," It is a favourite doctrine
with him that every animal has its dominant instinct,
and that the dominant instinct of a man is the spirit
of the family.^ Every country, he holds, which does
not take as its base the patria potestas is without
assured existence. And in France, he judges, the
family is extinct ; the Revolution dealt it a fatal blow.
" En coupant la tete a Louis XVI. la Revolution a
coup6 la tete a tous les peres de famille. II n'y
a plus de famille aujourd'hui ; il n'y a plus que des
individus. En proclamant I'^galite des droits a la
succession paternelle, ils ont tue I'esprit de famille :
ils ont cree le fisc." And he adds that the question
lies between two systems : " Ou constituer I'Etat par
la famille ou le constituer par I'interet personnel ; la
democratic ou I'aristocratie ; la discussion ou i'obeis-
sance ; le Catholicisme ou 1' indifference religieuse ;
voila la question en pen de mots." ^ It is into the
mouth of the Due de Chaulieu, a Minister of State
whom he gives to Louis XVIII., that Balzac puts
1 Mimoires de Deux Jeunes MarUes : CEuvres, vol. i. p. 175.
2 Ibid.
[iv.] Uniformity or Gradation ? 1 43
these words ; but there can be no doubt that they
represent his own opinions. They are, of course, in
direct opposition to those much-vaunted " principles
of '89," which, as expressed in the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, rest upon the proposition that
" men are born and remain free, and equal in rights."
Balzac finds that, as a matter of fact, men are not
born in the freedom and equality of rights of a
wholly visionary state of nature, but in the de-
pendence and inequality which are main notes of
civil society in all its forms, from the most simple
to the most complex. And he holds, as a matter of
theory, that not dull and impossible uniformity, but
well-ordered gradation is the true conception of the
political edifice. For him, in the words which Shake-
speare puts into the mouth of the wisest of the Greeks,
it is '• degree," which is " the ladder of all high
designs."
" Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark ! what discord follows : each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe.
Force should be right, or rather right and wrong.
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
This chaos when degree is suffocate
Follows the choking."
But Balzac was no prophet of the past ; he was
not of those who " mistook remembrances for hopes ; "
who supposed that the tide of human affairs could
be rolled back ; that the rdgime of the eighteenth
century could be revived in the nineteenth. Whether,
144 ^ French Shakespeare [iv.]
indeed, he had any but the most superficial acquaint-
ance with the course of French history during the two
hundred years which preceded the great Revolution,
I think very doubtful. I find in his pages no adequate
appreciation of the Csesarism which, from the destruc-
tion of the Catholic League at Ivry, pursued its
monstrous course, crushing out one after another the
old liberties of France, reducing her nobles from
the monarch's peers to his titled lacqueys, and the
spiritualty from an independent order — dear to the
people for a thousand years as the champion of their
rights — to an odious instrument of civil tyranny ; in
a word, over-weighting with absolutism the social
fabric, while the new philosophy was undermining its
very foundations. Like Napoleon, Balzac would seem
to have had little true knowledge of the past, but a
supreme eye for the present. He discerned clearly
enough that one of the most hopeless elements in the
political situation of his country was the absolute in-
capacity of the old noblesse, who, from 1815 to 1830,
fully vindicated the great Emperor's judgment of
them, that they were capable of committing any betise.
On the other hand, he had the smallest respect for
the parody of English party government — itself the
accident of an accident — which it was attempted to
establish in France. He had an entire disbelief in
the efficacy of constitutional nostrums in a country
destitute of the most rudimentary conceptions of civil
and religious liberty ; a country where, as Lamennais
learnt by bitter experience, '* personne presque ne
comprend, personne ne veut reellement la liberte;
[iv.J Something of Prophetic Strain 145
tous aspirant a la tyrannic et le disent hautement et
en sont fiers." He had read the lesson, written in
characters of blood and fire still freshly legible in his
youth, that the pseudo- Liberalism of " the principles
of '89" issues in the most odious despotism. But
he knew well, that " the Revolution is implanted in
the soil,^ written in the laws, living in the popular
mind of France." Still its virus, as he judged, would,
with more or fewer paroxysms, wear itself out.
Sooner or later, he held, the public order must be
reconstituted. " L'avenir, c'est I'homme social." ** The
great man who will save us from the shipwreck to
which we are hastening" — it is M. Benassis, the
M6decin de campagnc, who Is the speaker — " will no
doubt avail himself of individualism to remake the
nation ; but, pending that regeneration, we are in the
age of material interests and Positivism. Woe to
the country so constituted ! " These were Balzac's
political views, and the course of events since his
1 " ' Vous avez mis le doigt sur la grande plaie de la France,' dit le
juge de paix. ' La cause du mal git dans le titre des Successions du
Code civil, qui ordonne le partage dgal des biens. La est le plon dont le
jeu perpctuel dmiette le territoire, individualise les fortunes en leur otant
une stability ndcessaire, et qui decomposant sans recomposer jamais,
finira par tuer la France. La Revolution frangaise a emis un virus
destructif auquel les journdes de juillet viennent de communiquer une
activity nouvelle. Ce principe morbifique est I'accession du paysan k la
propridtd.' " — Le Cure de Village: CEuvres, xiv. p. 177. And in another
page he writes : " L'Angleterre doit son existence a la loi quasi fdodale
qui attribue les terres et I'habitation de la famille aux ainds. Avec le
morcellement de la propridtd I'Angleterre n'existerait ddjk plus. La
haute propridtd, les lords, y gouvement le mdcanisme social. Au lieu
de faire la guerre aux capacitds, de les annuller, de les mdconnaitre,
I'aristocratie anglaise les cherche, les recompense, et se les assimile con-
stamment." — Memoires de Deux Jeunes Mariees: CEuvres, vol. i. p. 182.
L
146 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
death in 1850 has gone far to justify them.^ Is there
any more dreary page in the world's annals than that
whereon is written the history of France during those
years ? I do not speak merely of loss of men and
territory, of shameful humiliations and disastrous
spoliations, but of far more deadly evils ; of the
complete dissolution of the bonds of thought, of that
extinction of public spirit, which is the moral death
of a nation, of the ostracism of the best from the
government, while hungry demagogues, skilfully
trading upon popular passions, rise from communistic
cabarets to the seats of princes. Nor can the future
be doubtful. The bourgeoisie has been weighed in
the balances, and found wanting. Its kingdom is
numbered and finished, and shall be taken from it by
the proletariat.
Balzac, then, was a Monarchist.^ He also pro-
fessed himself a Catholic. " I write," he tells us in
1 The following words might pass for a prophecy : " Nous fabriquons
des propridtaires mendiants chez le peuple, des demi-savants chez les
petits bourgeois, et Chacun chez sot, chactai pour sot, qui avait fait son
effet dans les classes dlevees en juillet de cette annde (1830), aura bientot
gangren^ les classes moyennes. Un proletariat deshabitue de senti-
ments, sans autre dieu que I'envie, sans autre fanatisme que le d(fsespoir
de la faim, sans foi ni croyance, s'avancera et mettera le pied sur le
coeur du pays. L'ctranger, grandi sous la loi monarchique, nous trouvera
sans roi avec la royautd, sans lois avec la Idgalitd, sans proprietaires avec
la propriety, sans gouvernment avec I't^lection, sans force avec le libre
arbitre, sans bonheur avec I'egalitd." — Le Cure de Village : QLuvres,
xiv. p. 180.
2 " J'appartiens au petit nombre de ceux qui veulent resister, h. ce
qu'on nomme le peuple, dans son intdrct bien compris. II ne s'agit plus
ni de droits feodaux, comme on le dit aux niais, ni de gentilhommerie ; il
s'agit de I'Etat, il s'agit de la vie de la France." — Memoires de Deux
Jeunes Marines : Q£uvrcs, vol. i. p. 175.
[iv.J Religion and Government 147
his Introduction, " in the Hght of two eternal truths, —
Religion and Monarchy : the two needs of France,
which contemporary events proclaim, and towards
which every writer of sound sense ought to try to
bring back our country." Christianity he holds to be
"a complete system of repression of the depraved
tendencies of man, and the greatest element of social
order ; " ^ and of Christianity he finds Catholicism the
only expression worth considering : for he agrees
with Comte,^ that Protestantism in all its forms is
merely Rationalism in different stages of development,
its logical issue being Deism, and, in its most extreme
phase, systematic Atheism. The doctrine of a life
beyond the grave he regards not merely as a
supreme consolation, but also as an incomparable
instrument of government. In religion he discerns
the sole power which sanctions social laws.^ Hence
it is that he accounts as the worst foes of his country
the doctrinaires who, for the last century, have laboured
with the violence of energumens to banish God from
the public order, and who have made it the first
principle of their system to withdraw the people from
the influence of the Church. " Toute association," he
writes, " ne peut-elle vivre que par le sentiment
religieux, le seul qui dompte les rebellions de I'esprit,
les calculs de I'ambition, et les avidites de tout genre." ^
" Every moral reformation not supported by a great
^ Avant-Propos : CEuvres, vol. i. p. 7.
^ See a well-known passage of the Cours de Philosophie Positive,
vol. V. p. 540.
^ Le Mddecin de Campagne : CEuvrcs, vol. xiv. p. 491.
* UEnvers de VHistoire Contemporaine : CEuvres, vol. xii. p. 679.
148 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
religious sentiment, and pursued within the fold of
the Church, rests upon a foundation of sand. All the
religious observances, so minute and so little under-
stood, which Catholicism ordains, are so many dykes
necessary to hold back the tempests of evil within." ^
Hence, "teaching, or rather education by religious
bodies, is the great principle of national existence ;
the sole means of diminishing the sum of evil, and of
Increasing the sum of good in any society. Thought
— le principe des maux et des biens — can be prepared,
subdued, directed, only by religion." ^
It would, however, be a great error to suppose
that Balzac sees in religion merely an instrument of
Government ; in the altar only an aid to police. It
is clear that the Catholic Church presented herself
to him as the most considerable fact in the world's
history. Her incommunicable attributes of unity,
sanctity, universality ; the perfection of the hier-
archical organization which centres round and culmi-
nates in the Apostolic throne ; the sublimity of her
ritual, "affecting the imagination through the senses,
and the emotions through the imagination ; " the
marvellous adaptation of her doctrines to the needs
of human nature ; ^ her safeguards for innocence, her
^ La Miise du DeparUtnent: CEuvres, vol. vi. p. 542.
2 Avant-Propos : CEuvres, vol. i. 7.
^ " Depuis le fetichisme informe des sauvages jusqu'aux gracieuses
inventions de la Gr^ce jusqu'aux profondes et ingdnieuses doctrines de
I'Egypte et des Indes, traduites par des cultes riants ou terribles, il y a
une conviction dans I'homme, celle de sa chute, de son pcchd, d'oii vient
partout I'idde des sacrifices et du rachat. . . . Tout est rachetable ; le
catholicisme est dans cette parole : de Ik ses adorables sacraments, qui
aident au triomphe de la grdce et soutiennent le pdcheur." — Le Cure de
Village : QLuvres, vol. xiv. p. 116.
[iv.] The Great Republic of Souls 149
remedies for sin, the celestial light and fragrance
which she diffuses around her as she moves through
the centuries with majestic steps that tell of her divine
origin, fascinate and overcome him. She is, for him,
" la grande republique des ames ; la seule Eglise qui
a mis I'humanite dans sa voie ; " ^ and it is manifest,
from many passages, both in his novels and in his
correspondence, that he had profoundly studied her
system and her doctrines. Thus, he writes, in one
place : " II n'y a que ceux qui voient Dieu qui I'aiment.
Mais d'ailleurs en quoi se fondent les croyances
religieuses ? Sur le sentiment de I'infini qui est en
nous, qui nous prouve une autre nature, qui nous
mene par une deduction severe a la religion, a
I'espoir."^ It would be difficult to state the case
better. The whole doctrine of Pascal is there in
germ.
Still it seems neither temerarious nor uncharitable
to assert that Balzac's apprehension of Catholicism
was rather notional than real. It attracts, it subdues
him as a consummate work of art, as a profound
system of policy, as a vast engine of moral power.
But this is very different from the spiritual discern-
ment, the personal apprehension of religious faith.
The Comedie Htcmaine itself, not to go further, sup-
plies only too strong evidence upon this matter. A
plausible answer might, indeed, be made to the charge
of immorality sometimes brought against it ; a charge
much like that urged by Rousseau against Moliere's
* Le Cjiri de Village : CEuvres, vol. xiv. p. 185.
2 Corresp07idence : (Envres, vol. xxiv. p. 251.
150 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
plays, of being "una 6cole de vices et de mauvais
mceurs." It is a saying as true as it is hackneyed,
that a nice man is a man of nasty ideas. And Jean-
Jacques, the purist, has probably done more to debauch
the popular mind of France than all the French play-
wrights put together ; nay, than any of his fellow-
leaders in that "progressive movement," one main
feature of which has ever been uncompromising
opposition to the virtue of purity. The ComMie
Humaine, like the plays of Moliere, is a picture of the
manners of the age ; and if Balzac's picture is worse
than Moliere's, it is because Balzac's age was worse
than Moliere's. In the seventeenth century, we find
religion, with its sacred sanctions, dominating the public
order: society, as a whole, believed, whatever the short-
comings of individual practice. I n the nineteenth, in the
twentieth century, it is otherwise. Then, as Sainte-
Beuve has happily said, " le fond etait de foi ; " now, " le
fond est de doute." But it is quite certain that Balzac
lends no charms to vice, and supplies no irritants to
sensual passion. Indeed, this seems to be pretty
generally allowed by his censors. The gist of the
complaint against him is, not that he is the minister
of impurity — which would be a small offence, or no
offence at all, in the eyes of some of his severest
judges — but that he presents a terrible picture of
human nature, and preaches a despairing pessimism.
To this his answer is, in effect, that of Martin, in
Candide : " C'est que j'ai vecu." He urges that he
is "as moral as experience," — and that he did not
write "virginibus puerisque," but for men. And it
[iv.] The Great Book, of Contemporary Life 1 5 1
may be forcibly contended that it was well to put a
picture of man and society, in its unvarnished truth,
before an age which is summoned to embrace the
religion of humanity. In such an age, deafened with
assertions of " the dignity of man as a rational being,
apart from theological determinations," Balzac holds
up the mirror to nature, and exhibits no abstractions,
no individua vaga, but the men and women of the
concrete world, in all their littleness, their turpitude,
their radical corruption. It is the loudest sermon De
Confemphc Mimdi ever preached, and its great force
lies in this — that the preacher is not declaiming from
some worm-eaten homily, but is passionlessly unfolding
the great book of contemporary life. Still it is difficult
to suppose that any man who had personally felt the
power of a religion, the main notes of which are purity
and charity, could have written the ComMie Huinaijie.
To depict good and evil without predilection or re-
pugnance or moral end, to behold humanity as it lies
in its misery, naked and wounded and full of sores,
and to survey it scientifically, probing its wounds,
sounding its ulcers, removing every shred of rag or
fragment of plaister which hides its foulness and dis-
honour, coldly and unmoved, with no tear of pity, no
word of compassion — this would be impossible for
such a man, for his position is not that of a mere
spectator in the world : he has a task to accomplish in
it as a fellow-worker with the Great Physician.
The truth would seem to be that, in Balzac, for
religious faith we find sentimentality, and in this he
is the true exponent of his age. It is observed by
152 A French Shakespeare [iv.]
Heine, with his usual keen incisiveness, in one of
his letters to Lewald, " The French cannot be false
to their education. They are all more or less
materialists, according as they have received, for a
longer or shorter term, the education based upon
the materialistic philosophy which is imparted in
France. . . . Sentimentality is a product of mate-
rialism. The materialist carries in his soul the
vague consciousness that all in this world is not
matter. It is of no use for his limited understanding
to show him the material character of everything ;
his soul instinctively rises up in rebellion. He is
from time to time tormented by the necessity of
recognizing in things a purely spiritual origin, and
these desires, these vague wants, produce the vague
effect which we call sentimentality. Sentimentality
is the despair of matter, which, not being able to
suffice for itself, dreams with undecided and undefined
longing of a better sphere." The true account of
Balzac would appear to be indicated in these words,
which might be strikingly illustrated by the theories
of the nature of man and of the unseen world broached
by him from time to time. Thus, in the Peau de
Chagrin thought is said to be a material form like
vapour, a fluid mass of which man directs the pro-
jection at pleasure ; and in it, as we read in Cesar,
Birotteau, electricity plays a great part. Elsewhere
he speaks of ideas as completely organized beings
which live in the invisible world and influence our
destinies, and he refers miracles to animal magnetism.
At one time he was greatly fascinated by Swedenborg,
[iv.] A Chaos of Opinions 153
and S^raphita is little more than an exposition of
certain doctrines borrowed from that great mystic. At
another he appears to have been under the influence
of a kind of Pantheism which mingles all the exist-
ences and phenomena of nature in a vague and con-
fused unity, and makes an end of all personality,
human and divine. And in his Introduction he gives
a sketch of what may be called, in Diderot's phrase,
" a system of Platonico - Pythagorico - Peripatetico -
Paracelsico Christianity," essaying to effect a com-
promise between the naturalists and the mystics,
between the spirit of Buffon and the spirit of St.
Martin.
I am far from denying that in these speculations
this great genius may have been dimly prescient of
that idealistic Monism to which a widely influential
school of European thought has, of late years, been
slowly but surely tending. But I am here concerned
with them as showing how deeply he had drunk
into the spirit of the age. As the Divine Comedy
is informed by the philosophy of the medieval school,
so majestic in its universal congruity, so the Comddie
Huinaine reflects the chaos of opinions distracting the
times in which it was written. In this, as in other
respects, it is the true expression of the society in
which its author lived. Mere fragment as it is of his
vast design, it fulfils his purpose and possesses the
character which he claimed for it. It is a great
treasure-house of documents, which no student of
the history of our age can afford to neglect, upon a
phase of modern civilization. The chief note of that
154 ^ French Shakespeare [iv.]
civilization, Heine has pointed out, is the absence from
it of faith ; and if there is any lesson more emphatically
taught than another by the history of man it is this —
that faith of some sort, be it religious, political, or
philosophical, is as necessary to his moral being as air
to his physical organism ; a faith shared by others,
and forming a spiritual atmosphere. It was the work
of the eighteenth century to dry up the sources of
faith alike in its divine and human expressions. The
French Revolution, the inevitable result of Bourbon
Csesarism and the sensualistic philosophy, was the
outward visible sign of the overthrow of the principles
upon which the old order had rested. It was then
that Napoleon arose to proclaim, amid the roar of his
victorious cannon, the new gospel that force was the
measure of truth, success the test of right, and
personal interest the law of action. The teaching
was greedily drunk in by the generation into which
Balzac was born. And we have the outcome of it
in the civilization which found in him "its most
original, most appropriate, and most penetrating
historian." ^
^ SU. Beuve : Causeries du Limdi, vol. ii. p. 443.
V
A NINETEENTH-CENTURY
SAVONAROLA
(I)
Felicite de Lamennais is unquestionably among the
great names of the last century. Perhaps the time
has now come when it is possible fairly to estimate him
and his work. It is worth while to attempt to do
this, for in him we see more fully and clearly than in
any one else, the working of the spiritual forces of his
times : more fully and clearly than in De Maistre, or
Bonald, or Chateaubriand, or Comte — all true re-
presentatives and exponents of the Zeitgeist. In
Lamennais, Mr. Gibson well observes, "a severe and
ruthless logic, a by no means scanty fund of cynicism,
and a somewhat pronounced development of the
critical faculty, were strangely mingled with a wild
and stormy temperament : a temperament in which
a daring persistent energy was often rudely broken
down by uncouth, almost incomprehensible attacks of
exaggerated melancholy, explaining at once the value
and the deep pathos of his life."^ The pathos of
^ The Abbe de Lamennais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in
France, by the Hon. W. Gibson, p. 2.
156 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
Lamennais' life is evident enough. The value is not
so evident. What I propose to do is, first, briefly to
sketch his career, and then to try to indicate its real
significance.
(11)
F61icit6 de Lamennais was born on June 19, 1782,
at St. Malo, in the house which is now No. 3, Rue
St. Vincent. The family name was really Robert ;
and it was his father, Pierre-Louis Robert, a con-
siderable shipowner, who added to it the designation
** de la Mennais " — which is a Breton word meaning
mountain — on being ennobled by Louis XVI. in 1788.
That honour was bestowed at the request of the
Estates of Brittany, in recognition of Pierre- Louis's
many public-spirited acts, and, especially, of his feed-
ing the poor of St. Malo at his own expense during a
famine. Felicity — the name was commonly abbreviated
among his intimates into Feli — was the fourth of six
children, and was from his birth puny and fragile.
" Of an extraordinary and feverish vivacity," writes
Mr. Gibson, " resulting from a nervous excitable tem-
perament, he was in childhood domineering, irritable,
and subject to fits of anger, which very often ended
by fainting. He kept aloof from other children and
rarely joined their games ; a vague feeling of supe-
riority seemed to incline him to solitude." Truly,
"the child is father of the man." When he was
seven years old he lost his mother, and in after-life
he used to say that the only two things he could
[v.] A Strange Child 157
remember about her were her saying her rosary and her
playing on the violin. It is stated by members of his
family that after his mother's death he became still
more sad and reserved ; breaking, however, through
the monotony and gloom of his existence by unex-
pected outbursts of self-assertion. The fever of those
times of Revolution crept into his blood ; and as he
grew into youth and early manhood the licence of
thought and action which characterized the period,
infected his mind and stained his life. But in all that
tract of years religion was also silently working upon
him. Pierre-Louis, though outwardly conforming to
revolutionary anti-Christianity, still adhered in secret
to the Catholic creed, and practised the Catholic
worship. " Had any of his Republican friends been
present on certain days in a small upper room in the
Hotel de la Mennais" — I am quoting from Mr. Gibson's
book — " they would have been somewhat taken aback
by the unexpected picture which would have presented
itself to them. There, in the early hours of the morn-
ing, they would have seen a group of kneeling wor-
shippers, from time to time timorously glancing around
or starting at the slightest movement in the street
below, while in their midst, standing before an impro-
vised altar, a non-juring priest was saying Mass. They
might have noticed one of the sons of the house, T-^an-
Marie, performing the office of server, while his
younger brother, Feli, sat by the door and listened
anxiously for the slightest sound."
In 1804, Felicite's elder brother, Jean, who, from
the first, had given proofs of ardent piety and a strong
158 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
sacerdotal vocation, was ordained priest ; and the
same year Fclicite made his First Communion. He
was then of the age of twenty-two. In 1807 we find
the brothers at a small country house of the family's
in the Breton woods, a few miles from Dinan, called
La Chenaie — The Oaks — afterwards destined to
become no less famous than Port- Royal. Ill-health
had driven the Abbe Jean thither, and the companion-
ship of that pure and saintly soul exercised a powerful
influence over Felicites mind and heart. It was for
him a time of interior strife and combat — so much we
know, although no details of his spiritual troubles
remain to us. He had always been an earnest though
desultory student, and now, more than ever, he sought
relief in books from the overwhelming pressure of
thought. Hitherto, he had been doubtful about his
career in the world. Sometimes he had thought of
engaging in his father's business, sometimes of
emigrating. Now, at last, he appears to have realized
that his true vocation was to write.
(Ill)
It was at this time that the relations between Pope
Pius VII. and Napoleon, which, for many months,
had become more and more strained, began to assume
the character of a decided feud. There are few things
more discreditable in the history of the First Empire
— and that is saying a great deal — than its ecclesiasti-
cal policy. In 1804, Pius VII. had officiated at the
[v.] Napoleon and Pius VII 159
coronation of the Emperor, hoping- thereby to set
the seal to the restoration of the CathoHc worship
in France, and to rivet the claim of the Church to the
support of " the foremost man of all this world : " such
Napoleon then seemed. But the ambition of Bona-
parte, growing with what it fed upon, aimed at nothing
less than dominating the souls as well as the bodies
of men. He now sought, as the historian of the
Gallican Church puts it, " to govern the consciences
of his subjects through the vassalage of the Pope and
the Bishops, while he controlled them physically by the
power of the sword." To compass this end, he formed
the design of reducing the Supreme Pontiff to the posi-
tion of chief imperial Prelate. When First Consul he
had recognized the wisdom of " the immemorial tradi-
tion which had annexed a certain portion of secular
territorial authority to the spiritual headship of Christ-
endom." Nay, at his coronation he had solemnly
guaranteed the rights of the Pope to the patrimony of
St. Peter. But within a year of that event — significant
commentary upon the worth of his promises — imperial
troops seized and occupied the Pontifical port of
Ancona ; and in reply to the Pope's remonstrances,
the Emperor informed him, in effect, that if he desired
to retain, in any sense, his temporal authority, he could
only do so by owning the suzerainty of France. The
friends of France must be his friends ; the enemies of
France must be his enemies ; he must make common
cause with the policy of France, and abet the aggres-
sions of France upon the rights and liberties of the
other nations of the world. The Emperor had not
i6o A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
divined the patient heroism concealed beneath " the
inflexible sweetness " of Pius VII. The Pope's reply-
to his outrageous demand was a izon possumus. The
Emperor rejoined by sending a division of the French
army to occupy Rome, and to plant a battery of cannon
before the Ouirinal, where the Pontiff was residing.
Shortly afterwards Pius VII. was conveyed to Savona,
a small town in North Italy, and was there confined
and strictly guarded, while the members of the Sacred
College resident in Rome were removed to Paris.
The Pope, following the example of his predecessors
in the like cases, betook himself to his spiritual
weapons. As the French sees fell vacant, he refused
to institute to them the successors nominated by the
Emperor.
Thus was the contest between military despotism
and the spiritual power formally declared. Napoleon
had little dreamt of the opposition which he experi-
enced from the Pope, and which unquestionably con-
tributed to his eventual downfall. He resorted to
threats, and declared that " following the discipline of
earlier ages," his Bishops should dispense with the
Papal bulls of institution. But Pius VII. remained
steadfast in his resolve to abstain from all Pontifical
acts in respect of the Church in France until his
personal independence and freedom of action were
restored to him. And soon twenty-seven French
sees were vacant in consequence of his persistence in
his purpose. It was at this moment that Felicite de
Lamennais began to write. Devout Catholics in
France — the ten thousand men who had not bowed
[v.] No Uncertain Sound i6i
the knee to the image of Baal — were ardent in their
sympathy with the Pontiff. And nowhere was the
ardour greater than in the saintly soul of Jean de
Lamennais. He it was who supplied the materials
for Felicite's first book, published in 1808 — Rdflexions
sttr VEtat de VEglise en France: a work exhibiting
but scanty promise of the literary power which the
author was soon to display, but giving, with no uncer-
tain sound, the same note of opposition to State control
of religion which his later writings sent as a trumpet-
blast throughout Europe. It was seized by the
imperial police, and the two brothers proceeded to the
composition of another treatise on the question of
the institution of Bishops, then so keenly debated,
strenuously upholding, of course, the Papal rights.
The police again intervened and prevented its publica-
tion, nor did it appear until Napoleon's retirement to
Elba. During the Hundred Days, Felicite withdrew
to London, where he made the acquaintance of a
refugee priest, the Abbe Carron, whose sympathetic
sanctity largely influenced his future life. In 1809 he
had received minor orders, not without grave mis-
givings. His friends — especially the Abbe Carron,
now his spiritual director — urged him to proceed to
the irrevocable step of the priesthood. He hesitated,
and became more and more timid as the time for
actual decision drew near. But his advisers pressed
him more and more ; his brother, the Abbe Jean,
alone holding back until the last, no doubt from
secret misgivings as to his vocation. At the begin-
ning of 181 6 he was made sub-deacon. On March 9,
1 62 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.*]
1816, he was ordained priest. A short time before
his ordination he wrote to his sister, Madame Blaize :
" I certainly have not followed my own inclination in
deciding upon an ecclesiastical career." In after-times
he was wont to affirm that at his first Mass, as he held
the newly consecrated Host in his trembling hands, he
heard a voice that distinctly said to him : " I call upon
you to carry My cross ; nothing but the cross. . . .
Remember ! "
(IV)
The Abbe Felicite de Lamennais, as he was now,
** appears to have settled down to his normal occupa-
tions, and to have reconciled himself by degrees to his
new position." Public affairs interested him in the
highest degree, especially on their ecclesiastical side.
The restoration of the Bourbon monarchy he saw with
joy. He had hated the Emperor as an incarnation of
the Revolution. But he soon discovered that the
legitimate King followed the same route in Church
policy as the popular Caesar, though indeed haud
passibus cequis. The Concordat of 1801 remained in
force. And ''the idea of a State Church, which had
seemed almost respectable as part of a scheme for
a world-wide Empire, became contemptible when it
reduced religion and its ministers to the position of
mere salaried agents of a monarchy, owing its very
existence to the intervention of foreign Powers." It
was then that Felicite set himself to the composition
[v.] The Essay on Indifference 163
of the Essay on Indifference, which at once gave him
a European reputation. The keynote of the book is
struck in the fine passage at the beginning : —
" Convinced, in spite of itself, of the necessity of connecting
heaven with earth and man with his Creator, the statecraft
of to-day enters the sanctuary and brings forth from it the
Supreme Being who is adored there. It clothes Him in rags
of purple, puts a reed into His hand, on His head a crown of
thorns, and it shows Him to the people, saying : ' Behold
your God ! ' Can it be wondered at that religion, thus
humiliated and dishonoured, is received with indifference ?
After eighteen hundred years of fighting and of triumphs,
Christianity at length meets with the same fate as its Founder.
Summoned, so to speak, not before a proconsul, but before
the human race, the question is put to it, Art thou a king?
Is it true, as these accuse thee, that thou pretendest to rule
over us ? Then comes the answer : It is you who have said
it : / am a king. I reign over minds by enlightening them ;
and over hearts by guiding their movements, and even their
very desires ; I reign over society by the good that I have
done. The world was buried in the darkness of error : I came
to bring truth to it. Hence my mission : he who loves the triith,
hears me. But this saying has already ceased to have a
meaning to perverted reason ; and must be explained to it.
What is truth ? asks the stupid, absent-minded judge ; and
without waiting for an answer, he goes out, declares that he
finds no fault in the accused, and washing his hands, gives
religion over to the multitude, to become, first their plaything,
and then their victim."
The theme of the first volume — originally published
by itself — is the necessity of religion as a social
factor, and the absurdity of the prevailing indifference.
It was a declaration of war against the dominant
Gallicanism. Of the philosophic theory set forth in
164 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
the subsequent volumes I shall say a word hereafter.
Here I may remark that the work was well received
by the Papal theologians, and that on visiting Rome,
in the summer of 1824, its author was warmly
welcomed by Pope Leo XII. Indeed, it seems clearly
established that the Pontiff designed to raise him to
the Cardinalate, and would have done so but for the
opposition of the French Government.
Felicite de Lamennais was now forty years of age,
and the bent of his mind was profoundly and ardently
Catholic. It was at this time that he brought out his
translation of the Imitation of Christ — perhaps the
best rendering into any modern language of that
incomparable treatise — adding to each of the chapters
reflections of his own, characterized by extreme beauty
and delicacy of thought, and by profound religious
feeling. In 1826 he published La Religion consideree
dans ses Rapp07'ts avec VOrdre politiqtie et social^ in
which he attacks the Gallican position in uncom-
promising terms, and sets forth what would now be
called extremely Ultramontane views. The Govern-
ment decided upon prosecuting the author as impugning
the Constitution. He was accused of " effacing the
boundaries which separate spiritual from secular
authority, of proclaiming the supremacy and infallibility
of the Pope, and of recognizing his despotic power."
The charge was not denied. He was convicted and
sentenced to a fine of thirty-six francs. This trial,
with its lame and impotent conclusion, was, of course,
a moral victory for Lamennais. But the Government
of Charles X. continued to pursue the Napoleonic
[v.] "The Gallican Liberties" 165
policy towards the Church. That policy was, in fact,
of Bourbon origin. Its staunchest defender had been
Louis XIV., who had, indeed, stereotyped it — so to
speak — in the famous Four Articles which professed
to embody " The Gallican Liberties."
I wonder how many people accounted educated —
how many, for example, of those who will peruse these
pages — have an accurate conception of what ** The
Gallican Liberties " really are. I feel sure the number
is not so great as to make a very brief exposition
of them superfluous. " The Gallican Liberties," then,
were represented as the ancient prerogatives of the
National Church of France {nszis canonum, observantia
juris antiqtit) ; a body of customs, privileges, and
immunities, limiting the exercise of the Pontifical
jurisdiction in that country. And, as I have just
observed, they are supposed to be summed up in the
Four Articles adopted by an Assembly of the French
clergy in 1682 at the instance of Louis XIV., then at
variance with Pope Innocent XL, in consequence of
his arbitrary extension to all the dioceses in his king-
dom of the right called Regalia, which he possessed
only in some of them — the right, that is, of enjoying
the revenues and patronage of a vacant see. The
First of the Four iVrticles denies that kings and princes
are subject to any ecclesiastical power with regard to
their temporal government. The Second declares the
full force and perpetual obligation of the third and
fourth sessions of the Council of Constance, which
Roman theologians hold to apply in their fulness only
to the particular set of circumstances which called them
1 66 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
forth ; in other words, this article declares the sub-
ordination of the Pope to a General Council, and made
it easy for the Bishops of France, at the instigation of
the Government, whose creatures they were, to defy
Papal authority. The Third asserts the inviolability
of the ancient rules, customs, and institutions of the
Church and Realm of France ; a vague assertion,
serving in practice to support any opposition to Papal
authority which the secular power might see fit to
make. The Fourth affirms that the Pope's judgment
in matters of faith is not irreformable unless confirmed
by the consent of the Church ; a proposition the
reverse of which has in our own days been laid
down by the Vatican Council. As a matter of fact,
these " Gallican Liberties " were practically Gallican
servitudes. " The Gallican principle," as Cardinal
Newman accurately puts it, "is the vindication of
the Church, not into independence, but into State
patronage. The liberties of the Gallican Church are
its establishment — its becoming, in Scripture phrase,
the servant of men. . . . They were aimed at the
assistance afforded to religion by an external power
against the pressure of the temporal power within." ^
Fenelon expressed himself with regard to them even
more strongly. "In practice," he writes, •* the King
of France is more the head of the Church than the
Pope. Liberty towards the Pope, slavery towards
the King. . . . Secular judges go so far as to
examine even those Papal bulls which relate only to
matters of faith." Such is the system which issued in
' Essays Critical afid Historical, vol. i. p. log.
[v.] Sops to Cerberus 167
the tyranny of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy,
and in the fraud of the Organic Articles.
In 1828 appeared two Royal Ordinances, of which
the first deprived the Jesuits of the right of directing
and teaching in colleo^es, and the second limited the
number of clerical seminaries and interfered with their
internal discipline. These were really sops thrown
by the affrighted Government of Charles X. to the
revolutionary Cerberus. It was an attempt, like that
made by our Charles I. in an earlier age, to save the
monarchy by sacrificing the Church ; and it met with
the like ill success. It called forth from Lamennais
one of his most powerful pamphlets : Des progr^s de la
Revolution et de la Guer^x contre V Eglise. Lamennais
was no great admirer of the Society of Jesus, whose
ethos and methods he thought out of date and unsuit-
able to this new age. He declined to regard their
cause as identical with the Catholic cause, but he quite
recognized that the attack upon them in the nineteenth
century, as in the eighteenth, was simply the outcome
of hostility to religion. The cause of the monarch he
altogether separated from the Catholic cause. "To
identify ourselves," he wrote, " with authority in the
form it has assumed under the influence of godless
maxims which free it from every rule and all depend-
ence, would be to lean on that which is falling, on a
thing which henceforward no mortal power can save,
and to alienate the people from religion by sacrificing
to a few men, hopelessly blinded, their holiest rights
and their legitimate future." In this powerful
brochure Lamennais clearly unfolds the conception
1 68 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
now dominating his mind, of the Church as an inde-
pendent spiritual power and the champion of in-
dividual freedom and popular rights. It fell, Mr.
Gibson truly says, ** Hke a thunderbolt on the
ministerial and politico-ecclesiastical world, and made
a great stir throughout Europe and America." One
of its immediate results was the formation of the
Society of St. Peter, a sort of national league for the
diffusion and vindication of Lamennais's teaching. His
brother, the Abbe Jean, took a leading part in its
organization, and was himself elected its Superior
General. Its headquarters were at Malestroit, but its
chief interest centred at La Chenaie, where Felicite
continued to reside. There the *' little dried-up man,
with a thin yellow face, simple in manner, abrupt in
speech," gathered round him a few young men, " intent
on high designs, a thoughtful band," of whom the most
notable were Lacordaire and Gerbet, dominating
them by his strong personality and kindling in them
the fire of his contagious enthusiasm. In 1832 Maurice
de Guerin joined the little community, of which he
has given such a vivid and delightful picture in one of
his letters.
The Revolution of 1830 seemed to Lamennais a
just judgment on the monarchy of Charles X. " The
vanquished," he wrote, " have in every way deserved
their defeat, and that defeat is beyond hope of re-
covery." He did not admire Louis Philippe, on
whose head, he predicted, the crown would weigh
heavily. He would himself have preferred a Republic,
as he frankly declared. However, the time seemed
[v.] "God and Liberty" 169
ripe for further and more definite action in support
of the cause to which he had dedicated himself : the
cause of ecclesiastical and popular liberty ; he believed
the two to be identical. "The strong man," he wrote,
" turns his back on the past, and walks with raised
head towards the future, that he may take his place
therein." "The Future:" it was in October, 1830,
that the journal bearing that title was established.
The Avenir bore for its motto, " God and Liberty."
A large extension of the suffrage, frequent elections,
liberty of speech, teaching, and opinions were de-
manded by it. We may refer to it the foundations of
the movement called " Liberal Catholic" — not, indeed,
very happily; for Lamennais and his friends, while
strong Radicals in politics, were as strong Ultra-
montanes in theology. One of the first results of the
foundation of the Avenir was to bring to the little
band of Mennaisians, as they were beginning to be
termed, a brilliant recruit, Charles de Montalembert.
He threw himself into the new crusade with the same
chivalrous ardour which his ancestors had displayed
in going forth to combat for the Holy Land.
The ecclesiastical policy of Louis Philippe, which
was merely a continuation of the ecclesiastical policy
of Charles X., was, of course, utterly unsatisfactory
to Lamennais and his friends, and was bitterly
attacked by them in the Avenir. An unsuccessful
Government prosecution of that journal served merely
to advertise it. Its fame spread, its circulation ex-
tended, it converted Liberals and Protestants ; the
Catholic Bishops of Ireland, assembled in Council,
170 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
pronounced it to be " a truly Christian publication ; "
its words found an echo in England, Belgium, and
the New World from New Orleans to Boston. La-
mennais became one of the most conspicuous figures
in France. Nay, for a brief time, he was the most
influential man in the Catholic world after the Pope.
In 1 83 1 the Agence Ginerale for the Defence of
Religious Liberty was founded. It speedily grew into
a great political power ; and public opinion inclined
to look with favour upon the alliance advocated by
Lamennais between strong Catholic views and De-
mocracy, between the People and the Pope. But all
at once there arose against him what he calls " a vast
and inexplicable persecution." He had reckoned with-
out the French Episcopate. Appointed practically
by the State, they were, more or less, the servants
of the State. They inclined, as Lamennais bitterly
said, " to forget that there is in the world a person
called the Pope, to whom, since the days of St. Peter,
custom has attributed some authority in the Catholic
Church." They were more or less attached to the
Gallican traditions. They looked with disfavour on
the Democratic movement, which appeared to them —
as it well might — anti-Christian. They were not
in the least disposed to surrender, at Lamennais's
bidding, the pecuniary provision — beggarly as it is —
made for the Church by the Concordat, and to throw
themselves upon Apostolic poverty and freedom.
They began to censure the Avenir in their pastoral
letters. Some of them directly discountenanced its
circulation in their dioceses ; " on the suspicion of
[v.] The Affaires de Rome 171
being concerned in it, professors were deprived of
their chairs, and parish priests of their livings." It
is just vi^hat happened in the Oxford Movement.
The ground was cut away by the Episcopate from
under the feet of the would-be reformers. The
Avenir was discontinued on November 13, 1831,
after having run for thirteen months. Lamennais
eagerly consented to a suggestion of Lacordaire that
the Sovereign Pontiff should be asked to pronounce
upon the question in debate. Montalembert, too,
acquiesced in it, but apparently against his own
judgment. And the three made together their famous
expedition to the Pontifical Court.
(V)
The story of this expedition has been narrated by
Lamennais in the Affaires de Rome — that fascinating
and melancholy book which perhaps reveals him at
his greatest as a master of style — and in letters
written by him at the time and published long years
afterwards. But he must be read with caution. " That
excessive man," a judicious French critic has called
him ; and with reason. Excess is written on his
career from first to last. It seems never to have so
much as occurred to him that the time was singularly
ill-chosen for seeking the Pontifical blessing upon the
principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, as
interpreted by the Revolution then raging throughout
Europe, a movement as threatening to the altar as to the
throne. Gregory XVI. a pious monk and somewhat
172 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
commonplace official, who a year before had been
called to the Chair of St. Peter from a cloister, was
almost entirely in the hands of his advisers. " Men
to whom religion was as indifferent as it was to all the
cabinets of Europe : ambitious, covetous, avaricious,
blind and infatuated as the eunuchs of the Lower
Empire," is Lamennais's account of them. The
picture is certainly drawn in too lurid colours. There
is no reason for believing that Gregory's counsellors
were worse than the generality of ecclesiastical
statesmen, who may not be abnormally pious, but
who are not abnormally depraved. It is, however,
unquestionable that the dominant thought of the
Curia was the maintenance of the existing political
institutions of the Pontifical States. It is certain
that widespread disaffection to the Papal rule was
the result of the measures adopted for that end ;
and that the Government — to quote Mr. Gibson —
"came to be identified in the eyes of the Italians
with the revival of inquisitorial methods, the en-
couragement of informers, and secret trials before
interested tribunals." The tottering temporal power
of the Pope was upheld by the troops of Austria and
France ; and notes from the Governments of those
powers and of Russia, demanding Lamennais's con-
demnation, had preceded him to Rome. What a
moment for requesting the Pontiff to identify himself
with the cause of militant democracy ! Lamennais
had gone to Rome, as he himself expressed it, "to
ask the Pope whether it was a crime to take up arms
for truth and justice." Gregory, at an audience
[v.] Outer Darkness 173
granted after many delays and with much reluctance,
instead of answering this question, offered him snuff
and entertained him with aesthetic small-talk. Lamen-
nais departed sick at heart. Rome, where he had
hoped to find the throne of righteousness, the oracle
of truth, the aegis of liberty, seemed to him " a great
tomb, with nothing but worms and bones inside it."
Or, as he expressed it in another of his too-passionate
metaphors, "the foulest cesspool which has ever
sullied the eyes of men ; the vast drains of the
Tarquins would be too narrow to give passage to so
much uncleanliness." Soon the Encyclical Mirari
Vos dealt him a blow which was his spiritual death.
His greatest love turned to his greatest hate. The
light that was in him became darkness. And how
great was that darkness ! From thence his history
is a blank. He went out of the Catholic Church into
the wilderness alone ; friends and influence left him
■with the faith. For twenty years he lived alone.
And there are few more pathetic scenes in history
than his solitary death, unillumined by a ray of trust
or hope in the religion of which he had written, " It
is my life, because it is the life of humanity."
(VI)
It would take me beyond the limits which I here
propose to myself to inquire how far time has
vindicated, and is vindicating, the truth of Lamennais's
message to the world. Certain it is that the old
174 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
alliance between the Papacy and Legitimism is dead
and gone. Certain it is that the Encyclicals in which
Leo XI I L dealt with the political and social ques-
tions of the age are written in a very different tone
from Gregory XVL's Mirari Vos. But no sensible
man will blame the Court of Rome, sixty years ago,
for not following Lamennais's lead, or, indeed, for
repudiating him. No doubt when Lamennais dis-
cerned in the Catholic Church *' an institution capable
of indefinite expansion and adaptability," when he
judged that her future is bound up not with kings and
aristocracies, but with the people, he judged more
correctly than the Popes and Cardinals who con-
demned him, more correctly than his later self, in his
revolt against that condemnation. From the ideal
heights in which he dwelt, he beheld the land that
was very far off. Those who sat in Moses' seat did
not share that Pisgah vision. Unquestionably the
course of events from the middle of the nineteenth
century has brought the Catholic Church into a posi-
tion very different from that which she occupied in
the days of Pope Gregory and his counsellors. The
anti-Christian sectaries of Italy, who overthrew the
Temporal Power, fondly hoped — in the words of one
of their leaders — " to decapitate the Papacy in Rome."
Quite other has been the effect of their rapine and
sacrilege. The Roman question seemed to Lamen-
nais to constitute an impassable barrier between the
Church and modern democracy. The enemies of the
Church have themselves broken down that barrier.
Stripped of his petty principality, supported by the
[v.] The Life of the Papacy 175
alms of his spiritual children, ruling in the midst even
among his enemies, Pius X., as in the discharge of
his ecumenical mission he reproves the world of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment, exercises a religious
and moral sway for a parallel to which we must go
back to 'the Middle Ages. The principle for which
Lamennais fought and suffered, that popular in-
fluence is the life of the Papacy — a principle to which
the history of the Christian centuries bears ample
testimony — is every day receiving more complete
rfecognition, "That the Church is, properly speak-
ing, the City of the Poor, that in its first plan it was
built for the poor only, that they are the true citizens
of the City of God," was the testimony which Bossuet,
constrained by his very allegiance to truth, bore even
before Louis XIV. It was delivered in vain to that
monarch and his courtiers. It is preached in our own
day to the suffering and toiling masses. And they
have ears to hear.
Assuredly, if Lamennais "beyond the veil" has
knowledge of the present attitude of the rulers of the
Church towards the peoples, he may well be consoled
for his immediate failure — a failure which was the in-
evitable consequence of his many mistakes. As the
first of these mistakes, and the source, in some sort, of
the rest, I must consider his priesthood. He was a
priest without vocation, devoid of the ecclesiastical
spirit, which is essentially a spirit of humility : and not
even suspecting the merit of that other necessary
sacerdotal virtue of obedience. His gifts were pro-
phetic, not priestly. Yes : he was one of the goodly
176 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
fellowship of those whose eyes have been opened to
discern thino^s hidden from their fellows of the race of
men, whose lips have been touched with celestial fire
to utter forth a higher language than what is heard
from the mass of humanity. From earliest youth he
was marked off from the vulgar herd by thoughts not
as their thoughts, ways not as their ways. We see
him, a boy of eight, as Mr. Gibson has pictured him,
on the ramparts of St. Malo, his thin, pale face turned
towards the sea, watching with deep sad eyes the
battlings of wind and wave, listening to the roar of
the waters, and brooding over things undreamed of
by the men and women around him. "lis regardent
ce que je regarde, mais ils ne voient pas ce que je
vols," he said to his companions. It was ever so all
his life long. Through the play of petty intrigues,
base interests, and sordid motives, which for most men
constitute the sum of human existence, he discerned
the war of great elemental ideas. Even his letters,
Scherer has well remarked, are " an apocalyptic com-
mentary upon the events of the day." But prophets
are seldom good men of action. They are idealists.
They w^ant the touch of earth necessary for enabling
them to deal with practical politics. They are narrow
and intolerant because they are dominated by a single
overmastering inspiration. Lamennais saw distinctly
some great verities ; but he saw in part — and he
prophesied in part. Not one of his true words has
fallen to the ground. No true word ever does. The
exaggerations, the distortions, the violences of his
fierce and passionate thoughts, may be forgotten.
[v.] A Prophet's Reward 177
He suffered sufficiently for them. Such suffering is
a prophet's reward. His message is never heard
gladly by the scribes and Pharisees. They are the
guardians of, the witnesses for, tradition. He is a
revolutionist charged with a burden of woe to them
that sit at ease in Zion. It is not in the nature of
things that they should hear him gladly.
We may call Lamennais the Savonarola of the
nineteenth century : greater than the Apostle of
Florence in his intellectual gifts ; less in his spirtual,
and incalculably more unhappy ; for to him the issue
was not martyrdom, but apostasy. His intellectual
gifts, indeed, we can hardly estimate so highly as did
his contemporaries. His famous Essay on Indifference,
in which he makes absolute scepticism the basis of
absolute certitude, is, no doubt, singularly powerful.
But the power is rather in isolated passages than in
the general argument. It is curiously French in its
exaggerations ; curiously un-French — if I may so
speak — in its want of plan and unity. Moreover,
Lamennais fell into what we must account the common
fault of generalizers, or makers of systems. They do
not sufficiently verify their data, and they mistake
their speculations, their hypotheses, for explanations.
Also, I personally cannot place the Paroles d'un
Croyant so high as his most recent biographer places
it. Where Mr. Gibson sees "awful grandeur" I
find little more than passionate rhetoric. Of course,
a prophet is nothing if not rhetorical. A certain
feverishness of thought is inseparable from his calling.
But whether we agree or disagree with Mr. Gibson's
178 A Nineteenth-century Savonarola [v.]
opinions, certain it is that we have to thank him for a
picture ahke vivid, sympathetic, and, in the main, true,
of one of the most striking personahties in the history
of the last century.
VI
CARDINAL WISEMAN'S LIFE AND
WORK
(I)
Cardinal Wiseman died in 1865. His Life was not
published till 1897.^ There are two reasons why, as
it appears to me, the delay may be accounted not
unfortunate. It is far easier now to judge Cardinal
Wiseman fairly and impartially, than it would have
been at any time during the episcopate of his im-
mediate successor. And in Mr. Wilfrid Ward he has
found quite an ideal biographer. It is not merely that
Mr. Ward writes with a singular fulness of knowledge,
an unusual discrimination of judgment, a rare psycho-
logical power, and a candour that might satisfy even
Othello. He possesses the still more unfrequent gift
of sympathetic diagnosis — a gift as essential to high
excellence in the literary as in the pictorial portrait-
painter. I remember spending an hour in the late
Sir John Millais' studio while the picture of Cardinal
Newman, now in the possession of the Duke of
' The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By Wilfrid Ward. In
two volumes. London. 1897.
i8o Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
Norfolk, was being painted. Millais liked to smoke
in silence at his work, and to get some one to talk to
his sitter. I was engaged in conversation with the
Cardinal upon some topic which specially interested
and animated him, when Millais, pipe in hand, suddenly
exclaimed, with subdued excitement, " I've got him."
So he had. At last, after being often baffled, he had
"divinely found the man,"^ and the Cardinal's face
lived upon his canvas. Now, Mr. Wilfrid Ward has
certainly "got" Cardinal Wiseman. The testimony
of those who knew Wiseman well leaves no doubt
about the fidelity and vividness of the portraiture.
He has given us, in his two admirable volumes, not
merely the great prelate, but the man, with his
pompous manner and his shy nature, his grandiose
tastes and his childlike heart, his singularly wide
culture and his boyish love of fun, his social success
and his simple piety, his august achievements and his
miserable mistakes. We know his aims ; we under-
stand his actions ; we are let into the secret of his
inner life. And the result is one for which Cardinal
Wiseman would undoubtedly have been grateful. " I
don't think," he said, when he lay dying, "they will
always think me such a monster." By "they" he
meant his fellow-countrymen in general. Assuredly,
no one can rise from the perusal of Mr. Ward's
volumes without feelings of esteem, admiration, and
I will say reverence, for the accomplished and devout
Churchman, whose righteousness is there made as
^ Millais told me that Cardinal Newman's likeness was extremely
difficult to catch ; " There is so much in that face," he said.
[vi.] An Ideal Biographer i8i
clear as the light, and his just dealing as the noonday.
We may apply to him, without hyperbole, the beautiful
and familiar verses —
" We know him now : all narrow jealousies
Are silent ; and we see him as he moved :
How modest, kindly, all accomplished, wise.
Sweet nature, gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters ; dear to Science, dear to Art.
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure ; but through all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless hfe."
Mr. Wilfrid Ward's book, however, is of interest
and importance not only as an admirable specimen of
the biographer's art, but for another reason. The
Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman is the title
which he has given it. And the sidehghts which it
throws upon the momentous period in which the
Cardinal's lot was cast, and upon some of the famous
personages with whom he was associated, are of great
historical value. The Catholic reaction, of which
Chateaubriand was the herald, and in some sort the
initiator, the condition of the Papal States in the
first half of the last century, the growth and issue of
the Tractarian Movement, the attitude of Rome to
modern thought, are among the topics touched upon
and illuminated by him. Again, we may take it —
indeed, Mr. Ward, in his Preface, hints as much — that
a subsidiary object of his book is to put before the
world a juster view of Cardinal Manning than the one
exhibited in a famous Life, with which most of my
readers are probably acquainted. In what I am
about to write I shall, in the first place, present some
1 82 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
of the more salient features of Cardinal Wiseman's
personality and career, using, for the most part, the
materials provided by Mr. Wilfrid Ward. And, by
way of epilogue to this, I shall briefly consider what
he has to tell us about Cardinal Manning, supplement-
ing it, so far as may seem desirable, from my own
knowledge of that most eminent ecclesiastic.
(II)
Cardinal Wiseman was born two years after
Cardinal Newman — that is, in 1802. He claimed
descent from a Protestant Bishop of Dromore; but
his grandfather was a Catholic merchant, who, at the
end of the last century, migrated from Waterford to
Seville. There Nicholas Wiseman was born, and
there he spent the first three years of his life. Thence
he was sent to a boarding-school at Waterford to
acquire a knowledge of English; and in 1810 he
passed to Ushaw College, near Durham. As an
infant he had been consecrated to the service of the
Church by his mother, who, we are told, laid him
upon the high altar of the Cathedral of Seville ; and
he never doubted of his vocation. Looking back over
his career in his last illness, he told a friend : " I have
never cared for anything but the Church : my sole
delight has been in everything connected with her."
He remained at Ushaw for eight years, one of his
greatest friends there being George Errington, who
was subsequently to become his coadjutor. Dr.
i':.J
[vi.] The English College 183
Lingard, who was Vice-President of the College,
showed him, as he writes, "many acts of thoughtful
and delicate kindness," the foundation of a "corre-
spondence and intimacy " between them in later years,
which lasted till the death of that learned historian.
As a boy, Nicholas Wiseman was shy and retiring,
destitute of all aptitude for athletics, and devoted to
books. In 18 1 8 he went to Rome to the restored
English College. His life there has been described
by Mr. Ward in a passage which it is worth while to
quote : —
" The student-Hfe which Wiseman led for the next four
years was one of great regularity and of strict discipHne. The
English College — although less exacting in its regulations
than some of the Italian colleges — preserves a measure of
Continental severity. The students rose then at half-past
five. Half-an-hour's meditation was followed by Mass and
breakfast. Every day, except Thursday and Sunday, lectures
were attended on philosophy, theology, canon law, Church
history, Biblical exegesis, as the case might be ; and the rest
of the morning was devoted to study. The midday dinner
was preceded by the daily * examination of conscience.'
After dinner came a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and, a
little later, the siesta. A space in the afternoon was allotted
to a walk through the city, either to some object of interest —
a church or a museum — or to one of the Palazzos, or to Monte
Pincio, where friends would meet the collegians and exchange
greetings or converse. Nearly all the colleges — and among
them the English — would take their walk in camerata — that
is to say, the students walking two abreast, in double file.
Outside the city or on Monte Pincio this order was relaxed
for the time, and students might disperse, reassembling for
their return home. The bell towards sunset for the Ave Maria
would summon the camerata back to college, and the rest of
184 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
the day was spent chiefly in study and prayer. On Thursday,
the weekly holiday, expeditions were often made beyond the
city walls to places of interest. The Easter vacation and the
long summer holiday were spent at the country house belong-
ing to the college at Monte Porzio, near Tusculum, Here
the discipline was somewhat less strict, but was still a life of
great regularity, and passed under community rule. The
day, both in Rome and at Monte Porzio, was brought to a
close with night prayers and the reading of the meditation
for the following morning."
It is not easy to overestimate the depth of the
impressions left upon Wiseman by the four years
passed by him as a student in Rome ; by his contact
with its relics of the past and its life in the present.
" Two influences," writes Mr. Ward, ** are especially
to be noted — which became intimately blended — that
of the historical associations of early Christian history
made by the Catacombs, shrines, and museums ; and
the effect of the frequent sight of the Pope himself.
No one can reside in Rome without being affected by
both these aspects of the life there; but with Wiseman
the impression which they made was the deepest of
his life. It was deepened by years of close intimacy
with every detail of both aspects, an intimacy
represented in later years by the most popular of his
books, Fabiola, and by the Recollections of the Last
Four Popes!'
In 1824 Wiseman took his degree of Doctor of
Divinity, having acquitted himself with much credit in
what was called " The Great Public Act." This was
the chief feature in the examination, and consisted in
maintaining a number of theological propositions
[vi.] Leading Principles and Thoughts 185
against subtle and trained disputants, in the presence
of an audience of prelates and professors. " Among
those who came to witness his prowess," Mr. Ward
tells us, " were Father Cappellari, afterwards Pope
Gregory XVI., then *a monk clothed in white,' who
glided in while the disputation was in full course ; and
the celebrated French divine, whose writings this same
monk later on condemned, Felicite de Lamennais."
Wiseman was not quite twenty-two when his
career as a student — his apprenticeship, let me rather
say, for he was a student all his days — thus came to a
close. And here I should like to insert a portion of
a letter of his, written thirty-four years afterwards, in
which he reviews this early period of his life. After
observing that the method which guided him was to
classify leading principles and thoughts, and to refer
all he read to a definite aim, he continues —
" I think my powers, such as they were, had been trained
and formed and logicized by rude exercises and inward severity
which no one saw. Such a course of years ! — (oh, my dearest
Willy, may you never experience them) — years of solitude, of
dereliction, without an encouraging word from Superior or
companion, denounced even, more than once, by unseen
enemies; years of shattered nerves, dread often of instant
insanity, consumptive weakness enfeebled from sinking energy,
of sleepless nights and weary days, and hours of tears which
no one ever witnessed. For years and years this went on,
till a crisis came in my life and character, and I was drawn
into a new condition, where all was changed. It was during
this period, to me invaluable, that I wrote my HorcB SyriaccB
(which you probably have scarcely looked into, to see what
they cost me), collected my materials for the Lectures on the
' Connexion,' on the Eucharist, etc. Without this training I
1 86 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite controversy
at a later period. Yet many of that body, then and since,
have told me that I was the only Catholic who understood
them, or could throw his mind into theirs. If so, this was only
the result of the self-discipline ... of previous years. The
very principle which pervades the Lectures on the Eucharist
is the ground of my Oxford Movement papers: that of trying
to seize the ideas and feelings of those whose moods you
interpret. . . . Some principles and thoughts have been so
familiar to my own mind since I was eighteen or twenty, that
they appear to me to be universal and commonplace ; yet I
find, when I have compulsory occasion to utter them, they
seem new ... to others. They are seeds of early planting,
which every one should value in himself. There was one con-
solation through this early time of trial, that the intellectual
so thoroughly absorbed the physical, that it made me pass
through a passionless youth — I had almost said temptation-
less. Very early I chose the one object of all my studies, to
defend and illustrate religion, Christian and Catholic, and I
do not think I have ever swerved in purpose from my aim.
Whatever variety of motives may have been attributed to
me, I do not think that I have ever been unfaithful to this
end."
In 1825 Wiseman was ordained priest. He speaks
in his Recollections of his happiness at this time, when
"freed from the yoke of a repressive discipline and left
to follow the bent of his own inclinations [he could] . . .
drink long draughts from the fountains which hitherto
he could only taste." The next three years were chiefly
devoted by him to the preparation of his Horce
SyriaccB. The work was published in 1827, and soon
gave its author a European reputation. He was
immediately nominated by Leo XII. Professor of
Oriental Languages at the Roman University, and
[vi.] The Horce Syriaccs 187
Vice Rector of the English College. The next year
he became Rector. It was at this time that he laid
the foundation of his very considerable reputation as
a preacher by a course of English sermons delivered
in the church of Gesu e Maria.
Under Wiseman's presidency the English College
became a very considerable centre of intellectual life.
" The HorcE Syriacce had, by this time, made him a marked
man in the learned world, and visitors to Rome sought him
out as a person of distinction. As the chief English preacher
in Rome he was turned to for advice and guidance in the
not unfrequent cases of the reconciliation of Englishmen to
Catholicism, and his new appointment gave him the promin-
ence attaching to the official representative of English Catho-
lics in Rome. Hitherto a shy student, associating little with
his neighbours ... he [now] appears to have mixed freely
in society, and to have corresponded with the learned world
in various countries. . . . Among the Englishmen who made
Wiseman's acquaintance as visitors to Rome during his rector-
ship, besides Mr. Monckton Milnes, were such men as Arch-
bishop Trench, Julius Hare, Sir Thomas Acland, Charles
Marriott, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Macaulay, John Henry Newman,
Hurrell Froude, Henry Edward Manning. Some of these
visits ... led to friendships, which were continued on occa-
sion of his visits to England, and brought him into intercourse
with cultivated English society outside the Catholic pale, a
very unusual position at that time for a 'Romish' ecclesiastic.
Visits to the country houses of Archbishop Trench, Monckton
Milnes, Lord Spencer, and others are referred to in his
letters."
In 1830 there came to the English College, to
receive ordination as a priest, the remarkable man
subsequently well known as Father Ignatius Spencer.
1 88 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
The brother of the late Lord Spencer, he had been
during his early manhood a familiar figure in English
society, and had been by no means noted for the
strictness of his life. It was in the Opera House in
Paris in 1820, as he relates, that he received his first
religious impressions. The last scene of Don Giovanni
appealed to him as a warning of the fate which awaited
himself, and led him to a complete reformation of
conduct. A little later, he took orders in the Anglican
Church, but soon came to entertain doubts of the
tenableness of his ecclesiastical position. In 1830 he
made his submission to Rome. " He ultimately re-
nounced all his worldly possessions, and devoted his
whole time to preaching the Gospel to the poor. He
died within a year of Cardinal Wiseman's own death,
in 1864, after nearly twenty years spent amid the
rigour and austerities of the Passionist order." Father
Spencer's dominant thought, after his reception into
the Catholic Church, was the conversion of England
The devotion and enthusiasm of this holy man deeply
influenced Wiseman's impressionable mind. His
*' simple missionary zeal made him almost suspicious
of the more intellectual career upon which the Rector
of the College had entered. He told Wiseman,
bluntly, that he should apply his mind to something
more practical than Syriac MSS. or treatises on
geology, and that he would rather see him take up
with what suited a priest on the English Mission, as
it then was." His admonitions had a great effect on
Wiseman, who determined from thenceforth to devote
his studies more directly to the cause of the Catholic
[vi.] The Truest Justification of Christianity 189
revival then in progress throughout Europe, and in
particular to labour, as far as in him lay, for the
furtherance of "the great cause " in England.
It was in 1833 ^^^^ Wiseman first saw Newman,
who was then visiting Rome in company with Hurrell
Froude. Thirteen years afterwards he wrote : ** From
the day of Newman and Froude's visit to me, I have
never, for one instant, wavered in my conviction that
a new era had commenced in England. . . . To this
great object I devoted myself. The favourite studies
of former years were abandoned for the pursuit of this
aim alone." Thenceforth, then, Wiseman's mind was
steadily set upon more active work for religion among
his fellow-countrymen. He thought of founding a
Catholic University, of founding a Catholic Review in
England, and determined upon paying a reconnoitring
visit in the summer of 1835. But before leaving
Rome, he delivered the Lectures on the Connexion
between Science and Revealed Religion, which added
so greatly to his reputation. They are, indeed, strik-
ing discourses from the thorough and systematic re-
search of which they are manifestly the outcome, from
the moderation and candour of their tone, and from
their recognition of the great verity so cogently en-
forced before by Pascal, and since by Newman, that
the truest justification of Christianity consists in its
giving us " the key to the secrets of our nature, and
the solution of all mental problems . . . the answer
to all the solemn questions of our restless conscious-
ness." Of course, they are largely out of date, for the
science with which they dealt was the science of fifty
190 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
years ago : but even at the present time they will
well repay perusal.
(Ill)
Wiseman was now thirty-three years old, and was
becoming ever more and more deeply interested in
the movement of contemporary European thought,
which, as he expressed it, in his rhetorical way, seemed
" pawing the ground and struggling to be free from
the Pagan trammels which the Reformation cast upon
it, and trying once more to fly into the purer Christian
ether of Dante and Chaucer." "The exertions of
such men as Schlegel, Novalis, Gorres, Manzoni,
Lamennais, Lamartine, and even the less pure efforts
of Victor Hugo or Janin," appeared to him " to show
a longing after the revival of Christian principles as
the soul and centre of thought and taste and feeling."
In this frame of mind he came to England in the
autumn of 1835, travelling by Vienna, Munich, Paris,
and Bruges, where, as *' he saw the Catholic cham-
pions, whose writings had so moved him, and received
letters in the course of his journey from Syria and
China, the world-wide empire of the Roman See was
brought before his imaginative mind. And his spirit
of hopeful enterprise stood in marked contrast to the
ideas of Englishmen, Catholic and Protestant alike, as
to the status and work of the Catholics in England — the
remnant of the long-proscribed English Papists." To
the history of Catholicism in this country during the
[vi.] English Catholics in 1835 191
two preceding centuries, Mr. Ward devotes a carefully-
written chapter. Their condition at the time with
which we are concerned has been pictured by Cardinal
Newman in one of the finest passages which he ever
wrote. It is so perfect a bit of EngHsh that I cannot
deny myself the pleasure of transcribing it, and my
readers the pleasure of perusing it : —
" No longer the Catholic Church in the country — nay, no
longer, I may say, a Catholic community — but a few adherents
of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about,
as memorials of what had been. ' The Roman Catholics ' —
not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it — not
a body, however small, representative of the Great Com-
munion abroad — but a mere handful of individuals, who
might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great
deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed
which, in its day, indeed, was the profession of a Church.
Here a set of poor Irishmen, coming and going at harvest
time, or a colony of them lodged in a miserable quarter of the
vast metropolis. There, perhaps, an elderly person, seen
walking in the streets, grave and solitary, and strange though
noble in bearing, and said to be of good family, and a ' Roman
Catholic' An old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance,
closed in with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and
the report attaching to it that ' Roman Catholics ' lived there ;
but who they were, or what they did, or what was meant by
calling them Roman Catholics, no one could tell ; though it
had an unpleasant sound, and told of form and superstition.
And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, looking with a
boy's curious eyes through the great city, we might come
to-day upon some Moravian chapel, or Quakers' meeting-
house, and to-morrow on a chapel of the ' Roman Catholics ; '
but nothing was to be gathered from it, except that there
were lights burning there, and some boys in white, swinging
censers ; and what it all meant could only be learned from
192 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
books, from Protestant Histories and Sermons ; and they did
not report well of the * Roman Catholics,' but, on the contrary,
deposed that they once had power and had abused it. And
then, again, we might, on one occasion, hear it pointedly put
out by some literary man, as the result of his careful investi-
gation, and as a recondite point of information, which few
knew, that there was this difference between the Roman
Catholics of England and the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
that the latter had bishops, and the former were governed by
four officials, called Vicars-Apostolic. Such was about the
sort of knowledge possessed of Christianity by the heathen
of old time, who persecuted its adherents from the face of the
earth, and then called them gens hicifugay a people who
shunned the light of day. Such were Catholics in England,
found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops,
or in the recesses of the country ; cut off from the populous
world around them, and dimly seen, as if through a mist or
in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high Protes-
tants, the lords of the earth."
To these Wiseman came in 1835, the representative
of glorious historical traditions of their own which had
become to them " only a fading verbal memory," and
of an ecumenical cause the identity of which with their
own they hardly realized. He came " not an unknown
man, who had to win respect from bitterly prejudiced
fellow-countrymen, but a scholar of European distinc-
tion, the host and the friend of many an Englishman
who had been glad of an English welcome in Rome,
and were ready to return his hospitality."
Wiseman's reconnoitring visit lasted for a year,
and was pregnant with the results of great moment.
An accident brought him somewhat prominently
before the general public. The Abbate Baldaconni,
[vi.] Lectures in the Sardinian Chapel 193
the priest of the Sardinian Chapel in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, was anxious to pay a visit to Italy. Wiseman,
who spoke Italian as fluently as English, consented
to take his duty, and in Advent 1836 tried the experi-
ment of some Lectures addressed to Catholics and
Protestants alike. They had an extraordinary success ;
a success so great as to alarm the pious lecturer. " I
used to shed tears," he told Cardinal Vaughan long
after, "in the sacristy of the Sardinian Chapel, fearing
that whatever good the lectures were doing to others,
they were filling me with vain-glory." The chapel
was crowded, every seat being occupied half an hour
before Compline, and although the discourses lasted
for an hour and a half, or longer, the attention of the
congregation seems never to have flagged. Wiseman
was then staying in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the house
of Mr. Bagshawe, father of the late Judge Bagshawe,
who relates, " He was besieged at all hours of the day
by those who heard the lectures and wished to consult
the lecturer." In the following Lent he lectured in
Moorfields Church at the request of Bishop Bramston,
the Vicar- Apostolic of the London District, and " the
second venture was even more successful."
" Society in this country," writes the late Mr. George
White, "was impressed, and listened almost against its will,
and listened not displeased. Here was a young Roman
priest, fresh from the centre of CathoHcism, who showed
himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical dis-
cussion, but of the amenities of civih'zed Hfe. Protestants
were equally astonished and gratified to find that acuteness
and urbanity were not incompatible even in controversial
argument. The spacious church of Moorfields was thronged
O
194 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance ; • . . many
persons of position and education were converted, and all
departed with abated prejudice, and with very different
notions about Catholicism from those with which they had
been prepossessed by their education. 'No controversial
lectures delivered within our memory,' says another contem-
porary writer, ' ever excited public interest to such a degree.'
• I had the consolation,' writes Wiseman himself, ' of witness-
ing the patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience,
many of whom stood for over two hours, without any
symptom of impatience.' Among the most constant listeners
was Lord Brougham."
A curious token of the abatement of anti-Catholic
prejudice, brought about by Wiseman's Lectures, is
supplied by the fact that in 1836 he was invited to
write an article on the Catholic Church for The Penny
Cyclopedia. In the same year he joined O'Connell
and Quinn in founding the Dublin Review^ stipulating
that "no extreme political views should be introduced
into it." In the autumn of 1836 he returned to Rome,
and was at his post in the English College for the
commencement of the term in October. But he never
again entirely settled down into his old habits. His
heart was, thenceforth, in great measure in England.
(IV)
To England he came again in the summer of 1839.
And this visit resulted in his permanent residence here.
That was his own wish, and the wish of the English
ecclesiastical authorities ; and the Pope concurred in
[vi.] President of Oscott 195
it. The aged Bishop Walsh, Vicar-Apostolic of the
Central District, needed a coadjutor. Wiseman was
nominated to the office, and was at the same time
appointed President of Oscott. On June 8, 1840, he
received episcopal consecration from the hands of
Cardinal Fransoni, in the chapel of the English College.
It was a sore trial to him to leave the city where he
had dwelt for twenty-two years, until, as he expressed
it, "affection clung to every old stone there like the
moss which grew to it." Writing in 1857, he applied
to himself the touching lines of Ovid's Tristia : —
" Quum subit illius tristissima noctis imago
Quae mihi supremum tempus in Urbe fuit,
Ouum repeto noctem qua tot mihi cara reliqui
Labitur ex oculis nunc quoque gutta meis."
But he had a strong feeling that his duty called him
to labour here. On arriving in England he writes :
*' I saluted the land dear to me by holy love. Behold,
the vineyard of the Lord ! Welcome, labour and per-
secution, reproach and scorn. Bless, O Lord, my
entry into the land of my desires." On September
16, 1840, he arrived at Oscott, and took up his resi-
dence there as its President.
The Oxford Movement was now in full progress,
and largely engaged Wiseman's thoughts. It is not
too much to say that the fate of that Movement was
determined by his famous essay on " St. Augustine
and the Donatists," published in the Dublin Review
of July, 1839. Newman has described in the Apologia
the impression it produced upon him. " The first real
hit from Romanism," he says. It emphasized with a
196 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
force, all the greater from the urbanity and moderation
of the language in which it was couched, the principle
deemed by St. Augustine essential to the idea of the
Church as the one organized spiritual society claiming
to expound with authority the Christian revelation.
But I will give Mr. Ward's admirable summary : —
" He pointed out that the question of a Church in a state of
schism was regarded by the Fathers not as a question of anti-
quarian research, but as a great practical case of conscience for
each individual. The facts on which the technical controversy-
depended might become obscured ; but this did not leave indi-
vidual persons or individual Churches free to say, ' I see no
convincing proof on either side ; therefore I will do as I like/
Such a plea had been advanced in the fifth century ; and the
very Fathers to whom Newman was appealing as his mainstay
had emphatically disallowed it. Briefly, St. Augustine had
shown that in a matter so vital to the continued existence of
the Church as an organic society, a simple and incontrovertible
guiding principle was needed for individual persons and
Churches — a principle capable of being applied by the
unlearned as well as by the learned. Cases were constantly
arising, and would arise, of schism on the part of a local or
national Church. Each party — the schismatics and their
opponents — would profess to represent the ancient Catholic
faith, and would call itself Catholic. If the individual Church
or the individual member of the Church were to be allowed
to judge for itself or himself, all hope of Catholic unity would
be gone. The local Church must, therefore, in the nature of
the case, be amenable to the judgment of its peers. If the
rest of the Catholic Church acknowledged the bishop of a
local Church, and interchanged letters of communion with
him, then he and those who were his spiritual subjects formed
part of the Church Catholic. If the rest of the Church refused
to communicate with him, and judged his claim to be invalid,
then he was thereby ruled to be in schism. This simple but
[vi.] Securus judicat Orbis Terrarum 197
pregnant rule was essential to the very existence of the
Church Catholic ; and St. Augustine sums it up in the
sentence which was destined to ring in Newman's ears for
many a day: 'Quapropter securus judicat orbis terrarum, in
quacumque parte orbis terrarum.' "
We all know the effect of this " Securus judicat
orbis terrarum" upon Newman. That very summer
he for the first time realized — as he told Henry
Wilberforce — that possibly it might prove a duty to
join the Church of Rome. This famous article was
one of a series devoted to successive phases of the
Oxford Movement. The general effect of them was
fairly summed up by Mr. W. G. Ward in a letter
written twenty years afterwards : " There can be no
doubt whatever, in my judgment, that without such a
view of the Catholic Church and her position as we
obtained from the Dublm, we, Oxford people, should
have had our conversion indefinitely retarded, even
had we, at last, been converted at all."
I shall deal with the progress and issue of the
Oxford Movement in a subsequent Study. But I should
notice that some of the main lines of thought in the
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which
we may regard as the last cry of Newman's expiring
Anglicanism, had been anticipated by Wiseman in a
remarkable sermon preached at Derby in 1839. It
may be said of Wiseman, as of Newman himself, that
when at the call of duty he engaged in religious con-
troversy he at once lifted it to a higher level than that
usually occupied by disputants on divinity. In neither
of them was there any trace of the odium theologicuni.
198 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
Both employed their arguments not to wound nor to
baffle, but to persuade and win. But while watching the
Tractarian Party with the keenest interest, and with a
hopefulness only partially justified by the event, Wise-
man was endeavouring to breathe a new life into the
dry bones of English Catholicism ; to clothe them, so
to speak, with flesh and blood ; to deck them with the
beauty and grace of renascent vigour. On this subject
let us hear Mr. Ward —
" The new President had of necessity to play the part of
controversialist and diplomatist, in dealing with the develop-
ment of the Oxford Movement; but it was a much more
unmixed pleasure to him to aim at bringing to perfection the
devotional rites in Oscott Chapel. The poetry and symbolism
of the Catholic liturgy were, according to the testimony of all
his friends, the subject of his greatest interest and enthusiasm.
He had learned to love the liturgy in its wonderful presenta-
tion at the Sixtine Chapel ; and he endeavoured, as far as
might be, in this as in other things, to bring Rome to England.
He was fully alive to the transitory nature of the theological
controversy of the hour — to its reference to a passing state of
opinion. He foresaw that a few years later the crucial con-
troversy would not be about the Thirty-nine Articles, but
about all belief in the supernatural world. 'Fifty years
hence,' he said one day to the Divines in the middle of a
theological lecture, 'the professors of this place will be
endeavouring to prove, not transubstantiation, but the
existence of God.' Controversy was in its nature ephemeral
— as well as distasteful to his genial and kindly nature. But
the Church liturgy was a part of that life of the Church which
was more near to the source of its strength than any phase
of dialectics. The deep feelings and beliefs of the early
Christians, the poetry of their faith and its intense reality,
had embodied themselves in the liturgy which was handed
[vi.] The Election of Pius IX 199
down. Here we have the living imaginative pictures which
had inspired Christians before the medieval dialectics were
known to them, which should inspire with the same spirit the
Christians of our own time, and which would outlive our own
disputes as they have outlived those of Abelard and those of
Luther. The meditations they aroused were the permanent
and unchanging heritage of the Church, never to pass away ;
while each intellectual phase was in its nature only transient."
(V)
In the spring of 1847 the question of the restora-
tion of the Catholic Hierarchy in England had been
mooted by the English Bishops at their Annual
Meeting, and Wiseman had been deputed to go to
Rome and submit their views to the Holy See. The
year before Pius IX. had been elected to the Apostolic
Throne, and had been welcomed " with tumult of
acclaim" as the leader of the national movement in
Italy. Unquestionably he sympathized warmly with
that movement, and hoped to guide and restrain it
within the limits of Christianity and Catholicism. He
began his reign by a complete abandonment of the
repressive policy relied upon by his immediate pre-
decessors for the maintenance of their Civil Princedom,
undermined by the insurrections and conspiracies
which had become chronic in the States of the Church.
An almost general amnesty was granted to political
offenders. A constitution founded on the old institu-
tions which the French invasion of 1 798 had shattered,
a much-needed reform of civil and criminal law, the
200 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
concession of a rational freedom of the press, the
creation of a Roman Municipal Council and National
Guard, were among the wise and liberal measures
which marked the beginning of the new Pontificate.
They secured for Pius IX. an unbounded popularity
throughout Europe. In England he was generally
described as the most enlightened Sovereign of the
age. And to England he specially looked for " diplo-
matic support and avowed encouragement." This
was reasonable enough, since these measures were
precisely such as the English Government had
suggested in language even more emphatic than that
employed by the other Great Powers who also recom-
mended them, in 1831, after the insurrection of the
Legations had been put down. And Wiseman was
sent back to England to communicate the Pontiff's
views to Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary.
The extremely interesting Memorandum which he
drew up on this occasion for Palmerston's information,
is given in full by Mr. Ward. The result was that
Lord Minto was despatched by the British Govern-
ment to Rome, " not as a Minister accredited to the
Pope, but as the authentic organ of the British Govern-
ment, enabled to declare its views and explain its
sentiments." As a matter of fact, Lord Minto's
presence in Rome served chiefly to encourage the
extreme Liberal Party against which Pius IX. sought
protection, and which was determined to force him
into war with Austria. I need not recount the story
of the Roman Revolution of 1848 : how the Pope
made concession after concession in the vain hope of
[vi.] The Restoration of the English Hierarchy 201
satisfying popular demands : how Rosmini came to
Rome as the Envoy of the Sardinian King, and
drafted a scheme for an Italian Federation under
Papal presidency : how Rossi — surely one of the most
pathetic figures in the history of the century — was
brutally assassinated : how Pius IX., threatened with a
like fate, fled to Gaeta, declining, in his humiHty and
self-abnegation, one of the most magnificent prospects
of martyrdom ever offered to the sons of men. But
during that troubled and disastrous time, the project
for the restoration of the English Hierarchy was being
carefully matured by the Congregation of Propaganda
with the assistance of Bishop Ullathorne, representing
the English Vicars- Apostolic. And when that prelate
left Rome in August, 1848, the scheme was practically
decided on.
In the spring of 1849, Wiseman was appointed
Vicar-Apostolic of the London district, which he had
administered since the death of Bishop Walsh in
August, 1847. His task there was, from the first, by
no means an easy one. Many, probably most, of the
born Catholics among his clergy were opposed to what
was called " the Romanizing and innovating ways " of
some of the converts — ways with which Wiseman,
educated in foreign traditions, largely sympathized.
One of the most arduous tasks which lay before him
was the fusion of the old and new elements in English
Catholicism. But this he did not then know. In the
spring of 1850 he was led to believe that his work in
England was soon to be ended. A communication
reached him at that time notifying the Pope's intention
202 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
to call him to the Sacred College. And this, as he
supposed, meant that for the future he must reside in
Rome. Much as he appreciated the honour, he would
fain have declined it. For it was the death-blow to
his cherished wish to labour for England in England.
He wrote to Rome to beg that he might be excused.
But a peremptory answer came that he was wanted
there, and that his successor would be appointed. The
thought that he would return to London as Cardinal-
Archbishop never entered his mind, we are assured
by Dr. Whitty, then his Vicar-General. But it entered
the minds of many of the leading laity, and strong
representations were accordingly made to the Vatican.
The result was that when the Pope's Brief re-establish-
ing the Hierarchy was issued in September, 1850,
Wiseman, who just before had been created a Cardinal,
was appointed to the see of Westminster.
(VI)
It cannot be denied that his first official act
exhibited that curious want of judgment which from
time to time marred his career. Wisdom after the
event is proverbially easy. But even then clear-
headed men among Catholics were dismayed by that
wonderful Pastoral " From without the Flaminian
Gate." Dr. Whitty, his Vicar-General, stood aghast
at its inflated rhetoric, and was greatly perplexed
whether or no to publish it. But he felt that he
could not withhold it without a clear obligation
[vi.] " From without the Flaminian Gate " 203
of duty. A very valued and very intimate friend
of Newman told me : " I was in church on the
following Sunday, when Newman read the Pastoral.
His face was a study — especially when he came to
the ' From without the Flaminian Gate ' at the end."
I need not dwell upon the " Papal Aggression "
outcry, or the abortive Ecclesiastical Titles Act in
which it issued. I may, however, note that Cardinal
Wiseman's masterly Appeal to the English People
— a considerable portion of which Mr. Ward prints —
had no small influence in quieting the agitation.
Temperate and logical — curious contrast to the
Flaminian Pastoral — it was acknowledged by nearly
the whole press to be in the highest degree worthy
of the author's reputation and position. " There can
be no doubt at all," wrote the Spectator, " of his
controversial power. Whether confuting the Premier
on grounds of political precedent, meeting ecclesi-
astical opponents by appeals to principles of spiritual
freedom, rebuking a partisan judge, or throwing
sarcasm at the ' indiffusive wealth of a sacred establish-
ment which has become literally hedged from the
world by barriers of social depravity,' he equally
shows his mastery of dialectical resource."
Cardinal Wiseman ruled the diocese of West-
minster as its Archbishop, and the Catholic Church
in England as its Metropolitan, for fourteen years.
I must refer my readers to an admirably written
chapter in Mr. Ward's second volume for most
interesting personal traits about him ; his sympathetic
kindness to his clergy, his aversion from the business
204 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
routine of public life, the breadth and variety of his
interests, his jocose intercourse with his intimates,
his fondness for children, his love of elegant literary-
trifling, his endeavours worthily to sustain the dignity
of his position — exemplified, for example, in his keep-
ing the table of a Roman Cardinal, and a chariot
with gorgeous trappings such as members of the
Sacred College then used in Rome. I am here
rather concerned to note that his work during those
fourteen years was to live down the prejudice excited,
by the events of 1850-51, against him and the
cause he represented : and to build up the Catholic
Church in England. That work he successfully
accomplished. It is curious to observe how soon he
regained his popularity with the general public. A
striking evidence of this is afforded by the invitations
to lecture on subjects of general interest which
reached him from all sides — invitations with which
he gladly complied so far as he could. One of them
came from the Royal Institution. He was, I believe,
the first Catholic to whom that compliment was paid.
It was in 1854 that he published his historical
romance, Fabiola : "a good book, which had all the
success of a bad one," the Archbishop of Milan wittily
said. It was speedily translated Into almost all Euro-
pean languages, and new editions of it are still
appearing in England and on the Continent.
" The great variety of his pursuits," writes Mr. Ward,
" might seem at first sight suggestive of the dilettante. Over
and above his professional duties, we have seen him occupied
with Oriental studies, with art, with literature, with the
■m
[vi.] The Cause of his Influence 205
Tractarian Movement, at one time on a diplomatic mission on
behalf of the Liberal Pope, at another lecturing to a London
audience on the Crimean War ; then again busy with practical
reforms among the poor, and soon afterwards offering sugges-
tions as to the hanging of a National Portrait Gallery. Yet
his intimate friends are unanimous as to the unity of his work
and purpose. The key to the explanation of this apparent
contradiction is, I think, found in a saying of his friend,
Father Whitty, in a letter to Henry Edward Manning, written
just after Wiseman's death. The cause of Wiseman's in-
fluence did not lie. Father Whitty said, only in his talents
and acquirements, considerable as they were, but in his being,
in his tastes, in his policy and work, and in his writings, a
faithful representative of the Catholic Church — not, he adds,
as a Saint represents her, solely on the ethical side, but as a
national poet represents the all-round genius of a particular
country in his various poems. Hence, in the first place, the
character of his influence even among his own co-religionists
in England. He found them a persecuted sect, he left them
a Church. He found them in 1835 the remnant of a pro-
scribed section of Englishmen, longing only to live and let
live, who had lost the old devotional ideas, to whom many
characteristic features in the training of the priesthood, in the
symbolical ceremonial of the Church, in the monastic life,
were almost unknown ; who had little appreciation of religious
art or religious architecture. He brought to them bodily,
from Roman life, the poetry and varied activity of the Church,
together with its Hierarchy and organization. But further,
he pointed out, in the inaugural lecture at the opening of
his Academia, in 1861, his conception of the Church in its
relations with the world : and this had a bearing on a wider
public. While he resolutely maintained that, whether trium-
phant or depressed, in the Lateran Basilica or in the
Catacombs, the Church has the great ethical ideals of the
Gospel to teach, that these have been securely preserved only
where the primitive traditions and doctrines have been
jealously guarded and handed down, and that if the world
2o6 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
despises these ideals so much the worse for the world ; while
he insisted that the Saints were the witnesses to the possi-
bility and the value of the highest life ; while in this sphere
he maintained that whether men of intellect laughed with
Voltaire or bent in reverence with Pascal, the Church was a
teacher, — he was equally emphatic that in the spheres of
science and art, and secular civilization, Catholics should be
largely learners, and adapt themselves to the genius of the
age or country in which their lot is cast. The Church cannot
expect to be the source of the varied energy of the com-
munity ; all she can do is to turn its direction towards those
high ideals of which she is the guardian, or in a direction
which bodes them no harm. This, I think, gives the true
meaning of Wiseman's very various fields of interest. He
strove, partly unconsciously, to realize his ideal of the Church
in contact with human activity."
It is unpleasant to remember that Cardinal Wise-
man's last days of failing health and vigour were
embittered by those of his own household of faith
from whom he most confidently expected help and
sympathy. The year 1856 saw the beginning of the
difficulty with the Rambler, of which a full and, so far
as I can judge, a fair account will be found in Mr.
Ward's pages. The year before. Bishop Errington
of Plymouth was appointed by the Pope, at Wise-
man's desire, to be his coadjutor with right of
succession, and was nominated to the titular Arch-
bishopric of Trebizond. The year after, the Pontiff
named Dr. Manning Provost of the Westminster
Chapter. Manning had been received in 1851, and
had since then resided much in Rome, where Pius IX.
had taken a great fancy to him. As Provost of
Westminster he acquired a commanding influence
[vl] Dr. Manning 207
over the moribund Cardinal, much to the dissatis-
faction of Archbishop Errington, who, in common
with hereditary Catholics generally, regard the convert
clergyman with great distrust. They viewed, also,
with much dislike the Congregation of the Oblates
which he had founded in Bayswater with himself as
Rector, and to which, as was supposed, the direction
of the Diocesan Seminary was to be entrusted. On
this subject Mr. Ward has an admirably candid page,
which I shall quote : —
"When, therefore, they found the Rector of the new
Congregation — a convert, unacquainted with traditionary
English Cathq^lic ways — indulging in superciliousness, as
they thought, in his attitude towards the sterling qualities
of his fellow-priests and encouraging his young followers to
* pose ' as models of a new spirit in the priesthood, and to
preach the spirit of obedience to the very college superiors
whom they ought to have obeyed and not criticized ; when
at the same time it was evident that the abilities of this
' convert parson ' had secured for him an ever-growing in-
fluence with the Cardinal ; when he was placed by the Pope
over the Chapter as its Provost ; when the Cardinal's action
in critical matters was found to be in harmony with the
Provost's views, and he gave especial exemptions to the
Oblates themselves and treated them (it was thought) as
favourites, a number of deep feelings and prejudices in human
nature were aroused. The kind of 'caste feeling' which
made the old Catholic mistrust the * convert ' came to the
front. Manning's reserved nature and ungenial demeanour
encouraged it. His ceaseless activity, his wide schemes, were
unintelligible to men whose traditions were those of a per-
secuted minority which had courted only tolerance and
obscurity. His pertinacity became in their eyes intriguing ;
his activity and enterprise pro Deo et Ecclesia were ambition ;
2o8 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
his motives were outside the sphere which such men could
understand or believe in. He was constantly seen going to
the Cardinal at York Place or at Leyton. The ordinary
hours for audience were set aside for the Provost, who was
admitted at all times. Old friends, like Errington and Searle,
found it useless to say a word in opposition to the views of
this new-comer. He had ' got round ' the Cardinal, and
loyalty to Wiseman, as well as the welfare of the diocese,
called upon them to open the Cardinal's eyes, and, if possible,
to curb the ever-growing power of the Provost."
The Errington drama, as Mr. Ward calls it, dragged
its slow length along until July, i860, virhen Pius IX.,
failing to persuade the coadjutor to resign, by an
exercise of Apostolic authority, without precedent, as
I understand, deprived him of his coadjutorship and
right of succession.
This did not augment Dr. Manning's popularity
among the clergy of Westminster. But it ratified and
increased his influence over Cardinal Wiseman, vi^ho,
in ever-failing health — "sick at heart and in body"
is his own description of himself — was painfully
estranged from his Chapter, the great bulk of his
clergy, and most of his brother Bishops. And now
the Roman Question came to the front, and became,
indeed, the question of the day among Catholics. In
i860 all that remained to the Pope of the States of
the Church was the City of Rome, with the Provinces
of Frosinone and Velletri. And this attenuated
sovereignty was felt to be very precarious. Men's
minds were failing them for fear throughout the
Catholic Church. They did not see how the Papacy
could do without the Temporal Power which it had so
[vi.] " Grand Llamism " 209
long possessed. This feeling was strong in England.
Wiseman, of course, fully sympathized with it. But
he was of pacific temperament and in feeble health.
Manning, on the other hand, was of militant disposition
and full of vigour. He threw himself with ardour into
that extreme Papalism of which Louis Veuillot was
the chief apostle in France, and which in England
found its most considerable exponent in Mr. W. G.
Ward. " To Wiseman, to be a party man was to act
contrary to the genius of the Church." But Manning
was by nature a party man. And his sympathies were
openly and unreservedly given to a certain section of
Catholics who seemed desirous to convert Catholicism
into what Montalembert called "Grand Llamism."
The adulatory addresses which used to go up to Pius
IX. from devotees all over the world, fill one with
amazement when one reads them at this distance of
time, and applies to that Pontiff the laws of historical
perspective.^ Sir Epicurus Mammon, in Jonson's
Alchemist, anticipates among other advantages which
will accrue to the possessor of the Philosopher's Stone,
this : that his " flatterers shall be the purest and
gravest of divines." That doubtful benefit Pius IX.
enjoyed for many years. It was, of course, an exagge-
ration of the chivalrous devotion to him engendered
by his personal amiability — " one whom to see is
to love," Cardinal Newman truly said — and by the
greatness of his reverses. "The Temporal Power,"
1 Mr. Ward notes that the conductors of the Ufiivers and its successor,
the Monde, expressed devotion to the Pope in language which some of
the French Bishops stigmatized as idolatrous.— Vol. ii. p. 418.
r
2IO Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
however, became a sort of shibboleth. And the eyes
of surprise and indignation were turned upon CathoHcs
who dedined to pronounce it in season and out of
season. It was the habit of Mr. W. G. Ward to
designate those of the household of faith who did not
adopt all his extravagances and absurdities on this
subject "half-tinkered Catholics." I have heard him
apply this phrase to Newman, among other dis-
tinguished persons. And I remember how, years
afterwards, he felt Newman's elevation to the Cardi-
nalate as a sort of personal wrong. An excellent
ecclesiastic, much in his confidence, sought to console
him by remarking, "Well, Mr. Ward, Pius IX. would
never have made him a Cardinal." " Pius IX. have
made him a Cardinal ! " Ward exploded : " Pius IX.
would have seen him damned first." Mr. Wilfrid
Ward tells us that the object of the prohibition of the
English Universities to Catholic young men, and the
consequent sacrifice of the higher education of genera-
tions, was that they might be " sound on the question
of the Temporal Power." Well, I will take leave to
say that the sacrifice was made in vain. So far as my
experience goes — and it goes fairly far — I find usually
in Catholics whose minds have been expanded and
disciplined by the training of Oxford or Cambridge, a
rational appreciation of the importance of that grave
question : a real apprehension of the truth succinctly
formulated by Cardinal Newman, that ** the autonomy
of the Pope is a first principle in European politics."
And it is, as a rule, Catholics lacking such mental
expansion and discipline, who are lukewarm about the
[vi.J The Syllabus Errorum 2 1 1
question, and to whom Pontifical assertions of the neces-
sity of "an effective civil sovereignty" for the peace-
ful exercise of the Supreme Pastorate signify nothing.
It is not easy to overrate the loss which the world
has suffered by the divorce of the cause of freedom
from the cause of faith through the events of 1848-9.
The Pope, restored to his Civil Princedom by French
troops, was thrown into the hands of reactionaries,
who, in the name of piety, fought against progress, and
sought to gainsay the world's great law of movement.
The Liberal party in Italy, on the other hand, became
avowedly anti-Christian. Its mountebank hero. Gari-
baldi, in a published letter to which Wiseman oppor-
tunely called the attention of the British public, just
then on their knees before that vulgar idol, extolled
the French Revolutionists of 1793 for giving to the
world the Goddess of Reason, and reproached their
descendants for abandoning her obscene cult. It
must be owned that the Syllabus of Errors in which
Pius IX., "addressincj the Catholic world in orreat
earnestness and charity " (to use Cardinal Newman's
words), provided mankind with an Index raisonn6 to
his Encyclical and Allocutional "proscriptions," pro-
duced an effect quite other than what the Pope had
contemplated. He maybe said, indeed, to have played
into the hands of his enemies in issuing it. For what-
ever the theological value and merit of the docu-
ment may be ^ — a subject which I am incompetent to
discuss, as I am not a theologian — I feel sure that
no candid historian can regard it as happy in the
^ Cardinal Newman's view on this question will be found at p. 261.
212 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
opportunity of its publication. It supplied the anti-
Christian party with a colourable pretext for asserting
" the definite divorce of the Church from the modern
world," the irreconcilable hostility of Catholicism to
the civilization and progress of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Wilfrid Ward correctly notes that Pius IX., who,
in 1848, was hailed by English public opinion as "the
most enlightened sovereign in Europe," was considered,
ten years afterwards, "the most benighted." All this
was extremely bitter to Wiseman, as utterly opposed
to his most cherished ideal. His conception — and
Cardinal Newman's also — was, to quote Mr. Ward's
words, that " the Church was to do its work by turning
in a right direction all the energies of modern civiliza-
tion and adopting its institutions." His last years
were spent in "a world not moving to his mind."
His work was done. He felt it to be so. It was on
the 15th of March, 1865, that his release came. His
funeral was the occasion of a display of sympathetic
popular interest, not exhibited, as his old opponent
the Times newspaper declared, since the State funeral
of the Duke of Wellington.
(VII)
Such in brief outline was Cardinal Wiseman as
presented to us in Mr. Wilfrid Ward's admirably
written pages. There too, as I intimated in beginning
this paper, will be found much to rectify the picture
presented of Cardinal Manning in the too-famous
Life with which we are all acquainted. Perhaps
[vi.] Manning's Iron Will 213
the most unpleasant portion of that work is the account
given of the affair of Dr. Errington. Mr. Ward con-
clusively shows, by reference to original documents,
that this account is extremely inaccurate. He claims,
further — and it appears to me with reason — that
Manning's action throughout that affair was simply
self-defensive ; that there is no ground for ascribing
Archbishop Errington's deposition to " Manning's
skill and audacity." He admits, however, as " possible
enough," that " Manning's iron will did materially help
to keep Cardinal Wiseman firm in carrying through
the contest." That seems to me more than " possible
enough." It seems quite certain. As to the charge of
"unscrupulous methods of attack" which is brought
against Cardinal Manning by his biographer, Mr.
Ward desiderates "knowledge of the facts on which
it rests." I suppose the truth is that Manning, in his
diplomatic proceedings at Rome, was obliged to make
use of such instruments as he found. Conspicuous
among them was Mgr. George Talbot, for whose
astounding letters the best excuse may perhaps be
found in the conjecture that they were written in the
early stage of that mental malady to which he eventu-
ally succumbed.
And now, one word more about Cardinal Manning.
It must be remembered that he was essentially an
ecclesiastical statesman. He was not, in the full sense
of the word, a scholar. Doubtless he profited vastly
by that Oxford training from which — curiously enough
— he, for so many years, debarred others. But the
late Bishop Milman, of Calcutta, who knew him well,
214 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
appears warranted in describing him as " entirely
deficient in accuracy and real knowledge." Of this,
indeed, he himself was well aware. In 1845 he wrote,
" Every day makes me feel more the want of deep
and thorough study in early life." That want the
engrossing occupation of maturer years never allowed
him to supply. Nor was he, properly speaking, a
man of letters. Some years ago I was led, for a
particular purpose, to read every line he had ever
written. Probably I am the only man living who has
accomplished that task, and it is difficult to believe that
any man could engage upon it save at the categorical
bidding of a sense of duty. I cannot call to mind a
single page of his likely to live as literature. The
title of theologian assuredly cannot be given to him.
Indeed, there are very few ecclesiastics to whom it can
be given. Theology in the Catholic Church — and I
suppose in the Catholic Church alone — is arduously
and profoundly studied as a science. Manning never
so studied it. The nickname of Mgr. Ignorante,
bestowed upon him in Rome, where his great favour
with Pius IX. aroused much jealousy, expressed
the disdain generally felt for his attainments in
divinity. His attainments in philosophy were not
more considerable, although he was fond of talking
about it, and was, I believe, a regular attendant at the
meetings of that singular Metaphysical Society, the
members of which, with very few exceptions, possessed
not the slightest tincture of metaphysics. His great
tact, unfailing readiness, supreme confidence in him-
self, and singular dignity of manner, invested his
[vi,] "Impressive Nothings" 215
utterances on such topics as were there debated with
a certain speciousness. But his great friend and
admirer, Mr. W. G. Ward, a very competent judge,
used to describe them as "impressive nothings."
I remember one occasion on which I fully expected
to see him cornered. It was at the house of the
editor of one of our leading Magazines, where a small
number of persons, supposed to be representative of
various schools of thought, were gathered together
for friendly colloquy. Among these were Cardinal
Manning, Dr. Fairbairn, and myself. Dr. Fairbairn
was discussing a somewhat difficult metaphysical
point, with copious references to recent Teutonic
speculation, and was especially addressing himself to
the Cardinal, who, entirely ignorant of German, could
not, as I felt sure, so much as understand the ter-
minology which was employed. He ended by saying,
"What does your Eminence think ? " I was in a state
of expectant wonder as to how the Cardinal would get
out of it, when, to my dismay, he turned to me, re-
marking : " Mr. Lilly's studies in these matters have
been more recent than mine ; perhaps he will kindly
tell us what he thinks." This was turning the tables
on me with a vengeance, as I had been merely con-
sidering what the Cardinal could possibly say to Dr.
Fairbairn's argument, and had been by no means
weighing it. I replied as best I could, on the spur of
the moment ; but I fear that what I said must have
been little satisfactory to that profound and widely
read metaphysician : a nothing, and not impressive.
It was I, not the Cardinal, who was cornered.
2i6 Cardinal Wiseman's Life and Work [vi.]
Cardinal Manning, then, was, before and beyond
all things, an ecclesiastical statesman — and an eccle-
siastical statesman of a high order : a Churchman
cast in the heroic mould of St. Gregory VII. And
William of Malmesbury's description of the Pontiff
applies equally well to the Cardinal : " Vir apud
Deum felicis gratise et apud homines austeritatis
fortassis nimiae," He was essentially a man of action;
and it was in matters of ecclesiastical polity that his
great gifts found their proper sphere : his imperious
will, his clear intellect, his strong purpose. The
principle of authority had very early commended
itself to him as all-sufficient in religion. And in the
Communion of Rome he found the true home of that
principle. For him Roma locuta est was an all-sufficient
formula. **The Church asserts," "the Church con-
demns," was enough. Into the reasons, limits, and
qualifications, whether of her assertion or condemna-
tion, he did not care to inquire. His words to Hope
Scott, upon the eve of quitting the Anglican Com-
munion, are very significant : " It is either Rome or
licence of thought and will." That acute and bitter
writer, known as Pomponio Leto, said of him :
" Manning is enamoured of the principle of authority
as the slave adores the principle of liberty." And he
expected and exacted from others the blind obedience
which he was himself accustomed to give. As a ruler,
he was severe and exact. But — this should never be
forgotten — there were in his nature springs of deep
compassion and true tenderness towards the weak and
the erring. The twenty thousand neglected Catholic
[VI.] "Aut Cssar, aut Nullus " 217
children of London were very near his heart from the
first moment of his episcopate. And before it came to
an end he had succeeded, after many a hard fight with
bigotry and ignorance, in securing their education in
Catholic schools. For the brutal gratifications of no-
toriety and money he cared absolutely nothing. But
he was a born ruler of men ; and he loved to rule.
At Harrow he was known as "the General," from his
habit of command. Even there, " Aut Caesar, aut
nullus" was his motto. Well, he became Caesar — a
ruler in the midst, even among his brethren. And
his rule was everywhere felt. He sought to control
even the smallest details. A witty man, who knew
him well, said of him : " He is not content to drive
the coach ; he wants to drag it also." It was not an
uncommon experience — experto crede — if one went to
ask his sanction for some plan, to receive for answer,
" Yes, I thank you ; it would be an excellent thing —
/'// do it : " which was not exactly the answer one
wanted. And, as a rule, he did not do it. How
could he ? His hands were too full. He had the
defects of his qualities — his great qualities. But I do
not understand how any one who had the privilege
of intercourse with him could doubt his faith unfeigned,
his deep devotion, his spotless integrity, his indomi-
table courage, his singleness of aim, his entire dedica-
tion of himself to the cause which he, in his inmost
soul, believed to be the only cause worth living for.
" The purity of his heart, the sanctity of his motives, no
man knowing him can question," Archdeacon Hare
bore witness when lamenting his secession. This
testimony is true.
VII
THE MEANING OF TRACTARIANISM
( I)
I PROPOSE to inquire what Tractarianism was in
itself, and what is its significance for us. The time
has perhaps now come when this can be done without
exciting those polemical passions which the bare
mention of Tractarianism was once sure to arouse.
The Tractarian Movement has become matter of his-
tory : and, like all great moral, intellectual, and
spiritual movements, it is most accurately and most
fruitfully studied in the person and action of its
leader. Nor can there be any doubt who its real
leader was. The judgment of our own day is in
accord with the judgment of Cardinal Newman's
contemporaries, in regarding him as its originator,
so far as its origin can be referred to any one man ;
in fastening upon him the main responsibility for all
that has come out of it. I shall have to touch upon
this point again. For the moment it will be sufficient
to observe, that, in what I am about to write regard-
ing the true character and more notable results of
the Tractarian Movement, I shall seek my main
[vii.] The Truest. Modesty 219
documents in Cardinal Newman's works. Now, one
special note of those works which renders them of
the utmost value for my present purpose is their
strong individuality. They are all instinct with that
egotism which, to use a happy expression of their
author, is, in some cases, the truest modesty. Each
in its different way, and in its varying degree, has for
us its revelation about him. Thus the Grammar of
Assent does for us objectively what the Apologia does
subjectively. The Essay on Development \s confessedly
a chapter — the last — in the workings of the author's
mind which issued in his submission to Rome. There
is perhaps not one of his Oxford Sermons which, as he
has told us of the famous discourse on Wisdom and
Innocence, was not written with a secret reference to
himself His verses are the expression of personal
feelings, the greater part of them, to give his own
account, growing out of that religious movement which
he followed so faithfully from first to last.^ And,
further, we have his later criticism of his former self,
his ultimate judgments upon his early views, in the
prefaces and notes with which he has enriched the
new editions of his old works. Thus we possess in
his volumes not only the story of his life, but, in some
degree, his comment thereon.
" lUe velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat unquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene, quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis."
' Dedication to Mr. Badeley of Verses upon Various Occasions^ p. vii.
220 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
Cardinal Newman's life ran with the last century.
It is to the age of Pitt and Fox, of Napoleon and
Pius VII., of Scott and Byron, of Coleridge and Kant,
that we must go back to survey the moral, political,
and religious surroundings of his early years. It is
worth while to go back to these surroundings. To
form some apprehension of the spiritual element in
which he lived and moved during the time when his
character was matured and his first principles were
formed, is a necessary condition precedent to any true
understanding of what he was and of what he wrought.
Let us therefore glance at the condition of English
religious thought at that period.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that never,
during its course of well-nigh two thousand years in
the world, did Christianity so widely lose the character
of a spiritual religion as during the last half of the
eighteenth century. Not in England only, but in
all Protestant countries, the general aim of its
accredited teachers seems to have been to explain
away its mysteries, to extenuate its supernatural
character, to reduce it to a system of ethics little
differing from the doctrines of Epictetus or Marcus
Aurelius. Religious dogmas were almost openly
admitted to be nonsense. Religious emotion was
openly stigmatized as enthusiasm. Theology, from
being " the science of things divine," had sunk into
[vii.] The Last Stage of Theological Decay 221
apologies opposing, too often, weak answers to strong
objections, and into evidences endeavouring, for the
most part with the smallest result, to establish the
existence of a vague possible Deity. Even the sanc-
tions of morality were sought in the lowest instincts
of human nature, the reason for doing good assigned
in the received text-books of ethics being, in effect,
" that God is stronger than we are, and able to damn
us if we do not." The prevailing religion of the day
may be accurately judged of from the most widely
popular of its homiletic works, those thrice-famous
sermons of Blair's, which were at one time to be found in
well-nigh every family of the upper and middle classes
of this country, and which may still be discovered in
the remoter shelves of the libraries in most country-
houses. No one can look into these discourses
without admitting the truth of Sir Leslie Stephen's
trenchant criticism that " they represent the last stage
of theological decay." ^ For unction there is mere
mouthing ; for the solid common sense of earlier
writers, an infinite capacity for repeating the feeblest
platitudes ; the morality can scarcely be dignified by
the name of prudential, unless all prudence be summed
up in the command, " Be respectable ; " the pages are
full of solemn trifling — prosings about adversity and
prosperity, eulogies upon the most excellent of virtues.
Moderation, and proofs that religion is, upon the
whole, conducive to pleasure. John Stuart Mill
^ English Thought in the Eighteenth Cefitury, vol. ii. p. 346. The
remarks in my following sentence are an abridgement of an admirable
page — the next — of Sir Leslie Stephen's book.
222 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vil]
accurately sums the matter up : " The age seemed
smitten with an incapacity of producing deep or strong
feehng, such at least as could ally itself with medi-
tative habits. There were few poets and none of a
high order ; and philosophy had fallen into the hands
of men of a dry prosaic nature, who had not enough
of the materials of human feeling in them to imagine
any of its more complex and mysterious manifesta-
tions ; all of which they either left out of their theories,
or introduced them with such explanations as no one
who had experienced the feelings could receive as
adequate." ^
Such was the dominant school of EngHsh thought
about the time when Cardinal Newman was born.
But beside it there was another which exercised a
strong influence over a not inconsiderable number of
adherents, and which potently affected the growth of
his character and the formation of his opinions.
Among the figures conspicuous in the history of
England in the eighteenth century there is perhaps
none more worthy of careful study than John Wesley.
Make all deductions you please for his narrowness, his
self-conceit, his extravagance, and still it remains that
no one so nearly approaches the fulness of stature
of the great heroes of the Christian faith in the early
and middle ages. He had more in common with
St. Boniface and St. Bernardine of Sienna, with St.
Vincent Ferrer and Savonarola, than any teacher
whom Protestantism has ever produced. Nor is the
formation of the religious body commonly known by his
' Discussions and Dissertaiions, vol. i. p. 430.
[vii.] John Wesley 223
name — the " people called Methodists " was his way
of designating his followers — by any means the most
important of the results of his life and labours. It is
not too much to say that he, and those whom he
formed and influenced, chiefly kept alive in England
the idea of a supernatural order during the dull
materialism and selfish coldness of the eighteenth
century. To him the rise of the Evangelical party in
the National Church is undoubtedly due. Romaine
and Newton, Venn and Jowett, Milner and Simeon,
differing as they did from him on particular doctrines,
derived from him that fundamental tenet of religious
conversion which they termed " the new birth." It is
easy now, as it ever was, to ridicule the grotesque
phraseology of these teachers, to make merry over
their sour superstitions, their ignorant fanaticism, to
detect and pillory their intellectual littleness. It is
not easy to estimate adequately the work which they
did by reviving the idea of Grace in the Established
Church. They were not theologians, they were not
philosophers, they were not scholars. Possibly only
two of them, Cecil and Scott, can be said to rise above
a very low level of mental mediocrity. But they were
men who felt the powers of the world to come in an
age when that world had become to most little more
than an unmeaning phrase ; who spoke of a God to
pray to, in a generation which knew chiefly of one to
swear by ; who made full proof of their ministry by
signs and wonders parallel to those of the prophetic
vision. It was in truth a valley of dry bones in which
the Evangelical clergyman of the opening nineteenth
224 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
century was set ; and as he prophesied there was a
noise, and behold, a shaking, and the breath came into
them, and they lived and stood up upon their feet, an
exceeding great army.
• (III)
In this army John Henry Newman was led to
enroll himself in early youth. He has himself told
us how, in the autumn of 1816, he fell under the
influence of a definite creed, and received into his
intellect impressions of dogma which have never been
effaced nor obscured ; how " the conversations and
sermons of that excellent man, long dead, the Rev.
Walter Mayers, of Pembroke College, Oxford," were
" the human means of the beginning of this divine
faith " in him ; how, in mature life, he was " still more
certain of the inward conversion of which he was then
conscious, than that he has hands or feet." ^ Cardinal
Newman's earliest religious reading was of authors
such as Romaine, Thomas Scott, Joseph Milner, whose
works were then the text-books of the Evangelical
school. But he also studied attentively two writers
of very different characters, both of whom made a
deep impression upon his mind : William Law, the
non-juror, whose Serious Call, it will be remembered,
was such a powerful agent in John Wesley's spiritual
history, and Bishop Newton, whose work upon the
* Apologia pro Vita Sua^ p. 4.
[vii.] A Widening Horizon 225
Prophecies is the very fount and source of an " exposi-
tory " literature, still dearly cherished by Exeter Hall.
In 18 16 he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford,
and during the whole of his undergraduate course he
adhered rigidly to the straitest sect of the Evangelicals.
It was not till 1822 that his spiritual horizon began
to widen. In that year he came under the influence
of Dr. Whately, who, he tells us, ''emphatically
opened my mind and taught me to think, and to use
my reason." ^ It is curious to find him particularly
specifying among his obligations to Dr. Whately
this : " What he did for me in point of religious
opinion was to teach me the existence of the Church
as a substantive body or corporation ; next to fix in
me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity which
were one of the most prominent features of the Trac-
tarian Movement." At the same time he formed a
friendship with a worthy representative of the classic
High Church school of Anglicanism, Dr. Hawkins,
then Vicar of St. Mary's, who was the means of great
additions to his belief. From him he derived directly
the doctrine of Tradition, and indirectly the doctrine
of Baptismal Regeneration ; while Mr. James of Oriel
taught him the dogma of Apostolical Succession, and
Mr. Blanco White led him "to have freer views on
the subject of inspiration than were usual in the
Church of England at that time."^ Still more impor-
tant were his obligations to Butler, whom he began
to read about the year 1823. He regards the study
* Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. ii, 12.
2 Ibid., pp. 8, 9.
Q
226 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
of the Analogy as an era in his religious opinions, and
refers to it the underlying principles of a great portion
of his teaching : Sacramentalism and Probability/
It is manifest that while acquiring these new views
he was widely diverging from the standards of ortho-
doxy received by his Evangelical friends. Among the
many legends which have grown up about him is one
attributing his final separation from them to the
rejection in 1826 of two hundred and fifty amendments,
said to have been moved by him to the draft of the
annual report of the Oxford Bible Society, of which
body, according to the story, he was " third secretary : "
amendments directed to the purgation of that document
from the strange verbiage which was the outward
visible sign of the Low Church spirit. Unfortunately,
a word from Cardinal Newman dispelled this amusing
myth. " I never was any kind of secretary to the
Bible Society," he told me; "and I never moved any
amendments at all." ^ There is, however, one grain
of truth in the story. It was, indeed, about the year
1826 that John Henry Newman's ties with the
Evangelical party were finally severed. But though
no longer of them, as a professed adherent, he retained
much that he had learned from them. In particular
their fundamental doctrine of Grace, that is, of a
^ By the sacramental system, in the large sense of the word, Cardinal
Newman means " the doctrine that material phenomena are both the
types and the instruments of real things unseen.'' — Apologia^ p. i8.
Butler's teaching, "that probability is the guide of life," he considers to
have originally led him to " the question of the logical cogency of faith,"
on which he has "written so much." — Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. ii.
2 Upon this subject see some remarks in Cardinal Newman's Via
Media, vol. ii. pp. 4-7, ed. 1884.
[vii.] Dissatisfaction 227
sensible, supernatural, and direct divine influence upon
the soul of man, remained, and continued with him to
the end, as a prime and vital verity.
For some little time from 1826 Newman continued
unattached to any theological section or school. The
old high-and-dry party, the two-bottle orthodox, then
predominant in the University, were little to his taste,
although he sympathized vehemently with their
political opinions ; and for the first few years of his
residence as a Fellow at Oriel — he had been elected
in 1822 — he lived very much alone. In 1826 he
began a close and tender friendship with Richard
Hurrell Froude, never dimmed nor interrupted during
the short career of that many-sided and highly-gifted
man. Robert Isaac Wilberforce, who, like Froude,
was then a Probationer Fellow of Oriel, was also
among his most intimate companions, and there were
others — their names need not be enumerated here
— who were drawn to him by the strong ties of
kindred minds, like aspirations, and the many subtle
influences engendered by community of academical
life. One thing which especially bound together the
little knot of men who constituted the original nucleus
of the future Tractarian party was an irrepressible
dissatisfaction with the religious schools of the day ;
an eager looking out for deeper and more definite
teaching. It may be truly said — the phrase, I think, is
Cardinal Newman's — that this feeling was in the air
of the epoch. The French Revolution, shattering the
framework of society throughout Europe, was but the
manifestation in the public order of great intellectual
228 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
and spiritual changes. England, indeed, shut off
from the Continent by her insular position, and by the
policy of the great Minister whose strong hand guided
her destinies for so many perilous years, was exempt,
to a great extent, from the influence of the general
movement of European thought. Still, in England
too, there arose the longing — vague, half-expressed,
not half-understood — for some better thing, truer and
higher and more profound than the ideas of the out-
worn world could yield : a longing which found quite
other manifestations than the Evangelical.
Striking evidence of this feeling is afforded by the
reception given to the delineation of the fuller life of
a simpler age, which was attempted in the poetry and
prose fictions of Sir Walter Scott. "The general,
need of something more attractive than had offered
itself elsewhere" — Cardinal Newman remarks — "led
to his popularity, and by means of this popularity he
reacted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst,
feeding their hopes, setting before them visions which
when once seen are not easily forgotten, and silently
indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might
afterwards be appealed to as first principles." ^ Byron
and Shelley, too, bear witness in a different way to the
working in the English mind of the ferment with which
the European intellect was leavened. But of the
actual movement of contemporary thought and feeling
upon the Continent little was definitely understood in
England. The great reaction in France against the
* "Essay on the Prospects of the Anglican Church," reprinted in
Essays Critical and Historical^ vol. i. p. 267.
[vii.] The New Critical Philosophy 229
eighteenth century, the initiation of which will be in
the event, and, indeed, even now is, Chateaubriand's
best title to fame, was very faintly appreciated among
us, and the masters of the new literature in Germany
were scarcely even heard of. For long years Goethe
was known in this country only by Sir Walter Scott's
translation of one of his earliest and least significant
works ; and of Lessing, Schiller, Tieck, Richter,
Novalis, the two Schlegels, it might be said, with
almost literal truth, that they were not known at all.
Kantism was an epithet significant of "absurdity,
wickedness, and horror," and was freely used to label
any " frantic exaggeration in sentiment," or " crude
fever dream in opinion," which might anywhere break
forth. ^ Slowly, however, but surely, did the new
critical philosophy infiltrate itself into this country,
through the most metaphysical head which this country
has ever produced. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the
first among English thinkers to study and understand
Kant, to assimilate his teaching, and to reproduce it
in a new form.^ Rejecting with disgust the physical
method which he found predominant in English
speculation, he discerned in the transcendentalism of
Kant a higher and nobler system than the materialism
' Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i. p. 56.
2 I find the late Professor Green stating this fact in a somewhat
different way : " The last generation took its notions about Kant chiefly
from Coleridge, and though Coleridge, if he would have taken the
necessary trouble, could have expounded him as no one else could, he
in fact did little more than convey to his countrymen the grotesquely
false impression that Kant had sought to establish the existence of a
mysterious intellectual faculty called Reason, the organ of truth in-
accessible to the Understanding." — Academy, September 22, 1877.
230 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
of Locke or the utiHtarianism of Paley. Coleridge,
indeed, was no bhnd disciple of his Teutonic master.
It may be truly said of him that he was " Nullius
addictus jurare in verba magistri." His mind was too
original to allow him to be a mere echo of other men's
thoughts. It is, however, as he used to insist, to Kant
that he owes, with much else, that distinction between
the Understanding and the Reason — Verstand and
Vermi7ift — which is one of his fundamental positions ;
which, indeed, he considered essential to any profitable
study of psychology. But the philosophy of Coleridge
is too great a subject to be dealt with here. I can
only observe that its influence upon the mind of his
age was far more potent than is generally understood.
In my judgment he is to English thought of the nine-
teenth century pretty much what Locke is to English
thought of the eighteenth century. I am, however,
immediately concerned with his effect upon that
particular intellectual and spiritual phase represented
by the Tractarian Movement. Cardinal Newman, in
a paper published in the British Critic m 1839, reckons
him one of its precursors, as ** providing a philosophical
basis for it, as instilling a higher philosophy into
inquiring minds than they had hitherto been accustomed
to accept."
The action of this great thinker's doctrine was,
indeed, to a large extent, indirect. It is through the
poetry of his comrade and disciple Wordsworth that
his metaphysics, stripped of technicalities, and pre-
sented in a popular form, won the widest acceptance
and exercised the deepest influence. *' I wish to be
[vii.] Wordsworth 231
considered a teacher or nothing," Wordsworth wrote to
his friend Sir George Beaumont. The age had need
of that teaching, bewitched as it was by the Circean
strains of Byron's morbid egotism, and the irresistible
charm of the splendid verse in which Shelley clothed
his passionate dreams, soaring like his own skylark
away from this working-day world until he is lost in
the clouds of his ecstatic idealizations. How many
felt in Wordsworth's own generation, how many more
have felt since, the healing influence of his poetry, as
of Nature herself!
" As snow those inward pleadings fall,
As soft, as bright, as pure, as cool,
With gentle weight and gradual.
And sink into the feverish soul." ^
" I have not written for superficial observers
and unthinking minds," the poet explained to his
friend. But from the first he drew to him the more
thoughtful and true-hearted of his age, *' non solum
dulcissimse poeseos, verum etiam divinse veritatis
antistes : " ^ and among those who were most deeply
influenced by him was John Keble.
(IV)
The Christian Year, which appeared in 1827,
marks an epoch in the religious history of the century.
1 I need hardly say, perhaps, that these lines are quoted from
Cardinal Newman's magnificent religious poem, St. Philip in his Cod.
2 Dedication to William Wordsworth — " viro vere philosopho et vati
sacro " — of Keble's PrcBlectiones Academics.
232 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
Cardinal Newman, writing of it nineteen years later,
and looking back upon it and its influence from an
external point of view, observed —
" Much certainly ca.me of the C/iristmn Year. . . . Coming
from one who had such claims on his readers, from the weight
of his name, the depth of his devotional and ethical tone, and
the special gift of consolation of which his poems were the
evidence, it wrought a great work in the Establishment. It
kindled hearts towards his Church ; it gave something for
the gentle and forlorn to cling to ; it raised up advocates for
it among those who, if God and their good angel had suffered
it, might have wandered away into some sort of philosophy
and acknowledged no Church at all." ^
It did all this, certainly, and there can be no
question that it acted as a powerful instrument in
drawing together those who subsequently constituted
the Tractarian party. It is, however, very difficult
for men of the present generation to understand the
sort of influence exercised by this volume of devo-
tional poetry when it first appeared. It is not hard
to account for its popularity; but it is hard to con-
ceive now how it could have been an important factor
in a great movement of religious thought. Judged
coldly and by the ordinary canons of criticism, the
book may be justly praised for delicacy and refine-
ment of style, for smoothness and harmony of numbers,
for correctness of taste, for a sweet and gentle mys-
ticism, and a kind of natural sacramentalism. But
there is no trace of the fine frenzy which, according
' Essays Critical and Historical, vol. ii. p. 245.
[vil] The Christian Tear 233
to the Aristotelian dictum, is the chief note of high
poetic inspiration. Nor do we find in it the keen-
ness of vision, the intensity of feeling, the passion
of appeal, by which the souls of men are wont to be
kindled, and which we are led to look for in composi-
tions playing an important part in a religious revival.
If we compare John Keble with the poets of the
previous century whose hymns were such a living
power, it must be allowed that, though he never sinks
to their lowest level, he certainly never rises to their
highest. There is nothing in the Christian Year
which for grandeur of conception, splendour and fire
of diction, natural freedom, easy grace, and strong
upwelling of religious emotion, can be ranked with
some of Charles Wesley's best verses : verses which
perhaps have more in common with the master-
pieces of Adam of St. Victor and St. Bernard, than
any other in our language. Indeed, John Keble's
professed purpose was to exhibit the soothing ten-
dency of the Prayer-book : and that this purpose was
accomplished with rare skill and beauty, who can
doubt .?
The curious thing is that the volume achieved so
much beyond what its author aimed at ; and that this
was so is an emphatic testimony to the needs of the
age in which he wrote. The high-and-dry school
had little to offer in satisfaction of spiritual aspira-
tions. In place of living bread — pams vivtis et vitalis
— it had nothing to set before the hungry soul but
the stone of theological petrifactions. Evangelicalism
was in its decadence. It was perishing of intellectual
234 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
inanition. Beginning, in Apostolic-wise, with " the
foohshness of preaching," it had ended unapostolically
in the preaching of foohshness. Its divinity was
confined to a few isolated dogmas, which torn from
their place in systematic theology, had no enduring
principle of life. For scholarship it had unctuous
pulpit platitudes ; for philosophy, the deliramenta
of apocalyptic tea-tables. From art it turned away
with comminatory references to " texts " in Exodus
and Leviticus. To those who like John Henry
Newman had made trial of it, and had found it
wanting, and to those who like Hurrell Froude had
never been drawn by it from conventional orthodoxy,
the Christian Year came as " a new music, the music
of a school long- unknown in Enorland, when the
general tone of religious literature was so nerveless
and impotent."^ Cardinal Newman judges that the
two main intellectual truths which it brought home to
him were the principle of sacramentalism and the
doctrine as to certitude which he had already learned
from Butler. Such was the influence of the Christian
Year. Cardinal Newman reckoned it the original bond
of those who were to become the leaders of the
Oxford Movement, the formal start of which he dates
from Keble's once famous discourse on National
Apostacy, preached at St. Mary's in 1833.
It was in that year that Cardinal Newman began,
"out of his own head," the series of papers from
which the movement received its truest and most
characteristic name of Tractarian. There can be no
^ Apologia, p. 18.
[vii.] Liberalism 235
room for doubt that its chief springs of action are
to be found in the Tracts for the Times, and in
those Oxford Sermons, which, as Mr. Copeland says,
produced "a living effect" upon their hearers. The
importance of the part played in the movement by
Cardinal Newman admits of an easy test. Is it
possible to conceive of it without him ? We can
conceive of it without the two Kebles, without Isaac
Williams, without Dr. Pusey, who did not join it until
1836. They are, if we may so speak, of its accidents ;
John Henry Newman is of its essence. It grew,
indeed, out of the occult sympathies of kindred minds,
and was the issue of manifold causes, long work-
ing according to their own laws. But the objective
form which it assumed was due, principally, to New-
man's supreme confidence, irresistible earnestness,
absolute fearlessness, and to the unique personal
influence which accompanied, and in part sprang from,
these endowments. The specific danger, as it was
judged, which supplied the occasion for its initiation
was the Bill for the suppression of certain Irish
Bishoprics. But this measure was an occasion merely.
To Newman, since at the age of fourteen he first
looked into Voltaire and Hume, the primary fact of
the age had been what he denominates Liberalism,
by which term, as he explained upon a memorable
occasion, he means "the doctrine that there is no
positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as
good as another." ^ To this he sought to oppose the
1 See his address delivered in the Palazzo della Pigna, upon the
reception of the biglietto announcing his elevation to the Cardinalate.
236 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
principle of dogma — from first to last the basis of
his religion. He endeavoured to meet the new spirit
with a definite religious teaching as to a visible
Church, the kingdom in this world of a present though
invisible King, a great supernatural fact among men,
represented in this country by the Anglican Establish-
ment, and speaking through its formularies and the
living voice of its episcopate, and to him, as to each
man in particular, through his own Bishop, to whom
he looked up as " the successor of the Apostles, the
Vicar of Christ." ^ And so he tells us —
" [The Oxford] Movement started on the ground of main-
taining ecclesiastical authority, as opposed to the Erastianism
of the State. It exhibited the Church as the one earthly
object of religious loyalty and veneration, the source of all
spiritual power and jurisdiction, and the channel of all grace.
It represented it to be the interest, as well as the duty, of
Churchmen, the bond of peace and the secret of strength, to
submit their judgment in all things to her decision. And it
taught that this divinely founded Church was realized and
brought into effect, in our country, in the National Establish-
ment, which was the outward form or development of a con-
tinuous dynasty and hereditary power which descended from
the Apostles. It gave, then, to that Establishment, in its
officers, its laws, its usages, and its worship, that devotion and
obedience which are correlative to the very idea of the Church.
It set up on high the bench of Bishops and the Book of
Common Prayer as the authority to which it was itself to bow,
with which it was to cow and overpower an Erastian State." ^
Such, according to Cardinal Newman, was the
"clear, unvarying line of thought" upon which the
^ Apologia, P- 51- ^ Anglican Difficulties, vol. i. p. 130.
[vii.] From T'ract i to 'Tract 90 237
movement of 1833 proceeded, and a careful study of
the documents in which its history is to be traced,
amply confirms, if confirmation be wanted, the correct-
ness of this view. The progress of Tractarianism,
from Trad i to Tract 90, was the natural growth,
the logical development, of the idea of submission to
ecclesiastical authority. It was a progress leading
ever further from the historical position, the first
principles, of the Church of England as by law
established. The enterprise in which the Tractarians
were engaged was, unconsciously to themselves, an
attempt to transform the character of the Anglican
communion, to undo the work of the Reformation, to
reverse the traditions of three centuries. '* Uncon-
sciously to themselves," indeed. Nor need we wonder
at their unconsciousness. It is, as Clough says —
" What do we see ? Each man a space
Of some few yards before his face."
No man may see more. " If we would ascertain the
real course of a principle we must look at it at a
certain distance and as history represents it to us." ^
But who can project himself into times to come, and
survey the present from the standpoint of the future ?
The Tractarians were as men who had launched
upon unknown seas, full of strange tides and secret
currents, which swiftly and imperceptibly bore them
away, baffling their vain attempts at steerage. Others,
however, could see more clearly than was possible to
them the direction in which they were drifting. Even
so early as the year 1836, Cardinal Newman says,
^ Apologia, p. 263.
238 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
" a cry was heard on all sides of us, that the Tracts
and the writings of the Fathers would lead us to
become Catholics, before we were aware of it."^ It
was then that he set about a defence of the movement
and its principles, and produced his treaties upon The
Prophetical Office of the Chttrch, viewed relatively to
Rojnanism and Popular Protestantism. This work
appeared in 1837. Its subject was the Via Media, a
designation "which had already been applied to the
Anglican system by writers of repute. Its main object
was to furnish an approximation in one or two points
towards a correct theory of the duties and office of the
Church Catholic." " If we deny that the Roman view
of the Church is true," the author says, " we are bound
in very shame to state what we hold ourselves." The
Lectures on the Prophetical Office attempted to put
forward such a statement. There was, however, an
initial objection, which their author felt keenly, and
stated in the Introduction to his work, with his habitual
candour and peculiar power : —
" When we profess our Via Media as the very truth of the
Apostles, we seem to bystanders to be mere antiquarians or
pedants amusing ourselves with illusions or learned subtleties,
and unable to grapple with things as they are. Protestantism
and Popery are real religions. No one can doubt about them.
They have furnished the mould in which nations have been
cast, but the Via Media, viewed as an integral system, has
never had existence, except on paper."
He grants the objection, although he endeavours
to lessen it.
' Apologia, p. 63.
[vii.] The Via ^Media 239
" It still remains to be tried whether what is called Anglo-
Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud,Hammond,Butler,
and Wilson, is capable of being professed, acted on, and main-
tained on a large sphere of action and through a sufficient
period, or whether it be a new modification and transition
state of Romanism or of popular Protestantism."
The trial was made, and we know with what
results. In these Lectures on the Prophetical Office
the case stated is put with marvellous dialectic skill
and great persuasive power ; but the logic of facts is
stronger than the strongest logic of words. And facts
were against the Via Media, the facts both of antiquity
and of modern times. Its author had taken the
historical foundation for granted.^ It was an unfortu-
nate assumption. The national feeling did but assert,
with whatever passion and prejudice, the testimony of
the national history — of which, indeed, that feeling is
to a large extent the outcome — against the ethos of
the movement, as alien from the established religion.
It was nothing to the purpose to show that the views
put forward by the Tractarians, with ever-increasing
boldness, might be paralleled, one from this Anglican
authority, another from that. It was not pretended
that any accredited writer of the Establishment had
ever ventured to hold such a body of doctrine as was
at last set forth in Tract 90. The essentially Pro-
testant mind of the country was shocked at the
* Preface to the third edition, p. xxiii. In the Apologia, pp. 1 14-120,
and p. 139, Cardinal Newman tells us of his dismay when ancient ecclesi-
astical history dislosed to him veritable examples of a Via Media in the
Monophysite and Arian heresies. See also the Twelfth Lecture on
Anglican Difficulties.
240 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
attribution of a theology practically indistinguishable
from the Tridentine, to a Church whose time-honoured
boast was (as South had declared) that " it alone made
Protestantism considerable in Europe."
Such was the ultimate resolution of the idea —
dogmatic, sacerdotal, hierarchical — of the movement
of 1833. To this goal had it conducted its authors.
Tract 90 was received throughout the country with a
storm of indignation, and the living rulers of the
Establishment began to move. " These are they,"
Cardinal Newman says, "who reverse the Roman's
maxim, and are wont to shrink from the contumacious,
and to be valiant towards the submissive." ^ This
little touch of bitterness is not unnatural, still, I venture
to say that Anglican Bishops seem to have acted to-
wards Tractarianism with much long-suffering, and in
the event to have condemned it only when the primary
obligation of fidelity to themselves compelled them to
do so. Excellent men, but not heroic ; respectable,
but not sacerdotal ; solidly adhering to things settled,
and, in Carlyle's phrase, mainly occupied in burning
their own smoke — what sympathy could they have
had with such a movement .-* Indeed, Tract i, in
which the author declared that he "could not wish
them a more blessed termination of their course than
the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom," might
reasonably have distressed and alarmed them. But
for years they bore and forbore ; it was difficult to be
hard upon men who assured them that they were
> "Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos." — A?iglican Difficulties,
vol. i. p. 152.
[vii.] Condemnation 241
** Apostles true." And when at length they acted, in
obedience to strong popular pressure, surely no action
could have been milder. Contrast it with any con-
ceivable action by Catholic Bishops in respect of a
Protestantizing movement within the communion of
Rome.
Still, in the event, they did undoubtedly pronounce
against Tract 90 in a series of charges lasting through
three years. "It was a formal, determinate move-
ment," Cardinal Newman says : *' I recognized it as a
condemnation. It was the only one that was in their
power." ^ It was the beginning of the end. To the
adverse verdict of public opinion, to the censure of
academical boards, he might have been comparatively
indifferent. He had not entered upon his course to
be turned aside from it arbitrio papillaris aurcs, or to
quail before the ardor civium prava jubentut77t. But
the condemnation of the episcopate was a fatal blow
to the Tractarian party. Its leaders felt that "their
occupation was gone. Their initial principle, their
basis, external authority, was cut away from under
their feet. They had set their fortunes upon a cast,
and they had lost." " Henceforward they had nothing
left but to shut up their school and retire into the
country, . . . unless, indeed, they took up some other
theory, unless they changed their ground, unless they
strangely forgot their own luminous and most keen
convictions," "ceased to be what they were, and be-
came what they were not," or, " looked out for truth
and peace elsewhere."^ These were, indeed, the
' Apologia, p, 139. 2 Anglican Difficulties, vol. i. p. 153.
R
242 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
three courses open to the adherents of the movement,
and some followed one of them, some another. There
were those who, withdrawing from the world not
moving to their mind, to the seclusion of rural parishes,
sought there to reap the reward of "toil unsevered
from tranquillity," in the beneficent activity of an
English clergyman's life, and the soothing influences
of his home. Many "vindicated the right of private
judgment," modified their views, and cast in their lot
with other sections of religious thought. No in-
considerable number, after more or fewer years of
anxiety and suspense, determined that the Church of
Rome was the true home of the theological idea which
they could not surrender. Of these was John Henry
Newman. It is unnecessary to dwell here upon the
workings of his mind which led him to this conclusion.
They may be followed, step by step, in the Apologia
and the Essay on Development. It was on September
25, 1843, that his last words as an Anglican clergy-
man were spoken to the little knot of friends as-
sembled in the chapel of his house at Littlemore to
keep with him the anniversary of its consecration.
There were few dry eyes there save the preacher's,
as, from the text which had been that of his first
sermon nineteen years before, he spoke to them of
" the parting of friends." " Man goeth forth to his
work and to his labour until the evening." His sun
was set, and even had come. They knew well what
he meant when, in the sacred language which " veils
our feelings while it gives expression to them," he
bade them keep the feast, " even though in haste and
il
[vii.] Logical Consistency 243
with bitter herbs, and with loins girded and with staff
in hand, as they who have no continuing city, but seek
one to come."
(V)
The first Earl Russell once spoke of Cardinal
Newman's secession from the Church of England as
an inexplicable event. It is difficult to understand
how any one can desire a clearer explanation than
that which Cardinal Newman himself has given of it
— an explanation which seems to be of a quite con-
vincing candour and cogency. His logical consistency
appears to be as much beyond cavil as his moral
rectitude. He started with the assumption that the
system finally developed in Tract 90 was the true
system of the Anglican communion. Of that system
submission to ecclesiastical authority was the keystone.
And when the adverse sentence of such authority
proceeded against him he was true to his principles,
he accepted it,^ although it was to him as the bitterness
of death. Never was his loyalty to the Church of
England more conspicuously manifested than in the
supreme hour when he left her, " parting with all that
his heart loved, and turning his face to a strange
land." At the time indeed, few, very few, could
^ In 1843 he wrote to Archdeacon Manning : " If there ever was a
case, in which an individual teacher has been put aside and virtually put
away by a community, mine is one. ... It is felt — I am far from denying
justly felt — that I am a foreign material, and cannot assimilate with the
Church of England." — Apologia, p. 220.
244 'r^^ Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
understand this ; and their calmer voices were drowned
in the prevaihng ululation. The secession, at last, of
such a man, for years an object of ever-increasing sus-
picion and distrust, shocked the public mind of that
day in a way that can now be hardly realized, and
confused the judgments even of the wise. There is
nothing which men in general resent so deeply as an
action which tends to unsettle their opinions. The
utterances of indignation and disgust are seldom
weighed with nice discrimination, and an accusation
of deceit is the shape in which popular anger most
readily finds vent.
It was natural that the cry of treachery should go
up ; but the cry was as ill-founded as it was natural.
If John Henry Newman, and his friends who shared
his deep ineradicable convictions, instead of betaking
themselves whither those convictions logically led and
could honestly be held, had retained their places in a
communion with whose fundamental positions they
were at variance, the accusation of treachery would
have admitted of no extenuation upon the ground of
popular prejudice and the excitement of the hour.
To remain in the Church of England as by law
established, while ostentatiously defying that law ; to
revile and browbeat ecclesiastical rulers, while pro-
fessing to reverence them as divinely appointed ; to
introduce stealthily the dogmas and the ritual of Rome
in a great national institution, whose history, whose
formularies, whose Articles of Religion y are a standing
protest against Rome ; to convulse and bring to the
verge of destruction the Anglican spiritual edifice,
U
[vii.] An Eclectic or Original Religion 245
while bearing its name and eating its bread, — such
would have been, in truth, the conduct of traitors.
But Cardinal Newman has himself told us how such a
course was regarded by him.
" I can understand, I can sympathize with, those old-world
thinkers whose commentators are Mant and D'Oyly, whose
theologian is Tomlin, whose ritualist is Wheatley, and whose
canonist is Burns. ... In these days three hundred years is
a respectable antiquity, and traditions recognized in law
courts, and built into the structure of society, may well with-
out violence be imagined to be immemorial. Those also I
can understand who take their stand upon the Prayer-book ;
or those who honestly profess to follow the consensus of
Anglican divines, as the voice of authority and the standard
of faith. Moreover, I can quite enter into the sentiment with
which members of the liberal and infidel school investigate
the history and the documents of the early Church. They
profess a view of Christianity truer than the world has ever
had ; nor on the assumption of their principles is there any-
thing shocking to good sense in this profession, . . . Free-
thinkers and broad-thinkers, Laudians and Prayer-book
Christians, high-and-dry and Establishment men, all these
[I] understand ; but what [I] feel so prodigious is this . . .
that such as you . . . should come forth into open day with
your new edition of the Catholic faith, different from that
held in any existing body of Christians anywhere, which not
half a dozen men all over the world would honour with their
imprimatur ; and then withal should be as positive about its
truth in every part, as if the voice of mankind were with you
instead of being against you. . . . You do not follow the
Bishops of the National Church ; you disown its existing
traditions ; you are discontented with its divines ; you protest
against its law courts ; you shrink from its laity ; you outstrip
its Prayer-book. You have in all respects an eclectic or
original religion of your own. . . . Nearly all your divines.
246 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
if not all, call themselves Protestants, and you anathematize
the name. Who makes the concessions to Catholics that
you do, yet remain separate from them ? Who among
Anglican authorities would speak of Penance as a Sacrament
as you do ? Who of them encourages, much less insists upon,
auricular confession, as you do ? Or makes fasting an obliga-
tion ? Or uses the crucifix and the rosary ? Or reserves
the consecrated bread ? Or believes in miracles as existing
in your communion ? Or administers, as I believe you do,
Extreme Unction ? In some points you prefer Rome, in
others Greece, in others England, in others Scotland ; and of
that preference your own private judgment is the ultimate
sanction. What am I to say in answer to conduct so pre-
posterous ? Say you go by any authority whatever, and I
shall know where to find you and I shall respect you. Swear
by any school of religion, old or modern, by Rouge's Church,
or by the Evangelical Alliance, nay, by yourselves, and I
shall know what you mean, and will listen to you. But do
not come to me with the latest fashion of opinion the world
has seen, and protest to me that it is the oldest. Do not
come to me at this time of day with views palpably new,
isolated, original, s?(i generis, warranted old neither by Christian
nor unbeliever, and challenge me to answer what I really
have not the patience to read. Life is not long enough for
such trifles. . . . The basis of [the Tractarian] party was the
professed abnegation of private judgment : your basis is the
professed exercise of it." ^
John Henry Nev^^man's secession from the Church
of England may, then, justly be regarded as the
supreme proof of his good faith. It must not, how-
ever, be forgotten that it has another bearing. It
was also the seal of the good faith of his opponents.
Perhaps the most influential of these — certainly from
^ Anglican Difficulties, vol. i. pp. 155-163.
[vii.] Dr. Arnold 247
the historical point of view the most considerable —
was Thomas Arnold. And, widely as their views
differed, fierce as was the polemical strife between
them, profound as was the conviction of each as to
the appalling mischief inherent in the system of the
other, we may, at this distance of time, place their
names together as among the noblest and best adorn-
ing the annals of our country in the nineteenth
century. In subtleness of intellect, in dialectical skill,
in imaginative cogency, Dr. Arnold must indeed be
judged far inferior to his great opponent. A dis-
tinguished French critic has well observed : " His
talent was not, perhaps, upon the same level with
his character ; it was his character which inspired
his talent," and was the source of his ** extraordinary
ascendancy over his pupils."^ Passionate alike in his
hatred of ecclesiasticism and in his love of truth, it
was not to theology and history, but to his moral
sympathies, that he looked for light to guide him
in his spiritual and intellectual difficulties. The
theory in which he so earnestly believed, and in the
name of which he taught — a theory of a Christian
state with the politics of Aristotle and the ethics of
St. Paul — was as purely a paper theory as the Via
Media which he so detested, and has as utterly passed
away. This theory has much in common with that
of Hooker ; but it was from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
that Arnold derived it in greatest measure. It is a
curious testimony to the many-sided genius of that
great thinker that his doctrine, while providing, as
* Scherer, Melanges (THistoire Reh'gteuse, pp. 219, 220.
248 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
Cardinal Newman tells us, "a philosophical basis" to
the Tractarian Movement, should also have supplied
the inspiration, and furnished the arms, which were
to have so large a share in bringing about that
movement's overthrow.
(VI)
The Tractarian party was defeated then, and
crumbled into dissolution. Its leader and its most
consistent adherents went out of the National Church,
because, in truth, they were not of it. The house,
which they had reared so laboriously, was built upon
the sand ; and the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house,
and it fell, and great was the fall of it. The practical
results of Tractarianism have, however, been of the
highest importance. Let me now go on to indicate
a few of the more obvious of them.
And first, as to the Church of England. The
Tractarians thought they had failed : and so they
had as to the main object which they had at heart.
But, as so often happens in the affairs of men, while
not accomplishing what they intended, they accom-
plished much that they did not intend. The Oxford
Movement, discredited in its system, lived on in its
sentiment. Tract 90, which most truly represents
its dogmatic teaching, has been forgotten except as
a document of history, or a curiosity of literature.
It is far otherwise with the various volumes which
[vii.] The Gain of Anglicanism 249
embody its feeling, practical or emotional. The
Christian Year has become a household book. Next
to the Bible and Prayer-book it is one of the most
popular religious works in England, and wherever Eng-
lish religion has followed the English flag. Cardinal
Newman's Oxford Sermons, Mr. Copeland has truly
said, "have acted like leaven on the mind, and
language, and Hterature of the Church in this country."^
A treasury of all that is delicate and tender in the
religious spirit, they are, and are likely long to remain,
the chosen devotional reading of thousands, who are
profoundly indifferent, or actually opposed, to the
author's doctrinal views. It is not too much to say
that Tractarianism has done for the national religion
of England a work similar to that which Le Ginie du
Christianis?7ie did, some years before, for the national
religion of France. It has produced an intelligent
and sympathetic study of the art, the institutions, the
spiritual history of the past ; it has engendered a
revival of external reverence in public worship ; it has
aroused a deep sense of the sanctity of common life ;
it has created a transcendental school in striking
contrast with the dull, dreary, depressing pietism
which, up to the date when it arose, presented the
only outlet in the Establishment for devout aspira-
tions and mystical affections. It has cleansed our
ancient cathedrals and churches from the squalor of
centuries, and has clothed them in some semblance
of their pristine magnificence ; it has erected new
religious edifices throughout the land, some hardly
* Preface to the new edition, p. 7.
250 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
inferior in beauty of construction and splendour of
decoration to the works of medieval piety. All this,
and much more which should be added to make the
picture complete, and which each reader may supply
for himself, is in large measure due to the movement
originated by John Henry Newman. Thus, even
now, he is no mere name of the past in the Church
of England, but a present power, working, and long
to work ; how fruitfully no man can judge.
And, if we turn to the Catholic Church, the in-
fluence of Tractarianism has been, at the least, as
important there as in the Anglican Establishment.
Perhaps, it is not too much to say, that to it, in large
measure, is due all that most signally distinguishes the
present position of Catholics in this country from that
which they occupied in the early nineteenth century.
No doubt the Act of Emancipation rendered possible
the change which has come about. But the Catholic
body in England in 1829, when the Act was passed,
was hardly in a condition to profit, to any large extent,
by that great measure of justice. Far be it from me
to write one word sounding in disparagement of men
for whom I entertain a reverential admiration which
no words can adequately express. Who indeed can
but revere and admire the indefectible fidelity of that
heroic band of hereditary confessors .-* No English-
man, surely, can fail to be touched by it. But I
suppose it is an unquestionable fact of history that the
political, educational, and social disabilities of centuries
had told disastrously upon the Catholics of England.
How could it have been otherwise ? For generations
[vii.] The Gain of Catholicism 251
they had dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of
death, and the iron had entered into their souls. Sine
adjutoriOy inter mortuos liber, sicut vulnerati dormientes
in sepulchris, is the true description of the state in
which they found themselves when they were once
more admitted to their constitutional rights. It was
opportune, then, that the fresher zeal, the wider
cultivation, the uncramped energies of the band of
proselytes which John Henry Newman headed, were
placed, just when they were, at the service of Catho-
licity in England.
The new blood brought into the Catholic com-
munion is certainly a very important result of the
Tractarian Movement ; and its importance is not
restricted either to the geographical limits of this
country or to the chronological limits of this age.
Still, I do not think I am hazarding a doubtful predic-
tion in saying that, in the long run, the most consider-
able product of Tractarianism, so far as the Catholic
Church is concerned, will be found to be her gain of
John Henry Newman, her acquisition of this one
mind — a mind upon a level with that of Pascal or
Bossuet, and uniting to much which was highest and
best in both, great endowments which were given to
neither.
It is very difficult, however, to set down in writing
anything that will convey a just impression of the
work which Cardinal Newman did, and is still doing,
for the Church with which he found the true home of
his religious convictions. The works published by him
after his secession, great as their effect has already
252 The Meaning of Tractarlanism [vii.]
been, represent only a small portion of it. From his
retreat at Birmingham went forth through the Catholic
world the same subtle influence which once went forth
from Oriel and Littlemore, — an influence profoundly
affecting events, not in their more vulgar manifesta-
tions which meet the eye, but in their secret springs
and prime sources. To others he left conspicuous
positions and the " loud applause and Aves vehement "
which greeted their achievements there, himself taking
unquestioningly that lowest place which his ecclesi-
astical superiors assigned him, going forth, as of old,
to his work and to his labour in his appointed sphere ;
and at last, in the " calm sunset of his various day,"
as unquestioningly obeying the voice of authority
bidding him go up higher, and setting him among the
princes of his people. His life, after he joined the
communion of Rome, was to a great extent " a hidden
life ; " a life of religious retirement and abstraction,
not indeed from the world's thought and great
interests, but from its selfish striving and low desires ;
that life, as some one has described it, d lafois en notes
et hors de nous, which is perhaps the most favourable
to the development of high spiritual and intellectual
gifts. So far as its external surroundings are con-
cerned, it was spent among a strange people ; a
population given up to grimy industrialism, to "the
dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the
Protestant religion," and possessing little in common
with the visitant who had exchanged the learned
leisure and antique beauty of Oxford for the ''fumum
et opes strepitumque" of their modern and unlovely
[vii.] The Main Account 253
city. There he passed from mature manhood to
green old age, and there, in the fulness of years and
of honour, the summons to depart came to him.
Thence his sound went out into all lands. A simple
priest, holding no position of authority, living tranquilly
with his brethren, his utterances have sunk into the
thinking minds of his communion, throughout the
world, as those of no other member of his Church.
Not one of his words has fallen to the ground. This
must be duly pondered in judging of his life as a
Catholic.
" Not on the vulgar mass
Called * work ' must sentence pass,
Things done that took the eye and had the price ;
O'er which, from level stand.
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind,
Could value in a trice ;
But all the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb.
So passed in making up the main account : "
all that must be duly reckoned when the time comes
to speak fully of his action in the Catholic Church.
For the time is not come yet. That history must be
left to the day — if it ever dawns — when his papers
are released from the limbo in which they are so
unaccountably detained.
The world knows enough of his Catholic life,
however, to trace its main lines, to discern the domi-
nant ideas, to appreciate the general significance.
His later writings tell us much ; like his earlier, they
are true revelations of himself; from some points of
254 'The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
view, indeed, truer, for in them we have the ultimate
resolution of his philosophical and theological opinions,
and the mature development of his literary gifts.
Thus the Gram^nar of Assent is the fuller expansion
and orderly arrangement of the philosophic system
first set forth in his Sermons before the University of
Oxford. His Discottrses to Mixed Congregations ^ and
Upon Various Occasions, certainly surpass in intensity
of power any of his former productions, whether in
pages of appalling description which recall the via
terribile of Michael Angelo, or in passages of more
than earthly beauty and sweetness, which seem like
a translation into words of a picture of Fra Angelico.
I am here concerned with them, however, merely as
documents of history, as notes and memorials of his
work, as serving to shadow forth, however faintly, the
more public side of his activity as a Catholic.
That activity was to a large extent of a con-
troversial kind ; Cardinal Newman would gladly have
had it otherwise. His ideal of existence would rather
have been " to behold the bright countenance of
truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."
But for him, as for Milton, it was not so ordered.
His course lay "in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
disputes," and in that rough element his endeavour
was ever to do, with all his might, the duty which lay
nearest to him. And when he had himself embraced
Catholicism, he felt that his first duty was towards
those whom he had left behind. His heart yearned
towards his brethren. They had gone one mile with
him : he would compel them to go twain. That upon
[vii.] "Broad Visible Facts" 255
their own principles they ought to follow him is the
scope of most of his earlier Catholic sermons, and of
those Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, originally de-
livered in London in 1850, which created so great an
impression at the time, and which, as years have gone
on, have exercised an ever-increasing influence. It
does not fall within my present scope to examine in
detail the arguments which he there employs. But
I may remark, generally, that the effect of his writings
upon what is called the Anglican controversy has been
to place it upon quite another footing from that on
which it formerly stood, and to lift it into a higher sphere.
He puts aside, for example, when discussing Anglican
Orders, dreary gropings into minute intricate passages
and obscure corners of past occurrences, as unsatis-
factory except to antiquaries, who delight in researches
into the past for their own sake.^ He brings you face
to face with " broad visible facts," with great manifest
historical phenomena. Thus, if he is treating "De
Ecclesia," he inquires what the true logical idea of a
Church is, and what is that idea as it has actually
lived and worked, as it has from the first been appre-
hended by Saints and Doctors, and received by the
orbis terrarum. And he draws it out in its particulars,
as a divine creation, a supernatural order in the world,
appealing to the human conscience as the natural
order appeals to the human senses, the City of God
tabernacling among men, the Living Oracle of God in
the earth, the inerrant Judge of Faith and Morals
^ See " Letter to Father Coleridge " in Essays Critical and Historical,
vol. ii. p. 109.
256 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
until the consummation of all things, gathering, in each
successive generation, the elect into a polity in belief
of the truth, at once a philosophy, and a religious rite,
and a political power, as its Divine Author is Prophet,
Priest, and King. And then, he asks, Can any man
believe the Church of England to be this, or in any
true sense to represent it ? Not that he is insen-
sible to so much that is excellent and winning in
Anglicanism.
" Its portions of Catholic teaching, its ' decency and order,'
the pure and beautiful English of its prayers, its literature, the
piety found among its members, the influence of its superiors
and friends, its historical associations, its domestic character,
the charm of a country life, the remembrance of past years, —
there is all this and much more to attach the mind to the
national worship. But attachment is not trust, nor is to obey
the same as to look up to and to rely upon ; nor do I think
that any thoughtful or educated man can simply believe in
the ivordoi the Established Church. I never met any such
person who did, or said he did, and I do not think that such a
person is possible." ^
The whole matter, as he judges of it, turns upon
the question whether there is in the world such a
thing as a Church, in the true sense of the word.
Throughout his long career the deep underlying
convictions which guided him were unchanged. Not
only is it true of him that "his wandering step" was
ever "obedient to high thoughts," but it is also true
that the thoughts were always, in substance, the same.
As an Anglican, his battle was on behalf of the dog-
matic principle. As a Catholic, he carried on the
* Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 232.
[vii.] "This is a Religion" 257
same battle, under different conditions. He quitted
the Church of England when he became convinced
that it was in no true sense dogmatic, but merely " a
civil establishment daubed with divinity." ^ And he
says in another place : —
"There came on me an extreme astonishment that I had
ever imagined it to be a portion of the Catholic Church . . .
Forthwith I could not get myself to see in it anything else
than ... a mere national institution. As if my eyes were
suddenly opened, so I saw it — spontaneously, apart from any
definite act of reason or any argument; and so I have seen it
ever since. ... I gazed at [the Catholic Church] almost pas-
sively, as a great objective fact. I looked at her ; at her
rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts ; and I said, ' This is a
religion : ' and then when I looked back upon the poor
Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so hard, and
upon all that appertained to it, and thought of our various
attempts to dress it up doctrinally and aesthetically, it seemed
to me to be the veriest of nonentities." ^
This is the main thesis of Cardinal Newman's
earlier Catholic sermons and of his Lectures on
Anglican Difficulties ; — that the Church of England
is not an oracle of religious truth ; that Rome is the
natural, logical, and true home of the idea of Trac-
tarianism. And the course of events in the Anglican
communion has been such as to add much point to
his argument. The defeat of Tractarianism was the
victory of Liberalism, and Liberalism has reaped the
full fruits of its triumph. One judgment after another
1 Via Media, vol. i. p. 339, note of 1877.
^ Apologia, p. 340.
258 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
of the Supreme Appellate Court of the Established
Church has deprived it of any semblance of dogmatic
character which it may once have possessed, and has
reduced it to the position of an exponent of the most
conflicting opinions on theological subjects. If Bishop
Watson has rightly defined Protestantism to be
" the right of saying what you think, and of thinking
what you please," the Church of England, unques-
tionably, is the most Protestant of ecclesiastical
communities.
So much must suffice with regard to Cardinal
Newman's action in the Anglican controversy. It
is, as I have observed, a continuation of that cham-
pionship of the dogmatic principle which distinguished
him as a Protestant. And the same may be said of
the course which he took with regard to controversies
among Catholics. While he strenuously combated, on
the one hand, the Liberalism which strikes at the root
of the dogmatic principle, he was, on the other, an
equally uncompromising opponent of those who, as he
judged, sought to overlay the Catholic creed with pri-
vate interpretation, and to impose their unauthorized
shibboleths as authoritative teaching — to impress
upon the ecumenical attributes of the Church a
partisan character. The doctrines defined of late
years, which are popularly supposed to be the greatest
stumbling-blocks, never, in themselves, presented any
difficulties to him, as a Catholic. The promulgation
of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was
hailed by him in a passage not surpassed, perhaps,
in any of his writings, for "tender grace" and
[vii.] Trials and Afflictions 259
splendour of diction.^ And the need which he held to
exist, before he joined the communion of Rome, for
"an infallible chair " to judge in controversies of faith,
supplied one of the arguments which attracted him
towards it.^ But doctrinal teaching is one thing ; the
tone and temper of religious factions are quite another.
"From the day I became a Catholic [he wrote in 1875] to
this day, now close upon thirty years, I have never had a
moment's misgiving that the Communion of Rome is that
Church which the Apostles set up at Pentecost. . . . Nor
have I ever for a moment hesitated in my conviction, since
1845, that it was my clear duty to join that Catholic Church,
as I did then join it, when in my conscience I felt it to be
divine. . . . Never for a moment have I wished myself back.
But [he adds] I had more to try and afflict me, in various
ways, as a Catholic than as an Anglican." ^
Nor is the world ignorant as to the causes of these
trials and afflictions, in part at least. He has himself
told us that there were those whose proceedings upon
the occasion of the Vatican Council shocked and dis-
mayed him. Himself holding the infallibility of the
Pope as a matter of theological opinion ever since he
had become a Catholic,'^ but doubting the opportuneness
of its definition, he stood aghast at the virulence dis-
played by a small and extreme section among the
^ In his sermon on the " Glories of Mary," Discourses to Mixed
Congregations, p. 359. See also the sermon on the "Fitness of the
Glories of Mary " (No. XVI 1 1.), and the " Letter to Dr. Pusey " in vol. ii.
of Anglican Difficulties.
2 See Essay on Developnient, chap. ii. § 2, p. 90.
3 " Letterto the Duke of Norfolk," Postscript, Anglican Difficulties,
vol. ii. p. 349.
* " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," idid., vol. ii. p. 304.
26o The Meaning of Tractarianism [vn.]
advocates of the dominant party. It was a party not
dominant which commended itself to his judgment
and instincts, not only in theology but also in politics ;
for the old Laudian notion of the indefeasible divine
right of hereditary rulers, and of the absolute passive
obedience due to them, had dropped away from him, and
had been replaced by the broader doctrine of Aquinas
and Suarez. The party of which I speak called itself
Liberal. He did not like the name, but he recognized
the fact that between the Liberalism against which he
had ever warred and the Liberty for which Montalem-
bert and Lacordaire so earnestly contended, there was
nothing in common but a sound. With the " general
line of thought and conduct " of those illustrious men
he " enthusiastically concurred," ^ and he resented as
an outrage the invectives with which they and those
who thought with them were so persistently pursued :
" I felt deeply [he wrote], and shall ever feel while life lasts
the violence and cruelty of journals and other publications,
which, while taking, as they professed to do, the Catholic side,
employed themselves by their rash language (though, of
course, they did not mean it) in unsettling the weak in faith,
throwing back inquirers, and shocking the Protestant mind. " '^
Such language, indeed, ever elicited his strong dis-
approbation. Thus in another place he observes —
" There are those among us who for years past have con-
ducted themselves as if no responsibility attached to wild
* Apologia y p. 285.
2 " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," Anglican Difficulties, vol. ii.
p. 300.
[vii.] ''Tyrannous ipse dixits'' 261
words and overbearing deeds : who have stated truths in the
most paradoxical form, and stretched principles until they
were close upon snapping. ^ There has been a fierce and
intolerant temper abroad which scorns and virtually tramples
on the little ones of Christ. While I acknowledge one Pope,
jicre divbio, I acknowledge no other, and I think it a usurpation
too wicked to be comfortably dwelt upon when individuals
use their own private judgment in the discussion of religious
questions, not simply abimdare in siwsettsii, but for the purpose
of anathematizing the private judgment of others." ^
This "jealous vindication, against tyrannous ipse
dixits, of the range of truths and the sense of pro-
positions, of which the absolute reception may be
required," is among the most marked characteristics
of his later writings ; and nowhere, perhaps, did he
more strongly display it than in dealing with a
document so much and so ignorantly talked of, both
by Catholics and Protestants, the Syllabus Errorum,
issued by command of Pope Pius IX. in 1864. Before
proceeding to his argument, that this catalogue of
errors has in itself no dogmatic force, that it is a mere
index raisonni the value of which lies in its references,
that the aversion felt by educated Europe towards it
arises mainly from misinterpretation of the theses con-
demned, from ignorance of the language of scientific
theology, and from the reading of the propositions
apart from the context, occasion, and drift of each, he
interposes words of indignant protest against " those
who wish and try to carry measures, and declare they
1 " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," Anglican Difficulties, vol. ii.
p. 177.
- Ibid., p. 346.
262 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
have carried, when they have not carried them ; " and
adds the caution, that Pontifical " utterances which are
really dogmatic must be read by definite rules and by
traditional principles of interpretation, which are as
cogent and as unchangeable as the Pope's own decisions
themselves." ^
(VII)
It is not necessary, however, for me to pursue this
subject, and I gladly leave unstirred theological dust,
now happily fallen, to glance at the bearing of the
Tractarian Movement upon another question of far
profounder and more general interest ; the great
question of the day, we must account it, lying as it
does at the root of all philosophy : Is any knowledge of
God possible ? — any knowledge of His existence as a
fact ? — any knowledge of Him as a Person ? — and, if
so, how ? I need hardly say that to present with any
fulness the mind of the author of Tractarianism upon
this matter would be an undertaking very far beyond
my present limits, involving as it would, with much
else, an exposition of his whole doctrine as to certitude
and the logical cogency of faith. All I can pretend to
do here is to indicate, as briefly as may be consistent
with clearness, the outlines of one important branch of
his argument ; and I shall endeavour to do this, as far
as possible, in his own words. His main principle
is that which he originally learnt from Butler — that
1 " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," § 7, Anglican Difficulties, vol. ii.
p. 280.
[vii.] Probability 263
probability is the guide of life. Formal logical
sequence, he observes —
" is not, in fact, the method by which we are enabled to become
certain of what is concrete, and it is equally plain what the
real and necessary method is. It is the cumulation of pro-
babilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature
and circumstances of the particular case which is under
review, probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle
and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous
and various for such conversion, even were they convertible." ^
This, he says,
" is the mode in which we ordinarily reason, dealing with things
directly and as they stand, one by one, in the concrete, with
an intrinsic and personal power, not a conscious adoption of
an artificial instrument or expedient.^ From the nature of
the case, and from the constitution of the human mind,
certitude is the result of arguments which, taken in the letter,
and not in their full implicit sense, are but probabilities." ^
And so, in religious inquiries, he holds informal
inference to be the real and necessary method. By
religion he means the knowledge of God, of His will,
and of our duties towards Him ; and he finds three
main channels which Nature furnishes for acquiring
this knowledge, viz. our own minds, the voice of man-
kind, and the course of the world, the most authorita-
tive of these, as specially our own, being our own
minds. To Cardinal Newman our great internal
teacher of religion is conscience, a personal guide,
which he must use because he must use himself, and
nearer to him than any other means of knowledge."
1 Gratnmar of Assent, p. 281. ^ Ibid., p. 324.
3 Ibid, p. 286. ^ Ibid., p. 389.
264 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
He puts away abstract questions ; he does not con-
sider "how far external existences are in all cases
necessary to the action of the mind, because, in fact,
man does not live in isolation, but is everywhere found
as a member of society." He deals with no indivi-
duum vagtmt, but with man as the experience of life
presents him, and with the man he is best acquainted
with — himself, because he knows what has satisfied
and satisfies himself; if it satisfies him, it is likely to
satisfy others ; if, as he believes and is sure, it is true,
it will approve itself to others also, for there is but
one truth. ^ Conscience, then, to him is the voice of
God within, " teaching not only that He is, but what
He is," " the special Attribute under which it brings
Him before us, and to which it subordinates all other
Attributes," being "that of justice — retributive
justice."
" Hence its effect is to burden and sadden the religious
mind, and is in contrast with the enjoyment derivable from the
exercise of the affections, and from the perception of beauty,
whether in the material universe or in the creations of the
intellect. This is that fearful antagonism brought out with
such soul-piercing reality by Lucretius, when he speaks so
dishonourably of what he considers the heavy yoke of religion,
and the " aeternas poenas in morte timendum ; " and, on the
other hand, rejoices in his Alma Venus, "Quae rerum naturam
sola gubernas." '^
He looks within, then, and he finds, as he believes,
that the existence of a God of Judgment is as certain
^ Grammar of Assent^ p. 385.
^ Ibid., p. 391.
[vir.] "A Vision to dizzy and appal" 265
to him as his own existence, however difficult it may
be to put into logical shape the grounds of that
certainty. He looks into the world and there he sees
a sight that " seems simply to give the lie to this great
truth, of which his whole being is so full." '* To
consider the world," he writes —
"in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races
of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation,
their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, governments,
forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless courses, their
random achievements and acquirements, the impotent con-
clusions of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken
of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn
out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as
if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the
greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his
short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the dis-
appointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil,
physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity
of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary
hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fear-
fully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, 'Having
no hope, and without God in the world,' — all this is a vision
to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon the mind the sense
of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human
solution. . . . Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly
in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a
pantheist, or a polytheist, when I looked into the world." ^
Thus does human life present itself to him. Such
is the " heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact" which
he has to face. Is there any explanation of it ? " I
see only a choice of alternatives," he answers.
' Apologia, p. 241.
266 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
"Either there is no Creator, or He has disowned His
creatures. Are, then, the dim shadows of His Presence in
the affairs of men but a fancy of our own, or, on the other
hand, has He hid His face and the light of His countenance
because we have in some special way dishonoured Him ?
My true informant, my burdened conscience, gives me at
once the true answer to each of these antagonistic questions : —
it pronounces without any misgiving that God exists : — and
it pronounces quite as surely that I am alienated from Him ;
that ' His hand is not shortened, but that our iniquities have
divided between us and our God.' Thus it solves the world's
mystery, and sees in it only a confirmation of its own original
teaching." ^
This, then, is his first step. The presence of God
in the conscience, and the sense of alienation from
God, are to him the main truths of natural religion —
the notorious facts of the case in the medium of his
primary mental experiences. And here, before I pass
on, I should remark, that, irresistibly as Cardinal
Newman finds the doctrine of the existence of God
borne in upon him, he must not be supposed to be
without a keen consciousness of the number and weight
of the objections which may be raised against it — of
the insoluble questions, the inconceivable, inexplicable
mysteries, which attend it — of the imperfection and
incompleteness of the body of proof adducible for it —
of the plausible excuses which may be urged for
doubting it.^ He recognizes that "the main difficulty
* Graimnar of Assent, p. 397.
2 See Sermon on "Mysteries of Nature and Grace" in Discourses to
Mixed Congregatio7is, p. 263. So in Oxford University Sermons, p. 194,
he remarks, " It is a great question whether Atheism is not as philo-
sophically consistent with the phenomena oi \.h.Q physical world, taken by
[vii.] The Great Obstacle to Faith 267
to an inquirer is firmly to hold that there is a Living
God, the Creator, Witness, and Judge of men." And
he thinks that, when once the mind is broken-in " to
the belief of a power above it, when once it under-
stands that it is not itself the measure of all thingfs in
heaven and earth, it will have little difficulty in going
forward : " not, indeed, that it necessarily must, but
that it has passed a line — that " the great obstacle to
faith is taken away." ^ The very difficulties of nature,
he judges, make it likely that a Revelation should be
" That earnest desire which religious minds cherish leads
the way to the expectation of it. Those who know nothing
of the wounds of the soul are not led to deal with the ques-
tion, or to consider its circumstances. But when our atten-
tion is roused, then the more steadily we dwell upon it, the
more probable does it seem that a revelation has been, or
will be, given to us. This presentiment is founded on our
sense, on the one hand, of the infinite goodness of God, and,
on the other, of our extreme misery and need.^ You know
there is a God, yet you know your own ignorance of Him,
of His will, of your duties, of your prospects. A revelation
would be the greatest of possible boons which could be
vouchsafed to you. After all, you do not know, you only
conclude, that there is a God ; you see Him not, you do but
hear of Him. He acts under a veil ; He is on the poijit of
manifesting Himself to you at every turn, yet He does not.
He has impressed on your heart anticipations of His majesty ;
themselves, as the doctrine of a creative and sovereign Power." But see
the note in the last edition upon the words in italics. It must not be
supposed that Cardinal Newman denies the validity of the argument from
design in its place.
^ Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 276,
^ Grammar of Assent, p. 423.
268 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
in every part of creation has He left traces of His presence
and given glimpses of His glory ; you come up to the spot,
He has been there, but He is gone. . . . The news, then, of
a revelation, far from suspicious, is borne in upon our hearts
by the strongest presumptions of reason in its behalf It is
hard to believe that it is not given, as, indeed, the conduct
of mankind has ever shown. You cannot help expecting it
from the hands of the All-merciful, unworthy as you feel
yourselves of it. It is not that you can claim it, but that He
inspires hope of it ; it is not you that are worthy of the gift,
but it is the gift which is worthy of your Creator. It is so
urgently probable, that little evidence is required for it, even
though but little were given. Evidence that God has spoken
you must have, else were you a prey to impostures ; but its
extreme likelihood allows you, were it necessary, to dispense
with all proof that is not barely sufficient for your purpose.
The very fact, I say, that there is a Creator, and a hidden
one, powerfully bears you on and sets you down at the very
threshold of revelation, and leaves you there looking up
earnestly for divine tokens that a revelation has been made."^
This is the second stage of his argument. His
third point is, If there is a Revelation, where should
we seek it ? Christianity he considers to be the truest
complement of natural religion.^ But which of its
innumerable varieties is the truest form of Christianity ?
And here comes in the testimony of history. Christi-
anity is a great fact in the world. Its founders set
it up as a Church, a Visible Society, a Kingdom.
This was their work, not to write a book, nor to put
together a collection of documents, the Bible being, in
fact, the creation of the Church, and deriving from her
sanction an authority the actual extent of which she
' Discourses to Mixed Congregations^ pp. 277-279,
2 Grammar of Assent, p. 486.
[vii.] The Church and the Pope 269
has never defined. But where is this kingdom which
Christ set up, if, indeed, it is still on earth ? '* If," he
argues,
" all that can be found of it is what can be discerned at Con-
stantinople or Canterbury, I say, it has disappeared. . . . We
must either give up the belief in the Church as a divine
institution altogether, or we must recognize it in that com-
munion of which the Pope is the head. . . . We must take
things as they are ; to believe in a Church is to believe in the
Pope.^ The question lies between the [Catholic] Church and
no divine messenger at all ; there is no revelation given us,
unless she is the organ of it ; for where else is there a Prophet
to be found ? Your anticipation, which I have been speaking
of, has failed, your probability has been falsified, if she be not
that Prophet of God. Not that this conclusion is an absurdity,
for you cannot take it for granted that your hope of a revela-
tion will be fulfilled ; but, in whatever degree it is probable
that it will be fulfilled, in that degree it is probable that the
Church, and nothing else, is the means of fulfilling it. . . .
Turn away from the Catholic Church, and to whom will you
go? . . .
" There is nothing between it and scepticism, when men
exert their reason freely. Private creeds, fancy religions,
may be showy and imposing to the many in their day ;
national religions may lie huge and lifeless, and cumber the
ground for centuries, and distract the attention or confuse the
judgment of the learned ; but in the long run it will be found
that either the Catholic religion is verily and indeed the
coming-in of the unseen world into this, or that there is
nothing positive, nothing dogmatic, nothing real in any of
our notions as to whence we come and whither we are
^ " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," Anglican Difficulties, vol. ii .
p. 207.
2 Discourses to Mixed Congi-egations, pp. 279-283.
270 The Meaning of Tractarianism [vii.]
Such is, in substance, the solution of this great
question which commended itself to Cardinal Newman.
Of those farthest from accepting it, there are, I think,
not a few who will recognize that he has done much
to clear the ground, and to present to the world the
true issue. And this, perhaps, is the chief significance
of Tractarianism.
VIII
CONCERNING GHOST STORIES
(I)
The telling of ghost stories is, I believe, a not un-
common way of honouring the festival of Christ's
Nativity, and I resign myself to it, or endeavour to
do so, with a good grace, as to one of the inevitable
incidents of the holy season, like waits, Christmas-
boxes, and pantomimes. I do not, however, make
any contribution to the narratives, and possibly my
face, less under control than it ought to be, betrays
sometimes that they but moderately interest me. At
all events, I remember one occasion on which a
brilliant lady, who had just finished a thrilling tale,
turned to me with a look of surprise, and observed,
" You don't seem to care about ghost stories ? " I
replied, '* Well, no ; I never tell them, and I would
not go out of my way to listen to them ; still, I have
no wish to mar your innocent — or perhaps not quite
innocent — amusement." The lady rejoined, " But
surely many ghost stories are quite well authenticated
— the one I have just told is ; and, if so, what can
be the harm of telling them ? " I thought it best to
272 Concerning Ghost Stories [v"i.]
follow the example of the Chancellor in The Day
Dream — a serious discussion would have been out of
place just then — " and, smiling, put the question by,"
promising, however, to write something about it when
I should have leisure to do so. And now I proceed
to redeem my promise.
The question, indeed, which my fair friend put to
me divides itself into two. "Are not many ghost
stories true?" and, "If they are, or may be, true,
what can be the harm of telling them to beguile an
after-dinner hour or to enliven a tea-table ? " Let us
consider both these questions a little.
(II)
I take the phrase " Ghost Stories " in a large sense,
and include in it not merely tales of apparitions, but
generally accounts of phenomena not referable to the
action of any natural laws at present known, and
therefore presumed to belong to the supernatural
sphere. Now, that many of these accounts are true
I do not for one moment doubt. It is, doubtless,
quite easy to deny them upon a priori grounds. The
affirmation that there is no order beyond the physical,
of course implies that there can be no communication
from the supernatural. And this is really the argu-
ment — to give a classic example — of Voltaire in his
article " Apparitions " in the PJiilosophical Dictionary.
The first sentence strikes the keynote : "It is not at
all an uncommon thing for a person under a strong
[viii.] The a priori Argument 273
emotion to see that which is not." (" Ce n'est point
du tout une chose rare qu'une personne, vivement
emue, voit ce qui n'est point") The proposition is
unquestionably true. As unquestionably, it is not
conclusive. It would be just as true to say, "It is
not by any means uncommon for a person in a normal
state of health and nerves, and not under the influence
of any strong emotion, to be conscious of the presence
of one who is dead." The evidence for this second
proposition is just as abundant and overwhelming as
is the evidence for the first. The a priori argument
against apparitions of the departed resolves itself into
the ancient Roman dictum that "there is nothing
beyond death, and that death itself is nothing " —
" Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil." Of
course a man may believe that if he likes. I use the
words "if he likes" advisedly, for it is, in nine cases
out of ten, our inclination which determines our creed.
There are those who, to any form of faith in the
supersensuous, prefer a crude disbelief in all that lies
out of the senses' grasp. On such, evidence of the
supernatural is thrown away. And just now I am
not writing for them.
But I suppose that thanatists, as it is the fashion
to call them, are really not very numerous. At all
events, I will take it that most of those who do me
the honour to read this Study will be of the opinion
expressed by Cardinal Newman in a striking passage
of his sermon "The Invisible World." "The dead,
when they depart hence, do not cease to exist, but
they retire from this visible scene of things, or, in
T
274 Concerning Ghost Stories [vm-]
other words, they cease to act towards us and before
us thj'ough otir senses. . . . They remain ; but without
the usual means of approach towards us and corre-
spondence with us. . . . We are in a world of spirits
as well as in a world of sense." To Newman, the
phenomenal universe was but a veil, hiding from us
spiritual realities. The question is. Can any com-
munication reach us from beyond that veil .'*
It is a question of fact, and, as I have before
observed, the evidence for an affirmative answer to
it seems to me overwhelming. I am well aware that
this evidence can seldom be tested as evidence is
tested in an English court of law. The narrator does
not speak, as a rule, under the sanction of an oath
or a solemn affirmation. Nor is he, as a rule, sub-
jected to the sifting process of cross-examination.
Still, I do not hesitate to say that the testimony upon
which many histories of apparitions rest is so clear,
so concrete, and so cogent, as to leave no room for
doubt in a candid mind — a mind, as the phrase is,
open to conviction. " If," Lord Chief Baron Pollock
told the jury in the trial of the Mannings — " if the
conclusion to which you are led be that there is that
degree of certainty in the case that you would act
upon it in your own grave and important concerns,
that is the degree of certainty which the law requires,
and which will justify you in returning a verdict of
guilty." That was the degree of certainty which this
very learned judge, expounding, I need not say
correctly, the doctrine of English jurisprudence, held
sufficient for the hanging of the Manning couple.
[viii.] Evidence 275
But the degree of certainty produced by the evidence
in support of certain well-known apparitions — for
example, the Wynyard-Sherbrooke, the Brougham,
and the Weld — appears to me to go far beyond that,
and to leave no room for incredulity, except in a
mind dominated by a first principle which blocks
belief I may say the same of the account of St.
Ambrose falling into a trance during- Liturgy, and
being seen at the funeral of St. Martin of Tours,
and of the apparitions of St. Philip Neri, both during
his lifetime and after his decease, to Cardinal Baronius,
his friend and disciple.
I have been writing without special reference to
the Christian religion. But it must be perfectly clear
to any student of its Sacred Books that if communica-
tions from the unseen world, such as those which we
are considering, are impossible, and do not take place,
these venerable documents lose all claim to credibility,
so closely are stories of visions and revelations inter-
woven with their very texture. We must say the
same of the Lives of the Saints. And, as regards
the more recent Saints, we are often in a position to
criticize closely the evidence upon which the alleged
supernatural facts rest. In many cases that evidence
seems amply sufficient for certitude, unless we dis-
credit it on the a priori ground which I mentioned
before : as, for example, in the following incident in
the life of St. Alphonsus Liguori : —
"On the morning of September 21, 1774, after Alphonsus
[he was then Bishop of St. Agatha] had ended Mass, contrary
to custom, he threw himself into his armchair ; he was cast
276 Concerning Ghost Stories [vm.]
down and silent, he made no movement of any sort, never
articulated a word, and said nothing to any one. He remained
in this state all that day and all the following night, and
during all this time he took no nourishment and did not
attempt to undress. The servants, on seeing the state he was
in, did not know what was going to happen, and remained up
and at his door, but no one dared to enter it. On the morn-
ing of the 22nd he had not changed his position, and no one
knew what to think of it. The fact was that he was in a
prolonged ecstasy. However, when the day became further
advanced, he rang the bell to announce that he intended to
celebrate Mass. The signal was not only answered to by
Brother Francis Anthony, according to custom, but all the
people in the house hurried to him with eagerness. On
seeing so many people, his Lordship asked what was the
matter, with an air of surprise. ' What is the matter ! ' they
replied ; * you have neither spoken nor eaten anything for
two days, and you ceased to give any signs of life.' ' That
is true,' replied Alphonsus ; ' but do you not know I have
been with the Pope, who has just died?' ... It was looked
upon as a mere dream. . . . However, before very long the
tidings of the death of Pope Clement the Fourteenth were
received. He passed to a better life on September 22 at
seven o'clock in the morning, at the very moment when
Alphonsus came to himself."
I should here observe, as in fairness I am bound
to do, that well-authenticated stories of this sort are
by no means confined to Christian hagiology. Thus,
in Eflaki's well-known work, Menaqibu 'L'Arifin, the
Acts of certain Islamite saints of the Mevlevi order
of Dervishes, many similar instances of supernatural
facts are vouched for by the historian — a man of
undoubted intelligence and probity — as seen by him-
self; while others are related upon the authority of
[viii.] Schopenhauer's View 277
witnesses whose names are generally given, and whose
piety and veracity were known to him.
But the reader must not suppose that narrations
of this kind find credence only among the professors
of Christianity or Islam. They are received with
equal readiness by exponents of the newest schools
of philosophy, to whom Christianity, or any of its
rival religions, would appear "a creed outworn."
Thus Schopenhauer, who, however we may feel
towards his speculations, certainly ranks amongst the
keenest and subtlest intellects of these latter days,
profoundly believed in them, and would not reject
even the wildest stories of supernatural manifestations
as unworthy of examination. Whether the dead ever
actually appear he does not indeed undertake to
determine ; but he will not deny that they may have
the capacity of manifesting themselves to, or com-
municating with, the living. Death, as he judged,
though extinguishing the intellect, which, according
to him, is merely a function of the brain, has, he
considers, no dominion over the will, whereof the
brain is only a manifestation. And the fact of
apparitions of the living he believed to be established
beyond all reasonable doubt. He gives many in-
stances in support of his belief. I have before me,
as I write, his most fascinating paper, *' An Enquiry
concerning Ghost-seeing, and what is connected there-
with " (" Versuch uber Geistersehen und was damit
zusammenhangt "). He observes that belief in ghosts
is born with man, that it is found in all ages and in
all countries, and that probably no one is altogether
278 Concerning Ghost Stories [v"i-]
free from it. The great multitude of men, he con-
tinues, in all times and in all lands, draw a distinction
between natural and supernatural, as two essentially-
different orders of things, ascribing to the supernatural
order miracles, divinations, ghosts, and enchantments,
but yet apprehending that nature itself rests upon the
supernatural. And this popular differentiation {Unter-
sckeidung), he goes on to say, essentially agrees with
the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and the
thing-in-itself ; although Kant regards nature and the
supernatural not as two different and separate kinds
of being, but as one, which, taken in itself, may be
called supernatural, but when manifested in the world
of sense, and apprehended by the intellect, and
assuming the forms prescribed thereby, is termed
nature. What Kant calls phenomenon {Ersckeinung)
Schopenhauer denominates intellectual representation
( Vorstellung) ; and Kant's thing-in-itself is named by
him Will. In ordinary circumstances, Schopenhauer
teaches, we know this Will only as manifested under
the forms of space, time, and causality. But there
are states of the brain in which we penetrate beyond
those forms and come into direct contact with the
ultimate, the one reality — Will, transcending the
intellectual illusions which are the realm of physical
science, and reaching the sphere of absolute truth.
To this sphere of absolute truth, curious as it may
seem, he refers animal magnetism, sympathetic cures,
magic, second sight, presentiments, apparitions, and
visions of all kinds.
[viii.] A Harmless Amusement ? 279
(III)
But I must not linger further upon these fasci-
nating and far-reaching speculations. That they are
Schopenhauer's is enough to entitle them to a re-
spectful hearing. What I have said may suffice as
to the first question which I have proposed : the
truth, actual or possible, of ghost stories. I shall now
proceed to consider the further question — whether,
allowing that they may be, and often are, more or less
true, the telling them is a harmless amusement. I
put the inquiry in this way purposely. I shall answer
it in the negative, and shall give my reasons for so
doing. I am, of course, very far from saying that
all tales of the supernatural, save such as are well
authenticated, or vouched for by religion, are neces-
sarily to be reprehended. They may be harmless ;
nay, more, they may even be, as a recent reverend
writer claims, " edifying, ministering to faith and
fostering piety." Nor; again, would I venture to
affirm that all scientific inquiry regarding supernatural
phenomena is in itself reprehensible. I use the
word "scientific" in the proper signification. It is
generally taken in a too narrow and exclusive sense.
In common parlance it is restricted to physics, and to
ways of investigation most congruously followed in
the domain of physics, but ill-adapted, as a rule, for
employment elsewhere. I understand by "science,"
systematized and co-ordinated knowledge, a know-
ledge of facts as underlain by principles — in other
28o Concerning Ghost Stories [vm.]
words, causal knowledge. And by the scientific
method I understand that which the modern mind
now so emphatically recognizes and so fruitfully
follows as its chosen instrument of research in all
departments of intellectual activity — the method which
starts, not from a priori speculations, but from estab-
lished facts, and which finds in the comparison of
those facts and in the deduction of their results the
guarantee of reality. I am far from saying that we
may not pursue this method in investigating the
supernatural. But I do say that to a science of the
supernatural, in the true sense of the word ** science,"
we shall never attain by human industry. However
numerous the supernatural phenomena which we
collect by observation and verify by experience, we
cannot advance to the idea of a law as the ex-
planation of them. The subject is too obscure ; the
instances are too conflicting and too contradictory ;
the causal nexus is beyond us. Consider the results
obtained by the Society for Promoting Psychical
Research, for which two valued friends of my own,
now no more, Mr. Edmund Gurneyand Mr. Frederick
Myers, laboured so abundantly. What is the outcome
of the investigations of those two highly-disciplined
and most accomplished intellects, aided as they were
by a multitude of calm, candid, and careful inquirers ?
Is it other than shadowy, contradictory, illusory, mock-
ing ? Yes, mocking ; making me think of the laugh
which Horace attributes to the Deity when mortal men
attempt to overpass the bounds divinely set to human
knowledge : " Ridetque si mortalis ultra fas trepidat."
[viii.] "Things not revealed" 281
It seems, then, to me that the conclusion to which
we are driven, as we meditate on these matters, is
that the sphere of the supernatural is beyond the pro-
vince of earthly science. The veil, lifted though it be
at times a very little, conceals from us, and ever will
conceal, all effective knowledge of the things beyond
it. Mysteries they are, and mysteries they will
always remain. They are of the things sung by a
loftier poet than Horace —
"Things not revealed, which the Invisible King
Only Omniscient hath suppressed in night."
The sphere of our human science is the visible world,
in which, for a brief space between two eternities, we
labour and suffer, and are glad and sorry, and do good
and evil. Clouds and darkness hide from us the
whence and whither of humanity. The mystery of
generation and the mystery of death are impenetrable
to us. Our questionings concerning them, as Voltaire
observes not unhappily, are like the questionings of
blind men who say to other blind men, "What is
light?"
We do not know these things, in any real sense.
We see them only per speculum et 171 enigmate,
*' through a glass darkly," and surely the inference
for those who believe in a Divine ordering of the
world is, that this is best for us. The curiosity of
man is insatiable. It is not always wise. There are
things as to which it is better not satisfied. To quote
the weighty words of Cardinal Newman, in his sermon
on '* Ignorance of Evil : " " There is knowledge which
is forbidden, unlawful, hurtful, unprofitable. Now this,"
282 Concerning Ghost Stories [^"i-l
he continues, " seems very strange to the men of this
day. The only forbidden subjects which they can
fancy are such as are not triie . . . Falsehood they
think wrong . . . because false. But they are per-
plexed when told that there may be branches of real
knowledge, yet forbidden. Yet it has ever been con-
sidered in the Church, as in Scripture, that soothsay-
ing, consulting the stars, magic, and similar arts are
unlawful — unlawful even though not false." Why
unlawful ? Because rash intrusions into the Secret
of the King ; by-paths to things beyond flesh and
blood, and so avenues to ill, not to good ; leading not
to sane and safe knowledge, but to bewilderment,
illusion, and despair. I add that what Macaulay calls,
in one of his most striking pages, " a longing to pry
into the mysteries of the grave," is a token of intel-
lectual and spiritual decay. So was it with the
unhappy Spanish monarch whose visit to the royal
tombs under the Church of the Escurial he has
pictured with all the power of his vivid rhetoric. So
was it in the decadent days of Imperial Rome, when
the general mind was dominated by the belief that
man could hold intercourse, by means of spells, charms,
and incantations, with spirits of greater might and
knowledge than his own, and could compel the souls
of the departed to reveal the secrets of their prison-
house ; when divination, as Cicero testifies, " lay like
a heavy burden upon the minds of men, so that even
sleep, which should be a refuge from anxiety, became,
through the interpretation of dreams, the source of a
vast brood of cares." And surely, in our own age, the
[viii.] Ug^y Symptoms 283
same ugly symptoms are not wanting. In the discredit
of ancient beliefs, in the dissolution of traditional
morality, in the eclipse of the "mighty hopes which
make us men," there are many who seek some token
from the invisible world by means not unlike those
antique expedients. The quest is vain. No sane
word comes from beyond the veil to testify what is
there. As of old, there is but a "hideous hum in words
deceiving."
Unquestionably, as Newman says, the Catholic
Church, throughout the ages, has sternly set her face
against practices such as these, and here, as elsewhere,
has made profit of the gift which even her bitterest
foes credit her with — a singular practical sagacity, a
marvellous knowledge of what is in man. We must
remember that, according to her teaching, the denizens
of the invisible world by which we are encompassed,
are not all the friends of God and man ; that evil
spirits, as well as good angels, surround us ; and that,
if an apparition of the dead (to speak only of that)
does occur, it may be due not to the powers of good,
but to the powers of evil ; that it may indeed have
for its object to instruct, to console, to correct the
living or to obtain prayers for the departed ; but that,
on the contrary, it may come to deceive or tempt
those whom, in the inscrutable counsels of the Creator
and Judge of men, maleficent spirits are permitted to
assail. Such is the teaching of the Catholic Church, and,
whether or no we accept it, the subject is surely too
full of sacred awe and solemn mystery to be prostituted
to a topic for idle talking. A learned correspondent
284 Concerning Ghost Stories [vm.]
of mine correctly points out that the custom of telhng
ghost stories at Yule is purely heathenish, an unfit
survival from the Teutobergian forest, a custom
clearly inconsistent with the attitude prescribed, alike
by reason and religion, towards the departed — " Re-
quiescant in pace," as touching the good, and for the
evil, " Non ragioniam di lor." And perhaps I cannot
better conclude this brief discussion than with the
words of one of the most distinguished of living
Catholic Bishops, whom I have consulted on the
subject of it, and who kindly allows me to quote from
what he has written to me; words which, at all events,
will carry weight with members of his own communion :
" I have always thought Catholics too heedless or too
lax about telling ghost stories and discussing ghosts
and apparitions. The Catholic spirit is (i) to accept
no apparition except on serious and valid evidence ;
(2) to consider that the apparitions which favour a false
religion, or which incite to pride or indifference, or
which tend to weaken lawful authority, or to give an
untrue idea of the state of spirits in the world to come,
or which are trivial, unbecoming, or ludicrous, are
certainly (if authentic) the work of demons, and must
be abhorred by all Catholics ; (3) seeing that the great
majority of ghost stories are either idle tales or are
unworthy and misleading as regards religion, a
Catholic should avoid countenancing them."
[ix.] A Protest from Ohio 311
ridiculous to any one else." And I suppose this is
true of the vast majority of people. Hence it was
that Pope was led to magnify his office : —
" Yes, I am proud, I must be proud, to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me ;
Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit and the Throne,
But touched and scared by ridicule alone."
But the clock, which beats out the little lives of men,
has beaten out the brief hour of the lecturer. And so
with these noble lines of our great ethical poet, I take
my leave of my subject and of my audience.
Note to p. 307.
To the Editor of the "Fortnightly Review!'
" Cleveland, Ohio, July lo, 1896.
"My dear Sir,
"The enclosed paragraph, which I clip from the
Leader of this city, represents a writer in your periodical, as
stating that the North American Indians were entirely desti-
tute of the sense of the Ludicrous, an opinion which I think
generally obtains among people who have not made a special
study of the character of our aborigines. But I regard it as a
slander upon the poor aborigines, and as I am almost one of
them, my ancestors having come here from Holland in 1645,
and helped to shoot a sense of the Ludicrous into them, and
as they have no one to take their part, I feel like taking up
cudgels in their defence.
"During the last year and a half I have been engaged in
translating the Jesuit Relations, a. work soon to be brought
out by the publishing house of The Burrows Brothers Company
312 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
of this city, and in the course of my work I have found much
information tending to contradict the opinion expressed by
your contributor, against whom I feel no especial grudge,
although he has basely slandered the people who discovered
my country, and held it for my Dutch ancestors until they
came over.
" It may not be out of place to state here that the Relations
consist of the experience and observations of the French Jesuit
missionaries in Canada and this country in the early part of
the seventeenth century, and when published, the translation
offset by the old French text, they will comprise about sixty
volumes. The Jesuits spent all of their time among the
Indians, their sole effort being to become acquainted with
their character and language, in order that they might open a
way for the introduction of their religion. They were very
decided in their opinion that the North American Indian
possesses quite a keen 'sense of the Ludicrous.' When the
ship's crew, a few passengers, and the Jesuits all came on
shore, the Indians stood off, and looked at them in the
distance, making facetious remarks about them. The Father
says that if one of the new-comers was corpulent, if he had a
flat nose, was cross-eyed, or had any other characteristic dis-
tinguishing him from his companions, the Indians were quick
to notice it and to laugh at it. ' They mock us behind our
backs,' said one of the Fathers. 'They notice every little
peculiarity in our dress, our manners and features, and make
all the fun of it they please behind our backs ' ays another.
" One of the Fathers mentions a village w "ire the people
did nothing at all, he thought, but amuse theu elves by play-
ing tricks upon him and upon each o* r. On one occasion
a number of Indians combined to teacii Father Paul le Jeune
all of the vilest words in their language, and induced him to
use them in a sermon in which he was trying to explain the
mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church. His every sentence
was greeted by loud roars of laughter from his congregation,
but it was some time afterwards that the Father learned the
full nature of the practical joke which had been perpetrated
[ix.] A Protest from Ohio 313
upon him. You will laugh and think they have a keen ' sense
of the Ludicrous ' if you ever read the good Father's account
of this incident.
" On another occasion one of the Fathers was spending a
summer in a little Indian village, many of the inhabitants of
which were extremely assiduous in their efforts to teach them
their language. They were expecting a visit from a neighbour-
ing tribe, and a part of the entertainment to the guests was to
be a speech from the Jesuit priest in the Indian language.
The Frenchman had his speech all ready to deliver, when one
of the squaws informed him that the words taught him were
very vulgar, and that the head-men of the village were
attempting to use him for the amusement of their visitors.
The Father refused to speak. He says that the Medicine-
Men, who wield more influence than all of the others, threat-
ened him, and that he, in turn, assumed a menacing tone to
his oppressors. Finally, it was agreed that the Jesuit would
speak to the company on condition that they would allow him
to say what he pleased. His first words were greeted with
loud guffaws, on account of his mistakes in their language.
Nothing daunted by this, however, he continued his speech,
pausing wherever the Indians laughed most vociferously,
repeating his words several times, and finally inducing some
children or women in the audience to tell him in what his
mistake consisted, when he corrected it. At last he succeeded
in quieting his unruly audience, and delivered to them quite
an effective sermon.
"Many other instances are cited by the very observant
Jesuits, showing a very fair sense of the Ludicrous among the
aborigines of this continent. They probably had as good
cause for laughter in the mistakes of the Jesuit missionaries,
as audiences have every year in the Paris theatres at the
manufactured mistakes made by personages purporting to be
Englishmen, striving to speak the French tongue.
" Yours respectfully,
"John Cutler Covert."
IX
THE THEORY OF THE LUDICROUS
(I)
Just a year ago I had the honour of delivering in this
place four Lectures, having for their subject four
English humourists whom I considered specially
representative of the nineteenth century, namely,
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Carlyle. In
my first Lecture I gave a definition of the word
"humourist," as I understand it: an artist who playfully
gives us his intuition of the world and of human life.
The definition, which was the result of a good deal of
reflection, I believed, and still believe, to be accurate.
But it did not appear to find universal acceptation.
Nor was it universally allowed that the four eminent
writers whom I have mentioned could be regarded as
humourists. Thus, a very accomplished friend, of
great literary distinction, and specially entitled to
speak on such a subject, wrote to me as follows : —
" It would doubtless be interesting to trace an element of
^ This Lecture, delivered at the Royal Institution on the evening of
Friday, March 13, 1895, was printed from the shorthand writer's report,
with corrections and additions.
286 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
humour in all these four writers, and to show how it gives
them a certain affinity. I doubt, though, whether that could
be done. But to say that they are all first and foremost
humourists seems to me — forgive the word — absurd. I doubt
whether Dickens was a humourist at all. Thackeray was
doubtless a humourist ; but it seems to me the one point
which distinguishes him from Dickens. George Eliot's genius
was marred from first to last by the invincible pedantry of the
superior person, which prevented her real force of feeling and
tragic power from catching more than one phase at a time,
and so prevented her from being, in any sense of the word, a
great humourist. As for Carlyle, whether he is a humourist
or not, you certainly adduce no instance of it."
I replied to my friend that a passage in one of
Carlyle's Essays, which I had quoted in my Lecture on
him — the well-known passage about Balaam the son
of Beor — appeared to me to indicate the high-water
mark, so to speak, of British humour in this nineteenth
century ; and that if his perusal of that author, of
George Eliot, and of Dickens, did not satisfy him
that they were humourists, I feared no arguments of
mine would lead him so to regard them.
I have referred to this friendly encounter, upon the
present occasion, because it came to my mind when
the invitation of the Managers of the Royal Institution
to speak here to-night reached me. And as i thought
about it, I resolved to devote the hour which has been
put into my hands to a discussion of that larger ques-
tion whereof this of humour forms part — the question
of the Ludicrous.
[ix.] A Large Question 287
(11)
A large question it is, indeed, comprehending as it
does all that appeals to what I may, with sufficient
accuracy for my present purpose, call the sportive side of
human nature ; or, as the Germans would say, all that
relates to the Spieltrieb in man. The feelings aroused
by the perception of the Beautiful and the Sublime,
are referred, by modern writers on psychology, to the
domain of what Kant has taught us to call the Esthetic.
It seems to be pretty generally allowed that the Beau-
tiful attracts without repelling, and affects us with un-
mingled pleasure in the free exercise of our cognitive
faculties ; while the feeling of the Sublime is mixed of
pleasure and pain, involving, as it does, fear and awe,
as well as admiration. Regarding the Ludicrous there
is much less agreement, and few modern psychologists
appear to have made it the subject of profound or
far-reaching studies. That is one reason why I have
chosen it as my topic to-night. Now, in dealing with
the Ludicrous, the first thing to be remembered is its
vast extent. I know not who has better brought this
out than Isaac Barrow, in a passage which is, I sup-
pose, the locus classicus on the subject, and which I
think I shall do well to read : —
" But first, it may be demanded what the thing we speak
of is, or what this facetiousness doth import? To which
question I might reply as Democritus did to him that asked
the definition of a man, It is that which we all see and know :
any one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance than I
288 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versa-
tile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many
postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several
eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a
clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of
Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes
it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable
application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale :
sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage
from the ambiguity of their sense or the affinity of their
sound : sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humourous
expression : sometimes it lurketh under a similitude : some-
times it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a
quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting,
or cleverly retorting an objection : sometimes it is couched in
a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole,
in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contra-
dictions, or an acute nonsense : sometimes a scenical repre-
sentation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical
look or gesture passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity,
sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being : some-
times it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange,
sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the pur-
pose : often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth
up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable, being
answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings
of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the
simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth
things by) which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit
or expression, doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it
some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto."
That seems to me a very fine bit of English. Dr.
McCosh is, I think, well warranted when in his book
on The Emotions he pronounces it, both in respect of
thought and feeling, one of the most comprehensive
[ix.] A Catalogue 289
passages in our language. And now let us look a
little at the varieties of the Ludicrous included in it,
as that will help us, perhaps, to the theory of which
we are in quest. I have thought that it would be well
to catalogue them — a thing, so far as I am aware, not
previously attempted. My catalogue, which reduces
them to twenty headings, is as follows : —
1. Humour.
2. Wit.
3. Irony.
4. Satire.
5. Sarcasm.
6. Parody.
7. Bulls.
8. Puns.
9. Banter.
10. Caricature.
11. Bufifoonery.
12. Mimicry.
13. The Comical.
14. The Farcical.
15. The Burlesque.
16. The Grotesque.
17. Alliteration.
18. Conundrums.
19. Charades.
20. Practical Joking.
Now, I am far from asserting that this catalogue is
exhaustive, although I have taken a great deal of pains
with it, and cannot call to mind any instance of the
Ludicrous that may not be brought under one or
another of its twenty headings ; which, I may observe,
are, so to speak, mere finger-posts for guidance in a
vast and ill-explored country. Most of them seem so
plain and intelligible as to require no discussion. We
all know, for instance, what Puns, Charades, and Con-
undrums are. We all know, or may know with a little
reflection, what is properly meant by Sarcasm, Banter,
Caricature. But there are four varieties of the
Ludicrous which seem to present special difficulties.
And upon these I must offer a few remarks.
u
290 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
(Ill)
First, then, in this catalogue of mine stands Humour,
which seems to me beyond question the highest
manifestation of the Ludicrous. And I do not think
we can have a better account of Humour than one
given by an admirable writer to whom some of us had
the pleasure of listening in this place yesterday after-
noon. " That spirit of playing with the vain world
and all that therein is familiar to Socrates, which is
always more or less discernible in the highest natures." ^
The question is often asked, What is the difference
between Humour and Wit ? A great many different
answers have been given, one of the least satisfactory
of them, as it seems to me, being in Sidney Smith's
Lectures on Moral PJiilosophy, which he delivered here
ninety years ago. I shall return to that presently.
For myself I would say, borrowing from the German
a distinction now pretty familiar to cultivated people
throughout the world, that Wit specially implies
Understanding — Ver stand — while Humour has most
in common with Reason — Vernwift — in which there is
always an element — latent, it may be — of tragedy. The
greatest humourist in Shakespeare is the melancholy
Jacques. And here I am reminded of some words of
that most accomplished critic, the late Mr. Walter
Pater. In his Essay on Charles Lamb he characterizes
Wit as " that unreal and transitory mirth which is as
1 The Rev. William Barry, D.D.
[ix.] Wit and Humour 291
the crackling of thorns under a pot," and Humour as
" the laughter which blends with tears, and even with
the subtleties of the imagination, and which, in its
most exquisite motives, is one with pity — the laughter
of the Comedies of Shakespeare, hardly less expressive
than his moods of seriousness or solemnity of that
deeply stirred soul of sympathy in him, as flowing from
which both tears and laughter are alike genuine and
contagious." This is, I think, true as regards Humour,
although it hardly does justice to Wit. What Sydney
Smith says in his Lectures about Wit and Humour
appears to me most unsatisfactory, which is the more
surprising since he himself was doubtless one of the
wittiest of his generation. Humour, he tells us, con-
sists in "■ discovering incongruity between ideas which
excite surprise, and surprise alone." It is a surprising
proposition ; but, at all events, it becomes intelligible
when we see what it is that he means by Humour.
He gives three instances : A young officer of eighteen
years of age coming into company in full uniform, but
with a wig on his head, such as was worn at the begin-
ning of this century by grave and respectable clergy-
men, advanced in years ; a corpulent and respectable
tradesman, with habiliments somewhat ostentatious,
sliding down gently into the mud, and de-decorating
a pea-green coat ; and the overturning of a very large
dinner-table with all the dinner upon it. But these
do not appear to me to be examples of Humour at all.
My old friend. Dr. Kennedy, for many years Regius
Professor of Greek at Cambridge, a very dignified and
correct person, was dining in the hall of one of the
292 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
colleges of that University upon some festive occasion,
and found himself next to a well-known joker, whose
facetiousness, never very refined, grew coarser and
coarser as the banquet proceeded, while the Doctor's
face grew glummer and glummer. At last the funny
man said, " You seem to have no taste for humour,
Professor." "Sir," replied the Doctor, much in wrath,
*' I have a taste for humour, but I have no taste for
low buffoonery." Well, what Sydney Smith gives as
his first instance of Humour appears to me — to use
Dr. Kennedy's expression — low buffoonery ; his other
two instances I should refer to the category of the
Comical. As little can I accept Sydney Smith's account
of Wit. "It discovers," he tells us, " real relations
that are not apparent between ideas exciting surprise,
and surprise only." Surely this will not stand. Con-
sider, for example, the lines of Pope — Hazlitt judged
them the finest piece of Wit he knew — on the Lord
Mayor's Show, and the Lord Mayor's Poet Laureate —
" Now, night descending, the proud show is o'er ;
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more."
What discovery is there here of real but not apparent
relations between ideas producing surprise, and sur-
prise only ? Or take the lines — far wittier, I think,
than these — of Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. He
is speaking of certain bad poets —
"He who still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left ;
And he who now to sense, now nonsense leaning.
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning ;
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry but prose run mad."
[ix.] Bulls 293
Surely the Wit here does not lend itself to Sydney
Smith's explanation. But, as I have ventured thus to
criticize this highly gifted man's definition of Wit,
perhaps I ought to offer for your criticism a definition
of my own. I should say, then, that Wit consists in
the discovery of incongruities in the province of the
understanding {Verstaizd), the distinctive element
which it leaves out, being the element of Vermmfi.
I am equally dissatisfied with Sydney Smith's
account of another variety of the Ludicrous, namely,
the Bull. "A Bull," he tells us, "is the exact
counterpart of a Witticism, for as Wit discovers real
relations that are not apparent. Bulls admit apparent
relations that are not real." I do not think Bulls
necessarily do that. When Sir Boyle Roche told the
Irish House of Commons that he wished a certain bill,
then before that assembly, at the bottom of the bottom-
less pit, he certainly produced a Bull, and a very fine
one ; but as certainly his aspiration does not admit
apparent relations that are not real. It appears to me
that a Bull may perhaps be defined — in so difificult
and subtle a matter I don't like to dogmatize — as a
contradiction in terms which conveys a real meaning.
I observe in passing — and I hope I may not in so doing
seem to be lacking in justice to Ireland — that the claim
sometimes made on behalf of that country to a sort of
monopoly of Bulls is untenable. Excellent Bulls are
produced by people of other countries, as, for example,
by an Austrian officer, mentioned by Schopenhauer,
when he observed to a guest staying in the same
country house, " Ah, you are fond of solitary walks ; so
294 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
am I ; let us take a walk together." Or by the
Scotchman who told a friend that a common acquaint-
ance had declared him unworthy to black the boots of
a certain person, and who in reply to his remark,
" Well, I hope you took my part," said, " Of course I
did. I said you were quite worthy to black them."
Or, again, by a well-known English judge, who, when
passing sentence on a prisoner convicted on all the
counts of a long indictment, observed, " Do you know,
sir, that it is in my power to sentence you, for these
many breaches of the laws of your country, to a term
of penal servitude far exceeding your natural life ? "
There is yet another variety of the Ludicrous
upon which I should like to say a few words —
Parody. A Parody is a composition which sportively
imitates some other composition. I suppose that, in
the majority of cases, the object, or, at all events, the
effect of the imitation, is to cast a certain amount of
ridicule upon the original. "What should be great
you turn to farce," complains the honest farmer to his
wife, in Priors amusing poem, The Ladle. Well, it
must be confessed that this is what a Parody too
often does. But this need not be so. A Parody
must necessarily be sportive, or it would not belong
to the great family of the Ludicrous ; but the laughter,
or the smile, which it raises need not be at the
expense of the composition imitated. Pope speaks
of his imitation of one of the Satires of Horace as a
Parody : but the laugh which he raises does not fall
upon Horace. So, you will remember, in the Dunciad
he most effectively parodies certain noble lines of
[ix.] Parody 295
Denham's Coopers Hill, lines addressed by that poet
to the river Thames : —
" O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme !
Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."
Fine verses, indeed, are these : possibly the finest
example of that strength with which Pope, in a well-
known line, rightly credits Denham. And, assuredly.
Pope by no means intended to ridicule them, when he
addressed the unhappy Welsted : —
" Flow Welsted, flow, like thine inspired Beer,
Though stale, not ripe ; though thin, yet never clear ;
So sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull.
Heady, not strong ; overflowing, yet not full."
I think, perhaps, the finest Parody I know, is Clough's
New Decalogue —
" Thou shalt have only one God ; who
Would be at the expense of two ?
No graven image may be
Worshipped, except the currency.
Swear not at all, for, for thy curse,
Thine enemy is none the worse.
At church on Sundays to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend.
Honour thy pareiits, that is, all
From whom advancement may befall.
Thou shalt not kill ; but need not strive,
Ofliciously, to keep alive."
And so forth.
Now, Clough's intention in these mordant lines
assuredly was not to cast ridicule upon the Ten
296 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
Commandments. No : his ridicule was directed to
the false religionism which honours them with its lips,
but, in its heart, is far from them.
(IV)
So much must suffice regarding the four varieties
of the Ludicrous, which seem to me to present special
difficulties. What I have said may serve to show
how wide and varied its range is, and how many
things have to be thought of, and taken into account,
before we can even attempt to frame a theory of it.
But, indeed, that is not all. The matter is further
complicated by national differences. This is especially
so in the case of humour. Spanish humour, for
example — its chief monument is, of course, Don
Quixote — differs very widely from all other. It is
impossible to conceive of that marvellous book as
being written out of Spain, not merely on account of
its local colouring, but also, and far more, on account
of its ethos, its indoles. Pope, in dedicating to Swift
the Dunciadf writes —
"Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair."
The lines are singularly infelicitous. The Castilian
gravity of Cervantes is one thing. The British
gravity of Swift is quite another. Nor is there much
in common between Rabelais and Swift. Rabelais is
the supreme example of what Renan has called " the
[IX.] Racial Differences 297
old Gallic gaiety " — it seems now well-nigh extinct in
France — in its moods of wildest and most unrestrained
extravagance. Swift, " bitter and strange," is ever
sober, ever holds himself in hand. Rabelais ! Yes :
we picture him to ourselves in his easy-chair, laughing
consumedly, quaffing his cup of good old wine to
warm his good old nose, and ministered to, like
Falstaff, " by a fair hot wench in a flame-coloured
taffeta." Swift's most outrageous utterances are
delivered with all the solemnity — I think this has
been remarked by Taine — of a clergyman discoursing
in his gown and bands. I can only glance at this
subject of the difference in the humour of different
races. It is too large, and would want a Lecture, or
rather a book, to itself, for any adequate treatment.
But, before I pass on, I should like to observe how
American humour is distinctly a thing sui generis. It
is, I think, the only intellectual province in which the
people of the United States have achieved originality.
I cannot here enter upon an analytical and comparative
examination of it. I suppose its peculiar charm lies
in its homely and fresh grotesqueness. The dryness
and crispness of the American climate seem to have
passed into it. Lowell is unquestionably one of its
chief masters.
" Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life.
That th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats
And marched round in front of a drum and a fife
To git, some of 'em office and some of 'em votes,
But John P
Robinson, he
Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee."
298 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
Artemus Ward, another great master of American
humour, has not surpassed this. But, I think, he has
equalled it : as, for example, in his account of his visit
to Brigham Young : —
" * You are a married man, Mr. Young, I believe,' says I,
preparing to write him some free parsis.
"' I've eighty wives, Mr. Ward. I sertinly am married.'
" * How do you like it as far as you hev got ? ' said I.
" He said, ' Middlin'.' "
But the American newspapers, even the humblest
of them, constantly contain things just as good as
this. A correspondent the other day sent me some
obscure journal, published in the far West, I think,
wherein I found a story which strikes me as so
superlatively good a specimen of American humour
that I shall venture to read it to you. It is called,
A Cool Burglar, too.
" ' I think about the most curious man I ever met/ said
the retired burglar, ' I met in a house in Eastern Connecticut,
and I shouldn't know him either if I should meet him again,
unless I should hear him speak ; it was so dark where I met
him that I never saw him at all. I had looked around the
house downstairs, and actually hadn't seen a thing worth
carrying off, and it wasn't a bad-looking house on the outside,
either. I got upstairs, and groped about a little, and finally
turned into a room that was darker than Egypt. I hadn't
gone more than three steps in this room when I heard a man
say, " Hello, there ! "
"'"Hello!" says I.
" ' " Who are you ? " said the man ; " burglar ? "
"'And I said Yes, I did do something in that line
occasionally.
[ix.] Plato's View 299
" ' " Miserable business to be in, ain't it ? " said the man.
His voice came from a bed over in the corner of the room,
and I knew he hadn't even sat up.
"'And I said, "Well, I dunno ; I've got to support my
family someway."
"'"Well, you've just wasted a night here," said the man.
** Didn't you see anything downstairs worth stealing ? "
"'And I said no, I hadn't.
" ' "Well, there's less upstairs," says the man ; and then I
heard him turn over and settle down to go to sleep again.
I'd like to have gone over there and kicked him. But I
didn't. It was getting late, and I thought, all things con-
sidered, that I might just as well let him have his sleep out' "
(V)
And now having thus taken, so to speak, a bird's-
eye view of the vast domain of the Ludicrous, let us
go on to inquire if we can arrive at any true theory
about it. Can we define the Ludicrous ? Is there
a Ludicrous in the nature of things — an Objective
Ludicrous, as well as a Subjective Ludicrous .-* In
other words, what is the Ludicrous in itself, and what
is it to us ? And what is the faculty which com-
prehends and judges the Ludicrous ? These are
questions which confront us when we seek to deal
with the matter philosophically. And they are ques-
tions which it is far easier to ask than to answer.
Plato, in the Philebus^ tells us " the pleasure of the
Ludicrous springs from the sight of another's misfor-
tune, the misfortune, however, being a kind of self-
ignorance that is powerless to inflict hurt." A certain
300 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
spice of malice, you see, he held to be of the essence
of this emotion. Well, that may be so. It is always
perilous to differ from Plato. But certainly his
account is inadequate, as, indeed, is now pretty gene-
rally allowed. Far profounder is the view expounded
by Aristotle, here, as in so many provinces, "the
master of them that know." "The Ludicrous," he tells
us in The Poetics, " is a defect of some sort {dfxdpT7)ixoi
Ti) and an ugliness (al(Txo<5), which is not painful or
destructive." These are words which, at first, may
not seem very enlightening. But, as Professor
Butcher admirably remarks, in his edition of T/ie
Poetics, we cannot properly understand them without
taking into account the elements which enter into
Aristotle's idea of beauty. And when we have done
that, we shall find that we may extend their meaning
so as to embrace " the incongruities, absurdities, or
cross purposes of life, its imperfect correspondences
or adjustments, and that in matters intellectual as well
as moral." Aristotle's view of the Ludicrous appears
to be, in fact, something out of time and place without
danger, some want in truth and propriety which is
neither painful nor pernicious. The treatment of the
Ludicrous by the Schoolmen is worth noting, as indeed
is their treatment of every question to which they
have applied their acute and subtle intellects. Their
philosophy goes upon Plato's notion of ideals or
patterns in the Divine mind, compared with which
individuals, both in themselves and in their relations
with one another, fall short of perfection. This
deficiency, they teach, when not grave enough to
[ix.] Herbert Spencer's View 301
excite disgust or indignation, is the ground — the
fundament7im reale — of our subjective perception of
the Ludicrous. I beheve I have looked into most of
the modern philosophers who have dealt with this
matter, and I do not think that, with one exception —
to be presently dwelt upon — they take us much
beyond the Ancients and the Schoolmen. Of course,
we have attained to a clearer perception of its physical
side. And here we are indebted to Mr. Herbert
Spencer for an explanation, which, so far as I can
judge — and that is not very far — is probably true.
This is the substance of it : "A large amount of
nervous energy, instead of being allowed to expend
itself in producing an equivalent amount of the new
thoughts and emotions which were nascent, is suddenly
checked in its flow." "The excess must discharge
itself in some other direction, and there results an
efflux through the motor nerves to various classes of
the muscles, producing the half-convulsive actions we
term laughter." I dare say Mr. Spencer may be right
in the hypothesis he here presents. But I am sure
he is wrong if he supposes that those " nervous dis-
charges " of which he speaks, are the primary or the
main element in the emotion of which laughter is an
outward visible sign. That emotion begins with a
mental act. As Lotze well puts it in his Microcosmos,
" The mechanism of our life has annexed the corporeal
expression to a mood of mind produced by what we
see being taken up into a world of thought, and
estimated at the value belonging to it in the rational
connection of things." Of course, the corporeal
302 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
expression is not necessarily connected with the mood
of mind. The physical phenomenon which we call
laughter may be produced by purely physical means,
for example, by titillation. The laugh of the soul and
the laugh of the body are distinct. We may have
either without the other. And only a gross and super-
ficial analysis will confound them.
But, as I intimated just now, there is one modern
philosopher who appears to me to have given us a
satisfactory formula of the Ludicrous. That philo-
sopher is Schopenhauer, unquestionably one of the
most profound and penetrating intellects of this century,
however we may account of his system as a whole.
One of his cardinal doctrines is that all abstract know-
ledge springs from knowledge of perception, and
obtains its whole value from its relation to perception.
And upon this doctrine he hangs his theory of the
Ludicrous. " The source of the Ludicrous," he
teaches, " is always the paradoxical, and therefore un-
expected, subsumption of an object under a conception
which in other respects is different from it." Or,
as he, elsewhere in his great work, writes more at
large —
" The cause of laughter, in every case, is simply the sudden
perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real
objects, which by means of it we have thought in a certain
association, and laughter itself is the expression of this incon-
gruity. Now, incongruity occurs in this way : we have
thought of two or more real objects by means of one concept,
and have passed on the identity of the concept to the objects.
It then becomes strikingly apparent, from the discrepancy of
[ix.] Schopenhauer's View 303
the objects in other respects, that the concept applies to them
only from one point of view. It occurs quite as often, how-
ever, that the incongruity between a single real object and
the concept under which from one point of view, it has rightly
been subsumed, is suddenly felt. Now, the more correct the
subsumption of such objects under a concept may be from
one point of view, and the greater and more glaring their
incongruity from another point of view, the stronger is the
ludicrous effect which is produced by this contrast. All
laughter, therefore, springs up on occasion of a paradoxical
and unexpected subsumption, whether this is expressed in
words or actions."
Now, I believe this account to be, in the main,
correct. It is, in substance, the thought of Aristotle,
but it brings in the element of paradox, unexpected-
ness, suddenness, which is lacking in that philosopher's
definition. And it is cast into an accurate and
scientific form. ** The source of the Ludicrous is
always the paradoxical, and therefore unexpected,
subsumption of an object under a conception which,
in other respects, is different from it." Yes ; I think
that this is true. Every instance of the Ludicrous, in
its twenty varieties which I have been able to call to
mind, fits in with this formula. But there are two
points in Schopenhauer's exposition to which I must
demur. In the first place, I do not think him well
warranted in affirming — as he does — that his theory
of the Ludicrous is inseparable from his particular
doctrine of perception and abstract ideas. And
therefore it is not necessary for me, on the present
occasion, to enter upon an examination of that doctrine;
of which I am heartily glad ; for to do so, even in
304 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
briefest outline, would take up far more time than is
left of my hour. Besides, I hate talking metaphysics
after dinner, and I fancy very few people really like
hearing metaphysics talked at that period of the day
— or perhaps at any other ! Again, Schopenhauer
certainly uses unguarded and too general language
when he tells us that all laughter is occasioned by the
paradoxical, and therefore unexpected, subsumption
of an object under a conception which in other respects
is different from it. The phenomenon of laughter
may be due to a variety of causes. It may be due to
merely physical causes, as I pointed out just now. It
may be due to quite other mental causes than para-
doxical and unexpected subsumption. Paradoxical
and unexpected subsumption is not the explanation of
the heavenly laughter of which Dante speaks in the
twenty-seventh canto of the Paradiso — the laughter of
Beatrice, " so gladsome that in her countenance God
Himself appeared to rejoice."
" Ma ella che vedeva il mio disire
Incommincio, ridendo, tanto lieta
Che Dio parea nel suo volto gioirc."
It is not the explanation of what is called fiendish
laughter — laughter propter malitiam, the outcome of
mere malice — the sort of laughter which, by the way,
one of his critics has attributed to Schopenhauer him-
self, the laugh of a demon over the fiasco of the
universe. It is not the explanation of that ringing
laugh of pure human happiness which one sometimes
hears from the lips of young girls ; is there any music
like it.-* They laugh as the birds sing. Nor is the
[ix.] The Laughter of Sorrow 305
laughter of women at their lovers — a common phe-
nomenon enough — always to be referred to the para-
doxical, and therefore unexpected, subsumption of an
object under a conception which in other respects is
different from it. It is far oftener the expression of
mere triumph. " The outburst of laughter," Dr. Bain
truly tells us in his Mental and Moral Science^ " is a
frequent accompaniment of the emotion of power,"
But it is sometimes a manifestation of pain too deep
for tears. This is the laughter of which Antigone
speaks : 'AXyoi)o"a \iXv hr\r et yeXcur' h/ crol yeXco : "I
laugh in sorrow, if I laugh at thee." That laugh of
sorrow — so piercing and pathetic ! who does not know
it ? Surely it is the saddest thing in the world.
Lastly, not to continue unduly the enumeration,
laughter is very often the expression of mere mental
vacuity. I remember a gentleman who was fond of
relating utterly imbecile stories concerning himself, the
invariable ending of them being, "And then I roared."
We gave him the name of the Roarer, and fled at his
approach as we would have done from a ramping and
roaring lion. But I am quite sure his laughter was
not due to the paradoxical, and therefore unexpected,
subsumption of an object under a conception which in
other respects was different from it. No ; his was the
inane laughter which Cicero justly calls the most inane
thing in the world. " Inani risu nihil est inanius."
3o6 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
(VI)
With these reservations, then, I think we must
admit Schopenhauer's theory of the Ludicrous. It is
true as far as it goes. I use these words of Hmitation,
because it does not attempt to answer those deeper
questions connected with the subject which I mentioned
just now. Perhaps they are unanswerable. Certainly
the few minutes left to me will not suffice, even for the
most superficial examination of them. I would rather
employ those minutes for another and more practical
purpose : an Englishman is nothing if not practical.
We have seen what the Ludicrous is : the paradoxical,
and therefore unexpected, subsumption of an object
under a conception which in other respects is differ-
ent from it. Well, but what is the function of the
Ludicrous in human life ? What end does it serve ?
Please note that this question is quite congruous with
the title of my Lecture : for, in order really to know
anything, we must know its end : according to that
profound saying of Aristotle, '^7 Se ^vcrts reXo? eorTi.
I observe, then, that a sense of the Ludicrous is
the most sane thing we have. Incorrectness and
abnormality are the notes of the Ludicrous. And,
they provoke one to affirm — ridentem diccre verum —
what is correct and normal. We may say then, that the
Ludicrous is an irrational negative which arouses in
the mind a rational affirmation. And so, in strictness,
a sense ofthe Ludicrous cannot be attributed to animals
less highly evolved than man in the scale of being :
[ix.] Complete Man 307
because, though they have understanding, they have
not, properly speaking, reason ; they have knowledge
of perception; they have not abstract knowledge. Still,
in this province, as elsewhere, we may observe amongst
them what Aristotle calls /At/xT^ra t-^s ai'd pcoTrCvrj^ ^wrjs :
mimicries of the life of man. As in the most favoured
individuals of the higher species of them there appear
analoga of the operations of reason, so do we find also
indications of the lower kinds of the Ludicrous : farce,
buffoonery, practical joking. But, indeed, there appear
to be whole races of men — the North American Indians ^
and the Cingalese Veddas, for example — that are desti-
tute of the sense of the Ludicrous. And in the higher
races this sense is, by no means, universally found.
The richest intellects possess it in amplest measure.
The absence of it is a sure indication of mental poverty.
" Here comes a fool : let's be grave," said Charles
Lamb upon one occasion. And, I remember a friend
of my own observing of a somewhat taciturn person
whom we had met, "He must be a man of sense, for,
although he said little, he laughed in the right place."
That laugh is a manifestation of intellectual abundance
or exuberance : it is something over and above the
actual work of life. And, so we may adopt for our
present purpose certain words of Schiller's in his
Letters on ^^sthetic Edtication : "Man sports {spielt)
only when he is Man in the full signification of the
word : and then only is he complete man {ganz Mensck)
when he sports."
I need hardly observe how grossly this faculty of
^ But see the letter appended to this Lecture.
3o8 The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
the Ludicrous may be abused. There is nothing
more diabolical — in the strictest sense of the word —
than to turn into ridicule " whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." There
is no more detestable occupation than that of" sapping
a solemn creed with solemn sneer." But it is a
maxim of jurisprudence, " Abusus non tollit usum."
And this is universally true. No ; the abuse of the
Ludicrous does not take away its uses. Those
proper, healthy, and legitimate uses are obvious.
And very few words will suffice for such of them as
I can here touch on. Now, one office of the Ludicrous
is to lighten " the burden and the mystery of all this
unintelligible world." Beaumarchais has indicated it
in his well-known saying : " I make haste to laugh
at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep."
Samuel Rogers used to tell a story of Lord Shelburne
— who, it seems, could say the most provoking things
with the most innocent air — remarking upon one
occasion, in a speech, that Lord Carlisle had written
a comedy. "A comedy ! " that peer interrupted ; "no,
it is a tragedy." " I beg the noble lord's pardon,"
Shelburne replied, " I thought it was a comedy."
Well, '* life's poor play " is tragedy or comedy, as you
take it. It is best not to take it as tragedy, at all
events too habitually. A certain novelist, I forget
who, says of a certain lady, I forget her name, who
adorns his pages, that on a certain occasion, I forget
what, " not knowing whether to laugh or cry, she
chose the better part and laughed." It is the better
[ix.] Life's Illusions 309
part. And one office of humour — to speak only of
that variety of the Ludicrous — is to show us the folly
of quarrelHng with such life as we have here. Ah,
it is so easy to strip off the illusions of human exist-
ence ! And so foolish ! Yes ; and, may we not add,
so ungrateful .-* For assuredly, the Almighty hand
which has hung the veil of Maya over the darker
realities of life, was impelled by pity for the "purblind
race of miserable man." Illusions ! what would the
world be without them .'* And it is the function of
the humourist to teach us to enjoy them wisely ; to
lead us to make the most of life's poor play, while it
lasts, which assuredly we shall not do if we are for
ever examining too curiously the tinsel and tawdry
which deck it out, if we are ever thinking of the final
drop of the curtain upon " the painted simulation of
the scene" and the extinguishment of the lights for
ever. Memento mori is undoubtedly a most whole-
some maxim. So is Disce vivere. " Ah, mon enfant,"
said the old priest, touching lightly with his withered
hand the blooming cheek of the young girl, too vain of
her pretty face, " Ah, mon enfant, tout cela pourrira."
" Oui, mon pere," she replied naively, " mais ce n'est
pas encore pourri." Well, they were both right, the
sage confessor and the silly coquette. And we may
learn a lesson from them both. There is an admirable
saying of Joubert, " L'illusion et la sagesse r^unies
sont le charme de la vie et de I'art."
But again, the Ludicrous has a distinct ethical
value. Aristotle places evrpaTrekCa among the virtues,
and by evrpaTreXta he means decorous wit and humour,
3IO The Theory of the Ludicrous [ix.]
as distinguished from the low buffoonery to which
Dr. Kennedy so strongly objected. It is said that
ridicule is the test of truth. And there is a true sense
in the saying. The Platonic irony — which is really
the feigning of ignorance in order to get a man to
make a fool of himself — may illustrate this. And, to
look at the matter from another point of view, it may
be seriously maintained that we never really believe
a thing until we are able to treat it sportively. The
more profound our wisdom, the more lightly we shall
wear it. It is a tradition of the Catholic Church, in
her colleges and seminaries, that all ethical questions
should be dealt with humourously. The Professor
of Moral Philosophy, in those institutions is " der
Lustige," as the Germans would say : the man who
does the comic business. Carlyle, in one of his early
Letters, speaks of a sense of the ridiculous as
"brotherly sympathy with the downward side." It
is a most pregnant saying. *' Twenty-seven millions,
mostly fools." Well, better to view them as fools
than as knaves. For the emotion raised by folly is
rather pity and ruth than anger. Then again, the
Ludicrous, and especially the variety of it which we
call satire, is an inestimable instrument of moral
police. I do not say of moral reformation. What
moral reformation really means is the conversion of
the will from bad to good. And I do not think satire,
as a rule, likely to effect that. But it is certainly a
most effective deterrent. Goethe makes Werther, as
the supposed author of the Letters from Switzerland,
say, " One would always rather appear vicious than
Index
Actors, their status in Shakespeare's
time, 29
Agnosticism, value of the term, 45
the essence of, 46
Alphonsus Liguori, St., account of an
ecstasy of, 275
Anglicanism, Cardinal Newman on,
255-257
Aquinas, St. Thomas, the basis of his
philosophy, 27
on law, 42
Aristotle, on the truth of poetry, 34
on the Ludicrous, 300
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, greatness of his
character, 247
Augustine, St., the thought dominating
his mind, 27
Avenir, the, 169, 171
B
Bain, Dr., on the outburst of laughter,
305
Balzac, Honor6 de, his place in French
literature, 82-88
parallel between, and Shakespeare,
88
his object in the Comidie Humaine,
90-93, 140-142
divisions of that work, 94
his social portraiture, 96, 135, 140,
^54. .
on artistic reality, 137-140
his political views, 142-146
his religious views, 146-149
his alleged immorality, 150
his philosophy, 152-153
Barrow, Isaac, on the Ludicrous, 287-288
Bible, the, Landor on, 78
Bishops, the Anglican, Cardinal Newman
on, 240
real merits of, 240
Boccaccio, Landor on, 79
Bona, Cardinal, on the hour at which
High Mass might be sung, 24
Bossuet, on the Church and the poor, 175
Bowden, Father Sebastian, his Religion
of Shakespeare referred to, or
quoted, 9, 10, 11, 18, 23, 24, 27, 28
Brenner, Friedrich, on evening Masses,
25
Browning, his merits and defects, 32
Bull, a, Sydney Smith's account of, 293
a proposed definition of, 293
Butler, Bishop, Cardinal Newman's
obligations to, 225
Campion, on Cardinal Wolsey, 16
Carlyle, Thomas, on Shakespeare's ethos,
26
his judgment of Landor, 71
on a sense of the ridiculous, 310
Catena, his Life of St. Pius V., referred
to, 12
Catholics, English, in Cardinal New-
man's youth, 191
work donejfor, by Tractarianism, 250
Catullus, Landor on, 80
Chasles on Balzac, 87
Christianity, Lander's view of, 73
Balzac's view of, 147-149
in England in the eighteenth century,
220-222
Church, the Anglican, its true character,
240, 256
Cardinal Newman's work for, 248-
250
seen from without, 257-258
Church, the Catholic, BaJzac's view of,
148
Lamennais' view of, 174
Cardinal Wiseman's view of, 205
Cardinal Newman's view of, 257,
259, 269
3i6
Index
"Church Papist," 29
Church, Dean, on Calvinism in the
Church of England, 4
Cicero, his definition of comedy, 140
on divination, 282
on inane laughter, 305
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, his influence
on English thought, 229-231, 247
College, the English in Rome, life at, 183
Collins, Mr. Churton, his Studies in
Shakespeare, i, 2
Colvin, Mr. Sidney, on Landor, 54, 59,
60, 61
Comte, on Protestantism, 147
Concordat, the, of 1801, 162
Conscience, Tennyson's embodiment of,
49
Cardinal Newman on, 263
Courthope, Mr. , on the authorship of The
Troublesome Reign of King John, 13
on Falstaff, 20
on the Lollard "martyr" Oldcastle,
20
on Pope's religion, 26
Dante, Landor on, 79
the source of his power, 87
is an ethical judge, 140
Davies, the Rev. Richard, his statement
as to Shakespeare's religion, 29
Dollinger, Dr., on the play of Henry
VIII., xo
Eflaki, instances of supernatural facts
vouched for by, 276
Errington, Archbishop, the affair of, 208,
213
Evangelical party, the, rise of and work
done by, 223
decadence of, 233
F^nelon, on Tacitus, 86
on the "Gallican Liberties," 166
Forster, Mr., his edition of Landor, 53,
64, 65, 70
on Southey, 75
GabiUio, his Life of St, Pius V., quoted,
"Gallican Liberties," the, account of, 165
Cardinal Newman on, 166
Ff^nelon on, 166
Garibaldi and the Goddess of Reason, 211
Gautier, Th^ophile, on the use of a novel,
91
on Balzac, 140
Ghost stories, the, a priori argument
against, 272
evidence for, in some cases, over-
whelming, 274-275
Schopenhauer on, 277-278
the great majority of, either idle tales,
or unworthy and misleading, 284
Gibson, Mr. W., his The Abbe de
Lamennais and the Liberal Catholic
Movetnent in France, quoted or
referred to, 155, 156, 157, 172, 176,
177
Gillow, Mr., his Bibliographical Diction-
ary of English Catholics, referred
to, 9, 28
Gladstone, Mr. W. E. , whence the curious
learning of his Vaticanism, 9
Gozlan, his Balzac chez lui, quoted, 138
Green, Professor, on Coleridge and Kant,
229
Gregory XVL , Pope, character of, 171
Lamennais' audience of, 173
publishes the Encyclical Mirari Vos,
173
H
Hare, Archdeacon, on Cardinal Manning,
217
Hawkins, Dr., Cardinal Newman's obli-
gations to, 225
Hazlitt, on Measure for Measure, 22
Heine, on Shakespeare's alleged plagia-
rism, 6
on the opportuneness of Shakespeare's
appearance, 26
on French sentimentality, 152
on modern French civilization, 154
Henry VIIL, account of him in the Book
of Homilies, 3
Shakespeare's account of, 18
Hergenrother, Cardinal, his Catholic
Church and Christian State,
quoted, 11
Homilies, the Anglican, on Henry VIH., 3
Hooker, his definition of law, 41
Humour, Dr. William Barry's definition
of, 290
Walter Pater's account of, 290
what Sydney Smith meant by, 291
national varieties of, 296-299
Humourist, definition of, 285
Huxley, Professor, incompetent in purely
philosophical questions, 41
Index
317
Indians, North American, and
Ludicrous, 307, 311-313
Indulgences, Cardinal Beaufort's, 14
Johnson, Landor on, 78
Joubert, on the study of poetry, 34
Journalism, Parisian, Balzac's account of,
117-121
American, Charles Dickens on, 117
K
Kant, slow but sure influence of his
philosophy, 224
on nature and the supernatural, 278
Keble, John, the influence of his Christian
Year, 231-234
Knight, Mr., on Shakespeare's respect
for "the ancient ecclesiastical
character," 20-21
Lamartine, his judgment of Balzac, 84
Lamennais, F61icit6 de, his place among
the great names of the nineteenth
century, 155
his childhood and youth, 156-158, 176
his Reflexions sur I'Etat de I'Eglise
en France, 161
is ordained priest, 162
his Essay on Indifference, 163
visits Rome, and is warmly received
by Leo XIL, 164
publishes his translation of the
I mi tat io Christi, 164
publishes his La Religion consider ie
dans ses Rapports avec I'Ordre
politique et social, 164
his Des progris de la Revolution et de
la guerre contre I'Eglise, 167
and the Society of St. Peter, 168
at La ChSnaie, 168
starts I'Avenir, 169
is censured by the French Bishops, 170
goes to Rome with Lacordaire and
Montalembert, 171
his Affaire de Ro7ne, 171
his interview with Pope Gregory, 173
and the Encyclical Mirari Vos, 173
goes out of the Catholic Church, 173
his death, 173
his prophetic vision, 174
the principle for which he fought, 175
the source of his mistakes, 175
his intellectual gifts, 177
Landor, Walter Savage, on Shakespeare's
originality, 7
his personal history, 55-62
his work in pure literature, 63-71
his critical work, 71-81
his aloofness from Christianity, 71,
73
on the ways of our reviewers and
magazine men, 72
his political opinions, 73
on philosophy, 74
on Shakespeare, 76
on Milton, 76
on Tennyson, 77
on Swift, 77
on Johnson, 78
on the Bible, 78
on the French language and literature,
78
on Boccaccio, 79
on Dante, 79
on Catullus, 80
Law, the true conception of, 40-42
definition of, by Hooker, 41
Aquinas's account of, 42
Tennyson's witness to the true con-
ception of, 43-44
the primordial, of being, 46
the surest, of man's nature, 48
in pohtics, 50
Leo XIII., Pope, tone of his Encyclicals,
174
Lotze, on emotion and its expression,
301
Lowell, J. R., a great master of American
humour, 297
Ludicrous, the, Isaac Barrow's account
of, 287
varieties of, 289
national characteristics of, 296-299
philosophical accounts of, 299-305
sense of, a sign of intellectual opu-
lence, 307
abuse of, 307
practical uses of, 308
ethical value of, 309
M
Macaulay, Lord, on the source of the
power of the Divine Comedy, 87
Manning, Henry Edward, appointed
Provost of Westminster, 206
greatly distrusted by hereditary
Catholics, 207
his influence with Cardinal Wiseman,
207, 208
his ecclesiastical sympathies, 209
and the aff"air of Dr. Errington, 213
attainments and character of, 213-217
3i8
Index
Martene, on the hour at which Mass
might be said, 24
Maya, the veil of, 309
Melanchthon, desires the assassination of
Henry VIII., 11
Milman, Bishop, on Cardinal Manning,
213
Milton, Landor's judgment of, 76
Mirari Vos, the Encyclical, 173, 174
N
Napoleon, his ignorance of history, 144
and Pope Pius VII., 160
Newman, John Henry, on atheism and
the phenomena of the physical
world, 45
on the " Gallican Liberties," 166
his account of the condition of the
Catholic Church in England in his
youth, 191
on Pope Pius IX., 209
on the autonomy of the Pope, 210
the foimder of the Tractarian Move-
ment, 218, 234, 235
strong individuality of his writings,
219
surroundings of his early years, 220-
224
attaches himself to the Evangelical
school, 224
his spiritual horizon widens, 225
his obligations to Butler, 225
legend concerning his amendments
to Report of Oxford Bible Society,
226
his ties with the Evangelical party
severed, 226
his first friends at Oriel, 227
comes under new literary influences,
228-231
influence of The Christian K?ar upon,
233
begms the Tracts for the Times,
234
the fundamental principle of his
religion, 236
his treatise on the Via Media, 238
on Anglican Bishops, 240
condemned by the Anglican episco-
pate, 241
preaches his last AngHcan sermon,
242
accused of treachery, 244
his secession a proof of his good
faith, 244-246
abiding influence of his Oxford
Sermons, 249
no mere name of the past in the
Church of England, 250
Newman — contimied.
his influence in the Catholic Church,
250-253
his life as a Catholic, 253-254
significance of his later writings, 253-
262
his controversial method, 255
his consistency from first to last, 256-
257
on the Church of England seen from
without, 257
on the Immaculate Conception and
Papal Infallibihty, 258-259
his trials as a Catholic, 259-262
his sympathy with Montalembert and
Lacordaire, 260
his disapproval of the violence and
cnielty of certain Catholic writers,
260
acknowledges only one Pope, 261
on the Syllabus Errorum, 261
his treatment of the great question of
the day, 262-270
on the Invisible World, 273
on forbidden and unlawful knowledge,
281
Parody, what it is, 294-296
Patria Potestas, the base of national
existence, 142
Peasantry, the French, Balzac on, 130
Petrarch, Landor on, 79
Phillipps, Mr, Halliwell, on Davies's state-
ment regarding Shakespeare's
religion, 30
Physicists, their dogmatism, 39
Pius v., St., meditates the removal of
Queen Elizabeth, 12
discountenances evening Masses, 25
Pius IX., his wise and liberal measures
at the beginning of his pontificate
199-200
his flight to Gaeta, 201
adulatoiy addresses to, 209
his Syllabus Errorum, 211, 261
his great favour to Dr. Manning, 214
Plato, on poetical inspiration, 5
on ordinary virtue, 36
on T^ 'Epufj-fvov, 47
on the first of certitudes, 48
on the Ludicrous, 299
Poetry, should be the great study of the
philosopher, 34
Poets, are prophets in the proper sense,
36
Pollock, Lord Chief Baron, on the degree
of certainty sufficient for a verdict
of guilty in a miu^der case, 274
Index
319
Pomponio Leto, on Cardinal Manning,
216
Pope, on the preservation of character in
Shakespeare's plays, 17
his religion, 26
value of his Essay on Criticism, 33
infelicitous lines to Swift, 296
Pope, the, belief in, Cardinal Newman on,
269
Probability, Cardinal Newman on, 263
Protestantism, " Orthodox," 2-3
alleged, in Shakespeare's plays,
10-19
Puritanism, what it is, 4, 22
Realism, in art, 137-139
Reformation, the Anglican, phases of,
3-4
and Shakespeare, 4
Regalia, meaning of the term, 165
Reviewers and magazine men, Landor
on, 72
Revolution, the French, Balzac on, 145
its influence on the movement of
European thought, 227
Ritualists, Protestant, Cardinal New-
man's opinion of, 245
Russell, the first Earl, on Newman's
secession from the Church of
England, 243
Sainte-Beuve, on Balzac, 83, 84, 87, 154
Sand, George, on the Comidie Humaine,
140
Schelling, on artistic inspiration, 36
Schiller, on complete man, 307
Schopenhauer, on ghost-seeing, 277-278
on the Ludicrous, 302-304
Science, true meaning of the term, 279
Sciences, the physical, their stupendous
progress, 38
such progress not unmixed gain, 39
Scott, Sir Walter, influence of his poetry
and prose fictions, 228
Sentimentality, Heine on, 152
Shakespeare, his knowledge of Greek and
Roman classics, i
orthodox Protestantism attributed
to, 2
his occasional conformity to the
Church of England, 4, 28-29
his plays his truest self, 5
his genius essentially dramatic, 6
Shakespeare— -Ci5«/i«?<'<7rf.
his plays composed to serve the pur-
pose of the hour, 6, 7
charge of plagiarism against, 6, 7
his creative power, 7
did not employ the drama as a means
of political instruction, 7
his mental attitude towards the pro-
blems of the day reflected in his
dramas, 7
passages cited from his plays in sup-
port of his alleged Protestantism
considered, 10-19
his treatment of the Protestant clergy,
19-20
his yearning fondness for the Old
Faith, 20-23
his language about the Blessed Vir-
gin, 21
his reverence for virginal chastity, 22
his Catholic imagery, 23
his mention of evening Mass, 23-26
"the noblest product of Middle- Age
Catholicism," 26
his acquaintance with Catholic philo-
sophy, 27
tradition that he was "reared up " by
a Benedictine Monk, 28
Davies's statement, "He dyed a
Papist," 29-30
Landor on, 76
paints the civilization of his age, 89
Simpson, Richard, his view of Shake-
speare's teaching, 7
his Shakespearean studies, 7-9, 13,
15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, 30
Smith, Sydney, his definitions of Wit,
Humour.and Bull criticized, 290-293
Sophocles, his Polytheism, 2
Sorrow, the laugh of, 305
Southey, Landor on, 74
Cardinal Newman on, 75
Mr. Foster on, 75
Spedding, Mr., on the play of Henry
VIII., 18
Spencer, Father Ignatius, 187
Spencer, Herbert, his criterion of most
highly evolved conduct, 22
on the Ludicrous, 301
Stanhope, Earl, his criticism of Mr.
Simpson and M. Rio, 8, 17, 23-24
Stephen, Sir Leslie, on English religion
in the eighteenth century, 221
Strabo, on the time for celebrating Mass,
24
Suarez, on tyrannicide, 11-12
Swedenborg, his influence on Balzac, 152
Swinburne, Mr., his tribute to Landor,
57
Syllabus Errorum, Pope Pius IX.'s, 211,
261
320
Index
Taine, on Balzac, 85, 139, 141
Talbot, MgT. George, a possible excuse
for, 213
Tennyson, iAe English poet of the
nineteenth century, 31
his poetry the result of prolonged
meditation and prolonged labour,
33
his acute sensibility to the Zeitgeist,
37
his sympathy with the scientific move-
ment, 38
his mission to witness to, and insist
on, the true conception. of law, 43,
51
his direct intuition into the constitu-
tion and needs of human nature, 44
his Theism, 44-47
his ethical creed, 48-49
his political principles, 49-51
his charm to quell the commonplace,
SI
Landor on, 77
Thanatists, 273
Thombury, Mr., on the Anglican clergy
in the time of Shakespeare, 19-20
Tractarian Movement, the rise of, 234-235
line of thought upon which it pro-
ceeded, 236
collapse of, 239-243
goal of, 240
practical results of, 248-262
its bearing upon the great question
of the day, 262-270
Tractarianism, the meaning of, 218-270
Trench, Archbishop, on Shakespeare and
the AngUcan Reformation, 4
Verona, evening Mass in, 25
Voltaire on apparitions, 272
W
Ward, Artemus, his humour, 298
Ward, Dr. A. W., on Shakespeare's
religion, 28
Ward, Dr. W. G. , his extravagances and
absurdities, 209, 210
Ward, Mr. Wilfrid, his Life and Times
0/ Cardinal Wiseman, i-jq-zij
Wesley, Charles, his poetical merit, 233
Wesley, John, his character and work,
222
Whately, Archbishop, Cardinal New-
man's obligations to, 225
White, Blanco, Cardinal Newman's obli-
gations to, 225
Wiseman, Cardinal, character of, 180-
181, 203, 204
his career, 182-212
his leading principles and definite
aim, 185
his HorcB Syriacm, 187
his Lectures on the Connexion between
Science and Revealed Religion,
189
his sympathy with the movement of
contemporary European thought,
190
success of his London Lectures, 193
founds the Dublin Review, 194
his influence on the Oxford Move-
ment, 195-198
his influence on English Catholicism,
198
created Cardinal, and appointed
Archbishop of Westminster, 202
cause of his influence, 205
Wit, its difterence from humour, 290-293
Walter Pater's account of, 290
Sydney Smith's account of, 292
a proposed definition of, 293
Wordsworth, his merits and defects, 31
his special gift, 35
one of the highest of modern
prophets, 37
his influence as a teacher, 231
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