OF SOULS 
 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A NATURALIST OF SOULS
 
 A NATURALIST OF 
 SOULS 
 
 Studies in Psychography 
 
 BY 
 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OP "LEE, THE AMERICAN," "CONFEDERATE 
 PORTRAITS," "UNION PORTRAITS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1917
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. INC.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 2/7 
 
 tit 7 
 
 TO 
 
 BLISS PERRY 
 
 WHO HAS HIS DOUBTS ABOUT PSYCHOGRAPHY 
 
 BUT HAS HELPED GREATLY 
 
 IN THE MAKING OF IT 
 
 1121593
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 The Author wishes to thank the publishers 
 of The Atlantic Monthly, The North American 
 Review, The Yale Review, The South Atlantic 
 Quarterly, and Poet Lore for permission to re- 
 print articles originally published by them.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I PSYCHOGRAPHY .... 3 
 
 II THE POETRY OF DONNE ... 27 
 
 III A PESSIMIST POET .... 63 
 
 IV ANTHONY TROLLOPE ... 97 
 V AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK . 117 
 
 VI ALEXANDER DUMAS .... 139 
 
 VII THE NOVEL Two THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 AGO 167 
 
 VIII A GREAT ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 193 
 
 IX LETTERS OF A ROMAN GENTLEMAN . 219 
 
 i 
 
 X OVID AMONG THE GOTHS . . . 247 
 
 XI PORTRAIT OF A SAINT . . . 273
 
 "J* analyse, f herborise, je suis un naturaliste 
 des esprits." 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE.
 
 I 
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 
 
 SOME one asked Zola why he used the term, 
 "Naturalism," when there was nothing about 
 his work that was essentially different from 
 realism or from other literary forms that had been 
 employed for thousands of years before his time. 
 "I know all that," he said. "You are perfectly 
 right. But I needed a name to attract the attention 
 of the public. When I repeat the word over and 
 over, it is bound at last to make people think there 
 is something in it. It is like driving a nail. The 
 first blow does not amount to much; but as you add 
 another, and another, and another, in the end you 
 make progress." 
 
 1 confess that my use of the word, "Psychogra- 
 phy," was at first something like Zola's use of 
 "Naturalism." It was not even my own original 
 invention, though I had coined it for myself before 
 I discovered that it had been used by Professor 
 Saintsbury a few years earlier in discussing the work 
 of Sainte-Beuve. I did not suppose that it meant 
 
 3
 
 4 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 anything particularly new, but it seemed to sum 
 up processes that have been rather vaguely employed 
 before and to give them a name which might be 
 useful in attracting the attention of the jaded, over- 
 loaded American reader. 
 
 I should not now claim that the word meant any- 
 thing new in substance. All literary and historical 
 methods have been employed over and over again 
 and the most we can hope to do is to improve and 
 modify them. But the more I practise psychogra- 
 phy, the more it seems to me to represent definite 
 phases of literary or historical production, phases 
 worthy not only of a distinct name, but of careful 
 study and consideration. 
 
 I can best introduce what I have in mind by mak- 
 ing clear one or two things that psychography is 
 not. In the first place, it is not at all properly con- 
 veyed or suggested by the word, portrait. I have 
 hitherto used this term, because it has the excellent 
 authority of Sainte-Beuve and many others, and 
 because I have not yet found courage to talk about 
 "psychographs," and even if I had, publishers and 
 editors have not. But "portraits" is very unsatis- 
 factory. To carry the terms of one art into another 
 is always misleading, and I have experienced this in 
 the complaint of many critics that as a portrait 
 painter I could present a man at only one moment 
 of his career, that I depicted his character in only
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 5 
 
 one phase, one situation, one set of conditions and 
 circumstances. 
 
 Now the aim of psychography is precisely oppo- 
 site to this. Out of the perpetual flux of actions 
 and circumstances that constitutes a man's whole 
 life, it seeks to extract what is essential, what is 
 permanent and so vitally characteristic. The painter 
 can depict a face and figure only as he sees them at 
 one particular moment, though, in proportion to 
 the depth and power of his art, he can suggest, more 
 or less subtly, the vast complex of influences that 
 have gone to building up that face and figure. The 
 psychographer endeavours to grasp as many particu- 
 lar moments as he can and to give his reader not 
 one but the enduring sum total of them all. 
 
 But, it is urged, if the object is thus chronological 
 completeness, in what respect does psychography 
 differ from biography*? Simply that biography is 
 bound to present an elaborate sequence of dates, 
 events, and circumstances, of which some are vital 
 to the analysis o the individual subject, but many 
 are merely required to make the narrative complete. 
 From this yast and necessary material of biography, 
 psychography selects only that which is indispensable 
 for its particular purpose, and as the accumulation 
 of books becomes yearly greater and greater, it seems 
 as if this principle of condensation must become 
 more and more pressing in its appeal.
 
 6 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Finally, psychography differs from psychology in 
 that the latter does not deal primarily with indi- 
 viduals, but with general principles, and uses indi- 
 viduals only for the discovery, development, and 
 illustration of those principles. 
 
 Psychography, then, is the attempt to portray 
 character, and in discussing psychography we must 
 evidently begin with a clear understanding of what 
 character means. The reader will perhaps pardon 
 my rehearsing the no doubt crude metaphysical 
 analysis which I have found satisfactory for my own 
 purposes. Character is quite distinct from indi- 
 viduality. Individuality, so far as we appear to 
 others in this world, is a vast complex, based pri- 
 marily upon the body, the material, physical organi- 
 sation, and consisting of all the past history of that 
 organisation, its name and all its actions and utter- 
 ances in theij sequence and concatenation with other 
 circumstances and events. 
 
 It is, of course, perfectly evident that no words, 
 no possible abstract instruments of thinking, will 
 ever suffice to render this individuality in its com- 
 pleteness. The brush of the painter can at once 
 attain a result that is impossible to language, and 
 although the artist in colour never conveys anything 
 like the fulness of individuality, yet the physical 
 portrayal he achieves is to all intents and purposes
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 7 
 
 distinct from the portrayal of any other human 
 being, and so far individual. 
 
 But we poor workers in words have to toil vaguely 
 after a result which is far less conclusive and satis- 
 fying. Even the concrete method, employed by the 
 novelist and dramatist, of letting a personage do his 
 own deeds and speak his own words, rarely makes 
 any approach to complete individuality. No single 
 human action, as verbally recorded, can be confined 
 to one human being more than to another, and 
 scarcely any complication of actions. In the same 
 way no word or combination of words is distinctively 
 yours or mine, or Csesar's or Napoleon's. A thou- 
 sand women might have murdered Duncan as Lady 
 Macbeth did, and a million men might have said 
 with Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the 
 question." 
 
 Fortunately, in the weltering chaos which is to- 
 taled by the word, individuality, there is one clue 
 that we can seize, though it is frail and insecure. 
 As we observe the actions of different men, we find 
 that they follow certain comparatively definite lines, 
 which we call habits, that is, the same man will per- 
 form over and over again actions, and speak words, 
 which have a basis of resemblance to each other, 
 though the basis is often obscure and elusive. And 
 back of the words and actions we assume from our 
 own experience motives of sensation and emotion,
 
 8 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 which serve to strengthen and confirm such resem- 
 blance. On this vague basis of fact is built the 
 whole fabric of our study and knowledge of our 
 fellow men. The generalisation of these habits of 
 action, sometimes expressing itself very obscurely 
 and imperfectly for the acute observer in features 
 and manifestations of the body, constitutes what we 
 call qualities. And the complex of these qualities 
 in turn forms the fleeting and uncertain total which 
 we sum up in the word, character. An honest man is 
 one who does honest actions. A simple man is one 
 who does simple actions. An ambitious man does 
 ambitious actions. A cruel man, cruel actions. And 
 so on, almost without limit. The importance of 
 these quality terms is so enormous in our practical 
 daily lives that we are apt, as with many other 
 abstractions, to look upon them as mysterious enti- 
 ties, functions, elements, in some way existing by 
 themselves and entering into the very fibre and sub- 
 stance of the man's inmost soul. And so far as his 
 habits of action are ingrained, vital, rooted deep 
 down in the solid foundations of education and in- 
 heritance, these words which express habit are per- 
 manent and significant, but their significance comes 
 only from the acts they generalise and the inferred 
 feelings and emotions that prompt those acts, noth- 
 ing more. 
 
 Character, then, is the sum of qualities or gen-
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 9 
 
 eralised habits of action. Psychography is the con- 
 densed, essential, artistic presentation of character. 
 And it is now perfectly obvious how frail, how in- 
 firm, how utterly unreliable is the material basis 
 upon which psychography rests. First, before we 
 can analyse and generalise a man's habits of speech 
 and action, we must deal with the historical record 
 of that speech and action. And here, of course, we 
 meet the ordinary difficulties in regard to accuracy, 
 which have become so many and so glaring in the 
 light of modern historical research. Most of our 
 knowledge of men's actions in the past depends upon 
 the testimony of others. That testimony, when lim- 
 ited in amount, is extremely uncertain, as shown 
 by the fact that, when abundant, it is usually con- 
 flicting. In the small number of cases in which 
 we have the testimony of the man himself, we are 
 apt to be more puzzled and perplexed than when 
 we are without it. As with actions, so with words. 
 It is rare indeed that we can be sure of having even 
 the substance of f a man's speech correctly reported 
 to us. Yet for the interpretation of his character 
 it is often of the utmost importance that we should 
 have his exact language, and, if possible, the tone 
 and gesture and emphasis that double or halve its 
 significance. 
 
 But these concrete, historical difficulties are but 
 the smallest part of the problem we have to deal
 
 10 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 with in psychography. Supposing that we have 
 the most reliable record of a man's deeds and ut- 
 terances, we have advanced but a very little way in 
 establishing the qualities of his character. What 
 actions are just, what actions are generous, what 
 actions are cruel, what actions are foolish*? To 
 determine these points requires wide reflection on 
 the bearing of actions in reference to all sorts of 
 conditions and circumstances, and on a man's own 
 judgment and others' judgment of that bearing. 
 The result of such reflection will be different in dif- 
 ferent minds, and the colour that an action assumes 
 to you will be very different from what it assumes 
 to me or to the next critic who considers it. 
 
 Further, the generalisation of actions is always 
 imperfect. A man may do one or several kindly 
 actions, yet not have the essential habit of kindli- 
 ness. A man whose ordinary life runs in the con- 
 ventional groove of honesty may meet some sudden 
 crisis with an entire reversal of his honest habit. 
 The most minute study, the widest experience in the 
 investigation of human actions and their motives, 
 only make us feel more and more the shifting, ter- 
 rible uncertainty of the ground under our feet. 
 
 The natural question then arises, of what use is 
 psychography? Why perplex and torment one's 
 self with the study of character, when the difficulty 
 is so great and the result so uncertain, when we
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 11 
 
 seem to begin with nothing and to end with nothing, 
 to be weaving a skein of shadows into a fabric of 
 clouds ? 
 
 The answer is first, that there is no possible study 
 more fascinating. The problems of character, in 
 others and in ourselves, are teasing us for solution 
 every moment of our lives. The naturalist spends 
 years in studying the life and habits of a bird, or a 
 frog, or a beetle. But every beetle is a beetle, and 
 when you have studied the class, the individual is 
 practically nothing. With the human class every in- 
 dividual is infinitely varied from every other and 
 the field of study is as inexhaustible as it is ab- 
 sorbing. 
 
 Moreover, if psychography is an impossible 
 science, it is a necessary one. The psychographer 
 is not a curious dilettante, investigating odd facts to 
 pass an idle hour. The one form of knowledge that 
 is practical above all others is the knowledge of our- 
 selves and of other men. We are all psychograph- 
 ers from the cradle. The child, almost before it can 
 speak, learns just what will affect its father or its 
 mother, and what will not. In our business and in 
 our pleasure, in our hope and in our fear, in our toil 
 and in our repose, we are always considering, ex- 
 amining, calculating upon the action of others. We 
 miscalculate and mistake and blunder disastrously 
 again and again, but we still pursue our instinctive
 
 12 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 psychography, because it is more important than 
 anything else to the successful conduct and even to 
 the mere living of our lives. 
 
 Of course, in the vast chaos of individual action 
 and speech, certain elements are far more significant 
 than others, and it is largely in the discovery and 
 interpretation of these elements that the claim of 
 psychography consists. A man may deliver a formal 
 oration, carefully framed after conventional models 
 and tell us practically nothing about himself. I long 
 since learned that such material as the fifteen vol- 
 umes of Sumner's collected works was of little or 
 no value for my purposes. Again, a careless word, 
 spoken with no intention whatever, a mere gesture, 
 the lifting of the hand or the turning of the head, 
 may fling open a wide window into a man's inmost 
 heart. 
 
 When one gets to watching for these subtle in- 
 dications of character, the delight of them is in- 
 expressible. All history and biography are strewn 
 with them, but in astonishingly varying abundance. 
 The Diary of Pepys contains new light on the 
 writer's soul in every page and paragraph. The 
 equally extensive Diary of Madame D'Arblay is ar- 
 tificial, literary, external, and tells comparatively 
 little about Madame D'Arblay herself. General 
 Sherman wears his heart upon his sleeve. Material 
 for depicting him is so plenty that there is only the
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 13 
 
 difficulty of selecting. General Lee conceals him- 
 self instinctively behind a barrier of formal re- 
 serve, and it is only by long study that one comes 
 across such vivid revelations as his remark at Fred- 
 ericksburg, "It is well that war is so terrible, or else 
 we should grow too fond of it." 
 
 Of course these revelations of soul are not con- 
 fined to books or to historical personages. The men 
 and women we meet in casual daily intercourse are 
 always telling or concealing the same story of 
 what they are and what they are not. One or two 
 apparently trifling instances have stuck in my mem- 
 ory from their singular significance. A man's wife 
 was caught unexpectedly, in travelling, with little or 
 no money, and obliged to explain her difficulties to 
 the hotel keeper and telegraph to her husband for 
 assistance. The husband sent it at once, but his 
 comment was, "To think that my wife should be 
 stranded in a hotel without money." Just reflect 
 upon all that little sentence tells of the person who 
 wrote it. Agair^ I was explaining to a friend a ter- 
 rible disaster that had happened to another friend 
 and I was myself so agitated and overcome that I 
 could not make anything approaching a lucid story. 
 My hearer was dumfounded by my condition and 
 after a moment's effort to gather what I was. driving 
 at, his first word was, "Tell me, at least, does this 
 trouble concern me?" Think of the depths of hu-
 
 H A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 man nature revealed in that! Take still another 
 instance. A most worthy, affectionate, devoted hus- 
 band, who was trying to do all that could be done 
 for an invalid wife, used often to remark, "When 
 I stand by her grave, I do not wish to have anything 
 to reproach myself with." Simple, natural words, 
 perhaps, yet they seem to me distinctly significant 
 of a certain type of man. 
 
 So, every day, every hour, every minute, we are 
 all of us writing our own psychographs, at any rate 
 piling up ample material for some one else to do 
 it for us. 
 
 It is sometimes urged that attention to such mi- 
 nute details in the conduct of historical personages, 
 not to speak of our neighbours, savours of mere gos- 
 sip. We degrade history and biography, it is said, 
 when we make them depend on careless words and 
 unregarded actions. But if it be true, as I have sug- 
 gested, that the knowledge of others' characters is 
 absolutely vital to living our own lives and that just 
 such careless words and unregarded actions give us 
 this knowledge of character, then assuredly it is 
 right we should observe them, no matter how trivial 
 and apparently insignificant. 
 
 It must be admitted that psychography is always 
 in danger of degenerating into gossip. The dif- 
 ference between the two is simply that gossip springs 
 from the desire to saturate our own emptiness with
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 15 
 
 the lives of others, from a mere idle curiosity about 
 things and persons, bred by an utter lack of interest 
 in ourselves. Gossip makes no distinction of signifi- 
 cance between different facts, but gapes wide for 
 all, only more eagerly for those that offer more 
 violent and abnormal distraction. Psychography 
 picks, chooses, and rejects; in a bushel of chaff finds 
 only a grain or two of wheat, but treasures that 
 wheat as precious and invaluable. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of psychography as a 
 science, that is, of the material with which the psy- 
 chographer deals. Before I touch upon psychography 
 as an art, let me turn for a few moments to the writer 
 from whom I think the psychographer has most to 
 learn, Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 It is curious that Sainte-Beuve should have been 
 all his life the most exquisite practitioner of psy- 
 chography and never have known it. I do not mean 
 that he did not use the word. That is a small mat- 
 ter. But he always thought and spoke of himself as 
 a literary critic, all the while that he was doing work 
 far different from literary criticism. 
 
 Indeed, as a mere critic, I do not think that Sainte- 
 Beuve quite deserves the rank usually assigned him. 
 He had little knowledge of any literature beside the 
 classics and his own. Even in speaking of things 
 French, he is a very unsatisfactory guide, outside of 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
 
 16 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 If he writes of his contemporaries, his judgments, 
 when just, are apt to be intertangled with a per- 
 sonal element of jealousy, which is very unpleasant. 
 Such pure criticism as his study of Theocritus has 
 great and peculiar charm, but it is much less common 
 in his work than is generally supposed. 
 
 Where he is really distinguished and original 
 and unrivalled, is as what he himself called, in a 
 rare moment of analysis, "a naturalist of souls." 
 In insight into the deep and hidden motives and 
 passions of the soul, in power of distinguishing and 
 denning them, best of all, in cunning and subtle gift 
 of winnowing material so as to select just those 
 significant and telling illustrative words and actions 
 I have spoken of, in all these admirable qualities 
 he had no predecessor and has had no follower 
 who can at all approach him. His vast col- 
 lection of studies of great and striking figures 
 in French history is something quite unmatched 
 in any other literature, and it is coming to 
 stand out more and more and be better appre- 
 ciated, as it is more widely known. Best of all are 
 his many portraits of women. Madame de Sevigne, 
 Madame de Maintenon, Madame Du Deffand, Ma- 
 dame d'Epinay, and a score of others, representing 
 entirely different aspects of character, are depicted 
 with a fidelity, a sympathy, a delicacy, a just appre- 
 ciation of mental and moral strength and weakness,
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 17 
 
 which make you feel as if you had known every one 
 of them all your life. 
 
 Now it seems evident enough that it is a mere mis- 
 use of terms to call such work as this literary criti- 
 cism. Is it not strange, then, that Sainte-Beuve 
 should never have got really clear with himself about 
 what he was doing, but should have insisted that 
 because these various women wrote letters, there- 
 fore, in discussing them, he was discussing literature? 
 The explanation is closely connected with an es- 
 sential element of his greatness. For he was not 
 an abstract thinker, not a man of theories or formu- 
 lae. His attempts to analyse the general character 
 of his work are rare, and those that do occur are not 
 lucid or satisfactory. What he did have was an 
 immense, insatiable desire for observation, investiga- 
 tion. Few men have personified more completely 
 than he the spirit of pure scientific curiosity, the 
 love and reverence for the fact in itself, independent 
 of argument, or of any effort to use facts as foun- 
 dations for theoties. One of the ablest of his fol- 
 lowers, Scherer, points out that in all Sainte-Beuve' s 
 vast work there is little or no repetition. This is 
 true, but Scherer fails to note the significant reason. 
 It is because Sainte-Beuve adores and imitates the 
 immense individuality of nature. Scherer himself, 
 Brunetiere, France, Lemaitre, Faguet, Matthew Ar- 
 nold, all admirers and imitators of Sainte-Beuve,
 
 i8 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 miss his excellence in this point entirely. Not one of 
 them left a quarter part as much work as Sainte- 
 Beuve did. Yet not one of them but in those nar- 
 rower limits repeats himself over and over in some 
 philosophical discussion or some abstract theory, as 
 all readers will immediately realise in regard to Mat- 
 thew Arnold. To Sainte-Beuve theories were mis- 
 leading and unprofitable. Human beings were un- 
 limited in fascination and charm. 
 
 Thus, no one was more widely conversant with the 
 material of psychography than he. Moreover, so 
 far as the art of psychography consists in the cun- 
 ning and exquisite selection of illustrative details, 
 no one has ever surpassed or ever will surpass him. 
 
 But there is another phase of psychographic art, 
 which becomes daily of greater interest to me, and 
 which Sainte-Beuve practised comparatively little. 
 This is the phase of composition. His method of 
 procedure was usually that of simple biography. 
 After a brief introduction, he followed the chronol- 
 ogy of his subject, developing different points of 
 character in connection with different circumstances 
 or periods. No doubt great variety can be obtained 
 in this way, as every skilled biographer knows. At 
 the same time, it seems to me that there is a gain in 
 swinging clear from this chronological sequence al- 
 together, and in attaching oneself solely to the pres- 
 entation of a man's qualities of character, arranged
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 19 
 
 and treated in such logical sequence as shall give a 
 total impression that will be most effective and most 
 enduring. I confess that I had grave doubts about 
 this procedure at first. I feared that the discussion 
 of qualities in the abstract would be academic, ped- 
 agogic, monotonous. Even yet I am not prepared 
 to affirm that this will not prove true and that in 
 the end I shall not have to fall back on simple bio- 
 graphical structure. But my doubt in the matter 
 diminishes daily. Indeed, it is in this regard that 
 the originality and significance of psychography im- 
 presses me most, and I am astonished to find how rich 
 and varied are the possibilities of artistic presenta- 
 tion with every individual character. Instead of a 
 monotonous renewal of the same qualities in the 
 same order, every individual seems to suggest and 
 to require a different arrangement, a different em- 
 phasis. So that I come to feel that Nature herself 
 is the artist and that all one has to do is to lend a 
 patient, earnest e^ar to her dictation. It is true that 
 not one but a dozen possibilities of composition are 
 indicated in every case and this seems largely to ac- 
 centuate the uncertainty and unreliability of psy- 
 chographic art. But, as I have already shown, such 
 wide variety in methods of treatment corresponds to 
 a far wider variety in the material employed, and 
 the search for the best form of developing the ma-
 
 20 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 terial is as delightful as the discovery of the ma- 
 terial itself. 
 
 After enlarging on Sainte-Beuve especially as the 
 master of all psychographers, I want to refer also 
 to some other artists, to whom I at least owe almost 
 as much. What we may call the quintescence of 
 psychography is those studies of character to be 
 found in the literary and imaginative historians, 
 Tacitus, Clarendon, Saint-Simon, to name no others. 
 
 Take Clarendon's character of the Earl of Arun- 
 del : "It cannot be denied that he had in his person, 
 in his aspect, and countenance, the appearance of a 
 great man, which he preserved in his gait and mo- 
 tion. He wore and affected a habit very different 
 from that of the time, such as men had only beheld 
 in the pictures of the most considerable men; all 
 which drew the eyes of most, and the reverence of 
 many, towards him, as the image and representative 
 of the primitive nobility, and native gravity of the 
 nobles, when they had been most venerable; but 
 this was only his outside, his nature and true humour 
 being so much disposed to vulgar delights, which in- 
 deed were very despicable and childish. He was 
 never suspected to love anybody, nor to have the 
 least propensity to justice, charity, or compassion, so 
 that though he got all he could, and by all the ways 
 he could, and spent much more than he got or had, 
 he was never known to give anything, nor in all his
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 21 
 
 employments . . . never man used or employed by 
 him ever got any fortune under him, nor did ever 
 any man acknowledge any obligation to him. He 
 was rather thought to be without religion than to 
 incline to this or that party of any. He would have 
 been a proper instrument for any tyranny, if he 
 could have found a man tyrant enough to have been 
 advised by him, and had no other affection for the 
 nation or the kingdom, than as he had a great share 
 in it, in which, like the great leviathan, he might 
 sport himself; from which he withdrew himself, as 
 soon as he discerned the repose thereof was like to 
 be disturbed, and died in Italy, under the same 
 doubtful character of religion in which he lived." 
 
 Take again this portrait of the Duke de La Feuil- 
 lade, by Saint-Simon : "He had much wit and many 
 sorts of wit. He knew how to impress his merits up- 
 on those who saw the surface only, and he had above 
 all the kind of conversation and manners that en- 
 chant women. He was delightful to live with, if you 
 cared only for amusement. He was magnificent in 
 everything, liberal, courteous, very brave and very 
 gallant, a great and a daring gamester. He knew 
 well his own good qualities and made parade of 
 them, was self-asserting, always full of moral saws, 
 and loved to argue to show his wit. His ambition 
 was limitless, and as he was inconstant in great and 
 little things both, ambition and the love of pleasure
 
 22 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 possessed him alternately. He was always eager 
 for reputation, and he had the art of paying apt 
 court to those whose praise could help him and by 
 their praise, which entailed that of others, of making 
 himself a figure in the social world. He appeared 
 to desire friends and sustained the delusion for a 
 long time. He had a heart corrupted to the bot- 
 tom, a soul of mud, and was an infidel for the fash- 
 ionable air of being so. In short, he was as thor- 
 oughly worthless a man as has been known for 
 years." 
 
 In these wonderful portraits the defects of psy- 
 chography, which I indicated in beginning, are glar- 
 ingly apparent, its dependence upon generalisations, 
 usually hasty and never complete, and its consequent 
 unreliability and incapacity for ever being abso- 
 lute or final. But what light they throw, not only 
 upon the subjects actually presented, but upon the 
 human heart in general, with its passions and weak- 
 nesses! It would indeed be vain to hope to equal 
 the vividness, the brevity, the imaginative power of 
 these great masters, but by amplifying their intense, 
 concentrated method with fuller detail, with a 
 broader and more elaborate arrangement of design, 
 above all with carefully chosen and significant illus- 
 tration, the defects of psychography can be partially 
 concealed, if never obliterated. In spite of its de- 
 fects, or because of them, it is one of the most inex-
 
 PSYCHOGRAPHY 23 
 
 haustibly fascinating pursuits ever yet discovered 
 to appease the restless activity of the human mind, 
 and the one to which applies most of all the old Ro- 
 man apothegm, 
 
 All longings fail save that to understand. 
 
 The reader who has been at all interested in the 
 preceding discussion will, I trust, follow with some 
 curiosity the sequence of the following chapters, 
 which illustrates rather fully at least the practical 
 development of psychography. 
 
 In "The Poetry of Donne" and "A Pessimist 
 Poet" I had no thought of aiming at anything but 
 literary criticism. Yet the psychographical interest 
 and even the beginnings of psychographical method 
 are obvious in both. This is more marked in "An- 
 thony Trollope," "An Odd Sort of Popular Book," 
 and "Alexander Dumas," though when writing them 
 I had still no thought of psychography as a word or 
 a thing. "The Novel Two Thousand Years Ago" 
 has, from the nature of the subject, no direct psycho- 
 graphical bearing, though the method is, I think, 
 more indicated than in some of the earlier examples. 
 "A Great English Portrait Painter" analyses the 
 work and the character of one to whom psychog- 
 raphy is deeply indebted for models and for inspira- 
 tion. Finally, the last three portraits are elaborate 
 specimens of psychography working consciously, and
 
 24 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 the last two are as finished psychographs as it is in 
 my power to produce. I trust that others, using a 
 similar method, will produce something much better. 
 
 1915
 
 II 
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE
 
 II 
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 1 
 
 POETS of the first rank may be expected to 
 unite the praises of all schools of critics. 
 Those of a lower order, those, at any rate, 
 who are read only by the few, have generally a fac- 
 tion that adores them and another that rejects them 
 wholly. This is more or less the case with Shelley, 
 with Leopardi, with Browning. It is at present the 
 fortune of Donne to be ignored by the general pub- 
 lic, and to be at the same time an object of enthusi- 
 asm to very different minds among those who know. 
 This will be sufficiently proved by two quotations. 
 One is from Lowell: "What are the conditions of 
 permanence*? Immediate or contemporaneous recog- 
 nition is not one 6f them, or Cowley would be popu- 
 lar. . . . Nor can mere originality assure the in- 
 terest of posterity, else why are Chaucer and Gray 
 familiar, while Donne, one of the subtlest and most 
 self-irradiating minds that ever sought an outlet in 
 
 1 Since this essay was written much study, both biographical and 
 editorial, has been given to Donne; but it has not changed the 
 essential character of the man or the splendour of his poetry. 
 
 27
 
 28 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 verse, is known only to the few?" The other is from 
 a critic whose taste and judgments are certainly 
 quite different from Lowell's, Swinburne, who, in 
 his rhetorical fashion, refers thus to Donne, while 
 speaking of the prose writings of Ben Jonson: 
 "That chance is the ruler of the world I should be 
 sorry to believe and reluctant to affirm ; but it would 
 be difficult for any competent and careful student to 
 maintain that chance is not the ruler of the world 
 of letters. Gray's Odes are still, I suppose, familiar 
 to thousands who know nothing of Donne's Anniver- 
 saries ; and Bacon's Essays are conventionally if not 
 actually familiar to thousands who know nothing of 
 Ben Jonson's Discoveries. And yet it is certain 
 that in fervour of inspiration and depth and force 
 and glow of thought and emotion and expression 
 Donne's verses are as far above Gray's as Jonson's 
 notes or observations on men and morals, on princi- 
 ples and on facts, are superior to Bacon's in truth 
 of insight, in breadth of view, in vigour of reflection, 
 and in concision of eloquence." It will be noticed 
 that both writers emphasise the merit of Donne by 
 a comparison with Gray. 
 
 Donne's reputation among men of letters has not 
 always been so high. Dr. Johnson selected him as 
 the type of what was objectionable in the so-called 
 metaphysical poets, and he was certainly repugnant 
 enough to the taste of the eighteenth century. But
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 29 
 
 among his own contemporaries he was regarded with 
 enthusiasm both as a poet and as a man. Ben Jonson, 
 no easy judge, called him "the first poet of the 
 world in some things :" and Carew, in his admirable 
 eulogy, speaks of him as 
 
 "A king who ruled as he thought fit 
 The universal monarchy of wit." 
 
 We shall find, I think, that the study of his 
 poems fully justifies this high estimate of him, 
 though his unpopularity with those who read to 
 pass an idle hour is perfectly explicable. 
 
 Our materials for the life of Donne are more 
 abundant than is the case with many Elizabethan 
 writers. Besides the charming narrative of Walton, 
 there are biographical facts contained in Donne's 
 own poems; above all, a great number of his let- 
 ters are extant, affording valuable information, es- 
 pecially as to his later years. What would we not 
 give for such precious documents from the hand of 
 Shakespeare ! 
 
 John Donne was born in London in the year 
 1573. The most interesting thing we know about 
 his youth is that his parents were strongly Roman
 
 30 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Catholic, and made every effort to bring him up in 
 that religion. He was sent to the University of 
 Oxford in his twelfth year that he might avoid the 
 oath, which was not administered to those under 
 sixteen, and which, as a Catholic, he could not take. 
 According to Walton, he left Oxford for Cambridge, 
 and completed his education there; but this state- 
 ment is said to be unfounded. Walton also tells 
 us that in the seventeenth year of his age he was 
 admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and there began the 
 study of law. What is more important, from the 
 light it throws on his character, is the statement that 
 soon after this he entered into an examination of 
 the Catholic and Protestant creeds, pursuing his re- 
 searches through the gloomiest depths of theological 
 controversy. Nothing could be more like Donne. 
 The word which stamps itself on every line of his 
 works, on every trait of his nature, is intensity, that 
 restless, hungry energy of mind, which will not let 
 a man shut his eyes while there is a corner of 
 thought unprobed, unlightened. Vigour of intellect, 
 fervour of emotion, these are what give Donne his 
 high position as a man and as a poet. 
 
 So far as we can judge from the many poems that 
 he wrote about this time, his theological studies were 
 followed by a plunge into dissipations of a quite 
 untheological nature. Here, too, intensity is still 
 the word. No depth of passion let us speak
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 31 
 
 frankly, sensuality was too much for this eager 
 temper, this fierce and energetic soul. 
 
 In the year 1596 Donne appears to have gone with 
 the Earl of Essex on the expedition to Cadiz. When 
 he returned he was made secretary to the Lord 
 Keeper Elsmore, and through him became acquainted 
 with Lady Elsmore's niece, whom he afterwards 
 married. The history of the match is curious. Sir 
 George Moore, the lady's father, being informed of 
 Donne's attachment to his daughter, opposed it, 
 not unnaturally, as she was but sixteen, and Donne's 
 prospects were not over-brilliant. The young people 
 were constant to each other, and were at length se- 
 cretly married. Sir George was indignant, and took 
 the short-sighted step of getting Donne dismissed 
 from his place. When Donne heard of this, he wrote 
 his wife with the characteristic signature, "John 
 Donne, Ann Donne, un-done," to appreciate which 
 it is necessary to remember that the proper name 
 was then pronounced like the participle. Sir George 
 even went further, and managed to have Donne and 
 .two of his friends committed to prison. The con- 
 finement was short, and father and son-in-law were 
 finally reconciled; but Donne was not out of his 
 difficulties. Sir George, repenting of his hasty se- 
 verity, made an attempt to have the ex-secretary 
 reinstated. In this he was unsuccessful, and as he 
 refused to help support the young couple, their po-
 
 32 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 sition was a hard one. At this time both circum- 
 stances and inclination led Donne toward the church ; 
 but conscientious scruples and the memory of his 
 past life deterred him. For a number of years he 
 struggled on, assisted by his friends. His reputa- 
 tion as a scholar and a wit grew constantly, and in 
 the year 1610 he wrote, at the request of the king, 
 his book against the Catholics, entitled "Pseudo- 
 Martyr." The next year he was abroad for some 
 time with one of KIs patrons, Sir Robert Drury. Aft- 
 er his return he began to have a hope of secular pre- 
 ferment about the court; and this was probably the 
 cause of his connection with the infamous Carr, after- 
 wards Earl of Somerset. We have a number of his 
 letters to Carr, and also his "Epithalamium," com- 
 posed for the marriage of Somerset and the divorced 
 Countess of Essex. His expectations, if he had any, 
 were, however, disappointed by the exposure and 
 condemnation of that well-matched pair. 
 
 Some record of Donne's existence in the unhappy 
 years after his marriage is preserved for us in his 
 letters, which impress one chiefly by a tone of manly 
 dignity blended with fine sensibility. Those who 
 have got from Johnson the idea that Donne was a 
 clever but chilly trifler should study his correspond- 
 ence. I quote one passage, written probably a few 
 years after his marriage, when he was in despair
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 33 
 
 over the uncertainty of his fortunes and the unprofit- 
 ableness of his life : 
 
 "Every Tuesday I make account that I turn a 
 great hour-glass and consider that a week's life is 
 run out since I writ. But if I ask myself what I have 
 done in the last watch or would do in the next, I can 
 say nothing; if I say that I have passed it without 
 hurting any, so may the spider in my window. The 
 primitive monks were excusable in their retirings and 
 inclosures of themselves; for even of them every one 
 cultivated his own garden and orchard, that is, his 
 soul and body, by meditation and manufactures ; and 
 they sought the world no more since they consumed 
 none of her sweetness, nor begot others to burden 
 her. But for me, if I were able to husband all my 
 time so thriftily as not only not to wound my soul 
 in a minute by actual sin, but not to rob and cozen 
 her by giving any part to pleasure or business, but 
 to bestow it all upon her in meditation, yet even in 
 that I should wound her more and contract another 
 guiltiness; as trie eagle were very unnatural, if, be- 
 cause she is able to do it, she should perch a whole 
 day upon a tree, staring in contemplation of the 
 majesty and glory of the sun, and let her young 
 eaglets starve in the nest." 
 
 From the time Donne entered the church he was 
 then forty-two years old there was not a moment's 
 doubt about his reputation or his future prospects.
 
 34 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 He advanced from preferment to preferment, and 
 at last reached the high position of Dean of St. 
 Paul's, which he filled till his death. That he was 
 happy would be too much to say. His Christian 
 faith was never shaken, but the feverish restless- 
 ness of his nature and his constant brooding on the 
 sins of the past cut him off from any settled peace 
 in his religion. In 1617 his wife died. The blow 
 was severe, and he never recovered from it. Even 
 then he was worn and broken in health, and his let- 
 ters are full, not of complaint, but of reference to 
 the weakness and weariness that hung over him like 
 a cloud. "I am not alive because I have not had 
 enough to kill me, but because it pleases God to 
 pass me through many infirmities before He takes 
 me, either by those particular remembrances to bring 
 me to a particular repentance, or by them to give 
 me hope of his particular mercies in heaven." Yet 
 he battled on for fourteen years more, indomitable 
 in devotion to the cause he had undertaken to serve, 
 indomitable in love, indomitable in hope, though his 
 hope might seem at times a little shadowy and for- 
 lorn. 
 
 He performed the duties of his office till the end, 
 and his last sermon, a solemn discourse on the solemn 
 text, "To God the Lord belong the issues of death," 
 was delivered when he was so feeble that many 
 people said he was preaching at his own funeral.
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 35 
 
 He died on the last day of March, in the year 
 1631. 
 
 Before leaving the biographical part of my sub- 
 ject, I must quote from Walton one striking anec- 
 dote : 
 
 "Dr. Donne, by the persuasion of Dr. Fox, easily 
 yielded at this very time to have a monument made 
 for him; but Dr. Fox undertook not to persuade 
 him how or what monument it should be; that was 
 left to Dr. Donne himself. 
 
 "A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne 
 sent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure 
 of an urn, giving him directions for the compass 
 and height of it, and to bring with him a board of 
 the just height of his body. These being got, then, 
 without delay, a choice painter was got to be in readi- 
 ness to draw his picture, which was taken as follow- 
 eth. Several charcoal fires being first made in his 
 large study, he brought with him into that place his 
 winding-sheet in his hand; and having put off all 
 his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied 
 with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so 
 placed as dead bodies are usually fitted to be 
 shrouded, and put into their coffin or grave. Upon 
 this urn he thus stood with his eyes shut with so 
 much of the sheet turned aside as might show his 
 lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely 
 turned toward the east, from whence he expected the
 
 36 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In 
 this posture he was drawn at his just height; and 
 when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to 
 be set by his bedside, where it continued and be- 
 came his hourly object till his death." 
 
 It would be unjust to Donne to make no mention 
 of his prose writings even in an essay devoted to his 
 poetry. In quantity his prose far exceeds his verse, 
 and the substance of it, though very different from 
 that of his poems, and certainly far less interesting 
 to the general reader, is perhaps quite as much 
 marked by his peculiar qualities of passion and in- 
 tensity. Sermons form the bulk of Donne's prose 
 work. He has been accused of preaching with the 
 jingle and word-play that are said to injure his 
 poetry. On this point Coleridge remarks : "I have, 
 and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, 
 and find none of these jingles. The great art of the 
 orator, to make whatever he talks of appear of im- 
 portance, this, indeed, Donne has effected with con- 
 summate skill." Elizabethan sermons are tedious 
 reading; but I do not see how one can go through a 
 sermon of Donne's without agreeing with Coleridge. 
 I can recommend no better specimen for the reader's 
 perusal than the magnificent passage quoted by Mr. 
 A. H. Bullen in his introduction to the works of 
 Marston. 
 
 Donne wrote other prose besides sermons, though
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 37 
 
 most of it is religious. One exception, composed in 
 his younger days, is his "Biathanatos," an essay in 
 which he attempts to prove that suicide is not in 
 every case unlawful. The book was not published 
 till after his death. 
 
 II 
 
 I have alluded to Donne's great reputation among 
 his contemporaries. He was in many ways a typi- 
 cal Elizabethan, and his fellows recognised him as 
 such. The reaction from this opinion in the eight- 
 eenth century was natural. Pope admired Donne's 
 satires; but he considered it necessary to polish and 
 practically rewrite them before presenting them to 
 the delicate palates of his own public. Johnson's 
 opinion I have already referred to. The great censor 
 used Donne as a sort of scapegoat for Cowley, brack- 
 eting the two together as representatives of the meta- 
 physical school of poets. This unintelligible epi- 
 thet was happily chosen to unite two writers who 
 have as little as possible in common. Unfortu- 
 nately Johnson did not himself define the name. 
 "The metaphysical poets," he says, "were men of 
 learning, and to show their learning was their whole 
 endeavour." But may not one be learned without 
 being metaphysical ? So many men have been meta- 
 physical without being learned! An ingenious de-
 
 38 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 fence of this appellation is to be found in Mr. El- 
 wes's "Life of Pope." Donne and his fellows, Mr. 
 Elwes argues, and, indeed, the Elizabethans gen- 
 erally, inherited the philosophy of the mediaeval 
 schoolmen. From them they got their hair-splitting, 
 wire-drawing subtlety, from them, also, their strange, 
 uncouth conception of the natural world. If this 
 was the case, Johnson was above all things happy 
 in the word he chose. It does not take much to 
 upset this theory, even if there is a grain of truth 
 at the bottom of it. The conclusions Mr. Elwes 
 draws show that there must be a fallacy. The great 
 defect of this metaphysical poetry so he goes on 
 was its separation from nature, and to return to 
 nature was the triumph achieved by the school of 
 Pope. Did any one ever before hold up the poetry 
 of Pope as the mirror of nature*? The most obscure 
 and elaborate poem of Donne strikes more deeply 
 into the truths of nature and the heart of man than 
 the most brilliant production of the clever rhymer 
 of Twickenham. 
 
 If Mr. Elwes had said "taste" instead of "na- 
 ture" he would have had reason on his side. Good 
 taste, which was the merit of Pope and Addison, was 
 wofully lacking not only to Donne, but to the 
 Elizabethans generally. It was this want of meas- 
 ure, of a decent reasonableness, which offended 
 Johnson, and made him stand a little on his guard,
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 39 
 
 even against Shakespeare. Good taste, the love of 
 rounded and flawless beauty, Donne did not possess, 
 nor did Cowley; but here the resemblance between 
 them ends. The disregard of perfect clearness and 
 Attic simplicity takes various forms among the dif- 
 ferent Elizabethan writers. There is the careless, 
 joyous overflow of imaginative richness, which shows 
 itself, influenced more or less by foreign pedantry, 
 in the earlier poets, in Sidney's "Arcadia," in the 
 novels of Lyly, Lodge, and Greene, in Shakespeare's 
 plays of the first period. Secondly, there is the habit 
 of making up for deep, strong feeling by the use of 
 far-fetched, frigid conceits; this is more common 
 with the later writers, Crashaw, Habington, Cowley 
 especially; Donne is by no means wholly free from 
 it. Thirdly, there is a strangeness, an appearance 
 of labour, resulting from the intense, crowding en- 
 ergy of the poet's thought, an energy that cannot 
 stop to arrange -its expressions, to choose its figures, 
 that strikes the irpn at a white heat, moulds it, often 
 awkwardly, but always leaves it with a stamp of 
 power; I cannot propose a better instance of this 
 than some parts only some parts of Shakespeare 
 and almost the whole of Donne. Of course, these 
 are all forms of one tendency manifesting itself in 
 different temperaments; but Donne's was a differ- 
 ent temperament from that of Sidney on the one 
 hand and that of Cowley on the other. The es-
 
 40 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 sence of his poetical gift, the essence of his moral 
 character, was effort, struggle. No one could be 
 further removed than he from such simple sweet- 
 ness as that of Spenser. Donne was always at war 
 with the elements of style, bending them, rending 
 them, straining them, to match the sweeping tide 
 of his thoughts and passions. Sometimes he con- 
 quered, and soared into the highest heaven of poetry ; 
 sometimes he was worsted and sank to depths lower 
 than the lowest of prose. The effort he makes in 
 the latter case, the distortions he produces, are pain- 
 ful, like the scratching of a pin on glass, as in the 
 hideous exaggeration so often quoted : 
 
 "Oh do not die, for I shall hate 
 
 All women so, when thou art gone, 
 That thee I shall not celebrate, 
 
 When I remember thou wast one." 
 
 Alas! it is needless to bring forward further ex- 
 amples. 
 
 Another defect of Donne's, more real than his 
 conceits, is his difficulty. Cowley is simple. Con- 
 ceits are scattered over the natural movement of his 
 writing like red knots on a white garment. Donne 
 is often unintelligible, wantonly so. He flings down 
 his ideas before you like a tangled skein ; you meddle 
 with it at your peril. In this, also, he has some 
 affinity with Shakespeare. One can take, almost at
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 41 
 
 random, from Shakespeare's later plays, passages 
 that require very careful reading : 
 
 "A strange fellow here 
 Writes me that man, how dearly ever parted, 
 How much in having, or without, or in, 
 Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, 
 Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection; 
 As when his virtues shining upon others 
 Heat them and they retort that heat again 
 To the first giver." 
 
 Donne, however, writes in this way through whole 
 poems and with infinitely less art than his great con- 
 temporary, who, when he used such a style, had his 
 own ends to serve. Donne employed it indifferently 
 on profound philosophical subjects and on what he 
 meant to be the most rapid and graceful lyrics. Of 
 the latter I quote a specimen : 
 
 yet to prove 
 I thought there was some deity in love, 
 
 So did I reverence and gave 
 Worship as atheists at their dying hour 
 Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power, 
 
 As ignorantly did I crave: 
 
 Thus when 
 Things not yet known are coveted by men, 
 
 Our desires give them fashion and so 
 As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow."
 
 42 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Much of Donne's best writing is contained in his 
 lyrics, but we must not judge them by the pure and 
 delicate ease of the exquisite work Mr. Bullen has 
 given us in his "Lyrics from Elizabethan Song 
 Books." 
 
 Still another reason why Donne is little read now- 
 adays is that he is extremely coarse, coarse is the 
 word, rather than sensual, at least for most of his 
 poems. He never shrinks from any expression that 
 throws light on his meaning. No modern realist, no 
 Frenchman, could go further. Shakespeare pales 
 beside him, even Ben Jonson. Literature is full 
 of anomalies: Donne, the coarsest of Elizabethan 
 poets, was the most intensely, profoundly Chris- 
 tian in spirit, the most serious, the most earnest, the 
 highest in his standards and aims. Oh, irony of 
 
 genius ! 
 
 in 
 
 Donne is always regarded as an example of rough 
 and jarring metre. Dr. Johnson said of the "meta- 
 physical poets" that "instead of writing poetry they 
 only wrote verses, and very often such verses as 
 stood the test of the finger better than that of the 
 ear"; while the earlier and greater Johnson told 
 Drummond "that Donne, for not keeping of ac- 
 cent, deserved hanging." It would be foolish to 
 deny the extreme, absurd harshness of many of
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 43 
 
 Donne's lines. The defect is so evident that it 
 seems as if Donne himself must have been well aware 
 of it, especially as he often shows an exquisite sense 
 of rhythm. This is no excuse. It does, however, 
 suggest that he had an artistic aim in the very halt 
 of his verses. The conclusion is strengthened when 
 we find that his satires are rougher than his lyrics 
 and serious pieces. As might be expected with so 
 difficult a writer, the text of early editions is ex- 
 tremely corrupt, which accounts for some of his met- 
 rical irregularities. 
 
 Yet nothing can palliate Donne's wanton disre- 
 gard of the laws of English versification. Coleridge 
 said : "Read even Donne's satires as he meant them 
 to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and 
 you will find in the lines a manly harmony." This 
 may be true of the continuous effect in long pas- 
 sages ; but it is not true of single lines. 
 
 "A subtle statesman may gather of that." 
 
 "His passion^ and the world's troubles; rock me." 
 
 i 
 
 Words are split to make a rhyme, accents are shaken 
 over the verse from a pepper-box, the reader thinks 
 himself adrift in chaos. Yet it would be simplicity 
 to confound Donne's rhythm with that of an in- 
 competent poetaster. He is never commonplace, 
 never monotonous, never tame. Beneath his appar-
 
 44 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ent carelessness there is profound skill in the varia- 
 tion of pauses, in the management of periods. Mr. 
 Swinburne has well said the verse of Donne is 
 nigged, the verse of Jonson stiff, meaning just this, 
 that Donne's roughness is mainly intentional and 
 calculated to contribute to the force and effect of the 
 idea conveyed. 
 
 In truth, when the merits of Donne's versification 
 are considered, he will be a bold man that will ven- 
 ture to make excuses for him. I do not know that 
 any English poet has surpassed the vigour of move- 
 ment in even the harshest of his satires, though they 
 are difficult to quote. 
 
 "Sir, though (I thank God for it) I do hate 
 All this town perfectly, yet in every state 
 There are some found so villainously best 
 That hate towards that breeds pity towards the rest." 
 
 "Words, words, which would tear 
 The tender labyrinth of a soft maid's ear 
 More, more than ten Slavonians' scolding, more 
 Than when winds in our ruined abbeys roar." 
 
 And in Donne's poems, everywhere, there are lines 
 of extraordinary rhythmic power, like the following 
 from one of his "Holy Sonnets" : 
 
 "At the round earth's imagined corners blow 
 Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 45 
 
 From death you numberless infinities 
 
 Of souls and to your scattered bodies go." 
 
 But Donne's verse has beauty and sweetness as well 
 as force. He can tune it at times, in short passages, 
 to an exquisite subtlety of delicate music: 
 
 "So may thy mighty, amazing beauty move 
 Envy in all women and in all men love." 
 
 Take also the following lines from "The Calm;" 
 the harshness of sound and sense in the first two 
 contrasts strikingly with the grace and melancholy 
 cadence of the last: 
 
 "As water did in storms, now pitch runs out 
 As lead when a fired church becomes one spout, 
 And all our beauty, all our trim decays, 
 Like court removings or like ended plays." * 
 
 Donne's lyrics, especially, are full of evidence that 
 his fault in verse-writing was carelessness, not lack 
 of ear. Take such little turns as this: 
 
 "If tKou find'st one, let me know; 
 
 Swch a pilgrimage were sweet," 
 
 or the whole song of which the following is the first 
 stanza :- 
 
 1 Curiously enough, the last line occurs, with slight variations 
 in Jonson's New Inn (iv. 3). This play must have been written 
 long after Donne's poem, so that he could not have been the bor- 
 rower. Jonson greatly admired "The Calm."
 
 46 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "Sweetest Love, I do not go 
 
 For weariness of thee, 
 Nor in hope the world can show 
 
 A fitter love for me; 
 
 But since that I 
 Must die at last, 'tis best 
 Thus to use myself in jest, 
 
 Thus a feigned death to die." 
 
 Yet it must be admitted that Donne's peculiar ex- 
 cellence is not metrical. The ruggedness, the force 
 that stamps his verse is far more characteristic of 
 his thought. He ransacks all nature for an image 
 that will not dull the intensity of his feelings, and he 
 thus falls into the vagaries that horrified Dr. John- 
 son. But the originality and startling effectiveness 
 of his figures have never been surpassed. He darts 
 a flash of lightning on his object, strips it of all con- 
 ventional trapping, with a grasp recalling Dante in 
 power, if not in simplicity. Here is a most Dan- 
 tesque and terrible simile from the "Second Anni- 
 versary :" 
 
 "As sometimes in a beheaded man, 
 Though at those two red seas which freely ran 
 One from the trunk, another from the head, 
 His soul has sailed to her eternal bed, 
 His eyes will twinkle and his tongue will roll, 
 As though he beckoned and called back his soul, 
 He grasps his hands and he pulls up his feet, 
 And seems to reach and to step forth to meet
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 47 
 
 His soul; when all these motions which we saw 
 Are but as ice that crackles at a thaw; 
 Or as a lute, which in moist weather, rings 
 Her knell alone by cracking of her strings; 
 So struggles this dead world now she is gone: 
 For there is motion in corruption." 
 
 Beside which place the following, with its subtle and 
 melancholy charm: 
 
 "But when old age their beauty hath in chase 
 And ploughs up furrows in their once smooth face, 
 Then they become forsaken and do show 
 Like stately abbeys ruined long ago." 
 
 Let me in passing point out that in both these pas- 
 sages the rhythm is striking as well as the thought. 
 Donne's originality and power show not only in 
 elaborate figures, but in little touches constantly oc- 
 curing. In "The Anagram:" 
 
 "If we might put the letters but one way 
 In that lean dearth of words what could we say?" 
 
 In the "Second Anniversary:" 
 
 "Shalt thou not find a spungy, slack divine 
 Drink and suck in the instructions of great men 
 And for the word of God vent them again?" 
 
 From a letter to the Lady Gary : 
 
 "For when, through tasteless, flat humility, 
 In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see, 
 'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he."
 
 48 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 The same qualities, vigour and intensity rather 
 than tenderness or grace, mark Donne's description 
 of nature. He did, indeed, write of 
 
 "The household bird with the red stomacher," 
 
 and with Shakespearian sweetness of 
 
 "Lilies, hyacinths, and your gorgeous birth 
 Of all pied flowers which diaper the earth;" 
 
 but he draws generally with a pen of iron, and his 
 landscape has a taste of Salvator. The companion 
 pieces called "The Storm" and "The Calm" are good 
 instances. In the latter, a most remarkable poem, 
 it is interesting to compare his 
 
 "And in one place lay 
 Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday," 
 
 with Keats's 
 
 "Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 Lifts not one light seed from the feathered grass, 
 But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest." 
 
 The traits we have hitherto studied in Donne must 
 make it evident that he would succeed in satire, and 
 his writing in that kind is, indeed, masterly. It is 
 not necessary to settle whether he was the first of 
 English satirists in date: for quality, no other can 
 be placed beside him in his own line. His subjects
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 49 
 
 do not require the broad canvases of Dryden, nor 
 has he Dryden's lucidity and rapidity. But even 
 Dryden cannot approach him in power, and he makes 
 Pope seem dry and tame. Of his own contempora- 
 ries Hall is far more conventional, Wither thinner, 
 though certainly clearer. Marston has a touch of 
 Donne's force, but is more grotesque and laboured. 
 His satires are difficult from affectation. Donne's, 
 like all his work, are moulded directly and naturally 
 by the stern and tumultuous cast of his thought. He 
 ploughs his way along, regardless of obstacles, tear- 
 ing up language and metre by the roots ; but his re- 
 sult is unequalled. Obscurity and coarseness will 
 keep his satires from ever becoming popular, but 
 no one has studied them carefully without being 
 repaid. How the characters stand out ! With what 
 energy he lashes the vices and follies around him! 
 Here is his account of an interview with a court 
 bore : 
 
 "I tell him of new plays: 
 He takes my hand and as a still which stays 
 A semibrief 'tw*ixt each drop, he niggardly, 
 As loath to enrich me, so tells many a lie 
 More than ten Hollinsheds, or Halls or Stows, 
 Of trivial household trash he knows: he knows 
 When the queen frowned or smiled; and he knows what 
 A subtle statesman may gather of that. 
 He knows who loves whom; and who by poison 
 Hastes to an office's reversion.
 
 50 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 He knows who hath sold his land and now doth beg 
 A license old iron, boots, shoes, and egg- 
 Shells to transport. . . . 
 
 And wiser than all us, 
 He knows what lady is not painted." 
 
 All this is lightened and enlivened by keen wit. He 
 comments thus on a young man of fashion : 
 
 "His schools 
 
 Are ordinaries where civil men seem fools; 
 Or are for being there; his best books, plays, 
 Where meeting godly scenes, perhaps he prays. 
 His first set prayer was for his father ill 
 And sick that he might die; that had, until 
 The lands were gone, he troubled God no more." 
 
 And. here is a scrap of one of his dialogues : 
 
 "Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, 'Do you see 
 Yonder well-favoured youth?' 'Which?' 'Yea! 'Tis he 
 That dances so divinely.' 'O!' said I, 
 'Stand still, must you dance too for company?' 
 He drooped." 
 
 This admirable comic gift is shown not only in 
 Donne's satires, but in almost all his poems, and 
 atones for many of his extravagances. Often, if you 
 look carefully, you can see a half smile on his face 
 that you should take him seriously. The richness 
 and variety of his humour appear in such poems as 
 "Woman's Constancy," "The Triple Fool" with its
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 51 
 
 "Who are a little wise the best fools be," 
 
 "Love's Legacy," and in flashes everywhere. Some- 
 thing in this mingling of mirth with passion, this 
 swift interchange of grief and laughter, recalls 
 Heine; but Donne had nothing of the cynic about 
 him. The thing above all others that makes him 
 beautiful and lovable is his tenderness, which sepa- 
 rates him absolutely from the mockery of Heine, and 
 still more from the savage invective of satirists like 
 Marston, with whom I but now compared him. 
 
 IV 
 
 As a poet and as a man Donne does, indeed, rise 
 far above mere railers at humanity and life. His 
 smile is that of sympathy, not that of scorn. His 
 philosophy was too deep, his nature too serious, to 
 allow him ever to be a trifler, jester, scoffer. His 
 high intellectual earnestness never leaves him even 
 in matters that seem light and trifling. He never 
 shuns the struggle with great problems. One does 
 not go to poets hor to Elizabethans for consistent 
 philosophical reasoning; but in acute, thoughtful, 
 and far-reaching comment on human life Donne is 
 unsurpassed. Instances of this are best taken from 
 his "Verse-Letters," where the dignity of tone is 
 least often marred by conceit and strangeness. Here 
 is one from a letter to Sir Henry Wotton :
 
 52 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "Be then thine own home and in thyself dwell; 
 Inn anywhere, continuance maketh Hell. 
 And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam, 
 Carrying his own house still, is still at home, 
 Follow (for he is easy-paced) this snail, 
 Be thy own palace, or all the world's thy jail." 
 
 And another, to the same effect : 
 
 "Seek we then ourselves in ourselves; for as 
 Men force the sun with much more force to pass 
 By gathering his beams with a crystal glass, 
 
 "So we, if we into ourselves will turn, 
 Blowing our sparks of virtue, may outburn 
 The straw which doth about our hearts sojourn." 
 
 Above all, there is the noble letter to Sir Henry 
 Goodyere. The following introductory stanza is 
 not above the rest: 
 
 "Who makes the last a pattern for next year 
 Turns no new leaf but still the same things reads, 
 Seen things he sees, heard things again doth hear, 
 And makes his life but like a pair of beads." 
 
 Intellect, thought, is certainly predominant in 
 Donne. It was predominant in all the Elizabethan 
 poets. All of them, unless we except Spenser, were 
 ready to wander off in endless deserts of ingenious 
 speculation. The very titles of their poems "A 
 Treatise of Monarchy," "Musophilus," "The Im-
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 53 
 
 mortality of the Soul," "The Anatomy of the Soul" 
 show a taste for abstraction, not to say pedantry. 
 But intellectual as they are, they all have imagina- 
 tion, passion. Compare Donne with Emerson and 
 this point becomes clear. Emerson has no greater 
 fancy for epigram, for cleverness, than the older 
 poet, but he is always cold, never touched, fired, 
 carried away. Donne at his strangest is stung with 
 intense feeling; he blends beauty and grace with his 
 harshest rhythms, with the subtlest refinements of 
 his thought. This is his supreme excellence, the 
 merit that makes one overlook all his faults, if it 
 does not outweigh them. This lifts him a whole 
 heaven above the ease of Waller and the sweetness 
 of Cowley. He is real, he is alive. In satire, in 
 elegy, in love lyric, in hymn, his words burn, and 
 the reader who feels cannot but be kindled by them. 
 This intensity is not found in all Donne's poems 
 alike. It is not, I think, found so perfectly in the two 
 celebrated "Anniversaries," written in memory of 
 Elizabeth Drury, as in some others shorter and less 
 known. The first "Anniversary," especially, does 
 not give the most favourable view of Donne's sin- 
 gular genius. It was composed to eulogise a lady 
 Donne had never known; it is consequently general 
 and full of expressions that are exceedingly repul- 
 sive. The second is much better, in parts giving 
 Donne at his best, as in the wonderful lines :
 
 54 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "Her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks and so distinctly wrought 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
 Still, even in this great poem there is a good deal 
 that is difficult and affected. 
 
 The same faults mar Donne's only attempt at 
 narrative, the fragmentary "Progress of the Soul." 
 
 The "Elegies" and, above all, the "Lyrics" are 
 Donne's most satisfactory productions. The ele- 
 gies are, unfortunately, difficult to quote, though 
 who could pass by the charming "Refusal to Al- 
 low His Young Wife to Accompany Him Abroad," 
 or the "Autumnal," or the one "Upon the Loss of 
 His Mistress' Chain," with its keen wit and its 
 Shakespearean line: 
 
 "So lean, so pale, so lame, so ruinous?" 
 
 But I confess, of all Donne's works his lyrics are to 
 me the most delightful in their wisdom, their hu- 
 mour, their passion, their varying play of sense and 
 sound. Has any one ever flashed the light of imag- 
 ination so vividly upon the depths of feeling? Now 
 he does this by a simple, almost careless touch, as 
 in that line of the "Relic" so much praised by Low- 
 ell, which describes the openers of the poet's grave 
 as finding 
 
 "A bracelet of bright hair about the bone"
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 55 
 
 just that one word "bright" gleams like a star; or as 
 in "Love's Legacy:" 
 
 . "And all your graces no more use will have 
 Than a sun-dial in a grave." 
 
 Now he twists a wreath of faint, sweet, strange 
 thoughts about a subject almost grotesque, which 
 yet under his hands becomes intensely real, as in 
 "Air and Angels:" 
 
 "Ever thy hair for love to work upon 
 Is much too much, some fitter must be sought, 
 For nor in nothing, nor in things 
 Extreme and scattering bright came love in here; 
 Then as an angel face and wings 
 Of air not pure as it, yet pure doth wear, 
 So thy love may be my lover's sphere; 
 Just such disparity 
 As is 'twixt air and angels' purity, 
 'Twixt woman's love and man's will ever be." 
 
 Now he inserts in a poem made up of curious sub- 
 tleties a few lines of the most solemn and touching 
 dignity, like the conclusion of the lyrical "Anni- 
 versary :" 
 
 "Let us live nobly, and live, and live again 
 Years and years unto years, till we attain 
 To write threescore: this is the second of our reign." 
 
 In his lyrics the necessity of passion often saves 
 Donne from using conceits, makes the conceits tol
 
 56 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 erable or even impressive when they come. This is 
 illustrated by the whole poem called "A Valedic- 
 tion of Tears," also by the one "Upon Parting from 
 His Mistress," which contains in a stanza condemned 
 by Johnson, but praised by most critics, the compari- 
 son of himself and her to a pair of compasses : 
 
 "Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 
 To move, but doth if the other do. 
 And though it in the centre sit, 
 Yet when the other far doth roam, 
 It leans and hearkens after it, 
 And grows erect as that comes home." 
 
 One thing that must be noticeable even in what 
 I have already quoted from Donne is the prominence 
 through all his poetry of death and the grave. An 
 uneasy curiosity about these matters is a trait of the 
 Renaissance. Epicureans like Herrick constantly 
 refer to them, sometimes from a sort of fascination, 
 sometimes merely to enhance the zest of present 
 pleasure. But with Donne it is far different. He 
 was no Epicurean, no Pagan; he was only in part a 
 child of the Renaissance. His wildest verse bears 
 the mark of those laborious years spent in compar- 
 ing the doctrines of the Catholic and Protestant 
 churches. His entrance into the ministry was no 
 abrupt change or conversion. One is sure that he 
 never plunged carelessly into mad riot, as did Mar- 
 lowe and Greene. If he tried violent pleasures, it
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 57 
 
 was uneasily, reluctantly, half in bravado, despair 
 at the uncertainty and vanity of anything else. No 
 other English poet has ever been so penetrated with 
 the restlessness, the wretchedness of life as Donne. 
 In his "Devotions" he says, "Man hath no centre 
 but misery." In his letters he appears always oc- 
 cupied with death, almost in love with it. The same 
 feeling is shown in that curious anecdote about his 
 monument. One finds it again and again in his most 
 passionate poems : 
 
 "I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay 
 With graves than cradles to wear out a day." 
 
 See, above all, the strange and sombre lyric entitled 
 "A Nocturnal on St. Lucy's Day." 
 
 No Schopenhauer or Leopardi could more urge the 
 imperfection of our earthly life than Donne, but 
 the difference is that Donne was a Christian. I 
 should, perhaps, make some allusion here to Donne's 
 especially religious poetry. It has the same energy 
 and passion ashis other work. Take, for example, 
 the striking "Hymn to Christ on the Author's Last 
 Going into Germany," of which I quote the first 
 stanza with its movement swift and overwhelming 
 as the mystical devotion it illustrates : 
 
 "In what torn ship soever I embark, 
 That ship shall be my emblem of thy ark;
 
 58 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 What sea soever swallow me, that flood 
 Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood. 
 Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise 
 Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes, 
 Which though they turn away sometimes, they never will 
 despise." 
 
 But the intensity and profound earnestness of Chris- 
 tian thought belong to Donne's secular poems also. 
 This separates him not only from modern pessimists, 
 but from his literary contemporaries, from the se- 
 rene naturalism of Shakespeare, from the stern stoi- 
 cism of Milton and Marvell. At any rate his Chris- 
 tianity was of a different type from theirs. To him 
 the essence of our life here was struggle and war. 
 He never lost sight of the goal, the star of faith 
 was never over-clouded for him; but the flesh was 
 unequal to the spirit. He loved no eremitical soli- 
 tude. He moved amid the bustle and confusion of 
 cities and courts. He knew all temptations and was 
 led astray by them. But he always hated them, he 
 never yielded, never despaired. Through sin and 
 wretchedness he fought his way upward, and the 
 stamp of strife is left on all he ever wrote, not only 
 on his sermons, but on the freest of his verses; all 
 alike are the passionate expression of one of the 
 noblest, tenderest, broadest, and deepest natures that 
 ever received the subtle gift of genius. It is for this 
 that Donne must remain pre-eminently great to
 
 THE POETRY OF DONNE 59 
 
 those who will labour with him ; not for his wit, nor 
 his learning, nor his eccentricity. He has not the 
 ingenious sanctity of Herbert, nor the lark-like love- 
 liness and bright simplicity of Vaughan, nor the se- 
 rene elevation of Giles Fletcher; but he has the moral 
 dignity and grandeur of a soul which, not ignorant 
 of the wretchedness of this world, is yet forever 
 ravished with the love and worship of the eternal. 
 
 1892
 
 Ill 
 
 A PESSIMIST POET
 
 Ill 
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 
 
 GIACOMO LEOPARDI was born on the 2Qth 
 of June, 1 798, at Recanati, a small town in 
 the March of Ancona. His father, Count 
 Monaldo, was of an old family, but not wealthy. He 
 was a scholar and an author, but full of aristocratic 
 prejudice, and opposed to reform, either political 
 or religious. His wife seems not to have had much 
 influence over her children; at least, they write to 
 her and of her with respect, but with little affection. 
 Giacomo was the eldest of the family. Brought 
 up in the solitude of a provincial Italian city, he 
 buried himself in books, which alone offered him ac- 
 cess to the world. The account of his youthful stud- 
 ies is prodigious. When fifteen years old he set 
 himself to learn Greek without a teacher, and suc- 
 ceeded so well that in the following year he was able 
 to write a commentary on Porphyrius's "Life of 
 Plotinus." He also made himself familiar with 
 Hebrew and the modern languages, except German. 
 
 63
 
 64 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 These studies soon gained him a name. One of 
 the first results of them was a friendship with Pietro 
 Giordani, which lasted during Leopardi's life. His 
 letters to Giordani form a large portion of his cor- 
 respondence; and they give us a good idea of his 
 early years, of the various difficulties he had to 
 contend with in his literary pursuits, and of the 
 formation of that peculiar philosophy which is al- 
 ways associated with his name. In the first place, his 
 enthusiastic study had broken his health. "I often 
 endure for many hours," he writes, "the horrible tor- 
 ment of sitting with my hands folded." And again : 
 "Ah, my dear Giordani, what do you think I do 
 nowadays*? Get up in the morning late, because 
 now a diabolical state of things I prefer sleep- 
 ing to waking. Then get immediately to walking 
 and walk without ever opening my mouth or seeing 
 a book till dinner. After dinner walk likewise till 
 supper; unless by making a great effort, often stop- 
 ping and sometimes giving up altogether, I man- 
 age to read for an hour." 
 
 Ill-health was not the only cause of Leopardi's 
 melancholy. He found himself condemned to pass 
 the best years of his life in a small provincial town. 
 He was not naturally inclined to see good in every- 
 thing, rather, he spoiled every possibility of pres- 
 ent pleasure by dwelling on an imaginary future; 
 and his abuse of his native place is extremely vio-
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 65 
 
 lent. "What is there beautiful in Recanati? What 
 is there that a man would take pains to see or learn 4 ? 
 Nothing. Now, God has made this world of ours 
 so beautiful, men have made so many beautiful 
 things in it, there are so many men in it, that any 
 one in his senses burns to see and know. The earth 
 is full of wonders, and I, at eighteen, must say, 'In 
 this den shall I live and die where I was born 1 ?' Do 
 you think these desires can be bridled, that they are 
 unjust, tyrannous, extravagant, that it is folly to be 
 dissatisfied with seeing nothing, to be discontented 
 with Recanati*?" In this passage we see Leopardi's 
 weakness: he was always talking about love, he 
 was gentle and affectionate to his friends; yet he 
 was haughty, too forgetful of sympathy and human 
 kindness. In the same way he talked about philoso- 
 phy and studied it; but he never possessed that su- 
 preme philosophy of life which teaches us to take the 
 world as we find it and respect facts. 
 
 There was yet another source of the unhappiness 
 of our poet. If the boy for at this time he was 
 hardly more had found comfort at home, Recanati 
 might have Deemed tolerable. But his mother was 
 nothing to him; Count Monaldo approved his son's 
 taste for philology, but they differed on philosophy 
 and on politics. Their relations were altogether un- 
 fortunate, owing to misunderstandings and to gen- 
 eral incompatibility. Biographers at first sided with
 
 66 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Giacomo. Of late years some things have come up 
 to excuse the old Count ; yet the following sketch of 
 him, taken from his own autobiography, will show 
 what his character was: 
 
 "The experience of my whole life has taught me 
 the truth of the saying Seneca's, I believe that 
 there is no great intelligence without its dose of 
 madness, and I have been surprised to see that in 
 some corner of the loftiest mind there lurk incredible 
 puerilities. I have made some examination of my- 
 self in order to learn the weak point of my reason, 
 and not having found any, I am tempted to believe 
 my mind superior to many, not indeed in loftiness, 
 but in balance." Poverty obliged Monaldo to deny 
 his son many things, and Giacomo was but too ready 
 to assume a harsher motive. 
 
 A close affection bound the young scholar to his 
 brother Carlo and to his sister Paolina, who seem, 
 nevertheless, to have been greatly his inferiors. One 
 person only in his family might have been really 
 helpful to him, his aunt, Ferdinanda Melchiorri, 
 who, unfortunately, died when he was twenty-four 
 years old. The few letters of hers which Signor 
 Piergili has collected show a mind of great clear- 
 ness, a sensibility equal to Leopardi's, and a calm- 
 ness and resignation he was never able to attain. 
 "Little by little we learn to forget our miseries by 
 slighting them or by not keeping the image of them
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 67 
 
 forever before us; reason must persuade us of this, 
 and we must use reason for our happiness, not for 
 the contrary." You see Leopardi lost much when 
 he lost her. 
 
 The life at Recanati, living death he would have 
 called it, with its tedium, its fierce protest against 
 the tyranny of circumstances, its idealisation of the 
 outside world, continued till the man's nature was 
 thoroughly confirmed in a philosophy of defiance. 
 The influence of Giordani had separated him from 
 the Catholic Church, and filled him with liberal 
 ideas; yet he never adopted these ideas with great 
 enthusiasm, they were sweet illusions, but illusions. 
 
 In 1822 he finally succeeded in getting away and 
 going to Rome. It is pitiful, even if a little amus- 
 ing, to see his disappointment. Rome is no better 
 than Recanati, after all. "Speaking seriously," he 
 writes to his sister, "you may take it as certain that 
 the most stolid Recanatese has a greater dose of 
 good sense than j the wisest and gravest Roman. Be- 
 lieve me, when I say that the frivolity of these idiots 
 is beyond anything. If I tried to narrate all the 
 absurd stuff which serves as matter for their talk, 
 and which they revel in, a folio would not suffice." 
 Truly, coelum mutat, non animum. 
 
 Leopardi went to Rome to get recognition and en- 
 couragement in his studies, and also to seek some 
 sort of public employment that would enable him
 
 68 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 to live away from detested Recanati. Reputation 
 as a scholar soon came to him, though such work as 
 his was better appreciated by foreigners than by his 
 fellow-countrymen. Bunsen, then Prussian am- 
 bassador at Rome, treated him kindly, and Niebuhr 
 expressed great admiration for him. We read in 
 "A Memoir of Baron Bunsen" that Niebuhr, "re- 
 turning from his visit to the wretched lodging of 
 Leopardi, entered the office-room at Palazzo Savelli, 
 where Bunsen was at work, exclaiming, with an un- 
 wonted burst of satisfaction, that he had at last seen 
 an Italian worthy of the old Italians and of the 
 ancient Romans." But admiration came more read- 
 ily than preferment. The ecclesiastical authorities 
 at Rome were willing to do what they could, but only 
 on condition that Leopardi should enter the church. 
 In order to bring this about, they deferred giving 
 him even an insignificant lay office, hoping literally 
 to starve him into obedience to their wishes. But 
 his so-called "philosophical conversion" had taken 
 hold of him too deeply for honest acquiescence in 
 Catholic doctrine; and the inflexible uprightness 
 which marked him, as it has some other unbelievers, 
 made him scorn a hypocritical compliance. There- 
 fore, after lingering on at Rome through the winter, 
 he was obliged to return to his father's house. 
 
 Recanati did not seem any more agreeable than 
 formerly. His ill-health continued to make study
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 69 
 
 impossible, and he was driven back upon his own 
 thoughts ; which fills his letters of this time chiefly 
 to Giordani and to Brighenti, a Bolognese friend 
 with an endless monotony of wretchedness. In the 
 year 1824 he published at Bologna a collection of 
 poems, most of which were new. He also published 
 the first of his philosophical prose works, "A com- 
 parison of the Opinions of the Younger Brutus and 
 of Theophrastus, on the Approach of Death." 
 
 In the spring of 1825 he once more left Recanati, 
 this time intending to proceed by way of Bologna 
 to Milan, where he had engaged to do various kinds 
 of literary work for the Publisher Stella. He found 
 Bologna very attractive. His reputation had pre- 
 ceded him thither, and the literary circle received 
 him cordially. In Milan it was different. He had 
 no friends, no connections. Stella's work was dis- 
 agreeable to him, editing, with little or no pros- 
 pect of either freedom or great profit. After a stay 
 of two months he returned to Bologna, having ar- 
 ranged to carry, out his agreement with Stella at 
 that place. 
 
 The next year was perhaps the happiest, or the 
 least miserable, of his life. His health was, as al- 
 ways, bad; he had little money, and was obliged to 
 give lessons, like many another unfortunate man of 
 letters. But he was in the company of people who 
 made much of him, and he found the social diver-
 
 70 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 sion that was lacking in Recanati. "These lessons," 
 he writes to his brother Carlo, "which eat out the 
 heart of my day, bore me horribly. Except for that, 
 I have nothing to complain of. The literary men, 
 who in the beginning, as I have been told, looked 
 upon me with envy and mistrust, expecting to find 
 me haughty and disposed to put on airs, are now 
 well-pleased with my affability and readiness to 
 give way to every one; in short, they speak very well 
 of me, and I feel that they consider my presence an 
 acquisition to Bologna." At this time, also, we 
 find the trace of one of his few love affairs, that 
 with the Countess Malvezzi. The bodily weakness, 
 amounting almost to deformity, which resulted from 
 his early studies, made him painfully sensitive in 
 his relations with women ; but in this particular case 
 literary sympathy seems to have been added to 
 merely social attractions. "When I first knew her," 
 he writes, "I lived in a sort of delirium and fever. 
 We have never spoken of love, unless in jest, but we 
 keep up a tender and sympathetic friendship, with 
 mutual interest, and a freedom that is like love with- 
 out love's disquietude." Alas, such "sympathetic 
 friendships" hasten so quickly to their end ! 
 
 In the autumn of 1826 Leopardi returned to Re- 
 canati. From this time on his life was a losing 
 struggle with ill-health. His hatred of his native 
 place grew more and more bitter: "It seems a
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 71 
 
 thousand years till I can escape from this hoggish 
 city, where I know not whether the men are more 
 fools or knaves; I know well that they are both one 
 and the other." Harsh notes like this occur too of- 
 ten in Leopardi; yet his situation was undoubtedly 
 a trying one. 
 
 In 1827-28 we find him at Pisa, the climate there 
 suiting him better than at Florence or Bologna. The 
 death of his younger brother Luigi at this time called 
 forth a few words which it is well to quote, in con- 
 trast with the passage just given: "I have lost a 
 brother in the flower of his years : my family in their 
 grief looks for no other consolation than that of 
 my return. I should be ashamed to live, if anything 
 but a perfect and utter impossibility prevented me 
 from going to shed my tears with those I love." 
 
 He did, indeed, return to Recanati for another 
 winter; but in May, 1830 he left there for the last 
 time. For the next three years he lived in Florence 
 and Rome, his -health getting steadily worse and 
 worse. Finally, \n the autumn of 1833, ^ e wen t to 
 Naples with Antonio Ranieri, whose name is in- 
 separably connected with Leopardi's later years. 
 After this the letters gathered in the correspondence 
 become few and brief, being chiefly pitiful requests 
 for money to make him less dependent on his friends. 
 Extreme weakness rendered any continuous work 
 impossible; and it was probably only the constant
 
 72 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 and affectionate care of Ranieri and his sister that 
 prolonged the poet's life. They were successful in 
 doing this till the spring of 1837. Then, quite sud- 
 denly, death came on the 14th of June, caused by 
 dropsy affecting the heart. The cholera was in the 
 city at the time, and Ranieri was only able to se- 
 cure private burial for his friend by bribing the 
 priest of the little church of San Vitale with a 
 present of fish. 
 
 ii 
 
 Leopardi's prose is either philological or philo- 
 sophical. The philological work belongs chiefly to 
 his younger days. It is now, of course, much out of 
 date; Leopardi had no idea of the discoveries that 
 have been made in the nineteenth century as to the 
 relationship of the different European languages. 
 Yet he was undoubtedly a thorough scholar, and 
 probably had that delicate insight which goes so 
 much farther then erudition, and which so many 
 great scholars have been without. Perhaps his most 
 permanent work of this kind is his translation of 
 various classical authors, executed with the care and 
 patient search for accurate expression that mark all 
 his work. The excellence of his scholarship appears 
 in his imitations of Greek and old Italian writers, 
 which long deceived some very learned men. The 
 chief original product of his early years was a book
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 73 
 
 on the "Popular Errors of the Ancients," written 
 when he was seventeen years old, and showing cer- 
 tainly extraordinary learning for a boy of that age. 
 Outside of the curious citations, the reader will find 
 little to interest him here, nothing of the large 
 Renaissance curiosity that informs the fascinating 
 work of Sir Thomas Browne. In treating the su- 
 perstitions of Greece and Rome, Leopardi manifests 
 the same dogmatic spirit that appears in his later 
 writings; only he had not yet hit upon extreme 
 pessimism, nor even left the fold of the Catholic 
 Church. The book closes with this apostrophe: 
 "Religion, loveliest of things, it is indeed sweet to 
 be able to end with speech of thee that which has 
 been undertaken to do some good to those whom 
 every day thou benefitest; it is indeed sweet to con- 
 clude in security and confidence of heart that he is 
 no philosopher who does not follow and respect 
 thee, nor is there any one who follows and respects 
 thee who is not a philosopher." We are in the full 
 vein of the "Imitation." 
 
 In a few years the tone changes. Acquaintance 
 with Giordani and others brought about the "philo- 
 sophical conversion;" and after that Leopardi's let- 
 ters are full of attacks upon the system of nature 
 which creates man for useless, purposeless misery. 
 All his remaining prose works not strictly philolog- 
 ical develop these views in one form or another.
 
 74 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 The list is not extensive, some two dozen dialogues 
 and about a hundred "Thoughts" varying from 
 two to thirty or forty lines. Any one who goes to 
 these writings expecting to find in them the formal 
 and logical exposition of the great German meta- 
 physicians will be disappointed. Leopardi was anx- 
 ious to teach what he considered to be the true doc- 
 trines of philosophy; but his first instinct as an 
 author was literary. The model he had before him 
 was Plato, or, still more, Lucian; and he aimed to 
 convey his teaching by illustration, even allegory, 
 rather than by a system of laborious deduction. 
 Whatever may be thought of his conclusions, his 
 methods have the great merit of simplicity and lit- 
 erary charm. 
 
 As to the matter of his philosophy, the general 
 character of it is well known; it consists in an ever- 
 renewed proclamation that the sole certainty of 
 man's life is misery, that the universe exists for no 
 apparent purpose, that if there are gods at all, they 
 only augment the wretchedness of man; though on 
 this last point Leopardi is always reticent, leaving it 
 to the reader to infer the complete incompatibility 
 of any divine love or goodness with such a system as 
 he insists on finding out in nature. It is not neces- 
 sary to look far for passages illustrating these things. 
 Here is one from a letter written when he was twen- 
 ty-one years old: "This is the wretched condition
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 75 
 
 of humanity and the barbarous teaching of reason, 
 that, human joys and griefs being mere illusions, 
 work that is based on the certainty of the nothing- 
 ness of things is the only work that is just and true. 
 And if it be argued that by regulating all our lives 
 on the feeling of this nothingness, we should end 
 the world and should justly be called mad, it is 
 nevertheless logically certain that this would be mad- 
 ness rational in every respect and even that com- 
 pared with it all wisdom would be madness; since 
 this world goes on only by the simple and continual 
 forgetfulness of this universal truth that everything 
 is nothing." 
 
 This instantly recalls an eloquent passage from 
 a more celebrated philosopher than Leopardi: 
 "Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains 
 after the entire abolition of Will is for all those 
 who are still full of Will certainly nothing; but, 
 conversely, to those in whom the Will has turned 
 and has denied itself, this our world, with all its 
 suns and milky ways, is nothing." Indeed, the 
 names of Schopenhauer and Leopardi are often as- 
 sociated together more closely than is justified by 
 the circumstances of the case. Schopenhauer's phi- 
 losophy consists of two parts, which, though skilfully 
 and intimately blended, may yet be separated, and 
 have not, I venture to think, so vital a connection as 
 is generally assumed. The metaphysical part is the
 
 76 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 theory of Will as Thing-in-Itself constituting the 
 absolute basis of the floating world of phenomena, 
 manifesting itself momentarily in consciousness, then 
 dissolving and vanishing again into the unknown 
 from whence it came. The practical part is the un- 
 wearied assertion of the utter misery of man's mor- 
 tal life, misery alleviated only by the encourage- 
 ment of false and foolish illusions, which make him 
 believe he is ever approaching nearer to what it is 
 impossible he should attain. Whether Schopen- 
 hauer deduced his practical doctrine from his ab- 
 stract theory, or whether, as seems more probable, 
 his empirical view at least coloured his metaphysics, 
 I cannot say; at any rate, the two components fit to- 
 gether very neatly. 
 
 Of these two elements of Schopenhauer's "World 
 as Will and Idea," only one appears in Leopardi. 
 Schopenhauer found him a most satisfactory expo- 
 nent of his doctrine as to the evil of existence. "No 
 one," he says, "has so thoroughly and exhaustively 
 handled this subject as in our own day Leopardi. 
 He is entirely filled and penetrated by it ; his theme 
 is everywhere the mockery and wretchedness of this 
 life; he presents it upon every page of his works, 
 yet in such a multiplicity of forms and applications, 
 with such a wealth of imagery, that he never wearies 
 us, but, on the contrary, is throughout entertaining 
 and exciting." Indeed the Italian poet's proclama-
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 77 
 
 tion of pessimism is so thorough and consistent that 
 it could not but be gratifying to his German follower. 
 Of metaphysics proper, however, Leopardi has little 
 or nothing. He has a great deal to say about philoso- 
 phy, and about the importance of giving it a place 
 in Italian literature ; but in his works he never does 
 more than reiterate a few phrases about the misery 
 of life and the inanity of all human pursuits. Such 
 theory as he has would seem to be derived from the 
 English empirical school of Locke and his followers. 
 He was not a German scholar, and evidently knew 
 nothing even of Kant, much less of Kant's suc- 
 cessors. Except for a few coincidences of expres- 
 sion, he has no trace of the elaborate system of 
 Schopenhauer, and would probably have found talk 
 about the Will as Thing-in-Itself simply unintel- 
 ligible. 
 
 Nevertheless, Schopenhauer is right in saying that 
 Leopardi presents the mockery and wretchedness of 
 this life upon every page of his works, and with a 
 multiplicity of forms and illustrations. I think the 
 philosopher is mistaken when he declares that this 
 is always entertaining and exciting; but it is done 
 with such skill that, considering the narrowness of 
 the subject, there is wonderfully little monotony. 
 Every dialogue ends with the same refrain: it were 
 better not to have been born ; having been born, it is 
 best to die as soon as convenient; but this theme is
 
 78 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 constantly varied. Sometimes, as in the "Hercules 
 and Atlas," or "The Earth and the Moon," super- 
 human beings satirise the unhappy lot of mortals. 
 Sometimes philosophers discuss it, as in the "Dia- 
 logue between a Physicist and a Metaphysician," or 
 in the "Plotinus and Porphyrius." Sometimes a for- 
 lorn creature addresses a higher power with reproach 
 or prayer, as in the "Dialogue between Nature and a 
 Soul," or in that "Between Nature and an Ice- 
 lander." Sometimes the misery of man receives illus- 
 tration or comment from beings lower in the natural 
 world, as in the "Dialogue between a Will-o'-the- 
 Wisp and a Gnome," or in the "Eulogy of Birds." 
 
 The very titles show how much there is of literary 
 art in all these. Some of them are playful, at 
 least on the surface. Hercules persuades Atlas to 
 use the earth for a game of ball, in the midst of 
 which they drop it, greatly to their dismay. Fashion 
 points out to Death the immense services she ren- 
 ders her by leading man-kind into infinite pernicious 
 follies. A passer-by questions an almanac-vender 
 as to the coming year, and tries to prove to him that 
 there is no reason why that should be happy, if 
 none of the past have been. Some are poetical, al- 
 most lyrical, like the "Song of the Wild Cock," and 
 the exquisite "Eulogy of Birds." The latter, espe- 
 cially, is an Aristophanic piece of musical grace. 
 "Other animals appear commonly grave and solemn
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 79 
 
 ... ; if they take pleasure in the green fields, in 
 broad and pleasant prospects, in splendid sunshine, 
 in a crystalline and gentle air, they make no sign. 
 . . . But birds show their joy by their movements 
 and their very look." 
 
 Most of the dialogues are, however, of a grey 
 and melancholy cast. The "History of the Human 
 Race," the first in the collection, gives anything but 
 a cheerful account of the gradual degradation of 
 humanity down to the nineteenth century, which 
 Leopardi detested with all his soul. The "Wager of 
 Prometheus" recounts Prometheus's efforts to prove 
 the excellence of his invention of man, and his com- 
 plete failure to do so. "Copernicus" ridicules the 
 fluctuations of science. The "Dialogue between 
 Frederick Ruysch and his Mummies" represents the 
 latter as reviving for a short space and enlightening 
 their owner about the other world, as well as about 
 the departure from this. 
 
 Perhaps as complete an exposition as any of Leo- 
 pardi's pessimism is to be found in the "Dialogue 
 between Nature' and an Icelander." The native of 
 the northern island, after seeking everywhere the 
 author of the miseries of life, finds in the centre of 
 Africa a vast image of a woman, who condescends 
 to discuss the matter with him. She points out that 
 the universe exists only by a continual process of 
 production and destruction. "That is what all the
 
 8o A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 philosophers argue," says the Icelander, "but inas- 
 much as that which is destroyed suffers, and that 
 which destroys receives no pleasure and is soon de- 
 stroyed in its turn, tell me what no philosopher can 
 tell me: who is pleased or benefited by this most 
 miserable existence of the universe, sustained by the 
 suffering and death of all things that compose it*?" 
 The interesting response to this question is inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of two hungry lions, who pro- 
 ceed at once to make away with the curious Ice- 
 lander. 
 
 The "Memorable Sayings of Filippo Ottonieri" 
 gives a sort of idealised sketch of Leopardi himself, 
 embodying the curious combination of defiant nihil- 
 ism with high moral principle which was peculiar 
 to him. The piece ends with an epitaph of singular 
 and melancholy dignity. "The bones of Filippo 
 Ottonieri, born for virtuous deeds and for glory, 
 lived indolent and useless, and died without fame, 
 not ignorant of his own nature nor of his own for- 
 tune." 
 
 Besides the "Dialogues" or "Operette Moral!" 
 Leopardi wrote, shortly before his death, about a 
 hundred "Thoughts," much the same in tone as his 
 longer pieces. They are, however, colder and more 
 gloomy. Now and then there is a touch of calm in- 
 sight, as : "There is no greater mark of feeble phi- 
 losophy and little wisdom than to demand that the
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 81 
 
 whole of life should be philosophical and wise." But 
 the majority are quite as cynical as La Rochefou- 
 cauld, without his brilliancy and point. 
 
 The thing that strikes one most about Leopardi's 
 mental attitude is the absoluteness of it. Happi- 
 ness is a dream, he says, because we no sooner ob- 
 tain what we wish for than it becomes repugnant to 
 us, and we begin to long for something else. No 
 situation is so delightful but that we can imagine 
 another more so; and desire for that other makes 
 the actual one wretched by comparison. But does 
 it? Is it not possible to recognise that one might 
 be happier, and yet be very happy at the same 
 time? 
 
 With such beliefs as these, the natural course to 
 take would be suicide. If life is so utterly worth- 
 less and miserable, why not get out of it? On this 
 point Leopardi is not satisfactory. Schopenhauer 
 treats it logically by explaining that life is, indeed, 
 miserable, since it is the indulgence of the tyrannous 
 Will; but to tal^e one's life is an even more violent 
 act of will, which, instead of freeing us, involves 
 us only more deeply. We must emancipate ourselves 
 by becoming indifferent to life, death, or anything 
 else. Leopardi has not this resource. He is con- 
 stantly dwelling on the superior charms of death, 
 and charging mankind with cowardice for not seek- 
 ing it; but he does not state clearly whether he is
 
 82 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 himself deterred by this consideration, or by some 
 other. The "Dialogue between Plotinus and Por- 
 phyrius" turns on this subject, but the arguments 
 are neither very clear nor very strong. 
 
 The truth is that, like every one with a dogma 
 to defend, Leopardi was blind to any consideration 
 that did not support his position. He was not con- 
 tented with being unhappy himself; he was deter- 
 mined that every one else should be unhappy, as 
 well. Not, of course, that he was anxious to make 
 them so ; but he wished them to understand that they 
 were necessarily so, and that nothing but their own 
 folly prevented them from seeing it. Thus it was 
 natural that he should be irritated when told that 
 he looked at life through dark glasses, and was mis- 
 led by his own physical weakness and suffering. He 
 solemnly denies this, not seeing, apparently, that no 
 denial of his could possibly affect the argument ; un- 
 less, indeed, he had brought forward as the greatest 
 proof that nature was malign, her having made him 
 to call her so. This he neglects to do; and the 
 healthy part of mankind will, therefore, forever re- 
 gard him as a melancholy hypochondriac. 
 
 Independent of his health, it is, however, clear 
 that many circumstances combined to give him a 
 peculiar view of things. His family relations were 
 trying. He had constantly before him the degrada- 
 tion of Italy, brought home more keenly by his fa-
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 83 
 
 miliarity with the history of her past. Above all, 
 as we have seen, he was long isolated in a provin- 
 cial town, removed from the stir of modern life, 
 which produces scepticism, but teaches toleration, 
 comprehension of varying conditions. The results 
 of this are everywhere seen in Leopardi, and make 
 him seem, in spite of all his scholarship and all his 
 literary ability, like a fretful and irritated child, who 
 cries, as I heard one the other day: "I'm not happy, 
 and I haven't got anything to make me happy." 
 This is the whole philosophy of Leopardi. 
 
 in 
 
 Leopardi was not a philosopher, but a man of 
 letters. His work does not embody a consistent 
 system of reasoning; but it offers us a study of 
 human life, not, indeed, broad in its scope, yet 
 subtle, above all passionate, and carried on with 
 an exquisite feeling for certain kinds of beauty in 
 style. The moclels that he set before himself 
 were the Greeks and the early Italians: he sought 
 purity and simplicity rather than the richness and 
 variety of colour that belong to a great deal of mod- 
 ern writing; but such means as he used were perfectly 
 within his control, and his care and patience are 
 shown by the great number of varying readings 
 which have been published in recent editions of his
 
 84 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 works. This devotion to the technical part of style 
 recalls Flaubert, with whom Leopardi has something 
 in common; though the great French novelist had a 
 far wider and stronger hold on human life in gen- 
 eral. 1 
 
 The love of simplicity, of pure yet energetic 
 form, is undoubtedly what gives Leopardi his popu- 
 larity in Italy, as to which Signer Piergili says: 
 "Does not this person know that Leopardi is one of 
 the authors most studied among us, that he is 
 studied and learned by heart, not only by the pupils 
 in the schools, in the technological institutes, and in 
 the universities, but even by young girls, who cannot 
 pretend to more than a moderate education*?" 
 "Amore e Morte" seems a curious study for young 
 girls; but then so is Shelley's "Revolt of Islam." 
 
 This simplicity of form also separates Leopardi 
 from the romantic writers of his own generation in 
 Italy, France, England, and Germany. His quiet 
 and isolated life, his constant preoccupation with 
 the classics, made him prize a severe and statuesque 
 
 1 An Italian critic gives some statistics as to Leopardi's style 
 stating, among other things, that the number of adjectives in a 
 thousand words averages 62, taking all his poems but one, "La 
 Ginestra." This is also the case with Dante's "Divina Commedia." 
 Such figures have not much value, yet they are suggestive. I give 
 some computations that I have had the curiosity to make on the 
 English poets. In ten thousand words taken from different poems 
 of Keats, the proportion of adjectives to the thousand is 126, in 
 Milton, 113; in Spenser, 108. In Shakespeare it is only 63; and 
 this is not wholly owing to Shakespeare's works being dramatic, 
 since I find the proportion in Fletcher to be 79.
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 85 
 
 restraint much more than they did. Yet in spirit, 
 in feeling, he was profoundly romantic; and it is 
 just this combination that makes him interesting. 
 His classicism was not the tawdry frippery of the 
 eighteenth century, which injures Byron when he 
 does not shake himself free from it; it was the same 
 passion for clear, perfect lines that possessed Goethe ; 
 and Leopardi, with Italian to work in, was able to 
 satisfy it better than Goethe ever succeeded in do- 
 ing. But underneath the polished form lurks a fire 
 none the less fierce for being hidden: all the rest- 
 lessness, the questioning, the defiance, which Byron 
 wore upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, Leopardi 
 carried in his heart, wove it subtly into the fibre 
 of his verses, to be plucked out readily enough by 
 a sympathetic hand. I say his verses, because the 
 personal element comes in there more clearly than in 
 his prose. In spite of all his skill, the dialogues are 
 tedious. They have an air of pretension which is 
 unjustified. We look for philosophy, and get noth- 
 ing but railing; pot cynical indeed, there is too 
 much earnestness for that, but cold. The writer 
 evidently makes an effort to keep in the background. 
 But Leopardi's poetry is personal, lyrical. It is less 
 vehement, less incoherent, than Byron or Shelley or 
 Obermann, but not less passionate, less sincere. Sin- 
 cerity, genuineness, are, indeed, stamped on every 
 line Leopardi wrote. His thinking may have been
 
 86 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 neither clear nor logical; but his feeling is at once 
 subtle, thoroughly modern, and of a kind not quite 
 to be paralleled in any contemporary literature. 
 
 Leopardi's poetry consists, besides some boyish 
 work, of translations done in his youth, when he was 
 busy with philology, of forty-one short pieces pub- 
 lished in his lifetime, and of the "Paralipomena to 
 the Batrachomyomachia," formerly attributed to 
 Homer. The latter poem, which is of considerable 
 length, is a mock heroic, composed in Leopardi's 
 last years to satirise contemporary political events. 
 It is difficult for a foreigner to follow, and more- 
 over, attempts humour, which with Leopardi always 
 results in a sort of skull and crossbones effect. The 
 execution is skilful, and reminds one constantly of 
 Ariosto, but only to bring out the difference be- 
 tween his joyous license and the contracted grimaces 
 of his modern imitator. 
 
 Of the "Canti," or "Odes," the first four or five, 
 written before their author had learned his strength, 
 are full of patriotic rhetoric about Italy. Leopardi 
 ostensibly kept his moral enthusiasms quite inde- 
 pendent of his philosophical doctrines; but, never- 
 theless, these poems ring a little hollow. The imi- 
 tation of the classics is too apparent; and it is hard 
 to associate passion with such a frequent appeal to 
 "numi," in the plural, or with such frigid encour- 
 agement as: "But for thine own sake set thy heart
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 87 
 
 upon the goal. What is life for? For nothing but 
 that we should contemn it; it is happy only when, 
 absorbed in perils, it forgets itself, takes no note 
 of the filthy, tedious hours, hears not the flowing of 
 them, happy only when with foot treading the 
 Lethean shore it begins at last to smile." Yet these 
 Odes, like the later ones, have traces of the grand 
 style about them; one is reminded everywhere of 
 Petrarch, often of a greater than Petrarch, of the 
 greatest of all the poets of Italy. 
 
 Such poems as those addressed to Count Carlo 
 Pepoli or "La Ginestra" have a general philosophi- 
 cal tendency resembling that of the "Dialogues." 
 "La Ginestra" is one of Leopardi's latest and longest 
 works, written with all his simplicity, and with such 
 Dantesque touches as, 
 
 "Quale star puo quel c' ha in error la sede." 
 
 It is the most complete exposition of his more ma- 
 ture philosophical views, and shows a certain aban- 
 donment of the attitude of fierce scorn for that of 
 love and tenderness; as in the celebrated line, "I 
 know not which prevails, laughter or pity." But I 
 am inclined to think Leopardi's most devoted readers 
 generally prefer the shorter and more lyrical pieces. 
 These are of two kinds; those which depict the 
 feelings of some other person than the poet him- 
 self, or are at least general, and those which are
 
 88 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 strictly personal, and express his own experience and 
 opinions directly. Among those of the first class 
 we have "The Last Song of Sappho," "Calm after 
 Storm," "The Nocturnal Song of a Wandering 
 Shepherd of Asia," "The Setting of the Moon," 
 "Love and Death." The descriptive pieces usually 
 begin with a sketch of some scene or event, and con- 
 clude with a moral, a melancholy moral, of course. 
 Thus, in "Calm after Storm," we have first the pic- 
 ture of peace returning to the landscape, and then the 
 comment, quite in Leopardi's vein : 
 
 "O, courteous Nature, these are thy gifts, these the de- 
 lights thou bestowest upon men. To escape from grief is 
 a delight to us. Sorrows thou scatterest with an open 
 hand; woe springs unsummoned; and such joy as is born 
 rarely, a wonder and miracle, from ill, is a precious gain. 
 The human race dear to the Gods! Happy enough are we, 
 if we are allowed to breathe exempt from misery, blessed 
 if death frees us from all pain." 
 
 The quality of natural description that appears in 
 all these poems is that of Greek and Latin poetry; 
 it is clear, direct, simple, as, for instance, in "The 
 Village Saturday" : "A maiden comes from the fields 
 at sunset with a sheaf of grain, bearing in her hand 
 a bunch of roses and violets." Colour, the rich 
 warmth of feeling for Nature which belongs to the 
 northern nations, Leopardi has not. His passion is 
 all for the interests and sufferings of man. And in
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 89 
 
 these semi-dramatic poems it makes itself felt with 
 wonderful intensity. Still it is the same refrain: 
 "All is mystery save our grief. Neglected offspring, 
 we are born to tears, and the cause is hidden in the 
 bosom of the gods." "This I know and feel," sings 
 the Shepherd of Asia, "that from the endless flow 
 of things, that from my frail being, some good or 
 joy may come to others; but life is misery to me." 
 "The Setting of the Moon" ends thus: 
 
 "But mortal life, when once fair youth has vanished, 
 shines with a lovely colour never more, knows no new dawn. 
 Widowed is it till the end; and on the night which sheds 
 its shadows over all past years the Gods have set the 
 sepulchre for sign and seal." 
 
 More impressive still becomes this cry of revolt 
 and pain in the pieces where the poet speaks himself. 
 The most common subject of lyrical outbursts, love, 
 is not very prominent in Leopardi. Yet a number 
 of poems touch* upon it vaguely. "Silvia" and "The 
 Recollection" refer to passions of his youth, "when 
 the harsh, unworthy mystery of things comes to us 
 full of sweetness." "Aspasia" recounts a later affair, 
 which resulted in disappointment and bitterness. He 
 was no more fortunate in love than in other things. 
 Here, too, he was, perhaps, led astray by the wor- 
 ship of an impossible ideal. The verses "To His 
 Lady" would form rather a perilous standard for
 
 90 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 earthly love-making: "Naught on earth resembles 
 thee; and if anything should seem to resemble thee 
 in feature, in act, in speech, it would be, even so 
 like, less beautiful than thou." 
 
 The most interesting of these personal lyrics are 
 those in which the poet strikes slight chords in his 
 own remembered life, the echo of which shudders 
 into a vague harmony of grief. Such is the poem 
 "To the Moon," grand and clear as Petrarch, with 
 its 
 
 "II rimembrar delle passate cose." 
 
 Such is "The Infinite," which I give in verse, re- 
 flecting alas! but feebly the solemn beauty of the 
 original : 
 
 "This tender slope was always dear to me 
 And this enclosure, which shuts off my gaze 
 From half the circle of the far horizon. 
 And sitting here, in thought I have devised 
 Interminable vastness, out beyond, 
 And superhuman silence, and some rest 
 Profoundest, gazing, where a little while 
 The heart frets not itself. And as I hear 
 The night-wind howling idly through the woods, 
 I can compare its turbulence with that 
 Infinity of silence, and remember 
 The eternal, and the years past, and those present 
 And passing, and their murmur. So in this 
 Immensity my thought has lost itself, 
 Nor am I loath to wreck in such a sea."
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 91 
 
 Such is the longer "Evening after a Festival," de- 
 scribing the poet's agony at parting from his mis- 
 tress, and comparing it to the fretful sorrow of a 
 child, who, after his holiday has fled, lies oppressed 
 with the utter, blank monotony of life : 
 
 "In my first childish years, 
 
 When some bright, longed-for, happy day had come, 
 And passed, and gone, I, grieving, on my couch 
 Lay, watched; and in the stillness of the night 
 A song far-heard in dark and quiet ways, 
 Which swelled upon the silence and died off, 
 Even then, as now, passionately wrung my heart." 
 
 He to whom this does not recall a thousand things 
 will find nothing to please him in Leopardi. 
 
 It will be sufficiently clear that Leopardi, in spite 
 of his great originality, has a good deal in common 
 with the Senancours and Chateaubriands of France, 
 the Byrons and Shelleys of England. He was an 
 idealist, as they were. The realities of life disgusted 
 him. His heact was fixed on a new heaven and a 
 new earth. Only he had no sort of confidence that 
 the ideal would ever become real. He shows not one 
 trace of interest in the great democratic movement 
 that began with the French Revolution. He is full 
 of scorn for the nineteenth century, with its printing- 
 press, its philanthropy, its calm assumption of 
 superiority over the past: "The wise heads of my 
 time found out a new and almost divine plan: not
 
 92 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 being able to make any one on earth happy, forget- 
 ting individuals, they set themselves to work to seek 
 a common happiness; and this being found easily, 
 these people make of a race each wretched and miser- 
 able a joyous and happy nation." Leopardi is irre- 
 ligious, as were many of his French and English 
 fellows. But his irreligion is cold and indifferent, 
 not defiant. The gods are not to him great blighting 
 shadows, to be combated; they are vague personifi- 
 cations, too insignificant to be treated even with con- 
 tempt. Yet neither Shelley nor Byron nor Heine 
 has surpassed the blank, tremendous blasphemy of 
 Leopardi, sterner and more overwhelming because 
 it is so cold: "Bitter and grey is life; there is naught 
 else but greyness and bitterness; mere slough is this 
 world. Rest forever. Despair now for the last 
 time. To me fate gave nothing but to die. Nature 
 ever spurns thee, Nature, the ugly power, which 
 rules in secret to the common ill, and the infinite 
 vanity of things." Yet even here one sees that the 
 poet is led astray by the very excess of idealism in 
 him. It is said that he was led to think all men 
 knaves, because he was ready to trust all men. The 
 same childish absoluteness is manifest in his writ- 
 ings. Every one must notice his extreme fondness 
 for personification. This poor deity, Nature, is mal- 
 treated by him because he conceives her, not form- 
 ally, but constantly, as a remote human being ani-
 
 A PESSIMIST POET 93 
 
 mated with the most anthropomorphic spite. 
 Scherer, the French critic, notices this in his essay 
 on Amiel: " 'I know Nature is deaf,' cries Leopardi, 
 'that she thinks not of happiness, but of being only.' 
 Passion of a fretful child! Nature is neither deaf, 
 nor preoccupied, nor cruel she is what she is." 
 Taken by itself, this sounds rather oracular, but it 
 offers just the correction Leopardi requires. 
 
 But it is this very absoluteness that makes him 
 lovable. It is because his heart beats so warm with 
 human affection that he revolts against the necessary 
 conventionality of life; it is because he conceives 
 so high a destiny for man that he proclaims the utter 
 vileness of all that man has done or does. He is no 
 sceptic, no cynic, no Epicurean. He is hopeless, but 
 not loveless; and by that tenderness and breadth of 
 love he has a close kinship with the great English 
 poet who lived near him without knowing him, who 
 sung the woes of life as clearly as Leopardi, but 
 far more clearly the regeneration love might work, if 
 only love wou!4 take heart and face its task. 
 
 The net result we get from Leopardi is certainly 
 disappointing, and to most people irritating. We 
 rebel against this positive assertion of our misery 
 on grounds of sentiment, but still more on grounds 
 of fact. Tell us life is wretched, if you will, per- 
 haps even more wretched than happy ; but tell us that 
 life contains no happiness at all, and most of us
 
 94 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 answer, "Please speak for yourself." Life is not 
 made on such an absolute plan. Mysterious it cer- 
 tainly is; but there are bright spots in it, yes, for 
 all of us ! Sainte-Beuve says, speaking of Chateau- 
 briand, "I know the race of Rene: they have their 
 moments of unhappiness, when they cry from the 
 housetops and pour out their miseries to the universe ; 
 they have days of joy which they bury in silence." 
 The insinuation of rhetoric and posing here implied 
 does not affect Leopardi; but, though his notes of 
 quietness and peace are rare, they occasionally come. 
 With one of these, an appeal to nature not as an 
 "ugly power," but as the sweetest, gentlest of com- 
 forters, let me end. "For even if life is shorn of 
 love and all sweet dreams, even if starless night shuts 
 round me in the midst of spring, yet have I my com- 
 fort and revenge lying here idle, quiet on the grass, 
 smiling at earth and sky and sea." 
 
 1893
 
 IV 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE
 
 IV 
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 
 
 JT is pleasant to see signs of a Trollope revival, 
 and we may well hope that readers who are a 
 little tired of cloak and sword romance will be 
 glad to seek variety in the pages of "Doctor Thorne" 
 and the Barchester Chronicles. Perhaps no writer 
 represents more perfectly than Trollope the great 
 development of social and domestic tendencies in 
 the English novel of the middle and third quarter of 
 the last century. A man of real genius, he yet had 
 not genius enough to stand out from and above his 
 time; and for that very reason he portrays it more 
 fully, just as Ben Jonson brings us nearer to the 
 Elizabethan Age than does Shakespeare. 
 
 Trollope was, essentially a realist; by which I do 
 not mean that he had any elaborate theory as to 
 his art, but simply that he described common life as 
 common people see it. Realism is genius in the ex- 
 pression of the commonplace. Imagine a beef-eat- 
 ing, fox-hunting, Gaul-hating Englishman, red- 
 cheeked, arrogant, stuffed full of prejudice, loathing 
 a radical, idolising a bishop and a lord, and worship- 
 
 97
 
 98 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ping British liberty, imagine such a one with the 
 exceptional gift of depicting himself and many an- 
 other like him to the very life, and you have the 
 author of "Orley Farm" and "Phineas Finn." 
 
 It would be desirable to reprint Trollope's Auto- 
 biography with the novels, as no novelist has left us 
 a more entertaining and instructive account of him- 
 self and his objects and methods of work. No char- 
 acter in his stories stands out more distinctly before 
 us than the awkward, unfortunate, neglected boy, 
 who tripped and stumbled through an imperfect 
 education and a premature manhood, a burden and 
 annoyance to his friends, an object of disgust and dis- 
 satisfaction to himself. Nor does any novel present 
 a happier ending to the imagination of the sympa- 
 thetic reader than that pleasant picture of a way 
 found out of difficulties, of success achieved by hon- 
 est industry, of self-respecting, middle-class virtue 
 rewarded with unlimited whist, wine, cigars, and 
 fox-hunting. It is enough to turn the ambition of 
 every poor boy in the direction of authorship. 
 
 What is especially delightful in Trollope's con- 
 fessions is the utter absence of shame. Other artists 
 some others do their pot-boiling in private, and 
 proclaim publicly their scorn of pecuniary gain, their 
 adoration of art for art's sake. Trollope writes for 
 money, and is proud of getting it. He speaks of 
 "that high-flown doctrine of the contempt of money,
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 99 
 
 which I have never admired." If he can make a 
 work of perfect art, well and good; but perfect or 
 imperfect, it must sell. He gives an elaborate table 
 doubtless to many young authors the most inter- 
 esting portion of the book containing a full, dated 
 list of all his writings and the sums received for each 
 of them up to the year 1879, amounting to three hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 
 Nor did Trollope believe that genius must be pam- 
 pered, humoured, taken at its propitious times and 
 seasons. In the nineteenth century everything 
 should be manufactured mechanically, books as well 
 as shoes. "I had long since convinced myself that 
 in such work as mine the great merit consisted in 
 acknowledging myself to be bound by rules of labour 
 similar to those which an artisan or a mechanic is 
 forced to obey. A shoemaker, when he has finished 
 one pair of shoes, does not sit down and contemplate 
 his work in idle satisfaction: 'There is my pair of 
 shoes finished at last ! What a pair of shoes it is !' 
 The shoemaker Vho so indulged himself would be 
 without wages half his time. It is the same with a 
 professional writer of books. . . . Having thought 
 much of all this, and having made up my mind that 
 I could be really happy only when I was at work, 
 I had now quite accustomed myself to begin a second 
 pair as soon as the first was out of my hands." 
 
 All the details of this cobbling process are com-
 
 ioo A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 placently revealed to us. So many words an hour, 
 "to write with my watch before me, and to require 
 from myself two hundred and fifty words every 
 quarter of an hour. I have found that the two hun- 
 dred and fifty words were forthcoming as regularly 
 as my watch went," so many hours a day, so many 
 novels a year ! Carlyle required absolute silence and 
 leisure for production: the hand-organ over the way 
 tormented him to fury. But this characteristic 
 author of the nineteenth century is indifferent to 
 time and place. "I made for myself, therefore, a 
 little tablet, and found, after a few days' exercise, 
 that I could write as quickly in a railway carriage 
 as I could at my desk." These bits of insight into 
 the method of production will mean more to us 
 when we come to look more closely into the product 
 itself. 
 
 Trollope's novels deal almost entirely with the 
 author's own time; no mediaeval history, bravos, 
 swordplay, moonlight romance. His people are com- 
 mon people ; that is, they are human beings like other 
 human beings, before they are anything else. It 
 is this constant detection of ordinary human nature 
 under the disguises of wealth and aristocracy which 
 misleads Mr. Saintsbury into calling Trollope a 
 painter of middle-class life. His painting of mid- 
 dle-class life is good, much better than his painting 
 of low life; but certainly his best work is on the
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 101 
 
 upper classes, dukes and duchesses, earls and 
 barons, bishops and Cabinet ministers, or, more 
 briefly, ladies and gentlemen. Only somehow, under 
 his quiet but penetrating insight, all these high per- 
 sonages, without becoming in the least vulgar or un- 
 natural, 1 seem to drop their titles and tinsel and 
 appear just as middling as the middlest of us. This, 
 too, without any of those constant depreciatory re- 
 marks which so abound in Thackeray and constitute 
 a sort of back-handed snobbishness. Trollope's 
 great ones are simply and naturally men and women, 
 nothing more. 
 
 So far as plot goes, in the stricter sense of the 
 word, Trollope confesses that he is weak, and few 
 will be found to differ from him. Sir Walter Be- 
 sant's entertaining pamphlet containing a recipe for 
 producing novels Besant novels has no applica- 
 tion here. The elaborate machinery of scenarii, with 
 every motive and every climax carefully fitted into 
 place before one line is written, does not at all suit 
 our easy-going improvisator. "There are usually 
 some hours of agonising doubt, almost of despair, 
 so, at least, it has been with me. And then, with 
 nothing settled in my brain as to the final develop- 
 ment of events, with no capability of settling any- 
 
 1 In spite of some odd lapses of grammar and occasionally of 
 manners, which make it seem as if Trollope himself had not always 
 lived with dukes and bishops.
 
 102 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 thing, but with a most distinct conception of some 
 character or characters, I have rushed at the work 
 as a rider rushes at a fence which he does not see." 
 And speaking of that arch-plotter of plotters, Wilkie 
 Collins, he says : "When I sit down to write a novel, 
 I do not at all know and I do not very much care 
 how it is to end. Wilkie Collins seems so to con- 
 struct his that he not only, before writing, plans 
 everything out, down to the minutest detail, from 
 the beginning to the end; but then plots it all back 
 again to see that there is no piece of necessary dove- 
 tailing which does not dovetail with absolute accu- 
 racy. . . . Such work gives me no pleasure. I am, 
 however, quite prepared to admit that the want of 
 pleasure comes from a fault of my intellect." 
 
 Yet, although the dramatic continuity of Trol- 
 lope's stories is seldom complete, we constantly come 
 across those intensely effective and striking scenes 
 which are perhaps the best thing in a good novel, 
 which we pause to read twice over, which cling in 
 the memory and keep returning to us, yet are always 
 fresh and delightful when we come to them again. 
 Mr. Slope's slap in the face and his fierce fight with 
 Mrs. Proudie for the domination of the Bishop, the 
 pitched battle between Mrs. Proudie and Mrs. 
 Grantly, the delicious scene between Lady Lufton 
 and Lucy Roberts, and the somewhat similar one 
 between the archdeacon and Grace Crawley, Johnny
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 103 
 
 Eames and the bull, Lord Chiltern riding Dandolo, 
 Madame Max and the Duchess over the jewels, 
 Phineas's acquittal, these are but a tithe of what 
 lovers of Trollope will take joy in recalling. 
 
 The life of such scenes comes from the ever pres- 
 ent and admirably sustained interest of character, 
 and this interest gives to Trollope's novels a unity 
 which is wanting in their plots. One can never in- 
 sist too much on the immense superiority of English 
 literature in general over all others on this point of 
 character. Richness and fulness of human life is 
 what distinguishes the drama of Shakespeare from 
 that of Sophocles, of Calderon, of Racine, of Dumas 
 fils. An excellence of the same kind, unusual in 
 French writers, but far inferior not only to Shakes- 
 peare's, but to Jonson's or Fletcher's or Massinger's, 
 gives Moliere his great reputation. So in the novel. 
 French fiction may surpass English in skill of con- 
 struction, in finished elegance of style, in grace and 
 charm. It never approaches it in fertility, variety, 
 and strength of character production. One has only 
 to compare Dumas with Scott, George Sand with 
 George Eliot, to feel the force of this. Balzac, like 
 Moliere, is great because he is an exception; but, 
 like Moliere, he accomplishes with Titanic effort 
 what Shakespeare, Fielding, Miss Austen, Thackeray, 
 and Dickens do with divine ease and unerring in-
 
 104 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 stinct. With a great price bought he this freedom, 
 but they were born free. 
 
 Without placing Trollope on a level with these 
 greatest masters, it is easy to see that with him 
 also character is a strong point. He always recog- 
 nises this himself, and in his Autobiography he has 
 some admirable observations on the subject in con- 
 nection with the sensational in novels. Speaking 
 of "The Bride of Lammermoor," of "Esmond," of 
 "Jane Eyre," he says: "These stories charm us, not 
 simply because they are tragic, but because we feel 
 that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures 
 with whom we can sympathise, are struggling amid 
 their woes. It all lies in that. No novel is any- 
 thing, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, 
 unless the reader can sympathise with the characters 
 whose names he finds upon the pages. . . . Truth 
 let there be, truth of description, truth of character, 
 human truth as to men and women. If there be 
 such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too 
 sensational." 
 
 From the very fact of pitching his characters so 
 largely on a middle note, of choosing them and keep- 
 ing them always in the common light of every day, 
 Trollope gives peculiarly the impression of having 
 lived with them and of making us live with them. 
 He often goes into very diffuse analyses of the 
 thought and actions of his heroes and heroines; yet
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 105 
 
 in so doing he does not seem to sap their vitality as 
 do Thackeray and George Eliot. The reason of this 
 is that he does not appear to be explaining, but 
 speculating. He does not say, "I made this ma- 
 chine, and I can tell you just how it goes." He 
 talks to you as a friend would talk about another 
 friend in a desultory, twilight chat, before a smoul- 
 dering fire. His characters seem to exist entirely in- 
 dependent of their author, and to work out their 
 own natures with no volition or even control from 
 him. This is doubtless one of the advantages of 
 his rapid and instinctive method of working. 
 
 This common naturalness of Trollope's charac- 
 ters, this feeling that we have lived with them and 
 known them, is much intensified by their constant re- 
 appearance in different stories. Of course, many 
 other authors have held their characters along from 
 one book to another; but neither Dumas nor Balzac 
 nor Mr. Howells has done it to the same extent as 
 Trollope. He speaks somewhere of his lack of 
 memory; but surely a memory approaching instinct 
 was needed to carry a company of people through 
 thirty-two volumes, 1 with long intervals of time 
 
 1 It may interest some of Trollope's admirers to have a complete 
 list of the long series of connected novels which include most of 
 his best work. The six chronicles of Barset come first as follows: 
 The Warden, Barcfiester Towers, Doctor Thome, Framley Par- 
 sonage, The Small House at Allington, The Last Chronicle of 
 Barset. These are followed by the parliamentary novels, the con-
 
 io6 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 both in the subjects and in the composition, and to 
 keep constantly a distinct grasp not only of general 
 traits of character but of eyes and hair, of gait and 
 gesture. In this vast and loose sequence of events 
 and circumstances slips and inaccuracies doubtless 
 occur, but their rarity is wonderful. 
 
 In such a crowd of characters we can hardly single 
 out many for special consideration. Mr. Saintsbury, 
 who has written of Trollope with sympathy and 
 appreciation, speaks of Mr. Crawley as almost the 
 only one of his personages who stands out with real 
 originality and permanent significance, and Trol- 
 lope himself has an unusual affection for that eccen- 
 tric gentleman ; but Mr. Crawley is too exceptional, 
 too near the limits of sanity, for the deepest human 
 interest. How inferior he is to the archdeacon, the 
 admirable archdeacon, at once perfect (artistically 
 perfect) man and perfect English clergyman ! How 
 we love him, with his conventional dignity, his con- 
 ventional religion, his bustling meddlesomeness, his 
 tyrannous impertinence, his sturdy English com- 
 mon sense, his never- failing ejaculation, "Good 
 Heavens!" how we love him! And in a far dif- 
 ferent fashion how we love Mr. Harding, one of 
 the tenderest, simplest, most touching figures in fic- 
 
 nection between them being maintained through Mr. Palliser arid 
 some others: Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace 
 Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, The Duke's Chil- 
 dren.
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 107 
 
 tion, whose gentle memory brings the tears to one's 
 eyes ! How we should delight, unobserved, to watch 
 him in one of the stalls of his beloved cathedral 
 choir, turning over the pages of his own church 
 music, gently and absently playing seraphic airs on 
 an imaginary violoncello ! 
 
 "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 Are sweeter." 
 
 Mr. Harding, perhaps the most striking of all Trol- 
 lope's creations, because so totally unlike Trollope 
 himself, whereas the archdeacon is clearly the very 
 image of the author of his being. 
 
 Then the women Mrs. Proudie, we all detest 
 her. Yet we have a sneaking fondness for her, too. 
 There is one of the marks of large humanness in 
 Trollope : he brings out something not wholly hate- 
 ful in the worst character he touches. The masters 
 of human life in literature, Shakespeare and Scott, 
 have the same trait. And Lady Glencora, how 
 well we know her, and who does not feel her fasci- 
 nation! Trollope's own observations on her show 
 how far a true artist's judgment may be below his 
 genius : "She has, or has been intended to have, be- 
 neath the thin stratum of her follies a basis of good 
 principle, which enabled her to live down the origi- 
 nal wrong that was done to her, and taught her to 
 endeavour to do her duty in the position to which she
 
 io8 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 was called." And this is Lady Glen, the sprightly, 
 the mobile, the petulant, the wilful, the bewitching 
 Lady Glen! It would be instructive if we had the 
 original skeletons of Rosalind and Diana Vernon to 
 range and ticket on the same shelf with this inert 
 anatomy. 
 
 Nor is it only in what dramatic slang would call 
 "character parts" that Trollope succeeds. In the 
 still more difficult task of giving individual life to 
 heroes and heroines he shows himself equally skilful. 
 Phineas Finn, for example, is intended to be and is 
 a very ordinary person; yet an indescribable and in- 
 definable something of loveableness pervades his 
 character everywhere, so that one cannot choose but 
 love him. As for Trollope's girls, Eleanor Har- 
 ding, Mary Thome, Lucy Roberts, Lily Dale, Grace 
 Crawley, Violet Effingham, Isabel Boncassen, and 
 the rest, they are charming, and at the same time 
 they are remarkably distinct: each keeps her indi- 
 viduality in the midst of the general fascination. 
 
 The style in which Trollope writes about all 
 these personages is what might be expected from 
 the author's method of working, loose, free, easily 
 followed. After all, perhaps this is the best style 
 for story-telling, when a man has the gift of it. The 
 curious felicity of Flaubert and Stevenson is a 
 precious thing; but one never escapes the sense that 
 it is born of painful effort, and one feels a little
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 109 
 
 guilty not to enjoy it with a certain effort also. The 
 Goncourts speak somewhere of the struggle with 
 which an author tears forth a beautiful page from his 
 very vitals. Trollope never tore any pages from his 
 vitals; he had no vitals, literaryly speaking. Easy, 
 rapid, graceful improvisation, at the rate of a thou- 
 sand words an hour, as aforesaid, was good enough 
 for him and for most of his readers. Gautier said 
 that the production of copy was a natural function 
 with George Sand. So it was with Trollope: he 
 wrote as easily as he breathed, or hunted, yet his 
 style is full of individuality. It has neither dignity 
 nor power nor remarkable precision; but it has a 
 peculiar homely, personal flavour, as of a man loosely 
 noting his natural thought, writing in old clothes, 
 with a pipe in his mouth and a glass of old wine 
 beside him. The very tricks of it that most marked 
 one, which Mr. Saintsbury has noted, of repeating 
 and emphasising words are characteristic of the 
 man, and one gets attached to them as to him. 
 
 As for observation, Trollope had little, so far as 
 the external world is concerned; but his moral in- 
 sight is close and keen on the somewhat superficial 
 plane to which he was limited by nature. "That 
 which enables the avaricious and unjust to pass 
 scatheless through the world is not the ignorance of 
 the world as to their sins, but the indifference of 
 the world as to whether they be sinful or no." "The
 
 no A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 little sacrifices of society are all made by women 
 as are also the great sacrifices of life. A man who 
 is good for anything is always ready for his duty, 
 and so is a good woman for her sacrifice." "Men 
 are cowards before women till they become tyrants." 
 "Why is it that girls so constantly do this"? So fre- 
 quently ask men who have loved them to be present 
 at their marriages with other men 1 ? There is no 
 triumph in it; it is done in sheer kindness and affec- 
 tion. 'You can't marry me yourself,' the lady seems 
 to say, 'but the next greatest blessing I can offer 
 you, you shall have: you shall see me married to 
 somebody else.' I fully appreciate the intention, but 
 in all honesty I doubt the eligibility of the proffered 
 entertainment." 
 
 The last quotation shows the sort of good-natured 
 satire which keeps one smiling through a great part of 
 Trollope's work. Mr. Howells, in his otherwise most 
 appreciative criticism, charges Trollope with a lack 
 of humour. To most of Trollope's admirers it seems 
 that his novels are full of humour; not indeed over- 
 charged and farcical, like Dickens's, always re- 
 strained within the limits of nature, but true humour 
 nevertheless. 
 
 I have said nothing as yet, however, of that which 
 constitutes the greatest claim of Trollope's novels 
 to permanence; I mean, their picture of contempo- 
 rary English life. Even where plot and character
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 111 
 
 are weakest there is always something of vitality and 
 truth, and so of interest, in the background and sur- 
 roundings; but when we come to the Barchester and 
 Parliamentary series, the richness and accuracy of 
 detail are wonderful. Every syllable that deals with 
 Barchester has the accent of truth. I have already 
 referred to Archdeacon Grantly, who is so clerical 
 and so English as well as so human; but all his sur- 
 roundings, the bishops and the deans and canons, and 
 the wives of these dignitaries and their very children, 
 and all that they say and do, bring the quaint, quiet 
 air of the cathedral town about us. Surely future 
 ages will turn to Trollope more than to any other 
 author for a true and vivid picture of this life, when 
 it shall have wholly passed away. 
 
 The Parliamentary atmosphere is naturally less 
 peculiar in its interest, but its appeal is stronger on 
 that very account. We know by Trol lope's own 
 confession that he failed to obtain a seat in the 
 House of Commons. We know from the same source 
 that to obtain such a seat was one of the ambitions 
 of his life. It does not seem possible that if he had 
 obtained it he could have acquired a more intimate 
 knowledge of the details of parliamentary practice. 
 Certainly no formal history could give us half the 
 insight into the machinery of government that we 
 get from him. All the technicalities of majorities, 
 cabinets, readings, questions, committees, whips, and
 
 112 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 the rest of it, all the ins and outs of candidacies, elec- 
 tions, ballotings with egg-throwing accompaniment, 
 take life and significance from the human figures 
 with which they are associated, and in turn give to 
 these human figures a body and a substance which 
 would otherwise be lacking. 
 
 Then the hunting, oh, the hunting! I have re- 
 ferred to it before, but it is worth mentioning ten 
 times over. Unquestionably it is the best part of 
 Trollope. Others have described it from the desk 
 and the chimney corner; but he gives it fresh from 
 the field, crisp with the hoarfrost of the autumn 
 morning, glowing with the very rush and ardour of 
 the thing itself. Oh, the deep voice of the hounds, 
 and the red coats flashing, and the stride of the 
 steeds, and the thick of the hurly-burly! It is 
 dragged into novel after novel, as Trollope himself 
 admits; yet the novels that are without it seem by 
 comparison to be only half alive. 
 
 With this note of external, physical life and ac- 
 tivity it is well to leave Trollope. As I said in the 
 beginning, he is a true realist, a common man giving 
 the views and the feelings of common men. His 
 moral attitude is always proper and decent, some- 
 times even to the extent of sermonising; but he has 
 no spiritual ideal, no sense of passionate moral strug- 
 gle, no aspiration after the unseen and the divine. 
 Stuffed full of British conventions, he is, and will
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE 113 
 
 remain, the loyal interpreter of British and other 
 Philistinism, all the more loyal because instinctive 
 and unconscious. What Philistine would not die 
 happy if he could sum up his career in the following 
 paragraph? "If the rustle of a woman's petticoat 
 has ever stirred my blood, if a cup of wine has been 
 a joy to me, if I have thought tobacco at midnight 
 in pleasant company to be one of the elements of an 
 earthly paradise, if now and again I have somewhat 
 recklessly fluttered a five-pound note over a card 
 table, of what matter is it to any reader*? I have be- 
 trayed no woman. Wine has brought me to no sor- 
 row. It has been the companionship of smoking that 
 I have loved rather than the habit. I have never 
 desired to win money, and I have lost none. To 
 enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from 
 its vices and evil effects, to have the sweet and leave 
 the bitter untasted, that has been my study. The 
 preachers tell us that this is impossible. It seems to 
 me that I have succeeded fairly well." 
 
 1901
 
 V 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 
 
 MULTIPLICITY of editions does not make 
 a book a classic. Otherwise Worcester's 
 Dictionary and Mrs. Lincoln's Cook-Book 
 might almost rival Shakespeare. Nevertheless, when 
 a work which has little but its literary quality to 
 recommend it, achieves sudden and permanent popu- 
 larity, it is safe to assume that there is something 
 about it which will repay curious consideration. As 
 to the popularity of "The Anatomy of Melancholy" 
 there can be no dispute. "Scarce any book of philol- 
 ogy in our land hath, on so short a time, passed 
 through so many editions," says old Fuller. The 
 first of these editions appeared in 1621. It was fol- 
 lowed by four others during the few years preceding 
 the author's death in 1640. Three more editions 
 were published at different times in the seventeenth 
 century. The eighteenth century was apparently 
 contented to read Burton in the folios ; but the book 
 was reprinted in the year 1800, and since then it 
 has been issued in various forms at least as many 
 
 117
 
 ii8 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 as forty times, though never as yet with what might 
 be called thorough editing. 
 
 Quantity of approval is in this case well sup- 
 ported by quality. Milton showed his admiration, 
 as usual, by imitation. Sterne conveyed passage 
 after passage almost bodily into "Tristram Shandy." 
 Southey's odd book, "The Doctor," follows Burton 
 closely in manner and often in matter. Dr. John- 
 son said that "The Anatomy of Melancholy" was 
 the only book that ever took him out of bed two 
 hours sooner than he wished to rise ; large commenda- 
 tion surely, and I have never found any other, even 
 of the most devout Burtonians, quite ready to echo 
 it. Lamb was a reader, adorer, and imitator; Keats, 
 the first two, at any rate. Finally, Mr. Saintsbury 
 assures us that "for reading either continuous or 
 desultory, either grave or gay, at all times of life and 
 in all moods of temper, there are few authors who 
 stand the test of practice so well as the author of 
 'The Anatomy of Melancholy.' " For all that, I 
 would not advise the general reader to buy a copy 
 in too great haste. He will, perhaps, find it easier 
 to read about the book than to read it. 
 
 What we know of the life of Robert Burton is 
 a very small matter, as is the case with so many 
 of his greater contemporaries. He was born at Lind- 
 ley in Leicestershire, in 1577, thirteen years after 
 Shakespeare, four years after Ben Jonson. He was
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 119 
 
 at School at Sutton-Coldfield, in Warwickshire, and 
 at Nuneaton, till he was seventeen. He then went 
 to Brasenose College. In 1599 he was elected 
 student of Christ Church. In 1614 he received 
 the degree of B.D., and in 1616 he became vicar of 
 St. Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford. About 
 1636 he added to this cure the rectory of Segrave in 
 Leicestershire. Besides the Anatomy he wrote a 
 Latin comedy, "Philosophaster," unusually clever, 
 and brilliant in its kind. He died in 1640, and was 
 buried in the choir of Christ Church Cathedral. The 
 little bit of gossip narrated by Wood is amusingly 
 illustrative of the mythical character so apt to at- 
 tach itself to the solitary scholar. It seems that 
 Burton's death occurred at or very near the time 
 which had been foretold by himself from the calcu- 
 lation of his own nativity; in consequence of which 
 "several of the students did not forbear to whisper 
 among themselves that, rather than there should be 
 a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to 
 heaven through a slip about his neck." With the 
 exception of a few other scraps of doubtful hearsay 
 and of the full text of his will, this is all of im- 
 portance that has come down to us about the author 
 of "The Anatomy." It is rather brief, when one 
 realises that, if he had lived two hundred and fifty 
 years later, he would probably have been honoured
 
 120 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 with two solid volumes of so-called biography, like 
 many another much less worthy of it. 
 
 Far more than most great writers, however, Bur- 
 ton left the reflection of his life and character in 
 his work, and "The Anatomy of Melancholy" may 
 be called one of the most intensely personal books 
 ever written. To be sure, the author does not con- 
 stantly and directly refer to himself and his own 
 affairs. Nevertheless, the impress of his spirit is 
 felt on every page. 
 
 Several of the biographical facts above mentioned 
 are derived from casual remarks dropped here and 
 there throughout the book. Of his mother, Mistress 
 Dorothy Burton, he says that she had "excellent 
 skill in Chirurgery, sore eyes, aches, etc.," and that 
 she had "done many famous and good cures upon 
 divers poor folks that were otherwise destitute of 
 help." He gives us a reminiscence of his boyhood: 
 "They think no slavery in the world (as once I did 
 myself) like to that of a grammar scholar." He 
 speaks with a grain of bitterness of a younger 
 brother's lot: "I do much respect and honour true 
 gentry and nobility; I was born of worshipful par- 
 ents myself, in an ancient family; but I am a 
 younger brother, it concerns me not." 
 
 He gives us many glimpses of his lonely scholar's 
 life. In his youth he was ambitious: "I was once 
 so mad to bustle abroad and seek about for prefer-
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 121 
 
 ment, tire myself, and trouble all my friends." But 
 the world is cold, friendship formal and touches not 
 the heart: "I have had some such noble friends, 
 acquaintances, and scholars, but most part they and 
 I parted as we met; they gave me as much as I re- 
 quested and that was ." His habits are those of 
 the recluse and ascetic: "I am a bachelor myself and 
 lead a monastic life in college." "I am aqua potor, 
 drink no wine at all." Yet he loves the sweet of 
 nature, too, if the bitter thirst of knowledge would 
 permit : "No man ever took more delight in springs, 
 woods, groves, gardens, walks, fishponds, rivers, etc." 
 Force of circumstance, lack of opportunity, younger 
 brotherhood, timidity, have kept him secluded with- 
 in the walls of great libraries, have piled huge dusty 
 tomes upon the human beating of his heart. "I have 
 lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life in the 
 University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, 
 to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part 
 in my study." Yet if the Fates had willed other- 
 wise, the man would have been consenting. Let us 
 note right here that this is the whole charm of Bur- 
 ton and his great book. It is no dry treatise of a 
 grey-haired pedant, thumbing contentedly forever 
 dull volumes of mouldy tradition. For all its quaint 
 garb and thorny aspect it is a great human docu- 
 ment, the work of a man whose bodily life was 
 passed in his study, but whose senses were all keenly,
 
 122 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 pantingly alert to catch the motion of the wide world 
 beyond. Beauty he adores beauty. "This amaz- 
 ing, confounding, admirable beauty; 'tis nature's 
 crown, gold, and glory." Love Oh, how he could 
 have loved! "I confess I am but a novice, a con- 
 templator only," he writes of it; "yet homo sum, I 
 am a man, and not altogether inexpert in this sub- 
 ject." Like Flaubert, he doubtless leaned forth from 
 his study window on many a moonlit night, and 
 heard a company of revellers with merry song and 
 pleasant jest, and caught the dim flutter of a white 
 gown, and found all his books and learning mere 
 dust beside the laughter and the passion of the world. 
 
 And so he grew melancholy, as often happens in 
 such cases. When a man gets these fits on him, he 
 may either rush out into active life for the sake of 
 contrast, he may marry, or go into politics, or do 
 something even more rash and criminal; or he may 
 cut his throat; or he may write a book. On the 
 whole, the last method is the most to be recom- 
 mended. Burton adopted it; and, with homoeo- 
 pathic ingenuity, he wrote a book on melancholy it- 
 self. "I write against melancholy, by being busy to 
 avoid melancholy. . . . Shall I say, my mistress 
 melancholy, my Egeria, or my evil genius *?" 
 
 The loose and literary sense in which Burton uses 
 the word melancholy is characteristic of the tone 
 of his book. Without really attempting any pre-
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 123 
 
 cise definition, or, rather, having confused the reader 
 with a multitude of definitions taken from all the 
 authors under the sun, he proceeds to include every 
 form of nervous depression, from a mere temporary 
 fit of the blues to acute or chronic mania and insanity. 
 At the same time, being a man of logical and system- 
 atic turn of mind, he imposes on others, and per- 
 haps on himself, with a great show of formal and 
 scientific treatment. The work is mapped out into 
 divisions, partitions, sections, members, subsections, 
 arranged in as awful order of deduction as Euclid 
 or the Ethics of Spinoza. But let no one be alarmed. 
 This is pure matter of form. The author speaks of 
 what he likes, when he likes. Occasionally he takes 
 the pains to recognise that he is digressing, as in the 
 delicious chapters entitled, "A Digression of 
 Spirits," "A Digression of Air." And then, with a 
 sigh, he tries to call himself back to the work in 
 hand. "But my melancholy spaniels quest, my game 
 is sprung, and I must suddenly come down and fol- 
 low." The game leads him into strange places, how- 
 ever. The vast and checkered meadow of the hu- 
 man heart is his hunting-ground. Melancholy is the 
 skeleton in the closet, always popping out at odd 
 times and in unexpected corners; but he keeps it 
 wreathed with bright flowers, and made sweet with 
 strange and subtle savours, and brilliant and spark- 
 ling with jewels of quaint wit and wandering fancy.
 
 124 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Nevertheless, when he does discuss his subject it- 
 self, he has bits of sound common sense, useful to- 
 day and always, like his recommendation of "the 
 three Salernitan Doctors, D. Merryman, D. Diet, 
 and D. Quiet, which cure all diseases." 
 
 Some one may object that this saying is quoted, 
 and not Burton's own invention. Certainly, Burton 
 is the greatest quoter in literature, far surpassing 
 even Montaigne. His mind was full of the thoughts 
 of others, and he poured them forth together with 
 his own in inextricable mixture. He was a man 
 drenched, drowned in learning, not learning of the 
 quick, smart, practical, modern type, which enables 
 its possessor to give interviews on the inhabitants of 
 Mars and testify on poisons at a murder trial, but 
 mediaeval learning, drowsy, strange, unprofitable, 
 and altogether lovely. In the discussion of these 
 melancholy matters all preceding literature is laid 
 under contribution, not only the classics, but count- 
 less writers of the Middle Ages, doubtless respectable 
 in their own day and possibly in Burton's, but now 
 so dead that the reader stares and gasps at them 
 and wonders whether his author is not inventing 
 references, like the "Oracle" in "The Innocents 
 Abroad." Melanelius, Rufus, Aetius, describe 
 melancholy "to be a bad and peevish disease." Her- 
 cules de Saxonia approves this opinion, as do 
 Fuchsius, Arnoldus, Guianerius, and others not un-
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 125 
 
 naturally. Paulus takes a different view, and Haly- 
 abbas still another. Aretseus calls it "a perpetual 
 anguish of the soul, fastened on one thing, without 
 an ague." In this brilliant but hazy statement the 
 absence of ague is at least a comfort. It is dis- 
 quieting, indeed, to find that "this definition of his 
 Merrialis taxeth" ; but we are reassured by the solid 
 support of CElianus Montaltus. And so on. 
 
 Pure pedantry, you will say. Well, yes. It would 
 be, if Burton were not saved from the extreme of 
 pedantry by a touch of humour, which makes you 
 somehow feel that he does not take all this quite 
 seriously himself. Yet it is vary hard for him to 
 look at anything except through the eyes of some re- 
 mote authority. We have heard him speak of his 
 mother's excellent cures. It seems that one of her 
 favourite remedies was "an amulet of a spider in a 
 nutshell lapped in silk," super-sovereign for the ague. 
 Burton finds it hard to swallow this; it was "most 
 absurd and ridiculous; for what has a spider to do 
 with a fever*?" Ah, but one day "rambling amongst 
 authors (as often I do) I found this very medicine 
 in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, repeated by 
 Aldrovandus. ... I began to have a better opin- 
 ion of it, and to give more credit to amulets." I 
 can see from here Mistress Dorothy Burton's lovely 
 scorn at being confirmed by Dioscorides. What did 
 she care for Dioscorides? Did she not have the
 
 126 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 recipe from her great-aunt, and has she not proved it 
 a dozen times herself? 
 
 This trick of constant quoting has led some shal- 
 low people to set Burton down as a mere quoter and 
 nothing else. There could be no greater mistake. 
 It is the activity and independence of his own mind 
 which make him so eager to watch and compare the 
 minds of others; and while he profited by their 
 thinking, he was abundantly able to do his own, 
 as every page of his book shows. One need ask no 
 better specimen of strong, shrewd, satirical reflec- 
 tion than the sketch of a Utopian commonwealth in 
 the introduction which purports to be by Democri- 
 tus, Junior; and of many other passages we may say 
 the same. 
 
 Nor was our author lacking in deep, human sym- 
 pathy, although his solitary life and keen intellect 
 disposed him to be a trifle cynical. The celebrated 
 bit with the refrain "Ride on!" so brilliantly imi- 
 tated by Sterne shows a pitiful appreciation of sor- 
 row and misery, which, indeed, are abundantly recog- 
 nised everywhere in "The Anatomy." 
 
 But perhaps the most characteristic illustration of 
 Burton's intense appetite for humanity is his fre- 
 quent reference to common daily life and manners. 
 M. Anatole France tells us that the author of the 
 "Imitation" must certainly have been a man of the 
 world before he betook himself to his lonely cell and
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 127 
 
 pious meditation. If Burton never was a man of 
 the world, he would certainly have liked to be one. 
 He peers out from behind the bars of his retreat and 
 catches every possible glimpse of the curious things 
 which are shut away from him. Shreds of fashion, 
 hints of frivolity, quips of courtiers, the flash of 
 swords and glittering of jewels he will find a place 
 for them. Woman fascinates him especially, that 
 singular creature who apparently cares nothing for 
 books and study, laughs, weeps, scolds, caresses, with- 
 out any reasonable cause whatever. Certainly no 
 philosopher should take any notice of her, yet they 
 all do. And he exhausts himself in cunning heaps 
 of observation, vain interrogations of mysterious 
 boudoirs: "Why do they make such glorious shows 
 with their scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, 
 tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, 
 tinsel, cloth of gold, silver, tissue ? With colours of 
 heavens, stars, planets ; the strength of metals, stones, 
 odours, flowers, birds, beasts, fishes, and whatsoever 
 Africa, Asia, America, sea, land, art and industry 
 of man can afford"? Whv do they use such novelty 
 of inventions; such new-fangled tires; and spend 
 such inestimable sums on them"? . . . Why is it but, 
 as a day-net catcheth larks, to make young men stoop 
 unto them*?" And old philosophers also, he might 
 have added. 
 
 I have taken this passage from the section on
 
 128 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "Love Melancholy" ; for Burton devotes a large por- 
 tion of his work to that delightful subject. He feels 
 it necessary to make some apology for entering upon 
 it. Some persons will think it hardly becoming in 
 so grave, reverend, and dignified a gentleman, a 
 clergyman, too. But he has good authors on his 
 side: "I excuse myself with Peter Godefridus, Val- 
 leriola, Ficinus, Langius, Cadmus, Milesius, who 
 writ fourteen books of love." Surely, he would be 
 very critical who should ask more than this. 
 
 The apology once made, with what gusto he sets 
 forth, how he luxuriates in golden tidbits from 
 love's delicate revels! "A little soft hand, pretty 
 little mouth, small, fine, long fingers, 'tis that which 
 Apollo did admire in Daphne." "Of all eyes (by 
 the way) black are most amiable, enticing, and fair." 
 "Oh, that pretty tone, her divine and lovely looks, 
 her everything lovely, sweet, amiable, and pretty, 
 pretty, pretty." Is it not the mere ecstasy of amor- 
 ous frenzy 1 ? Again, he gives us a very banquet, a 
 rosy wreath of old, simple English names, a per- 
 fect old-fashioned garden : "Modest Matilda, pretty, 
 pleasing Peg. sweet, singing Susan, mincing merry 
 Moll, dainty dancing Doll, neat Nancy, jolly Jane, 
 nimble Nell, kissing Kate, bouncing Bess with black 
 eyes, fair Phillis with fine white hands, fiddling 
 Frank, tall Tib, slender Sib, etc." Do you not hear 
 their merry laughter, as he heard it in his dim study,
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 129 
 
 a dream of fair faces and bright forms twisting, and 
 turning, and flashing back and forth under the har- 
 vest moon? 
 
 Yet, after all, love is a tyrant and a traitor, a 
 meteor rushing with blind fury among the placid 
 orbs of life. What is a man to make of these wild 
 contrasts and tragical transitions? At one moment 
 the lover seems to be on the pinnacle of felicity, "his 
 soul soused, imparadised, imprisoned in his lady; 
 he can do nothing, think of nothing but her; she is 
 his cynosure, Hesperus, and Vesper, his morning and 
 evening star, his goddess, his mistress, his life, his 
 soul, his everything; dreaming, waking, she is al- 
 ways in his mouth; his heart, eyes, ears, and all his 
 thoughts are full of her." But then something goes 
 wrong and the note is altogether changed. "When 
 this young gallant is crossed in his love, he laments, 
 and cries, and roars downright. 'The virgin's 
 gone and I am gone, she's gone, she's gone, and what 
 shall I do? Where shall I find her? whom shall I 
 ask? What will become of me ? I am weary of this 
 life, sick, mad, and desperate.' " 
 
 It becomes the sage, then, to be clear of these toys. 
 If he is to write about Love Melancholy, let him 
 cure it. Let him hold up a warning to the unwary. 
 What is the use of days and nights spent in toiling 
 over learned authors, if the young and foolish are 
 not to have the benefit of one's experience? If only
 
 130 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 the young and foolish would profit! If only the 
 unwary would beware ! Still, we must do our part. 
 Let us remind them that beauty fades. It is a rather 
 well-known fact, but youth is so prone to forget it. 
 "Suppose thou beholdest her in a frosty morning, 
 in cold weather, in some passion or perturbation of 
 mind, weeping, chafing, etc., rivelled and ill-favoured 
 to behold. . . . Let her use all helps art and nature 
 can yield; be like her, and her, and whom thou wilt, 
 or all these in one; a little sickness, a fever, small- 
 pox, wound, scar, loss of an eye or limb, a violent 
 passion, mars all in an instant, disfigures all." Then 
 let us exalt the charms of a bachelor's life. It has 
 its weak points, as I feel, writing here alone in the 
 dust and chill, with nothing but books about me, 
 no prattle of children, no merry chatter of busy 
 women. But what then? It is quieter, after all. 
 "Consider how contentedly, quietly, neatly, plenti- 
 fully, sweetly, and how merrily he lives ! He hath 
 no man to care for but himself, none to please, no 
 charge, none to control him, is tied to no residence, 
 no cure to serve, may go and come when, whither, 
 live where he will, his own master, and do what he 
 list himself." Nevertheless, it all sounds a little 
 hollow, and as I sit here in the winter midnight with 
 my old pipe, I wonder if it might not have been 
 otherwise. 
 
 I have made my quotations with very small skill,
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 131 
 
 if the ingenious reader does not by this time feel that 
 Burton was in his way a great master of style. His 
 skill and power as a writer, more than anything else, 
 show that he was not a mere pedant or Dryasdust. 
 It is true, he himself disclaims any such futile pre- 
 occupation. He has not "amended the style which 
 now flows remissly, as it was first conceived." His 
 book is "writ with as small deliberation as I do ordi- 
 narily speak, without all affectation of big words, 
 fustian phrases, jingling terms." But the facts belie 
 him, and one shudders to think what must have been 
 his idea of the big words he does not use. A careful 
 collation of the first edition of the Anatomy with 
 the last published in the author's lifetime not only 
 shows a great number of additions and alterations, 
 but proves conclusively that these changes were 
 made, in many cases, with a view to style and to 
 style only. Take a single instance. In the first 
 edition Burton wrote: "If it be so that the earth is 
 a moon, then are we all lunatic within." Later he 
 amplified this as follows, with obvious gain in the 
 beauty of the phrase: "If it be so that the earth is 
 a moon, then we are also giddy, vertiginous and 
 lunatic within this sublunary maze." Amended I 
 think, but oh, for the "big words, fustian phrases, 
 jingling terms" ! 
 
 Yes, Burton was a master of style. He could 
 bend language to his ends and do as he willed with
 
 132 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 it. If he is often rough, harsh, wanton in expression, 
 it is simply because, like Donne, he chose to be so. 
 Does he wish to tell a plain story"? Who can do 
 it more lightly, simply, briefly? "An ass and a 
 mule went laden over a brook, the one with salt, the 
 other with wool ; the mule's pack was wet by chance ; 
 the salt melted, his burden the lighter ; and he there- 
 by much eased. He told the ass, who, thinking to 
 speed as well, wet his pack likewise at the next 
 water; but it was much the heavier, he quite tired." 
 
 Does he wish to paint the foul and horrible? I 
 know of nothing in Swift or Zola more replete with 
 the luxury of hideousness than the unquotable de- 
 scription of the defects which infatuated love will 
 overlook, a description which Keats tells a corre- 
 spondent he would give his favourite leg to have writ- 
 ten. Here, as in so many passages I have quoted, 
 Burton piles up epithet after epithet, till it seems 
 as if the dictionary would be exhausted, a trick 
 which, by the bye, he may have caught from Rabe- 
 lais, and which would become very monotonous, if it 
 were not applied with such wonderful variety and 
 fertility. 
 
 Then, at his will, the magician can turn with ease 
 from the bitter to the sweet. When he touches love 
 or beauty, all his ruggedness is gone. His words be- 
 come full of grace, of suave, vague richness, of deli- 
 cacy, of mystery, as in the phrase which Southey
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 133 
 
 quotes in "The Doctor" : "For peregrination charms 
 our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety 
 that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a 
 kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that from his 
 cradle to his old age beholds the same still: still, 
 still the same, the same." Or, to take a more elabo- 
 rate picture, see this, which might be a Tintoretto or 
 a Spenser: "Witty Lucian, in that pathetical love- 
 passage or pleasant description of Jupiter's stealing 
 of Europa and swimming from Phoenicia to Crete, 
 makes the sea calm, the winds hush, Neptune and 
 Amphitrite riding in their chariot to break the waves 
 before them, the Tritons dancing round about with 
 every one a torch; the sea-nymphs, half-naked, keep- 
 ing time on dolphins' backs and singing Hymenseus ; 
 Cupid nimbly tripping on the top of the waters ; and 
 Venus herself coming after in a shell, strewing roses 
 and flowers on their heads." 
 
 I have dwelt thus long on Burton's style because 
 it is absolutely characteristic, and because it proves 
 by its eminent artistic qualities that he was not 
 simply a compiler and quoter, but a thinking and 
 feeling man, a strong, shrewd, passionate tempera- 
 ment, gazing with intense interest out of his scholas- 
 tic windows at the strange and moving spectacle of 
 life. In his fulness and abundance he, more than 
 any other English author, recalls Montaigne, whom 
 he occasionally quotes : he has less fluidity, more con-
 
 134 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ventional prejudice, but also more sincerity, more 
 robust moral force. Again, he in a certain sense re- 
 sembles a greater than Montaigne, his own greatest 
 contemporary, Shakespeare, whom he also quotes 
 enough to show that he knew and loved his writings, 
 at any rate, if not himself. Shakespeare's work is 
 like a glorious piece of tapestry, a world of rich 
 and splendid hues, woven into a thousand shapes of 
 curious life. Burton's is like the reverse side of the 
 same; all the bewildering wealth of colour, but 
 rough, crude, misshapen, undigested. 
 
 One of the characteristic oddities of Burton's style 
 is his perpetual use of the phrase etc. When his 
 quick and fluent pen has heaped together all the 
 nouns or adjectives in heaven, and in earth, and in 
 the waters under the earth, he completes the picture 
 with the vast vague gesture of an etc. Take an 
 often-quoted passage in the introduction, in which 
 he describes his own life as an observer and con- 
 templator: "now comes tidings of weddings, mask- 
 ings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, 
 tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, 
 sports, plays; then again, as in a new-shifted scene, 
 treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous vil- 
 lainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes, 
 new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then 
 tragical matters; to-day we hear of new lords and 
 officers created, to-morrow of some great men de-
 
 AN ODD SORT OF POPULAR BOOK 135 
 
 posed, and again of fresh honours conferred; one is 
 let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, an- 
 other breaketh ; he thrives, his neighbour turns bank- 
 rupt ; now plenty, then again dearth and famine ; one 
 runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, etc." 
 
 So we may sum up "The Anatomy of Melancholy" 
 in an etc. The general tone of the book, with its 
 infinite multiplicity, reminds one of nothing more 
 than of the quaint blending of mirth, mystery, and 
 spiritual awe, so deliciously expressed in Stevenson's 
 baby couplet, 
 
 "The world is so full of a number of things, 
 I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." 
 
 Only Burton would have laid a mischievous and 
 melancholy emphasis on "should." 
 
 1902
 
 VI 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS
 
 VI 
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 
 
 MR. DAVIDSON, whose excellent volume 
 on Dumas must be the foundation of any 
 careful study of the subject, dismisses his 
 author with the remark: "Except for increasing the 
 already ample means of relaxation, he did nothing to 
 benefit humanity at large." Is not this a rather grudg- 
 ing epitaph for the creator of "Monte Cristo 6 ?" 
 Are the means of relaxation so ample that we can 
 afford to treat "La Tour de Nesle" and "La Reine 
 Margot" as alms for oblivion*? Would Stevenson 
 have read "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" six times, 
 would you or I have read "Les Trois Mousquetaires" 
 more times than we can count, if other relaxation of 
 an equally delightful order were indeed so easily ob- 
 tainable*? In spite of the flood of historical novels 
 and all other kinds of novels that overwhelmed the 
 nineteenth century, story-tellers like Dumas are not 
 born every day, nor yet every other day. 
 
 For he was a story-teller by nature, one who could 
 make a story of anything, one who did make a story 
 of everything, for the joy of his own childlike imagi- 
 
 139
 
 140 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 nation. "I am not like other people. Everything 
 interests me." The round oath of a man, the smile 
 of a woman, a dog asleep in the sun, a bird singing 
 in a bush, even a feather floating in the breeze, was 
 enough. Fancy seized it and wove an airy, sun- 
 bright web about it, glittering with wit, touched with 
 just a hint of pathos; and as we read, we forget the 
 slightness of the substance in the grace and delicacy 
 of the texture. 
 
 It is an odd thing, this national French gift of 
 story- telling, of seeking by instinct the group-effect, 
 as it were, of a set of characters, their composite re- 
 lations to one another and the development of these 
 relations in dramatic climax. English writers, from 
 Chaucer down, dwell by preference on the individual 
 character, force it only with labour and difficulty 
 into the general framework, from which it constantly 
 escapes in delightful but wholly undramatic human 
 eccentricity. To the French habit of mind, such in- 
 dividuality is excrescent and distasteful. Let the 
 characters develop as fully and freely as the action 
 requires, no more. They are there for the action, 
 not the action for them. Hence, as the English de- 
 fect is dull diffusion and a chaos of disorder, so the 
 French is loss of human truth in a mad eagerness for 
 forcible situations, that is to say, melodrama. 
 
 Even in Hugo, in Balzac, in Flaubert, in Zola, 
 one has an uneasy feeling that melodrama is not too
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 141 
 
 far away. In Dumas it is frankly present always. 
 The situation something that shall tear the nerves, 
 make the heart leap and the breath stop for Dumas 
 there lies the true art of dramatist and novelist. And 
 what situations ! No one ever had more than he the 
 two great dramatic gifts, which perhaps are only one, 
 the gift of preparation and the gift of climax. "Of 
 all denouements, past, present, and I will say even to 
 come," writes Sarcey, "that of 'Antony' is the most 
 brilliant, the most startling, the most logical, the 
 most rapid ; a stroke of genius." "Henri III," "Rich- 
 ard Darlington," "La Tour de Nesle" are full of ef- 
 fects scarcely inferior. If one thinks first of the 
 plays, it is only because in them the action is more 
 concentrated than in the novels. But in novel after 
 novel also, there is the same sure instinct of arrange- 
 ment, the same masterly hand, masterly for obtaining 
 the sort of effect which the author has chiefly in view. 
 And perhaps the melodrama is not quite all. The 
 creatures are not always mere puppets, wire-pulled, 
 stirring the pulse when they clash together, then for- 
 gotten. We hate them sometimes, sometimes love 
 them, sometimes even remember them. Marguerite 
 and Buridan are not wholly unreal in their wild pas- 
 sion. The scene of reconciliation between the Mus- 
 keteers in the Place Royale has something deeper 
 than mere effect. And these are only two among 
 many. Under all his gift of technique, his love of
 
 142 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 startling and amazing, the man was not without an 
 eye, a grip on life, above all, a heart that beat widely, 
 with many sorrows and many joys. 
 
 Then the style is the style of melodrama, but it 
 is also far more. No one knew better how and when 
 to let loose sharp, stinging, burning shafts of phrase, 
 like the final speech of Antony, "Elle m'a resiste; 
 je Vai assassmee," shafts which flew over the foot- 
 lights straight to the heart of every auditor. But 
 these effects would be nothing without the varied 
 movement of narration, the ease, the lightness, the 
 grace, above all, the perpetual wit, the play of 
 delicate irony, which saves sentiment from being sen- 
 timental and erudition from being dull. 
 
 Dumas's style has been much abused, and in some 
 ways deserves it. Mr. Saintsbury considers that the 
 plays have "but little value as literature properly so- 
 called," and that "the style of the novels is not more 
 remarkable as such than that of the dramas." But 
 how far more discerning and sympathetic is Steven- 
 son's characterisation of it: "Light as a whipped 
 trifle, strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; pat 
 like a general's despatch ; with every fault, yet never 
 tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right." As 
 for dialogue, that subtlest test of the novelist's 
 genius which neither Balzac, nor Flaubert, nor 
 Zola could manage with flexibility or ease, Dumas 
 may have used it to excess, but who has ever carried
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 143 
 
 it to greater perfection*? In M. Lemaitre's excellent, 
 if somewhat cynical, phrase, Dumas' s dialogue has 
 "the wonderful quality of stringing out the narra- 
 tive to the crack of doom and at the same time mak- 
 ing it appear to move with headlong rapidity." But 
 let it string out, so it moves. And surely Dumas's 
 conversations do move, as no others ever have. 
 
 In the hurry of modern reading, few people have 
 time to get at Dumas in any but his best-known 
 works. Yet to form a complete idea of his powers, 
 one must take a much wider survey. All periods, all 
 nations, all regions of the earth, came at one time or 
 another under his pen. Of course this means an in- 
 evitable superficiality and inaccuracy. But one over- 
 looks these defects, is hardly aware of them, in the 
 ease, the spirit, the unfailing humanness of the nar- 
 rative. Take a minor story like "L'Isle de Feu," 
 dealing with the Dutch in Java and with the habits 
 and superstitions of the natives, snake-charming, 
 spirit-haunting, etc. Everywhere there is movement, 
 life, character, the wit of the "Impressions de Voy- 
 age," the passion of "La Reine Margot." And if 
 Dumas does not quite anticipate the seductive melan- 
 choly of Loti's tropics, he gives hints of it which are 
 really wonderful for a man who had never been 
 south of latitude thirty. 
 
 Perhaps, outside of the historical novels, we may 
 select four very different books as most typical of
 
 144 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Dumas's great variety of production. First, in "Con- 
 science 1'Innocent," we have a simple idyllic subject, 
 recalling George Sands' country stories : peasant life, 
 rural scenes, sweet pictures of Dumas's own village 
 home at Villers-Cotterets, which he introduced into 
 so many of his writings. Second, in the immense 
 canvas of "Salvator," too little appreciated, we have 
 a picture of contemporary conditions, the Paris of 
 Sue and Hugo, treated with a vividness far beyond 
 Sue and a dramatic power which Hugo never could 
 command. Third, comes the incomplete "Isaac La- 
 quedem," the vast Odyssey of the Wandering Jew, 
 in which the author planned to develop epically the 
 whole history of the world, though the censorship al- 
 lowed him to get no further than the small Biblical 
 portion of it. Few of Dumas's books illustrate bet- 
 ter the really soaring sweep of his imagination, and 
 not many have a larger share of his esprit. Lastly, 
 there is "Monte Cristo," which, on the whole, re- 
 mains, doubtless, the best example of what Dumas 
 could do without history to support him. "Pure 
 melodrama," some will say; in a sense, truly. Yet, 
 as compared with the melodrama of, for instance, 
 "Armadale" and "The Woman in White," there is 
 a certain largeness, a sombre grandeur, about the 
 vengeance of Dantes which goes almost far enough 
 to lift the book out of the realm of melodrama, and 
 into that of tragedy. And then there is the wit!
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 145 
 
 But it is on historical romance, whether in drama 
 or fiction, that Dumas's popularity must chiefly rest. 
 He himself felt it would be so, hoped it would be so; 
 and his numerous references to the matter, if amus- 
 ing, are also extremely interesting. He speaks of his 
 series of historical novels as "immense pictures we 
 have undertaken to unroll before the eyes of our 
 readers, in which, if our genius equalled our good will, 
 we would introduce all classes of men from the beg- 
 gar to the king, from Caliban to Ariel." And again : 
 "Balzac has written a great work entitled The Hu- 
 man Comedy.' Our work, begun at the same time, 
 may be entitled 'The Drama of France.' " He hopes 
 that his labours will be profitable as well as amus- 
 ing: "We intentionally say 'instruct' first, for 
 amusement with us is only a mask for instruction. 
 . . . Concerning the last five centuries and a half we 
 have taught France more history than any historian." 
 And when some one gently insinuates that from a 
 purely historical point of view his work cannot stand 
 with the highest, he replies with his usual charming 
 humour, "It is the unreadable histories that make a 
 stir; they are like dinners you can't digest; digestible 
 dinners give you no cause to thinic about them on the 
 next day." 
 
 After all, humour apart, we must recognise the jus- 
 tice of Dumas's claim; and the enduring life and 
 perpetual revival of the historical novel go far to
 
 146 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 support it. Mankind in general do love to hear 
 about Henry IV, Richelieu, and the Stuarts, about 
 Washington and Lincoln and Napoleon, and in hear- 
 ing they do learn, even against their will. Pedants 
 shake their heads. This birth-date is incorrect. That 
 victory was not a victory at all. When Dr. Dryas- 
 dust has given the slow labour of a lifetime to dis- 
 entangling fact from fiction, how wicked to mislead 
 the ignorant by wantonly developing fiction out of 
 fact! As if Dr. Dryasdust really knew fact from 
 fiction ! As if the higher spiritual facts were not al- 
 together beyond his ken and his researches! As if 
 any two pedants agreed! Take the central fact of 
 history, the point from which everything of impor- 
 tance and interest emanates, human character, the 
 human soul. What pedant can reach it, can analyse 
 it with his finest microscope*? Napoleon was born 
 on such a day, died on such a day, this he did, that 
 he did. But was he in any sense patriotic, an ideal- 
 ist, a lover of France? Was he a suspicious, jealous, 
 lascivious tyrant 1 ? Was he sometimes one, sometimes 
 the other? State documents and gossiping memoirs 
 give no final answer to these questions, only hints and 
 cloudy indications bearing upon them, from which 
 the genius of the historian must sketch a figure for 
 itself. Therefore, as many historians, so many Na- 
 poleons, and in the end my Napoleon, your Napo- 
 leon. If so, why not Alexander Dumas's Napoleon,
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 147 
 
 said Dumas, having perhaps as much faculty of im- 
 aginative divination as you or I, or even as several 
 historians whom we will not mention. 
 
 In fact, Dumas has undoubtedly taught the his- 
 tory of France to thousands who would otherwise 
 have had little concern with it. And his characters 
 live. Catherine de' Medici and her sons, Louis XIV, 
 Mazarin, the Due de Richelieu, Marie Antoinette 
 we know them as we know people whom we meet 
 every day: in one sense, perhaps not at all; but in 
 another sense, intimately. Great actions call for a 
 large background, which should be handled with the 
 wide sweep of the scene-painter, not with the curious 
 minuteness of the artist in miniatures. The very 
 abundance of these characters, the vastness of the 
 canvas, help the reality, and in this matter of am- 
 plitude Dumas and Scott show their genius, and tri- 
 umph over the petty concentration of later imitators. 
 Nor are the characters wholly or mainly of Dumas's 
 own invention less vivid than those historical; for 
 Dumas learned from Scott the cardinal secret of 
 historical romance, which Shakespeare did not grasp, 
 that the action of the story should turn, not on real 
 personages, but on fictitious heroes and heroines, 
 whose fortunes can be moulded freely for a dramatic 
 purpose. Dumas himself says somewhere that people 
 complain of the length of his novels, yet that the 
 longest have been the most popular and the most sue-
 
 148 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 cessful. It is so. We can wander for days in the 
 vast galleries of the "Reine Margot" series, charmed 
 with the gallantry of La Mole, the vivacity of Co- 
 connas, the bravado of Bussy, above all, the inimi- 
 table wit and shrewdness of Chicot, who surely comes 
 next to d'Artagnan among all Dumas's literary chil- 
 dren. And d'Artagnan what a broad country he 
 inhabits! How lovely to lose one's self there in 
 long winter evenings, meeting at every turn a saucy 
 face or a gay gesture or a keen flash of sword that 
 makes one forget the passage of time. "I never had 
 a care that a half-hour's reading would not dissi- 
 pate," said Montesquieu. Fortunate man! How 
 few of us resemble him ! But if a half-hour's read- 
 ing of anything would work such a miracle, surely 
 a novel of Dumas would do it. 
 
 As for the man himself, he happily created such 
 characters as d'Artagnan and Chicot because he re- 
 sembled them, and was in his own person as pictur- 
 esque a figure as any that talks passion in his plays, 
 or wit in the endless pages of his novels. I do not 
 know that he had ever read Milton's oracular say- 
 ing that he who would be a great poet should make 
 his life a true poem; but, in any case, he pointed it 
 aptly by showing that the best way to write romantic 
 novels is to make a romantic novel of your own ca- 
 reer. Born in 1802, in the most stirring period of 
 French history, one-quarter African by blood, he
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 149 
 
 worked his way upward from bitter poverty and in- 
 significance to sudden glory and considerable wealth. 
 Ambitious for political as well as literary success he 
 took a more or less active part in the various commo- 
 tions of the second quarter of the century, so that he 
 was able to say of himself with some truth and im- 
 mense satisfaction, "I have touched the left hand of 
 princes, the right hand of artists and literary celebri- 
 ties, and have come in contact with all phases of 
 life." 
 
 A great traveller, a great hunter, he had innumer- 
 able adventures by flood and field. Quick in emo- 
 tion and quicker in speech, he made friends every- 
 where and some enemies. Peculiarly sensitive to 
 the charms and caresses of women, he had no end 
 of love-affairs, all more or less discreditable. 
 Thoughtless, careless, full of wit, full of laughter, 
 he travelled the primrose way, plucking kisses like 
 spring blossoms, wrapping his cloak more tightly 
 round him when he ran into winter storms of envy, 
 jealousy, and mocking. What wealth he had he 
 squandered, what glory, he frittered away. And as 
 he was born in a whirlwind of French triumph, so 
 he died, in 1870, in a wilder whirlwind of French 
 ruin and despair. 
 
 The man's life was, indeed, a novel ; and in writ- 
 ing his "Memoirs" he dressed it out as such, height- 
 ening, colouring, enriching the golden web of mem-
 
 150 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ory, as only he knew how to do; so that I am almost 
 ready to call these same memoirs the best of his 
 works, even with "Les Trois Mousquetaires" and 
 "La Tour de Nesle" in fresh remembrance. Such 
 variety and vivacity of anecdote, such vivid, shifting 
 portraiture of characters, such quick reality of inci- 
 dent, such wit always. But the best of it, unques- 
 tionably, is not Talma, nor Dorval, nor Hugo, nor 
 the Duke of Orleans, but just Alexander Dumas. It 
 is said that once, when a friend asked him how he 
 had enjoyed a party, Dumas replied, "I should have 
 been horribly bored, if it hadn't been for myself." 
 Readers of the "Memoirs" will easily understand how 
 other society might have seemed dull in comparison. 
 
 From all the tangled mass of anecdote and laugh- 
 ter let us try to gather one or two definite lines of 
 portraiture for the better understanding of this singu- 
 lar personage, "one of the forces of nature," as 
 Michelet called him in a phrase which Dumas loved 
 to repeat. 
 
 And to begin with the beginning. Did the creator 
 of Buridan and Chicot have a religion, did he trouble, 
 himself with abstract ideas'? You smile; and cer- 
 tainly he did not trouble his readers very much with 
 these things. Yet in his own opinion he was a 
 thinker, and a rather deep one. Read, in the pref- 
 ace to "Caligula," how the public received with awe 
 "this rushing torrent of thought, which appeared to
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 151 
 
 it perhaps new and daring, but solemn and chaste; 
 and then withdrew, with bowed head, like a man 
 who has at last found the solution of a problem 
 which has vexed him during many sleepless nights." 
 In his turbulent youth the author of "Antony" 
 was a disbeliever, as became a brother of Byron and 
 Musset; "there are moments when I would give thee 
 up my soul, if I believed I had one." But in later 
 years he settled down to the soberer view which ap- 
 pears in the dedication of "La Conscience" to Hugo : 
 "in testimony of a friendship which has survived 
 exile and will, I hope, survive death. I believe in 
 the immortality of the soul." And again and again 
 he testified to the power of his early religious train- 
 ing, which "left upon all my beliefs, upon all my 
 opinions, so profound an impression that even to- 
 day I cannot enter a church without taking the holy 
 water, cannot pass a crucifix without making the 
 sign of the cross." Nor do these emotions spring 
 from mere religiosity, but from an astonishingly, not 
 to say crudely, definite form of belief: "I know 
 not what my merit has been, whether in this world 
 or in the other worlds I may have inhabited before ; 
 but God has shown me especial favours and in all 
 the critical situations in which I have found myself, 
 he has come visibly to my assistance. Therefore, 
 O God, I confess thy name openly and humbly before 
 all sceptics and before all believers." What revival-
 
 152 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ist of to-day could speak with more fervour? If 
 only one did not suspect a bit of the irony that 
 shows more clearly in the conversation with his old 
 teacher, whose prayers Dumas had requested. "My 
 prayers'?" said the abbe. "You don't believe in 
 them." "No, I don't always believe in them. That 
 is very true; but don't worry: when I need them I 
 will believe in them." On the strength of that re- 
 mark we might almost call Dumas the inventor' of 
 pragmatism before Professor James. 
 
 And the irony is rooted in a truth of character. 
 Dumas was a man of this world. He might dream 
 of the other at odd moments, in vague curiosity ; but 
 by temperament he was a frank pagan, an eater, a 
 laugher, a lover, a fighter, gorgeously in words, not 
 wholly ineffectively in deeds, even after we have 
 made the necessary discount from his own version 
 of his exploits. He had inherited something of his 
 father's magnificent physique and something of his 
 father's courage. When he tells us that "since I 
 arrived at manhood, whenever danger has presented 
 itself, by night or by day, I have always walked 
 straight up to danger," we believe him with the dis- 
 count aforesaid; and we believe him all the more, be- 
 cause like every brave man, he does not hesitate to 
 confess fear. "It was the first time I had heard the 
 noise of grapeshot, and I say frankly that I will not
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 153 
 
 believe any one who tells me that he heard that noise 
 for the first time without perturbation." 
 
 In truth, the religion, the courage, the fear all, and 
 everything else in the man, were a matter of im- 
 pulse, of immediate emotion. He was quite aware 
 of this himself. When he proposed his Vendee mis- 
 sion to Lafayette, the latter said to him, "Have 
 you reflected on what this means?" "As much as I 
 am capable of reflecting about anything: I am a 
 man of instinct, not of reflection." The extraordi- 
 nary vanity of which he was justly accused, of which 
 he accuses himself, "everybody knows the vain side 
 of my character," was only one phase of this nat- 
 ural impulsiveness. He spoke out what others think 
 and keep to themselves. Mr. Davidson has ad- 
 mirably noted that in Dumas's case vanity was per- 
 fectly compatible with humility. He had no ab- 
 surdly exaggerated idea of his own powers. But he 
 liked to talk about himself, to be conspicuous, to 
 be the central figure on every stage. The African 
 blood, of which he was not ashamed "I am a mu- 
 latto," he says repeatedly, told in him; the negro 
 childlikeness. He was a child always, above all 
 childlike in this matter of vanity. Readers of "Tom 
 Sawyer" will remember that that delightful youth, 
 on hearing the beatific vision of Isaiah, which pic- 
 tures such a varied menagerie dwelling in harmony, 
 with a little child to lead them, had one absorbing
 
 154 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 wish : that he might be that child. Dumas was pre- 
 cisely like Tom Sawyer; witness this delightful 
 prayer of his youth : "Make me great and glorious, 
 O Lord, that I may come nearer unto thee. And 
 the more glorious thou makest me, the more humbly 
 will I confess thy name, thy majesty, thy splendour." 
 
 The same childlike temper, the fresh, animal in- 
 stincts of a great boy, explain, if they do not excuse, 
 the disorders of Dumas's life. 
 
 In this connection it is hardly necessary to do more 
 than to point out his hopeless aberration from all 
 Anglo-Saxon standards of propriety and decency. 
 It would be easy to lash such aberration, but it is 
 perhaps better to consider it in connection with the 
 man's character as a whole, and to remember that 
 his life was as far as possible from being a generally 
 idle or dissipated one. He never smoked, cherish- 
 ing, in fact, a grudge against tobacco, which he re- 
 garded as an enemy to true sociability. He was 
 moderate in eating and drinking. Above all, he was 
 an enormous worker. No man essentially vicious, no 
 man who had not a large fund of temperance and 
 self-control, could have produced a tithe of Dumas's 
 legacy to posterity. But what is most interesting of 
 all in this matter of morals is Dumas's entire satis- 
 faction with himself. I doubt if any other human 
 being would deliberately have ventured on a state- 
 ment so remarkable as the following: "When the
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 155 
 
 hand of the Lord closes the two horizons of my 
 life, letting fall the veil of his love between the 
 nothingness that precedes and the nothingness that 
 follows the life of man, he may examine the inter- 
 mediate space with his most rigorous scrutiny, he 
 will not find there one single evil thought or one 
 action for which I feel that I should reproach my- 1 
 self." Comment on this would only dim its splen- 
 dour. Yet people say that the "Memoirs" of Dumas 
 lack interest as human documents ! He was an atro- 
 cious hypocrite, then, you think? Not the least in 
 the world. Simply a child, always a child. 
 
 A child in money matters also. No one could 
 accuse him of deliberate financial dishonesty; but to 
 beg and borrow and never to pay was the normal 
 condition of things. To promise right and left when 
 cash was needed, then to find one's self entirely un- 
 able to fulfil one's promises, still childlike. Only, 
 persons of that childlike temper, who have not ge- 
 nius, are apt to end badly. And then, after all, to 
 write in cold blood that one has never had a single 
 action to reproach one's self with ! I trust the reader 
 appreciates that passage as I do. 
 
 And if the child lacked a sense of money property, 
 how should he be likely to have a sense of property 
 in literature 1 ? Shakespeare, Schiller, dozens of 
 others, had had ideas which were useful. Why not 
 use them? A few persons had previously written
 
 156 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 on the history of France. Distinguished historical 
 characters had left memoirs describing their own 
 achievements. It would have been almost disres- 
 pectful to neglect the valuable material thus af-, 
 forded. Let us quote the histories and borrow from 
 the memoirs. As for mentioning any little indebted- 
 ness, life is not long enough for that. We make bold 
 to think that what we invent is quite as good as 
 what we take from others. So it is far better. A 
 careful comparison of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" 
 with the original d'Artagnan "Memoirs" increases 
 rather than diminishes one's admiration for the au- 
 thor of the novel. 
 
 But it will be said, even after borrowing his ma- 
 terial, Dumas could not write this same novel with- 
 out the assistance of a certain Maquet. Again the 
 same childlike looseness in the sense of property. 
 Could a genius be expected to write three hundred 1 
 volumes without helpers for the rough work"? He 
 must have hodmen to fetch bricks and mortar. And 
 perhaps the builder, hurried and overdriven, may set 
 the hodmen to lay a bit of wall here and there, may 
 come to leave altogether too much to hodmen so 
 that the work suffers for it. What matter 4 ? Had 
 ever any Maquet or Gaillardet or Meurice, writing 
 
 1 Perhaps it would be well to explain the different numerical 
 estimates of Dumas's works. As now published in the Levy collec- 
 tion they fill about three hundred volumes, but in their original 
 form they ran to twelve hundred, more or less.
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 157 
 
 by himself, the Dumas touch? As Mr. Lang justly 
 points out, no collaborator has been suggested for 
 the "Memoirs" and I have already said that the "Me- 
 moirs" belong, in many respects, to Dumas's best, 
 most characteristic work. 
 
 Then, a child is as ready to give as to take. So 
 was Dumas. In money matters it goes without say- 
 ing. He was always ready to give, to give to every- 
 body everything he had, and even everything he had 
 not and some one else had. "Nature had already 
 put in my heart," he says of his childhood, "that 
 fountain of general kindliness through which flows 
 away and will flow away, everything I had, every- 
 thing I have, and everything I ever shall have." 
 But it was not only money, it was time and thought, 
 labour and many steps. This same fountain of gen- 
 eral kindliness was always at the service even of 
 strangers. For instance, Dumas himself tells us 
 that, happening once to be in a seaport town, he 
 found a young couple just sailing for the islands and 
 very desolate. He set himself to cheer them up, 
 and his efforts were so well received that he could 
 not find it in his heart to leave them, though pressing 
 business called him away. He went on board ship 
 with them, and only returned on the pilot boat, in 
 the midst of a gale and at the peril of his life, so 
 says the story. Even in the matter of literary col- 
 laboration, Mr. Davidson justly points out that
 
 158 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Dumas gave as well as took, and that the list of 
 his debtors is longer than that of his creditors. 
 
 And in the highest generosity, that of sympathy 
 and appreciation for fellow-workers, the absence of 
 envy and meanness in rivalry, Dumas is nobly abun- 
 dant. He tells us so himself, not having the habit 
 of concealing his virtues: "Having arrived at the 
 summit which every man finds in the middle of 
 life's journey, I ask nothing, I desire nothing, I 
 envy nothing, I have many friendships and not one 
 single hatred." More reliable evidence lies in the 
 general tone of enthusiasm and admiration with 
 which he speaks of all his contemporaries. Musset 
 avoided him, Balzac insulted him; yet he refers to 
 both with hearty praise very different from the 
 damning commendations of the envious Sainte- 
 Beuve. Lamartine and Hugo he eulogises with lav- 
 ish freedom, not only in the often-quoted remark, 
 "Hugo is a thinker, Lamartine a dreamer, and I am 
 a populariser," a remark more generous than dis- 
 criminating, but in innumerable passages which 
 leave no possible doubt of his humility and sincerity. 
 "Style was what I lacked above everything else. 
 If you had asked me for ten years of my life, prom- 
 ising in exchange that one day I should attain the 
 expression of Hugo's 'Marion Delorme,' I should 
 not have hesitated, I should have given them in- 
 stantly."
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 159 
 
 These things make Dumas attractive, lovable even, 
 as few French writers are lovable. With all his 
 faults he has something of the personal charm of 
 Scott. Only something, however; for Scott, no whit 
 less generous, less kindly, had the sanity, the stabil- 
 ity, the moral character, why avoid the word*? which 
 Dumas had not. And in comparing their works 
 a comparison which suggests itself almost inevitably ; 
 "Scott, the grandfather of us all," said Dumas him- 
 self this difference of morals strikes us even more 
 than the important differences of style and handling 
 of character. It is the immortal merit of Scott that 
 he wrote novels of love and adventure as manly, as 
 virile, as heart can wish, yet absolutely pure. 
 
 Now, Dumas has the grave disadvantage of not 
 knowing what morals sexual morals are. Listen 
 to him: "Of the six hundred volumes (1848) that 
 I have written, there are not four which the hand 
 of the most scrupulous mother need conceal from her 
 daughter." The reader who knows Dumas only in 
 "Les Trois Mousquetaires" will wonder by what 
 fortunate chance he has happened on two volumes 
 out of those "not four." But he may reassure him- 
 self. There are others of the six hundred which, to 
 use the modern French perversion, more effective 
 untranslated, the daughter will not recommend to 
 her mother. The truth is, Dumas's innocence is 
 worse than, say, Maupassant's, sophistication. To
 
 160 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 the author of "La Reine Margot" love, so called, 
 is all, the excuse, the justification, for everything. 
 Marriage ca n'existe pas; Dumas knew all about 
 it. He was married himself for a few months 
 at the king's urgent suggestion. Then he recom- 
 mended the lady to the ambassador at Florence 
 with a most polite note, and she disappeared from 
 his too flowery career. Therefore, Dumas begins 
 his love-stories where Scott's end, and the delicate 
 refinement, the pure womanly freedom of Jeannie 
 Deans and Diana Vernon, is missing in the French- 
 man's young ladies, who all either wish to be in a 
 nunnery or ought to be. 
 
 The comparison with Scott suggests another with 
 a greater than Scott; and like Scott, Dumas did not 
 object to being compared with Shakespeare, who, 
 by the way, has never been more nobly praised in a 
 brief sentence than in Dumas's saying that "he was 
 the greatest of all creators after God." There are 
 striking resemblances between the two writers. 
 Shakespeare began in poverty, lived among theatri- 
 cal people, made a fortune by the theatre. Only, 
 being a thrifty English bourgeois, he put the fortune 
 into his own pocket instead of into others'. Shake- 
 speare made a continuous show of English history 
 and bade the world attend it. Shakespeare begged, 
 borrowed, and stole from dead and living, so that 
 his contemporaries spoke of his
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 161 
 
 "Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide." 
 
 Doubtless Maquet and Gaillardet would have been 
 willing to apply the phrase to their celebrated col- 
 laborator. Thus far the comparison works well 
 enough. But Shakespeare had a style which was 
 beyond even that of "Marion Delorme." And then, 
 Shakespeare felt and thought as a man, not as a 
 child; his brain and his heart carried the weight of 
 the world. 
 
 What will be the future of Dumas'? Will his 
 work pass, as other novels of romantic adventure 
 have passed 1 ? Three hundred years ago idle women 
 and men read "Amadis de Gaul" and the like, 
 with passion. Says the waiting-woman in Massin- 
 ger's "Guardian": 
 
 In all the books of Amadis de Gaul 
 
 The Palmerins and that true Spanish story, 
 
 The Mirror of Knighthood, which I have read often, 
 
 Read feelingly, nay, more, I do believe in't, 
 
 My lady has no parallel. 
 
 Where are Amadis and the Palmerins now 4 ? Two 
 hundred years ago the same persons read with the 
 same passion the novels of Scudery and La Calpre- 
 nede. "At noon home," says Mr. Pepys, "where I 
 find my wife troubled still at my checking her last 
 night in the coach in her long stories out of 'Grand 
 Cyrus,' which she would tell, though nothing to the
 
 162 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 purpose, nor in any good manner." And hear Ma- 
 dame de Sevigne on "Cleopatre" : "The style of La 
 Calprenede is abominable in a thousand places : long 
 sentences in the full-blown, romantic fashion, ill- 
 chosen words I am perfectly aware of it. Yet it 
 holds me like glue. The beauty of the sentiments, 
 the violent passions, the great scale on which every- 
 thing takes place and the miraculous success of the 
 hero's redoubtable sword it carries me away, as if 
 I were a young girl." Le succes miraculeux de leur 
 redoutable epee; if one tried a thousand times, could 
 one express more precisely and concisely one's feel- 
 ings about "Les Trois Mousquetaires" *? Yet "Grand 
 Cyrus" is dead, and "Cleopatre" utterly forgotten. 
 No bright-eyed girl asks for them in any circulating 
 library any more. 
 
 Shall d'Artagnan, "dear d'Artagnan," as Steven- 
 son justly calls him, "I do not say that there is no 
 character so well-drawn in Shakespeare ; I do say that 
 there is none I love so wholly," d'Artagnan, whose 
 redoutable epee makes such delightful havoc among 
 the nameless canaille, whose more redoubtable wit 
 sets kings and queens and dukes and cardinals at 
 odds and brings them to peace again, shall d'Ar- 
 tagnan, too, die and be forgotten*? The thought is 
 enough to make one close "Le Vicomte de Brage- 
 lonne" in the middle and fall a-dreaming on the 
 flight of time and the changes of the world. And
 
 ALEXANDER DUMAS 163 
 
 one says to one's self that one would like to live two 
 or three centuries for many reasons, but not least, to 
 read stories so absorbing that they will make one in- 
 different to the adventures of d'Artagnan. 
 
 1908
 
 VII 
 
 THE NOVEL TWO THOUSAND YEARS 
 AGO
 
 VII 
 
 THE NOVEL TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 
 
 NOT quite two thousand, since we hardly 
 care to take account of Xenophon's 
 graceful Sunday-school book, "The Cyro- 
 psedia," nor of the Milesian fables, of which we 
 know little except that they were not Sunday-school 
 books. Plutarch tells us that an officer in the de- 
 feated army of Crassus had a valise stuffed with 
 these same fables, which greatly shocked his Parthian 
 conqueror; though even the grave biographer points 
 out a certain inconsistency in the Parthian's morals, 
 in view of his own domestic arrangements. 
 
 Neither are we much concerned with the dream- 
 ing philosophy of Plato's "Atlantis," nor with the 
 various travel-stories that have come to us in frag- 
 ments, nor with the Alexander legends which were 
 so popular in the Middle Ages. The "Satyricon" 
 of Petronius is more a series of sketches of manners 
 than a unified work; and even Apuleius's "Metamor- 
 phoses," full of grace and full of spirit, is less a com- 
 plete novel than a tissue of adventures after the 
 fashion of "Gil Bias." 
 
 167
 
 i68 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 There are, however, a half-dozen stories belonging 
 to the later period of Greek literature which curiously 
 anticipate certain types of modern fiction. It is char- 
 acteristic of these books that everything about them 
 is vague. We hardly know the authors' names; 
 nothing of their lives. We do not know the dates 
 of composition, nor which were imitations and which 
 originals. And the contents are vaguer still. Lovers 
 from far countries range through the known world, 
 joyously indifferent to history and chronology, in- 
 tent on their own affairs, and regardless of what 
 takes place about them. They might have told us 
 so much that we should like to know, and they do 
 not. This is the complaint of the learned Professor 
 Rohde, exhaled at German length in six hundred 
 closely-printed pages. Not to be compared with 
 modern novels, he says, no psychology, no picture 
 of real life at all; and when I read Professor 
 Meyer's pronouncement, that "Die Wahlverwand- 
 schaften" is the best of German romances, I am 
 obliged to confess that if that and "Wilhelm Mei- 
 ster" are the highest types of fiction, Chloe and 
 Chariclea may hide their heads at once. 
 
 But the Greek novels were not written for pro- 
 fessors. They were read in their own day by those 
 who read Scott and Dumas at present. And I greatly 
 fear "The Three Musketeers" would suit Professors 
 Rohde and Meyer no better than "Clitophon and
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 169 
 
 Leucippe." The Greek novels were written to amuse 
 and to enchant, not to instruct. Curiously enough, 
 I think we may infer almost certainly from their 
 general character that they were written, as most 
 novels are to-day, for women. And we must imag- 
 ine to ourselves a Greek lady, with no church fairs 
 and no woman's clubs to occupy her time, throwing 
 her whole soul into the strange adventures of Callir- 
 rhoe, and longing unutterably for a husband as brave, 
 as handsome, as devoted, as the much-enduring 
 Chsereas. Why should we quarrel with these stories 
 for what they are not 1 ? Let us put ourselves in the 
 place of their readers and inquire what those readers 
 found in them. 
 
 And first and everywhere and always there is love. 
 M. Anatole France charmingly misquotes Gremio 
 in "The Taming of the Shrew" as requiring of books 
 only "qu'ils soient bien relies et qtfils parlent 
 d'amour" The Greek romances may or may not be 
 beautifully bound, but assuredly they speak of love 
 and of nothing else. Psychologically, no : that is not 
 their way; but love in its tenderness, its grace, its 
 early and youthful pathos they often depict with ex- 
 traordinary charm. "For never yet was any one 
 born loveless, or will be, while beauty is, or eyes be- 
 hold. But may the gods spare me, even while I 
 write of others' woes," says one author. Anthia and 
 Abrocomas meet at last in the temple, after years of
 
 170 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 separation and torment and despair. "They knew 
 each other at once, such was the overwhelming long- 
 ing of their souls. And they embraced each other 
 again and again. And their knees sank under them, 
 in a tide of passions hardly to be borne joy, grief, 
 fear, the remembrance of things past, the agony and 
 doubt of things to come." 
 
 What is distinctive in these stories, as in Greek 
 literature generally, is the conception of love as a 
 visitation and scourge of God, not as a weakness to 
 be ashamed of, nor as a pretty sentiment to be 
 nursed and cherished. Sainte-Beuve, in his essay on 
 Theocritus, has admirably analysed the difference 
 between ancient and modern feeling in this matter. 
 Love to the Greek poet was a malady, a fierce af- 
 fliction; but the sense of its divine origin ennobled 
 the physical torment and made the passion of Medea 
 and Dido a strong blend of bodily and spiritual ec- 
 stasy. It was just the lack of this essential mingling 
 of soul and sense which Macaulay meant to indi- 
 cate when he said that Southey's heroines loved 
 "either like seraphim or like cattle." And the Greek 
 attitude has never been better summed up than in 
 Euripides' line. 
 
 " Ki?rpts yap 6v fopyTbv T\V iroXXi) pvy " 
 
 so finely paraphrased by Horace 
 
 "In me tota ruit Venus,"
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 171 
 
 and by Racine 
 
 "C'est Venus tout entiere a sa proie attachee." 
 
 Phaedra and Dido are doubtless a good way above 
 the heroines of our Greek novels; but the point of 
 view is the same. Love comes like a thunder-clap. 
 The heart is free, and the god envelops it and blasts 
 it all in a moment. As Juliet speaks ten words to 
 Romeo and droops and withers 
 
 "If he be married, 
 My grave is like to be my wedding bed," 
 
 so Callirrhoe sees Chsereas on her way to the temple 
 and is lost. "The maiden fell at the feet of the 
 goddess and kissed them, and said, 'Sweet lady, give 
 me to my husband, the man whom you have showed 
 me now.' ' And she went home and pined away, 
 and was not to be comforted, till they gave her 
 Chsereas. Then, "like a lamp that has burned low, 
 when you pour fresh oil on it," she "glowed and 
 gleamed again, in fresher and brighter and more per- 
 fect loveliness." 
 
 As with love, so with the beauty that enkindles it. 
 The heroines of modern novels are as beautiful as 
 language can make them, undoubtedly. But here 
 again the Greek attitude is different. It is not a 
 matter of hair and eyes and colour. There is very 
 little description in detail. It is the Greek feeling
 
 172 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 of something divine in beauty, an adoration of pure 
 lines and graceful bearing as something in them- 
 selves almost inseparable from grace and nobility 
 of soul. The impression given is quite as much of 
 a different sense in the beholder as of an ideal per- 
 fection in the thing beheld. 
 
 Note also that the mere physical beauty of the 
 hero counts almost as much as that of the heroine. 
 "When Abrocomas took his place amongst the young 
 men, although the aspect of the maidens was very 
 tempting, every one forgot them in gazing at him, and 
 the multitude, carried away by the sight of him, 
 cried out, 'How fair is Abrocomas fairer than ever 
 mortal was before, and the very image of a glorious 
 deity.' " Almost, not quite so long as the writer 
 is a man, even though a Greek. "Then Chariclea, 
 chaste and lovely, issued from the temple, and at 
 once we realised that Theagenes was surpassed, but 
 surpassed only by so much as it is natural for the 
 beauty of woman to overshadow the beauty of man." 
 
 Perhaps it is in regard to Callirrhoe, the heroine 
 of Chariton, that the public and general adoration 
 of beauty reaches its highest pitch. And if there is 
 something fantastic about it, there is also something 
 sincere and genuine, which testifies to a real basis of 
 human experience. Callirrhoe is summoned to the 
 court of the great king. As she approaches the 
 capital, a rival beauty comes out to meet her, but is
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 173 
 
 completely eclipsed. "All the people strained not 
 only their eyes, but their souls, one crowding be- 
 fore another, to get as near a view of her as possible. 
 For the countenance and the glory of Callirrhoe 
 possessed the eyes of all, as in the depth of night 
 the sudden flashing of a splendid star. The barba- 
 rians, overcome, bowed down and worshipped her, 
 and no one even seemed aware that her rival was 
 present." A more humorous phase of the same thing 
 is the naive remark of Callirrhoe herself, when start- 
 ing on one of her varied wanderings, "I don't care 
 so much about the length of the journey, but I'm 
 afraid that somebody over there may find me lovely 
 too." 
 
 If the heroes of these stories excel the modern ar- 
 ticle in physical beauty, it is by no means the same 
 in other respects. Our friends, the German profes- 
 sors, are very indignant with the Greek hero for his 
 selfishness and his pusillanimity. They forget that 
 he was a Greek, not a German or Englishman. The 
 heroes of the Iliad fight like tigers, but they also run 
 away, and feel no shame for it. They brag and 
 scold and gibe and weep and groan. So do Thea- 
 genes and Chsereas. The latter is advised to forget 
 the sight of his love. "He did not like it, though 
 he did his best, and the tears ran down his cheeks." 
 Whenever this same gentleman meets trouble, he 
 has immediate recourse to suicide, and has to be
 
 174 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 either cut down or pulled out by some accommodat- 
 ing friend. Hysmine is thrown overboard by pirates, 
 and her lover stands by and sees it done. Clitophon 
 loses Leucippe: "Six months had now passed, and 
 the greater part of my grief had disappeared." A 
 little later he is caught by a rival and beaten: "I 
 was much puzzled, having no idea who the man was 
 nor why he was beating me; but I suspected some- 
 thing was wrong and therefore made no effort to re- 
 sist, though of course I might have done so. When 
 he was tired of beating and I of philosophising, I 
 got up and said, 'Who are you, anyhow, and what 
 are you beating me for*?' ' Imagine a hero of Mr. 
 Winston Churchill behaving after this fashion, or 
 even a hero of Scott ! . 
 
 Yet the Greek heroes come out strong at times, 
 with an inconsistency which, if unheroic, is not 
 wholly unhuman. After all his weeping and mourn- 
 ing, Theagenes baits a bull single-handed and has a 
 jollily impossible wrestling bout with a "bony 
 prizer," whom Orlando would have hesitated to 
 face. Chsereas, throwing off his suicidal melan- 
 cholia, regains his bride by leading a rebel army, be- 
 sieging cities, and smashing the navy of Persia. 
 Above all, the most striking merit of these romantic 
 lovers is their constancy, which a modern novelist 
 would naturally assume, but would hardly portray 
 in such vivid fashion. Every one of them sticks to
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 175 
 
 his love, in spite of the most enticing and fascinating 
 blandishments, and even of stripes and torture. This 
 trait is easy to ridicule, but it is really most signifi- 
 cant. In the first place, it confirms our suspicion 
 that these stories were largely written for women; 
 and, even more than that, it seems oddly out of 
 keeping with our usual ideas of pagan morality. 
 
 The heroines are worth constancy, however; and 
 in making them distinctly superior to their lovers, 
 the Greek novelists have Shakespeare, at any rate, 
 if not human nature, on their side. Chariclea, An- 
 thia, and Callirrhoe are far more than beautiful, 
 they are truly charming simple, tender, affection- 
 ate, brave, self-forgetful. They will lie occasionally, 
 for the good of the cause. What Greek would not*? 
 But otherwise they are quite faultless, and not of- 
 fensively so. For spirit, can you beat Chariclea, 
 shooting arrow after arrow, like Artemis, or a Hard- 
 ing Davis girl with a revolver, at the pirates who 
 are fighting for the possession of her and her lover? 
 And for tenderness, how about Anthia, who implores 
 Abrocomas to save them both from cruel persecu- 
 tion by accepting the hand of the pirate's daughter? 
 "I know you love me more than the whole world, 
 but I beseech you, O sovereign of my soul, not to 
 destroy yourself by braving the wrath of the bar- 
 barian ! Yield to the tyrant's desire, and I will not 
 come between you, but will kill myself. Only, I
 
 176 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 beg of you, bury me, and love me a little, and do not 
 forget Anthia !" 
 
 The most curious difference between these an- 
 cient heroines and their modern counterparts is that 
 Callirrhoe and Anthia, at least, are married when 
 the story begins. Therefore, instead of the old busi- 
 ness of the lover seeking his beloved, we have hus- 
 band and wife, separated, and faithful, and longing 
 for each other unspeakably, and re-united at last. 
 And that seems to give a different and peculiar charm 
 and tender piquancy, which make one wonder that 
 modern novelists have not been tempted by the theme 
 more often. Callirrhoe, sold into slavery, and about 
 to become a mother, hesitates between death and 
 second marriage, but finally decides on the latter al- 
 ternative, as the only means of saving her child. Her 
 prayer to Aphrodite seems to me singularly touching 
 in its absolute simplicity: "'I beseech thee, sweet 
 lady, be kinder to me in the future. I have suffered 
 enough. I have died and come to life again. I have 
 been afflicted by pirates and more afflicted in escap- 
 ing from them. And. now I have been sold into 
 slavery, and am to enter upon a second marriage, 
 which is to me the worst evil of all. Yet, in re- 
 turn for this. I ask only one favour of thee, and 
 through thee, of all the other gods : spare my child.' 
 She would have said more, but her tears would not 
 permit."
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 177 
 
 Other characters besides the heroes and heroines 
 there are in the Greek novels practically none 
 shadows, puppets, figures of circumstance, playing 
 their part in the action, nothing more. 
 
 Likewise there is little local colour no description 
 of frocks or furniture or shop windows or afternoon 
 teas, such as French realists would revel in and 
 German doctors gloat over. Heliodorus hangs up 
 his narrative for a book to tell us about some tedious 
 Egyptian ceremonial ; but he does it awkwardly, and 
 hurries back as soon as possible to the rushing stream 
 of adventure which is his proper business. 
 
 Ah, the adventure! For quantity nobody has 
 piled it up before or since like these Greeks. The 
 editor of a popular magazine for young people is 
 reported to have said to the late Elijah Kellogg, 
 "Why don't you write more for us?" And Kellogg 
 answered, "It's too wasteful. You want incident 
 enough in one short story to last me through six 
 volumes." But the most popular editor would be 
 satisfied here. With a little good-will you may find 
 everything that has been invented and re-invented 
 by all the novelists of yesterday and to-day. Read 
 the opening of "Theagenes and Chariclea." It 
 might have served as well for G. P. R. James : "The 
 morn was just breaking, and the sunlight had tipped 
 the mountain-tops, when a band of armed robbers 
 paused upon the summit of a hill which overlooks
 
 178 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 one of the branches of the Nile Delta. First their 
 glances swept the sea, but in the piratical line they 
 found no encouragement. Then they gazed along 
 the coast, and this is what they saw." 
 
 Long ago it was pointed out that Juliet's drinking 
 of the potion and awaking in the tomb had been 
 anticipated by Anthia, the heroine of Xenophon of 
 Ephesus, who in his turn probably borrowed from 
 some one else. So the marriage of Chsereas and Cal- 
 lirrhoe reconciles two houses who have been in bit- 
 ter feud. And, again, Chsereas is driven mad with 
 jealousy by Callirrhoe's maid, who personates her 
 mistress, as in "Much Ado About Nothing." 
 
 These are mere trifles, however, in the furious 
 tide of incident, which sweeps the reader along from 
 one breathless page to another. Earthquakes and 
 cataclysms, perils by sea, perils by land, murder, 
 threat of murder, and thrilling rescue from murder, 
 separations and recognitions, ordeals by fire and 
 water, strawberry marks on the left arm nothing 
 is wanting. Anthia is twice buried alive, the second 
 time with two starved dogs for company; but she 
 escapes. Don't you wonder how? Chariclea is to 
 be burned, but the flames will not touch her. Abro- 
 comas is crucified, but a fierce wind blows him, cross 
 and all, into the river. He is fished out and a fire 
 is kindled around him, but the river rises and ex- 
 tinguishes the blaze. Leucippe has her entrails torn
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 179 
 
 out before her lover's eyes, but she re-appears, cheer- 
 ful as ever. Later her head is cut off (also in her 
 lover's sight) but, like the heroine of Sidney's "Ar- 
 cadia" after a similar experience, she re-appears once 
 more. "O Leucippe, Leucippe," cries the lover, not 
 unnaturally somewhat discouraged, "you have died 
 on me so very, very often!" It reminds one of the 
 Irish maid who exclaimed on the occasion of her 
 mistress's third widowhood, "That poor lady's hus- 
 band has died again." 
 
 Then there are the pirates: other diversions may 
 fail, but the pirates are with us always. You may 
 know them by their terrible aspect, and especially 
 by their long hair. If Mr. Howard Pyle would only 
 draw a few, with haggard eyes, and spots of gore, 
 and always with that long hair! I commend this 
 remark of Heliodorus to Mr. Pyle's particular at- 
 tention: "These fellows do everything they can 
 to appear blood-curdling. Above all, they let their 
 hair grow down over their eyes and far on to their 
 shoulders, knowing well that long hair makes lovers 
 more lovely, but pirates more awful." Such a gor- 
 geous fight as begins "Theagenes and Chariclea," 
 when the pirates divide into two parties and kill 
 each other, every last man, while the hero and he- 
 roine take a hand at convenient intervals and other- 
 wise placidly await the result. Chassang complains 
 that these are not real pirates, but the comic opera
 
 i8o A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 variety. Bless his professorial heart ! Does he sup- 
 pose the readers of these stories wanted real pirates'? 
 "that would hang us, every mother's son." They 
 must roar, but they must roar gently as any suck- 
 ing dove, so as not to affright the duchess and the 
 ladies. 
 
 All this is, of course, very primitive, very crude, 
 inartistic, and overloaded. Yet sometimes it moves 
 you. "So long as the human nerves are what they 
 are, so long will things like the sounding of the 
 horn, in the famous fifth act of 'Hernani,' produce 
 a thrill hi us," says Matthew Arnold. I was glad 
 myself that Leucippe came to life again. So with 
 the repetition of the same incidents. The German 
 critics complain bitterly of this though how could 
 it have been helped, when the first writer had used 
 everything that exists in nature? But the point is 
 that readers like what they know witness the ex- 
 traordinary limitation of our modern historical nov- 
 els to the Stuarts and Valois. Sarcey's two rules 
 apply to novels as to lecturing: be sure you make 
 your material your own, and never tell your audience 
 anything they did not know before. Again, Rohde 
 grumbles because all these adventures are external 
 no psychology, no inward analysis at all. But in- 
 ward analysis was not what readers wanted or 
 want to-day. To simple minds violent incidents are 
 the natural stuff of fiction. To simple minds earth-
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 181 
 
 quakes, shipwreck, pirates, lust, and bloody murder 
 are beautifully simple; what is complex and labo- 
 rious and subtly difficult is the adventures of the soul. 
 And he who cannot render his mind simple, for a few 
 hours at least, is not to be envied, but pitied. 
 
 But it is their possible reality which distinguishes 
 the adventures of the Greek novels most of all from 
 the modern. Our pirates exist only in the hirsute 
 and rubicund imagination of Mr. Howard Pyle. But 
 to the Greek lady a pirate was a splendid actual 
 shudder, who might at any moment tear her away 
 and put her through all the torments endured by 
 Chariclea or Callirrhoe. To understand how literal 
 these violent incidents were we have only to turn 
 from popular fiction to the real experience of St. 
 Paul, in a period little earlier than that of our ro- 
 mances: "Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was 
 I stoned, thrice have I suffered shipwreck, a day and 
 a night have I been in the deep. In journeyings of- 
 ten, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
 perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the 
 heathen, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilder- 
 ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false 
 brethren." It would be difficult to make a more con- 
 cise catalogue of the adventures by which the luck- 
 less Greek novelists excite the wrath of the learned 
 Rohde. 
 
 There is so little mystery left in the world nowa-
 
 182 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 days that we do not understand what the word 
 meant two thousand years ago. Now the unknown is 
 only a spot about the poles, and perhaps a bit of 
 Asia or Africa even that tramped over by presi- 
 dents with caravans and cameras. Then it was all 
 unknown. What strange surprises, what sudden 
 thrills, what wonders, what miracles awaited the 
 imagination, as soon as it strayed from the accus- 
 tomed nook! And as with the material world, so. 
 with the spiritual: nothing of the dry certainty of 
 modern thought, indifferent to the casual interplay 
 of winds and tides, measuring, weighing, balancing 
 even the brute forces that overwhelm it. With those 
 old people there was always the sense of the un- 
 known, of dim powers, of hidden personalities, some 
 loving, some hating, some mocking, all to be courted 
 and appeased. The presence of these things is con- 
 stantly felt in the Greek novels; and while it is 
 doubtless, in part, as scornful critics suggest, rhe- 
 torical and literary, it also unquestionably reaches 
 down into genuine depths of spiritual disturbance 
 and dismay. The long picaresque narrative of Apu- 
 leius is a mine of supernatural matter: witchcraft, 
 spells, transformations, oracles, and dreams. 
 Dreams especially are the stock-in-trade of the Greek 
 romancers : young and old hearken after them as ea- 
 gerly as Hebrew prophets. And omens and oracles
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 183 
 
 now and then there is a sceptical gibe, but the 
 usual tone is to interpret and believe. 
 
 And the land which above all others abounds in 
 such things is the paradise of all the novelists, Egypt. 
 They may start their characters in Greece, or Sicily, 
 or Syria: but somehow or other Egypt always gets 
 hold of them at last. "Tell a story about Egypt 
 and all Greece is agog at once," says Heliod- 
 orus. Obviously because of the contrast. Greece 
 was clear, bright-eyed, simple, living in the present : 
 Egypt was always dreaming of the past, and forgot- 
 ten glory, and the dead. It is properly in Egypt that 
 this same Heliodorus lays the grimmest of all his 
 inventions that of the old woman calling her dead 
 son to life by magic, that he may tell her of his 
 brother's fate. Heine, as quick as any one who ever 
 lived to seize these contradictions, has set Greece and 
 Egypt over against each other in his discussion of 
 Shakespeare's Cleopatra. "You know Egypt, that 
 mysterious Mizraim, that narrow Nile valley, which 
 looks like a coffin. In the tall bullrushes lurks the 
 crocodile, or the outcast child of revelation. Rock 
 temples, with colossal pillars, and sacred monsters 
 leaning against them, high-coloured hideously. In 
 the portal nods a priest of Isis, his cap all hiero- 
 glyphs. In lofty villas mummies dream away the 
 world, screened by their gold shrouds from the 
 swarming armies of corruption. Like dumb thoughts
 
 184 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 rise the thin obelisks and the plump pyramids. In 
 the background soar the moon mountains of Ethio- 
 pia, hiding forever the sources of the Nile. Every- 
 where death, stone, and mystery. And over this 
 land the lovely Greek Cleopatra is queen." 
 
 Yet superstition and religion are never far apart. 
 And the spiritual attitude of the Greek heroes and 
 heroines is not wholly abject, but sometimes has a 
 very pure and tender charm. It has been urged, in- 
 deed, and with some reason, that their prayers are 
 too often addressed to Chance, Tyche, in Malvolio's 
 phrase, "Fortune, all is Fortune." But even the 
 austere ^Eschylus acknowledges the same wayward 
 deity, "Fortune, our saviour." Souls naturally de- 
 vout may revere the spiritual reality under very dif- 
 ferent names, and the prayers of Chariclea and Cal- 
 lirrhoe have genuine fervour, though offered to gods 
 who do not seem to us very godlike. 
 
 It is with morals as with religion. I have been 
 surprised to find in these stories, or some of them, a 
 tone quite different from what one might expect. 
 The morals of Greek romance are not in every way 
 our morals, especially in the light regard for truth 
 which I have already spoken of as troubling us in 
 otherwise most charming heroines. Nevertheless, 
 there is a singular sweetness of tone, a kindliness, an 
 element of human sympathy; there is a high esti- 
 mate of virtue and goodness, even where they are
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 185 
 
 not habitually practised: most remarkable of all, 
 there is an entire seriousness in the treatment of 
 moral questions, an almost nai've sincerity, nothing 
 whatever, absolutely nothing, of the leer of Ariosto 
 and Boccaccio, or even of the riotous coarseness of 
 Chaucer and Rabelais. This delicacy of tone is per- 
 haps the most peculiar thing about the Greek novels 
 and is especially what convinces me that they must 
 have been written for women. 
 
 There is a difference, however, and the novels may 
 be divided quite sharply into two groups. Heliodo- 
 rus, Xenophon, and Chariton deserve the compli- 
 ments I have just been paying them. They evidently 
 write with a moral instinct, though there are trifling 
 inconsistencies of detail. Artistically, also, they 
 stand together. Their object is to tell a story that 
 shall thrill and stir and startle. Heliodorus does it 
 with a better grace; the others do it more naturally. 
 But none of the three cares for much besides adven- 
 ture, incident, sentiment, and virtue properly re- 
 warded. 
 
 The other group, consisting of Longus and Tatius, 
 is more exceptionable from a moral point of view, 
 but as literature much more interesting. Tatius's 
 morals are hardly suited for discussion, though even 
 with him there is no cynicism, merely an attitude 
 totally different from ours. But as a writer he is
 
 186 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 of distinct importance, a true lover of words, and a 
 consummate master of them. 
 
 Even more important is Longus, with his "Daph- 
 nis and Chloe"; and here we have the only one of 
 these Greek stories that really deserves very serious 
 consideration as matter of art. The moral difficulty 
 does indeed again confront us. But on re-reading 
 the book, I feel more than ever that there is neither 
 impurity nor corruption, simply Greek nudity, a 
 nudity not possible in modern English, but in no 
 way ugly or offensive with the ugliness and offen- 
 siveness of so many French plays and novels. 
 
 The little romance is really a poem, the last flower- 
 ing of old Greek beauty, the last relic of that pastoral 
 grace which holds us enthralled in the pages of The- 
 ocritus. Even as a story it is on a different plane 
 from Heliodorus and the rest. There is the same 
 use of incident, pirates, etc.; but the incident is 
 handled with more of artistic restraint, the strange 
 happenings have more of divine fitness and poetic 
 beauty as when Chloe, by merely playing on the 
 pipe of Pan, makes all the stolen herd crowd to the 
 side of the pirate ship, overturn it, and swim safe to 
 shore with the triumphant Daphnis. 
 
 And the magic of the style is much greater than 
 that of the story. Rhetoric, say the critics, and con- 
 trast the sweet naivete of the old French translation 
 by Amyot. No one need deny the merits of Amyot,
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 187 
 
 or maintain that the original is naive in exactly 
 Amyot's fashion. He wrote at the beginning of a 
 literature, Longus at the end. But a great writer is 
 a great writer always. The simplicity of "Hermann 
 und Dorothea" is a conscious simplicity. The sim- 
 plicity of Wordsworth is a conscious simplicity. 
 What can be more exquisite than the simplicity of 
 M. Anatole France 1 ? Yet we know that it is the 
 studied result of the most subtle literary art. So 
 Longus was cunning in every resource of rhythm and 
 diction, but he used these resources with taste and 
 skill and delicacy to produce something very near a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 Goethe was an enthusiast for the book. "The 
 whole work," he said to Eckermann, "shows art 
 and refined cultivation of the highest order ... a 
 taste, a sense of perfection, a delicacy of sentiment 
 comparable to the very best. . . . One would do 
 well to re-read it every year to renew the impression 
 in all its freshness." What charmed Goethe most 
 was, of course, the pastoral grace of the story, its 
 exquisitely pure and simple lines. "The landscape," 
 he cried, "the landscape ! It is sketched with a few 
 strokes ... so that behind the figures we see clearly 
 the meadows, the river, the low woods, and far away 
 the infinite sea. No trace of dark days, or clouds, 
 or raw, dank mist; always a sky of purest blue, an 
 air deliciously soft, and the earth so dry and sweet
 
 i88 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 that you could lie on it all day without a garment." 
 Precisely this purity of outline makes Longus dif- 
 ficult to translate, and without the gift of Amyot per- 
 haps it is rash to attempt such a thing; yet we must 
 have one passage at least. Chloe, hardly more than 
 a child, is touched by love for Daphnis, and does 
 not understand it. " 'I am ill at ease,' she said; 'yet 
 I know not what ails me. I suffer, but no cause of 
 suffering appears. I am troubled, yet no one of 
 my lambs has gone astray. . . . How many thorns 
 have pricked me and I have not wept? How many 
 bees have stung me, yet I have eaten gaily after- 
 wards? But this bites my heart more cruelly than 
 thorns or bees. Daphnis is fair; so are the flowers. 
 His pipe sounds sweetly; so do the nightingales. But 
 neither nightingales nor flowers are anything to me. 
 Would I were a pipe, that he might breathe upon me ! 
 Would I were a lamb, that he might shepherd me! 
 ... I am perishing, sweet nymphs, and not even 
 you will save the maiden you have reared! Who 
 will honour you when I have gone away? Who will 
 feed my wretched lambs'? Who will tend my twit- 
 tering cicada? Him I captured with much labour, 
 that he might sing me to sleep sitting in the shadow 
 of your cave. Now I lie awake for Daphnis, and 
 the poor captive twitters in vain !' ' 
 
 But it should be read in the original, not in my 
 translation, nor even in Amyot's. So only can one
 
 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO 189 
 
 get the charm of it, that Greek something which is 
 lost now, and which neither the mystery of the 
 Middle Age, nor the splendour of the Renaissance, 
 nor the human sympathy of the nineteenth century 
 can quite replace that something which Goethe 
 meant when he said, "The art of all other times and 
 nations requires some allowance : to the Greeks alone 
 are we always debtor." No one has more delicately 
 analysed this charm of Greek life and work than 
 Sainte-Beuve, in his delightful essay on Theocritus, 
 from which I have already quoted. In a few words 
 of translation and comment he sums up the whole 
 matter: " Thus let me sit and sing, having thee 
 in my arms, love in my arms, beholding our two 
 herds mingled together, and far below us the blue, 
 divine Sicilian sea.' That is what I call the Raphsel 
 in Theocritus : three simple lines, and the blue hori- 
 zon crowning all." 
 
 1909
 
 VIII 
 A GREAT ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER
 
 VIII 
 
 A GREAT ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 
 
 ENGLAND has no great portrait-painter of 
 the Renaissance to put beside those of Italy, 
 of the Low Countries, and of Spain. If her 
 brave men and fair women of the first part of the 
 seventeenth century still live on canvas, it is mainly 
 thanks to a foreign artist who found early that the 
 English could pay, though they could not paint. 
 They could also use the pen, if not the brush. 
 Neither Sir Joshua nor Gainsborough later, not even 
 Vandyke or Velasquez or Titian, could have painted 
 English gentlemen more grandly or more imperish- 
 ably than did Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. 
 
 He has painted himself at full length, at very 
 great length, with a power and an insight not un- 
 comparable to the best in the Uffizi chamber of self- 
 portraiture. Side by side with his great "History" 
 runs the slighter current of his own "Life," slighter, 
 but clearer, gayer, more vivid, with less ample curve, 
 less solid majesty, as a plain prose outline by a fin- 
 ished poem. 
 
 He was a man who mingled early with great 
 193
 
 194 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 people and great things and liked to look upward; 
 for he "never knew one man, of what condition so- 
 ever, arrive to any degree of reputation in the world 
 who made choice of or delighted in the company or 
 conversation of those who were inferior or in their 
 parts not much superior to himself." It was thus 
 that he sought the society of Selden, of Cowley, of 
 Carew, of Ben Jonson, who knew the human heart 
 and perhaps taught his young friend some of its se- 
 crets. Of Selden, Hyde says, simply (writing as 
 usual in the third person), "He always thought 
 himself best when he was with him." 
 
 Then there came days of trouble in England, and 
 Hyde was in the thick of it, so that no man ever 
 lived who had more chance of seeing good sides of 
 human nature, bad sides, all sides, than he. He not 
 only saw, but acted with hand and brain. He loved 
 freedom, but he also loved old, sacred things, and 
 stood for the Crown, if not always for the King. 
 His masters made him Lord Chancellor, and listened 
 to his advice, and sometimes heeded it, and some- 
 times not, and perhaps might not have profited even 
 if they had. 
 
 Then came ruin and despair and exile. And Hyde 
 was often wise and always faithful. With the Res- 
 toration he grew very great and was honest at heart 
 and strove against the overwhelming stream of cor- 
 ruption about him perhaps as effectually as one man
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 195 
 
 could. "Had it not been for the firmness of the Earl 
 of Clarendon the liberties of the nation had been 
 delivered up," says the blunt Burnet. And Pepys: 
 "I am mad in love with my Lord Chancellor, for he 
 do comprehend and speak out well and with the 
 greatest easiness and authority that ever I saw man 
 in my life. . . . He spoke indeed excellent well; 
 ... his manner and freedom of doing it as if he 
 played with it, and was informing only all the rest 
 of the company, was mighty pretty." 
 
 Here we begin to detect the weaknesses, as, indeed, 
 they may be detected in the man's own account of 
 himself. He was haughty and unapproachable, "a 
 man not to be advised, thinking himself too high to 
 be counselled," says Pepys again. Worse still, dam- 
 nably worse, to Charles the Second's thinking, he 
 was tedious. Says Burnet: "He was also all that 
 while giving the King many wise and good advices, 
 but he did it too much with the air of a governor 
 or a lawyer." What the King felt about it Claren- 
 don himself lets us see, involuntarily, when he writes 
 of the Stuarts in general: "They did not love the 
 conversation of men of many more years than them- 
 selves, and thought age not only troublesome but im- 
 pertinent." And I say to myself Polonius, oh, Polo- 
 nius, for all the world! Polonius was wise and 
 shrewd and really full of good counsel. But he was 
 tedious. And that other great painter, Saint-Simon,
 
 196 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 also played a weary Polonius to the mad Duke of 
 Orleans. 
 
 So the King's patience gave out at last. That of 
 others had given out long before. The Chancellor 
 made a good fight, recovering himself again and 
 again when no recovery seemed possible. But his 
 enemies were too many for him, and succeeded in 
 driving him once more into exile, from which he 
 never returned. He bore himself bravely, which was 
 well. And prided himself on it, which was perhaps 
 less well. He himself says : "The truth is the Chan- 
 cellor was guilty of that himself which he had used 
 to accuse Archbishop Laud of, that he was too proud 
 of a good conscience." Nevertheless, he confesses 
 with charming frankness the very one of his faults 
 which was most treasured against him, his love of 
 grandeur, display, extravagance; and admits the 
 folly of his huge new mansion, which overshadowed 
 the King's: "He could not reflect upon any one 
 thing he had done of which he was so much ashamed 
 as he was of the vast expense he had made in the 
 building of his house." He "could not find any 
 house to live in except he built one himself (to which 
 he was naturally too much inclined)." And in ex- 
 ile "he remained still so much infected with the de- 
 light he had enjoyed" that he was unwilling to sell. 
 Meantime, thus driven back upon himself, he gave 
 his idle hours to building an even grander mansion
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 197 
 
 in which we can wander to-day and see a richer col- 
 lection of portraits than that which made Clarendon 
 House the envy of all contemporaries. 
 
 The History of the Rebellion, as mere writing, 
 leaves much to be desired. It is not readable. The 
 course of the story is clogged with ill-digested ma- 
 terial, letters, petitions, despatches, statutes. Toward 
 the end these diminish in number and the action be- 
 comes more closely knit and vigorous. There are in 
 the later volumes many bits of swift and vivid nar- 
 rative, notably the admirable account of Charles 
 the Second's escape after the battle of Worcester. 
 Still, to make any continuous and steady progress 
 in the book requires a reader of patience and perse- 
 verance. Even in the great battle-pieces the his- 
 torian is by no means at his best. They are con- 
 fused, slow, lacking intense and salient situations. 
 Now and then a gorgeous high light strikes a fair 
 head or a glittering cuirass, but the general course of 
 things is lost in smoke. 
 
 For Clarendon has not only the Elizabethan cum- 
 brousness in the conduct of his story, he has the 
 Elizabethan inarticulateness. He may have known 
 Pryden, if he condescended to look down so far. 
 He knew nothing of that inimitable march of com- 
 mon prose which Dryden learned from French clarity 
 and native wit. Clarendon has often Milton's 
 grandeur. He also has too often Milton's heaviness
 
 198 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 and a trailing incoherence outdoing Milton's. He 
 himself accuses Selden of "a little undervaluing 
 the beauty of style and too much propensity to the 
 language of antiquity." But to eyes of the twentieth 
 century his own writing seems liable to the same 
 accusation. He has sentences of a singular, haunting 
 grace and beauty: "He had no ambition of title 
 or office or preferment, but only to be kindly looked 
 upon and kindly spoken to and quietly to enjoy his 
 own fortune." He has many others which an Ameri- 
 can school-boy would be ashamed of, like this wan- 
 dering concatenation of relatives : "The Prince left 
 a strong garrison there that brought almost all that 
 whole country into contribution, which was a great 
 enlargement to the King's quarters, which now, with- 
 out interruption, extended from Oxford to Wor- 
 cester, which important city, with the other of Here- 
 ford and those counties, had before been quitted by 
 the rebels." It may be said that such faults should 
 be overlooked in a great writer, but it is precisely be- 
 cause of them that the modern general reader shuns 
 Clarendon and knows nothing of him. 
 
 In his political and philosophical view of human 
 affairs at large Clarendon is distinctly a moderate, 
 even a liberal. He prefers the old constitution and 
 traditions of England. He has no love for the ex- 
 treme vagaries of Puritans in religion or of republi- 
 cans in matters of state. Yet no one appreciates
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 199 
 
 more clearly then he the errors and excesses of Stuart 
 absolutism, even before the Restoration: "I pray 
 God the almighty justice be not angry with and 
 weary of the government of kings and princes, for 
 it is a strange declension monarchical government is 
 fallen to, in the opinion of the common people within 
 these late years." 
 
 It is not, however, with Clarendon's attitude 
 toward life in general that we are here concerned, 
 but with his portrayal of men and women, of the 
 human heart. Though we employ to some extent the 
 phraseology of painting, it is essential to realise the 
 difference between the two methods of representa- 
 tion which Lessing long ago discussed so fruitfully. 
 Lines and colours give us at once the individual face. 
 This words can never do. You may analyse fea- 
 tures, you may dissect expressions, you may pile de- 
 tail upon detail. But the more you elaborate, the 
 further you get from unity of effect. The more you 
 charge memory with particular outlines, the less you 
 succeed in producing a complete, definite, permanent 
 image. "The description of a face is a needless 
 thing, as it never conveys a true idea," says Lady 
 Mary Montagu, curtly, but in the main justly. No. 
 The art of the word painter is suggestion. Take, in 
 a little different field, the line of Keats, 
 
 "Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves."
 
 200 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 The landscape artist can render the violets peeping 
 from their leafy covert with infinite delicacy and 
 grace. What he can never render, except as he finds 
 a willing spirit to interpret, is the poet's comment, 
 the world of reflection and emotion contained in the 
 epithet, "fast-fading." So with the portrayal of 
 men. The cunning artist who has only words at 
 his disposal will not delay long in trying to convey 
 exactness and completeness of lineament. He will 
 strike out some quick touch of feeling, some hint of 
 passion, some profound association of thought, or 
 achievement, or desire. This will not always be con- 
 fined to the spiritual world. It may be intensely 
 physical. But the effect will be an effect of sug- 
 gestion, not of reproduction. That is the essential 
 point. Thus Shakespeare gives Cassius "a lean and 
 hungry look," and Milton's Satan appears not "less 
 than archangel ruined and the excess of glory ob- 
 scured." Thus Tacitus depicts Otho "stretching out 
 kind hands, flattering the mob, flinging kisses, doing 
 all things like a slave that he might rule all things." 
 Thus Saint-Simon strikes off one of his minor figures, 
 tumbling body and soul together in passionate hurly- 
 burly: "She was starched, made up, always em- 
 barrassed, a wit scarce natural, an affected devotion, 
 full of outwardness and odd fashions ; in two words, 
 nothing amiable, nothing sociable, nothing natural; 
 tall, straight, an air which wished to impose, yet to
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 201 
 
 be gentle; austere and distinctly verging on the bit- 
 ter-sweet. No one could get on with her, and she 
 could get on with nothing and nobody. She was 
 charmed to have done with it all and go, and no one 
 had the slightest desire to detain her." Whoever 
 reads Clarendon faithfully will see that in this art 
 of suggestion, of stimulating the imagination, he is 
 one of the richest, the mightiest, the most fruitful of 
 all the great masters of words. 
 
 The chief danger which besets the painter of soul 
 is rhetoric. Words are his instruments. He must 
 keep them bright and polished, must get from them 
 all their resources of music and power, study them, 
 profit by them always with fertile variety and end- 
 less inspiration. But they must be his servants, not 
 his masters. He must make all this use of them by 
 instinct, as it were; for his eyes, his thoughts, his 
 whole heart, must be always on his subject. He must 
 be penetrated by it, wrapt in it ; it must speak right 
 through him and dominate all his powers of ex- 
 pression in instinctive service. The instant we feel 
 that he is thinking more of his effects than of his 
 characters, that tricks of speech are more to him 
 than secrets of soul, that instant we lose our confi- 
 dence. He may amuse, he will rarely inspire. 
 
 Of course every writer has his rhetorical moments. 
 There are turns in Tacitus, turns in Saint-Simon, that 
 one could wish away. When Clarendon says of the
 
 202 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Earl of Arundel that "he resorted sometimes to the 
 court because there only was a greater man than 
 himself, and went thither the seldomer because there 
 was a greater man than himself," we feel that he is 
 even more anxious to show Clarendon's cleverness 
 than Arundel's vanity. But in the really great 
 soul-painters these slips are rare, because their pas- 
 sion for human truth engrosses them beyond any- 
 thing else. In lesser men the passion for human 
 truth is a less serious matter. Macaulay's "History 
 of England" is as rapid, as brilliant, as absorbing as 
 a well-constructed drama. If only one could rid 
 one's self of the impression that one is watching a 
 clever variety actor doing tricks ! 
 
 What interests' Clarendon is not tricks, but men. 
 To be sure, with him as with Saint-Simon the gift 
 lies quite as much in imaginative portrayal as in 
 moral insight. It is the new word, the old words 
 used new ways, the significant touch, the illuminat- 
 ing flash. But the difference from Macaulay is 
 simply that the other two think of the subject first, 
 of the word only second, if at all. 
 
 Nor do I wish to imply that Clarendon's insight 
 is less than his imagination. He could not have 
 painted if he had not seen. The fine secrets, the 
 deeper places of the human heart, are open to him. 
 Gardiner refers to "his usual habit of blundering," 
 and altogether treats him with a good deal of con-
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 203 
 
 tempt as a rather pompous, rather conventional, 
 rather timid, and eminently legal sort of personage. 
 Warburton, Clarendon's earliest commentator, speaks 
 differently: "In the knowledge of human nature 
 (the noblest qualification of the historian) this great 
 author excels all the Greek and Latin historians put 
 together." This is strong language, but the "His- 
 tory" and "Life" go far to justify it. Personally 
 Clarendon had his foibles (Saint-Simon even more 
 so), but I think most of us had rather blunder im- 
 mortally with him than be mortally accurate and 
 commonplace with the industrious Gardiner. 
 
 Although Clarendon does his work always with 
 conscientious earnestness, this does not mean that 
 he puts no humour into it. Like Saint-Simon, he 
 saw the oddities, the farcical contrasts between hu- 
 man infirmity and human greatness. Like Saint- 
 Simon, he expressed them with an intense, incisive 
 vigour which makes us sigh even as we smile, or, if 
 you prefer, the other way about. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, his humour, like Pepys's, is unintentional, as 
 when he speaks of "Colonel d'Ews, a young man of 
 notable courage and vivacity, who had his leg shot 
 off by a cannon bullet, of which he speedily and 
 very cheerfully died." More often he smiles him- 
 self and lets the reader see that he does, though 
 briefly and with compressed lip, as befits a chancellor 
 and one weighted with the charge of state affairs as
 
 204 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "Silent smiles, the gravity of mirth," 
 
 a poet of that day calls them. Now it is a dry com- 
 ment on some solemn scene, like that on Blake's fu- 
 neral, recalling Voltaire's remark that Admiral Byng 
 was shot pour encourager les autres: "He wanted no 
 pomp of funeral when he was dead, Cromwell caus- 
 ing him to be brought up by land to London in all the 
 state that could be ; and, according to the method of 
 that time, to encourage his officers to be killed, that 
 they might be pompously buried, he was, with all the 
 solemnity possible, and at the charge of the public, 
 interred in Harry the Seventh's chapel, among the 
 monuments of the kings." Now it is a witty, if 
 cynical, epigram, dissecting the heart or brain of 
 some great personage, as of the Earl of Arundel: 
 "He did not love the Scots; he did not love the 
 Puritans, which good qualities were allayed by an- 
 other negative ; he did love nobody else." 
 
 In accordance with what I have said above as to 
 the limits of word portraiture, Clarendon is cautious 
 in his attempt to depict physical characteristics. He 
 is much more conservative here than Saint-Simon, 
 who has cruel words for immortalising ugliness, as 
 in his sketch of Mezieres : "Humped both before and 
 behind, his head in his chest far down below his 
 shoulders, hurting you to watch him breathe; mere 
 bones, moreover, and a yellow face that looked like
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 205 
 
 a frog's." Clarendon has nothing of this kind. Yet 
 he has a rough vigour of his own in dealing with the 
 earthly frame of even royal personages. Of James 
 the First's death he says : He "fell into a quartan 
 ague, which meeting many humours in a fat, un- 
 wieldy body of fifty-four years, in four or five fits 
 carried him out of the world." When soul is to be 
 read by body, he has subtle observations often, as in 
 the case of Sir Henry Vane : "He had an unusual as- 
 pect, which, though it might naturally proceed from 
 both father and mother, neither of which were beauti- 
 ful persons, yet made men think there was somewhat 
 in him of extraordinary ; and his whole life made good 
 that imagination." And equally so when soul is not 
 to be read by body, but masks foul evil under bodily 
 simplicity: "He (Goring) could help himself with 
 all the insinuations of doubt, or fear, or shame, or 
 simplicity in his face that might gain belief to a 
 greater degree than I ever saw any man; and could 
 seem the most confounded when he was best pre- 
 pared, and the most out of countenance when he 
 was best resolved, and to want words and the habit 
 of speaking when they flowed from no man with 
 greater power." Few writers have ever painted more 
 vividly the mighty influence of the soul over the 
 body. Thus Falkland, after the peace between King 
 and Commons was at last broken, "grew into a per- 
 fect habit of uncheerfulness ; and he who had been
 
 206 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 so exactly unreserved and affable to all men that his 
 face and countenance was always present, and va- 
 cant to his company, and held any cloudiness and 
 less pleasantness of the visage a kind of rudeness 
 and incivility, became on a sudden less communicable 
 and thence very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected 
 with the spleen." 
 
 If we wish to compare two great English word- 
 painters in this matter of physical description, we 
 can take Clarendon and Burnet on Lauderdale. 
 Clarendon, like Rembrandt, prefers suggestion, at- 
 mosphere, touches the gross, material singularity 
 with vigour, but with speed. "The fatness of his 
 tongue that ever filled his mouth." Burnet, with 
 the flat, brusque energy of Hals, dwells on ugly de- 
 tail till it takes almost the proportion of monstrosity : 
 "He made a very ill appearance; he was very big; 
 his hair red, hanging oddly about him; his tongue 
 was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew 
 all he talked to." 
 
 It is by these brief touches, in both the physical 
 and moral world, that a great artist gets often his 
 most lasting effects, impressions that fix themselves 
 upon the memory and recur immortally, not only 
 in association with that special character, but with 
 others whom they fit and illuminate. Here no one 
 has ever equalled Tacitus, whether in the familiar 
 bits, "he would have been thought of all men the
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 207 
 
 most worthy to reign if he had never reigned"; or 
 in those less known: "He could squander, but he 
 could not give"; "he gave, but sparingly, and not 
 as one about to die." 
 
 Amplitude, not brevity, is Clarendon's distinguish- 
 ing characteristic. Yet when he chooses, he can fling 
 one sentence at a man that will stick to him forever. 
 "Wilmot was of a haughty and ambitious nature, 
 of a pleasant wit, and an ill understanding, as never 
 considering above one thing at once; but he con- 
 sidered that one thing so impatiently that he did not 
 admit anything else to be worth consideration." 
 Gowley "had an extraordinary kindness for Mr. 
 Hyde (Clarendon himself) till he found he betook 
 himself to business which he believed ought never 
 to be preferred before his company." Selden "would 
 have hindered them (the Parliament), if he could, 
 with his own safety, to which he was always enough 
 indulgent." St. Albans "had that kindness for him- 
 self that he thought everybody did believe him." 
 
 The historian is more at ease, however, when he 
 takes a little wider sweep. To enumerate, or even 
 to suggest, the elaborate, splendid portraits which 
 fill page after page of both the "Life" and the "His- 
 tory" would be altogether impossible. Will not some 
 one some day pay Clarendon the deserved honour of 
 isolating these from the clogging context, as has
 
 208 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 been done most successfully in the very similar case 
 of Saint-Simon 1 ? 
 
 I will at least quote a single specimen, not perhaps 
 one of the most alluring, but finely representative, 
 the full-length of Cottington taken after his death: 
 
 "He was a very wise man, by the great and long expe- 
 rience he had in business of all kinds; and by his natural 
 temper, which was not liable to any transport of anger or 
 any other passion, but could bear contradiction and even 
 reproach without being moved or put out of his way, for 
 he was very steady in pursuing what he proposed to him- 
 self, and had a courage not to be frighted or amazed with 
 any opposition. . . . He lived very nobly, well served, and 
 attended in his house, had a better stable of horses, better 
 provision for sports (especially of hawks, in which he took 
 great delight), than most of his quality, and lived always 
 with great splendour ; for though he loved money very well, 
 and did not warily enough consider the circumstances of 
 getting it, he spent it well all ways but in giving, which 
 he did not affect. He was of an excellent humour, and very 
 easy to live with ; and, under a grave countenance, covered 
 the most of mirth, and caused more than any man of the 
 most pleasant disposition. He never used anybody ill, but 
 used many very well for whom he had no regard : his great- 
 est fault was that he could dissemble and make men believe 
 that he loved them very well, when he cared not for them. 
 He had not very tender affections, nor bowels apt to yearn 
 at all objects which deserved compassion: he was heartily 
 weary of the world, and no man was more willing to die, 
 which is an argument that he had peace of conscience. He 
 left behind him a greater esteem of his parts, than love to 
 his person."
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 209 
 
 If it be inferred from this and some of my other 
 quotations that Clarendon painted common or un- 
 lovely natures best, it may be answered that he lived 
 amid the shock of fierce ambitions and cruel selfish- 
 nesses, and for contrast the reader may turn to the 
 much longer and exquisite study of Falkland and to 
 some others in the beginning of the Life. 
 
 It will be asked, how far was the painter influenced 
 by his own prejudices in painting both dark and 
 bright? Every man is influenced by them; but he, 
 I think, not much further than most of us would be 
 in writing of our own contemporaries. Human 
 character is an unstable thing, an ample, shifting 
 thing, altering with every angle of vision, like a 
 far mountain or a summer cloud. Therefore no 
 study of it is final. Only, that made by a man of 
 genius is rich in suggestion and permanent in beauty. 
 When Clarendon analyses Hampden and Cromwell, 
 we know that we must allow something for cropped 
 crown and steeple-hat. When he says of the Earls 
 of Pembroke and Salisbury that "they had rather 
 the King and his posterity should be destroyed than 
 that Wilton should be taken from the one of them 
 or Hatfield from the other; the preservation of both 
 which from any danger they both believed to be 
 the highest point of prudence and politic circumspec- 
 tion," we have to remember that these were Parlia- 
 mentary commissioners. Likewise the praise of
 
 210 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Laud, aptly mingled with shrewd blame, is such as 
 befits the august head of the Episcopal Church. And 
 in the summing-up of the whole matter of Charles I 
 we admire the historian's ingenuity rather more than 
 his judgment: "If he were not the best King, if he 
 were without some parts and qualities which have 
 made some kings great and happy, no other prince 
 was ever unhappy who was possessed of half his vir- 
 tues and endowments and so much without any kind 
 of vice." 
 
 What I miss most in Clarendon, considering the 
 extent of his portraiture, is any elaborate study of 
 women. Did he respect them too much, or fear them 
 too much, or despise them too much? Of his own 
 first wife, who died young, he says: "He bore her 
 loss with so great passion and confusion of spirit that 
 it shook all the frame of his resolution." Doubtless 
 out of compliment to her memory, he soon married 
 a second "with whom he lived very comfortably in 
 the most uncomfortable times and very joyfully in 
 those times when matter of joy was administered." 
 Perhaps he thought the privacy of the sex should be 
 considered, even in an age when they did not much 
 consider it themselves. 
 
 He certainly did not approve of feminine inter- 
 ference in politics. "There being at that time," he 
 says of the early, better days, "no ladies who had dis- 
 posed themselves to intermeddle in business"; and,
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 211 
 
 later, of the difficulty of managing the court at Ox- 
 ford, "the town being full of lords and many per- 
 sons of the best quality, with very many ladies, who 
 were not easily pleased and kept others from being 
 so." His most bitter opponent under his first master 
 was the Queen, and under his second the royal mis- 
 tress. Yet of neither has he left any such finished 
 picture as of his male friends and enemies. 
 
 How different is this from the way of Tacitus, who 
 touches so many women, briefly, as in everything, but 
 masterfully, like the wife of Vitellius, ultra feminam 
 ferox. How different especially from Saint-Simon, 
 whose pages swarm with women, delightful or 
 hideous the Duchesse de Bourgogne, the Duchesse 
 du Maine, the Princesse des Ursins, a hundred others, 
 and, above all, Madame de Maintenon, whom he de- 
 tested as Clarendon did Lady Castlemaine, but did 
 not therefore refrain from painting in every light 
 and in every shadow. Madame de Maintenon, 
 "whose passion it was to know everything, to meddle 
 in everything, to govern everything." Madame de 
 Maintenon, "who for kinship's sake loved those who 
 had repented much better than those who had noth- 
 ing of which to repent." 
 
 Surely Clarendon's opportunities for studying 
 women were no less than Saint-Simon's. He saw 
 two queens daily, and their ladies, high and low. 
 Doubtless he understood them, or thought he did.
 
 212 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 But he makes little attempt to have us understand 
 them. Only rarely does he throw off a careless sug- 
 gestion of some minor figure. There is Mademoiselle 
 de Longueville, who "was looked upon as one of the 
 greatest and richest marriages in France in respect 
 of her fortune; in respect of her person not at all 
 attractive, being a lady of a very low stature, and 
 that stature no degree straight." There is Lady 
 Monk, "a woman of the lowest extraction, least wit, 
 and less beauty, who, taking no care for any other 
 part of herself, had deposited her soul with some 
 Presbyterian ministers, who disposed her to that in- 
 terest." There is the wife of Prince Rupert, who, 
 "from the time she had the first intimation that the 
 King had designed her husband for the command of 
 the fleet, was all storm and fury; and according to 
 the modesty of her nature poured out a thousand 
 full-mouthed curses against all who had contributed 
 to that counsel, . . . but the company she kept and 
 the conversation she was accustomed to could not 
 propagate the reproaches far; and the poor General 
 felt them most, who knew the Chancellor to be his 
 very faithful and firm friend, and that he would not 
 be less so because his wife was no wiser than she 
 was born to be." 
 
 Also, as compared with Saint-Simon, it seems to 
 me that Clarendon is less successful in depicting 
 groups of figures that is, great historical scenes and
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 213 
 
 critical situations. He has, indeed, some that are 
 very striking: the death of Buckingham, the arrest 
 of Charles I, the humiliation of the second Bucking- 
 ham, the death of Falkland. But he sometimes fails 
 when we expect him at his best. For instance, the 
 trial of Charles is passed over very lightly. And he 
 has nowhere anything that approaches the great 
 scenes of Saint-Simon, such as the feeding of the 
 carp or the deaths of Monseigneur and the Due de 
 Bourgogne. 
 
 I end by asking myself what was Clarendon's mo- 
 tive in his immense undertaking. "If," he says in 
 one passage, "the celebrating the memory of eminent 
 and extraordinary persons and transmitting their 
 great virtues to posterity be one of the principal ends 
 and duties of history. . . ." No doubt he thought 
 it was so, and laboured valiantly for that object. But 
 a great painter likes to immortalise himself as well 
 as others, takes legitimate delight in the skilful 
 touches of his art. Clarendon must have found in his 
 own and others' word-painting the keen pleasure 
 which Saint-Simon displayed so naively on hearing 
 of a clever saying of Louis XIV's : "When Marechal 
 told me this, I was overcome with astonishment at 
 so fine a stroke of the brush." 
 
 Also Clarendon must have had the passion for 
 studying mankind, though he is conservative, as al- 
 ways, in the expression of it : "I was at that time no
 
 214 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 stranger to the persons of most that governed and 
 a diligent observer of their carriage." This is sober 
 compared even to the frankness of Pepys: "And I, 
 as I am in all things curious," let alone the inquisi- 
 tive fury of Saint-Simon: "This fact is not impor- 
 tant, but it is amusing. It is especially significant 
 with a prince as serious and as imposing as Louis 
 XIV; and all these little court anecdotes are well 
 worth while." "I skimmed off a few of these details 
 on the spot." "For me, I glutted myself with the 
 spectacle." Yet Clarendon unquestionably derived 
 immense pleasure from his rich opportunities for 
 reading "bare soul." 
 
 And with all his experience of what was dark and 
 evil I do not think his observation was unkindly. 
 He could be cruel with the cruel and cynical with 
 the cynical, but he retained more of human tender- 
 ness than Saint-Simon; more, much more than that 
 other masterly English painter, John, Lord Hervey. 
 
 Clarendon had, indeed, honestly tried to do his 
 best for his country. He had been deceived, be- 
 trayed, mocked, slandered, ruined, exiled. What 
 wonder that he summed up his knowledge of the 
 world with a little bitterness. "He had originally 
 in his nature so great a tenderness and love towards 
 all mankind that he ... did really believe all men 
 were such as they appeared to be. ... These un- 
 avoidable reflections first made him discern how weak
 
 ENGLISH PORTRAIT-PAINTER 215 
 
 and foolish all his imaginations had been and how 
 blind a surveyor he had been of the inclinations and 
 affections of the heart of man (and of) this world, 
 where whatsoever is good and desirable suddenly 
 perisheth and nothing is lasting but the folly and 
 wickedness of the inhabitants thereof." 
 
 It was on a dark day in a sad, strange land that 
 he wrote that. Nevertheless, his great books show 
 everywhere the desire for what is noble and of good 
 report ; nay, more, the real, lasting love of his fellow- 
 men, not only as they might be, but as they actually 
 *are, which remains, I think, the firmest secret of 
 human felicity. 
 
 1911
 
 IX 
 LETTERS OF A ROMAN GENTLEMAN
 
 IX 
 
 LETTERS OF A ROMAN GENTLEMAN 
 
 TO us who dwell in settled peace it is difficult 
 to imagine the violent contrasts that made 
 up the life of the younger Pliny and his 
 sudden trap-doors under your feet, your best friends 
 suspected, your lightest words twisted, to Trajan's 
 firm, mild, and kindly government, must have been 
 like stepping into heaven from hell. 
 
 But Pliny was a man of sunshine under any gov- 
 ernment. It is most instructive to turn to his pic- 
 ture of his age from that of his sombre and indignant 
 contemporaries, Juvenal, Suetonius, Tacitus. Read 
 them and you will think it a wicked world indeed. 
 The great are idle, selfish, cruel, and corrupt. The 
 little are mean, sordid, fawning, debased, contempti- 
 ble. It is not so with Pliny, who sees and records 
 good in great and little both. So one might easily, 
 imagine a double and self-contradicting likeness of 
 our world to-day: on this side, greed, indulgence, 
 godlessness, the rich getting richer, and the poor 
 
 219
 
 220 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 poorer, one preying and the other hating; on that 
 side, endless acts of kindness and sacrifice, a high 
 ideal and a lowly spirit, love growing everywhere, 
 even where selfishness would hardly let it grow. And 
 both pictures would be true according to the tem- 
 perament of the artist who drew them. 
 
 Not that Pliny entirely overlooks the evils about 
 him. He recognises that the old world was in some 
 points better: "Time was when those who wrote in 
 praise of their country were rewarded; but in our 
 age this, like other notable and lovely things, has 
 slipped away." He shrinks from writing history, 
 "because, with men as wicked as they are, much 
 more is to be blamed than praised." Yet, after all, 
 it is wiser to smile than sigh. "Why am I angry*?" 
 he says of the triumphant epitaph of the abominable 
 Pallas. "It is better to laugh, so that such creatures 
 may not think they have achieved high fortune, when 
 they have made themselves ridiculous." And he 
 cherishes the noble belief that the best way to make 
 his age worthy is passionately to wish it so : "I love 
 my generation, praying that it may not be effete 
 and sterile and longing with all my heart that our 
 best citizens may have something fine in their houses 
 besides fine pictures." 
 
 Yet he was a lawyer and so must have known 
 what human nature is. He had a lawyer's training 
 and prejudices, that ingrained love of tradition and
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 221 
 
 precedent which came naturally to Romans, as to 
 Englishmen. Success in a profession so difficult 
 commands his admiration, even when it is accom- 
 panied by indifferent honesty, and he cannot but 
 praise the zeal of the unprincipled Regulus whom in 
 other respects he is never weary of abusing. Yet we 
 have his own word for it and I believe him that 
 he himself was a shining example of uprightness. 
 
 Being a lawyer, he was also an orator, as was 
 essential in that age, however it may be now. He 
 went through all the degrees of that elaborate train- 
 ing which was considered necessary for a great 
 speaker in a time when speech meant so much. What 
 the formal oratory of Pliny may have been we are 
 left to guess, except for one peculiarly artificial and 
 tedious specimen. To us the man is known only 
 through his letters. Yet even these are the letters 
 of an orator. That is, they are not the fresh, simple, 
 spontaneous outpouring of one mind to another, but 
 are arranged, elaborated with a view to literary 
 effect, as if the writer had always a larger audience 
 in mind than the person directly addressed. They 
 are too often clever essays rather than natural corre- 
 spondence. And Pliny's efforts in this line are the 
 lawful progenitors of a host of frigid things known 
 properly as elegant epistles rather than letters: the 
 productions of Balzac, for instance, or Voiture, or of 
 James Howell, or Pope.
 
 222 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 After all, however, the greatest letter writers 
 probably wrote with some self-consciousness. Varied, 
 vivacious, infinitely human as Cicero's letters are, 
 he must have seen posterity out of the corner of his 
 eye. I do not, indeed, suppose that Lamb, even in 
 his later years, for a moment suspected that his care- 
 less scribbling would be the delight of English read- 
 ers all over the world. Or, perhaps, did he? Cer- 
 tainly Cowper did not, nor Edward Fitz-Gerald. But 
 Madame de Sevigne's letters were read and admired 
 in her lifetime. And she knew it. And could go 
 on discussing her little domestic affairs and her soul 
 with as perfect ease as if she were prattling to you 
 or me by a twilight fire. Horace Walpole, also, 
 divined his future public; and the consciousness sat 
 less lightly on him than on the charming French lady 
 he adored and imitated. 
 
 Ease, naturalness, and simplicity are not the char- 
 acteristics of Pliny. He confesses his methods of 
 procedure in his very first sentence : "You have often 
 urged me to collect and publish such letters as I have 
 taken a little extra pains with." It recalls Horace 
 Walpole at the opening of his epistolary career: 
 "You have made me a strange request, that I will 
 burn your letters. I make you a still stranger one, 
 that you will keep mine." Pliny does indeed urge 
 that the style of letters should be simple, pressus 
 sermo purusque; but in his case the brevity was
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 223 
 
 always elegantly draped and the refinement that of 
 the drawing-room. Mommsen has justly pointed out 
 that each letter is too often a formal disquisition 
 on one subject; and Joubert, whose exquisite sense 
 of art was never separated from his sense of soul, 
 has judged the Roman letter- writer with unusual 
 severity: "The younger Pliny took pains with his 
 words. With his thoughts he took no pains." Pliny 
 himself inadvertently admits much the same thing. 
 After describing minutely to a scientific friend the 
 peculiar behavior of a variable spring, he adds, "It 
 is your business to examine the causes of such a won- 
 derful phenomenon. My part is simply to put the 
 effect in words." 
 
 Yet, after all, a gift of % expression such as Pliny 
 had is no contemptible thing. Much of the best of 
 Shakespeare consists in putting the thoughts of all 
 of us into language of enduring power and charm. 
 And Flaubert, himself the most passionate and hu- 
 man of letter writers, said, "II n'y a que les lieux 
 communs et les pays connus pour avoir une intariss- 
 able beaute." If Pliny could occasionally descend 
 so low as "I will make an end of my letter in order 
 that I may at the same time make an end of the 
 tears which my letter has called forth," he could also 
 turn phrases which must be left untranslated in their 
 abiding beauty and grace. "Quod me recordantem 
 fragilitatis humantz miseratio subit. Quid enim tarn
 
 224 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 circumcisum, tarn breve quam hominis vita long- 
 issima?" And he could do much more than turn 
 clever phrases. He could find subtle and apt terms 
 of literary criticism, he could often convey delicate 
 and tender emotion, he could describe gaily, if he 
 chose,or if he chose again, with profound dramatic 
 effect, as in the swift and telling narrative of the 
 ghost adventure which befell the philosopher Atheno- 
 dorus. 
 
 In fact, a man cannot write lengthy letters for 
 many years without telling us much of value about 
 his times and about himself. And it is especially to 
 be noted that, although Pliny was artificial in ex- 
 pression, he had a simple soul. "Pline, qui est un 
 naif" says Gaston Boissier, with perfect justice. 
 And in this Pliny is totally different from Horace 
 Walpole, who was born sophisticated, with a heart 
 as wrinkled at twenty as his cheeks at seventy-five. 
 Walpole tells us exactly what he wishes to tell us 
 and his veracity stands in no proportion to his lo- 
 quacity. Pliny's soul peeps through every fold of 
 the shimmering drapery in which he would invest it. 
 
 For the study of many peculiar characteristics of 
 his age he is of singular interest. For instance, he 
 gives a most effective description of one of those 
 practical philosophers, who, in a sense, anticipated 
 Christianity by doing revival work before vast 
 audiences with a zeal and sincerity that command
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 225 
 
 our admiration. "There is nothing repugnant in 
 his aspect, nothing dismal, but a lofty gravity. If 
 you met him, you would stand in awe of him, but 
 you would not shrink away. His life is as winning 
 as it is holy. He attacks vices, not men. And does 
 not chastise sinners, but converts them." In a dif- 
 ferent vein he depicts those assemblies of friends be- 
 fore which the poets of the day were accustomed to 
 read their productions. Bored! cries Pliny. Why 
 shouldn't they expect to be bored 1 ? "True affection 
 casteth out the fear of boredom, and of what use 
 are your friends anyway if they come together only 
 for their own amusement'?" Or he renders, with 
 truly tragic touch, the terrible pathos of a vestal 
 virgin condemned by Domitian to be buried alive 
 for alleged unchastity: "She was led to her doom, 
 if not innocent, at least with every aspect of inno- 
 cence. Even when she was stepping down into the 
 vault, her garment caught, and she turned and gath- 
 ered it up about her: and when the executioner 
 offered her his hand, she drew back, as if to keep 
 her chaste body still pure from the defiling touch." 
 Nor are Pliny's letters less fruitfifl and impressive 
 in anecdotes and sketches of definite historical per- 
 sonages than in the painting of manners in general. 
 Sometimes he adds to the list of terse, pregnant say- 
 ings which seem so characteristically Latin and Ro- 
 man. Every one knows that figure of antique splen-
 
 226 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 dour, Arria, who by planting the knife in her own 
 breast encouraged her husband to seek freedom, with 
 the words "Paete, non dolet" Pliny thinks it an 
 injustice that other sayings of hers as noble should 
 not also be recorded in history and he records them. 
 Thus to the wife of Scribonianus she cries: "Do you 
 think I will listen to you, when your husband was 
 killed in your arms and you live 1 ?" 
 
 More tranquil pictures Pliny has also, of spirits 
 lofty as Arria's, but fruitfully occupied with service 
 to their country, or after years of such service still 
 profitably busying a serene old age. It is refreshing 
 enough to pass from the horrors of Tacitus to the 
 dignified quiet of Spurinna, who lived at peace 
 among his friends and servants, now talking sagely 
 of great deeds done, now reading or writing of the 
 deeds of others, varying these intellectual pursuits 
 with wholesome exercise to keep the temperate body 
 fresh and sound. "Thus, though he is past his sev- 
 enty-seventh year, his sight and hearing are perfect, 
 his body agile and alert, and the only trace of old 
 age about him is his wisdom. Such a life is the 
 object of my wish and prayer, and I shall enter upon 
 it whenever the passage of years shall permit me 
 to think of retirement. Meanwhile, I am overcome 
 with a thousand distractions, amid which I comfort 
 myself with the example of this same Spurinna." 
 
 Another noble figure delineated by Pliny is that
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 227 
 
 of his uncle and parent by adoption, Pliny the elder. 
 This distinguished personage, besides being an active 
 and energetic citizen, was an indefatigable student 
 and writer. He wrote extensive histories, of which 
 nothing now survives. He produced also an enor- 
 mous compilation of myth, tradition, fable, and ob- 
 servation, which, under the name of natural history, 
 fed the curiosity of more than a thousand years with 
 things that never happened. It may, however, be 
 justly said of him that "nothing in his life became 
 him like the leaving of it." For he perished in a 
 thoroughly scientific attempt to study the great erup- 
 tion that destroyed Pompeii. After perpetuating 
 forty books of lies, he died of the desire to discover 
 the truth. It was a creditable exit, which the younger 
 Pliny has described in a way to make it more credita- 
 ble; for the nobility of his uncle's scientific spirit 
 is entirely surpassed by his tranquil acceptance of a 
 terrible situation and his efforts to impart his own 
 tranquillity to others. As soon as he appreciated 
 the peril and that escape was unlikely, he began to 
 cheer those about him, to comfort them, to relieve 
 their terrors by gaiety or the aspect of gaiety. As 
 the long hours dragged on, he beguiled despair by 
 making notes. Then, in the murky and intolerable 
 darkness and horror, he actually slept. Balked in 
 his final attempt to escape by his unwieldy stature 
 and scant breath, and overcome by the smoke and
 
 228 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ashes, he was found afterwards, "his body entire, 
 unharmed, and clothed as when he had left home; 
 his aspect rather that of the sleeping than of the 
 dead." 
 
 The man Pliny himself is, however, the most in- 
 teresting thing in his letters; and though he endeav- 
 oured to show himself only draped, togaed, and in a 
 senatorial attitude, his inmost anatomy is visible 
 enough, if one cares to look for it. We can see him, 
 if we choose, in the rush of his daily business, hurry- 
 ing about the forum, pleading a cause, attending to 
 a public duty, arranging a little matter for a friend 
 or a great charity for a community, administering a 
 far province, with theatres, and fire departments, and 
 aqueducts, and obstinate Christians to be brought to 
 submission or fed to the wild beasts. 
 
 We can see him, much more attractively, in the 
 home life on his great country estates, which the 
 Romans, like the English, loved to cherish, keeping 
 their roots firm in the soil. Pliny himself writes to 
 a friend of country pleasures : "I will not say I envy 
 you ; but it torments me to think that I cannot have 
 what I long for as the fevered long to bathe in cool- 
 ing springs. Shall I never break these hampering 
 bonds, since I cannot loose them^" 
 
 The Romans, indeed, had not the modern romantic 
 passion for nature. Pliny was no Wordsworth to 
 adore a daffodil or apostrophise a linnet. Such do-
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 229 
 
 ings would have seemed to him as unworthy as to 
 Socrates. But he loved the country air, and the 
 wide sky, a noble prospect, sparkling sea, and vine- 
 clad hills. "For a scholar," as he says of one of 
 his friends, "a brief acreage suffices, to tread one 
 well-worn path, to know every vine and count every 
 fruit-tree." But he himself is tempted into larger 
 purchasing: "Change of soil and sky, broad peregri- 
 nation through one's own possessions, have an infinite 
 charm." It reminds one of old Burton: "For pere- 
 grination hath such an infinite and sweet variety that 
 some call him unhappy who never travelled, but 
 beholdeth from his cradle to his old age the same, 
 still, still the same." 
 
 And so Pliny gives us a minute and loving picture 
 of his country homes: of Como, where he was born 
 and which he loved with the tenderness of Cowper, 
 
 Scenes that soothed 
 
 And charmed me young, no longer young I find 
 Still soothing and of power to charm me still; 
 
 of his elaborate and splendid villas in Tuscany and 
 at Laurentum, which he describes with a detail of 
 singular interest to the antiquarian: halls, baths, 
 libraries, porticoes, sitting-rooms for the day and 
 for the night, for company, for privacy; chambers 
 looking out upon the wide prospect, sea or stars, 
 chambers hidden and secluded, "where no noise of
 
 230 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 busy people comes, no murmur of the waves, no 
 tumult of the storm, nor glare of lightning, nay, if 
 you wish, not even the light of day, when the shut- 
 ters are closed"; trim gardens, with flowers, and 
 fruit, and shade; and over the whole dwelling glad- 
 some vines, creeping from roof to roof up to the 
 highest peak of all. They knew what luxury was, 
 these wealthy Romans, and Pliny was by no means 
 one of the wealthiest. 
 
 We hear not only of Pliny's abodes, but of his 
 friends, and he was a man to have .many of them. 
 The most august was the Emperor Trajan himself, 
 and a collection of letters survives, exchanged be- 
 tween the two when Pliny was governor of the 
 provinces of Bithynia and Pontica. The most in- 
 teresting of these deal with the treatment of the 
 Christians and show the attitude of a humane and 
 kindly Roman gentleman towards those who, he felt, 
 must be punished, not because they held outlandish 
 beliefs, but because they refused to recognise the 
 supreme control of the civil authority. 
 
 Trajan's letters were brief, but courteous and con- 
 siderate; Pliny's, on the whole, manly and inde- 
 pendent. The same thing may perhaps be said of 
 the general tone of the "Panegyric on Trajan," 
 Pliny's one remaining piece of oratory. Yet the 
 adulation unavoidable in such a performance will 
 hardly suit an American ear, however it might pass
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 231 
 
 in Berlin or St. Petersburg. "A religious nation, 
 whose piety has always merited the favour of the 
 immortal gods, can ask nothing further to perfect 
 its happiness than that the gods themselves should 
 imitate Caesar." A little strong, is it not? And 
 what interests me most of all is how a person of 
 Trajan's native common sense and practical dispo- 
 sition, not born to this sort of thing, but having 
 grown up a common man among other men, could 
 sit by and listen to it? Was he nauseated ? Was he 
 simply bored, enormously 1 ? Is it possible that he 
 should have enjoyed it? Did Napoleon? 
 
 Pliny had hosts of other friends, not draped in 
 purple. Some of them, many of them, were the 
 first men of the age, whose names echo to us now in 
 a way which would seem to make the mere distinc- 
 tion of their friendship glory enough. Suetonius, 
 Martial Martial immortalises Pliny's hospitality 
 and his friend is duly grateful : "Is it not fitting that 
 I should mourn him who wrote about me thus? He 
 gave me all he had to give. If he had had more, 
 he would have given it. And what can a man give 
 more than praise and glory and eternity?" Tacitus? 
 Tacitus sends his writings for Pliny's revision. 
 Think of it ! Revising Tacitus ! And Pliny does it. 
 "I have noted with the utmost care what I think 
 should be altered, what omitted." What, I wonder? 
 And Pliny sends his own works for Tacitus's revision
 
 232 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 in return which strikes us as a matter of less im- 
 portance. And he exults in the thought that they 
 two will go down the ages together: "What a delight 
 that posterity, if it takes heed of us at all, will record 
 everywhere that we lived together in simple faith 
 and brotherly love! A rare and notable thing in- 
 deed that two men of nearly equal age and public 
 position, and not unknown in letters (I am forced 
 to speak slightly of you also since I am speaking of 
 myself) should have cherished and fostered one an- 
 other's studies.". How could he know that in two 
 thousand years Tacitus would be all and he nothing? 
 
 Lesser friends he advises also, as to their verses, 
 as to their prose, as to commoner matters still. To 
 one in sickness he sends excellent counsel, with an 
 elaborate account of his own good health and how 
 he got it, which I think can hardly have been very 
 gratifying to the sufferer, any more than Lamb's 
 maliciously delightful epistle to Henry Crabbe 
 Robinson under similar circumstances. 
 
 And always Pliny is ready to praise his friends, 
 high and low, as if they were the emperor himself. 
 It reminds one sometimes of Lepidus's ecstasies : His 
 dear Qesar; but then his dear Antony; Antony, the 
 man of men; but Csesar is godlike. Pliny was ridi- 
 culed, even in his own day, for these excesses, and 
 admits it, and defends himself. "I confess the fault, 
 I am proud of it. ... Supposing they are not
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 233 
 
 what I think them. The more fortunate I, since to 
 me they seem so ... never will you persuade 
 me that I can love my friends too much." And he 
 lauds the verses of one, the banquets of another, the 
 children of another, till we think we are living in a 
 different and a better world. "He showed me some 
 letters the other day and said they were his wife's. 
 I thought I was reading Plautus or Terence dissolved 
 in prose. Whether they are his wife's, as he affirms, 
 or his own, as he denies, they do equal credit to the 
 man who can turn out such letters or such a wife." 
 It is true that in these matters there is a certain tit- 
 f or-tatishness ; and if Pliny praises, he is not averse 
 to payment in kind. But under all the manner and 
 all the artificial grace, it is, I think, impossible not 
 to recognise genuine love and tenderness: "You 
 know the weakness of my heart in its affections, you 
 know my anxious fears; and you will not be sur- 
 prised if I fear most where I hope most." 
 
 One charming phase of Pliny's friendships is his 
 correspondence with illustrious ladies who represent 
 the very best of Roman dignity and Roman virtue. 
 "There are," says Professor Dill, "youths and 
 maidens in the portrait gallery of Pliny whose inno- 
 cence was guarded by good women as pure and strong 
 as those matrons who nursed the stern, unbending 
 soldiers of the Sabine wars." To Calvina he writes 
 on matters of business, not omitting to indicate his
 
 234 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 own probity as well as hers. He advises another 
 friend as to the choice of a tutor for her son : "From 
 this person your son will learn nothing that will not 
 profit him, nothing that would be better unlearned, 
 and will be reminded no less often than by you or me 
 what ideals he must live up to, what great names 
 are his to sustain." One should compare also the 
 touching patience and fortitude of a young girl's 
 death: "She did what the doctors told her, she com- 
 forted her father and sister, she kept up her courage 
 even when overcome by weakness. And this endured 
 to the end and was not shaken by the length of her 
 illness or the fear of death." Other specimens of 
 womanhood there are, to be sure, showing more the 
 influence of prevalent luxury, extravagance, and 
 idleness, as the odd case of that very gay old lady 
 who used the strictest possible care in the education 
 of her grandson, but did not consider it necessary 
 to apply the same methods to herself. "He lived 
 in the house of his luxurious grandmother after the 
 severest, but also the most submissive fashion. She 
 had a fancy for actors and ran after them rather 
 more than became a lady of her rank. But Quadra- 
 tus never saw one, on the stage or at home; nor did 
 she wish him to. She told me once, when she was 
 commending her grandson's studiousness, that for 
 herself, to get rid of her wretched feminine leisure, 
 she liked to take a hand in a game or see a play, but
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 235 
 
 when anything of the sort was going on, she bade 
 the boy go to his books, quite as much, I think, out 
 of regard for his innocence as for his learning. You 
 will be astonished at this. So was I." 
 
 As to Pliny's treatment of his slaves we have no 
 evidence but his own, which is remarkably favour- 
 able. I am inclined to trust it, however, in default of 
 better. There is, indeed, a curious sentence in the 
 "Panegyric," showing how slavery could dull and 
 harden the finer feelings of the kindly and humane. 
 Trajan is extolled because he did not provide im- 
 moral and debasing theatrical performances but in- 
 stead contests "which inspired the glorious contempt 
 of wounds and death by showing even in slaves and 
 criminals the ardour for praise and the thirst for vic- 
 tory." But numerous passages in the letters indicate 
 a consistent gentleness of treatment, with a desire 
 to secure the welfare of dependents, which makes an 
 agreeable contrast to much that we read of a very 
 different character in other authors. Thus Pliny ex- 
 plains to a friend that he furnished his upper servants 
 with the same wine that he drinks himself. "Must 
 be rather expensive," says the friend. "No," says 
 Pliny. "They do not drink what I do. I drink what 
 they do." His favourite reader falls ill with a hemor- 
 rhage. "How hard it would be for him, what a 
 loss for me, if he to whom all my studies owe their 
 charm should become unfit for study! Who would
 
 236 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 read my work so well, would cherish it so much*? 
 Whose voice would caress my ear like his"? But I 
 have hopes that Providence will spare him." He 
 bewails an excessive mortality among his slaves, but 
 he has at least the comfort of having treated them 
 kindly: "Two consolations I have, not indeed ade- 
 quate, but consolations: one, that I allow them to 
 obtain their freedom easily; for those seem not to 
 die too young who have got free; the other, that I 
 allow even the slaves to make a kind of will and 
 that I execute it as such. They devise and enjoin 
 as they wish; and I carry out their wishes. They 
 divide, bestow, and bequeath, provided it is confined 
 to my own household. For the household is, as it 
 were, the country and commonwealth of slaves." 
 
 As regards immediate family, Pliny had no chil- 
 dren, though he was twice married. To his second 
 wife, Calpurnia, he writes charming letters, rather 
 literary perhaps in expression, but obviously inspired 
 by genuine feeling. He is glad to hear that she 
 misses him, glad that she reads his verses in his ab- 
 sence. He reads her letters over and over, thinks of 
 her constantly, gives every leisure moment to the 
 thought of her, and is glad to be busy because other- 
 wise he longs for her so much. But the cream of 
 the correspondence in this connection is the letter 
 describing Calpurnia's excellences to her affectionate 
 aunt. No page of Pepys has fuller measure of
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 237 
 
 human nature pressed down and running over: the 
 immense, complacent egotism of the husband gaug- 
 ing his wife's perfection by her devotion, the ex- 
 quisite tact of the wife, playing with deft fingers 
 upon that egotism as upon a many-stopped pipe, 
 guided much by love, no doubt, but also by a fine 
 appreciation of what was for her own comfort and 
 matrimonial ease. "She has the shrewdest common 
 sense, the most careful housewifery. She loves me 
 as a good wife should. Moreover, her love for me 
 has inspired her with a love for literature. She has 
 all my works, reads them over and over, even learns 
 them by heart. How anxious she is when I am go- 
 ing to speak, how delighted when I have spoken 
 well. She keeps messengers to let her know how I 
 am taking, what applause I get, what the verdict is. 
 When I give a reading, she sits near me, discreetly 
 veiled, and drinks in the praise of me with avid 
 ears. She even sings my verses and sets them to 
 the cither (Oh, Mrs. Pepys, oh, Mrs. Pepys!), not 
 taught by art but love, which is the best of masters. 
 For these reasons I feel sure that we shall be hap- 
 pier and happier together as long as we live. For 
 she does not love my youth or my good looks, which 
 fail and fade, but my glory, as behooves one brought 
 up at your hands and taught by your precepts, who, 
 in your dwelling, learned nothing but what was holy
 
 238 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 and of good report, who even grew to love me under 
 your tutoring." 
 
 From which I conclude that Calpurnia, senior, was 
 a mistress hand in the tutoring of wives. Do you 
 remember Sir Toby's eulogy of Maria*? "She's a 
 beagle, true bred; and one that adores me." But 
 Sir Toby winked, and Pliny never winks. 
 
 By this time it must be evident that our epistolary 
 friend had a good share of amiable vanity. If it 
 were not so amiable, it would certainly be mon- 
 strous. And remembering Cicero, I ask myself if 
 many of these world-subduing Romans had a microbe 
 of self-admiration, which would stare us in the face, 
 if we had their letters. Then I think of the ex- 
 quisite modesty of Virgil, of the fine irony of Horace, 
 of the godlike intellect of Csesar, which penetrated 
 himself and every one else. 
 
 But Pliny had the microbe, if any one ever had. 
 And the art of ingenious and ever entertaining 
 self-laudation could not be carried further. He sends 
 his works to his friends and asks criticism, with that 
 anxious modesty which we know so well. Be hon- 
 est. Be sincere. Tell me what you really think. "I 
 ask it of your confiding simplicity, tell me about my 
 book just what you would tell any one else." But 
 woe to the simple friend who accepts such an in- 
 vitation ! 
 
 Another ingenious device is to repeat to one friend
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 239 
 
 the eulogies of another. "They say everybody is 
 reading my book, though it came out so long ago; 
 that is, unless the publishers are fooling me." "I 
 was very much gratified about my reading. I asked 
 my friends to come if it was convenient and they 
 had nothing else to do. (In Rome there is always 
 something else to do and it is never convenient.) 
 But they came for two days running, and when my 
 modesty was ready to make an end, they insisted 
 on having a third day." 
 
 In his omnivorous appetite for commendations, 
 he admits that he is not too discriminating and even 
 maintains that others are like him. "All who care 
 for fame and glory enjoy praise even when it comes 
 from their inferiors. . . . Indeed, I don't know why 
 it is, but men prefer their glory broad rather than 
 lofty." 
 
 Written eulogy that comes in the cool quiet of the 
 study is agreeable; but this is nothing compared to 
 the success of the orator, the fury of popular ap- 
 plause, the enthusiasm of the crowd that hangs upon 
 your words, the handshakings and congratulations 
 that come after. "My turn arrives. I rise . . . O 
 wonderful ! Those who were but now against me 
 receive every word with attention and applause. I 
 conclude. Veiento tries to reply. Nobody will 
 listen. . . . There was hardly a man in the Senate 
 who did not embrace me, did not kiss me, did not
 
 240 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 overwhelm me with praise." It recalls afar off 
 that most wonderful scene of Mr. Pepys's great 
 speech and the climax of commendations which agi- 
 tated his spirit with delight : "From thence I went 
 to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. G. Montagu, 
 who came to me and kissed me, and told me that 
 he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now 
 he would kiss my lips: protesting that I was an- 
 other Cicero, and said all the world said the same 
 of me. Mr. Ashburnham, and every creature I met 
 there of the Parliament, or that knew anything of 
 the Parliament's actings, did salute me with this 
 honour: Mr. Godolphin: Mr. Sands, who swore 
 he would go twenty miles, at any time, to hear the like 
 again, and that he never saw so many sit four hours 
 together to hear any man in his life, as there did 
 to hear me ; Mr. Chichly, Sir John Duncomb, and 
 everybody do say that the kingdom will ring of my 
 abilities, and that I have done myself right for my 
 whole life: and so Captain Cocke, and others of 
 my friends, say that no man had ever such an op- 
 portunity of making his abilities known; and, that 
 I may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower 
 did tell me that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, 
 and in his hearing it, said so to the Duke of Alber- 
 marle, and afterwards to W. Coventry, that he had 
 sat twenty-six years in Parliament and never heard 
 such a speech there before : for which the Lord God
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 241 
 
 make me thankful ! and that I may make use of it, 
 not to pride and vainglory, but that, now I have 
 this esteem, I may do nothing that may lessen it!" 
 
 Delightful as this contemporary approbation is, 
 however, Pliny is insatiably looking forward. Pos- 
 terity, years upon years upon years, must honour him, 
 or he will not be satisfied: "Whether they are right 
 or wrong in praising me I do not know ; but my one 
 prayer is that posterity may be right or wrong in 
 the same way." And, with good critical tact, he 
 begs for a scrap of the immortality which Tacitus 
 can bestow : "I know I am right in predicting that 
 your history will be immortal. For that reason I 
 frankly confess that I should be glad to be men- 
 tioned in it." Alas, he may have been, but not 
 in that portion that has endured. 
 
 We smile at this vanity of Pliny's. Who could 
 help it? But, as I have said, it is amiable, and, 
 as has been long ago remarked, vanity is often as- 
 sociated with excellent qualities. The fine, the really 
 beautiful expressions of moral, almost Christian feel- 
 ing, which occur in the letters, are not merely ex- 
 pressions; and when we read, "I call him most per- 
 fect who himself forgives others as if he were daily 
 liable to fall and refrains from falling as if there 
 were no forgiveness," we are safe in assuming that 
 the writer practised his own precept, as far as frail 
 human nature may. He does, indeed, beg pardon
 
 242 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 for writing verses that are too gamesome; but prob- 
 ably it was because he thought, with others since, 
 that in poetry to be gamesome was to be great; and 
 I imagine that his verses were no more like the 
 verses of Martial than the letters of Martial would 
 have been like the letters of Pliny. 
 
 Kindly he certainly was and practically beneficent, 
 though even here his failing haunts him and he in- 
 forms us of his charities in ample phraseology, at 
 the same time remarking that "those who adorn their 
 good deeds with fine words seem not to be telling 
 because they have done, but to have done in order 
 that they might be telling." Telling or not, how- 
 ever, he did the deeds, built temples, founded schools, 
 had a friendly word for trouble and an open hand 
 for suffering, in short, lived the life of a useful citi- 
 zen and an honourable gentleman, if not, as he 
 would have wished, that of a great poet and an im- 
 mortal genius. 
 
 It is to be noted, also, that Pliny's essential vir- 
 tue does not proceed from any especially religious 
 motive, as does, for instance, that of the Athenian 
 gentleman who in some ways resembles him, Xeno- 
 phon. With Xenophon the gods are daily, nightly 
 present. He considers them in his getting up and 
 in his lying down. To do wrong is to offend them 
 and risk their anger. To do right is always pleas- 
 ing and acceptable to them. Now Pliny is by no
 
 LETTERS ROMAN GENTLEMAN 243 
 
 means directly irreligious. Indeed, a strong tinc- 
 ture of superstition appears in him, as in so many 
 of his contemporaries, witness the excellent ghost 
 story that he tells with positive assurance as to the 
 facts and much credulity as to the causes. But 
 scepticism was too deeply rooted in a Roman of that 
 -day for the divine to be often recognised as a spring 
 of daily action, and Pliny rarely, if ever, refers to 
 it as such. His goodness, his kindliness, are native, 
 instinctive, spring from pure human love and char- 
 ity, and are surely none the less creditable to him 
 on that account. 
 
 And thus, as we read him here in far-off America, 
 he has an undying glory, as undying glories go. Only 
 it is not for his verses, but for his virtues. Would 
 that have satisfied him? I fear not. Long since 
 it was remarked that we had rather be praised for 
 the head than for the heart. And yet it is some- 
 thing to be remembered for two thousand years as 
 one who was a little better than the average. 
 
 1912
 
 X 
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS
 
 X 
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 
 
 THE haphazard pun by which Touchstone 
 compares himself among his goats to the 
 honest poet Ovid among the Goths has a 
 double infelicity, because Ovid was not among the 
 Goths and because he is ill-described by "honest" 
 in the parliamentary sense in which Touchstone em- 
 ploys the word* Nevertheless, the familiar refer- 
 ence will serve to introduce the most pitiable figure 
 in all classic literature, who has made himself in- 
 teresting by the minute, if monotonous, description 
 of his woes. Cano tristia tristis. My song is dismal 
 because I am. As he had sung lovers without lov- 
 ing, gods without believing, and heroes, though per- 
 fectly incapable of heroism, some of us prefer his 
 dismal strains to anything else he wrote. 
 
 Boissier, with unusual exaggeration, declares his 
 
 t CJC7 J 
 
 belief that Ovid, before his exile, was the happiest 
 man that ever existed. This would be a rash as- 
 sertion, even about men whom we know far better. 
 But it is clear that Ovid's early life must have been 
 a peculiarly fortunate one. Born just at the be- 
 
 247
 
 248 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ginning of the Augustan age, he had none of the 
 personal recollection of preceding horrors which 
 gave gravity to Virgil and Horace; yet he knew by 
 hearsay enough to impart a sharper zest to the pleas- 
 ures of peace and luxury and ease. Placed in a com- 
 fortable social position and financially well-to-do, he 
 had friends in the literary and in the fashionable 
 sets both. At that time the whole Roman world 
 was mad for pleasure. The men were excluded 
 from politics and had nothing to do but run after 
 the women. The women were restless, idle, and 
 eager for the admiration of the men. Banquets, the- 
 atres, shows, public readings every diversion which 
 would bring the sexes into social contact was sought 
 for with incessant eagerness. 
 
 In short, Cupid was the reigning deity. Marry- 
 ing, giving in marriage and forgiving in marriage 
 have rarely been carried on more hilariously. Ovid 
 himself was married thrice; but this was modera- 
 tion. His claims to popularity were quite different. 
 Of all that carnival of amorous gaiety, legitimate and 
 illegitimate, he was the poet and high-priest. It is 
 true that genuine love requires little literary stim- 
 ulus. "A lady asked me the other day," says Ana- 
 tole France, "of what use were poets. I told her 
 they helped us to love, but she assured me one could 
 love very well without them." Ovid himself ac- 
 knowledges the same thing with charming candour:
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 249 
 
 "My verses teach only what everybody knows al- 
 ready." Nevertheless, gaudy youth will always, 
 with the hero of Shakespeare, like books that are 
 well-bound and that treat of love. And Ovid, in- 
 exhaustible in poetic ingenuity, fed the popular ap- 
 petite, first with a glowing account of his own experi- 
 ences, and then with an elaborate treatise on the Art 
 of Love, which proved him at once to be an ex- 
 pert, and no doubt won him the applause and ad- 
 miration of all who had been, were, or wished to be 
 successful lovers. 
 
 Few men were better able to enjoy or appreciate 
 such a position. He had not sufficient depth of na- 
 ture for profound sympathy, but he was eminently 
 mobile, sensitive, and quick to respond to outside 
 influences. He was a thorough egotist, but he had 
 also the strong social instinct which obscures egotism 
 when it cannot obliterate it. He was selfish, yet 
 he was kindly where it cost him nothing, and though 
 he was intensely ambitious, Landor has well pointed 
 out that few poets have spoken of their contempo- 
 raries with less jealousy than he. In all his vast 
 work, there is little trace of genuine passion, and 
 consequently his poetry lacks the high note that pas- 
 sion gives. He is fanciful rather than imaginative, 
 gay rather than merry, ingenious rather than pro- 
 found. In fact, ingenuity haunts him everywhere. 
 A professional story-teller, he can never lose him-
 
 250 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 self in his story, as do Boccaccio and Chaucer, Dumas 
 and Scott. The whole world to him, earth, heaven, 
 and hell, is matter for perpetual cleverness. He re- 
 minds one often of Oscar Wilde, and, like Wilde, 
 he seemed of all men least fitted to bear the sudden 
 blast of misery that came upon him. 
 
 For, in the height of his popularity, when he was 
 doing his best and soberest work, when all Rome 
 admired and applauded him, he was sent by the 
 Emperor Augustus into perpetual exile at the end 
 of the world. The exact, immediate cause of this 
 misfortune is not clearly known. Ovid refers to 
 it often, but in veiled language and with obscure 
 hints only. The most probable conjecture is that 
 he was in some way involved in one of the scandals 
 of the imperial family and had seen and heard more 
 than he should have done. Back of this pretext, 
 however, it seems evident that the emperor wished 
 to punish the poet for his very objectionable verses. 
 Among other ambitions Augustus had that of desiring 
 to be a reformer. He found Rome brick and left 
 it marble. He also found it corrupt and wished to 
 leave it virtuous. This was a good deal more dif- 
 ficult. No coadjutors, he thought, would be more 
 helpful than the poets. Virgil, and even Horace, 
 fell in with the revival policy admirably. But Ovid, 
 Ovid he triumphed with ecstasy in everything the 
 emperor most wished to suppress. Therefore, when
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 251 
 
 a good occasion presented itself, he had to suffer. 
 
 He did suffer. At the age of fifty he was exiled 
 to Tomi, a little colony, half Greek, half barbarian, 
 on the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Danube. 
 The decree came upon him suddenly and he gives 
 a piteous description of his hurried departure, the 
 scanty preparation, the forlorn leavetakings. A rough 
 and violent winter voyage brought him, after many 
 narrow escapes, to the dreary, barren edge of civilisa- 
 tion, where he was to spend eight miserable years, 
 and from which he sent forth one prolonged wail of 
 metrical agony. "To think that one whose name 
 was a household word in Rome should have to live 
 among the Bessi and the Getes !" That is the per- 
 petual note. 
 
 Could there be a more curious psychological study 
 than such a man, thrown into such surroundings and 
 himself supplying careful notes on his sufferings and 
 experiences? For, in his long series of verse let- 
 ters to home friends, he details, with cruel monotony, 
 if not the incidents, at least the emotions, of his 
 daily life. As might have been expected, with his 
 character, disaster so complete brings complete moral 
 collapse. "If you met me in the street, you would 
 not know me," he writes to one friend; "my prime 
 of life is so overcome with ruin." He does, indeed, 
 occasionally pride himself on bearing up with cour- 
 age. "My soul is equal to my evils. From that my
 
 252 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 body gets strength and bears things not to be borne." 
 Again, "All woes come upon me. But my soul 
 bears all woes and gives my body strength to bear 
 them." These are vague flashes, however. As a gen- 
 eral thing, he finds no consolation, no comfort, no 
 refuge. 
 
 There seems to be little effort to seek for charm 
 or interest in his surroundings, yet some charm or 
 interest they must have had, surely. All through 
 his earlier work there are constant traces of delight 
 in the beauty of nature, and though his expression 
 of this is too apt to be deformed by the attempt at 
 cleverness, it has often exquisite feeling. 
 
 Nee minimum refert, intacta rosaria primus, 
 An sera carpas paene relicta manu. 
 
 To be sure, the nature of the Scythian steppes was 
 far remote from that of Tibur or Psestum; yet one 
 would think its breadth, its colour, its vastness, must 
 have made some spiritual appeal. To Ovid there is 
 none, nothing but barrenness, shuddering desolation, 
 horror, and cold, cold, forever cold. It is most curi- 
 ous to note how again and again he starts to paint 
 what he sees about him, and, before he knows it, 
 slips into painting what he does not see; violets, 
 roses, the breath of vineyards, merry barefoot maid- 
 ens dancing in the autumn sun. His heart aches
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 253 
 
 as he remembers, and his light verses grow heavy 
 with the weight of tears. 
 
 There is one natural solace that he would indulge 
 in, if he could, and his longing for it is a great ele- 
 ment of attraction in him. Apparently even in the 
 giddy days of laughter and vanity, he had learned, 
 or had not forgotten, the true Roman love of the 
 soil. He recalls with sadness those gardens tended 
 now by whom? which he himself was wont to 
 cherish, and the trees he planted from which others 
 must pluck the fruit. The touch of the soil, he 
 feels, would make him forget thought, the homely 
 contact of goats or sheep. He would like to learn 
 the Getic cries for guiding oxen, to grasp the plough 
 in his hand and cast the seed upon the turned earth. 
 His quick imagination fires with the idea, these 
 fields, why not clear the tangled weeds out of them'? 
 Why not bring water to the parched and sterile soil *? 
 Yet, after all, what is the use"? This is not civilised 
 Italy. And what profits labour, when the maraud- 
 ing Scythian may sweep away a season's effort in one 
 night? 
 
 But, if nature is inadequate and uncertain, there 
 are still men, and women, and children. Surely they 
 ought to be all the more interesting because they are 
 different from those at home. We are told that 
 Ovid was the keenest of observers. Always "in the
 
 254 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 closest contact with human nature," says Sellar; and 
 Landor, "that poet who with all his levity has more 
 unobtrusively sage verses than any, be he Roman or 
 Athenian." It may be so; but he appears to find 
 very little worth his talent in an eight years' resi- 
 dence at Tomi. Rare indeed is any touch of genuine 
 observation: "The women pound corn, instead of 
 spinning, and carry heavy vessels of water on their 
 bent heads." Occasionally he sketches in broad out- 
 lines the hurrying throng as he sees it about him: 
 "You want to know something of these people of" 
 Tomi where I dwell? A mixed company, between 
 Greek and Getic, but more of the half-subdued Getic 
 than the Greek. . . . Not one of them who does 
 not carry quiver and bow and arrows dark with 
 viper's gall. Fierce voices, cruel faces, the true breed 
 of Mars, unshorn, unshaven, quick to strike with the 
 knife that every man of them carries at his thigh. 
 Among these creatures, dear friend, now dwells thy 
 poet, alas, forgetful of his dainty loves ; such things 
 he hears and such he sees." And the shudder of his 
 rising hair and nerve-racked flesh makes his verses 
 harsh as the filing of a saw : 
 
 Nee vacat, in qua sint positi regione Tomitae, 
 Quaerere, finitimo vix loca nota Getae; 
 
 Aut quid Sauromatae faciant, quid lazyges acres, 
 Cultaque Oresteae Taurica terra deae.
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 255 
 
 If he had not leisure even to observe or describe 
 the human movement that was going on about him, 
 it is hardly to be supposed that he would enter into 
 it with sympathy, that he would make acquaintances 
 or friends, and find in new affection, however dif- 
 ferent, some recompense for the loss of the old. Ap- 
 parently he did not. "Here is no friend," he says, 
 "whose chat can wile away the slowly slipping 
 hours." And in a moment of petulance he brands 
 everybody with savage condemnation "The men 
 are hardly worthy of the name : the wolves are only 
 a little more savage." It is true that when his neigh- 
 bours at last find out this attitude and not unnatu- 
 rally take offence at it, he apologises. No, no, not 
 you, he says, I never quarrelled with you. It is my 
 own situation I grieve over here. You are all kind 
 to me, very, very kind. It is your country I don't 
 like. And you don't like it yourselves. With time 
 he overcomes his prejudices, learns the native lan- 
 guage, writes in it, is praised and honoured, and 
 finds, no doubt, a certain satisfaction in being so. 
 
 Yet, even allowing for all the circumstances, the 
 man's bearing seems to me thoroughly consistent with 
 what we know of him. He was quick and sensitive. 
 He had no depth of kindliness or sympathy. It is 
 only necessary, to place the elaborate love letters of 
 his heroines beside Dante's Francesca or Virgil's 
 Dido to perceive this. But compare Ovid with a
 
 256 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 much lesser personage than Dante or Virgil, with 
 Dumas pere, whom in some ways he resembles. 
 Dumas would have felt such an exile from Paris as 
 keenly as Ovid; but in three months he would have 
 had three love affairs, have hobnobbed with Greek 
 and Sarmate, have rigged a stage and put on melo- 
 dramas that would have drawn tears and coin from 
 every Getic soul. Since he could not go to Rome, 
 he would have brought Rome to Tomi, and the pres- 
 ent applause of the barbarians would almost have 
 made up for remote Roman forgetfulness. 
 
 I ask myself, further, whether adversity accom- 
 plished any change in Ovid's inner life, whether the 
 loss of all he loved brought the least profit in self- 
 examination, in stiffening of spiritual fibre, in puri- 
 fying and elevating of moral tone. The response is 
 slighter than one could wish. Of repentance for 
 early folly and indiscretion, real regret for having 
 offended, not only against the wishes of Augustus, 
 but against all the purer and finer traditions of Ro- 
 man morals, there is hardly a trace. Once or twice, 
 indeed, the poet's agony wrings from him what 
 sounds like a cry of genuine remorse. "When I was 
 fortunate and happy, I toyed with youthful, happy 
 things. Now at last I come to regret it." Again, 
 even more earnestly : "Oh, I repent, I repent, if ever 
 wretchedness is to be trusted; and my error wrings 
 my soul. My fault is worse to me than my exile
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 257 
 
 and to have sinned is worse than to suffer the penalty. 
 So help me God, to whom that sin is known, the 
 penalty may be removed, the sin will last forever." 
 It seems hard not to believe such a fervour of con- 
 fession as this. Yet with Ovid one never knows. 
 His general tone in regard to his shortcomings is 
 much more one of apology and of defence. Others 
 have done far worse than he. Look at the old poets, 
 Greek and Latin. What things are written there 
 and no poet was ever exiled for them ! Look at the 
 stage a horror, beside which his verses are innocent. 
 And there is the old plea, that he gave the public 
 only what it asked for. Altogether, it seems as if 
 the regret were less for having offended morals than 
 for having offended Augustus. 
 
 Also, misery should have bred tenderness and toler- 
 ance as well as repentance. Did it? I have already 
 noted Lander's stress upon Ovid's general kindliness. 
 "I wish well to Ovidius, for he speaks well of every- 
 body," says Messala, in his charming dialogue with 
 Tibullus. This is in the main undeniable, and some- 
 times a deeper spirit of forgiveness breathes in the 
 melancholy elegies: "Your loyalty is precious. As 
 for those who turned their backs and fled with for- 
 tune, let us forgive them." Yet over against this 
 we must set that curious outburst of rage called 
 "Ibis," in which the poet hurls his whole arsenal 
 of fury against an enemy who persists in hounding
 
 258 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 him even in his exile. Such a luxury of cursing, such 
 a finished, ornate, elaborate triumph of anathema 
 can hardly be produced elsewhere outside the eccle- 
 siastical perfection of Doctor Slop. A mere literary 
 exercise, in imitation of Callimachus, say some. 
 Literary the thing is, to the point of frigidity, like 
 much of Ovid's writing. But literary or not, a mind 
 which could occupy itself with such vindictiveness 
 can hardly be said to have been chastened, or sweet- 
 ened, or purified by adversity. 
 
 The truth is, during the whole long eight years, 
 the exile thought of but one thing, getting home 
 again. This effort sustained him, this hope com- 
 forted him. Without it his only refuge would have 
 been the suicide from which a faithful friend saved 
 him when the blow first fell. 
 
 From the beginning he keeps up a perpetual epis- 
 tolary bombardment upon every one in Rome who is 
 likely to have interest or influence. The emperor, 
 of course, stands first and to him Ovid addresses 
 appeal after appeal, varying his petitions with all 
 possible ingenuity of flattery. The longest of these 
 letters is the elaborate defence referred to above, 
 in which the poet justifies his errors by the example 
 of others. It would seem as if nothing could have 
 shown more lack of judgment. If Augustus was 
 really bent on reforming the world, he was not likely 
 to be gratified by the argument that all literature
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 259 
 
 was against him. A sincere offer of assistance would 
 probably have gone further; but no doubt he knew 
 that of this Ovid was quite incapable. At any rate, 
 neither argument, nor gross flattery, nor piteous plea 
 made any impression, unless Ovid was right in 
 imagining that the emperor was preparing to re- 
 consider at the time of his death. 
 
 Below the throne there was a long list of friends 
 and acquaintances to whom Ovid writes with agon- 
 ised entreaty. What their response was we can only 
 guess; but it is likely to have implied more or less 
 amiable evasion. In the first series of his letters, 
 the "Tristia," he mentions few names, appealing now 
 to one great personage, now to another, anonymously, 
 with the evident fear that they would not wish to 
 be compromised. But in the "Pontic Epistles" he 
 drops this precaution, whether because he has grown 
 hopeless or because the whole story has become too 
 public for comment to be dangerous. Among his 
 correspondents are some of the greatest names of 
 Rome and he addresses them in every variety of tone. 
 Now he learns of one, trusted utterly, who has be- 
 trayed him, and it seems as if the foundations of 
 his universe were shaken. Or again, a mere acquaint- 
 ance, from whom he expected nothing, proves loyal, 
 and his heart exults with hope. In his extremity, he 
 even goes outside the limits of Roman friendship and 
 appeals to the barbarian king Cotys, if by any chance
 
 260 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 his influence may avail with the imperial auto- 
 crat. Sometimes he reproaches bitterly, for real or 
 imagined neglect: "The ants never throng to a de- 
 serted granary. Lose your wealth and you will lose 
 your friends." Sometimes he declares that he will 
 give up the attempt, reconcile himself, forget: 
 "There are wounds that are made worse by meddling 
 with them. It is better to let them alone." But 
 this mood does not last. No diversion, no reaction 
 lasts; all give place, and that speedily, to the pro- 
 longed, renewed, inevitable wail : Rome, Rome, bring 
 me back to Rome, or if not that, get me delivered 
 from this Scythian horror, this bleak and frigid epit- 
 ome of hell. 
 
 There is one intercessor in whom the poet places 
 more confidence than in any other his wife; and 
 his letters to her are the most curious of all. How 
 genuine was his affection for her 1 ? She was his third 
 matrimonial experiment, and we have no means of 
 knowing how deep his conjugal devotion may have 
 been before disaster came. Certainly, to hear him, 
 you would think they must have been a pair of 
 doves. She is the half of his soul. He would be 
 glad indeed to perish if only she can be safe. Her 
 agony at his departure so he says was indescriba- 
 ble : swooning, torn hair, gelid limbs, a first impulse 
 to go with him, a second to die since she cannot have 
 him, the third to live only with the sacred purpose
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 261 
 
 of devoting herself to his recall. From the far 
 shores of Scythia he writes back, commending her 
 fidelity. He knows all she is doing for him. She 
 is as chaste as Penelope, as faithful as Laodamia, and 
 he wraps her in the purple garment of mythology 
 which he had ready-made for all the numerous and 
 varied ladies whom it served his turn to celebrate. 
 Her birthday comes. He will honour it in frozen 
 Tomi as he used to in Italian sunshine. "Blessed 
 festival, come hither, hither to my far-off dwelling- 
 place; come all bright and shining, alas, too much 
 unlike my own." 
 
 Yet there grows later a little impatience, if you 
 are watching carefully. Why can't she do some- 
 thing? The years are going, going. There is the 
 empress. Surely she can appeal to her. Risk? 
 What if there is a little risk? Even if she loses her 
 life in the attempt, there was a king Admetus who 
 had a queen, Alcestis. But there bore my wife, so 
 faithful, though a little timid, a little inexperienced 
 in the world's wicked ways? I am not the sort of 
 man for that. And one asks one's self, What was 
 she doing all those years? Really longing, loving; 
 or betraying, forgetting? Who may know? 
 
 Whatever doubt may attach to Ovid's affection 
 for his wife, none attends the brief glimpse we get 
 of his daughter, the lovely-named Perilla, who had 
 probably little influence and apparently much
 
 262 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 charm. He makes a tender reference to her in the 
 "Fasti": "One daughter I have, and may she long 
 outlive me. With her alive I cannot but be happy." 
 And one letter he writes to her from his melancholy 
 exile. It is sad enough, but it has a singularly win- 
 ning grace. Where will it find her, he wonders, 
 sitting with her gentle mother or busy with her 
 books'? Wherever she may be, he knows she will 
 snatch it eagerly, wild with desire to know how he 
 is and what he is about. Those books does she 
 remember how they enjoyed them together, made 
 verses together, each helped the other in the lovely 
 converse of the Muses? Those books let her cling 
 to them still. She need not fear that song will be 
 her ruin as it has been his. For she can sing nothing 
 but what is innocent and pure. And her beauty will 
 fade, and age with noiseless foot will come stealing 
 upon her; but the delight of thought and the en- 
 chanting grace of poetry can never grow old. 
 
 So this vision of fresh girlhood breaks in, like a 
 gleam of sunshine, on the varied monotony of com- 
 plaint. But the clouds close again at once, and if 
 the poet thinks of anything but his woes, he does 
 not speak of it. Long day after long day he broods 
 on misery. Ill health*? No, not ill health, at least 
 not always. He has been frail from childhood, but 
 on the whole he bears his troubles physically well. 
 Perhaps the strong fresh air even invigorates nerves
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 263 
 
 spent with too much Roman luxury. But for the 
 mind what is there to hope *? Days of terror, years 
 of remorseless, cold life unrelieved by affection, or 
 society, or glory; and death death in that barren 
 desert, untended, unpitied,- unbewailed. Why, if 
 tales be true, his Roman ghost must wander forever 
 among Sarmatic shadows. Ah, no, rather perish on 
 the pyre, body and soul. But at least he begs that 
 those who love him if any love him may bring 
 back his ashes in a little urn, that so he may not be 
 an exile even after death. 
 
 From thoughts bitter as these, memory, though 
 also bitter, affords a sort of refuge, and the poet 
 lives much in the past, forgetting in the pale glow 
 of his imagination the wastes of Scythia and the bat- 
 tle cries of Gete and Sarmate. Rome hangs ever 
 before him, Rome so immeasurably the greatest 
 thing in the Roman world. Paris to a Frenchman 
 means much. Perhaps no Parisian could be per- 
 manently happy away from it. Still, there are other 
 capitals besides Paris. And some flavour of civilisa- 
 tion would be found in almost any modern exile. 
 To a Roman, outside of Rome there was nothing 
 not even in Athens or the gorgeous cities of the East. 
 Thus it is that Ovid tells over to himself all those 
 past days and the delights of them, visits again 
 known streets and squares, basks in sunlit porticos,
 
 264 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 hears the common cries that once seemed harsh and 
 now re-echo so deliciously. 
 
 Not the city only, but the things that were done 
 there, fill his memory and sting it with a terrible, 
 enchanting pain. Youth, youth is fled far enough 
 anyway, but how much farther it seems, and dim- 
 mer, and sweeter, across those stern and savage seas. 
 Now he recalls pleasant days and merry companions : 
 "I remember so well our pastimes together and the 
 dainty jests that sped the moments swiftly. The 
 hours seemed too brief for the interchange of thought 
 and the day was gone sooner than what I had to 
 tell you." Now he goes over, less, no doubt, for his 
 correspondent than for himself, a rapid sketch of his 
 childhood and young manhood, touches tenderly the 
 memory of his lost brother, dwells at length on his 
 passion for study and poetry and the friends it 
 brought him. Virgil he saw, Horace he heard, Pro- 
 pertius he knew well. Where are they now? Or 
 his mind turns to earlier wanderings, far, far dif- 
 ferent from those he has lately known. Then, with 
 his friend Macer, he visited the purple East, Greece, 
 and Sicily, all sunshine, all gaiety, all charm. It 
 is one thing to travel at your own wayward will, in 
 jovial company, when pleasant sights suggest quick 
 thoughts, and quick thoughts breed harmless jests, 
 and when above all, if you choose, you can turn
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 265 
 
 your ship's prow backward and in a few hours be 
 in Rome again. But Scythia ! 
 
 And those who have dreamed dreams of loved ones 
 lost and joy vanished will know what dreams must 
 have been to Ovid. To see, to hear, actually to 
 touch, and then to have all snatched away again in 
 a moment! "My dreams affright me with the 
 shadow of real things and my inner sense wakes ever 
 for my ruin. Sometimes I seem to shun the flying 
 arrows and to extend my captive hands for cruel 
 chains. Or again, fooled by the treachery of too 
 sweet sleep, I behold the far dwellings of my own 
 country, and speak my fill with the friends I love 
 and with my darling wife. Then I awake, and see 
 how false was my delight, and my present state is 
 made worse by the keen perception of all that I 
 have lost. Thus, whether day beholds this wretched 
 head, or whether the dewy steeds of night are pass- 
 ing slowly, my heart is melted within me by per- 
 petual care, even as new wax is melted by a sudden 
 flame." 
 
 And love? What of love"? He had been the 
 poet of love, the prophet of love, the high-priest of 
 love. Will love desert him now*? The memory of 
 past triumphs and successes still lingers with him 
 a torture, or a delight"? Cupid appears to him in a 
 dream and comforts him with the near prospect of 
 release from exile. Again, in a more melancholy
 
 266 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 moment, he composes his epitaph and calls upon all 
 true lovers to pray for his repose. Yet I hardly 
 think love, as a personal emotion, can ever have 
 been a very important element in his life. At any 
 rate, when he arrived at Tomi, he was well past 
 middle age, and there is certainly no indication of 
 amatory solace during his sojourn there. I have said 
 that Dumas would have had many love-affairs upon 
 his hands. But Ovid was of a different temper. He 
 himself tells us that he never gave a thought to 
 such things and naively confirms the assertion by 
 declaring that his surroundings afforded no oppor- 
 tunity. It seems more than probable that he is an- 
 other striking instance of a fact singularly attested 
 in the correspondence of Sterne, that the men who 
 have written most freely on sexual matters are, for 
 obvious reasons, apt to be personally of a rather 
 frigid temperament. 
 
 No, I imagine that the recollection of love and 
 all his dealings with it and all it had done or un- 
 done for him, afforded Ovid little but bitterness. 
 And though he would have comprehended but im- 
 perfectly the beautiful sentences of his great admirer 
 Landor, he would have been quite ready to sub- 
 scribe to them: "Before I left Ovidius when I re- 
 turned his visit, he read to me the commencement 
 of some amatory pieces, at which, if I smiled, it was 
 in courtesy, not approbation. From the mysteries
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 267 
 
 of religion the veil is seldom to be drawn, from the 
 mysteries of love never. For this offence the gods 
 take away from us our freshness of heart and our 
 susceptibility of pure delight." 
 
 One consolation Ovid had in his misery, however, 
 one serious, high, enduring consolation, without 
 which it is difficult indeed to see how he could have 
 survived; and that was literature. All his life he 
 was essentially a literary man. It was not only that 
 he loved glory, as Lucretius and Virgil did. It was 
 not only that he had an exquisite delight in artistic 
 expression, as Horace had. It was more than that. 
 He looked at all life, at nature, at religion, at man 
 and woman, at himself, from the literary point of 
 view, as much as ever Flaubert or D'Annunzio. 
 Through all his emotions, through all his experiences, 
 you trace that curious detachment, that double per- 
 sonality, by which the born writer at once lives, and 
 stands by and watches himself live. He had the writ- 
 er's love of finish, the writer's vanity, the writer's pre- 
 tence of belittling his work when it is all on earth 
 he cares for. How admirable is his declaration in 
 one line that he has burned his great poem, with the 
 confession in the next that it is safely extant in 
 other copies! 
 
 The excess of this literary preoccupation accounts, 
 I think, for the defects of even Ovid's best poetry. 
 He never loses himself in his subject, is never lifted
 
 268 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 up, nor swept away. Sellar is impressed with the 
 poet's freshness of imaginative sympathy, and the 
 Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco feels that he ap- 
 proaches the old myths with the buoyancy and im- 
 pressionability of a child. But Boissier calls him 
 a poet of fashion, a parlour poet, and I do not see 
 how any one can read him widely without agreeing 
 with Boissier. He had, it is true, immense fertility 
 of invention, an extraordinary richness and breadth 
 of fancy. But always at critical moments there 
 comes the false note, the sense of artifice, the intru- 
 sion of the writer's cleverness between the reader 
 and the thing portrayed. Light, colour, swiftness, 
 ease, gaiety, are always there; but human truth is 
 not there. Even in Ovid's lamentations, the sincerest 
 things he ever wrote, this literary ingenuity is often 
 near at hand. A sob turns to an epigram and a bit- 
 ter memory is dissolved in a mythological catalogue. 
 Yet the fact remains that literature was his com- 
 fort, his solace, his delight, a pale delight, and some- 
 times chilled by the frozen winds of Scythia, but at 
 least something to turn to, to banish thought and 
 sweeten care. He is a worker, has always been a 
 worker he tells us, and even in exile and misery he 
 works. On the voyage out, when the high seas are 
 wetting his manuscript, he is making verses. After 
 years of absence, in the midst of barbarians, and with 
 hostile uproar sounding in his ears, he is making
 
 OVID AMONG THE GOTHS 269 
 
 verses still. Sometimes his patience fails, sometimes 
 he loses temper even with the Muse, his best, most 
 faithful, only friend; after all, she misled him, she 
 ruined him. But it does not last long. She is a 
 mistress whose sovereign charm no lover can resist, 
 and he returns to her with a cry which all her fol- 
 lowers will echo and cherish: "As the wounded vo- 
 tary of Bacchus does not feel her wounds, when 
 sense is numbed by the wild revel in Idsean woods, 
 so when my heart is touched by that thyrsus, ever 
 green, the spirit within me rises above all human 
 ills. It forgets exile, forgets the frigid barriers of 
 the Scythian sea, forgets even the anger of the gods. 
 I might have drunk the cup of Lethe, breeder of 
 sleep, so free is my soul from the bitter contact of 
 adversity." 
 
 Nor is it merely as diversion, distraction, minister 
 of forgetfulness, that the Muse helps lonely sorrow 
 such as Ovid's was. There is something in the out- 
 cry, too, something of relief and comfort in pro- 
 claiming one's woes in imperishable beauty which 
 distant ears will hear, if ears at hand do not. 
 Strange, that those things we would not, could not, 
 utter in close confidence to a near friend, we are 
 ready to pour out from the housetops that whoso 
 will may profit by them. And thus, no doubt, Ovid, 
 like Leopardi, like Byron, like Heine, found conso-
 
 270 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 lation in embalming his griefs in what he fondly 
 hoped might be eternal verses. 
 
 One thing is curious. The sufferings Ovid sang 
 were real, tangible, indisputable, such as no one could 
 doubt or laugh at. Byron's, on the other hand, were 
 for the most part subjective, wilful, matter of the 
 mind not of the body. Yet, perhaps from this very 
 fact, Byron's seem to us far more noble, more worthy, 
 more dignified. Neither was thoroughly manly, but 
 of the two Byron was very much more so. 
 
 Manly or not, however, Ovid succeeded in making 
 millions of posterity think about him. The assur- 
 ance of this would have been some slight alleviation 
 of his misery. And indeed there were times when, 
 with the splendid prophetic vision of a great poet, 
 he needed no external assurance. Thus the clos- 
 ing lines of the charming letter to his daughter are 
 among the finest, not only of Ovid, but of any 
 Roman poet: "Even I, though I lack fatherland and 
 love and home, though all things have been taken 
 from me that can be taken, yet I have with me my 
 genius as an eternal joy. Over that even Csesar has 
 no power. Whoever wills may end my mortal life. 
 But my fame will live on when I have passed away. 
 So long as martial Rome, victorious upon her seven 
 hills, shall sway the orbed world, so long mankind 
 shall read my verses." Moments like that must have 
 paid for some days even of exile. 19 1 3
 
 XI 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT
 
 XI 
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 
 
 FRANCIS OF SALES was a man who, of his 
 own choice, gave up all the good things of 
 this world out of pure love for the kingdom of 
 God. Born in 1567, the eldest son of a rich and noble 
 French family, with every career of arms or state op- 
 en to him, he chose the church, and without the use of 
 political influence or intrigue, simply by purity, de- 
 votion, and a charming power over souls, became a 
 bishop infinitely beloved, and was duly canonised 
 after his death. Few have better deserved sainthood. 
 The life of Saint Francis has been obscured by 
 numerous hagiographers with the pious incense of 
 spiritual legend. But one disciple, Camus, Bishop 
 of Belley, has left us a study, "L'Esprit de Saint 
 Francois de Sales," which portrays the saint in his 
 daily life almost with the patience and fidelity of a 
 Bos well. Indeed, in some respects, Bos well is out- 
 done; for Camus tells us that when his idol visited 
 him, in order to get more exact material for his 
 record, he bored a hole through into Francis's room, 
 and watched his actions even when he thought him- 
 
 273
 
 274 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 self alone. This is an extreme biographical solici- 
 tude to which I do not read that Dr. Johnson was 
 subjected. Perhaps he would not have come out 
 quite so well as Saint Francis is reported to have 
 done. 
 
 But far more valuable than such gossipy external 
 observation is Saint Francis's own writing, his nu- 
 merous sermons and treatises, and the intimate per- 
 sonal letters of which a vast number have been pre- 
 served. 
 
 First, for the shadows, such as they are. It was 
 a bitter time. The battles of the Reformation were 
 fighting everywhere, and both sides were tempted 
 to resort to words and deeds that our cooler and 
 less believing age can hardly tolerate. Francis, as 
 bishop in the neighbourhood of Protestant Geneva, 
 was drawn into some actions and more words that 
 we are very far from approving. But everything 
 shows that, for his time, he was mild and tolerant, 
 and really cherished the spirit of his own beautiful 
 sentence, written in later life: "He who preaches 
 with love really preaches enough against the heretics, 
 though he does not utter one word of controversy." 
 
 In dealing with these practical sides of the divine 
 calling, Sainte-Beuve justly points out that Francis 
 shows the business instincts of a man of the world. 
 He was no recluse, no shy and quiet scholar. He 
 could mingle with men, and influence them, and
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 275 
 
 guide them in every day pursuits. He even com- 
 plains of the distraction this brought upon him. 
 "The affairs of this diocese are not streams but tor- 
 rents." When he was sent to Paris for things semi- 
 political, semi-religious, he so demeaned himself that 
 Henri Quatre, that supreme man of the world, spoke 
 of him and treated him with as much affection as 
 respect. If necessary, he could recall high persons 
 to their duty with prophetic sternness, as when he 
 reminded the Duke of Savoy that princes were bound 
 to give great thought to great measures, "on pain 
 of eternal damnation." 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that he was 
 one of the busy, meddling prelates who long to ar- 
 range matters of this world as well as of the other. 
 On the contrary, I have sought far for even subtle 
 and indirect evidence of such ambition and have 
 found none. He went into the world for duty. For 
 delight he gladly and often went out of it. 
 
 In other words, he was pre-eminently a man of 
 the spirit, a man to whom God meant everything. 
 Not that he was a great theologian. He read widely, 
 read the Fathers thoroughly. His own treatise, "On 
 the Love of God," contains much subtle theological 
 discussion, which some may find of profit; but he 
 is always glad to break away from difficult problems 
 and the vain effort to search out the unsearchable. 
 "Poor little insect," he says to his own understand-
 
 276 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 ing, "poor little insect, bred from the corruption of 
 my flesh, why will you scorch your wings at this 
 immense fire of divine omnipotence, which would 
 consume and devour the seraphim, if they thrust 
 themselves into such expense of curiosity? No, poor 
 butterfly, thy business is to be lost in adoration, and 
 not to dangle thy plummet in the deep." 
 
 This is the mystic's self-abandonment. Saint 
 Francis took to it far more kindly than to the de- 
 bates of Augustine and Aquinas. The treatise above 
 mentioned is full of mystical ecstasy, drenched with 
 it, and Francis's letters contain many passages even 
 more significant in their high-wrought rapture and 
 their absolute submission to the will of God. "Keep- 
 ing my soul forever in His divine presence, with a 
 joy not over-impetuous, but, as it seems to me, rich 
 enough to express a perfect love to Him ; for nothing 
 in this world is worth our love; it should be all for 
 that Saviour who has given us all of His." 
 
 But the essential characteristic of Saint Francis's 
 religion was neither theology nor ecstasy, but sun- 
 shine. His heart was simple, and to the simple is 
 given the supreme heritage of joy. He did not, in- 
 deed, wholly claim this for himself. "I am, to be 
 sure, by no means simple, but I love simplicity with 
 an extraordinary love." He was simpler than he 
 thought, and pure, and straightforward, and direct. 
 
 He was humble, also, did not exalt himself even
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 277 
 
 by the assumption of humility. "Humility, sim- 
 plicity of heart and of affection, and spiritual sub- 
 mission, are the solid foundations of the religious 
 life." So he wrote, so he thought, and his practice 
 bore out the letter of his teaching. 
 
 Above all, in his simplicity and in his humility, 
 he had charm. The adjective that occurs most fre- 
 quently in his writings, that occurs with a singular, 
 penetrating, impressive repetition, is suave, which 
 we must free from all its English associations of in- 
 sincerity and keep only in its primitive significance, 
 of grace, gentleness, sweetness, tenderness. "Let us 
 be saved with our amiable relative, Saint Francis of 
 Sales," writes Madame de Sevigne. "He leads peo- 
 ple to Paradise by a pleasanter road than the gen- 
 tlemen of Port Royal." And one of the great con- 
 troversialists of the Reformation indicated admirably 
 the same thing: "If it is only a question of convinc- 
 ing, I can do it; but if you want to convert men, 
 take them to the Bishop of Geneva, who has received 
 that gift from God." 
 
 The secret of this was, that back of the suavity, 
 giving it breadth and depth and truth, lay the tender- 
 est and kindliest humanity. Here was a man at all 
 points tempted as we are, whose own struggles and 
 victories and even more, failures, give him infinite 
 charity for the failures of others. There is never 
 anywhere in Saint Francis tolerance of sin; but
 
 278 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 there is an inexhaustible tolerance and patience and 
 sympathy for sinners. 
 
 And there is further, what one surely does not 
 look for in a canonised saint, but what adds a fine 
 flower to the saint's grace and charm, a rich and joy- 
 ous gaiety which sometimes broadens into laughter. 
 In the "Introduction to the Devout Life" Saint 
 Francis, though reprehending all uncharitable mock- 
 ery, permits and encourages light and kindly humour; 
 and he himself does not hesitate to practise his own 
 precept, even in his spiritual letters. "Reverend 
 mother, you should live before God in entire gaiety 
 of heart," he writes to Madame de Chantal. And 
 how winning is the gentle irony with which he dis- 
 suades an ardent novice from excess of devotion. 
 "My dear daughter, we must allow ourselves re- 
 pose, enough repose; be kind enough to leave some 
 labour to others, and not try to get all the crowns 
 ourselves: our beloved neighbour will be charmed 
 to have a few." 
 
 This suavity, this charity, this large humanity, 
 together with boundless tact and grace in handling 
 souls, made Saint Francis probably one of the most 
 skilful and successful spiritual directors that the 
 Catholic Church has ever known, and it is in this 
 aspect of his activity that the study of him is most 
 interesting and most profitable. As to the value of 
 such direction there has always been dispute and
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 279 
 
 there always will be. Its dangers are obvious. No 
 human soul can wholly take the burden of another. 
 Yet every human soul has moments when it craves 
 all the guidance and comfort that another soul can 
 give it. Few have understood better than Saint 
 Francis how to take advantage of these moments and 
 make the comfort and the guidance lasting. 
 
 How far he influenced and governed men I can- 
 not tell. His letters to them, except those of pure 
 business or courtesy, are comparatively few. I can- 
 not help thinking that some rebuff from the sterner 
 sex occasioned one of his very rare expressions of 
 discouragement: "It is wonderful what power the 
 fashions of this world have over mankind, and it 
 seems hopeless to try to remedy this. If you hold 
 up to them hell and damnation, they hide behind 
 the goodness of God. If you press them, they leave 
 you right where you stand." Now and then he 
 writes to some young nobleman, urging upon him the 
 care of his soul. One answers, like Calchas in "La 
 Belle Helene," that his natural vocation is to enjoy 
 himself. Ah, says the saint, listen to me and virtue 
 will become a second nature stronger than the first. 
 I wonder if the young man listened. To another 
 Francis represents the value of the right use of time, 
 and that some portion of the day at least should be 
 given to prayer and meditation; at any rate, none to 
 reading the fashionable follies of the hour, such as
 
 280 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 "that infamous Rabelais." And we are reminded of 
 Valentin, the young friend of Goncourt. "Valentin 
 had only two books : a Bible of which he read a little 
 every morning, a Rabelais, of which he read a little 
 every night." With all this, however, it must be 
 remembered that our saint had the infinite respect of 
 men of all classes and characters and that not a few 
 of them came to him in trouble and sorrow and were 
 comforted. 
 
 But unquestionably it was women who most often 
 sought help and obtained it. As to his personal 
 relations with them, it is hardly necessary to say that 
 no word of reproach or suspicion is possible. His 
 affection for Madame de Chantal was as pure as it 
 was lofty. Their correspondence, carried on for 
 many years, is one of the most beautiful examples of 
 a spiritual relation mutually elevating, sustaining, 
 and inspiring. With women generally he is said to 
 have urged and to have himself practised the most 
 scrupulous regard for propriety and reserve, making 
 it a rule never to speak to any woman except with a 
 third person present in the room. Also he sets, per- 
 haps half humorously, a rigorous prescription for let- 
 ters: "When one writes to a woman one ought, if 
 it were possible, to use the point of a penknife, in- 
 stead of a pen, so as to be sure to say nothing super- 
 fluous." Although, as Sainte-Beuve, who quotes 
 this, points out, with his usual charming naivete he
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 281 
 
 often forgets his own precept and wanders where it 
 takes a swift and current pen to follow him. 
 
 In all his counsels to women it is interesting to 
 note not only the high and stimulating impulse to 
 spiritual intensity, but also the delicate restraining 
 hand where spiritual intensity might be carried to 
 excess. No one is more eager than he to urge the 
 religious life upon those who are fit for it, ready for 
 it. To a young girl whose parents are persuading 
 her to marry for the sake of marriage, he says : "Those 
 who are naturally inclined to marry and are married 
 happily find so much occasion for patience and for 
 self-denial that they can hardly bear the burden; 
 how should you bear it, when you have entered it 
 against your will 1 ?" Yet in other cases he points 
 out that the parent's wish should be thought of first, 
 that domestic duties have their claim, and that a 
 mother's love, although it sometimes seems torment- 
 ing, should be considered and respected before every- 
 thing but the command of God. 
 
 Even to small matters of feminine frivolity he 
 brings an affectionate touch of common-sense. It is 
 a pity to dress too daintily, but it is better to dress 
 daintily than to worry about dressing daintily. 
 "Tell her to powder her hair, if she likes, so long as 
 her heart is right ; for the thing is not worth so much 
 thinking about. Don't get your thoughts entangled 
 among these spider-webs. The hairs of this girl's
 
 282 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 spirit are more snarled up than those of her head." 
 And although no one knows better than he the depth 
 and power and richness of a woman's soul, there are 
 times when he feels called upon to insist upon her 
 weakness to an extent that would make the new 
 woman somewhat restless. "Your sex needs to be 
 led, and never succeeds in any enterprise but by sub- 
 mission; not that you have not oftentimes as much 
 light as men, but such is the will of God." 
 
 It is already sufficiently evident what fine observa- 
 tion, what delicate insight, what acute comparison 
 and distinction were needed to practise the art of 
 soul-direction as Saint Francis practised it. Every- 
 where through his writings are scattered reflections 
 and comments as subtle as those of La Rochefou- 
 cauld or La Bruyere, the profound wisdom of a man 
 who has walked through this cruel and bitter world 
 with eyes well open and not always turned upward. 
 "Everybody finds it easy to practise certain virtues 
 and hard to practise others, and everybody exalts the 
 virtue which he can practise easily and seeks to ex- 
 aggerate the difficulty of the virtues which are diffi- 
 cult to him." Of the obstinate and stiff-necked he 
 says: "Thus we see that it is a natural thing to be 
 dominated by one's opinions : melancholy persons are 
 ordinarily much more attached to them than those 
 who are of a gay and jovial disposition; for the latter 
 are easily turned by a light finger and ready to be-
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 283 
 
 lieve whatever is told them." And the following 
 shows with what a quick, sharp probe he went right 
 to the bottom of a tormenting spiritual malady as 
 haunting to-day as three hundred years ago. "Mark 
 these four words that I am going to say to you: 
 your trouble comes from your fearing vice more 
 than you love virtue. If you could give your soul 
 from the very roots to the desire for practical religion, 
 for loving-kindness, and for true humility, you 
 would soon be an acceptable Christian, but you must 
 think of these things all the time." 
 
 Mere insight, however, would have carried the 
 saint but little way in his spiritual labours. Far 
 more important was his sympathy, his power of put- 
 ting himself in others' places, his infinite love. There 
 is nothing of remote austerity about him, nothing 
 of judicial coldness. He never hesitates to admit his 
 own frailty, his own temptation, his own failures. 
 Has his patient for what is he but a physician of 
 the soul? the disease of restlessness 1 ? He too has 
 known the evil. "May it not perhaps be a multi- 
 tude of desires that obstructs your spirit? I myself 
 have been ill of this malady. The bird tied to its 
 perch knows itself to be bound and feels the shock 
 of its detention only when it essays to fly away." 
 Or, as the "Imitation" expresses it, with its inimi- 
 table and untranslatable grace, Cella continuata dul- 
 cescit, sed male custodita t&dium general. And what
 
 284 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 can be more charming than his confession, after years 
 of ecclesiastical dignity, of the momentary spectre, 
 the intrusive and quickly banished shadow of human 
 regret 1 ? "Alas, my daughter, shall I tell you what 
 happened to me the other day*? Never in my life 
 before have I had a single hint of temptation against 
 my devout calling. But the other day, when I was 
 least looking for it, such a thing came into my mind, 
 not the wish that I did not belong to the Church, that 
 would have been too gross; but because just before, 
 talking with an intimate friend, I had said that if 
 I were still free and were to become heir to a duchy, 
 I should nevertheless choose the ecclesiastical pro- 
 fession, I loved it so much, a little debate arose in 
 my soul, of should I or should I not, which lasted 
 quite a space of time. I could see it, it seemed to 
 me, way, way down in the baser portion of my soul, 
 swelling like a toad. I laughed at it and would not 
 even think whether I was thinking of it. So it went 
 away in smoke and I saw it no more." Would not 
 you and I, who have our own toads crouching in 
 dark corners, if we were to have a confessor at all, 
 wish for a confessor like that? 
 
 So, on such a foundation of vast understanding 
 and human sympathy, Saint Francis built up a 
 method of spiritual direction which was all compact 
 of charity and tenderness. For high and low alike 
 he had the same breadth of comprehension, allowed
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 285 
 
 for their failings and appreciated their difficulties. 
 Rare indeed in the seventeenth century is the human- 
 ity which would deprive the rich of their pleasures 
 out of regard for the poor. "It is not reason- 
 able that anybody should take his recreation at the 
 expense of any one else, and especially by injuring 
 the poor peasant, who is sufficiently oppressed at 
 all times and whose labour and miserable condition 
 we should always respect." Everywhere in Saint 
 Francis's writings there is the same consideration for 
 weakness and wretchedness, the same desire to make 
 the world better by pity rather than by scorn. Even 
 where scorn is necessary, it should be restrained and 
 moderated. Some things should be treated with 
 contempt, "but the contempt should be subdued and 
 serious, not mocking nor full of disdain." 
 
 But let us look more nearly at some aspects of 
 Saint Francis's spiritual labours. To begin with, he 
 was essentially practical, at times almost homely, did 
 not by any means overstress meditation or pure devo- 
 tion at the expense of everyday virtue. He insists 
 usually upon truth with the strictest emphasis. "I 
 am comforted," he says, in his quaint phraseology, 
 "to find that you have a horror of all finesse and du- 
 plicity; for there is no vice more contrary to the 
 embonpoint and grace of the soul." It is true he 
 permits rare and professional exceptions. "If any- 
 body asks you whether you have told something that
 
 286 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 you have told under the sacred seal of confession, you 
 may assert boldly, and with no fear of duplicity, 
 that you have not." But, in general, he stands as 
 firm for entire truthfulness as any teacher of any age 
 or country. 
 
 On the practice of little virtues he is charming. 
 Not all can be saints, not all can teach or preach, 
 not all can attain that glory which is perhaps as 
 much of a false allurement in the things of virtue 
 as in the things of vice. But there is plenty that 
 all can do. "More than any others, I love these 
 three little virtues, gentleness of heart, poverty of 
 spirit, simplicity of life ; also these common deeds of 
 charity, visiting the sick, aiding the poor, comforting 
 the afflicted, and the like. But do these things with- 
 out feverish anxiety and in the true freedom of the 
 spirit." 
 
 It is on this freedom of the spirit that he insists 
 as much as upon anything. Do not fret, do not be 
 anxious, do not be falsely careful. The service of 
 God is a joyous service. Over and over again he 
 repeats these admonitions, which, with Madame de 
 Chantal, were apparently very needful. Now he 
 uses a homely vivacity of phrase which recalls Mon- 
 taigne: "Heavens, daughter, I wish the skin of 
 your heart were tougher, that the fleas might not 
 keep you waking." Now he speaks with a grave 
 tenderness which must have brought comfort to
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 287 
 
 many a weary sinner. "We ought to hate our 
 faults, but with a hatred which should be quiet and 
 tranquil, not spiteful and full of restlessness." Now 
 his joyous fancy sings out in a burst of good cheer, 
 the delicate melody of which is quite untranslatable : 
 Laissez courir le vent et ne pensez pas que le frifilis 
 des feuilles soit le cliquetis des armes. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to point out that these 
 practical matters are not all, or even the essential 
 part, of St. Francis's teaching. Through his letters, 
 through his sermons, through his treatises, every- 
 where, runs the passionate insistence upon the joy of 
 spiritual rapture, upon the splendour, the perfection, 
 the all-absorbing ecstasy of communion with God. 
 It does not appear that Saint Theresa herself felt 
 this more fully or proclaimed it more frequently. 
 Only here, as always, Saint Francis shows his serene 
 common sense. Ecstasy is much, he urges, but in our 
 human life on this dusty earth it cannot be all. There 
 are common duties from the performance of which no 
 ecstasy can set us free. "If it pleases God to let us 
 taste of these angelic experiences, we will do our best 
 to receive them worthily; meantime, let us devote 
 ourselves simply and humbly to the little virtues 
 which our Lord has commended to our effort and 
 care." 
 
 And as there are times when the sweetest and pur- 
 est souls cannot rise above themselves, cannot shake
 
 288 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 off the dust of earth, are overcome and overwhelmed 
 by shadow and despair, or by that dead inertia which 
 is almost worse than despair, for these times espe- 
 cially Saint Francis is ready with consolation, ready 
 with encouragement, ready with hope. Above all, 
 he thinks, souls so cast down should not be chidden 
 or reproved. Let them know, he urges all confes- 
 sors, let them know that you too are human and have 
 erred and suffered even as they. "If, for example, 
 you see one who is bowed down by remorse and 
 shame, give him confidence and assurance that you 
 are not an angel any more than he, that you find it 
 in no way wonderful that a mere man should sin." 
 For those hours of wayward depression, which come 
 without cause and vanish without warning, he has 
 his own grace of tender reassurance. Do not strive 
 too much, do not battle too much. Wait and hope 
 and pray patiently for the goodness of God. And 
 he analyses such dark phases with a subtlety which 
 shows that he knew well what he was talking about. 
 "The evil sadness comes upon you like a hail storm 
 with an unlocked for change and a vast impetuosity 
 of terror. It comes all at once and you know not 
 whence it comes, for it has no foundation in reason; 
 nay, when it has come, it hunts about everywhere for 
 reasons to justify itself. But the sweet and fruitful 
 sadness comes gently upon the soul, like a soft rain 
 which moistens blessedly, bringing the warmth of
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 289 
 
 consolation ; and it comes not unheralded, but for a 
 good and sufficient cause." 
 
 The reader cannot but have noticed already that 
 Francis was not only a saint, but a great writer, and 
 as with other great writers, his manner of writing is 
 most significantly characteristic of the man himself. 
 To be sure, he maintains that a preacher should put 
 aside all thought of mere expression, and modestly 
 disclaims any literary effort on his own part. "I 
 make no pretence of being a writer; for the sluggish- 
 ness of my wit and the circumstances of my life 
 make such a thing impossible for me." Yet it is per- 
 mitted to doubt, with Saint-Beuve, whether so fine 
 a master of words did not take some pleasure in the 
 use of them. Moreover, while denying to the 
 preacher the privilege of literary artifice, Francis 
 enjoins upon him the most careful employment of 
 literary art as an exquisite and powerful means of 
 moving souls. The distinction is sometimes a little 
 hard to draw. But in the following admirable pas- 
 sage he states it clearly: "In a word, you should 
 speak affectionately and devoutly, simply and can- 
 didly, and with a firm faith; you should be pro- 
 foundly possessed by the doctrine you teach and by 
 all that you wish to impress upon others. The 
 greatest artifice of all is to have no artifice. . . . 
 You may say what you please, but the heart speaks 
 to the heart, while mere words reach the ears only."
 
 2QO A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 Elsewhere he defends the use of figurative expression. 
 "One word should be said about similitudes, they 
 have an incredible efficiency in illuminating the un- 
 derstanding and in touching the will. . . . Simili- 
 tudes from little things, subtly applied, are of ex- 
 treme utility." 
 
 In thus justifying figures of speech, he was justi- 
 fying himself, as he well knew. For his own style 
 is simple, quaint, tender, at times lofty and solemn; 
 but what distinguishes it most is the extraordinary 
 richness of imaginative suggestion, of similes drawn 
 from every phase of nature and human life. Flow- 
 ers, doves, bees, he is never weary of ringing the 
 changes on them. It might be thought, perhaps, 
 that the reader would weary; but he does not. 
 There is such constant freshness of handling, such 
 variety of detail, such an unfailing sense of the spir- 
 itual bearing of all these symbols, that you rejoice 
 in each new one blossoming amid doctrinal discus- 
 sion, as if it were a delicate flower in a barren plain. 
 
 And it is to be noted that the charm of these poeti- 
 cal digressions does not come from exact observation. 
 Saint Francis is no Keats, no Thoreau, to spend 
 hours watching the balance of a bird on a wind-tossed 
 spray. Sometimes you get the impression that he 
 has forgotten even prayer in listening to an autumn 
 wind, or has enjoyed a golden morning just for itself, 
 as when he says of doves "their plumage is always
 
 PORTRAIT OF A SAINT 291 
 
 smooth and it does you good to see them in the sun- 
 shine." But generally his natural world for that 
 matter, like a good part of Shakespeare's, his exact 
 contemporary is taken from Pliny, from Virgil, 
 from old books and quaint scholastics, from anything 
 but God's blessed sky and the land and water under 
 it. Phoenixes, unicorns, and salamanders play a 
 large part in his menagerie, and his botany is too 
 often in a class with FalstafT's camomile : "Honours, 
 rank, dignities are like the saffron plant, which the 
 more it is trodden on, the faster it grows." 
 
 Yet genius and sincerity can make even wax flow- 
 ers blossom, and Saint Francis draws from everything 
 profit and help and comfort for the souls whose guid- 
 ance is, after all, his great and only care. What a 
 light, what a charm, what a winning, winged grace 
 attaches to his words, when he speaks of "marks of 
 the love of God, signs of his good pleasure in our 
 souls. He nests in the hawthorne of our hearts" 
 
 What strikes me very much in the life and work 
 of Saint Francis is the immense opportunity for the 
 psychologist. One who has come to consider that 
 nothing is so widely curious, so inexhaustibly fas- 
 cinating as the study of the human soul, grows al- 
 most envious of such a field of purely scientific in- 
 vestigation. When the saint writes, "I have met 
 several souls, which, closely examined, offered noth- 
 ing that I could consider sin," what psychologist in
 
 292 A NATURALIST OF SOULS 
 
 his laboratory can often feel that souls have been 
 closely examined in such a sense as that? 
 
 But great as the delight of such examination would 
 be, it is easy to see how the saint could find a delight 
 much greater. Indeed, he himself condemns the 
 scientific pleasure of the psychologist as dangerous, 
 if not impious. "Many indulge in rash judgments 
 for the pleasure of philosophising and divining the 
 characters of people as a mere intellectual exercise. 
 If, by chance, they manage to hit the truth, their 
 audacity and appetite for more increase so much, 
 that it is almost impossible to turn them from the 
 pursuit." 
 
 In some of us the appetite and the audacity in- 
 crease forever. But Saint Francis had interests even 
 more absorbing. With him the object was not to 
 know souls merely, but to help souls, to save souls. 
 The direction of souls to him is "the art of arts." 
 And who will differ from him*? Simply to watch, 
 to divine the play of secret springs in the inner life, 
 is exquisite enough, but to use one's cunning sapience 
 to mould souls as if they were wax, to bring light 
 out of darkness, joy out of bitterness, comfort out of 
 great trouble, and a pure and perfect flower out of 
 what seemed a mass of corruption, could any human 
 triumph be greater than this? 
 
 1913
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Book Slip-35m-7,'63(D8634s4)4280
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PN 511 B72n 1917 
 
 L 005 663 614 5 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PN 
 511 
 B?2n 
 1917 
 
 LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 001 110484 1