Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/faitliunfaitliotlieOOpaulrich 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH 
 
FAITH AND 
 
 UNFAITH 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 -BSi 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTR 
 MDCCCXCI 
 
Acs 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The seven essays in the present volume are all 
 that I care to preserve (apart from ^^Biographical 
 Sketches " already published in similar form) of my 
 contributions to various Periodicals for some years 
 past. J recognize that in addition to their oian 
 inherent defects^ of which notie can be more aware 
 than /, they have no such link each with the other 
 as had the parts of the previous volume; though 
 to myself there appears a spiritual affmity in most 
 of them^ in that they were the outcojne of doubts 
 and difficulties 7iow at rest. It has see?ned 
 right, however few the matter may concern, that 
 since the record of inward strife was given to the 
 world, the same essays should be publistied with 
 trifling necessary changes showing that the strife is 
 over, and with the intimation that if I have been 
 
 in 
 
 258538 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 in error in what I have said concerning any of the 
 Church's doctrines^ I submit in thisy as in all things^ 
 to her teachijtg. 
 
 I have to thank the Editors and Proprietors 
 of the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly , Theo- 
 logical, British Quarterly, and Century Guild 
 Hobby Horse Reviews, and the Guardian News- 
 paper for permission to reprint the substance 
 of the book. 
 
 C, K. P. 
 
 March 8, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fatih and Unfcdth 
 
 I 
 
 Thomas K Ke7npis and the Imitation . 
 
 . 33 
 
 Pascal's ''Pens^es'' .... 
 
 65 
 
 The Story of Jean Calas 
 
 . 119 
 
 What we know of Shakspere . 
 
 . 165 
 
 The Production and Life of Books 
 
 . 191 
 
 On English Prose Style .... 
 
 . 225 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 TN looking back to the beginning of any great 
 -*• schism of thought it is often difficult to under- 
 stand why so vast importance attached to what now 
 seem trifles ; the parties which opposed each other 
 with the utmost vehemence said much the same 
 thing, "only in slightly different words." The 
 strifes of the schoolmen are held to be mere phrases ; 
 it is hard for any who are outside the pale of the 
 Churches to see wherein lies the essential variance 
 between the Catholic and the Lutheran doctrine of 
 the Eucharist ; a devout Churchman or Wesleyan 
 of these days does not easily understand the grounds 
 of separation in the last century, or, indeed, the 
 precise point at which the " Methodists " ceased to 
 be a stricter section within the Established Church. 
 The currents of thought are like those of rivers 
 rising in the same watershed ; no reason is evident 
 why they should not take the same direction, only 
 when their later course is considered we see how 
 wide was the ultimate distance involved in their 
 earliest channels. 
 
 The 
 
 A 
 
2 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 The wish, on the one hand, to change, and, on 
 the other, to refuse all change of that which has 
 once been defined, is instinctive. There are in the 
 one case the dim stirrings of life, such as take place 
 in the spring long before the feelings are conscious 
 of alteration in climatic conditions, or 
 
 " Even as the prisoned silver, dead and dumb, 
 Shrinks at cold winter's footfall ere he come ; " 
 
 in the other the mind is no less sensitive. 
 
 Without in any degree underestimating the great 
 controversies in the early centuries of our era, 
 while the rule of faith was forming, or those others 
 when the scholastic philosophy issued from the 
 shock of opposing forces, we may safely assert that, 
 from the time that the Church arose to develop the 
 monotheism of Judaea and supplant the religions of 
 heathendom, no such event took place in the 
 Western, or civilised world, as that which on its 
 secular side is called the Renascence, and on the 
 religious side the Reformation. To the movement 
 the Church could not, and did not, as a whole, 
 object. The new learning, if it were true, could 
 not only not conflict with truth, but would throw 
 many side lights on it. Sciolism and stupidity, 
 the dark shadows which attend the light of know- 
 ledge, were alone to be disliked and dreaded. The 
 greatest and holiest minds recognised the need of 
 reform in high places and in low ; in the luxury of 
 some popes and the laxity of friars much called 
 
 for 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 3 
 
 for amendment, somewhat for radical change and 
 destruction. Perhaps this could not have come 
 wholly from within. Outside resistance and criti- 
 cism are always good for the criticised, if not for 
 the critic, just as now the very fact of living in the 
 light of opposition makes the Catholic Church 
 more fair, morally and socially, in England, than, 
 let us say, in Madeira. But, however this may be, 
 the Renascence and the Reformation had hardly 
 begun, when the Church instinctively knew that 
 liberty would soon grow into license, and separa- 
 tion would become destruction. Erasmus made 
 merry over pilgrimages, and Ulrich von Hutten 
 over the meagre Latinity of certain monks ; but 
 though they fell out among themselves, and though 
 no one would ever have attempted to justify much 
 of what is told, not untruthfully, in the Peregrinatio 
 religionis ergo, or the amazing ignorance of Pfeffer- 
 korn in the Epistolae obscurorum vtrorum, the 
 Church looked askance on both reformers, even ^ 
 
 on him who remained within, as on him who 
 definitely withdrew from the pale of salvation. 
 
 Assault on dogma was implicitly involved in 
 opposition to abuses even when the assailants were 
 unable to recognise that they doubted dogma at all. 
 Each party soon called the other antichristian, but 
 there was a difference in the meaning with which 
 the term was used. The Protestants asserted that 
 the pure teaching of Jesus had been overlaid by a 
 multitude of useless ceremonies, and that, if these 
 
 were 
 
4 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 were stripped off, the underlying truth would again 
 be manifest, while, as regarded the hierarchy, they 
 thought they recognised the mystical opponent of 
 Jesus of whom the Apocalypse had spoken. But 
 they could not mean that Christ was nominally 
 or implicitly assailed by a Church which had his 
 image on every altar, claimed to preserve his body 
 in every tabernacle, to consecrate and consume it 
 daily, whose whole ecclesiastical year was founded 
 on the life of Christ, whose very saints, even if, as 
 their enemies said, they had taken his place, were 
 saints only in, and because of, their relation to him. 
 But the Catholics meant far more than this ; that 
 the new spirit of revolt had implicitly in it the 
 denial of Christ, and ultimately of God ; that if the 
 premisses of the reformers were accepted, then 
 logically followed the downfall of all faith in 
 Christ, in God, and in the supernatural, and of 
 course the utter abandonment of the name and 
 office of a Church. In the material destruction of 
 roods, in the denial of the doctrine of the Mass, 
 this was, they thought, involved, and that which 
 was to their enemies a figure of rhetoric was to 
 them a very bald, but terrible truth when they used 
 the word antichristian. 
 
 Yet even then, and in the heat of controversy, it 
 was scarce seen whereunto the difference would 
 grow. The Protestant parties expected to keep to 
 the end large portions of faith and ritual which 
 gradually dropped from them ; the Catholics scarce 
 
 thought 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH, 5 
 
 thought that the revolt would be of long duration. 
 And many, while they held the dangerous and 
 unrighteous nature of the new tenets, no doubt 
 hoped that these would not issue in their logical 
 consequences ; just as now those who most assert 
 the antinomian character of the utilitarian philo- 
 sophy are among the most ready to admit that its 
 adherents are moral, law-abiding, and excellent 
 men. 
 
 But now that we can regard the controversy with 
 the cumulative experience of three hundred years, 
 we see how wide is the divergence of those opinions 
 which seemed parallel at their first separation ; 
 that, while the Church is one and the same, Protes- 
 tantism is not one ; it has divided into a thousand 
 parties, but the tendency in all is to get rid of such 
 dogma as it once possessed, and more and more to 
 denounce the outward semblance and the inward 
 spirit of the organisation from which it sprang. 
 The Church of England alone stands as an apparent 
 exception, all the more remarkable because a large 
 portion, perhaps even a numerical majority, among 
 its clergy have in the last fifty years gradually re- 
 curred to the outward likeness of many Catholic 
 forms, and reasserted many long-neglected doc- 
 trines. But this reaction is far more apparent than 
 real ; to render it a reality there must be author- 
 ity and discipline. It is notorious that the men who 
 carry reaction furthest scoff at discipline, since their 
 bishops, as a rule, will have nothing to do with 
 
 either 
 
6 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 either their teaching or their practice ; nor is there 
 any central authority to decide who goes right in 
 the bewildering maze. The people at large, even 
 those who attend the churches in which ritual is 
 most carried out and dogma most asserted, regard 
 the whole matter in the light of a pleasing imitation, 
 and look on it as provisional, longing for the time 
 when Christendom once more shall be united, by 
 which they mean when they themselves can see 
 their way to joining the Church of Rome. For 
 no one seriously thinks that Rome will yield to 
 them, recognise their orders, and allow married 
 priests to officiate, nor would they make any 
 concession whatever to the sects, who, without 
 very large allowances, for which it is fair to say 
 they do not ask, could play no part in an united 
 Christendom. 
 
 But if we take all the other Protestant sects, and 
 the still large portion of the English Church which 
 is not reactionary, we find as a fact that dogma has 
 faded to a very few articles, and that these are 
 always diminishing in number and importance. 
 The creeds are recited in the English Church, but 
 few doctrines are, save in the high churches, dwelt 
 on with any insistance ; in the nonconformist 
 churches the creeds are not even recited, and the 
 very notion of a body of all-important doctrines, 
 each one in close interdependence on the others, is 
 rapidly vanishing. While in all, no doubt, the 
 excellence of a moral life is studiously upheld, 
 
 enforced 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 7 
 
 enforced by scriptural precept and example, super- 
 natural aid is almost disregarded, or at least is 
 vaguely described as the help of the Holy Spirit. 
 How that aid is given and applied is left to each 
 believer. He is to discover in himself the workings 
 of that which is never defined to him ; an uncertain 
 form of words of little meaning takes the place of 
 elaborate sacraments which of old fortified the 
 Christian at every turn. Grace has become a sound 
 instead of a reality, whereof the channels were once 
 so visible that the invisible current seemed almost 
 apparent to the senses. In the broad church por- 
 tion of the Church of England, and in some of the 
 sects outside of it, there is an increasing tendency 
 to approximate to the theology known as Unitarian. 
 Almost all the chapels which belonged to the old 
 Presbyterian Church in England, to those clergy 
 which separated themselves on the enforcement of 
 the Act of Uniformity, have become Unitarian by 
 insensible gradations, and in America the gulf 
 between the sects once known as orthodox and 
 unorthodox is not always apparent. 
 
 The Unitarian body is by no means stationary, 
 and among the leaders of thought in that com- 
 munity the teaching grows less and less dogmatic, 
 tending to restrict itself to the simple enunciation 
 of theism, and the need of a life morally correct 
 and intellectually graceful. There are next to no 
 Unitarian poor. 
 
 The disintegration of dogma has gone further 
 
 than 
 
8 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 than persons generally suppose. The adherents of 
 all sects would be startled at the vast number of 
 those who hold no form of religion at all, or who, 
 if they attend worship, do so as an act of com- 
 pliance, or for a season of rest, and not on any 
 grounds of faith. There is no need to do more 
 than assert that which is to some a commonplace, 
 and which others can easily verify for themselves 
 if the inquiry is not too painful. None who have 
 marked the swift change and abandonment of faith 
 during the last quarter of a century, the tolerance 
 extended to those who but a few years ago would 
 have been ostracised, the acceptance, as common- 
 places of criticism, of statements which would not 
 long since have been counted as daring infidelity, 
 can doubt that opinion is still changing with in- 
 creasing swiftness. All that lies between the 
 Catholic Church and extreme free-thought is whirl- 
 ing and surging, but gradually setting into two 
 streams, the one recurrent, the other dashing 
 rapidly to some unknown cataract, whose roar is 
 heard by almost all, however smoothly glides their 
 barque. 
 
 Those who are called on to take part in the strifes 
 between the Churches may for a while shut their 
 eyes to the fact, but few thoughtful men whose 
 attention is drawn to it will refuse to grant, that 
 ultimately, later or sooner, the great contest of 
 thought must be fought, not between two varying 
 forms of the Christian faith, nor between the Pro- 
 testant 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH, 9 
 
 testant sects and unbelief, but between that historic 
 Church of which the sects are but rebellious child- 
 ren, however they may deny their parentage, and 
 the modern spirit, call it by what name we will. It 
 is not fairly to be called the spirit of unbelief or 
 atheism, for it is not dogmatic, and atheism is 
 dogma as much as theism, but it is a spirit of 
 patient waiting, which is content not to know. If 
 pressed, and obliged to define itself, it says frankly 
 that, whatever may be guessed or hoped, nothing 
 can be concluded, accurately and positively, of 
 which the senses cannot take cognizance, nothing 
 beyond what is material and physical. Minds pene- 
 trated by this spirit have no desire to force the 
 contest prematurely, which, indeed, none can hasten, 
 which will come only, like all that is, when the time 
 is ripe ; yet none the less are they content to see the 
 two lines distinctly forming themselves for the great 
 battle of Armageddon, and think it well when one 
 or another who has wavered decides to range him- 
 self under either banner. Such an one, though 
 separated by a vast intellectual distance from the 
 Roman position, may yet admire the pomp of that 
 august army which comes on as of old, with banners 
 flying and censers waving, chanting its olden hymns 
 of faith ; nor refuse his partial sympathy to the 
 phalanx of men who do not much strive nor cry, 
 nor let their voices be heard in the streets, but 
 prepare their way in the lecture-room, the labora- 
 tory, and the library ; yet who, when need is, their 
 
 faces 
 
lo FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 faces set like flints, advance without pomp, but with 
 unshrinking steadfastness, to the overthrow of what 
 ihey hold as superstition. 
 
 Such an one may do more than this. He may 
 attempt to clear the ground for others, if it seem to 
 him that he has in any degree succeeded in doing 
 so for himself. For it is a singular fact, in this 
 controversy more than in any other, that the 
 magnitude of the issues involved blinds men to 
 the logical outcome of their own opinions. Many 
 who deem themselves to be in an intermediate 
 position are totally unaware that it is already 
 carried, and that they are bound by all rules of 
 reasoning to take one or the other side. They 
 assail the historic Church with unmeasured vitu- 
 perations, while their own principles, or what they 
 take to be such, implicitly involve the admission of 
 their adversaries' dogmas ; the extremest opinions 
 of Rome are to be justified by, and deduced from, 
 the premisses they themselves admit. Or, on the 
 other hand, the orthodox will occasionally make 
 liberal concessions which involve the denial of 
 what they hold most dear, will reject this or that 
 miracle, not on grounds of insufficient evidence, 
 but for rationalistic reasons which may equally 
 apply to those which they accept. 
 
 I am of course aware that a vast number of per- 
 sons do not think that a strict logical process is 
 needful in matters of faith ; they bear, like Canute, 
 their chairs to the edge of the sea of theological 
 
 change 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH, ii 
 
 change, tuck up their feet and shut their eyes, 
 and, because they feel dry, deny that the water has 
 passed them and is around them, believing that 
 they have controlled the flood because it has 
 not actually washed them away. And there are 
 those also who can deliberately shut their minds, 
 and clasp them with a clasp, and, having once 
 determined on a rule of life which then seemed to 
 them sufficient, have never again paid any atten- 
 tion to controversies which do not affect their 
 practical life. Happier they, perchance, than those 
 whom an inner impulse drives ever to weigh, to 
 sift, to accept or reject all that is presented to 
 them, or to which they can reach, yet perchance 
 also not happier, for it may be there is no real 
 evil but stagnation, which is but another name 
 for death. 
 
 To aid in clearing my own mind, and, if it may 
 be, to enable others in some degree to do so too, I 
 wish to show that on Christian premisses, by which 
 are here understood those accepted by the majority 
 of Christian folk, the very dogmas of Rome which 
 often give most offence, and are considered most 
 extreme, are not only to be justified, but main- 
 tained, with even greater ease than those which 
 find less opposition, and to ask whether it be not 
 a logical necessity that whoso denies them should 
 deny much more, or, accepting them, should at 
 least not judge harshly those who go on to beliefs 
 which are implicitly involved in them. Such an 
 
 inquiry 
 
1^ FAITH AND UNFAITH, 
 
 inquiry has at least the advantage of dealing with 
 grave and momentous issues, and leaves on one 
 side minor points, on which are often sharp wrang- 
 lings by which nothing of profit can be decided. If, 
 for instance, the subject matter of difficulty or dis- 
 cussion be whether the Being who created heaven 
 and earth can be localised in a wafer and consumed 
 by the faithful ; or whether the same Being have 
 given to men who stand in a certain relation to 
 him the power of changing, or seeming to change, 
 the usually unvarying course of nature ; if he have 
 endowed fragments of their bodies, or relics of the 
 Passion of Christ, with abnormal virtues of healing 
 and restoration ; if from the merits of those who 
 live holy lives there be laid up such an overplus of 
 goodness as avails to cancel the temporal punish- 
 ment of sinners unconnected with them save by the 
 general bond of a common humanity, how mean 
 and petty become the disputes about vestments, or 
 jurisdiction, or the excellence of an Establishment ! 
 If it can be shown that the majority of religious 
 persons assert that which involves much of what 
 they most abhor, the strifes between the Churches 
 are as naught ; the one Church which claims adhe- 
 sion is that which carries out accepted premisses 
 most fully, or else the rejection of the conclusion 
 necessitates rejection of all that involves it. 
 
 There is perhaps no dogma which has called 
 forth more indignant remonstrance from its op- 
 ponents than that of the Mass, and in this the 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 13 
 
 one point that Christ, whole and entire, God, the 
 Saviour of mankind, is, so to speak, localised in 
 the wafer or bread consecrated by the priest. 
 This doctrine may be stated with refined meta- 
 physical subtlety ; it may take the crude yet 
 poetical form in which it appears in the legend of 
 the Holy Grail, when the knights of Arthur's 
 Round Table saw the Fair Child who came '* and 
 smote himself into the bread," so that the on- 
 lookers saw the very act of transubstantiation 
 by which the wafer became the Flesh of God. Or, 
 again, it may assume a ghastly form in the tale of 
 those mediaeval Jews who, stealing the sacred 
 particle to mock and insult the Christian faith, 
 and lancing it with their knives, saw flowing forth 
 from the pierced wafer red streams of sacred 
 blood. Nor can it be said that this mode of stat- 
 ing the doctrine is, even in these days, alien to the 
 feeling of clergy or laity of the Catholic Church, 
 since this very miracle and its consequences have 
 been taken as the subject of a modera painted 
 window in the cathedral of St. Gudule, at Brussels. 
 But whether stated in subtler or grosser terms, the 
 doctrine is one and the same, and it may not 
 inaptly be stated as the localisation of the Infinite. 
 Now we are not concerned to deny or to mini- 
 mise the enormous difficulties involved, but simply 
 assert that it is not more difficult than the ordinary 
 admissions of ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 believing Christians. We need not enter into 
 
 Athanasian 
 
14 FAITH AND UNFAITH, 
 
 Athanasian niceties of the distinction between the 
 nature and offices of the Father and the Son. 
 Enough that the Son is stated to be God, infinite 
 and incomprehensible. But if God be infinitely- 
 great, he is also infinitely httle : size has nothing 
 to do with the question, and in fact one of the 
 commonplaces about Almighty God is his care for 
 the smallest of his creatures, and the manifestation 
 of his power in the minute finishings of his work. 
 It is brought to our notice by a thousand writers 
 from Job to our own day that he has made the 
 firmament and the blade of grass, the behemoth 
 and the gnat. 
 
 " Each little flower that opens, 
 Each little bird that sings, 
 He made their glowing colours, 
 He made their tiny wings," 
 
 runs the children's hymn ; and Pope, the Catholic 
 poet, says precisely what every Christian would 
 admit, that the power of God is " as perfect in a 
 hair as in a heart." But unless a man be prepared 
 to go much further than this he might be only a 
 pantheist, and the charge of teaching pantheistic 
 doctrine has been freely brought against Pope and 
 others who, as Wordsworth, have seen God reveal- 
 ing himself in nature. To assert that he is every- 
 where would at first seem to be the very contradic- 
 tory of such a dogma as that under consideration. 
 Yet the mind of man has not felt the doctrines 
 destructive the one of the other. The Bible, to 
 
 which 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITIL 15 
 
 which all appeal, asserts, from its first page to its 
 last, that in some sense and in some modes God, 
 who is everywhere, is present more particularly in 
 certain places. The same notion has descended to, 
 and become emphasised in, modern days. The 
 majority of persons who go to church would cer- 
 tainly give as one of their reasons for doing so, that 
 God is in a special manner there, and that his pre- 
 sence hallows the altar yet more. On what principle 
 do they decline to go a step further, and to admit 
 that it may have pleased him to place himself, in a 
 still more special mode, and under certain condi- 
 tions, in the sacrament, in that which Christ gave 
 as the express sign of his abiding with the Church ? 
 Once let it be granted that he is in any degree and 
 under any conditions localised, the size of the 
 particle is naught, and he who framed the exquisite 
 meshes of the fly's wing, or the microscopic fibres 
 of the lichen, may choose the smallest spot in which 
 to show his greatest and divinest power. 
 
 And if any say that the localisation of the Deity 
 may be granted, but not the change of the sub- 
 stance of bread into the substance of flesh, with 
 which in this case it is intimately and to many 
 minds inseparably linked, it lies with them in 
 contradicting this to define what substance is, since 
 he who declares himself a believer in transubstan- 
 tiation, fully admits with those who deny it, that the 
 outward semblance, species, and accidents of bread 
 and wine remain wholly unchanged. 
 
 Or 
 
I6 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 Or we may take the point of relics, whether of 
 Christ or of the saints. When an eager controver- 
 siaHst laughed at Cardinal Newman because he did 
 not at once refuse credence to the statement that a 
 healing virtue still attaches to an oil supposed to 
 flow from the bones of St. Walburga, his standing 
 as a clergyman would scarce have permitted him 
 categorically to deny the story in the Book of Kings 
 that a dead man was raised to life so soon as his 
 body touched the bones of Elisha, into whose 
 sepulchre it had been lowered. If the new dispensa- 
 tion be, as all Christians maintain, superior to the 
 old, a saint living under the graces and gifts of the 
 Gospel might be expected to have more, not less, 
 mherent virtue than a prophet of the former faith. 
 If it be claimed for the holy coat at Treves, for the 
 sacred thorn at Paris, for fragments of the true 
 cross, that miracles are wrought by their agency, 
 objectors have scarce an obvious right still to be- 
 lieve the statement in the Acts of the Apostles that 
 to the sick were borne handkerchiefs and aprons 
 which had touched the body of Paul, that healing 
 might and did result ; or that other, how folk too 
 weak to walk were carried into the streets, that the 
 shadow of Peter passing by might fall upon and 
 invigorate them. The question in each case would 
 be one of evidence, whether the relic were indeed 
 what is asserted, and assuredly for some miraculous 
 fragments the evidence that they are what they 
 profess to be is overwhelming. There is less room 
 
 for 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 17 
 
 for doubt than in the case of many an authentic 
 historical reUc, at which to cavil would be the very- 
 wantonness of scepticism. If, then, there be likeli- 
 hood that any object associated with Jesus be indeed 
 what is claimed, then from it might still flow the 
 same virtue that healed the sick woman when she 
 touched his garment's hem ; for surely it would be 
 the extremest materialism to maintain that a 
 kerchief or a robe had efficacy only while warm 
 from the living bodies of those who wore them. 
 
 Again, conversely, if miraculous agency be ad- 
 mitted at all, and evidence show that any 
 have been healed by such and such rehcs, 
 the miracles would go far to prove the 
 authenticity of the relics by placing them in the 
 same category with those sacred garments which 
 once were the channels of healing. If, it may be 
 asked, the bones of Elisha had a sanative or even 
 a life-giving power, why not the bones of St. 
 Walburga ; if the hem of Christ's garment, why not 
 the holy coat of Treves ; if the sacred spittle, why 
 not the holy blood in the treasury at Reichenau, 
 or that which was spilt on the sacred thorn ? And 
 if one of these relics, or a link said to be of Peters 
 chain, have done as much as is claimed for Peter's 
 shadow, will not the admitted fact prove, or go far 
 to prove, the asserted fact, at least to the same 
 extent that the typical miracles are proved ? I 
 admit the enormous difficulty ; it is not my present 
 business to obtain credence for either, but to point 
 
 out 
 B 
 
i8 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 out that the rejection or admission of one class may 
 involve the admission or rejection of the other. 
 
 The doubt may of course be pushed back yet 
 further, to the point of asking whether there be such 
 a thing as miraculous interposition at all. Though 
 it is not easy to frame any satisfactory definition of 
 miracle, that is fairly complete which is usually 
 accepted — an interruption or reversion of the 
 ordinary laws of nature, whether this take place by 
 the suspension of those laws, or by the interposition 
 of a law that is higher and overrides the lower. 
 Indeed, a God who never wrought miracle would 
 seem to many in the position of a God who had 
 deliberately abdicated his functions, or rather 
 to be no God at all. For such is the imper- 
 fection of human intellect that we can only 
 think of the sovereign ruler of all under the 
 figure of an earthly monarch, and it would seem to 
 us that one who set the affairs of his government 
 in motion, to retire to an inner chamber, whence 
 indeed he could see all that happened, but never 
 interfered nor communicated with his subjects, 
 would be but a poor ruler, a rot faineant without 
 even the semblance of an authority he had ceased 
 to wield. We may go further, and assert, without 
 danger of serious contradiction, that Avhoever has 
 ceased to believe in miracle has lost all true faith 
 in a personal God. He may use, if he pleases, 
 the name, but *'a stream of tendency " or even an 
 undefined ** power which makes for righteousness " 
 
 can 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH, i9 
 
 can but be called God in a sense alien to that which 
 has been put on it, and on analogous names, since 
 human consciousness first woke to the conception 
 of a Being like to but greater than ourselves. Un- 
 less he were like us, he could not expect us to be 
 like him, while the thought of one whose goodness 
 is the explanation and model of human virtue is to 
 many that which alone makes moral life possible. 
 And if God be living and personal, and the Church 
 a living body sanctioned, even framed by him, 
 premisses taken for granted by the enormous 
 majority of professing Christians, it is absurd to 
 suppose that the organs, so to speak, of miracle 
 became atrophied at some date not precisely 
 fixed, and that the Being who once acted through 
 organs and agents, has now ceased to act at all in 
 any true manner. Once more we are not here 
 asserting nor denying a personal God, the ruler of 
 the world, but if there be such, he must act, and if 
 he have not retired from governing must show that 
 he governs. The difference between the maker of 
 a machine which continues to ply its appointed 
 task mechanically and even brutally, and the 
 intelligent upholder of a living organism such as the 
 Church is usually assumed to be, is the gift of 
 miracles. And this the Catholic Church claims as 
 her constant birthright, potentially wherever there 
 are relics of her Master and his followers, or traces 
 of their special presence and interest, actually in 
 the daily mystery of the Mass, and indeed in all 
 sacramental graces. Two 
 
ao FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 Two doctrines, closely connected one with the 
 other, act on many persons as red rags on a bull- 
 purgatory and indulgences. It is difficult to see 
 what harm the first of these can do to any one. We 
 all remember the witty remark of the Catholic 
 bishop in Ireland to his Protestant rival who 
 declined to accept the doctrine of purgatory, 
 " Faith ! you may go further and fare worse " ; and 
 it is a curious fact that the stoutest opponents of the 
 cleansing fire are those who most earnestly uphold 
 the doctrine of hell ; for others and not for 
 themselves. Unless, however, it be maintained 
 that the mere pronunciation of a shibboleth is to 
 free the soul from sin, and make it fit for the joys 
 of heaven, the very conception of a penal, involves 
 that of a purgatorial, fire. For there are surely 
 those who, as the Scotch proverb has it, are "ower 
 bad for blessing and ower guid for banning," for 
 whom there must needs be a time in which to purge 
 themselves, before they rise to the clear vision of 
 eternal day, a place or state in which pardonable 
 offences may be pardoned, and the earthly dross be 
 burned away from the pure gold of the immortal 
 soul. Purgatory is logically involved in the thought 
 of hell and in the thought of heaven ; the true 
 alternative to it is not the immediate severance 
 between the sinner and the saint, the transference 
 of the one to eternal torment, the other to eternal 
 delight, but the dripfiova vyypcrov vttvov of the 
 Greek poet, the sleep that knows no waking. For 
 
 who 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 21 
 
 who is fit for hell or heaven ? Even of the evil, a 
 Catholic theologian, who did not mince his words 
 nor take a rose-coloured view of the future state, 
 has said, that Judas is the only soul of whose 
 damnation we are quite certain, and surely there 
 are many believers at least equally hopeful. 
 
 On the other hand, it was no Catholic, but one 
 of the strictest of Scotch Protestants, the great 
 Edward Irving, who objected thus vehemently to 
 that shibboleth of the saving power of Christ. In 
 his " Discourse on Judgment to Come," he says: — 
 
 Now what difference is it whether the active spirit of a 
 man is laid asleep by the comfort of the holy wafer, and 
 extreme unction, to be his viaticum and his passport to 
 heaven, or by the constant charm of a few words sounded 
 and sounded, and eternally sounded, about Christ's 
 sufficiency to save ? In the holy name of Christ and the 
 three times holy name of God, have they declared aught to 
 men, or are they capable of declaring aught to men, which 
 should not work upon men the desire and the power of 
 holiness? Why then do I hear the constant babbling about 
 simple reliance and simple dependence upon Christ, instead 
 of most scriptural and sound-minded calls to activity and 
 perseverance after every perfection ? And oh ! they will die 
 mantled in their vain delusion as the Catholic dies, and 
 when the soothing voice of their consolatory teacher is 
 passed into inaudible distance. Conscience will arise with 
 pensive Reflection and pale Fear, her two daughters, to take 
 an account of the progress and exact advancement of their 
 mind. 
 
 By all means let those who please deny purgatorial 
 fire and purgatory of any kind, but, in consistency, 
 the joys of heaven must vanish at the same time, 
 
 with 
 
22 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 with the dismal hell appointed for those who sin in 
 a different manner to the assertor of it, and for the 
 holders of a different faith. Where in such a case 
 would be the hope and comfort of many a 
 Christian ? 
 
 Ever since, and even before, Luther nailed his 
 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, the very 
 name of indulgences has been a by-word among 
 men. Catholics themselves have often had to 
 speak of them with bated breath, and in a 
 Protestant country the word is little pronounced. 
 Every Catholic is quite aware that his doctrine is 
 capable of the most complete defence, or he would 
 not profess to hold it ; but he would fully admit that 
 the traffic in indulgences, developed to so large an 
 extent for financial reasons, to supply the money 
 needed for St. Peter's in Rome, and carried to an 
 excess by vulgar monks who turned pedlars with 
 these as their wares, has brought discredit on the 
 doctrine itself, as well as on its abuses. But this, 
 however natural, is unfair. What is really held by 
 the Roman Church is briefly this : for the sake of 
 good deeds, done either by a man himself or by 
 some other person, certain penalties of misdeeds 
 may be, under conditions, set aside ; or to speak 
 technically, an indulgence is a " remission of 
 the punishment still due to sin after sacra- 
 mental absolution, this remission being valid 
 in the court of conscience and before God, and 
 being made by an application of the treasures of 
 
 the 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 23 
 
 the Church on the part of a lawful superior." As 
 in the social so in the moral code, a transgression 
 may be of the slightest or of the gravest character. 
 We may offend against social law by neglecting to 
 raise our hat to a lady, or by running away with our 
 neighbour's wife. For the one transgression the 
 penalty may be that the lady forgets to ask us to her 
 next evening party ; for the graver offence are the 
 law-courts, possibly a heavy money fine and ex- 
 clusion from all decent society. So, in the same 
 way, an offence against the moral law may vary 
 from an indulged tendency to lie too long in bed, 
 or to be drowsy in church, to the gravest sins of 
 which poor human nature is capable; and the 
 Church draws a very inteUigible distinction between 
 mortal and venial sin, making also a difference 
 between two kinds of punishment which fall on the 
 ofifender and the two kinds of forgiveness needed. 
 The one punishment is temporal, and, if we may say 
 so, trivial, the other spiritual and eternal, and it is 
 to the passing punishment, whether in this world or 
 the next, that an indulgence can alone apply. 
 
 Now if it be a shocking thing that, for the remis- 
 sion of temporal punishment, men should be en- 
 titled to draw on a store of merits not their own, or 
 on their own previous good deeds, the objector, if con- 
 sistent, must refuse to accept any kind of vicarious 
 merit, and apply his law of stern and unflinching 
 morality to all cases in which aught is done for 
 another's sake, or in remembrance of the past. 
 
 Some 
 
24 FAITH AND UNFAITH, 
 
 Some years ago there was an usage at Eton, which 
 seemed to the present writer, when only a boy of 
 thirteen, exactly, though perhaps unintentionally, 
 framed on the lines of ecclesiastical indul- 
 gences. The " Remove" was a part of the school 
 in which geography and history were especially 
 studied, and the making of maps was a weekly 
 exercise, to which an importance was attached be- 
 yond their real value as a means of teaching. The 
 masters of this form, and, as far as I remember, of 
 this form alone, were in the habit of giving what 
 were termed " exemptions " for well-executed maps. 
 A small piece of the corner of the map which de- 
 served praise was torn off, signed with the master's 
 initials, and handed to the artist. Perhaps a day 
 or two afterwards the same boy was accidentally late 
 for school, and ordered to write out fifty lines of 
 Virgil as a punishment. When the time came for 
 producing the lines, he presented instead his '* ex- 
 emption," which was accepted without a word ; his 
 previous merits had gained him an indulgence. I 
 have some impression, though my memory in this 
 serves me but imperfectly, that the transfer of ex- 
 emptions was at least tacitly allowed, even if not 
 directly sanctioned, but I speak under correction. 
 If it so chanced that a graver fault had been com- 
 mitted than the mere venial offence of being late 
 for school, talking in class, or the like, and that the 
 offender then presented an exemption, not only was 
 it not received in lieu of punishment, but the very 
 
 pleading 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 25 
 
 pleading the excuse was held to deepen the fault ; 
 and here, on a lower ground, was all the distinction 
 between mortal and venial sin. At the same 
 school an extra week of holidays has often been 
 granted on account of the marriage, that is to say, 
 the "merits," of a royal Prince or Princess. 
 
 If there be nothing immoral in giving boys a 
 holiday because some one else is married, or in for- 
 giving a trivial misdeed for the sake of previous 
 good conduct, we fail to see the moral iniquity of 
 remitting temporal punishment of sin on account of 
 the merits of the saints, or of a devotion sedulously 
 performed. And this is all that was ever claimed 
 for indulgences, rightly understood. The acts are, 
 it is true, on altogether different planes, but the 
 principle is the same, and a principle is indepen- 
 dent of magnitude ; it " shuns the lore of nicely 
 calculated less or more." And if indeed there be 
 no such thir.g as the application of the merits of 
 one to the needs of another, a far larger fabric than 
 was at first contemplated must crumble under the 
 blast of displeasure, for surely the whole Christian 
 religion stands on no other foundation, and it must 
 be remembered that objections to the intrinsic 
 morality of the whole " scheme of Revelation," as 
 it is called, have been based on the simple fact of 
 its vicarious character. 
 
 To pass to another subject. The elder Quakers, 
 strict Jews, and Mohammedans are consistent in 
 the objections they raise to the use of images, and 
 
 hold 
 
26 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 hold as literally binding on all the order to make 
 no representation of any creature. But, apart from 
 such stern Puritans, it is hard to see how any pos- 
 sessor of a book of photographs, one who hangs in 
 his room the portraits of relatives who tend him no 
 longer on earth, or the great and wise who have 
 helped to nurture his mind, can reasonably object 
 to such aids to thought and devotion as hang and 
 stand in the churches. If in rude and barbarous 
 countries the symbol is now and then in danger of 
 being mistaken for the thing signified, it may possi- 
 bly be a question whether the authorities in that 
 place or country would not do well to minimise, as 
 far as in them lay, the devotion paid to such sacred 
 objects. But it is difficult to see on what grounds 
 they should be bound to do even so much as this, 
 unless the whole theory that the divine power is ex- 
 hibited through material symbols is denied. So 
 long as any graces and gifts are so given, there 
 can be no reason why to this or that sacred em- 
 blem God may not have attached them in a special 
 manner ; and just as he is often understood to grant 
 a large portion of his spirit to one marred and un- 
 comely like St. Paul, so it were not unlike his usual 
 dealings that the image or picture specially chosen 
 by him should be not the work of a Michael Angelo 
 or a Fra Angelico, but some rude doll or daubed 
 canvas, into which the simple workman had put 
 more piety than art. So long as in things of every- 
 day life, some special human interest may centre in 
 
 this 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH, 27 
 
 this or that portrait, quite apart from the artistic 
 merits, so a special sacred interest may be given to 
 some particular portrait of Christ or his saints ; and 
 the same power which directs the affections, on 
 the hypothesis that devotion and piety are the 
 gifts of God, may grant corresponding benefits in 
 answer to that devotion. The whole cultus of 
 images seems a part of that sentiment which flows 
 out in all portraiture of those we love. It is absurd 
 to deny to the deepest affections, that which is 
 useful and praiseworthy when applied to those 
 more shallow and fleeting. 
 
 The whole claims and powers of the priesthood 
 appear to be involved in the very conception of a 
 Church, as a Church is involved in that of a living 
 and ruling God. Of all the absurd notions which 
 ever obtained large sway over the human mind, 
 perhaps the most singular is that a Supreme Being, 
 who for ages had spoken to men by direct communi- 
 cation, or by ministers and prophets having a special 
 gift of his own Spirit, who at the last sent his Son with 
 a message, should, when he recalled that Son, have 
 simply put the record of all these transactions in a 
 book and given to none any authoritative power of 
 interpretation. Conceive a codification of the laws 
 of the realm, without judges to declare, interpret, 
 and administer, or a work on medicine which, with- 
 out training, without study of physiology or anatomy, 
 every one should understand as he pleased ; yet 
 an uninterpreted Bible is more incoherent, more 
 
 monstrous 
 
28 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 monstrous than either of these. It unfolds to the 
 
 uninstructed eye contradictory statements, and 
 
 upholds for adpiiration and pattern states of society 
 
 and theories of morals wholly alien to our own, and 
 
 to others approved by itself. But the claim of the 
 
 Catholic Church, that in all points of faith it has 
 
 divine guidance, and therefore speaks with authority, 
 
 is intelligible, and it would seem involved in the 
 
 very idea of a living, active, yet unseen and unheard 
 
 ruler, that there should be some interpreter of his 
 
 will to men. From another point of view tbe 
 
 priesthood is the organised and orderly ministry of 
 
 those powers which belong to the Church as a whole. 
 
 If it should be maintained that the Church is 
 
 another name for collective humanity considered 
 
 on its religious side, in such a conception may lie 
 
 the reconciliation of opinions which now are widely 
 
 separated. Considered in this light, should the 
 
 priest declare the forgiveness of the penitent, his 
 
 absolution has its human side. He expresses the 
 
 judgment of humanity that the sin is not one which 
 
 should shut out the penitent from the fellowship or 
 
 the kindly relations of men. If men are hard and 
 
 merciless, unforgiving and unjust, Man is not so ; 
 
 the ultimate judgment is of the best of the race ; 
 
 humanity is the ideal man. And in this aspect, 
 
 we do not forget that there is another and a higher, 
 
 the absolution of God pronounced by the priest is 
 
 the ratification of the absolution of man. " Hath 
 
 no man condemned thee, neither do I condemn 
 
 thee ; go and sin no more." 
 
 We 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 29 
 
 We may, it is true, take a wholly different view 
 of the human race and of the world. We may 
 assert that all we see and know is an assembly of 
 men, how placed here we know not, from whom 
 deriving their bein^ we cannot tell, yet probably 
 elaborated by the slow toil of the ages from crea- 
 tures infinitely below our present state. We may 
 trace their development from the first organic 
 blastules, themselves resultant from chemical 
 changes, of which we know nothing, in organic 
 matter, till, after ages the very enumeration of which 
 makes the brain reel, "at the last arose the man." 
 Then, dismissing all thoughts of their origin, we 
 may see these beings gradually casting off habits 
 which are called evil because they make fellow-life 
 and society impossible. We may see them striving 
 ever upward, pressing forward to some absolutely 
 unknown goal, forming to themselves visions of 
 what it may be, bright and beautiful, or dark and 
 hateful, to dismiss them with a sigh, and acquiesce 
 in their ignorance once more. So far as any man 
 dare to speculate on the days to come, he may 
 foresee that this collective humanity of which he 
 forms a part has in the future a grander outlook, 
 grander possibilities, than have ever yet been 
 realised. If the great world spin for ever down 
 the ringing grooves of change, and no end comes 
 within the ken of the wildest speculation, he may 
 be content not to know. So also he may be 
 ignorant of the destiny of each separate unit of the 
 
 great 
 
30 FAITH AND UNFAITH. 
 
 great whole, but think it most probable that each, 
 having fulfilled his term of years, is resolved men- 
 tally and bodily into the elements from which he 
 came, leaving his imperishable part, the few good 
 deeds he has done, and the few noble thoughts 
 which have been his, to be used up again, trans- 
 muted and carried forward by those who shall 
 come. 
 
 And such are conceptions which satisfy many. 
 But those whom they do not satisfy, those who 
 cling to the words of the old beliefs, Credo in unum 
 Deum, will surely and increasingly find more than 
 they thought enwrapped in the notion of a God, of 
 a Church, of a priesthood. A large number of men 
 will constantly be constrained to admit, at least in 
 some mystical and transcendental sense, the very 
 dogmas of the Church Catholic they have most 
 spurned. If, admitting the postulates of Chris- 
 tianity, they admit also the spirit of criticism, they 
 may find themselves denying such fundamental 
 principles as omne majus continet in se minus ^ and, 
 that there is no escape of a logical conclusion from 
 given premisses. He who begins to deny that a 
 God who is infinitely great is also infinitely little, 
 to scoff at the efficacy of relics, to scruple at the 
 power of multiplication which may exist in portions 
 of the true cross, as under sacred manipulation 
 loaves and fishes multiplied by the lake of Galilee, 
 may find that his criticism leads him far, first to 
 the denial of biblical histories, then to that of the 
 
 whole 
 
FAITH AND UNFAITH. 31 
 
 whole supernatural guidance of life and the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 And if such be the case, the morality which is 
 now based on the supernatural may fail him, and 
 leave him stranded and wrecked on the rocks of 
 his passions, unless he shall have replaced it by a 
 morality founded on naturalism, not on super- 
 naturalism ; on evolution, and not on revelation. 
 But this scheme of morals is not as yet formulated ; 
 we may be allowed to doubt whether it will ever 
 become a rule of life for the ignorant, the sorrowful, 
 and the humble. 
 
 No doubt for many years to come there will be 
 those who walk on some middle way, accepting a 
 portion, yet rejecting much, of what once was 
 undoubted by all but a bold and eager minorit)^ 
 Men are not yet guided wholly by logic or by 
 reason ; their prejudices, their fancies, and their 
 wills are equally to be considered in the calculation 
 of what any may do. Yet the conflict is becoming 
 more apparent, the issue is narrowing, and it has 
 seemed not out of place that one who feels the 
 enormous importance of the struggle between faith 
 and unfaith should state in a few clear words his 
 view of this great dilemma. 
 
THOMAS X KEMPIS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 IMITATION. 
 
 THESE pages speak of a man and a book, 
 both of them in very sharp contrast with 
 us, our life, our society, and our time. The man 
 is Thomas, a brother of the Order of Canons 
 Regular under the Augustinian rule ; the book is a 
 treatise written by him, known as De Imitatione 
 Christi, " Of the Imitation of Christ," or " The 
 Following of Christ." 
 
 I have said, in another essay, that for the busi- 
 ness of our everyday life the one author whom 
 it does us most good to study is Shakspere, but 
 that for our hermit hours, those few which the 
 ordinary man gives to communing with his 
 own heart in his chamber, such a work as the 
 Imitation best befits our needs. To many whose 
 constant companion it has been in those quiet 
 times, the reading it is as though a breath of cool 
 
 free 
 c 
 
34 THOMAS )L KEMP IS 
 
 free wind swept through this crowded life ; our 
 complex interests, duties, and schemes are as 
 nothing when placed side by side with the writer's 
 great simplicity. The impression is salutary and 
 bracing; it is, perhaps, fleeting because indistinct ; 
 to make this more precise and permanent is the 
 aim of this essay. 
 
 Ever since this book has been known, it has been 
 the chosen volume of all such as wished to live the 
 inner life, and to recognise that *' the world is too 
 much with us." Though it was written by a monk 
 for monks, by a Catholic for Catholics, it has gone 
 far beyond them, and its power has been acknow- 
 ledged by those who repudiated the whole dog- 
 matic teaching of the writer. Cathohcs have ac- 
 cepted it as the spiritual book pre-eminent above 
 all others ; it was the only one besides the New 
 Testament which St. Ignatius of Loyola selected 
 to guide him when he laid down the rules of his 
 great Society. But John Wesley and Dr. Puseyboth 
 adapted it to their separate communions ; and the 
 most eloquent among modern testimonies to its 
 power over the soul is from the pen of one who 
 was not only not Catholic, but not Christian. We 
 all know the passage in The Mill on the Floss in 
 which Maggie Tulliver has learned the content 
 which lies in renunciation ; but it may be quoted 
 afresh :— 
 
 •' I suppose that is the reason why the small, old-fashioned 
 book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a bookstall, 
 
 works 
 
AND THE IMITATION, 35 
 
 works miracles at this day, turning bitter waters into sweet- 
 ness ; while expensive sermons, and treatises newly issued, 
 leave all things as they were before. 
 
 "It was written down by a hand that waited for the 
 heart's prompting ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden 
 anguish, struggle, trust, and triumph — not written on velvet 
 cushions— to teach endurance to those who are treading with 
 bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a 
 lasting record of human needs and human consolations, the 
 voice of a brother who ages ago felt, and suffered, and re- 
 nounced, in the cloister, with serge gown and tonsured 
 head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a 
 fashion of speech different from ours, but under the same 
 silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, 
 the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness." 
 
 Other words I will quote, not only because they 
 are, with the exception of one sentence, true and 
 admirable, but also because they are the words of a 
 dear dead friend of my own, Dr. Charles Beard, 
 from whose work, left by him as a finished portion 
 of an unfinished whole, " Martin Luther and the 
 Reformation in Germany,'* I take the following 
 passage :— 
 
 " That famous book, which .... next to the 
 Bible, has perhaps counted more readers than any other, 
 the Imitation of Christ. That it should have met with so 
 much acceptance at the hands of other than Catholic 
 readers, is a striking testimony to the depth and sincerity of 
 its religious feeling ; for the odour of incense is upon it, 
 and its ideal of human perfectness is distinctly monastic. 
 Indeed it is justly liable to the charge of being only a 
 manual of sacred selfishness ; the domestic and social 
 virtues are entirely overlooked by it ; it points the way to 
 the salvation of the solitary soul. But within these limita- 
 tions its devoutness is so direct, so pure, so profound ; its 
 
 vision 
 
THOMAS A KEMP IS 
 
 vision of divine realities so unclouded, its insight into 
 human nature so deep and clear, as quite to obscure and 
 overbear for the pious soul the difficulties of the form into 
 
 which it is thrown In the Imitation we are 
 
 still in communion with the whole Latin Church ; the 
 language of Augustine and of Jerome, moulded indeed by 
 centuries of monastic use, is upon our lips ; we have not 
 passed from the universality of mediaeval to the national 
 separations of modern Christianity. It was only twelve 
 years after Thomas a Kempis died that Luther was born." 
 
 The sentence with which I do not agree is that 
 in which Dr. Beard calls the Imitation a manual 
 of sacred selfishness, ignoring the social virtues. 
 On this I would say briefly that he who cares most 
 for his own personal holiness is, as a rule, he who 
 cares most for the holiness of others ; you might 
 as well say in regard to the bodily life that the man 
 who takes care to eat his own dinner neglects to 
 feed the hungry. And next, that the Imitation is 
 full of lessons on the social duties of a monk to 
 other monks. If in all these passages you trans- 
 late the words implying community life into others 
 which express family and domestic relations, they 
 will be as applicable to ourselves as they were to 
 Thomas and his brethren. 
 
 It were needless to cite other writers, for it is 
 scarcely too much to say that for 450 years the 
 writer of the Imitation has been the unseen guide 
 and friend of all devout souls, of whatever commu- 
 nion, nor has it lost its charm. It gave strength in 
 the desert to Gordon, whose devout soul made a 
 
 still 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 37 
 
 still chamber for itself even in the stress of his 
 arduous life. It penetrates now in cheapest form 
 to humble homes ; the curious in books have 
 gathered whole libraries of its editions, transla- 
 tions, commentaries, and treatises thereon, while 
 a recent version in Japanese has shown how it 
 can appeal to that which in the mind of man is 
 not European, nor Catholic, but simply human. 
 Such a book, if only as a curiosity from the out- 
 side, and apart from its spiritual influences, well 
 deserves our thoughts, and the first thing in that 
 study is to know, if possible, what he was who 
 wrote it. Then, again, in turn, the study of the 
 book itself will bring us back near the inmost 
 heart of the writer. 
 
 He, as I have said, was Thomas, of the Monas- 
 tery of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle, in Holland. 
 Thomas was born in May, 1380, at Kempen, about 
 forty miles north-west of Koln, and he died at 
 Mount St. Agnes, being of the advanced age of 
 ninety-one, on the Feast of St. James-the-Less, 
 July 26th, 1471, " in the evening, after Compline had 
 been said." Kampen, eight miles from Utrecht, also 
 aspired to be declared his birthplace, but that is 
 now proved to be a mistake. Both towns take their 
 name from the wide expanse of level country in 
 which they are situated {canipi in Latin). The 
 birthplace of Thomas is a pleasant little German 
 town, of some 5,000 inhabitants, cleanly, healthful, 
 and prosperous. 
 
 The 
 
^ THOMAS A KEMP IS 
 
 The claims, however, on behalf of others to the 
 authorship of the book have been far more nume- 
 rous, and the matter has been more hotly contested. 
 Such claims seem to have been made at first out of 
 simple wantonness and desire of thieving, after- 
 wards out of the joy of controversy and the interest 
 of literary puzzles. Ten names have been proposed, 
 the grandest being that of St. Bernard, who died in 
 1 153; the most plausible that of Jean Charlier de 
 Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, who 
 died in 1429 ; the least likely that of Walter Hil- 
 ton, an English Carthusian, who died in the reign 
 of Henry VI., about 1470. Neither the terms 
 *' plausible" nor "not plausible" can be adopted 
 for one person, Gersen, Abbot of Vercelli, who 
 has had numerous and enthusiastic supporters, 
 since it is now conclusively proved that he never 
 existed at all. To weigh these claims would be 
 wearisome here ; and it is needless, since it has 
 been done with great care and patient minuteness 
 by two English writers, one Catholic and one Pro- 
 testant, the Rev. Samuel Kettlewell, an Anglican 
 clergyman, and Dr. Francis R. Cruise, a physician 
 in Dublin. These have summed up the whole con- 
 troversy, and justify most fully by proof of fact as 
 well as of tradition that Thomas is the author of 
 the Imitation. The dispute, indeed, may be con- 
 sidered as closed. Anyone who studies the ques- 
 tion with a fair mind can come to no other result 
 than that the constant tradition is right, and that 
 
 Thomas 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 39 
 
 Thomas will only be shown not to have written the 
 Imitation when Shakspere is proved not to have 
 written Shakspere's plays. 
 
 The circumstances of his life may be told in a 
 few words. His father was John, called Hammer- 
 lein, or Hemerken, the hammerer, probably a 
 worker in metal, who cultivated also a small 
 farm. Such artisans were commonly to be found 
 near each large church, as was that of Kempen, 
 at whose stall might be bought both votive offerings 
 and memorials of a visit ; and Dr. Moren, a recent 
 biographer of Thomas, finds in some of his writings 
 indications that he had a practical acquaintance 
 with the trade. It has been supposed that an 
 elaborate and artistic description of the crown of 
 St. Agnes, in a sermon delivered by Thomas to the 
 novices, is a special proof of this. Perhaps the 
 deftness of hand thus obtained, aided also by the 
 effect of the then famous art-schools at Cologne, 
 influenced him and his brother in after-life. For 
 John k Kempis, the hammerer's elder son, became 
 very expert as an illuminator and illustrator of 
 manuscripts, and Thomas a highly-accomplished 
 scribe. The hammerer and his wife Gertrude were 
 able to give their sons a good education. The 
 elder, John, was trained in the school at Deven- 
 ter, and at an early age joined the Society of 
 the Brothers of Common Life, a congregation 
 living under less strict rules than the monastic 
 Orders, engaged chiefly in the copying of manu- 
 scripts. 
 
40 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 scripts. They also lent a helping hand to lads who 
 came to Deventer for study, giving them a home, 
 and, if they needed it, money, while attending 
 classes at the public school. 
 
 John and Thomas both joined the Congregation at 
 their house on Mount St. Agnes, and John became 
 first Prior thereof Thomas took orders at the age of 
 thirty-three, and shortly thereafter is supposed to 
 have written the Imitation^ between 141 5-1420. A 
 celebrated MS., undoubtedly written by his own 
 hand, is dated 1441, and is probably one of many 
 which he made, his time being mainly spent in such 
 work. His great labour in this kind was the tran- 
 scription of the whole Bible in four folio volumes, 
 which occupied him fifteen years. He rarely left 
 the monastery, except for three years, during which 
 the Brethren were expelled from their home, and 
 had to wander from place to place. The cause of 
 this exile was a contested election to the bishopric 
 of Utrecht. It is enough to say that the Papal was 
 not the popular candidate, and the district in which 
 Mount St. Agnes lay was therefore placed under an 
 interdict. Pending an appeal to Rome, the Pope 
 being then Martin V., the district affected by the 
 cessation of public religious offices took the law 
 into its own hands, calling on the monasteries of the 
 diocese to disregard alike the Papal candidate and 
 the interdict, or to depart the country. 
 
 The Canons Regular chose rather exile than to 
 abandon principle. They were dispersed among 
 
 various 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 41 
 
 various monasteries in the Low Countries outside 
 the diocese, till the disputed election was settled, on 
 the accession of Pope Eugenius IV., when the 
 interdict was removed. The restoration of the 
 Brethren to Mount St. Agnes was one of the first 
 consequences of this happier state. 
 
 Thomas died at Mount St. Agnes, and was buried 
 at the eastern end of the cloister. There, for two 
 hundred years, and long after the cell in which he 
 lived, as well as the church in which he worshipped, 
 had fallen into ruin, his remains rested, till in 1672 
 Max Heinrich, Elector of Cologne, identified the 
 place of his burial, and opened the grave. The 
 Elector seems to have done this reverently, and out 
 of a desire to honour one whom he regarded as a 
 saint. The grave was opened on August ist, and 
 on August 3rd the relics were borne in triumph to 
 Zwolle. On the bones of the left foot was a growth 
 of lichen, which, resembling minute yellow, pink, 
 and white flowers, was by some regarded as a 
 miracle. The Elector and the Archbishop of 
 Cologne cared for the construction of a reliquary, 
 in which the body still rests, and in which it 
 has been reverently examined and handled very 
 recently. Had the relics been discovered some- 
 what earlier, it is probable that Thomas would have 
 been canonised. When Cardinal Fabius Chisi, 
 who became Pope in 1655, under the style of 
 Alexander VII., was Papal Nuncio to the Rhine 
 Provinces, he wished to promote the canonisation 
 
 of 
 
42 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 of Thomas, if only he could find his bones. But the 
 Pope had passed away before the day of Max 
 Heinrich, and Thomas, not technically a saint, is 
 canonised only in the hearts of men. 
 
 Thomas and his community, living in so remote 
 a corner of the world, were probably little affected 
 by external events other than the almost domestic 
 contest about the archbishopric. The great strife 
 between Pope and anti-Pope broke out in the year 
 in which he was born ; it came to an end about 
 the time he was ordained ; but it was throughout 
 a political rather than a religious question, and 
 scarcely touched in any degree the life of a remote 
 monastery. It affected Zwolle no more than the 
 ex-King at the Court of St. Germains interfered 
 with the affairs of any secluded village in England 
 after our own Revolution. 
 
 Still less did the fall of Constantinople, and the 
 strife between the Eastern and Western Churches, 
 without which the Saracenic power would have 
 been unable to establish itself in the Eastern capital, 
 bring alarm to Mount St. Agnes. In days of im- 
 perfect and slow communication it was impossible 
 for dwellers by those northern dunes to realise that 
 the very Christianity of Europe was hanging in the 
 balance, and that the whole course of modern 
 history might have been changed. 
 
 So, too, it maybe doubted whether the beginnings 
 of those heresies which preluded the Reformation 
 were heeded or even heard by Thomas and his 
 
 companions. 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 43 
 
 companions. If Jerome of Prague and John Huss 
 were so much as named, it would be only as the 
 utterances of some Mormon apostle in a remote 
 Welsh village might find faint and careless mention 
 in the columns of the Tablet or the Guardian of 
 to-day. 
 
 And, clearly, the revival of classical learning, the 
 renascence, the invention of printing, did not pre- 
 sent themselves in their full significance to the 
 Canons Regular, or to Thomas, their Sub-Prior. 
 No thoughts of the length to which the last would 
 grow stayed his busy hand, as he patiently covered 
 page after page with his neat and fair writing of 
 sacred Scripture, or multiplied the copies of his 
 own immortal book. The picture of the external 
 events of the time, however minutely it may show 
 itself to our mind, is rather as a background to the 
 portrait of Thomas in his cell, musing on the duties 
 of a good monk, saying his office, or training his 
 penitents, than as the representation of anything 
 which really blended with his life or influenced one 
 line of his book. 
 
 I pass now to the book itself. 
 
 The language is Latin ; not classical, but good ; 
 very far from being rough and barbarous, such as 
 the Latin of monasteries had often become, which 
 Ulrich von Hutten caricatured with unsparing 
 humour in the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorutn. It 
 is colloquial Latin, such as Erasmus wrote, sprinkled 
 with some unusual words, phrases, and technicali- 
 ties, 
 
THOMAS A KEMP IS 
 
 ties, arising from the writer's nationality and mode 
 of life. 
 
 It is certain that the writer thought in Flemish, 
 and this is one of the proofs that Thomas, and 
 not Hilton nor Gerson, was the author. In the 
 first chapter of the first book occurs the curious 
 expression, " Si scires totam bibliam exterius "— 
 •' If thou didst know the whole bible outside. ^^ 
 This is not a Latin expression, and is, at first 
 sight, absolutely untranslatable, so that many MSS. 
 copied in Italy omit the word ; the copyists did not 
 understand it ; one inserted the words '*/« ?nente," 
 "in the mind," translating the evident thought of 
 the writer, so as to avoid the barbarous term. The 
 idiom is Flemish, van buiten, " outside," being the 
 recognised phrase for "by heart." 
 
 In Book I., chap. 25, is a very curious idiom from 
 the speech of the Netherlands : "Etideo turpe 
 esset ut tu deberes in tam sancto opere pigritari " 
 — " It would therefore be a shame for thee to be 
 sluggish in so holy an exercise" — where ^^debeo^' 
 is used as its equivalent in the Teutonic languages 
 *' shall " and *' should," but not at all according to 
 the wont of the verb in Latin. 
 
 In Book III., chap. 25, we find: *' Ita ut una 
 aequali facie in gratiarum actione permaneas," — 
 ** So that with the same equal countenance thou 
 mayest continue the giving of thanks." Aequa 
 mente is good Latin, but aequali facie is not, and 
 therefore some of the best foreign translators have 
 
 avoided 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 45 
 
 avoided the difficulty ; but the idiom again is good 
 Flemish, met een gelyk aengezicht. 
 
 In Book III., chap. 59, we have : '* Et ideo post 
 te gemere clamare et exorare necesse est" This 
 again is good Flemish, naer u, "after thee," good 
 also in English and other Teutonic languages, but 
 in Latin it would be ad te. Hence the Italian and 
 French translators have left it out, or rendered it 
 wrongly : '* Je ne puis loin de vous, que soupirer 
 et gemir." These examples might largely be 
 multiplied, but are probably enough. So much 
 then for the original tongue and nation of the 
 writer. 
 
 We come now to the ecclesiastical expressions 
 peculiar to Thomas. And first there is a word 
 that comes often from his pen, which we his 
 readers naturally understand and apply in a broad, 
 but which he used in a narrower, sense — devotus, or 
 devout. The devoii were the Brothers of Common 
 Life, and when Thomas records that he had lived 
 familiarly among them, and was stirred up by their 
 great piety to his own humiliation, he is speaking 
 of a definite society, and not, as we should say, of 
 pious persons in general. One passage may suffice 
 for the word. Book IV., chap. 9 : *' Offero quoque 
 tibi omnia pia desideria devotorum, necessitates 
 parentum, amicoriim, fratrum, sororum, omnium- 
 que carorum meorum " — " I offer to thee also all 
 the pious desires of thy devout servants, the needs 
 of my parents, friends, brethren, sisters, and all 
 
 who 
 
46 THOMAS k KEMP IS 
 
 who are dear to me." As all these last five classes 
 of persons have a certain definite relation to the 
 author, so the first is also such a class, those who 
 lived under the same monastic rule as he. It 
 would not be difficult to reconstruct a considerable 
 part of this rule from the various passages in the 
 hnitation wherein the word devoius occurs. 
 
 And another such term is conversi^ not the con- 
 verted, but \h^fr^res cojivers^ or lay brothers. 
 
 There is a word of great interest when consider- 
 ing the book as the work of a monk, in Book I., 
 chap. 3 : — 
 
 " Tell me where are now all those great doctors and 
 masters, whom thou knewest so well whilst they were alive 
 and flourished in learning ? Others already possess their 
 offices. " Jam eorum praebendas alii possident. '' 
 
 The word praebenda, best rendered " oflfices " for 
 modern days, less well " livings," was in fact an 
 allowance of food and drink answering to college 
 "commons" at the Universities, or "rations" 
 among soldiers : thus we find in the monastic 
 books praebenda puerilis = choir-boys' commons ; 
 and even praebenda equi = rations for the con- 
 vent horse. The cell was part of a monk's 
 prebend ; praebenda doctrinalis was the daily 
 allowance to the scholastic who taught any branch 
 of theology, \\\^ praebenda ntissae was the priest's 
 fee, now called in French honor aire de messe. In 
 the Roman basilicas and elsewhere the distribution 
 of commons is still made daily, so much for each 
 
 office 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 47 
 
 office the clergy join in saying ; if absent they get 
 nothing. This is \\\€\x prebend, and they are called 
 beyieficiati, " beneficed." The word here implies 
 probably ih^ praebenda doctrmalis, but in any case 
 he who succeeded to the prebend succeeded to the 
 office. It would be, in religion, strictly equivalent 
 to the arrangement in the world by which members 
 of the board of some public companies receive fees 
 for attendance, but none if absent from their duty. 
 
 In Book I., chap. 19, "Atque omnem observantiam 
 strictius custodire" — "to keep all our rule more 
 strictly," observaniia is a technical and special 
 word, retained in English monasteries of strict 
 observance, the old unmitigated rule. 
 
 Book I., chap. 21, ** Compunctio multa bona 
 aperit ; quae dissolutio cito perdere consuevit " — 
 ** Compunction opens the way to much good, 
 which dissipation of mind is wont quickly to de- 
 stroy." A consideration of this passage opens the 
 whole question of what Thomas meant by "disso- 
 luteness "and "vice," dissolution vi/ia, and other 
 words of the kind. No doubt he is here and there 
 using such familiar hyperbolical expressions as that 
 by which St. Paul called himself the chief of sinners, 
 but far more often he is thinking of little breaches 
 of monastic rule, rather than of his shortcomings as 
 a man. Whoever has watched in England the weari- 
 ness of merely perfunctory choirmen, or, in a foreign 
 country, the snuff-boxes of the Canons in full play 
 during the recitation of sacred offices ; whoever will 
 
 think 
 
48 THOMAS ^L KEMP IS 
 
 think of the Httle dispensations tending towards 
 ease and comfort which a religious might gain, will 
 understand what is meant by vUium or dissolutio. 
 Louis of Blois, born about the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century, writes in the same way to monks. 
 **Take heed that no vice^ viiium^ be found in you, 
 such as are excess in food and drink, exaggeration 
 and triviality in talk, foolish gestures and move- 
 ments," &c. The want of remembering this has 
 led to mistranslations as well as exaggerations. In 
 one well-known passage (Book I., chap. 8) we find 
 *' Non sis familiaris alicui mulieri," which has been 
 rendered " Be not familiar with any woman," as 
 though the reader were cautioned against grave 
 sins of the body. It has not been sufficiently re- 
 membered that the book is addressed to those 
 already holy, and that the sentence is "a counsel 
 of perfection." The true sense is, *' Be not a friend 
 to any one woman," advice often needed for the 
 cleric who may be too much under the dominion of 
 some holy lady or penitent of his flock. 
 
 Now and then the reader is struck by the way in 
 which shrewd common-sense breaks through what 
 would be to a lesser man commonplaces of religion, 
 when they come into conflict with fact. Thus he 
 does not admit that ill health has necessarily and 
 of itself a purifying effect, nor that pilgrimages 
 were certainly means of grace. "Pauci ex infir- 
 mitate meliorantur, sic et qui multum peregrinantur 
 raro sanctificantur "— " Few are improved by sick- 
 ness : 
 
AND THE IMITATION, 49 
 
 ness ; they also who go on many pilgrimages seldom 
 become holy." In Book IV., chap, i, he speaks of 
 stated pilgrimages which had for their end, not the 
 visit to the Holy Land, so common in the thirteenth 
 century, but that to the relics of the saints :— 
 
 •'Currunt multi ad diversa loca pro visitandis reliquiis 
 sanctorum. Et mirantur auditis gestis eorum ampla 
 aedificia templorum ; inspiciunt et osculantur sericis et 
 auro involuta sacra ossa ipsorum." — " Many run to sundry 
 places to visit the relics of the saints, and are astonished to 
 hear of their wonderful works ; they look at the spacious 
 buildings of their churches, and kiss their sacred bones, 
 wrapped up in silk and gold." 
 
 And he disparages " the sacred bones wrapped up in 
 silk and gold" in comparison with that presence 
 on the altar day by day, "Thou, my God, Saint 
 of saints, Creator of men. Lord of angels." The 
 usual translation of the first quoted passage, 
 "they who travel much abroad," is clearly wrong, 
 however true the fact may be, since travelling 
 for the sake of traveUing was not common, and to 
 a monk impossible ; while the way in which the 
 devotion of a pilgrimage might be neutralised by 
 the behaviour of the pilgrims will easily be un- 
 derstood by the readers of Chaucer. 
 
 The remark is very natural, taken in connection 
 with the well-known historical facts of the Nether- 
 lands and the Rhine Provinces. Long before the 
 fifteenth century the great pilgrimages of those 
 countries had for their object the remarkable relics 
 
 at 
 D 
 
50 . THOMAS ^ KEMPIS 
 
 at Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Treves, Maestricht, 
 and Tongres. Relics, exposed every year with a 
 certain ceremony, were every seventh year exhibited 
 with exceptional pomp, attracting great crowds of 
 pilgrims. In 1391 and in 1405 the magistrates of 
 Maestricht published an order regulating the ex- 
 change of foreign moneys during the "kermesse." 
 In 1440 the concourse was so great at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle that the roofs of several houses fell in 
 under the crowds which had mounted them to see 
 the exposition of the relics. Fourteen years later 
 the gates of the same town had to be closed against 
 an excessive number of pilgrims. The sacred 
 ceremonies were held in the different towns nearly 
 at the same time, in order that pilgrims might 
 attend several functions. Well might Thomas say 
 "Curruntad diversa loca" — "They run to divers 
 places." 
 
 In Book III., chap. 7, is a passage which is true 
 at all times, when devotion is not chastened by 
 common-sense, but which when Thomas wrote it 
 had a special application to two of his brothers in 
 religion : — 
 
 " Quidam incauti propter devotionis gratiam se ipsos de- 
 struxerunt ; quia plus agere voluerunt quara potuerunt, non 
 pensantes suae parvitatis mensuram ; sed magis cordis 
 affectum sequentes quam rationis iudicium. Et quia maiora 
 praesumpserunt quam Deo placitum fuit ; idcirco gratiam 
 cito perdiderunt. Fact sunt inopes et viles relicti ; qui in 
 coelum posuerunt nidum sibi ; ut humiliati et depau- 
 perati discant non in alis suis volare ; sed sub pennis meis 
 
 sperare." 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 51 
 
 sperare." — "Some, wanting in caution, have ruined them- 
 selves by reason of the grace of devotion ; because they were 
 desirous of doing more than they could, not weighing well 
 the measure of their own littleness, but following rather the 
 inclinations of the heart than the dictates of reason. And 
 because they presumptuously undertook greater things than 
 were pleasing to God, therefore they quickly lost grace. 
 They became needy, and were left wretched, who had built 
 themselves a nest in heaven to the end that, being thus 
 humbled and impoverished, they might learn not to soar on 
 their own wings, but to cherish hope under mine." 
 
 Busch, who edited the Chronicles of Wtndes- 
 hevn, tells us of two of the brethren who forgot 
 that to obey was better than sacrifice. The fervour 
 was great at Windesheim and at Mount St. Agnes, 
 especially in the first years after their foundation ; 
 for it must not be forgotten that the Brothers of 
 Common Life were tacitly reproving the negligence 
 which had crept into some of the older and strictly 
 conventual orders ; and the zeal was wont at times 
 to lack discretion : — 
 
 "There were," we are told, " two brethren at Windesheim 
 who by their rigid abstinence and secret diminution of their 
 food upset their brain and natural faculties and became 
 deprived of their reason." 
 
 The one, Brother Berthold, a sub-deacon, while 
 thus insufficiently nourished, took to studies be- 
 yond his mental capacity, to frequent meditation, 
 and active discussion on El and Eloi and other 
 names of God, till he became half foolish. The 
 other, Brother Nicolas, had been professor in the 
 
 University 
 
$2 THOMAS 2 KEMPIS 
 
 University of Paris. He, too, reduced himself by- 
 excessive fastings to the same state. Their mis- 
 taken self-denial had gone too far when discovered, 
 and they both died mad. 
 
 There is possibly, even probably, a further recol- 
 lection of Nicolas in the unexpected question in 
 Book I., chap. 3, **Etquidcurae nobis de generibus 
 et speciebus? "—"And what need have we to concern 
 ourselves about genera and species?" To the 
 companions of Thomas the words would not have 
 seemed, as to us. dragged into the context with 
 little relevance. For in the Life of Wessel Gans- 
 fort^ one of his intimate friends, we find the ac- 
 count of the disputes at Paris between the real, 
 nominal, and formal theologians. 
 
 In the whole of the fourth book the advice is not 
 to a monk as such, but to a priest as such, and in 
 order to understand it aright, it must be remem- 
 bered that the contrast is not between the priest and 
 the layman, but the celebrant and non-celebrant. 
 When one Mass alone is said, as on Holy Thurs- 
 day, even the Cardinals, or the Pope himself, if he 
 be not the celebrant, receive in one kind. The 
 offerer of the sacrifice consummates it, the re- 
 cetvers of the sacrament do not— they communi- 
 cate. 
 
 There is a curious passage in Book IV., chap. 4, 
 which would seem to show, in this connection, that 
 a fragment of very early ritual was still practised in 
 the Low Countries. " Wherefore, if I cannot draw 
 
 out 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 53 
 
 out of the fulness of the fountain nor drink my fill ;" 
 apponam tamen os meum ad foramen coelestis 
 fistulae ; " I will at least set my mouth to the orifice 
 of this heavenly pipe,^ wherein is an allusion to 
 the ancient mode of communion through a pipe of 
 gold or silver. 
 
 So much for the words used, in so far as they 
 were affected by the writer's surroundings. The 
 style is more absolutely simple and unadorned than 
 perhaps that of any other book in the whole world ; 
 and its marvellous eloquence arises from the very 
 fact that it is naked thought, manifest directly to the 
 mind without any interception of metaphor, which 
 may turn us aside from the bare thought. Of 
 external nature Thomas knows next to nothing. 
 Nor can we account for this simply by the want of 
 fair scenery in the country round Zwolle, for, as a 
 rule, those writers who have the keenest eyes for 
 natural objects are those nursed in the tamest 
 countries, who find a beauty in herb and flower, in 
 the colour of sky and sea. When he goes beyond 
 the walls of his cell for a phrase, he finds a stock 
 one from the Bible, as •' Let us lay the axe to the 
 root," for most assuredly he had seen no, or few, 
 trees felled in the treeless dunes. At most he 
 speaks once or twice of the thirsty soil without 
 water, when the summer cracks in the convent 
 garden were before him, and the drooping pot- 
 herbs drank the shower from his hand ; once or 
 twice of the ships driven along the tumbling 
 
 northern 
 
54 THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 northern wave ; once, and once only, the vast im- 
 mensity of the sea seems to have overcome his 
 insensitiveness to external nature. Then he thinks 
 of it with Matthew Arnold's thought : — 
 
 " A God, a God their severance ruled. 
 And bade between their shores to be 
 The unplumbed salt estranging sea." 
 
 O pelagus intransnatabile ! — " O sea, which none 
 can overpass by swimming ! " he breaks out, for 
 once, in metaphor, when he would speak of God's 
 unfathomable judgments. 
 
 Of the form of the work apart from the language 
 somewhat must be said. Just as the Bible was not 
 divided into chapters and verses till some time after 
 the invention of printing, so the verses and para- 
 graphs in the Imitation^ now convenient for medita- 
 tion and for reference, do not exist in the MSS., 
 and are more or less arbitrary. Henry Somalius, 
 a Jesuit, in an edition published at Antwerp in 1599, 
 was the first to divide the chapters into paragraphs ; 
 the verses were only fixed as now usually received 
 in the seventeenth century. Dr. Hirsche, of 
 Hamburg, who has recently edited the book after 
 Thomas's autograph copy of 1441, has made a 
 discovery which is in the main demonstrative and 
 final, even if it be open to dispute in some minor 
 details. This is that according to Thomas's own 
 pointing and arrangement it was probably meant to 
 be chanted like the Psalter, and was certainly, for 
 
 convenience 
 
AND THE IMITA TION. 55 
 
 convenience of memory, arranged rhythmically, 
 even to a large extent in rhyme. This is noticeable 
 in the words about sickness and pilgrimage, but 
 open the book where we will, with this fact in our 
 mind, we find the same thing now in a greater, now 
 in a less degree. 
 Thus take the opening sentences :— 
 
 " Qui sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris ; 
 dicit Dominus." 
 
 That is a quotation from the Gospels needing no 
 memoria technica. But now listen to the music of 
 these lines : — 
 
 " Haec sunt verba Christi quibus admonemur, 
 quatenus vitam eius et mores imitemur ; 
 si veliraus veraciter illuminari, 
 et ab omni caecitate cordis liberari. 
 Summum igitur studium nostrum sit ; 
 in vita Jesu Christi meditari. " 
 
 Or, again, taken at random from the 48th chapter 
 of the third book :— 
 
 " O supernae civitatis mansio beatissima. 
 
 O dies aeternitatis clarissima : 
 
 quam nox non obscurat ; 
 
 sed summa Veritas semper irradiat : 
 
 dies semper laeta, semper secura 
 
 et numquam statum miitans in contraria. 
 
 Dies huius temporis parvi et mail : 
 ubi homo, .... 
 
 multis timoribus stringitur, 
 multis ciu-is distenditur ; 
 
 multis 
 
56 THOMAS J5 KEMP IS 
 
 multis curiositatibus distrahitur, 
 
 multis vanitatibus implicatur : 
 
 multis erroribus circumfunditur, 
 
 multis laboribus atteritur tentationibus gravatur ; 
 
 deliciis enervatur, 
 
 egestate cruciatur. 
 
 O quando finis horum malorum : 
 quando liberabor a misera servitute vitiorum ? " 
 
 And that this sonorous rime is intended mainly 
 as a help to the memory is proved by the fact that 
 whenever a catalogue or contrasted list is given 
 which impresses itself easily on the mind without 
 such aid, he cares for the rhymical arrangement 
 only or chiefly ; though the rimes might have been 
 multiplied with perfect ease. An illustration of 
 what is meant will be found in Book IV., chap. 7. 
 To those who are in the habit of reading the 
 Imitation in the Latin I would earnestly commend 
 Dr. Hirsche's small edition of the text, published at 
 Berlin in 1874. There is a singular likeness between 
 these passages and the hymns written for music 
 by Thomas, into which it were too long now to 
 enter, as also into the question of punctuation 
 adopted by him, which is not without its great in- 
 terest for those who have time to follow it out. 
 
 I now pass from the form to the matter of 
 the book ; and, first, to consider in what manner 
 Thomas was dependent on and linked to those who 
 went before him. Less perhaps than any man who 
 ever lived would he have cared to be considered 
 original. He knew that in the fullest sense he had 
 
 nothing 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 57 
 
 nothing which he did not receive, that he was the 
 steward of the past for the future, created by his 
 time, helping to form that which was to come. 
 
 He was almost a man of one book, and that, of 
 course, the Bible. This is so interwoven in the 
 texture of the Imitation that it is not always easy to 
 say what is and is not quoted, for some passages 
 are introduced apparently from memory, with more 
 or less variation ; others in which there is the 
 merest hint or allusion, so that the passage may 
 not have been consciously in the mind. But the 
 Bible is not treated as literature, or to be read as a 
 scholar would read it, but solely with a devotional 
 end : — 
 
 " Truth," he says, "is to be sought for in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, not eloquence We must seek rather 
 
 for profit in the Scripture than for subtlety of speech. 
 . . . Inquire not who said this, but attend to what is 
 
 said Our own curiosity often hinders us in 
 
 reading the Scriptures when we wish to understand and 
 discuss where we should simply pass on." 
 
 The extracts from the Fathers and the Saints are 
 perhaps a dozen in number at most, taken chiefly 
 from St. Augustine and St. Bernard. The few 
 quotations from secular books would appear to 
 be familar words which had become common 
 property : — 
 
 " Principiis obsta ; sero medicina paratur, 
 
 " Withstand the beginning, after-remedies come too late." 
 
 From Ovid. 
 
 "Quoties 
 
5t THOMAS A KEMPIS 
 
 " Quoties inter homines fui minor homo redii. 
 " As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned 
 less a man." 
 
 From Seneca. 
 
 " Non tibi sit ctirae de magni nominis umbra. 
 " Have no care for the shadow of a great name." 
 From Lucan. 
 
 " Omnis homo naturaliter scire desiderat- 
 " Every man naturally desires to know-" 
 
 From a Latin translation of Aristotle. 
 
 Beyond these are a few quotations from the canon 
 of the Mass and hymns of the Church. 
 
 And as there is scant literature so is there little 
 history. St. Laurence, St. Sixtus, and St. Francis 
 are the only saints of whom he speaks by name. 
 Even the spiritual experiences introduced are his 
 own, or those of his friend and master Florentius, 
 whose life he wrote, Superior of the Canons 
 Regular. It may be admitted fully that in such a 
 book is small occasion for introducing historical 
 facts, but in scholars and students such lore be- 
 comes part of the life, and is indicated uncon- 
 sciously at every turn. 
 
 Beyond these negative matters we ask with 
 interest if there be any autobiography in the Imi- 
 tation which we can read between the lines ? On 
 one such passage there is no doubt; and it is a 
 parallel to that of St. Paul, " I knew a man in 
 Christ fourteen years ago." It tells of the time 
 when there came to Thomas that hour of deep 
 
 spiritual 
 
AND THE IMITATION. 59 
 
 spiritual dejection through which all men of any 
 greatness must pass, the hour in which Dante 
 descended into hell, and Shakspere conceived 
 the soliloquies of Hamlet ; and thus he records the 
 trial (Book I. 25) :— 
 
 " When one who often anxiously wavered between hope 
 and fear, was one day consumed with sadness, he prostrated 
 himself in prayer in the church before a certain altar, and 
 revolved these things within himself, saying, ' Oh, if I did 
 but know that I should persevere on and on ! ' All at once he 
 heard within himself the divine answer : ' And what wouldest 
 thou do if thou knewest this ? Do now what thou wouldest 
 then do, and thou wilt be safe enough.' 
 
 "And presently being comforted and strengthened, he 
 committed himself to the divine will, and his anxious 
 wavering ceased. 
 
 " Neither had he a mind to search curiously to know 
 what should befall him hereafter, but he studied rather to 
 inquire what was the acceptable and perfect will of God 
 for the beginning and accompUshing of every good work." 
 
 . . . . " I do not ask to see 
 
 The distant scene, one step enough for me," 
 
 was the lesson he learnt, the lesson which all have 
 to learn, out of whatever faith or bitter experience 
 they may attain it. 
 
 There is another passage in which we may find 
 himself. Thomas was at one time sub-Prior at St. 
 Agnes. Then at the time of the dispersion all 
 offices, of course, were in abeyance, and at the 
 restoration he was not replaced in his post. It was 
 his again at a later date, but he was never the head 
 of the community, and for the greater part of his 
 
 life 
 
«b THOMAS 2 KEMP IS 
 
 life he was in a subordinate position. Now in every 
 life which is under rule, even in our own home, 
 much must be irksome and petty, if every action, 
 however trifling, is not considered as part of a great 
 whole, and as ennobled by the end it subserves. 
 How does he raise and transfigure the small trials 
 incident to monastic life ! — 
 
 " Thou must oftentimes do that which thou wiliest not ; 
 and let alone that which thou wiliest. 
 
 " That which is pleasing to others will go forward ; that 
 which thou wouldest have will not succeed. 
 
 "That which others say will be hearkened to; what 
 thou sayest will be esteemed as nought. 
 
 " Others will ask and will receive ; thou wilt ask and not 
 obtain. 
 
 " Others will be great in the mouths of men; but none 
 will speak of thee. 
 
 " Others will have this or that office; but thou wilt be 
 accounted fit for nothing. 
 
 " Nature will sometimes repine at this, and it will be no 
 small matter if thou bear it with silence." 
 
 A member of a Catholic community, correspond- 
 ing in some degree to the Brothers of Common 
 Life, wrote to me some time since in regard to 
 the above: — 
 
 " Here is a picture of monastic life as it will, nature being 
 what it is, tend to be, in the general run of monks. At the 
 triennial distribution of offices you will be set aside. Some 
 ' junior ' will be preferred ; you will have had your day ; 
 no one cares for you. In Chapter the advice of others will 
 be taken— you will be thought stupid, prosy, behind the 
 age, &c. In ore hominum ; 'great in the mouths of men.' 
 What a preacher Brother A. is! and what a cellarer is 
 
 Brother B. 
 
AND THE IMITATION, 6i 
 
 Brother B. But de te tacebitur, none will speak of thee. You 
 want some little permission, the Abbot says No, You 
 would like to be illuminating some pet capital, you must go 
 and thresh com," &c. 
 
 There is the hard, prosaic reality, but the saint 
 sees these trivial matters in the light which trans- 
 figures and illuminates all that is lowly and mean. 
 It is none the less a bit of genuine autobiography. 
 
 There are many other passages which could only 
 have been written by a devout monk, but not 
 especially personal, and I notice them only to 
 draw attention to the fact that, however applicable 
 they may be and are to all of us, it is not be- 
 cause they give any uncertain note on monachism 
 or Catholicism. Nothing is ever gained by com- 
 promise, or by minimising religious convictions ; 
 hence those translations which omit or falsify 
 passages in the Imitation are as needless in their 
 changes as they are dishonest. It is a Catholic 
 book, written primarily for Catholic monks. 
 
 But it is ours also because it appeals to that 
 central desire of rest, which finds place even in the 
 busiest life, the desire for the "whirlwind's heart 
 of peace," for the cell into which we must at times 
 retire, to be alone with that which is not ourself. 
 
 It is ours because it teaches us that the Cross, 
 type of self-abnegation, is the part of every true 
 life ; and this is the teaching of every noble soul 
 from the Hebrew prophets in Jerusalem to Goethe 
 at Weimar. 
 
 Listen 
 
62 THOMAS 1 KEMPIS 
 
 Listen to the way Thomas puts it :— 
 
 " Walk where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, and thou 
 wilt find no higher way above, no safer way below, than 
 the way of the holy cross 
 
 "The cross is always ready and everywhere awaits 
 thee. 
 
 " Thou canst not escape it, whithersoever thou runnest ; 
 for whithersoever thou goest, thou earnest thyself with thee, 
 and always shalt thou find thyselfl 
 
 "Turn thyself upwards, turn thyself downwards, turn 
 thyself without, turn thyself within thee ; and everywhere 
 thou shalt find the cross. 
 
 ' ' And everywhere hast thou need of patience, if thou 
 wouldest have interior peace and merit a lasting crown. 
 
 "If thou carry the cross willingly, it will carry thee and 
 bring thee to thy wished- for end ; thither, to wit, where 
 there will be an end of suffering, though here there will 
 not be 
 
 • ' If thou fling away one cross, without doubt thou wilt 
 find another, and perhaps a heavier." 
 
 The Imitation is ours, again, because it asserts 
 vehemently the shortness of time, the great need 
 of doing our tale of work while yet it is ours to do. 
 Listen :— 
 
 " ' Ah fool ! Why dost thou think to live long, when 
 thou art not sure of one day ? ' 
 
 ' ' How often hast thou heard it related such an one was slain 
 by the sword, another was drowned, another falling from on 
 high broke his neck, this man grew stark in chewing his 
 food, that other came to his end when he was at play ? . . 
 
 "Thus death is the end of all; and man's life passes 
 suddenly like a shadow." 
 
 •' Love is our principle ; live for others," said 
 Auguste Comte, the latest founder of a religion 
 
 which 
 
AND THE IMITATION, 63 
 
 which claims to be world-wide, all-embracing, 
 sufficient for the needs of humanity. In so far as it 
 is useful at all it is only because it puts into modern 
 language the old words, and the old Christian 
 teaching, the lessons of Jesus and St. John. 
 
 This is how Thomas puts the axiom " Love is 
 the fulfilling of the Law ; " the command " Love 
 one another" :— 
 
 '• Love often knows no measure, but warmly glows above 
 all measure. 
 
 '• Love feels no burthen, regards not labours, would 
 willingly do more than it is able, pleads not impossibility, 
 because it feels sure that it can and may do all things. 
 
 ** Love watches, and sleeping slumbers not ; weary is 
 not tired ; straitened is not constrained ; frightened is not 
 disturbed ; but like a living flame and a burning torch, it 
 bursts forth upwards, and safely overpasses all. . . . 
 
 ' ' He who loves must willingly embrace all that is hard 
 and bitter for the sake of the beloved, and must never suffer 
 himself to be turned away from him by adverse hap.'' 
 
 The dangers of our time are not likely to be in- 
 creased by any taking to ourselves the lessons of 
 the Imitation in excess. Not ours is the danger 
 that we should become over spiritual in a material 
 age. Not ours that we should become too full of 
 mystic quietism in the unrest that is around us. 
 And, therefore, we may, in our daily meditation, 
 welcome that voice which speaks to us out of the 
 ages, welcome the calm hand reached out from the 
 cloister to rest on our fevered brow and still the 
 beating of our troubled heart. 
 
PASCAL'S "PENSEES." 
 
 AMONG the books which have moved, and con- 
 tinue to move the world, is one which, con- 
 sidered in itself and in its history, is unique. For, 
 properly speaking, it is not a book at all, but 
 rather an undigested heap of detached thoughts 
 and fragments for a book which was only partially 
 written, if even fully planned. 
 
 Pascal took in hand his great work against athe- 
 ists and unbelievers in the thirty-fifth year of his 
 age, after finishing the " Provincial Letters" in the 
 spring of 1657. A certain languor had succeeded to 
 that vast intellectual effort, and, always in feeble 
 health, he was able during that year only to sketch 
 in part the course his work would take, to write fully, 
 and with great elaboration, certain paragraphs and 
 portions of definite chapters, and to make notes, 
 afterwards to be expanded viva voce for lectures at 
 Port Royal. But in the following spring he was at- 
 tacked by neuralgia in the face, which proved to be 
 the beginning of other nervous affections, taking 
 from him all power of sustained labour, racking his 
 body with pain, and obliging him either to depend 
 
 not 
 E 
 
66 PASCAL'S ''PENSAes:' 
 
 not a little on the aid of an illiterate servant as 
 amanuensis, or to jot down his own thoughts on 
 separate slips of paper, which he was never able 
 to work out nor to fit into their place. These have 
 lain strewn, so to speak, on the world like the 
 feathers scattered by the fairy Disorder; it has 
 been the task of many editors to try and restore 
 them according to the plan in Pascal's mind, not 
 fully known to them, and only in part described by 
 him to his most intimate friends. 
 
 Then, when the pen fell from the dead hand, and 
 his family determined that the thoughts so left 
 should be given to the world, the MS. was 
 entrusted to a committee, who conceived them- 
 selves at liberty to retrench, to prune, and to 
 modify, to shape what was formless ; so giving of 
 necessity a different result to the first idea ; and to 
 weaken what was strong. Yet in spite of this, and 
 in spite of the wholly different minds of the men 
 affected by the "Pensdes," they have had Con- 
 dorcet as an editor, and Voltaire as a commen- 
 tator; Sainte-Beuve, in his great work on Port 
 Royal, brought to bear on them and on the 
 character of Pascal the whole power of his search- 
 ing and luminous criticism; while no less than 
 three modern editors in France, MM. Faug^re, 
 Havet, and Molinier, have gone back to the 
 original MS., have discussed each line and word 
 and marginal mark, have arranged and re-arranged 
 each fragment to see where best it would fit, and, 
 
 in 
 
PASCALS ''PENSiESy 67 
 
 in a word, have treated this book, which is no 
 book, as one of the sacred scriptures of the world. 
 These men have laboured, and entering into their 
 labours we may study the thoughts, the man, and 
 the time with pleasure and profit, and find order 
 arise out of the disorder. 
 
 As j ustifying and explaining mediaeval monachism 
 and asceticism, a modern writer has said : ** The 
 very ferocity and foulness of the time, by a natural 
 revulsion, called forth at the same time the 
 apostolic holiness and the Manichaean asceticism 
 of the mediaeval saints. The world was so bad that 
 to be saints at all they were compelled to go out of 
 the world." ^ In the same manner the terrible 
 laxity of what is called Society in France, a laxity 
 which had invaded the sanctity of cloistered life, 
 and poisoned the pure wells of religion, called out 
 the austere holiness of Port Royal, and of the lives 
 associated with it during, roughly speaking, the 
 last century of its existence. Among these lives, 
 that of Pascal is the one which most naturally, even 
 more than that of Le grand Amauld, or La Mfere 
 Angllique, rises to our mind when we hear the 
 name of the great abbey. 
 
 The Cistercian Convent of Port Royal des 
 Champs is, or rather was, for scarce one stone is 
 left upon another, about eighteen miles from Paris, 
 in a pleasant and narrow valley, such as the order 
 of St. Bernard always chose. '* He established 
 
 his 
 1 C. Kingsley, Preface to " The Saint's Tragedy." 
 
68 PASCAL* S ''PENS^ESy 
 
 his monasteries," says one of the Port Royal 
 historians, " in deep valleys where the view of the 
 world was excluded, and nothing but the heaven 
 could be seen." Or, as the old lines have it— 
 
 Bernardus valles, colles Benedictus amabat, 
 Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes. 
 
 Valleys Bernard chose, but Bennet built on the moun- 
 tains, 
 
 Francis in smaller towns ; where men throng thickest 
 Ignatius. 
 
 f'ounded in the first decade of the thirteenth 
 century, and presumably fulfilling its functions as 
 a place of pious retreat and prayer for many years, 
 it had become lax and irregular at the opening of 
 the sixteenth century. The Abbot of Citeaux, 
 visitor of the convent, made his formal visitation 
 in 1504, and found, firstly, that the Divine offices 
 were ill sung, and celebrated with extreme irregu- 
 larity. Before all things, he says, they must get an 
 abbey clock as one means to punctuality. Secondly, 
 the dormitories were ill arranged ; in fact, there 
 was a common dormitory; the rule of strict 
 seclusion was not at all observed. Thirdly, the 
 nuns wore fashionable dresses with wide sleeves 
 and trains, the price of which, said a preacher of 
 those days, would have maintained a whole poor 
 family ; and when the fashion changed they 
 thought that they did much for God in making 
 these dresses, used and soiled though they were, 
 
 into 
 
PASCAL'S " PENS^ES." 69 
 
 into altar coverings. They even wore jewels, for- 
 getting that a nun was dead, and that trinkets were 
 ill suited to a corpse. 
 
 In 1572 and 1574 further visitations showed a 
 still worse state of things, under a careless abbess, 
 who was threatened with excommunication, and 
 ended by deserting her convent, on the pretext 
 that she was troubled by the wars of the League. 
 She betook herself to an abbey in Normandy, 
 where, presumably, she was less looked after. 
 These visitations discovered irreverent services, 
 sacraments disregarded, confessions neglected, 
 and these made, when made, to any priest, and 
 not to him appointed by authority, sick sisters 
 uncared for, the food of the community stinted, 
 together with grave personal imputations against 
 the abbess. The lady who succeeded her, when 
 she ran away, reformed the kitchen at any rate, and 
 does not appear to have been open to blame. But ; 
 and nothing shows the whole state of feeling out- 
 side and inside the convent more than this ; she 
 took as assistant superior, with, as it would seem, 
 the vested right of succession, a little girl aged 
 seven years, Jaqueline Marie Arnauld, whose 
 parents had caused her to enter into religion for 
 that end. 
 
 The whole circumstances were amazingly dis- 
 creditable, and go far to justify the cynical remark 
 of a distinguished judge of our own days, who said 
 that "it is always the very best persons who do 
 
 the 
 
70 
 
 PASCAL'S ''PENsAeS.' 
 
 the very worst things." M. Antoine Arnauld, the 
 father of the infant nun, came of a good family in 
 what would now be called the upper middle class ; 
 he was an advocate in great practice, a man esteem- 
 ed by all as honourable and religious, selected by the 
 University of Paris as their counsel against the 
 Jesuits, the confidential adviser of half the great 
 world of Paris. He had ten children, and not un- 
 naturally in those days looked to the convent as the 
 destiny of some of his daughters ; since to a man 
 in his position to ask for them the post of abbess, 
 or at least of assistant superior, was to gain it. 
 The appointments were in the patronage of the 
 Crown, and it was easily arranged that the abbess 
 of Port Royal should nominate Jaqueline Arnauld 
 as her assistant, and that a similar post at St. Cyr 
 should be filled by Jeanne, a still younger sister ; 
 the office of abbess then vacant being given to a 
 lady who was bound to resign when Jeanne reached 
 the age of twenty. The future abbess of Port 
 Royal was placed for her religious education at yet 
 another Cistercian abbey, that of Maubuisson, the 
 superior of which was a pluralist, being also abbess 
 of Bertaucourt near Amiens. These high positions 
 Madame Ang^lique d'Estrees owed not to any 
 exalted spirituality ; such is scarcely to be expected 
 when ecclesiastical offices are Crown appointments ; 
 but to the fact that she was the sister of La Belle 
 Gabrielle, the mistress of Henry IV. The easy 
 manners of the time placed no barrier between the 
 
 intercourse 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES:* Jl 
 
 intercourse of the cloistered lady and her of the 
 court, who often retired for a while to her sister's 
 convent for country air ; and Madame Ang61ique 
 d'Estr6es obtained the second abbey as being 
 within an easy distance from Paris, not too far for 
 a visit from the King when hunting. Under this 
 singular instructress Jaqueline Arnauld passed her 
 novitiate, and at the age of nine made her pro- 
 fession, changing her name to Ang^lique in compli- 
 ment to Madame d'Estr^es. It was, and is, common 
 that a nun on quitting the world should take a new 
 name, but there was a special reason in the case 
 under consideration. 
 
 For when the original arrangement that Jaqueline 
 should afterwards succeed to Port Royal was pro- 
 posed at Rome, the ratification of the royal appoint- 
 ment was absolutely refused by the Pope, and the 
 whole affair was for some time in abeyance. But 
 now the abbess was dead, and without sanction from 
 Rome the assistant superior could not take her 
 place. In applying to the Pope all mention of 
 Jaqueline Arnauld was dropped, and Angelique was 
 named to his Holiness, accompanied by the false 
 statement that her age was seventeen. This age 
 seemed scarce sufficient, and it needed all the di- 
 plomacy of Cardinal Ossat to carry the point and 
 gain consent at last to the King's nomination. It is 
 difficult to see why, if a direct falsehood were to be 
 told at all, the Amaulds and their supporters drew 
 the line at seventeen, and shrank from declaring 
 
 Jaqueline 
 
74 PASCAL'S ''PENSEES» 
 
 Jaqueline to be of any age which might have satis- 
 fied the Pope without further trouble. 
 
 The condition of the community over which this 
 infant was called to preside was scandalous beyond 
 measure. There were thirteen nuns, of whom the 
 eldest was thirty-three, and as she was the eldest, 
 so was she the worst of the whole, so that Madame 
 Arnauld, mother of the abbess, had to exert her 
 influence to have her removed. Religious cere- 
 monies had been reduced to their lowest possible 
 measure, the official confessor could barely read, 
 but he was able more intelligently to take his 
 part in the masquerades, a favourite diversion 
 of the community. The nuns also wore masks on 
 occasions, and, which seems to have been con- 
 sidered almost as worldly, gloves. Much of this, 
 however, was at once set to rights. Madame 
 Arnauld, having turned out the dissolute nun of 
 thirty-three, found a prioress, a Madame Du Pont, 
 to take the management of the house, which she 
 did fairly well, and being herself a busy practical 
 woman, she and other members of the family were 
 constantly driving over from Paris without notice 
 to visit the young superior. While manifesting no 
 remarkable sanctity, la M^re Angelique said her 
 offices regularly, and read a good deal ; romances 
 and Roman history being her chief study. M. 
 Arnauld, when the law courts were not sitting, 
 came to stay occasionally at the nunnery, and the 
 great patron of the family, King Henry IV., 
 
 knowing 
 
PASCAL'S "PENSiES." 73 
 
 knowing that the father of the abbess was there, 
 himself arrived, during one of his hunting excur- 
 sions. The little abbess, preceded by her cross- 
 bearer and followed by her train of nuns, went to 
 meet his Majesty, and had prudently put on pattens, 
 so that the King thought her very tall for her age. 
 He had never even affected to believe the fiction 
 which had been presented to the Pope. 
 
 It is not strange that this life of routine, un- 
 dignified by devotion, yet undiversified by the 
 distractions which had made the life of worse nuns 
 endurable to them, became intolerable to Ange- 
 lique ; she saw a way of escape in the fact that her 
 profession had been made before the lawful age. 
 She determined to leave the religious life ; and, as 
 a preliminary, good Catholic though she was, 
 determined to run away and take shelter with her 
 Huguenot aunts. She was only prevented doing 
 so by an illness, during which she was removed to 
 her mother's care and tenderly nursed. Her father, 
 becoming at any rate partly aware of what was 
 passing in his daughter's mind, insisted on her 
 signing a paper in which she renewed her vows ; 
 and she returned to her post, still weak, but more 
 resigned, touched by the pleasure with which the 
 nuns saw her return, and disposed to find comfort 
 and rest in reading religious books, rather than 
 romances, as heretofore. 
 
 But the great awakening of her own religious 
 life, and as a consequence that of others, was at 
 
 hand. 
 
74 PASCAL'S "F£NS££S." 
 
 hand. A certain Pere Basile passing by one even- 
 ing, came to the convent, and offered to preach. 
 The abbess, then just coming in from the garden, 
 refused, as the hour was late, but afterwards con- 
 sented. His subject was the humility of the Son of 
 God in his birth and in his cradle. But how he 
 treated the subject, or what were his words, la 
 Mere Ang^lique could never tell. She only knew 
 that her heart was touched by Divine grace, and 
 that the hour was as the dawn, the light whereof 
 increased unto the perfect day. 
 
 The instrument of this conversion was strangely 
 ill-adapted to carry on the work begun through his 
 means. He was dissolute in his life, he had already 
 proved the cause of scandal in more than one 
 religious house, so that any help from such a man 
 to a girl of sixteen wishing to reform herself and her 
 convent was out of the question. Nor did much 
 assistance come from other advisers to whom she 
 turned. One was too stern and another too little 
 able to understand what this new crisis in a 
 spiritual life meant ; so that, thrown on her own 
 resources, la Mere Angelique plunged into excesses 
 of unchecked austerity. Neither from within nor 
 without could she gain aid or sympathy, for her 
 father disapproved of the attempted reform, as well 
 as of its exaggerated asceticism. But on All Saints' 
 Day, 1608, after she had returned from a visit to her 
 home more sad and discouraged than she had ever 
 been, and, as it would seem, some six months after 
 
 the 
 
PASCALS 'TENsAeS." 75 
 
 the visit of the itinerant Capuchin, there came 
 another outpouring of grace, which made all clear, 
 and was the true beginning of what concerns us 
 in the history of Port Royal. 
 
 This time the moving cause was the preaching of 
 a Bernardine monk, for M. Amauld had found 
 means to keep away the too exciting Capuchin. 
 He spoke on the Beatitude, *' Blessed are they who 
 are persecuted for righteousness' sake," and the 
 shaft from his bow, aimed at a venture, was driven 
 home where it struck by one of the nuns, who said 
 to the abbess, *'You, madam, if you choose, may 
 be one of the blessed who suffer for righteousness." 
 
 Hence came struggles of spirit and of conscience, 
 which once more seriously undermined her health, 
 also entreaties and discussions with the sisters, till 
 on a certain day they were wrought up to a great 
 renunciation, and renewing their vows of poverty, 
 cast all their little private possessions into the com- 
 mon stock. It were long and needless to relate 
 all that happened thereafter in the conventual 
 reform ; the new and unaccustomed sanctity of the 
 cloister, even against M. Amauld himself, the rigid 
 enforcement of poverty, the seclusion, even within 
 the seclusion of the convent, in which the abbess 
 and the stricter nuns shut themselves ; and with all 
 this, as the inner motive of the whole, the passionate 
 fervour of religion which steeped the souls of la 
 Mere Angelique and of those who fell under her 
 influence. 
 
 From 
 
76 PASCAL'S " PENS^ES:' 
 
 From Port Royal the reform spread. The most 
 relaxed convents, even Maubuisson, still under the 
 profligate rule of Madame d'Estrees, felt the in- 
 fluence of, or were directly set in order by, la Mire 
 Angelique ; and, refuting the proverb that a 
 prophet has no honour in his own country, the 
 whole Arnauld family one after another succumbed 
 to the holy zeal of this first convert. Six sisters 
 became nuns of Port Royal, two brothers and four 
 nephews were specially connected with it. La Mire 
 Angelique was fortunate in the confessors and direc- 
 tors whom she chose in this time of change, her 
 spiritual advisers for many years ; but neither their 
 names nor they themselves are of importance in 
 our rapid sketch of the reform at Port Royal. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to distinguish between the 
 two houses which belonged to the community, 
 that in Paris and that in Port Royal des 
 Champs, or to trace the migrations from one to 
 the other. It is enough to explain that from the 
 great reform there arose not only the strict and 
 populous convent or convents with their schools of 
 girls, but also a community of brothers at Port 
 Royal, worshipping in the convent church, under, 
 for the most part, the same confessor. It was 
 headed, so far as we can speak of a head in so 
 democratic a community, by relatives of the abbess, 
 these brethren having under them a number of 
 young men and boys also pursuing their studies. 
 It need hardly be said that the separation between 
 
 the 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSAeS." yy 
 
 the two bodies was carefully maintained, close as 
 was the community of sympathy of religion and 
 interest, made more intimate by the bonds of 
 neighbourhood and of united worship. 
 
 It was a part of the peculiarity of this religious 
 revival, extending over many years, of which the 
 above is a hurried sketch, that it necessarily affected 
 the great world of Paris, and that nothing could be 
 done in a comer. The bishops and even the saints 
 of those days were men of the world ; Saint 
 Francois de Sales interested himself in the fortunes 
 of Port Royal, and was a correspondent of la Mere 
 Angelique ; Richelieu, and afterwards Mazarin, were 
 ministers on whose will and word depended the 
 imprisonment or release of the Port Royal solitaries 
 in the time of trouble ; the shades of theological 
 dogma were eagerly debated in fashionable salons/ 
 the Church and the world crossed and mingled 
 very strangely ; strangely because it was a time of 
 monstrous corruption in politics and of wanton 
 licence in morals. 
 
 It would be impossible, however, to go at any 
 length into the controversies which arose between 
 the two parties in the Church, and especially in 
 France, on the doctrines of grace, as laid down by 
 St. Augustine, and as interpreted by Jansenius; 
 enough to say that the Jesuits were the chief 
 representatives of one party in the controversy ; 
 the Port Royalists, and pre-eminently at first M. 
 de St. Cyran, the director, were the representatives 
 
 of 
 
78 PASCAL'S '^PENSAes:' 
 
 of the other. The dead embers of this theological 
 controversy can scarcely be blown into light and 
 fire by even the breath of one so eloquent as the 
 great French critic and historian of our time, 
 Sainte-Beuve ; and it is better to turn from its 
 ephemeral phases, once so important, to the moral 
 question which underlay the whole difference 
 between the Jesuits and their opponents. 
 
 Given, and the point is assumed in the very 
 existence of a Church, an Ecclesia, those called out 
 of a larger body, that the world is corrupt, and 
 that the function of a Church is to save, if not the 
 world, at any rate the souls of the men who come 
 under its influences, the modes in which this is to 
 be done divide themselves sharply into two, each 
 of which has its logical and consistent basis. One 
 is the mode of which monasticism is the highest 
 expression. "The world is rushing to its ruin, 
 come out and be ye separate," is the cry of those 
 whose view of life is that of religious pessimism. 
 And though, as matter of fact, only a limited num- 
 ber can act on the impulse or obey the call, yet the 
 enormous danger of those entangled with the things 
 of this life, the few that are saved, are considerations 
 to be kept ever before the minds of men. 
 
 The world is very evil, the times are waxing late ; 
 Be sober and keep vigil, the Lord is at the gate, 
 
 is the watchword of such. It was that of the nuns 
 and brethren of Port Royal. ** Between us and 
 
 you," 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENsAes:' 79 
 
 you," they seemed to say, "there is a great gulf 
 fixed," and they who would cross to us must leap ; 
 there are no bridges, and the return is attended 
 with deadly peril. Oh, high ascetic souls, such as 
 was Augustine, whence once the call of the Divine 
 voice was heard ; and h. Kempis, by the rollmg sea; 
 and Pascal, as a solitary of Port Royal ; have you 
 ever asked yourselves how your view, if it be the 
 only view, is to be reconciled with the existence of 
 the world? The law is laid down, God and his 
 Will are supreme ; if he call and infuse his grace 
 into the heart, man can but obey, the consequence 
 is in God's hands. 
 
 On the other hand there have been, and always 
 will be, those who, without setting for themselves a 
 lower Personal standard than the others, aim at 
 establishing a modus vivendi between. the world 
 and the Church. The law remains, but its rules 
 are rather to show the ideal than the actual. 
 *' Thou shalt not kill " ; true, but, if taken literally, 
 how does the soldier differ from the assassin, the 
 hangman from the criminal he executes ? *' Thou 
 shalt not lie" ; but what of him who, tender-hearted, 
 sends the hunters on the track the hare has not 
 taken ; or who uses an dquivoque or even direct 
 false statement to save a human hfe? "Thou 
 shalt not steal " ; but can anyone class the mother 
 who takes a loaf for her starving child with the 
 ordinary thief ? Now the moment that the smallest 
 deviation is allowed, cases of conscience arise, and 
 
 a 
 
8o PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES:' 
 
 a whole casuistry grows up, which almost all would 
 admit must be scientific rather than haphazard, and 
 cannot be defined at will by each more or less rigid 
 moralist. The school which within the Church 
 has most made casuistry a study and a science 
 finds its culmination and its aptest expression in 
 the Jesuits ; who at the time of the Port Royal 
 reform were the chief religious directors of society, 
 and had established a modus vivendi between the 
 world and the Church. 
 
 No one who reads the lives of the early Jesuits 
 can doubt for a moment the purity of their inten- 
 tions, the personal holiness of their lives, and their 
 hatred of sin. The society was originally founded 
 in order to the propagation of the faith and the 
 conversion of infidels ; and it was not unnatural 
 that, existing for that end, and considering the 
 whole subject broadly, the most important matter 
 was that in days of heresy the outward integrity 
 of the Church should be preserved in her form 
 and doctrine, since within her alone were faith 
 and morals secure. Better for a while relax 
 morals in some of whose ultimate conversion there 
 Avas hope while they still remained within the pale, 
 than that erroneous doctrines should sap the very 
 foundations of faith and morals alike, and that the 
 rising tide of Protestantism should carry all away. 
 Therefore the first Jesuits were very bold in fixing 
 the minimum of moral obedience demanded of one 
 who, in spite of sin, yet remained in the faith ; they 
 
 became 
 
PASCALS '^PENSf.ES:' 8i 
 
 became complaisant in certain cases, where graver 
 evils would have resulted to the Church at large 
 had they not been so. For instance, and it is an 
 instance given by Sainte-Beuve, the Church lays 
 down rigid rules for fasting, but permits relaxations 
 in the case of the sick. Now supposing a man have 
 given himself up to dissipation and excess for a 
 whole day, and on the following day is ill in con- 
 sequence of that excess, is he bound to fast ? Given 
 the original sin, as admitted, confessed, repented, 
 or at least nominally repented ; and no human 
 director can judge of the heart; given a penance 
 inflicted, is the duty of fasting to be laid on, say, a 
 Louis XL, an all but absolute monarch, whose 
 weakness from want of food for a single day might 
 interrupt the whole functions of Government ? The 
 same sort of case in another form comes almost 
 daily before the police magistrate, when he has to 
 decide whether drunkenness, the original and ad- 
 mitted fault, is to condone or excuse an after assault. 
 As a rule, he judges according to the case^ and if 
 that be serious, according to precedents laid down 
 in the law books, but always with a view to the 
 larger interests of society. No one would dream of 
 accusing such a magistrate of lax personal morality 
 should he in such a case incline to a lenient view. 
 
 On the other hand, the Jesuits were keenly on 
 the watch for the least hint of false doctrine ; even 
 more active, if possible, than were their opponents 
 for the least hint of light morals. Those who have 
 
 watched 
 F 
 
82 PASCAL'S ''PENs£eS» 
 
 watched the controversy, or rather the silent but 
 earnest struggle on difficult points of philosophic 
 doctrine, which has now for years gone on between 
 the Society of Jesus and the Fathers of Charity, 
 will understand how strongly the Jesuits felt when 
 they considered that St. Augustine's doctrines, 
 misstated by persons of the holiest lives, were the 
 more dangerous because of their personal holiness. 
 Being in power when M. de Saint Cyran, the 
 director of Port Royal, espoused the Jansenist 
 interpretation of St. Augustine, the Jesuits used 
 their influence with Richelieu, and took their first 
 step against Port Royal by causing the Abbe to be 
 imprisoned for his teaching and for his attacks 
 against their society. 
 
 How from his prison the Abbe de Saint Cyran 
 directed the affairs of Port Royal, and emerged 
 more powerful than before; how the war against 
 the Jesuits was carried on by him, as well as by the 
 important book of Amauld on Frequent Commu- 
 nion, which may still be read with a languid interest 
 by those who have a turn for theology ; how after his 
 death the tradition of wise and holy direction was 
 carried on at Port Royal ; there is no need here to 
 speak ; nor concerning M. de Singlin, nor of M. 
 d'Andilly, M. de Saci, and others of the Amauld 
 family, nor of all the other men whose names rise 
 vaguely in the memory when any allusion is made 
 to the events of those times ; these things must be 
 read in a history of Port Royal. All that has been 
 
 said 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSiES.'' 83 
 
 said is only to make the position and the surround- 
 ings of Pascal clear, when he appears on the stage 
 as one of the solitaries of Port Royal. But for him 
 all these names and events, these fervid contro- 
 versies and eager hearts, the memories even of 
 miraculous interpositions, the dramatic scenes of 
 conventual reform, the pangs of passionate self- 
 abasement, as well as the high diplomatic strife of 
 Cardinals and Popes, would have been lost as com- 
 pletely as are the traces of the very walls of Port 
 Ro3al des Champs. Or, if remembered, it would 
 have been, as one stirring the immemorial grass 
 may find a fragment, here and there, to show what 
 once had been. But in Pascal all lives ; because 
 he wrote, men have written histories of Port Royal, 
 dissertations on the Jesuits, &c. ; in gathering his 
 relics, what was buried with him has been laid 
 bare. 
 
 Blaise Pascal, bom at Clermont-Ferrand in 
 Auvergne on June 19, 1623, sprang, like the 
 Arnaulds, from a well-known legal family, many 
 members of which had held lucrative and respon- 
 sible positions. His father, to pass over points of 
 interest to any student of the time, but unconnected 
 with our special subject, held the post of intendant 
 or provincial administrator in Normandy, where, 
 and at Paris previously, Pascal lived from the age 
 of sixteen to twenty-five, almost wholly educated by 
 his father on account of his precarious health. His 
 mother had died when he was eight years old. 
 
 Etienne 
 
84 PASCAL'S "PENSj^ES" 
 
 Etienne Pascal appears to have been a pious but 
 stern person, by no means disposed to entertain or 
 allow any undue exaltation in religion ; and 
 thus, unlike the Arnaulds, refused, to the end of 
 his life, permission that his daughter Jaqueline, 
 who had an earnest desire for a cloistered 
 life, should take the veil. But he had the 
 usual faiths and superstitions of his time, and a 
 very singular affair, wherein he played a part, 
 which of course became a matter of family tradi- 
 tion, had, as it would seem, no small share in form- 
 ing the mind of his son, disposing him to accept those 
 uncommon modes of Divine or supernatural mani- 
 festation, about which most men require greater 
 evidence than is always forthcoming. When 
 Blaise Pascal was a year old, a woman reputed 
 among the peasantry of Auvergne to be a sorceress, 
 whom his father refused to aid in a lawsuit, 
 was supposed to have bewitched the infant, who 
 forthwith began to pine visibly away. M. Pascal, 
 who for some time paid no attention to the gossip, 
 at last grew alarmed, and threatening the woman 
 with the direst pains and penalties, brought her to 
 confess that she had indeed bewitched the child, 
 and that his sickness was unto death. The only 
 remedy was that the charm should be laid on some- 
 one else, a life for a life, but as the exchange with a 
 human being was not to be thought of, she con- 
 sented to take a cat. Undeterred by the remon- 
 strances of two monks who came to console 
 
 Madame 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSkESj' 85 
 
 Madame Pascal, the family gave her the cat, and 
 with a plaister made from herbs plucked before 
 sunrise by a girl under seven years old, no 
 doubt bruised down with the cat's blood, the sick 
 infant recovered. But M. Pascal, who afterwards 
 repented that he had, in his eager desire to save 
 his child, allowed this new appeal to the powers of 
 evil, must have seen that the witch's ability was 
 stronger to hurt than to save, since the child's 
 feeble health remained feeble to the end- 
 Intellectually, Blaise Pascal grew rapidly to the 
 strength and stature of a giant, and his genius 
 chiefly showed itself in mathematics. He was but 
 twelve when, without the aid of any books, for his 
 father did not approve this direction for his 
 thoughts, he worked out for himself some of the 
 most difficult problems resolved already by Euclid ; 
 he was but fifteen when his studies on conic sections 
 were thought worthy of being read before the most 
 scientific men of Paris ; at nineteen he invented the 
 calculating machine ; he was only twenty-three 
 when his experiments on the vacuum, in support 
 of Torricelli's hypothesis, took its place for ever 
 among renowned treatises. But his actual reading 
 was at all times narrow. He had little Latin and 
 less Greek; Montaigne, Comeille, and Mdlle. de 
 Scudery were his favourite modern authors. 
 Madame Perier, his elder sister, was a tender and 
 pious woman, who admired, though she never quite 
 understood, her brother, and afterwards became 
 
 his 
 
86 PASCALS ''PENS£eS." 
 
 his biographer, working with the Port Royalists as 
 editor of his Remains. 
 
 But JaqueHne, the younger sister, was a very 
 different person. Thwarted during her father's 
 lifetime in her desire of becoming a nun of Port 
 Royal, she lived in her own home as austere a life 
 as though she had been professed ; without fire in 
 the coldest weather, spending her whole time in 
 prayer, in hard manual labour, and in nursing the 
 sick. On ]6tienne Pascal's death she entered Port 
 Royal, and became one of the most enthusi- 
 astic and strict of that rigid rule. It was 
 characteristic of the Jansenist movement that it 
 often took hold of entire families, and not of 
 isolated members only. But while the whole 
 Pascal family obeyed the influence, it was felt in 
 its extreme form by Jaqueline and Blaise. With 
 him, however, as he would have been the first to 
 admit, there was a certain struggle against his 
 calling. He was twice converted. In 1646 his 
 father, having broken his thigh from a fall on the 
 ice at Rouen, came under the influence of two 
 members of the Jansenist body at that place, who 
 attended him in his illness ; and from this dated the 
 more serious thought of the family. But Blaise 
 Pascal, having with his usual enthusiasm thrown 
 himself into theological, as before into mathe- 
 matical, studies, injured his health ; he was advised 
 to abstain from intellectual labour, and returned to 
 the world of Paris, where his firiends the Due de 
 
 Roannez 
 
PASCAL'S '"PENS^ES." 87 
 
 Roannez, the Chevalier de Mere, and M. Miton 
 were among the best known and the most fashion- 
 able names. His father's death gave him the 
 command of considerable means, and he used them 
 freely, not at all, though it has been so hinted, in a 
 vicious manner, but with no exclusion of the 
 pleasures of society. There is some evidence of a 
 proposal that he should marry the Due de 
 Roannez's sister, and no doubt with some such 
 scheme before him he wrote his celebrated 
 ** Discours sur les Passions de TAmour." But the 
 memory of the religious influence once exerted over 
 him had never died wholly away. Jaqueline's 
 fervent and exalted piety, though her brother had 
 also opposed her entrance into the cloister, was 
 slowly telling on him, and, at last, suddenly, as all 
 great crises come, however prepared beforehand, 
 occurred the second conversion, from which there 
 was never again a moment of backsliding. 
 
 It is perhaps not possible to specify the im- 
 mediate cause, but it may be that an accident at 
 the Pont de Neuilly was not without its effect on 
 this sensitive mind, so ready to believe in the 
 supernatural and in special providences. We are 
 told, though the story comes filtered through many 
 channels, that on a certain fete day, Pascal and 
 several friends in a carriage with him, were taking 
 the fashionable drive over the bridge, when the 
 leaders, in a spot where was no parapet, bolted and 
 fell into the water, but the traces breaking, the 
 
 coach 
 
88 PASCAL'S ''PENsAeS." 
 
 coach itself was stayed upon the very brink. How- 
 ever this may have been; whether from some 
 outward shock or some inward temptation, some 
 relapse into an abandoned evil habit, some glimpse 
 by imagination into the world to come, or some 
 word or letter of his sister ; there came a dread 
 night in which for two long hours he wrestled with 
 God as did Jacob of old ; and without some such 
 conflict, as Goethe says, no man knows the 
 heavenly powers. 
 
 Here are Pascal's own words in reference to this 
 supreme moment : 
 
 This year of grace, 1654, 
 
 Monday, Nov, 23rd, day of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr, 
 and others in the Martyrology, 
 
 Eve of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others ; 
 
 From about half-past ten at night to about half after mid- 
 night, 
 
 Fire. 
 
 God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, 
 
 Not of the philosophers and the wise. 
 
 Security, security. Feeling, joy, peace. 
 
 God of Jesus Christ. Deum tneum. et Deum vestnnn. 
 
 Thy God shall be my God. 
 
 Forgetfulness of the world and of all save God. 
 
 He can be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel. 
 
 Greatness of the human souL 
 
 righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I 
 
 have known thee. 
 Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. 
 
 1 have separated myself from him. 
 Dereliquerunt mefontem aquae vivae. 
 
 My God, why hast thou forsaken me? . . . 
 That I be not separated from thee eternally. 
 
 This 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES:* 89 
 
 This is life eternal : that they might know thee the only 
 
 true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ, 
 
 Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. 
 I have separated myself from him ; I have fled, renounced, 
 
 crucified him. 
 May I never be separated from him. 
 He maintains himself in me only in the ways taught in the 
 
 Gospel. 
 Renunciation total and sweet, &c. 
 
 This writing, the record of the second beginning 
 of a new life, was found after his death sewn into 
 his doublet, copied both on parchment and on 
 paper; and his servants believed that at each 
 change of dress he had been accustomed to stitch 
 this " profession of faith," as a sort of charm or 
 amulet, into the folds of the new garment. 
 
 From this hour there was a complete change 
 in Pascal's life; austerity, self-denial, absolute 
 obedience to his spiritual director, boundless alms- 
 giving, succeeded to what at most had been but a 
 moderate and restrained use of worldly pleasure, 
 and he threw himself into the life, controversy, and 
 interests of Port Royal with all the passion of one 
 who was not only a new convert, but the champion 
 of a society into which those dearest to him 
 had entered even more fully than he. For 
 Jaqueline was a nun of that convent, and Mad"^- 
 de Roannez, under his influence, v/as there also 
 with a view of taking the veil, though after Pascal's 
 death she left the cloister, to make an unhappy 
 marriage with the Due de la Feuillade. 
 
 When 
 
90 PASCAL'S ''PENS^ESy 
 
 When Pascal engaged in the Port Royal struggle, 
 the Abbey, and all that was attached to it, greatly 
 needed aid from without. For though the nuns 
 and their school showed no signs of falling off, 
 though fresh men of the world were still enrolling 
 themselves among the solitaries, the power of the 
 Jesuits was ever increasing, and their attacks on 
 the Abbey grew more and more violent. Theologi- 
 cally, their aim was to gain condemnation from 
 Rome for certain propositions in the works of 
 Jansenius, hoping that the immediate and prac- 
 tical result would be the destruction of the 
 whole spiritual basis on which Port Royal was 
 founded. A Bill condemning Jansenius was 
 gained at length from the Pope, and a formulaiy, 
 minimising the effect so far as was possible, was 
 drawn up by the General Assembly in France, 
 which was ultimately accepted by Port Royal itself. 
 That the condemned propositions were not, in 
 precise terms, what Port Royal had held, was a 
 statement involving some little intellectual agility. 
 
 But if the Port Royalists minimised the defeat, so 
 tlieir adversaries exaggerated the victory. A con- 
 fessor at St. Sulpice refused absolution to a parish- 
 ioner because he had a Jansenist residing in his 
 house, and had sent his granddaughter to school at 
 Port Royal. Hence pamphlets and letters from M. 
 Arnauld to the Sorbonne, a recrudescence of 
 irritating controversies without much point, and on 
 which, being in Latin, the public at large could 
 
 form 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENS^ESr 91 
 
 form no opinion. It was at this point that Pascal 
 dashed into the controversy with his *' Letters to a 
 Provincial," the first three having reference to the 
 special matter in dispute between M. Arnauld and 
 the Sorbonne; after which, no longer taking a 
 merely defensive line, he turned the attack against 
 the enemy in his entrenched camp of morals. 
 
 It would be as impossible as it would be needless 
 to speak at length hera on the Provincial Letters ; 
 they would require a study to themselves, and they 
 are noticed solely as a link in the history of the 
 events which led to the " Pensees." To those who 
 are unable to enter fully into the controversies of 
 the time; and to read the ** Provinciales " without 
 this were idle waste of time over an incomprehen- 
 sible book ; the chapter relating to them in Sainte- 
 Beuve's "Port Royal" will perhaps give informa- 
 tion enough on this most interesting subject. 
 
 In the " Provinciales " Pascal found his true style, 
 and took rank at once among the great French 
 writers. He had probably been himself unaware 
 of his own powers, since his previous papers on the 
 Vacuum, and on his Calculating Machine, though 
 clear and simple, show no trace, nor was it neces- 
 sary they should show trace, of the admirable 
 language, polished, witty, indignant, or pathetic of 
 the " Lettres Provinciales." These contributed 
 largely to turn the scale of feeling for the time 
 against his adversaries; they and an occurrence 
 in which he saw the visible finger of God saved 
 
 Port 
 
92 PASCAL'S "PENS^ES."' 
 
 Port Royal for the time, as did also in part the 
 acceptance by the Port Royalists of the papal 
 Bull, with whatever mental reservations they 
 accepted it. The great strife, however, outlived 
 Pascal, and outlived Port Royal. A century 
 afterwards, in 1762, the society was expelled 
 from France, as at other times it has been from 
 other countries, but always to return after a while. 
 And in this the Jesuits have shown per- 
 sistency and constancy; their iabours and the 
 record of them have filled the world : never have 
 sufferings and martyrdom been borne more 
 courageously than by the Jesuit fathers. The 
 controversy is not yet closed. The devotion and 
 the goodness of individuals is admitted, but 
 the word Jesuit is still the synonym in many 
 quarters for all that is sly and underhand, even 
 where the charge of lax morality in other matters 
 is for the time in abeyance. Sainte-Beuve goes so 
 far as to say: "If we take them one by one, they 
 are often excellent people, honourable in spite of 
 all their subtlety; there have been among them 
 men of vast erudition, of heroic devotion. But if 
 we take the whole of their conduct and their in- 
 fluence, our tone must change. The individuals 
 may ,be in general good, but the body, and the 
 spirit of the body, are detestable." He quotes a 
 certain Abbe, a friend of Grimm and Diderot, and 
 correspondent of Mme. d'Epinay, who said in one 
 of his letters, " Every Jesuit was charming, moral, 
 
 useful, 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSJSeS" 
 
 93 
 
 useful, but the society as a whole, which however 
 is only the individuals in a body, hateful, morally 
 corrupt, pernicious. Others may explain this phe- 
 nomenon ; I am lost when I try to do so." 
 
 This seems very like nonsense, if it does not 
 shirk the question. To say that a congeries of 
 sweets make a sour, or of moral men an immoral 
 body, is a contradiction in terms. Pascal would 
 never have given such a crude explanation. Here 
 is what he did say, in the fifth letter — 
 
 " Know, then, that they do not intend to corrupt morals; 
 that is not their design, but on the other hand the reforma- 
 tion of morals is not their sole end, which would be bad 
 policy. Their thought is this. They have so good an 
 opinion of themselves as to ;'aink that it is useful and even 
 necessary to the good of religion that their credit should be 
 everj'where extended, and that they should have sway over 
 all consciences. And because the severe maxims of the 
 gospel are fit to govern some kinds of people, they use them 
 whenever these are favourable to them. But as the same 
 maxims do not accord with the designs of the majority of 
 men, they abandon them in regard to these, so as to be able 
 to satisfy everybody." 
 
 Making allowance for the tone of the sentence, 
 which has a deliberate bitterness in it intended to 
 give offence, no Jesuit need object to this, while we 
 ourselves admit that the Jesuits are right, if they 
 are to be considered, and if they consider them- 
 selves, as ruling and moving the world. 
 
 This, moreover, may be said without hesitation, 
 that unless there be a certain practical giving and 
 taking between ordinary human nature and that 
 
 higher 
 
;94 PASCAL'S "PEA'SJ^ES." 
 
 higher nature which is the ideal, the ordinary 
 nature would be crushed out, and the world would 
 come to a speedy end. It is well to aim at the 
 highest even when in our inmost mind we know we 
 cannot attain it, for, as says George Herbert, 
 *' Who aims the sky shoots higher far than he that 
 means a tree ; " but this once admitted, the degree 
 of giving and taking must always be uncertain, and 
 each case here also must be judged on its own merits. 
 All honour to Pascal that he set before 
 him the highest ideal, and endeavoured to raise 
 every man to it. If the Fathers whom he mentions 
 by name went too far, if certain maxims involved 
 the danger that they might be unwholesomely 
 applied, it is well this should be pointed out ; and 
 we may for ever be thankful to Pascal that he has 
 shown us danger or vice wherever it lurks. The 
 evils which he calls, and which have since been 
 called Jesuitical, exist, and are to be condemned ; 
 but as under the old law Pharisaism was not con- 
 fined to the Pharisees alone, neither were all 
 Pharisees Pharisaical, so when Pascal assailed 
 Jesuits as his Master assailed the Pharisees, there 
 were many who did not deserve the condemnation, 
 and no doubt some of those he named were living 
 holy and self-sacrificing lives. It must always be 
 remembered that the *' Provinciales " was a political 
 pamphlet as well as a religious treatise, and that 
 Pascal, like many another man of strong opinions 
 and convictions, was a thorough-going partisan. 
 
 And, 
 
PASCAL'S '' PENSjSeS,'' 95 
 
 And, taking the world as it is, little work is done in 
 it except by those who are partisans. But with this 
 caution, and with this remembrance, we may give 
 ourselves wholly to Pascal in his abhorrence of the 
 moral evils which he assailed. 
 
 He had no doubt that God was fighting for him 
 and in him, that the strength which was in his 
 words was given to him from above, and that 
 visible signs and wonders came to confirm the side 
 he was defending. There are few passages more 
 eloquent than the famous outburst in the i6th 
 Provincial : — 
 
 " Cruel and cowardly persecutors, are not even the most 
 secluded cloisters an asylum against your calumnies? 
 While night and day these holy virgins adore Jesus Christ 
 in the Holy Sacrament, as is their vow, you cease not night 
 and day to declare abroad that they do not believe that He 
 is in the Eucharist, nor even at tlie right hand of the Father, 
 and you cut them off publicly from the Church, while they 
 are praying in secret for you and for all the Church. You 
 calumniate those who have neither ears to hear you nor lips 
 to answer. But Jesus Christ, in whom they are hidden, that 
 they may one day appear with Him, hears you, and answers 
 for them. We hear, at this very day, that voice holy and 
 terrible which astounds nature and consoles the Church ; 
 and I fear, my Father, that they who harden their hearts 
 and stubbornly refuse to hear Him when He speaks as God, 
 will be forced to listen with terror when He shall speak to 
 them as Judge." 
 
 The voice had spoken in what was known as the 
 miracle of the Holy Thorn, to which we must turn 
 for awhile. 
 
 M. Arnauld 
 
96 PASCAL'S **PENSAeS." 
 
 M. Arnauld had been condemned by the Sor- 
 bonne, and his enemies said he had been excom- 
 municated, which was not technically true ; he was 
 in danger of arrest, and had to seek various hiding- 
 places ; the solitaries of Port Royal were almost all 
 scattered ; the schools were thinned of their pupils, 
 and on the point of closing ; the confessors were 
 about to be withdrawn and the nuns dispersed ; 
 when the miracle took place. 
 
 Jaqueline Perier, Pascal's niece, a child of ten 
 years old, was one of the pupils not as yet dismissed 
 to her home. She was at Port Royal in Paris, 
 tenderly nursed for a terrible complaint, an ulcer in 
 the lachrymal gland, which had destroyed the bones 
 of the nose, and produced other horrors of which 
 there is no need to speak. A relic of the Saviour, a 
 thorn of his crown of mockery, which had been en- 
 trusted to the nuns, and was venerated in the chapel, 
 passed, as it would seem, from hand to hand, in its 
 reliquary. When the turn of the scholars came, Sis- 
 ter Flavia, their mistress, moved by a sudden im- 
 pulse, said "My child, pray for your eye, "and touch- 
 ed the ulcer with the reliquary. None at the time 
 noticed any change, so absorbed were they in devo- 
 tion, but after the ceremony Jaqueline told another 
 child that she thought she was cured. As soon as it 
 came to the ears of the superior, then la M^re Marie 
 des Anges, she desired silence on the subject, and 
 sent for the surgeon who had already declared the 
 disease beyond remedy. When he recognised his 
 
 patient, 
 
PASCALS ''PENSEES." 
 
 97 
 
 patient, he, without looking closely, said, " What 
 do you wish me to do? Have I not already said 
 the case is incurable ? " When pressed to examine 
 the patient, he declared the cure miraculous, but 
 at the instance of the superior, who was afraid of 
 drawing further attention to a house so persecuted, 
 he kept silence. However, he fell ill with fever, 
 and feared he had done wrong in not publishing 
 and attesting the miracle, which he then accord- 
 ingly did. Thus it happened that it was not for 
 full three weeks after the cure on March 24, 1655, 
 that the matter was really noised abroad. But 
 the effect was immediate ; the remaining solitaries 
 were not dispersed, some of those who had gone 
 returned, the confessors were not dispersed, the 
 school was not closed, and Port Royal was respited 
 for a time. 
 
 That a cure, rapid, unexpected, and singular took 
 place is a fact of which there cannot be the smallest 
 doubt ; there is scarcely any event of those days so 
 well attested. A miracle, supposing one really to 
 have been proved, would work on different classes 
 of minds in quite different ways. If it were really 
 shown beyond a shadow of doubt that the disease 
 in question had destroyed, not merely affected, a 
 part of the living organism, that the application of 
 the reliquary had recreated perished tissue, that it 
 had, in fact, reversed the whole ascertained course 
 of nature, there are those who would see in such 
 cure the authenticity of the relic of Him from 
 
 whom 
 G 
 
^ PASCAL'S ''PENS£eSJ* 
 
 whom healing powers proceeded. They would 
 enter on a course of thought widening ever from 
 this small point of the sacred thorn to include all 
 supernatural, all Catholic dogma, so that the belief 
 in relics would thenceforth become not the most 
 difficult but the most easy article of faith. There 
 are, again, minds holding the faith firmly, who would 
 see in this one more surprising manifestation of 
 God's power, a voix de ton?terre. We can imagine 
 others equally faithful, equally confident that the 
 age of miracles had not ceased, to whom the mat- 
 ter would present scarcely any points of interest, 
 because it was so trivial in comparison with the 
 stupendous event involved in the Christian scheme ; 
 as Cardinal Newman enumerates some of the most 
 astounding occurrences narrated in the lives of the 
 saints, and concerning relics, and then says : — 
 
 " I do not see how we can scruple at any miracle on the 
 mere ground of its being unlikely to happen. No miracle 
 can be so great as that which took place in the holy house 
 at Nazareth ; it is indefinitely more difficult to believe than 
 all the miracles of the Breviary, of the Martyrology, of 
 saints' lives, of legends, of local traditions put together, and 
 there is the grossest inconsistency on the very face of the 
 matter for any one so to strain out the gnat and to swallow 
 the camel, as to profess what is inconceivable yet to protest 
 against what is surely within the limits of intelligible 
 hypothesis. If through Divine grace we are once able to 
 accept the solemn truth that the Supreme Being was bom 
 of a mortal woman, what is there to be imagined which can 
 offend us on the ground of its marvellousness ? " 
 
 Pascal 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENS^ESJ' 99 
 
 Pascal was in the second of these classes. The 
 miracle was at once a solemn matter of religion and 
 a family occurrence ; he took henceforward as his 
 cognizance, not perhaps with the best artistic taste, 
 an eye encircled with a crown of thorns, and the 
 motto, " Scio cui credidi " — I know in whom I have 
 believed. In the miracle we see the link which 
 joins two sides of Pascal's character, that chiefly 
 shown in the " Provinciales," and that chiefly in 
 the "Pens^es," which latter book hangs, as it 
 were, on the miracle of the holy thorn. 
 
 The conversation with M. de Saint Saci, so well 
 known as prefaced to several editions of the " Pen- 
 sees," took place, if indeed it was one conversation, 
 and not rather a recollection of many, between the 
 spring of 1657 and that of 1658. It was the last year 
 of his good health, if that can be called good which 
 was at best but feeble. In that year he indicated the 
 plan of his intended work, and wrote the most 
 finished paragraphs, generally the beginnings of 
 the chapters. The detached thoughts which make 
 up the bulk of the work were sketched as they 
 occurred to him, during the last four years of his 
 life, on scraps of paper or on the margin of what 
 he had already written, often when from his nervous 
 malady he was quite incapable of sustained employ- 
 ment, except in the problems of geometry and the 
 higher mathematics ; for in his deep application to 
 these he sometimes succeeded in forgetting and 
 overmastering the terrible pains which tortured him. 
 
 They 
 
lOO PASCALS ''PENsAeS.'' 
 
 They ended only with his life, on August 9, 1662, 
 at the age of thirty-nine, the last years of which had 
 been spent in an ecstasy of self-denial, of charity, 
 and aspiration after God. Not for six years after 
 his death were his family and friends able to con- 
 sider in what form his unfinished work should be 
 given to the world. Then Port Royal had a breath- 
 ing space, the peace of the Church was established 
 by Clement IX., and it was clear that the time had 
 come to set in order these precious fragments. 
 
 The duty of giving an author's works to the world 
 as he left them was little understood in those days, 
 and the Due de Roannez had even suggested that 
 Pascal's whole work should be rewritten on the 
 lines he had laid down. Some editing was on all 
 hands allowed to be necessary ; thus the arrange- 
 ment of chapters and the fragments to be included 
 in chapters were matters for fair difference of 
 opinion and discussion. But the committee of 
 which mention has already been made, went 
 further, and even when the text had been settled 
 by M^w, it had to undergo a further censorship by 
 various theologians. Finally, in January, 1670, the 
 *' Pensees" appeared as a small duodecimo, with a 
 preface by the Perier family, and no mention of 
 Port Royal in the volume. But it was all the same 
 a Port Royalist and Jansenist book, and as such had 
 much exercised the mind of the Archbishop of Paris, 
 M. P^refixe, before its publication. He wished to 
 see a copy before it was in the hands of others, and 
 
 was 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSfESr loi 
 
 was put off till the book was published, under the 
 allegation, on the part of the bookseller, that no 
 copies had been bound earlier. Then he wished 
 that there should be bound with the work a state- 
 ment by the Curd of St. Etienne du Mont, to the 
 effect that Pascal had retracted his Jansenist 
 opinions on his deathbed. This was cut short by a 
 new title-page, calling the unsold copies " second 
 edition," so that further change was impossible. 
 The book had its effect at once ; it took its place 
 among the glories of Port Royal from which the 
 storm was for a time more and more clearing away. 
 It is well to hear what the writer said of his work 
 before taking our own view of it. 
 
 " I do not undertake to prove here by natural reasons 
 either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the Immor- 
 tality of the Soul, nor aught of that kind, not only because 
 I do not feel myself strong enough to find in nature where- 
 withal to convince hardened atheists, but also because 
 ^vithout Jesus Christ such knowledge is useless and barren. 
 Though a man should be persuaded that the proportions 
 of numbers are immaterial truths, eternal and dependent on 
 a first truth in which they exist, and which we call God, I 
 do not find him much advanced in the way of salvation." 
 
 The General Introduction is one of the portions 
 of the work which, though remaining fragmentary, 
 is here and there finished, and lays down cer- 
 tain principles lying at the root of Pascal's whole 
 system. That God is hidden, and can be perceived 
 only by those who seek him with their whole 
 hearts, that those who have not found have not 
 
 sought, 
 
loz PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES." 
 
 sought, that those who do not seek must be living 
 immoral and careless lives, are the theses laid 
 down. That men denied out of carelessness or 
 bravado was an axiom ; that they could have a 
 system alternative to the orthodox was inconceiv- 
 able, or at least was not conceived by Pascal. 
 " How," he says, " can such an argument as the 
 following occur to a reasoning man ? " 
 
 " I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what 
 the world is, nor what I myself am ; I am terribly ignorant 
 of everything ; I know not what my body is, nor my senses, 
 nor my soul, nor even that part of me which thinks what I 
 say, which reflects on all and on itself, yet is as ignorant of 
 itself as of all beside. I see those dreadful spaces of the 
 universe which close me in, and I find myself fixed in 
 one comer of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am 
 set in this place rather than elsewhere, nor why this moment 
 of time given me for life is assigned to this point rather 
 than another of the whole Eternity which was before me or 
 which shall be after me. I see nothing but infinities on 
 every side, which close me round as an atom, and as a 
 shadow which endures but for an instant and returns no 
 more. I know only that I must shortly die, but what I 
 know the least is this very death which 1 cannot avoid. 
 
 " As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither 
 I go ; only this I know, that on departing this world, I 
 shall either fall for ever into nothingness, or into the hands 
 of an offended God, without knowing which of these two 
 conditions shall eternally be my lot. Such is my state, full 
 of weakness and uncertainty ; from all which I conclude 
 that I ought to pass all the days of my life without thought 
 of searching for what must happen to me. Perhaps I might 
 find some ray of light in my doubts, but I will not take 
 the trouble, nor stir a foot to seek it ; and after treating 
 with scorn those who are troubled with this care, I will go 
 
 without 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSEESP 103 
 
 without foresight and without fear to make trial of the 
 grand event, and allow myself to be led softly on to death, 
 uncertain of the eternity of my future condition. 
 
 " Who would wish to have for his friend a man who 
 should thus speak ; who would choose him rather than 
 another for advice in business ; who would turn to him ia 
 sorrow ? And indeed to what use in life could we put him ? " 
 
 And among certain detached notes, which seem 
 clearly intended to be woven into the General 
 Preface, we find striking sentences like these — 
 
 " Is it courage in a dying man that he dare, in his weak- 
 ness and agony, face an almighty and eternal God ? " 
 
 Again — 
 
 " A man in a dungeon, who knows not whether his doom 
 is fixed, who has but one hour to learn it, and this hour 
 enough, should he know that it is fixed, to obtain its 
 repeal, would act against nature did he employ that hour, 
 not in learning his sentence, but in playing piquet. 
 
 "So it is against nature that man, &c. It is to weight 
 the hand of God." 
 
 Again — 
 
 " Between us and hell or heaven, there is nought but life, 
 the frailest thing in all the world." 
 
 In all this we must remember the views of the 
 time. On the one side was Catholic doctrine, all 
 but untouched. The Huguenots had but little in- 
 fluence on French life, they probably entered less 
 into it than the Quakers do into that of our own 
 days ; on the other hand there was the frivolity and 
 
 the 
 
JO* 
 
 PASCAL'S ''PENsAeS." 
 
 the scandalous lives of French men of pleasure, 
 whose interest it was to flout that which they 
 feared. Of a life spent in striving after the highest 
 human ideal without fear of punishment, and with- 
 out hope of reward other than that of seeking all 
 which is noble and true and of good report, of 
 men who felt that 
 
 " because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence," 
 
 Pascal knew nothing ; he was, as every man is, the 
 child of his time, and it would have been as im- 
 possible for him to understand the position of a 
 religious unbeliever, or sceptic, or positivist, as it 
 would have been for Plato or Socrates to under- 
 stand the life and faith of a mediaeval monk. But 
 he made the further mistake, not uncommon, of 
 confusing the sceptic with the man who denies ; he 
 insisted that whoever suspended his judgment on 
 any matter must be taken to affirm the opposite ; 
 and this though there was in him a deep vein of 
 unconscious scepticism. He clung as passionately 
 to the least secure points of his faith as to the more 
 stable, lest allowing any one to slip from his grasp 
 he might fall into the abyss. And now and then, 
 by the very vehemence of his assertion, he shows 
 that he is endeavouring to cry down a rising doubt. 
 " The disproportion of man with nature " is one 
 of the thoughts which he uses the most, to intensify, 
 so to speak, the greatness of God. And in the 
 
 chapter 
 
PASCALS ''PENSEES:' 105 
 
 chapter wherein he sets forth this thought occurs 
 one of his most sustained passages, and one of the 
 best known sentences. We must quote this, 
 though feeling keenly that the force and majesty of 
 the words evaporate when transferred to another 
 language than that in which they were first con- 
 ceived and written : 
 
 ' ' Let man then contemplate the whole realm of nature in its 
 full and exalted majesty, and turn his eyes from the low 
 objects which hem him round ; let him observe that brilliant 
 light set hke an eternal lamp to illumine the universe let the 
 earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast 
 circle described by that sun, and let him see with amazement 
 that even this vast circle is itself but a fine point in regard 
 to that described by the stars revolving in the firmament. 
 If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass beyond, 
 and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature 
 that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is 
 but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. 
 No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond 
 all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in com- 
 parison with the reality of thingp, // is an infinite sphere, 
 the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference no- 
 where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of the 
 almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose 
 itself. 
 
 "Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own 
 being compared with all that is ; let him regard himself as 
 wandering in this remote province of nature ; and from 
 the little dungeon in which he finds himself lodged, I mean 
 the universe, let him learn to set a true value on the earth, 
 on its kingdoms, its cities, and on himself. . . . 
 
 "For after all what is man in natvire? A nothing in re- 
 gard to the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean 
 
 between 
 
lo6 PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES: 
 
 between nothing and the whole ; infinitely removed from 
 understanding either extreme. Ihe end of things and their 
 beginnings are invincibly hidden from him in impenetrable 
 secrecy, he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing 
 whence he was taken, and the infinite in which he is en- 
 gulfed." 
 
 Like a host of other striking thoughts, Pascal's 
 claim to the invention of the magnificent sentence 
 about nature which we have italicised, has been 
 disputed ; it has been traced through Montaigne, 
 Rabelais, Hermes Trismegistus, to Empedocles, in 
 the middle of the fifth century before Christ. But 
 he would have cared little had anyone told him the 
 thought was none of his. He anticipated such 
 objections in a fragment which he called " Preface 
 to the First Part"— 
 
 " Let no one say I have said nothing new ; the disposition 
 of my matter is new. In playing tennis, two men play with 
 the same ball, but one places it better. 
 
 " It might as truly be said that my words have been used 
 before. And if the same thoughts in a different arrange- 
 ment do not form a different discourse, so neither do the 
 same words in a different arrangement form different 
 thoughts." 
 
 From man's disproportion Pascal passes by a 
 natural transition to the thought that neither nature 
 nor self can satisfy man. His restlessness requires 
 perpetual distraction and diversion. 
 
 "Men have (he says) a secret instinct prompting them 
 to look for diversion and occupation from without, which 
 arises from the sense of their continual pain. They have 
 another secret instinct, a relic of the greatness of our 
 
 primitive 
 
PASCAL'S '*FENS£eS." 107 
 
 primitive nature, teaching them that happiness indeed con- 
 sists in rest, and not in turmoiL" 
 
 Again— 
 
 " Man is weary, and seeks a multitude of occupations only 
 because he has the idea of a lost happiness. And not find- 
 ing this in himself, he seeks it vainly in external things, 
 without being able to content himself, because it is neither 
 in vs, nor in the creatures, but in God alone." 
 
 In these words we come upon the similarity of 
 devout souls in however distant ages. " The heart 
 has no peace," said St. Augustine, "until it rest in 
 thee." Thomas k Kempis said much the same : 
 "Walk where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, and 
 thou wilt find no higher way above, no safer way 
 below than the way of the holy Cross." Outside the 
 Church also, but in a most catholic spirit, Toplady 
 sang " Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me hide my- 
 self in thee." And Watts, " His dying crimson like 
 a robe, Spreads from his body o'er the tree, And 
 I am dead to all the globe, and all the world is dead 
 to me." Even Auguste Comte found a motive out- 
 side self in the motto wherein he gathered up all 
 the self-denials and renunciations and martyrdoms 
 of the past ; Vivre pour autrui. Little as he 
 knew it, was not even he feeling after God, not far 
 from every one of us ? When we go out of self, in 
 whatever way, we are linked to all great souls past, 
 present, and to be. 
 
 A chapter on "The Greatness and Littleness 
 of Man," which unfortunately remains in a very 
 
 fragmentary 
 
108 PASCAL'S ''PENS^ES:' 
 
 fragmentary state, sums up and completes the two 
 which precede it. But it is extremely interesting 
 as showing how, try as he will to make little of 
 man, he breaks out into praise of the ideal man, 
 who, it must ever be remembered, is the Only true 
 Man, the ideal to which we all tend, after which we 
 all strive. There is in it an outburst like that of 
 the Psalmist in the same topic, who said— 
 
 " When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
 The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, 
 What is man, that thou art mindful of him, 
 And the son of man, that thou visitest him ? 
 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. 
 To crown him with glory and worship." 
 
 And here is Pascal — 
 
 • ' The greatness of man consists in thought. Not from 
 space must I seek my dignity, but from the ruling of my 
 thought. I should have no more if I possessed whole 
 worlds. By space the Universe encompasses and swallows 
 me as an atom, by thought I encompass it. 
 
 ' ' Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed 
 which thinks. It needs not that the whole Universe should 
 arm to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water is enough to 
 kill him. But were the Universe to crush him, man would 
 still be more noble than that which has slain him, because he 
 knows that he dies, and that the Universe has the better of 
 him. The Universe knows nothing of this. 
 
 "All our dignity therefore consists in thought. By this 
 must we raise ourselves, not by space or duration, which we 
 cannot fill. Then let us make it our study to think well, for 
 this is the starting-point of morals. 
 
 "The 
 
PASCALS ''PENSEESP 109 
 
 "The greatness of man is great in that he knows he is 
 miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable. 
 
 "It is therefore little to know ourselves little, and it is 
 great to know ourselves little. 
 
 " Thus his very infirmities prove man's greatness. They 
 are the infirmities of a great lord, of a discrowned king." 
 
 We must pass over much that is full of interest, 
 on "Justice, Habits, and Prejudices," on "The 
 Weakness, Unrest, and Defects of Man," in which 
 are deep thoughts and pregnant sentences implicitly 
 containing volumes, to dwell for a moment on a 
 passage concerning " Self-love," as an instance 
 of Pascal's dexterity as a controversialist. He is 
 showing that a true appreciation of self would 
 prevent anger at those who think ill of us, " since 
 it is but just that men should know us as we are, 
 and despise us if we are despicable." This is in 
 the exact spirit of Thomas k Kempis, who says— 
 
 " Son, take it not to heart if some think ill of thee, and 
 say of thee what thou dost not gladly hear. 
 
 " Thou oughtest to think worse things of thyself, and to 
 believe that no one is weaker than thyself." 
 
 When Pascal has laid down this general truth and 
 pointed out how often we wish others to have an 
 erroneously favourable opinion of us, he suddenly 
 localizes, so to speak, and narrows the controversy 
 in the most unexpected manner. 
 
 " One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic 
 religion does not oblige us to tell out oiu- sins indiscriminately 
 to all, it allows us to remain hidden from men in general, 
 but she excepts one alone, to whom she commands us to open 
 
 the 
 
no PASCAL'S "FJSNsAeS." 
 
 the very depths of our heart, and to show ourselves to him 
 as we are. There is but this one man in the world whom 
 she orders us to undeceive ; she binds him to an inviolable 
 secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as though it were 
 not. We can imagine nothing more charitable and more 
 tender. Yet such is the corruption of man, that he finds 
 even this law harsh, and it is one of the main reasons which 
 has set a large portion of Europe in revolt against the 
 Church. 
 
 " How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which 
 finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what 
 in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just 
 that we should deceive them ? " 
 
 Thus suddenly, and as an argiunentum ad 
 hominem^ he sharpens a general principle for the 
 men around him who were leading light lives. 
 While it is not necessarily true, as theologians often 
 assume, that a man who denies their principles and 
 therefore neglects their practice is immoral, it is 
 more often true than not, that he who admits their 
 principle, and yet neglects the consequent practice, 
 hates the light because his deeds are evil. 
 
 As the introduction to the whole work was more 
 elaborated than much which was to follow, so also 
 there are portions worked out in great detail in the 
 earlier chapters of the second part, wherein Pascal 
 passes to his more constructive argument that the 
 Scripture reveals a Redeemer who will give man 
 his true happiness. Perhaps no single passage 
 shows his method, his own absolute security of 
 faith, his daring statement of the other side, his 
 changing from argument into passionate pleading, 
 
 more 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSAes:' III 
 
 more than the celebrated comparison of belief and 
 unbelief to a great game of chance, in which the 
 probabilities are on the side of belief, on which 
 side therefore it were better to stake. There is 
 a danger of making this most luminous of writers 
 obscure through excess of concentration, in not 
 giving the passage in full, but it is too long to 
 quote entire. 
 
 " Let us (he says) examine this point, and say ' God is, or 
 he is not.' But to which side shall we incline? Reason 
 can determine nothing about it. There is an infinite gulf 
 fixed between us. A game is playing at the extremity of this 
 infinite distance in which heads or tails may turn up. What 
 will you wager ? There is no reason for backing either one 
 or the other, you cannot reasonably argue in favour of 
 either. . . . Yet you must wager ; this depends not on your 
 will, you are embarked in the aflfair. Which will you 
 choose ? . . . You have two things to lose, truth and good, 
 and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your 
 knowledge and your happiness ; and your nature has two 
 things to avoid, error and misery. Since you must needs 
 choose, your reason is no more wounded in choosing one 
 than the other." 
 
 Then, after working out this in great detail, he 
 clinches the matter thus — 
 
 " It is of no avail to say it is uncertain that we gain, and 
 certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance between 
 the certainty of that which is staked and the uncertainty of 
 what we shall gain, equals the finite good which is certainly 
 staked against an uncertain infinite. This is not so. Every 
 gambler stakes a certainty to gain an uncertainty, and yet he 
 stakes a finite certainty against a finite uncertainty without 
 acting imreasonably." 
 
 At 
 
112 PASCAL'S ''PENSfESy 
 
 At last he makes his antagonist say that he admits 
 what has been said, but— 
 
 " My hands are tied and my mouth is gagged : I am forced 
 to wager, and am not free, none can release me, but I am so 
 made that I cannot believe. What then would you have me 
 do? 
 
 "True. But understand at least your incapacity to believe, 
 since your reason leads you to belief and yet you cannot 
 believe. Labour then to convince yourself, not by increase 
 of the proofs of God, but by the diminution of your passions. 
 You would fain arrive at faith, but know not the way ; you 
 would heal yourself of unbelief, and you ask remedies for it. 
 Learn of those who have been bound as you are, but who 
 now stake all that they possess ; these are they who know 
 the way you would follow, who are cured of a disease 
 of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which 
 they began, by making believe that they believed, taking the 
 holy water, having masses said, &c. 
 
 " If my words please you, and seem to you cogent, know 
 that they are those of one who has thrown himself on his 
 knees before and after to pray that Being, infinite, and 
 without parts, to whom he submits all his own being, that 
 you also would submit to him all yours, for your own good 
 and for his glory." 
 
 In this daring balance of dread chances, in the 
 warm affection for human souls, in the way in which 
 he considers that the greater not only includes but 
 supposes the less, so that there is nothing mean nor 
 insignificant in the remedy of holy water, when 
 once the fact is grasped that finite things are 
 sacraments of the infinite, and in the sudden turns 
 from the abstract to the concrete application, Pascal 
 is strangely like our great modern, by whom the 
 Catholic faith is shown at its fairest, yet who never 
 
 shrinks 
 
PASCAL'S '"PENsAeS." 113 
 
 shrinks from placing before us its greatest stumb- 
 ling-blocks, John Henry, Cardinal Newman. 
 
 There is a final fragment to the section from 
 which a quotation has already been taken which is 
 most characteristic, and especially so in this, that 
 it is impossible to say whether Pascal meant to say 
 it in his own person, or to put it into the mouth of 
 his opponent. At any rate it has so autobiographic 
 a ring that we cannot doubt the thoughts had been 
 his own in those dread hours of doubt, whereof he 
 spoke with such pathos. 
 
 " This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all 
 sides, and see nothing but obscurity ; nature offers me no- 
 thing but matter for doubt and disquiet Did I see nothing 
 there which marked a Divinity I should decide not to be- 
 lieve in him. Did I see everywhere the marks of a Creator, 
 I should rest peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to 
 deny, and too little to affirm, my state is pitiful, and I have 
 a hundred times wished that if God upheld nature, he would 
 mark the fact unequivocally, but that if the signs which 
 she gives of a God are fallacious, she would wholly suppress 
 them, that she would either say all or say nothing, that I 
 might see what part I should take. Instead of this, in my 
 piesent state, ignorant of what I am, and of what I ought to 
 do, I know neither my condition nor my duty. My heart is 
 wholly bent to know where is the true good in order to 
 follow it, nothing would seem to me too costly for eternity." 
 
 It may frankly be admitted that while detached 
 thoughts in many chapters in the second part, on 
 •* Philosophy," on the " Sacred Books," on "Pro- 
 phecy,'' and the like, are of value and interest, the 
 whole manner of dealing with biblical criticism is 
 
 so 
 H 
 
114 PASCAL'S ''PENsi.ES." 
 
 so totally unlike that of our days, so apart from all 
 our train of thought, that it would be unprofitable 
 to summarize this portion of the work. It will 
 always be read to show Pascal's method ; gems of 
 thought and diction are imbedded in it, but the 
 present state of biblical criticism renders it quite 
 impossible to consider Pascal's views on these 
 points as a serious contribution to it. Yet let none 
 who study the man rather than his knowledge of 
 the Bible, none who look for spiritual guidance 
 apart from the particular form in which, according 
 to the time, it has clothed itself, pass by these 
 chapters. If they do, they will miss such grand 
 passages as this — 
 
 •' All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of 
 the eyes, or the pride of life ; libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, 
 libido dominandi. Woe to the accursed land which these 
 three rivers of flame enkindle rather than moisten. 
 Happy they who are on these rivers, not overwhelmed nor 
 carried away, but immovably fixed upon the floods, not 
 standing but seated, and on a firm and sure base, whence 
 they rise not before the dawn ; but where, having rested 
 in peace, they stretch forth their hands to him who will 
 lift them up, and cause them to stand firm and upright 
 in the porches of the heavenly Jerusalem, where pride may 
 no more assail nor cast them down ; and who yet weep, not 
 to see all those perishable things crumble which the torrents 
 sweep away, but at the remembrance of their dear country, 
 that heavenly Jerusalem, which they remember without 
 ceasing while the days of their exile are prolonged. 
 
 " The rivers of Babylon rush and fall and sweep away. 
 
 '• O holy Sion, where all is firm and nothing falls. 
 
 " We must sit upon the floods, not under them or in 
 
 them. 
 
PASCAL'S ''PENSJ^ES." 115 
 
 them, but on them ; not standing but seated, being seated 
 to be humble, and above them in security. But in the 
 porches of Jerusalem we shall stand. 
 
 ' ' Let us see if our pleasure is stable or transitory ; if it 
 pass away, it is a river of Babylon.'' 
 
 The final sections in Molinier's edition of the 
 *'Pensees," the last word on the arrangement of this 
 most perplexing book, are those on " Miracles, with 
 Special Reference to that of the Holy Thorn," on 
 "The Jesuits," on "Style," and one composed of 
 "Various Thoughts," for which no other place 
 could be found. That on miracles is exceedingly 
 fragmentary, but the fragments throw much light 
 on Pascal's whole attitude in regard to the super- 
 natural. He is bold enough to attempt a definition 
 of miracles, and then draws a curious deduction 
 from his definition. 
 
 ", Miracle. An effect which exceeds the natural force of 
 the means employed, and non-miracle an effect not exceed- 
 ing the natural force of the means employed. Thus those 
 who heal by invocation of the devil work no miracle, for that 
 does not exceed the natural power of the devil." 
 
 No doubt he was considering the tale handed down 
 from his own nursery days, and made up his mind 
 that the old woman who had first bewitched him, 
 then healed him by herbs and the blood of a cat, 
 had worked no miracle, but used only the natural 
 means of her master and ally. But the miracle of 
 the thorn was the clear will of God. 
 
 " Here is a sacred relic, here is a thorn from the crown of 
 the Savioiu- of the world, on whom the prince of this world 
 
 has 
 
X^^ PASCAL'S ''PENS&ES," 
 
 has no power, which works miracles by the immediate power 
 of the blood that was shed for us. Thus God has himself 
 chosen this house wherein openly to show forth his power. 
 
 ' ' Here are not men who work miracles by an unknown 
 and doubtful virtue, obliging us to a difficult discrimination ; 
 it is God himself, it is the instrument of the passion of his 
 only Son, who being in many places chose this, and made 
 men come from all sides, there to receive miraculous succour 
 in their weaknesses." 
 
 And being thus sure in his own mind, he pro- 
 pounds this dilemma — 
 
 " Which is the most clear? 
 
 "This house is not of God, for they do not there believe 
 that the five propositions are in Jansenius. 
 
 " Others : This house is of God, for in it strange miracles 
 are done. 
 
 " Which is the most clear? " 
 
 Then on a detached scrap of paper he flings this 
 ecstatic meditation — 
 
 "As God has made no family more happy, be should 
 also find none more grateful. " 
 
 The fragments on Jesuits and Jansenists need 
 not long detain us. We have already seen Pascal's 
 position in the matter, and those who will know it 
 in detail must turn to the *' Provinciales." But one 
 passage is most valuable, as showing the human 
 revolt which broke out now and then even in so 
 obedient a son of the Church, when he saw his 
 enemies gaining the upper hand, and he was con- 
 scious of his own integrity and confident of the 
 
 soundness of his cause. 
 
 "The 
 
PASCALS **PENsAeS." 117 
 
 "The Inquisition and the Society are the two scourges of 
 the truth. 
 
 " If my Letters are condemned at Rome, what I condemn 
 in them is condemned in heaven, 
 
 *' Ad iuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello." 
 
 Nor need the remaining sections detain us, 
 though in them there occurs the interesting passage 
 on the differences between the mathematical mind 
 and the mind of the practical man of business, and 
 other thoughts, worthy of attention, did space 
 allow ; but it has been necessary, since somewhat 
 must be overlooked, to dwell almost exclusively on 
 the religious side of Pascal's mind. 
 
 Enough has been said to show the exceeding 
 value and interest of a book so much talked of, yet 
 so little studied, in England ; of the hfe of one 
 whose name is on the lips of many, but, again in 
 England, written in the hearts of few. In France 
 it is very different ; the prophet has honour in his 
 own country, may he have it increasingly among 
 ourselves, for he deserves all we can give, as one 
 of the great thinkers of the world, who, like all such, 
 has given thought a new impulse even when he 
 sought to restrain it in the interests of what he 
 deemed truth. He has been like some weir cast 
 across a mighty river, which seeming to check its 
 course has given it a fresh impulse and added to its 
 picturesqueness and beauty. Thought would indeed 
 be a sluggish stream had there been no such limita- 
 tions through which it had to burst. 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 NOT only idle and vulgar curiosity leads people 
 to throng courts of justice when any remark- 
 able case is brought forward for judgment. Lower 
 and baser considerations, no doubt, attract some of 
 the crowd, and enter in some degree into the minds of 
 all ; but the true, even if unconscious, motive always 
 seems to be, that in such trial there is unveiled 
 to human eyes a part of the great judgment which 
 is ever in secret being transacted ; the world's sift- 
 ing of falsehood from truth, right from v/rong, is 
 here gathered up into the concrete ; men hear both 
 sides fairly stated — a rare circumstance, save in a 
 legal trial ; and in the great majority of cases the 
 verdict of the jury is also that of the public, who, at 
 the same time, silently and unofficially try the case. 
 The records of causes c'elebres have the same sort 
 of interest, but with this element superadded, that 
 history and time have judged the judges of each 
 old case, have stilled the passions which sway the 
 minds of even judicial persons in seasons of strong 
 political or religious excitement. And it may happen 
 
 at 
 
I20 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 at times that, in reading such an old trial, we find 
 it, as it were, still in progress ; the feelings have 
 not died away which were yet keener when all the 
 actors were alive ; we sit as a sort of court of 
 appeal, in which the whole question has to be 
 argued over again ; and the ultimate verdict, which 
 time and the human conscience are sure to give in 
 the end, may yet be in suspense, awaiting a calmer 
 future. Typical trials like those of Mary Stuart and 
 her grandson, in the region of politics, will rise 
 naturally to the minds of all as instances of what 
 we mean ; though they are dead, they are not yet 
 judged by the final court of appeal ; in each case 
 "adhuc sub judice lis est." 
 
 And in reading the accounts of past causes, we 
 have to consider a point which the original and 
 formal court ought seldom to notice at all, and 
 which, if it affected the verdict, did so wrongly, as 
 we now think. When a prisoner is on his trial, 
 the only question should be, " Does the evidence 
 support the charge?" but we may calmly consider 
 this further question, "Is it likely the prisoner 
 should have acted as he is said to have done ?" and 
 we may pronounce the mental verdict of " Guilty," 
 when the spoken verdict, according to the evidence, 
 ought to have been " Not guilty." Once this 
 maxim of modern judicial procedure was not so 
 understood, so acted on as now ; premisses were 
 laid down, conclusions drawn, in support of a 
 position which evidence alone failed to substan- 
 tiate ; 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 121 
 
 tiate; and, since the premisses were not always 
 stated, the accused, if rebutting the evidence, was 
 yet condemned by a conclusion drawn formally 
 enough from propositions which he would have 
 denied as vehemently, nay sometimes far more 
 vehemently, than his accusers. 
 
 Such a cause ckl^bre was the trial of Jean Calas, 
 in the middle of the i8th century ; but its interest 
 is still further intensified by the facts, that in it were 
 and are enlisted the feelings of Catholic against 
 Protestant, and Protestant against Catholic, and 
 this in the south of France, where religious con- 
 troversy has ever been bitter ; that even now the 
 side taken in the ''''affaire Calas" depends, far 
 more than many eager partisans would like to admit, 
 on creed and not on evidence. And as if the dif- 
 ferences between religious men on either side were 
 not enough, the story interested Voltaire, who took 
 a vehement part in the long controversy which has 
 not died away in the space of a century ; and from 
 the premisses, Jean Calas was a Protestant, and 
 Voltaire vindicated his memory, have been drawn 
 the conclusions, the man was a villain and his 
 memory is accursed. 
 
 We propose here to tell the story of Jean Calas, 
 summarising the facts mainly from two books, one 
 called "Jean Calas et sa Famille," by the late 
 Athanase Coquerel, Fils, written with Protestant 
 bias, but singular fairness ; the other, ** Histoire du 
 Proc^ de Jean Calas," written as an answer to 
 
 M. Coquerel, 
 
122 THE STOR Y OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 M. Coquerel, by M. I'Abbe Sal van, Honorary- 
 Canon of Toulouse. The Abbe seems a worthy 
 and painstaking, though extremely stupid, person. 
 M. Coquerel's book is one of a class more common 
 both in France and in Germany than in England, 
 a treatise which is absolutely exhaustive of its 
 subject. Convinced of the importance of the case 
 as bearing on the social and religious life of the 
 period, he has thought it worth while to place the 
 facts and the actors in all possible lights, and to 
 tell the story with the most circumstantial minute- 
 ness. The reader is reminded of Mr. Browning's 
 Ring and the Book ; and the comparison is a com- 
 pliment to both authors. For the highest poetry is 
 intensely realistic ; and the vein of tragedy which 
 is in every life, coming to the surface in that of 
 Jean Calas, lends a dignity to the mean surround- 
 ings of his station, and raises the linen-draper's 
 shop into the stage of an awful drama. 
 
 The scene is Toulouse ; the time, October 13th, 
 1761. At half-past nine o'clock on that warm 
 autumn night, numbers of people had been com- 
 ing and going along the busy Grand'rue des 
 Filettiers ; for though the shops were closed be- 
 times, the citizens were, many of them, sitting 
 before their doors, and even entertaining their 
 friends, as is the mode in more genial climes than 
 ours, in the open street. Sieur Jean Calas, the 
 linen-draper, was not in the open air, however, as 
 was his neighbour the demoiselle Brandelac ; he 
 
 and 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 123 
 
 and his family had remained indoors after supper ; 
 and, indeed, he was not a man likely to be much 
 at his ease in the light give-and-take gossip of the 
 public pavement. In business, the great leveller 
 of parties and creeds, he could hold his own, 
 nor so long as his wares were good would even 
 the ladies of Toulouse care to enquire into the 
 orthodoxy of the seller. But business over, the 
 townsfolk were quick to remember that he was 
 a Protestant, one of a proscribed caste, against 
 whom the hatred was such as we can scarcely 
 realize even with the facts before us. 
 
 Up to the time of which we write, every child 
 born of a Protestant marriage was by law a bastard; 
 only nine years earlier the assemblies of Protes- 
 tants for worship had been put down by dragon- 
 nades, and infants who had been baptised as 
 Protestants were re-baptised under military force. 
 Less than three years before, there had been dragon- 
 nades to disperse congregations of the Reformed 
 in two provinces of the south. Toulouse itself had 
 an annual fete in commemoration of a provincial 
 massacre of Huguenots, which, ten years before 
 that of St. Bartholomew in Paris, had given a 
 frightful hint of how best such an extermination of 
 heresy could be conducted. A Protestant house- 
 hold would naturally keep much to itself in Toulouse. 
 Madame Calas, moreover, was not only a Protestant, 
 but of somewhat higher birth than might be expected 
 from her position, and allied to many noble families 
 
 in 
 
124 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 in Languedoc ; hence, in a country and an age 
 when such ties were more considered than now, 
 she ruled her small household in a noticeable 
 dignified manner, " and, though the wife of a 
 simple tradesman, retained much high breeding." 
 
 The family was neither united nor alone on this 
 October evening. The two daughters, Rose and 
 Nannette, were paying an annual visit to some 
 friends in the country ; Donat, the youngest son, 
 a lad of fourteen, was apprenticed to a merchant's 
 house in Nismes; Louis, the second son, was living 
 in Toulouse, but away from home, and, though 
 seeing his family from time to time, by no means 
 on cordial terms with them. He had become a 
 Catholic ; and this, which of itself was enough to 
 cause a coolness, in those days, between himself 
 and the other members of his family, was rendered 
 still more bitter to his father by a demand, enforced 
 by law, for a separate home and maintenance, 
 which the finances of the latter could ill afford. 
 There remained at home only Monsieur and 
 Madame Calas ; their elder son. Marc Antoine, 
 now in his twenty-ninth year; their third son, 
 Pierre, and the servant, Jeanne Viguiere, who had 
 been with them for nearly thirty years, a Catholic, 
 and a main instrument in the conversion 
 of Louis. At supper, and remaining with the 
 family through the evening, was a young man, 
 named Lavaysse, who, accidentally delayed in 
 passing through Toulouse, had spent his time 
 
 between 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 125 
 
 between the Galas family and that of another 
 Protestant friend. 
 
 From this house, thus peopled, where all that 
 was orderly, peaceable, and perhaps a trifle dull, 
 might have been expected, came cries of murder 
 on the still night. Though the street was now 
 emptier than it had been, no less than fourteen 
 persons heard the cry for help ; and though, as was 
 natural, there was some difference as to the actual 
 words heard in that moment of confusion and 
 alarm, they seem to have been, in the patois of 
 Toulouse, "Ah, moun Diou ! I'an tuat." (Oh, mon 
 Dieu ! on I'a tu6), and, therefore, probably, as 
 was in fact declared by several witnesses, they 
 proceeded from the servant Jeanne. Before any 
 neighbours from without could enter the house, 
 Lavaysse and Pierre Galas had rushed out 
 for assistance. Pierre seems to have returned, 
 gone out, and back again more than once 
 before Lavaysse returned at all, and had brought 
 with him, first the assistant of a neighbouring 
 surgeon, next an intimate friend, a tradesman 
 named Gazeing, at whose house Lavaysse was 
 staying, and finally a lawyer, the Sieur Clausade. 
 The first of the neighbours to enter was a 
 friend of the two young Galas, Antoine Delpech. 
 He saw the body of Marc Antoine Galas lying 
 in the shop, his head supported by some bales, 
 his father leaning against the counter, but com- 
 ing from time to time to bend over his son, and 
 
 try 
 
126 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 try to make him swallow some cordial. Delpech, 
 thinking his friend had been wounded in a duel, 
 felt the body, and found it cold, and the surgeon's 
 assistant having come in, confirmed his fear that 
 death had long taken place, but on examination 
 declared it had been by hanging or by strangula- 
 tion. The Sieur Clausade, seeing that medical aid 
 was of no avail, suggested that the police should 
 at once be summoned; Lavaysse, who had now 
 returned, offered to go, and started with Clausade 
 for the chief magistrate and the clerk. On his 
 return, he found the police in possession, and a 
 magistrate engaged in a hurried examination ; he 
 was admitted after some difficulty, and only on his 
 assertion that he was almost a member of the family, 
 as having supped in the house that very night. 
 No sooner had he entered the house than he found 
 he was under arrest ; and his fate for the next four 
 years was linked with that of the Calas family. 
 
 For while the magistrate was making his 
 examination, with the aid of the surgeons he had 
 brought with him, the busy crowd around the door 
 were giving rise to the wildest stories. As A. H. 
 Clough has said of the sudden development of 
 marvellous fables : 
 
 " As circulates in some great city crowd 
 A rumour, changeful, vague, importunate and loud, 
 From no determined centre, or of fact 
 Or authorship exact ; 
 
 Which no man can deny 
 Nor verify ; 
 So spread the wondrous tale," that 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS, 127 
 
 that the Sieur Galas, or even the whole of this 
 Huguenot family, had killed Marc Antoine because 
 he was about to declare himself a Catholic. To 
 the blundering, over-officious, fanatical magistrate, 
 '* this anonymous cry appeared the voice of truth. 
 This suspicion was for him a ray of light." M. 
 David de Beaudrigue, whose interpretation of the 
 adage "Voxpopuli, vox Dei" was in this case so 
 extremely literal, acted on his sudden conviction, 
 accepting it as only too likely that a Protestant 
 would be guilty of any crime, and by his precipitate 
 haste did much to increase the difficulty of those 
 who would form a dispassionate opinion on the 
 facts. Supposing Marc Antoine to have been 
 murdered at all, he yet made no search in the 
 house for any concealed assassins ; he did not 
 examine whether the clothes of those who were 
 accused of having strangled a young man in the 
 vigour of his age were at all disordered ; he did 
 not examine the bedroom of the deceased to see 
 if perhaps any Catholic books of devotion, any 
 objets de pikte might substantiate the asser- 
 tion that he was inclined to become a Catholic, 
 but, arresting all who were found in the house, 
 including the young Lavaysse and Cazeing, he 
 carried off the corpse and the coat of the dead 
 man, which had been found folded on the counter, 
 and destroyed in so doing, and in the haste of his 
 proceedings, much which might have thrown light 
 on the true cause of death. 
 
 So 
 
128 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 So little did the relations of the deceased realize 
 their arrest and approaching imprisonment, that 
 they believed they were taken to the Hotel de Ville 
 to give an account of the facts of a suicide. Pierre 
 Galas even lighted a candle, to be left burning in 
 the passage against their return ; but this was ex- 
 tinguished by the orders of David de Beaudrigue. 
 At the Hotel de Ville a brother magistrate ventured 
 to suggest to his impetuous friend that he was 
 going too fast, and, in fact, the arrest was in itself 
 illegal without a warrant ; but he answered, " I 
 take all responsibility on myself;" and again, 
 *' The cause of religion is at stake." Here also he 
 drew up the firocls verbal, which, according to 
 law, should have been done on the spot, while 
 everything remained in its usual state; here also 
 was the formal surgical examination made, which, 
 again, according to law, should have taken place 
 where the body was found. After a brief and 
 separate examination of each of the persons 
 arrested, they were imprisoned for the night, Jean 
 Galas and his son in windowless cells, the two 
 women in somewhat better quarters, Lavaysse and 
 Cazeing in the guard-room. 
 
 M. David de Beaudrigue, whose knowledge of 
 law was so much less than his zeal, who had formed 
 so strong an d priori opinion on the case, who took 
 on himself the position at once of police officer and 
 prosecutor, was also one of the judges who would 
 have to try the case. He was one of the eight 
 
 elected 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 129 
 
 elected magistrates who bore at Toulouse the 
 title of Capitouls, the body to which they be- 
 longed being called the Capitoulat. The account 
 given by M. Coquerel of these persons, who remind 
 us a good deal of some modern town councillors 
 and mayors, is full of interest to anyone who wishes 
 to understand the state of France before the Re- 
 volution. So also is the constitution of the pro- 
 vincial Parliaments, the various obsolete modes 
 in which law causes were then conducted, the ter- 
 rible tortures adopted to wring from the accused 
 whatever their accusers might desire to hear ; but 
 into none of this need we enter. The accusation 
 was now fairly started, which has never yet died 
 away, which is even now the subject of fierce con- 
 troversy, and two questions present themselves first 
 of all to us : Was Marc Antoine Galas on the point 
 of confessing Catholicism? Was he murdered at 
 all, or did he commit suicide 1 
 
 MM. Coquerel and Salvanfind themselves greatly 
 opposed to each other with regard to the character 
 and habits of Marc Antoine Calas, and to his 
 father's relations with him ; the former has no 
 doubt that he was a Protestant, who did small 
 credit to his religion ; the latter, following the 
 traditions of Toulouse, would fain find him to be a 
 Catholic martyr. And, in truth, it is not easy to 
 decide any point but the last ; it appears perfectly 
 clear that he was no Catholic or likely to become 
 so. In other matters, M. Coquerel seems to us to 
 
 paint 
 I 
 
I30 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 paint him in somewhat too dark colours. His life 
 had been somewhat shaded by a severe disappoint- 
 ment just as a career which suited him was open- 
 ing to him. He had chosen the legal profession, 
 had taken the degree of Bachelor of Laws by 
 special licence before the legal age, and was about 
 to be called to the bar, when a technical difficulty 
 came in his way. It was necessary that he should 
 present a certificate that he was a Catholic ; and 
 this was about to be given him as a mere form, 
 and without examination, when the sei-vant of the 
 priest to whom he applied officiously announced 
 that she knew him to be a Protestant. The priest, 
 thus warned, had of course no alternative but to 
 say he could only grant the certificate when the 
 Catholicism of the applicant was attested by his own 
 confessor. The case is not without analogy in our 
 own day, when the law that the burial service of 
 the Church of England shall not be read over un- 
 baptised persons, is often evaded through the fact 
 that no special inquiry is made, but can scarcely be 
 escaped if the non-baptism of the deceased is 
 directly and formally brought before the notice of 
 the officiating minister. M. Salvan would have us 
 believe that the promise that the certificate would 
 be granted in case of conformity would be a power- 
 ful inducement, though not a very noble one, to the 
 desired end ; but he overlooks the fact that even 
 without such promise it must have been granted 
 as a mere formal matter, and that a fellow-pupil 
 
 deposed 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 131 
 
 deposed at the trial that Marc Antoine, in spite 
 of his bitter disappointment, had at once and for 
 ever renounced his hopes of the bar, with the 
 words that "he never would make any act of 
 Catholicism." And with this profession were closed 
 also all careers save that of some few trades. 
 One royal decree after another had restricted to 
 Catholics the professions and trades of attorney, 
 attorney's clerk, clerk of court and his subordi- 
 nates, printer, bookseller, goldsmith, physician, 
 surgeon, apothecary, grocer, servant and appren- 
 tice in a Protestant household, and even that of 
 midwife, which, though it did not affect the 
 young man in question, serves to show how com- 
 pletely and severely test acts were applied in 
 France. A share in a trading business was found 
 impossible, when offered, because of the large 
 premium required ; and his father would not 
 formally take him as a partner in his own shop 
 "because, according to one account, he was idle- 
 to another, because the Sieur Calas was habitually 
 hard and stern towards his eldest son. On this, 
 *' Irritated against the present, and without hope 
 for the future, the unhappy young man became 
 a gambler, . . . and played high for a man of his 
 condition. ... It is certain that on the very day " 
 (of his death) his father had ordered him " to 
 change silver money into gold, that he rendered 
 no account of it, and that the money was never 
 found." He also "had in his pockets at the time 
 
 of 
 
132 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 of his death indecent poems and songs." ^ M. 
 Sal van softens this severe judgment into *' Marc 
 Antoine tried to amuse himself by innocent 
 diversions, theatrical declamation, tennis, fencing, 
 billiards. There is no reason for saying that his 
 father was very angry with his conduct ; we shall 
 produce a deposition of Jean Calas, in which he 
 declares that Marc Antoine had never given him 
 any trouble." * It is most natural that a father 
 should say this of his dead son, when all that was 
 evil was forgotten, and what they had loved in him 
 was alone present to the mind of the family ; and 
 the balance of evidence is certainly in favour of 
 the son's conduct having been such as to vex the 
 father, though he by no means appears to have 
 been exceptionally vicious, or to have led such a 
 life as to account for suicide ; the implied theft 
 from his father cannot be considered as proved, 
 nor do we know what amount of impropriety may 
 have been the characteristic of the papers found 
 about him. 
 
 It is a phenomenon, unhappily not confined to 
 one creed, that zeal for dogma may exist to a 
 degree which is almost fanaticism, without any 
 real and vital religion. Protestantism, founded 
 on free thought, which has no true raison det7'e if 
 this be denied, is yet often bitter and narrow. 
 And Marc Antoine Calas, so far from being 
 
 inclined 
 
 1 Salvan, p. 4. 2 /^/^/^ ^ pp, ^8, 49. 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 133 
 
 inclined to Catholicism, was, on the contrary, 
 most intolerant of it. A priest declared that he 
 had heard him maintain that no one could be 
 saved in the Roman Church, and that every 
 Catholic would be damned eternally. No one of 
 his family was so angry as he was at the con- 
 version of his brother Louis ; it was from his 
 ang-er at the separate maintenance for Louis that 
 we learn, what otherwise would have remained 
 a profound secret, that the Calas family were in 
 somewhat embarrassed circumstances owing to 
 the general depression of trade. This being the 
 case, on evidence which seems irresistible, it is 
 wonderful the report should have spread thai 
 he intended to turn Catholic. Probably the 
 supposition was launched wholly at a venture, 
 and only afterwards an attempt was made to 
 substantiate it. The Abbe Salvan quotes the 
 testimony of fifteen witnesses, on whose evidence 
 we may suppose he relies. He wisely omits 
 to give the whole examination, which, after the 
 singular procedure of those days, was devoted to 
 the establishment of the fact. It is instructive 
 to summarise one deposition which still exists, 
 and was gravely received. '* The widow Massa- 
 leng, nee Jeanne Paignon, said that her daughter 
 told her, that Sieur Pagds told her, that M. 
 Soulie told him, that the demoiselle Guichardet 
 told him, that the demoiselle Journu told her, 
 something from which she concluded that Father 
 
 Serrant, 
 
134 THE STOR V OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 Serrant, a Jesuit, might certainly have been the 
 confessor of Galas. Whereupon Father Serrant 
 was called, and the whole of this laborious 
 scaffolding was reduced to nothing in a moment. 
 
 But of the fifteen witnesses quoted by the Abb^ 
 Salvan, it is by no means easy to see how the 
 majority aid him to prove his case. One, Fran- 
 cois Challier, advised young Galas to become a 
 Gatholic, and gained only so distinct a refusal, 
 that Marc Antoine even spoke of a plan of going 
 to Geneva that he might become a Protestant 
 minister. Four more of the fifteen merely depose 
 that there had been a rumour in the town that 
 Marc Antoine intended to abjure. One witness, 
 who had often spoken to him on the subject, 
 thought him inclined to Gatholicism. Eight had 
 seen him in Gatholic churches, or present at 
 Gatholic processions, "last Lent," "at a sermon 
 at St. Etienne," " kneeling when the host passed 
 in the street," " often at vespers," " once at mass," 
 " often at sermon, never at mass or vespers," and 
 so on, in a vague and inaccurate way. One only, 
 Gatherine Daumiere, or Dolmier, deposed that 
 Marc Antoine told her that he was unhappy at 
 home, that he was in the hands of a good 
 confessor, that he was going to confess on 
 Wednesday next, and had promised to lend her 
 books. But the whole evidence broke down. She 
 pretended to be newly converted from Protestant- 
 ism, whereas she had always been a Gatholic ; 
 
 the 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS, 135 
 
 the confessor was never found ; Marc Antoine 
 had never possessed the books which she said 
 he had promised to lend her. 
 
 Somewhat idle, by no means inclined to 
 Catholicism, but rather fanatically Protestant, 
 mixing in Catholic services, so far as he did so 
 simply because his intellectual taste for oratory 
 and declamation could be satisfied nowhere so 
 well as at the Catholic sermons, and because the 
 processions and functions were among the sights 
 of the town in which a young man might join 
 from curiosity equally well as from devotion, his 
 disposition was sullen, reserved and gloomy ; 
 he chose the poetry which he loved to recite 
 from the more introspective and morbid speeches 
 of the great dramatists, more than one especially 
 deahng with the subject of suicide. 
 
 It is true, as M. Coquerel says, that "the time 
 had not yet arrived when suicide had become a 
 literary fashion, and when the sorrows, imaginary 
 or guilty, of a Werther and a Ren^, upset weak 
 minds. But the diseases of the human heart 
 change their name rather than their nature ; 
 they are at bottom the same in all times ; and 
 we need not be too much surprised that a young 
 man without position and without hope, yet full 
 of ambition, vegetating by his father's counter, 
 should fall from wounded pride into despair. We 
 take it as quite certain that there are in all ages 
 very many men who, finding they have failed in 
 
 life, 
 
136 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 life, deliberately face the question of self-slaughter, 
 and make up their minds, for or against, simply 
 as they believe will be best for those they leave 
 behind them. It is easy to declaim on the im- 
 piety of suicide ; but even where there is not 
 want of vital religion, as seems to have been the 
 case with Marc Antoine Calas, the mind disposed 
 to suicide will ever find quite sufficient justifi- 
 cation, arguments to silence all pleas of con- 
 science. It is by no means always the case that 
 in the end of the contention of the two voices, 
 the *' dull and bitter voice is gone," sometimes 
 the heart which has to decide deliberately makes 
 choice rather 
 
 " To commune with that barren voice, 
 Than that which said, Rejoice, Rejoice." 
 
 That what is told us of young Calas is quite 
 enough to give a clear and definite cause for 
 suicide, if such cause can ever exist, is, we admit, 
 doubtful ; but of two possibilities, and they are the 
 only two that have been suggested, it seems more 
 likely that the son should have desired to live no 
 longer, than that the father should determine to 
 kill him because of an intended change of religion 
 — a father who, when his son Pierre had taken the 
 very step, said, " I approve the conversion of my 
 son, if it be sincere. To attempt to restrain the 
 action of conscience never succeeds but in making 
 complete hypocrites, who end in having no religion 
 at all." 
 
 The 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 137 
 
 The Abbe Salvan having adopted the other 
 belief, naturally tries to strengthen it, and devotes 
 a chapter to the proof that there was a plot in the 
 family, and in fact not confined to the family, but 
 shared by the Protestant sect in Toulouse and its 
 neighbourhood, to put the apostate to death. At 
 the time there were those who believed that formal 
 commands to this effect were to be found in the 
 works of Luther and Calvin ; there was a certain 
 astonishing rumour that a Sieur Cazals, who had 
 visited the demoiselles Calas without their father's 
 knowledge, had had to hide himself under a bed, 
 and there had overheard the formation of a de- 
 sign against Marc Antoine's life, because he had 
 changed his religion. M. Salvan, with a great 
 show of fairness, dismisses this ridiculous story, 
 and then proceeds to show this fairness still more 
 by the following paragraph : — 
 
 "We will grant to the gentlemen of the so-called Re- 
 formed religion that there does not exist in the teaching 
 of the chief Reformers, or in any Protestant synod or 
 council, an article which directly permits or prescribes 
 murder or assassination to hinder a change of religion ; but 
 they must grant to us that religious fanaticism is capable of 
 producing the most horrible excesses. This was the 
 fanaticism of which the Saviour speaks to His disciples (St. 
 John, chap. xvi. ) : ' The hour cometh when whosoever 
 killeth you will think that he doeth God service. ' " 1 
 
 Yes, M. I'Abbe, we grant it fully. Religious 
 fanaticism has produced St. Bartholomew mas- 
 sacres 
 
 1 Salvan, p. 37. 
 
138 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 sacres and Smithfield fires, Lord George Gordon 
 riots and Lord John Russell's Durham letter; it 
 has blackened the fair fame of Catholic and 
 Protestant alike ; but it has seldom made itself 
 more detestably ridiculous than when it saw a 
 plot against a young man's life in the fact that his 
 sisters were absent at the time of his death ; that 
 several people had called at the house of a Pro- 
 testant friend the day before ; that when young 
 Lavaysse said he was detained in Toulouse by 
 the impossibility of hiring a horse, it is not quite 
 certain that he had been to every livery stable in 
 the town ; that M. Cazeing, who had been at 
 Auterive on the day of Marc Antoine's death, had 
 said he had business in Toulouse for which he 
 must return, and he feared that he might be too 
 late. 
 
 Although no attempt could have been made at 
 the time of the arrest to support the vague asser- 
 tions of the crowd by what now must do duty for 
 evidence, the rumours were still more terrible 
 against the Galas family. Young Lavaysse was 
 reported to be the executioner brought from Bor- 
 deaux by the Protestants of Toulouse to put Marc 
 Antoine to death. " They say he is the sacrificing 
 priest {sacrificateur) of his religion ; " that is to 
 say, invested with the horrible occupation of 
 strangling those who were apparently about to be 
 converted.! 
 
 Under the weight of such a terrible imputation 
 
 against 
 1 Coquerel, p. 73. 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 139 
 
 against them, with one of the Capitouls at least 
 pledged to a belief in their guilt, the Calas were 
 put on their defence. We must condense their 
 own account of the affair, as given partly in the 
 examination of the various parties, and in a letter 
 of Madame Calas. 
 
 The house and shop of the Sieur Calas were, 
 as has been said, in the Rue des Filettiers, or 
 Filatiers. The shop gave upon the street, and 
 was divided from a warehouse at the back by a 
 partition, in which were folding doors. This 
 warehouse was lighted from a yard at the back, 
 and both it and the shop opened into a long 
 passage, which led from the street to the staircase 
 and the yard. Upstairs were four rooms, entirely 
 occupied by the family after business hours ; while 
 below the ground-floor was a large vaulted cellar. 
 From the room next the dining-room it was 
 possible to gain the staircase and the entrance 
 to the cellar by an exterior gallery without go- 
 ing through the dining-room and without being 
 seen. 
 
 Young Lavaysse, who was, as we said, delayed 
 in Toulouse longer than he had intended to stay, 
 called on Madame Calas on the 13th October. 
 " After the first compliments, he said to me," 
 as she wrote afterwards, " * I shall sup with you ; 
 your husband asked me.' I said I should be 
 glad to see him, and left him for a few moments 
 to go and give some orders to my servant. In 
 
 consequence 
 
140 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 consequence also, I went to find my eldest son— 
 whom I found all alone in the shop, sunk in 
 deep thought— to beg him to go and buy some 
 Roquefort cheese ; he generally used to purchase 
 this for us, because he understood it better than 
 the others." . . . After supper, " this un- 
 fortunate child, I mean my eldest son, rose 
 from table, as was usual with him, and went 
 into the kitchen. The servant said to him, ' Are 
 you cold, monsieur I'aine? Warm yourself.' 
 He answered her, * Quite the contrary ; I am 
 burning ; * and went out. We sat on a few 
 minutes at table, after which we went into the 
 next room, M. Lavaysse, my husband, my son 
 (Pierre), and I." Here they remained in con- 
 versation till about a quarter to ten, when 
 Lavaysse got up to take leave, and Pierre, with 
 a candle, went down to let him out. As they 
 went downstairs, Lavaysse remarked that the 
 door from the passage into the shop was open. 
 Was this neglect on the part of the servant, or 
 had anyone got into the shop ? Pierre went in 
 to satisfy himself, his friend followed him ; and 
 both, seized with horror, cried aloud with alarm 
 at findmg Marc Antoine hanging at the inner 
 door, which was the communication between the 
 shop and a back shop, which they called the 
 ^varehouse. Across the two leaves of this open 
 folding-door Marc Antoine had placed one of 
 those large round sticks, flattened at one end, 
 
 on 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 141 
 
 on which bales of stuff are rolled. To this he 
 had hung himself by a cord with a double slip- 
 knot. He was in his shirt-sleeves. It was 
 noticed later that his hair was not disordered, nor 
 his clothes ruffled. The police found his coat 
 of grey cloth and his nankeen waistcoat placed 
 on the counter and carefully folded,— a strange 
 detail, which proves certainly not only a voluntary 
 death, but that cool and deliberate determination 
 with which a man carries out a suicide about 
 which he has long thought. Pierre took the 
 hand of his brother ; this movement made the 
 body sway to and fro ; and then the two terrified 
 young men ran to call for help. 
 
 At their cries the unhappy father hurried down 
 in his dressing-gown ; neither of the friends had 
 had time or presence of mind to cut the cord. 
 Calas ran to the body, and seized it in his arms ; 
 the corpse thus raised, the roller fell to the 
 ground. Then the father laid his son on the 
 floor, and took off the cord by slackening the 
 running knot, while he cried to Pierre, *'For 
 God's sake, run to Camoire's (a neighbouring 
 surgeon) ; perhaps my poor son is not quite 
 dead." ^ 
 
 But when all was over— when the surgeon's 
 assistant had said that life had fled— when the poor 
 mother, chafing her son's temples, and endeavour- 
 ing to make him swallow a "cordial," had desisted 
 
 from 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 78, 79. 
 
142 THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 
 
 from her tender, useless task — when Pierre, scarce 
 knowing whither he went, was about to rush again 
 from the house, his father called him back, and 
 said to him, " Do not spread the rumour that your 
 brother has made away with himself; preserve, at 
 any rate, the honour of your unhappy family." In 
 the same spirit of dissimulation, the whole party, 
 at the request of Galas, declared, both to those who 
 came in and to the Capitouls, on oath, that they 
 had found the body extended lifeless on the floor; 
 it was only afterwards that they confessed the 
 truth. The untruth had deplorable consequences, 
 but it was most natural. The legislation of that 
 time with regard to suicides was barbarous in 
 the extreme. It started from the Roman law, 
 '■^ Hojnidda stiij insepultus abjidatur" and added 
 to this atrocity, of which the superstitious denial of 
 burial rites in case oi felo de se still preserves the 
 memory among ourselves, the confiscation of the 
 goods of the suicide to the use of the king. It was 
 this unfortunate but most natural lie which gave 
 the judges the excuse of not believing the after- 
 version of the facts, when, finding the uselessness 
 of persistence, the inability to account for death 
 in any other way, and their own danger, they told 
 the truth. 
 
 The theory for the prosecution which M. Salvan 
 adopts, is, that the death could not have been by 
 suicide because no footstool was found on which 
 Marc Antoine could have stood, because some 
 
 skeins 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 143 
 
 skeins of twine were undisturbed on the door, 
 because the roller was too short to go across the 
 door, because his neckcloth was not loosened. On 
 some of these points the evidence is conflicting ; 
 but on a complete resume of the circumstances, 
 and with the full recollection that no answer has 
 been attempted to M. Coquerel's second revision 
 of the facts, after his first account had been care- 
 fully examined, and in some points assailed by the 
 Abb^ Salvan, we are bound to say we find no 
 evidence whatever for the murder, much for the 
 suicide. 
 
 Three or four days elapsed, during which it 
 became abundantly evident that, in spite of the 
 grave mistake the Galas family had made in 
 attempting to veil the crime of their dead son, 
 there was scant hope of procuring a conviction 
 unless something more was done. It will be re- 
 membered that some at least of the more busy 
 of the Capitouls were convinced of the guilt of the 
 accused ; the King's Proctor was instructed for the 
 prosecution ; the religious world of Toulouse were 
 interested in believing that Marc Antoine Galas 
 was a martyr for the Gatholic faith. There existed 
 at that time in France a most astonishing mode of 
 procuring information in criminal cases. At the 
 request of the civil authority, the ecclesiastical 
 authority was in the habit of issuing an Admonition 
 {Monitoire) to be read after sermon and placarded 
 in the streets, to warn all who knew, by hearsay or 
 
 otherwise^ 
 
144 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 otherwise^ the facts in question, that if they did not 
 declare them to the magistrates or their clergy, 
 they would incur the penalty of excommunication. 
 The Admonition, in the present case, was drawn up 
 by the King's Proctor, and ran as follows :— 
 
 "ADMONITION. 
 
 " I. Against all who shall know, by hearsay or otherwise, 
 that the Sieur Marc Antoine Galas, the elder, had renounced 
 the so-called Reformed religion, in which he was educated ; 
 that he was present at the ceremonies of the Roman 
 Catholic Church ; that he had received the sacrament of 
 Penance, and was about to make public adjuration after the 
 13th of the present month of October, and against all to 
 whom Marc Antoine Calas had disclosed his resolution. 
 
 " 2. Against all who shall know, by hearsay or otherwise, 
 that, on account of this change of creed the Sieur Marc 
 Antoine Calas was menaced, maltreated, and looked on 
 with disfavour in his home ; that the person who threatened 
 him had said to him, that if he made public adjuration he 
 should have no other executioner than the speaker (il 
 naurait d' autre bourreau que lui). 
 
 "3. Against all those who know, by hearsay or other- 
 wise, that a woman who is considered attached to heresy 
 excited her husband to such threats, and herself threatened 
 Marc Antoine Calas. 
 
 " 4. Against all who know, by hearsay or otherwise, that 
 on the morning of the 13th of the present month, a debate 
 was held in a house of the parish of La Daurade, when the 
 death of Marc Antoine Calas was determined or advised, and 
 who shall have seen on that same morning a certain number 
 of the said persons enter or leave the said house. 
 
 " 5. Against all who know, by hearsay or otherwise, that 
 the same 13th day of the month of October, between night- 
 fall and about ten o'clock, this execrable decision was 
 carried out, by making Marc Antoine Calas kneel, who by 
 surprise or by force was strangled or hung by a cord with 
 
 two 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 145 
 
 two slip-knots or nooses, one to strangle, and the other to 
 be tied to a roller used to roll bales, by means of which 
 Marc Antoine Galas was strangled and put to death by- 
 suspension or by twisting the cord. 
 
 "6. Against all who have heard a voice cry 'Murder!' 
 and immediately, ' Ah, my God ! what have I done to you ? 
 Have pity on me ! ' the same voice having become piteous 
 and saying, ' Ah ! my God ! Ah ! my God ! ' 
 
 ' ' 7. Against all to whom Marc Antoine Galas had com- 
 municated the troubles he experienced in his home, which 
 made him sad and melancholy. 
 
 "8. Against all who may know that there arrived from 
 Bordeaux, the evening before the 13th, a young man of this 
 town, who, not having found horses to go and join his 
 relations, who were at their country-house, having been 
 delayed to sup at a house, was present, assenting to or 
 participating in the deed. 
 
 " 9. Against all who know, by hearsay or otherwise, who 
 were the authors, accomplices, abettors or assentients to 
 this crime, which is most detestable. 
 
 " Lastly, against all who know and do not reveal the 
 above facts, circumstances, and consequences." 
 
 The bias against the accused scarce needs to be 
 pointed out ; the opening afforded by the Admoni- 
 tion for more of that old wives' gossip, out of which 
 it had in fact arisen, and no one will be surprised 
 that a mass of hearsay-testimony was at once 
 forthcoming, on which the Capitouls proceeded to 
 pass sentence that Jean Calas, Jean Pierre Galas, 
 and Anne Rose Cabibel (Madame Calas) should be 
 tortured in order that they should confess ; that 
 Alexander Gaubert Lavaysse and Jeanne Viguiere 
 should be present at the examination for the same 
 reason. From this sentence an appeal was at once 
 
 made 
 K 
 
146 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 made to the Parliament of Toulouse both on the 
 part of the Galas, on account of its severity, and 
 by the King's Proctor, who had required a far 
 sterner sentence. But in the meantime the eccle- 
 siastics, who had shown pretty clearly how com- 
 pletely they had made up their mind, were now 
 to give a still stronger proof of it. It was by no 
 means necessary at once to inter the body of Marc 
 Antoine, with regard to which measures had been 
 taken to arrest decomposition ; to bury it was a 
 bold step while the matter was still undecided, 
 since those ran a double risk of sacrilege who 
 interred in consecrated ground, with all the pomp 
 of the Church, a Protestant and a suicide, whom 
 all his family and their Catholic servant declared 
 to be such. However, these considerations did not 
 deter the King's Proctor or the two Capitouls, who 
 urged by the clergy, gave an informal sanction to 
 the interment at a packed meeting, when those 
 only of the assessors on whom they could rely were 
 present. 
 
 ' ' The funeral took place with all possible ceremony. All 
 was done to produce the conviction that Marc Antoine was 
 a mart)n:. . . . An immense procession, headed by more 
 than forty priests, went to bear the body from the Hotel de 
 Ville. The White Penitents were there, with tapers and 
 banner, becasue it was alleged that Marc Antoine had 
 intended to join them. An enormous crowd was present 
 at the service in the Cathedral. . . . This ostentatious 
 demonstration was but the prelude to other ceremonies still 
 more to be regretted. Some days after the funeral, the 
 White Penitents caused a magnificent service to be cele- 
 brated 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 147 
 
 brated in their chapel for the soul of the martyr. All the 
 religious orders were invited and were present at it by their 
 deputations. The whole church was hung with white, and, 
 for the greater effect on the mind, a magnificent catafalque 
 was erected in the middle of the building, on the top cf 
 which stood a skeleton, hired from a surgeon. At the foot 
 of this hideous representation was written the name of the 
 deceased. It held in its right hand a palm, emblem of mar- 
 tyrdom, and in the other this inscription in large letters: 
 ' Abjuration of Heresy.' There was also a service in the 
 Church of the Cordeliers. "^ 
 
 *'It is possible," admits M. Salvan, "that they 
 went a little too far in the honours rendered to the 
 mortal remains of Marc Antoine." We heartily 
 agree with him. 
 
 Pending the appeal to the Parliament, the 
 Protestants on their side were not idle in clearing 
 themselves from the monstrous charge that it was 
 a part of their religion to murder one who had 
 abandoned it. Not only did the advocate of the 
 Calas family obtain a statement from the pastors 
 and others of the Church at Geneva, the strong- 
 hold and centre of Continental Protestantism, that 
 such deeds were absolutely foreign to their creed 
 and principles; but Paul Rabaut, the illustrious 
 and long-tried pastor at Nismes, answered the 
 accusation by his pamphlet entitled ** La Calomnie 
 confondu," bearing this motto: "If they have 
 called the master of the house Beelzebub, how 
 much more shall they call them of his household." 
 (Matt. X. 25.) It seemed to the other party that 
 
 the 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 105, 106. 
 
148 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 the pamphlet was quite sufficiently answered when 
 it was burnt by the hangman. 
 
 The result of the appeal to the Parliament was 
 to open up the whole question again, and to add to 
 the hearsay stories which had been almost sanc- 
 tioned by the Admonition. But the question was 
 really decided as far as Jean Galas was concerned. 
 One only of the thirteen judges voted for an 
 acquittal ; two desired that an examination should 
 be made if indeed it were possible that a man 
 should hang himself at the place specified, which 
 had never been done in all the months which now 
 had elapsed from October till March ; but three 
 were for torture, and probably death ; seven for 
 immediate death. It was hoped that when Jean 
 Galas suffered, enough might be extorted to 
 criminate his fellow-prisoners. 
 
 After tortures which lasted many hours, Jean 
 Galas suffered death on the loth of March, 1762. 
 We need not describe to our readers the agonies 
 he had to bear; it is sufficient to say they must 
 have taxed the ingenuity of even those accustomed 
 to executions, that he bore them with the most 
 exemplary calmness, protesting his innocence to 
 the last. None can read the account of those 
 hours of agony, unless they be singularly blinded 
 by religious hatred, without remarking the contrast 
 of the sufferer's calmness in contradistinction to 
 the fury of those who strove to wring a confession 
 from the dying lips, and the astounding callous- 
 ness 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 149 
 
 ness of the Reverend Canon of Toulouse, who 
 seems to think that after all Jean Calas only got 
 his deserts. 
 
 All hope was now over that the rest of the 
 prisoners could be implicated in the crime. Even 
 the hearsay evidence, if admitted at all, was too 
 feeble. But another trap was laid for the widowed 
 mother of the suicide, who for four days was kept 
 in ignorance of the death of her husband. A 
 soldier on guard told Lavaysse that all the 
 prisoners were condemned to the same death ; 
 but a Dominican monk was introduced into 
 Pierre's cell, to announce to him that this sentence 
 would not be carried out if he recanted his heresy. 
 This moral torture succeeded to a certain extent ; 
 the two young men abjured their faith. On this, 
 Pierre was taken to his mother, for the first time 
 since their imprisonment, that he might tell her of 
 his change of religion in the presence of the monk. 
 It was hoped she would break out into reproaches 
 against him which would justify the assertion that 
 she had been irritated with her eldest son. But 
 the poor woman simply turned away her head and 
 spoke no word. 
 
 It was no longer possible to keep the other 
 prisoners under arrest. Madame Calas, Lavaysse, 
 and the faithful servant, who had suffered in spite 
 of her creed, were set entirely free. Pierre was 
 sentenced to perpetual banishment, but this was 
 only carried out in form. The executioner led him 
 
 out 
 
ISO THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 out of the town by one gate, but a priest went 
 with him, and brought him in by another to the 
 Dominican convent. Here the monk who had 
 been with his father on the scaffold met him with 
 the information that if he continued a Cathohc his 
 sentence would not be pressed. He abjured his 
 faith formally, and remained in surveillance at the 
 convent for four months. At the end of this time 
 he contrived to escape to his brother Donat, at 
 Geneva, and renounced his enforced creed. His 
 eyesight had suffered severely in the dark and 
 unwholesome dungeon in which he had been 
 kept.^ 
 
 No details are extant of the liberation of Madame 
 Galas and her servant, who found a shelter in the 
 house of a friend, A niece of Lavaysse has left an 
 account of her uncle's release. Some friends, who 
 feared the disposition of the people, proposed to 
 smuggle him out with the greatest secrecy; but 
 another, M. Jouve, repudiated this counsel, and 
 demanded that the release should take place in 
 open day. MM. Jouve and Senovert, brother-in- 
 law of Lavaysse, went to bring him out. 
 
 "When the two entered the fatal gaol, in which the 
 prisoner had been kept in the most rigid seclusion, he 
 fainted as he embraced his brother-in-law. Only with the 
 greatest precaution could this last, after having had the 
 irons removed, prepare him for the happiness of seeing his 
 family again. The operation had been painful, since my 
 uncle's legs were greatly inflamed. He got into a sedan- 
 chair, 
 
 1 Salvan, p. ii6 ; Coquerel, pp. 208, 209. 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 151 
 
 chair, and sat there with his hands on his knees, one 
 window being open, by which was M. Jouve ; M. de 
 Senovert was at the other door. From the Hotel de Ville 
 to the Rue St. Remesy an immense crowd was in the way ; 
 but their dispositions were changed ; whether it was that 
 the shedding of blood had quenched the thirst of fanaticism, 
 or that repentant fanaticism was turned to pity, every one 
 congratulated M. de Senovert, and said with tears, ' Oh 
 no! this young man, so handsome, so gentle, son of a 
 respectable person, cannot have assassinated his friend.' " ^ 
 
 The two demoiselles Calas had remained in 
 Toulouse during the months in which the fate of 
 their father was in suspense. At his death they 
 fled to Montauban, where Madame Calas joined 
 them at the house of a friend. Their reunion 
 lasted but a few days. The President of the Par- 
 liament obtained from the Count de St. Florentin, 
 the Secretary of State, two ^^letfres de cachet" to 
 shut up the daughters of "this wretched father." 
 A hope was entertained that one at least would 
 become Catholic, which was destined to be dis- 
 appointed. Rose Calas was shut up in the Con- 
 vent of Notre Dame de la Rue de Sac, where it is 
 said she was treated with harshness. Nannette 
 experienced the greatest kindness at the Convent 
 of the Visitation. To her and her tender gaolers 
 we shall have to return. 
 
 Jean Calas was dead ; a legal sentence, as law 
 was understood in those days, had decided that he 
 was guilty; Madame Calas and her children must 
 beg or starve, as it seemed, for what power had 
 
 they 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 209, 210. 
 
152 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 they to resist the Church and its fanaticism, the 
 law and its prejudices? But another person 
 appeared on the scene, whose influence in France 
 at that time can scarcely be overstated, and was 
 all the greater because he took care not to reside 
 there permanently. Voltaire, then at Geneva, 
 heard of the story, and at once resolved to sift it to 
 the bottoni. Whether Marc Antoine Galas had 
 been murdered by his father, or Jean Galas under 
 the pretence of a judicial trial, was but small 
 matter to Voltaire. He was no more a Protestant 
 than he was a Catholic, and he did not care for the 
 triumph of either faith. But either way, fanaticism 
 had perpetrated an atrocious crime. And what 
 was true and noble in Voltaire was the burning 
 indignation excited in his breast by all crimes 
 committed in the name and under the semblance 
 of religion. In many respects the complete con- 
 trast to our English poet, there was here a remark- 
 able likeness to the feelings and character of 
 Shelley. Voltaire believed in God ; but the crimes 
 committed in the most sacred name made him 
 throw aside the religions to which those belonged 
 who committed them, while really oftentimes 
 contending for a truth which lies at their very root. 
 Shelley said that he did not believe in God ; he 
 was in reality fighting against false conceptions of 
 the Divine Being, and did much to help men to a 
 truer ideal of Him whom he thought he assailed, 
 when he stripped off all attributes which dishonour 
 
 holiness 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 153 
 
 holiness and truth. And together with deplorable 
 irregularities in their lives, there was in both the 
 most ardent loveof humanity, a spirit of mercy and 
 charity which should cover a multitude of sins. 
 We make this hasty comparison simply to show 
 more clearly, by means of one more known and 
 read than Voltaire is now, what is our attitude 
 towards him whom people hate on hearsay, or on 
 their judgment of one or two sayings which startle 
 and shock us. But he spoke the truth when he 
 said of himself : 
 
 " J'ai fait un peu de bien, c'est mon meilleure ouvrage." 
 
 Voltaire wrote in all directions to inquire into the 
 real state of aifairs. The very Protestants themselves 
 at a distance from Toulouse were imposed on by 
 the trial, and had thought Calas guilty; and his 
 mind was still in doubt. But finding that Donat 
 Calas was in Geneva, he sent for him ; and after a 
 long interview, in which he interrogated him closely 
 on all the relations of Jean Calas with his children, 
 he made up his mind that the father was innocent. 
 From that moment he exerted himself to obtain 
 the reversal of a sentence which was disgraceful to 
 his country and to humanity. He was incessant in 
 his entreaties to powerful persons of all opinions 
 and classes to obtain a re-hearing of the case 
 before the '''• conseil du roij" and once heard, apart 
 from the strife of religious parties at Toulouse, the 
 sentence was reversed as far as the living were 
 
 concerned. 
 
154 THE STOR V OF JEAN CALAS, 
 
 concerned. The Parliament of Toulouse, obstinate 
 and stupid to the last, suppressed, as far as they 
 could, the public announcement of their own con- 
 demnation. With a wise moderation, no measures 
 of recrimination were taken, though no doubt the 
 Capitouls and the Parliament were open to an 
 action on the part of Madame Calas, as well as of 
 the other prisoners; but Voltaire and Lavaysse 
 were both strongly against it, and Madame Calas 
 acted entirely under the advice of the former. 
 Indeed, so crushed had she been by the blow, that 
 no small pressure had to be exercised to make her 
 take even the necessary steps for the declaration 
 of her husband's entire innocence. A royal gift to 
 the survivors of the family recompensed them in 
 some degree for the material sufferings they had 
 undergone, for the loss of their trade, and their 
 banishment, for such it practically still was, from 
 their home. When the many sins of Voltaire 
 against decency and reverence are remembered, 
 his tolerance and charity should be allowed their 
 weight in the opposite scale. We cannot but feel 
 with M. Coquerel when he exclaims : 
 
 " All honour and gratitude to Voltaire for having striven 
 alone against intolerance so frightful, even now so powerful, 
 and for having conquered it. All honour and gratitude to 
 Jean Calas, whose blood, heroically shed in slow tortures, 
 has washed the most abominable calumny from his brothers 
 in faith, and has assured to them anew the respect and the 
 sympathy of the world." * 
 
 M. Salvan 
 
 1 Coquerel, p. 263. 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN CALAS. 155 
 
 M. Salvan can see nothing to admire in the 
 conduct of Voltaire. He says : 
 
 " When Voltaire is in question, the comic is ever mixed 
 with the serious. He wrote to D'Argental as soon as he 
 heard the news : ' A young Calas was with me when I 
 received your letter, that of Madame Calas, that of Elie, 
 and many others. Young Calas and I shed tears of joy. 
 My old eyes yielded as many as his ; mes chers anges, we 
 were choked by them.' What a buffoon ! " 
 
 If theological prejudice thus blinds one who has 
 investigated the whole case, to the noble generosity 
 of an enemy, we need not be surprised that he 
 refuses also to believe there were any grounds for 
 the reversal of a sentence which he could wish 
 a just one. He thinks it proves much against 
 Jean Calas that the popular opinion of Toulousan 
 Catholics still believes him guilty, and that while 
 there are three different traditional accounts of the 
 way in which Marc Antoine was put to death, all 
 agree that he was murdered. In resuscitating the 
 gossip of a provincial town, he shows the same 
 strange misconception of the nature of evidence as 
 he does when reviewing that brought before the 
 Capitouls. * 
 
 For ordinary Catholics, who have not investigated 
 the facts with the care M. Salvan gave them, and 
 without M. Coquerel's exhaustive book under their 
 eyes, there is much excuse for misconception. But 
 they widely misconstrue M. Coquerel if they think 
 that he wrote his monograph in order to attack 
 the Catholic religion. 
 
 M. Coquerel's 
 
156 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 M. Coquerel's aim is not to show that the 
 Church is necessarily fatal to fair dealing, char- 
 ity, and kindliness ; he neither says so, nor, so 
 far as we know his mind, does he think so. His 
 desire is to rescue, once for all, the memory of one 
 of his co-religionists, still vilified, and to place in 
 its true light a passage in the history of his then 
 bitterly persecuted Church. He did not forget 
 the life-devotion of the Catholic servant, Jeanne 
 Vigui^re ; we shall find also in some of his pages 
 which we are now about to notice that the most 
 rigid Catholic orthodoxy is consistent with the 
 most affectionate tenderness towards a heretic. 
 
 Nannette Calas was, as we have said, imprisoned 
 for a considerable space of time at the Convent of 
 the Visitation at Toulouse. She was especially 
 given into the charge of Sister Anne Julie Fraisse, 
 with a view to her conversion. The attempt was 
 made in vain ; but there grew up between the two 
 women of ages and stations so different the most 
 cordial and affectionate friendship. Sister Anne 
 Julie Fraisse had powerful relations ; and from her 
 convent cell she made efforts, while Voltaire was 
 making the same on his side, for the declaration of 
 the innocence of the Calas. Her keen woman's 
 instinct came to the same conclusions as those to 
 which his reason and examination led the philo- 
 sopher. " Closed within her narrowing nunnery 
 walls," she allowed her interests and affections to 
 range freely beyond them, and eagerly espoused the 
 
 cause of an heretic. But 
 
 "We 
 
THE STOR V OF JEAN CALAS. 157 
 
 " We shall be thoroughly mistaken if we take Sister Anne 
 Julie for a strong-minded woman, if we suppose that she 
 had the smallest sympathy for the ' enlightenment of the 
 age,' which she held in profound abomination. She was 
 seriously and truly a devout Catholic. She had not the 
 least doubt about the eternal damnation of her young 
 friend, not for her sins — she found her full of virtues, and 
 even recognised in her some piety — but because of her 
 religion."! 
 
 After leaving the convent, Nannette married a 
 Swiss Protestant minister, named Duvoisin, estab- 
 lished in Paris, with whom she lived in happy- 
 marriage thirteen years, till his death in 1780, and 
 had by him three children, only one of whom grew 
 up to manhood. She died in 1820, having survived 
 her sister Rose, who lived with her, twenty years. 
 Madame Calas had died in 1792 ; Jeanne Viguiere 
 twelve years earlier. 
 
 During the years 1762 to 1775, about forty letters 
 passed from Sister Anne Julie to Nannette, the 
 answers to which have unfortunately been lost. 
 They reflect a pleasant sunset glow over the 
 sombre history we have narrated. 
 
 "The general character of these letters seems to be 
 that of the truest and warmest sensibility, expressed 
 naturally with much grace and spirit. The language is 
 often incorrect. It is sometimes easy to see the nun has 
 thought in Languedoc patois the phrase which she trans- 
 lates carelessly into French. . . . She never looks a 
 moment for the best word, when she has found one 
 
 energetic 
 
 1 Coquerel, p. 287. 
 
158 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 energetic and precise, which says what she wants to say. 
 Sister Fraisse deserves a place in the list of those select 
 women authors without intending it, whose lively and natural 
 letters are one of the ornaments of our literature, and 
 count among the most attractive creations of the French 
 mind."i 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 + " Vive Jesus. 
 
 "From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 26th October, 
 1763. 
 
 "It is a long while, my dear Nannette, since you have 
 heard news of me, or I of you. I would flatter myself, as I 
 can assure you on my side, that neither forgetfulness nor 
 indifference has had any share in it. You are always in my 
 heart, and to my last breath I shall never cease to pray God 
 for your salvation with as much ardour as for my own. He 
 only knows my desires and my sighs. But I must break off 
 all that I could say. This is a subject which affects me 
 even to tears. ... Ah ! if I could see you again in my 
 clutches, which are not destructive, I would lose no occasion 
 of proving my tenderness. If you see your brother (Louis) 
 give him the news of the death of the Abb6 Durand, whom 
 a malign^int fever carried off in a week. He died as holily 
 as he lived.2 
 
 " I have again some new marriages to announce of the 
 same sort as the last. We have had in the house for a 
 month Mademoiselle Ville, twin-sister of our sister Marie 
 Melanie, who taught you how to knit mittens. She came 
 here to make a retreat, with a view to deciding her future 
 condition in life. She will be married this very month. "U'e 
 
 have 
 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 378, 379, 380. 
 
 2 " These last words are crossed out, but are legible, as 
 the good nun probably meant them to be." The Abb6 
 Durand had taken a prominent part in the conversion of 
 Louis the good-for-nothing. As appears from other pas- 
 sages. Sister Anne Julie had no good opinion of the Abb^ 
 Durand, and by no means considei^ed his life a saintly one. 
 
THE STOR V OF JEAN CALA S. 1 59 
 
 have had another whom perhaps you know, Mademoiselle 
 Opiats, very devout, the daughter of a merchant at the port. 
 She has gone. I do not know if she will decide as the 
 others have done. See how wrong Nannette was not to 
 say, I will be a nun."i 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 + "Vive Jesus. 
 
 " From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 30th May, 1764. 
 
 " I am busy about you before the Lord for 
 
 what would render you really happy. I hope against hope, 
 and shall hope till my last breath. The power of the Most 
 High is greater than our resistance. We must always hope 
 for those precious moments, which are fixed in the eternal 
 decrees. 
 
 " I have not yet got over the loss we have suffered this 
 Lent of our sister Marie Henrictte Lapeirie, from an attack 
 of colic, such as you saw her in when I was ill. We cannot 
 accuse Lent of it ; since that illness she has never been in 
 the habit of fasting. The colic seized her on the Thursday 
 in Passion Week, and she died on the Saturday. We have 
 regretted her much. She was a girl of a good disposition, 
 and was only thirty-two. The ladies Notonnier and De 
 Grave (who had both been inmates of the nunnery as 
 boarders) are about to lie in. The former has taken up her 
 abode at the very top of her house, and weeps freely when 
 she sees any visitors." 2 
 
 On the 4th of June, 1764, the Council had arrested 
 the sentence of the Capitouls and the Parliament, 
 which was the first step towards its complete re- 
 versal. 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 + " Vive Jesus. 
 " From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 13th June, 1764. 
 "I am so overjoyed, my dear little friend, that I scarce 
 
 know 
 
 1 Coquerel, p. 394. 2 Coquerel, p. 394. 
 
i6o THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 know how to express it. Read my heart, and you will find 
 in it all that is in your own. I take a large share in all that 
 it feels. Your interests, your pleasures, your sorrows, are 
 good and evil, which belong to me as much as to you. It 
 will ever be the same up to my last breath. P^ar or near, 
 you are always with me. When I am before God, I say 
 much to Him for you. 
 
 "When the tribunal shall be named to go thoroughly 
 into the matter, let me know as soon as possible. Our 
 nuns are in almost all the towns in the kingdom ; we may 
 perhaps find for you acquaintances and help. 
 
 "Tell me, dear Nannette, if the consequences of your 
 suit for the recovery of your property will not necessitate 
 your coming for awhile into this neighbourhood. Do not 
 forget this point when you write to tell me the Parliament 
 is appointed. I am and shall be always youi-s, 
 
 " Sister Anne Julie Fraisse, of the Visitation of 
 St. Mary. Blessed be God." 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 + " Vive Jesus. 
 
 "From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 17th April, 1765. 
 
 " Oar Parliament has held, it is said, secret 
 
 meetings, to examine the legality of the reversal of the 
 sentence, but they have found no means by which they can 
 oppose it. They say they will have the proceedings (at the 
 trial) printed, and give them to the public as their justifica- 
 tion. I answer, they will take care not to do so. I can, 
 however, assure you that every one who knows you is 
 delighted at your triumph. Our superior, all our nuns, are 
 overjoyed. . . . You have gained all hearts. Often at 
 recreation the only talk has been about my dear Nannette, 
 whom every one praised ; and they have ended with this 
 exclamation, ' Mon Dieu, what a pity ! ' (that she remained 
 Protestant). 
 
 " As to my third question, I do not despair 
 
 about it. I do not count on your fortune ; I know only too 
 well that you have none ; but I cannot persuade myself that 
 
 your 
 
THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. i6i 
 
 your face, your rare qualities, are not worth more than 
 considerable sums, in case — and in case ; without wanting 
 in the respect we owe to St. Paul, if the affair have to do 
 with a Catholic, dare the step, and I will answer for it that 
 God and St. Paul, far from being angry, will be quite 
 pleased. Never forget that you have promised to tell me 
 everything which may happen to you. You see I affect to 
 give you advice before you ask it, but everything is allow- 
 able in friendship. With you my heart thinks aloud. I 
 trust so entirely in the goodness and steadiness of your 
 mind, that I believe you guaranteed from participating in 
 the damnable systems with which Paris is infected. You 
 have naturally a pious heart and mind ; a little ray of the 
 true light would make you a perfect Christian." i 
 
 Here is a pleasant little exchange of compliments 
 between the nuns and Dr. Sol, a physician in large 
 practice at Toulouse. He had conformed out- 
 wardly to Catholicism, as so many did, for the 
 sake of the certificate which allowed him to follow 
 his profession ; but it deceived no one, nor did he 
 allow it to do so. 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 
 -f "Vive Jesus. 
 
 " From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 30th April, 1766. 
 
 " I gave M. Sol as soon as possible all the kind 
 
 messages for him in your last. I have only had too much 
 occasion to see him this last week ; he has almost lived in 
 our house, for a little child of M. le Marquis de Puilaroque, 
 who, after all his care, has gone to Heaven. M. Sol envied 
 her lot. I said to him that the good God afflicted us by 
 choosing our house to take away from us the poor children 
 entrusted to our care. He answered that our house was 
 the pathway to heaven. ' Why, then, do not you become a 
 
 Brother 
 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 400, 401. 
 
i62 THE STORY OF JEAN GALAS. 
 
 Brother of the Visitation? ' ' I would become,' said he, ' a 
 gardening lay brother, were I as sure of my part in Paradise 
 as that little one who will be there an hour hence.' 
 
 ' ' Is not that a charming conversation with a Protestant ? 
 Blessed be God ! We must adore His plans and submit to 
 them. Yet I am troubled about them, and ray dear little 
 friend has certainly her part in this trouble." ^ 
 
 Some little disappointment was experienced by 
 Sister Anne Julie, when Nannette Calas married 
 M. Duvoisin, not only a Protestant, but a Protes- 
 tant minister. But she made the best of it, and 
 her letters grew more tender as advancing years 
 brought her nearer to the land in which she dared 
 not hope to meet her earthly friend if she continued 
 in her heresy. One more extract must suffice us : 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 + "Vive Jesus. 
 
 " You wish to have news of me. My health 
 
 is very good. My employment— manageress of our vast 
 estates, and archivist. If you have not forgotten our house, 
 I have a very pretty room, very pleasant in summer; we 
 call it the vaulted closet. If you will come and occupy it 
 with the little monkey, it is quite at your service. The dear 
 husband would be out of place there ; my offer cannot go 
 so far as that. I beg you to assure him, in spite of my 
 refusal of a lodging, of all my good wishes always for his 
 happiness. . . . 
 
 " I embrace you with all my heart. . . . 
 
 " From our Nunnery at Toulouse, this 4th January, 1769. 
 Hay ! " 
 
 The old lady, born with the century, had just 
 entered her 70th year, which explains the joyous 
 
 exclamation. 
 1 Coquerel, pp. 409. 
 
THE STOR Y OF JEAN GALAS. 163 
 
 exclamation. Her tenderness and her happy tem- 
 per were given her to the end of her devout life. 
 
 If Voltaire, the accomplished literary scoffer, 
 and Sister Anne Julie, the illiterate nun of the 
 Visitation, could ever have met, the meeting would 
 not have been without its interest. Each would 
 have had much to learn from the other, and might, 
 possibly, having learned it, joined hand and heart 
 for the conversion of M. David de Beaudrigue. I 
 have endeavoured to bring them together on paper 
 by the death-pangs of Jean Calas and the hard- 
 ships of his family, and to make more audible, 
 perhaps, to some, the cry, which rises louder and 
 louder from men of all parties and creeds, for 
 toleration and forbearance, greater belief in the 
 virtues of our adversaries, and greater trust in 
 man. 
 
 If this cry be heard more clearly now through 
 his death than when his human voice was stilled, 
 Jean Calas' blood was not shed in vain. 
 
WHAT WE KNOW OF 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 THERE is, I suppose, no question that Shak- 
 spere is the best loved poet of the English race. 
 His name rises to our lips as that of the man in 
 whom the literary majesty of our language, and the 
 literary expression of English thought have as yet 
 culminated. When other poets, the spokesmen of 
 our time, have need of a representative man whom 
 to name, they take him. When Wordsworth has 
 to justify the Sonnet form ; not yet popular, per- 
 haps never to be so ; wherein were so many of 
 his own triumphs, he calls to mind that " with 
 this key Shakspere unlocked his heart." When a 
 Vision of Poets rises before the mental ken of 
 the greatest woman poet of our day, Shakspere 
 seems to her to transcend them all in glory. 
 When Charles Kingsley addresses the woman who 
 seemed to him wisest and fairest of all, he con- 
 ceives that he can praise her best in saying : 
 
 *' Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspere's self! 
 No head save some world-genius ought to rest 
 Above the treasures of that perfect breast." 
 
 There 
 
i66 WHAT WE KNOW OF SHAKSPERE, 
 
 There can be none who know not Matthew 
 Arnold's Sonnet in which he likens Shakspere to 
 
 " the loftiest hill 
 Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty.'* 
 
 Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, Kingsley, Arnold ; 
 you will hardly find four teachers who more 
 fitly express the matured conviction of the best 
 minds of the age, in putting forward Shakspere as 
 the wisest and greatest in the intellectual record 
 of our nation. 
 
 If we look to the supreme name of each other 
 country — I confine myself to modern days, the 
 time we understand and whose thought we can in 
 a measure gauge, — there is but one name we can 
 compare with his ; Dante alone can be considered 
 for a moment ; the grandest German, Goethe, the 
 most brilliant Frenchman, Voltaire— I speak of 
 them only as intellectual giants,— the wisest and 
 wittiest Spaniard, Cervantes, are out of all compari- 
 son. But if the definition of the supreme Poet 
 would approximate as nearly as possible to that of 
 the supreme man : " Perfect God and Perfect Man, 
 of a Reasonable Soul, and Human Flesh subsist- 
 ing" : then I think that Dante would be found 
 somewhat lacking on the human side, while 
 Shakspere would not be found below Dante on 
 the divine. 
 
 But in claiming for one of our own blood such 
 magnificent, such pontifical rank in the great 
 church whereinto the entrance depends not on re- 
 pentance 
 
IVBA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 167 
 
 pentance and faith, through the baptism of water, 
 but on intellect alone, and most often through the 
 baptism of fire and blood, it is well to be careful 
 and to pause, lest English prejudice bias us over- 
 much. We may reassure ourselves, on testimony 
 in no degree suspect. 
 
 To put it at its lowest estimate. Positivism is one 
 of the great motive forces of the world at this 
 present moment. It may not do all that Auguste 
 Comte expected from it, but at least he is a man 
 to be reckoned with, in the shaping of the age's 
 thought. Now in framing the Calendar of his new 
 divisions of the year, Comte selected thirteen 
 names of - men for those of the months, as 
 typical of the phases through which the human 
 mind has passed, and of various stages of human 
 development. These stages overlap each other,, 
 but they are, roughly speaking, chronological, and 
 the name of the person prefixed to each month 
 is of him who exemplified most completely the 
 character of each phase. In the month which 
 bears the name of Shakspere, Auguste Comte 
 summed up the spirit of the Modern Drama. If 
 we study that Calendar, well deserving attention 
 even from those who are not Positivists, we shall I 
 think discover that the wide soul and luminous in- 
 telligence of its framer are shown in the fact that 
 his own nationality moved him so little in his 
 choice of names. It is strange that a Frenchman 
 has not selected as his chief name Racine, nor 
 
 Comeille, 
 
i68 IVI/A T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Corneille, but one whom even Voltaire had not 
 known how to appreciate. 
 
 If we take the two men who, in Germany, during 
 the last century are best known to us, we shall find 
 Goethe and Heine in full agreement about Shak- 
 spere's preeminence. In Wilhelm Meister is to be 
 found the most brilliant criticism which exists of 
 Hamlet, while Heine's boundless admiration for 
 Shakspere is but intensified by the scorn and 
 distaste he felt for almost all else that was English. 
 And cultivated Germans, their countrymen, know 
 as a whole more about our Poet than we do our- 
 selves. It is in no narrow spirit of provincialism 
 that we put him among the greatest of the world. 
 
 Now, if we could call the dead to life, clasp their 
 hands and bid them lead us, sit at their feet and 
 pray them teach us, lay our head on their knees 
 as little children do to their parents and tell them 
 our perplexities and struggles, whom would we 
 choose, we who are English men and English 
 women of to-day? We should feel, to adopt 
 Comte's list for a moment in default of another, 
 that Moses and Homer and Charlemagne are too 
 vague, their forms too veiled in mist to come at 
 them ; we should be like the disciples of old, who 
 '* feared as they entered into the cloud." St. Paul 
 and Dante, tender and compassionate as we know 
 their inmost hearts to have been, are too austere 
 externally, too far withdrawn ; who would try to 
 warm himself at a star? The philosophers, the 
 
 men 
 
W.HA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE, 169 
 
 men of science, are full of aid for our intellect, but 
 if we love them and seek them, it is not for the 
 qualities which make them great. The one man to 
 whom we should turn, the most human, who had 
 the most varied knowledge of life in all its depths 
 and windings, is he whom we now consider, our 
 English Shakspere. 
 
 Yet how different is the look of Shakspere, as we 
 know him, to that of any one else. It helps us 
 much in our understanding of a man that we are 
 aware of how he appeared to his fellows. Run 
 over in your mind the great men who have in- 
 fluenced your lives ; of some we can never know 
 how they looked; they lived before painting or 
 sculpture were Arts. But of the undoubted por- 
 traits of men whom we do know, all save one 
 have the same characteristic ; we see in them 
 some likeness, more or less true, in many cases 
 very true, of the men as they lived. Few, perhaps 
 none, represent the whole man. Only a great 
 painter here and there has ever succeeded in 
 giving what we feel to be the entire character, as 
 after many years the inner life had stamped itself 
 upon the outward form. Bellini's Doge in the 
 National Gallery, David's Pope Pius VII. at 
 Fontainebleau, are such, but the generality of 
 portraits give only a partial view of the spirit 
 manifest in the flesh. But they are living, they 
 can be understood. The face of Shakspere is not 
 to be understood. It is the face of a man who was 
 
 alive 
 
170 WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 alive and is dead. All special feeling is discharged 
 from it : 
 
 " His face, that two hours since hath died, 
 Wilt thou find passion, pain, or pride? " 
 
 There is no doubt that the authentic portraits of 
 Shakspere are based on the Stratford Bust, and 
 that is taken, more or less imperfectly, from a death 
 mask. Mr. Woolner has pointed out that the bust 
 is certainly the work of two hands ; the whole of the 
 face, and lower part of the forehead by one who 
 knew thoroughly what he was about, but worked 
 from a cast of the dead ; the upper part by a less 
 competent person, perhaps the mere village mason, 
 working where the mask failed him. We know 
 therefore of this face only the grand result, summed 
 up by the artist, Death; we see not what went to 
 form it; we know the whole and we do not know 
 the parts ; it is the most inscrutable of all portraits, 
 save perhaps that of Dr. Donne, born nine years 
 later than Shakspere, as he stands shrouded, in 
 marble effigy, in the south ambulatory of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. 
 
 It is not, I think, fanciful to say that the teaching 
 we gain from Shakspere as a whole is of the same 
 kind as that which is symbolized by his face ; it is 
 based on broad human principles from which we 
 may derive guidance for ourselves in particular 
 instances ; but he has not a cut and dried maxim 
 for every problem which presents itself to us, nor a 
 rule for every hour, nor a code by which we are to 
 
 think, 
 
WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 171 
 
 think, feel, believe. He has no system of casuistry, 
 not even ten commands, nor eight beatitudes ; he 
 tells us little of his own life, lest we call him master 
 over much ; he will only say : " thus and thus life 
 looked to me ; I show you as in a mirror all that 
 has seemed to me most notable for example, or 
 for avoidance." We will seek some of these broad 
 lessons. 
 
 Shakspere is revealed to us in three ways, and it 
 is often said that the revelations in each kind are 
 scanty ; but before giving our assent to this it will 
 be well to see what they are. The first is of course 
 given through the facts in his outward life. It is 
 not superfluous to recapitulate these, for here in 
 fact our positive knowledge is larger than we 
 always recognize. 
 
 He was born in 1564, six years after the accession 
 of Queen Elizabeth, and he died in 1616, thirteen 
 years after the accession of James I. Thus his 
 life is coincident with the morning hours of the new 
 time on which our English nation was then enter- 
 ing. We may fairly hold that the Middle Ages 
 expired with Mary, though their feeble breath was 
 nearly quenched with that of Henry VIII. His 
 life ended before the stormy days came under 
 James's son, days which caused the minds of men 
 to run in narrower channels, great as were the 
 writers, Milton and Clarendon and Jeremy Taylor. 
 But while Elizabeth reigned, breadth and freedom, 
 as well as depth of intellect, marked the high tide of 
 the English Renascence. John 
 
1 72 WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 John Shakspere, the father of William, was a 
 well-to-do townsman at Stratford-on-Avon, and 
 there is no real difficulty, although one has been 
 raised, in the fact that those who have made 
 researches into his calling have found him variously 
 occupied. For it is very common indeed in pro- 
 vincial districts to find one man engaged in most 
 different trades. John Shakspere farmed his own 
 land, and was designated as "yeoman," a respect- 
 able term which, as well as the thing it signified, 
 has almost died out. He went through the various 
 town offices, becoming alderman and high bailiff. 
 Of a family which could trace its descent through 
 at least four generations, he married Mary Arden, 
 who was a substantial heiress, and of a stock which 
 dated back to the Conqueror. Two years before 
 his death he received a grant of Arms from the 
 College of Arms, then much more important than 
 now it is. The Coat of Arms comes under what is 
 called "canting heraldry," that is, it contains an 
 allusion to the name. A spear is the charge on the 
 shield, and the crest is a Griffin holding or shaking 
 a spear. This has probably tended to fix the spell- 
 ing of the name down to the present day. The 
 spelling of names was most wild and wayward three 
 centuries ago ; that in question varies between 
 Shaxper, Shakspere, probably the most genuine 
 form, and Shakespear in various ways. 
 
 I mention all these things because I am intimately 
 persuaded that there is no such thing as gathering 
 
 grapes 
 
WBA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 173 
 
 grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. And to 
 find that Shakspere was sprung on both sides from 
 men who had the education, the culture and the 
 gentle training of their time, goes far to explain 
 what he was. One of the most powerful motives, 
 as it seems to me, for self-cultivation, ought not to 
 be even our own enjo}Tnent, but to help the gene- 
 rations yet unborn, our children, who so largely 
 depend on what we are. 
 
 William Shakspere was the eldest son of his 
 parents, and was sent at the age of seven to the 
 Grammar School of Stratford, where he remained 
 till he was about fourteen. It is said that John 
 Shakspere fell into some business difficulties, and 
 that William had to leave school early to aid his 
 father. There is a tradition that he was bound 
 apprentice to a butcher, but this may, I think, be 
 dismissed as nonsense, there being a confusion 
 between his father and a Thomas Shakspere at 
 Warwick, who was actually in that trade. Another 
 tradition says that he taught in the school at which 
 he had been educated; and it is by no means 
 unlikely, and quite in accordance with custom, 
 that, as he rose in the school, he should have 
 taught the younger boys. It is certain that in the 
 years during which he was at school, and after- 
 wards in his father's business, he read not many 
 books but much ; and he learned that which ought 
 to be the aim of all boyish education, not to cram 
 the memory with facts and figures, but how to use 
 
 all 
 
174 W^A T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 all that comes to us in life. It may be that Shak- 
 spere knew "small Latin and less Greek," it is still 
 more true that he retained what he had learned 
 better than most men, and the result shows, that in 
 nearly every branch of the knowledge of those days, 
 Shakspere was better educated than the great 
 majority of men, then or now. 
 
 We know little of how his time was occupied 
 when he was not teaching, or with his father in 
 business, but he thoroughly steeped himself in the 
 country which was round him. When in after 
 years he laid the scene of one of his plays in the 
 forest of the Ardennes in France he described it as 
 he saw the forest of Arden, which lay at his door ; 
 the little town of Henley in Arden still keeps the 
 memory of the name. There is a story of his 
 having gone out with poachers, and shot a deer 
 belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, 
 whom he afterwards caricatured as Justice Shallow, 
 and there is no reason to reject it. For in fact there 
 is scarce any country place, in which many respect- 
 able young fellows might not have, or indeed have 
 not, entered into such mere boyish frolics in pur- 
 suit of sport, so dear to the heart of every English 
 lad, at some time in his life. That the scrape was 
 not serious is evident from his frequent returns to 
 Stratford, after he left it for London, and his settle- 
 ment there again as a substantial land-owner, 
 townsman, and burgess. It seems unlikely that 
 any such youthful escapade drove him to leave 
 
 Stratford 
 
WHAT WE KNOW OF SHAKSPERE. 175 
 
 Stratford for London, especially as we know of a 
 more persuasive reason. 
 
 Shakspere was wise enough, or fool enough, to 
 marry when he was only eighteen, a woman of 
 twenty-six, and before he himself was two and 
 twenty he had three children. His wife, Anne 
 Hathaway, was the daughter of a yeoman, and 
 there seems no reason to doubt that it was a true 
 love match, happy, if somewhat imprudent. I take 
 it that the first love of most honest young men is 
 for women somewhat older than themselves ; it is 
 seldom that circumstances allow them to marry 
 their first loves, or the kind of alliance would be 
 more frequent than is the case. Nor was the 
 marriage so rash as it may now seem. In the 
 many businesses carried on by the Shakspere 
 family, a fair living was to be anticipated for the 
 son and successor, even if some of those trades 
 were not as profitable as heretofore ; life was not 
 so complicated as now it is ; while it was much 
 more versatile, and men began their careers earlier. 
 
 When three years were over, however, things did 
 not look bright, and Shakspere went to London to 
 see if fortune had aught in store for him. There is 
 not one single fact to prove that he left home 
 because he was unhappy in his marriage, as has 
 been suggested ; nothing to substantiate the asser- 
 tion that his first connection with the theatre was 
 that of holding horses at the door. It is probable 
 that he came to seek a patron for a poem he had 
 
 already 
 
176 WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE, 
 
 already composed, the "Venus and Adonis." It 
 was common in those days to court a wealthy and 
 titled patron, literature not having as yet attained 
 strength to run alone. 
 
 It is impossible to say how he became connected 
 with the stage, but he became a player, and in the 
 first instance an adapter and rewriter of plays 
 written by others, with a keen eye for what the 
 stage needed. He made friends among the great, 
 his first Poems being dedicated to Lord Southamp- 
 ton ; and Lord Pembroke, one of the brightest 
 figures in Elizabeth's court, was to him more than 
 a brother. These were persons whom a young 
 man from the provinces, less great by nature, 
 would as a rule scarce have known, and though 
 he had the passionate love of many, he had no 
 less the passionate hate of others. Men of strong 
 character have friends and enemies of equal 
 fervour, if not in equal numbers. 
 
 The literary skill which was in Shakspere grew 
 by using, and when he wrote his greater works he 
 must have known his power ; yet he was careless of 
 his gift, prizing it not for itself, but as a means to 
 an end — the acquisition of property which he could 
 call his own, in his birthplace. Thither he retired 
 when he could, and, finally, as soon as he could ; 
 there he died, while yet in the flower of his age. He 
 had sorrows, for he lost his only son ; he had joys, 
 for he realized his ambition; and he fell asleep 
 while the wife of his youth and his daughters could 
 
 lay 
 
WHATWEKNOWOFSHAKSPERE. 177 
 
 lay him in the quiet church, where he hoped to rest 
 undisturbed. We may let some foolish traditions, 
 some trivial verses ascribed to him, slumber, and 
 suppose them to be harmless burs such as stick to 
 every man who passes through the fields of life, 
 but are no part of himself, nor even of his true 
 environment. But in regard to the life as a whole, 
 we may wonder why some people assert that his 
 wish to attain a competence, and settle down in the 
 abode of his forefathers, was other than noble. 
 There are few more interesting and touching 
 passages in Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings, 
 than that in which he tells us of the great Procon- 
 sul's desire to purchase Daylesford, and build up a 
 home once more, where his ancestors had lived and 
 died. What was noble at Daylesford in the eigh- 
 teenth century was not less so in Stratford in the 
 sixteenth. There is something most pathetic in the 
 thought that he, whose spirit searched the hidden 
 deeps of humanity, and soared to its summits, lived 
 an outward life on its level plain, and was concerned 
 with those everyday things which are the staple of 
 an ordinary man's occ upation. If we think at times 
 that our lives are monotonous and prosaic, lacking 
 in the stir and romance which would, we dream, 
 quicken our pulses, and ennoble our souls, it may 
 be well to remember that Shakspere's feet rested 
 on solid commonplace earth. And if to live for 
 others be the highest calling of man, to do so un- 
 consciously, and by a noble human instinct, is 
 
 greater 
 
 M 
 
178 IVHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 greater than to follow, however carefully, a conscious 
 and deliberate plan. 
 
 Between these lines of outward fact which are 
 known to all, much may be read by those who have 
 eyes to see. Meres, Chettle, Ben Jonson, who loved 
 him, all have pregnant sentences about him, and in 
 his favour ; Greene and Nash sneered at him ; 
 Davies too has disparaging allusions, but he also 
 speaks of his "honesty," that is, honour and good 
 character. I would refer those who wish to gather 
 up all indications of Shakspere's life and character, 
 to a chapter in Mr. Gerald Massey's recent work on 
 Shakspere's Sonnets called " The Man Shakspere 
 and his private friends," and to a valuable collec- 
 tion of Essays, " Noctes Shaksperianse," written 
 by members of the Winchester Shakspere Society. 
 We should however always read Mr. Massey with 
 great caution, and we ought wholly to disagree 
 with his theory of the Sonnets. There will dawn 
 to the patient investigator a vision of the man very 
 much clearer than that of any other Elizabethan 
 writer save Ben Jonson, far more distinct, for 
 instance, than that of Beaumont or Fletcher, of 
 Marlowe or Greene. If we regret the fact that we 
 know the purely literary men of those days so far 
 less than the statesmen, some of whom, though 
 literary men, are remembered chiefly because they 
 are statesmen, as Sidney and Raleigh, we should 
 recognize that this is in the nature of things. We 
 are acquainted with every detail of the lives of our 
 
 greatest 
 
WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 179 
 
 greatest statesmen now, but how little men in 
 general know of our greatest poets, of Tennyson 
 and Browning; of our greatest novelists, Meredith 
 and Hardy ; and if this be true in these days of 
 Biography and Autobiography, of Interviews and 
 Celebrities at Home, how much more was it the 
 case when a man was on the whole allowed to live 
 his life unto himself alone, not forced against his 
 will to " wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws 
 to peck at." Besides, what Heine says is most 
 true: 
 
 " The want of definite information about Shakspere's life 
 is easily to be explained when we think of those storms, 
 both religious and political, which broke out shortly after 
 his death, which for some time put the Puritans in absolute 
 power, and afterwards had such withering influence, so that 
 not only was the golden age of Elizabethan literature 
 brought to nought, but totally forgotten." 
 
 The second revelation is of course through the 
 Plays. But to this statement a limitation must 
 be made, inasmuch as we may not suppose for a 
 moment that Shakspere has drawn a portrait of 
 himself in any character of his dramas. To say 
 that he was Romeo in his youth, or Hamlet 
 when the problems of existence pressed on him, 
 is manifestly absurd ; if aught of himself were 
 depicted in either, it can be but a small portion. 
 He would seem to have guarded against any such 
 superficial interpretation by placing characteristic 
 touches of self in the mouths of baser persons, as 
 
 when 
 
i8o WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 when the wonderful description of a good name is 
 given by I ago. He would not have been a true 
 artist, if it were possible to accept such a sugges- 
 tion. The self-revelation consists in the manner 
 that he views life as a whole. He is the greatest 
 writer of a time in which humanity was object 
 enough in itself, was in its own foreground, and 
 middle distance, and background ; was not seen 
 as projected against the clear sky of heaven, or 
 the lurid smoke of hell ; in which man was not 
 considered with reference to some other life, and 
 the world was not contemplated only as a mere 
 passing atom in time, in contrast with the abiding- 
 ness of the Eternal. Let me explain what I mean 
 by a rapid survey of some earlier presentments of 
 man. 
 
 The Greek Tragedians exhibit all their scenes 
 and figures against a great background of Destiny, 
 only another name for that which was afterwards 
 known as the Calvinistic conception of God. "In 
 God we live and move and have our being," said 
 St. Paul, and in that sentence he summed up the 
 essence of the Old Testament Scriptures. The 
 New Testament gathered up Humanity into Christ, 
 who, ex hypothesis was Very God. The one great 
 Epic of the Middle Ages leaves earth altogether, and 
 shows us men moving in the after world, which was 
 mapped out with a precision greater than that em- 
 ployed on terrestrial charts. The master book of 
 devotion in the Middle Ages, the Imitation of 
 
 Christ, 
 
WHATWE KNOW OF SHAKSPERE. i8i 
 
 Christ, is absolutely scornful of things that are, 
 except in reference to those which are to be. And 
 if our English Chaucer be the one exception among 
 earlier poets in his human and mundane concep- 
 tion of the life which transacted itself before him, 
 Tennyson has chosen the right phrase in consider- 
 ing him a harbinger of Shakspere. In Shakspere 
 was summed up the English Renascence on its 
 purely and simply secular side. Of course he 
 brings in the unseen world here and there, and 
 equally of course when he does so, he speaks the 
 theological language of his time, but his motives 
 are of this world, his virtues of this world ; here 
 are his punishments, here are his rewards. The 
 great scene between Claudio and Isabella in 
 " Measure for Measure," is typical of this, in which 
 the sister is exhorting her brother to play the man, 
 and die if need be to expiate his fault. She, the 
 nun, the votaress of St. Clare, looks on death 
 simply from the human side : 
 
 " The sense of death is most in apprehension, 
 And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, 
 In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies." 
 
 Claudio says " Death is a fearful thing," to which 
 Isabel retorts, ** And shamed life a hateful." 
 Claudio pictures to himself a purgatory and a 
 hell, while Isabel says no word of the future life. 
 And so is it throughout. Shakspere never pro- 
 jects life against the supernatural. But all the 
 
 splendid 
 
1 82 WHATWE KNOW OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 splendid pageant of his age moves before him, and 
 the past is coloured by the life of his present. He 
 painted men as they were, nothing extenuating, 
 nor setting down aught in malice. He had the gift 
 of a large sympathy, which did not disdain the 
 mirth of clowns, nor the ignorance of the un- 
 learned, nor to smile while he pitied Falstaif. He 
 saw the pathos of life, its unrealized ideals, its 
 hopeless failures, as well as its triumph and its 
 crown. There is in him none of the careless 
 spirit personified in the Epicurean Gods, nor does 
 he venture to stand in the place of a great and 
 final judge ; but he is as one who knows that all is 
 working to one far off divine event, and that the 
 fantastic tricks of the units which compose the 
 whole neither make much, nor mar much. 
 
 At the same time that he had these broad and 
 general sympathies, he was a specialist if ever one 
 there were. It would be wearisome to recapitulate 
 the many speculations on his training, his educa- 
 tion, his opinions, his callings in life before he 
 became a player, founded on the exact know- 
 ledge of details on so many subjects to be 
 found in the Plays. He must, it is said, have been 
 a lawyer's clerk, because of the legal knowledge 
 displayed by him, he had studied medicine, wit- 
 ness his acquaintance with mad folk, he was a 
 protestant, he was a catholic, he was this or that. 
 On most of these matters we may speculate as we 
 please, but in the stormy Renascence time when 
 
 so 
 
WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 183 
 
 so much was destroyed, he was conservative in the 
 best sense, and he was above all the mirror of his 
 time. The England of Elizabeth will stand out 
 vivid before men for ever ; whatever else becomes 
 mythical and unreal, of that we can say : it was 
 thus and thus. 
 
 The third great Revelation of Shakspere is 
 through the Sonnets. Mr. Massey is the most 
 recent among those who believe that these are not 
 personal; I hold on the contrary that they are a very 
 important factor in our understanding his charac- 
 ter, that they are, just so far as we can interpret 
 them, that unlocking of his heart by Shakspere to 
 all whom it might concern. 
 
 His confessions therein are as truthful as man 
 ever made to his friends or his fellows, but they 
 have not in them the perfect clearness and passion- 
 ate self-abasement of St. Augustine, nor the un- 
 abashed complacency of Rousseau. Shakspere 
 never mixed his soul with clay, he had that truest 
 repentance which consists in the wish to amend; 
 he never lost his nobleness of aspiration, he told 
 his faults with a dignified reserve of words. I 
 think that if the details of the story sketched in 
 the Sonnets are here and there obscure, the main 
 facts are clear enough. The one great love of 
 Shakspere's life was that for a friend. It was 
 such as David had felt for Jonathan. It was such 
 as in its intensity, purity, and absolute unselfish- 
 ness only the rarest souls can experience, or even 
 
 fully 
 
i84 JV//A T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE, 
 
 fully understand. Alongside of this devoted 
 friendship ran a love, which was not so innocent, 
 for some unknown woman. Anne Hathaway, now 
 Anne Shakspere, left, of stern necessity, behind at 
 Stratford, was for awhile forgotten, or at least she 
 ceased to hold her due place in her husband's 
 heart; his friend was aware of this passion, and 
 yet supplanted him. There was a time of bitter 
 anger and sorrow ; a time in which he felt his faith 
 in human nature giving way, a time in which he 
 mourned his wrong-doing, striving after righteous- 
 ness and peace once more, and these at last he 
 attained. He put from him his illicit love, and he 
 forgave his friend, so reaching a counsel of per- 
 fection to which but few attain, forgiving not only 
 till " seven times, but until seventy times seven. ''' 
 The whole of this revelation is manly, dignified, 
 sublime. That great crisis of soul which is called 
 conversion can be best understood by the man 
 who has read St. Augustine's Confessions, how 
 base and immoral can be the man of fine in- 
 tellect and keen sensibility can best be imagined 
 by the student of Rousseau, and in the Sonnets, 
 the other of the three great Confessions of the 
 world, may be read the history of a soul which 
 keeps its balance, its true respect for manhood and 
 for self, even in the stress of penitence. 
 
 It will thus be obvious to any who have followed 
 the argument that we need not agree with critics 
 who like Delius consider the Sonnets as "the free 
 
 outcome 
 
WHATWE KNOW OF SHAKSPERE. 185 
 
 outcome of a poetic imagination," nor with such as 
 Dyce, who considers that only a few sonnets refer 
 to circumstances of the poet's life, while the main 
 body of them may be regarded as mere exercises 
 of the fancy. The rcducHo ad absurdunt of this 
 theory is to be found in the elaborate work by Mr. 
 Gerald Massey already mentioned ; a ponderous 
 monument of misplaced ingenuity. 
 
 Nor can I assent to those who consider there is 
 anything unworthy, ignoble, or unmanly in the 
 unusual love and admiration Shakspere exhibits 
 for the younger friend who wronged him. It was a 
 mode of the time to give the reins to the fancy in 
 speaking of friendship as in speaking of love. It 
 must be remembered that, though there were 
 exceptions, women of intellect were fewer than 
 now, and that although in theory a wife is now, 
 more often than perhaps in fact, the mate of a 
 man's spirit as well as of his body, the intellectual 
 camaraderie which all men need was, at least in 
 those days, more often to be found in a friend than 
 in a lover. Hence in writers of the Elizabethan 
 age those outpourings of affection towards the 
 same, which are now usually restricted to the 
 other, sex. As Professor Dowden well says : 
 "The writer of amatory sonnets was expected, 
 as a matter of course, to express an extravagance 
 of sentiment. But friendship, a marriage of soul 
 with soul, was looked upon as even a more ardent, 
 and more transcendent power than love. In 
 
 Allot's 
 
i86 PVHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Allot's Wits' Commonwealth (1598) we read: The 
 love of men to women is a thing common and of 
 course, but the friendship of man to man infinite 
 and immortal." 
 
 So writes the sanest critic I have met with on the 
 Sonnets. But if any are yet inclined to think that 
 Shakspere's words to his friend exceed the bounds 
 of honest and honourable praise, if any think them 
 effeminate, I would say only this further : There is 
 but one coarse word or phrase in the whole range 
 of the Sonnets, and that one, as it so happens, 
 absolutely negatives any suspicion dishonouring to 
 Shakspere. 
 
 There are who do not think themselves bound to 
 fashion any theory about the persons in the drama 
 unfolded by the Sonnets. They would seem to hold 
 that if they cannot fill in all the details there is not 
 use in making a sketch. I cannot feel with them. 
 As in scientific, so in literary matters of this kind, 
 it is good to have a working hypothesis round 
 which the facts may crystallize, even at the risk of 
 having again to dissolve them if a new discovery be 
 made. Any provisional order is better than dis- 
 order. Such a working hypothesis may be found, 
 with many it is also conviction, in supposing that 
 the youth of the Sonnets is Pembroke. He was 
 nineteen when Shakspere was thirty-five. There is 
 no figure who moves with more stately beauty 
 through the pageant of the Elizabethan Age ; there 
 is none whom all the allusions in the Sonnets seem 
 
 to 
 
WHA T WE KNO WOF SHAKSPERE. 187 
 
 to suit so completely. I am unable to admit with 
 Dowden that the patron of these poems is " a dim 
 figure." The rival poet who for a while supplanted 
 Shakspere in Pembroke's affection is more dim, 
 Daniel or Chapman seem the most probable 
 guesses. The woman who was the cause of all the 
 woe, the woman for whom Shakspere and his friend 
 almost sacrificed their passionate and happy friend- 
 ship can perhaps never be identified. To quote 
 once more from Dowden : — 
 
 " We shall never discover the name of that woman who 
 for a season could sound, as no one else, the instrument in 
 Shakspere's heart from the lowest note to the top of the 
 compass. To the eyes of no diver among th • wrecks of 
 time will that curious talisman gleam. Already when 
 Thorpe dedicated these poems to their only begetter, she 
 perhaps was lost in the quick-moving life of London, to all 
 but a few in whose memory were stirred as by a forlorn 
 small wind the grey ashes of a fire gone out." 
 
 But the name of Pembroke is enough— let the 
 Sonnets cluster round him, and the story, I think, 
 becomes comparatively clear; in reading it, you 
 lay your hand, as it were, on Shakspere, and feel the 
 beatings of that stormy and mighty heart, before 
 he attained to the calm in which we think of him 
 now among the Immortals. 
 
 But it is of course to be admitted that the Sonnets 
 show one phase only of Shakspere's life, the 
 Sturm und Drang Pertodej not the finally serene 
 and prosperous man who died at Stratford while 
 yet in the flower of his age. 
 
 Thus 
 
1 88 IVHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Thus have I endeavoured to give in outline what 
 we know of Shakspere. Each separate portrait 
 must have details filled in by patient study. The 
 scholar should avoid, as the Plague, the framing in 
 his own mind a Life such as Dean Plumptre has 
 written of Bishop Ken, in which on every page you 
 find what might have been rather than what was. 
 But as we search contemporary literature, and 
 mark one by one the allusions to Shakspere, read 
 Marlowe, and recognize the actual quotations, find 
 out the few books then in print, native or translated, 
 which he must have handled, the edition of Mon- 
 taigne above all, which we know that he possessed ; 
 the dry bones will clothe themselves and the mist 
 of three centuries clear away. 
 
 Then take the Plays, and consider whether there 
 we do not find those among whom the Poet moved, 
 so that we may see what were his relations to 
 other men ; whether it does not pass from an 
 hypothesis into a certainty that Nash, who jeered 
 at Shakspere, was answered in "Love's Labour's 
 Lost ; " and that Davies, the writing master of 
 Hereford, sat for Malvolio ; whether greater men 
 and dear friends, Pembroke, and Southampton, 
 and Essex are not shadowed out. And here I 
 would again name to be read, but to be used with 
 singular caution, Mr. Massey's Essay on " The 
 Man Shakspere, and his private friends." 
 
 For the Sonnets, the true way of study is to 
 translate them, to write them into prose, to analyze 
 
 them, 
 
WHA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE. 189 
 
 them, and leave no passage till it has cleared itself 
 to your mind, and after these three revelations are 
 examined, it will be a surprise to the student how 
 near he has got to the very man whom at a dis- 
 tance he has already loved. 
 
 We all know how theologians delight to dwell 
 on the faint indications of certain Scripture charac- 
 ters, and to show how in slight words and touches 
 are subtle hints from which a whole life can be 
 evolved, of Abraham, of David, of the Apostles, 
 of the Blessed Virgin. The devout soul knows that 
 these indications are true ; can live with the saints ; 
 can trust itself to their guidance, not at all as 
 abstractions, but as friends, as patrons. The dead 
 are alive, recreated not only by faith, but also by 
 a spiritual comparative anatomy, which learns to 
 reconstruct a whole from a part, as famous osteo- 
 logists have restored long-forgotten animals from 
 fragments of bone. What science has done for 
 the prehistoric world, and religion for the sainls, 
 love can do for Shakspere, and the reverent 
 student can attain to know him, through whom, 
 more than any writer, we may know Man, the 
 proper study of mankind. 
 
 We are led by him through the throngs of life, 
 as a child who clings to a father's hand through the 
 streets of this great city. Some vile faces the child 
 must see, debased by passion, some rough words 
 will strike the ear, but the firm grasp and the en- 
 couraging tones of the guide are with it all the 
 
 way, 
 
IQO JVUA T WE KNO W OF SHAKSPERE, 
 
 way, and the shifting mob proves a useful education 
 under this firm, wise, and omniscient conduct. 
 
 It is the condition of our modern hfe that we can 
 rarely be alone; the hermit life is over, and we 
 can at best have a few hermit hours now and then. 
 For those periods of retreat and solitude, the 
 Psalmist, the Evangelists, Thomas \ Kempis, and 
 men like these are our best companions ; but for 
 our struggling ordinary life, "this workaday 
 world," so "full of briars," there is no nobler, 
 no more beloved teacher, than the man to whom 
 I have bowed all my heart in these words, to 
 whose feet I have tried to lead you. 
 
THE PRODUCTION AND 
 LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 IT is intended to trace in the following pages the 
 life of a book, from its first conception in the 
 womb of an author's mind to its grave, that long 
 home, unknown, often long deferred, yet which 
 surely awaits all which is wrought by man, as well 
 as the toiling hand and busy brain which made it. 
 There are few subjects of which the outside world 
 is so profoundly ignorant as of the processes con- 
 nected with the production of books ; who can or 
 who cannot write them ; the mechanical act of 
 writing them ; how they are printed, on what paper, 
 and how bound ; how they are sold and distributed ; 
 how they are treated by buyers and readers ; how 
 and on what principle authors are paid or not 
 paid ; finally, what books live for longer or shorter 
 periods; how they die, are buried, and are for- 
 gotten, and sometimes reappear, like ghosts, from 
 the realm of the dead. 
 
 It may seem an obvious matter that no one has 
 any business to write if he have not something 
 
 definite 
 
192 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 definite to say, which is, or at least appears, worth 
 saying. But this is not so. If a person have fallen 
 into poverty, say a lady left, by the death of father 
 or husband, with limited means, or a gentleman 
 who has failed in business, the lady is recommended 
 to keep a school, the gentleman to take pupils, and 
 both to write a book. The whole outfit is supposed 
 to consist in a few quires of foolscap, a steel pen, 
 and a bottle of ink. Round everybody is almost 
 sure to be a certain circle, who, totally ignoring all 
 mental qualifications, or those derived from educa- 
 tion and experience, think their friend has only to 
 put pen to paper in order to win fame and money. 
 MSS. are sent to publishers in heaps, ill written, ill 
 spelt, with no knowledge of their subject, display- 
 ing ignorance which would discredit a Board-school 
 boy or girl ; and these their writers and their writers' 
 friends conceive to be worth, not only the expense 
 of publication, but a considerable sum of money to 
 boot. 
 
 It may be taken as an axiom, that no first books 
 and few others are worth giving to the world which 
 do not spring naturally from the author's feeling 
 that he has something to say which will benefit 
 others to hear. That quality, called inspiration, 
 existing in very different degrees, is always needed 
 for the making of a true book. There are, of course, 
 some Hmitations to this statement. A practised 
 writer, long warmed by the sacred flame, may re- 
 tain an>fter-glow, may have learned a trick of pen, 
 
 which 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 193 
 
 which may carry him on for some time when the 
 impulse has ceased ; but even then some lighting 
 of the brands by fire as from heaven, some kindling 
 from a wind from without, is needful again and 
 again, were the writer as copious as Scott, as 
 versatile as Goethe, That quality, called inspira- 
 tion, existing in very different degrees, is always 
 needed for the making of a true book. Whether he 
 appeal, as Heber, to 
 
 •' Ye guardian saints, ye warrior sons of heaven," 
 or as Pope, — 
 
 ' ' O thou my voice inspire, 
 Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire ; " 
 
 or in the frigid and, as it were, stereotyped invoca- 
 tion to " the Muse," or is silent about his feelings, 
 but feels all the same, the genuine author knows 
 that there is beyond the range of his ordinary 
 thoughts and experiences a power which over- 
 masters and constrains him, or else his utterances, 
 on whatever subject, will be worthless. To those 
 who declare that they have something to say, and 
 ask how best they shall say it, should be given all 
 encouragement ; what though the message be never 
 so slight and trivial, there springs in it a spark 
 from mind to mind ; but utter extinction should be 
 swiftly accorded to him or her who says practically, 
 " I want to talk, and now let me consider what I 
 shall talk about." 
 
 But, granted this inspiration, this something 
 which is not self, more still is needed— a liberal 
 
 education. 
 K 
 
194 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, 
 
 education. Of course here, too, are exceptions, 
 such as the " Ettrick Shepherd," or Bloomfield the 
 farmer's boy, and Chatterton. But without asking 
 too carefully whether the great majority of such 
 exceptions have contributed aught really worth 
 having to literature, and without insisting on the 
 fact that the great majority are lyrical poets, whose 
 **cry" is more spontaneous and less dependent on 
 the treasures of the past than is the work of epic 
 and dramatic poets, or prose authors, the excep- 
 tions may be admitted ; yet it may be maintained 
 that the more a man has of learning and general 
 culture the more likely he is to write well, even on 
 his own special subject. It is not here meant that 
 he is to drag in illustrative quotations, than which 
 perhaps nothing is more tiresome, but the turn of 
 a phrase, the allusion to a character, and other 
 indications which show an intellectual reader that 
 he and the author are denizens of the same spiritual 
 land, and have wandered through the same scenes, 
 often make the whole difference between the sensa- 
 tions of delight and weariness. It might seem 
 absurd to insist on an elementary knowledge of the 
 English tongue as a qualification, were it not con- 
 stantly absent even in printed books ; so that 
 we can gather what abuses of the long-suffering 
 grammar must be perpetrated, which never see the 
 light ; and it would be superfluous to maintain 
 that legible writing and a neat MS. are advan- 
 tages, did not painful experience teach how often 
 
 they 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 195 
 
 they are neglected. A knowledge of logic and of 
 the rules of metaphor are also much to be desired, 
 and of foreign languages, if an author undertake 
 to translate, as so many do, considering it an easy 
 task, whereas it is one of the very hardest to execute 
 well. Perhaps the most singular bundle of meta- 
 phors ever produced in writing came from a gentle- 
 man who was thoroughly acquainted with the 
 matter he treated, but was not equally familiar with 
 the rules of English composition. He wrote thus : 
 — Eclecticism is like the mule in creation, essentially 
 barren. Without foundations it soon totters to its 
 fall, and dies as it has lived, childless and intestate." 
 That writer was a man, and the work was original ; 
 but the chief sinners in false metaphor and bad 
 translation are women. 
 
 Not long since, a lady undertook a very simple 
 version of a German book, in which Count von 
 Moltke gave an account of the coronation of the 
 late Emperor of Russia. She wrote, "The arch- 
 bishop poured the oil on his head, and two bishops 
 fastened on his spurs." The word in German is 
 " Spur," and means a trace, and what the bishops 
 had really done was to wipe the oil away. Another 
 lady called the father of Cardinal Cusanus, "a 
 mussel-fisherman at Treves," from simple ignor- 
 ance that the river there is called the Mosel, and that 
 mussels are sea -fish. 
 
 But we will suppose that a book is written and 
 that its author has surmounted the preliminary 
 
 difficulties 
 
196 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 difficulties of want of inspiration and want of learn- 
 ing. We will assume it has been written on one 
 side of the paper only, and in quarto, not in folio 
 size ; that the pages are numbered, and that they 
 are not all fastened together, a most irritating and 
 vexatious proceeding. It is, perhaps, too much to 
 assume that the MS. has been carefully revised, 
 because many people put this off till, as they say, 
 they can see it in print. Things look so different 
 in type, they are tired of MS. ; the alterations can 
 be, at worst, but slight, and are far more easily 
 made in proof. Now herein are several fallacies. 
 Correcting proof, except the mere errors of the 
 printer, is an expensive business. The estimate 
 made for printing a book, whether given to the 
 author or the publisher, assumes that only such cor- 
 rections and a few more will be made in proof, and 
 all else is charged extra. There never yet lived an 
 author who was not quite sure he had corrected 
 very little, and those who are most guilty are the 
 most confident that they have made next to no 
 changes. Nor is it true that all things can be best 
 corrected in proof. When the MS. leaves the 
 writer he has taken leave of his book as a whole. 
 He afterwards gets it only piecemeal— he is unable 
 to compare the beginning with the middle and the 
 end. When we read a story and find that Mr. 
 Brown in Chapter I. is called Mr. White in Chapter 
 X., that Edward becomes Thomas, and so on, we 
 may feel sure, not so much that the writer is a care- 
 less 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 197 
 
 less proof-corrector, though that is true, as that 
 the original MS. has been untidy, careless, and ill 
 revised. 
 
 However, suppose the book to exist in MS., and 
 that it has to take its chance, first of finding favour 
 with a publisher, next with the public. Let it be 
 carefully remembered that not every book which 
 has a literary has also a commercial value ; 
 and that the one is not necessarily in any degree 
 the measure of the other. If a book is transcend- 
 ently good on any subject, it will, no doubt, sooner 
 or later, succeed ; if it is bad, it will sometimes 
 succeed because of its very badness ; it may appeal 
 to the vulgar, or the base, or the trivial. But if the 
 writer be not a Robertson as a preacher, or a 
 Macaulay as historian, a George Eliot as a novelist, 
 or a Browning as poet ; if he be one of the aver- 
 age public who has written a fairly good book, 
 success will depend on whether the book at the 
 moment hits the fancy of the public or supplies 
 a want just then felt : it rarely creates the demand. 
 Whatever it be, it will probably be carefully and 
 kindly considered if sent to a publisher. No author 
 need ever seek an introduction to a publisher, 
 nor fear that a MS. will not be examined. Good 
 authors are too rare for publishers to run the risk 
 of passing them over, and it is quite certain that 
 there is no respectable firm who does not give just 
 so much attention as is its due to every MS. offered 
 to them. There are stories, mostly fabulous, 
 
 though 
 
198 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, 
 
 though some may have a grain of truth, of MSS. 
 which have wandered from house to house, rejected 
 and despised, at last accepted to the fortune of 
 the clever publisher who discovered the author's 
 merits, and to the shame and confusion of face of 
 those who refused the offered boon. But what of 
 that? The legends, however true, would only- 
 show that publishers are not infallible, not that the 
 MSS. were unconsidered. And the book got into 
 print at last ! The fact is, that books worth having 
 are rarely, if ever, lost to the world ; in the literary 
 market, as well as all other markets, good wares 
 are willingly taken and fetch their full price. 
 
 What that full price is depends on a number of 
 causes ; but it may be said that it is rarely indeed 
 the value the author puts upon it. Suppose, for 
 instance, that a book will cost ;^ioo to produce, 
 and is to sell at 6s. Says the author, glibly, " A 
 thousand copies, which are sure to sell, will realise 
 £2P^, so that after the book is produced and paid 
 for, there will remain two-thirds of that sum to 
 divide." "Stay," says the publisher; *'how are 
 you to get it distributed.? What is to become of 
 the booksellers, who must make their profit? 
 What of the review copies, without which it will 
 not be noticed at all ? What of the chances that it 
 does not sell, and is a loss instead of a gain ? " 
 This may serve to show the marvellous kind of mis- 
 takes into which authors fall when they estimate 
 the value of their wares. There comes a happy 
 
 time 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 199 
 
 time to some when they can in a degree fix the 
 value aright. A successful novelist, like George 
 Eliot, a successful poet, like Lord Tennyson, does 
 attain to know the trade value of a story or a 
 ballad ; but the experience must first be a wide and 
 a long one, and even then the author does not 
 always understand that his name in a magazine at a 
 given time may be worth more than the story or the 
 poem, which in itself, and in another magazine or 
 at another time, might not be worth half the money. 
 
 Again, much will depend on the number of copies 
 likely to be needed. There is a vast crowd of 
 books good and useful, of which a small edition, 
 likely to satisfy the whole demand, just pays its 
 expenses, leaving little for division. And there are 
 certain technical books appealing to only a few 
 which can never, under any circumstances, pay 
 their cost. It would be well if, on proper examina- 
 tion by competent persons, these were now and 
 then subsidised by Government, as they are in 
 . other countries ; but these must always be too few 
 to need any special mention. 
 
 Of ordinary ways of publishing there are several. 
 I. The sale of copyright. In this case the pub- 
 lisher takes all the risk, the author receives a 
 lump sum down, and, as far as he is concerned, 
 thf^re is an end of the transaction. In the case 
 of a work of but ephemeral value, such as the 
 ordinary novel, the arrangement is good for the 
 author, and the publisher knows, or ought to 
 
 know. 
 
200 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 know, his business. 2. The payment by royalty. 
 That is, that the author assigns the book to the 
 publisher, taking, by agreement, so much on each 
 copy sold, either from the first or after a certain 
 reserved number of copies, or on each edition ; 
 but these modifications do not affect the principle 
 of the arrangement, by which the publisher takes 
 the risk, and the profits are divided in a definite 
 specified manner. If the book have any per- 
 manent value, and is likely to run to edition after 
 edition, this is by far the fairest way. For take a 
 book, say like a scientific treatise, or a school- 
 book requiring revision from time to time, of which 
 the author sells the copyright, and after a couple 
 of years, on a new edition being required, a 
 complete revision is needed. Without a further 
 payment the author does not care to revise that in 
 which he now has no pecuniary interest ; if the 
 book sells, the publisher's temptation is great not 
 to bring it up to the highest standard; therefore the 
 ideally excellent arrangement is one by which both 
 are interested in making the book always complete 
 by fresh revisions. The system of *' half profits" 
 is misleading and unsatisfactory; it should never 
 be employed ; a definite royalty on definite copies 
 is one on which there can be no mistake and no 
 dispute. Or, 3, a book may be published on com- 
 mission ; that is, the writer bears the whole ex- 
 pense, the book belongs to him, the publisher 
 taking a certain commission on the sales. If the 
 
 publisher 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 201 
 
 publisher consider a book will prove a success, he 
 would of course willingly make it his own specula- 
 tion; and the fact of taking it on commission usually 
 shows that in his judgment the work has but a 
 slender commercial value. But there may be many 
 reasons why it should yet be brought out. And if it 
 be the mere whim of the writer, the £100 or ;^2oo 
 spent upon it, some of which is sure to be returned, 
 is of more good to the world, and of more pleasure 
 to the writer, than would be the case did he buy a 
 picture or a gem of the same cost, to be seen by 
 fewer than those whom his book may instruct or 
 amuse. Some books are also published on com- 
 mission because the author is so confident of his 
 work that he prefers to take for himself the risk 
 and the profit. 
 
 *' Why should I not get my own estimate and 
 print for myself ?" is a common question, and 
 the answer is manifold. A book arranged by an 
 amateur is almost always disagreeable to the eye. 
 The reader will often not know why a given page is 
 so much pleasanter to read than another, when an 
 experienced person will see at a glance that the 
 print of one is too wide on the paper, and the 
 breadth of a single letter would make all the differ- 
 ence; there are a dozen little details of this 
 sort which need personal attention at every turn. 
 Nor can an amateur successfully advertise or dis- 
 tribute his book. Even an author of the celebrity 
 of Mr. Ruskin has crippled his usefulness and 
 
 injured 
 
202 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 injured his sale by attempting amateur publish- 
 ing. 
 
 When all these matters are decided, a specimen 
 page fixed, the different kinds of type decided, and 
 so on, the printers begin their work. The MS. is 
 given to a number of men who are arranged in a 
 group, which is called a "companionship," and 
 these are, or ought to be, occupied continuously on 
 the book till it is done. But authors give the 
 printers trouble, if, on the other hand, it is some- 
 times amply repaid in kind. They will not always 
 send all the " copy," as it is termed, at once, when 
 it is most important that the printers should have 
 their whole work before them ; they will not return 
 proofs promptly, nor make their corrections at the 
 same time, but send them in by driblets as second 
 thoughts ; all of which are exceeding interruptions 
 to business Those who have had proofs to correct 
 have noticed on the MS. returned with them names 
 written on the margin. This shows what portion 
 has been allotted to each man of the group, and 
 explains why it is important that only one side of 
 the paper be written on, or the same sheet might 
 have to be divided amongst two men, and paper is 
 not yet made so thick as to enable them to split it 
 in its thickness. 
 
 As soon as the printing is begun, usually on long 
 strips of paper containing from two and a half to 
 three pages of the book, begins also too often the 
 strife as to spelling between author and printer. It 
 
 has 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 203 
 
 has probably occurred but little to many readers 
 what variations there can be, and how different 
 are the customs of different printers. If a writer 
 have any wish that his own punctuation and spell- 
 ing be followed, let him be quite clear that he 
 knows his own mind, and give, in writing, the 
 strictest orders that no alteration whatever be 
 made. If there be any one thing a really good 
 writer knows, it is that punctuation is simply meant 
 to aid the reader, and there is no hard-and-fast 
 rule for commas and semicolons. But a printer 
 has his hard-and-fast rule, only that the rules 
 are not uniform in different houses. So with 
 spelling. If we left it to the printers we 
 should, unhappily, soon cease to write English, 
 we should write American. We should have 
 *' favor " and " honor " for " favour " and 
 honour"; we should "commence" instead of 
 " begin " ; we should have the vulgarity of " Did 
 you have?" instead of "Had you?" Not long 
 . since a new edition of a volume of sermons by Dr. 
 Pusey was sent back from the printer with the 
 author's spelling in an already printed volume 
 altered on almost every page— "judgement" with 
 an "e" to '■'■ judgment" without one; "Oh," 
 into "Ol" and the like— simply because the 
 pedantry of that particular office decided that its 
 rule was better than that of one of the greatest 
 scholars of England. 
 But now to come to misprints proper. The late 
 
 Provost 
 
204 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, 
 
 Provost of Eton, Dr. Goodford, when a tutor, had 
 a formula which he never tired of repeating, 
 " Never think till you are in the Sixth Form " ; till 
 then his pupils were to look out and verify each 
 word in a dictionary. Yet he would have been the 
 first to admit that the boy who never thought was 
 even more hopeless ; the truth lay between the two 
 contradictions, "never think" and "ever think." 
 So a printer has to steer with difficulty between 
 them, and it is hard to say which is the most trying, 
 the man who blunders because he thinks, or the 
 one who does so for an opposite reason. Misprints 
 are wonderful, and are often such as seem invented 
 by the evil one himself, so perverse is their in- 
 genuity. 
 
 Some recur after all alterations, when the printer 
 is quite certain that he is and must be right. Victor 
 Hugo once used the English word '■'•varlet^^ in 
 one of his plays. It came back again and again 
 printed '^ valeV M. Louis Blanc, when living in 
 England, wrote an article in English, in which he 
 correctly gave the French phrase, ^^^outrance" 
 But since one of the commonest mistakes made by 
 Englishmen is to use that phrase as " h Poutrance" 
 M. Louis Blanc, in spite of all his corrections, got 
 it finally printed wrong. How could a Frenchman 
 possibly know better than a British workman ? If 
 this were so, where were the uses of Waterloo ? 
 
 The cost of such corrections as are necessitated 
 by blunders of the printer is charged to the printer, 
 
 but 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 205 
 
 but all else falls on the author or publisher, as may 
 have been arranged. Few matters connected with 
 books are a more frequent source of disagreement 
 than corrections ; for, as the printers work by- 
 time, it is difficult to decide what minutes, or 
 fractions of minutes, are occupied in any given 
 change. This further may be said to those who 
 write, that all corrections made when the book is 
 divided into pages are more costly than when the 
 matter is in slip. 
 
 When the book has advanced a certain stage, 
 varying with the size of the volume, the resources 
 of the printer, and in great measure with the type 
 adopted, the printer will often ask for a "release" 
 of type, that is, he will print from his fonns already 
 set up as many copies as are wanted of those 
 sheets, and distribute the type, or take the letters 
 apart. Then it is that the number of the book 
 likely to sell has to be calculated, 500, 750, 1,000, 
 or more, and whether it shall be moulded, or 
 stereotyped. Few persons have the smallest 
 notion of the great weight or cost of the type used in 
 printing, say, a crown octavo book of 500 pages. 
 In such a book, there will be nearly 25 cwt. of type, 
 and the cost will be over ;^i6o, exclusive of what 
 is called furniture, chases, &c., all that is used in 
 holding the type. When distributed the type 
 must, of course, be set up again if a new edition 
 be wanted, and the cost incurred de novo ; and to 
 avoid this expense, and the still vaster cost and 
 
 warehouse-room 
 
2o6 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 warehouse-room of keeping any large number of 
 books standing, stereotyping, or electrotyping, which 
 is a sort of glorified form of the first, is adopted in 
 regard to such books as are likely to have any 
 large sale without being changed to any great 
 extent. The first process of this is called moulding, 
 and in case of uncertainty this alone may be at 
 first undertaken. The types as they stand for each 
 page have a cast taken of them in soft yielding 
 material, papier-machd or plaster-of- Paris, which 
 becomes hard as it dries, just as the impression of 
 a seal is taken in bread-crumb or wax ; the stereo- 
 plate is made by running metal into the mould, 
 which, in the case of electrotype, is coated with a 
 harder metal, so that there is an exact and immove- 
 able copy or duplicate of the page of shifting type. 
 It is, of course, just infinitesimally less sharp and 
 clear, but it gains in stability ; there is no chance 
 of a dropped letter, such as is found now and then 
 in the very best printed books ; but with perfectly 
 careful workmen the artistic effect of a first-rate 
 book printed from moveable type is better than 
 that taken from a plate. In any case the first 
 edition is usually taken from the moveable type, 
 the worked sheets are laid aside till joined by 
 others, and the cast is then taken from the type 
 before distribution. 
 
 It is, then, on these worked sheets, printed on 
 the paper supplied for the book, instead of the 
 rough waste on which proofs are pulled, that the 
 
 quality 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 207 
 
 quality and appearance of the type and work can 
 be for the first time judged. It must be confessed 
 that while a modern press can turn out a vast 
 number of volumes with great credit, scarce any 
 book nowadays can vie in beauty with the old 
 Aldine books, with many printed in Italy in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or with 
 those printed by our English Baskerville in the 
 last century, between the years 1756 and 1775. One 
 reason of this is that our types are not so beautiful. 
 In old days each type-founder was desirous of get- 
 ting designs for his letters from men of real artistic 
 feeling; nor did these disdain to design a comma 
 any more than they would scorn to make a beauti- 
 ful leaf or flower in a picture devoted to saints or 
 historical personages. There is a tradition that 
 Hogarth designed Baskerville's types, which is 
 likely enough; at any rate, they were the last 
 English types of originality or beauty. The best 
 now existing are copies of copies, reproduced 
 mechanically, which have long ceased to have the 
 human brain infused, as it were, into the molten 
 metal. The best existing types at this moment are 
 French, and they, not ours, are the true descend- 
 ants of Baskerville's ; for at his death in 1775 ^^^ 
 types were sold to France, and used to print an 
 edition of Voltaire, still well known, and most ex- 
 cellent in its workmanship. The modern French 
 types of the best founts are reproduced, as it would 
 seem, from these, but with less of exact mechanical 
 
 copying 
 
2o8 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 copying and more of human variation and fancy. 
 There could scarcely be a better thing for the 
 artistic future of books than that which might be 
 done by some master of decorative art, like Mr. 
 William Morris, and some great firm of type- 
 founders in conjunction, would they design and 
 produce some new types for our choicer printed 
 books. 
 
 That the great bulk of the paper now made is 
 not so good as it used to be is, I suppose, uni- 
 versally admitted. One reason is obvious. Far 
 greater quantities are used every year, the best 
 paper is made from linen rag, and there is less 
 linen rag available since the larger wear of calico 
 and woollen goods. Ultimately, of course, paper 
 is now what it always was since first it was made 
 from the fibres of the rush or papyrus. It was at 
 first manipulated in no degree ; the outer peel was 
 stripped off the rush, and the strips were fastened 
 together. Gradually it was discovered that the 
 vegetable fibre, beaten and disintegrated into pulp, 
 then allowed under certain conditions to settle into 
 a film and dried, was better. But the more the 
 fibres can be disintegrated the better the paper; 
 and no process is so complete as the making it in 
 the first place into another material, and allowing 
 it to be worn and broken, as the completest mode 
 of destroying its stringiness. Every kind of 
 material has been tried, especially those on which 
 St. Paul said it would not do to lay a foundation— 
 
 " wood, 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, loc^ 
 
 "wood, hay, stubble," the most common being 
 the coarse form of vegetable fibre known as 
 Esparto grass, a species of broom. It is not 
 wholly fanciful that human wear and use has some- 
 thing to do with the excellence of paper, as with 
 all other things of art. Mechanism is fatal to the 
 higher and more spiritual qualities which make 
 art. It has its great uses in cheapening and ren- 
 dering plenteous much which is valuable and in 
 a limited degree beautiful. But just as a chromo- 
 lithograph is vile compared with an oil-painting, 
 just as a photograph of a picture compared with a 
 beautiful print of it, so in exact proportion as you 
 bring human work and human wear to bear on 
 paper and printing you will have it, of its kind, 
 supremely good, or only tolerable. This brings us 
 to another reason why old paper was better than 
 all but the best to be now procured. It was all 
 hand-made ; there was no machinery. The best 
 paper now made, such as Whatman's in England, 
 or the best Dutch, which is all still made by hand, 
 is better than, or at least as good as, was ever made 
 since the world was ; but the greater part of cheap 
 paper is bad. 
 
 Take a novel of ten years ago, and fold down the 
 pages, they will often crack sharply off, showing as 
 the paper gets old little trace of fibre ; or burn a 
 sheet of the same paper on a shovel, and, instead 
 of shrivelling into a small roll of almost powdery 
 ash, as is the case with good paper, the sheet re- 
 tains 
 O 
 
2IO PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 tains its form, on which the writing will sometimes 
 remain visible. This seeming indestructibility is 
 the very evidence of its worthlessness. It arises 
 from the clay with which it has been loaded ; and 
 the paper is scarcely more than a very thin and 
 fragile china plate which soon goes to pieces, and 
 returns to its natural dust. 
 
 So again, if we will have first-rate work in the 
 printing of a book, it must be done by hand. 
 Nowadays there are few printers who will or can 
 do this well, and therefore again the Aldines and 
 the Baskervilles are no more ; the average printing 
 is better, but the highest, except in a few cases, 
 is not so high. This is because the exact pressure 
 given to ensure beautiful printing can only be given 
 by the skilled human hand. In all things where 
 tenderness of feeling is required, machinery breaks 
 down. In Italy and other wine countries grapes 
 have been and are crushed by machinery, but be it 
 never so carefully adjusted, this bruises the skins 
 and breaks the stones, giving a rough and tart 
 flavour to the produce; so that in all the finer 
 qualities they have to go back to the old fashion of 
 the days of Isaiah, when the garments of him that 
 trod in the wine-vat were red ; and of the early 
 days of the Italian people when the must foamed 
 round the white feet of laughing girls. It cannot too 
 often be said that machinery crushes and destroys 
 that highest art which demands the human touch. 
 
 The first patent for making paper by machinery 
 
 was 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 211 
 
 was taken out by one Robert, a workman attached 
 to a paper-mill at Essone, in 1798 ; the machine was 
 set up in the following year, but proved quite un- 
 workable from its great imperfections. M. Didot, 
 the proprietor of the mill in which Robert was a 
 workman, bought the patent in the following year, 
 introduced some improvements in the original 
 model, and came over to England to have the 
 plans executed. The machine was first used 
 successfully at Mr. Hall's mill, in Hertfordshire, in 
 1803. Printing by machine-press instead of hand 
 has been introduced very gradually, but it has at 
 last almost driven out the old art. I am not here 
 denying the convenience and the general accuracy 
 of machinery, nor its exclusive adaptability for the 
 generality of books, I am simply asserting that it 
 is not the highest nor the most artistic work for 
 those that are truly beautiful. 
 
 The area of type upon the page will have usually 
 determined the size of the finished book, but this is 
 only absolutely regarded as fixed when the paper 
 is delivered to the printer, who folds his sheet of 
 paper so many times according to the size needed. 
 When paper was made by hand all sheets were, as 
 a rule, the same size ; the sheet once folded, mak- 
 ing two leaves and four pages, was called in-folio, 
 or, shortly, folio, each leaf being a folio. These 
 were once very common, the reason being in great 
 measure that the size of the type required it. It is 
 now rare, as is also the quarto, the sheet folded 
 
 into 
 
212 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, 
 
 into four, or eight pages. These two sizes are 
 now seldom used, except for dictionaries, en- 
 cyclopaedias, church bibles, books of reference, 
 or those which will usually be read at a desk 
 standing. The sheet folded in eight was called 
 an octavo, and in twelve a duodecimo. Now, 
 however, that sheets may be of various sizes, the 
 demy octavo, roughly speaking the size known as 
 library books, is the only one that almost precisely 
 keeps the old form and name; and the books in 
 most common use are known as demy octavo ; 
 large crown, or post ; crown octavo, and foolscap. 
 Smaller books, approaching to the size once called 
 duodecimo, so vary in shape that no special 
 name is, or can be, attached to them. 
 
 The old notion of a book was, that if it were 
 good enough to print, it was good enough to bind, 
 so as to preserve it permanently, to be read over 
 and over again. But since no book is sufficiently 
 dry when issued, nor is the type set on the paper 
 for this purpose, it was necessary to place it in 
 some kind of wrapper to serve a temporary end. 
 The most elementary covering is that paper wrap, 
 known and cursed by all purchasers of German 
 and French books ; the lightest sewing, the flim- 
 siest cover, so that the book is in rags before it is 
 read through. But the miraculous thing is, that 
 Continental students not only seem willing to en- 
 dure this, but, whether it is that they read their 
 books laid flat on a table and less at the fireside 
 
 than 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 213 
 
 than we do, they certainly tear their books less 
 apart, and actually keep them on their shelves for 
 years, referring to them now and again in that con- 
 dition. 
 
 The old boarding of the last century, as practised 
 amongst ourselves, was pleasant, pretty, and use- 
 ful. It was simply two sheets of stiff cardboard 
 united by a back, the sides covered with blue or 
 grey paper, and the name of the book on a pasted 
 label. It served its purpose till the book could be 
 bound ; it was neat and cheap, and there was no 
 pretence that it imitated anything beyond itself. 
 Yet it had its disadvantages ; it caught the dirt 
 easily and soon became shabby ; while, unquestion- 
 ably, there are many books not good enough to 
 deserve a leather binding, which yet are worth 
 preserving as long as we are likely to need them. 
 Hence have sprung up what are called cloth 
 bindings, more or less ornate, fairly inoffensive 
 in the hands of a person of taste, but also fre- 
 quent vehicles for pretension and vulgarity. There 
 is little to be said in reference to this matter, 
 except that in the case of really good books, 
 '• boards " should always be regarded as temporary, 
 inadequate coverings. And in reference to future 
 bindings all faces should be set, like flints, against 
 a detestable habit lately introduced of using wire 
 instead of thread to fasten the sheets together. 
 When a book stitched in this fashion is sent to be 
 really bound, the difficulty of removing the wire is 
 
214 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 so great that the book is almost sure to be torn ; 
 and moreover this again introduces into books 
 what we should so eagerly strive to ehminate, the 
 merely mechanical non-human labour. 
 
 Readers are much divided on the question 
 whether books should or should not be cut. Some 
 people are angry with the publishers that books to 
 be read are not issued like Bradshaw's Guides, 
 Bibles, Prayer Books, and the like, with cut edges. 
 The reason is that when a volume is bound, the 
 edges, being thrown out of the level smoothness 
 they have acquired from the first cutting, will need 
 a second trimming, and the margin will be sensibly 
 reduced, so that the broad type will have a miserably 
 inadequate setting, as though you should put a 
 picture in a frame too narrow for it. Those who 
 care for the future of our well-bound books, will 
 see that there is reason on the publisher's side 
 for refusing to give in to the hasty and un- 
 reasonable cry for books with cut edges. But 
 when the paper-knife is used it should be done 
 thoroughly. Some people never cut a book 
 humanely, they treat it, or maltreat it, as though 
 they had a special enmity towards it. An in- 
 telligent literary man used to say, in an altogether 
 sweeping and ungallant manner, that he would 
 never, if he could help it, trust a woman with a 
 book. First, he said, that if she left it on a table 
 she invariably put it open face downwards and 
 broke the back, and next that she never cut it well 
 
 into 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 215 
 
 into the corners, so that as soon as it was really- 
 opened the leaves were torn. Would that these 
 iniquities were confined to the weaker sex ! 
 
 When a book worth preserving is to be really- 
 bound, the binding should be suitable, and done by 
 a good workman. The early bindings were most 
 costly. In the British Museum, and other great 
 collections, are to be seen covers in gold or silver, 
 or carven wood, with bosses of precious stones, or 
 of the metal itself wrought into special ornament 
 on velvet or leather. But of bindings which were 
 to be used and handled daily, the earliest fine 
 specimens, which even now cannot be outdone, 
 date from the first half of the sixteenth century. 
 Many of the bindings executed for Jean Grolier 
 are still extant, and fetch very high prices when 
 they come into the market ; they are remarkable 
 in another way than their beauty, in showing the 
 large and liberal spirit of the man, for they are 
 inscribed, " Of the books of Jean Grolier and his 
 friends." His notion of a book was that it should 
 be used, and indeed if books are to be valued men 
 must be trusted with them, and allowed access 
 even to those which are the most precious. The 
 French school of binding still stands very high, 
 but our best Englishmen are as good, save that 
 they want a little looking after in the way of head- 
 bands and small details. But whoever will have 
 his books really cared for must learn to take in 
 them an intelligent interest, must consult with, 
 
 instruct 
 
2i6 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 instruct as well as defer to, the artist, and spend 
 at least as much pains about the clothing of his 
 books as about that of his own person, or that of 
 his wife and daughters. 
 
 The books, however, of which we are speaking 
 are for the most part boarded only, and have next 
 to be distributed to the public. This is done in 
 three ways: by advertising, by sending them to 
 reviews, by subscribing them to the booksellers. 
 
 As soon as the volume is ready it is shown round 
 by a traveller to all the leading booksellers in 
 London and the provinces, and each of these 
 speculates in as many copies as he thinks fit, 
 getting them at that time and in that manner 
 on special terms. As everyone knows, we can, 
 by paying cash, get a large reduction on the 
 price of a book, amounting in many cases to 25 per 
 cent., and since the bookseller must also make his 
 profit, the difference between the nominal and the 
 actual sum received for a book is very considerable. 
 The system employed by modern booksellers, 
 while it has no doubt cheapened books to the 
 public, has materially changed the character of 
 the bookselling trade. We now meet more rarely 
 than of old the man of intelligence who knew all 
 about the books published, and was able to advise 
 and help his customer. He is succeeded by the 
 man who tries especially to sell the class of book 
 out of which he can, under the changed circum- 
 stances of the trade, get the most money; who 
 
 speculates 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 217 
 
 speculates in as few books as possible, leaving it 
 to his customer to find out what books are in 
 demand, and order them through him. The cus- 
 tomer must discover the books by means of adver- 
 tisements and reviews. 
 
 As a rule, if a book is good, the public, review 
 or no review, finds it out and buys it ; if it be bad 
 no amount of praise from injudicious or foolish ad- 
 mirers will make it go. There is no such thing as 
 ** pushing a book," except to put it fairly before the 
 public, to give it its opportunity, and let it take its 
 chance. It is often said that the system of monster 
 circulating libraries is a good thing for literature ; 
 but this may be doubted or even emphatically 
 denied. Some thirty years ago, before the rise of 
 these establishments, there were in every part of 
 the country book clubs, containing from a dozen 
 to fifty members, who chose and circulated the 
 books from house to house. If, then, a good book 
 of travel, or historical research, or biography were 
 written, the publisher might feel sure that among 
 these clubs an edition would sell, and on that 
 security could offer good terms to the author. The 
 book clubs have vanished, and the half-dozen 
 monster libraries, if indeed there be so many, make 
 less than half the number of books do, among their 
 far larger number of readers. The present system 
 has fostered the growth and development of the 
 second-rate novel, but it has in no degree aided 
 literature properly so called. 
 
 So 
 
2i8 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 So our supposed book is launched on its life 
 voyage. It may perish as so many do, almost at 
 its birth, " unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," save 
 perhaps by its begetter, and he sometimes, if it 
 fail thus miserably, has the grace to be ashamed of 
 his own abortion. But if it live in any true sense, 
 its life may be as varied as any human existence, 
 and, like that, it depends much on intrinsic charac- 
 ter. Say it is a volume of poetry. In that case it 
 is a miracle indeed if it attain success in life. For 
 poetry, refined, subtle, romantic, unconcerned with 
 the most obvious things of life, is ill-suited to make 
 its way in a material world. When a man of such 
 a character comes to the front he exercises a great 
 and abiding influence, which lasts long after he is 
 cold in death ; but few there are who do so. And 
 it is the same with poetry, except the very highest. 
 It may be again repeated, that the absolutely first- 
 rate book of any kind on any subject is sure to 
 make its way, the poetry which takes most with 
 the public is not the fairly good but the bad. 
 Horace said long since— 
 
 '* Mediocribus esse poetis 
 Non di non homines non concessere columnae." 
 
 Nor gods, nor men, nor booksellers' shops will 
 have anything to do with middling poets. It is a 
 melancholy thought that almost in our own days 
 Tupper had an enormous sale, while Browning 
 only slowly attained recognition. In this more 
 than in any other class of literature popularity is no 
 
 test 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 219 
 
 test of vitality. Probably Greene, who jeered at 
 Shakspere, and parodied one of his fairest lines 
 into ** O tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide," 
 was best known among his coevals — and who reads 
 Greene now ? " The Poet-Priest, Milman," is 
 forgotten, for who reads Fazio ? while Keats, who 
 was thought, however erroneously, to have died of 
 Milman 's article in the Quarterly^ reigns and will 
 reign one of the Kings of Song. 
 
 Or, the book may be a novel. How soon these 
 die, all but a few ! Some indeed are very long 
 lived. To speak only of English books, we shall 
 not willingly let die Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy^ 
 the great masterpieces of humour, which if now and 
 then coarse, were so after the fashion of the time, 
 and less harmfully than certain modern novel- 
 ists are indecent behind a veil; but how are 
 others vanished ! In a later day Scott remains 
 one of the giants of all time ; but where is Gait ? 
 Miss Austen lives ; but where is Mrs. Brunton ? 
 And of the novels which we read when we were 
 young, Miss Porter's, Mrs. Gore's, " Ou sont les 
 neiges d'antan f" as Villon sings: " Where are the 
 snows of a year agone?" 
 
 Or in history, Grote's Greece is alive, but where 
 is Mitford's ? Another history of the same country, 
 learned and painstaking, was never fully bom. 
 And Mr. Wordy's History of the Peninsular Wary 
 to prove that Providence was on the side of the 
 Tories ? dead, dead ; and with no hope of a joyful 
 or indeed of any resurrection. To 
 
220 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 To go into a library is like wandering into 
 some great cathedral church and looking at the 
 monuments on the walls. Everyone there was in 
 his or her day the pattern of all the virtues, the 
 best father, the tenderest wife, the most devoted 
 child. Never were such soldiers and sailors as 
 those whose crossed swords or gallant ships are 
 graven in marble above their tombs; every dead 
 sovereign was virtuous as Marcus Aurelius, every 
 bishop as blameless as Berkeley. The inscriptions 
 are all of the kind which George IV. put on the 
 statue of George III. at the end of the •* Long 
 Walk " at Windsor. Having embittered his father's 
 life while that father had mind enough to know the 
 baseness of his son, he called him '* pater optimus," 
 best of fathers ! This same George, it may be said 
 in a parenthesis, gave to the library of Eton School, 
 not such a tomb of dead books as is the library of 
 Eton College, the dead Delphin Classics, which 
 have been well described as "the useless present 
 of a royal rake." 
 
 Yet those names so forgotten which meet us in 
 the Church were not without their influence. If 
 there be one statement more than another to be 
 disputed among those made by Shakspere's Mark 
 Antony^ it is — 
 
 " The evil that men do lives after them, 
 The good is oft interred with their bones." 
 
 It has a truth, but a less truth than that the good 
 
 more 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 221 
 
 more often lives, and passes into other lives to be 
 renewed and carried forward with fresh vigour in 
 the coming age. Were it not so the human race 
 would steadily deteriorate, weltering down into a 
 black and brutal corruption, ever quickening, if at 
 all, into lower forms. As it is we know that the 
 race, with all its imperfections, "moves upward, 
 working out the beast, and lets the ape and tiger 
 die." The great men stand like stars at distant 
 intervals, individuals grander, perhaps, than ever 
 will be again, each in his own way; but still the 
 average level of every succeeding age is higher 
 than that which went before it. We may never 
 again have a Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes, St. 
 Paul, Caesar, or Charlemagne; but in all things 
 those great ones who forecast philosophy, or 
 science, or mediaeval civilization bear sway over us 
 still, — " the living are under the dominion of the 
 dead." Those lesser forgotten ones of whom we 
 have spoken have carried on the torch of life in his 
 or her own home circle, were influential even if not 
 widely known, and have helped to make us what 
 we are. 
 
 It is the same with literature. The shelves of a 
 library are catacombs. There stand out among the 
 dead who are yet alive such names, to speak only 
 of more modem days, as Dante, Milton, Shakspere, 
 "on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the 
 world. O ! eyes sublime. With tears and laughter 
 for all time" ; there too are "the ingenious " Mr. 
 
 This, 
 
222 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 
 
 This, or "the celebrated" Mr. That, now for- 
 gotten. But they too have formed the literature 
 which is ours. Does a modern strive after origin- 
 ality, ten chances to one his best things have been 
 said before him ; the only true originality is to 
 reconstruct, recast, and transmit, with just the 
 additions enforced by the special circumstances of 
 the time Again : " the living are under the 
 dominion of the dead." 
 
 And as perhaps no human life was ever wholly 
 worthless, and the worst use to which you can put 
 a man, as has been said, is to hang him, so no book 
 is wholly worthless, and none should ever be de- 
 stroyed. We have probably all had the same ex- 
 perience, that we have never parted with a book, 
 however little we fancied it would be wanted again, 
 without regretting it soon afterwards. There is a 
 spark of good remaining in the most unvirtuous 
 person or book. 
 
 But it is the peculiarity of books as apart from 
 men, that while the man is enshrined once for all 
 in one body only, a book has many duplicates ; 
 and in regard to some it may be perhaps admitted 
 that the copies stored up in libraries are indeed 
 enough. In the British Museum, or in the 
 Bodleian, or in the Biblioth^que Nationale, per- 
 sons may read two thousand years hence how we 
 in the dawn of science and civilization lived, more 
 legibly than we can read in the relics of the 
 lacustrine dwellings how lived our forefathers 
 
 before 
 
PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS. 223 
 
 before the dawn began. They will marvel at our 
 manners if they take some ladies' fictions for 
 gospel truth about us. 
 
 The remaining copies— preserve them while you 
 can, unless indeed they be what Charles Lamb 
 called biblia abiblia, railway novels, birthday 
 books, and the like— will fade away, will light the 
 fire, and wrap the parcels of generations to come. 
 The best use for them is that to which many 
 unsaleable books are put at once, they are 
 *' wasted," that is, are sent to the mill, ground up, 
 pulped down, and made again into paper for fresh 
 books and newer readers. 
 
 We have not been unmindful of the spiritual 
 nature of books while we have dwelt especially on 
 their material fabric, nor forgotten that, by books 
 alone, we come to know intimately the mind of the 
 mighty dead or of the living writer. Did Mr. 
 Bethell, who was his Eton tutor, know Shelley as 
 we may know him, or Provost Hawtrey, who was 
 in his form, and thought him a very commonplace 
 boy; did Byron, or Medway, or Trelawny? The 
 muddy vesture of decay was about him, and veiled 
 his pure spirit ; we see him in his books, as he was. 
 Did Anne Hathaway, the wife who lay in Shaks- 
 pere's bosom, know how divine was the intellect 
 which informed that tenement of clay ; did even 
 the friend of the sonnets ? We, not Hamnet who 
 died young, not Susanna and Judith, who survived 
 their father, are Shakspere's true children. 
 
 It 
 
224 PRODUCTION AND LIFE OF BOOKS, 
 
 It is by books that mind speaks to mind, by 
 books the world's intelligence grows, books are 
 the tree of knowledge, which has grown into and 
 twined its branches with those of the tree of life, 
 and of their common fruit men eat and become 
 as gods knowing good and evil. Of books, dear 
 Charles Lamb said that he trusted, when he died, to 
 go to some world where he might still learn what he 
 wished to know by the slow and pleasing habit of 
 reading, and not as he phrased it, by some trouble- 
 s ome method of intuition. To that every book-lover 
 will say heartily "Amen." 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 NO one should write himself down in his 
 dotage by becoming a mere praiser of past 
 time : nor is it well to repeat the cant, prevalent 
 some years since, that who would write good 
 English must study the " Spectator " ; the first 
 enunciation of the modern fashionable notion, 
 only half believed, that Art and Literature reach- 
 ed the point for all after-imitation in the reign of 
 Queen Anne. 
 
 While Cardinal Newman and Walter Pater, 
 Thomas Hardy and Hesba Stretton, live among 
 us, each in his or her own way showing the per- 
 fection to which, in this age, our language can 
 be wrought, he would be a bold man who would 
 assert that even in the adaptation of sound to 
 sense the art of style has in any degree decayed. 
 There has been change; faint and gradual dif- 
 ferences separate the prose of one epoch from 
 that of another ; Milton, Gibbon, Macaulay write 
 
 unlike 
 P 
 
226 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 unlike each other, not only because they were 
 diflferent in character and in temperament, but 
 because they lived in different ages. 
 
 It may be doubted whether the greater diffusion 
 of education, while it has certainly brought more 
 writers into the field, and more bad writers, since 
 in a matter of style the number of careless per- 
 sons always preponderates ; has not also confused 
 the minds of readers, robbed them in a degree of 
 their clearer judgment, interfered with their sense 
 of proportion, spoiled their quick apprehension of 
 what is fine art in writing. When the dread of ex- 
 amination was not upon the mind of every boy and 
 girl in the land, it was more easy to consider style 
 in what was read. Profusion brings confusion. 
 But as the body is not the better simply for being 
 fed, apart from the graces of the table, so the 
 mind is harmed of that student who takes facts, 
 or even fiction, without care for the manner in 
 which they are presented. This indiscriminate 
 variety of reading makes it unquestionably difficult 
 to distinguish good style among the writers of our 
 own day. We are the children of the century, we 
 think the thoughts of the men and women around 
 us, and we have a tendency to admire those writers 
 who put our own ideas into form, without always 
 considering whether the form be good. We have 
 to place ourselves in an attitude of criticism, and 
 this sometimes appears to be irreverent towards 
 those whose opinions have influenced us. But 
 
 this 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 227 
 
 this must be done by all who would hand on un- 
 sullied English to future generations. 
 
 Let us see if there be any principles which may 
 guide us in our study. It is an obvious remark, 
 that the spoken word precedes the written, and 
 that writing only exists because each man cannot 
 speak directly to all others. The written word 
 differs from the spoken in that it is more mea- 
 sured, dignified, thoughtful: it were pedantic if 
 men always spoke as they would write. But at 
 the same time, all good writers have spoken well ; 
 they have not been necessarily great talkers, or 
 orators, they may have been naturally silent, but 
 what they said was clearly said, and with fitting 
 words. A careless speaker will be slovenly and 
 inaccurate in writing. If a young man says, in 
 answer to a question, "It will suit me down to 
 the ground ; " or a young woman says, " Oh, thank 
 you ever so much, it will be awfully jolly;" we 
 know that the elementary meanings of words are 
 Still sealed to them, and it is quite impossible that 
 any book worth reading can proceed from them. 
 
 The first characteristic of a good style is an 
 accurate and cautious estimate of the values of 
 words; and I would add this to some excellent 
 remarks of Mr. Arthur Galton, in a preface to his 
 recent work, " English Prose from Maundeville 
 to Thackeray." He says : 
 
 "It is more profitable to study prose in concrete ex- 
 amples, than to hold vague and general theories about 
 
 style. 
 
228 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 style. ... In all ages the really great writers have 
 differed very little from one another ; all good prose has 
 the same qualities of directness, plainness, and simplicity. 
 And good prose can still be written whenever a writer con- 
 descends to think clearly, to stick to the point, and to ex- 
 press his ideas in the plainest, the simplest, the most direct 
 and unpretentious way." {Preface to "English Prose," 
 Camelot Series.) 
 
 And long ago, Steele said precisely the same thing 
 about the art of conversation. 
 
 " If I were to choose the people with whom I would 
 spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly 
 such as laboured no farther than to make themselves readily 
 and clearly apprehended. ... . To have good sense, 
 and ability to express it, are the most essential and necessary 
 qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to 
 utter , . , there needs but very little care in cloth- 
 ing them." (" Tatler," On Eloquence.) 
 
 It follows from this, that a writer should have 
 somewhat to say. The great corrupters of English 
 style are the newspapers. Of course, here and 
 there you get an article vigorous and terse, so 
 good in style that our first regret is that it should 
 not live, but be forgotten before the close of day ; 
 but the greater part of our daily newspaper reading 
 comes from the people who ask what they shall 
 write about, not from those who write because they 
 must. Still, as when the Psalmist sang, there is but 
 one true reason for utterance : " I believe, therefore 
 will I speak." 
 
 Now for some examples of " simplicity, plainness, 
 
 directness, 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 229 
 
 directness, and their contraries. Take first a very 
 ordinary subject, the description of some place or 
 fact known to the writer by his own experience or 
 reading, which he wishes the reader to see vividly 
 in the same light as that in which he sees it " :— 
 
 " Demerara yields to no country in the world in her birds. 
 The mud is flaming with the scarlet ciu"lew. At sunset the 
 pelicans return from the sea to the courada trees. Among 
 the flowers are the humming birds. The columbine, 
 gallinaceous, and passerine tribes people the fruit trees. At 
 the close of the day, the vampires, or winged bats, suck the 
 blood of the traveller, and cool him by the flap of their 
 w ings. Nor has Nature forgotten to amuse herself here in 
 the composition of snakes,— the camondi has been killed 
 from thirty to forty feet long ; he does not act by venom, 
 but by size and convolution. The Spaniards affirni that he 
 grows to the length of eighty feet, and that he will swallow 
 a bull; but Spaniards love the superlative. There is a 
 xvhipsnake of a beautiful green. The labarri snake of a 
 dirty brown, who kills you in a few minutes. Every lovely 
 colour imder heaven is lavished upon the counacouchi, the 
 most venomous of reptiles, and known by the name of the 
 bush-master. Man and beast fly before him, and allow him 
 to pursue an undisputed path." (Sydney Smith, Review of 
 " Waterton's Wanderings.") 
 
 In this there is no single word superfluous, no 
 epithet which does not tell; it is simple, plain, 
 direct, admirable prose, yet not what we call 
 prosaic ; there are touches of humour, and of 
 dread, while the colour is brilliant as a painting. 
 No one who has ever heard or read that passage 
 can fail to have some conception of the bird and 
 
 snake 
 
230 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 snake life of Demerara, as Sydney Smith conceived 
 it ; and therefore in its way it is a triumph of style. 
 Now take the well-known sentence from Russell's 
 " Modem Europe " about the behaviour of the 
 Goths in Italy :— 
 
 "They hunted the bear on the voluptuous parterre, the 
 trim garden and the expensive pleasure ground, where 
 effeminacy was wont to saunter or indolence to loll." 
 
 It is scarcely possible to have more faults ; the 
 riming syllables at the outset, the idiotic epithets, 
 the personification of qualities, the ignoble word 
 which concludes it without just cause. 
 
 The passage from Sydney Smith is an excellent 
 example of plainness ; I can best show by its 
 opposite what is that other quality of style, direct- 
 ness. All bad writers are indirect ; yet to be so 
 is a peculiar attribute of women who write ill. 
 Here are two specimens, from an author I will not 
 name, because on the whole she writes well, and is 
 not in this respect worse than many others. 
 
 "Watching her sitting at his window, at work on nice 
 things for his comfort, to be worn as she fondly hoped in 
 the coming winter, which he knew he should never see, he 
 remarked the beauty of her face and form. ... In her pale 
 blue linen dress, and bunch of field daisies, he thought her 
 charming." 
 
 Again, a single sentence a few pages later :— 
 
 "What was the reason of her writing at all I could never 
 make out." 
 
 An4, 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 231 
 
 And, that I may be impartial, I will take a very 
 flagrant example from a male writer :— 
 
 "A handsome manly fellow appeared Mark Elliot to the 
 hundreds of eyes that were bent on him." 
 
 The author means to say that Mark Elliot was 
 handsome ; what he does say is, that some one 
 appeared to be Mark Elliot. This sort of thing 
 comes, as a rule, from simple slovenliness. Yet of 
 course so soon as a writer is master of the words he 
 uses, he may invert his sentences with good eftect : 
 he must do so at times in order to give due emphasis. 
 The opening sentences of " Adam Bede " are a case 
 in point : — 
 
 "With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian 
 sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far- 
 reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to 
 do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my 
 pen I w ill show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan 
 Burge,' carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, 
 as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our 
 Lord 1799." 
 
 That is a very pregnant sentence. One less sure 
 of her powers would have written, and ought to 
 have written : '* The Egyptian sorcerer undertakes 
 to reveal far-reaching visions of the past with a 
 single drop of ink for a mirror ; " and the same 
 with the next clause. Yet you feel at once that so 
 the life and spirit would have gone out of it. The 
 inversion is legitimate because the vivid point to be 
 brought before your mind is the swarthy boy with 
 the ink in the palm of his hand, as described in a 
 
 passage 
 
232 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 passage in "Eothen," which George Eliot had in 
 her mind ; because, too, she determines to let you 
 into the secret of her own deliberate habit of com- 
 position ; the poised pen with the drop of ink at 
 the end, waiting till she had ordered and balanced 
 her whole sentence, before she wrote down a word. 
 But although inversion may be used with great 
 force, you will find, as a rule, that the goodness of 
 a style is generally in proportion to the rarity with 
 which the privilege is taken. 
 
 It is the same with the simplicity of sentences. 
 
 That style is best, as a rule, which is freest from 
 parentheses. In letter-writing it may be other- 
 wise, for a letter aims at showing the thoughts as 
 they arise, orderly in a well-ordered mind, but not 
 so classified as to be pedantic. And again, the 
 parenthesis may be used to excess with a certain 
 comic effect, to give the impression of a discursive- 
 ness which does not really exist ; as in Charles 
 Lamb's Essays, in "Tristram Shandy," and in 
 Cowper's Letters : but the student must avoid 
 parentheses, making each sentence convey one 
 thought and no more. Yet not every author 
 who is free from parentheses is therefore simple. 
 Macaulay, for instance, is often laboured and con- 
 fused, though the unwary may sometimes mistake 
 brilliancy for transparency. Lest this should seem 
 a perverse judgment of my own, I will quote what 
 Lord Cockburn wrote of Macaulay's style :— 
 
 ' ' To my feeling, Macaulay is always ponderous. In the 
 
 two 
 
ON ENGUSH PROSE STYLE, 233 
 
 two one-things needful, thought and knowledge, he never 
 fails to be admirable. But his mere style I cannot approve 
 of. I know no great writer whose style is so dangerous to 
 youth. It is more so than even Gibbon's, because his other 
 qualities are more attractive than Gibbon's. His elaborate 
 brilliancy, constant antithesis, and studied quaintness of 
 manner arc all weaiisome. But these faults, though still 
 gross, and even paraded as his peculiar excellencies, are 
 diminishing, and if the progi'css shall end in simplicity he 
 will then be a good writer. Simplicity should be his aim ; 
 all that is bad of him may be traced to the want of it. " 
 (Cockburn's " Circuit Journeys" p. 273.) 
 
 But, after all, you may be thinking that these 
 are but different ways of putting the same thing ; 
 they are excellent qualities for a piece of straight- 
 forward narrative like an account of Ceylon, or 
 the record of facts, such as you have in a news- 
 paper. How when the subject is complicated, 
 when the writer is not only giving you, in the best 
 way he can, a sort of superior auctioneer's cata- 
 logue, but feels himself, and wishes to arouse in 
 you, wonder, admiration, love, hate, scorn, pity, 
 and all the various passions which to clothe in 
 words is the part of the master? What are we 
 to say of those storms of melodious sound which 
 we hear in the great authors whose succession has 
 never failed from the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century till now; from Maundeville and Malory 
 and Latimer to those men and women of our own 
 day, who, in spite of many evil examples, still 
 write English, free, dignified, and pure? What 
 of such passages as Ruskin's description of the 
 
 Campanile 
 
234 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 Campanile of Giotto at Florence, and the perora- 
 tion of Newman's Sermon on the Parting of 
 Friends ; the two instances selected by Charles 
 Kingsley as the finest examples known to him of 
 modern prose? The answer is not simple, but I 
 trust to make you see what it is. 
 
 First, no| writer of a fine passage is at the time 
 aware he is writing finely. A bit of deliberate 
 fine writing is quite sure to be turgid, bombastic, 
 unreal. But if the thought be lofty, then, language 
 being the vehicle by which thought is communi- 
 cated to others, the language must of necessity 
 rise also, and the beauty of words will correspond 
 to the ideal beauty in the mind. This will be 
 easier understood if we consider the place in the 
 chapter in which such celebrated passages occur. 
 
 Cardinal Newman's words on music are a portion 
 of a sermon preached before the University of 
 Oxford in 1843, on " The Theory of Developments 
 in Religious Doctrine." The history of the forma- 
 tion of religious dogmas demanded and received 
 from him the most precise and guarded language. 
 But as you read, you feel he is burning with great 
 thoughts, which he must give in the simplest 
 words. We are conscious of underlying passion, 
 satire, scorn, even humour, but all held down as by 
 an iron hand. At last he has to speak of music, 
 not as an integral or necessary part of his subject, 
 but only as an illustration. And therefore, music 
 being his darting art, he may let himself go, give 
 
 way 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 235 
 
 way to the storm of excited feeling which has 
 surged within him. Yet unconsciously, as the 
 orator when moved by true feeling is unaware 
 of the vibrant tones of his voice. This is the 
 passage :— 
 
 " Let us take another instance, of an outward and earthly 
 form, or economy, under which great wonders unknown 
 seem to be typified ; I mean musical sounds, as they are 
 exhibited most perfectly in instrumental harmony. There 
 are seven notes in the scale ; make them fourteen ; yet what 
 a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise ! What science 
 brings so much out of so little ? Out of what poor element 
 does some great master in it create his new world ! Shall 
 we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere in- 
 genuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the 
 day, without reality, without meaning ? We may do so ; 
 and then perhaps we shall also account the science of 
 theology to be a matter of words ; yet, as there is a divinity 
 in the theology of the Church, which those who feel cannot 
 communicate, so there is also in the wonderful creation of 
 sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many 
 men the very names which the science employs are utterly 
 incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems 
 fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon 
 us to be childish extravagance ; yet is it possible that that 
 inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet 
 so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so 
 majestic, should be a mere soimd which is gone and perishes ? 
 Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen 
 emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, 
 and awful impressions from we know not whence, shoiild 
 be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and 
 goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so ; it cannot 
 be. No ; they have escaped from some higher sphere ; 
 they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium 
 of created sound ; they are echoes from our Home ; they 
 
 are 
 
236 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 are the voice of Angels or the Magnificat of Saints, or the 
 living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divine Attributes ; 
 something are they besides themselves, which we cannot 
 compass, which we cannot utter — though mortal man, and 
 he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, 
 has the gift of eliciting them." 
 
 Just in the same way, the thought rises, and the 
 eloquence rises with it, in the chapter called the 
 " Lamp of Beauty," in the *' Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture." The whole chapter is masterly. 
 The earlier part is written w ith a certain stateliness. 
 Ruskin passes through a long catalogue of orna- 
 ment and design, which according to him make 
 for ugliness, to justify his position. In all this the 
 writing is lucid, but there is nothing remarkable ; 
 all is good, and deserves study, but it could not be 
 quoted for any distinctive features. But now he 
 comes to speak of the perfect beauty with which 
 Salisbury Cathedral rises out of its surrounding 
 greensward, and the Campanile of Giotto at 
 Florence stands out against the sky. He contrasts 
 the two in a passage, of which the whole were too 
 long to quote ; and then is carried out of himself, 
 is swayed by a certain inspiration, in speaking of 
 the artist who conceived the latter work ; — 
 
 ' ' I said that the power of human mind had its growth in 
 the wilderness, much more must the love and conception of 
 that beauty whose every line and hue we have seen to be 
 at the best a faded image of God's daily work, and an 
 arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in 
 the places which He has gladdened by planting there the 
 fir tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, 
 
 but 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE, lyj 
 
 but among the far-away fields of her lilies, was the child 
 trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty above 
 her towers of watch and war. Remember all that he 
 became, count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the 
 heart of Italy, ask those who followed him w hat they learned 
 at his feet ; and when you have numbered his labours, and 
 received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had 
 verily potu"ed out on this His servant no common nor 
 restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a 
 King among the children of men ; remember also that the 
 legend upon his crown was that of David, ' I took thee 
 from the sheep-cotes and from following the sheep.' " 
 
 The last line is an example, as I imagine, of an 
 unconscious alteration of one sound for another 
 which is more pleasing to the ear. No one better 
 understands the value of " apt alliteration's artful 
 aid" than Mr. Ruskin, but he also knows that 
 alliteration may be overdone. Now we have in the 
 last sentence three fs; "from the sheep-cotes 
 and from following." The word in the Psalms is 
 " sheepfolds " :— 
 
 " He chose David also his servant, and took him away 
 from the sheepfolds. As he was following the ewes great 
 with young ones he took him, that he might feed Jacob his 
 people and Israel his inheritance." 
 
 The preponderance of the "f" sound is not 
 unduly felt among the many words ; but the 
 moment the sentence was condensed, it was evident 
 that "sheep-cotes" would be better than "sheep- 
 folds." 
 
 I would however beg you to notice that uncon- 
 sciousness in writing, which is largely the secret of 
 
 all 
 
238 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE, 
 
 all good work, is quite another thing from uncon* 
 sciousness in revision. With all his splendid 
 qualities, Ruskin is a less excellent artist than New- 
 man, mainly because he is more self-conscious. 
 But the passage once written, and on the whole 
 accepted by the judgment, then comes the time 
 when no care and finish can be too great, when 
 *' cotes " would be accepted and " folds " rejected, 
 when jingle and the too frequent recurrence of the 
 same word would be carefully avoided, Mr. Pater 
 lately wrote an Essay on ** Flaubert," in which he 
 quoted what that master of style says about re- 
 vision :— 
 
 " Neglect nothing. Labour ! Do the thing over again, 
 and don't leave your work till you feel convinced you have 
 brought it to the last point "of perfection possible for you. 
 In these days genius is not rare. But what no one has 
 now, what we should try to have, is the conscience of one's 
 work." 
 
 And further in the same essay Mr, Pater tells us 
 that Flaubert 
 
 " sat mortth after month, seeking sometimes with so much 
 pain, the expression, ' the phrase,' weighing the reten- 
 tion or rejection of an epithet — his one fixed belief the 
 belief in beauty, literary beauty, with liberal delight at 
 beauty in other men's work, remembering after many years 
 the precise place on the page of some approved form of 
 sentence." 
 
 Whoever would write well must care about the 
 work for its own sake. There are those who will 
 
 tel 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE SYTLE. 239 
 
 tell you they cannot write unless they are in the hu- 
 mour, who work spasmodically, and therefore idly ; 
 there are others who find no difficulty at all, who 
 can force out as many lines on one day as another, 
 whatever be the weather or their own moods. 
 
 Of such was Anthony TroUope. No doubt he was 
 pleased with the men and women he created, and 
 you can read his stories, it might be truer to say you 
 could read his stories ; but I doubt if he had real 
 interest in the work, or cared in what words he 
 clothed the story he had to tell ; he went to his work 
 as the journeyman grocer takes down the shutters, 
 and weighs his moist sugar, as the mercer's assis- 
 tant handles his yard wand ; the interest of his life 
 lay elsewhere. And therefore his style is detestable, 
 his chapters end wearisomely; you feel he laid 
 down his pen with relief, his pulse beating as calmly 
 as when he began ; no thrill, no sense of melody, 
 no cadence in his words. 
 
 Charles Kingsley, who wrote a good style, when 
 he took time to prune it, would grow so excited as 
 he wrote, that he had to leave his standing desk, 
 and rush into the open air to pace his garden and 
 to smoke, before he could calm himself down again 
 to the mere act of writing, so much did his words 
 interest and move him. But because Trollope did 
 not feel^ however he might like to tell a story well, 
 and make his puppets dance, he comes to the end 
 of a chapter where, as an architect puts his 
 ornament on coign and frieze, or a woman lace on 
 
 the 
 
240 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE, 
 
 the edges of her garments, graceful and eloquent 
 words find natural and appropriate place ; and we 
 find him ending his chapters thus : 
 
 " ' She is not my style at all,' said he. ' But of course a 
 man is obliged to be civil to girls in his own house.' And 
 then they all went to bed." 
 
 Of course they did, but what need to say it, and 
 leare such a ragged edge ! We turn a few pages : 
 
 "And so it was that Christmas day was passed at 
 Noningsby." 
 
 A few more : 
 
 "Mr. Mason was not a contented man when he sat 
 down to his solitary beefsteak in Soho Square." 
 
 This is sugar weighed out in pounds, ribbon cut 
 in lengths. I do not say that this is always wrong ; 
 but whether the chapter is mere narrative, or is 
 meant to be passionate, full of incidents which 
 thrill, so far as Trollope can thrill, he is always at 
 that same level ; there is no quiet striking of some 
 gentle chord to let the music die away. 
 
 Now take Scott. Perhaps the most striking 
 single scene in the whole range of his works is the 
 interview at Richmond between Jeanie Deans and 
 Queen Caroline : 
 
 •' 'Our business is, I think, ended for the present, my 
 Lord Duke,' said the Queen, ' and, I trust, to your satisfac- 
 tion. Hereafter I hope to see your Grace more frequently, 
 both at Richmond and St. James's.— Come, Lady Suffolk, 
 we must wish his Grace good morning.'" 
 
 The 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 241 
 
 The business of the chapter is over, how shall he 
 end it? Not 
 
 " And so they went up the avenue," 
 
 but 
 
 "They exchanged their parting reverences, and the Duke, 
 so soon as «the ladies had turned their backs, assisted Jeanie 
 to rise from the ground, and conducted her back through 
 the avenue, which she trode with the feeling of one who 
 walks in her sleep." 
 
 The way to end a chapter or a book is perhaps 
 as good a lesson in style as you can get. I will 
 quote three examples to explain what I mean when 
 I say that there is the place for eloquence ; because 
 there the thought and the interest culminate, and 
 the silence comes at once with double impressive- 
 ness ; or else a few chords bridge the gidf between 
 the music and the stillness. Here is a passage 
 which all must know. Sir Walter Raleigh did not 
 set himself to write finely, but he put into words 
 what such a soul felt, when "with no cold grada- 
 tions of decay" he was to pass into the great 
 unknown life. 
 
 '• O eloquent, just and mighty death ! whom none could 
 advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou 
 hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only 
 hast cast out of the world and despised : thou hast drawn 
 together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, 
 and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these 
 two narrow words. Hie jatet. " 
 
 And here is a simpler passage, the end of Miss 
 Stretton's *' Michel Lorio's Cross." A man scouted 
 
 by 
 Q 
 
242 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 by the Breton peasants of his village, because he 
 was a Protestant, has at the cost of his own life 
 saved that of a little child : 
 
 ' ' Michel Lorio was dead and all that could be done for him 
 was to carry his dead body home to his paralytic mother, and 
 lay it upon his bed in the little loft, where he had spent so 
 many hours of sorrowful loneliness. It was a perplexing 
 problem to the simple people. Some said that Michel had 
 been permitted to save the child by diabolic agency, which 
 had failed him when he sought to save himself. Others 
 maintained that it was no other than the great archangel St. 
 Michel who had securely fastened the net upon the stake 
 and so preserved Delphine, while the heretic was left to 
 perish, A few thought secretly , and whispered it in fear, that 
 Michel had done a noble deed, and won heaven thereby. 
 The Cure, who came to look upon the calm dead face, 
 opened his lips after long and profound thought — ' If this 
 man had been a Christian,' he said, ' he would have been a 
 saint and a martyr.' " 
 
 Our third example shall be one which does not 
 travel beyond the simplest words at the command 
 of any villager. It is the conclusion of Mr. Hardy's 
 " The Woodlanders," which he puts into the mouth 
 of a girl, the poorest of the poor, at her lover's 
 grave : 
 
 " ' Now, my own love,' she whispered, ' you are mine and 
 only mine, for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you 
 died. But I, whenever I get up, I'll think of 'ee. When- 
 ever I plant the young larches I'll think that none can plant 
 as you planted, and whenever I split a gad, and whenever 
 I turn the cider wring, I'll say none could do it like you. If 
 ever I forget your name, let me forget home and heaven. . . 
 
 . But no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee, for you was a 
 
 ^ood man and did good things.' " 
 
 Yet 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 243 
 
 Yet another paragraph may be quoted as an ex- 
 ample of how sentences of direct, simple, plain nar- 
 rative, not without a touch of humour, can glide at 
 once into words of extraordinary beauty, under the 
 stress of passionate feefing. Cardinal Newman vin- 
 dicates the Church for showing honour to images ; 
 and part of the defence is a very characteristic 
 argument, that dishonour to images implies the 
 contrary : 
 
 "What is meant," he says, "by burning Bishops, or 
 Cardinals, or Popes in effigy f has it no meaning? is it not 
 plainly intended for an insult ? Would any one who was 
 burned in effigy feel it no insult ? Well, then, how is it not 
 absurd to feel pain at being dishonoured in effigy, yet 
 absurd to feel pleasure at being honoured in effigy ? " 
 
 Then, after working out this idea in somewhat 
 more detail, he has this paragraph, worthy of the 
 most careful study from the point of view here 
 selected : 
 
 " But this is not all ; Protestants actually set up images to 
 represent their heroes, and they show them honour without 
 any misgiving. The very flower and cream of Protestantism 
 used to glory in the statue of King William on College 
 Green, Dublin ; and though I cannot make any reference in 
 print, I recollect well what a shriek they raised some years 
 ago when the figure was unhorsed. Some profane person 
 one night applied gunpowder, and blew the King right out 
 of his saddle ; and he was found by those who took interest 
 in him, like Dagon, on the ground. You might have 
 thought the poor senseless block had life, to see the way 
 people took on about it, and how they spoke of his face, and 
 
244 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 his arms, and his legs ; yet those same Protestants, I say, 
 would at the same time be horrified had I used *he' and 
 ' him ' of a crucifix, and would call me one of the monsters 
 of the Apocalypse did I but Jionour my Living Lord as 
 they their dead king. " ("Present Position of Catholics," 
 p. i8i.) 
 
 The collocation of strong monosyllables at the 
 end of this example is to be noted, and though we 
 should not imitate it, or indeed any point of style, 
 servilely, yet should we find our thoughts naturally 
 clothe themselves in such a sentence, we shall not 
 reject the phrase because it has a rise rather than a 
 cadence, and we may remember we have admirable 
 authority. The close, for instance, of a famous 
 passage in Latimer's "Sermon of the Plough" is 
 wholly monosyllabic. He says of the Devil : 
 
 ' ' And when he had once brought Christ to the Cross he 
 tliought all cock sure." 
 
 In the quotation from Sir Walter Raleigh the 
 whole is but one long sentence ; Miss Stretton's 
 sentences are shorter, the whole divided much more 
 frequently by periods. Cardinal Newman's are 
 more flowing ; Lord Macaulay chops up his sen- 
 tences at times into mincemeat. Neither plan is 
 wrong. There is no rule for the length of sentences, 
 but that of clearness and emphasis. One of the 
 most full and pathetic sentences in the whole range 
 of literature consists of two words only: "Jesus 
 
 wept." 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 245 
 
 wept." Some of Milton's are like a musical 
 fugue in their long and stately march. But it 
 will be obvious that in a narrative, sentences 
 will be shorter, because the thoughts are more 
 various and broken, than in a philosophical trea- 
 tise, where the thought is progressive. For in- 
 stance, the concluding sentence of the Rev. H. B. 
 Wilson's Bampton Lectures, next to Newman's 
 the finest pulpit oratory known to me in our days, 
 consists of no less than one hundred and seventy 
 words. The passage is this : 
 
 " Finally, if in the course of these lectures questions 
 new to some have been opened, if in the minds of some, in 
 young and vigorous soils, there shall have been sown seeds 
 of thoughts concerning God and man, and divine law, 
 and human history, thoughts worthy to be matured 
 anxiously, and when matured, it may be, submitted 
 hereafter to the judgment of their own generation, let 
 me request such to carry also with them this caution, 
 which I trust has been sufficiently present to myself: 
 that no member of a communion or society is bound, either 
 by public or private duty, to unsettle received opinions where 
 ihey may seem to be erroneous, unless he have a reason- 
 able hope, as it appears to him, that he shall be able to sub- 
 stitute something better in their place : we should not rob 
 weak wayfarers in this worldly scene of the reeds on which 
 they lean, unless we can strengthen their feeble knees or 
 supply into their right hands stronger staves to lean on." 
 
 That quotation for one purpose serves also for 
 another. A pedantic rule tells us never to end a 
 sentence with a preposition. But the whole force 
 and rhythm of the sentence is destroyed if we sub- 
 stitute 
 
246 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 stitute for the last phrase " stronger staves on which 
 to lean." Nor is it trivial to accentuate the effect of 
 a change in only a few words. A whole chapter or 
 section of a book is like a musical work, it is built 
 up of paragraphs, as that is of movements; the 
 word corresponds to the note, the sentences to the 
 phrases, the parts of sentences to the chords. In 
 that art we are conscious of a correct or incorrect 
 chord, a beautiful phrasing, a false modulation. So, 
 unless we are able to recognise absolute per- 
 fection in that sentence from the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews : 
 
 " Turned to flight the armies of the aliens" ; 
 
 in Shakspere : 
 
 " Nay, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas 
 encarnadine, Making the green one red"; 
 
 in Milton : 
 
 "A noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a 
 strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks " ; 
 
 those who insist on beauty of style speak to those 
 who cannot understand, and are as those who to 
 such as know not one note of music from another 
 should play some elaborate symphony, and expect 
 them to unravel its " linked sweetness." 
 
 We noticed how Flaubert could recollect after 
 many years the exact place on the page of 
 some favourite sentence. We all have to remem- 
 ber, that a good sentence, musical, balanced^ 
 
 harmoniously 
 
ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 247 
 
 harmoniously proportioned in itself, is the foun- 
 dation of the paragraph, as is the chapter of the 
 book. 
 
 In the *' Contemporary Review " for April, 1885, 
 you will find a very clever paper on style by Mr. 
 Louis Stevenson, in which he has a few weighty 
 words on the sentence : 
 
 "Each phrase," he says, "is to be comely in itself, and 
 between the implication and the evolution of the sentence 
 there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound, for nothing 
 more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and 
 sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly fini^ed." 
 
 Now having said as much as is needful on 
 principles, we turn to details. These must be 
 mainly negative ; though the first is positive. We 
 must be careful about punctuation, and stop our 
 work as we mean it to be read. Modem writers 
 are incredibly careless, and take little note of 
 the value of stops, which they reduce as far as 
 possible to the comma and the period. The colon 
 is almost neglected ; but it is extremely valuable, 
 as marking a limb of a sentence, where the period 
 is not needed. A comma always should be used, if 
 possible, rather than a parenthetic sign, and dashes 
 as rarely as may be. And this, not only because a 
 page so written looks ugly, but because our reading, 
 and the sense of our writing, is afTected by the marks 
 we use. 
 
 We must, of course, be careful about grammar, 
 though not all popular writers are so. There are 
 
 two 
 
248 ON ENGLISH PROSE STYLE. 
 
 two faults against which a caution is needed. If a 
 verb has its own inflexion, we must use it ; and not 
 supply its place by an auxiliary verb. In poetry 
 constantly, for the sake of the metre, in prose often 
 from mere carelessness, we find people say "he 
 did enjoy," for "he enjoyed," "he did love," 
 for "beloved." The one phrase in which this is 
 absolutely offensive is "did have" : as "did you 
 have a pleasant walk?" "did you have your din- 
 ner?" instead of "had you a pleasant walk?" 
 And with these may be classed such disgraceful 
 vulgarisms as "to have a look" instead of "to 
 look" ; "to have a smoke" instead of "to smoke" ; 
 and, worst of all, "to put in an appearance" in- 
 stead of " to appear," or simply "to come." 
 
 The next slovenliness, which is common, increas- 
 ing, and always to be avoided, is the thrusting of 
 the adverb between the infinitive sign and the 
 verb : " they seemed to greatly enjoy the proceed- 
 ings"; instead of either "they seemed greatly to 
 enjoy"; or, "to enjoy greatly." 
 
 Again, from sheer carelessness, we often find 
 such a sentence as "It was Jones who devised and 
 carried out the plan " ; instead of "Jones devised 
 and carried out the plan." 
 
 Victor Hugo has one inestimable rule, which 
 deserves to be graven on the memory of all who 
 essay to write : " Quand la chose est, dites lemot." 
 We may not use paraphrases such as Macaulay 
 loves ; but apply the dictum in its fullest measure 
 
 and 
 
ON ENGUSH PROSE STYLE. 249 
 
 and in all its meanings ; and of whatever we have 
 to speak we must do so in the most direct and 
 unequivocal manner. 
 
 And so we return once more to principles. We 
 have the tongue of Raleigh and Walton and Milton, 
 in which Bunyan and South and Defoe wrote so 
 plainly, directly and vigorously: wherein Shak- 
 spere out-tops, as yet, all English writers ; and it 
 has come down to us unstained and almost un- 
 changed. A great responsibility is laid on those 
 who write, and also on those who read. If we leave 
 the circulating library on one side, and study the 
 acknowledged great writers, in them devoutly read 
 by day, on them meditate by night; so shall 
 the great treasure of speech committed to our 
 charge suffer no diminishing nor loss. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 r 
 
 I7Apr'58Mf|| 
 IN STACKS 
 
 APR 31958 
 
 M 
 
 ;fr 
 
 "jliN fe'68-4PM 
 
 f ■"■ ' ■■■" HEPT. 
 
 MAY 22 
 
 BEC. CIR. APR 3 
 
 1983 
 
 1930 
 
 30)>l-6,'14 
 
m 
 
 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CD^s^^^4l7 
 
 258538