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THE GREAT POETS AND THEIR THEOLOGY
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AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG, D. D., LL. D.
PRESIDENT OF THE ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AUTHOR OF "SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY" AND " PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION"
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AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY MDCCCXCVI1
Copyright 1897 by the AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
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PREFACE
THE essays which follow are summer recreations. The author is well aware that he does business on small capital, and that most of the capital is borrowed. He only hopes to repay what has been lent him, with the addition of some moderate interest.
It is not maintained that the poets are conscious the- ologians. In their vocation as seers, however, they have glimpses of truth in theology, as well as in philosophy and physics. From their higher point of view, indeed, they sometimes descry truths which are yet below the horizon of other thinkers. Poetical expressions of these truths are all the more valuable, because they are clothed in the language of feeling, and appeal to our .sense of beauty.
The author is inclined to believe that the great poets, taken together, give united and harmonious testimony to the fundamental conceptions of natural religion, if not to those of the specifically Christian scheme. This testimony is cumulative, and it follows the law of evolu- tion, by advancing from vague to clear. Even poets like Goethe, who proclaim another gospel, witness in spite of themselves to the truth as it is in Jesus.
There may be question what names deserve to be counted among those of the great poets. The author at first intended to include in the list only Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. Further study
vii
Vlll PREFACE
has convinced him that Wordsworth, Goethe, Browning, and Tennyson must be admitted to the company of the immortals.
Whatever judgment may be passed upon this point, he anticipates no dissent from the opinion that the study of all these poets is of the greatest advantage to theologians and preachers, as well as to the general seeker after truth. With the hope that old truths may gain new interest and brightness from an unfamiliar setting, the author submits to the public the fruits of his vacation work for the past thirteen years.
It remains only to be said that the first part of the paper on Browning was printed in " The Examiner," of New York, in December, 1887; that on Milton, in "The Watchman," of Boston, in March, 1897; those on Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, have appeared in "The Standard," of Chicago, at various dates from 1887 to 1897 ; those on Goethe and Tenny- son, together with the latter part of that on Browning, appear now for the first time.
A. H. S.
ROCHESTER, August i, 1897.
CONTENTS
HOMER
THE HOMERIC QUESTION AND THE HOMERIC THE- OLOGY . 1-63
Characterizations of the Homeric poems 3
The critical, or disintegrating, theory 5
Reaction in favor of the unity 6
Painting in the background 8
Development of plot 10
Minor proofs of common authorship 12
Unity of the " Iliad " 13
Unity of the "Odyssey" 16
Judgment of recent investigators 16
The poems were probably written 20
Testimony of Abou Symbel 21
Antiquity of Greek letters 22
Recent evidence from Egypt 25
Were the Greeks a dull people ? 27
Composition and transmission possible without writing 28
Later feats of memory 30
The evolutionary theory 31
There was a hearing public 3£-*"
Homer had his theology 34
Undertone of monotheism 36
Zeus a magnified man 37
Relation of Zeus to fate 39
The gods are not holy 40
They instigate iniquity 41
Origin of this conception 42
Homer's doctrine of sin 44
Sin is deception 44
No deep penitence in Homer 46
ix
X CONTENTS
Yet sin is self-deception also 47
And sin deserves death 49
Homer's doctrine of atonement 50
Does it involve substitution ? 51
Old Testament analogues 52
Superiority of the Christian scheme 54
Eschatology in Homer 55
Life incomplete without the body 56
Rewards and punishments 57
The human interest predominates 59
Splendor of the Homeric poetry 61
VIRGIL
THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 65-103
Virgil's place in history 67
The poet a product of his time 68
His early surroundings 69
His personal traits 71
The education of the poet 72
Preeminently a literary artist 73
His relation to earlier Latin poetry 74
The greatest of imitators 75
Progress in his work 77
The " Eclogues " of Virgil 77
The "Georgics" of Virgil 79
His ideas of nature and of government 80
The";Eneid" of Virgil 81
His journey to Greece and his death 82
Virgil compared with Homer . 83
Artistic rather than spontaneous 85
The last half of the "^Eneid" 85
Virgil's special merits 87
The apotheosis of Augustus 89
Virgil a precursor of modern civilization 90
Virgil's theological ideas 91
The soul holds a higher place than in Homer .... 93
Virgil a prophet of Christianity -94
Sources of his predictions 95
Wide influence of Virgil's poetry ......... 97
CONTENTS
Led to a revival of the old religion 98
Virgil as a saint and a wizard 98
Mediaeval legends about Virgil 100
Story of the salvation of Rome 101
Virgil the poet of Rome 102
DANTE
DANTE AND THE DIVINE COMEDY IO5-I55
A summer study of Dante 107
Dante's birth and education 108
Dante and Beatrice 109
Preparation for the ' ' Divine Comedy " in
Dante in exile 113
The "Divine Comedy " another " Pilgrim's Progress " . 115 Expresses Dante's philosophy of civil society . . . .117 Expresses his ideas of man's relations to God . . . .119
An interpretation of all known truth 121
Dante's scheme of the universe 121
Dante's verse and its influence 124
The entrance to the hell 125
The hell of incontinence 128
The hell of bestiality 129
The hell of malice 130
Lessons of the " Inferno " 132
Sin is essentially vile and contemptible 132
Sin is self-perversion of the will 133
Penalty is not external to the sinner 134
From hell to purgatory 136
The seven capital sins 138
The seven terraces of the mount 139
Lessons of the " Purgatorio " 142
Purgatory is not so much a place as a process .... 142 Unwarrantably extends purification after death .... 143 Regards the process of purification as a penal one . . 143
The nine spheres of the "Paradise" 144
The rose of the blessed 148
Light and love constitute Dante's heaven 151
To Dante the spiritual world was the real world . . . 154
Xll CONTENTS
SHAKESPEARE
THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE . . . , I $J-22O
Mysterious largeness of Shakespeare ........ 159
The function of imagination ............ 160
True art is creative ......... . ...... 162
Poetry an expression of the universal ........ 163
Dramatic poetry the highest form of art ....... 164
More of truth in poetry than in prose ........ 167
The abnormal use of imagination ......... 168
Universality involves impersonality ......... 169
Shakespeare partly the product of his time ..... 171
Nature as well as nurture ............. 173
A youth not wild and dissolute .......... 175
The first two periods of his productive activity . . . .178
The last two periods of his productive activity .... 181
Did Shakespeare appreciate his own genius ? . . . .183
Concessions to the tastes of the vulgar ....... 185
Meaning of the word universality ......... 186
Character manifested ............... 187
Character developed ............... 191
Ethical and religious ideas ............ 193
Neither naturalistic nor agnostic .......... 195
Man's freedom and responsibility ......... 197
Crime is not the mere result of ignorance ...... 198
Personal sins and hereditary sinfulness ....... 200
Responsibility for inborn depravity ......... 202
Conscience predicts retribution .......... 203
Not only in the next world, but in this ....... 205
The only real quittance is the work of Christ .... 208
Shakespeare a witness to Christianity ........ 209
A creator of imagery as well as of character ..... 21 1
The poetic diction of Shakespeare ......... 214
The limitations of Shakespeare .......... 217
The greatest poet of secular humanity ....... 217
MILTON
THE POET OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 22 1 -
Shakespeare and Milton ............. 223
8
CONTENTS xiii
(The Mil tonic sublimity 224
Intense personality of Milton's poetry 226
Jits austere purity 226*
Its immense erudition 228
^Its religious faith 229
Preparation of practical life 231
Milton's parentage and training 233
He takes part in the struggle for liberty 234
His pamphlets, their eloquence and their bitterness . 235
His fierceness of denunciation 236
His infelicitous marriage 239
His "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" 241
He loses his sight 242
Blindness shuts him in to the supernatural 245
Scheme of the universe in the " Paradise Lost" . . 246
Temptation and fall of our first parents 249
The "Paradise Regained" 252
Can the highest poetry be didactic ? 253
Must poetry conform to correct science? 255
Milton's " Treatise of Christian Doctrine " 257
The Scriptures an infallible divine revelation 258
An Arminian doctrine of divine decrees 259
An Arian doctrine of the person of Christ 260
A Monistic doctrine of creation 263
A Traducian doctrine of the origin of the soul . . . 264 An orthodox doctrine of anthropology and soteriology 265
A doctrine of soul-sleeping in eschatology 266
A Baptist doctrine of the church and the ordinances . 269
A final Quaker element in his religion 270
Influence of Roger Williams upon Milton 271
What is the essence of Protestantism ? 273
Milton shows the creative power of true religion . . 276
GOETHE
THE POET OF PANTHEISM 2/9-33!
Luther and Goethe compared 281
Goethe the literary emancipator of Germany .... 282 Cosmopolitan Frankfort, and Goethe's parents . . . 283
Attractiveness of young Goethe 285
Goethe incapable of true love 287
XIV CONTENTS
Destitute of patriotism 290
Goethe's early moral attitude 290
Not short-sightedness or invincible ignorance .... 292
A wrong moral decision 293
He accepts the gospel of self-culture 294
Effect upon his philosophy . . . 296
Effect upon his theology 298
Goethe a non-ethical evolutionist 301
Effect of pantheism upon his personal life 302
An egotistic and lonely old age 305
Effect of pantheism upon his literary work 308
Lost his power to depict reality 309
From Gothic warmth to classic coldness 311
The first part of "Faust" 315
Expresses truths of freedom, sin, guilt, retribution . .316
The second part of " Faust " 318
A pantheistic substitute for the Christian redemption .319
Concessions to Christianity only apparent 320
Goethe's God is indistinguishable from nature . . . .322
Goethe the poet of a materialistic age 325
In his lyrics he most nearly forgets himself 327
Pernicious influence of his philosophy 328
In matters of faith the enslaver of his country .... 329
WORDSWORTH
THE POET OF NATURE 333~372
Characterizations of Wordsworth 335
His relation to preceding thought 336
His account of his own growth . . . • • 339
Meditation upon nature 340
He sought truth more than beauty 341
The true poet must ennoble character 342
Wordsworth the poet of natural religion 343
Not inconsistent with Christianity 344
The influence of his sister Dorothy 346
Dorothy the complement of her brother 347
The influence of Coleridge 349
The breaking of their intimacy 351
The " Intimations of Immortality" 353
CONTENTS XV
Seeming recollections of the past 354
Recollections of preexistence in God 357
Imagination is creative reason 360
An organ for the recognition of truth 361
"Tintern Abbey" 363
Nature an instructor, because instinct with God . . . 364
The "Ode to Duty" 366
Conscience an eternal witness against pantheism . . . 367
Wordsworth's poetry essentially Christian 368
Final recognition of Wordsworth's claims 369
He has added a permanent element to the world's thought 371
BROWNING
HIS POETRY AND HIS THEOLOGY 373~447
Browning's portrait in the Watts' Collection 373
The story of Browning's life 377
The creative element in poetry 378
The imaginative reproduction of the universe .... 380 Browning the poet, not of nature, but of man's thoughts 381 */
Not lyric, but dramatic 372
The structure of "The Ring and the Book" .... 385
The ideal element in poetry 387
Poetry not a mere representation of life 389
The poet must believe in freedom and immortality . . 390 In the personality, righteousness, and love of God . . 392
In a revelation of God to man 394
Browning's spirit more religious than Tennyson's . .^96
Is his poetry always serious ? 397
Is his poetry always healthful ? 398
The artistic element in poetry 400
An explanation of Browning's obscurity 402
Is the explanation sufficient ? 404
Has he the art of rhythmical and musical expression ? 407
Palliations of the poet's harshness 410
The highest poetry is yet to come 412
Browning as the poet of optimism 413
Due to health, environment, philosophical influences . 414
He finds God, not only in nature, but in the soul . . . 416 \n I ^
XVI CONTENTS
Interprets nature by man, not man by nature .... 419
Browning is a monist, but not a pantheist 422
The unifying principle is love ..." * 426
An optimist, because he sees God revealed in Christ . 427 The later Browning a philosopher rather than a poet . 43 1 He holds moral evil to be somehow a form of good . 434 Right and wrong are illusions to sting men to effort . 436
Love is of God, as truth and right are not 439
A sad falling off from the earlier Browning 442
Yet he sees in love a guarantee for immortality . . . 444
TENNYSON
POETRY AS INTERPRETING THE DIWNE ORDER 449-524
The poet's early surroundings 451
His conception of poetry 453
The true, poet is a prophet also 455
Tennyson's relation to preceding poets 458
The first period of dainty grace 459
The poet's replies to his critics 462
His personal characteristics 462
The second period of subtle thought 464
The divine order in the relation of the sexes .... 465
Illustrated in " The Princess " 467
The divine order in society and government .... 470 Illustrated in " Locksley Hall " and other poems . . 470 The divine order in the relation of man to God . . . 473
Illustrated in ",In Memoriam': 473
" In Memoriam " is Tennyson's " Paradise Regained " 476
The third period of broad humanity 477
Illustrated in "The Idylls of the King" 477
"The Idylls of the King" is his "Paradise Lost" . . 477
Man is ruined by one sin 481
The dramas, "Harold," "Becket," and "Queen
Mary" 482
His theology influenced by English agnostic philosophy 483
Faith wrongly sundered from knowledge 484
The soul is an emanation from God 486
Yet Tennyson is no pantheist 489
The soul's personality persists after death 490
CONTENTS Xvii
Had the soul a personal existence before birth ? . . . 493
The poet's conception of nature 496
The world is a shadow-world 499
Tennyson an evolutionist, but not a materialist . . . 502
Sin as sensuality, in "The Vision of Sin" 504
Sin as pride and selfishness, in "The Palace of Art" . 506
Christ recognized as divine Redeemer 509 — •
God's work must be complemented by man's . . . .512
The fourth period of growing despondency 515
Tennyson's restorationism 519
Summing up of Tennyson's theology 519
The greatest poetry must be theological 522
HOMER
HOMER
i
THE HOMERIC QUESTION AND THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
HOMER'S " Iliad " has been called " the most famous among poems." Bryant speaks of its author as "the greatest of epic poets," and says that "the common consent of the civilized world places the ' Iliad ' and the 'Odyssey' at an unapproachable height of poetical ex- cellence." Shelley declares that "as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satis- fying completeness of his images." Keats, ignorant of Greek, looks into Chapman's translation and describes his impressions in one of the finest of English sonnets :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez — when with eagle eyes He stared on the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise — Silent upon a peak in Darien.
Cuique in sua arte credendum — we may trust the poets in matters pertaining to their own art. And the popular verdict bears out that of the poets. Homer is translated into every tongue that makes pretension to be civilized. The rector of the German Gymnasium
3
4 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
tells his pupils that there are two things which they are expected to learn thoroughly : the first is the Bible, and the second is Homer. He speaks wisely, for these are the two great records of the early world ; Homer gives us the secular record, as the Bible gives us the sacred.
Matthew Arnold has summed up for us the general characteristics of Homer's poetry. He makes them to be : first, rapidity of movement ; secondly, plainness of thought ; thirdly, simplicity of expression ; fourthly, no- bility. Ballad poetry lacks the last of these — nobility. As the writer of the article in the " Britannica" has said : " The old English balladist can stir Sir Philip Sidney's heart like a trumpet ; but Homer can do more — he can refine and transmute the raw natural man." Virgil, Dante, Milton, lack the first three of the elements of Homer's greatness — rapidity, plainness, simplicity. They seem artificial and self-conscious beside Homer. Virgil has always for his underlying motive the exalta- tion of Rome ; Dante is bent upon expounding the politi- cal and religious philosophy of his time ; even Milton, in the "Paradise Lost," is the Arian and the Puritan. But Homer seems free from subjective motive. No strong antipathy of race or of religion moves him. He is him- self absorbed, and he absorbs us, in life. Like Shakes- peare and Browning, he can say : Humani nihil a me alienum puto — everything human delights me. With wonderful ease and simplicity he depicts to us, in noble metrical form, the whole world of human action and feeling.
Homer reigns by right of possession, and both the poets and the people recognize his authority. But the critics are a peculiar race, and for a century past they
THE CRITICAL THEORY 5
have been suggesting serious doubts whether the " Iliad ' and the "Odyssey' are by the same author; whether either one was as a whole composed by Homer ; whether in fact such a man as Homer ever lived at all. Before we attempt to form a judgment for ourselves, it may be well to have before us a brief sketch of the history of what is known as "the Homeric Question."
Antiquity has often been called uncritical. Yet an- tiquity was critical enough to separate the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey ' ' from the other so-called Homeric pro- ductions, and to recognize these two as the genuine work of Homer, while it attributed the Hymns and the Cyclic poems to other authors. There were but two exceptions to the unanimity of this judgment. About the year 225 B. c., Xeno and Hellanicus of Alexandria detached the " Iliad " from the " Odyssey," and held to a dual authorship. For this reason these two otherwise obscure Alexandrian writers were called Chorizontes, or Separatists. They never went so far as to suggest that the " Iliad" might be a congeries of poems by different authors, or that the " Odyssey " was a composite produc- tion. That was left for the skepticism of a far later time.
The close of the last century was an era of disintegra- tion, of revolt against settled beliefs and institutions. Then "a man was famous, according as he lifted up axes upon the thick trees." Wolf, in Germany, pub- lished his " Prolegomena to Homer" in 1795. He held that the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, about the middle of the sixth century B. c., finding current in his time many separate and independent lays which had for their common subject the siege of Troy, compiled these into
6 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
one poem and first committed them to writing. Wolf, however, regarded the nucleus of the "Iliad" and the nucleus of the "Odyssey" as composed by Homer, or by two Homers — to this nucleus in each case Peisistratus added other lays.
Thus the long tradition of single and Homeric author- ship was broken, and one modern critic set at naught a belief which, with two unimportant exceptions, had been held semper, ubique, et ab omnibus. The breaking of the dam was followed by a flood of destructive criticism. The German Lachmanh resolved the " Iliad " into sixteen distinct and clearly defined lays. Grote, in England, considered it as an Achilleid enlarged into an "Iliad" by the addition of nearly half the poem — the " Odyssey' being a later production by a different author. Still more recently, Paley has maintained the same view, and has compared the two poems to pictures of stained glass, made up by an artistic combination of handsome bits of older windows which fortune and time had shivered.
We are fortunately able to set over against the names of these great critics another set of names, at least equally great, of men who, in spite of all the learning brought to bear in dismembering the Homeric poems, still defend their substantial integrity. It is the more interesting to observe that some of these defenders were at one time persuaded to adopt the views of Wolf and Lachmann. Goethe was one of these. He gave up at first the unity of the Homeric authorship ; but after- ward his juster poetical insight asserted itself and he set himself to oppose the critical theory. So it was with Nitzsch, though he continued to believe in large inter- polations and additions to the primitive poems. Mure,
REACTION IN FAVOR OF THE UNITY /
in like manner, was first a Wolfian; but after twenty years of study he reversed his judgment and became a zealous advocate of the unity.
Gladstone also defends the Homeric authorship, and brings to the defense what the learned Germans so often lack — a statesmanlike common sense. The latest contribution to the discussion is the article of Monro in the last edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and this too holds to the unity of each poem, though the writer regards the " Odyssey " as composed by a differ- ent and later author than the " Iliad." So the combat- ants are as to numbers pretty evenly balanced, while genius and learning, though at one time they seemed mainly to favor the theory of disintegration, are of late more and more arraying themselves on the side of the traditional view that both poems are substantially by the same author and that this author is Homer.
But it is desirable that we should look into the matter for ourselves. Let us briefly review the critical theory, and in reviewing it let us reverse the common order of discussion. I ask the reader to adjourn for a little the question whether the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey' are each a unity, and, granting this for the sake of the argument, I ask him first to consider with me whether these two are works of the same author. There is abundant evidence, as it seems to me, why this latter question should be answered in the affirmative : the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " are by the same hand. I argue this mainly upon the ground that the two poems exhibit a similarity of structure impossible to explain in any other way, especially when we take into account the fact that this peculiar structure is found only here
8 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
in all classic literature, and that it is at the same time characteristic of the highest genius.
Jevons, in his admirable " History of Greek Litera- ture," has pointed out that Homer's method of " paint- ing in his background ' is entirely unique yet incom- parably artistic. The test of a poet's ability is his method of putting his hearer or reader in possession of the preliminary facts needful to the understanding of the action. There are three ways of doing this. Euripi- des is an illustration of the first : one of his characters appears upon the stage and describes the situation before the play opens ; but this method forewarns the hearer or reader that the play is not reality, whereas the poet's object is so to absorb his audience that they will for the hour regard the performance not as illusion but as real life. Virgil gives us an instance of the second method : the hero of the "^Eneid" relates the preceding history to Dido ; but here the speaker is too evidently talking not so much to Dido as to the reader, and so again the illusion is dispelled. The third method is that of constructing scenes necessary to the development of the plot, and yet, in the midst of the forward movement, making these very scenes explain what is behind. This is reality ; this is the highest art ; and this is the method of Homer.
Observe how all that is presupposed in the action of the " Iliad " is disclosed by the plot itself. The action lasts only some forty or fifty days. But these forty or fifty days have been preceded by nine long years of siege, during which the Greeks have shut up their enemy in Troy and have occupied themselves in rava- ging the surrounding country. Some knowledge of all
\
PAINTING IN THE BACKGROUND 9
this must be communicated, but only incidentally. The poem begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. It is the father of Briseis, the subject of the quarrel, from whom we learn that these chiefs are beleaguering Troy. Why, we learn from Achilles, when he says that it is for no advantage of his own, but to gain recompense for Menelaus and Agamemnon. How long the siege has continued, we learn from Agamemnon, when he tests the spirit of his men after the defection of Achilles. Just before the first engage- ment, Hector upbraids Paris with the remark : " Thou mayst see what sort of a warrior he is whose lovely wife thou hast." Paris is vanquished and flees to his mis- tress. Then first the guilty cause of the Trojan war appears in the person of Helen.
In precisely similar manner does the author of the " Odyssey " paint in the background of his story. The first four books are called the Telemacheia, and they depict the state of things which precedes the action of the poem. Telemachus, the youthful son of Odysseus, is set before us as suffering continual wrong. The inso- lence of the suitors for the hand of his mother is shown by bringing in Athene, a candid judge, in the guise of a stranger. Hoping to win the mother, the suitors even plot the death of the son. Thus, at the beginning, the long distress of twenty years is unfolded before us, yet all by way of incident and as a part of the plot itself. The news about Odysseus, vague at first, becomes more definite, till it stops just where the real action of the " Odyssey ' begins. When Telemachus has set sail for Pylos the preparations are complete, and we enter upon the narrative of Odysseus' wanderings and of his return.
IO THE HOMERIC QUESTION
Now I submit that this similarity of structure goes far to prove the two poems the work of one author. Here are intuitive discernment of a law of literary composition and successful working in accordance with it which evince the highest genius. That two great poets should have arisen simultaneously in that early age, and that both should have constructed their poems so completely in accordance with this law of the human mind, this law of human thought, that later writers can imitate but never surpass them, this surely is a far greater demand upon our believing faculty than is the hypothesis of one author for them both.
This conviction will be strengthened by considering the development of the plot in the two poems, as we have now considered the preparation for it. We must remember that the epic appeals to wonder, just as the drama does. After the situation is set before us, there must come an entanglement which rouses our curiosity. The more complex the plot, so long as it is not con- fused, the more difficult the knot, so long as its intri- cacies can be seen, so much the greater is the interest which is raised in the reader, so much more intense is his demand for the denouement, the untying, the resolu- tion of the theme. We have seen with what art the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" propose their subjects to us — the concrete before the abstract, synthesis before analysis, the problem before the explanation. Do they also show a common genius and follow a common prin- ciple in the evolution of their respective plots ?
The full answer to this question would require an elaborate statement of the argument of each. This is obviously impracticable in the present essay. I must
DEVELOPMENT OF PLOT I I
content myself with citing a few of the curious corre- spondences of the two poems. In the " Iliad," Achilles is absent from the end of the first book to the beginning of the eighteenth — so in the " Odyssey," Odysseus is absent most of the time. In both the " Iliad " and the "Odyssey," matters grow from bad to worse. In the " Iliad," the Greeks suffer untold woes, although they have for nine years confined the enemy within the walls of Troy. Achilles' absence now enables the Trojans to drive them behind the rampart they have been forced to build, and even to fire their ships ; then Achilles comes forth to avenge Patroclus, the tide of battle turns, and the hero carries death and dismay before him.
So, in the "Odyssey," the servants and suitors grow reckless of duty and fearless of punishment — successive outrages intensifying our indignation — until the many- wiled Odysseus, after enduring incomparable toils and dangers, appears upon the scene, proves his might by stringing his ancient bow, and from it rains upon the guilty crew the shafts of a just retribution. In both the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," the plot leads step by step to a crisis of moral grandeur ; in both poems this climax is followed by soothing scenes which relieve the long strain upon the feelings of the reader. We claim that the poems are too much alike in this great matter of structure to have been by different authors. Imitation will not account for the similarity ; if it were so, we should have "Iliads" and "Odysseys" in plenty through the after ages. No, this secret of structure is an instinct of genius ; it works spontaneously and unconsciously in the great artist ; only in later times does philosophic analysis penetrate and name the mystery.
12 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
The argument from structure is so conclusive that we can afford to leave unnoticed many other evidences of a common authorship, such as the facts that each poem begins with an invocation to the Muse, and that at least two thousand lines of the " Iliad " are found also in the "Odyssey." We need only mention some of the objec- tions to the view that one poet composed both poems. Minstrels appear in the " Odyssey," it is said, but never in the " Iliad " ; we reply that minstrels belong to the court and not to the camp. The gods, it is said, are at bitterer warfare with each other in the " Iliad " than in the "Odyssey"; yes, we answer, but in the "Iliad" there are greater strifes among men to call forth their anger.
There are differences of style and spirit between the poems, but these differences are perfectly consistent with unity of authorship when we remember two things : first, that the " Odyssey " is a sequel to the "Iliad," depicting the subsequent fortunes of the heroes of Ilium, and having its scene in European Greece and the Ionian Isles, as the scene of the " Iliad ' was in Asiatic Greece and the Isles of the ALgean ; secondly, that the " Iliad" is the work of the author's youth, while the " Odyssey " is the production of his later age. Hence the hero of the first is a youthful warrior, the hero of the second an older wanderer; hence the geo- graphical knowledge of the second is more extended than that of the first ; hence the gods, in both poems a medley of vices and virtues, are on the whole more sober and moral in the " Odyssey " than in the " Iliad," as befits the more mature reflection of the author. The differ- ences between the two poems are not greater than those
UNITY OF THE " ILIAD ' 13
between the "Paradise Lost' and the "Paradise Re- gained" of John Milton, or, to take more modern in- stances, between the earlier and the later writings of George William Curtis or Thomas Carlyle.
But my learned readers are by this time fancying that I have been choosing an easy controversy with a man of straw, while the real antagonist has been unattacked and unchallenged. I proceed, therefore, to discuss the more important question whether the " Iliad ' or the " Odys- sey" is in itself a unity. Was either poem the work of a single author, or are both the products of a gradual evolution, remains of a varied collection of hymns on the war of Troy and the after adventures of its heroes ? Was there one Homer who composed these great epics, or are the poems we now possess a skillful combination of many ancient heroic lays? Is the present unity, or seeming unity, of each poem due to the genius of one great poet who struck out the plan of the whole at the first, or is it due to critical selection and careful com- pilation in subsequent ages? For the consideration of these questions I trust that what has been already said has prepared the way and has indicated the method. I would still call attention to structure, and would maintain that in the structure of each poem there are evidences of unity so marked and admirable that they point indu- bitably, not to many authors, but to one.
The unity of the "Iliad" has sometimes failed to be perceived for the reason that the critic has mistaken the theme of the epic. That theme is not the fall of Troy nor the fate of Achilles ; for neither of these is described in the poem. In the first line of the first book we are forewarned against such misapprehensions, when the
14 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
subject announced is Achilles' wrath. The first book, crowded with incident as it is, yet unembellished by a single simile, sets before us the cause of this wrath and the promise of Zeus to avenge the son of Thetis. It is only the death of the Trojan hero at Achilles' hands that sates this wrath, and therefore the climax of the poem is the slaying of Hector. All that follows after this is simply the letting down of the reader's excited feeling, and the poem ends with the line : " Such burial the illustrious Hector found," simply because the reader, without this knowledge, would have been left in painful anxiety. To this death of Hector, the sacrifice that appeases Achilles' wrath, the " Iliad ' moves forward and onward from the very start. The reverses of the Greeks and the transient successes of Odysseus and Diomede, both and alike prepare the way for the day of reckoning when the son of Peleus comes to his own once more.
And yet with this note of triumph there ever mingles a sorrowful minor strain. The hero of the Greeks was the object of sympathy as well as of admiration. An evil fate hung over him. "Whom the gods love die young." Though the death of Achilles does not form the proper subject of the poem, it is yet intimated prophetically. When, in the first book, the hero appeals to Thetis, it is with a reference to his " brief span of life." In the ninth book again he says : " My returning home is taken from me." In the eighteenth, Thetis, shedding tears, admonishes him : " Straightway, after Hector, death is appointed for thee." In the nineteenth, we hear Achilles yet again : " Well know I that it is ap- pointed me to perish here, far from my father dear and
UNITY OF THE " ILIAD " 15
mother." In the twenty-first : " Under the wall of Troy I must die by the swift arrows of Apollo." And, finally, in the twenty-second book, Hector, with his dying breath, predicts the death of his fierce enemy : " In the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo slay thee, for all thy valor, at the Scaean gate." Here in the suc- cessive books of the " Iliad " is the gradual unfolding of a prophecy. It reminds us of the far nobler progress in the Old Testament from the protevangelium in Genesis to the clear predictions in Micah and Isaiah. It has been well said that funeral notes mark every appearance of Achilles, and that they grow in intensity with every repetition, like a motif of Wagner's.
Now all this is indicative of an underlying design — a design which belonged to the first conception of the poem. It cannot be an afterthought, for it is part of the very warp and woof of the "Iliad." As each feature of a great picture must be in the artist's mind before he puts his brush to canvas, so the ideas of Achilles' wrath and of his fateful triumph must have been from the first in the mind of some composer of the " Iliad." In a true sense the whole antedates the parts, not the parts the whole. Each subsequent part presupposes the parts that have gone before and is unintelligible without them.
This is markedly true of that very portion of the poem which has been often held to be a mere episode — the Doloneia, or the episode in which Odysseus and Diomede made their brilliant night foray upon the camp of the Trojans. When we remember that this follows upon Achilles' rejection of Agamemnon's embassy and offer of reconciliation, and especially when we remember that it lifts the Greeks from profound discouragement and
1 6 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
prepares the way for the new onset which brings the whole story to its culmination, it will be plain to us that the development of the plot makes indispensable the Doloneia. And so with every other extended passage which the critics have sought to detach. The whole " Iliad " is an Achilleid, and it is vain to seek within the poem for any nucleus which has unity in itself and to which other short productions were added to make up the present whole. Even Wolf never dared to specify what the precise nucleus is. Try to separate any such part from the rest, and you find such a network of mu- tual reference that you are compelled to stop ; there are multitudinous connections, like bloodvessels, which pre- vent you from cutting off any single limb without de- stroying the life of the whole.
If the unity of the "Iliad" is demonstrable, that of the "Odyssey" is much more so. Indeed, I do not pro- pose to enter into the detailed proof of it. I prefer to shorten my discussion by adopting as my own the con- clusion of Monro, the latest writer on the subject, when he says : " The unity of the ' Odyssey,' as a whole, is beyond the reach of existing weapons of criticism." In both poems, besides this matter of structure to which I have adverted, there is a consistent delineation of char- acter, which sets before us the greatest variety of gods and men, yet with never a slip or mistake in the way of confounding the traits of one with the traits of another- each character preserves his peculiar identity whenever and under whatever circumstances he appears. There is a composite language — the archaic Ionian is mixed with the later and less flowing speech, leaving it flexible enough for purposes of adaptation, yet like the tongue
UNITY OF THE 'ODYSSEY I/
of Chaucer marking a period of transition and incapable of reproduction at any later time. There is a dignity of style which belongs only to the work of a lofty mind ; the adjective "Homeric" has a meaning as well denned as the adjective "Miltonic." Like every one of the greatest poets, the author of the " Iliad ' and of the " Odyssey ' ' is master of all the knowledge of his time, and this conscious mastery breathes everywhere through his verse — incedit regina. I suppose it was the con- vergence of all these proofs which moved Aristotle — one of the most sagacious thinkers the world has seen -to declare that the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" con- stitute the standard of epic unity.
Consider, for a moment, what demands the opposite hypothesis makes upon our credulity. Instead of one Homer, or even of two Homers, we are to believe in many Homers, each equal to the production of a poem which may ultimately constitute a part of the " Iliad ' or the "Odyssey." Are great poets, then, so plenty in human history ? The critics seem to think them thick as blackberries in August. But even the Elizabethan age has but one Shakespeare ; we may count ourselves well off if one such star of poesy rises in each five hundred years. Granting that a whole galaxy of poets rose at once, is it probable that they would all choose for their theme the war of Troy, the last year of that war, Achilles among all the chiefs, and, more narrowly still, the one incident of Achilles' wrath ? Would they all, with one accord, ignore the story of Troy's fall, and passing over the fates of all the other heroes, devote their genius to depicting only the wanderings and the
return of Ulysses ?
B
1 8 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
Or, if this is credible, can we believe that out of these independent lays a consistent whole could be constructed, with parts so nicely balanced, and with such unity of effect as to make it a paragon of art ? As well believe that the Parthenon is the work of a multitude of succes- sive builders, each beginning where the last left off, but without architect or plan : the rambling incongruities and incompleteness of some English cathedrals show the results of such a method. Or is the genius of the poems the genius of the patient bookmaker — some critical and selecting and combining Peisistratus, or servant of Peisistratus, five hundred years after the original com- position of the separate lays? Then we have a double problem to deal with : first, why such genius should have occupied itself with work so mechanical and inglorious ; and secondly, why the composer of the nu- cleus should not have been equally competent at the first to organize his material into the finished poem. Whatever proves such genius in the separate parts, proves ability to construct the whole ; whatever proves genius in the compiler proves that compiling would never satisfy his poetical ambition.
Professor Mahaffy, in his " Problems of Greek His- tory," has well said that, while the "Iliad" and " Odys- sey " are made up of many different legends, their co-ordi- nation is the work of one great poet. Even the great German critic of Homer calls the "Iliad" "the Greek Bible." Yet he denies the unity of its authorship, and would break it into its component parts. He represents the innovating and destructive tendency of the modern criticism in general. Now that the same method is ap- plied to the Hebrew Bible, and only the nucleus of the
UNITY OF THE 'ODYSSEY* 1 9
Pentateuch is accepted as the work of Moses, we can see somewhat more clearly both the nature of the method and its results.
It would rob us of every great name of literature. It would give to the late and inferior talent which can only patch together the works of others the praise that be- longs to supreme creative genius. The large design and simple elegance of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" are not the natural product of an artificial age like that of Peisistratus ; they belong to the mighty childhood of the race. Moses and Homer were possibly added to and supplemented as their work passed down through gen- erations following ; Ezra in the former case and Peisis- tratus in the latter had doubtless a part to play in determining what was canonical and genuine. The "Iliad" and the " Odyssey'1 probably supplanted other and earlier poems which ceased to be read or recited and so were lost forever. But the former supplanted the latter because the former possessed a unity and majesty in which the latter were lacking.
It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Homer himself, granting that our doctrine of a single author- ship is correct, may have taken many years for the com- plete elaboration of his poems, and during those years versions of various degrees of perfection may have been set in circulation. Some such hypothesis fully accounts for ancient diversities of reading and provides abundant work for Peisistratus, while it saves the integrity of the poems. Goethe, in one of his letters to Schiller, cites different versions of his own poems to refute the theory we are considering. He had at various times amended and enlarged them, but he did not propose on that
2O THE HOMERIC QUESTION
account to concede that there was a second Goethe, or many Goethes. Wolf's " Prolegomena" itself, treated in this way, would furnish evidence that the one Wolf was many Wolf s instead. "The London Spectator " sums up the argument none too forcibly when it says : " It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or work of art should be produced without a great master-mind to conceive the whole, as that a fine living bull should be developed out of beef sausages."
Here we must consider a most plausible objection proposed by Paley, the latest English representative of the Wolfian theory. He denies the original unity of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey' upon the ground that it is impossible to preserve intact so long poems un- written, and that written they could not have been. Let us take these two points in the reverse order from that in which they are stated. Both assertions are without warrant. We meet the first with the counter-assertion that the poems could have been, and probably were, written. All arguments for the unity and the internal vital connections of the poems are also arguments for the writing of them. The burden of proof rests upon those who deny that they were originally written, and the proof of such a negative as this will be found a very considerable burden.
We do not choose, however, to avail ourselves of our privilege in this matter. We rather desire to state all the important facts which make against our own view, as well as those which favor it ; let the balance then be struck, and let the reader decide for himself. What was the date of Homer ? or, if any dislike to put the question in that form, when was the substance of the " Iliad '
TESTIMONY OF ABOU SYMBEL 21
and of the " Odyssey" composed ? We answer, Homer lived, or the poems were composed, many years after the Trojan war. This we infer from the fact that the poet speaks of the superior size and strength of the warriors who fought before Troy, as of a generation long since passed away. If then we take 1050 B. c., the traditional date of the Trojan war, as approximately correct, we may put Homer, or the rise of the Homeric poems, at 850 B. c., or four hundred years before the time of Her- odotus. The question before us is therefore this : Is it probable that the Greek language was committed to writing and was used for literary purposes so early as 850 B. c. ?
We must grant that no actual literary remains, unless it be the poems of Homer, have come down to us from that time. The earliest specimens of Greek epigraphy do not antedate the middle of the seventh century before Christ. The fragmentary inscriptions of Thera, of Crete, and of Naucratis, may be assigned to 650, 640, and 630, respectively. Those of Melos and of Abou Symbel come later still, and probably within the sixth century. As the last of these is peculiarly interesting and significant, I dwell upon it at greater length.
Far up the river Nile, in modern Nubia, and at the very confines of ancient Egypt, still stand the remains of the temple of Abou Symbel. On its front is the famous row of colossal statues, seventy feet high, though each is sitting with hands upon the knees. They are awe-inspiring in their solitary grandeur. But to the archaeologist one of the most curious things about them is an inscription cut long after the statues themselves were carved out of the solid rock. That inscription is
22 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
in Greek. It is upon the left leg of one of the gigantic figures, and below the knee. It is just such an inscrip- tion as an American Vandal will occasionally cut into a famous statue or edifice abroad. It records the names of certain Greek mercenaries in the employ of a certain Egyptian king, Psammeticus. The Greek characters are of antique style. The letter Omicron answers both for Omicron and Omega, and so we are assured that its date must be before the year 540 — for from this time inscriptions have the Omega — Omega being the last in order of the Greek alphabet, simply because it was the last — the last letter invented and added.
If we can only learn the date of this Egyptian King Psammeticus, we can fix more narrowly the time of the inscription. There were unfortunately four Psammeti- cuses who might possibly be referred to. But Herod- otus mentions an expedition to Ethiopia by Psammeticus the Second, and it was probably this expedition on which the Greek mercenaries were employed. Now Psammeticus the Second reigned from 594 to 589 before Christ. Sometime before 589 B. c., therefore, this speci- men of Greek epigraphy must have been written. Of the mercenaries some were lonians and some were Dori- ans, yet all of them used the Ionic form of the alphabet. This presupposes time for the Ionic alphabet to become generally used in Greece, and makes it certain that writing was a common art by the middle of the seventh century.
The argument is far stronger than this mere state- ment of dates would seem to indicate. We have been adducing the evidence of inscriptions upon stone or jnetal, But these imply the long-continued previous
ANTIQUITY OF GREEK LETTERS 23
existence of the easier writing upon leather or parch- ment. Archilochus, a poet of about 700 B. c., speaks of "a grievous scytale' -the scytale being the staff on which a strip of leather for writing purposes was rolled slantwise, so that the message inscribed upon the strip could not be read until the leather was rolled again upon another staff of the same size ; since only the writer and the receiver possessed staves of the proper size, the scytale answered all the ends of a message in cypher ; so we get back a hundred years earlier and still find writing among the Greeks. Hesiod dates from about 756 B. c., and Hesiod enjoins that children be not taught letters before seven years old ; and yet we are a hundred years later than the time of Homer.
How can we bridge that gulf? Shall we consult Homer himself ? Shall we infer from the tablet which Homer represents Bellerophon as carrying from King Proetus to lobates, that the author of the "Iliad" at least was familiar with writing ? When we read that there were " written in the folded tablet many soul- harassing things," it seems difficult to believe that any mere signs or picture-writing can be meant. Yet this is the clearest allusion to writing in the Homeric poems, and of itself it would be far from proving that the poems themselves were written. Even though this were the case, it would be rather for the help of the composer than of the reader, and the poet would not be any more likely to tell us about the mysteries of his art than the modern extemporaneous preacher or orator is apt to speak of the elaborate writing which precedes his public efforts.
We frankly confess, therefore, that we have no great
24 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
amount of direct testimony to the existence of writing among the Greeks so early as 850 B. c. But there is an indirect argument from what we know of other peoples with whom the Greeks had intercourse. The Latin race was by no means so quick-witted as the Greek, yet Niebuhr tells us that there were written books under the Tarquins, that is, about 750 B. c., although the oldest Latin inscriptions are several centuries later. The most ancient Hebrew epigraphy, the inscription on the Moabite stone, does not date back farther than to two hundred years after David and seven hundred years after Moses. Yet Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and during the Egyptian nineteenth dynasty, which covered Moses' time, there were "houses of books," that is, there was literature enough to fill whole libraries.
The recent excavations of Tel el-Amarna have brought to light a multitude of clay tablets inscribed with cunei- form characters which record the correspondence of an Egyptian with a Babylonian king. We learn from them, to quote the words of Professor Sayce, that "in 'the fif- teenth century before our era — a century before the Exodus — active literary intercourse was going on throughout the civilized world of Western Asia between Babylon and Egypt and the smaller states of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and even of Eastern Cappa- docia. This intercourse was carried on by means of the Babylonian language and the complicated Babylonian script. This implies that all over the civilized East there were libraries and schools where the Babylonian language and literature were taught and learned. Baby- lonian appears to have been as much the language of
RECENT EVIDENCE FROM EGYPT 25
diplomacy and cultivated society as French has become in modern times."
But after all, the common language of Egypt was Egyptian, and this use of Babylonian in the fifteenth century B. c. may be characteristic of the period of the shepherd kings, during which the old Semitic stock got possession for a time of the wealth of the Nile valley. Mr. Petrie, in his recent excavations in the Fayum, eighty miles southwest of Cairo, has unearthed a town of the nineteenth dynasty, or of the thirteenth century B. c. On the pottery of this town Cypriote or Greek let- ters are incised. Another town of pyramid builders, be- longing to the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, yielded pottery marked with similar Cypriote letters. He de- clares that all the evidence points to a use of this alpha- bet before 2000 B. c.
Dr. Howard Osgood, in his article entitled " The Oldest Book in the World," published in the " Bibliotheca Sacra" for October, 1888, takes us back to an earlier time, at least three thousand years before Christ, and gives the translation of a book of proverbs which might almost have formed the model for Solomon. The Proverbs of Ptah-hotep are in Egyptian. Renouf, in his " Hibbert Lectures," declares that in the fourth dy- nasty, as early as 3124 B. c., there was in Egypt "a universally diffused system of writing and a common use of papyrus." While Professor Hommel of Munich has found proofs of high civilization in Arabia as far back as 2000 B. c., the recent explorations of Professor Hil- precht of the University of Pennsylvania have brought to light at Nippur in Babylonia an inscription which he regards as earlier than 4000 B. c.
26 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
Yet there are Old Testament critics who tell us that Moses, who lived about 1500 B. c., and who was edu- cated in the court of the Egyptian king, could not possi- bly have known how to write ; Solomon, who lived about 1000 B. c., could not possibly have been enough in ad- vance of his time — the time required by the hypothesis of natural evolution — to write a book of proverbs. Pro- fessor Sayce, referring to those who have formed opin- ions adverse to the historical character of the Pentateuch, says well that " the Tel el-Amarna tablets have already overthrown the primary foundation on which much of this criticism has been built " ; and Professor Hommel declares his conviction that " Arabia itself will furnish us the direct proofs that the modern destructive crit- icism of the Pentateuch is absolutely erroneous."
Let us apply all this to our present subject. The age of Homer was six hundred and fifty years after the time alluded to by Professor Sayce ; eleven hundred and fifty years after the time mentioned by Professor Hommel ; twenty-two hundred and fifty years after that spoken of by Monsieur Renouf ; and thirty-one hundred and fifty years after that given us by Professor Hilprecht. The Greeks were a seafaring people, who inhabited not only the Argive peninsula with its manifold harbors, but also the islands of the ^Egean and the Adriatic ; records lately recovered seem to prove that ^Egean Greeks visited Egypt as early as three thousand years before Christ ; in the nature of things the winds and the waves must have driven Greeks over the sea to Egypt and Egyptians over the sea to Greece ; the Homeric poems themselves speak of such intercourse, besides intimating that there was a coastwise commerce by way of Phoe-
WERE THE GREEKS A DULL PEOPLE? 2/
nicia; tradition declares that a certain Phoenician, Cadmus by name, long before the Trojan war introduced into Greece the use of letters ; the letters of the Greek alphabet are substantially the same with those of the Semitic languages, Alpha being only Aleph, and Beta being only Beth in disguise ; and yet, merely upon the ground that no Greek writing remains to us of demon- strably earlier date than B. c. 650, we are asked to be- lieve that at 850 B. c. the composer of the Homeric poems could not possibly have put them into writing. This, as it seems to us, is to attribute to the Greeks a physical inertia, as well as a mental incapacity to appre- hend and to appropriate, which are the precise opposites of all we know of that eager, curious, colonizing race.
We find it difficult to believe that it took two thousand years for letters to come around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to Greece. We prefer to think that there was some foundation for the belief of the Greeks themselves that letters among them be- longed to the ante-Homeric age. Before the dawn of history the Egyptian Cecrops came, it was said, to Athens, and the Egyptian Danaus to Argos. The time of the driving out of the shepherd kings from Egypt corresponds quite well with these Greek traditions. And how can we explain the universal knowledge of reading and writing among the Greeks two hundred years after Homer's time, unless a very long period of instruction had gone before? In the days of Solon, six hundred years before Christ, there were laws forbidding the erasure of public inscriptions, and the practice of ostracism prevailed — the marking of a " yes " or a " no ' upon a pebble of stone.
28 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
At the very time of Peisistratus, there were in ex- istence actual commentaries upon the Homeric poems, Who ever heard of written commentaries upon an un- written poem ? The idea that Peisistratus, three centu- ries after Homer, first committed these poems to writing seems to us amazingly improbable. Grant that writing in Homer's time was a mystery known only to the few ; that it was in possession, not of a reading public, but of a poetical and literary guild ; that it was used as a private help to the bard in composing and memorizing, rather than as a means of communication to others; still the argument in favor of Homer's use of letters seems to us far to outweigh the argument against it. If the patchwork theory of the Homeric authorship takes it for granted that writing was unknown or unused among the Greeks of Homer's time, it rests upon an ut- terly unproved and an extremely improbable assumption.
We do not stop here, however. Even if it could be proved that Peisistratus first secured the writing out of the Homeric poems, we should not surrender the doc- trine of their unity. Our adversaries declare that poems so long as these could never without writing* be com- posed in the first place, nor afterward be transmitted intact to future generations. Here again we are com- pelled to meet each part in the declaration with a stout demurrer. The epic, as its very name intimates, is a poem narrated or recited, while the lyric is one sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. As the epic is intended for public recitation, so in manifold instances it has been composed without writing, preserved only in the mind, recited from memory, and, to mix metaphors, orally handed down to posterity.
COMPOSITION POSSIBLE WITHOUT WRITING 29
The Old German epic entitled " Parsifal," is a poem of twenty-four thousand eight hundred and ten lines, very much longer than the " Iliad ' -for the " Iliad ' has only fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety-three -yet "Parsifal" was composed by Eschenbach, who could neither read nor write. The weird poems of the Icelandic Skalds were for two centuries transmitted' without writing. The Greek festivals have to this day their blind singers who depend on memory alone to keep the thread of their story. Composition is quite possible without writing, as every public speaker can witness. Homer, even if he were blind when he composed his poems, might still have been quite equal to his task. And what was once mentally put into form could also have been mentally preserved.
To us, who in these later days depend upon books to keep our treasures for us and use our memories so little, the retention of a whole " Iliad " or a whole " Odyssey" without break or error, seems to savor of the miraculous. Memory does little for us because we give memory so little to do. We have come to cherish a sort of mild contempt for the memorizer, and we doubt the mental grasp of the man of facts and dates. Not so in the early days. Mnemosyne was then one of the Muses. Memory was cultivated, cherished, trusted, honored. Of Alex- ander and of Caesar it was said that they knew all their soldiers by name ; the story at any rate proves that they thought such ability no disgrace to them. There were educated men in Athens who knew the wrhole " Iliad ' and " Odyssey ' by heart and could recite them straight on from any point where they were asked to begin.
And such power is not entirely wanting in recent
30 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
times. Macaulay could repeat, at fifty, long poems which he had never glanced at since he read them for the first and only time at fifteen. And Scaliger, that modern wonder of learning and scholarship, com- mitted the whole of Homer to memory in twelve days, and all the extant Greek poets in three months. If we only now consider that in prehistoric times this com- posing and reciting of epic poetry was a- regular trade, so richly rewarding with gifts and honors those who were its masters that memory was stimulated to put forth its highest powers, we shall rid ourselves of the last vestige of doubt whether poems as long as Homer's could have been composed without writing and then handed down substantially intact for several centuries.
We ought not to miss here the incidental advantage of our present study in furnishing a parallel to the oral transmission of the Gospel narratives. All competent investigators now agree that from twenty-five to thirty- five years intervened between the death of our Lord and the putting into its present written form of each of the Synoptics. And there are not wanting those who de- clare that even in that brief time the stories of Christ's life might become so altered as to be untrustworthy.
But these critics are strangely forgetful of some very common facts. A sacred narrative, which has assumed stereotyped form and which passes from lip to lip, may be submitted to a constant process of verification. Just as many an aged saint who knows her Bible mentally corrects the slips in a young preacher's quotations, so the first disciples, we may believe, were evermore con- ning and correcting the oral narratives which they heard, purging them of excrescences when such appeared, and
THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 31
bringing them back to the standard form. A narrative upon which the church was founded and for which Christians had to answer with their lives might con- ceivably have been handed down, not simply for twenty- five or thirty-five years, but for a century, without seri- ous loss or change. The Gospel problem seems an easy one when we have once granted that the Homeric poems could have been transmitted intact for more than three hundred years.
And yet we are not quite through with the objections of Paley. To all that have been mentioned he adds this last of all : Homer, he says, could not have composed poems so long as the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," for the reason that there was no reading or hearing public to be addressed by such poems. It is the old evolu- tionary theory in a new guise. The simple must come before the complex. Early times have patience and attention only for poems that are brief and fragmentary. The complicated epic whole must be the result of the constructive and combining genius of later times.
Unfortunately for this theory the facts are all against it. There was just such a public as the full-fledged "Iliad' or "Odyssey" requires. It was found in the halls of the petty kings or chieftains of early Greece. There every comer was welcome and there were many guests. The numerous retainers of the household con- stituted of themselves a sufficient audience, and the songs of the bard were the chief amusement of the evening, as athletic games and sports were the amuse- ment of the day.
Minstrelsy was a recognized and honored profession. In the simple days when society has emerged from bar-
32 THE HOMERIC QUESTION
barism, but has not yet taken on the conventional refine- ments of an advanced civilization, nothing so stirs the blood and rouses enthusiasm as the story of martial deeds. In " Ivanhoe," Sir Walter Scott has given us a glimpse of such entertainment in the rude halls of our Anglo-Saxon ancestry. So it was among the Greeks. Evening after evening the singer was assured of one constant audience. Instead of being compelled to tell his whole story in a single night, he was the best poet who could longest spin his tale. Provided only that part was connected with part, that there was development of plot, and all tended to a fitting climax, he might sing on for a thousand and one nights, like Queen Scheherezade.
The genuine epic, then, being only a metrical kind of story-telling, naturally has its place at the beginnings of civilization. It is history and mythology and poetry and music all in one. As the incentives to its cultivation are then the greatest, and as original genius is then most free from the fetters of precedent, it is only natural that we should find in these primitive times some of the greatest masters of spontaneous song. Patriarchal monarchy and family life afford the typical field for the development of epic poetry.
Lyric poetry just as naturally belongs to the later day of aristocracies, when a privileged class takes the place of the large family life we have described. Now, the one great house and gathering place is replaced by many and smaller mansions ; meetings are of the few ; we find the exclusiveness of good society ; there are other means of entertainment as well ; the song must be elegant, con- ventional, and brief.
Last of all comes the time of democracy, when power
THERE WAS A HEARING PUBLIC 33
has gotten into the hands of the people. Then the whole free population of a city must be amused. It is an audience that does not long hold together ; it is the time of the rhapsodists or reciters of select portions of the old songs ; the new poetry is all dramatic, suited to the entertainment in the open air of large numbers at once. This progress from epic to lyric and from lyric to dramatic poetry was a matter of actual history in Greece. When Paley tells us, then, that a reading public did not exist in Greece before the year 430 B. c., we do not simply content ourselves with denying the fact, we claim that it makes no difference to our thesis whether there was or not. There certainly was a hearing public, and precisely such a one existed in the two cen- turies after the Trojan war as might furnish the best op- portunity and incentive to the epic genius of a Homer. The reader has doubtless concluded long since that this argument is endless, and I am myself pretty nearly of his opinion. There are a score of points, all of them important and interesting, which I might have embraced in my treatment. I have confined myself to a few which can be popularly stated. The result of the investigation may well remind us of that not too learned English stu- dent, who, being required on examination to give the present state of the Homeric question, said : " The old view was that both the poems were written by Homer, but it is now concluded that they were written by another man of the same name." However learned and plausible the theories of a later putting together of ancient poetical fragments may be, they all suffer ship- wreck on this single rock — the necessity of finding in
the early time of the petty kings some commanding
G
34 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
genius capable of gathering the traditional material, or- ganizing it about one central theme, and determining its poetical form. This genius must have been one, not many ; and it is not credulity, but simple common sense, to take for our own the well-nigh unanimous consent of antiquity, and to call that genius by the name of Homer.
II
I have been treating of the Homeric Question. But I have not been
Presenting Thebes and Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine,
entirely for its own sake. I have intended it to prepare the way for a succinct account of the Homeric The- ology. To this latter theme I now address myself. I wish I could relieve my reader's fears by assuring him that the temple to which I introduce him is, like the temple at Jerusalem, far smaller than the portico at its entrance. But I cannot so easily part company with the principles of rhetoric. The Homeric Theology is as noble a subject, and it requires as long a treatment, as the Homeric unity. This latter question, indeed, de- rives much of its importance from its connection with the former. If Homer is only a name for many bards scattered in space and time, then the Homeric theology can hardly be expected to have consistency and unity. If, on the contrary, there was one Homer, and the "Iliad" and the " Odyssey " were both his work, then from the poems of this great genius of the early world we may hope to learn something about that early world's religious doctrines and beliefs. That there was one
HOMER HAD HIS THEOLOGY 35
Homer, and that he composed both of the poems which after times have ascribed to him, with the possible ex- . ception of unimportant interpolations, I propose hence- forth to take for granted, and I would now ask only about his theology.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say, and yet to prevent any possible misconception it may be well distinctly to declare, that I do not profess to find in Homer a charac- teristically religious poet. ^Homer never heard of the word "theology," nor did he ever write the " Iliad" or the " Odyssey" with the conscious aim of setting forth theological ideas. Not the epic poets, but the tragedi- ans, were the religious teachers of the Greeks. The tragic stage, upon which ^Eschylus produced his " Pro- metheus Bound," and Sophocles brought out his "Antigone," was the Greek pulpit, and there we are to look for appeals to conscience and threats of the gods. The Athenian archon, under whose charge these plays were represented, was clothed for the purpose with priestly dignity, and the whole office was an office of religion. The epic, on the other hand, was more nearly a means of amusement, when instruction and amusement went hand in hand. Its place was the court of the petty king, its time the hours that followed the games and the banquet. If we could conceivably have a tragedy from the time of Homer, we should doubtless have more of religion and more of theology than Homer has given us.
Yet Homer had his theology, notwithstanding; for every poet puts together in more or less complete form the facts which he has apprehended about Deity and the relations of Deity to the universe. Se moquer de la philosophiey c est vraiment philosopher — to mock at
36 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
philosophy is to philosophize ; and even when Homer satirizes the gods he shows that he has ideas about them. Theology may popularly be defined as the doctrine of God, of man, and of their mutual relations. _I propose simply to ask what are Homer's ideas about God and what are his ideas about man's relations to God. God, sin, atonement, a future life — these are the determining elements of every theological system ; if we can learn what Homer thinks of these, we shall have the substance of his theology.
Perhaps the first thing that strikes the thoughtful reader of the Homeric poems is their undertone of monotheism. This may surprise some who have re- garded Homer only as a polytheistic poet, yet it is nev- ertheless true. Though there are many gods in the "Iliad' and the "Odyssey," yet they constitute a hierarchy in which Zeus is supreme. Very often we read of " the god," in the singular number, without the mention of any definite name, and in connections which seem to show that it should be translated simply " God " ; in other words, it is an expression of an in- eradicable belief that deity is one.
Of this god, whose name is Zeus when any name is given him, the other gods are in some sense manifesta- tions. Some of them are his children, and derive their life from him. Two of them, Athene and Apollo, are hardly more than hypostases, or personifications, of his energy ; with Zeus these two constitute an inner circle and faintly remind us of the biblical Trinity — Athene being the divine wisdom and Apollo the executor of the divine will. Here, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes, Artemis, and Aphrodite had a second rank. Then, thirdly, come
ZEUS A MAGNIFIED MAN 37
Poseidon, Hades, Dione, and Letona, and after them the whole multitude of inferior gods who preside over the forces of nature or are identified with particular rivers, winds, and groves.
And yet, even of Zeus, the head of this imposing hierarchy, as well as of all the other gods, it is true that he is but a magnified man. The only absolute dis- tinction between gods and men is that of immortality. But this immortality of the gods is a physical immor- tality. They have bodies like the bodies of men, bodies dependent upon physical nutriment. Their food is ambrosia indeed, and their drink is nectar ; but they must perpetually partake of these if they would not die. So they are not self-subsistent, like the God of the Bible ; the ground of their being is in something outside of themselves. As this endless continuity of physical being is the only characteristic difference between gods and men, it is a bar that may be broken over. Odysseus would have become a god if he had accepted Calypso's invitation and had eaten of her promised ambrosia in- stead of confining himself to the food of mortals. Etymologically and symbolically, ambrosia is itself im- mortality, so that the gods feed on immortality, even as they wash themselves in beauty. Hence the oath by the Styx, the river of the world of the dead, is the only oath that irrevocably binds them ; for physical death would be the end of their godhood.
The bodies of the gods are of great size. When Athene smites Ares with a stone on the plain of Troy, it is said that "seven roods he covered in his fall." They are of great voice ; the battle-cry of Ares and Poseidon is loud as the united shout of a myriad of the Greeks. They
38 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
have their fixed abodes — Poseidon in the depths of the sea at Aegae, and Ares in the land of Thrace ; the tem- jDle& consecrated to them are only occasional haunts ; Hephaestus has built for the family of Zeus permanent habitations upon Mount Olympus. Though they are subject to these limitations of space, their movements are very rapid ; Hermes, it is true, tires of his long journey to Ogygia, yet one spring of the horses of Here takes them through the haze into the distance upon the open sea. Theoretically, the gods know all things and can do all things ; practically, they are ignorant of some of the matters that most concern them ; can be most egregiously deceived ; are obliged to take counsel before they know their own minds ; have their wishes thwarted by other gods and even by mortal men, as when Posei- don's son Polyphemus is blinded by Odysseus.
This antithesis between the theoretical and the actual is one of the most significant things in Homer. Either as the remains of a primitive revelation handed down by tradition, or as the result of man's own religious nature which ever prompts him to " seek God, if haply he may feel after him and find him," the poet is contin- ^ually declaring the omniscience and omnipotence of the _gods, and yet, almost in the same breath, is most incon- sistently attributing to them all the weaknesses and limitations of men. Again and again they are called "the blessed gods," and yet we read of their stains and pains, of their wounds and weeping and fear. Thetis sheds bitter tears over the fate of her son Achilles, and Zeus is sorely troubled about Here's anger, even when the nodding of his dark brow makes Olympus quake and assures victory to the Greeks.
RELATION OF ZEUS TO FATE 39
There is a similar duality in Homer's representation
of Fate and of Jove's relation to it. At times Zeus and
*— — - — _ ••••«•»•••«».
Fate are one ; the same things are ascribed to Zeus and to Fate ; Zeus is the dispenser of the Fates. But at other times Fate appears as a Will side by side with that of Zeus, and even over Zeus and all the other gods ; they must passively submit to Fate, when they are un- willing actively to employ themselves in its accomplish- ment. Zeus is the head of an Oriental council, the master of an Oriental harem : that is Homer's method of representing the manifoldness of the divine manifesta- tions. Fate is one, inevitable, binding both gods and smen : that is Homer's effort to supplement polytheism with the inalienable consciousness of the unity and ab- soluteness of God. But this Fate, though it stood for the highest Homeric conception of the Godhead, never was worshiped, never could be worshiped, for it was devoid of mind and heart, and could hardly be distin- guished from blind and inexorable necessity.
The idea of something done beyond that which is or- dained, something surpassing Fate, is certainly, though only rarely, found in Homer; it seems once more to open the door that had been closed against divine and human freedom, and to relieve the sternness and arbi- trariness of Fate. But both Fate and that which is be- yond it are equally abstractions ; they have no eye to pity and no arm to save. Pipmer's doctrine of the God- head shows us two things : first, that human nature de- mands a deity free from limitations and lifted above the finite ; secondly, that human imagination is utterly un- able to construct for itself such a deity, and when it at- tempts the task succeeds only in making a huger finite
4O THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
being like itself. .^God created man at the first in his own image ; the heathenism of which Homer is the noblest representative can only create a god in the image of man.
This becomes still plainer when we examine the poet's conceptions of God's moral attributes. There can be no exacter measure of the chasm that separates the Homeric from the biblical theology than the way in which they respectively treat God's attribute of holi- ness. The Scriptures bring this characteristic of God's nature before us more frequently than any other ; this is the fundamental attribute that conditions all others ; this it is that chiefly makes God to be God. But in Homer the gods never even once have this quality ex- pressly ascribed to them — they are constantly called blessed and immortal, but they are never once called holy.
The gods have a sort of moral perception, indeed, but this is exercised only in estimating the character and acts of men. They are like some men we know of, who have a very keen conscience for other people, but very dull for themselves. The noble swineherd, Eu- maeus, tells Odysseus that " it is not froward deeds that the gods love, but they reverence justice and the right- eous acts of men." One of the wooers declares that " the gods, in the likeness of strangers from far coun- tries, put on all manner of shapes and wander through the cities, to watch the violence and the righteousness of men." When the suitors have suffered their deserts, the aged Laertes can say : " Father Zeus, verily ye gods yet bear sway on high Olympus ! ' Zeus sends floods upon the people whose judges deliver unjust judgments.
THE GODS INSTIGATE INIQUITY 4!
The gods are displeased because Achilles pitilessly retains the body of Hector at the ships and will not take ransom for the dead.
But now observe how in this last instance Homer takes back again all that he has given to the gods in the way of praise. How came this pitiless spirit into Achilles' heart ? Ajax tells us when he addresses the hero : " The gods have put within thy breast a spirit implacable and evil." And so the gods appear again and again as tempters to perjury and adultery, as in the violation of the truce which Zeus himself suggests, and in the unfaithfulness of Helen which Aphrodite in- spires. It is not enough to say that the gods permit these things — they actually bring them about by their direct and efficient causation. How devilish, it has been well remarked, is the deception which Athene in the form of Deiphobos practises upon Hector in the
^ — -— ,^^^-^^— — •— — — T^— , - ' ^^^^^ ™"^^™^— ^ ^"— "
hour of his extremest need, when she flatters him with a brother's voice and lures him to destruction !
The truth is, that God and devil are confounded in Homer. The suitors look to the gods for help in their iniquities. The gods regard only their own honor and pleasure in the government they exercise. They are envious — Poseidon envies the Greeks their rampart, because it rivals the wall he had built for Troy, and he envies the Phaeacians their prosperous voyages, because these voyages seem to make the Phaeacians instead of himself the lords of the sea. Not only crime, but hap- piness also, is punished by the Furies.
The gods are revengeful. Here and Athene never cease to hate and to afflict the Trojans on account of the judgment of Paris, and Poseidon never ceases to
42 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
pursue Odysseus even though Odysseus' only fault was this, that he had rid the earth of a monster.
gods are placable sometimes, but at other times neither a just cause nor manifold offerings can remove their anger. The Zeus of Homer is only an immortal man. The gods are only projections into space and formal embodiments of human feelings, impulses, and passions. Aphrodite is little more than a name for illicit desire ; Hermes for the disposition to falsehood. So Athene at times is but a figure for the better judgment of Odys- seus or Achilles ; Ares stands for the warlike spirit ; Apollo for presages of the future.
This brief survey has been sufficient, I trust, to con- vince the reader that .Homer's conception of God is that of a nature-deity, who includes in himself all the forces of the physical and moral world, whether these are good or whether they are evil. Homer's God is God, world, man, and devil, all in one. God is the sum of all hid- den causes. Different names are given to his various manifestations and appearances — and so we have the nine great Olympians and the whole retinue of minor gods besides. Personality belongs to him — but then in his aspect as Fate impersonality belongs to him also. He is moral and is the source of all law among men- but then he is immoral also, and his law is an arbitrary thing, having no fixed abode in his nature and not al- ways enforced on earth.
It is a most interesting question how such a conception of the godhead could have originated. Are these " fair humanities of old religion," so called, the offspring only of a mythologizing tendency inherent in the childhood of the race ? Some writers would have us believe this,
ORIGIN OF THIS CONCEPTION 43
The Greeks, they say, were natural poets. Imagination conceived of nature as alive ; each natural phenomenon, each movement of the spirit within, seemed due to a separate will ; supernatural beings were thought to find in human affairs everywhere a field for their activity; the artistic instinct unconsciously wrought over this material ; the innocent result was the gods of Greece. Alas for the theory, Homer himself furnishes the refu- tation of it. There is enough of the divine unity, spir- ituality, and righteousness left in his representations to show that these growths were not wholly imaginative and poetic. Ever and anon we hear the deep conscious- ness of God uttering its protests against the impieties with which sense and art seek to drown its voice.
* _L_-^—^L^^^^*^*^*B'*^^W~:
This god-making was not innocent. It began in the clesire of fallen humanity to rid itself of the thought of ajmoral God who would challenge its impurity and pun- ish its transgressions. It transformed the one holy Will into many wills, sometimes conflicting, often malig- nant, but never unalterably righteous, until at last all things, without the soul and within as well, whether evil or good, were ascribed to them. Art proceeded to clothe these creations with beauty, but it was a mere- tricious beauty, and it led to further debasement of the idea itself ; the statues of the gods became an object of idolatry. This is the genesis of heathenism. The Apostle Paul has given us the only philosophical as well as the only authoritative account of it. It is not the result of natural evolution, but of guilty degradation. It presupposes a primitive knowledge of God. The heathen are "without excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks,
44 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
but became vain in their reasonings and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incor- ruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."
Arid so we come naturally to examine the Homeric doctrine of sin. It is evident that with such a doctrine of God, the poet's idea of sin must equally diverge from the truth. If God is a spiritual and personal being whose will isjthat we be like himself in holiness, then sin will be a self-chosen unlikeness to God in character and conduct. But if God is the sum of all natural ten- dencies and forces, both good and evil, as Homer repre- sents him, then sin can at its worst be only the short- sighted following of evil impulses, the origin of which can in the last analysis be ascribed to God himself. And this is actually the prevailing conception of sin in the " Iliad " and in the " Odyssey."
There is no idea in these poems more striking to the practical moralist than that contained in the word Ate. By derivation and in its practical use, it signifies a be- fooling. And this is the chief element in sin. Sin is not a matter of will, — the self-assertion of freedom in opposition to the will of God, — it is the error or mis- take of foolishness, and this foolishness is due to the gods themselves. Agamemnon, when he gives account of the fault he committed against Achilles, declares that Zeus had bound him with might in grievous blindness of soul.
In the noble address in which Phoenix, the instructor of Achilles, labors to turn the hard heart of his old pupil,
SIN IS DECEPTION 45
there occurs so remarkable a description of this Ate, or Sin, that I quote it entire :
Therefore, Achilles, rule thy high spirit ; neither beseemeth it thee to have a ruthless heart. Nay, even the very gods can bend, and theirs withal is loftier majesty and honor and might. Their hearts by incense and reverent vows and drink-offering and burnt-offering men turn with prayer, so oft as any transgresseth and doeth sin. Moreover, prayers of penitence are daughters of great Zeus, halting and wrinkled and of eyes askance, that have their task withal to go in the steps of sin. For sin is strong and fleet of foot, wherefore she far outrunneth all prayers, and goeth before them over all the earth making men fall, and prayers fol- low behind to heal the harm. Now whosoever reverenceth Zeus' daughters when they draw near, him they greatly bless and hear his petitions ; but when one denieth them and stiffly refuseth, then depart they and make prayer unto Zeus the son of Kronos, that sin may come upon such an one, that he may fall and pay the price.
Let me quote, also, the words of Agamemnon, after Achilles had renounced his wrath. He is speaking of his own fault which had roused that wrath. He says complacently :
It is not I who am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny and Er- inyes, that walketh in the darkness, who put into my soul fierce madness on the day when in the assembly I, even I, bereft Achilles of his meed. What could I do ? It is God who accom- plisheth all. Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate, who blindeth all, a power of bane ; delicate are her feet, for not upon earth she goeth, but walketh over the heads of men, making men to fall, and entangleth this one or that. Yea, even Zeus was blinded upon a time, he who they say is greatest among gods and men ; yea, even him Here, with female wile, deceived.
Then, after describing how Ate deceived even Zeus himself, Agamemnon tells us how the father of gods and men awoke from his illusion :
46 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
Sharp pain smote him in the depths of his soul, and straight- way he seized Ate by her bright-haired head in the anger of his soul, and swore a mighty oath that never again to Olympus and the starry heaven should Ate come, who blindeth all alike. He said, and whirling her in his hand, he flung her from the starry heaven, and quickly came she down among the works of men. Thus also I, what time great Hector of the glancing helm was slaying Argives at the sterns of our ships, could not be unmindful of Ate, who blinded me at the first. But since thus blinded was I, and Zeus bereft me of my wit, fain am I to make amends and recompense manifold for the wrong.
So we read of Zeus himself falling into sin, and then in revenge leading men into it. Again we see that Zeus is both God and Satan.
The result is that we have no deep confessions of sin, and no deep penitence, either in the " Iliad" or the " Odyssey." How can there be either, when the blame of sin is shifted from man to Ate or Zeus or Fate ? The later Greek tragedy shows much more of the workings of remorse than we find in Homer, yet even in the later Greek tragedy CEdipus declares that his evil deeds have been suffered, and not done. It was the terrors of a guilty conscience that first led men to turn the moral God into the unmoral gods — then they reaped the fruit of their error in a new depravation of their moral con- sciousness ; the unmoral gods became so far the authors of men's sins that the sense of guilt well-nigh disap- peared.
Well-nigh disappeared, I say, but not altogether. Just as we recognized an inconsistency in Homer's repre- sentations of God, so we must recognize an inconsist- ency in his representations of sin. Through the mist of this self-excusing theory there gleam again and again
YET SIN IS SELF-DECEPTION ALSO 47
the inextinguishable lights of the earlier and truer faith. Conscience now and then asserts herself. Hector, when urged by Andromache not to enter the fight, speaks of the sore shame he will feel, if, like a coward, he shrinks from the battle ; yet, when at last he ventures to under- take the combat with Achilles, he fears lest he has un- done the Trojan host by his wantonness. Not only the desire for fame, but the sense of honor, keeps from evil deeds and prompts to bravery. Self-respect is a power in the Homeric poems ; and in the assertion of the bet- ter self against the seductions of ease and pleasure, we find a remnant of fidelity to conscience.
It_is true that this self-respect not unfrequently be- comes exaggerated and perverted. The conscience that has no standard outside of self sometimes applauds self- seeking. Yet overweening pride and self-assertion are not only objects of dislike, but they are charged to men's account and are visited with unmistakable punishments. These are the faults of Achilles, and the fact that Zeus imbues him with pitiless revenge is not regarded as destroying his responsibility. Giving place to one's own hardihood and strength is a crime before both gods and men. Men can yield to wantonness, being the fools of their own force. Ajax might have escaped his doom at the hands of Poseidon had he not let a proud word fall in the fatal darkening of his heart, when he said that in the gods' despite he had escaped the great gulf of the sea.
Here then we have a partial corrective applied by Homer himself to that very superficial and immoral conception of sin which prevails in his poems. Sin is, after all, not wholly a deception from without, a work of
48 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
the gods in which man is simply passive. Sin is also man's own act, the expression of his selfishness. It is pride and self-will, infatuated with the conceit of inde- pendence, and despising alike the ordinances of the gods and the rights of men. While sin is deception, it is self- deception also. And so, side by side with the common disposition to excuse sin and throw the blame of it on the gods, we find an occasional word of self-reproach. In Helen, the great sinner of the Homeric story, even while she attributes her faithlessness to Fate and to Aphrodite, there ever lives a feeling of guilt and re- morse ; she calls herself a hateful wretch, a shameless bitch. And there is definite expectation of punishment for sin ; at times "a fearful looking for of judgment."
The whole course of the two poems is proof that the unsophisticated moral sense of mankind demands repara- tion for wrong-doing. On the one hand, Achilles' inor- dinate anger is punished by the slaying of Patroclus, his dearest friend ; on the other hand, the sin of Paris and of his countrymen who abetted it meets its just retribu- tion in the death of Hector and the predicted fall of Troy. Through ten years of outrage and insolence at the hands of the wooers, Telemachus has no resource but his trust in the avenging righteousness of the gods. Warnings only harden these evil-doers. They have fearful premonitions of their doom, but they only banish them with laughter. ,The gods are represented as arranging circumstances in such a way as to bring their iniquity to a head and to occasion its most flagrant manifestation. Their sin is punished by involving them in more aggravated wickedness, until at length per- suasions and entreaties are useless, for their appointed
AND SIN DESERVES DEATH 49
day of vengeance has already come. When the arrows of Odysseus strike the suitors at the very culmination of their villainy, those arrows are the very thunderbolts of Zeus. The hero proclaims himself to be the executor of the divine judgments when he says : " These hath the destiny of the gods overcome and their own cruel deeds."
Sin is ill-deserving ; sin puts the sinner in antagonism to God ; sin is sure to be punished ; the infatuation of sin is itself a part of its punishment — these great truths stand fast in Homer, in spite of the easy shifts by which he commonly relieves the conscience and dims the holi- ness of God, The doctrine of Scripture is purer than Homer's, for while Scripture tells us that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it does not fail, in close connection therewith, to tell us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and so to intimate that the divine operation is not immediate or causative, but only permissive and indirect, through the circumstances which God ordained and the means of enlightenment which he gave, but which Pha- raoh's evil disposition seized upon as an occasion for the manifestation of his own heart's iniquity. There are no permissive decrees in Homer, and this is the chief defect in his doctrine of sin. At the best, the responsibility for transgression is divided between man and God, and conscience has the force of her accusations partly broken. Yet even Homer teaches that sin deserves death, and that punishment is a debt due to the gods. The " Iliad" and the " Odyssey' are everlasting witnesses to the fundamental postulates of natural religion.
Homer, as we have seen, recognizes that sin deserves
death and that punishment is a debt due to the gods.
D
THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
Can there be remission of penalty and pardon of the guilty ? Is there any way by which man may be just with God ? Has God ever made himself known as the Helper and Saviour of sinners? These are questions which we have still to ask our poet. The answer to them will constitute the Homeric doctrine of atone- ment.
There-are burnt-offerings and sin-offerings in both the "Iliad" and "Odyssey." The most striking of them all occurs in the first book of the former poem. The fatal shafts of Apollo are falling thick and fast in the Grecian camp, and men are everywhere dying under the inflic- tion. The god is angered at the insult offered to his priest and temple, by the capture of Chryseis, the priest's daughter. Reparation must be made. Odysseus is made the captain of a ship of twenty oarsmen, in which Chryseis is taken to her father, and with her an offering to the god. When they reach Apollo's temple they purify themselves and cast the defilements into the sea, and sacrifice unblemished hecatombs of bulls and goats, and the sweet savor arises to heaven eddying amidst the smoke. Then speaks Odysseus to the priest : " Chryses, Agamemnon, king of men, sent me hither to bring thy daughter, and to offer to Phoebus a holy hecatomb on the Danaans' behalf, wherewith to propitiate the king that hath now brought sorrow and lamentation on the Argives." So Chryses lifts up his hands and prays aloud for them : " Hearken to me, god of the silver bow, that standest over Chryse and holy Killa, and rulest Tenedos with might ; even as erst thou heardest my prayer, and didst me honor, and mightily afHictedst the people of the Danaans, even so now fulfill
DOES IT INVOLVE SUBSTITUTION ? 5 I
me this my desire : remove them from the Danaans forth- with the loathsome pestilence." Thus he speaks in player, and Phoebus Apollo hears him.
The_ object of this sacrifice is expressly said to be propitiation, and propitiation is the turning away of ajnger. The anger of the god has been incurred by sin, and this sin has involved guilt and defilement. The de- filement is symbolically put away by the washing of Odysseus' company and by the casting into the depths of the sea of the water that has removed their stains. The guilt is atoned for by the shedding of the blood and the burning of the flesh of animals offered in sacrifice. Satisfaction is in this way rendered to the offended majesty of the god, and pardon is secured for the offenders. No one can read Homer without perceiving that this element of satisfaction to the deity enters into every sacrifice of every sort.
In the sacrifices of the Bible there is another element of equal importance — that of substitution. Satisfaction by substitution makes up the full conception of the offering there. Is this element of substitution found in Homer ? Not so plainly, we grant, as it is found in later Greek poetry, where Hermes declares to Prometheus that he shall not be released until some god appear as a successor to his sufferings, one willing to go down to Hades and Tartarus for him ; not so plainly as the Latin poets declare it, when Ovid bids the gods take the heart and flesh of the victim for the heart and flesh of the offerer, and Virgil says of the sacrifice : " One head shall be given for the many." But even in the "-Iliad" and the "Odyssey" there is evidence that the idea of substitution is by no means wholly absent. The
52 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
shedding of the blood of the brute is an alternative set over against the shedding of the blood of the sinner.
When Agamemnon has slain the lambs before the single combat of Paris and Menelaus, he pours forth wine with their blood before the gods, and the Achaeans pray : " Zeus, most glorious, most great, and all ye im- mortal gods ! which folk soever be first to sin against the oaths, may their brains be so poured forth upon the earth even as this wine, theirs and their children's." j\ll through the " Odyssey" there is the continual pre- irijmition of coming doom in the declaration that the evil deeds of the suitors are unatoned for ; the offerings which they make are devoid of any power to avert or postpone their fate ; when they die at the hands of Odysseus, they themselves pay to the gods the penalty which they fain would have escaped by sacrifice.
The Old Testament shows us a system of sacrifice much more fully developed, and one which enables us to understand the offerings of the Homeric poems. In the scapegoat, we have the analogue of the defilements which Odysseus casts into the sea; while the burning of the slain beasts is in both cases the same. The Hebrew conception of God as holy and of man as per- sonally guilty, made the bloody offering of the Old Tes- tament a recognized picture of the ill-desert of sin and of vicarious satisfaction for it ; the death of the animal took the place of the death which the offerer had incurred by his transgression and restored him to the divine favor. We are persuaded that the sacrificial language of the " Iliad ': and the "Odyssey" can never be explained except by supposing that it is the relic of an age when the race had a better understanding of God and of sin.
OLD TESTAMENT ANALOGUES 53
Men in Homer's time have forgotten God's holiness and have blinded themselves to the fact of their own guilt, so that at last much of the meaning of the sacrifices which they traditionally offer has dropped out ; at times they seem to be regarded as in themselves a sufficient compensation for the offense committed ; at times the sensuous gratification of the god appeases his anger. But the outward forms still remain, and, whenever con- science revives, it puts into them more or less of their old significance. Sacrifice is evermore a vivid, because a divinely appointed picture, of sin's desert of death and of the divine intention that man's guilt shall be removed by the laying of it upon another and so make perfect satisfaction to the law and justice of God. Homer re- tains the element of satisfaction to God's justice ; he only occasionally, and then vaguely, suggests substitution.
Let us not blame Homer too much. Those were the times of ignorance, which God in his forbearance over- looked. Christ had not yet come. Not even the Jew was yet aware that God himself was to provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, and that all this paraphernalia of sacrifice was only a mute prophecy of the atoning work of the Son of God. To the Homeric age the gods were far away. They had mingled with men long be- fore the war of Troy, but that intercourse had ceased.
+ '
There were no present communications either in the way olieaching .or command. The will of the gods could be learned only by inference from the history of the past, or by the obscure leadings of natural insight. As the Scripture declares, God suffered men to walk in their ways and to demonstrate the inability of human nature, left to itself, to find the way of peace or holiness.
54 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
Homer's doctrine of sacrifice can give no peace to a guilty conscience, for it is a merely human offering ; none can say whether the gods will accept it ; they may indeed be moved to pity and forgiveness, but then they may not ; the result is wholly arbitrary and uncertain. Hecuba offers an embroidered robe, if perchance she may induce the goddess to spare Hector, but Pallas Athene denies the prayer. Odysseus slays the ram to secure pardon for his killing of the Cyclops, but Zeus heeds not the sacrifice. These are examples of at- tempted expiation that accomplish nothing. The most Homer can assure us of is the possibility of forgiveness. The gods determine arbitrarily the limits of their anger, and humanity lives without the certainty of mercy.
Let this examination of the Homeric doctrine teach us the immeasurable superiority of the Christian scheme. Here we have what natural religion and philosophy can- not give — a sure word of God, a voice from out of the darkness and the silence, declaring that there is for- giveness with him that he may be feared ; that if the wicked will forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and will turn unto the Lord, he will have mercy upon him, and unto our God, he will abundantly pardon. And if this assurance seem, in view of God's holiness and our sin, too great to be believed, we have made known to us the immutable foundation upon which the promise is based, the provision of grace in accord- ance with which God can be just and yet justify the be- liever in Jesus.
In the Christian system there is an atoning sacrifice provided not by man but by God himself, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than any offered upon
ESCHATOLOGY IN HOMER 55
heathen or Jewish altars, even the sacrifice of the Son of God himself. God has come down to earth again and has joined himself to humanity in more perfect manner than ever Homer fabled of Aphrodite or of Zeus, in order that he might lift man up to heaven in more perfect manner than Homer tabled of Hercules when he married Hebe, the daughter of eternal youth. Aye, God in the person of his Son has put his own great shoulders under the burden of our guilt and has himself suffered as an atonement to his own violated holiness, in order that the sinner may be saved. JElea- thenism tells us that the gods have certain favorites whom
<j
they love, sometimes without regard to morals or to justice, but it never tells us that they love man every- where, even in his sins, and that they love him so greatly that they are willing to die, and actually die, in his be- half. Christianity alone shows us that the glory of God is in self-sacrifice, that the lifting up of the Godhead above humanity and the coming down of the Godhead into humanity are one and the same thing. Heathen- ism is the vain attempt of man, by self-moved and self-
A ' J
dependent works and sacrifices, to lift himself up to God. Christianity is God's coming down in mercy and grace, to do what man can never do for himself, namely, to redeem man from his sins and to lift him up to God.
A few words with regard to Homer's ideas of the future life must complete our view of the Homeric the- ology. The reader will be able to anticipate the most that we can say, if he will but remember how far Homer is from recognizing the independence of the human will, and how completely he makes immortality depend upon the continued existence of the body. After the
56 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
soul has left its earthly tenement, it wanders desolate on the shores of the other world, but being bodiless, it is destitute of full personality. Memory and hope are alike obliterated. Only when the shadowy dead drink the blood of the sacrifices to which Odysseus invites them, do they recover their recollection of the past and their ability to recognize the living.
In all this we have testimony to great truths, though these truths are most dimly apprehended. That the eidolon, or shade, continues to exist after death, even although separated from the body it once inhabited, shows that Homer was no materialist after all ; at the risk of an inconsistency, he will recognize the spiritual nature of man. But this shadowy existence is hardly to be called existence — it is devoid of all that renders life desirable. When Odysseus in the house of Hades assures the shade of Achilles that the Achaeans give him honor with the gods and count him a prince among the dead, the hero only answers : " Nay, speak not com- fortably to me of death, great Odysseus. Rather would I live upon the soil as the hireling of another, with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead that are no more."
And the longing for the renewal of physical life ex- plains the strange eagerness with which the ghosts crowd about Odysseus, and clamor for the draught of blood which will even momentarily reanimate their powers and give them back again the consciousness which death had taken from them. Jt is Homer's way of telling us that man is a two-fold being ; that an in- termediate state in which the soul is sundered from the body is an abnormal state ; that the truest life is
LIFE INCOMPLETE WITHOUT THE BODY
impossible except in a state where soul and body are joined together. As there is only a shadow of man's being in that other world, so that world itself is but the shadow of a world. Orion drives the wild beasts over the mead of asphodel, and Minos wields a golden sceptre, giving sentence from his throne to the dead ; but both the mead of asphodel and the golden sceptre, like Orion and Minos themselves, are shadows.
Yet in that under-world, on the other side of Oceanus, in the sunless West, there are those who punish men, and the heavier crimes meet their just desert. ..How all this is possible in a world where the bodiless soul is incapable of thought or memory, we must not too narrowly in- quire. The spirit at any rate still lives. It is regarded as in some sense freed from the limitations of sense. Invisible, its existence is somewhat like that of the gods. It can have libations made to it, and can be addressed in prayer. In the last book of the " Iliad," Achilles draws wine from a golden bowl and pours it forth upon the earth, calling meantime upon the spirit of hapless Patro- clus. In the last book of the Odyssey, Odysseus makes a drink-offering and entreats with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead. The reader cannot fail to perceive that we have here, not in Scripture, the origin of the invocation of the saints. The divi manes became in the Roman Catholic church the canonized departed, and this very term divi was used to character- ize them. The apotheosis which lifted Leucothea and Ganymede from earth to heaven was held to have its Christian counterpart in the act by which God makes men partakers of the divine nature and causes them to sit with him upon his heavenly throne.
58 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
Yet this idea of future reward for the righteous has very narrow and meager expression in Homer. Of Menelaus alone is it declared that he is not ordained to die, but that the deathless gods will convey him to the Elysian plain and to the world's end where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain ; but alway ocean sendeth forth its breezes to blow cool on men. As there is no distinct statement of punishment for all the wicked, but only for the most outrageous transgressors, so there is no distinct promise of happiness for the good, but only for a few excep- tional favorites of the gods. The doctrine of future re- wards and punishments was in later times far more fully developed — only the germs of it do we find in Homer. Indeed he cannot develop it, for the one means by which, in accordance with his general system, blessed- ness could be assured to the departed has never oc- curred to him. Consciousness and happiness are de- pendent on the possession of a physical organism. True life can be ours only by joining body and soul once more together. But Homer nowhere tells us of a resurrec- tion ; he knows no way of rescue from the power of the grave ; life and immortality have not yet been brought to light by the gospel. Here is another truth which Moses knew, and the Egyptians long before him, but which became so lost out of the beliefs of the Greeks, that when Paul proclaimed Jesus and the resurrection to the men of Athens, they only mocked at him, and thought his story too silly for a hearing.
And as for hope in death, Homer has nothing of this either. The golden fabric of life is shot with many a thread of sorrow. Outwardly the world is fresh and
THE HUMAN INTEREST PREDOMINATES 59
young, and it rejoices in its youth, but the joy is super- ficial— listen intently and you will hear a sound of wail- ing over the instability and brevity of earthly things. Age finds death welcome, for death puts an end to pains of body and the caprice of fortune ; but, when death cornes, it only ushers the soul into a cheerless region of wandering and retribution, where there are indeed bitter punishments for the wicked, but no sure rewards for the righteous. There is no rest for the weary in this pres- ent world, and there is still less rest for the weary in
j
the world to come. How strangely incongruous with the whole tenor of the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " would be an interpolation of that verse from John's Gospel, " I am the resurrection, and the life ; he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die " ; or this from the Apocalypse, " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors ; for their works follow with them."
If there is any one lesson which, more than any other, is taught us by this study of Homer, it is man's need of a special divine revelation. We see humanity blindly groping after the truth with regard to God, sin, atonement, the future life, but utterly unable to reach iL_. These great poems do not teach us so much of divinity as they do of humanity. They set before us in vivid pictures the ideas of courage and endurance which make the ideal man, when once God's ideal of humanity has faded out of sight. It is this human interest which makes both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey' great; in each there stands forth a living man ; Achilles represents
6O THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
the grandeur, as Odysseus represents the virtue, of the heroic character. In each poem the hero is made to speak out, and to act out, an inner life peculiarly his own : the fiery wrath of Achilles and the fiery love that conquers it, the patient faithfulness of Odysseus and his many devices — these, and not mere external incidents, are the subjects which the poet is intent upon develop- ing. How different from the Christian standard of humility and mercy is the warlike grandeur of Achilles! How different from the Christian standard of simplicity and truth is the wily wisdom of Odysseus ! Heathen doctrine has begotten heathen morality — the stream cannot rise higher than its fountain.
Yet these natural virtues, half-barbaric as they are, have a splendid vigor in Homer's pages, and they will never cease to captivate the world. And Homer's women, with what slight touches, yet how masterly and sure, are these selected types painted upon the canvas ! I do not speak of Helen, whose imperishable beauty through all the vicissitudes of war and conquest subdues both friend and foe, even though alternate self-reproach and easy indifference reveal the shallowness of her nature. I do not speak of Nausicaa, that picture of pure girlishness, in which naive tt and dignity, sagacity and modesty, innocent curiosity and womanly promise, so exquisitely blend. I speak rather of Andromache, the heroine of the " Iliad," the tender wife and mother, whose grief at Hector's loss so crushes her that she has not even one word of anger or reproach for those who slew him. And I speak of Penelope, the heroine of the " Odyssey." As Andromache is the model of passive, so Penelope is the model of active, suffering. Here is
SPLENDOR OF THE HOMERIC POETRY 6 1
marital fidelity, which through the long and lonely years solaces itself indeed with weeping, yet ever weaves anew the web of hope and planning for her lord's return. In the depicting of these characters, so individual all ajid so distinct, Homer, more than any other poet ex- cept Shakespeare, absorbs himself ; the creator is lost in his creations ; we know much about Ajax and Ther- sites, about Circe and Eumaeus, but we know very little about Homer himself.
There is a spontaneity and exuberance of imagery, moreover, an endless fertility of invention, a largeness and roundness of conception, a dewy sparkle and fresh- ness of phrase, that befit the early morning time of his- tory. How unconventional and yet how graphic, how ornate and yet how simple, how definite and yet how sublime, is the poetry of Homer ! Physical health breathes through it ; more than any other epics, these are the poems of out-of-doors. The earth, the sky, and the loud-resounding main are here. On the plain of Troy we catch the dazzling gleam of the innumerable bronze, as the serried ranks of the Greeks move for- ward to the fray. On the waters we hear the shrill west wind whistling through the cordage and singing over the wine-dark sea. By day the Achaeans fight like unto burning fire, saying that one omen is best, to fight for one's country. By night the watch-fires of the Tro- jans are countless as the stars when the air is windless and all heaven opens to the view and the shepherd's heart is glad. Apollo is made known by the dread clanging of his silver bow ; the lame Hephaestus hobbles about to dispense the nectar amid the unquenchable laughter of the blessed gods. Upon their hinges groan
62 THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY
the gates of heaven whereof the Hours are the warders, to whom are committed great Heaven and Olympus, whether to throw open the thick cloud or to shut it to. The persuasive words of Odysseus are like the snow- flakes of the early winter, so softly do they fall ; there is something awe-inspiring in every word of Achilles, as when he opens his mouth to say : " Hateful ! to me as the gates of hell is he that hideth one thing in his heart and uttereth another." Is it wonderful that Xenophanes called the " Iliad ' and the " Odyssey ' " the primary source of all education," and that ^Eschy- lus called his own tragedies but " fragments from the great banquet of Homer " ?
Whether for good or evil, Homer has been one of the world's chief teachers. Every later poet has formed his poetic style more or less upon Homer's model; where the influence has been unconscious, it has been none the less real. Like the Colosseum at Rome, the " Iliad" and the " Odyssey ' have been a quarry, from which later builders have drawn a large part of their material. Subtract from the " ^Eneid," from the " Divine Com- edy," from the " Paradise Lost," what of substance or expression they indirectly or directly owe to Homer, and you would hardly recognize your Virgil or Dante or Milton. We cannot doubt that Providence ordained these poems to be a great factor in the education of mankind.
Hegel makes the godlike Achilles fierce but brave, impulsive but generous, the type and incentive of Greek civilization. Who can measure the influence which Homer has exerted, not only on the literature and liberty of Greece, but on the literature and liberty of
SPLENDOR OF THE HOMERIC POETRY 63
the world ! His poems have in them an inexnaustible vitality, and no device of criticism can tear from his brow "his crown of indivisible supremacy." Even now, as we look back upon the past which poetry has peopled with heroic figures, we descry far in the distance, but still towering above the rest, the form of great Achilles, and " through the music of the languid hours we hear, like Ocean on a western beach, the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." A single poet in a narrow sphere has succeeded in catching the ear of all generations, and we learn the lesson that man's influence is not measured by his small surroundings, and that this world and the drama enacted here may be the source of good to all the universe. God would seem to have given the death- blow to the whole theory of impersonal and atheistic evolution by ordaining at the very dawn of human his- tory that the greatest of epic poets should also be the first.
VIRGIL
VIRGIL
THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
ROME had conquered the world and the victors were scrambling for the spoils. Two great civil wars natu- rally followed the earlier wars of conquest. In the first of these civil wars, Marius and Sulla measured their strength against each other. After seven years of bloodshed, Sulla entered Rome in triumph and was made dictator just eighty-one years before Christ. Then followed thirty-seven years of exhaustion and peace, broken only by Pompey's overthrow of Sulla's constitution in the year 70, and Caesar's overthrow of Pompey and the republic in 48.
The second civil war began just so soon as there arose two new leaders able to continue the fight. Those leaders were Antony and Octavian, the former Caesar's legal heir, the latter Caesar's personal heir. As in the first civil war Sulla had represented the aristocratic party against Marius, so in the second civil war Octa- vian represented the popular party against Antony. The civil wars were in part a contest of principles — the principle of senatorial aristocracy on the one hand and the principle of democratic rule on the other.
But they were still more a contest of ambitious men, each bent on making himself the foremost man of all this world. As Sulla defeated the plebeians only to
67
68 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
make himself dictator, so Octavian defeated the sena- torial party only to make himself supreme. His assump- tion of the title of Augustus was the beginning of the Roman Empire, and Augustus was none the less em- peror because he clothed his power with the old forms of the republic. When, after thirteen years of anarchy and carnage, the battle of Actium in 3 1 left Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus the sole authority in the State, the world heaved a sigh of relief, and welcomed peace even at the cost of liberty.
It has been said of Milton that if it had not been for the civil war in England he never would have written "Paradise Lost," with its account of rebellion in heaven and the downfall of the prince of darkness, but would have commended himself to posterity only by such poems as " Comus " and "The Nativity." It must be still more evident that the greatest of the Latin poets was the product of his time, and that both his earlier and his later work can be interpreted only in the light of contemporaneous Roman history.
Virgil had his birth and his education during those thirty-seven years of comparative peace and exhaustion when the Roman world was recovering from the first, and was gathering strength for the second, of the great civil wars. Here was a lull in the noise of battle, in which a pensive and imaginative nature might nourish dreams of Arcadian happiness and rest. The results we find in the " Eclogues," and the " Georgics," which, though written after the second civil war began, and taking a plaintive tone from the sorrowful surroundings of the time, are yet a reflection and expression of the quiet and seclusion of Virgil's earlier years. After the
VIRGIL A PRODUCT OF HIS TIME 69
civil war is ended, after the world is unified, after Au- gustus is enthroned, a grander spirit of confidence takes possession of the poet, and he sings in the "^Eneid" the new beginning of national life, the actual reign of universal peace, and the promise of perpetual dominion, which fate and the gods have given to Rome.
Freeman, the historian, dates the beginning of mod- ern times from Caesar's conquest of Gaul. Then first the Southern races were brought into- contact with the lands where lay the scene and the forces of future his- tory. But we must remember that Northern Italy was Cisalpine Gaul, and that it became an integral part of Rome only after Virgil reached his manhood. Born in the center of this Northern Italy, and possibly himself of Celtic descent, or as others have suggested, connected with the Tyrolese over the mountains, he did not be- come a Roman citizen until his twentieth year. Well- nigh a century later, a certain Roman tribune in Pales- tine declared that with a great sum he attained this freedom. In Virgil's youth, from the country beyond the Po, still subject to arbitrary confiscation and parti- tion at the nod of the Roman master, and overrun with the legionaries returning from the Eastern wars, Rome and Roman privilege and Roman power must have loomed up as the greatest things on earth. All love for the place of his nativity, and all hope for its future, must have connected themselves in his mind with Rome. The modern element in Virgil's poetry is the product of these two factors — the fresh new life of Northern Italy and the all-encompassing grasp of the imperial city which had brought the whole world to its feet.
But we must know something more of the poet's early
/O THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
surroundings, and something more of his personal traits. The modern Lago di Garda, the greatest lake of Italy, fed by the snows of the Tyrolese Alps, sends out from its southern extremity the last and largest affluent of the Po. This river is the Mincio — " the smooth-sliding Mincius " of Virgil — as the Po was once Padus, and the lake Benacus, by name. The Mincio, not more than fifty miles long with all its windings, grows broad and sluggish as it comes down into the plains until, about twelve miles above its junction with the Po, it fairly encircles the city of Mantua, whose towers and walls rise as from an island in the midst of the swampy and reedy lagoons of the lakelike river.
Mantua has until recently been one of the most for- midable fortresses in Europe. Sixty miles west from Venice, seventy southeast from Milan, eighty northwest from Florence, ninety northeast from Genoa, and one hundred and eighty northwest from Rome, the city holds a strategic position that is commanding, as both Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. well knew. Here Giulio Romano built for the Gonzagas his Palazzo del Te, with its Sala del Giganti, or Hall of the Giants, where, by a combination of mechanical with artistic devices, as one describes it, "the rout of the Titans, still contending with artillery of uptorn rocks against the pursuit and thunder- bolts of Jove, appears to rush downward on the spec- tator." In the city of Mantua, Sordello, the precursor of Dante and the hero of Browning's mysterious story, was born and sang. And in the same city, or on the hilly slopes not far away, a greater than Sordello, the precursor of modern poetry and civilization, the poet of Rome, the most complete literary representative of
VIRGIL'S PERSONAL TRAITS
the Latin race, and the best-read poet of all time, was born also.
It was seventy years before Christ when Virgil first saw the light. He was a shy and gentle spirit, sober and unworldly, diffident of his own powers, modest even to rusticity in his manner, melancholy, yet kindly in temper. He could never arrange his toga to please men of fashion, and he always wore shoes too large for his feet. Virgil never married ; he was accessible only to intimate friends ; he was a man of books, as Horace was a man of the world. After he had won friends and fame, and audiences in the theatre rose to salute him as they did Octavian, he yet stole along the streets in trepi- dation lest he should be recognized, and a single whisper, " There goes Virgil ! ' would drive him into the next house for refuge. It is possible that his bashfulness and reserve were due in part to ill health, for though tall and dark he is said to have been a victim to chronic asthma and headache. Augustus, sitting between Virgil and Horace, who suffered from an affection of the eyes, said jocosely that he was between sighs and tears.
Like many another poet, in his youth Virgil seems to have known little of youthful sports. He never bore arms, as Horace did under Brutus at Philippi. He was a man of contemplation rather than of action. Yet he inspired affection. He was the friend of Maecenas, the patron of art and Augustus' great minister; he knew Augustus himself before Horace did, if he did not ac- tually make Horace known to Augustus. In an age when decorous vice was almost universal, Virgil by his temperance and purity gained the title of Parthenias. A sort of virgin sanctity seemed to envelope him. He
72 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
was wrapped in loftier thoughts than the men who lived and wrought around him.
It was an age of criticism and of unbelief. Heroic days were getting to be matter of jest, and religion was mostly an affair of the rabble. But Virgil saw beneath the surface. He had the poet's eye for reality. The heroic stirred him — he was a hero-worshiper. The nil admirari spirit of his time did not infect him. He saw that men live by admiration, hope, and love. So he tried to combine the later science with the primitive faith, to bring back the age to a belief in the higher powers, to inspire in a generation that was self-seeking and partisan some sense of the greatness of the State, of the duty of patriotism, of the dignity of labor, of the value of peace ; in short, he would make Rome secure by investing public virtue with religious sanctions.
The father of Virgil, the well-to-do proprietor of an extensive farm, though not himself a man of education, seems to have spared no expense or pains in the educa- tion of his son, accompanying him at the age of sixteen to Cremona, as the father of Horace accompanied his son to 'Rome. Virgil had probably read Homer from his childhood, for Cicero tells us that Northern Italy was at this time especially noted for its study of Greek. At the age of eighteen we find him in training at Rome. His endless industry is praised by his biog- raphers. Science of all sorts attracts him. Like every great poet, he masters the learning of his time. Siron initiates him into the secrets of philosophy, to such ex- tent that at one time he vows to devote his life to ab- stract thought ; and, in many subsequent hours of des- pondency over what seems to him his ill success in his
THE EDUCATION OF THE POET 73
real vocation, he regrets that he did not fulfill his early vow. Even to the end of his days his love for philos- ophy never leaves him, and both Plato and Epicurus seem to speak again in portions of his verse.
But to Virgil, dulc'es ante omnia Mtiste. To poetry he early consecrates himself. He has the sense of a mission. He sets himself as deliberately to become a poet as Cicero sets himself to become an orator. The labor of years seems short, for the love he has to the Muse. Seven years he gives to the composition of his first poem ; seven years to the second ; ten years to the third ; and then he wishes to destroy this third, because, forsooth, his life is too short to furnish the three addi- tional years needed to complete it. So, revolving long his several themes and working them over and over be- fore he gives them to the public eye, he at last produces works of such incomparable artistic excellence that the world will not willingly let them die — indeed, they seem endowed with an inherent immortality.
If other things are equal, poetry lives in proportion to the perfection of its artistic form. As the produc- tions of the poet are borne downward on the? stream of time, those which have angularities of structure are caught and stopped upon their way — only the rounded and innately beautiful pass by all obstacles and sail on to the ocean of eternal fame. And Virgil was pre-emi- nently the artist. He, perhaps, more fully than any other of the sons of men, had the literary instinct, the discernment of form. Not so much a creator as a shaper of material, he regarded thought as a means of producing literary effects.
He was a rhetorical poet, if the phrase be permissi-
74 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
ble. But as the true rhetorician knows how to choose great themes, because only great themes will bear the richest garb, so Virgil never wastes his gifts on empty words. Beginning with lighter subjects, probably be- cause he seems to himself more equal to them, he gives the maturity of his powers to the greatest subject pos- sible to his time, — he celebrates the rise of Rome's po- litical dominion ; and, by linking her present grandeur to the heroic past, he blends patriotism and piety to- gether. And " the silent spells held in those haunted syllables ' have done more than any other single in- fluence to give a humane and gracious aspect to the hard- ness and sordidness of Roman life. Latin before the Christian era would seem the language of a heartless race, and Rome would seem only incarnate power and law, if it were not for the sweetness and pathos of Virgil.
In this matter of artistic form Virgil was an origi- nator. He carried the music of words to a higher per- fection than it had ever reached before. Other Latin poets had preceded him, but in their hands the strength of the language had hardly been tamed — it was sono- rous, but it was harsh ; it had majesty, but it lacked melody. Ennius, the Calabrian, was a half-Greek, and he aimed to reproduce in Latin the Homeric hexameters ; but Ennius, though he had a lofty genius, was deficient in art, and it was left to Virgil to make that verse " the noblest metre ever molded by the lips of man." En- nius died just a century before Virgil was born. He was the father of Latin poetry. His "Annals," a cu- rious mixture of history and song, unquestionably fur- nished Virgil not only with his metre, but with the
THE GREATEST OF IMITATORS 75
theme of his great epic — the origin, greatness, and des- tiny of Rome. Whole lines from Ennius, indeed, are said to remain embedded in the ".^Eneid," and to give archaic simplicity and force to portions of Virgil's poem.
Lucretius was born 100 B. c., while Virgil was born in 70. Catullus preceded Virgil only fifteen years. Both Lucretius and Catullus were in the zenith of their fame during the years when Virgil was getting his train- ing. He was profoundly influenced by both of them. Lucretius was the most original and profound thinker of the Roman race. His doctrines of the uniformity of nature and the reign of law became a part of Virgil's system of thought, while Virgil, unlike Lucretius, con- tinued to believe in a will of the gods which expressed itself in nature and molded the wills of men. From Lucretius, moreover, Virgil caught an impassioned ear- nestness, a condensation and vividness of expression, which constitute one of the most marked characteristics of his verse.
Catullus furnished Virgil with an example of sweet sadness and graceful melancholy ; but the later poet im- proves upon the tender cadences and the pathetic sim- plicity of his predecessor, by adding to them dignified refinement and just bounds. To put it all in a word, Virgil has absorbed in himself and has combined into one all the great merits of the Roman poets that preceded him.
If Virgil had contented himself with drinking in and reproducing the general characteristics of the earlier poets, no fault could ever have been found with him. If, like Milton, he had recalled without copying, he would have had only praise. But Virgil is the greatest
76
THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
of imitators. Whatever suits his purpose, whether in Greek or Latin verse, he appropriates without a qualm of conscience, and with an air of happy self-compla- cency. True it is that whatever he touches he adorns. When he was charged with using Homer's similes as if they were his own, he merely replied : " Only the strong can wield the club of Hercules." He has made others' work his own so perfectly that what is original with him can hardly be distinguished from what he has ap- propriated. So Moliere said boldly : u I take my prop- erty wherever I find it." Even in Shakespeare we have a somewhat similar phenomenon. Plot and incident, thought and phrase, our greatest poet often borrows with perfect unconcern. His early dramas are appar- ently only others' tragedies made over, but made over so wonderfully that even their original authors had more reason for admiration than for complaint.
Virgil is no plagiarist in the ordinary sense. As Dr. Wilkinson has well said, he looked upon Homer and the elder poets, both of Greece and Rome, as a great treas- ure-house, like that of nature itself. He does not seek to conceal his indebtedness — he rather desires it to be recognized. Like the Spartans, he would have us ad- mire the art with which he steals. Just as Charles Sumner sometimes introduced into his speeches imita- tions of noble passages from Demosthenes, and was only delighted when you noticed and praised them as a proof of his scholarship and taste, so Virgil would only have felt complimented if you had pointed out how in- geniously he had made his own poems an anthology of all the poets that had gone before him. An echo, says Miss Wedgewood, may be sweeter than the sound that
PROGRESS IN HIS WORK
awoke it, and we may be thankful that Virgil has echoed down to our time a thousand voices of the past that would otherwise be lost.
We may say something more about this matter of originality, after we have considered what Virgil actually wrote. As we have already intimated, there was pro- gress in his work, corresponding to the breadth of his experience and the maturity of his powers. As we think of the " Eclogues," the " Georgics," and the " yEneid ' ' succeeding one another, first the graceful pastorals, secondly the didactics of industry, thirdly the great political epic, we are reminded of Tennyson — the linked sweetness and indecisive touch of his youth- ful poems such as, "Airy, fairy Lilian," the philosophic depth and moral energy of his manlier work in " In Me- moriam," and the broad freedom and epic swing of his later " Idylls of the King."
The earliest work of Virgil was naturally the " Ec- logues." He had been dispossessed of his country home by Caesar's veterans. But Pollio, the Roman gov- ernor of the district beyond the Po, had introduced him to Augustus, had interceded for him, and had secured a decree of restoration. When he went to take his es- tate however, he found that de jure ownership was one thing, and de facto ownership was another. The old soldier in possession attacked him with such passion and vigor that Virgil was forced to swim the Mincio to save his life. It is doubtful whether he ever really recovered the farm. Some say that Augustus preferred to permit his legionary to retain what he had so stoutly defended, and that Virgil was compensated in some other way, possibly by the gift of a residence in Naples.
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In the city and not in the country the " Eclogues ' were probably written. Blessings brighten as they take their flight, and most poetry in praise of country life is written in the town. Shut out from his home, a thou- sand sweet illusions gather about the memory of it. The poet feels the tender grace of a day that is dead. Tityrus, who had worked the farm on shares and had enabled Virgil of old time to play the gentleman farmer while he gave his thoughts to poetry, is now exalted into an Arcadian shepherd. The tending of flocks is the only real work of life ; love-making and contests of verse and song are its solaces and delights.
That such a poem could have been published in the year 37 before Christ, in the midst of the second great civil war, shows not only the idealizing powers of the true poet, but also the large fruitage of Virgil's previous years of calm. There is a na'ivett and a liquid flow to the " Eclogues ' which witness to the rise of a new force in literature. Pollio is said to have pressed the poet to the writing of them, and Theocritus is said to have furnished the model and the inspiration. But no one who has in imagination reclined with the writer sub tegmine fagi can ever banish from his mind the delight- ful freshness of the verse, the charm of the Italian landscape which pervades it, and the impression of Vir- gil's wonderful love for nature. Nature seems actually to live and speak. She mourns for the dead Caesar, as in Greek poetry she mourned for the dead Daphnis. "In the last Eclogue," as another has said, "all the gods of Arcady come to console the poet when his faithless lady has forsaken him to follow his rival to the wars. This passage suggested the august procession of
THE "GEORGICS" OF VIRGIL 79
the superhuman mourners of Lycidas, which in its turn suggested to Shelley the splendid fragment of Adonais."
In the "Georgics," published in 30 or 29 B. c., after the great victory of Actium had made Augustus sole ruler of the Roman world, we have a more sober and lofty poem, whose temper of chastened hope and serene endeavor, to use the phrase of Prof. Sellar, befits the time of settlement. The word tf Georgics" might be translated " Field-work. " It is a glorification of indus- try. The country is not now the scene of perpetual holiday, as it was in the "Eclogues." Work is to be done, and the four sorts of work give their themes to the four books, which successively treat of tillage, trees, herds, and bees. Here too, Virgil had his model, and the model was Hesiod's "Works and Days." He had his prompter also ; for Maecenas, the generous patron and encourager of timid genius, urged the writing of them.
There was reason enough for the advice. The long wars had been times when regular government was almost suspended. Rapine and corruption had stalked in the track of the advancing armies. There was danger that the old virtues of the republic would be buried in the republic's grave. What could arrest the decay of Roman life? Nothing but a revival of the principles which at the first had made Rome great. Industry, frugality, simplicity, love of home, and reverence for law — these must take the place of strife and luxury, of ambition and greed. With a true poet's insight and with a true patriot's hope, Virgil seems to have risen to the occasion. He clothes with a halo of imagination and invests with a tender beauty all the homeliest details of country labor and country life. The "Georgics"
8O THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
would be the greatest of didactic poems if they were meant to be a didactic poem at all. But this is a mis- taken notion ; they were never intended to answer for a book of instruction to the farmer. Their object rather was to elevate men's conceptions of the arts of peace, to dignify humble toil, to teach the love of country, to inspire reverence for nature's laws.
These poems give us, more plainly than any others, Virgil's ideas about nature and about government. Na- ture to him means universal law. The same authority which in the "^ineid" appears as Fate, appears in the "Georgics" as Nature. "Thus Nature," he says, "at first imposed these laws, these eternal ordinances, when Deucalion first cast stones in an empty world, whence the hard race of men arose." But Nature, to Virgil's mind, does not exclude intelligence, or prevent the care and purpose of the gods. Hear him once again : " In- cessant labor conquers all things"; "for gods there are"; " Jove hurls the lightning "; "therefore venerate the gods"; "may they now save the Saviour of the State!"
And so Virgil's doctrine of divine government leads to his doctrine of human government. That too has divine sanctions. Augustus, who had pacified the world and saved the State, was the very embodiment at once of the will of the gods and of eternal law. It is not necessary to regard Virgil as a mere court poet, who flatters Augustus as a matter of trade. Nor was the deification of the emperor a piece of sycophancy. Per- verse and idolatrous though it was, it was still in large part, as I shall hope to show, the blind exaggeration of a noble sentiment — the sentiment of loyalty and of
THE ".ENEID" OF VIRGIL 81
reverence for divinely appointed powers. As the He- brews of old called human judges "gods," because they were appointed by God to stand in his place and admin- ister justice in his name, so the apotheosis of the Caesars and Virgil's declaration that Augustus would be exalted to heaven, as a new star filling the gap between the Virgin and the Scales, were in some degree a poetical recognition of the fact that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that his faithful representatives shall partake of God's own immortality.
There is a promise in the "Georgics" which indicates the consciousness in Virgil's mind that the time was near when he could venture upon a larger task than any he had yet achieved. He declares that he will yet wed Caesar's glories to an epic strain. The "^Eneid" is the fulfillment of that promise. Ten years of work he spent upon it. In the " Eclogues'1 he had followed in the track of Theocritus; in the "Georgics" he had imitated Hesiod ; now in his last great poem he mounts higher, and aspires to produce a work like those of Homer.
The "^Eneid " indeed is intended to be an "Odyssey" and an "Iliad" in one, the first six books with the wan- derings of ^Eneas aiming to be an "Odyssey," and the last six books, with their battles on land, aiming to be an "Iliad." The hero, however, as befits the unity of the epic, is in both halves of the story the same, the pious ^Eneas; and the great object of the poem is to show how the universal empire of Rome, which the gods had willed and Fate had decreed, was first established on the Italian shores. Virgil will write a poem that reflects the genius and the destiny of the Latin race ; he will dignify the history of Rome by linking it to the heroes
82 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
of antiquity and the counsels of heaven ; he will clothe his theme with all the splendors of legend and song ; he will reproduce the Homeric poems in Italy; he will himself be the Homer of Rome.
How fully this magnificent project was realized we have now to inquire. There seems every reason to be- lieve that, till within a few hours of his death, he was hopeful of accomplishing his task. In the year 19 B. c., he read to Augustus and to Octavia, the sister of Au- gustus, the second book of the poem with its account of the destruction of Troy, the fourth book with its tragic story of Dido, and the sixth book with its descrip- tion of ^Eneas' descent into the underworld. It is said that when Octavia heard the splendid eulogy upon her son, the dead Marcellus, the mother's heart within her gave way; she fainted both for grief and joy; and she revived to make the poet glad with a great gift of gold.
But the "^Eneid" was not yet ready to leave the author's hands. The whole poem lacked revision; in the latter part especially there were lines still incom- plete ; Virgil counted three more years as necessary to finish his work. He set out for Athens, in order on the voyage to get the local color needed for his description of the wanderings of ^Eneas. At the capital of Greece he met Augustus. The emperor persuaded Virgil to return with him to Italy. The burning sun of Megara made him ill. He continued his voyage notwithstand- ing. At Brundisium he died, and he was buried at Naples.
All the great Latin poets died young. Neither Catul- lus nor Lucretius reached middle age. Virgil, when he died, had just passed it, for he was fifty-one. He died
VIRGIL COMPARED WITH HOMER 83
despondent, because he thought his work undone. He begged that the "^Eneid," since he could not complete it, might be burned ; he called it a piece of lunacy that he ever consented to undertake so great a task; he valued the "Georgics" more highly, because they were within the compass of his powers. So Milton thought his "Paradise Regained," as respected its subject, a greater poem than his "Paradise Lost."
It is well for us that Virgil's dying injunctions were not carried out. Augustus knew too well the poetical and political value of the "y£neid" to permit it to be destroyed. Instead of burning it, he ordered it to be most carefully preserved ; he commanded that it should be neither amended, added to, nor altered, in any way; through his influence it gained at once a circulation and fame entirely unexampled in ancient times. It remains the most complete picture of the Roman mind at its highest elevation. It is the noblest contribution to pure literature that has ever been made by the Latin race.
And yet we must not rate Virgil too high. Among ancient poets he is the second, not the first. We must grant that he is not a Homer. For while Virgil has talent — prodigious talent, Homer has genius. And the difference between the two is this : Genius is spontane- ous, unconscious, free from the thought of self, working from an inner impulse that makes labor both a necessity and a delight. Talent, on the other hand, works with self-consciousness and effort. Virgil has prodigious talent. Whatever labor and skill can do, he accom- plishes. But the vivida vis, the creative power, the original insight into the heart of things, he has not, as Homer has.
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Virgil does not set before us great characters, as Homer does. Achilles and Ulysses, Homer's heroes, are creations so distinct and yet so natural, that the pas- sionate courage of the one and the wily wisdom of the other are almost historical realities to us. But it is not so with the hero of Virgil's poem. ./Eneas is more of a saint than a hero, more of a monk than a warrior. Saints are not necessarily uninteresting, but pious yEneas hardly excites in us a ripple of enthusiasm. Even his saintship is not decided, for everything seems right to him that will further his interest.
If Virgil has given us any wholly original character, it is that of Dido. Her figure is lifelike and complete. The gradual rise of her fatal passion for ^Eneas, and her throwing away of life when she finds herself abandoned, have in them more of the spirit of modern romance than can be found in all classical literature besides. Non hnmilis mulier — there is nothing small about her grief ; and nothing so becomes her in her life as the grand air with which she leaves it :
My life is lived, and I have played
The part that fortune gave, And now I pass, a queenly shade,
Majestic to the grave.
And yet it is said that Apollonius Rhodius furnished Virgil with the outline of this picture of Dido. Yes, and even Homer had his predecessors. There were brave men before Agamemnon, and there were doubt- less poets before Homer. To all men of genius it can be said : " Other men labored, and ye have entered into their labors." So the greatest literary productions of
ARTISTIC RATHER THAN SPONTANEOUS 85
all the ages are inextricably intertwined with one an- other. Milton could never have written if Dante had not gone before ; Dante presupposes Virgil ; Virgil would have been impossible without Homer; Homer himself was probably the interpreter and unifier of a whole cycle of rhapsodists who glimmered like stars in the early morning of poetry before his own great epic sun had risen.
Still it is true that the power to set forth great per- sonalities belongs to Homer in far larger measure than to Virgil. Homer can use his materials creatively, and out of them can fashion new forms, as Virgil cannot. The powerful invention, the dramatic instinct, the in- sight into character, which belong to the greatest poetry, are lacking in Virgil's work. The Germans distinguish between the Naturepos and the Kunstepos, between the epic poetry that is spontaneous and the epic poetry that springs from art. While Virgil gives the best specimen of the one, Homer must evermore be the noblest ex- ample of the other.
The interest of the "^Eneid," unlike that of the "Odyssey" or the "Iliad," is not so much in the main story as in the episodes. The former poem is much more capable of partition. It may be doubted indeed whether Augustus and Virgil might not better have compromised matters by burning the last six books of the "y£neid"' while the first six were preserved. No revision could ever have turned those last six into an "Iliad." In spite of the fact that Dante seems most moved by the closing scenes of the poem, and in spite of the fact that the Roman and imperial element is stronger in the last half than in the first, it still is true
86 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
that Virgil's literary fame would have been greater if that last half had not been written. This Latin Homer begins to nod when he gets half way through his task.
Yet Turnus, a character of much more heroic fibre than ^Eneas, would be lost to us if the last six books were lost, and the noblest type of Latin chivalry with him. How much we should lose if we lost the episode of Camilla, the virgin warrior, the Amazonian queen, whose onset is like the wind:
Nay, she could fly o' er fields of grain Nor crush in flight the tapering wheat ;
Or skim the surface of the main, Nor let the billows touch her feet.
Macaulay, in his "Lays of Ancient Rome," has no more effective couplet than that in which he describes the rush of another army, that moves
Like swift Camilla o' er the corn, Camilla o' er the main.
And how could we part with that exquisite episode of Nisus and Euryalus, who occupy in ancient poetry the place which Damon and Pythias occupy in ancient prose ? Here one noble youth dies to save another :
Love for his friend too freely shown, This was his crime, and this alone.
It is the heathen confirmation of Paul's words : " For a good man some would even dare to die." But Virgil witnesses to " the rarity of this human charity," by predicting the immortality of fame which he will give it in his poem :
VIRGIL'S SPECIAL MERITS 87
Blest pair ! if aught my verse avail, No day shall make your memory fail
From off the heart of time, While Capitol abides in place, The mansion of the yEnean race, And throned upon that moveless base
Rome* s father sits sublime.
Yet in spite of these brilliant and pathetic episodes, and the great constructive skill which Virgil has shown in weaving them into his story, the "y£neid" has devel- oped passions rather than created persons, and in read- ing it we get no such impression of sustained and ma- jestic power, as is made upon us when we enter the charmed circle of Homer.
When we have said this, however, we have said the most that can be said in disparagement of Virgil. He has merits of his own which Homer cannot equal, sim- ply because Homer was born too early in human his- tory. In all that pertains to moral earnestness, to re- finement of taste, and to human sympathy, Virgil is superior to Homer. Certain historians of Latin litera- ture complain that Virgil has always a divided mind ; his spirit belonged to the ages of faith, and yet he sought to reconcile that faith with science. Let us rather say that Virgil takes the nafve and unquestioning beliefs of Homer and turns them into rational convic- tions, adds to them the knowledge of a later day, clothes them with the very perfection of literary work- manship, interprets them to the new age, and hands them down to posterity.
Virgil feels the mystery of the unseen world more than Homer does ; he cannot like Homer talk sportively
88 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
of the gods. With a deeper reverence, he has a deeper sense of j ustice ; he believes more in moral law ; con- science and sin are greater realities to him ; the idea of sacrifice is more fully developed ; the offerings to the gods are both propitiatory and vicarious : unum pro multis dabitur caput. Poet as he is of the Roman Empire, and believer as he is in its divine mission to embrace the world, he is notwithstanding conscious of the crimes that have marked those hideous years of foreign con- quest and of internal strife ; he fears divine judgment ; he counsels piety and a return to the ways of virtue and peace. So it is not without a meaning that his hero is the pious yEneas — pious, not only toward the gods, but toward his father and his race. The mission of ^Eneas is to bring the Trojan gods to Italy, and to find for them a lasting home.
All this is a distinct advance on Homer. Virgil has sounded depths in the human soul that Homer knew not of. Neither courage nor adventure can for Virgil any longer give sufficient charm to character. The true man is one who identifies himself with institutions, and builds his life into the life of his time. In both the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," the interest is chiefly per- sonal ; the author is not specially on the side of the Greeks. But, in the "^Eneid," the interest is chiefly national ; Virgil is always and everywhere on the side of Rome. He makes fidelity to Rome a sort of re- ligion. He clothes the Empire with an imaginative halo that impressed men's minds for ages after.
It is certain that the Roman people would never have endured the rule of such monsters of cruelty and li- cense as Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, and Domitian, if the
THE APOTHEOSIS OF AUGUSTUS 89
Empire had not seemed to be the manifestation in hu- man affairs of invisible powers, and the emperor him- self to be in some sort divine. In the apotheosis of the emperors, accompanied as it was by temples and sacri- fices and worship in their honor, we have indeed a most convincing proof of man's forgetfulness of the true God and of his disposition to worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. Though the Hebrews called their judges "gods," because they were God's representatives, they never identified them with God, or called them immortal, or paid them worship. These very judges were told that they should die like men, and they were bidden to fall down in worship before Je- hovah. The very climax of heathen sacrilege and idol- atry was thought to be reached when the images of the . emperor which the Roman legions carried upon their standards underneath their eagles of bronze or silver, and which every soldier of the legion was required to worship, were set up in the holy place of the temple at the final siege of Jerusalem ; that was " the abomi- nation of desolation."
But Virgil lived in the times of ignorance, which God \ winked at, and which we ought to wink at too. The 1 words deus and divus did not mean so much then as they mean to us. In Homer the Manes of the de- parted had been invoked in prayer ; in Virgil's time these Manes were commonly called divi, or divine. It was not so great a thing to be a god, when popular be- lief held that there were many gods, instead of one. A half -pantheistic confounding of the world with God had made it easy to regard the actual ruler of the world as divinity made visible.
9O THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Alexander the Great had claimed not only a divine parentage, but also a divine nature, and had sent an or- der to the Republic of Greece to recognize his divinity. The answer of the Lacedemonians shows just how much meaning they attached to it. " Since Alexander desires to be a god," they said, "let him be one ! ' So among the Romans, Romulus had been deified, and Julius Caesar after his death had been similarly exalted. Virgil applied all this to Augustus, even before his earthly life had ended. He invested the Roman Em- pire with divine sanctions. It is doubtful whether the existence of that Empire in form at least until 1806, when the last Roman emperor, Francis, king of Ger- many, permitted it to die, can be explained without tak- ing into account the influence of Virgil.
In thus making the motives of his epic a larger justice and a larger humanity, Virgil did not depress the tone of poetry, he only enlarged its sphere. So he has been truly called a precursor of modern civilization. He is the most feminine of all the great poets ; he first ac- knowledges and does reverence to the feminine in true manhood. Courtesy, pity, love, sympathy with misfor- tune, resignation in suffering, have almost no place in the " Iliad," but they are marked traits in the principal characters of the "^Eneid." Triumph in defeat, suc- cess in apparent failure, the judging of life not by what it accomplishes but what it aims at, these ideas, of which Robert Browning is the great modern representative, are already hinted at by Virgil.
Homer has a joy in battle ; he delights to chronicle the most ghastly wounds ; compassion to a fallen foe he regards as only weakness. Of Zeus he sings :
VIRGIL'S THEOLOGICAL IDEAS 91
Apart from the rest he sate, and to fill his eyes was fain, With the gleam of the brass and the fate of the slayers and them that were slain.
Virgil too, out of deference to Homer, gives us more than one battle scene. But his heart is evidently not in it. Touches of pathos and of pity light up the cloud of war, and the interest lies, not so much in the bloodshed, as in the tender emotions that mitigate its ferocity. When Pallas slays the twin sons of Danaus, as a re- viewer has pointed out, Virgil thinks of their parents, who, "sore perplexed, each for the other took, nor wished the sweet uncertainty resolved." When ^Eneas slays Lausus, his weapon " rent the vest his mother's hand had broidered o'er with gold." Virgil has pity for the vanquished and the sorrowful. He thinks it worth his while to justify his hero's desertion of Dido by the stern compulsion of fate, and to recompense the love- lorn queen by reuniting her to her husband in the world of shades.
Here, indeed, is another mark of theological progress. Homer punishes the bad in Hades, but he gives only the faintest intimations that there are rewards for the good. Virgil believes in an Elysium :
Here sees he the illustrious dead Who fighting for their country bled ; Priests, who while earthly life remained Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained ; Blest bards, transparent souls and clear, Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear ; Inventors, who by arts refined The common life of human kind, With all who grateful memory won By services to others done :
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A goodly brotherhood, bedight With coronals of virgin white.
Virgil is an imitator of Homer, but Dante was almost equally an imitator of Virgil. Each improved upon his predecessor, while he drew without stint from his stores. Dante does well in the " Inferno " to take Virgil for his guide, for Virgil had mapped out the ground for him long before. He copies from Virgil the approach of night in the underworld :
Another sun and stars they know, That shine like ours, but shine below.
From Virgil he gets the cue for his limbo of infants :
Whom portionless of life' s sweet bliss, From mother's breast untimely torn,
The black day hurried to the abyss
And plunged in darkness soon as born.
From Virgil he takes his hopes for those who die in
youth :
Towards the ferry and the shore The multitudinous phantoms pour ; Matrons and men, and heroes dead, And boys and maidens yet unwed, And youths who funeral pyres have fed
Before their parents' eye, Dense as the leaves that from the treen Float down when autumn first is keen, Or as the birds that thickly massed Fly landward from the ocean vast, Driven over sea by wintry blast
To seek a sunnier sky.
It would almost seem as if Dante had taken from Virgil his ideas of purgatorial suffering, though in the
THE SOUL HOLDS A HIGHER PLACE 93
" JEneid " purgatorial suffering prepares, not for entering into paradise, but for returning once more to the life of earth. Here in Virgil is a transmigration of souls which is found neither in Dante nor in Homer. Homer had regarded the body as more important than the soul ; without the body the soul was but phantom and shadow ; Achilles had rather be a slave on earth than the mon- arch of all the dead. But to Virgil the soul is the superior thing ; the body is its place of imprisonment and source of defilement ; only when it escapes from its earthly prison will the caged eagle soar into its native air. ^Eneas wonders that Anchises, after he had tasted the repose and the liberty of Elysium, should ever de- sire to return to earth.
Evidently, Pythagoras and Plato have contributed to Virgil's theology quite as much as Homer has. » Homer puts his hell far away — Ulysses has to go to the ex- tremity of the immense ocean to find it. Virgil's under- world is much more accessible — the grottos of Lake Avernus in Southern Italy, with their sulphurous odors and volcanic aspect, furnish gateways to it. Not only in point of space, but in point of meaning, is Virgil's Hades nearer to us than Homer's. Virgil's is the Hades of philosophy, as well as of poetry. The spir- itual at last overtops the physical. All souls indeed are but forms of an anima mundi that breathes through all
things.
Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon' s pale orb, the starry train,
Are nourished by a soul, A bright intelligence, which darts Its influence through the several parts
And animates the whole.
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Thence souls of men and cattle spring,
And the gay people of the wing,
And those strange shapes that ocean hides
Beneath the smoothness of his tides.
So penal sufferings they endure
For ancient crime, to make them pure :
• •••••
All these, when centuries ten times told The wheel of destiny have rolled,
• •••••
The voice divine from far and wide Calls up to Lethe's river-side, That earthward they may pass once more, Remembering not the things before, And with a blind propension yearn To fleshly bodies to return.
I have for once, and only once, given a long specimen of Conington's translation. The ballad metre, though it is flowing, does not represent the stately sweetness of Virgil's hexameters; Dante's "Purgatory" is the best literary analogue to the Hades of the "^Eneid." The early part of the passage I have quoted has a sound very like Lucretius, but the latter part witnesses to a doctrine of immortality and of penalty at which Lucretius scoffed. Dante learned from Virgil that a heathen might realize the depth of the abyss into which transgression brings the soul, without being able to discover the way of escape from it. And yet we should miss one of the chief as- pects of Virgil's genius if we failed to consider him in his character as a prophet of Christianity. To a certain extent Virgil did predict the way of escape, when he wrote his fourth " Eclogue." Let us remember that this was composed a whole half-century before Christ's work was accomplished, and we shall at least be struck with
SOURCES OF VIRGIL'S PREDICTIONS 95
its remarkable correspondence with the future facts and its equally remarkable likeness to Hebrew prophecy.
The poet begins by calling on the muses of Sicily — that is, those who have inspired the genius of Theocritus — to aid him now in work higher than any he has yet attempted. A virgin is coming, and the reign of Saturn ; the earlier ages are to return. The chaste Lucina, whose emblem is the moon, is invoked in be- half of the babe soon to be borne. Pollio himself, to whom the "Eclogue" is dedicated, shall see the opening of the glorious time now foretold. Under his guidance, if any vestiges of human wickedness remain, they shall at least cease to cause terror to the world. The coming child shall overthrow the age of iron and shall found a golden race ; he shall take on himself a divine nature ; he shall see heroes mingling familiarly with the gods ; he shall himself be one of them. Under his mild government men shall recover their ancestral virtues. The timid flocks shall no longer fear the lion. Serpents shall perish and poisonous herbs disappear. From the very cradle of the babe shall spring living flowers ; the earth everywhere shall be alike fruitful ; the soil shall not need the harrow, nor the vine the pruning-hook ; the plowman shall release the ox from the yoke. Best of all, the Fates declare that this age of peace shall endure forever.
When Constantine recited a part of this " Eclogue ' to the assembled fathers at the Council at Nice, it was with the view of showing that heathenism had predicted its own downfall, that the deliverer it looked forward to was nothing less than divine, and that this Desire of all nations had come. So Virgil came to be enrolled, like Balaam, among the prophets. His statue was placed among them in the cathedral of Spanish Zamora in the Middle Ages, and he was invoked as " prophet of the Gentiles," at Limoges and Rheims in France. " Sancte Socrate, ora pro nobis" we hear at one time ; and Buddha is canonized as St. Josaphat at another.
96 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Whence did Virgil derive his idea of the coming de- liverer ? Lactantius and Augustine thought him the organ of a prophetic inspiration which he did not himself understand. But it is more probable that here, as else- where, Virgil was only an imitator. The Sibylline books had repeated the Greek representations of a golden age. The Jews scattered among all nations after the Exile were a proselyting race ; in every large city they had their synagogues ; the Roman world had been leavened with their hope of a Redeemer. Virgil only echoed a longing which, originally springing from Jewish prophecy and from divine inspiration, had gradually permeated every civilized nation.
The hope of a deliverer did not come from heathen- ism. That was skeptical and hopeless rather. Cicero thought the course of all things to be downward. Horace mentions the idea of a golden age, only as a dream never to be realized on earth. But Virgil had the piety and the faith that could welcome truth so far above men's common thought, and could welcome it even though coming from a Jewish source. The years of conscription and slaughter through which Rome had just passed were to him a reign of terror. All that was worst in the world seemed to have been uppermost ; surely the turn of the righteous must come. This mar- velous hope settled on the new-born or expected child of Augustus and Scribonia, and Virgil expresses it in lan- guage which more than anything else in classic literature reminds us of Isaiah.
Virgil's prophecy did not come precisely true, for the world's deliverer was born, not in the consulship of Pollio, as he predicted, but some forty years later. Yet his
LED TO A REVIVAL OF THE OLD RELIGION 97
religious teaching had wonderful effect. The published with the special sanction of Augustus, had a send-off, if I may use the term, such as no other of the world's great poems ever had. We must not push back into the Augustan age ideas of the fewness of copyists and the large price of books which belong only to the dark ages that came after.
In Virgil's time there were publishing houses at Rome in which the new work of a poet could be put into cir- culation almost as quickly, though not with the same number of copies, as it can be to-day. There were great rooms filled with the desks of scribes; from an elevated pulpit or platform the poem was dictated word for word, and if need be, letter by letter ; fifty or a hundred copies were made at once ; the scribes were slaves, and slave labor was cheap. Martial, a century after, tells us that the first book of his " Epigrams " could be bought for five denarii, or for less than a dollar. Imagine, now, the rapidity with which Virgil's " yEneid ' was multiplied, with all the prestige of imperial favor to give it a start in the race for fame. It attained at once a circulation and an influence entirely unexampled in ancient times. It was the means of bringing about a marked change in the beliefs of all classes of the Roman people.
The nature of that change will be understood if we compare the times of Cicero, just before Virgil wrote, and the times of the Antonines, two hundred years after. Though Cicero had talked publicly and officially of the gods and of immortality, he was by no means sure of either. He wrote the "De Natura Deorum" yet privately and at heart he was a skeptic. In his letters
98 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
there are no allusions to the gods. Nor does he in his letters, even when he is in greatest affliction, draw any consolations from the life to come. In " De Senectute" it is true, he finds the discomforts of old age relieved by the anticipation of speedy reunion with lost friends. Yet in another place he says : " Upon this subject I entertain no more than conjectures." When he reads Plato's argument for immortality he seems to himself convinced, but when he has laid down the book he finds that all his doubts have returned.
Cicero is the type of his time, a time when Epicurus is the reigning philosopher and Lucretius is the reigning poet. But before two centuries have passed, Marcus Aurelius, the type of his time also, writes letters full of religious sentiment ; in almost every sentence he recog- nizes the gods ; the future life gives him hope. Virgil, more than any other single influence, brought about this revival of old religion ; showed how much litera- ture could do to change the course of human thought and feeling. It showed how much literature could do, but it also showed how little literature could do. It could quicken conscience ; it could inspire hope ; it could not give certainty ; it could not impart life. Neither Virgil's legal nor his prophetic utterances could do the work of the gospel, but they could and they did do something in preparing the world to accept the Christian faith.
It is not wonderful that the Middle Ages came to regard Virgil both as a saint and as a wizard. Mag- ister Virgilius came to be not only master of all hu- man science — mathematics, mechanics, architecture, and medicine — but also master of evil spirits, conjurer,
VIRGIL AS A SAINT AND A WIZARD 99
necromancer, and magician. Tunison has shown that these stories are not a sort of folklore that grew up spontaneously in Italy. Naples, the city of Virgil's chief residence, has none of them. They were the fruit of conscious invention. They had an exclusively literary origin. They came from the North, not from the South. We must remember that the poems of Virgil became the school-reader of all the world. For nineteen hundred years his influence has been con- tinuous.
Homer was lost to the Western world for centuries- only the bringing of Greek books from Constantinople, and the revival of Greek learning after the Crusades, brought back Homer to his place of power. But from the day that the " ^Eneid ' ' was given to the public until now, no ingenuous youth has had a liberal education without being compelled to read Virgil. What Aris- totle became in logic and philosophy, Virgil always was in the more elementary training — the text-book of su- preme authority.
Grammarians wrote such commentaries on his works that, if those works should themselves be lost, every line could probably be recovered from their citations. Noble ladies had their Virgil clubs, and injected mys- terious meanings into his words, even as now they some- times deal with Robert Browning. The "^Eneid" was used to conjure by, and in the time of Hadrian fortunes were told by the Sortes Virgiliance, or by seizing upon the first word that presented itself ad aperturam libri, just as the Bible is used by some superstitious people to-day. As the Latin language gradually was displaced by the popular corruptions of it, it came to be regarded
IOO
THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
as a mystery, both in church and school. To the vul- gar, "hoc est corpus y became "hocus-pocus" A mag- ical efficacy was attributed to learning. Friar Bacon and Dr. Faustus alike, when they dived too deeply into science, were thought to be in league with the devil.
The chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies had no very clear ideas of the dividing line be- tween history and fable, and they too often fed the popular appetite for the marvelous with concoctions of their own imagination.' Because Virgil had risen at a bound from a modest fortune to wealth and the favor of princes, it was inferred that something more than natural agents must have been at his bidding. Because he was master of all the learning of his time, the conclusion was drawn that the spirits of evil instructed him. Italy, to those far-away mediaeval gropers, seemed a fairy-land, and classic times were the early ages of enchantment.
About this period, moreover, the returning Crusaders brought back from the East the wonderful tales of Con- stantinople and Cairo and Bagdad, which, a century or two after, took form in the "Thousand and One Nights." The German, French, and English romancers wrought over the same raw material with which Moslem sheiks were entertained in the desert. The genii of the East became the demons of the West, Virgil became a classic Friar Bacon and Dr. Faustus all in one, and all the stories of magic art crystallized about him.
Like Aladdin, Virgil found a demon in a cave and pressed him into his service. He imprisoned familiar spirits in bottles, like the Arabian fisherman. At Naples he had a magic garden, wherein grew all manner of plants for healing and for charming men. This
STORY OF THE SALVATION OF ROME IOI
garden was protected by an immovable atmosphere, as by a wall ; and upon a bridge of air Master Virgil could pass at will, and in a moment, whithersoever he would, even to the most distant lands. Petrarch tells us that in his time Virgil was thought to have excavated the grotto of Posilippo by his spells. There was a bronze statue which he set up to watch Vesuvius and to check its eruptions. Whenever the mountain began to groan and to threaten the town, the statue shot an arrow at it and compelled it to cease its throes, or to pour forth its ashes and lava in the opposite direction.
But Virgil's chef-d'oeuvre as a magician was the tower or palace which he constructed at Rome. As Amphion of old had, by the music of his lyre, com- pelled the very stones to build themselves into his city wall, so Virgil used his poetry with similar effect to raise an edifice for the protection of the imperial city. John Desborcke, the chronicler, gives the story as fol- lows :
The emperor asked of Virgilius how that he might make Rome prosper, and have many lands under them, and know when any land would rise against them ; and Virgilius said to the emperor : ."I will within short space that do." And he made, upon the Capitolium, what was the town-house, made with carved images, and of stone, and called the Sal-vatio Roma / that is to say : This is the salvation of the city of Rome ; and he made, in the com- pass of it, all the gods, that we call idols, that were under the subjection of Rome ; and every one of the gods, that there were, had in his hand a bell ; and in the midst of the gods made he one god of Rome ; and whensoever there was any land would make war against Rome, then would the gods turn their backs toward the god of Rome ; and then would the god of the land that would stand up against Rome clink his bell that he hath in his hand, till the senators of Rome heard it ; and forthwith they
IO2 THE POET OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
go there and see what land it is that will war against them, and go against them, and subdue them.
The tale went on to say that Virgil declared that this magic tower should stand until a virgin should bear a son ; and that, in accordance with his prophecy, it fell into ruins when Christ became incarnate. It is a strik- ing proof of the persistence of men's craving for the marvelous, that this story of the " Salvation of Rome," and of Virgil's connection with it, should have been hawked about in English chap-books so late as the be- ginning of the present century, and should have died out of popular belief only when the Roman Empire itself expired.
Goldwin Smith declares that the victories of Rome were victories of the intellect. He regards the first settlers at the mouth of the Tiber as a commercial rather than a warlike people, who were able to keep the marauding tribes of the hills in check only by maintain- ing a discipline superior to theirs. So the necessities of traders gave to the Roman State its bent to military art, as the necessity of harmonizing the customs of the varied peoples whom it subdued compelled its attention to or- ganization and to law. Greece treated strangers as bar- barians, and even the Greek colonies were never Greece. But wherever a Roman went, there Roman sovereignty and citizenship went with him. Rome incorporated every conquered people ; adopted their gods ; and made both gods and people Romans. It is this incorporation and reconciliation of all nations by the decree of heaven under the aegis of Rome that constitutes the one great motive and subject of Virgil's song.
In his " ConvitOy" Dante speaks of "the allegory of
VIRGIL, THE POET OF ROME 1 03
the ages of man, which Virgil imagined in the It was not so much an allegory of the ages of man, as an allegory of the ages of mankind. Written when the people of Italy first attained the sense of complete and secure nationality, and the whole circle of the earth recognized the authority of Rome, it most fully ex- pressed the bounding hope of the Augustan age.
As the victory over Persia ushered in the splendid triumphs of art and oratory in the time of Pericles ; as the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the humbling of papal Spain was immediately followed by the culmina- tion of English literature in the days of great Elizabeth ; so the unity of all mankind under Roman sway roused the soul of Rome's greatest poet. After the horrors of civil war, no wonder that Augustus seemed to him the Saviour of the State. With the world subdued, no wonder he could believe that the Empire was peace. We may smile at his idealization of the Empire, and we may frown upon his apotheosis of the emperor, but we cannot deny that his great poem drew its greatness from some of the noblest springs of human emotion, and constituted an unconscious prophecy of a greater king- dom than Rome, and a greater King than any of the Caesars.
DANTE
DANTE
AND "THE DIVINE COMEDY"
ONCE upon a time, as the story-books would say, or, to speak more historically and exactly, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-six, and in the month of August, a little company of fairly intelligent people determined to put their vacation to use. The scene and the surroundings were propitious. We were upon the banks of Canandaigua Lake, the loveliest of those paral- lel sheets of water which so diversify the landscape of Central and Western New York. From the veranda where we assembled after breakfast, Bear Hill loomed up across the lake, like Vesuvius over the Bay of Naples. The quiet summer mornings, the shade of the great elms, and the deep blue sky invited us to something more serious than vers de socittt.
Some one spoke of " The Divine Comedy," and won- dered if anybody had ever read it through. It was a revelation, a challenge, and an admonition. Most of us had read the " Inferno," but had been so ill-pleased with Dante's Hell, that we had never cared to try his Purga- tory, or even his Paradise. But a new resolve was taken. We would begin and finish. Forthwith were produced the translations of Cary, Wright, and Long- fellow. Two of us knew something of Italian, and had
with us the original poem. We brought to our help the
107
io8
THE DIVINE COMEDY
English version of Dr. Carlyle and Mr. Butler, with the Italian original on the same page. Best of all, we read by way of introduction and of comment, " The Shadow of Dante," by Maria Francesca Rossetti, from which I take much of value in the composition of this paper.
An hour and a half each morning for four weeks suf- ficed to accomplish our task. Indeed it was no task ; the pauses for discussion were numberless ; its beauty grew upon us ; when we finally closed our books, the four weeks seemed four days for the love we bore the poet and the poem. I have since read the essays of James Russell Lowell and of Dean Church — the former very learned and thoughtful, though conceived from a literary point of view ; the latter strong and eloquent, the work of a moralist and a preacher. I undertake now to give the condensed result in my own mind of this bit of summer study — not however without the ex- pectation and acknowledgment that pieces of others' learning will here and there shine through my writing, as through a palimpsest. I have let my reader into the secret of its origin, if by any means I may tempt him to go and do likewise.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in the year 1265, so that my story takes us back more than six hun- dred years. The Middle Ages were coming to their end. The Crusades had wakened Europe from the sleep of centuries ; the classic literature had begun to attract its devotees ; the free cities had established themselves ; there was everywhere the stir of new politi- cal and religious life. But it was a time of strife. The Guelphs, the party of the popes, and the Ghibellines, the party of the emperors, were hotly contesting every
DANTE AND BEATRICE
point of vantage in city and country ; although in Italy the Ghibellines were strong in the provincial districts, while the Guelphs were strong in the towns. To the Guelph party Dante's family belonged. He does not appear to have been of noble birth, for he afterward held office ; and the constitution of Florence at the time forbade this to nobles. But he does appear to have been born to wealth ; he certainly possessed the means of the highest education the age could give ; he was ever in the front rank of his contemporaries, both in society and in politics. Of his youth we have but a single incident —fortunately that was the most important incident of his life. It was his meeting with Beatrice.
At the age of nine years he first saw the lady of his dreams. It was at a festival at the house of her father, Falco Portinari. She was but a little damsel, no older than himself, but she was habited in crimson, and the sight of her was the awakening of his spirit. The next meeting of which we have record was nine years after, and that seems to have been a casual encounter on the street, leaving only a glance and a gentle word to be re- membered. We do not know that Dante ever sought Beatrice in marriage ; she was a star apart, to be looked at from afar ; she married another, and she died at twenty-four ; she probably never knew of the influence she exerted ; and yet, from the day of that festival at her father's house, she was the ruler of Dante's soul.
Sense did not mingle with his passion. Beatrice be- came to him the symbol of all spiritual beauty. When he reaches paradise, he is lifted from each lower sphere of heaven to the next higher simply by gazing into the transparent depths of Beatrice's eyes. " The thoughts
IIO "THE DIVINE COMEDY*
of youth are long, long thoughts," and the resolves then formed prove often the strongest resolves of a lifetime. So the loves of youth may be long, long loves. A true affection never dies, and the psalmist never spoke more truly than when he said, " Your heart shall live for- ever." That meeting at the festival was not the first time, nor the last time, that the sight of a little damsel in pink or blue has turned the head of some great man, and so has changed the face of the world.
I wish we could say that Dante was absolutely faith- ful to the memory of Beatrice. But history and his own acknowledgments are too much for us. There was a little time when, possibly to distract his mind after her death, he plunged into a skeptical philosophy and yielded to the attractions of sense. A rival, whom he calls the adversary of Reason, and whom he pictures as a woman at a window, temporarily absorbed his thoughts. But the spell could not last. Let us adapt and use the lines of Tennyson :
Faith in womankind
Beat with his blood, and trust in all things high Came easy to him, and though he tripped and fell He could not blind his soul with clay.
How noble a lesson there is in the fact that the break- ing of the evil spell is coincident with a second vision of Beatrice ! As there rises before his imagination the fair form of his lost love, still habited in crimson as he had seen her so long ago, yet now invested with a purity and glory that belonged to heaven rather than to earth, the chains of sense and of unbelief seem to fall away from Dante's soul.
PREPARATION FOR "THE DIVINE COMEDY' III
So the new life begins, of which the " Vita Ntwva " is the history. Beatrice, who has rescued him, becomes to him God's angel and minister, the perfect combina- tion of nature and grace, the symbol and embodiment of that heavenly wisdom which alone can free man from the anguish of doubt and the degradation of sin. Hence- forth he identifies her with divine philosophy, and in token of his renewed and perpetual allegiance to his first-beloved, he writes these words :
There appeared to me a marvelous vision, wherein I saw things which made me resolve to say no more of this blessed one until I could more worthily treat of her. And to come to this I study as much as I can, as she knows in truth. So that if it be the pleas- ure of Him by whom all things live that my life shall last some- what longer, I hope to say of her that which has never yet been said of any woman. And may it then please him who is the Lord of lovingkindness that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady ; that is, that blessed Beatrice who gloriously gazes upon the face of Him who is blessed forever !
"The Divine Comedy" is Beatrice's monument. It was the labor of a lifetime. It was prepared for by profound and extensive studies. What is true of every great poet was especially true of Dante — he was master of all the learning of his time. It was easier then than now to compass all human knowledge. Thomas Aquinas had written, and from his immense " Summa ' the poet had learned theology. Aristotle furnished him with his philosophy. Homer and Virgil were his masters in poetry. He was deeply read in history, both sacred and profane. Whatever of physical science had then been discovered, whatever of medicine or of law was taught in the schools, all the culture that music, painting,
112 'THE DIVINE COMEDY'
architecture, and sculpture could give, all. these were Dante's possession.
But more than this, he was a man among men, a citi- zen, a diplomatist, a statesman. Grave yet eloquent, composed yet capable of heroic decisions, an ardent lover of his country and a soldier in her defense, he had that large knowledge of affairs and that experience of human nature which fitted him to speak to the very heart of his generation, and indeed to the human heart in all ages and everywhere. He had moreover the sub- lime self-confidence of genius. He entered unabashed into the company of the greatest poets, as he met them in the world of spirits ; and, even in Florence, when it was proposed to send him on an embassy to Rome, he replied : "If I go, who remains ? and if I remain, who goes?"
But neither study nor political life alone would have qualified him to write his great poem. It needed the heavy blows of exile, poverty, and suffering to forge the argument of "The Divine Comedy." In the year 1300 Dante was elected one of the chief magistrates of Flor- ence, and perceiving that his native city could have no peace unless the leaders of its factions were banished, he used his two months of brief authority to send these leaders beyond the borders of the State. It was a patriotic and unselfish act, for among them, and in either party, were certain of his personal friends. It was abstract justice without regard to consequences, and when the tide turned and his enemies returned to power, they gave to him the same measure which he had meted out to them.
In 1302 a heavy fine was imposed upon him, and
DANTE IN EXILE I 13
when he refused to pay, his entire estate was confis- cated, and it was decreed that if he should be found again in Florence he should be burned alive. Hence- forth Dante became a wanderer upon the face of the earth. In 1310, he appears to have gone to Paris, per- haps to Oxford. After his return he was offered am- nesty, upon condition of paying fine and acknowledging criminality. But he scorned to enter Florence except with honor. "The means of life will not fail me," he said. "In any case I shall be able to gaze upon the sun and stars, and to meditate upon the sweetest truths of philosophy."
Let us enter in imagination into the fortunes of this son of Florence, her truest patriot and her greatest man, cast out by an unloving mother, though every stone of her streets and every foot of her soil were sacred to him as they could be to no other. He be- came a Ghibelline in hope that the emperor's coming would restore just authority and would right the wrong. Poor, and exposed to all " the stings and arrows of out- rageous fortune," he wandered from one petty Ghibel- line court to another, illustrating all too well the words of his own prophecy :
Thou shalt have proof how savoreth of salt The bread of others, and how hard a road The going down and up another' s stairs.
The lines of sweetness in his youthful portrait hard- ened and deepened into the sad, stern countenance of his later years. The very dignity of his nature, that forbade outward complaint, threw him inward upon him- self.
H
114 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
Seldom he smiled, and smiled in such a sort As if to scorn his nature that could be moved To smile at anything.
Yet morose and despairing he never did become. As the outward darkness of his lot deepened about him, a "light that never was on sea or land" "so much the more shone inward." As he walked up and down in Northern Italy, leaving traditions of his sojournings connected with many a ruined castle and mountain tor- rent, there were opening before his vision great truths with regard to God and his judgments ; he was gather- ing vast knowledge of nature and of the human heart ; aye, he was mapping out heaven, earth, and hell for the generations to come. There can be no doubt that he re- garded himself as a sort of prophet. From the heav- enly spheres he looked down upon this earth of trial and sifting and saw the meaning of it :
The threshing-floor that maketh us so proud To me, revolving with the eternal twins, Was all apparent made from hill to harbor.
And so, revolving "The Divine Comedy" and bringing it into form, he passed nineteen years of sorrowful exile, until at last, far from home, at Ravenna, in the year 1321, and at the age of fifty-seven, Dante Alighieri died.
Before speaking of the great poem in detail, it will be desirable to say something about the end which Dante has in view and the means which he uses to attain it. The first of its hundred cantos is a sort of introduction to the whole, and we may well avail ourselves of the hints it gives us. Its first line,
In midway of the journey of this life,
"THE DIVINE COMEDY" A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 115
has doubtless a personal reference to the history of the writer, and fixes the date when its composition began at 1300, when Dante had just reached the age of thirty- five, having passed half-way through the threescore years and ten allotted to man.
On the first day of that new year and that new cen- tury, he describes himself as wandering, half asleep, from the right path, and becoming entangled in the mazes of a dark wood. Before him rises a hill, to which he makes his way and up which he essays to climb, until he finds himself withstood and repelled in succession by three wild beasts, a swift leopard, a raging lion, and a greedy wolf. These well-nigh drive him back upon the sunless plain, when suddenly he becomes aware that he is not alone. A gracious and majestic figure approaches and offers succour and conduct :
Follow thou me, and I will be thy guide,
And bring thee hence by an eternal place,
Where thou shalt hearken the despairing shrieks,
Shalt see the ancient spirits dolorous
That each one outcries for the second death.
And thou shalt then see those who are content
Within the fire, because they hope to come
When that it be, unto the blessed race.
To whom thereafter, if thou wouldst ascend,
A soul there' 11 be more worthy this than I :
Thee will I leave with her when I depart,
Seeing that Emperor who above there rules,
Because I was rebellious to his law,
Wills to his city no access by me.
In every part he sways, and there he reigns ;
There is his city and the exalted seat —
Oh, happy he whom thither he elects !
n6 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
It is Virgil who thus offers himself as Dante's conduc- tor through hell and purgatory ; it is Beatrice who has sent him for Dante's deliverance, and who is to be his guide through paradise after Virgil has led him through the two lower provinces of God's empire.
Many have been the interpretations put upon the great poem. The true interpretation is that which finds in it a combination of meanings. Dante himself has told us that there are four separate senses which he in- tends his story to convey. There are the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. In Psalm 114 : i, we have the words, "When Israel went out of Egypt." This, says the poet, may be taken literally, of the actual deliverance of God's ancient people ; or alle- gorically, of the redemption of the world through Christ ; or morally, of the rescue of the sinner from the bondage of his sin ; or anagogically, of the passage of both soul and body from the lower life of earth to the higher life of heaven. So from Scripture Dante illus- trates the method of his poem. We have his own war- rant for beginning with the literal meaning, and then superadding the spiritual.
Nothing can be more plain than the personal element that runs through the poem ; Dante's own life and spiritual struggles furnish the basis for all the rest. We cannot be far wrong in maintaining that the beginning of the poem describes Dante's own entanglement in the thickets of sense and unbelief, his early efforts to make his way up the mount of knowledge and virtue by strength of his own ; the demonstration of his inability to cope with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — the three adversaries which like
DANTE'S PHILOSOPHY OF CIVIL SOCIETY 117
wild beasts would drag him down ; the offer and the acceptance of superior aid, in order that he may know the truth and the truth may make him free ; and then his gradual growth in knowledge and holiness, as one after another the sins and infirmities of the soul are revealed and are put beneath his feet, until at last he rises to communion with God and to the society of the holy. In other words, and yet more briefly, " The Di- vine Comedy "is an autobiographical " Pilgrim's Pro- gress," written from the point of view of the Middle Ages and the Romish Church.
But this is only the beginning. Around and upon this core and foundation, is built up a wondrous sym- bolic structure in which Dante has sought to express his ideas of God's relations to humanity. It has been well said that the ancient epic never rose above the individ- ual. " Arms and the man I sing," said Virgil. Dante sings, not of himself, nor of any particular man alone, but of man in the largest sense : "His subject is man, as by merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the reward or punishment of justice." Man, in this large sense, has two sides to his nature, an earthly and a heavenly, a temporal and a spiritual. In each of these relations he needs author- ity. God has therefore provided upon earth two rulers, the pope to be his vicegerent in spiritual, the emperor to be his vicegerent in temporal things ; the former like the sun giving forth the light of God's truth directly, the latter like the moon reflecting that of the former ; each has his sphere, and each, being directly responsible to God, is to a certain extent independent of the other. There is therefore a political sense in which " The Divine
u8 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
Comedy" must be taken, and the constant interweav- ing of political incident and philosophy, which has struck so many as beside the purpose of the poem, is only a sign of its larger completeness and unity.
Miss Rossetti has beautifully traced the working of this idea into the introduction of the poem. The dark- some wood is the distracted and hopeless political con- dition of Italy. The hill of virtue and reason that arose before the mind of Dante, was the scheme of a stable and righteous commonwealth. But there was no mate- rial to build a city. The Guelph powers beset him. Factious Florence, proud France, avaricious Rome, are respectively the leopard, the lion, and the wolf, that set themselves against all order and all progress. Dante sinks back almost into despair of his country, when Virgil, the symbol of science and philosophy, appears for his deliverance, and brings him to a right understanding of the divine will, so far as the light of nature can go ; and when that has done its utmost, divine grace, in the person of Beatrice, discovers to him the very consum- mation of God's plans for the temporal good of hu- manity.
Whatever we may think of the details of this inter- pretation, there can be no doubt that in Dante's soul there had dawned the idea of a free State, as well as that of a free Church. He was immeasurably grieved and angered at the insane jealousies and enmities that tore his country in pieces. His prose essay, " De Monarchia" shows that his advocacy of Ghibelline doctrine in the latter half of his life, was based upon the conviction that only the supremacy of the emperor could deliver Italy from the wiles of the papacy and give her a strong
EXPRESSES MAN'S RELATIONS TO GOD I 1 9
and solid government. Italian unity and the independ- ence of Church and State both found their first great advocate in Dante — or rather, shall we say, first found germinal expression in his writings. No stronger bond than love for Dante has for centuries, in spite of all her political divisions, preserved a moral unity in Italy. And now at length even Dante's dream of political unity has worked its own realization. The pen has proved mightier than the sword, because it has led men to wield the sword in securing and in defending the unity of Italy.
So far, as to the temporal or political aim of Dante's poem, the settlement of the true principles upon which civil society should be built. This, however, is not its chief aim. The spiritual side of man is more important than this. He would set forth the nature of man as a subject of God, free to obey or to disobey, and bound to answer to his own conscience and to Him who made him. And here we must remember that, with all Dante's reverence for God's spiritual vicegerent upon earth, he never fails to distinguish between the office and him who held it, between the papacy and the indi- vidual popes.
He held loyally to Roman Catholic doctrine — indeed there was none other in his day to hold to ; but he held to it in no slavish way. He abhorred the temporal power of the papacy ; he regarded it as usurpation of the pre- rogatives of the State, treachery to the spiritual calling of the vicar of God, and cause of all the divisions and miseries of Italy. He has denounced the pride and venality of many a pope, and he has put some of them, heels upward, in hell. We cannot think him lacking in
I2O "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
courage, when we hear him calling the rulers of the church Antichrist :
Your avarice o' erwhelms the world in woe.
To you Saint John referred, O shepherds vile, When she, who sits on many waters, had Been seen with kings her person to defile ;
(The same, who with seven heads arose on earth And bore ten horns, to prove that power was hers, Long as her husband had delight in worth).
Your gods ye make of silver and of gold ; And wherein differ from idolaters, Save that their god is one, yours manifold ?
Ah, Constantine ! what evils caused to flow, Not thy conversion, but those fair domains Thou on the first rich Father didst bestow !
In Dante's expositions of Scripture he has given us independent judgments ; widely read as he was in sacred and patristic learning, we find him ever apply- ing the Bible to matters of common life ; as we uncon- sciously get something of our theology from Milton, many an educated Italian only quotes Dante when he thinks he is quoting the Bible. The whole range and compass of man's spiritual being is the subject of Dante's treatment. He intended nothing less than to set forth the whole process and philosophy of man's fall and man's restoration. Not simply the outward means for the cure of souls, but the great array of spiritual agencies that work for the punishment of the lost and the recovery of the penitent, constitute the subject of his story.
Let us put ourselves again, then, with the poet, in the dreary wood. The poet is only the image of humanity, straying away from God and miserably perishing in its
DANTE S SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE 121
sin. There is left only the voice of conscience to urge it up the steep hillside of knowledge and virtue, and this upward impulse is more than counteracted by the arts and devices of the great adversary. Humanity needs all the help that can come from both earth and heaven. God sends human teachers, and these show men the nature and the consequences of their sins and the means of purification from them. Virgil is the representative of the highest earthly wisdom. He can lead us to a terrestrial paradise ; but if we would pass beyond, we must have a higher guide. Beatrice is divine science, the teaching of the Spirit, God's highest gift to men. He who yields to the lower teaching shall have the higher. Dante's taking Virgil for his guide is symbol of the whole race of man putting itself under God's elementary tuition, that it may learn the truth which will deliver it from hell and lift it to heaven.
So the poem, which has autobiography for its center, embraces not only the doctrine of the State, but widens out until it takes in universal humanity and the true relations of that humanity to God. " The Divine Comedy" is an attempt to put all theology and all phi- losophy into poetical form, that man may have before his eyes an interpretation of the universe of things, a concrete representation of eternal truth, a justification of the ways of God to men. It is the loftiest concep- tion ever framed by any earthly poet, and the execution is worthy of the theme. "The Divine Comedy'1 was the first Christian poem ; it seems to us also to be the greatest.
So much for Dante's aim ; let us consider now the means he used to attain it — I mean his scheme of the
122 "THE DIVINE COMEDY*
universe, and the external vehicle by which he com- municated his thought ; or, first, his cosmology, and secondly, his verse. We must remember that Dante lived before Kepler ; his system was not the Coperni- can, but the Ptolemaic. To understand his poem with- out knowing this is as impossible as it would be for a schoolboy to learn geography without a map. Ptolemy did not hold to a flat, but to a spherical, earth ; yet he did hold that the earth was the center of all, and that sun, moon, and stars all revolved around it. There were two hemispheres — an eastern hemisphere of land and a western hemisphere of water. In the center of the hemisphere of land is the city of Jerusalem, di- rectly over the hollow pit of hell ; in the center of the hemisphere of water is the island-mount of purgatory, up whose steep sides all penitents must climb to heaven.
Neither hell nor purgatory was created where they now are ; this is the result of Satan's fall. When the rebel angel was cast out from heaven, his immense mass and weight crushed through earth's surface to the very center of the planet ; gravity prevented him from going farther and held him there fast bound. The very sub- stance of the globe fled from him in horror as he came hurtling down, and with these three results : First, the great pit of hell was excavated, at the bottom of which Satan lies ; secondly, the waters of the eastern hemi- sphere were transferred to the western, so that the east- ern hemisphere is now laid bare ; thirdly, the portion of earth's substance displaced to form hell, since it must go somewhere, was thrust up under the ancient Eden and so the terrestrial Paradise was made the summit of the
DANTE'S SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE 123
purgatorial mountain in the midst of the waste of west- ern waters. Ulysses is the only mortal who has seen that mount, and there it was that he met his fate. Tennyson's poem " Ulysses ' is only a reminiscence of Dante. The mount of purgatory is therefore "exactly at the antipodes of Jerusalem, and its bulk is precisely equal and opposite to the cavity of hell."
Hell and purgatory belong to this planet. Earth alone is the abode of sin and the place of penance. But as we leave earth and go upward we find nine sev- eral heavens, one above the other, each a hollow revolv- ing sphere, enclosing and enclosed. These are at once solid and transparent ; in them the planets are fixed, to give light by day and night. First comes the heaven of the moon ; beyond this the heaven of Mercury ; then the heaven of Venus ; fourthly, the heaven of the sun, which Dante, after the fashion of his time, regarded as a planet revolving around the earth ; fifthly, the heaven of Mars ; sixthly, the heaven of Jupiter ; seventhly, the heaven of Saturn; eighthly, the heaven of the fixed stars ; ninthly, the starless, crystalline heaven, or Primum Mobile, which moves most rapidly of all, and by so moving communicates movement to all the rest. Beyond all these nine heavens is a tenth, the motionless empyrean of God and his saints. There the elect spirits of all time, arranged in ranks like the rising seats of an amphitheatre, surround a lake of light formed by the reflection of the divine glory from the convex upper surface of the Primum Mobile. It is the Rose of the Blessed, whose petals expanding on every side are made up of countless intelligences, all bright with the purity and the love of the highest heaven.
124 'THE DIVINE COMEDY
Such is Dante's scheme of the universe. Let us ask now about his verse. He called his work " The Com edy"; the title " Divine " was given to it by admirers belonging to the next generation. He tells us that the designation "Comedy" was given to it, because, though beginning in gloom and sorrow, it has a happy ending; it takes the reader through hell and purgatory, but it brings him to paradise. The average reader, I fear, does not give to Dante's work the benefit of the poet's own explanation. He reads only the " Inferno," and in- sists on judging the whole by this single part. Here the grotesque and the revolting so fasten his attention that he declines to proceed farther. He does not pene- trate to the deep philosophy of Dante's treatment ; does not see that Dante's aim is to portray the folly and the monstrosity of sin ; does not appreciate the poet's aim of making all this a contrast and a foil to the sweetness of penitence and the joy of the redeemed. But he who has the grace and the patience to read the Purgatory, and the Paradise as well, will find that Dante was right in not calling his poem "The Divine Tragedy." Dante is no pessimist. To his mind "all things work together for good" ; and so his poem, which was meant to be an interpretation of the universe and a philosophy of history, rightly calls itself a " Comedy," for it de- scribes the uplifting of humanity from sin to holiness and from eternal sorrow to eternal joy.
But there was still another reason for the cheerful title. The work is written, not in the stately and sonorous Latin with its classic elegance and coldness, but in the humble Italian of common speech, the newly emerging product of a new civilization, the language of
THE ENTRANCE TO THE HELL 125
the shop and of the home, rather than the language of the schools. And yet it is too much to say that this language existed before Dante wrote. Dante was rather its creator ; for the Italian language, with all its sweetness and purity and beauty, the language of love, of poetry, of philosophy, sprang complete from Dante's brain.
There is something almost awe-inspiring in the sud- den appearance of such a work as his, as new in its literary vehicle as it was in conception and in theme. It did more to fix the language of Italy than the French Academy ever did to fix the French, or the English Bible to fix the English, tongue. Six hundred years ago a language was spoken in France which no com- mon Frenchman can understand to-day ; six hundred years ago a language was spoken in England which no common Englishman can understand to-day. But Dante's Italian is the Italian of modern speech. It is well worth while to learn a little Italian, for even a little will enable one to appreciate to some degree the sweet severity of Dante's verse ; the marvelous compression which never wastes a word ; the fascination of the terza rima, or triple rhyme, whose endless reiterations seem like the recurrent melody, at one time of funeral, and at another time of marriage, bells.
There is scarcely a more striking example of this fit- ness of phrase than in the solemn music which records the inscription over the gate of hell :
Per me si va nella citta dolente : Per me si va neir eterno dolor e :
Per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore :
126 "THE DIVINE COMEDY '
Fecemi la divina Potestate,
La somma Sapienza e il primo Amore.
Dinanzi a me nonfur cose create, Si non eterne, ed io eterno duro ;
Lasciate ogni sfieranza, voi eft entrate !
Let us now compare the Italian with the English, and mark how the liquid and intense quality of the original well-nigh disappears in the translation :
Through me ye enter the abode of woe ;
Through me to endless sorrow are ye brought ; Through me amid the souls accurst ye go.
Justice did first my lofty Maker move ; By Power almighty was my fabric wrought,
By highest Wisdom and by primal Love. Ere I was formed, no things created were,
Save those eternal — I eternal last : All hope abandon — ye who enter here !
The gate is " closed to none, being reft of all its fas- tenings since the day when the Conqueror of Death, fresh from the cross, forced through it his resistless passage." So Dante, following Virgil as his guide, pur- sues the deep and savage pathway and enters the In- ferno. Let us enter with him. Hell, as we have seen, is a pit within the earth, a hollow inverted cone, grow- ing narrower as it descends; in which, as space con- tracts, torment is intensified. The outermost borders of the pit constitute an ante-hell, rather than hell itself. It is the abode of the Neutrals, those who are not good enough for heaven, and who have not character enough for hell.
Here are confined the angels who at the first great rebellion in the spirit-world stood neither for God nor
THE ENTRANCE TO THE HELL I2/
for his enemies, but only for themselves. Here is confined a large part of the human race, even as the circuit of this uppermost region of the Inferno is the widest. These feeble and cowardly souls, stung by flies and wasps, the image of a reproving conscience, chase a hurrying standard, while worms in the dust beneath their feet absorb their blood and tears. So Dante punishes those who only ignored God, but did not have force enough to rebel against him. He crosses the River Acheron, the joyless river, with Charon for his ferryman, who grimly drives the reluctant souls out of his boat with the blows of his oar. So they reach hell proper, a pit of nine circles, each furnishing a landing- place, on one side of which is the wall of solid earth, on the other the abyss.
The first circle of the Inferno proper is called Limbo — the home of infants who died unbaptized, and of non- believers who had no knowledge of a Saviour. Here once dwelt the saints of Old Testament times ; but when Christ descended into the underworld after his resurrection, he rescued them and led them forth in triumph. Here still, and forever, dwell the heathen sages whose ignorance was invincible. There is no out- ward infliction. Their pain is the pain of loss, of un- satisfied yearning. Within a castle of sevenfold walls and gates they lead their shadowy life, neither sad nor glad, grave and subdued in aspect, conversing still with regard to the problems of existence, knowing nothing of the present, but only of the past and future. It is the highest point of attainment for unbelievers. Here Virgil points out " the luminous habitation of the poets." Homer and Horace receive Dante into their company,
128 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
and show him Socrates, Plato, and other master-spirits of antiquity. When they leave him, he re-enters the domain of darkness ; passes before Minos, the infernal judge ; and now at length descends into the hell of posi- tive sin and of real punishment.
It will be worth our while here to pause a moment and consider the three great divisions under which Dante classifies the sins punished in the eight circles which we have still to visit. There are, to his mind, three great types and gradations of sin. They are in- continence, bestiality, and malice. But neither incon- tinence nor bestiality is precisely what these words would seem to indicate. Incontinence includes all sin of mere emotion and desire, of affection and feeling. Lasciviousness, gluttony, avarice, and anger all belong to this category. They are sins of impulsive passion, exaggerations of principles of our nature which are themselves innocent, but which are indulged in manner or measure opposed to the will of God. It is signifi- cant that all these sins are punished in darkness, as befits the nature of them, committed as they have been with mind beclouded by passion.
And the respective punishments are punishments in kind. Carnal sinners are swept along by a violent hur- ricane, as if to intimate that they who have sown the wind must reap the whirlwind. Gluttons lie prostrate on the ground beneath a pelting storm of rain, snow, and hail ; while Cerberus, a sort of personified belly, devours them. The avaricious and the prodigal crawl in two bands in opposite directions, pushing before them great weights which clash together as they meet, the one band howling to the other : " Why did ye
THE HELL OF BESTIALITY
keep?' and the other howling in return : "Why did ye give away ? ' The wrathful and gloomy are im- mersed naked in a lake of mud, and in this lake they strike and tear each other. There is an impressive lesson here. Anger and melancholy are punished together. Too much indignation and too little indig- nation are equally sins. The wrathful and the wrath- less both transgress God's law. " Be ye angry, and sin not," says the Scripture. " Ye that love the Lord, hate evil." Not to be angry at unrighteousness, smoothly and indolently to condone wrong-doing, this to Dante is sin against God, and they who commit it are imbedded in the dregs of the Stygian pool.
We have been dealing with sins of feeling. How solemn a truth does the poet teach us when he makes sins of the thoughts to follow these ! For this is what he means by bestiality, the next great class of trans- gressions. The bestial man is the man who is besotted in mind, and who gives himself over to infidelity or to heresy ; who either says with the fool : " There is no God," or says with the errorist : " God is different from what he has revealed himself to be." Here, in the flaming city of Dis, where the walls are of iron and the darkness is mingled with fire, the arch-heretics are confined in red-hot tombs; as if to show the living death of the soul that cuts itself loose from faith in God and his revelation.
Notice that this sin of bestiality or unbelief follows, and grows out of, the sin of wrong desire. The heart first departs from God, and then the intellect follows in its train. It is only an anticipation of Goethe's dictum :
" As are the inclinations, so are the opinions." When
i
ijo "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
man gives loose rein to evil affections, the eyes of his understanding are darkened. But there is something worse even than sin of the feelings and of the intellect : it is sin of consciously evil will ; and so the third great class of iniquities in Dante's hell is that of malice, in its ever-deepening forms, now of violence, then of fraud, and finally of treachery. The sin of unbelief cannot maintain itself against the accusations of conscience except by becoming the sin of positive hatred and opposition to God. First the heart, then the intellect, and lastly the will, sets itself against him who made it.
Malice is punished after its kind also. The violent, such as tyrants, murderers, and marauders, are sunk in a boiling river of blood, and as often as they emerge are shot at by the Centaurs. Such the fate of those who commit violence against others — they have their fill of blood. Suicides, or those who are guilty of vio- lence against themselves, are turned into trees, whose living branches are plucked away by harpies only to grow again. Blasphemers, or those who have done vio- lence to God, are exposed to a slow shower of fire upon a plain of burning sand. Below the circle where vio- lence is punished, at a vast depth indeed beneath, fraud in its ten sub-divisions has its place of doom.
Here are seducers and flatterers, the first scourged by demons, the second immersed in filth. Simoniacs, who have purchased high places in the church with money, are fixed in circular holes, like purses, with their heads down, their legs only appearing, and the soles of their feet burnt with flames. Sorcerers or diviners, as they endeavored to pry into the future, have their heads twisted around so that they have to walk backward now.
THE HELL OF MALICE 131
Barterers and peculators are plunged into a lake of boil- ing pitch. Hypocrites wear cloaks and hoods which are gilt outside, but are lined within with lead, whose heavy weight they try with groans to carry. Thieves are per- secuted with a swarm of serpents. Evil counsellors are tormented in wrappings of flame that fit them as a garment. Slanderers and schismatics have their limbs miserably mangled. Alchemists and forgers are visited with an itching leprosy.
Last of all comes the well of the primeval giants, the mythical demigods who rose against Jove in arms. They are representatives of the last and deepest inten- sity of sin, the malice that becomes ingratitude, and that betrays kindred and friends, king and country, and finally its very God and Saviour. Treachery is in Dante's scheme the utmost malignity of sin, its most complete and dreadful expression. The lowest pit is called the Judecca, because it holds Judas, who betrayed his Lord. And here Judas is tormented by Satan, to whom for thirty pieces of silver he sold himself.
We have reached hell's lowest point. Let us gaze at Satan there. He is a creature of monstrous size — Dante gives us the means of estimating very accurately his dimensions. The primeval giants are each seventy feet tall ; Satan is twelve times as great — eight hundred and forty feet therefore in height. At the very center of the earth he sits forever flapping his vast and batlike wings in effort to escape, while these very movements chill the air and turn everything about him to frost and ice. He tries to escape, but every effort only freezes him more solidly into his place of imprisonment. He has three heads and three faces, red, white, and black,
132 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
to correspond with the three divisions of the human race which he has succeeded in leading to perdition ; in each one of his three mouths he is craunching and devouring a traitor, and of the three traitors Judas is chief.
The center of hell is not fire but ice — fit type of the hardness and coldness of the heart that is past feeling. The sin of sense has become the sin of malice, and malice has deepened into treachery and positive hatred to God. Feeling led the way in transgression, but the intellect followed, and then the will gave in its con- scious adhesion to wrong, until there came the spurning of the very mercy that would save, and the sin against the Holy Ghost that hath never forgiveness, either in this world or in that which is to come.
Before we leave the " Inferno," it is important to note three things. The first is that the grotesqueness and monstrosity of Dante's punishments are intended to teach a moral lesson — this namely, that sin is some- thing essentially vile and contemptible. "The Divine Comedy" gives a very different picture of Satan, for example, from that with which we have become fa- miliar in the "Paradise Lost." Milton's Satan is "the archangel ruined," but the emphasis seems rather to lie upon the "archangel" than upon the "ruined"; Satan has been called, indeed, the hero of the "Paradise Lost." But Dante is resolved that no illusive glamour shall sur- round the great enemy. He will picture him in all his native cruelty and hatred and malignity, a creature loath- some and loathed.
Milton, it is true, has passages in which the adver- sary confesses to an inward torment. Those three
LESSONS OF THE INFERNO 133
words, " Myself am hell," contain the very essence of the doctrine of future punishment. But as we see Satan striding over the burning marl, asserting himself in rebellious pride, daring the Almighty to crush him with his thunderbolts, we are forced to admire the un- conquerable will that had rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. And in all this Milton is false to Scripture. Though Dante goes beyond the Bible in his grotesque physical images, he expresses more of the spirit of the Bible than does Milton. Sin and sinners he holds in derision. Even in the story of " Francesca da Rimini ' we do not lose sight of the serpent that lies beneath the flowers ; guilty love has in it moral corruption and eter- nal despair. All Dante's demons are hateful ; no man through him shall be seduced into calling darkness light or evil good. He declares that, just as surely as the righteous shall rise to everlasting life, the wicked shall rise to shame and everlasting contempt.
A second lesson which Dante teaches us is that sin is the self-perversion of the will. If there is any thought fundamental to his system it is the thought of freedom. Man is not a waif swept irresistibly down- ward on the current ; he is a being endowed with power to resist, and therefore guilty if he yields. Sin is not misfortune, or disease, or natural necessity ; it is will- fulness, and crime, and self-destruction. "The Divine Comedy " is, beyond all other poems, the poem of con- science, and this it could not be if it did not recognize man as a free agent, the responsible cause of his own evil acts and his own evil state.
Dante is a lover of God and of holiness. He puts himself on God's side in the great moral controversy
134 'THE DIVINE COMEDY
of the ages. He explains suffering by guilt ; he sees the whole race under the load of just penalty ; hell is to him only the sign of God's estimate of sin. Is there anything that our age needs more than this strengthen- ing of conscience, this assertion of the claims of right- eousness, this declaration that the soul that sinneth, it shall die ? Would that our soft and easy-going time, soothed almost to sleep as it is by the tempter's voice, "Thou shalt not surely die," and inclined to compound with Almighty justice for indulgence in all sorts of pleasurable wickedness, would that our age might listen to the awful voices of self-accusation and despair that sound out from Dante's hell to proclaim the voluntari- ness and the damnableness of sin !
Still another lesson from the "Inferno" is that pen- alty is not in its essence external to the sinner. Here I know I shall contradict the impressions of many of my readers. " Dante not a believer in material and physical punishment?" Ah, I did not say that. I said that to Dante the material and the physical were not the essence of punishment. I most earnestly believe that, with all the material imagery of Dante's hell, he never meant us to take one of these physical punish- ments merely in its literal sense. He believed indeed in a body, and believed that God would destroy both soul and body in hell ; doubtless he expected that sins of the flesh would be punished in the flesh. But his view of sin as having its source and center in the soul forbade him to put upon the mere body the main stress of penalty.
People have made the same mistake about Jonathan Edwards. Because he speaks of the sinner as shrivel-
LESSONS OF THE INFERNO 135
ing like a worm in the fire of God's judgments, some have supposed that he regarded hell as consisting mainly of such physical torments. But this is a mis- interpretation of Edwards. As he did not fancy heaven to consist in streets of gold or pearly gates, but rather in the holiness and communion with Christ of which these are symbols, so he did not regard hell as consist- ing in fire and brimstone, but rather in the unholiness and separation from God of which fire and brimstone are symbols. He used the material imagery, because he thought that this best answered to the methods of Scripture. He probably went beyond the simplicity of the Scripture statements, and did not sufficiently ex- plain the spiritual meaning of the symbols he used ; but I am persuaded that he neither understood them literally himself, nor meant them to be so understood by others. What is true of Edwards is true of Dante. In how many ways does he show that sin is essentially a condition of soul, an alienation of the heart from God, an inner conflict and agony ! It is shown by the fact that living men are represented as already in hell ; as eternal life is already present in the souls of the good, so eternal death is already in the souls of the evil. It is shown by the fact that the sinner is made to punish himself ; the wicked is holden in the cords of his own sins ; sin is its own detecter and judge and tormentor. Dante's doc- trine is ever this : " The responsible agent, man, does to himself whatever he does, and his deeds return to the doer.'* The material symbols are nothing more than symbols — symbols of the corruption and death which are involved in sin itself — symbols of the fact that sin tends to permanence ; that sin at last is stamped upon
136 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
the soul as its eternal form ; that the free-will becomes at last enslaved to evil ; that the sinner, apart from divine grace, tends ever downward in an ever-increas- ing intensity of selfish will, and an ever-increasing in- tensity of punishment.
It is pleasant to emerge from the Inferno, even though we have learned from it so many lessons. Dante emerges under the guidance of Virgil. Having passed the center of the earth in his descent, he takes his upward way to the opposite side of the globe from that at which he entered. But the force of gravity is against him now. " Facilis descensus Averno" \ and we may add, Difficilis ascensus Ccelo. By what road does he ascend ? Ah, there is a channel worn through the solid earth by the stream that flows downward from the Mount of Purgatory. That stream is made up of the tears of the penitents who make reparation on the mount, and whose guilt and depravity, as fast as it is purged away, flows downward to Satan from whom it came and with whom it now abides forever.
As our toilworn pilgrim emerges from the bowels of the earth and plants his feet upon the Mount of Purifi- cation, the day begins to break, and the sorrow of his soul gives place to joy. He sees an angel-piloted bark approaching the island-mount, a bark which brings to purgatory, from the banks of the Tiber, all souls which have died at peace with the church, and who only need to be freed from the remains of sin to be fitted for heaven. Here we need to remember that in Roman Catholic doctrine, purgatory is only a temporary abid- ing place. Purgation may last for hundreds of years, but it cannot last forever.
FROM HELL TO PURGATORY 137
All who enter hell go there to stay. In purgatory none ever stay. And yet none wish to depart. They desire only to be cleansed. They bear willingly, yes even gladly, the chastisements of God, which are meant for their correction in righteousness. The reeds with which the shores of that island are fringed, yielding ever as they do to the swaying of the waves, are the symbol of the will of the mountain's habitants, bending ever to the slightest movement of the will of God. On this mount they bemoan their sins. It is a sweet and holy dwelling-place, irradiated by the southern cross, a constellation unseen in our cold northern climes ; the grassy slopes are kept green by the tears of the penitents ; angels visit it to encourage them, admonish them, guide them upward, in their toilsome striving ; hymns and prayers to God are continually ascending from its terraces, as from altar-stairs ; its summit is the terrestrial paradise, from which by a short step the soul, with the temporary shade-body which it wears till the resurrection, can rise from earth to heaven.
There is an ante-purgatory, just as there was an ante- hell. This ante-purgatory is under the wardenship of Cato of Utica, that model of ancient self-control. Here at the base of the mountain are detained those who deferred repentance during their former life ; they are compelled to wait outside of St. Peter's gate a hun- dred years for every year of that former delay — that is, are compelled to wait unless their stay is shortened by the pious prayers of friends whom they have left behind, one moment of whose intense intercessions has power to deliver from years of purgatorial sorrow. Voltaire
138 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
said rightly that in purgatory the church had found what Archimedes vainly longed for, a KOU ara> upon which he might plant his lever to move the world.
The souls in this place of preliminary trial chant the Miserere and the Compline Hymn, and so get help against the Adversary. At St. Peter's Gate, purgatory proper first begins. They approach it by a threefold stair, symbolic of the confession, contrition, and satis- faction which the church requires. An angel with flaming sword keeps the door, charged to err by admit- ting, rather than to err by excluding, those who seek admission there ; and yet there is a safeguard — he who after entering should look back, would again find him- self without.
Upon the brow of each one so admitted the angel with his sword of flame marks seven times the letter P, which means Peccatum, Peccavi, and indicates that there are seven capital sins which must be successively purged away. There are seven terraces, each devoted to the purgation of one of these sins of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lasciviousness ; and when the purgation of any one of these is complete, the corre- sponding mark of shame vanishes from the brow. So the process goes on until the forehead is pure as at man's first creation ; and, as the soul leaps up in free- dom and regains once more its lost estate of innocency, the whole Mount of Purgatory shakes for joy.
In the Inferno sin grows in intensity as the circles narrow and we go downward. In purgatory the rule is just the opposite ; the greatest sins are first purged away, and the mountain narrows as we ascend. Progress upward is at the first slow and difficult, and the heights
THE SEVEN TERRACES OF THE MOUNT 139
are great. But each sin removed gives new freedom ; the distances grow smaller and the ascent more rapid ; for "to him that hath shall be given," and when the sins that so easily beset are all laid aside, the soul " mounts up with wings as eagles" ; nothing now is left to separate between it and God.
There is another relation between the structure of the purgatory and the hell — sins in both are classified under three general divisions. In the Purgatory, how- ever, the classification is that of the mediaeval theolo- gians, into love distorted, love defective, and love ex- cessive. Under love distorted, pride, envy, and anger are ranged — each being regarded as loving evil to one's neighbor. Love defective is represented only by sloth -this loves too little the highest good. Love excessive has three divisions — avarice, or the excessive love of money ; gluttony, or the excessive love of food ; lascivi- ousness, or the excessive love of sensual pleasure. The seven terraces around the mountain are but eighteen feet in width, for "narrow is the way that leads to life." On the one side of each is the preci- pice; on the other the rocky wall, up which there is but one long and steep ascent, by stairs, to the terrace next above.
Let us delay for one moment to glance at the chas- tisements of the Mount of Penitence. In the first cir- cle pride, the primal sin and root of all other sins, is made to surfer. The proud are bowed to the earth by heavy weights of stone placed upon their backs ; and as they move onward in long procession, their eyes lifted up no longer, they look sideways at wonderfully sculptured representations of humility upon the rocky
140 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
wall, or downward at wonderfully sculptured represen- tations of pride upon the pavement beneath their feet, while spirit voices chant the Lord's Prayer and " Blessed are the poor in spirit."
In the second terrace the envious are punished by having the eyes that looked askance on others sewed up with iron thread, while mantled in prickly haircloth they are compelled to sit shoulder to shoulder, leaning upon one another and recognizing their mutual obligation and dependence. The eyes that have transgressed are not permitted now to see, and so instruction is communi- cated to them by spirit voices that record the various historical instances of love or of envy. "Blessed are the merciful," and " Rejoice, O Victor," are the saluta- tions that signalize release.
The third circle is devoted to the chastisement of anger. This too is punished in kind, by a dense fog, symbolic of the passion which blinds the eyes of the wrathful. The fog is bitter as smoke and black as night, and it is only in ecstatic vision that the angry souls are reminded of noble examples of forbearance, and of the murderous fruits of the opposite vice. The souls here suffering pray to the Lamb of God for mercy, and the beatitude that celebrates the comple- tion of their purging is "Blessed are the peacemakers."
But we must hasten up the mount. The slothful are punished in the fourth terrace by being forced against their nature to run races with each other ; while they exercise the virtue opposite to their own failing by shouting out to each other shameful illustrations of lukewarmness and inspiring instances of diligence. Avarice, in the circle next above, is bound hand and
LESSONS OF THE PURGATORIO 141
foot ; and, as it has refused to look upward to higher good, so it is now made to grovel on the earth. " My soul cleaveth unto the dust," is the cry of the penitent ; and " Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness ' is the sign of their victory over this their besetting sin. Then comes the circle of the gluttonous, tormented by the tree of Tantalus, a tree that entices by its wealth of fragrant fruits, but that widens upward instead of downward, and evermore withholds the means of gratification from the famished soul. Haggard and emaciated, the gluttonous crowd about it, casting eager eyes upon its precious burden, but only to elicit from its branches urgent admonitions to temperance.
In the seventh and last circle lasciviousness is ex- piated by long lines of penitents who pass through a fierce flame proceeding from the rocky wall beside them. Dante and Virgil both enter into this flame. Only here, and in the third terrace where anger is punished, does Dante himself surfer with the penitents. Of two sins only he seems to himself to need purging. And the penal fire does its work. His soul is purified from its last remaining sin. He is now master of himself, and as a crowned and mitred sovereign, with the lost image of God restored, he enters the terrestrial paradise, the Eden from which man was expelled for his sin. Virgil now can no longer be his guide, and Beatrice comes to take Virgil's place, after Dante has drunk of the waters of Lethe, which extinguish the memory of the past, and of the waters of Eunoe, which bring back the memory of the good.
Arnid the living verdure and the fragrant flowers, the
142
"THE DIVINE COMEDY
pleasant zephyrs and the singing birds, we would gladly linger. There are two remarks, however, which I must make with regard to Dante's purgatory, before I leave it. And the first is that, like the hell, Dante does not regard it as a place, so much as it is a process. Doubtless he believed in the place, and sought to give an imaginative picture of it. But much more he be- lieved in the thing — the necessity of purification. "Without holiness no man can see the Lord" ; "put to death the deeds of the flesh"; "cleanse yourselves therefore from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit"; these are the essential truths which were in Dante's mind. The Christian doctrine of sanctification is put into verse in Dante's poem, and so far, both Prot- estant and Romanist may find in it a source of great religious incitement and profit.
Indeed the purgatory comes nearer to our common life than either the hell or the paradise. The former is too far beneath us, and the latter is too far above. But every man can recognize resemblance to himself in the penitents of purgatory; that is, if he has even a spark of the hatred of sin and longing for holiness which God's regenerating Spirit has inspired. The tender and humble confessions of the sufferers, their submis- sion to the divine chastisements, their eager appropria- tion of all helps to their restoration which are bestowed by the word or the Spirit of God, are full of subduing beauty. Nowhere in literature, outside of the Bible, have we so nobly portrayed "the blessedness of him whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is cov- ered."
This first remark about the purgatory has had to do
LESSONS OF THE PURGATORIO 143
with that which Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have in common. My second remark has to do with the differences between them. There are two respects in which Protestants must regard Dante's representa- tions as painfully erroneous. On the one hand he errs, as the Roman Catholic Church has erred, in extending the period of purification beyond the confines of death. The literal interpretation is better — purgatory is only on this earth and in this life. "After death" there is, not purification, but "judgment." For multitudes the Romanist doctrine is a doctrine of second probation. Men are content here with being at peace with the church, while they are not yet at peace with God. The real controversy between themselves and their Judge is adjourned to the future world. Purgatory, with all its sufferings, becomes the basis of false hopes ; distant suffering is chosen rather than immediate renunciation of sin ; a fatal trust is put in what the sinner can do by way of reparation, rather than in what Christ has done by way of atonement.
And this leads me to notice another error intimately connected with that which I have just mentioned, and which Protestants must ever most strenuously oppose. I refer now to Dante's error in making the process of purification a penal one. If there is any truth of Scripture more vital and precious than another, it is that of the completeness of Christ's sacrifice. Our sins, and all of them, were "laid on him"; he "has re- deemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"; "there is therefore now no condemna- tion to them who are in Christ Jesus." God chastises his children ; but it is in love, and it is for their
144 'THE DIVINE COMEDY
good. There is no anger and there is no penalty, since
Nothing, either great or small,
Remains for me to do ; Jesus died and paid it all,
Yes, all the debt I owe.
The notion that the sufferings and calamities of the present life dre of the nature of punishment is contrary to the whole doctrine of the New Testament, and con- stitutes "a bridge to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatorial fires." Neither in this world nor in the world to come can any mortal add by penance of his own to the efficacy of that sacrifice of Christ which was offered once for all. Dante was not in advance of his age, nor was he yet possessed of the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation. Justification by faith alone had not yet dawned upon him as God's only way of salva- tion. The "mass" to him was still a repetition of Christ's death, and the pains of purgatory voluntarily endured by the penitent were still needed to supple- ment what Christ had done upon the cross.
So at last we came to Dante's Paradise, a creation in some respects loftier and more wonderful than either the Hell or the Purgatory, but, for the reason that it is so lofty and wonderful, less attractive than either of these to the ordinary mind. Yet, as I read the poet's sublime meditations upon the greatest truths of re- ligion and philosophy, I am impressed with the self- sufficiency of his genius. Never, even in its highest soaring, does the wing of his imagination seem to flag. Or, if ever earthly pictures seem to fail and earthly words are incapable of expressing the " exceeding and eternal weight of glory," piety and worship furnish what
THE NINE SPHERES OF THE PARADISE 145
art cannot supply, and the glowing heart of the poet shows itself most manifestly lost in adoration and in joy.
Heaven, we must remember, is to Dante's mind the state of the perfected will ; or rather, the state of the will that has been freed at length from earthly and sen- sual desires. But while perfection in the sense of sin- lessness belongs to all the inhabitants of the blessed realm, perfection in the sense of capacity is ever en- larging. All are as full as they can hold of the love and purity of God, yet one can hold more than another. To use the mediaeval illustration, "A king may clothe all his children equally with cloth of gold, yet the amount of the cloth apportioned to each may vary ac- cording to their size." In heaven too, as well as in the lower realms, each soul goes to his own place. Out- ward surroundings are simply the fit accompaniments and evidences of character. As the soul laden with sin experiences a downward, so the soul possessed of purity experiences an upward, gravitation ; and each one can say with King Richard, in Shakespeare's play : "Mount, mount, my soul — thy seat is up on high ! ' As we pass upward then from one heavenly sphere to another, we are to remember that we are not among the race of sinners any longer — we are rather among those whose varying native gifts and whose varying degrees of faith- fulness in the exercise of these gifts constitute an ever- varying receptivity for the life and love of God.
Beatrice, the symbol of heavenly wisdom, is now Dante's guide. As he gazes upon her face, the light of the terrestrial paradise is lost in another light. " Sud- denly day seemed added unto day, as if Omnipotence
had lit up the sky with another sun." The poet is
K
146 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
lifted up from earth to heaven. And yet it is the low- est heaven which first he visits — the heaven of the moon, with its waxing and waning, the proper home of those whose wills on earth were imperfect through in- stability. Here are nuns, who, being constrained to marry, did not return to their vows when they had opportunity. This sphere is revolved by the angels. The next sphere is that of Mercury, and archangels have it in charge, turning it in due order around the earth and the sphere of the moon which it encloses. In this sphere of Mercury abide those whose wills were on earth imperfect through love of fame — men of great activity and eloquence, who lived on the whole for God, yet at the same time had some regard to the praise of men.
Then comes the sphere of Venus, revolved by the Principalities, and fitly made the home of those whose wills on earth were imperfect through excess of human love, even though that love was in itself lawful. Here Dante is led to
Admire the Art that turns to good Such passion, and the Wisdom manifold Whence earthly love by heavenly is subdued.
Thence he is lifted to the sun, the fourth heaven, revolved by the Powers. Here, in this chief light of the material universe, I am happy to observe that he places the abode of doctors of divinity and philosophy, proba- bly because they have themselves been sources of light to the church.
The sphere of Mars, to which the poet next ascends, is revolved by the Virtues. Here he sees the forms of
THE NINE SPHERES OF THE PARADISE 147
distinguished warriors, confessors, and martyrs for the faith, not drawn up in the order of an earthly army but ranged together in the shape of a cross. Then comes the sphere of Jupiter, of which the Dominations have control. Here rulers eminent for justice are disposed, in the shape of an eagle ; and wonderful to tell, the eagle, collective representation of earth's noblest kings and potentates, itself finds a voice, and speaks to Dante of the greater things of the divine kingdom. In the planet Saturn, or seventh heaven, revolved by the Thrones, are found contemplative spirits, or those who have furnished the most illustrious examples of the monastic life. The cold sphere of Saturn is peculiarly adapted to the monks and hermits, who have resigned the warmth of the fireside and the fervors of civic life in order to give themselves to prayer and to the study of heavenly truth.
The heaven of the fixed stars comes next ; for Dante knew of no planet beyond Saturn. Here the cherubim move the sphere, and the apostles and saints of the Old and of the New Testaments have their dwelling. And here, before he is permitted to ascend higher, Dante passes an examination on the subject of faith, hope, and love — St. Peter, St. James, and St. John success- ively conducting it. When he has shown himself expert in these prerequisites to heavenly bliss, the poet is car- ried up to the ninth or highest heaven, revolved by the seraphim. This sphere is called the Primum Mobile, because its motion is most rapid, and is the cause of motion to all the spheres which it encloses. This high- est heaven is starless and crystalline ; and here " the nine orders of the celestial hierarchy circle in fiery rings
148 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
around the Light which no man can approach unto, manifested as an Atomic Point."
Dante has reached the summit of being, and is per- mitted to gaze upon its uncreated Source. A stream of light proceeds from God himself. In that light the multitude of saints and angels fin,d their blessedness.
And as a cliff looks down upon the bed
Of some clear stream, to see how richly crowned With flowers and foliage is its lofty head ;
So all from earth who hither e' er returned,
Seated on more than thousand thrones around, Within the Eternal Light themselves discerned.
It is the "Rose of the Blessed" — the great company of the redeemed, circling like petals of a rose, rank beyond rank, around the mystical lake of light which reflects that " Light which no man hath seen or can see." The saints of all ages are here, from Adam to St. Paul, and from the Virgin Mary to Beatrice. All the praises which Dante has hitherto lavished upon the lady of his love fail now, he says, to give any adequate conception of her loveliness, as with him she ascends to the highest heaven.
But his love is now no merely earthly love — he has learned the lesson that "our loves in higher love endure." Love for God draws him nearer to Beatrice, and conversely love for Beatrice draws him nearer to God. His eyes, and all eyes, are supremely set on the Highest of all — the triune God, into partnership with whom our humanity has been taken, in the person of the Son, and whose Trinity in Unity is now unfolded to the adoring contemplation of his creatures. At the
THE ROSE OF THE BLESSED 149
intercession of St. Bernard, Dante is enabled with puri- fied sight to gaze directly upon the supreme Jehovah, and is moved to pray that grace may be given him so to utter what he sees that generations to come may catch some glimpse of the sublime vision :
O sovereign Light ! who dost exalt thee high Above all thoughts that mortal may conceive, Recall thy semblance to my mental eye,
And let my tongue record the wondrous story, That I to nations yet unborn may leave One spark at least of thy surpassing glory !
But the sight transcends all powers of description. Only one thing is made plain, — and that the greatest thing of all, — in God, Light and Love are one :
The glorious vision here my powers o* ercame ; But now my will and wish were swayed by Love — (As turns a wheel on every side the same)
Love — at whose word the sun and planets move.
So ends "The Divine Comedy." The translation of Wright, which I have generally used because it best represents the rhythm and rhyme of the original, is in these last lines in one respect defective ; it does not put at the end the word with which Dante meant his poem to close. That word is the " stars." With this word ends the " Inferno " :
Emerging, we once more beheld the stars.
With this word he ends the "Purgatorio " :
And with a will endued to mount the stars.
150 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
With this word he ends also the " Paradiso" :
The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
We can now see how narrow and unintelligent that criticism is which represents Dante's poetry as savage and grotesque, and regards the poet as capable only of rough effects. The truth is that Dante is the most sen- sitive of all poets to the changeful aspects of nature ; every hour of the day or of the night has to him its peculiar beauty ; no poet ever read in the book of na- ture more spiritual lessons ; no poet ever expressed those lessons in more varied and melodious phrase. When the boys of the street saw Dante go by, they said: "There goes the man that was in Hell !" and there was in his countenance a solemn gravity which gave verisimilitude to the popular report. But he did not revel in horrors, as some imagine. It was his in- stinct of righteousness, and not a morbid disposition to gloat over suffering, that furnished the animus of his dark descriptions of the torments of the lost. He had an enthusiasm for justice ; but then he had also a soul tremulously sensitive to the least of earth's sorrows and to all those benignant agencies by which God would remedy them. Dante was thoroughgoing. He saw the depth of man's need ; he saw the grandeur of the heavenly discipline. He did not waste his fervors on sin or sinners ; he reserved those fervors for struggling purity and for God's plan of rescue and restoration. Dante is the most ethical of poets — he measures all things by the standard of the sanctuary. But all beauty that is real or lasting — all moral beauty, in
LIGHT AND LOVE CONSTITUTE HIS HEAVEN 151
short — wakes in Dante's soul responsive emotions, and finds a calm and sweet expression in his verse.
Take, for example, the poet's ruling conception of heaven. It is that of light — light qualified by love. No language upon earth has such a marvelous wealth of terms expressive of the varying shades and aspects of light as has the Italian. And the most of these it owes to Dante. He not only pressed into service every word his native Italian furnished, but he revived scores of words which slept in the Latin classics ; and, when these would not suffice, he coined yet others from the mint of his own brain. This was no fanaticism of sen- suous delight ; it was the struggle of a great nature to express moral truth through the poor vehicle of human speech. There rang forever in his ears that sounding and sublime sentence : " God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." In the " Paradise," when all other earthly images fail him to describe the state of the re- deemed, he represents their blessedness under the fig- ure of ever new intensities and splendors of the light. The saints are " light in the Lord " ; they have " awaked, and risen from the dead, and Christ has given them light- So the " light ' is the light of truth, of purity, of holiness — the opposite to that " darkness ' which is error and impurity and sin. As God himself is light, and dwells in the light which is unapproachable, so each successive rise in the scale of being is a rise from one degree of light to another — not a merely physical and passive elevation either, since it is the mind and heart and will into which and through which "the true light now shineth." No Mohammedan paradise is here, but
152 'THE DIVINE COMEDY'
only the paradise which consists in holiness and in like- ness to God. The poet who could thus resist the sen- suous and externalizing influences of the church of his day must not only have drunk deep of a nobler than Pierian spring — even the well of Holy Scripture, but must have been specially guided and enlightened by the Holy Spirit of God.
In another respect Dante's " Paradise " is worthy of the highest praise. It represents nearness to God and serv- ice to God's creatures as contemporaneous. Rank in God's creation is determined by the clearness of the soul's vision of God — here the mystical and contem- plative element in religion has its rights accorded to it. But the ascetic exaggerations of this truth, which had so infected the life of the church, Dante is almost wholly a stranger to. He writes from the point of view, not of the monk, but of the common Christian. Ex- ceedingly few of the so-called saints of the Roman Catholic calendar does he deign to notice ; the more healthful .scriptural examples of chastity and faith and endurance are strewn thickly over his pages. And then, most remarkable of all, he has made the nine heavens, with all their upper and lower spheres, only the working-places of the redeemed ; while their work- ing-places are below, their dwelling-places are on high, in the mystical White Rose which is above all time and space, around the mystical lake of light, where there is no need of sun or moon because God and the Lamb are the light of it.
All the saints dwell in the light of God's immediate presence, and according to their capacity are made to reflect that light. But just in proportion to the light
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS THE REAL 153
which they are able to receive, just in proportion to their nearness to God and the clearness of their vision of him, is the service they are permitted to ren- der others. At the same time that they worship above, they have an existence and perform a service in the uni- verse of time and space. The highest of them can help God's creatures in the heaven of the fixed stars ; the lowest of them can help those who are just begin- ning their course in the heaven of the moon. It is not worth our while to stop here and smile at Dante, until we ponder those words of our Lord from which the poet, it may be, derived the suggestion of his thought : " See that ye despise not one of these little ones, for ... in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." What is this but to say : Heaven and earth are not mutually exclusive. Angels — and if angels, why not redeemed men? — by so much as they are near to God, by so much do they busy them- selves in service to God's creatures. Heaven is no ref- uge of idleness ; no hands hang down, and no lips are dumb. " His servants shall serve him." Knowledge of God and service to men are contemporaneous and interdependent. The nearer we get to God the larger will be our sphere of loving activity; the more shall we resemble him, who, though he was the very Son of God and in the very bosom of the Father, yet was among us "as one that serveth."
So holiness is joined to love, and holiness and love together constitute Dante's heaven. It is beautiful to see how, in the " Paradise," all heaven rejoices over the new joy of each victorious and ascending spirit, and how increasing nearness to God brings its inhabitants
154 "THE DIVINE COMEDY'
ever nearer to each other. Even the ministrants in the upper temple get new understanding of the wonders of God's grace, and take on a new brightness of holy love, as they see Dante enter heaven.
It was with such thoughts as these that the exile soothed the long years of his poverty and disappoint- ment. Who can wonder that to him the spiritual world became at last more real than the material world that was open to his senses ! It is sometimes made cause of complaint against him that his representations were so matter of fact ; that his journey through hell, purga- tory, and heaven was so real a journey ; that its inci- dents were so like the incidents of actual experience. Ah, this is the wonder and the poetry of it ! Imagina- tion and piety created a new world. Just so did John Bunyan, in Bedford jail, turn from the earthly to the heavenly, from the seen to the unseen, from the tem- poral to the eternal. He not only saw Christian mak- ing his way from the City of Destruction to the Heavenly City, but he was Christian.
So Dante's vividness of description is not mere liter- ary art ; it is a deeper process than that — it is a living through the things which he described, so that he too could say: Quorum magnaque pars fui. It is this in- tense realism which gives the "Divine Comedy" its chief power. It is the utterance of the greatest man of his time, and one of the greatest men of all times. It is his conscientious and God-fearing attempt to express the truth of God as his generation apprehended it, and so to express it that it might influence all after ages to turn from error and iniquity to truth and righteous- ness. Thomas Carlyle has called Dante " the mouth-
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD IS THE REAL 155
piece of the Middle Ages." The German Tieck declares that in him "ten silent centuries found a voice." This seems high praise, but Dante deserves higher praise than this. He is the mouthpiece, not only of the Middle Ages, but of all ages. Not twelve centuries, but all the cen- turies, find a voice in him. He illustrates truths that are true not only then, but now and always — truths of sin and purgation and recovery to righteousness, truths for the expression of which God spread the floor of the universe with its mosaic of constellations, and caused the curtain of night and chaos to rise at the creation.
" The corruption of the will, the purification of the will, the perfection of the will," these are Dante's themes ; and, as they are the greatest themes of all, so they are themes the most deeply affecting and perma- nently inspiring. Like Mary's breaking of the alabaster box, this offering of Dante to Beatrice, wherever the gospel goes, will be spoken of for a memorial of her ; but it will be a memorial of something higher still, even of that higher love which spoke through the love of the Triune God to a humanity that was sunk and lost in its sin. For this reason the poem of Dante will never die. Dante's universe has changed. In the midst of the western hemisphere modern discovery has found not the Mount of Purgatory but a vast new con- tinent. Our earth is no longer the center of the solar system — it is a satellite of the sun instead. But the great truths of being remain just what they were in Dante's time ; and the "Divine Comedy" will be immor- tal, because it is the grandest utterance yet given by man to these universal and fundamental principles in the nature of man and the nature of God.
SHAKESPEARE
SHAKESPEARE
THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
HE who attempts to write about Shakespeare may well feel as Hamlet did : he undertakes a task that transcends his powers. No great name in literature has had so much written about him, and this of itself shows that he is the greatest name. When all the lesser orbs have been circling around this sun and striving in their measure to reflect his light, it may seem hopeless to propound anything that is both new and true.
In dealing with Shakespeare we seem to be dealing with one of the great operations of nature. There is a mysterious largeness about him. He is not merely an individual poet, he is a great elemental force in the world's thought. He has been called the myriad- minded. His own personality is well-nigh lost in his work, and that work absorbs into itself, while it repre- sents and relumes for us all the varied secular life of his time. But his merit is a deeper and more vital one than this. He has struck the fundamental tones of secular human life everywhere and always. His poetry, more than any other, holds the mirror up to nature as it now is, and answers to Aristotle's definition of poetry as "an expression of the universal."
There was a day when schoolboys were set to writing essays on "Virtue." Their wrestlings with the vast
159
I6O THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
abstract theme were pitiful. Yet to some there was an attraction in the very greatness of the subject, and later years have seen them bending sharper powers of analy- sis to its comprehension. To write on Shakespeare is like writing on virtue. Success is possible by no schoolboy methods. Only the application of a broad philosophy will bring out valuable results. I propose therefore to preface what I have to say about Shakes- peare with a brief statement of the true place and func- tion of imagination, and of dramatic poetry as a means of imaginative expression.
It is a great error to regard imagination as an illegiti- mate child of reason, to be disowned and kept out of sight as much as possible. This was the view of Plato. He loved knowledge ; he desired to see things as they are. Imagination, in his view, coins only fiction, and fiction is untruth ; imagination and philosophy are in- consistent with each other ; hence he banishes all poets from his ideal republic. Modern narrowness and asceti- cism have often reproduced the error of Plato, and have put their ban upon the novel and upon the fine arts. The cure for all this is to be found in a proper appre- hension of the relation between imagination and other operations of the mind.
Imagination in its most obvious meaning is the image-making power of the intellect. In this sense it is a help and condition of all the more advanced mental processes. Our earliest perceptions of the self and the not-self are doubtless direct contacts, but our later knowledges are really combinations of direct perception with the images which past experiences have given us. I see a bit of red light among the leaves. Only when
THE FUNCTION OF IMAGINATION l6l
I add an image stored up in the mind, can I call it an apple. Memory itself is impossible without imagina- tion ; there must be an image of the past, as well as a recognition of that image as representing a former state of the self. All judgment with regard to the new involves imagination, for only imagination can enable us to compare the new with the old. Only the image- making faculty can bring together the present and the absent, the particular thing and the general standard to which it is to be referred.
Brutes have percepts and they can recall them. Even dogs have a low imagination and can dream. Imagina- tion becomes rational and human, only when it is able to distinguish between dream images and the actual per- cepts of present experience. But there is also a rational imagination which is free — a power of recom- bining the percepts of the past in an order determined by the mind itself. Imagination has a constructive power, as well as a reproductive power. It leaves out the irrelevant ; it puts together the essential.
Just in proportion to men's breadth of experience and insight into truth is their use of imagination in construing the world about them and reducing it to order and unity under its typical forms. Napoleon said well that the men of imagination rule the world. Tyn- dall can speak very properly of the scientific use of the imagination: "Nourished," he says, "by knowledge partially won, and bounded by co-operant reason, imagi- nation becomes the mightiest instrument of the physi- cal discoverer." Great inductions, like Sir Isaac New- ton's, are only the ventures of the rational imagination into the world of truth that is hidden from the multi-
1 62 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
tude. The hypotheses which precede experiment can never be framed without imagination. Kepler thinks God's thoughts after him, and his discovery is a work of imagination, quite as much as it is a work of reason. Art, as well as science, is man's attempt to reconstruct the universe in its essential ideas, and to set forth the real life of things.
Art then is not imitation, but creation. The creative imagination is the most rational and lofty form of imagi- nation, for it attempts to reproduce, not so much per- sons and things, as the formative idea of persons and things, the typical thought for which they stand and which gives them all their value. We have indeed a so-called art, like that of Verestschagin in painting and of Zola in literature, which aims to depict simply what is, in all its minute detail, whether that be ennobling or disgusting. This realism is not truly realistic, for it does not penetrate beneath the surface. It describes the very nails and hairs of the body, but gives no inti- mation of its life. It has no belief in the existence of God, and so it sees in the universe no soul, no thought, no dignity, no worthy ends. It does not see that the ideal is the most real element in the real, and so it con- founds the real with the actual. Upon this principle, as Hutton has suggested, the picture of a cannibal feast might be a work of art, and poetry might devote itself to descriptions of lust without love.
But there is a God, and the universe is a rational uni- verse. Through this phenomenal world another noume- nal world is striving to express itself. God's creative activity indeed is essentially a continuous presentation of the divine ideas to intelligent beings. In his out-
POETRY AN EXPRESSION OF THE UNIVERSAL 163
ward creation God gives us illustrations of his truth, that we may be taught to use our own creative powers. And man's creative activity is the discovery by the imagination of these same divine ideas and the putting of them into new combinations and forms. If the forms are merely abstract, we call this work of the imagina- tion philosophy ; if the forms are concrete, we call the result art.
Man has a free will, and he may deny and contradict these ideas both in his thought and in his life. He may imagine error, and devise wickedness. Art will then be- come artful — it will lend its many hues to the serpent, it will clothe vice with a hideous attraction. But it will still by contrast illustrate the divine truth which was meant to be its stimulus and goal. Do we conclude that the true artist must be a dogmatist and a conscious preacher of virtue ? No, we merely say that only the man in whom morality and religion are living principles can ever see deeply enough into the heart of things to become a true artist.
Now poetry is the greatest and noblest of the arts, and that for the reason that, while equally with philoso- phy it penetrates into the life of the universe, it has power more than any other art to exhibit that life of the universe to the mind and heart of man. I have men- tioned Aristotle's description of poetry as " an expres- sion of the universal." I need to add another profound saying of the same philosopher, namely, that "poetry is more philosophic and of higher worth, than history." The reason is not far to seek. History deals with the actual ; it has all the defects and limitations of its theme. Poetry, on the other hand, sets before us the
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types and truths of which history furnishes only single and concrete illustrations.
Poetry is more universal than history. In it appear the divine ideas purged of excrescences. Compare the characters of Shakespeare's historical plays with those same characters as they appear in the English annals. I do not hesitate to say that Shakespeare has seized the dominant feature of each character, and has presented it more consistently than any historian has ; while for grasp of the spirit of those turbulent times, their pas- sionate loyalty and their barbaric cruelty, and for vivid and moving exhibition of the national life and genius, the plays leave, and ever will leave, the histories far behind.
While poetry has these advantages over philosophy and history, there is one kind of poetry which possesses them to the utmost, and that is, dramatic poetry. Here we have life reconstructed, as it were. Great principles of action are set before us, but they animate concrete personalities. Types of humanity are consistently de- lineated, but with natural surroundings. Each man influences, and he receives influence from others. The network of circumstance becomes a matrix for the de- velopment of character. The persons of the drama are not only conceived, but they are made to speak, and in speaking, to reveal themselves. Their own acts, and not the descriptions of the poet, approve or condemn them. As we read or hear the play, the world seems to lay aside its mask and admit us into its secret. Our own hearts and the hearts of others are opened to us. The creative genius of the dramatist has breathed into his characters the breath of life, so that they have
DRAMATIC POETRY THE HIGHEST FORM OF ART 165
become living souls, and can never die. To multitudes, Othello and Lear, Romeo and Hamlet are more real and powerful factors of mental and moral growth, than are Cromwell and Napoleon and Washington.
The Greek tragedies maintain their hold upon us, even after the lapse of many centuries, because they exhibit in noble artistic form the primary affections and fears of humanity. But in the days of Greece life was simple. The complexity of modern interests and feel- ings had not yet arisen. Duty to the family and the State was the largest motive to action. The heart of man had not become introspective, and the depths of passion had not been sounded. The love of man for woman and of woman for man was not yet self-con- scious, and what we call romance was impossible.
The " Christian Era ' introduces us to a larger world. Nature yields in attractiveness to human nature. The State is seen to exist for the individual. Not only man as a race, but each man of the human family, is the object of divine regard and self-sacrifice. The single soul is the scene of conflicts more impressive than any battle of the elements. To dramatize modern life is a greater task than that which the Greeks had laid upon them. To seize upon the great types of character as they live and move in this new world without and within, and to give these types concrete and consistent expression as they interact with one another and shape each other by their interaction, this requires a breadth and vigor of creative imagination such as the Greeks never possessed.
Greek art lives, because it has in it an element of universality. The single idea or feeling which a Greek
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statue or poem embodies is an idea or feeling common to all mankind. But Coriolanus and Shylock and Henry V. present to us these same ideas and feelings contending with many others, and hastening on, through infinite complexity of circumstance, to triumph or de- feat. It is because our great poet, more than any other, has been able to portray all the secular varieties of human character, in the endless relations they sustain in modern life, that we can speak of the universality of Shakespeare.
It is said of Tennyson that a friend found him one day on the edge of a country brook gazing down into its depths and absorbed in contemplating the endless variety of its subaqueous life. As he lifted his head the poet only said : " What an imagination God has ! ' But the brook was only the universe in miniature. He who regards the universe as an ordered whole, and sees in it
One God, who ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.
will be deeply impressed with the wonders of that di- vine and creative imagination which constructed the plot of the great drama of history, and which is con- ducting the play through all its successive scenes to its final denouement and success.
It is the privilege of the poet to enter into God's plan of the. universe and to express God's thought. Not the actual world, but the ideal of which the actual is the shadow, the essence of things disencumbered from the accidents of circumstance, characters clearly unfolded,
MORE OF TRUTH IN POETRY THAN IN PROSE l6/
doom fixed by human acts, the meaning of events- these are the things with which the poet deals, and in all this he is prophet as well as poet, anticipator of results, interpreter of God. In his creations, God makes himself better known. He lifts us up into the region of eternal truths. Does one man's line of development run on for a while alone, but then suddenly become in- extricably tangled in another man's, whose past history has all unconsciously prepared him for the contact ? George Eliot will in a similar way give us in one novel both Gwendolen and Grandcourt, and Shakespeare will carry on two separate stories in King Lear which only at the crisis of the play merge into one.
Anachronisms are not to be ruled out in poetry so long as they subserve ideal truth. It required a vivid imagination to recognize the two rivals for the throne in Richard III., encamped so close together on the stage that the same ghost could speak alternately to both. But space and time are annihilated in poetry, because poetry is an expression of the universal. Shall we call this a defect in Shakespeare ? As well quarrel with Raphael for bringing into juxtaposition the top of the Mount with its transfigured Saviour, and the foot of the Mount with the distressed humanity which he came to save.
Poetry then has in it, not less truth, but more truth than prose. It seizes upon and expresses the deeper facts of life, which the superficial observer neglects. When Milton described poetry as " simple, sensuous, passionate," he meant by "simple' this very conform- ity to the laws of nature and of mind — simplicity in- cludes the idea of genuine rationality. But if poetry is
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an expression of the highest reason, how comes it that poetry and insanity are so connected together in the thoughts of men ? Listen to Dryden (" Absalom and Achitophel," 193) :
Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide ;
and to Seneca ("De Tranquillitate Animi" 15): " There is no great genius without a tincture of madness."
In our judgment this is only to say that an alert and active mind may put such a strain upon its cerebral organism as to throw the machine into utter disorder. It is easy to " o'er-inform the tenement of clay," when that tenement is so delicate an instrument as the poet's brain. A slight jar will sometimes stop a delicate chro- nometer, and the most accomplished performer makes sorry music when he plays on a cracked violin. Ophelia is wrong when she says of Hamlet (3 : i : 157) :
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ;
for it is not the reason that is out of tune, but the brain. The result, however, is the same, and we speak of a rea- son overthrown, as we speak of a conscience seared.
The abnormal imagination may link objects together by the most tenuous threads of association. This should not blind us to the dignity of its normal exercise, when it enters into the secret of things and reconstructs the universe in its essential truth and beauty. In "Midsummer Night's Dream" (5 : I : 4), Shakespeare himself, with inimitable skill, has depicted both the rational and the irrational use of this wonderful faculty :
UNIVERSALITY INVOLVES IMPERSONALITY 169
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact ;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold :
That is the madman ; the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt ;
The poet' s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet' s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Since imagination, in its higher rational use, is a means of grasping truth not open to the senses, it is a most important coadjutor, if not a necessary instrument, of reason in its loftiest investigations. Neither mathe- matics nor morals can make known their highest truths to the man of no imagination. The dull plodder within the circle of material facts will discern no connections between them, and will have no science. Although God is apprehended not by imagination but by reason, yet imagination is a most important help to religion, and we may almost say that some men have not imagination enough to be religious.
The poet can express the universal, only as the uni- versal is in him. We must not think of him simply as an individual. He is also member of the race, with the life of the race pulsating in his veins. When he hears "the still, sad music of humanity," it is because humanity" speaks to him and in him. Aye, the great- est poetry expresses a higher life than that of man.
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David and Isaiah see divinity in nature and in human affairs, because God in them enables them to see God outside of them. This we call inspiration. I do not argue that every poet is inspired, but I do maintain that there are lower as well as higher forms of divine influence, and that the great works of secular liter- ature would never have been possible had not their authors been enlightened by the " Light that lighteth every man."
God's providence has not left these mighty springs of power without control. As he spoke through Balaam and through Caiaphas in spite of their perversity, inter- jecting amid their selfish and profane utterances some truths that lived after the falsehoods died, so Goethe in his "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," and Moore in his " Come, ye Disconsolate," have been made to prophesy against their will. But much more through the greatest poets, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, must we at times recognize a divine voice speaking. At times the poet is rapt, his words and thought go beyond himself, truth discloses itself to him dressed in a word-garb of supernatural beauty. He wonders at himself, for all this is something not wrought by him but wrought for him. He talks of the Muses, or he gives thanks to God.
These considerations explain what we may call the impersonality of the greatest poets. What is the motive of their writing ? Do they write for pecuniary reward ? The pressure of poverty, the need of bread for wife or child, the desire to retrieve family misfortune, these have doubtless set many pens a-running, and pos- sibly Shakespeare's among the rest. Do they write for
SHAKESPEARE PARTLY THE PRODUCT OF HIS TIME I /I
fame ? The love of praise and the handing down to posterity of a work that cannot die, these have been occasions and helps to poetic art, as even Dante con- fesses to us. Do they write to do good and to teach mankind ? Yes, this has been one motive to artistic production, and Milton's "Paradise Lost" seeks to "justify the ways of God to man."
And yet we maintain that no great poetry was ever written with any one of these as its sole, or even its rul- ing, motive. These may serve as occasions, they may give the pen its start ; but, unless the writer is lifted above them, no poem of permanent value is the result. For here is no spontaneity and no joy, but rather ex- ternal or internal constraint. All great poetry is a work of freedom, as well as of necessity. The poet creates, as God creates, simply to express the world of thought and beauty within. The surging life of humanity becomes self-conscious in the poet's breast. He must " speak forth the things which he has seen and heard" without regard to consequence or reward. The great poets forget themselves in their themes. We know much of Achilles, but little of Homer. And if Shakes- peare is the greatest poet of the world, it is not wonder- ful that this rule should apply to him most of all, and that we should know much about Macbeth, but little about Shakespeare.
•
We can now perceive the mingled truth and error in M. Taine's contention that our poet was the child of the Renaissance. Every great artist is in part the product of his time, and Shakespeare gathered up and expressed all that there was of rich and rare in that most stirring age. The revival of learning reached distant England
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almost a century after it had begun in Italy, but delay only increased the volume and power of the wave. The Reformation had added an ethical and purifying element to what was originally a mere outburst of intellectual energy, and the ferocity of mediaeval manners had been somewhat tamed. The defeat of the Armada had freed England from the fear of Spain ; the beheading of the Queen of Scots had freed England from internal foes.
It was an age of adventure and discovery. The world had doubled in size, and transatlantic treasures had been poured into the lap of Europe. The Bermudas gave to Shakespeare his " still-vexed Bermoothes," and the heathen cannibal gave him his Caliban. Imagination was provided with material both modern and classical, at the same time that it was emancipated from the superstitions of the past. Elizabeth, the virgin queen, mistress of the seas and commanding the enthusiastic loyalty of her subjects, was a lover and promoter of literature. Never before since the victory of the Greeks over Persia, was a nation so on the top-wave of freedom and achievement. The very breathing of the air was exhilaration, and hope could never hope too much in the breast of the poet.
What an instrument was then made ready to his hand in our English mother-tongue ! The Norman had enriched it with all the dignity and sonorous charm of the Latin ; the Saxon had furnished its solid foundation of simple, forthright, hearty, pathetic speech. Spenser had subdued its harshness into the melody and harmony of poetry ; Sidney had shown how rhythmical and yet how vigorous might be its prose. The language was no hack, with regular, funereal gait, but a colt just put to
NATURE AS WELL AS NURTURE 173
harness, a compound of grace and of intense vitality, ready for all manner of sudden excursions from the beaten track.
What we now call word-coining, and occasionally tol- erate as poetic license, was the business of the Eliza- bethan poet, and the new words had all the brilliancy and beauty of counters fresh from the mint. The age had a peculiar feeling for artistic form — form and sub- stance indeed had not yet been divorced. English had not yet acquired the stiffness of Puritanism. To use the words of Lord Bacon, it had the very " sparkle of the purity of man's first estate." Dramatic poetry had begun to use it for its vehicle. The coarse and bloody tragedies of an earlier time had given place to plays in which there was at least some effort at rational develop- ment of character, and Shakespeare himself, in alluding to Marlowe, could speak of
The proud, full sail of his great verse.
The poet was born indeed in a mighty time, but the time can never wholly account for the poet. Shakes- peare was born, not made ; nurture did much for him, but nature did more. When M. Taine calls him the child of the Renaissance, he forgets that the Renais- sance had other children not so great. Ben Jonson, as well as Marlowe, had more of learning and more of training in the schools. They were children of the Renaissance, but they were not Shakespeares.
The French critic has little faith in personality. His philosophy is the philosophy of materialism : man is the product of his surroundings. Against such a philosophy Shakespeare, like Homer, will ever be an unanswerable
THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
argument. Here is a new force in history, for which the past cannot account. Humanity reaches a new stage of development in him. The characters which he creates do not belong peculiarly to the Renaissance, they belong to universal humanity. Ben Jonson nobly recognized the essential quality of Shakespeare's genius, when he declared his work to be " not of an age, but for all time."
And this suggests the final and sufficient reason why the plays of our great dramatist can never be referred to Lord Bacon as their author. Bacon was the child of the Renaissance. He represents the critical and inquir- ing spirit. His aim was to bring philosophy down from its ideal heights, and to set it at study of concrete facts. He could doubtless have adopted Luther's characteriza- tion of Aristotle as "a damned mischief -making heathen." There is probably in all literature no greater contrast of method and spirit than that between Shakespeare's intuitive grasp of human character and life on the one hand and Bacon's careful gathering of instances and induction of generals from particulars on the other. The "final causes" which Aristotle taught, and which Bacon hated, were the very life-blood of Shakespeare. To fancy Francis of Verulam writing " Midsummer Night's Dream >: or " The Tempest ' is to imagine a dray-horse soaring like Pegasus.
The education of such a genius must have been a course of liberal training to those who taught him. So active and aspiring a mind, with his manifold questions, must have made trouble for the doctors in the temple. It is by no means certain that he did much of regular study at the Free Grammar School of Stratford, but his
A YOUTH NOT WILD AND DISSOLUTE 175
occasional introduction of Latin lines, and especially his use of words derived from the Latin in a new and etv-
m
mological sense, show that he picked up that language in a very practical way. And though he is said to have had less Greek than Latin, I cannot explain the long succession of questions and answers in single lines of " King Richard III." except by supposing that these monostichs were suggested by the reading of Euripides, or by overhearing the recitation of it in the schoolroom.
When it comes to the writing of " Antony and Cleo- patra," or "Troilus and Cressida," we find that Shakes- peare has drunk in the very spirit and genius of Greek and Roman times ; indeed, in his portraiture of Ulysses, he takes Homer's hints about the man of many wiles, and makes Ulysses reveal himself in speech with a full- ness and consistency of which Homer himself would have been incapable.
Schools or no schools, Shakespeare would have appro- priated, and he did appropriate, all the secular knowledge of his time. Essays have been written to prove that he must have been at different times a lawyer, a physician, and a soldier. He probably was none of them. May we not reasonably believe that he tells the story of his own mental growth when, in " Cymbeline " (i : i : 43), he makes a gentleman say of Posthumus, that the king
Puts him to all the learnings that his time Could make him the receiver of ; which he took As we do air, fast as 'twas ministered ; And in his spring became a harvest.
In a similar way we may interpret what seem at first sight to be intimations of a wild and dissolute youth.
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They are rather signs of an omnivorous appetite for knowledge. With a poet's delight in every novel ex- perience, he threw himself into life. But he did not throw himself away. Keenly sensitive as he was to pleasure, he had yet the justness of judgment which enabled him to hold his spirit above the temptations and companionships which would have dragged him down. With a largeness of heart like the sand upon the seashore, he could master everything, yet be mas- tered by none.
Greene might drink himself to death and Marlowe might perish in a brawl, but Shakespeare never. A delicacy of taste was there which revolted from the vile. A conscience yet unseared discerned between the evil and the good. The " Venus and Adonis " does not prove Shakespeare's early manhood to have been swallowed up in sensuality, any more than the " Laus Veneris " of Swinburne proved him to be a youthful reprobate.
Hazardous and guilty as are these edgings toward vice, we might yet in all candor believe that the vice is, like the bacchanalian songs of our college days, rather an ideal than a real thing, a matter of theory rather than of practice. It is the ill-chosen theme for intellectual subtlety to disport itself upon. Real vice is too much absorbed in its own viciousness to be self-observant and poetical. To those who accuse him too harshly, Shakes- peare may use Warwick's extenuation of Prince Hal's fondness for wild associates ("King Henry IV.," Part II., 4 : 4 : 67) :
My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite :
The prince but studies his companions,
Like a strange tongue ; wherein, to gain the language,
A YOUTH NOT WILD AND DISSOLUTE 177
'Tis needful that the most immodest word
Be looked upon, and learned ; which once attained,
Your highness knows, comes to no further use,
But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,
The prince will, in the perfectness of time,
Cast off his followers ; and their memory
Shall as a pattern or a measure live,
By which his grace must mete the lives of others,
Turning past evils to advantages.
Another theory, I know, is quite possible, namely, that an early manhood of license was rescued from utter dis- aster only by disappointment in illicit love, the treachery of chosen friends, and the death of the poet's father and son. Let us unhesitatingly accept the facts, while we reject the inference drawn from them. As to the inference, it is enough to say that it is impossible to suppose even the genius of Shakespeare to have made its steady progress toward the summit of literary and dramatic achievements through years of recklessness and dissipation. Genius needs material to work upon, and that material must be gathered by labor. Disap- pointment, treachery, and death taught Shakespeare many lessons ; but they never turned sottishness into industry, nor passion into wisdom.
Prof. Dowden, of the University of Dublin, has done more than any or all of the writers before him to give a rational and connected account of the poet's life and work. The year 1600 is marked as the middle point of his productive activity. The ten years preceding 1600 were the years that saw the rise and maturing of his genius. The ten years that followed 1600 were the years of his grandest triumphs. The twenty years be- tween 1590 and 1610, therefore, cover the whole extent
M
1/8 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
of Shakespeare's writing for the stage. But each ten years of these twenty may be further subdivided into halves, and these minor five-year periods may be roughly yet substantially distinguished from each other. Prof. Dowden has well named these four minor periods : (i) " In the workshop " ; (2) " In the world " ; (3) " Out of the depths " ; (4) " On the heights."
Let us follow this order for a moment, and get from it what help we may toward understanding the develop- ment of Shakespeare's genius. We shall see that the poet did not attain his supremacy at once. Universality was not to be reached at a bound. First came the years of apprenticeship, in which imagination almost ran riot. In Romeo and Titania there was sweetness in excess. All was regularity and rhyme. Quips and conceits abounded. The play upon words was incessant. Shakes- peare was in large part working over the dramas of others.
The three parts of " King Henry VI.," and perhaps also " Richard III.," were adaptations and improve- ments of earlier productions, whose original authors, though they were associated with him in the business of making plays, could yet enviously speak of him as an " upstart crow, beautified with their feathers." But these playwrights live now only by virtue of the breath which Shakespeare breathed into them. While the poet used the material they gave him, he so transformed it that the authors could hardly recognize it. Even in those early days of experiment, he put into his work a vivacity, a variety, a truth, and a beauty, which were altogether new in dramatic literature.
The five years " in the workshop " were succeeded by five years "in the world." He began to dispense with
THE FIRST TWO PERIODS OF PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY I 79
the collaboration of others, and to do wholly indepen- dent work. Beginning to write mainly as a matter of trade, he found the trade become profitable, and the more original his productions were, the more money they brought in. The family star, which had been declining, came into the ascendant once more. In 1596 John Shakespeare, his father, who had been prosecuted for debt and had lost his estate, applied for liberty to dis- play a coat-of-arms, and in 1 597 the poet purchased New Place in Stratford for a family mansion. In 1 598 Francis Meres, in his " Wit's Treasury," bore testimony to the poet's established fame, and gave him the highest place among English poets and dramatists, while de- claring him equal to the greatest writers of tragedy or comedy in Greece and Rome.
Success encouraged him to further and bolder effort. He flung away the traditional restrictions of dramatic poetry. End-stopped and periodic lines, with their mo- notonous uniformity of cadence, gave place to run-on lines, with frequent weak endings, and a wonderful variety in the location of the caesural pause. The pro- logue to " King Henry V." illustrates the new freedom and unbounded energy which Shakespeare put into his verse. There the chorus begins :
O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention !
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene !
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels,
Leash* d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirit that hath dar' d
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On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object : can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt ?
This magnificent passage illustrates not only the new splendor and freedom which Shakespeare gave to dra- matic verse ; it illustrates equally well the realistic quality of his second literary period. It is as if he had said to himself : " I have done with conceits and fancies ; let me deal with real life." The five years "in the world" are represented by the "Merchant of Venice ' and by the long series of English historical plays. Eight of these last follow one another in un- broken connection. From the fact that no one play is absolutely complete in itself, we may infer that Shakes- peare intended them to constitute parts of one great heroic poem, in which English history, with its shame and its glory, should live again before the eyes of men.
The historical plays are a mirror of kings, it has been said, and they should be a pattern for princes. But he must be a very kingly king who can live up to the dig- nity and strength of either Shakespeare's " Henry IV." or " Henry V." No warnings against romantic weak- ness in a monarch can be so impressive as a reading of " King Richard II." ; no warnings against pietistic weak- ness so powerful as a representation of "King Henry VI." It is striking that the plays which depict royal imbecility belong to the earliest period of the poet's development, while those which depict royal greatness and strength belong to the second period of his growing maturity and larger knowledge of the world. He has
THE LAST TWO STAGES OF HIS PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY l8l
so thought himself into the spirit and temper of a king, that he has made the actor's task a hard one. Those parts can be fitly acted only by princes, or by men whose imagination enables them to enter into the uni- versality of Shakespeare.
And now, with the year 1600 and the ripe confidence of his manhood, come vicissitudes and sorrows which turn the poet's thoughts inward and lead him to medi- tate deeply upon the great problems of existence. The sonnets belong to this period of Sturm und Drang. Shakespeare's father and Shakespeare's only son have died. The treachery of a trusted friend has wounded him to the quick. The lightness of spirit which met openly and joyfully every youthful disappointment has given place for the time to a sombre view of life. The capacity of the human heart for grief and anger and fear is opened to him as never before. The third five years are well characterized by the words, " Out of the depths."
1600 to 1605 must be regarded as the most produc- tive half-decade in the history of literature. For during this half -decade were produced "Antony and Cleopatra," "Hamlet," "Lear," "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Corio- lanus." Here are the six greatest tragedies of the world. They represent the excessive working of the greatest passions. In "Antony and Cleopatra" we see sensual pleasure dragging down a noble mind and heart ; in "Macbeth" it is ambition; in "Othello' jealousy; in "Coriolanus" pride. "Lear" shows us the human spirit driven to insanity by filial ingratitude ; " Hamlet ' is the impersonation of idealistic wavering in the presence of duty, and of opportunity forever lost.
1 82 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
But how different these embodiments of human pas- sion and weakness are from the shadowy abstractions of Marlowe and Ben Johnson ! Those were lay-figures with a mere outside dress of passion. They went through their appointed motions like automata, but they had no real life. Shakespeare's characters have such intense vitality that we discuss their motives and actions as if they were living men. We see the human heart fairly torn by contending emotions. And yet, dark as the colors often are, reflection only convinces us that in these creations nature herself is speaking.
There were also comedies belonging to this third period of Shakespeare's productive activity, but they were not light and mirthful like those of the period preceding. We find no " Merry Wives of Windsor," no "Much Ado About Nothing," no "As You Like It," between 1600 and 1605. "Measure for Measure," "All's Well That Ends Well," and "Troilus and Cressida," are products of this stage of the poet's genius. The comedy is ironical and bitter. It deals with misjudgment and treachery.
It is pleasant to pass from the third period to the last. The five years from 1605 to 1610 were years of restored calm, of forgiveness, of reconciliation. It is the serene Indian summer of the poet's days. "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest," with their stories of wrongs righted, of repentance for transgression, of sunny and large-minded charity, were the fruit of these later years of Shakespeare. His leaf had not begun to wither ; it was not even sere and yellow. He was only in his ripe manhood, for he was but fifty-two when he died.
DID SHAKESPEARE APPRECIATE HIS OWN GENIUS? 183
He had attained a competence and had retired to enjoy it. He was the foremost citizen of Stratford. If there had been estrangement from his family, this came now to an end. His pre-eminence as a dramatist and a poet was universally acknowledged. The shallow criti- cism of a succeeding age had not yet begun to dim his fame. He seems now to have written little, and what he did write was written rather to satisfy an inner impulse than to meet any outward demand. Prospero, in " The Tempest," might almost seem to be the poet's picture of himself in this golden harvest-time of his life, and many have seen, in the last words of Prospero, Shakes- peare's own farewell to dramatic composition ("Tem- pest," 5 : i : 50) :
This rough magic
I here abjure ; and, when I have requir'd Some heavenly music (which even now I do), To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I' 11 break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, F 11 drown my book.
Did the poet fully appreciate his own genius ? He seems to have taken little pains to correct his plays or to prepare them for the press. In devising to his daughters, Judith and Susanna, the various portions of his estate, there is no mention of his interest in the plays, nor any provision for their editing or publication. We owe the preservation of some of these dramas to Shakespeare's fellow-actors; but for their care the plays might have perished.
It is not correct to say that carelessness on the part
1 84 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
of the author was characteristic of that age, for Ben Jonson spent no end of time in revising and printing his writings. It is possible, of course, that Shakes- peare's will expressed only a portion of his mind ; when he made it he may not have expected soon to die; still it remains a mystery why he should have disposed of other portions of his estate, yet should have given no thought to this. It is possible that he hoped for still many years to do the work of revision in ; in fact, the copies in possession of the Globe Theater, which was destroyed by fire soon after Shakespeare's death, may have borne marks of a revision already begun.
But all this is mere hypothesis. I have already inti- mated what seems to me the preferable explanation. It connects itself with my special theme. The greatest poets are impersonal. Like John the Baptist they come to regard themselves as voices of a higher Intelligence, and they leave their work to God. Shakespeare ap- pears to have been peculiarly self-forgetful. The most characteristic epithet that has come down to us from his own age is that one which Ben Jonson applied to him when he called him " gentle Shakespeare." The naturally shy and sensitive spirit has an ideal so high that, after its noblest achievements, it only desires to get away from them. Praise tires, because the poet is too conscious of his defects to listen to it. If there is any worth in his song, posterity will discover it and celebrate it without special care of his.
It confirms this view when we find that it was not the plays that Shakespeare prided himself upon, but the measured poems, like "Lucrece" and the "Sonnets." Never did he wholly free himself from the feeling that
CONCESSIONS TO THE TASTES OF THE VULGAR 1 8$
dramatic poetry was not poetry at all, but a mere make- shift to amuse the crowd. The writing of plays was closely connected with the acting of them; he had entered upon it in the way of business, but a stigma was attached to the profession ; it was relief and luxury when he could break completely the ties that bound him to the stage. He mourns in the "Sonnets" (m) that the actor's calling has infected him :
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer' s hand.
There are no predictions of immortality for the plays. It is only in the " Sonnets" (107) that we read:
Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, F 11 live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o' er dull and speechless tribes ; And thou in this shalt find thy monument When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
I must believe that many palpable defects in the plays were concesssions to the taste of the vulgar. The drama before Shakespeare's time had appealed to the savage instincts of human nature. Bloody scenes were enacted. Obscenity and ferocity went hand in hand. The shudder, which some of our modern novel- ists and playwrights are striving to introduce again into literature, was a test of dramatic art in the ante-Eliza- bethan times.
1 86 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
I cannot think that the same hand which penned "Venus and Adonis," with its marvelous finish and sweet- ness, could have willingly written the brutalities of " Titus Andronicus." Yet "Titus Andronicus' is probably Shakespeare's first dramatic production — at any rate he had a hand in the writing of it. It is proof of his con- stant advance toward ideal standards, that the harrow- ing and the frightful have a continually smaller place as he gains in experience and wisdom.
Though even in " King Lear," a work of his third and noblest period, Cornwall is made in full sight of the audience to pluck out the eyes of the earl of Gloster, this is the single and exceptional instance of such cruelty in Shakespeare's plays. He sees, in general, how foreign to real art is the appeal to the sensual or the brutal. Through his whole artistic life he is making progress toward that universality of poetic judgment which addresses the deepest, noblest, most permanent emotions of humanity. Shakespeare began by showing to a barbaric time its own likeness ; he ended by rising above his time, and by exhibiting to it the ideal truth and beauty which lie at the heart of the universe.
I have taken the word universality as a key to unlock the mystery of Shakespeare. By universality I do not mean the poet's currency or popularity in all places and times — that may depend, not upon the poet, but upon the education and insight of those who read him. By universality I mean something belonging to the poet himself, namely, his grasp of elements which are not individual or local, but which are common to human nature everywhere. There are three great ranges of production in which Shakespeare's imagination stands
MEANING OF THE WORD UNIVERSALITY l8/
supreme. As a creator, first of character, secondly of imagery, and thirdly of diction, he is the greatest of the sons of men. In these three things he holds undis- puted mastery, simply because in each case his imagi- nation works with incomparable ease and spontaneity under the law of reason and of truth.
In order to comprehend the universal element in Shakespeare's creation of character, it will be useful to take one of the earlier and one of the later plays, and to observe some of those facts of structure which the common reader only vaguely apprehends, but which after all are their chief sources of power. I take " King Richard III." and " Macbeth," partly because they represent the historical and the ideal drama respectively, but also for the reason that I can here follow and call attention to the suggestions of Moulton, in his admira- ble work on "Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist."
" Richard III. ' has probably been the most popular play of the dramatic stage. It never fails to entrance the galleries. Some have fancied this the result of its very violence. So great a critic as James Russell Low- ell has thrown doubts upon its Shakespearean author- ship, for the reason that it lacks in subtlety of poetic expression, in humor, and in eloquence. We must grant that these qualities of style are not seen at their best in "Richard III." Let us remember, however, that plot is as much a criterion of greatness as is style. The plot of "King Richard" has merits so great that we can attribute the play to none but Shakespeare, while at the same time we see in it only the glow of a morning whose meridian splendor is to be found in such a tragedy as "Macbeth." A comparison of these two
1 88 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
plays will illustrate what we mean by the poet's univer- sality, at the same time that it shows his progress toward this universality.
"King Richard III." is Shakespeare's complete and ideal villain. Richard has no such excuse as lago has, -the excuse that others have been unfaithful to him. He devotes himself deliberately to villainy as the one method in which, despite his physical deformity, he can show his power. He is a villain, a conscious and con- fessed villain, at the start. The play shows no develop- ment of character ; it is only a progressive revelation of character already formed.
There is no complexity of story. No other person of the drama attracts special interest or diverts attention from its one hero. And Richard is a hero only in wickedness. His intensity of evil will, and his almost supernatural skill in the accomplishment of his purposes, fascinate us almost as we are fascinated by Milton's "Satan"; indeed, some have fancied that Milton took from this character of Shakespeare's some of the fea- tures of his "archangel ruined." But Richard has ele- ments which belong to Goethe's "Mephistopheles," as well as to Milton's "Satan." He is the sneering, ironi- cal, and humorous, as well as the hypocritical, proud, and malignant, devil.
He glories in his mastery over men, but especially in his deception of women. With unblushing effrontery he can court and win Lady Anne, the widow of Edward Prince of Wales, whom he himself had stabbed on the field of Tewksbury, and he can court and win her beside the coffin of King Henry VI. , her husband's father whom he had murdered in the Tower. His conquest
CHARACTER MANIFESTED I 89
seems a piece of hideous necromancy, but Richard gloats over it. No qualms disturb him. Conscience is laid to sleep. Evil has become his good. He makes merry over crime. He is an artist in iniquity. He says ("Henry VI.," Part III., 3:2: 165) :
This earth affords no joy to me, But to command, to check, to o' erbear such As are of better person than myself.
Almost to the very end, his course seems an unbroken success. Before his devilish deceit and murderous cruelty every obstacle gives way. "Without remorse or dread," he " wades through blood and slaughter to a throne." Clarence and Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, Hastings and Buckingham, are brought to their deaths, Queen Anne is poisoned, and the young princes are smothered in the Tower. All this would too greatly shock the moral sense, if there were not some premoni- tions of avenging Justice. The poet could not connect these premonitions too closely with Richard, lest the dramatic pictures of his resistless will and unchecked wickedness should lose a part of their hold upon the imagination. For a long time Nemesis is seen only in the case of the minor characters. Clarence and Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, Hastings and Buckingham, who have played into his hands and have abetted his crimes, each and all successively recognize in their doom the just reward of their past faithlessness or ambition. Their deaths are mutterings of distant thunder which portend a storm.
At last the storm breaks. Richard's very success in iniquity prepares for him a more sudden and overwhelm-
THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
ing ruin. Conscience, kept muzzled in his waking hours, now gnaws his heart in sleep. The ghosts of those whom he has murdered, after having risen to torment him with predictions of defeat, sit heavy on his soul in the hour of battle. After incredible efforts of desper- ate valor, he utterly succumbs. In his agony of fear he would give his kingdom for a horse. But flight can- not save him. His crimes and the crimes of the house of York meet their recompense. From the dead tem- ples of the bloody wretch the crown is plucked to grace the brows of Richmond, the representative of Lancas- ter, and settled peace comes once more under his reign as the seventh Henry. Nemesis has come at last. The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding small, and "King Richard III." will ever be one of the most impressive of the world's sermons upon the puni- tive justice of God.
Here is unity of dramatic action, depth of thought, rapidity of movement, and a fiery energy of expression, such as belong to Shakespeare alone. And yet " King Richard III." shows us the poet not yet master of his art, and a study of the tragedy of " Macbeth " will teach us how vast was the interval between the poet's earlier and his later works. Compared with the breadth of "Macbeth," " Richard' is narrow; while the early play is simple, the latter is complex. While in the one the only character is Richard, in the other Duncan, Mac- duff, and Lady Macbeth are strongly differentiated, and each plays a part in its way as influential as that of Macbeth himself.
Richard is a full-grown monster at the beginning. We know from the first, for he himself tells us, what he
CHARACTER DEVELOPED 19 1
is to be. But in " Macbeth" we see all the dreadful growth of evil from its earliest suggestion to its final and absolute domination of the nature. The inner workings of passion, the stifling of pity, the hell-fire of remorse, are depicted as nowhere else in literature.
In the earlier drama the poet plays, as it were, upon one instrument. The compass and variety are small. In the later drama he has learned to direct an orchestra, to develop a theme, to interlace one musical motive with another, to organize many forms of emotional expres- sion into one grand and overwhelming harmony. We recognize in both plays the same Shakespeare, but in " Richard III." the poet seems to look down upon human nature from the village spire, while in " Macbeth" he stands upon the mountain top and the whole world of humanity is spread out before him.
Let us compare the Nemesis in " Macbeth ' ' with the Nemesis in " Richard." The witches are supernatural agents of evil who can suggest, but who cannot origi- nate, man's evil decision. Macbeth (i : 3 : 122) has his warning from Banquo :
'Tis strange :
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence.
But the warning neglected, the temptation cherished, principle undermined, there is a surrender of free-will to Satan, and thenceforth an ever-accelerating course of self-depravation and self-destruction. And sin becomes its own detecter, judge, and tormentor.
Up to the moment of his coronation, Macbeth is un-
192 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
suspected ; his crime seems to have run a successful course. But crime begets crime. To free himself from the penalty of the first, he commits a second. As Schiller has well said :
This is the penalty of evil deed, That of new evil it becomes the seed.
And the second crime of murdering Banquo opens to all eyes the first crime of murdering Duncan. The rise of Macbeth's fortunes through the first half of the play is succeeded by decline through successive stages till he reaches his miserable end. Vaulting ambition has o'erleaped itself. Efforts to escape destiny are made the very means of fulfilling it. The wicked man is holden in the cords of his own sins. With awful irony the malignant powers that at the first lured him to evil mock at his calamity, until in his despair he cries (5 : 8:19):
And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope !
How much more profound and tragic than anything in King Richard's calm and open espousal of evil is this deception and irony of sin in Macbeth ! But even here we have a variety of portraiture. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth present a contrast to which we find no likeness in the earlier play. Here ambition, murder, remorse, are seen working themselves out in two different na- tures, the one the impulsive and practical man of action, the other the woman of thought and will who has com- mitted herself to her husband's purpose, and who un-
ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS 193
sexes herself in order to nerve him to the deed. He has superstitious faith in the witches, and fear of Ban- quo' s ghost. She has argued herself out of such faith and fear, and sees in supernatural appearances only reflections of ambitious hopes and remorseful feelings.
The man of action cannot bear suspense, and rushes headlong into new crime and into consequent self-dis- closure. She can wait and conceal and plan, while he is powerless. But the nervous tension is too great. Nemesis overtakes her in the shape of madness, and her madness is a long confession. " Here's the smell of the blood still," gasps out the night-walking queen ; "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand ! ' And the madness ends in suicide.
But the Nemesis of Macbeth comes in the shape of infatuation. He blindly trusts the oracle, even while his foes are gathering for his destruction. He cries (5:3:32):
F 11 fight till from my bones my flesh be hack' d. . . Send out more horses, skirr the country round ; Hang those that talk of fear. Give me my armor !
And when the falsity of his supernatural tempters is revealed to him, he flings himself desperately into the battle. He meets his death, but his death is virtual suicide, and his suicide is virtual confession.
I do not see how any one can read the tragedies with- out perceiving that Shakespeare is one of the greatest of ethical teachers. And what is true of these tragedies is true of his work in general, it wakens a response in the deepest heart of man. But not because the poet had any set purpose to be a moral teacher. All this is
N
194 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
incidental. He aims only to depict life, to show man to himself, to exhibit human nature with its love, its hate, its hope, its fear. But all the more powerful is Shakes- peare's testimony to the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man.
The same remarks apply to Shakespeare's treatment of religion and doctrine. He has not set himself to propound dogmas. Whether he was Romanist or Prot- estant no one can surely tell ; the most that we can say is that he disliked Puritanism, and made it once or twice the subject of a casual jest. Homer and Virgil, Dante and Milton, had each his heaven and his hell, and each described without hesitation the unseen world. But Shakespeare has no heaven and no hell ; he deals only with this present life ; even his ghosts and witches tell us nothing of the life beyond — they are forbidden to tell the secrets of the prison house, and only intimate that they " could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up the soul" ("Hamlet," 1:5:13). Our great dramatist is the poet of the secular and not of the relig- ious, of the temporal and not of the eternal.
Here is the limitation of his universality. As Scherer has said : " It is on the boundaries of the invisible world that Shakespeare's vision fails." But he has, notwith- standing, the most sane and level apprehension of the relations of this life, and his testimony to Christian truth, like his testimony to the ethical facts of remorse and retribution, is all the more valuable because unintention- ally given. Let us inquire what this testimony is, and what doctrines of our faith derive confirmation from it. In treating this portion of my theme I avail myself to some extent of the references given so copiously in
NEITHER NATURALISTIC NOR AGNOSTIC 195
Bishop Wordsworth's excellent book on " Shakespeare and the Bible."
Though Shakespeare does not profess to teach theol- ogy, it is not because he has no theology, nor because he regards theology as an impossibility to man. He is not an agnostic. He distinctly maintains the reality and the value, while he confesses the limitations, of our knowledge of God and his relations to the universe. In the second part of " King Henry VI." (4:7: 67), he tells us that
Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge, the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
In "Antony and Cleopatra" (i : 2 : 8) he says:
In nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.
He does not hold the naturalistic, any more than he holds the agnostic, view of the universe. In "All's Well That Ends Well" (2:3: i) he makes Lafeu, the wise man of the play, express himself as follows : " They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical per- sons, to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is, that we make trifles of ter- rors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear."
We should expect that this poet of secular life would find in human nature the main source of his knowledge of God. And so it is, for he calls man "the image of his Maker " (" King Henry VIIL," 3:2: 440). God is a God of justice. In "Measure for Measure" (2:2: 76) God is called "the top of judgment." Yet
196 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
God is also merciful. In "Titus Andronicus " (i : I : 117) we read :
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods ? Draw near them then in being merciful.
Shakespeare's noblest and completest delineation of female character is that of Portia in the " Merchant of Venice." When Portia sits as doctor of laws and legal adviser of the Duke, we hear from her lips the mingled praise of justice and mercy, and we have an unequaled passage in which the conceptions of the two attributes are so combined that the one qualifies and heightens the other (4 : i : 175):
The quality of mercy is not [con] strained ; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless' d, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes : 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown ; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings : It is an attribute to God himself ; And earthly power doth then show likest God' s, When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, — That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.
Such is the poet's view of the divine nature. What now is his view of human nature ? Is man the victim
MAN'S FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
of heredity and environment ? The only reply is, that man has moral freedom ; that he may do the right and avoid the wrong. The citizen in " Coriolanus "(2:3:3), when told that he may do an unjust thing, replies : "We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do." And in "Twelfth Night' (3 : 4 : 351)' Antonio protests :
In nature there's no blemish but the mind ; None can be call' d deform' d but the unkind. Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks o' erflourish' d by the devil.
As men have freedom, they cannot lay the blame of their transgression either upon nature or upon God. Edmund, the double-dyed villain in "King Lear" (1:2: 1 08), acknowledges that this is only the insincere apol- ogy of the guilty :
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeit of our own behavior — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars ; as if we were villains of necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance ; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary in- fluence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.
In "All's Well That Ends Well" (i : i : 155) Helena declares :
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven ; the fated sky Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull ;
and in "Julius Caesar" (i : 2 : 135), Cassius says nobly:
198 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
Men at some time are masters of their fates ; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Dr. Flint in his essay on " Theism" has well said that "Where the will is without energy, and rest is longed for as the end of existence, as among the Hindus, there is a marked inability to think of God as cause or will, and a constant tendency to pantheism." We only utter the complementary truth when we say that where the will is a bounding activity of individual and national life, there is always a strong conviction of the personality of God and the freedom of man. This is peculiarly true of the Elizabethan age, and it is markedly seen in Shakespeare, its noblest writer. Man is capable of good, but he is also capable of freely willing evil.
Robert G. Ingersoll, in his lecture on Shakespeare, represents the poet as holding that crime is only the result of ignorance. Shakespeare holds precisely the opposite. With him, " the wish is father to the thought " ("King Henry IV.," Part II., 4:5: 93), not the thought father to the wish. Says Suffolk ("King Henry VI.," Part L, 2 : 4 : 7) :
Faith, I have been a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it, And therefore frame the law unto my will.
And Troilus ("Troilus and Cressida," 4:4: 94) witnesses that
Sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency.
CRIME IS NOT THE RESULT OF IGNORANCE 1 99
The angels fell by ambition ("King Henry VIII.," 3:2: 439), and man too " falls like Lucifer" (Idem, 3:2:
369)-
Sin begins in the abuse of free-will, but by that abuse man makes himself a slave. One sin leads to another. Says Pericles (i : i : 137):
One sin, I know, another doth provoke ; Murder' s as near to lust, as flame to smoke.
and Richard III. confesses (4:2: 63) :
I am in So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin.
This sin may come to be a fixed state of obstinate self- assertion, an apotheosis of self, that defies both God and man. Coriolanus (5 : 4 : 23) "wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in;" "there is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger."
In " Richard III." and in " Macbeth " we have Shakes- peare's representations of hubris, the one unpardonable sin of the Greek tragedy. lago too is a willful hater of all good, and Goneril and Regan show that human nature may consciously and deliberately surrender itself to evil. " Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?'1 inquires Lear (3:7: 75). The sug- gested answer is, that what nature never did, and never could do, man's evil will has done; he has so perverted his nature that it has become utterly unnatural.
And yet while there is danger of reaching a point where the sinner will be too infirm of purpose to strive any longer for the good, there is still in all men a re-
2OO THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
mainder of freedom, and a possibility of change for the better. What the king in "Hamlet" (4 : 7 : 117) says with regard to the evil deed is equally true with regard
to the good deed :
That we would do,
We should do when we would ; for this ' ' would ' ' changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents ; And then this ' ' should ' " is like a spendthrift sigh, That hurts by easing.
— o — r
The player-king in the same drama (3 : 2 : 171) declares
that
Purpose is but the slave to memory ; Of violent birth, but poor validity.
And Hamlet himself advises his mother (3:4: 163):
Refrain to-night ;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence ; the next more easy ; For use can almost change the stamp of nature, And either master the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency.
Here there is recognized a "stamp of nature," an evil taint of blood. No poet of the world has more fully and constantly acknowledged man's congenital de- pravity. Timon of Athens (4:3:18) proclaims that
There' s nothing level in our cursed natures, But direct villainy.
In "All's Well That Ends Well" (4 : 3 : 18) we read: " Now, God delay our rebellion ! as we are ourselves, what things are we ! Merely our own traitors ! ' In "Measure for Measure" (1:2: 120):
PERSONAL SINS AND HEREDITARY SINFULNESS 2OI
Our natures do pursue,
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil ; and when we drink we die.
In "Hamlet" (3:1:117): "Virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it." In "Love's Labor's Lost" (i : i : 149):
For every man with his affects is born,
Not by might mastered, but by special grace.
Shakespeare testifies that all men are sinners : Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all,
says Henry VI. (Part II., 3 : 3 : 31);
Who lives that' s not depraved or depraves ?
says Tim on (1:2: 124). In "Othello"1 we read (3 :
Where's that palace whereinto foul things Sometimes intrude not ? Who has a breast so pure, But some uncleanly apprehensions Keep leets and law-days, and in sessions sit WTith meditations lawful ?
Hamlet confesses (3:1: 122):
I am myself indifferent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me : I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven ? We are arrant knaves, all ; believe none of us.
2O2 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
And yet our poet will not clear man from responsi- bility for his inborn depravity. Hamlet compares God's influence to the sun which "breeds maggots in a dead dog, kissing carrion" (2 : 2 : 181); that is, God is no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart and the evil that comes from it, than the sun is respon- sible for the maggots which its heat breeds in a dead dog. We are not only corrupt by nature but we are guilty. In "The Winter's Tale'1' (1:2: 69), Polixenes describes his companionship with Leontes, when they were boys together :
We knew not the doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream' d That any did. Had we pursued that life, And our weak spirits ne' er been higher rear' d With stronger blood, we should have answered Heaven boldly, Not guilty ; the imposition cleared Hereditary ours ;
that is, provided our hereditary connection with Adam had not made us guilty.
Man's guilt, both hereditary and personal, is real, and it has punishment for its correlate. There is a craving to make reparation for sin. In "Measure for Measure" (5:1: 470), when Escalus expresses sorrow that Angelo should have sinned, Angelo replies :
I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy ; 'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it
Posthumus in "Cymbeline"' (5:4: 22), thinking he had caused the death of his wife, makes request of the gods :
CONSCIENCE PREDICTS RETRIBUTION 2O3
For Imogen's dear life take mine ; and though
'Tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life ; you coined it
' Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp ;
Though light, take pieces for the figure* s sake ;
You rather mine, being yours ; and so, great Powers,
If you will take this audit, take this life,
And cancel these cold bonds !
Desired more than constrained ; to satisfy, If of my freedom ' tis the main part, take No stricter render of me than my all ;
that is, settle the account with me by taking my life.
While the conscience of the penitent desires punish- ment, the conscience of the impenitent man expects punishment.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
says Hamlet (3 : 1:83); and the queen in the same play (4:5:17) breaks out in fear :
To my sick soul, as sin' s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss ; So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt
King Henry VI. (Part II., 3:2: 232) exclaims:
What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted ! Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just ; And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
Sin may blunt the edge of conscience for a time :
When we in our viciousness grow hard,
(O misery on't !) the wise gods seal our eyes ;
2O4 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To our confusion.
("Antony and Cleopatra," 3 : 13 : in.)
But conscience will sooner or later awake again in the case of the guilty. Gonzalo, in "The Tempest '(3:3: 104), testifies :
Their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now ' gins to bite the spirits.
Even " Richard III." confesses at the last (5:3: 180):
O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict me !
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.
And conscience is but the prophecy of another con- demnation more terrible still. "Can we outrun the heavens?" says "Henry VI." (Part II., 5:2: 73). And "Henry V." (4:1: 157) says nobly: "If transgressors have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God." Hamlet witnesses (3 13 : 57):
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice ;
But ' tis not so above. There is no shuffling ;
There the action lies in his true nature, and we ourselves
Compell' d, even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.
Hear King John (4 : 2 : 216) :
RETRIBUTION IN THIS WORLD ALSO
Oh, when the last account ' twixt heaven and earth Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal [the warrant for the murder of Prince Arthur] Witness against us to damnation.
And in the same play the Bastard speaks (4:3:117):
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damn'd, Hubert !
In all literature there is no scene more moving than that one in which Beaufort, the bloody cardinal in King Henry VI. (Part II., 3:3:2), offers the treasures of a realm to purchase a little longer life, cries out in agony at the thought of his victims, and when asked to indi- cate some remaining hope in God's mercy, sinks back in death, but makes no sign.
There is retribution in the world to come, but there is also retribution here. This world is under the rule of Providence (" Hamlet," 5:2:10):
There' s a divinity that shapes our ends Rough-hew them how we will.
Says Edgar, in "King Lear" (5:3; 171):
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us.
and Hamlet (i : 2 : 257):
Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o' erwhelm them, To men* s eyes.
2O6 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth testifies (i : 7 : 10) that
Even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips ;
and Buckingham, in "Richard III. " (5 : 2 : 23) :
Thus doth he force the swords of wicked men To turn their own points in their master' s bosoms.
From this retributive Providence here, as well as from God's judgments hereafter, there is no escape except through repentance and faith in the atonement which God himself has provided.
But let us particularly notice that repentance is not mere outward penance, nor any merely transient sorrow. Shakespeare understands that no true penitence exists where the sinner still clings to his sin, or fails to repair the wrong. The king in "Hamlet" cries (3:3; 51):
What form of prayer
Can serve my turn ? Forgive me my foul murder ? That cannot be ; since I am still possess' d Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardon' d and retain the offence?"
What then ? what rests ? Try what repentance can : what can it not ? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent ? O wretched state ! O bosom, black as death ! O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engag' d !
In " Measure for Measure ' (2:3: 30) the duke ad- dresses Juliet:
REPENTANCE IS NOT ATONEMENT 2OJ
'Tis meet so, daughter ; but lest you do repent As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven, Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear.
And Juliet responds :
I do repent me, as it is an evil, And take the shame with joy.
Ariel, in "The Tempest' (3 : 3 : 72) interprets both nature and the human heart when he says :
For which foul deed,
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incensed the seas and shores ; yea, all the creatures Against your peace ; . . whose wrath to guard you from, . . is nothing but heart' s sorrow, And a clear life ensuing.
Henry V. (4 : I : 287) expresses the deepest feeling of the truly penitent man, when he adds to his repa- ration and his sorrow the confession that both these are
insufficient :
More will I do,
Though all that I can do is nothing worth ; Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon —
pardon both for the crime itself, and for the imperfection of his repenting of it. Repentance does not of itself pay man's debt to the divine justice, or clear the guilty from the punishment of their sin. Prayer may to some extent avail. In "All's Well That Ends Well" (3:4: 25) the aged countess speaks:
2O8 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband ? He cannot thrive, Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice !
But the only real quittance is afforded by the work of Christ in our behalf. Here the testimony of Shakes- peare to the need of human nature and the sufficiency of the divine provision is ample and complete. In "All's Well That Ends Well," Helena declares (2 : i :
It is not so with Him that all things knows As ' tis with us that square our guess by shows ; But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men.
We read in "King Henry VI." (Part II., 3 : 2 : 154)
That dread King took our state upon him To free us from his Father' s wrathful curse.
In "Measure for Measure" (2 12 : 73) :
Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once ; And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy.
He speaks in "Richard II." (2:1: 56), of
The world' s ransom, blessed Mary' s Son ;
and in "King Henry IV." (Part I., I : I : 24) of
Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
SHAKESPEARE'S WITNESS TO CHRISTIANITY 209
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross.
In "King Henry VI." (Part II., i : i : no) Salisbury swears
Now by the death of Him that died for all ;
and in "King Richard III." Clarence in the Tower ad- jures his murderers (i : 4 : 183):
I charge you, as you hope to have redemption By Christ' s dear blood, shed for our grievous sins, That you depart, and lay no hands on me.
It may possibly be thought that in the plays of Shakespeare we have no real clew to the religious beliefs of the poet, since he puts into the mouth of each char- acter only what fitted his station and his time. This might be true, if there were intermingled with the tes- timonies to the great facts of ethics and religion other testimonies to atheism and immorality. But these latter are conspicuously lacking. It is otherwise with Mar- lowe ; he was known as an atheist, and his characters witness both for and against morality and the Christian faith.
Suppose for a moment that a census were taken of George Eliot's characters ; that their expressions of be- lief or unbelief were classified, as I have attempted to classify Shakespeare's ; can any one doubt that the re- sult would be a far different one, and that George Eliot's own skepticism and pessimism would be discovered faintly written, as in a palimpsest, underneath their lines? I challenge any man to find unbelief in the dramatis personce of Shakespeare's plays, except in cases
2IO THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
where it is the manifest effect or excuse of sin, reproved by the context, or changed to fearful acknowledgment of the truth by the results of transgression. In his ethical judgments he never makes a slip; he is as sure- footed as a Swiss mountaineer; he depicts vice, but he does not make it alluring or successful.
After earnest searching I can unhesitatingly avow the belief that the great dramatist was both pure in his moral teaching and singularly sound in faith. There is a freedom of utterance with regard to the relations of the sexes, such as is natural in a bold and vigorous age, but there is no lingering over sensual details. Plausi- ble sinners like Falstaff come to an evil end. How pathetic is the Hostess' account of his death in "King Henry V." (2 : 3 : 16):
His nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. "How now, Sir John," quoth I : "what man ! be of good cheer. " So ' a cried out, ' ' God, God, God ! ' ' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God ; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So ' a bade me lay more clothes on his feet : I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone ; then I felt to his knees and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.
The recent suggestion that Sir John's "babbling of green fields" is an allusion to the Twenty-third Psalm, and that Shakespeare here means to intimate that at his death he returned to the faith of his childhood and felt that the Lord was " making him to lie down in green pastures," had not yet occurred to the Hostess, for she was only bent on soothing a troubled conscience by turning away its thoughts from God.
CREATOR OF IMAGERY AS WELL AS OF CHARACTER 2 I I
There is no trace of Mariolatry, nor of dependence for salvation upon ritual and ceremony. Yet Shakes- peare is as devoid of Puritanism as he is of Romish superstition. In an age of much clerical corruption he never rails at the clergy. While he has some most un- godly prelates, his priests are all a credit to their calling. None of his characters are disseminators of skepticism. I cannot explain all this except by supposing that Shakespeare was himself a believer. Though he was not a theological dogmatist, nor an ecclesiastical parti- san, he was unwaveringly assured of the fundamental verities of the Christian scheme. Shakespeare had dug down through superficial formulas to the bed-rock of Christian doctrine. He held the truths which belong in common to all ages of the church. If any deny the personality of God or the deity of Christ, they have a controversy with Shakespeare. If any think it irrational to believe in man's depravity, guilt, and need of super- natural redemption, they must also be prepared to say that Shakespeare did not understand human nature.
Here is a healthy secular mind, calmly and sagaciously judging things high and things low, and so picturing life in its essential features that we appeal to his characters as if they were living men. He had his trials with the sex, but there is no more bitterness against women than prejudice against priests. The king and the beggar he conceives with equal truth to nature. The archness and persuasiveness of a French woman were never depicted so well as in Katherine's reception of King Henry's suit. The pedantic theorizing and dogged courage of a Welsh soldier were never better exhibited than in Flu- ellen. Yet Shakespeare never traveled. He was not a
212 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
man of the court. He was primarily a man of business. But the man of business was a genius — the finest genius in the way of poetic imagination that ever appeared upon this planet.
Goethe carried erudition into art. Shakespeare was never a man of technical learning — the scholastic ele- ment is absent from his plays. He makes up for all de- ficiencies by his creative faculty. What others acquire by rote, he gets by insight. And so " he could take in everything," as Taine has said ; " sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, trivial buffoonery and the divine in- nocence of love." " It was a piece of good fortune that he knew little Latin and less Greek," says Lilly; "for this closed to him the r61e of imitation. The rules of classicalism he knows not of, nor is his mental horizon bounded by the writers of antiquity. Of intellectual freedom he is our supreme example, and for two centu- ries well-nigh the last example, among English poets."
I have said so much of the universal element in Shakespeare's creation of character, that I have but scant time to deal with the poet's creation of imagery or of diction. As to imagery, I run no risk in saying that our poet saw nothing in an isolated way. To him there was a universe : all things were interdependent ; truth in one realm had its analogues in every other. It was not the mere association of ideas which we call fancy ; it was the discernment of rational connections which we call imagination.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was the most imaginative, and at the same time the most profound, of thinkers : bread, water, light, darkness, the sea, the sky, the birds, the beasts, the fish of the sea, all taught spiritual lessons.
IMAGERY AND DICTION 213
Shakespeare possessed this divine gift of imagination in his lower degree and within his more limited range. The flow of metaphor is so constant and so natural that we cannot call it brilliancy — it is insight into the heart of things. Like Tennyson's wizard,
To him the wall
That sunders ghosts and shadow-casting men Became as crystal, and he saw them through it, And heard their voices talk behind the wall, And learnt their elemental secrets, powers, And forces.
Other poets strain after effects ; with Shakespeare all is spontaneous. With others there are lapses, and the poetry becomes prose ; with Shakespeare the vision and the faculty divine seem native to him and perpetual. Milton's epitaph on Shakespeare is only truthful when it says :
To the shame of slow-endeavoring art Thy easy numbers flow.
We are amazed, tantalized, carried away, with the rush, the beauty, the inexhaustible vitality of his imagination. And yet nothing is overdone — in the very torrent, tem- pest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of his passion, there is a temperance that gives it hold upon our judgment. When Hotspur asks ("King Henry IV.," Part L, 4 : i 194): ' ., . . •
Where is his son,
The nimble-footed, mad-cap Prince of Wales, And his comrades, that dafifed the world aside And bid it pass ?
214 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
Sir Richard Vernon answers :
All furnish' d, all in arms, All plumed like estridges, that with the wind Bated — like eagles newly bath'd ; Glittering in golden coats like images ; As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer ; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. I saw young Harry — with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed — Rise from the ground like feather' d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat, As if an angel dropped down from the clouds To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
Here are nine different similes, succeeding each other with such matchless freshness and beauty that they fairly dazzle us, yet each adding a quick new stroke of stirring description, and all together rising to a climax that cap- tivates both sense and reason.
In character and in imagery we have seen the uni- versality of Shakespeare — his appeal to the universal elements of human nature. It remains to speak of the poet's diction — the word-garb in which his creations are portrayed. Here we find him the greatest aug- menter of our language. Milton, with all his adapta- tions from the Greek and the Latin, uses but eight thou- sand words, Shakespeare cannot content himself with less than fifteen thousand. Hundreds of these are of his own coinage, or are preserved to our literature only by his use of them. Feliciter audax is the phrase that best designates him. He had the subtle sense of the connection between word and thing which led the
THE POETIC DICTION OF SHAKESPEARE 215
Greeks to apply the same name rhema to both. It is said of Ruskin that in his childhood the sight of the word crocodile would frighten him. Every great poet has this keen appreciation of the capacity of language. Shakespeare, beyond all others, had the gift of naming things which the author of the book of Genesis as- cribes to the unfallen father of the race. Of all poets, he is most easily master of the art : rem acu tangere. His words are " the true and only words." To change the words is to spoil the thought.
Not only the single word but the various combina- tions of the word into phrase and line were as much creations as were his characters and his images. There is an immortal music in his verse. Pathetic or gay, gentle or grand, as the case may be, it goes so to the heart and it so lingers in the ear, that a sense of divine perfection is roused within us, and we get a new proof of a supernatural intelligence that has made the rhythm of thought and the rhythm of speech to complement each other and to constitute one whole.
If we ask for pathos, where can we find it if not in the dirge which the princes sing over the seemingly lifeless Cymbeline (4 : 2 : 259) :
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter' s rages ; Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta' en thy wages ; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frowns o' the great, Thou art past the tyrant' s stroke ;
Care no more to clothe and eat ; To thee the reed is as the oak :
2l6 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust
Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone ;
Fear not slander, censure rash ; Thou hast finished joy and moan :
All lovers young, all lovers must,
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
If we desire solemn utterance, what can surpass Alonzo's confession of his crime in " The Tempest "(3:3: 96) :
O, it is monstrous, monstrous ! Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it ; The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc' d The name of Prosper ; it did base my trespass !
Or if we wish for ethereal delicacy, we shall discover it nowhere if not in Ariel's song ("Tempest," 1:2: 395) :
Full fathom five thy father lies ;
Of his bones are coral made ; Those are pearls that were his eyes ;
Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell : Hark ! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.
It took two hundred years to convince the English people that Shakespeare was their greatest poet, but no writer of eminence in recent times has had inclination to dispute it. We are in a fair way indeed to crown him as the poet laureate of the race. But with all our ap- preciation let us be both critical and just. His great-
THE LIMITATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 2I/
ness does not consist in his power of invention. Of all his plays there are only two the germs of which cannot be found before his time ; but those two are " Midsum- mer-Night's Dream" and "The Tempest," in which pure imagination has reached its very loftiest flights. Quite commonly, however, he took his whole story from others. He was not an inventor of incident, but a creator of character.
The disjecta membra of many a dead drama lay scat- tered at his feet. Like the bones of Ezekiel's vision, they were very old and exceeding dry. Shakespeare prophesied over them and a spirit came into them ; a veritable heart began to throb under the ribs of death ; the simulacra of humanity breathed and moved and spoke ; the dry bones became living men. And with this creation of real characters, true to nature, instinct with vitality, and perfectly separable from one another, all the complex web of incident in which they moved became living also. The story when Shakespeare took it was dull and colorless; the poet touched it with the torch of his genius, and it began to glow and corus- cate like a piece of fireworks after it is lit.
Shakespeare is the creator of character, but of char- acter belonging to this world rather than the next. He is the poet of secular humanity. Homer has pictured a few types of humanity in a narve and objective way. Shakespeare shows us human nature in its infinite vari- ety ; there are more than six hundred distinct charac- ters in his mimic world, yet every one of them gives us intimation of another world of varied passions and fears within the circle of his breast. Virgil is the poet of a political epoch, the representative of Roman hope and
2l8 THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
civilization, the sweet singer of the Augustan age. Shakespeare transcends all epochs and all times ; he can enter into the spirit of Greece and of Rome as easily as into that of his native England ; and that because he knows what human nature is, everywhere and always.
Dante is the religious poet of the Roman and mediae- val church, as Milton is the religious poet of Protestant- ism and the Reformation. Both Dante and Milton re- gard man chiefly in his relations to an invisible and spiritual world, and earthly life is merely incidental to the heavenly. But to Shakespeare the present world is man's arena, and the future looms up only now and then as a dim and shadowy background.
Wordsworth is the poet of nature. The divine life interfused through all physical things is the central thought of his verse. Shakespeare does not go beneath the surface of nature, and he regards the outward world mainly in its relations to man, hardly ever as the mani- festation of God. Browning is the poet of the inner life, the dramatist of motives, the portrayer of specula- tive struggles and triumphs. Shakespeare is no philos- opher ; he deals with motives only as they work them- selves out in action ; he is the poet of the concrete, rather than of the abstract. But within this realm of secular life and character in action, he is supreme. More than any other poet he has added to our knowledge of ourselves as creatures of this present world.
A greater poetry than his is indeed conceivable and possible, for nature and God are indispensable factors in the imaginative interpretation of the universe, and these play no great part in Shakespeare's verse. But human nature reflects the divine nature, and in studying hu-
THE GREATEST POET OF SECULAR HUMANITY 2IQ
manity we gain material for the study of God. What our great poet has told us about humanity is of inesti- mable value to theological thought.
«/ I have not intended to compare the poetry of Shakes- peare with the poetry of the Bible. Shakespeare has neither the eloquence of Isaiah nor the sublimity of Job. What Shakespeare does not profess to do, Job and Isaiah do profess to do — namely, to teach of God and duty. Nor have I intended to compare the merits of the great uninspired poets, or to call one greater and another less. It is better to call each great in his pecu- liar sphere. But in the creation of character Shakes- peare so far surpasses all others, that by common con- sent we have come to regard him as the greatest secu- lar poet of the world. Will the world ever see a poet who shall surpass him ? It can only be by adding Dante's vision of God and Wordsworth's vision of nature to Shakespeare's vision of humanity. Until some inspired bard shall touch all these several strings with simultaneous and equal mastery, we may well con- tent ourselves with Shakespeare.
We can subscribe to the judgment of James Russell Lowell when he says that " For those who know no lan- guage but their own there is as much intellectual train- ing to be got from the study of his writings as from those of any, I had almost said, of all, of the great writ- ers of antiquity." And the chief reason for this is that beyond all other poets Shakespeare has a faculty for the universal, a power of seizing upon the types of things, and an art of evoking living characters in which these types are concretely represented.
Dewey, in his " Psychology ' ' (200), comes very near
22O THE UNIVERSALITY OF SHAKESPEARE
to expressing the noblest lesson of our theme, when he says : " All products of the creative imagination are un- conscious testimonies to the unity of spirit which binds man to man, and man to nature, in one organic whole." We would add only the one remark and explanation, that the spirit which thus binds all things together, and makes possible the poet's insight into universal truth and beauty, is none other than the omnipresent Spirit of God, whose specifically religious work is inspiration, but who is also working in all secular literature, and is making it the progressive revelation of his own divine life.
MILTON
MILTON
THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
IN the French Academy, that national Sanhedrin of savants and litterateurs, the custom is for each newly elected member to signalize his admission into the com- pany of the immortals by delivering a eulogy upon the academician who has last died and whose place he has been chosen to fill. It is a curious fact that the first published poem of John Milton should have been his " Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare." The six-year-old boy with auburn curls, who played before the door of his father's shop at the sign of the spread eagle in Bread Street, may possibly have attracted the attention of William Shakespeare, when he made his last visit to London town in 1614, and with Ben Jonson and other jovial spirits passed by the scrivener's door on their way to the Mermaid Inn.
We know at any rate that, whether in the theatre or through the printed page, Milton very early heard
Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy' s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.
He took the torch as it were, from Shakespeare's hand, and passed it on to after times. It is no wonder that one of the first uses to which Milton puts the torch is
to light up the portrait of his great predecessor. He
223
224 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
tells us that Shakespeare requires no monument of piled
stones :
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What needst thou such weak witness of thy name ?
The rapt and mute astonishment of mankind is itself a sort of stony monument to enshrine him :
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving ; And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie, That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.
In this epitaph to the greatest of poets, whose sun had so lately set, we perceive already the signs that another sun had risen in the literary firmament. The new light was no mere reproduction of the old — it had a quality of its own. The world has agreed to call it " Miltonic," in token of its unique force and greatness. I shall make it my first business to define this epithet, and to show the new and peculiar sources of Milton's power. The one word which springs into mind, as we give account to ourselves of the impression he makes upon us, is the word "sublime." But the sublimity of Milton is a sublimity of his own. You cannot explain it as a composite of elements found separately in any past writings, whether secular or sacred. It is some- thing larger and more complete than the broken and jagged grandeur of ^Eschylus. Milton's sublimity is a new majesty combined with a new harmony. In it you may discern a boom of lofty independence, of super- sensual ideality, of free commerce with the invisible world. There is a "linked sweetness long drawn out," but there is also the os magna soniturum, the sustained
THE MILTONIC SUBLIMITY 22$
utterance of one who seems to be prophet as well as poet, and to repeat in our ears with not unaccustomed lips the whispers of the Infinite.
Whether we can put into words the whole meaning of the word " Miltonic ' may be doubtful. There can be no doubt, however, that the gift of sublime thought and expression was in this case inborn. The first pro- ductions of the poet reveal its existence not so fully, but just as truly, as the last. When he was twenty-six years of age he could describe in " Arcades ' such meditations as these :
In deep of night, when drowsiness Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Syrens' harmony, That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And sing to those that hold the vital shears And turn the adamantine spindle round On which the fates of gods and men are wound.
And he was but twenty-one when he wrote his ode, " At a Solemn Musick," in which, not after the fashion of the classic Muse, but rather in language drawn from the treasuries of Holy Writ and in the spirit of Isaiah or of John, he presents "to our high-rais'd phantasy" :
That undisturbed song of pure consent, Aye sung before the sapphire-colour' d throne To him who sits thereon, With saintly shout and solemn jubilee Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row, Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow ; And the cherubic host, in thousand quires, Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
P
226 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
Hymns devout and holy psalms Singing everlastingly.
There are certain constituents of the Miltonic poetry somewhat less obvious, and which go far to explain its power to move and awe. One of these is its intense personality. The subjective element is felt everywhere ; the poem and the man are inseparable ; the poet puts his own life and history into his verse. The contrast between Shakespeare and Dante in this matter is par- ticularly instructive. Shakespearean poetry is objective — the author is lost in his work. It requires much sub- tlety and insight to gather anything with regard to the poet's idiosyncrasies from the plays or the poems ; and, when we have drawn our inferences, we have to acknowl- edge that they are unpleasantly precarious. The poetry of Dante, on the contrary, is full of the poet himself ; " The Divine Comedy " is the drama of his life ; hell, purgatory, and heaven itself, are but the three-fold stage upon which the exiled patriot acts out his thoughts and sorrows. In a similar manner John Milton's personality shines through all his works. Out of his prose and poetry we can reconstruct the whole fabric of his life, as perfectly as if his main purpose had been to write for us an auto- biography.
Yet another note of the Miltonic poetry is its austere purity. The personality is a pure personality, and there- fore the poet may, nay, he must, put it into his verse. Through all his writing there runs a strain of noble pride and self-assertion. Not for nothing had God made him what he was. He knew that he had received the full quota of ten talents. He would not waste his
ITS AUSTERE PURITY 22/
gifts in riot or self-indulgence, but would husband them, and increase them, by protracted studies and the open- ing of his heart to influences from above. " He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well," he himself says, " ought himself to be a true poem." John Milton's life and work are a great object-lesson to the whole school of thinkers who maintain that the true artist must be a colorless mirror to reflect whatever images the pure or impure world may print upon its surface — an object-lesson equally to that other school that regards the sowing of wild oats in youth merely as the gaining of a valuable experience.
Our poet never forgot that he was a man, and a serv- ant of the high and holy One. Of his travels in Italy he asseverates : " I again take God to witness that, in all those places where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched by all profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that, though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God." And so through all his days there was not one line written which, so far as its moral tone was concerned, he or any other pure soul would have wished afterward to blot. The closing words of "Comus" are the consistent testimony both of his poetry and of his life :
Mortals that would follow me, Love Virtue ; she alone is free : She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime ; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
There is a third characteristic of Milton as a poet —
228 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
I mean his immense erudition. His verse not seldom requires learning to interpret it. The whole mythologi- cal world of Greece and Rome was native to him, and he was deeply read in sacred Scripture. The words of John the Baptist in "Paradise Regained" might have been Milton's own :
When I was but a child, no childish play To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do What might be public good : myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth And righteous things.
We are told that his father caused him to be " in- structed daily ... by sundry masters and teachers both at home and in the public schools." He had a passion for study, and from his twelfth year he scarcely ever until midnight went from books to bed — it was this un- seasonable diligence indeed that laid the foundation for disease of the eyes and subsequent total blindness. He became the most distinguished Latinist at his univer- sity. Listen to his " Master's Oration on the Advan- tages of Knowledge" :
No more in the orator than in the poet [he says] can any- thing common or mediocre be tolerated. . . It behooves him who would truly be and be considered an orator, to be instructed and thoroughly finished in a certain circular education in all the arts and all science. . . I would rather be working with severe study for that true reputation, by the preliminary practice of the neces- sary means, than hurrying on a false reputation by a forced and precocious style.
He finds nothing more nourishing to his genius than a learned and liberal leisure, and thus he praises it :
ITS RELIGIOUS FAITH 22Q
This I would fajn believe to be the divine sleep of Hesiod ; this to be Endymion' s nightly meetings with the moon ; this to be the retirement of Prometheus, under the guidance of Mer- cury, to the steepest solitudes of Mount Caucasus, where he be- came the wisest of gods and men, so that even Jupiter himself is said to have gone to consult him about the marriage of Thetis. I call to witness for myself the groves and rivers and the beloved village elms, under which I remember so pleasantly having had supreme delight with the Muses, where I too among rural scenes and remote forests seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden eternity.
The poet had his wish. His well-to-do and liberal father did not force him either into the law or into the church, but permitted him to spend the six years suc- ceeding his graduation in storing his mind with various learning, though he was yet ignorant what his future work would be. It was a hazardous experiment. All depended upon the quality of the stock and his capa- city for self-culture. Fortunately, these were of the best.
Religious faith constituted a fourth element, more \f important and dominant than all the rest. John Milton was a profound believer. He believed in a personal God and in man's personal responsibility to him. In the Latin college oration, which I have already quoted in translation, there occurs also this sentence :
This I consider, my hearers, as known and received by all, that the great Maker of the universe, when he had framed all else fleeting and subject to decay, did mingle with man, in addition to that of him which is mortal, a certain divine breath and, as it were, part of himself, immortal, - indestructible, free from death and all hurt ; which, after it had sojourned purely and holily for some time in the earth as a heavenly visitant, should flutter up- ward to its native heaven and return to its proper place and
23O THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
country ; accordingly, that nothing can deservedly be taken into account among the causes of our happiness, unless it somehow or other regards not only this secular life, but also that life everlast- ing.
On arriving at the age of twenty-three he mourns the fact that, while the days are hasting by, his late spring shows as yet no bud or blossom of completed work, and even inward ripeness does not yet appear :
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster1 s eye.
Here is a great mind and a great heart not ignorant of its own powers, yet humbly waiting its appointed task. To his friend, Charles Diodati, he writes in 1637 :
What God has resolved concerning me I know not, but this at least I know : he has instilled into me a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labor is Ceres said to have sought her daughter Proserpine, as I am wont day and night to seek for this idea of the beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, for many are the shapes of things divine . . . But what am I doing? I am pluming my wings and meditating flight ; but as yet our Pegasus raises himself on very tender pinions. Let us be lowly wise.
It is evident that Milton, at the age of thirty-four, has both the literary training and the devout spirit which fit him to be a great religious poet. But he has not yet received his message. Form is assured, but substance is yet to come. As respects form, he is the product of the generation past — the spontaneity and
PREPARATION OF PRACTICAL LIFE 23 1
splendor of the Renaissance survive in him. As re- spects substance, he is to be the product of the new generation, with its profound convictions, its hatred of ancient error, its fierce struggles for the truth — the English Reformation finds in him its poetical embodi- ment and expression. Milton was a Puritan of the Puritans ; and, as Puritanism has been said to be only Protestantism in its acute form, we can best express the significance of his work by saying that, as Dante was the poet of the Roman Catholic Church, so John Mil- ton was the poet of the Protestant Reformation.
How shall the young student, whose lofty and fin- ished verse might as yet be counted only the achieve- ment of a better Spenser, be endowed with the stern magnificence of " Paradise Lost ' and " Paradise Re- gained " ? Only by exchanging the ideal for the real world, only by undergoing the discipline of sorrow, by mingling with men, by absorbing himself for years in a great cause. The Miltonic sublimity, like the Dantean sublimity, was developed through experiences of exalted hope and agonizing fear. Not only the spirit of the prophet, but also the spirit of the martyr, must enter into it. The poet must come into contact with the greatest soldiers and statesmen of his time — heroes of faith, yet men of action, born to command, yet ready to die for the truth. He never can paint the conflict between God and Satan in the invisible world, until he has taken part in the actual conflict between God and Satan in the world of the visible and present. And this plunging into the thick of the battle, this actual participation in the most momentous affairs, was Mil- ton's lot during the twenty years from 1640 to 1660 —
232 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
the years that saw the rise and the success of the great Rebellion, the trial and execution of King Charles the First, the splendid reign of the great Protector, the rallying of the Royalists after Cromwell's death, and the cruelty and shame of the Restoration.
In my last and only conversation with George Wil- liam Curtis, toward the close of his honored life, I told him that I had used his writings to illustrate the possi- bility of two styles but of one Isaiah. At first sight, I ventured to say, it might seem hardly possible that the mellifluous grace of " The Potiphar Papers ' and the " Nile Notes of a Howadji," written in Mr. Curtis' youth, could have had for their author the same person who, in later years, wrote the calm and statesmanlike articles in " Harper's Weekly" ; if in thirty years Mr. Curtis' style could so change, then during the forty years of Isaiah's ministry under the four kings of Judah his style may have changed also, and there may be no necessity for believing in two Isaiahs. Mr. Curtis was interested in the parallel I sought to draw, and he re- plied vivaciously : " But do you know what it was that changed my style ? It was the Civil War. That roused me to see that I had no right to spend my life in liter- ary leisure. I felt that I must throw myself into the struggle for freedom and for the Union. I began to lecture, and to write, for a purpose. The style took care of itself. But I fancy it is somewhat more solid now than it was thirty years ago."
So it was with John Milton. His country called for his service. He became the literary chief of the Par- liamentary party, as Cromwell became its political chief. His services as Latin Secretary to the Council, and the
MILTON S PARENTAGE AND TRAINING 233
noble State papers that he wrote, were only the natural sequence of those tremendous pamphlets which he had previously hurled against the enemies of the Reforma- tion in England. And no account of his poetry can be adequate which fails to notice the influence upon it of his prose, and of the great part he took in that life and death struggle of English liberty.
By birth and education Milton was a Puritan. His father had been disinherited by his Roman Catholic grandfather for becoming a Protestant and for having in his possession an English Bible. His father's house was a home of grave Puritanic piety, of religious read- ing, and of devout exercises. His mother, a woman given to charity and to prayer, had destined him for the church. At ten years he was put under the charge of a Puritan schoolmaster in Essex, who cut his hair short and turned him into a sweet little Roundhead. But his father had been a student in Christ's Church at Oxford, and was a lover and composer of music. Young Mil- ton's training was of the broadest sort ; he became an excellent swordsman as well as an excellent player upon the organ. He was under the middle height, and was so distinguished for his personal beauty as well as for his withdrawal from common sports, that his contempo- raries at Cambridge called him " the Lady of Christ's College." Milton replied, in a comic oration, that he wished those who thus named him could as easily put off the ass as he could put off the woman.
In spite of his delicacy, no one ever seems to have questioned either his manliness or his courage. He would have taken orders if he could have done so with good conscience. But it was the time when Laud was
234 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
trying to bring back all manner of papal ritual and cere- mony into the church. This was Laud's idea of " the beauty of holiness." Nonconformists were harried out of the Establishment. Milton could be neither a hypo- crite nor a slave. To the church, as governed by Laud, he could not belong. He determined to devote himself to literature, not in a secular but in a religious spirit. As if speaking of his own gifts, he writes :
These abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some in every nation, and are a power, beside the office of a pulpit, to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and to set the affections in right tune to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God' s Almightiness.
These words were written while he was meditating the plan of "Paradise Lost." But twenty years were to elapse before he could take up that work effectively. While he was in Italy, the conflict broke out between the Parliament and King Charles. " When I was desir- ous to cross to Sicily and Greece," he writes, " the sad news of civil war coming from England called me back ; for I considered it disgraceful that, while my fellow- countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be traveling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes." Returning to England, he found the battle joined. Charles I., after trying in vain to govern without a Par- liament, had summoned a Parliament that counted it a first duty to call him to account. A deep religious fer- vor moved the nation to assert its right to freedom in Church and State. Over against the policy of " Thor- ough," which meant nothing more nor less than the
MILTON'S PAMPHLETS 235
breaking down of all constitutional checks upon royal absolutism and tyranny, the Parliament party asserted the doctrine of "Root and Branch," and this meant the abolition of Episcopacy and the wresting from the king of all control over both revenue and army.
Milton took part in the struggle, but not as a soldier. He says :
I did not for any other reason decline the dangers of war, than that I might in another way, with much more efficacy, and with not less danger to myself, render assistance to my countrymen, and discover a mind neither shrinking from adverse fortune, nor actuated by any improper fear of calumny or death. Since from my childhood I had been devoted to the more liberal studies, and was always more powerful in my intellect than in my body, avoid- ing the labors of the camp, in which any robust soldier could have surpassed me, I betook myself to those weapons which I could wield with the most effect ; and I conceived that I was act- ing wisely when I thus brought my better and more valuable faculties, those which constituted my principal strength and con- sequence, to the assistance of my country and her honorable cause.
In 1641 he published the first of his pamphlets. It was entitled, " Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that Hitherto Have Hindered It." If any are inclined to think it a pity that one with such capacities for poetry should compel himself to prose, they need only to read this pamphlet to be convinced that Milton's prose, if it was not itself poetry, was one of the best of all preparations for poetry. In this prose, eloquence reaches a very lofty strain. No English essayist or ora- tor or preacher can afford to be unfamiliar with the prose writing of Milton. There is a roll to it, like that of ocean waves driven by a mighty wind. It shows
236 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
the power of language to express the most exalted emo- tions.
Moral energy, hatred of unrighteousness, unconquer- able devotion to truth, resistless determination to put down oppression, uplifting of the whole soul to God — all these, apart from Scripture, have never been put into more soul-moving forms of expression than they have been by John Milton. The prayer which concludes the pamphlet on the Reformation has a majesty and a pathos, combined with a long-drawn fervor and a soar- ing splendor of phrase, which would befit one of the angels in the Apocalypse. I am bound, however, in all good conscience, to say that Milton's prose is noblest when it approaches most nearly to poetry. When he is most of a poet, then he is most of a man. It is hard for him, indeed, to keep the poet under — there is a smol- dering fire that is ever ready to break forth ; and when it does flame out we have a grandeur of expression such as has never been surpassed by any uninspired writer.
Alas that the poetic instinct could not always rule ! Side by side with these bursts of eloquence, or, rather, surrounding them, interpenetrating them, and some- times swamping them, we have great tracts of sonorous and learned, but involved and entangled, speech, in which simplicity is lost sight of, and bitterness of parti- sanship seems quite ready to make the worse appear the better reason. Here is the narrowness, as well as the sternness, of the Puritan.
With all his knowledge of literature and of art, Mil- ton was from his youth something of a recluse. The broadening and humanizing process ended with his de- parture from Italy. Henceforth for twenty years he
HIS FIERCENESS OF DENUNCIATION 237
threw himself into the conflict of opinions with an un- compromising rancor which sometimes makes even truth and righteousness seem unlovely. The close of that very prayer which pictures the redeemed as " clasping inseparable hands, with joy and bliss in overmeasure forever," exults over the fallen foes of liberty, and pre- dicts that, "after a shameful end in this life," they " shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell," where they shall remain forever, "the basest and lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot and downtrodden, vassals of perdition."
Here is a fierceness of denunciation which reminds us of Sumner's assaults upon slavery. There have been days in our own national history when even Quakers found great satisfaction in reading the imprecatory psalms. We cannot understand the fulminations of Milton, until in imagination we put ourselves back into the times of the Long Parliament. Milton's prose is full of imprecations upon the enemies of liberty because they are regarded as the enemies of God. His pam- phlets breathe a spirit of lofty justice, and they appeal to the conscience of mankind. There was in them, to use Shakespeare's phrase, "a proud, majestical, high scorn," which served an excellent purpose in combating aristocratic pretence and royal prerogative.
Their influence in the crisis of the struggle for free- dom in England was only second to the influence of the sword of Cromwell. The essay entitled " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," printed in February, 1648- 49, immediately after the execution of King Charles, and "proving that it is lawful and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to
238 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due convic- tion to depose and put him to death," is so scathing an indictment of the dead "traitor, murderer, and public enemy," and so tremendous a justification of that act of State by which he was condemned to death, that it will forever stand in human history as the unanswerable plea of the Regicides. That it did its work is plain, when we remember that in 1663, Twyn, a bookseller, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, for printing a book which merely reproduced the substance of Milton's argument. It is one of the yet unexplained mysteries of the time that Milton himself, when so many friends of liberty perished, was not called to anwer with his life.
The " Areopagitica " is the noblest of all defenses of an unfettered press. Milton says :
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extrac- tion of that living intellect that bred them. . . As good almost kill a man as kill a good book ; who kills a man kills a reason- able creature, God' s image ; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. . . We should be wary, there- fore, what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books : since we see a kind of homicide may be thus com- mitted ; sometimes a martyrdom ; and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre ; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself ; slays an immortality rather than a life.
Yet this masterly " Speech for the Liberty of Un
HIS INFELICITOUS MARRIAGE 239
licensed Printing ' ' would never have seen the light, if Milton had not felt called upon to defend his own pre- vious conduct. On August i, 1643, he had printed without a license, because no license could ever have been obtained, a tract entitled " The Doctrine and Dis- cipline of Divorce." In it he had argued that "indis- position, unfitness, and contrariety of mind are proper causes of divorce," and that proper laws on this subject should be included in the new Reformation in England. The modern world knows well, and Milton's enemies did not delay to point out then, that his views had been in great part determined by his hasty and infelicitous mar- riage.
Until his thirty-fifth year, this lofty idealist, with his soaring imagination and his devotion to books, had dwelt, as Wordsworth phrases it, "like a star, apart." But when he visited Richard Powell, at Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire, to collect five hundred pounds which that gentleman had long owed his father, the star came strangely down from its heavenly heights, and entangled itself in the golden curls of Mary Powell, the daughter of his host. It was clearly a case of love at first sight, at least on Milton's part, and he afterward sorrowfully confessed that love, though not blind, has but one eye, and that eye is often deceived. He seems to have clothed the pretty creature that attracted him with a whole array of graces and virtues drawn solely from the wardrobe of his fancy. Because she smiled, he thought her appreciative ; because she was silent, he thought her wise.
In less than a month after their first meeting, Milton, instead of his five hundred pounds, took Mary Powell
24O THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
back to London with him, as his wife. There, instead of the fresh air and the flowers of the country, she had the smoky city, and rooms that overlooked a churchyard. After the first feasting, life came to be ineffably dull. Milton was much with his books, and the young bride began to sigh for the gayety of her home. Milton was as handsome as a statue, but, alas ! he seemed almost as stiff and cold. Unless you are a Pygmalion, you cannot love a statue, and Mary Powell Milton was no Pygma- lion. Nor did her husband find her the wise and ap- preciative wife he had expected her to be. Sad to say, he found her stupid, instead. In his subsequent pam- phlets he cites, as a proper cause for divorce, " inability for fit and matchable conversation." He talks of "a mute and spiritless mate" ; "a living soul bound to a dead corpse." He declares that it is " enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit, and sink him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavor in all his actions" ; enough to drive a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of atheism."
The husband, in this case, it must be acknowledged, was of too lofty and severe a nature to be fitted for matrimony. Rigid self -discipline had prepared him for autocracy in the household. He had ideas with regard to the subjection of women which belonged to pagan and classic, rather than to Christian times. It is quite pos- sible that he undertook to command, when he should have ruled by love. The verses in " Samson Agonistes," where the athlete laments his failure to resist Delilah, seem a reminiscence of this experience of Milton's, though they intimate no consciousness on his part of wrong :
HIS DOCTRINE OF DIVORCE 241
Therefore God' s universal law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe,
Nor from that right to part an hour,
Smile she or lower ;
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, nor sway' d
By female usurpation, or dismay' d.
But it took two to make a bargain here. Mrs. Mil- ton was doubtless stupid, but she was not stupid enough to endure subjection without a protest. As it had taken only a month for Milton to win her, so it took him only a month to lose her. She accepted an invitation to visit her old home, and the visit was prolonged to two years. Milton's remonstrances were met with silence ; his mes- sengers were driven away by her father with contempt. The pamphlet on " Divorce " seems to have been writ- ten and printed in hot haste. In May he began his courtship ; in June he married ; in July his wife deserted him ; in August he stirred the country with a tract ad- vocating almost unlimited liberty of divorce.
Divorce for the man, however — not for the woman. The wiser should govern the less wise. Man being the superior being, God pitied him most and gave him the right to divorce his wife, but gave to the wife no corre- sponding right to divorce her husband. Mrs. Milton repented after two years, when her royalist father had lost his fortune. She made most humble confession and submission, pleading that " her mother had been the chief promoter of her frowardness." Milton instantly forgave the past and took her back. But the end was like the beginning. Milton's family life, though he was three times married, was only at rare intervals a happy
Q
242 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
one. The proud, self-contained, exalted spirit carried his head too far above the clouds to elicit much of sym- pathy from either wife or children. Milton was by nature a lonely man — to a certain extent his loneliness was the penalty of his greatness.
I am detailing these features of his life, in order to show the influences that changed a poet of the depart- ing Renaissance into the stern and majestic poet of the Protestant Reformation. The story will not be com- plete without some allusion to Milton's blindness. We have seen how the foundation for this was laid by the premature vigils of his studious boyhood. Too seden- tary a life in the succeeding years brought on a rheu- matic affection, and this was naturally accompanied by increasing weakness of the eyes. When he entered the service of the Commonwealth, at the age of forty-one, his sight was already getting dim. A year later, when Sal- masius published his defense of King Charles the First, the Council of State requested Milton to prepare a reply. This required much work by candle-light. Milton's left eye was useless already, and there were warnings that before long the right eye might fail also. His physicians admonished him that total blindness might result, if he persevered. But, with the alternative before him of blindness on the one hand and desertion of duty on the other, he chose blindness. " Urged," he says, " by the heavenly Counsellor who dwells in conscience, I would have shut my ears to ^Esculapius himself speaking in his Epidaurian temple."
He finished his reply, but he lost his sight. He learned to dictate to amanuenses indeed, and he could still hear his favorite authors as they were read to him
HE LOSES HIS SIGHT 243
by others. But the labor of investigation in his library was multiplied many-fold. He was dependent now. Imagine the great, imperious, self-absorbed man, after Charles the Second had come to the throne ; driven into hiding ; his friends exiled or beheaded ; uncertain whether he himself might not yet be hanged ; his moth- erless children in a chronic state of mute rebellion against the task of reading to him in languages which they could not understand, unfilially conspiring with his servants to embezzle his money and to sell his books, and when he sought to alleviate his loneliness by an- other marriage, wishing rather they could hear that he was dead ; and all this while increasingly afflicted with gout-calculi, accompanied by swelling of the joints, and twinges of pain at every movement of the limbs.
But worst of all was the blindness. Blind Samson, in the drama which constitutes his last great work, is simply the blind Milton in antique Grecian dress. Hear his pitiful lament :
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain !
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age !
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me ;
They creep, yet see ; I, dark in light, expos' d
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong ;
Within doors, as without, still, as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own ;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
244 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day !
Such words as these mark the nadir of the poet's sorrows. There were consolations also. To Cyriack Skinner, one of his old scholars and lifelong friends, he wrote in more calm and cheerful strain :
Cyriack, this three years day these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against heaven' s hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them, overplied In liberty's defense, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
But more than this. The blind poet came to see that blindness did not preclude work — it rather threw him back upon the work to which in his youth he had con- secrated himself, but from which the political struggles of his time had withdrawn him — threw him back upon it with an experience of life so enlarged that he was now a different man, with a new insight into truth and a new
impulse of
adventurous song
That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
We must go even further. The poet's blindness, while it shut him out from the world of the natural, shut
SHUT IN TO THE SUPERNATURAL 245
him in, as it were, to the world of the supernatural. His ear became more attent to heavenly harmonies ; his spiritual eyes were opened, as the outward eyes were closed. The "troubled sea of noises and hoarse dis- putes," upon which he had embarked in 1640, was from 1660 to 1674 only as a distant murmur of the waves to one who has entered the harbor. Though straitened in means, his last years were, on the whole, years of rest and devotion. As the Cromwellian republic, for which he had sacrificed so much, proved to be only another Utopia, the vision of a celestial order dawned upon him, and the struggle between right and wrong on earth, with all the personal trouble through which he had passed, furnished him with the spirit and imagery of a new drama, the scene of which should be laid almost wholly in the supernatural world, which should describe the age-long war between God and Satan, and which should
assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
Milton's blindness drove him not only from the out- ward to the inward and from the sensible to the super- sensible for his subject — it drove him also to God, the source of true illumination. There is in all literature no more noble or pathetic prayer than that at the open- ing of the third book of " Paradise Lost," in which he mourns "wisdom at one entrance quite shut out," yet lifts up his soul to him who is himself Wisdom :
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate ; there plant eyes ; all mist from thence
246 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
Purge and disperse ; that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight
It is certain that Milton deals with the invisible more than any other poet that ever lived. Like Jonathan Edwards in his " History of Redemption," he would re- late a story which begins in an eternity past and ends in an eternity to come, the whole life of angels and of men being spanned by its mighty arch. Supernatural beings play a greater part in this epic than in any other — the persons of the Godhead and the celestial emissaries and servants of the Almighty do two-thirds of all the speak- ing, and the other third is done by two specimens of unfallen humanity whose thought and language tran- scend all ordinary human standards.
The world into which the poet introduces us is not a part of this universe — it is rather that empyrean which subsisted before this universe had a being. The de- mands of such an epic as this are simply colossal ; the conception of it could come only to one to whom the sub- lime was as his native air ; the mere statement of the fact gives us one of the best explanations of the Mil- tonic poetry and one of the best reasons for its power. In order that we may better appreciate the greatness of " Paradise Lost," the work resumed with such new ad- vantages after twenty years of enforced silence, and may understand what manner of "singing robes" the great poet then put on, it will be indispensable to dis- tinguish between Dante's universe and Milton's uni- verse, and to see how much more supersensual and ideal the latter was than the former.
Both Dante and Milton were believers in the Ptole-
MILTON S SCHEME OF THE UNIVERSE 247
male or geocentric theory of the universe. Milton in- deed had heard of Copernicus, and he seems to have suspected the new scheme of things to be true; but all his education and all the ideas of his time were of the older sort, and, for poetic purposes at least, he thought it not wise to change. It was not in this universe, how- ever, Ptolemaic as it was, that Milton laid the scene of his epic. Dante's hell and purgatory, on the con- trary, and even his heaven, were parts of this present visible frame of things. Hell was that tremendous cone-shaped cavity in the very earth beneath our feet, which Satan's falling mass and bulk had hollowed out when he was thrust from heaven and came hurtling down upon our sublunary planet, crashing through its succes- sive strata till gravitation brought him up standing at the center and held him fast there at the very bottom of the pit.
Purgatory, to Dante's mind, was a mount on this earth, on the side opposite to the mouth of hell, com- posed of the material dislodged by Satan's fall and made to bulge out when that material fled from his hated presence. And what was Dante's heaven ? Why, it was simply the concentric spheres which in the Ptole- maic system enclosed this earth and revolved around it as their center. In those spheres, the moon, the sun, the planets were fixed, and surrounding all was the Pri- mum Mobile, so called because it moved all the rest, but itself never moved at all. Here God himself dwelt. This was the abode of the Almighty and of the most exalted saints. But Dante's heaven was as definite in extent as Dante's earth. The Primum Mobile had its bounds, and everything in existence could be weighed
248 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
and measured. William Watson characterizes the Dan- tean sublimity as " mysticism tempered by mensuration."
The essence of the sublime is its suggestion of the infinite. Macaulay's essay on Milton makes its best point by showing how much more sublime Milton's in- definite descriptions are than any of the definite state- ments of Dante. Dante would excite our imagination by giving us the size of Satan in feet and inches ; by this intrusion of earthly and finite measures he limits and degrades. It is the old error of the pictures and images of the Roman Church. Milton has in him the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of true art — he suggests, but he does not define. There is an air of vastness about his poetry; the very absence of fixed limits permits the imagination of the reader, nay, com- pels his imagination, to spread its own wings and soar; Milton's Satan is incomparably grander than the Satan of Dante.
But I wish now especially to point out what Macaulay seems not to see, namely, that Dante's whole universe is infinitesimal compared with that of Milton. For Mil- ton hangs Dante's whole universe as a mere drop in the center of his empyrean. Milton, being a Protestant, has, of course, no purgatory, and his heaven and hell are both outside of Dante's universe. At the begin- ning God dwells in an infinite heaven. Beneath him is a weltering chaos, formless and dark, yet containing the material of the world that is to be. Angels of many ranks and endowments are created, to be his servants and companions, long before the earth or man appears. When the Son of God is exalted above them and they are bidden to worship him, there is rebellion and war in
TEMPTATION OF OUR FIRST PARENTS 249
heaven ; Satan and the rebel angels are cast out of heaven and thrust down to the lowermost point of chaos, and the abode constructed for them and by them becomes hell. Nine days they fall ; nine days they lie stupefied upon the burning marl ; during six days of these nine the Almighty creates our universe, and sus- pends it like a solid sphere at that point in the floor of heaven where Satan and his host burst through when they fell. When the fallen archangel gathers strength and essays to pass through chaos on his way to tempt mankind, he sees the new-created universe hanging in space so far above him that it appears, in comparison with " the empyreal heaven, extended wide in circuit . . . once his native seat,"
in bigness as a star, Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.
Into this universe, hard, solid, opaque, and illuminated only from the empyrean above, there is but one open- ing, and that is at the point of attachment to heaven. Satan perceives a gleam of light from the staircase, not yet withdrawn, by which angels went up and down. There he enters, and entering, all the flaming systems of orbs that constitute our universe dawn for the first time upon his sight. He makes his way to our sun, and, on pretence of being a belated spirit just returned from some distant errand in heaven, he inquires about God's new creation. Uriel, the archangelic regent of the sun, unsuspectingly directs his steps to earth. There the adversary finds our first parents, clad only in the majesty of spotless innocence and "imparadised in each other's arms." Filled with jealousy, he plans their over-
THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
throw. Raphael is sent from heaven to instruct them and prepare them to resist ; and here come in, after the fashion of Homer and Virgil, three whole books of in- formation with regard to the war in heaven, Adam's previous experiences, and Milton's whole scheme of philosophy and theology.
The historical background of the drama being thus complete, the tragedy can proceed to its sad climax. Satan tempts, our first mother and father fall, the Son of God comes down to pronounce their doom, the guilty pair incriminate each other and sink into despair. But at last they pray ; and in answer to that first evidence of penitence, the same Archangel Michael, who is sent to expel them from Paradise, comforts them on their way by two whole books of prophecy. All the future his- tory of redemption is unfolded to them ; they are taught that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head ; they are promised a return to paradise when dis- cipline has done its work. So the heavenly Muse taught John Milton to cover past, present, and future with his sublime epic, and to fulfill, in age and weariness and pain and solitude, the purpose, formed at least thirty years before, to sing
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.
It is not true that the poem met with a cold recep- tion from the public. The impression that it did so is probably derived from the fact that the author received
TEMPTATION OF OUR FIRST PARENTS 25!
for his work only five pounds down, with promise of fifteen pounds more for the three succeeding editions. But this was partly due to Milton's printing it just after the great fire of London, when all the booksellers were ruined and any literary venture was hazardous. Though the book actually brought to the poet and his family only eighteen pounds in money, worth perhaps two hundred and fifty dollars in our day, it gave at once to its author a fame second only to that of Shakespeare. Dryden not only called it "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced," but he was compelled to say also, "This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too ! '
In that Philistine age, the Philistines themselves re- ceived a shock comparable only to that which Samson had given them of old ; and Masson, at the close of his six-volume biography of Milton, quotes " Samson Ago- nistes," as expressing the poet's triumph in contem- plating the effect of his great work upon his contempo- raries :
But he, though blind of sight,
Despis' d and thought extinguish' d quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtues rous'd
From under ashes into sudden flame,
And as an evening dragon came,
Assailant on the perched roosts
And nests in order rang' d
Of tame villatic fowl ; but as an eagle
His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depress' d, and overthrown, as seem' d,
...•••••
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most,
THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
When most unactive deem' d ;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.
Nor is it true that Milton himself regarded his " Para- dise Lost" as inferior to his "Paradise Regained." He simply hoped that the fame of the former might not prevent a due consideration of the merits of the latter. He would not have the victory of Satan, the hero of the first epic, obscure the victory of Christ, the hero of the second. The "Paradise Lost" appeared in 1667, when Milton was fifty-nine. The actual writing of it had occupied seven solid years. The poet had but seven more years to live. But he filled them up with noble work. Before the first great poem was published, young Ellwood, a friend of Milton's, borrowed a manuscript copy of it. When he returned it, he said to the poet, "Thou hast said much here of 'Paradise Lost,' but what hast thou to say of ' Paradise Found ' ? ' Milton sat some time in a muse, but returned no answer. The final answer was the publication of "Paradise Regained," in which our Lord's temptation in the wilderness, with its foiling of Satan's arts and its winning of eternal life for man, is set over against Adam's temptation in the garden, with its defeat and its incurring of universal death.
The later epic indubitably shows some falling off in the poet's powers ; the supernatural vein has already yielded the best of its ore ; earth must now be the main scene of the drama ; the piercing splendors of the poet's earlier verse give place to something more like grand and sonorous prose. Yet now and then the old inspira-
CAN THE HIGHEST POETRY BE DIDACTIC? 253
tion seems to seize him ; flame bursts out from the embers ; as when he describes
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable,
and bids us
Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratic, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin' d over Greece To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne ;
or, when he closes the poem with the acclaim of angels to the victorious Son of God :
Now thou hast aveng'd Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing Temptation, hast regain' d lost Paradise.
Milton is a didactic poet, and perhaps the most criti- cal question that can be asked with regard to his place in literature is this : Is the dogmatic element consist- ent with the very highest poetry ? Our age is inclined to deny this. It is a part of the current theory of art in general, that the artist should only reproduce what he sees, and thus hold the mirror up to nature. He must do this simply because he is smitten with the love of nature's beauty and longs to express the passion of his soul. The ulterior aim of teaching interferes with spontaneity and freedom, and without spontaneity and freedom no true poetry is possible. We deny the premises as well as the conclusion. The theory that art consists simply in imitation, is the relic of a bygone
254 ™E POET OF THE REFORMATION
age that knew nothing of the idealizing and the creative powers of the human imagination. What the poet sees, moreover, will depend upon what the poet is ; if he is a sensual soul, he will revel in dreams of sense, and will strive to reproduce them ; if he is an ardent lover of purity and goodness, he will embody these in " thoughts that breathe and words that burn."
It is vain to say that the poet shall not teach ; if he is a true poet, he cannot help teaching. No man ever yet made strong impression on his fellow-men without being a great believer : "I believed, therefore have I spoken," might be the motto of every leader of man- kind. " Entire intellectual toleration," said Mrs. Brown- ing, "is the mark of those who believe nothing." And believing something involves antagonism to its opposite ; in the words of Coleridge, "He who does not with- stand, has no standing-ground of his own." Advocacy of truth, denunciation of error, these are instincts of those who see. " When any truth becomes central and vital, there comes the desire to utter it," as Dr. Storrs has well remarked. And shall the poet, who is simply the most deeply seeing man, be shut out from the advo- cacy of truth and the denunciation of error, simply because he is a poet? Nay, rather, because he is a poet, he will give truth wings ; he will be her champion ; he will bring all the powers of his soul into her defense.
The poet then not only may be a dogmatist — he must be a dogmatist. But he must be more. He must not only possess the truth, but the truth must possess him. He must have a soul great enough to apprehend it, not only in its bare logical forms and in its isolated particu- lars, but in its broad reaches of connection and in its
MUST POETRY CONFORM TO SCIENCE? 255
power to rouse the deepest emotions. He must see it as beauty, and must be so ravished by the sight that he cannot contain the vision within himself, but must pub- lish it to others. Imagination, spontaneity, passion — these are not originally angels of darkness, but angels of light. Their highest service is to utter God's mes- sages of righteousness and salvation. Isaiah and John are none the less, but rather the greater poets because they are teachers. And Milton, that
Mighty-mouth' d inventor of harmonies, Skill' d to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England,
as Tennyson calls him, is none the less a poet because he has so definite and dogmatic an aim. With all his conviction, he seeks to conquer by beauty ; he feeds
on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers ;
and in his best writing he is conscious of the rush and impulse of a higher and larger Love and Wisdom.
The scenery of the " Paradise Lost " is so unearthly, and the poem makes natural law so much the sport of arbitrary will, that some have doubted whether Milton can retain his hold upon future ages. We meet the doubt with the simple denial that any one of the world's greatest poems depends for longevity upon its conform- ity to correct science. Homer will never cease to be the world's great epic teacher, even though his universe is peopled with Naiads and is under the rule of the upper and the nether Jove. Virgil will live forever by virtue of his sweet and sonorous verse, even though his
256 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
subterranean realms are reached by an easy and literal descent from the volcanic hillsides of Naples. Who will refuse immortality to Dante because his purgatory bulges out from our southern hemisphere, or to Shakes- peare because he furnishes a seacoast to Bohemia ?
No, the currency of poetry is independent of such matters of geography or astronomy ; the truth it sets forth is truth of a different sort ; its universal and ever- lasting hold upon the human spirit consists in its ability to lift man above mere space and time into the region of the spiritual and eternal. It does this in two ways, and in each of these ways John Milton has no superior. First, he is our greatest English master of literary form. We can well believe John Bright, when he said that his own oratory was built upon John Milton. But since perfection of form can never exist by itself alone, we may add, secondly, that our poet proclaims to all ages the greatest moral message. Behind the form is sub- stance such as never entered into Homer's or Virgil's or Dante's or Shakespeare's verse, namely, the pro- foundest conception of man's apostasy from God, and of his recovery from ruin through Jesus Christ.
Milton has not the spontaneity of imagination that distinguishes Shakespeare, nor has he so large a nature, but his sense of form is more unfailing, and in loftiness of character he towers far above the bard of Avon. Puritan as he is, he is more of an aristocrat, and more of a man, than is Shakespeare. His nobility of poetic form is but the expression of a lofty soul, thrilled to the center of its being with the greatest of possible themes • — the struggle of good and evil, of God and Satan, and the triumph of the Almighty in the redemption of man.
HIS TREATISE OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 257
When this theme grows old, then will " Paradise Lost ' and "Paradise Regained" grow old. But so long as man recognizes and values his own immortality, so long will the poetry of Milton vindicate its claim to be im- mortal.
With most poets, we are obliged to gather their doc- trine from their verse. In the case of Milton, we get additional information from his biography ; but, besides this, we are particularly favored by the fact that Milton, of all the great poets, was the one and only systematic theologian. In his early life he had planned a treatise on Christian truth ; in his last years he composed it. Curiously enough, it was never printed during his life- time ; the very existence of it was forgotten ; at last the manuscript of it, tied up in a bundle with the original copy of his State Letters, was discovered among the lumber of the State Paper Office in London, in 1823. So, after a disappearance lasting nearly a century and a half, the key to Milton's poetry came to light, and Ma- caulay justly signalized the event by the publication, in the " Edinburgh Review," of his famous first essay on John Milton. Though unfortunately it has never yet gained wide recognition in the theological world, this " Treatise of Christian Doctrine'1 is so original and so able a discussion of fundamental truth, that it merits careful attention.
At many points it shows a daring independence, and an anticipation of views only recently propounded or thought tolerable in the Christian church. Yet its doc- trine is proclaimed with a confidence and calmness which are themselves impressive. The importance and
value which the author ascribed to his work are indi-
R
258 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
cated by the fact that he begins it as if it were an apos- tolic general epistle : " John Milton, Englishman, to all the churches of Christ, and also to all everywhere on earth professing the Christian faith : Peace and knowl- edge of the truth, and eternal salvation in God the Father, and in our Lord Jesus Christ." He divides his treatise into two parts — a theoretical part, as to Chris- tian knowledge, and a practical part, as to Christian duty. We can deal only with the former of these. But since our aim is to consider Milton's poetry espe- cially in its theological aspect, we may be permitted a somewhat minute inspection of the great features of his doctrinal system.
First of all, then, Milton is an unwavering believer in the infallibility and sufficiency of the Bible as God's revelation of truth to men. Though his formal teach- ing with regard to Holy Scripture is reserved for the later portion of his treatise, it is plain, even from the beginning, that he assumes the divine inspiration of every part of the Old and the New Testaments. He gives no proof of this, but declares that the word of God carries with it its own evidence. Clearly, he writes for those who are Christians already, not for those who doubt the essentials of the Christian faith.
Yet this rigid doctrine of inspiration is held in a somewhat large and liberal way. It does not claim the absolute truth of every statement of Scripture taken by itself. There are many sorts of composition, and the Holy Spirit can make use of them all. He can set before us the complaints of Job, and the doubts of Solo- mon. " The Bible," says Milton, in his " Areopagitica," " brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against
AN ARMINIAN DOCTRINE OF DECREES 259
Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus." It is necessary to interpret Scripture, therefore ; and every man has the right to interpret for himself. For this purpose he has the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is an inner light, as well as an outer standard. In one place, Milton's words would at first sight seem to sanction the Quaker doctrine: "The Spirit," he says, "is a more certain guide than Scrip- ture, whom, therefore, it is our duty to follow." But, taken in connection with the supremacy given to Scrip- ture everywhere else in his writings, this must be under- stood to mean, not that the Holy Spirit is a co-ordinate source of truth, but only that his interpretation is so indispensable that even the Scriptures would fail to be apprehended aright without it.
Milton, in the second place, is an Arminian, so far as respects his doctrine of the divine decrees. Though God foreknows all events, he has not decreed them absolutely; he only decrees that, if his creatures act so and so, such and such will be the consequences. Here I quote his own words to show how remarkably he could anticipate certain methods of statement now current even among moderate Calvinists, yet statements which in those days would have been thought heresy itself. " Future events," he says, "will happen certainly, but not of necessity. They will happen certainly, because the divine prescience will not be deceived ; but they will not happen necessarily, because prescience can have no influence on the object foreknown, inasmuch as it is only an intransitive action."
Thus far the modern Calvinist might assent, though he would claim that God's decree to create at all, when
26O THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
he foreknew the results, was to all intents and purposes a decreeing of those results, the decree, however, in the case of moral evil, being a permissive, and not an effi- cient, decree. But when Milton applies his principle to the matter of salvation, he takes ground which the Cal- vinist cannot hold with him. "There is no particular predestination or election," he says, " but only general." He means, as Masson has expressed it, that John or Peter is not predestined to be saved as John or Peter; but believers are predestined to be saved, and John and Peter will be saved if they are in the class of believers." Of course this is a denial that God bestows any special grace to make John or Peter a believer ; and so it must be regarded as the denial of a fundamental principle of Calvinism. This Arminian doctrine must be considered, however, as a later development of his theology, for in " Areopagitica," printed twenty-five years before this treatise was written, he had mentioned " the acute and distinct Arminius," but had spoken of him as "per- verted." •
In his views of the Person of Christ, thirdly, Milton was not an orthodox Trinitarian, but a high Arian. Here too, we must recognize a change from the poet's way of thinking in his earlier years. In 1629, in his wonderful " Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativ- ity," he had written of "the Son of heaven's eternal King":
That glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont at heaven' s high council-table To sit the midst of trinal unity, He laid aside ; and, here with us to be,
AN ARIAN DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 26 1
Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
In 1641 he closed his first prose-pamphlet, "Of Refor- mation," with a prayer to the " One Tripersonal God- head," as in that same pamphlet he had called the Arians "no true friends of Christ."
But in the fifth book of " Paradise Lost " Milton has come to be of a different mind ; now he attributes a be- ginning of existence to the Son ; he makes the sin of the rebel angels to consist in their refusal to recognize the Lordship of him whom God in these following words sets over them :
Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;
Hear my decree, which unrevok" d shall stand.
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son, and on this holy hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand: your head I him appoint;
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow
All knees in heaven, and shall confess him Lord.
Here God's eternal decree, to which corresponds an eternal Sonship, is interpreted as if it were a temporal decree to which would correspond a Sonship beginning in time. And though, in the third book of the same poem, we read:
Thee next they sang, of all creation first, Begotten Son, divine Similitude, In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud Made visible, the Almighty Father shines, Whom else no creature can behold ; on thee Impress' d the effulgence of his glory abides,
262 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
Transfus' d on thee his ample spirit rests.
He heaven of heavens, and all the powers therein
By thee created;
we are compelled to interpret this by the later theologi- cal treatise. That teaches us that " the Son of God did not exist from all eternity, is not coeval or coessential or coequal with the Father, but came into existence by the will of God to be the next being to himself, the first-born and best beloved, the Logos or Word through whom all creation should take its beginnings. . . God imparted to the Son as much as he pleased of the di- vine nature, nay, of the divine substance itself, care being taken not to confound the substance with the whole essence."
This is very like the doctrine of Sir Isaac Newton. Christ may be said to be divine, in the sense that he is next in rank to God and has been endowed by God with divine power to create, but he is inferior to the supreme Godhead. It was perhaps well for Milton that his trea- tise was not published in his lifetime, for Arianism was not a heresy which those times winked at. He must have remembered the fate of Bartholomew Legate, an Essex man and an Arian, who was burned to death at Smithfield, March 13, 1613. King James the First asked him whether he did not pray to Christ. Legate's answer was that " indeed he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but not for these last seven years ; " which so shocked the king that "he spurned at him with his foot." At the stake Legate still refused to recant, and so was burned to ashes amid a vast con- flux of people.
In the fourth place, as to Milton's doctrine of Crea-
A MONISTIC DOCTRINE OF CREATION 263
tion, he was a Monist, while yet maintaining the inde- pendence and freedom of the human will. He is not an idealistic, but a materialistic, Monist. All things are forms of matter more or less ethereal. But this matter is not something either lifeless or self-subsistent — it is an efflux or emanation from the Divine Being himself, and it partakes of his indestructibility. " No created thing " therefore " can be finally annihilated." Raphael, the archangel, explains :
O Adam ! One Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, If not deprav' d from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Endued with various forms, various degrees Of substance and, in things that live, of life, But more refin' d, more spirituous and pure, As nearer to him plac' d.
But see how carefully the poet guards himself from pantheistic conclusions. The original matter of which all things are made, being a part of God's own sub- stance, is not evil, but good. Yet " God has voluntarily loosened his hold on such portions of this primeval mat- ter as he has endowed with free will, so that they may originate independent actions not morally referable to God himself." Hear Raphael once more, as he speaks
to Adam :
Son of heaven and earth, Attend ! That thou art happy, owe to God ; That thou continuest such, owe to thyself, That is, to thy obedience ; therein stand. This was that caution given thee ; be advis' d, God made thee perfect, not immutable : And good he made thee ; but to persevere,
264 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
He left it in thy power ; ordained thy will By nature free, not overrul' d by fate Inextricable, or strict necessity : Our voluntary service he requires, Not our necessitated ; such with him Finds no acceptance, nor can find ; for how Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve Willing or no, who will but what they must By destiny, and can no other choose ?
In all this John Milton anticipated the modern doctrine of Lotze, of Dorner, and of Browning.
Fifthly, in his opinions with regard to the origin of the soul, our great poet is a Traducian. In opposition to the current orthodoxy of his time, which was Federal- ist and Creationist, he held that the soul, like the body, comes to us all by inheritance. Indeed, Milton goes fur- ther than this. " He has no faith in soul as separate from, and inhabiting, the body. He believes in a certain corporeity of the soul. Mind and thought are rooted in the bodily organism. Soul was not inbreathed by God after the body was formed. The breathing into man's nostrils was only the quickening impulse given to that which had life already. God does not create souls every day. Man is a body-and-soul, or a soul-body, and he transmits himself as such."
These quotations are not Milton's own words, but they are the summing up of his doctrine which is given by Masson, his great biographer. Special creation is indeed taught pictorially in book seven of the " Para- dise Lost," both with reference to the lower animals and to man. There we read :
The grassy clods now calved ; now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOTERIOLOGY 265
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds And rampant shakes his brinded mane ; the ounce, The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks : the swift stag from under ground Bore up his branching head.
But we must interpret this as only pictorial, for in the fifth book the whole modern philosophy of evolution seems to be hinted at in Milton's verse. He speaks of the various degrees and forms of the "one first mat- ter," as
Each in their several active spheres assign' d,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportion' d to each kind. So, from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes : flowers and their fruit,
Man' s nourishment, by gradual scale sublim' d
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual ; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding ; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive ; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.
Milton's Anthropology and Soteriology are so stoutly orthodox as to excite but little curiosity. He is a be- liever in the universal sinfulness of the human race and in the common guilt of the Fall. Humanity, when it comes into the world, is just what Adam made it by his transgression. Man is doomed to death for his sin.
Die he, or justice must ; unless for him Some other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
266 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
But, in his great love, Christ became incarnate for our salvation. Having taken our human nature by being born of a virgin, he had resting upon him all our expo- sures and liabilities. " He voluntarily submitted him- self to the divine justice," and suffered death, the pen- alty due to human sin. So he made atonement, and re- deemed all believers at the price of his own blood ; as Michael teaches Adam :
Slain for bringing life; But to the cross he nails thy enemies, The law that is against thee, and the sins Of all mankind, with him there crucified, Never to hurt them more who rightly trust In this his satisfaction.
We can object to these statements only upon the ground that the poet conceives of the relation of men to Adam and to Christ respectively in somewhat too formal and mechanical a way. If he had followed his Traducian view of the soul to its logical conclusions, it would have made him a sound Augustinian in his view of sin, and an advocate of the ethical or realistic view of the atonement.
We pass these doctrines, however, to consider, in the sixth place, Milton's Eschatology. Here we can antici- pate his conclusions from what we know of his premises. If soul and body are not two, but one and inseparable, then at death the whole man dies, soul and body to- gether ; and not till the resurrection, when the body is revived, does the soul live again. " The millions who have died since Adam ' -I quote once more from his biographer — " are all asleep, thick and sere as the au-
A DOCTRINE OF SOUL-SLEEPING 26/
tumnal leaves in Vallombrosa ; they shall not wake till the last trump stirs their multitudes. For the dead, however, the intervening time is annihilated. They die ; but so far as their consciousness is concerned, they re- vive the next instant to be alive with Christ forever."
At this point too, Milton's later thinking carried him away both from Scripture teaching and from his earlier beliefs. We may well prefer the doctrine he held from 1637 to l&39 when, in "II Penseroso," he spoke of unsphering
The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds or what regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook.
or when, in " Lycidas," he wrote the most pathetic of all elegies for the friend of his youth drowned in the Irish Sea :
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more;
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves,
Where other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.
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But to the aged Milton all this was fancy and not fact. His dead friend was unconscious and would be unconscious until the morning of the resurrection. When should that morning dawn ? Ah, the poet held, not only to soul-sleeping, but to the pre-millennial advent of Christ. The day of judgment with which Christ's coming is so closely connected in Scripture he believed to be no single day, marked by the rising and setting of the sun, but a period a thousand years in duration. Judgment to him was not so much an act as a long pro- cess, continuing through Christ's millennial reign on earth, and " wound up at last by a new revolt of Satan, his final overthrow, the sentencing of devils and bad men, the destruction of the world by fire, the banish- ment of the bad to hell, and the exaltation of the saints to a new heaven and a new earth created for their enjoyment."
The seventh and last point of Milton's theological belief which I can notice is his doctrine of the church. Here too, there was a constant progress from his early to his later years, and in my judgment, a progress on the whole toward truth rather than toward error. He began by being a Puritan member of the Established Church. When he entered the service of the State he was a strong Presbyterian, and his first political pamphlets were written in the interest of Presbyter- ial government in the Church of England. But he found that Presbyterianism at that time represented as much of intolerance and tyranny as belonged to the Roman Church. In his poem "On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament," these lines occur :
A BAPTIST DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 269
Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy, To seize the widowed whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorr' d ; Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a classic hierarchy ? . . . Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul Must now be named and printed heretics. . . But we do hope to find out all your tricks . . . When they shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.
As from being a Churchman he had become a Presby- terian, so from being a Presbyterian he became an Inde- pendent, or Congregationalist. The ideas of republican civil government that were gaining headway in the army had, as their correlative, ideas of absolute democracy in the government of the church. And then, ten years of further thought and experience made him theoretically a Baptist. Cromwell did not profess any particular opinion, but he was more nearly a Baptist than anything else, and Cromwell's influence was strong over Milton. The poet, however, was more consistent both in his republicanism and in his Independency than was Crom- well himself. Milton feared the monarchical tendencies of the protectorate ; and, on the subject of absolute freedom of opinion, he was a monitor to the Protector. Not only did Milton hold, in theory at least, to the fundamental Baptist principle of separation of Church and State, but he agreed with Baptists in his rejection of infant baptism, and in his belief that immersion in water is the proper form of baptism. Infants, he says,
2/O THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
" are not to be baptized, inasmuch as they are incompe- tent to receive instruction, or to believe, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for themselves, or even to hear a word." Of baptism he thus speaks: "The bodies of believers, who engage themselves to pureness of life, are immersed in running water, to sig- nify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and their union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection." These quotations are taken of course from his " Chris- tian Doctrine," but, in the twelfth book of the " Para- dise Lost," we have the following significant lines:
To teach all nations what of him they learned, And his salvation, them who shall believe Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign Of washing them from guilt of sin to life Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall, For death like that which the Redeemer died.
I am far from maintaining that John Milton was ever himself immersed, or that he ever formally identified himself with any local Baptist church. I must add, indeed, that before the end of his days there came to be a Quaker element in his religion. He became in- different to times and places of worship ; he held the Sabbath to be abrogated, with the Mosaic law of which he considered it a part ; in his latest years " he ceased to attend any church, he belonged to no religious com- munion, and he had no religious observances in his family. Considering the profoundly religious character of his mind," says Masson, "this excited considerable surmise among his friends, but he gave no explanation." The explanation, we may imagine, was simply this : The
A QUAKER ELEMENT IN HIS RELIGION 2/1
blind and dependent old man, who could not attend even a conventicle except as he was led, had simply per- mitted himself, partly from the inertia of failing strength, and partly from dislike of all religious forms even though they were the simplest, to swing to the opposite extreme of no religious service at all. What he excused in himself he could not have justified in others; for, in this very "Treatise of Christian Doctrine," he counts individual membership and support of Christ's church to be the duty of every believer.
We have spoken of the influence of Cromwell, but there was another influence upon Milton's thinking more important still, and that was the influence of Roger Williams. This most lovable man, yet born agi- tator, republican, and Baptist, did a work in England as well as in America — a work that only of late years has come to be recognized. When the Long Parliament had loosened the grip of Charles and of Laud upon the civil and religious liberties of England, Williams, in the year 1643, made a visit to his English home. Twelve years before, he had emigrated to Massachusetts ; seven years before, he had founded a tiny settlement at Provi- dence in Rhode Island. Cotton Mather tells us what manner of man he seemed to orthodox New England- ers to be. "In the year 1654," says that distinguished divine, " a certain windmill in the Low Countries, whirl- ing round with extraordinary violence, by reason of a violent storm then blowing, the stone at length by its rapid motion became so intensely hot as to fire the mill ; from whence the flames, being dispersed by the high winds, did set a whole town on fire. But I can tell my reader that, above twenty years before this, there was a
2/2 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
whole country in America like to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill in the head of one particular man ; ' and Cotton Mather proceeds to say that this man was Roger Williams.
The church to which Roger Williams belonged in Salem had excommunicated him because he had been baptized and had baptized others, establishing thereby the first church in America of the Baptist faith. It was not in human nature — it was certainly not in Roger Williams' human nature — when he returned to England to cease propagating his new faith. The windmill con- tinued to run and set other towns on fire. He pro- claimed, far in advance of his time, the duty of abso- lutely separating Church and State. He was the guest, for a whole year, of the younger Vane. Here he natu- rally came frequently in contact with Milton, Vane's warm friend and admirer. He found Milton, on account of his divorce pamphlets, put out with the Presbyterians, thrown among the sectaries, and, as the poet himself tells us, in "a world of disesteem." Williams now pub- lished his "Bloody Tenet of Persecution, with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience." He was the apostle of Voluntaryism. His book made great stir in London, but it especially commended itself to Milton. From Roger Williams, the poet probably imbibed not only this particular portion of Baptist doctrine, but much more with regard to the nature and the subjects of Christian baptism.
If circumstances had permitted the absolute separa- tion of Church and State in England, we may believe that Milton would have steadfastly argued in its favor. But even Cromwell could not accept the principle of
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF PROTESTANTISM? 2/3
universal toleration — popery at least must be suppressed. And Milton seems to have yielded to the inevitable. After the Restoration, disestablishment seemed to him only a dream. The final doctrine of the pamphlets published in his lifetime is simply this : Since not reason or the church, but the Scripture, is the one and only authority and standard, there must be " no liberty of conscience until and without acceptance of the Scrip- tures, but after and with that acceptance, all liberty." But in his "Treatise of Christian Doctrine," he comes squarely to the ground of Roger Williams, and opposes interference of the State or civil magistrate in any way in matters of religious belief.
Travelers in Italy tell us that even educated Italians refer to the Bible ideas and expressions which are found only in the "Divine Comedy." The popular theology of the English-speaking race is, in a similar manner, to a considerable extent derived from "Paradise Lost." Many notions with regard to the nature of angels and with regard to the temptation of man have come to us, not from Moses, but from Milton. It is well for us, therefore, carefully to estimate the claims of the Mil- tonic theology and its correspondence or non-corre- spondence with Scripture. We have called Milton the poet of the Protestant Reformation. Can we still sub- scribe to this dictum, when we find him, in his doctrinal treatise, declaring himself to be an Arminian, an Arian, a Monist, a Traducian, a Soul-sleeper, a Pre-millenarian, and, last of all, a Baptist ?
We can answer this question only by asking another, and that is : What is the essence of Protestantism ? We reply, Protestantism is the protest of mankind
274 THE POET °F THE REFORMATION
against the substitution of the church in the place of Christ, and of the priest in the place of Scripture. Roman Catholicism had turned means into ends. George Herbert has stigmatized the error in his couplet :
What wretchedness can give him any room, Whose house is foul, while he adores his broom !
The Protestant Reformation, on the other hand, dispos sessed all these intermediaries between the soul and God. It insisted that every man must have personal dealings with Christ. He is not to come to Christ through the church, but to come to the church through Christ. He is not to take his belief from the priest, but from the word of God. He is bound to read and to interpret the Scripture for himself, and he is person- ally responsible to God for the conclusions to which he comes.
This is Protestantism ; this is Puritanism ; and Mil- ton is a Puritan of the Puritans. He will put his con- science into no ecclesiastical keeping, even though it may be the keeping of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. So he thinks for himself and writes for him- self. While he believes all men to be sinners, and sal- vation to be only through Christ, he shows how flexible and daring the intellectual spirit of Puritanism may be. It is not so much the old orthodoxy, as the new the- ology, that appears in him. He is the poet of Protest- antism, by illustrating its large range of freedom, and by turning its rugged doctrine into song.
How much the politics and religion of the Common- wealth owe to Milton may be judged by the utter con- tempt into which they fell for a hundred and fifty years.
THE CREATIVE POWER OF TRUE RELIGION 275
The Long Parliament voted themselves out of office when they determined that none of their number should be members and soldiers at the same time — the Restor- ation wits stigmatized them as "self-denying devils." Cromwell said to the artist, "Paint me just as I am- wrinkles and all!' -the Cavaliers called him "Noll Maggot-face." When that "steel-clad theorist" found that his first levies were eager for prayer meetings and holdings-forth at every halt, he said, " I have a lovely company ! ' and prophesied that they would hold their own against the gentlemen of the king — but in the next generation all this religious zeal became an object of ridicule. Lofty patriotism gave place to swinish self- indulgence. Milton suffered obloquy with his party. Dr. George H. Clark, the biographer of Oliver Crom- well, tells us that "in the year 1710 an engraver was at work in Westminster Abbey upon a Latin inscription to the memory of the poet, John Phillips. He came to the words : Uni Miltono Secundus — * Next to Milton.' The Dean of the Abbey stopped the engraver ; that hallowed building must not be desecrated even by the name of Milton on another man's monument. John Phillips, with his poetry, must go down to posterity without it."
Only during the last fifty years has the world begun to do justice either to the Puritans or to Milton. We cannot understand the one without understanding the other. It is only Milton who shows that the iron faith of the Puritans was compatible with the highest art. His gorgeous verse has glorified the time in which he lived and the doctrine for which he contended. His prose is a defense of the great Protector more telling
2/6 THE POET OF THE REFORMATION
than the "Memoirs of Carlyle." His poetry, the real product of that stalwart age of faith and freedom, does more to prove the idealizing and creative power of true religion than Macaulay's eulogy of the Puritans. The age of the Commonwealth would seem hard and coarse and unrespectable without him. Since Roman Catholi- cism has Dante for its poetical representative and ex- positor, it is well for us, and for the cause of truth and righteousness, that we have in Milton the poet of the Protestant Reformation.
Many years ago, on a summer evening, I wandered through the ruins of Ludlow Castle, in the West of England, where in 1634 the great Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of Wales, celebrated his entrance into office. The castle has its own wall separate from the wall of Ludlow town, from which town the visitor passes to the castle over moat and drawbridge. The immense thickness of the walls, and the strength of the position on a rocky promontory at the confluence of two beautiful streams, were enough of themselves to attract interest. But the goal to which every foot now tends is the great banquet-hall, now dismantled, where, as a part of the pomp and pageantry of the earl's inaugura- tion, Milton's Masque, entitled " Comus," was first represented.
I could imagine the end of the hall turned into a stage; a mimic forest; the young daughter of the house playing the part of the lady, lost in the thickets of the wood ; the necromancer and his rout of monsters with heads of beasts and bodies of men ; the " barbarous dis- sonance of Bacchus and his revelers " ; the temptation of innocence; the invocation of help; the triumph of
THE CREATIVE POWER OF TRUE RELIGION 2JJ
virtue. When that Masque was first acted, Milton was a youth unknown, and the castle honored him. Two hundred and fifty years have passed since then, and now it is Milton who gives to Ludlow Castle all its honor. To the pure ambition which that early poem breathed, the poet was true through all his life, and, in spite of French critics, who make a mock at sin and cannot understand how art and faith can ever dwell together, the words of the Attendant Spirit in "Comus" still express, to those who have ears to hear, the mission of his poetry :
Before the starry threshold of Jove' s court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live inspher' d
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care,
Confin'd and pester' d in this pinfold here
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true servants,
Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats ;
Yet some there be, that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity :
To such my errand is.
GOETHE
GOETHE
THE POET OF PANTHEISM
WHO is the greatest German ? There are two, and only two, who can compete for the honor — Luther and Goethe. In native genius as well as in influence upon the national life we can find points of similarity between them. Both were richly endowed with vigor and emo- tion ; both shaped the faith and the literature of Ger- many.
But their nature and work were more unlike than like each other. Luther's moral and religious instincts mas- tered him; he freed his people from the tyranny of ecclesiasticism, and led them back to Scripture and to God. Goethe was a man without conscience ; he was the instrument of a merely literary emancipation, while he re-established, so far as he could, the reign of pagan self-dependence and of moral indifference.
Luther's whole being was pervaded with faith in a personal and living God, and his songs were half-battles for truth and righteousness. Goethe believed only in a God who was identical with nature; who consecrated the lower impulses of man as well as the higher; who could be approached without confession or repentance of sin ; and his writings effected only an aesthetic, never an ethical, reformation. So long, then, as we judge
greatness by moral and spiritual standards, we must
281
282 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
regard Luther, and not Goethe, as the greatest of the Germans. And yet, since he is the type of a remark- able literary development, Goethe is worthy of profound study. He has been called the supreme literary artist. I propose to speak of him as the poet of pantheism.
"Wilt thou the poet understand ? Dwell thou in the poet's land ! ' No one can comprehend Goethe without knowing something of Germany and its previous liter- ary history, of Frankfort, where the poet was born, and of Weimar, the scene of his greatest productive activity. Until Goethe appeared, Germany could hardly be said to have had a literature of its own. Frederick the Great, while he made Prussia independent in politics, had enslaved his country to French standards of com- position. The traditions of the French Academy, with its dramatic unities and its magniloquent proprieties, had exerted a benumbing influence upon German authors, until freedom and life had almost departed. Pride in their own rich and sonorous language gave place to con- tempt. Their national history seemed hardly worth the chronicling. The land of the Niebelungenlied, the land of the Reformers, seemed to furnish no subjects for poetry or for art. German writers set themselves to copying the classics, or rather to copying French copies of the classics.
But a new breath of life was stirring. A spirit of revolt was in the air. Rousseau and the French Revo- lution began to have their analogues, if not their ef- fects, in Germany. Shakespeare was read, and brought his readers back to nature. Herder and Lessing and Klopstock showed independent powers of criti- cism and creation. But it was chiefly Goethe who, like
FRANKFORT, AND GOETHE'S PARENTS 283
a literary Moses, led his people out from bondage into liberty. It was his masterful originality that first con- vinced his countrymen that there could be a native growth of German literature, and that they need no longer be in subjection to foreign powers.
Frankfort was a fit city from which the movement might begin. It was not only a free city of the Holy Roman Empire, but it was the city where for centuries the emperors had been crowned. Its annual fair brought together the fabrics of the East and the West, and gave a sort of cosmopolitan atmosphere to the place. The burgher class was wealthy and enterprising, per- vious to modern ideas, while at the same time proud of the mediaeval traditions of the town. From this burgher class Goethe sprang. His father was a re- tired government official, with the title of Counsellor. He was a man of education, and he had traveled in Italy. Methodical in his habits, and with little of business to occupy him, he devoted himself mainly to the training of his wife, and his two children, John and Cornelia.
His wife, a bright, airy, pleasure-loving creature of seventeen, found, when she married the wise Counsellor of thirty-eight, that she had put herself under severe discipline. She had to spend most of the honeymoon in learning the piano, and in writing out Italian ex- ercises. She conceived an unwholesome fear of her husband, and she encouraged her children in all sorts of deceptions in order to escape from the rigid rule and scrutiny of their father. She declared that she had no gift for bringing up a family. She coaxed her offspring to be good, and whipped them if they
284 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
cried, without inquiry into the causes either of their goodness or of their grief. In short, she was a child with them.
Her one strong point was her endless story-telling. The evenings were beguiled with all manner of extem- pore dramas and fairy tales. The tales were continuous, like those of Queen Scheherezade When the interest was at its height and the hero or the villain was at the crisis of his fate, the story was suspended for twenty- four hours and young Goethe and his sister were put to bed. His imagination, however, could not rest, and before he went to sleep he had devised an exit from the dramatic difficulty. Next morning he confided his in- vention to his grandmother. She was in collusion with the mother, and when evening came again Goethe would be delighted to find that the story came out just as he had expected. So the child lived in a world of poetry and romance, wonderfully adapted to stimulate his gifts to precocious development.
The elements derived from father and from mother were each in their way admirable, yet each had its draw- backs and limitations. The father furnished to the son a love of order, a persistent industry, an omnivorous appetite for knowledge. Yet with this there was a calm and severe self-dependence, and a disregard of the feel- ings of others when they crossed the plans of the party of the first part. The boy was held to work by the father, as few boys have been. In his eighth year he wrote Latin with ease, and had made considerable progress in Greek and in French. But the mother fur nished the bonhommie, the fresh insight into nature, the charm of fancy, the warmth of feeling, the impulse to
ATTRACTIVENESS OF YOUNG GOETHE 285
expression, which made common things glow with life and clamor to be described.
But with these gifts of imagination and of utterance, there were great deficiencies. There was no reverence and no conscience. The moral idea was almost wholly lacking in Goethe's mother. She hated pain, and she taught the forgetting of sin instead of repentance for1 it. An emotional religion she had, but no prostration of the sinful soul before the holiness of God. There was an easy-going confidence in the future that at times amounted to flippancy and even sacrilege. On her deathbed she was particularly anxious that the raisins should not be skimped in the cake for the funeral, and she replied to an invitation, that Frau Goethe was sorry to be compelled to decline it, for the reason that just at that time she was engaged in dying.
Goethe himself has described what he supposed to be his inheritance from his parents, in the well-known lines :
My goodly frame and earnest soul
I from my sire inherit ; My happy heart and glib discourse
Were my brave mother' s merit
•
That goodly frame was indeed goodly. Though not great in stature, the poet was in point of physical beauty one of the noblest men that the world has ever seen. Jung Stilling speaks of his broad brow, his flashing eye, and his mastery of every company of which he formed a part. When he was young, he never entered a place of public entertainment or passed through a crowded street without finding that all eyes turned toward him and followed him with a sort of fascination. " Voild
286 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
un homme /' said Napoleon, when Goethe retired from his interview with the emperor at Weimar.
A certain majesty of mien was natural to him, a calm, self-contained air, which is described as Olympian, and which gave the impression of inexhaustible resources combined with just consciousness of power. He said of himself that he had an innate aristocracy which made him feel on a level with princes. When the duke made him Privy Councillor and confidential adviser, it took but a little time for the newly elevated burgher to subdue all murmurs of the ancient nobility, and to con- vince them that in serene dignity he surpassed them all. This dignity was not vanity, for Goethe was influenced very little by mere desire for admiration. It was rather a lofty pride, a sense of greatness, an insight into human nature, and a consciousness of larger knowledge and ability than other men possessed. And it does not appear that either in childhood, youth, or manhood, this proud and self-conscious spirit ever learned humility, or was taught to depend either upon man or God.
It was perhaps natural that such a man should have but few male friends. Men of independence were obliged to resign their independence or conceive aver- sion toward a being so superior. But women were ordi- narily enthralled. He came, he saw, he conquered, because his whole bearing seemed to say that he knew their hearts, and that he had a breadth and sympathy of nature which they could completely rest upon. And this was partly true. His greatest gift was the gift of a quick sensibility for all common things. The little things of nature and of life stirred depths of feeling in him. It was not love, it was not reverence ; it was sim-
INCAPABLE OF TRUE LOVE 287
pie emotion. But women thought it was love, and they poured out their love upon him. He seemed to them the greatest star they had ever descried in the human firmament, and in some respects he was. But he ? Ah, there was no star for him but that same Goethe-star- the star of self.
It is said that he had the perpetual habit of falling in love, and the list of his lady-loves is very long. Six- teen of these have been catalogued and minutely de- scribed. Eight of them are scientifically classified as A i, hotly and passionately loved. Five are enumerated as A2, to whom he was very intimately attached. Then follow a great number Bi and 62, to whom he gave a more transient adoration. One might say of them as Sainte Beuve said of Chateaubriand's attachments : " 'T is like the stars in the sky ; the more you look at them, the more you discover." Professor Blackie has gone so far as to say that this talent for falling in love was an essential part of Goethe's genius, that it was insepara- ble from his insight into character and life, and that it is to be commended rather than to be condemned.
I venture to say that Goethe was incapable of any true love, and that all these passions were mere means of self-gratification and self-glorification. There was unquestionably an easy flow of sentiment which simu- lated love. But if love is self-devotion and self-impar- tation, Goethe knew nothing of this sacred and divine emotion. Up to a certain point his nature was stirred, but when he found that the object of his regard desired an exclusive and eternal affection, he drew back. It has been well said that the conception of living for another probably never occurred to him. The bright
288 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
and cheerful mother to whom he owed so much was visited in Frankfort, because Goethe was her son, by every distinguished stranger who passed through the town ; but the son visited her very rarely, and, during the last eleven years of her old age, he visited her not at all. His vacations were spent in other places than Frankfort, though Frankfort was not a hundred miles from Weimar. Nor are his few letters to her distin- guished by any special love or gratitude.
His affair of the heart with Friederike Brion, the pas- tor's daughter at Sesenheim, near Strasburg, was one in which it is difficult to acquit Goethe from the charge of treachery. The sweet young girl gave herself to him ; the parents regarded the pair as virtually be- trothed ; but he left her, without explanations, to wait and pine in vain. It is said that he suffered for years from self-reproach, but no sign of this appears in his account of the matter. What was a small thing to him was a great thing to her. She refused excellent offers of marriage, saying that to have loved a Goethe was enough for one life. She fell into a consumption and died, still loving her early but inconstant admirer.
It would have been far better for Goethe's soul, and far better for his genius, if he had married Friederike. It would have saved him from a long series of illicit connections which did much to benumb his moral sense, cut the wings of his imagination and limit his outlook to merely earthly and temporal things. It would have prevented the composition of those Roman Elegies, which sing the praises of unhallowed love ; it would have made impossible the eighteen hundred love letters to Frau von Stein ; and still more impossible the seven-
INCAPABLE OF TRUE LOVE 289
teen years of concubinage with Christiane Vulpius, whom he afterward took to be his wife. But the radical defect in Goethe's character was that which constitutes the essence of sin everywhere, namely, the overweening love of self. He looked upon others as mere instru- ments, to be used for purposes of self-advancement, and to be thrown aside so soon as he had exhausted their power to be of use to him.
This is the secret of all his so-called love affairs. Under the portrait of the Frau von Stein, when he first saw it, he wrote : " What a glorious poem it would be to see how the world mirrors itself in this soul ! ' He regarded women as furnishing mere studies of human nature. He played upon their affections, as upon harp strings, until he had possessed himself of every melody of which they were capable. He felt more or less, in- deed, but then he was always master of his feeling ; he never by any accident permitted it to master him.
Bettine von Arnim said to Lord Houghton that Goethe treated women as, in his childhood, he treated flowers and birds : pulling off the leaves to see how the petals were joined to the calyx, or plucking birds to observe how the feathers were inserted into the wings. He subjected each woman who loved him to a process of spiritual vivisection, in order that he might obtain liter- ary material. In the case of Kestner and his wife, he repaid the unmeasured adoration which the innocent pair bestowed upon him, by misrepresenting his relations to them in his " Sorrows of Werther," by staining the rep- utation of Kestner' s wife, and finally by berating Kest- ner himself for the indignation he felt at the attack upon her honor.
290 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
Treachery in the case of Friederike, and ingratitude in the case of Lotta, were matched by Goethe's indif- ference to the cause of his country at the crisis of her fate. Napoleon had invaded Germany, and every patri- otic German was eager to drive out the invader. The emperor, with his usual desire to lead men of thought captive in his train, invited the poet of Weimar to an audience. Goethe accepted the advances of his country's enemy, and flattered the conqueror. The poet's de- fenders are accustomed to argue that his greatness made him cosmopolitan ; it was not the invader whom he flattered, but the man of might ; breadth of intellect, we are told, renders patriotism impossible. This is true only if greatness absolves a man from all moral relations. And this was the view of Goethe. Evil and good were alike to be studied and admired. To know the world and to reproduce it in literature, this was his mission. And, to do this efficiently, he must be thor- oughly master of himself, and must reach the utmost pitch of self-culture and self-development.
There was an element of personal character here, and there was an element of philosophic theory. I believe that the character shaped the philosophy first of all, and that then the philosophy in turn reacted upon the character. Let me, therefore, call attention primarily to the moral attitude of Goethe in his early life. A wonderfully gifted child, an object of the father's pride and the mother's indulgence, he early contracted a self- confidence that was phenomenal. Nothing seems ever to have disturbed it.
The only possible exception was in his boyhood, when his schoolfellows and himself wrote competitive verses.
MORAL ATTITUDE IN EARLY LIFE 2QI
He noticed that they thought just as well of their pro- ductions as he thought of his, and for a moment the question occurred to him whether his own estimate of his work might not be a self-deception, as he felt assured theirs was. But these doubts of himself soon vanished, and they appear never to have returned. He was the most imperturbable believer in himself that ever attained literary fame. By virtue of his powers, he regarded himself as pledged to make the most of himself. The object was, not to serve God or man, but simply to gather in to himself whatever of knowledge or of power the world could give, and then to express himself in literature.
This was not merely a spontaneous and constitutional tendency — it was the deliberate decision and purpose of his life. In a youthful letter to Lavater he writes : " The desire to raise the pyramid of my existence, the base of which is already laid, as high as possible into the air, absorbs every other desire, and scarcely ever leaves me." And he held on in this course to the end. In Faust, published only in his later life, one of the most admired verses has been thus translated by Carlyle :
Like as a star, That maketh not haste, That taketh not rest, Be each one fulfilling His God-given hest.
But Boyeson points out that in the original there is no mention of God or of a " God-given hest." The proper translation is : " Be each revolving about his own weight ' -that is, about the center of his own personal-
THE POET OF PANTHEISM
ity. Goethe's life was a self-centered life, and that, not from instinct but by choice.
It cannot be said that this choice was the choice of short-sightedness or of invincible ignorance. At least once in his life he came in contact with a person whose character and aims were formed upon a totally different model. This was Fraulein von Klettenberg, a lady much older than Goethe, and suffering from an incur- able disorder. Her patience and resignation attracted the young man's attention, and she had opportunity to tell him the story of a profound and unmistakable Christian experience. An illness of his own at this time made him more nearly conscious of weakness than he appears ever to have been before or after. The Moravian type of religion which his pious friend, like an older sister, sought to commend to him, made a deep impression, though a temporary one.
It is characteristic of Goethe that this whole story of a life in God, a life of communion with Christ and of constant charity to man, is reproduced in " Wilhelm Meister." But it is found there in strange companion- ship. It is side by side with Wilhelm's experiences behind the scenes of the theatre and with strolling play-actors, that we find these " Confessions of a Beauti- ful Soul," as illustrations of certain facts of the universe that must be studied by a truly educated man. As we read the account of this spiritual and holy life, it seems as if no one but a Christian could ever have written it. But like the sermon of Dinah, in George Eliot's " Adam Bede," this episode in "Wilhelm Meister' passes by. It has shown the author's wonderful ability to enter into phases of human life other than his own. It is the
CONFIRMED BY A WRONG DECISION 293
purely artistic delineation of a character with which he had no inner sympathy. It is a work of the imagina- tion and not of the heart — a mere chef-d'oeuvre of dramatic representation. This touching story of a life devoted to God is followed by other experiences, frivolous or commonplace. The greatest altitude reached is that of labor for labor's sake. No unselfish heart-throbs of Goethe are recorded. On the whole, " Wilhelm Meister " is only what Niebuhr called it, " A menagerie of tame creatures."
Yet the rejection of the true ideal and the clinging to the false cost Goethe a struggle ; it seems indeed to have been the turning-point of his moral life. The only letter we possess from Goethe to Fraulein von Kletten- berg was written just before his twenty-first birthday, and was apparently an answer to her earnest entreaties that he would devote his life to God. It seems to be his half-earnest, half-ironical effort to excuse himself from duty. He says :
I have been to-day to the Holy Communion, to keep in mind the passion and death of our Lord ; and you can guess why I am amusing myself this afternoon, and at last intending in earnest to write a letter so long delayed. . . My connection with the religious people here is not exactly firm : at the beginning I had turned myself very persistently toward them, but it seems as if it could not be. They are so mortally prosy, when they begin, that my live- liness could not endure it. . . People of moderate intellect think religion is everything, because they know nothing else. . . Another acquaintance, exactly the opposite, has been of no little use to me. . . Herr - — , with the cool-bloodedness with which he has always regarded the world, thinks he has found out that we are set in this world especially to be useful to it, that we are able to make our- selves capable of this, whereto religion affords some aid, and that the most useful man is the best
294 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
Goethe did reach this conviction, and he has made his Faust find happiness and heaven only when he uses his powers for the benefit of others. But the develop- ment of self must come first, and this self-development is to be carried on in man's own strength. Prometheus is the picture of Goethe's ideal of life. He is an artistic creator, who works for the interests of men, but he looks to heaven for nothing, and relies wholly upon his own power. From the summer of 1772, Goethe no longer went to church and seldom prayed.
It is instructive to observe that this putting away from him of the distinctly religious ideal, and the sub- stitution for it of the gospel of self-culture, preceded by only a single month Goethe's acquaintance with Fried- erike at Sesenheim. It was because he feared she would hinder his mental growth that he left her to fade and die. He had no sense of duty to a personal God, to hold him true to any human friend. I am convinced that the refusal to yield his will to God's claims upon him explains not only his treachery in this love affair, but the tone of moral indifference that afterward distin- guished his life. Theoretically there was before him the service of humanity. But practically, self-develop- ment and self-gratification, chosen first as means, be- came in themselves the end. Conscience, not listened to, became benumbed. Pleasure assumed an importance and asserted a claim to which it had no right.
" Extreme strictness," he said, " tends to make a man melancholy." The self-denial and self-sacrifice which Christianity accounts to be virtues, Goethe came to re- gard as vices. This is evident from the " Generalbeichte" or " Form of Confession," in which he makes his followers
ACCEPTS THE GOSPEL OF SELF-CULTURE . 2Q5
repent of the sin of having let slip an opportunity of enjoyment, and solemnly resolve never to be guilty of such sin in future. They vow to "wean themselves from half-measures, and live resolutely in the whole, in the good, and in the beautiful." If this were simply, as Professor Seeley claims, a resolve to abstain from useless self-denial, it would be only the common Prot- estant revolt from monasticism, and there would be in it nothing reprehensible. But it was more than that. It was a determination to open all the avenues of the nature to enjoyment, without regard to the restraints of social tradition or positive law.
He would develop all sides of his nature, gain all sorts of experience, taste all the pleasures that life could give. It was a pagan culture which he set himself to attain. He was "the great heathen " of modern times, and he was not ashamed to be known as such. He hid his face from the pain and suffering of the world, as the old Greeks did. The Cross of Christ, with its vicarious love and sorrow, was repulsive to him, for it was a con- trast and rebuke to his self-indulgent, self-seeking, self- exalting spirit. Goethe had in his heart turned away from the true God — the personal God, the God of holi- ness, the God who imposes moral law, the God who offers pardon through Christ — and he had put in his place a God of his own wishes and imagination, a nature- God, a God without personality or moral character, a God to whom evil and good are both alike, because both alike proceed from him, a God who is best served, not by self-restraint and self-sacrifice, but by the unhindered development of all our inborn instincts and powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once lectured to the Woman's
296 , THE POET OF PANTHEISM
Fortnightly Club, of Chicago. Its president said to him : " I regret that you were not here last week, Mr. Emerson. We were discussing Goethe's ' Elective Affinities,' and we should have been happy to learn your views of the work." Emerson bowed, but maintained a gracious silence. His interlocutor was not content, but persisted : " What would you have said to us about it ? " " Madam," he replied, " I have never felt that I had attained to the purity of mind that qualified me to read that book." The " Elective Affinities," a work not of Goethe's youth but of his mature life, was only the frank expression of his loose conceptions of the marriage relation. A thin veil of sentiment partly hides and partly idealizes illicit passion. The sentiment is mawk- ish, and the evil intent is plain. There was in the man a settled love of the impure. He was "the great heathen," in spite of all the light of the Christian dis- pensation that shone around him.
Goethe's history shows that he loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil. It was his heteropraxy that led to his heterodoxy. To one who had made an essentially immoral decision, it was a great satisfaction to find what seemed to be a rational justi- fication of his position. And this he did find in the philosophy of Spinoza. I do not mean that Goethe was a metaphysician or a lover of metaphysics. With his inborn love for clearness and for facts he even derided the philosophic schools of his day. He ex- plains his own greatness by his avoidance of such spec- ulation :
Mein Kind, ich habe' s klug gemacht ; Ich habe nie uber ' s Denken gedacht.
EFFECT UPON HIS PHILOSOPHY
" My wisdom has been, never to think about think- ing."
If he had thought more about thinking, he might possibly have scrutinized more sharply the system which he accepted, might have perceived its incongruity with the facts of human life, might have seen its utter inabil- ity to explain such things as sin and guilt, remorse and retribution. But Goethe did not accept the views of Spinoza upon rational grounds ; he accepted them rather because they fitted in with a previous moral decision of his own. He has himself well said, "As are the inclinations, so are the opinions." And Fichte, whom he ridiculed, uttered the same truth in the aphorism, " Men do not will according to their reason, but reason according to their will."
He read Spinoza in 1774, when he was twenty-five years of age. "I well remember," he writes, "what peace and serenity came over me when I first glanced over the surviving works of that remarkable man. This sensation was still quite distinct to me, though I could not have recalled any particular point. But I hastened forthwith to the works to which I was so much indebted, and the same sense of peace took possession of me. I gave myself up to reading them, and thought when I scrutinized myself that the world had never looked so clear."
Far be it from me to deny that in the works of Spi- noza there is this charm for the mere intellect. His system is a system of Monism. There is but one Sub- stance, one aspect of which is extension, and the other aspect is thought. All the events of the universe follow from the nature of this one Substance, as the natuie of
298 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
the diameter follows from the nature of the circle. There is no freedom, no purpose, no morality. It is a sort of Monism, but it is not an Ethical Monism. " The great systematic work of Spinoza," says Hodge, "is en- titled ' Ethica ' ; but for real ethics we might as well con- sult the 'Elements' of Euclid." And though this one Substance is called God, it might far better be called the Universe.
Hegel was right when he declared the superiority of his system to Spinozism to lie in his substitution of 1 Subject ' for ' Substance.' " The true Absolute," says Seth, " must contain, instead of abolishing, relations ; the true Monism must include, instead of excluding, Pluralism." And this true Absolute, I may add, is a Personal Intelligence and Will, not bound to the Uni- verse by necessity, but freely originating the Universe, and expressing in his relations to free moral beings not only his wisdom and power, but also his holiness and love.
Such a God as this Spinoza knew nothing of, and Goethe knew the true God quite as little as Spinoza. Hutton tells us that Goethe combined the pantheistic view of God with the personal view of man. But I think it is clear that whatever personality is left to man becomes distinctly unmoral. If there is no freedom in God, there can be none in man, and a personality with- out freedom is entirely illusory. Man is only a part of the all-embracing Spirit of the Universe, a Universe eternally changing indeed, but changing according to unchangeable laws. No attributes can be ascribed to God — in fact, we can have no definite thought of him. No special revelation can come from him. He is deaf
AND UPON HIS THEOLOGY 2Q9
to our entreaties. He speaks only in us. It is im- possible to make God an object of love, for love goes out only toward persons. Or, if we say that love to God becomes love for Nature, this means no more than that we love the highest expression of God, namely our- selves. All tends to the exaltation of self and the weakening of the sense of obligation. God is within, not without. There, in the desires and aspirations of the individual soul, is to be found the only standard of morality.
As Goethe had no definite thought of God, so he had no definite expectation of immortality — at least it was no present aid to him. " Such incomprehensible sub- jects lie too far off," he said, "and only disturb our thoughts if made the theme of daily meditation. An able man who has something to do here, and must toil and strive day by day to accomplish it, leaves the future world till it comes, and contents himself with being active and useful in this." And Faust's words only express the poet's own view :
The sphere of earth is known enough to me, The view above is barred immutably. A fool who there his blinking eyes directeth And o' er the clouds of earth a place expecteth, Firm let him stand and look around him well ! This world means something to the capable ; Why needs he through eternity to wend ? Here he acquires what he can comprehend.
Which simply means : Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. There is no eye to pity, and no arm to save.
It is a proof of the blinding influence of sin, that
3OO THE POET OF PANTHEISM
Goethe maintained this plan of life to be unselfish. Because he surrendered himself to self, to toil and learn, to enjoy and to describe, he conceived himself as sub- ject to the invisible Spirit of the Universe, and as working for humanity. But the real nature of that in- visible Spirit he persistently ignored ; the moral law which expresses his nature he put beneath his feet ; the revelation of his will in Christ and in Scripture he con- temned. He describes his religion as one of self-confi- dence, attention to the present, admiration of gods only as works of art, submission to irresistible fate, future hope confined to this world, the preciousness of post- humous fame. This he considered to be the religion of health and joy, religion not of the word, but of the deed — the acting out of man's nature.
It was, alas, only a maimed and stunted nature which Goethe had in mind — a nature in which both the ethical and spiritual elements were wholly lacking. And yet there were grains of truth even in this pantheistic view which gave it a hold both upon the poet himself and upon his readers. The immanence of God was a great truth, exaggerated and perverted though it was by being held in isolation and unqualified by the comple- mentary truth of the divine transcendence. Even the Christian can see the sublimity of the words :
Was war" ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse, Im Kreis' das All am Finger laufen liesse ? Ihm ziemt die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, Sich in Natur, Natur in sick, zu hegen, So dass, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist, vermisst.^
1"Spriiche in Reimen : Gott, Gemiith, und Welt."
GOETHE A NON-ETHICAL EVOLUTIONIST 3OI
What God would outwardly alone control, And on his finger whirl, the mighty Whole ? He loves the inner world to move ; to view Nature in him, himself in Nature too ; So that what in him works, and is, and lives, The measure of his strength, his spirit, gives.1
As Goethe was a monist, so he was an evolutionist. He believed that man is an outgrowth of the animal creation, even as animals have come from plants. There is a blood relationship, he thought, between all organic beings. The oneness of things deeply impressed him. In his conception of the leaf as the typical form of the plant, and of all other organs as modifications of the leaf, he made one of those sage guesses into the mean- ing of nature, which are possible only to a genius. Nor were his utterances mere guesses. They were insights into truth, based upon large knowledge of facts. It was the intermaxillary bone, that taught him the kinship of man to the lower forms of life. But it was just in proportion as he turned his thoughts away from the higher ranges of human life and experience, that he seemed to utter truth.
To the facts of the ethical world he became increas- ingly insensitive. He lost even the moral predilections of his early days, and became a cold and calculating egoist. His aim was to throw off every yoke and to be arbiter of his own destiny. His old age was that of a self-absorbed and fastidious Lothario, who sought con- tinually, but sought in vain, to renew the raptures of his passionate youth. Since all men are victims of circum- stance, and great men are great only because a certain
1 "Proverbs in Rhyme : God, Soul, and World."
3°2 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
demonic influence spurs them on, he never repented of sin — indeed, sin for him was simply the mistake of ignorance, the stumbling of the child who thereby learns to walk.
Nichts taugt Ungeduld,
Noch weniger Reue ; Jene vermehrt die Schuld
Diese schafft neue.
"Impatience avails nothing, and still less contrition; the former only increases our guilt, while the latter makes us guilty anew."
Here was a soul that felt itself great enough to treat sin and guilt and pain and death as non-existent, or at least as matters with which it had no concern. Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no character. If this is true, it is certain that Goethe was the typical German. But I do not hold it to be true. Tennyson was right in his "Palace of Art ". in making Goethe the type, not of German character, but of that irresponsible and godless spirit which cultivates art wholly for art's sake :
I take possession of men' s minds and deeds ;
I live in all things great and small ; I sit apart, holding no forms of creeds,
But contemplating all.
Let us examine the effect of this pantheistic philoso- phy upon Goethe's personal life, and then upon his literary productions. He went to Weimar at the invi- tation of the duke. He was already a famous man. He was made an important officer of the court, and he became the duke's most intimate friend. The duke
EFFECT OF PANTHEISM ON PERSONAL LIFE 303
himself was noted for his loose talk and for his still looser morals. Society in his capital is described as only "imperfectly monogamous." Schiller, in disgust, declared of the women of the court, " There is not one of them who has not had a liaison." Goethe not only did not set himself to better the morals of Weimar, but he fell in with the tide. He was the boon-companion of his sovereign in dances and drinking bouts, and, though his elder by seven years, was his aider and abettor in the maddest of pranks. "All reserve was laid aside between them from the first," says his biographer. "They spent days and nights in each other's society; they hunted, drank, and gambled together. On one occasion they were seen cracking sledge-whips in the market-place of Jena for a wager. At night they fin- ished up with carousals, in which wine was drunk from human skulls."
Goethe was fresh from an engagement of marriage with a banker's daughter of Frankfort — an engagement which the lady had herself broken off on account of Goethe's vacillation and inconstancy. It was not long before he formed his celebrated connection with Frau von Stein, the wife of the Master of the Horse, six years Goethe's elder, and the mother of seven children. This connection lasted for twelve years. Goethe wrote a letter to her nearly every day. She visited with him and traveled with him. No term of endearment which the German language possesses, from " darling ' to "dearest angel," is spared in these multitudinous epistles. The Frau von Stein was not handsome, but she was a woman of birth and dignity, combined with a vivacity, tact, and subtle charm of manner, such as
3O4 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
Goethe up to this time had been a stranger to. For the first time he met a woman who was his equal. He declares that her influence upon his literary work was next to that of Shakespeare. There are those who re- gard the poet's relations to his friend as purely Platonic. We have only his letters to her, not her letters to him. When he took Christiane Vulpius to his house without marrying her, the Frau von Stein rebelled, either at the rivalry or the wrong, recalled the letters she had sent, and so the close friendship between them came to an end. But it had illustrated Goethe's new version of the commandment : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor and thy neighbor's wife."
But before this break-up of intimacy, there came the visit of Goethe to Italy. He regarded the year there spent as the turning-point of his life. He had become wearied of official duties at Weimar, which absorbed his strength, and he longed for freedom to devote himself exclusively to literature. Strange to say, he regarded the traditions and proprieties of Weimar as fettering his development, and he sought in Italy to live a life modeled after pagan art and pagan morals. His ethical sense was so blunted that he could not understand Frau von Stein's objections to the illicit connections which he formed in Venice and in Rome, and which in his letters he frankly avowed to her. In Italy he determined to live in the senses as well as in the intellect, and when he returned to Weimar his connection with Christiane began. What shall we say of a man who, after he has done a young girl the greatest wrong, can yet write to his best woman friend : " What kind of a relation is it ? Who is defrauded by it ? Who lays claim to the
AN EGOTISTIC AND LONELY OLD AGE 305
sentiments which I give to the poor creature, and who to the hours I spend with her ? '
It does not seem to have occurred to him that he owed something to the poor creature he was injuring. As a matter of fact, the humiliating position in which she was put, as his housekeeper but not his wife, led her to intemperance. Slighted by the very friends whom Goethe most honored and loved — he himself
%
permitting the slight — she became so addicted to drink as to make him miserable, even though he made her the slight reparation of marrying her after seventeen years of concubinage. Goethe's two sons inherited the passion for drink from the mother, and the eldest, his idol, died in Rome as the result of a drunken de- bauch. The family became extinct in the very next generation, and so the sins of the father were visited upon his children.
How shall I picture Goethe's old age ? One by one death took from him the friends of earlier days. Schil- ler, with whom he had come to have the most sincere and honorable literary friendship, and who had called him, as he said, out of the charnel-house of science back into the fair garden of life, died in 1805. " Goeth'e himself was ill at the time, and those who were about him refrained from telling him the news. Meyer, the artist, his intimate friend, who was with him, left the house lest his grief might escape him. Goethe divined something of the fact, and said, at last, ' I see Schiller must be very ill.' Says Lord Lytton, in his " Life of Schiller": "That night they overheard Goethe — the serene man, who seemed almost above human affection,
who disdained to reveal to others whatever grief he felt
u
3O6 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
when his son died — they overheard Goethe weep ! In the morning he said to a friend, < Is it not true that Schiller was very ill yesterday ? ' The friend — it was a woman — sobbed. ' He is dead,' said Goethe faintly. ' You have said it/ was the answer. ( He is dead ! ' re- peated Goethe, and covered his face with his hands."
The Duchess Amalia died in 1807, his mother in 1808, his wife in 1816. When his wife was taken from him — the woman who with all her faults had pardoned the long contumely he had heaped upon her, had ten- derly nursed him through successive illnesses, and who had clung to him to the end in spite of his repeated unfaithfulness — the outburst of his grief was terrible. He knelt, we are told, by her deathbed, and seizing her hands said, "Thou wilt not forsake me; thou must not forsake me ! ' The demigod after all was human, and was not sufficient to himself.
Whether as the result of these losses or of his own more mature reflection, there seems to have been in his last days a little quickening of his moral sense and of his desire for a life after death. He was inclined to believe in immortality, " because nature wastes no power." When Wieland died, Goethe consoled himself by thinking that a man so industrious would never cease to act, somewhere and in some way. In 1819, in reply to a letter from Augusta von Stolberg, urging him to turn his mind to God, he wrote :
Let us go on, not caring too anxiously for the future. In our Father's kingdom there are many provinces, and since he has given us here so fair a dwelling, he will doubtless take good care of us both in our future state of existence. There perhaps we shall understand each other better, and therefore shall love each other more.
EFFECT OF PANTHEISM UPON LITERARY WORK 307
To Zelter he wrote :
Let us continue our work till one of us, before or after the other, returns to ether at the summons of the World-Spirit. Then may the Eternal not refuse us new activities analogous to those wherein we have here been tested ! If he shall also add memory and a continued sense of the Right and the Good, in his fatherly kindness, we shall then surely all the sooner take hold of the wheels which drive the cosmic machinery —
or, as I suppose he means, enter upon the work of eternity. It is the principle of continuity to which he appeals, together with the idea that man is made for labor, for accomplishment. Here is teleology. To Goethe work and happiness were inseparable.
But he did not desire to work in solitude, either here or hereafter. Seven years after the death of his wife, and when Goethe was seventy-four years of age, he conceived a passion for a young Bohemian lady, and wished to marry her. She wisely thought the differ- ence in their years to be too great, and he was saved from so hazardous a venture. Thackeray visited him in 1830, when Goethe was eighty-one, and found him still keen in intellect, and, though his hearing was de- fective, his eyesight was unimpaired. But at last the end came. In 1832, the old man of eighty-three was taken with a slight fever ; his mind began to wander ; his speech became incoherent ; he called for more light ; at last he settled himself in the corner of his armchair and fell into a gentle sleep. No one knew at what pre- cise moment sleep became death.
So a pantheistic philosophy produced a life of ever- increasing isolation and hopelessness. The benumbing of his moral sense and the taking of law into his own
3O8 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
hands followed more and more upon his renunciation of a personal God. But I have still to examine the effects of this pantheistic philosophy upon Goethe's literary work. I must express my conviction that in this regard also the result was a narrowing of his range of vision, an impoverishment of his emotions, and a barring of the highest poetic achievement.
It is the judgment of all the competent critics, that the most vigorous delineation of noble character, and the most stirring dramatic work of Goethe's life, was the play that he first published, " Goetz von Berlichin- gen." In the figure of Goetz, the assert er of individual rights and the redresser of wrong, we have a heart-stir- ring picture of the glory and romance of feudal times. The drama pulsates with life from beginning to end. In it we have not only progressive action, but we have vivid contrast. Over against the generous daring of the hero, we have the vacillation and perfidy of Weislingen, and the Satanic arts of his temptress Adelaide. The pangs of remorse are here, and the deepest elements of tragedy. The love of liberty is appealed to so effec- tively that we wonder what would have happened if Goethe had used his powers to rouse his countrymen against the French invader, and then wonder again how the youthful patriotic impulse of the author could ever have been so lost. In Goetz, our poet most nearly for- gets himself, throws his whole soul into his characters, shows us great principles and passions contending together in personal form on the field of action. He has recreated the Middle Ages, with their barbaric splendor and their wild independence. The first pub- lished work of Walter Scott was a translation of this
LOST HIS POWER TO DEPICT REALITY 309
drama of Goethe, and many have thought that "Goetz von Berlichingen ' ' first suggested to Sir Walter the pos- sibilities of a literature of feudalism, and so the writing of the Waverley Novels.
" Goetz" is Shakespearean in its variety, movement, and life ; indeed it was consciously the introduction into Germany of Shakespeare's method and spirit, and the result was a breaking away from French literary fetters, and the creation of a new German literature. But " Goetz " was written before Goethe had come under the spell of Spinoza, and had still some belief in free- dom, accountability, and guilt. From this time on, his sense of individuality grew weaker. The person be- came of less account than the idea ; action seemed less valuable than thought. In all Goethe's works we never have another whole-souled lover of his kind like Goetz ; we never have another self-condemning and self-tor- turing villain like Weislingen. The moral element gradually evaporates; persons give place to abstrac- tions ; and abstractions finally become, as in the second part of " Faust," mere unintelligible symbols.
When Goethe broke away from God and from the moral law, he broke away from real life, and lost his power to depict reality. Not only did his patriotic sym- pathies give place to scorn for the aspirations of his country, but the highest sources of poetic inspiration were dried up. A long step away from truth was the publication of the " Sorrows of Werther." They are the sorrows of a young man who falls in love with the wife of another, and who kills himself because he can- not possess her. It is a long piece of sickly sentimen- tality, so feverish and so maudlin as utterly to disgust
3IO THE POET OF PANTHEISM
the healthy-minded reader. What can be more ridicu- lous than the following :
We went to the window. It still thundered in the distance ; a soft rain was pouring down over the country and rilled the air around us with delicious odors. Charlotte leaned forward upon her arm ; her eyes wandered over the scene ; she raised them to heaven, and then turned them upon me ; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand upon mine, and said, "Klop- stock ! " At once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts ; I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensa- tions, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand and kissed it in a stream of delicious tears. As I raised myself, I looked steadfastly in her face. Divine Klopstock ! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes ? And thy name, so often profaned, why should I ever desire to hear it repeated ?
And yet the ravings of this young idiot were read in all classes of society, and were translated into many foreign languages. "Perhaps there never was a fic- tion," says Lewes, " which so startled and enraptured the world. Men of all kinds and classes were moved by it. It was the companion of Napoleon in Egypt; it penetrated into China. To convey in a sentence its wonderful popularity, we may state that in Germany it became a people's book, printed on miserable paper, hawked about the streets like an ancient ballad, while, in the Chinese Empire, Charlotte and Werther were modeled in porcelain."
It was symptomatic of the time — a time of long-re- pressed and therefore overwrought individual feeling. Goethe, with all his disposition to renounce foreign models, had been reading Rousseau, and the vain and impious Frenchman had encouraged the impulse of
FROM FREEDOM TO CLASSIC COLDNESS 3 I I
Goethe himself to open the floodgates of emotion, with- out regard to the restraints of reason or social order. And as " Goetz von Berlichingen " had prepared the way for Walter Scott and the literature of feudalism, so the " Sorrows of Werther ' ' prepared the way for Lord By- ron and the literature of romance. Byron regarded Goethe as the awakener of his genius, and " Childe Harold" is an English adaptation of Werther, as Man- fred is an English adaptation of " Faust."
But thus far Goethe's work was of the Gothic type. With the higher social life of the court at Weimar, and especially with his journey to Italy, begins the second great period of his literary activity, when the Gothic gave place to the classical. Having infused life into German literature, he felt the need of giving it law and order, and all the more since his acknowledged position as the greatest German poet now gave him the right and the confidence, as he expressed it, to "command poetry." Poetry should be no less spontaneous, but its spontaneity should be in glad and natural subjection to the rules of right reason. These he found in classic lands and especially in Italy. To the south, with its sunny skies and its treasures of ancient art, he looked as to the poet's paradise. This is the meaning of his lovely song, " Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen btehen?"
Knowst thou the land where the fair citron blows, Where the bright orange midst the foliage glows, Where soft winds greet us from the azure skies, Where silent myrtles, stately laurels rise, Knowst thou it well ? ' Tis there, ' tis there, That I, with thee, beloved one, would now repair !
312 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
It is not Christian Italy, with its sanctuaries and martyrs that he longed for, but pagan Italy rather, with its monuments of imperial greatness and its master- pieces of painting and sculpture. The cloudy skies of the North oppressed him ; he sought light and freedom. It is too evident that moral and not simply artistic free- dom was the goal he had in view. He scarcely ever visited the churches, and the history of the church he took little interest in. Dante he had no taste for ; he thought the "Inferno' abominable, the "Purgatorio" dubious, and the " Paradiso " tiresome. It was the calm superiority of Greek art to conscience and to morals that constituted to him its attraction.
Beauty was the one expression of the Infinite in which he believed, and beauty he would worship even at the sacrifice of goodness and of truth. Yet he per- suaded himself that this worship was normal and worthy. There was in it a grain of sense. Religion has too often ignored the beautiful. Truth has often failed of acceptance because the substance has been so belied by the form. Goethe wished to unite the two. And this is the meaning of the mystical marriage, in the second part of his great drama, between Faust and Helen of Greece. It is the marriage of sub- stance and form, of truth and beauty, of Northern life and fire with Southern order and law.
The works of this period are in point of artistic fin- ish and completeness the noblest of Goethe's life. The ordering of material, the exclusion of the irrele- vant, the dignity of the thought, the melody of the phrase, show the hand of a master. " Tasso " and " Iphi- genia ' are sculpturally perfect. One might almost
FROM FREEDOM TO CLASSIC COLDNESS 3 I 3
think them written and acted in ancient Greece, so full are they of the spirit of classic poetry and art. While the play of feeling in them shows us that the motive and idea are modern, the form is statuesque and the ef- fect is that of cold regularity. We long for greater warmth, even at the expense of beauty. With the pa- gan indifference to moral ideas, there is also a deaden- ing of the emotions and a consequent weakening of in- terest. The operation of conscience is the very essence of tragedy. No other fear thrills the reader or specta- tor as does the fear of retribution. Pity and remorse and repentance touch deeper chords in the heart than do any representations of love or joy. But these deeper chords Goethe found it increasingly hard to reach.
The proud serenity of the man disdained itself to feel, and it could not make others feel, the real emotions that make human life solemn and momentous. More and more, as the mood of Goethe became that of the pagan gods, a mood of cheerful optimism and of moral indifference, his works became icily regular and fault- ily faultless, but the life had gone out of them. The wonderful song of the Fates in^'Iphigenia," the trans- lation of which I quote from Hutton, expresses his whole conception of deity and his whole philosophy of life :
Within my ear there rings that ancient song, —
Forgotten was it and forgotten gladly, —
Song of the Parcae, which they shuddering sang
When from his golden seat fell Tantalus.
They suffered in his wrongs ; their bosom boiled
Within them, and their song was terrible.
To me and to mv sister in our vouth
• ^
The nurse would sing it, and I marked it well.
314 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
' ' The gods be your terror Ye children of men ; They hold the dominion In hands everlasting, All free to exert it As listeth their will.
' ' Let him fear them doubly Whom e' er they' ve exalted ! On crags and on cloud-piles The seats are made ready Around the gold tables.
"Dissension arises : Then tumble the feasters Reviled and dishonored To gulfs of deep midnight ; And look ever vainly In fetters of darkness For judgment that' s just.
"But they remain seated At feasts never failing Around the gold tables. They stride at a footstep From mountain to mountain ; Through jaws of abysses Steams toward them the breathing Of suffocate Titans, Like offerings of incense A light-rising vapor.
"They turn, the proud masters, From whole generations The eye of their blessing ; Nor will in the children The once well-beloved Still eloquent features Of ancestor see."
THE FIRST PART OF FAUST 315
So sang the dark sisters. The old exile heareth That terrible music In caverns of darkness, Remembereth his children And shaketh his head.
There had been a Shakespearean period in Goethe's work, a period of fresh original genius ; this had been followed by the classical period, in which form was the great aim of the poet ; there was still to come the Ro- mantic period, in which he sought to combine the merits of the other two. " Faust " was the great work of this period, as indeed it was the crowning work of his life, and the greatest production of the century in the Ger- man language. But it is so, not because it is the work of the author's age, but because it preserves to us the best impulses of the author's youth. As the poet him- self has said, the conception of it came to him as early as the year 1774, when he was twenty-five years old. Considerable portions of the first part were printed in 1790, but the first part was complete only in 1808, and the second part belongs to the poet's last days in 1831, after he had meditated upon it for more than fifty years.
The story of " Faust " had the great advantage of being already a popular one, with elements of the deep- est interest derived from still lingering beliefs in magic, evil spirits, and the possibility of a fatal confederacy of man with the Prince of Darkness. Here was a frame- work in which Goethe's abstract ideas might fix them- selves— ideas which in his mind were ever tending to an impotent generality. The theme was nothing less than that of Dante and of Milton : man's fall and man's re-
316 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
covery. Much as Goethe disliked Dante, our poet de- scribed the purpose of his great drama somewhat as Dante would have described the purpose of the " Divine Comedy"; he declared it to be the progress of the human soul through the world to hell, and then again through the world to heaven.
As in the case of Dante, so in the case of Goethe, the personal experiences of the poet are interwoven with the story. Indeed, both Faust and Mephistopheles are only impersonations of the two contending princi- ples in the breast of Goethe himself. In 1781 he wrote to Lavater : " I am conscious of the fact you so well describe, that God and Satan, heaven and hell, are striving for the mastery within me." And Faust only echoes Goethe's own experience when he says :
Two souls are ever striving in my breast Each from the other longing to be free.
But neither to us nor to the world at large does the interest of the work depend upon its representation of purely personal struggle and achievement. We are moved by it because it presents to us a most vivid pic- ture of universal human experience, sets before us the moral struggle of the ages, reflects our own life with its temptation and danger, promises to throw light upon the great problem of sin and redemption.
" Faust " is great — one of the greatest poems of the world — because the first part embodies sublime truths of human freedom, sin, guilt, retribution, from which Goethe in his earlier life had not yet falsely emanci- pated himself. The cynical and lascivious Satan, who can assume the garb and air of a gentleman when he
TRUTHS OF FREEDOM, SIN, AND GUILT 317
entices to transgression, but who throws off disguise when once he has bound his victim fast, is a true crea- tion of Goethe's genius. The restlessness of a selfish spirit, the impossibility of satisfying its longings with the things of sense, the ever-increasing complications of shame and misery in which the sinner involves him- self, the ruin which all unconsciously he spreads around him, have never been portrayed more powerfully than in the first part of " Faust."
Margaret is the picture of a guileless* child led astray by the arts of the tempter; her love is made the means of her destruction ; her sin brings death to her mother, her brother, her child. In the great cathedral, where she goes to pray, the consciousness of guilt chokes back her prayer, and she falls fainting as she hears the solemn reverberations of the "Dies Irce" In prison, when Faust comes to rescue her, she is found wild with insanity and rejecting all entreaties to escape, while Faust himself, torn with remorse and anguish, is forced by his chuckling demon to leave her to her fate. There is no more pitiful story anywhere than this, and Goethe has told it with a vividness and terseness that are worthy of all praise. Here he has drawn his char- acters from real life, and has been true to the facts of human nature. The first part of " Faust ' must be ranked with " Goetz," as a survival of insight, the price- less relic of an early manhood as yet uncorrupted by false philosophy. While in form it shows the influence of Goethe's classical studies, it has preserved the fresh- ness and spontaneity of his Shakespearean youth ; and it will doubtless hold its place as one of the world's master-works in the realm of poetry.
318 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
It is comparatively easy to tell the story of sin and degradation. Not only the descent to Avernus, but the description of it, can be compassed by a genius un- illuminated by Divine revelation. But the return from hell is difficult, and is equally difficult to describe. It is plain that unity and completeness required an account of Faust's restoration, just as Milton's "Paradise Lost" required for its complement the "Paradise Regained." It is no wonder that the pantheistic poet found the sec- ond part of "Faust" a long and arduous task. He was to show, what no mortal wisdom apart from special revelation can ever show, how a human soul exposed to the penalties of violated law, and in addition inwardly denied, can be restored to favor with God and made like God in character.
To this mystery he had thrown away the key when he gave up his belief in a personal God. From the im- personal God of pantheism there could be no reaching down in sympathy, no atonement for sin, no declaration of pardon, no inward transformation of the affections, no help in the way of virtue. Man must accomplish his own renewal. As he has bound himself to his lower nature, so he must liberate himself from it. And this he can do, first, by self -culture, and secondly, by labor for the good of others. Self-culture is typified by Faust's marriage with Helen of Greece, the symbol of Beauty, and labor for the good of others is typified by Faust's reclaiming of the barren seashore and providing for the happiness of its coming inhabitants. When, in his old age, though blind, he realizes that others will be bene- fited by his work, he finds a moment of true happiness and dies with these words upon his lips :
THE SECOND PART OF FAUST 319
Freedom like life must be deserved by toil ;
Here men shall live, and on this fertile soil,
Begirt with dangers, shall from youth to age
Their constant warfare with the ocean wage.
Oh, could I see my followers ! Might I stand
Among free people on my once free land !
To such a moment of intense delight
I' d fearless say : " O stay, thou art so bright ! '
Anticipating all that future bliss,
I have it now. That moment's here ! 'Tis this !
And this is Faust's redemption. Mephistopheles is outwitted. The bargain had been that whenever Faust should say to the passing moment, " Stay ! thou art so fair!" his soul should thenceforth belong to the Evil One. Satan therefore claims his prey. But angelic hosts appear to claim the soul of Faust for their own — only the body is left to the devil. And these heavenly messengers, as they bear his immortal part away, give the reason for this defeat of the adversary and this rescue of his victim :
The noble spirit now is free
And saved from evil scheming ; Whoe' er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming. And if he feels the grace of love
That from on high is given, The blessed hosts that wait above
Shall welcome him to heaven.
"In these lines," said Goethe to Eckermann, "the key to Faust's rescue may be found — in Faust himself an ever purer and higher form of activity to the end, and the Eternal Love coming down to his aid from
32O THE POET OF PANTHEISM
above. This is entirely in harmony with our religious ideas, according to which we are saved not alone through our own strength, but through the freely bestowed grace of God." Goethe had a habit of put- ting his thoughts into Christian language, while the substance of them was wholly pantheistic and pagan. And though the second part of " Faust ' has often been quoted as indicating its author's final approxima- tion to evangelical beliefs, a careful examination of his writings shows that his meaning is by no means the Christian meaning even in his closing words :
All things transitory
But as symbols are sent : Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event ; The Indescribable
Here it is done : The Woman-soul leadeth us
Upward and on.
The " Woman-soul ' — das Ewig-weibliche — is the pantheistic substitute for the personal Love of God in Jesus Christ. But it has no Christian significance. The God to whom Goethe would lead us is only the Brocken-shadow of humanity itself, projected upon the clouds by the imagination. " Christ," he says, " con- ceived of an only God, to whom he attributed all the qualities which he felt in himself as perfections. God became simply the essence of his own beautiful soul, full of goodness and love like himself, and entirely adap- ted to have good men confidingly give themselves up to him and cherish this idea as the sweetest bond with heaven." This ideal of humanity is not only the only
CONCESSIONS ONLY APPARENT 321
God, but it is the only Christ, for Goethe says also : " Your Christ has awakened my wonder and admiration. ... In him you can now see yourself as in a mirror, and in fact can thus worship yourself."
This ideal of humanity is not confined to Christ, it is more or less embodied in all men. He says :
We are not the disciples of one master ; we have many teach- ers. We regard ourselves as all sons of God, and worship him as existing in ourselves and in all his children. . . My views are not anti-Christian or un-Christian, they are simply non- Christian. . . You think nothing is so beautiful as the gospel. But among all the books, ancient and modern, written by men to whom God has given wisdom, I find thousands of pages as beautiful, as useful, as indispensable for the instruction of man- kind. . . Were I a preacher, you would find me as zealous in defending my notion of an aristocracy as you are now in asserting your idea of Christ' s monarchy.
Every man may have God revealed in him just as Christ had. " What greater gain can man find in life than this, that the one principle which is both God and Nature should reveal itself to him?'1
Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen Als dass ihm Gott-Natur sick ojfenbare f
Yet he cannot conceive of any higher or more per- fect revelation of his impersonal God — which is simply ideal humanity — than that which is found in Christ. "The third religion and the last," he says in "Wilhelm Meister's Wander jahre," "is Christianity." Men have been led up by Christ to an ideal that could not have been believed possible without his aid.
To leave beneath his feet all the shows and honors of this world,
v
322 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
and to keep ever in view heaven, his birthplace and home, might seem possible in a wise and good man ; but to endure the utmost sorrow, nay more, to find means of a divine manifestation in his endurance of humiliation, poverty, contempt, torture, and death ; to lift up the vilest out of their sins and miseries ; to make them capable of loving holiness, yea, capable of attaining holiness — these are facts of which only faint indications had appeared before the time of his coming to dwell with men. And such a coming cannot be temporary, cannot pass away as a fact merely historical. Since human nature has been elevated to a point so high, and has been made capable of rising to such a height, it remains for- ever as a point from which humanity cannot recede. . . The truth that has thus been made manifest has been incorporated and can never disappear. . . Humanity cannot take a retrograde step, and the truth that has once found a divine embodiment can never again be dissolved. . . The Christian religion has strength in itself. From age to age that strength has been exerted to lift up fallen and suffering humanity. With such facts on its side it cannot require the aid of philosophy, but must hold an independ- ent and sublime position — one far above all philosophy.
The central idea of Christianity is that of the suffering Saviour. Carlyle says that he learned from Goethe to seek, not happiness, but the Cross of Christ. And Goethe himself said: "The Christian religion, often enough dismembered and scattered here and there, must at last be found collected and restored to union by the Cross." And he counsels us, in founding our future society, to make Christianity a principal element in its religion.
Here is a would-be heathen compelled, in spite of him- self, to take account of Christianity, yet utterly miscon- ceiving its meaning and value. The fundamental dif- ficulty is in his erroneous conception of God. His God is not the God of holiness, personal and free,
GOD INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM NATURE 323
reflected in the human conscience and demanding obedi- ence to moral law, but rather a universal force indis- tinguishable from nature. Neither God nor man has freedom, and man is but the link in an endless chain of necessity, a victim of circumstance. The moral impulse is only one of many impulses, all of which equally pro- ceed from this Nature-God. The reproaches of con- science and the threats of retribution are alike illusions to which the wise man becomes superior. To follow one's bent, to develop all one's powers, to do the great- est amount of work, to secure the greatest amount of enjoyment — in short, to make the most of one's self and of one's opportunities — this is man's calling on earth.
There is no such thing as sin or guilt, for there is no freedom to abuse, and no moral law to be violated. There need be no repentance therefore. All that is needed is self-development, choice of the highest, labor for others. Faust is admitted into heaven without so much as a pang of repentance or a word of confession, though his life has been stained by lust and treachery and murder. As there is no God against whom he has sinned, so he needs no atonement for his sin. The cul- ture and development which he needs are quite within his own power. He can whiten his own black heart. The leopard can put away his spots, and the Ethiopian can change his skin. In place of the Spirit of God we find at most a nature-power, which is nothing more than the man himself. Superstitious faith in a certain demonic energy takes the place of dependence upon God, and the fact that man is possessed by this demonic energy excuses and even glorifies every passion however
324 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
vicious. Redemption is to be attained, not by the culti- vation of character, but by the cultivation of impulse. The second part of u Faust' preaches the pantheistic gospel of salvation by mere natural development. Evil in time becomes good, and man saves himself.
So much for the substance of Goethe's greatest work. Is the second part of "Faust" as inferior to the first part in form ? Here all the critics and commen- tators are well-nigh agreed. The second part is one of the puzzles of literature. While the general drift of it is comprehensible and there are isolated passages of great power and beauty, we must declare that with increasing age the poet's hold upon reality grew weaker and weaker. It is a world of mere fancy into which he bears us. Not only is all verisimilitude left behind, but all intelligibleness also. A host of symbolic creatures move and talk, but it is a long process of wearisome mystification, the inanity of which only the poet's lack of humor could have prevented him from recognizing. It is not only unintelligible and unreal, but it is also cold. The warmth of life, which pulsated so strongly in Goetz and in the first part of " Faust," has gone out of it. The atmosphere of necessity encircles it. The sun that shines is that of winter.
The drama is purely intellectual. It is like the aged Goethe himself, on whose lily-white hand no vein showed the way to the heart. A pretended wisdom amuses itself by writing for us hieroglyphics, which, when we succeed in translating them, seem intended for the very purpose of concealing the poverty of the thought. As the old man, in his study at Weimar, dis- posed the lights in such a way as to make the most
THE POET OF A MATERIALISTIC AGE 325
effective impression upon his visitors, so in the second part of "Faust" Goethe seems to play the oracle simply for the purpose of imposing on the credulous. He was accustomed to be worshiped, and he had the art to make that worship posthumous by a work of apocalyptic obscurity. In form as well as in substance, we must hold the second part of "Faust'1 to be the most strik- ing of judgments upon the philosophy which it seeks to express. The tree is known by its fruits, and we have in Goethe the proof that pantheism not only depraves the poet's life, but withers the poet's art.
Thus I have tried to show the effect of a wrong moral decision upon Goethe's philosophy, and the effect of that philosophy in turn upon his morality and upon his poetry. It has been a painful task, and I have undertaken it only because the Goethe-cult which has been rife both in Germany and in America has in it such promise and potency of evil. Carlyle and George Eliot are the English representatives of this Goethean school. The Concord School of Philosophy has devoted a whole summer to his glorification. It must be that much of truth and of beauty is to be found in his writ- ings, or this systematic panegyric would hardly be possible.
What then is the great merit of Goethe, and how can we account for his hold upon the thought of our time ? I answer that Goethe is in many ways even yet the best exponent of the thought of our time, with its lawless independence, its new knowledge of nature, its confi- dence in material things, its love of merely sensuous beauty, its aversion to pain and self-denial, its belief that the evils of the world can be cured by physical
326 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
means without the forgiveness of sins or the regener- ating grace of God.
It was Goethe's merit or demerit that he put all this doctrine into attractive form. With a wonderfully clear and serene mind, he learned from French masters to write for the first time a German that was no longer crabbed, but simple and musical as Apollo's lute. His prose has a sweetness and at the same time an intensity that of itself goes far to persuade the reader of the importance and truth of what he reads, and his poetry has in it that sustained dignity and precision, that masterful vigor and repose, which we call " the large style." This was unknown to the German tongue before Goethe's time. Thus he used French means to conquer French traditions and to create a new German literature.
He was one of the very greatest literary artists that the world has seen ; only Virgil and Milton in this mat- ter of form can be called his superiors. He had a deep and sympathetic feeling for the life of nature which might have surpassed that of Wordsworth, if he had only been able with Wordsworth to break from necessitarian and pantheistic fetters and to see in rock and mountain, in the leaves of the trees and the clouds of the sky, the presence and utterance of a personal God. As Saul's companions on the way to Damascus heard the voice from heaven but saw no man, so Goethe heard the voice in nature but did not recognize the per- son ; he perceived the moving panorama to be instinct with life, but he could not discern in it all the living God. So his imagination has been called a passive imagination ; it was not in the truest sense active or
IN HIS LYRICS HE FORGETS HIMSELF 327
creative ; it simply gave back what the senses had given to it ; there was no true interpretation by the spirit. But as a mere reproduction of nature his verse is almost unequaled. Hutton has well said that his lyrics seem to escape as unconsciously from the essence of earth and air, as the scent from a violet or the music from a bird.
It is in his lyrics indeed that Goethe most nearly for- gets himself. Goetz and Faust are his great characters, and in these early works he has put the fervor and freshness of his genius. But because of his necessi- tarian views he was able to understand physical nature more fully than he could understand human nature. The kinship between man and the outward world, our brotherhood with the universe, this he saw and expressed in song. Here abstractions are absent ; the poet throws himself into the feeling of the moment ; there is a flash of insight and a flood of sympathy that carry him away, and when he puts them into verse, they carry us away likewise. What, for example, can be more beautiful than this little night-song :
Hush'd on the hill
Is the breeze ; Scarce by the zephyr
The trees
Softly are pressed ;
The woodbird' s asleep on the bough ; Wait then, and thou Soon wilt find rest !
I am inclined to believe that Goethe's songs are more genuine and lasting proofs of poetic genius than any of his dramas or any of his works in prose. He has said
328 THE POET OF PANTHEISM
that a work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart, and nothing can be more pertinent or true. But I would add that a work of art can be produced by the head only with the assistance of the heart. It is because Goethe's heart was put into his lyrics that they are immortal. Yet even these degenerated as he grew older, and for the plain reason that his heart grew selfish and cold. His Olympian serenity was also Olympian isolation. His calm avoidance of all that would disturb, his ignoring of human sin, his effort to lift himself above all sorrow, constituted a limitation of his genius, narrowed its range, dried up its springs of emotion. As he cut him- self loose from moral restraint and suffered passion to have its way with him, a chill came over his soul ; poetic inspiration gave place to poetic artifice ; his later lyrics, like the second part of " Faust," are didactic and abstract ; the poet, in trying to save his life, has lost it.
Herder, the critic, the preacher, and the Christian, who watched with sadness and growing repulsion the downward progress of Goethe's mind and art, said well, " Would that Goethe could take up some other Latin book besides Spinoza ! ' We see the evil that can be wrought by a false philosophy. Much of the modern notion, so popular in fiction, that love is a passion which knows no law, which reason and will cannot control, and which justifies any means taken for its gratification, is directly or indirectly the result of the teaching of Goethe. He has done much to spread about immoral desire a glamour of refinement, and to abate the blame of transgression by charging it to nature. He has made
THE ENSLAVER OF HIS COUNTRY 329
moral and aesthetic culture a substitute for religion, and has substituted self-development for the service of God.
I do not deny that in doing this he has incidentally called attention to human impulses and needs which the current Christianity of his time too much neglected. The Puritan turned from the moss-rosebud saying, "I have learned to call nothing on earth lovely." But nature is beautiful notwithstanding. Art has its claims, and we are bound to have a proper regard for self. While Goethe moves in the sphere of the merely aesthetic and worldly, he has surprising insight and wis- dom ; whole books of proverbs and maxims for the con- duct of life have been drawn from his writings. He has been called the wisest man that ever lived without a conscience, without humility, and without faith. But his wisdom is simply the wisdom of this world that is foolishness with God, and that is foolishness likewise to any man who looks beneath the surface and who sees its results in Goethe's character and in Goethe's literary work. He himself said that his writings were one con- tinued confession. We must also say that his writings are one continuous judgment and condemnation of his philosophy and his life.
Goethe desired, above all other honors, that he might be called by the name of Befreier, or Liberator. In one sense he merits the title ; he has freed his country from its bondage to French literary models, and has opened the way for a native German literature. Be- liever in necessity, as he was, and resigning himself to whatever force was uppermost, he could not be a patriot. And yet, like Dante, by uniting his country in a liter- ary bond, he indirectly and unintentionally prepared his
33O THE POET OF PANTHEISM
country for political unity. Hermann Grimm tells us in fact that a politically united Germany was made possible only by Goethe and Schiller. While we grant, however, that Goethe may be called directly the literary liberator, and indirectly the political liberator, of Germany, I must record my conviction that in other and more important respects he was the enslaver of his country. I believe that the materialistic tendency which has been felt throughout the century in Germany, and which has almost superseded the older idealistic and spiritualistic teaching of the universities, is in large part due to the influence of Goethe.
Multitudes of youth have been captivated by his sen- suous and fatalistic spirit. How vast a power the great- est writer of a nation can exert, was never more strik- ingly illustrated than in the case of Goethe. Sad to say, he has not used that power, as Shakespeare did, to depict the actual facts of human nature — he has used it rather to set before us a humanity devoid of conscience and freedom, and the helpless prey to what- ever demonic impulse may arise within. He has not used that power, as Milton did, to impress upon men's minds the central truths of the Christian scheme, man's willful abuse of freedom, his fall into sin and guilt and misery, his recovery by the reaching down of infinite divine grace — he has used it rather to weaken human faith in divine revelation and in the one and only means of man's restoration.
To bring a whole nation, and to some extent a whole world, into the toils and under the bonds of a pantheistic philosophy that knows no personal God, no freedom of will, no real responsibility for sin, no way of pardon
THE ENSLAVER OF HIS COUNTRY 33!
and renewal, no certain hope of immortal life, is to be the agent of a moral and spiritual enslavement worse by far than any enslavement that is merely physical or political, because it is enslavement of the soul to false- hood and wickedness, and sure in due time to bring physical and political enslavement in its train. Over the door of the house where Goethe was born was carved a lyre and a star. He loved to think it a prog- nostication of his greatness as a poet. But the star
was
A star that with the choral starry dance
Joined not, but stood, and standing saw The hollow orb of moving Circumstance
Rolled round by one fixed law.
And Tennyson is not too severe when he intimates that this abuse of intellectual power and this self-exaltation above truth and duty are signs not of human, but of diabolic greatness. It is Goethe whom he calls
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain, That did love Beauty only, or, if Good, Good only for its beauty.
WORDSWORTH
WORDSWORTH
THE POET OF NATURE
MATTHEW ARNOLD has well said that Wordsworth is one of the chief glories of English poetry, and he adds that by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. When we think of what England has done for liberty and for religion, it may seem at first thought extrava- gant to call her greatest gift to the world the gift of poetry. But it is her poetry, in which England's lib- erty and religion are best expressed. Matthew Arnold himself suggests the point of view from which his words can be interpreted, when he says that "poetry is the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter the truth."
I wish to compare with this a passage from John Stuart Mill. The philosopher and economist, in a time of great mental depression, sought relief in the reading of poetry. He read Byron, but he found his own ennui and discontent only reflected to him. He turned to Wordsworth. There he found medicine for his state of mind, because Wordsworth's poems fur- nished the culture of the emotions which he was in quest of. They awakened not only the love of rural beauty but a greatly increased interest in the common destiny of human beings.
" The result was, " said Mr. Mill, " that I gradually, but com- pletely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never
335
336 THE POET OF NATURE
again subject to it. I long continued to value Wordsworth, less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he."
The characterization of Wordsworth as " the poet of unpoetical natures" is itself a stroke of genius; and, by combining the thought of it with Arnold's dictum about poetry, we may get a new understanding of Words- worth's exact place in literature. Our poet was primar- ily a seeker after truth. But he did not regard truth as consisting solely or mainly in mere facts, or in mere abstract propositions. To him truth was reality, the inner life of things. The world of nature and of man expressed not only thought but feeling, and this thought and feeling was the thought and feeling of a Being greater than the world, because he was the Maker and the Life of the world. The macrocosm could be inter- preted- by the microcosm, for macrocosm and microcosm alike were modes in which the Infinite One made him- self known to us. It is the great and unique merit of Wordsworth that he first used the common, unsophisti- cated, primary, and universal sympathies of humanity, to interpret the physical universe in which humanity has its dwelling-place. He is the poet of nature, be- cause he perceives the kinship between nature and man by reason of their common origin and life in God.
There was need enough of such poetry as this, for the thought of the world had for many a day tended to sunder nature from God, and so to sunder nature from
HIS RELATION TO PRECEDING THOUGHT 337
man. The Hebrews saw God in nature. They said, "The God of glory thundereth," and "The heavens declare the glory of God." Our Lord declared that God fed the birds, and clothed the grass of the field with beauty. Paul and John recognized the presence of God in his works. As all men "live, move, and have their being" in God, so all things "consist" or hold to- gether in Christ, the one great Revealer of God ; "whatever has come into being was life in him." The Eastern Church in general held more strongly to this conception of God's immanence than did the Western ; Augustine and Calvin unduly emphasized the forensic element, and made God's operation more a matter of law than of life. So Puritan theology led by natural reaction to deism, with its distant God and its automatic universe. Upton has said :
The defect of deism is that on the human side it treats all men as isolated individuals, forgetful of the immanent divine nature that interrelates them and in a measure unifies them, and that on the divine side it separates man from God and makes the relation between them a purely external one.1
On this view, man loses his dignity, and the sympa- thies and aspirations which men have in common cease to be matters of interest or concern. But nature fol- lows the fate of man. It becomes a curious machine, whose mathematics may be studied, but whose life and glory have departed. A universe which can get on without God has no longer anything which irresistibly attracts the mind of man. There is no affinity between man and nature ; nature has no voice with which to stir man's heart ; nature indeed is dead.
1 " Hibbert Lectures," 287. • W
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These were the influences which had come to reign in English literature before Wordsworth began his work. A formal and mechanical versifying had taken the place of the Elizabethan vigor and insight. Pope showed what talent could do without genius, what mere taste could do without a lofty faith. But a new breath of life swept over the world. The French Revolution was the sign of it in politics ; the transcendental school of Kant and Fichte and Schelling was the sign of it in philosophy ; Burns, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Words- worth, were signs of it in English literature. The great- est of these poets was Wordsworth. He was greatest because he, most distinctly of all poets up to his time, apprehended the principle of all true poetry and most consistently and continuously applied it to the description of nature and of man. Henry Crabb Robinson states the principle, when he says that "by the imagination the mere fact is connected with that Infinity without which there is no poetry." Wordsworth regarded it as his sacred mission to show that the world is full of beauty and meaning because it is throbbing with the life of God. Nothing is insignificant or valueless, for each thing manifests the "Wisdom and Spirit of the universe." "Amongst least things he had an under- sense of the greatest." We see in him the true bio- logical impulse which since his day has transformed science as well as literature, and Emerson only ex- pressed Wordsworth's leading thought, when he wrote,
In the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings.
It is fortunate that we have in "The Prelude" the
MEDITATION UPON NATURE 339
poet's account of the growth of his own mind. For frank unfolding of the innermost experiences of a great man and a great writer, it holds much the same place in literature as that which is held in philosophy by Des- cartes' "Treatise on Method," and in theology by the " Confessions " of Augustine. " The Prelude " is a poem of nine thousand lines, yet it is intended only as a sort of ante-chapel to a great cathedral upon which Words- worth intended to spend the main labor of his life, and to which his minor poems were to sustain the relation of niches, chantries, oratories, and altars. "The Ex- cursion," nearly eleven thousand lines in length, was the only part of the great structure which the poet actually completed. It was meant to be the second book of the poem. "The Recluse," of which only fragments were written, was to be the first book. The third book never existed except in Wordsworth's imagination. In many ways " The Prelude," though long and occasionally pro- saic, is an invaluable record. The poet has there dis- closed himself more perfectly than Dante or Milton ever did. As we read, we see a vigorous and healthy, yet a calm and quiet spirit developing under our eyes, even though we fail to see the justice of Coleridge's praise when he described the poem as
An Orphic song, indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts, To their own music chanted.
A peasant near Rydal was asked during the poet's lifetime : " What sort of a man is Mr. Wordsworth ? ' and the reply was : " Oh, sir, he goes humming and muffling and talking to himself; but whiles he's as sen-
34O THE POET OF NATURE
sible as you or me!' In this matter of meditation up- 'on nature, the child was father of the man. From his earliest youth he ranged the open heights, rowed upon the lake, angled in lonely brooks, or " alone upon some jutting eminence' watched for the gleams of dawn. So he tells us "the foundations of his mind were laid." At first he passively received, passively enjoyed. But at length he became conscious that "a plastic power abode within him," "a local spirit of his own, at war with general tendency." The creative impulse began to awaken :
An auxiliar light,
Came from my mind, which on the setting sun Bestowed new splendor.
But even this creation was reproduction, for he was able to create only because of the pre-existing harmony between man and nature. " He began to construe the universal life as quasi-human," says Professor Knight, his biographer. "Delight in nature for herself was ex- changed for delight in nature for what she revealed of man. The process of idealization, or rather, of inter- pretation, was matured, only when he detached himself from nature and realized the separateness and the kin- dredness together."
As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained,
I looked for universal things, perused
The common countenance of earth and sky ;
Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace
Of that first paradise whence man was driven ;
And sky, whose beauty and whose bounty are expressed
By the proud name she bears — the name of heaven.
I called on both to teach me what they might ;
HE SOUGHT TRUTH MORE THAN BEAUTY 34!
Or turning the mind in upon herself
Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts
And spread them with a wider creeping ; felt
Incumbencies more awful, visitings
Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,
That tolerates the indignities of time
And, from the center of eternity
All finite motions overruling, lives
In glory immutaole.
Yet, with all this love for nature and insight into her meaning, Wordsworth was a homely and almost a rustic poet. It was truth that he sought, even more than beauty. And he tended to express the truth he saw in common phrase. One can hardly avoid the conviction that the meager ancTpTain surroundings of his childhood, and the lack of cultivated society, made him tolerant of rude and inharmonious speech, and ready to lapse into bare and dull expression, when the creative impulse within him grew weak. He had little or no sense of humor, to preserve him from unconsciously degenerat- ing into commonplace. Many of his minor poems are like Sunday-school talks in words of one syllable — they underrate the intelligence of his readers. Even in the larger poems there is not enough of linked sweetness to make up for the fact that they are so long drawn out. The truth is that all the best work of Wordsworth was done from his twenty-eighth to his thirty-eighth year. After that decade had passed, the spontaneity of his verse seemed to vanish, while yet his indomitable indus- try remained. From thirty-eight to eighty, a long course of forty-two years, he was fruitlessly chasing poetry, as the boy pursues the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.
342 THE POET OF NATURE
The sense of a vocation dawned upon him as early as his nineteenth year. He was then a student of St. John's College, Cambridge. He had brought thither a robust vitality, a habit of solitary wandering in the woods and fields, and a genuinely meditative spirit. He was a great reader, but he was no great scholar. Yet university life strongly influenced him. As he sat in the chambers of Milton, or looked upon the statue of Newton, the past got hold upon him. He says :
I could not print
Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps Of generations of illustrious men, Unmoved.
He became aware of the fact that he had a peculiar gift of observation and insight, and that he might be able, " else deeply sinning," to leave behind him some work which "pure hearts would reverence." His con- ception of his office was no mean or humble one. He held that no poet could be great unless he was a teacher as well as a versifier, and unless the result of his teach- ing was the ennobling of character. He regarded Sir Walter Scott, not as a poet, but as a novelist in verse, because he had " never written anything addressed to the immortal part of man " ; and Wordsworth was not inconsistent with himself when, on Scott's departure to Naples in search of health, he declared that the might
Of the whole world' s good wishes with him goes ;
Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptred king or laureled conqueror knows,
Follow this wondrous Potentate.
So he did not think Goethe a great writer. Homer
THE POET OF NATURAL RELIGION 343
and Shakespeare he called universal. " Goethe," he said, "tried the universal, without ever being able to avoid exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. His moral perceptions were not sufficiently clear to make him anything but an arti- ficial writer." Wordsworth has expressed the sense of his mission in the words :
He serves the Muses erringly and ill
Whose aim is pleasure light and fugitive.
O that my mind were equal to fulfill
The comprehensive mandate which they give !
Vain aspiration of an earnest will !
Yet in this moral strain a power may live.
And, like Milton, he invokes the Spirit of God to help his high endeavor :
Descend, prophetic Spirit ! that inspirest
The human soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come, and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty poets ; upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight ; that my song
With starlike virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence — and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect
Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere !
It must not be inferred that Wordsworth was a specif- ically Christian poet. It was not his business to put dogma into verse, or to buttress any particular ecclesi- astical system. He valued the Church of England as a safeguard of popular morals, a comforter of the poor, an elevator of national ideals, and a noble inheritance
344 THE POET OF NATURE
from the past. " I would lay down my life for the church," he said. But it is still true that he did not often attend the services of the church. We are re- minded of the Polish nobleman who was ready to die for his country, but who could not be prevailed upon to live in it. It was not so much the Christian scheme which the poet conceived himself as set to teach. It was rather the great truths of natural religion, which lie at the basis of the Christian scheme indeed, but which may be treated apart from their relation to a super- natural revelation. This is his meaning when he says :
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
God is manifested in nature. He may be recognized in the unity, law, order, harmony, of the world. Our own intelligence and affection find even in the physical uni- verse another and a higher intelligence and affection coming out to meet us. The storm reveals a power, and the sunshine reveals a love, which gives us joy. This recognition of nature's divinity, and the submission of the soul to its tranquilizing and restoring influence, is what Wordsworth means by " natural piety."
This is not Christianity, but it is not inconsistent with Christianity. God has not left himself without a witness, even where the light of Christ's gospel has never shone. Paul declares that " the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are plainly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity." And these pre- suppositions of Christianity are of inestimable impor- tance.
NOT INCONSISTENT WITH CHRISTIANITY 345
Men will not believe in supernatural revelation, un- less they first believe in a God from whom such super- natural revelation may come. The tendency of deistic thought has always been to render Christianity an im- pertinence and an absurdity. Wordsworth's poetry was one long protest against this banishment of God from ]|is universe. Because he believes in " Nature's self, which is the breath of God," he can also believe in "his pure word, by miracle revealed." And rather than abandon this pure elementary faith in a divine life hidden beneath the raiment of the natural world, he would go back to heathen religion, because that still preserved some remnants of the truth.
Great God ! F d rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Wordsworth's biographer tells us that "'The Eclectic Review' criticised 'The Excursion' as pointedly in- sinuating that nature is a sort of God, and that the love of nature is a sanctifying process." It regarded the religious character of the poem as doubtful. All such criticism savors strongly of Philistinism. It is like denouncing Humboldt's "Cosmos" as atheistic, because the author confines himself to physics and never once mentions the name of God. We must not judge a writer by what he does not say, but only by what he does say. Let us grant him the right to choose his province. Wordsworth's province was the religion of nature, and there he was great. It was well that he did
346 THE POET OF NATURE
not attempt theology, for there he was not great. Yet he was a believer in the simple facts of Scripture. He left their systematizing and their interpretation to others. Perhaps the best understanding of his position may be gotten from his own words. He writes :
Theologians may puzzle their heads about dogmas as they will ; the religion of gratitude cannot mislead us. Of that we are sure. ; and gratitude is the handmaid to hope, and hope the harbinger of faith. I look abroad upon nature, I think of the best part of our species, I lean upon my friends, and I meditate upon the Scripture, especially the Gospel of St. John, and my creed rises up of itself, with the ease of an exhalation, yet a fabric of ada- mant
No account of Wordsworth's life and work would be complete or even correct, which did not make mention of two other persons who had the largest influence upon him. One of these was his sister Dorothy, and the other was Coleridge. The death of the poet's mother when he was eight years of age, and the death of his father when he was fourteen, had broken up the family and had separated its members from one another. They lived with a grandfather or with an uncle. But after Wordsworth finished his course at Cambridge, he and his sister began their simple life together, and led that simple life for more than sixty years. It was one soul in two bodies. When the poet married Mary Hutchinson, the quiet and kindly friend of his child- hood, brother and sister were still as inseparable as ever.
It is doubtful whether literary history can furnish another such instance of absolute devotion as that which Dorothy Wordsworth showed toward her brother. She
DOROTHY COMPLEMENTED HER BROTHER 347
lived only in him and for him. The labor of writing was irksome to him ; she put down upon paper line upon line as the words fell from his lips. Endless copy- ing of manuscript, after endless correction, occupied her often far on into the night. She was the constant companion of his walks at all hours of daylight or dark, in all weathers, with little care for proper clothing or food, of which indeed there was never too much, for the Wordsworths lived for years at Grasmere on only seventy pounds a year. They were poor, and were not ashamed to be poor. Yet Coleridge said : " His is the happiest family I ever saw." They lived for a great end, the development of a noble poetic gift, the discovery and expression of the beauty and meaning of the world. Wordsworth was "very much resigned to his own com- pany." He would often walk on in sublime meditation, while wife and sister submissively followed, hopefully waiting for the utterances of the oracle. Coleridge was often with them. The four discussed every aspect of the scenes about them. Then they stopped to eat their bread and cheese. Dorothy says in her diary: "We rested upon a moss-covered rock, rising out of the bed of the river. William and Coleridge repeated and read verses. I drank a little brandy and water, and was in heaven."
Dorothy Wordsworth, as her diaries show, was a woman of genius. She furnished the complement to her brother; he found in her the sprightliness and sweetness which in him were somewhat lacking. She was no merely passive recipient, for she was more full of suggestion even than he. Exquisite sensibility was united with extraordinary insight, the deepest feeling
348 THE POET OF NATURE
with the minutest observation. Innocent, ardent, lov- ing, the secret of nature seemed disclosed to her, but all the treasure that she found she laid at her brother's feet. There was a sort of communism between them. He used her journals at times for the material of his poems, and even extracted bits of it for his letters, because he could not compose anything better. Dorothy did every- thing for him, even wrote his love letters, since he detested correspondence. There was little of romance in him ; there was much of romance in her. He could go to the cemetery and look at the tombstones a few hours after his wedding, and that in spite of the fact that the exquisite poem, " She was a Phantom of De- light," was written for his bride. His sister did much to correct this austerity. And though, like Milton, he did not greatly devote himself to his sister or to his wife, he has recognized his debt to Dorothy in his poems. He says, for example:
I too exclusively esteemed that love And sought that beauty which (as Milton sings) Hath terror in it Thou didst soften down This oversternness.
And it was of Dorothy that he wrote :
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares and delicate fears, And love and thought and joy.
It could be wished that the record of such lifelong sisterly devotion could be written without intimation that harm of any sort had come from it. But the poet himself was rendered too autocratic and seclusive, while
THE INFLUENCE OF COLERIDGE 349
Dorothy's health was injured by exhausting walks and long exposures to wind and rain. Wordsworth's own robust constitution could endure the strain, but with his sister the intense spirit "o'erinformed its tenement of clay," and her last years were years of mental alienation, with only occasional gleams of smoldering genius. Yet it was she who, at an earlier day, when her brother was for a time skeptical, depressed, bewildered, almost ready to give up his vocation in despair, brought him back to calmness and to faith. " Then it was," he says :
Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good,
That the beloved sister in whose sight
Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice
Of sudden admonition — like a brook
That did but cross a lonely road, and now
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
Companion never lost through many a league —
Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self ; for though bedimmed and changed
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded and a waning moon :
She whispered still that brightness would return ;
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth.
Coleridge too must be mentioned, because he con- tributed to Wordsworth an element of ideality which would otherwise have been imperfectly developed. We must remember their early friendship and their great influence upon each other. Damon and Pythias had scarcely a warmer affection. Here too, each furnished what the other lacked. Coleridge had more of the native poetic instinct, but he had also the discursive
THE POET OF NATURE
and philosophic mind. It may be questioned whether we should ever have found in Wordsworth the meta- physical element which here and there characterizes his poems, if it had not been for his long communings with Coleridge. Coleridge was "the Friend' to whom the outpourings of heart in "The Prelude" were addressed. On the other hand it was Wordsworth who gave to Coleridge whatever practical wisdom he ever had, and who taught him that
to the solid ground Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.
Wordsworth himself was ignorant enough of the affairs of this life, but Coleridge was an infant beside him. When the two tried for a half-hour to get the collar off a horse without ever thinking of turning it, they showed that they were more familiar with " the light that never was on sea or land," than they were with the lights of modern horsemanship. Cole- ridge had imagination, and could write his "Hymn at Chamounix," with its sublime description of the ava- lanche, without ever having seen either Chamounix or an avalanche. But Wordsworth taught him something of the observation of nature. Wordsworth suggested those realistic features of the "Ancient Mariner," the shooting of the albatross and the navigation of the ship by the dead men. In fact, the interpretation of nature as the continual manifestation of God may possibly be the echo of Wordsworth's thought. At any rate, Cole- ridge had in some way learned the secret which Plato and Plotinus had taught long before, and in his "^Eolian Harp " had written :
THE BREAKING OF THEIR INTIMACY 351
And what if all of animated Nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o' er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one -intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each and God of all.
It seems a great pity that these two gifted souls, so fitted to supplement each other's virtues and correct each other's faults, should, after long and loving inter- course, have fallen apart and ceased greatly to influence each other. It was partly the fault of circumstances, partly the fault of natural temperament. Coleridge's marriage was unhappy, and separation from wife and family made him a wanderer. Opium, taken at first to ease pain, became a fearful tyrant ; conscience became dull, and will became impotent ; to know that a thing ought to be done was the very reason why the doing of it was impossible. Coleridge fled from Wordsworth's compassion, and an estrangement began which was never wholly removed. Possibly it was this estrange- ment which Coleridge had in mind when he wrote :
Alas, they had been friends in youth ; But whispering tongues can poison truth ; And constancy lives in realms above ; And life is thorny ; and youth is vain ; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart' s best brother ; They parted — ne' er to meet again ! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining. They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
352 THE POET OF NATURE
\ Like cliffs that had been rent asunder ; A dreary sea flows now between ; — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
And yet each loved the other to the end. The sepa- ration was due to mutual knowledge of each other's limitations. Coleridge disliked Wordsworth's excessive frugality, and spoke of his occasional fits of hypochon- dria. Yet he called Wordsworth " the first and greatest philosophical poet." Wordsworth on the other hand thought Coleridge "destined to be unhappy." When Coleridge died, the poet felt that he could not write an elegy ; the tie between them was too close, the pain was too overwhelming. Coleridge, as Dr. Knight had said, "was his earliest and closest friend, and his most illus- trious contemporary in English literature." All he could venture to say of him, a year and a half after he was dead, is in these following words :
Every moral power of Coleridge Is frozen at its marvelous source ; . . The rapt one of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature, sleeps in earth.
The three poems which mark the highest poetical attainment of Wordsworth are the "Intimations of Immortality," "Tintern Abbey," and "Ode to Duty." The first has in it most of philosophy, the second most of religion, the third most of morality. Together they furnish an admirable test of the poet's range and qual- ity. So lofty and noble are they, that we are tempted to wish, for his fame's sake, that he had never written
" INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY* 353
anything else, and that these shining mountain peaks had not required so vast a body of commonplace earth and rock for their foundation. Yet these great poems are the outgrowth of Wordsworth's whole literary life and work, and they cannot be understood by themselves. Let us take them successively and subject them to criti- cal examination, in the light of what we have learned of the poet's mind and aim.
The " Intimations of Immortality" is an attempt to show that man must live after death because he lived before he was born. The argument is as old as Plato. In the " Phaedo " this is the chief and most impressive consideration upon which the sublime faith in immor- tality is based. Plato held that intuitive ideas, such as ideas of space, time, cause, substance, right, God, are reminiscences of things learned in a previous state of being. He regarded the body as the grave of the soul, and urged the fact that the soul had knowledge before it entered the body, as proof that the soul would have knowledge after it left the body. But even in Plato this argument is based upon an unconscious identifica- tion of the ideal with the actual. The truth at the foundation of the theory of pre-existence is simply the ideal existence of the soul, before birth, in the mind of God — that is, God's foreknowledge of it. The intui- tive ideas, of which the soul finds itself in possession, are really evolved from itself ; in other words, man is so constituted that he perceives these truths upon proper occasions or conditions ; the fact that they are not de- rived from sense by no means proves that they are rec- ollections of what was learned in a previous or time- less state of being.
x
354 THE POET OF NATURE
Yet the persistence of this speculation is a curiosity in philosophy, theology, and literature. Philo and Ori- gen both held to it, the former to account for the soul's imprisonment in the body, the latter to justify the dis- parity of conditions under which men enter the world. Kant and Julius Miiller have advocated it in Germany, and Edward Beecher in America, upon the ground that the inborn depravity of the human will can be explained only by supposing a personal act of self-determination before the present life began. The large place which the doctrine of the transmigration of souls holds in the Indian religions is known to all, but it may not be so generally known that a sort of metempsychosis has been favored in Scotland, and in our own day, by Professor Knight, the editor and biographer of Wordsworth. That Wordsworth himself made the idea the basis of his great poem is not so wonderful when we remember that Vaughan in the "Retreate," so early as 1621, used the same idea, and probably gave to Wordsworth the clew which he has more successfully followed, as Tenny- son in his "Two Voices," and Browning in his "La Saisiaz," have followed Wordsworth.
The poets, however, have added something to the philosophers. They have utilized a peculiar experience which men like Walter Scott have vividly described, namely the apparent recollection that we have seen at some time past a landscape which we know to be now for the first time before us, or that before the present time we have passed through an exigency which our sober reason tells us we now first confront. It is prob- ably an illusion of the memory, a mistaking of a part for the whole : we have seen something like a part of
SEEMING RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST 355
the landscape — we fancy that we have seen this land- scape and the whole of it. So our recollection of a past event is one whole, but this idea of the whole may have an indefinite number of subordinate ideas existing within it ; the sight of something similar to one of these parts suggests the whole which the parts make up. Augus- tine hinted that this illusion of the memory may have played an important part in developing the belief in metempsychosis — we infer that, since what we remem- ber has never happened in this world, it must have hap- pened in some world which we inhabited before we entered upon this.
The fact that Coleridge busied himself with this problem, and suggested that " likeness in part tends to become likeness of the whole," makes it a very interest- ing question how far Wordsworth's adoption of the idea may have been due to the influence of Coleridge. But a still more interesting question is how far Wordsworth's adoption of the idea may be said to express his own conviction of the truth, or how far we may believe it to be a jeu dj esprit, or a mere device of fancy to attract us to his poetry. Here we must confess that what we know of the poet's solemn earnestness, his passion for truth, his scorn of all disingenuous arts and tricks, in- clines us to reject the second explanation and to accept the first. In this greatest of his poems he seems, if ever, to be speaking out of his own innermost mind and heart. The " Intimations of Immortality from Recol- lections of Early Childhood" is not argument from our present recollections of our past childhood, but from the recollections which we had, when we were children, of a previous state of being. A few quotations from
356 THE POET OF NATURE
the poem will possibly assume a new aspect when we remember this :
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The soul that rises with us, our life' s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
The homely Nurse [Earth] doth all she can To make her foster child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o' er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by ;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being' s height !
O joy ! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive !
Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise, But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Falling from us, vanish ings, Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : But for those first affections Those shadowy recollections
RECOLLECTIONS OF PRE- EXISTENCE IN GOD 357
Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet the master-light of all our seeing :
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake
To perish never ; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man, nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy !
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
It is impossible to read these lines carefully without perceiving that the recollections which the poet attrib- utes to childhood are not recollections of a personal existence in a preceding state of being. They are rather recollections of what belonged to it before it "drew from out the vast," as Tennyson has expressed it ; survivals, in the finite personality, of knowledge in the infinite personality from which it has come ; in other words, God's ideas revealing themselves in the creature who partakes of his life. Not ideal pre-exist- ence in God's foreknowledge, but substantial pre-exist- ence in God's being, is the thought of Wordsworth. While nature is the constant expression of the divine mind and will, man is an actual emanation from God
himself, and therefore
a being, Both in perception and discernment, first
THE POET OF NATURE
In every capability of rapture, Through the divine effect of power and love : As, more than anything we know, instinct With godhead and, by reason and by will, Acknowledging dependency sublime.
Our destiny, our being' s heart and home Is with infinitude and only there.
And this interpretation is confirmed by other passages in the " Excursion " as well as in the " Prelude " :
Ah, why in age
Do we revert so fondly to the walks Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired Of her own native vigor ; thence can hear Reverberations ; and a choral song, Commingling with the incense that ascends Undaunted toward the imperishable heavens From her own lonely altar.
Thou, thou alone
Art everlasting, and the blessed spirits Which thou includest, as the sea her waves.
Our childhood sits,
Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne, That hath more power than all the elements ; I guess not what this tells of Being past, Nor what it augurs of the life to come.
We must confess that if this were all, the proof of immortality would be defective. If the soul had no personal existence before it entered upon its present state, it may have no personal existence after this pres- ent state is ended. As it came from the boundless infinite, so to the boundless infinite it may return, merg-
IMAGINATION IS CREATIVE REASON 359
ing its little wave once more in the great ocean from which it sprang. But another thought is suggested which helps the proof. It is that of the divine love. He who gave being to these sons of men will not disap- point their expectations nor put an end to their progress. Made in the image of God, only an eternity will suffice for their development. Their sympathies are evidence of God's sympathies. Their very longing for immor- tality is the impulse of divinity within them, and so is prophetic of the future :
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,
In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
That Wordsworth advocated no pantheistic confound- ing of the soul with God, but rather believed in a per- sonal consciousness and life beyond the grave, is evi- dent from his poem, " The Primrose of the Rock " :
Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
The reasoning sons of men, From one oblivious winter called,
Shall rise and breathe again ; And in eternal summer lose
Our threescore years and ten.
36O THE POET OF NATURE
To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high, The faith that elevates the just,
Before and when they die ; And makes each soul a separate heaven,
A court for Deity.
In the lines composed a few miles above " Tintern Abbey," on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, we have the poet's most complete expression of his views of the relation between nature and God. But in order fully to understand it, we need to take a slight preliminary survey of some of his other utterances, es- pecially those with reference to imagination and the office of a poet. As I have already intimated, Words- worth regards love as a medium of insight into truth. Beauty cannot be perceived by him who has no love for beauty, and the morally right cannot be perceived by him who has no love for the morally right. Reason, in its largest sense, is far more than reasoning — it is the mind's whole power of knowing, and to the highest ex- ercise of reason a right state of the sensibilities and affections is just as essential as merely perceptive and logical power.
Intellect is not the whole of man ; the integral man is made up of emotion as well as intellect. The feelings give wings to the intellect and permit it to soar into lofty regions of truth, when without right feeling intellect would grovel on the earth and learn nothing of the true meaning of the universe. Nor can mere love for the creature ensure the higher intelligence ; only love to God can enable us to understand the least of God's works. All the delights of love are pitiable —
AN ORGAN FOR THE RECOGNITION OF TRUTH 361
Unless this love by a still higher love
Be hallowed, love that breathes not without awe,
Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer,
By heaven inspired ; that frees from chains the soul,
Lifted, in union with the purest, best
Of earth-born passions, on the wings of praise,
Bearing a tribute to the Almighty' s throne.
And now we have, directly following this passage of the " Prelude," the most notable and valuable definition of imagination to be found in all poetical literature :
This spiritual love acts not nor can exist Without imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power, And clearer insight, amplitude of mind, And reason in her most exalted mood.
The imagination of a pure and loving soul is there- fore an organ for the recognition of truth. The crea- tive faculty in- the poet is like the microscope or the telescope — it does not invent but rather discovers ; that others do not see is simply the fault of their defective vision. And imagination in man enables him to enter into the thought of God — the creative element in us is the medium through which we perceive the meaning of the Creator in his creation. The world without answers to the world within, because God is the soul of both. Even the least sensitive are stirred at times by the cata- ract or the storm.
The power which all
Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus To bodily sense exhibits, is the express Resemblance of that glorious faculty That higher minds bear with them as their own ;
362 THE POET OF NATURE
This is the very spirit in which they deal With the whole compass of the universe ; They from their native selves can send abroad Kindred mutations. . .
They build up greatest things From least suggestions. . . Such minds are truly from the Deity, For they are Powers ; and hence the highest bliss That flesh can know is theirs — the consciousness Of Whom they are, habitually infused Through every image and through every thought, And all affections by communion raised From earth to heaven, from human to divine.
So to the poet :
The unity of all hath been revealed, Feeling has to him imparted power That through the growing faculties of sense Doth, like an agent of the one great Mind, Create, creator and receiver both, Working but in alliance with the works Which it beholds.
He catches glimpses of affinities
In objects where no brotherhood exists To passive minds. . . Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying.
I felt the sentiment of Being, spread
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still, . .
Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
With every form of creature as it looked
Toward the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
"TINTERN ABBEY" 363
Coming now to Wordsworth's great poem of " Tin- tern Abbey," we can see how the poet has condensed a whole system of thought into his verse. The ministries of nature have given him " sensations sweet " and happy memories :
Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened — that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on — Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul ; While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
It was not always thus, however :
For nature then
To me was all in all. I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
364 THE POET OF NATURE
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
We can understand now what Wordsworth means by Nature, and why he can recognize in her an instructor, protector, and comforter. If Nature had been to him a dead somewhat, something unintelligent, foreign, and unknown, no verse of this sort would have been pos- sible. It is only because Nature is to him, as Goethe phrased it, " the living garment of the Deity," nay, more, the constant expression of divine intelligence and love, that he can cherish toward it affection and find in it a guide. Nature is not created by fiat and then left by God to itself. The Creator is ever active — he is in
NATURE AN INSTRUCTOR 365
the smallest of his works, and the smallest of them, as truly as the greatest, is the arena in which his omni- presence and omnipotence display themselves. There- fore
To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
But therefore also the simple and common emotions and affections of humanity are the best guide to the in- terpretation of nature, since the same God who is pres- ent in the one is present also in the other. From this point of view Wordsworth's preference for humble life, with its joys and sorrows, is explicable. It was the primitive and unsophisticated that taught him most of God. The universal feelings, he thought, were the most significant. The hopes and fears of all tell us more about the secret of the world than do the hopes and fears of some, even though they be the rich and culti- vated few. His poetry busied itself with the toil and suffering, the hope and love, of the poor. He disclosed the hidden sources of content which are possessed by the shepherd on the hillside and the grandame at her loom. He sang of "joy in widest commonalty spread.'' He glorified the obscure. He had hope for the fallen. And that because he saw in man, as in nature, the com- mon life of God.
Neither vice nor guilt, Debasement undergone by body or mind, Nor all the misery forced upon my sight, Misery not lightly passed, but sometimes scanned Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust In what we may become.
I have reserved to the last the mention of the " Ode
366 THE POET OF NATURE
to Duty," not only because the ethical seems naturally to follow the philosophical and theological, but because this ode, in my judgment, is the most noble and com- plete of Wordsworth's poems. Though briefer by far than either of the two just examined, it is more sus- tained in its dignity, and has a flavor of antique grandeur which reminds us of the best work of Milton. In this ode, moreover, we have the best assurance that Words- worth was no pantheist, and that he never meant, when he looked upon God as the life of nature and of man, to break down all moral boundaries and confound the human personality with the divine. If this had been the case, conscience would have been declared to be God's own voice within the soul. In the first line of the ode, however, duty is addressed as
Stern daughter of the voice of God.
It is an allusion to the rabbinic doctrine of the Bath-kol, or " Daughter of the Voice." The later Jewish teachers held that the Holy Spirit spoke during the tabernacle by Urim and Thummim, under the first temple by the prophets, but under the second temple by the Bath-koly a divine intimation as inferior to the oracular voice proceeding from the mercy-seat as a daughter is supposed to be inferior to her mother. Hence an approving conscience came to be called Bath-kol, and the rabbins intimated thereby that while conscience holds a relation to God's voice, is indeed the reflection or echo of that voice, it is not to be identified with it. Man has a connection of life with God, even as his being has sprung from God. But the creature is not the Creator. Man has an independent mind and
CONSCIENCE A WITNESS AGAINST PANTHEISM 367
will. Though his conscience testifies to his divine origin, it also testifies to the fact that he is free.
Look up to heaven ! the industrious sun Already half his race hath run ; He cannot halt or go astray But our immortal spirits may.
Conscience therefore is an eternal witness in the soul against pantheism, and our poet in his adoption of the rabbinical definition of conscience intimates his belief in man's freedom and responsibility. Not simply the initial apostrophe to Duty, but the whole poem from beginning to end, is instinct with moral life. Words- worth recognizes the beauty and blessedness of a loving and spontaneous obedience. But he recognizes human weakness and perversity also, and the need of severe reproof at times to keep the soul from straying from the path of rectitude.
Serene will be our days, and bright
And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Even now who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.
Then comes confession of past error and sincere re- pentance for the wrong, together with yearning for a state where the will is secure in righteousness. He chooses to be the bondman of duty, rather than to be the bondman of sin.
Me this unchartered freedom tires ; I feel the weight of chance desires ;
368 THE POET OF NATURE
My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.
Stern Lawgiver, yet thou dost wear
The Godhead' s most benignant grace ; Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face ; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads ; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are firm and strong.
To humbler functions, awful Power,
I call thee : I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour.
Oh, let my weakness have an end ! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice ; The confidence of reason give ; And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live.
I have said that Wordsworth is not a specifically Christian poet, and we shall look through his writings in vain for any evidence that he intended to teach the details of Christian doctrine. Yet the spirit of his poetry is the spirit of Christianity, and that in spite of the fact that he felt it his mission to be the poet of nature. He never would have been able to find in nature so much to awe and to console, he never could have seen in her so much of truth and love, if he had not carried into his contemplations what he had learned from the gospel of Christ. It is the old story of Plato's cave. He who has once explored the cave with a torch can afterward make his way through in the dark. Many an ethical philosopher like Spencer imagines his conclu-
HIS POETRY ESSENTIALLY CHRISTIAN 369
sions about man's being to be the result of his own insight, when in fact they are unconscious plagiarisms from the Christian revelation. We have followed that torch through the recesses of the cavern, and only for that reason are we now able to find our way through them alone. The interpretation of nature, as well as the interpretation of man, is an exclusively Christian achievement. The wisdom and love of God were never seen in nature, until Christ himself had been revealed as the Lord of nature and yet as the Redeemer of man.
There are those who refuse to call Wordsworth a great poet, for the reason that there are so many com- monplace and prosaic pages in his collected works. But there are two reasons for calling him great which these critics overlook : First, the large body of genuine poetry which these works contain ; and, secondly, the new bent and insight which these works have communi- cated to literature. The sonnets of Wordsworth con- stitute of themselves our noblest collection after those of Shakespeare and Milton, and there is a grave and serious beauty even in poems so long as the "Prelude" and the " Excursion." His chief claim to greatness, however, is this, that he has not only apprehended and expressed the divinity of nature as it had never been apprehended and expressed before, but that he has done this in such a way as to mold and change the poetry of his country and of the world, and to begin a new epoch in the history of literature.
His belief in this divinity of nature was so utter that the homeliest things were to him transfigured. The roughest aspects of humanity and the boldest scenes
3/Q THE POET OF NATURE
of the physical world were full of interest, because they conveyed some thought of God. They seemed to him so interesting in themselves that they needed no artistic charms of verse : let the poetry that described them be as bare as the rocks, and it still would have power to move the heart of man. Yes, we say, but only if the heart of man be prepared to receive it. The clew must first be given ; the taste must first be formed ; the love of nature must first be implanted.
It is no wonder that the admirers of mechanical verse and the devotees of fashion and convention had no ears to hear the sober and solemn music of Words- worth— they even denied that there was music there. Jeffries, of the "Edinburgh Review," read "Peter Bell," and declared that it would never do. It took almost forty years to convince the English-speaking world that a new poetic luminary had risen upon the horizon. But when the degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred upon the poet by the University of Oxford, and the whole auditory of England's picked and sifted scholars rose as one man with shouts and cheers to do him rever- ence ; when Sir Robert Peel overbore his modesty and well-nigh entreated him to accept the poet-laureateship, not because England gave him anything more to do but because England demanded the privilege of rewarding what he had done ; it became clear that the tide had forever turned and that his name was to be inscribed upon the rolls of everlasting fame as the first and greatest poet of nature and of common life. And Tennyson, when he succeeded to the office, only did just honor to the spirit of Wordsworth's verse when he con- gratulated himself upon receiving
RECOGNITION OF WORDSWORTH'S CLAIMS 37 i
/
The laurel greener from the brows Of him who uttered nothing base.
It is not possible to concede supreme merit to more than a few, and those by no means the longest, of Wordsworth's poems. But no poet is to be judged by his worst. Let Wordsworth be judged by his best, and he takes the rank of a great poet — the greatest poet who had appeared since Milton. Browning and Tenny- son have eclipsed his fame, but only because they have drawn into their own writings much of his peculiar light. He has added a permanent element to the world's thought ; he has given us a new method of regarding the world of nature and of man ; he has increased the calmness, the comfort, the hope, of humanity. William Watson has given proof of his critical, as well as of his poetic, genius in his lines upon "Wordsworth's Grave," and his estimate may fitly close this essay :
Not Milton' s keen, translunar music thine ;
Not Shakespeare' s cloudless, boundless, human view, Not Shelley' s flush of rose on peaks divine ;
Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.
What hast thou that could make so large amends For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed —
Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends ? Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest.
From Shelley' s dazzling glow or thunderous haze, From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth,
Men turned to thee and found — not blast and blaze, Tumult of tottering heavens — but peace on earth.
Not peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, There in white languors to decline and cease ;
3/2 THE POET OF NATURE
But peace whose names are also rapture, power, Clear sight, and love : for these are parts of peace.
It may be that his manly chant, beside
More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune ; It may be thought has broadened, since he died,
Upon the century' s noon ; . . . Enough that there is none since risen who sings
A song so gotten of the immediate soul, So instant from the vital fount of things
Which is our source and goal ; And though at touch of later hands there float
More artful tones than from his lyre he drew, Ages may pass ere trills another note
So sweet, so great, so true.
BROWNING
BROWNING
HIS POETRY AND HIS THEOLOGY
I
IT is a serious question whether this essay would ever have been written if I had not awhile ago seen Robert Browning — not in the flesh, but in the Watts' collec- tion. I do not refer to the collection of Isaac Watts, valuable as that collection is, but to that of George Frederick Watts, who puts his poetry upon canvas in- stead of coining it into song. Many critics regard this particular Watts as the best modern reviver of the color and the ideality of the Venetian masters.
A considerable number of his pictures were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was " Love and Death ' —a rosy boy, with appealing look, vainly striving to press back from the threshold a veiled and sombre form that trampled under his feet the flowers falling from Love's fingers. There was " Love and Life " — a noble, masculine figure helping a fainting maiden along a rocky, precipitous path — the lesson being this, that life cannot get on without love. There was " Time, Death, and Judgment " — Time, an immortal youth, Death, a solemn, dusky shape, both wading through a deep stream, while Judgment, with flaming sword, followed close behind.
These three were all of them great pictures — great
375
3/6 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
because they bodied forth ideal truth and gave it power over the heart. But the portraits of the collection were more impressive still. The realistic method was never more rigidly applied. Each subject was treated in its own way. The artist had seized the central feature of each personality and had set it forth so vividly and powerfully that the living man stood revealed before you in lineaments never to be forgotten.
There was Lord Lawrence, a swarthy face against a lurid background, as if just emerging from the smoke and flame and blood of the Indian mutiny. There was Sir Frederick Leighton, president of the Royal Acad- emy, all elegance and jollity, as if he cared not a fig whether his special school of painting kept or not. There was John Stuart Mill, cold and intellectual, as if meditating whether in some distant star like Sirius two and two might not possibly make five. There was John Lothrop Motley, the very pink of a literary aristocrat. There was Cardinal Manning, all scarlet and lace, all dignity and devotion, but with an ascetic air that seemed to say he had not had a good meal of victuals since he entered the Roman church. There was Thomas Car- lyle, biting through his under lip for very groutiness. There was Swinburne, a pert little counter-jumper, with red hair flying all abroad as if he had just received a shock of electricity. There was Alfred Tennyson, with melancholy and self-consciousness only slightly relieved by the remembrance of his elevation to the House of Lords.
And there, finally, was Robert Browning, healthy, robust, sagacious, subtle ; seemingly a large-minded cot- ton manufacturer, rather than a retail vender of " Red-
THE STORY OF BROWNING S LIFE
cotton Night-caps " ; with good humor, knowledge of affairs, insight into character, determination to express what he saw; but, as for "the soul of melody," "sing- ing as the bird sings," or anything sensuous, senti- mental, or purely artistic, why, it was simply not there. Philosopher, critic of life, man of the world? Yes. But, poet ? Well, if so, not one of the common sort. Not Tennyson's
The poet in a golden clime was born,
but Emerson's
The free winds told him what they knew,
is the verse to describe him. Yet, when I saw the por- trait, I felt that I had new light thrown upon all that Browning ever wrote. The man interpreted his work. I recognized a new species of the genus " poet ' — one who has made a sort of poetry so entirely his own that we shall have to pull down our barns and build greater, or else construct an annex to our old scheme of classi- fication, in order to make room for him and take him in. That Robert Browning is a great writer, the story of his life sufficiently demonstrates. Born in 1812, he was graduated at the London University before reaching the age of twenty. He then spent some years south of the Alps, rummaging about in the libraries of old monas- teries and inspecting the pictures of old cathedrals, till Walter Savage Landor could truly say that Browning never strikes a false note when he treats of Italy. "Pauline' was his first printed poem; "Paracelsus," published in 1836, his first tragedy. His " Straff ord ' was represented upon the stage and failed, though Mac-
3/8 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
ready took the principal role in 1837. He married Elizabeth Barrett in 1846, and Mrs. Browning died in 1861.
During all these and the following years Browning has been a prolific writer. As many as ten thick vol- umes attest his industry. Yet he has
he has never tried to catch it. His pro- ductions have had to make their way against storms of criticism, but they have been read by a continually in- creasing number of thoughtful people. Whatever the student of literature may think of Browning, he must take account of the fact that never before was there a writer of verse for the study of whose writings during his lifetime clubs were formed in every large city of both hemispheres — the proceedings of some of these clubs being regularly published, like the transactions of learned societies.
Here is at least a literary phenomenon. There are two possible explanations : Either Robert Browning is a plausible pretender, or he is a great poet. Is Robert Browning a great poet? Well, "that depends." We must know what poetry is and what Robert Browning is. I shall treat my reader therefore to a definition of poetry which, however defective in other respects it may be, will at least have the merit of being brand-new. I shall then weigh Robert Browning in these balances and see whether he is found wanting.
Poetry is an imaginative reproduction of the universe in its ideal relations and the expression of these relations in rhythmical literary form. The meaning of this defi- nition will more fully appear if we say concretely that the poet isy-iksty-a- creator^ secondly, an idealizer; and,
*'
THE CREATIVE ELEMENT IN POETRY 379
thirdly, a literary artist. Take the first of these. There is a creative element in all true poetry. The poet is etymologic ally a " maker," not in the sense in which God is the maker of all, but in the secondary sense that he shapes into new forms the material made ready to his hand. Browning has himself furnished us with a noble description of this office of the imagination :
I find first
Writ down for very A, B, C, of fact : " In the beginning God made heaven and earth," . . . Man — -as befits the made, the inferior thing — . . . Repeats God' s process, in man' s due degree, Attaining man' s proportionate result ; Creates ? No, but resuscitates perhaps. For such man' s feat is, in the due degree, Mimic creation, galvanism for life, But still a glory portioned in the scale.
— The Ring and the Book, 1 : 706, 741.
Still farther on, in the same work from which we have quoted, the author compares this manipulation of facts by the imagination to the adding of alloy when the gold is made into a ring.
We must remember, however, that this creative func- tion is to be clearly distinguished from that power of the mind which merely recalls the past. The reproduc- tive faculty is not simply the representative faculty. Imagination is not memory. Every woman can write one novel ; she remembers one story — her own — and she can tell that. But " the vision and the faculty divine " that can evolve a hundred stories, all true to life and throb- bing with emotion, how rare a thing is this! Byron shows the narrowness of his creative powers, when
380 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
everywhere, on the Alps or on the Rhine, in Greece or Spain or Italy, he sees only himself. Manfred and the Giaour, Childe Harold and Don Juan, are all Byron, under different names and various disguises. Not so with Shakespeare. The greatness of the master appears in nothing so much as in this,, that.in Shakespeare you see everybody and everything but Shakespeare himself. So Browning hides his own personality. Only twice that I remember in all his writings does he speak in his own name — first, in that magnificent tribute to his living wife, " One Word More " ; and, secondly, at the close of his introduction to "The Ring and the Book," in which he almost apotheosizes his wife now dead. Browning deals with the non-ego, not with the ego> in the sense of self.
I have called poetry the imaginative reproduction of the universe. But I have not meant to limit the word " universe" to its technical theological meaning. I have meant it to include all, even God himself. Only by giving to the term this infinite sweep of significance do we gain the proper conception of the dignity of poetry. It is nothing less than the reproduction to the imagination of all being, all beauty, all truth, in short of all things, visible or invisible. The high praises of God are its noblest province, but all the world of finite things is its province also. To reproduce all this to the imagination would require an infinite mind, and the result would be the poetry of the ages, the poetry of eternity.
If this is the meaning of the word "universe," then it is certain that no mortal poet can compass it. Hence the poet must make his choice ; he must divide, in order
IMAGINATION REPRODUCES THE UNIVERSE 381
to conquer. It is not to his discredit that he takes a limited field, provided within those limits he "holds the mirror up to nature" and shows us the essential truth of things. In order to judge Browning justly then, we must ask what- range he has assigned himself, and whether within that range he shows himself possessed of a great creative imagination.
The most obvious thing to be said about Browning's genius is that he is the poet, not of nature, but of man. Wordsworth was the poet of nature. To him the world was sacred, because symbolic and interfused with a divine element. The " light of setting suns," and "the billows rolling evermore" — these kindled his poetic imagination.
The meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem Appareled in celestial light — The glory and the freshness of a dream.
Now all this affords the utmost contrast to Browning's poetry. I doubt whether sentiments like these can be found in all the dozen solid volumes that bear his name. Browning and Wordsworth both deal with common things ; but Wordsworth treats of nature, Browning of life. The latter could adopt Pope's line, "T.he proper study of mankind is man." And in the introduction to " Sordello," where our author has most clearly indicated the direction of his literary ambition, he says in plain prose : " My stress lay on the incidents in the develop- ment of a soul."
Again, Browning is the poet, not of events, but of
382 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
thoughts. He cares not so much for the result as for the. process — he describes, not so much incidents, as people's impressions of them. Some might perhaps think that in the "Bringing of the Good News from Ghent to Aix ' we had at least one exception to this rule ; but even here the interest lies not so much in the ride as in the rider; not so much in the redoubtable steed as in the fiery determination that spurred him on; not so much in the deliverance itself as in the thoughts of the deliverer. Rarely, if ever, has this writer's verse any tinge of the objective, much less of the epic.
On the other hand, he lets us into the secrets of the heart. As he sets before us " Bishop Blougram's Apology" for holding great ecclesiastical preferments while all real faith in the doctrines he was set to defend has gone out of him, we see " all the recesses and windings of an acute but mean and peddling little soul." As we hear the duke calmly describe his villainous treatment of "My Last Duchess," it is difficult to say which we most shudder at, the speaker's icy cruelty, or his unconsciousness of it. No poet has more clearly taught that "out of the heart are the issues of life," and that "as a man thinketh, so is he." NQ _poet has more powerfully depicted the self -perpetuating sin of the thoughts, or has given more impressive illustrations of the necessity of " bringing every thought into cap- tivity," if we would make the least pretense to virtue.
Once more, Browning's poetry is not lyric, but dra- matic. He does not himself describe men's thoughts, but he makes men describe their own. In one of his poems he rebukes a brother poet for "speaking naked
NOT LYRIC, BUT DRAMATIC 383
thoughts, instead of draping them in sights and sounds." In the " Spanish Cloister," the malicious, cursing monk involuntarily sets before us the character and life of the gentle and kindly brother whom he hates ; so that, though the latter never utters a word for himself, the very cursing of his enemy becomes his justification and his monument. The little poem entitled ''Confessions'1 contains a startling revelation of the heart. It is the last words of a dying man. He will have nothing to do with the clergyman who comes to give him spiritual consolation. He fastens his eyes on the medicine bot- tles upon the table, and his imagination turns even them into a picture of a darling sin of his youth, and gloats over the remembered transgression, even though the next moment is to usher him into the presence of God.
All this reminds me of a historical incident related by Mrs. George in her book, entitled " The Diary of Kitty Trevyly an." John Nelson, the Methodist preacher of England, was converted by means of a dream. He saw the great white throne set and the myriads gath- ered of earth and heaven. The Judge sat silent, but before him was an open book. Up to that book came one by one in long procession every soul of all mankind, and as each advanced he tore open his breast as a man would tear open the bosom of his shirt, and then com- pared his heart with the commandments written in the book. Not a word was said, nor did the Judge lift his finger, but each man, according as his heart agreed or disagreed with that perfect standard, went with joy to the company of the saved, or in despair to the company of the damned. Sin became its own detecter and judge
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and tormentor. So as we read Robert Browning we become aware that a process of self -revelation is going on. We seem to have naked souls before us. We look into the heart of man and into the day of judgment.
Now, granting to our author his peculiar and chosen department, namely, man; his aspect of that segment of the universe, namely, thought; and, finally, his method of treatment, the dramatic ; we ask once more : Is Browning a great creative genius ? I think no one who has attentively and sympathetically read such poems as "Karshish," "Andrea del Sarto," "The Flight of the Duchess," " Dis Aliter Visum" "The Statue and the Bust," " By the Fireside," " Master Hugues," " Eve- lyn Hope," can refrain from answering in the affirma- tive.
But none of these, after all, give more than fragmen- tary evidences of his power. The greatest work of Robert Browning is unquestionably " The Ring and the Book." A sort of personality invests this acknowl- edgment of mine, and I make it partly by way of reparation; for, fifteen years ago, I began to read this production of the poet, but allowed myself to be daunted by the roughness and obscurity of its opening pages. I threw it down, determined to read no more. For ten years I kept my vow. Beginning then with something easier, I found to my surprise that Browning was comprehensible. A summer vacation devoted to " The Ring and the Book " converted me to a qualified admirer of the poet. Now, after further study of his writings, I regard this poem as the greatest work of creative imagination that has appeared since the time of Shakespeare.
STRUCTURE OF "THE RING AND THE BOOK.' 385
I wish to justify this statement, which to many will seem so extraordinary. I can only do so by briefly describing " The Ring and the Book." It is founded upon the story of an old Italian murder. Count Guido, after having passed his youth in the service of the pope and having failed to secure the advancement that he sought, determines in disgust to retire to his dilapidated castle and his ancestral estate. He bethinks him, how- ever, that an addition to his meagre income will be de- sirable, and he manages, with that end in view, to marry the reputed daughter of an aged and well-to-do couple of the middle class and to take her with him. Her parents follow her and, being ill-treated by him, leave his house in wrath. They then make known the fact that their reputed daughter is no daughter of theirs, but the offspring of a courtesan.
Count Guido, in revenge, pursues toward his wife a course of relentless cruelty. He would drive her from him, yet in such a way as to throw the blame on her. A young priest is filled with pity for this double victim of avarice and malice — so young, so pure, so miserable -and he helps her to escape and to make her way to her so-called father's house in Rome. Thither Count Guido pursues her, and on a certain Christmas eve bursts in with hired assassins and fatally stabs the father, the mother, and herself. The count is appre- hended, tried, and executed.
It is this story upon which Browning has rung the changes in "The Ring and the Book." First, we have the bare facts narrated — fourteen hundred lines. Sec- ondly, we have the story as one-half of Rome tells it, said one-half taking the part of the husband — fifteen
386 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
hundred lines. Thirdly, what the other half of Rome said, taking the side of the wife — seventeen hundred lines. Fourthly, Tertium quid — what the few, the Mite, the cultured, the cardinals, said — sixteen hundred lines. Fifthly, what Count Guido himself said — two thousand lines. Sixthly, what the brave priest said who fled with the count's wife — twenty-one hundred lines. Seventhly, what the young wife herself said during the short hours between the attack and her death — eighteen hundred lines. Eighthly, what the counsel for the defense said at the trial — eighteen hundred lines. Ninthly, what the counsel for the prosecution said at that same trial — sixteen hundred lines. Tenthly, what the pope said, to whom the case was referred for final decision — twenty- one hundred lines. Eleventhly, what Count Guido said in prison before he was beheaded — twenty-four hundred lines. Twelfthly, what the world said when all was over — nine hundred lines.
A most audacious and wearisome specimen of literary trifling, the reader will be apt to say. Not so. Each new telling of the story adds new incident and sheds new light. The effect is stereoscopic — you see the facts from ever new points of view. Little by little the real truth is evolved from the chaos of testimony ; little by little the real motives of the actors become manifest. As the process goes on you catch yourself speculating about each of the dramatis persona, as if he were a character in real life. The complexity of human mo- tive, the wonderful interaction of character and circum- stance, the vastness of the soul, all these begin to dawn upon you. Men are both better and worse than they know; only God can judge the heart. I know of no
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN POETRY 387
poem in all literature in which the greatness of human nature so looms up before you, or which so convinces you that a whole heaven or a whole hell may be wrapped up in the compass of a single soul.
And as for the separate figures, I know not where to find characters more original or more distinct than that of Guido, with a selfishness that makes sun, moon, and stars revolve about him, and when foiled turns to des- perate malignity ; or Pompilia, the white lily grown out the horsepond scum, unstained even in the midst of cruelty and misery ; or Caponsacchi, the pleasure-loving soul turned to a hero by one resolve of daring and self- sacrifice ; or the grand old pope, rounding out a just life and preparing to go before God's judgment bar by doing one last act of justice and judgment upon earth. There are those who think this poem great only in its length, and it cannot be denied that it gives the impression of inexhaustible fertility. But such critics can scarcely have read the poem through. The learning, the thought, the general conception — these are as remark- able as the length ; and taking them all together, I am persuaded that the generations to come will regard "The Ring and the Book," in the mere matter of creative genius, as the greatest poetical work of this generation.
The strongest and most flattering thing that can be said about Robert Browning has been said already. We have found him to possess in an eminent degree the first and most important characteristic of the true poet, creative genius. But there is a second standard by which he must be tried. Is the, idealizing, element as highly developed in him ? Poetry is the imaginative
388 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
reproduction, not of the actual, but of the ideal uni- verse. The great poet then must be able to idealize. His imagination, creative though it may be, must not find its affinities in the bad, the morally indifferent, or the merely actual. It must hold high converse with the true, the beautiful, and the good. The poet must be one of
The immortal few
Who to the enraptured soul and ear and eye Teach beauty, virtue, truth, and love, and melody,
Let me make this plain by a few contrasts. Imagina- tion is not enough to make a poet. I once had a class- mate who had a vivid imagination — the trouble was that his imagination all ran to snakes. Of words descriptive of creeping and slimy things — centipedes, scorpions, and toads — he had a rare supply ; and the imaginative power displayed in his occasional objurgations was some- thing impressive. But I never called him a poet.
Somewhat similarly there is an imagination that runs by instinct to the morally bad, that seems to love the low and the vile for its own sake ; or, if not this, is pos- sessed with the notion — a notion born of a pantheistic philosophy — that everything that is has a sort of sacred- ness and value, and therefore is to be faithfully repre- sented in literature. And so we have Zola's studies of morbid anatomy, and his minute depicting of the fester- ing plague-spots of humanity. Of a somewhat better sort are the novels of Henry James — novels with no moral purpose ; novels, in fact, that scout a moral pur- pose as foreign to true art. Mr. James seems to fancy that his business is simply to set before us studies of
NOT A MERE REPRESENTATION OF LIFE 389
actual society and manners : he would photograph modern life.
Now in contrast to all this tendency in our modern literature I stand for the thesis that poetry is not a mere representation of life. Preraphaelite studies of nature are not worthy the name of poetry. Art is not photography, and photography is not art. The ideal element must be seized and exhibited, or we have no poetry. We want to see the good in low surroundings, and we want to see the evil only as a foil and contrast to the good. "Poetry," as Ruskin has well said, " pre- sents to us noble grounds for the noble emotions." We seek in poetry for the essential truth and beauty that lie at the heart of things. Bluer skies than those of Italy, brighter wit than that of Sidney Smith, higher thought than that of Plato, these we seek and expect in poetry. We look to her to lift us from the dull realm of the actual into the "great air" of the ideal.
Of Browning as an idealizer I cannot say so much as I said when I spoke of him as a creator. And yet a striking feature of his poetry is its recognition of this higher element in human life. To him all men are in a true sense ideal beings. There is a germ of greatness in every soul, continents that no Columbus has ever yet discovered, thoughts and motives, feelings and decisions, that possess interest beyond that of the whole material universe. Browning would not have chosen for his subject the soul of man if he had not sympathized with the dictum of Sir William Hamilton, " In the universe there is nothing great but man ; in man there is nothing great but mind."
Idealization, however, to be of any value, requires the
3QO THE POETRY OF BROWNING
possession of right standards of judgment. The poet therefore must be able to see things in_large relations, discern the universal in the particular, catch glimpses of the absolute truth and beauty in its minor manifesta- tions. The greatest poetry is impossible except to a great philosopher. I know what prejudices I am en- countering here; still I believe that these prejudices originate in a mistaken and narrow view of what poetry is. If poetry is the imaginative reproduction of the universe in its ideal relations, then nothing human, nothing divine, can be foreign to the poet. He must know psychology and ethics and politics and law ; he must know the physical sciences, and he must be a theologian as well. Of course I do not mean that he must be a master in details ; but this is certain, that the great poets have possessed themselves of the sub- stance of the knowledge of their times. And this means that the great poet must be a man of broad mind, of deep sympathy, a great thinker, and a great man.
There are three things in particular which serve as standards in all idealization, and which the great poet must rightly apprehend. He must first of all have a right view of human nature. He must believe in free- dom and immortality. No great poet was ever a fatalist. The poetry of mere fate denies man's consciousness, and fails to inspire. Emerson was better than his philosophy when he wrote :
So near is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, "Thou must,"
The youth replies, ' ' I can. ' '
FAITH IN FREEDOM AND IMMORTALITY 39 1
How different from this is the writing of George Eliot, with her exaggeration of heredity. To her, life is but the working out of inborn tendencies. Man may struggle and he may pray, but his nature is too much for him at last. Those who have seen Elihu Vedder's illustrations of Omar Khayyam will remember the ever- recurring swirl that images human life; the many threads that come, no man knows whence, that go, no man knows whither ; the gathering of these threads for a moment into the knot of human consciousness, and then the scattering of that consciousness forever. No wonder that at that center stands the wine cup. It is the old philosophy of the brute : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
Now I say that with such a conception as this there can be no proper idealization, and no poetry that will permanently touch the heart of man. Life is not worth writing poetry about, for it has lost its dignity. The true poet believes less in environment, and more in will ; less in heredity, and more in freedom. Charles Kingsley has said that the spirit of the ancient tragedy was " man conquered by circumstance," while the spirit of the modern tragedy is "man conquering circumstance." But this is only partly true. Even the ancient tragedy had its Prometheus, with unconquerable will asserting his freedom in spite of the thunderbolts and the vul- tures.
And there is still more to be said. The thirst of con- science for reparation is the very essence of tragedy, whether ancient or modern. And this conscience wit- nesses to freedom in the past and to an immortality of retribution in the future. Poetry must take account of
392 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
these facts in the nature of man, or it ceases to be poetry. Now we claim for Robert Browning that he recognizes them. In his pages we read of human freedom. " Ixion " is a poem worthy, for its spirit and its power, to be put side by side with the " Prometheus " of ^Lschylus. In it the victim, bound to his iron wheel, can still triumph over Jove. In "Pippa Passes," the innocent peasant girl trips in simple gladness from scene to scene, singing as she goes :
God's in his heaven, All' s right with the world,
but her little song rouses conscience, makes vice seem hateful, reveals men to themselves. All unconsciously to herself her words strike right and left, "a savor of life unto life or of death unto death," and the result is two murders and three souls saved. I know of no poem since " Macbeth ' that so portrays the agony of an awakened conscience. In this day of Hegelian revival, when moral evil and natural evil are confounded with each other, our literature needs to be invigorated by a fresh breeze from Dante, by Shakespeare's pictures of remorse, and by Robert Browning's illustrations of the voluntariness and the damnableness of sin.
If the poet must have proper views of human nature, it is yet more important that he should have proper views of the divine. He must recognize the fact that there is a God. A poet of whom it can be said that " God is not in all his thoughts," has missed the greatest thought of poetry, for "the greatest thought of the finite is the Infinite." So Jean Paul has said, and Browning would adopt his phrase. Our author's writing is so full
FAITH IN PERSONALITY, RIGHTEOUSNESS, LOVE 393
of this divine element that many a reader would fain call him a religious philosopher, if not a religious poet. We maintain that the highest poetry is impossible with- out religion, not only because the thought of God is the most sublime and fruitful of thoughts, but because from this loftiest thought all our lower thoughts take their proper measure and color. He who has no sense of God can never look at finite things in their right pro- portions. He who does not see in God an infinite per- sonality, righteousness, and love, can never interpret the world with its sorrow and its sin.
Browning believes in the personality and righteous' ness and love of God. He is at war indeed with the anthropomorphism which would degrade God to the level of human appetites and passions. His " Caliban on Setebos" is a most scathing and convincing arraign- ment of superstitious and slavish worship. " The Epi- logue," in which David stands as the type of the re- ligion that confines God "to place, and Renan as the type of the skepticism that gazes sensuously into heaven until the last star of faith grows dim and disappears, ends with Browning's own declaration of faith in an immanent Deity :
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows.
But that this is not pantheism, we are assured by other poems like " Saul," in which, not content with an un- moral God, he declares that " All's law, yet all's love," and maintains that incarnation is the only true revela- tion. So Pompilia strikes the same note when she says :
394 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
I never realized God' s birth before — How he grew likest God in being born.
" Ferishtah's Fancies," thought by some to be only a collection of slight poems, seems to me to be one of the most significant examples of the poet's irresistible tendency to the expression of religious ideas. In these slight poems I find the following subjects successively treated: i. God works no unnecessary miracles. 2. Let us give thanks for actual blessings, though much that we desire may fail us. 3. Faith and love go together. 4. Pray on, though you see no answer to your prayers. 5. The purpose of suffering is purifica- tion. 6. The punishment of sin is the dwarfing of nature. 7. Asceticism fails of its own end. 8. Love must go before knowledge. 9. Life is worth the living. I think no one can read over this list without being convinced that here is a poet who believes in God as well as in the soul.
But there are also relations between man and God upon which the poet must have definite opinions, if he would idealize aright. I have already referred to " Saul," by way of evidence that Browning's God is a personal God, a God of love, a God self-revealed and brought down to our human comprehension in the in- carnate Christ. I wish to speak of this same poem as embodying the true idea of inspiration, and so in gen- eral, of the communications of God to man. I speak of this poem the more readily because it is perhaps the most widely known and the most easily understood of Browning's longer productions — the fittest of all there- fore for a beginner to master.
FAITH IN A REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 395
The title of the poem should be " David," rather than " Saul," for the interest centers not in Saul's hearing but in David's song. The shepherd boy has been brought from the sheepfold to chase away with music the abnormal and insane depression of Saul's spirit. David sings of nature and her beauty, but Saul is not moved. He celebrates Saul's own heroic deeds, but there is no response. David rises in spirit as he sings ; in love he takes to himself Saul's sorrow ; and, as he does so, a Spirit greater than his own takes possession of the singer ; through his own love for his monarch, he is lifted up to understand something of the great love of God ; his human sympathy becomes the vehicle of prophecy ; in God himself he sees the desire to reveal himself in human form to men ; he looks into the far future and cries, " See the Christ stand ! '
Is there any other poem than this that more fully and truly expresses the method of divine inspiration ? Here is a using of human faculties and powers, of human heart and tongue, yet an elevation of all these to heights of understanding and expression which unaided humanity is powerless to reach. The supernatural uses the natural as its basis and starting-point, as its medium and vehicle ; but it transcends the natural, opening to it the far reaches of prophetic vision, and attuning it to the melody of a heavenly song.
I might speak of "A Death in the Desert," an attempt to depict the last hours of St. John, and to il- lustrate how human nature, fainting and failing as it is, can hospitably receive and faithfully express the mind and will of the Spirit of God. But I find nowhere in Browning's writings any intimation that the gift of in-
396 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
spiration proper is to be confounded with the enlighten- ment of Christian men in general. He stops with the faith that " holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And yet the obscure and the weak may be God's workmen still :
All service ranks the same with God — With God, whose puppets best and worst Are we* : there is no last nor first
Alfred Tennyson has been called the religious poet of this century, apparently upon the ground of such poems as "The Two Voices," "The Vision of Sin," and " In Memoriam." I dislike to shock the sensibili- ties of Tennyson's admirers ; but I wish to record my belief that there is far more of a healthful religious spirit in Browning than in Tennyson. In the latter, underneath the faith there is a generally hidden, but sometimes outcropping, skepticism ; so that I should hesitate to say whether his poetry had been quoted the more by the prophets of faith or the prophets of unbe- lief. This cannot be said of Browning. I do not read fragments of his writings in sermons preached for the purpose of criticising or denouncing the old faith. I do find him referred to in reverent discussions of the law and the attributes of God.
I am inclined to commend the reading of Robert Browning to all preachers and theologians, as well as to all thoughtful Christian people. He is the most learned, stirring, impressive literary teacher of our time — but he is a religious philosopher as well. He has expressed himself upon a larger variety of problems than any modern poet. He who would serve men's highest in-
IS HIS POETRY ALWAYS SERIOUS? 397
terests as secular or religious teacher, will find more of suggestion, more of illustration, more of stimulus, in Browning than in any modern writer. To quote again from Walter Savage Landor : " His is the surest foot, since Chaucer's, that has waked the echoes from the difficult places of poetry and of life."
I cannot leave this general subject of Browning's idealizing faculty without fairly considering two objec- tions to my doctrine, one directed against the serious- ness, and the other against the healthfumess of his poetry. I grant that there is at times an apparent levity. This may sometimes be merely a sign that he is consciously master of his theme — so fully master that he can play with it. The cat plays with the mouse she has caught — she does not care to play with the dog. But Browning himself has suggested a deeper and more constant reason than this. He has appropriated as motto for " Ferishtah's Fancies " what Collier in his edition of Shakespeare says of that great master : " His genius was jocular, but when disposed he could be very se- rious." So we may say that it is the nature of Brown- ing's genius to be jocular.
Is jocularity incompatible with seriousness ? " I am never merry when I hear sweet music," says Jessica in "The Merchant of Venice." Why did Jesus never jest ? Would he have seemed to us possessed of a larger and truer humanity if the humorous element had appeared in him ? It is common to say that our Lord's unique work of. suffering and death involved unique and soul-crushing burdens — for him to laugh would have been as incongruous as for us to laugh at a funeral. We sing, "He wept that we might weep."
398 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
Is it not equally true to say, " He wepi- that we might smile " ? Since " Believing, we rejoice 10 see the curse remove," may we not maintain that an unhindered de- velopment of all parts of our nature is first rendered possible by his death ?
I think no one can doubt that there is a provision in our nature for wit and jollity. Great men with great cares have solaced themselves with jests. We do not think either Socrates or Abraham Lincoln the less se- rious because they were occasionally jocular. I will not venture to say that Browning is never guilty of seeming irreverence ; but that this seeming irreverence has a really profane intent would be hard to prove. In gen- eral, I think it is rather the bubbling up of a deep effer- vescent spring. It is part of his idealizing faculty to see things in their humorous relations. His jocularity, though sometimes carried to an extreme, is part of the large-mindedness of the man.
And this opens the way to the discussion of the last objection. Is Robert Browning's poetry healthful in its influence ? We must grant that there is a certain free- dom about its treatment of man's physical instincts, which now and then may offend critics of the Tenny^ sonian school. There is no asceticism in Browning. He does not attempt to do without the body, as Shel- ley did. But neither does he deify the body, as Swin- burne does. Mens sana in corpore sano is his motto. He believes in food and drink — but in food and drink mainly as means, not as ends. If he ever speaks of sensuous things with something of Elizabethan frank- ness, we must remember that there is a mock modesty more akin to vice than is innocent freedom of speech.
IS HIS POETRY ALWAYS HEALTHFUL? 399
I find in Browning true sentiment without a tinge of sentimentality.
John Stuart Mill once defined sentimentality as " a setting of the sympathetic aspect of things above their aesthetic aspect, or above the moral aspect of them — their right or wrong." This was the fault of the early novels, like Richardson's " Clarissa," which drew such oceans of tears from our great-great-grandmothers, but whose sickly and maudlin sentiment we only make merry over to-day. Now I think it a great tribute to the healthfulness of Robert Browning's poetry, and so to his power of true idealization, when I say that, as for this mawkish sentimentality, he will have none of it. Wordsworth would have come nearer to being one of the greatest poets if he had not lacked one of his senses — not one of the five senses, but that sixth, most impor- tant sense — the sense of the ludicrous. Browning's sense of the ludicrous stands him in good stead. He cannot be commonplace, he cannot be nonsensical, he cannot be affected, he cannot be sentimental. Our young people will get good from reading such poems as Dis Aliter Visum, because Browning does not believe that true love is an unreasoning impulse, but rather regards it as subject to judgment and conscience.
Passion is not its own justification ; the sympathies are under law to reason ; feeling should have a basis in fact — these are truths which greatly need to be taught to our easy-going, pleasure-loving time ; and no one has taught them so well as Browning. Out of his books there blows a healthful breeze, as from the woods and the hills, to brace up and reinvigorate a literature that was fast becoming finical and dilettante. And I
4OO THE POETRY OF BROWNING
think I am not mistaken in saying that much of the modern progress toward direct and sensible speech, both in the pulpit and in the press ; much of the new sim- plicity and vigor which differences our talk from the bookish conversations of Walter Scott's novels ; aye, much of the condensation and energy of recent Eng- lish poetry, as compared with the long-winded weari- someness of Wordsworth, is to be attributed to the healthful influence of Robert Browning.
Browning is greatest as a creative genius ; less great as an idealizer ; least great as a literary artist. We have said that poetry is an imaginative reproduction of the universe in its ideal relations and an expression of these relations in rhythmical literary form. It is this standard of artistic form by which we have still to try our poet. Artistic form is of two sorts, or rather involves two elements : first, an element of construction ; and sec- ondly, an element of rhythmical and musical expression. In considering the constructive element, we must remem- ber that true poetry, like true science, puts before us not merely facts, but facts in their relations. In a great poem we want, not the materials of poetry, but an or- ganic structure ; not bricks, but a house. It is a serious question whether that can be a great poem which com- pels the reader to do the poet's work. I do not attempt just here to decide the question ; I only suggest it with the view of adducing an argument or two upon each side and then leaving the reader to judge for himself.
For all ordinary purposes and in all ordinary kinds of writing, the world has come to accept Herbert Spen- cer's principle of style, — a contribution to human knowl- edge, by the way, of more value and longer to be re-
THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN POETRY 40 1
membered than all the rest of his philosophy, — I mean the principle of " economy of the reader's or hearer's at- tention." Given in the auditor, for example, a certain amount of intellectual and emotional energy, then the less of this energy expended in grappling with the mere form of an address, the more there will be left to seize upon the substance. Hence the wisdom of making the drapery as thin as possible, that the real form may be the better seen. Avoid all involution and remote allusion that will hinder the hearer from getting at the sense. Let the phrase of your essay be so simple that he who runs may read. So order your material that it unfolds most easily and naturally, each new sentence adding some point of interest, and all tending to a climax of thought and of expression.
This is the art of putting things. The French excel in it. Every great teacher is in this respect a literary artist. He knows how to organize his matter so as to produce the most rapid, comprehensive, and powerful impression. And this is the first thing pointed out in Milton's description of true poetry : " Simple, sensuous, passionate."
Now it is agreed by all that Browning is often ob- scure, and that this obscurity resides not alone in the single phrase or verse, but also in the whole arrange- ment of his material. The reader often begins, as I myself began, with unprepossessed and even favorable mind, only to find that unexplained allusions throng upon him ; clues are presented which, being tracked out, seem to lead no-whither ; in fact, a labyrinth seems to be the only comparison that fits the poem. Grave doubts suggest themselves either of the poet's sanity
2A
4O2 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
or of our own. Or is he trifling with us ? The average reader concludes at any rate that what it is not worth Mr. Browning's while to make intelligible, it is not worth his own while to read. The very multiplicity of ques- tions that suggest themselves at every turn, and that make so lively the meetings of the Browning clubs, are an offense to the man who does not love to think much as he reads.
I know of no author, ancient or modern, the mention of whose name just now excites more violent dispute. Certain it is that Browning divides the world. There are two hostile camps. If he is not of all poets the best loved by his friends, he is surely the best hated by his foes. Indeed it is almost amusing to hear one who has been cheered, in beginning Sordello, by the author's assurance : " Who will, may hear Sordello's story told," and then has floundered through what he cannot but regard as a mediaeval literary morass — I say, it is amusing to hear such a one describe the indigna-
•
tion with which at the close of the poem he read the words : "Who would, has heard Sordello's story told."
It is only fair, however, to listen to Browning's de- fense. His method, he would say, is the true method, because it is the method of life. Suppose you go down the street to morrow morning, and as you go, perceive in the distance a great crowd stretching from curb to curb. There are excitement, and hurried ejaculations, and much rushing to and fro. You draw near and ask some person upon the periphery of the circle what it is all about. He gives you the curt and fragmentary an- swer, " Murder," and then turns from you. You press your way inward, questioning others as you can, until
AN EXPLANATION OF HIS OBSCURITY 403
gradually there rises in your mind the structure of a story; hints which at first you could not understand begin to be interpreted ; you modify first impressions by subsequent information ; by the time you have reached the center of the crowd a whole tragedy of love, and jealousy, and crime, and death, has been en- acted in your brain.
Compare this way of getting at the story with the other way of reading about it all in the evening paper of that same day. Which of these ways most rouses your thinking powers, most excites your interest and sympathy ? Can any one doubt that it is the former ? Now this is Browning's method. He thrusts us into the turmoil of life and compels us to construct the story for ourselves. He gives us facts, but only in a fragmentary way. What is said becomes fully intelligible only in the light of further knowledge. What is the result ? Why this : you become a judicial personage, and weigh evidence, as the case unfolds before you. You become yourself a poet, a creator, and when you have done, you feel that the poem is a thing of life, that you have your own hard-earned conception of it, that it is your poem as well as Browning's.
All this is best illustrated in the case of " The Ring and the Book." As those twenty-two thousand lines pass before your eyes, your first impulse is to give up the investigation — the case is too complicated, and life is short. But keep on, and the story gets a hold upon you ; the characters become instinct with life ; each new aspect of the case is like a new revelation ; the whole poem becomes a mighty living structure, wheel within wheel, the fit type and representative of the life of hu-
404 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
manity moved upon from above by angelic influences, and seized from beneath by the powers of hell. When you have read it you can call it "A ring without a posy, and that, mine." In this very sense of possession which Browning's poems awaken, I see the secret of the intense interest he excites in those who have the patience and the grace to read him. If we have to eat our own bread in the sweat of our brow, Browning would say that this is precisely what he has been aiming at ; with- out exercise we should have no appetite, no enjoyment of our food, no profit from the eating of it.
I confess that this view of the case has much to say for itself. Certainly the best poetry is not that which yields its full meaning at the first cursory reading. If absolute intelligibility to a half-roused mind be the test of poetry, much of what we call the best is no poetry at all. No, a man cannot understand the best poetry without being something of a poet ; even as he cannot appreciate Mont Blanc without looking at it from some neighboring height. The best poetry of Shakespeare or even of Tennyson is not mastered except by repeated reading ; it takes years, and maturity indeed, before the full glory of some great passages dawns upon us.
Browning compels us to work for our intellectual living more perhaps than any other modern poet, but there is always the comfort of knowing that there is a real pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, and that there is a definite place where the rainbow ends. I do not think that Browning is obscure for the mere sake of obscurity ; what obscurity there is is a part of his art, whether the principle upon which it rests is ill-judged or not. And, with practice, the obscure becomes plain.
IS THE EXPLANATION SUFFICIENT? 405
In fact I find that the objection upon the score of ob- scurity is urged less and less, as the reader becomes more and more familiar with Browning's method. He expects it, he sees the object of it, he is stimulated by it, he ends by becoming a qualified admirer of it, just as he admires the twilight and the growing splendor of the stars.
Thus I have presented with all fairness the considera- tions pro and con, so far as respects the constructive element in Browning's poetry. I wish I could sum up and give the verdict squarely upon the side of the poet. This I fear I cannot do. I could do so if I did not recognize certain " unexplored remainders" in his writ- ings, the meaning of which I have some doubt whether even Browning himself ever knew. In " Ferishtah's Fancies" there are certain lines printed in the original Hebrew ; this looks to me mischievous, if not malicious. A noted Greek professor said that he could understand Browning's translation of the " Agamemnon," if he were only permitted to use the original as a "pony."
I have always thought it doubtful whether the Romans understood their own great poets at first reading. I have some sympathy with the man who declared that if the Latins had had to learn their own language, they would have had no time to conquer the world. But there is seldom what you may call willful and needless obscurity in the classic poets. Their condensed and nervous speech was meant to pack things in for pres- ervation ; and it is no wonder that the original package sometimes takes time to untie. So Browning means to pack his thought. Mrs. Orr tells us that it was a re- proachful note of Miss Caroline Fox that determined
406 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
him nevermore to use an unnecessary word. Would that he had added the determination perfectly to or- ganize his material before he began to write.
While I see in Browning an untold wealth of resource, a mind most eager for expression, a power to recognize truth in its secret hiding-places, I see also an occasional lack of judgment as to what is valuable and what is merely curious, and a lack of constructive power to make the most of the matter that is chosen. He seems at times content with first drafts, willing to put down out oL-a-teeming mind what first comes to hand, and ready to say, upon objection made, that if the reader cannot understand it, so much the worse for the reader. Here he is something _less.^thaiLa great literary artist, for true art is intelligible, and no unintelligible poem can ever become immortal.
I cannot leave this part of my subject without putting something of the poet's least intelligible verse side by side with something of his simplest and best. I know few passages more difficult as to form, yet more noble for depth and insight, than this one from " The Ring and the Book" i1 >-
God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not heard —
Passed on successively to each court I call
Man' s conscience, custom, manners, ail that make
More and more effort to promulgate, mark
God' s verdict in determinable words,
Till last come human jurists — solidify
Fluid results — what' s fixable lies forged,
Statute — the residue escapes in fume,
Yet hangs aloft a cloud, as palpable
To the finer sense as word the legist welds.
1 "The Ring and the Book," I : 255 sq.
RHYTHMICAL AND MUSICAL EXPRESSION 407
Justinian' s Pandects only make precise What simply sparkled in men' s eyes before, Twitched in their brow or quivered on their lip, Waited the speech they called, but would not come.
Yet this passage is obscure to many merely because thought is profound. To such let us commend "The Martyr's Epitaph," in which Browning shows himself capable of a simplicity and grandeur unsur- passed in English poetry :
Sickly I was, and poor and mean, — A slave ; no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price From Caesar' s envy ; therefore twice I fought with beasts, and thrice I saw My children suffer by his law. At length my own release I earned ; I was some time in being burned, But at the last a hand came through The flame above my head, and drew My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, wrote for me This testimony on the wall ; For me — I have forgot it all.
— Easter Day, 275-288.
The truest artistic form requires something more than the constructive element — it implies also the element of rhythmical and musical expression. The good and true must be married to the beautiful. This marriage cer- tainly seems made in heaven, for nothing more surprises the poet than the leaping from his brain of thought and word together — wedded from their birth. In this matter of melodious expression the poets differ more -than in almost anything else. We modern and English-
4C>8 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
speaking people owe, in this respect, a great debt to Shelley. I find in him a " linked sweetness long drawn out," that Milton himself was never master of, and that Swinburne has sought, but with weaker intellectual powers, to copy. It is a wonder that, with Browning's passionate admiration of Shelley, he has in his own writing so little of Shelley's distinguishing excellence. In this mastery of melodious expression, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is greatly the superior of her husband. Compare " Lady Geraldine's Courtship ' with the " Flight of the Duchess " ; compare " My Kate " with "The Lady of Tripoli," and you cannot help seeing that the wife puts into her verse a delicate sweetness and a tremulous emotion which the husband can never equal.
Indeed, for a reason already suggested when I spoke of defects of construction, Robert Browning aims not to be an emotional poet. And here let us do him justice, as we can only do by looking at the matter from his peculiar point of view. Browning found the literary world well-nigh enslaved to a poetry in which sense was sacrificed to sound, in which melody of phrase took the place of thought, in which mere sweetness covered a multitude of sins of vagueness and rhapsody and in- anity. You could read such poetry when half asleep, and you were quite asleep when you were done. Brown- ing thought such writing beneath the dignity of the poet. No "Airy, fairy Lillians" would he write. His poetry should carry no one to heaven on flowery beds of ease. Men's minds should be alert, if they read him at all. Hence his brusque air, his harsh turns, his scorn for the merely sensuous and quieting, his startling us from
RHYTHMICAL AND MUSICAL EXPRESSION 409
dreams into sense. A little poem of his illustrates this :
Verse-making was least of my virtues : I viewed with despair Wealth that never yet was but might be — all that verse-making
were
If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare. So I said "To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse" — And made verse.
Love-making — how simple a matter ! No depths to explore, No heights in a life to ascend ! No disheartening before, No affrighting hereafter — love now will be love evermore. So I felt "To keep silence were folly — all language above," I made love.
It reminds me of an out-of door play of my early days which bore the name of "Snap the whip." A long line was formed of boys taking hold of hands, the biggest and strongest boy at one end of the line, the smallest and most unsuspecting at the other, many fine gradations between. The game was to swing the line around with the big boy for a center, and to swing it around with such momentum that the little boy at the small end should be thrown off like a comet from the solar system. It was fine fun for the big boy; for the little one it meant the general demoralization of his attire and the breaking of his head against the fence. Many a time, as I have read Robert Browning and have been hurled off into vacancy by one of his sudden turns, I have felt like the little boy in " Snap the whip." It is all very well for Mr. Browning, but how about the unsophisticated reader ? Is it possible for him to escape a certain sense of injury ?
Emotion, music, grace — these are not so native to Robert Browning as thought. The philosopher often
h
4IO THE POETRY OF BROWNING
overtops the poet. His harshness is not all to be par- doned upon the plea that it is a higher kind of art. Much of it is to be accounted for only upon the ground that " it is his nature to." Verse is not quite sponta- neous with him. John Stuart Mill's conception of God is somewhat similar. The imperfections of the uni- verse, he thinks^ argue either lack of love or lack of power .in the Supreme Intelligence ; he prefers to doubt the power rather than to doubt the love. God does the best he can, but he has to work with very intractable material. And so Mill speaks of God as if he were some weak old man trudging up-hill with a mighty bur- den which he cannot easily manage, which, in fact, he is just able to carry — a shocking representation of him whom we know to be infinite in power as well as infi- nite in love. I have sometimes thought that the repre- sentation was an excellent one of merely earthly crea- tors— and of none more so than of Browning. His material at times seems too much for him. The metal is not hot enough to run freely into poetic molds ; the metal is of the best ; but the power to shape it into per- fect forms — the highest measure of this is lacking.
In Italy they have a peculiar way of cooking and serving that pretty little bird, the ortolan. It is trans- fixed with a skewer, but upon the skewer are also put a piece of brown toast upon the one side, a sage-leaf upon the other. So came, in thick succession, sage- leaf, ortolan, toast, sage-leaf, ortolan, toast, repeated as many times as need be. Browning likens his writing very justly to the combination of these three. The ortolan represents the poetry ; the sage-leaf furnishes piquancy ; the brown toast is nothing but sound sense.
PALLIATIONS OF HIS HARSHNESS 4! I
I admire his candor — few poets are so frank. My only fear is that at times when ortolans were scarce and thin, Browning may have made up for their lack by put- ting two sage leaves in place of one, and by indefinitely increasing the size and thickness of the brown toast.
I would not indulge myself, however, nor would I advise my younger readers to indulge, in the calm super- ciliousness with which many intelligent people still treat Robert Browning. It is not wise to assume that so steadily growing a fame and so marked an influence upon current literature are without any just foundation. It is best to take account of the forces of our time ; we cannot afford to be ignorant of them. The youth who postponed his crossing of the stream until the water should flow by had to wait for a long time. So, it seems to me, the man who regards what he calls "the Browning- cult ' as a merely temporary craze "exspectat, dum de- fluit amnis!' Those who know most of Browning are rather inclined to say of him as Isocrates said of Hera- cleitus : " What I know of him is so excellent that I can draw conclusions from it concerning what I cannot understand."
And one can say all this without for a moment sur- rendering his powers of critical judgment. He only insists that wisdom does not exclude wonder, and that we live, as intellectual and spiritual beings, only by " ad- miration, hope, and love." The nil admirari spirit is the spirit of decrepitude and death, and faith in great men is next to faith in God. I would not have Robert Browning's defects of artistic form blind any of my readers to the broad humanity of the poet and his ideal pictures of the deep thoughts of man's heart. No poet
412 THE POETRY OF BROWNING
of this century is more widely learned, no poet has more carefully pondered the great problems of existence, no poet has uttered more important truth.
There is, of course, a higher poetry than his, a poetry of wider range, of sweeter sound, of deeper spiritual significance. As civilization goes on, imagination will not fall into disuse, but will reach a higher development. To believe otherwise is to fancy that an inalienable pre- rogative of the human soul can be sloughed off as a mere excrescence, or can dwindle till it ceases to be. No, imagination belongs to man ; and, as with advanc- ing ages man's range of vision widens, imagination will only be furnished with larger and nobler materials, will only have deeper insight into the ideal relations of the universe, will only grow in power to express the truth. With larger truth will come deeper emotions, and with deeper emotions will come greater perfection of artistic form.
If there were only as much of us at all times as there is at some times, and if power of expression only an- swered always to the heart's desire, living would be a delight and earth would be heaven. I take the very sense of imperfection in all poetry of the past as an incentive to look forward. I not only anticipate no de- cline of poetry, but I confidently predict a day when, under the influence of a diviner Spirit than any earthly Muse, poetry shall be the chief handmaid of religion, the incarnate God shall be its chief subject, and the poet shall undertake "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." I look for a grander poetry here on earth- but I am not content with this ; I want all God's sons and daughters to prophesy ; I trust we shall all be poets
BROWNING AS THE POET OF OPTIMISM 413
in the New Jerusalem ; I long for the great future when the soul can fully express herself, when form shall an- swer to spirit, when language shall be the perfect vehicle of thought, and when all speech shall be song.
II
In the charming " Memoirs of Caroline Fox," we are told that Carlyle once entertained Emerson by taking him at midnight through the London slums. After he had shown his friend some more than common speci- mens of depravity, the sage of Chelsea blurted out in his cynical way : " Do you believe in a devil now ? ' But the calm American only replied : " I am more and more convinced of the greatness and goodness of the English people." It is an illustration of the tendencies to pessimism on the one hand, and to optimism on the other, that divide the world between them. In Ger- many, Schopenhauer looked at life through glasses dim with the smoke of the pit, while to Fichte a roseate mist suffused and glorified every dark and hateful thing. The pessimists, like the poor, we have always with us ; but in literature it is only the optimists who have last- ing power and attraction. The true poet must be a sort of prophet — a believer in the divine presence and purpose in all things, and therefore confident and for- ward-looking, like the prophets of Israel.
Robert Browning was the greatest optimist of the century, and his optimism constituted his chief message to our generation. In a pessimistic age, when the winds were laden with wailing, he preached a gospel of cheer and hope. He did this persistently and courageously,
414 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
in spite of the fact that the age had its strong influence upon him. In his later days even he became involved in the toils of a pessimistic philosophy, and that to the great detriment of his poetry. Yet the optimistic faith and impulse of his early years remained to the last and asserted themselves in spite of speculative difficulties. The withes of the Philistines could not long bind this Samson, and, even when old and blind, he could summon up his strength and confound his enemies.
It was largely a matter of temperament. When Henry Ward Beecher was asked whether life was really worth living, he replied that it depended very much upon the liver. It was not wholly without reason that the ancients located the affections in that particular portion of the body. Pessimism and optimism are to a considerable extent matters of digestion. The dyspep- tic takes dark views of the universe around him, while youth and health see all things bright and fair. Brown- ing certainly began his career with a fine physical endow- ment, and though some of his later philosophical aber- rations have been laid to the account of ill-health, I can testify that, so recently as 1887, when I saw him in his scarlet gown among the dons at the Oxford Commem- oration, he seemed the picture of a sound mind in a sound body. The twinkle of humor in his eye and the air of sagacity and comfort in his whole manner indi- cated that there was no place in him for mawkish senti- ment. There is a story that Swinburne, when he first met Browning, refused to take the chair that was offered him, and insisted upon sitting upon a hassock at the master's feet. The story goes on to relate that when Swinburne took his departure the master indulged
PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES 415
in what the lower classes of London call "language." Carlyle once said of Browning : " There's a great con- trast between him and me. He seems very content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a very strange and curious spectacle to behold a man in these days so confidently cheerful." If something of this cheer was due to native temperament, a part was attributable to the fact that he constantly mingled with men. In this respect we may contrast him with Tenny- son. As compared with Browning, Tennyson was a recluse. Self-conscious and morbidly sensitive to what- ever voices were rife around him, he came to be a praiser of the time that was past, and a somewhat morose critic of the present. One has only to read " Locksley Hall ' and then to read " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," to perceive that the tender grace of a day that was dead could never come back to Lord Tennyson. He who shuts himself out from his kind comes to distrust his kind. Browning believed in humanity, in large part be- cause he was en rapport with humanity.
Yet we must go deeper than this. Every man is a product of his time. Larger influences than those of his own health and environment make him what he is. There are streams of tendency that come down from the past. The atmosphere of thought owes its temperature and quality to distant seas and to other lands. The Puritans had so exalted God as to leave no place for man, and there had been a natural reaction. Deism had come in, with its " absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first sabbath at the outside of the universe and seeing it go." Sensationalism had come in, with its derivation of our sublimest ideas from sense, and its
41 6 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
consequent failure to see dignity in anything. But the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a change. Whatever else the German transcendental philosophers did do or did not do, they showed that there are ele- ments in knowledge which are not furnished by the senses. Kant proved that there may be, Hegel proved that there must be, being to which our knowledge cor- responds. In other words, we can get at Reality. It was the rediscovery of God in his universe.
The wave of German thought swept over to England. Shelley, in his " Adonais," saw God in nature, though he could not pronounce the sacred name, and even called himself an atheist :
The One remains, the many change and pass ; Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly ; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments.
And in this recognition of the divine principle in the world, more than in the matchless melody of his verse, I find the explanation of Browning's apotheosis of Shelley in his " Sordello." Wordsworth also saw God in nature — his insistence upon a personal intelligence and love in even the meanest flower that blows constitutes the chief merit and charm of his poetry.
But here Shelley and Wordsworth stopped. Shelley felt that he was at war with the world of mankind and the world of mankind at war with him. He would have pulled down the existing order of society, if only he could have done it. And Wordsworth, in spite of his theoretical recognition of God in all things, was at
PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES 417
home only when he got "far from the madding crowd." Men were lawless, and the divine in them was hard to recognize. I cannot better express my conception of Browning's place in literature than by saying that he begins where Shelley and Wordsworth leave off — begins by finding God in nature and ends by finding God in man. Listen to " Paracelsus " :
The center fire heaves underneath the earth, And the earth changes like a human face ; The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame — God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still ; earth is a wintry clod ; But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it ; rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.
• ••••••
Above, birds fly in merry flocks ; the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishing-gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews
His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all,
From life' s minute beginnings, up at last
To man — the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere of life. . .
2B
41 8 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
And man produced, all has its end thus far ; But in completed man begins anew A tendency toward God.
In these last lines the poet goes far beyond Shelley or Wordsworth. Browning .^ees^God, not only in nature, but in the souL He has been called the " sub- tlest asserter of the soul in song." In his main poems, indeed, he finds his subjects in the struggles, aspirations, triumphs, of the souL He believes in spirit. In " The Ring and the Book," the Pope says: "Mind is not matter, nor from matter, but above " ; and, in one of his last poems, he writes :
Quoth a young Sadducee, ' ' Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain we have, as they tell us, souls ? ' ' "Son, there is no reply" ; the rabbi bit his beard ; "Certain, a soul have I — we may have none," he sneered. Thus Karshook, the Hiram' s-hammer,
The Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And struck the simple solemn.
Yet Browning is a pronounced evolutionist. He finds it difficult to maintain an absolute difference between the organic and the inorganic, so long as every plant is turning the one into the other ; and, so long as man by eating animal food is turning the brute into himself, he finds it difficult to assert an absolute difference between himself and the brute. The same principle which mani- fests itself in matter manifests itself in a higher form in spirit. Evolution is only the name of a process. It leaves the question of agency still unsolved. Both evo- lution and law are modes of action — the action of a
PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES 419
spiritual Being who reveals himself in both matter and mind.
The poet's idealism makes all this easier to him. " To know," he says in " Paracelsus,"
To know
Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without
Thus his evolutionism, instead of lowering man, ele- vates nature. Matter cannot explain spirit, for matter cannot be understood except as a manifestation of spirit, or else as an element in the spiritual world. As we look upon the ascending scale of being, shall we take as the principle of explanation the beginning or the end ? Evidently the latter. "The oak explains the acorn, even more truly than the acorn explains the oak." We say, therefore, of the spiritual activities of man : " This is what the crude beginning in nature really was. Man, with his higher ideas, shows the meaning and con- tent of all that led up to him." Here is genuine poetic insight. Let me illustrate it first by a quotation from " Hohenstiel-Schwangau " :
For many a thrill of kinship I confess to With the powers called Nature, animate, inanimate, In parts or in the whole ; there' s something there Manlike, that somehow meets the man in me.
And then by several brief quotations from " Paracelsus " :
Man, once descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things.
42O THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
A supplementary reflex of light Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back-step in the circle.
The winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh, Never a senseless gust, now man is born. The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, A secret they assemble to discuss When the sun drops behind their trunks.
The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn Beneath the warm moon, like a happy face.
I knew, I felt (perception unexpressed, Uncomprehended by our narrower thought, But somehow known and felt in every shift And change in the spirit — nay, in every pore Of the body even) — what God is, what we are, What life is — how God takes an infinite joy In infinite ways — one everlasting bliss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds.
Comte declared that science would conduct God to the frontier of his universe, and politely bow him out, with thanks for his provisional services. But Browning holds rather with Lord Bacon, that while " a little, philosophy inclineth, man's mind to atheism," "depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For, while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further ; but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and
INTERPRETS NATURE BY MAN 421
Deity." Our poet never dispenses with God. Instead of seeing no design in the universe, he finds nothing but design. " Strange," says Frances Power Cobbe, " that when we once find out how a thing is done, we at once conclude that God has not done it ! ' Our intuitions are not valueless because we come from ape- like progenitors. " Intuitions are God's tuitions," and man, the end and goal of the development, explains the significance and purpose of all the lower forms that pre- pared the way for him.
In the powers and faculties of man, the summit of creation, therefore, Browning finds the most conclusive evidence of God's existence. We must interpret nature by man and not man by nature. Nature is no " empty eye-socket," as Jean Paul expresses it, without life or intelligence, but shows everywhere a living face, to meet and respond to the face of man. We have heard in our day the mournful atheism of Fitzgerald's " Omar Khayyam " :
And that inverted bowl they call the sky, Whereunder crawling cooped we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help — for It As impotently moves as you or I.- Here the sweetness of the verse is like that of flowers upon a cofrin. Contrast with this the glowing theism of Robert Browning :
I know that He is there, as I am here,
By the same proof, which seems no proof at all,
It so exceeds familiar forms of proof.
— Hohenstiel-Schwangau.
The truth in God' s breast
Lies trace upon trace on ours impressed :
422
THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him.
— Christmas Eve.
God is behind all.
We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening, till at last Comes God behind them.
— Mr. Sludge, the Medium.
God is the perfect poet,
Who, in creation, acts out his own conceptions.
— Paracelsus.
And so, while nature is a manifestation of God, it is in man that God most perfectly reveals himself. Every man^Jias in him a divine element, and this presence of God in man gives an infinite value and dignity to the poorest and meanest human being. Browning, like John Milton before him, is a monist. He holds that there is but one substance or principle of being. All things are potentially spirit, or, in other words, the uni- verse is a universe of spirits. Nature herself is in- stinct with life, and all things show & divine idea and plan :
This is the glory, that, in all conceived
Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind
— Not mine, but like mine — for the double joy
Making all things for me, and me for Him.
— Hohenstiel—Schwangau.
But he does not hesitate to include man, as well as nature, in this monistic view of the universe. Man too, in the deep basis of his being, is connected with God. Humanity ...is— naturally: rooted and grounded in him "from- whom and through whom and to whom are all
A MONIST, BUT NOT A PANTHEIST 423
things." In "The Ring and the Book," the Pope soliloquizes :
O thou, — as represented to me here
In such conception as my soul allows, —
Under thy measureless, my atom-width !
Man's mind, what is it but a convex-glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known Unknown, our God revealed to man ?
Professor Jones of Wales has given the best expo- sition of Robert Browning's philosophy. He says that:
While Browning insists on this identity of the human spirit with God, and declares all the phenomena of the world to be mani- festations of love, he does not forget that the identity is not abso- lute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves God lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality. In his poem entitled "Death in the Desert," we read :
" Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve ; A Master to obey, a Cause to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."
The unity of the divine and the human within the spiritual life of man is a real unity, just because man is free ; the identity manifests itself through the difference ; and the difference is pos- sible through the unity. . . He would find God in man, and yet leave man free.
To this statement of Professor Jones I may add that Browning— does not attempt to explain how unity of substance between God and man is consistent with freedom, sin, and guilt in the finite creature. Yet he believes in these last, as firmly as in the first. Observe
424 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
the two elements of his doctrine in the following lines, first, from " Rabbi Ben Ezra " :
Rejoice we are allied
To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive ;
A spark disturbs our clod :
Nearer we hold of God Than of his tribes that take, I must believe.
Here we are declared to be one with the Source and Giver of life. But now, secondly, note the limitation of this unity. In " Christmas Eve ' we hear the poet
deriding
The important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator.
He tells us that it was God's plan to make man in his
image :
To create man, and then leave him
Able, his own word saith, to grieve him ;
But able to glorify him too,
As a mere machine could never do
That prayed or praised, all unaware
Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,
Made perfect as a thing of course.
God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away,
As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give
Room for the newly made to live,
And look at him from a place apart,
And use his gifts of brain and heart.
Life's business being just the terrible choice.
— The Ring and the Book, Pope, 1238.
THE UNIFYING PRINCIPLE IS LOVE 425
We may interpret all this by saying that the poet is a monist, but an ethical monist, a believer that God and man are of one substance, but a hater of pantheism which denies God's transcendence and separate person- ality.
Sidney Lanier asserts that the last twenty centuries have spent their best power upon the development of personality, and that literature, education, government, and religion have all learned to recognize the individual as the unit of force. Of all poets, Robert Browning most clearly perceives that the greatness and power of God are revealed in the very freedom of human person- ality and the consequent diversity of human life. Man has a freedom which he may abuse, and the essential thing in life is the opportunity for probation, choice, the determination and manifestation of character. The poet seizes a typical man at the crisis of his history, when all the influences of ancestry and environment converge to a focus upon him, and when he speaks the one word or makes the one decision which reveals to all eternity what manner of man he chooses to be. At that moment, that instant one and infinite, he takes his snap-shot, photographs the man, depicts his innermost thought and character. But not because the single act or the single man is of supreme importance — rather, because in this particular man and this particular act we may see one aspect or manifestation of the infinite energy and the perfect character of God.
It is easy to suggest difficulties here, and to maintain that our poet is formulating metaphysical and moral contradictions. How can ignorance and weakness mani- fest wisdom and power ? Above all, how can falsehood
426 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
and wickedness manifest the divine purity and truth ? The complete answer to these questions Browning does not prof ess-ta give. He only suggests that there is an ultimate principle of unity, and tells us what it is, though without showing us in detail how the reconcilia- tion is effected. Here we come to another characteristic and fundamental feature of his system of thought. The principle that unifies all is Love. All grades of being are in some way embodiments of the supreme good. The whole is in every part. Unus homo, nullus homo. The universe in like manner is an organism, and every part ministers to the whole, as the whole to every part. So the world may be called the return of the highest to itself, and the universe is homeward-bound. As all things are manifestations of spirit, so all things are manifestations of love.
Denn das Leben ist die Liebe, Und des Lebens Lebengeist.
Love is for Browning the highest, richest conception man can form. Mere intellect is not perfection ; here he differs from Hegel ; love is perfection, for it includes intellect and all else. The poet was certainly a man of affectionate nature ; if he had not been, it is doubtful whether such a solution of the problems of life would ever have dawned upon him. Fanny Kemble said he was the only man whom she had ever known that be- haved like a Christian to his wife. As she was frail and secluded from the world, he never but once during his fifteen years of married life dined away from home. On every anniversary of his marriage, when he was in Lon- don, this robust Englishman, who did not ordinarily
BROWNING AN OPTIMIST 427
deal in mere sentiment, went to the church where the ceremony had been performed, and kneeling down kissed the doorstep. In his last illness he called every night for the ring his wife had given him on her deathbed, and pressed it to his lips before he went to sleep. He re- garded love as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of God, and the most essential article of his creed he summed up in the word in " Paracelsus " :
God, them art love ! I build my faith on that !
How could Browning believe the universe to be in every part a manifestation of love, when sin and wretch- edness abound ? The answer is that he saw the love of God so demonstrated in Jesus Christ that these seem-
ingly opposing phenomena ceased to trouble him. I do not mean that he held to any of the orthodox formulas as to the person of our Lord. His faith was doubtless a very liberal one. But he did see in. Christ the most effective revelation of God. With his conviction that personality was the highest form of being was united a belief that only personal influences can ever transform character. He declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very touch gives life and courage and power. When he seeks stimulus for sustained effort, and inspiration for enduring virtue, he finds them in Jesus Christ.
The proof of all this from Browning's writings must be a cumulative one. Let me first quote from his let- ters. In writing to a lady in her last illness, he says : " It is a great thing — the greatest — that a human being should have passed the probation of life, and sum up its experience in a witness to the power and love of God.
428 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
... I see ever more reason to hold by the same hope." And then he quotes the words of Charles Lamb, when " in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to ap- pear suddenly in flesh and blood once more, on the final suggestion : * And if Christ entered this room ? ' he changed his manner at Once and stuttered out, as his manner was when moved: 'You see, if Shakespeare entered, we should all rise; if He appeared, we should all kneel ! ' But why should Robert Browning join with Charles Lamb in the worship of Christ ? I answer, first, because he regards Christ as God revealed, Deity -active in nature and in history. The living God whom we see in nature is none other than Christ. Nature is not his body, in the sense that he is confined to nature. Nature is his body, in the sense that in nature we see him who is above nature, and in whom at the same time all things consist.
Mrs. Orr, his biographer, says that Browning once spoke to her with relation to his own religious opinions, and concluded by reading to her the "Epilogue to Dramatis Personse." She continues :
It will be remembered that the beautiful and pathetic second part of the poem is a cry of spiritual bereavement, the cry of those victims of nineteenth century skepticism for whom incarnate Love has disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. The third part attests the continued existence of God in Christ, as mystically present to the individual soul :
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows.
"That face," said Mr. Browning as he closed the book, "that face is the face of Christ : that is how I feel him."
BROWNING AN OPTIMIST 429
With one qualification the most orthodox believer may accept the view of the poet. Nature is an ex- pression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an expression of my mind and will. Rhetorically I can identify nature with Christ, just as I can identify my face with myself. But then let us remember that be- hind and above my face is a personality of which the face is but the partial and temporary manifestation. And, in like manner, let us remember that nature is but the partial and temporary manifestation of the Christ who is not only in all things, but before all things, and above all things.
There is a second reason why Browning bows to Christ, and that is because he who is the life of nature and the moving power in history has taken human form and has shown by an infinite self-sacrifice that God is love. I quote from several poems :
From the first Power was, I knew ;
Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see.
— Reverie, in Asolando.
I never realized God' s birth before, How he grew likest God in being born.
Such ever was love' s way — to rise, it stoops.
— Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book.
Gladness be with thee, Helper of the world !
I think this the authentic sign and seal
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts,
Into a rage to suffer for mankind
And recommence at sorrow.
• — Balaustiori s Adventure.
43O THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
This man so cured regards the curer then As — God forgive me — who but God himself, Creator and Sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile. The very God ! — think, Abib ; dost thou think ? So the All-Great were the All-loving too ! So through the thunder comes a human voice Saying : " O heart I made, a heart beats here ! Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee." — Karshish, the Arabian Physician.
Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wilt thou — so wilt thou !
So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown,
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up or down
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death !
As thy love is discovered Almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with it and for it, of being beloved !
He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest shall stand the
most weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ; my flesh that I seek In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee : a man like to me Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever ! A hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ
stand ! — Saul.
After all these citations I think it will not be doubted that the-secret-of Browning's persistent optimism lay in his recognition of Christ as God and Saviour. If the life that pulsates through all nature is the life of Christ, and if the hand that conducts the march of history is the hand that was nailed to the cross, then we may dismiss our fears and advance to the study of life's problems
if*
THE LATER BROWNING A PHILOSOPHER 431
with cheerful heart, believing with Pippa that, however great the intellectual difficulties may be,
God's in his heaven,
All' s right with the world !
Or if any one still questions whether this is the real source of the poet's quietude as he faces the mysteries and seeming contradictions of existence, I make one quotation from " Death in the Desert " :
I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the world and out of it, And hath so far advanced thee to be wise ;
and another from "The Ring and the Book," where he speaks of
The divine instance of self-sacrifice That never ends and aye begins for man. So, never miss I footing in the maze ; No ! I have light, nor fear the dark at all.
I wish that my account of Browning's philosophical and religious views might only end here. In general it is the earlier Browning that I have been describing. The earlier Browning is Browning the poet ; the later Browning is Browning the would-be philosopher. While he sticks to intuition and to poetry, he satisfies us. In his earlier poems he sees with the imagination and the heart, and his poems rouse us, warm us, inspire us, like Luther's triumphant songs. He starts with_insight and Scripture, and he is strong. He attempts to prove, and he becomes weak. He makes the mistake of attempting to put philosophy into poetry. He succeeds
432 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
only in spoiling a good poet to make a poor philosopher. It is like the story of George Eliot over again — at first simplicity and natural pathos, afterward over-elaboration and wearisome sententiousness.
Was the change due to the weakening of imagina- tion and the strengthening of the merely logical intelli- gence which growing years brought with them ? Or did success in grappling with problems stimulate ambition to demonstrate the truth he saw? Certain it is that in- sight brings logic after it. The poet gives the hint to the philosopher. After ^Eschylus and Sophocles come Plato and Aristotle. And sometimes a long historical succession is represented in the life of a single individual. I am disposed, however, to connect the change in Brown- ing rather with a change of the utmost importance in his personal relations — I mean with Mrs. Browning's death, and with the loss of her insight and influence. The poet's wife had more of native poetic ardor than her husband had. So long as she lived, he valued his proper vocation and was content with " the vision and the faculty divine." But when she left him, the mys- tery of life and death, of sin and sorrow, oppressed him as never before. Her cultivation of his faith-instinct was now lacking. He began to speculate. He deter- mined to interpret the world in terms of spirit. He staked all on his ability to prove that all things are illus- trations of love.
But this was philosophy and not poetry. The effect upon his verse was not fortunate. In poetry it is not the first step but the last step that costs. That last step — of making the form perfect — he had always been averse to. His later work is full of rude vigor, but it is
MORAL EVIL SOMEHOW A FORM OF GOOD 433
the vigor of a first draft — what he has written he has written, and he more and more disdains to alter or amend ; if the reader is scandalized by the roughness or blindness of it, so much the worse for the reader. It is unfortunate that so many people get their first impres- sions of Browning from these later productions of his, in which involved and long-drawn reasoning is only occasionally relieved by a simile or aphorism that shows the sage and the seer. If this were the only Browning, we might well subscribe to the lines of George C. Brag- don, who describes him as :
Versed in all schools, athirst for the unseen.
He wrote in measures noble English prose, Dropping rich gems of poesy between,
Where passion flamed through masterful repose.
It was a mistake even so far as the philosophy was concerned, for poetry sees deeper than science does. Faith is a sort of winged intellect, an operation of the integral mind, the highest activity of reason. Only love can give eyes to the mind. Only the intellect that is conditioned by a right state of the affections can ever reach the highest truth. It is not blind faith but " blind unbelief ' that is " sure to err and scan God's works in vain." Faith is not blind, but is endued with powers of insight which mere intellect can never boast of. When Browning ceased to trust his poetic insight and began to indulge in argument, he exchanged the spear of Ithuriel for a weapon of merely earthly temper.
The poet's thesis is that all things are manifestations of love. His earlier poems simply declare the fact, to-
2C
434 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
gether with what he can see of God's method, but with- out pretense of reconciliation ; as, for example, in " Saul," he says :
I spoke as I saw — I report as man may of God' s work — all' s love, yet all' s law.
But his later poems are efforts to defend his thesis in terms of intellect alone. Here he had to confront the fact of moral .fiyil Now there are two kinds of opti- mism : first, Christian optimism, which asserts that, in spite of moral evil all things are working together for good ; and secondly, pantheistic-optim ism, which asserts that all things are good. With every inclination to put the best interpretation upon his work, I am obliged to confess that Browning came dangerously near to the pantheistic explanation of sin. And Dr. E. G. Robin- son has well said that " Sin explained is sin defended." Let us trace from step to step the growth of this wrong principle. Robert Browning wished to see in all things, even the worst, only various forms of good. He describes the result of his observations as follows :
All the same,
Of absolute and irretrievable black — black' s soul of black, Beyond white' s power to disintensify — Of that I saw no sample ; such may wreck My life and ruin my philosophy
To-morrow, doubtless.
— Ferishtah ' s Fancies.
He depicted the criminals in "The Ring and the Book," only to show
In the absolutest drench of dark Some stray beauty-beam, to the despair of hell.
MORAL EVIL SOMEHOW A FORM OF GOOD 435
So even Guido, that arch-fiend among mortals, who declared that, as he had tried to murder Pompilia here, so he would murder her in the next world if he could only catch her there, is made to give at least one sign of incipient morality in his last cry for mercy :
' ' Pompilia, will you let them murder me ? ' '
Our poet set out with a firm belief in personality and freedom. If he had kept this constantly in mind, he would have referred all evil to the perversity of the finite will. But he thought it necessary, instead, to refer it somehow to God. This could only result in a gradual blurring of the clear line between moral good and moral evil. How shall moral evil be shown to have in it an element of good ? In this way : Man's life is a progress through strife. The important thing is to rouse the will. Evil awakens man's active energies, incites him to conflict and endeavor. So evil is the necessary means of good. But it is clear that, in this explanation, the moral idea already begins to be lost sight of, and force takes the place of right. Virtue is defined as mere valor in the battle of life. Better seek evil with one's whole mind, than be lukewarm in goodness. Indifference and spiritual lassitude are the worst of sins. " The Statue and the Bust " seems to teach that vigorous transgression is better than pusil- lanimous rectitude. Says Browning :
I hear your reproach : ' ' But delay was best ;
For their end was a crime. ' ' Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test,
As virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment' s view.
43^ THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
Here let us listen to Professor Boyesen's interpreta- tion :
What Browning contends is that passion is the expression of the personality at its floodtide ; it is the man' s or the woman' s power at its climax ; it is the rich blossoming of the soul ; and the fail- ure to obey its prompting is a sacrilege, a wasting of golden mo- ments that will never return. It is in these moments that life reaches out for its fulfillment ; and dying, without having tasted their sweetness, is death indeed ; is sterility and failure. It is as if the plant should die without having blossomed. The moral objections to this doctrine are known to Browning in all their aspects, but he chooses never to emphasize them. It is doubtful whether he would recommend his philosophy to any one as a guide of action. . . Quite apart from the fact that society must, for its own protection, punish nonconformity in morals, the pursuer of pleasure for its own sake, or for his own sake, will always have the experience of Ixion — he will embrace a cloud. Even from a purely philosophical point of view the words of Christ are true : "He that seeketh his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life, for my sake, shall find it."
With this criticism of Boyesen I heartily agree. Browning in attributing the origin of evil to God has come dangerously near to consecrating every abnormal impulse of human nature. Right is simply might. In "The Ring and the Book," the pope is a warrior-priest, and Pompilia reaches the height of virtue by becoming energetic. Browning would have agreed with Dante in consigning to a specially despicable Limbo those who were not good enough for heaven and who had not char- acter enough for hell. Luther's " Pecca fortiter " seems to be the recipe for true greatness.
Is all moral failure, then, only apparent ? Is sin only a phantom ? Are right and wrong only illusions to sting men to effort ? Is Ottima just as good in her place as
RIGHT AND WRONG ARE ILLUSIONS 437
Pippa ? It certainly seems as if this were at times Browning's doctrine. He says :
All service ranks the same with God — With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we ; there is no last or first.
— Pippa Passes.
In spite of the evil will that opposes the good, the poet seems to take the voice of conscience in man as evidence of his moral worthiness, instead of its being evidence that he knows the right and so is the more guilty for the wrong.
Sin then is not the willful grieving of God and depar- ture from his commandment which Browning's earlier poems had declared it to be. It is rather a necessary result of the limitations of man's finite being. It is the blundering of inexperience, the thoughtlessness that takes evil for good, the ignorance that puts its fingers into the fire, the stumbling without which one cannot learn to walk. It is a fruit which is sour and bitter simply because it is immature. It is a means of dis- cipline and training for something better — it is holiness in the germ, good in the making ; and, so long as we are finite creatures, the idea of escaping from it is, as Goethe expresses it, like "the idleness of wishing to jump off from one's own shadow."
Our moral nature, however, revolts against this view. James Russell Lowell said truly :
In vain we call old notions fudge
And bend our conscience to our dealing ;
The ten commandments will not budge And stealing will continue stealing.
438 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
What shall be done with this voice of conscience ? Is the solemn utterance of our moral nature only a decep- tion ? The answer is substantially this, that, as evil is necessary to good, so error is necessary to truth. We cannot know truth except as the antithesis to error ; we cannot gain truth except by putting off error ; in other words, error is only partial truth, that prepares the way for truth that is more complete.
Man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best
— Death in the Desert.
What were life,
Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife Through the ambiguous Present to the goal Of some all-reconciling Future ?
— Gerard de Lairesse.
The space
Which yields thee knowledge — do its bounds embrace Well-willing and wise- working, each at height ? Enough : beyond this lies the infinite — Back to thy circumscription !
— Francis Turini.
Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither with extreme
concern !
Living here means nescience simply : ' t is next life that helps to learn.
— La Saisiaz.
But this is skepticism and agnosticism. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then this theory is not true or its truth cannot be known. Browning was a poet rather than a metaphysician, or he could hardly have accepted a scheme so self -contradictory.
BUT LOVE IS OF GOD 439
But let us get the scheme itself more fully before us. The doctrine is, that ignorance and deception are need- ful if man is to strive and grow. To know things as they really are would reveal all as locked together in a system of universal good ; but to know this would be the greatest of disasters, since stimulus to activity would then be lacking. Evil is only illusion, but the knowledge of that fact would paralyze all moral effort. To believe that evil is only evil, however, would be alike ruinous, since it would take away all trust in uni- versal providence and all ground of hope for the future. Hence we are left to faith. In default of intellectual certainty we betake ourselves to our fundamental pos- tulate that love is the controlling principle of all, and we conclude that ignorance is only love's instrument. Good can be known only by the contrast of evil ; evil is but illusion, the necessary stepping-stone to good ; Love permits the illusion, only to incite to good.
But is not God truth and right, as well as love ? Here we come to another peculiarity of Browning's thinking. In his earlier poems he did apply to truth and right the same principle that he applied to love. In " Christmas Eve " he says :
For Justice, Good, and Truth were still Divine, if, by some demon' s will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and Right misnamed.
And in " A Soul's Tragedy " he adds :
Were ' t not for God, I mean, what hope of truth — Speaking truth, hearing truth — would stay with man ? I trust in God, the Right shall be the Right, And other than the Wrong, while he endures.
44-O THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
Here truth and right are declared as divine and eter- I/ nal as God himself. But in his later productions he classes these by themselves, and sets love above them as the only thing divine and eternal. Man's love is a gift from God and a means of interpreting God — not so man's knowledge. While "love gains God at first leap," knowledge is always defective. A radical flaw runs through our knowing faculty. In his last poems he seems to grant that intellect finds mere power ruling on every side, indifferent to morally good or evil, while heart rebels against this conclusion of intellect, and be- lieves that even power will some day be seen to be love :
When see ? When there dawns a day,
If not on this homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and the new have birth, And Power comes full in play.
This setting of the heart against the intellect, and the affections against the reason, is not only to make man's nature inherently self-contradictory, but to make God, who reveals himself in man's reason, essentially unvera- cious. Conscience cannot acquiesce in this, explanation of evil as only apparent. And love protests against the sorrow that evil brings in its train. We feel that the divinest thing in us is our recognition of the essential and eternal difference between right and wrong, and we feel also that God cannot be the author of moral evil, even though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent and transient. Browning himself feels the pressure of this difficulty. He asks :
Wherefore should any evil hap to man, From ache of flesh to agony of soul,
KNOWLEDGE IS ONLY APPARENT 44!
Since God' s All-mercy mates All-potency ? Nay, why permits he evil to himself — Man's sin, accounted such ? Suppose a world Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant — Man pure of evil in thought, word, deed — Were it not well ? Then wherefore otherwise ?
The only answer is that the apparent existence of evil is the necessary condition of goodness. If man is to aspire and attain, the present must seem to him in- adequate, imperfect, wrong. But the evil must still be only apparent, since God is love. We are to believe and love, in spite of all that intellect may say.
Man's part Is plain, to send love forth, astray perhaps ;
No matter — he has done his part.
— The Sun.
We can now perceive how deep a speculative error that was into which Browning fell when, in order to sub- stantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge as only apparent. His appeal from the head to the heart should have been an appeal from the narrower knowledge of the mere intellect to the larger knowledge which is conditioned upon right affection. Human nature cannot be cut in two with a hatchet. We must not sever the intellect from the affections. Yet that is what our poet did. Instead of standing by his earlier utterances with regard to finite personality and freedom, and referring all sin and misery to the ab- normal working of the human will, he must somehow find in God the ground and explanation of moral evil. This requires him by hook or by crook to turn evil into good. But if moral black is at bottom only moral
V
\
442 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
white, there is evident mistake in our most serious moral judgments. Hence, knowledge must be dis- credited, and truth itself be made a merely subjective and relative thing. And this implies that, though love comes from God, truth does not ; in other words, God is love, but he is not truth.
A sad falling off from the earlier Browning ! How sad can be estimated by one or two quotations from his earlier works. "The Ring and the Book" marks the high tide of his poetic insight, before his faith had taken an agnostic philosophy for its treacherous ally. There he says :
Truth nowhere lies, yet everywhere, in these ; Not absolutely in a portion, yet evolvable From the whole, evolved at last Painfully, held tenaciously, by me.
Yet my poor spark had for its source the Sun ; Thither I sent the great looks that compel Light from its fount : all that I do and am Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised, Remembered or divined, as mere man may.
and in " Christmas Eve " we read :
What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man' s dust to God' s divinity ?
So in "Paracelsus," "Easter Day," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Death in the Desert," knowledge as well as love is treated as an emanation from God. With these
A FALLING OFF FROM THE EARLIER BROWNING 443
poems, his later works, "La Saisiaz," "Ferishtah's Fan-^x cies," " The Parleyings," and " Asolando," form a pain- ful contrast. In these an intellectual pessimism hangs like an old man of the sea upon the neck of his moral optimism and greatly hampers its free going. When the poet concedes that knowledge is only dissembling ignorance, and that faith is only blind trust, he plucks out his own right eye.
So Browning condemns man to strive for a truth he can never attain, as Carlyle, with a similar philosophy, condemns him to strive for a goodness he can never achieve. Browning saw more deeply than Carlyle, when he maintained that divine love was at the heart of all things. Professor Jones has finely indicated the con- trast between these two literary lights of our day, when he says that Carlyle saw in law only the work of a great taskmaster, and in man only hopeless confusion. He is so busy working himself, that he sees no other workers. But Browning is certain of the moral purpose of life, of the grand result of good toward which the universe is moving, because law to him is only the method of love. Carlyle saw God as lawgiver and judge, but not as helper ; as a God within, only in conscience, issuing imperatives and threats, not within as a beneficent and regenerating power. But to Browning, all moral prog- ress is the spiritual incarnation of God, God's love put- ting itself into human action, and bringing good out of evil. How great the pity that Browning could not have carried his doctrine farther, and have seen that, as all human love, even the poorest, is God's love in man flow- ing back to its source, so all human knowledge is God's truth in man bearing witness to him from whom it
444 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
comes ! Knowledge is not " lacquered ignorance ' simply because it is not complete. We can know truly without knowing exhaustively. God is light as well as love, and the ideal without is not only a power of love, but also a power of knowledge, within.
Yet, in spite of his speculative errors, this poet of the soul found love a guarantee for immortality. We may separate the soul from the body, its instrument, but this separation does not arrest the course of its moral devel- opment. Here is an optimism that refuses to confine its view to the narrow span of three score years and ten :
Have you found your life distasteful ?
My life did, and does, smack sweet Was your youth of pleasure wasteful ?
Mine I saved, and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish ?
When mine fail me, I' 11 complain. Must in death your daylight vanish ?
My sun sets to rise again.
— At the Mermaid.
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain ; And this first life claims a second, else I count its good no gain.
What' s time ? Leave Now for dogs and apes — Man has forever.
— The Grammarian' s Funeral.
No work begun shall ever pause for death.
There shall never be one lost good ; what was, shall live as before ; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much more ; On the earth, the broken arc ; in the heaven, a perfect round.
— Abt Vogler.
LOVE A GUARANTEE FOR IMMORTALITY 445
And so Robert Browning was to the end
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward ;
Never doubted clouds would break ;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph ; Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
I
The death of Mrs. Browning deprived him of his best adviser and left him to struggle, not always successfully, with oppositions of science falsely so called. Yet that death directed all his later thinking to the future life, gave him a fresh and ineradicable conviction of immor- tality, and made his words a source of courage and faith to this generation not only, but to many generations to come. How much our age needed his message will appear, if I quote from the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khay- yam, whose melodious pessimism has seemed to so many like an Epicurean gospel :
I came like water, and like wind I go.
Up from earth' s center through the seventh gate I rose and on the throne of Satan sate, And many a knot unraveled by the Road, But not the master-knot of human fate.
There was the door to which I found no key ; There was the veil through which I might not see ; Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was, and then no more of Thee and Me.
Earth could not answer, nor the seas that mourn In flowing purple, of their Lord forlorn ; Nor rolling Heaven, with all his signs revealed, And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.
446 THE THEOLOGY OF BROWNING
Then of the Thee in Me, who works behind
The veil, I lifted up my hands to find
A Lamp amid the darkness ; and I heard
As from without : ' ' The Me within Thee find ! ' '
Then to the lips of this poor earthen Urn I leaned, the secret of my life to learn ; And lip to lip it murmured : ' ' While you live, Drink ! for once dead, you never shall return ! ' '
Robert Browning has hope for the bad as well as for the good — not hope for them in their badness, but hope that the badness may yet be purged out of them. Even of Guido, the typical villain, as he enters eternity, the Pope says:
Else I avert my face, nor follow him Into that sad, obscure, sequestered state Where God unmakes, but to remake, the soul He else made first in vain : which must not be !
— The Ring and the Book.
And in his poem entitled " Apparent Failure," we read :
It's wiser being good than bad, It' s safer being meek than fierce, It' s fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ;
That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched ;
That what began best, can' t end worst, Nor what God blest once, prove accurst
And as for Browning's personal prospect, I think it cannot be doubted that he spoke out of his own heart in "Prospice":
LOVE A GUARANTEE FOR IMMORTALITY 447
Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the stress of the storm,
The post of the foe, Where he stands, the Arch-Fear, in a visible form ?
Yet the strong man must go : For the journey is done, and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall, Though a battle' s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more
The best and the last ! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And let me creep past. No ! let me take the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old ; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life' s arrears,
Of pain, darkness, and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute' s at end, And the elements rage, the fiend-voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest !
TENNYSON
TENNYSON
POETRY AS INTERPRETING THE DIVINE ORDER
FEW poets have given so early promise of greatness as did Alfred Tennyson. At five years of age in his father's garden, when caught and swept along by a gale, he exclaimed : " I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind ! ' His first verses were inscribed upon a slate at home, while his elders were at church. " Yes, you can write! " said his brother Charles, after he had read them. The grandfather was not so hopeful. He gave Alfred a half-sovereign for a few lines upon his grandmother's death, with the words : " That is the first money you have earned by your poetry and, my word for it, it will be your last." He little thought that the manuscript of the " Poems by Two Brothers," including Alfred's first productions, would be one day sold for two thou- sand one hundred and fifty dollars, and that a single copy of the published work would bring one hundred and twenty dollars.
At Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where the poet was born and where he gained the most of his preparatory training for the university, he spent his youth in the still air of delightful studies. The father was variously learned, with gifts for painting, architecture, and music, as well as for poetry and the classic languages. A sweet and gentle mother bound the household together
451
452 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
by ties of reverence and love, so that faith in woman- kind beat henceforth with the poet's blood. There were twelve children in the rectory family, and of the seven sons the two older than himself were poets also. The village numbered scarcely a hundred souls. It was far removed from the noise of politics or trade. But there were books in plenty, and there was endless story- telling at the table and around the hearth. The news of the battle of Waterloo never penetrated to that re- mote corner of the earth ; but there were mimic battles fought on the lawn, with rods stuck in the ground for kings, with knights on either side to defend them, and with an inexhaustible artillery of stones for their over- throw.
The " Ode to Memory" is still printed among the juvenile works of the author, but it has touches that are worthy of his prime. It tells of the strong impressions that were made upon him by his English home, that haunt of ancient peace :
Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside,
The seven elms, the poplars four,
That stand beside my father' s door,
And chiefly from the brook that loves
To purl o' er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn,
In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodland.
O ! hither lead thy feet ! Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds,
Upon the ridged wolds,
When the first matin-song hath wakened loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn,
HIS CONCEPTION OF POETRY 453
What time the amber morn
Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud.
Here are a keen observation of nature, a sparkling freshness of phrase, and a pure affection for trie scenes of childhood. None of these, however, are sure proofs of coming greatness. There are other lines of greater significance in this same " Ode to Memory" :
In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest Thou leddest by the hand thy infant Hope. The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence ; and the cope
Of the half-attained futurity,
Though deep, not fathomless, Was cloven with the million stars that tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy. Small thought was there of life's distress ; For sure she deemed no mist of earth could dull Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful. Sure she was nigher to heaven' s spheres, Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years.
These last words are repeated and preserved from " Timbuctoo," the first poem of the author published under his own name. They are in the grand style, and they disclose the central thought of the poet's life and work. He has in mind something larger than the fabled music of the spheres, namely, the ordered march of the ages and of all their histories. He found within him an impulse to measured speech. But this would have been child's play if he had not felt it to correspond with rhythmical realities in the universe. There is an order which pervades all time as well as all space. It
454 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
is the function of the poet to discover that order, and to interpret it to men. Tennyson began his work with a right theory of art. His position in literature and his influence upon his generation cannot be understood with- out recognizing this.
What is merely intimated in the " Ode to Memory ' is clearly expressed elsewhere. Not often has a great singer in his first lays so fully spread out the programme of his career as has our author in another early poem, "The Poet." Rarely has the after-harvest given so abundant witness to the quality of the seed. And never, I believe, has any literary sower committed this seed more daringly or more tremblingly to the earth :
The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above ; Dower' d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw through life and death, through good and ill
He saw through his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting Will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay : with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame : The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And winged with flame.
• •••••#'
So, many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
Though one did fling the fire ; Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams
Of high desire.
Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world Like one great garden show' d,
THE TRUE rOET IS A PROPHET ALSO 455
And, through the wreaths of floating dark upcurl' d, Rare sunrise flow' d.
Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,
So was their meaning to her words. No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl' d, But one poor poet' s scroll, and with his word
She shook the world.
So much of sound philosophy is condensed into these lines, and so much of Tennyson's own theory of art, that I venture, even at the risk of repeating what I have said in other essays, to point out some of the fea- tures of his poetic creed. All truth is material for the poet, whether it be truth of nature or of the human soul, of history or of the divine purpose that unifies his- tory. One ordered realm of truth is open to the poet's gaze, and he is truth's interpreter. He deals with truth, however, not in its abstract forms, but in its power to move and sway the soul — with truth therefore in its aspect as beauty, and as fit to charm and stir, to in- spirit and energize. Not mere fact, but tendency, not the individual, but the type, not the sequences of life, but the order and beauty which lie behind them, it is the poet's mission to discover and to declare — and all for the good of human kind and for the unveiling of the divine love and wisdom.
The true poet then has a moral aim. He is a prophet
1. A A
of the Highest. He does not minister to pleasure, light and fugitive, but to man's lasting good. He does
456 POETRY INTERNETS THE DIVINE ORDER
not depict the actual, so much as the ideal He is not a photographer of all that is, so much as he is a delinea-
r»
tor of that which ought to be. His art does not exist for art's sake, but for humanity's sake and for God's v sake. He peers into the great purpose of good at the heart of the universe, in order that he may promote that purpose. And as it is his greater powers of love that enable him to see the universal order, so love en- ables him to pity the disorder which man has wrought, and to lend his own inspiring words to set that disorder right. In short, the poet is the man of deeper feeling, and therefore of larger insight, who sees the inner truth and order of the world, through all its superficial falsity and disorder, with a view to expressing that truth and order in forms of beauty and for purposes of goodness. In his later poems Tennyson has more fully set forth his conception of his mission. Without faith in an eternal order, he calls the world,
This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
Knowledge severed from love and faith, he says, is "_a_child, and vain." Goethe had declared that "the great poet must be free from all moral prepossessions." Tennyson, on the contrary, regards wisdom, or knowl- edge tempered by love, as essential to poetic inspira- tion. The faith which constitutes the heart and core of his writings is expressed in the closing lines of « In Memoriam." There he confesses a personal and loving God, who is the source of the world's order
THE TRUE POET IS A PROPHET ALSO 45 /
and the guarantee that it will wisely reach its appointed
end:
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.
I do not mean that this view of the universe, or of his relation to it as interpreter, was so definite and con- scious at the beginning of his career as it was at the close. His faith was no " idle ore,"
But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter' d with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
My purpose, indeed, is to trace the development of this faiths It will be found, if I mistake not, that its history and the history of the poet are one and the same thing. For the very reason that Tennyson's belief in a divine order is more than a native tendency of mind, is rather an achievement, made by struggle with many opposing influences until at last it became a settled consciousness of the soul, for this reason he constitutes not only the best representative of his age, but also its most power- ful poetic influence.
He fought his doubts and gathered strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them : thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own ;
And Power was with him in the night,
45 8 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud.
Although Waterloo was unheard of, the news of Lord Byron's death reached the rectory of Somersby. It stirred the hearts of those imaginative children as no political event ever could. To young Alfred, it seemed as if the world were over and done for. Now that this great literary light was extinguished, there was nothing left of any worth. He walked out alone and carved deep into the sandstone, and with the feeling that the inscription marked the tombstone of the universe, the words, " Byron is dead ! ' It is an illustration of the fascination which that wayward and passionate spirit exerted upon all English-speaking youth. Byron was the artistic counterpart of the French Revolution, with its fierce license, its revolt against established forms, its wild determination to be free. The influence of Byron is quite perceptible in Tennyson's juvenile verse. There are imitations of "The Maid of Athens," and of "The Destruction of Sennacherib."
But Byron and his school burnt over the ground, so that poetry of this sort could not grow again. They ran passion to death. The world tired of the Satanic in literature. There came a natural reaction, and Words- worth was its representative. It was a return to nature, idyllic, calm, sincere. It appealed to the thoughtful. But dramatic fervor was lacking. Tennyson's " Dora ' and "The Miller's Daughter' are in Wordsworth's manner. Our poet had in him too much of life and fire, to follow long in the ways of Wordsworth's tame sim-
FIRST PERIOD OF DAINTY GRACE 459
plicity. Poetry has been described as " great thoughts clothed in splendor." Tennyson has retained much of Byron's dramatic energy, though he lacks something of his rush and spontaneity. He combines with this dramatic energy much of the idyllic sweetness of Words-
worth, while he is master of a condensation and of a selective skill which neither Byron nor Wordsworth ever possessed. Of prosaic passages he is almost wholly guiltless. He is at the same time the greatest example of pure beauty in English poetical literature.
Let us, with William Watson, distinguish between beauty and style. In women, style does not imply pure beauty. Milton is unapproached in pure poetic endow- ment, and presents to us the highest summit of style. But he is no doubt less perfectly beautiful than Tenny- son. There is a perpetual refinement and elegance in our later poet which the earlier seldom equals. We can almost believe the current story that Tennyson has made it his rule to keep his productions seven years under the file before printing them. In this respect he resembles Virgil ; indeed, he is our English Virgil, not merely for the minute care and the uniform merit of his verse, but for his embodiment in it of the principle Q
social, and religious order. Tennyson is the poet of organized society, as truly as was Virgil the poet of the Roman Empire.
He has been said to belong to " the art-school of poets." There is much truth in the phrase. His artistic impulses antedated the substance of his message. The instrument was shaped before the music was written. It seems a providential preparation for subsequent work. Tennyson's first productive period was distinguished by
460 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDKK
mastery of form rather than of thought. There was a dainty grace, somewhat out of proportion to the mean- ing. Sense was subordinated to sound. We must regard "Airy, fairy Lilian," and " Where Claribel Low Lieth," rather as metrical experiments, than as significant ven- tures into the realm of true poetry. Tennyson served an apprenticeship like that of Robert Louis Stevenson. He first familiarized himself with the machinery of style — only afterward did he learn to use it.
In " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," his earliest publication, the most promising were " The Poet " and " The Ode to Memory," already mentioned. " Mariana/' " The Sea- fairies," and " Recollections of the Arabian Nights," all had a charm of melody and a pictorial beauty. But they were over-fanciful. There is a sense of effort in the frequency of the compound words, in the revival of terms antiquated or obsolete, and in the irregularity of the metre. The new music of the verse did not blind the critics to its defects. " Blackwood's Magazine " found the author " self-willed and perverse in his infantile vanity," and " hampered by a puerile partiality for par- ticular forms of expression." Christopher North called his book "dismal drivel," and, alluding to the little poem "The Owl," said that Mr. Tennyson himself was "the greatest owl." The " Hang-draw-and Quarterly' that criticised Tennyson, however, had previously cut up quite as savagely the " Endymion " of John Keats.
It may be interesting to pursue still further this his- tory of criticism. It will show through what a fiery gauntlet every new claimant to poetic honors must pass. The first book, printed in 1830, was followed by another in 1833, with the title: "The Lady of Shalott, and other
FIRST PERIOD OF DAINTY GRACE 461
Poems." Among these other poems was "Oenone." It provoked the anger of Carlyle, as a mere echo of the classics instead of original work dealing with the life of the present, and he said of Tennyson : " There he sits, upon a dungheap, surrounded with innumerable dead dogs." Yet Carlyle came to regard Tennyson with pride and admiration. When he read " The Revenge," he cried, " Eh, he's got the grip o' it ! ' He asked Richard Monckton Milnes why he had not secured a pension for Alfred Tennyson. Milnes replied that his constituents knew nothing of poetry and would think the pension a matter of personal favoritism. Carlyle responded: "Richard Milnes! in the day of judgment, when you are asked why you did not get that pension, you may lay the blame on your constituents, but it is you that will be damned ! '
The pension of two hundred pounds was granted in 1845, and in 1850 Tennyson was made poet-laureate. It is said that Sir Robert Peel, when the poet was men- tioned in connection with the laureateship, had never read a line of his writings. He took up " Ulysses," however, and that one poem convinced him. Even after the honor had been conferred, the poet had to fight for his reputation. Bulwer called him " School-Miss Alfred " ; spoke of him as " out-babying Wordsworth " ; and in "The New Timon, a Romance of London," described him as " quartered on the public purse, in the prime of life, without either wife or family." Last of all, and least of all, Alfred Austin, so late as 1 869, con- tributed an article to " Temple Bar " on " The Poetry of the Period," in which he declared that " Mr. Tennyson has no sound pretensions to be called a great poet."
462 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Tennyson always chafed under criticism. He replied to Christopher North :
When I learnt from whom it came I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher ; I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
He retorted upon Bulwer by calling him a " band- box," and by pointing out that the true Timon did not wear his hair in curl-papers. I do not know that he ever thought it worth his while to notice the disparage- ment of Alfred Austin. It must be confessed that there was a vein of self-consciousness in our poet, and a sort of stately vanity, which a little detracted from the highest greatness.
Recent stories illustrate these characteristics. When entertaining or entertained, he expected to read from his own poems. "Come and let me read you ' Maud/ ' said he to Mr. Fields, " you will never forget it ! ' At an English country house where he appeared unexpectedly, though he was asked to read, not a single copy of his works could be found — all had been taken to another place. The host was embarrassed ; but the occasion was made laughably memorable when Mr. Tennyson, in a petulant and contemptuous voice, said : " Bring me Shakespeare ! ' When traveling on the Rhine, he read a poem of his own in the half-intelligible Dodonic chant so natural to him, and when he closed the book he broke the spell with the question : " Could Browning do that ? ' Nothing seemed to inspire him more than to hold the hand of some lady while he read, and he once, in an
HIS PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 463
imperial party, unconsciously grasped the hand of the Empress Augusta and held it through the entire read- ing, only to discover his mistake and to make most pro- fuse apologies at the end, apologies which were as gra- ciously received as they were humbly offered.
The poet has been described as " a great-boned, loose- limbed, gigantesque man, with domed head, soft dark hair, gentle eyes ; white, smooth, fine-lined brow covered with delicate skin through which the blue veins shone." Force and fineness were united in him. Bayard Taylor speaks of him as " tall and broad-shouldered as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of Southern darkness." Edward Fitzgerald calls him " a man at all points of grand proportion and feature, of great strength, straight and with broad breast, as if from the army." Carlyle writes to Emerson :
Tennyson came in to us on Sunday evening. A truly interest- ing son of earth and son of heaven. One of the finest-looking men in the world. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail and all that may be between ; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet in these decades with such company over a pipe. A true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your soul can say, Brother ; a man solitary and sad, as certain men are ; dwell- ing in an atmosphere of gloom — carrying a bit of chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into cosmos.
The sign of chaos was perhaps his unkempt hair, which led the undergraduates of Oxford, when Tenny- son received his degree of D. c. L., to salute him with the cry, " Did your mother call you too early this morn- ing, Alfred dear ? ' He smoked nine hours a day, never the same pipe twice ; and when some one spoke of one
464 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
of his lines as evidently spontaneous, he merely re- plied : " I smoked more than twenty pipes over that line."
I have said that he was extraordinarily sensitive to criticism. His sensitiveness stood him in good stead, for it led him to criticise himself. "The Lover's Tale," printed in 1833, was withdrawn from circulation be- cause of imperfections pointed out in his other poems. He seems to have discovered that form with him had dominated substance. Some have found in " The Lady of Shalott " the poet's own confession that he had lived too long in the world of mere fancy, and that before he gave more to the public he needed a larger experience of life. As,
' ' I am half-sick of shadows, ' ' said The Lady of Shalott,
so Tennyson, if he did not " leave the web ' and " leave the loom," left off for ten whole years all publi- cation and marketing of his wares. He determined that his next work should be as good as he could make it. For one who had already printed such poems as "The Palace of Art," "The Lotos Eaters," and "A Dream of Fair Women," this was rigid self-restraint, a self-restraint all the more admirable because the poet's external circumstances were narrow and there was con- stant temptation to print for mere pecuniary reward.
Virtue was in this case not only its own reward, but it was the unconscious servant of a divine Providence. For it was the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tenny- son's dearest friend, in 1833, that nrst shook from him the fantastic and unreal element that hindered his
SECOND PERIOD OF SUBTLE THOUGHT 465
growth. Like Samson, Hallam slew more by his death than by his life. A young man of wonderful powers, he still spoke, though dead, through his friend. That friend was led to profound meditation upon the realities of existence. The world, life, and death, things present and things to come, assumed new significance. The development of heart and soul which came to John Mil- ton through experience of outward conflict, came to Alfred Tennyson through experience of inward sorrow. In the quick sense of personal loss he seemed to lose that faith in the order of the world which had uncon- sciously been the source of his strength. The recovery of this faith was the result of a new apprehension of the divine love that pervades the universe. When he had seized upon that organific principle, it remade the poet as it remade the man.
The period of dainty grace came thus to be followed by the period of subtle thought. Tennyson always shunned publicity. The digito monstrari vexed him, as much as it troubled Virgil. Unlike Browning, he pre- ferred to look upon the struggles of life from the out- side. This gives to his poetry a certain academic air. Yet he grapples with all the problems of his time, though the strength he shows is not that of the Her- cules, but that of the Apollo ; not that of the club, but that of the winged arrow. All his poetical work is an application to human affairs of the principle of divine % order. This key for him opens all locks. In 1842 he published " The Princess." It set forth divine order in the relation of the sexes. " Locksley Hall ' applied the same principle to social life ; " The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington " applied it to national
2E
466 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
affairs; and " In Memoriam," in 1850, applied it to the great question of man's relations to God and immor- tality.
Reserving for a later place in our discussion the the- ological implications of Tennyson's poetry, let us for a moment consider the manifestations of this principle of order during the second period of his productive activity. " The Princess " is a protest against the doctrine that "marriage is but an old tradition." It is a half -humor- ous, half-satirical reassertion of the true relation of man and woman. Byron and Shelley had propounded the theory that love is mainly a matter of physical passion. They had adopted Goethe's view that passion is its own justification, and that it may override all obstacles of law or conscience. But the results of this theory are dis- astrous to woman, even more than to man. She becomes man's victim and slave, while he becomes by his superior strength her tyrant and oppressor.
Marriage itself is often contracted on man's part in the spirit of the tyrant, and when woman discovers this there is a disposition to rebel against the ordinance itself. She undervalues love, even if she does not become skep- tical as to its existence. She perceives that man owes his power in large degree to his superior knowledge, and she fancies that knowledge will enfranchise her. She isolates herself, that she may learn. In all this, she for- gets that she is not man, but woman ; that man and woman were meant to work together, not in separation from each other ; that the highest knowledge is impos- sible without love ; that she therefore needs, not less love, but more.
This divine order in the relation of the sexes Tenny-
ILLUSTRATED IN THE PRINCESS 467
son sets forth in a mock-heroic medley, where the outward form is drawn from the middle ages, but the motive and spirit of the poem from the life of to-day. In Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost," the king and three of his lords withdraw from the world for purposes of study ; they bind themselves to see no woman for three years. Dr. Johnson, in his "Rasselas," makes his princess found a college of learned women, over which she presides. Tennyson combines the features of both these schemes. His princess too establishes a univer- sity, in a certain summer palace of her father's. It is for maidens only, and they are to see no men. Knowl- edge, she held,
Was all in all ; they had been, she thought, As children ; they must lose the child, assume The woman ; . . .
Maintaining that, with equal husbandry, The woman were an equal to the man.
We cannot stay to describe the gradual breaking down of all this noble but unnatural enterprise. Ida, the Princess, cannot suppress her pity for the Prince who loves her. And pity brings love in its train. She learns that
The woman' s cause is man' s : they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free :
Let her make herself her own To give or keep, to live and learn and be All that harms not distinctive womanhood. For woman is not undeveloped man, But diverse : could we make her as the man, Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference :
468 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Yet in the long years liker must they grow ;
The man be more of woman, she of man ;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words ;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men,
Then reign the world' s great bridals, chaste and calm,
Then springs the crowning race of human kind.
May these things be !
It has been said that Tennyson, after all, merges the individuality of the Princess in that of the Prince ; that there is too little of self-realization in her case ; that her mission is conceived of too exclusively as that of accom- plishing the Prince's manhood. We must grant that the poet's ideal woman is of the domestic type. In " Locksley Hall," he says indeed that
Woman's pleasure, woman's pain — Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain :
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.
But this may be only an instance where the poet pro- jects himself into a character, and the pessimism of " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After ' may be, in like manner, only the dramatic picture of the fruitage of
ILLUSTRATED IN THE PRINCESS 469
early misanthropy. For fifty years ago, "The Princess" was an almost startling advocacy of the dignity and rights of woman, as it has been ever since a repertory of argument and defense of her just claims.
In the poetry of pure affection, in distinction from that of passion, Tennyson is a master. No one more movingly than he has described the self-forgetful devo- tion with which the happy bride joins her lot to that of her husband :
And on her lover' s arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went In that new world which is the old :
• ••••••
And o' er the hills and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day,
Through all the world she followed him.
And King Arthur expresses the true end of a noble marriage when he says :
Were I joined with her, Then might we live together as one life, And reigning with one will in everything Have power on this dark land to lighten it, And power on this dead world to make it live.
Our poet has done immeasurable service to humanity by his maintenance of the sanctity of marriage, on the one hand, and of the equality in diversity which is its essential nature, on the other. There are no more win- ning pictures of its grave and loving union than in " Isabel " :
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The stately flower of female fortitude
Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead ;
. . . Through all her placid life
The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.
He would give to woman the highest possibilities of education, but would withdraw her from public place and work, thus
Turning to scorn, with lips divine, The falsehood of extremes.
Her true place is that of wife, and her first duty is motherhood. The poet's whole doctrine, indeed, may be summed up in the Scripture words : " Whom God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." And the " Dedication " to his own wife shows that he knew not only in theory, but in practice, the blessedness of an equal marriage :
Dear, near and true — no truer Time himself Can prove you, though he make you evermore Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life Shoots to the fall.
The same reverence for the divine order appears in Tennyson's treatment of man's social relations. In " Locksley Hall," which has been explained by some as a record of the poet's own disappointment in love, we have a fervid denunciation of the ambitions and the conventions which prevent pure natural affection from having its way :
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth ! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth !
ILLUSTRATED IN ' LOCKS LEY HALL
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature' s rule ! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool !
He is never so scathing as when he describes the man who sells his daughter to a mercenary marriage. And yet no one can have more regard than Tennyson foi custom and law, for birth and blood, when these repre- sent justice and nobility. It is organized society which he respects, and of which he is the interpreter. He cares little for the individual as a mere individual. This is one of the chief distinctions between him and Robert Browning. Browning is the poet of the indi- vidual soul ; he has no sense of corporate interests ; society and government matter little to him, or not at all. Tennyson looks beyond the single man : man is of value only as he is part of an ordered whole far greater than himself.
He who has an eye for men in the aggregate is often blind to individual misery and wrong. The order of society seems to him cheaply purchased by personal sacrifice. Tennyson's love for order made him more and more a conservative, while Gladstone's sympathy with individual rights and liberties made him more and more a radical. In his youth the poet could sing of
Men my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something
new : That which they have done but earnest of the things that they
shall do.
But he looked at his brothers from afar. He took no part in efforts for their legal emancipation. For him the only remedy for the evils of competition was more competition. He praised and defended Governor Eyre,
472 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
of Jamaica, when his cruelty was denounced. He took no part in the Italian struggle for national unity. He was silent when the slave-power of America sought to establish itself even to the ruin of the republic.
These mistakes were misinterpretations of the prin- ciple of order. They can be forgiven, because they were exaggerations of a virtue. In a similar manner we must treat the narrow nationalism of Tennyson. He is so loyally English that international sympathy is practically excluded. His early hope that the world might live
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battleflags were
furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world ;
Where the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law,
seems exchanged sixty years after for a darker prospect •
Warless ? When her tens are thousands, and her thousands mil- lions, then — All her harvest all too narrow — who can fancy warless men ?
Warless ? War will die out late then. Will it ever, late or soon ? Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon ?
In the meantime he regards war as necessary. In " Maud," righting for one's country seems to atone for private misconduct. And his highest ambition for Eng- land's colonies is expressed in the words :
Sons, be welded each and all, Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart and soul, One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne ! Britons, hold your own !
THE DIVINE ORDER AS TO MAN AND GOD 473
Tennyson is no republican. He is afraid of the people, except as they are governed by the wise and faithful few. The " red fool-fury of the Seine ' and "the blind hysterics of the Celt" arouse in him a pas- sion of objurgation which is almost equally hysterical. But he has unfailing pride and confidence in sturdy English common sense. He trusts the wisdom of the past. He chooses for his abode
A land of settled government, A land of old and just renown, Where freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent.
And it is because he sees in England the type of a divine order, the powers that are ordained of God, that he can throw into his patriotic and martial songs such exuberant loyalty and devotion. The British empire will be stronger forever for such poems as " The De- fense of Lucknow," "The Charge of the Light Bri- gade," and the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington."
The greatest work of Tennyson's second period, how- ever, is unquestionably " In Memoriaro," Here the poet grapples with the deepest themes, the mysteries of sorrow, suffering, and death. He expresses, with a tenderness and a yearning unknown before in literature, the dull sense of loss, the agonizing regrets, the wild rebellion, the tormenting doubts which prey upon one whom death has just despoiled of the object of his love. But the poem is no mere elegy, like the " Lycidas " of Milton or the " Adonais " of Shelley ; it is the effort of the loving soul to give rational account to itself of the
4/4 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
great facts of sin, pain, and grief, and to reconcile them with the belief in God. " In Memoriam " is not a theo- logical discussion, and the poet does not reach his con- clusions by pure argument. But he does assert most luminously the intuitions of the soul — the conviction that there is divine order in the universe, and that this order is the result of love :
,
If these brief lays of sorrow born Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and questions here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn.
Her care is not to part and prove ; She takes, when harsher moods remit, What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love.
In the way that he intends, Tennyson attains his pur- pose. He longs " to prove no lapse of moons can canker love." He does prove this to the heart, though he cannot prove it to the mere intellect. The various doubts that rise with regard to the separate existence of the soul after death, its continued consciousness, and its affection for those who are left behind, are all dissipated by reflections upon the nature and essential immortality of love. Earthly love is but the transcript and efflux of the heavenly. Our loves in higher love endure — a love that embraces us and all. As the poet meditates, he finds his own sorrow only a little part of a great world's sorrow, and his own love only a little part of a great divine love which would meet that sorrow and would turn it into joy. So from individual grief he is led to a consciousness of his oneness with all the race, and of his oneness with God himself.
ILLUSTRATED IN "IN MEMORIAM' 4/5
I regard "In Memoriam" as the greatest poem of our century, both for substance and for form. It is the most representative poem of the age. If Goethe's " Faust" reflects the materialism and skepticism of the nineteenth century, Tennyson's " In Memoriam ' ex- presses its faith triumphant over doubt. It is regarded1 by superficial readers as mournful and prosaic. M. Taine thinks it the pretentious monody of a young man with new black gloves and spotless cambric pocket-handkerchief. The Frenchman cannot under- stand either the sorrow or the joy. Frederick W. Rob- ertson saw deeper into the poem, when he said : " It is simply one of the most victorious songs that poet ever chanted."
It is difficult to express in words the value of a poem that demonstrates to the universal heart the divinity and immortality of love. Amid so many claimants for supremacy — money, power, pleasure, fame — a pure affec- tion is in danger of being thrust aside. But love is of God, and can never die. " Your heart," says the Psalm- ist, "shall live forever." Love can never lose its own ; those whom God loves can never cease to be ; and those who are one with the God of love can never lose the objects of their affection. Love must grow with our growth, both here and hereafter :
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that have flown, For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before.
"If we still love those we lose," says Thackeray, "can we altogether lose those we love ? '
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" In Memoriam ' is, in the truest sense, a religious poem : it aims to soothe and spiritualize grief by taking hold of the unseen and eternal. In this respect it forms a striking contrast to the " Sonnets " of Shakes- peare. The " Sonnets" describe such love to a friend, that Tennyson, in allusion to it, can say :
r>
1 loved thee, Spirit, and love ; nor can The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
But the love of the " Sonnets" is shadowed with sin and shame; that of "In Memoriam" is a pure and lofty affection, which ennobles him who cherishes it. Shakes- peare's love never lifts him above the earth. Tenny- son's, from being a power within, becomes a Lord and King without, and at last identifies itself with that
Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.
"In Memoriam" is Tennyson's "Paradise Regained," and "The Idylls of the King" is his "Paradise Lost." The order in which the works were produced differed from that of John Milton. But there was advantage in it. Only after Tennyson had proved to his own soul that, through all and in all and above all sin and sorrow and death, a divine and immortal order reigned, could he hopefully undertake the story of the world's down- V fall and shame. And this is his intent in the "Idylls." \He aims to show how man has broken the divine order, to his own undoing. He has written an epic, not of fate, but of free-will ; not an allegory, but a parable, of
THIRD PERIOD OF BROAD HUMANITY 477
human sin and ruin by the abuse of freedom. He him- self has called it "the dream of man coming into prac- tical life, and ruined by one sin."
The " Idylls " is the characteristic work of Tennyson's third period. As the first was the period of dainty grace, and the second the period of subtle thought, the third was the period of broad humanity. No one can pass from "In Memoriam" to "The Idylls of the King," without feeling that a new note of vigorous simplicity has been struck ; the former touches us like a marche funtbre, but the latter shows the fruits of sorrow in a more universal sympathy. Since I have called " The Idylls' Tennyson's "Paradise Lost," it will be interest- ing to compare the work of our poet with that of John Milton. Milton in early life thought seriously of taking the story of King Arthur for the subject of an epic. In Tennyson's story, as in Milton's, it is the fault of a woman, and she the best beloved, that brings destruc- tion to her husband. Milton's epic is in parts more dramatic, original, and sublime than Tennyson's, but the latter is the superior in sustained beauty. Milton is in long passages stiff and prosaic, while our poet is always graceful, and never dull.
King Arthur and his Round Table furnish us with a curious illustration of the nature of the myth, and of its power to survive and grow and improve through many transformations. It is highly probable that some en- lightened chief of the Britons, after the Roman power had been broken, sought to defend his island from Norse invasion, and to perpetuate a Christian civilization. But those were barbarous times ; his helpers were few ; op- posing forces both within and without were too mighty
4/8 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
to be subdued ; internal treachery and external assault brought his fair scheme to ruin, and himself to death. Yet his name remained. Around it gathered popular conceptions of gentleness and purity and honor. The story of Arthur and his knights was told in many ways. Each generation manufactured its own drapery. The age of chivalry clothed it with all the paraphernalia of the tournament and the banquet hall.
The legend of the Holy Grail became mixed with it. There had been a heathen story of an enchanted castle whose inmates preserved a perpetual youth by feeding from a vessel dedicated to one of the Celtic gods. The turning of the pagan temple at Glastonbury into a church perhaps gave a Christian interpretation to the legend. The holy vessel became the symbol of the mass. The Grail was the cup in which was preserved the blood of Christ, of which if one drink he shall never die. Joseph of Arimathea had brought to Britain the very cup used at the Last Supper. To see the red blood throbbing within the cup was granted only as the reward of long service to Christ and the church.
Sir Thomas Malory collected these stories and wove them into one whole. Tennyson has availed himself of the work of Malory. But, in the very spirit of the legends themselves, he has not scrupled to omit, to interpret, to add, whenever he could thus adapt the material more perfectly to his purpose. He has made King Arthur an impeccable saint, although the original legend makes his heroic sacrifices to be expiatory in their nature — the effort to atone for earlier sin. Swin- burne laughs at our poet's regard for the proprieties, and calls Arthur "a prig." But Tennyson has done
. .
> )
THE IDYLLS OF THE KING 47Q
well to make the King a model of virtue, and his poem a Christian, rather than a Greek, tragedy. The sad suc- cess of evil in frustrating the hopes of the good appeals more strongly to the heart of this age than any of Mr. Swinburne's pagan exhibitions of the natural develop- ment of vice.
The hero of the "Idylls" is no mere allegorical phan- tom, like those of Spenser's " Fairie Queene." Dr. Van Dyke has rightly pointed this out to us. The hero is a living, breathing human being instead. And yet he is at the same time the parabolic representation of the soul of man, coming out of the unknown eternity that is past, to live its life, fight its fight, undergo its probation, and then departing, as it had come, into the unknown eter- nity that is before it. It is here, in this narrow earthly existence, to stand for the true and the right, to shed abroad the light of a noble example, to wage war upon the sensual and the selfish, and to put them down. It begins with lofty hopes. Youth and love think all things possible. As King Arthur is the symbol of man in his freedom, so his knights are symbols of man's powers — courage and intellect, purity and justice, truth and loyalty. For a time all goes well. There seems good prospect that the soul will set up a kingdom of righteousness, a restored Eden, upon earth.
What are the hindrances ? First, man's sensual appe- tites. The story of Lancelot and Guinevere is the story of passion dethroning faith, of secret sin wasting all the powers of the soul within and bringing to naught all the noblest possibilities of achievement without. One evil example corrupts the court, until only three or four of Arthur's helpers are left untainted. And the second
480 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
hindrance is that wild asceticism which is the opposite extreme to license, and which in the end only makes license more licentious. The knights resolve to go in quest of the Holy Grail. Percivale tells the story:
Then on a summer night it came to pass, While the great banquet lay along the hall, That Galahad would sit down in Merlin' s chair.
And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs,
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than day :
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
All over cover' d with a luminous cloud,
And none might see who bare it, and it past
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring at each other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.
I sware a vow before them all, that I, Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it, Until I found and saw it, as the nun My sister saw it ; and Galahad sware the vow, And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot' s cousin sware, And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights, And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest.
King Arthur has been absent on some chivalrous essay to rid his realm of injustice. He does not take the vow. When he returns, he can only mourn the rash decision of his knights. He has lost their help, and they, as he well knows, enter upon a vain search, with
MAN IS RUINED BY ONE SIN 481
nothing certain but disappointment and demoralization. He can only say :
Go, for your vows are sacred, being made : Yet — for ye know the cries of all my realm Pass through this hall — how often, O my knights, Your places being vacant by my side, This chance of noble deeds will come and go Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires Lost in the quagmire !
And it is even as he predicts. The Round Table is broken up. The return of the knights is the signal for a corruption that leaves almost no one pure. The sin of Lancelot and Guinevere is made public. The guilty wife flees to the convent at Almesbury, while Arthur ends his life in battle upon the misty western shore, and on the dusky barge tended by the three queens, Faith, Hope, and Love,
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.
So the poet has given us a picture of a lost cause. Disaster and defeat have overtaken the truth. Evil seems to have triumphed. This victory of evil would be fatal to the success of the " Idylls ' as an epic, if there were not a background of good. I have tried to show that though we have here Tennyson's " Paradise Lost," we have in " In Memoriam ' Tennyson's " Para- dise Regained." The pathos of the "Idylls" is not the pathos of pessimism. To this disorder which man has wrought a nobler divine order shall succeed. The evil shall somehow be made to minister to good, and all human faithfulness, though it may seem to fail of its
2F
482 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
purpose here, shall be seen at last to have triumphed even in the article of death.
O yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete.
It has been my purpose to discuss, and even to men- tion, the separate poems of Tennyson only as this might prepare the way for the consideration of his theology. But, before I leave the third period of his work, the period of broad humanity, I must briefly notice the dramas. Of these " The Cup," " The Falcon," « The Promise of May," and "The Foresters," may be passed by, as of no particular significance, except to demon- strate the poet's lack of supreme dramatic genius. They are slight and fanciful studies of character, which might better have been put into the form of monologue than into that of drama. Our poet is more descriptive than creative. He finds it difficult to invent situations, to diversify action, to represent passion as expressing itself in life, to make the scene supply motive and explain speech. While Shakespeare never lets our attention flag, Tennyson gives us long harangues and compar- atively little movement.
Yet "Harold," " Becket," and "Queen Mary," are great historical dramas, in spite of the fact that they are better adapted for private reading than for acting
HIS THEOLOGY INFLUENCED BY AGNOSTICISM 483
upon the stage. They constitute a trilogy, the com- mon subject of which is "The Making of England." "Harold" depicts the conflict between Saxon and Nor- man ; " Becket ' the struggle between church and crown; "Queen Mary "the fight between Protestantism and Rome. They are invaluable pictures of three great crises in English history. Freeman declared that the poet's insight and imagination had made comprehensible to him certain intricacies of those old times, as his own studies had never done. George Eliot said that " Ten- nyson's plays run Shakespeare's close." And Hutton, our greatest English critic, ranks " Queen Mary," in dramatic force and general power, higher even than Shakespeare's "King Henry the Eighth."
In passing to the consideration of Tennyson's the- ological opinions, let me sum up what precedes. The discussion thus far has shown us, not only that our poet believes in God and in a divine order in the universe, but that these beliefs are fundamental to his whole system of thought. His view of the dignity of poetry is based upon them. They enter into his conception of the relation of man to woman, of man to his fellow-man, of man to government, and of man to God. A more omnipresent theistic spirit it would be difficult to find in the works of any poet. For this reason I regret all the more that in Tennyson's utterances about God, he has so largely fallen in with methods of expression de- rived from the agnostic, school of modern thinkers.
Let us remember the days in which his poetry had its origin. From 1830 to 1860 the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton was the current one in England.
484 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Mansel showed its implications in his " Limits of Re- ligious Thought," and Herbert Spencer took advantage of it to proclaim that the Ultimate Reality is inscru- table. In spite of the Scripture declarations that " he that loveth God knoweth God," " the pure in heart . . . shall see God," "this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God," many Christian thinkers seemed readvj^o return to heathen ignorance, and to build an altar T To An Unknown God." Instead of taking Jesus at his word, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," and so attributing to God the characteristics of Jesus, they made Jesus' revelation a proof that God is essentially incognizable to finite intel- ligences.
I find much of this agnosticism in Tennyson. In the introduction to " In Memoriam ' ' we read :
We have but faith : we cannot know ;
For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness : let it grow.
Here is a denial that matters of religion are objects of knowledge : since science is knowledge, such matters cannot be objects of science, and there is no science of theology. The poet adopts the vicious principle that knowledge is only of sensuous phenomena and their relations : supersensible things must be apprehended by faith, and faith is not knowledge at all. Henry Drfcm- mond challenged this whole method of representation when he said that faith in the New Testament is op- posed, .not to reason, but to sight. Faith is a higher sort of knowledge. It is an act of reason, of reason in
FAITH IS SUNDERED FROM KNOWLEDGE 485
the sense of the mind's whole power of knowing, of reason therefore as conditioned upon a right state of the affections. Faith then is the higher knowledge possessed by the loving heart and the upright will.
Yet in his use of the words knowledge and faith Tennyson is not consistent. When it comes to appre- hension of the inward world, even though this is super- sensible, he calls it knowledge. And at times the soul knows God as it knows itself :
Let visions of the night or of the day Come, as they will ; and many a time they come, Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, This air that smites his forehead is not air But vision — yea, his very hand and foot — In moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision, nor that One Who rose again.
But his wrong conception of faith, as somehow sundered from knowledge, leads the poet to divest God to a large extent of cognizable attributes, and to clothe him with a mist of words in which all definiteness is lost. To Christian hearts that say " Our Father, who art in heaven," it seems chilling as well as tantalizing to hear the prayer at the close of " De Profundis" :
Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah !
Infinite Ideality !
Immeasurable Reality !
Infinite Personality ! Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah !
We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee ; We feel we are something — that also has come from Thee :
486 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to be. Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah !
I call the reader to witness, however, that this is pantheistic prayer. Pantheism denies the separate ex- istence and personality of God. This prayer calls God a Personality, and implies the continued and distinct existence and personality of man also. It is an expres- sion, though in our judgment not a highly poetical or impressive expression, of the doctrine of Paul that in God "we live and move and have our being." There is unquestionably in Tennyson the belief that man is an emanation from God. "The great deep" from which King Arthur comes and to which he goes is not simply the deep of eternity, it is also the deep of the divine existence. So, in " De Profundis," written at the birth of his son, the poet writes :
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, From that true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore — Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep, With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.
For in the world which is not ours They said
" Let us make man," and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows.
The thought of this derivation of the soul from God and of its essential oneness with its divine original,, is found in Tennyson's earliest poems, it crops out in the works of his middle life, and it persists in those printed just before his death. One may say indeed that this
THE SOUL IS AN EMANATION FROM GOD 487
view of the dignity of human nature is inseparable from his conception of a universal divine order: there is order, because there is one substance at the basis of all beings and all things. " The Two Voices ' suggests that life may exist after the soul is sundered from the body, because we have faint reminiscences of a state prior to the soul's existence in a body.
Yet how should I for certain hold, Because my memory is so cold, That I first was in human mold ?
• • • • • • •
Much more, if first I floated free, As naked essence, must I be Incompetent of memory :
For memory dealing but with time, And he with matter, could she climb Beyond her own material prime ?
Moreover something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams —
Of something felt, like something here ; Of something done, I know not where ; Such as no language may declare.
The beginning of a human life is described in the Epilogue to " In Memoriam " :
A soul shall draw from out the vast And strike his being into bounds,
And moved through life of lower phase, Result in man, be born and think, And act and love.
488 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Our life in time and space is necessary to our separate personality :
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin, As through the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due, Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
The physical universe exists for the sake of develop- ing this personality. In " The Higher Pantheism" we read:
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ?
Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why ;
For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I" ?
Man's life is from God and in God, yet he feels his own distinctness and responsibility. " The Ancient Sage ' recognizes both the oneness with God and the differ- ence from God :
But that one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself Forever changing form, but ever more One with the boundless motion of the deep.
And lest we should say that the wave is but the form and manifestation of the ocean, and can have no real separateness or freedom, Tennyson tells us in " De Pro- fundis " that God wrought
YET TENNYSON IS NO PANTHEIST 489
Not matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world.
And in his address " To the Duke of Argyll ' he speaks of the will as
A power to make
This ever-changing world of circumstance, In changing, chime with never-changing Law.
" The Higher Pantheism ' then is no pantheism at all, for it asserts that both God and man are distinct personalities, and that God is not confined to the uni- verse but is transcendent above it. There are yet fur- ther proofs that Tennyson is no pantheist, first, in his doctrine of prayer ; secondly, in his doctrine of con- science ; and thirdly, in his doctrine of the soul's sepa- rate existence after death. The last words of King Arthur give us the doctrine of prayer :
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
In other words, the poet believes in intercourse and com- munion between man and God, such as can occur only between separate persons, and such as excludes all pan- theistic confounding of one personality with the other.
49O POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
The commands and the reproaches of conscience are a witness against pantheism. If man has no separate personality, but is a waif upon an infinite stream, what sense in talking to him of right or wrong ? Whatever is, is right ; pleasure and duty are one. But we find Tennyson asserting the claims of conscience over against pleasure :
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncalled for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear ; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Arthur's knights bind themselves "to reverence their conscience as their king." As the demand of con- science indicates a personal Lawgiver, so the pangs of conscience indicate a personal Judge, and to Lancelot in his sin the Holy Grail has
a stormy glare, a heat As from a seven times heated furnace,
which blasts and burns and blinds him, with such fierceness that he swoons away.
Nor is man absorbed in God even after this earthly life is ended. " In Memoriam ' gives us Tennyson's doc- trine of the soul's separate existence after death :
That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds and, fusing all
PERSONALITY PERSISTS AFTER DEATH 49 I
The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet : Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside ; LAnd I shall know him when we meet :
And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other' s good : What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth ?
And Mr. Knowles, in "The Nineteenth Century' (January, 1893), writes of Tennyson: "He formulated once and quite deliberately his own religious creed in the words : * There is a Something that watches over us ; and our individuality endures ; that's my faith, and that's all my faith ! ' "
But in his poems the spirit of the seer possesses him, and he asserts a larger and more definite creed :
I trust I have not wasted breath : I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ;
Not only cunning casts in clay : Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men,
At least to me ? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape ;
But I was born to better things.
Let it live then — ay, till when ? Earth passes, all is lost
492 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
In what they prophesy, our wise men,
Sun-flame or sunless frost, And deed and song alike are swept
Away, and all in vain As far as man can see, except
The man himself remain ; And though, in this lean age forlorn,
Too many a voice may cry That man can have no after-morn,
Not yet of these am I. The man remains, and whatsoe' er
He wrought of good or brave Will mold him through the cycle-year
That dawns behind the grave.
Gone forever ! Ever ? no — for since our dying race began, Ever, ever, and forever, was the leading light of man.
And yet, in spite of these testimonies to immortality, there are expressions in Tennyson which might seem to teach that the souls of the departed are so merged in God that all bounds and limitations are lost. Let us interpret these expressions by the clearer passages which we have already examined. The poet means only that his dead friend is now one with God, and that this one- ness with God brings with it a lifting of the soul above the hindrances of space and time. That dead friend had himself said : " The tendency of love is toward a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identifica- tion." Arthur is now inseparable from the divine. All his powers are expanded beyond our earthly measures. All things are his, because God is his and the infinite fullness of God's love.
We do not call Milton a pantheist because he ad- dresses Lycidas as "the Genius of the shore." Shelley
A PERSONAL EXISTENCE BEFORE BIRTH 493
is not a pantheist merely because Adonais is " made one with Nature" and "his voice is in all her music." No more is Tennyson a pantheist when he writes :
Thy voice is on the rolling air ;
I hear thee where the waters run ;
Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then ? I cannot guess ; But though I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less :
My love involves the love before ;
My love is vaster passion now ;
Though mixed with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh ;
I have thee still, and I rejoice ;
I prosper, circled with thy voice ; I shall not lose thee though I die.
He evidently holds that, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, and though an inconceivable greatness is before us, we are not to lose our separate being, or to lose the personal loves that have made that being so largely what it is. Man's personality will endure after this life is over.
But another interesting question arises : Did the soul have separate personality before it entered this world of time and space ? I cannot believe that Tennyson means to imply this, for the reason that the soul's conscious- ness of its personality and the exercise of its freedom are made to depend upon its finite surroundings. He
494 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
can speak of " the abysmal depths of personality," be- cause our being is inseparable from God's being, even as it is originally derived from him. But that this soul existed, as soul, before its birth into this present life, the poet nowhere asserts.
There are frequent intimations, indeed, that we re- member what was before our birth. I have quoted verses from "The Two Voices," which can be inter- preted in no other way. " The Ancient Sage'1 is the attempt of the poet to give us the wisdom of his later | years :
To-day ? but what of yesterday ? for oft On me, when boy, there came what then I call' d . . . In my boy-phrase "The Passion of the Past," The first gray streak of earliest summer dawn, . . . Desolate sweetness — far and far away.
One of the loveliest of his songs is made up of these "deep musings and tender broodings over the past, and not the past of human life alone, for many of them are echoes of some antenatal dream " :
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
• •'»...
Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign' d On lips that are for others ; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; O Death in Life, the days that are no more !
A PERSONAL EXISTENCE BEFORE BIRTH 49$
And one of his latest songs takes up the same myste- rious strain :
What sight so lured him through the fields he knew As where earth' s green stole into heaven' s own hue,
Far — far — away ?
What sound was dearest in his native dells ? The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far — far — away.
What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy, Through those three words would haunt him when a boy
Far — far — away ?
A whisper from his dawn of life ? A breath From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death
Far — far — away ?
Far, far, how far ? from o' er the gates of Birth, The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,
Far — far — away ?
What charm in words, a charm no words could give ? O dying words, can Music make you live ?
Far — far — away ?
An occasional critic holds indeed that the belief in man's conscious and responsible existence before he came into this present world is found in the " Epi- logue " to the " Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Bala- clava" :
But since our mortal shadow, 111,
To waste this earth began — Perchance from some abuse of Will
In worlds before the man Involving ours — he needs must fight,
To make true peace his own, He needs must combat might with might, Or Might would rule alone.
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But I think it plain that the poet here has in mind not an antenatal sin of man, but an antehuman sin of Satan. The "abuse of will" is " in worlds before the man," and is regarded as only indirectly " involving ours." We are left then to the conclusion that Tennyson's reminiscences are, like Wordsworth's, survivals of a knowledge possessed in a previous state of existence, not by the separate soul, but by the divine Being from whom it has subsequently sprung.
But in one very important respect Tennyson's doc- trine is unlike Wordsworth's and is inferior to it. I refer to his conception of nature. Stopford Brooke, in his noble and almost exhaustive treatment of Tenny- son and his poetry, has nowhere shown greater penetra- tion than where he calls attention to the marked differ- ence between his view of the physical universe, includ- ing the human body, and the view of Wordsworth. The difference is simply this : To Wordsworth nature is alive, and alive with God. " The splendor in the grass, the glory in the flower," are but the outward sign, the intelligible speech, of an immanent Deity. Nature can therefore be regarded with affection, and the soul can commune with her. She responds to the heart of man, counsels him, inspires him. The lonely forest and the sounding shore teach him great lessons of wisdom, for in nature's quiet or in her majesty he hears the voice of God.
To Tennyson, on the other hand, nature is rather a phantasmagoria cunningly arranged to witness of an absent God. There is no life in nature, and specially no divine life. The only life in the universe, outside of God, is found in the soul of man. Nature is but a
THE POETS CONCEPTION OF NATURE 497
series of pictures or symbols, intended to instruct and to educate, but never revealing a present Divinity. I am inclined to connect this view of nature with Tenny- son's general tendency la-agnosticism. In this respect i I think both Wordsworth and Browning far more vigor- ous and pronounced believers than Tennyson. And this agnosticism is accompanied by an idealism more / subjective than Browning's, an idealism that at times seems to doubt the real existence of any world but that of feeling and of thought. ^
The world is not so much the immediate product a present God as it is the shadow of a God who is far away :
Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by, Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,
Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, through the human
soul ; Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the whole.
In fact, this picture or shadow of the Infinite One does not answer to the Reality except in part. Nature, owing to our imperfect vision, is a distorted image of Him who is reflected in it :
My God, I would not live
Save that I think this gross, hard-seeming world Is our misshaping vision of the Powers Behind the world, that make our griefs our gains.
Our mortal veil
And shatter' d phantom of that infinite One, Who made thee unconceivably Thyself Out of His whole World-self and all in all.
2G
POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
I cannot understand the least flower that blows ; but such is the order of the universe, that knowledge of that one flower, if I only did possess it, would be knowl- edge of all :
Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
Tennyson made it no secret to his friends that from boyhood, sometimes when he was all alone and some- times when he was in the presence of others, he had been subject to a sort of waking trance. Four times in "The Princess " he describes such a one :
And truly waking dreams were, more or less,
An old and strange affection of the house,
Myself too had weird seizures, heaven knows what :
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day,
And while I walk' d and talk' d as heretofore,
I seem' d to move among a world of ghosts
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
• ••••••
The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, The jest and earnest working side by side, The cataract and the tumult of the Kings, Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night With all its doings had and had not been, And all things were and were not.
" In Memoriam " tells of another :
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touched me from the past, And all at once it seemed at last
The living soul was flashed on mine,
THE WORLD IS A SHADOW-WORLD 499
And mine in his was wound, and whirl' d About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Ionian music measuring out
The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance — The blows of Death.
And similarly in " The Ancient Sage ' ' we read :
For more than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and through loss of Self The gain of such large life as match' d with ours Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words, Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.
A shadow- world, especially when that world of shad- ows only imperfectly answers to the Reality, affords no object of communion. It is only the dim symbol of Him who dwells behind the darkness and the shadow- it is never the manifestation of a present God. Yet I must make a single exception, one which has doubtless occurred to the reader, namely, the remarkable poem entitled " The Higher Pantheism." Here, for a moment, the poet is endowed with Wordsworth's deeper insight, and actually sees God in nature :
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him that reigns ?
5OO POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
But the vision does not tarry. Tennyson has hardly expressed the sublime thought when doubt again seizes him. The vision is a misleading vision, true only to us and only while the vision lasts :
Is not the Vision He ? Though He be not that which he seems ? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams ?
Here is the old Kantian relativity. All knowledge is relative to the knowing agent. Tennyson is not con- tent with knowing the Reality in the phenomena ; he is trying to know the Reality apart from the phenomena, trying to know without fulfilling the conditions of knowledge, in short, trying to know without knowing. Agnosticism regards God as concealed by his own mani- festation— it should hold instead that in knowing the phenomena we know the Reality itself. Our poet is infected with this agnostic philosophy ; and, though he has a moment of insight when the truth dawns upon him, the clouds shut in again ; though he listens for a little to the wise, the unwise must have their say also :
God is law, say the wise ; O soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet his voice.
Law is God, say some : no God at all, says the fool ;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool.
And so the conclusion is a mixture of faith and of unbe^ lief:
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ; But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He ?
Would that the poet had grasped the principle that the laws of our knowing are not merely arbitrary and
THE WORLD IS A SHADOW-WORLD
regulative, but correspond to the nature of things ! But he did not grasp this principle, and Nature re- mained to him a sort of dream, in which God mani-
fested himself indeed, but only distantly and irregularly.
Tennyson therefore does not care to be alone with Nature. Only when some fellow-man is by, has he interest in physical beauty or in physical grandeur. The external universe is only the setting for humanity, \ the background for the human figure. But, with man to interpret, the world has a meaning. Our poet's greatest art, indeed, consists in finding a fitting environment for every emotion of the soul. He can create, not dramatic scenes, but material landscapes, to reflect, symbolize, and intensify every phase of thought and emotion.
I venture to give one out of many possible illustra- tions of Tennyson's use of nature, not as a living, but as a symbolic thing. He makes nature express other- wise unutterable yearnings in his little poem :
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
The dull recurrence of the wave-beats answers to heart- beats even more monotonous and sad. And now the poet heightens the impression of grief by contrast :
O well for the fisherman' s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play !
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay !
And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill ;
5O2 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still !
So the glad accomplishment of the voyage of the ship increases our sympathy with one whose earthly hopes have vanished. And the last stanza intimates that, while the wave-beats are mechanical and unconscious, the heart-beats are living and unescapable :
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
•
A divine order, and finite intelligences watched over by an. infinite Intelligence who uses nature for their instruction and discipline — this is Tennyson's faith. His idealism, combined with his belief in freedom, de- livers him from the materialistic error of supposing that the universe is sufficient unto itself. He recognizes the world as under the dominion of law. In his later years he was increasingly impressed with the evidence that evolution is the method of creation. But he never loses sight of the fact that there is a law within the law, namely, the will of God. He sees that evolu tion is only a method, and not an agent ; that behind the method is a divine Intelligence which designed it ; that the Agent who works according to this method is God.
Tennyson made many needless concessions to agnosti- cism, but he never ceased to fight against materialism. In his acknowledgment of law, he did not surrender his faith in freedom. He believed that God, while
binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.
AN EVOLUTIONIST, BUT NOT A MATERIALIST 503
God's order is the order, not of constant miracle, but of gradual development. But God is free, as well as man ; and this enabled him to trust that
God was love indeed, And love creation' s final law — Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
This enabled him also to cherish hope for the world, even though many questions about the existence of evil remained unsolved :
Is there evil but on earth ? Or pain in every peopled sphere ? Well be grateful for the sounding watchword ' ' Evolution ' " here.
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Tennyson had evidently grasped the thought that the abuse of human freedom has substituted reversion for evolution, and that sin must be taken account of, if we would explain the history of man or reconcile it with the principle of divine order. The materialism that denies freedom, and the necessitarianism that excludes sin, are combated in the drama called "The Promise of May." At the first representation of this little play in London, the Marquis of Queensbury rose from his seat in the theatre and protested against the character of "Edgar" as "an abominable caricature" of the ag- nostic position. It is nevertheless a faithful picture of the logical tendency and natural consequences of ag- nosticism :
A soul with no religion . . . Was without rudder, anchor, compass — might be
504 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Blown every way with every gust, and wreck On any rock.
If man be only
A willy-nilly current of sensations — Reaction needs must follow revel — yet — Why feel remorse, he, knowing that he must have Moved in the iron grooves of Destiny ? Remorse then is a part of Destiny, Nature a liar, making us feel guilty Of her own faults.
The last gleam of an after-life but leaves him A beast of prey in the dark.
The two aspects of this abuse of freedom, the sin of sense on the one hand and the sin of pride on the other, have been depicted by Tennyson with wonderful power, the former in "The Vision of Sin," and the latter in "The Palace of Art." Not that he confines his treat- ment of the subject to these poems. As I have already pointed out, "The Idylls of the King' is one jong^ex- positipn of the nature and the_cons£quences of trans- gression. The song of Vivien ' in " Balin and Balan ' gives us the insidious and lying aspect of temptation :
The fire of heaven is lord of all things good, And starve not thou this fire within thy blood, But follow Vivien through the fiery flood ! The fire of heaven is not the flame of hell !
"Thou shalt not surely die," said the first seducer; "ye shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil." So Vivien extorts the charm from Merlin :
Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm Of woven paces and of waving hands,
SIN AS SENSUALITY
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
" The Vision of Sin'1 presents temptation to sensual sin in its coarser aspect :
I had a vision when the night was late :
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls and led him in.
Then come song and revel, ecstasies of pleasure, the giddy whirl of the dance, an orgy of intoxication. But there is a solemn sequel. Divine retribution slowly gathers :
And then I looked up toward a mountain tract,
That girt the region with high cliff and lawn :
I saw that every morning, far withdrawn
Beyond the darkness and the cataract,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn,
Unheeded : and detaching, fold by fold,
From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near,
A vapor heavy, hueless, formless, cold,
Came floating on for many a month and year,
Unheeded.
At length the vapor touches the palace-gate and en- compasses its inmates. Penalty overtakes the sinner. The youth with curls, fairly flying in the exuberance of his vitality and passion, becomes at last
A gray and gap-tooth' d man as lean as death, Who slowly rode across a wither' d heath And lighted at a ruin' d inn.
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Sense has increased the stimulant until at last no pleasure is left. The recklessness of youth is now a bitter cynicism. There is no goodness or purity. Death is approaching, but it is made matter for ribald jest. Conscience occasionally threatens, but it can be deadened with drink :
I am old, but let me drink ;
Bring me spices, bring me wine ; I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine.
• ••••••
Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl' d ;
Unto me my maudlin gall And my mockeries of the world.
Fill the cup, and fill the can ;
Mingle madness, mingle scorn ! Dregs of life, and lees of man :
Yet we will not die forlorn !
The voice grew faint : there came a further change : Once more uprose the mystic mountain range.
• ••••••
Then some one spake : ' ' Behold, it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time." Another said : ' ' The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame."
Penalty is the reaction of natural law, and the sin of sense is punished in kind. Man reaps what he sows, yet the operation of natural law is at the same time the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
As "The Vision of Sin'1 shows us sensual sin "avenged by sense that wore with time," so "The Palace of Art" is a picture_pf the inherent misery
SIN AS PRIDE AND SELFISHNESS 5O/
of selfishness. There the soul that has built for itself
~^~_ — .*.,»*-— 1«, — - - -
a lordly pleasure-house, looks down with contempt upon the poor :
O Godlike isolation which art mine !
I can but count thee perfect gain, What time I watch the darkening droves of swine
That range on yonder plain.
In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, They graze and wallow, breed and sleep,
And oft some brainless devil enters in And drives them to the deep.
This palace of pride is adorned with beauty, but the pleasures sought within are not pleasures of the senses. Science, literature, and art are the soul's ministers. Everything is here to give enjoyment, except humility and love.
Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Flash' d through her as she sat alone,
Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth, And intellectual throne.
And so she throve and prosper' d : so three years She prosper' d : on the fourth she fell,
Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, Struck through with pangs of hell.
Despair, dread, loathing of her solitude, fell on her. Art, sundered from love, had turned the palace into a veritable prison. "Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame,"
she
Lay there exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name ;
And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair,
5O8 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity, No comfort anywhere.
• • ••*••
She howl'd aloud, " I am on fire within.
There comes no murmur of reply. What is it that will take away my sin,
And save me, lest I die ? ' '
So, when four years were wholly finished,
She threw her royal robes away, " Make me a cottage in the vale," she said, ' ' Where I may mourn and pray.
"Yet pull not down my palace-towers, that are
So lightly, beautifully built : Perchance I may return with others there, When I have purged my guilt."
The remorse of a soul awakened by conscience, and "plagued by God with sore despair," has never been more vividly described. The conviction that sin must be taken away, that guilt must be purged, that the sin- ner must depend upon help from without, that one must come and "save it, lest it die" — all this is the voice of human nature itself, under the teachings of Scripture and of the Holy Spirit. And Tennyson recognizes the universal need of this deliverance, for in "Becket" he says:
We are sinners all, The best of all not all prepared to die.
In "The Promise of May" this sin is described as hereditary :
O this mortal house Which we are born into, is haunted by The ghosts of the dead passions of dead men ;
CHRIST RECOGNIZED AS DIVINE REDEEMER 509
And these take flesh again with our own flesh, And bring us to confusion.
He was only
A poor philosopher who called the mind Of children a blank page, a tabula rasa. There, there, is written in invisible inks, "Lust, Prodigality, Covetousness, Craft, Cowardice, Murder" — and the heat and fire Of life will bring them out, and black enough So the child grow to manhood.
Evil heredity, however, has not extinguished human freedom. We have still a will that can act down upon our natures and can modify them. We are responsible for the evil, and we can alter our destiny :
Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half control his
doom — Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.
*
For man is man, and master of his fate.
With all these abstract possibilities of good, it still re- mains true that man is weak, and that for his complete renovation he is dependent upon a higher power. In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," the poet says of earth in general what is equally true of the individual man :
Ere she gain her heavenly best, a God must mingle with the game.
\i
Does Tennyson recognize Christ as the divine Re- deemer ? I am glad to find abundant evidence of this. Doubtful as he is about nature as a direct revelation of God, he has no doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or as to Christ's proclamation of God's mind and will to men.
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"In Memoriam" teaches this not only in its noble initial invocation,
Strong Son of God, immortal Love !
but in the subsequent attribution to him of creative power, of supreme authority, and of infinite wisdom. Christ is the Maker, the Lord, and the Light, of men. It is the larger Christ, the eternal Revealer of God, to whom the poet makes the sublime ascription :
Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood thou : Our wills are ours, we know not how ;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day ; They have their day and cease to be : They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
And yet this Light of the world, this eternal power and truth and love, became incarnate, so that all men might recognize and adore a present God :
For wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.
In "The Holy Grail," the hermit tells Percivale that the model of all earthly excellence is to be found in the humility of Christ,
CHRIST RECOGNIZED AS DIVINE REDEEMER 5! I
when the Lord of all things Made himself naked of glory for his mortal change.
The Model of humanity does not stand at a distance commanding us to be like him, — he enters into us and remodels us. Not imitation of him, so much as appro- priation of him, is needed. Immortal Love becomes our Lord and King, by diffusing through our being his own loving spirit. Christ is "the Life indeed." He raised Lazarus from the dead ; he receives the souls of the departed; he is an object of prayer to-day. And in allusion to Paul's words, "That rock was Christ," and "Christ liveth in me," the poet prays that God in Christ may pervade and purify us :
O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shalt suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow through our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out the dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer' d years, To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control, The truths that never can be proved, Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
Because Tennyson's belief in God is combined with an agnostic philosophy, Stopford Brooke can say that our poet is more Christian than theist. Though he professes to know little about God, he knows much about Christ. When I hear him praying to Christ, I am not greatly troubled by his seeming identification of Christ with all the good :
512 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVJNE ORDER
Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name,
Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of 111, Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will.
Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.
It is rather the identification of the good with Christ, their Inspirer and their life. Tennyson has shown us his heart, and he has confessed to us his faith, in the " May Queen," where the dying girl says of the clergyman :
He taught me all the mercy, for he showed me all the sin. Now, though my lamp was lighted late, there' s One will let me in, Nor would I now be well, mother, again if that could be, For my desire is but to pass to Him that died for me.
The same trust in Christ as a Saviour is shown in his pathetic poem entitled " In the Children's Hos- pital." There the little child who has prayed to Jesus to help her in prospect of a surgical operation, and has put her arms outside the bed so that he may distinguish her from the other patients, has her prayer answered. The hard-hearted skeptical surgeon
Had brought his ghastly tools : we believed her asleep again — Her dear, long, lean, little arms lying out on the counterpane ; Say that his day is done ? Ah, why should we care what they say ? The Lord of the children had heard her, and Emmie had past away.
Tennyson perceives that God's work for man must be met and appropriated by man's work for God. In theological parlance, regeneration must be accompanied by conversion, and there is no conversion without re- pentance and faith. In " Maud," even an earthly love
GOD'S WORK COMPLEMENTED BY MAN'S $13
has power to humble a man and to make him long to be more worthy of the object of his affection :
And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be.
And in " Guinevere' we see the forgiving love of Arthur for his faithless Queen result in her true repent- ance and in the awaking at last of responsive love for him whom she had so greatly wronged. The King's forgiveness comes first :
Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives : do thou for thine own soul the rest
• ••••»•
Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband — not a smaller soul, Nor Lancelot, nor another.
But Guinevere's repentance follows :
Now I see thee what thou art, Thou art the highest and most human too, Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none Will tell the King I love him, though so late ? Now — ere he goes to the great battle ? none : Myself must tell him in that purer life, But now it were too daring. Ah, my God, What might I not have made of thy fair world, Had I but loved thy highest creature here ? It was my duty to have loved the highest :
2H
5H POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
It surely was my profit, had I known : It would have been my pleasure, had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.
There is a defect in this representation, in spite of its heart-moving pathos. Not enough stress is laid upon the necessity of a divine influence to enable us to see and love the highest. That divine influence accom- panied and spoke through Arthur's forgiveness, or the guilty passion of the Queen would not have been re- placed by contrition. I find a .. disproportionate stress laid upon the merely human agencies, and too little stress laid upon the direct operation of the divine Spirit. Hence, in his outlook for the world's future, Tennyson has only hope of a consummation that is far away. He does not see that God can cut short his work in right- eousness, and do what commonly takes a thousand years in one day. The naturalistic method of modern science has almost banished from his mind the conviction that Nature and History are plastic in the divine hands, and that the things which are impossible with men are pos- sible with God.
The verses entitled " By an Evolutionist ' attribute more of individual progress to old age, than to the Spirit of God :
Done for thee ? starved the wild beast that was linked with thee
eighty years back. Less weight now for the ladder- of-heaven that hangs on a star.
If my body come from brutes, though somewhat finer than their
own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute?
FOURTH PERIOD OF GROWING DESPONDENCY 515
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne, Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy Province of the brute.
I have climb' d to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the
Past, Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low
desire,
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher.
And while the poet expects the future triumph of good in this world of ours, he hardly hopes that the ghost of the brute will be laid for a million years to come :
Forward then, but still remember how the course of time will
swerve, Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.
• ••••••
Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past. I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.
These last quotations are from the poems of Tenny- son's old age. They breathe a more unhopeful tone than the productions of his earlier manhood. The strong faith with which " In Memoriam ' closes is somewhat weakened. We may indeed speak of a fourth period of Tennyson's productive activity, and may call it the period of growing despondency. Evolution has come to seem the exclusive method of God, though it has not taken the place of God. The poet's hold upon the personal Love at the heart of the Universe is re- laxed. Let us believe it to be merely the decay of natural cheerfulness and the growth of egotistic petu-
5l6 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
lance, rather than a renunciation of the faith of his youth. " Locksley Hall" has in it more of truth than " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," for in the former faith indignantly represses doubt :
Fool, again the dream, the fancy ? But I know my words are
wild, For I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.
• ••••••
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
• ••••••
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range, Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Through the shadow of" the world we sweep into the younger day : Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
I believe that these verses have in them not only more of truth, but also more of Tennyson's own faith, than the poems of his later years. Yet it is delightful to find that his last poem expresses anew the confidence of his youth. It is the poet's personal version of Stephen's prayer, " Lord, into thy hands I commend my
spirit " :
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me ! And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark !
FOURTH PERIOD OF GROWING DESPONDENCY 517
And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark ;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
And what about the future destiny of men? Will all attain to blessedness ? We find two methods of representation in Tennyson. When he contemplates the freedom of the human will and the possibilities of its self-perversion, he declares that
he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love.
How solemn is the song of the little maid in " Guinevere " :
Late, late, so late ! and dark the night, and chill ! Late, late, so late ! but we can enter still. Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
No light had we : for that we do repent ; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
No light : so late ! and dark and chill the night ! O let us in, that we may find the light ! Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet ? O let us in, though late, to kiss his feet ! Too late, too late ! ye cannot enter now.
"The Vision of Sin" closes with almost equally solemn
words :
At last I heard a voice upon the slope, Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
5l8 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand ; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn God made himself an awful rose of dawn.
But when the poet considers the majesty of the divine order, he cannot believe that any human soul will fail of accomplishing the design of its creation :
The wish that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul ?
He trusts that in some way God will subdue all things to himself. The order of the divine administration will be vindicated, though the perversity of the human will seems almost insuperable :
Behold, we know not anything , I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off— at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
"Despair," one of his latest poems, is a travesty of the orthodox doctrines of the decrees of God, and of the fixity of self-determined character. The decrees are so described as to be not permissive, but mandatory, and punishment is made to consist in external inflictions, rather than in the natural results of transgression. If this poem reflects Tennyson's final opinions, it indicates that calm and candid judgment of the facts of human sin and destiny had given place to arbitrary and unrea- soning assumption. I prefer to believe that this poem is intended not as an exposition of the author's own be-
SUMMING UP OF TENNYSON'S THEOLOGY 519
liefs, but as a dramatic picture of the possible results of a materialistic and fatalistic interpretation of the scrip- tural utterances with regard to future punishment.
Tennyson, however, was, without much doubt, a res- torationist. He was obliged to confess, at least in his earlier poems, that the ultimate blessedness of all was not susceptible of proof, and that there was much to contradict it. His evolutionism seemed inconsistent with such a conclusion. Of fifty seeds, nature often brings but one to bear. May there not be a similar sur- vival of the fittest in the moral realm ? If he had car- ried his evolutionary philosophy to its logical conclusion, would he not have been obliged to grant that abuse of freedom may result in reversion to the brute, annihila- tion of manhood but not of existence, punishment from within but not from without, eternal penalty in the shape of eternal loss ? And would not this have fitted in with the observed results of sin here, better than his own restorationism ? Tennyson feels the difficulties of his own position, and in " In Memoriam " he confesses :
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares Upon the world' s great altar-stairs
That slope through darkness unto God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
We may sum up our view of Tennyson's theology by saying that he is, first and foremost, a believer in the divine order of the universe in spite of all the confu-
520
POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
sion incident to human sin ; that he regards man as an emanation from God, yet for that very reason respon- sible and free; that he worships Christ as the mani- fested God who has become incarnate to take man's sin away ; that nature is but the symbol and partial expres- sion of God, while Christ is the divine Word, intelligible and complete ; that God's method, both in nature and in grace, is that of evolution, though the process admits the hearing and the answering of prayer and the com- munion of the finite spirit with its infinite Creator ; that the Christ of God is imparting himself to Jjin^n hearts and is displacing the brute inheritance •* of
love ; that this love in man, being deri connecting the soul with God, is immortai , . persistence of love is the rational ground to.'-r' in the ultimate triumph of good in thefi1^
Our poet is so much of a believer that nes an
interesting question why faith did not quell his doubts altogether and rise to the heights of unwavering assur- ance. So it did not ; for the struggle with doubt not only did not cease, but even grew more severe, with ad- vancing age. He had a mind wonderfully open to all the voices of his time. Its science and its philosophy deeply impressed him. They claimed to be the only sources of real knowledge. Tennyson almost took them at their word. And though his works are full of virtual quotations from Scripture, and he speaks of
The comfort clasped in truth revealed,
he seems to have trusted the Bible only when he could find some evidence in nature to corroborate it. Into the higher joys and certitudes of the spiritual life he
SUMMING UP OF TENNYSON'S THEOLOGY $21
entered at times ; but he was not native to that air, and the most of his life was passed in the valley of the shadow.
It is easy to say that Tennyson might have been a more strenuous believer ; but when we review the list of his actual beliefs, and remember through what stress and storm of doubt and conflict they were achieved, we may well be thankful for what he was, rather than com- plain of what he was not. His very sensitiveness to every form of doubt has made him the confidant and guide of - ~HIV who would never have trusted a dog-
a multitude out of their darkness 5 has done this not so much by ar- £ Appealing to something higher tfcan the Jfea understanding, namely, to the instincts of the frak more precisely, to the reason as
conditior Enlightened by pure affection.
Edgar Allen Poe declared that he regarded Tenny- son as the greatest poet that ever lived. He is cer- tainly the greatest poet of our century. We may put him next to Milton, if not side by side with Milton and only lower than Shakespeare. He is a master of liter- ary workmanship. His art, at least in all the produc- tions of his prime, is almost never- failing. His songs have a liquid melody equal to that of Shelley, and far more informed with genuine emotion. No song of our greatest dramatist in our judgment surpasses the " Bugle- song " in " The Princess ":
The splendor falls on castle walls,
And snowy summits old in story : The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
522 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river : Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
Stedman, in his "Victorian Poets," has said that there is more of English landscape in one stanza of "In Memoriam' than in all of Thomson's "Seasons." I would add that there is more of heart in one such stanza than in all the poetry of Lord Byron. Tennyson touches us at deeper depths than any other poet of our generation, simply because he has a larger view of human nature, and a soul that itself has profounder emotions. The yearning of human love, and the sense of the Infinite, go together in him. It is because he is a religious poet, that he is the most representative poet of our time. Whatever may be said to the contrary by shallow unbelievers, our time is a time, not of growing unbelief, but of growing faith, and the poets who have greatest influence and a clear title to immortality are those who deal most with that which is immortal in man.
And this is only to say that without love to man and
THE GREATEST POETRY THEOLOGICAL $23
love to God the greatest poetry is impossible. Mere human love is not enough to stir the deepest chords either in the poet or in his readers. It is the connection of human love with the divine love that gives it per- manence and security. The suggestion of the Infinite is the secret of all sublimity and beauty. The poet need not be a conscious theologian, much less can he be chiefly a dogmatist, but he must be deeply impressed with the problems of theology and must have his own solutions of them, if he is to move his age or to influ- ence it for good. It is because Tennyson has seen the relation of nature and of man to the ineffable and eternal order, that he has commanded the affection and reverence of the world. He has done much to hasten the victory of the divine goodness and to bring men under the dominion of the divine love.
It was a tribute to the power of poetry, as one of God's chief ministers for the teaching and uplifting of the race, that there gathered in Westminster Abbey, on the 1 2th of October, 1892, a most notable company of representatives of the English-speaking race, to do the last honors to the mortal remains of Alfred Tennyson. He was the Poet-Laureate of Great Britain, and he had been made a peer of the realm. The universal outburst of sorrow that followed the death of the old man of eighty-three, was fitly reflected in the crowds that lined the streets through which the funeral procession passed, and that filled every nook and corner of England's grandest mausoleum. The greatest of recent poets was buried in the Poets' Corner, among the singers whose names have become immortal. Tennyson's funeral proved that the "pen is mightier than the sword," and
524 POETRY INTERPRETS THE DIVINE ORDER
the closing lines of his great " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington " apply to him also :
Peace, his triumph will be sung
By some yet unmolded tongue
Far on in summers that we shall not see.
• ••••*
For though the giant ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will ;
Though world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul ?
On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
Hush, the dead march wails in the people's ears :
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears ;
The black earth yawns : the mortal disappears ;
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ;
He is gone who seemed so great.
Gone ; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in state,
And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him.
Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him.
GENERAL INDEX
Abou Symbol, Greek inscription there, 21.
" Absalom and Achitophel," 168.
"AbtVogler,"444.
"Adonais,"416, 473, 493.
" All's Well That Ends Well," 182, 195.
Anachronism, legitimate in poetry, 167.
" Andrea del Sarto," 384.
Antiquity, not uncritical, 5.
"Antony and Cleopatra," 175, 181, 195.
Aquinas, " Summa " of, 111.
"Arabian Nights, Recollections of," 460.
Archilochus, and the scytale, 23.
Aristotle, 17, 111. 163.
"As You Like It," 182.
" Asolando,' ' 443.
Atonement, in Homer, 50.
Augustine, 337.
Authorship of "Iliad" and "Odys- sey " : evidences of, 7-13 ; not incon- sistent with variations of style and spirit, 12.
Bacon, Francis, 173, 174, 420.
" Balaustion's Adventure," 429.
"Balin and Balan," 504.
Barrett, Elizabeth, 378, 408.
Bath-Kol, 366.
Beatrice, 109, 111, 116, 121, 145, 148.
"Becket,"482, 508.
Befreier, Der, epithet desired by Goethe, 329.
"Bishop Blougram's Apology," 382.
" Blackwood's Magazine," 460.
" Break, Break, Break," 501.
" Bringing the Good News from Ghent," 382.
Browning, Robert : his poetry and his theology, 375-447 ; occasion of essay upon, 373-377 ; his portrait, 376 ; his life till death of his wife. 377, 378 ;
his notoriety, 378; his range, 381- 384 ; his " Ring and the Book," 384- 387 ; possesses the faculty of ideal- ization, 387-397; is he serious? 397, 398; are his writings healthful? 398- 400 ; as a literary artist, 400-412 ; his optimism, 413-431; is an evolution- ist, 418-421; believes in God, 421, 422 ; is a monist, 422-425 ; sees God revealed in human personality, 425- 427 ; sees love of God in Christ, 427- 431; in a later aspect, 431-444; in- fluence of his wife's death, 445 ; has hopes for the bad, 446; his own prospect, 446.
Brutes : have percepts, 161 ; have some imagination, 161.
Byron, 335, 379, 458, 522.
Carlyle, Thomas, 13, 154, 291, 322, 376, 415.
"Charge of the Heavy Brigade," 495.
" Charge of the Light Brigade," 473.
Chorizontes, 5.
Christ : according to Goethe, 320, 321 ; Browning's estimate of, 427 ; Lamb's estimate of, 428 ; nature as the body of, 428; nature as the face of, 428, 429.
" Christmas Eve," 422, 424, 439, 442.
Christianity : Goethe's estimate of, 321. 322 ; unconscious plagiarisms from, 369.
Coleridge: on "Withstanding," 254; on the " Prelude," 339 ; his " ^Eolian Harp," 350 ; relations of, with Words- worth, 351, 352; on an illusion of memory, 354.
"Comedy, The Divine": the monu- ment of Beatrice, 111 ; Dante's pre- paredness for writing, 111-114; the intention of, 114-121 ; the poem de- scribed, 121-150; its cosmology, 122,
525
526
GENERAL INDEX
123 ; its title explained, 124, 125 ; its terza rima, 125, 126 ; the Inferno de- scribed, 126-136 ; the Purgatorio de- scribed, 136-144; the Paradise de- scribed, 144-150; conclusion of, 151- 154.
"Comus," 227.
" Confessions," 383.
Conscience : in Shakespeare's works, 203, 204 ; a witness against panthe- ism, 367.
"Coriolanus," 181, 197, 199.
" Courtship, Lady Geraldine's," 408.
Critical theory of the Homeric poems : its supporters, 5, 6 ; its opponents, 6, 7 ; reviewed, 7-13.
Cross, the, Goethe's view of, 322.
Curtis, G. W., on a change in his style, 13, 232.
" Cymbeline," 175, 182, 202, 215.
Dante and "The Divine Comedy": considered, 105-155; how essay origi- nated, 107, 108.
Dante Alighieri : the time of his birth, 108, 109; relations to Beatrice, 109- 111 ; how qualified to be author of " The Divine Comedy," 111-114 ; his aim in his great work, 114-121 ; his scheme of the universe, 122-124 ; as a versifier, 124, 126; his "Comedy" described, 126-149 ; the most sensi- tive of poets, 150 ; his ruling concep- tion of heaven, 151, 152; his view of saintship, 152-154 ; an intense realist, 154; the voice of all centuries, 154, 155 ; why his work will endure, 155
" Daughter of the Voice, The," phrase explained, 366.
Dead, The, in Homer, 56.
" Death in the Desert, A," 395, 431. 438.
" Death of the Duke of Wellington, Ode on," 473.
Deism : Upton upon, 337 ; isolates, 337 ; robs man, 337 ; makes nature a ma- chine, 337; separates man and na- ture, 337 ; in England, 415.
Descartes, his " Treatise on Method," 339.
" Despair," Tennyson's, criticised, 518.
Dewey, on creative imagination as evi- dence of unity of universe, 220.
" Doloneia," The, its place in " Iliad," 15.
"Dora, "458.
Dowden, on Shakespeare's productive life, 177.
Dramatic literature: its genesis, 33; its characteristics, 164; Greek and modern, 165.
" Duchess, My Last," 382.
"Duty, Ode to": its place among Wordsworth's poems, 366 ; its style, 366 ; not pantheistic, 366 ; its teach- ings, 367.
"Easter Day, "442.
"Eclogues," 68.
Edwards, Jonathan: his views of heaven and hell, 134, 135; his "His- tory of Redemption," 246.
Eliot, George : her double plots, 167 ; scepticism in her works, 209 ; knows the evangelical system, 292 ; exag- gerates heredity, 391 ; on Tennyson's plays, 483.
Emerson: on Goethe's "Elective Af- finities," 2% ; on universality of beauty, 338 ; on duty and ability, 390.
English tongue : influence of Bible on, 125 ; in Shakespeare's time, 172 ; Ba- con on, 173.
Ennius : as predecessor of Virgil, 74 ; deficient in art, 74; his "Annals," 74 ; Virgil's use of, 76.
Epic, the : appeals to wonder, 10 ; a kind of story-telling, 32; its con- genial conditions, 32; a recreation, 35.
Epigraphy: Greek, 21-23; Latin, 24; Hebrew, 24; Egyptian, 24; Baby- lonian, 24, 25.
" Epilogue, The," Browning's, 393.
"Epilogue to Dramatis Personse," Browning's, 428.
"Evelyn Hope, "384.
Evil : its place in descriptive litera- ture, 389; its source, 435; good in, 435.
Evolution: according to Browning, 418 ; a criticism on, 514.
Ewig-weibliche, das, discussed, 320.
"Excursion, The": its length, 339; its place in poet's plan, 339.
GENERAL INDEX
527
Falstaff, his deathbed, 210.
Fate, in Homer, 39.
"Faust": its place among poet's works, 315 ; its features, 315-317 ; first part of, 317 ; second part of, 318-320 ; a criticism on second part of, 324, 325.
"Ferishtah's Fancies," 394, 397, 405, 434, 443.
Fichte, 338.
" Fireside, By the," of Browning, 384.
" Flight of the Duchess, The," Brown- ing's, 384, 408.
Flint, on subjective tendency to pan- theism, 198.
" Francis Turini," Browning's, 438.
Future life, Homer's views of, 55-59.
"Georgics," 79-81.
"Giaour, The," 380.
Gladstone, on Homeric question, 7.
God : as presented in Homer, 42, 53, 54 ; his immanence, 337.
Gods of Homer ; characteristics of, 37, 38; inconsistently delineated, 38; why unmoral, 46.
Goethe : on Homeric authorship, 6 ; his references to his own poems, 19 ; a dictum of, 129; "The Poet of Pan- theism," 279-331 ; compared with Luther, 281 ; parentage of, 283, 284 ; characteristics of, 284-286 ; his habit of falling in love, 287 ; his treatment of his mother, 288; affair of, with Frederike Brion, 288; writes the "Roman Elegies," 288; concubinage of, 289, 304, 305; his treatment of Kestner, 289 ; unpatriotic, 290 ; self- confident, 290 ; letter of, to Lavater, 291; influence on, of Fraiilein von Klettenberg, 292, 293; his "Confes- sions of a Beautiful Soul," 292 ; with- draws from religious services, 294 ; his "Generalbeichle" 294; his "hea- thenism," 295, 2%; his Spinozism, 296, 297 ; does not know true God, 298 ; the character of his philosophy, 298, 299 ; his religion of health and joy, 300; some truth in his philosophy, 300 ; an evolutionist, 301 ; loses hold on ethical distinctions, 301 ; old age of, 301, 305 ; his view of sin and re- pentance, 302 ; Tennyson's estimate
of, 302, 331 ; life of, at Weimar, 302, 303 ; spending a year in Italy, 304 ; connection of, with Frau von Stein, 303, 304 ; bereavements of, 306 ; moral sense of, quickened, 306 ; reply of, to Augusta von Stolberg, 306 ; letter to Zelter, 307 ; his offer of marriage declined, 307 ; visited by Thackeray, 307 ; death, 307 ; his " Goetz von Ber- lichingen," and criticisms thereof, 308 ; his " Sorrows of Werther," 309 ; the second period of his literary life, 311-315; third period of his literary life, 315 ; composes " Faust," 315, 316- 320 ; views of Christ and Christianity, 321, 322 ; why influential, 325, 326 ; style of, 326 ; relation of, to nature, 326, 327 ; lyrics of, 327, 328 ; his method of using Christian terminology, 320 ; his influence on modern fiction, 328 ; how a Befreier, 329 ; how a political liberator of Germany, 330 ; how an enslaver of Fatherland, 330 ; his defi- nition of nature, 364.
"Goetz von Berlichingen," 308, 309.
Grail, the Holy, legend of, 478, 480, 510, 511.
"Grammarian's Funeral, The," 444.
Grote, on composition of " Iliad " and "Odyssey," 6.
Hamilton, Sir W., 389, 483.
Hamlet, 159, 168, 181, 194, 200-206.
" Hang-draw-and Quarterly," 460.
Heavens, the, of Dante, 123.
Hector, 9, 14, 41, 47.
Hegel, 298, 416.
Hegenanism, its need, 392.
Helen : 41, 48, 60 ; marries Faust, 318.
Hell of Dante, 122, 137.
Hellanicus, a Chorizont, 5.
"Henry IV.": mentioned 180 ; Parti.,
208, 213; Part II., 176,198. " Henry V." : mention of, 179, 180, 204,
207, 210. "Henry VI.": introduced, 178, 180;
Part I., 198 ; Part II., 195, 201, 203-205,
208,209; Part III., 189. Heredity, limited, 509. Hermes, 36, 38, 42. Hesiod, 79. Historical plays of Shakespeare, 180.
S28
GENERAL INDEX
" Hohenstiel-Schwangau," 419, 421, 422.
Homer : how estimated, 3, 4 ; Arnold's characterization of, 4 ; ancient criti- cism of, 5 ; Wolf's theory regarding, 5; a host of destructive critics at- tack, 6; conservative critics of, 6; his claim to works that bear his name defended, 7-17 ; how he discloses plot, 8-10 ; how he develops plot, 10, 11 ; objections to sole authorship of, 12; individual unity of each of the poems of, 13-17; what follows denial of unity of ? 17, 18 ; various versions of poems of, how explained, 19; was there a written language in time of, 21-28 ; proof of unity of, not de- pendent on existence of written characters, 28-31; public apprecia- tive of the works of, 31-33 ; ideas of, about God, 35-44 ; doctrine of, con- cerning sin, 44-49; his doctrine of atonement, 50-55 ; his ideas of future life, 55-59 ; exhibits human life, 59- 62 ; influence of, 62, 63.
History and poetry compared, 163, 164.
Hubris, 199.
Hutton : on realism, 162 ; on Goethe's philosophy, 298 ; on Goethe's lyrics, 327.
" Iliad " : similar to " Odyssey " in dis- closure and development of plot, 7- 11; differs from "Odyssey," 12, 13; its unity, 13-16.
"Idylls of the King " : subject of, 477 ; their story, 479-481.
Imagination : its place and function, 160-163 ; God's, 166 ; needful to sci- ence and religion, 169; not fancy, 212 ; best poetical definition of, 361.
Immortality : in Homer, 55 ; Goethe's mature views of, 306, 307.
"Intimations of Immortality": dis- cussion on, 353-360 ; its aim, 353 ; its argument stated, 355 ; quotations from, 356-360.
"Iphigenia," Goethe's, 313, 315.
Isaiah, differing style in, 232.
James, Henry, 388.
James First of England, his treatment
of an Arian, 262. Jeffries, on " Peter Bell," 370.
Jesus, was he defective in humor? 397. Jocularity discussed, 397, 398. Jonson, Ben, 182, 184. " Julius Csesar," 197.
Kant, 338, 416.
"Karshish," 384.
" Kate, My," 408.
Klettenberg, Fraulein von, 292, 293.
Klopstock, referred to, 282.
Lachmann, 6.
"Lady of Tripoli," 408.
Lanier, Sidney, on individual freedom,
425.
"Laus Veneris," of Swinburne, 176. " Lear, King," 167, 181, 186, 197, 199, 205. Light, Dante's vocabulary of, 151. Limbo, 127.
" Locksley Hall," 465, 470-472. "Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After,"
415, 516. Love : its mediaeval classification, 139 ;
Milton's, 239; a means of insight,
360 ; its permanent prominence, 475,
476.
" Lucknow, The Defense of," 473. Lucretius, influence of, on Virgil, 75. Ludlow Castle, 276, 277. "Lycidas,"473, 492. Lyric poetry, affected by aristocracies,
32.
Macaulay : memory of, 30 ; best point in his essay on " Milton," 248.
"Macbeth": discussed, 171, 187, 190; and "Richard III." compared, 191; and Lady Macbeth compared, 192, 193.
Man : and nature united, 336 ; the in- tegral, 360; explains all that leads up to him, 419.
"Mariana, "460.
Marlowe, 173, 176, 182.
" Martyr's Epitaph," 407.
" Mary, Queen," 482, 483.
"Measure for Measure," 182, 195, 202, 206, 208.
" Memoriam, In " : its nature and aim, 473, 474 ; its supreme value, 475, 476.
Memory, its retentiveness in ancient and modern times, 29, 30.
" Memory, Ode to," 452, 453.
GENERAL INDEX
529
" Merchant of Venice," 180, 1%.
"Merry Wives of Windsor," 182.
" Midsummer Night's Dream," 168, 217.
Mill, J. S., 335, 376, 399, 410.
" Miller's Daughter," 458.
Milton : general treatment of, 222-277 ; influence of Civil War upon, 68 ; his epitaph on Shakespeare, 223, 224; elements in his style called "Mil- tonic," 224; his education, 233, 234; his part in the struggle for civil lib- erty, 235-239 ; marriage of, and its sequel, 239-242; his blindness, 242- 24fi ; the sphere introduced into by " Paradise Lost," 246-250 ; its trag- edy detailed, 250; reception of the work of, by the public, 250-252 ; his "Paradise Regained," its inception and character, 252, 253 ; his didacti- cism, 253, 254 ; scientific incorrect- ness of and permanent popularity, 255, 256 ; his sense of form, 256 ; theo- logical tenets of, 257-271 ; influenced by Roger Williams, 271, 272; how far tolerant in religion, 272, 273 ; in what regard the poet of Protestant- ism, 273-276.
Monism : of Milton, 263 ; non-ethical, of Spinoza, 298; ethical, of Brown- ing, 422-425.
Monotheism, of Homer, 36.
" Much Ado about Nothing," 182.
"Nativity, Ode on the Morning of Christ's," 68, 260.
Nature: according to Wordsworth, 364 ; according to Goethe, 364 ; its best interpreters, 365 ; its relation to God, 365.
Nemesis in " Richard III." and " Mac- beth," 191, 192.
"Not-self," earliest perception of, what? 160.
Oak explains acorn. 419.
Odysseus, 11, 14, 37. 38, 42, 49, 56, 57, 62.
"Odyssey," see " Iliad."
" One Word More," Browning, 380.
Optimism : often a matter of temper- ament, 414; Christian, 434; Pan- theistic, 434.
Ostracism, 27.
'Othello," 181, 201.
P as a symbol, 138.
" Palace of Art, The," 504, 506-508.
Pantheism : has no method to restore the mpsed, 318 ; fatal to Art, 325,
"Pantheism, The Higher, "488, 489, 499.
"Paradise Lost" and "Regained," see Milton.
Paradise, Dante's : consistent with progress, 144; upward gravitation in, 145 ; not a Mohammedan, 151.
" Parleyings, The," 443.
" Parsifal," carried in memory, 29.
Paul, Jean, 392.
" Pauline," of Browning, 377.
Peisistratus, 5, 6, 18, 19, 28.
Penalty, its essence, 134, 506.
Pharaoh, hardening his heart, 49.
Phoenicia. 27.
" Pippa Passes," 392, 431.
Plato : his view of imagination, 160 ; banishes poets from his Republic, 160; his theory of pre-existence, 353 ; cave of, 368.
Poet, the : expresses God's plan of the universe, 166 ; presents the uni- versal, 169; Wordsworth upon, 342 : "a maker," 379: described by Browning, §79 ; not made by imagi- nation alone, 388 : idealizes, 388 ; is a philosopher, 390; is not a fatalist, 390 ; has right views of God, 392 ; has a moral aim, 455.
" Poet, The," of Tennyson, 454, 455, 460.
Poetry: depends on form, 73; more valuable than history, 163, 164; re- constructs, 164 ; as described by Milton, 167 ; and insanity, 168 ; Eng- land's chief glory, 335 ; defined. 378, 379 ; imagination and facts in, 379 , creative, not a mere reproduction, 389 ; has an ideal and religious ele- ment, 389-393 ; of the future, 412, 413 ; definition of, 459 ; essentials to the greatest, 523.
Pope, criticised, 338.
Portia, excellence of her delineation, 196.
Pre-existence of souls, 353-359.
" Prelude, The," 338, 339, 361, 362.
" Primrose of the Rock, The," 359.
21
530
GENERAL INDEX
•' Princess, The," 466-469, 498.
•' Profundis, De,'' 485, 486, 489.
" Prometheus," 391, 392.
Propitiation, in Homer. 51.
Purgatory : difficulty of ascent to, 136 ; has an ante-purgatory, 137, 139 ; com- pared with hell, 138, 139 ; classifica- tion of sins in, 139 ; is a process, 142 ; mistakes engendered by teaching concerning, 143.
Puritan theology : tends to Deism, 337 ; its mistakes, 415.
Queensberry, Marquis of, an agnostic, 503.
" Rabbi ben Ezra," 424, 442. Reason, its largest meaning, 360. Religion, is knowledge, 484. Reparation, the essence of tragedy,
391. " Richard III. " : its plot simple, 188 ;
its hero, Shakespeare's "villain,"
188, 189 '; arrival of Nemesis in, 190. Rimini, Francesca di, 133. " Ring and the Book, The," 379, 380,
384, 387, 403, 406, 418, 423, 424, 431, 434,
436, 442, 446. " Root and Branch " party, 235.
Sacrifice, the heathen and Christian idea of, 52, 54, 55.
" Sage, The Ancient," 488, 499.
"Saisiaz, La," 438, 443.
" Samson Agonistes," 240, 241, 243.
"Saul," 393, 394,395.
Schiller : on Weimar Society, 303 ; in- fluence of, on Goethe, 303 ; his death, 305, 306.
Science, what ? 162.
Seneca, " De Tranquillitate" 168.
Shakespeare : his universality, 157- 220 ; his largeness, 159, 160 ; ex- pressed what was best of his age, 171-173 ; is yet a new force, 173, 174 ; his education, 174 ; his adventurous youth, 175-177; the period of his productive activity divided, 177, 178 ; "in the workshop," 178; "in the "world," 178-181; "out of the depths," 181, 182; "on the heights," 182, 183 ; his self-forgetfulness, 181 ;
his concessions to popular taste, 185 ; his universality considered, 186 ; the universal element present in his creation of characters, 187-212 ; is a great ethical teacher, 193 ; his secu- larity a limitation of his univer- sality, 194 ; not agnostic or natural- istic, 195; his view of the divine nature, 1%; his view of human nature, 197-211; his references to work of Christ, 208, 209; his teach- ings pure and sound, 210 ; the uni- versal in his imagery, 212-214 ; the universal in his diction, 214-216 ; his invention limited, 217 ; the poet par excellence of secular humanity, 217- 220.
Shelley, 3, 338, 408, 416, 521.
Sin : in Homer, 44-51 ; Dante's classi- fication of, 128-131 ; Dante's view of nature and penalty of, 132-136; Shakespeare's view of, 198-202 ; Mil- ton's view of, 265 ; Goethe's view of, 302; Browning's view of, 434-439; Tennyson's view of, 504-509.
Sonnets : of Shakespeare, 184, 185, 476 ; of Milton, 244, 369; of Words- worth, 369.
"Sordello,"402, 416.
" Sorrows of Werther," 309-311.
" Soul's Tragedy," 439.
" Spanish Cloister," 383.
Spinoza, 297, 298.
" Statue and the Bust, The," 384, 435.
"Strafford,"377.
Substitution, 51.
Suffering, how explained by Dante, 134.
Swinburne, 176, 376, 408, 414, 478, 479.
Taine, M., 171, 475.
Tennyson : 449-524 ; the promise of his youth, 451-458 ; style of, 458-460 ; earli- est publications of, 460, 461 ; some characteristics of, 461-465 ; applies the principle of divine order, 465-469 ; poet of the pure affections, 469-471 ; his mistakes extenuated, 471-473; the greatest work of his life, 473-476 ; writes "The Idylls of the King," 476-482 ; dramas of, 482, 483 ; the ag- nostic cast of his poems accounted for, 483-485; inconsistent in use of
GENERAL INDEX
531
the words faith and knowledge, 485 ; his views of the derivation of the soul, 480-489 ; not a pantheist, 489-493 ; believes in no personal ex- istence before birth, 4U3-496 ; his con- ception of nature, 490-502 ; fights ma- terialism, 502 ; recognizes the abuse of human freedom, 503 ; his pictures of sin, 504-509 ; recognizes Christ as deliverer, 509-514 ; the despondency of his old age, 515-517 ; his two repre- sentations of man's future destiny, 517-519 ; theology of, summed up, 519, 520 ; a religious guide, 521 ; wherein a great poet, 521-523 ; his final hon- ors, 523, 524.
Theology, a popular definition of, 36.
"Timonof Athens," 200, 201.
"Tintern Abbey, Lines Written Above," Wordsworth's completest statement of relation between God and nature, 360-362.
" Tintern Abbey," a system of thought in verse, 303-365.
"Titus Andronicus," 186,1%.
"Treatise of Christian Doctrine," Mil- ton's, 257-274.
" Troilus and Cressida," 175, 182, 198.
" Twelfth Night," 197.
Twyn, his fate, 238.
Ulysses: referred to, 123; Shakes- peare's portraiture of, 175.
Universality: key to unlock mystery of Shakespeare, 186; its meaning, 186.
Universe, content of term, 380.
Vaughan, his metempsychosis, 354.
"Venus and Adonis," 176, 186.
Virgil : general treatment of, 65-103 ; and Homer, 4 ; his presentation of facts, 8 ; his age, 67-69 ; his birth and education, 09-73 ; his devotion to the Muse, 73-75 ; his characteristics as a writer, 75-77; his writings, 77; his
"Eclogues," 77-79; his "Georgics," 79-81 ; the" JSneid," 81-83; his posi- tion among ancient poets, 83-87; some special excellencies of, 87-91 ; is theologically in advance of Ho- mer, 91-94 ; a prophet of Christianity, 94-97 ; send-off of his work, 97 ; in- fluences the faiths of his country- men, 97, 98 ; in the estimation of the Middle Ages, 98-102 ; the motive and subject of his song, 102 ; expresses the hope of the Augustan Age, 103.
Voltaire, on purgatory, 138.
Vulpius, Christiane, 289, 304-306.
Watson, William, 371, 459.
Watts, G. F., a collection of his paint- ings, 375.
" Where Claribel Low Lieth," 460.
" Wilhelm Meister," 293.
"Winter's Tale," 182.
Wolf, his Homeric theory, 5, 6, 16.
Wordsworth : in general, 333-372 ; in- fluence of, on Mill, 335, 336 ; the poet of revival and revolution, 336-338; his " Prelude," 338-341 ; why a rustic poet, 341 ; awakes to his vocation, 342-344 ; deals with pre-suppositions of Christianity, 344-340; his sister Dorothy, 340-349; his friend Cole- ridge, 349-352; his three greatest poems, 352, 353 ; his " Intimations of Immortality," 353-359; not a pan- theist, 359,360; his "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey," 3GO-362; his " Tin tern Abbey," 303-305 ; his " Ode to Duty," 365-368 ; possesses a Chris- tian spirit, 368, 369 ; is a great poet, 369, 370 ; tributes to his genius, 370- 372.
Xenon, a Chorizont, 5.
Zeus, 36-42. Zola, 162, 388.
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1077
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1897
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