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BOSTON PUBLIC UBRARY
j^-^^Hfcc — ;jT"tiT~t^:5v^
\X- ^'•ihi".
MY COMMONPLACE BOOK
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
MY COMMONPLACE BOOK
BY
J. T. HACKETT
■Omne meum, nihil meum."
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1923
COPYRIGHT
First publication in Great Britain, September igig.
Second English Edition, September 1920.
Third English Edition, Jatiuary 1921.
Fourth English Edition, 1923.
^fffc^'
\
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
O Memories ! O Past that is !
George Eliot.
DEDICATED TO
MY DEAR FRIEND h X 3 ^
RICHARD HODGSON
WHO HAS PASSED OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE
Of wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle-stay ;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay ;
Of weariness and fear
I made my shouting spear ;
Of loss, and doubt, and dread,
And swift oncoming doom
I made a helmet for my head
And a floating plume.
From the shutting mist of death,
From the failure of the breath
I made a battle-horn to blow
Across the vales of overthrow.
O hearken, love, the battle-horn !
The triumph clear, the silver scorn I
O hearken where the echoes bring,
Dozvn the grey disastrous morn,
Laughter and rallying ! *
William Vaughn Moody,
From Richard Hodgson's Christmas Card, 1904 (the Christmas before his death).
Vll
I cannot hut remember such things were That were most precious to me.
Macbeth, iv. 3.
vui
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH ENGLISH EDITION
This edition is the first in which the book has been ade- quately revised.
I compiled the book in 19 17 (while the war was still raging), but through various long delays it was not published until September 19 19. When I then saw it in print, I realized that I had made several errors of judgment. For example, the longest by far of the quotations v/as John Payne's " Rime of Redemption." I thought Payne was remembered only as a translator and was forgotten as a minor poet. To my surprise I learnt that he was the object of a special cult, and that a John Payne Society had been actually formed in his lifetime I In any case, although the poem has merit, it v/as an error of judgment to include it in this book. I also saw that fragments from narrative poems are unsatisfactory, as in the case of Buchanan, that there was too much of Swinburne in the book, and that some other quotations were too long to justify their inclusion. For these and other reasons I have cut out some poems, few in number but occupying a disproportionate amount of space.
I could not do this when the second and third editions were issued. I was ill and away from my books and notes. Even if I had been well enough, I had not the material with me to replace the omitted pages, and, without this material, the book would have had to be set up again. However, I have now had it set up again, and this has given me the opportunity of revising and adding to it.
Besides the poems now omitted, there were others which I also wished to replace. Copyright- owners were on the whole exceedingly good to me, but nevertheless I was refused permission to publish some of my best quotations. As permission was readily granted to publish everything of
ix b
X PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
inferior importance and interest, the general average of the book necessarily suffered. (I was on the other side of the world and could do nothing to remedy this.) However, everything that I have omitted or was not allowed to publish has been now replaced by a much larger number of quota- tions that will probably be found interesting.
As regards the comments, I have allowed myself much more latitude than in the original book. That was my first literary effort, and I did not know whether my comments would be found acceptable. I have now revised the original notes and added many others of a literary character.
But besides those literary notes, I wrote others of a scientific, psychological, or philosophic nature. Here, how- ever, Mr. George F. Hassell, who has continued to confer with me regarding the contents of this book, called my attention to the fact that I was entirely altering its character. This warning was very necessary, for with the scores of subjects referred to in a thousand quotations one is tempted to write on indefinitely. Therefore I put a stop to such notes and withdrew much that I had written.
But I decided to retain one series of those notes. On p. 170 I have put together some of the main facts we now know about the Unconscious ; as an addendum to that note I have on pp. 183-4 given reasons for dissenting from the current theory concerning primitive man and savages ; on p. 282 a criticism of eugenics is practically another addendum to that note ; and on pp. 41, 67, and elsewhere I have referred to materialism. I see no need to apologize for retaining this series. This book is neither an anthology nor a purely literary work. It is a " commonplace book," that is to say, a note-hook, dealing with all questions that occupied our thoughts in the seventies and eighties or thereabouts, including especially the subjects dealt with in those notes. But also, even from a literary point of view, the notes seem to me rightly included. Without a true sense of the great- ness of the soul in man, I do not think any one can properly appreciate fine literature. I do not see how, for example, a thorough-going materialist could possibly understand or appreciate such literature. Merely through his absorption in the mechanical aspects of biology, Darwin, who was not a materialist, lost his aesthetic faculties so that even Shake- speare " nauseated " him (see p. 363). Therefore, it seems essentially important to the literary student to pay attention to the subjects referred to.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION xi
With the larger number of quotations and the increase in number and length of the comments, this book is materially enlarged.
I undertook personally the preparation of the indexes for this edition — little realizing the extraordinary amount of work involved. It was, however, interesting to see what a curious medley of quotations would come together under a particular heading in the Subject- Index. I should think that those quotations might often be found suggestive and useful to any one writing on the particular subject. In the Index of Authors I have put the dates of the respective authors, so that it also may be occasionally useful for handy reference.
I have to thank Messrs. Macmillan as publishers and Messrs. R. & R. Clark as printers for the improved format of the book. To Messrs. Clark is due the excellent arrange- ment of the quotations and notes on each page. This was a difficult matter requiring close, unremitting attention, and literary taste. I am very greatly indebted to them.
In the original edition I was careful to acknowledge any assistance given me by friends — yet I omitted to do justice to my dear wife. She read through the whole of the manu- script, gave me some apt quotations, and made many useful suggestions. It was entirely due to her admirable judgment, for instance, that I did not spoil the book for general reading by being too outspoken on certain subjects. The book was originally intended as a memorial to Richard Hodgson and was properly dedicated to him ; otherwise, it would have been dedicated to my wife.
In another instance I could not know how much I was indebted — or whether I was indebted at all — when the original preface was written. But for my friend, Sir Lang- don Bonython, this book would probably have never seen the light. So gloomy were the forebodings of my other friends in Australia that, time and again, I would have consigned my manuscript to the waste-paper basket, but for Sir Langdon's strenuous and most determined resistance. (Mr. Hassell, of course, also thought well of the book, but he was closely identified with it and could no more form an unbiased opinion than I myself could.).
To me — an Australian, without previous experience in literary work, and strongly affected by the depressing views of my friends, and also knowing that authors are usually the worst judges of their own work — there was a great dread
xii PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
that I might be acting very fooHshly in pubUshing the book in London. Therefore I sent a full copy of my manuscript to a gentleman whom I am proud to call my friend, Professor A. H. Sayce, who was then in Cairo. Besides his great genius as an orientalist and archaeologist, Professor Sayce has the finest taste in literature. Fortunately, before I reached London and met on every hand far worse, because much more authoritative, predictions that the book would be an absolute failure, I received Professor Sayce 's reassuring advice to unhesitatingly proceed with its publication.
It may be unusual to do so, but I must express my thanks to the many reviewers who prevented the disaster that had been predicted for this, my only book.
I am indebted to the following for permission to use quotations : Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, for Mrs. Meynell's " Re- nouncement " and Francis Thompson's " Messages " ; Mr. Denys de Saumarez Bray, for his daughter's poem " Cad- mus " ; Mr. Samuel Waddington, for " The Lost Cipher " ; G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., for Coventry Patmore's " The Toys " ; the Earl of Balfour, for an extract from " The Foundations of Belief" ; Professor A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, for a quota- tion from " The Idea of God " ; Sir William Watson, for his " Shelley and Harriet " ; Mr. Edward Garnett, for Richard Garnett's " Nocturne " ; Mr. Arthur Symons, for " The Return " ; Professor W. H. Carruth of Stanfield University, California, for " Each in His Own Tongue " ; Dr. A. C. Bradley, for an extract from " Oxford Lectures on Poetry " ; Mr. Thomas Hardy, for a quotation from " The Dynasts " ; the late Herbert Trench, for " Lindis- farne " ; Messrs. Chatto & Windus, on behalf of Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, and also Charles Scribner's Sons, for^^R. L. Stevenson's " Requiem " ; and Messrs. Chatto & Windus, the Estate of Samuel L. Clemens, the Mark Twain Company and Harper & Brothers, for an extract from " The Stolen White Elephant."
J. T. HACKETT.
London, August ist, 1923.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION*
A LARGE proportion of the most interesting quotations in this book was collected between 1874 and 1886. During that period I was under the influence of Richard Hodgson, who was my close friend from childhood. To him directly and indirectly this book is largely indebted,
Hodgson (1855-1905) had a remarkably pure, noble, and lovable character, and was one of the most gifted men Australia has produced. He is known in philosophic circles from some early contributions to Mind and other journals, but is mainly known from his work in psychical research, to which he devoted the best years of his life. Apart from his great ability in other directions, he was endowed, even in youth, with fine taste and a clear and mature literary judgment. This will appear to some extent in the quota- tions over his name, and the note on p. 235 will give further particulars of his career. He was from two to three years older than myself, and guided me in my early reading. Therefore, indirectly, he has to do with most of the contents of this book.
But, more than this, about one-third of the main quota- tions (not including the notes which I have only now added) came direct from Hodgson. He left Australia in 1877, but
* To the readers of the Adelaide edition (which was issued only in Australia) I should explain why the book is now so much enlarged. The first issue was prepared hastily and without sufficient care. (The proceeds were to go to the Australian Repatriation Fund, and the book was hurriedly put together and printed to be ready for a Repatriation Day which was announced but actually was never held.) It was my first experience in pubUshing, and I did not realize the care and consideration required in issuing a book even ot this character. Hence (i) part of my manuscript was entirely overlooked ; (2) I failed to see that many quotations would be improved by adding their content ; (3) I did not go properly through the great mass of Hodgson's correspondence ; and (4) I, wrongly, as I now think, excluded many quotations because I thought certain subjects were unsuitable for the book. Besides extending the scope of the collection by including those subjects, I now have no longer restricted myself to the seventy-eighty period. The notes also add materially to the size of this volume.
xiii
xiv PREFACE
we maintained a voluminous correspondence until 1886. This correspondence contained most of the quotations referred to, and the remainder Hodgson gave me in London on the only occasion I met him after he left Australia. (After 1886 he became so immersed in psychical research, and I in legal work, that our correspondence ceased to be of a literary character.) Thus directly and indirectly Hodgson has much to do with the book — and, if it had been practicable, I would have placed his name on the title-page.
This book is simply one to be taken up at odd moments, like any other collection of quotations. But there are two reasons why it may have some special interest. One reason is that it includes passages from a number of authors who appear to have become forgotten, or, at any rate, to be passing Lethe-wards. We, who dwell in the underworld,* cannot, of course, have a complete knowledge of what is known or forgotten in the inner literary circles of England. We can depend only on the books and periodicals that happen to come to our hands, and perhaps should not rely too much on such sources of information. But some of the authors quoted in this volume must be generally forgotten.
It must be remembered that this book is not an anthology. A commonplace book is usually a collection of reminders made by a young man who cannot afford an extensive library. There is no system in such a collection. A book is borrowed and extracts made from it ; another book by the same author is bought and no extract made from it. On the one hand a favourite verse, although well known, is written out for some reason or other ; on the other hand hundreds of beautiful poems are omitted. So far from this being an anthology, I have, as a matter of course, omitted many poems that since the seventy-eighty period have become general favourites ; and, as regards the most beautiful gems of our literature, they are almost all excluded. There are, for example, only a few lines from Shakespeare.
Some exceptions have, however, been made. In a series of word-pictures, a few of the best-known passages will be found. A few others have been included for reasons that
* See Tennyson's " Princess " : —
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld.
PREFACE XV
will readily appear ; they either form part of a series or the reason is apparent from the notes. Apart from these I have retained Blanco White's great sonnet and Bourdillon's " The Night has a Thousand Eyes," because with regard to these I had an interesting and instructive experience. I accidentally discovered that of four well-read men (two at least of them more thorough students of poetry than myself) two were ignorant of the one poem and two of the other. Seeking an explanation, I turned to the anthologies. I could not find in any of them Bourdillon's little gem until I came to the comparatively recent Oxford Book of Victorian Verse and The Spirit of Man. The Blanco White sonnet I could find nowhere except in collections of sonnets, which in my opinion are little read. It will be observed that in anthologies alone can Blanco White's one and only poem be kept alive.
The second reason why this book may have a special interest is that it may serve as a reminder to my contempo- raries of our stirring thoughts and experiences in the seventies and eighties. How interesting this period was it is difficult to show in a few lines. In pure literature, books of value simply poured from the press. In the closing year, 1889, " One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward " died on the day that his last book, Asolando, was published, leaving Tennyson, an old man of eighty, the sole survivor of the poets of a great period. At almost the same moment " Crossing the Bar " was published.
Apart from literature, the seventies and eighties were an eventful period in science and religion. Darwinism was still causing its tremendous upheaval, and the supposed conflict between religion and science exercised an enormous effect on the minds of men. Evolution had explained so much of the processes in the history of life, that the majority of thinkers at that time imagined that no room was left for the supernatural. Science was supposed to have given a death-blow to religion, and the greatest wave of materialism ever known in the history of the world swept over England and Europe. It is strange how many great thinkers missed what now appears so obvious a fact, that causality still stood behind all law, and that Darwin, like Newton, had merely helped to show the method by which the universe
xvi PREFACE
is governed. (It seems to me that James Martineau stood supreme at that time as a man of genius who saw clearly the inherent defect of the whole materialist movement.)
However, agnosticism, materialism, positivism flourished and triumphed. Science, whose dignity had been so long unrecognized, came into her own, and, in her turn, usurped the same dogmatic, superior attitude she had resented in ecclesiasticism. On the one hand pessimistic literature and philosophy poured from the press ; on the other hand new religions arose to take the place of the old. Theosophy and spiritualism were in evidence everywhere (leading in 1882 to the happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded). Harrison, Clifford, Swinburne and others preached the deification of man. There were discords within, as well as foes without the Church. The severely orthodox fought against the revelations of Colenso and the higher criticism ; Seeley's Ecce Homo and a host of other works aroused fierce antagonism ; Pius IX., who had in 1864 published his Syllabus which would have destroyed modern civilization, proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope in 1870 — and in 1872 was deprived of temporal power. Such questions as the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible were the subjects of intense conflict — and especially strange is it to remember the dire struggle of well-intentioned men to maintain the horrible doctrine of eternal punishment. I imagine that this book will assist to some extent in recalling the atmosphere and aroma of that remarkable period.
I have made very little attempt to arrange my quotations — and now wish I had done less in that direction. The book is intended for casual reading, and to arrange it under headings would tend to make it heavy. The element of surprise is more calculated to make the book attractive.
I began the notes that are appended to some of the quotations with the intention of giving only such short, necessary explanations as would be of assistance to the inexperienced reader. When, however, I began to write, I found my pen running away with me. Apart from the usual, ineff^ectual eff"orts of one's youth, I had never before attempted literary work, and for the first time experienced the great pleasure there is in such writing. With the immense variety of subjects in a collection of quotations.
PREFACE xvii
one could continue to write over a series of years ; but it was necessary to keep the book within reasonable bounds, and, therefore, I had arbitrarily to come to a stop. In these notes I do not claim that there is much, if any, origin- ality,* they are mostly recollections of old reading. Still they may serve the important purpose of revivifying old truths (see p. 82).
I have been astonished at the great deal of work this book has involved — and also how much I have needed the assistance of my friends. There were some sixty or seventy quotations in respect to which I had neglected to give any reference to the authors (for the same reason as one did not put the names on photographs of old friends — it seemed impossible that the names could be forgotten). The diffi- culty of finding even one such quotation is enormous, and we have no British Museum in Adelaide, but only some limited public libraries. However, with the help of my friends I have succeeded in tracing the paternity of most of these " orphans." In this and other directions I have had the kind assistance of many gentlemen. Of these first and foremost comes Mr. G. F. Hassell, the pubHsher of the Adelaide edition, who, in his devotion to literature as well as to his own art of printing, is a worthy representa- tive of the old Renaissance printers. He has given me every assistance, has gone through every line, and, as he is both an exceedingly well-read man and also of a younger generation than myself, I have left it to him to decide what should be omitted and what retained in this book. Professor Mitchell has also been so kind as to revise and make sugges- tions concerning a number of notes on philosophic and other subjects. Professor Darnley Naylor has been uni- formly good in revising any notes of a classical nature — though he takes no responsibility whatever for the views I express. Dr. E. Harold Davies has also helped me with two notes on music, in one instance correcting a serious mistake I had made. Sir Langdon Bonython, my friend of many years, has assisted me with practical as well as literary suggestions, and has thrown open his library to me. Mr. Francis Edwards, of High Street, Marylebone, has assisted in my search for references to quotations.
* I occasionally thought I had hit on something new, but usually discovered that I had been anticipated — and then deeply sympathized with St. Jerome's old tutor, Donatus. It will be remembered that Jerome, in his commentary on " There is no new thing under the sun," tells us that Donatus used to say, " Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixenmt," " Confound the fellows who anticipated us ! "
xviii PREFACE
Mr. H. Rutherford Purnell, Public Librarian of Adelaide, and his staff have helped me throughout, and Mr. E. La Touche Armstrong, Public Librarian of Melbourne, has gone to great trouble on my account. Others who have helped me in one way or another are two English friends, Mrs. Caroline Sidgwick and Mrs. Rachel Bray, Miss M. R. Walker, Messrs. Sydney Temple Thomas, J. R. Fowler, H. W. Uffindell, and S. Talbot Smith.
For permission to include quotations from their works I thank the following authors : Rev. F. W. Boreham, Mr. F. W. Bourdillon, Mr. A. J. Edmunds, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Professor Hobhouse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. E. F. Knight, Mr. R. Le GalHenne, Mr. W. S. Lilly, Mr. Robert Loveman, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Professor A. H. Sayce, Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner, Mr. J. C. Squire, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Samuel Waddington, Mr. F. A. Westbury, Mr. F. S. Williamson, and Sir Francis Younghusband.
For extracts from the writings of their relatives I am grateful to Sir Francis Darwin, Mr. Henry James, the Earl of Lytton, Dr. Greville McDonald, Miss Martineau, Miss Massey, Mr. W. M. Meredith, Mrs. F. W. H. Myers, the Rev. Conrad Noel, Mr. William M. Rossetti, Sir Herbert Stephen, and Lord Tennyson. Mr. Piddington has also given much assistance.
I am indebted to the following for quotations from the works of the authors named : of Ruskin, to the Ruskin Literary Trustees and their publishers, Messrs. George Allen & Unwin ; of Brunton Stephens, to Messrs. Angus & Robertson of Sydney ; of C. S. Calverley, to Messrs. G. Bell & Sons ; of George Eliot, to Messrs. William Black- wood & Sons ; of James Kenneth Stephen, to Messrs. Bowes & Bowes ; of Francis Thompson, to Messrs. Burns & Gates ; of R. L. Stevenson, to Messrs. Chatto & Windus and to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons ; of Robert Buchanan, to Messrs. Chatto & Windus and to Mr. W. E. Martyn ; of James Thomson (" B.V."), to Messrs. P. J. & A. E. Dobell ; of D. G. Rossetti, to Messrs. Ellis ; of Swinburne, to Mr. W. Heinemann ; of Mr. Le Gallienne, H. D. Lowry, Stephen Phillips, and J. B. Tabb, to Mr. John Lane ; of R. Loveman, to the J. B. Lippincott Co. ; of A. K. H. Boyd, R. Jefferies, W. E. H. Lecky, and James
PREFACE xlx
Martineau, to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. ; of Alfred Austin, T. E. Brown, Lewis Carroll, Edward FitzGerald, F. W. H. Myers, Walter Pater, Lord Tennyson, and Charles Tennyson Turner, to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. ; of V. O'Sullivan, to Mr. Elkin Matthews ; of Mrs. Elizabeth Waterhouse, to Messrs. Methuen & Co. ; of Robert Browning, to Mr. John Murray ; of Moncure Conway and Sir Alfred Lyall,to Messrs. Paul (Kegan), Trench, Triibner, & Co. ; of George Gissing, to Mr. James B. Pinker ; of John Payne, to Mr. O. M. Pritchard, his executor, and to Mr. Thomas Wright ; of P. J. Bailey (Festus) and Coventry Patmore, to Messrs. George Routledge & Sons ; of G. Whyte- Melville, to Messrs. Ward Lock & Co. (songs and verses) ; of George MacDonald, to Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son ; Mr. Rudyard Kipling's " L'Envoi " is reprinted from Departmental Ditties, by kind permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co. ; " To the True Romance " is published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., to whom I am deeply indebted, not only for this and the permissions mentioned above, but also for much assistance in tracing copyrights. Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Mr. John Murray, and Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son have been most helpful in this direction, as have also been Messrs. T. B. Lippincott, the Oxford University Press, and Messrs. Watts & Co. Messrs. Constable & Co. have generously granted permission for the quotations from George Meredith and, as the representatives in London of the Houghton Mifflin Co. of Boston, Mass., have secured the quotations from the works of American authors published by that firm, viz. T. B. Aldrich, R. W. Gilder, W. V. Moody, E. M. Thomas, C. D. Warner, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier. Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons have also given much help ; the lines from Anna Reeve Aldrich and R. C. Rogers are published by their New York House. Mr. Martin Seeker joins in the consent given by Mr. Squire for the extract from his poems. I thank the Editor of the Contemporary Review for quotations from the writings of Alexander Bain and the Rev. R. F. Littledale ; and the Editor of the Nineteenth Century for some paraphrases of epigrams from the Greek Anthology by W. M. Hardinge, and an extract from an article by F. W. H. Myers on Multi- plex Personality. I thank also the Society for Psychical Research for an obituary article by F. W. H. Myers on Gladstone, printed in the Journal of that Society.
XX PREFACE
For any unintentional omissions, oversights, or failures to trace rights I beg to tender my apologies. The distance of Adelaide from the centre of publication may, in some measure, serve as an excuse for such shortcomings.*
All profits derived from the sale of this book will be paid to the Red Cross Fund.
J. T. HACKETT.
Adelaide.
* In reprinting this preface for the Fourth Edition I have struck out references to any material now omitted. Such references would be misleading.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION
In preparing this edition I have made a great number of more or less important corrections, alterations, and additions. Most of these occupy only a few lines apiece and, although none call for special mention, they should together add to the interest and usefulness of this book. For a number of them I am indebted to Mr. Vernon Rendall, formerly editor of the Athenceiim and Notes and Queries. With his wonderfully wide and exact knowledge of English and Classical literature, he gave me much assistance and I am grateful to him.
The issue of a Second Edition enables me to thank my friend, Sir John Cockburn, for his truly remarkable kindness to me. When I sent this book home from Adelaide to be published, he undertook the heavy work of seeking the consent of the numerous copyright owners, negotiating with publishers, and seeing the book through the press. Only those who are experienced in such matters can realize the enormous amount of time and labour that all this involved. It is impossible for me to express adequately my obligations to my friend. He did not include any reference to himself in the original Preface, in spite of my insistence by letter and cable.
In associating his name with this book, I am bound to add that Sir John disagrees with and, therefore, disapproves of much that I have said in some notes on the Ancient Greeks.
J. T. HACKETT.
London, Septefnber 1920.
XXI
PREFACE TO THE THIRD ENGLISH EDITION
This has presumably to be called a new edition, rather than a new issue, seeing that there are revisions and alterations. But these are not numerous, and the only ones to which I need call special attention are the substituted verses on PP- I53-5-*
I am indebted to Mr. Denys Bray for permission to include his daughter's verses.
J. T. HACKETT.
Mentone, December 1920.
* Now pp. 186-8.
XXll
YOUTH AND AGE
Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying. Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee —
Both were mine ! Life zvent a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young I
When / was young ? — Ah, woful When ! Ah ! for the change 'twixt Now and Then I This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands How lightly then it flashed along : — Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On zcinding lakes and rivers wide, That ask no aid of sail or oar. That fear no spite of wind or tide ! Nought cared this body for wind or weather When Youth and I lived in't together.
Flowers are lovely : Love is flower-like ; Frie?idship is a sheltering tree ; O I the joys, that came down shower-like. Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old !
Ere / was old ? Ah, woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here I O Youth ! for years so many and sweet 'Tis known that Thou and I were one, ril think it but a fond conceit — It cannot be, that thou art gone I xxiii
xxiv YOUTH AND AGE
Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolVd : — And thou wert aye a masker bold ! What strange disguise hast now put on To make believe that Thou art gone ? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this alter' d size : But Spring-tide blossoms o?i thy lips. And tears take sunshine from thine eyes I Life is but Thought : so think I will That Youth and I are house-mates still.
Dew-drops are the gems of morning. But the tears of mournful eve ! Where no hope is, life's a warning That only serves to make us grieve
When we are old : — That only serves to make us grieve With oft and tedious taking-leave, Like some poor nigh-related guest That may not rudely be dismist. Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while. And tells the jest without the smile.
S. T. Coleridge.
MY COMMONPLACE BOOK
ENGLAND
When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, how ennobUng thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country — am I to be blamed ?
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart.
Of those unfiHal fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee ; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men ;
And I by my affection was beguiled :
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child !
Wordsworth (1803).
In an age of fops and toys. Wanting wisdom, void of right, Who shall nerve heroic boys To hazard all in Freedom's fight ? . . ^
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low. Thou must. The youth replies, / can.
R. W. Emerson. Voluntaries.
Although through various delays this book was not published until 1919, it was compiled in 1917, tuhile the war was still raging.
I B
WHITTIER— LOWELL
The future's gain Is certain as God's truth ; but, meanwhile, pain Is bitter, and tears are salt : our voices take A sober tone ; our very household songs Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs ; And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat, The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet !
J. G. Whittier. In War Time.
Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but
record One death struggle in the darkness 'twixt old systems and
the Word ; Truth forever on the scaifold, Wrong forever on the
throne, — Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim
unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above
^'^ «^"- J. R. Lowell.
The Present Crisis,
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her. Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her ; But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her. So loved her that they died for her. . . . They saw her plumed and mailed. With sweet, stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
J. R. Lowell. Ode at Harvard Commemoration, 1865.
This Ode was written in memory of the Harvard University men who had died in the Secession war. Our own brave men are also fighting in the cause of Truth, against the hideous falsity of German teaching and morals.
QUARLES— BUCHANAN
Our God and soldier we alike adore, When at the brink of ruin, not before ; After deliv'rance both ahke requited, Our God forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.
Francis Quarles (i 592-1 644).
PRIEST
" The glory of Man is his strength,
And the weak man must die," said the Lord.
CHORUS
Hark to the Song of the Sword !
PRIEST
Uplift ! let it gleam in the sun — Uplift in the name of the Lord !
KAISER
Lo ! how it gleams in the light, Beautiful, bloody, and bright. Yea, I uplift the Sword Thus in the name of the Lord !
THE CHIEFS
Form ye a circle of fire Around him, our King and our Sire — While in the centre he stands. Kneel with your swords in your hands. Then with one voice deep and free Echo like waves of the sea — " In the name of the Lord ! "
VOICES WITHOUT
Where is he ? — he fades from our sight ! Where the Sword ? — all is blacker than night. Is it finish'd, that loudly ye cry ? Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die } O bury us deep, most deep ; Write o'er us, wherever we sleep, " In the name of the Lord ! "
BUCHANAN— MORRIS
KAISER
While I uplift the Sword,
Thus in the name of the Lord,
Why, with mine eyes full of tears.
Am I sick of the song in mine ears ?
God of the Israelite, hear ;
God of the Teuton, be near ;
Strengthen my pulse lest I fail.
Shut out these slain while they wail —
For they come with the voice of the grave
On the glory they give me and gave.
CHORUS
In the name of the Lord ? Of what Lord ? Where is He, this God of the Sword ? Unfold Him ; where hath He His throne } Is He Lord of the Teuton alone ? Doth He walk on the earth ? Doth He tread On the limbs of the dying and dead ? Unfold Him ! We sicken, and long To look on this God of the strong !
PRIEST
Hush ! In the name of the Lord, Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword !
R. Buchanan. The Apotheosis of the Sword, Versailles, 1871.
Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire : For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth, Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown
of worth ; But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the
death ; And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to
the slanderous breath : And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that
the weary should sleep.
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that
soweth should reap. ,,, -^
^ W. Morris.
Sigurd the Volsung, Book III.
THUCYDIDES
GREEKS OR GERMANS ?
Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For now your empire has become a despotism, a thing which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.
Thucydides. Speech by Pericles.
I HAVE observed again and again that a democracy cannot govern an empire ; and never more clearly than now, when I see you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, you are guilty of a weak- ness dangerous to yourselves and receive no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your empire is a despotism exercised over unwilling subjects who are ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any kindness you show them : they obey just so far as you show yourselves their masters. They have no love for you, but are held down by force. . . .
You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.
Thucydides. Speech by Clean.
It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed by the impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as to the demagogue Cleon. The Greeks were fervent supporters of Democracy and Equality, but not when it came to dealing either with foreign states or with their own women or slaves. (See also Socrates and Aristotle, p. 412.)
6 PAINE
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country ; but he, that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered ; j^et we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly : it is dearness only that gives any- thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods ; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Thomas Paine (1776).
Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it would be difficult to find any single passage in the world's literature that produced so wonderful a result as the above passage of Tom Paine's. It was the opening paragraph of the first number of The Crisis, and was written by miserable, flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington's ill-clad, worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then despairing from hardship and defeat, were roused by these words to such enthusiasm that next day they rushed bravely in and won the first American victory, which turned the tide of the War of Independence.
Previously to this, it was through Paine's pamphlet, Com7non Sense, that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about Common Sense and The Rights of Man. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common Sense anywhere !
For trying to save the life of Louis XVI. during the revolution, Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell- doors of those to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine's door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence !
Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by a word — but remained silent ! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington's military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington, and the bigotry of the time against the author of The Age of Reason, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.
When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined ! And yet Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men, Washington included.
EMERSON— PASCAL 7
The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure D. Conway in The Fortnightly, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway's subsequent Life of Paine.
Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recog- nition of Paine 's fine character and important work. (The unpleasant flippancy * with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in The Americana and The Biographical Dictionary of America — and also in our own Dictionary of National Biography. The general impression among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist ; as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, " I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God."
Carlyle's reference to Paine is amusing : " Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her Paine : rebellious staymaker ; unkempt ; who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his Common- Sense Pamphlet, free America — that he can and will free all this World ; perhaps even the other." (French Revolution.)
SACRIFICE
Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — " 'Tis man's perdition to be safe. When for the truth he ought to die."
R. W. Emerson.
When I consider the shortness of my life, lost in an eternity before and behind, " passing away as the remem- brance of a guest who tarrieth but a day," the little space I fill or behold in the infinite immensity of spaces, of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me — when I reflect this, I am filled with terror, and wonder why I am here and not there, for there was no reason why it should be the one rather than the other ; why now rather than then. Who set me here } By whose command and rule were this time and place appointed me ? How many kingdoms know nothing of us ! The eternal silence of
those infinite spaces terrifies me. t^
^ Pascal.
Pensees.
* The flippancy is at times amusing, as when he says : " The account of the whale swallowing Jonah, though the whale may have been large enough to do so, borders greatly on the marvellous ; but it would have approached nearer to the just idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale."
GREEK ANTHOLOGY
FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
RUFINUS
Here lilies, here the rosebud, and here too
The windflower with her petals drenched in dew,
And daffodillies cool, and violets blue.
MELEAGER
It's oh ! to be a wild wind — when my lady's in the sun — She'd just unbind her neckerchief and take me breathing in, It's oh ! to be a red rose — just a faintly blushing one — So she'd pull me with her hand and to her snowy breast I'd win.
PLATO TO ASTER
Thou gazest on the stars— a star to me
Thou * art—but oh ! that I the heavens might be
And with a thousand eyes still gaze on thee !
PALLADAS
Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we Live, and a little space the sunlight see — Even all that live — each being an instrument To which the generous air its life has lent. If with the hand one quench our draught of breath. He sends the stark soul shuddering down to death. We, that are nothing, on our pride are fed. Seeing, but for a little air, we are as dead.
AESOPUS
Is there no help from life save only death ? " Life that such myriad sorrows harboureth I dare not break, I cannot bear " — one saith.
" Sweet are stars, sun, and moon, and sea, and earth. For service and for beauty these had birth. But all the rest of life is little worth —
* Altered from " That," which may be a misprint. " Thou " gives the same meaning and runs more smoothly.
GREEK ANTHOLOGY 9
" Yea, all the rest is pain and grief," saith he, " For if it hap some good thing come to me An evil end befalls it speedily ! " *
PHILODEMUS
I loved — and you. I played — who hath not been Steeped in such play ? If I was mad, I ween 'Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.
Hence with it all ! Then dark my youthful head. Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead. Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.
I gathered roses while the roses blew. Playtime is past, my play is ended too. Awake, my heart ! and worthier aims pursue.
W. M. Hardinge. Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1878.
My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the " Leslie ' ' in Mallock's New Republic. Another version of Plato's beautiful epigram (which was addressed to " Aster," or " Star ") is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor :
Thou gazest on the stars, my Star ;
Oh ! might I be The starry sky with myriad eyes
To gaze on thee !
The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4500 short poems by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to A.D. 1000. At first these poems were epigrams — using the Vv'ord " epigram " in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. Still later any short lyric was included.
This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of poetry, which gives much insight into the Greek life of the time ; and it also largely influenced English and European literature. For instance, the first verse of Ben Jonson's " Drink to me only with thine eyes " is taken direct from the Anthology (Agathias, Anth. Pal. v. 261). I may add that the second verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as a com- pliment to the lady but as a kindness to the roses, which could not wither if worn by her, is also borrowed from a Greek source. (Philostratus, Epistolai Erotikai.)
Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the difficult task of translating or paraphrasing these little poetic gems into correspondingly poetic and concise language, but the beauty of the original can never be fully retained.
* Compare " I never nursed a dear gazelle " (p. 208).
10 GREEK ANTHOLOGY
HERACLEITUS
They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest. Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake ; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
William (Johnson) Cory.
This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on hearing of the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not the philosopher of that name).
Francis Thompson (Sister Songs) hoped that his " nightingales " would continue to sing after his death, just as light would come from a star long after it had ceased to exist :
Oh ! may this treasure-galleon of my verse, Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme, Set with a towering press of fantasies, Drop safely down the time, Leaving mine isled self behind it far Soon to be sunk in the abysm of seas, (As down the years the splendour voyages
From some long ruined and night-submerged star).
PLATO TO STELLA
Thou wert the morning star among the living.
Ere thy fair light had fled : — Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.
Shelley's Version.
PTOLEMY
I KNOW that we are mortal, the children of a day ; But when I scan the circling spires, the serried stars' array, 1 tread the earth no longer and soar where none hath trod, To feast in Heaven's banquet-hall and drink the wine of God.
H. Darnley Naylor's Version.
Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no doubt the great Greek astronomer ; and the epigram would date from about A.D. 140.
KIPLING— ELIOT ii
Buy my English posies !
You that will not turn — Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o' fern Gather'd where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lome — Buy my Christmas creeper
And I'll say where you were born ! West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin — They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn — Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South
Main- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again !
Buy my English posies !
Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake
Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim — Bird ye never heeded,
O, she calls his dead to him ! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas ; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these ! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land — Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand !
RuDYARD Kipling. The Flowers.
Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various British Dominions I take only the one that represents my own country. At the time KipHng wrote, the inhabitants of our beloved mother-country did not seem to fully realize that we were also English and their kindred — that our fern and clematis made English posies — but no doubt that feeling has altered since we have fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England was always " home," and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered straight into our hearts.
Our deeds are like children that are born to us ; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never : they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
George Eliot. Romola.
13 NOEL AND OTHERS
Room in all the ages For our love to grow,
Prayers of both demanded A little while ago :
And now a few poor moments,
Between life and death. May be proven all too ample For love's breath.
RoDEN Noel. The Pity of It.
Ye weep for those who weep ? she said. Ah, fools ! I bid you pass them by.
Go weep for those whose hearts have bled What time their eyes were dry.
Whom sadder can I say ? she said.
E. B. Browning. The Mask.
See also Seneca (Hipp.), Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent. Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb."
O LOVE, my love ! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, — How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground- whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing !
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Lovesight.
For while a youth is lost in soaring thought. And while a maid grows sweet and beautiful. And while a spring- tide coming lights the earth, And while a child, and while a flower is born, And while one wrong cries for redress and finds A soul to answer, still the world is young !
Lewis Morris. Epic of Hades.
R. BROWNING 13
There ! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining Under those spider-webs lying ! . . ,
Is it your moral of Life ?
Such a web, simple and subtle. Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, Death ending all with a knife ?
Over our heads truth and nature —
Still our life's zigzags and dodges. Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature —
God's gold just showing its last where that lodges, Palled beneath man's usurpature.
So we o'ershroud stars and roses,
Cherub and trophy and garland ; Nothings grow something which quietly closes
Heaven's earnest eye ; not a glimpse of the far land Gets through our comments and glozes.
R. Browning, Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably indicates the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of Germany. The " masterpiece, hard number twelve," referred to in the poem, may be (Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is in five-part counterpoint.
This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous fashion, but its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully imitative manner * it describes the wrangling and disputing in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons appear to be taking part) :
One is incisive, corrosive ;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant ; Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive ;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant : Five . . . O Danaides, O Sieve !
(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaides were doomed to pour water everlastingly into a sieve.)
" Where in all this is the music ? " asks Browning. And, although he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he finds that the fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is wanting in the essentials of true art. He prefers Palestrina's simpler and more emotional mode of expression :
* See Milton's imitation of a fugue. Par. Lost, XI.
14 R. BROWNING
Hugues ! I advise med poena *
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon) Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena !
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ. Blare out the mode Palestrina.
In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly follow the poet's thought. Music is essentially the language of feeling, of emotioti ; the fugue is a triumph of invention, and, therefore, the result of intellect. Feeling is elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling ; the intricacies of the fugue are artificially constructed and, therefore, unsuited to the expression of pure emotion. They represent intellect as against feeling. And essentially in the moral world, but also in our general outlook upon truth and nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple human emotion rather than intellect ; " Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." (The whole of Browning's poetry teaches that love, not intellect, is the solution of all moral problems, and the goal of the universe.)
In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in an old church ; and, as shown in the lines quoted, the poet sees an illustration of his thought in the fine gilded ceiling covered by thick cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold of the ceiling are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the fugue — and both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives. Truth and Nature, " God's gold " — the pure, simple truths of the higher life — are over us, bright and clear as the noon-day sun. But by doubts and disputations, warring philosophies and con- tending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, casuistries, self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any spider's web), by endless "comments and glozes," we lose sight of the elemental truths and clear principles that should guide our lives. The pure and simple-hearted reach the Mount of Vision : to them comes the clear sense of Love and Duty. Those of us who turn our intellects to a perverse use and exclude the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders who cover up " stars and roses. Cherub and trophy and garland." We obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God's high " legislature," and follow a lawless life of selfish passion and sordid ambitions. The Good and Beautiful and True have been obliterated and forgotten ; " God's gold " is tarnished, His harmonies lost in discord ; and we become morally dead.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air ; Cold plashing past it, crystal waters roll ; We visit it by moments, ah, too rare ! . . .
Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high, Upon our life a ruling effluence send ; And when it fails, fight as we will, we die, And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.
Matthew Arnold. Palladium.
" I take the risk," or " Mine the risk.'
MARTINEAU 15
[Referring to the Gorham case.] The future historian of opinion will write of us in this strain : " The people who spoke the language of Shakespeare were great in the con- structive arts : the remains of their vast works evince an extraordinary power of combining and economizing labour : their colonies were spread over both hemispheres, and their industry penetrated to the remotest tribes : they knew how to subjugate nature and to govern men : but the weakness of their thought presented a strange contrast to the vigour of their arm ; and though they were an earnest people, their conceptions of human life and its Divine Author seem to have been of the most puerile nature. Some orations have been handed down — apparently delivered before one of their most dignified tribunals — in which the question is discussed : ' In what way the washing of new-born babes according to certain rules prevented God's hating them.' The curious feature is, that the discussion turns entirely upon the manner in which this wetting operated ; and no doubt seems to have been entertained by disputants, judges, or audience, that, without it, a child or other person dying would fall into the hands of an angry Deity, and be kept alive for ever to be tortured in a burning cave. Now, all researches into the contemporary institutions of the island show that its religion found its chief support among the classes possessing no mean station or culture, and that the education for the priesthood was the highest which the country afforded. This strange belief must be taken, therefore, as the measure, not of popular ignorance, but of their most intellectual faith. A philosophy and worship embodying such a superstition can present nothing to reward the labour of research."
James Martineau. Essay on " The Church of England"
In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council, it was decided that Mr. Gorham's beliefs, although unusual, were not repugnant to the doctrines of the Church of England. His views were that baptism is generally necessary to salvation, that it is a sign of grace by v/hich God works in us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it is not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are certainly saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow on baptism.
In such matters one question stands out very prominently. The priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the eternal truths of Christ — -Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration. How can he keep those truths in due perspective when his intellect is engaged in warfare over miserable casuistries ?
i6 BLAND-SUTTON AND OTHERS
And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most High, they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of the lawyers paid by one side or the other to argue questions of baptism and prevenient grace ! It was precisely this introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality, the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal quibbling and hair-splitting, the " letter " that " killeth " as against the " spirit " that " giveth life," which led to Christ's bitter invectives against the " Scribes " or lawyers of His day.
Seeley, in Ecce Homo, points out that when Christ summoned the disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not belief in any specific doctrines. As it was not until later that they learnt He was to suffer death and rise again, they could at first have held no belief in the Atonement or the Resurrection. " Nor," says Seeley, " do we find Him frequently exainining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel. . . . Assuredly those who represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily, ' Believe or be damned,' have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the World."
As I have read somewhere, " From all barren Orthodoxy, good Lord, deliver us." *
An ostrich in the menagerie at Clifton swallowed a Book of Common Prayer, and died soon afterwards. Dr. Harrison examined the bird and found the remnants of the book. Nearly the whole of the Prayer-Book had been destroyed, but the Thirty-nine Articles were intact ; even an ostrich found them indigestible.
Sir John Bland-Sutton. Selected Lectures and Essays.
This statement could not be reproduced in a serious work, if it were not vouched for by so eminent an authority.
Star unto star speaks light.
P. J. Bailey. Festus, Scene i, Heaven.
It is as necessary, or rather more necessary, for most men to know how to take Mice, than how to take Elephants.
Edward Topsell. The History of Four-footed Beasts.
* The above is a concrete illustration of Brovraing's meaning in the preceding quotation, but a far wider illustration is seen in the terrible cruelties inflicted on the one side by the Inquisition and on the other by the Protestants. This was again due to the introduction of intellectualism, which distorted the Religion of Love into a Religion of Hate.
QUILLER-COUCH 17
DE TEA FABULA
Do I sleep ? Do I dream ? Am I hoaxed by a scout ? Are things what they seem, Or is Sophists about ? Is our TO ri rjv elvai a failure, or is Robert Browning played out ?
Which expressions like these
May be fairly applied By a party who sees A Society skied Upon tea that the Warden of Keble had biled with legitimate pride.
'Twas November the third,
And I says to Bill Nye, " Which it's true what I've heard : If you're, so to speak, fly. There's a chance of some tea and cheap culture, the sort recommended as High."
Which I mentioned its name And he ups and remarks : " If dress-coats is the gam.e And pow-wow in the Parks, Then I'm nuts on Sordello and Hohensteil-Schwangau and similar Snarks."
Now the pride of Bill Nye
Cannot well be express'd ; For he wore a white tie And a cut-away vest : Says I : " Solomon's liUes ain't in it, and they was reputed well dress'd."
But not far did we wend,
When we saw Pippa pass On the arm of a friend — Dr. Furnivall 'twas. And he wore in his hat two half- tickets for London, return, second-class.
c
1 8 QUILLER-COUCH
" Well," I thought, " this is odd."
But we came pretty quick To a sort of a quad
That was all of red brick, And I says to the porter : " R. Browning : free passes ; and kindly look slick."
But says he, dripping tears
In his check handkerchief, " That symposium's career's Been regrettably brief, For it went all its pile upon crumpets and busted on gun- powder leaf ! "
Then we tucked up the sleeves
Of our shirts (that were biled). Which the reader perceives That our feelings were riled, And we went for that man till his mother had doubted the traits of her child.
Which emotions like these Must be freely indulged By a party who sees A Society bulged On a reef the existence of which its prospectus had never divulged.
But I ask : Do I dream }
Has it gone up the spout ; Are things what they seem. Or is Sophists about ? Is our TO Tt rjv etvac a failure, or is Robert Browning played out ?
Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch.
This parody on Bret Harte's " Plain Language from Truthful James " was written at the time when the Browning Society at Keble College, Oxford, came to an end — apparently, according to these verses, because its funds had been exhausted in afternoon teas !
TO Ti 7jv elvaL (pronounced toe tee ane einai). In Oxford special attention is paid to Aristotle ; and Quiller-Couch, being an Oxford man, assumes that his readers are familiar with this phrase. It means " the essential nature of a thing," or, literally, " the question what a thing really is." Such a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning of
GOETHE— MACDONALD 19
Browning's difficult poems, so that the phrase is as appropriate as it is amusing in its application.
The title " De Tea Fabula " — " a story concerning tea " — is a pun on Horace's " Quid rides ? Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur " (Sat. I. 69). " Wherefore do you laugh ? Change but the name, of thee the tale is told." Oxford, which Matthew Arnold called the home of lost causes, still refuses to pronounce Latin correctly, and makes te rhyme with fee, see, bee. It ought, of course, to rhyme with fay, say, bay. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted to the pronunciation of ea which prevailed until the end of the Eighteenth Century. See Pope's " Rape of the Lock " :
Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.
Dr. Funiivall (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the founder of the society, the first society ever formed to study the works of a living poet. From the context he may have specially admired, as he certainly threw special light upon, Browning's Pippa Passes.
Scout at Oxford is a (male) college servant.
Poems are painted window panes.
If one looks from the square into the church,
Dusk and dimness are his gains —
Sir PhiHstine is left in the lurch !
The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,
Nor anything henceforth assuage him.
But come just inside what conceals ; Cross the holy threshold quite — All at once 'tis rainbow-bright, Device and story flash to light, A gracious splendour truth reveals. This to God's children is full measure, It edifies and gives you pleasure !
Goethe.
This is George MacDonald's translation (but never can a translation of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says of the poem : " This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be disnial enough regarded from the outside ; prismatic in its revelation of truth from within." Among the arts this statement is especially applicable to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are sometimes required to assist the reader to " come inside " and see the poem in its true aspect.
God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.
George MacDonald.
20 STEVENSON— SHAKESPEARE
REQUIEM
Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me : Here he lies where he longed to be ; Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the MIL
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean : so o'er [? e'en] that art.
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock.
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
B)^ bud of nobler race : this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature. <-,
Shakespeare.
The Winter's Tale.
" Mean " = means.
This is one of the many passages that show Shakespeare's trans- cendent genius. Here it will be seen how greatly in advance of Bacon's intellect was the poet's i?mght in Bacon's own subject, philosophy.
It is necessary to bear in mind that facts which are very familiar to us were exceedingly novel, or entirely unknown, to the men of Shake- speare's day. For example, the Copernican system was then only beginning to influence man's thought — so that we find the following lines in Hamlet :
Doubt thou the stars are fire ;
Doubt that the sun doth move ; Doubt truth to be a liar ; But never doubt I love.
So also the Elizabethans had not arrived at the idea of the umversality of nature — that man with all his great faculties was as much a creature of nature as any star or clod, cr>'stal or gas, fly or flower. He was regarded as an independent personality who " aided " or " restrained " nature. Men then thought of themselves as observing nature from the outside, as though looking at a cinema-picture— not as being themselves part of the picture. The old Aristotelian distinction was still drawn between art and nature — " art " being the work done by man.
SHAKESPEARE
21
In The Winter's Tale Perdita says she will not have carnations or gilly-flowers (pinks) in her garden because they are unnatural, not formed by nature alone but with the assistance of art. Man had added to the processes of nature by grafting or cross-fertilization. Therefore, the carnations and pinks are not natural but artificial : she, indeed, compares them to a painted woman.
Polixenes answers her in the lines quoted above, that man and his art are themselves part of nature. Nature is universal — it cannot be helped by any means that is not itself produced by nature. So, he says to Perdita, the art of man which you say " adds to nature " is itself a creation of nature. (" O'er " is evidently a misprint for " e'en.") Man by his art grafts one stock on another, and so improves or changes nature, but " The art itself is nature."
Shakespeare had in fact discovered — and was, so far as we know, the first of all inen to discover — the great fact of the universality of nature.* But he apparently realized that this truth was in advance of the time and would make no impression, for he sardonically makes Perdita adhere to her opinion :
I'll not put The dibble [pointed stick] in earth to set one slip of them ; No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth to say 'twere well.
In Montaigne and Shakespeare Mr. J. M. Robertson gives very good reasons for believing that, wherever a resemblance appears in the writings of Shakespeare and Bacon, Shakespeare preceded Bacon, who must have borrowed from him. (London was then a town of only about 150,000 inhabitants, the great majority of whom were uneducated. The few cultured persons would be thrown much more together than in our large cities of more or less educated people — and all would either see, or know all about, Shakespeare's plays.)
In this particular case Bacon never at any time realized the universality of nature — that nature included man. He could not get away from the old distinction between art and nature : man " assists " or " binds ' nature or has certain powers over it. After The Wititer's Tale had been played, some expressions appeared in his Descriptio Globi Intellectualis from which he seemed to be drawing near to the true conception ; but in his later works he clearly has no other notion than that of man as distinct from nature.
Mr. Robertson mentions the curious fact that Bacon never refers to Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood, although, as Harvey was the Court physician, he must have had his attention specially directed to it ; and also he paid no attention to Kepler's new astronomical discoveries. He, therefore, failed in the claim that he " took all knowledge to be his province," and it is not at all surprising that he did not recognize the importance and truth of Shakespeare's statement. Yet he still holds in popular opinion the exaggerated im- portance attributed to him by Macaulay.
* His mind had been previously occupied on the subject. The Winter's Tale was written in 1610-11. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, II. 2, written about 1594, Lysander says :
Transparent Helena ! Nature shows art,
That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.
As he can read Helena's inmost feelings, nature has made her " transparent " ; thus exercising the function of art, which makes glass transparent.
In King Lear, IV. 6, wTitten in 1G05, the king says, " No, they cannot touch me for coining ; I am the king himself. Nature's above art in that respect." He is the king by nature (by birth), and, as king, is above the law — which is the work of man and therefore art.
22 E. B. BROWNING AND OTHER
There is no short cut, no patent tramroad, to wisdom :
after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies
through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden
in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was
trodden by them of old time. ^ -r,
^ George Eliot.
The Lifted Veil.
Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.
E. B. Browning. A Vision of Poets.
Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong : They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Shelley. Julian and Maddalo.
Let us think less of men and more of God.
Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,
Like a small bird winging the still blue air ;
And then again, at other times, it rises
Slow, like a cloud, which scales the skies all breathless.
And just overhead lets itself down on us.
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Rush like a rocket tearing up the sky.
That we should join with God, and give the world
The slip : but, while we wish, the world turns round
And peeps us in the face — the wanton world ;
We feel it gently pressing down our arm—
The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders ;
We feel it softly bearing on our side —
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body, —
And we are fools, and there's the end of us.
P. J. Bailey. Festus.
It is lucky to see a wolf : it is lucky also not to see one.
Proverb.
BUCHANAN 23
TO THE MOON
The wind is shrill on the hills, and the plover
Wheels up and down with a windy scream ; The birch has loosen'd her bright locks over
The nut-brown pools of the mountain stream : Yet here I linger in London City,
Thinking of meadows where I was born — And over the roofs, like a face of pity.
Up comes the Moon, with her dripping horn.
0 Moon, pale Spirit, with dim eyes drinking The sheen of the Sun as he sweepeth by,
1 am looking long in those eyes, and thinking
Of one who hath loved thee longer than I ; I am asking my heart if ye Spirits cherish
The souls that ye witch with a harvest call ? — If the dreams must die when the dreamer perish ?-
If it be idle to dream at all ?
The waves of the world roll hither and thither.
The tumult deepens, the days go by. The dead men vanish — we know not whither,
The live men anguish — we know not why ; The cry of the stricken is smothered never.
The Shadow passes from street to street ; And — o'er us fadeth, for ever and ever.
The still white gleam of thy constant feet.
The hard men struggle, the students ponder.
The world rolls round on its westward way ; The gleam of the beautiful night up yonder
Is dim on the dreamer's cheek all day ; The old earth's voice is a sound of weeping,
Round her the waters wash wild and vast, There is no calm, there is little sleeping, —
Yet nightly, brightly, thou glimmerest past !
Another summer, new dreams departed, And yet we are lingering, thou and I ;
I on the earth, with my hope proud-hearted, Thou, in the void of a violet sky !
24 BUCHANAN AND OTHERS
Thou art there ! I am here ! and the reaping and mowing
Of the harvest year is over and done, And the hoary snow-drift will soon be blowing
Under the wheels of the whirling Sun.
While tower and turret He silver'd under,
When eyes are closed and lips are dumb, In the nightly pause of the human wonder,
From dusky portals I see thee come ; And whoso wakes and beholds thee yonder.
Is witch'd like me till his days shall cease, — For in his eyes, wheresoever he wander,
Flashes the vision of God's white Peace.
R. Buchanan.
In the second verse Buchanan refers to the then recent death of his friend, the promising young poet David Gray, who died at twenty- three in I 86 I.
He knows with what strange fires He mixed this dust.
Hereditary bent
That hedges in intent He knows, be sure, the God who shaped thy brain.
He loves the souls He made.
He knows His own hand laid On each the mark of some ancestral stain.
Anna Reeve Aldrich.
I HAVE lost the dream of Doing, And the other dream of Done, The first spring in the pursuing, The first pride in the Begun, — First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won.
E. B. Browning. The Lost Bower. It is the saddest of things that we lose our early enthusiasms.
We needs must love the highest when we see it.
Tennyson. Idylls of the King — Guinevere.
SPENSER AND OTHERS 25
The other [maiden] up arose
And her fair lockes, which formerly were bound
Up in one knot, she low adowne did loose :
Which, flowing long and thick her clothed around,
And the ivorie in golden mantle gowned :
So that fair spectacle from him was reft,
Yet that, which reft it, no less faire was found :
So, hid in lockes and waves from looker's theft.
Nought but her lovely face she for his looking left.
Withall she laughed, and she blushed withall, That blushing to her laughter gave more grace. And laughter to her blushing.
Spenser. Faerie Queene 2, xii. 67.
The girl is bathing, and her long, fair hair covers with a golden mantle the ivory of her body.
I LOVE and honour Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. Nor can you excite me to the least un- easiness by saying, " He acted, and thou sittest still." I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. One piece of the tree is cut for a weather- cock, and one for the sleeper of a bridge ; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.
R. W. Emerson. Spiritual Laws.
He, who is with himself dissatisfied, Though all the world find satisfaction in him. Is like a rainbow-coloured bird gone blind. That gives delight it shares not.
Thomas Hardy. The Dynasts, Part I. Act H. Sc. i.
That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.
Wordsv^orth.
Tintern Abbey.
26 MASSEY
It fell upon a merry May morn,
r the perfect prime of that sweet time When daisies whiten, woodbines climb ,-
The dear Babe Christabel was born.
Look how a star of glory swims Down aching silences of space, Flushing the Darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o'erbrims !
So brightening came Babe Christabel, To touch the earth with fresh romance, And light a Mother's countenance
With looking on her miracle.
With hands so flower-like soft, and fair. She caught at life, with words as sweet As first spring violets, and feet
As faery-light as feet of air.
She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,
In shine and shower, — calm and strife — A Rainbow on our dark of Life
From Love's own radiant heaven down-smiled !
In lonely loveliness she grew, — A shape all music, light, and love, With startling looks, so eloquent of
The spirit burning into view.
Such mystic lore was in her eyes, And light of other worlds than ours, She looked as she had fed on flowers,
And drunk the dews of Paradise.*
Ah ! she was one of those who come With pledged promise not to stay Long, ere the Angels let them stray
To nestle down in earthly home :
* Compare with " Kubia Khan" — see p. 356.
MASSEY 27
She came — like music in the night Floating as heaven in the brain, A moment oped, and shut again.
And all is dark where all was light.
In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies,
The Angels with us unawares.
Our beautiful Bird of Light hath fled ;
Awhile she sat with folded wings —
Sang round us a few hoverings — Then straightway into glory sped.
And white-wing'd Angels nurture her ;
With heaven's white radiance robed and crown'd.
And all Love's purple glory round. She summers on the Hills of Myrrh.
Thro' Childhood's morning-land, serene She walked betwixt us twain, like Love ; While, in a robe of light above.
Her better Angel walked unseen, —
Till Life's highway broke bleak and wild ; Then, lest her starry garments trail In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,
The Angel's arms caught up the child.
Her wave of life hath backward roll'd To the great ocean ; on whose shore We wander up and down, to store
Some treasures of the times of old :
And aye we seek and hunger on
For precious pearls and relics rare.
Strewn on the sands for us to wear At heart, for love of her that's gone.
Gerald Massey. The Ballad of Babe Christabel.
28 KINGLAKE
You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. By a strange chance in these latter days, it happened that, alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. When I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of the Mussulmans, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, pray heaven there still may be heard there the voice of free innocent girls. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer the timid flock will gather round you with their large burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain ; and if you imagine evil against them they will know of your ill-thought before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gone in the moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you ; and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to your side, and touch the hem of your coat in playful defiance of the danger ; and then the rest will follow the daring of their youthful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill controversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you with cloth so fine ; and then, growing more profound in their researches, they will pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a ghmpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of delight and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with the hues of your sunburnt face, or with their own warmer tints. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin ; with tremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smooths it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you, even then still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surely quite harmless and innocent — a lion that makes no spring
KINGLAKE AND OTHERS 29
— a bear that never hugs ; and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and a controversy. But the one — the fairest and the sweetest of all — is yet the most timid : she shrinks from the daring deeds of her playmates, and seeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen her glowing consciousness from the eyes that look upon her. But her laughing sisters will have none of this cowardice ; they vow that the fair one shall be their complice — shall share their dangers — shall touch the hand of the stranger ; they seize her small wTist and draw her forward by force, and at last, whilst yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up her whole soul under the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmost strength, they vanquish her utmost modesty and marry her hand to yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers and throbs like a whisper upon your listening palm. For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you — in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter as though they had played too perilously and harmed their gentle sister. A moment, and all with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer ; yet soon again like deer they wheel round, and return, and stand, and gaze upon the danger, until they grow brave once more.
A. W. KiNGLAKE.
Eothen.
Let us hope that the present war will be a successful " Crusade " and that the Turks will disappear from the land which is sacred to the memory of our Lord.
DiscEDANT nunc amores ; maneat Amor.
(Loves, farewell ; let Love, the sole, remain.)
Author not traced.
SHELLEY AND HARRIET
A star looked down from heaven and loved a flower, Grown in earth's garden — -loved it for an hour. Let eyes that trace his orbit in the spheres Refuse not, to a ruined rosebud, tears.
William Watson.
30 C. ROSSETTI AND OTHERS
Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land ; When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned : Only remember me ; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve : For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had.
Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Rossetti.
Compare Shakespeare's sonnet LXXI. :
No longer mourn for me when I am dead, . . . for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.
I SAW a son weep o'er a mother's grave :
" Ay, weep, poor boy — weep thy most bitter tears
That thou shalt smile so soon. We bury Love,
Forgetfulness grows over it like grass ;
That is the thing to weep for, not the dead."
Alexander Smith. A Boy's Poem.
UNTIL DEATH
If thou canst love another, be it so. I would not reach out of my quiet grave To bind thy heart, if it should choose to go. Love shall not be a slave. . . .
It would not make me sleep more peacefully. That thou wert waiting all thy life in woe For my poor sake. What love thou hast for me Bestow it ere I go. . . .
WESTBURY— WHITTIER 31
Forget me when I die. The violets Above my rest will blossom just as blue Nor miss thy tears — E'en Nature's self forgets — But while I live be true.
F. A. Westbury.
These verses are by a South Australian writer. " Forget me when I die " is an unpleasing sentiment ; yet see Christina Rossetti's poem :
When I aiTi dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me ; Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree : Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet ; And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain ; I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain ; And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember.
And haply may forget.
As regards this latter poem, the curious fact is that it is read as an ex- quisite piece of music, and not for any poetic thought it contains. If it has any coherent meaning, it is that the speaker is indifferent whether or not " her dearest " will remember her or she will remember him. Yet the haunting music of the lines has inade it a favourite poem, and it finds a place in all the anthologies. Christina Rossetti is by no means a great poet (Mr. Gosse's estimate in the Encyc. Brit, is exaggerated), but she had a wonderful gift of language and metre. Take, for example, the pretty lilt contained in the simplest words in " Maiden-Song " :
Long ago and long ago,
And long ago still. There dwelt three merry maidens
Upon a distant hill. One was tall Meggan,
And one was dainty May, But one was fair Margaret,
More fair than I can say, Long ago and long ago.
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old .'' Safe in thy immortality.
What change can reach the wealth I hold What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust for me ?
32 WHITTIER AND OTHERS
And while in life's long afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far. Since near at need the angels are ; And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand. And, white against the evening star.
The welcome of thy beckoning hand ?
J. G. Whittier. Snow-Bound.
I HAVE a dream — that some day I shall go
At break of dawn adown a rainy street,
A grey old street, and I shall come in the end
To the little house I have known, and stand ; and you.
Mother of mine, who watch and wait for me.
Will you not hear my footstep in the street.
And, as of old, be ready at the door.
To give me rest again ? . . . I shall come home.
H. D. LowRY.
DEATH
It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight ;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night ;
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite.
And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow ;
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal spright
Be lapp'd in alien clay and laid below ;
It is not death to know this, — but to know
That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go
So duly and so oft — and when grass waves
Over the passed-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.
Thomas Hood.
WORDSWORTH AND OTHERS 33
Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport — Oh ! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find ?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —
But how could I forget thee ? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss ! — ^That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore.
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn.
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Wordsworth.
Written of the poet's child Catherine, who died in 1812 at three years of age, and of whom Wordsworth had also written, " Loving she is, and tractable, though wild." Forty years after the death of this child and her brother, who died about the same time, the poet spoke of them to Aubrey de Vere with the same acute sense of bereavement as if they had only recently died.
By rose-hung river and light-foot rill There are who rest not ; who think long
Till they discern as from a hill
At the sun's hour of morning song,
Known of souls only, and those souls free. The sacred spaces of the sea.
Swinburne. Prelude — Songs before Sunrise.
The sea typifies the wider, nobler life of the soul.
One fine frosty day, My stomach being empty as your hat.
R. Browning. Fra Lippo Lippi.
The " cheekiest " line I know.
It is the glory and merit of some men to write well, and
of others not to write at all. ^ ^ .
La Bruyere.
34 COLERIDGE
O NEVER rudely will I blame his faith In the might of stars and angels ! . . . . . . For the stricken heart of Love This visible nature, and this common world, Is all too narrow : yea, a deeper import Lurks in the legend told my infant years Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn. For fable is Love's world, his home, his birth-place : Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans, And spirits ; and delightedly believes Divinities, being himself divine. The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion. The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain. Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring. Or chasms and watr'y depths ; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason ! But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names. And to yon starry world they now are gone. Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth With man as with their friend ; and to the lover Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky Shoot influence down : and even at this day 'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great, And Venus who brings everything that's fair.
S. T. Coleridge. Wallenstein, " The Piccolomini."
His faith. — Wallenstein, the great German soldier and statesman (1583-1634), believed in astrology.
The " intelligible forms of ancient poets " and " fair humanities of old religion " are the gods and inferior divinities that please our fancy. Thus the Greeks peopled the heavens (not very distant heavens to them) with their gods, who visited earth and mingled with men. There were also the lesser deities, as the Hours and the Graces ; and also the Nymphs — the Nereids, Naiads, Orcades, and Dryads — who inhabited seas, springs, rivers, and trees respectively. The Nymphs would corre- spond somewhat to the elves, gnomes, and fairies of Northern religions.
Coleridge's translation of " Wallenstein " (of which " The Piccolo- mini " is a portion) is considered a masterpiece. Schiller was fortunate in having a finer poet than himself to translate his drama. In the above passage Coleridge greatly improved on the original ; the seven splendid lines beginning " The intelligible forms of ancient poets " are his and not Schiller's ; and, therefore, this passage may fairly be ascribed to him as author.
DE QUINCEY— MOLIERE 35
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing ; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.
De Quincey. Murder, as one of the Fine Arts.
Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve. (I take my property wherever I find it.)
MOLIERE.
An interesting question arises with regard to this famous saying.
The story is as follows. In 1671 Moliere produced his Comedy Les Fourberies de Scapin, in which he had used t\\o scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac's Le Pedant Jou6. They are the amusing scenes where Geronte repeatedly says " Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere ? " " What the deuce was he doing in that Turkish galley?" Grimarest, the first biographer of the great dramatist, says that Cyrano had originally appropriated those scenes from Moliere, and that the latter, when taxed with this wholesale plagiarism, replied " Je reprends mon bien ou je le trouve." " I take back my property, where I find it." That is to say, he claimed the scenes as his own property and denied the plagiarism.
The curious fact is that the precisely opposite meaning is now given to this saying in French literature — see, for example, Larousse's great encyclopaedia-dictionary under " Bien." Moliere is now taken to have said, " / admit the plagiarism, but I so improve upon what I borrow that it becomes my own property."
Tho' old the thought and oft expressed, 'Tis his at last who says it best.*
The question is, Which is the right interpretation ?
Voltaire, in a " Life of Moliere," makes a general assertion (not referring specially to this incident) that all Grimarest's stories are false. This must, of course, be far too sweeping an assertion, and Grimarest is in fact quoted as an authority. Voltaire himself (1694-1778) uses the saying in the sense given by Grimarest {La Pucelle, Chant III.) :
Cette culotte est mienne ; et je prendrai Ce que fut mien ou je le trouverai.
" Those breeches are mine, and I shall take what was mine wherever I find it." Agnes Sorel had been captured dressed as a man and wearing the garment in question, which had been previously stolen from the speaker.
It seems clear that Grimarest's story must be accepted, that Moliere claimed the scenes as originally his and denied plagiarism. There is
* J. R. Lowell, " For an Autograph."
36
MOLIERE
no evidence to the contrary, and the saying is given its obvious meaning. (It is word for word as in the Digest, Ubi rem meam invenio, ibi vindico, " Where I find my own property, I appropriate it.") But the question then arises, Why should so commonplace a statement have attained such notoriety ?
The explanation appears simple. Moliere had many jealous and bitter enemies, who laid every charge they could against him. He was well known to have borrowed ideas, characters, and scenes in all direc- tions— and his enemies constantly and persistently attacked him on this ground. Then came his most glaring plagiarism from a comparatively recent play, written by a man whose dare-devil exploits had made him a perfect hero of romance. Moliere's story that Cyrano had previously stolen the scenes from him would not have been accepted for a moment. Cyrano had never been known to plagiarize, nor would it have been natural for a man of his character to do anything clandestine. Also Moliere would have had nothing to support his statement — and Cyrano was not alive to contradict and kill him. The conclusion, therefore, seems to be that the dramatist's statement was received in Paris with such incredulity, indignation, and ridicule that it became a byword.
But if this is so, why have the words been given the fictitious mean- ing that Moliere admitted the plagiarism and justified it ? The answer seems to lie in the fact that, as Moliere's great genius became realized, the desire arose to remove a blemish from his reputation. His is the greatest name in French literature, and almost anything would be excused in him. (We ourselves pass lightly over plagiarisnis by Shakespeare.) Also, whether morally justified or not, Moliere enriched the world's literature by his borrowings. It was, therefore, no serious matter to Frenchmen that he should have borrowed from Cyrano, but it was a distinct blemish on his character that he should have denied the fact and also slandered a dead hero. Ordinarily, in such a case, the story is ignored and forgotten, just as the one seriously wrong act of Sir Walter Scott, his borrowing from Coleridge of the " Christabel " metre, is usually ignored or slurred over. But the saying had become rooted in literature and this course was not practicable. However, there is little that enthusiasm cannot accomplish by some means or other, and the object in this instance has been achieved by reversing the meaning of Moliere's words.
What I find particularly interesting in the above is that it illustrates the perversion of truth that has taken place on a far greater scale regarding the ancient Greeks. Several of my notes deal with that subject (see Subject- Index).
As regards the meaning now given to the saying, Seneca claimed the same right to borrow at will. Quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, tneu?n est {Ep. XVI.). After advising his reader to consider the Epistle carefully and see what value it had for him, he says, " You need not be surprised if I am still free with other people's property. But why do I say ' other people's property ' ? Whatever has been well said by any one belongs to me."
So also the late Samuel Butler said, " Appropriate passages are intended to be appropriated " {Life of Butler, by Jones, ii. p. 3).
The stars make no noise.
Irish Proverb.
MARTINEAU AND OTHERS 37
The disposition to judge every enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with years, till we sympathize with nothing for which we cannot take out a policy of assurance.
James Martineau. Hours of Thought, i. 87.
For when the mellow autumn flushed The thickets, where the chestnut fell. And in the vales the maple blushed, Another came who knew her well,
Who sat with her below the pine And with her through the meadow moved, And underneath the purpling vine She sang to him the song I loved.
N. G. Shepherd,
This losing is true dying ; This is lordly man's down-lying, This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning.
R. W. Emerson. Threnody.
Referring to the death of his son.
Our finest hope is finest memory,
As they who love in age think youth is blest
Because it has a life to fill with love,
George Eliot. A Minor Poet.
A little pain, a little fond regret,
A little shame, and we are living yet.
While love, that should outlive us, lieth dead.
W. Morris.
38 DICKENS AND OTHERS
Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat there ; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, " You know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me ! "
Charles Dickens.
David Copperfield.
" They were learning to draw," the Dormouse went on, " and they drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M "
" Why with an M .? " said AHce.
" Why not ? " said the March Hare.
Alice was silent. t /-.
Lewis Carroll.
Alice in Wonderland.
In a Dublin lunatic asylum one of the inmates peremptorily ordered a visitor to take off his hat. Defer- entially obeying the order, the visitor asked why he should remove his hat. The lunatic replied : " Do you not know, sir, that I am the Crown Prince of Prussia ? " Having duly made his apologies, the visitor proceeded on his round ; but, coming again upon the same lunatic, was met with the same demand. Again obeying the order, he repeated the question : " May I ask why you wish me to take off my hat ? " The lunatic replied : " Are you not aware, sir, that I am the Prince of Wales ? " " But," said the visitor, " you told me just now you were the Crown Prince of Prussia." The lunatic, after scratching his head and deliberating for a moment, replied : " Ah, but that was by a different mother."
(Another Irish lunatic always lost himself and insisted on looking for himself under the bed.)
Author not traced.
These are true stories but localized — perhaps another injustice to Ireland ! In a recent book, Echoes of the Eighties, the first incident is said to have happened to a friend of Lord Goschen's at a Philadelphia asylum — but nevertheless the lunatic must surely have been Irish !
CARROLL AND OTHERS 39
[After looking at his watch] " Two days wrong ! " sighed the Hatter. " I told you butter would not suit the works ! " he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.
" It was the best butter," the March Hare replied.
Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland.
Perhaps, as two negatives make one affirmative, it may be thought that two layers of moonshine might coalesce into one pancake ; and two Barmecide banquets might be the square root of one poached egg.
Author not traced.
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing.
Some say that the King of England [George HL] is dead, others say he is not dead. As for me, I do not believe either one or the other. I tell you this in confidence, and for heaven's sake do not give me away.
Talleyrand. Album Perdu.
Johnson was present when a tragedy was read, in which there occurred this line :
" Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free."
The company having admired it much, " I cannot agree with you," said Johnson, " it might as well be said :
' Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.' "
Boswell's Lije of Johnson (1784).
Johnson here seems to show a flippant smartness, but not his usual good sense. Yet his saying has been found useful ; see, for instance, the quotation from Bain, p. io8.
40 SWIFT AND OTHERS
No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore money is better than counsel.
Swift.
If the man, who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.
Johnson.
One swore that Homer, Aristotle, and all the host of the Antient Greeks were such Ignorant Fellows that they did not understand one word of Latin.
Samuel Butler.
Pointz. Come, your reason, Jack,— your reason. Falstaff. Give you a reason on compulsion ! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I v/ould give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.
Shakespeare. I Henry IV., ii. 4.
Reason needs to be given its old pronunciation, " raison " (or raisin) in order to understand Falstaff 's pun.
I MET a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth — not a tooth in his head — yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever met !
Artemus Ward. Lecture.
Still I cannot believe in clairvoyance — because the thing is impossible.
Samuel Rogers. Table Talk.
I might follow the fifteen preceding quotations (which illustrate " the art of reasoning ") with the well-known story of Charles Lamb, who, when blamed for coming late to the office, excused himself on the ground that he always left early. (He also said, " A man could not have too
ROGERS 41
little to do and too much time to do it in.") There is also the reply of Lord Rothschild, when the cabman told him that his son paid better fares than he did, " Yes, but he has a rich father, and I haven't."
I am tempted by the quotation from Rogers to add some remarks in a more serious vein. The grotesque assumption, that he understood the nature of the universe and, without investigation, could declare what is or is not possible, is one that is common even among intellectual men. Indeed, all of us are more or less disposed to make the same assumption. Doubtless Rogers would have said that wireless telegraphy was impossible. The belief that stones fell from the sky was ridiculed until a shower of meteorites chanced to fall near Paris. Comte said that the chemical composition of the heavenly bodies must be for ever unknowable to man ; but only a few years later the spectroscope was invented, and we now know what the stars are made of. So also most of us would, a few years ago, have jeered at a suggestion that matter consisted of electricity, or that the most solidly fixed of all " natural laws," gravitation, was founded on an erroneous conception. So also, as regards other deductions from Einstein's theory, that the world is four-dimensional, time being the fourth dimension ; that Euclidean geometry is fictitious as applied to reality ; that there is no absolute space or absolute time, both space and time being abstractions made by the mind ; that the universe is probably spherical or elliptical, and is also probably finite. Again how " impossible " would have appeared what we now know regarding the Unconscious (see p. 170). We all need to keep constantly impressed on our minds that we have as yet learnt practically nothing of the universe :
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me ; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drowned.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be. And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond —
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
The Choice.
We readily abandon this " know-all " attitude, so soon as the physicist asserts a fact which was previously incredible — and which we have to take on trust, seeing that we cannot understand the evidence on which it is founded. But when a fact of a psychical nature is asserted, although such a fact is more important to us than any physical discovery, and although the evidence in its support can be easily followed and appreci- ated, then even able men refuse to pay any attention to it.
Bergson's explanation of this tendency is that the scientist begins with mathematics, and is interested only in what is, or is likely to become, subject to TJieasiirement (see his Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research, republished in Mind-Energy). But I think it can be explained much more simply on the ground that our habits of thought are coloured by the materialism of last century. This is so even with men who absolutely reject the materialist creed. We all, more or less, have an inherited " materialism-complex " which is opposed to the recognition of anything psychical. And this has been greatly strength- ened by the exhibition of widespread imbecility and fraud in spiritualism, theosophy, and like directions. It is due to this state of things that most thinkers make the fatal mistake of ignoring the great work done
42 WORDSWORTH— ELIOT
by the most important in human interest of all societies, the Society for Psychical Research (see pp. 382-3).
The war produced at least one good result in compelling medical men to recognize psychical facts, which practically the whole profession had ignored for fifty years. They could no longer do this when faced with innumerable so-called " shell-shock " cases, that could be cured only by psychical methods. Some of them now, but only a small pro- portion, recognize in their practice hypnotism and other methods of cure by suggestion. But still the materialism-complex exerts its domin- ating influence against other psychical facts, and few scientists and thinkers generally pay any attention to them.
As regards clairvoyance, which Rogers declared impossible, and various other psychical matters, see long note on p. 170.
WHO FANCIED WHAT A PRETTY SIGHT
Who fancied what a pretty sight This rock would be if edged around With Hving snow-drops ? circlet bright ! How glorious to this orchard ground ! Who loved the little rock, and set Upon its head this coronet ?
Was it the humour of a child ?
Or rather of some gentle maid,
Whose brows, the day that she was styled
The Shepherd- queen, were thus arrayed ?
Of man mature, or matron sage }
Or old man toying with his age ?
I asked — 'twas whispered, " The device To each and all might well belong : It is the Spirit of Paradise That prompts such work, a Spirit strong That gives to all the self-same bent Where life is wise and innocent."
Wordsworth,
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look
passively at our future selves, and see our own figures
led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby
achievement. ^ „
George Eliot,
Middlemarch.
MACDONALD AND OTHERS 43
They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an inter-radiating con- nection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an unde- veloped life lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connections with the worlds around us than those of science and poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. They are portions of the living house within
which he abides. ^ ni/r t-n
George MacDonald.
Phantasies.
O WEARY time, O hfe, Consumed in endless, useless strife To wash from out the hopeless clay Of heavy day and heavy day Some specks of golden love, to keep Our hearts from madness ere we sleep !
W. Morris. The Earthly Paradise.
To an Australian, a metaphor taken from alluvial gold-mining is interesting.
Hope, whose eyes Can sound the seas unsoundable, the skies Inaccessible of eyesight ; that can see What earth beholds not, hear what wind and sea Hear not, and speak what all these crying in one Can speak not to the sun.
Swinburne. Thalassius.
44 STERNE AND OTHERS
[Dr. Slop has been uttering terrible curses against Obadiah] I declare, quoth my Uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness. — He is the father of curses, replied Dr. Slop.— So am not I, rephed my uncle. — But he is cursed and damned already to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop.
I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby. o
Tristram Shandy.
Faust. If heaven was made for man, 'twas made for me. Good Angel. Faustus, repent ; yet heaven will pity thee. Bad Angel. Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee. Faust. Be I a devil, yet God may pity me.
Marlowe. Doctor Faustus.
But fare-you-well, Auld Nickie-Ben ! O, wad ye tak a thought and men' ! Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken —
Still hae a stake : I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Ev'n for your sake !
Robert Burns.
Address to the Deil.
" Shargar, what think ye ? Gin the deil war to repent, wad God forgie him ? "
" There's no sayin' what folk wad dae till ance they're tried," returned Shargar cautiously.
George MacDonald. Robert Falconer, chap. xii.
There is a passage, I think in one of MacDonald's novels, where the question is again put, " Gin the de'il war to repent ? " The reply is to the effect, " Do not wish even him anything so dreadful. The agony of his repentance would be far worse than anything he can suffer in hell."
Scotus Erigena, a very able Irish theologian and philosopher of the Qth century, believed that Satan himself must ultimately be reclaimed, since otherwise God could not in the end conquer and extinguish sin. He cites Origen and others in support of his contention. These old and very serious discussions seem more remote than Plato, but the belief in a personal devil was not uncommon even in my young days.
MARSTON— E. B. BROWNING 45
O WIND, a word with you before you pass ; What did you to the Rose that on the grass Broken she hes and pale, who loved you so ?
THE WIND
Roses must live and love, and winds must blow.
Philip Bourke Marston, The Rose and the Wind.
I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young :
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years.
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair ;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, —
" Guess now who holds thee ? " — " Death," I said. But
there. The silver answer rang. — " Not Death, but Love."
E. B. Browning. Sonnets from the Portuguese.
This is the first of the chain of sonnets, which Mrs. Browning called " Sonnets from the Portuguese." They tell her own love-story, and were written in secret and without thought of publication. Robert Browning learnt of them only the year after the marriage, and then insisted on their being published. They include some of the finest sonnets in our language.
The love-story of the two poets is very beautiful. Mrs. Browning was six years older than her husband and a life-long invalid, expecting, as she says in this sonnet. Death rather than Love. Their mari-iage was supremely happy, and the great poet, when in England, used to visit the church in which they were married to express his thankfulness.
In these sonnets Mrs. Browning laid bare her innermost feelings.
Robert Browning, however, in several poems says the privacy of a poet's life and feelings should not be bared to the public. Wordsworth had written in 1827 :
Scorn not the Sonnet. . . . With this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
46
E. B. BROWNING
Browning in 1876 (thirty years after the " Sonnets from the Portuguese " were written) wrote in his poem called House :
" With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart "... Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare he !
Swinburne comments on these lines : " No whit the less like Shake- speare, but undoubtedly the less like Browning."
Yet Browning was undoubtedly right. Shakespeare simply presents to us the world as it exists, with all its conflicts and problems, introducing nothing of his personal experiences or emotions. He does not " unlock his heart " ; if he had done so, he could not have given us so uncoloured and true a presentation of life. Yet Shakespeare's world corresponds to the actual world, and we see in it that good is good, virtue is virtue : Cordelia and Desdemona shine foith radiantly, however sad their destiny. Shakespeare would realize this, but there was no " unlocking of his heart," no expression of his personal attitude towards the universe. He simply drew a true picture of life, and left us to deduce from it the only possible conclusions.
If, when depicting in his plays all the phases and all the horrors of human life Shakespeare stood as aloof as a god, giving no indication of his own views or emotions, is it in the least degree likely that he " un- locked his heart " in the sonnets ? Are we to iinagine that there were two entirely different Shakespeares, one of the plays and one of the sonnets ? The many fantastic and absurd theories that have been deduced from the sonnets are based mainly on ignorance of the language, literary practices, conventions, conceits, affectations, and extravagances of all the many sonneteers of that peculiar sonnet-period from 1591 to 1596. Shakespeare afterwards in his plaj^s ridiculed the sonnets of that time. He himself was always the dramatist, and where (very occasionally) he introduces a personal note in the sonnets he is simply using it for a dramatic purpose. There is no serious personal emotion — except that there was no doubt some real feeling of gratitude underlying the extravagant flattery of his patron, the Earl of Southampton. How- ever, I must refer the reader for fuller particulars to the admirable discussion of this subject in Sir Sidney Lee's Life of the poet.
Croce points out (Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille) that, although it would be absorbingly interesting to know Shakespeare's real experi- ences and thoughts, it would not be an assistance, but rather a hindrance, to our artistic appreciation of his poetry. It is, indeed, necessary to forget biographical details in reading poetry. So, it seems to me, we would appreciate the works of many a poet far more if we knew less of his history. The inner aesthetic life of a poet, or indeed of any man, is not truly reflected in his practical life — and this explains why " A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house " (Matthew xiii. 57). Nor would it help us to understand a poem if we knew the experiences that immediately led up to it. The imagina- tion is creative, and efitirely transforms the material it works on — and we must contemplate only the actual poem as it exists. For example, it would only distract our attention if we had before us the play of Hamlet that Shakespeare knew before he wrote his own play. All we have to consider is the actual product of his imagination, and not the baser material which he has transformed. It is the aesthetic of the poet that concerns us and nothing else.
Going back to Mrs. Browning's sonnet, Robert Browning in his turn tells their love-story in the next quotation.
R. BROWNING 47
.... Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again, Let us now forget and now recall.
Break the rosary in a pearly rain. And gather what we let fall ! . . .
Hither we walked then, side by side.
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek, And still I questioned or replied.
While my heart, convulsed to really speak. Lay choking in its pride.
Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet, And care about the fresco's loss,
And wish for our souls a like retreat, And wonder at the moss.
We stoop and look in through the grate, See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date ;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,
Take the path again — but wait !
Oh moment, one and infinite !
The water slips o'er stock and stone ; The West is tender, hardly bright :
How grey at once is the evening grown — One star, its chrysolite !
We two stood there with never a third, But each by each, as each knew well :
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.
Oh, the little more, and how much it is !
And the little less, and what worlds away ! How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, And life be a proof of this ! . . .
48 R. BROWNING— ADDISON
A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast ;
But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and hfe : we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen, . . .
How the world is made for each of us !
How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself — to wit. By its fruit, the thing it does ! . . .
I am named and known by that moment's feat ;
There took my station and degree ; So grew my own small life complete,
As nature obtained her best of me— One born to love you, sweet !
And to watch you sink by the fire-side now
Back again, as you mutely sit Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it. Yonder, my heart knows how !
R. Browning. By the Fireside.
The last verse, describing Mrs. Browning, makes it clear that the poet is speaking of his own love-story, although the scene is imaginary. The last two verses are to be read literally, as an expression of the poet's firm belief, and not as poetical exaggeration.
Perhaps the most admired of these verses are the fifth to the seventh.
If we look into the profession of physic, we shall find a most formidable body of men. The sight of them is enough to make a man serious, for we may lay it down as a maxim that, when a nation abounds in physicians, it grows thin of people. This body of men in our own country may be described like the British army in Caesar's time. Some of them slay in chariots, and some on foot. If the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried so soon into all quarters of the town, and despatch so much business in so short a time.
Addison.
ROSSETTI 49
THE DARK GLASS
Not I myself know all my love for thee :
How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday ?
Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray ; And shall my sense pierce love, — the last relay
And ultimate outpost of eternity ?
Lo ! what am I to Love, the lord of all ?
One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, — One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
And veriest touch of powers primordial That any hour-girt life may understand.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
" The Dark Glass " refers to i Cor. xiii. 12, " Now we see as through a glass darkly "• — we know love only imperfectly.
You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do ; and nobody knows. Wise men are afraid to say that there is anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical truth, as that two and two cannot make five. There are dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we did not see them going on under our eyes all day long. If people had never seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite different shapes from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, they would have said, " The thing cannot be." . . . Suppose that no human being had ever seen or heard of an elephant. And suppose that you described him to people, and said, " This is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast . . . and this is the section of his skull, more like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable or unreasonable beast ; yet he is the wisest of all beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts." People would surely have said, " Nonsense ; your elephant is contrary to nature," and have thought you were telling
E
50 KINGSLEY- TACITUS
stories — as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe ; and as the King of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor, when he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain fell as feathers. The truth is that folks' fancy that such and such things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage's fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw one running wild in the forest.
Charles Kingsley. Water- Babies.
This passage interested us greatly in the old days, and also another passage drawing a not very satisfactory analogy between the transforma- tion of insects and our probable transformation at death.
As regards the elephant's brain, Kingsley had no doubt been looking at a disarticulated skull of a young elephant. The upper part of this (the supra-occipital) does somewhat resemble a large mushroom, because of its shape and colour, and because of the air-spaces beneath, which appear like the radiating gills on the under side of the cap of the mush- room. This honeycomb structure is, however, common to all large bones — reducing their weight without lessening their strength — although it is remarkably conspicuous in the elephant's skull. Such a charac- teristic of the bone is, of course, no indication of the nature of the brain beneath, and, therefore, Kingsley's remarks are quite unwarranted.
This book, published in 1863,* had a considerable effect in doing away with the barbarous employment of young children in mines, factories, brickfields, etc. It called attention particularly to the chimney- sweep boys of four or five years of age who had to climb up the narrow chimneys, and who w-ere simply slaves, neglected and ill-treated by their drunken masters. We are apt to forget how recently we emerged from barbarism, if, indeed, we can be said to have yet emerged.
The gods are on the side of the strongest.
Tacitus. Hist. iv. 17.
De Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, said in 1677, " God is on the side of the heaviest battalions." Voltaire again said, in 1770, that there are far more fools than wise men, " and they say that God always favours the heaviest battalions " (Letter to Le Riche). Gibbon wrote, " The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators " (chap. Ixviii.).
* In 1843 Mrs. Browning's fine appeal, "The Cry of the Children," appeared in Blackwood, but I presume had little effect. So also Hood's "Song ot the Shirt," " Bridge of Sighs," and "Song of the Labourer" were written about the same time, but could have made little real impression.
COLERIDGE AND OTHERS 51
He seemed to me to be one of those men who have not very extended minds, but who know what they know very well— shallow streams, and clear because they are shallow.
S. T. Coleridge. Table Talk.
To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying
Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is
to have kept your soul alive. t^ t o
^ •' R. L. Stevenson.
Virginibus Puerisque.
THE OCTOPUS
By Algernon Sin burn
Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed,
Whence camest to dazzle our eyes. With thy bosom bespangled and banded,
With the hues of the seas and the skies ? Is thy name European or Asian,
O mystical monster marine. Part molluscous and partly crustacean. Betwixt and between }
Wast thou born to the sound of sea-trumpets ?
Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess Of the sponges — thy muffins and crumpets —
Of the sea-weed — thy mustard and cress ? Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral,
Remote from reproof or restraint ? Art thou innocent, art thou immoral, Sinburnian or Saint ?
Lithe limbs curling free as a creeper,
That creeps in a desolate place, To enrol and envelop the sleeper
In a silent and stealthy embrace ; Cruel beak craning forward to bite us,
Our juices to drain and to drink. Or to whelm us in waves of Cocytus, Indelible ink !
52 HILTON
O breast that 'twere rapture to writhe on !
O arms 'twere deHcious to feel CHnging close with the crush of the Python,
When she maketh her murderous meal ! In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden
Let our empty existence escape : Give us death that is glorious and golden, Crushed all out of shape !
Ah, thy red limbs lascivious and luscious.
With death in their amorous kiss ! Cling round us and clasp us and crush us,
With bitings of agonized bliss ! We are sick with the poison of pleasure.
Dispense us the potion of pain ; Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure. And bite us again !
A. C. Hilton.
This extraordinarily clever parody of Swinburne's " Dolores " was written by Arthur Clement Hilton when he was an undergraduate at St. John's, Cambridge. It appeared in The Light Green, a clever but short-lived magazine published in Cambridge in the early 'seventies as a rival to The Dark Blue, published in London by Oxford men. Hilton was the main contributor to The Light Green. He died when only twenty-six years of age. This brilliant young author is not included in The Dictionary of National Biography.
He wrote the closest and most ingenious parody I know of :
Bret Harte's " Heathen Chinee " had cards up his sleeve —
And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers — that's wax.
Hilton's " Heathen Pass-ee " entered the examination-room with concealed notes —
And we found in his palms, which were hollow, What are frequent in palms — that is, dates.
A CENTURY ago men were following, with bated breath, the march of Napoleon, and waiting with feverish im- patience for the latest news of the wars. And all the while, in their own homes, babies were being born. But who could think about babies ? Everybody was thinking about battles. In one year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there stole into the v/orld a host of heroes ! During that one year, 1809, Mr. Gladstone was born in Liverpool ; Alfred Tennyson was born at the Somersby
BOREHAM— MILL 53
rectory ; and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appear- ance in Massachusetts. On the very self-same day of that self-same year Charles Darwin made his debut at Shrews- bury, and Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath in old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. Within the same year, too, Samuel Morley was born in Homerton, Edward Fitzgerald in Woodbridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Durham, and Frances Kemble in London. But nobody thought of babies. Everybody was thinking of battles. Yet, viewing that age in the truer perspective which the distance of a hundred years enables us to command, we may well ask ourselves, " Which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies of 1809 ? " . . .
We fancy that God can only manage Flis world by big battalions abroad, when all the while He is doing it by beautiful babies at home. When a wrong wants righting, or a truth wants preaching, or a continent wants opening, God sends a baby into the world to do it. That is why, long, long ago, a babe was born in Bethlehem.
Frank W. Boreham. Mountains in the Mist.
Mr. Boreham has made a mistake about Mrs. Browning, who was born in 1806 ; and it is now known that Chopin was born in 18 10, not 1809.
Continuing the work of creation, i.e. co-operating as instruments of Providence in bringing order out of disorder ... is only a part of the mission of mankind, and the time will come again when its due rank will be assigned to con- templation and the calm culture of reverence and love. Then poetry will resume her equality with prose. . . . But that time is not yet, and the crowning glory of Wordsworth is that he has borne witness to it and kept alive its traditions in an age, which, but for him, would have lost sight of it
'=""■■'='>'• J. S. Mill.
In that utilitarian period the figure of the great poet stands out in sheer sublimity. Apart from the depressing atmosphere of the time, one needs to remember how serenely he continued to deliver his high message in spite of the most deadly want of appreciation. At thirty he received £100 from his poems and nothing more until he was sixty- five 1 The quotation is from a letter in Caroline Fox's Journals.
54 MARTINEAU AND OTHERS
The true life of the human community is planted deep in the private affections of its members ; in the greatness of its individual minds ; in the pure severities of its domestic conscience ; in the noble and transforming thoughts that fertilize its sacred nooks. Who can observe, without astonishment, the durable action of men truly great on the history of the world, and the evanescence of vast military revolutions, once threatening all things with destruction ? How often is it the fate of the former to be invisible for an age, and then live for ever ; of the latter, to sweep a genera- tion from the earth, and then vanish with slight trace ?
James Martineau. The Outer and the Imier Temple.
Wars seem to leave little trace except where they result in the im- migration and settlement of a tribe or nation. Otherwise they appear to cancel one another. The present war will probably destroy the only trace of the Franco-Prussian war, and, with respect to Turkey, Poland, and other countries, will no doubt cancel the effects of many tremendous conflicts of past centuries.
Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.
(To know all is to forgive all.)
French Proverb.
This proverb is said to have originated from a sentence in Mme. de Stael's Cormne, Tout comprendre rend tres-indidgetit , " Understanding everything makes one very forgiving."
My sarcastic friend says, with the utmost gravity, that no man with less than a thousand pounds a year can afford to have private opinions upon certain important subjects. He admits that he has known it done upon eight hundred a year ; but only by very prudent people with small families.
Sir a. Helps. Companions of my Solitude.
The worst way to improve the world Is to condemn it.
P. J. Bailey. Festus.
CONWAY— STEPHENS 55
'Tis an old theme, this Divine Love, and it cannot be exhausted. Men have not outHved it, angels cannot out- learn it. It swayed the ancient world by many a fair god and goddess ; its light has been cast over ages of Christian controversy and warfare ; it is still the guiding Star of the Sea to each voyager after the nobler faith. The youth leaves the old shore of belief, only because love has left it. His starved affections will no longer accept stone, though pulverized flour-like and artfully kneaded, for bread. Their white sails fill the purple and the sombre seas, and they hail each other to ask for the summer-land, where faith climbs to beauty, and the lost bowers of childhood's trust
may be found again. ,, ^^ ^
•' ^ MoNCURE Daniel Conway.
An Earthward Pilgrimage.
This fine writer was a Unitarian minister, but afterwards became a free-thinker.
THE DARK COMPANION
There is an orb that mocked the lore of sages Long time with mystery of strange unrest ;
The steadfast law that rounds the starry ages Gave doubtful token of supreme behest ;
But they, who knew the ways of God unchanging. Concluded some far influence unseen — -
Some kindred sphere through viewless others ranging, Whose strong persuasions spanned the void between ;
And knowing it alone through perturbation
And vague disquiet of another star. They named it, till the day of revelation,
" The Dark Companion " — darkly guessed afar.
But when, through new perfection of appliance, Faith merged at length in undisputed sight.
The mystic mover was revealed to science. No Dark Companion, but — a speck of light :
No Dark Companion, but a sun of glory : No fell disturber, but a bright compeer :
The shining complement that crowned the story : The golden link that made the meaning clear.
56 STEPHENS
O Dark Companion, journeying ever by us, O grim Perturber of our works and ways,
O potent Dread, unseen, yet ever nigh us. Disquieting all the tenor of our days —
O Dark Companion, Death, whose wide embraces O'ertake remotest change of clime and skies —
0 Dark Companion, Death, whose grievous traces Are scattered shreds of riven enterprise —
Thou, too, in this wise, when, our eyes unsealing. The clearer day shall change our faith to sight,
Shalt show thyself, in that supreme revealing, No Dark Companion, but a thing of light :
No ruthless wrecker of harmonious order :
No alien heart of discord and caprice : A beckoning light upon the BHssful Border :
A kindred element of law and peace.
So, too, our strange unrest in this our dwelling. The trembling that thou joinest with our mirth,
Are by thy magnet-communings compelling Our spirits farther from the scope of earth.
So, doubtless, when beneath thy potence swerving, 'Tis that thou lead'st us by a path unknown.
Our seeming deviations all subserving
The perfect orbit round the central throne.
The night wind moans. The Austral wilds are round me. The loved who live — ah, God ! how few they are I
1 looked above ; and Heaven in mercy found me
This parable of comfort in a star.
J. Brunton Stephens. Convict Once and other Poems.
The " Dark Companion " is no doubt the star known as the " Com- panion of Sirius." Certain peculiarities in the motion of Sirius led Bessel in 1844 to the behef that it had an obscure companion, with which it was in revolution. The position of the companion having been ascertained by calculation, it was at last found in 1862. It is equal in mass to our sun, but is obscured by the brilliancy of Sirius, which is the brightest of the fixed stars. Brunton Stephens' poem was published in Melbourne in 1873.
LE GALLIENNE— GARNETT 57
WHAT OF THE DARKNESS ?
What of the Darkness ? Is it very fair ?
Are there great calms, and find ye silence there ?
Like soft-shut lilies all your faces glow
With some strange peace our faces never know,
With some great faith our faces never dare :
Dwells it in Darkness ? Do ye find it there ?
Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie ?
Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry ?
Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap ?
Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep ?
Day shows us not such comfort anywhere :
Dwells it in Darkness ? Do ye find it there ?
Out of the Day's deceiving light we call,
Day, that shows man so great and God so small,
That hides the stars and magnifies the grass,
O is the Darkness too a lying glass,
Or, undistracted, do ye find truth there ?
What of the Darkness ? Is it very fair ?
R. Le Gallienne.
These lines were written of the blind, but become even more beautiful and true if applied to a different subject, the dead. I am half-disposed to think that, although the poet's conscious intention was to write on the former subject, his imagination preferred he should write on the dead, and inspired him accordingly. That this is not so absurd a con- jecture as it appears will be seen from the note on p. 170 ; but, if it is correct, the case is an extraordinary one.
NOCTURNE
Keen winds of cloud and vaporous drift Disrobe yon star, as ghosts, that lift A snowy curtain from its place, To scan a pillowed beauty's face.
They see her slumbering splendours lie Bedded on blue unfathomed sky ; And swoon for love and deep delight. And stillness falls on all the night.
Richard Garnett.
58 LYNCH AND OTHERS
REINFORCEMENTS
When little boys with merry noise
In the meadows shout and run ; And little girls, sweet woman buds,
Brightly open in the sun ; I may not of the world despair.
Our God despaireth not, I see ; For blithesomer in Eden's air
These lads and maidens could not be.
Why were they born, if Hope must die ?
Wherefore this health, if Truth should fail ? And why such Joy, if Misery
Be conquering us and must prevail ? Arouse ! our spirit may not droop !
These young ones fresh from Heaven are ; Our God hath sent another troop.
And means to carry on the war.
Thomas Toke Lynch.
There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime. With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime ; Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task v/ith busier feet. Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.
John Keble.
The Christian Year, "St. Matthew."
True wit consists in the resemblance of ideas . . . but it must be such that gives delight and surprise to the reader. Where the likeness is obvious it creates no surprise, and is not wit. Thus when a poet tells us that the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison — but, when he adds with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows into wit.
Dryden.
LYALL 59
SEQUEL TO " MY QUEEN "
" When and where shall I earliest meet her," etc.
Yes, but the years run circling fleeter,
Ever they pass me — I watch, I wait — Ever I dream, and awake to meet her ;
She Cometh never, or comes too late.
Should I press on ? for the day grows shorter —
Ought I to linger ? the far end nears ; Ever ahead have I looked, and sought her
On the bright sky-line of the gathering years.
Now that the shadows are eastward sloping, As I screen mine eyes from the slanting sun,
Cometh a thought — It is past all hoping, Look not ahead, she is missed and gone.
Here on the ridge of my upward travel.
Ere the life-line dips to the darkening vales,
Sadly I turn, and would fain unravel The entangled maze of a search that fails.
When and where have I seen and passed her ?
What are the words I forgot to say ? Should we have met had a boat rowed faster ?
Should we have loved, had I stayed that day ?
Was it her face that I saw, and started,
Gliding away in a train that crossed ? Was it her form that I once, faint-hearted,
Followed awhile in a crowd and lost }
Was it there she lived, when the train went sweeping Under the moon through the landscape hushed ?
Somebody called me, I woke from sleeping. Saw but a hamlet — and on we rushed.
Listen and linger— She yet may find me In the last faint flush of the waning light —
Never a step on the path behind nie ; I must journey alone, to the lonely night.
6o ROSSETTI— LANDOR
But is there somewhere on earth, I wonder, A fading figure, with eyes that wait.
Who says, as she stands in the distance yonder, " He Cometh never, or comes too late " ?
Sir Alfred Lyall.
Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late ! You loitered on the road too long.
You trifled at the gate : The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate ; The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate ; Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.
Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago. Even then you had arrived in time.
Though somewhat slow ; Then you had known her living face
Which now you cannot know : The frozen fountain would have leaped.
The buds gone on to blow, The warm south wind would have awaked
To melt the snow.
Christina Rossetti. The Prince's Progress.
Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray ; Life passes on more rudely fleet.
And balmless is its closing day.
I wait its close, I court its gloom. But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have sooth'd it all.
W. S. Landor.
HOLMES 6i
I THINK, I said, I can make it plain that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in a dialogue between John and Thomas.
Three Johns : The real John — known only to his Maker.
■ John's ideal John — never the real one, and often very
unlike him, Thomas's ideal John — never the real
John, nor John's John, but often very unlike
either.
Three Thomases : The real Thomas. Thomas's ideal Thomas. John's ideal Thomas.
Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one can be weighed on a platform balance ; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing them- selves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, beheves him to be an artful rogue, we will say ; therefore he is, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angr}^ when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.
(A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean- time he had eaten the peaches.)
O. W. Holmes. Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
62 DONNE— ELIOT
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER
Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before ? Wih Thou forgive that sin, through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore ? — When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done ; For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door ? Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two, but wallowed in a score ? — When Thou hast done. Thou hast not done ; For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when Fve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ; But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son Shall shine, as He Shines now and heretofore ; And having done that. Thou hast done : I fear no more.
John Donne.
In line (i) the reference is to the old doctrine that the guilt of Adam and Eve's " original sin " tainted all generations of man ; (3) " run," ran ; (8) his sin — the example he has set — is the door which opened to others the way of sin.
In this fine poem there are puns. In the last verse one pun is on the words " Son " and " Sun," Christ being the " Sun of righteousness who arises with healing in his wings " (Malachi iv. 2). Also in the fifth, eleventh, and seventeenth lines, the play is on the last word " done " and the poet's name Donne, which was pronounced dun. (It was occasionally written Dun, Dunne, or Done : see Grierson's Poems of John Donne, vol. ii. pp. Ivii, Ixxvii, Ixxxvii, 8 and 12. Contrariwise, the adjective " dun," dull-brown, was spelt donne in the poet's time.) We are accustomed only to the jocular use of puns, but here there is a serious intention to give two meanings to one expression. Such a use of puns was one of the " quaint conceits " of that period of our literature and it is found also in serious Persian poetry.
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand ; the angels come to visit us and we only know them when they are gone.
George Eliot. Felix Holt.
WESTWOOD 63
LET IT BE THERE
Not there, not there ! Not in that nook, that ye deem so fair ;— Little reck I of the bright, blue sky. And the stream that floweth so murmiiringly, And the bending boughs, and the breezy air —
Not there, good friends, not there !
In the city churchyard, where the grass Groweth rank and black, and where never a ray Of that self-same sun doth find its way Through the heaped-up houses' serried mass — Where the only sounds are the voice of the throng, And the clatter of wheels as they rush along — Or the plash of the rain, or the wind's hoarse cry, Or the busy tramp of the passer-by, Or the toll of the bell on the heavy air — Good friends, let it be there !
I am old, my friends — I am very old —
Fourscore and five — and bitter cold
Were that air on the hill-side far away ;
Eighty full years, content, I trow,
Have I lived in the home where ye see me now,
And trod those dark streets day by day.
Till my soul doth love them ; I love them all,
Each battered pavement, and blackened wall,
Each court and corner. Good sooth ! to me
They are all comely and fair to see —
They have old faces— each, one doth tell A tale of its own, that doth like me well. Sad or merry, as it may be. From the quaint old book of my history. And, friends, when this weary pain is past. Fain would I lay me to rest at last In their very midst ; full sure am I, How dark soever be earth and sky, I shall sleep softly — I shall know That the things I loved so here below Are about me still — so never care That my last home looketh all bleak and bare — Good friends, let it be there !
Thomas Westwood.
64 HERBERT AND OTHERS
THE PULLEY
When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, " Let us," said He, " pour on him all we can ; Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie.
Contract into a span."
So strength first made a way, Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure ; When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
" For if I should," said He, " Bestow this jewel also on My creature, He would adore My gifts instead of Me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.
" Yet let him keep the rest. But keep them with repining restlessness ; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast."
George Herbert.
" The Pulley " because by the desire for rest after toil and tribulation God draws man up to Himself.
Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones : it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure, which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of being scarified. Thackeray.
Pendennis.
The devil could drive woman out of Paradise ; but the devil himself cannot drive the Paradise out of a woman.
George MacDonald. Robert Falconer.
HUXLEY 65
[Darwin's Origin of Species was published in November 1859.] At the Oxford meeting of the British Association in i860 Huxley had on Thursday, June 28, directly con- tradicted Professor Owen's statement that a gorilla's brain differed more from a man's than it did from the brain of the lowest of the Quadrumana (apes, monkeys, and lemurs). He was thus marked out as the champion of evolution. On the Saturday, although the public were not admitted, the members crowded the room to suffocation, anxious to hear the brilliant controversialist. Bishop Wilberforce, take part in the debate. An unimportant paper was read bearing upon Darwinism, and a discussion followed. The Bishop, inspired by Owen, began his speech. He spoke in dulcet tones, persuasive manner, and with well-turned periods, but ridiculing Darwin badly and Huxley savagely. " In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution : rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to Huxley, with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey y
As he said this, Huxley turned to his neighbour and said, " The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands ! " On rising to speak, he first gave a forcible and eloquent reply to the scientific part of the Bishop's argument. Then " he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words — words, which no one seems sure of now, nor, I think, could re- member just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. * He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor : but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth.' No one doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous. One lady fainted and had to be carried out : I, for one, jumped out of my seat," {Macmillan's, 1898.) There is no verbatim report of this incident, but the varying accounts agree in outline.
Extracted from " Life of Huxley .'^
One object of this book is to bring back the memories of the seventy- eighties — and of overwhelming interest at the time was the alleged con- flict between religion and science. Through Darwin's great researches and Herbert Spencer's world-wide extension of the evolution theory, so much appeared to be covered by law that men were blinded to the
F
66 TYNDALL
fact that the essential question of causality, lying behind all law, was still untouched.
The important and thrilling incident referred to above took place in i860, when I was two years old, but it was still an absorbing topic thirteen or fourteen years later, and is one of my most vivid recollections.
Wilberforce (i 805-1 873) was a great Churchman and, indeed, has been said to be the greatest prelate of his age, although his nickname " Soapy Sam " led to a popular depreciation of his merits. (This epithet originally meant that he was evasive on certain questions, but it took a further nieaning from his persuasive eloquence.) In this instance he meddled with a subject of which he was ignorant. Owen, who instigated him to make this attack on Darwin and Huxley, had at first welcomed the theory of evolution, but quailed before the orthodox indignation against the necessary extension of that theory to the origin of man. Huxley (i 825-1 895) was thirty-five years of age when he thus showed himself a strong debater and a power in the scientific world.
On tracing the line of life backwards, we see it approach- ing more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have " a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character." Can we pause here "i We break a magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking ; but however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case of life ? . . . Believing, as I do, in the con- tinuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our micro- scopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and justified by science I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial Life.
[Referring to the question of inquiring into the mystery of our origin.] Here, however, I touch a theme too great for me to handle, but which will assuredly be handled by
TYNDALL 67
the loftiest minds, when you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have tnelted into the infinite azure of the past.
John Tyndall.
The italics are mine.
As in the preceding quotation the subject is the alleged conflict between religion and science, which occupied so large a space in our life and thought in the seventies and eighties. The above are the two passages from Tyndall 's presidential address at the Belfast meeting of the British Association in 1874, which caused an immense sensation. The Belfast Address, like Huxley's smashing reply to Bishop Wilberforce, was useful in showing that all scientific questions must be considered with an open mind, free of theological bias, and also in adding testimony to the importance and value of Darwin's investigation. Although fifteen years had passed since The Origin of Species was published, this was still necessary. (At that very time Professor McCoy, afterwards Sir Frederick McCoy, F.R.S., when lecturing at the Melbourne Univer- sity to his students, of whom I was one, was still making inane jokes about evolution and our monkey cousins.)
But, while the world was in ferment over the question of man's alleged kinship with the monkey, there canie the further startling fact that the President of the British Association also proclaimed his belief in materialism and, inferentially, that there was no life after death. Englishmen had not before realized how widely materialism had spread through England and Europe. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that a majority at least of the leading thinkers had become materialists.
In travelling outside science into metaphysics, Tyndall betrayed a lamentable ignorance of the latter — a parallel case to that of Bishop Wilberforce when he attempted to meddle with science. Martineau, referring to the first quotation above, wrote : " There is no magic in the superlatively little to draw from the universe its last secret. Size is but relative, magnified or dwindled by a glass, variable with the organ of perception : to one being, the speck which only tlie microscope can show us may be a universe ; to another, the solar system but a molecule ; and in the passing from the latter to the former you reach no end of search or beginning of things. You merely substitute a miniature of nature for its life-size without at all showing whence the features arise."
Materialism or naturalism is the theory that the universe is merely a machine, and that nothing exists but matter and motion acting by blind necessity in accordance with natural law. Mind is simply a cerebral process and there is no purpose in the world. Not only is mind merely a function of matter, but also free will is non-existent ; there can be no God, no soul, no survival after death, no ground for inorality and no moral responsibility, and (weirdly enough) no reliance on the validity of our intellectual processes. We are, in fact, left in a hopeless quagmire. We cannot believe that we know anything, or that we know nothing ; that we are real beings, or only " such stuff as dreams are made on " — since we need a mind to have any belief. It seems strange to us to-day that any such creed could have been accepted by the majority of thinkers so recently as, say, forty years ago. As Professor Eddington says (Space, Time and Gravitation), filling space with the hum of machinery was a procedure curiously popular in the nineteenth century.
It was a period, great in science, but very poor in philosophy. Most thinkers of Darwin and Tyndall's time seemed unable to grasp the fact
68 TYNDALL
that causality lies behind all natural law. They failed to see, in particular, that behind evolution there was necessarily some cause of evolution^- and that that cause showed purposive, creative intelligence. Nor did they realize that they were using ftiind, not physical or chemical processes, to prove that mind did not exist. It was only through mind that they could understand those processes, and the facts of evolution, and all other operations of the physical universe ; yet they were engaged in the curious occupation of employing mind to disprove its own existence. It was a near approach to lunacy that the makers of machines should argue that they were machines themselves.
However, in this note it is not proposed to discuss the position as it then was, and the many facts that were overlooked or misunderstood ; I propose only to point out that the ?iezu advances in our knowledge during the last twenty-five years have in themselves made it impossible for any intelligent man to hold the materialist creed,
Herbert Spencer, the greatest thinker of last century, was the first to realize that scientific knowledge was incompatible with materialism. In 1898, in the revised edition of Principles of Biology, he made his great confession that " the processes which go on in living things are in- comprehensible as results of any physical actions known to us. . . . We are obliged to confess that life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms." Since then progress has been rapid ; the whole aspect of the universe has been changed ; and each fresh discovery has not only failed to lessen, but has so far vastly increased
The burden of the mystery Of all this unintelligible world.
Wordsworth.
Tintern Abbey.
Instead of a universe consisting of a small fixed number of irreducible, unchangeable atoms of matter, we now know that matter itself consists of electricity. The atom is a kind of minute solar system, held together by prodigious force ; and one atom is convertible into another as they all consist of similar charges of electricity. As to the mysterious " ether " that fills the relatively vast spaces between those particles of electricity, we know nothing about it, except that it is not matter. The two sup- posed constituents of the universe, matter and motion, have been resolved into one, motion ; and motion — as we know from the theory of relativity — is not absolute, but relative to the mind.
Other facts have also appeared, each one of which suflliciently demon- strates the futility of a materialist theory. One is the immensely im- portant discovery of the Unconscious, as to which I have written at considerable length on p. 170, and need say nothing more here, except that it shows materialism to be a monstrous absurdity.
Another great physical discovery, which is also essentially psychical, is that of Einstein, which alters our whole conception of the physical universe, and proves that it is not something foreign to mind, but essenti- ally one with mind. Space, time and matter are simply forms which the mind has constructed out of its own experience ; and time is not an " independent variable " to be considered apart from space, but is a " fourth dimension." It also demonstrates the wonderful fact that the purely ittental results of the non-Euclidean geometries, hitherto supposed to be merely imaginary, actually correspond with the facts of the physical universe, and give us knowledge that we failed to obtain from the observed phenomena. And it further shows that philosophy also by a purely mental process was right in its conclusion that space and time are, as
SAYCE 69
Kant said, merely forms of experience. In other words, the mind can evolve by its ozv7i iniier powers, and zvithoiit refereiice to physical phenomena, true conceptions of the nature of the universe. This important fact alone puts an end to materialism.
Also opposed to materialism are numbers of other facts in biology and kindred sciences, and in psychology, anthropology, etc., which, as is now realized, show the omnipresence of intelligence. Take, for example, the statement quoted above from Herbert Spencer. It can hardly now be questioned that in the actions of every living organism there is present the idea of " end " or purpose. This concerns biology, which deals with all living organisms ; when we ascend from this science to spheres of knowledge which are peculiar to man, we rise not only above the physico-chemical, but above and beyond the reach of biological laws. This is seen in mathematics, ethics, assthetics, psychology, sociology, metaphysics, and, above all, religion. We, in fact, become entirely removed into the realm of mind.
On the other hand, take an example of a different character — the evidence of survival after death investigated by able men and women, using proper scientific methods, during the forty years the Society for Psychical Research has been at work.
It results from these recent discoveries alone that mind not only exists, but is the one fundamental and supreme fact in the universe.
With this note should be read the note on p. 170.
THE NEW GOSPEL
HAECKELIUS loquitur :
The ages have passed and come with the beat of a measure- less tread And piled up their palace-dome on the dust of the ageless
dead, Since the atom of life first glowed in the breast of eternal
time, And shaped for itself its abode in the womb of the shapeless
slime ; And the years matured its form with slow, unwearying toil. Moulded by sun and storm, and rich with the centuries' spoil, Till the face of the earth was fair, and life grew up into mind. And breathed its earliest prayer to its god in the dawn or
wind. And called itself by the name of man, the master and lord, Who conquers the strength of flame and tempers the spear
and sword ; For the world grows wiser by war, and death is the law of
life, The lowermost rock in the scar is red with the stains of strife.
70 SAYCE
Burst thro' the bounds of sight, and measure the least of
things, Plummet the infinite and make to thy fancy wings ; From crystal, and coral, and weed, up to man in his noblest
race, The weaker shall fail in his need, and the stronger shall hold
his place !
RENANUS loquitur :
Ah ! leave me yet a little while, to watch
The golden glory of the dying day. Till all the purple mountains gleam and catch
The last faint light that slowly steals away.
Too soon the night is on. us ; ay, too soon We know the cloud is born of bUnding mist :
The throne, whereon the gods sat crowned at noon With ruby rays and liquid amethyst.
Is but a vapour, dim and grey, a streak
Of hollow rain that freezes in its fall, A dull, cold shape that settles on the peak.
Icy and stifling as a dead man's pall.
The world's old faith is fairest in its death, For death is fairer oftentimes than life ;
No vulgar passion quivers in the breath : The dead forget their weariness and strife.
Say not that death is even as decay,
A hideous charnel choked with rotting dust ;
The cold white lips are beautiful as spray Cast on an iceberg by the northern gust.
The memories of the past are diadem'd About the brow and folded on the eyes ;
The weary lids beneath are bent and gemm'd With charmed dreams and mystic reveries.
Once more she sits in her imperial chair. And kings and Csesars kneel before her feet.
And clouds of incense fill the heavy air,
And shouts of homage echo thro' the street.
SAYCE 71
Or yet, again, she stretches forth the hand. And men are done to death at her desire ;
The smoke of burning cities dims the land, And limbs are torn or shrivelled in the fire.
Once more the scene is shifted, and the gleam Of eastern suns about her brow is curled ;
Once more she roams a maiden by the stream, Despised of men, the Magdalen of the world.
So scene on scene floats lightly, as a haze
That comes and goes with sudden gust and lull :
Limned with the sunset hues of other days.
They are but dreams ; yet dreams are beautiful.
Archibald Henry Sayce. Academy, Dec. 5, 1885.
As in the two preceding quotations, the subject is the supposed conflict of religion and science. Haeckel (born 1834, recently dead) was the most ruthless of all the biologists in accounting for evolution and all progress by a struggle for existence. This is finely expressed in the six lines beginning, " For the world grows wiser by war." Renan (1823-1892), the French writer, whose love of Christianity survived his belief in it, speaks of the passing away of the old faith as " the golden glory of the dying day," and says that in its death it will be more beautiful than in its life, when it led to passion, persecution and war. The pen- ultimate verse refers to the time when temporal power was removed from the church, and she reverted to the humility, and also the beauty, of primitive Christianity when it came in its morning glory from the East.
The fact that these fine verses are by the great philologist and archaeo- logist, Professor Sayce, who has not publicly appeared in the role of a poet, adds greatly to their interest. The few verses he has published have mostly appeared over the initials " A. H. S." in the old Academy, and he was not known to the public as the author.
Anything about Professor Sayce must be interesting to the reader, and I, therefore, need not apologize for mentioning the following in- cidents, which, I imagine, are known only among his friends. In 1870, during the Franco-German War, Mr. Sayce was ordered to be shot at Nantes as a German spy, and only escaped " by the skin of his teeth." It was just before Gambetta had flown in his balloon out of Paris, and there was no recognized Government in the country. Nantes was full of fugitives, and bands of Uhlans were in the neighbourhood. Mr. Sayce was arrested when walking round the old citadel examining its walls — not realizing that it was occupied by French troops. Fortunately, some ladies of the garrison came in during his examination to see the interesting young prisoner and, after Mr. Sayce had been placed against the wall and a soldier told off to shoot him, they prevailed upon the Commandant to give him a second examination, which ended in his acquittal.
Mr. Sayce was also among the Carlists in the Carlist war of 1873,
72 BYRON— CALVERLEY
and was present at some of the so-called battles which, he says, were dangerous only to the onlookers. He also once had a pitched battle with Bedouins in Syria.
Professor Sayce (he became Professor in 1876) has also the proud distinction of being the only person known to have survived the bite of the Egyptian cerastes asp, which is supposed to have killed Cleopatra. He accidentally trod on the reptile in the desert some three or four miles north of Assouan and was bitten in the leg. Luckily, he happened to be just outside the dahabieh in which he was travelling with three Oxford friends, one of them the late Master of Balliol. The cook had a small pair of red-hot tongs, with which he had been preparing lunch, and Professor Sayce was able to burn the bitten leg down to the bone within two ininutes after the accident ; thus saving his life at the expense of a few weeks' lameness.
That all-softening, overpowering knell, The tocsin of the soul — the dinner bell.
Byron. Don Juan.
But hark ! a sound is stealing on my ear — A soft and silvery sound — I know it well.
Its tinkling tells me that a time is near Precious to me — it is the Dinner Bell.
0 blessed Bell ! Thou bringest beef and beer.
Thou bringest good things more than tongue may tell : Seared is, of course, my heart — but unsubdued Is, and shall be, my appetite for food.
1 go. Untaught and feeble is my pen :
But on one statement I may safely venture : That few of our most highly gifted men
Have more appreciation of the trencher. I go. One pound of British beef, and then
What Mr. Swiveller called a " modest quencher " ; That, " home-returning," I may " soothly say," " Fate cannot touch me : I have dined to-day."
C. S. Calverley. Beer.
These are the two last verses of a parody of Byron's " Don Juan " (see preceding quotation). In each of the last three lines there is a literary reference. The first, of course, is to the happy-go-lucky Dick Swiveller of Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop.
The next reference is to the amusing story about Sir Walter Scott that became known about the time Calverley was writing (1862). Scott,
" OWEN MEREDITH "—CARROLL 73
in his description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight (" Lay of the Last Minstrel "), says :
If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight ;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. . . .
Yet there can be no doubt that he himself had never seen the Abbey by moonlight ! He further tells his readers that they can
Home returning, soothly swear
Was never scene so sad and fair.
They, having seen it, can " soothly " (i.e. truthfully) swear to its moon- light beauty, which was more than he himself could !
Calverley's last line is from Sydney Smith's " Recipe for a Salad " : Oh, herbaceous treat ! 'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat ; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl ; Serenely full the epicure v.ould say, " Fate cannot harm me — I have dined to-day."
This again is an adaptation of Dryden's " Imitation of Horace " (Book III., Ode 29) :
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own ;
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.
We may live without poetry, music and art ; We may live without conscience, and live without heart : We may live without friends ; we may live without books ; But civilized man can not live without cooks.
He may live without books — what is knowledge but grieving ? He may live without hope — what is hope but deceiving ? He may live without love — what is passion but pining ? But where is the man that can live without dining }
Earl of Lytton, " Owen Meredith." Lucile.
" A LOAF of bread," the Walrus said,
" Is what we chiefly need : Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed — Now if you're ready. Oysters dear.
We can begin to feed."
Lewis Carroll. The Walrus and the Carpenter.
74 SWIFT AND OTHERS
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers. o
Gullwer's Travels.
What is experience ? A little cottage made with the
debris of those palaces of gold and marble which we call
our illusions. .
Author not traced.
First of the first, Such I pronounce Fompilia, then as now Perfect in whiteness : stoop thou down, my child. . . . My rose, I gather for the breast of God. . . . And surely not so very much apart. Need I place thee, my warrior-priest. . . .
In thought, word and deed. How throughout all thy warfare thou wast pure, I find it easy to believe : and if At any fateful moment of the strange Adventure, the strong passion of that strait, Fear and surprise may have revealed too much, — As when a thundrous midnight, with black air That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell. Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides Immensity of sv/eetness, — so, perchance. Might the surprise and fear release too much The perfect beauty of the body and soul Thou savedst in thy passion for God's sake. He who is Pity. Was the trial sore ? Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second time ! Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his feet, And so be pedestalled in triumph ?
R. Browning, The Ring and the Book, X.
A young handsome priest, who had led a gay life, was moved by pure motives to rescue a beautiful young wife from a dreadful husband, and he travelled with her for three days to Rome. The husband was following
HAFIZ AND OTHERS 75
with an armed band, the priest was risking disgrace, and the girl was risking death. The mutual danger would in itself tend to draw the fugitives too closely together ; but also the girl had shown herself doubly lovable, for the strain and stress had revealed in her a very beautiful nature — just as a midnight thunderstorm opens and draws rich scent from
Some sheathed
Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides
Immensity of sweetness.
Coleridge has a similar illustration, " Quarrels of anger ending in tears are favourable to love in its spring tide, as plants are found to grow very rapidly after a thunderstorm with rain " (Allsop's Letters, etc., of Coleridge). Coleridge died in 1834, and The Ring and the Book was published in 1 868-1 869 : it is curious that both poets should have been impressed with a fact that appears to have been only recently recognized. In the seventies Lemstrom proved that plants thrive under electricity ; but it was only of recent years that in some agricultural experiments in Germany it was found that electricity was of no benefit to the crops without rain or other fuoisture.
The quotation is from the fine judgment which the Pope delivers.
Every man hath his gift, one a cup of wine, another heart's blood.
Hafiz.
Some poets sing of wine or sensuous enjoyment, but Hafiz pours out his heart's blood in song. Wine and blood are contrasted because of their similar appearance.
As perchance carvers do not faces make, But that away, which hid them there, do take : * Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee, And be his Image, or not his, but He.
John Donne. The Cross.
As sculptors chisel away the marble that hides the statue within, so let " crosses " or afflictions remove the impurities which hide the Christ in us, so that we shall become His image, or not His image, but Himself.
Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes — they were easiest for his feet.
Selden.
* Never did sculptor's dream unfold A form which marble doth not hold In its white block.
Michel Angelo.
76 SHAKESPEARE AND OTHERS
A CHILD of our grandmother Eve, a female, or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
Shakespeare. Love's Labour's Lost, I. i.
The whole World was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman : Man is the whole World, and the Breath of God ; Woman the rib and crooked piece of man.
Sir Thomas Browne. Religio Medici.
Give me but what this ribband bound. Take all the rest the sun goes round !
Edmund Waller. On a Girdle.
A WOMAN is the most inconsistent compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice that I am acquainted with.
Jean Paul Richter. Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces.
If she be made of white and red Her faults will ne'er be known.
Shakespeare. Love's Labour's Lost, I. 2.
God made the world in six days, and then he rested. He
then made man and rested again. He then made woman
and, since then, neither man, woman, nor anything else
has rested. .
Author not traced.
Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me. „ ^t
•^ ■^ Robert Herrick,
To Anthea.
SHELLEY AND OTHERS • 77
He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; Envy and cahimny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again ; From the contagion of the world's slow stain. He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain ; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn. With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
Shelley. Adonais, an Elegy on Keats, XL.
This verse is engraved on Shelley's own monument in the Priory Church at Christchurch, Hampshire.
A LOOSE, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. Green and myself in a lane near Highgate. Green knew him and spoke. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he came back and said, " Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand ! " " There is death in that hand," I said to Green, when Keats was gone ; yet this was, I believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.
S. T. Coleridge. Table Talk.
Keats gives a somewhat different version of this meeting (see Buxton Forman's Poetry and Prose by John Keats, p. 147). He says he walked with Coleridge " at his alderman-after-dinner pace " for nearly two miles. " In those two miles he broached a thousand things [nightin- gales, poetry, metaphysics, nightmen, volition, monsters, mermaids, etc.]. I heard his voice as he came towards me — I heard it as he moved away — I had heard it all the interval. [As to Coleridge's monologue- habit, which Keats apparently did not appreciate, see p. 356.] He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at Highgate."
This was about 1819. It is pathetic, this meeting of two great poets, Keats, who was to die two years afterwards at the early age of twenty- six, and Coleridge, whose few brilliant years of poetic life had long previously ended in slavery to the opium-habit.
The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.
Benjamin Franklin.
78 BUCHANAN
THE BALLAD OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
'TwAS the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay in the Field of Blood ; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Beside the body stood.
Black was the earth by night,
And black was the sky ; Black, black were the broken clouds,
Tho' the red Moon went by. . . .
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot, So grim, and gaunt, and gray.
Raised the body of Judas Iscariot, And carried it away.
For days and nights he wandered on
Upon an open plain. And the days went by like blinding mist.
And the nights like rushing rain.
He wandered east, he wandered west. And heard no human sound ;
For months and years, in grief and tears. He wandered round and round. . . .
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,
Strange, and sad, and tall, Stood all alone at dead of night
Before a lighted hall.
And the wold was white with snow. And his foot-marks black and damp,
And the ghost of the silvern Moon arose, Holding her yellow lamp.
And the icicles were on the eaves. And the walls were deep with white.
And the shadows of the guests within Pass'd on the window light.
BUCHANAN 79
The shadows of the wedding guests
Did strangely come and go, And the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretch 'd along the snow.
The body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretched along the snow ; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Ran swiftly to and fro.
To and fro, and up and down.
He ran so swiftly there. As round and round the frozen Pole
Glideth the lean white bear.
'Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head. And the lights burnt bright and clear —
" Oh, who is that," the Bridegroom said, " Whose weary feet I hear ? "
'Twas one look'd from the hghted hall,
And answered soft and slow, " It is a wolf runs up and down
With a black track in the snow."
The Bridegroom in his robe of white
Sat at the table-head — " Oh, who is that who moans without ? "
The blessed Bridegroom said.
'Twas one looked from the lighted hall,
And answered fierce and low " 'Tis the soul of Judas Iscariot
Gliding to and fro."
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Did hush itself and stand. And saw the Bridegroom at the door
With a light in his hand.
The Bridegroom stood in the open door.
And he was clad in white, And far within the Lord's Supper
Was spread so broad and bright.
8o BUCHANAN
The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and look'd,
And his face was bright to see — " What dost thou here at the Lord's Supper
With thy body's sins ? " said he.
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stood black, and sad, and bare — " I have wandered many nights and days ;
There is no light elsewhere."
'Twas the wedding guests cried out within, And their eyes were fierce and bright —
" Scourge the soul of Judas Iscariot Away into the night ! "
The Bridegroom stood in the open door, And he waved hands still and slow,
And the third time that he waved his hands The air was thick with snow.
And of every flake of falling snow,
Before it touched the ground. There came a dove, and a thousand doves
Made sweet sound.
'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Floated away full fleet, And the wings of the doves that bare it off
Were like its winding-sheet.
'Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,
And beckon'd, smiling sweet ; 'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stole in, and fell at his feet.
" The Holy Supper is spread within.
And the many candles shine, And I have waited long for thee
Before I poured the wine ! "
The supper wine is poured at last.
The lights burn bright and fair, Iscariot washes the Bridegroom's feet.
And dries them with his hair.
R. Buchanan.
CHOLMONDELEY AND OTHERS 8i
Now, as of old, Man by himself is priced :
For thirty pieces Judas sold Himself, not Christ.
Hester Cholmondeley.
I learn from the New Statesman reviewer of the first English Edition that these lines were by Hester, a gifted sister of Mary Cholmondeley. She died at 23.
THE RETURN
A LITTLE hand is knocking at my heart, And I have closed the door. " I pray thee, for the love of God, depart : Thou shalt come in no more."
" Open, for I am weary of the way.
The night is very black ;
I have been wandering many a night and day,
Open — I have come back."
The little hand is knocking patiently ; I listen, dumb with pain. " Wilt thou not open any more to me ? I have come back again."
" I will not open any more. Depart.
I, that once lived, am dead."
The hand that had been knocking at my heart
Was still. " And I .? " she said.
There is no sound, save in the v/inter air The sound of wind and rain. All that I loved in all the world stands there. And will not knock again.
Arthur Symons.
Man must and will have Some Religion, and if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the ReHgion of Satan.
William Blake. Jerusalem.
82 A. SMITH AND OTHERS
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
Alexander Smith. On the Writing of Essays.
It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.
Sydney Smith.
In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstances of their universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed- ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side v/ith the most despised and exploded errors.
S. T. Coleridge.
Aids to Reflection.
Social and moral truth is like one of those inscriptions on tombs, v/hich every one passes by, concerned only with business matters, and which daily become more and more effaced, until some rescuing chisel comes to cut it more deeply into the worn stone, so that all are compelled to see and read it. This chisel is in the hands of a small number of men, who with great determination continue stooping at work on the old inscription, at the risk of being knocked about and crushed against the marble by the careless feet of the passers-by.
Alexandre Vinet.
Vinet (1797-1847) was an important French literary man and theo- logian, born in Switzerland.
H. SMITH 83
ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY AT BELZONI'S EXHIBITION
And thou hast walked about (how strange a story !) In Thebes 's streets, three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory. And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous. . . .
Tell us — for doubtless thou canst recollect — To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame ?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect
Of either pyramid that bears his name ?
Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer ?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ? . . .
Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat. Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass ;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass ;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication. . . .
Since first thy form was in this box extended
We have, above-ground, seen some strange mutations ;
The Roman Empire has begun and ended.
New worlds have risen — we have lost old nations ;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled.
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.
Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread, O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,
And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder ?
If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold ; — A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast.
And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled : — Have children climbed those knees, and kissed that face ? What was thy name and station, age and race ? . . .
84 H. SMITH— ROSSETTI
Why should this worthless tegument endure, If its undying guest be lost for ever ?
O let us keep the soul embalmed and pure In living virtue, that when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
Th' immortal spirit in the skies may bloom !
Horace Smith.
But she is far away Now ; nor the hours of night grown hoar Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day When we shall meet once more.
Oh sweet her bending grace Then when I kneel beside her feet ; And sweet her eyes o'erhanging heaven ; and sweet
The gathering folds of her embrace ; And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face W^hen breaths and tears shall m.eet. . . .
Ah ! by a colder wave On deathlier airs the hour must come Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
Between the lips of the low cave Against that night the lapping waters lave. And the dark lips are dumb.
But there Love's self doth stand. And with Life's weary wings far-flown. And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
Gathers the water in his hand : And they that drink know nought of sky or land But only love alone.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
The Stream's Secret.
These are only a few verses from the poem where the lover is thinking of the time when he will rejoin his lost love in the other world. The last verse is particularly beautiful.
GASCOIGNE AND OTHERS 85
Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here, With Angels' faces, and harmful, hellish hearts. With smiling looks, and deep deceitful thoughts, With tender skins, and stony cruel minds. . . . The younger sort come piping on apace In whistles made of fine enticing wood, Till they have caught the birds for whom they brided.* The elder sort go stately stalking on. And on their backs they bear both land and fee. Castles and Towers, revenues and receipts. Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all. What should these be ? (Speak you, my lovely lord !) They be not men : for why ? they have no beards. They be no boys, which wear such side-long gowns. What be they ? Women, masking in men's weeds, With dutchkin doublets and with jerkins jagged, With Spanish spangs and ruffs set out of France. They be so sure even Wo to Men indeed. High time it were for my poor muse to wink. Since all the hands, all paper, pen and ink. Which ever yet this wretched world possessed, Cannot describe this Sex in colours due.
George Gascoigne.
The Steele Glas, 1576.
I'm not denying the women are foolish : God Almighty made 'em to match the men. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
Adam Bede.
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak ;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think ;
They are slaves v/ho dare not be
In the right with two or three.
J. R. Lov^ELL. Stanzas on Freedom.
* Minced, or practised their affectations.
86 THACKERAY
The Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to the poor, who were hstening with all their might and faith to the preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation ; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience ; and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbhng of honey and Hybla and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead ? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak — the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience ! What is conscience ? Why accept remorse ? What is public or private faith ? Myths alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing and acknow- ledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest farther than a laugh : if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved : if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other — and you alone are to He on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger — you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.
Thackeray. Pendennis, XXIII.
What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, hfting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber ; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself ; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face ; a thing to set children screaming ; — and yet looked at nearher, known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes ! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives : who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous } And we look and behold him instead filled v/ith imperfect virtues :
STEVENSON— TRENCH 87
infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind ; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity ; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea ; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection ; bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy : the thought of duty ; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God ; an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible ; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop.
R. L. Stevenson. Pulvis et Umbra.
A CHARGE
If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem Commission'd by thy absent Lord, and while 'Tis incomplete.
Others would bribe thy needy skill to them — Dismiss them to the street !
Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove, At last be panting on the fragrant verge, But in the track.
Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love — Turn at her bidding back.
When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears, And every spectre mutters up more dire To snatch control
And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears — Then to the helm, O Soul !
Last ; if upon the cold green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway,
And one must perish — let it not be he Whom thou art sworn to obey !
Herbert Trench.
88 WORDSWORTH— MARTINEAU
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 fresh and strong.
Wordsworth. Ode to Duty.
Human nature, trained in the School of Christianity, throws away as false the delineation of piety in the disguise of Hebe, and declares that there is something higher than happiness — that thought which is ever full of care and trouble is better far — that all true and disinterested affection, which often is called to mourn, is better still — that the devoted allegiance of conscience to duty and to God — which ever has in it more of penitence than of joy — is noblest of all.
James Martineau. Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 42.
There is in man a Higher than Love of Happiness ; he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessed- ness ! Was it not to preach forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered ; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the God-like that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom ? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught ; O Heavens ! and broken vv^ith manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it ! O thank thy Destiny for these ; thankfully bear what yet remain ; thou hadst need of them ; the Self in thee needed to l3e an- nihilated. . . . Love not Pleasure ; love God, This is the everlasting yea, wherein all contradiction is solved ; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him. . . . To the Worship of Sorrow, ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been
CARLYLE AND OTHERS 89
generated ? Is it not here ? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God ! This is BeHef ; all else is Opinion. , . . Do the Duty which liest nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty. The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, where- in thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free. The Ideal is in thyself. Carlyle.
Sartor Resartus.
The belief that the sense of duty and moral aspiration arises from within ourselves, and is the cause rather than the result of sociological evolution is far more widespread to-day than in v/hat Carlyle calls his " atheistical century." The " Everlasting Yea " is opposed to the " Everlasting No " of nescience.
He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know
At first sight, if the bird be flown ; But what fair well or grove he sings in now
That is to him unknown. ^^^^^ Vaughan.
Friends Departed. For the subject of the verse see title of poem.
I HAVE seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things ;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation. ,j.
^ Wordsworth.
The Excursion.
90 R. BROWNING AND OTHERS
What would one have ? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance — - Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed. For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me To cover.
R. Browning. Andrea del Sarto.
Andrea del Sarto says that, but for certain unfortunate circumstances, he might have reached the high eminence of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. In heaven he may have another chance to compete with them.
FAME
Their noon-day never knows What names immortal are :
'Tis night alone that shows How star surpasseth star.
J. B. Tabs.
Beneath a summer tree, Her maiden reverie
Has a charm ; Her ringlets are in taste ; What an arm ! and what a waist
For an arm !
With her bridal-wreath, bouquet, Lace farthingale, and gay
Falbala — If Romney's touch be true. What a lucky dog were you.
Grandpapa !
Frederick Locker-Lampson. To my Gra?idmother.
The title adds, " Suggested by a picture by Mr. Romney." The farthingale was a hooped petticoat of the kind we see in portraits of Queen Elizabeth. In Romney's time, the eighteenth century, the farthingale had disappeared and the " hoop," which was practically a crinoline, was in fashion. Falbala is a furbelow or flounce.
COLERIDGE AND OTHERS 91
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a ccdarn cover ! A savage place ! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
S. T, Coleridge. Kiihla Khan.
This and the five following quotations and others through the book are from a small collection of word-pictures, that I had begun to put together.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea, Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream, Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair, With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy.
Shelley, Prometheus Unbound.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square :
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Tennyson. The Princess.
" But show me the child thou callest mine. Is she out to-night in the ghost's sunshine ? "
" In St. Peter's Church she is playing on, At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
" When the moonbeams right through the window go. Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
" She says the rest of them do not stir. But one comes down to play with her."
George MacDonald. Phantasies.
It is a ghost-child who is playing in the great cathedral.
92 C. ROSSETTI— THEOCRITUS
Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other's wings, They lay down in their curtained bed.
Christina Rossetti. Goblin Market.
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn ;
The cow's in the meadow, the sheep in the corn ;
Is this the way you mind your sheep.
Under the haycock fast asleep ?
Nursery Rhyme.
Edward FitzGerald, quoting this in Euphranor, says the " meadow ' the grass reserved for meadowing, or mowing.
THE FEAST OF ADONIS
Gorgo. Is Praxinoe at home }
Praxinoe. My dear Gorgo, at last ! Yes, here I am. Eunoe, find a chair — get a cushion for it.
Gorgo. It will do beautifully as it is.
Praxinoe. Do sit down.
Gorgo. Oh, this gad-about spirit ! I could hardly get to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and ail the carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in uniform. And what a journey it is ! My dear child, you really live too far off.
Praxinoe. It is all that insane husband of mine. He has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and take a hole of a place — for a house it is not — on purpose that you and I might not be neighbours. He is alv/ays just the same — anything to quarrel with one ! anything for spite !
Gorgo. My dear, don't talk so of your husband before the little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. {Talking to the child) Never mind, Zopyrio my pet, she is not talking about papa. (Good heavens, the child does really understand.) Pretty papa !
THEOCRITUS 93
Praxinoe. That " pretty papa " of his the other day (though I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and rouge, brought me home salt instead ; stupid, great, big, interminable animal !
Gorgo. Mine is just the fellow to him. But never mind now, get on your things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the Queen's decorations are some- thing splendid.
Praxinoe, " In grand people's houses everything is grand." What things you have seen in Alexandria ! What a deal you will have to tell to anybody who has never been there !
Gorgo. Come, we ought to be going,
Praxinoe. " Every day is a holiday to people who have nothing to do," Eunoe, pick up your work ; and take care, you lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again ; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch me some water, quick ! I wanted the water first, and the girl brings me the soap. Never mind ; give it me. Not all that, extravagant ! Now pour out the water, stupid ! Why don't you take care of my dress ? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where is the key of the large wardrobe ? Bring it here — quick !
Gorgo. Praxinoe, you can't think how well that dress, made full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did it cost — the dress by itself, I mean ?
Praxinoe. Don't talk of it, Gorgo : more than eight guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it, I have almost worn my life out.
Gorgo. Well, you couldn't have done better.
Praxinoe. Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my hat properly on my head — properly. No, child {to her little boy) I am not going to take you ; there's a bogey on horseback v/ho bites. Cry as much as you like ; I'm not going to have you lamed for life. Now we'll start. Nurse, take the little one and amuse him ; call the dog in, and shut the street door. {They go out.) Good heavens ! what a crowd of people ! How on earth are we ever to get through all this ? They are like ants : you can't count them. My
94 THEOCRITUS
dearest Gorgo, what will become of us ? Here are the Royal Horse Guards. My good man, don't ride over me ! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt upright ; what a vicious one ! Eunoe, you mad girl, do take care ! — that horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad I am now, that I left the child safe at home.
Gorgo. All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them ; and they have gone on to where they are stationed.
Praxinoe. Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes than of anything else in the world. Let us get on ; here's a great crowd coming this way upon us.
Gorgo {to an old woman). Mother, are you from the palace }
Old Woman. Yes, my dears.
Gorgo. Has one a tolerable chance of getting there ?
Old Woman. My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy by dint of trying hard ; trying will do anything in this world.
Gor^o. The old creature has delivered an oracle and disappeared.
Praxinoe. Women can tell you everything about every- thing, even about Jupiter's marriage with Juno !
Gorgo. Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace gates !
Praxinoe. Tremendous ! Take hold of me, Gorgo ; and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis ! — tight hold, or you'll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight to us, Eunoe ! Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! Gorgo, there's my scarf torn right in two. For heaven's sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress !
Stranger. Fll do what I can, but it doesn't depend upon me.
Praxinoe. What heaps of people ! They push like a drove of pigs.
Stranger. Don't be frightened, ma'am, we are all right.
Praxinoe. May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day you live, for the care you have taken of us ! What a
THEOCRITUS 95
kind, considerate man ! There is Eunoe jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push ! Capital ! We are all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had locked himself in with the bride.
Gorgo. Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at that work, how delicate it is ! — how exquisite ! Why, the gods might wear it in heaven.
Praxinoe. Goddess of Spinning ! what hands were hired to do that work ? Who designed those beautiful patterns ? They seem to stand up and move about, as if they were real— as if they were living things, and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature ! And look, look, how charming he lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, that beloved Adonis — Adonis, whom one loves even though he is dead !
Another Stranger. You wretched women, do stop your incessant chatter ! Like turtles, you go on for ever.
Gorgo. Lord, where does the man come from ? What is it to you if we are chatterboxes ? Order about your own servants !
Praxinoe. Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than the one we've got ! We don't the least care for you ; pray don't trouble yourself for nothing.
Gorgo. Be quiet, Praxinoe ! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something first-rate from her. She is going through her airs and graces ready to begin.
Theocritus. Fifteenth Idyll.
This is Matthew Arnold's prose translation of a poem by Theocritus, who Uved in the Third Century B.C., 2200 years ago (see Arnold's Essay on Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentimeiit). I have altered a few words and also omitted part because of its length.
Gorgo, a lady of Alexandria, calls on her friend Praxinoe, to take her to the Festival of Adonis. Greek ladies were allowed to go out on Festival days if veiled and attended, and, therefore, Gorgo and Praxinoe take with them their respective maids, Eutychis and Eunoe, who would no doubt be slave-girls.
Some curious facts may be noted. The wife is kept in seclusion and the husband does the marketing, buying among other things her rouge. Observe how perfunctory are the pretty lady's ablutions (the soap, by the
96 W. C. SMITH AND OTHERS
way, is in the form of paste). The little boy represents the ruling sex and will be removed at an early age from her control. She is disposed to rebel against her lord and master, but takes the utmost care of the important boy-child. W^hile the ladies with their slaves make up their own dresses, the designs and the finest needlework are done by men. The Greek woman in Athens was practically uneducated and regarded as an inferior being ; but these ladies were Dorian Greeks and would no doubt be better treated and have somewhat more freedom — especially in Alex- andria, which was a colony and, therefore, probably less conservative. Although no doubt veiled, their eyes would be visible and, as seen in the East to-day, a pretty woman can always manage to show her beauty, if she chooses. It will be seen that one man is polite to the two young, pretty, richly-dressed ladies, and saves them from being crushed by the crowd, while another is a crusty, grumpy person, who treats them with some rudeness and, in the original, ridicules their Dorian pronunciation. Praxinoe is most grateful to the polite man for what would now be an ordinary act of courtesy.
As regards the conversation, Andrew Lang says : " Nothing can be more gay and natural than the chatter of the women, which has changed no more in two thousand years than the song of birds."
For there is not a lie, spite of God's high decree,
But has made its nest sure on some branch of our tree,
And has some vested right to exist in the land ;
And many will have it the tree could not stand.
If the sticks, straws, and feathers, that sheltered the wrong.
Were swept from the boughs they have cumbered so long.
W. C. Smith. Borlatid Hall.
y
I SHALL be old and ugly one day, and I shall look for man's chivalrous help, but I shall not find it. The bees are very attentive to the flowers till their honey is done, and then they fly over them.
Olive Schreiner. The Story of an African Farm.
You can't turn curds to milk again. Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then ; And, having tasted stolen honey, You can't buy innocence for money.
George Eliot. Felix Holt.
SELDEN AND OTHERS 97
Marriage is a desperate thing ; the Frogs in Aesop were extreme wise : they had a great mind to some Water, but they would not leap into the Well, because they could not get out again.
'Tis reason a Man that will have a Wife should be at the Charge of her Trinkets, and pay all the Scores she sets on him. He that will keep a Monkey, 'tis fit he should pay for the Glasses he breaks.
Selden. Table Talk.
When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now ; but vether it's worth while goin' through so much to learn so little, as the charity-boy said wen he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste. / rayther think it isn't.
Charles Dickens.
Pickwick Papers.
A MAN, who admires a fine woman, has yet no more reason to wish himself her husband, than one, who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.
Pope.
You, Paula, wish to marry Priscus. I am not surprised : you are wise. Priscus does not want to marry you : he is also wise.
Martial, ix. 5.
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
Swift.
H
98 WEBSTER AND OTHERS
[Marriage] is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden : the birds without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.
John Webster.
The White Divel.
This is not original with Webster. It goes back before him to Montaigne, Quitard, and Sir John Davies— and was perhaps a French proverb.
Matrimony is the only game of chance the clergy favour.
Author not traced.
He who marries a wife and he who goes to war must necessarily submit to everything that may happen.
Italian Proverb.
The man who, married once, seeks a second wife, is like a sailor who, after shipwreck, puts off again on the same perilous sea.
Greek Anthology.
Dr. Johnson, speaking of a man who was unhappy in his first marriage and was marrying again, described it as " the triumph of Hope over Experience " (Boswell's Life, year 1770). In H. F. Jones' Life of Samuel Butler, i. 378, Miss Savage writes to Butler, " I agree with the proverb that a man who marries again does not deserve to have lost his first wife." This carries the joke to a revolting extreme.
It is a curious paradox that, although man adores woman and is her willing and devoted slave, he enjoys such cynical statements as those I have put together above.
Seek Love in the pity of others' woe.
In the gentle relief of another's care.
In the darkness of night and the winter's snow.
In the naked and outcast, seek Love there !
William Blake. William Bond.
LOWELL
IN THE TWILIGHT
Men say the sullen instrument, That, from the Master's bow. With pangs of joy or woe, Feels music's soul through every fibre sent,
Whispers the ravished strings More than he knew or meant ;
Old summers in its memory glow ; The secrets of the wind it sings ; It hears the April-loosened springs ; And mixes with its mood All it dreamed when it stood In the murmurous pine-wood. Long ago !
The magical moonlight then
Steeped every bough and cone ; The roar of the brook in the glen
Came dim from the distance blown ; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro With delight as it stood In the wonderful wood. Long ago !
O my life, have we not had seasons That only said, Live and rejoice ? That asked not for causes and reasons.
But made us all feeling and voice ? When we went with the winds in their blowing,
When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years ?
Have we not from the earth drawn juices Too fine for earth's sordid uses ? Have I heard, have I seen All I feel and I know ? Doth my heart overween ? Or could it have been Long ago ?
99
100 LOWELL
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odour from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendour that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere. Of memories that stay not and go not. Like music heard once by an ear That cannot forget or reclaim it, A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know. As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago !
And yet, could I live it over.
This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover. Moon and tide, bee and clover.
As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so. The world should not lack a poet. Such as it had In the ages glad. Long ago !
J. R. Lowell.
Poetry, as the result of imagination, involves a certain amount of mysticism, for mysticism seems to shadow a higher truth than is known to the intellect. In this charming poem the poet, phantasy-dreaming in the twilight, thinks of those experiences which we all seem to have at times, and which appear like memories of a past existence. He begins with that mysterious instrument of a mysterious art, the violin, and pictures in beautiful language its past life as it stood in the forest. He sees in the marvellous music that it gives forth in the hands of a master, not only an expression of the artist's soul, but also an enrichment of that expression by the violin's own memories of its forest life.*
In this respect there is a curious coincidence between this poem, which was published in 1869, and Leigh Hunt's " Paganini," published
* H. R. Haweis, himself a fine violinist, says o£ this strangely human instrument, " It wiU often seem as if the player found quite as much power as he brought ; and, if at times he dictates to the violin, the violin at other times seems to subdue him, and carry him away with its own sweetness, until he forgets his own mind and follows the lead and suggestion of his marvellous companion " [Music and Morals, p. 394).
BRADLEY loi
in 1834. In the latter poem Leigh Hunt gives a wonderfully fine descrip- tion of Paganini's violin-playing, in which the following lines occur :
Or he would fly as if from all the v/orld
To be alone and happy, and you should hear
His iiistniment become a tree far ojj,
A nest of birds and sunbeams, sparkling both.
The third verse should appeal to all who remember their experiences before " the years had brought the inevitable yoke." We have all had times in our youth when we seemed to be carried back to a former primeval unity with nature (as the violin to its original tree in the forest), and to be one with mother-earth :
When we went with the winds in their blowing,
When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years.
Then come other dim memories of past existences, which the poet feels he has lived somewhere — even as
Maiden and lover. Moon and tide, bee and clover.
Although such strange phantasies seem quite unfamiliar and, indeed, wildly extravagant, yet they are all delightful as the outcome of poetic imagination.
And now, when all is said, the question will still recur, though now in quite another sense, What does poetry mean ? This unique expression, which cannot be replaced by any other, still seems to be trying to express something beyond itself. And this, we feel, is also what the other arts, and religion, and philosophy are trying to express : and that is what impels us to seek in vain to translate the one into the other. About the best poetry, and not only the best, there floats an atmosphere of infinite suggestion. The poet speaks to us of one thing, but in this one thing there seems to lurk the secret of all. He said what he meant, but his meaning seems to beckon away beyond itself, or rather to expand into something boundless which is only focussed in it ; something also which, we feel, would satisfy not only the imagination, but the whole of us ; that some- thing within us, and without, which everywhere
. . . makes us seem To patch up fragments of a dream. Part of which comes true, and part Beats and trembles in the heart.*
* From a fragment of Shelley's, published in Gamett's Relics of Shelley.
102 BRADLEY AND OTHERS
Those who are susceptible to this effect of poetry find it not only, perhaps not most, in the ideals which she has sometimes described, but in a child's song by Christina Rossetti about a mere crown of wind-flowers, and in tragedies like Lear, v/here the sun seems to have set for ever. They hear this spirit murmuring its undertone through the Aeneid, and catch its voice in tlie song of Keats's nightingale, and its light upon the figures on the Urn, and it pierces them no less in Shelley's hopeless lament, " O world, O life, O time," than in the rapturous ecstasy of his " Life of Life." This all-embracing perfection cannot be expressed in poetic words or words of any kind, nor yet in music or in colour, but the suggestion of it is in much poetry, if not all ; and poetry has in this suggestion, this " meaning," a great part of its value. We do it wrong, and we defeat our own purposes when we try to bend it to them :
We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence ; For it is as the air invulnerable. And our vain blows malicious mockery.
It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not speak at our bidding, nor answer in our language. It is not our servant ; it is our master.
A. C. Bradley. Oxford Lectures on Poetry.
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ; — be it so !
Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour : And if, as toward the silent tomb we go.
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower. We feel that we are greater than we know.
Wordsworth. After-Thought.
There are more Fools than Knaves in the World. Else the Knaves would not have enough to live upon.
Samuel Butler.
COLERIDGE— THOMPSON 103
I AM especially pleased with their freundin [the German word meaning a female friend], which unlike the arnica of the Romans, is seldom used but in its best and purest sense. Now I know it will be said that a friend is already something more than a friend, when a man feels an anxiety to express to himself that this friend is a female ; but this I deny — in that sense at least in which the objection will be made. I would hazard the impeachment of heresy, rather than abandon my belief that there is a sex in our souls as well as in their perishable garments ; and he who does not feel it, never truly loved a sister — nay, is not capable even of loving a wife as she deserves to be loved, if she indeed be worthy of that holy name.
S. T. Coleridge. Biographia Liter aria, " Letter to a Lady."
Coleridge also says : " The qualities of the sexes correspond. The man's courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude again is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. Can it be true what is so constantly affirmed, that there is no sex in souls ? — I doubt it, I doubt it exceedingly." — Table Talk.
But surely Coleridge might have found the best proof of his contention in the nature of children, the small boy who fights with his fists, plays with tin soldiers and despises " girls," and the girl-child who loves her doll and her pretty clothes. See next quotation.
O Thou most dear !
Who art thy sex's complex harmony
God-set more facilely ;
To thee may love draw near
Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility : Thou Perseus' Shield wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman's fateful-fair allure ! Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free ; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The bared limbs of the rebukeless mind. Wild Dryad, all unconscious of thy tree.
With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole ; Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole.
Who wear'st thy femineity Light as entrailed blossoms, that shalt find It erelong silver shackles unto thee.
I04 THOMPSON— POPE
Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul ; —
As hoarded in the vine Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze : —
In whom the mystery which lures and sunders ;
Grapples and thrusts apart ; endears, estranges, — The dragon to its own Hesperides —
Is gated under slow-revolving changes. Manifold doors of heavy-hinged years.
So once, ere Heaven's eyes were filled with wonders To see Laughter rise from Tears, Lay in beauty not yet mighty, Couched in translucencies, The antenatal Aphodrite, Caved magically under magic seas ; Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.
Francis Thompson. Sister Songs.
Francis Thompson is one of the " difficult " poets who repay study. Here he says that, in the young girl, sex appears in a less complex form than in the woman. Just as Perseus could safely look at the reflection on his shield of the fatal Medusa's head, so — mirrored in the girl — we can view without risk the fateful attractiveness of womanhood. Nothing conceals her open, innocent nature, gentle as a girl, free as a boy. She is the Dryad, the Nymph who lives in the tree and is born and dies with it, but is as yet unconscious of the tree, that is, of her sex. Her " young sex is yet but in her soul," and is like the juice of the grape which has not yet fermented into wine, or the calm air which sleeps undisturbed. The m^'stery of womanhood, which attracts and yet, in its own protection, repulses man, will not come to her until after the changes of years. It is the Aphrodite lying in unawakened beauty before she rises as a goddess from the sea. (" Facilely " appears to have the strained meaning " easy to understand " or " simply " ; the word " gated," " confined," is a curious use of a university word : the Oxford or Cambridge under- graduate, who has misbehaved, may be " gated " for a period, i.e. con- fined to the precincts of his own college. " The dragon to its own Hesperides " — the Hesperides were maidens who guarded the golden apples of love and fruitfulness, which Earth had given to Hera on her marriage to Zeus. The maidens were protected by a dragon. Here the dragon is the maiden's own sensitive reserve and self-protecting nature, which enable her to guard herself. " Conched," Aphrodite is lying in her shell.)
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer when once we know them.
Pope.
THOMSON— SEELEY 105
DAY
Waking one morning In a pleasant land, By a river flowing Over golden sand : —
Whence flow ye, waters, O'er your golden sand ? We come flowing From the Silent Land.
Whither flow ye, waters, O'er your golden sand ? We go flowing To the Silent Land,
And what is this fair realm ? A grain of golden sand In the great darkness Of the Silent Land.
James Thomson (" B.V.").
This is a version of an old theme, which many of us first learnt in our school-days from Green's Short History of the English People. There we read how the Wise Men of Northumbria met together in a.d. 627 to consider whether they would adopt the new faith of Christianity, which King Edwin had already accepted. The narrative continues : " So seems the life of man, O King," burst forth an aged Ealdorman, " as a sparrow's flight through the hall when you are sitting at meat in winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth but the icy rain- storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then, flying forth from the other, vanishes into the wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight ; but what is before it. what after it, we know not."
Compare the ancient with the modern world ; " Look on this picture, and on that." One broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet " holy." In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who besides being virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaff"ected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a vicious
io6 SEELEY AND OTHERS
thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time of Christ where a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed ? or can Christianity die ?
Sir J. R. Seeley. Ecce Homo.
The quotation from Hamlet should read, " Look here, upon this picture, and on this."
There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, " Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will ; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children,"
Olive Schreiner. The Story of an African Farm.
. . . That pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a coimnoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.
George Eliot. Middlemarch.
What is the life of man ? Is it not to turn from side to side ? From sorrow to sorrow ? To button up one cause of vexation and unbutton another ?
Sterne. Tristram Shandy.
I KNOW thy heart by heart.
P. J. Bailey. Festus.
ELIOT AND OTHERS 107
If there are two things not to be hidden^ — love and a cough — I say there is a third, and that is ignorance, when one is obUged to do something besides wagging his head.
George Eliot. Romola.
In George Eliot's story Nello is quoting the Latin proverb, Amor tussisqiie iion celantur. It is also found in George Herbert's Jacula Prudentian, 1640. The same proverb appears with all sorts of variations, " love and a sneeze," " love and snioke," " love and a red nose," " love and poverty," etc., being the things that cannot be hidden. " Love and murder will out " (Congreve, The Double Dealer, Act IV. 2).
The gods are brethren. Wheresoe'er They set their shrines of love or fear, In Grecian woods, by banks of Nile, Where cold snows sleep or roses smile, The gods are brethren. Zeus the Sire Was fashioned of the self-same fire As Odin ; He, whom Ind brought forth, Hath his pale kinsman east and north ; And more than one, since life began. Hath known Christ's agony for Man. The gods are brethren. Kin by fate. In gentleness as well as hate, 'Mid heights that only Thought may climb
They come, they go ; they are, or seem ; Each, rainbow'd from the rack of Time,
Casts broken lights across God's Dream.
R. Buchanan. Balder the Beautiful.
I KNOW, of late experience taught, that him
Who is my foe I must but hate as one
Whom I may yet call Friend : and him who loves me
Will I but serve and cherish as a man
Whose love is not abiding. Few be they
Who, reaching friendship's port, have there found rest.
Sophocles. Ajax.
This is from C. S. Calverley's fine translation of the speech of Ajax.
io8 MAINE AND OTHERS
[Referring to those who insist on the practical as against the theoretical^ This soHtary term [" practical "] serves a large number of persons as a substitute for all patient and steady thought ; and, at all events, instead of meaning that which is useful as opposed to that which is useless, it constantly signifies that of which the use is grossly and immediately palpable, as distinguished from that of which the usefulness can only be discerned after attention and exertion.
Sir Henry Maine.
As psychology comprises all our sensibilities, pleasures, affections, aspirations, capacities, it is thought on that ground to have a special nobility and greatness, and a special power of evoking in the student the feelings themselves. The mathematician, dealing with conic sections, spirals, and differential equations, is in danger of being ultimately resolved into a function or a co-efficient : the metaphysician, by investigating conscience, must become conscientious ; driving fat oxen is the way to grow fat,
Alexander Bain. Contemporary Review, April 1877.
There is a crude absurd materialism abroad which hasn't yet learned the fundamental difference between Mind and Matter. It is altogether incomprehensible how any material processes can beget sensations and feelings and thoughts ; it is altogether incomprehensible how you arose or / arose. Listen to Spencer : — " Were we compelled to choose between the alternatives of translating mental phenomena into physical phenomena, or of translating physical phenomena into mental phenomena, the latter alternative would seem the more preferable of the two. , , . Hence though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols."
Richard Hodgson. Letter, March 21, 1880.
MARTINEAU AND OTHERS 109
[Men are] dragged along the physiological history, because easy to conceive, and baffled by the spiritual, because it has no pictures to help it.
James Martineau. Hours of Thought, i. 100.
Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl ?
Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ?
Malvolio. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
Clown. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness.
Shakespeare. Tzvelfth Night, IV. 2.
As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, " That, that is, is."
Shakespeare. Tzvelfth Night, IV. 2.
WHAT AM I ?
The aggregate of feelings and ideas, constituting the mental /, have not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them together as a whole ; but the /, which con- tinuously survives as the subject of these changing states, is that portion of the Unknowable Power, which is statically conditioned in [my particular one of those] special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically-conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power called energy.
Herbert Spencer. Principles of Psychology, 3rd ed., ii. 504.
The heading and words in brackets are mine. As the reader may at any time be asked, " What are you ? " it would be well to be ready with a simple reply.
no SPENCER
WHAT IS LOVE ?
The passion which unites the sexes ... is the most compound, and therefore the most powerful of all the feehngs. Added to the purely physical elements of it are, first, those highly complex impressions produced by per- sonal beauty. . . . With this there is united the complex sentiment which we term affection — a sentiment which, as it can exist between those of the same sex, must be re- garded as an independent sentiment. . . . Then there is the sentiment of admiration, respect, or reverence. . . . There comes next the feeHng called love of approbation. To be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired above all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree passing every previous experience. . . . Further, the allied emotion of self-esteem comes into play. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment from, and sway over, another is a proof of power which cannot fail agreeably to excite the amour propre. Yet again, the proprietary feeling has its share in the general activity : there is the pleasure of possession — the two belong to each other. Once more, the relation allows of an extended liberty of action. Towards other persons a restrained behaviour is requisite. Round each there is a subtle boundary that may not be crossed — an individuality on which none may trespass. But in this case the barriers are thrown down ; and thus the love of unrestrained activity is gratified. Finally there is an exaltation of the sympathies. Egoistic pleasures of all kinds are doubled by another's sympathetic participation ; and the pleasures of another are added to the egoistic pleasures. Thus, round the physical feehng, forming the nucleus of the whole, are gathered the feelings produced by personal beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, of sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally tending to reflect their excite- ments on one another, unite to form the mental state we call Love.
Herbert Spencer.
Principles of Psychology, 3rd ed., vol. i. 487. The heading is, of course, mine — not Spencer's.
R. BROWNING AND OTHERS iii
New truths, old truths ! sirs, there is nothing new possible to be revealed to us in the moral world ; we know all we shall ever know : and it is for simply reminding us, by their various respective expedients, how we do know this and the other matter, that men get called prophets, poets, and the like, A philosopher's life is spent in dis- covering that, of the half-dozen truths he knew when a child, such an one is a lie, as the world states it in set terms ; and then, after a weary lapse of years, and plenty of hard- thinking, it becomes a truth again after all, as he happens to newly consider it and view it in a different relation with the others : and so he restates it, to the confusion of some- body else in good time. As for adding to the original stock of truths, — impossible ! ^ tj
A Soul's Tragedy.
When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said.
Byron. Don Juan, Canto XI.
The law of equal freedom which Herbert Spencer deduces is binding only upon those who admit both that human happiness is the Divine Will, and that we should act in accordance with the Divine Will. Why should I obey this law ? Because without such obedience human happiness cannot be complete. Why should I aim at human happiness ? Because human happiness is the Divine Will, The inexorable why pursues us here — Why should I aim at the fulfilment of the Divine Will } To this question there seems no satisfactory reply but that it is for my own happiness to do so. ^^^^^^^ Hodgson.
Unpublished Essay, 1879.
He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly. g^^^^ ^^^^^^
Hudibras, I. i. 149.
112 HODGSON AND OTHERS
I HAVE no ambition to wander into the inane and usurp the sceptre of the dim Hegel, situated Nowhere, with pure Nothing behind him, and pure Being before him, stead- fastly and vainly endeavouring with his Werden to stop the sand-flowing of smiling Time.
Richard Hodgson. Early Unpublished Essay.
Werden in Hegel is usually translated " Becoming." To Hegel the truth of the world is found in life or movement, not in Being which is changeless, but tells and does nothing.
The very law which moulds a tear And bids it trickle from its source, — That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course.
Samuel Rogers. On a Tear.
" You remember Tom Martin, Neddy ? Bless my dear eyes," said Mr. Roker, shaking his head slowly from side to side, and gazing abstractedly out of the grated window before him, as if he were fondly recalling some peaceful scene of his early youth ; " it seems but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down Fox-under-the-hill, by the wharf there. I think I can see him now, a-coming up the Strand between the two street-keepers, a little sobered by his bruising, with a patch o' winegar and brown paper over his right eyelid, and that 'ere lovely bull-dog, as pinned the little boy arterwards, a-following at his heels. What a rum thing Time is, ain't it, Neddy ? "
Charles Dickens. Pickwick Papers.
Mr. Roker is a turnkey in the Fleet prison.
There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort, were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators.
Samuel Johnson.
THOMSON— BLAKE 113
WILLIAM BLAKE
He came to the desert of London town
Grey miles long ; He wander'd up and he wander'd down,
Singing a quiet song.
He came to the desert of London Town,
Mirk miles broad ; He wandered up and he wandered down,
Ever alone with God.
There were thousands and thousands of human kind
In this desert of brick and stone : But some were deaf and some were blind.
And he was there alone.
At length the good hour came ; he died
As he had lived, alone : He was not miss'd from the desert wide, —
Perhaps he was found at the Throne.
James Thomson (" B.V.").
The desert of London Town — Magna civitas, magna solitudo : " a great city is a great solitude."
It is strange to think that these verses (and especially the last verse) were written bv the pessimist who wrote in all sincerity the terrible lines in Pt. VIII. of" The City of Dreadful Night."
Farewell, green fields and happy grove, Where flocks have ta'en delight ; Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angels bright ;
Unseen, they pour blessing
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
They look in every thoughtless nest, Where birds are covered warm ; They visit caves of every beast, To keep them all from harm :
114 BLAKE— HODGSON
If they see any weeping That should have been sleeping, They pour sleep on their head, And sit down by their bed.
When wolves and tigers howl for prey, They pitying stand and weep, Seeking to drive their thirst away, And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful.
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.
And there the lion's ruddy eyes Shall flow with tears of gold, And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold.
Saying, " Wrath, by His meekness.
And, by His health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day."
William Blake. Night.
[Speaking of an Essay on Wordsworth he is about to write for some Melbourne society.] I purpose describing briefly the poetic tendencies, or rather the unpoetic tend- encies, of the 1 8th Century, and the new school beginning to manifest itself in Cowper. I shall then refer to W.'s principles — shall banish to a future time the working out of the psychological connection between forms of nature and the human soul — shall banish also the feelings, the elementary feelings, of humanity, which W. drew powerful attention to, and confine myself to pointing out those characteristics in external nature which he took note of. These produce corresponding feelings in the " human," and some of them are beauty, silence and calm, joyousness, generosity, freedom, grandeur, and Spirituality. These are found in Nature, and W. saw them, and in the growing familiarity with them a man's soul becomes beautiful, calm, joyous, generous, free, grand, and spiritual. The first ones, of course, all depend on and grow from the last, and the
HODGSON— BLAKE 115
Spirituality is God immanent. This last, as the root of all the others, will merit special attention — it exhibits W.'s poetico-philosophy so far as it regards the work of Nature upon man ; and includes too the Platonic Reminiscence business. [Here follows personal chit-chat.] I think we might add the " supreme loftiness of labour " to the fore- going elements in Nature. In the Gipsies (I give both readings) :
O better wrong and strife, Better vain deeds or evil than such life !
The silent heavens have goings-on ;
The stars have tasks — but these have none ! ^
Oh, better wrong and strife (By nature transient) than this torpid life : Life which the very stars reprove As on their silent tasks they move.
R. Hodgson. Letter, 1877.
In 1877 Blake was little appreciated. (I remember only that in our children's books we had " Tiger, Tiger burning bright " — and it was a strange thing to include in such books a poem which raises the problems of the existence of evil and the nature of God.) Hence it will be evident why so keen a student of poetry as Hodgson did not couple Blake with Cowper as a precursor of the Romantic Revival. As a matter of fact, Blake had more of the " Romantic " spirit than Cowper, and really preceded him, for the poor verse that Cowper published the year before Blake's Poetical Sketches need not be considered. While still in his teens Blake wrote (" To the Muses ") :
. . . Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry,
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you ! The languid strings do scarcely move.
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
Curiously enough, Gray also had in him an element of the Romantic which he suppressed. It is very remarkable that in his " Elegy " (published 175 1) he cut out the following verse :
There scattered oft, the earliest of the year.
By hands unseen are showers of violets found ;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there. And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
A FOOL sees not the same tree as a wise man sees.
William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
ii6 PATMORE— SOUTH
THE TOYS
My little son, who looked from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
I struck him, and dismissed
With hard words and unkissed,
— His mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep.
With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan.
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own ;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach.
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells.
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I prayed
To God, I wept, and said :
Ah ! when at last we lie with tranced breath.
Not vexing Thee in death.
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys.
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou 'It leave Thy wrath, and say,
" I will be sorry for their childishness."
Coventry Fatmore.
We may compare the soul to a linen cloth. It must be first washed to take off its native hue and colour, and to make it white ; and afterwards it must be ever and anon washed to preserve and to keep it white.
Robert South.
VIRGIL AND OTHERS 117
Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves, Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis, oves, Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes, Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra, boves.
(So you, birds, build nests — not for yourselves, So you, sheep, grow fleeces — not for yourselves, So you, bees, make honey — not for yourselves, So you, oxen, draw the plough — not for yourselves.)
Virgil.
According to Donatus, Virgil wrote a couplet in praise of Caesar and posted it anonymously on the portals of the palace (31 B.C.). Bathyllus gave himself out as the author of this couplet, and on that account received a present from Caesar. Next night Sic vos non vobis (" So you, not for you ") was found written four times in the same place. The Romans were puzzled as to what was meant by these words, until Virgil came forward and completed the verse — adding a preliminary line, Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honor es, " I wrote the lines, another wears the bays."
Shelley in " Song to the Men of England " wrote as a socialist :
The seed ye sow, another reaps ; The wealth ye find, another keeps ; The robes ye weave, another wears ; The arms ye forge, another bears.
In previous verses he refers to bees, and, of course, the above quotation was in his mind.
A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and
struggling upwards, And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered
cork of Propriety :
He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it
tasteth of the cork. ^ o ^
C. S. Calverley.
Imitating the now-forgotten Martin Tupper. The reference is to the artificial, affected behaviour imposed upon girls at that time.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Wordsworth. Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.
ii8 LYALL
MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of
a God ? Westward across the ocean, and Northward across the snow. Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest
know ?
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a
gathering storm ; In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are
seen. Yet we all say, " Whence is the message, and what may the
wonders mean ? "
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings, As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient
kings ; And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry Of those who are heav}'-laden, and of cowards loth to die.
For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of
the hills. Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that
kills ; Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown. We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns
hollow and grim. And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the
twilight dim ; And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest, Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and
a rest ?
The path, ah ! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide ?
The haven, ah ! who has known it } for steep is the moun- tain side.
Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.
LYALL 119
Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient
name, Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died
in flame ; They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits
who guard our race. Ever I watch and worship — they sit with a marble
face.
And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering
priests, The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts ! What have they wrung from the Silence ? Hath even a
whisper come Of the secret. Whence and Whither ? Alas ! for the gods
are dumb.
Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the
uttermost sea } " The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your
message to me ? " It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the
heavens began, How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was
man.
I had thought, " Perchance in the cities where the rulers
of India dwell. Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth
with a spell. They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured
the unknown main — " Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest
is vain.
Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the
dreamer awake ? Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the
mirror break ? Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered
and gone From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning
are level and lone ?
120 LYALL— HODGSON
Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and
the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the
rolling world ? The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence
and sleep With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices
of women who weep.
Sir Alfred Lyall.
This poem appeared in Cornhill, Sept. 1877, with the title, " Medita- tions of a Hindu Prince and Sceptic " (see next quotation).
MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE AND SCEPTIC
I THINK till I weary with thinking, said the sad-eyed Hindu
King, But I see but shadows around me, illusion in everything.
How knowest thou aught of God, of his favour or his wrath ? Can the little fish tell what the lion thinks, or map out the eagle's path ?
Can the finite the infinite search, — did the blind discover the
stars ? Is the thought that I think a thought, or a throb of the
brain in its bars ?
For aught that my eye can discern, your god is what you
think good. Yourself flashed back from the glass when the light pours on
it in flood !
You preach to me of his justice, and this is his realm, you say, Where the good are dying of hunger, and the bad gorge every day.
You tell me he loveth mercy, but the famine is not yet gone, — That he hateth the shedder of blood, yet he slayeth us, every one.
HODGSON AND OTHERS 121
You tell me the soul must live, that spirit can never die, If he was content when I was not, why not when I've passed by?
You say that I must have a meaning ! So has dung, — and
its meaning is flowers : What if our lives are but nurture for souls that are higher
than ours ?
When the fish swims out of the water, when the bird soars
out of the blue,
Man's thought shall transcend man's knowledge, and your
God be no reflex of you ! t^ tt
^ Richard Hodgson.
In the former editions I did not ascribe these verses to Hodgson because, as I explained, Mrs. Piper, the trance-medium, believed he was not the author. She says he gave her a copy (which she has since lost) signed with some one else's initials. To explain why I am satisfied she is mistaken, I would require to set out at length facts of a private nature, but I may say that I have a copy of the verses in Hodgson's writing, with no signature — and, therefore, presumably his own.
Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony. . . . Even that vulgar and Tavern Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer. . . . There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers : it is an Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creatures of God ; such a melody to the ear as the whole World, well under- stood, would afl^ord the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds
in the ears of God. o rn t>
Sir Thomas Browne.
Religio Medici.
Ambition tempts to rise, Then whirls the wretch from high To bitter Scorn a sacrifice And grinning Infamy.
Thomas Gray. On a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
Slightly altered verbally to admit of quotation.
122 A. SMITH
The present writer . . . was seated in a railway- carriage, five minutes or so before starting, and had time to con- template certain waggons or trucks filled with cattle, drawn up on a parallel line, and quite close to the window at which he sat. The cattle wore a much-enduring aspect ; and, as he looked into their large, patient, melancholy eyes, — for, as before mentioned, there was no space to speak of intervening, — a feeling of puzzlement arose in his mind. . . . The much-enduring animals in the trucks opposite had unquestionably some rude twilight of a notion of a world ; of objects they had some unknown cognizance ; but he could not get behind the melancholy eye within a yard of him and look through it. How, from that window, the world shaped itself, he could not discover, could not even fancy ; and yet, staring on the animals, he was conscious of a certain fascination in which there lurked an element of terror. These wild, unkempt brutes, with slavering muzzles, penned together, lived, could choose between this thing and the other, could be frightened, could be enraged, could even love and hate ; and gazing into a placid, heavy counte- nance, and the depths of a patient eye, not a yard away, he was conscious of an obscure and shuddering recognition of a life akin so far with his own. But to enter into that life imaginatively, and to conceive it, he found impossible. Eye looked upon eye, but the one could not flash recognition on the other ; and, thinking of this, he remembers, with what a sense of ludicrous horror, the idea came, — what, if looking on one another thus, some spark of recognition could be elicited ; if some rudiment of thought could be detected ; if there were indeed a point at which man and ox could meet and compare notes ? Suppose some gleam or scintillation of humour had lighted up the unwinking, amber eye ? Heavens, the bellow of the weaning calf would be pathetic, shoe-leather would be forsworn, the eating of roast meat, hot or cold, would be cannibalism, the terrified world would make a sudden dash into vege- tarianism ! Alexander Smith.
On the Importance of Man to Himself.
Does not this give the reason why we do not eat dogs and horses ? We, more than other nations, recognize in the horse, as well as in the dog, a life and intelligence akin to our own. We also believe that both animals reciprocate the affection we feel towards them. (Coleridge in Table Talk says : " The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a CTopyq or affection upwards to man.")
MONTAIGNE AND OTHERS 123
When I am playing with my Cat, who knowes whether
she have more sport in dallying with me, than I have in
gaming with her ? We entertaine one another with mutual
apish trickes : If I have my houre to begin or to refuse,
so hath she hers. ,;,
Montaigne.
Bk. II., ch. 12.
THE LAMB
Little lamb, who made thee ?
Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bade thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead ; Gave thee clothing of delight. Softest clothing, woolly, bright ; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice ?
Little lamb, who made thee ?
Dost thou know who made thee ?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee ;
Little lamb, I'll tell thee ; He is called by thy name. For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee !
Little lamb, God bless thee !
William Blake.
Who can wrestle against Sleep ? Yet is that giant very
gentleness. ,;, -t.
^ Martin Tupper.
Of Beauty.
Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh, what were man ? a world without a sun !
Thomas Campbell. Pleasures of Hope, Pt. II.
124 LOWELL AND OTHERS
One summer hour abides, what time I perched, Dappled with noon-day, under simmering leaves, And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled, Denouncing me an alien and a thief.
J. R. Lowell.
The Cathedral.
O WHAT are these Spirits that o'er us creep. And touch our eyelids and drink our breath ?
The first, with a flower in his hand, is Sleep ; The next, with a star on his brow, is Death.
R. Buchanan, Balder the Beautiful.
ON A FINE MORNING
Whence comes Solace ? — Not from seeing
What is doing, sufl^ering, being.
Not from noting Life's conditions.
Nor from heeding Time's monitions ; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the Gleam Whereby gray things golden seem.
Thus do I this heyday, holding Shadows but as lights unfolding, As no specious show this moment With its iridized embowment * ;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan ;
Proof that earth was made for man.
Thomas Hardy.
This poem is interesting as showing Mr. Hardy in an optimistic mood. It is also in my opinion one of the best of his lyrics — yet he has omitted it from the Selected Poems and also from Late Lyrics and Earlier Poems.
It is a true statement (although Mr. Hardy presumably does not now approve of it) that the earth was made for man. It expresses
* In the Mellstock edition " iris6d embowment." It means the rainbow-hued framing or atmosphere of a beautiful morning.
HARDY AND OTHERS 125
the oneness of the universe, which is not complete until it includes a sentient and rational being. Man (as also any other intelligent beings that may exist) is organic to the universe. He is, as it were, an organ of the w'orld, through which it beholds itself. Nature has, in fact, developed an organ out of her own substance, namely man, by which she comes to life and becomes conscious of herself and enters into the joy of her ozvn being (see Pringle-Pattison's The Idea of God, chap. vi.). " Where man is not, nature is barren " (William Blake, " The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ").
" The Dream . . . the Gleam " : Mr. Hardy had in his mind Words- worth's lines in " Peele Castle " :
The gleam. The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream.
And also the great Ode on " Intimations of Immortality from Recollec- tions of Early Childhood " :
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light. The glory and the freshness of a dream.
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? W^here is it now, the glory and the dream ?
The Oxford Dictionary under " Gleam " quotes from Tryon's Way to Health : " The white clear bright Gleam in every Creature . . . does arise and proceed from the divine Principle."
Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — ■ He hath awakened from the dream of Hfe — 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable life.
Shelley. Adonais, XXXIX.
That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture !
R. Browning. Home- Thoughts from Abroad.
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
Shenstone.
126 BENTHAM
Of two opposite methods of action, do you desire to know which should have the preference ? Calculate their effects in pleasures and pains, and prefer that which promises the greater sum of pleasures.
Think not that a man will so much as lift up his little finger on your behalf, unless he sees his advantage in it.
Jeremy Bentham.
These cold-blooded and repulsive aphorisms are typical of Bentham's Utilitarian philosophy, from which all sense of duty and moral aspiration were excluded. It is strange that these views should be held by a great thinker who was himself of benevolent character. Such a doctrine could not have survived to my time, had it not been supplemented by John Stuart Mill (i 806-1 873), who gave a different place to the humanist element. While still adhering to Bentham's doctrine that there is no good but pleasure and no evil but pain, he introduced as the higher forms of pleasure those derived from the wish for self-culture and the desire to satisfy our mental and moral aims. He gave priority to all the sympathetic and altruistic motives that govern our actions. Whereas Bentham held that all pleasures were equal and could be counted in one column, Mill said that they differed in quality, that they could no more be added up in one column than pounds, shillings and pence ; that, in fact, there is no equivalent for a higher pleasure in any quantity of a lower one.
This was typical of Mill's sincerity ; but he did not see that his addi- tions were fatal to Bentham's doctrine and to hedonism generally. How, for instance, is a higher pleasure to be known for a higher ? In what respect is an intellectual pleasure or the satisfaction of doing one's duty of higher quality than the gratification of the senses ? To ascertain this it is necessary to pass from the pleasure itself to the thing that gives the pleasure, or, in other words, to the character that finds the pleasure. Many illustrations of this might be given. In one of Sir Alfred Lyall's poems, which is founded on fact, an Englishman who has been captured by Arabs has no religious belief ; his loved ones are waiting his return ; he can save his life if he will only repeat the Mahomedan formula ; if he dies no one will know of his self-sacrifice : yet he decides to die for the honour of England.
However, Bentham's careful calculus of equal pleasures and pains, " push-pin " being " worth as much as poetry," * came to an end through Mill, and Mill at once made way for Spencer on the one hand, and T. H. Green on the other ; both of these rejected the calculation of pleasures or happiness as the standard of right either for the individual or the greatest number. In all directions the low moral stage of philo- sophic thought represented by Benthamism has been passed through and forgotten. We no longer hold the belief that the only sphere of Government is to protect our persons and property, but follow loftier ideals ; and in art and poetry we look for higher aims than mere luxury and sensuous pleasure.
* Was a phrase of Cowper's in Bentham's nund ? The latter WTote to Christopher Rowley, " We are strange creatures, my little friend ; everything that we do is in reality important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin."
PROCTER— KEATS 127
LIFE
We are born ; we laugh ; we weep ;
We love ; we droop ; we die ! Ah ! wherefore do we laugh, or weep ?
Why do we live, or die ? Who knows that secret deep Alas, not I !
?
Why doth the violet spring
Unseen by human eye ? Why do the radiant seasons bring
Sweet thoughts that quickly fly ? Why do our fond hearts cling To things that die ?
We toil, — through pain and wrong ;
We fight, — and fly ; We love ; we lose ; and then, ere long,
Stone dead we lie. Life ! is all thy song
Endure and — die ?
B. W. Procter, " Barry Cornwall."
Stop and consider ! Life is but a day ; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit ; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci, — Why so sad a moan ? Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown ; The reading of an ever-changing tale ; The light uplifting of a maiden's veil ; A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air ; A laughing school-boy, without grief or care. Riding the springy branches of an elm.
Keats. Sleep and Poetry.
Life is compared to the brief fall of a dewdrop, the Indian's un- conscious sleep while his boat hastens to destruction ; but life also is Hope, Experience, Love, Beauty, and Joy.
128 DRYDEN AND OTHERS
When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat ; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit, Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay — - To-morrow's falser than the former day — , Lies worse and, while it says we shall be blessed With some new joys, cuts off what we possesst. Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain ; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive What the first sprightly running would not give. I'm tired with waiting for this chymic gold, Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.
Dryden,
Aureng-zebe. " Cozenage " cheating.
Some of your griefs you have cured.
And the sharpest you still have survived ;
But what torments of pain you endured From evils that never arrived !
R. W. Emerson. From the French.
This sentiment has been expressed by many different authors. Some friends of mine have as their favourite motto, " I have had many troubles in my life, and most of them never happened."
Let to-morrow take care of to-morrow,
Leave things of the future to fate : What is the use to anticipate sorrow ?
Life's troubles come never too late. If to hope overmuch be an error,
'Tis one that the wise have preferred ; And hovv' often have hearts been in terror
Of evils — that never occurred !
Charles Swain.
A VERY Strange, fantastic world — where each one pur- sues his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing the same. I have been thinking how a moral Linnaeus would classify our race.
Author not traced.
MONTENAEKEN 129
PEU DE CHOSE ET PRESQUE TROP
La vie est vaine :
Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine . . .
Et puis — bonjour !
La vie est breve :
Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve . . .
Et puis — bonsoir !
(Life is vain : A little love, A little hate, . . . And then — good-day ! Life is short : A little hope, A little dream, . . . And then — good-
night !)
Ll^ON MONTENAEKEN.
This haunting little lyric is a literary curiosity from one point of view. In spite of expostulations from the author (a Belgian poet), and repeated public statements by others from time to time, the poem is constantly being wrongly attributed to one or other of the French poets. It appeared in Le Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, 1887, but had probably been written and published some years before that date. In the Nine- teenth Century, September 1893, William Sharp pointed out that the poem was always being attributed to the wrong author — even Andrew Lang being one of the culprits. The author himself wrote to the Literary World of June 3, 1904, to the same effect. The subject was again spoken of in Notes and Queries, January 5, 1907, when the author's letter was republished. London Truth also brought the matter up at one time, and probably the same fact has been publicly pointed out elsewhere a hundred times — but the poem continues to be attributed to the wrong author ! In the Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations, by H. P. Jones, published so recently as 1913, the verses are ascribed to Alfred de Musset.
There is a third verse, which reads like an answer or retort to the other two :
La vie est telle,
Que Dieu la fit ; Et telle, quelle . . . Elle suffit !
(Life is such As God made it, And, just as it is, . . . It suffices !)
Compare with the first two verses :
On entre, on crie, Et c'est la vie ! On bailie, on sort, Et c'est la mort !
AusoNE DE Chancel, 1836.
(You enter, you cry, and that is life ; 3'ou yawn, you go out, and that is death.)
Curiously enough De Chancel's verse was also wrongly attributed (to Edmond Texier) when first published in Figaro, Oct. 29, 1863.
K
130 LOWELL
He did but float a little way, Adown the stream of time, With dreamy eyes watching the ripples play Or listening to their fairy chime ; His slender sail Ne'er felt the gale ; He did but float a little way, And, putting to the shore While yet 'twas early day, Went calmly on his way. To dwell with us no more ! No jarring did he feel. No grating on his vessel's keel — A strip of silver sand Mingled the waters with the land Where he was seen no more : O stern word — Nevermore !
Full short his journey was. No dust
Of earth unto his sandals clave.
The weary weight that old men must.
He bore not to the grave.
He seemed a cherub who had lost his way
And wandered hither ; so his stay
With us was short. And 'twas most meet
That he should be no delver in earth's clod,
Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet
To stand before his God :
O blest word — Evermore !
J. R. Lowell. Threnodia.
These are the last two stanzas of a poem written in 1839 on the death of an infant. These verses seem to have had an experience not unlike that of the preceding poem. In L. S. Wood's English Verse for Infancy and Childhood (Golden Treasury Series, 1921), the verses are quoted under the title " The Child's Death," and are ascribed to an anonymous seventeenth -century author ! Mr. Wood says that they were reprinted from Emily Taylor's Flowers and Fruits from Old English Gardens in the first edition of Beeching's Lyra Sacra, but omitted by Beeching in the second edition. Beeching probably learnt from some one of his critics — as, I suppose, Mr. Wood has by this time also learnt — that his ascription was incorrect, and he omitted the verses altogether from his second edition. The mistake is however curious, for " Threnodia " is the first poem in the usual edition of Lowell's poetical works, and Beeching had made a special study of sixteenth and seventeenth century poets and had edited the works of several of them.
GEORGE ELIOT 131
TWO LOVERS
Two lovers by a moss-grown spring : They leaned soft cheeks together there, Mingled the dark and sunny hair, And heard the wooing thrushes sing. O budding time ! O love's blest prime !
Two wedded from the portal stept : The bells made happy caroUings, The air was soft as fanning wings, White petals on the pathway slept. O pure-eyed bride ! O tender pride !
Two faces o'er a cradle bent :
Two hands above the head were locked ; These pressed each other while they rocked, Those watched a life that love had sent. O solemn hour ! O hidden power !
Two parents by the evening fire : The red light fell about their knees On heads that rose by slow degrees Like buds upon the lily spire. O patient life ! O tender strife !
The two still sat together there,
The red light shone about their knees : But all the heads by slow degrees Had gone and left that lonely pair. O voyage fast ! O vanished past !
The red light shone upon the floor
And made the space between them wide ; They drew their chairs up side by side, Their pale cheeks joined, and said, " Once more ! " O memories ! O past that is ! George Eliot.
132 CHAUCER AND OTHERS
With him ther was his son, a yong Squyer,* Squire A lovyere and a lusty bachelor, lover
With lokkes crulle, as they were leyd in presse. curly locks Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse. . . . Singinge he was, or floy tinge, al the day ; playing the
He was as fresh as is the month of May. ^"*^
Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide, Well coude he sitte on hors and faire ride,
Chaucer. Canterbury Tales — Prologue.
This and the next five quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven ; Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even ; She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem.
No wrought flowers did adorn. But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn ; Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
The Blessed Damozel.
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, Brave is her shape, and sweeter unpossess'd.
George Meredith. Love in the Valley.
* " SquycT " is a dissyllable. The final e at the end of a line is always sounded like a in " China." " Lokkes," " sieves," and " faire " are also dissyllables, because e, ed, en, es are sounded as syllables, except before vowels and certain words beginning with h.
KEATS AND OTHERS 133
With a waist and with a side White as Hebe's, when her zone SHpt its golden clasp, and down Fell her kirtle to her feet, While she held her goblet sweet. And Jove grew languid. „
Fancy.
Like Angels stopped upon the wing by sound Of harmony from heaven's remotest spheres.
Wordsworth. The Prelude, Bk. XIV.
Whenas in silk my JuHa goes.
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes !
Robert H^errick. Upon Julia's Clothes.
When thou must home to shades of underground, And there arrived, a new admired guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White lope, blithe Helen, and the rest.
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move :
Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights.
Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make,
Of tourneys and great challenges of knights. And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake :
When thou hast told these honours done to thee,
Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
Thomas Campion.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
134 BROWN AND OTHERS
Whatever else may or may not work on through eternity, we are bound to beHeve that the love, which moved the Father to redeem the world at such infinite cost, must work on, while there is one pang in the universe, born of sin, which can touch the Divine pity, or one wretched prodigal in rags and hunger far from the home and the heart of God.
Rev. Baldwin Brown.
Canon Farrar is not happy in his rejoinder to the argument that to cast a doubt on the endlessness of punish- ment is to invalidate the argument for the endlessness of bliss, since both rest on exactly the same Biblical sanction. There are three replies, cumulatively exhaustive, which he has failed to adduce. [Firstly, evil and temptation are banished from heaven ; Second, the two arguments do 7iot rest on the same Biblical sanction.] Thirdly, the difference of the two eternities, heaven and hell, consists in the presence or absence of God. Let us put a for each of those eternities or aeons, and d to denote Him. The assertion of the equality of the two, then, is that a + 6 = a-d, which can stand only if 0 = 0, the postulate of atheism.
Rev. R. F. Littledale, D.C.L.
Both these passages come from an Article in the Contemporary for April 1878.
As this book is partly intended to revive the memories of forty years ago, I include these out of the passages in my commonplace book which refer to the intense struggle that then raged over the question of Eternal Punishment. Surely no other word, since the world began, raised so tremendous an issue, created such conflict and caused so much heart- burning as the one word aidbvios.
(Liddell and Scott, 1901, gives the following meanings for aUbmos : lasting for an age, perpetual, everlasting, eternal.)
Ne nous imaginons pas que I'enfer consiste dans ces etangs de feu et de soufre, dans ces flammes eternellement devorantes, dans cette rage, dans ce desespoir, dans cet horrible grincement de dents. L'enfer, si nous I'entendons, c'est peche meme : l'enfer, c'est d'etre eloigne de Dieu.
BOSSUET.
(Let us not imagine that hell consists in those lakes of fire and brim- stone, in those eternally-devouring flames, in that rage, in that despair, in that horrible gnashing of teeth. Hell, if we understand it aright, is sin itself : hell consists in being banished from God.)
BROWNE AND OTHERS 135
I THANK God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of Hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery of the other : to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of Him : His Mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His Judgments afraid thereof.
Sir Thomas Browne. Religio Medici.
A HUNDRED times when, roving high and low, I have been harassed with the toil of verse. Much pains and little progress, and at once Some lovely Image in the song rose up Full-formed like Venus rising from the sea.
Wordsworth. Prelude, Bk. IV.
Apart from the many beautiful passages it contains, " The Prelude " is extremely interesting as a poet's autobiography.
Hark ! the raven flaps his wing In the brier'd dell below ; Hark ! the death-owl loud doth sing To the nightmares, as they go :
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree.
See ! the white moon shines on high ; Whiter is my true-love's shroud : Whiter than the morning sky. Whiter than the evening cloud :
My love is dead.
Gone to his death-bed All under the willow- tree.
136 CHATTERTON— BRYANT
Here upon my true-love's grave Shall the barren flowers be laid ; Not one holy saint to save All the coldness of a maid :
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed All under the willow- tree. . . .
Come with acorn-cup and thorn, Drain my heartes blood away ; Life and all its good I scorn. Dance by night or feast by day :
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree. ^
Chatterton.
Song from Aella.
Nightmares were female monsters supposed to settle on people when asleep, suffocating them by their weight.
There is a curious unconscious plagiarisin of the first verse in a juvenile fragment of Shelley's : —
Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings,
In the pathless dell beneath ; Hark ! 'tis the night-raven sings,
Tidings of approaching death.
The precocious maturity of the boy-poet, Chatterton, is seen in the apposite expression " barren flowers " in the third verse. The flowers laid on the tomb, like the maid who will remain true to her dead lover, can have no offspring.
It is sad to think of this child-genius who, living in a world of romance, was driven by destitution to commit suicide at seventeen years of age.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave.
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
W. C. Bryant. Thanatopsis.
Bryant wrote this poem when seventeen years of age. But, as it did not appear in the North American Revieiv until 1817, five years after- wards, its superb diction may be partly due to revision in the meantime.
BOSWELL AND OTHERS 137
. . . Sir Henry Wotton's celebrated answer to a priest in Italy, who asked him, " Where was your religion to be found before Luther ? " " My religion was to be found there — where yours is not to be found now — in the written word of God." In Selden's Table Talk we have the follow- ing more witty reply made to the same question : " Where was America an hundred or six score years ago ? "
BoswELL. Life of Johnson.
I do not wish to introduce sectarian questions, but these answers are interesting and clever. The next quotation is pro-Catholic.
During the horrible time of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI., a French priest and a Jew became very intimate friends. The priest, very anxious for the future welfare of his friend, urged him to be received into the church : and the Jew promised to earnestly consider this advice. The priest, however, gave up all hope on learning that the Jew was called by his business to Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life of the Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on his return announced that he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion, which could still exist in spite of such abominations, must be the true religion.
Author not traced.
I noted this from an old French book, but the real story must be the earlier one of Boccaccio (1315-1375). Alexander Borgia was Pope, 1492-1503.
I VERILY believe that, if the knife were put into my hand,
I should not have strength and energy enough to stick it
into a Dissenter. „ „
Sydney Smith.
Shortly before his death in 1844 he gave this as a singular proof of his declining strength ! (See Memoir by his daughter, Lady Holland.)
A MAN cannot possess anything that is better than a good woman, nor anything that is worse than a bad one.
SiMONIDES OF AmORGOS. Sophocles later makes the same statement (Fr. 608).
138 CLOUGH
" Come back, come back " ; behold with straining mast And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast ; With one new sun to see her voyage o'er, With morning light to touch her native shore, " Come back, come back."
" Come back, come back " ; across the flying foam, We hear faint far-off voices call us home, " Come back," ye seem to say ; " Ye seek in vain ; We went, we sought, and homeward turned again. Come back, come back."
" Come back, come back " ; and whither back or why } To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try ; Walk the old fields ; pace the familiar street ; Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete. " Come back, come back."
" Come back, come back " ; and. whither and for what ? To finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, And with much toil attain to half-believe. " Come back, come back."
" Come back, come back " ; yea back, indeed, do go Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow ; Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings, And wishes idly struggle in the strings ; " Come back, come back.". . .
" Come back, come back ! "
Back flies the foam ; the hoisted flag streams back ; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track, Back fly with winds things which the winds obey — The strong ship follows its appointed way.
A. H. Clough. Songs in Absence.
In the seventy-eighty period with which this book is mainly con- cerned, a barbarous theology had taken the place of Christ's religion of love. Yet men needed a strong resolution to abandon their early beliefs, and pursue a path which their dearest friends believed would lead to their eternal damnation. In the poem the ship, or soul, is nearing its " native shore " of truth. (I have inserted the quotation-inarks in the poem.)
ARNOLD— ELIOT 139
TO FAUSTA
Joy comes and goes : hope ebbs and flows,
Like the wave ; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love lends life a little grace, A few sad smiles : and then. Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
Dreams dawn and fly : friends smile and die.
Like spring flowers. Our vaunted life is one long funeral. Men dig graves, with bitter tears. For their dead hopes ; and all. Mazed with doubts and sick with fears, Count the hours.
We count the hours : these dreams of ours.
False and hollow.
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead ?
Joys we dimly apprehend.
Faces that smiled and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end.
Shall we follow ?
Matthew Arnold.
This poem was written in 1849. The sad note in so much poetry of that period shows that the time was only too ripe for the materiaUsm that broke out after Darwin's proof of evolution. But Arnold did not give himself up to pessimism, as we learn from his note-books. Here, although
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes,
he nevertheless questions :
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead ?
Shall we find our dreams realized, our lost friends restored to us and all that was obscure here made clear in the life after death .''
Has any one ever pinched into its pillulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship ?
George Eliot. Middlemarch.
140 XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON
Dead ! that is the word That rings through my brain till it crazes !
Dead, while the mayflowers bud and blow, While the green creeps over the white of the snow. While the wild woods ring with the song of the bird. And the fields are a-bloom with daisies.
See ! even the clod
Thrills, with life's glad passion shaken !
The vagabond weeds, with their vagrant train. Laugh in the sun, and weep in the rain,
The blue sky smiles like the eye of God, Only my dead do not waken.
Dead ! There is the word That I sit in the darkness and ponder !
Why should the river, the sky and the sea
Babble of summer and joy to me. While a strong, true heart, with its pulse unstirred,
Lies hushed in the silence yonder ?
Author not traced.
There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than
mortals. Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature ; But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are
begotten. With human sensations and voice and corporeal members ; So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's
fashion, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of
Godhead, Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like
oxen. Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.
Xenophanes of Colophon.
I do not know whose paraphrase this is ; it was prefixed by Tyndall to his Belfast Address, 1874. He probably imagined that these lines contained an argument in favour of materialism ; but on the contrary the Greek philosopher affirms the existence of a supreme God. All that he says is that the conception of him as resembling a mortal in his physical attributes is wrong.
At the back of Tyndall's mind was no doubt the prevalent idea that
PLATO 141
any " anthropomorphic " conception of the nature of the Deity is neces- sarily absurd. But there is nothing unreasonable in beHeving that His nature, though immeasurably superior, is nevertheless akin to our own. The source or power of the world must be greater than the highest thing it has produced, the mind of man ; and it must more nearly resemble the higher than the lower of its products. In particular it is impossible for us to believe that our moral ideas of truth, justice, right and wrong, etc., can differ at all in kind, however much in degree, from those of God. So also our reason must be akin to His insight. Such a belief should be regarded, not as " anthropomorphic," but as (in a sense different from that of Clifford and Harrison) a " deification of man " — the recognition of the Divine that is in him. As Sir Thomas Browne saj's, " There is surely a piece of Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage under the sun."
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our Father dear ; And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is man, His child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face. And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.
William Blake.
The Divine Image.
To see the soul as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity — and then her beauty will be revealed. . . . We must remember that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts of ways, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster than his own natural form. And the soul which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must we look.
Where then !
At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine ; also how different she would become if wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the
142 PLATO AND OTHERS
stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this life as they are termed : then you would see her as she is, and know . . . what her nature is.
Plato. Republic, Bk. lo, Jowett's translation.
Apart from the intrinsic interest of such a passage, the picture of the old sea-god, with long hair and long beard, his body ending in a scaly tail, battered about by the waves, and overgrown with seaweed and shells, is very curious. Without discussing how far the great philosopher himself or some other advanced thinkers believed in such divinities, it must be remembered that to the Greeks generally the gods were very real personages.
Our voices one by one Fail in the hymn begun ; Our last sad song of Life is done, Our first sweet song of Death.
Edmund Gosse. Encomium Mortis.
This poem appeared in early editions of On Viol and Flute, but is now omitted from Mr. Gosse's poems.
Youth's quick and warm, old age is slow and tame, And only Heaven can fairly halve their blame. To-day the passionate roses breathe and blow And ask no counsel from to-morrow's snow, Whose fretwork sparkles to the winter moon White, as if roses never flushed in June.
Author not traced.
Veil not thy mirror, sweet Amine, Till night shall also veil each star ! Thou seest a tv/ofold marvel there : The only face so fair as thine, The only eyes that, near or far, Can gaze on thine without despair.
J. C. Mangan.
ALDRICH AND OTHERS 143
IDENTITY
Somewhere — in desolate wind-swept space — In Twilight-land — in No-Man's land —
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.
" And who are you ? " cried one a-gape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light. " I know not," said the second Shape,
" I only died last night ! "
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing : Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow. And tread softly and speak low. For the old year lies a- dying. . . .
Close up his eyes : tie up his chin : Step from the corpse, and let him in That standeth there alone, And waiteth at the door. There's a new foot on the floor, my friend, And a new face at the door, my friend, A new face at the door.
Tennyson. The Death of the Old Year.
Time and the ocean and some fostering star In high cabal have made us what we are.
William Watson. Ode on the Coronation of Edward VII.
The best way to prove the clearness of our mind is by showing its faults : as, when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water. _
^ ^ Pope.
144 STEPHEN
TO R. K.
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us !)
Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrendous
Demonfaco-seraphic
Penman's latest piece of graphic. „
^ ^ ^ Browning.
Will there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse : When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an Ass, And a boy's eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass :
When mankind shall be delivered,
From the clash of magazines. And the inkstand shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens : When there stands a muzzled stripling.
Mute, beside a muzzled bore : When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more.
James Kenneth Stephen.
" R. K." is Rudyard Kipling, but what was the " boy's eccentric blunder " that brought him success I do not know. Stephen in this instance showed a want of judgment. The books Kipling had then produced, Plain Tales from the Hills, Departmental Ditties, and the six little books, Soldiers Three, etc., all written before the age of twenty-four, should have been sufficient to show that the author was certainly not a stripling to be " muzzled." Stephen's niisjudgment was, however, trivial when we remember how many important writers have failed to understand and appreciate the most beautiful poems. Jeffrey (1773- 1850) thought to the end of his days that of the poets of his time Keats and Shelley would die and Campbell and Rogers alone survive ! Shelley was very unfortunate in his critics. Matthew Arnold, Carlyle and many others besides Jeffrey disparaged him ; Theodore Hook said " Pro- metheus Unbound " was properly named as no one would think of binding it ; and worst of all was Emerson. He said Shelley was not a poet, had no imagination and his muse was uniformly imitative (" Thoughts on Modern Literature ") ; his poetry was " rhymed English " which " had no charm " (" Poetry and Imagination "). Just as amazing was the article in the Edinburgh Review, 181 6, on Coleridge's little book containing " Christabel," " Kubla Khan," etc. This article, usually attributed to Hazlitt, and certainly having Jeffrey's sanction,
RUSKIN 145
said : " We look upon this publication as one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty ; and one of the boldest experiments that have as yet been made upon the patience or understanding of the public." De Quincey said the style of Keats " belonged essentially to the vilest collections of waxwork filigree or gilt gingerbread." Other instances are Swinburne's abuse of George Eliot and Walt Whitman, Carlyle's brutality towards Lamb, Jeffrey's savage attack on Wordsworth (the famous " This will never do " article on " The Excursion " — although it was not so very inexcusable), Edward FitzGerald's letter that Mrs. Browning's death was a relief to him (" No more Aurora Leighs, thank God ! "), Samuel Rogers' statement that he " could not relish Shakespeare's sonnets," and Steevens' far worse condemnation of them, and indeed the list could be extended indefinitely. On the other hand, unmerited praise was given by whole generations of writers to poems which are now properly forgotten. In face of such facts it is somewhat of a mystery why the best things do survive. See next quotation.
If it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been for centuries consecrated by pubHc admiration, without possessing in a high degree some kind of sterhng excellence, it is not because the average intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are competent in any way to distinguish what is really excellent, but because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded opinion tran- sitory ; so that while the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honour, and award what is undue, have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few who are in reality competent judges, being necessarily stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to mind, descending lower as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute authority, even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot be understood. On this gradual victory of Vv^hat is consistent over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest in art and literature.
John Ruskin. Modern Painters, I, i.
This is an excellent suggestion in explanation of the question raised in the preceding note. It is also interesting because of the youth of this great writer at the time. Ruskin was born in 181 9, and the volume was published in 1843, when he was twenty-four. Because of his youth, it was thought inadvisable to give his name as author, and, therefore, the book was published as " by an Oxford Graduate."
Ruskin's fine style is sadly spoilt by his interminable sentences.
L
146 POE— TRENCH
TO ONE IN PARADISE
Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine —
A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain, and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.
Now all my days are trances.
And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances.
And where thy footstep gleams — In what ethereal dances !
By what eternal streams !
E. A. PoE.
LINDISFARNE
O ROCKY the islet And narrozv the sand That twice a day only Leads back to the land ! . . . Our Seer, the net-mxnder. The day that he died Looked out to the seaward At ebb of the tide. Gulls drove like the snow Over bight, over barn. As he sang to the ebb On the rock Lindisfarne : " Twain and twain only, At Death and at Birth, Are the tides of the day That man spends upon Earth. Hail, thou blue ebbing ! The breakers are gone From the stormy coast-islet Bethundered and lone !
TRENCH 147
Hail, thou wide shrinking Of foam and of bubble — The reefs are laid bare And far off is the trouble ! For through this retreating As soft as a smile, The isle of the flood Is no longer an isle. . . .
" By the silvery isthmus Of the sands that uncover, Now feet as of angels Come delicate over — ■ The fluttering children Flee happily over ! To the beach of the mainland Return is now clear, The old travel thither Dry-shod, without fear. . . .
'* And now, at the wane, When foundations expand. Doth the isle of my soul, Lindisfarne, understand She stretches to vastness Made one with the land ! "
Herbert Trench.
Lindisfarne is perhaps better known as Holy Island, a name derived from the monastery founded in a.d. 635 by the Irish saint Aidan, who was sent on a mission to Northumbria. It is a rocky islet, two miles from Northumberland, and at ebb-tide tivice a day it is joined to the mainland by a pathway of sand.
Here the dying net-mender, looking at the ebbing tide, compares man to the islet. Like the islet he stands alone, buffeted by storms and breakers and his world one of foam and bubble. But on two occa- sions in the day of his life, at Birth and at Death, he is connected with the spiritual mainland. When the tide ebbs and the pathway appears, " feet as of angels " — the children arriving — " come happily over " ; while the old can travel back home " dry-shod, without fear." He himself, being about to die, hails the ebbing of the tide. The stormy breakers are gone, and the foam and bubble of life disappeared. The trouble that caused all the disquietude has removed far away, for his soul is no longer a lonely isle in the waters, but has expanded its foundations and been made one with the spiritual world.
There is nothing omitted from the poem : the pauses (dots) are in the original.
148 NEWTON AND OTHERS
I DO not know what I may appear to the world ; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Sir Isaac Newton.
Newton said this a short time before his death.
We too say that she [England] now, Scarce comprehending the voice Of her greatest golden-mouthed sons Of a former age any more. Stupidly travels her round Of mechanic business, and lets Slow die out of her life Glory, and genius, and joy.
So thou arraign 'st her, her foe : So we arraign her, her sons.
Yes we arraign her ! But she — The weary Titan — with deaf Ears, and labour-dimmed eyes, Regarding neither to right Nor left, goes passively by Staggering on to her goal ; Bearing on shoulders immense, Atlantean, the load, Wellnigh not to be borne. Of the too vast orb of her fate.
Matthew Arnold. Heine's Grave.
Heine had declaimed against England because of its sordid commercial spirit. This poem was written in 1867, when the growth of modern industrialism began to manifest itself still more strongly to men like Arnold and Ruskin.
Note the fine description of England, " the weary Titan."
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want
'^«^^- Swift.
EMERSON AND OTHERS 149
The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth, who owed nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quahty of his nature, shed an epic splendour around the facts of his death, which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol for the eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our
highest fact.
R. W. Emerson. Essay on Character.
Thou with strong prayer and very much entreating Wiliest be asked, and Thou shalt answer then.
Show the hid heart beneath creation beating. Smile with kind eyes, and be a man with men.
Were it not thus, O King of my salvation. Many v/ould curse to Thee, and I for one,
Fling Thee thy bliss and snatch at thy damnation. Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun.
Ring with a reckless shivering of laughter
Wroth at the woe which Thou hast seen so long ;
Question if any recompense hereafter Waits to atone the intolerable wrong.
F. W. H. Myers. Saint Paul.
Wiliest be asked, " requirest to be asked," as in " God willeth Samuel to yield unto the importunity of the people " (i Sam. viii., in margin).
Saint Paul was written for the Seatonian prize for religious English verse, Cambridge, about 1866, but failed to secure the prize !
In the Eighth Century B.C., in the heart of a world of
idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a
conception of religion which appears to be as wonderful
an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science
of Aristotle. " And what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God ? " r^. tt tt
^ T. H. Huxley.
Essays, IV. 161,
Huxley's quotation is from Micah vi. 8.
150
PAINE AND OTHERS
[Speaking of future state] " Those who are neither good nor bad, or are too insignificant for notice, will be dropt entirely. This is my opinion. It is consistent with my idea of God's justice, and with the reason that God has given me, and I gratefully know that He has given me a large share of that Divine gift " (!)
Thomas Paine. Age of Reason.
SIXTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF LOVE (AEAnH)
It is long-suffering. 9
is kind. 10
envieth not. 11
vaunteth not itself. 12
is not puffed up. 13
doth not behave itself 14
unseemly. 15
seeketh not its own. 16 is not easily provoked.
It thinketh no evil.
rejoiceth not in iniquity, rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, never faileth.
St. Paul. I Cor. xiii.
'A7a7r77, brotherly love, " Though I have all knoioledge and all faith, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing " (i Cor. xiii. 2).
The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer ; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; The first true gentleman that ever breathed.
Thomas Dekker.
CoNSOLE-toi ! Tu ne me chercherais pas, si tu ne m 'avals pas deja trouve.
(Console thyself ! Thou wouldst not be seeking Me, if thou hadst not already found Me.)
Pascal.
WORDSWORTH AND OTHERS 151
The best of all we do and are, Just God, forgive,
Wordsworth. Thoughts near the Residence of Burns.
RENOUNCEMENT
I MUST not think of thee ; and, tired yet strong, I shun the love that lurks in all delight — The love of thee — and in the blue heaven's height
And in the dearest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright ; But it must never, never come in sight ; I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, When night gives pause to the long watch I keep. And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, Must doff my will as raiment laid away, —
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.
Alice Meynell.
This was considered by Rossetti to be one of the three best sonnets written by women.
Tears for the passionate hearts I might have won,
Tears for the age with which I might have striven.
Tears for a hundred years of work undone.
Crying like blood to Heaven. -.j. a
^ ^ Wm. Alexander.
My life, my beautiful life, all wasted :
The gold days, the blue days, to darkness sunk ;
The bread was here, and I have not tasted : The wine was here, and I have not drunk.
Richard Middleton.
I do not find these lines in Middleton's collected works, but they appear as his in my notes.
I s2 ROSSETTI— LECKY
LOST DAYS
The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay ?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay ? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ?
I do not see them there ; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath : " I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me ? "
" And I — and I — thyself," (lo ! each one saith,) " And thou thyself to all eternity ! "
D. G. ROSSETTI.
BIRTHDAYS
" Time is the stuff of life " — then spend not thy days while
they last In dreams of an idle future, regrets for a vanished past ; The tombstones lie thickly behind thee, but the stream still
hurries thee on, New worlds of thought to be traversed, new fields to be
fought and won. Let work be thy measure of life— then only the end is well — The birthdays we hail so blithely are strokes of the passing
bell.
W. E. H. Lecky.
" Dost thou love life ? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of " (Franklin, Poor Richard's Ahnanack, 1757).
I retain the two above quotations, because they are typical of the " copybook " aphorisms of my youth. Now we would ask what con- stitutes a " lost day," and we would certainly deny that life was to be spent in work that was distasteful — or wholly in work at all. Life consists of much more than work ; it includes, for instance, love, the sense of beauty or aesthetic enjoyment, worship, philanthropy and social, physical, and other pleasures of many kinds. A day is not necessarily " lost," because it is entirely spent in leisure or enjoyment.
THACKERAY AND OTHERS 153
Ah, gracious powers ! I wish you would send me an old
aunt — a maiden aunt— an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage
and a front of light, coffee-coloured hair — how my children
should work work-bags for her, and my Julia and I would
make her comfortable ! Sweet — sweet vision ! Foolish —
foolish dream ! „
Thackeray.
Vanity Fair.
And the nightingale thought, " I have sung many songs
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away." „
■^ -^ Tennyson.
The Poet's Song.
This often-quoted verse does not give the highest view of poetry, as Tennyson's own poems show. The poet sings of a Universe,
Which moves with Hght and Hfe informed, Actual, divine and true.
He sings of Nature, Man, God, ImmortaHty. (This note is from an early letter of Hodgson's. His quotation is from The Prelude, Bk. XIV.)
TuER le mandarin.
French proverbial expression.
" To kill the mandarin " means to do a bad action, being certain it will not be found out. Rousseau in Entile had said : "If, in order to become the wealthy heir of a man we have never seen or heard of, and who dwells in the remote end of China, it sufficed to push a button and make him die, which of us would not push the button and bring about the death of the mandarin ? "
But Chateaubriand in Le Genie dii Christianisme said in his turn : " I look into my mind and ask myself this question : If you could, by a mere desire, kill a man in China and inherit his fortune in Europe, with an absolute, supernatural certainty that no one would ever know anything about it, would you consent to form that desire in your mind ? "
What does the Right hand gaine by being more active and useful than the Left — but only more Labour and
Samuel Butler. Contradictions.
154 HILTON
THE VULTURE AND THE HUSBANDMAN
The rain was raining cheerfully,
As if it had been May, The Senate-house appeared inside
Unusually gay ; And this was strange, because it was
A Viva- Voce day.
The men were sitting sulkily,
Their paper work was done. They wanted much to go away
To ride or row or run ; " It's very rude," they said, " to keep
Us here and spoil our fun."
The papers they had finished lay
In piles of blue and white ; They answered everything they could
And wrote with all their might. But tho' they wrote it all by rote
They did not write aright.
The Vulture and the Husbandman
Beside these piles did stand ; They wept like anything to see
The work they had in hand : " If this were only finished up,"
Said they, " it would be grand ! "
" If seven D's or seven C's
We give to all the crowd. Do you suppose," the Vulture said,
" That we could get them ploughed ? " " I think so," said the Husbandman,
" But pray don't talk so loud."
" Oh, Undergraduates, come up,"
The Vulture did beseech, " And let us see if you can learn
As well as we can teach ; We cannot do with more than two
To have a word with each."
HILTON 155
Two Undergraduates came up
And slowly took a seat ; They knit their brows and bit their thumbs
As if they found them sweet ; And this was odd, because you know
Thumbs are not good to eat,
" The time has come," the Vulture said,
" To talk of many things, Of Accidence and Adjectives
And names of Jewish kings, How many notes a sackbut has.
And whether shawms have strings."
" Please, Sir," the Undergraduates said,
Turning a little blue, " We did not know that was the sort
Of thing we had to do." " We thank you much," the Vulture said,
" Send up another two."
Two more came up, and then two more,
And more, and more, and more ; And some looked upwards at the roof,
Some down upon the floor. But none were any wiser than
The pair that went before.
" I weep for you," the Vulture said,
" I deeply sympathize ! " With sobs and tears he gave them all
D's of the largest size. While at the Husbandman he winked
One of his streaming eyes.
" I think," observed the Husbandman,
" We're getting on too quick ; Are we not putting down the D's
A little bit too thick ? " The Vulture said with much disgust,
" Their answers make me sick."
156 HILTON AND OTHERS
" Now, Undergraduates," he said,
" Our fun is nearly done ; Will anybody else come up ? "
But answer came there none. And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd ploughed them every one !
A. C. Hilton.
Vulture — one who plucks ; Husbandman — one who ploughs. The Senate-house at Cambridge was the examination-room.
The above will be readily recognized as a parody of " The Walrus and the Carpenter " in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. I do not know, but it may have been partly due to this parody that viva- voce examination was abolished at Cambridge.
Who is the most dihgent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing his office ? It is the Devil. He is the most dihgent preacher of all other, he is never out of his diocese, ye shall never find him unoccupied, ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will ; he is ever at home, the diligentest preacher in all the Realm ; ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. . . . He is no lordly loiterer, but a busy ploughman, so that among all the pack of them the Devil shall go for my money ! There- fore, ye prelates, learn of the Devil to be diligent in doing of your office. If you will not learn of God nor good men : for shame learn of the Devil. ^^^^^^ Latimer.
Sermon on the Ploughers, 1549.
APPRECIATION
To the sea-shell's spiral round 'Tis your heart that brings the sound : The soft sea-murmurs, that you hear Within, are captured from your ear.
You do poets and their song
A grievous wrong. If your own soul does not bring To their high imagining As much beauty as they sing.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
RUSKIN 157
In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of NO sin ? Can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse ? Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying — measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got— put his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to Heaven with an entire understanding of Heaven's ways about the horse ? Yet the horse is a fact — no dream — no revelation among the myrtle trees by night ; and the dust it dies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts ; and yonder happy person, whose the horse was, till its knees were broken over the hurdles ; who had an immortal soul to begin with, and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality ; who has also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, and the oppression of the poor ; and has, at this actual moment of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him in calm shadow, with their death-eyes fixed upon him, biding their time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the stones, — this happy person shall have no stripes, — shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation ! Or, if other things are indeed reserved for him, Heaven's kindness or omnipotence is to be doubted therefore !
We cannot reason of these things. But this I know — and this may by all men be known — that no good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness ; and that the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left.
John Ruskin. Modem Painters, V. 19.
It is one of the arguments in Plato's Phaedo that the soul must survive, since otherwise terribly wicked and cruel men would escape retribution ; annihilation would be a good thing for them.
Why are Time's feet so swift and ours so slow !
Author not traced.
158 BROWNE AND OTHERS
Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the Gauntlet in the cause of Verity : many, from the ignorance of these Maximes, and an inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of Error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City and yet be forced to surrender ; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazzard her on a battle.
Sir Thomas Browne. Religio Medici.
" Very well," cried I, " that's a good girl ; I find you are perfectly qualified for making converts, and so go help your mother to make a gooseberry pye."
Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield.
All creatures and all objects, in degree,
Are friends and patrons of humanity.
There are to whom the garden, grove and field
Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield ;
Who would not lightly violate the grace
The lowliest flower possesses in its place,
Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive,
Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give.
Wordsworth. Humanity.
'Tis weary watching wave by wave.
And yet the Tide heaves onward ; We chmb, like Corals, grave by grave,
That pave a pathway sunward ;
We are driven back, for our next fray
A newer strength to borrow. And, where the Vanguard camps To-day,
The Rear shall rest To-morrow.
Gerald Massey. To-day and To-morrow.
MILTON AND OTHERS 159
White-handed Hope, Thou hovering Angel girt with golden wings.
Milton. Comus.
Hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became
° * George Eliot,
Silas Marner, ch. xv.
By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
George Eliot. Middlemarch, ch. xxxix.
GROWN UP
My son is straight and strong,
Ready of lip and limb ; 'Twas the dream of my whole life long
To bear a son like him.
He has griefs I cannot guess,
He has joys I cannot know : I love him none the less —
With a man it should be so.
But where, where, where
Is the child so dear to me. With the silken-golden hair
Who sobbed upon my knee ?
Elizabeth Waterhouse.
All the Gallantry of Cloaths began with Fig leaves and was brought to Perfection with Mulberry leaves.
Samuel Butler. Contradictions.
1 60 TENNYSON— NO VALIS
Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin !
Here is custom come your way ; Take my brute, and lead him in.
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay. . . .
I am old, but let me drink ;
Bring me spices, bring me wine ; I remember, when I think.
That my youth was half divine. . . .
Fill the cup, and fill the can : Have a rouse before the morn :
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. . . .
Chant me now some wicked stave. Till thy drooping courage rise.
And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes. . . .
Change, reverting to the years.
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears.
And the warmth of hand in hand. . . .
Fill the can, and fill the cup : All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up.
And is lightly laid again. ry.
^ ■' ° Tennyson.
The Vision of Sin.
Change, that is, change the subject.
These are a few verses from what Edward FitzGerald called " The Old Sinner's Lyric." The last three famous lines refer, of course, to " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return " (Gen. iii. 19).
Where gods are not, spectres rule.
Where children are is a golden age.
A people, like a child, is a separate educational problem.
NOVALIS.
MARTINEAU i6i
A WORLD without a contingency or an agony could have no hero and no saint, and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a Son of God. But for the suspended plot, that is folded in every life, history is a dead chronicle of what was known before as well as after ; art sinks into the photograph of a moment, that hints at nothing else ; and poetry breaks the cords and throws the lyre away. There is no Epic of the certainties ; and no lyric without the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever touches and ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of the past is a divine birth from human doubt and pain. Let then the shadows lie, and the perspective of the light still deepen beyond our view ; else, while we walk together, our hearts will never burn within us as we go, and the darkness as it falls, will deliver us into no hand that is Divine.
James Martineau. Hours of Thought, i. 328,
The subject of the sermon is the uncertainties of life, the perils and catastrophes that cannot be foreseen or provided for, death, disease, and other ills which may fall upon us at any moment, the crises that arise in the history of men and nations. It is by reason of these that character or soul is developed. If everything happened by known rule, and could be predicted as surely as the movements of the stars, we should have no affections or em.otions and would be mere creatures of habit.
In one of his letters Keats says : " The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is ' a vale of tears.' Call the world, if you please. The Vale of Soul-making. Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul ? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways. As various as the lives of men are, so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, of the sparks of his own essence."
So also, Browning says in " Rabbi Ben Ezra " :
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance. This Present, thou forsooth would fain arrest :
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
Also Mr. J. C. Squire in his poem " The Stronghold " (a place where there is " no tear or heart-ache ") says in musical verse :
But O, if you find that castle,
Draw back your foot from the gateway.
Let not its peace invite you.
Let not its offerings tempt you. For faded and decayed like a garment. Love to a dust will have fallen,
M
1 62 MARTINEAU— STEELE
And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow, And hope will have gone with pain ; And of all the throbbing heart's high courage Nothing will remain.
Martineau not only did important work in philosophy, but he was also eminent as a moral teacher. Taking together his originality, sublimity of soul, and beauty of expression, the sermons in Hours of Thought and other similar writings are the finest product of modern religious thought. They indeed stand among the best productions of our literature, and should be read even by those (if there are any such persons) who love literature and thought but are indifferent to religion. To illustrate this, I choose — almost at random — a passage where the thought itself has no interest outside religion {Hours of Thought, ii. 334) :
Worship is the free offering of ourselves to God ; ever renewed, because ever imperfect. It expresses the consciousness that we are His by right, yet have not duly passed into His hand ; that the soul has no true rest but in Him, yet has wandered in strange flights until her wing is tired. It is her effort to return home, the surrender again of her narrow self-will, her prayer to be merged in a life diviner than her own. It is at once the lowliest and loftiest attitude of her nature : we never hide ourselves in ravine so deep ; yet overhead we never see the stars so clear and high. The sense of saddest estrangement, yet the sense also of eternal affinity between us and God meet and mingle in the act ; breaking into the strains, now penitential and now jubilant, that, to the critic's reason, may sound at variance but melt into harmony in the ear of a higher love. This twofold aspect devotion must ever have, pale with weeping, flushed with joy ; deploring the past, trusting for the future ; ashamed of what is, kindled by what is meant to be ; shadow behind, and light before. Were we haunted by no presence of sin and want, we should only browse on the pasture of nature ; were we stirred by no instinct of a holier kindred, we should not be drawn towards the life of God.
For her alone the sea-breeze seemed to blow, For her in music did the white surf fall, For her alone the wheeling birds did call Over the shallows, and the sky for her Was set with white clouds far away and clear. E'en as her love, this strong and lovely one. Who held her hand, was but for her alone.
Author not traced. Perseus and Andromeda.
There are women who do not let their husbands see their faces till they are married ; not to keep you in suspense, I mean that part of the sex who paint.
Steele.
WHITTIER— LICHTENBERG 163
He Cometh not a king to reign ;
The world's long hope is dim ; The weary centuries watch in vain
The clouds of heaven for Him.
And not for sign in heaven above
Or earth below they look, Who know with John His smile of love,
With Peter His rebuke.
In joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin. He is His own best evidence —
His witness is within.
The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain ; We touch Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again.
O Lord and Master of us all !
Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call.
We test our lives by Thine. . . .
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may Thy service be ?— Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word.
But simply following Thee.
We faintly hear, we dimly see,
In differing phrase we pray ; But, dim or clear, we own in Thee,
The Light, the Truth, the Way !
J. G. Whittier. Our Master.
Many verses are omitted from this poem for want of space, and the last two are transposed in order.
We live in a world, where one fool makes many fools, but one wise man only a few wise men.
Lichtenberg.
i64 STOWE— E. B. BROWNING
Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character — but, looldng through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature — loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be. Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift of prophecy— like the mother of St. Augustine, who, in the midst of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision, standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the right hand of God — as he has stood for long ages since. Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we should follow them with faith and reverence through all the disguises of human faults and weaknesses, " waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God."
Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Minister's Wooing.
Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace To look through and behind this mask of me, (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains) and behold my soul's true face. The dim and weary witness of life's race, — Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for a place In the new Heavens, — because nor sin nor woe, Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighbourhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go. Nor all which makes me tired of all, self- viewed, — Nothing repels thee, . . . Dearest, teach me so To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good !
E. B. Browning. Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Here two fine thoughts of Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Browning are in- spired by the vision of Monica, the saintly mother of the great St. Augustine (354-430).
This is a good illustration of the need of notes. Without a reference to St. Monica's vision, I think that readers would be repelled, rather than attracted, by Mrs. Browning's sonnet. It does not accord with one's sense of modesty that a lady should say to her lover, " My un- attractive person and incurable illness turned other men away, but you saw that, behind all this, I was ' a patient angel waiting for a place in
POPE AND OTHERS 165
the new Heavens.' " I myself could not understand how Mrs. Browning could write and her husband could publish this poem, until Hodgson, in one of his letters to me, referred to " the use made by Mrs. Browning of St. Monica's vision in one of her sonnets."
The sonnet is not quoted as one of the finest of the series.
I have placed Mrs. Stowe's quotation first for an obvious reason ; but The Minister's Wooing was published in 1859, while the sonnet appeared in 1847.
Et in Arcadia ego.
(I too have been in Arcady.)
Anon.
Arcadia was a mountainous district in Greece which was taken to be the ideal of pastoral simplicity and rural happiness — as in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and other literature. It was famous for its musicians and a favourite haunt of Pan.
The saying is best known from the fine landscape in the Louvre by N. Poussin (1594-1665). In part of the landscape is a tomb on which these words are written, and some young people are seen reading them. I learn, however, from King's Classical and Foreign Quotations that the words had been previously written on a picture by Bart. Schidone (1570- 161 5), where two young shepherds are looking at a skull.
The meaning intended was that death came even to the joyous shep- herds of Arcady. But the quotation is now used in a more general sense : " I too had my golden days of youth and love and happiness."
It often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been most injured by slanderers ; as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been pecking at. p
ON DYING
I ALWAYS made an awkward bow.
Keats.
On n'a pas d'antecedent pour cela. II faut improviser — c'est done si difficile. (Death admits of no rehearsal.)
Amiel.
C'est le maitre jour ; c'est le jour juge de tous les autres. (It is the master-day ; the day that judges all the others.)
Montaigne.
i66 COLERIDGE— LOWRY
O LADY ! We receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live : Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud !
And would we aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth — And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth. Of all sweet sounds the life and element !
S. T. Coleridge.
See note to next quotation.
TELLING STORIES
A LITTLE child He took for sign
To them that sought the way Divine.
And once a flower sufficed to show The whole of that we need to know.
Now here we lie, the child and I, And watch the clouds go floating by,
Just telling stories turn by turn. . . . Lord, which is teacher, which doth learn ?
H. D. LowRY.
As Coleridge says in the last quotation, " We receive but what we give." In order to realize the beauty that exists in nature we must bring with us the mind that sees ; and, so far as use, habit, and other causes still the activity and lessen the receptivity of the mind and spirit, the world around us becomes less instinct with life and beauty.
Putting aside the question whether, as Wordsworth says in his great Ode,
Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home,
it will be familiar to any one who has a sympathetic, appreciative sense that the child's outlook on the world around him is very different from our own. It has in him a more intense emotional reaction. He sees it with a freshness and wonder unfelt by us, because our sensibility is blunted and less vivid. And for the same reason that we trust our
LOWRY— PATMORE 167
faculties in their prime rather than in their degeneration, so the fresh and clear emotional response of a child's nature represents more truthful appreciation than our own. Our sensibility is blunted, not only by use and habit, but also by the hardening and coarsening experiences of our lives ; and also again by the development of intellect, which grows largely at the expense of the emotions. We lose the transparent soul of the child, his simple faith and trusting nature. To any one who cannot feel the difference between the child's outlook and his owri, this will convey no meaning — and words cannot assist him. It is as if one tried to describe love to a person who has never loved, or a religious experience to one who has never had such an experience ; indeed, in both love and religious experience, there is the same child-like attitude of pure emotion — and hence Christ's comparison of His true followers to " little children." Poetry, music, love of nature, and the highest art produce in us at times the same indefinable feeling and give us back for evanescent periods the fresh, clear, emotional sensibility of a child.
In Edward FitzGerald's Euphranor, at the point where Wordsworth's ode is being discussed, the following passage is interesting :
" I have heard tell of another poet's saying that he knew of no human outlook so solemn as that from an infant's eyes ; and how it was from those of his own he learned that those of the Divine Child in Raffaelle's Sistine Madonna were not overcharged with expression, as he had previously thought they might be."
" Yes," said I, " that was on the occasion, I think, of his having watched his child one morning worshipping the sunbeam on the bedpost — I suppose the worship of wonder. ... If but the philosopher or poet could live in the child's brain for a while 1 "
(The poet referred to was Tennyson ; see Memoir by his son, who was the baby in question, vol. i. 357.)
THE REVELATION
An idle poet, here and there,
Looks round him ; but, for all the rest. The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling's jest.
Love wakes men, once a life-time each ;
They lift their heavy heads and look ; And, lo, what one sweet page can teach
They read with joy, then shut the book.
And some give thanks, and some blaspheme.
And most forget : but, either way. That, and the Child's unheeded dream.
Is all the light of all their day.
Coventry Patmore.
i68 JAMES
The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself ! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our imagination — they seem too much like mere museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did not daily, through long years of the foretime, hold fast to the body struggling in despair of some fated living victim. Forms of horror just as dreadful to their victims, if on a smaller spatial scale, fill the world about us to-day. Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are ; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along, and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.
William James.
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
" If you protest " — one certainly protests. There is a great mass of medical and other evidence to the contrary. Sir William Osier made notes of about five hundred cases and says : " To the great majority their death, like their birth, vi^as but a sleep and a forgetting."
So too the reference to the domesticated cat playing with a mouse gives a wrong impression. In a state of nature the carnivora hunt and kill to satisfy hunger, not for amusement. It is onlj^ man who kills for sport. (It is only man also who kills his own species.)
The " cruelty " is very largely imaginary : we exaggerate because c?; of our anthropomorphic tendency. The intensity of pain varies with the development or decay of mind and its nervous system, so that even a negro suffers less than we do — and the lower animals far less and less again than the negro. This subject has been discussed by many writers, beginning with A. R. Wallace in The World of Life. The biological function of pain, and the reason why it has been evolved, is to compel us to take precautions against disease or wounds, and also to ensure the rest and attention necessary for a cure. It follovv's from this that the pain must be more intense, as intelligence rises in the animal scale. Actually, among ourselves, anticipation is often far worse than the reality — and it is this purely mental factor which we attribute to the mouse !
NOVALIS AND OTHERS 169
There are many flowers of heavenly origin in this world ; they do not flourish in this climate but are properly heralds, clear-voiced messengers of a better existence : Religion is one ; Love is another.
NOVALIS.
Will she return, my lady ? Nay : Love's feet, that once have learned to stray, Turn never to the olden way.
Ah, heart of mine, where lingers she ? By what live stream or saddened sea ? What wild-flowered swath of sungilt lea
Do her feet press, and are her days Sweet with new stress of love and praise, Or sad with echoes of old lays ?
John Payne.
Light 0' Love.
I SEARCH but cannot see What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known The gain of every life. . . .
I say, I cannot think that gains — which will not be Except a special soul had gained them — that such gain Can ever be estranged, do aught but appertain Immortally, by right firm, indefeasible, To who performed the feat, through God's grace and man's
^^^^- R. Browning.
Fifine at the Fair.
Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower, v/here I thought a flower would grow.
Abraham Lincoln.
170 MYERS
Why describe our life-history as a state of waking rather than of sleep ? Why assume that sleep is the acquired, vigilance the normal condition ? It would not be hard to defend the opposite thesis. The newborn infant might urge with cogency that his habitual state of slumber was primary, as regards the individual, ancestral as regards the race ; resembling at least, far more closely than does our adult life, a primitive or protozoic habit. " Mine," he might say, " is a centrally stable state. It would need only some change in external conditions (as the permanent immersion in a nutritive fluid) to be safely and indefinitely maintained. Your waking state, on the other hand, is centrally unstable. While you talk and bustle around me you are living on your physiological capital, and the mere prolongation of vigilance is torture and death."
A paradox such as this forms no part of my argument ; but it may remind us that physiology at any rate hardly warrants us in speaking of our waking state as if that alone represented our true selves, and every deviation from it must be at best a mere interruption. Vigilance in reality is but one of two co-ordinate phases of our personality, which we have acquired or differentiated from each other during the stages of our long evolution.
F. W. H. Myers. Multiplex Personality.
This is from an article in the Nineteenth Century, November 1886, in which Myers urged the study of the trance-personalities that manifest themselves under hypnotism. In his great work, Himia?i Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, he develops a theory that the waking life is evolved by practical needs from the prenatal and earliest infantile state, which is neither sleep nor waking. The faculties necessary for those practical needs are retained and intensified in the waking life, but other faculties and sensations are withdrawn and dropped into the unconscious. These unconscious faculties and sensations manifest themselves in dreams — frequently to a less extent, but at times in great activity — lost memories being revived, problems being unexpectedly solved, such a poem as " Kubla Khan " composed and many intense sensations and emotions experienced. Myers also finds in dreams evidence of higher powers, which connect us with the spiritual world, but which have dropped into the unconscious.
It seems to me that the theory, that the unconscious is made up of memories and faculties dropped from the conscious, is erroneous. I propose to outline, very brief!}', some of the facts which appear to be fully established, and which show that the unconscious is different from and superior to the conscious. From these facts I also draw the deduc- tion that the unconscious controls the bodily organism, but that it itself is not embodied. That is to say, it exists independently of the body, and its processes and activities have no correlative structures in the
NOTE ON MYERS 171
brain. There can, therefore, be no presumption that it dies with the body — or dies at all. The conclusion will be found inevitable, that it is the Soul.
The facts I mention will appear strange to those who are unfamiliar with the subject, but they are nevertheless reliable ; my deductions are, of course, open to question. Some of them depend on neurology, of which I have only a very elementary knowledge. Needless to say, they appear to me to be correct.
/ noio drop the expression, " the unconscious," which is ambiguous, misleading and most troublesome to handle, and I substitute the less un- satisfactory expression, " the superconscious." Yet the use of this expres- sion is not intended to suggest the idea of something superhuman or supernatural. The superconscious is human, limited in knowledge and capacity, and varying in both in each individual.
A. The superconscious memory is imineasurably greater in extent and quality than the conscious memory. It remembers every event in our lives. (Bergson came to this conclusion as to memory generally as long ago as 1896, when the evidence was far less complete.) The hypnotized subject can live over again periods of his past life, even as far back as when he was an infant a few mottths old. This is by no means an extreme statement — there is evidence that seems to point to the existence of even prenatal memories, but I do not wish to introduce debatable questions. Not only under hypnotism, but also in dreams and the delirium of fever and in periods of intense excitement, those long-lost, far-distant memories reappear. Where persons have been resuscitated after drowning or hanging, or Alpine climbers have slipped down crevasses, or soldiers have stood before the firing-party, they have had all the forgotten events of their lives pass before them in swift panoi-ama, with every detail and in their due order. That these are superconscious memories will be more clearly seen as the reader proceeds with this note.
Even facts to which no attention was paid at the time by the conscious mind are found recorded in this wonderful memory. An ignorant woman in the delirium of fever talked Latin, Greek and Hebrew ; on inquiry it was found that as a girl she had been a servant to an old professor, who was in the habit of reading aloud passages in those languages.* Another woman had been a peasant child speaking only in a dialect, v/hich she since had entirely forgotten : when hypnotized and told to go back to her childhood, she speaks in the forgotten dialect and (so absolutely is she living again in that period of her life) she cannot speak in her present town-language. On the other hand, when the hypnotized subject is not sent back to a previous period, it is seen that the superconscious memory contains also everything that the conscious memory contains, and far more vividly than the latter, so that it canttot consist of memories " dropped from the conscious." Later on it will be found perfectly clear that the superconscious could not exercise its various functions if its memory did not include everything that is still retained in the conscious memory.
So far I have shown the vast extent of the superconscious memory as compared with the very limited conscious memory. But also the former is of a much superior quality to that of the latter : the one is clear, distinct and permanently indelible ; the other, needing note-books
* At the last moment, as this book is passing through the press, I am reminded that Andrew Lang threw some doubt on this story. However, there is an abundance of similar evidence. See, for instance, Floumoy's Des Indes a la Planite Mars (which is published also in translation).
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and memoranda for even what happened yesterday, is evanescent, elusive and ephemeral.
The question now arises whether the superconscious is embodied or is independent of the body. To those who have paid attention to the important evidence adduced by the S.P.R. (Society for Psychical Re- search) there is no need to ask this question. It is quite certain that the dead, who have ceased to be embodied, retain the whole of their memories. However — such is the absurd state of things — this invaluable evidence is neglected by the majority of thinkers, and I therefore proceed to other facts.
Seeing that the ephemeral conscious memory is associated with the brain-cells, which are also ephemeral, the inference is that the permanent and indelible superconscious meinory is not so associated — and this inference is borne out in at least two important directions. There is, first, the fact that the superconscious memory begins, as shown above, at earliest infancy when the child's brain is not fully co-ordinated and developed. The other fact is seen in observed cases, of which an immense number occurred during the war. The typical case is that of the Rev. Thomas Hanna, who through an accident had lost every memory of the past to an extraordinary extent, so that he had to begin learning everything again, as if he were an infant. Yet in his dreams there was found clear evidence of memory of the past, and by a hypnoidal process Boris Sidis discovered that the whole of the lost memories remained intact in the superconscious. The injury to the brain, which had completely effaced the conscious memory, had not affected the superconscious to the slightest extent. Therefore in regard to memory, the superconscious does not appear to be embodied.
B. Again the superconscious apparently has control over every cell and every function of the body. The evidence of this is enormous, but I shall confine myself to two effects of suggestion, namely, stigmatiza- tion and cure of disease.
(i) As regards the former, St. Francis of Assisi and a number of others, even in recent times, are said to have received the stigmata, definite, open bleeding wounds in hands, feet and side resembling those of Our Lord. Under hypnotic suggestion many similar results can be produced. A design is drawn on the skin, and by suggestion the lines will become bleeding wheals. If it is suggested that a cold iron placed against the skin is red-hot, an actual burn will appear. On the other hand the skin can be really burned, but, if it is so suggested, no blister will arise, the inflamed area will not extend and will rapidly heal, and no pain whatever will be felt. Therefore, the stigmata stories are no doubt true, but thej'^ are due to autosuggestion. (This, however, does not disprove supernatural influence, for we have no knowledge of what this mysterious " suggestion " really is or how it operates, and we know practically nothing of the nature and relations of the superconscious. Autosuggestion appears to be of the nature of faith, prayer and self- surrender.)
However, here we have clear-cut, definite facts of fundamental importance proved beyond possible doubt. The superconscious certainly has control over myriads of body-cells, including at least portion of the nervous system. Until w'e can see the interior of the body with something better than the X-ray process, our direct experi- ments are limited to the cells at or near the surface of the body ; but it would, indeed, be a fatuous argument that the area controlled by the superconscious is limited to the area within the range of our vision. Plainly the inference is that it controls every cell in the body, and it will be seen that this is confirmed by the curative effects of suggestion.
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In the latter group of cases, as in the stigmata phenomena, it will appear later that the superconscious does not act, as it were, in opposition to our conscious selves ; and must be invited to intervene by suggestion. It can cure the bad habits by which we injure the tissues of the body (and which also make it a prey to certain diseases) ; but it must be asked to do so — and, to be fully effective, the invitation must come before repair has become impossible.
(2) As regards the curative effect of suggestion, it has been much in evidence during the last twenty years in the work of M. Coue and his New Nancy School, but it was known long before his time by those who took an interest in psj-chical research. Suggestion cures organic as well as functional disease, with certain limitations, which are much the same in the one as in the other. (The view is now generally held that both functional and organic diseases are structural, but in the former the changes are molecular, and therefore not visible to the eye or under the microscope.) The cure of functional disease by suggestion is universally admitted ; and the evidence is ample and undoubted as regards organic disease also. But I may perhaps quote the following from Dr. T. W. Mitchell's paper read at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1922 :
" Let us take an example : there is perhaps no more common instance of faulty bodily functioning than habitual constipation ; and the cure of this condition, by material remedies alone, is perhaps impossible. On the other hand, almost every case of habitual constipation, in which hypnosis can be induced, may be cured by suggestion, without the use of any material remedies whatever. Or take another example : an apparently healthy young woman gets badly scalded by the upsetting of a kettle of boiling water. The wound is appropriately dressed and, during hypnosis, absence of pain and rapid healing are suggested. There follows a sequence of events frequently recorded in experimental work on hypnotic suggestion : no pain is experienced, no inflammatory area develops, and the injured part heals with unusual rapidity." In the discussion that followed, these statements were not questioned.
The most conservative medical men admit that suggestion at least " stimulates " recovery in organic disease and, more often than not, attach greater importance to the suggestion that goes with the medicine or treatment than to the medicine or treatment itself. Hence the importance to a doctor of " a good bedside manner." Or, as Professor G. A4. Robertson put it at the meeting above referred to, " the successful medical man is the successful psychotherapeutist, though he may not know it."
On the other hand, an injurious suggestion caused by anxiety or depression will hinder recovery. Suggestion will even stop all the bodily functions and cause death, as when persons, especially savages, believe they are dying, or by witchcraft or through breach of tribal observance doomed to die. When under savage tradition a definite time is fixed, death comes punctually to the moment.
Now to produce stigmatization, to prevent inflam.mation, to cause anaesthesia, to be able to cure, or even to " stimulate " the cure of organic disease, and to prevent recovery, and to stop all the processes of the body at one moment, and cause death, the superconscious must pre- sumably have power to direct and control all the cells and organs of the body.
From this it seems necessarily to follow that the superconscious directs growth, so that it is probablj' the primary factor in evolution — selection and adaptation being secondary processes. I have no space
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to enlarge upon this, and must leave it as a suggestion. (But the reader, who finds an initial difficulty in the notion that something in the nature of a superconscious may exist in the lower forms of plant and animal life, might read William Janies' essay on " Human Immortality " and Bergson's essay on " Life and Consciousness.") *
Now again in regard to these curative and other activities, does the superconscious appear to be embodied ? Are there any concomitant processes in the brain ? In some cases, as in the action of the free cells or in manufacturing or using antitoxins, no part whatever of the nervous system seems to be employed. When the body is cut or bruised, and the phagocytes and antitoxins are despatched to the injured locality to wage war on the invading germs, no neural function appears at work, and there can surely be no correlative process in the brain. Not only so, but in causing anaesthesia the superconscious appears to control the brain and nervous system, so that surgical operations can be performed under hypnosis. See also the case mentioned by Dr. Mitchell. Again, the most remarkable of all curative processes is the restitution of functions of the brain itself. When through some accident or disease, some function, sensory, motor or intellectual, of the brain is destroyed, the superconscious is often able to teach other nervous centres to carry on the lost functions, so that they perform tasks previously unknown to them. (It can only be the superconscious that does this, for it is certainly not the conscious mind — and one part of the brain cannot so direct and educate another part automatically.) In carrying out this work in the brain, can it possibly be suggested that there is any corresponding process in the brain itself ?
C. Most important of all the faculties of the superconscious is imagina- tion— that great creative faculty, superior to the intellect, the source of inspiration and genius in art, music, poetry, religion, science, philosophy, war, statesmanship, invention and all other mental activities ; even in " business " and the conduct of one's ordinary life. It is, indeed, the essential source of human progress. Its supreme value is attested by numberless poets, philosophers and others. I might refer to a few classic instances : Newton and the apple, Galileo and the lamp, Socrates and his Dtemon, William Blake and his " spirits," Coleridge and " Kubla Khan," Joan of Arc and her Voices, R. L. Stevenson and his Brov>?nies, and one we heard of recently, Sir J. M. Barrie and his " M'Connachie." Many persons appear to think that imagination is confined to art and poetry, but even these instances show that it is not so. Its sway is universal. Tyndall said that imagination was " the greatest of scientific instruments." Maudsley {Body and Wilt) said, " It performs the initial and essential functions in every branch of human development." Sir W. R. Hamilton tells us that his method of quaternians burst upon him, completely finished, while he was near a bridge in Dublin. " In a conversation concerning the place of imagina- tion in scientific work," says Liebig, " a great French mathematician expressed the opinion to me that the greater part of mathematical truth is acquired not through deduction, but through the imagination. He might have said ' all the mathematical truths ' zvithout being ivrong." (Another important testimony to this fact will be seen later on.) BuflFon, the great naturalist, said, " You feel a little electric shock striking you on the head, seizing your heart at the same time— that is the moment of genius." Puttenham has an interesting statement in The Art of English Poesie, 1589 : " The phantastical [imaginative] part of men is a repre- senter of the best, most coinely and bewtifuU images or appearances of thinges to the soule and according to their very truth. Of this sort of Phantasie are all good Poets, notable Captaires stratagematique, all
• See note since added, p. 283.
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cunning artificers and Enginers, all Legislators, Politiciens and Coun- sellours of estate, in whose exercises the inventive part is most employed, and is to the sound and true judgement of man most needful." Other statements will appear in the course of this note.
The all-important fact is that imagination is not only superior to the intellect, but is a different, independent faculty. It is the source of originality and invention, the framer of hypotheses and cause of dis- coveries in science and philosophy, and the inspiration of art and poetry. It is the " divine afflatus " of the ancients, v.'ithout which, as Cicero said, no man could be truly great. (William Blake thought it the essential attribute of God ; see p. 351.) It is clearly differentiated from intellect, since it acts independently of the conscious mind and will. An artist will consciously plan out his work, but, as it proceeds, he finds his scheme so altered (and improved) that he is startled at the ultimate result. In an illustration to be given presently, a scientist starts to demonstrate a conclusion he had arrived at consciously, but his superconscious intervenes and sets him to work out the precisely reverse theory. Geley {From the Unconscious to the Conscious) speaks of " Rousseau in a state of rapture and tears, covering pages of writing without reflection or effort, Alfred de Musset listening to the ' genius ' who dictated his poems, Socrates listening to his daemon, Schopenhauer refusing to believe that his unsought and unexpected postulates were his oivn work." Du Bois-Reymond, the physiologist, said " he had often noted that his happy thoughts came to him involuntarily and zvhen he was not thinking of the subject." George Sand said, " With Chopin creation was spon- taneous, miraculous ; he wrought without foreseeing. It would come complete, sudden, sublime." Jacob Boehme, the great mystic, said : " I declare before God that I do not myself know how the thing arises within me, without the participation of my will. I do not even know that which I am impelled to write." Ribot says : " Inspiration reveals a power superior to the conscious individual, and strange to him although acting through him — a state which many inventors [original artists, scientists, etc.] have expressed by saying, ' / had no art or part in the work.' " Darwin {Descent of Man) says : " The imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results. ' A poet,' as Jean Paul Richter remarks, ' who must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes or no— to the devil with him ! He is only a stupid corpse.' " (The italics above are mine.) See also quotations from Niebuhr and Shelley, pp. 240-41.*
The difference between intellect and imagination is that between reason and insight. In the state of knowledge of Newton's time no amount of conscious intellectual work would have given him the idea that the universe was balanced by gravitation. When Shelley wrote those marvellous lines in " Adonais,"
Life, like a dome of many- coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
he rose as high as the stars above mere intellect, and gave us a sublime truth whose meaning it would take volumes to adequately express. On pp. 20-21 the imaginative insight of the poet Shakespeare is seen to transcend by far the intellect of the philosopher Bacon in his own subject, philosophy. So in this curious " poetic " period there must be at least two thousand writers of the present generation in the British Empire, each of whom has published one or more books of verse ; yet, as they
* In those remarkable cases of " calculating boys " the conscious mind is clearly not at work — and this is probably so with " infant prodigies " generally.
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seem to have little true poetic imagination, the result of this huge in- tellectual output will probably not equal in poetic value the woi^k of Keats, who died at twenty- five, or Shelley, who died at twenty-nine. Again, in this greatest of all periods in physics, inathematics, psychology and invention there are thousands of highly educated and efficient men, but only a few who are gifted with great imagination. However, it is a recognized fact that without imagination we could have no genius, and therefore no great achievements in art, science or other directions.
Yet to make this note clear I must find room for an illustration show- ing that this superconscious imagination (i) is superior to the intellect and (2) works independently of the conscious mind and will. An excellent instance is given in Poincar^'s Science and Method. I may mention that Poincare (1854-1912) was a man of extraordinary genius, who did great work, not in one subject only, but over a remarkably wide range of subjects, including philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and physics. Bertrand Russell, in his preface to the English translation of this book (published in 1914), says : " Henri Poincare was, by general agreement, the most eminent scientific man of his generation — more eminent, one is tempted to think, than any man of science now living."
In a chapter on " Mathematical Discovery," Poincar^ states that all his discoveries came from the " subliminal ego," that is to say, the superconscious. There is nothing remarkable about this, as it is the common experience of all men of genius ; but he also gives us a detailed account of one of his discoveries — that of the Fuchsian functions in mathematics — as an illustration of what occurred in every case.
To begin with, he was on the wrong track, and had been trying for a fortnight to prove that no such functions were possible. But one morning he woke with the fact clearly demonstrated to him that one (hyper- geometrical) series of Fuchsian functions did certainly exist. It was the superconscious, as of course he saw himself, that had established this fact for him.*
He proceeded to work out the results of what had been thus demon- strated. He then had to leave his home at Caen to take part in a geologi- cal conference, and the incidents of the journey made him forget his mathematical work. " At Coutances we got into a break to go for a drive and, just as I put my foot on the step," there came to him another brilliant idea that shed new and important light on the nature of the Fuchsian functions. Nothing in his former thoughts seemed to have prepared him for this new development. " I made no verification and had no time to do so, since I took up the conversation again as soon as I sat down in the break, but I felt absolutely certain at once." On returning to Caen he verified the facts.
He then began to study some arithmetical questions, not in connection with the Fuchsian functions, which he knew only as referable to geometry. He could make no headway with these arithmetical questions and, disgusted at his failure, went away for a few days to the seaside. There his thoughts were occupied in entirely different matters. But one day, as he was walking on the cliff, another conception of enormous importance came to him " with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty." This conception identified certain arith- metical results with those of the higher geometry, and was therefore of wide significance ; and it disclosed in particular the existence of other
* Poincare had taken coffee before going to bed, and was unable to sleep. He says a host of ideas kept surging in his head ; and he apparently thought this brain-disturbance had to do with the fact he found established in the morning. But this could be only a co- incidence. As will be seen later on, no brain-action takes place when the imagination is at work. And, in fact, in the three other cases, where the imagination came to Poincare's assistance, it will be seen that the brain is not at work on the subject.
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series of Fuchsian functions in addition to the one series he had known of up to that time.
He returned home to Caen and worked out the results of this third great discovery. He tried hard to form all the new functions which he now knew to exist. But he met with a difficulty that all his efforts failed to surmount (this work of course was conscious). At this tirne he had to leave home and serve his time in the army — and naturally his mind became fully occupied with very different matters. But " one day, as I was crossing the street, the solution of the difficulty which had brought me to a standstill came to me all at once." This ended the research and, when he had completed his service in the army, he was able to compose at a single sitting the treatise on the Fuchsian functions which made him renowned.
Poincard then considers the fact that throughout the whole period the superconscious had been working out step by step this profound mathematical problem. And it had done this voluntarily and not through the conscious mind. And it had succeeded time after time when the conscious mind had failed. Therefore, it was apparently clear that the superconscious was superior to the conscious. But Poincare confesses that he is loth to admit this. The philosopher, Boutroux (1845-1921), had also found the same result appearing in quite different matters, and he also disliked coming to the conclusion that the super- conscious w^as superior to the conscious. However, it is not necessary to discuss the very nebulous and wholly unsatisfactory hypotheses, by which these eminent men endeavoured to escape from an inevitable conclusion. They themselves were clearly not satisfied with their own far-fetched suggestions. And they had both failed to put together and consider as a whole the facts relating to the superconscious, or even the facts relating to the imagination alone.
So far I have spoken only of the achievements of genius, but imagina- tion enters into all human activities. As I write these lines I remember an incident that happened a few hours ago. I went to the Melbourne Public Library to read Condillac's Traite des sensations, which I had never looked at. I put down my umbrella to search for the reference in the card-catalogue, then received the book from the librarian, and, forgetting the umbrella, went to the reading-room. There I soon became completely absorbed in this very interesting book. Suddenly the fact that I had left my umbrella startled me, and I went back and fortunately found it. Here my conscious mind was occupied to its fullest extent — ■ and it was surely the superconscious that had given me the reminder. Take another familiar, but more important, experience. A man finds himself confronted with some serious and critical situation of business or private concern. He sees only one decision to come to, and embodies that decision in a letter which will bind him irrevocably. If he is a sensible man he will withhold his ultimatum until he has " slept on it." This is really, although he does not know it, an invitation to his superconscious to assist him, when his tired brain is at rest. How often does he find on waking next morning that his attitude to the situation is entirely changed and that his decision was wrong — and how thankful he is that he did not send the letter ! He may attribute this to " un- conscious cerebration," the old, absurd idea that the brain can auto- matically carry out a train of intelligent thought : but certainly neither intellect nor brain had been at work. If they had, the man would not have waked fresh and vigorous to begin another day's work. It was imagination that came to inform, advise and direct the intellect.
Now again comes the question whether the superconscious is embodied. It seems sufficient to point out that imagination is spon-
N
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taneous and independent of conscious thought, that it operates when the brain is inactive as in sleep, or quiescent as in phantasy-dreaming, or when the conscious mind and the brain are fully and actively at work on other matters. Moreover, the brain becomes worn out with fatigue and needs rest and recuperation, but no fatigue resuhs from the work of the imagination. (I must again state that it is at work while the brain is recovering its energy in sleep.) Therefore, it cannot apparently have any correlative process in the brain.
There is also another point which is perhaps even stronger in this connection. We know that physical resemblance is inherited ; and so also is no doubt intellect (although a vast deal attributed to heredity is simply due to environment). But it is clear that genius is not inherited.* If it were, instances would have occurred of two or more indisputable geniuses being closely allied in blood ; and among all the many men of genius in art, poetry, religion, science, philosophy, inven- tion, etc., not one instance has been established. There are, on the contrary, many cases like that of Newton, where there were no men of any note whatever among their kindred ; and when two fine poets, the Brownings, intermarry, the son (although he is said to have had some moderate success as an artist) is quite unknown to fame. As genius is not inherited, it obviously follows that this must be the case with imagination generally, and that the latter is not embodied. If it were embodied, it would be subject to heredity as intellect is.
D. Telepathy and clairvoyance. Both of these indicate the existence of mind independent of the body. One means that mind can communicate with mind independently of the senses of the body, the other that the mind can perceive objects that are inaccessible to sight or other senses. (In many cases they are indistinguishable.)
With regard to both these subjects I can make only general state- ments, for the evidence is enormous. As regards clairvoyance we have such a volume of evidence from reliable sources that there can be no doubt that it is founded on fact. A new body of " book-test " evidence has recently appeared and it is most remarkable. (See Mrs. Henry Sidgwick's article in Proc. of the S.P.R. for April 1921, and The Earthen Vessel by Lady Glenconner, 1921.)
Telepathy is in a still stronger position, because it is amenable to experiment as well as to observation. It is now thirty-four years since telepathy was established by the Society for Psychical Research after six years of exhaustive inquiry and experiment by an able committee ; and the evidence has been enormously increased since that time. I have no hesitation in saying that no intelligent, unbiased man can examine that overwhelming mass of evidence without being absolutely convinced that telepathy is a fact.
I am even disposed to think that telepathy is the primary source of communication between mind and mind among animals and men — the cries and calls and other methods of animals and our own speaking and writing being later additional mechanisms. There are many facts that seem to indicate this. What, to begin with, is the origin of language itself ? It must have been a joint process, the result of an agreement between a tribe or other group as to the signs to be used. How could such a mutual understanding — in the absence of language itself — have been arrived at except by telepathy ? How again do babies understand what is said to them ? What is the origin of the proverb, " Think of
* See on this subject James Ward's Psychological Principles, chap, xviii. Gallon, in the second edition of Hereditary Genius, admits that the title should have been " Hereditary Ability." Schopenhauer, Carlyle, Nietzsche and. other writers say that the " great man " is a demigod who stands by himself and cannot be explained by heredity or otherwise.
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the devil, etc." ? Who has not repeatedly had the experience of thinking of some long-absent and forgotten person just before he turns a corner and comes into view, or just before one finds a letter from him lying on the breakfast-table ? How otherwise are to be explained the numerous instances where Indians or savages have known in every detail events that had occurred at great distances away, when there was no possibility of news having reached them by any other means ? Are not all the facts on which M'Dougall bases his artificial conception of a " group mind " explicable by telepathy ? How extraordinarily often do man and wife or any two closely intimate friends, without look or sign, know what each other is thinking of ? Surely far too often to be accounted for by coincidence, or as the result of similar trains of thought. This may well be the explanation of many curious facts, as, for example, how what is called "the spirit of the age" arises (see p. 308), or the remarkable way in which children change their games together at one time. As regards animals, there are numbers of instances where they act together at the same moment under the influence apparently of telepathy ; the sudden lighting up and darkening of innumerable fire- flies and other light-producing organisms, the stampeding and other combined movements of flocks and herds, the concerted, duly marshalled and orderly marching and other proceedings of countless myriads of ants, the migration of birds simultaneously and ivith remarkable precision in the marshalling of their ranks and the order of their flight are a few instances.* Without my enlarging further on this subject, the reader himself will find many other facts in his own experience if he thinks over the matter.
It should, however, be borne in mind that the strong tendency of our social civilization, especially in the competitive strife of modern industrialism, is to make us conceal our thoughts, and therefore to inhibit telepathy. Also, we do not need telepathy so much since we developed speaking and writing. Presumably, like any other faculty, telepathy can decay through disuse. These are probably the reasons why we usually fail to see it in active operation.
Telepathy also is not confined to the living. I, in common with many other members of the Society for Psychical Research, am satisfied that telepathy also occurs between the dead and the living (including the projection of mental images or apparitions). It is probably due to telepathy from the dead that primitive man believed in survival after death, but a discussion of this subject would add enormously to this over-long note. Yet see generally as to primitive man, p. 183.
There is no need to ask the question whether as regards telepathy and clairvoyance the superconscious appears to be embodied. Plainly it is not. They even seem to involve a power in the superconscious of travelling and acting outside the body.
E. I must hurry through the remaining points, although they are equally important. I shall merely mention the phenomena of medium- ship and omit all other alleged supernormal phenomena, for which the evidence is not equally strong. It is clear that the superconscious is the dramatic author, and also the " producer," of our dreams, of which the dreamer is the spectator or the helpless victim. We have also learnt that, although we remember so little of our dreams, we are dream- ing constantly through the night. If then dreaming were associated
* There is an enormous number of stories in Fabre's and a thousand otiier books that indicate the existence of telepathy, clairvoyance, somnambulism, presentiment of death and other supernormal phenomena in animals ; and I should think every one who has had much to do with horses, dogs, elephants and other animals could add to the evidence. There are also cases of telepathy between animals and man (see Proc. of the S.P.R., Oct. 1922, and also accounts of Indian snake-charmers, etc.). It should be remembered also that dogs and other animals have vivid dreams.
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with brain-action, we would wake up more fatigued than when we went to sleep, and life could not possibly continue.
On this latter point it seems to me probable that our conscious mind obtains its fresh energy from the superconscious during sleep. As Myers points out, the waking time can exist only for brief periods con- tinuously ; we cannot continue to live without resort to the fuller vitality which sleep brings to us. No length of time lying down awake in dark- ness and silence will give the recuperative effect that even a few moments of sleep will produce. Does this not indicate that, acting as it does in its curative work, it is this tireless, ever-awake superconscious that recuperates the conscious mind, supplying it with new energy ?
One very important point I must not pass over. The superconscious appears to be the source of our intuitions, including our ideals and " judgments of value." These are not deducible by any intellectual process, and are, indeed, opposed to what we call common-sense. But the superconscious has a great knowledge of the facts of human life by reason of its retentive memory, and a clearer perception of the truths underlying and explaining those facts ; and it compels the conscious to accept and act upon ideals, which are opposed to its own reasoned conclusions. (See quotation from Menzies, p. 314.)
I have had to confine myself to these few facts relating to the super- conscious. The subject is a vast one and has ramifications in every direction.* We have still to consider whether any, and what, general conclusions can be arrived at.
F. We are only at the beginning of knowledge, but one fact seems to be quite clear, namely, that the superconscious is superior to the conscious mind. This is seen in its memory, its curative and other powers over the body, its imagination, telepathy, etc. But, as men- tioned before, it is not superhuman. Although, by its more extensive memory, it has a greater knowledge of the facts, and it also has a finer appreciation of them, yet it knows nothing in advance of the conscious. It could not, for instance, tell Dalton that his " atoms " were complex formations, or tell Newton of four-dimensional space-time. It is human, and liable to err, and it grows in knowledge. It may even grow in faculty, for our sense of beauty in nature seems to be a recent acquisi- tion. Apparently it can also decay, since the aesthetic and other faculties are known to decay (see p. 363). It of course varies in every individual from the savage to the average civilized man, and from the average man to the genius.
Again, the superconscious appears to be independent of the body, and to use it simply as an instrument, so that there is no reason to suppose that it perishes with the body. Also, it is through the superconscious that we are in touch with the spiritual world. The evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research, which has in my opinion estab- lished the fact of survival after death, comes through telepathy fro in the dead. And it is from the superconscious and not from the conscious mind that we place the highest value upon those ideals, love, duty, self- abnegation, moral principle and the cause of truth, for which nien lay down their lives.
What then is the superconscious ? Here, I think, we can come to
* Take as an illustration the sense of humour, which shows us things in their due propor- tion, saving us from unwholesome pessimism on one hand and childish self-conceit on the other — and keeps an old man young. This seems to belong to the superconscious and not the intellect. Many highly intellectual men (Gladstone is a well-known instance) have been devoid of any sense of humour. The Prussians are not wanting in intellect, but are wanting in humour — and hence their grotesque notion of their own world-superiority, and their disastrous inroad upon civilization.
NOTE ON MYERS i8i
a definite conclusion. It is the true self or Soul.* As the spectrum is not limited to visible light, so
(fl) The Soul is not liinited to its conscious functions.
(b) It has " superconscious " functions, superior to those of the
conscious. How far they extend, we have only begun to explore.
(c) In those functions it acts independently of the body, but it employs
the conscious mind with its brain to do subsidiary work.
The real difficulty appears to be, not what is the superconscious, but what is the conscious mind, and what are the relations between the two. It is a mystery, and we can only conjecture. As I said above, I am in- clined to think that the superconscious is the cause of evolution, and, therefore, has developed the brain and nervous system. That is to say, it appears to form the machinery for the use of the conscious mind. Does it also form the conscious mind itself ? I cannot think that this is possible for several reasons, chiefly because the conscious mind has volition. But, if I inay hazard a conjecture, the conscious may be a branch or specialized part of the superconscious or Soul. This is a vague statement, but at present we cannot form clear conceptions.
In this conjecture I am in the first place influenced by the fact that the superconscious or Soul is plainly superior to the conscious. But it may be desirable that it should detach a portion of itself to be in contact with the outside world, to acquire knowledge, to carry into effect aesthetic conceptions or, as in such a case as Poincare's, to work out with pen and paper scientific hypotheses that the superconscious has formed.
Let us consider what happens in a particular instance. Take the case of an infant before its brain, the machinery of the conscious mind, is co-ordinated and developed. The infant undoubtedly reasons ; its reasoning extends over a very wide area, and it arrives at a multitude of conclusions. We also know that, although it spends most of its time asleep, it acquires knowledge at a prodigious rate. Taking one only of its many acquirements, it learns a language. And it does not matter in the least what language it is, for, if the infant is adopted early enough by alien foster-parents, any English baby will as readily learn French, Arabic, Hindustanee, or Chinese as it will learn English. This seems to mean that, until the superconscious has developed the brain, it does not detach the conscious mind, but works directly as a whole. When it has formed the necessary machinery, the brain, it then delegates certain subordinate functions to the conscious.
But what mainly appeals to me is that the disembodied dead retain their intelligence to the fullest extent. In their case we see no dis- tinction between the superconscious and the conscious. But here I am again dealing with the evidence furnished by the S.P.R., which is so strangely neglected by the majority of thinkers.
However, my conjecture is only a conjecture and is faced with serious difficulties. It seems to make far too little of the conscious volitional mind which occupies so great a part in our lives. And we also find a number of perplexing facts, some of which seem incompatible with the conjecture, and some that seem favourable to it. Although the superconscious or Soul can apparently restrain the conscious from acts which cause disease or death (as when a man is cured of the drinking habit by suggestion), it will not intervene unless the conscious mind " suggests," which seems to mean, asks it to do so. But it will not
* The use of the term "mind " in such a connection is, as a friend writes me, a " timorous academic compromise."
1 82 NOTE ON MYERS
obey a conmiand from the conscious ; the will must be absolutely in abeyance, or the superconscious will not lend its assistance. Cou^ discovered this in his curative work, but, as shown above, it has long been recognized in connection with the imagination. Although the superconscious can control the body, yet, to quote a neurological fact mentioned in Sir C. S. Sherrington's address to the British Association in 1922, it allows the severed nerves in an amputated limb to sprout uselessly and cause great unnecessary suffering. And, worst of all, it will apparently carry out an injurious suggestion of the conscious mind, and even cause death.
Again, the superconscious or Soul comes only to assist the conscious in matters which the conscious has been previously considering. It was to explain problems that had arisen in Newton's conscious mind that the superconscious conceived and brought to him the idea of gravita- tion ; it did not bring it to an artist or poet who had not concerned himself with problems in physics. But where the superconscious does operate, it volunteers its assistance. This adds to the mystery. Why should it voluntarily intervene to help the poet, artist and scientist in his work, and yet not intervene to save them froin suffering or death ?
Then, again, Poincar^'s case shows that it does not acquire its own knowledge, but depends on information obtained by the conscious. It was only when Poincare had worked at arithmetical problems, v^hich apparently had nothing to do with the geometrical Fuchsian functions, that the superconscious arrived at the important truth that certain arith- metical results corresponded with those of the higher geometry. That the superconscious should thus depend on facts brought to its knowledge by the conscious mind seems to be consistent with my conjecture — that the superconscious has specialized the conscious and formed the brain for that express purpose. This would also explain why it assists the conscious only in matters that the latter has been previously investi- gating— it has only the facts acquired by the conscious to work on. As the artist or poet provides no scientific facts, unless in such a case as Leonardo da Vinci or Goethe, his superconscious cannot build up any scientific hypothesis.
In the last paragraph I have not fully set out the position as it appears to me. I think the superconscious directs the intellect, and probably directed Poincar^'s conscious mind to work at the arithmetical problems referred to. It may have had some indication of the truth from the arithmetical work Poincar^ had previously done. Its profound memory would have all that work vividly before it. Even from my own humble experience I arrived at the conclusion that the superconscious directs the conscious. It is unfortunate that we have not other accounts like Poincare's. If only, for instance, Einstein could and would narrate his experiences in similar detail, it would probably be of the greatest value to psychology.
As regards the objections which seem opposed to my conjecture, they may disappear when we learn more of the subject. We need to remember, for instance, that the superconscious or Soul is human and liable to error ; and that it pursues its own course, actuated by motives that we cannot as yet fully comprehend. It no doubt experiments, and all experimenting is " at random " to begin with. Again, we have no idea whatever as to what this wonderful " suggestion " really is. There are several more or less plausible explanations that offer them- selves, but I have to bring to an end this enormously long note.*
* In putting together the above facts, apart from Ribot and other authorities, I derived much assistance from Dr. Geley's From the Unconscious to the Conscious. But unfortunately in this very suggestive book, in addition to recognized facts. Dr. Geley relies for liis own
NOTE ON MYERS 183
Addendum to Note
On further consideration I think I must refer to one subject which bears on the above note generally, and in particular on the question why primitive man believed in survival after death (see p. 179). Accord- ing to the generally accepted theory, earliest man was of brutally low intelligence, far inferior to the most bestial of savages. As it was recently put in Nature, the savage is as much superior to him as he was to the ape. Also, according to the current theory, savages are tribes that have advanced considerably beyond primitive man but, nevertheless, have reached only a comparatively low stage of development. It seems to me on the contrary that primitive man was equal, if not superior, to ourselves in mentality (although, of course, not in accumulated knowledge) ; and that savages are degenerates from superior ancestors and far inferior to primitive man. I put forward this view with great diffidence, because on such subjects I am not a student, but only a casual reader. Also, I can give only the briefest possible statement of the main evidence that appears to support my contention.
If man originally was such an inconceivably degraded human being as the current theory alleges, and has since made such stupendous intellectual progress, we ought to find, on tracing his history backwards, a clear and continuous decline in intelligence. Let us first consider the evidence from
(i) Anthropology. (I should first mention that, as Marcellin Boule has clearly demonstrated, " Neanderthal man " and his probable pro- genitor, " Heidelberg man," do not belong to our species. Homo sapiens, but are of a different species, if not a different genus.) Although the anthropological evidence is scanty, we learn from it that primitive man invented tools, weapons, clothing and ornaments, that he made the greatest of all discoveries, how to produce fire, and, presumably, he also invented language. All these are the work of the highest genius, un- surpassed by anything that man has since done. There are also other facts, such as the perfection of art shown in the cave paintings and carvings of the Aurignacian race. Therefore, the earliest known records prove that man was at least equal in mentality to ourselves.
(2) Archaeology also shows that great races existed, who were equal, if not superior, to modern peoples : — the Sumerians, Babylonians, Cretans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Mayas and others.
(3) So ancient history with its record of the Greeks, Chinese, Hindus, Persians, Egyptians, Saracens, Jews and other great nations.
(4) There appears to be also a strong argument from biology, which I offer with much hesitation because of the tangled and conflicting theories that are held, and because of my own insufficient knowledge of the subject. From my point of view, however, it seems immaterial to consider whether one species arises from another through a long series of small mutations or by one definite advance, or what constitutes a species, or any of the other questions. We actually know of hundreds of thousands of clearly defined, separate and distinct species that have arisen, many of which have persisted through vast geological periods. In not one of these species have we detected any increase of intelligence during its history. Whatever may be the answer to the questions above referred to, biologists have not found any evidence that intelligence increases in the life history of any species. If, therefore, our species,
theories upon other alleged evidence of the most improbable nature, — " ectoplasm " material- izations, cases where intelligence is said to have been fully manifested when the brain was destroyed, the Elberfeld " calculating " horses, prophecies of the war and so on.
IS4
NOTE ON MYERS— KEATS
Homo sapiens, has in its history made the truly enormous intellectual advance alleged by the current theory, then it appears to be contrary to all other biological facts.
(5) As regards savages, there seems to be the same unanimous testi- mony that they are not tribes that, although progressing, have reached only an early stage of development, but that they are degenerates from superior ancestors. It appears to me that ethnologists make the same mistake that biologists made before Anton Dohrn in 1875 opened their eyes to the vast extent to which degeneration takes place. Knowing only of parasites as degenerates, they supposed that all other animals were wz a state of upzvard evolution. They thought that all simpler and lower forms of life represented early stages in evolution, instead of, in an immense number of cases, being degenerates from higher organisms.
But also they seem to me to again make the fundamental mistake referred to in paragraph (4). Man is only one species, and evolution does not take place within a species but only when a new species arises. The individuals of any species can only maintain the original body and the original intelligence of that species, or decay. See p. 283.
Just as degeneration covers an enormous area in the biologic world, so also it does in the case of man. Archaeology is one long record of the decay of great nations — and so, indeed, is history. Man is, as it were, a vast smouldering crust on the surface of the earth, with light occasionally flickering up and dying down here and there, but never wholly extinguished, although the great mass consists only of dying embers.
Every savage race shows degeneracy. In many cases there is direct evidence of this. The Boskop and other skulls of ancestors of savage tribes that have been discovered with even greater brain capacity than our own, the artistic, architectural and other remains of the ancestors of many savages, the clear evidence that many tribes had possessed arts which they have since lost, and their own traditions and a thousand other facts point to the same conclusion.
However, it seems hardly necessary to go into such details. We need ask only one question, which applies to practically all savages : Could such savages in their present state of intelligence have invented their language, or their tools and weapons, or composed their mj'ths and songs, or devised their intricate rules against intermarriage, or their social laws and ritual observances, or formulated their beliefs ? There can surely be only one answer to this question.
This is an utterly inadequate summary of facts, which it would require one or more volumes to set out properly. The question is one of primary and funda7ne7ital importance in all departments of knowledge that have to do with Man (including the Freudian theories).
Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain :
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain :
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
Keats. The Eve of St. Agnes.
Madeline is lying asleep in bed — but the last line could be used in quite another sense as prettily expressing rejuvenation.
CLOUGH AND OTHERS 185
Where lies the land to which the ship would go ? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from ? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace ; Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go.
On stormy nights when wild north- westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave ! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to hear, and scorns to wish it past.
Where lies the land to which the ship would go ? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from ? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
A. H. Clough. Songs in Absence.
The Ship is the ship of life. The first line is taken from Words- worth's sonnet, " Where lies the land to which yon Ship must go."
Learn to win a lady's faith
Nobly as the thing is high, Bravely as for life and death.
With a loyal gravity.
E. B. Browtvting. The Lady's Yes.
Without good nature man is but a better kind of vermin.
Extreme self-lovers will set a man's house on fire, though it were but to roast their eggs.
Bacon.
i86 BRAY
THE CORAL REEF
In my dreams I dreamt
Of a coral reef- Far away, far, far away. Where seas were lulled and calm, A place of silver sand.
Truly a lovely land,
Truly a lovely dream.
Truly a peaceful scene — When, like a flash, through all the sea
There shone a gleam. Rising like Venus from her wat'ry bed Rose a young mermaid with her hair unkempt, Beautiful hair ! light as a golden leaf, Shining like Phoebus at the break of day.
And she tossed and shook her lovely head. Shook off drops more precious, far, than pearls.
To a coral rock she slowly went.
Slowly floated like a graceful swan ;
Combed her hair that hung in yellow curls Till the evening shadows 'gan to fall ; Then she gave one look round, that was all. Rose — and then, her figure curved, arms bent Above her head — a flash ! and she was gone ; And ripples in wide circles rise and fall. Spreading and spreading still, where she has been.
Betty Biuy, January 19 li Aged II.
BENEATH MY WINDOW
Beneath my window, roses red and white Nod like a host of flitting butterflies ; But, faded by the day, one ev'ry night Shakes its soft petals to the ground, and dies. And that is why I see, when night doth pass. Tears in her sisters' eyes, and on the grass,
Betty Bray, 1920. Aged 13.
See note on p. i88.
BRAY 187
MUSIC
Three wondrous things there are upon the earth, Three gentle spirits, that I love full well, Three glorious voices, which by far excel Even the silver-throated Philomel.
For not in sound alone lies music's worth, But rather in the feeling that it brings, Whether of joy, or peace, or dreaminess.
And when I hear the rain soft, softly beat, Singing with low, sweet voice, and musical, I think of all the tears that ever fell In perfect happiness, or deep distress. And so it brings a pang, half sad, half sweet, Into my heart.
Then, when the sparkling rill Dances between the sunny banks, and sings For very joy, all dimpling with delight,
O all the happy laughter 'neath the sky
Rings sweet and clear, and makes the world more bright.
And, when the sun has sunk beneath the sea And vanished from the glory of the west, Leaving the peaceful eve to melt to night. —
O then it is the loveliest voice of all.
The gentle night-wind softly sings to me.
Tender and low, as sweetest lullaby
As ever hushed a weary head to rest :
On, on it sings, until from drowsiness
My tired eyes softly close, and all is still.
Betty Bray, 1920. Aged 13.
See note on p. 188.
BRAY
THE MARTYR
When night fell softly on the silent city, A little white moth thro' my window came Out of the darkness and the shadows dim, Seeking the brightness of my candle's flame. Around and round the lighted wick he flew, Winging his wonderful and curious flight ; And near, and still more near, the circles grew . . . And then — the flame no more was bright for him. Then all my heart went out in sudden pity To that small martyr, who had sought for light. And found — his death. O he was fair to die. I rose and snuffed the candle with a sigh.
Betty Bray, 1920. Aged 14 years.
CADMUS
Down in my garden, in the deep black mould,
I planted little bulbs. The winter came
And went, blown by the north wind's mighty breath.
And then, beneath the trees there came four score
Small, green-clad, faery forms. And each one bore
A torch that lit my garden with its flame.
When I beheld them there before my eyes,
I stared — Old Cadmus never wondered more,
When he had planted those few dragon's teeth
And saw ... a hundred thousand men arise
Full armed to battle, in the days of old.
Betty Bray, 1920. Aged 14.
These fresh, spontaneous verses bring us a Promise of Spring — the message that we may still hope for a revival of English Poetry. This induced me to insert them, although they are outside the scope of the book.
Miss Betty Bray has been writing since she was seven years old. Her parents are careful to make no suggestion or interfere in any way with what she writes. Imagination appears to come very readily to her assistance, for " Cadmus " was set as a subject in a school- examination.
She was born on June ii, 1906, and is the daughter of Mr. Denys de Saumarez Bray, C.S.I., and the grand-niece of my late partner. Sir John Cox Bray, K.C.M.G. Her grandfather was born in Adelaide.
MILTON AND OTHERS 189
Thus with the year Seasons return ; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose. Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Milton. Paradise Lost.
Milton refers to his blindness in this and other passages — as in the well-knovv'n sonnet.
THE ATTAINMENT
You love ? That's high as you shall go ;
For 'tis as true as Gospel text, Not noble then is never so.
Either in this world or the next.
Coventry Patmore. The Angel in the House.
The dull, wearisome crowd puts genius to sleep ; they do not corrupt or vitiate it. But the world ! the world ! it makes us like itself : it unceasingly pursues us with its sarcasm, it penetrates to the heart, its unbelief envelops us, its frivolity shrivels us up, it looks with stony coldness on our enthusiasm and chills it to death, it drags out our dreams one by one and scatters them, it despoils us of everything — and when it sees us wretched objects like itself, made in its own image, disenchanted, without heart, without virtue, without belief, without passion and frozen with its own icy coldness, then it places us among the elect and tells us proudly, " You are nov/ all right— you are one of us."
Delphine Corinne de Girardin. Napoline.
This is quoted in Sainte-Beuve's article on Madame de Girardin in Causeries du Lundi.
I90 BEDDOES
LOVE'S LAST MESSAGES
Merry, merry little stream,
Tell me, hast thou seen my dear ? I left him with an azure dream,
Calmly sleeping on his bier — But he has fled !
" I passed him in his churchyard bed —
A yew is sighing o'er his head,
And grass-roots mingle with his hair."
What doth he there ? O cruel, can he lie alone ? Or in the arms of one more dear ? Or hides he in that bower of stone.
To cause, and kiss away my fear ?
" He doth not speak, he doth not moan- Blind, motionless, he lies alone ; But, ere the grave-snake fleshed his sting, This one warm tear he bade me bring
And lay it at thy feet
Among the daisies sweet."
Moonlight whisperer, summer air.
Songster of the groves above. Tell the maiden rose I wear
Whether thou hast seen my love.
" This night in heaven I saw him lie.
Discontented with his bliss ;
And on my lips he left this kiss. For thee to taste and then to die."
T. L. Beddoes.
Beddoes intended to destroy this poem, but it was published without his knowledge. This is one of the cases where artists have shown them- selves incapable critics of their own work.
PERCY AND OTHERS 191
King Stephen was a worthy peere,
His breeches cost him but a crowne ; He held them sixpence all too deare
Therefore he called the taylor lowne, rascal He was a wight of high renowne
And thouse but of a low degree, thou art
It's pride that putts the countrye downe,
Man, take thine old cloake about thee.
Percy's Reliques.
The poor man wants a new cloak, but his wife objects.
The verse is sung by lago {Othello, Act II., Sc. 3), the words being a little different.
Beneath the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year ; The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.
I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell ; Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well !
J. G. Whittier. My Birthday.
O earth so full of dreary noises ! O men with wailing in your voices ! O delved gold, the wailers heap ! O strife, O curse that o'er it fall ! God strikes a silence through you all And giveth His beloved sleep.
E. B. Browning. The Sleep.
Geometry, the only Science that it hath pleased God
hitherto to bestow on mankind. tt
Hobbes.
Leviathan, 1651.
192 EMERSON— A. SMITH
Give all to love ;
Obey thy heart ;
Friends, kindred, days.
Estate, good-fame.
Plans, credit, and the Muse, —
Nothing refuse. . . .
Cling with life to the maid ;
But when the surprise.
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee.
Free be she, fancy-free ;
Nor thou detain her vesture's hem
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day. Stealing grace from all alive ;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go
The gods arrive. t-, ,,. ^^
^ R. W. Emerson.
Give all to Love.
On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace than have last winter's snowflakes. This commonplace sequence and flowing on of life is immeasur- ably afi^ecting. That winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper when, at three o'clock, the red sun set in the purple mist. . . . Battles have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself ; but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apple-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and sm_oked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its newborn children, and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the
churchyard. . o
^ Alexander Smith.
Dreamthorp.
RUSKIN AND OTHERS 193
Quixotism, or Utopianism : that is another of the devil's pet words. I beheve the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make, that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is " Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.
John Ruskin. Lectures on Architecture and Painting.
O MOON, tell me, Is constant love deemed there but want of wit ? Are beauties there as proud as here they be } Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? Do they call virtue there ungratefulness }
Sir p. Sidney.
" Do they call ungratefulness a virtue ? "
Two angels guide The path of man, both aged and yet young, As angels are, ripening through endless years. On one he leans : some call her Memory, And some Tradition ; and her voice is sweet. With deep mysterious accord : the other, Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams A light divine and searching on the earth, CompeUing eyes and footsteps. Memory yields. Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked But for Tradition ; we walk evermore To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp.
George Eliot. Spanish Gypsy.
" Tradition " is reIi<?ion.
194 LAMB AND OTHERS
Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance : not one Christian : not one but undervalues Christianity — singly, what am I to do ? Wesley (have you read his life ?) was he not an elevated character ? Wesley has said " Religion is not a solitary thing." Alas ! it necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary.
Charles Lamb. Letter to Coleridge, Jan. lo, 1797.
Poor lovable Charles Lamb ! When he wrote this he was only twenty-one years of age, he had already been himself confined in an asylum, and now his sister in a moment of madness had killed her mother. When afterwards he was allowed to take care of Mary, he had still to take her back to the asylum from time to time, as a fresh attack of mania began to m.anifest itself. The picture of the weeping brother and sister hand-in-hand on their way to the asylum is dreadfully sad. The passage seems interesting because of Lamb's reference to Wesley.
If on my theme I rightly think. There are five reasons why men drink : — Good wine ; a friend ; or being dry ; Or lest we should be by and by ; Or — any other reason why.
Henry Aldrich.
Autres temps, autres mceurs ! Aldrich was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, when he wrote these lines.
INSCRIPTION FOR A BUST OF CUPID
Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre ; II Test, le fut, ou le doit etre.
(Whatso'er thou art, thy master see ! He was, or is, or is to be.)
Voltaire.
A PEBBLE in the streamlet scant
Has turned the course of many a river,
A dewdrop in the baby plant
Has warped the giant oak for ever.
Author not traced.
C. ROSSETTI AND OTHERS 195
UP-HILL
Does the road wind up-hill all the way ?
Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day ?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place ?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face ?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night ?
Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight ?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak ?
Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek ?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Christina Rossetti.
" The sum," the " summit," completion or end.
" Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know !
Keats. Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Matthew Arnold says of this : " No, it is not all ; but it is true, deeply true, and we have deep need to know it. . . . To see things in their beauty is to see things in their truth, and Keats knew it. ' What the Imagination seizes on as Beauty must be Truth,' he says in prose."
Aux coeurs blesses — I'ombre et le silence. (For the wounded heart — shade and silence.)
Balzac. Le Medecin de Campagne.
196 HOLMES— PAYNE
But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said,
" They are gone."
The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said — Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago,— That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
But now his nose is thin. And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff. And a crook is in his back. And a melancholy crack
In his laugh. . . .
O. W. Holmes. The Last Leaf.
Were it not sadder, in the years to com.e, To feel the hand-clasp slacken for long use, The untuned heart-strings for long stress refuse
To yield old harmonies, the songs grow dumb For weariness, and all the old spells lose
The first enchantment ? Yet this they must be :
Love is but mortal, save in memory.
John Payne. A Farewell.
KNIGHT 197
The huge mass of black crags that towered at the head of the gloomy defile was exactly what one would picture as the enchanted castle of the evil magician, within sight of which all vegetation withered, looking from over the desolate valley of ruins to the barren shore strewed with its sad wreckage, and the wild ocean beyond. . , .
The land-crabs certainly looked their part of goblin guardians of the approaches to the wicked magician's fastness. They were fearful as the firelight fell on their yellow cynical faces, fixed as that of the sphinx, but fixed in a horrid grin. Those who have observed this foulest species of crab will know my meaning. Smelling the fish we were cooking they came down the mountains in thousands upon us. We threw them lumps of fish, which they devoured with crab-like slowness, yet perseverance.
It is a ghastly sight, a land-crab at his dinner. A huge beast was standing a yard from me ; I gave him a portion of fish, and watched him. He looked at me straight in the face with his outstarting eyes, and proceeded with his two front claws to tear up his food, bringing bits of it to his mouth with one claw, as with a fork. But ail this while he never looked at what he was doing ; his face was fixed in one position, staring at me. And when I looked around, lo ! there were half-a-dozen others all steadily feeding, but with immovable heads turned to me with that fixed basilisk stare. It was indeed horrible, and the effect was nightmarish in the extreme. While we slept that night they attacked us, and would certainly have devoured us, had we not awoke ; and did eat holes in our clothes. One of us had to keep watch, so as to drive them from the other two, otherwise we should have had no sleep.
Imagine a sailor cast alone on this coast, weary, yet unable to sleep a moment on account of these ferocious creatures. After a few days of an existence full of horror he would die raving mad, and then be consumed in an hour by his foes. In all Dante's Inferno there is no more horrible a suggestion of punishment than this.
E. F. Knight. The Cruise of the " Falcon."
The scene is in the Island of Trinidad, off the coast oc Brazil — one of the many islands so named.
198 DE STAEL AND OTHERS
LOVE
Get egoisme a deux.
De Stael.
It is the torment of one, the fehcity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
Washington Irving.
. . . Nor the end of love is sure, (Alas ! how much less sure than anything !)
Whether the little love-light shall endure In the clear eyes of her we loved in Spring, Or if the faint flowers of remembering
Shall blow, we know not : only this we know, — Afar Death comes with silent steps and slow.
John Payne. Salvestra.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her ; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
Wordsworth. Three Years She Grew.
Alas ! the long gray years have vanquished me.
The shadow of the inexorable days ! I am grown sad and silent : for the sea
Of Time has swallowed all my pleasant ways. I am grown weary of the years that flee And bring no light to set my bound hope free,
No sun to fill the promise of old Mays.
Author not traced.
RUSKIN— JAMES 199
As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that
all lovely things are also necessary : the wild flower by the
wayside, as well as the tended corn ; and the wild birds
and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle :
because man doth not live by bread alone, but also by the
desert manna ; by every wondrous word and unknowable
work of God. t t»
John Ruskin.
I CONFESS that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight, — as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem ; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears. For such a half- wild, half-saved universe our nature is adapted. The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears. ... In these depths of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things ; and compared with these con- crete movemxcnts of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments — the veto, for example, which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith — sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth.
William James. Is Life Worth Living ?
(Mr. T. R. Glover in The Jesus of History points out that when Christ said, " Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations," Luke xxii. 26, He meant that the disciples had helped Him by their fidelity.)
The following is from Professor Hobhouse's Questions of War and Peace, repeating what he had set out at length in his Development and Purpose :
" I think, therefore, that we must go back into ourselves for faith, and
200 HOBHOUSE AND OTHERS
away from ourselves into the world for reason. The deeper we go into ourselves the more we throw off forms and find the assurance not only that the great things exist, but that they are the heart of our lives, and, since after all we are of one stock, they must be at the heart of your lives as well as mine. You say there are bad men and wars and cruelties and wrong, I say ail these are the collision of undeveloped forms. What is the German suffering from but a great illusion that the State is something more than man, and that power is more than justice ? Strip him of this and he is a man like yourself, pouring out his blood for the cause that he loves, and that you and I detest. Probe inwards, then, and you find the same spring of life everyw'here and it is good. Look outwards, and you find, as you yourself admit, the slow movement towards a harmony — which just means that these impulses of primeval energy come, so to say, to understand one another. Every form they take as they grow will provoke conflict, perish, and be cast aside until the whole unites, and there you have the secret of your successive eflforts and failures which yet leave something behind them. God is not the creator who made the world in six days, rested on the seventh and saw that it was good. He is growing in the actual evolution of the world."
And since [man] cannot spend and use aright
The Httle time here given him in trust, But wasteth it in weary undelight
Of foohsh toil and trouble, strife and lust, He naturally claimeth to inherit The everlasting Future, that his merit
May have full scope ; as surely is most just.
James Thomson (" B.V."). The City of Dreadful Night.
Dead years have yet the fire of life
In Memory's holy urn ; Her altars, heaped with frankincense
Of bygone summers, burn ; And, when in everlasting night
We see yon sun decline. Deep in the soul his purple flames
Eternally will shine.
Albert Joseph Edmunds. The Living Past.
Some things are of that Nature as to make One's fancy checkle, while his Heart doth ake. ^^^^ Bunyan.
Checkle = chuckle.
BLAKE AND OTHERS 201
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage : Love caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing.
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me ; Then stretches out my golden wing. And mocks my loss of liberty.
William Blake. Song.
This poem was written before Blake v^^ls fourteen years of age.
This and the four following quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
When the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed. Fresh as a bridegroom. . . . He was perfumed like a milliner ; And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked ; And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by. He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly. To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
Shakespeare. I Henry IV., I. iii.
As. I came through the desert thus it was. As I came through the desert : Eyes of fire Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire ; The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death ; Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold :
But I strode on austere ;
No hope could have no fear.
James Thomson (" B.V."). The City of Dreadful Night.
202 CLOUGH— WILLIAMSON
High-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them, Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them Matching their hly-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the wash-tub !
In a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey. Barefoot, barelegged he beheld her, with arms bare up to
the elbows, Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting
potatoes !
A. H. Clough.
The Bothie of Toher-na-Vuolich.
SHE COMES AS COMES THE SUMMER NIGHT
She comes as comes the summer night,
Violet, perfumed, clad with stars, To heal the eyes hurt by the light
Flung by Day's brandish'd scimitars. The parted crimson of her lips
Like sunset clouds that slowly die When twilight with cool finger-tips
Unbraids her tresses in the sky.
The melody of waterfalls
Is in the music of her tongue, Low chanted in dim forest halls
Ere Dawn's loud bugle-call has rung. And as a bird with hovering wings
Halts o'er her young one in the nest. Then droops to still his flutterings.
She takes me to her fragrant breast.
O star and bird at once thou art.
And Night, witli purple-petall'd charm, Shining and singing to my heart.
And soothing with a dewy calm. Let Death assume this lovely guise,
So darkly beautiful and sweet. And, gazing with those starry eyes.
Lead far away my weary feet ;
WILLIAMSON AND OTHERS 203
And that strange sense of valleys fair
With birds and rivers making song To lull the blossoms gleaming there,
Be with me as I pass along. Ah ! lovely sisters, Night and Death,
And lovelier Woman — wondrous three, " Givers of Life," my spirit saith,
Unfolders of the mystery.
Ah ! only Love could teach me this.
In memoried springtime long since flown ; Red lips that trembled to my kiss.
That sighed farewell, and left me lone. O Joy and Sorrow intertwined, — ■
A kiss, a sigh, and blinding tears, — Yet ever after in the wind,
The bird-like music of the spheres !
Frank S. Williamson.
This is from the author's Purple and Gold, a book of poems pub- lished in Melbourne (Thomas C. Lothian, publisher).
'Tis a very good world to live in.
To spend, and to lend, and to give in ;
But to beg, or to borrow, or ask for our own
'Tis the very worst world that ever was known.
J. Bromfield.
Often ascribed to the Earl of Rochester. See Notes and Queries, July 18, 1896.
Cato said " he had rather people should inquire why he had not a statue erected to his memory, than why he had."
Plutarch. Political Precepts.
No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
George MacDonald. Robert Falconer.
204 BROWN— NOVALIS
WHEN LOVE MEETS LOVE
When love meets love, breast urged to breast,
God interposes, An unacknowledged guest.
And leaves a little child among our roses.
O, gentle hap !
O, sacred lap !
O, brooding dove !
But when he grows
Himself to be a rose,
God takes him— Where is then our love ?
O, where is all our love ?
T. E. Brown.
BETWEEN OUR FOLDING LIPS
Between our folding lips
God slips
An embryon life, and goes ;
And this becomes your rose.
We love, God makes : in our sweet mirth
God spies occasion for a birth.
Then is it His, or is it ours ?
I know not — He is fond of flowers.
T. E. Brown.
Compare the well-known lines by George MacDonald : Where did you come from, baby dear ?
God thought about me, and so I grew.
The suggestion that we are the result of God's thought appears elsewhere in MacDonald, as in Robert Falconer :
If God were thinking me — ah ! But if He be only dreaming me, I shall go mad.
And in The Marquis of Lassie :
I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.
Love is the Amen of the Universe.
NOVALIS.
EDMUNDS AND OTHERS 205
SPIRITUALISM
Only a rising billow,
Only a deep sigh drawn By the great sea of chaos
Before Creation's dawn.
Only a little princess
Spelling the words of kings ;
Only the Godhead's prattle In Sinai mutterings !
The crowd mistakes and fears it,
And Aaron has ignored. But Moses, far above them.
Is talking with the Lord !
Albert Joseph Edmunds.
Although I preserved these verses (which were written in 1883), I had no interest whatever in spiritualism, permeated as it was with childish- ness and fraud. But, nevertheless, it (together with the so-called " Theosophy ") led to the happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882. Although spiritualism did good in this way, its unhappy associations do harm to the Society and hamper it in the important work it has carried on during the last forty years. Popular prejudice continues to associate it with the old spiritualism, and in consequence no proper attention is paid to its intensely interesting and most valuable investigations. See pp. 382-3.
He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed.
Thomas Fuller.
This refers to the French proverb, " // we faut pas vendre la peau de I'ours avant de V avoir tui" " Until you have killed the bear don't sell its skin," or, as we say, " Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."
Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die ; Which in life did harbour give To more virtue than doth live.
Ben Jonson.
As Dr. Johnson said : "In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath."
2o6 SEELEY
Habit dulls the senses and puts the critical faculty to sleep. The fierceness and hardness of ancient manners is apparent to us, but the ancients themselves v/ere not shocked by sights which were familiar to them. To us it is sickening to think of the gladiatorial show, of the massacres common in Roman warfare, of the infanticide practised by grave and respectable citizens, who did not merely condemn their children to death, but often in practice, as they well knew, to what was still worse — a life of prostitution and beggary. The Roman regarded a gladiatorial show as we regard a hunt ; the news of the slaughter of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Caesar or half a million Jews by Titus excited in his mind a thrill of triumph ; infanticide committed by a friend appeared to him a prudent measure of household
^^^^^^y- Sir J. R. Seeley.
It is still more important to realize that the exposure of children was a recognized practice also among the Greeks, and that no one, not even Plato, their noblest philosopher, saw anything wrong in it. It is onl}' by letting the mind dwell on such facts as these, until their significance is fully appreciated, that we can realize the width and depth of the great gulf that separates the Pagan and the Christian, the ancient and the modern world. Take this one fact only : imagine the Greek father looking at his helpless babe and coldly deciding that to rear it will be inconvenient,* or that there are already enough children to divide the inheritance, or that the child is sickly or deformed, or that its person offends his idea of beauty — and then consigning his own offspring to slavery, prostitution, or death ! (The child would either die or be picked up to be reared for some such purpose.) Even in the very im- perfect state of our own civilization, we at least have children's hospitals and crfeches, and are inflamed with righteous rage when even an utiknozcm baby is ill-treated. We, indeed, go further, and have laws and societies for prevention of cruelty to animals.
The consideration of such a fact leads us also to inquire as to the relations of husband and wife, seeing that the woman would have at least the affection for her offspring that is common among the lower animals. We then find that the modern chivalrous idea of womanhood was un- known to the Greeks ; the wife was not educated, and was considered an inferior being ; she was married mainly in order to provide sons to carry out certain ritual observances necessary for the father's welfare after death ; she was kept in an almost Eastern seclusion (and therefore had to improve her pallid complexion by paint) ; she would associate mainly with the children and slaves. We also find that fidelity of the husband to the wife was neither required nor esteemed ; and that there was little marital love or family life. (Plato in his model Republic would abolish both the latter, for there was to be promiscuity of women, and all children were to be brought up by the State.)
Considering further this practice of exposing children, we realize that it indicates the want of pity for the helpless and suffering, which is
* No doubt one reason would be that given by the Australian black woman for leaving her baby in the bush, " him too much cry." The Greeks had numerous slaves, and were fond of comfort ; and their houses were, of course, small and cramped compared with our own.
SEELEY— PAINE 207
seen among the lower animals (but with exceptions even among them). From this we may reasonably infer that the Greeks would show little humanity in treating other helpless or suffering people, the sick or distressed, dependents or slaves, conquered enemies or others in their power. (In this respect, however, they, as an intellectual people, would subject themselves to and be controlled by necessary social laws and practical considerations ; and also, as a fact, they at times showed generosity to a valiant foe.) Again we can infer that, where even the spirit of mercy was so wanting, the gospel of love could not possibly exist, and that the Greeks lived on a far lower moral plane than ours.
But, even from this very small portion of the available evidence, we can arrive at three resulting facts : First, that when in translations from the Greek we find such words as " kindness," " love," " morality," " purity," " virtue," " religion," etc., they have for us a far larger and higher content than the Greek words in the original ; secondly, that therefore the reader must get incorrect impressions of Greek literature and thought ; and, thirdly, that truly marvellous as the Greeks were in art and literature, the current conception of them as a noble-minded and refined people is erroneous.
In referring to the Greeks, one needs to limit the people and period, and I am referring to the great age of the Attic or Athenian Greeks, say the Fifth Century, B.C. There would, of course, be gradations of character among them, and, no doubt, some would be kind-hearted, others would have affection for their wives, and so on. But this can only be assumption, for there is little in their literature to support it. This will be seen if the evidence adduced by Mr. Livingstone {The Greek Genius, pp. 1 17-122) is carefully and critically examined. His references to Homer, who lived in a far distant age, must be omitted. Also the fact that Herodotus, in the course of his narrative, tells us that some men of another state had a moment of compassion for a baby whom they were about to slay, does not prove in the slightest degree that he was himself humane. The wording of Mr. Livingstone's trans- lation, p. 118, " It happened by a divine chance that the baby smiled, etc.," would appear to confirm this view of his ; but the Greek words simply mean that a god by chance intervened. Knowing what we do of the Greek gods, that intervention would certainly not be actuated by any kindly feeling towards the infant — the object presumably was that the child should live to fulfil the destiny prophesied by the Delphic Oracle. (Herodotus was a typical Greek to whom the world was peopled with gods, and he sees them constantly interposing in human affairs.) As regards the exposure of children, the point is that it was a recognized and common practice, duly sanctioned by lazv, and never condemned by any loriter. Indeed Plato and Aristotle definitely approve of it, and in Plato's Ideal Republic the weakly and deformed children were to be killed by the State.
As regards the current conception of the Greeks, Shelley in his Preface to " Hellas " describes them as " those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind." Similar statements could be gathered from innumerable English and European writers.
Reputation is what men and women think of us Character is what God and the angels know of us.
Thomas Paine.
2o8 BACON AND OTHERS
He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind, fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth best avert the dolours of death.
Bacon.
" En Angleterre," said a cynical Dutch diplomatist, " numero deux va chez numero un, pour s'en glorifier aupres de numero trois."
(In England, Number Two goes to visit Number One in order to boast about it to Number Three.)
Laurence Oliphant.
INDWELLING
If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say, " This is not dead,"
And fill thee with Himself instead :
But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity.
That, when He comes, He says, " This is enow
Unto itself — 'Twere better let it be :
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."
T. E. Brown.
Oh ! ever thus from childhood's hour,
I've seen my fondest hopes decay ; I never loved a tree or flower.
But 'twas the first to fade away. I never nursed a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well.
And love me, it was sure to die !
Thomas Moore. Lalla Rookh.
As in other cases mentioned in the Preface, I find that these lines, so familiar in my day, appear to be unknown to younger men.
LOCKE— MILTON 209
Our ideas, like the children of our youth, often die before
us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which
we are fast approaching — where, though the brass and marble
may remain, the inscriptions are effaced by time and the
imagery moulders away. , -^
^ -^ ■' John Locke.
What makes such a passage attractive is its use of poetic imagery ; and yet Locke had no regard for poetry. See next quotation.
If these may be any reasons against children's making Latin themes at school, I have much more to say, and of more weight, against their making verses — verses of any sort. For if he has no genius to Poetry, 'tis the most un- reasonable thing in the world to torment a child and waste his time about that which can never succeed ; and if he have a poetic vein, 'tis to me the strangest thing in the world that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be ; and I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire to have him bid defiance to all other callings and business. . . . For it is very seldom seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in Parnassus. . . . Poetry and Gaming usually go together. ... If, therefore, you would not have your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the Sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how to pass an afternoon idly ; if you would not have him to waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will very much care he should be a Poet.
John Locke. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693.
Locke was writing during the dreary Dryden period, when poetry had so greatly degenerated since the brilliant Elizabethan epoch. He himself evidently had no interest in poetry. We know that he did not appreciate Milton (whose Paradise Lost appeared in 1667, when Locke was in his prime).
See also as to the Elizabethan period, p. 399.
Smiles from reason flow To brute denied, and are of love the food.
Milton. Paradise Lost, IX. 239. p
2 1 o BENTH AM— M AULE
ON BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES
In taking leave of our Author [Sir William Blackstone] I finish gladly with this pleasing peroration : a scrutinizing judgment, perhaps, would not be altogether satisfied with it ; but the ear is soothed by it, and the heart is warmed.
Jeremy Bentham. A Fragment of Government.
I think it worth while quoting from my notes this amusing piece of sarcasm aimed by a young man of twenty-eight at the most renowned legal writer of the time. A Fragment of Government (1776), the first of Bentham's works, not only showed the utter folly of Blackstone's praise of the English constitution, but also laid the foundation of political science. (The passage, which the quotation refers to, is in Sec. 2 of the Introduc- tion to the Commentaries, " Thus far as to the right of the supreme power to make law . . . public tranquillity.")
Not only was the English constitution a subject of eulogy in Bentham's day, but also English law, then in a most barbarous state, was alleged to be the perfection of human reason ! Through the efforts of this great and original thinker many dreadful abuses were removed, but it is a remarkable illustration of the blind strength of English conservatism that his wise counsel has not yet been followed in many exceedingly important directions.
In the seventy-eighty period, with which this book mainly deals, there was a strong agitation for law reform, which had some results.
[The wife of a poor man deserted him for another man, and he married again. On being convicted for bigamy Mr. Justice Maule sentenced him as follows :] Prisoner at the bar : You have been convicted of the offence of bigamy, that is to say, of marrying a woman while you had a wife still alive ; though it is true she has deserted you and is living in adultery with another man. You have, therefore, committed a crime against the laws of your country, and you have also acted under a very serious misapprehension of the course which you ought to have pursued. You should have gone to the ecclesiastical court and there obtained against your wife a decree a mensa et thoro. You should then have brought an action in the courts of common law and recovered, as no doubt you would have recovered, damages against your wife's paramour. Armed with these decrees, you should have approached the legislature and obtained an Act of Parliament, which would have rendered you free and legally competent to marry the person whom
MAULE AND OTHERS 211
you have taken on yourself to marry with no such sanction. It is quite true that these proceedings would have cost you many hundreds of pounds, whereas you probably have not as many pence. But the law knows no distinction between rich and poor. The sentence of the court upon you, there- fore, is that you be imprisoned for one day, which period has already been exceeded, as you have been in custody since the commencement of the assizes.
Sir W. H. Maule.
This fine piece of irony, well known to lawyers, materially helped to end the old bad state of the law of divorce. We need more men of the same stamp to draw attention to other abuses.
It was the boast of Augustus, that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be our Sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law dear, and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book — left it a living letter ; found it the patrimony of the rich — left it the inheritance of the poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression — left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence !
Lord Brougham. Speech in Parliament, 1828.
It would indeed be a proud boast — but not one of these objects has vet been achieved.
When Lord EUenborough was trying one of the Govern- ment charges against Home Tooke, he found occasion to praise the impartial manner in which justice is administered. " In England, Mr. Tooke, the law is open to all men, rich or poor." " Yes, my lord," answered the prisoner, " and so is the London Tavern."
Henry S. Leigh. Jeux d^ Esprit.
The same story is told in Rogers' Table Talk, but a different judge is named. (Probably both are wrong, but it is immaterial.) The London Tavern was where Home Tooke's Constitutional Society met, and must have been often referred to during the trial ; but of course the meaning simply is that the throne of justice cannot be approached with an empty purse.
212 MARTIAL
Revenons a nos moutons.
(Let us return to our sheep.) La Farce de Maistre Pierre Patelin, 1464.
In this mediaeval farce by an unknown writer, a cloth merchant, who is suing his shepherd for stolen sheep, discovers also that the attorney on the other side is a man who had robbed him of some cloth. Dropping the charge against the shepherd, he begins accusing the lawyer of his offence ; and, to recall him to the point, the judge impatiently interrupts him with Sus revenons d nos tnoutotis, " Come, let us get back to our sheep."
Compare Martial, vi. 19 : " My suit has nothing to do with assault, or battery, or poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have been stolen by my neighbour. This the judge desires to have proved to him ; but you, with swelling words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the Battle of Cannae, the Mithridatic war, and the perjuries of the in- sensate Carthaginians, the Syllae, the Marii, and the Mucii. It is time, Postumus, to say something about my three goats."
Is this pleading causes, Cinna ? Is this speaking eloquently to say nine words in ten hours ? Just now you asked with a loud voice for four more clepsydrae. What a long time you take to say nothing, Cinna !
Martial, viii. 7,
Clepsydrae, water-clocks used like an hour-glass.
In Racine's comedy, Les Plaideurs, Act III. Sc. iii., a prolix advocate begins his speech by referring to the Creation of the world. " Avocat, passons au deluge " (Let us get along to the Deluge), says the judge. See also The Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. i. :
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing ; more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff : you shall seek all day ere you find them ; and, when you have them, they are not worth the search.
" There's nae place like hame," quoth the de'il, when he found himself in the Court o' Session.
Scottish Proverb.
I understand that the original wording was " ' Hame's hamely,' quoth the de'il," etc.
Perhaps the only English institution which the Hindu appreciates is that of English Law — but not as a system of Justice. To his acute mind it is a remarkably clever and most ingenious gambling ga?ne. It is said that two Hindus v/ill even fabricate mutual complaints, the one against the other, to bring before the Courts — and that it is almost equivalent
TABB AND OTHERS 213
to a patent of nobility to have had a case taken to the Privy Council. The following incident actually happened to a friend of mine who was Resident in a Native State. Sitting in his judicial capacity he reproved a Hindu gentleman for his excessive litigiousness. The latter retorted that it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black ; that he had seen the Resident put his rupees on the totalisator the day before ; and the British race-course wasn't a bit more of a gamble than the British Law Courts. For his part he preferred to have his flutter on the latter.
COMPENSATION
How many an acorn falls to die
For one that makes a tree ! How many a heart must pass me by
For one that cleaves to me !
How many a suppliant wave of sound
Must still unheeded roll, For one low utterance that found
An echo in my soul.
John Banister Tabb.
The title to this little poem is hardly satisfactory. If a man passes through life unrecognized by kindred souls, it is the reverse of " com- pensation " to him, if he also fails to recognize other sympathetic natures.
The author was an American Catholic priest.
What we gave, we have ; What we spent, we had ; What we left, we lost.
Epitaph on Earl of Devonshire, about a.d. 1200.
Weeping, we hold Him fast, who wept
For us, we hold Him fast. And will not let Him go, except
He bless us first or last.
Christina Rossetti.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
214 MASNAIR— EMERSON
First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,
Next he passed therefrom into that of plants,
For years he lived as one of the plants,
Remembering nought of his inorganic state so different ;
And, when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state,
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant.
Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants.
Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers ;
Like the inclination of infants towards their mothers.
Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.
Again, the great Creator, as you know.
Drew man out of the animal into the human state.
Thus man passed from one order of nature to another.
Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.
Of his first souls he has now no remembrance.
And he will be again changed from his present soul.*
Masnair (Bk. IV.) of Jalal ad Din (13th century).
The gases gather to the solid firmament ; the chemic lump arrives at the plant and grows ; arrives at the quadruped and walks ; arrives at the man and thinks.
R. W, Emerson. Uses of Great Men.
Go out into the woods and valleys, when your heart is rather harassed than bruised, and when you suffer from vexation more than grief. Then the trees all hold out their arms to you to relieve you of the burthen of your heavy thoughts ; and the streams under the trees glance at you as they run by, and will carry away your trouble along with the fallen leaves ; and the sweet-breathing air will draw it off together with the silver multitudes of the dew. But let it be with anguish or remorse in your heart that you go forth into Nature, and instead of your speaking her language, you make her speak yours. Your distress is then infused through all things and clothes all things, and Nature only echoes and seems to authenticate your self-loathing or your hopelessness. Then you find the device of your sorrow on the argent shield of the moon,
* Quoted in E. Clodd's Story of Creation.
VAUGHAN AND OTHERS 215
and see all the trees of the field weeping and wringing their hands with you, while the hills, seated at your side in sack- cloth, look down upon you prostrate, and reprove you like the comforters of Job.
Robert Alfred Vaughan. Hours with the Mystics.
If this fine writer had lived, much might have been expected of him. He is one of the manj' instances of " the fatal thirty-fours and thirty- sevens."
ALL SUNG
What shall I sing when all is sung
And every tale is told. And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old }
Why should I fret unwilling ears
With old things sung anew While voices from the old dead years
Still go on singing too ?
A dead man singing of his maid
Makes all my rhymes in vain, Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,
And mine shall sing again.
Why should I strive thro' weary moons
To make my music true } Only the dead men know the tunes
The live world dances to.
R. Le Gallienne.
Mr. Le Gallienne was not the first to complain that poetic subjects were exhausted. Choerilus, a Samian poet of the Fifth Century, B.C. (2000 years before Shakespeare), wrote : " Happy was the follower of the muses in that time, when the field was still virgin soil. But now when all has been divided up and the arts have reached their limits, we are left behind in the race, and, look where'er we may, there is no room anywhere for a new-yoked chariot to make its way to the front " (St. John Thackeray, Anthologia Graeca).
Thinking is only a dream of feeling ; a dead feeling ; a pale-grey, feeble life. ^
2i6 • CARROLL
HIAWATHA'S PHOTOGRAPHING
From his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood, Made of shding, folding rosewood ; This he perched upon a tripod — Crouched beneath its dusky cover — Stretched his hand, enforcing silence — Said, " Be motionless, I beg you ! " Mystic, awful was the process.
All the family in order Sat before him for their pictures : Each in turn, as he was taken, Volunteered his own suggestions, His ingenious suggestions.
First the Governor, the Father : He suggested velvet curtains Looped about a massy pillar ; And the corner of a table. Of a rosewood dining-table. He would hold a scroll of something. Hold it firmly in his left-hand ; He would keep his right-hand buried (Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat ; He would contemplate the distance With a look of pensive meaning. As of ducks that die in tempests.
Grand, heroic was the notion : Yet the picture failed entirely : Failed, because he moved a little, Moved, because he couldn't help it.
Next, his better half took courage ; She would have her picture taken. She came dressed beyond description, Dressed in jewels and in satin Far too gorgeous for an empress. Gracefully she sat down sideways, With a simper scarcely human. Holding in her hand a bouquet Rather larger than a cabbage. All the while that she was sitting, Still the lady chattered, chattered,
CARROLL 217
Like a monkey in the forest. " Am I sitting still ? " she asked him, " Is my face enough in profile ? Shall I hold the bouquet higher ? Will it come into the picture ? " And the picture failed completely.
Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab : He suggested curves of beauty. Curves pervading all his figure, Which the eye might follow onward. Till they centered in the breast-pin. Centered in the golden breast-pin. He had learnt it all from Ruskin And perhaps he had not fully Understood his author's meaning ; But, whatever was the reason, All was fruitless, as the picture Ended in an utter failure.
Next to him the eldest daughter : She suggested very little, Only asked if he would take her With her look of " passive beauty."
Her idea of passive beauty Was a squinting of the left-eye. Was a drooping of the right-eye. Was a smile that went up sideways To the corner of the nostrils.
Hiawatha, when she asked him, Took no notice of the question. Looked as if he hadn't heard it ; But, when pointedly appealed to. Smiled in his peculiar manner. Coughed and said it " didn't matter," Bit his lip and changed the subject.
Nor in this was he mistaken, As the picture failed completely.
So in turn the other sisters.
Last, the youngest son was taken : Very rough and thick his hair was, Very round and red his face was. Very dusty was his jacket, Very fidgety his manner. And his overbearing sisters Called him names he disapproved of :
2i8 CARROLL
Called him Johnny, " Daddy's Darling," Called him Jacky," Scrubby School-boy." And, so awful was the picture, In comparison the others Seemed, to his bewildered fancy, To have partially succeeded.
Finally my Hiawatha Tumbled all the tribe together, (" Grouped " is not the right expression) ; And, as happy chance would have it, Did at last obtain a picture Where the faces all succeeded : Each came out a perfect likeness.
Then they joined and all abused it. Unrestrainedly abused it. As " the worst and ughest picture They could possibly have dreamed of.
Giving one such strange expressions- Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people ! "
(Hiawatha seemed to think so.
Seemed to think it not unlikely).
All together rang their voices,
Angry, loud, discordant voices,
As of dogs that howl in concert,
As of cats that wail in chorus. But my Hiawatha's patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished.
And he left that happy party.
Neither did he leave them slowly,
With the calm deliberation.
The intense deliberation
Of a photographic artist :
But he left them in a hurry,
Left them in a mighty hurry.
Stating that he would not stand it.
Stating in emphatic language
What he'd be before he'd stand it.
Thus departed Hiawatha.
Lewis Carroll.
RUSKIN— TAYLOR 219
It has been said by Schiller, in his letters on aesthetic culture, that the sense of beauty never furthered the per- formance of a single duty.
Although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly
be accepted by any one in so many terms, seeing that there
are few so utterly lost but that they receive, and know that
they receive, at certain moments, strength of some kind, or
rebuke from the appealings of outward things ; and that
it is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so much
as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and
rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope from
stone, flower, leaf or sound, nor without a sense of a dew
falling upon him out of the sky ; though I say this falsity
is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly
and practically so in much of the doing and teaching even
of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of God
to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most
abundantly and immediately shown ; though they insist
much on his giving of bread, and raiment, and health (which
he gives to all inferior creatures), they require us not to
thank him for that glory of his works which he has permitted
us alone to perceive : they tell us often to meditate in the
closet, but they send us not, like Isaac, into the fields at
even ; they dwell on the duty of self-denial, but they
exhibit not the duty of delight. r r,
•^ •' ^ John Ruskin.
Modern Painters, III. i. xv.
The italics are mine.
God is present by His essence ; which, because it is
infinite, cannot be contained within the limits of any place ;
and because He is of an essential purity and spiritual nature.
He cannot be undervalued by being supposed present in the
places of unnatural uncleanness : because, as the sun,
reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted
in its beams, so is God not dishonoured when we suppose
Him in every one of His creatures, and in every part of
every one of them. t rn
•^ Jeremy Taylor.
Holy Living, Ch. i. Sec. 3.
There is an old Scottish proverb, " The sun is nae waur for shinin* on the midden."
220 BROWNING
Not on the vulgar mass
Called " work " must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price ;
O'er which, from level stand.
The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice :
But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb. So passed in making up the main account ;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure. That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount :
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act. Fancies that broke through language and escaped ;
All, I could never be.
All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
So, take and use thy work :
Amend what flaws may lurk. What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim !
My times be in Thy hand !
Perfect the cup as planned ! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
R. Browning. Rabbi ben Ezra.
" All (that) I could never be, All (that) man ignored in me." All that the world could not know, a man's thoughts, desires, and intentions, all that he wished or tried to be or do, although unknown to his fellows, have their value in God's eyes. Man is the Cup, whose shape {i.e. character or soul) has been formed by the wheel of the great Potter, God. See further as to this Eastern metaphor.
The late Mrs. A. W. Verrall, widow of Doctor Verrall and herself a classical scholar, pointed out in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, June 1911, a probable connection between "Rabbi ben Ezra" and FitzGerald's " Omar Khayyam," and I do not think that her in- teresting views have been published elsewhere.
Both poems centre round the idea of man as a Cup, but treat the metaphor from very different standpoints. In Omar the cup is simply a wine-cup. Omar's cup (quoting from the first edition) is to be filled with " Life's Liquor " (ii.), with " Wine ! Red Wine ! " (vi.), with what " clears To-Day of past regrets " (xx.) ; the object is to drown the memory of the fact that " without asking " we are " hurried hither "
BROWNING 221
and " hurried hence " (xxx.) ; the " Ruby Vintage " is to be drunk " with old Khayyam," and " when the Angel with his darker Draught draws up " to us we are to take that draught without shrinking (xlviii.). On the other hand, in " Rabbi ben Ezra " man is a Cup made for the use of the great Potter. We are told to look " not down but up ! to uses of a cup " (30). The Rabbi asks " God who mouldest men ... to take and use His work " (32) and the ultimate purpose of the Cup, when it has been made " perfect as planned," is to slake the thirst of the Master.
The comparison of man to the Clay of the Potter in both poems is not sufficient in itself to show any connection between them. Such a comparison is found, as FitzGerald reminds us, " in the Literature of the World from the Hebrew Prophets to the present time " * ; and it is as appropriately employed by the Hebrew as by the Persian thinker. But Mrs. Verrall has other grounds :
The little pamphlet in its brown wrapper containing the Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam was first published by Edward FitzGerald in 1859, and, as is well known, attracted so little attention that, although there were only 250 copies, it found its way into the two-penny boxes of the book- sellers. (It now sells for about £so !) But, nevertheless, the poem was eagerly read and enthusiastically praised by a small group, among whom were Swinburne and Rossetti. In 1861 Robert Browning came to live in London, and often saw Rossetti, who was his friend. It is, therefore, very improbable that he did not learn of the poem, which had so impressed Rossetti. In 1864 " Rabbi ben Ezra " was published in the volume called Dramatis Personae.
Again, there is intrinsic evidence that Browning intended a direct refutation of Omar's theory of life. Com.pare verses 26 and 27 of " Rabbi ben Ezra " with verses xxxvi. and xxxvii. of " Omar Khayyam " (first edition).
Omar says that he " watched the Potter thumping his wet clay," and thereupon advises :
Ah, fill the Cup ; — what boots it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our Feet : Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday, Why fret about them if To-day be sweet !
Rabbi ben Ezra says :
. . . Note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor !
and proceeds :
Thou, to whom fools propound. When the wine makes its round, " Since life fleets, all is change ; the Past gone, seize To-day ! "
Fool ! all that is, at all. Lasts ever, past recall ; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
Although the " carpe diem " (" seize to-day ") theory of life is no doubt common to all literatures, the cumulative effect of Mrs. Verrall's argument is strong, although not conclusive.
As regards the above verses, compare the next quotation.
* See, for instance, Kipling's poem " A Dedication " :
Tlie depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray, Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
222 BROWNING AND OTHERS
From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread
Sabaoth : / will ? — the mere atoms despise me ! Why am I not loth To look that, even that, in the face too ? Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance ? What stops my
despair ? This : — 'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what
man Would do !
R. Browning. Saul.
Sabaoth, armies, hosts. " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth."
Let the thick curtain fall ; I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained.
Not by the page word-painted Let life be banned or sainted ; Deeper than written scroll The colours of the soul.
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue ;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.
J. G. Whittier. My Triumph.
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us ; as if life were not sacred too, — as if it were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.
George Eliot. Janefs Repentance.
BOSWELL— CLEVELAND 223
He [Dr. Johnson] would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in England. " Much," said he, " may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young." Boswell.
Life of Johnson.
[A Mr. Strahan, a Scot, asked Dr. Johnson what he thought of Scotland] " That it is a very vile country to be sure, Sir," returned for answer Dr. Johnson. " Well, Sir ! " replied the other, somewhat mortified, " God made it." " Certainly He did," answered Mr. Johnson again, " but we must always remember that he made it for Scotch- men.^' T\/r r.
Mrs. Piozzi. Johnsoniana.
These are the two best of Johnson's chaffing jibes against the Scots. The neatness of the latter is, to my mind, spoilt by the words at the end, which I have omitted : " and — comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan, — - but God made hell." The following may also be quoted as showing both Johnson and that clever charlatan, Wilkes, quizzing Boswell (year 1781) :
Wilkes : " Pray, Boswell, how much may be got in a year by an advocate at the Scotch bar ? "
Boswell : " I believe two thousand pounds."
Wilkes : " How can it be possible to spend that money in Scotland ? "
Johnson : " Why, Sir, the money may be spent in England ; but there is a harder question. If one man in Scotland gets possession of two thousand pounds, what remains for all the rest of the nation ? "
Many Scots undoubtedly enjoy chaff against themselves and their country, and I think this was so with Boswell. It is a phase of social psychology that needs explaining.
In these jokes Johnson, himself a very strong Jacobite, was, consciously or not, influenced by the fine Royalist poet John Cleveland (1613-1658) ; but the latter belonged to the time of Charles I. and was deadly in earnest. He detested the Scots for fighting against Charles I. His references to Scotland in " The Rebel Scot " are terse and witty :
A land that brings in question and suspense God's omnipresence.
And again
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom ; Not forced him wander, but confined him home !
Johnson had many quotations from Cleveland in his dictionary.
Whether Johnson truly disliked the Scots or not, he certainly hated the Nonconformists. He loved the Church of England, and also the University of Oxford, the great nursery and stronghold of the Church — from which Nonconformists were excluded. Hence a clever Johnsonese
224 BOYD— LOWELL
story has been invented in connection with Murray's New English Dictionary :
Boswell : " They say^ Sir, that your Dictionary has been superseded by another written by a Scotch Nonconformist, and also that he is in residence in Oxford ! "
Johnson : " Sir, to be facetious it is not necessary to be indecent.^'
I DARE say Alexander the Great was somewhat staggered in his plans of conquest by Parmenio's way of putting things. " After you have conquered Persia what will you do ? " '' Then I shall conquer India." " After you have conquered India, what will you do ? " " Conquer Scythia." " And after you have conquered Scythia, what will you do ? " " Sit down and rest." " Well," said Parmenio to the con- queror, '* why not sit down and rest now ? "
A. K. H. Boyd. The Recreations of a Country Parson,
I include this because it is a good short paraphrase of the actual story of Pyrrhus and Cineas {Plutarch's Lives — " Pyrrhus ") and because of the curious absurdity of attributing such philosophic advice to the warrior, Parmenio. This general was the only one of Alexander's old advisers who urged him to invade Asia ! {Plutarch's Lives — "Alexander").
Sorrow and care and anxiety may quite well live in Elizabethan cottages, grown over with honeysuckle and jasmine ; and very sad eyes may look forth from windows around which roses twine.
A. K. H. Boyd. The Recreations of a Country ParsoJi.
This book had a great vogue, but not sufficient merit to preserve it from oblivion.
Nature, they say, doth dote
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote.
J. R. LOW^ELL.
Ode at Harvard Commemoration.
MYERS 225
If thou wouldst have high God thy soul assure
That she herself shall as herself endure,
Shall in no alien semblance, thine and wise,
Fulfil her and be young in Paradise,
One way I know ; forget, forswear, disdain
Thine own best hopes, thine utmost loss and gain.
Till when at last thou scarce rememberest now
If on the earth be such a man as thou,
Nor hast one thought of self-surrender, — no.
For self is none remaining to forego, —
If ever, then shall strong persuasion fall
That in thy giving thou hast gained thine all.
Given the poor present, gained the boundless scope.
And kept thee virgin for the further hope. . . .
When all base thoughts like frighted harpies flown
In her own beauty leave the soul alone ;
When Love, — not rosy-flushed as he began,
But Love, still Love, the prisoned God in man, —
Shows his face glorious, shakes his banner free,
Cries like a captain for Eternity : —
O halcyon air across the storms of youth,
O trust him, he is true, he is one with Truth !
Nay, is he Christ ? I know not ; no man knows
The right name of the heavenly Anteros, —
But here is God, whatever God may be.
And whomsoe'er we worship, this is He.
F. W. H. Myers. The Implicit Promise of Immortality.
Anteros is the god of mutual love, who punishes those who do not return the love of others, as otherwise his brother Eros, god of love, will be unhappy.
The fine poem from which this is quoted represents one of the phases of Myers' experience. It was published in 1882, but written about ten years before. He had then lost his faith in Christianity, but believed in a future life on grounds based partly upon philosophy and partly on " vision." He had those moments of exaltation when, as he says :
The open secret flashes on the brain, As if one almost guessed it, almost knew Whence we have sailed and voyage whereunto.
For entrance into the future life, Love and Self-surrender are the best equipment for the soul. God, " whatever God may be," is Love.
Q
226 TENNYSON AND OTHERS
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords
with might ; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Tennyson. Locksley Hall.
But all through life I see a Cross,
Where sons of God yield up their breath : There is no gain except by loss,
There is no life except by death,
There is no vision but by Faith, Nor glory but by bearing shame. Nor Justice but by taking blame ;
And that Eternal Passion saith, "Be emptied of glory and right and name."
W. C. Smith. Olrig Grange.
Life is short, and we have not too much time for gladden- ing the lives of those who are travelling the dark road with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Amiel's Journal.
SELF-SACRIFICE.
What though thine arm hath conquered in the fight, — What though the vanquished yield unto thy sway, Or riches garnered pave thy golden way, —
Not therefore hast thou gained the sovran height
Of man's nobility ! No halo's light
From these shall round thee shed its sacred ray ; If these be all thy joy, — then dark thy day.
And darker still thy swift approaching night !
But if in thee more truly than in others
Hath dwelt Love's charity ; — if by thine aid Others have passed above thee, and if thou.
Though victor, yieldest victory to thy brothers,
Though conquering conquered, and a vassal made — Then take thy crown, well mayst thou wear it now.
Samuel Waddington. .
ROSSETTI AND OTHERS 227
SOUL'S BEAUTY
Under the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe,
I drew it in as simply as my breath.
Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw. By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.
This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
Thy voice and hand shake still, — long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet. How passionately and irretrievably. In what fond flight, how many ways and days !
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Although Rossetti was not a classical student, he seems here to have arrived at the Platonic idea of an abstract Beauty, of whose essence are all beautiful things, " sea or sky or wonian." Love and death, terror and mystery guard her, as a goddess on her throne, and ail lovers of the beautiful are worshippers at her shrine.
We bury decay in the earth ; we plant in it the perishing ; we feed it with offensive refuse : but nothing grows out of it that is not clean ; it gives us back life and beauty.
Charles Dudley Warner. My Summer in a Garden.
A WHETSTONE Cannot cut, but it makes iron sharp, and
gives it a keen edge. t
^ ^ Isocrates.
This is quoted in Plutarch's Lives. Isocrates (436-338 B.C.) was asked why he taught rhetoric so much and yet spoke so rarely ; and this was his reply. Horace {Ars Poetica) playfully says that he is no longer able to write verses, but he will teach others to write, adding, " A whetstone is not used for cutting, but is used for sharpening steel nevertheless " — a reference, of course, to the saying of Isocrates.
The career of Isocrates, " that old man eloquent " (see Milton's sonnet, " To the Lady Margaret Ley "), is extremely interesting. He preserved his energy and his influence to the end of his long life of ninety-eight years.
228 SWINBURNE
From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods there be That no life lives for ever ; That dead men rise up never ; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Swinburne, The Garden of Proserpine. A very musical expression of a very ugly thought.
CANADIAN BOAT-SONG From the Gaelic
Listen to me, as when ye heard our fathers
Sing long ago the song of other shores — Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
All your deep voices, as ye pull your oars :
CHORUS
Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand ; But we are exiles from our fathers^ land.
From the lone sheiling of the misty island Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas —
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides :
Fair these broad meads, etc.
We ne'er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley,
Where 'tween the dark hills creeps the small clear stream,
In arms around the patriarch banner rally,
Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam :
Fair these broad meads, etc.
When the bold kindred, in the time long vanish'd, Conquered the soil and fortified the keep, —
No seer foretold the children would be banish 'd, That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep ;
Fair these broad meads, etc.
BAIN— S. SMITH 229
Come foreign rage — let Discord burst in slaughter !
O then for clansmen true, and stern claymore — The hearts that would have given their blood like water,
Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar.
Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand ;
But zve are exiles from our fathers^ land.
•' •' Anon.
The authorship of these verses is uncertain, but it probably lies between John Gait, author of Annals of the Parish, and Lockhart, son-in- law of Sir Walter Scott. The verses were quoted by Professor Wilson (Christopher North) in his Nodes Arnbrosianae in Blackwood, Sept. 1829, but, because Wilson was not the author, they are not reproduced in his collected works (Blackwood, 1855).
A degenerate Lord, etc. This refers to the eviction of the Highland crofters and cottars. In 1829 the Duke of Hamilton had just cleared the population out of the Isle of Arran.
Sheiling or Shealing, a hut used by shepherds, fishermen, or others for shelter when at work at a distance from home.
My closing remark is as to avoiding debates that are in their very nature interminable. . . . There is a certain intensity of emotion, interest, bias or prejudice if you will, that can neither reason nor be reasoned with. On the purely intellectual side, the disqualifying circumstances are com- plexity and vagueness. If a topic necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, the essay may do some- thing for it, but not the debate. Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, and unsettled terms. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects, each, perhaps, in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy terms will make a debate that is pretty sure to end as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, may contain within it capacities of misunder- standing, cross-purposes, and pointless issues, sufficient to occupy the long night of Pandemonium, or beguile the journey to the nearest fixed star.
Alexander Bain. Contemporary Reviezv, April 1877. From an address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society.
A MAN should be able to render a reason for the faith that
is in him. o o
Sydney Smith.
230 SPENSER— BOREHAM
Our daies are full of dolor and disease, Our life afflicted with incessant paine, That nought on earth may lessen or appease. Why then should I desire here to remaine ? Or why should he that loves me, sorie bee For my deliverance, or at all complaine My good to hear, and toward joyes to see ?
Edmund Spenser. Daphnaida.
TSzvard, " approaching."
In life, Love comes first. Indeed, zve only come because Love calls for us. We find it waiting with outstretched arms on arrival. Love is the beginning of everything.
F. W. BOREHAM.
Faces in the Fire.
THE RETREAT
Happy those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy ! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought : When yet I had not walk'd above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back, at that short space. Could see a glimpse of His bright face When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul v/ould dwell an hour. And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity : Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinful sound. Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to ev'ry sense. But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.
VAUGHAN AND OTHERS 231
O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track ! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train ; From whence th' enlighten'd spirit sees That shady City of Palm-trees ! But ah ! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way ! Some men a forward motion love. But I by backward steps would move ; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.
Henry Vaughan.
This is the precursor of the greatest ode ever written, Wordsworth's Ode on " Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Child- hood." Wordsworth, Vaughan, and many others believed, as Buddha and Plato also did, that we had a separate existence before we came into this world (and there is much in the experience of each of us to warrant that belief).
But in order to appreciate either Wordsworth's or Vaughan's poem it is not necessary to have this belief in a past separate existence — it is enough to realize that
Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.
Vaughan desires to go back to his original state of innocence, and therefore entitles his poem " The Retreat."
Ah ! not the nectarous poppy lovers use. Not daily labour's dull, Lethaean spring, Oblivion in lost angels can infuse Of the soil'd glory, and the trailing wing.
Matthew Arnold. To a Gipsy Child.
Between the great things that we cannot do, and the small things we zvill not do, the danger is that we shall do
^' Adolphe Monod.
Diogenes, seeing Neptune's temple with votive pictures of those saved from wreck, says, " Yea, but where are they painted, that have been drowned ? " ^
232 R. BROWNING— POPE
There's a fancy some lean to and others hate — That, when this Hfe is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins : Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series ; Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.
Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best.
And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, —
When our faith in the same has stood the test —
Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
The uses of labour are surely done ;
There remaineth a rest for the people of God :
And I have had troubles enough, for one.
R. Browning. Old Pictures in Florence.
Browning in his last poem, the well-known " Epilogue," speaks with another voice. He wishes his friends to think of him after death as he was when alive :
One v/ho never turned his back but marched breast-forward.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer ! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, " Strive and thrive ! " cry, " Speed, — fight on, fare ever,
There as here ! "
F. W. FI. Myers wrote :
We need a summons to no houri-haunted paradise, no passionless contemplation, no monotony of prayer and praise ; but to endless advance by endless effort, and, if need be, by endless pain. Be it mine, then, to plunge among the unknown Destinies — to dare and still to dare !
Emerson's heaven also was
Built of furtherance and pursuing. Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Threnody.
One may see the small value God has for riches by the people He gives them to. Phpf
PRAED 233
THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM
I SAW her at the County Ball :
There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far
Of all that set young hearts romancing ; She was our queen, our rose, our star ;
And then she danced — O Heaven, her dancing
Through sunny May, through sultry June,
I loved her with a love eternal ; I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them to the Sunday Journal : My mother laugh'd : I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling ; My father frown'd : but how should gout
See any happiness in kneeling ? . . .
She smiled on many, just for fun, —
I knew that there was nothing in it ; I was the first— the only one
Her heart had thought of for a minute. — I knew it, for she told me so.
In phrase which was divinely moulded ; She wrote a charming hand, — and oh !
How sweetly all her notes were folded !
We parted ; months and years roll'd by.
We met again four summers after : Our parting was all sob and sigh ;
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter : For in my heart's most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers ; And she was not the ball-room's Belle,
But only — Mrs. Something Rogers !
W. M. Praed.
" I knew it, for she told me so " is a delicious line.
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234
LILLY AND OTHERS
A CANON of my own in judging verses is that no man has a right to put into metre what he can as well say out of metre. To which I may add, as a corollary, that afortiore he has no right to put into metre what he can better say out of metre.
W. S. Lilly. Essay on George Eliot.
Aujourd'hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit, on le chante.
(Nowadaj's, when a thing is not worth saying they sing it — i.e. put it in a song or poem.)
Beaumarchais. Le Barhier de Seville, Act L Sc, i.
I DO not know whether I gave you at any time the details of my work here, or the principles upon which I have been proceeding. . . . Some of the work set down includes Ancient Ethics — which is almost entirely grossly wrong and great rubbish also. This part I have persistently refused to get up, not because I disliked it, but because it is decidedly injurious to v/arp and twist the brain by impressing it with wrong thoughts and systems — just as it would be insane in the polisher of a mirror to think it would reflect the external world more truly if he gave it a dint here, a scratch there, a bulge in another place, and so forth. It would take me too long to describe the details. Suffice it to say that one of the examiners in Mental Philosophy and in Moral and Political Philosophy is an old, blind (literally) man of the old school, who gave a very abnormally large amount of questions relating to Ancient Ethics, and an abnormally large amount to the early part of English Ethics — leaving hardly any marks to be scored by thorough understanding and ability to use the principles of the subjects.
The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spencerian. Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because " there was too much of Spencer and myself " ! So that instead of criticism and originality, he avowedly preferred mere reproduction, a good example of
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LILLY AND OTHERS
A CANOX of iny own ia jiKlglng verses is that no man has a right to put into metre whiat he ean as well say out of metre. To whieh I n\ay add, as a eorollary, that aforliorc he has no right to put into metre what he can better say out of metre.
W. S. Lilly. Essay on George Eliot.
Aujouud'iili, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit, on le chante.
(Nowadays, wlien a thing is not worth sajing they sing it — i.e. put it in a song or poem.)
Beaualarciiais. Le Darbicr de Seville, Act L Sc. i.
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I DO not know whether I gave you at any time the details of my work here, or the principles upon which I have been proceeding. . . . Some of the work set down includes Ancient Ethics — which is almost entirely grossly wrong and great rubbish also. This part I have persistently refused to get up, not because I disliked it, but because it is decidedly injiu-ious to vrarp and tvvist the brain by impressing it with v.-rong thoughts and systems — just as it v/ould be insane in the polisher of a mirror to think it w^ould reflect the external world more truly if he gave it a dint here, a scratch there, a bulge in another place, and so forth. It would take me too long to describe the details. Sufnce it to say that one of the examiners in iNIental Philosophy and in Moral and Political Philosophy is an old, blind (literally) man of the old school, who gave a very abnormally large amount of questions relating to Ancient T'lthics, and an abnormally large amount to the early part of English Ethics — leaving hard!}' any marks to be scored by thorough understanding and ability to use the principles of the subjects.
The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spenccrian. Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because " there was too much of Spencer and myself " ! So that instead of criticisju and originality, he avowedly preferred incre reproduction, a good example of
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HODGSON
235
the slavislmcss of that method of examination predominant mostly, whieh, as Speneer wrote to me some time ago, is devised for testing a man's " power of acquisition instead of using that which has been acquired,"
Richard Hodgson. Letter, Dec. i88i.
This letter was written to nie from Cambridge, when Hodgson (see Preface) had found his immediate prospects blasted by the results of the ?>'Ioral Science I'ripos. No one was placed in the First Class, and he (although at the head of the Tripos) only in the Second Class. This meant that he h.ad no hope of a Fellowship, which would have enabled him to go on with original work in philosophy, and he would have to employ his time in earning a livelihood. Added to this was the cruel disappointment to his fainily and friends.
Hodgson was one of the most gifted men that Austialia has produced. He had completed his M.A. and LL.D. courses in Melbourne by 1877, when he \\as twenty-two years of age, and then, discarding the profession of the law, left for Cambridge to read Mental and Moral Science. While still an undergraduate there he had written an article in reply to T. H. Green,' and submitted it to Herbert Spencer, who highly approved of it, and sent it to the Contemporary. Hov.ever, as stated above, Hodgson's immediate future depended on the result of th.e examination. (He v.as at the time preparing one of the articles he contributed to Mind, and liad in view further original work.)
When the result of the Tripos appeared, Henry Sidgwick and Venn, v.'ho v.ere then Lecturers and by far the best I\Ioral Science men in Cam- bridge, came to synipathize with Plodgson on the unfair result. Tliey urged him to go to Germany so that he might acquire that perfect com- mand of the German language which was necessary for his philosophic work. On learning that he was not in a position to do this, Sidgwick insisted — as he said, " in the interests of philosophy " — on defrayiiig tJ'.e 7chole of the expenses of Hodgson's residence in Germany. As he insisted strongly, Hodgson accepted the offer, and went to Jena, arm.ed with a very flattering letter of introduction from Herbert Spencer to Haeckel.
Almost immediately after has return from Germany the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and Hodgson joined it. He came to the conclusion that the v.ork of this Society v.as inore important than any otlier study, while probably it would also be of fundamental assistance to philosophy. He went out to India in 18S4, and thoroughly exposed i^.Iadame Blavatsky and her " Tlieosophy," and, from al^out 1SS6, devoted the rest of his life to Psychical Research. Although riiaintaining his reading and his intimacy with Henry Sidgwick, AVilliam James, and others, his services practically became lost to philosophy. This, however, does not affect the important fact illustrated by the 'I'ripos incident. Wo learn what ineptitude can exist in a great university, and what grave results niust necessarily follow therefrom.
Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity (yet with a dauntless heart — sec verse on Dedication page), his remarks on Ancient Ethics arc not, in my opinion, exaggerated,
Herbert Spencer's rcinark to Hodgson about examinations may also be noted.
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234 LILLY AND OTHERS
A CANON of my own in judging verses is that no man has a right to put into metre what he can as v/ell say out of metre. To which I may add, as a corollary, that afortiore he has no right to put into metre what he can better say out of metre.
W. S. Lilly. Essay on George Eliot.
Aujourd'hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'etre dit, on le chante.
(Nowadaj's, when a thing is not worth saying they sing it — i.e. put it in a song or poem.)
Beaumarchais. Le Barhier de Seville, Act L Sc. i.
I DO not know whether I gave you at any time the details of my work here, or the principles upon which I have been proceeding. . . . Some of the work set down includes Ancient Ethics — which is almost entirely grossly wrong and great rubbish also. This part I have persistently refused to get up, not because I disliked it, but because it is decidedly injurious to v/arp and twist the brain by impressing it with wrong thoughts and systems — just as it would be insane in the polisher of a mirror to think it would reflect the external world more truly if he gave it a dint here, a scratch there, a bulge in another place, and so forth. It would take me too long to describe the details. Suffice it to say that one of the examiners in Mental Philosophy and in Moral and Political Philosophy is an old, hli?id (literally) man of the old school, who gave a very abnormally large amount of questions relating to Ancient Ethics, and an abnormally large amount to the early part of English Ethics — leaving hardly any marks to be scored by thorough understanding and abihty to use the principles of the subjects.
The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spencerian. Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because " there was too much of Spencer and myself " ! So that instead of criticism and originality, he avowedly preferred mere reproduction, a good example of
HODGSON 235
the slavishness of that method of examination predominant mostly, which, as Spencer wrote to me some time ago, is devised for testing a man's " power of acquisition instead of using that which has been acquired."
Richard Hodgson. Letter, Dec. 1881.
This letter was written to nie from Cambridge, when Hodgson (see Preface) had found his immediate prospects blasted by the results of the Moral Science Tripos. No one was placed in the First Class, and he (although at the head of the Tripos) only in the Second Class. This meant that he had no hope of a Fellowship, which would have enabled him to go on with original work in philosophy, and he would have to employ his time in earning a livelihood. Added to this was the cruel disappointment to his family and friends.
Hodgson was one of the most gifted men that Australia has produced. He had completed his M.A. and LL.D. courses in Melbourne by 1877, when he was twenty-two years of age, and then, discarding the profession of the law, left for Cambridge to read Mental and Moral Science. While still an undergraduate there he had wi-itten an article in reply to T. H. Green, and submitted it to Herbert Spencer, who highly approved of it, and sent it to the Contemporary . However, as stated above, Hodgson's immediate future depended on the result of the examination. (He was at the time preparing one of the articles he contributed to Mind, and had in view further original work.)
When the result of the Tripos appeared, Henry Sidgwick and Venn, Vv^ho were then Lecturers and by far the best Moral Science men in Cam- bridge, came to sympathize with Hodgson on the unfair result. They urged him to go to Germany so that he might acquire that perfect com- mand of the German language which was necessary for his philosophic work. On learning that he was not in a position to do this, Sidgwick insisted — as he said, " in the interests of philosophy " — on defraying tke whole of the expenses of Hodgson's residence in Germany. As he insisted strongly, Hodgson accepted the offer, and went to Jena, armed with a very flattering letter of introduction from Herbert Spencer to Haeckel.
Almost immediately after his return from Germany the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and Hodgson joined it. He came to the conclusion that the v/ork of this Society was more important than any other study, while probably it would also be of fundamental assistance to philosophy. He went out to India in 1884, and thoroughly exposed Madame Blavatsky and her " Theosophy," and, from about 1886, devoted the rest of his life to Psychical Research. Although maintaining his reading and his intimacy with Henry Sidgwick, William James, and others, his services practically became lost to philosophy. This, however, does not affect the important fact illustrated by the Tripos incident. We learn what ineptitude can exist in a great university, and what grave results must necessarily follow therefrom.
Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity (yet with a dauntless heart — see verse on Dedication page), his remarks on Ancient Ethics are not, in my opinion, exaggerated.
Herbert Spencer's remark to Hodgson about examinations may also be noted.
236 SHELLEY— WORDSWORTH
Prometheus. And thou, O Mother Earth !
Earth. I hear, I feel Thy Hps are on me, and their touch runs down Even to the adamantine central gloom Along these marble nerves ; 'tis life, 'tis joy. And, through my withered, old, and icy frame. The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down Circling. Henceforth the many children fair Folded in my sustaining arms ; all plants. And creeping forms, and insects rainbow- winged. And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom Draining the poison of despair, shall take And interchange sweet nutriment.
Shelley. Prometheus Unbound, HL 3.
In Shelley's great poem, Prometheus is not merely the Titan who, having stolen fire from heaven to benefit man, was chained to a pillar while an eagle tore at his vitals ; he is the spirit of humanity. Man has (through superstition) given the god, Zeus, great powers which he uses to enslave and oppress man's own mind and body. Ultimately the god is overthrown, Prometheus, the spirit of man, is released, and the world enters upon its progress towards perfection.
This and the following quotations are from a collection of references to Mother-Earth, which I had begun to put together.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one. When rocked to rest on their mother's breast. As she dances about the sun.
Shelley. The Cloud.
Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers ;
The common growth of mother-earth
Suffices me — her tears, her mirth.
Her humblest mirth and tears.
Wordsworth. Peter Bell.
COLERIDGE AND OTHERS 237
Say, mysterious Earth ! O say, great mother and goddess, Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was un-
girdled. Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee
and won thee ! . . . Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty
embracement ; Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold
instincts, Filled, as a dream, the wide waters ; the rivers sang on their
channels ; Laughed on their shores the wide seas ; the yearning ocean
swelled upward ; Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the
echoing mountains. Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming
branches.
S. T. Coleridge. Hytnn to the Earth.
An imitation of Stolberg's Hymne an die Erde.
For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me.
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
'Twill be time enough to die.
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.
R. W. Emerson. Woodnotes.
So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap.
Milton. Paradise Lost, XL 535.
238 SHELLEY AND OTHERS
SONG OF PROSERPINE
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth. Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom.
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue. Fairest children of the Hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine. ^
oHELLEY.
Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, whilst gathering flowers with her play- mates at Enna in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, also called Dis, god of the dead. (For two-thirds, or, according to later writers, one-half of each year, she returns to the earth, bringing spring and summer.)
That fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Was gathered ; which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.
Paradise Lost, IV. 269.
Like a shadow thrown Softly and lightly from a passing cloud. Death fell upon him, Vv^hile reclined he lay For noontide solace on the summer grass, The warm lap of his mother earth.
Wordsworth. Excursion, VII. 286.
And O green bounteous Earth ! Bacchante Mother ! stern to those V/ho live not in thy heart of mirth ; Death shall I shrink from, loving thee ? Into the breast that gives the rose Shall I with shuddering fall ?
George Meredith. Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn.
MACDONALD AND OTHERS 239
And . . . the rich winds blow,
And . . . the waters go,
And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer.
Bowing their heads in the sunny air ...
All make a music, gentle and strong,
Bound by the heart into one sweet song ;
And amidst them all, the mother Earth
Sits with the children of her birth . . .
Go forth to her from the dark and the dust
And weep beside her, if weep thou must ;
If she may not hold thee to her breast.
Like a weary infant, that cries for rest ;
At least she will press thee to her knee
And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,
Till the hue to thy cheek, and the light to thine eye,
Strength to thy limbs, and courage high
To thy fainting heart return amain.
George MacDonald. Phantastes.
Hold thee to her breast, give rest in death.
Ne deeth, alias ! ne wol nat han my life ; will not take
Thus walke I, lyk a restelees caityf, restless wretch
And on the ground, which is my modres gate, mother's I knokke with my staf, both erly and late, And seye, " leve moder, leet me in ! say, " Dear mother
Lo, how I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin ! waste away" Alias ! whan shul my bones be at reste ? "
Chaucer. The Pardoner's Tale.
Who would loose. Though full of pain, this intellectual being. Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night ?
Milton. Paradise Lost, II. 146.
" Loose " — by committing suicide.
240 E. B. BROWNING
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river :
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away. Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river ; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river. . . .
" This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river), " The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan !
Piercing sweet by the river ! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan ! The sun on the hill forgot to die. And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river. Making a poet out of a man : The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, — For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
E. B. Browning.
There is little merit in inventing a happy idea, or attrac- tive situation, so long as it is only the author's voice which we hear. As a being whom we have called into life by magic
NIEBUHR AND OTHERS 241
arts, as soon as it has received existence, acts independently of the master's impulse, so the poet creates his persons, and then watches and relates what they do and say. Such creation is poetry in the literal sense of the term, and its possibility is an unfathomable enigma. The gushing full- ness of speech belongs to the poet, and it flows from the lips of each of his magic beings in the thoughts and words peculiar to its nature. t^t
^ NiEBUHR.
Letters, etc., vol. iii. 196.
Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted
according to the determination of the will. A man cannot
say, " I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even
cannot say it ; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal,
which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind,
awakens to transitory brightness ; this power arises from
within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes
as it is developed ; and the conscious portions of our nature
are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.
Could this influence be durable in its original purity and
force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results ;
but, when composition begins, inspiration is already on the
decline — and the most glorious poetry that has ever been
communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of
the original conceptions of the poet. ^^
^ ^ ^ Shelley.
A Defence of Poetry.
I AM thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best ; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am ahvays full of thanks for moderate goods. ... In the morning I awake, and find the old v/orld, wife, babes and mother. Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far oflF. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, v;e shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Every- thing good is on the highway. ^ ^^ Emerson.
Essay on Experience.
R
242 OUIDA— ARNOLD
When the white block of marble shines so solid and so
costly, who remembers that it was once made up of decaying
shell and rotting bones and millions of dying insect-lives,
pressed to ashes ere the rare stone was ? ^, ,
Lnandos.
The madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful — except to the future. And for the future, who cares — save those madmen themselves ?
. . . The gods that most of all have pity on man, the gods of the Night and of the Grave.
Our eyes are set to the light, but our feet are fixed in the mire. Folle-Farine.
" If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away," says Antoninus : do the same with a thought. . . . There is no cucumber so heavy that one cannot throw it over som.e
wall. rp ' . .
I ncotnn. OuiDA.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, A.D. 120-180, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, is the author of the well-known Meditations. The quotation is from Bk. VIII.: "The gourd is bitter; drop it, then! There are brambles in the path ; then turn aside ! It is enough. Do not go on to argue, Why pray have these things a place in the world ? " etc.
These quotations from Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ram6e) may serve to illustrate the saying of Pliny the Elder, " No book is so bad but some good may be got out of it" (Pliny the Younger's Letters, III. io)^a saying which was no doubt true until printing let loose on the world such a multitude of worthless writers.
Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore ; But in disdainful silence turn away, Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more ?
Matthev/ Arnold. To a Gipsy Child.
BUCHANAN— SWINBURNE 243
WHEN WE ALL ARE ASLEEP
When He returns, and finds the World so drear —
All sleeping, — young and old, unfair and fair, Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear,
" Awaken ! " or for pity's sake forbear, —
Saying, " How shall I meet their frozen stare Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear ?
How shall I comfort them in their despair. If they cry out, ' Too late ! let us sleep here ' ? " Perchance He will not wake us up, but when
He sees us look so happy in our rest. Will murmur, " Poor dead women and dead men !
Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest. Wherefore awake them into life again ?
Let them sleep on untroubled — it is best."
R. Buchanan.
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears ;
Grief, with a glass that ran ; Pleasure, with pain for leaven ;
Summer, with flowers that fell ; Remembrance fallen from heaven.
And madness risen from hell ; Strength without hands to smite ;
Love that endures for a breath ; Night, the shadow of light.
And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears. And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years ; And froth and drift of the sea ;
And dust of the labouring earth ; And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth ; And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love. With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
244 SWINBURNE— ODYSSEY
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south
They gathered as unto strife ; They breathed upon his mouth.
They filled his body with life ; Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labour and thought,
A time to serve and to sin ; They gave him light in his ways.
And love, and a space for delight. And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire ;
With his lips he travaileth ; In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death ; He weaves, and is clothed with derision ;
Sows, and he shall not reap ; His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
SV^INBURNE.
Atalanta in Calydon.
In the first stanza " Time " and " Grief " would seem to have been transposed — thus meaning that Time brings tears and Grief comes to an end.
She [the ship of Odysseus] came to the limits of the world, to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud ; and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep ; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place v/hich Circe had declared to us.
There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but
ODYSSEY 245
I drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine and for the third time with water. . . . When I had besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth : and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens with grief yet fresh at heart ; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me. ... I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suff'ering not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias. . . .
Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for sacred llios. At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.
Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden
sceptre in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me :
" Son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many
devices, what seekest thou now, wretched man — wherefore
hast thou left the sunlight and come hither to behold the
dead and a land desolate of joy ? Nay, hold off from the
ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of
the blood and tell thee sooth." So spake he, and I put up
my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and when he had
drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble seer speak
unto me. ... ^ th vt
Odyssey, Bk. XI.
Butcher and Lang's translation.
In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias from the under- world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted — and the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.
What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. Homer was, indeed, their Bible. It will be observed that the dead live in a dark land, " desolate of joy."
To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a river.
246 R. BROWNING— SWINBURNE
For — see your cellarage !
There are forty barrels with Shakespeare's brand, Some five or six are abroach : the rest Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test What yourselves call best of the very best !
How comes it that still untouched they stand ? Why don't you try tap, advance a stage With the rest in cellarage ?
For — see your cellarage !
There are four big butts of Milton's brew, How comes it you make old drips and drops Do duty, and there devotion stops ? Leave such an abyss of malt and hops
Embellied in butts which bungs still glue ? You hate your bard ! A fig for your rage ! Free him from cellarage !
R, Browning. Epilogue to Pacchiarotto and other Poems.
Though the seasons of man full of losses
Make empty the years full of youth. If but one thing be constant in crosses.
Change lays not her hand upon truth ; Hopes die, and their tombs are for token
That the grief as the joy of them ends Ere time that breaks all men has broken
The faith between friends.
Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the heaven has one ;
Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight And the earth dispossessed of the sun,
They have moonlight and sleep for repayment, When, refreshed as a bride and set free,
With stars and sea-winds in her raiment,
Night sinks on the sea. ^
^ Swinburne.
Dedication, 1865.
It is hardly possible for a younger generation to realize the almost intoxicating effect produced upon us by Swinburne's new melodies. Although the Poems and Ballads were largely erotic, the curious fact is
SWINBURNE 247
that we were too much carried away by the beauty and swing of his verse to trouble about the sensual element in it. That element was in itself an artificial production and not a reflection of the poet's own emotions, for he was free from sensuality. It was with us more a question of music. Swinburne himself preferred a musical word or line to one that would more aptly express his meaning ; and in the " Dedication," from which the above verses are quoted, several lines will not bear analysis. However, this was one of our favourites among his poems :
O daughters of dreams and of stories
That life is not wearied of yet, Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
Felise and Yolande and Juliette, Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
When sleep, that is true or that seems, Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
O daughters of dreams ?
They are past as a slumber that passes,
As the dew of a dawn of old time ; More frail than the shadov.s on glasses,
More fleet than a wave or a rhyme. As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
When their hollows are full of the night. So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
Recede out of sight.
He asks that his wild " storm-birds of passion " may find a home in our calmer world :
In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers,
Will you spare not a space for them there Made green with the running of rivers
And gracious with temperate air ; In the fields and the turreted cities.
That cover from sunshine and rain Fair passions and bountiful pities
And loves without stain ?
In a land of clear colours and stories,
In a region of shadowless hours. Where earth has a garment of glories
And a murmur of musical flowers ; In woods where the spring half uncovers
The flush of her amorous face. By the waters that listen for lovers
For these is there place ?
Though the world of your hands be more gracious
And lovelier in lordship of things. Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious
Warm heaven of her imminent wings. Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting,
For the love of old loves and lost times ; And receive in your palace of painting
This revel of rhymes.
Then come the final verses quoted above. These are somewhat
4
248 SWINBURNE^HEINE
detached in meaning from the rest, and form a sort of Envoi : " Whatever changes or passes, there is always some beautiful thing that survives."
Swinburne's place in the great world of English poetry is a very peculiar one. He had no important message to deliver. It was he v/ho introduced the new Hellenism or paganism, which was followed by Pater and J. A. Symonds, and ended with Oscar Wilde (see p. 354). On the other hand, by his wonderful mastery of metre and language, the magical efi^ct of his new melodies, he was of tremendous service in transforming all later poetry. Yet here again he was wanting in the art (of which Milton is the supreme example) of varying his rhythm and accents. Notwithstanding the fine language and the splendid swing of his verses, the extreme regularity produces in his longer poems a certain effect of monotony. Swinburne spoke of the " spavined and spur-galled Pegasus " of George Eliot, but, although she lacked his great lyrical melody, she Vv'as more artistic and effective than he in varying the rhythm of her verse. However, his immense influence on all subsequent poetry should never be forgotten. Even the dreary iambic couplet he made musical.
As might be expected, Swinburne was much parodied (and indeed in the Heptalogia and in the poems lately published he parodied himself). The above poem has been cleverly parodied by a lawyer. Sir Frederick Pollock. (Although parodies go as far back as the Fifth Century B.C. I know of no other la^vyer who, qua law^^er, has successfully taken a hand in the game.) In his parody Pollock's subject was the great changes effected by the Judicature Act, when the old Courts of Common Law, Chancery, and others were consolidated into one Supreme Court, and the various classes of business assigned to different " Divisions." Also owing to changes in procedure, much of the old technical learning became obsolete. His last verse is as follows (compare with the second verse quoted above) :
Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle
To divers Divisions of one. And no fire from your face may rekindle
The light of old learning undone. We have suitors and briefs for our pa^-ment,
While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas. We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,
Not sinking the fees.
A PINE-TREE Stands all lonely
On a northern hill-top bare, And, wrapped in its snowy mantle.
It slumbers peacefully there.
Its dream.s are of a palm-tree,
Far-off in the morning land, Which in lone silence sorrows
On a burning, rocky strand.
Heinrich Heine.
KINGSLEY AND OTHERS 249
WuLF died, as he had Hved, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved ail righteous and noble souls, had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors ; and the old warrior v/as in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked, " Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors ? " " In hell," replied the v/orthy prelate. Wulf drev/ back from the font, and threw his bearskin cloak around him — " He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his ov/n people." And so he died unbaptized, and went to his ov/n place.
Charles Kingsley. Hypatia.
This story appears in several old chronicles (Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. X. 33), but the name should be Radbod. He was Duke or Chief of the Frisians, and the episode probably occurred in Heligoland, from which island he ruled his people.
The bee draws forth from fruit and flower Sweet dews, that swell his golden dower ; But never injures by his kiss Those who have made him rich in bliss.
The moth, though tortured by the flame. Still hovers round and loves the same : Nor is his fond attachment less :
" Alas ! " he whispers, " can it be. Spite of my ceaseless tenderness.
That I am doomed to death by thee ? "
AzY Eddin Elmogadessi. L. S. Costello's translation.
These are two of several verses — one referring to love betrayed, the other to love rejected.
We are scratched, or we are bitten By the pets to whom we cling ;
Oh, my Love she is a kitten, And my heart's a ball of string.
Author not traced.
250 CANNING
THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER
FRIEND OF HUMANITY
" Needy Knife-grinder ! whither are you going ? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order ; Bleak blows the blast — your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches !
" Weary Knife-grinder ! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- -road, what hard work 'tis crying all day ' Knives and Scissors to grind O ! '
" Tell me. Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives ? Did some rich man tyrannically use you ? Was it the squire ? or parson of the parish ? Or the attorney ?
" Was it the squire, for killing of his game ? or Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining ? Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little All in a lawsuit ?
(*' Have you not read the ' Rights of Man,' by Tom Paine ?) Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your Pitiful story."
KNIFE-GRINDER
*' Story ! God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir. Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle.
" Constables came up, for to take me into Custody ; they took me before the justice ; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish- -stocks for a vagrant.
CANNING 251
" I should be glad to drink your Honour's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence ; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir."
FRIEND OF HUMANITY
" / give thee sixpence ! I will see thee damn'd first — Wretch ! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance — Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded. Spiritless outcast ! "
{Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philan- thropy.)
George Canning. The Anti-Jacobin.
This famous poem was written by Canning in collaboration with John Hookham Frere for the Anti-Jacobin, a journal intended to ridicule and counteract the frothy teachings of the Jacobins of the French Revolution. Southey at first had Republican views, and wrote poems which he sup- pressed when he becanae a staunch Tory. Canning's verses, written in Sapphics, are a parody of one of those poems, " The Widow," which was written in the same metre by Southey at the age of twenty-two. Froin our point of view there was not the least reason why Canning should have attacked the poem, or why Southey should have suppressed it. It is a pathetic poem of a poor, ill-clad, homeless woman struggling across the downs at night in a pitiless snowstorm, until
Worn out with anguish, toil and cold and hunger. Down sunk the wanderer ; sleep had seized her senses. There did the traveller find her in the morning ; God had released her.
But there was little sympathy for the poor in those days ; and Southey's poem would have been considered highly dangerous as tending to increase the discontent created by the French Revolution, and to lead to a similar outbreak in England.
Usually there is no need to look for a reason why a poem is parodied — it is sufficient that the poem is very well known. To the parodist nothing is sacred. My friend, Mr. Alfred S. West, tells me that even the lines which are said to be the most beautiful in English poetry have not escaped. When the air raids were occurring nightly in London there appeared an article in The Times, headed " Magic Basements " : " Up- stairs there is a chilly propriety, but down here there is colour, movement, excitement, an alluring dash of strangeness — in a word, Romance. We have found it at last, the land of Romance — the
Magic basement, opening up a home For perilous folk in airy raids forlorn."
(See next quotation.)
252 KEATS AND OTHERS
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird !
No hungry generations tread thee down ; The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown : Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Keats. Ode to a Nightingale.
This is a wonderful verse, and the last two lines are said to be the most beautiful in English poetry. It was, I think, either William Morris or Rossetti v/ho first expressed this opinion.
I LOVED him ; but my reason bade prefer
Duty to love, reject the tempter's bribe
Of rose and lily when each path diverged,
And either I must pace to life's far end
As love should lead me, or, as duty urged.
Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm v/ith friend. . . .
But deep within my heart of hearts there hid
Ever the confidence, amends for all,
That heaven repairs what wrong earth's journey did.
When love from life-long exile comes at call.
R, Browning. Bifurcation, 1876.
The lady prefers Duty to Love, but she will remain constant to her lover, and reunion with him in heaven will make amends for all. (In the remainder of the poem Browning puts the case of the lover who, although deserted, is expected to remain constant through life — and who falls. The lady had disobeyed Love, because of the hardship and trouble that would follow, and Browning, whose own married life had been a most happy one, says this was no excuse.)
Women never betray themselves to men as they do to
each other.
George Eliot.
Middle march.
R. BROV/NING AND OTHERS 253
Some man of quality Who — breathing musk from lace-work and brocade, His solitaire amid the flow of frill, Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back. And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist, — Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase, 'Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon Where mirrors multiply the girandole,
R, Browning. The Ring ojid the Book, I.
This and the next six quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
" Oh, what are you waiting for here, young man ?
What are you looking for over the bridge ? " A little straw hat with streaming blue ribbons ;
— And here it comes dancing over the bridge !
James Thomson (" B.V."). Sunday up the River.
They see the Heroes
Sitting in the dark ship
On the foamless, long-heaving,
Violet sea,
At sunset nearing
The Happy Islands.
Matthew Arnold.
The Strayed Reveller.
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread. And having once turned round, v/alks on
And turns no more his head :
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
S. T. Coleridge. The Ancient Mariner.
254 BUCHANAN— WORDSWORTH
Down in yonder greene field There lies a knight slain under his shield ; His hounds they lie down at his feet, So well do they their master keep.
Anon. The Three Ravens.
When we cam' in by Glasgow toun, We were a comely sight to see ;
My Love was clad in the black velvet, And I mysel' in cramasie. crims
Anon. O waly, waly, up the bank.
He sat down in a lonely land
Of mountain, moor and mere. And watched, with chin upon his hand. Dark maids that milked the deer.
R. Buchanan. Balder the Beautiful.
Balder, son of Odin, is the god who loves man and comes down from heaven to live with him on earth.
Many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the ghmmering lake. . . . Then in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents ; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake.
Wordsworth. The Prelude, Bk. V.
BACON AND OTHERS 255
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom ; and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man — not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
Bacon.
Cunning, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from it that can be. And as an ape for the likeness it has to a man— wanting what really should make him so — is by so much the uglier, cunning is only the want of understand- ing, which, because it cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick and circumvention.
John Locke. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693.
A rogue is a roundabout fool ; a fool in circumbendibus.
S. T. Coleridge.
Let its teaching [the teaching of scientific and other books of information, the " literature of knowledge "] be even partially revised, let it be expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. ¥/hereas the feeblest works in the literature of power [poetry and what is generally known as literature], surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men. . . . The Iliad, the Prometheus of Aeschylus — the Othello or King Lear — the Hamlet or Macbeth — and the Paradise Lost, are triumphant for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.
De Quincey. Alexander Pope.
De Quincey's division of literature into " literature of power " and " literature of knowledge " still remains a useful classification.
256 FOOTE AND OTHERS
She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple pie. Just then, a great she-bear coming down the street poked its nose into the shop-window. " What ! no soap ? " So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing Catch- who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
Samuel Foote.
Charles Macklin (1699-1797), actor and playwright, said in a lecture on oratory that by practice he had brought his memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once hearing or reading it. Foote (1720-1777), a more important dramatist and actor, wrote out the above and handed it up to Macklin to read and then repeat from memory 1 The passage was very familiar to us from Miss Edgeworth's Harry and Lucy ; and also from Verdant Green, by Cuthbert Bede (Edward Bradley), where it was set in the bogus examination paper " To be turned into Latin after the manner of the Animals of Tacitus."
How brew the brave drink. Life ? Take of the herb hight morning joy.
Take of the herb hight evening rest. Pour in pain, lest bliss should cloy. Shake in sin to give it zest — Then down with the brave drink. Life !
Author not traced.
I had this attributed to Robert Burton, but cannot find it in the Anatomy of Melancholy. It may possibly be by Richard Brathwaite, whose works were often attributed to Burton.
I EXPECT to pass through this world but once. Any good v»^ork, therefore, I can do or show to any fellow creature, let me do it now ! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn.
There has been much discussion in Notes and Queries and elsewhere as to the origin of this quotation, and it is now usually attributed to the French-American Quaker, Stephen Grellet. As, however, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations gives " I shall not pass this way again " as a favourite saying of William Penn's, it seems more reasonable to consider him the author.
PRINGLE-PATTISON 257
The aspects of beauty and sublimity which we recognize in nature, and the finer spirit of sense revealed by the insight of the poet and the artist, are not subjective imaginings. They give us a deeper truth than ordinary vision, just as the more developed eye or ear carries us farther into nature's refinements and beauties. The truth of the poetic imagina- tion is perhaps the profoundest doctrine of a true philosophy. " I am certain of nothing," said Keats, " but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of Imagination." It is with the second of these far-reaching certainties that we are here concerned. The poet, it has been often said, is a revealer ; he teaches us to see, and what he shows us is really in the facts. It is not put into them, but elicited from them by his intenser sympathy. Did Wordsworth spread the fictitious glamour of an individual fancy over the hills and vales of his beloved Lakeland, or was he not rather the voice by which they uttered their inmost spirit to the world ? Remember his own noble claim for poetry as " the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the im- passioned expression which is on the face of all science." " Of genius in the fine arts," he says, " the only infallible sign is the widening of the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour, and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe : it is an advance or a conquest made by the soul of the poet." But, again, the new element is not imported ; the advance is an advance in the interpretation of the real world, a new insight v/hich brings us nearer to the truth of things.
Hence, when Coleridge says in a well-known passage,
O Lady, we receive but what we give. And in our life alone doth Nature live,
the statement is exactly the reverse of the truth, if it be taken to mean that the beauty of nature is reflected upon it from the subjective spirit of the observer and does not express what Wordsworth calls " the spirit of the place." Coleridge's lines are only true if they are understood, as they may be understood, to mean that, unless we bring the seeing eye, we shall not see the vision. All idealism teaches the correlativity of subject and object ; they develop pari passu, keeping step together, inasmuch as the objective world seems to grow in richness as we develop faculties to
S
258 PRINGLE-PATTISON— MOZLEY
apprehend it. But all sane idealism teaches that, in such advance, the subject is not creating new worlds of knowledge and appreciation for himself, but learning to see more of the one world, " which is the world of all of us."
A. Seth Pringle-Pattison. The Idea of God.
In Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, he thought that nature was to be considered purely as mechanism. But in his Critique of Judgme?it he deals with two factors in nature, which cannot come under " mechanism," one of which is beaut>'. But he added a suspicion that, though beauty is in nature, it is not so firmly fixed there as mechanism, and it may possibly be due to our idiosyncrasy or mental constitution — to be in fact subjective only. Pringle-Pattison's argument is directed against this suggestion generally, although he refers only to the Lake Poets.
Nature has two great revelations — that of use and that of beauty. She is beautifid by the self-same material and laws by which she is useful. The beauty is just as much a part of nature as the use ; they are only different aspects of the self-same facts. Take a gorgeous sunset, — what is the substance of it ? Only a combination of atmospheric laws and laws of light and heat ; the same laws by which we are enabled to live, see, and breathe. The usefulness on one side is, on the other, beauty. It is not that the mechanism is painted over, in order to disguise the deformity of machinery, but the machinery is itself the painting ; the useful laws compose the spectacle. All the colours of the landscape, the tints of spring and autumn, the hues of twilight and dawn — all that might seem the superfluities of nature — are only her most necessary operations under another view ; her ornament is but another aspect of her work ; and, in the very act of labouring as a machine, she also sleeps as a picture.
These two effects of nature are as totally different and distinct facts as can be conceived. Who could possibly have told beforehand that those physical laws which fed us, clothed us, gave us breath and motion, the use of our organs, and all the means of life, would also create a picture ? These two results are divided toto coelo from each other. The picture does not feed us, clothe us, fill our lungs, nourish our nerves and centres of motion. The beauty of nature is a distinct revelation made to the human mind, apart from
MOZLEY— YOUNGHUSBAND Z59
that of its use. When the materialist has exhausted himself in efforts to explain utility in nature, it would appear to be the peculiar office of beauty to rise up suddenly as a con- founding and baffling extra, which was not even formally provided for in his scheme. The glory of nature resides in the mind of man. We cannot explain why material objects impress the imagination. The whole of what any scene of earth or sky is materially is stamped upon the retina of the brute, just as it is upon the man's ; the brute sees all the same objects which are beautiful to man — only without their beauty ; which aspect is inherent in man, and part of his reason.
J. B. MoZLEY. University Sermons.
This is a much-condensed quotation from Mozley's fine sermon on " Nature," delivered in 1871.
The sermon was probably suggested by Emerson's Nature (the treatise in eight chapters, not the essay) published in 1836. The latter would again have its origin in Kant's great Critique of Judgtnent (1790). Mozley distinguishes between use and beauty, Kant between mechanism and beauty. See previous quotation.
There came upon me this thought, which doubtless has occurred to many another besides myself — why the scene should so influence me and yet make no impression on the men about me. Here were men with far keener eyesight than my own, and around me were animals with eyesight keener still. . . . Clearly it is not the eye, but the soul that sees. But then comes the still further reflection : what may there not be staring me straight in the face which I am as blind to as the Kashmir stags are to the beauties amidst which they spend their entire lives ? The whole panorama may be vibrating with beauties man has not yet the soul to see. Some already living, no doubt, see beauties that we ordinary men cannot appreciate. It is only a century ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous. And in the long centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties unthought of now ? Undoubtedly we must. And often in reverie on the mountains I have tried to imagine what still further loveliness they may yet possess for men.
Sir F. Younghusband. Kashmir.
26o SHELLEY— GIBBON
To
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it, One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not, — The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow ?
Shelley.
One cannot be absolutely sure of the poet's meaning in the first verse. But apparently the " one word so often profaned " is love, and with this is contrasted the " one feeling " which the lady should not disdain, worship- The " one hope too like despair " is the hope for compassion and sympathy from the object of worship to the humble worshipper.
F. W. Robertson (" Robertson of Brighton ") had an intense admira- tion for the beautiful line, " The desire of the moth for the star " (see his Life and Letters). He saw in it a symbol of Resignation — the homage of resignation from " the solitary inhabitant of air and night below " to the pure, bright, perfect star looking down from the infinite and eternal heavens.
Seeing that the simile typifies the devotion of the soul to an unattain- able ideal, Robertson rightly finds in it the sense of resignation. Probably this was not conscious to Shelley's mind ; but imagination transcends the intellect, and inspired poetry often has more aspects and higher meanings than are present to the poet's conscious mind.
It is more easy to forgive 490 times than once to ask pardon of an inferior.
Gibbon. Decline and Fall, Ch. 68, n.
Gibbon multiplies the " seventy times seven."
MONTAIGNE AND OTHERS 261
Truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be regarded as their most serious actions.
Montaigne.
Boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man ; so that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun and moon ; and the harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the United States.
R. L. Stevenson. The Lantern-Bearers.
Says Chloe, " Though tears it may cost, It is time we should part, my dear Sue ;
For your character's totally lost, And Fve not sufficient for two ! "
Anon.
I took this from a poor collection of epigrams by C. S. Carey (1872), no author being given. Andrew Lang quoted it in his Presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research, and it was duly inscribed in the Proceedings. I, with some diffidence, follow an illustrious example.
You feel o'er you stealing The old familiar, warm, champagny, brandy-punchy feeling.
J. R. Lowell. Old College Rooms.
The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat One's self.
P. J. Bailey. Festus, " Anywhere."
Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
Disraeli. Coningsby.
262 A. SMITH
I CANNOT say, in Eastern style, Where'er she treads the pansy blows ; Nor call her eyes twin-stars, her smile A sunbeam, and her mouth a rose. Nor can I, as your bridegrooms do, Talk of my raptures. Oh, how sore The fond romance of twenty-two Is parodied ere thirty-four !
To-night I shake hands with the past, —
Famihar years, adieu, adieu !
An unknown door is open cast.
An empty future wide and new
Stands waiting. O ye naked rooms.
Void, desolate, without a charm.
Will Love's smile chase your lonely glooms.
And drape your walls, and make them warm ?
Alexander Smith. The Night before the Wedding.
In my notes, this strange poem is stated to have been actually written by Smith on the night before his wedding ; it was certainly published shortly after that event. The poet sits until dawn thinking of the " long-lost passions of his youth " (he was then only twenty-six, not thirty-Jour), and comparing them with his calm and unimpassioned love, " pale blossom of the snow," for the bride of the morrow. He even fears that his wife's tenderness will keep alive the memories of his youthful loves :
It may be that your loving wiles Will call a sigh from far-off years ; It may be that your happiest smiles Will brim my eyes with hopeless tears ; It may be that my sleeping breath Will shake with painful visions wrung ; And, in the awful trance of death, A stranger's name be on my tongue.
This is sufficiently gruesome. However he finally comes to the con- clusion (although it seems dragged in to save a very difficult situation) that his love for his future bride may become more satisfactory' to him :
For, as the dawning sweet and fast Through all the heaven spreads and flows. Within life's discord rude and vast Love's subtle music grows and grows.
My love, pale blossom of the snow,
Has pierced earth, wet with wintry showers —
O may it drink the sun, and blow,
And be followed by all the year of flowers 1
Smith, with P. J. Bailey, Sydney Dobell and others, belonged to what was called the " Spasmodic " school which the Britannica says is " now
A. SMITH AND OTHERS 263
fallen into oblivion." I do not know what this means. Smith, Bailey, and Dobell no doubt wrote extravagantly, but they have all written good verses. Take for example the following from Smith's first poem, " A Life Drama," written at twenty-two years of age :
All things have something more than barren use ;
There is a scent upon the brier, A tremulous splendour in the autumn dews.
Cold morns are fringed with fire ;
The clodded earth goes up in sweet-breath'd flowers,
In music dies poor human speech, And into beauty blow those hearts of ours.
When Love is born in each.
Daisies are white upon the churchyard sod, Sweet tears the clouds lean down and give,
The world is very lovely ! O my God I thank thee that I live.
Smith was also a charming essayist. See quotations elsewhere.
And so on to the end (and the end draws nearer) When our souls may be freer, our senses clearer,
('Tis an old-world creed which is nigh forgot), When the eyes of the sleepers may waken in wonder. And hearts may be joined that were riven asunder.
And Time and Love shall be merged — in what ?
Author not traced.
Soft music came to mine ear. It was like the rising breeze, that whirls, at first, the thistle's beard ; then flies, dark-shadowy, over the grass. It was the maid of Fiiarfed wild : she raised the nightly song ; for she knew that my soul was a stream, that flowed at pleasant sounds.
James Macpherson.
Macpherson (173 6-1796) alleged that he had discovered poems by the Gaelic bard, Ossian, who lived in the third century, and he pub- lished translations of them. Actually the poems were his own, but they were beautiful and had a considerable effect upon literature.
He first deceas'd ; she for a little tried
To live without him : liked it not, and died.
Sir Henry Wotton. Reliquiae Woitonianae, 1685.
264 SHELLEY AND OTHERS
I DARE not guess : but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem. And we the shadows of the dream. It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.
Shelley. The Sensitive Plant.
I SHOULD like to make every man, woman, and child discontented with themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should like to waken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspira- tion even in part. For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.
Charles Kingsley. The Science of Health, 1872.
The origin of the expression " divine discontent."
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep ; For still He giveth His beloved sleep. And, if an endless sleep He wills, so best.
Henrietta Anne Huxley.
By Huxley's special direction, these curious lines from one of his wife's poems were inscribed on his tombstone. To this clear thinker it was not incompatible with God's love for the souls He has created that He should destroy them !
Huxley, like Spencer and Darwin, the other two great leaders in that great Victorian age, was not a materialist. Apart from other passages in his works he made an explicit disavowal of materialism in Evolutio?t and Ethics, p. 129. I do not know about the physicist, Tyndall. Huxley, writing of him to Spencer says, " A favourite problem of his is — Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust there- from. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily " (Life and Letters of Huxley, i. 231). On the other hand, in an essay on " The late Professor Tyndall " in the Huxley Memorial volume, Spencer says that Tyndall held " the belief that the known is surrounded
BALFOUR— BACON 265
by an unknown, which he recognized as something more than a negation." Possibly he had changed his views since the Belfast Address (see p. 66) and come into line with other leading physicists. It is a noteworthy fact, as McDougall points out in Body and Mind, that while biologists in that materialist period dogmatically insisted that the organic world could be explained in terms of physical science, many physicists of the highest standing, who best knew the limits of science (and had taught the biologists) were of the opposite opinion. He mentions several : Lord Kelvin, Sir G. Stokes, Clerk Maxwell, P, G. Tait, Balfour Stewart, Sir W. Crookes, Sir O. Lodge, Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir J. J. Larmor, Professor Poynting.
Man's very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the Hfe of one of the meanest of the planets. . . . We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. " Im- perishable monuments " and " immortal deeds," death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.
Earl of Balfour. The Foundations of Belief.
In this eloquent passage, written in 1894, Mr. A. J. Balfour (as he then was) depicted the result of the materialistic belief which was so prevalent last century, but which is no longer held by men who have kept themselves abreast of modern knowledge (see p. 67).
My Lord St. Albans said that wise nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high ; and, therefore, that exceeding tall men had ever empty heads.
Bacon. Apothegms.
266 DOUGLAS AND OTHERS
Is the yellow bird dead ?
Lay your dear little head Close, close to my heart, and weep, precious one, there,
While your beautiful hair On my bosom lies light, like a sun-lighted cloud ;
No, you need not keep still,
You may sob as you will ; There is some little comfort in crying aloud.
But the days they must come,
When your grief will be dumb : Grown women like me must take care how they cry.
You will learn by and by 'Tis a womanly art to hide pain out of sight.
To look round with a smile.
Though your heart aches the while, And to keep back your tears till you've blown out the light.
Marian Douglas, Picture Poems for Young Folks.
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it : This high man, with a great thing to pursue.
Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one.
His hundred's soon hit : This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit. That, has the world here — should he need the next,
Let the world mind him ! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find Him.
R. Browning.
A Grammarian's Funeral.
See The Inn Album (iv.) where Browning makes his heroine say :
Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed As, God be thanked, I do not !
A WOMAN needs to be wooed long after she is won, and the husband who ceases to court his wife is courting disaster.
Author not traced.
THOMSON AND OTHERS 267
A REQUIEM
Thou hast lived in pain and woe,
Thou hast hved in grief and fear ; Now thine heart can dread no blow,
Now thine eyes can shed no tear : Storms round us shall beat and rave ; Thou art sheltered in the grave.
Thou for long, long years hast borne. Bleeding through Life's wilderness,
Heavy loss and wounding scorn : Now thine heart is burdenless :
Vainly rest for ours we crave ;
Thine is quiet in the grave.
James Thomson (" B.V.").
O ELOQUENT, just, and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words. Hie jacet !
Sir Walter Raleigh. Historie of the World.
There is a secret belief among some men that God is displeased with man's happiness ; and in consequence they slink about creation, ashamed and afraid to enjoy anything.
Sir a. Helps. Companions of my Solitude.
It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest
full-grown men can distinguish well-rolled barrels from
more supernal thunder. ^ „
^ George Eliot.
Mill on the Floss.
268 R. BROWNING
AMPHIBIAN
The fancy I had to-day, Fancy which turned a fear !
I swam far out in the bay,
Since waves laughed warm and clear.
I lay and looked at the sun. The noon-sun looked at me :
Between us two, no one
Live creature, that I could see.
Yes ! There came floating by
Me, who lay floating too, Such a strange butterfly !
Creature as dear as new :
Because the membraned wings
So wonderful, so wide. So sun-suff"used, were things
Like soul and nought beside. . . .
What if a certain soul
Which early slipped its sheath. And has for its home the whole
Of heaven, thus look beneath,
Thus watch one who, in the world, Both lives and likes life's way,
Nor wishes the wings unfurled That sleep in the worm, they say ?
But sometimes when the weather Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free oneself of tether. And try a life exempt
From worldly noise and dust, In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought, — why, just Unable to fly, one swims ! . . .
R. BROWNING 269
Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky, We substitute, in a fashion,
For heaven — poetry :
Which sea, to all intent.
Gives flesh such noon-disport As a finer element
Affords the spirit sort.
Whatever they are, we seem :
Imagine the thing they know ; All deeds they do, we dream ;
Can heaven be else but so ?
And meantime, yonder streak
Meets the horizon's verge ; That is the land, to seek
If we tire or dread the surge :
Land the solid and safe —
To welcome again (confess !) When, high and dry, we chafe
The body, and don the dress.
Does she look, pity, wonder
At one who mimics flight. Swims — heaven above, sea under.
Yet always earth in sight ?
R. Browning. Prologue to Fifine at the Fair.
This is not one of Browning's finest poems, but it is very interesting, as giving his view of the nature of poetic imagination.
In Greek art and Hterature the butterfly was emblematic of the departed soul, because it had, as it were, passed through death in the chrysaHs stage and risen in a more spiritual form. The word " psuche " (psyche) had both meanings, " soul " and " butterfly." Here the poet swimming in the sea is reminded, by the ethereal butterfly floating above him, of the soul of his wife looking down on him from heaven. It troubles him that she sees that he " Both lives and likes life's way," that he is content with his earthly existence, and does not wish to " unfurl his wings " and enter the spiritual life.
Yet, he says, in moments of poetic imagination, when he gets away " from worldly noise and dust " and lives " in the sphere which over- brims with passion and thought," he does approach some way towards the
270 R. BROWNING— KING
spiritual life. Although he cannot " fly " in the pure celestial regions, he does at least " swim " away from earth. But he confesses that earth must always be in sight, and that he gladly returns to it when the period of poetic inspiration is over. He fears that his wife looks down with pity and wonder that he should be content with such occasional flights from earth, that only ?nimic the higher life of the soul.
However, the essential point of the poem is that the poetic imagination is a reflex of the spiritual life :
Whatever they are, we seem :
Imagine the thing they know ; All deeds they do, we dream ;
Can heaven be else but so ?
Amphibian is the title of the poem, because the poet is of earth and yet can " swim " in the sea of imagination. Charles Lamb speaks of his charming Child Angel, half-angel, half-human, as Amphibium. Brown- ing's poem may have been an unconscious development of a passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici : " Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds : for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible."
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 fails me, I'll complain. Must in death your daylight finish ?
My sun sets to rise again.
R. Browning. At the Mermaid.
Here, as in the preceding poem. Browning " both lives and likes life's way."
Sleep on, my Love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted !
My last good-night ! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake :
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves ; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there : I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
KING AND OTHERS 271
And think not much of my delay :
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree
And every hour a step towards thee. . . .
The thought of this bids me go on And wait my dissolution With hope and comfort. Dear — forgive The crime — I am content to live Divided, with but half a heart, Till we shall meet and never part.
Henry King. Exequy on his Wife.
Bishop King, in this fine poem, laments the death of his young wife, twenty-four years of age.
Compare the last four lines with the two preceding quotations.
We work so hard, we age so soon,
We live so swiftly, one and all. That ere our day be fairly noon.
The shadows eastward seem to fall. Some tender light may gild them yet,
As yet, 'tis not so very cold. And, on the whole, I won't regret
My slender chance of growing old.
W. J. Prowse. My Lost Old Age.
Prowse (1836-1870) wrote good verse before he was twenty and died at thirty-four.
Here now I am : the house is fast ; I am shut in from all but Thee ; Great witness of my privacy. Dare I unshamed my soul undress, And, like a child, seek Thy caress. Thou Ruler of a realm so vast ?
T. T. Lynch.
272 ARNOLD AND OTHERS
Calm Soul of all things ! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
Matthew Arnold. Lines written in Kensington Gardens.
Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis. Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, frigida, nudula ; Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos !
Hadrian.
There is a wonderful pathos and charm in this poem. It was written in a.d. 138 by the dying Emperor Hadrian, as he contemplated the pale, shadowy existence which he expected after death. It has been translated by Vaughan, Prior, Byron and others. Mr. Clodd {The Question — If a Mmi Die) gives this version, without naming the trans- lator :
Soul of mine, thou fleeting, clinging thing,
Long my body's mate and guest.
Ah 1 now whither wilt thou wing.
Pallid, naked, shivering,
Never more to speak and jest.
In all these versions pallidula, etc., are applied to animida, but, as Mr. Alfred S. West points out to me, they appear to be epithets of loca, thus : " Fleeting, winsome soul, my body's guest and comrade, that art now about to set out for regions wan, cold, and bare, no more to jest according to thy wont."
This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait.
We call our Dwelling-place : But angels in their full enlightened state. Angels, who Live, and know what 'tis to Be, Who all the nonsense of our language see. Who speak things, and our words — their ill-drawn pictures — scorn,
When we, by a foolish figure, say,
" Behold an old man dead ! " then they Speak properly, and cry, " Behold a man-child born ! "
Abraham Cowley. Life.
SHELLEY AND OTHERS 273
As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given Its own. . . .
Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.
Shelley. To Jane.
While I listen to thy voice,
Chloris ! I feel my life decay : That pow'rful noise
Calls my fleeting soul away. Oh ! suppress that magic sound. Which destroys without a wound.
Peace, Chloris, peace ! or singing die ; That, together, you and I
To heaven may go :
For all we know Of what the Blessed do above Is, that they sing, and that they love.
Edmund Waller.
GRACE FOR A CHILD
Here a little child I stand.
Heaving up my either hand ; Cold as Paddocks though they be, frogs
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall blessing
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
Robert Herrick.
T
274 HOLMES AND OTHERS
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
O. W. Holmes.
From a letter to Julia Ward Howe in 1889 on her seventieth birthday. Mrs. Howe wrote the fine " Battle Hymn of the American Republic," beginning : —
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored : He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword : His truth is marching on.
The dog walked off to play with a black beetle. The
beetle was hard at work trying to roll home a great ball of
dung it had been collecting all the morning ; but Doss
broke the ball, and ate the beetle's hind legs, and then bit
off its head. And it was all play, and no one could tell what
it had lived and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and
an ending in nothing. ^ c^
° ^ Olive Schreiner.
The Story of an African Farm.
The author is depicting the sadness of life.
INSOMNIA
A HOUSE of sleepers, I alone unblest
Am still awake and empty vigil keep :
When those who share Life's day with me find rest,
Oh, let me not be last to fall asleep.
Anna Reeve Aldrich.
She did " fall asleep " at the early age of twenty-six in June 1892.
The world is full of willing people : some willing to work, and the rest willing to let them.
Author not traced.
Il y a toujours I'un qui baise, et I'autre qui tend la joue. (There is always one who kisses and the other who offers the cheek.)
Author not traced.
CLOUGH— LYTTON 275
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY "
What we, when face to face we see The Father of our souls, shall be, John tells us, doth not yet appear ; Ah ! did he tell what we are here !
A mind for thoughts to pass into,
A heart for loves to travel through,
Five senses to detect things near.
Is this the whole that we are here ? . . .
Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head ; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us receive ;
Must still believe, for still we hope That in a world of larger scope. What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone.
My child, we still must think, when we That ampler life together see. Some true result will yet appear Of what we are, together, here.
A. H. Clough.
He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation next to that which Cometh from heaven. " What, softer than woman ? " whispers the young reader. Young reader, woman teases as well as consoles. Woman makes half the sorrows which she boasts the privilege of soothing. On the whole, then, woman in this scale, the weed in that — Jupiter ! hang out thy balance and weigh them both ; and, if thou give the preference to woman, all I can say is, the next time Juno ruffles thee, O Jupiter, try the weed !
BuLWER Lytton. What will He do with It ?
Compare Kipling in " The Betrothed " :
A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
276 PATMORE AND OTHERS
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price. Knowing he cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapen'd paradise ; How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift.
Had made brutes men, and men divine !
Coventry Patmore. The Angel in the House.
Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think —
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
But had you — oh, with the same perfect brow.
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler's pipe and follows to the snare —
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind !
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
" God and the glory ! never care for gain,"
I might have done it for you.
R. Browning. Andrea del Sarto.
The painter says that his wife, instead of urging him to work for immediate gain, might have incited him to nobler efforts.
Alas, how easily things go wrong !
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long.
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain.
And life is never the same again.
George MacDonald. Phantasies.
Plus je vois les hommes, plus j 'admire les chiens.
(The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.)
Author not traced.
PRAED 277
CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS
Once on a time, when sunny May
Was kissing up the April showers, I saw fair Childhood hard at play
Upon a bank of blushing flowers ; Happy — he knew not whence or how —
And smiling,— who could choose but love him ? For not more glad than Childhood's brow
Was the blue heaven that beamed above him.
Old Time, in most appalling wrath.
That valley's green repose invaded ; The brooks grew dry upon his path,
The birds were mute, the lilies faded. But Time so swiftly winged his flight,
In haste a Grecian tomb to batter. That Childhood watched his paper kite.
And knew just nothing of the matter. . . .
Then stepped a gloomy phantom up.
Pale, cypress-crowned, Night's awful daughter, And proffered him a fearful cup
Full to the brim of bitter water : Poor Childhood bade her tell her name ;
And when the beldame muttered, " Sorrow," He said, " Don't interrupt my game ;
I'll taste it, if I must, to-morrow." . . .
Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball.
And taught him with most sage endeavour, Why bubbles rise and acorns fall.
And why no toy may last for ever. She talked of all the wondrous laws
Which Nature's open book discloses. And Childhood, ere she made a pause,
Was fast asleep among the roses.
Sleep on, sleep on ! Oh ! Manhood's dreams
Are all of earthly pain or pleasure. Of Glory's toils. Ambition's schemes.
Of cherished love, or hoarded treasure :
278 WORDSWORTH AND OTHERS
But to the couch where Childhood Hes A more deHcious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered Heaven !
W. M. Praed.
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe ! Thou soul that art the eternity of thought. That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion ! Not in vain By day or star-light thus, from my first dawn Of childhood, didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul ; — Not with the mean and vulgar works of man. But with high objects, with enduring things— With life and nature — purifying thus The elements of feeling and of thought : And sanctifying, by such discipline, Both pain and fear, until we recognize A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, Bk. I.
The brooding East with awe beheld Her impious younger world. The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd. And on her head was hurled.
The East bowed low before the blast In patient, deep disdain ; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again.
Matthew Arnold. Obermann Once More.
The light of every soul burns upward. Let us allow for atmospheric disturbance. ^^^^^^ Meredith.
Diana of the Crossways.
KIPLING 279
THE LONG TRAIL
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield, And the ricks stand grey to the sun, Singing : — " Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover. And your English summer's done."
You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind. And the thresh of the deep-sea rain ; You have heard the song — how long ! how long ! Pull out on the trail again !
Ha' done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass.
We've seen the seasons through,
And it's time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the
out trail. Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail — the trail that is
always new.
It's North you may run to the rime-ringed sun
Or South to the blind Horn's hate ; Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay, Or West to the Golden Gate ;
Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
And the wildest tales are true.
And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the
out trail, And life runs large on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.
The days are sick and cold, and the skies are gray and old, And the twice-breathed airs blow damp ; And I'd sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll Of a black Bilbao tramp ;
With her load-hne over her hatch, dear lass,
And a drunken Dago crew,
And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail,
the out trail From Cadiz Bar on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.
28o KIPLING
There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake
Or the way of a man with a maid ; But the sweetest way to me is a ship's upon the sea In the heel of the North-East trade.
Can you hear the crash on her bows, dear lass,
And the drum of the racing screw.
As she ships it green on the old trail, our own trail, the
out trail. As she lifts and 'scends on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new ?
See the shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore,
And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave ; It's " Gang-plank up and in," dear lass, It's " Hawsers warp her through ! " And it's " All clear aft " on the old trail, our own trail,
the out trail. We're backing down on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new, . . .
O the mutter overside, when the port-fog holds us tied,
And the sirens hoot their dread ! When foot by foot we creep o'er the hueless viewless deep To the sob of the questing lead !
It's down by the Lower Hope, dear lass.
With the Gunfleet Sands in view,
Till the Mouse swings green on the old trail, our own
trail, the out trail, And the Gull Light lifts on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.
O the blazing tropic night, when the wake's a welt of light
That holds the hot sky tame. And the steady fore-foot snores through the planet-powder'd floors Where the scared whale flukes in flame ! Her plates are scarr'd by the sun, dear lass, And her ropes are taut with the dew. For we're booming down on the old trail, our own trail,
the out trail, We're sagging south on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.
KIPLING AND OTHERS 281
Then home, get her home, when the drunken rollers comb.
And the shouting seas drive by, And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing, And the Southern Cross rides high !
Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass,
That blaze in the velvet blue.
They're all old friends on the old trail, our own trail,
the out trail. They're God's own guides on the Long Trail — the trail that is always new.
Fly forward, O my heart, from the Foreland to the Start —
We're steaming all too slow, And it's twenty thousand mile to our little lazy isle Where the trumpet-orchids blow !
You have heard the call of the off-shore wind And the voice of the deep-sea rain ; You have heard the song — how long ? how long ? Pull out on the trail again !
The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And The Deuce knows what we may do —
But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail,
the out trail. We're down, hull down on the Long Trail — the trail that
is always new.
RuDYARD Kipling.
A great sea-song ; we are on board passing through scene after scene and feeling the very movement of the ship and its gear.
Some prize his blindfold sight ; and there be they Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Lovers Lovers.
I NEVER knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Pope.
282 PAINE
The Quakers have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that, if the taste of a Quaker could have been con- sulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been ! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason.
This quotation reminds me of an interesting passage in Professor Bateson's Presidential Address to the British Association at Melbourne in 1914 :
" Every one must have a preliminary sympathy with the aims of eugenists both abroad and at home. Their efforts at the least are doing something to discover and spread truth as to the physiological structure of society. The spread of such organizations, however, almost of necessity suffers from a bias towards the accepted and the ordinary, and if they had power it would go hard with many ingredients of society that could be ill-spared. I notice an ominous passage in which even Galton, the founder of eugenics, feeling perhaps soine twinge of his Quaker ancestry, remarks that ' as the Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it goes, the happier for mankind.' It is not the eugenists who will give us what Plato has called ' divine releases from the common ways.' If some fancier with the catholicity of Shake- speare would take us in hand, well and good ; but I would not trust Shakespeares, meeting as a committee. Let us remember that Beethoven's father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of consumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs also we learn — what may very well be the truth — that the fathers of such as dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ, and the instructor of every artificer in brass or iron — the founders, that is to say, of the arts and the sciences — came in direct descent from Cain, and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to us, as he probably was also in the narrow circle of his own contemporaries, what naturalists call a nomen nudum."
Nonien nudum is a bare name without further particulars, but Donne, no doubt on the authority of Josephus (I. 2. 3), attributes Astronomy to Seth (" The Progresse of the Soule ") :
Wonder with mee Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, Or most of those Arts whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cain's race invented be, And blest Seth vext us with Astronomic.
Donne (1573-1631) is " vext " with Astronomy, presumably because at that time Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642) were affirming the Copernican system and making other discoveries supposed to be dangerous to religion.
The object of eugenics is to improve the human race physically and mentally. The eugenists tell us that, if we believe in evolution, we must also believe that man can be " developed."
NOTE ON PAINE 283
They appear to have overlooked the fact that homo sapiens is not a series of genera and species, but only one single species. One does not speak of "evolution," when referring to a single species which has remained unaltered. Evolution manifests itself only when certain mysterious variations suddenly and unaccountably appear and give rise to new species. By a marvellous succession of such variations through millions or billions of years, some one-celled, jelly-like, amoeba-like, living speck of protoplasm evolved ultimately into a Shakespeare — but, until the first mysterious variation happened, it remained the same primordial speck of protoplasm. There can be no evolution or development in any species until the variation arises that transforms it into another species. This so far has not happened to man. On p. 183 I give reasons for believing that earliest man was mentally equal, and quite possibly superior, to ourselves. This would also be the case as regards his body.
Therefore, so long as man remains unchanged, his innate physical and mental constitution cannot be improved. But by the exercise of his normal mental faculties, man can and does add greatly to his know- ledge. Each accession of knowledge gives his mind further data to work upon, so that knowledge increases in geometrical progression. (I am using the term " mind " in its popular sense, as including the Uncon- scious or Soul with its Imagination.) Through this purely mental process, man has already added enormously to his physical powers. He can, for example, see and investigate the constitution of worlds many billions of miles distant from him, or observe the behaviour of incon- ceivably minute electrons within an inconceivably minute atom. This is not due to any " development " in the eye or in the mental faculties which man originally had, but simply to the continued exercise of those faculties. (This is one of the reasons that lead me to believe that the mind — or rather the Unconscious or Soul — is the essential cause of evolution, as stated on p. 173.) On the other hand, although man's faculties cannot be improved, those faculties can decay, see p. 184. The eugenists deal also with the question of decay, but we are at present dis- cussing their proposal to " develop " or improve the human race.
Assuming this can be done, there is only one way in which the eugenists can set about it, namely, by adopting the methods of the stock-breeder. They know that the world will not trust them with the compulsory powers of the stock-breeder, but, having a faith that should remove mountains, they hope to educate the world to submit themselves voluntarily to a similar process.
To begin with, the stock-breeder " breeds for points," and the eugenists admit that after fifty years they do not yet know what points to breed for. But let us further assume that they have fixed upon the necessary congenital elements and isolated them, so that they can begin their breeding. In the first place we know that the breeder can produce results only within very narrozv and strictly fixed limits. We also know that, if he once ceases his work of selection, the animal reverts to its original (normal) condition and the results disappear.
But also the breeder does not aim at improving the aftitnal. His object is to increase certain physical characters at the expense of others for the benefit, Jiot of the animal but of man. In other words his object is to produce artificial monstrosities. It is not an improvement of a sheep, qua sheep, to grow an excessive load of wool, or of a bullock, qua bullock, to become an unwieldy mass of flesh. (Nor is it an improvement of a rose, qua rose, to give up its reproductive organs in exchange for a number of useless petals.) If the stock-breeder were to try to make a superior animal, he would utterly fail — and he also cannot add to the innate intelligence of any animal. Therefore, after making all manner
284
NOTE ON PAINE
of unwarranted assumptions, we still find that eugenics must turn out a failure in this respect.
Let us now proceed to the next question. The eugenists say emphatic- ally that the human race is rapidly decaying, and they propose to arrest that decay. Here there is one fact that we must all admit. Defectives and other abnormals should not — in the present state of rnedical know- ledge— be allowed to produce tainted offspring. So far as the eugenists assist in promoting this object, they are to be commended ; but it was not necessary to found a new " science " for this one object.
However, the eugenists do not rely only on this comparatively minor point, when they say that the human race is rapidly decaying. They have a very remarkable theory. This theory is that man is divided into upper and lower classes which are respectively possessed of a higher and lower order of intelligence, and transmit the same to their respective descendants. These classes have also another distinguishing feature in that the upper class have a far less birth-rate than the lower class. There- fore the human race is being fast denuded of its intelligent class, and becoming degenerate.
These classes are not fixed and definite, for there is a constant transfer of members going on from one class to another. But when such in- dividuals so transfer themselves or become transferred, they find them- selves on an average subject to the law of their new class, and produce more or less offspring as the case may be.
As regards this theory, it may be noted that no such division into classes, with higher and lower intelligence and different birth-rates, is to be found in any other biological species. Also it must be a late development in man himself for, as John Ball preached in 1381,
When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman ?
Also this theory of classes which interchange but still remain distinct has not the characteristics of a genuine scientific hypothesis.
The question is whether the two classes do actually differ in innate intelligence. The eugenists, of course, admit that men of exceptional ability appear in the lower class, but this does not affect their view that this class is mentally inferior to the upper class. The popular view that ability will always come to the surface — is bound to manifest itself — seems to be implicit in all eugenist literature. That is to say, the excep- tional cases where men have risen from the lower class are to be taken as practically the only cases where ability exists in that class. It should not be necessary to argue against this absurd theory. No ability, or even genius, can manifest itself, unless it has an opportunity to do so. When it is combined with an indomitable energy, which is by no means a usual combination, it will occasionally be able, as it were, to make an opportunity by sheer force. But not even such a combination can work impossibilities. A hundred Einsteins' may have been lost to the world through, for example, mere lack of elementary education, or the incessant struggle for a bare existence.
In past history, it is scarcely inaccurate to say that it was not possible for ability in the lower class to assert itself. There were extremely few exceptions. Hence all great men appeared only in the upper class ; and hence the notion arose that this class was innately superior. But throughout all history the aristocracies, Greek and Roman nobles, the Venetian oligarchy, and so on, died out. All kinds of reasons are given for these happenings, but the true reason seems to be the rise of able men among the proletariat. The signal case is that of France.
NOTE ON PAINE 285
There the aristocracy were either exterminated or banished or deprived of their property and privileges ; yet the nation was quickly renewed from the lower class and soon stood, as it now stands, in the forefront of civilization. In England, even so recently as sixty years ago, there was practically no opportunity for ability to manifest itself among the lower classes. And, although the state of things has greatly improved, there is very little such opportunity to-day. What possible chance have " the ragged, screaming, verminous children " of the slums described by Mr. Sampson in English for the English ?
In Australia things are happily very different, and there is far more opportunity for the lower class (see p. 421). Consequently we are so familiar with instances of important men rising from the ranks that it excites not the least comment, and is taken as a matter of course. It is so obvious that there are no different strata of intelligence in children of one class or another, that I do not think any Australian has ever imagined anything to the contrary. But there is also direct evidence that no such difference exists among English children. There is, for example, the remarkable testimony of Mr. Edmond Holmes (see What Is and What Might Be and his other books). Or take the results obtained by that genius, the late Miss Charlotte Mason, in the schools of the Parents' National Educational Union, which she founded. That Union has about 250 primary or elementary schools all over England. They are Government /ree schools attended by the children of the lower class. But the Union also has about 150 private and secondary schools which are not free, and (except for a few in the secondary schools that have obtained scholarships in the primary schools) are attended by children of the leisured and cultured classes. They have also about 3000 children being educated by the same methods in their own homes. They have, therefore, a unique opportunity of comparing the mentality of children of every description, from those of the higher aristocracy to those of the very lowest classes. The conclusion, in which the leaders of the Union all agree, is expressed as follows by Mr. H. W. Household, Government Education Secretary for Gloucestershire {English Literature and the Teaching Methods of Miss Mason) :
We have learned that the children of Labour are not inferior to the children of Capital, that their average of capacity is at least as high ; and we have proved that, given the opportunity, they show a greater eagerness and will to learn. The best brains of a Secondary School will generally be found among those who have come there with free places.
We may well ask what evidence the eugenists have to set against this.
There is another point on which the eugenists rely. The Americans during the war applied to their conscripts certain " mental tests," and discovered to their surprise and disgust that those conscripts (who fully represented the young men of the nation) were on an average of the " mental age " of thirteen. This meant that the majority of the popula- tion were " morons," that is to say feeble-minded. On this the eugenists greatly rely as proving that the human race is rapidly decaying. As a matter of fact it does 7tot prove this.
In the first place those " mental tests " have been considered by many psychologists, and the general opinion (outside the ranks of the eugenists) is that they are very unreliable as tests of intelligence. It is pointed out that even the elaborate and carefully prepared University and Civil Service examinations have been condemned by Royal Commissions and other authorities as insufficient tests of intelligence. Some writers go so far as to say that the mental tests are wholly unreliable. But this
286 NOTE ON PAINE
is plainly an exaggeration ; and the true conclusion probably is that a comparatively low average state of intelligence was shown in the American people, but not so low as the figures indicate.
This, however, applies only to the Americans and not to other nations. We meet here a delicate matter that one would prefer not to discuss, but delicacy must be left out of the question. For two reasons the Americans are necessarily inferior on the average to other civilized nations. Their population consists largely of ignorant alien labourers who have immigrated, in addition to their own negroes. They also are the most subject of all nations to that curse of modern civilization, industrialism, which destroys the higher imaginative and spiritual faculties, and makes man's life a mean and sordid one. From these two causes their contribution to art, literature, science, and philosophy is inferior to that of, say, the French or the British, although in numbers they exceed the combined total of both those nations. From the same two causes they exceed in corruption and crime other civilized races. So also in the war their perceptions of principle and duty were submerged by industrialism — and this still appears in their attitude towards the war- debts. In each case the " dollar " was and is the all-powerful factor. But this phase can only be considered as temporary — we are not likely to see a " darkest America " — and probably a great spiritual revival will alter the whole position. But in the meantime this nation is bound to show the inferior average of intelligence, which their mixture of races and an undue absorption in money-making must necessarily involve.
There is a still more important objection to eugenics than anything I have hitherto mentioned. If the views I express in the long note on p. 170 are v/ell founded, the proposals of the eugenists are not only unwarranted but are positively penncioiis. This is also the case if only one statement in that note is correct, namely, that genius is not inherited. For it means that imagination, the essential source of human progress, is not subject to heredity. It appears indiscriminately in all classes. If, therefore, the eugenists Vv'ere to carry out their proposals (which depend upon heredity), this, the supreme of all faculties, would of necessity be ignored. The result would be, first, a dead-level of unprogressive humanity and, next, the decay of civilization. Their eflforts to improve the human race would reduce civilized man to the level of savages !
To put this in other words, the eugenists omit from their programme the greatest of all factors, the soul of man. It was this that was at the back of Bateson's mind in the remarks quoted above.
For fifty years Galton and his followers have predicted that, unless we mend our ways, civilization is doomed to rapid decay, and Professor McDougall now joins in the outcry (National Welfare and National Decay). Yet the world still rolls on placid and undisturbed ! Notwithstanding those gloomy prophecies, the present is the greatest period in the world's history in all the physical sciences, in mathematics, in biology and all its allied sciences, in psychology and in invention, and it is also a great period in philosophy and other departments of knowledge.
Therefore the vievv's of the eugenists do not appear to be founded on a scientific basis or to correspond with existing facts. In Nature, June 16, 1923, Karl Pearson, the head of the eugenists, ridicules "the wholly unwarranted belief that man is an animal for whom other laws hold than for his humbler mammalian kindred." As it seems to me, it is precisely upon this '"vvhoUy unwarranted belief" that his "science" of eugenics is based.
STEPHEN— LOWRY 287
A SONNET
Two voices are there : one is of the deep ;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now, roars, now murmurs with the changing sea.
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep :
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony.
And indicates that two and one are three.
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep :
And, Wordsworth, both are thine : at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes.
The form and pressure of high thoughts v/ill burst :
At other times — good Lord ! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A. B.C.
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.
James Kenneth Stephen.
" Two Voices are there ; one is of the sea," is Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland.
It is certainly extraordinary how the great poet at times dropped into the most prosaic language and commonplace verse. This, however, was only in his earlier poems and only in a few of those poems. His theory at that time was that poetic language should be natural, such as used by ordinary men, and not essentially different from prose. Actually, however, at the root of the matter was his want of any sense of humour. Only so can we account for his beginning a poem " Spade ! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands," or writing absurdly babyish verses. The one instance on record in which he did apparently exhibit a grotesque kind of humour was in a verse of " Peter Bell " :
Is it a party in a parlour ? Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd — Some sipping punch, some sipping tea. But, as you by their faces see, All silent and all damn'd.
But this he no doubt wrote quite seriously and without any idea that the verse was humorous. Shelley placed this verse at the head of his parody of " Peter Bell," and Wordsworth omitted it from the poem after 1819.
O THE Spring will come, And once again the wind be in the West, Breathing the odour of the sea ; and life, Life that was ugly, and work that grew a curse, Be God's best gifts again, and in your heart You'll find once more the dreams you thought were dead.
H. D. LowRY. In Cove fit Garden.
288 ELIOT— R. BROWNING
Day is dying ! Float, O Song, Down the westward river,
Requiem chanting to the Day — Day, the mighty Giver.
Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds,
Melted rubies sending Through the river and the sky.
Earth and heaven blending ;
All the long-drawn earthy banks Up to cloud-land lifting :
Slow between them drifts the swan, 'Twixt two heavens drifting,
Wings half open, like a flow'r
Inly deeper flushing. Neck and breast as virgin's pure —
Virgin proudly blushing.
Day is dying ! Float, O swan,
Down the ruby river ; Follow, song, in requiem
To the mighty Giver.
George Eliot. The Spanish Gypsy.
And, were I not, as a man may say, cautious
How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,
I could favour you with sundry touches
Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess
Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness
(To get on faster) until at last her
Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
Of mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse ;
In short, she grew from scalp to udder
Just the object to make you shudder.
R. Browning. The Flight of the Duchess,
TENNYSON— LESSING 289
Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh, life, not death, for which we pant ; More life, and fuller, that we want.
Tennyson. The Two Voices.
Tennyson differs from Job (iii. 20) : " Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul ; which long for death but it cometh not : and dig for it more than for hid treasures ; which rejoice exceedingly and are glad, when they can find the grave ? "
It is a familiar fact that many men have desired death, mostly because life ineant a continuous torture to themselves and mental distress to their families. When I met Richard Hodgson in London in 1897, he told me that he definitely wished to die. He was free from ill-health or trouble of any kind, but his one desire was to " pass over" and be with the friends with whom for years he had been in communication. Hodgson was incapable of saying anything insincere.
" More life, and fuller " : "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly " (John x. 10).
Not the truth of which a man is or believes himself to be possessed, but the earnest efforts, which he has made to attain truth, make the worth of the man. For it is not through the possession of, but through the search for truth, that he develops those powers in which alone consists his ever-growing perfection. Possession makes the mind stag- nant, indolent, proud.
If God held in His right hand all truth, and in His left the ever-living desire for truth — although with the condition that I should remain in error for ever — and if He said to me, " Choose," I should humbly bow before His left hand, and say, " Father, give ; pure truth is for Thee alone."
Lessing. Wolfenbuttel Fragments.
When Lessing wrote this famous passage he was contending that criticism should be absolutely free in regard to religious, as to all other, subjects. " The argument on which he chiefly relies is that the Bible cannot be considered necessary to a belief in Christianity, since Chris- tianity was a living and conquering power before the New Testament in its present form was recognized by the Church. The true evidence for what is essential in Christianity, he contends, is its adaptation to the wants of human nature ; hence the religious spirit is undisturbed by the speculations of the boldest thinkers " {Encyclopcedia Britannica).
U
290 SCHREINER AND OTHERS
Human life may be painted according to two methods. There is the stage method. According to that, each char- acter is duly marshalled at first, and ticketed ; we know with an immutable certainty that, at the right crises, each one will reappear and act his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this — and of completeness. But there is another method — the method of the life we all lead. Here nothing can be prophesied. There is a strange coming and going of feet. Men appear, act and re-act upon each other, and pass away. When the crisis comes, the man who would fit it does not return. When the curtain falls, no one is ready. When the footlights are brightest they are blown out ; and what the name of the play is no one knows. If there sits a spectator who knows, he sits so high that the players in the gaslight cannot hear his breathing.
Olive Schreiner. The Story of an African Farm.
This is from the preface to the second edition. This book must be unique, for surely no other girl in her teens has written a book so brilliant in itself and indicating such originality and genius. It is a great loss to literature that the writer became entirely absorbed in South African politics and controversy.
I SLEEP, I eat and drink, I read and meditate, I walk in my
neighbour's pleasant fields and see the varieties of natural
beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights —
that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in
God Himself. And he, that hath so many causes of joy, and
so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness,
who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon
his little handful of thorns. -, rr.
Jeremy Taylor.
In my Progress travelling Northward, Taking farewell of the Southward, To Banbury came I, O prophane-One ! Where I saw a Puritane-One Hanging of his Cat on Monday, For kilhng of a Mouse on Sunday.
R. Brathwaite. Drunken Barnaby.
WHITE— PLUTARCH 291
NIGHT AND DEATH
Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue ?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came.
And lo ! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun ! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed.
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife ? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?
J. Blanco White.
(See preface.) This sonnet, apart from its great excellence, is a remarkable literary curiosity. By this one poem alone Blanco White achieved a lasting reputation as a poet. The point is that this is his only poem. He had previously written a sonnet of little merit on survival after death, but " Night and Death " was an inspired transfiguration of this earlier effort. It is a startling instance of inspiration coming to a man once only in his life — and then coming in its very highest form. There are other poets, whose work is generally of poor quality, but who have each produced one surprisingly good poena which alone keeps their memory alive. An instance of this is Christopher Smart (1722-1771), who wrote several volumes of verse but only one fine poem, the " Song to David." Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) is also known only by his " Burial of Sir John Moore," but his other poems, though forgotten, are said to have had some nierit.
The sonnet is also interesting for another reason. White's family had settled in Spain for two generations, his grandfather having changed his name to Blanco. His mother was Spanish, he was educated in Spain, and became a Spanish priest, and he did not leave for England until 1810, when thirty-five years of age. Yet White's beautiful thought could hardly be expressed in finer language. There is, however, one defect in the words " fly and leaf and insect." (William Sharp courageously altered " fly " to " flower.")
Coleridge thought this " the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language." Leigh Hunt said that in point of thought it " stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language : nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence."
Remember what Simonides said — that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.
Plutarch. Morals.
292 LEIGH
ONLY SEVEN {A Pastoral Story, after Wordsworth)
I MARVELLED why a simple child That lightly draws its breath
Should utter groans so very wild, And look as pale as Death.
Adopting a parental tone, I asked her why she cried ;
The damsel answered, with a groan, " I've got a pain inside.
" I thought it would have sent me mad Last night about eleven."
Said I, " What is it makes you bad ?
How many apples have you had ? " She answered, " Only seven ! "
" And are you sure you took no more, My little maid ? " quoth I.
" Oh ! please sir, mother gave me four, But they were in a pie ! "
" If that's the case," I stammered out, " Of course you've had eleven."
The maiden answered, with a pout, " I ain't had more nor seven ! "
I wondered hugely what she meant. And said, " I'm bad at riddles,
But I know where little girls are sent For telling tarrididdles.
" Now, if you don't reform," said I,
" You'll never go to heaven." But all in vain ; each time I try. That little idiot makes reply, " I ain't had more nor seven " !
LEIGH AND OTHERS 293
POSTSCRIPT
To borrow Wordsworth's name was wrong,
Or slightly misapplied ; And so I'd better call my song,
" Lines after Ache-inside.^^
Henry Sambrooke Leigh.
It seems wicked to travesty Wordsworth's tender little poem, but Leigh's verses amused us greatly when they appeared. Mark Akenside (1721-1770) is a poet now almost forgotten.
Of such as he was, there be few on Earth ; Of such as he is, there are many in Heaven ; And Life is all the sweeter that he lived. And all he loved more sacred for his sake : And Death is all the brighter that he died. And Heaven is all the happier that he's there.
Gerald Massey. In Memoriam.
The hour, which might have been, yet might not be. Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore, Yet whereof life was barren, — on what shore
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea ?
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Stillborn Love.
I ALWAYS wanted to make a clean breast of it ;
And now it is made — why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets.
Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
And genially floats me about the giblets.
R. Browning. The Flight of the Duchess.
Get thee behind the man I am now.
You man that I used to be, r» ti
R. Browning.
Martin Relph.
294 ELIOT— STEVENSON
Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass
to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied
souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in those
far-off days which live in us, and transform our perception
into love. ^ -r,
George Eliot.
Mill on the Floss.
The firmaments of daisies since to me Have had those mornings in their opening eyes ; The bunched cowslip's pale transparency Carries that sunshine of sweet memories, And wild-rose branches take their finest scent From those blest hours of infantine content.
George Eliot. Brother and Sister.
It will be observed that the thought is the same in both passages.
For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with us, but it seems they must be of dift'erent clay. They hear the clock strike the same hour, yet surely of a diff"erent epoch. They travel by steam conveyance, yet with such baggage of old Asiatic thoughts and supersti- tions as might check the locomotive in its course. Whatever is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall ; what the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in the hamlets round Pekin ; religions so old that our language looks a halfling boy alongside ; philosophy so wise that our best philosophers find things therein to wonder at ; all this travelled alongside of me for thousands of miles over plain and mountain. Heaven knows if we had one common thought or fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same design, beheld the same world out of the railway windows. And when either of us turned his thoughts to hom.e and childhood, what a strange dissimilarity must there not have been in these pictures of the mind — when I beheld that old, gray, castled city, high
STEVENSON AND OTHERS 295
throned above the firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and the red-coat sentry pacing over ah ; and the man in the next car to me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same aff"ection, home.
R. L. Stevenson. Across the Plains.
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH
Say not, the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth. And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be Hars ;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers.
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain.
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main ;
And not by eastern windows only.
When dayhght comes, comes in the light ;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly ! But westward, look, the land is bright !
A. H. Clough.
. . . Fear No petty customs nor appearances ; But think what others only dreamed about ; And say what others did but think ; and do What others did but say ; and glory in What others dared but do.
P. J. Bailey. My Lady.
296 POPE AND OTHERS
A MAN should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. p
We have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that respected individual by a total negation of his opinions.
George Eliot. Scenes from Clerical Life.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Now, for myself, when once the wick is crushed, I ask not where the light is, which is not. Nor where the music, when the harp is hushed, Nor where the memory, which is clean forgot.
W. C. Smith. Borland Hall.
My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes.
Forgetting, or never Regretting, its roses.
E. A. PoE. For Annie.
And there's none of them, but would as soon
Criticize the Almighty as not. And see that the angels kept tune And watch that the sun and the moon
Did not squander the light they have got.
W. C. Smith. Borland Hall.
MARTINEAU— MEREDITH 297
The Cynic in society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large embrace of sympathy, which fails him as inter- preter of human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature, in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect. He misses the comprehensive march of advancing purpose, because, while he himself is in it, he has found some halting member that seems to lag behind. He picks holes in the universal order ; he winds through its tracks as a detective, and makes scandals of all that is not to his mind. He trusts nothing that he cannot see : and he sees chiefly the excep- tional, the dubious, the harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, peering through the young green woods, does but dress up a stony desert with deceitful beauty ; and in the new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope. ... In selfish minds the same temper resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most desolating thoughts : " If God were good, why should I be born with a club-foot ? If the world were justly governed, how could my merits be so long overlooked ? "
James Martineau. Hours of Thought, I. 97.
Reverting to this subject later, Martineau says {Hours of Thought, ii. 354) : " Wherever he moves, he empties the space around him of its purest elements ; with his low thought he roofs it over from the heavenly light and the sweet air ; and then complains of the world as a close- breathed and stifling place."
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers ; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves.
George Meredith. The Egoist.
298 CARRUTH
EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE
A FIRE mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell, A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod, — Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
A haze on the far horizon.
The infinite, tender sky, The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields.
And the wild geese sailing high ; And all over upland and lowland
The charm of the golden-rod, — Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.
Like tides on a crescent sea-beach.
When the moon is new and thin. Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in ; Come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod, — Some of us call it Longing,
And others call it God.
A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock.
And Christ upon the rood ; And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathway plod, — Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.
William Herbert Carrutii.
Professor Carruth of Stanford University, California, published these verses in Each in His Own Tongue, and Other Poems (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York). It is an interesting fact that many persons have tried to
CARRUTH 299
expand and revise the poenn, and my own first acquaintance with it was in the following version (I do not know the author) :
A fire mist, and a planet,
A crystal, and a cell, A jelly-fish, and a saurian,
And caves where cave-men dwell ; Then, a sense of love and duty.
And a face turned from the clod, — Some call it Evolution :
And others call it God.
A haze on the far horizon,
An infinite, tender sky, The living gold of the cornfields,
And the lark soaring up on high, The bright procession of flowers
From primrose to golden-rod, — Some call it Summer and Nature :
And others say it is God.
The echo of ancient chanting,
The gleam of altar flames. The stones of a hundred temples.
Graven with sacred names, Man's patient quest for the Secret
In soul, in star, in sod, — Some deem it Superstition :
And others believe it is God.
A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock.
And Jesus on the rood ; The millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight hard path have trod,— Some call it Social Instinct :
And others feel it is God.
Like the tide on crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin. They come, our soul's deep yearnings,
Welling and surging in — They come from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod, — Some hold it Idle Dreaming :
We know that it is God.
In this version I have taken the liberty of substituting " Social Instinct " for the inappropriate word " Consecration " in the second- last verse. This conforms to the widely-accepted views of the McDougall school of psychology. (With those views I do not agree, for the reasons well set out in AUport and Dunlap's articles in The Journal of Abnortnal Psychology, Dec. 1921.)
The interpolated third verse seems reminiscent of the second verse on p. 1 19 of this book.
300 THOMPSON
MESSAGES
What shall I your true-love tell
Earth-forsaking maid ? What shall I your true-love tell,
When life's spectre's laid ?
" Tell him that, our side the grave,
Maid may not conceive Life should be so sad to have,
That's so sad to leave ! "
What shall I your true-love tell,
When I come to him ? What shall I your true-love tell —
Eyes growing dim !
" Tell him this, when you shall part
From a maiden pined : That I see him with my heart,
Now m)^ eyes are blind."
What shall I your true-love tell ?
Speaking-while is scant. What shall I your true-love tell.
Death's white postulant ?
" Tell him : Love, with speech at strife,
For last utterance saith : I, who loved with all my life.
Love with all my death."
Francis Thompson.
The gravest fish is an oyster, The gravest bird is an owl, The gravest beast is a donkey. And the gravest man is a fool.
Scotch Proverb.
SWINBURNE AND OTHERS 301
Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade.
The spirit that for temporal veil has on
The souls of all men woven in unison,
One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought
And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought . . .
Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime ;
Love, that is blood within the veins of time. . . .
Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,
Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears.
That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings ;
Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things ;
Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,
The whole world's fiery forces not burn down ;
Love, that what time his own hands guard his head
The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead ;
Love, that if once his own hands make his grave
The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save . . .
Love that is fire within thee and light above,
And lives by grace of nothing but of love.
Swinburne. Tristram of Lyonesse.
Goethe says somewhere there is something in every man for which, if we only knew it, we would hate him. I would prefer to say that there is something in every man for which, if we only knew it, we would love him.
Richard Hodgson. Letter.
For us no shadow on Life's solemn dial
Goes back to give us peace ; There is no resting-place in the stern trial
Until the heart-throbs cease ; We cannot hold Time fast, and bid him bless us,
And not for us the sun, When shades fall fast, and doubts and woes oppress us,
Stands still in Gibeon.
E. H. Sears.
302 R. BROWNING AND OTHERS
Here's my case. Of old I used to love him This same unseen friend, before I knew :
Dream there was none like him, none above him, — Wake to hope and trust my dream was true. . . .
All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream's sake ! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought " The gladlier Lives my friend because I love him still ! "
R. Brov^ning. Fears mid Scruples.
The " Friend " is God. The lines " All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream's sake," seem to me very beautiful. In so few words Browning, with dramatic insight, expresses the feeling of a Renan or George Eliot after they had lost their faith in Christianity.
The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow. . . .
In proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. They are the kings of the world who give the colour of their present thought to all nature and all art. . . . The great man makes the great thing. . . . Linnaeus makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman ; Davy, chemistry ; and Cuvier, fossils. The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon,
R. W. Emerson. The American Scholar.
Cantat Deo, qui vivit Deo. (He sings to God, who lives to God.)
Author not traced.
STETSON 303
A CONSERVATIVE
The garden beds I wandered by
One bright and cheerful morn, When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
A-sitting on a thorn, A black and crimson butterfly,
All doleful and forlorn.
I thought that life could have no sting
To infant butterflies, So I gazed on this unhappy thing
With wonder and surprise. While sadly with his waving wing
He wiped his weeping eyes.
Said I, " What can the matter be ?
Why weepest thou so sore. With garden fair and sunlight free
And flowers in goodly store ? " — But he only turned away from me
And burst into a roar.
Cried he, " My legs are thin and few
Where once I had a swarm ! Soft fuzzy fur — a joy to view —
Once kept my body warm, Before these flapping wing-things grew,
To hamper and deform ! "
At that outrageous bug I shot
The fury of mine eye ; Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
In rage and anger high, " You ignominious idiot !
Those wings are made to fly ! "
" I do not want to fly," said he,
" I only want to squirm ! " And he dropped his wings dejectedly,
But still his voice was firm : " I do not want to be a fly !
I want to be a worm ! "
304 BEDDOES AND OTHERS
0 yesterday of unknown lack ! To-day of unknown bliss !
1 left my fool in red and black, The last I saw was this, —
The creature madly climbing back Into his chrysalis.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson.
In the old times Death was a feverish sleep, In which men walked. The other world was cold And thinly-peopled, so life's emigrants Came back to mingle with the crowds of earth : But now great cities are transplanted thither, Memphis, and Babylon, and either Thebes, And Priam's towery town with its one beech. The dead are most and merriest : so be sure There will be no more haunting, till their towns Are full to the garret ; then they'll shut their gates To keep the living out, and perhaps leave A dead or two between both kingdoms.
T. L. Beddoes. Death's Jest-Book, III. 3. This is one of the queer fancies in a curious poem.
There, on the fields around.
All men shall till the ground, Corn shall wave yellow, and bright rivers stream ;
Daily, at set of sun.
All, when their work is done.
Shall watch the heavens yearn down and the strange
starlight gleam. ^i -n
^ ^ R. Buchanan,
The City of Man.
This is the poet's vision of the city of the future, and will be interesting to the allotment- holders in English cities to-day.
The very fiends weave ropes of sand Rather than taste pure hell in idleness.
R. Browning, A Forgiveness.
ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHERS 305
De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.
(We make for ourselves a ladder of our vices, when we tread under foot the vices themselves.)
St. Augustine. De Ascensione.
I HELD it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
Tennyson. In Memoriam
Saint Augustine ! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame !
Longfellow. The Ladder of St. Augustine.
The trials that beset you,
The sorrows ye endure. The manifold temptations
That death alone can cure.
What are they but His jewels
Of right celestial worth ? What are they but the ladder
Set up to Heav'n on earth ?
J. M. Neale. O Happy Band of Pilgrims.
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.
Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on
every other sail in the horizon. ^ ,,^ ^
R. W. Emerson.
Essay on Experience.
X
3o6 LOWELL AND OTHERS
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us ;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we He in ; At the devil's booth are all things sold, Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay. Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking :
'Tis heaven alone that is given away, 'Tis only God may be had for the asking.
J. R. Lowell. The Vision of Sir Launfal.
. . . The too susceptible Tupman, who, to the wisdom and experience of maturer years, superadded the enthusiasm and ardour of a boy, in the most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses, love. Time and feeding had ex- panded that once romantic form ; the black silk waistcoat had become more and more developed ; inch by inch had the gold watch-chain beneath it disappeared from within the range of Tupman's vision ; and gradually had the capacious chin encroached upon the borders of the white cravat ; but the soul of Tupman had known no change.
Charles Dickens. Pickwick Papers.
So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it
ever have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of
aught else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come,
there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a
mine out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever
upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness ; yea,
springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret
channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing
flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night ;
without which he yet could not be, and whereof he is in part
compounded. ^ tx/t r\
^ George MacDonald.
Phantasies.
In the story an ogre is reading this passage from a book. Phantasies is MacDonald's finest work.
ARNOLD 307
ISOLATION
Yes ! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing ; And lovely notes, from shore to shore. Across the sounds and channels pour —
Oh ! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent ;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent 1
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again !
Who ordered, that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled ? Who renders vain their deep desire ? — A God, a God their severance ruled ! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
Matthew Arnold.
This fine poem is one of a series called " Switzerland," which was written as the result of Arnold's meeting and falling in love with a lady at Berne. The poem immediately preceding it in the series is entitled " Isolation : To Marguerite," while this is called " To Marguerite, Continued " ; but as it is now quoted separately, it is better entitled " Isolation."
In the preceding poems the lady has lost her affection while her lover is still devoted ; and this leads to the subject of our isolation from each other in our inner lives. In the third verse the poet describes the moments when we most crave for love, sympathy, and mutual spiritual understanding and union.
For an interesting fact connected with this poem, see next quotation and note.
3o8 THACKERAY
[Thackeray has been describing how husband, wife, mother, son — each of the inmates of a household — is interested in his or her own separate world and looking at the same things from a different point "of view.] How lonely we are in the world ! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy yourselves united : pshaw ! does she cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she has the toothache ? ... As for your wife — O philosophic reader, answer and say, Do you tell her all ? Ah, sir, a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine — all things in nature are different to each — the woman we look at has not the same features, the dish we eat from has not the same taste to the one and the other — you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us.
Thackeray. Pendennis, ch. xvi.
The similarity between this passage and the preceding poem, written at about the same time, is very curious. Arnold's poem appeared in 1852 but was composed some years earlier, while Peftdennis was published in monthly parts in 1849-50. Therefore, neither author would con- sciously know at the time what the other had written.
The incident is probably an illustration of the mysterious way in which minds influence one another and create the spirit of the particular age. There is, I believe, a Chinese proverb to the effect that we are more the product of our age than of our parents. This permeating quality of thought and feeling is, no doubt, the explanation why the highest art and literature, though often unappreciated at the time, become ultimately recognized. It appears not to be sufficiently taken into account in other directions. For instance, it is repeatedly stated that Blake, because of the limited circulation of his poems, exercised no influence on the Romantic Revival — see for example The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xi. 201. Yet we know that his work was known to and appreciated by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Southey, and Hayley. Although little regarded now, Hayley 's fame was then so great that he was offered and refused the poet-laureateship. He appears to have been the one man who was an intimate friend of both Blake and Cowper, the two earliest Romantics.* While a very long period went by before Blake's poems became generally known, their influence may well have been very great, permeating unconsciously through other minds. See reference on p. 221 to the similar case of FitzGerald's " Omar Khaj^yam."
Even if a poem were read by only one person, it might conceivably influence a generation of authors. Suppose, if that had been possible, a page of Swinburne's " Tristram of Lyonesse " or F. W. H. Myers' " Implicit Promise " (both quoted elsewhere) had been read by Pope or Dryden ; how the monotonous heroic couplet of their time might have been marvellously transformed !
* We have recently learnt from the Farington Diary that Stothard, West, Cosway, and Humphry were enthusiastic over Blake's " extraordinary genius and imagination " as an artist.
GISSING AND OTHERS 309
I THINK sometimes how good it were had I some one by me to Hsten when I am tempted to read a passage aloud. Yes, but is there any mortal in the whole world upon whom I could invariably depend for sympathetic understanding — nay, who would even generally be at one with me in my appreciation ? Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing. All through life we long for it . . . and, after all, we learn that the vision is illusory. To every man is it decreed : Thou shalt live alone.
George Gissing. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.
The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has ; you may survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the savants in the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human personality. And the worst of all this is, that love and friendship may be the out- come of a certain condition of knowledge ; increase the knowledge, and love and friendship beat their wings and go. Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings. Intimacy is frequently the road to in- difference ; and marriage a parricide.
Alexander Smith. The Importance of a Man to Himself.
QuAND on n'a pas ce que Ton aime, II faut aimer ce que Ton a.
(When you have not what you love, You must love what you have.)
Thomas Corneille. Ulnconnu.
On parent knees, a naked, new-born child. Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled : So live, that sinking to thy life's last sleep Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.
Sir William Jones. From the Persian.
310 HODGSON— SEELEY
A CHILD was playing on a summer strand
That fringed the wavelets of a sunny sea :
The mother looked in love. " Now build," said she,
" Your splendid golden castles where you stand ;
But when the wave has beaten all to sand,
You must go home." ** Ah, not so soon," said he.
And now the night has darkened out his glee, And sad-eyed Grief has grasped him by the hand. No more the years shall find him free and wild And madly merry as a bright brave bird : For earth has nothing like the home he craves And pauseless Time is beating bitter waves On all his palaces. He waits the word Away beyond the blue, " Come home, my child."
Richard Hodgson, 1879,
An impromptu written in 1879 when the mother and child incident happened, and not revised.
Humanity is neither a love for the whole human race,
nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or
for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and less
pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every
human being as such interesting and important, and without
waiting to criticize each individual specimen, pays in advance
to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy, ... If
some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be
incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or
destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ ?
Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies
than he was ? Is our standard higher than his ? And yet
he associated by preference with these meanest of the race ;
no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that
they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the
common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable
of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing
of which a man may be prouder than of this ; it is the most
hopeful and redeeming fact in history ; it is precisely what
was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm.
An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the
love Christ bore to it. o t t^ o
Sir J. R, Seeley.
Ecce Homo.
SWINBURNE AND OTHERS 311
But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us ;
Morning is here in the joy of its might ; With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us ; Now let him pass and the myrtles make way for us ; Love can but last in us here at his height For a day and a night.
Swinburne. At Parthw.
Can the earth where the harrow is driven
The sheaf of the furrow foresee ? Or thou guess the harvest for heaven
When iron has entered in thee ?
Author not traced.
This was quoted by Lord Lytton in an essay on The Influence of Love upon Literature and Real Life.
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon ; The diver, Omar, plucked them from their bed, FitzGerald strung them on an English thread.
J. R. Lowell. On Omar Khayyam.
It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy dining.
George Eliot. Daniel Deronda.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too— what's become of
all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms ? I feel chilly and
grown old.
R, Brov^ning.
A Toccata of Galuppi's.
312 TENNYSON AND OTHERS
At last methought that I had wandered far In an old wood : fresh-washed in coolest dew
The maiden splendours of the morning star Shook in the steadfast blue. . . .
At length I saw a lady within call,
Stiller than chiselled marble, standing there ;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise. One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled ;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold. . . .
*' I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found Me lying dead, my crown about my brov\^s, A name for ever ! — lying robed and crowned, Worthy a Roman spouse."
Tennyson. A Dream of Fair Women.
Helen of Troy and Cleopatra — but, as Peacock mentioned in Gryll Grange, Cleopatra was of pure Greek descent and could not have been a " swarthy " lady.
These and the four following quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
One pond of water gleams ;
. . . the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.
R. Browning. Pauline.
He put the hawthorn twigs apart, And yet saw no more wondrous thing
Than seven white swans, who on wide wing Went circling round, till one by one They dropped the dewy grass upon.
W. Morris. The Earthly Paradise.
KEATS AND OTHERS 313
I MET a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a faery's child ; Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long ;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song. ^^
•^ ° Keats.
La Belle Dame sans Merci.
Quoth Christabel, — So let it be ! And, as the lady bade, did she. Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.
S. T. Coleridge. Christabel.
Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions —
like effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel,
broken glass, and rags. „ „
* * George Eliot.
The Lifted Veil.
My Galligaskins that have long withstood
The Winter's Fury, and incroaching Frosts,
By Time subdued, (what will not Time subdue !)
An horrid Chasm disclose, with Orifice
Wide, discontinuous. t t^
John Phillips.
The Splendid Shilling.
Galligaskins, trunk-hose. " The Splendid Shilling " is a famous and very clever parody on Milton, written some time before 1701.
Man that passes by So like to God, so like the beasts that die.
W. Morris. The Earthly Paradise.
314 ' MENZIES
It is a mistake into which spiritually-minded men have fallen, that God is apprehended and known by a special faculty. The fact is that every faculty is serviceable in this noble work. We reach the Divine through our aesthetic faculties when our soul is stirred by a grand burst of music, or by the contemplation of a magnificent landscape. We reach the Divine through our purely intellectual faculties, when, by true reasoning, founded on sound observation, we master any great law by which God governs the world. We reach the Divine through our emotional nature when pure grief or pure love, holy longing, unselfish hope, righteous indignation, elevate us above the prosaic level of customary equanimity, and help us to realize the incom- parable beauty of holiness.
Just as the weeping Magdalene * stood bewailing the loss of what even to her was only sacred clay, all unconscious that her Saviour had been given back to her without seeing corruption, in a glorified and eternal form, not dead, but alive for evermore, whom she could love with ever increasing ardour of devotion : so, we say, there are not a few in our time whose lot it is to wring their hands over the grave of lost ideas, which they loved and their fathers loved, but for which God himself is substituting ideas nobler and better far, which earlier ages failed to grasp only because they were not in circumstances to feel their higher worth.
One cannot demonstrate on any physical or visible basis whatever, that it is a nobler thing to suffer injustice than to commit it, that truth-speaking is honourable, forgiveness of injuries magnanimous, and loving self-sacrifice for others sublime. Honour, purity, humility, reverence, tenderness, courtesy, patience, these things cannot be weighed on physical scales, cannot be handled or touched, or melted or frozen in any mechanical or chemical laboratory. They belong to a different order of realities from acids and vapours : they are denizens of what, for want of any more definite or
* " They say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou ? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him " (John xx. 13). The sermon is on the subject of the growth of religious ideas.
MENZIES 315
accurate expression, we are accustomed to call the spiritual world.
One can see how religion should, to a young person, be associated with repressive and prohibitive laws. Youth is the time for the luxuriating of newborn and, therefore, delicious vital forces. But its very luxuriance is disorderly, and religion cannot co-exist with disorder. Therefore, that which is so continually warning the young against impulse, and passion, and irregularity, ought not to be too greatly displeased if it should, by and by, come to be regarded by the young as a synonym for mere repressive force, and, therefore, as an unpleasant and unpopular thing. I believe, too, that there is no exception to the uniformity of the experience, that all young countries adopt freer systems of religion, and divest religious bodies more completely of all political and properly coercive power, than older countries. It is all an illustration of the same thing. Young life, which most needs regulation, most dislikes it.*
As the genius of the bard is in the poem, as the wisdom of the legislator is in the law, as the skill of the mechanician is in the engine, as the soul of the musician is in the harmony and melody, as the words of a man's lips issue from the inner world of his mental and spiritual character — so every work of God, and conspicuously man, as the noblest of God's works, may truly be said to shadow forth a portion of the mind of God.
We talk of creation as a past thing. But the truth is, creation is eternal. Creation never ceases. Every time the clouds drop in rain, every time the waters freeze into new ice, every time the juices of nature gather into another violet, every time a new wail of life is heard upon a mother's breast, every time you breathe another sigh, or shed another tear, there is God as truly present in His miraculous creative
* This standing by itself may give a somewhat wrong impression of Menzies' thought. As a matter of fact, the text of the sermon is : "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly " (John x. 10).
3i6 MENZIES AND OTHERS
capacity as on the day when He said, " Let there be light," and there was Hght. p g menzies.
Sennons.
Apart from their intrinsic value, the above extracts are given because this book of sermons is of special interest to Australians and because it has passed into oblivion. There are few copies in existence.
Menzies came from Glasgow to Scots Church, Melbourne, in 1868, and died at the early age of thirty-four in 1874. At the Glasgow University he had been largely influenced mentally and spiritually by Principal Caird.
The sermons published in this book were selected by his widow after his death. Although not revised by their gifted young author, the fine thoughts expressed in chaste and beautiful language remind one of James Martineau.
That element of tragedy which hes in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind ; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feehng of all ordinary human life, it would be Uke hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which Ues on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
George Eliot. Middlemarch.
In the story Dorothea has found her husband to be a man of narrow mind and unsympathetic nature. Such a disillusionment after marriage frequently happens, and we are not deeply moved by what is not unusual, although it may mean a real life-tragedy. Ruskin says, " God gives the disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne " {Modern Painters, V. xix. 32). Only thus could we have lived through the horrors of the present war.
George Eliot's analogy between intensity of the emotions and acute- ness of the senses reminds one of Pope's lines (" Essay on Man," Ep. I.) where he says life would be insupportable, if we had the acute hearing, smell, and other senses of insects and other animals ; we should Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
We would not pray that sorrow ne'er may shed Her dews along the pathway they must tread ; The sweetest flowers would never bloom at all, If no least rain of tears did ever fall.
Gerald Massey. Via Crucis, Via Lucis.
R. BROWNING 317
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 good more ; On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ;
Not in semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, nor power. Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard.
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky. Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ;
Enough that He heard it once : we shall hear it by and bye.
R. Browning. Abt Vogler.
Abt — or Abb^ — Georg Joseph Vogler, 1749-1814, a German organist and composer, is probably chosen by Browning because, although an important musician, his compositions have perished. In this fine poem Vogler has been extemporizing, and his inspired music has lifted him in ecstasy to heaven. The sounds are his slaves who have built palaces of music, as in the Arab legends angels and demons built magic structures for Solomon. He grieves that this wonderful music should apparently have vanished for ever ; but is comforted by the thought that no good thing, no fine aspiration, no great effort or noble impulse can really die, but must continue to exist for ever.
The quotation reminds one of Wordsworth's sonnet on the " Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge."
Where music dwells Lingering — and wandering on as loth to die ; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.
. . . Had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood to see, nor the process so wonder- worth : Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect proceeds from cause. Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told ; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws. Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled : —
3i8 R. BROWNING
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are ! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well : each tone of our scale in itself is nought ; It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is said : Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my thought : And, there ! Ye have heard and seen : consider and bow the head !
R. Browning. Abt Vogler.
See the preceding note. The poet says that Painting and Poetry are " art in obedience to laws," but the musician exerts a higher creative power akin to that of God. The painter has before him the pictures he reproduces, the poet borrows his imagery from visible things and has apt words in which to express his thoughts : the musician has nothing visible, nothing outside his own soul, to assist him, and can use only the meaning- less sounds which we hear everj^where around us. By combining, however, three of those empty sounds (in a chord) he evolves a fourth sound, which so transcends all that other arts can do in expressing emotion that Browning compares it to a " star."
But this expresses only part of the poet's meaning. In using this tremendous comparison to a star, as also in enthroning music supreme above art and poetry, he means that it transcends their loftiest flights and rises above our world to the heavens above. In the earlier part of the poem the " pinnacled glory," built by the slaves of sound at the bidding of the musician's soul, is based " broad on the roots of things " and ascends until it " attains to heaven."
F. W. H. Myers, in The Re?7ezval of Youth, has a passage on music. His theme is that while music (as in Mozart's operas) may express human passion, it also (as in Beethoven) rises to greater heights and appears to voice the emotions of a world beyond our senses. In the lines I have italicized in the following passage he no doubt refers to Browning's line, " That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star 1 " — the " star " meaning that music ascends to a higher world than our own :
. . . Music is a creature bound, A voice not ours, the imprisoned soul of sound, — Who fain would bend down hither and find her part In the strong passion of a hero's heart, Or one great hour constrains herself to sing Pastoral peace and waters wandering ; — Then hark how on a chord she is rapt and flown To that true ivorld thou seest not nor hast known, Nor speech of thine can her strange thought unfold, The bars' wild beat, and ripple of running gold.
Not only does Browning unselfishly assert that the sister-art is superior to his own, but he goes further, and doubts if music is not the greatest of all man's gifts. I do not discuss either contention — leaving musicians to rejoice in the tribute of a great poet.
WORDSWORTH AND OTHERS 319
A GRACIOUS spirit o'er this earth presides
And o'er the heart of man : invisibly
It comes, to works of unreproved dehght
And tendency benign, directing those
Who care not, know not, think not what they do.
The tales that charm away the wakeful night
In Araby ; romances ; legends penned
For solace by dim light of monkish lamps ;
Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised
By youthful squires ; adventures endless, spun
By the dismantled warrior in old age,
Out of the bowels of those very schemes
In which his youth did first extravagate ;
These spread like day, and something in the shape
Of these will live till man shall be no more.
Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours.
And they must have their food. Our childhood sits.
Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne
That hath more power than all the elements.
Wordsworth. The Prelude, Bk. V.
Death closes all : but something ere the end. Some work of noble note, may yet be done . . . Tho' much is taken, much abides ; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, we are ; One equal temper of heroic hearts. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson. Ulysses.
Jenny kissed me when we met.
Jumping from the chair she sat in ; Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets upon your list, put that in ! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad.
Say that health and wealth have missed me. Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me. Leiqh Hunt.
" Jenny " was Mrs. Carlyle.
320 BERANGER AND OTHERS
Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira Que le peuple qui I'enterra Pleura.
(Only at his death, when they came to bury him, did his people shed a tear.)
BERANGER.
Le Rot a" Yvetot.
In this famous song B^ranger satirized Napoleon by drawing a picture of a homely, happy king, beloved of his people and free from Napoleon's ambition, which had submerged France in an ocean of tears. It was a very daring poem for Beranger to write. It was circulated in manuscript in 1813, and quickly spread far and wide. (In 1815 came the battle of Waterloo.)
Petion (1770-18 1 8) was a quadroon who bravely won the independence of Haiti from the French. (That chivalrous nation nevertheless honoured him as a hero.) He became President of his liberated country in 1815, and died in 181 8. B. Seebohm in his Life of Grellet mentions that the epitaph on Petion's tombstone was :
II n'a jamais fait couler larmes ^ personne sauf ^ sa m.ort. (He never caused any one to shed tears except at his death.)
Thus Beranger's words, which were then in everybody's mouth, were turned into a beautiful epitaph.
Although a gem be cast away, And lie obscured in heaps of clay,
Its precious worth is still the same ; Although vile dust be whirled to heaven, To it no dignity is given,
Still base as when from earth it came.
Sadi. L. S. Costello's translation.
" My other piece of advice, Copperfield," said Mr.
Micawber, " you know. Annual income twenty pounds,
annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result miseiy. The blossom is
blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon
the dreary scene, and — and in short, you are for ever floored.
As I am_ ! " r. t^
Charles Dickens.
David Copperfield.
WADDINGTON 321
THE LOST CIPHER
The Night her occult manuscript
Unrolls along the sky, And with her mystic words equipt
The racing winds rush by : They bear her message, — what is it ? Go, ask the winds what she hath writ.
The radiant Morn once more returns,
Once more the golden dawn Illumes the scroll each eye discerns
On meadow-land and lawn ; Each flower a word dropt from above, — What is the message, — is it Love ?
Yet shalt thou see, ere sets the day
And all its splendours pass, The hawk descending on its prey.
The adder in the grass ; Far ofi^ the thunder muttereth, — What is the message, — is it Death ?
O Spirit of the Universe,
That hast been and shalt be. Here still thy riddle we rehearse
Yet cannot find the key ; Lost is the cipher that we need Who fain thy manuscript would read.
Samuel Waddington,
In the closing years of last century there happened to be at the Board of Trade a group of poets which was known as the " Nest of Singing Birds." Mr. Samuel Waddington was one of this group, which also included Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, and Cosmo Monkhouse. Of these Cosmo Monkhouse died in 1901, and Austin Dobson, his most intimate friend, in 1921. Mr. Gosse and Mr Waddington are happily still with us, but of course have long retired from the Board of Trade.
Mr. Le Gallienne in Miles' Poets and Poetry of the Century speaks of this group as " that charming Whitehall coterie destined, one must think, to live in literary history beside that other famous one at the India House." The latter reference is to Charles Lamb, Thomas Love Peacock, James Mill, and John Hoole (the translator of Tasso), who happened to be associated together in the India House.
Y
322 BLAKE— TWAIN
First the Wild Thyme And Meadow-sweet, downy and soft, waving among the
reeds. Light springing on the air, lead the sweet dance ; they wake The Honeysuckle sleeping on the oak ; the flaunting beauty Revels along upon the wind ; the White-thorn, lovely May, Opens her many lovely eyes ; listening the Rose still sleeps — None dare to wake her ; soon she bursts her crimson- curtained bed And comes forth in the majesty of beauty. Every flower. The Pink, the Jessamine, the Wallflower, the Carnation, The Jonquil, the mild Lily opes her heavens ; every Tree And Flower and Herb soon fill the air with an innumerable
dance. Yet all in order sweet and lovely. Men are sick with love.
William Blake. Milton, Bk. H.
This beautiful " dance of flowers " begins at sunrise.
[A press interviewer is seeking information, and asks the following questions.]
Q. Who is this a picture of on the wall ? Isn't that a brother of yours ?
A. Oh ! yes, yes, yes ! Now you remind me of it ; that was a brother of mine. That's William — Bill we called him. Poor old Bill !
Q. Why ? Is he dead then ?
A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery about it.
Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared then ?
A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him.
Q. Buried him ! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not !
A. Oh, no ! Not that. He was dead enough.
Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and you knew he was dead
A. No ! no ! We only thought he was.
TWAIN AND OTHERS 323
O, Oh, I see ! He came to life again ?
A. I bet he didn't.
Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was buried. Now, where was the mystery ?
A. Ah, that's just it ! That's it exactly. You see we were twins — defunct and I — and we got mixed in the bath- tub when we were only two weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill. Some think it was me.
Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think ?
A. Goodness knows ! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now, which I have never revealed to any creature before. One of us had a peculiar mark — a large mole on the back of his left hand ; that was me. That child was the one that was drowned.
Mark Twain. An Encounter with an Interviewer.
Bergson quoted this passage in his book on Humour. It appeared in the Stolen White Elephant volume, published in 1882. Compare with it one of Samuel Butler's Contradictions, written about 250 years ago, but first published from his MSS. in the British Museum in 1908. (As an additional coincidence " Q." and " A." are used for Question and Answer) : —
" Sir, are you you or your Brother ? A. Sir, I am my Brother. Q. Your pardon ! Pray tell your Brother I would speak with you."
The world is so inconveniently constituted, that the vague consciousness of being a fine fellow is no guarantee of success in any line of business.
George Eliot. Brother Jacob.
The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.
Shelley, The Woodman and the Nightingale.
324 SCOTT AND OTHERS
Wasted, weary, — wherefore stay Wrestling thus with earth and clay ! From the body pass away ! — Hark ! the mass is singing.
From thee doff thy mortal weed, Mary Mother be thy speed. Saints to help thee at thy need ! Hark ! the knell is ringing.
Fear not snow-drift driving past, Sleet, or hail, or levin blast ; Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast. And the sleep be on thee cast That shall know no waking.
Haste thee, haste thee to be gone, Earth flits past, and time draws on, — - Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan. Day is near the breaking.
Sir Walter Scott.
From Guy Mannering. Scott says it is a prayer or spell, which was used in Scotland or Northern England to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling of a bell in Catholic days.
. . . The trial-test Appointed to all flesh at some one stage Of soul's achievement — when the strong man doubts His strength, the good man whether goodness be, The artist in the dark seeks, fails to find Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine.
R. Browning. The Inn Album.
And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams Call to the soul, when man doth sleep.
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, And into glory peep.
Henry Vaughan.
Friends Departed. This is Vision.
MARTINEAU AND OTHERS 325
Evil of every kind, being familiar to us as an object of apprehension, appears to be external to ourselves. And yet it is invested v/ith the greater part of its severity by the mind : it acts upon us by the ideas it awakens, the affections it wounds, the aspirations it disappoints. If its outward pressure were all, and it dealt with us as beings of sense alone, it would lose most of its poignancy and would dwindle down into a few animal pangs. ... It is our higher nature that creates immeasurably the greater part of the ills we endure : they are ideal, not sensible : and it is the privilege of reason to have tears instead of groans ; of love to know grief instead of pain ; of conscience to replace uneasiness with remorse. . . . Penury, disgrace, bereavement, guilt, are evils which we must be human in order to feel ; and it is the penalty of our nobleness, not only to be v/eighed down by their occasional burthen, but to be perpetually haunted by the phantom of their approach.
James Martineau. Hours of Thought, II. 150.
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the Httle birds sang west, And I said in underbreath, — all our life is mixed with death, And who knoweth which is best ?
Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness — •
Round our restlessness, His rest.
E. B. Brov/ning. Rhyme of the Duchess May.
0 Lord, it broke my heart to see his pain !
1 thought — I dared to think — if / were God, Poor Caird should never gang so dark a road ;
I thought — ay, dared to think, the Lord forgie ! — The Lord was crueller than I could be ; Forgetting God is just and knoweth best What folk should burn in fire, what folk be blest.
R. Buchanan. A Scottish Eclogue.
326 CLOUGH
QUA CURSUM VENTUS
As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side, Tv^^o towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried ;
When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they pHed,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side :
E'en so — but why the tale reveal
Of those, whom year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel Astounded, soul from soul estranged ?
At dead of night their sails were filled. And onward each rejoicing steered —
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed. Or wist, what first with dawn appeared !
To veer, how vain ! On, onward strain. Brave barks ! In light, in darkness too.
Through winds and tides one compass guides — To that, and your own selves, be true.
But O blithe breeze ! and O great seas. Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought. One purpose hold where'er they fare, —
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas ! At last, at last, unite them there !
A. H. Clough.
Two friends, who through absence have become " soul from soul estranged," are compared to two ships, which unconsciously draw apart during the night and must continue a diverging course ; but, being both bound for the same port, will at the end of their life- voyage be re-united.
LONGFELLOW AND OTHERS 327
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness ; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Longfellow. Tales of a Wayside Inn.
This was written in 1863, but ten years earlier Alexander Smith, in " A Life Drama," had written :
We twain have met like the ships upon the sea. Who hold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet ; One little hour ! and then away they speed On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam, To meet no more.
Others writers have also used the same simile. See preceding poem.
Two or three of them got round me, and begged me for the twentieth time to tell them the name of my country. Then, as they could not pronounce it satisfactorily, they insisted that I was deceiving them, and that it was a name of my own invention. One funny old man, who bore a ludicrous resemblance to a friend of mine at home, was almost indignant. " Unglung ! " said he, " who ever heard of such a name ? — anglang, angerlang — that can't be the name of your country ; you are playing with us." Then he tried to give a convincing illustration. " My country is Wanumbai — anybody can say Wanumbai. I'm an orang- Wanumbai ; but N-glung ! who ever heard of such a name ? Do tell us the real name of your country, and when you are gone we shall know how to talk about you." To this luminous argument and remonstrance I could oppose nothing but assertion, and the whole party remained firmly convinced that I was for some reason or other deceiving them.
A. R. Wallace. The Malay Archipelago.
A man's body and his mind, with the utm.ost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining : rumple the one, you rumple the other.
Sterne. Tristram Shandy.
328 TENNYSON AND OTHERS
Speak to Him thou, for He hears — and Spirit with Spirit can
meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
Tennyson. 0 The Higher Pantheism.
Tennyson, here and elsewhere (see, for example, the king's beautiful speech in " The Passing of Arthur ") urges us to prayer, and adds his belief in a personal intercourse with an ever-present and loving God. Innumerable men of the highest character during nineteen centuries have testified to the same direct communion with the Almighty.
Thou canst not in hfe's city
Rule thy course as in a cell : There are others, all thy brothers,
Who have work to do as well.
Some events that mar thy purpose
May light them upon their way ; Our sun-shining in dechning
Gives earth's other side the day.
R. A. Vaughan. Hours with the Mystics.
My little craft sails not alone ; A thousand fleets from every zone Are out upon a thousand seas ; And what for me were favouring breeze Might dash another, with the shock Of doom, upon some hidden rock. And so I do not dare to pray For winds to waft me on my way.
Catherine Atherton Mason.
I SITS with my toes in a brook ;
If any one asks me for why, I hits him a rap with my crook —
'Tis sentiment kills me, says I.
Horace Walpole.
This was written in a game of bouts rimes (rhymed ends). Four lines had to be composed ending with " brook," " why," " crook," " I."
BLANC— RUSKIN 329
II [Boucher] trouvait la nature trop verte et mal eclairee. Et son ami, Lancret, le peintre des salons a la mode, lui repondait : " Je suis de votre sentiment, la nature manque d'harmonie et de seduction."
(He, Boucher, found nature too green and badly lit. And his friend, Lancret, the fashionable painter of the day, replied to him, " I arn of your opinion, nature is wanting in harmony and seductiveness.")
Charles Blanc.
See following quotation.
If you examine the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, you will find that nearly all its expres- sions, having reference to the country, show . . . either a fooHsh sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. Nothing is more remark- able than the general conception of the country merely as a series of green fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of more sublime scenery. The love of fresh air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures of men ; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the formalisms of the age. And although in the second-rate writers con- tinually, and in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find an affectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever they write from their heart, you will find an utter absence of feeling respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Examine, for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Moliere, and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps Sterne's Sentimental Journey, in its total absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of anything at Geneva which might not as well have been seen at Coxwold, is the most striking instance I could give you ; and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of Moliere, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age.
John Ruskin. Architecture and Paintitis.
330 HUGO— DONNE
SouvENT femme varie, Bien fol est qui s'y fie !
(Woman is very fickle,
A madman he who trusts in her !)
Victor Hugo. Le Rot s' amuse.
Francis I. (i 494-1 547), King of France, wrote on the walls of the royal apartments at Chambord Toute femme varie, " All women are fickle." In Victor Hugo's play Francis enters singing the above lines. One finds this never-ending theme of poets and cynics in Virgil's varium et Jtmtabile semper femina, " Woman is a fickle and changeable thing " (Aeneid, iv. 569), La donna k mobile {Rigoletto), and countless other passages.
Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis By Thyrsis sit, hard by a fount of Chrystal,
And with her hand more white than snow or lilies, On sand she wrote " My faith shall be immortal "
And suddenly a storm of wind and weather
Blew all her faith and sand away together.
Anon.
If Thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee ; Thou, when thou return'st, will tell me All strange wonders that befell thee, And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know : Such a pilgrimage were sweet. Yet do not ; I would not go.
Though at next door we might meet. Though she were true when you met her. And last till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two or three.
John Donne. Song.
SHAKESPEARE AND OTHERS 331
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,
Than women's are. o
Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night, H. iv.
I GO to prove my soul ! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive ! what time, what circuit first, I ask not : but unless God send his hail Or bUnding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : He guides me and the bird. In his good time !
R. Browning. Paracelsus.
Browning was twenty-two when in 1835 he wrote " Paracelsus." The last line quoted above refers to the beautiful poem, " To a Water- fowl," which Bryant had written in 1814 at twenty years of age : —
He who from zone to zone Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde : Hae mercy o' my soul. Lord God ; As I vv'ad do, were I Lord God, And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.
George MacDonald. David Elginbrod.
DiEU me pardonnera ; c'est son metier.
(God will pardon me ; that is His business.)
Heine.
A third in sugar with unscriptural hand Traffics and builds a lasting house on sand.
Alfred Austin. The Golden Age.
332 MELVILLE— HODGSON
In his broken fashion Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for otto- mans ; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides it was very convenient on an excursion — much better than those garden- chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks. Upon occasion a chief v/ould call his attendant, and desire him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree — perhaps
in some damp marshy place. ^t n/r
^ •' ^ Herman Melville.
Moby Dick.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA
Thoughts and tears as I turn away,
Tears for a long ago : She looks out on a summer day,
I on a night of snow. But I see some ferns and a rushing rill
And my love that promised Jiie, And a day we spent on God's great hill
On the other side of the sea. My heart.
On the other side of the sea.
Ay ! the hill was green and the sky was blue,
And the path was dappled fair. And a light from loving eyes shone through
Beyond the sunlight there. And I gave my life — and Vv^ho's to blame ? —
As over the hill went we : But the sky and the hill and the way we came
Are the other side of the sea, Sad heart.
Are the other side of the sea. . . .
'Mid trees and grass and a tangled v\^all
We wandered merrily down. Through the homeless boughs and the forest fall
Of the dead leaves thick and brown.
HODGSON AND OTHERS 333
But faith is broken and life is pain
And oh ! it can never be That I gather those golden hours again
On the other side of the sea, Poor heart,
On the other side of the sea.
Though the sea is wild and the sea is dark,
It v/ill sink and slip away At the bounding scorn of my speeding bark
To the land of that dear day ; But never the Love of my soul be seen.
The light of that day to me. For I know there is lying our hearts between
A wilder and darker sea, O God!
The depth of a bitterer sea.
Richard Hodgson.
This was written in March, 1879, after Hodgson had left Australia for England. The love-episode is imaginary.
They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod.
And go to church on Sunday ; And many are afraid of God — ■
And more of Mrs. Grundy.
F. Locker- Lampson. The Jester's Plea.
The triumph of machinery is when man wonders at his own works ; thus, says Derwent Coleridge, all science begins in wonder and ends in wonder, but the first is the wonder of ignorance, the last that of adoration.
Caroline Fox's Journals.
Derwent Coleridge was evidently discussing his father, S. T. Cole- ridge's Aphorism on Spiritual Religion {Aids to Reflection) : " In Wonder all Philosophy began : in Wonder it ends : and Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is the Offspring of Ignorance : the last is the Parent of Adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge : the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis."
Plato says (Theaet. 155 d), " Philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder)."
334 SHELLEY
Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity.
Shelley. Hellas.
It is very true that the amazing intellectual power of the Greeks in a primitive age ensures them an immortality of fame ; and this is finely expressed in the last tzvo lines. But those two splendid lines are utterly spoilt by the two that precede them. One asks, Why " Greece and her foundations " ? One does not say " a house and its foundations " are built somewhere or other. This by itself would be trivial, but next comes the question, What is the meaning of the second line ? We know what Shelley intended — that the memory and influence of Greece will withstand its destruction by war — but why in that case should she not be built above, instead of submerged belozv the tide of war ? Later on, in lines 836-7, the Emperor Palaeologus, at the siege of Constantinople, is said to have cast himself " beneath the stream of war " ; that is to say, he was overwhelmed and killed. The words, in fact, do not express the poet's meaning. The third and fatal defect of the lines is the juxta- position of " tide " and " sea " — the city is built belozv a tide, and also based on a sea. Not only is this combination absurd in itself, but it also destroys the beauty of the last two magnificent lines. The moving un- stable water is scarcely a foundation to build upon, yet this meaning is forcibly impressed upon the word " sea " by the previous mention of a " tide." What Shelley meant was an immense, broad, deep expanse of solid crystal — the " sea of glass like unto crystal " of Revelation (iv. 6) and the Mer de Glace (" sea of ice "), the great Alpine glacier.* There- fore, any one who had exactness of thought or perception of poetry would omit the first two lines and give only the last two as a quotation.
Mrs. Shelley in her note on " Hellas " specially refers to this verse as a beautiful example of Shelley's style, and she quotes all four lines. We may assume, therefore, that Shelley himself thought highly of the verse, and we thus have an illustration of the curious fact that a great poet is often a poor judge of his own poetry. (Almost certainly Shake- speare himself did not realize how god-like he stood above all other poets.) However, it is not only for this reason that I have included the above quotation, but because with it I propose to make a flank attack upon Mr. R. W. Livingstone, the author of The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us. I do this, of course, with a special object in view.
Mr. Livingstone's book is important, valuable, and highly interesting — and is especially admirable because the author does not envelop his subject in the usual glamour, born of enthusiasm. He is, indeed, most exceptional in this respect, that he endeavours to look at the Greeks from an ordinary common-sense point of view. But he makes the mistake, not unusual with classical men, of supposing that he is a qualified critic of poetry ; and he, therefore, gives us a special dissertation upon the comparative values of English and Greek poetry.
Apart from this dissertation, he quotes three or four passages from English poets in the course of the book. Of these the most prominent is the above verse of Shelley's, and he quotes all four lines without comment. Thus we see an able man, in whom classical study should
* So we speak of a " sea of heads," " sea of faces," " sea of sand," " sea of clouds," " sea of vegetation," etc.
SHELLEY 335
have induced exactness of thought, failing to analyse and understand what he is quoting. But, more than this, the question is one of poetic perception. The imagery in the last tivo lines is sublime — in the four lines it is ludicrous. Therefore, we begin with the fact that our literary critic was unable to see palpable and grave defects in one of the few verses he himself quotes. (I might give other illustrations, as where he admires poor verse of Dryden's, but I must be brief.)
Mr. Livingstone's point is that the " direct " and " truthful " char- acter of Greek poetry is superior to the " imaginative " quality of English verse. He goes so far as to say that " Sappho and Simonides with four words make him see a nightingale and give him a greater and far saner pleasure " than Shelley's poem " To a Skylark." I take his quotation from Simonides, as it involves less discussion than that from Sappho.* It is drjodfes woXvkwtlXoi. x^wpai'Xfes elapival, " The warbling nightingales v/ith olive necks, the birds of spring."
As Mr. Livingstone is not discussing beauty of expression, we can leave this out of consideration. (We can, however, agree that the language of all three poets, Shelley, Sappho, and Simonides, is very beautiful.) He is discussing the substance of poetry, comparing the " directness " and " truthfulness " of Simonides with the imaginative element in Shelley's poem. He would apparently discard the latter element altogether, and prefers a simple description of the nightingale — that it sings, has an olive neck, and appears in spring. The first sug- gestion that occurs to one is that if, say, an auctioneer's catalogue of farm stock — without any addition whatever to its contents— could be worded prettily and made metrical, it would afford huge enjoyment to our hterary critic.
The whole question is as to the value of the imaginative element, which to our minds makes Shelley's poem one of the inost beautiful lyrics in all literature. In sweeping away this elenient, Mr. Livingstone tells us how much of English poetry must be cast aside. But he does not realize that much else has also to be fiung on the scrap-heap. Imagination, in its true sense, includes all those aesthetic, moral, and spiritual faculties which are higher than the intellect — all, in fact, that raises man above his material existence. With the immense deal of English poetry which Mr. Livingstone proposes to " scrap " must go all our most beautiful music, all that is great in painting (which is never " direct " and " truth- ful " in this sense, or it would not be great), all Greek statuary, and all that expresses the noblest truths in Greek or any other literature. I do not think that Mr. Livingstone will find many adherents to his new creed.
This critic also discusses style, and we find that he speaks of Pope as a " great poet," and apparently revels in his monotonous verse ! When pointing out that English verse, unlike what we have left of Greek poetry, includes much unequal and ill-finished work, he says, " Of all our great poets, perhaps only Milton and Pope can boast unfailing excellence of style."
As regards this inequality in the work of English poets the answer is very simple. Mr. Livingstone forgets the fact — a very important fact in any speculation upon the scheme of the universe — that only the good things ultimately survive. How very little we have left of many Greek poets ! Of Sophocles only seven plays remain out of one hundred and twenty-seven, and the Fragments collected are said to be very poor (many, of course, are only grammatical illustrations) — and more than half of Homer must have been dropped. We probably still have everything that is best in Greek literature. Again, it is not in fact desirable to restrict
* See supplementary remarks at the end of this note.
336
SHELLEY
publication to work of the highest importance, and the facilities afforded by printing have made it unnecessary thus to restrict it — so that even My Commonplace Book is now, at least temporarily, part of English literature ! Greatly as I admire Mr. Livingstone's book, I feel bound to call attention to a view of poetry that must do great harm to University students and others. I am also bound to mention him as an illustration of the fact that classical men usually imagine that their study of the Greek and Latin languages and literature qualifies them to become literary critics.* This fact has impressed itself upon me from youth upwards. One of my teachers, a man of some weight in the classical world, was in the habit of saying that only through study of Latin and Greek could a man learn to write good English ! His own English was execrable. f
I will give another instance where a classical enthusiast, as in Mr. Livingstone's case, exaggerates the value of his favourite literature-;- truly wonderful as it is. Gissing's Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is an interesting book of wide circulation, in which the author displays great admiration for and familiarity with the classics. Speaking of Xenophon's Anabasis, he says, " Were it the sole book existing in Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order to read it." That is to say, it would be worth while expending, out of our short lives, some years of study for the sole purpose of reading in the original an extremely simple, prose historical narrative, which has been excellently translated ! (If Gissing had said Homer instead of Xenophon, no one would have quarrelled with him.) Again, he says, " Many a single line presents a picture which deeply stirs the emotions " ; and he gives us what he calls " a good instante of such a line." A guide, who has led the Greeks through hostile country, has to return through the same perilous district, and the wonderful line is "Eiirel ea-wipa iyfvero, vx^to TTis vvKTos diTLthv. This Hue Gissing translates, " When evening came he took leave of us and went away by night " — a sentence which only by inadvertence could have appeared in, say, a Ti^nes leader, seeing that the words " by night " are redundant. As a matter of fact, the translation is incorrect , there is nothing about " taking leave of us," and the meaning is, " As soon as evening came, he had slipped away into the darkness."
(Professor Naylor points out to me that the woi-d ^x^'^" in this line is interesting. It conveys the idea of a swift or abrupt departure or dis- appearance. It is used in connection with that most interesting rnan Alcibiades (Xen. Hell. ii. i. 26), and gives a fine impression of his quick, insolent temper. The Greek admirals had put themselves in a position of extreme danger, and he came to warn them of their peril. Their reply was the usual expression of ineptitude, " We are the admirals, not you " ; and immediately follows the one word vx^to, " he turned on his heels and left " — and with this word Alcibiades disappears from contemporary history.)
In referring to Mr. Livingstone's remarks above I could not use the Sappho quotation, because there are certain initial questions that need to be first settled.
Sappho's line is '^Hpo; li^yyeKos Ifiepocpujvo^ drjduii', which Mr. Living-
* As Professor Damley Naylor's name appears at times in this book, it is necessary to mention that he is so qualified and, therefore, is not one of the gentlemen referred to.
I may mention here that Mr. Livingstone deserves censure for not giving us an index to his valuable book. This neglect, being greatly provocative of profanity, is an offence against morality. Much loss of time and irritation have been caused to me in looking up passages I remembered in his book — and I have at times given up the search in despair.
t See interesting remarks on Matthew Arnold and Addison in Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology, Note 20 to Ch. 10.
SHELLEY 337
stone translates " The messenger of spring, the lovely- voiced nightingale." Now i'^epos (himeros) means animal passion, so that tp.epocpwvos {himero- phonos) is a strong word meaning singing of, or with, passion — in this case the passion of the pairing-time. Why then does Mr. Livingstone, following Liddell and Scott, give the totally different meaning " lovely- voiced " ? Apparently it is because Theocritus (xxviii. 7) applies the expression " himerophonos " to the Charites or Graces, and, according to the current conception, those deities were pure unimpassionate beings.*
In questions of this character, seeing that the Greek gods were guilty of every form of immorality and the Greeks themselves were the most sensual of civilized nations that ever existed, the presumption is in favour of impurity : the onus of proof is on those who allege pvirity. I have not undertaken the heavy work of looking up the innumerable references to the Charites in Greek literature, but I know of nothing that supports the prevalent conception of those deities. Apart from the fact that Theocritus uses the word himerophonos, Meleager (Atith. Pal. v. 195) speaks of himeros as conferred by the Charites. There is nothing in the meaning of charis, or the verb charizesthai, to support the current idea (both being even used in an immodest sense) ; Homer identifies Charis with Aphrodite, with whom Hesiod also identifies Aglaia, since each is made the wife of Hephaestus ; the Charites are constantly associated with Aphrodite and Eros (and consequently with Himeros, the personification of passion), so that the maxim Noscitur a sociis applies ; Sappho repeatedly claims them as her patrons ; as regards the representation of the Charites in art, girl friendship would be a subject quite alien to the Greek mind.
If the view suggested is correct, our authorities with their preconceived ideas presume to correct Theocritus and Sappho ! They not only give a wrong view of the Charites, but also hide the coarseness of the compli- ment paid by Theocritus to his lady friend — in each case distorting the truth.
Mr. Livingstone may have another reason for altering the meaning of " himerophonos." He appears to hold the opinion that a Greek writer would not ascribe intelligence or emotion to a bird, as Mrs. Browning does in " To a Seamew." (I quite agree with him as to the false, feminine sentiment in this poem. It is mainly the " Sonnets from the Portuguese " that raise Mrs. Browning above the minor poets.) Mr. Livingstone, for example, translates rip-epbcpoiv' dXeKTup, " O cock that criest at dawn." This should surely mean " that announceth the dawn " ; the attitude and the very crow of the bird would suggest this to the Greeks ; and the fowl did, as a matter of fact, serve in place of an alarm-clock to them (see, for instance, Aristophanes' Birds, 488). Does not Mr. Livingstone forget that the Greeks attributed not only intelligence but also miraculous powers to animals (see p. 415) ? If so, this illustrates another fact noticeable among classical authorities. They often fail to consider all the premises before arriving at a conclusion. Taking another illustration from Mr. Livingstone, he says that the Greeks had little of the feeling of wonder, did not " muse on the strangeness of the world," and would not have experienced the emotion Pascal felt when viewing the starry heavens, " The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me." The premise he appears to omit here is the fact of the intense ignorance of the Greeks. Their world was a very limited one, with its flat earth and solid lid, certain bright objects conceived as gods or otherwise nioving
• For example : Miss Jane Harrison {Mythology of Ancient Athens) says " all sweetness and love " come to mortals from the " holy " Charites, who " were in the fullest sense ' givers of all grace.' " (That is to say, these deities have the attributes of God, who is, of course, the sole giver of all grace ! Compare with this Professor Gilbert Murray on the god Dionysus, p. 419O
z
338 SHELLEY— COLERIDGE
in the intermediate space. To illustrate this, Herodotus (ii. 24) believes that the sun-god is forced by the cold winds in winter to move to the warm sky above Libya ; and in 434 B.C. (about the same time) Anax- agoras was arrested for blasphemy and exiled because he taught that the sun must be a mass of blazing metal larger than the Peloponnesus ! Everything in nature had its god, whose action explained whatever happened. If the Greeks had once realized the awful infinity of the universe, their whole outlook on nature would have changed, and I cannot think that so highly intellectual a people would not have been moved by wonder. I cannot see any element in " the Greek genius " that would justify such a conclusion — and see the later epigram by Ptolemy on p. 10.
Returning to the Sappho quotation, Mr. Livingstone translates r/pos dyyeXos literally as " the messenger of spring." Does he mean the messenger " sent by spring " or " announcing spring " ? Presumably he does not mean the latter, as it would impute intelligence or emotion to the bird. But, if we accept the former interpretation, it leads to the curious result that the poet, not content with a Goddess of Spring and the Hours who represent the seasons, intends still further to personify spring. Is not the true meaning of Sappho's words " the nightingale with its passionate song sent (by Proserpine) to let men know that spring is approaching " ? This is not mere captious criticism. To Sappho the goddess Proserpine was a concrete being with some sort of corporeal form, who brings a thing called spring, and who actually does send the nightingale ahead to sing of the passion of the pairing-time, and thus let men know that spring is coming. There is no poetic imagery, no imaginative picture, in the poet's mind, but the statement of an actual fact. See also the reference to the halcyon, p. 415. It seems to me that, in this as in other cases, our classical authorities /«// to place themselves in the position of the Greeks. Here they interpret as imagination what was meant as reality. (Plowever, until we knew exactly what Sappho's verse meant, it could not be properly brought into the discussion of Mr. Livingstone's views.)
Alas ! they had been friends in youth ;
But whispering tongues can poison truth ;
And constancy hves in realms above ;
And Hfe is thorny ; and youth is vain ;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
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,
Like cliffs which had been reft asunder ;
A dreary sea now flows between.
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.
S. T. Coleridge. Christabel.
ARNOLD 339
It irked him to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields,
He loved his mates ; but yet he could not keep. For that a shadow lower'd on the fields,
Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.
He went ; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground ; He could not wait their passing, he is dead !
So, some tempestuous morn in early June, When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er.
Before the roses and the longest day— When garden-walks and all the grassy floor.
With blossoms red and white of fallen May And chestnut-flowers are strewn — So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I !
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on.
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon.
Sweet- William with its homely cottage -smell, And stocks in fragrant blow ; Roses that down the alleys shine afar.
And open, jasmine-muflSed lattices.
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening-star.
Matthew Arnold. Thy r sis.
The exquisite poem from which these verses are taken is a lament for Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, and Arnold's friend. Clough (1819-1861) was much disturbed over the religious and social questions of the period. Arnold says in these verses that he should have trusted that the tempestuous sceptical time would pass away.
The last two verses give a beautiful picture of the English late Spring and Midsummer.
340 DRAYTON AND OTHERS
LOVE'S FAREWELL
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,— Nay I have done, you get no more of me ; And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free ;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows. And when we meet at any time again. Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes,
— Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover !
Michael Drayton.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe : Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars. Is always watching with a wondering hate. Not till the fire is dying in the grate Look we for any kinship with the stars.
George Meredith. Modern Love, IV.
A poetic expression of a familiar fact. Under the influence of love, anger, or other strong passion, a man becomes an unreasoning animal, and actually hates to be told the truth. Wild Passion glares through the bars of its self-constituted cage at Philosophy standing calm, lofty, and serene. Only " when the fire is dying in the grate " — when passion cools — do we again become akin to cold, dispassionate, star- like Philosophy.
No one of himself can rise out of the depths, but must
clasp some outstretched hand. -^
^ Seneca.
Epistle Hi.
WORDSWORTH AND OTHERS 341
One there is, the loveliest of them all,
Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
For gains, and who that sees her would not buy ?
Fruits of her father's orchard are her wares.
And with the ruddy produce she walks round
Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
Of her new office, blushing restlessly.
Wordsworth. The Prelude, Bk. VHI.
This and the next five quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
Out came the children running —
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.
R. Browning. The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone.
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.
Shakespeare. 2 Henry IV.
That strange song I heard Apollo sing, While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Tennyson. Tithonus.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon. And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest. And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint.
Keats. The Eve of St. Agnes.
342 MEREDITH AND OTHERS
Cool was the woodside ; cool as her white dairy
Keeping sweet the cream-pan ; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rush'd brown and red with sunshine ;
O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool ! Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
Said, " I will kiss you " : she laughed and lean'd her cheek.
G. Meredith.
Love in the Valley.
A ciBO biscocto, A medico indocto, Ab inimico reconciliato, A mala muliere
Libera nos, Domine.
(From twice-cooked food, from an ignorant doctor, from a reconciled enemy, from a wicked woman, Lord, deliver us.)
Old Monkish Litany.
CONSTANCY REWARDED
I VOWED unvarying faith, and she,
To whom in full I pay that vow. Rewards me with variety
Which men who change can never know.
Coventry Patmore. The Angel in the House.
Life is mostly froth and bubble ;
Two things stand like stone : — Kindness in another's trouble.
Courage in your own,
Adam Lindsay Gordon. Ye Weary Wayfarer.
MARTINEAU
343
If the collective energies of the universe are identified with Divine Will, and the system is thus animate with an eternal consciousness as its moulding life, the conception we frame of its history will conform itself to our experience of intellectual volition. . . . It is in origination, in disposing of new conditions, in setting up order by differentiation, that the mind exercises its highest function. When the product has been obtained, and a definite method of procedure established, the strain upon us is relaxed, habit relieves the constant demand for creation, and at length the rules of a practised art almost execute themselves. As the intensely voluntary thus works itself ofl:" into the automatic, thought, liberated from this reclaimed and settled province, breaks into new regions, and ascends to ever higher problems : its supreme life being beyond the conquered and legislated realm, while a lower consciousness, if any at all, suffices for the maintenance of its ordered mechanism. Yet all the while it is one and the same mind that, under different modes of activity, thinks the fresh thoughts and carries on the old usages. Does anything forbid us to conceive similarly of the cosmical development ; that it started from the freedom of indefinite possibilities and the ubiquity of universal consciousness ; that, as intellectual exclusions narrowed the field, and traced the definite lines of admitted movement, the tension of purpose, less needed on these, left them as the habits of the universe, and operated rather for higher and ever higher ends not yet provided for ; that the more mechanical, therefore, a natural law may be, the further is it from its source ; and that the inorganic and unconscious portion of the world, instead of being the potentiality of the organic and conscious, is rather its residual precipitate, formed as the Indwelling Mind of all concentrates an intenser aim on the upper margin of the ordered whole, and especially on the inner life of natures that can resemble him ?
James Martineau. Modern Materialism.
The remarkably fine essay in which this striking passage occurs was written in 1876 in reply to a weak article by Tyndall against Martineau (see Fragments of Science). It is not possible to condense Martineau's argument, in which every word is given full effect, and I can only set out in bald outline the portion of the essay in which the passage occurs.
The notion of power or causation is not derived from observation. All that we see taking place around us consists of certain co-existences and sequences. We see a stone fall to the ground, or a flash of lightning
344
MARTINEAU
split a tree. We see mechanical energy become heat, and heat become electricity. The chemical union of carbon and oxygen in the furnace is followed by heat, which is succeeded by the molecular separation of water into steam, the expansion of which lifts a piston and institutes mechanical operations. We see a chain of movements, but nothing that would have given us the notion of power or causation. If we were observing all these happenings as disembodied spirits, that notion would never have arisen in our minds. But we find that we ourselves can move matter, and it is from this we discover that energy means not merely succession, but pozver. Knowing that when we exercise energy we are using power, we are bound by the laws of our thought to believe that, outside ourselves also, all energy means an effort, or power and causation.
Power or causality is, therefore, not something seen— it is something thought. It is due to an intuition within ourselves that all phenornena appear to us as the result of Power. The important question then arises, What is the nature of that One Power which includes so many forms and degrees of energy ? The materialist says that it is identical with the simplest and lowest, namely, purely mechanical energy, and that from this would be derived chemical affinity, magnetic and electrical pheno- mena, and finally those of life and consciousness. Here Martineau's argument to the contrary is very effective but too long to set out. How- ever, he establishes the important point that the nature of Power in the world must be judged from the best thing it has done— the minds it has produced. A blind, unconscious, mechanical Power is inconceivable, seeing that the Power has produced conscious minds. It is the same argument that the Psalmist uses: " He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall he not see ? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know ? " (Ps. xciv. 9, 10).
Martineau further shows that causality in our own acts means Will — and the Universal Power, as it is best understood by reference to man who most resembles it, means a Universal Will and therefore God. Here again I must not attempt to set out the argument in detail. But he next proceeds to discuss the point that he is taking an anthropomorphic view of God. He not only maintains that he is right in doing so ; but, in the passage quoted, suggests that the analogy might be pressed still further.
He says, " If the collective energies of the universe are identified with Divine Will and the system is thus animate with an eternal consciousness as its moulding life," our conception of the history of the world should conform to what we ourselves experience in our own history. To take a simple example, a baby learning to walk has at first to consciously use its muscles and balance its body. Later, having formed the habit, it does all this unconsciously, and can attend to other and higher matters. This procedure continues throughout our mental history. The work that is at first intensely voluntary becomes automatic ; and thought, liberated from this work, breaks into new regions and rises to ever higher problems. Yet it is one and the same mind that thinks the fresh thoughts and carries on the old usages. Does anything forbid us, says Martineau, to conceive similarly of the development of the universe ? First you would have a universal consciousness — everything would be done by the Universal Will consciously. Gradually definite lines of movement would be separated and become " laws of nature," that is to say, habits of the universe. The more mechanical a natural law may be, the earlier it has split off. Relieved of attention to these matters, the Divine Will operates for higher and ever higher ends " not yet provided for." The inorganic and unconscious portion of the world is the residual precipitate formed as the Indwelling Mind of all concentrates more intensely upon
BEDDOES AND OTHERS 345
higher aims, " and especially on the inner life of natures that can resemble him."
In this curious speculation, everything seems to be turned upside down. The inorganic and unconscious, from which the evolutionist (which now means practically every scientist) believes the organic and conscious has been evolved, is simply a residuum cast aside as the Divine Mind paid attention to higher things. The doctrine of Special Creation is also restated to its fullest extent (and, indeed, a fact to be accounted for in any theory is that a higher form of existence appears whenever the environment is suitable). God does all the work of the world either consciously or, as habits, subconsciously. However, Martineau meant this purely as a speculation, and we do not know whether he attached great importance to it, or whether as a fact it contains — as it may contain — some important element of truth. It certainly interested students in the seventies and eighties.
There's lifeless matter ; add the power of shaping, And you've the crystal : add again the organs, Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form And manner of one's self, and you've the plant : Add power of motion, senses, and so forth, And you've all kind of beasts ; suppose a pig : To pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff, Then you have man. What shall we add to man, To bring him higher ?
T. L. Beddoes. Death's Jest-Book, V. 2.
Death's jfest-Book was published in 1850, after Beddoes' death ; The Origin of Species appeared in 1859 : the passage is, therefore, curious. In suggesting, however, development by the addition of faculties, it affords no explanation how those faculties came to be added.
Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.
Macaulay. On Niccolo Machiavelli.
A wonderful record if it were correct, but " Old Nick " is said to be derived from Scandinavian mythology.
I SPEAK truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare ; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.
Montaigne. Essay, Of Repentance.
346 HERBERT
" OUTLANDISH PROVERBS "
Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
He plays well that wins.
The offender never pardons.
Nothing dries sooner than a tear.
Three women can hold their peace — if two are away.
A woman conceals what she knows not.
Saint Luke was a Saint and a Physician, yet is dead.*
Were there no hearers, there would be no backbiters.
He will burn his house to warm his hands.
The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one.
Ill ware is never cheap.
Punishment is lame — but it comes.
Gluttony kills more than the sword.f
The filth under the white snow the sun discovers.
You cannot know wine by the barrel.
At length the fox is brought to the furrier.
Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge.
None is a fool always, every one sometimes. J
In a great river great fish are found, but take heed lest you
be drowned. I wept when I was born, and every day shows why. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings. Gossips are frogs, they drink and talk. He is a fool that thinks not that another thinks. He that sows, trusts in God. He that hath one hog makes him fat, and he that hath one
son makes him a fool. Where your will is ready, your feet are light. A fair death honours the whole life. To a good spender God is the treasurer. The choleric man never wants woe. Love makes a good eye squint. He that would have what he hath not should do what he
doth not. A wise man cares not for what he cannot have.
• " Physician, heal thyself," Luke iv. 23. Also see the following from Nicharchus in the Greek Anthology (G. B. Grundy's translation) : —
MEDICAL ATTENDANCE Yesterday the Zeus of stone from the doctor had a call : Though he's Zeus, and though he's stone, yet to-day's his funeral.
t Compare : —
" Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune."
t Lincoln is alleged to have said, " You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
HERBERT— ROGERS 347
The fat man knoweth not what the lean thinketh.
In every country dogs bite.
None says his garner is full.
To a close-shorn sheep, God gives wind b)?^ measure.*
Silks and satins put out the fire in the chimney.
Lawyers' houses are built on the heads of fools.
It is better to have wings than horns.
We have more to do when we die than we have done.
George Herbert, Jaciila Priidentum .
The reader may not know of the " saintly Herbert's " collection of " Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc." from which the few examples above are taken.
AVALON
We seek a land beneath the early beams Of stars that rise beyond the sunset gate, Where all the year the twilight lingers late, Athwart whose coast the last-born sunray gleams. Fair are the fields and full of pleasant streams, Far sound the hedge-rows with the burgher bees, Soft are the winds and taste of southern seas, Night brings no longing there, and sleep no dreams. O tillerman, steer true, while we, who bow Above the oar-shafts, sing the land we seek, Land of the past, its rapture and its ruth ; Future we ask none, we are memories now. We bear the years whose lips no longer speak. And round our galley's prow the name is Youth. Robert Cameron Rogers.
An American author who wrote the well-known song, " The Rosary." Avalon or Avilion " is in Welsh mythology the kingdom of the dead, afterwards an earthly paradise in the western seas, and finally in the Arthurian romances the abode of heroes to which King Arthur was conveyed after his last battle " {Ency. Brit.). Tennyson wrote in " The Passing of Arthur " :
But now farewell. I am going a long way To the island-valley of Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
* Showing that Sterne's " God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb " (Sentimental Journey) was his rendering of an older saying. The French have the same saying, " A brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent."
348 KIPLING
TO THE TRUE ROMANCE
Thy face is far from this our war,
Our call and counter-cry, I shall not find Thee quick and kind.
Nor know Thee till I die. Enough for me in dreams to see
And touch Thy garments hem : Thy feet have trod so near to God
I may not follow them.
Through wantonness if men profess
They weary of Thy parts, E'en let them die at blasphemy
And perish with their arts ; But we that love, but we that prove
Thine excellence august, While we adore discover more
Thee perfect, wise, and just.
Since spoken word Man's Spirit stirred
Beyond his belly-need, What is is Thine of fair design
In thought and craft and deed ; Each stroke aright of toil and fight,
That was and that shall be. And hope too high, wherefore we die.
Has birth and worth in Thee.
Who holds by Thee hath Heaven in fee
To gild his dross thereby, And knowledge sure that he endure
A child until he die — For to make plain that man's disdain
Is but new Beauty's birth — For to possess in loneliness
The joy of all the earth.
As thou didst teach all lovers speech
And Life all mystery, So shalt Thou rule by every school
Till love and longing die.
KIPLING 349
Who wast or yet the Lights were set
A whisper in the Void, Who shalt be sung through planets young
When tliis is clean destroyed.
Beyond the bounds our staring rounds,
Across the pressing dark, The children wise of outer skies
Look hitherward and mark A light that shifts, a glare that drifts,
Rekindling thus and thus, Not all forlorn, for Thou hast borne
Strange tales to them of us.
Time hath no tide but must abide
The servant of Thy will ; Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme
The ranging stars stand still — Regent of spheres that lock our fears
Our hopes invisible. Oh ! 'twas certes at Thy decrees
We fashioned Heaven and Hell !
Pure Wisdom hath no certain path
That lacks thy morning-eyne, And captains bold by Thee controlled
Most like to God's design ; Thou art the Voice to kingly boys
To lift them through the fight, And Comfortress of Unsuccess,
To give the dead good-night.
A veil to draw 'twixt God, His law,
And Man's infirmity, A shadow kind to dumb and blind
The shambles where we die ; A rule to trick th' arithmetic
Too base of leaguing odds — The spur of trust, the curb of lust.
Thou handmaid of the Gods !
O Charity, all patiently Abiding wrack and scaith !
350 KIPLING
0 Faith, that meets ten thousand cheats Yet drops no jot of faith !
Devil and brute Thou dost transmute
To higher, lordher show, Who art in sooth that lovely Truth
The careless angels know !
Thy face is far from this our war, Our call and counter-cry ,
1 may not find Thee quick and kind. Nor know Thee till I die.
Yet may I look with heart iinshook On blow brought home or missed —
Yet 7nay I hear with equal ear The clarions down the List ;
Yet set my lance above mischance
And ride the barriere — Oh, hit or miss, how little 'tis.
My Lady is not there !
RuDYARD Kipling.
In a note on p. 170 I have written at some length on the subject of the imagination, and my remarks might be read in connection with this poem.
Mr. Kipling has here essayed a more ambitious flight than usual with him, and it is an interesting and important poem. But in some respects it seems to go too far — and in others not far enough. In order to explain this fully I would need to repeat a good deal of what I have said in the note referred to, and I shall give only one or two instances. In the second verse he limits imagination to the province of aesthetics, for he refers to the present-day neglect of art, poetry, music, and literature. But on the other hand imagination is conspicuous in the present period in the physical and other sciences, mathematics, invention, etc. Else- where he arrives at the wider conception, as in the third verse :
What is is Thine of fair design In thought and craft and deed ;
and in the eighth verse :
Pure Wisdom hath no certain path That lacks thy morning-eyne.
Also the italicized verses presumably mean that imagination is of the essence of the soul (which is immortal), and this I think is a true statement.
Again, in the sixth verse imagination appears to be confused with mere fancy, instead of being, as it is, the essential source of knowledge. In other lines he raises it to an infinite height ; yet where his utterances
THACKERAY 351
appear extravagant they may contain an element of truth, for we as yet know little of this great subject. Blake, indeed, who is the very high- priest of imagination, goes far beyond Mr. Kipling. In his prophetic poems he declares imagination to be the essential attribute of God and Christ (see for example " A Memorable Fancy " in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). However, to the general contents of this poem there can be no objection. It is imagination that gives us the vision of glory in earth and sky, the sense of mystery in life and love, the feeling of wonder and worship, the belief in our ideals, the heroism that springs from duty and self-sacrifice, and the faith in the inherent and ultimate rightness and righteousness of the scheme of things.
Love not me for comely grace, For my pleasing eye or face, Nor for any outward part, No, nor for a constant heart : For these may fail or turn to ill. So thou and I shall sever. Keep, therefore, a true woman's eye, And love me still but know not why — So hast thou the same reason still To doat upon me ever !
Anon.
This was published in John Wilbye's Second Set of Madrigals, 1609.
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. Everything appears to him to carry in itself the explanation of its How and Why.
Schopenhauer.
This is not only true of the unintelligent man : all of us are apt to forget that the " usual " is just as mysterious as the " unusual." The familiar physical and mental phenomena that we call " normal " or " natural " are as inexplicable as what we call " supernormal " or even " supernatural." We know that there is the same cause for the falling of a stone as for an eclipse of the sun, but, as Sir Oliver Lodge reminds us, we still do not know why a stone falls to the ground.
Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies ; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flovv^er — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
Tennyson.
352 BLAKE AND OTHERS
SORROWS OF WERTHER
Werther had a love for Charlotte, Such as words could never utter ;
Would you knov^ how^ first he met her ? She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the v/ealth of Indies Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed and pined and ogled, And his passion boiled and bubbled.
Till he blew his silly brains out. And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter. Like a well-conducted person
Went on cutting bread and butter.
Thackeray.
The Sorrows of Wertlier was one of those tiresome novels by Goethe which in our young days we thought it our duty to struggle through, and try to admire.
The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side, His hands and feet were wounded wide. His body bent, his arms and knees Like to the roots of ancient trees.
Titus ! Constantine ! Charlemaine ! O Voltaire ! Rousseau ! Gibbon ! Vain Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword Against this image of his Lord ;
For a Tear is an Intellectual thing ; And a Sigh is the sword of an angel King ; And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.
William Blake. Jerusalem. ' The image of Christ is, of course, the martyred monk.
PATER
353
The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face ; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest ; some mood of passion or insight or intel- lectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us — for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses ? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy ?
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits : for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem ahke. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. . . .
We are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve : we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listless- ness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among " the children of this world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion — that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied conscious- ness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love for art's sake, has most ; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest
2A
354 PATER AND OTHERS
quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.
Walter Pater.
The Renaissance.
This is the famous " pulsation " passage as Pater altered it in his second edition.
Pater was a Hellenist and preached the new paganism of last century. The Greek ideal life was supposed to be one of purely aesthetic enjoyment, divorced from religious problems or from any sense of the higher in our nature. Pater, however, altered his views, Marius the Epicurean being intended as a recantation, and he became in effect an Anglo-Catholic.
Pater was " Rose " in Mallock's New Republic.
A CHILD
is a man in a small Letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of the Apple. ... He is nature's fresh picture, newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper, un- scribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. . . . His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ. . . . We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest : and his drums, rattles and hobby- horses but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember ; and sighs to see what innocence he has outlived. The older he grows, he is a stair lower from God ; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches. . . . Could he put off his body with his little Coat, he had got eternity without a burthen, and exchanged but one Heaven for another.
John Earle. Micro-Cosmographie, 1628.
Advice, like snow, the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
S. T. Coleridge.
GILDER
A WOMAN'S THOUGHT
I AM a woman — therefore I may not
Call to him, cry to him,
Fly to him.
Bid him delay not !
Then when he comes to me, I must sit quiet ;
Still as a stone —
All silent and cold.
If my heart riot —
Crush and defy it !
Should I grow bold,
Say one dear thing to him,
All my life fling to him.
Cling to him —
What to atone
Is enough for my sinning ?
This were the cost to me,
This were my winning —
That he were lost to me.
Not as a lover At last if he part from me, Tearing my heart from me, Hurt beyond cure — Calm and demure Then must I hold me, In myself fold me. Lest he discover ; Showing no sign to him By look of mine to him What he has been to me — How my heart turns to him, Follows him, yearns to him. Prays him to love me.
355
Pity me, lean to me. Thou God above me !
Richard Watson Gilder.
356 FOX— BEAUMONT
Coleridge was holding forth on the effects produced by his preaching, and appealed to Lamb : " You have heard me preach, I think ? " "I have never heard you do anything else," was the urbane reply.
[John Sterling said] Coleridge is best described in his own words :
His flashing eyes, his floating hair ! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread. For he on honey-dew hath fed. And drunk the milk of Paradise.*
Madame de Stael was by no means pleased with her intercourse with him, saying spitefully and feelingly, " M. Coleridge a un grand talent pour le monologue " (Mr. Coleridge has a great talent for monologue ").
Caroline Fox's Journals.
Here we have different views of Coleridge's monologues. Mme. de Stael objected to his monopolizing the conversation, but his friends loved to hear him. Lamb, of course, had to have his joke.
What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life.
Francis Beaumont. Epistle to Ben Jonson.
What would one not give to have been present at the Mermaid Tavern with the wonderful Elizabethans who met there ? Among them were Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh, Beaumont, Fletcher, Donne, Carew, and John Selden. One is reminded of the Symposium of Plato.
The poem of Keats is well known :
Souls of Poets dead and gone. What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ?
* " Kubla Khan."
MARTINEAU AND OTHERS 357
If we cannot find God in your house or in mine ; upon the roadside or the margin of the sea ; in the bursting seed or opening flower ; in the day duty or the night musing ; in the general laugh and the secret grief ; in the procession of life, ever entering afresh, and solemnly passing by and dropping off" ; I do not think we should discern Him any more on the grass of Eden, or beneath the moonlight of Gethsemane. Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there is miracle ; and it is simply undevoutness which imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of God, The customs of Heaven ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its anomalies ; the dear old ways, of which the Most High is never tired, than the strange things which He does not love well enough ever to repeat. And he who will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting finger of the Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with which Adam gazed on the first dawn in Paradise.
James Martineau.
Endeavours after the Christian Life.
Where is the use of the lip's red charm. The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow. And the blood that blues the inside arm — Unless we turn, as the soul knows how. The earthly gift to an end divine ? A lady of clay is as good, I trow.
R. Browning.
On a day Hke this, when the sun is hid,
And you and your heart are housed together, If memories come to you all unbid, And something suddenly wets your lid. Like a gust of the out-door weather. Why, who is in fault but the dim old day, Too dark for labour, too dull for play ?
Author not traced.
358 MASSEY AND OTHERS
My burden bows me to the knee ;
O Lord, 'tis more than I can bear.
Didst Thou not come our load to share ? My burden bows me to the knee : Dear Jesus, let me lean on Thee ! . . .
Far off, so far, the Heavens be,
With their wide arms ! and I would prove The close, warm-beating heart of Love.
But so far-off the Heavens be :
Dear Jesus, let me lean on Thee !
Gerald Massey. Out of the Depths.
This poem is omitted from My Lyrical Life, Massey's collected poems.
A MAN can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries with him the germ of his most excep- tional actions ; and, if we wise people make fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.
George Eliot.
I UNDERSTAND thosc women who say they don't want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real power, while we go through the mockery of making laws. They want the power without the responsibility.
Charles Dudley Warner.
My Summer in a Gardeti.
Hearts do not break ! They sting and ache For old love's sake. But do not die !
Sir W. Gilbert.
Mikado.
ARNOLD— BROWNE 359
Spare me the whispering, crowded room, The friends who come, and gape, and go ; The ceremonious air of gloom — All that makes death a hideous show ! . . .
Bring none of these ! but let me be. While all around in silence lies. Moved to the window near, and see Once more before my dying eyes
Bathed in the sacred dews of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread —
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead. . . .
There let me gaze, till I become In soul with what I gaze on wed ! To feel the universe my home ; To have before my mind — instead
Of the sick-room, the mortal strife. The turmoil for a little breath — The pure eternal course of life. Not human combatings with death.
Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear ; Thus willing let my spirit go To work or wait elsewhere or here !
Matthew Arnold. A Wish.
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps ; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation [binding] of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise [revelry] of company ; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action,
360 BROWNE AND OTHERS
apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions ; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted under- standings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed.
Sir Thomas Brov\ts[e. Religio Medici. Here " reason " is imagination.
God's works — paint any one, and count it crime
To let a truth slip. Don't object, " His works
" Are here already ; nature is complete :
" Suppose you reproduce her (which you can't)
" There's no advantage ! You must beat her then."
For, don't you mark ? we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see ;
And so they are better, painted — better to us
Which is the same thing. Art Vv^as given for that ;
God uses us to help each other so.
Lending our minds out.
R. Browning. Fra Lippo Lippi.
We actually prefer a painting to the original, because the former is endued with the imagination of the artist. His personality, his thoughts and emotions, create a work of art in the painting ; otherwise it would not equal in value even a photograph.
Night dreams of day, and winter seems In sleep to breathe the balm of May. Their dreams are true anon ; but they,
The dreamers, then, alas, are dreams.
Thus, while our days the dreams renew
Of some forgotten sleeper, we.
The dreamers of futurity, Shall vanish when our own are true.
J. B. Tabb.
THOMAS AND OTHERS 361
THE MOTHER WHO DIED TOO
She was so little — little in her grave,
The wide earth all around so hard and cold — She was so little ! therefore did I crave
My arms might still her tender form enfold. She was so little, and her cry so weak
When she among the heavenly children came — She was so little — ^I alone might speak
For her who knew no word nor her own name.
Edith Matilda Thomas.
The economy of Heaven is dark ; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark. Why human buds, like this, should fall. More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day ; while shrivell'd crones Stiff'en with age to stocks and stones ; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years.
Charles Lamb. On an infant dying as soon as horn.
For the folk through the fretful hours are hurled On the ruthless rush of the wondrous world,
And none has leisure to lie and cull
The blossoms, that made life beautiful In that old season when men could sing For dear delight in the risen Spring
And Summer ripening fruit and flower.
Now carefulness cankers every hour ; We are too weary and sad to sing ; Our pastime's poisoned with thought-taking.
John Payne, Tournesol.
All our life is a meeting of cross-roads, where the choice of directions is perilous.
Victor Hugo.
362 MYERS— BROWNING
Oh dreadful thought, if all our sires and we
Are but foundations of a race to be, —
Stones which one thrusts in earth, and builds thereon
A white delight, a Parian Parthenon,
And thither, long thereafter, youth and maid
Seek with glad brows the alabaster shade,
And in processions' pomp together bent Still interchange their sweet words innocent, — Not caring that those mighty columns rest Each on the ruin of a human breast, — That to the shrine the victor's chariot rolls Across the anguish of ten thousand souls !
" Well was it that our fathers suffered thus," I hear them say, " that all might end in us ; Well was it here and there a bard should feel Pains premature and hurt that none could heal ; These were their preludes, thus the race began ; So hard a matter was the birth of Man."
And yet these too shall pass and fade and flee. And in their death shall be as vile as we. Nor much shall profit with their perfect powers To have lived a so much sweeter life than ours. When at the last, with all their bliss gone by. Like us those glorious creatures come to die, With far worse woe, far more rebellious strife Those mighty spirits drink the dregs of life.
F. W. H. Myers. The Implicit Promise of Immortality.
It will be observed that Myers, like Swinburne, handled the old heroic couplet in a masterly manner, undreamt of by Pope, Dryden, and their generation. This is still more remarkable in another quotation, p. 225.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with. One to show a woman when he loves her !
R. Browning. One Word More.
DARWIN 363
I AM much engaged, an old man and out of health, and I cannot spare time to answer your questions fully, — nor indeed can they be answered. Science has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any Revelation. As for a future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. Wishing you happiness, I remain, etc. Charles Darwin.
Letter to von Miiller, Jmie 5, 1879.
This letter is reproduced in the Life and Letters, but evidently Francis Darwin did not know that the " German youth " to whom he says it was written was Baron Ferdinand von Muller, K.C.M.G. (1825-1896), then fifty-three years of age ! Von Muller was director of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens from 1857 to 1873, and died in Melbourne in 1896. He did important work in Australian botany.
As regards Darwin's letter, it seems to me that a sufficient reason why a great and lovable man, who was at first a convinced believer in the immortality of the soul, became an agnostic is given in the next quotation. His higher aesthetic faculties had become atrophied.
Darwin himself thought that he had not given sufficient consideration to religious questions, and was exceedingly anxious that his own agnostic views should not influence others.
I HAVE said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry : I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseates me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. . . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that [aesthetic] part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Charles Darwin.
This is from autobiographical notes made by Darwin for his children and not intended for publication.
364 O'SULLIVAN— SMITH
CHILDREN'S HYMN ON THE COAST OF BRITTANY
At length has come the twihght dim, The sun has set, the day has died ;
And now we sing Thy holy hymn, O Mary maid, at eventide.
To Jewry, to that far-off land,
Erstwhile there came a little Child :
You led Him softly by the hand. He was so very small and mild.
Like us. He could not find his way, Although He was Our Lord, the King :
And so we beg we may not stray. Nor do a sad or foolish thing.
Teach us the prayer that Jesus said.
The words you sang and murmured low.
When He was in His tiny bed.
And all the earth was dark and slow.
Hushed are the trees, and the small wise bees,
Our fathers are on the deep, — Little Mother, be good to us, please !
It is time to go asleep.
Vincent O'Sullivan.
The Toucan has an enormous bill, makes a noise like a puppy dog, and lays his eggs in hollow trees. How astonish- ing are the freaks and fancies of nature ! To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with a bill a yard long, making a noise like a puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees ? The Toucans, to be sure, might retort, to what purpose were gentlemen in Bond Street created ? To what purpose were certain foolish prating Members of Parliament created ? — pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country ? There is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics of the Toucan.
Sydney Smith. Reviezv of ^' Water ton's Travels in South America ^
WESLEY— LANDOR 365
WESLEY'S MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS
For an Ague : — Make six middling pills of cobwebs. Take one a little before the cold fit ; two a little before the next fit (suppose the next day) ; the other three, if need be, a little before the third fit. This seldom fails.
A Cut : — Bind on toasted cheese. This will cure a deep cut.
A Fistula : — Grind an ounce of sublimate mercury as fine as possible. . . . [Two quarts of water to be added, then half a spoonful with two spoonfuls of water to be taken fasting every other day]. ... In forty days this will also cure any cancer, any old sore or King's evil.
The Iliac Passion : — Hold a live puppy constantly on the belly.
John Wesley.
Primitive Physic.
The iliac passion, now known as ileus, is a severe colic due to intestinal obstruction.
It seems strange that so eminent a man should have believed in these absurd prescriptions, but as a matter of fact the book generally is much more sane and sound than one would expect from the habits and state of knowledge of the time. For example, in his rules of health Wesley strongly advises the practice of cold bathing, cleanliness, open-air exercise, moderation of food, etc. Also these prescriptions are chosen for their absurdity — in each case other more sensible remedies are offered. But Wesley in his preface says that he has omitted altogether from his book Cinchona bark, because it is " extremely dangerous." This means that in regard to ague he omitted the only efficient remedy — which was much more unfortunate than his prescribing cobweb pills.
This book went to thirty-six editions between 1747 and 1840.
Alas, how soon the hours are over
Counted us out to play the lover !
And how much narrower is the stage
Allotted us to play the sage !
But when we play the fool, how wide
The theatre expands ! beside.
How long the audience sits before us !
How many prompters ! What a chorus !
W. S. Landor.
366 CAMPION— ELIOT
Rose-cheeked Laiira, come ;
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing. Lovely forms do flow From concent divinely framed ; Heaven is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly. These dull notes we sing Discords need for helps to grace them, Only beauty purely loving
Knows no discord. But still moves delight. Like clear springs renewed by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them-
Selves eternal.
Thomas Campion.
Richard Lovelace (1618-1655) subsequently wrote (Orpheus to Beasts)
O, could you view the melodic
Of ev'ry grace,
And musick of her face,
You'd drop a teare,
Seeing more harmonic
In her bright eye,
Then now you heare.
Then = than. See next quotation.
I THINK the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music ? — to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration : melt- ing you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years : con- centrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy : blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy ? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of
ELIOT— LANDOR 367
her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her Hps. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music : what can one say more ? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them : it is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes — it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there ; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness — by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty, and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most bhnded to the character of the woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to come in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind. George Eliot.
Adam Bede.
Here we have three writers speaking of beauty as being like music. Besides these Sir Thomas Browne says in Religio Medici that " there is music even in beauty " and Byron ("The Bride of Abydos," I. vi.) speaks of " the music breathing from her face." In all these cases the question arises whether there is unconscious memory. Take George Eliot, for example : she would not know of Campion's poem, for his verses had been forgotten until A. H. Bullen revived them in 1889 ; and Lovelace is only remembered by two or three lyrics, of which this is not one. But she might have read and retained in her unconscious memory either the passage from Religio Medici or " The Bride of Abydos." Evidently she did not think she was echoing something previously said — nor, as the records show, did Byron. Thus we have five authors expressing the same poetic thought, and we do not know whether it was original to each of them, or was due to unconscious memory.
I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art :
I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life ; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
W. S. Landor.
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear : Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
W. S. Landor.
368 PHILLIPS AND OTHERS
A LITTLE I will speak. I love thee then Not only for thy body packed with sweet Of all this world. . . . Not for this only do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods ; And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearned up the cUffs to tell ; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth. Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea ; Thy face remembered is from other worlds. It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where.
Stephen Phillips. Marpessa.
Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone. But as the meaning of all things that are.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Heart's Compass.
" When shall our prayers end ? " I tell thee, priest, when shoemakers make shoes, That are well sewed, with never a stitch amiss. And use no craft in uttering of the same ; When tinkers make no more holes than they found, When thatchers think their wages worth their work, When Davie Diker digs and dallies not. When horsecorsers beguile no friends with jades, When printers pass no errors in their books. When pewterers infect no tin with lead, When silver sticks not on the Teller's fingers, When sycophants can find no place in Court, . . . When Lais lives not like a lady's peer Nor useth art in dyeing of her hair. . . .
George Gascoigne. The Steele Glas.
WHYTE-MELVILLE 369
" IMBUTA "
The new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth like the old. The heart is all athirst again.
The drops are all of gold ; We thought the cup was broken.
And we thought the tale was told. But the new wine, the new wine.
It tasteth like the old !
The flower of life had faded.
The leaf was in its fall, The winter seemed so early
To have reached us, once for all ; But now the buds are breaking.
There is grass above the mould. And the new wine, the new wine.
It tasteth like the old !
The earth had grown so dreary.
The sky so dull and grey ; One was weeping in the darkness.
One was sorrowing through the day : But a light from heaven gleams again.
On water, wood, and wold, And the new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth like the old !
For the loving lips are laughing,
And the loving face is fair, Though a phantom hand is on the board.
And phantom eyes are there ; The phantom eyes are soft and sad.
The phantom hand is cold, But the new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth like the old !
We dare not look, we turn away,
The precious draught to drain, 'Twere worse than madness surely now
To lose it all again ; To quivering lip, with clinging grasp,
The fatal cup we hold,
2B
370 WHYTE-MELVILLE AND OTHERS
For the new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth Hke the old ! And Hfe is short, and love is life.
And so the tale is told, Though the new wine, the new wine,
It tasteth like the old.
G. J. Whyte-Melville.
The title evidently refers to Horace, Ep. i. 2. 69, 70, Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu. " The scent which once has flavoured the fresh jar will be preserved in it for many a day." Moore no doubt had the same passage in his mind when, speaking of the memories of past joys, he wrote :
You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will. But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
So Whyte-Melville says that when love is poured again into the heart of a man who has lost his first love, " The new wine, the new wine. It tasteth like the old."
LETTY'S GLOBE
When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year. And her young artless words began to flow.
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world ; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers ; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss ;
But v/hen we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry —
" Oh ! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there 1 " And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
Charles Tennyson Turner.
Charles Tennyson, a brother of Lord Tennyson and author with him of Poems by Two Brothers, took the name of Turner.
Any sort of meaning looks intense
When all beside itself means and looks nought.
R. Browning. Fra Lippo Lippi,
MEREDITH 371
Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble ; and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and, sometim.es nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat : mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue : from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note : the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers : a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude : a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth ; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flov>^ers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting ; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weirpiles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scufl. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside
372 MEREDITH— ROSSETTI
her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed her. . . .
To-morrow this place will have a memory — the river and the meadow, and the white falling weir : his heart will build a temple here ; and the skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries.
George Meredith. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
LOVE-SWEETNESS
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall About thy face ; her sweet hands round thy head In gracious fostering union garlanded ;
Her tremulous smiles ; her glances' sweet recall
Of love ; her murmuring sighs mem.orial ;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which ansv/ers there for all : —
What sweeter than these things, except the thing In lacking which all these would lose their sweet :- The confident heart's still fervour : the swift beat And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing. Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring. The breath of kindred plum.es against its feet ?
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Jesus saith. Wherever there are two, they are not without God ; and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me ; cleave the wood and there am I.
Logia of Jesus.
This is one of the Logia or Sayings of Jesus written on papyrus in the third century and discovered in Egypt by Grenfell and Hunt in 1897. The itaHcs, of course, are mine.
ELIOT 373
O MAY I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven : To make undying music in the world . , .
This is life to come, Which martyr'd men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love. Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. And in diffusion ever more intense, So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.
George Eliot.
There is an infinite pathos in these lines. Having lost her faith in a future life, George Eliot tries to find consolation in the thought that, when she has passed into nothingness — when she " joins the choir invisible " — she will have done something to ennoble the minds of those who come after her. But why should generation after generation of insect-lives waste themselves in raising and purifying the minds of the generations that follow, if all in turn pass into nothingness ? The higher and purer men became, the more they would love their fellow-beings and the more they would shudder at the insensate pain and cruelty in the world — the physical torture they themselves endure, and the mental torture both of losing for ever those they love and of seeing the sufferings of others. One should act in conformity with one's belief. Instead of thus adding greater pain and sorrow to each succeeding generation, the effort should be to coarsen and brutalize our natures. Only when all sense of love, duty, and moral aspiration have disappeared shall we and our descendants cease to be saddened by the hateful scheme of things — a world of useless effort and undeserved pain. Our lives should, in fact, correspond with the brutal, ugly, and stupid scheme of the universe.
This is the direct answer to George Eliot, allowing her very important assumption that we have a duty towards others, including those who come after us. But this assumption is logically unwarranted, if at the end of our brief years we pass into nothingness and have no further concern with any living being. This brings us to a familiar train of argument. Why should we be irresistibly impelled to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others ? And, apart from altruism, why should we develop our own higher attributes — why seek to ennoble our own selves, since those selves
374 ELIOT— TENNYSON
disappear ? Why fill with jewels the hollow log that is to be thrown on the fire ? Why are we swayed by a sense of honour, a desire for justice, a love of purity and truth and beauty, a craving for affection, a thirst for knowledge, which persist up to the very gates of death ? To take an illustration of Edward Caird's, is not the path of life which is so traversed like the path of a star to the astronomer, which enables him to prophesy its future course — beyond the end which hides it from our eyes ? Other- wise, to use another simile, it is as though Pheidias spent his life sculp- turing in snow.
(This does not mean, as the sceptic usually argues, that the virtuous man merely desires a reward for his virtuous conduct. It is an inquiry why he is virtuous — what is a sane view of the scheme of the universe. Are our ideals foolish imaginings and our lives absurdly illogical ?)
In forming the conclusion that there was no possible future for man, George Eliot and an immense number of other thinkers of her time made the vast assumption that there was nothing left to discover. Blanco White's sonnet alone might have taught them the folly of such premature judgments. Or we may take an illustration, used by F. W. H. Mj'ers, namely, the discovery that, far beyond the red and the violet of the spectrum or the rainbow, extend rays that are invisible to our eyes. Since George Eliot's time the Society for Psychical Research has during the last forty years accumulated unanswerable evidence of survival after death.
Why are we weigh 'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness ?
All things have rest : why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown :
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm ;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
" There is no joy but calm ! "
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things ?
Hateful is the dark-blue sky. Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life ; ah, why Should life all labour be ? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last ? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
TENNYSON AND OTHERS 375
To war with evil ? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence ; ripen, fall and cease :
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
Tennyson. The Lotos-Eaters.
See preceding quotation.
We may well begin to doubt whether the known and the natural can suffice for human life. No sooner do we try to think so than pessimism raises its head. The more our thoughts widen and deepen, as the universe grows upon us and we become accustomed to boundless space and time, the more petrifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, the more contemptible become the pettiness, shortness, fragility of the individual life. A moral paralysis creeps upon us. For awhile we comfort ourselves with the notion of self-sacrifice ; we say, What matter if I pass, let me think of others ! But the others have become contemptible no less than the self ; all human griefs alike seem little worth assuaging, human happiness too paltry at the best to be worth increasing. The whole moral world is reduced to a point ; good and evil, right and wrong become infinitesimal ephemeral matters, while eternity and infinity remain attri- butes of that only which is outside the sphere of morality. Life becomes more intolerable the more we know and dis- cover, so long as everything widens and deepens except our own duration, and that remains as pitiful as ever. The aff"ections die away in a world where everything great and enduring is cold ; they die of their own conscious feebleness and bootlessness.
Sir J. R. Seeley. Natural Religion.
See the two preceding quotations.
The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from ship- wreck : can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves ?
George Eliot. Janefs Repentance. " But for the grace of God, there goes John Bunyan ! "
376 CARLYLE
The first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.
Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly.
There are quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were not unwelcome ; even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself with glory — of a temporary nature.
. . . Nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.
Thou art bound hastily for the City of Nowhere ; and wilt arrive !
Carlyle. French Revolution.
It is interesting to learn from a correspondent of The Spectator (Feb. 17, 1917) that Carlyle wrote two verses which he combined with Shake- speare's " Fear no more the heat o' the sun " {Cymbeline, iv. 2) to make a requiem, of which he was very fond :
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.
Hurts thee now no harsh behest,
Toil, or shame, or sin, or danger ; Trouble's storm has got to rest,
To his place the wayworn stranger.
Want is done, and grief and pain,
Done is all thy bitter weeping ; Thou art safe from wind and rain
In the Mother's bosom sleeping.
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.
The lines from Cymbeline are often echoed in pi-ose and poetry, as in Henley's verse :
So be my passing 1
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west.
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
KNOWLES AND OTHERS 377
It takes two for a kiss,
Only one for a sigh ; Twain by twain we marry,
One by one we die. Joy has its partnerships,
Grief weeps alone ; Cana had many guests,
Gethsemane had none.
Frederick Lawrence Knowles.
Byron in Don Juan says :
All who joy would win must share it, Happiness was born a twin.
FIoLD, Time, a little while thy glass.
And, Youth, fold up those peacock wings !
More rapture fills the years that pass Than any hope the future brings ; • Some for to-morrow rashly pray.
And some desire to hold to-day.
But I am sick for yesterday. . . .
Ah ! who will give us back the past ?
Ah 1 woe, that youth should love to be Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast.
And so is fain to find the sea, — That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep, These creeks down which blown blossoms creep. For breakers of the homeless deep.
Edmund Gosse. Desideriiim.
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one ; Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one ; Yet the light of a whole life dies.
When love is done.
F. W. BOURDILLON.
See reference to this poem in Preface. It was written by Mr. Bour- dillon when an Oxford undergraduate, and appeared in The Spectator^ Oct. 25, 1873.
378 PLINY
But to come again unto Apelles, this was his manner and custom besides, which he perpetually observed, that no day went over his head, but what businesse soever he had other- wise to call him away, he would make one draught or other (and never misse) for to exercise his hand and keepe it in use, inasmuch as from him grew the proverb e, Nulla dies sine tinea, i.e. Be alwaies doing somewhat, though you doe but draw a line. His order was when he had finished a piece of work or painted table, and layd it out of his hand, to set it forth in some open gallerie or thorowfare, to be seen of folke that passed by, and himselfe would lie close behind it to hearken what faults were found therewith ; preferring the judgment of the common people before his owne, and imagining they would spy more narrowly, and censure his doings sooner than himselfe : and as the tale is told, it fell out upon a time, that a shoomaker as he went by seemed to controlle his workmanship about the shoo or pantofle that he had made to a picture, and namely, that there was one latchet fewer than there should be : Apelles, acknowledging that the man said true indeed, mended that fault by the next morning, and set forth his table as his manner was. The same shoomaker comming again the morrow after, and finding the want supplied which he noted the day before, took some pride unto himselfe, that his former admonition had sped so well, and was so bold as to cavil at somewhat about the leg. Apelles could not endure that, but putting forth his head from behind the painted table, and scorning thus to be checked and reproved, Sirrha (quoth hee) remem- ber you are but a shoomaker, and therefore meddle no higher I advise you, than with shoos. Which words also of his came afterwards to be a common proverbe, Ne sutor ultra crepidam.
Pliny.
Natural History.
Apelles, the greatest painter of antiquity. The two proverbs mean : " No day without a line," " A cobbler should stick to his last." Pantofle, sandal ; latchet, the thong fastening the sandal ; painted table, panel picture ; controlle, find fault with.
In the hum of the market there is money, but under the cherry-tree there is rest.
Japanese Proverb.
ELIOT— JONSON 379
[Speaking of the rare and exalted nature of Dorothea, who has adopted the normal, domestic married life.] Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the stren'gth, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive ; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts ; and that things are not so ill with you and me, as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in un visited tombs.
George Eliot. Middlemarch.
This passage, which finely expresses an important truth, is at the end oi Middlemarch. The reference is to a story of Herodotus. He says that Cyrus, the Persian, was angry with the river Gyndes (Diyalah), because it had drowned one of the white horses, which, as being sacred to the sun, accompanied the expedition. He, therefore, employed his army to divert the river into 360 channels (representing the number of days in the year). The story was probably told to Herodotus as explain- ing the great irrigation system that existed in Mesopotamia. The Diyalah flows into the Tigris not far from Baghdad.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow. Before rude hands have touched it ? Have you marked but the fall of the snow.
Before the soil hath smutched it ? Have you felt the wool of the beaver ?
Or swan's down ever ? Or have smelt o' the bud of the briar.
Or the nard in the fire ? Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? O, so white ! O, so soft ! O, so sweet is she !
Ben Jonson. A Celebration of Charts.
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect ; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom — a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom — is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and
38o RUSKIN AND OTHERS
deficiencies which are not only signs of Hfe, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its sym- metry. All admit irregularity as they imply change ; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exer- tion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.
John Ruskin. Stones of Venice, II. vi. 25.
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burn'd on the water : the poop was beaten gold ; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke. She did lie In her pavilion : on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-coloured fans. . . . Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids tended her. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers : the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
Shakespeare. Antony and Cleopatra.
This and the next three quotations, and others through the book, are word-pictures.
Little round Pepita, blondest maid
In all Bedmar — Pepita, fair yet flecked,
Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red
As breasts of robins stepping on the snow —
Who stands in front with little tapping feet,
And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed
Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets.
George Eliot. The Spanish Gypsy.
COLERIDGE AND OTHERS 381
And how then was the Devil drest ?
Oh ! he was in his Sunday's best :
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain,
And backward and forward he swished his long tail,
As a gentleman swishes his cane.
S. T. Coleridge. The DeviVs Thoughts.
The stanzas are reversed in order.
We walked abreast all up the street,
Into the market up the street ; Our hair with marigolds was wound, Our bodices with love-knots laced. Our merchandise with tansy * bound. . . .
And when our chaffering all was done,
All was paid for, sold and done, We drew a glove on ilka hand, We sweetly curtsied, each to each. And deftly danced a saraband.
William Bell Scott. The Witch's Ballad.
Mere verbal insults [to a Roman Emperor] were not considered treason ; for, said the Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius, in language that is a standing rebuke to pusillanimous tyrants, if the words are uttered in a spirit of frivolity, the attack merits contempt ; if from mad- ness, they excite pity ; if from malice, they are to be forgiven.
William A. Hunter. Roman Law, Appendix.
This recalls to mind the numerous cases of lese-majesti for words spoken against the Kaiser before the war. The passage would make a pleasant retort to a rude opponent (a " pusillanimous tyrant ") in a debate.
* An aromatic herb with yellow flowers.
382 MYERS
GLADSTONE AND THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Mr. Gladstone's relation to Psychical Research affords one more illustration of the width and force of his intellectual sympathies. Many men, even of high ability, if convinced as Mr. Gladstone was of the truth and sufficiency of the Christian revelation, permit themselves to ignore these ex- perimental approaches to spiritual knowledge, as at best superfluous. They do not realize how profoundly the evidence, the knowledge, which we seek and which in some measure we find, must ultimately influence men's views as to both the credibility and the adequacy of all forms of faith, Mr. Gladstone's broad intellectual purview, — aided perhaps in this instance by something of the practical foresight of the statesman, — placed him in a quite diff^erent attitude towards our quest. " It is the most important work which is being done in the world," he said in a conversation in 1885. " By far the most important," he repeated, with a grave em- phasis which suggested previous trains of thought, to which he did not care to give expression. He went on to apologize, in his courteous fashion, for his inability to render active help ; and ended by saying, " If you will accept sympathy without service, I shall be glad to join your ranks." He became an Honorary Member, and followed with attention, — I know not with how much of study — the successive issues of our Proceedings. Towards the close of his life he desired that the Proceedings should be sent to St. Deiniol's Library, which he had founded at Hawarden ; thus giving final testimony to his sense of the salutary nature of our work. From a man so immersed in other thought and labour that work could assuredly claim no more ; from men profoundly and primarily interested in the spiritual world it ought, I
think, to claim no less. t- xir tt ht
' F. W. H. Myers.
S.P.R. Journal^ June 1898.
Apart from the interesting glimpse of Gladstone, this shows the importance he attached to the work of the Society for Psychical Research. This Society has been forty years in existence, but its valuable work is not realized by the public. They confuse it with spiritualist and other associations, and attribute to it lectures and publications by Sir Conan Doyle and other persons.
It was formed by Myers, Gurney, Henry Sidgwick and others at the beginning of 1882 to inquire into, and ascertain if there were any truth in, the alleged psychical phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, spiritualism, theosophy, apparitions, haunted houses, and so on. They
MYERS— WORDSWORTH 383
declared at the outset that they would approach those subjects without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and would investigate the evidence in a strictly scientific spirit. During the forty years that have since elapsed, the investigation has been conducted in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry by able members of the Society, who have devoted their lives to this important work. (Hodgson was one of those members.)
The critical ability displayed by these investigators is remarkable. For example, quite early in the history of the Society they discovered sources of error in testimonj' that all the past generations of lawyers had failed to detect (S.P.R. Proceedings, vi. 381 ; viii. 253). They showed Madame Blavatsky and her " Theosophy " to be a fraud. They un- masked more spiritualist impostors than probably all the rest of the world has done. They have gone to endless trouble in investigating alleged cases of haunted houses, poltergeist, and similar phenomena, and shown they were often due to normal causes. Their patient, careful, and judicial examination of evidence, their methods of testing such evidence, their stringent rules, such as the refusal to publish any state- ment whatever unless it is confirmed by extraneous evidence, their employment of professional conjurers and other adepts to assist them and provide against any possibility of fraud, in fact all their methods of investigation are such as could only be devised by astute, highly experi- enced persons, impartially seeking after truth. I do not know of any instance in their whole history of facts being loosely admitted. On the other hand, I know of instances where, under their strict rules, they have rejected evidence wliich would carry weight with myself, a lawyer of forty years' experience ; but I fully agree that in matters of such tremendous significance the severest precautions are necessary and must be adhered to.
Apart from what are called " occult " matters, the S.P.R. has done splendid work in other directions. They were practically the sole supporters of hypnotism from the outset. Also its members had not to wait for the war to learn of psychotherapy. So far back as 1894 this subject was introduced by Myers in an article on Breuer's method of abreaction. And they have been throughout the leaders in all questions of the Unconscious and in telepathy and other subjects, which are only now becoming gradually known to persons outside the Society.
As I have stated before in this book, the evidence collected (with the same strict methods) by this Society satisfies a large number of the members, including myself, that survival after death is established as a fact.*
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother. From sunshine to the sunless land !
Wordsworth. On the Death of James Hogg.
* Perhaps the briefest way of showing the importance of this Society is to give the names of its Presidents : — Henry Sidgwick, Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., Earl of Balfour, CM., F.R.S., William James, Sir William Crookes, CM., F.R.S., F. W. H. Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., Sir William Barrett, F.R.S., Charles Richet, Rt. Hon. G. W. Balfour, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, H. Arthur Smith, Andrew Lang, Boyd Carpenter, Henri Bergson, Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, Gilbert Murray, L. T. Jacks, Lord Rayleigh, CM., F.R.S., William McDougall, F.R.S., and Dr. T. W. MitcheU.
384 HUGO AND OTHERS
Le roi disait, en la voyant si belle,
A son neveu : " Pour un baiser, pour un sourire d'elle,
Pour un cheveu, Infant Don Ruy, je donnerais I'Espagne
Et le Perou ! " Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne
Me rendrafou.
(The King, seeing her so beautiful, said to his nephew, " For one kiss, for a smile, for one hair of her head, Infante Don Ruy, I would give Spain and Peru." Refrain : " The wind that blows over the inountain will drive tne mad.")
Victor Hugo. Gastibelza.
This charmingly extravagant praise of a lady's beauty recalls the story of another poet. The Eastern conqueror, Timur (or Tamerlane), sent for the Persian poet Hafiz and very angrily asked him, " Art thou he who offered to give my two great cities, Samarkand and Bokhara, for the black mole on thy mistress's cheek ? " Hafiz, however, cleverly escaped trouble by replying, " Yes, sire, I always give freely, and in consequence am now reduced to poverty. May I crave your kind assistance ! " Timur was amused at the reply and made the poet a present. The story, however, is considered doubtful, because Timur did not conquer Persia until some years after 1388, which is supposed to be the date of the poet's death.
I HAVE discovered that a feigned familiarity in great ones, is a note of certain usurpation on the less. For great and popular men feign themselves to be servants of others, to make these slaves to them. So the fisher provides bait for the trout, roach, dace, etc., that they may be food for him.
Ben Jonson. Mores Aulici.
Ci-ctT ma femme, ah ! qu'elle est bien, Pour son repos — et pour le mien.
DU LORENS. Paraphrased as :
Here Abigail my wife doth lie ; She's at peace and so am I.
COLENSO— COLERIDGE 385
God is my witness, what hours of wretchedness I have spent at times, while reading the Bible devoutly from day to day, and reverencing every word of it as the Word of God, when petty contradictions met me which seemed to my reason to conflict with the notion of the absolute historical veracity of every part of Scripture, and which, as I felt, in the study of any other book we should honestly treat as errors or mis-statements, without in the least detracting from the real value of the book ! But in those days, I was taught that it was my duty to fling the suggestion from me at once, " as if it were a loaded shell shot into the fortress of my soul," or to stamp out desperately, as with an iron heel, each spark of honest doubt, which God's own gift, the love of truth, had kindled in my bosom ... I thank God that I was not able long to throw dust in the eyes of my own mind, and do violence to the love of truth in this way.
Bishop Colenso. Pentateuch.
(See G. W. Cox's Life of Colenso, i. 493.) Colenso 's quotation, " as if it were a loaded shell," etc., is from Bishop Wilberforce. Cox mentions elsewhere that in one of Wilberforce 's published sermons he speaks of a young man of great promise dying in darkness and despair, because he had indulged in doubt as to whether the sun and moon stood still at Joshua's bidding ! Who, that went through the experiences of those days, can ever forget them ? We had been taught that we " must believe " every word of the Bible to be divinely inspired or else be eternally damned. And yet we realized that such belief was absolutely impossible !
The horror with which Bishop Colenso's revelations were received in orthodox circles would to-day be scarcely credible, and not until after the eighties were the results of the Higher Criticism generally accepted.
Let a man be once fully persuaded that there is no differ- ence between the two positions, " The Bible contains the religion revealed by God," and " Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God " ; and that whatever can be said of the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said of each and every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself, — and I no longer wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the Copernican system as incompatible therewith ; or who ex- claim, " Wonderful ! " when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old woman to the gallows in honour of the
2 c
386 COLERIDGE AND OTHERS
Witch of Endor. ... I challenge these divines and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief in the modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their and Wesley's doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures.
S. T. Coleridge.
There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake ; but very few indeed — -and scarcely one woman — love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of the persecution of the truth — the pretext and motive of in- quisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.
S. T. Coleridge.
Table Talk.
The old creeds grew out of human nature as genuinely as weeds and flowers out of the earth. It is well enough that the gardener, whose business it is to pull them up, should despise them as pigweed, wormwood, chickweed, shad- blossom ; so they are, out of their place ; but the botanist picks up the same and recognizes them as Ambrosia, Stel- laria, Amelanchalia, Amaranth. Natura nihil agit frustra. Let us coax each to yield its last bud.
Moncure D. Conway.
Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon maitre, Un certain animal difficile a connoitre, Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal.
(A woman, look you, is a certain animal hard to understand and much inclined to mischief.)
Moliere. Le Depit amour eux.
BLAKE— SHAKESPEARE 387
THE LAND OF DREAMS
Awake, awake, my little boy ! Thou wast thy mother's only joy ; Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep ? Awake ! thy father does thee keep.
" O, what land is the Land of Dreams ?
What are its mountains, and what are its streams ?
0 father ! I saw my mother there, Among the lilies by waters fair.
" Among the lambs, clothed in white.
She walked with her Thomas in sweet delight.
1 wept for joy, like a dove I mourn ;
0 ! when shall I again return ? "
Dear child, I also by pleasant streams
Have wandered all night in the Land of Dreams ;
But, though calm and warm the waters wide,
1 could not get to the other side.
*' Father, O Father ! what do we here In this land of unbelief and fear ? The Land of Dreams is better far Above the light of the morning star."
William Blake.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues ; nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.
Shakespeare. Measure for Measure.
" Issues," purposes ; " scruple," the least possible quantity ; " determines," assigns to ; " use," interest — here the " interest " on Nature's " loan " is the spiritual good arising from the exercise by the debtor of the virtue lent to him.
388 EMERSON— SMITH
BRAHMA
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near ;
Shadow and sunlight are the same ; The vanished gods to me appear ;
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out ;
When me they fly, I am the wings ; I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven ;
But thou, meek lover of the good !
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
R. W. Emerson.
It seems impossible for a Western mind to clearly comprehend Hindu religion and philosophy, but they must contain elements of truth. Even as regards metempsychosis, the more limited theory that we have had a previous existence — the subject of Wordsworth's ode on " Intimations of Immortality " — seems to correspond with certain of our own experi- ences. Also as Professor Davids pointed out, a belief held by Buddha and Plato, the two greatest ethical thinkers of antiquity, cannot be summarily dismissed as inherently absurd.
For the Parsons are dumb dogs, turning round. And scratching their hole in the warmest ground. And laying them down in the sun to wink. Drowsing, and dreaming, and thinking they think. As they mumble the marrowless bones of morals, Like toothless children gnawing their corals. Gnawing their corals to soothe their gums With a kind of watery thought that comes.
W. C. Smith. Borland Hall.
WARNER— SMITH 389
Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others ? The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine ; but you never can put beans in poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. Corn — which, in my garden, grows alongside the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of superior- ity— is, however, the child of song. It " waves " in all literature.
Charles Dudley Warner. My Summer in a Garden.
Mr. Yeats has, however, rescued the bean from its invidious position (The Lake Isle of Innisfree) : —
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made ; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
Lady Middleton, a friend of old days in Adelaide and now in England, reminded me of these lines. But in preparing this (fourth) edition I thought so serious a subject should have more attention. I have accordingly looked up the Nezv English Dictionary and obtained good results. I learn that an unknown poet writing about 1325 says, " No rich man dredeth God The worth of a bean " ; and Langland in Piers Plowtnan says of wicked woman, " To be corsed in consistorie " (cursed in the Bishop's Court) " she counted noght a bene." In Chaucer's Merchant's Tale we learn that a " woman thirty yere of age ... is but bene-straw " — such a shrivelled old witch she must have been at that age in those days ! The bean is also found in poetry, quoted in Cotgrave and appearing in Lydgate's poems, Thomson's Seasons, and Morris's Earthly Paradise. As regards " the highest sort of prose " Warner must have forgotten Jack and the Beanstalk ! Haliburton {Sam Slick) also describes a man as " a bean-pole of a lawyer " (just as we used to call people in New South Wales " Cornstalks "). When we further re- member that it is a test of intellectual ability " to know how many blue beans make five," it becomes finally conclusive that the bean needed no such rehabilitation as Warner supposed.
It is not the essayist's duty to inform, to build pathways through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incident- ally he may do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his duty, and should not be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily created to sing, although a whole choir of them may be baked in pies and brought to table ; they were born to make music, although they may incident- ally stay the pangs of vulgar hunger. . . . The essay should be pure hterature as the poem is pure literature.
Alexander Smith. On the Writing of Essays.
390 MYERS
Yet in my hid soul must a voice reply
Which knows not which may seem the viler gain. To sleep for ever or be born again,
The blank repose or drear eternity.
A solitary thing it were to die
So late begotten and so early slain,
With sweet life withered to a passing pain.
Till nothing anywhere should still be I. Yet if for evermore I must convey These weary senses thro' an endless day
And gaze on God with these exhausted eyes, I fear that howsoe'er the seraphs play My life shall not be theirs nor I as they.
But homeless in the heart of Paradise.
F. W. H. Myers. Immortality.
This is from Myers' Poems, 1870, and is one of a pair of sonnets. I do not quote the first in full because its meaning seems obscure, but the last six lines on the shortness of life as compared with eternity are as follow :
Lo, all that age is as a speck of sand
Lost on the long beach where the tides are free,
And no man metes it in his hollow hand Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be ;
At ebb it lies forgotten on the land And at full tide forgotten in the sea.
In the second sonnet quoted above, Myers is not m.erely referring to the Biblical account of the future life in heaven as consisting in endless worship — which, if taken literally instead of symbolically, would certainly mean a " drear eternity." The suggestion is that there miust be some equivalent to work, thought, activity, progress, and definite aims to make eternal life preferable to annihilation. (I am reminded here of a curious statement made by the great Adam Smith, " What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience ! ") Myers ultimately came to the definite conclusion that the future life will be one of continued progress.
His name, Myers, is purely English, not Jewish. This gifted man was not only a fine poet, but also an important essayist and a remarkable classical scholar. He, Hodgson, and others formed the small band of able men who threw everything else aside and devoted their lives to Psychical Research. Myers' best poems appeared in The Renewal of Youth and other Poems, 1882, and it was no doubt a loss to poetry that during the remaining eighteen years of his life he added little, if anything, more. However, he and Hodgson considered that the work to which they had devoted themselves was of the very highest importance. His monumental work, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, was left incomplete at his death, but Hodgson, with Miss Alice Johnson's assistance, completed and edited it.
Myers was quite satisfied before his death, in 1901, that the evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research had already established in
WADDINGTON— COLERIDGE 391
itself the fact of survival after death. But the interesting fact is that during nineteen years since he " passed over to the other side " he has apparently been the principal agent in adding greatly to that evidence. There is ever}' reason to believe that Myers has personally been com- municating and arranging and directing much of the evidence that has since been given.
MORS ET VITA
We know not yet what life shall be,
What shore beyond earth's shore be set ; What grief awaits us, or what glee, We know not yet.
Still, somewhere in sweet converse met,
Old friends, we say, beyond death's sea Shall meet and greet us, nor forget
Those days of yore, those years when we
Were loved and true — but will death let Our eyes the longed-for vision see ? We know not yet.
Samuel Waddington.
There is abundant evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research that friends do constantly meet on the other side. In one of their many convincing cases, The Ear of Dionysius, the late Dr. A. W. Verrall and Professor Butcher are clearly seen working out together an exceedingly clever and intricate scheme to prove their personal identity and survival. (It is a mistake to suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond is in any way typical of the best evidence collected by the Society. Although naturally very convincing to Sir Oliver and the family, it has no great evidential value for the outside world — and in this respect is far inferior to such water-tight cases as, for example, Yhe Ear oj Dionysius.)
( ) is one of those men who go far to shake my faith
in a future state of existence ; I mean, on account of the difficulty of knowing where to place him. I could not bear to roast him ; he is not so bad as that comes to ; but then, on the other hand, to have to sit down with such a fellov/ in the very lowest pothouse of heaven is utterly inconsistent with the belief of that place being a place of happiness for me.
S. T. Coleridge. Table Talk.
392 CORY— SWINBURNE
MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH
You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will ;
But sweet, sweet is this human life. So sweet, I fain would breathe it still ;
Your chilly stars I can forgo.
This warm kind world is all I know.
You say there is no substance here,
One great reality above : Back from that void I shrink in fear,
And child-like hide myself in love : Show me what angels feel. Till then, I cling, a mere weak man, to men.
You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins
To sexless souls, ideal quires.
Unwearied voices, wordless strains :
My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend's remembered tones.
Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away ;
All beauteous things for which we live By laws of time and space decay.
But oh, the very reason why
I clasp them, is because they die.
William (Johnson) Cory.
Mimnermus was a fine Greek elegiac poet— about 630-600 B.C.
Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous. To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death ;
But the flower of their souls he shall not take away to shame us, Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath ;
For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell.
Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.
Swinburne. In Memory of Barry Cornwall.
KANT— JEFFERIES 393
There are two things that fill my soul with a holy rever- ence and an ever-growing wonder : the spectacle of the starry sky, that virtually annihilates us as physical beings ; and the moral law which raises us to infinite dignity as intelligent agents.
The ought expresses a kind of necessity, a kind of connec- tion of actions with their grounds or reasons, such as is to be found nowhere else in the whole natural world. For of the natural world our understanding can know nothing except what is, what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that anything in it ought to be other than it actually was, is, or will be. In fact, so long as we are considering the course of nature, the ought has no meaning whatever. We can as little inquire what ought to happen in nature as we can inquire what properties a circle ought to have.
Immanuel Kant.
The first quotation (from the Kritik of Practical Reason) is often rendered in such words as these : " Two things fill my soul with awe — the starry heavens in the still night, and the sense of duty in man."
One summer evening sitting by my window I watched for the first star to appear, knowing the position of the brightest in the southern sky. The dusk came on, grew deeper, but the star did not shine. By and by, other stars less bright appeared, so that it could not be the sunset which obscured the expected one. Finally, I considered that I must have mistaken its position, when suddenly a puff of air blew through the branch of a pear tree which overhung the window, a leaf moved, and there was the star behind the leaf.
At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing at the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful star shines clearly ; here a constellation is hidden by a branch ; a universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organon is required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which may be removed and a real void ; when to cease to look in one direction, and to work in another. . . . There are infinities to be known, but they are hidden by a leaf.
Richard Jefferies. The Story of my Heart.
394 TENNYSON AND OTHERS
And here the Singer for his Art
Not all in vain may plead " The song that nerves a nation's heart Is in itself a deed."
Tennyson. Charge of the Heavy Brigade.
I KNEW a very wise man that believed that, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.
Fletcher of Saltoun. Letter to Montrose and others.
What would the wise man have said of " It's a long, long way to Tipperary " ?
De par le Roy defense a Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu.
(By order of the King, God is forbidden To work miracles in this place.)
Anon.
The teaching of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) led to an important evangelical movement in the Roman Catholic Church. When, however, the Jansenists became subjected to persecution, the usual result followed that numbers of them became fanatics. The more corrupt the French Court and Society became, the more frenzied became this fanaticism. In 1727 the Jansenist deacon, Paris, a man of very holy life, was buried in the St. Medard churchyard, and shortly afterwards miracles were said to take place at his tomb. In consequence large crowds of convidsion- naires assembled there and very shocking scenes were enacted, men and women in hysterical and epileptic fits and ecstatic delirium, eating the earth of the grave and inflicting frightful tortures on themselves and each other. When in 1732 the Court interposed and closed the churchyard some wit wrote the above couplet on the gate.
Art — which I may style the love of loving, rage Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things For truth's sake, whole and sole — nor any good, truth brings The knowcr, seer, feeler beside.
R. Browning. Fifine at the Fair.
CALVERLEY 395
FIRST* LOVE
O MY earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill !
Will a swallow — or a swift, or some bird — Fly to her and say, I love her still ?
Say my life's a desert drear and arid.
To its one green spot I aye recur : Never, never — although three times married —
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.
No, mine own ! though early forced to leave you. Still my heart was there where first we met ;
In those " Lodgings with an ample sea-view," Which were, forty years ago, " To Let,"
There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun, — who (so they say) beholdest Everything, — hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.
There she sat — so near me, yet remoter Than a star — a blue-eyed bashful imp :
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.
And I loved her, and our troth we plighted On the morrow by the shingly shore :
In a fortnight to be disunited By a bitter fate for evermore.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed !
To be young once more, and bite my thumb At the world and all its cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.
Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed. Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn :
Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn : —
396 CALVERLEY AND OTHERS
Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,
That sweet mite with whom I loved to play ?
Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper, That bright being who was always gay ?
Yes — she has at least a dozen wee things !
Yes — I see her darning corduroys, Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things
For a howling herd of hungry boys,
In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil !
But at intervals she thinks, I know, Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.
O my earliest love, still unforgotten.
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue !
Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton To another as I did to you !
C. S. Calverley.
It isn't raining rain to me,
It's raining daffodils. In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of grey engulf the day
And overwhelm the town : It isn't raining rain to me.
It's raining roses down.
Robert Loveman.
Over the winter glaciers
I see the summer glow. And through the wild-piled snowdrift
The warm rosebuds below.
R. W. Emerson. The World- Soul.
Fmcrson is always an optimist.
OLDYS— ELIOT 397
ON A FLY DRINKING OUT OF A CUP OF ALE
Busy, curious, thirsty fly. Drink with me, and drink as I, Freely welcome to my cup ; Couldst thou sip and sip it up, Make the most of life you may ; Life is short and wears away.
Both alike, both thine and mine. Hasten quick to their decline ; Thine's a summer, mine's no more. Though repeated to three-score : Three-score summers, when they're gone. Will appear as short as one.
William Oldys.
This was first published in 1732 as " The Fly — An Anachreontick " and Mr. Gosse in the Eticy. Brit, gave the first six Hnes as an example of an Anacreontic. He attributed the poem to Oldys, but the authorship is doubtful. (See Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 21.) Vincent Bourne, in a copy of his Poeniatia, 1734, in my possession, has written out and signed the two verses, entitling them " A Song," the last line of each verse being repeated as a refrain. From this it might appear that he claimed the authorship. In 1743 he published a Latin version of the poem. Vincent Bourne, a beautiful Latinist, was much loved by his pupils, Charles Lamb and Cowper, who each translated into English some of his fine Latin verses.
" Go, go, poor devil," quoth my Uncle Toby [addressing a fly that had buzzed about his nose all dinner-time], " get thee gone, — why should I hurt thee ? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me " {Tristram Shandy, ch. xlviii.).
But, alas, hygiene says, " Kill that Ry ! "
It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, where it will find its world and paradise all in one, and never have a presentiment of the dry bank. The fretted summer shade, and stillness, and the gentle breathing of some loved life near — it would be paradise to us all, if eager thought, the strong angel with the implacable brow, had not long since closed the gates.
George Eliot. Romola.
398. LONGFELLOW AND OTHERS
Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee, Saying : " Here is a story book
Thy Father has written for thee."
" Come, wander with me," she said,
" Into regions yet untrod ; And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail. She would sing a more wonderful song.
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
Longfellow Agassiz.
Place thyself, O lovely fair ! Where a thousand mirrors are ; Though a thousand faces shine, 'Tis but one — and that is thine.
Then the Painter's skill allow, Who could frame so fair a brow. What are lustrous eyes of flame. What are cheeks, the rose that shame, What are glances wild and free. Speech, and shape, and voice — but He .''
MOASI.
L. S. Costello's translation.
And Christians love in the turf to lie,
Not in watery graves to be — Nay, the very fishes would sooner die
On the land than in the sea.
Thomas Hood.
PUTTENHAM 399
As well Poets as Poesie are despised, and the name become, of honourable infamous, subject to scorne and derision, and rather a reproach than a prayse to any that useth it : for commonly whoso is studious in the Arte or shewes himselfe excellent in it, they call him in disdayne a. phantasticall : and a light-headed or phantasticall man (by conversion) they call a Poet. ... Of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well scene in many laudable sciences, and especially in Poesie, it is so come to passe that they have no courage to write ; and if they have, yet are they loath to be a-known of their skill. So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and suppressed it agayne, or else suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it : as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seeme learned, and to shew himselfe amorous of any good Arte.
George Puttenham.
The Arte of English Poesie, 1589.
We do not always remember in what disheartening conditions the great EHzabethan Hterature was produced — the inferior position of the writer, his wretched remuneration and his dependence on patrons. It is strange to think that it was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman to write poetry or to acknowledge its authorship — or apparently to show proficiency in other arts or sciences. Such men as Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh were exceptions. The curious fact is that Puttenham himself (assuming, as is probable, that he was the author) issued this important book anonymously. He had, however, acknowledged his Partheniades ten years before.
As Arber points out, the above passage, and another reference by Puttenham to the same subject, indicate that, at least in the earlier Eliza- bethan period, much talent inust have been lost and much literature never reached the printing press. The same feeling that then existed is seen again in Locke's time (see p. 209), and, if we consider a moment, we shall find that it has persisted to some extent to the present day. Think how miserably inadequate is the attention paid to poetry in our educational system, the methods employed being, indeed, calculated to make the student loathe the subject. When I was young we had as a school text- book Palgrave's Golden Treasury — a divine gift to us in those days. As we had a sympathetic teacher, we read it as poetry, and the consequence was that I and other boys loved the book and knew it practically by heart from cover to cover.
It is surprising that Englishmen neglect the one great talent which they possess. What distinguishes them above all other nations is their superiority in the higher imaginative faculties. Curiously enough, they do not recognize this, but pride themselves upon being shrewd, common- sense, practical business-men, " a nation of shopkeepers " — although their entire history shows the contrary. That history is epitomized in such an expression as " England the Unready," or, in the King's appeal, " Wake up, England ! " That they are idealists and dreamers can be shown by numberless facts. For example, what have they supported in the sacred name of Liberty ? The laissez-faire doctrine, that law is an
400 E. B. BROWNING
infringement of freedom, and, therefore, that cruelty, abuses, and absurdities must not be interfered with ; the theory that England should be the home of freedom, and, therefore, that the scum of Europe shall infect the nation ; the " Palladium of English Liberty," Trial by Jury, which means the appointment of sets of inexperienced, irresponsible, and easily-biased judges, one or more of each set being quite often open to corruption ; the economic policy, which, because it is falsely labelled Free Trade, becomes a fetish against which no practical objection must be urged and no lesson learned from the experience of other countries. On the other hand, our experience in the present war is a proof that the imaginative faculties are more powerful than mere intellect : for, when the Englishman bends his energies to the business of war, he soon sur- passes the German for all his fifty years' preparation.
That the English are essentially an imaginative race is shown in their initiative and enterprise, their love of travel and adventure which have created the British Empire ; and is proved concretely by the fact that England has produced the greatest wealth of poetry which the world has ever seen. This great treasure, which should be employed for encourag- ing the highest of all faculties, is allowed to lie idle. The fact seems to be overlooked that the study of poetry is not only of enormous intrinsic value in knowledge and culture, but that it is the finest of all mental training. It provides the main advantages claimed for the study of the classics. By analysis and paraphrase it gives knowledge of language, appreciation of style, practice in literary expression, and, above all things, precision of thought. In my opinion, poetry should form an essential part of education, beginning in childhood and continuing throughout the Arts course. It may be found that there are intelligentpersons who are incapable of appreciating poetry, and the subject may, therefore, not be made a compulsory one. But my conviction is that, where men imagine themselves to be thus deficient, it is the result of a bad system of education. There is great truth in Stevenson's fine essay, " The Lantern- Bearers."
The Earth goeth on the Earth, glistening like gold, The Earth goeth to the Earth, sooner than it wold. The Earth builds on the Earth castles and towers — The Earth says to the Earth, all shall be ours.
Epitaph^ 17th Century,
An inscription on a tomb in Melrose Abbey, but said to be a version of lines by a fourteenth century poet, William Billing.
She never found fault with you, never implied Your wrong by her right ; and yet men at her side Grew nobler, girls purer . . . None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall ; They knelt more to God than they used — that was all.
E. B. Browning. My Kate.
CARLYLE AND OTHERS 401
All true Work is religion ; and whatsoever religion is not Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will ; with me it shall have no harbour.
Carlyle.
Reward.
Deep, deep are loving eyes, Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet ; And the point is paradise Where their glances meet.
R. W. Emerson. The Daemonic and the Celestial Love.
The whole earth The beauty wore of promise — that which sets The budding rose above the rose full-blown.
Wordsworth. The Prelude, Bk. XI.
Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those, who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high again.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Transformation .
Go, wing thy flight from star to star, From world to luminous world, as far As the universe spreads its flaming wall : Take all the pleasures of all the spheres. And multiply each through endless years, One minute of Heaven is worth them all.
Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh.
A Celtic flight of imagination.
2D
402 BROWNING AND OTHERS
. . . As I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth, straight as stone can point,
And let the bed-clothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work.
R. Browning. The Bishop orders his Tomb.
This and the next four quotations and others through the book are word-pictures.
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle. Led the lorn traveller up the path.
Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle ; And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlour steps collected, Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say, —
" Our master knows you — you're expected."
W. M. Praed. The Vicar.
As when a Gryphon through the wilderness With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold.
Milton. Paradise Lost.
The Griffin, with head and wings of a bird and body of a Hon, is pursuing, " half on foot, half flying," the one-eyed Arimaspian, who is fleeing on horseback with the purloined gold. The Griffins guarded mines of gold and hidden treasure (Herodotus, iv. 27).
. . . Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of Hfe or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire.
Shelley. Hellas.
TENNYSON AND OTHERS 403
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot.
Tennyson. The Lady of Shalott.
And on we roll — the year goes by
As year by year must ever go, And castles built of bits of sky
Must fall and lose their wondrous glow ;
But Hope with his wings is not yet old. While every year like a summer day
Ends and begins with grey and gold, Begins and ends with gold and grey.
Richard Hodgson.
When none need broken meat. How can our cake be sweet ? When none want flannel and coals, How shall we save our souls ?
Oh dear ! oh dear ! The Christian virtues will disappear.
Charlotte Perkins Stetson,
Since we parted yester eve,
I do love thee, love, believe. Twelve times dearer, twelve hours longer. One dream deeper, one night stronger. One sun surer — thus much more
Than I loved thee, love, before.
Owen Meredith (Earl of Lytton). Love Fancies.
Beauty is worse than wine — it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.
J. G. Zimmermann.
404 WREN
Wonder of highest Art ! He that will reach
A Streine for thee, had need his Muse should stretch,
Till flying to the Shades, she learne what Veine
Of Orpheus call'd Eurydice againe ;
Or learne of her Apollo, 'till she can,
As well as Singer, prove Physitian :
And then she may without suspension sing,
And, authorised, harp upon thy String.
Discordant string ! for sure thy soule (unkind
To its own Bowells Issue) could not find
One Breast in Consort to its jarring stroake
'Mongst piteous Femall Organs, therefore broke
Translations due [to] Law, from fate repriev'd,
And struck a Unison to her selfe, and liv'd.
Was't this ? or was it, that the Goatish Flow Of thy Adulterous veines (from thence let goe By second Aesculapius his hand) Dissolv'd the Parcae's Adamantine Band,
And made Thee Artist's Glory, Shame of Fate, Triumph of Nature, Virbius his Mate.
Christ. Wren, Gent. Com. of Wad. Coll.
These lines are particularly interesting because we know so little of that great genius, Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723). We do know, however, that, apart from his architecture, he was a boy-prodigy in geometr}', astronomy, and ph^^sics, and continued to do important scientific work until i656. He was the leading scientist of his generation except, of course, Newton — who spoke very highly of him in his Principia. The Great Fire of 1666 diverted the rest of Wren's life to architecture ; otherwise he would have been perhaps a greater scientist than he was an architect.
A curious fact, in face of what we now know about the propagandist Germans, is that they stole Wren's discoveries and inventions and passed them off as their own !
In 1 65 1, when Wren wrote this poem at eighteen or nineteen years of age, he was a Gentleman Commoner at Wadham College, Oxford, and had already done important work in science. On December 14, 1650, Anne Greene, a girl twenty-two years of age, was hanged at Oxford for the murder of her new-born child. At the hanging the women present threw themselves on the body, pulling and jerking it. This was done, of course, in execration of the girl's crime, but the Diet, of Nat. Biog. accepts the absurd story that it was done at the girl's request in order to expedite her death ! However, the girl when taken down was found to show signs of life, and after long and careful attention frona the physicians recovered and was pardoned. The episode caused a sensation, and a pamphlet, Newes from the Dead, was
WREN— BLAKE 405
published at Oxford in 1651, containing a number of verses on the subject, including this one of Wren's.
The poem is not easy to follow, but the outstanding feature is its grim play of words on the hanging-rope. " Wonder of highest Art " refers to the success of the physicians in resuscitating the girl. The distinction was drawn at that time between Art and Nature, Art being the work of man (see pp. 20-21). " Streine " and "stretch" are two puns on the hanging. The Muse is to learn by what music Orpheus brought Eurydice back from the underworld as Anne Greene also had been recovered from death.
The next four lines seem to me obscure. " Suspension" is another musical term, meaning the discord caused by prolonging a note or chord into the following chord — and it is, of course, a pun on the " suspension " or hanging of the girl. And in " harp upon thy string," the string is the hanging-rope. But why the Muse, learning froin Apollo the art of physic, will be able without " suspension " to " harp upon thy string," I cannot clearly understand.
The remainder is, however, fairly plain. The rope is called a " discordant string," because it could not wake sympathy among the woinen " by its jarring stroake." The soul of the girl, who had killed her baby, is " unkind to its own Bowells Issue." " Translations " is probably another musical term with some sense of " removal," the translating or removal of the girl to Hades. Having failed to wake pity in the breasts of the women, her soul escapes from the judgment pronounced by law and effects a " unison " (another musical term) with herself and lives.
Or, says the poem, was it that the girl's " goatish " blood was too strong for the Fates ? The goddess of prostitutes was Aphrodite Pandemos, whose symbol was the goat — and the goat's blood was supposed to be exceedingly strong.
" Artist's Glory," the physicians being the " Artists " ; " Shame of Fate," because Fate had been overcome ; " Triumph of Nature," Nature (again distinguished from Art) was the innate strength of the girl's blood ; " Virbius his Mate," Virbius, whom Sir J. G. Frazer has introduced to us in his Golden Bough, was a King of Aricia whom Diana had restored to life.
O Rose, thou art sick ! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howUng storm,
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy ; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
William Blake.
4o6 CRASHAW— SUCKLING
Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.
(The modest Nymph saw her God and blushed.)
The conscious water saw its God and blushed.
Richard Crashaw.
Referring to the miracle of Cana. Both Latin and English epigrams are by Crashaw. In the former the water is personified by its Nymph.
The maid (and thereby hangs a tale) For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce : No grape, that's kindly ripe, could be So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half so full of juice.
Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light : But O, she dances such a way ! No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
Her cheeks so rare a white was on, No daisy makes comparison
(Who sees them is undone) ; For streaks of red were mingled there. Such as are on a Catherine pear.
The side that's next the sun.
Her lips were red, and one was thin Compar'd to that was next her chin,
(Some bee had stung it newly), But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.
Sir John Suckling. Ballad upon a Wedding.
" Some bee had stung it." //, of course, means the full underlip, as against the less full upperlip.
WHITMAN AND OTHERS 407
A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER
A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated ;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding.
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself ;
Ever unreeling them^ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space.
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, — seeking the
spheres, to connect them ; Till the bridge you will need, be form'd — till the ductile
anchor hold ; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my
Soul.
Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass.
The Dahlia you brought to our Isle Your praises for ever shall speak 'Mid gardens as sweet as your smile And colours as bright as your cheek.
Lord Holland.
A pretty compliment to his wife, who in 1814 had introduced the dahlia into England from Spain. Previous attempts had failed (Liechtenstein's Holland House).
C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux.
A. DE Musset.
Quoted by Austin Dobson : —
. . , And you, whom we all so admire, Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new ! One word in your ear : There were Critics before . . . And the man who plants cabbages imitates, too !
The Future, that bright land which swims In western glory, isles and streams and bays. Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze.
George Eliot. Jubal.
4o8 BROWN AND OTHERS
Vox, et praeterea nihil.
(Voice and nothing more.)
Proverb.
Plutarch, in his Apophthegm, Lacon. Incert. xiii., says that a man after plucking a nightingale and finding little flesh on it, said (pdiva r6 ris eaal, Kai ov^ev aXXo, " Thou art voice and nothing more."
No doubt this was the origin of the saying ; but there is also the story from Ovid (Met. iii. 365-401). The mountain nymph, Echo, used to engage Hera in talk, while Zeus played with the other nymphs. Hera discovered this, and changed her into an echo, a being who had no control over her tongue ; so that she could not speak until some one else had spoken, and could not keep silent when some one else spoke. Echo fell in love with Narcissus, and, as her love was not returned, she pined away until nothing remained of her but her voice.
The saying is now used in Hamlet's sense, " Words, words, words ! "
(I owe the reference to Plutarch to King's Classical and Foreign Quotations.)
Campbell the poet, v/ho had always a bad razor, I suppose, and was late of rising, said he believed the man of civilization who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain in littles in shaving every day than a woman with a large family had from her lyings-in.
John Brown. Horae Subsecivae, i. 457.
See also Don jfuafi, XIV. 23, 24 — but whether Campbell or Byron was the originator of this profound observation I do not know.
Called on the W. Molesworths. He is threatened with total blindness, and his excellent wife is learning to work in the dark in preparation for a darkened chamber. What things wives are ! What a spirit of joyous suffering, con- fidence, and love was incarnated in Eve ! 'Tis a pity they should eat apples.
Caroline Fox's Journals.
Nature, and nature's laws, lay hid in night : God said, " Let Newton be ! " and all was light.
Pope.
MYERS 409
Such is the ascendancy which the great works of the Greek imagination have estabHshed over the mind of man that . . . he is tempted to ignore the real superiority of our own reHgion, morahty, civiHzation, and to re-shape in fancy an adult world on an adolescent ideal,
F. W. H. Myers. Essay on Greek Oracles.
That early burst of admiration for Virgil of which I have already spoken was followed by a growing passion for one after another of the Greek and Latin poets. From ten to sixteen I lived much in the inward recital of Homer, Aeschy- lus, Lucretius, Horace, and Ovid. The reading of Plato's Gorgias at fourteen was a great event ; but the study of the Phaedo at sixteen effected upon me a kind of conversion. At that time, too, I returned to my worship of Virgil, whom Homer had for some years thrust into the background. I gradually wrote out Bucolics, Georgics, Aeneid from memory. . . .
The discovery at seventeen, in an old school book, of the poems of Sappho, whom till then I had only known by name, brought an access of intoxicating joy. Later on, the solitary decipherment of Pindar made another epoch of the same kind. From the age of sixteen to twenty-three there was no influence in my life comparable to Helle7iism in the fullest sense of the word. That tone of thought came to me natur- ally ; the classics were but intensifications of my own being. They drew from me and fostered evil as well as good ; they might aid imaginative impulse and detachment from sordid interests, but they had no check for pride.
When pushed thus far, the " Passion of the Past " must needs wear away sooner or later into an unsatisfied pain. In 1864 I travelled in Greece. I was mainly alone ; nor were the traveller's facts and feelings mapped out for him then as now. Ignorant as I was, according to modern standards, yet my emotions were all my own : and few men can have drunk that departed loveliness into a more passionate heart. It was the life of about the sixth century before Christ, on the isles of the Aegean, which drew me most ; — that intensest and most unconscious bloom of the Hellenic spirit. Here alone in the Greek story do women play their due part with men. What might the Greeks have made of the female sex
410 MYERS
had they continued to care for it ! Then it was that Mim- nermus sang : —
Tts Be /Bios, Ti SI Tepiri'ov arep ^(^pvaeij'i ' A(jjpo8iT ij'i ; TiOvati^v, ore /xoi fxrjKeTt. ravra /xeAot. *
Then it was that Praxilla's cry rang out across the narrow seas, that call to fellowship, reckless and lovely with stirring joy. " Drink with me ! " she cried, " be young along with me ! Love with me ! wear with me the garland crown ! Mad be thou with my madness ; be wise when I am wise ! "
I looked through my open porthole close upon the Lesbian shore. There rose the heathery promontories, and waves lapped upon the rocks in dawning day : — lapped upon those rocks where Sappho's feet had trodden ; broke beneath the heather on which had sat that girl unknown, nearness to whom made a man the equal of the gods. I sat in Mytilene, to me a sacred city, between the hill-crest and the sunny bay. . . .
Gazing thence on Delos, on the Cyclades, and on those straits and channels of purple sea, I felt that nowise could I come closer still ; never more intimately than thus could embrace that vanished beauty. Alas for an ideal which roots itself in the past ! That longing cannot be allayed.
F. W. H. Myers. Fragments of Prose and Poetry.
In the second of these quotations, the wonderful record of Myers in classical study will first be observed. If we did not know him to be absolutely trustworthy, we would find it practically impossible to believe his statement. Imagine, for instance, a boy of sixteen learning by heart the whole of Virgil for his own pleasure ! However, anything vouched for by Myers must be accepted as literally true.
Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to a subject quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and important, namely, the distortion of truth caused by extreme classical enthusiasm. f It is perfectly easy to see how such enthusiasm arises. Greek art and litera- ture are not only intrinsically wonderful and valuable, but, seeing that they were produced by a comparatively small population in a barbaric age, they constitute the greatest marvel in the history of the world. Every- thing tends to excite enthusiasm for this remote, alien, primitive, but
* " What is life, what gladness without the golden Aphrodite ? May death be mine when these joys no longer please me ! "
t In the notes on the Greeks in this book it was necessary to keep to one State and a particular period. Greece consisted of a number of States of which Attica was one, with Athens as its centre. It comprised only seven hundred square miles, and, allowing for its colonies, would be about half the size of Lancashire. Its great and brilliant period corre- sponded roughly with the middle half of the fifth century B.C. A large proportion of the finest Greek art and literature was produced by this tiny state in that short period. This is the miracle of antiquity. It is to Attica during this period that my remarks mainly refer.
The reader will not be able to follow this note properly, unless he has read the other notes on the Greeks (see Subject-Index).
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most remarkable people. I need not speak of the art in which they stand unrivalled throughout the ages. As regards their literature, apart from its intrinsic excellence and the beauty of the language in which it is written, it has an additional fascination and charm, because it is the speech and song of the infancy of the world. Through it we see into the mind and realize the life of the most interesting race that ever lived. Possess- ing astounding intellect and intense originality, they were nevertheless the children of nature. Their earth was peopled with fauns and nymphs, their gods lived and moved and had their being in every natural object — and they had very little of our ideas of right and wrong. They had nothing of our wide knowledge and experience, yet they constructed a world of life and thought for themselves. It is absorbingly interesting to read their beautiful poetry, fine literature, and philosophic thought, bearing in mind that it was produced in the ignorant childhood and paganism of the human race, over two thousand years ago. And one of the most astonishing things about them is that essential product of civilization, a keen sense of humour. So curiously " modern " is their literature that the writers speak to us across the ages with as vivid a voice as if they were still alive. No other primitive race has been able to leave us any such adequate conception of its life and thought. More- over, we can never forget how the Greek arose out of the tomb, where he had slept for many centuries, to preside at the re-birth of our own modern world — that emergence of Europe from medieval darkness which we call the Renaissance. It was largely Greek art and literature that stimulated the mental activity of the world and made us what we are to-day.
Very great enthusiasm is, therefore, warranted in the Greek student — but there comes a point where enthusiasm may become pure fanaticism, and lead to that most deadly of all things, the perversion of the truth.
In the above quotations two Greek poems are quoted, and another is referred to in the lines I have italicized. The first two * refer to vice, which to us is revolting and criminal, but to the whole Greek nation was natural, and recognized by law. The third expresses even more revolt- ing passion. It will be seen, therefore, that Myers, in order to illustrate the " departed loveliness " of Greek life made a strange choice of quota- tions (which also, standing alone, would give a false notion of classic Greek poetry).
Seeing that Myers was one of the purest-minded of men, what is the explanation of this very remarkable fact .'' The explanation is simply that Myers was a classical enthusiast. He had forgotten the warning he himself gave in the first quotation. It is absolutely amazing how such an enthusiast, however brilliant a scholar and capable a man in other respects, can blind himself to the most obvious facts where anything Greek is concerned. It is very certain that Myers read into each poem a perfectly innocent meaning — and he would not be alone in that respect. Take, for instance, the third quotation, which is from Sappho. In my youth the great majority of classical men appeared to have convinced thetnselves that a poem of terribly fierce passion was an expression of pure friendship ! Even our leading reference-book. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, gave the same absurd view until about 1877.^ However, we must get away from this ugly subject and seek further illustrations elsewhere.
This perverted enthusiasm seems to permeate all books of the last
♦ The second is not by Praxilla. It is to be found in Atlienaeus (xv. 695), and is written in the masculine. Most curiously tlie same mistake is made in Itie Parnasse des Dames, an eighteenth century French book in which Myers would not have been in the least interested.
t One at least of the Sappho enthusiasts still survives. See Professor T. G. Tucker's Sappho.
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fifty or sixty years dealing with Greek life, art, and literature that I have met with. This is a very large statement to make, and, of course, I do not mean that such flagrant instances as those above referred to are the rule. But to me there seems always to be sofne bias which tends to exaggerate or falsify the facts to so?ne extent. We can trace this tendency back more than eighteen hundred years to Plutarch {Oti the Malice of Herodotus). He, as Mr. Livingstone * says, " took the view that the Greeks of the great age could do no wrong, and rates the historian for ' needlessly de- scribing evil actions.' " And it is largely in this way that the enthusiast works — by omitting facts. I should think few readers unfamiliar with the classics will have known all the facts already put before them in these notes— because such facts, although known to all classical scholars, are kept in the background as much as possible. Again the tendency is to judge the Greeks by their greatest men — to imagine every Greek to have been a Plato !
I might add greatly to what I have already said about the Greeks, but I must confine myself to a few matters, repeating nothing that has been said in previous notes. The Greeks had very little regard for truth- fulness. An oath was a matter of religion and was supposed to be binding upon them, but it was excusable to twist out of it. They also saw nothing immoral in theft. Hermes was the god of thieves, and " the wily Odysseus " was a favourite hero of the Greeks. Autolycus, the grand- father of Odysseus, was taught by Hermes himself to surpass all men in stealing and perjury {Od. xix. 395). Hence it was thought quite a proper thing to make war for the purpose of robbing neighbours of terri- tory or property. I need quote only the truly " German " opinions of Socrates and Aristotle placed by Mr. Zimmern at the head of his chapter on Warfare in The Greek Commonzvealth. " But, Socrates, it is possible to procure wealth for the State from our foreign enemies." " Yes, certainly you may, if you are the stronger power " (Xen. Alem. iii. 6, 7). " War is strictly a means of acquisition, to be employed against wild animals and against inferior races of men who, though intended by nature to be in subjection to us, are unwilling to submit [!], for war of such a kind is just by nature " (Aristotle, Politics, 1256). On considering that such sentiments are expressed by their greatest philosophers, we are not surprised to find that the history of the Greeks is one of lies, perfidy, and cruelty. '\ It further illustrates their unsympathetic pagan character when we find the Greek mother mourning for her dead son because he will not " feed her old age," and Socrates valuing friendship because friends were useful. J
When the enthusiast is confronted with the debased Greek religion he tells us, or leads us to think, that the people did not believe in their dis- solute gods. As regards this I cannot do better than quote the terse statement of Mr. Livingstone. After pointing out that there were some advanced thinkers among the Greeks who were more or less sceptics (and that there were also some small sects who are said to have had higher moral beliefs than their countrymen §) he says, " We are concerned with the state religion, which Athenians learnt to reverence as children, which permeated the national literature, which crowned the high places of the city with its temples, which consecrated peace and war and every- thing solemn and ceremonial in civil life, which by its intimate connec- tion with these things acquired that support of instinctive sentiment which
* " The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us."
t It should be remembered, however, that this is largely the history of Prussia also.
t See Mr. Livingstone's book.
S But see p. 418 as to Dionysiac sect.
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is stronger than any moral or intellectual sanction." * Something may be added to this. Why was the Greek so greatly concerned about his tomb and his burial rites ? The main reason why he burdened himself with a wife and household was that a son should be left to see to those rites and look after his tomb. He did not see his M'ife before marriage, and, however beautiful he found her to be, the uneducated girl would be no companion for him ; and her beauty would soon fade in the unwhole- some confined life she led. Fler office was fulfilled when she had borne him sons — and he looked for his pleasures elsewhere. Surely this one fact alone proves that the Greeks had a very real belief in their religion. Again why do we find that only Socrates and a few other thinkers appear to have been charged with impiety ? Mr. Livingstone, curiously enough, argues from this that there was greater freedom of thought among the Greeks. Surely the simple and natural explanation is far preferable, namely, that there were no other pronounced sceptics than those few ad- vanced thinkers. Imagine the danger of declaring anything against the gods which would throw in doubt the divinity of the patron goddess Athena ! f
It is often argued that the intelligent Greeks could no more have believed the monstrous stories of their gods, than we believe some of the Old Testament stories of Jehovah. But the position is entirely different. We disbelieve stories that offend our moral sense : the gods of the Greeks had a character similar to their own, and acted as they themselves would have acted if they had been gods. Also they had no ethnology, no know- ledge of purer religions to teach them the falsity and depravity of their own — nor, indeed, would the proud Greeks have condescended to learn from barbarians (especially as they believed themselves descended from heroes who were sprung from the gods). Finally one has only to read the accounts of travellers in Greece to learn that the religion even lingers on to-day — see, for instance, S. C. Kaines Smith's Greek Art and National Life (pp. 153, 172), where the woodcutters, when a tree is falling, throw themselves on the ground and hide their faces in deadly fear of the Dryads,;]: and an eminent Greek gentleman crosses himself at the name of the Nereids. (See also W. H. D. Rouse's Tales fro?n the Isles of Greece and Balkan Home Life, by Lucy M.J. Garnett.)
My statement has been very one-sided so far, as I have said very little of the virtues of the Greeks. These virtues were those of intelligent primitive people, love of freedom, justice, and equality (but confined to their own nation and not including their own zvomen and slaves), personal courage, great patriotism, fidelity to kinsfolk and guests ; they showed at times generosity to a valiant enemy and recognized some such duties as burying the dead. While I do not think we can carry the national virtues much further than this, there would be gradations of character among the Greeks, and probably many would be more or less kindly, others have a true affection for their wives, others show private virtues
* See an interesting passage in Plato's Republic, i. 330. See also p. 207 as to Herodotus.
t This should be taken into account in interpreting the plays of Euripides, who was prob- ably a sceptic. The case of Aristophanes was different — he was known to be orthodox and almost any licence was permitted on the Comic Stage.
% Perhaps these woodcutters would not have entirely appreciated what Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson (The Greek View of Life) says of the Greek divinities. He tells us that the Greek originally felt " bewilderment and terror in the presence of the powers of nature," but his religion developed " till at last from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the beginning there emerged into the charmed light of a world of ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities." (The italics are mine.) The classical enthusiast always pictures the Greeks as living in fairyland : actually the gods and lesser divinities were to them for the most part objects of awe and dread. In this " world of ideal grace " there would be, for example, the horrible Furies who dwelt in their grotto in Athens !
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in various directions — we can only conjecture as to something of which there is very little evidence in their literature. On the one hand, we know that Socrates suffered martyrdom for the truth,* and we may surmise that there were other fine characters ; on the other hand, we know that this highly intellectual nation put the philosopher to death as a blasphemer against their profligate gods.
But while we can give the Greeks credit for little of the morality of modern civilization, on the other hand we would be thinking very absurdly if we regarded their vices as though the people were on the same moral plane as ourselves. (This is the fact to be recognized. The ridiculous tendency of the modern enthusiast is to depict the Greeks as a highly moral nation striving for righteousness !) Strictly speaking, the Greek practices and habits should not be called vices, because the Greeks had no reason to believe that they were doing anything wrong. Their virtues and their vices were those of ordinary primitive life.f The moral principle, that highest product of creation, had not yet developed itself among the people to any appreciable extent ; but we see it gradually emerging in the growing disbelief in the national religion among thinking men, and reaching an advanced stage in Plato, the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But to the average Greek, apart from religion (including respect for parents), the patriotism which they had learnt from Homer, their one great book, covered much of what they meant b}^ " virtue." % Whatever was good for the State was a virtue, whatever bad for the State a vice. We can hardly realize what Athens stood for in the Greek mind. For instance, Aeschylus tells us that the patron goddess Athena came to Athens to preside over the balloting of the jurors and conduct the trial of Orestes, and also that the Furies lived among the citizens in a sacred grotto. The Greeks saw that they were immensely superior to the sur- rounding " barbarians," and they regarded their State practically as an object of zvorship (as Rome was also regarded by the Romans).
It would have been interesting to discuss here the ethical views of the philosophers, but the subject is far too intricate for this note — and in any case they and their followers formed only a few exceptions among the Greeks. It will be seen later that the use of such words as " virtue," " holiness," etc., causes a vast deal of meaning to be read into Plato which never entered that philosopher's mind.
The great outstanding fact about the Greeks is their astonishing intellect, combined with sound common sense {awcppoavvri) and a quite modern gift of humour. Their powerful intellect, however, had very poor material to work upon. In a previous note I have mentioned their remarkably limited idea of the world — but, while knowing this to be a fact, we still cannot realize the mental attitude of men who had even one false conception of such magnitude as regards their general outlook and thought. Let us take an instance of a different kind from the great philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who came after Plato — bearing in mind that the average Greeks would be vastly more ignorant and super- stitious than their greatest thinkers. In his Mechanica Aristotle explains the power of a lever to make a small weight lift a larger one. His ex- planation is that a circle has a certain magical character. A very wonder- ful thing is a circle, because it is both convex and concave ; it is made by
* I think it correct to say this, altliough there were political reasons also for prosecuting Socrates, and, if he had shown less contempt for his judges, he might have been acquitted.
t I do not know how far unnatural vice extended among other peoples ; but the statement in Plato's Symposium that the lonians and most of the barbarians held it in evil repute is strongly condemnatory of the Greeks.
J See how this idea pervades the whole of the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles, and how he defines what is " the good life " of a citizen.
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a fixed point and a moving line, which are contradictory to each other ; and whatever has a circular movement moves m opposite directiotis. Also, Aristotle says, movement in a circle is the most natural movement 1 Hence we get the result : the long arm of the lever moves in the larger circle, and has the greater amount of this magical natural motion, and so requires the lesser force ! Again, let us take a story which was as firmly believed by Aristotle as the most ignorant of his countrymen. Our word " halcyon " is the Greek word Alkuon, meaning a bird, probably of the kingfisher species. The Greeks supposed the word to be formed of two words, hah kuon, meaning " conceived in the sea " — therefore they believed the bird tvas so conceived and that it was bred in a nest floating on the sea — and, as the sea must then be smooth, they further believed that a period of fourteen days' calm necessarily occurred about Christmas — finding there was no such period of calm around their own coasts they either thought that it must occur (and the birds breed) else- where, or, like Theocritus, that the bird could charm the sea into tran- quillity.*
The Greeks believed queer things about animals. I take the following instances of birds alone from Mr. Rogers' Introduction to his Birds of Aristophanes, so that I need not give references. By looking at a plover, who returns the look, a man is cured of jaundice. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, was said to have been so named because, having been cast into the sea, she was rescued by widgeons (Greek, penelops). The song of the dying swan was a belief of the Greeks. The raven was the bird of augury and had mysterious knowledge. The cranes fought the pygmies and swallowed stones for ballast. The young storks fed their aged parents. The siskin foresees the winter and snowstorms. Mr. Rogers has no need to discuss the yet more extravagant stories of the phoenix, sirens, harpies, etc. Plutarch {De Is. and Os. Ixxi.) tells us how the Greeks regarded birds and other animals in relation to the gods ; he says that while they did not, like the Egyptians, worship animals, " they said and believed rightly that the dove was the sacred animal of Aphrodite, the raven of Apollo, the dog of Artemis, and so on." (Possibly Aristophanes' comedy did not win the prize, because the audience saw little humour in exaggerat- ing the powers which they really believed the birds to have. To the Greeks the birds were greater and the gods smaller than we ourselves picture them. Ruskin's translation of Od. v. 67, f the seabirds which " have care of the works of the sea," seems much more likely to be correct than the accepted version that the birds live by diving and fishing. Con- sider how the Greeks would regard the birds that flew round and over their ships or fishing-nets and over the waves and rocks, where the sea- gods lay beneath — and compare //. ii. 614.)^
All that has been said about the Greeks in this and previous notes is intended, not so much to exhibit the character of that nation as for other reasons. In one instance the intention was to indicate how vast a gulf exists between Christianity and the ancient world. Many classical
* See Theoc. vii. 57, and what the Scholiast says. As to the subject generally see the references given by Mr. Rogers in The Birds of Aristophanes.
t Modern Painters, iv., xiii. 17.
X A few days after writing the above I was walking along the sea-beach with friends, and we came to a man and boy who were drawing in a net. It was a beautifully clear day, and no seagull or other bird could be seen anywhere. I pointed this out to my friends, and said, " You'll see the patrol-bird arrive presently." In a few minutes a gull appeared from nowhere, flew round the net and then, as though the business was unimportant, flew away. The net when drawn in was empty ! This is how the bird probably appeared to the Greeks. When the net brought in a haul, and the birds clamoured round it for their share, how very reasonable would this again appear to the Greeks.
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enthusiasts do not seem to realize this, and a definitely paga?i tendency is very apparent in their habits of thought.
But the main object of pointing out the inferior state of civilization among the Greeks, their non-moral character in certain respects, their ignorance and superstition, and their low standard of morality generally, has to do with the important question of interpreting Greek literature and philosophy. It would matter very little that the enthusiast should picture the Greeks as a race of saints and demigods, if there were no beautiful and valuable literature to be coloured and falsified by reason of such views. It is only by realizing the actual life and thought of this primitive race that zue can understand their lafigiiage, that is to say, we can learn what meanings should be attached to the words they use. Only thus can we interpret their literature. We have already had two simple illustrations of this. In one case what appears to be a poetic fancy in Theocritus, when the voyager hopes the halcyons will calm the sea for hiin, is seen to be a wish that the birds will actually exercise the power that they possess. The other instance appears on page 338. But much more important is it that, in reading words of knowledge such as references to the starry heavens or the constitution of matter, or mental or moral phenomena, we should not attribute to the Greek writer conceptions far larger and higher than he had in his mind. To amplify what I have said in a previous note, let us take the words in Plato, Aristotle, or, say, Euripides which are trans- lated by such English words as " morality," " purity," " virtue," " honour," " religion," etc. It is clear that the original Greek expres- sions cannot signify, for instance, either purity as we know it, or even abstention from unnatural vice or from infanticide.* We are, therefore, mistranslating when we use such English words, and this fact needs to be steadily borne in mind. Again when interpreting, say, a Greek play, it is necessary to bear in mind, not only the supposed character of the dramatist, but also the actual, known character of the audience to whom the play was addressed. I now propose to give an illustration of this.
Is it reasonable to ask if the Athenians, some few of whose character- istics have been outlined in these notes, would have flocked to hear, and have greatly enjoyed, a play replete with high moral teaching, and con- taining hymns that might have come out of a Church Hymnal ? Now the Bacchae of Euripides, one of the most popular of Greek plays, and the Hippolytus of the same dramatist, have been translated by one Greek scholar. Professor Gilbert Murray, in a manner that (at any rate, as regards the Bacchae) received the " hearty admiration and approval " of another Greek scholar, Dr Verrall. In this version, one after another of the debased Greek gods is called " God." We also find such expres- sions as (note the capitals) " God's grace," " Virgin of God/' " Babe of God," " God's son," and even " God's true son " (who is Dionysus or Bacchus), "Spirit of God," "Child of the Highest," "Heaven," " Purity," " Saints " (who are the Maenads !), " righteous," " divine," " holy," and so on.
Professor Murray is put in a difficulty when two or more gods are referred to. In some cases he becomes illogical (and reminds us of the Kaiser), as when Dionysus has to say " God and me." In others he has to use the Greek name for one god, and then the words sound blasphem- ous, as when he speaks of Dionysus who was " born from the thigh of Zeus and now is God." These instances are taken quite at random and there must be many others.
* See also as to the so-called " purification rites " in the mysteries, p. 418.
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Take the following, which are probably the most admired lines in Professor Murray's versions of Euripides :
Where a voice of living waters never ceaseth In God's quiet garden by the sea.
The original reads : " Where the ambrosial fountains stream forth by the couches of the palaces of Zeus," or, to give them a more musical turn, Mr. A. S. Way's version is :
Where the fountains ambrosial sunward are leaping By the couches where Zeus in his halls lieth sleeping.
In Professor Murray's two lines Zeus becomes " God," " living waters " is taken from the Song of Solomon, and " God's quiet garden " from Isaiah and Ezekiel. Such expressions, with their tender and beautiful associations, do not in the least convey the sense of the original Greek. Used to describe the palace of a vicious, barbaric deity, they are an atrocious mistranslation. Also every one of the expressions referred to above is, wherever used, another mistranslation (although some may be necessitated by the limitation of language). Again there are other more pronounced mistranslations, some of which are pointed out by Verrall {Bacchants of Euripides). "Thus where the very old man Cadmus, setting out on an unusual journey,, merely says to his ancient comrade, " We have pleasantly forgotten that we are old " (Bacchae, 184-9), Professor Murray interpolates a stage direction, " A mysterious strength and exaltation " (from the god Dionysus) " enters into him " — and he alters the words of Cadmus to conform with the miracle :
Sweetly and forgetfully The dim years fall from off me 1
Here, therefore, we find an important episode deliberately inserted into the play.
Take another instance which Verrall does not mention. In the very enthusiastic " Introductory Essay," Professor Murray tells us that Euripides longed to escape from the bad, hard, irreligious Athenians of that day (the same pious Greeks who would so enjoy his Church Hyynnal !) and proceeds as follows :
" What else is wisdom ? " he asks, in a marvellous passage : — What else is wisdom ? What of man's endeavour Or God's high grace so lovely and so great ? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait ; To hold a hand uplifted over Hate ;
And shall not loveliness be loved for ever ?
There is nothing here, nor in the translation that follows, to indicate that there has been any interference with the text. It is only upon turning to the notes at the end of the translation (which the average reader would hardly study) that we find the third line is " practically interpolated." He gives reasons for this that are not easy to follow, and says, " If I am wrong, the refrain is probably a mere cry for revenge " ; I add that the latter is the generally accepted meaning, and the only meaning in the original Greek.
Now Professor Murray's object in all this is to convey in words that appeal to our minds his conception of the devout, religious and, therefore, highly moral attitude of, not only Euripides, but also his Athenian audience. The attitude of mind must be that of the audience, as well as the dramatist, because none but devout, religious people go to a " Service of Song," and, as stated above, the Bacchae was a very popular play among the
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Greeks. If, however, Professor Murray thought that, by colouring, altering, and adding to the play, he gave a more correct impression of it as it appeared to the Greeks, he was perfectly at liberty with that object to mistranslate as much as he pleased — provided he told his readers and hearers that they were not reading or hearing the zvords that Euripides zvrote.
Has he told them this ? The book is entitled " Euripides translated into English rhyming verse." In the Preface he also begins by telling us definitely that it is a translation ; later on he says : " As to the method of this translation . . . my aim has been to build up something as like the original as I possibly could, in form and what one calls ' Spirit.' To do this, the first thing needed was a work of painstaking scholarship, a work in which there should be no 7ieglect of the letter in an attempt to snatch at the spirit." He then goes on to tell us that " the remaining task " was to reproduce the poetry of the original and (here is the only admission that he has varied from the text) he " has often changed meta- phors, altered the shapes of sentences, and the like. . . . On one occasion he has even omitted a line and a half" (because unnecessary) and he says, he " has added, of course by conjecture, a few stage directions." Let the reader look back over what has been said above and ask himself whether such words — however carefully studied — would have given him the least impression of what this " translation " actually amounts to.
The plain fact is that the whole thing is Gilbert Murray and not Euripides. Let us simply ask the question, Does this pious, fervently- religious version represent the actual play that the cruel, lying, treacherous, and unspeakably sensual Greeks flocked to see and enjoy .' Further comes a much more important question. Would such a " trans- lation," put before English readers, or staged before an English audience, give them a true or a false idea of the character of the Greeks ?
I might compare with this Ruskin's view of the Greek character {The Crown of Wild Olive). This is what he says the Greeks won from their lives : " Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain." (Italics mine.) This is truly amazing ! I am tempted to go back again to Professor Murray's Euripides (p. Ixiii) and quote a like passage :
" Love thou the day and the night," he (Euripides) says in another place. " It is only so that Life can be made what it really is, a Joy : by loving not only your neighbour — he is so vivid an element in life that, unless you do love him, he will spoil all the rest ! — but the actual details and processes of living, etc., etc."
The italics are again mine — but here it will be seen that Euripides has, as a matter of course, anticipated the great evangel of Christ ! He has even gone a step further — but I must leave Professor Murray to his love of the " details and processes of living," whatever that may mean.
Finally, in this extraordinary essay, I come to something which is absolutely repulsive. I must first briefly premise that the Dionysiac mys- tery cult was not sectarian. It was orthodox, believing in the plurality' and the profligacy of the gods. Its adherents had no more idea of morality or purity than other Greeks. Its rites were indecent. The so- called " purification rites," including regulations regarding continence, were simply trai?iing rules preparatory to their hideous orgies. The essential rite of the cult was practised by the Maenads or Bacchantes. They tore to pieces live animals (and at one time human beings) and de- voured their raw, quivering flesh. As stated above, these horrible women
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are Professor Murray's " Saints." He now proceeds to draw an analogy between their loathsome god Dionysus and jesits Christ I Thus Dionysus is born of God (Zeus) and a human mother. He is also the " twice-born " — having been hidden in Zeus's thigh after birth ! He " comes to his own people of Thebes, and — his own receive him not." Again " It seemed to Euripides in that favourite metaphor of his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that a God had been rejected by the zuorld that he came from." Dionysus " gives his Wine to all ?nen. ... It is a mysticism which includes democracy, as it includes the love of your tieigh- bour." Dionysus " has given man Wine, zvhich is his Blood and a religious symbol." In the translation Dionysus is called " God's son " and even " God's true son." Reading this and such statements as Miss Jane Harrison's (see p. 337), one stands amazed. Apparently this fanatical enthusiasm destroys the critical faculties, so that the enthusiast becomes utterly incapable of appreciating the beauty and value of Our Lord's ethical teaching and its exemplification in His life.
For my last illustration of how enthusiasm affects our leading classical authorities (and, therefore, leads to perversion of the truth) I take Mr. A. E. Zimmern's Greek Commomvealth. This, like Mr. Living- stone's work, is a very excellent book, which should be in all libraries.
Mr. Zimmern quotes and definitely endorses the well-known statement in Galton's Hereditary Genius (1869), which is as follows : " The average ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own, that is, about as much as our race is above that of the African Negro." (The italics are mine.) Here I have happened by chance * upon an excellent illustration of classical enthusiasm, which is worth while dwelling upon at some length. In the first place Galton's statement is perhaps the most absurd utter- ance ever made by an important thinker ; in the second place it appears to have been accepted by English and European authorities for nearly half a century.
Galton's argument is a mathematical one, and is based on the number of great men produced by a nation in proportion to its population. He states that between 530 and 430 B.C. the Athenian Greeks produced fourteen highly illustrious men : Themistocles, Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles (statesmen and commanders) ; Thucydides, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato (literary and scientific men) ; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes (poets) ; and Pheidias (sculptor). I take the minor objections to his statement first.
He estimates the population of free-born Greeks in Attica at 90,000. In this instance he was misled by the authorities of his time and is not to blame ; but I take Mr. Zimmern s ozvn figures, as he endorses Galton's state- ment. The 90,000 should have been, according to Mr. Zimmern's more correct figures, 180,000 to 200,000. This alone cuts dozen Galton's esti- mate of the " average ability " of the Greeks to at least one-half. Galton also excludes the resident aliens who, according to him, numbered 40,000, but according to Mr. Zimmern 96,000. Yet both these and the outside aliens must be considered, for there were intermarriages. Themi- stocles and Cimon had alien mothers, Thucydides also probably had an alien mother, or at any rate was partly of Thracian descent, and there
* It is necessary to emphasize this, lest the reader should think that these illustrations are exceptional and the result of prolonged research. Actually I had no memoranda or other material when I began the many notes to the first edition of this book, and those notes were all completed in ten months. For this note I simply took two books, Professor Murray's and Mr. Zimmern's, to illustrate my thesis. I might have chosen far more " enthusiastic " works than Mr. Zimmern's excellent book.
420 MYERS
would be some ground for the charge of usurping citizenship repeatedly made by Cleon against Aristophanes. Galton also takes no account of the slaves, the number of whom he estimates at 400,000, but Zimmern at about 112,000. These cannot be entirely omitted when we consider the life of the Greek women and the habits of the men. It should be remem- bered that the slaves were often Greeks of other States and also by reason of the practice of exposing children some would be Athenians and even of the best families (Plato's Laws, 930, deals with children of slaves and Greek men and women). However, on these figures, it will be seen that Galton's estimate has to be enormously reduced.
Next, the greatest of all the names in his list, Plato, has to be struck out. There can be no reasonable doubt that he was not born until 428 or 427 B.C. However, there is some evidence that he was born in 430, and let us assume that this is so. But, if we are to include in the 100 (or rather loi) years every one who is born or died in that time, we are actually taking a period of 200, not 100, years, and doubling the proper estimate ! Besides Plato, I may mention that Aristophanes and Xenophon could have been only about fourteen years of age in 430, Thucydides had not then begun to write, and of the eighteen plays extant of Euripides two only were written before 430. Here again is another enormous reduction of Galton's estimate.
Again let us take Galton's opinion of the ability of these fourteen men. It is amazingly high. It will be seen that there are only tivo grades between ourselves and the African negro. Again, in Galton's table, " eminent men " are two grades above " the mass of men who obtain the ordinary prizes of life." He nozv places the whole of these fourteen Greeks two grades above the eminent men ! To what starry height he means to raise them, it is impossible to say, for the whole statement is exceedingly vague ; but he tells us that two of the fourteen, Socrates and Pheidias, stand alone as the greatest men that ever lived.
It is clear then that the fourteen Greeks have to be placed at a tremend- ous height in our estimation. It is impossible here to take each man and discuss his ability, but let us inquire what qualifications Galton had as a critic. We turn to his list of great modern English and European liter- ary men. Although he goes back as far as the fifteenth century and his list comprises only fifty-two writers, he finds room among them for such names as John Aikin and Maria Edgeworth ! Again, his ten great English poets are Milton, Byron, Chaucer, Milman, Cowper, Dihdin (!), Dryden, Hook, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. (Some names would no doubt be omitted because they did not throw light on questions of heredity, but these lists in any case are highly absurd.)
We need not greatly prolong this part of the discussion. We might ask, however, what ground had Galton, for example, to place such men as Miltiades, Aristides, or Cimon even on an equality with, say, Caesar, Alex- ander, or Marlborough. How can he class Xenophon as even equal to our great writers ? It is the interesting /aci5 he tells us of, not his literary ability', that makes this somewhat monotonous writer so very interesting. Also Plato's Dialogues include the teaching of Socrates, and we do not know how much to attribute to the one or the other. But the whole value of these immortal works cannot be credited to each one of them.
Now take another point which I might illustrate from Galton's own pages. He tells us (in another connection) that about sixty years before the time he is writing (1869) there were Senior Wranglers in Cambridge who also obtained first classes in the Classical Tripos — and even at a later date men could take high rank in both departments. Is it then to be
MYERS 421
argued that the earlier men were the greater ? Not so, but, as Galton himself says, knowledge had become so far advanced that it was no longer possible for a man to gain such a distinction in more than one of the two subjects. Here we have the point — the world of knowledge and activity is infinitely wider to-day than when it formed the subject of Greek speculation. Their great men were very original thinkers-^but in a very feiv subjects. Moreover, they had no books to read, no foreign languages to learn. Even their social and political life was far less complicated and involved than our own.
Again, where we speak of " average ability," it is not correct to com- pare large populous countries, where great talents are often submerged (see Gray's "Elegy"), with smaller communities that afford far ampler scope. Take South Australia with its population of under half a million, less than that of one of the larger English towns. We are practically an independent State with an immense territory. We have our two Houses of Parliament and our Civil Service with its many important depart- ments ; Town Councils, County Councils, Boards of Health, Road Boards, Forestry, Lighthouses, Customs, Boards dealing with the aborigines, etc. ; Railwi3^s, Irrigation, Alining, Drainage and other important works with their engineering and managing staffs ; Educational, Post and Telegraph and Police systems that have to cover this vast area ; a Supreme Court and numerous inferior courts. Bishops and clergy, Hospitals and doctors, Banks and Insurance Companies, that all have to serve the same area ; a University with Arts, Laws, Science, Medicine and other Schools, Public Library, Museum, Art Gallery, School of Mines, Agricultural College, etc. ; our production of Books and Journals, including excellent newspapers ; all manner of Scientific, Charitable and other Societies ; many Manufactures of all kinds employing thousands of men and girls ; financiers, merchants, pastoralists, farmers, vignerons, brewers, naval and military men and others, many of considerable importance. This is only a very rough and imperfect statement, but it will give sorne idea of the large number of men of ability and resource that this tiny community produces. If we compare ourselves with an average half- million of Englishmen, how great our superiority would apparently be! And yet, we know that we are not actually more capable — our ability had been simply brought into play. The explanation is that there is far greater opportunity for all classes in South Australia than in England. Mr. W. M. Hughes might himself have been a " flower to blush unseen," if he had not emigrated to Australia.
We have so far dealt with minor matters, which have nevertheless reduced Galton's arithmetical estimate by, say, 80 or 90 per cent. Let us now take the one great misrepresentation that must have immediately flashed upon the minds of all reviewers of Galton's book, if they had not been blinded by classical enthusiasm. It is truly remarkable that not a single one of them seems to have called attention to the obvious fact that Galton takes the one great Athenian period, as though it were an average period in their history ! From Homer's time to the fifth century B.C. would probably be about as long as from the Norman Conquest to the present time, or from King Alfred to Shakespeare — and there are again the many centuries that followed. Is the " average ability " of the Greeks during hundreds or thousands of years to be estimated on their one most brilliant period ? The question needs no discussion. Galton might in the same way have taken our Elizabethan period when London had a population of 150,000, and Great Britain of about three millions — and proved that our own ancestors were as far above ourselves as we are above the negro.
Mr. C. T. Whiting, of the Adelaide Public Library, knowing how my
422 MYERS
time was limited, very kindly volunteered to make an extensive search for references to Galton's statement in such of the literature of the time as is available in Adelaide. In addition to a number of books, he has searched through thirty-eight journals. He finds reviews of Galton's book in the following : Athenceum, British Quarterly, Saturday Review, Edinburgh Reviezv, Fortnightly Review, Chambers's Journal, Journal of Anthropology, Atlantic Monthly, Frazer's Magazine, Nature, Times, and Westminister Review. The first seven do not refer at all to the statement — they apparently accept it as a matter of course. Of the last five Frazer's mentions the statement, and says vaguely that the chapter in which it is contained " offers several vulnerable points to the critic " ; the West- minster states the fact without taking any exception to it ; the Atlantic Monthly raises the question whether Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Xenophon were so very illustrious, and enters into an argument on Galton's figures ; the Times considers that we have had other men in different fields of human effort, who could be named with Socrates and Pheidias, and lays stress on the enormous increase of knowledge and activity in modern life ; in Nature A. R. Wallace, misreading Galton as referring only to the age of Pericles, admits the truth of the statement as applied to the Athenians of that time. None of them refer to the fact that Galton takes the most brilliant period of Greek history as a normal period — and the arguments, taken together, amount to very little. As regards the twenty-six journals which appear to have takerv no notice of so startling a statement in an important book, the fact seems to indicate that to the writers for those journals the statement contained nothing of a remarkable or dubious character ! (Even Punch missed the chance of an amusing cartoon !)
It may be objected that the reviewers of the book would not be classical men. 'But first it must be remembered that the writers of 1869 would practically all have had a classical education, and secondly it needed no special classical knowledge to see the absurdity of the statement. Every one without exception would know, for example, that the period taken by Galton was the one great Greek period. The statement must also have excited interest on all sides. I myself remember how it was talked of when I was a boy in Melbourne, and I have heard it repeated as an acknowledged fact up to the present time — and, therefore, comment would have been expected in every direction. But apparently the state- ment was generally accepted. Mr. Whiting finds that in 1892, twenty- three years after, Galton calmly repeated the statement word for word, without reference to any criticisms. Again we find Mr. Zimmern accepting it as a matter of course in his second edition in 191 5. As it was in his first edition, which would be reviewed in the classical journals, it must pre- sumably have met with no adverse comments.
But we have to go even further than this. Galton's was one of those important books that are studied by all Europe. Seeing that he makes no mention of adverse criticisrri in his second edition, and Mr. Zimmern sees no reason to qualify the statement, it is fair to assume that no serious objection has been made in England or Europe during nearly half a century. So amazingly does classical enthusiasm pervade the thought of the world ! I do not think I need say anything further on this subject.
Mr. Zimmern heads one of his chapters " Happiness or the Rule of Love," the " Rule of Love " being his translation of evdai/xoria ! This chapter is occupied exclusively by the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles. I invite the reader to look through that terribly hard speech, and see how much love it contains ! Again to another chapter the heading is
MYERS 423
" Gentleness or the Rule of Religion," followed by two quotations which are evidently intended to be read as parallel passages :
(TTipyot bi fie <rix]cf>poavva.,
diiprj/jta KaWiffTov deibv* — Eur. Medea, 635.
Give unto us made lowly wise
The spirit of self-sacrifice. — Wordsworth.
xA.part from the question whether the proud Greek could ever by any possibility have become " lowly wise," the word awtppoavvq " temper- ance," "moderation" — or perhaps better still, "common sense" — becomes not only a " Rule of Religion " but even the highest conception of Christianity, self-sacrifice — which is entirely opposed to " common sense." It is very extraordinary. Imagine the Greeks — as we know them, and as Mr. Zimmern knows them — having the faintest conception of what we mean b}^ self-sacrifice ! It reminds one very inuch of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass : "When / use a word " (evSai./j.oi'ia or autppoffvvri) " it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
As this is my last note I am giving myself great latitude, but I must not prolong it into a treatise. I shall, as briefly as I can, refer to only one other matter, the Greek sense of beauty. I do not think it is an exaggera- tion to say that we are given to believe that in this respect the Greeks are exalted high as gods above the rest of mankind. What is the fact ? They saw beauty in only one natural object, the human body. In a land of clear skies, wonderful sunsets, starry nights, remarkable for its ranges of moun- tains and extent of sea-coast, they were (with some tiny exceptions not worth mentioning) absolutely blind to any beauty in inanimate nature. Nor did any bird or beast or insect, tree or flower appeal to them to any appreciable extent as a thing of beauty. They admired only what was useful or added to their comfort — the laden fruit tree, the shady grove, the clear spring, the soft water-meadows.
Various explanations have been given for the Greek failure to appre- ciate beauty in nature. Ruskin's theory is most often quoted, that the Greeks were so familiar with beautiful scenes that they could not appre- ciate them. In the first place he forgot that it was not always the bright tourist-season in Greece ; they had their dark and wintry times. In the second place, I have lived all my life in the southern part of Australia, which has much the same climate as Greece, and I do not think there are any greater lovers of nature than the Australians.
Is not the love of nature, as it came later, also higher than love of the human form (omitting that facial expression which is an index of the soul) ? Our ideals of human beauty appear to be purely relative and depend on our surroundings, while the same beauty in nature appeals to the most diverse nations. Take for example the Japanese and Dutch artists who both loved nature much as we do — yet they admired very different types of the human figure. I understand that the Japanese, originally at least, regarded with positive disgust our tall English beauties. Also our highly artistic Aurignacian ancestors of the post-glacial period admired the Hottentot type of beauty !
The beauty the Greeks saw in one object only, the human body, they reproduced in statues, which have never been equalled in grace and charm, and are the admiration of the world. Their pure white marble statues and temples seem to be always present in our minds and to transfigure our conceptions of the Greeks. We unconsciously picture them as a
• " May moderation befriend me, the finest gift of the gods."
424 MYERS
race of glorious men and beautiful women moving in a city of beautiful white marble.* We find ourselves forgetting what we know of their character and habits — and also forgetting the fact that both statues and temples were painted.
With the disappearance of colour through the effect of time, the flesh effect has disappeared from their statues, and the chaste white marble gives an idealized and spiritual conception of the utmost purity. As stated before, this would be a conception quite alien to the Greek mind, which saw no beauty in purity. If, when we stand in admiring awe before that calm, majestic, and exceedingly graceful and beautiful Venus of Milo, we imagine her as the Greeks saw her, how different is the picture ! To begin with, the Greeks had little sense of colour, as is seen from their limited colour- vocabulary. For example, one word por- phureos was used for dark-purple, red, rose, sea-blue, violet, and other shades even to a shimmery white. Their colours were harsh, glaring, and put together in shockingly bad taste. In temples and sculpture reds and blues were the main colours used. In the Venus of Milo we must, therefore, picture the hair painted red or red-brown, the lips a hard red, eyebrows black, the eyes red or red-brown with black pupils, the dress with borders and patterns of crude reds and greens or reds and blues. As regards the flesh surfaces, we know they were wax-polished, but there is no literary record or actual trace of any tinting or colouring. Yet the effect of the white marble would have been so horrible against the living eyes and face, that Mr. Kaines Smith (being one of our enthusiasts) suggests that the artist " might quite well " have used some colouring matter for the nude parts of the figure ! We must further picture the statue standing in a temple, which was also painted. The structure would have its borders generally of harsh reds and blues, and the decora- tive sculpture of the pediments, metopes, and friezes would be painted in most inconceivable colours. Thus in the metope relief of the slaying of the Hydra at Olympia, the hydra is blue, the background red, and the hair, lips, and eyes of Hercules are coloured. I might go on to the Elgin marbles, the greatest sculptures that we possess in the world, and show them gorgeous in bronze and colour. (Armour, horse-trappings, etc., were attached to the marble in bronze or other metal.) The two master- pieces of Pheidias, forty and sixty feet high respectively, which have not survived to us, were much more admired by the Greeks than the sculp- tures of the Parthenon. These were in barbaric ivory and gold, with the same living eyes, red lips, and so on. The fact is that the Greek " builded better than he knew." He unintentionally produced objects whose spiritual beauty he was incapable of appreciating, and, therefore, he gave thein a grosser form that appealed to his own primitive sensual nature.
(Apart from this the Greek sculptor was very limited by the paucity of his subjects. How tiresome are the never-ending Centaurs and Amazons !)t
As regards Greek architecture, its ornament is a question of sculpture, its structure is the result of intellect combined with a certain amount of design due to their artistic sense of proportion. The Greeks did great service to humanity in working out the principles of building— but, there-
• Their actual life was of course indescribably squalid and filthy, as could only be expected in a primitive race.
t Even as regards the human form Greek art is limited, as is seen in the Laocoon, where the boys are simply miniature men. (The Laocoon, although of very late date, is nevertheless Greek, with all the traditions of the art behind it.) The Greeks also saw no beauty in a baby and could not reproduce one in sculpture. It seems to me that something of much importance yet remains to be discovered about Greek sculpture.
MYERS 425
after, there was no scope for originality. Apart from its sculptural orna- ment, nothing more monotonous could well be imagined than a series of Greek temples, all of the same type and subject to definite, rigid rules of measurement. An excessive importance is attached to the cold, con- ventional, foliated designs.
Finally there are two matters I am bound to refer to in connection with these rough notes. First, in merely enumerating the salient features of a nation's character, one gives no picture whatever of the life they led. The Greek men led a highly intellectual, artistic, and on the whole a very gay life. If we look around us to-day, we shall find among ourselves Greeks, intellectual men who are moral sceptics, who simply do not under- stand that moral motives exist, who do no act in their lives from a sense of principle, and who live a purely material life (unless perhaps some great crisis, the arrival of the angel of Death, or some other overwhelming event, awakens them to a sense of higher things). We can see something like a parallel to the Greeks in the gay, immoral, artistic French aristocracy who lived in the midst of a starving peasantry before the Revolution — or in George Eliot's fascinating Renaissance story in Romola of the young Greek, Tito Melema. A man may be cruel, faithless, and immoral, and yet live a gay, artistic, and intellectual life — but it is not such a life as would have appealed to Myers or to ourselves. Secondly, a clear knowledge of the truth about the Greek character does in no way detract from the miracle of their literature or of their art. It adds to the wonder of it all. (If one may with the utmost reverence make another comparison, how can we fully appreciate the wonder and beauty of Christ's teaching, if we forget the conditions of the time ?) To find most beautiful poetry, fine litera- ture, deep philosophic thought, amazing grace and charm in art emanating from this primitive race is purely astounding in itself. And it needs to be borne in mind that even the men who took part in Plato's Symposium lived in a different atmosphere from our own, and had a very different conception of the physical universe and the moral law. But this should add to our admiration, our veneration, for a Plato who could rise to so great a sublimity of thought in spite of such semi-barbarous conditions and surroundings. These men also looked upon the world with younger and fresher eyes. We are two thousand three hundred years older than they are. They knew very little of the past history of the world and had only an insignificant fraction of our scientific knowledge. If any religious doubts had begun to arise in their minds, they still could not possibly have rid themselves of the beliefs instilled into them since childhood — and they lived among Nymphs and Fauns, and saw a god in every star and under every wave. Never had they heard or dreamt of any Love of God, or Love of Man. It is only the enthusiast who, by picturing the Greeks as a modern moral nation, detracts from our real interest in them and robs their literature of its fascination. If knowledge of the true Greek character were to destroy all our enjoyment in their art and literature, even then truth must prevail " though the heavens fall " ; but the fact is far otherwise. The fuller our knowledge the more we shall enjoy the greatness and beauty of their art and poetry and the more absorbing will be our interest in their literature.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit eras amet.
Anon.
This is the refrain of an old Latin song. Pervigilium Vetieris. Thomas Parnell paraphrased it as follows :
Let those love now who never loved before. Let those, who always loved, now love the more.
SUBJECT-INDEX
" A cibo biscocto," 343
" A Woman's Thought," 355
Acting and sitting still, 25
Acts, our, II, 96, 358
" Address to a Mummy," 83
Advice, 354
Aesthetic faculties, decay of, 363
Aims, high, 266, 302
Akenside, Mark, 293
" Alas, how easily things go
wrong," 276 Alcibiades, 336 Allotment-holders, 304 Ambition, 121, 224 American intelligence, 285-6 Amphibium, 270 Andrea del Sarto, 90 Animals, mind in, 122, 123, 168,
179 Anteros, 225
Anthropomorphism, 140-41, 344 Anti-Jacobin, the, 251 Anticipating trouble, 128 Apelles, 378 Aristotle, 412, 414, 415 Arnold, Matthew, 139, 144, 307 Art, 360, 394
Art of reasoning, the, 38-40 Associations, early, 294 Attributions, wrong, 129, 130 Auto-suggestion, 172-3 Avalon, 347
Babies, 26, 52, 204. See Children
Bacon, Francis, 21
Balder, son of Odin, 254
Baptism, 15
Bean in poetry, the, 389
Beauties, proud, 193
Beautiful necessary to man, the,
199 Beauty, 198, 379, 384, 403 Beauty of promise, 401 Beauty is truth, 195 Beeching, H. C, 130
Belfast Address, the, 66
" Beneath my Window," 186
Bentham, Jeremy, 126, 210
Bergson, 41, 171
Bible, literal interpretation, xvi,
385 Blake, 113, 115, 133, 175, 201, 308 Blanco White, 291 Blindness, 189 Body and mind, 311, 327 Bombast, empty, 267 Bourne, Vincent, 397 Bouts rimis, 328 Brahma, 388 Bride, the, 406
Browning, E. B., 45-8, 50 n., 164 Browning, R., 45-8, 318 Browning Society, the, 17 Burial-place, choice of, 63, 398 " Buy my English posies," 11
Cadmus and daffodils, 188 Cain and Seth, 282 " Canadian Boat-song," 228 Carlyle, 89, 144, 145, 376 Carpe diem, 220-21 Catholicism, Roman, 137 Cause and effect, 194 Chatterton, 136 Child-poets, 136, 186-8, 201 Child's outlook, the, 166-7 Children, 37, 52, 58, 130, 277, 354,
361. See Babies Children, cruelty to, 50, 106 Children's games, 261 Children's h^Tnn, 364 Chinese, the, 294 Christianity, 105, 206 Clairvoyance, 40, 41, 178-9 Classical enthusiasm, 410-35 Classical men, 336, 337 Cleopatra, 312, 380 Clergymen, 388 Clothes, 159 Clough, A. H., 339
427
428
SUBJECT-INDEX
Coleridge, Derwent, 333 Coleridge, S. T., 34, 77, 103, 144,
333, 356 Compensation, 213 Confession, 293 " Conservative, A," 303 Constipation, habitual, 173 Creation, 315 Cunning, 255 Cupid, 194 Cynicism, 297 Cyrano de Bergerac, 35, 36
Dahlia, the, 407 Dance of flowers, a, 322 Dancing, 406
" Dark Companion, The," 55 Darkness and light, 306 Darwin, xv, 65, 67, 264, 363 Day's requiem, 288 Dead, the, 30-33, 55, 304, 392 Death, 32, 55, 77, 125, 136, 140, 142, 267, 272 (2), 289, 296, 367,
383 Death, desire for, 274 Death, doomed to early, 271 Debates, 229
Depression pass, periods of, 287 De Quincey, 145 Devil, the, 44, 156, 212, 241, 381 Dick Swiveller, 72 Dining, on, 72-3 Discontent, 290 Discontent, divine, 264 Divine in man, the, 141, 278, 301,
313 Dogs versus men, 276 " Don't count your chickens," 205 Dreams, 170, 179 Dreamthorp, 192 Drift, letting oneself, 42 Drink, why men, 194 Duty, 85-9, 151, 319, 393 Dying, 165, 359 Dying, spell for the, 324
Earth made for man, the, 125
Earth the purifier, 227
East and the West, the, 278
Economics, 320
Eliot, George, 373-4
Emerson, 144, 259
England, i, 148
" England," the word, 327
English, characteristics of the,
399-400 English Law, 210-13 Enthusiasm, loss of early, 24, 37 Epigrams, 160, 261, 406
Epitaphs, 205, 213, 263, 384, 400
Epitaphs, extravagant, 205
Essays, 389
Eternal punishment, 134
Eternal silence of infinite space, 7
" Et in Arcadia ego," 165
Eugenics, 282-6
Evolution, 65-71, 173, 214, 283,
343-5 Evolution, main factor in, 173 Example, 400, 401 Expecting too much, 241
Fame, 90
Familiarity destroys emotion, 316
Familiarity kills romance, 305
Familiarity, pretended, 384
Fearlessness, 295
" Feast of Adonis," 92
Fidelity, 249
FitzGerald, Edward, 145, i6o, 220- 221, 311
Flies, 397
Fools and knaves, 102
Forgiving, Knowing means, 54
Fox-hunters, 125
Free Trade, 400
Freedom, 6, 85, 399-400
" Friend of Humanity," 250
Friends and foes, 107
" Friends departed," 89
Friends, quarrels between, 338
Fugues, 13
Furnivall, F. J., 19
Future life, 90, 230, 232, 362, 363, 373-5, 390, 391, 392. See Sur- vival of death.
Galton, 282, 419
Geometry, 191
Girl bathing, 25
Girl and dewberries, 371
Girls of Bethlehem, 28
Gissing, 336
Gladstone, 382
Gleam, the, 124-5
God, 191, 219, 302, 314, 315, 325
(2), 331 (2) Gods favour the strongest, the, 50 Good, desiring the, 159 Good life, a, 169, 320 Good survives, everything, 145,
317, 335 Grace for a child, 273 Gray, David, 24 Greek anthology, 9 Greek beliefs about animals, 337,
415 Greek character, 412
SUBJECT-INDEX
429
Greek democracy, 5
Greek glamour, 410-35
Greek gods, the, 142, 337
Greek infamicide, 206
Greek literature, 335-8, 415-16
Greek morality, 414
Greek religion, 412-13
Greek sense of beauty, 423-4
Greek statuary, 424
Greek, translations from, 207, 416
Greek underworld, the, 244-5, 272
Greek vice, 411
Greek women, 5, 92-6, 206, 413
Greeks, ignorance of the, 337-8,
414 " Greeks or Germans ? 5 Grief solitary, joy gregarious, 377 " Grown Up," 159
Haeckel, 69-71
Hafiz and Timur, 384
Happiness thought wicked, 267
Hardy, Thomas, 124
Hazlitt, William, 144
Heaven, 273, 401. See Future
life. Heaven only free of cost, 306 Hegel, 112 Hell, 134-S
Hellenism, the new, 248, 354 Hereafter, the, 139, 275 Hereditary defect, 24 Highest, love of the, 24 Highland crofters, evicted, 228-9 Hilton, A. C, 52 Hodgson, R., vii, xiii, 234-5, 390 Holmes, Edmond, 285 Hood, Thomas, 50 n. Hope, 37, 43, 159, 403, 407 Humour, sense of, 180 71. Huxley, 65, 66, 264 Huxley and Wilberforce, 65 " Hymn to God the Father, A," 62
" I never nursed a dear gazelle,"
208 Ideals, 314 " Identity," 143 Idleness, 304 Ignorance, our, 41, 148 Illusions often conscious, our, 313 Imagination, 57, 135, 174-8, 286,
348-51, 359. 399-400, 401 Imagination, poetic, 174-6, 240-41,
257, 268-9, 335 " Imbuta," 369 Imperfection essential, 379 " Impossible," the, 40, 41, 49 India House coterie, the, 321
Industrialism, 148, 286 Isolation of souls, 307-9
Jansenists, The, 394
" Jenny kissed me," 319
Jesus Christ, 123, 149, 150, 163
Johnson, Dr., 223
Judas Iscariot, 78-81
Kant, 258, 259, 393 Keats, 77, 144, 145 Kepler and Galileo, 282 Killing the mandarin, 153 Kingsley, Charles, 50 Kipling, Rudyard, 11, 144 Knowledge, pursuit of, 393
Lamb, Charles, 194, 270
Land-crabs, 197
" Land of Dreams, The," 387
Lang, Andrew, 261
lyate spring and summer, 339
Le Roi d'Yvetot, 320
Leisure, need of, 152, 361
Lese-tnajestCy 38 1
" Let it be there," 63
" Letty's Globe," 370
Lies, ancient, 96
L fe, 25, 105, 106, 127-8, 129, 131, 139, 169, 175, 184, 256, 261, 274, 275, 290, 301, 302, 309, 310, 320, 325, 342, 353, 361^(2), 367, 392
Life and after, 195
Lindisfarne, 147
Literature, 33, 112, 162, 255,335
Little Boy Blue, 92
" Lives and likes life's way," 268, 269, 270-71
Livingstone, R. W., 207, 334-S
Logia of Jesus, 372
Lost days, 151, 152
Lotos-eaters, the, 374
Love, 12, 29, 37, 43, 49, 98, no, 133, 162, 185, 189, 192, 193, 196, 198, 230, 281, 293, 301, 309 (2), 311, 340, 351, 355, 358, 368, 371, 372, 395, 401, 403
Love and a cough, 107
Love and duty, 252
Love betrayed, 249
Love, brevity of, 196, 198
Love, brotherly, 25, 98, 150, 225, 226, 256, 310
Love, divine, 55, 225
Love, early and later, 262
Love rejected, 249
Love, second, 369
Love strayed, 169
430
SUBJECT-INDEX
Love's cruelty, 133, 193, 249 " Love's Farewell," 340 Love's last messages, 190, 300 Lovelight and sunlight, 377 Lover dead, the, 135
M'Dougall, William, 179, 286, 299
Machiavelli, 345
Magic casements, 251, 252
Man credited with his own work,
169 Man innately good, 199-200, 301 Man necessary to God, 199 Man, primitive 183 Man, the making of, 243 Man's relation to the universe, 43,
Man's value in God's sight, 220,
222 Man's various aspects, 61, 362 Marriage, 97-8, 185 Martineau, J., xvi, 162 " Martyr, The," 188 Marvel, a two-fold, 142 Mason, Charlotte, 285 Materialism, 41, 66-9, 108, 140,
264-5, 298-9 Memories, 357 Memory, 171
Memory after death, 172, 200 Menzies, P. S., 316 Aiermaid Tavern, the, 356 Mice and elephants, 16 " Mimnermus in Church," 392 Miracles, 357, 394, 406 Moliere, 35 Moon, the, 23 Mother Earth, 236-9 Mrs. Grundy, 333 Murder, 35
Murray, Gilbert, 337, 416-19 Music, 13-14, 31, 99, 100, 121,
187, 263, 273, 317-18, 366-7 " Music, Beauty's silent," 366-7 Myers, F. W. H., 149, 170, 225,
232, 318, 390, 410-11 Mysterious, the simplest fact is,
351
Nation's songs, a, 394 Nature, 214, 219, 254, 277, 398 Nature, love of, 329, 423 Nature, universality of, 20 Nature's beauty actual, not sub- jective, 257-8, 259 Nature's teachings, 89, 114, 398 Nature — use and beaut)', 258 Night, Death, and Woman, 202 NocturnC; 57
Nomen nudum, 282
Nonsense, clever, 256
No " ought " in Nature, 393
" O, may I join the choir in- visible," 373 " Octopus, The," 51 Old age, xxiii, 196, 209 Old friends, 63, 75 " Old Sinner's Lyric, The," 160 Only one of a pair loves, 274 Opinions, altering one's, 296 Opinions, forming one's own, 51
Optimism, vii, 396 (2)
Ossian, 263
" Outlandish Proverbs," 346-7
Paine, Thomas, 6
Painted women, 162, 288
Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 399
Paradise, spirit of. 42
Parodies, 51, 72, 117, 154, 248,
250-51, 292, 313. 395 Passion, bias of, 340 Pater, W., 354 Payne, John, ix Peace of God, the, 272 Petion (1770-18 1 8), 320 Philosophy, scraps of, 108-112 Physicians, 42, 48, 173, 346, 365 Pity for the fallen, 375 Plagiarism, 35, 136, 367, 407 Playing the fool, 365 Poet, the, 240, 268-9 Poetry, 10, 19, 53, 58, 75, 100, loi-
IC2, 135, 153, 156, 175, 209,
215, 234, 240, 241, 252, 257, 260,
269-70, 334-6, 399-400 Poetry a valuable study, 399-400 Poetry, mysticism in, 99-101 Pope, Alexander, 335 f
" Practical," the, 108 ^
Prayer, 149, 271, 328 (3) Prescriptions, medical, 173, 365 Previous existence, 230-31, 388 Pride, 191, 260, 409 Progress, 158, 295 Prosaic persons, 323 Psychical Research, Society for,
xvi, 41-2, 69, 180, 205, 374,
382-3, 390, 391 Psychotherapy, 383 " Pulley, The," 64 " Pulsation " life, 354 Punishment of sin, 157 Puns in poetry, 62, 64, 398, 404 Puritans, 290 Pyrrhus and Cineas, 224
SUBJECT-INDEX
431
Qua cursurn 7:entus, 326 Quakers, 282
Rabbi ben Ezra and Omar Khay- yam, 220-21
Reasoning, the art of, 38-40
Rejuvenation, 184
Religion, 14-16, 58, 81, 149, 150, 302, 315, 401
Religion and love, 169, 225
Religion and science, 65-71, 193
Religious ideas, growth of, 314
Renan, 70
Renunciation, 151
Reputation and character, 207, 261
Requiem, 20, 267, 293, 376
Reunion after death, 84
" Revenons h. nos moutons," 212
Robertson, J. M., 21
Rogers, Samuel, 144, 145
Romance, spirit of, 42, 319
Roman cruelt\', 206
Romantic revival, the, 115
Rossetti, Christina, 30, 31
Ruskin , 145
St. Augustine, 164
St. Monica's vision, 164
Sanded sugar, 331
Savages, 184
Sayce, A. H., 71
" Say not, the struggle nought
availeth," 295 Scots, the, 223 Scott, Sir Walter, 36, 72-3 Sea-song, a great, 279 Sectarianism, 137 Self-centred, 208 Self-conceit, 296, 323 Self-deceit, 261 Self-sacrifice, 7, 225-6, 408 Selfishness, 185, 203 'Sense and emotion, 316 Sentimental Journey, Sterne's, 329 Seventy-eighty period, the, xv Seventy years young, 274 Sex in the soul, 103-4 Shakespeare and Bacon, 20-21 Shakespeare " unlocking his
heart," 45-6 Shaving and childbirth, 408 Shelley, 29, 117, 136, 144, 287 Ships that pass in the night, 326-7 " Sic vos non vobis," 117 Sidgwick, Henry, 235 Silence, 291 Singing, 273
Slandered, best people, 165 Sleep and waking life, 170, 180
Smiles are human, 209 Snobbishness, 208 Socialism, 117 Socrates on war, 412 Sofa, a living, 332 Sorrow, 12, 37, 133, 224 " Sorrows of Werther," 352 Soul, the, X, 14, 33, 103, 116,
141, 146-7, i8i, 272, 286, 407 Soul-making, 161 Soul's beaut>% 227 South Australia, 421 Southey, 251
" Spasmodic School, The," 262-3 Special creation, 343-5 Spencer, Herbert, 65, 68, 235, 264 Spirit of the age, 308 Spiritualism, 205 Stars and duty, 393 Stevenson, R. L., 400 Stigmatization, 172 Stoicism, 148, 242 Style, 144, 145 SuflFering, 22, 75, 161-2, 311, 316,
325. Suffering of animals exaggerated,
168 Suffering mainly mental, man's, 325 Suicide. 239
Superconscious, the, 170-82 Survival of death, 228, 296 Swinburne, 145, 246-8
Tall men, 265
Telepathy, 178-9
Temptation, 74
" The Belle of the Ball-room," 233
" The gods are brethren," 107
" The Other Side of the Sea," 332
" The Retreat," 230
" The Return," 81
" The Revelation," 167
" The Toys," 116
Theology not Christianitv, 14-16,
138 Theosophy, 383 Thinkers die before their views
recognized, 360 Thompson, Francis, 104 Thomson, James (" B.V."), 113 Thought prevents simple life, 397 Thrush, the, 125 Time too fast, 157 " 'Tis a very good world to live in,"
203 Tobacco, 275
" To my Grandmother," 90 " Too late for love," 59-60 Toucan, the, 364
432
SUBJECT-INDEX
Tradesmen, dishonest. 331, 368 Trial by jury, 400 Trial-test, the, 324 Truth, champions of, 158 Truth, love of, 386 Truth, pursuit of, 289 Truths, revivifying, 82, iii Truth-speaking, 345 Tupman the lover, 306 " Two Lovers," 131 Tyndall, John, 67, 264
Unconscious, the, 170-82 Universal power, nature of, 344 Useful penalty of being, 153 Utilitarianism, 126 Utopianism, 193
" Value," judgments of 54, 180,
320 Vices, a ladder of our, 305 Violin, the, 99, 100 Virgil, 117
Virtues like torches, 387 Vision, 225, 324 Vox et praeterea nihil, 408 " Vulture and the Husbandman,
The," 154
War, 1-4, 54, 412
Wesley, John, 194, 365
" What am I ? " 109
" What is Love ? " no
" What of the Darkness ? " 55
" When Love meets Love," 204
" When we all are asleep," 243
Whence and whither ? 105, 185
Whetstone, the, 227
Whitehall coterie, the, 321
Wilberforce, Samuel, 65
Willing people, 274
Witches, 381
Woman, 37, 64, 76, 85, 96, 103, 104, 123, 137, 162, 252, 263, 266 (2), 275, 276, 288, 311, 330- 331,342,351,355,358,361, 368, 379, 384, 386, 389, 403, 408
Woman — woe to man, 85
Woman's duty to elevate man, 276
(2) Women — and men — fickle, 37,
330-31 Wonder, 333 Word-pictures, 91-2, 132-3, 201-2,
253-4, 312-13, 341-2. 380-81.
402-3 Wordsworth, 33, 53, 135, 145, 231,
2S7 World, the, 22, 128, 189 World is beautiful, the, 263 World is young, the, 12 Wren, Sir Christopher, 404-5
" Yesterday, sick for," 377 Youth and age, xxiii, 142
Zimmern's Greek Commonwealth^ 419, 422
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Addison (1672-1719), 48 Aldrich, Anna Reeve (1866-1892),
24, 274 Aldrich, Flenry (1647-1710), 194 Aldrich, T. B. (1836-1907), 143,
156 Alexander, Wm. (1824-1911), 151 Amiel (1821-1881), 165, 226 Anon, (see Author not traced), 92,
165, 212, 228, 254, 261, 320,
330, 351, 394, 410, 425 Apelles, 378
Aristotle (384-322 n.c), 412, 414 Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888), 14, 19. 95) 139. 148, 195, 231, 242, 253, 272, 278, 307, 339, 359 Austin, Alfred (1835-1913), 331 Author not traced (see Anon.), 38, 39, 74. 76, 98, 128, 140, 142, 157, 162, 194, 198, 256, 263, 266, 272, 274, 276, 299, 302, 311, 357
Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), 21,
185, 208, 231, 255, 265 Bailey, P. J. (1816-1902), 16, 22,
54, 106, 261, 295 Bain, Alex. (1818-1903), 108, 229 Balfour, Earl of (b. 1848), 265 Ball, John (d. 1381), 284 Balzac (1799-1850), 195 Bateson, William (b. 1861), 282 Beaumarchais (1732-1799), 234 Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616),
356 Beddoes, T. L. (1803-1849), 190,
304, 345 Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832),
126, 210 B^ranger (1780-1857), 320 Billing, Wm. (fourteenth century),
400 Blackstone, Sir William (1723-
1780), 210 Blake, William (1757-1827), 81,
98, 113, 115, 123, 125, 133, 141,
201, 213, 296, 322, 351, 352,
387, 405 Blanc, Charles (1811-1882), 329 Bland-Sutton, Sir J. (b. 1855), 16 Boccaccio (1315-1375), 137 Boehme, Jacob (1575-1624), 175 Boreham, F. W. (b. 1871), 52 Bossuet (1627-1704), 134 Boswell ( 1 740-1 795), 137 Bourdillon, F. W. (b. 1852), 377 Bovd, A. K. H. (1825-1899), 224 Bradley, A. C. (b. 1851), loi Brathwaite, R. (? 1588-1673), 290 Bray, Betty (b. 1906), 186-8 Bromfield, J. (dates unknown), 203 Brougham, Lord (1778-1868), 211 Brown, Baldwin, 134 Brown, John (1810-1882), 408 Brown, T. E. (i 830-1 897), 204, 208 Browne, Sir Thomas (i 605-1 682),
76, 121, 141, 158, 270, 359, 367 Browning, E. B. (1806-1861), 12,
22, 24, 45, 164, 185, 191, 240,
325, 400
Browning, R. (1812-1889), 13, 33, 46, 47, 74, 90, III, 125, 144, 161, 169, 220, 221, 222, 232, 252, 253, 266, 268-9, 270, 276, 288, 293. 302, 304, 311, 312, 317- 318, 324, 331, 341, 357, 360, 362, 370, 394, 402
Bryant, W. C. (1794-1878), 136,
331 Buchanan, R. (1841-1901), 3, 23,
78-80, 107, 124, 243, 254, 304,
32s BufTon (1707-1788), 174 Bunyan, John (1628-1688), 200,
375 Burns (1759-1796), 44 Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693), 50 Butler, Samuel (1612-1680), 40,
102, III, 153, 159, 323 Butler, Samuel (1835-1902), 36
433 2F
434
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Bvron (1788-1824), 72. in, 367, '377
Calverley, C. S. (1831-1884), 72,
"7,395 „ ^
Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844),
123 Campion, Thomas (? 1567-1619),
133, 366 Camiing, George (1770-1827), 250 Carlyle (1795-1881), 7, 88, 376, 401 " Carroll, Lewis," C. L. Dodgson
(1832-1898), 38, 39, 73, 216-18,
423 Carruth, W. H. (b. 1859), 298 Chatterton (1752-1770), 135 Chaucer (? 1340-1400), 132, 239 Cholmondeley, Hester, 81 Cleveland, John (1613-1658), 223 Clough, A. H. (1819-1861), 138,
185, 202, 275, 295, 326 Colenso, T. W. (1814-1883), 385 Coleridge, S. T. (1772-1834),
xxiii, 34, 51, 75, 77, 82, 91, 103,
166, 237, 253, 255, 257, 291,
313, 338, 354, 356, 381, 385, 386,
391 Conway, M. D. (1832-1907), 6, 55,
386 Corneille, Thomas (1625-1709),
309 Cory, Wm. (Johnson) (i 823-1 892),
10, 393 Cowley (1618-1667), 272 Cowper (173 1 -1 800), 126 n. Crashaw, Richard (1616-1650), 406 Croce, Benedetto (b. 1866), 46 " Cuthbert Bede," Edward
Bradley (1827-1889), 256
Darwin (1809-1882), 175, 363 De Chancel, Ausone (1808-1878),
129 De Girardin, Delphine (1804-
1855), 189 De Musset, A. (1810-1857), 407 De Quincey (1785-1859), 35, 255 De Stael, Mme. (1766-1817), 54,
198, 356 Dickens (1812-1870), 38, 97, 112,
306, 320 Dickinson, G. Lowes, 413 Dictionary, Nezu Etjglish, 389 DisraeU (1804-1881), 261 Dobson, Austin (1840-1921), 407 Donatus, Aelius (fourth century),
xvii Donne, John (1573-1631), 62, 75,
282, 330
" Douglas, Marian," Annie Douglas Robinson {b. 1842), 266 Drayton (1563-1631), 340 Dryden (1631-1700), 58, 73, 128 Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896),
175 Du Lorens (1583-1658), 384
Earle, John (? 1601-1665), 354 Edmunds, A. J. {b. 1857), 200, 205 Eliot, George (1819-1880), v, 11, 22, 37, 42, 62, 85, 96, 106, 107, 131, 139, 159, 193, 222, 252, 267, 288, 294, 296, 311, 313, 316, 323, 358, 366, 373, 375, 379, 380,
397, 407 Emerson, R. W. (1803-1882), 1,
7, 25, 37, 128, 149, 192, 214,
232, 237, 241, 302, 305, 388,
396, 401 Euripides (480-406 B.C.), 423
FitzGerald, Edward (1809-1883),
145, 160, 167, 221 Fletcher of Saltoun (1655-1716),
394 Foote, Samuel (1720-1777), 256 Fox, Caroline (1819-1871), 53,
333, 356, 408 Franklin, Benjamm (1706-1790),
77, 152 Fuller, Thomas (1608-1661), 205
Galton (1822-1911), 282, 419-22 Garnett, Richard (1S35-1906), 57 Gascoigne, George (? 1525-1577),
85, 368 Geley, W., 175 Gibbon (1737-1794), 50, 260 Gilbert, Sir Wm. (1836-191 1), 358 Gissing, George (1857-1903), 309 Glover, T. R. (6. 1869), 199 Goethe (1749-1832), 19 Goldsmith (1728-1774), 158 Gordon, A. L. (1833-1870), 342 Gosse, Edmund {b. 1849), 142, 377 Gray, Thomas (1716-1771), 115,
121 GreekAnthoIogy, 8-10, 98,215, 346 Green. J. R. (1837-1883), 105
Hadrian (76-138) 272
Hafiz (died about 1388), 75, 384
Hamilton, Sir W. R. (1805-1865),
174 Hardinge, W. M., 8-9 Hardy, Thomas {b. 1840), 25, 124 Harrison, Jane {b. 1850), 337, 419 Haweis, H. R. (1838-1901), 100 n.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
435
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864),
401 Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 144 Heine (1797-1856), 248, 331 Helps, Sir A. (1813-1875), 54, 267 Henley, W. E. (1849-1903), 376 Herbert, George (i 593-1 633), 64,
346 Herrick (1591-1674), 76, 133. 273 Hilton, A. C. (1851-1877), 51, 154 Hobbes (1588-1679), 191 Hobhouse, L. T. (b. 1864). 199 Hodgson, Richard (1855-1905), • ^y,, 108, III, 112, 120, 234-5, 301, ' y 310, 332, 340 / J.' D Holland, Lord (1773-1840), 407
Holmes, O. W. (1809-1894), 61,
196, 274 Homer, 244 Hood, Thomas (1799-1845), 32,
398 Hook, Theodore (1788-1841), 144 Horace (64-8 B.C.), 19, 73, 227,
370 Household, H. W. {h. 1870), 285 Howe, Julia Ward (1819-1910), 274 Hugo, Victor (1802-1885), 330,
361, 384 Hunt, Leigh (1784-1859), 101, 291,
319 Hunter, W. A. (1844-1898), 381 Huxley, Henrietta A., 264 Huxley, T. H. (1825-1895), 65,
149
Irving, Washington (1783-1859),
198 Isocrates (436-338 B.C.), 227
James, William (1842-1910), 168,
199 Jefferies, R. (1848-1887), 393 Jeffrey, Francis, Lord (1773-1850),
144 Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784), 39,
40, 112, 205, 222 Jones, Sir William (1746-1794), 309 Jonson, Ben (? 1573-1637), 9, 379.
384
Kant (1724-1804), 393
Keats (1795-1821), 77, 127, 133,
161, 165, 184, 195, 252, 257, 313,
341, 356 Keble -(1792-1866), 58 King, Henry (1592-1669), 270 Kinglake, A. W. (1809-1891), 28 Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875), 49,
249, 264
Kipling, Rudyard (6. 1865), 11,
221 n., 275, 279-81, 348-50 Knight, E. F. {h. 1852), 197 Knowles, F. L. (1869-1905), 377
La Bruyfere (i 645-1 696), 33 Lamb, Charles (1775-1834), 40,
194. 356, 361 Landor, W. S. (1775-1864), 60,
365, 367 Lang, Andrew (1844-1912), 96,
171 n. Latimer, Hugh (? 1485-1555), 156 Lecky, W. E. H. (1838-1903), 152 Le GalHenne, R. {b. 1866), 57, 215 Leigh, H. S. (1837-1883), 211, 292 Lessing (1729-1781), 289 Lichtenberg, G. C. (1742-1799),
163 Liebig (1803-1873), 174 Lilly, W. S. {h. 1840), 234 Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865),
169, 346 Litany, Old Monkish, 342 Littledale, R. F. (1833-1896), 134 Livingstone, R. W. (6. 1880), 207,
334-8, 412, 413 Locke, John (1632-1704), 209, 255 Locker-Lampson, F. (1821-1895),
90, 333 Logia of Jesus, 372 Longfellow (1807-1882), 305, 327,
398 Lovelace, Richard (1618-1655),
366 Loveman, R. (6. 1864), 396 Lowell, J. R. (1819-1891), 2, 35,
85, 99-100, 124, 130, 150, 261,
306, 311 Lowry, H. D. (1869-1906), 32, 166,
287 Lyall, Sir Alfred (1835-1911), 59,
118 Lynch, Thomas Toke (181 8-1 871),
58, 271 Lytton, Bulwer (1803-1873), 275 Lytton, Earl of, " Owen Meredith "
(1831-1891), 70, 403
Macaulay, (1800-1859), 345 MacDonald, George (1824-1905),
19, 43, 44, 64, 91, 203, 204, 239,
276, 306, 331 Macpherson, James (1736-1796),
263 Maine, Sir Henry (1822-1888), 108 Mangan, J. C. (1803-1849), 142 Marcus Aurelius (120-180), 242 Marlowe (1564-1593), 44
436
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Marston, P. B. (1850-1887), 45 Martial (? 40-? 103), 97, 212 Martineau, James (1805-1900),
15. 37, 54. 67, 88, 109, 161, 162,
297, 325, 343, 357 Masnair (thirteenth century), 214 Mason, Catherine A., 328 Massey, Gerald (1828-1907), 26,
158, 293, 316, 358 Maudsley, Henry (1835-1918), 174 Maule, Sir W. H. (1788-1858), 210 Melville, Herman (1819-1891), 332 Menzies, P. S. (1840-1874), 314-16 Meredith, George ( 1 828-1 909) ,132,
238, 278, 297, 340, 342, 371 Meynell, Alice (1852-1922), 151 Michel Angelo (1475-1564), 75 Middleton, R. (1882-1911), 151 Mill, J. S. (1806-1873), 53 Milton (1608-1674), 159, 189, 209,
237, 239, 402 Mimnermus (? 630-? 600 B.C.), 410 Mitchell, T. W. {b. 1869), 173 Moasi, 398
Molifere (1622-1673), 35, 386 Monod, Adolph (1802-1856), 231 Montaigne (1533-1592), 123, 165,
261, 345 Montenaeken, Lfen, 129 Moody, W. V. (1869-1910), vii Moore, Thomas (1779-1852), 208,
370, 401 Morris, Lewis (183 3-1 907), 12 Morris, W. (1834-1896), 4, 37, 43,
312, 313 Mozley, J. B. (1813-1878), 258 Murray, Gilbert {b. 1866), 416-19 Myers, F. W. H. (1843-1901), 149,
170, 225, 318, 362, 382, 390, 409
Naylor, H. Darnley (Jb. 1872), 9, 10 Neale, J. M. (1818-1866), 305 Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), 148 Niebuhr (1776-1831), 240 Noel, Roden (1834-1894), 12 Novalis,F.L. (1772-1801), 160, 169 Nursery Rhyme, 92
Oldys, William (1696-1761), 397 Oliphant, L. (1829-1888), 208 Osier, Sir W. (1849-1919), 168 O'Sullivan, V., 364 Ouida (1839-1908), 242 Ovid (43 B.c.-A.D. 18), 408
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), 6,
150, 207, 282 Parnell, Thos. (1679-1717), 425 Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662), 7, 150
Pater, Walter (1839-1894), 353 Patmore, Coventry (1823-1896),
116, 167, 189, 276, 342 Payne, John (1841-1920), 169, 196,
198, 361
Pearson, Karl {b. 1857), 286 Penn, William (1644-1718), 228 Percy's Reliques, 191 Phillips, John (1676-1709), 313 Phillips, Stephen (1868-1915), 368 Plato (427-347 B.C.), 8, 10, 141,
157, 333 Pliny the Elder (? 23-79), 242, 378 Pliny the Younger (? 61-? 113), 242 Plutarch (? 46-120), 203, 291, 408,
412, 415 Poe, E. A. (1809-1849), 296 Poincar^, Henri (1854-1912), 176 Pollock. Sir F. {b. 1845), 248 Pope ( 1 688-1 744), 19, 97, 104, 143,
165, 232, 281, 296, 316, 408 Praed, W. M. (1802-1839), 233,
277, 402 Pringle-Pattison, A. Seth {b. 1856),
125, 257 Procter, B. W., " Barry Corn- wall " (1787-1874), 127 Proverbs, 22, 36, 54, 98, 107, 153,
205, 212, 219, 300, 346-7, 378,
408 Prowse, W. J. (1836-1870), 271 Ptolemy (second century a.d.), 10 Puttenham, George {d. 1590), 174,
399
Quarles, Francis (1592-1644), 3 Quiller-Couch, Sir A. {b. 1863), 17
Racine (1639-1699), 212
Raleigh, Sir Walter (? 1552-1618),
267 Ribot (1839-1903), 175 Richter, Jean Paul (1763-1825),
76, 175 Robertson, F. W. (1816-1853), 260 Robertson, J. M. {b. 1856), 21 Rogers, R. C. (1862-1912), 347 Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855), 40,
112 Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894),
30, 31, 60, 92, 195, 213 Rossetti, D. G. (1828-1882), 12,
41, 49, 84, 132, 152, 227, 281,
293, 368, 372 Ruskin (1819-1900), 145, 157, 193,
199, 219, 316, 329, 379, 418
Sadi (? 1184-1292), 320
St. Augustine (354-430), 305
INDEX OF AUTHORS
437
St. Jerome (? 340-420), xvii
St. Paul, 150
Sampson, George (b. 1873), 285
Sayce, A. H. (b. 1846), 69
Schopenhauer (1788-1860), 351
Schreiner, Olive (b. 1862), 96, 106,
274, 290 Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832), 73,
324 Scott, Wm. Bell (1812-1890), 381 Sears, E. H. (1810-1876), 301 Seeley, J. R. (1834-1895). 16, 105,
375 Selden, John (1584-1654), 75, 97 Seneca (4 b.c.-a.d. 65), 12, 36, 340 Shakespeare (1564-1616), viii, 20-
21, 30, 39, 40, 76, 102, 106, 109,
201, 212, 331, 341, 376, 380, 387 Shelley, P. B. (1792-1822), 10, 22,
77, 91, loi, 117, 125, 136, 175,
207, 236, 238, 241, 260, 264,
273, 323, 334, 402 Shenstone (1714-1760), 125 Shepherd, N. G. (1835-1869), 37 Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586), 193 Simonides of Amorgos, 137 Smith, Alexander (1830-1867), 30,
82, 122, 192, 262-3, 309, 327, 389 Smith, Horace (1779-1849), 83 Smith, S. C. Kaines, 424 Smith, Sydney (1771-1845), 73
82, 137, 229, 364 Smith, Walter C. (1824-1908), 96,
226, 296, 388 Socrates (? 469-399), 412 Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), 107, 137 South, Robert (1634-1716), 116 Southey, Robert (1774-1843), 251 Spencer, Herbert (1820-1903), 68,
108, 109, no Spenser, Edmund (? 1552-1599),
25, 230 Squire, J. C. (b. 1884), 161 Steele (1672-1729), 162 Stephen, J. K. (1859-1892), 144,
287 SterHng, John (1806-1844), 356 Sterne (1713-1768), 44, 106, 327,
347, 397 Stetson, Charlotte P. {b. i860),
303, 403 Stephens, J. Brunton (1835-1902),
55 Stevenson, R. L. (1850-1894), 20,
51, 86, 261, 294 Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-
1896), 164 Suckling, Sir John (1609-1642),
406
Swain, Charles (1801-1874), 128 Swift (1667-1745). 40, 74, 97, 148 Swinburne (1837-1909), 33, 43, 46, 228, 243, 246-7, 301, 311, 392 Symons, Arthur {b. 1865), 81
Tabb, J. B. (1845-1909), 90, 213,
360 Tacitus (? 55-120), 50 Talleyrand (1776-1839), 39 Taylor, Jeremy (1613-1667), 219,
290 Tennyson (1809- 1892), xiv, 24,
91, 143, 153, 160, 226, 289,
305, 312, 319, 328, 341, 347,
351, 374, 394, 403 Thackeray (1811-1863), 64, 86,
153, 308, 352 Theocritus (third century B.C.), 92 Thomas, Edith M. (1854-1921),
361 Thompson, Francis (1859-1907),
10, 103, 300 Thomson, James, " B.V." (1834-
1882), 105, 113, 200, 201, 253,
267 Thucydides (? 460-395 B.C.), 5 Topsell, Edward (d. ? 1638), i'6 Tooke, Home (1736-1812), 211 Trench, Herbert (1865-1923), 87,
146 Tryon, Thomas (1634-1703), 125 Tupper, Martin (1810-1889), 123 Turner, Charles Tennyson (1803-
1879), 370 " Twain, Mark," S. L. Clemens
(1835-1910), 322 Tyndall, John (1820-1893), 66, 174
Vaughan, Henry (1622-1695), 89,
230, 324 Vaughan, R. A. (1823-1857), 214,
328 Verrall, Margaret de G. (1857-
1912), 220-21 Vinet, Alexandre (1797-1847), 82 Virgil (70-19 B.C.), 117 Vogler, G. J., 317 Voltaire (1694-1778), 35, 5°, 1 94
Waddington, Samuel (b. 1844),
226, 321, 391 Wallace, A. R. (1823-1913), 327 Waller, Edmund (1606-1687), 76,
273 Walpole, Horace (1717-1797), 328 " Ward, Artemus," C. F. Browne
(1834-1867), 40
438
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Warner, Charles Dudley (1829-
1900), 227, 358, 389 Waterhouse, Elizabeth (1834-
1918), 159 Watson, Sir William {b. 1858), 29,
143 Webster, John (? 1580-? 1625), 98 Wesley, John (1703-1791), 194,
365 West, A. S. {b. 1846), 272 Westbury, F. A., 30 Westwood, Thomas (1814-1888),
63 White, Blanco (1775-1841), 291 Whitman, Walt (1819-1892), 407 Whittier, J. G. (1807-1892), 2, 31,
163, 191, 222 Whyte-Melville (1821-1878), 369 Wilberforce, Samuel (1805-1873),
6S, 385 Wilkes, John (1727-1797), 223
Williamson, F. S. {b. 1865), 202
Wordsworth (1770-1850), i, 33,
42, 45, 68, 88, 89, 102, 117, 125,
i33> 135, 151, 153, 158, 166, 198,
231, 236, 238, 254, 257, 278, 287,
317, 319, 341, 383, 401. 423 Wotton, Sir Henry (1568-1639),
263 Wren, Sir Christopher (1632-
1723), 404
Xenophanes of Colophon {c. 570 B.C.), 140
Yeats, W. B. (6. 1865), 389 Younghusband, Sir F. (6. 1863), 259
Zimmermann, J. G. (1728-1795),
403 Zimmern, A. E. {b. 1879), 419, 422
THE END
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