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EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY MURRAY AND GIBB, 


FOR 


= 


_ EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 








HISTORY 


OF 





ENGLISH LITERATURE 


BY 


H. A. TAINEH, 


D.C. L. 


TRANSLATED BY H. VAN LAUN. 


SECOND EDITION. 


VOL. IL 48 


EDINBURGH: 
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 
1872. 








CONTENTS. 


BOOK III.—THE CLASSIC AGE. 


7 Cuap. II.—Drypen, - 7 . : ‘ 
III.—TuE REVOLUTION, - - 3 ‘ 
~ IV.—Appison, ; ‘ ‘ . 
7 V.—SwIrT, .. . 
: VI.—Tue Nove ists, ; Pe 
VIl.—TuE Ports, . : ;, ° . 


BOOK IV.—MODERN LIFE. 


-~ CuHap. I.—IpEAS AND PRODUCTIONS, ‘ : é 
II.—Lorp Byron, . “ , = 
a III.—TuHE Past AND THE PRESENT, . id 5 


BOOK V.—MODERN AUTHORS. 


Intropuctory Norte, ‘ ‘ é 4 
Cuapr. I.—Tne Novet.—DIckens, 

II.—Tur NovEL CONTINUED.—THACKERAY, 

_~ TII.—Criricism AnD History.—MAcavLay, 

_/ IV.—PHILosopHy AND HisTory.—CARLYLE, 

/ Y.—PxiLosopuy.—Stuart MILL, . 


y VI.—PorTry.—TENNYSON, .« ° : ‘ 


INDEX, : ‘ : 4 . : 





223 
271 
313 


337 
338 
367 
402 
435 
477 
518 


543 








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HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, 


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BOOK - 1 Li. 


THE CLASSIC AGE, 





—~—. 
CHAPTER II. 


Dryden. 


I. Dryden’s beginnings—Close of the poetic age—Cause of literary decline 


and regeneration. 

II. Family—Education—Studies— Reading — Habits— Position —Character— 
Audience—Friendships—Quarrels—Harmony of his life and talent. 

III. The theatres re-opened and transformed—The new public and the new 
taste—Dramatic theories of Dryden—His judgment of the old English 
theatre—His judgment of the new French theatre—Composite works— 
Incongruities of his drama—T'yrannic Love—Grossness of his characters— 
The Indian Emperor, Aureng-zebe, Almanzor. 

IV. Style of his drama—Rhymed verse—Flowery diction—Pedantic tirades— 
Want of agreement between the classical style and romantic events— 
How Dryden borrows and mars the inventions of Shakspeare and Milton 
—Why this drama fell to the ground. 

V. Merits of this drama—Characters of Antony and Don Sebastian—Otway— 
Life—W orks, 

VI. Dryden as a writer—Kind, scope, and limits of his mind—Clumsiness in 
flattery and obscenity—Heaviness in dissertation and discugssion— Vigour 
and fundamental uprightness. 

VII. How literature in England is occupied with politics and religion—Political 
poems of Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal — Religious 
poems, Religio Laici, The Hind and the Panther—Bitterness and viru- 
lence of these poems—Mac Flecknoe. 


. VIII. Rise of the art of writing—Difference between the stamp of ia of the 


artistic and classic ages—Dryden’s manner of writing—Sustained and 
oratorical diction. 
IX. Lack of general ideas in this age and this stamp of mind—Dryden’s transla- 
tions — Adaptations —Imitations— Tales and letters — Faults—Merits— 
VOL. II, A 


2 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Il. 


Gravity of his character, brilliancy of his inspiration, fits and starts of 
poetic eloquence—Alexander’s Feast, a song in honour .of 8, Cecilia’s 
Day. 

X. Dryden’s latter days—Wretchedness—Poverty—Wherein his work is in- 
complete—Death. 


OMEDY has led us a long way; we must return and consider 
other kind of writings. A higher spirit moves amidst the great 
current. In the history of this talent we shall find the history of the 
English classical spirit, its structure, its gaps and its powers, its forma- 
tion and its development. 


i. 
The subject isa young man, Lord Hastings, who died of smallpox 
at the age of nineteen: 


‘ His body was an orb, his sublime soul 
Did move on virtue’s and on learning’s pole ; 
. . « Come, learned Ptolemy, and trial make 
If thou this hero’s altitude canst take. 


. - « Blisters with pride swell’d, which through ’s flesh did sprout 
Like rose-buds, stuck i’ the lily skin about. 

Each little pimple had a tear in it, 

To wail the fault its rising did commit. ... 


Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin, 
The cabinet of a richer soul within ? 

No comet need foretel his change drew on 
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.’ ! 


With such a fine specimen, Dryden, the greatest poet of the classical 
age, made his appearance. 

Such enormities indicate the close of a literary age. Excess of 
folly in poetry, like excess of injustice in political matters, lead up to 
and foretell revolutions. The Renaissance, unchecked and original, 
abandoned the minds of men to the fire and caprices of imagination, 
the oddities, curiosities, outbreaks of an inspiration which cares only 
to content itself, breaks out into singularities, has need of novelties, 
and loves audacity and extravagance, as reason loves justice and 
truth. After the extinction of genius folly remained; after the re- 
moval of inspiration nothing was left but absurdity. Formerly the 
internal disorder and dash produced and ‘excused conceit? and wild 
flights; thenceforth men threw them out in cold blood, by calcula- 
tion and without excuse.. Formerly they expressed the state of the 
mind, now they belie it. So are literary revolutions accomplished. 
The form, no longer original or spontaneous, but imitated and passed 
from hand to hand, outlives the old spirit which had created it, 





/ i Dryden’s Works, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 2d ed., 18 vols., 1821, xi. 94. 














CHAP. I] eo; DRYDEN. fe Oe 


and. is in opposition to the new spirit which destroys it. This pre- 
liminary strife and progressive transformation make up the life of 
Dryden, and account for his impotence and his falls, his talent and his 
success. 


rt 


Dryden’s beginnings are in striking contrast with those of the poets 
of the Renaissance, actors, vagabonds, soldiers, who were tossed about 
from the first in all the contrasts and miseries of active life. He was 
born in 1631, of a good family; his grandfather and uncle were baronets ; 
Sir Gilbert Pickering, his relative, was a knight, member of Parlia- 
ment, one of Cromwell’s council of twenty-one, one of the great office- 
holders of the new court. Dryden was brought up in an excellent 
school, under Dr. Busby, then in high repute; after which he passed 
four years at Cambridge. Having inherited by his father’s death a 
small estate, he used his liberty and fortune only to maintain him in 
his studious life, and continued in seclusion at the University for three 
years more. Here you see the regular habits of an honourable and 
well-to-do family, the discipline of a connected and solid education, 
the taste for classical and exact studies. Such circumstances announce 
and prepare, not an artist, but a man of letters. 

I find the same fugioiation and the same signs in the remainder of 
his life, private or public. He regularly spends his mornings in writing 
or reading, then dines with his family. His reading was that of a 

an of culture and a critical mind, who does not think of amusing or 
Ee ctng himself, but who learns and judges. Virgil, Ovid, Horace, 
Juvenal, and Persius were his favourite authors; he translated several ; 
their names were always on his pen; he discusses their opinions 
and their merits, feeding himself on this reasoning which oratorical 
customs had imprinted on all the works of the Roman mind. He is 
isa with the new French literature, the heir of the Latin, with 
Corneille and Racine, Boileau, Rapin and Bossu;? he reasons with 
them, often in their spirit, writes reflectively, seldom fails to arrange 
some good theory to justify each of his new works. He knew very 
well the literature of his own country, though sometimes not very. 
accurately, gave to authors their due rank, classified the different 
kinds of writing, went back as far as old Chaucer, whom he tran- 
scribed and. put into a modern dress. His mind thus filled, he would 
go in the afternoon to Will’s coffeehouse, the great literary rendeayaiess 
young poets, students fresh” fromthe” University, literary dilettante 
crowded round his chair, carefully placed in summer near the balcony,, 





1 Rapin (1621-1687), a French J esuit, a modern Latin poet and literary critic. 
Bossu, or properly Lebossu (1631-1680), wrote a T'raité du Poeme épique, 
which had a great success in its day. Both critics are now completely forgotten. 
—TIR 





A THE CLASSIC AGE, [BOOK III. 


in winter by the fireside, thinking themselves fortunate to get in a word, 
or a pinch of snuff respectfully extracted from his learned snuff-box. 
For indeed he was the monarch of taste and the umpire of letters; 
he criticised novelties—Racine’s last tragedy, Blackmore’s heavy epic, 
Swift’s first poems; slightly vain, praising his own writings, to the 
extent of saying that ‘no one had ever composed or will ever compose 
a finer ode’ than his on Alexander’s Feast; but gossipy, fond of that 
interchange of ideas which discussion never fails to produce, capable 
of enduring contradiction, and admitting his adversary to be in the 
right. These manners show that literature had become a matter of 
study rather than of inspiration, an an employment for the taste rather 
than for the enthusiasm, a source of distraction rather than of emotion. 
His audience, his friendships, his actions, his strifes, had the same 
tendency. He lived amongst great men and courtiers, in a society of 
artificial manners and measured language. He had married the 
daughter of Thomas Earl of Berkshire; he was historiographer, then 
poet-laureate. He often saw the king and the princes. He dedicated 
each of his works to some lord, in a laudatory, flunkeyish prenece bear- 
ing witness to his intimate acquaintance with the great. e received a 
purse of gold for each dedication, went to return thanks; introduces 
some of these lords under pseudonyms in his Essay on the Dramatic Art ; 
wrote introductions for the works of others, called them Mecenas, : 
Tibullus, or Pollio; discussed with them literary works and opinions. 
The re-establishment of the court had brought back the art of conver- 
sation, vanity, the necessity for appearing to be a man of letters and of 
possessing good taste, all the company-manners which are the source of 
classical literature, and which teach men the art of speaking well.t On 
the other hand, literature, brought under the influence of society, entered. 
into society’s interests, and first of all in petty private quarrels. Whilst 
men of letters learned etiquette, courtiers learned how to write. They 
soon became jumbled together, and naturally fell to blows. The Duke 
of Buckingham wrote a parody on Dryden, The Rehearsal, and took 
infinite” pains t6 teach the chief actor Dryden’s toné and gestures. 
Later, Rochester took up the cudgels against the poet, supported Settle 
against him, and hired a band of ruffians to beat him. Besides this, 
Dryden had quarrels with Shadwell and a crowd of others, and finally 
with Blackmore and Jeremy Collier. To crown all, he entered into 
the strife of political parties and religious sects, fought for the Tories 
and Anglicans, then for the Roman Catholics ; wrote The Medal, Ab- 
salom and Achitophel, against the Whigs ; Religio. Laici'a ‘against Dissenters 
and Papists; then The Hind and Panther for James I1., with the logic of 
controversy and the | bitterness of party. It is a long way from this 








1Jn his Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada, 
iv. 226, Dryden says: ‘ Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation 
is so much refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court.’ 





“ey 


CHAP. II.] _ DRYDEN. - 5 





combative and argumentative existence to the reveries and seclusion of 
the true poet. Such circumstances teach the art of writing clearly and 
wh ea methodical and connected discussion, strong and exact style, 
banter and refutation, eloquence and satire: these gifts are necessary 
to make a man of letters heard or believed, and the mind enters 
compulsorily upon a track when it is the only one that can conduct 
é. it to its goal. Dryden entered upon it spontaneously. In his second 
4 production,’ the abundance of well-ordered ideas, the oratorical energy | 
y and harmony, the simplicity, the gravity, the heroic and Roman spirit, 
. announce a classic genius, the relative not of Shakspeare, but of Cor- 
| neille, capable not of dramas. but of discussions. 


E: Ill. 


And yet, at first, he devoted himself to the drama: he wrote twenty- 
: seven pieces, and signed an agreement with the actors of the King’s 
4 Theatre to supply them with three every year. The theatre, forbidden 
under the Commonwealth, had just re-opened with extraordinary magni- 
4 ficence and success. The rich scenes made moveable, the women’s parts 
,* no longer played by boys, but by women, the novel and splendid wax- 
lights, the machinery, the recent popularity of actors who had become 
heroes of fashion, the scandalous importance of the actresses, who were 
mistresses of the aristocracy and of the king, the example of the court 
and the imitation of France, drew spectators in crowds. The thirst for 
pleasure, long repressed, knew no bounds. Men indemnified themselves 
for the long abstinence imposed by fanatical Puritans; eyes and ear, 
disgusted with gloomy faces, nasal pronunciation, official ejaculations 
on sin and damnation, satiated themselves with sweet singing, sparkling 
dress, the seduction of voluptuous dances. They wished to enjoy life, 
and that in a new fashion; for a new world, that of the courtiers and 
the idle, had been formed. The abolition of feudal tenures, the vast 
increase of commerce and wealth, the concourse of landed proprietors, 
who let their lands and came to London to enjoy the pleasures of the 
town and to court the favours of the king, had installed on the suminit 
of society, in England as in France, rank, authority, the manners and 
tastes of the world of fashion, of the idle, the drawing-room frequenters, 
lovers of pleasure, conversation, wit, and breeding, occupied with the 
e themselves than to criticise it. ‘Thus was 
Dryden’s drama built up; the poet, greedy of glory and pressed for 











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1 Heroic stanzas to the memory of Oliver Cromwell. 


6 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book III. 


‘The language, wit, and conversation of our age, are improved and refined above 
the last. . . . Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally 
consists ; that is, ‘‘either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are ill- 
sounding or improper ; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, 
and more significant.” . . . Letany man, who understands English, read diligently 
the works of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he will find in 
every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense... . 
Many of (their plots) were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in 


-one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 


Pericles Prince of Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakspeare ; besides many of 
the rest, as the Winter’s Tale, Love’s Labour Lost, Measure for Measure, which 
were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the 
comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment. . .. I 
could easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct 
plotting, nor that which they call the decorum of the stage. . . . The reader will 
see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself... . 
His shepherd falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women.’ ! 


Fletcher nowhere permits kings to retain the royal dignity. Moreover, 


the action of these authors’ plays is always barbarous. They introduce 


battles on the stage; they transport the scene in a moment to a distance 
of twenty years or five hundred leagues, and a score of times consecu- 
tively in one act; they jumble together three or four different actions, 
especially in the historical dramas. But they sin most in style. Dryden 
says of Shakspeare: 


‘ Many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those 
which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse ; and his whole style 
is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure.’ ? 


Ben Jonson himself often has bad plots, redundancies, barbarisms: 


‘ Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known till 
Mr. Waller introduced it.’? 


All, in short, descend to quibbles, low and common expressions: 


‘In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours. 

. - Besides the want of education and learning, they wanted the benefit of con- 

verse. Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and, 

though they allow Cob and Tibb to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased 
with their tankard, or with their rags.’4 


For these gentlemen we must now write, and especially for ‘reasonable 
men ;’ for it is not enough to have wit or to love tragedy, in order to be 
a good critic: we must possess a solid knowledge and a lofty reason, know 
a Nae Horace, Longinus, and pronounce judgment according to their 
rules.° These rules, based upon observation and logic, preseribe unity 
of action; that this action should have a beginning, middle, and end; 





1 Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada, iv. 213. 
2 Preface to J'roilus and Cressida, vi. 239. 

* Defence of the Epilogue of the Conquest of Granada, iv. 219. 

* Ibid, 225, ° Preface to All for Love, v. 306, 


Bis iat 


"3 f Se} i 








Fetes aes Ep. es " a <a 





CHAP. IL] | (DRYDEN, ~ > | ‘a 


that its parts should proceed naturally one from the other; that it: 
should excite terror and pity, so as to inform and improve us; that the 
characters should be distinct, harmonious, conformable with tradition 
or the design of the poet. Such, says Dryden, will be the new 
tragedy, closely allied, it seems, to the French, especially .as he quotes 
Bossu and Rapin, as if he took them for instructors. 

Yet it differs from it, and Dryden enumerates all that an English 
pit can blame in the French stage. He says: 


‘The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, 
because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and 
passions. . . . He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these 
last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or 
three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what 
has he produced except the Liar? and you know how it was cried up in France ; 
but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, . . . the most 
favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher’s or Ben 
Jonson’s. . . . Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read, . .. their 
speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be re- 
formed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply 
- with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey ; they 
are not so properly to be ealled plays as long discourses of reasons of state; and 
Polieucte, in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. 
Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, 
like our parsons. . , . I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French ; 
for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, 
who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious.’ ? 


As for the tumults and combats which they relegate behind the scenes, 
‘nature has so formed our countrymen to fierceness, . .. they will 
scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from 
them.’ Thus the French, by fettering themselves with these scruples,® 





1 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 337. 2 Ibid. 3438. 

2 In the preface of All for Love, v. 308, Dryden says: ‘In this nicety of 
manners does the excellency of French poetry consist. Their heroes are the most 
civil people breathing, but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense ; 
all their wit is in their ceremony; they want the genius which animates our 
stage. ... Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he 
will rather expose himself to death than accuse his step-mother to his father ; and 
my critics, I am sure, will commend him for it: But we of grosser apprehensions 
are apt to think, that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools 
and madmen. ... But take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he 
would think it a wiser part, to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather 
to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to die with the in- 
famy of an incestuous villain. . . . (The poet) has chosen to give him the turn 
of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, 
and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolite.’ This 
criticism shows in a small compass all the common sense and freedom of thought 
of Dryden; but, at the same time, all the coarseness of his education and of his 
age. 


8 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. . 


and confining themselves in their unities and their rules, have removed 


action from their stage, and brought themselves down to unbearable, 


monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness, variety, 
fulness. 
*. . . Contented to be thinly regular. ... 
Their tongue enfeebled is refined too much, . 
And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch. 
Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey, 
More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay.’ ! 


Let them laugh as much as they like at Fletcher and Shakspeare; there 
is in them ‘a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing 
than there is in any of the French.’ 

Though exaggerated, this criticism is good; and because it is good, I 
mistrust the works which the writer is to produce. It is dangerous for 
an artist to be excellent in theory; the creative spirit is hardly con- 
sonant with the criticising spirit: he who, quietly seated on the shore, 
discusses and compares, is hardly capable of plunging straight and 
boldly into the stormy sea of invention. Moreover, Dryden holds 
himself too evenly poised betwixt the moods; original artists love 
solely and without justice a certain idea and a certain world; the rest 
disappears from their eyes; confined in one region of art, they deny or 
scorn the other; it is because they are limited that they are strong. 
We see beforehand that Dryden, pushed one way by his English mind, 
will be drawn another way by his French rules; that he will alternately 
venture and restrain himself; that he will attain mediocrity, that is, 
platitude; that by reason of his faults he will fall into incongruities, 
that is, into absurdities. AIl original art is self-regulated, and no original 
art can be regulated from without: it carries its own counterpoise, and 
does not receive it from elsewhere; it constitutes an inviolable whole ; 
it is an animated existence, which lives on its own blood, and which 
languishes or dies if deprived of some of its blood and supplied from 
the veins of another. Shakspeare’s imagination cannot be guided by 
Racine’s reason, nor Racine’s reason be exalted by Shakspeare’s imagina- 
tion ; each is good in itself, and excludes its rival; to unite them would 
be to produce a bastard, a sick child and a monster. Disorder, violent 
and sudden action, harsh words, horror, depth, truth, exact imitation 
of reality, and the lawless outbursts of mad passions,—these features of 
Shakspeare become each other. Order, measure, eloquence, aristocratic 
refinement, worldly urbanity, exquisite painting of delicacy and virtue, 
all Racine’s features suit each other. It would destroy the one to 
attenuate, the other to inflame him. Their whole being and beauty 
consist in the agreement of their parts: to mar this agreement would 
be to abolish their being and their beauty. In order to produce, we 
must invent a personal and harmonious conception; we must not 





1 Epistle xiv., to Mr. Motteux, xi. 70. 


2p 


CHAP. II.] ‘ DRYDEN. a) 





mingle two strange and opposite ones. Dryden has left undone what 
he should have done, and has done what he should not have done. | 
ag He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivolous, 
% void of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the 

national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature, | 
a pecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the 
gratification of their curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work 
of art, only makes sensible a profound idea of man and of existence; 
there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and violences, 
and the audience ought to be capable of comprehending it, as the poet 
is of conceiving it, The hearer must have reflected or felt with energy 
or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined thoughts; Hamlet 
and Iphigénie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a lover of money. 
The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our own tears; - 
our interest is but that of sympathy ; and the drama is like an external 
conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we a 
felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like Saint Albans, — 
drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old children like 
Charles u.? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable 
even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in 
their sports, obscene in words, void of honour, humanity, politeness, 
who made the court a house of ill fame! The splendid decorations, 
change of scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the 
observance of a few rules imported from Paris,—such was the natural 
food of their vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English 
Restoration. 

I take one of these tragedies, very celebrated in time past, Tyrannic 
Love, or the Royal Martyr,—a fine title, and fit to makea stir. The royal 
martyr is Saint Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it appears, who 
is brought before the tyrant’ Maximin. She confesses her faith, and a 
pagan philosopher Apollonius is set loose against her, to refute her. 
Maximin says: 





‘War is my province !—Priest, why stand you mute? 
You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute.’ 


Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the 
following words: 
‘, .. Reason with your fond religion fights, 
For many gods are many infinites ; 


This to the first philosophers was known, 
Who, under various names, ador’d but one.’ + 





Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are 
great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician 
_-_-__—s immediately replies : ; 





1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1. 





10 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


* Then let the whole dispute concluded be ~ 
Betwixt these rules, and Christianity.’? 


Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the spot, insults the 
prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly 
enamoured, and makes jokes: 


* Absent, I may her martyrdom decree, 
But one look more will make that martyr me.’ 


In this dilemma he sends Placidius, ‘a great officer,’ to St. Catharine ; 
the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus; forthwith 
the saint propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of 
atoms, Maximin comes himself, and says: 


‘Since you neglect to answer my desires, 
Know, princess, you shall burn in other fires,’ 


_ Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off. 
Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, 
and to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs 
a magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the in- 
fernal spirits, and brings up a troop of Spirits: these dance and sing 
voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catharine. Her guardian-angel 
comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel 
brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catharine and her mother. 
Whilst the executionersare going to strip the saint, a modest angel descends 
in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel ; after which they are carried 
off, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add to these pretty 
inventions a twofold intrigue, the love of Maximin’s daughter Valeria 
for Porphyrius, captain of the Preetorian bands, and that sf Porphyrius 
for Berenice, Maximin’s wife; then a sudden catastrophe, three deaths, 
and the triumph of the good ‘Seople, who get married and interchange 
polite phrases. Such is this tragedy, which is called French-like; and 
most of the others are like it. In Secret Love, in Marriage a la Mode, 
in Aureng-Zebe, in the Indian Emperor, and especially in the Conquest 
of Granada, everything is extravagant, People cut one another to pieces, 
_ take towns, stab each other, shout lustily. These dramas have just the’ 
truth and naturalness of the libretto of an opera. Incantations abound ; 
a spirit appears in the Indian Emperor, and declares that the Indian gods 
‘are driven to exile from their native lands.’ Ballets are also there; 
- Vasquez and Pizarro, seated in ‘a pleasant grotto,’ watch like conquerors 
the dances of the Indian girls, who gambol voluptuously about them. 





1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1. 2 Ibid. 

8 Ibid. 3.1. This Maximin has a turn for jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he 
offers his daughter in marriage, says that ‘the distance was so vast ;’ whereupon 
Maximin replies: ‘ Yet heaven and earth, which so remote appear, are by the air, 
which flows betwixt them, near’ (2, 1), 


hte > Tt aE is > Cai ee ye Sy BG, On, ep eae I ee 
; Paes : we ; (or ; as on 





CHAP. II.]. DRYDEN. 11 


Scenes worthy of Lulli' are not wanting; Almeria, like Armide, comes 
to slay Cortez in his sleep, and suddenly conceives a love for him. 
Yet the libretti of the opera have no incongruities; they avoid all which 
might shock the imagination or the eyes; they are written for men of 
taste, who shun ugliness and heaviness of any sort. Would you believe 
it? In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma is tortured on the stage, and 
to cap all, a priest tries to convert him inthe meanwhile.? I recognise 
in this frightful pedantry the handsome cavaliers of the time, logicians 
and hangmen, who fed on controversy, and for pleasure went to look 
at the tortures of the Puritans. I recognise behind these heaps of 
improbabilities and adventures the puerile and worn-out courtiers, 
who, sodden with wine, were past seeing discordances, and whose 
nerves were only stirred by the shock of surprises and the barbarity 
of events. 

Let us go still further. Dryden would set up on his stage the 
beauties of French tragedy, and in the first place, nobility of sentiments. 
Is it enough to copy, as he does, phrases of chivalry? He would need 
a whole world, for a whole world is necessary to form noble souls. 
Virtue, in the French tragic poets, is founded on reason, religion, 
education, philosophy. Their characters have that uprightness of 
mind, that-clearness. of logic, that lofty judgment, which plant in a man 
settled maxims and self-government. We perceive in their company 
the doctrines of Bossuet and Descartes; with them, reflection aids 
conscience ; the habits of society add tact and finesse. The avoidance 
of violent actions and physical horrors, the meed of order and fable, 
the art of disguising or shunning coarse or low-bred persons, the con- 
tinuous perfection of the most measured and noble style, everything 
contributes to raise the stage to a sublime region, and we believe in 
higher souls by seeing them in a purer air. Can we believe in 
them in Dryden? Frightful or infamous characters every instant 
drag us down by their crudities in their own mire. Maximin, 





1 Lulli (1633-1687), a renowned Italian composer. -Armide is one of his chief 
works.—TR. 


Se Se se ee 


2 Christian Priest. But we by martyrdom our faith avow. 
Montezuma. You do no more than I for ours do now. 
{ To prove religion true, 
If either wit or sufferings would suffice, 
All faiths afford the constant and the wise, 
And yet even they, by education sway’d, 
' Jn age defend what infancy obeyed. 
Christian Priest. Since age by erring childhood is misled, 
Refer yourself to our unerring head. 
Montezuma. Man, and not err! what reason can you give? 
Christian Priest. Renounce that carnal reason, and believe... 
Pizarro. Increase their pains, the cords are yet too slack. 
: —The Indian Emperor, ii. 2. 





12 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


having stabbed Placidius, sits on his body, stabs him twice more, and 
says to the guards: 


‘ Bring me Porphyrius and my empress dead : 
I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head.’! 


Nourmahal, repulsed by her husband’s son, insists four times with such 
indecent pedantry as this: 
‘ And why this niceness to that pleasure shown, 

Where nature sums up all her joys in one.... 

Promiscuous love is nature’s general law ; 

For whosoever the first lovers were, 

Brother and sister made the second pair, 

And doubled by their love their piety. ... 

You must be mine, that you may learn to live,’ ? 


Illusion vanishes at once; instead of being in a room with noble cha- 
racters, we meet with a mad prostitute and a drunken savage. Lift 
the masks; the others are little better. Almeria, to whom a crown 
is offered, says insolently : 
‘I take this garland, not as given by you, 
But as my merit, and my beauty’s due.’ 
Indamora, to whom an old courtier makes love, settles him with the 
boastfulness of an upstart and the coarseness of a kitchen-maid: 
‘ Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh, 
My youth in bloom, your age in its decay.’ 4 
None of these heroines know how to conduct themselves; they look 
on impertinence as dignity, sensuality as tenderness; they have the 





1 Tyrannic Love, iii. 5.1. When dying Maximin says: ‘ And shoving back this 
earth on which I sit, I’ll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.’ 
2 Aureng-Zebe, v. 4.1. Dryden thought he was imitating Racine, when six 
lines further on he makes Nourmahal say: 
‘I am not changed, I love my husband still ; 
But love him as he was, when youthful grace 
And the first down began to shade his face : 
That image does my virgin-flames renew, 
And all your father shines more bright in you.’ 


Racine’s Phedre (2. 5) thinks her husband Theseus dead, and says to her stepson 
Hippolytus ; 
‘ Oui, prince, je languis, je brfile pour Thésée: 

Jel’aime... 

Mais fidéle, mais fier, et méme un peu farouche, 

Charmant, jeune, trainant tous les cceurs aprés soi, 

Tel qu’on dépeint nos dieux, ou tel que je vous voi. 

Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage ; 

Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage.’ 
According to a note in Sir Walter Scott’s edition of Dryden’s works, Langbaine 
traces this speech also to Seneca’s Hippolytus,—Tr. 

3 The Indian Emperor, ii. 2. * Aureng-Zebe, v. 2. 1. 





am ry. 


DRYDEN, 13 


recklessness of the courtesan, the jealousies of the grisette, the petti- 
ness of a chapman’s wife, the billingsgate of a fishwoman. The heroes 
are the most unpleasant of swashbucklers. Leonidas, first recognised 
as hereditary prince, then suddenly forsaken, consoles himself with 
this modest reflection : 
‘Tis true I am alone. 
So was the godhead, ere he made the world, 
And better served himself than served by nature. 
. I have scene enough within 

To exercise my virtue.’ } 
Shall I speak of that great trumpet-blower Almanzor, painted, as 
Dryden confesses, after Artaban,? a redresser of wrongs, a battalion- 
smiter, a destroyer of kingdoms?* They are but overcharged senti- 
ments, extemporised devotions, exaggerated generosities, high-sound- 
ing brag of a clumsy chivalry ; at bottom the characters are clods and 
barbarians, who have tried to deck themselves in French honour and 
fashionable politeness. And such, in fact, was the English court: it 
imitated that of Louis xiv. as a sign-painter imitates an artist. It had 
neither taste nor refinement, and wished to appear as if it possessed 
them. Panders and licentious women, bullying or butchering courtiers, 
who would go and see Harrison drawn, or mutilate Coventry, maids of 
honour who have awkward accidents at a ball,* or sell to the planters 
the convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and yelling 
gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his half- 


naked mistresses,°—such was this illustrious society; from French modes 


they took but those of dress, from their noble sentiments but high- 
sounding words. 


IV. 


The second point worthy of imitation in classical tragedy is the 
style. Dryden, in fact, purifies his own, and renders it more clear, by| 
introducing close reasoning and precise words. He has oratorical 
discussions like Corneille, well-delivered retorts, symmetrical, like a 





1 Marriage a la Mode, iv. 3. 1. 

2 *The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer, the next from 
Tasso’s Rinaldo, and the third from the Artaban of Monsieur Calpranéde.’—Preface 
to Almanzor. 

3 «The Moors have heaven, and me, to assist their cause’ (i. 1). 

‘ T'll whistle thy tame fortune after me’ (3. 1). 
He falls in love, and speaks thus: 
‘Tis he ; I feel him now in every part ; 
Like a new lord he vaunts about my heart, 
Surveys in state each corner of my breast, 
While poor fierce I, that was, am dispossess’d ’ (3. 1). 

* See vol. i. 471. 

5 Compare the song of the Zambra dance in the first part of Almanzor and 
Almahide, 3. 1. 


14 TUE,CLASSIC AGE. ,BOOK It. 


duel of argument. _He‘has maxims vigorously enclosed in the compass 
of a single line, distinctions, developments, and the whole art of special 
pleading. He has happy antitheses, ornamental epithets, finely-wrought 
comparisons, and all the artifices of the literary mind. What is most 
striking is, that he abandons the dramatic and national verse, which is 
without rhyme, and the mixture of prose and verse common to the old 
authors, for a rhymed tragedy like the French, fancying that he is thus 
inventing a new species, which he calls heroic play. But in this trans- 
formation the good perished, the bad remains. For mark, rhyme is 
a different thing in different races. To an Englishman it resembles 
a song, and transports him at once to an ideal and fairy world. Toa 
Frenchman it is only a conventionalism or an expediency, and trans- 
ports him at once to an ante-chamber or a drawing-room; to him it 
is an ornamental dress and nothing more ; if it mars prose, it ennobles 
it; it imposes respect, not enthusiasm, and changes a vulgar into a 
high-bred style. Moreover, in French aristocratic verse everything is 
connected ; pedantry, logical machinery of every kind, is excluded from 
it; there is nothing more disagreeable to well-bred and refined persons a 
than the scholastic rust. Images are rare, but always well kept up; 
bold poesy, real fantasy, have no place in it; their brilliancy and 
divergencies would derange the politeness and regular flow of the 
social world. The right word, the prominence of free expressions, are 
not to be met with in it; general terms, always rather threadbare, 
suit best the caution and niceties of select society. Dryden stumbles 
heavily against all these rules. His rhymes, to an Englishman’s ear, 
scatter at once the whole illusion of the stage; they see that the 
characters who speak thus are but squeaking mannikins; he himself 
admits that his heroic tragedy is only fit to represent on the stage 
chivalric poems like those of Ariosto and Spenser, . 
Poetic dash gives the finishing stroke to all likelihood. Would 
you recognise the dramatic accent in this epic comparison ? 
‘ As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress’d, 

Shrinks up, and folds its silken arms to rest ; 

And, bending to the blast, all pale and dead, 

Hears, from within, the wind sing round its head,— 

So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears : 

Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears, 

The storm, that caused your fright, is pass’d and done.’! 


What a singular triumphal song are these concetit of Cortez as he 
lands : 
‘ On what new happy climate are we thrown, 
So long kept secret, and so lately known ? 
As if our old world modestly withdrew, 
And here in private had brought forth a new.’? 





1 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 5. 2. 
2 The Indian Emperor, ii. 1. 1. 


OMAP. 11] oo), DRYDEN, 15 


Whink how these patches of colour would contrast with the sober design 
of French dissertation, Here lovers lay siege with metaphors; there 
@ wooer, in order to magnify the beauties of his mistress, says that 
‘bloody hearts lie panting in her hand.’ In every page harsh or vulgar 
words spoil the regularity of a noble style. Ponderous logic is broadly 
displayed in the speeches of princesses. ‘Two ifs,’ says Lyndaraxa, ‘scarce 
make one possibility.’ Dryden sets his college cap on the heads of 
these poor women, Neither he nor his characters are well brought up; 
they have taken from the French but the outer garb of the bar and the 
schools ; they have left behind symmetrical eloquence, measured diction, 
elegance and delicacy. A while before, the licentious coarseness of the 
Restoration pierced the mask of the fine sentiments with which it was 
covered ; now the rude English imagination breaks the oratorical mould 
in which it tried to enclose itself. 

Let us turn the picture. Dryden would keep the foundation of the 
old English drama, and retains the abundance of events, the variety of 
plot, the surprise of accident, and the physical representation of bloody or 
violent action. He kills as many people as Shakspeare.. Unfortunately, 
all poets are not justified in killing. When they take their spectators 
among murders and sudden accidents, they ought to have a hundred 
hidden preparations, Fancy a sort of rapture and romantic folly, a 
most daring style, eccentric and poetical, songs, pictures, reveries spoken 
aloud, frank scorn of all verisimilitude, a mixture of tenderness, philo- 
sophy, and mockery, all the retiring charms of varied feelings, all the 
whims of a buoyant fancy; the truth of events matters little. No one 
before Cymbeline or As you Like it was a politician or a historian; no 
one took these military processions, these accessions of princes, seriously ; 
the spectators were present at dissolving views. They did not demand 
that things should proceed after the laws of nature; on the contrary, they 
willingly did require that they should proceed against the laws of nature. 
The irrationality is the charm, That new world must be all imagination; 
if it was only so by halves, no one would care to rise to it. This is why 
we do not rise to Dryden’s. A queen dethroned, then suddenly set up 
again; a tyrant who finds his lost son, is deceived, adopts a girl in 
his place; a young prince led to punishment, who snatches the sword 
of a guard, and recovers his crown: such are the romances which con- 
stitute the Maiden Queen and the Marriage a la Mode. Wecan imagine 
what a display classical dissertations make in this medley; solid reason 
beats down imagination, stroke after stroke, to the ground. We cannot 
tell if the matter be a true portrait or a fancy painting; we remain 
suspended between truth and fancy; we should like either to get up to 





1 The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 2.1. This same Lyndaraxa says 
also to Abdalla (4. 2), ‘Poor women’s thoughts are all extempore, and logical, and 
coarse ;’ in Act 2. 1, to the same lover, who entreats her to make him ‘happy,’ 
‘If I make you so, you shall pay my price.’ 





16 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 





heaven or down to earth, and we jump down as quick as possible from : 
the clumsy scaffolding where the poet would perch us. 

On the other hand, when Shakspeare wishes to impress a doctrine, not 
raise a dream, he disposes us to it beforehand, but after another fashion. 
We naturally remain in doubt before a cruel action: we divine that the 
red irons which are about to put out the eyes of little Arthur are 
painted sticks, and that the six rascals who besiege Rome, are super- 
numeraries hired at a shilling a night. To conquer this mistrust we 
must employ the most natural style, circumstantial and rude imitation 
of the manners of the guardroom and of the alehouse; I could only 
believe in Jack Cade’s sedition on hearing the dirty words of bestial 
lewdness and mobbish stupidity. You must let me have the jests, the 
coarse laughter, drunkenness, the manners of butchers and tanners, to 
make me imagine a mob or an election. So in murders, let me feel the 
fire of bubbling passion, the accumulation of despair or hate which have 
unchained the will and nerved the hand. When the unchecked words, 
the fits of rage, the convulsive ejaculations of exasperated desire, have 
brought me in contact with all the links of the inward necessity which 
has moulded the man and guided the crime, I shall no longer think 
whether the knife is bloody, because I shall feel with inner trembling 
the passion which has handled it. Must I verify the death of Shakspeare’s 
Cleopatra? The strange laugh that bursts from her when the basket of 7 
saps is brought, the sudden tension of nerves, the flow of feverish words, | 
the fitful gaiety, the coarse language, the torrent of ideas with which she 
overflows, have already made me sound all the depths of suicide,’ and 
I have foreseen it from the beginning. This madness of an imagination, 
fired by climate and despotic power; these woman’s, queen’s, prostitute’s 
nerves; this marvellous self-abandonment to all the raptures of invention 
and desire—these cries, tears, foam on the lips, tempest of insults, actions, 





1*He words me, girls ; he words me, that I should not f 
Be noble to myself; but hark thee, Charmian. ... 
Now, Iras, what think’st thou ? 
Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown 
In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves, 
With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall 
Uplift us to the view. ... 
Saucy lictors 
Will catch at us, like strumpets ; and scald rhymers 
Ballad us out o’ tune; the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us, and present | 
Our Alexandrian revels ; Antony 
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness 
I’ the posture of a whore... . 
Husband, I come: 2 
Now to that name my courage prove my title! i 
I am fire and air ; my other elements 











DRYDEN. 17 


emotions ; this promptitude to murder, announce the rage with which 
she would rush against the least obstacle and be dashed to pieces. 
What does Dryden effect in this matter with his written phrases ? 
What of the maid, speaking in the author’s words, who bids her half- 
mad mistress ‘ call reason to assist you?’ What of such a Cleopatra as 
his, designed after Lady Castlemaine," skilled in artifices and whimpering, 
voluptuous and a coquette, with neither the nobleness of virtue nor the 
greatness of crime: 


* Nature meant me 
A wife; a silly, harmless, household dove, 
Fond without art, and kind without deceit.’? 


Nay, certainly, or at least this turtle-dove would not have tamed or kept 
an Antony; a woman without any prejudices alone could do it, by the 
superiority of boldness and the fire of genius. I can see already from 
the title of the piece why Dryden has softened Shakspeare: All for 
Love; or, the World well Lost. What a wretchedness, to reduce such 
events to a pastoral, to excuse Antony, to praise Charles 1. indirectly, 
to bleat as in a sheepfold! And such was the taste of his contempo- 
raries. When Dryden wrote the Tempest after Shakspeare, and the State 
of Innocence after Milton, he again spoiled the ideas of his masters; he 
turned Eve and Miranda into courtesans ;* he extinguished everywhere, 
under conventionalism and indecencies, the frankness, severity, delicacy, 
and charm of the original invention. By his side, Settle, Shadwell, 
Sir Robert Howard did worse. Zhe Empress of Morocco, by Settle, was 
so admired, that the gentlemen and ladies of the court learned it by 
heart, to play at Whitehall before the king. And this was not a passing 





I give to baser life. So; have you done? 
Come, then, and take the last warmth of my lips. 
Farewell, kind Charmian ; Iras, long farewell... . 
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, 
That sucks the nurse asleep ?’—Shakspeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, 5. 2. 
These two last lines, referring to the asp, are sublime as the joke of a courtesan and 
an. artist. 
1*Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms! 
You've been too long away from my embraces ; 
But, when I have you fast, and all my own, 
With broken murmurs, and with amorous sighs, 
I'll say, you were unkind, and punish you, 
And mark you red with many an eager kiss.’—A/J/ for Love, v. 3. 1. 

2 All for Love, 4. 1. 

3 Dryden’s Miranda says, in the Tempest (2. 2): ‘ And if I can but escape with 
life, I had rather be in pain nine months, as my father threatened, than lose my 
longing.’ Miranda has a sister ; they quarrel, are jealous of each other, and so 
on. See also in The State of Innocence, 3. 1, the description which Eve gives 
of her happiness, and the ideas which her confidences suggest to Satin. 


VOL, II. B 








18 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


fancy; although modified, the taste was to endure. In vain poets 
rejected a part of the French alloy wherewith they had mixed their 
native metal; in vain they returned to the old unrhymed verses of 
Jonson and Shakspeare; in vain Dryden, in the parts of Antony, Ven- 
tidius, Octavia, Don Sebastian, and Dorax, recovered a portion of the 
old naturalness and energy; in vain Otway, who had real dramatic 
talent, Lee, or Southern attained a true or touching accent, so that once, 
in Venice Preserved, it was thought that the drama would be regenerated. 
The drama was dead, and tragedy could not replace it; or rather each 
one died by the other; and their union, which robbed them of strength 
in Dryden’s time, enervated them also in the time of his successors. 
Literary style blunted dramatic truth ; dramatic truth marred literary 
style; the work was neither sufficiently vivid nor sufficiently well 
written: the author was too little of a poet or of an orator; he had 
neither Shakspeare’s fire of imagination nor Racine’s polish and art.’ 
He strayed on the boundaries of two dramas, and suited neither the 
half-barbarous men of art nor the well-polished men of the court. Such 
indeed was the audience, hesitating between two forms of thought, fed 
by two opposite civilisations. They had no longer the freshness of sense, 
the depth of impression, the bold originality and poetic folly of the cava- 
liers and adventurers of the Renaissance; nor will they ever acquire the 
aptness of speech, sweetness of manners, courtly habits, and cultivation 
of sentiment and thought which adorned the court of Louis x1v. They 
are quitting the age of solitary imagination and invention, which suits 
their race, for the age of reasoning and conversation, which does not 
suit their race: they lose their own merits, and do not acquire the 
merits of others. ‘They were meagre poets and ill-bred courtiers, 
having lost the art of imagination and of good manners, at times dull 
or brutal, at times emphatic or stiff. For the production of fine poetry, 
race and age must concur. This race, diverging from its own age, and 
fettered at the outset by foreign imitation, formed its classical literature 
but slowly; it will only attain it after transforming its religious and 
political condition: the age will be that of English reason. Dryden 
inaugurates it by his other works, and the writers who appear in the 
reign of Queen Anne will give it its completion, its authority, and its 
splendour. 


V. 


But let us pause a moment longer to inquire whether, amid so many 
abortive and distorted branches, the old theatrical stock, abandoned by 
chance to itself, will not produce at some point a sound and living shoot. 
When a man like Dryden, so gifted, so well trained and experienced, 
works with a will, there is hope that he will some time succeed; and 
once, in part at least, Dryden did succeed. It would be treating him 





1 This impotence reminds one of Casimir Delavigne, 





ee ee 











>» <a . wie im «bd NI 
Mo 






DRYDEN. 19 


unjustly to be always comparing him with Shakspeare; but even on 
Shakspeare’s ground, with the same materials, it is possible to create a 
___ fine work; only the reader must forget for a while the great inventor, 
___ the inexhaustible creator of vehement ‘and original souls, and to con- 
____ sider the imitator on his own merits, without forcing an overwhelming 
-—s comparison. 
a ‘There is vigour and art in this tragedy of Dryden, All for Love. 
t ‘He has informed us, that this was the only “play WENTen-TO-pIGHSs 
himself.’* And he had really composed it learnedly, according to his- 
tory and logic. And what is better still, he wrote it in a manly style. 
In the preface he says: 
‘The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it ; and the 
unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed, than perhaps the English 
, theatre requires. Particularly, the action is so much one, that it is the only of the 


kind without episode, or underplot ; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the 
main design, and every act concluding with a turn of it.’ . 


. er a 


5 He did more; he abandoned the French ornaments, and returned to 
7 national tradition : 

‘In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shakspeare ; which that I 
might perform more freely, I have disincumbered myself from rhyme. ... Yet, 
I hope, I may affirm, and without vanity, that, by imitating him, I have excelled 
myself throughout the play; and particularly, that I prefer the scene betwixt 
Antony and Ventidius in the first act, to anything which I have written in this 
kind.’ 

Dryden was right; if Cleopatra is weak, if this feebleness of conception 
takes away the interest and mars the general effect, if the new rhetoric 
and the old emphasis at times suspend the emotion and destroy the 
likelihood, yet on the whole the drama stands erect, and what is more, 
moves on. ‘The poet is skilful; he has planned, he knows how to con-: 
struct a scene, to represent the internal struggle’ by which two passions 
contend for a human heart. We perceive the tragical vicissitude of 
the strife, the progress of a sentiment, the overthrow of obstacles, the 
slow growth of desire or wrath, to the very instant when the resolution, 
rising up of itself or seduced from without, rushes suddenly on one side... 
There are natural words; the poet thinks and writes too genuinely not 
to discover them at need. There are manly characters: he himself is a 
man; and beneath his courtier’s pliability, his affectations as a fashion- 
able poet, he has retained his stern and energetic character. Except 
for one scene of recrimination, his Octavia is a Roman matron; and 
- when, even in Alexandria, in Cleopatra’s palace, she comes to look for 
Antony, she does it with a simplicity and nobility, not to be surpassed. 
‘Cesar’s sister,’ cries out Antony, accosting her. Octavia answers: 
‘ That’s unkind. 
Had I been nothing more than Cesar’s sister, 








1 See the introductory notice, by Sir Walter Scott, of All for Love, v. 290. 








a a 





20 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL 


Know, I had still remain’d in Ceesar’s camp: 

But your Octavia, your much injured wife, 

Though banish’d from your bed, driven from your house, 
In spite of Ceesar’s sister, still is yours. 

’Tis true, I have a heart disdains your coldness, 

And prompts me not to seek what you should offer ; 

But a wife’s virtue still surmounts that pride. 

I come to claim you as my own; to show 

My duty first, to ask, nay beg, your kindness : 

Your hand, my lord; ’tis mine, and I will have it.’! 


Antony, humiliated, refuses the pardon Octavia has brought him, and 


tells her: 
‘I fear, Octavia, you have bego’d my life, .. . 
Poorly and basely begg’d it of your brother. 
Octavia, Poorly and basely I could never beg, 

Nor could my brother grant... . 

My hard fortune 
Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes, 
But the conditions I have brought are such, 
You need not blush to take: I love your honour, 
Because ’tis mine ; it never shall be said, 
Octavia’s husband was her brother’s slave. 
Sir, you are free ; free, even from her you loath ; 
For, though my brother bargains for your love, 
Makes me the price and cement of your peace, 
I have a soul like yours ; I cannot take 
Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve. 
I'll tell my brother we are reconciled ; 
He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march 
To rule the East: I may be dropt at Athens ; 
No matter where. I never will complain, 
But only keep the barren name of wife, 
And rid you of the trouble.’? 


This is lofty; this woman has a proud heart, and also a wife’s heart: 
she knows how to give and how to bear; and better, she knows how to 
sacrifice herself without self-assertion, and calmly ; no vulgar mind con- 
ceived such a soul as this. And Ventidius, the old general, who with 
her and before her, comes to rescue Antony from his illusion and servi- 
tude, is worthy to speak in behalf of honour, as she had spoken for 
duty. Doubtless he was a plebeian, a rude and plain-speaking soldier, 
with the frankness and jests of his profession, sometimes clumsy, such 
as a clever eunuch can dupe, ‘a thick-skulled hero,’ who, out of simplicity 
of soul, from the coarseness of his training, unsuspectingly brings 
Antony back to the meshes, which he seemed to be breaking through. 
Falling into a trap, he tells Antony that he has seen Cleopatra unfaith- 
ful with Dolabella : 





t All for Love, v. 3. 1, 2 bid. 


j 
am 
1 

iF 
- 
J 
3 
* 


re eee 











DRYDEN, 21 


* Antony. My Cleopatra? 
Ventidius. Your Cleopatra. 
Dolabella’s Cleopatra. 
Every man’s Cleopatra. 
Antony. Thou liest. 
Ventidius. I do not lie, my lord. 
Is this so strange? Should mistresses be left, 
And not provide against a time of change? 
You know she’s not much used to lonely nights.’ ! 


It was just the way to make Antony jealous, and bring him back furious 
to Cleopatra. But what a noble heart has this Ventidius, and how we 
catch, when he is alone with Antony, the man’s voice, the deep tones 
which had been heard on the battlefield! He loves his general like 
a good dog, and asks no better than to die, so it be at his master’s 
feet. He growls ominously on seeing him cast down, crouches round 
him, and suddenly weeps: 


‘ Ventidius. Look, emperor, this is no common dew. 
I have not wept this forty years ; but now 
My mother comes afresh into my eyes, 
I cannot help her softness, 
Antony. By Heaven, he weeps! poor, good old man, he weeps! 
The big round drops course one another down 
The furrows of his cheeks.—Stop them, Ventidius, 
Or I shall blush to death: they set my shame, 
That caused them, full before me. 
Ventidius. I'll do my best. 
Antony. Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends : 
See, I have caught it too. Believe me, ’tis not 
For my own griefs, but thine. Nay, father!’? 


As we hear these terrible sobs, we think of Tacitus’ veterans, who, 


_ escaping from the marshes of Germany, with scarred breasts, white 


heads, limbs stiff with service, kissed the hands of Drusus, carried his 
fingers to their gums, that he might feel their worn and loosened teeth, 
incapable to bite the wretched bread which was given to them: 


‘No ; ‘tis you dream ; you sleep away your hours 
In desperate sloth, miscall’d philosophy. 
Up, up, for honour’s sake ; twelve legions wait you, 
And long to call you chief: By painful journies, 
I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, 
Down from the Parthian marshes to the Nile. 
*T will do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, 
Their scarr’d cheeks, and chopt hands; there’s virtue in them. 
They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates 
Than yon trim bands can buy.’3 


And when all is lost, when the Egyptians have turned traitors, and 
there is nothing left but to die well, Ventidius says: 





1 All for Love, 4. 1. 2 [bid. 1. 1. 3 Ibid. 


22 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


‘There yet remain - 
Three legions in the town. The last assault © 
Lopt off the rest: if death be your design,— 
As I must wish it now,—these are sufficient 
‘lo make a heap about us of dead foes, 
An honest pile for burial. . .. Chuse your death ; 
For, { have seen him in such various shapes, 
I care not which I take: I’m only troubled. 
The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 
Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indean 
We threw it from us with a better grace ; 
That, like two lions taken in the toils, 
We might at least thrust out our paws, and wound 
The hunters that inclose us.’!... 
Antony begs him to go, but he refuses: 
* Antony. Do not deny me twice. 
Ventidius. By Heaven I will not. 
Let it not be to outlive you. 
Antony. Kill me first, 
And then die thou ; for ’tis but just thou serve 
Thy friend, before thyself. 
Ventidius. Give me your hand. 
We soon shall meet again. Now, farewell, emperor ! 
. I will not make a business of a trifle : 
And yet I cannot look on you, and kill you. 
Pray, turn your face. 
Antony. I do: strike home, be sure. 
Ventidius. Home, as my sword will reach.’ ? 
And with one blow he kills himself. These are the tragic, stoical 
manners of a military monarchy, the great profusion of murders. and 
sacrifices wherewith the men of this overturned and shattered society 
killed and died. This Antony, for whom so much has been done, is 
not undeserving of their love: he has been one of Cesar’s heroes, the 
first soldier of the van; kindness and generosity breathe from him to 
the last; if he is weak against a woman, he is strong against men; he 
has the muscles and heart, the wrath and passions of a soldier; it is 
this heat of blood, this too quick sentiment of honour, which has caused 
his ruin; he cannot forgive his own crime; he possesses not that lofty 
genius which, dwelling in a region superior to ordinary rules, emanci- 
pates a man from hesitation, from discouragement and remorse ; he is 
only a soldier, he cannot forget that he has not executed the orders 
given to him: 
‘ Ventidius. Emperor! 
Antony. Emperor? Why, that’s the style of victory ; 
The conquering soldier, red with unfelt wounds, 
Salutes his general so ; but never more 
Shall that sound reach my ears. 





1 All for Love, 5. 1. ? Ibid. 





DRYDEN. 23 


Ventidius, I warrant you. 
Antony. Actium, Actium! Oh—— 
Ventidius. It sits too near you. 
Antony. Here, here it lies ; a lump of lead by day; 
, And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers, 
The hag that rides my dreams.... 
Ventidius. That’s my royal master ; 
And, shall we fight ? 
Antony. I warrant thee, old soldier. 
Thou shalt behold me once again in iron ; 
And at the head of our old troops, that beat 
The Parthians, cry aloud, ‘* Come, follow me.”’! 
He fancies himself on the battlefield, and already passion carries him 
away. Such a man is not one to govern men; we cannot master 
fortune until we have mastered ourselves; this mari is only made to 
belie and destroy himself, and to be veered round alternately by every 
passion. As soon as he believes Cleopatra faithful, honour, reputation, 
empires, everything vanishes: 
‘ Ventidius. And what’s this toy, 
In balance with your fortune, honour, fame ? 
Antony. What is’t, Ventidius ? it outweighs them all. 
Why, we have more than conquer’d Cesar now. 
My queen’s not only innocent, but loves me.... 
Down on thy knees, blasphemer as thou art, 
And ask forgiveness of wrong’d innocence! 
Ventidius, I'll rather die than take it. “Will you go? 
Antony. Go! Whither? Go from all that’s excellent! 
. Give, you gods, 
Give to your boy, your Cesar, 
This rattle of a globe to play withal, 
This gewgaw world ; and put him cheaply off: 
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.’ ? 
Dejection follows excess; these souls are only tempered against fear ; 
their courage is but that of the bull and the lion; to be fully them- 
selves, they need bodily action, visible danger; their temperament 
sustains them; before great moral sufferings they give way. When 
Antony thinks himself deceived, he despairs, and has nothing left but 
to die: 
‘Let him (Cesar) walk 
Alone upon’t. I’m weary of my part. 
My torch is out ; and the world stands before me, 
Like a black desert at the approach of night ; 
I'll lay me down, and stray no farther on.’? 
Such verses remind us of Othello’s gloomy dreams, of Macbeth, of 
Hamlet’s even; beyond the pile of swelling tirades and characters of 
painted cardboard, it is as though the poet had touched the ancient 
drama, and brought its emotion away with him. 








1 All for Love, 1. 1. 2 Ibid. 2. 1, end, 3 Ibid. 5. 1. 


24 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


By his side another also has felt it, a young man, a poor adventurer, 
by turns a student, actor, officer, always wild and always poor, who 
lived madly and sadly in excess and misery, like the old dramatists, 
with their inspiration, their fire, and who died at the age of thirty-four, 
according to some of a fever caused by fatigue, according to others of a 
prolonged fast, at the end of which he swallowed too quickly. a morsel of 
bread bestowed on him in charity. Through the pompous cloak of the 
new rhetoric, Thomas Otway now and then reached the passions of the 
other age. It is plain that the times he lived in marred him, that the 
oratorical style, the literary phrases, the classical declamation, the well- 
poised antitheses, buzzed about him, and. drowned his note in their 
sustained and monotonous hum. Had he but been born a hundred 
years earlier! In his Orphan and Venice Preserved we encounter the 
sombre imaginations of Webster, Ford, and Shakspeare, their gloomy 
idea of life, their atrocities, murders, pictures of irresistible passions, 
which riot blindly like a herd of savage beasts, and make a chaos of 
the battlefield, with their yells and tumult, leaving behind them but 
devastation and heaps of dead. Like Shakspeare, his events are human 
transports and furies—a brother violating his brother’s wife, a husband 
perjuring himself for his wife; Polydore, Chamont, Jaffier, weak and 
violent souls, the sport of chance, the prey of temptation, with whom 
transport or crime, like poison poured into the veins, gradually ascends, 
envenoms the whole man, is spread on all whom he touches, and contorts 
and casts them down together in a convulsive delirium. Like Shak- 
speare, he has found poignant and living words,’ which lay bare the 
depths of humanity, the strange noise of a machine which is getting 
out of order, the tension of the will stretched to breaking-point,? the 
simplicity of real sacrifice, the humility of exasperated and craving 
passion, which longs to the end and against all hope for its fuel and its 
gratification.® Like Shakspeare, he has conceived genuine women,*— 





1 Monimia says, in the Orphan (5, end), when dying, ‘ How my head swims! 
*Tis very dark ; good night.’ 
2 See the death of Pierre and Jaffier in Venice Preserved (5, last scene). Pierre, 
stabbed once, bursts into a laugh. 
3 * Jaffier. Oh, that my arms were rivetted 
Thus round thee ever! But my friends, my oath! 
This, and no more. (Kisses her.) 
Belvidera. Another, sure another 
For that poor little one you’ve ta’en such care of ; 
I'll giv’t him truly.’—Venice Preserved, 5. 1. 
There is jealousy in this last word. 
4 “Oh, thou art tender all, 
Gentle and kind, as sympathizing nature, 
Dove-like, soft and kind. ... 
I'll ever live your most obedient wife, 
Nor ever any privilege pretend 
_ Beyond your will.’-—Orphan, 4. 1. 








J 
h 





DRYDEN. 25 


Monimia, above all Belvidera, who, like Imogen, has given herself 


wholly, and is lost as in an abyss of adoration for him whom she has 
chosen, who can but love, obey, weep, suffer, and who dies like a flower 
plucked from the stalk, when her arms are torn from the neck around 
which she has locked them. Like Shakspeare again, he has found, at 
least once, the large bitter buffoonery, the crude sentiment of human 
baseness; and he has introduced into his most painful tragedy, an 
obscene caricature, an old senator, who unbends from his official 
gravity in order to play at his mistress’ house the clown or the valet. 
How bitter! how true was his conception, in making the busy man 
eager to leave his robes and his ceremonies! how ready the man is to 
abase himself, when, escaped from his part, he comes to his real self! 
how the ape and the dog crop out of him! The senator Antonio comes 
to his Aquilina, who insults him; he is amused; hard words relieve 
other compliments; he minces, runs into a falsetto like a zany at a 
country fair: : 


‘ Antonio. Nacky, Nacky, Nacky,—how dost do, Nacky? Hurry, durry. I 
am come, little Nacky. Past eleven o’clock, a late hour; time in all conscience 
to go to bed, Nacky.—Nacky did I say? Ay, Nacky, Aquilina, lina, lina, 
quilina ; Aquilina, Naquilina, Acky, Nacky, queen Nacky.—Come, let’s to bed. 
—You fubbs, you pug you—You little puss.—Purree tuzzy—I am a senator. 

Aquilina. You are a fool, I am sure. 

Antonio. May be so too, sweet-heart. Never the worse senator for all that. 
Come, Nacky, Nacky ; let’s have a game at romp, Nacky!... You won't sit 
down? Then look you now ; suppose me a bull, a Basan-bull, the bull of bulls, 
orany bull. Thus up I get, and with my brows thus bent—I broo ; I say I broo, 
I broo, I broo. You won’t sit down, will you—I broo. . . . Now, I'll be a senator 
again, and thy lover, little Nicky, Nacky. Ah, toad, toad, toad, toad, spit in my 
face a little, Nacky ; spit in my face, pry’thee, spit in my face, never so little ; 
spit but a little bit,—-spit, spit, spit, spit when you are bid, I say ; do pry’thee, 
spit.—Now, now spit. What, you won’t spit, will you? Then I'll be a dog. 

Aquilina. A dog, my lord ! 

Antonio. Ay, a dog, and I'll give thee this t’other purse to let me be a dog— 
and to use me like a dog a little. Hurry durry, I will—here ’tis. (Gives the 
purse.) ... Now bough waugh waugh, bough, waugh. 

Aquilina. Hold, hold, sir. If curs bite, they must be kicked, sir. Do you 
see, kicked thus ? 

Antonio. Ay, with all my heart. Do, kick, kick on, now I am under the table, 
kick again,—kick harder—harder yet—bough, waugh, waugh, bough.—Odd, I'll 
have a snap at thy shins.—Bough, waugh, waugh, waugh, bough—odd, she kicks 
bravely.’ ! ) 

At last she takes a whip, thrashes him soundly, and turns him out of 
the house. He will return, you may be sure; it has been a pleasant 
night for him; he rubs his back, but he was amused. In fine, he was 
but a clown who had missed his vocation, whom chance has given an 





1 Venice Preserved, 3.1. Antonio is meant as a copy of the ‘celebrated Earl 
of Shaftesbury, the lewdness of whose latter years,’ says Mr. Thornton in his edition 
of Otway’s Works, 3 vols. 1815, ‘ was a subject of general notoriety.’ —Tr. 


26 | THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


embroidered silk gown, and who turns out at so much an hour political — 


harlequinades. He feels more natural, more at his ease, playing Punch 
than aping a statesman. 

These are but gleams: for the most part Otway is a poet of his 
time, dull and forced in colour; buried, like the rest, in the heavy, grey, 
clouded atmosphere, half English, half French, in which the bright 
lights brought over from France, are snuffed out by the insular fogs. 
He is a man of his time; like the rest, he writes obscene comedies, The 
Soldier's Fortune, The Atheist, Friendship in Fashion. He depicts coarse 
and vicious cavaliers, rogues on principle, as harsh and corrupt as those 
of Wycherley: Beaugard, who vaunts and practises the maxims of 
Hobbes; the father, an old, corrupt rascal, who brags of his morality, 
and whom his son coldly sends to the dogs with a bag of crowns: Sir 
Jolly Jumble, a kind of base Falstaff, a pander by profession, whom 
the courtesans call ‘papa, daddy,’ who, ‘ if he sits but at the table with 
one, he’ll be making nasty figures in the napkins:’* Sir Davy Dunce, 
a disgusting animal, who ‘has such a breath, one kiss of him were 
enough to cure the fits of the mother; ’tis worse than assafcetida. 
Clean linen, he says, is unwholesome ...; he is continually eating of 
garlic, and chewing tobacco:’? Polydore, who, enamoured of his 
father’s ward, tries to force her in the first scene, envies the brutes, 
and makes up his mind to imitate them on the next occasion.* Even 
his heroines he defiles.* Truly this society sickens us. They thought 





1 The Soldier’s Fortune, 1. 1. 2 [bid. 

3 ‘Who'd be that sordid foolish thing called man, 
To cringe thus, fawn, and flatter for a pleasure, 
Which beasts enjoy so very much above him ? 
The lusty bull ranges thro’ all the field, 
And from the herd singling his female out, 
Enjoys her, and abandons her at will. 
It shall be so, I’ll yet possess my love, 
Wait on, and watch her loose unguarded hours: 
Then, when her roving thoughts have been abroad, 
And brought in wanton wishes to her heart ; 
I’ th’ very minute when her virtue nods, 
I'll rush upon her in a storm of love, 
Beat down her guard of honour all before me, 
Surfeit on joys, till ev’n desire grow sick ; 
Then by long absence liberty regain, 
And quite forget the pleasure and the pain.’—The Orphan, 1. 1. 

It is impossible to see together more moral roguery and literary correctness. 

4 * Page (to Monimia). In the morning when you call me to you, 
And by your bed I stand and tell you stories, 
I am ashamed to see your swelling breasts ; 
It makes me blush, they are so very white. 

Monimia. Oh men, for flatt’ry and deceit renown’d !’ 
—The Orphan, 1. 1. 


a 









re ee lon Tt. 


CHAP, II.] DRYDEN. Q7 


to cover all their filth with fine correct metaphors, neatly ended poetical 
periods, a garment of harmonious phrases and noble expressions. They 
thought to equal Racine by counterfeiting his style. They did not know 
that in this style visible elegance conceals an admirable justness; that 
if it is a masterpiece of art, it is also a picture of manners; that the 
most refined and accomplished in society alone could speak and under- 
stand it; that it paints a civilisation, as Shakspeare’s does; that each of 
these lines, which appear so restricted, has its inflection and artifice; 
that all passions, and every shade of passion, are expressed in them,— 
not, it is true, wild and entire, as in Shakspeare, but pared down and 
refined by courtly life; that this is a spectacle as unique as the other ; 
that nature perfectly polished is as complex and as difficult to under- 
stand as nature perfectly intact; that as for them, they were as far below 
the one as above the other; and that, in short, their characters are as 
much like Racine’s as the porter of Mons. de Beauvilliers or the cook 
of Madame de Sévigné are like Madame de Sévigné or Mons. de 
Beauvilliers.* 


VI. 


Let us then leave this drama in the obscurity which it deserves, and 
seek elsewhere, in studied writings, for a happier employment of a 
fuller talent. 

This is the true domain of Dryden and of classical reason :? pam- 
phlets and dissertations in verse, letters, satires, translations and imita- 
tions, this is the field on which, logical faculties and the art of writing 
find their best occupation. Before descending into it, and observing 
their work, it will be as well to study more closely the man who so 
wielded them. 

His was a singularly solid and judicious mind, an excellent_reasoner, 
accustomed to discriminate his ideas, armed with good long-meditated 
proofs, strong in discussion, asserting principles, establishing his sub- 
divisions, citing authorities, drawing inferences; so that, if we read his 
prefaces without reading his dramas, we might take him for one of the 
masters of the dramatic art. He naturally attains a definite prose 
style; his ideas are unfolded with breadth and clearness; his style is 
well moulded, exact and simple, free from the affectations and orna- 
ments with which Pope afterwards burdened his own; his expression 
is, like that of Corneille, ample and_periodic, by virtue simply of the 
internal argumentativeness which unfolds and sustains it. We can see 





1 Burns said, after his arrival in Edinburgh, ‘ Between the man of rustic life 
and the polite world, I observed little difference. ,.. Buta refined and accom- 
plished woman was a being altogether new to me, and of which I had formed but 
a very inadequate idea.’—(Burns’ Works, ed. Cunningham, 1832, 8 vols., i. 207.) 

2 Dryden says, in his Hssay on Satire, xiii. 30, ‘the stage to which my genius 
never much inclined me.’ 


uA 


28 THE CLASSIC AGE. _ [BOOK Im. 


that he thinks, and that on his own behalf; that he combines and verifies 
his thoughts; that beyond all this, he naturally has a just perception, 
and that with his method he has good sense. He has the tastes and 
the weaknesses which suit his cast of intellect. He holds in the highest 
estimation ‘the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose 
expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, 
whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows 
from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own, in coin as good, 
and almost as universally valuable.’* He has the stiffness of the 
logician poets, too strict and argumentative, blaming Ariosto, ‘ who 
neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action, or compass 
of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught; his style is 


luxurious, without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the | 


compass of nature and possibility.’ * He understands delicacy no better 


than fancy. Speaking of Horace, he finds that ‘his wit is faint and 
his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine 
wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.’* For the same 
reason he depreciates the French style: ‘Their language is not strung 
with sinews, like our English; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, 
but not the bulk and body of a mastiff.... They have set up purity 
for the standard of their language; and a masculine vigour is that of 
ours.’ * Two or three such words depict a man; Dryden has just 
affirmed, unwittingly, the measure and quality of his mind. 

This mind, as we may imagine, is heavy, and especially in flattery. 
Flattery is the chief art in a monarchical age. Dryden is hardly skilful 
in it, any more than his contemporariés. Across the Channel, at the 
same epoch, they praised just as much, but without cringing too low, 
because praise was decked out; now disguised or relieved by charm of 
style; now looking as if men took to it as to a fashion. Thus delicately 
rendered, people are able to digest it. But here, far from the fine aristo- 
cratic kitchen, it weighs like an undigested mass upon the stomach. 
I have related how Lord Clarendon, hearing that his daughter had just 
married the Duke of York in secret, begged the king to have her 
instantly beheaded ;° how the Commons, composed for the most part 
of Presbyterians, declared themselves and the English people rebels, 
worthy of the punishment of death, and went moreover to cast them- 
selves at the king’s feet, with contrite air to beg him to pardon the 
House and the nation.® Dryden is no more delicate than statesmen and 
legislators. His dedications are as a rule nauseous. He says to the 
Duchess of Monmouth : 


‘To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only be seen 
together. We are ready to conclude, that you are a pair of angels sent below to 





1 Hssay on Satire, dedicated to the Earl of Dorset, xiii. 16. 2 Ibid, 
3 Ibid. 84. # Dedication of the @neis, xiv. 204. 
§ See vol. i. 466. 6 See vol. i. 467. 


= 









CHAP. I1.] DRYDEN. 29 


make virtue amiable in your persons, or to sit to poets when they would pleasantly / 
instruct the age, by drawing goodness in the most perfect and alluring shape of | 
nature... . No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in mascu- | 
line beauty, and in goodliness of shape.’ ! 


Elsewhere he says to the Duke of Monmouth: 

* You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, con- \ 
spiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are 
ua ' present in you, even above their originals ; you only want a Homer or a Tasso to | 


k make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in 
the height of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of Heaven.’ ? 


His Grace did not frown nor hold his nose, and his Grace was right.® 

Another author, Mrs. Aphra Behn, burned a still more ill-savoured 

' incense under the nose of Nell Gwynne: people’s nerves were strong in 

those days, and they breathed freely where others would be suffocated. 

_ The Earl of Dorset having written some little songs and satires, Dryden 

swears that in his way he equalled Shakspeare, and surpassed all the 

ancients. And these barefaced panegyrics go on imperturbably for a 

score of pages, the author alternately passing in review the various 

virtues of his great man, always finding that the last is the finest; * 

: after which he receives by way of recompense a purse of gold. Observe 

f that in this Dryden is not more a flunkey than the others. The corpora- 

tion of Hull, harangued one day by the Duke of Monmouth, made him 

a present of six broad pieces, which were presented to Monmouth by 

Marvell, the member for Hull.® Modern scruples were not yet born. 

I can believe that Dryden, with all his prostrations, lacked spirit more 

than honour. 

A second talent, perhaps the first in carnival time, is the art of 

; saying pretty things, and the Restoration was a carnival, about as delicate 

: as a bargee’s ball. There are strange songs and more than adventu- 

’ rous prologues in Dryden’s plays. His Marriage a la Mode opens with 
these verses sung by a married woman: 


ee 2 ie 


* Why should a foolish marriage vow, 
Which long ago was made, 
Oblige us to each other now, 
When passion is decay’d ? 





1 Dedication of The Indian Emperor, ii. 261. 

2 Dedication of T'yrannic Love, iii. 347. 

3 He also says in the same epistle dedicatory: ‘ All men will join me in the 
adoration which I pay you.’ To the Earl of Rochester he writes in a letter (xviii. 
90): ‘I find it is not for me to contend any way with your Lordship, who can 
write better on the meanest subject than I can on the best. . . . You are above 
any incense I can give you.’ In his dedication of the Fables (xi. 195) he com- 
pares the Duke of Ormond to Joseph, Ulysses, Lucullus, ete. In his fourth poetical 
epistle (xi. 20) he compares Lady Castlemaine to Cato. 

4 Dedication of the Hssay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 286. 

5 See Andrew Marvell’s Works, i, 210. 


fe 


30 3 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


We lov’d, and we lov’d as long as we cou’d, 

*Till our love was lov’d out in us both. 

But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled ; 
"Twas pleasure first made it an oath.’ 


The reader may read the rest for himself in Dryden’s plays; it cannot 
be quoted. Besides, Dryden does not succeed well ; his mind is on too 
solid a basis; his mood is too serious, even reserved, taciturn. As Sir 
Walter Scott well said, ‘his indelicacy was like the forced impudence 
of a bashful man.’ He wished to wear the fine exterior of a Sedley or 
a Rochester, made himself petulant of set purpose, and squatted clumsily 
in the filth in which others simply sported. Nothing is more nauseous 
than studied lewdness, and Dryden studies everything, even pleasant- 
ness and politeness. He wrote to Dennis, who had praised him: 


‘They (the commendations) are no more mine when I receive them than the 
light of the moon can be allowed to be her own, who shines but by the reflexion 
of her brother.’? 


_He wrote to his cousin, in a diverting narration, these details of a fat 
woman, with whom he had travelled : 


‘Her weight made the horses travel very heavily ; but, to give them a breath- 
ing time, she would often stop us, . . . and tell us we were all flesh and blood.’ # 


It seems that these pretty things would then amuse a lady. His 
letters are made up of heavy official civilities, vigorously hewn com- 
pliments, mathematical salutes; his badinage is a dissertation, he props 
up his trifles with periods. I have found in him beautiful pieces, but 
never pleasing ones; he cannot.even argue with taste. The characters 
in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy think themselves still at school, learnedly 
quote Paterculus, and in Latin too, opposing the definition of the other 
side, and observing ‘that it was only a@ genere et fine, and so not alto- 
gether perfect.’* In one of his prefaces he says in a professorial tone: 


‘It is charged upon me that I make debauched persons my protagonists, or the 
chief persons of the drama ; and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my 
play ; against the law of comedy, which is to reward virtue, and punish vice.’ 


Elsewhere he declares: ‘It is not that I would explode the use of 
metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to raise it.’ 
His great essay upon satire swarms with useless or long protracted 
passages, with the inquiries and comparisons of a commentator. He 
cannot get rid of the scholar, the logician, the rhetorician, and show the 
natural man. | ‘ 
But the man of spirit was often manifest; in spite of several falls 





1 Scott’s Life of Dryden, i. 447. 

2 Letter 2, ‘to Mr. John Dennis,’ xviii. 114. 
3 Letter 29, ‘to Mrs. Steward,’ xviii. 144, 

4 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 302. 

5 Preface to An ELvening’s Love, iii. 225. 








DRYDEN. 31 





and many slips, he shows a mind constantly upright, bending rather 

from conventionality than from nature, with a dash and afflatus, occupied 
with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to his convictions. He 
was converted loyally and by conviction to the Roman Catholic creed, 
_____ persevered in it after the fall of James 1, lost his post of historio- 
| grapher and poet-laureate, and though poor, burdened with a family, 
and infirm, refused to dedicate his Virgil to King William. He wrote 
to his sons: 

‘ Dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent: yet, for your 

sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature. . . . In the mean time, 
I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty, and suffer for 
God’s sake. . . . You know the profits (of Virgil) might have been more ; but 
neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them; but I can 
never repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of 
the cause for which I suffer.’ 
One of his sons having been expelled from school, he wrote to the 
master, Dr. Busby, his own old teacher, with extreme gravity and noble- 
ness, asking without humiliation, disagreeing without giving offence, in 
a sustained and proud style, which is calculated to please, seeking again 
: his favour, if not as a debt to the father, at least as a gift to the son, and 
. concluding, ‘I have done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as 
to ask it.’ He was a good father to his children, as well as liberal, and 
sometimes even generous, to the tenant of his little estate.” He says: 


7 
leg 


‘ More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living. 
. . . I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, . .. and, being naturally 
vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.’ 3 


Insulted by Collier as a corrupter of morals, he endured this coarse 
reproof, and nobly confessed the faults of his youth : 


. ‘I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me 
justly ; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which 
can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. 
If he be my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I have given him 

no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.’ # 


all 


There is some wit in what follows: 


‘ He (Collier) is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to 
battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say ‘‘the zeal of God’s house 
has eaten him up,” but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners 
and civility.’® 
Such a repentance raises a man; to humble oneself thus, one must be a 

_ great man. He was so in mind and in heart, full of solid arguments 
and individual opinions, above the petty mannerism of rhetoric and 





1 Letter 23, ‘to his sons at Rome,’ xviii. 133. 

2 Scott’s Life of Dryden, i. 449. 

3 Hssay on Satire, xiii. 80. 

* Preface to the Fables, xi. 238. 5 Tbid. 





$2 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book m1. 


affectations of style, a master of verse, a slave to his idea, with that 
abundance of thoughts which is the sign of true genius: . 

‘ Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only 
difficulty is to chuse or to reject, to run them into verses, or to give them the 
other harmony of prose: 1 have so long studied and practised both, that they are 
grown into a habit, and become familiar to me.’ ? 


With these powers he entered upon his second career; the English con~ 
stitution and genius opened it to him. 3 


Vil. 


‘A man,’ says La Bruyére, ‘born a Frenchman and a Christian 
finds himself constrained in satire; great subjects are forbidden to him ; 
he essays them sometimes, and then turns aside to small things, which 
he elevates by the beauty of his genius and his style.’ It was not so 
in England. Great subjects were given up to vehement discussion ; 
politics and religion, like two arenas, invited to boldness and to battle, 
every talent and every passion. The king, at first popular, had roused 
opposition by his vices: and errors, and bent before public discontent 
as before the intrigue of parties. It was known that he had sold the 
interests of England to France; dt was believed that he would deliver 
up the consciences of Protestants to the Papists. The lies of Oates, the 
murder of the magistrate Godfrey, his corpse solemnly paraded in the 
streets of London, had inflamed the imagination and prejudices of the 
people ; the judges, blind or intimidated, sent innocent Roman Catholics 

.to the scaffold, and the mob received with insults and curses their pro- 
testations of innocence. The king’s brother had been excluded from 
his offices, it was endeavoured to exclude him from the throne. The 
pulpit, the theatres, the press, the hustings, resounded with discussions 

ind recriminations. The names of Whigs and Tories arose, and the 
deepest debates of political philosophy were carriedon, nursed by 
sentiments of present and practical interests, embittered by the rancour 
of old as well as of freshly roused passions. Dryden plunged in; and 
his poem of Absalom and Achitophel was a political pamphlet. ’ ‘They 
who can criticise so weakly,’ he says in the preface, ‘as to imagine that I 
have done my worst, may be convinced at their own cost that I can write 
severely with more ease than I can gently.’ A biblical allegory, suited 
to the taste of the time, hardly concealed the names, and did not hide 
the men. He describes the tranquil old age and incontestable right of 
King David ;* the charm, pliant humour, popularity of his natural son 
Absalom ;* the genius and treachery of Achitophel,* who stirs up the 











1 Preface to the Fables, xi. 209. 
2 Charles 11. 3 The Duke of Monmouth. 
+ The arl of Shaftesbury : . 
~~~ FOF these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages curst : 
















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<a Cones 


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"omar. 11] > PRYDE, « - 33 


son against the father, unites the clashing ambitions, and reanimates 
the conquered factions. There is hardly any wit here; there is no time 
to be witty in such contests; think of the roused people who listened, 
men in prison or exile who heard him; fortune, liberty, life was at 
stake. The thing is to strike the nail on the head and hard, not grace- 
fully. The public must recognise the characters, shout their names as 
they recognise the portraits, applaud the attacks which are made upon 
them, rail at them, hurl them from the high rank which they covet. 
Dryden passes them all in review: 3 


‘In the first rank of these did Zimri?! stand, 

A man so various that he seemed to be 

ot one, but all mankind’s epitome : 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was everything by starts and nothing long; 

ut in the course of one revolving moon 
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.’ 
Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy! 
Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes: 
So over-violent, or over-civil, 
That every man with him was God or devil. 





For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit— 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place, 
_In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 
A fiery soul, which working out its way, 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o’er-informed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity, 
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, 
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit, 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied 
nd thin partitions do their bounds divide ; 
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest, 
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ? 
Punish a body which he could not please, 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
d all to leave what with his toil he won, 
o that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son, 
ot, while his soul did huddled notions try, 
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy. 
In friendship false, implacable in hate, 


ue Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.’ 


1 The Duke of Buckingham. 
VOL, IL 0 





34 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 
Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late, 
He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
He laugh’d himself from Court ; then sought relief 
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief: 
For spite of him, the weight of business fell 
On Absalom and wise Achitophel ; 
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 
He left not faction, but of that was left. 
Shimei,! whose youth did early promise cas 
OF zeal to God and hatred to his King ; 
Did wisely from expensive sins refrain 
And never broke the Sabbath but for gain: 
Nor ever was he known an oath to vent, 
Or curse, unless against the government.’ 
Against these attacks their chief Shaftesbury made a stand: when 
accused of high treason he was declared guiltless by the grand jury, in 
spite of all the efforts of the court, amidst the applause of a vast multi- 
tude; and his partisans caused a medal to be struck, bearing his face, 
and boldly showing on the reverse the Tower obscured by a cloud. 
Dryden replied by his poem of the Medal, and the violent diatribe over- 
whelmed the open provocation : 
‘ Oh, could the style that copied every grace 
And plow’d such furrows for an eunuch face, 
Could it have formed his ever-changing will, 
The various piece had tired the graver’s skill! 
A martial hero first, with early care, 
Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war ; 
A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man, 
So young his hatred to his Prince began. 
Next this, (how wildly will ambition steer !) 
A vermin wriggling in the usurper’s ear ; 
Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 
He cast himself into the saint-like mould, 
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, 
The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train.’ 
The same bitterness envenomed religious controversy. Disputes on 
dogma, for a moment cast into the shade by debauched and sceptical 
manners, had broken out again, inflamed by the bigoted Catholicism of 
the prince, and by the just fears of the nation. The poet who in 
Religio Laict was_still an Anglican, though lukewarm and hesitating, 
drawn on gradually by his absolutist ‘inclinations, had become a convert 
to Romanism, and in his poem of The Hind and the Panther fought for 
his new reed. ‘The nation,’ he sa says in the preface, ‘1s in too high 
a ferment for me to expect either fair war or even so much as fair 
quarter from a reader of the opposite party.’ And then, making use 


1 Slingsby Bethel. 




















~ 


a 





CHAP. IL] DRYDEN. 35 


of the medieval allegories, he representsall the-heretical sects as beasts 


of prey, worrying a white hind of of heavenly origin ; he spares neither 
coarse comparisons, nor gross sarcasms, nor open objurgations. The 
argument is close and theological throughout. His hearers were not 
wits, who cared to see how a dry subject could be adorned, theologians 
accidentally and for a moment, with mistrust and reserve, like Boileau 
in his Amour de Dieu. They were oppressed men, barely recovered 
from a secular persecution, attached to their faith by their sufferings, 
ill at ease under the visible menaces and ominous hatred of their re- 
strained foes. Their poet must be a dialectician and a schoolman; he 
needs all the sternness of logic; he is immeshed in it, like a recent 
convert, saturated with the proofs which have separated him from the 
national faith, and which support him against public reprobation, fertile 
in distinctions, putting his finger on the weaknesses of an argument, 
subdividing replies, bringing back his adversary to the question, thorny 
and unpleasing to a modern reader, but the more praised and loved in 
his own time. In all English minds there is a basis of gravity and 
vehemence; hate rises tragic, with a gloomy outbreak, like the breakers 
in the North Sea. In the midst of his public strife Dryden attacks a 
private enemy, Shadwell, and overwhelms him with immortal scorn.’ A 
great epic style and salcran rhyme gave ‘weight to his s sarcasm, and the 
unlucky rhymester was drawn in a ridiculous triumph on the poetic car, 
whereon the muse sets the heroes and the gods. Dryden represented 
the Irishman Mac Flecknoe, an old king of folly, deliberating on the 
choice of a worthy successor, and choosing Shadwell as an heir to his 
gabble, a propagator of nonsense, a boastful conqueror of common 
sense. From all sides, through the streets littered with paper, the 
nations assembled to look upon the young hero, standing near the 
throne of his father, his b: brow surrounded with fogs, the vacant smile of 
satisfied imbecility floating” over his-countenance : : 


Neeramnaset ssn tach 27000 KN 














* The hoary prince in majesty appear aK. 
High on a throne of his own labours rear’d. 
At his right hand our young Ascanius sate, 
Rome’s other hope, and pillar of the state ; 
His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace, 
And lambent dulness play’d around his face. 
As Hannibal did to the altars come, 
Sworn by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome; 
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, 
That he, till death, true dulness would maintain; 
And, in his father’s right and realm’s defence, 
Ne’er to have peace with wit nor truce with sense, 
The king himself the sacred unction made, 
As king by office and as priest by trade. 
In his sinister hand, instead of ball, 
He placed a mighty mug of potent ale.’ 


1 Mac Flecknoe. 





1 “ +. ’ f 


¥ 


36 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL 


His father blesses him : 


‘*¢ Heavens bless my son! from Ireland let him reign 
To far Barbadoes on the western main ; 
Of his dominion may no end be known, 
And greater than his father’s be his throne ; 
Beyond Love’s Kingdom let him stretch his pen!” « 
He paused, and all the people cried Amen. 
Then thus continued he: ‘* My son, advance 
Still in new impudence, new ignorance. 
Success let others teach, learn thou from me, 
Pangs without birth and fruitless industry. 
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ ; 
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit... . 
Let them be all by thy own model made 
Of dulness and desire no foreign aid, 
That they to future ages may be known, 
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own : 
Nay, let thy men of wit too be the same, 
All full of thee and differing but in name... . 
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep ; 
Thy tragic Muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep. 
With whate’er gall thou setst thyself to write, 
Thy inoffensive satires never bite ; 
In thy felonious heart though venom lies, 
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. 
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame 
In keen Jambics, but mild Anagram. 
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command 
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land. 
There thou may’st wings display, and altars raise, 
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways ; 
Or, if thou wouldst thy different talents suit, 
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.” 
He said, but his last words were scarcely heard, 
For Bruce and Longville had a trap prepared, 
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. 
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind, 
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind. 
The mantle fell to the young prophet’s part, 
With double portion of his father’s art.’ 


Thus the insulting masquerade goes on, not studied and polished like 
Boileau’s Lutrin, but rude and pompous, inspired by a coarse and 
poetical afflatus, as you may see a great ship enter the muddy Thames, 
with spread canvas, cleaving the waters. 


VITl. 
In these three poems, the art of writing, the mark and the source of 
classical literature, appeared for the first.time. A new spirit was born 
and renewed this art, like everything else; thenceforth, and for a cen- 





OE NL 






‘CHAP. IL] DRYDEN. 37 


tury to come, ideas sprang up and fell into their place after another 
_ ___ law than that which had hitherto shaped them. Under Spenser and 
a Shakspeare, living words, like cries or music, betrayed the internal 
4 imagination which gave them forth. A kind of vision possessed the 
artist ; landscapes and events were unfolded in his mind as in nature; 
he concentrated in a glance all the details and all the forces which 
make up a being, and this image acted and was developed within him 
like the external object; he imitated his characters; he heard their 
words ; he found it easier to represent them with every pulsation than 
to relate or explain their feelings; he did not judge, he saw; he was 
an involuntary actor and mimic; drama was his natural work, be- 
cause in it the characters speak, and not the author. Then this com- 
plex and imitative conception changes colour and is decomposed: man 
sees things no more at a glance, but in detail ; he walks leisurely round 
them, turning his light upon all their parts in succession. ‘The fire 
which revealed them by a single illumination is extinguished; he ob- 
serves qualities, marks aspects, classifies groups of actions, judges and . 
reasons. Words, before animated, and as it were swelling with sap, are. 
withered and dried; they become abstractions; they cease to produce 
ns in him figures and landscapes; they only set in motion the relics. of 
| enfeebled_ passions; they barely shed a few flickering beams on the 

uniform texture of his dulled conception; they become exact, almost 

scientific, like numbers, and like numbers they are arranged in a series, 

allied by proportions,—the first, more simple, leading up to the next, 
: more composite,—all in the same order, so that the mind which enters 
_ upon a track, finds it level, and is never obliged to quit it. Thenceforth 
. a new career is opened; man has the whole world resubjected to his 
| thought; the change in his thoughts has changed all the aspects, and 
everything assumes a new form in his metamorphosed mind. His task 
is to explain and to prove; this, in short, is the classical style, and this 
is the style of Dryden. 

He develops, defines, concludes ; he declares his thought, then takes 
it up again, that his reader may receive it prepared, and having re- 
ceived, may retain it. He bounds it with exact terms justified by the 
dictionary, with simple constructions justified by grammar, that the 
Yéader may have at every step a method of verification and a source of 
clearness. He contrasts ideas with ideas, phrases with phrases, that 
the reader, guided by the contrast; may not deviate from the route 
marked out for him. You may imagine the possible beauty of such a 
work. This poesy is but a stronger prose. Closer ideas, more marked 
contrasts, bolder images, only add weight to the argument. Metre and 
rhyme transform the judgments into sentences. ‘The mind, held on the 
stretch by the rhythm, studies itself more, and by means of reflection 
arrives at a noble conclusion, The judgments are embossed in abbrevia- 
tive images, or symmetrical lines, which give them the solidity and 
popular form of a dogma. General truths acquire the definite form 








/ 








38 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK 11. 


which transmits them to posterity, and propagates them in the human 
race. Such is the merit of these poems; they please by their good 
expressions.’ In a full and solid web stand out cleverly knotted or 
sparkling threads. Here Dryden has gathered in one line a long argu- 
ment; there a BAPPY metaphor has opened up a new perspective under 
the princinal idea ;? further on, two similar words, united together, 
have struck the mind with an unforeseen and cogent proof ;* elsewhere 
a hidden comparison has thrown a tinge of glory or shame on the per- 
son who least expected it. These are all artifices or successes of a 
calculated style, which chains the attention, _and leaves the mind per- 
suaded ¢ or - convinced, 


IX. 


In truth, there is scarcely any other literary merit. If Dryden is a 
skilled politician, a trained controversialist, well armed with arguments, 
knowing all the ins and outs of discussion, versed in the history of men 
and parties, this pamphleteering aptitude, practical and English, con- 
fines him to the low region of everyday and personal combats, far from 
the lofty philosophy and speculative freedom which give endurance and 
greatness to the classical style of his French contemporaries. In this 
age, in England, all discussion was fundamentally narrow. Except the 

| terrible Hobbes, they all lack grand originality. Dryden, like the rest, 
is “confined to the arguments and insults of sect and fashion. Their 
ideas were as small as their hatred was strong; no general doctrine 
opened up beyond the tumult of the strife a poetical vista; texts, tradi- 
tions, a sad train of rigid reasoning, such were their arms; prejudice 
and passion swayed both parties. This is why the subject-matter fell 
below the art of writing. Dryden had no personal philosophy to de- 





1 «Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ, 
Conquering with force of arms and dint of wit : 
Theirs was the giant race, before the flood. 
And thus, when Charles return’d, our empire stood. 
Like Janus, he the stubborn soil manured, 
With rules of husbandry the rankness cured ; 
Tamed as to manners, when the stage was rude, 
And boisterous English wit with art endued.... 
But what we gain’d in skill we lost in strength, 
Our builders were with want of genius curst ; 
The second temple was not like the first.’ 
Epistle 12 to Congreve, xi. 59. 
2 ¢ Held up the buckler of the people’s cause 
Against the crown, and skulk’d against the laws.... 
Desire of power, on earth a vicious weed, 
Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed !’ 
Absalom and Achitophel, Part i. 
8 ¢ Why then should I, encouraging the bad, 
Turn rebel, and run popularly mad 2’ 


CHAP. IL] DRYDEN. 39 


velop; he does but versify themes given to him by others. In this 
Sterility art soon is reduced to the clothing of foreign ideas, and the 
writer becomes an antiquarian or a translator. In fact, the greatest 

art of Dryden’s poems are imitations, adaptations, or copies. He 
translated Persius, Virgil, part of Horace, Theocritus, J uvenal, Lucretius, 
and Homer, and put into modern English several tales of Boccacio and 
Chaucer. These translations then appeared to be as great works as 
original compositions. When he took the neid in hand, the nation, 
as Johnson tells us, appeared to think its honour interested in the issue. 
Addison furnished him with the arguments of every book, and an essay 
on the Georgics ; others supplied him with additions snd, notes ; great 
lords vied with one another in offering him hospitality ; ; subscriptions 
flowed in. They said that the English Virgil was to give England the 
Virgil of Rome. This work was long considered his highest glory. 
Even so at Rome, under Cicero, in the early dearth of national poetry, 
the translators of Greek works were as highly praised as the original 
authors. 

This sterility of invention alters or depresses the taste. For taste 
is an instinctive system, and leads us by internal maxims, which we 
pyran 
ignore. ‘The mind, guided by it, perceives connections, shuns discord- 
ances, enjoys or suffers, chooses or rejects, according to general con- 
ceptions which master it, but are not visible. These. removed, we see 
the tact, which they Sagendered, disappear ; the writer is clumsy, be- 
cause philosophy. fails him. Such is the imperfection of the stories 























handled by Dryden, from Boccacio and Chaucer. Dryden does not see 
that fairy tales or tales of chivalry only suit a poetry in its infancy; 
that ingenious subjects require an artless style; that the talk of Renard 
and Chanticleer, the adventures of Palamon and Arcite, the transfor- 
mations, tournaments, apparitions, need the astonished carelessness 
and the graceful gossip of old Chaucer. Vigorous periods, reflective 
antitheses, here oppress these amiable ghosts; classical phrases em- 
barrass them in their too stringent embrace; they are lost to our sight ; 
fo find them again, we must go to their frst parent, quit the too harsh 
light of a learned and manly age; we cannot pursue them fairly except 
in their first style in the dawn of credulous thought, under the mist 
which plays about their vague forms, with all the blushes and smile of 
morning. Moreover, when Dryden comes on the scene, he crushes the 
delicacies of his master, hauling in tirades or reasonings, blotting out 
7 sincere and self-abandoning tenderness. What a difference between 
: his account of Arcite’s death and Chaucer's! How wretched are all 
his fine words, his gallantry, ‘his symmetrical phrases, his cold re- 
grets, compared to the cries of sorrow, the true outpouring, the deep 
love in Chaucer! But the worst fault is that almost everywhere he 
is a copyist, and retains the faults like a literal translator, with eyes 
¢ glued on the work, powerless to comprehend and recast it, more a 
: rhymester thana poet. When La Fontaine put Ausop or Boceacio into 


eA 
t Sy - 





40 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK M1. 





verse, he breathed a new spirit into them; he took their matter only: : 
the new soul, which constitutes the value of his work, is his, and only 
his; and this soul befits the work. In place of the Ciceronian periods | 
of Boccacio, we find slim, little lines, full of delicate raillery, dainty 
voluptuousness, feigned frankness, which relish the forbidden fruit be- 
cause it is fruit, and because it is forbidden. The tragic departs, the 
relics of the middle-ages are a thousand leagues away; there remains 
nothing but the jeering gaiety, Gallic and racy, as of a critic and an 
epicurean. In Dryden, incongruities abound ; and our author is so little 
shocked by them, that he imports them elsewhere, in his theological 
poems, representing the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, as a hind, 
and the heresies by various animals, who dispute at as great length and 
as learnedly as Oxford graduates. I like him no better in his Epistles ; 
as a rule, they are but flatteries, almost always awkward, often mytho- 
logical, interspersed with somewhat vulgar sentences. ‘I have studied 
Horace,’ he says,” ‘and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated 
here.’ Do not imagine it to be true. Horace’s Epistles, though in 
verse, are genuine letters, brisk, unequal in movement, always unstudied, 
natural. Nothing is further from Dryden than this original and 
sociable spirit, philosophical and lewd,* the most refined and the most 
nervous of epicureans, a kinsman (at eighteen centuries’ distance) of 
Alfred de Musset and Voltaire. Like Horace, an author must be a 
thinker and a man of the world to write agreeable morality, and Dryden 
was no more than his contemporaries a thinker or a man of the world. 
But other no less English characteristics sustain him. Suddenly, in 
the midst of the yawns which these Epistles excited, our eyes are 
arrested. A true accent, new ideas, are brought out. Dryden, writing 
to his cousin, a country gentleman, has lighted on an English original 
subject. He depicts the life of a rural squire, the referee of his 
neighbours, who shuns lawsuits and town doctors, who keeps himself 
in health by hunting and exercise. Here is his portrait: | 
‘ How bless’d is he, who leads a country life, 

Unvex’d with anxious cares, and void of strife!... 

With crowds attended of your ancient race, 

You seek the champaign sports, or sylvan chase ; 

With well-breathed beagles you surround the wood, 

Even then industrious of the common good ; . ‘ 

And often have you brought the wily fox 

To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks ; 

Chased even amid the folds, and made to bleed, 

Like felons, where they did the murderous deed. 





1 Though Huguenots contemn our ordination, succession, ministerial vocation, 
etc. (The Hind and the Panther, Part ii. v. 189), such are the harsh words we 
often find in his books. 

2 Preface to the Religio Laici. 
3 What Augustus says about Horace is charming, but cannot be quoted, even 
in Latin. 





DRYDEN. 41 


This fiery game your active youth maintain’d ; 

Not yet by years extinguish’d though restrain’d:... 
A patriot both the king and country serves ; 
Prerogative and privilege preserves : 

Of each our laws the certain limit show ; 

One must not ebb, nor t’other overflow : 

Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand, 

The barriers of the state on either hand ; 

May neither overflow, for then they drown the land. 
When both are full, they feed our bless’d abode ; 
Like those that water’d once the paradise of God. 
Some overpoise of sway, by turns, they share ; 

In peace the people, and the prince in war: 

Consuls of moderate power in calms were made ; 
When the Gauls came, one sole dictator sway’d. 
Patriots, in peace, assert the people’s right, 

With noble stubbornness resisting might ; 

No lawless mandates from the court receive, 

Nor lend by force, but in a body give.’ ! 


This serious converse shows a political mind, fed on the spectacle of 
affairs, having in the matter of public and practical debates the supe- 
riority which the French have in speculative discussions and social con- 
versation. So, amidst the dryness of polemics break forth sudden 
splendours, a poetic fount, a prayer f from the heart’s depths ; ; the 
English well of concentrated passion is on a ‘sudden opened again with 
a flow and a dash which Dryden does not elsewhere exhibit: 


‘Dim as the borrow’d beams of moon and stars 
To lonely, weary, wand’ring travellers, 
Is reason to the soul: and as on high 
Those rolling fires discover but the sky, 
Not light us here ; so Reason’s glimm’ring ray 
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, 
But guide us upward to a better day. 
And as those nightly tapers disappear 
When day’s bright lord ascends our hemisphere, 
So pale grows Reason at Religion’s sight, 
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.’? 


‘But, gracious God! how well dost thou provide 
For erring judgments an unerring guide ! 
Thy throne is darkness in th’ abyss of light, 
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. 
O teach me to believe Thee thus conceal’d, 
And search no farther than Thy self reveal’d ; 
But her alone for my director take, 
Whom Thou hast promised never to forsake ! 
My thoughtless youth was wing’d with vain desires ; 
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, 





1 Epistle 15, xi. 75. 2 Beginning of Religio Laici. 








42 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


Follow’d false lights ; and when their glimpse was gone, 
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. 
Such was I, such by nature still I am ; 
Be Thine the glory and be mine the shame! 
Good life be now my task ; my doubts are done,’ 
Such is the poetry of these serious minds. After having strayed in the 
debaucheries and pomps of the Restoration, Dryden found his way to 
the grave emotions of inner life; though a Romanist, he felt like a Pro- 
testant the wretchedness of man and the presence of grace: he was 
capable of enthusiasm. Here and there a manly and effective verse 
discloses, in the midst of his reasonings, the power of conception and 
the inspiration of desire. When the tragic is met with, he takes to it 
as to his own domain; at need, he deals in the horrible. He has de- 
scribed the infernal chase, and the torture of the young girl worried 
by dogs, with the savage energy of Milton.? Asa contrast, he loved 
nature: this taste always endures in England; the sombre, reflective 
passions are unstrung in the wide peace and harmony of the fields. 
Landscapes are to be met with amidst theological disputation : 
‘ New blossoms flourish and new flowers arise, ~ 
As God had been abroad, and walking there 
Had left his footsteps and reformed the year. 
The sunny hills from far were seen to glow 
With glittering beams, and in the meads below 
The burnished brooks appeared with liquid gold to flow. 
As last they heard the foolish Cuckoo sing, 
. Whose note proclaimed the holy-day of spring.’ # 
Under his regular versification the artist’s soul is brought to light; * 
though contracted by habits of classical argument, though stiffened by 
controversy and polemics, though unable to create souls or to depict 
artless and delicate sentiments, he is a genuine poet: he is troubled, 
raised by beautiful sounds and forms; he writes boldly under the pres- 
sure of vehement ideas; he surrounds himself willingly with splendid 
images; he is moved by the buzzing of their swarms, the glitter of their 
splendours; he is, when he wishes it, a musician and a painter; he 
writes stirring airs, which shake all the senses, even if they do not sink 
deep into the heart. Such is his Alewander’s Feast, an ode in honour 
_of St. Cecilia’s day, an admirable trumpet-blast, in which metre and 
‘sound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the mind, a master- 
piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has come up 





1 The Hind and the Panther, Parti. v. 64-75. * Theodore and Honoria, xi. 
3 The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. v. 553-560. 
4 * For her the weeping heavens become serene, 
For her the ground is clad in cheerful green, 
For her the nightingales are taught to sing, 
And nature for her has delayed the spring.’ 
These charming verses on the Duchess of York remind one of those of La Fontaine 
on the Princess of Conti. 








CHAP. II. ] DRYDEN. ‘ 43 


to. Alexander is on his throne in the palace of Persepolis ; the lovely 
Thais sate by his side; before him, in a vast hall, his glorious captains, 
And Timotheus sings: 


\ 











‘The praise of Bacchus, then, the sweet musician sung ; 
Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young. 
The jolly God in triumph comes ; 
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums; 
Flush’d with a purple grace, 
He shews his honest face. 
Now, give the hautboys breath ; he comes, he comes. 
Bacchus, ever fair and young, 
Drinking joys did first ordain ; 
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure, 
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure ; 
Rich the treasure, 
Sweet the pleasure ; 
Sweet is pleasure after pain.’ 
And at the stirring sounds the king is troubled; his cheeks are glow- 
ing; his battles return to his memory; he defies heaven and earth. 
Then a sad song depresses him. Timotheus mourns the death of the 
betrayed Darius. Then a tender song softens him; Timotheus lauds 
the dazzling beauty of Thais. Suddenly he strikes the lyre again: 
‘A louder yet, and yet a louder strain. 
Break his bands of sleep asunder, 
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder, 
Hark, hark! the horrid sound 
Has raised up his head ; 
As awaked from the dead, 
And amazed, he stares around. 
Revenge, revenge! Timotheus cries, 
See the furies arise ; 
See the snakes, that they rear, 
How they hiss in their hair! 
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! 
Behold a ghastly band, 
Each a torch in his hand! 
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, 
And unburied remain 
Inglorious on the plain: 
Give the vengeance due 
To the valiant crew. 
Behold how they toss their torches on high, 
How they point to the Persian abodes, 
And glittering temples of their hostile gods. — 
The princes applaud, with a furious joy. 
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy ; 
Thais led the way, 
To light him to his prey, 
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.’ 





1 For instance, in the Chant du Cirque. 








44 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


Thus already music softened, exalted, mastered men; Dryden’s verses 
acquire power in describing it. 


X. 


This was one of his last works; brilliant and poetical, it was born 
amidst the greatest sadness. The king for whom he had written was 
deposed and in exile; the religion which he had embraced was despised 
and oppressed; a Roman Catholic and a royalist, he was bound to a 
conquered party, which the nation resentfully and mistrustfully con- 
sidered as the natural enemy of liberty and reason. He had lost the 
two places which were his support; he lived wretchedly, burdened 
with a family, obliged to support his son abroad; treated as a hireling 
by a coarse publisher, forced to ask him for money to pay for a watch 
which he could not get on credit, beseeching Lord Bolingbroke to pro- 
tect him against Tonson’s insults, rated by this shopkeeper when the 
promised page was not finished on the stated day. His enemies persecuted 
him with pamphlets; the Puritan Collier lashed his comedies unfeel- 
ingly; he was damned without pity, but conscientiously. He had long 
been in ill health, crippled, constrained to write much, reduced to 
exaggerate flattory’s in order to earn from the great the indispensable 
money which the publishers would not give him: 

‘ What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have 

undertaken to translate in my declining years ; struggling with wants, oppressed 
with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all 1 write; and 
my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me, by the 
lying character which has been given them of my morals.’ ? 
Although well meant for his own part, he knew that his conduct had 
not always been worthy, and that all his writings would not endure. 
Born between two epochs, he had oscillated between two forms of life 
‘and two forms of thought, having reached the perfection of neither, 
having kept the faults of both; having found in surrounding manners 
no support worthy of his’ Sharacter, and in surrounding ideas no sub- 
ject worthy of his talent. If he had founded criticism and good style, 
this criticism had only found scope in pedantic treatises or unconnected 
prefaces ; this good style continued out of the track in inflated tragedies, 
dispersed over multiplied translations, scattered in occasional pieces, in 
odes written to order, in party poems, meeting only here and there an 
afflatus capable of employing it, and a subject capable of sustaining it. 
What efforts for such a worst result! For a long time gravel and 
gout left him no peace; erysipelas seized one of his legs. In April 
1700 he tried to go out; ‘a slight inflammation in one of his toes be- 
came, from neglect, a gangrene ;’ the doctor would have tried amputa- 
tion, but he decided that what remained him of health and happiness 
was not worth the pain. He died at the age of sixty-nine. 





1 He was paid two hundred and fifty guineas for ten thousand lines. 
2 Postscript of Virgil’s Works, as translated by Dryden, xv. p. 187. 


_ * 





| 
& hn . 





VII. 


VITl. 


Ix. 


PS 6D in dos i a alae Sea ene 
ats ‘ % y 


THE REVOLUTION. 45 


CHAPTER IIL. 


The Revolution. 


. The moral revolution of the seventeenth century—It advances side by side 


with the political revolution. 


. Brutality of the people — Gin-Riots—Corruption of the great — Political 


manners—Treasons under William 111. and Anne—Morality under Wal- 
pole and Bute—Private manners—The roysterers—The atheists—Chester- 
field’s Letters—His polish and morality—Gay’s Beggars’ Opera—His 
elegance and satire. 

Principles of civilisation in France and England—Conversation in France ; 
how it ends in a revolution—Moral sense in England; how it ends in a 
reformation. 


- Religion—Visible signs—Its profound sentiment—Religion popular— Life- 


like—Arians—Methodists. 


- The pulpit—Mediocrity and efficacy of preaching—Tillotson—His heaviness 


and solidity — Barrow—His abundance and minuteness — South — His 
harshness and energy—Comparison of French-and English preachers. 


. Theology—Comparison of the French and English apology for religion— 


Sherlock, Stillingfleet, Clarke—Theology not speculative but moral—The 
greatest minds are on the side of Christianity—Impotence of speculative 
philosophy—Berkeley, Newton, Locke, Hume, Reid—Development of 
moral philosophy—Smith, Pine, Hutcheson. 

The Constitution—Sentiment of right—Locke’s Zssay on Government— 
Theory of personal right accepted—Maintained by temperament, pride, 
and interest—Theory of personal right applied—Put in practice by 
elections, the press, the tribunals. 

Parliamentary eloquence—Hts energy and harshness— Lord Chatham— 
Junius—Fox—Sheridan—Pitt—Burke. 

Issue of the century’s labours—Economic and moral transformation—Com- 
parison of Reynolds’ and Lely’s portraits—Contrary doctrines and ten- 
dencies in France and England — Revolutionists and Conservatives — 
Judgment of Burke and the English people on the French Revolution. 


fT. 


ITH the constitution of 1688 a new spirit appears in England, 
Slowly, gradually, the moral revolution accompanies the 


social: man changes with the state, in the same sense and for the same 
causes; character moulds itself to the situation ; and little by little, in 
manners and in literature, we trace the empire of a serious, reflective, 
moral spirit, capable of discipline and cies te a which can alone 
maintain and give effect to a constitution. 





46 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL 


i, 


This was not achieved without difficulty, and at first sight it seems 
as though England had gained nothing by this revolution of which she 
isso proud. The aspect of things under William, Anne, and the first 
two Georges, is repulsive. We are tempted to agree in Swift’s judg- 
ment, to say that if he has depicted a Yahoo, it is because he has seen 
him; naked or drawn in his carriage, the Yahoo is not beautiful. We 
see but corruption in high places, brutality in low, a band of intriguers 
leading a mob of brutes. The human beast, inflamed by political 
passions, gives vent to cries and violence, burns Admiral Byng in 
effigy, demands his death, would destroy his house and park, sways 
from party to party, seems with its blind force ready to annihilate civil 
society. When Dr. Sacheverell was tried, the butcher boys, crossing- 
sweepers, chimney-sweepers, costermongers, drabs, the entire scum, 
conceiving the Church to be in danger, follow him with yells of rage 
and enthusiasm, and in the evening set to work to burn and pillage 
the dissenters’ chapels. When Lord Bute, in defiance of public 
opinion, was set up in Pitt’s place, he was assailed with stones, and 
was obliged to surround his carriage with a strong guard. At every 
nag crisis was heard a riotous growl, were seen disorder, blows, - 

roken heads. It was worse when the people’s own interests were at 
stake. Gin had been discovered in 1684, and about half a century 
later England consumed seven millions of gallons." The tavernkeepers 
on their signboards invited people to come and get drunk for a penny ; 
for twopence they might get dead drunk; no charge for straw; the 
landlord dragged those who succumbed into a cellar, where they slept 
off their carouse. You could not walk London streets without meeting 
wretches, incapable of motion or thought, lying in the kennel, whom 
the care of the passers-by alone could prevent from being smothered 
in mud, or crushed by carriage-wheels. A tax was imposed to stop 
this madness: it was in vain; the judges dared not condemn, the in- 
formers were assassinated. ‘The House gave way, and Walpole, find- 
ing himself threatened with a riot, withdrew his law.? All these 
bewigged and ermined lawyers, these bishops in lace, these embroidered 
and gold-bedizened lords, this fine government so cleverly balanced, was 
carried on the back of a vast and formidable brute, which as a rule 
would tramp peacefully though growlingly on, but which on a sudden, 
for a mere whim, could shake and crush it. It was clearly seen in 
1780, during the riots of Lord George Gordon. Without reason or 
command, at the cry of No Popery the excited mob demolished the 
prisons, let loose the criminals, abused the Peers, and was for three 





11742, Report of Lord Lonsdale. 
?In the present inflamed temper of the people, the Act could not be carried 
into execution without an armed force.—Speech of Sir Robert Walpole, 





» 
4 


CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 47 


days master of the town, burning, pillaging, and glutting itself. Barrels 
of gin were staved in and made rivers in the streets. Children and 
women on their knees drank themselves to death. Some became mad, 
others fell down besotted, and the burning and falling houses ended by 
destroying or burying them. Eleven years later, at Birmingham, the 
people sacked and gutted the houses of the Liberals and Dissenters, and 
were found next day in heaps, dead drunk in the roads and ditches. 
The riot of instinct in this over-strong and well-fed race is perilous. The 
popular bull dashed headlong at the first red rag which it thought it saw. 

The higher ranks were even less estimable than the lower. If there 
has been no more beneficial revolution than that of 1688, there has 
been none that was launched or supported by dirtier means. Treason 
was everywhere, not simple, but double and triple. Under William 
and Anne, admirals, ministers, councillors, favourites of the antechamber, 
corresponded and conspired with the same Stuarts whom they had 
sold, only to sell them again, with a complication of bargains, each 
destroying the last, and a complication of perjuries, each surpassing 
the last, until in the end no one knew whose or who he was. The 


_ greatest general of the age, the Duke of Marlborough, is one of the 





basest rogues in history, supported by his mistresses, a a mapard user of 
the pay which he received from the State, systematically plundering 
his soldiers, trafficking in political secrets, a traitor to James, to William, 
to England, ready to risk his life to avoid changing a pair of wet boots, 
and to let an expedition of English soldiers fall into a French ambush. 
After him,.Bolingbroke,.a sceptic and_cynic, minister in turn to Queen 
and Pretender, disloyal alike to both, a trafficker in consciences, mar- 
riages, and promises, who had squandered his talent in debauch and 
intrigues, to end in disgrace, impotence, and scorn.t Then Walpole 
was compelled to resign, after having been prime minister for twenty 
years, and who used to boast that ‘every man had his price.’? Mon- 
tesquieu wrote in 1729:° 


‘There are Scotch members who have only two hundred pounds for their vote, 
and sell it at this price. Englishmen are no longer worthy of their liberty. They 
sell it to the king ; and if the king would sell it back to them, they would sell it 
him again.’ 

We must read in Bubb Doddington’s Diary the candid fashion and pretty 
contrivances of this great traffic. So Dr. King states: 


‘He (Walpole) wanted to carry a question in the House of Commons, to 
which he knew there would be great opposition. . . . As he was passing through 
the Court of Requests, he met a member of the contrary party, whose avarice 
he imagined would not reject a large bribe. He took him aside, and said, ‘‘ Such 





1 See Walpole’s terrible speech against him, 1734. 

2 See, for the truth of this statement, Memoirs of Horace Walpole, 2 vols., ed. 
E. Warburton, 1851, i. 381, note. 

8 Notes during a journey in England made in 1729 with Lord Chesterfield. 


48 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


a question comes on this day ; give me your vote, and here is a bank-bill of two 
thousand pounds,” which he put into his hands. The member made him this 
answer: ‘*Sir Robert, you have lately served some of my particular friends ; and 
when my wife was last at court, the King was very gracious to her, which must 
haye happened at your instance. I should therefore think myself very ungrateful 
(putting the bank-bill into his pocket) if I were to refuse the favour you are 
now pleased to ask me.”’? 


This is how a man of taste did business. Corruption was so fixed 
in public manners and in politics, that after the fall of Walpole, Lord 
Bute, who had denounced him, was obliged to practise and increase it. 
His colleague Fox changed the pay-office into a market, haggled about 
their price with hundreds of members, distributed in one morning 
twenty-five thousand pounds. Votes were only to be had for cash 
down, and yet at an important crisis these mercenaries would threaten 
to go over to the enemy, struck for wages, and demanded more. Nor 
did the leaders miss their own share. They sold themselves for, or 
paid themselves with, titles, dignities, sinecures. In order to get a 
place vacant, they gave the holder a pension of two, three, five, and 
even seven thousand a year. Pitt, the most upright, the leader of 
those who were called patriots, passed and retracted his word, attacked 
or defended Walpole, proposed war or peace, all to become or to con- 
tinue a minister. Fox, his rival, was a sort of shameless sink. The 
Duke of Newcastle, ‘whose name was perfidy,’ a kind of living caricature, 
the most clumsy, ignorant, ridiculed and despised of the aristocracy, 
was in the Cabinet for thirty years and premier for ten years, by virtue 
of his connections, his wealth, of the elections which he managed, and 
the places in his gift. The fall of the Stuarts put the government into 
the hands of a few great families which, by means of rotten boroughs, 
bought members and high-sounding speeches, oppressed the king, 
moulded the passions of the mob, intrigued, lied, wrangléd, and tried 
to swindle each other out of power. 

Private manners were as lovely as public. As a rule, the reigning 
king detested his son; this son got into debt, demanded of Parliament 
an increase of allowance, allied himself with his father’s enemies. 
George 1. kept his wife in prison thirty-two years, and got drunk every 
night with his two plain mistresses. George u1., who loved his wife, 
took mistresses to keep up appearances, rejoiced at his son’s death, 
upset his father’s will. His eldest son cheated at cards,” and. one 
day at Kensington, having borrowed five thousand pounds from Bubb 
Doddington, said, when he saw him from the window: ‘ That man is 
reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his 
parts I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds.’* George tv. 
was a sort of coachman, gamester, scandalous roysterer, unprincipled 





Dr. W. King, Political and Literary Anecdotes of his own Times, 1818, 27. 
* Frederick died 1751. Memoirs of Horace Walpole, i. 262. 
8 Walpole’s Memoirs of George II., ed. Lord Holland, 3 vols., 2d ed., 1847, i. 77. 








CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 49 
betting-man, whose proceedings all but got him excluded from the 
Jockey Club. The only upright man was George m1., a poor half- 
witted dullard, who went mad, and whom his mother had kept in his 
youth, as though in a cloister. She gave as her reason the universal 
corruption of men of quality. ‘The young men,’ she said, ‘were all 
rakes; the young women made love, instead of waiting till it was made 
to them.’ In fact, vice was in fashion, not delicate vice as in France. 
‘Money,’ wrote Montesquieu, ‘is here esteemed above everything, 
honour and virtue ngt much. An Englishman must have a good 
dinner, a woman, and money. As he does not go much in society, and 
limits himself to this, so, as soon as his fortune is gone, and he can no 
longer have these things, he commits suicide or turns thief.’ The young 
men had a superabundance of coarse energy, which made them mistake 
brutality for pleasure. The most celebrated called themselves Mohawks, 
and tyrannised over London by night. They stopped people and made 
them dance by pricking their legs with their swords; sometimes they 
would put a woman in a tub, and set her rolling down a hill; others 
would place her on her head, with her feet in the air; some would 
flatten the nose of the wretch whom they had caught, and press his 
eyes out of their sockets. Swift, the comic writers, the novelists, have 
painted the baseness of this gross debauchery, craving for riot, living 
in drunkenness, revelling in obscenity, issuing in cruelty, ending by 
irreligion and atheism.’ This violent and excessive mood requires to 
occupy itself proudly and daringly in the destruction of what men 
respect, and what institutions protect. These men attack the clergy by 
the same instinct which leads them to beat the watch. Collins, Tindal, 
Bolingbroke, are their doctors; the corruption of manners, the wont of 
treason, the elbowing of sects, the freedom of speech, the progress of 
sciences, and the fermentation of ideas, seemed as if they would dissolve 
Christianity. ‘There is no religion in England,’ said Montesquieu. 
‘Four or five in the House of Commons go to mass or to the parlia- 
mentary sermon. . . . If any one speaks of religion, everybody begins 
to laugh. A man happening to say, “‘I believe this like an article of 
faith,” everybody burst out laughing.’ In fact, the phrase was pro- 
vincial, and smacked of antiquity. The main thing was to be fashion- 
able, and it is amusing to see from Lord Chesterfield in what this 
fashion consisted. Of justice and honour he only speaks transiently, 
and for form’s sake. Before all, he says to his son, ‘have manners, 
good breeding, and the graces.’ He insists upon it in every letter, with 


a fulness and force of illustration which form an odd contrast: 





‘Mon cher ami, comment vont les graces, les manitres, les agrémens, et tous 
cés petits riens si nécessaires pour rendre un homme aimable? Les prenez-vous? 
y faites vous des progrés? . . . A propos, on m’assure que Madame de Blot sans 
avoir des traits, est jolie comme un cceur, et que nonobstant cela, elle s’en est 





1 Character of Birton in Voltaire’s Jenny. 
VOL, II. “ 





50 | ‘THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


tenue jusqu’ici scrupuleusement & son mari, quoi qu'il y ait dej&i plus d’un an 
qu'elle est mariée. Elle n’y pense pas.1. . . It seems ridiculous to tell you, 
but it is most certainly true, that your dancing-master is at this time the man in 
all Europe of the greatest importance to you.? . . . In your person you must be 
accurately clean ; and your teeth, hands, and nails should be superlatively so. 

Upon no account whatever put your fingers in your nose or ears.2 What ia 
Madame Dupin to you? For an attachment I should prefer her to la petite Blot.* 

. Pleasing women may in time be of service to you. They often please and 
govern others.’ 

And he quotes to him as examples, Bolingbroke and Marlborough, 
the two worst roués of the age. Thus speaks a serious man, an umpire 
of education and taste.© He wishes to polish his son, to give him a 
French air, to add to solid diplomatic knowledge and large views of 
ambition an engaging, lively, and frivolous manner. This outward 
polish, which at Paris is of the true colour, is here but a shocking 
veneer. ‘This transplanted politeness is a lie, this vivacity is senseless- 
ness, this worldly education seems fitted only to make actors and rogues. 

So thought Gay in his Beggars’ Opera, and the polished society 
applauded with furore the portrait which he drew of it. Sixty-three 
consecutive nights the piece ran amidst a tempest of laughter; the ladies 
had the songs written on their fans, and the principal actress, it is said, 
married a duke, What a satire! Thieves infested London, so that in 
1728 the queen herself was almost robbed; they formed bands, with 
officers, a treasury, and multiplied, though every six weeks they were sent 
by the cartload tothe gallows. Such was the society which Gay put on 
the stage. In his opinion, it was as good as the higher society ; it was hard 
to discriminate: the manners, wit, conduct, morality in both were alike. 

‘Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in 
high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable 
vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen $ 
the road the fine gentlemen.’? 

Wherein, for example, is Peachum different from a great minister ? 
Like him, he is a leader of a gang of thieves ; like him, he has a register 





1 The original letter isin French. Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son, ed. Mahon, 
4 vols., 1845 ; ii., April 15, 1751, p. 127. 

2 Ibid. ii. Jan. 8, 1751, p. 72. 3 Tbid. ii. Nov. 12, 1750, p. 57. 

4 Ibid. ii. May 16,1751, p. 146. 5 Ibid. ii. Jan. 21, 1751, p. 81. 

6 «They (the English) are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken 
to anybody above their schoolmaster and the Fellows of their college. If they 
happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin, but not one word of modern 
history or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it ; 
but, in truth, they stay at home all that while: for, being very awkward, con- 
foundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign com- 
pany, at least none good; but dine and sup with one another only at the tavern.’ 
Ibid. i., May 10, O. §., 1748, p. 186. ‘I could wish you would ask him (Mr. 
Burrish) for some letters to young fellows of pleasure or fashionable coquettes, that 
you may be dans l’hwunéte débauche de Munich.’——Ibid. ii. Oct. 3, 1753, p. 331. 

7 Speech of the Beggar in the Epilogue of the Beggars’ Opera. 







=, 





————— ee ee 


— 


CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION, 51 


for thefts; like him, he receives money with both hands; like him, he 
contrives to have his friends caught and hung when they trouble him ; 
he uses, like him, parliamentary language and classical comparisons; he 
has, like him, gravity, steadiness, and is eloquently indignant when his 
honour is suspected. You will answer, perhaps, that he quarrels with 
a comrade about the profits, and stabs him? But lately, Sir Robert 
Walpole and Lord Townsend had taken each other by the collar on a 
similar question. Listen to what Mrs. Peachum says of her daughter: 
. ra him (Macheath) worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better 
red.’ 

The daughter observes : 

‘ A woman knows how to be mercenary though she has never been in a court 
or at an assembly.’ ? 

And the father remarks : 

‘My daughter to me should be, like a court lady to a minister of state, a key 

to the whole gang.’ # 
As to Macheath, he is a fit son-in-law for such a politician. If less 
brilliant in council than in action, that only suits his age. Point out a 
young and noble officer who has a better address, or performs finer 
actions. He is a highwayman, that is his bravery ; he shares his booty 
with his friends, that is his generosity : 

‘You see, gentlemen, I am not a mere court-friend, who professes everything 
and will do nothing. . . . But we, gentlemen, have still honour enough to break 
through the corruptions of the world.’+ 
For the rest, he is gallant; he has half a dozen wives, a dozen children; 
he frequents stews, he is amiable towards the beauties whom he meets, 
he is easy in manners, he makes elegant bows to every one, he pays 
compliments to all: 

‘ Mistress Slammekin ! as careless and genteel as ever ! all you fine ladies, who 

know your own beauty affect undress . . . If any of the ladies chuse gin, I hope 
they will be so free as to call for it.—Indeed, sir, I never drink strong waters, but 
when I have the colic.—Just the excuse of the fine ladies! why, a lady of quality 
is never without the colic.’ 
Is it not the genuine tone of good company? And would you doubt 
that Macheath is a man of quality when you learn that he has deserved 
to be hung, and is not? Everything yields to such a proof. If, how- 
ever, you wish for another, he would add that, 

‘ As to conscience and nasty morals, I have as few drawbacks upon my pleasures 
as any man of quality in England ; in those I am not at least vulgar.’ ® 
After such a speech one must give in. Do not bring up the foulness 
of these manners; you see that there is nothing repulsive in them. 
These interiors of prisons and stews, these gambling-houses, this whiff of 





1Gay’s Plays, 1772 ; The Beggars’ Opera, i. 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Tbid. 
4 Jbid. iii. 2. 5 Ibid. ii. 1, 
6 J cannot find these lines in the edition I have consulted.—Tr. 


ae eee * - 2 ~~, * "Rav ate Saw Mas? ele 


52 THE CLASSIC AGE, ‘[Boox 111. 


gin, this pander-traffic, and these pickpockets’ calculations, by no means | 


disgust the ladies, who applaud from the boxes. They sing the songs of 
Polly ; their nerves shrink from ‘no detail; they have already inhaled the 
filthy odours from the highly polished pastoral of the amiable poet. 


They magh to see Lucy show. her pregnancy to Macheath, and give 


Polly ‘rats-bane.’ They are familiar with all the refinements of the gal- 
lows, and all the niceties of medicine. Mistress Trapes expounds her 
trade before them, and complains of having ‘ eleven fine customers now 


down under the surgeon’s hands,’ Mr. Filch, a prison-prop, uses words — 


which cannot even be quoted. A cruel keenness, sharpened by a 
stinging irony, flows through the work, like one of those London 
streams whose corrosive smells Swift and Gay have described; more 
than a hundred years later it still proclaims the dishonour of the society 
which is bespattered and befouled with its mire. 


Ill, 


These were but the externals; and close observers, like Voltaire, 


did not misinterpret them. Betwixt the slime at the bottom and the . 
scum on the surface rolled the great national river, which, purified ‘by’ 


its own motion, already at intervals gave signs of its true colour, soon 
to display the powerful regularity of its course and the wholesome 


limpidity of its waters. It advanced in its native bed; every nation » 


has one of its own, and flows down its proper slope. It is, this slope 
which gives to each civilisation its degree and form, and it is this 
which we must endeavour to describe and measure. | 

To this end we have only to follow the travellers from the two 
countries who at this time crossed the Channel. Never did England 
regard and imitate France more, nor France England. To see the 
distinct current.in which each nation flowed, we have but to open our 
eyes. Lord Chesterfield writes to his son: 


‘It must be owned, thatthe polite conversation of the men and women at = 


Paris, though not always very deep, is much less futile and frivolous than ours 
here. It turns at least upon some subject, something of taste, some point of 
history, criticism, and even philosophy, which, though probably not quite so solid 
as Mr. Locke’s, is however better, and more becoming rational beings, than our 
frivolous dissertations upon the weather or upon whist.’ 2 


In fact, the French became civilised by conversation; not so the 
English. As soon as the Frenchman quits mechanical labour and 
coarse material life, even before he quits it, he converses: this is his 





‘In these Eclogues the ladies explain in good style that their friends have their 
lackeys for lovers: ‘ Her favours Sylvia shares amongst mankind } such gen’rous 
Love could never be confin’d.’ Elsewhere the servant girl says to her mistress. 
‘ Have you not fancy’d, in his frequent kiss, th’ ungrateful leavings of a filthy miss?’ 

 Chesterfield’s Letters, ii. April 22, O. e» 1751, p. 131. See, for a contrast, 
Swift’s Lssay on Polite Conversation. 




















Mpc 


CHAP. IIL] THE REVOLUTION. 53 


goal and his pleasure.!_ Barely has he escaped from religious wars and 
feudal isolation, when he makes his bow and has his say. With the 
Hotel’ de Rambouillet we get the fine drawing-room talk, which is to 
last two centuries: Germans, English, all Europe, either novices or 
dullards, listen to France open-mouthed, and from time to time clumsily 
attempt an imitation. How amiable are French talkers! What discrimi- 
nation! What innate tact! With what grace and dexterity they can 
persuade, interest, amuse, stroke down sickly vanity, rivet the diverted 
attention, insinuate dangerous truth, ever soaring hundred feet above 
the tedium-point where their rivals are floundering with all their native 
heaviness. But, above all, how sharp they have soon become! Instinc- 
tively and without effort they light upon easy gesture, simple speech, 
sustained elegance, a characteristic piquancy, a perfect clearness. Their 





| phrases, still formal under Balzac, are looser, lightened, launch out, flow 


speedily, and under Voltaire find their wings. Did any one ever see such 
a desire, such an art of pleasing? Pedantic sciences, political economy, 
theology, the sullen denizens of the Academy and the Sorbonne, speak 
but in epigrams. Montesquieu’s [Esprit des Lois is also ‘? Esprit sur 
les lois.’ Rousseau’s periods, which begat a revolution, were balanced, 
turned, polished for eighteen hours in his head. Voltaire’s philosophy 
breaks out into a million sparks, Every idea must t blossom into a wit- 
ticism; thought is made to leap ; all truth, the most thorny. and the 
most gated, becomes a pleasant drawitig-rabin conceit, cast backward 


- and forward, like a gilded shuttlecock, by delicate women’s hands, with- 


out sullying the lace sleeves from which their slim arms emerge, or the 
garlands which the rosy Cupids unfold on the wainscoting. Everything 
must glitter, sparkle, or smile. The passions are refined, love is dimmed, 
the proprieties are multiplied, good manners are exaggerated. The 
refined man becomes ‘sensitive.’ From his wadded taffeta dressing- 
gown he keeps plucking his worked handkerchief to whisk away the 
moist omen of a tear; he lays his hand on his heart, he grows tender ; 
he has become so delicate and correct, that an Englishman knows not 
whether to take him for an hysterical young woman or a dancing- 
master.” Take a clear view of this beribboned puppy, in his light-green 
dress, lisping out the songs of Florian. The genius of society which has 
led him to these fooleries has also led him elsewhere; for conversation, 
in France at least, is a chase after ideas. To this day, in spite of 





1 Even in 1826, Sidney Smith, arriving at Calais, writes (Life and Letters, ii 
274): ‘What pleases me is the taste and ingenuity displayed in the shops, and 
the good manners and politeness of the people. Such is the state of manners, that 
you appear almost to have quitted a land of barbarians. I have not seen a cobbler 
who is not better bred than an English gentleman.’ 

2 See Evelina, by Miss Burney, 3 vols., 1784 ; observe the character of the poor, 
genteel Frenchman, M. Dubois, who is made to tremble even whilst lying in the 
gutter. These very correct young ladies go to see Congreve’s Love for Love ; their 


54 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


modern distrust and sadness, it is at table, over the coffee especially, 
that deep politics and the loftiest philosophy crop up. To think, above 
all, to think rapidly, is a recreation. The mind finds in it a sort of 
ball; think how eagerly it hastens thither. This is the source of all 
French culture. At the dawn of the age, the ladies, between a couple 
of bows, produced studied portraits and subtle dissertations; they un- 
derstand Descartes, appreciate Nicole, approve Bossuet. Presently 
little suppers are introduced, and during the dessert they discuss the 
existence of God. Are not theology, morality, set forth in a noble or 
piquant style, pleasures for the drawing-room and adornments of luxury? 
Fancy finds place amongst them, floats about and sparkles like a light 
flame over all the subjects on which it feeds. What. a flight was 
this of the eighteenth century! Was society ever more anxious for 
lofty truths, more bold in their‘search, more quick to discover, more 
ardent in embracing them? The perfumed marquises, these laced cox- 
combs, all these pretty, well-dressed, gallant, frivolous people, crowd to 
philosophy as to the opera; the origin of animated beings, the eels of 
Neédham, the adventures of Jacques the Fatalist,’ and the question of 
free judgment, the principles of political economy, and the calculations 
of the Man with Forty Crowns,?—all is to them a matter for paradoxes 
and discoveries. All the heavy rocks, which the men who had made 
it their business, were hewing and undermining laboriously in solitude, 
being carried along and polished in the public torrent, roll in myriads, 
mingled together with a joyous clatter, hurried onwards with an ever- 
increasing rapidity. There was no bar, no collision; they were not 
hindered by the practicability of their plans: they thought for think- 
ing’s sake; theories could be expanded at ease. In fact, this is how in 
France men have always conversed. ‘They play with general truths; 
they glean one nimbly from the heap of facts in which it lay concealed, 
and develop it; they hover above observation in reason and rhetoric; 
they find themselves uncomfortable and common-place when they are 
not in the region of pure ideas. And in this respect the eighteenth 
century continues the seventeenth. ‘The philosophers had described 
good breeding, flattery, misanthropy, avarice; they now examined 
liberty, tyranny, religion; they had studied man in himself; they now 
study him in the abstract. Religious and monarchical writers are of 
the same family as impious and revolutionary writers; Boileau leads 
up to Rousseau, Racine to Robespierre. Oratorical reasoning formed 





parents are not afraid of showing them Miss Prue. See also, in Evelina, by way of 
contrast, the boorish character of the English captain ; he throws Mrs. Duval twice 
in the mud ; he says to his daughter Molly: ‘I charge you, as you value my favour, 
that you'll never again be so impertinent as to have a taste of your own before my 
face’ (i. 190). The change, even from sixty years ago, is surprising. 

1 The title of a philosophical novel by Diderot.—Tr. 

* The title of a philosophical tale by Voltaire.—Tr. 








CHAP III. | THE REVOLUTION. 55 


the regular theatre and classical preaching; oratorical reason pro- 
duces the Declaration of Rights and the Contrat Social. They form for 
themselves a certain idea of man, of his inclinations, faculties, duties; 
a mutilated idea, but the more clear as it was the more reduced, From 
being aristocratic it becomes popular; instead of being an amusement, 
it is a faith ; from delicate ard sceptical hands it passes to coarse and 
enthusiastic hands. From the lustre of the drawing-room they make a 
brand and a torch. Such is the current on which the French mind 
floated for two centuries, caressed by the refinements of an exquisite 
politeness, amused by a swarm of brilliant ideas, charmed by the pro- 
mises of golden theories, till, thinking that it touched the cloud-palace, 
made bright by the future, it suddenly lost its footing and fell in the 
storm of the Revolution. 

Altogether different is the path which English civilisation has taken. 
It is not the spirit of society which has made it, but moral sense; and 
the reason is, that here man is not as he is in France. The French- 
men who became acquainted with England at this period were struck 
by it. ‘In France,’ says Montesquieu, ‘I become friendly with every- 
body; in England with nobody. You must do here as the English do, 
live for yourself, care for no one, love no one, rely on no one,’ They 
were of a singular genius, yet ‘solitary and sad. They are reserved, 
live much in themselves, and think alone. Most of them having wit, 
are tormented by their very wit. In scorn or disgust of all things, they 
are unhappy amid so many reasons why they should not be so.’ And 
Voltaire, like Montesquieu, continually alludes to the sombre energy of 
this character. He says that in London there are days when the wind 
is in the east, when it is customary for people to hang themselves; he 
relates shudderingly how a young girl cut her throat, and how the lover, 
without a word, bought back the knife. He is surprised to see ‘ so many 
Timons, so many splenetic misanthropes.’ Whither will they go? There 
was one path which grew daily wider. The Englishman, naturally 
serious, meditative, and sad, did not regard life as a game or a pleasure ; 
his eyes were habitually turned, not outward to smiling nature, but 
inward to the life of the soul; he examines himself, ever descends 
within himself, confines himself to the moral world, and at last sees no 
other beauty but that which shines there; he enthrones justice as the 
sole and absolute queen of humanity, and conceives the plan of disposing 
all his actions according to a rigid code. He has no lack of force in 
this ; for his pride comes to assist his conscience. Having chosen him- 
self and by himself the route, he would blush to. quit it; he rejects 
temptations as his enemies ; he feels that he is fighting and conquering,* 
that he is doing a difficult thing, that he is worthy of admiration, 
that he isa man. Moreover, he rescues himself from his capital foe, 





1 ¢The consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman, of 
standing out against something and not giving in.’"—Z'om Brown’s School Days. 


56 | THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book III. 


tedium, and satisfies his craving for action; having grasped his duties, 
he has a task for his faculties and an end in life, and this gives rise to 
associations, foundations, preachings; and finding more stedfast souls, 
and nerves more tightly strung, it sends them forth, without causing 
them too much suffering, to long strife, through ridicule and danger. 
The reflective character of the man has given a moral rule; the mili- 
tant character now gives moral force. The mind, thus directed, is more 
apt than any other to comprehend duty; the will, thus armed, is more 
capable than any other of performing itsduty. This is the fundamental 
faculty which is found in all parts of public life, concealed but present, 
like one of those deep and primeval rocks, which, lying far inland, give 
to all undulations of the soil a basis and a support. 


eh tf 
To Protestantism first, and it is from this structure of mind that the 
Englishman 1s religious. Find your way through the knotty and unin- 
viting bark. Voltaire laughs at it, and jests about the ranting of the 


preachers and the rigours of the faithful. ‘There is no opera, no — 


comedy, no concert on a Sunday in London; cards even are expressly 
forbidden, so that only persons of quality; and those who are called 
decent men, play on that day.’ He amuses himself at the expense of 
the Anglicans, ‘so scrupulous in collecting their tithes ;’ the Presby- 
terians, ‘ who look as if they were angry, and preach with a strong nasal 
accent ;’ the Quakers, ‘ who go to church to wait for the inspiration of 
God with their hats on their heads.’ But is there nothing to be observed 
but these externals ? And do you suppose that you are acquainted 
with a religion because you know the details of formulary and vest- 
ment? There isa common faith beneath all these sectarian differences : 
whatever be the form of Protestantism, its object and result are the 
culture of the moral sense; that is why it is popular here: principles 
and dogmas all make it suitable to the instincts of the nation. The 
sentiment which in the reformed man is the source of all, is anxiety 
of conscience ; he pictures perfect justice, and feels that his upright- 
ness, however great, cannot stand before that. He thinks of the Day 
of Judgment, and tells himself that he will be damned. He is troubled, 
and prostrates himself; he prays God to pardon his sins and renew his 
heart. He sees that neither by his desires, nor his deeds, nor by any 
ceremony or institution, nor by himself, nor by any creature, can he 
deserve the one or obtain the other. He betakes himself to Christ, the 
one Mediator; he prays to him, he feels his presence, he finds himself 
justified by his grace, elect, healed, transformed, predestinated. Thus 
understood, religion is a moral revolution; thus simplified, religion is 
only a moral revolution. Before this deep emotion, metaphysics and 
theology, ceremonies and discipline, all is blotted out or subordinate, 
and Christianity is simply the purification of the heart. Look now at 
these men, dressed in sombre colours, speaking through the nose on 


—_— cs 





ae 


at. 











CHAP. II] THE REVOLUTION.” BT 


Sundays, in a box of dark wood, whilst a mam in bands, ‘with the air 
of a Cato,’ reads a psalm. Is there nothing in their heart but theo- 
logical ‘trash’ or mechanical phrases? ‘There is a deep sentiment— 
veneration. This bare Dissenters’ meeting-house, this simple service 
and church of the Anglicans, leave them open to the impression of what 
they read and hear. For they do hear, and they do read; prayer 
in the vulgar tongue, psalms translated into the vulgar tongue, can 
penetrate through their senses to their souls. Be sure they do pene- 
trate; and this is why they have such a collected mien. For the race 
is by nature capable of deep emotions, disposed by the vehemence of 
its imagination to comprehend the grand and tragic; and the Bible, 
which is to them the very word of eternal God, provides it. I know 
that to Voltaire it is only emphatic, unconnected, ridiculous; the senti- 
ments with which it is filled are out of harmony with French sentiments. 
In England the hearers are on the level of its energy and harshness. 
The cries of anguish or admiration of the solitary Hebrew, the trans- 
ports, the sudden outbursts of sublime passion, the thirst for justice, the 
growling of the thunder and the judgments of God, shake, across thirty 
centuries, these biblical souls. Their other books assist it. The Prayer 
Book, which is handed down as an heirloom with the old family Bible, 
speaks to all, to the dullest peasant, or the miner, the solemn accent of 
true prayer. The new-born poetry, the reviving religion of the six- 

teenth century, have impressed their magnificent gravity upon it; and 

we feel in it, as in Milton himself, the pulse of the twofold inspiration 

which then lifted a man out of himself and raised him to heaven. 

Their knees bend when they listen to it. The Confession of Faith, the 
collects for the sick, for the dying, in case of public misfortune or 
private grief, the lofty sentences of impassioned and sustained eloquence, 

transport a man to some unknown and august world. Let the fine 
gentlemen yawn, mock, and succeed in not understanding: I am sure 
that, of the others, many are moved. ‘The idea of dark death and 
of the limitless ocean, to which the poor weak soul must descend, the 
thought of this invisible justice, ever present, ever foreseeing, on which 
the changing show of visible things depends, enlighten them with un- 

expected beams. The physical world and its laws seem to them but a 
phantom and a figure; they see nothing more real than justice ; it is 
the sum of humanity, as of nature. This is the deep sentiment which 

on Sunday closes the theatre, discourages pleasures, fills the churches ; 

this it is which pierces the breastplate of the primitive spirit and the 

corporeal dulness. This shopkeeper, who all the week has been count- 

ing his bales or drawing up columns of figures; this cattle-breeding 
squire, who can only bawl, drink, jump a fence; these yeomen, these 
cottagers, who amuse themselves, in order to draw blood whilst 
boxing, or vie with each other in grinning through a horse-collar, 


- —all these uncultivated souls, immersed in material life, receive thus 


from their religion a moral life. They love it; you will hear it in the 





58 THE CLASSIC AGE. : [BOOK II. 


yells of a mob, rising like a thunderstorm, when a rash hand touches or 
seems to touch the Church. You will see it in the sale of Protestant 
devotional books, Pilgrim’s Progress, The Whole Duty of Man, alone 
able to force their way to the window-ledge of the yeoman and squire, 
where four volumes, their whole library, rest amid the fishing-tackle. 
You can only move the men of this race by moral reflections and reli- 
gious emotions. The cooled Puritan spirit still broods underground, 

|ana is drawn in the only direction where fuel, air, fire, and action are 
to be found. 

We obtain a glimpse of it when we look at the sects. In France, 
Jansenists and Jesuits seem to be puppets of another century, fighting 
for the amusement of this. Here Quakers, Independents, Baptists 
exist, serious, honoured, recognised by the State, adorned by able 
writers, by deep scholars, by virtuous men, by founders of nations.? 
Their piety causes their disputes; it is because they will belief, that 
they differ in belief: the only men without religion are those who 
do not care for religion, A motionless faith is soon a dead faith; and 
when a man becomes a sectarian, it is because he is fervent. This 
Christianity lives because it is developed; we see the sap, always flow- 
ing from the Protestant inquiry and faith, re-enter the old dogmas, 
dried up for five hundred years. Voltaire, when he came to England, 
was surprised to find Arians, and amongst them the first thinkers in 
England—Clarke, Newton himself. Not only dogma, but feeling, is 
renewed ; beyond the speculative Arians were the practical Methodists; 
behind Newton and Clarke came Whitfield and Wesley. 

No history more deeply illustrates the English character than that of 
these two men. In spite of Hume and Voltaire, they founded a monas- 
tical and convulsionary sect, and triumph through rigour and exagge- 
pace which would have ruined them in France. Wesley was a scholar, 





an Oxford student, and he believed in the devil; he attributes to him 
sickness, nightmare, storms, earthquakes. His family heard supernatural 
noises ; his father had been thrice pushed by a ghost ; he himself saw the 

hand of God in the commonest events of life. One day at Birmingham, 
overtaken by a hailstorm, he felt that he received this warning, because 

at table he had not sufficiently exhorted the people who dined with him ; 
when he had to determine on anything, he looked out by chance for a 

text of Scripture, in order to decide. At Oxford he fasted and wearied 
himself until he spat blood, and almost died; at sea, when he departed S 
for America, he only ate bread, and slept on deck ; he lived the life of an ° 
apostle, giving away all that he earned, travelling and preaching all the 

year, and every year, till the age of eighty-eight ; 7 it has been reckoned 


? William Penn. 

* On one tour he slept three weeks on the bare boards. One day, at three in the 
morning, he said to Nelson, his companion: ‘ Brother Nelson, let us be of good 
cheer, I have one whole side yet ; for the skin is off but on one side.’—Southey’s 

Life of Wesley, 2 vols., 1820, ii. ch. xv. 54. 








CHAP. IIl.] THE REVOLUTION. 59 


_ that he gave away thirty thousand pounds, travelled about a hundred thou- 


sand miles, and preached forty thousand sermons. What could such a man 
have done in France in the tighteenth century? Here he was listened 
_to and followed, at his death he had eighty thousand disciples ; now he 
has a million. The qualms of conscience, which forced him in this 
direction, pushed others in his footsteps. Nothing is more striking than 
the confession of his preachers, mostly low-born and laymen. George 
Story had the spleen, dreamed and mused gloomily ; took to slandering 
himself and the occupations of men. Mark Bond thought himself 
damned, because when a boy he had pronounced once a blasphemy ; he 
read and prayed unceasingly and in vain, and at last in despair enlisted, 
with the hope of being killed. John Haime had visions, howled, and 
thought he saw the devil. Another, a baker, had scruples because his 
master continued to bake on Sunday, wasted away with anxiety, and 
soon was nothing but a skeleton. These are the timorous and impas- 
sioned souls which furnish matter for religion and enthusiasm. They 
are numerous in this land, and on them doctrine took hold. Wesley 
declares that 

‘A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is 
Christian holiness. It is not an assent to any opinion, or any number of opinions.’ 
‘ This justifying faith implies not only the personal revelation, the inward evidence 
of Christianity, but likewise a sure and firm confidence in the individual believer 
that Christ died for his sin, loved him, and gave his life for him.’ } 

‘ By a Christian, I mean one who so believes in Christ, as that sin hath no 
more dominion over him.’ ? 


Elsewhere, a w2man, disgusted with this madness, wished to leave, 
but had only gone a few steps when she fell into as violent fits as 
others. Conversions followed these transports; the converted paid 
their debts, forswore drunkenness, read the Bible, prayed, and went 
about exhorting others. Wesley collected them into societies, formed 
assemblies for mutual examination and edification, submitted spiritual 
life to a methodic discipline, built chapels, chose preachers, founded 
schools, organised enthusiasm. To this day his disciples spend three 
millions a year in missions to all parts of the world, and on the banks 
of the Mississippi and the Ohio their shoutings repeat the enthusiasm 
and the conversions of primitive inspiration, The same instinct is still 
revealed by the same signs; the doctrine of grace survives in uninter- 
rupted energy, and the race, as in the sixteenth century, puts its poetry 
into the exaltation of the moral sense. 

The faithful feels in himself the touch of a superior hand, and the 
birth of an unknown being. The old man has disappeared, a new man 
has taken his place, pardoned, purified, transfigured, steeped in joy and 
confidence, inclined to good as strongly as he was once drawn to evil. 
A miracle has been wrought, and it can be wrought at any moment, 





1 Southey’s Life of Wesley, ii. 176. 3 Ibid. i. 251. 


60 THE CLASSIC AGE. | [Book Tit. 


suddenly, under any circumstances, without warning. Some sinner, _ 


the oldest and most hardened, without wishing it, without having 
dreamed of it, falls down weeping, his heart melted by grace. The dull 
thoughts, which fermented long in these gloomy imaginations, broke out 
suddenly into storms, and the dull brutal mood is shaken by nervous 


fits which it had not -known before. Wesley, Whitfield, and their _ 


preachers went over all England preaching to the poor, the peasants, 
the workmen in the open air, sometimes to a congregation of twenty 
thousand people. ‘The fire is kindled in the country.’ There was 
sobbing and crying. At Kingswood, Whitfield, having collected the 
miners, a savage race, ‘saw the white gutters made by the tears which 
plentifully fell down from their black cheeks, black as they came out 
from their coal-pits.’* Some trembled and fell; others had transports 
of joy, ecstasies. Southey writes thus of Thomas Olivers: ‘His heart 
was broken, nor could he express the strong desires which he felt for 
righteousness. . . . He describes his feeling during a Te Deum at the 
cathedral, as if he had done with earth, and was praising God before 
His throne.’* The god and the brute, which’ each of us carries in him- 
self, were let loose; the physical machine was upset; emotion was 
turned into madness, and the madness became contagious. An eye- 
witness says : 


‘ At Everton some were shrieking, some roaring aloud. . . . The most general — 


was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life ; and, 
indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter 
anguish. Great numbers wept without any noise ; others fell down as dead... . I 
stood upon the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, 
fresh, healthy, countryman, but in a moment, when he seemed to think of nothing 


else, down he dropt, with a violence inconceivable. . . . I heard the stamping of ~ 
his feet, ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom’ 


of the pew. . . . I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his 


fellows; . . . his face was red as scarlet ; and almost ali on whom God laid his. 


hand, turned either very red or almost black.’ ® 


V. 


A sort of theological smoke covers and hides this glowing hearth 
which burns in silence. <A stranger who, at this time, had visited the 
country, would see in this religion only a choking vapour of arguments, 
controversies, and sermons, All those celebrated preachers, Barrow, 
Tillotson, South, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Burnet, Baxter, Barclay, 
preached, says Addison, like automatons, monotonously, without 
moving their arms. For a Frenchman, for Voltaire, who read them, 
as he read everything, what a strange reading! Here is Tillotson first, 
the must authoritative of all, a kind of Father of the Church, so much 
admired that Dryden tells us that he learned from him the art of writ- 





* Southey’s Life of Wesley, i. ch. vi. 236. 
2 Ibid. ii. ch. xvii. 111. 3 Ibid. ii. ch. xxiv. 320. 


a a SS ee 





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—_—. — — 






a 


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cca oT el Meee 


THE REVOLUTION. 61 


\ 


- ing well, and that his sermons, the only property which he left his 


widow, were bought by a publisher for two thousand five hundred 
‘pounds. This work has, in fact, some weight; there are three folio 


volumes, each of seven hundred pages. To open them, you must be 


a critic by profession, or absolutely desire to get saved. And now 
let us open them. ‘The Wisdom of being Religious,’—such is his 
first sermon, much celebrated in his time, and the foundation of his 
success : 


‘These words consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense ; 
so that they differ only as cause and effect, which by ametonymy, used in all sorts 
of authors, are frequently put one for other.’? 


This opening makes us mpensy. Is this great orator a teacher of 
grammar ? 


‘Having thus explained the words, I come now to consider the proposition 
contained in them, which is this : That religion is the best knowledge and wis- 
dom. This I shall endeavour to make good these’ three ways :—lst, By a direct 
proof of it ; 2d, By shewing on the contrary the folly and ignorance of irreligion 
and wickedness ; 3d, By vindicating religion from those common imputations 
which seem to charge it with ignorance or imprudence. I begin with the direct 


proof of this.’2. . . 


Thereupon he gives his divisions. What a heavy demonstrator! 
One is tempted to turn over the leaves only, and not to read them. 


Let us examine his ‘ Forty-second sermon, against Evil-speaking :’ 


‘ Firstly: 1 shall consider the nature of this vice, and wherein it consists, 
Secondly : I shall consider the due extent of this prohibition to speak evil of no 
man. Thirdly: 1 shall show the evil of this practice, both in the causes and 
effects of it. Fourthly: I shall add some further considerations to dissuade men 


from it. ifthly: 1 shall give some rules and directions for the prevention and 


cure of it.’® 


What a style! and it is the same throughout. There is nothing 
lifelike; it is a skeleton, with all its joints coarsely displayed. All the 
ideas are ticketed and numbered. The schoolmen were not worse. 
Neither rapture nor vehemence; no wif, no imagination, no original 
and brilliant idea, no philosophy ; nothing but quotations of mere 
scholarship, and enumerations from a handbook. The dull argumen- 
tative reason comes with its pigeon-holed classifications upon a great 
truth of the heart or an impassioned word from the Bible, examines it 

positively and negatively,’ draws thence ‘a lesson and an encourage- 


- ment,’ arranges each part under its heading, patiently, indefatigably, so 


that sometimes three whole sermons are needed to complete the division 


and the proof, and each of them contains in its exordium the methodi- 


cal abstract of all the points treated and the arguments supplied. Just 
so were the discussions of the Sorbonne carried on. At the court of 





1 Tillotson’s Sermons, 12 vols., 1742, i. 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Tbid, iii. 188. 





62 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book IIL. 


Louis xiv. Tillotson would have been taken for a man, who had run 
away from a seminary ; Voltaire would call hima village curé. He has 
all that is necessary to shock men of the world, nothing to attract them. 
For he does not address men of the world, but Christians: his hearers 
neither need nor desire to be goaded or amused; they do not ask for 
analytical refinements, novelties in matter of feeling. They come to 
have Scripture explained to them, and morality demonstrated. The 
force of their zeal is only manifested by the gravity of their attention. 
Let others make a pretext out of a text; for them, they cling to it: it is 
the very word of God, they cannot dwell on it too much. They must 
have the sense of every word hunted out, the passage interpreted 
phrase by phrase, in itself, by the context, by similar passages, by 
general doctrines. They are willing to have the different readings, 
translations, interpretations expounded; they like to see the orator 
become a grammarian, a Hellenist, a scholiast. ‘They are not repelled 
by all this dust of scholarship, which rises from the folios to settle upon 
their countenance. And the precept being laid down, they demand 
an enumeration of all the reasons which support it; they wish to be 
convinced, carry away in their heads a provision of good, approved 
motives to last the week. They came there seriously, as to their 
counting-house or their field, to get tired and wearied out with the 
task, to toil and dig conscientiously in theology and logic, to amend and 
better themselves. They would be angry at being dazzled. Their 
great sense, their ordinary common sense, is much better pleased with 
cold discussions; they want inquiries and methodical reports in the 
matter of morality, as in a matter of tariff, and treat conscience as port 
wine or herrings. 

In this Tillotson is admirable. Doubtless he is pedantic, as Voltaire 
called him; he has all ‘the bad manners learned at the university ;’ 
he has not been ‘ polished by association with women ;’ he is not like 
the French preachers, academicians, elegant discoursers, who by a 
courtly air, a well-delivered Advent sermon, the refinements of a 
purified style, earn the first vacant bishopric and the favour of high 
society. But he writes like a perfectly honest man; we can see that 
he is not aiming in any way at the glory of an orator; he wishes to 
persuade soundly, nothing more. We enjoy this clearness, this natural- 
ness, this justness, this entire loyalty. In one of his sermons he says: 


‘Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. 
If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better ; for 
why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he 
thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? For to counterfeit and 
dissemble, is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now, the best 
way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he 
would seem to be. Besides, that it is many times as troublesome to make good 
the pretence of a good quality, as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is 
ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to 


a 


Se . *§ VSS = 


Be 





CHAP. III. ] THE REVOLUTION. 63 


seem to have it are lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skil- 
ful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion. 

‘It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the 
bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and be- 
tray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it convenient to seem 
good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to everybody’s satis- 
faction ;. . . so that, upon all accounts, sincerity is true wisdom.’} 


We are led to believe a man who speaks thus; we say to ourselves, 
‘This is true, he is right, we must do as he says.’ The impression re- 
ceived is moral, not literary ; the sermon is efficacious, not rhetorical ; 
it does not please, it leads to action. 

In this great manufactory of morality, where every loom goes on as 
regularly as its neighbour, with a monotonous noise, we distinguish two 
which sound louder and better than the rest—Barrow and South. Not 
that they were free from dulness. Barrow had all the air of a college 
pedant, and dressed so badly, that one day in London, before an audi- 
ence who did not know him, he saw almost the whole congregation at 
once leave the church. He explained the word edyaproreiy in the pulpit 
with all the charm of a dictionary, commenting, translating, dividing, 
subdividing like the most formidable of scholiasts,? caring no more for 
the public than for himself ; so that once, when he had spoken for three 
hours and a half before the Lord Mayor, he replied to those who asked 
him if he was not tired, ‘I did, in fact, begin to be weary of standing so 
long.’ But the heart and mind were so full and so rich, that his faults 
became a power. He had a geometrical method and clearness,’ an in- 
exhaustible fertility, extraordinary impetuosity and tenacity of logic, 
writing the same sermon three or four times over, insatiable in his 
craving to explain and prove, obstinately confined to his already over- 
flowing thoughts, with a minuteness of division, an exactness of con- 





1 Tillotson’s Sermons, iv. 363; Sermon 55, ‘ Of Sincerity towards God and 
Man,’ John i. 47. This was the last sermon Tillotson preached ; July 29, 1694. 

2 Barrow’s Theological Works, 8 vols. Oxford, 1830, i. 179 ; Sermon viii., 
‘The Duty of Thanksgiving,’ Eph. v. 20. 

‘ These words, although (as the very syntax doth immediately discover) they bear 
a relation to, and have a fit coherence with, those that precede, may yet, (especially 
considering St. Paul’s style and manner of expression in the preceptive and ex- 
hortative parts of his Epistles), without any violence or prejudice on either hand, 
be severed from the context, and considered distinctly by themselves. . . . First, 
then, concerning the duty itself, to give thanks, or rather to be thankful (for eiza- 
poreiv doth not only signify gratias agere, reddere, dicere, to give, render, or declare 
thanks, but also gratias habere, grate affectum esse, to be thankfully disposed, to 
entertain a grateful affection, sense, or memory. . . . I say, concerning this duty 
itself, (abstractedly considered), as it involves a respect to benefits or good things 
received ; so in its employment about them it imports, requires, or supposes these 
following particulars.’ 

’ He was a mathematician of the highest order, and had resigned his chair to 


Newton. 





eh i = 


64 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111. 


nection, a superfluity of explanation, so astonishing that the hearer at 
last gives in; and yet the mind turns with the vast machine, carried 
away and doubled up as by the rolling weight of a flattening machine. 

Listen to his sermon, ‘Of the Love of God.’ Never was a more 
copicus and forcible analysis seen in England, so penetrating and un- 
wearying a decomposition of an idea into all its parts, a more powerful 
logic, more rigorously collecting into one network all the threads of a 
subject : 


* Although no such benefit or advantage can accrue to God, which may increase 
his essential and indefectibie happiness ; no harm or damage can arrive that may 
impair it (for he can be neither really more or less rich, or glorious, or jeyful than 
he is; neither have our desire or our fear, our delight or our grief, our designs 


or our endeavours any object, any ground in those respects) ; yet hath he declared, — 


that there be certain interests and concernments, which, out of his abundant good- 
ness and condescension, he doth tender and prosecute as his own; as if he did 
really receive advantage by the good, and prejudice by the bad success, respectively 
belonging to them ; that he earnestly desires and is greatly delighted with some 
things, very much dislikes and is grievously displeased with other things: for in- 
stance, that he bears a fatherly affection toward his creatures, and earnestly de- 
sires their welfare ; and delights to see them enjoy the good he designed them ; 
as also dislikes the contrary events; doth commiserate and condole their misery ; 
that he is consequently well pleased when piety and justice, peace and order 
(the chief means conducing to our welfare) do flourish ; and displeased, when im- 
piety and iniquity, dissension and disorder (those certain sources of mischief to 
us) do prevail ; that he is well satisfied with our rendering to him that obedience, 
honour, and respect, which are due to him ; and highly offended with our injurious 
and disrespectful behaviour toward him, in the commission of sin and violation 
of his most just and holy commandments; so that there wants not suflicient 
- matter of our exercising good-will both in affection and action toward God; we are 
capable both of wishing and (in a manner, as he will interpret and accept it) of 
doing good to him, by our concurrence with him in promoting those things which 
he approves and delights in, and in removing the contrary.’! 


This entanglement wearies one, but what a force and dash is there in 
this meditative and complete thought! Truth thus supported on all its 
foundations can never be shaken. Observe the absence of rhetoric. 
There is no art here; the whole oratorical art consists in the desire 
thoroughly to explain and prove what he has to say. He is even loose 
and artless; and it is just this imgenuousness which raises him to the 
antique level. You may meet with an image in his writings which 
seems to belong to the finest period of Latin simplicity and dignity: 


‘ The middle, we may observe, and the safest, and the fairest, and the most con- 
spicuous places in cities are usually deputed for the erections of statues and monu- 
ments dedicated to the memory of worthy men, who have nobly deserved of their 
countries. In like manner should we in the heart and centre of our soul, in the 





1 Barrow’s Theological Works, i., Sermon 28, 627. : 





es ee ha w 






ee 


CHAP. III. ] THE REVOLUTION. | 65 


best and highest apartments thereof, in the places most exposed to ordinary obser- 
vation, and most secure from the invasions of worldly care, erect lively representa- 
tions of, and lasting memorials unto, the divine bounty.’ } 


There is here a sort of effusion of gratitude; and at the end of the 
sermon, when we think him exhausted, the expansion becomes more 
copious by the enumeration of the unlimited blessings amidst which 
we float like fishes in the sea, not perceiving them, because we are sur- 
rounded and penetrated by them. During ten pages the idea overflows 
in a continuous and similar phrase, without fear of crowding or mono- 
tony, in spite of all rules, so loaded are the heart and imagination, and 
so satisfied are they to bring and collect all nature as a single offering: 


‘To him, the excellent quality, the noble end, the most obliging manner of 
whose beneficence doth surpass the matter thereof, and hugely augment the bene- 


fits: who, not compelled by any necessity, not obliged by any law (or previous 


compact), not induced by any extrinsic arguments, not inclined by our merit, not 
wearied with our importunities, not instigated by troublesome passions of pity, 
shame, or fear, (as we are wont to be), not flattered with promises of recompense, 
nor bribed with expectation of emolument, thence to accrue unto himself; but 
being absolute master of his own actions, only both lawgiver and counsellor to him- ° 
self, all-sufficient, and incapable of admitting any accession to his perfect blissful- 
ness ; most willingly and freely, out of pure bounty and good-will, is our Friend 
and Benefactor ; preventing not only our desires, but our knowledge ; surpassing 
not our deserts only, but our wishes, yea, even our conceits, in the dispensation of 
his inestimable and unrequitable benefits ; having no other drift in the collation 
of them, beside our real good and welfare, our profit and advantage, our pleasure 
and content.’? 

Zealous energy and lack of taste; such are the features common to 
all this eloquence. Let us leave this mathematician, this man of the 
closet, this antique man, who proves too much and is too eager, and 
let us look out amongst the men of the world he who was called the 
wittiest of ecclesiastics, Robert South, as different from Barrow in his 
character and life as in his works and his mind; armed for war, an 
impassioned royalist, a partisan of divine right and passive obedience, 
an acrimonious controversialist, a defamer of the dissenters, a foe to the 
Act of*Toleration, who never refused to use in his enmities the licence 
of an insult or a foul word. By his side Father Bridaine,? who seems 
so coarse to the French, was polished. His sermons are like a conver- 
sation of that time; and you know in what style they conversed then in 
England. South is afraid of no popular and impassioned image. He 
sets forth little vulgar facts, with their low and striking details. He 
never shrinks, he néver minces matters ; he speaks the language of the 





1 Barrow’s Theological Works, i. 184; Sermon viii., ‘The Duty of Thanks- 
giving,’ Eph. v. 20. 

2 Ibid. p. 202. 

* Jacques Bridaine (1701-1767), a celebrated and zealous French preacher, 
whose sermons were always extempore, and hence not very cultivated and refined 
in style. —Tr. 

VOL, II. . E 


66 THE CLASSIC AGE. | [BOOK IIL. 


people. His style is anecdotic, striking, abrupt, with change of tone, 
forcible and clownish gestures, with every species of originality, vehe- 
mence, and boldness. He sneers in the pulpit, he rails, he plays the 
mimic and comedian. He paints his characters as if he had them be- 
fore his eyes. The audience will recognise the originals again in the 
streets ; they could put the names to the po Read this bit on 
hypocrites : - 


‘Suppose a man infinitely ambitious, and equally spiteful and malicious ; 
one who poisons the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises by the 
fall of better men than himself; yet if he steps forth with a Friday look and a 
Lenten face, with a blessed Jesu! and a mournful ditty for the vices of the times ; 
oh! then he is a saint-upon earth: an Ambrose or an Augustine (I mean not for 
that earthly trash of book-learning ; for, alas! such are above that, or at least 
that’s above them), but for zeal and for fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, 
and a holy rage against other men’s sins. And happy those ladies and religious 
dames, characterized in the 2d of Timothy, ch. iii. 6, who can have such self- 
denying, thriving, able men for their confessors! and thrice happy those families 
where they vouchsafe to take their Friday night’s refreshments! and thereby 
demonstrate to the world what Christian abstinence, and what primitive, self- 
mortifying rigor there is in forbearing a dinner, that they may have the better 
stomach to their supper. In fine, the whole world stands in admiration of them ; 
fools are fond of them, and wise men are afraid of them ; they are talked of, they 
are pointed at ; and, as they order the matter, they draw the eyes of all men after 
them, and generally something else.’ } 


A man so frank of speech was sure to commend frankness; he has 
done so with the pointed irony, the brutality of a Wycherley. The 
pulpit had the plain-dealing and coarseness of the stage; and in this 
picture of forcible, honest men, whom the world considers as bad 
characters, we find the pungent familiarity of the Plain Dealer: 


* Again, there are some, who have a certain ill-natured stiffness (forsooth) in 
their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep pace with this or that self- 
admiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is pluming and praising himself, and 
telling fulsome stories in his own commendation for three or four hours by 
the clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind 
besides. 

‘There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor fears, 
frowns nor favours, can prevail upon, to have any of the cast, beggarly, forlorn 
nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual or temporal, trumped upon 
them. 

‘ To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-natured persons, who are not 
to be brought by any one’s guilt or greatness, to speak or write, or to swear or lie, 
as they are bidden, or to give up their own consciences in a compliment to those, 
who have none themselves, 

‘ And lastly, there are some, so extremely ill-natured, as to think it very 
lawful and allowable for them to be sensible when they are injured or oppressed, 
when they are slandered in their good names, and wronged in their just interests ; 





1 South’s Sermons, 1715, 11 vols., vi. 110. The fourth and last discourse from 
those words 1 in Isaiah, v. 20. 









ee 







CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 67 


and, withal, to dare to own what they find, and feel, without being such beasts of 
burden as to bear tamely whatsoever is cast upon them; or such spaniels as to 
lick the foot which kicks them, or to thank the goodly great one for doing them 
all these back favours.’ ! 

In this eccentric style all blows tell; we might call it a boxing-match 
in which sneers inflict bruises. But see the effect of these churls’ vul- . 
garities. We issue thence with a soul full of energetic feeling; we have 
seen the very objects, as they are, without disguise ; we find ourselves 
battered, but seized by a vigorous hand. This pulpit is effective; and 
indeed, as cémpared with the French pulpit, this is its characteristic. 
These sermons have not the art and artifice, the propriety and moderation 
of French sermons; they are not, like the latter, monuments of style, 
composition, harmony, veiled science, tempered imagination, disguised 
logic, sustained good taste, exquisite proportion, equal to the harangues 
of the Roman forum and the Athenian agora. They are not classical. 
No, they are practical. A rude shovel, roughly handled, and encrusted 
with pedantic rust, was necessary to dig in this coarse civilisation. The 
delicate French gardening would have done nothing with it. If Barrow 
is redundant, Tillotson heavy, South vulgar, the rest unreadable, they 
are all convincing; their sermons are not models of elegance, but 
instruments of edification. Their glory is not in their books, but in 
their works, They have framed morals, not literary remains. 


VI. 


To form morals is not all; there are creeds to be defended. We 
must combat doubt as well as vice, and theology goes side by side 
with preaching. It abounds at this moment in England. Anglicans, 
Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, Baptists, Antitrinitarians, wrangle 
with each other, ‘as heartily as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit,’ and are 
never tired of inventing weapons. What is there to take hold of and 
preserve in all this arsenal? In France at least theology is lofty ; the 
fairest flowers of mind and genius have there grown over the briars of 
scholastics; if the subject repels, the dress attracts. Pascal and Bossuet, 
Fénelon and La Bruyére, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu, friends 
and enemies, all have scattered their wealth of pearls and gold. Over 
the threadbare woof of barren doctrines the seventeenth century has 
embroidered a majestic stole of purple and silk; and the eighteenth 


‘century, crumpling and tearing it, scatters it in a thousand golden 


threads, which sparkle like a ball-dress, But in England all is dull, 
dry, and gloomy; the great men themselves, Addison and Locke, when 
they meddle in the defence of Christianity, become flat and wearisome. 
From Chillingworth to Paley, apologies, refutations, expositions, dis- 
cussions, multiply and make us yawn; they reason well, and that is 
all, The theologian enters on a campaign against the Papists of the 





ys South’s s ermons, Vi. 118, The fourth and last discourse from these words in 
Isaiah, v. 20. | 


68 THE CLASSIC AGE, [Book m1. 


seventeenth century and the Deists of the eighteenth," like a tactician, 
by rule, taking a position on a principle, throwing up a breastwork of 
arguments, covering all with texts, marching calmly underground in 
the long shafts which he has dug; we approach and see a sallow-faced 
pioneer creep out, with frowning brow, stiff hands, dirty clothes; he 
thinks he is protected from all attacks; his eyes, glued to the ground, 
have not seen the broad level road beside his bastion, by which the 
enemy will outflank and surprise him. A sort of incurable mediocrity 
keeps men like him, mattock in hand, in their trenches, where no one is 


likely to pass. They understand neither their texts nor their formulas. . 


They are impotent in criticism and philosophy. They treat the poetic 
figures of Scripture, the bold style, the approximations to improvisation, 
the mystical Hebrew emotion, the subtilties and abstractions of Alex- 
‘andrian-metaphysics, with the precision of a jurist and a psychologist. 
They would actually make Scripture an exact code of prescriptions and 
definitions, drawn up by a convention of legislators. Open the first that 
comes to hand, one of the oldest—John Hales. He comments on a 
passage of St. Matthew, where a question arises on a matter forbidden 
on the Sabbath. What was this, ‘to go amongst the corn, to pluck the 
ears or to eat thereof?’ Then follow divisions and arguments raining 
down by myriads.? Take the most celebrated: Sherlock, applying the 
new psychology, invents an explanation of the Trinity, and imagines 
three divine souls, each knowing what passes in the others. Stilling- 
fleet refutes Locke, who thought that the soul in the resurrection, 
though having a body, would not perhaps have exactly the same one 
in which it had lived. Go to the most illustrious of all, the learned 
Clarke, a mathematician, philosopher, scholar, theologian; he is busy 
patching up Arianism. The great Newton himself comments on the 
Apocalypse, and proves that the Pope is Antichrist. In vain have 
they genius; as soon as they touch religion, they dote, dwindle; they 
make no way; they are wedged in, and obstinately knock their 
heads against the same obstacle. Generation after generation they 
bury themselves in the hereditary hole with English patience and con- 
scientiousness, whilst the enemy marches by, a league off. Yet in the 





'T thought it necessary to look into the Socinian pamphlets, which have 
swarmed so much among us within a few years.—Stillingfleet, Jn Vindication of 
the Doctrine of the Trinity, 1697. 

? He examines, amongst other things, ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost.’ They 
would much like to know in what this consists. But nothing is more obscure, 
Calvin and other theologians each gave a different definition. After a minute dis- 
sertation, John Hales concludes thus: ‘And though negative proofs from Scripture 
are not demonstrative, yet the general silence of the apostles may at least help to 
infer a probability that the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not committable 
by any Christian who lived not in the time of our Saviour’ (1636). This is a 
training for argument. So, in Italy, the discussion about giving drawers to, or 
withholding them from the Capuchins, developed political and diplomatic ability. 









a ey ee ee 


CHAP. IIl.] THE REVOLUTION. 69. 


hole they argue; they square it, round it, face it with stones, then 
with bricks, and yet wonder that with all these expedients the enemy 
marches on. I have read a host of these treatises, and I have not 
gleaned an idea. A man is annoyed to see so much lost labour; is 
amazed that, during so many generations, people so virtuous, zealous, 
thoughtful, loyal, well read, well trained in discussion, have only 
succeeded in filling the lower shelves of libraries. We muse sadly on 
this second scholastic theology, and end by perceiving that if it was 
without effect in the kingdom of science, it was because it only strove 
to bear fruit in the kingdom of action. 

All these speculative minds were so in appearance only. They were 
apologists, and not inquirers. ‘They busy themselves with morality, 
not with truth. They would shrink from treating God as a hypothesis, 
and the Bible as a document. They would see a vicious tendency in 
the wide impartiality of criticism and philosophy. They would have 
scruples of conscience if they indulged in free inquiry without limita- 
tion. In fact, there is a sort of sin in really free inquiry, because it 
presupposes scepticism, abandons respect, weighs good and evil in the 
same balance, and equally receives all doctrines, scandalous or edifying, 
as soon as they are proved. They banish these dissolving speculations ; 
they look on them as occupations of the slothful; they seek from argu- 
ment only motives and means for right conduct. They do not love it 
for itself; they repress it as soon as it strives to become independent ; 
they demand that reason shall be Christian and Protestant; they would 
give it the lie under any other form; they reduce it to the humble 


- position of a handmaid, and set over it their own inner biblical and 


utilitarian sense. In vain did free-thinkers arise in the beginning of 
the century; forty years later,? they were drowned in forgetfulness. 
Deism and atheism were here only a transient eruption developed on 
the surface of the social body, in the bad air of the great world and 
the plethora of native energy. Professed irreligious men—Toland, 
Tindal, Mandeville, Bolingbroke—met foes stronger than themselves. 
The leaders of experimental philosophy,* the most learned and accredited 
of scholars of the age,* the most witty authors, the most beloved and 
able,° all the authority of science and genius was employed in putting 
them down. Refutations abound. Every year, on the foundation of 
Robert Boyle, men noted for their talent or knowledge come to London 





1¢The Scripture is a book of morality, and not of philosophy. Everything 


“there relates to practice. . . . It is evident, from a cursory view of the Old and 


New Testament, that they are miscellaneous books, some parts of which are history, 
others writ in a poetical style, and others prophetical ; but the design of them 
all, is professedly to recommend the practice of true religion and virtue.’—John 
Clarke, Chaplain of the King, 1721. 

2 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 

3 Ray, Boyle, Barrow, Newton.  ‘ Bentley, Clarke, Warburton, Berkeley. 

5 Locke, Addison, Swift, Johnson, Richardson. 


70 | THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK It. 


to preach eight sermons, ‘to establish the Christian religion against 
atheists, deists, pagans, Mohammedans, and Jews.’ And these apologies 
are solid, able to convince a liberal mind, infallible for the conviction 
of a moral mind. The clergymen whe write them, Clarke, Bentley, 
Law, Watt, Warburton, Butler, are not below the lay science and 
intellect. Moreover, the lay element assists them. Addison writes 
the Evidences of Christianity, Locke the Reasonableness of Christianity, 
Ray the Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation. Over 
and above this concert of serious words is heard a ringing voice: Swift 
compliments with his terrible irony the elegant rogues who entertained 
the wise idea of abolishing Christianity. If they had been ten times 
more numerous they would not. have succeeded, for they had nothing 
to substitute in its place. Lofty speculation, which alone could take the 
ground, was shown or declared to be impotent. On all sides philoso- 
phical conceptions dwindle or come to nought. If Berkeley lighted on 
one, the denial of matter, it stands alone, without influence on the 
public, as it were a theological coup d'état, like a pious man who wants 
to undermine immorality and materialism at their basis. Newton at- 
tained at most an incomplete idea of space, and was only a mathema- 
tician. Locke, almost as poor,’ gropes about, hesitates, does little more 
than guess, doubt, start an opinion to advance and withdraw it by 
turns, not seeing its far-off consequences, nor, above all, exhausting 
anything. In short, he forbids himself lofty questions, and is very 
much inclined to forbid them to us. He has written a book to inquire 
what objects are within our reach, or above our comprehension. He 
seeks for our limitations; he soon finds them, and troubles himself no 
further. Let us shut ourselves in our own little domain, and work 
there diligently. ‘ Our business in this world is not to know all things, 
but those which regard the conduct of our life.’ If Hume, more bold, 
goes further, it is in the same track: he preserves nothing of lofty 
science ; he abolishes speculation altogether. According to him, we 
know neither substances, causes, nor laws. When we affirm that an 
object is conjoined to another object, it is because we choose, by cus- 
tom; ‘all events seem entirely loose and separate.’ If we give them 
‘a tie,’ it is our imagination which creates it ;? there is nothing true 
but doubt. The conclusion is, that we shall do well to purge our mind 
ot all theory, and only believe in order that we may act. Let us 
examine our wings only in order to cut them off, and let us confine 





1 « Paupertina philosophia,’ says Leibnitz. 

? After the constant conjunction of two objects—heat and flame, for instance, 
weight and solidity—we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from 
the appearance of the other. All inferences from experience are effects of custom, 
not of reasoning. . . . Upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, 
any one instance of connection which is conceivable by us. All events seem en- 
tirely loose and separate ; one event follows another; but we can never observe 
any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected, 





oo Ae ee 


Ee 





CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 71 


ourselves to walking. So finished a pyrrhonism serves only to cast the 
world back upon established beliefs. In fact, Reid, being honest, is} 
alarmed. He sees society broken up, God vanishing in smoke, the 
family evaporating in hypotheses. He’ objects as a father of a family, 
a good citizen, a religious man, and sets up common sense as a sove- 
reign judge of truth. Rarely, I think, in this world has speculation 
fallen lower. Reid does not even understand the systems which he 
discusses; he lifts his hands to heaven when he tries to expound 
Aristotle and Leibnitz. If some municipal body were to order a system, ( 
it would be this churchwarden-philosophy. At bottom the men of 
i this country did not care for metaphysics; to interest them, it must 
be reduced to psychology. Then it becomes a science of observa- 
tion, positive and useful, like botany; still the best fruit which they 
pluck from it is a theory of moral sentiments. In this domain Shaftes- . 
bury, Hutcheson, Price, Smith, Ferguson, and Hume himself prefer to | 
labour ; here they find their most original and durable ideas. On this 
point the public instinct is so strong, that it enrols the most independent 
minds in its service, and only permits them the discoveries which turn to 
its profit. Except two or three, chiefly purely literary men, and who are 
French or Frenchified in mind, they busy themselves only with morals. 
This idea rallies round Christianity all the forces which in France 
Voltaire ranges against it. They all defend it on the same ground— 
as a tie for civil society, and as a support for private virtue. Formerly 
instinct supported it; now opinion consecrates it; and it is the same 
secret force which, by an insensible labour, at present adds the weight 
of opinion to the pressure of instinct. Moral sense, having preserved 
for it the fidelity of the lower classes, conquered for it the assent of, 
the loftier intellects. Moral sense transfers it from the public con- 
science to the literary world, and from being popular, makes it official. 


Vil. 


One would hardly suspect this public tendency, after taking a dis- 
tant view of the English constitution; but on a closer view it is the 
first thing we see. It appears to be an aggregate of privileges, that is, 
of sanctioned injustices. The truth is, that it is a body of contracts, 
that is, of recognised rights. Every one, great or small, has its own, 
which he defends with all his might. My lands, my property, my 
chartered right, whatsoever it be, ancient, indirect, superfluous, indi- 
vidual, public, none shall touch it, king, lords, nor commons. Is it of 
the value of five shillings? I will defend it like a million pounds; it is 
my person which they would fetter. I will leave my business, lose my 
time, throw away my money, make associations, pay fines, go to prison, 
perish in the attempt; no matter; I shall show that I am no coward, 
that I will not bend under injustice, that I will not yield a portion of 
my right. : 

By this sentiment Englishmen have conquered and preserved public 


EE ee 


x 


72 THE OLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


liberty. This feeling, after they had dethroned Charles 1. and James 11, 
is shaped into principles in the Declaration of 1689, and is developed by 
Locke in demonstrations. ‘All men,’ says Locke, ‘are naturally in a 
state of perfect freedom, also of equality.’* ‘In the State of Nature 
every one has the Executive power of the Law of Nature,’® i.e. of 
judging, punishing, making war, ruling his family and dependents. 
‘There only is political society where every one of the members hath 
quitted this natural Power, resign’d it up into the Hands of the Com- 
munity in all Cases that exclude him not from appealing for Protection 
to the Law established by it.’* 


‘Those who are united into one body and have a common established law and 
judicature to appeal to, with authority . . . to punish offenders, are in civil society 
one with another.’ As for the ruler (it is said), he ought to be absolute . . . because 
he has power to do more hurt and wrong ; it is right when he does it. . . . This is to 
think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be 
done them by polecats or foxes; but are content, nay think it safety, to be de- 
voured by lions.6 The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural 
liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to 
join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living 
one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater 
security against any, that are not of it.’? 


Umpires, rules of arbitration, this is all which their federation can 
impose upon them. They are freemen, who, having made a mutual 
treaty, are still free. Their society does not found, but guarantees their 
rights. And official acts here sustain abstract theory. When Parlia- 
ment declares the throne vacant, its first argument is, that the king has 
violated the original contract by which he was king. When the Com- 
mons impeach Sacheverell, it was in order publicly to maintain that 
the constitution of England was founded on a contract, and that the 
subjects of this kingdom have, in their different public and private 
capacities, as legal a title to the possession of the rights accorded to 
them by law, as the prince has to the possession of the crown. When 
Lord Chatham defended the election of Wilkes, it was by laying down 
that ‘the rights of the greatest and of the meanest subjects now stand 





1 We must read Sir Robert Filmore’s Patriarcha on the prevailing theory, in 
order to see from what a quagmire of follies people emerged. He said that Adam, 
on his creation, had received an absolute and regal power over the universe ; that 


- in every society of men there was one legitimate king, the direct heir of Adam. 


‘Some say it was by lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterranean 
in ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Afric, and Europa—portions for 
his three sons.’ Compare Bossuet, Politique fondée sur (Heriture. At this epoch 
moral science was being emancipated from theology. 

2 Locke, Of Civil Government, 1714, book ii. ch. ii. § 4. 

8 Ibid. § 13. 4 [bid. ii. ch. vii. § 87. 5 Ibid. 

6 Jbid. ii. ch. vii. § 98, 7 Ibid. ii. ch. viii. § 95, 








————EEE SS 





PE 


— —s 


CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 73 


upon the same foundation, the security of law common to all... . 
When the people had lost their rights, those of the peerage would 
soon become insignificant.’ It was no supposition or philosophy which 
founded them, but an act and deed, Magna Charta, the Petition of 
Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the whole body of the statute laws. 

These rights are there, inscribed on parchments, stored up in ar- 
chives, signed, sealed, authentic; those of the farmer and prince are 
traced on the same page, in the same ink, by the same writer; both are 
on an equality on this vellum; the gloved hand clasps the horny palm. 
What though they are unequal? It is by mutual accord: the peasant 
is as much a master in his cottage, with his rye-bread and his nine 
shillings a week,' as the Duke of Marlborough in Blenheim Castle, with 
his many thousands a year in places and pensions. 

There they are, these men, standing firm and ready to defend them- 
selves. Pursue this sentiment of right in the details of political life; the 
force of brutal temperament and concentrated or savage passions pro- 
vides arms. If you go to an election, the first thing you see is the full 
tables.? They cram themselves at the candidate’s expense: ale, gin, 
brandy are set flowing without concealment ; the victuals descend into 
their electoral stomachs, and their faces grow red. At the same time 
they become furious. ‘ Every glass they pour down serves to increase 
their animosity. Many an honest man, before as harmless as a tame 
rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner, has become more 
dangerous than a charged culverin.’* The wrangle turns into a fight, 
and the pugnacious instinct, once loosed, craves for blows. The can- 
didates bawl against each other, tillthey are hoarse. They are chaired 
about, to the great peril of their necks; the mob yells, cheers, grows 
warm with the motion, the defiance, the row; big words of patriotism 
peal out, anger and drink inflame their veins, fists are clenched, clubs 
are at work, and bulldog passions regulate the greatest interests of the 
country. Let all beware how they draw them down on their heads: 
Lords, Commons, King, they will spare no one; and when Government 
would oppress a man in spite of them, they will compel Government to 
suppress their own law. 

They are not to be muzzled, they make that a matter of pride. 





1 De Foe’s estimate. 
2 «Their eating, indeed, amazes me; had I five hundred heads, and were each 


head furnished with brains, yet would they all be insufficient to compute the num- 


ber of cows, pigs, geese, and turkies which upon this occasion die for the good of 

their country! . . . On the contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose 

their appetites ; every morsel they swallow. The mob meet upon the debate, fight 

themselves sober, and then draw off to get drunk again, and charge for another 

encounter,’—Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, Letter cxii., ‘An Election de- 

scribed.’ See also Hogarth’s prints. 
3 Ibid. 





74 THE CLASSIC AGE, _ . [Book mt 


With them, pride assists instinct in defending the right. Each feels 
that ‘his house is his castle,’ and that the law keeps guard at his door. 
Each tells himself that he is defended against private insolence, that 
the public arbitrary power will never touch him, that he has ‘ his body,’ 
and can answer blows by blows, wounds by wounds, that he will be 
judged by an impartial jury and a law common to all. ‘Even if an 
Englishman,’ says Montesquieu, ‘has as many enemies as hairs on his 
head, nothing will happen to him. The laws there were not made for 
one more than for another; each looks on himself as a king, and the 
men of this nation are more confederates than fellow-citizens.’ This 
goes so far, ‘that there is hardly a day when some one does not lose 
respect for the king. Lately my Lady Bell Molineux, a regular virago, ~ 
sent to have the trees pulled up from a small piece of land which the 
queen had bought for Kensington, and went to law with her, without 
having wished, under any pretext, to come to terms with her, and made 
the queen’s secretary wait three hours.’ ‘ When they come to France, 
they are deeply astonished to see the sway of “the king’s good plea- 
sure,” the Bastille, the Jettres de cachet ; a gentleman who dare not live 
on his estate in the country, for fear of the governor of the province ; 
a groom of the king’s chamber, who, for a cut with the razor, kills 
a poor barber with impunity.’? In England, ‘one man does not fear 
another.’ Converse with any of them, you will find how greatly this 
security raises their hearts and courage. A sailor who rowed Voltaire 
about, and may be pressed next day into the fleet, prefers his condition 
to that of the Frenchman, and looks on him with pity, whilst taking his 


' five shillings. ‘The vastness of their pride breaks forth at every step and 


in every page. An Englishman, says Chesterfield, thinks himself equal 
to beating three Frenchmen. They would willingly declare that they 
are in the herd of men as bulls in a herd of cattle. You hear them 
bragging of their boxing, of their meat and ale, of all that can support 
the force and energy of their virile will. Roast-beef and beer make 
stronger arms than cold water and frogs. In the eyes of the vulgar, 
the French are starved wigmakers, papists, and serfs, an inferior 
kind of creatures, who can neither call their bodies nor their souls their 
own, puppets and tools in the hands of a master and a priest. As for 
themselves, 


‘ Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state 
With daring aims irregularly great. 
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
I see the lords of human-kind pass by ; 
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, 
By forms unfashion’d, fresh from nature’s hand, 
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul, 
True to imagin’d right, above control, 








1 Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, ch. 40, * See Hogarth’s prints, 














eo Sa 


CHAP. I1.] THE REVOLUTION. 75 


While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, 
And learns to venerate himself as man.’+ 


Men thus constituted can become impassioned in public concerns, for 
they are their own concerns; in France, they are only the business of 
the king and of Madame de Pompadour.” Here, political parties are as 
ardent as sects: High Church and Low Church, capitalists and landed 
proprietors, court nobility and county families, they have their dogmas, 
their theories, their manners, and their hatreds, like Presbyterians, 
Anglicans, and Quakers. The country squire rails, after his wine, at 
the House of Hanover, drinks to the king over the water; the Whig in 
London, on the 13th of January, drinks to the man in the mask,’ and 
then to the man who will do the same thing without a mask. They 
imprisoned, exiled, beheaded each other, and Parliament re-echoed 
daily with the fury of their denunciations. Political, like religious life, 
wells up and overflows, and its outbursts only mark the force of the 
flame which nourishes it. The eagerness of parties, in State as in faith, 
is a proof of zeal; constant quiet is only general indifference; and if 
they fight at elections, it is because they take an interest in them. Here 
‘a tiler had the newspaper brought to him on the roof that he might 
read it.’ A stranger who reads the papers ‘would think the country 
on the eve of a revolution.’ When Government takes a step, the public 
feels itself involved in it; its honour and its welfare are being disposed 
of by the minister; let the minister beware if he disposes of them ill. 
With the French, M. de Conflans, who lost his fleet through cowardice, 
is punished by an epigram; here, Admiral Byng, who was too prudent 
to risk his, was shot. Each in his due position, and according to his 
power, takes part in business: the mob broke the heads of those who 
would not drink Dr. Sacheverell’s health; gentlemen came in mounted 
troops to meet him. Some public favourite or enemy is always exciting 
open demonstrations: Pitt, whom the people cheer, and on whom the 
corporations bestow many gold boxes; Grenville, whom people go to 
hiss when coming out of the house; Lord Bute, whom the queen loves, 
who is hooted, and who is burned under the emblems, a boot and a 
petticoat ; the Duke of Bedford, whose palace is attacked by a mob, 
and is only saved by a garrison of infantry and horse; Wilkes, whose 
papers the Government seize, and to whom the jury assign an indemnity 
of one thousand pounds. Every morning appear journals and pamphlets 
to discuss affairs, criticise characters, denounce by name lords, orators, 
ministers, the king himself. He who wants to speak speaks. In this 
hubbub of writings and associations opinion swells, mounts like a wave, 
and falling upon Parliament and Court, drowns intrigue and carries 





1 Goldsmith’s Traveller. 

2 Chesterfield observes that a Frenchman of his time did not understand the 
word country ; you must speak to him of his prince. 

3 The executioner of Charles 1, 


76 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


away all differences. After all, in spite of the rotten boroughs, it is 
opinion which rules. What though the king be obstinate, the men in 
power band together? Opinion growls, and everything bends or breaks. 
The Pitts rose as high as they did, only because public opinion raised 
them, and the independence of the individual ended in the sovereignty 
of the people. 

In such a state, ‘all passions being free, hatred, envy, jealousy, the 
fervour for wealth and distinction, were displayed in all their fulness.’ + 
Judge of the force and energy with which eloquence must have been 
implanted and have flourished. For the first time since the fall of the 
ancient tribune, it found a soil in which it could take root and live, and 
a harvest of orators sprang up, equal, in the diversity of their talents, 
the energy of their convictions, and the magnificence of their style, to 
that which once covered the Greek agora and the Roman forum. For 
a long time it seemed that liberty of speech, experience in affairs, the 
importance of the interests involved, and the greatness of the rewards 
offered, should have forced its growth; but eloquence came to nothing, 
encrusted in theological pedantry, or limited in local aims; and the 
privacy of the parliamentary sittings deprived it of half its force by 
removing from it the light of day. Now at last there was light; pub- 
licity, at first incomplete, then entire, gives Parliament the ‘nation for 
an audience. Speech is elevated and enlarged at the same time that 
the public is refined and multiplied. Classical art, become perfect, 
furnishes method and development. Modern culture introduces into 
technical reasoning freedom of discourse and a breadth of general ideas. 
In place of arguing, they conversed ; they were attorneys, they became 
orators. With Addison, Steele, and Swift, taste and genius invade 


politics. Voltaire cannot say whether the meditated harangues once - 


delivered in Athens and Rome excelled the unpremeditated speeches of 
Windham, Carteret, and their rivals. In short, discourse succeeds in 
overcoming the dryness of special questions and the coldness of com- 
passed action, which had so long restricted it; it boldly and irregularly 
extends its force and luxuriance; and in contrast with the fine abbés 
of the drawing-room, who in France compose their academical compli- 
ments, we see appear the manly eloquence of Junius, Chatham, Fox, 
Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan. 

I need not relate their lives nor unfold their characters; I should 
have to enter upon political details. Three of them, Lord Chatham, 
Fox, and Pitt, were ministers,” and their eloquence is part of their power 
and their acts. That eloquence is the concern of those men who may re- 
cord their political history; I can simply take note of its tone and accent. 





1 Montesquieu, book xix. ch. 27. 

* Junius wrote anonymously, and critics have not yet been able with certainty, 
to reveal his true name. Most probably he was Sir Philip Francis. For Sheridan, 
see vol. i. 524. For Burke, see vol. ii. 81. 


se ee 








Ee St 











THE REVOLUTION. 17 


Vill. 


An extraordinary afflatus, a sort of quivering of intense determina- 
tion, runs through all these speeches. Men speak, and they speak as if 
they fought. No caution, politeness, restraint. They are unfettered, 
they abandon themselves, they hurl themselves onward; and if they 
restrain themselves, it is only that they may strike more pitilessly and 
more strongly. When the elder Pitt first filled the House with his 
vibrating voice, he already possessed his indomitable audacity. In vain 
Walpole tried to ‘ muzzle him,’ then to crush him; his sarcasm was sent 
back to him with a prodigality of outrages, and the all-powerful mini- 
ster bent, smitten with the truth of the biting insult which the young 
man inflicted on him. A proud haughtiness, only surpassed by that of 
his son, an arrogance which reduced his companions to the rank of 
subalterns, a Roman patriotism which demanded for England a univer- 
sal dominion, an ambition lavish of money and men, gave the nation its 
rapacity and its fire, and only saw rest in far vistas of splendid glory 
and limitless power, an imagination which brought into Parliament 
the vehemence and declamation of the stage, the brilliancy of fitful 
inspiration, the boldness of poetic imagery. Such are the sources of 
his eloquence: 3 | 

‘But yesterday, and Zngland might have stood against the world ; now ‘‘none 
so poor to do her reverence.” 

‘We shall be forced ultimately to retract ; let us retract while we can, not 
when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive Acts: 
they must be repealed—you will repeal them ; I pledge myself for it, that you will 
in the end repeal them ; I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken 
for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed. 

‘You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly pile 
and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with 
every little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles 
of a foreign prince ; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from 
this mercenary aid on which you rely ; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, 
the minds of your enemies. To overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine 
and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling 
cruelty! IfI were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop 
was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never— 
never ! 

‘But, my Lords, who is the man, that in addition to these disgraces and mis- 
chiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk 
and scalping-knife of the savage? To call into civilised alliance the wild and in- 
human savage of the woods ; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of 
disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of barbarous war against our brethren ? 
My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment ; unless 
thoroughly done away, it will be a stain on the national character—it is a violation 
of the constitution—I believe it is against law.’ + 





1 Anecdotes and Speeches of the Zarl of Chatham, 4th ed., 3 vols., 1794, ii. ch. 
44, 445, 


78 THE CLASSIC ‘AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


There is a touch of Milton and Shakspeare in this tragic pomp, 
in this impassioned solemnity, in the sombre and violent brilliancy of 
this overstrung and overloaded style. In such superb and blood-like 
purple are English passions clad, under the folds of such a banner 
they fall into battle array; the more powerfully that amongst them 
there is one altogether holy, the sentiment of right, which rallies, oc- 
cupies, and ennobles them : 

“IT rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all 
the feelings: of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit 
instruments to make slaves of the rest.* 

* Let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate ; let it be taxable only 
by their own consent given in their provincial assemblies ; else it will cease to be 
property. 

‘This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who pre- 
fer with poverty liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in 
defence of their rights as men, as freemen. . . . The spirit which now resists your 
taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and 
ship money in England ; the same spirit that called England on its legs, and by 
the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution ; the same spirit which estab- 
lished the great, fundamental essential maxim of your liberties : that no subject of 
England shall be taxed but by his own consent. 

‘As an Englishman by birth and principle, I recognise to the Americans their 
supreme unalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the 
defence of to the last extremity.’ 


If Pitt sees his own right, he sees that of others too; it was with 
this idea that he moved and managed England. For it, he appealed to 
Englishmen against themselves ; and in spite of themselves they recog- 
nised their dearest instinct in this maxim, that every human will is 
inviolable in its limited and legal province, and that it must put forth 
its whole strength against the slightest usurpation. 

Unrestrained passions and the most manly sentiment of right ; such 
is the abstract of all this eloquence. Instead of an orator, a public 
man, take a writer, a private individual; see the letters of Junius, 
which, amidst national irritation and anxiety, fell one by one like drops 
of fire on the fevered limbs of the body politic. If he makes his phrases 
concise, and selects his epithets, it was not from a love of style, but in 
order the better to stamp his insult. Oratorical artifices in his hand 
become instruments of torture, and when he files his periods it was to 
drive the knife deeper and surer; with what audacity of denunciation, 
with what sternness of animosity, with what corrosive and burning 
irony, applied to the most secret corners of private life, with what in- 
exorable persistence of calculated and meditated persecution, the quota- 
tions alone will show. He writes to the Duke of Bedford: 


‘My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem 





1 Anecdotes and Speeches of the Earl of Chatham, ii. ch. 29, 46. 
2 Ibid. ii. ch. 42, 398. 

















CHAP, III.] THE REVOLUTION. 79 


from the public, that if, in the following lines, 2 compliment or expression of 
applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your estab- 
lished character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding.’ } 

He writes to the Duke of Grafton : 

‘There is something in both your character and conduct which distinguishes 
you not only from all other ministers, but from all other men. It is not that you 
do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that 
your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first 
uniform principle, or, if I may call it, the genius of your life, should have carried 
you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momen- 
tary imputation or colour of a virtue ; and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency 
should never once have betrayed you into a wise or honourable action.’ 2 


Junius goes on, fiercer and fiercer; even when he sees the minister 


fallen and dishonoured, he is still savage. It is vain that he confesses 
aloud that in the state in which he is, the Duke might ‘ disarm a private 
enemy of his resentment.’ He grows worse: 


‘You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. 
The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, 
and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object, as 
you are, would disgrace the dignity of revenge. . . . For my own part, I do not 
pretend to understand those prudent forms of decorum, those gentle rules of dis- 
cretion, which some men endeavour to unite with the conduct of the greatest and 
most hazardous affairs. . . . I should scorn to provide for a future retreat, or to 
keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the 
abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred 
shield of cowardice, should protect him. I would pursue him through life, and try 
the last exertion of my abilities to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and 
make it immortal.’ 3 


Except Swift, is there a human being who has more intentionally con- 
centrated and intensified in his heart venom and hatred? Yet this 
is not vile, for it thinks itself to be in the service of justice. Amidst 
these excesses, this is the persuasion which enhances them; these men 
tear one another, but they do not crawl ; whoever their enemy be, they 
take their stand in front of him. Thus Junius addresses the king: 


_*Srr,—It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every re- 
proach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never 
have been acquainted with the language of truth until you heard it in the com- 
plaints of your people, It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your 
education, Weare still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious 
lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the 
natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of 
a direct, deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on 
which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to 
entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since have 
adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint. . . . 
The people of England are loyal to the House of Hanover, not from a vain pre- 





1 Junius’ Letters, 2 vols., 1772, xxiii, i. 162. 9 Ibid. xii. i. 75. 
3 Ibid. xxxvi. ii. 56. 


oy ae ra ¥ ee eae ee 
ta "« 


80 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


ference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of 
that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, 
Sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational ; fit for Englishmen to 
adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty’s encouragement. We cannot long be 
deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemp- 
tible : armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The 
prince who imitates their conduct, should be warned by their example ; and while 
he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember 
that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another.’? 


Let us look for less bitter souls, and try to encounter a sweeter 


accent.. There is one man, Charles Fox, happy from his cradle, who 
learned everything without study, whom his father trained in prodigality 
and recklessness, whom, from the age of twenty-one, the public voice 
proclaimed as the first in eloquence and the leader of a great .party, 
liberal, humane, sociable, faithful to these generous expectations, whose 
very enemies pardoned his faults, whom his friends adored, whom labour 
never wearied, whom rivals never embittered, whom power did not 
spoil; a lover of converse, of literature, of pleasure, who has left the 
impress of his rich genius in the persuasive abundance, in the fine 
character, the clearness and continuous ease of his speeches. Behold 
him rising to speak ; think of the discretion he must use ; he is a states- 
man, a premier, speaking in Parliament of the friends of the king, lords 
of the bedchamber, the noblest families of the kingdom, with their allies 
and connections around him ; he knows that each word of his will pierce 
like a fiery arrow into the heart and honour of five hundred men who 
sit to hear him. No matter, he has been betrayed; he will punish the 
traitors, and here is the pillory in which he sets ‘ the janissaries of the 
bedchamber,’ who by the Prince’s order have deserted him in the 
thick of the fight : 


‘The whole compass of language affords no terms sufficiently strong and pointed 


to mark the contempt which I feel for their conduct. It is an impudent avowal 
of political profligacy, as if that species of treachery were less infamous than any 
other, It is not only a degradation of a station which ought to be occupied only 
by the highest and most exemplary honour, but forfeits their claim to the charac- 
ters of gentlemen, and reduces them to a level with the meanest and the basest of 
the species ; insults the noble, the ancient, and the characteristic independence of 
the English peerage, and is calculated to traduce and vilify the British legislature 
in the eyes of all Europe, and to the latest posterity. By what magic nobility can 
thus charm vice into virtue, I know not nor wish to know ; but in any other thing 
than politics, and among any other men than lords of the bedchamber. such an 
instance of the grossest perfidy would, as it well deserves, be branded with infamy 
and execration.’ ? 


Then turning to the Commons: 


‘A Parliament thus fettered and controlled, without spirit and without free- 
dom, instead of limiting, extends, substantiates, and establishes beyond all pre- 





? Junius’ Letters, xxxv. ii. 29. 
® Fox’s Speeches, 6 vols., 1815, ii. 271 ; Dec. 17, 1783. 








—_- 






CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 81 


cedent, latitude, or condition, the prerogatives of the crown. But though the 
British House of Commons were so shamefully lost to its own weight in the consti- 
tution, were so unmindful of its former struggles and triumphs in the great cause 
of liberty and mankind, were so indifferent and treacherous to those primary 
objects and concerns for which it was originally instituted, I trust the characteristic 
spirit of this country is still equal to the trial ; I trust Englishmen will be as jealous 
of secret influence as superior to open violence ; I trust they are not more ready to 
defend their interests against foreign depredation and insult, than to encounter and 
defeat this midnight conspiracy against the constitution.’} 


Such are the outbursts of a nature above all gentle and amiable; 
judge of the others. A sort of impassioned exaggeration reigns in the 
debates to which the trial of Warren Hastings and the French Revolu- 
tion gave rise, in the acrimonious rhetoric and forced declamation of 
Sheridan, in the pitiless sarcasm and sententious pomp of the younger 
Pitt. These orators love the coarse vulgarity of gaudy colours; they 
hunt out accumulations of big words, contrasts symmetrically protracted, 
vast and resounding periods, ‘They do not fear to rebuff; they crave 


res Force is their characteristic, and the characteristic of the 


reatest amongst them, the first mind of the age, Edmund Burke. 

He did not enter Parliament, like Pitt and Fox, in the dawn of his 
youth, but at thirty-five, having had time to train himself thoroughly 
in all matters, acquainted with law, history, philosophy, literature, 
master of such a universal erudition, that he has been compared to 
Bacon. But what distinguished him from all other men was a wide, 
comprehensive intellect, which, exercised by philosophical studies and 
writings,’ seized the general aspects of things, and, beneath text, con- 
stitutions, and figures, perceived the invisible tendency of events and 
the inner spirit, covering with his contempt those pretended statesmen, 
unfit to stand at the helm of a great state. 

Beyond all those gifts, he had one of those fertile and_precise 
imaginations which believe that finished knowledge is an inner-view, 
which never quit a subject without having clothed it in its colours and. 
forms, and which, passing beyond statistics and the rubbish of dry docu- 
ments, recompose and reconstruct before the reader’s eyes a distant 
country and a foreign nation, with its monuments, dresses, landscapes, 
and all the shifting detail of its aspects and manners. To all these 
powers of mind, which constitute a man of system, he added all those 
energies of heart which constitute an enthusiast. Poor, unknown, 
having spent his youth in compiling for the publishers, he rose, by dint 
of work and merits, with a pure reputation and an unscathed conscience, 
ere the trials of his obscure life or the seductions of his brilliant life had 
fettered his independence or tarnished the flower of his loyalty. He 
brought to politics a horror of crime, a vivacity and sincerity of con- 
science, a humanity, a sensibility, which seem only suitable to a young 





1 Fox’s Speeches, vol. ii. p. 268. 
; 2 An Inquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. 
VOL. II. F 


82 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 


man. He based human society on maxims of morality, demanded the 
conduct of business for noble sentiments, and seemed to have under- 
taken to raise and dignify. the generosity of the human heart. He had 
fought nobly for noble causes : against the outrage of power in England, 
the outrage of the people in France, the outrage of monopolists in Todint 
He had defended, with immense research and unimpeached disinte- 


restedness, the Hindovs tyrannised over by English greed : 


‘Every man of rank and landed fortune being long since extinguished, the 
temaining miserable last cultivator who grows to the soil, after having his back 
scored by the farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the assignee, and is thus 
by a ravenous because a short-lived succession of claimants lashed from oppressor 
to oppressor, whilst a single drop of blood is left as the means of extorting a single 
grain of corn.’ 


He made himself everywhere the champion of. a principle and the 
persecutor of a vice ; and men saw him bring to the attack all the forces 
of his wonderful knowledge, his lofty reason, his splendid style, with 
the unwearying and untempered ardour of a moralist and a knight. 

Read him only several pages at a time: only thus he is great; 
otherwise all that is exaggerated, commonplace, and strange will arrest 
and shock you; but if you give yourself up to him, you will be carried 
away and captivated. The vast amount of his works rolls impetuously 
in a current of eloquence. Sometimes a spoken or written discourse 
needs a whole volume to unfold the train of his multiplied proofs and 
courageous anger. It is either the exposé of a ministry, or the whole 
history of British India, or the complete theory of revolutions, and the 
political conditions, which comes down like a vast, overflowing stream, 
to dash with its ceaseless effort and accumulated mass against some 
crime that men would overlook, or some injustice which they would 
sanction. Doubtless there is foam on its eddies,~mud in its bed: thou- 
sands of strange creatures sport wildly on its surface: he does not 
select, he lavishes; he casts forth by myriads his multiplied fancies, 
emphasis. and harsh words, declamations and apostrophes, jests and 
execrations, the whole grotesque or horrible assemblage of the distant 
regions and populous cities which his unwearied learning or fancy has 
traversed. He says, speaking of the usurious loans, at forty-eight per 
cent. and at compound interest, by which Englishmen had devastated 
India, that 

‘That debt forms the foul putrid mucus, in which are engendered the whol 
brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless involutions, the eternal knot, added 


to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which devour the nutriment, and eat 
up the bowels of India.’ 


Nothing strikes him as in excess, neither the description of tortures, nor 
the atrocity of his images, nor the deafening racket of his antitheses, 





1 Burke’s Works, 1808, 8 vols., iv. 286, Speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s debts. 
2 Ibid. 282. 





VV 






; 





CHAP. IIL] THE REVOLUTION. | 83 


nor the prolonged trumpet-blast of his curses, nor the vast oddity of 


his jests. ‘To the Duke of Bedford, who had reproached him with his 


pensions, he answers : 


‘The grants to the house of Russel were so enormous, as not only to outrage 
ceconomy, but even to stagger credibility. The duke of Bedford is the leviathan 
among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk ; he 
plays and frolicks in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst ‘he 
lies floating many a rood,” he is still acreature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, 
his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against 
his origin, and covers me all over with the spray,—everything of him and about 
him is from the throne.’ ? 


Burke has no taste, nor have his compeers. The fine Greek or French 
deduction has never found a place among the Germanic nations; with 
them all is heavy or ill-refined: it is of no use for them to study Cicero, 
and to confine their dashing force in the orderly dykes of Latin rhetoric. 
He continues half a barbarian, battening in exaggeration and violence ; 
but his fire is so sustained, his conviction so strong, his emotion so 
warm and abundant, that we suffer him to go on, forget our repug- 
nance, see in his ‘regularities and his trespasses only the outpourings of 
a great heart and a deep mind, too open and too full; and we wonder 
with a sort of strange veneration at this extraordinary éverflow, impetu- 
ous as a torrent, bicad as a sea, in which the inexhaustible variety of 
colours and forthe undulates beneath the sun of a splendid imagination, 


which lends to this muddy surge all the brilliancy of its rays. 


IX. 


If you wish for a comprehensive view of all these personages, study 
Reynolds,? and then look at the fine French portraits of this time, 
the cheerful ministers, gallant and charming archbishops, Marshal de 
Saxe, who in the Strasburg monument goes down to his tomb with 
the taste and ease of a courtier on the staircase at Versailles. Here, 
under skies drowned in pallid mists, amid soft, vaporous shades, appear 
expressive or contemplative heads: the rude energy of the character 
has not awed the artist; the coarse bloated animal; the strange and 
ominous bird of prey; the growling jaws of the wicked bulldog—he 
has put them all in: levelling politeness has not in his pictures effaced 
individual asperities under uniform pleasantness. Beauty is there, but 
variously: in the cold decision of look, in the deep seriousness and sad 


nobility of the pale countenance, in the conscientious gravity and the 


indomitable resolution of the restrained gesture. In place of Lely’s 
courtesans, we see by their side chaste ladies, sometimes severe and 
active; good mothers surrounded by their little ones, who kiss them 





1 Burke’s Works, viii. 35 ; A Letter to a Noble Lord. 
2 Lord Heathfield, the Earl of Mansfield, Major Stringer pabeary Lord at 
burton, Lord Edgecombe, etc. 


POR eno Sel Aaa tT ’ ¢ nd te . ‘ A st 





84 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II, 


and embrace one another: morality is here, and with it the sentiment 
of home and family, propriety of dress, a pensive air, the correct deport- 
ment of Miss Burney’s heroines. ‘They have succeeded: Bakewell 
transforms and reforms their cattle; Arthur Young their agriculture ; 
Howard their prisons; Arkwright and Watt their industry; Adam 
Smith their political economy; Bentham their penal law; Locke, 
Hutcheson, Ferguson, Joseph Butler, Reid, Stewart, Price, their psycho- 
logy and their morality. They have purified their private manners, they 
now purify their public manners. They have settled their government, 
they have confirmed themselves in their religion. Johnson is able to 
say with truth, that no nation in the world better tills its soil and its 
mind. There is none so rich, so free, so well nourished, where public 
and private efforts are directed with such assiduity, energy, and ability 
towards the improvement of public and private condition. One point 
ldbue is wanting: lofty speculation. It is just this point which, for 
lack of the rest, constitutes at this moment the glory of France; and 
English caricatures show, with a good appreciation of burlesque, face to 
| face and in strange contrast, on one side the Frenchman in a tumble- 
- down cottage, shivering, with long teeth, thin, feeding on snails and a 
handful of roots, but otherwise charmed with his lot, consoled by a 
republican cockade and humanitarian programmes}; on the other, the 
Englishman, red and puffed out with fat, seated at his table in a com- 
_ fortable room, before a dish of most juicy roast-beef, with a pot of 
| foaming ale, busy in grumbling against the public distress and the 
\ traitorous ministers, who are going to ruin everything. 

Thus Englishmen arrive on the threshold of the French Revoluticn, 
Conservatives and Christians facing the French free-thinkers and revo- 
lutionaries. Without knowing it, the two nations have roiled on- 
wards for two centuries towards this terrible shock; without knowing 
it, they have only been working to aggravate it. All their effort, all 
their ideas, all their great men have accelerated the motion which hurls 
them towards the inevitable conflict. Hundred and fifty years of polite- 
ness and general ideas have persuaded the French to trust in human 
goodness and pure reason. Hundred and fifty years of moral reflection 
and political strife have attached the Englishman to positive religion 
and an established constitution. Each has his contrary dogma and his 

= . * 
contrary enthusiasm. Neither understands the other, and each detests 
the other. What one calls renovation, the other calls destruction; what 
one reveres as the establishment of right, the other curses as the over- 
throw of right; what seems to one the annihilation of superstition, 
seems to the other the abolition of morality. Never was the contrast 
of two spirits and two civilisations marked in more manifest characters ; 
and it was Burke who, with the superiority of a thinker and the hos- 
tility of an Englishman, took it in hand to show this to the French. 

He is indignant at this ‘tragi-comick farce,’ which at Paris was 
called the regeneration of humanity. He denies that the contagion of 





| 
\ 





CHAP. IIL] THE REVOLUTION. 85 


such folly can ever poison England. He laughs at the Cockneys, who, 
roused by the pratings of democratic societies, think themselves on the 
brink of a revolution: 


f . ‘Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their 

. importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of 
the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who 
make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field ; that of course, they are many 
in number ; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, 
hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.’} 


Real England hates and detests the maxims and actions of the French 
Revolution :? 


‘ The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with 
disgust and horror. We wished ... to derive all we possess as an inheritance 
from our forefathers. . . . (We claim) our franchises not as the rights of men, but 
as the rights of Englishmen.’ 


Our rights do not float in the air, in the imagination of philosophers ; 
they are put down in Magna Charta: 


‘We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like 
stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper 
about the rights of men.’ * 


We despise this abstract verbiage, which deprives man of all equity 
and respect to puff him up with presumption and theories, Our con- 
stitution is not a fictitious contract, like that of Rousseau, sure to be 
violated in three months, but a real contract, by which king, nobles, 
people, church, every one holds the others, and is himself held. ‘The 
. crown of the prince and the privilege of the noble are as sacred as the 
land of the peasant and the tool of the workman. Whatever be the 
acquisition or the inheritance, we respect it in every man, and our law 
has but one object, which is, to preserve to each his property and his 
rights, | 


UL L—— 


‘ We fear God ; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments ; 
with duty to magistrates ; with reverence to priests ; and with respect to nobility.’® 
‘ There is not one public man in this kingdom who does not reprobate the dis- 
honest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has been 
compelled to make. ... Church and State are ideas inseparable in our minds. ... 
Our education is ina manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiasticks, and in all stages, 
from infancy to manhood... . They never will suffer the fixed estate of the church 
to be converted into a pension, to depend on the treasury. . . . They made their 
church like their nobility, independent. They can see without pain or grudging 
an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a Bishop of Durham or a Bishop of 
Winchester in possession of ten thousand a year.’ ® 





1. Burke’s Works, v. 165; Rejlections on the Revolution in France. 
* ¢ J almost venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred amongst us participates 
in the triumph of the revolution society.’—Burke’s Reflections, v. 165. 
% Ibid. 75. * Ibid. 166. © Ibid. 167. 6 [vid. 188. 


ae THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK M1. 


We will never suffer the established domain of our church to be con- 
verted into a pension, so as to place it in dependence on the treasury. 
We have made our church as our king'and our nobility, independent. 
We are shocked at your robbery—first, because it is an outrage upon 
property; next, because it is an attack against religion. We hold that 
there exists no society without belief, and we feel that, in exhausting 
the source, you dry up the whole stream. We have rejected as a poison 
the infidelity which defiled the beginning of our century and of yours, 
and we have purged ourselves of it, whilst you have been saturated. 

‘Who, born within the last forty years, has read-one word of Collins, and Toland, 
and Tindal, . . . and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers ?’ + 

‘We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal. 

‘ Atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts. 

‘We are resolved to keep an established church, an established monarchy, an 
established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, 
and in no greater.’? 


We settle our establishment upon the sentiment of right, and the senti- 
ment of right on the respect for God. 

In place of right and of God, what do you acknowledge as master ? 
The sovereign people, that is, the arbitrary inconstancy of a counted 
majority... We deny that the majority has a right to re-create a con- 
stitution. ¥9 
‘The constitution of a country being once settled upon some compact, tacit or 


expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the 
covenant, or the consent of all the parties.’* 


We deny that the majority has the right to make a constitution ; 
unanimity must first have conferred this right on the majority. We 
deny that brute force is a legitimate authority, and that a populace is a 
nation.* 

‘A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state or separable 
from it.... When great multitudes act together under that discipline of nature, 
I recognise the people ;... when you separate the common sort of men from their 
proper chieftains so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that 
venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race of deserters and 
vagabonds.’ § 

We detest with all our power of hatred the right of tyranny which 
you give them over others, and we detest still more the right of insur- 





1 Burke’s Works, v. 172 ; Reflections. 2 Ibid. 175. 

3 Tbid. vi. 201; Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 

4 * A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not 
good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty 
millions. . . . As to the share of power, authority, direction, which each indi- 
vidual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be 
amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society..—Burke’s Works, v, 
109 ; Reflections. 

5 Burke’s Works, vi. 219; Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 





| 






~ ee 


CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 87 


rection which you give them against themselves. We believe that a 
constitution is a deposit transmitted to this generation by the past, to 
be handed down to the future, and that if a generation can dispose of 
it as its own, it ought also to respect it as belonging to others. We 
hold that, ‘ by this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, 
and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies and 
fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would 
be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would 
become little better than the flies of a summer.’* We repudiate this 
meagre and coarse reason, which separates a man from his, ties, 
and sees in him only the present, which separates a man from society, 
and counts him as only one head in a flock. We despise these 
‘metaphysics of an undergraduate and the mathematics of an ex- 
ciseman,’ by which you cut up the state and man’s rights according 
to square miles and numerical unities. We have a horror of that 
cynical coarseness by which ‘all the decent drapery of life is to be 
rudely torn off,’ by which ‘ now a queen is but a woman, and a woman 
is but an animal,’? which cuts down chivalric and religious spirit, the 
two crowns of humanity, to plunge them, together with learning, into 
the popular mire, to be ‘trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish 


. multitude’? We have a horror of this systematic levelling which 


disorganises civil society. Burke continues thus: 


‘I am satisfied beyond a doubt that the project of turning a great empire into 
a vestry, or into a collection of vestries, and of governing it in the spirit of a paro- 
chial administration, is senseless and absurd, in any mode, or with any qualifica- 
tions. I can never be convinced, that the scheme of placing the highest powers of 
the state in churchwardens and constables, and other such officers, guided by the 
prudence of litigious attornies, and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless 
women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns and brothels, by pert 
apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hairdressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage 
(who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they 
have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull uninstructed men, of useful but 
laborious occupations), can never be put into any shape that must not be both dis- 
graceful and destructive.’* ‘If monarchy should ever obtain an entire ascendency 
in France, it will probably be . . . the most completely arbitrary power that has 
ever appeared on earth. France will be wholly governed by the agitators in corpo- 
rations, by societies in the towns formed of directors in assignats, . . . attornies, 
agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy 
founded on the destruction of the crown, the church, the nobility, and the people.’® 


This is what Burke wrote in 1790 to the dawn of the French 
Revolution.® The year after the people of Birmingham destroyed the 





1 Burke’s Works, v. 181; Reflections. 2 Tbid. 151. 3 [bid. 154. 

4 Ibid. vi. 5; Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. 

5 Ibid. v. 349 ; Reflections. 

6 «The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please : we 
ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which 


i) 


88 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK Mit. 


houses of English Jacobins, and the miners of Wednesbury went out 
in a body from their pits to come to the succour of ‘king and church.’ 
Crusade against crusade; scared England was as fanatical as enthu- 
siastic France. Pitt declared that they could not ‘ treat with a nation 
of atheists.’* Burke said that the war was not between people and 
people, but between property and brute force. The rage of execration, 
invective, and destruction mounted on both sides like a conflagration.? 
It was not the collision of the two governments, but of the two civilisa- 
tions and the two doctrines. The two vast machines, driven with all 
their momentum and velocity, met face to face, not by chance, but by 
fatality. A whole age of literature and philosophy had been necessary 
to amass the fuel which filled their sides, and laid down the rail which 
guided their course: In this thundering clash, amid these ebullitions 
of hissing and fiery vapour, in these red flames which grated around 
the boilers, and whirled with a rumbling noise upwards to the heavens, 
an attentive spectator may still discover the nature and the accumulation 
of the force which caused such an outburst, dislocated such iron plates, 


_and strewed the ground with such ruins. 








may be soon turned into complaints. . . . Strange chaos of levity and ferocity, 

- monstrous tragi-comick scene. . . . After I have read the list of the persons 
and descriptions elected into the Tiers-Etat, nothing which they afterwards did 
could appear astonishing. . . . Of any practical experience in the state, not one 
man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. The majority was com- 


posed of practitioners in the law, . . . active chicaners, . . . obscure provincial” 


advocates, stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, etc.’ 
—Burke’s Reflections, etc., v. 87 and 90. That which offends Burke, and even 
makes him very uneasy, was, that no representatives of the ‘natural landed in- 
terests’ were among the representatives of the Tiers-Htat. Let us give one quo- 
tation more, for really this political clairvoyance is akin to genius: ‘Men are 
qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral 
chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling 
power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere ; and the less of it there is 
within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution 
of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their 
fetters.’ 

1 Pitt’s Speeches, 3 vols. 1808, ii. p. 81, on negotiating for peace with France, 
Jan. 26, 1795.. Pitt says, however, in the same speech: ‘God forbid that we 
should look on the body of the people of France as atheists.’—TR. 

2 Letters tow Noble Lord ; Letters on a Regicide Peace. 





—_— et eile 





‘ar 


- ADDISON, 89 


CHAPTER IV. 
Addison. 


I. Addison and Swift in their epoch—Wherein they are alike and unlike. 

II. The man—Education and culture—Latin verses—Voyage in France and 
Italy—Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax—Remarks on Italy —Dialogues 
on Medals—Campaign—Gentleness and kindness—Success and happi- 
ness. 

III. Gravity and rationality—Solid studies and exact observation—His know- 
ledge of men and business habits—Nobility of his character and conduct 
—Elevation of his morality and religion—How his life and character have 
contributed to the pleasantness and usefulness of his writings. 

IV. The moralist—His essays are all moral—Against gross, sensual, or worldly 
life—This morality is practical, and yet commonplace and desultory— 
How it relies on reason and calculation—How it has for its end satisfac- 
tion in this world and happiness in the other—Speculative meanness of 
his religious conception—Practical excellence of his religious conception. 

V. The writer—Harmony of morality and elegance—The style that suits men 
of the world—Merits of this style—Inconveniences—Addison as a critic 
—His judgment of Paradise Lost—Agreement of his art and criticism— 
Limits of classical criticism and art—What is lacking in the eloquence 
of Addison, of the Englishman and of the moralist. 

VI. Grave pleasantry—Humour—Serious and fertile imagination—Sir Roger de 
Coverley—The religious and the poetical sentiment—Vision of Mirza— 
How the Germanic element subsists under Latin culture, 


L 


N this vast transformation of the minds which occupies the whole 
eighteenth century, and gives England its political and moral 
standing, two superior men appear in politics and morality, both ac- 
complished writers—the most accomplished yet seen in England; both 
accredited mouthpieces of a party, masters in the art of persuasion and 


. conviction ; both limited in philosophy and art, incapable of considering 


sentiments in a disinterested fashion; always bent on seeing the motives ! 
of things, for approbation or blame; otherwise differing, and even in 
contrast with one another: one happy,.kind,.loved ; the other_hated, 
hating, and_ most. unfortunate: the one a partisan of liberty and the 
noblest hopes of man; the other an advocate of a retrograde party, and 
an eager detractor of ‘humanity : the one measured, delicate, furnishing 
a model of the most solid English qualities, perfected.by « continental 
culture; the other unbridled and formidable, showing an- example of 


perenne 


ae ee b ohn Pi Sk ere 6 ye bay be oe aie 





90 THE CLASSIC AGE, «= pone Ill. 


the harshest English. instincts, luxuriating without limit or rule in 
every kind of devastation and anid every degree of despair. To pene- 
trate to the interior of this civilisation and “this people, there are no 
means better than to pause and dwell upon Swift and Addison. 


II. 


‘I have often reflected,’ says Steele, ‘after a night spent with him 
(Addison), apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of 
conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who 
had all their wit and nature heightened with humour, more exquisite 
and delightful than any other man ever possessed.’* And Pope, a 
rival of Addison, and a bitter rival, adds: ‘His conversation had 
something in it more charming than I have found in any other man.’? 
These sayings express the whole talent of Addison: his writings are 
conversations, masterpieces of Englishurbanity and reason ; Toney all 
the details of his character and life have contributed to nourish ae 
urbanity-and_this reasonableness. 

At the age of seventeen we find him at Oxford, studious and peace- 
ful, loving solitary walks under the elm avenues, and amongst the 
beautiful ‘meadows on the banks of the Cherwell. From the ‘thorny 
brake of school education he chose the only flower—a withered one, 
doubtless, Latin-verse—but one which, compared to the erudition, to 
the theology, to the logic of the time, is still a flower. He celebrates, 
in strophes or hexameters, the peace of Ryswick, or the system of Dr. 
Burnett; he composes little ingenious poems on a puppet-show, on the 
battle.of the pigmies and cranes; he learns to praise and jest—in Latin, 
it is true—but with such success, that his verses recommend him for 
the rewards of the ministry, and even_reach Boileau. At the same 
time he imbues himself with the Latin poets; he knows them by heart, 
even the most affected, Claudian and Prudentius; presently in Italy 
quotations will rain from his pen; from top to bottom, in all its nooks 
and under all its aspects, his memory is stuffed with Latin verses. We 
see that he loves them, scans them with delight, that a fine cxsura 
charms him, that every delicacy touches him, that no hue of art or emo- 
tion escapes him, that his literary tact is refined, and prepared to relish 
all the beauties of thought and expression. ‘This inclination, too long 
retained, is a a sign of a little tind, I allow; a man ought not to spend 
so mish time in inventing cantos. Addison would have done better to 
enlarge his knowledge—to study Latin prose-writers, Greek literature, 
Christian antiquity, modern Italy, which he hardly knew. But this 
limited culture, leaving .him.weaker, made him more refined. He 
formed his art by studying only the monuments of Latin “urbanity ; ; he 
acquired a taste for the elegance and refinements, the triumphs and 

















1 Addison’s Works, ed. Hurd, 6 vols., v. 151; Steele’s Letter to Mr. Congreve. 
2 Ibid. vi. 729. 





—- a 


- CHAP, IV.] ADDISON, 91 


artifices of style; he became self-contemplative, correct, capable of 
knowing and perfecting his own tongue. In the designed reminiscences, 
the happy allusions, the discreet tone of his own little poems, I find 
beforehand many traits of the Spectator. 

“~Leaving the university, he ed long in the two most polished 
countries in the world, France and Italy. He lived at Paris, in the 
house of the ambassador, in the regular and brilliant society which 
gave fashion to Europe; he visited Boileau, Malebranche; saw with 
somewhat malicious curiosity the fine curtsies of the painted and 
affected ladies of Versailles, the grace and almost stale civilities of the 


fine speakers and fine dancers of the other sex. He was amused at 


our complimentary intercourse, and remarked that in France, when a 


tailor accosted a shoemaker, he congratulated himself on the honour of %<» 


ee ret cere 


saluting him. In Italy he admired the works of art, and praised them 
in a letter,’ whose enthusiasm is rather cold, but very well expressed.” 
You see that he had the fine training which is now given to young 
men of the higher ranks. And it was not the amusements of Cockneys 
or the worry of taverns which employed him. His beloved Latin poets 
followed him everywhere. He had read them over before setting out ; 
he recited their verses in the places which he mentions. 

‘I must confess, it was not one of the least entertainments that I met with in 
travelling, to examine these several descriptions, as it were, upon the spot, and to 


compare the natural face of the country with the landscapes that the poets have 
given us of it.’ 


These were the pleasures of an epicure.in literature; there could be 
nothing more literary and less pedanti@jghan the account which he 
wrote on his return.* Presently this r and delicate curiosity led 
him to coins, ‘There is a great affinity,” he says, ‘between them and 
poetry ;’ for they serve as a commentary upon ancient authors; an 
effigy of the Graces makes a verse of Horace visible. And on this sub- 
ject he wrote a very agreeable dialogue, choosing for personages well- 
bred men: 







‘ All three very well versed in the politer parts of learning, ‘and had travelled 
into the most refined nations of Europe. ... Their design was to pass away the 
heat of the summer among the fresh breezes that rise from the river (the Thames), 
and the agreeable mixture of shades and fountains in which the whole country 
naturally abounds.’ ® 





1 A Letter to Lord Halifax (1701), i. 29. 
2 «Renowned in verse, each shady thicket grows, 

And every stream in heavenly numbers flows. . . « 

Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown, 

And softened into flesh the rugged stone... . 

Here pleasing airs my ravisht soul confound 

With circling notes and labyrinths of sound.’—Jdid. 
3 Preface to Remarks on Italy, i. 358, * Remarks on Italy. 
5 First Dialogue on Medals, i. 255. 


if 


92 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


Then, with a gentle and well-tempered gaiety, he laughs at pedants who 
waste life in discussing the Latin toga or sandal, but pointed out, like 
a man of taste and wit, the services which coins might render to history 
and the arts. Was there ever a better education for a literary man of the 
world? He had already for a long time acquired the art of fashionable 
oetry, I mean the correct verses, which are complimentary, or written 
iD Onee Ta all polished Society we lock ToF the adornment of thought: : 
we desire for it rare, brilliant, beautiful dress, to distinguish it from 
vulgar thoughts, and for this reason we impose upon it rhyme, metre, 
noble expression; we make for it a store of select terms, true metaphors, 
suitable images, which are like an aristocratic wardrobe, in which it-is 
hampered but must adorn itself. Men of wit are bound to make verses 
for it, and in a certain style; others to display their lace, and after a 
certain pattern. Addison put on this dress, and wore it correctly and 
easily, passing without difficulty from one habit to another similar, 
from Latin to English verse. His principal piece, The Campaign,* is 
an excellent model of becoming and classical style Each verse is full, 
perfect in itself, with a clever antithesis, or a good epithet, or a figure 
of abbreviation. Countries have noble names; Italy is Ausonia, the 
Black Sea is the Scythian Sea; there are mountains of dead, and a 
thunder of eloquence sanctioned by Lucian ; pretty turns of oratorical 
address imitated from Ovid; cannons are mentioned in poetic peri- 
phrases as later in Delille.* The poem is an official and decorative 
amplification, like that which Voltaire wrote afterwards on Fontenoy. 
Addison does yet better; hmawrote an opera, a comedy, a_much_ad- 
mired tragedy on the deg Cato. Such writing was always, in the 
last century, a passpor oy good style and to enter fashionable 
society. A young man in Voltaire’s fime, on leaving college, had to 
write his tragedy, as now he must write an article on political economy ; 
it was then a proof that he could converse with ladies, as now it is 
a proof that he can argue with men. He learned the art of being 
amusing, of touching, of talking of love; he thus escaped from dry or 
special studies; he could chovse among events or sentiments those 
which will interest or please; he was able to hold his own in good 
company, to he sometimes-agreeable there, never to transgress. Such 
is the culture which these works gave Addison; it is of slight import- 
















1 On the victory of Blenheim. 
2 * With floods of gore... the rivers swell... 
. Mountains of dead. 
Rows of hollow brass 
Tube behind tube the dreadful entrance keep, 
Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep. ... 
.. . Here shattered walls, like broken rocks, from far 
Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war ; 
Whilst here the vine o’er hills of ruin climbs 
. Industrious to conceal great Bourbon’s crimes.’ ' 











ial = 


CHAP. IV. ] ADDISON. 93 


ance that they are poor. In them he dealt with passions, humour ; 
he produced in his opera some lively and smiling images; in his tragedy 
some-noble or moving accents; he emerged | from reasoning and pure 
dissertation; he acquired: the art of. rendering morality visible and 
truth _expressive; he knew how to give ideas a physiognomy, and that 
an attractive one. Thus was the finished writer perfected by contact 
with ancient and modern, foreign and national urbanity, by the sight of 
the fine arts, by experience of the world and study of style, by con- 
tinuous and delicate choice of all that is agreeable in things and men, 
in life and art. 

- His politeness received from his character a singular bent and charm. 
It was not external, simply voluntary and official; it came from the 
heart. He was gentle and kind, of a refined sensibility, so timid even 
as to remain quiet and seem “dal in a numerous company or be- 
fore strangers, only recovering his spirits before intimate friends, and 
confessing, that he could not talk well to more than one. He could not 
endure a sharp discussion; when the opponent was intractable, he pre- 
tended to approve, and for punishment, plunged him discreetly into his 
own folly. He withdrew by preference from political arguments ; being 
invited to deal with them in the Speci he contented himself with 
inoffensive and general subjects, which could interest all whilst shock- 
ing none. He would have suffered in making others suffer. Though 
a very decided and faithful Whig, he continued moderate in polemics ; : 
and ia time when “Conquerors legally attempted to assassinate or ruin 
the conquered, he confined himself t ow the faults of argument 
made by the Tories, or to rail courte t their prejudices.. At 
Dublin he went first of all to shake th of Swift, his great and 
fallen* adversary. Insulted bitterly by D&nnis and Pope, he refused to 
employ against them his influence or his wit, and praised.Pope to the 
end. What could be more touching, when we have read his life, than 
his essay on kindness? we perceive that he is unconsciously speaking of 
himself; . 


‘ There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good- 
nature, or something which must bear its appearance, and supply its place. For 
this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, 
which is what we express by the word good-breeding. . . . The greatest wits I 
have conversed with are men eminent for their humanity. . . Good-nature is 


generally born with us; health, prosperity, and ‘kind Bentment from the world 
are great cherishers of it where they find it.’ } 






It so happens that he is involuntarily describing his own charm and 
his own success. It is himself that he is unveiling; he was very pros- 
perous, and his good fortune spread itself around him in affectionate 
sentiments, in constant discretion, in calm cheerfulness, At college he 
was distinguished; his Latin verses made him a fellow at Oxford; he 





1 Spectator, No. 169, 

















94 THE CLASSIC. AGE. ‘[Boox mr. 


spent ten years there in grave amusements and the studies which pleased 
him. From the age of twenty-two, Dryden, the prince of literature, 
praised him splendidly. When he left Oxford, the ministers” gave him 
a pension of three hundred pounds to finish his education, and prepare 
him for. public service. On his return from his travels, his poem on 
Blenheim placed him in the first rank of the Whigs. He became a 





‘member of Parliament, twice Secretary for Ireland, Under-Secretary of 


State, Secretary of State. Party hatred spared him; amid the almost 
universal defeat of the Whigs, he was re-elected ; in the furious war of 
Whigs and Tories, both united to applaud his tragedy of Cato; the 
most cruel pamphleteers respected him; his. uprightness, his™talent, 
seemed exalted by common consent above discussion. He lived in 
abundance, activity, and honours, wisely and usefully, amid the assi- 
duous admiration and constant affection of learned and distinguished 
friends, who could never have too much of his conversation, amid the 
applause of all the good men and all the cultivated minds of England. 
If twieé the fall of his party seemed to destroy or retard his fortune, he 
maintained his position without much effort, by reflection and coolness, 
prepared for all that might happen, accepting mediocrity, confirmed in 
a natural and acquired calmness, accommodating himself without yield- 
ing to men, respectful to the great without degrading himself, free from 
secret revolt or internal suffering. These are the sources of his talent; 
could any be purer or finer? could anything be more engaging than 
worldly polish and elegance, without the factitious ardour and the com- 
plimentary falseness of the gyorld? And will you look for a more 
amiable conversation tha of a good and happy man, whose know- 
ledge, taste, and wit are mployed to give you pleasure ? 


III. 


This pleasure will be useful to you. Your interlocutor is as graye 
as he is polite; he would and can instruct as well as amuse you; his 
education has been as solid as it has been elegant; he even confesses in 
the Spectator that he prefers the serious to the funny style. He is 
naturally reflective, silent, attentive. He has studied literature, men, 












and things, with the conscientiousness of a scholar and an observer. 


When he travelled in Italy, it was m the English style, noting the 
difference of manners, the peculiarities of the soil, the good and ill effects 
of various governments; storing himself with concise reminiscences, 
circumstantial mementoes on taxes, buildings, minerals, atmosphere, 
harbours, administration, and I cannot say how many other things.* 
An English lord, who travels in Holland, goes simply into a cheese-shop, 
in order to see for himself all the stages of the manufacture ; he returns, 
like Addison, provided with exact_statistics, complete notes: this mass 
of verified information is the foundation of the common sense of English- 





1 See, for instance, his chapter on the Republic of San Marino. 


~ 








Wee Ngee Pet A NG lade f | ae ae ee 
z oe! " 


CHAP. IV.] ADDISON. 95° 


men. Addison added to it experience of business, having been succes- 


sively, or at the same time, a journalist, a member of Parliament, a 
statesman, hand and heart in all the fights and chances of party. Mere 


COR. 2 Brkt 


and drawing-rooms; the conversation of special men is more useful to 
them than the study of perfect periods; they cannot think for them- 
selves, but in so far as they have lived or acted. Addison knew how to 


-act and live. When we read his reports, letters, and discussions, we 


feel that politics and government have given him half his mind. To 
exercise patronage, to handle money, to interpret the law, to divine the 
motives of men, to foresee the changes of public opinion, to be com- 
pelled to judge rightly, quickly, and twenty times a day, on present and 
great interests, under the inspection of the public and the espionnage 
of enemies; all this nourished his reason and sustained his discourses. 
Such a man might judge and counsel his fellows; his judgments were 
not amplifications arranged by a process of the brain, but observations 
controlled by experience: he might be listened to on moral subjects as 
a physician was on physical subjects ; we could feel that he spoke with 
authority, and that we were instructed. 

After having listened a little, people felt themselves better ; for they 
recognised in him from the first a singularly elevated soul, very pure, so 
much attached to uprightness that he made it his constant and his 
dearest pleasure. He naturally loved beauty, kindness and justice, 


science and liberty. From an early age he had joined the Liberal party, 


and he continued in it to the end, hoping the best of human virtue and 
reason, noting the wretchedness into which people fell who abandoned 
their dignity with their independence.’ He followed the lofty dis- 
coveries of the new physical sciences, so as to raise still more the idea 
which he had of God’s work. He loved the deep and serious emotions 
which reveal to us the nobility of our nature and the infirmity of our 
condition. “He employed his talent and all his writings in giving us the 
notion of what we are worth, and of what we are to be. Of two 





1 Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax : 
‘ O Liberty, thou Goddess heavenly bright, 
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight 
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, 
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train... . 
’Tis liberty that crowns Britannia’s isle, 
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.’ 
About the Republic of San Marino he writes: 

‘Nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love that mankind has for 
liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary government, than such a savage moun- 
tain covered with people, and the Campania of Rome, which lies in the same 
country, almost destitute of inhabitants.’—Remarks on Italy, i. 406. 


! 








96 THE CLASSIC AGE. _ . [Book m1. 


Ge TET Tee 


. Cato, rai most virtuous of the Romans; the dita on that of ‘Socrates, 


: 


* 
v 


the most virtuous of the Greeks. At the end of the first he felt some 
scruples; and for fear of excusing suicide, he gave Cato some remorse, 
His opera of Rosamond was finished with the injunction to prefer pure 
love to forbidden joy joys ; the Spectator, the TZ atler, the Guardian, are mere— 
lay sermons. Moreover, he practised his maxims. ‘When he was in 
office, his integrity was perfect; he served men—often those whom he, 
did not know—always gratuitously, refusing even disguised presents. 
When out of office, his loyalty was perfect ; he maintained his opinions 
and friendships without bitterness or baseness, boldly praising his fallen 
protectors, fearing not thereby to expose himself to the loss of his only 
remaining resources. He was naturally noble, and he was so rationally. 
He considered that there is common sense in honesty. His first care, 
as he said, was to range his passions on the side of truth. He had made 
for himself a portrait of a rational creature, and he made his conduct 
conformable to this by reflection as much as by instinct. He rested 
every virtue on an order of principles and proofs. His logic fed his ~ 
morality, and the uprightness of his mind carried out the justice of his 
heart. His religion, English in every sense, was after the like fashion. 
He rested his faith on a regular succession of historical discussions :? 
he established the existence of God by a regular succession of moral— 
deductions ; minute and solid demonstration was throughout the guide 
and author of his beliefs and emotions. Thus disposed, he loved to 
conceive God as the rational head of the world; he transformed acci- 
dents and necessities into calculations and directions ; he saw order and 
providence in the conflict of things, and felt around him the wisdom 
which he attempted to establish in himself. He trusted in God asa 
good and just being, who felt himself in the hands of a good and just 
being. He lived willingly in his knowledge and presence, and thought 
of the unknown future which was to complete human nature and accom- 
plish moral order. When the end came, he went over his life, and 
discovered that he had done some wrong or other to. Gay: this wrong 
was doubtless slight, since Gay had no suspicion of it. Addison begged 
him to come to his bedside, and asked his pardon. When he was about 
to die, he wished still to be useful, and sent for his son-in-law, Lord 
Warwick, whose levity had disturbed him more than once. He was 
so weak that at first he could not speak, The young man, after waiting 
a while, said to him: ‘ Dear Sir, you sent for me, I believe; I hope 
that you have some commands; I shall hold them most sacred.’ The 
| dying man with an effort pressed his hand, and replied gently: ‘See 
in what peace a Christian can 1 die.’ he Shortly afterwards he expired. 





1 Halifax, for instance. 
2 Of the Christian Religion. 
3 Addison’s Works, vi. 525. 








CHAP, IV.] ADDISON, 97 


IV. 


‘The great and only end of these speculations,’ says Addison, in a 
number of the Spectator, ‘is to banish vice and ignorance out of the 
territories of Great Britain.’ And he kept his word. His papers are | 
wholly moral—advice to families, reprimands to thoughtless.women, a 
portrait of an honest man, remedies for the passions, reflections on God, 
the future life. I hardly know, or rather I know very well, what 
success a newspaper full of sermons would have in France. In Eagland 
it was extraordinary, equal to that of the most fortunate modern. 
novelists. In the general disaster of the reviews, ruined by the Stamp 
Act, the Spectator doubled its price, and held its ground. This was 
because it offered to ishmen the pictur nglish reason: the 


talent and the teaching were in harmony with the needs of the age and 


of t ts cones eee us endeavour to describe this reason, which was 
gradually eliminated from Puritanism and its rigidity, from the Restora- 
tion and its excess. The mind attained its balance together with religion 
and the state. It conceived the rule, and disciplined its conduct ; it 
diverged from a life of excess, and confirmed itself in a sensible life ; 
it shunned physical and prescribed moral existence. Addison rejects 
with scorn gross corporeal pleasure, the brutal joy of noise and motion : 


‘I would nevertheless leave to the consideration of those who are the patrons of 
this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of 
an affront to their species, in treating after this manner the human face divine. *! 

‘Is it possible that human nature can rejoice in its disgrace, and take pleasure 
in seeing its own figure turned to ridicule, and distorted into forms that raise 
horror and aversion? There is something disingenuous and immoral in the being 
_ able to bear such a sight.’? 


Of course he sets himself against licence without artlessness and the 
systematic debauchery which was the taste and the shame of the Resto- 
ration. He wrote whole articles against young fashionable men, ‘a 
sort of vermin’ who fill London with their bastards; against profes- 
sional séducéts, who are the ‘ knights-errant’ of vice. 


‘When men of rank and figure pass away their lives in these criminal pursuits 
and practices, they ought to consider that they render themselves more vile and 
despicable than any innocent man can be, whatever low station his fortune or 
birth have placed him in.’ 


He severely jeers at women who expose themselves to temptations, and 
whom he calls ‘ salamanders :’ 


‘ A salamander is a kind of heroine in chastity, that treads upon fire, and lives 
in the midst of flames without being hurt. A salamander knows no distinction of 
sex in those she converses with, grows familiar with a stranger at first sight, and 
is not so narrow-spirited as to observe whether the person she talks to be in breeches 





1 Spectator, No. 173. 2 Tatler, No, 108. 83 Guardian, No. 123. 
VOL. II. G 


SE ele LSS = t—‘i‘“CiO 


- afternoon at picquet, walks with him two or three hours by moonlight.’? 


V 


\ sew on their tuckers again, to retrieve the modesty of their characters, and not to 


/ 
f 


) 


\ 


| 


98 THE CLASSIC ‘AGE. [BOOK If 


or petticoats. She admits a male visitant to her bedside, plays with him a whole 


He fights like a preacher against the fashion of low dresses, and gravely 
demands the tucker and modesty of old times: 


‘To prevent these saucy familiar glances, I would entreat my gentle readers to 


/ imitate the nakedness, but,the innocence, of their mother Eve. In short, modesty 
gives the maid greater beauty than even the bloom of youth; it bestows on the 
. wife the dignity of a matron, and reinstates the widow in her virginity,’ ? 


You will find, further on, lectures on the masquerades, which end with 
a rendezvous; precepts on the number of glasses people might drink, 
and the dishes of which they might eat; condemnations of licentious 
professors of irreligion and immorality; all maxims now somewhat 
stale, but then new and useful, because Wycherley and Rochester had 
put the opposite maxims into use and credit. Debauchery passed for 
French and fashionable: this is why Addison proscribes in addition all 
French frivolities. He laughs at women who receive visitors in their 
dressing-rooms, and speak aloud at the theatre : 


‘There is nothing which exposes a woman to greater dangers, than that gaiety 
and airiness of temper, which are natural to most of the sex. It should be there- 
fore the concern of every wise and virtuous woman to keep this sprightliness from 
degenerating into levity. On the contrary, the whole discourse and behaviour of 
the French is to make the sex more fantastical, or (as they are pleased to term it) 
more awakened, than is consistent either with virtue or discretion.”® 


You see already in these strictures the portrait of the sensible house- 
wife, the modest English wife, domestic and grave, taken up with her 
husband and children. Addison returns a score of times to the artifices, 
the pretty affected babyisms, the coquetry, the futilities of women. 
He cannot suffer languishing or lazy habits. He is full of epigrams, 
written against flirtations, extravagant toilets, useless visits.* He 
writes a satirical journal of a man who goes to his club, learns the 
news, yawns, studies the barometer, and thinks his time well occupied. 
He considers that our time is a capital, our business a duty,and our 
life a task, 

Only a task, If he holds himself superior to sensual life, he is 
inferior to philosophical life, His morality, thoroughly English, always. 
crawls among .commonplaces,. discovering no principles, making no_ 
deductions. The fine and lofty aspectsof the mind. are wanting. 
He gives inimitable advice, a clear watchword, justified by what . 
happened yesterday, useful for to-morrow. He observes that fathers 
must not be inflexible, and that they often repent driving their children » 
to despair. He finds that bad books are pernicious, because their 
endurance carries their poison to future ages. He consoles a woman 





1 Spectator, No. 198, 2 Guardian, No. 100. 
8 Spectator, No. 45. 4 lvid. Nos. 817 and 328, 











= 





“CHAP. IV.] “* ADDISON: © > 99 


who has lost her sweetheart, by showing her the misfortunes of so many’ 
other people who are suffering the greatest evils at the same time, His 
Spectator is only an honest man’s manual, and is often like the Complete 
Lawyer. It is practical, its aim being not-to-amuse,but-to.correct-us,- 
The Se ication Prete nourished with dissertations and morality, 
demands an effectual monitor and guide ; he would like his reading to 
influence his conduct, and his newspaper to suggest a resolution. To 
this end Addison seeks motives everywhere. He thinks of the future. 
life, but-does-not.forget the present ; he rests virtue on interest, rightly 
understood. He strains no principle to its limits; he accepts them all, 
as they are to be met with in the human domain, according to their 
manifest goodness, tracing only the primary consequences, shunning 
the powerful logical pressure which spoils all by expressing too much. 
See him establishing a maxim, recommending constancy for instance ; 








as a rule from attaining our end; moreover, it is the great feature of 
every human and mortal being; finally, it is most opposed to the 
inflexible nature of God, who ought to be our model. The whole is 
illustrated at the close by a quotation from Dryden and a verse from 
Horace. This medley and jumble describe the ordinary mind which 
remains on the level of its audience, and the practical mind, which 
knows how to dominate over its audience, Addison persuades the 
public, because he draws from the public sources of belief. He is 
powerful because he is vulgar, and useful because he is narrow. 
Picture now this mind, so eharacteristically mediocre, limited to the 
discovery of good motives of action. What a reflective man, always 
equal and dignified! What a store he has of resolutions and ‘maxims! 
All rapture, instinct, inspiration, and caprice, are abolished or disci- 
plined. No case surprises or carries him away. He is always ready 
and protected; so much so, that he is like an automaton. Argument 
has frozen and invaded him. See, for instance, how he puts us on 
our guard against involuntary hypocrisy, announcing, explaining, dis- 
tinguishing the ordinary and extraordinary modes, dragging on with 
exordiums, preparations, methods, allusions to Scripture.’ After six 
lines of this morality, a Frenchman would go out for a mouthful of | 
fresh air. What in the name of heaven would he do, if, in order to 
move him to piety, he was told? that God’s omniscience and omnipre- 
sence furnished us with three kinds of motives, and then subdivided 
these motives into first, second, and third? To put calculation at 
every stage; to come with weight and figures into the thick of human 
passions, to ticket them, classify them like bales, to tell the public that | 


——~ 


the inventory is complete; to lead them, with the reckoning in their \ 
hand, and by the mere virtue of statistics, to honour and duty,—such is ~ 





i Spectator, No. 399, 2 Ibid. No. 571. 





100 | THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


the morality of Addison and of England. It is a sort of commercial 
common sense applied to the interests of the soul; a preacher here is 
only an economist in a white tie, who treats conscience like food, and 
refutes vice as a set of prohibitions. 

There is nothing sublime or chimerical in the end which he sets 
before us; all is practical, that is, business-like and sensible: the 
question is, How ‘to be easy here and happy afterwards.” To be easy 
is a word which has no French equivalent, meaning that comfortable 
state of the mind, a means of calm satisfaction, approved action and 
serene ldesetence. Addison makes it consist in labour and manly 
functions, carefully and regularly. discharged. We must see with 
what complacency he paints in the Freeholder and Sirttoger the grave 
pleasures of a citizen and proprietor: 

‘I have rather chosen this title (the Freeholder) than any other, because it is 
what I most glory in, and what most effectually calls to my mind the happiness of 
that government under which I live. As a British freeholder, I should not scruple 
taking place of a French marquis ; and when I see one of my countrymen amus- 
ing himself in his little cabbage-garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater 
person than the owner of the richest vineyard in Champagne. . . . There is an 
unspeakable pleasure in calling anything one’s own. A freehold, though it be 
but in ice and snow, will make the owner pleased in the possession, and stout in 
the defence of it. . . . I consider myself as one who give my consent to every 
law which passes. . . . A freeholder is but one remove from a legislator, and for 
that reason ought to stand up in the defence of those laws which are in some 
degree of his own making.’ ! 

These are all English feelings, made up of calculation and pride, ener- 
getic and austere; and this portrait is capped by that of the married 
man: 

‘ Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion ; and 
this I think myself amply possessed of, as I am the father of a family. I am per- 
petually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, 





in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments. . . . I look . 


upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty, in which I am myself both king and 
priest. ... When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice in the additions I have 


made to my species, to my country, and to my religion, in having produced such. 
a number of reasonable creatures, citizens, and Christians. 1 am pleased to see, 


myself thus perpetuated ; and as there is no production comparable to that of a 
human creature, I am more proud of having been the occasion of ten such glorious 
productions, than if I had built a hundred pyramids at my own expense, or 
published as many volumes of the finest wit and learning.’? 


If now you take the man away from his estate and his household, 
alone with himself, in moments of idleness or reverie, you will find 
him just as positive. He observes, that he may cultivate his own 
reasoning power, and that of others; he stores himself with morality ; 
he wishes to make the most of himself and of existence. The northern 
races willingly direct their thoughts to final dissolution and the dark 





1 Freeholder, No. 1. * Spectator, No, 500. 





CHAP. IV.] ADDISON. 101 


future. Addison often chose for his promenade gloomy Westminster 
Abbey, with its many tombs: 


‘Upon my going into the church I entertained myself with the digging of a 
grave ; and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a 
bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time 
or other had a place in the composition of an human body. . . . I consider that 
great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries and make our appearance 
together.’ + 


And suddenly his emotion is transformed into profitable meditations. 
Under his morality is a balance which weighs the quantities of happi- 
ness. He stirs himself by mathematical comparisons to prefer the 
future to the present. He tries to realise, amidst an assemblage of 
dates, the disproportion of our short life to infinity. Thus arises this 
religion, a product of melancholic temperament and acquired logic, in 
which man, a sort of calculating Hamlet, aspires to the ideal by making 
a good business of it, and maintains his poetical sentiments by financial 
additions. 

In such a subject these habits are offensive. We ought not to try 
and over-define or prove God; religion is rather a matter of feeling 
than of science; we compromise it by exacting too rigorous demonstra- 
tions, and too precise dogmas. It is the heart which sees heaven ; 
if you would make me believe in it, as you make me believe in the 
Antipodes, by geographical accounts and probabilities, I shall barely or 
not at all believe. Addison has little more than his college arguments 
or edification, very like those of the Abbé Pluche,? which let in objec 
tions at every cleft, and which we can only regard as dialectical essays, 
or sources of emotion. Add the motives of iaterest and calculations 
of prudence, which can make recruits, but not converts; these are his 
proofs. There is an element of coarseness in this fashion of treating 
divine things, and we like still less the exactness with which he explains 
God, reducing him to a mere magnified man. This preciseness and this 
narrowness go so far as to describe heaven: 

‘Though the Deity be thus essentially present through all the immensity of 
space, there-is one part of it in which he discovers himself in a most transcendent 
and visible glory. . . . It is here where the glorified body of our Saviour resides, 
and-where all the celestial hierarchies, and the innumerable hosts of angels, are 
represented as perpetually surrounding the seat of God with hallelujahs and hymns 
of praise. . . . With how much skill must the throne of God be erected! .. . 
How great stint be the majesty of that place, where the whole art of creation has 
been employed, and where God has chosen to shew himself in the most magnificent 
manner! What must be the architecture of infinite power under se direction of 
infinite wisdom !’8 





! Spectator, Nos. 26 and 575. 

2 The Abbé Pluche (1688-1761) was the author of a Systéme de la Nature and 
several other works.—Tr. 

3 Spectator, No. 580 ; see also No, 5381. 


102 THE CLASSIC. AGE. 





Moreover, the place must be very grand, and they have music there: 
it is a noble palace; perhaps there are antechambers. Enough; I will 
not continue.. The same dull and literal precision makes him inquire 
what sort of happiness the elect have." They will be admitted into the 
councils of Providence, and will understand all its proceedings : 

‘There is, doubtless, a faculty in spirits by which they apprehend one another 
as our senses do material objects; and there is no auestion but our souls, when 
they are disembodied, or placed in glorified bodies, wil] by this faculty, in what- 
ever part of space they reside, be always sensible of the Divine Presence.’? 


This grovelling philosophy repels you. One word of Addison will f 
justify it, and make you understand it: ‘The business.of mankind in ~~ 
this life is rather to act than to knew.’ Now, such a philosophy is as 
useful in action’as flat in science. All its faults of speculation become 
merits in practice. It follows in a prosy manner positive religion.® 
What support does it not attain from the authority of an ancient tradi- 
tion, a national institution, an established priesthood, visible ceremonies, a 
every-day customs! It employs as arguments public utility, the ex- | 
ample of great minds, heavy logic, literal interpretation, and unmistake- 
able texts. What better means of governing the crowd, than to degrade 
proofs to the vulgarity of its intelligence and needs? It humanises 
the Divinity: is it not the only way to make men understand him? It 
defines almost obviously a future life: is it not the only way to cause 
it to be wished for? The poetry of high philosophical deductions is 
weak beside the inner persuasion, rooted by so many positive and de- 
tailed descriptions. In this way an active piety is born; and religion 
thus constructed doubles the force of the moral spring. Addison’s is 
admirable, because it is so strong. Energy of feeling rescues wretched- 
ness of dogma. Beneath his dissertations we feel that he is moved; 
minutie, pedantry disappear. We see in him now only a soul deeply 
penetrated with adoration and respect; no more a preacher classifying 
God’s attributes, and pursuing his trade as a good logician ;. but a man 
who naturally, and of his own bent, returns to a lofty spectacle, goes 
with awe into all its aspects, and leaves it only with a renewed or 
| overwhelmed heart. The sincerity of his emotions makes us respect 3 
| even his catechetical prescriptions. He demands fixed days of devotion 
| and meditation to recall us regularly to the thought of our Creator 
and of our faith. THe inserts prayers in his paper. He forbids oaths, 
| 











and recommends to keep always before us the idea of a sovereign if 
Master : . 


‘Such an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would, in a particular manner, 
banish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name on the most 
trivial occasions. . . . What can we then think of those who make use of so 
tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most 





1 Spectator, Nos. 237, 571, 600. 
* Ibid. No. 571; see also Nos. 237, 600. 8 Tatler, No. 257. 











ema. 1v-] ~~) ADDISON. ~ 103 





impertinent passions ? of those who admit it into the most familiar questions and 
assertions, ludicrous phrases, and works of humour? not to mention those who 
violate it by solemn perjuries! It would be an affront to reason to endeavour to 
set forth the horror and profaneness of such a practice.’ ! 


A Frenchman, at the first word, hearing himself forbidden to swear, 
would probably laugh; in his eyes that is a matter of good taste, not 
of morality. But if he had heard Addison himself pronouncing what 
I have written, he would laugh no more. 


V. 


It is no small thing to make morality fashionable. Addison did it, — 
and it remaiiédin fashion.” Formerly honest men were not polished, 
and polished men were not honest; piety was fanatical, and urbanity 
depraved; in manners, as in letters, one could meet only Puritans or 
libertines. For the first time Addison reconciled virtue with elegance, 
taught duty in an accomplished style, and made pleasure subservient 
to reason: 


‘It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven, to in- 
habit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have 
brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in 
clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses. I would therefore, in a 
very particular manner, recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated 
families, and set apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter ; 
and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually 
served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage.’? 


In this you may detect an inclination to smile; it is the tone of a 
polished man, who, at the first sign of ennui, turns round, delicately 
laughs at himself, and tries to please. It is Addison’s general tone. 
What an art it is to please! First, the art of making oneself under- 
stood, at once, always, completely, without difficulty to the reader, 
without reflection, without attention. Figure to yourself men of the 
world reading a page between two mouthfuls of ‘bohea-rolls,’ ladies 
interrupting a phrase to ask when the ball begins: three special or 
learned words would make them throw the paper down. ‘They only 
desire clear terms, in common use, into which wit enters all at once, as 
it enters ordinary converse; in fact, for them reading is only a conyersa- 
tion, and-a-betterone than usual. For the select world Téfines language. 








. - It does not suffer the risks and approximations of extempore and inex- 


perienced speaking. It requires a knowledge of style, like a knowledge 
of external forms. It will have exact words to express the fine shades 
of thought, and measured words to preclude shocking or extreme im- 
pressions. It wishes for developed phrases, which, presenting the same 
idea, under several aspects, may impress it easily upon its desultory 
mind. It demands harmonies of words, which, presenting a known 





- 1 Spectator, No. 531. 2 Ibid. No. 10.. 








SS 


104 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Boox It. 


idea in a smart form, may introduce it in a lively manner to its desul- 
tory imagination. Addison gives it all that it desires; his writings are 
the pure source of classical style ; men never r spoke in J England better. 
Ornaments abound, and rhetoric has no part in them. Throughout 
we have just contrasts, which serve only for clearness, and are not 
too much prolonged; happy expressions, easily discovered, which give 
things a new and ingenious turn; harmonious periods, in which the 
sounds flow into one another with the diversity and sweetness of a 
quiet stream; a fertile vein of inventions and images, through which 
runs the most amiable irony. We trust one example will suffice : 


‘ He is not obliged to attend her (Nature) in the slow advances which she makes 
from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the successive production 
of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the 
spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the 
more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together, 
and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His 
soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks 
or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow 
wild in it ; myrrh may be met with in every hedge; and if he thinks it proper to 
have a grove of spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this 
will not furnish out any agreeable scene; he can make several new species of flowers, 
with richer scents and higher colours, than any that grow in the gardens of nature. 
His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as thick and 
gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista than a short one, 
and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high as from 
one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds, and can turn the course 
of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most delightful to the reader’s 


- imagination.”+ 


I find here that Addison profits by the rights which he accords, and 
is amused in explaining to us how we may amuse ourselves. Such is 
the charming tone of society. Reading this book, we fancy it still 
more amiable than it is: no pretension; no efforts; endless contrivances 
employed unconsciously, and obtained without asking; the gift of being 
lively and agreeable; a refined banter, raillery without bitterness, a 
sustained_gaiety; the art of finding in everything the most blooming 
and the freshest flower, and to smell it without bruising or sullying it; 
science, politics, experience, morality, bearing their finest fruits, adorn 
ing them, offering them at a chosen moment, ready to withdraw them 
as soon as conversation has received the flavour, and before it is tired 
of them; ladies placed in the first rank,? arbiters of refinement, sur- 
rounded with homage, crowning the politeness of men and the brilliancy 
of society by the attraction of their toilettes, the delicacy of their wit, 
and the charm of their smiles ;—such is the familiar spectacle in which 
the writer has formed and delighted himself. 

So many advantages are not without their inconvenience. The 





1 Spectator, No, 418. 2 Ibid. Nos. 428, 265. 










CHAP. IV] ADDISON. 105 


compliments of society, which attenuate expressions, blunt the style; 
by regulating what is instinctive and moderating what is vehement, 


_ they make speech threadbare and uniform. We must not always seek to 


please, above all, the ear. Monsieur Chateaubriand boasted of not ad- 
mitting a single elision into the song of Cymodocée; so much the worse 
for Cymodocée. So the commentators who have noted in Addison the 
balance of his periods, do him an injustice.’ They explain why he 
slightly wearies us. The rotundity of his phrases is a scanty merit, 
and mars the rest. To calculate longs and shorts, to be always think- 
ing of sounds, of final cadences,—all these classical researches spoil a 
writer. Every idea has its accent, and all our labour ought to be to 
make it free and simple on paper, as it is in our mind. We ought 
to copy and mark our thought with the flow of emotions and images, 
which raise it, caring for nothing but its exactness and clearness. One 
true phrase is worth a hundred periods: the first is a dogument which 
fixes for ever a movement of the heart or the senses; the other is a 
tey to amuse the empty heads of verse-makers. I would give twenty 
pages of Fléchier for three lines of Saint-Simon. Regular rhythm 
~mutilates the impetus of natural invention; the shades of inner vision 
vanish; we see no more a soul which thinks or feels, but fingers which 
scan. The continuous period is like the shears of La Quintinie,? which 
crop all the trees round, under pretence of beautifying. This is why 
\there is a coldness and monotony in Addison’s style. He seems to 
be listening to himself. He is too measured and correct. His most 
touching stories, like that of Theodosius and Constantia, touch us only 
partially, Who could feel inclined to weep over such periods as 
these ? 

‘ Constantia, who knew that nothing but the report of her marriage could have 
driven him to such extremities, was not to be comforted: she now accused herself 
for having so tamely given an ear to the proposal of a husband, and looked upon 
the new lover as the murderer of Theodosius: in short, she resolved to suffer the 


utmost effects of her father’s displeasure, rather than to comply with a marriage 
which appeared to her so full of guilt and horror.’ 


Is this the way to paint horror and guilt? Where are the motions of 
passion which Addison pretends to paint? The story is related, not 
seen. " 

~The classic..simply cannot see. Always measured and rational, his 
first care is to proportion and arrange. He has his rules in his pocket, 
and brings them out for everything. He does not rise to the source of 
the beautiful at once, like genuine artists, by force and lucidity of 





1 See, in the notes of No. 409 of the Spectator, the pretty minute analysis of 
Hurd, the decomposition of the period, the proportion of long and short syllables, 
the study of the finals. A musician could not have done better. 

* La Quintinie (1626-1688) was a celebrated gardener under Louis xiv., and 
planned the gardens of Versailles, 

* Spectator, No. 164, 


\ 


106 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Boox itt. 


natural inspiration; he lingers in the middle regions, aniid precepts, 
subject to taste and common sense. This is why Addison’s criticism is 
so solid and so poor. They who seek ideas will do well not to read his 

ination,! so much praised, so well written, but so scant 
of philosophy, and so commonplace, dragged down by the intervention 
of final causes. His celebrated commentary on Paradise Lost is little 
better than the dissertations of Batteux and Bossu. In one place he 
compares, almost in a line, Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The fine arrange- 
ment of a poem is with him the best merit. The.pure classics enjoy 
better arrangement. and--good~order than artless truth and strong 
originality. They have always their poetic manual in their hands: if 
you agree with the pattern of to-day, you have genius; if not, not. 
Addison, in praise of Milton, establishes that, according to the rule of 
epic poetry, the action of Paradise Lost is one, complete and great; 
that its characters are varied and of universal interest, and its senti- 
ments natural, appropriate, and elevated; the style clear, diversified, 
and sublime. Now you may admire Milton; he has a testimonial from 
Aristotle. Listen, tor instance, to cold details of classical dissertation : 


* Had I followed Monsieur Bossu’s method in my first paper on Milton, I should 
have dated the action of Paradise Lost from the beginning of Raphael’s speech mn 
this book.’? 

‘ But, notwithstanding the fineness of this allegory (Sin and Death) may atone 
for it (the defect in the subject of his poem) in some measure, I cannot think that 
persons of such a chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem.’ 


Further on he defines poetical machines, the conditions of their 
structure, the advantage of their use. He seems to me a carpenter 
verjfying the construction of a staircase. Do not suppose that artifi- 
ciality shocks him; he rather admires it. He finds the violent 
declamations of the Miltonie divinity and the royal compliments, 
indulged in by the persons of the Trinity, sublime. The campaigns 
of the angels, their bearing in chapel and barrack, their scholastic 
disputes, their bitter puritanical or pious royalistic style, do not strike 
him as false or disagreeable. Adam’s pedantry and household lectures 
ppear to him suitable to the state of innocence. In fact, the classics 
of the last two centuries never looked upon the human mind, except 
in its cultivated state. The child, the artist, the barbarian, the 
inspired_man, escaped them; so, of course, did all who were beyond 
humanity: their world was limited to the earth, and to the earth of 
the study and drawing-rooms; they rose neither to God nor nature, or 
if they did, it was to transform nature into a narrow garden, and God 
into a moral scrutator. They reduced genius.to eloquence, poetry to 
discourse, the drama to a dialogue. They regarded beauty as if it were 
reason, a sort of middle-faculty, not apt for invention, potent in rules, 
balancing imagination like conduct, and making taste the arbiter of 





1 See Spectator, No. 411-No. 482. 2 Ibid. No. 327, * Ibid. No. 278. 


a 





— 


FORT Mex 2 -- 
“« 


I Es a os 











CHAP. IV.] ADDISON.” ~ 107 


letters, as it made morality the arbiter of actions. They dispensed with 
the play on words, the sensual grossness, the flights of imagination, the 
atrocities, and all the bad accompaniments of Shakspeare;* but they 
only half imitated him in the deep intuitions by which he pierced the 
human heart, and discovered therein the God and the animal. They 
wanted to be moved, but not overwhelmed ; they allowed themselves 
to be impressed, but demanded to be pleased. To please rationally 
was the object of their literature. Such is Addison’s criticism, which 
resembles his art; born, like his art, of classical urbanity; fit, like his 
art, for the life of the world, having the same solidity and the same 
limits, because it had the same sources, to wit, rule and gratification. 


VI. 


But we must consider that we are in England, and that we find there 
many things not agreeable toa Frenchman. In France, the classical 
age attained perfection; so that, compared to it, other countries lack 
somewhat of finish. Addison, elegant at home, is not quite so in 
France. Compared with Tillotson, he is the most charming man pos- 
sible: compared to Montesquieu, he is only half polished. His converse 
is hardly sparkling enough; the quick movement, the easy change of 
tone, the facile smile, readily dropt and readily resumed, are hardly 
visible. He drags on in long and too uniform phrases; his periods are 
too square ; we might cull a load of useless words. He tells us what he 
is going to say: he marks divisions and subdivisions; he quotes Latin, 
even Greek ; he displays and protracts without end the serviceable and 
sticky plaster of his morality. He has no fear of being wearisome. ~ 
That is not a point of fear amongst Englishmen. Men who love long 
demonstrative sermons of three hours are not difficult to amuse. Re- 
member that here the women like to go to meeting, and are entertained 
by listening for half a day to discourses on drunkenness, or on the 
sliding scale for taxes: these patient creatures require nothing more 
than that conversation should be lively and piquant. Consequently 
they can put up with a less refined politeness and less disguised com- 
pliments. When Addison bows to them, which happens often, it is 
gravely, and his reverence is always accompanied by a warning. Take 


ey 





upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy 
of Indian queens ; but upon my going about into the pit, and taking them in front, 
I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much beauty in every face, that I found 
; them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the 
’ growth of no other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from ob- 
serving any further the colour of their hoods, though, I could easily perceive, by 
that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their own thoughts 
were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore upon their heads.’ ? 








1 Spectator, 39, 40, 58. ash § Tid. No. 266, 








108 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Boox m1. 


In this discreet raillery, modified by an almost official admiration, you 
perceive the English mode of treating women: man, by her side, is 
always a lay-preacher; they are for him charming children, or useful 
housewives, never queens of the drawing-room, or equals, as amongst 
the French. When Addison wishes to bring back the Jacobite ladies 
to the Protestant party, he treats them almost like little girls, to whom 
we promise, if they will be good, to restore their doll or their cake: 


‘ They should first reflect on the great sufferings and persecutions to which 
they expose themselves by the obstinacy of their behaviour. They lose their 
elections in every club where they are set up for toasts. They are obliged by their 
principles to stick a patch on the most unbecoming side of their foreheads. They 
forego the advantage of birthday suits. . . . They receive no benefit from the army, 
and are never the better for all the young fellows that wear hats and feathers. 
They are forced to live in the country and feed their chickens ; at the same time 
that they might show themselves at court, and appear in brocade, if they behaved 
themselves well. In short, what must go to the heart of every fine woman, they 
throw themselves quite out of the fashion. . . . A man is startled when he sees a 
pretty bosom heaving with such party-rage, as is disagreeable even in that sex 
which is of a more coarse and rugged make. And yet such is our misfortune, that 
we sometimes see a pair of stays ready to burst with sedition ; and hear the most 
masculine passions expressed in the sweetest voices. . . . Where a great number 
of flowers grow, the ground at distance seems entirely covered with them, and we 


must walk into it, before we can distinguish the several weeds that spring up in _ 


such a beautiful mass of colours.’ ! 


This gallantry is too deliberate; we are somewhat shocked to see a 
woman touched by such thoughtful hands. It is the urbanity of a 
moralist; albeit he is well bred, he is not quite amiable; and if a 
Frenchman can receive from him lessons of pedagogy and conduct, he 
must come over to France to find models of manners and conversation. 
If the first care of a Frenchman in society is to be amiable, that of 
an Englishman is to be dignified ; their mood leads them to immobility, 
as ours to gestures; and their pleasantry is as grave as ours is gay. 
Laughter with them is inward; they shun giving themselves up to it; 
they are amused silently. Make up your mind to understand this kind 
of temper, it will end by pleasing you. When phlegm is united to 
gentleness, as in Addison, it is as agreeable as it is piquant. We are 
charmed to meet a lively man, who is yet master of himself. We are 
astonished to see these contrary qualities together. Each heightens 
and modifies the other. We are not repelled by venomous bitterness, 
as in Swift, or by continuous buffoonery, as in Voltaire. We rejoice 
altogether in the rare union, which for the first time combines serious 
bearing and good humour. Read this little satire against the bad taste 
of the stage and the public: tare crs ST sae 
* There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement 
to the town than Signor Nicolini’s combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which 





Freeholder, No. 26. 


ae, 





Pad 1x ri 





_ CHAP. IV.] ADDISON. 109 ; 


has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and 
gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. . . . The first lion was a candle-snuffer, 
who being a fellow of a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not 
suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to havedone. . . . The second lion 
was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character of a 
mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was 
too sheepish for his part; insomuch that, after a short modest walk upon the 
stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, 
and giving him an opportunity of shewing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, 
indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet ; but this was 
only to make work for himself, in his private character of a tailor. . . . The act- 
ing lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it for his 
diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says, very handsomely, in 
his own excuse, that he does not act for gain, that he indulges an innocent plea- 
sure in it ; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in 
gaming and drinking. . . . This gentleman’s temper is made out of such a happy 
mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and 
- has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man. 
. . « In the meantime, I have related this combat of the lion, to show what are at 
' present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.’? 


ay 


There is much originality in this grave gaiety. As a rule, singu- 
larity is in accordance with the taste of the nation; they like to be 
struck strongly by contrasts. Our literature seems to them threadbare ; 
we again find them not delicate. A number of the Spectator which 
seemed pleasant to London ladies would have shocked people in Paris. 
Thus, Addison relates in the form of a dream the dissection of a beau’s 
brain >~ a 


—*The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the 
seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was | 
: encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or 
mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye ; insomuch that the soul, if 
there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her 
own beauties. We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput, that was 
filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery. . . . We did not find anything very 
remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may trans- 
late it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn, and decayed with 
use ; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye 
towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.’ ? 


These anatomical details, which would disgust us, amused a positive 
mind; crudity is for him only exactness; accustomed to precise images, 
he finds no objectionable odour in the medical style. “Addison does fot 
share our r repugnance. To rail at a vice, he becomes a mathematician, 
an economist, a pedant, an apothecary. Special terms amuse him. He 
| sets up a court to judge crinolines, and condemns petticoats in techni- 
| eal formulas. He teaches how to handle a fan as if he were teaching 

to prime and load muskets. He draws up a list of men dead or in- 

















1 Spectator, No. 13. ; 2 Ibid. No. 275, 





110 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book i 


jured by love, and the penomlons: causes which have reduced them to 
such a condition: 
‘Will Simple, smitten at the Opera by the glance of an eye that was aimed at 
one who stood by him. 
‘Sir Christopher Crazy, Bart., hurt by the brush of a whalebone petticoat. 
‘Ned Courtly, presenting Flavia with her glove (which she had dropped on 
purpose), she received it and took away his life with a curtsey. 
‘John Gosselin, having received a slight hurt from a pair of blue eyes, as he 
was making his escape, was dispatched by a smile,’? 
Other statistics, with recapitulations and tables of numbers, relate the 


history of the Leucadian leap: 


‘ Arideus, a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife of 


Thespis, escaped without damage, saving only that two of his foreteeth were struck 
out, and his nose a little flatted. 
‘Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of 
Bathylius, leaped and died of his fall ; upon which his wife married her gallant.’? 
You _see this strange mode of painting human folly; in England it 
is called humour. It contains an incisive good sense, the habit of re~ 
straint, business habits, but above all a fundamental energy of invention. 


The race is less refined, but stronger; and the pleasures which content 


its mind and taste are like the liquors which suit its palate and its 
stomach. 

This potent Germanic spirit breaks even in Addison through his 
classical and Latin exterior. Albeit he relishes art, he still loves 
nature. His education, which has loaded him with riiicktisia! has not 
destroyed his virgin sentiment of truth. In his travels in France he 
preferred the wildness of Fontainebleau to the correctness of Versailles. 
He shakes off worldly refinements to praise the simplicity of the old 
national ballads. He explains to his public the sublime images, the vast 
passions, the deep religion of Paradise Lost. It is curious to see him, com- 
pass in hand, kept back by Bossu, fettered in endless arguments and 
academical phrases, attaining with one spring, by strength of natural 
emotion, the high unexplored regions to which Milton rose by the 
inspiration of faith and genius. He would not say, with Voltaire, that 
the allegory of Sin and Death is enough to make people sick, He has a 
foundation of grand imagination, which makes him indifferent to the 
little refinements of social civilisation. He sojourns willingly amid the 
grandeur and marvels of the other world. He is penetrated by the 
presence of the Invisible, he must escape from the interests and hopes 
of the petty life in which we crawl.* This source of faith gushes from 
him everywhere; in vain is it enclosed in the regular channel of official 
dogma; the tests and arguments with which it is covered do not hide 
its true origin. It springs from the grave and fertile imagination which 
can only be satisfied with a sight of what is beyond. | 





1 Spectator, No. 377. 2 Ibid. No. 238. 
8 See the last thirty numbers of the Spectator. 


CG ON 


ee ee 





CHAP. IV.] “° ADDISON. > 111 


Such a faculty swallows a man up; and if we descend to the exami- 
nation of literary qualities, we find it at the bottom as well as at the 
top. Nothing in Addison is more varied and rich than the changes and 
the scenery. The driest morality is transformed under his hand into 
pictures and stories. There are letters from all kinds of men, clergy- 
men, common people, men of fashion, who keep their own style, and 
disguise their advice under the form of a little novel. An ambassador 
from Bantam jests, like Montesquieu, at the lies of European politeness. 
Greek or Oriental tales, imaginary travels, the vision of a Scotch seer, 
the memoirs of a rebel, the history of ants, the transformations of an 
ape, the journal of an idle man, a walk in Westminster, the genealogy 
of humour, the laws of ridiculous clubs; in short, an inexhaustible 
mass of pleasant or solid fictions. The allegories are most frequent. We 
feel that the author is pleased in this ‘magnificent and fantastic world ; 
he is giving himself a sort of opera; his eyes must look on colours. 
Here is a paper on religions, very Protestant, but as sparkling as it is 
ingenious: pleasure here did not consist, as in France, in the vivacity 
and variety of tone, but in the splendour and justice of invention: 


‘The middle figure, which immediately attracted the eyes of the whole com- 
pany, and was much bigger than the rest, was formed like a matron, dressed in the 
habit of an elderly woman of quality in Queen Elizabeth’s days. The most re- 
markable parts of her dress were the beaver with the steeple crown, the scarf that 
was darker than sable, and the lawn apron that was whiter than ermine. Her 
gown was of the richest black velvet, and just upon her heart studded with large 
diamonds of an inestimable value, disposed in the form of a cross. She bore an 
inexpressible cheerfulness and dignity in her aspect; and though she seemed in 
years, appeared with so much spirit and vivacity, as gave her at the same time an 
air of old age and immortality. I found my heart touched with so much love 
and reverence at the sight of her, that the tears ran down my face as I looked 
upon her ; and still the more I looked upon her, the more my heart was melted 
with the sentiments of filial tenderness and duty. I discovered every moment 
something so charming in this figure, that I could scarce take my eyes off it. 
On its right hand there sat the figure of a woman so covered with ornaments, 
that her face, her body, and her hands were almost entirely hid under them. 
The little you could see of her face was painted, and what I thought very odd, 
had something in it like artificial wrinkles ; but I was the less surprised at it, 
when I saw upon her forehead an old-fashioned tower of grey hairs. Her head- 
dress rose very high by three several stories or degrees ; her garments had a thou- 
sand colours in them, and were embroidered with crosses in gold, silver, and silk; 
she had nothing on, so much as a glove or a slipper, which was not marked with 
this figure ; nay, so superstitiously fond did she appear of it, that she sat cross- 
legged. . . . The next to her was a figure which somewhat puzzled me; it wag 
that of a man looking, with horror in his eyes, upon a silver bason filled with 
water. Observing something in his countenance that looked like lunacy, I fancied 
at first that he was to express that kind of distraction which the physicians call 
the Hydrophobia; but considering what the intention of the show was, I imme- 
diately recollected myself, and concluded it to be Anabaptism,’?} 








1 Tatler, No. 257. 


i 


112 THE CLASSIC AGE, 


The reader must guess what these two first figures meant. They will 
please an Anglican more than a Catholic; but I think that a Catholic 
himself cannot help recognising the fulness and freshness of the fiction. 

Genuine imagination naturally ends in the invention of characters. 
For, if you clearly represent to yourself a situation or an action, you 
will see at the same time the whole network of its connection; the 
passion and faculties, all the gestures and tones of voice, all details of 
dress, dwelling, society, which flow from it, will bring their precedents 
and their consequences; and this multitude of ideas, slowly organised, 
will at last be concentrated in a single sentiment, from which, as from a 
deep spring, will break forth the portrait and the history of a complete 
character. There are several such in Addison; the quiet observer 
Will Honeycomb, the country Tory Sir Roger de Coverley, which are 
not satirical theses, like those of La Bruyére, but genuine individuals, 





like, and sometimes equal to, the characters of the great contemporary 
novels. In fact, he invents the novel, without suspecting it, at the 


, same time and in the same way as his most illustrious neighbours. His 
,characters are taken from life, from the manners and conditions of the 
\time, described at length and minutely in all the parts of their education 


and surroundings, with the precision and positive observation, marvel- 
lously real and English. A masterpiece as well as an historical record 
is Sir Roger de Coverley, the country gentleman, loyal servant of con- 
stitution and church, justice of the peace, patron of the church, whose 
estate shows on a small scale the structure of the English nation. This 
domain is a little state, paternally governed, but still governed. Sir 
Roger rates his tenants, passes them in review in church, knows their 
affairs, gives them advice, assistance, commands; he is respected, 
obeyed, loved, because he lives with them, because the simplicity of his 
tastes and education puts him almost on a level with them; because in 
his position as magistrate, old landholder, rich man, benefactor, and 
neighbour, he exercises a moral and legal, a useful and respected autho- 
rity. Addison at the same time shows in him the solid and peculiar 
English character, built of heart of oak, with all the knots of the primi- 


\\ tive bark, which can neither be'softened tor planed down, a great fund 
_ of kindness which exténds~to~animals, love of country and bodily 
\exercises, a disposition to command anddiscipline, the feeling of 


subordination and respect, much common sense and little finesse, the 


habit of displaying and establishing in public his singularities and 


oddities, careless.of ridicule, without thought of bravado, solely because 
these men acknowledge no judge but themselves, A hundred traits depict 
the times; a lack of reading, a remnant of belief in witchcraft, peasant 
and hunting manners, the ignorances of an artless or backward mind. 
Sir Roger gives the children, who answer their catechism well, a Bible 
for themselves, and a quarter of bacon for their mothers. When a 
verse pleases him, he sings it for half a minute after the congregation 
has finished, He kills eight fat pigs at Christmas, and sends a pudding 


1% 






[Book mS 


| 


Cerin» . 





_ €HAP. IV.] ADDISON, - 113 
and a pack of cards to each poor family in the parish, When he goes 
to the theatre, he supplies his servants with cudgels to protect them- 

selves from the thieves which, he says, infest London. Addison returns 

a score of times to the old knight, always discovering some new aspect 

of his character, a disinterested observer of humanity, curiously assi- 

duous and diecarnianl a true creator, having bt but a step to go to enter, 
like Richardson and Fielding, upon the great great work of modern literature, 
the novel of manners and customs. 

4 “Beyond this, all is poetry. It has flowed through his prose a thou- 
[sna times more sincere and beautiful than in his verses. Rich oriental 
fancies are displayed, not with a shower of sparks as in Voltaire, but 
under a calm and abundant light, which makes the regular folds of their 
purple and gold undulate. The music of the long cadenced and tranquil; 
phrases leads the mind sweetly amidst romantic splendours and enchant- 
ments, and the deep sentiment of ever young nature recalls the happy 
quietude of Spenser.? Through gentle railleries or moral essays we 
feel that his imagination is happy, delighted in the contemplation of the 
sway of the forests which Clothe the mountains, the eternal verdure of 
the valleys, invigorated by fresh springs, and the wide horizons undulat- 
ing to the border of the distant sky. Great and simple sentiments come 
naturally to unite these noble images, and their measured harmony 
creates a unique spectacle, worthy to fascinate the heart of an honest 
man by its gravity and sweetness. Such are the Visions of Mirza, 

which I will give almost entire: 


‘ On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers 
I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning de- 
votions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in 
meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, 
I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and passing 
from one thought to another: Surely, said I, man is but a shadow and life a dream. 
Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was 
not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little 
musical instrument in his hand. AsI looked upon him he applied it to his lips, 
and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought 
into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different 
from any thing I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs 
that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, 
to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures 
of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures. ... 
‘ He (the genius) then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing 
_me on the top of it, Cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest. 
I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it. The 
valley that thou seest, said he, is the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou 
seest is part of the great tide of eternity. What is the reason, said I, that the tide 
I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at 
the other? What thou seest, said he, is that portion of eternity which is called 





. 1 Story of Abdallah and of Hilpa, 
VOL. 11. H 








“Ve 


; 


114 THE CLASSIC AGE. _[Boox m1. 


time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its 
consummation. Examine now, said he, this sea that is bounded with darkness 
at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it. I see a bridge, said I, 
standing in the midst of the tide. The bridge thou seest, said he, is human life ; 
consider it attentively.. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it con- 
sisted of three score and ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which added 
to those that were entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was 
counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thou- 
sand arches: but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the 
ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me further, said he, what thou dis- 
coverest on it. I see multitudes of people passing over it, said I, and a black 
cloud hanging on each end of it. As I looked more attentively, I saw several of 
the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed under- 


neath it ; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap- ~ 


doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, 
but they fell through them into the tide, and immediately disappeared. These 
hidden pit-falls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs 
of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. 
They grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together 
towards the end of the arches that were entire. 

‘ There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that con- 
tinued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after 
another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk. 

‘I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the 
great variety cf objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melan- 
choly to see several'dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and 
catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking 
up towards heaven in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation 
stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles 
that glittered in their eyes and danced before them ; but often when they thought 
themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sunk. In 
this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others 
with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on 
trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have 
escaped had they not been thus forced upon them... . 

‘I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, man was made in vain! How is 
he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed up in 
death !—The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so 
uncomfortable a prospect. Look no more, said he, on man in the first stage of his 
existence, in his setting out for eternity ; but cast thine eye on that thick mist 
into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it, I 
directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius strengthened 
it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too 
thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and 
spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running 
through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still 
rested on one half of it, insomuch that. I could discover nothing in it: but the 
other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were 
covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining 
seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with 
garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of 








o Ne, — 


_ ADDISON. 115 






. 7 : the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers ; and could hear a confused harmony 

of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness 

grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of 

an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats ; but the genius told me there 
was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every 
moment upon the bridge. The islands, said he, that lie so fresh and green before 
thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou 
canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore ; there are myriads 
of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching farther than thine 
eye, or even thine imagination, can extend itself. These are the mansions of good 
men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they 
excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures 
of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who 
are settled in them: every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective 
inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does 
life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is 
death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not 
man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.—I gazed with 
inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, shew me now, 
I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the 
ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant. The genius making me no answer, 
I turned me about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had 
left me ; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating ; 
but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw 
nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing 
upon the sides of it.’? 


In this ornate moral sketch, this fine piece of argument, so correct and 

so eloquent, this ingenious and noble imagination, I find an epitome of 

all Addison’s characteristics. These are the English tints which dis- 

tinguish this classical age from that of the French : a narrower _and_ 
more-practical-argument, a more _poetical-and_less eloquent_ urbanity, 

a , strueture-of-mind—more—inventive an and more ich, less..sociable.-and 

less refin 





1 Spectator, No. 159. 





116 THE CLASSIC AGE, 
CHAPTER V. 
J Swift. 


I. Swift’s origin—Character—Pride—Sensitiveness—His life in Sir William 
Temple’s house—At Lord Berkeley’s—Political life—Influence—Failure 
—Private life—Lovemaking—Despair and insanity. 

II. His wit—His power, and its limits—Prosaic and positive mind—Holding 
a mean position between vulgarity and genius—Why destructive. 


III. The pamphleteer—How literature now concerns itself with politics—Dif- — 


ference of parties and pamphlets in France and England—Conditions of 
the literary pamphlet—Of the effective pamphlet—These pamphlets are 
special and practical—The Hxaminer—The Drapier’s Letters—A Short 
Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton—An Argument against Abolish- 
ing Christianity— Political invective— Personal defamation — Incisive 
common sense—Grave irony. 

IV. The poet—Comparison of Swift and Voltaire—Gravity and harshness of 
his jests—Bickerstag—Coarseness of his gallantry—Cadenus and Vanessa 
—His prosaic and realistic poetry—The Grand Question Debated— 


Energy and sadness of his shorter poems— Verses on his own Death—His 


excesses. 

V. The narrator and philosopher—A Tale of a Tub—His opinion on religion, 
science, philosophy, and reason—How he maligns human intelligence— 
Gulliver's Travels—His opinion on society, government, rank, and pro- 
fessions—How he maligns human nature—Last pamphlets—Composition 
of his character and genius, 


N 1685, in the great hall of Dublin University, the professors en- 
gaged in examining for the bachelor’s degree enjoyed a singular 
spectacle: a poor scholar, odd, awkward, with hard blue eyes, an 
orphan, friendless, poorly supported by the charity of an uncle, having 
failed once before to take his degree on account of his ignorance of 
logic, had come up again without having condescended to read logic. 
To no purpose his tutor set before him the most respectable folios— 
Smiglecius, Kechermannus, Burgerdiscius. He turned over a few pages, 
and shut them directly. When the argumentation came on, the proctor 
was obliged to ‘reduce his replies into syllogism.’ He was asked how 
he could reason well without rules; he replied that he did reason pretty 
well without them. This folly shocked them; yet he was received, 
though barely, speciali gratid, says the register, and the professdrs 
went away, doubtless with pitying smiles, lamenting the feeble brain of 
: jonathan Swift. 


Ne er ern 





lis emrtintnhirtitniapeimaniee 





SWIFT. 3 EEE 


Z 


This was his first humiliation and his first rebellion. His whole 
life was like this moment, overwhelmed and made wretched by sorrows 
and hatred. To what excess they rose, his portrait and his history 
alone can show. He had an exaggerated and terrible pride, and made 
the haughtiness of the most powérful ministers and most mighty lords 
bend beneath his arrogance. A simple journalist, possessing nothing 
but a small Irish living, he treated with them on an equality. Harley, 
the prime minister, having sent him a bank bill for his first articles, 
he was offended at being taken for a paid man, returned the money, 
demanded an apology; he received it, and wrote in his journal: ‘I 
have _taken..Mr,Harley_inte-favour_again.’! On another occasion, 
having observed that St. John, Secretary of State, looked upon him 
coldly, he rebuked him for it: 


‘One thing I warned him of, never to appear cold to me, for I would not be 
treated like a school-boy ; that I expected every great minister who honoured me 
with his acquaintance, if he heard or saw anything to my disadvantage, would let 
me know in plain words, and not put me in pain to guess by the change or coldness 
of his countenance or behaviour ; for it was what I would hardly bear from a 
crowned head ; and I thought no subject’s favour was worth it: and that I de- 
signed to let my Lord Keeperand M. Harley know the same thing, that they might 
use me accordingly.’ ? 


St. John approved of this, made excuses, said that he had passed 
several nights at ‘business, and one night at drinking,’ and that his 
fatigue might have seemed like ill-humour. In the minister’s drawing- 
room Swift went up and spoke to some obscure person, and compelled 
the lords to come and speak to him: 


‘Mr. secretary told me the Duke of Buckingham had been talking to him much 
about me, and desired my acquaintance. I answered, it could not be, for he had 
not made sufficient advances. Then the Duke of Shrewsbury said, he thought the 
Duke was not used to make advances. I said, I could not help that ; for I always 
expected advances in proportion to men’s quality, and more from a duke than 
other men.’? 

‘Saw Lord Halifax at court, and we joined and talked, and the Duchess of 


’ Shrewsbury came up and reproached me for not dining with her: I said that was 


not so soon done ; for I expected more advances from ladies, especially duchesses : 
She promised to comply. . . . Lady Oglethorp brought me and the Duchess of 
Hamilton together to-day in the drawing-room, and I have given her some en- 
couragement, but not much.’ 4 





1 In Swift’s Works, ed. W. Scott, 19 vols. 1814; Journal to Stella, ii. Feb. 13 
(1710-11). He says also (Feb. 7): ‘I will not see him (M. Harley) till he makes 
amends. ... I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to him, 
and let him know that I expected farther satisfaction. If we let these great 
ministers pretend too much, there will be no governing them.’ 

2 Ibid. April 3, 1711. 8 Ibid, May 19, 1711. * Ibid. Oct. 7, 1711. 


118 THE CLASSIC AGE. 


He triumphed in his arrogance, and said with a restrained joy, full of 
vengeance : 

‘1 generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so 
proud that I make all the lords come up tome. One passes half an hour pleasant 
enough.’ 

He carried his triumph to brutality and tyranny; writing to the 
Duchess of Queensberry, he says: 

‘I am glad you know your duty ; for it has been a known and established rule 
above twenty years in England, that the first advances have been constantly made 
me by all ladies who aspired to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality, 
the greater were their advances,’ } 


The famous General Webb, with his crutch and cane, limped up two 
flights of stairs to dbrigratalate and invite him; Swift accepted, then 
an hour later withdrew his consent, preferring to dine elsewhere. He 
seemed to look upon himself as a superior being, exempt from the 
mecessity of ceremony, entitled to homage, caring neither for sex, rank, 

or fame, whose business it was to protect and destroy, distributing 
favours, insults, and pardons, Addison, then Lady Gifford, a friend of 
twenty years, having offended him, he refused to take then back into 
his favour until they had asked his pardon. Lord Lansdown, Secretary 
for War, being annoyed by an expression in the Examiner, Swift says: 


‘This I resented highly that he should complain of me before he spoke to me. 
I sent him a peppering letter, and would not summon him by a note, as I did the 
rest ; nor ever will have anything to say to him, till he begs my pardon.’? 


He treated art like man, writing a thing off, scorning the wretched 
necessity of reading it over, putting his name to nothing, letting every 
piece make its way on its own merits, unassisted, without the prestige 
of his name, recommended by none. He had the soul of a dictator, 
{ marred by power, and saying openly: ‘ All my ‘endeavours from a boy 
to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune, 
that I might be treated like a lord. . . . Whether right or wrong, it is 
no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the work 


of a blue ribbon, or of a coach and six horses.’* But he thought this. 


power and rank due to him; he did not ask, but expected them. ‘I 
will never beg for myself, though I often do it for others.’ He desired 
dominion, and acted as if he had it. Hatred and misfortune find their 
native soil in these despotic minds. They live like fallen kings, always 
insulting and hurt, having all the miseries but none of the consolations 
of pride, unable to relish either society or solitude, too ambitious to be 
content with silence, too haughty to use the world, born for rebellion 
and defeat, destined by their passions and impotence to despair and to 
talent. 





1 Swift’s Works, xvii. p. 352. ' 
2 Journal to Stella, iii., March 27, 1711-12. . 5 Letter to Pope, © 





[BOOK I. 7 





I 





CHAP. V.] Re Swit: “:’-: 119 


Sensitiveness in this case aggravated the stings of pride. Under 
this outward calmness raged furious passions. There was within him a 
ceaseless tempest of wrath and desire : 


‘ A person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to 
look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that 
would do mischief, if I would-not give it employment.” 


Resentment was deeper and hotter with him than with other men. 


Listen to the deep sigh of joyful hatred with which he sees his enemies 
under his feet : 


‘The whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while 
they are drowning ; and the great men making me their clumsy apologies.’! ‘It 
is good to see what a lamentable confession the whigs all make of my ill usage.’ ? 


And soon after: ‘Rot them, for ungrateful dogs; I will make them 
repent their usage before I leave this place.’* He is satiated and con- 
tented; like a wolf or a lion, he cares for nothing else. 

This fury led him to every sort of madness and violence. _His 
Drapier’s Letters had roused Ireland against the government, and the 
government had set up a proclamation offering a reward to any one who 
would denounce the Draper. Swift came suddenly into the reception- 
chamber, elbowed the groups, went up to the lord-lieutenant, with in- 
dignation on his countenance and thundering voice, and said : 


‘So, my lord, this is a glorious exploit that you performed yesterday, in suffer- 
ing a proclamation against a poor shopkeeper, whose only crime is an honest en- 
deavour to save his country from ruin.’ ¢ 


And he broke out into railing amidst general silence and amazement. 
The lord-lieutenant, a man of sense, answered calmly. Before such a 
torrent men turned aside. This chdotic and self-devouring heart could 
not understand the calmness of his friends; he asked them: ‘Do not 
the corruptions and villanies of men eat your flesh, and exhaust your 
spirits ae 





broke in upon his silent moods like flashes of grea “He was 
eccentric and _v violent in n_everything, in his ‘pleasantry, in his private 
affairs, with his friends, with unknown people ; he was often taken fora 
madman. Addison and his friends had seen for several days at the St. 
James’ Coffee-house a singular parson, who put his hat on the table, 
walked for half an hour backward and forward, paid his money, and 
left, having attended to nothing and said nothing. They called him 


the mad parson. One day this parson perceives a gentleman ‘just 








1 Journal to Stella, ii., Sept. 9, 1710. 2 Ibid. Sept. 80, 1710. 
3 [bid. Nov. 8, 1710. 4 Swift's Life, by Roscoe, i. 56. 
5 Swift's Life, by W. Scott, i. 279. : 





120 THE CLASSIC AGE. 


come out of the country, went straight up to him, and in a very abrupt 


manner, without any previous salute, asked him, “ Pray sir, do you 


know any good weather in the world?” After staring a little at the 
singularity of Swift’s manner and the oddity of the question, the gentle- 
man answered, “ Yes, sir, I thank God, I remember a great deal of good 
weather in my time.” ‘That is more,” said Swift, “than I can say. I 
never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet 
or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the 
year ‘tis all very well.”’* Another day, dining with the Earl of Bur- 
lington, the Dean said to the mistress of the house, ‘ Lady Burlington, 
I hear you can sing; sing me a song.’ The lady looked on this un- 
ceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively 
refused. He said, ‘she should sing, or he would make her. Why, 
madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge- 
parsons; sing when I bid you!’ As the earl did nothing but laugh 
at this freedom, the lady was so vexed, that she burst into tears, and 
retired. His first compliment to her, when he saw her again, was, 
‘Pray, madam, are you as proud and as ill-natured now, as when I 
saw you last?’? People were astonished or amused at these outbursts ; 
I see in them sobs and cries, the explosion of long overwhelming and 
bitter thoughts ; they are the starts of a mind unsubdued, shuddering, 
rebelling, breaking the barriers, wounding, crushing, or bruising every 
one on its road, or those who wish to stop it. Swift became mad at last ; 
he felt this sondineas coming, he has described it in a horrible manner; 
beforehand he has tasted all the disgust and bitterness of it; he showed 
it on his tragic face, in his terrible ‘and wan eyes. ‘This is the power- 
ful and foarnful genius which nature gave up as a prey to society and 
life ; society and life poured all their poisons in him. 

He knew what poverty and scorn were even at the age when the 


mind expands, when the heart is full of pride,® when he was hardly 


maintained by the alms of his family, gloomy and without hope, feeling 
his strength and the dangers of his strength.* At twenty-one, as secre- 
tary to Sir W. Temple, he had twenty pounds a year salary, sat at the 





1 Sheridan’s Life of Swift. 2 'W. Scott’s Life of Swift, i. 477. 
3 At that time he had already begun the Tale of a Tub. 
“He addresses his muse thus, in Verses occasioned by Sir William Temple’s 
late illness and recovery, xiv. 45: 
‘Wert thou right woman, thou should’st scorn to look 

On an abandoned wretch by hopes forsook ; 

Forsook by hopes, ill fortune’s last relief, 

Assign’d for life to unremitting grief ; 

To thee I owe that fatal bend of mind 

Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined ; 

To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide, 

That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride.’ 


[Book It.’ 











cur. v.] 


SWIFT. : 121 


same table with the upper servants,’ wrote Pindaric odes in honour of 
his master, spent ten years amidst the humiliations of servitude 
and the familiarity of the servants’ hall, obliged to adulate a gouty 
and flattered courtier, to submit to my lady his sister, acutely 
pained, ‘when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of 
humour,’* lured by false hopes, forced after an attempt at indepen- 
dence to resume the livery which was choking him. ‘When you fird 
years coming on, without hopes of a place at court, . . . I directly 
advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left 
you; there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short 
life and a merry one.’* This is followed by instructions as to the con- 
duct servants ought to display when led to the gallows. Such is his 
Directions.to. Servants ; he was relating what he had suffered. At the 
age of thirty-one, expecting a place from William 111, he edited the 
works of his patron, dedicated them to the sovereign, sent him a memo- 
rial, got nothing, and fell back upon the post of chaplain and private 
secretary to the Earl of Berkeley. He soon remained only chaplain to 
that nobleman, feeling all the disgust which the part of ecclesiastical 
valet must inspire in a man of feeling. 


‘You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a parson’s wife. . . . 
And over and above, that I may have your excellency’s letter 
With an order for the chaplain aforesaid, or instead of him a better.’ 4 


Their excellencies, having promised him the deanery of Derry, gave it 
to another. Driven to politics, he wrote a Whig pamphlet, A Dis- 
course on the Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Lome, received 
from Lord Halifax and the party leaders a score of fine promises, and 
was neglected. Twenty years of insults without revenge, and humi- 
liations without respite; the inner tempest of nourished and crushed 
hopes, vivid and brilliant. dreams, suddenly faded by the necessity of 
a mechanical duty; the habit of hatred and suffering, the necessity of 
concealing these, the baneful consciousness of superiority, the isolation 
of genius and pride, the bitterness of accumulated rage and pent-up 
scorn,—these were the goads which pricked him like a bull. _More 
than a thousand pamphlets in four years, stung him stillmore, with 
such designations as renegade, traitor, and atheist. He crushed theny 
all, set his foot on the Whig party, solaced himself. with the poignant 
pleasure of victory. If evera soul was saturated with the joy of tearing, 





1 These assertions have been denied. See Roscoe’s Life of Swift, i. 14.—Tr. 

2 <PDon’t you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple 
would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to.suspect a 
hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirit since then, faith; he spoiled a 
fine gentleman.’—Journal to Stella, April 4, 1710-11. 

3 Directions to Servants, xii. ch. iii. 434. 

4 Mrs, Harris’ Petition, xiv. 52. 


122 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book tr: 


butraging, and destroying, it was his. Excess of scorn, implacable 
irony, crushing logic, the cruel smile of the foeman, who sees before- 
hand the mortal spot in which he will strike his enemy, advances 
towards him, tortures him deliberately, eagerly, with enjoyment,—such 
were the feelings which had leavened him, and which broke from him 
with such harshness that he hindered his own career;* and that of so 
many high places for which he stretched out his hands, there remained 
for him only a deanery in poor Ireland. The accession of George 1. 
exiled him thither; the accession of George u., on which he had 
counted, confined him there. He contended there first against popular 
hatred, then against the victorious minister, then against entire hu- 
manity, in sanguinary pamphlets, despairing satires ;* he tasted there 
once more the pleasure of fighting and wounding; he suffered there 
to the end, soured by the advance of years, by the spectacle of oppres- 
sion and misery, by the feeling of his own impotence, enraged to have 
to live amongst ‘an enslaved people,’ chained and vanquished. He 
says: 


and revengeful ; and my rage is so ignoble, that it descends even to resent the 


‘I find myself disposed every year, or rather every month, to be more angry 
fea and. baseness of the enslaved people among whom I live.’ 


This cry is the epitome of his public life; these feelings are the mate- 
rials which public life furnished to his talent. 

He experienced these feelings also in private life, more violent and 
familiar. He had brought up and purely loved a charming, well-in- 
formed, modest young girl, Esther Johnson, who from infancy had loved 
and reverenced him alone. She lived with him, he had made her his 
confidante. From London, during his political struggles, he sent her the 
full journal of his slightest actions; he wrote to her twice a day, with 
extreme ease and familiarity, with all the playfulness, vivacity, petting 
and caressing names of tenderest attachment. Yet another girl, beau- 
tiful and rich, Miss Vanhomrigh, attached herself to him, declared her 
passion, received from him several marks of his own, followed him to 
Ireland, now jealous, now submissive, but so impassioned, so unhappy, 
that her. letters might have broken a harder heart: 

‘If you continue to treat me-as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me 
long... . . 1am sure I could have borne the rack much better, than those killing, 


killing words of you... . Oh that you may have but so much regard for me left, 
that this complaint may touch your soul with pity!’ 


She pined and died. Esther Johnson, who had so long possessed 





1 By the Tale ef a Tub with the clergy, and by the Prophesy of Windsor with 
the queen. 

2 Drapier’s Letters, Gulliver’s Travels, Rhapsody on Poetry, A Modest Pro 
posal for preventing the Children, etc., and several pamphlets on Ireland. 

3 Letter to Lord Bolingbroke, Dublin, March 21, 1728, xvii, 274. 

* Letter of Miss Vanhomrigh, Dublin, 1714, xix. 421. . ; 





pp Ae ial 


eae “ 





~ onar. v.] 2° SWIFT: 123 


Swift’s whole heart, suffered still more. All was changed in Swift's 


house. ‘At my first coming (home) I thought I should have died 
with discontent, and was horribly melancholy while they were installing 
me.’* He found tears, distrust, resentment, cold silence, in place of 
familiarity and tenderness. He married Miss Johnson from duty, but in 
secret, and on condition that she should only be his wife in name. She 
was twelve years dying; Swift went away to England as often as he could. 
His house Was a hell to him; it is thought that some secret cause had 
influenced his loves and his marriage. Delany, his biographer, having 
once found him talking with Archbishop King, saw the archbishop in 


tears, and Swift rushing by, with a countenance full of grief, and a | 


distracted air. ‘Sir,’ said the prelate,‘ you haye just met the most 
unhappy man upon earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you 
must never ask a question,’ Esther Johnson died. Swift’s anguish, 
the spectres by which he was haunted, the horrors in which the re- 
membrance of the two women, slowly ruined and killed by his fault, 
plunged and bound him, nothing but his end can tell. ‘It is time for 
me to have done with the world ... and so I would... . and not 
die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole? Overwork and 
excess of emotions had made him ill from his youth: he was subject 
to giddiness ; he lost his hearing. He had long felt that reason was 
deserting him. One day he was observed ‘ gazing intently at the to 

of a lofty elm, the head of which had been blasted. Upon his friend’ 

approach, he pointed to it, significantly adding, “‘I shall be like that 
tree, and die first at the top.”’* His memory left him; he received 
the attentions of others with disgust, sometimes with rage. He lived 
alone, gloomy, unable to read. ‘They say he passed a year without 
uttering a word, with a horror of the human face, walking ten hours 
a day, a maniac, then an idiot. A tumour came on one of his eyes, so 


that he continued a month without sleeping, and five men were needed to 


prevent his tearing out the eye with his nails. One of his last words 
was, ‘I am mad.’ When his will was opened, it was found that he left 
his whole fortune to build a madhouse. 


ii, 


These passions and these miseries were necessary to inspire Gulliver's 
Travels and the Tale of a Tub. Denise | 
~“A strange and powerful form of mind, too, was necessary, as Eng- 
lish as his pride and his passions. Swift has the style of a surgeon and 
a judge, cold, grave, solid, unadorned, without vivacity or passion, 


manly and practical. He desired neither to please, nor to divert, nor 





1 Journal to Stella, 8th July 1712. Miss Vanhomrigh died, however, in 
1721. 

2 Letter to Bolingbroke, Dublin, March 21, 1728, xvii. 276, 

* Roscoe's Life of Swift, is 80. . . ; 





to carry people away, nor to touch; he never hesitated, nor was re- 
dundant, nor was excited, nor made an effort. He expressed his: 
thoughts in a uniform tone, with exact, precise, often harsh terms, He 
with familiar comparisons, levelling all within reach of his hand, even 
the loftiest things—especially the lofties:-—with a brutal and always h 
haughty coolness. He knows life as a banker knows accounts; and his 
‘total once made up, he scorns or knocks down the babblers whe dispute 

it in his presence. 

With the sum total he knows the items. He not only familiarlyand = 
vigorously seized on every object, but he also decomposed it, and kept 
an inventory of its details. His imagination was as minute as it was 
energetic. He could give you an indictment of dry facts on every 
event and object, so connected and natural as to deceive one. Gulliver's 
Travels read like.a log-book. Isaac Bickerstaff’s predictions were taken 
literally by the inquisition in Portugal. His account of M. du Baudrier 
seems an authentic translation. He gives to an extravagant romance 
the air of a genuine history. By this detailed and solid science he 
imports into literature the positive spirit of men of business and ex- 
perience. Nothing could be more vigorous, narrow, unhappy, for 
nothing could be more destructive. No greatness, false or true, can 
stand before him ; whatsoever he fathoms and takes in hand loses at 
once'its prestige and value. Whilst he decomposes he displays the 


124 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK It.’ at 
7 
* 
ne 


~ real ugliness, and removes the fictitious beauty of objects. Whilst he 


brings them to the level of common things, he suppresses their real 
beauty, and gives them a fictitious ugliness. He presents all their 
gross features, and nothing but their gross features. Look with him 
into the physical details of science, religion, state, and with him reduce 
science, religion, state, to the low standing of every-day events; with 
him you will see here a Bedlam of shrivelled up dreamers, narrow and 
chimerical brains, busy in contradicting, heaping up hollow phrases in 
mouldy books, inventing conjectures, and crying them up for the truth; 
there, a band of enthusiasts, mumbling phrases which they do not 
understand, adoring figures of rhetoric as mysteries, attaching holiness 
or impiety to lawn-sleeves or postures, spending in persecutions or 
genuflexions the surplus of sheepish or ferocious folly with which an 
evil fate has crammed their brains ; there, again, flocks of idiots pour- 
ing out their blood and treasure for the whims or plots of a carriage- 
drawn aristocrat, out of respect for the carriage which they themselves 
have given him. What part of human nature or existence can continue 
{great and beautiful, before a mind which, penetrating all details, per- 
celves men eating, sleeping, dressing, in all dull and mean actions, 
\degrading everything to the level of vulgar events, trivial circumstances 

f dress and cookery? It is not enough for the positive mind to see 
the springs, pulleys, lamps, and whatever there is objectionable in the 
opera at which he is present; he makes it more objectionable by calling 
it a show. It is not enough not to ignore anything; we must also 


tn ; 





SWIFT. ii 125 


refuse to admire. He treats things like domestic utensils; after reck- 


oning up their materials, he gives them a vile name. Nature for him 
is but a caldron, and he knows the proportion and number of the 
ingredients cooking in it. In this power and this weakness you see 


beforehand the misanthropy and the talent of Swift. 


There are, indeed, but two modes of agreeing with the world: 
mediocrity of mind and superiority of intelligence—the one for the 
public and the fools, the other for artists and philosophers: the one 
consists in seeing nothing, the other in seeing all. You will respect 





the respectable, if you only see the surface—if you take them as they 


are, if you let yourself be duped by the fine show which they never 
fail to present. You will revere the gold-embroidered garments in 
which your masters bedizen themselves, and you will never dream of 
examining the stains hidden under the embroidery. You will be moved 
by the big words which they pronounce in a sublime voice, and you 
will never see in their pockets the hereditary phrase-book from which 
they have taken them. You will punctiliously bring them your money 
and your services; the custom will seem to you just, and you will 
accept the goose-dogma, that a goose is bound to be roasted. But, on 
the other hand, you will tolerate and even love the world, if, penetrating 
to its nature, you take the trouble to explain or imitate its mechanism. 
You will be interested in passions by an artist’s sympathy or a philoso- 
pher’s comprehension; you will find them natural whilst admitting 
their force, or you will find them necessary whilst computing their 
connexion ; you will cease to be indignant against the powers which 
produce fine spectacles, or will cease to be roused by the rebounds 
which the law of cause and effect had foretold. You will admire the 
world as a grand drama, or as an invincible development; and you will 
be preserved by the imagination or by logic from slander or disgust. 
You will extract from religion the high truths which dogmas hide, and 
the generous instincts which superstition conceals. You will perceive 
in the state the infinite benefits which no tyranny abolishes, and the 
sociable inclinations which no wickedness uproots. You will distinguish 
in science the solid doctrines which discussion never shakes, the liberal 
notions which the shock of systems purifies and expands, the splendid 
promises which the course of the present opens up to the ambition of 
he future, We can thus escape hatred by the nullity or the greatness 
of the prospect, by the inability to discover contrasts, or by the power 
to discover the harmony of contrasts. Raised above the first, sunk 
beneath the last, seeing evil and disorder, deprived of goodness and 
order, precluded from love and calmness, resigned to indignation and 
bitterness, Swift found neither a cause to cherish nor a doctrine to 
establish ;* he employs the whole force of an excellently armed mind 








1In his Thoughts on Religion (viii. 73) he says: ‘The want of belief is a 


defect that ought to be concealed, when it cannot be overcome.’ ‘I look upon 


eh 
a. 


| 


126 : THE CLASSIC AGE. 


and an excellently tempered character in denying and destroying: all — 


his works are pamphlets. 
pes TIL. 
At this time, and in his hands, the newspaper in England attained 


its proper character and its greatest force. Literature entered the 


sphere of politics. To understand what the one became, we must 
understand what the other was: art depended upon political business, 
and the spirit of parties made the spirit of writers. 

In France a theory arises—eloquent, harmonious, and generous; the 
young are enamoured of it, wear a cap and sing songs in its honour: 
at night, the citizens, whilst digesting their dinner, read it and delight 
in it; some, hotheaded, accept it, and prove to themselves their force 
of mind by ridiculing the retrogrades. On the other hand, the estab- 
lished people, prudent and timid, are mistrustful: being well off, they 
find that everything is well, and demand that kings shall continue as 
they are. Such are the two parties in France, very old, as all know; 
not very earnest, as all see. They must talk, be enthusiastic, reason 


on speculative opinions, glibly, about an hour a day, indulging but 


outwardly in this taste; but these parties are so well levelled, that they 
are at bottom all the same: when we understand them rightly, we will 
find in France only two parties, the men of twenty and the men of forty. 
English parties, on the other hand, were always compact and living 
bodies, united by interests of money, rank, and conscience, receiving 
theories only as standards or as a balance, a sort of secondary States, 
which, like the old orders in Rome, legally endeavour to monopolise 
the government. So, the English constitution was never more than a 
transaction between distinct powers, constrained to tolerate each other, 
disposed to encroach on each other, occupied in treating with each 
other. Politics for them are a domestic interest, for the French an 
occupation of the mind; Englishmen make them a business, the French 
a discussion. 

' Thus their pamphlets, notably Swift’s, seem to us only half literary. 
For an argument to be literary, it must not address itself to an interest 
or a faction, but to the pure mind: it must be based on universal 
truths, rest on absolute justice, be able to touch all human reasons; 
otherwise, being local, it is simply useful: nothing is beautiful but 
what is general. It must also be developed regularly by analysis, 
and with exact divisions; its distribution must give a picture of pure 
reason; the order of ideas must be inviolable; every mind must be 
able to draw thence with ease a complete conviction; its method, its 
principles, must be sensible throughout, and at all times. The desire 
to prove well must be added to the art of proving well; the writer 





myself, in the capacity of a clergyman, to be one appointed by Providence for 
defending a post assigned me, and for gaining over as many enemies as I can,’ 






; 
sn stance ome 


_ - 
"’ Jen fF 





SWIFT. 127 





‘must announce his proof, repeat it, present it under all its faces, 
“desire to penetrate minds, pursue them persistently in all their retreats; 
but he must treat his hearers like men worthy of comprehending 
and applying general truths; his discourse must be lively, noble, 
polished, and eager, so as to suit such subjects and such minds. It 
is thus that ancient prose and French prose are eloquent, and that 
political dissertations or religious controversies have endured as models 
of art. 

This good taste and philosophy are wanting in the positive mind; 
it wishes to attain, not eternal beauty, but present success. Swift does - 
not address men in general, but certain men. He does not speak to 
réasoners, but to a party; he does not care to teach a truth, but to 
make an impression; his aim is not to enlighten that Ssolated part of 
man, called ie aed, but to move the mass ‘of feelings and prejudices 
which constitute the actual man. Whilst he writes, his public is before 
his eyes: fat squires, puffed out with port wine and beef, aceustomed 
at the end of their meals to bawl loyally for church and king; gentle- 
men farmers, bitter against London luxury and the new importance of 
merchants ; ecclesiastics bred on pedantic sermons, and old-established 
hatred of dissenters and papists. ‘These people have not mind enough 
to pursue a fine deduction or understand an abstract principle. One 
must calculate the facts they know, the ideas they have received, 
the interests that move them, and recall only these facts, reason only 
from these ideas, set in motion only these interests. It is thus Swift 
speaks, without development, without logical hits, without rhetorical 
effects, but with extraordinary force and success, in phrases whose 
justice his contemporaries inwardly felt, and which they accepted at 
once, because they simply told them, in a clear form and cpenly, what 
they murmured obscurely and to themselves. Such was the power of _ 
the Examiner, which in one year transformed the opinion of three 
“Kingdoms ; and particularly of Drapier's Letters, which made a govern- 
ment draw back. 

‘Small change was lacking in Ireland, and the English ministers had 
given William Wood a patent to coin one hundred and eight thousand 
pounds of copper money. A commission, of which Newton was a 
member, verified the pieces made, found them good, and several com- 
petent judges still think that the measure was loyal and serviceable 
to the land. Swift roused the ‘people against it, speaking to them in 
an peelieble style, and triumphed over the common sense and the 
state.’ 





‘ Brethren, friends, countrymen, and fellow-subjects, what I intend now to say 
to you is, next to your duty to God and the care of your salvation, of the greatest 





1 Whatever has been said, I do not think that he wrote them in bad faith. It 
was possible, for Swift more than for another, to believe in a ministerial job, He 
seems to me to have been at bottom an honest man. 





128 THE CLASSIC AGE, [BOOK III, 


concern to you and your children: your bread.and clothing, and every common 
necessary of life depend upon it. Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you, as 
men, as Christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper 
with the utmost attention, or get it read to you by others; which that you may 
do at the less expence, I have ordered the printer to sell it at the lowest rate.’? 


You see popular distrust spring up at a glance; this is the style which 
reaches workmen and peasants; this simplicity, these details, are neces- 
sary to penetrate their belief. The author is like a draper, and they 
trust only men of their own condition. Swift goes on to accuse Wood, 
declaring that his copper pieces are not worth one-eighth of their 
nominal value. There is no trace of proofs: no proofs are required to 
convince the people; it is enough to repeat the same accusation again 
and again, to abound in intelligible examples, to strike eye and ear. 
The imagination once gained, they will go on shouting, convincing 
themselves by their own cries, intractably. Swift says to his adver- 
saries : 

‘ Your paragraph relates further that Sir Isaac Newton reported an assay taken 


at the Tower of Wood’s metal ; by which it appears that Wood had in all respects 
performed his contract. His contract! With whom? Was it with the Parlia- 


ment or people of Ireland? Are not they to be the purchasers? But they detest, - 


abhor, and reject it as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.’? 


And a little farther on: 


‘ His first proposal is, that he will be content to coin no more (than forty 
thousand pounds), unless the exigencies of the trade require it, although his patent 
empowers him to coin a far greater quantity. . . . To which if I were to answer, 
it should be thus: let Mr. Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers coin on, till 
there is not an old kettle left in the kingdom ; let them coin old leather, tobacco- 
pipe clay, or the dirt in the street, and call their trumpery by what name they 
please, from a guinea to a farthing ; we are not under any concern to know how 
he and his tribe of accomplices think fit to employ themselves. But I hope, and 
trust, that we are all, to a man, fully determined to have nothing to do with him 


or his ware.’ 3 


Swift gets angry and does not answer. In fact, this is the best way to 
answer; to move such hearers you must move their blood and their 
nerves; then shopkeepers and farmers will turn up their sleeves, 
double their fists; and the good arguments of their opponents will 
only increase their desire to knock them down. 

Now see how a mass of examples makes a gratuitous assertion 
probable: 

‘Your Newsletter says that an assay was made of the coin. How impudent 
and insupportable is this! Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two halfpence of 
good metal, sends them to the Tower, and they are approved; and these must 
answer all that he has already coined, or shall coin for the future. It is true, 
indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff; I cut it 





1 Drapier’s Letters, vii. ; Letter 1, 97. * bid. vii. ; Letter 2, 114, 
$ Ibid. vii. ; Letter 2, 115, 





> 





. a CHAP. V.] SWIFT. 129 


‘a fairly off, and if he likes it, he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the 


whole piece, and probably we come toa bargain. But if I were to buy a hundred 
sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single wether, fat and well fleeced, by 
way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred, without 
suffering me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good security to restore 
my money for those that were lean, or shorn, or scabby, I would be none of his 
customer. I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore 
carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encourage 
purchasers ; and this is directly the case in point with Mr. Wood’s assay.’ ! 


A burst of laughter follows; butchers and bricklayers were gained 
over. To finish, Swift showed them a practical expedient, suited to 
their understanding and their condition: 


‘The common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale house, will offer his 
money ; and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to 
heat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad 
half-pence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other 
tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if 
it is to be paid in Wood’s money ; for example, twenty-pence of that money for a 
quart of ale, and so in all things else, and never part with his goods till he gets 
the money.’ ? 


Public clamour overcame the English Government; they withdrew the 
money and paid Wood a large indemnity. Such is the merit of Swift’s 
arguments ; good tools, trenchant and handy, neither elegant nor bright, 
but whose value is proved by their effect. 

The whole beauty of these pamphlets is in their tone. They have 
neither the generous fire of Pascal, nor the bewildering gaiety of 
Beaumarchais, nor the chiselled delicacy of Paul Louis Courier, but an 
overwhelming air of superiority and a bitter and terrible rancour. Vast 
passion and pride, like the positive Drapier’s mind just now described, 
have given all the blows their force. You should read his Public Spirit 
af the Whigs, against Steele. Page by page Steele is torn to pieces 
with a calmness and scorn never equalled. Swift approaches regularly, 
leaving no part unwounded, heaping wound on wound, every blow 
sure, knowing beforehand their reach and depth. Poor Steele, a vain, 
thoughtless fellow, is in his hands like Gulliver amongst the giants ; 
it is a pity to see a contest so unequal; and this contest is pitiless. 
Swift crushes him carefully and easily, like an obnoxious animal. 
The unfortunate man, an old officer and semi-literary man, had made 
awkward use of constitutional words: 


‘Upon this rock the author . .. is perpetually splitting, as often as he 
ventures out beyond the narrow bounds of his literature. He has a confused 
remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost half their mean- 
ing, and puts them together with no regard, except to their cadence; as I 





1 Drapier’s Letters, vii. ; Letter 2, 114. 2 Tbid. vii. ; Letter 1, 101, | 
VOL, IL. I 


~ 








130 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK I. 


remember, a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman’s closet, some sidelong, others 
upside down, the better to adjust them to the pannels.’! 


When he judges he is worse than when he proves; witness his Short 
Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton. He pierces him with the 
formulas of official politeness; only an Englishman is capable of such 
phlegm and such haughtiness : 


‘I have had the honour of much conversation with his lordship, and am 
thoroughly convinced how indifferent he is to applause, and how insensible of 
reproach, . . . He is without the sense of shame, or glory, as some men are 
without the sense of smelling ; and therefore, a good name to him is no more than 


a precious ointment would be to these. Whoever, for the sake of others, were to 


describe the nature of a serpent, a wolf, a crocodile or a fox, must be understood 
to do it without any personal love or hatred for the animals themselves. In the 
same manner his excellency is one whom I neither personally love nor hate. I see 
him at court, at his own house, and sometimes at mine, for I have the honour of 
his visits ; and when these papers are public, it is odds but he will tell me, as he 
once did upon a like occasion, ‘‘ that he is damnably mauled,” and then, with the 


easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather, or time of the day ; so that ~ 


I enter on the work with more cheerfulness, because I am sure neither to make 
him angry, nor any way hurt his reputation ; a pitch of happiness and security 
to which his excellency has arrived, and which no philosopher before him could 
reach. Thomas, Earl of Wharton, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, by the force of a 
wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climacteric without any 
visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind ; and in spite of a con- 
tinual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both. . . . Whether he 
walks or whistles, or swears, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in 
each, beyond a templar of three years standing. With the same grace, and in the 
same style, he will rattle his coachman in the midst of the street, where he is 
governor of the kingdom ; and all this is without consequence, because it is his 
character, and what everybody expects. . . . The ends he has gained by lying, 
appear to be more owing to the frequency, than the art of them ; his lies being 
sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and always in a week. ... He 
swears solemnly he loves and will serve you; and your back is no sooner turned, 
but he tells those about him, you are a dog and arascal. He goes constantly to 
prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel 
door. He is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion ; but he chooses 
at present to whore with a papist. In his commerce with mankind, his general 
rule is, to endeavour to impose on their understandings, for which he has but one 
receipt, a composition of lies and oaths. . . . He bears the gallantries of his lady 
with the indifference of a stoick ; and thinks them well recompensed, by a return 
of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father. ... He 
was never yet known to refuse or keep a promise, as] remember he told a lady, 
but with an exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a 
pension), yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I 
desire to distinguish between a promise and a bargain ; for he will be sure to keep 





1 The Public Spirit of the Whigs, iv. 405. See also in the Examiner the 
pamphlet against Marlborough under the name of Crassus, and the comparison 
between Roman generosity and English meanness. 





{ 
‘ 








CHAP. V.] SWIFT, 131 


the latter, when he has the fairest offer. . ... But here I must desire the reader’s 
pardon, if I cannot digest the following facts in so good a manner as I intended ; 
because it is thought expedient, for some reasons, that the world should be in- 
formed of his excellency’s merits as soon as possible. . . . As they are, they may 
serve for hints to any person who may hereafter have a mind to write memoirs of 
his excellency’s life.’+ 


Throughout this piece’ Swift’s voice has remained calm; not a muscle 
of his face has moved; no smile, flash of the eye, gesture ; he speaks 


_ like a statue; but his anger grows by constraint, and burns the more 


that it shines the less. 

This is why his ordinary styie is grave irony. It is the weapon of 
pride, meditation, and force. The man who employs it is self-contained 
in the height of the storm within ; he is too proud to make a show of 
his passion ; he does not take the public into his confidence ; he elects 
to be solitary in his soul; he would be ashamed to surrender; he 
means and knows how to keep absolute possession of himself. Thus 
collected, he understands better and suffers more; no fit of passion 
relieves his wrath or draws away his attention; he feels all the points 
and penetrates to the depths of the opinion which he detests; he 
multiplies his pain and his knowledge, and spares himself neither 
wound nor reflection. We must see Swift in this attitude, impassible 
in appearance, but with stiffening muscles, a heart scorched with hatred, 
writing with a terrible smile such pamphlets as this: 


‘It may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent, to argue against the abolishing 
of Christianity, at a juncture, when all parties appear so unanimously determined 
upon the point. . . . However, I know not how, whether from the affectation of 
singularity, or the perverseness of human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that 
I cannot be entirely of this opinion. Nay, though I were sure an order were 
issued for my immediate prosecution by the attorney-general, I should still confess, 
that in the present posture of our affairs, at home or abroad, I do not yet see the 
absolute necessity of extirpating the Christian religion from among us. This per- 
haps may appear too great a paradox, even for our wise and paradoxical age to 
endure ; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness, and with the utmost defer- 
ence to that great and profound majority, which is of another sentiment... . I 
hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, 
such as used, in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages), to 
have an influence upon men’s belief and actions ; to offer at the restoring of that, 
would indeed be a wild project ; it would be to dig up foundations ; to destroy at 
one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the kingdom. . . . Every candid 
reader will easily understand my discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal 
Christianity ; the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general 
consent, as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power.’? 





1 Swift’s Works, iv. 148. 

2 An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity might be attended 
with some Inconveniences, viii. 184. The Whigs were herein attacked as the friends 
of freethinkers, 


132 THE CLASSIC AGE, 


Let us then examine the advantages which this abolition of the title — 


and name of Christian might have: 


‘ It is likewise urged, that there are, by computation, in this kingdom above ten — q 


thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops, would 
suffice to maintain at least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and 
freethinking, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejudices, 
who might be an ornament to the court and town.’?} 

‘It is likewise proposed as a great advantage to the public that if we once dis- 
card the system of the gospel, all religion will of course be banished for ever; and 
consequently along with it, those privvous prejudices of education, which under 
the names of virtue, conscience, honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb 
the peace of human minds, and the notions whereof are so hard to be eradicated, 
by right reason, or free-thinking.’ ? 


Then he concludes by doubling the insult: 

‘I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to 
murmur, and be shocked at the sight of so many daggled-tail parsons, who hap- 
pen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes; but at the same time, those wise 
reformers do not consider, what an advantage and felicity it is, for great wits to be 
always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and im- 
prove their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on them- 
selves ; especially when all this may be done, without the least imaginable danger 
to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Chris- 
tianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and 
the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject, so calculated in all 
points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit 
should we be deprived of, from those, whose genius, by continual practice, has been 
wholly turned upon raillery and invectives, against religion, and would, therefore, 


never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject? We are _ 


daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away 
the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left ?’% 

‘I do very much apprehend, that in six months time after the act is passed for 
the extirpation of the gospel, the Bank and East India stock may fall at least one 
per cent. And since that is fifty more, than ever the wisdom of our age thought 
fit to venture, for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be 
at so great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it.’ 


Swift is only a combatant, I admit; but when we see at a glance this 
common sense and this pride, this empire over the passions of others, 
and this empire over himself, this force of hatred, and this employment 
of hatred, we judge that there have rarely been such combatants. He 
is a pamphleteer as Hannibal was a condottiere. 


IV. 


On the night after the battle we usually unbend; we sport, we 
make fun, we talk in prose and verse; but this night is a continuation 
of the day, and the mind which leaves its trace in matters of business 
leaves its trace in amusements. 





1 An Argument, etc., 188. 2 Ibid. 192. 3 Ibid. 196, 
* Ibid. 200 ; final words of the Argument. 


. 
. 













CHAP. V. | ~ «SWIFT. 133 


_ What is gayer than Voltaire’s sowées? He rails; but do you find 

any murderous intention in his railleries? He gets angry; but do you 

perceive a malignant or evil character in his passions? In him all is 
amiable. In an instant, through the necessity of action, he strikes, 
caresses, changes a hundred times his tone, his face, with abrupt move- 
ments, impetuous sallies, sometimes as a child, always as a man of the 
world, of taste and conversation. He wishes to entertain me; he con- 
ducts me at once through a thousand ideas, without effort, to amuse 
himself, to amuse me. The agreeable host who desires to please and 
who knows how to please, who only dreads ennui, who does not dis- 
trust me, who is not constrained, who is always himself, who sparkles 
with ideas, naturalness, sportiveness? If I was with him, and he 
rallied me, I should not be angry; I should fall into his tone, I should 
laugh at myself, I should feel that he only wished to pass an agreeable 
hour, that he did not mean it, that he treated me as an equal and a 
guest, that he broke out into pleasantries as a winter fire into sparks, 
and that he was none the less pleasant, wholesome, amusing. 

Heaven grant that Swift may never jest at my expense. The positive 
mind is too solid and too dry to be gay and amiable. When he takes 
to ridicule, he does not sport with it superficially, he studies it; he 
goes into it gravely, masters it, knows all its subdivisions and its proofs. 
This deep knowledge can only produce a withering pleasantry. Swift’s, 
‘at bottom, is but a reductio ad absurdum, altogether scientific. For 
instance, The Art of Political Lying’ is a didactic treatise, whose plan 
might serve for a model. ‘Inthe first chapter of this excellent treatise 
he (the author) reasons philosophically concerning the nature of the 

~ soul of man, and those qualities which render it susceptible of lies. He 
supposes the soul to be of the nature of a pleno-cylindrical speculum, or 
| looking-glass. . . . The plain side represents objects just as they are; 
and the cylindrical side, by the rule of catoptrics, must needs represent 
true objects false, and false objects true. In his second chapter he 
treats of the nature of political lying; in the third of the lawfulness of 
political lying. The fourth chapter is wholly employed in this ques- 
tion, “ Whether the right of coinage of political lies be wholly in the 
government.”’ Again, nothing could be stranger, more worthy of an 
archeological society, than the argument in which he convicts a 
humorous piece of Pope’s? as an insidious pamphlet against the religion 
of the state. His Art of Sinking in Poctry*® has all the appearance of 
good rhetoric; the principles are laid down, the divisions justified ; the 
examples chosen with extraordinary precision and method; it is perfect 
reason employed in the service of folly. 
His passions, like his mind, were too strong. If he wishes to scratch, 
he tears; his pleasantry is gloomy; by way of a joke, he drags his 








1 Arbuthnot is said to have written the whole or at least part of it.—Tr. 
2 The Rape of the Lock. 3 Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift wrote it together. 


134 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book m1. 


reader through all the disgusting details of sickness and death. An 
old shoemaker, Partridge, had turned astrologer ; Swift, imperturbably 
cool, assumes an astrologer’s title, writes maxims on the duties of the » 
profession, and to inspire confidence, begins to predict: 








‘ My first prediction is but a trifle ; yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant 
those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: it relates to Part- 
ridge the almanack-maker ; I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own 
rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at 
night, of a raging fever ; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his 
affairs in time.’ 


The 29th of March being past, he relates how the undertaker came to 
hang Partridge’s rooms ‘in close mourning ;’ then Ned, the sexton, 
asking ‘whether the grave is to be plain or bricked ;’ then Mr. White, 
the carpenter, to screw down the coffin; then the stone-cutter with his. 
monument. Lastly, a successor comes and sets up in the neighbour- 
hood, saying in his printed directions, ‘ that he lives in the house of the 
late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, 
physic, and astrology.’ You may tell beforehand the protestations of 
poor Partridge. Swift in his reply proves that he is dead, and is 
astonished at his hard words: 


‘To call a man a fool and villain, an impudent fellow, only for differing from 
him in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very improper 
style for a person of his education. . . . I will appeal to Mr. Partridge himself, 
whether it be probable I could have been so indiscreet, to begin my predictions, I 
with the only falsehood that ever was pretended to be in them? and this in an a 4 
affair at home.’* : 





Mr. Partridge is mistaken, or deceives the public, or would cheat his 
heirs. This gloomy pleasantry becomes elsewhere still more gloomy. 
Swift pretends that his enemy, the bookseller. Curll, has just been 
poisoned, and relates his agony. A house-surgeon of “a hospital would 
not write a more repulsive diary more coldly. The details, worked out 
with the completeness of a Hogarth, are admirably minute, but disgust- 
ing. We laugh, or rather we grin, as before the vagaries of a madman 
in an asylum. Swift in his gaiety is always tragical; nothing unbends 
him ; even when he serves, he pains you. Inhis Journal to Stella there 
is a sort of imperious austerity ; his compliments are those of a master 

, toa child. The charm and happiness of a young girl of sixteen cannot 

» Soften him. She has just married, and he tells her that love is 
a ‘ridiculous passion, which has no being but in playbooks and 
romances ;’ then he adds, with perfect brutality : 





1 Predictions for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff, ix. 156. 

? These quotations are taken from a humorous pamphlet, Squire Bickerstaff 
Detected, written by Dr. Yalden. See Swift’s Works, ix. 176.—Tr. 

* A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, ix. 186. 





ap aay et 
— 


CHAP. v.] SWIFT. 135 


‘I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex;.. . your sex 
employ more thought, memory, and application to be fools than would serve to 
make them wise and useful. . . . When I reflect on this, I cannot conceive you to 
be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey ; who 
has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal less mischievous and ex- 
pensive, might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I 
know, would equally become them.’! 


Will poetry calm such a mind? Here, as elsewhere, he is most 
unfortunate. He is excluded from great transports of imagination, as well 
as from the lively digressions of conversation. He can attain neither the 
sublime nor the agreeable; he has neither the artist’s rapture, nor the 
~ entertainment of the man of the world. Two similar sounds at the end 
of two equal lines have always consoled the greatest troubles: the old 
muse, after three thousand years, is a young and divine nurse; and 
her song lulls the sickly natures whom she still visits, like the young, 
flourishing races amongst whom she has appeared. The involuntary 
music, in which thought wraps itself, hides ugliness and unveils nature. 
Feverish man, after the labours of the evening and the anguish of the 
night, sees at morning the beaming whiteness of the opening heaven ; 
he gets rid of himself, and the joy of nature from all sides enters with 
oblivion into his heart. If misery pursues him, the poetic afflatus, un- 
able to wipe it out, transforms it ; it becomes ennobled, he loves it, and 
thenceforth he bears it; for the only thing to which he cannot resign 
himself is littleness. Neither Faust nor Manfred have exhausted human 
grief; they drank from the cruel cup a generous wine, they did not 
reach the dregs. They enjoyed themselves and nature; they tasted 
the greatness which was in them, and the beauty of creation; they 
pressed with their bruised hands all the thorns with which necessity 
has made our way thorny, but they saw them blossom with roses, fos- 
tered by the purest of their noble blood. There is nothing of the sort 
in Swift: what is wanting most in his verses is poetry. ‘The positive 
mind can neither love nor understand it; it sees therein only a machine 
or a fashion, and employs it only for vanity and conventionality. When 
in his youth he attempted Pindaric odes, he failed lamentably. I can- 
not remember a line of his which indicates a genuine sentiment of 
nature: he saw in the forests only logs of wood, and in the fields only 
sacks of corn. He employed mythology, as we put on a wig, ill-timed, 
wearily and scornfully. His best piece, Cadenus and Vanessa,’ is a 
poor, threadbare allegory. To praise Vanessa, he supposes that the 
nymphs and shepherds pleaded before Venus, the first against men, the 
second against women; and that Venus, wishing to end the debates, 
made in Vanessa a model of perfection. What can such a conception 
furnish but flat apostrophes and pedantic comparisons? Swift, who 








1 Letter to a very young Lady on her Marriage, ix. 420. 
2 Cadenus and Vanessa, xiv. 441. 





136 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK I. 


somewhere gives a recipe for an epic poem, is here the first to make 
use of it. And even his rude prosaic freaks tear this Greek frippery 
at every turn. He puts a legal procedure into heaven; he makes 
‘Venus use all kinds of technical terms. He introduces witnesses, 
‘questions on the fact, bill with costs dismiss’d.’ They talk so loud 
that the goddess fears to lose her influence, to be driven from Olympus, 
to be 

‘Shut out from heaven and earth, 

Fly to the sea, my place of birth: 

There live with daggled mermaids pent, 

And keep on fish perpetual Lent.’ 


When elsewhere he relates the touching history of Baucis and Philemon,* 
he degrades it by a travesty. He does not love the ancient nobleness 
and beauty; the two gods become in his hands begging friars, Phile- 
mon and Baucis Kentish peasants. For a recompense, their house 
becomes a church, and Philemon a parson: 


‘His talk was now of tithes and dues; 
He smok’d his pipe and read the news. . . . 
Against dissenters would repine, 
And stood up firm for ‘‘right divine.”’ 


Wit luxuriates, incisive, in little compact verses, vigorously coined, of 
extreme conciseness, facility, precision; but compared to La Fontaine, 
it is wine turned vinegar. Even when he comes to the charming 
Vanessa, his vein is still the same: to praise her childhood, he puts her 
name first on the list, as a little model girl, just like a schoolmaster: 
‘ And all their conduct would be tried 

By her, as an unerring guide: 

Offending daughters oft would hear 

Vanessa’s praise rung in their ear : 

Miss Betty, when she does a fault, 

Lets fall her knife, or spills the salt, 

Will thus be by her mother chid : 

‘*°Tis what Vanessa never did!” ? 


A strange way of admiring Vanessa, and of proving his admiration for 
her. He calls her a nymph, and treats her like a school-girl! Cadenus 
‘now could praise, esteem, approve, but understood not what was love!’ 
Nothing could be truer, and Stella felt it, like others. The verses 
which he writes every year on her birthday, are a pedagogue’s censures 
and praises; if he gives her any good marks, it is with restrictions. 
Once he inflicts on her a little sermon on want of patience; again, by 
way of compliment, he concocts this delicate warning : 

‘Stella, this day is thirty-four 

(We shan’t dispute a year or more). 

However, Stella, be not troubled, 

Although thy size and years are doubled 











1 Baucis and Philemon, xiv. 83. 2 Cadenus and Vanessa, xiy. 448. 





CHAP. V.] Swarr « ” 137 


Since first I saw thee at sixteen, 
The brightest virgin on the green 5 
So little is thy form declin’d, 
Made up so largely in thy mind.’ 





And he insists with exquisite taste: 


‘0, would it please the gods to split 
Thy beauty, size, and years and wit! 
No age could furnish out a pair 
Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair.’? 


Decidedly this man is an artisan, strong of arm, terrible at his work 
and in a fray, but narrow of soul, treating a woman as if she were a 
beam. Rhyme and rhythm are only business-like tools, which have 
served him to press and launch his thought; he has put nothing but 
prose into them: poetry was too fine to be grasped by those coarse 
hands. 

But in prosaic subjects, what truth and force! How this masculine 
nakedness crushes the artificial poetry of Addison and Pope! There 
are no epithets; he leaves his thought as he conceived it, valuing it for 
and by itself, needing neither ornaments, nor preparation, nor exten- 
sion; above the tricks of the profession, scholastic conventionalisms, the 
vanity of the rhymester, the difficulties of the art ; master of his subject 
and of himself. This simplicity.and_ naturalness astonish us in verse. 
Here, as elsewhere, his originality is entire, and his genius creative ; he 
surpasses his classical and timid age; he tyrannises over form, breaks 
it, dare utter anything, spares h himself no strong word. Acknowledge 
the greatness of this invention and audacity; he alone is a superior, 
who finds everything and copies nothing. What a biting comicality in 
the Grand Question Debated! He has to represent the entrance of a 
captain into a castle, his airs, his insolence, his folly, and the admiration 
caused by these qualities! The lady serves him first ; the servants stare 
at him : 


‘The parsons for envy are ready to burst ; 
The servants amaz’d are scarce ever able 
To keep off their eyes, as they wait at the table; 
And Molly and I have thrust in our nose 
To peep at the captain in all his fine clothes. 
Dear madam, be sure he’s a fine spoken man, 
Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue ran ; 
*¢ And madam,” says he, ‘‘if such dinners you give, 
You'll ne’er want for parsons as long as you live. 
I ne’er knew a parson without a good nose ; 
But the devil’s as welcome wherever he goes ; 
G—d—me! they bid us reform and repent, 
But, z—s ! by their looks they never keep Lent: 





1 Verses on Stella’s Birthday, March 13, 1718-19, xiv. 469. 


138 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 


Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I’m afraid 
You cast a sheep’s eye on her ladyship’s maid: 

I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand 

In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band ” 
(For the dean was so shabby, and look’d like a ninny, 
That the captain suppos’d he was curate to Jinny). 

‘* Whenever you see a cassock and gown, 

A hundred to one but it covers a clown. 

Observe how a parson comes into a room, 

G—d—me, he hobbles as bad as my groom ; 

A scholard, when just from his college broke loose, 
Can hardly tell how to ery bo to a goose ; 

Your Noveds, and Bluturks, and Omurs,! and stuff, 
By G—, they don’t signify this pinch of snuff ; 

To give a young gentleman right education, 
The army’s the only good school in the nation. 


This has been seen, and herein lies the beauty of Swift’s verses: they 
are personal; they are not developed themes, but impressions felt and 
observations collected. Read The Journal of a Modern Lady, The 
Furniture of a Lady's Mind, and other pieces by the dozen: they are 
dialogues transcribed or opinions put on paper after quitting a drawing- 
room. Zhe Progress of Marriage represents a dean of fifty-two married 
to a young worldly coquette ; do you not see in this title alone all the 
fears of the bachelor of St. Patrick’s? What diary is more familiar and 
more pungent than his verses on his own death? 


‘ «He hardly breathes.” ‘‘ The Dean is dead.” 
Before the passing bell begun, 
The news through half the town has run ; 
**O may we all for death prepare ! 
What has he left ? and who’s his heir? ” 
** T know no more than what the news is; 
*Tis all bequeath’d to public uses.” 
** To public uses! there’s a whim! 
What had the public done for him ? 
Mere envy, avarice, and pride : 
He gave it all—but first he died. 
And had the Dean in all the nation 
No worthy friend, no poor relation ? 
So ready to do strangers good, 
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!” ... 
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay 
A week, and Arbuthnot a day. ... 
My female friends, whose tender hearts 
Have better learn’d to act their parts, 
Receive the news in doleful dumps : 
The Dean is dead (pray what is trumps ?) 
Then, Lord, have mercy on his soul! 
(Ladies, I’ll venture for the vole.) 








1 Ovids, Plutarchs, Homers. 2 The Grand Question Debated, xv. 1538. 


CHAP. V.] | SWIFT. 139 


Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall... 
(I wish I knew what king to call.) 
Madam, your husband will attend 

The funeral of so good a friend ? 

No, madam, ’tis a shocking sight, 

And he’s engaged to-morrow night : 

My Lady Club will take it ill, 

If he should fail her at quadrille. 

He lov’d the Dean—(I lead a heart), 
But dearest friends, they say, must part. 
His time was come: he ran his race ; 
We hope he’s in a better place.’ ' 





Such is the inventory of human friendships. All poetry exalts the 
mind, but this depresses it; instead of concealing reality, it unveils it; 
instead of creating illusions, it removes them. When he wishes to give 
a description of the morning,® he shows us the street-sweepers, the ‘ watch- 
ful bailiffs,’-and imitates the different street cries. When he wishes to 
paint the rain,* he describes ‘ filth of all hues and odours,’ the ‘ swelling 
kennels,’ the ‘dead cats,’ ‘ turnip-tops,’ ‘ stinking sprats,’ which ‘come 
tumbling down the flood.’ His long verses whirl all this filth in their 
eddies. We smile to see poetry degraded to this use ; we seem to be 
at a masquerade; it is a queen travestied into a rough country girl. ~ 
We stop, we look with the sort of pleasure we feel in drinking a 
bitter draught. is always good to know, and in the splendid 
piece which artists show us, we need a manager to tell us the number 
of the hired applauders and of the supernumeraries. 

It would be well if he only drew up such a list! Numbers look 
ugly, but they only affect the mind; other things, the oil of the lamps, 
the odours of the side scenes, all that we cannot name, remains to be 
told. I cannot do more than hint at the length to which Swift carries 
us; but this I must do, for these extremes are the supreme effort of 
his despair and his genius: we must touch upon'them in order to 
measure and know him. He drags poetry not only through the mud, 
but into the filth; he rolls in it like a raging madman, he enthrones 
himself in it, and bespatters all passers-by. Compared with his, all 
foul words are decent and agreeable. In Aretin and Brantéme, in La 
Fontaine and Voltaire, there is a suspicion of pleasure. With the first 
unchecked sensuality, with the others malicious gaiety, are excuses ; 
we are.scandalised, not disgusted; we do not like to see in a mana 
bull’s fury or an ape’s buffoonery ; but the bull is so eager and strong, 
the ape so spirited and smart, that we end by looking on or being 
amused. Then, again, however coarse the pictures may be, they speak 
of the accompaniments of love; Swift touches only upon the results of 
digestion, and that only with disgust and revenge; he pours them out 





1 On the Death of Dr. Swift, xiv. 331. 2 Swift’s Works, xiv. 93. 
8 A Description of a City Shower, xiv. 94, 


140 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Boox 1m. 


with horror and sneering at the wretches whom he describes. He must 
not in this be compared to Rabelais: that good giant, that drunken 
doctor, rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking no evil; 
the dunghill is warm, convenient, a fine place to philosophise and sleep 
off one’s wine. Raised to this enormity, and enjoyed with this heedless- 
ness, the bodily functions become poetical. When the casks are emptied 
down his throat, and the viands are gorged, we sympathise with so much 
bodily comfort ; in the heavings of this colossal belly and the laughter 
of this homeric mouth, we see, as through a mist, the relics of bacchanal 
religions, the fecundity, the monstrous joy of nature; these are the 
splendours and disorders of its first births. The cruel positive mind, 
on the contrary, clings only to vileness ; it will only see what is behind 
things; armed with sorrow and boldness, it spares no ignoble detail, 
no obseene word. Swift enters the dressing-room,! relates the disen- 
chantments of love,’ dishonours it by a medley of drugs and physic,® 
describes the cosmetics and a great many more things.* He takes his 
evening walk by solitary walls,” and in these pitiable pryings has his 
microscope ever in his hand. Judge what he sees and suffers; this is 
his ideal beauty and his jesting conversation, and you may fancy that he 
has for philosophy, as for poetry and politics, execration and disgust. 


V. 


He wrote the Tale of a Tub at Sir W care 
reading, as an abstract of truth and science ence this tale is ge 
satire of all science and all truths 

Of religion first. He seems here to defend the Church of Englanges 
but what church and what creed are not involved in his attack ? To 
enliven his subject, he profanes and reduces questions of dogma to a 
question of clothes. A father had three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack; 
he left each of them a coat at his death,® warning them to wear it clean 
and brush it often. The three brothers obeyed for some time, and 
travelled sensibly, slaying ‘a reasonable quantity of giants and dragons.’’ 
Unfortunately, having come up to a town, they adopted its manners, 
fell in love with several fashionable ladies, the Duchess d’Argent, 
Madame de Grands Titres, and the Countess d’Orgueil,® and to gain 
their favours, began to live as gallants, taking snuff, swearing, rhyming, 
and contracting debts, keeping horses, fighting duels, whoring, killing 
bailiffs. A sect was established who 

‘Held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which invests everything: 
that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by the stars, and the stars 




















1 The Lady’s Dressing-room. 2 Strephon and Chloe. 

3 A Love Poem from a Physician. * The Progress of Beauty. 

> The Problem, and The Examination of Certain Abuses. 

6 Christian truth. 7 Persecutions and contests of the primitive church. 

8 Covetousness, ambition, and pride ; the three vices that the ancient fathers 
inveighed against, 


i) 
: Lae * 
PES yar id “ 


. 
iy 
bs 
ns 
BI 














CHAP. V.] . SWIFT. 141 


are invested by the primum mobile... . What is that which some call land, but 
a fine coat faced with green ? or the sea, but a waistcoat of water-tabby?... You 
will find how curious journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the vegetable beaux ; 
observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet 
of white sattin is worn by the birch. ... Is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair 
of shoes worn out in the dirt ; self-love a surtout ; vanity a shirt ; and conscience 
a pair of breeches ; which, though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is 
easily slipt down for the service of both ?. . . If certain ermines and furs be placed 
in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn 
and black sattin, we entitle a bishop.’ ? 


Others held also ‘that the soul was the outward, and the body the 
inward clothing. . . . This last they proved by Scripture, because in 
them we live, and move, and have our being.’ Thus our three brothers, 
having only very simple clothes, were embarrassed. For instance, the 
fashion at this time was for shoulder-knots, and their father’s will 
expressly forbade them to ‘add to or diminish from their coats one 
thread :’ 


‘In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father’s will, 
read it over and over, but not a word of theshoulder-knot. . . . After much thought, 
one of the brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than the other two, 
- said, he had found an expedient. ‘‘ It is true,” said he, ‘‘ there is nothing in this 
will, totidem verbis, making mention of Shoulder-Knot ; but I dare conjecture, we 
may find them inclusiggg or totidem syllabis.” This distinction was immediately 
approved by all ; QB fell again to examine ; but their evil star had so 
directed the matter, TWat the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writ- 
_ings. Upon which disappointment, he, who found the former evasion, took heart 
- and said: ‘‘ Brothers, there are yet hopes, for though we cannot find them totidem 
verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we shall make them out ¢ertio modo, or 
totidem litteris.” This discovery was also highly commended ; upon which they 
fell once more to the scrutiny, and picked out s, H, 0, U, L, D, EB, R ; when the same 
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was not to be 
found. Here was a weighty difficulty ; but the distinguishing brother... now 
his hand was in, proved by a very good argument, that K was a modern illegiti- 
mate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be found in ancient 
manuscripts. ... Upon this all farther difficulty vanished ; shoulder-knots were 
made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as 
large and flaunting ones as the best.’? 


Other interpretations admitted gold lace, and a codicil authorised flame- 
coloured satin linings : 


‘Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the corporation of fringe- 
makers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and accord- 
ing to the laudable custom gave rise to that fashion. Upon which the brothers 
consulting their father’s will, to their great astonishment found these words: 
**Ttem, I charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver-fringe 
upon or about their said coats,” etc. .. . However, after some pause, the brother 
so often mentioned for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had found 
in a certain author, which he said should be nameless, that the same word, which 





1A Tale of a Tub, xi. sec. 2, 79. 7 Ibid. 83. 


142 THE CLASSIC AGE, [BOOK III, 


in the will is called fringe, does also signify a broomstick: and doubtless ought 
to have the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the brothers 
disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceived, 
in propriety of speech, be reasonably applied to a broomstick ; but it was replied 
upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical sense. 


However, he objected again, why their father should forbid them to wear a broom-. 


stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and impertinent ; upon 
which, he was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently of a mystery, which 
doubtless was very useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried 
into, or nicely reasoned upon.’? 


In the end the scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther 
‘ evasions,’ locked up the old will in a strong box, authorised by tradi- 
tion the fashions which became him, and having contrived to be left 
a legacy, styled himself My Lord Peter. His brothers, treated like 
servants, were discarded from his house; they reopened the will of 
their father, and began to understand it. Martin the Anglican, to 
reduce his clothes to the primitive simplicity, brought off a large hand- 
ful of points, stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe, rid his coat of 
a huge quantity of gold-lace, but kept a few embroideries, which could 
not ‘be got away without damaging the cloth.’ Jack the Puritan tore 
off all in his enthusiasm, and was found in tatters, moreover envious 
of Martin, and half mad. He then joined the olists, or inspired 
admirers of the wind, who pretend that the pik 2 or breath, or wind, 
is heavenly, and contains all knowledge : 


‘ First, it is generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and 
secondly they proved it by the following syllogism: words are but wind; and 
learning is nothing but words ; ergo learning is nothing but wind. . . . This, when 
blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid 
under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and 
others of equal weight, the wise Aolists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest 
act of a rational creature. ... At certain seasons of the year, you might behold 
the priests among them in vast number... linked together in a circular chain, 
with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour’s breech, by which they 
blew each other to the shape and size of a tun; and for that reason with great 
propriety of speech, did usually call their bodies their vessels.’ ? 


After this explanation of theology, religious quarrels, and mystical 
inspirations, what is left, even of the Anglican Church? She is a 
sensible, useful, political cloak, but what else? Like a brush used with 
too strong a hand, the buffoonery has carried away the cloth as well 
as the stain. Swift has put out a fire, I allow; but, like Gulliver at 
Lilliput, the people saved by him must hold their nose, to admire the 
right application of the liquid, and the energy of the engine that saves 
them. 

Religion drowned, he turns against science; for the digressions 


aT mee mere pecans am Sn 


with which he interrupts his story to confute and mock the modern 





1A Tale of a Tub, 88, 2 Ibid. sec. 8, 146, 








if , 
if 
in 
(i 

F 
» 
it 

{ Wy 
i 
4 

| 

‘ é 


CHAP. V.] SWIFT. 143 


sages are attached to his tale by the slenderest ties. The book opens 
with introductions, prefaces, dedications, and other appendices generally 
employed to swell books—violent caricatures heaped up against the 
vanity and prolixity of authors. He professes himself one of them, 
and announces their discoveries. Admirable discoveries! The first of 
their commentaries will be on 

* Tom Thumb, whose author was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise 
contains the whole scheme of the Metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the 
soul through all her stages. Whittington and his Cat is the work of that myste- 
rious rabbi Jehuda Hannasi, containing a defence of the Gemara of the Jerusalem 
Misna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary to the vulgar opinion.’? 


He himself announces that he is going to publish ‘ A Panegyrical Essay 
upon the Number Three; a General History of Ears; a Modest Defence 
of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages; an Essay on the Art of 
Canting, philosophically, physically, and musically considered ;’ and he 
engages his readers to try by their solicitations to get from him these 
treatises, which will change the appearance of the world. Then, turn- 
ing against the philosophers and the critics, sifters of texts, he proves 
to them, according to their own fashion, that the ancients mentioned 
them. Can we find anywhere a more biting parody on forced inter- 
pretations : 


‘ The types are so apposite and the applications so necessary and natural, that 
it is not easy to conceive how any reader of a modern age or taste could overlook 
them. . . . For first; Pausanias is of an opinion, that the perfection of writing 
correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics ; and, that he can possibly 
mean no other than the true critic is, I think, manifest from the following descrip- 
tion. He says, they were a race of men, who delighted to nibble at the super- 
fluities and excrescences of books ; which the learned at length observing, took 
warning, of their own accord, to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the 
sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works. But now, all this he cun- 
ningly shades under the following allegory: that the Nauplians in Argos learned 
the art of pruning their vines, by observing that when an ass had browsed upon 
one of them, it thrived the better, and bore fairer fruits. Herodotus, holding the 
very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer, and almost in terminis. He has been 
so bold as to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice ; telling us openly, for I 
think nothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya, there were asses 
with horns,’ 


Then follow a multitude of pitiless sarcasms. Swift has the genius of 
insult; he is an inventor of irony, as Shakspeare of poetry; and as 
beseems an extreme force, he goes to extremes in his thought and 
art. He lashes reason after r science, and leaves nothing of the whole 

man mi With a medical seriousness he establishes that vapours 














are exhaled from the whole body, which, ‘ getting possession of the 


brain,’ leave it healthy if they are not abundant, but excite it if they 





1A Tale of a Tub, Introduction, 72. 
2 Ibid. sec. 8; A Digression concerning Critics, 97, 


144 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL, 


are; that in the first case they make peaceful individuals, in the second 
great politicians, founders of religions, and deep philosophers, that is, 
fools, so that folly is the source of all human genius and all the institu- 
tions of the universe. This is why it is very wrong to keep men shut 
up in Bedlam, and a commission appointed to examine them would 
find in this academy imprisoned geniuses ‘ which might produce ad- 
mirable instruments for the several offices in a state ecclesiastical, civil, 
and military.’ 

‘Is any student tearing his straw in piece-meal, swearing and blaspheming, 
biting his grate, foaming at the mouth? .. . let the right worshipful commis- 
sioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders 
among the rest. .. . You will find a third gravely taking the dimensions of his 
kennel ; a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark. . . . He 
walks duly in one pace . . . talks much of hard times and taxes and the whore 
of Babylon ; bars up the wooden window of his cell constantly at eight o’clock, 
dreams of fire. . . . Now what a figure would all those acquirements amount to if 
the owner were sent into the city among his brethren! Now is it not amazing to 
think the society of Warwick-lane should have no more concern for the recovery 
of so useful a member? . . . I shall not descend so minutely, as to insist upon the 
vast number of beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover 
by such a reformation. . . . Even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, 
am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to 
run away with his reason, which I have observed, from long experience, to be a 
very light rider, and easily shaken off; upon which account my friends will never 
trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this, or the 
like manner, for the universal benefit of mankind.’ } 


Wretched he who knows himself and mocks himself. What madman’s 
laughter, and what a sob in this hoarse gaiety! What remains for him 
but to slaughter the remainder of human invention? Who does not 
see here the despair from which sprang the academy of Lagado? Is 
there not here a foretaste of madness in this intense meditation of 
absurdity? His mathematician, who, to teach geometry, makes his 
pupils swallow wafers on which he writes his theorems; his moralist, 
who, to reconcile political parties, proposes to saw off the occiput and 
brain of each ‘ opposite party-man,’ and ‘to let the occiputs thus cut 
off be interchanged ;’ his economist again, who tries ‘ to reduce human 
excrement to its original food.’ Swift is akin to these, and is the most 
wretched of all, because he nourishes his mind, like them, on filth and 
folly, and he has more knowledge and disgust than they. 

It is sad to exhibit human folly, it is sadder to exhibit human per- 
versity: the heart is more a part of ourselves than reason: we suffer 
less in seeing extravagance and folly than wickedness and baseness, 
and I find Swift more agreeable in his Tale of a Tub than in Gulliver, 

All his talent and all his passions are assembled in this*book; the 
positive mind has impressed upon it its form and force. There is 





1A Tale of a Tub; A Digression concerning Madness, sec, 11, 167. 








. ke Le ee eee , =i, ties tS fh — s/s ert ee ch 
7 _- % * r+, a 





CHAP. V.] SWIFT. - 145 


nothing agreeable in the fiction or the style; it is the journal of an 
ordinary man, a surgeon, then a captain, who describes coolly and 
sensibly the events and objects which he has seen; no feeling for the 


beautiful, no_appearance_of ‘admiration-or passion, no accent. Banks 
and Cook relate thus. Swift only seeks the natural, and he attains it. 


His art consists in taking an absurd supposition, and deducing seriously. 
the effects to which it tends Is the logical a and technical mind of a 
mechanician, who, imagining the decrease or increase in a wheelwork, 

perceives the result of the changes, and writes down the record. His 
whole pleasure is in seeing these results clearly, and by a solid reason- 
ing. He marks the dimensions, and so forth, like a good engineer and 
a statistician, omitting no trivial and positive detail, explaining cookery, 
stabling, politics: in this he has no equal but De Foe. The loadstone 
‘machine which sustains the flying island, the entrance of Gulliver’ in 
Lilliput, and the inventory of his property, his arrival and maintenance 
among the Yahoos, carry us with them; no mind knew better the 
ordinary laws of nature and human life; no mind shut itself up more 
strictly in this knowledge; none was ever more exact or more limited. 

But what a vehemence in this dryness! How ridiculous our interests— 
and passions seem, degraded to the littleness of Lilliput, or compared 
to the vastness of Brobdignag! What is beauty, when the hand- 
somest body, seen with piercing eyes, seems horrible? What is our 
power, when an insect, king of an ant-hill, can be called, like our 
princes, ‘sublime majesty, delight and terror of the universe?’ What 
is our homage worth, when a pigmy ‘is taller, by almost the breadth 
of a nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe 
into his beholders?’ Three-fourths of our sentiment are follies, and 
the weakness of our organs is the only cause of our veneration or 
love. 

Society repels us still more than man. At Laputa, at Lilliput, 
amongst the horses and giants, Swift rages against it, and is never tired 
of abusing and reviling it. In his eyes, ‘ignorance, idleness, and 
vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; laws are 
best~explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose mteneet and 
abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.’* A noble 
is a wretch, corrupted body and soul, ‘combining in himself all the 
diseases aad vices transmitted by ten generations of rakes and rascals. 
A lawyer is a hired liar, wont by twenty years of roguery to pervert 
the truth if he is an advocate, and to sell it if he is a judge. A minister 
of state is a go- -between, who, having disposed of his wife,’ or brawled 
for the public good, is master of all offices; and who, in order better 
to rob the money of the nation, buys members of the House of Commons 
with the same money. A prince is a practiser of all the vices, unable 
to employ or love an honest man, persuaded that ‘the royal throne 








1 Swift’s Works, xii. Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, ch. 6, p. 171. 
VOL. II, K 


146 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 11. 


could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confi- 
dent, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual 
clog to public business.’ At Lilliput the king chooses as his ministers 
those who dance best upon the tight-rope. At Luggnagg he compels 
all those, who are presented to him, to crawl on their bellies and lick 
the dust. 


‘When the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle, in- 


dulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder — ia 
of a deadly composition, which, being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four 


hours. But in justice to this prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his 


subjects’ lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of Europe ~ 


would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are 
given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution. 
. . « L myself heard him give directions that one of his pages should be whipped, 
whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but 
maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect, a young lord of great hopes coming 
to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the prince at that time had 
no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the 
poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special 
orders,’ ? 


All these fictions of giants, pigmies, flying islands, are means for 
depriving human nature of the veils with which habit and imagination 
cover it, to display it in its truth and its ugliness. There is still one 
cloak to remove, the most deceitful and familiar. Swift must take away 
that appearance of reason in which we deck ourselves. He must sup- 
press the sciences, arts, combinations of societies, inventions of indus- 
tries, whose brightness dazzles us. .He must discover the Yahoo in 

Atenas weenie ~ 
man. What a spectacle! 

‘ At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind 
sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed. . . . Their heads 
and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank ; they 
had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the forepart 
of their legs and feet; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might see 
their skins, which were of a brown. buff colour. . . . They climbed high trees as 
nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, termi- 
nating in sharp points and hooked... . The females. . . had long lank hair on their 
head, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on the rest 
of their bodies. . . . Upon the whole I never beheld in all my travels so disagree- 
able an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so great. an antipathy.’* 


According to Swift, such are our brothers. He finds in them all our 
instincts. They hate each other, tear each other with their talons, with 
hideous contortions and yells: such is the source of our quarrels. If 
they find a dead cow, although they are but five, and there is enough 
for fifty, they strangle and wound each other: such is a picture of our 





1 Gulliver’s Travels, Part 3, ch. 8, p. 258. 
* Ibid. Part 8, ch. 9, p. 264. 5 Ibid. Part 4, ch. 1, p. 286. 











ho ee ee Se ON —s ae Ss 
7 J 7 r , 
' rape * oae 


CHAP. V.] SWIFT. 147 


greed and our wars. They dig up precious stones and hide them in 
their kennels, and watch them ‘with great caution,’ pining and howling 
when robbed: such is the origin of our love of gold. They devour 
indifferently ‘ herbs, berries, roots, the corrupted flesh of animals,’ pre- 
ferring ‘ what they could get by rapine or stealth,’ gorging themselves 
till they vomit or burst: such is the portrait of our gluttony and injus- 
ice. They have a kind of juicy and unwholesome root, which they 
‘would suck with great delight,’ till they ‘ howl, and grin, and chatter,’ 
mbracing or scratching each other, then reeling, hiccuping, wallowing 
the mud: such is a picture of our drunkenness. 


‘In most herds there was a sort of ruling yahoo, who was always more deformed 

in body, and mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest : that this leader had 

_ usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment was to lick 

his master’s feet, . . . and drive the female yahoos to his kennel ; for which he 

was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass’s flesh. . . . He usually continues 
in office till a worse can be found.’ ? 


Such is an abstract of our government. And yet he gives prefer- 
ence to the Yahoos over men, saying that our wretched reason has 
aggravated and multiplied these vices, and concluding with the king 
of Brobdignag that our species is ‘the most pernicious race of little 
odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of 
the earth.’ ? 

Five years after this treatise on man, he wrote in favour of unhappy 
Ireland a pamphlet which is like the last effort of his despair and his 
genius.” I give it almost whole; it deserves it. I know Bophing. like 
it in any literature : 


‘It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel 
in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors crowded with 
beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and 
importuning every passenger for an alms. . . . I think it is agreed by all parties 
that this prodigious number of children . . . is, in the present deplorable state of 
the kingdom, a very great additional grievance ; and therefore, whoever could find 
out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, easy members 
of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue 
set up for a preserver of the nation. . . . I shall now, therefore, humbly propose 
my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.’ * 


When we know Swift, such a beginning frightens us: 


‘I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in Lon- 
don, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, 
nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ; and I 
make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. 





1 Gulliver’s Travels, Part 4, ch. 7, p. 337. ? Ibid. Part 2, ch. 6, p. 172. 
8 A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of the poor people in Ireland 
Srom becoming a burden on their parents or country, and for making them bene- 


Jicial to the public. 
4 Tbid. vii. 454. 





148 THE CLASSIC AGE. | [BOOK Tit. 


‘I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and 
twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for 
breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; . . . that the remaining hundred 
thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune 
through the kingdom ; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in 


the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will ~ is 


make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, 
the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little 
pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.’ 

‘I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve 
pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight 
pounds. 

‘I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list 
I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers), to be about two 
shillings per annum, rags included ; and I believe no gentleman would repine to 
give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will 
make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. 

‘ Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may flay 
the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for 
ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. 

‘ As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the 
most convenient parts of it ; and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting ; 
although I rather recommend buying the children alive, than dressing them hot 
from the knife, as we do roasting pigs. . . 

‘I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made, are obvious and 
many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, 
it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, 
being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies. 

. Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand children, from two 
years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per 
annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per 
annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of 
fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will 
circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manu- 
facture. . . . Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise 
nations have either encouraged by’ rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It 
would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they 
were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the 
public, to their annual profit or expense.... Many other advantages might be 
enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcases in our exportation 
of barrelled beef; the propagation of swine’s flesh, and the improvement in the art 
of making good bacon... . But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of 
brevity. 

‘ Some persohs of desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast num- 
ber of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed ; and I have been desired to 
employ my thoughts, what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous 
an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter ; because it is 
very well known, that they are every day dying and rotting, by cold and famine, 
and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young 
labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition ; they cannot get work, 
and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree, that, if at any 





= 


CHAP. V.] 3 SWIFT. 149 


time they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not strength to per- 
form it ; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils 
to come. 

‘I profess, in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal 
interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive 
than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, 
relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by 
which I can propose to get a single penny ; the youngest being nine years old, and 
my wife past child-bearing.’ + 


Much has been said of unhappy great men, Pascal, forinstance. I think 
that his cries and his anguish are faint compared to this calm treatise. 
Such was this great and unhappy genius, the greatest of the classical 
age, the most unhappy in history, English throughout, whom the ex- 
cess of his English qualities inspired and consumed, having this in- 
tensity of desires, which is the main feature of the race, the enormity of 
pride which the habit of liberty, command, and success has impressed 
upon the nation, the solidity of the positive mind which the pursuit of 
business has established in the country ; precluded from power and_ 
action by his unchecked passions and his intractable pride ; excluded 

















“from poetry and ‘philosophy by the clear- -sightedness and narrowness of 











his ene aad th deprived of the. “consolations offered by contem- 


plative life, and the. a by practical life ; too superior 


the-wide® weainatlics which sty all parties ; ; cudsonet bet his parare 
and surroundings to fight without loving a cause, to write without being 
attached to the art, to think without attaining a dogma, a condottiere 
against parties, a misanthrope against man, a sceptic against beauty and 
truth. But these very surroundings, and this very nature, which ex- 
pelled him from happiness, love, power, and science, raised him, in this 
age of French imitation and classical moderation, to a wonderful height, 
where, by the originality and power of his inventions, he is the equal 
of Byron, Milton, and Shakspeare, and shows pre-eminently the spirit 
of his nation. Sensibility, a positive mind, and pride, forged for him a 
unique style, of terrible vehemence, withering calmness, practical effec- 
tiveness, tempered with scorn, truth, and hatred, a weapon of vengeance 
and war which made his enemies cry out and die under its point and its 
poison. A pamphleteer against opposition and government, he tore or 
crushed his adversaries with his irony or his sentences, with the tone of 
a judge, a sovereign, and a hangman. A man of the world and a poet, 
he invented a cruel pleasantry, funereal laughter, a convulsive gaiety of 
bitter contrasts; and whilst dragging the mythological harness, as if it 
were a compulsory rag, he created a personal poetry by painting the 
crude details of trivial life, by the energy of a painful grotesqueness, by 





1A Modest Proposal, etc., 457. 


s revelation rf the filth we conc 
osophy, he created a realistic poem, a 
ry, ab sur. aS a eam, credible 
pasa dish clout set like a crown on nth 
miseries and his force: we quit suc 
. phat: bisier, but full of admiration; and we say that a- 
- tiful even when it is on fire, Antists will add: 








Res, ea eet 





a " Ties eee) Uk le aa PH EON wt ‘oo | oN 
a 3. ype CS en ek ae Se * 4 i Se heh : 
= A hot ty ' ' - i ‘ 

r ‘ i 
; A ‘ 
re 


THE NOVELISTS. | 151- 





CHAPTER VL 


The Novelists. 





. Characteristic of the English novel—How it differs from others. 
al De Foe—His life—Energy, devotion, his part in politics—Spirit—Differ- 
7 ence of old and modern realists —- Works — Career — Aim — Robinsor 
Crusoe—How this character is English — Inner enthusiasm—Obstinate 
will—Patience in work—Methodical common sense—Religious emotions 
—Final piety. 

III. Circumstances which gave rise to the novels of the eighteenth century—All 
these novels are moral fictions and studies of character—Connexion of 
the essay and the novel—Two i notions in morality—How they 
produce two kinds of novels. 

IV. Richardson—Condition and character—Connexion of his perspicacity and 
his rigour — Talent, minuteness, combinations — Pamela — Her mood 
—Principles—The English wife—Clarissa Harlowe—The Harlowe family 
—Despotic and unsociable characteristics in England—Clarissa— Her 
energy, coolness, logic—Her pedantry and scruples—Sir Charles Grandi- 
son—Incongruities of automatic and edifying heroes—Richardson as a 

preacher—Prolixity, prudery, emphasis. 

‘~ V. Fielding—Mood, character, and life—Joseph Andrews—His conception 

sf of nature—Zom Jones—Character of the squire—Fielding’s heroes— 
Amelia—Faults in her conception. 

VI. Smollett—Roderick Random—Peregrine Pickle—Comparison of Smollett 

and Lesage—Conception of lite—Harshness of his heroes—Coarseness 
. of his pictures—Standing out of his characters—Humphrey Clinker. 
| VII. Sterne—Excessive study of human particularities —Sterne’s character— 
Eccentricity—Sensibility—Obscenity—Why he depicts the diseases and 
| degeneracies of humanity. 
mee VIII. Goldsmith—Purification of the novel—Picture of citizen life, upright hap- 
7 piness, Protestant virtue—The Vicar of Wakefield—The English clergy- 
man. 
IX. Samuel Johnson—His authority—Person—Manners— Life— Doctrines — 
nid Opinion of Voltaire and Rousseau—Style—W orks—Hogarth—Moral and 
7 realistic painting—Contrast of English temperament and morality—How 
- morality has disciplined temperament, 


I. 
MIDST these finished and perfect writings a new kind makes its 
appearance, appropriate to the public tendencies and circum- 


stances, the anti-romantic novel, the work and the reading of positive 
minds, observers and moralists, destined not to exalt and amuse the 


152 | THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


imagination, like the novels of Spain and the middle ages, not to re- 
produce or embellish conversation, like the novels of France and the 
seventeenth century, but to-depict real life, to describe characters, to 

’ suggest plans of conduct, and judge motives of action. It was a strange 
apparition, and like the voice of a people buried underground, when, 
amidst the splendid corruption of high life, this severe emanation of the 
middie class welled up, and when the obscenities of Mrs. Aphra Behn, 
still the diversion of ladies of fashion, were found on the same table 
with De Foe’s Robinson Crusoe. 


Tl, 


De Foe, a dissenter, a pamphleteer, a journalist, a novel-writer, 
successively a hosier, a tile-maker, an accountant, was one of those 
indefatigable labourers and obstinate combatants, who, ill-treated, 
calumniated, imprisoned, succeeded by their uprightness, common 
sense, and energy, in gaining England over to their side. At twenty- 
three, having taken arms for Monmouth, he was fortunate in not being 
hung or transported. Seven years later he was ruined, and obliged to 
hide. In 1702, for a pamphlet misunderstood, he was condemned to 
pay a fine, was set in the pillory, had his ears cut off, was imprisoned 
two years in Newgate, and only the charity of Godolphin prevented 
his wife and six children from dying of hunger. Being released and 
sent as a commissioner to Scotland, to treat about the union of the two 
countries, he had a narrow escape of being stoned. Another pamphlet, 
again misconceived, sent him to prison, compelled him to pay a fine of 
eight hundred pounds, and only just in time he received the queen’s 
pardon. He was caricatured, robbed, and slandered. He was obliged 
to protest against the plagiarists who borrowed and altered his works 
for their benefit; against the neglect of the Whigs, who did not find 
him tractable enough ; against the animosity of the Tories, who saw in 
him the chief champion of the Whigs. In the midst of his self-defence 
he was struck with apoplexy, and continued to defend himself from his 
bed. Yet he lived, but with great difficulty ; poor and burdened with 

family, he turned, at fifty-five, to fiction, and wrote successively Moll 
Flanders, Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack, the History 
of the Great Plague in London, etc. This vein exhausted, he diverged 
and tried another—the Complete English Tradesman, a Tour through 
Great Britain. Death comes on; poverty remains. In vain had he 
written in prose, in verse, on all subjects, poljtical and religious, acci- 
dental or moral, satires and novels, histories and poems, travels and 
pamphlets, commercial essays and statistical information, in all two 
hundred and ten works, not of verbiage, but of arguments, documents, 
and facts, crowded and piled one upon another with such prodigality, 
that the memory, thought, and application of one man seem too small 
for such a labour; he died penniless, in debt. However we regard his 
life, we see only prolonged efforts and persecutions. Joy seems to be 








THE NOVELISTS. - 153 


wanting; the idea of the beautiful never enters. _When he comes 
to fiction, it is like a Presbyterian and a plebeian, with low subjects 
and moral aims, to treat of the adventures and reform the. conduct 
of thieves and prostitutes, workmen and sailors. His whole delight 

_ was to think that he had a service to perform, and that he was per- 
forming it : 

‘He that opposes his own judgment against the current of the times ought to 
be backed with unanswerable truth ; and he that has truth on his side, is a fool as 
well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it, because of the multitude of other men’s 
opinions. Tis hard for a man to say, all the world is mistaken, but himself. But 
if it be so, who can help it?’ 


De Foe is like one of those brave, obscure, and useful soldiers who, 
with empty belly and burdened shoulders, go through their duties with 
their feet in the mud, pocket blows, receive day by day the fire of the 
enemy, and sometimes that of their friends into the bargain, and die 
sergeants, happy if it has been their lot to get hold of the legion of 
honour. 

He had the kind of mind suitable to such a hard service, solid, 
exact, entirely destitute of refinement, enthusiasm, pleasantness.* His 
imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed{ 
and, as it were, jammed down with facts. He tells them as they 
come to him, without arrangement or style, like a conversation, with- 
out dreaming of producing an effect or composing a phrase, employing 
technical terms and vulgar forms, repeating himself at need, using 
the same thing two or three times, not seeming to suspect that there 
are methods of amusing, touching, engrossing, or pleasing, with no 
desire but to pour out on paper the fulness of the information with 
which he is charged. Even in fiction his information is as precise 
as in history. He gives dates, year, month, and day; notes the 
wind, north-east, south-west, north-west; he writes a log-book, an 
invoice, attorneys’ and shopkeepers’ bills, the number of moidores, 
interest, specie payments, payments in kind, cost and sale prices, the 
share of the king, of religious houses, partners, brokers, net totals, 
statistics, the geography and hydrography of the island, so that the 
reader is tempted to take an atlas and draw for himself a little map of 
the place, to enter into all the details of the history as clearly and fully 
as the author. It seems as though he had performed all, Crusoe’s 
labours, so exactly does he describe them, with numbers, cunts 
dimensions, like a carpenter, potter, or an old tar. Never was such a 
sense of the real before or since. Our realists of to-day, painters, 
anatomists, decidedly men of business, are very far from this natural- 
ness ; art and calculation crop out amidst their too minute descriptions. 
De Foe creates illusion ; for it is not the eye which deceives us, but the 





1 See his dull poems, amongst others Jure Divino, a poem in twelve books, in 
defence of every man’s birthright by nature. 





ey 


154 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


mind, and that literally: his account of the great plague has more than 
once passed for true; and Lord Chatham took his Memoirs of a Cava- 
ler for authentic. This was his aim. In the preface to the old edition 
of Robinson Crusoe it is said: 
‘The story is told . . . to the instruction of others by this example, and to 
ustify and honour the wisdom of Providence. The editor believes the thing to be 
just history of facts ; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.’ 


All his talents lie in this, and thus even his imperfections aid him; his 
lack of art becomes a profound art ; his negligence, repetitions, prolixity, 
contribute to the illusion: we cannot imagine that such and such a 
detail, so minute, so dull, is invented; an inventor would have sup- 
pressed it ; it is too tedious to have been putin on purpose: art chooses, 
embellishes, interests ; art, therefore, cannot have piled up this heap of 
dull and vulgar accidents ; it is the truth. 

_ Read, for instance, A True Relation of the A pparition of one Mrs. 
Veal, whe’ next Day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, 
the 8th of September 1705 ; which ‘Apparition recommends the perusal of 
Drelincourt’s Book of Consolation against the Fear of Death ‘The 
ancient threepenny little books, read by old needlewomen, are not more 
monotonous. ‘There is such an array of circumstantial and guaranteed 
details, such a file of witnesses quoted, referred to, registered, compared, 
such a perfect appearance of tradesman-like honesty, coarse, vulgar 
common sense, that one would take the author for an. honest retired 
hosier, with too little brains to invent a story ; no writer careful of his 
reputation would have composed such nonsense. In fact, it was not his 
reputation that De Foe cared for ; he had other motives in his head; we 
literary men of the present time cannot guess them, being literary men 
only. In short, he wanted to sell a pious book of Drelinecourt, which 
would not sell of itself, and in addition, to confirm people in their belief 
by advocating the appearance of ghosts. It was the grand proof then 
brought to bear on sceptics. Grave Dr. Johnson himself tried to see a 
ghost, and no event of that time was more appropriate to the belief of 
the middle class. Here, as elsewhere, De Foe, like Swift, is a man of 
action ; effect, not noise touches him; he composed Robinson Crusoe to 
warn the impious, as Swift wrote the life of the last man hung to inspire 
thieves with terror. In this positive and religious age, amidst these 
political and puritan citizens, practice is of such importance as to reduce 
art to the condition of its tool. 

Never was art the tool of a more moral or more English work. 
Crusoe is quite one of his race, and might instruct it in the present day. 
He has that force of will, inner enthusiasm, dull ferment of a violent 
examination which formerly produced the sea-kings, and now produces 
emigrants and squatters. The misfortunes of his two brothers, the 





1 Compare Edgar Poe’s Case of M. Waldemar. The American is a suffering 
artist ; De Foe a sensible citizen. 





\ 
; 
Fi 


Sy Palate aces ee Se a ) 


Cg - eo ee eee ¥ = -v = nd » Lae , =) . vf * * i Se fas! 
BEY se Wits hc, Ue eT ee ae ey oe (7) a ooo. hoe 


CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 155 


tears of his relatives, the advice of his friends, the remonstrances of his 
reason, the remorse of his conscience, are all unable to restrain him: 
there was ‘a something fatal in his nature ;’ he had conceived the idea, 
he must go to sea, To no purpose is he seized with repentance during 
the first storm ; he drowns in punch these ‘fits’ of conscience. To no 
purpose is he warned by shipwreck and a narrow escape from death ; 
he is hardened, and grows obstinate. To no purpose captivity among 
the Moors and the possession of a fruitful plantation invite repose; the 
indomitable instinct returns; he was born to be his own destroyer, and 
embarks again. Theship goes down; he is cast alone on a desert island ; 
then his native energy found its vent and its employment; like his 
descendants, the pioneers of Australia and America, he must re-create 
and re-master one by one the inventions and acquisitions of human 
industry ; one by one he does so. Nothing represses his effort ; neither 
possession nor weariness : 

‘I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I believe, 
for one man ; but I was not satisfied still ; for, while the ship sat upright in that 
posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of her that I could. . . . I got 
most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with infinite 
labour ; for I was fain to dip for it into the water ; a work which fatigued me 
very much. ... I believe, verily, had the calm weather held, I should have 
brought away the whole ship, piece by piece.’+ 
In his eyes, work-is natural. When, in order ‘to barricade himself, 
he goes to cut the piles’ in the woods, and drives them into the earth, 
which cost a great deal of time and labour,’ he says : 

“A very laborious and tedious work. But what need I have been concerned at 

the tediousness of any thing I had todo, seeing I had time enough to doit in?.. . 
My time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as 
another. ’? 
Application and fatigue of head and arms give occupation to his super- 
fluous activity and force; the mill must find grist to grind, without 
which, turning round empty, it would consume itself. He works, 
therefore, all day and night, at once carpenter, oarsman, porter, hunter, 
tiller of the ground, potter, tailor, milkman, basketmaker, grinder, baker, 
invincible in difficulties, disappointments, expenditure of time and toil. 
Having but a hatchet and an adze, it took him forty-two days to make 
a board. He occupied two months in making his first two jars; five 
months in making his first boat; then, ‘by dint of hard labour,’ he 
levelled the ground from his timber-yard to the sea, tried to bring the 
sea up to his boat, and began to dig a canal; then, reckoning that he 
would require ten or twelve years to finish the task, he builds another 
boat at another place, with another canal half a mile long, four feet 
deep, six wide. He spends two years over it: 





1 De Foe’s Works, 20 vols., le The Life and Adventures of Robinson 
Crusoe, i. ch. iv. 65. : 
* [bid. 76. 





156 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book 11. 


\ 


‘I bore with this. ... I went through that by dint of hard labour. ... 
Many weary stroke it had cost... . This will testify that I was not idle... 
As I had learned not to despair of any thing. I never grudged my labour.’ 


_ These strong expressions of indomitable patience are ever recurring. 
This hard race is framed for labour, as its sheep are for slaughter and 
its horses for the chase. Even now you may hear their mighty hatchet 
and pickaxe strokes in the claims of Melbourne and in the log-houses of 
the Salt Lake. ‘The reason of their success is the same there as here; 


they do everything with calculation and method; they rationalise their _ 


energy, which is like a torrent they make a canal for. Crusoe sets to work 
only after deliberate calculation and reflection. When he seeks a spot 
for his tent, he enumerates the four conditions of the place he requires. 
When he wishes to escape despair, he draws up impartially, ‘like debtor 
and creditor,’ the list of his advantages and disadvantages, putting them 
in two columns, active and passive, item for item, so that the balance is 
in his favour. His courage is only the servant of his common sense: 

‘By stating and squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational 
judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I 
had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and 
contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, espe- 
cially if I had had tools.’? 


There is a grave and deep pleasure in this painful success, and in this 
personal acquisition. The squatter, like Crusoe, takes pleasure in 
things, not only because they are useful, but_because-they-are-his work. 
He feels himself a man, whilst finding all about him the sign of his 
labour and thought ; he is pleased : 

‘IT had everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me to 
see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries 
so great.’ ? 


He returns to his home willingly, because he is there a master and 
creator of all the comforts he has around him; he takes his meals there 
gravely and ‘like a king.’ 

Such are the pleasures of home. <A guest enters there to fortify 
these natural inclinations by the ascendency of duty. Religion appears, 
as it must, in emotions and visions: for this is not a calm soul ; imagi- 
nation breaks out into it at the least shock, and carries it to the threshold — 
of madness. On the day when he saw the ‘print of a naked man’s foot 
on the shore,’ he stood ‘like one thunderstruck,’ and fled ‘ like a hare to 
cover;’ his ideas are in a whirl, he is no longer master of them; though 
he is hidden and barricaded, he thinks himself discovered ; he intends ‘ to 
throw down the enclosures, turn all the tame cattle wild into the woods, 
dig up the corn-fields.’ He has all kind of fancies; he asks himself if 
it is not the devil who has left this footmark; and reasons upon it: 





1 Robinson Crusoe, ch. iv. 79. ? Ibid. 80. 








CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 157 


‘I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to 
have terrified me; . .. that, asI lived quite on the other side of the island, he 
would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thou- 
sand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the 
first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed 
inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all notions we usually entertain of the 
subtlety of the devil.’ + 
In this impassioned and uncultivated mind, which for eight years had 
continued without a thought, and as it were stupid, engrossed in manual 
labour and bodily wants, belief took root, fostered by anxiety and soli- 
tude. Amidst the risks of all-powerful nature, in this great uncertain 
upheaving, a Frenchman, a man bred like us, would cross his arms 
gloomily like a Stoic, or would wait like an epicure for the return of 
physical cheerfulness. As for Crusoe, at the sight of the ears of barley 
which have suddenly made their appearance, he weeps, and thinks at 
first ‘that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow.’ Another 
day he has a terrible vision: in a fever he repents of his sins; he opens 
the Bible, and finds these words, which ‘were very apt to his case:’ - 
‘Call upon me in the day of trouble ; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt 
glorify me.’? Prayer then rises to his lips, true prayer, the converse 
of the heart with a God who answers, and to whom we listen. He also 
read the words: ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.’ ® 

‘Immediately it occurred that these words were to me. Why else should they 

be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my 
condition, as one forsaken of God and man ?’* 
Thenceforth spiritual life begins for him. To reach its very foundation, 
the squatter needs only his Bible; with it he carries out his faith, his 
theology, his worship; every evening he finds in it some application to 
his present condition : he is not alone; God speaks to him, and provides 
for his energy matter for a second labour to sustain and complete the 
first. For he now undertakes against his heart the combat which he has 
maintained against nature ;+ he wants to conquer, transform, ameliorate, 
pacify the one as he has done with the other. Crusoe fasts, observes 
the Sabbath, three times a day he reads the Scripture, and says: 

‘I gave humble and hearty thanks . . . that he (God) could fully make up 
to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society by his 
presence, and the communication of his grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, 
and encouraging me to depend upon his providence, and hope for his eternal pre- 
sence hereafter.’ 5 
In this disposition of mind there is nothing a man cannot endure or do; | 
heart and hand come to the assistance of the arms; religion consecrates 
labour, piety feeds patience; and man, supported on one side by his 
instincts, on the other by his beliefs, finds himself able to clear the land, 
to people, to organise and civilise continents. 





1 Robinson Crusoe, ch, xi. 184, 2 Ibid. 187. Ps. 1. 15. 3 Heb, xiii. 5. 
# Ibid. ch. viii. 134, 5 Tbid. ch. viii. 138, 





| 


sO UL ee ee ee ee 
= 4 


158 THE CLASSIC AGE. 


Ill. 


It was by chance that De Foe, like Cervantes, lighted on a novel 
of character: as a rule, like Cervantes, he only wrote novels of adven- 
ture; he knew life better than the soul, and the general course of the 
world better than the particularities of the individual. But the impulse 
was given, nevertheless, and now the rest followed. Chivalrous manners 
had been blotted out, carrying with them the poetical and picturesque 
drama. Monarchical manners had been blotted out, carrying with them 
the witty and licentious drama. Citizen manners had been established, 
bringing with them domestic and practical reading. Like society, 
literature changed its course. Books were needed to read by the 
fireside, in the country, in the family: invention and genius turn to 
this kind of writing. The sap of human thought, abandoning the old 
dried-up branches, flowed into the unseen boughs, which it suddenly 
made to grow and turn green, and the fruits which it produced bear 
witness at once to the surrounding temperature and the native stock. 
Two features are common and proper to them. All these novels are 
character novels. The men of this country, more reflective than others, 
more inclined to the melancholy pleasure of concentrated attention and 
inner examination, find around them human medals more vigorously 
struck, less worn by friction with the world, whose uninjured face is 
more visible than that of others. All these novels are works of obser- 
vation, and spring from a moral design. ‘The men of this time, having 
fallen away from lofty imagination, and being immersed in active life, 
desire to cull from books a solid instruction, exact documents, effectual 
emotions, feelings of practical admiration, and motives of action. 

We have but to look around; the same inclination begins on all sides 
the same task. The novel springs up everywhere, and shows the same 
spirit under all forms. At this time’ appear the Zatler, Spectator, 
Guardian, and all those agreeable and serious essays which, like the 
novel, look for readers at home, to supply them with documents and 
provide them with counsels; which, like the novel, describe manners, 
paint characters, and try to correct the public; which, in fine, like the 
novel, turn spontaneously to fiction and portraiture. Addison, like a 
delicate amateur of moral curiosities, complacently follows the amiable 
oddities of Sir Roger de Coverley, smiles, and with discreet hand guides 
the excellent knight through all the awkward predicaments which may 
bring out his rural prejudices and his innate generosity; whilst by his 
side the unhappy Swift, degrading man to the instincts of the beast of 
prey and beast of burden, tortures humanity by forcing it to recognise 
itself under the execrable portrait of the Yahoo. Although they differ, 
both authors are working at the same task. They only employimagination 
in order to study characters, and to suggest plans of conduct. They bring 





21709, 1711, 1718. 


[ROOK II. 


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CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 159 
down philosophy to observation and application. They only dream of 
reforming or chastising vice. They are only moralists and psycholo- 
gists. They both confine themselves to the consideration of vice and 
virtue; one with calm benevolence, the other with savage indignation. 
The same point of view produces the graceful portraits of Addison and 
the frightful pictures of Swift. Their successors do the like, and all 
diversities of mood and talent do not hinder their works from acknow- 
ledging a single source, and concurring in a single effect. 

Two principal ideas can rule, and have ruled, morality in England. 
Now it is conscience which is accepted as a sovereign; now it is instinct 
which is taken for guide. Now they have recourse to grace; now 
they rely on nature. Now they wholly enslave everything to rule; 
now they give everything up to liberty. ‘The two opinions have suc- 
cessively reigned in England; and the human frame, at once too 
vigorous and too unyielding, successively justifies their ruin and their 

success. Some, alarmed by the fire of an over-fed temperament, and 
by the energy of unsocial passions, have regarded nature as a dangerous 
beast, and placed conscience with all its auxiliaries, religion, law, edu- 
cation, proprieties, as so many armed sentinels to repress its least 
outbreaks. Others, repelled by the harshness of an incessant constraint; 
and by the minuteness of a morose discipline, have overturned guards 
and barriers, and let loose captive nature to enjoy the free air and sun, 
deprived of which it was being choked. Both by their excesses have 
deserved their defeats and raised up their adversaries. From Shak- 
speare to the Puritans, from Milton to Wycherley, from Congreve to 
De Foe, from Wilberforce to Lord Byron, unruliness has provoked 
constraint and tyranny revolt. This great contest of rule and nature 
is developed again in the writings of Fielding and Richardson. 


IV. 

‘ Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, in a series of familiar letters from a 
beautiful young damsel to her parents, published in order to cultivate 
the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both 
sexes ; a narrative which has its foundation in truth, and at the same 
time that it agreeably entertains by a variety of curious and affecting 
incidents, is entirely divested of all those images which, in too many 
pieces calculated for amusement only, tend to inflame the minds they 
should instruct." We can make no mistake, the title is clear. The 
_ preachers rejoiced to see assistance coming to them from the very spot 
where there was danger; and Dr. Sherlock, from his pulpit, recom- 
mended the book. Men inquired about the author. He was a printer 
and bookseller, a joiner’s son, who, at the age of fifty, and in his leisure 
moments, wrote in his shop parlour : a laborious man, who, by work and 
good conduct, had raised himself to a competency and sound informa- 








11741. The translator has consulted the tenth edition, 1775, 4 vols. 


160 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK II, 


tion; delicate, moreover gentle, nervous, often ill, with a taste for the 
society of women, accustomed to correspond for and with them, of 
reserved and retired habits, whose only fault was a timid vanity. He 
was severe in principles, and had acquired perspicacity by his rigour. 
In fact, conscience is a lamp; a moralist is a psychologist; Christian 
casuistry is a sort of natural history of the soul. He who through 
anxiety of conscience busies himself in drawing out the good or evil 
motives of his manifest actions, who sees vices and virtues at their 
birth, who follows the insensible progress of culpable thoughts, and the 
secret confirmation of good resolves, who can mark the force, nature, 
and moment of temptations and resistances, holds in his hand almost 
all the moving strings of humanity, and has only to make them vibrate 
regularly to draw from them the most powerful harmonies. In this 
consists the art of Richardson; he combines whilst he observes; his 
meditation develops the ideas of the moralist. No one in this age has 
equalled him in these detailed and comprehensive conceptions, which, 
grouping to a single end the passions of thirty characters, twine and 
colour the innumerable threads of the whole canvas, to bring out a 
figure, an action, or a lesson. 

This first novel is a flower—one of those flowers which only bloom 
in a virgin imagination, at the dawn of original invention, whose charm 
and freshness surpass all that the maturity of art and genius can after- 
wards cultivate or arrange. Pamela is a child of fifteen, brought up 
by an old lady, half servant and half favourite, who, after the death of 
her mistress, finds herself exposed to the growing seductions and per- 
secutions of the young master of the house. She is a genuine child,| 
\ frank and artless as Goethe’s Margaret, and of the same family. After! 
twenty pages, we involuntarily see this fresh rosy face, always blushing, 
and her laughing eyes, so ready with tears. At the smallest kindness she 
is confused ; she knows not what to say ; she changes colour, casts down 
her eyes, as she makes a curtsey; the poor innocent heart is troubled 
or melts. No trace of the bold vivacity, the nervous coolness, which 
are the elements of a French girl. She is ‘a lambkin,’ loved, loving, 
without pride, vanity, bitterness; timid, always humble. When her 
master tries forcibly to kiss her, she is astonished; she will not believe 
that the world is so wicked. ‘This gentleman has degraded himself 
io offer freedoms to his poor servant.’? She is afraid of being too free 
with him; reproaches herself, when she writes to her relatives, with saying 
toc often he and him instead of his honour; ‘ but it is his fault if 1 do, 
tor why did he lose all his dignity with me?’* No outrage exhausts 








_ 3 €To be sure I did think nothing but curt’sy and cry, and was all in confusion 
at his goodness. 

‘I was so confounded at these words, you might have beat me down with a 
feather. .. . So, like a fool, 1 was ready to cry, and went away curt’sying, and 
blushing, 1 am sure up to the ears,’ 

2 Vol. i. Letter x. 3 Ihid. 





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CHAP. VI] THE NOVELISTS. 161 


her submissiveness: he has embraced her, and took hold of her arm 
so rudely that it was ‘black and blue ;’ he has done worse, he has 
behaved like a ruffian and a knave. To cap all, he slanders her cir- 
cumstantially before the servants; he insults her repeatedly, and pro- 
vokes her to speak; she does not speak, will not fail in her duty to 
her master. ‘It is for you, sir, to say what you please, and for me 
only to say, God bless your honour !?2 She falls on her knees, and 
thanks him for sending her away. But in so much submission what 
resistance! Allis against her; he is her master; he is a justice of 
the peace, secure against all intervention—a sort of divinity to her, 
with all the superiority and authority of a feudal prince. Moreover, 
he has the brutality of the times; he rates her, speaks to her like a 
slave, and yet thinks himself very kind. He shuts her up alone for 
several months, with ‘a wicked creature,’ his housekeeper, who beats 
and threatens her. He attacks her by fear, weariness, surprise, money, 
gentleness. At last, what is more terrible, her own heart is against 
her: she loves him secretly; her virtues injure her; she dare not lie, 
when she most needs it;* and piety keeps her from suicide, when that 
seems her only resource. One by one the issues close around her, so 
that she loses hope, and the readers of her adventures think her lost 
and ruined. But this native innocence has been strengthened by 
Puritanic faith. She sees temptations in her weaknesses; she knows 
that ‘ Lucifer always is ready to promote his own work and workmen ;’* 
she is penetrated by the great Christian idea, which makes all souls 
equal before the common salvation and the final judgment. She says: 
‘My soul is of equal importance to the soul of a princess, though my 
quality is inferior to that of the meanest slave.’* Wounded, stricken, 
abandoned, betrayed, still the knowledge and thought of a happy or 
an unhappy eternity are two defences which no assault can carry. She 
knows it well; she has no other means of explaining vice than to sup- 
pose them absent. She considers that wicked Mrs. Jewkes is an atheist. 
Belief in God, the heart’s belief—not the wording of the catechism, 
but the inner feeling, the habit of picturing justice as ever living and 
ever present—this is the fresh blood which the Reformation caused to 
enter the veins of the old world, and which alone could give it a new 
life and a new youth, 

She is, as it were, animated by it; in the most perilous as in the 
sweetest moments, this grand sentiment returns to her, so much is it 
entwined with all the rest, so much has it multiplied its tendrils and 
buried its roots in the innermost folds of her heart. Her young master 
thinks of marrying her now, and wishes to be sure that she loves him, 


She dares not say so, being afraid to give him a hold upon her. She © 





1 Pamela, i. Letter xxvii. 2 “JT dare not tell a wilful lie.’ 


3 Pamela, i. Letter xxv. € Ibid. Letter to Mr. Williams, i, 208. 
VOL, IL L 


162 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


is greatly troubled by his kindness, and yet she must answer. Religion — 


comes to veil love in a sublime half-confession: 


‘I fear not, sir, the grace of God supporting me, that any acts of kindness 
would make me forget what I owe to my virtue; but... my nature is too frank 
and open to make me wish to be ungrateful ; and if I should be taught a lesson 


I never yet learnt, with what regret should I descend to the grave, to think that 


I could not hate my undoer: and that, at the last great day, I must stand up as 
an accuser of the poor unhappy soul, that I could wish it in my power to save! ’? 


He is softened and vanquished, descends from that vast height where 


aristocratic customs had placed him, and thenceforth, day by day, the © 


letters of the happy child record the preparations for their marriage. 
Amidst this triumph and happiness she continues humble, devoted, 
and tender ; her heart is full, and gratitude fills it from every source : 
‘This foolish girl must be, after twelve o’clock this day, as much his 
ol as if he were to marry a duchess.’? She ‘had the boldness to 
k 


iss his hand.’* ‘My heart is so wholly yours, that I am afraid of — 


nothing but that I may be forwarder than you wish.’* Shall the 
marriage take place Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday? She dare 
not say Yes; she blushes and trembles: there is a delightful charm in 
this timid modesty, these restrained effusions. For a wedding present 
she obtains the pardon of the wicked creatures who have ill-treated 
her: ‘I clasped my arms about his neck, and was not ashamed to kiss 
him once, and twice, and three times, once for each forgiven person.’® 
Then they talk over their plans: she shall remain at the lodge; she 
will not frequent grand parties; she is not fond of cards; she will keep 
the ‘ family accounts,’ and distribute her husband’s charities ; she will 
help the housekeeper in ‘the making jellies, comfits, sweetmeats, mar- 
malades, cordials, and to pot, and candy, and preserve,’® to get up the 
linen ; she will look after the breakfast and dinner, especially when 
there are guests; she knows how to carve: she will wait for her hus- 
band, who perhaps will be so good as now and then to give her an 
hour or two of his ‘ agreeable conversation,’ ‘and will be indulgent to 
the impertinent overflowings of my grateful heart.’’ In his absence 
she will read—‘ that will help to polish my mind, and make me worthier 
of your company and conversation ;’* and she will pray to God, she 
says, in order ‘that I may be enabled to discharge my duty to’® her 
husband. Richardson has sketched here the portrait of the English 
wife—a good housekeeper and sedentary, studious and obedient, loving 
and pious—and Fielding will finish it in his Amelia. 

This was a contest: here is one still™#féater. ~ Virtue, like force 


of every kind, is valued according to its power of resistance: and we 





' Pamela, i. 290. 2 Tbid. ii. 167. 3 Tbid. ii. 78. 4 Ibid. ii. 148. 
5 Ibid. ii. 194. 6 bid. ii. 62. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. ii. 63. 
9 Ibid. 


have only to subject it to more violent tests, to give it its greatest 








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CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 163 


\ 


prominence. Let us look in the passions of her native land for foes 
capable of assailing virtue, calling it forth, and rendering it obstinate. 
The evil and the good of the English character is a too strong will. 
When tenderness and lofty reason fail, the native energy is turned to 
sternness, obstinacy, inflexible tyranny, and the heart becomes a den 
of malevolent passions, eager to rave and tear each other. Against a 
family, having such passions, Clarissa _Harlowe has to struggle. Her 
father never would be ‘controuled, nor yet persuaded.’* He never 
‘did give up one point he thought he had a right to carry.’* He 
has broken down the will of his wife, and degraded her to the part 
of a dumb servant; he wishes to break down the will of his daughter, 
and give her for a husband a coarse and heartless fool. He is the 


head of the family, master of all his people, despotic and ambitious 


as a Roman patrician, and he wishes to found a house. He is stern 
in these two harsh resolves, and thunders against the rebellious 
daughter. Above the outbursts of his voice we hear the loud wrath 
of his son, a sort of hot-blooded, over-fed bull-dog, excited by his 
greed, his youth, his fiery temper, and his premature authority; the 
shrill outcry of the eldest daughter, a coarse, plain-looking girl, with 
‘a plump, high-fed face,’ exactingly jealous, prone to hate, who, being 
neglected by Lovelace, revenges herself on her beautiful sister; the 
churlish growling of the two uncles, narrow-minded old bachelors, 
vulgar, pig-headed, through their notions of male authority; the 
grievous importunities of the mother, the aunt, the old nurse, poor 
timid slaves, reduced one by one to become instruments of persecu- 
tion. The whole family have bound themselves to favour Mr. Solmes’ 
proposal to marry Clarissa. They do not reason, they simply express 
their will, By dint of repetition, only one idea has fixed itself in 
their brain, and they become furious when any one endeavours to 
free them from it. ‘Who at the long run must submit?’ asks her 
mother; ‘all of us to you, or you to all of us?’* Clarissa offers 
every submission; she consents to give up her property. But her 
family answered: ‘ They had a right to her obedience upon their own 
terms; her proposal was an artifice, only to gain time; nothing but 
marrying Mr. Solmes should do; ... they should not be at rest 
till it was done.’® It must be done, they have promised it; it is a 
point of honour with them. A girl, a young, inexperienced, insignifi- 
cant girl, to resist men, old men, of position and consideration, nay, 
her whole family—monstrous! So they persist, like brutes as they 
are, blindly putting on the screw with all their stupid hands together, 
not seeing that at every turn they bring the child nearer to madness, 
dishonour, or death. She begs them, implores them, one by one, with 





1 See in Pamela the characters of Squire B. and Lady Davers. 
2 Olarissa Harlowe, 4th ed. 1751, 7 vols. i. 92. 3 Tbid. i. 105. 
* (bid. i. Letter xx. 125. ® Jbid. i, Letter xxxix. 253. 


164 THE CLASSIC AGE. ‘[BOoK Il. 


every argument and prayer; racks herself to discover concessions, goes 
on her knees, faints, makes them weep. It is all useless. The in- 
domitable, crushing will oppresses her with its daily increasing mass. 
There is no example of such a varied moral torture, so incessant, so 
obstinate. They persist in it, as if it were a task, and are vexed to 
find that she makes her task so long. They refuse to see her, forbid 
her to write, are afraid of her tears. Her sister Arabella, with the 
venomous bitterness of an offended, ugly woman, tries to make her 
insults more stinging : 

‘The witty, the prudent, nay the dutiful and pi-ous (so she sneeringly pro- 
nounced the word) Clarisse Harlowe, should be so strangely fond of a profligate 
man, that her parents were forced to lock her up, in order to hinder her from 
running into his arms. ‘‘ Let me ask you, my dear, said she, how you now keep 
your account of the disposition of your time? How many hours in the twenty- 
four do you devote to your needle? How many to your prayers? How many to 
letter-writing? And how many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, the 
latter article is like Aaron’s rod, and swallows up the rest. . . . You must there- 
fore bend or break, that was all, child... . 

‘** What, not speak yet? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to me. 
You must say ¢wo very soon to Mr. Solmes, I can tell you that. . . . Well, well 
(insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief) . . . Then you think 
you may be brought to speak the two words.” # 


She continues thus: 


‘ This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But this is quite charming !—And 
this, were I you, should be my wedding nightgown.—But, Clary, won’t you have 
a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know. 
Crimson velvet, I suppose. Such a fine complexion as yours, how would it be set 
off by it !—And do you sigh, love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those 
charming eyes, gleaming, through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not 
Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes?’ 3 


Then, when Arabella is reminded that, three months ago, she did not 
find Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she nearly chokes with passion; she 
wants to beat her sister, cannot speak, and says to her aunt, ‘ with 
great violence:’ ‘ Let us go, madam ; let us leave the creature to swell 
till she bursts with her own poison.’* It reminds us of a pack of 
hounds in full cry after a deer, which is caught, and wounded; whilst 
the pack grow more eager and more ferocious, because they have 
tasted his blood. 

At the last moment, when she thinks to escape them, a new chase 
begins, more dangerous than the other. Lovelace has all the evil 
passions of Harlowe, and in addition a genius which sharpens and 
aggravates them. What a character! How English! how different 
from the Don Juan of Mozart or of Moliére! Before everything the 
cruel fair one, the desire to bend others, a combative spirit, a craving 





1 Clarissa Harlowe, i. Letter xlii., 278, 2 Ibid. i. Letter xliii. 295. 
* Ibid. i. Letter xlv. 308. 4 Ibid. 309. 





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CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 165 


for triumph; only after these come the senses. He spares an innocent 
girl because he knows she is easy to conquer, and the grandmother 
thas besought him to be merciful to her.’ ‘The Debellare superbos 
should be my motto,’* he writes to his friend Belford ; and in another 
letter he says: ‘I always considered opposition and resistance as a 
challenge to do my worst.’* At bottom, pride, infinite, insatiable, 
senseless, is the mainspring, the only motive of all his actions. He 
acknowledges ‘ that he only wanted Cesar’s outsetting to make a figure 
among his cotemporaries,’* and that he only stoops to private con- 
quests out of mere whim. He declares that he would not marry the 
first princess on earth, if he but thought she balanced a minute in her 
choice of him or of an emperor. He is held to be gay, brilliant, con- 
versational ; but this petulance of animal vigour is only external: he is 
cruel, jests savagely, in cool blood, like a hangman, about the harm 
which he has done or means to do. Mark in what manner he re- 
assures a poor servant who is troubled at having given up Clarissa to 
him. ‘ The affair of Miss Betterton was a youthful frolick. . . . I went 
into mourning for her, though abroad at the time. A distinction I 
have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in childbed by 
me... . Why this squeamishness, then, honest Joseph?’* At that 
time, and in this land, the roysterers of those days threw the human 
body in the sewers. One gentleman, a friend of Lovelace, ‘ tricked a 
farmer’s daughter, a pretty girl, up to town, . . . drank her light- 
hearted, . . . then to the play, . . . then to the bagnio, ruined her; 
kept her on a fortnight or three weeks; then left her to the mercy of 
the people of the bagnio (never paying for anything), who stript her 
of all her cloaths, and because she would not take on, threw her into 
prison, where she died in want and in despair.’® The rakes in France 
were only rascals,® here they were villains; wickedness with them 
poisoned love. Lovelace hates Clarissa even more than he loves her. 
He has a book in which he sets down, he says, ‘all the family faults 
and the infinite trouble she herself has given me. When my heart is 
soft, and all her own, I can but turn to my memoranda, and harden 
myself at once.’’ He is angry because she dares to defend herself, 
says that he'll teach her to vie with him in inventions, to make plots 
against and for her conqueror. It is a struggle between them, without 
truce or halting. Lovelace says of himself: ‘What an industrious 
spirit have 1! Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness; .. . 
certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure 
in whatever station I had filled.’* He assaults and besieges her, spends 





1 Clarissa Harlowe, i. Letter xxxiv. 223. 2 Tbid. ii. Letter xliii. 315. 
3 Tbid. i. Letter xii. 65. * Jbid. iii. Letter xviii, 89. 
5 Ibid. vii. Letter xxxviii. 122. 

6 See the Mémoires of the Marshal de Richelieu. 

7 Clarissa Harlowe, ii. Letter xxxix, 294. 8 Jbid. iv. xxxiii. 232. 


- 


166 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


whole nights outside her house, gives the Harlowes servants of his own, 
invents stories, introduces imaginary personages, forges letters. There 
is no expense, fatigue, plot, disloyalty which he will not undertake. 
All weapons are the same to him. He digs and plans even when 
away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all meet in the same mine. He has 
a remedy for everything; he is ready for everything; divines, dares 
everything, against all duty, humanity, common sense, in spite of the 
prayers of his friends, the entreaties of Clarissa, his own remorse. 
Excessive will, here as with the Harlowes, becomes a steel cog-wheel, 
which twists out of shape and breaks to pieces what it ought to bend, 
so that at last, by blind impetuosity, it is broken by its own impetus, 
over the ruins it has made. . 
Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as te 
determined as his own. She also is armed for war, and admits that : 
she has as much of her father’s spirit as of her mother’s gentleness. 
Though gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she 
‘had hoped to be an example to young persons’ of her sex; she 
possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine reflection.’ 
What self-scrutiny! what vigilance! what minute and indefatigable | 
observation of her conduct, and of that of others!? No action, or a 
word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved by her, 
uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of mind 
of a diplomatist and a moralist! You must read these long conversa- 
tions, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine duels daily 
renewed, with death, nay, with dishonour before her. She knows it, 
is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never exposes herself, 
is not stunned, defends every inch of ground, feeling that all the world 
is on his side, no one for her, that she loses ground, and will lose more, 
that she will fall, that she is falling. And yet she bends not. What | 
a change since Shakspeare! Whence comes this new and original | 
idea of woman? Who has encased these yielding and tender inno- | 
cents with such heroism and calculation? Secularised Puritanism. 
Clarissa ‘never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed 
one, with indifference.’ She has passed her whole life in looking at 
these duties. She has placed certain principles before her, has reasoned 
upon them, applied them to the various circumstances of life, has 
fortified herself on every point with maxims, distinctions, and argu- 
ments. She has set round her, like bristling and multiplied ramparts, 











1 See (vol. vii. Letter xlix.) among other things her last Will. 

2 She makes out statistics and a classification of Lovelace’s merits and faults, 
with subdivisions and numbers. Take an example of this positive and practical 
English logic: ‘That such a husband might unsettle me in all my own principles, 
and hasard my future hopes. That he has a very immoral character to women. 
That knowing this, it is a high degree of impurity to think of joining in wedlock 
with such a man.’ She keeps all her writings, her memorandums, summaries or P 
analyses of her own letters, 


pate: — 
ee Oe 





- CHAP. VL] ‘THE NOVELISTS. 167 


a numberless army of inflexible precepts. We can only reach her by 
turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This is her force, 
and also her weakness; for she is so carefully defended by her forti- 
fications, that she is a prisoner; her principles are a snare to her, and 
her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much decorum. 
She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public the 
family quarrels. She does not resist her father openly; that would be 
against filial humility. She does not repel Solmes violently, and like 
a hound, as he is; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will 
not leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her 
friend. She reproves Lovelace when he swears;* a good Christian 
ought to protest against scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, 
a politician and a preacher; she wearies us, she acts not like a woman. 
When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does not do 
what Miss Clarissa does—ask for her slippers. I am very sorry for it, 
but I say it with bated breath, Clarissa had a little mind; her virtue 
is like the piety of devotees, literal and over-nice. She does not carry 
you away,.she has always her catechism in her hand; she does not 
discover her duties, but follows instructions ; she has not the audacity 
of great resolutions, she possesses more conscience and firmness than 
enthusiasm and genius.” This is the disadvantage of morality pushed 
to an_extreme, no matter what the school or the aim is. By dint of 
regulating man, we narrow him. 

Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing 
forth in broad light, and has created Sir Charles Grandison ‘ a man of 
true honour.’ I cannot say whether this model has converted many. 
There is nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. This Sir Charles is as 
correct as an automaton ; he passes his life in weighirg his duties, and 
‘with an air of gallantry.’* When he goes to visit a sick person, he 
has scruples about going on a Sunday, but reassures his conscience by 
saying, ‘I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my 
journey ; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy.’* Would you believe 
that such a man could fall in love? Such is the case, however, but in 
a manner of his own. Thus he writes to his betrothed : 

‘ And now, loveliest and dearest of women, allow me to expect the honour of a 


line, to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday you will 
be so good to abate. . . . My utmost gratitude will ever be engaged by the con- 























1 ¢ Swearing is a most unmanly vice, and cursing as poor and low a one, since 
it proclaims the profligate’s want of power and his wickedness at the same time ; 
for could such a one punish as he speaks, he would be a fiend.’—Vol. ii. Letter 
XXXvili. 282. . 

2 The contrary is the case with the heroines of George Sand’s novels. 

3 See Sir Charles Grandison, 7 vols. 1811, iii. Letter xvi. 142: ‘ He received 
the letters, standing up, bowing; and kissed the papers with an air of gallantry, 
that I thought greatly became him.’ 

* Ibid. vi. Letter xxxi, 236. 


168 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


descension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as it 
will be to the end of my life that shall give me the greatest blessing of it and con- 
firm me. For ever yours, Charles Grandison.’ } 


A wax figure could not be more.proper. All is in the same taste. 
There are eight wedding-coaches, each with four horses; Sir Charles 


is attentive to old people; at table, the gentlemen, each with a napkin 
under his arm, wait upon the ladies; the bride is ever on the point of 
fainting ; ‘he throws himself at her feet in every kind of way : 





‘What, my love! In compliment to the best of parents, resume your usual 
presence of mind. I, else, who shall glory before a thousand witnesses in receiving 
the honour of your hand, shall be ready to. regret that I acquiesced so cheerfully 
with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration.’ ? 


Salutations begin, compliments fly about; a swarm of proprieties flutters 
around, like a troop of little love-cherubs, and their devout wings serve 
to sanctify the blessed tendernesses of the happy couple. Tears abound; 
Harriet bemoans the fate of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, whilst Sir Charles, 


‘In a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, put his arm round me, and taking 
my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. 
Sweet humanity! Charming sensibility! Check not the kindly gush. Dewdrops 
of heaven! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief), dew-drops of 
heaven, from a mind like that heaven mild and gracious ! ’? 


It is too much; we are surfeited, we tell ourselves that these phrases 


should.be.accompanied by a sana tin The most patient of mortals 
feels himself sick at heart when he has swallowed a thousand pages of 
this sentimental twaddle, and all the milk and water of love. To crown 
all, Sir Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her rival, sketches the plan of 
a little temple, dedicated to friendship, to be built on the very spot; it 
is the triumph of mythological bad taste. At the end, bouquets shower 
down as at the opera; all the characters sing in unison a chorus in 
praise of Sir Charles, and his wife says : 


ful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers ; the most faithful of friends: 


- ~ * But could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most duti- 
[ra is good upon principle in every relation of life?’ 


He is sh ke he is generous, delicate, pious, irreproachable ; he » has never 

one @ mean action, nor made a wrong gesture. ‘His ¢onscience and 
his wie are unsullied. Amen! Let_us canonise him, and_stuff him 
with straw. 

“Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all 
the wit which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to 
serve morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of these 
edifying advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end of 





1 Sir Charles Grandison, vi. Letter xxxiii. 252. 2 Ibid. vi. Letter lii. 358. 
3 [bid. vi. Letter xxxi. 233. * Ibid. vii. Letter lxi. 336, 

















CHAP, VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 169 
your books? We are repelled, lose emotion, see the black-gowned | 
preacher come snufiling out of the worldly dress which he had assumed 
for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but 
do not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the 
uman heart, and that if we too openly set ourselves to wall it up 
hrough discipline, it escapes and looks for free air outside. You print 
t the end of Pamela the catalogue of the virtues of which she is an 
example; the reader yawns, forgets his pleasure, ceases to believe, and 
asks himself if the heavenly heroine was not an ecclesiastical puppet, 
trotted out to give him a lesson. You relate at the end of Clarissa 
Harlowe the punishment of all the wicked, great and small, sparing 
none; the reader laughs, says that things happen otherwise in this 
world, and bids you put in here, like Arnolphe,’ a description ‘of the 
cauldrons in which the souls of those who have led evil lives are to 
boil in the infernal regions.’ We are not such fools as you take us for. 
There is no need that you should shout to make us afraid; that you 
should write out the lesson by itself, and in capitals, in order to distin- 
guish it. We love art, and you have a scant amount of it; we want to 
be pleased, and you don’t care to please us. You copy all the letters, 
detail the conversations, tell everything, prune nothing; your novels 
fill many volumes; spare us, use the scissors; be a literary man, not a 
registrar of archives, Do not pour out your library of documents on 
the high-road. Art is different from nature; the latter draws out, the 
first. condenses. Twenty letters of twenty pages do not display a cha- 
racter; but one sharp word does. You are rendered heavy by your 
conscience, which drags you along step by step and low on the ground ; 
ou are afraid of your genius; you reinitin; you dare not use loud. 
Danan wore for ine monanis You flounder into em- 
tten phrases ;“ you will not show nature as it is, as 
Shakspeare shows it, when, stung by passion as by a hot iron, it cries 
out, rears, and plunges over your barriers. You cannot love it, and 
your punishment is that you cannot see it.’ 





1 A selfish and misanthropical cynic in Molitre’s Ecole des Femmes.—Tx.. 

? Clarissa and Pamela employ too many. 

3 In Novels and Novelists, by W. Forsyth, 1871, it is said, ch. vii.; ‘To me, I 
confess, Clarissa Harlowe is an unpleasant, not to say odious book. . . . If any 
book deserved the charge of sickly sentimentality, it is this ; and that it should have 
once been so widely popular, and thought admirably adapted to instruct young 
women in lessons of virtue and religion, shows a strange and perverted state of the. 
public taste, not to say public morals.’ Mrs. Oliphant, in her Historical Sketches 
of the Reign of George Second, 1869, says of the same novel (ii. x. 264): ‘Richard- 
son was a respectable tradesman, . . . a good printer, . . . a comfortable soul, 
. . . never owing a guinea nor transgressing a rule of morality ; and yet so much 
a poet, that he has added at least one character (Clarissa Harlowe) to the inherit- 
ance of the world, of which. Shakspeare need not have been ashamed—the most 
celestial thing, the highest effort of his generation.’—Tr. 


170 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


V. 


Fielding protests on behalf of nature; and certainly to see his 
_actions and his persons, we might think him made expressly for that : 
a robust, strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an ex- 
cess of good humour and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and 
brave, but imprudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roysterer, ruined as it 
were by heirloom, having seen the ups and downs of life, bespattered, 
but always jolly. Lady Worteley Montague says of him: ‘ His happy 
constitution made him forget everything when he was before a venison 
party, or over a flask of champagne.’* Nature sways him; he is some- 
what coarse but generous. He does not restrain himself, he indulges, he 


follows nature’s bent, not too choice in his course, not confining himself to ~ 


banks, muddy, but abundantly and in a broad channel. From the outset 
an abundance of health and physical impetuosity plunges him into gross 
jovial excess, and the immoderate sap of youth bubbles up in him until 
he marries and becomes ripe in years. He is gay, and seeks gaiety; he 
is careless, and has not even literary vanity. One day Garrick begged 
him to cut down an awkward scene, and told him ‘that a repulse would 
flurry him so much, he should not be able to do justice to the part.’ 
‘If the scene is not a good one, let them find that out.’ Just as was 
foreseen, the house made a violent uproar, and the performer tried to 
quell it by retiring to the green-room, where the author was supporting 
his spirits with a bottle of champagne. ‘ What is the matter, Garrick ? 
are they hissing me now?’ ‘Yes, just the same passage that I wanted 
you to retrench.’ ‘Oh,’ replied the author, ‘I did not give them credit 
for it; they have found it out, have they?’? In this easy manner 
he took all mischance. He went ahead without feeling the bruises 
much, like a confident man, whose heart expands and whose skin is thick. 
When he inherited some money he feasted, gave dinners to his neigh- 


bours, kept a pack of hounds and a lot of magnificent lackeys in yellow — 


livery. In three years he had spent it all; but courage remained, he 
finished his law studies, wrote two folios on the rights of the crown, 


became a magistrate, destroyed bands of robbers, and earned in the 


most insipid of labours ‘ the dirtiest money upon earth.’ Disgust, weari- 
ness did not affect him ; he was too solidly made to have the nerves of 
awoman. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. 
He had a mother’s fondness for his children, adored his wife, became 
almost mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep 
with his maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest 
girl, that he might give a mother to his children; the last trait in the 
portrait of this valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, possessing 





1 Lady Montague’s Letters, ed. Lord Wharncliffe, 2d ed. 3 vols. 1837 ; Letter 
to the Countess of Bute, iii. 120. 
2 Roscoe’s Life of Fielding, p. xxv. 





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no dislikes, but all the best parts of man, except delicacy. We read 
his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers 
and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet. 

Such a man was sure to dislike Richardson. He who loves expan- 
sive and liberal nature, drives from him like foes the solemnity, sadness, 
and pruderies of the Puritans. To begin with, he caricatures Richard- 
son. His first hero, Joseph, is the brother of Pamela, and resists the 
proposals of his mistress, as Pamela does those of her master. The 
‘temptation, touching in the case of a girl, becomes comical in that of a 
young man, and the tragic turns into the grotesque. Fielding laughs 
heartily, like Rabelais, like Scarron. He imitates the emphatic style ; 
ruffles the petticoats and bobs the wigs; upsets with his rude jests all 
the seriousness of conventionality. If you are refined, or simply well 
dressed, don’t go along with him. He will take you to prisons, inns, 
dunghills, the mud of the roadside ; he will make you flounder among 
rollicking, scandalous, vulgar adventures, and crude pictures. He has 
plenty of words at command, and his sense of smell is not delicate. 
Mr. Joseph Andrews, after leaving Lady Booby, is felled to the ground, 
left naked in a ditch, for dead; a stage-coach came by; a lady objects 
to receive a naked man inside; and the gentlemen, ‘ though there were 
several greatcoats about the coach,’ could not spare them; the coach- 
man, who had two greatcoats spread under him, refused to lend either, 
lest they should be made bloody.’ This is but the outset, judge of the 
rest. Joseph and his friend, the good Parson Adams, give and receive 
a vast number of cuffs; blows resound ; cans of pigs’ blood are thrown 
at their heads; dogs tear their clothes to pieces; they lose their horse. 
Joseph is so good-looking, that he is assailed by the maid-servant, 
‘obliged to take her in his arms and to shut her out of the room ;’? 
they have never any money; they are threatened with being sent to 
prison. Yet they go on in a merry fashion, as their brothers in 
Fielding’s other novels, Captain Booth and Tom Jones. These hailstorms 
of blows, these tavern brawls, this noise of broken warming-pans and 
basins flung at heads, this medley of incidents and downpouring of 
mishaps, combine to make the most joyous music. All these honest 
folk fight well, walk well, eat well, drink still better. It is a pleasure 
to observe these potent stomachs; roast-beef goes down into them as 
to its natural place. Do not say that these good arms practise too 
much on their neighbours’ skins: the neighbours’ hides are healthy, and 
always heal quickly. Decidedly life is a good thing, and we will go along 
with Fielding, smiling by the way, with a broken head and a bellyful. 

Shall we merely laugh? There are many things to be seen on our 
journey: the sentiment of nature is a talent, like the understanding of 
certain rules; and Fielding, turning his back on Richardson, opens up a 
domain as wide as that of his rival. What we call nature is this brood 





1 The Adventures of Joseoh Andrews, bk. i. ch. xii. 2 Ibid. i. ch. xviii, 


172 _ THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK mL 


of secret passions, often malicious, generally vulgar, always blind, which — 
tremble and fret within us, ill-covered by the cloak of decency and 
reason under which we try to disguise them; we think we lead them, 
and they lead us; we think our actions our own, they are theirs. They 
are so many, so strong, so. interwoven, so ready to rise, break forth, be 
carried away, that their movements elude all our reasoning and our 
grasp. ‘This is Fielding’s domain; his art and pleasure, like Moliére’s, 
are in lifting a corner of the cloak; his characters parade with a rational 
air, and suddenly, through a vista, the reader perceives the inner 
turmoil of vanities, follies, lusts, and setret rancours which make them 
move. Thus, when Tom Jones’ arm is broken, philosopher Square comes 
to console him by an application of stoical maxims; but to prove to 
him that pain is an indifferent matter, he bites his tongue, and lets slip 
an oath or two; whereupon Parson Thwackum, his opponent and rival, — 
assures him that his mishap is a warning of Providence, and both are~ 
nearly coming to blows.’ Another time, the prison chaplain having 
aired his eloquence, and entreated the condemned man to repent, 
accepts from him a bowl of punch, because Scripture says nothing 
against this liquor; and after drinking, repeats his last sermon against 
the pagan philosophers. Thus unveiled, natural impulse has a grotesque 
appearance; the people advance gravely, cane in hand, but in our eyes 
they are all naked. Understand, they are every whit naked; and some 
of their attitudes are very lively. Ladies will do well not to enter here. 
This powerful genius, frank and joyous, loves boisterous fairs like 
Rubens; the red faces, beaming with good humour, sensuality, and 
energy, move about his pages, flutter hither and thither, and jostle each ~ 
other, and their overflowing instincts break forth in violent actions. Out 
Yof such he creates his chief characters. He has none more lifelike than 
these, more broadly sketched in bold and dashing outline, with a more 
wholesome colour. If sober people like Allworthy remain in a corner 
of his vast canvas, characters full of natural impulse, like Western, stand 
out with a relief and brightness, never seen since Falstaff. Western is 
a country squire, a good fellow in the main, but a drunkard, always in 
the saddle, full of oaths, ready with coarse language, blows, a sort of 
dull carter, hardened and excited by the brutality of the race, the — 
wildness of a country life, by violent exercises, by abuse of coarse food 
and strong drink, full of English and rustic pride and prejudice, having 
never been disciplined by the constraint of the world, because he lives 
in the country; nor by that of education, since he can hardly read; 
nor of reflection, since he cannot put two ideas together; nor of autho- 
rity, because he is rich and a justice of the peace, and given up, like 
a noisy and creaking weathercock, to every gust of passion. When 
contradicted, he grows red, foams at the mouth, wishes to thrash some 
one, ‘Doff thy clothes.’ They are even obliged to stop him by main 





1 History of a Foundling, bk. v. ch. ii. 


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_ CHAP. v1] 7 THE NOVELISTS. 173 


“force. He hastens to go to Allworthy to complain of Tom Jones, who 
has dared to fall in love with his daughter : 


‘It’s well for un I could not get at un: I’d a licked un; I'd a spoiled his 
caterwauling ; 1’d a taught the son of a whore to meddle with meat for his master. 
He shan’t ever have a morsel of meat of mine, or a varden to buy it. If she will 
ha un, one smock shall be her portion. I’d sooner give my estate to the sinking 
fund, that it may be sent to Hanover, to corrupt our nation with.’ 


Allworthy says he is very sorry for it: 


‘ Pox o’ your sorrow. It will do me abundance of good, when I have lost my 
only child, my poor Sophy, that was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and 
comfort of my age. But I am resolved I will turn her out o’ doors ; she shall beg, 
and starve, and rot in the streets. Not one hapenny, not a hapenny shall she ever 
hae o’ mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting and be 
rotted to’n ; I little thought what puss he was looking after. But it shall be the 
worst he ever vound in his life. She shall be no better than carrion ; the skin o’er 
it is all he shall ha, and zu you may tell un.’? 


His daughter tries to reason with him; he storms. Then she speaks of 


tenderness and obedience; he leaps about the room for joy, and tears 


come to his eyes. Then she recommences her prayers ; he grinds his 
teeth, clenches his fists, stamps his feet : 

‘Tam determined upon this match, and ha him you shall, damn me, if shat 
unt. Damn me, if shat unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning.’ *® 


He can find no reason; he can only tell her to be a good girl. He 
contradicts himself, defeats his own plans; is like a blind bull, which 
butts to right and left, doubles on his path, touches no one, and paws 
the ground. At the least sound he rushes head foremost, offensively, 
knowing not why. His ideas are only starts or transports of flesh and 


‘blood. Never has the animal so completely covered and absorbed the 


man. It makes him grotesque; he is so natural and so brute-like: he 
allows himself to be led, and speaks like a child. He says: ! 
‘I don’t know how ’tis, but, Allworthy, you make me do always just as you 


please ; and yet I have as good an estate as you, and am in the commission of the 
peace just as yourself.’ * 


Nothing holds or lasts with him; he is Ghapilsive 3 in everything; he 
lives but for the moment. Rancour, interest, no passions of long con- 
tinuance affect him. He embraces people whoth he just before wanted 
to knock down. Everything with him disappears in the fire of the 
passion of the hour, which comes over his brain, as it were, in sudden 
waves, which drown the rest. Now that he is reconciled to Tom, he 
cannot rest until Tom marries his daughter: 

‘To her, boy, to her, go to her. That’s it, little honeys, O that’s it. Well, 
what, is it all over? Hath she appointed the day, boy? What, shall it be to- 
morrow or next day? Ishan’t be put off a minute longer than next day, I am 





1 History of a Foundling, bk. vi. ch. x. 2 Ibid. 
3 Thid. xvi. ch. ii. , 4 Ibid, xviii, ch. ix. 


174 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


resolved. ... I tell thee it is all flimflam. Zoodikers! she’d have the wedding 


to-night with all her heart. Would‘st not, Sophy ?... Where the devil is All- 
worthy?... Harkee, Allworthy, I’ll bet thee five pounds to a crown, we have a 
boy to-morrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wut ha? Wut ha Bur- 
gundy, Champaigne, or what? For please Jupiter, we’ll make a night on’t.’? 


And when he becomes a grandfather, he spends his time in the nursery, 
‘where he declares the tattling of his little granddaughter, who is 
above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the finest cry of 
dogs in England.’? This is pure nature, and no one has displayed 
it more free, more impetuous, ignoring all rule, more abandoned to 
physical passions, than Fielding. 

It is not because he loves it like the great impartial artists, Shak- 
speare and Goethe; on the contrary, he is eminently a moralist; and 
it is one of the great marks of the age, that reformatory designs are as 
decided with him as with others. He gives his fictions a practical aim, 
and commends them by saying that the serious and tragic tone sours, 


whilst the comic style disposes men to be ‘more full of good humour... 


and benevolence.’* Moreover, he satirises vice; he looks upon the 
passions not as simple forces, but as objects of approbation or blame. 
At every step he suggests moral conclusions; he wants us to take sides; 
he discusses, excuses, or condemns. He writes an entire novel in an 
ironical style,* to attack and destroy rascality and treason. He is more 
than a painter, he is a judge, and the two parts agree in him. Fora 
psychology produces a morality: where there is an idea of man, there 
is an ideal of man; and Fielding, who has seen in man nature as 
opposed to law, praises in man nature as opposed to law; so that, ac- 
cording to him, virtue is but an instinct. Generosity in his eyes is, 


like all sources of action, a primitive inclination; like all sources of 


action, it flows on, receiving no good from catechisms and phrases ; 
like all sources of action, it flows at times too copious and quick. Take 
it as it is, and do not try to oppress it under a discipline, or to replace 
it by an argument. Mr. Richardson, your heroes, so correct, con- 
strained, so carefully made up with their impedimenta of maxims, are 
cathedral vergers, of use but to drone in a procession. Square or 
Thwackum, your tirades on philosophical or Christian virtue are mere 
words, only fit to be heard after dinner. Virtue is in the mood and 
the blood; a gossipy education and cloistral severity do not assist it. 
Give me a man, not.a show-mannikin or a mere machine, to spout 
phrases. My hero is the man who is born generous, as a dog is born 
affectionate, and a horse brave. I want a living heart, full of warmth 
and force, not a dry pedant, bent on squaring all his actions. ‘This 
ardent character will perhaps carry the hero too far; I pardon his esca- 
pades. He will get drunk unawares; he will pick up a girl on his way ; 





1 History of a Foundling, xviii. ch. xii. 
* Last chapter of the History of a Foundling. 8 Preface to Joseph Andrews, 
4 Jonathan Wild. 








> 





CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 175 


he will hit out with a zest ; he will not refuse a duel ; he will suffer a fine 
lady to appreciate him, and will accept her purse ; he will be imprudent, 
will injure his reputation, like Tom Jones; he will be a bad manager, 
and will get into debt, like Booth. Pardon him for having muscles, 
nerves, senses, and that overflow of anger or ardour which urges for- 
ward animals of a noble breed. But he will let himself be beaten till 
he bleeds before he betrays a poor gamekeeper. He will pardon his 
mortal enemy readily, from sheer kindness, and will send him money 
secretly. He will be loyal to his mistress, and will be faithful to her, 
spite of all offers, in the worst destitution, and without the least hope 
of winning her. He will be liberal with his purse, his trouble, his 
sufferings, his blood; he will not boast of it; he will have neither 
pride, vanity, affectation, nor dissimulation ; bravery and kindness will 
abound in his heart, as good water in a good spring. He may be 
stupid, like Captain Booth, a gambler, even extravagant, unable to 
manage his affairs, liable one day through temptation to be unfaithful 
to his wife ; but he will be so sincere in his repentance, his error will 
be so involuntary, he will be so carefully, genuinely tender, that she 
will love him exceedingly,’ and in good truth he will deserve it. He 
will be a nurse to her when she is ill, behave as a mother to her; he 
will himself see to her lying-in; he will feel towards her the adoration 
of a lover, always, before all the world, even before Miss Matthews, 
who seduced him. He says: ‘If I had the world, I was ready to 
lay it at my Amelia’s feet; and so, Heaven knows, I would ten thou- 
sand worlds.’ He weeps like a child on thinking of her; he listens 
to her like a little child. ‘I believe I am able to recollect much the 
greatest part (of what she uttered); for the impression is never to 
be effaced from my memory.’* He dressed himself ‘ with all the ex- 
pedition imaginable, singing, whistling, hurrying, attempting by every 
method to banish thought,’* and galloped away because he cannot 
endure her tears. In this soldier’s body, under this brawler’s thick 
breastplate, there is a true woman’s heart, which melts, which a trifle 
disturbs, when she whom he loves is in question ; timid in its tenderness, 
inexhaustible in devotion, in trust, in self-denial, in the communication 
of its feelings. When a man possesses this, overlook the rest; with all 
his excesses and his follies, he is better than your well-dressed devotees. 

To this we reply: You do well to defend nature, but let it be on 
condition that you suppress nothing, One thing is wanted in your 





! Amelia is the perfect English wife, an excellent cook, so devoted as to pardon 
_ her husband his accidental infidelities, always looking forward to the accoucheur. 
She says even (bk. iv. ch. vi.), ‘Dear Billy, though my understanding be much 
inferior to yours,’ etc. She is excessively modest, always blushing and tender. 
Bagillard having written her some love-letters, she throws them away, and says 
(bk. iii. ch. ix.): ‘I would not have sucha letter in my possession for the universe ; 
I thought my eyes contaminated with reading it.’ 
2 Amelia, bk. ii. ch. viii. 3 (bid. bk. iii. ch. i. 4 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. ii. 





176 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK III. 


strongly-built folks—refinement; the delicate dreams, enthusiastic ele- 
vation, and trembling delicacy, exist in nature equally with coarse 
vigour, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness. Poetry is true, like prose ; 
and if there are eaters and boxers, there are also knights and artists. 
Cervantes, whom you imitate, and Shakspeare, whom you recall, had 
this refinement, and they have painted it; in this abundant harvest, 
with which you fill your arms, you have forgotten the flowers. We 
tire at last of your fisticuffs and tavern bills. You flounder too readily 
in cowhouses, among the ecclesiastical pigs of Parson Trulliber. We 
would fain see you have more regard for the modesty of your heroines ; 
wayside accidents raise their tuckers too often; and. Fanny, Sophia, 
Mrs. Heartfree, may continue pure, yet we cannot help remembering 
the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so rude your- 
self, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You persuade Tom 
Jones falsely, yet {or an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom he has made 
his mistress, is his mother, and you leave the reader long buried in the 
shame of this supposition. And then you are obliged to become un- 
natural in order to depict love; you can give but constrained letters; 
the transports of your Tom Jones are only the author’s phrases. For 
want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware of the impetuosity 
of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the effusion of tenderness, 
but not of the nervous exaltation and poetic rapture. Man, such as 
you conceive him, is a good buffalo; and perhaps he is the hero re- 
quired by a people which is itself called John Bull. 


VI. 


At all events this hero is powerful and formidable; and if at this 
period you collect in your mind the scattered features of the faces which 
the novel-writers have made pass before us, you will feel yourself trans- 
ported into a half-barbarous state, and to a race whose energy must 
terrify or revolt all your gentleness. Now open a more literal copyist 
of life: they are doubtless all such, and declare—Fielding amongst 
them—that if they imagine a feature, it is because they have seen it; 
but _Smollett has this advantage, that, being mediocre, he chalks out 
the figures insipidly, prosaically, without transforming them by the 
illumination of genius: the joviality of Fielding and the rigour of 
Richardson are not there to lit up or ennoble the pictures. Observe 
carefully Smollett’s manners; listen to the confessions of this imitator 
of Lesage, who reproaches that author with being gay, and jesting with 
the mishaps of his hero. He says: 


‘The disgraces of Gil Blas are, for the most part, such as rather excite mirth 
than compassion: he himself laughs at them, and his transitions from distress to 
happiness, or at least ease, are so sudden that neither the reader has time to pity 
him, nor himself to be acquainted with affliction. This conduct... prevents 
that generous indignation which ought to animate the reader against the sordid 
and vicious disposition of the world, I have attempted to represent modest merit 


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CHAP. VI.] ‘THE NOVELISTS. 177 


struggling with every difficulty to which a friendless orphan is exposed from his 
own want of experience as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base 
indifference of mankind.’ 4 


It is no longer merely showers of blows, but also of knife and sword 
thrusts, as well as pistol shots. In such a world, when a girl goes out 
she runs the risk of coming back a woman; and when a man goes out, 
he runs the risk of not coming back at all. The women bury their 
nails in the faces of the men; the weil-bred gentiemen, like Peregrine 
Pickle, whip gentlemen soundly. Having deceived a husband, who 
refuses to demand satisfaction, Peregrine calls his two servants, ‘and 
ordered them to duck him in the eanal.’? Misrepresented by a curate, 
whom he has horsewhipped, he gets an innkeeper ‘to rain a shower of 
blows upon his (the priest’s) carcass,’ who also ‘ laid hold of one of his 
ears with his teeth, and bit it unmercifully.’* I could quote from 
memory a score more of outrages begun or completed. Savage insults, 
broken jaws, men on the ground beaten with sticks, the churlish sour- 
ness of conversations, the coarse brutality of jests, give an idea of a pack 
of bull-dogs eager to fight each other, who, when they begin to get 
lively, still amuse themselves by tearing away pieces of flesh. A French- 
man can hardly endure the story of Roderick Random, or rather that of 
Smollett, when he is in a man-of-war. He is pressed, that is to say, 
carried off by force, knocked down, attacked with ‘ cudgels and drawn 
cutlasses,’ ‘pinioned like a malefactor,’ and rolled on board, covered 
with blood, before the sailors, who laugh at his wounds; and one of 
them, ‘seeing my hair clotted together with blood, as it were, into dis- 
tinct cords, took notice that my bows were manned with the red ropes, 
instead of my side.’* ‘ He desired one of his fellow-captives, who was 
unfettered, to take a handkerchief out of his pocket, and tie it round 
his head to stop the bleeding ; he pulled out his handkerchief, ’tis true, 
but sold it before my face to a bum-boat woman for a quart of gin.’ 
Captain Oakum declares he will have no more sick in his ship, ordered 
them to be brought on the quarter-deck, commanded that some should 
receive a round dozen; some spitting blood, others fainting from 
weakness, whilst not a few became delirious; many died, and of the 
sixty-one sick, only a dozen remained alive.® To get into this dark, 
suffocating hospital, swarming with vermin, it is necessary to creep 
under the close hammocks, and forcibly separate them with the shoulders, 
before you can reach the patients. Read the story of Miss Williams, a 
wealthy young girl, of good family, reduced to the trade of a prostitute, 
robbed, hungry, sick, shivering, strolling about the streets in the long 
winter nights, amongst ‘a number of naked wretches reduced to rags 
and filth, huddled together like swine, in the corner of a dark alley,’ 
who depend ‘upon the addresses of the lowest class, and are fain to 





1 Preface to Roderick Random. 2 Peregrine Pickle, ch. 1x. 
’ Tbid. ch, xxix, 4 Ibid. ch. xxiv. 5 (bid. ch. xxvii. 
VOL. Il M 





178 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Il. 


allay the rage of hunger and cold with gin; degenerate into a brutal 
insensibility, rot and die upon a dunghill.’* She was thrown into 
Bridewell, where, she says, ‘in the midst of a hellish crew I was sub- 
jected to the tyranny of a barbarian, who imposed upon me tasks that 


I could not possibly perform, and then punished my incapacity with the — 


utmost rigour and inhumanity. I was often whipped into a swoon, and 
lashed out of it, during which miserable intervals I was robbed by my 
fellow-prisoners of everything about me, even to my cap, shoes, and 
stockings: I was not only destitute of necessaries, but even of food, so 
that my wretchedness was extreme.’ One night she tried to hang her- 
self. Two of her fellow-prisoners, who watched her, prevented her. 
‘In the morning my attempt was published among the prisoners, and 
punished with thirty stripes, the pain of which, co-operating with my 
disappointment and disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me 
into an ecstasy of madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones 
with my teeth, and dashed my head against the pavement.’* In vain 
you turn your eyes on the hero of the novel, Roderick Random, to 
repose a little after such a spectacle. He is sensual and ¢ like 
Fielding’s heroes, but not good and jovial as chass—"THS Generous. wine 
Posing. 2 Saoe hands, becomes brandy of the~drani=shop. 
His heroes are selfish; they revenge themselves-batbarously. oderick 
oppresses the faithful Strap, and ends by marrying him to a prostitute. 
Peregrine Pickle attacks by a most brutal and cowardly plot the honour 
of a young girl, whom he wants to marry, and who is the sister of his 
best friend. We get to hate his rancorous, concentrated, obstinate 











character, which is at once that of an absolute king accustomed to please . 


himself at the expense of others’ happiness, and that of a boor with only 
the varnish of education. We should be uneasy at living near him ; he 
is good for nothing but to shock or tyrannise over others. We avoid 


him as we would a dangerous beast ; the ‘sudden rush of animal passion 


and the force of his firm will are so overpowering in him, that when he 
fails he becomes outrageous. He draws his sword against an innkeeper ; 
he must bleed him, grows mad. Everything, even to his generosities, 
is spoiled by pride; all, even to his gaieties, is clouded by harshness. 
Peregrine’s amusements are barbarous, and those of Smollett are after 
the same style. He exaggerates caricature; he thinks to amuse us by 
showing us mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half-a-foot long; he 
magnifies a national prejudice or a professional trick until it absorbs 
the whole character ; he jumbles together the most repulsive oddities,— 
_a Lieutenant Lismahago half roasted by Red Indians; old jack-tars who 
pass their life in shouting and travestying all sorts of ideas into their 
nautical jargon ; old maids as ugly as monkeys, as withered as skeletons, 
and as sour as vinegar; maniacs steeped in pedantry, hypochondria, 
misanthropy, and silence. Far from sketching them slightly, as Le Sage 





1 Peregrine Pickle, ch. xxiii. * 2 Ibid. 





ane. .«~9 eS eee. 











CHAP. VI.] 


ee eee ey _ al ing 
‘ ‘“ phy 


THE NOVELISTS. 179 





does in_Gi. he brings into prominent relief each disagreeable fea- 
ture, overloads it with details, without considering whether they are too 
numerous, without reflecting that they are excessive, without feeling 
that they are odious, without perceiving that they are disgusting. The 
public whom he addresses is on a level with his energy and his coarse- 
ness; and in order to move such nerves, a writer cannot strike too hard.? 

But, at the same time, to civilise this barbarity and to control this 
violence, a faculty appears, common to all, authors and public: serious 
reflection attached to the observation of character. Their eyes are 
turned toward the inner man. They note exactly the individual pecu- 
liarities, and mark them with such a precise imprint that their personage 
becomes a type, which cannot be forgotten. They are psychologists. 
The title of a comedy of old Ben Jonson’s, Every Man in his Humour, 
indicates how this taste is ancient and national amongst them. Smollett 
writes a whole novel, Humphrey Clinker, on this idea. No action; the 
book is a collection Fetes Wattren during a tour in Scotland and 
England. Each of the travellers, after his bent of mind, judges variously 
of the same objects. A generous, grumbling old gentleman, who amuses 
himself by thinking himself ill, a crabbed old maid in search of a husband; 
a lady’s maid, ingenuous and vain, who bravely mutilates her spelling ; 
a series of originals, who one after another bring“their oddities on the 
scene,—such are the characters: the pleasure of the reader consists in 
recognising their humour in their style, in foreseeing their follies, in 
perceiving the thread which pulls each of their motions, in verifying the 
agreement of their ideas and their actions. Push this study of human 


peculiarities to excess, and you will come upon the origin of Sterne’s talent. 


SP ere easareerenernnenndie 
VIL. 


Figure to yourself a man who goes on a journey, wearing on 
his eyes a pair of marvellously magnifying spectacles. A hair on 
his hand, a speck on a tablecloth, a fold of a moving garment, will 
interest him: at this rate he will not go very far; he will go six 
steps 1 day, and will not quit his room. So Sterne writes four 


* In Novels and Novelists, by W. Forsyth, the author says, ch. v. 159: * What, 
is the character of most of these books (novels) which were to correct follies and 
regulate morality? Of a great many of them, and especially those of Fielding 
and Smollett, the prevailing features are grossness and licentiousness. Love 
degenerates into a mere animal passion. . . . The language of the characters 
abounds in oaths and gross expressions. . . . The heroines allow themselves to 
take part in conversations which no modest woman would have heard without a 
blush. And yet these novels were the delight of a bygone generation, and were 
greedily devoured by women as well as men. Are we therefore to conclude that 
our great-great-grandmothers . . . were less chaste and moral than their female 
posterity ? I answer, certainly not ; but we must infer that they were inferior to 
them in delicacy and refinement. They were accustomed to hear a spade called a 
spade, and words which would shock the more fastidious ear in the reign of Queen 
Victoria were then in common and daily use.’—Tr. 











Dt og ee wa me 4 te 


180 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


volumes to record the birth of his hero. He perceives the infinitely 
little, and describes the imperceptible. A man parts his hair on one 
sitee-this-uetording to Bteme, aepahde on his whole character, which 
is of a piece with that of his father, his mother, his uncle, and his whole 
ancestry ; it depends on the structure of his brain, which depends on 
the circumstances of his conception and his birth, and these on the 
fancies of his parents, the humour of the moment, the talk of the pre- 


ceding hour, the contrarieties of the last curate, a cut thumb, twenty 
‘knots made on a bag; I know not how many things besides. The six 





or eight volumes of Tristram Shandy are employed in summing them 








up; for the smallest and dullest incident, a sneeze, a badly-shaven 
beard, drags after it an inextricable. network of inter-involved causes, 
which from above, below, right and left, by invisible prolongations and 
ramifications, are buried in the depths of a character and in the remote 
vistas of events. Instead of extracting, like the novel-writers, the prin- 
cipal root, Sterne, with marvellous devices and success, devotes himself 
to drawing out the tangled skein of numberless threads, which are 
sinuously immersed and dispersed, so as to suck in from all sides the 
sap and the life. Slender, intertwined, buried as they are, he finds 
them ; he extricates them without breaking, brings them to the light; 
and there, where we fancied was but a stalk, we see with wonder the 
underground mass and vegetation of the multiplied fibres and fibrils, 
by which the visible plant grows and is supported. . 
This is truly a strange talent, made up of blindness and insight, 
which resembles those diseases of the retina in which the over-excited 
nerve becomes at once dull and penetrating, incapable of seeing what 
the most ordinary eyes perceive, capable of observing what the most 


piercing sight misses. In fact, Sterne is a sickly and eccentric humorist, 


an ecclesiastic and a libertine, a fiddler and a philosopher, ‘ who whim- 
pered over a dead donkey, but left his mother to starve,’ selfish in 
act, selfish in word, who in everything is the reverse of himself and 
of others. His book is like a great storehouse of articles of wirtu, 
where the curiosities of allages, kinds, and countries lie jumbled in a 
heap; texts of excommunication, medical consultations, passages of un- 
"known or imaginary authors, scraps of scholastic erudition, strings of 
absurd histories, dissertations, addresses to the reader. His pen leads 
him; he has neither sequence nor plan; nay, when he lights upon 
anything orderly, he purposely contorts it ; with a kick he sends the pile 
of folios next to him over the history he has commenced, and dances on 
the top of them. He delights in disappointing us, in sending us astray 
by interruptions and outrages.’ Gravity displeases him, he treats it as 





There is a distinct trace of a spirit similar to that which is here sketched, in 
a select few of the English writers. Pultock’s Peter Wilkins the Flying Man, 
Amory’s Life of John Buncle, and Southey’s Doctor are instances of this. Rabelais 
is probably their prototype.—Tr. 





al EE FS 





CHAP. VI.] . |THE NOVELISTS. © 181 


a hypocrite; to his liking folly is better, and he paints himself in 
Yorick. In a well-constituted mind ideas march one after another, 
with uniform motion or acceleration ; in this uncouth brain they jump 
about like a rout of masks at a carnival, in troops, each dragging his 
neighbour by the feet, head, coat, amidst the most promiscuous and 
unforeseen hubbub. All his little lopped phrases are somersaults ; we 
pant as weread. ‘The tone is never for two minutes the same ; laughter 
comes, then the beginning of emotion, then scandal, then wonder, then 
ie ~ tenderness, then laughter again. The mischievous joker pulls and en- 
* ‘ tangles the threads of all our feelings, and makes us go hither, thither, 
ie irregularly, like puppets. Amongst-these various threads there aye 
3 two which he pulls more willingly than the rest. Like all men who 
r have nerves, he 1s subject to érness; not that he is really kindly 
| and tender; on the contrary, his life is that of an egotist ; but on cer- 
Wy. tain days he must needs weep, and he makes us weep with him. He is 
moved on behalf of a captive bird, of a poor ass, which, accustomed to 
blows, ‘looked up pensive,’ and seemed to say, ‘ Don’t thrash me with 
it (the halter); but if you will, you may.’ He will write a couple of 
pages on the attitude of this donkey, and Priam at the feet of Achilles 
was not more touching. Thus in a silence, in an oath, in the most 
trifling domestic action, he hits upon exquisite refinements and little 
heroisms, a sort of charming flowers, invisible to everybody else, which 
grow in the dust of the driest road. One day Uncle Toby, the poor 
sick captain, catches, after ‘infinite attempts,’ a big buzzing fly, who 
has cruelly tormented him all dinner-time; he gets up, crosses the 
be room on his suffering leg, and opening the window, cries: ‘Go, poor 
devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? ‘This world surely is 
| “gt enough to hold both thee and me.’? This womanish sensibility 
is too fine to be described ; we should have to give a whole story—that 

of Lefevre, for instance—that the perfume might be inhaled; this per- 
fume evaporates as soon as we touch it, and is like the weak fleeting 
odour of the plants, brought for one moment into a sick-chamber. 
What still more increases this sad sweetness, is the contrast of the free 
and easy waggeries which, like a hedge of nettles, encircles them on 
; all sides. Sterne, like all men whose mechanism is over-excited, has 
irregular appetites. He loves the nude, not from a feeling of the 
beautiful, and in the manner of painters, not from sensuality and frank- 
ness like Fielding, not from a search after pleasure, like Dorat, Boufilers, 
and all those refined pleasure-seekers, who at the same time were rhym- 
ing and enjoying themselves in France. If he goes into dirty places, 
it is because they are forbidden and not frequented. What he seeks 
there is singularity and scandal. The allurement of this forbidden fruit 
is not the fruit, but the prohibition; for he bites by preference where 


. -~ 7 
- 
. 








1 Sterne’s Works, 7 vols., 1783, 3; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, 
vii. ch. xxxii. 2 Tbid. 1, ii. ch. xii. 








182 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Ul. 


the fruit is withered or worm-eaten. That an epicurean delights in 
detailing the pretty sins of a pretty woman is nothing wonderful ; but 
that a novelist takes pleasure in watching the bedroom. of a musty, 
fusty old couple, in observing the consequences of the fall of a burning 
chestnut in a pair of breeches,’ in detailing the questions of Mrs. Wad- 
man on the consequences of wounds in the groin,” can only be explained 
by the aberration of a perverted fancy, which finds its amusement in 
repugnant ideas, as spoiled palates are pleased by the pungent flavour 
of mouldy cheese.? Thus, to read Sterne we should wait for days when 
we are in a peculiar kind of humour, days of spleen, rain, or when 
through nervous irritation we are disgusted with rationality. In fact, 
his characters are as unreasonable as himself. He sees in man nothing 

but fancy, and what he calls the hobby-horse—Uncle Toby’s taste for 
fortifications, Mr. Shandy’s fancy for oratorical tirades and philosophical 
systems. ‘This hobby-horse, according to him, is like a wart, so small 
at first that we hardly perceive it, and only when it is ina strong light ; 
but it gradually increases, becomes covered with hairs, grows red, and 
buds out all around: its possessor, who is pleased with and admires it, 
nourishes it, until at last it is changed into a vast wen, and the whole 
face disappears under the invasion of the parasite excrescence. No one 
has equalled Sterne in the history of these human hypertrophies; he 

: Spt down The S00; feeds Tr-pradually—mides-tie “propagating threads 
creep round about, shows the little veins and microscopic arteries which 
inosculate within, counts the palpitations of the blood which passes 
through them, explains their changes of colour and increase of bulk. 
The psychological observer attains here one of his extreme develop- 
ments. A far advanced art is necessary to describe, beyond the con- 
fines of regularity and health, the exception or the degeneration; and 
the English novel is completed here by adding to the representation of 
form the picture of deformations. 


Vill. 
The moment approaches when purified manners will, by purifying 


the novel, impress upon it its final character. Of the two great ten- 
dencies manifested by it, native brutality and intense reflection, one at 
last conquers the other: erate, Grown severe, expels from fiction 
the coarseness of Smollett and the indecencies of Sterne ; and the novel, 


in every respect moral, before falling into the almost prudish hands of 





1 Tristram Shandy, 2, iv. ch. xxvii. 2 Tbid. 3, ix. ch. xx. 

3 Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Moore, have a tone of their own, which 
comes from their blood, or from their proximate or distant parentage—the Irish 
tone. So Hume, Robertson, Smollett, W. Scott, Burns, Beattie, Reid, D. Stewart, 
etc., have the Scotch tone. In the Irish or Celtic tone we find an excess of chivalry, 
sensuality, expansion ; in short, a mind less equally balanced, more sympathetic and 
less practical. The Scotchman, on the other hand, is an Englishman, either slightly 
refined or narrowed, because he has suffered more and fasted more. 





CHAP. VI.] - THE NOVELISTS, 183 


Miss Burney, passes into the noble hands of Goldsmith, His Vicanof 
Wakefield is ‘a prose idyl,’ somewhat spoilt by phrases too well written, 
but at bottom as homely as a Flemish picture. Observe in Terburg 
or Mieris’ paintings a woman at market or a burgomaster emptying his 
long glass of beer: the faces are vulgar, the ingenuousness is comical, 
the cookery occupies the place of honour; yet these good folk are so 
peaceful, so contented with their small but secure happiness, that we 
envy them. The impression left by Goldsmith’s book is pretty much 
the same. The excellent Dr. Primrose is a country clergyman, the 


whole of whose adventures have for a long time consisted in {migra- 
fone rom the—ble. Bee te He has cousins, ‘ even to the 
fortieth remove,’ who came to eat his dinner and sometimes to borrow 
a pair of boots. His wife, who has all the education of the time, is a 
perfect cook, can almost read, excels in pickling and preserving, and at 
dinner gives the history of every dish. His daughters aspire to elegance, 
and even ‘make a wash for the face over the fire.’ His son Moses gets 
cheated at the fair, and sells the pony for a gross of green spectacles. 
Primrose himself writes treatises, which no one buys, against second 
marriages of the clergy; writes beforehand in his wife’s epitaph, though 
she was still living, that she was the only wife of Dr. Primrose, and by 
way of encouragement, places this piece of eloquence in an elegant 
frame over the chimney-piece. But the household continues the even 
tenor of its way; the daughters and the mother slightly domineer 
over the father of the family ; he lets them, like a good fellow; and now 
and again delivers himself at most of an innocent jest, busies himself 
in his new farm, with his two horses, wall-eyed Blackberry and the 
other without a tail: 

‘ Nothing could exceed the neatness of my enclosures, the elms and hedge-rows 
appearing with inexpressible beauty. . . . Our little habitation was situated at 
the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a 
prattling river before ; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. . . . (It) con- 
sisted but of one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great 
snugness ; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed. . . . Though the same 
room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides, 
as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers, being 


well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably 
relieved, and did not want richer furniture.’ ! 





They make hay all together, sit under the honeysuckle to drink a 
bottle of gooseberry wine; the girls sing, the two little ones read; and 
the parents ‘ would stroll down the sloping field, that was embellished 
with blue bells and centaury :’ 

‘But let us have one bottle more, Deborah, my life, and Moses, give us a good 
song. What thanks do we not owe to Heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, 
health, and competence! I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch 
upon earth. He has no such fire-side, nor such pleasant faces about it.’? 





1 The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. iv. 2 Ibid. ch. xvii. 





184 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Boox 1m. 


-Such is moral happiness. Their misfortune is no less moral. The 
poor vicar has lost his fortune, and, removing to a small living, turns 
farmer. The squire of the neighbourhood seduces and carries off his 
eldest daughter; his house takes fire; his arm was burnt in a terrible 
manner in saving his two little children. He is put in prison, amongst 
wretches and rogues, who swear and blaspheme, in a vile atmosphere, 
sleeping on straw, feeling that his illness increases, foreseeing that his 
family will soon be without bread, learning that his daughter is dying. 
Yet he does not give way: he remains a priest and head of a family, 
prescribes to each of them his duty; encourages, consoles, orders, 
preaches to the prisoners, endures their coarse jests, reforms them; 
establishes in the prison useful work, and ‘institutes fines for punish- 
ment and rewards for industry.’ It is not hardness of heart nor a 
morose temperament which gives him strength; he has the most 
paternal soul, the most sociable, humane, open to gentle emotions and 
familiar tenderness. He says: 


‘I have no resentment now; and though he (the squire) has taken from me 
what I held dearer than all his treasures, though he has wrung my heart (for I am 
sick almost te fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire 
me with vengeance. . . . If this (my). submission can do him any pleasure, let 
him know, that if I have done him any injury, I am sorry for it. . . . I should 
detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the 
contrary, as my oppressor has been once my parishioner, I hope one day to present 
him up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal.’ 


Nothing is effectual: the wretch haughtily repulses the noble applica- 
tion of the vicar, and in addition causes his second daughter to be 
carried off, and the eldest son thrown into prison under a false accu- 
sation of murder, At this moment all the affections of the father are 
wounded, all his consolations lost, all his hopes ruined. ‘His heart 
weeps to behold’ all this misery, he was going to curse the cause of 
it all; but soon, returning to his profession and his duty, he thinks 
how he will prepare to fit his son and himself for eternity, and by way 
of being useful to as many people as he can, he wishes at the same 
time to exhort his fellow-prisoners. He ‘made an effort to rise on the 
straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the 
wall; my son and his mother supported me on either side.’? « In this 
condition he speaks, and his sermon, contrasting with his condition, is 
the more moving. It is a dissertation in the English style, made up 
of close reasoning, seeking only to establish that, from the nature of 
pleasure and pain, the wretched must be repaid the balance of their 
sufferings in the life hereafter. We see the sources of this virtue, 
born of Christianity and natural kindness, but long nourished by inner 
reflection. Meditation, which usually produces only phrases, results 
with Dr. Primrose in actions. Verily reason has here taken the helm, 


te. 





1 The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxviii, * Ibid. ch. xxviii, 





CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. ~ 185 


and it has taken it without oppressing other feelings; a rare and excel- 
lent spectacle, which, uniting and harmonising in one character the best 
features of the manners and morals of the time and country, creates 
an admiration and love for pious and orderly, domestic and disciplined, 
laborious and rural life. Protestant and English virtue has not a more 
approved and amiable exemplar. Religious, affectionate, rational, the 
Vicar unites dispositions which seemed irreconcilable; a clergyman, a 
farmer, a head of a family, he enhances those characters which appeared 
fit. only for comic or homely parts. 


IX, 
In the centre of this group stands a strange character, the most 
esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator, Richardsen was his 


friend, and gave him essays for his paper; Goldsmith, with an engag- 
ing vanity, adinires-him, whilst he suffers himsélf to be continually 
outshone by him; Miss Burney imitates his style, and reveres him as 
a father. ne @ historian, Reynolds. the painter, Garrick the 
actor, Burke the orator, Sir liam Jones the Orientalist, ‘come to his 
club to converse with him. Lord Chesterfield, who had lost his favour, 
vainly tried to regain it, by proposing to-aSsign to him, on every word 
in the language, the authority of a dictator.! Boswell dogs his steps, 
sets down his opinions, and at night fills quartos with them. His 
criticism becomes law ; men crowd to hear him talk; he is the arbiter 
of style. Let us transport in imagination this ruler of mind, Dr, 
Samuel Johnson, into France, among the pretty drawing-rooms, full of 
elegant philosophers and epicurean manners; the violence of the con- 
trast will mark better than all argument, the bent and predilections of 
the English mind. 

There appears then a man whose ‘person was large, robust, ap- 
proaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency,’? 
with a gloomy and unpolished air, ‘his countenance disfigured by the 
king’s evil,’ and blinking with one of his eyes, ‘in a full suit of plain 
brown clothes,’ and with not overclean linen, suffering from morbid 
melancholy since his birth, and moreover a hypochondriac.? In com- 
pany he would sometimes retire to a window or corner of a room, and 
mutter a Latin verse or a prayer.* At other times, in a recess, he 
would roll his head, sway his» body backward and forward, stretch out 
and then convulsively draw back his leg. His biographer relates that 
it ‘was his constant anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage, 
. . . so as that either his right or his left foot should constantly make 
the first actual movement; . . . when he had neglected or gone wrong 





1 See, in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, 1853, ch. xi. p. 85, Chester- 
field’s complimentary paper on Johnson’s Dictionary, printed in the World. 

2 Ibid. ch. xxx. 269. 3 bid. ch. iii. 14 and 15. 

* [bid. ch. xviii. 165, n. 4, 


. rere 
B ~eri F 


s\ 


186 THE CLASSIC AGE, [BOOK III. 


in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put 
himself in the proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone 
through it, walk briskly on and join his companion.’* People sat down 
to table. Suddenly, in a moment of abstraction, he stoops, and clench- 
ing hold of the foot of a lady, drew off her shoe.? Hardly was the 
dinner served when he darted on the food; ‘his looks seemed riveted 
to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say 
one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others; 
(he) indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, 
the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration 
was visible.’® If by chance the hare was high, or the pie had been 
made with rancid butter, he no longer ate, but devoured. When at 
last his appetite was satisfied, and he consented to speak, he disputed, 
shouted, made a sparring-match of his conversation, snatched a triumph 
no matter how, laid down his opinion dogmatically, and maltreated 
those whom he was refuting. ‘Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig.’* 
‘ My dear lady (te Mrs Thrale), talk no more of this; nonsense can be 
defended but by nonsense.’*® ‘One thing I know, which you don’t seem 


to know, that you are very uncivil.’® ‘In the intervals of articulating — 


he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating, 

. sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue 
play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen. 
. . . Generally, when he had concluded a period, in the course of a 
dispute, . . . he used to blow out his breath like a whale,’’ and swallow 
several cups of tea. 

‘Then in a low voice, cautiously, men would ask Garrick and Bos- 
well the history and habits of this strange being. He had lived like 
a cynic and an eccentric, having passed his youth reading miscel- 
laneously, especially Latin folios, even those least known, such as 
Macrobius; he had found on a shelf in his father’s shop the Latin 
works of Petrarch, whilst he was looking for apples, and had read 
them ;* ‘he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin 
poems of Politian.’® At twenty-five he had married for love a woman 
of about fifty, ‘very fat, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, pro- 
duced by thick painting, flaring and fantastic in her dress,’*® and who 
had children as old as himself. Having come to London to earn 
his bread, some, seeing his convulsive grimaces, took him for an idiot; 
others, seeing his robust frame, advised him to buy a porter’s knot.” 
For thirty years he worked like a hack for the publishers, whom he 
used to thrash when they became impertinent ;’? always shabby, having 








1 Life of Johnson, ch. xviii. 166, 2 Tbid. ch. xlviii. 439, n. 3. 
3 Tbid. ch. xvii. 159. 4 Tbid. ch. xxvi. 236, 

5 Ibid. ch. xxii. 201. 6 Ibid. ch. Ixviii. 628. 

7 Ibid. ch. xviii. 166, 8 Ibid. ch. ii. 12. 

® Ibid. ch. iv. 22. 10 Tbid. ch. iv. 26. 


1 Tbid. ch. v. 28, note 2, 12 Jbhid. ch. vii, 46. 


, 





CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 187 


once fasted two days;* content when he could dine on a ‘ cut of meat 
for sixpence, and bread for a penny;* having written Rasselas in 
eight nights, to pay for his mother’s funeral. Now pensioned ® by the 

ing, freed from his daily labours, he gave way to his natural indolence, 
lying in bed often till mid-day and after. He is visited at that hour. 
We mount the stairs of a gloomy house on the north side of Fleet 
Street, the busy quarter of London, in a narrow and obscure court ; 
and as we enter, we hear the scoldings of four old women and an old 
quack doctor, poor penniless creatures, bad in health and in disposi- 
tion, whom he has rescued, whom he supports, who vex or insult him. 
We ask for the doctor, a negro opens the door; we gather round the 
master’s bed; there are always many distinguished people at his levee, 


including even ladies. Thus surrounded, ‘he declaims, then went to 


dinner at a tavern, where he commonly stays late,’ * talks all the even- 
ing, goes out to enjoy in the streets the London mud and fog, picks 
up a friend to talk again, and is busy pronouncing oracles and main- 
taining his opinions till four in the morning. 

Whereupon we ask if it is the freedom of his opinions which is 
fascinating. His friends answer, that there is no more indomitable 
partisan of order. He is called the Hercules of Toryism. From in- 
fancy he detested the Whigs, and he never spoke of them but as public 
malefactors. He insults them even in his Dictionary. He exalts Charles 
the Second and James the Second as two of the best kings who have 
ever reigned.® He justifies the arbitrary taxes which Government 
presumes to levy on the Americans.® He declares that ‘ Whiggism is a 
negation of all principle ;’” that ‘the first Whig was the deyil;’* that 
‘the Crown has not power enough;’® that ‘mankind are happier in 
a state of inequality and subordination.’’° Frenchmen of the present 
time, the admirers of the Contrat Social, soon feel, on reading or hear- 
ing all this, that they are no longer in France. And what must they 
feel when, a few moments later, the Doctor says: 

‘I think him (Rousseau) one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be 
hunted out of society, as he has been. . . . I would sooner sign a sentence for his 
transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these 
many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.’"!... 


It seems that in England people do not like philosophical innovators. 








' Life of Johnson, ch. xvii. 159. 2 Tbid. ch. v. 28. 

3 He had formerly put in his Dictionary the following definition of the word 
pension: ‘ Pension—an allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In 
England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state-hireling for 
treason to his country.’ This drew of course afterwards all the sarcasms of his 
adversaries upon himself. 


* Boswell’s Life, ch, xxiv. 216. 5 Tbid. ch. xlix. 444, 
6 bid. ch. xlviii. 435. 7 Ibid. ch. xvi. 148, 
8 Ibid. ch. lxvi. 606. 9 bid. ch. xxvi. 236. 
10 Ibid. ch. xxviii. 252. 11 Jbid, ch. xix. 175. 


188 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book mr. 


Let us see if Voltaire will be spared: ‘It is difficult to settle the pro- 
portion of iniquity between them (Rousseau and Voltaire).’* In good 
sooth, this is clear. But can we not look for truth outside an Estab- 
lished Church? No; ‘no honest man could be a Deist; for no man 
could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity.’ ? 
Here is a peremptory Christian; there are scarcely any in France so 
decisive. Moreover, he is an Anglican, with a passion for the hierarchy, 
an admirer of established order, hostile to the Dissenters. You will 
see him bow to an archbishop with peculiar veneration.? You will 
hear him reprove one of his friends ‘ for saying grace without mention 
of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’* If you speak to him of a 
Quakers’ meeting, and of a woman preaching, he will tell you that ‘a 
woman preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs; it is not 
done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”*® He is a 
Conservative, and does not fear being considered antiquated. He went 
at one o’clock in the morning into the Church of St. John, Clerkenwell, 
to interrogate a tormented spirit, which had promised to ‘ give a token 
of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin.’* If you look at 
Boswell’s Life of him, you will find there fervent prayers, examinations 
of conscience, and rules of conduct. Amidst prejudices and follies he 
has a deep conviction, active faith, severe morality. He is a Christian 
from his heart and conscience, reason and practice. The thought of 
God, the fear of the last judgment, engross and reform him. He said 
one day to Garrick: ‘T’ll come no more behind your scenes, David, 
for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my 
amorous propensities.’ He reproaches himself with his indolence, im- 
plores God’s pardon, is humble, has scruples. All this is very strange. 
We ask men what can please them in this grumbling bear, with the 
manners of a beadle and the inclinations of a constable? They answer, 
that in London people are less exacting than in Paris, as to manners 
and politeness; that in England they allow energy to be rude and 
virtue odd; that they put up with a combative conversation; that 
public opinion is all on the side of the constitution and Christianity ; 
and that society was right to take for its master a man who, by its 
style and precepts, best suited its bent. 
We now send for his books, and after an hour we observe, that 
whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary, biography or essay, he 
lways keeps the same tone. ‘Dr. Johnson,’ Goldsmith said one day 
o him, ‘if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like 
hales.’’ In fact, his phraseology rolls always in solemn and majestic 
eriods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accom- 





1 Boswell’s Life, ch. xix. 176. 2 Tbid. ch. xix. 174. 
3 Tbid. ch. lxxv. 723. 4 Ibid. ch. xxiv. 218. 
5 Tbid. ch. xvii. 157. 6 Jbid. ch. xv. 138, note 8, 


7 Ibid. ch. xxviii. 256. 








CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 189 


panied by its epithet; great, pompous words peal like an organ; every 
proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; 
thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splen- 


dour of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as 
Classi SP Pane Car tttorepomascomnede, or nature 
more forced. No one has confined ideas in more strait compartments ; 
none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof; none has im- 
posed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumenta- 
tion and violent declamation; none has more generally mutilated the 
flowing liberty of conversation and life by antitheses and technical 


words. It is the completion and the excess, the triumph and the 
tyranny, of oratorical style. We understand Saw ast an, oratorical 
age would recognise him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence 
the primacy which it attributed to Pope in verse. 

We wish to know what ideas have made him popular. Here the 
astonishment of a Frenchman redoubles. We vainly turn over the 
pages of his Dictionary, his eight volumes of essays, his ten volumes of 
biographies, his numberless articles, his conversation so carefully col- 
lected; we yawn. His truths are too true; we already knew his 
precepts by heart. We learn from him that life is short, and we ought 
to improve the few moments accorded to us;*? that a mother ought 
not to bring up her son as a dandy; that a man ought to repent of his 
crimes, and yet avoid superstition ; that in everything we ought to be 
active, and not hurried. We thank him for these sage counsels, but 
we mutter to ourselves that we could have done very. well without 
them. We should like to know who could have been the lovers of 
ennut who have bought up thirteen thousand copies. We then remember 
that sermons are liked in England, and that e . $a ons. 
We discover that men of reflection do not need bold or striking ideas, 
but palpable and profitable truths. They demand to be furnished with 
a useful provision of authentic documents on man and his existence, 
and demand nothing more. No matter if the idea is vulgar; meat and 
bread are vulgar too, and are no less good. They wish to be taught 
the kinds and degrees of happiness and unhappiness, the varieties and 
results of characters and conditions, the advantages and inconveniences 





1 Here is a celebrated phrase, which will give some idea of his style (Boswell’s 
Journal, ch. xliii. 881): ‘We were now treading that illustrious island, which 
was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving 
barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To 
abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, 
and would be foolish if it were possible. . . . Far from me and from my friends 
be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any 
ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little 
to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, 
or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruius of Iona,’ 

2 Rambler, 108, 109, 110, 111. 


190 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BooK tir. 


of town and country, knowledge and ignorance, wealth and poverty, 
because they are moralists and utilitarians; because they look in a 
book for the knowledge to turn them from folly, and motives to con- 
firm them in uprightness; because they cultivate in themselves sense, 
that is to say, practical reason. A little fiction, a few portraits, the 
least amount of amusement, will suffice to adorn it. This substantial 
food only needs a very simple seasoning. It is not the novelty of the 
dishes, nor dainty cookery, but solidity and wholesomeness, which they 
seek. For this reason the Essays are a national food. It is because 


they are qoepid-and-dull tor-sethat Sheps the tail Sees 
man, We understand now why they take for a favourite the respectable, 


the unbearable Samuel Johnson. 

, r all these features, see these figures; 
only colours and forms complete an idea; to know, we must see. Let 
us go to the print-room. Hogarth, the national painter, the friend of 
Fielding, the contemporary of Johnson, the exact imitator of manners, 
will show us the externals, as these authors have shown us the internals, 

We enter these great archives of art. Painting is a noble thing! 
It embellishes all, even vice. -On the four walls, under transparent 
and brilliant glass, the torsos rise, flesh palpitates, the blood’s warm 
dew circulates under the veined skin, speaking likenesses stand out in 
the light; it seems that the ugly, the vulgar, the odious, have dis- 
appeared from the world. Ino more criticise characters; I have done 
with moral rules. I am no longer tempted to approve or to hate. A 
man here is but a smudge of colour, at most a handful of muscles; 
I know no longer if he be a murderer. 

Life, the happy, complete, overflowing display, the expansion of 
natural and corporal powers; this from all sides floods and rejoices our 
eyes. Our limbs instinctively move by contagious imitation of move- 
ments and forms. Before these lions of Rubens, whose deep growls 
rise like thunder to the mouth of the cave, before these colossal con- 
torting torsos, these snouts which grope about skulls, the animal in us 
quivers through sympathy, and it seems as if we were about to emit 
from our chests a roar to equal their own. 

What though art has degenerated, even amongst Frenchmen, epi- 
grammatists, the bepowdered abbés of the eighteenth century, it is art 
still. Beauty is gone, gracefulness remains. These pretty arch faces, 
these slender waspish waists, these delicate arms buried in a nest of 
lace, these careless wanderings amongst thickets and warbling foun- 
tains, these gallant dreams in a lofty chamber festooned with garlands, 
all this refined and coquettish society is still charming. The artist, 
then as always, gathers the flower of things, recks not of the rest. 

But Hogarth, what did he mean? who ever saw such a painter? Is 
he a painter? Others make us wish to see what they represent; he 
makes us wish not to see it. 

Nothing can be more agreeable to paint than a drunken debauch 








og: es *) ieee 7 ee 





, omar vw] ‘THE NOVELISTS. 191 


Ea by night; the jolly, careless faces; the rich light, drowned in shadows 

' which flicker over rumpled garments and weighed-down bodies. With 
Hogarth, on the other hand, what figures! Wickedness, stupidity, all 

_ the vile poison of the vilest human passions, drops and distils from them. 
One is shaking on his legs as he stands, sick, whilst a hiccup half opens 
his belching lips; another howls hoarsely, like a wretched cur; another, 
with bald and broken head, patched up in places, falls forward on his 
chest, with the smile of a sick idiot. We turn over the leaves of 
Hogarth’s works, and the train of odious or beastly faces appears to be 
inexhaustible; features distorted or deformed, foreheads lumpy or 
puffed out with perspiring flesh, hideous grins distended by ferocious 
laughter: one has had his nose bitten off; the next, one-eyed, square- 
headed, spotted over with bleeding warts, whose red face looks redder 
under the white wig, smokes silently, full of rancour and spleen; 
another, an old man with a crutch, scarlet and puffed, his chin fall- 
ing on his breast, gazes with the fixed and starting eyes of a crab. 
Hogarth shows the beast in man, and worse, the mad and murderous, 
the feeble or enraged beast. Look at this murderer standing over the 
body of his butchered mistress, with squinting eyes, distorted mouth, 
grinding his teeth at the thought of the blood which stains and 
denounces him; or this ruined gambler, who has torn off his wig and 
kerchief, and is crying on his knees, with closed teeth, and fist raised 
against heaven. Look again at this madhouse: the dirty idiot, with 
muddy face, filthy hair, stained claws, who thinks he is playing on the 
violin, and has a sheet of music for a cap; the religious madman, who 
writhes convulsively on his straw, with clasped hands, feeling the claws 
of the devil in his bowels; the naked and haggard raving lunatic whom 
they are chaining up, and who is tearing out his flesh with his nails. 
Detestable Yahoos that you are, who presume to usurp the blessed 
light, in what brain can you have arisen, and why did a painter sully 
his eyes with the sight of you? 

f Itis because his eyes were English, and the senses are barbarous. 
Let us leave our repugnance behind us, and look at things as Eng- 
lishmen do, not from without, but from within. The whole current 
of public thought tends here toward observation of the soul, and 
painting is dragged along with literature in the same course. Forget 
then the forms, they are but lines; the body is here only to translate 
the mind.’ This twisted nose, these pimples on a vinous cheek, these 
stupefied gestures of a drowsy brute, these wrinkled features, these 
degraded forms, only make the character, the trade, the whim, the 
habit stand out clear. The artist shows us no longer limbs and heads, 
but debauchery, drunkenness, brutality, hatred, despair, all the diseases 





1 When a character is strongly marked in the living face, it may be considered 
as an index to the mind, to express which with any degree of justness in painting, 
requires the utmost efforts of a great master.—Analysis of Beauty. ; 


192 . THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


and debdaehtizon: of these too harsh and hard wills, the mad menagerie 
of all the passions. Not that he lets them loose; this rude, dogmatic, 
and Christian citizen handles more vigorously chen any of his brethren. 
the heavy club of morality. He is a beef-eating policeman charged 
with instructing and correcting drunken pugilists. From such a man 
to such men ceremony is superfluous. At the bottom of every cage 
where he imprisons a vice, he writes its name and adds the condemna- 
tion pronounced by Scripture; he displays that vice in its ugliness, 
buries it in its filth, drags it to its punishment, so that there is no 
conscience so perverted as not to recognise it, none so hardened as not 
to be horrified at it. 

Look well, these are lessons which have force. This one is against 
gin: ona step, in the open street, lies a drunken woman, half naked, 
with hanging breasts, scrofulous legs; she smiles idiotically, and her 
child, which she lets fall on the pavement, breaks its skull, Beneath, 
a pale skeleton, with closed eyes, sinks down with her glass in her 
hand. Round about, dissipation and frenzy drive the tattered spectres 
one against another. A wretch who has hung himself sways to and fro 
in a garret. Gravediggers are putting a naked woman into a coffin. 
A starveling is gnawing side by side with a dog a bone destitute of 
meat. By his side a young woman is making her suckling swallow 
gin. A madman pitchforks his child, and raises it aloft; he dane and 
laughs, and the mother sees it. 

Another picture and lesson, this time against cruelty. A young 
murderer has been hung, and is being dissected. He is there, on a 
table, and the lecturer calmly points out with his wand the places 
where the students are to work. At this sign the dissectors cut the 
flesh and pull. One is at the feet; the second man of science, a sar- 
donic old butcher, seizes a knife with a hand that looks as if it would 
do its duty, and thrusts the other hand into the entrails, which, lower 
down, are being taken out to be putin a bucket. The last medical 


student takes out the eye, and the distorted mouth seems to howl under 


his hand. Meanwhile a dog seizes the heart, which is dragging on the 
ground ; thigh-bones and skull boil, by way of concert, in a copper ; 
and the doctors around coolly exchange surgical jokes on the subject 
which, piecemeal, is passing away under their scalpels. 

Frenchmen will say that such lessons are good for barbarians, and 
that they only half-like these official or lay preachers, De Foe, Hogarth, 
Smollett, Richardson, Johnson, and the rest. I reply that moralists are 
useful, and that these have changed a state of barbarism into one of 
civilisation, | 











a A > 9). “Te 2 ae) ee De a eal = , bee! 
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4 


CHAP. VIL] ape torts, - > 193 


CHAPTER VII 
The Poets. 


I. Rule and realm of the classical spirit—Its characters, works, scope, and limits 
—How it is centred in Pope. 

II. Pope—Education—Precocity—Beginnings— Pastoral poems—Essay on Criti- 
cism—Personal appearance—Mode of life—Character—Mediocrity of his 
passions and ideas—Largeness of his vanity and talent—Independent fortune 


and assiduous labour. 
III. Epistle of Hloisa to Abelard—What the passions become in artificial poetry 


—The Rape of the Lock—Society and the language of society in France 
and England—Wherein Pope’s badinage is painful_and displeasing—7'he 
Dunciad—Obscenity and vulgarities—Wherein the English imagination 
and drawing-room wit are irreconcilable. 

IV. Descriptive talent—Oratorical talent—Didactic poems— Why these poems are 
the final work of the classical spirit—The Hssay on Man—His deism and 
optimism—Value of his conceptions—How they are connected with the 


dominant style—How they are deformed in Pope’s hands—Methods and 


perfection of his style—Excellence of his portraits—Why they are superior 
—Translation of the Jliad—Change of taste during the past century. 

V. Incommensurability of the English mind and the classical decorum—Prior— 
Gay—Ancient pastoral impossible in northern climates—Moral conception 
natural in England—Thomson. 

VI. Discredit of the drawing-room—Entrance of the man of sensations—Why the 
return to nature is more precocious in England than in France—Sterne— 
Richardson—Mackenzie—Macpherson—Gray, Akenside, Beattie, Collins, 
Young, Shenstone—Persistence of the classical form—Domination of the 
period—Johnson—The historical school—Robertson, Gibbon, Hume—Their 
talent and their limits—Beginning of the modern age. 


I, 


HEN we take in in one view the vast literary region in England, 
extending from the restoration of the Stuarts to the French 
Revolution, we perceive that all the productions, independently of the 
English character, bear a classical impress, and that this impress, special to: 
this region, is met with neither in the preceding nor in the succeeding time. 





This dominant form of thought is imposed on all writers from Waller to 


Johnson, from Hobbes and Temple to Robertson and Hume: there is an 
art to which they all aspire; the work of a hundred years, practice and 
theory, inventions and a tetions, examples and criticism, are employed 
in attaining it, They comprehend only one kind of beauty; they estab- 


VOL, I. N 


a 





eer 





194 ; THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


lish only the precepts which may produce it; they re-write, translate, 
and disfigure on its pattern the great works of other ages; they carry 
it into all the different kinds of literature, and succeed or fail in them 
according as it is adapted to them or not. The sway of this style is so 
absolute, that it is imposed on the greatest, and condemns them to im- 
potence when they would apply it beyond its domain. The possession 
of this style is so universal, that it is met with in the weakest, and raises 
them to the height of talent, when they apply it in its domain. This 
it is which brings to perfection prose, discourse, essay, dissertation, 
narration, and all the productions which form part of conversation and 
eloquence. This it is which destroyed the old drama, debased the new, 
impoverished and diverted poetry, produced a correct, agreeable, sen- 
sible, colourless, and concise history. This spirit, common to England 
and France, impressed its form on the infinite diversity of literary works, 
so that in its universal manifest ascendency we cannot but recognise 
the presence of one of those internal forces which bend and govern the 
course of human genius. 

In no branch was it displayed more manifestly than in poetry, and 
at no time did it appear more clearly than under Queen Anne. The 
poets have just attained to the art which they had discerned. For sixty 
years they were approaching it ; now they possess it, handle it; already 
they employ and exaggerate it. The style is at the same time finished 
and artificial. Open the first that comes to hand, Parnell or Philips, 
Addison or Prior, Gay or Tickell, you find a certain turn of mind, 
versification, language. Pass to a second, the same form reappears ; 
you would say that they were imitations one of another. Go on to 
a third; the same diction, the same apostrophes, the same fashion of 
arranging an epithet and rounding a period. Turn over the whole 
lot; with little individual differences, they seem to be all cast in the 
same mould; one is more epicurean, another more moral, another 
more biting; but the noble language, the oratorical pomp, the classical 
correctness, reign throughout; the substantive is accompanied by its 
adjective, its knight of honour; antithesis balances the symmetrical 
architecture; the verb, as in Lucan or Statius, is displayed, flanked 
on each side by a noun decorated by an epithet; one would say that 
the verse had been fabricated by a machine, so uniform is the make; 
we forget what it means; we are tempted to count the feet on our 
fingers; we know beforehand what poetical ornaments are to embellish 
it. There is a theatrical dressing), contrasts, allusions, mythological 
_elegances, Greek or Latin quotations. There is a scholastic solidity, 
-sententious maxims, philosophic commonplaces, moral developments, 
oratorical exactness. You might imagine yourself to be before a 
|family of plants; if the size, colour, accessories, names differ, the 





+P. L. Courier (1772-1825) says, ‘a lady’s maid, under Louis xiv., wrote 
better than the greatest of modern writers.’ 








CHAP. VIL] , THE POETS. 195 


fundamental type does not vary; the stamens are of the same num- 
ber, similarly inserted, around similar pistils, above leaves arranged 
on the same plan; he who knows one knows all; there is a common 
organism and structure which involves the uniformity of the rest. 
If you review the whole family, you will doubtless find there some 
characteristic plant which displays the type in a clear light, whilst 
next to it and by degrees it alters, degenerates, and at last loses itself 
in the surrounding families. So here we see classical art find its 
centre in the neighbours of Pope, and above all in Pope; then, after 
being half effaced, mingle with foreign elements, until it disappears in 
the poetry which succeeded it.* 


i II. 

In 1688, at the house of a linen draper in Lombard Street, London, 
was born a little, delicate, and sickly creature, by nature artificial, 
constituted beforehand for a studious existence, having no taste but 
for books, who from his early youth derived his whole pleasure from 
the contemplation of printed books. He copied the letters, and thus 
learned to write. He passed his infancy with them, and was a verse- 
maker as soon as he knew how to speak. At the age of twelve he 
had written a little tragedy out of the iad, and an Ode on Solitude. 
From thirteen to fifteen he composed a long epic of four thousand 
verses, called Alexander. For eight years shut up in a little house in 
Windsor Forest, he read all the best critics, almost all the English, 
Latin, and French poets who have a reputation, Homer, the Greek 
poets, and a few of the greater ones in the original, Tasso and Ariosto 
in translations, with such assiduity, that he nearly died from it. He 
did not search in them for passions, but style: there was never a more 

__devoted adorer, never a more precocious master of form. Already his 
taste showed itself: amongst all the English poets his favourite was 
Dryden, the least inspired and the most classical. He perceived his 
career. He states that Mr. Walsh told him there was one way left of 


1 The Rev. Whitwell Elwin, in his second volume of the Works of Alexander 
Pope, at the end of his introduction to An Hssay on Man, says, p. 338: ‘M. Taine 
asserts that from the Restoration to the French Revolution, from Waller to John- 
son, from Hobbes and Temple to Robertson and Hume, all our literature, both prose 
and verse, bears the impress of classic art. The mode, he says, culminated in the 
reign of Queen Anne, and Pope, he considers, was the extreme example of it. . . . 
Many of the most eminent authors who flourished between the English Restoration 
wrote in a style far removed from that which M. Taine calls classical. . . . The 
verse differs like the prose, though in a less degree, and is not ‘‘ of a uniform make, 
as if fabricated by a machine.”.. .. Neither is the substance of the prose and 
verse, from the Restoration to the French Revolution, an invariable common-sense 
mediocrity. . . . There is much truth in his (M. Taine’s) view, that there was a 
growing tendency to cultivate style, and in some writers the art degenerated into 
the artificial.’—Tr. 

















/\ 
J 





196 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


excelling. ‘We had several great poets,’ he said, ‘but we never had 
one great poet that was correct; and he advised me to make that my 
study and aim.’* He tollowed this advice, tried his hand in transla- 
tions ot Ovid and Statius, and in recasting parts of old Chaucer. He 
appropriated all the poetic elegances and excellencies, stored them up | 
in his memory; he arranged i in his head the complete dictionary of all 
happy epithets, all ingenious turns of expression, all sonorous rhythms 
by which one may exalt, render precise, illuminate an idea. He was 
like those little musicians, infant prodigies, who, brought up at the 
piano, suddenly acquire a marvellous touch, roll out scales, brilliant 
shakes, make the octaves vault with an agility and justice which drive 
off the stage the most famous artists. At seventeen, becoming ac- 
quainted with old Wycherley, who was sixty-nine, he undertook, at 
his request, to correc dems, and corrected them so well, that ‘the 
other was at once charmed and mortified. Pope blotted out, added, 
recast, spoke trankly, and eliminated firmly. The author, in spite of 
himself, admired the corrections secretly, and tried openly to make 
light of them, until at last his vanity, wounded at owing so much to 
so young a man, and at finding a master in a scholar, ended by break- 
ing off an intercourse by which he profited and suffered too much. 
For the scholar had at his first step carried the art beyond his master’s. 
\At sixteen? his Pastorals bore witness to a correctness which no one 
had possessed, not even Dryden. To read these choice words, these 
exquisite arrangements of melodious syllables, this science of division 
and rejection, this style so fluent and pure, these graceful images 
rendered still more graceful by the diction, and ail this artificial and 
many-tinted garland of flowers which he called pastoral, people thought 
of the first eclogues of Virgil. Mr. Walsh declared ‘that it is not 
flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his 
age.’® When later they appeared in one volume, the public was 
dazzled. ‘ You have oer displeased the critics,’ wrote Wycherley, ‘ by 
pleasing them too well’* The same year the poet_ of _twenty-one 
finished his Essay on Criticism, a sort of Ars Poetica: it is the kind of 
poem a man might write at the end of his career, when he has handled 
all modes of writing, and has grown grey in criticism; and in this sub- 
ject, whose treatment demands the experience of a whole literary life, 
he was in an instant as ripe as Boileau. 

This consummate musician, who begins by a treatise on harmony, 
what will he make of his incomparable mechanism and his professional 
science? It is well to feel and think before writing; a full source of 














1 R. Carruthers, Life of Alexander Pope, 2d ed. 1857, ch. i. 33. 

* It is very doubtful whether Pope was not older than sixteen when he wrote 
the Pastorals. See, on this subject, Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin, London 1871, i. 
239 ef passim.—TR. 

3 Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin, i. 233. 4 Ibid. i. 242. 












ert ti —_—— 





CHAP. VII. | : THE POETS. 197 


living ideas and candid passions is necessary to make a genuine poet, 
and in him, seen closely, we find that everything, to his very person, is 
tricked_out_and_artificial ; he was a dwarf, four feet high, contorted, 
hunchbacked, thin, valetudinarian, appearing, when he arrived at 
maturity, no longer capable of existing. “He could not get up him- 
self, a woman dressed him; he wore three pairs of stockings, drawn on 
one over the other, so slender were his legs; ‘when he rose, he was 
invested in bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold 
himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waist- 
coat ;’4 next came a sort of fur doublet, for the least thing made him 
shiver ; and lastly, a thick linen shirt, very warm, with fine sleeves. 
Over all this he wore a black garment, a tye-wig, a little sword; thus 
equipped, he went and took his place at the table of his great friend, 
Lord Oxford. He was so small, that he had to be raised on a chair of 
his own ; so bald, that when he had no company he covered his head with 
a velvet cap ; so punctilious and exacting, that the footmen avoided to go 
his errands, and the Earl had to discharge several ‘ for their resolute re- 
fusal of his messages.’ At dinner he ate too much; like a spoiled child, he 
would have highly seasoned dishes, and thus ‘ would oppress his stomach 
with repletion.” When cordials were offered him, he got angry, but did 
not refuse them. He had all the appetite and whims of an old child, 





an old invalid, an old author, an old bachelor. You are prepared to 


find him whimsical and susceptible. He often, without saying a word, 
and without any known cause, quitted the house of the Earl of Oxford, 
and the ladies had to go repeatedly with messages to bring him back. 
If Lady Mary Wortley, his former poetical divinity, were unfortunately 
at table, there was no dining in peace; they would not fail to contra- 
dict, peck at each other, quarrel; and one or other would leave the 
room. He would be sent for and would return, but he brought his 
hobbies back with him. He was crafty, malignant, like a nervous 
abortion as he was; when he wanted anything, he dared not ask for it 
plainly ; with hints and contrivances of speech he induced people to 
mention it, to bring it forward, after which he would make use of it. 
‘Thus he teased Lord Orrery till he obtained a screen. He hardly 
drank tea without_a stratagem. Lady Bolingbroke used ‘to say that 


“he 2 played the j politician about cabbages and turnips.” ’* 
The rest of his life is not much more noble. He wrote libels on 


the Duke of Chandos, Aaron Hill, Lady Mary Wortley, and then lied 
or equivocated to disavow them. He had an ugly liking for artifice, 
and prepared a disloyal trick against Lord Bolingbroke, his greatest 
friend. He was never frank, always acting a part; he aped the bdlasé 
man, the impartial great artist, a contemner of the great, of kings, of 
poetry itself. The truth is, that he thought of nothing but his phrases, 








1 Johnson, Lives of the most eminent English Poets, 3 vols., ed. Cunningham, 
1854; A. Pope, iii. 96. 2 Ibid. iii. 99. 


198 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


his author’s reputation, and ‘a little regard shown him by the Prince 
of Wales melted his obduracy.’ When you read his correspondence, 
you find that there are not more than about ten genuine letters; he 
is a literary man even in the moments when he opened his heart; his_ 
confidences are formal rhetoric ; and when he conversed with a frien 
he was always thinking of the printer, who would give his effusions to 
the public. Through his very pretentiousness he grew awkward, and 
unmasked himself. One day Richardson and his father, the piintoks 
found him reading a “pamphlet that Cibber had written against him. 
‘These things,’ said Pope, ‘are my diversion.’ ‘They sat by him while 
he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young 
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be 
preserved from such diversion.’? In fine, his great cause for _writing 
was literary vanity ; he wished to be admired, and nothing more ; his 
life was that of a coquette studying herself in a glass, bedecking here 
self, smirking, paying compliments to herself, yet declaring that com- 
Bliments weary her, that painting the face makes her dirty, and that 
she has a horror of affectation. Pope has no dash, no.naturalness or 
manliness ; no more ideas than passions ; at least such ideas as a man 





feels if necessary to write, and in connection with which we lose thought — 


of words. Religious controversy and party quarrels resound about him ; 
he studiously avoids them; amidst all these shocks his chief care is to pre- 
serve his writing-desk ; he is a very lukewarm Catholic, all but a deist, 
not well aware of what deism means; and on this point he borrows 
from Bolingbroke ideas whose scope he cannot see, but which he thinks 
‘suitable to be put into verse. In a letter to Atterbury (1717) he says: 

‘In my politics, I think no further than how to prefer the peace of my life, 
in any government under which I live; nor in my religion, than to preserve the 
peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. I hope all 
.churches and governments are so far of God, as they are rightly understood and 
rightly administered ; and where they err, or may be wrong, I leave it to God 
alone to mend or reform them.’ 


Such convictions do not torment a man. In reality, he did not write 
because he thought, but thought in order to write; inky paper, and 
the noise it makes in the world, was his idol; if he wrote verses, it was 
merely for the sake of doing so. Lb BES 5 

This is the best training for versification. Pope gave himself up to 
it; he was a man of leisure, his father had left him a very fair fortune ; 
i earned a large sum by translating the Iliad } and Odyssey ; he had an 
income of eight hundred pounds. He was ‘never in the pay of a pub- 
lisher ; he looked from an eminence upon the beggarly authors grovel- 
ling in their Bohemianism, and, calmly seated in his pretty house at 
Twickenham, in his grotto, or in the fine garden which he had himself 

1 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ch. lxxi. 670. 

3 Carruthers’ Life of Pope, ch. x. 877. 3 Ibid. ch. iv. 164, 











—— 


— 


Ta Ga! Aa 


5 


— 


. 





_ CHAP, VIL] THE POETS. 199 


planned, he could polish and file his writings as long as he chose. He 
did not fail to do so. When he had written a work, he kept it at least 
two years in his desk. From time to time he re-read and corrected it; 
took counsel of his” friends, then of his enemies; no new edition was | 
unamended; he moulded-without.wearying. His first production was 
so much recast and transformed, that it could not be recognised in the 
final copy. The pieces which seem least retouched are two satires, and 
Dodsley says that in the manuscript ‘almost every line was written 
twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time 
afterwards to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over 
a second time.’* Dr. Johnson says: ‘ From his attention to poetry he 
was never diverted. If conversation offered anything that could be 
improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an ex- 
pression, more happy than was common, rose to his mind, he was careful 
to write it ; an independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of 
insertion ; and some little fragments have been found containing lines, 
or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at some other time.’* His 
writing-box had to be placed upon his bed before he rose. ‘Lord 
Oxford’s domestic related that, in the dreadful winter of 1740, she was 
called from her bed by him four times in one night to supply him with 
paper, lest he should lose a thought.’* Swift complains that he was 
never at leisure for conversation, because he ‘ had always some poetical 
scheme in his head.’ Thus nothing was lacking for the attainment 
of perfect expression; the practice of a lifetime, the study of every 
J model, independent fortune, the company of men of the world, free- 
-. pe from turbulent passions, the absence of dominant ideas, the facility 

: 





f an infant prodigy, the assiduity of an old man of letters. It seems 
: as though he were expressly endowed with faults and good qualities, 
ae here enriched, there impoverished, at once narrowed and developed, to 
f set in relief the classical form by the diminution of the classical depth, 
to present the public with a model of a well-used and accomplished art, 
to reduce to a brilliant and rigid crystal the flowing sap of an expiring 
literature. 

Il. 


It isa great misfortune for a poet to know his business too well; 
his poetry then shows a man of business, and not the poet. I-wish I etd 
admire Pope’s works of imagination, but I cannot. In vain I read the 
testimony of his contemporaries, and even that of the moderns, and 
repeat to myself that in his time he was the prince of poets; that his 
Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard was received with a cry of enthusiasm ; 

_ that one could not then imagine a finer expression of true poetry ; that 
to this day it is learned by heart, like the speech of Hippolyte in the 
Phédre of Racine; that Johnson, that great literary critic, ranked it 





1 Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets ; Alexander Pope, iii. 114. 
2 Jbid. iii. 111. 3 bid. iii. 105, 


200 | THE CLASSIC’AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


amongst ‘the happiest productions of the human mind;’ that Lord 
Byron himself preferred it to the celebrated ode of Sappho. I read it 
again, and am bored: this is not as it ought to be; but, in spite of my- 
self, I yawn, and I open the original letters of Eloisa to find the cause 
of my weariness. . 

Doubtless poor Eloisa is a barbarian, nay worse, a literary barbarian; 
she makes learned quotations, arguments, tries to imitate Cicero, to 
arrange her periods; she could not do otherwise, writing a dead lan- 
guage, with an acquired style; perhaps the reader would do-as much if 
he were obliged to write to his mistress in Latin.» But how the true 
sentiment pierces through the scholastic form ! 





‘Thou art the only one who can sadden me, console me, make me joyful... . 
I should be happier and prouder to be called thy mistress than to be the lawful 
wife of an emperor. . . . Never, God knows it, have I wished for anything else 
_in thee but thee. It is thee alone whom I desire ; nothing that thou couldst give; — 
it is not a marriage, a dowry: I never dreamt of doing my pleasure or my will, 
thou knowest it, but thine.’ 


Then come passionate words, genuine love words,® then the candid 
words of a penitent, who says and dares everything, because she wishes 
to be cured, to show her wound to her confessor, even her most shame- 
ful wound ; perhaps also because in extreme agony, as in childbirth, 
modesty vanishes. All this is very crude, very rude; Pope has more 
wit than she, and how he endues her with it! In his hands she becomes 
an academician, and her letter is a repertory of literary effects. Portraits 3 
and descriptions ; she paints to Abelard the nunnery and the landscape: $ 


‘ In these lone walls (their days eternal bound), 
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned, 
Where awful arches make a noon-day night, 
And the dim windows shed a solemn light... . 
The wandering streams that shine between the hills, 
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, “i 
The dying gales that pant upon the trees, . 
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze.’ * 


Declamation and commonplace: she sends Abelard discourses on love 
and the liberty which it demands, on the cloister and the peaceful life 





1 Rev. W. Elwin, in his edition of Pope’s Works, ii. 224, says: ‘The authenti- 
city of the Latin letters has usually been taken for granted, but I have a strong 
belief that they are a forgery. . . . It is far more likely that they are the fabri- 
cation of an unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with a 
latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards them- 
selves. The suspicion is strengthened when the second party to the correspon- 
dence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits the same exceptional 
depravity of taste.’—Tr. 

2 *Vale, unice.’ 

5 Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin; Hloisa to Abelard, ii. 245, v. 141-160. 


a ee ee ee ce 






CHAP. VIL] _ THE POETS. | 201 





which it affords, on writing and the advantages of the post.1 Antitheses 
and contrasts, she forwards them to Abelard by the dozen; a contrast 
between the convent illuminated by his presence and desolate by his 
absence, between the tranquillity of the pure nun and the anxiety of the 
culpable nun, between the dream of human happiness and the dream of 
divine happiness. In fine, it is a bravura, with contrasts of forte and 
piano, variations and change of key. Eloisa makes the most of her 
theme, and sets herself to crowd into it all the powers and effects of her 
voice. Admire the crescendo, the shakes by which she ends her brilliant 
morceauxz ; to transport the hearer at the close of the portrait of the 
-innocent nun, she says: 


‘ How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! 
The world forgetting, by the world forgot : 
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ! 
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned 
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep ; 
‘Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep ;” 
Desires composed, affections ever even ; 
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav’n. 
Grace shines around her, with serenest beams, 
And whisp’ring angels prompt her golden dreams. 
For her, th’ unfading rose of Eden blooms, 
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes, 
For her the spouse prepares the bridal ring, 
For her white virgins hymeneals sing, 
To sounds of heavenly harps she dies away, 
And melts in visions of eternal day.’? 


Observe the noise of the big drum, I mean the grand contrivances, for 

i so_may be called all that a person says who wishes to rave and cannot ; 

Lee for instance,.speaking to rocks and walls, praying the absent Abelard to 
; come, fancying him present, apostrophising grace and virtue: 


‘Oh grace serene! Oh virtue heavenly fair ! 
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care ! 
Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky ! 
_ And faith, our early immortality ! 
: Enter, each mild, each amicable guest ; 
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!’ 





1 Eloisa to Abelard, ii. 240, v. 51-58 : 
‘ Heav’n first taught letters for some wretch’s aid, 
Some banished lover, or some captive maid ; 
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires, 
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires, 
The virgin’s wish without her fears impart, 
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart, 
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, 
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.’ 
2 Ibid. 249, v. 207-222. 8 Ibid. 254, v. 297-302. 








202 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


Hearing the dead speaking to her, telling the angels: 
‘Icome! Icome! Prepare your roseate bow’rs, 
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow’rs.’? 
This is the final symphony with modulations of the celestial organ. I 
suppose that Abelard cries ‘ Bravo’ when he hears it. 

But this is nothing in comparison with the art exhibited by her in 
every phrase. She puts ornaments into every line. Imagine an Italian 
singer trilling every word. O what pretty sounds! how nimbly and 
brilliantly they roll along, how clear, and always exquisite! it is im- 
possible to reproduce them in another tongue. Now it is a happy 
image, filling up a whole phrase; now a series of verses, full of sym- 
metrical contrasts; two ordinary words set in relief by strange con- 
junction; an imitative rhythm completing the impression of the mind 
by the emotion of the senses; the most elegant comparisons and the 
most picturesque epithets; the closest style and the most ornate. 
Except truth, nothing is wanting. Eloisa is worse than a singer, she 
is an author: we look at the back of her epistle to Abelard to see if 
she has not written ‘ For Press.’ 

Pope has somewhere given a receipt for making an epic poem: take 
a storm, a dream, five or six battles, three sacrifices, funereal games, a 
dozen gods in two divisions ; shake.together-until-there_rises the froth 
of a lofty style. You have just seen the receipt for making a love- 
letter.:. This kind of poetry resembles cookery; neither heart nor 
genius is necessary to produce it, but a light hand, an attentive eye, 
and a cultivated taste. 

It seems that this kind of talent is made for light verses. It is 
factitious, and so are the manners of society. To make pretty speeches, 
to prattle with ladies, to speak elegantly of their chocolate or their fan, 
to jeer at fools, to criticise the last tragedy, to be good at compliments 
or epigrams,—this, it seems, is the natural employment of a mind such 
as this, but slightly impassioned, very vain, a perfect master of style, as 
careful of his verses as a dandy of his coat. Pope wrote the Rape of 
the Lock and the Dunciad; his contemporaries went into ecstasies on the 
charm of his badinage and the exactness of his raillery, and believed 
that he had surpassed Boileau’s Zutrin and Satires. 

That may well be; at all events the praise would be saan In 
Boileau there are, as a ‘rule two kinds of verse, as was said by a man of 
wit ;” most of which seem to be those of a sharp schoolboy in the third 
class, the rest those of a good schoolboy in the upper division. Boileau 
wrote the second verse before the first; this is why once out of four 
times his first verse only serves to stop'a gap. Doubtless Pope had a 
more brilliant and adroit mechanism; but this facility of hand does not 
suffice to make a poet, even a poet of the boudoir. There, as elsewhere, 
we need genuine passions, or at least genuine tastes. When we wish to 





1 Lloisa to Abelard, ii. 255, v. 317. 7M. Guillaume Guizot. 









CHAP. VIL] THE POETS. 203 


paint the pretty nothings of conversation and the world, we must like 
them. We can only paint well what we love.* Is there no charming 
grace in the prattle and frivolity of a pretty woman? Painters, like 
Watteau, have spent their lives in feasting on them. A lock of hair 
which is lifted up, a pretty arm peeping from underneath a great deal 
2 of lace, a stooping figure making the bright folds of a petticoat sparkle, 
*% and the arch, half-engaging, half-mocking smile of the pouting mouth, — 
2 these are enough to transport an artist. Certainly he will be aware of 
the influence of the toilet, as much so as the lady herself, and will never 
scold her for passing three hours at her glass; there is poetry in 
elegance. He enjoys it as a picture; enjoys the refinements of worldly 
life, the long quiet lines of the lofty, wainscoted drawing-room, the soft 
reflection of the high mirrors and glittering porcelain, the careless gaiety 
of the little sculptured Loves, locked in embrace above the mantel- 
piece, the silvery sound of these soft voices, buzzing scandal round the 
tea-table. Pope hardly, if at all, rejoices in them; he is satirical and 
a. English amidst this amiable luxury, introduced from France. Although 


‘¢ he is the most worldly of English poets, he is not enough-so; nor is the 
a society around him. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who was in her 
; time ‘the pink of fashion,’ and who is compared to Madame de Sévigné, 


has such a serious mind, such a decided style, such a precise judgment, 
and such a harsh sarcasm, that you would take her fora man. In fine, 
"i the English, even Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, never mastered 
the true tone of the salon. Pope is like them; his voice thunders, and 
then suddenly becomes biting. Every instant a harsh mockery blots 
out the graceful images, which he began to arouse. Consider Zhe Rape 
of the Lock as a whole; it is a buffoonery in a noble style. Lord 
Petre had cut off a lock of hair of a fashionable beauty, Mrs. Arabella 
Fermor; out of this trifle the problem is to make an epic, with invoca- 
tions, apostrophes, the intervention of supernatural beings, and the rest 
of poetic mechanism; the solemnity of style contrasts with the little- 
ness of the events; we laugh at these bickerings as at an insect’s quarrel. 
Such has always been the case in this country; whenever Englishmen 
wish to represent social life, it is with an external and assumed polite- 
ness; at the bottom of their admiration there is scorn. Their insipid | 
compliments conceal a mental reservation; observe them well, and } | 
you will see that they look upon a pretty, well-dressed, and coquettish | 
woman as a pink doll, fit to amuse people for half an hour, by her out-| 
ward show. Pope dedicates his poem to Mistress Arabella Fermor' 
with every kind of compliment. The truth is, he is not polite; a 
Frenchwoman would have sent him back his book, and advised him to 
learn manners; for one commendation of her beauty she would find 
ten sarcasms upon her frivolity. Is it very pleasant to have it said to 


Ser 





1 Goethe sings—‘ Liebe sei vor allen Dingen, 
Unser Thema, wenn wir singen.’ 


a en eel 
ak ‘ 


204 THE CLASSIC AGE. _ [BOOK TIL. 


one: ‘You have the prettiest eyes in the world, but you live in the 
pursuit of trifles?’ Yet.to this all his homage is reduced.’ His com- 
plimentary emphasis, his declaration that the ‘ravish’d hair. . . adds 
new glory to the shining sphere,’? all his stock of phrases is but a 
parade of gallantry which betrays indelicacy and grossness. Will she 


‘Stain her honour, or her new brocade, 
Forget her pray’rs, or miss a masquerade, 
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball ?% 


No Frenchman of the eighteenth century would have imagined such a 
compliment. At most, that bearish Rousseau, that former lackey and 
Geneva moralist, might have delivered this disagreeable thrust. In 
England it was not found too rude. Mrs. Arabella Fermor was so 
pleased with the poem, that she gave about copies of it. Clearly she 
was not hard to please,, for she had heard much worse compliments. 
If you read in Swift the literal transcript of a fashionable conversation, 


you will see that a woman of fashion of that time could endure much — 


before she was angry. 

But the strangest thing is, that this badinage is, for Frenchmen at 
least, no badinage at all. It is not all like lightness or gaiety. Dorat, 
Gresset, would have been stupefied and shocked by it. We remain 
cold under its most brilliant hits. Now and then at most a crack of the 
whip arouses us, but not to laughter. These caricatures seem strange 
to us, but donot amuse. The wit isno wit; all is calculated, combined, 
artificially prepared; we expect flashes of lightning, but at the last 
moment they do not descend. Thus Lord Petre, to ‘implore propitious 
heaven, and every power,’ 

: ‘To Love an altar built 
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, 
And all the trophies of his former loves ; 
With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, 
And breathes three am’rous sighs to raise the fire.’ * 


We remain disappointed, not seeing the comicality of the description. 
We go on conscientiously, and in the picture of Melancholy and her 
palace find figures very strange after another fashion: 


‘Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pye talks ; 
Men prove with child, as pow’rful fancy works, 
And maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks.’ ° 


We tell ourselves now that we are in China; that so far from Paris 





1 See his Epistle of the Characters of Women. According to Pope, this cha- 
racter is composed of love of pleasure and love of power. 

2 Rape of the Lock, c. v. 181, v. 141. , 3 Thid. c. ii, 156, v. 107. 

4 [bid, ¢. ii, 153, v. 37-42. 5 Ibid. c. iv. 169, v. 52. 





f 
7 


hy a! a! OT he ~ 






ae ge es ‘“. % Wh PN at Beis ane ts h res ae eee. 
es) : fo 4 


CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 205 
and Voltaire we must be surprised at nothing, that thése folk have ears 
different from ours, and that a Pekin mandarin vastly relishes a con- 
cert of kettles. Finally, we comprehend that, even in this correct age 
and this artificial poetry, the old imagination exists ; that it is nourished, 
as before, by oddities and contrasts ; and that taste, in spite of all culture, 
will never become acclimatised; that incongruities, far from shocking, 
delight it ; that it is insensible to French sweetness and refinements ; that 
it needs a succession of expressive figures, unexpected and grinning, to 
pass before it ; that it prefers this coarse carnival to delicate insinuations ; 
that Pope belongs to his country, in spite of his classical polish and 
his studied elegances, and that his anpleasing and vigorous fancy is akin 
to that of Swift. 

We are now prepared and can enter upon his second poem, The - 
Dunciad. Weneed much self-command not to throw down this master- 
piece as insipid, and even disgusting. Rarely has so much talent been 
spent to produce greater tedium. Pope wished to be avenged on his 
literary enemies, and sang of Dulness, the sublime goddess of literature, 
‘daughter of Chaos and eternal Night, . . . gross as her sire, and as her 


“Ya grave,’* queen of hungry authors, whe chooses for her son and 
a 


vourite Cibber. ‘There he is, a king, and to celebrate his accession 

she institutes public games in imitation of the ancients; first a race of 
booksellers, trying to seize a poet ; then the struggle of the authors, who 
first vie with each other in braying, and then dash into the Fleet-ditch 
filth; then the strife of critics, who have to undergo the reading of 
two voluminous authors without falling asleep.” Strange paradise, to be 
sure, and in truth not very striking. Who is not deafened by these 
hackneyed and bald allegories, Dulness, poppies, mists, and Sleep ? 
What if I entered into details, and described the poetess offered for a 
prize, ‘ with cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes;’ if I related the 
plunges of the authors, floundering in the Fleet-ditch, the vilest sewer 
in the town; if I transcribed all the extraordinary verses, in which 

‘First he relates, how sinking to the chin, 

Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck’d him in: 

How young Lutetia, softer than the down, 

Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown, 

Vied for his love in jetty bow’rs below.’ . . . 3 
I must stop. Some passages, for instance that on the fall of Curl, Swift 
alone might have seemed capable of writing; we might have excused 
it in Swift; the extremity of despair, the rage of misanthropy, the 
approach of madness, might have carried him to such excess. But 
Pope, who lived calm and admired in his villa, and who was only urged 
by literary rancour! He can have had no nerves! How coulda poet 
have dragged his talent wantonly through such images, and so con- 





* Pope’s Works, The Dunciad, bk. i. * [bid. bk. ii. 
3 bid. 


206 THE CLASSIC AGE. [Book Il. 


strained his ingeniously woven verses to receive such dirt? Picture a 


pretty drawing-room basket, destined only to contain flowers and fancy- 
work, sent down to the kitchen to be turned into a receptacle for filth. 
In fact, all the filth of literary life is here; and» heaven knows what it 
then was! In no age were hack-writers so beggarly and more vile. 
Poor fellows, like Richard Savage, who slept during one winter in the 
open air on the cinders of a glass manufactory, lived on what he received 
for a dedication, knew the inside of a prison, rarely dined, and drank 
at the expense of his friends; pamphleteers like Tutchin, who was 
soundly whipped; plagiarists like Ward, exposed in the pillory and 
pelted with rotten eggs and apples; courtesans like Eliza Heywood, 
notorious by the shamelessness of their public confessions; bought 
journalists, hired slanderers, vendors of scandal and insults, half-rogues, 
complete roysterers, and all the literary vermin which haunted the 
gambling-houses, the stews, the gin-cellars, and at a sign from a book- 
seller stung honest folk for a crown. ‘These villanies, foul linen, the 
greasy coat six years old, musty pudding, and the rest, are in Pope as 
in Hogarth, with English crudity and preciseness. ‘This is their fault, 
they are realists, even under tlie classical wig; they do not disguisé 
what is ugly and mean; they describe that ugliness and meanness with 
their exact outlines and distinguishing marks; they do not clothe them 
in a fine cloak of general ideas; they do not cover them with the pretty 
innuendoes of society. This is the reason why their satires are so harsh. 
Pope does not flog the dunces, he knocks them down; his poem is 
truly hard and mischievous; it is so much so, that it becomes clumsy : 
to add to the punishment of dunces, he begins at the deluge, writes 
historical passages, represents at length the past, present, and future 
empire of Dulness, the library of Alexandria burned by Omar, learning 
extinguished by the invasion of the barbarians and by the superstition 
of the middle-age, the empire of stupidity which extends over England 
and will swallow it up. What paving-stones to crush flies! 


* See skulking Truth tc her old cavern fled, 
Mountains of casuistry heap’d o’er her head ! 
Philosophy, that lean’d on Heav’n before, 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. 
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, 

And Metaphysic calls for aid on sense! ... 

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, 

And unawares Morality expires. 

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine ; 

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! 
‘ Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored ; 

Light dies before thy uncreating word : 

Thy hand, great anarch ! lets the curtain fall ; 

And universal darkness buries all.’+ 





1 The Dunciad, the end. 


ve we ‘ 
: - ae 
toe 

. 5 

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_ 

4 

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‘ 

: 











CHAP, VII.] |) 0 SEE PORTS; sli 207 


The last scene ends with noise, cymbals and trombones, crackers and 
fireworks. For me, I carry away from this celebrated entertainment 
only the remembrance of a hubbub. Unwittingly I have counted the 
lights, I know the machinery, I have touched the toilsome stage- 
property of apparitions and allegories. I bid farewell to the scene 
painter, the machinist, the manager of literary effects, and go elsewhere 
to find the poet. 


IV. 


‘There_is, however, a poet in Pope, and to discover him we have 
only to read him by y fragments; if the whole is, as a rule, wearisome 
or shocking, the details are admirable. It is so at the end of all literary 
ages. Pliny the younger, and Seneca, so affected and so inflated, are 
charming in small bits; each of their phrases, taken by itself, is a 
masterpiece; each verse in Pope is a masterpiece when taken alone. 
At this time, and after a hundred years of culture, there is no movement, 
no object, no action, which poets cannot describe. Every aspect of 
nature was observed; a sunrise, a landscape reflected in the water,* 
a breeze amid the foliage, and so forth. Ask Pope to paint in verse an 
eel, a perch, or a trout; he has the exact phrase ready; you might 
glean from him the contents of a ‘Gradus.’ He gives the features so 
exactly, that at once you think you see the thing; he gives the ex- 
pression | so_copiously, that your imagination, however obtuse, will end 


by seeing it. He marks everything in the flight of a pheasant: 


‘See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs 
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings... . 
Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes, 
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, 
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, 
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold ?’? 


He possesses the richest store of words to depict the sylphs which 
flutter round his heroine Belinda: 


‘ But now secure the painted vessel glides, 
The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides: 
While melting music steals upon the sky, 
And softened sounds along the waters die ; 
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently, play,... 
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair : 
Soft o’er the shrouds the aérial whispers breathe, 
That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. 





1 Pope’s Works, i. 352 ; Windsor Forest, v. 211. 
‘ Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies 
The headlong mountains and the downward skies, 
The wat’ry landscape of the pendant woods, 
And absent trees that tremble in the floods.’ 
® [bid, 347, v. 111-118, 














208 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold, 

Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ; 
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 

Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. 

Loose to the wind their airy garment flew, 

Thin glitt’ring textures of the filmy dew, 

Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, 

Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes ; 

While ev’ry beam new transient colours flings, 

Colours that change whene’er they wave their wings.’! 


Doubtless these are not Shakspeare’s sylphs; but side by side with a 
natural and living rose, we may still look with pleasure on a flower of 
diamonds, as they come from the hand of the jeweller, a masterpiece of 
art and patience, whose facets make the light glitter, and cast a shower 
of sparkles over the filagree foliage in which they are embedded. A 
score of times in a poem ‘of Pope’s we stop to look with wonder on one 
of these literary adornments. He feels so well in which the strong 
point of ‘his talent lies, that he abuses it; he delights to show his skill. 
What can be staler than a card party, or more repellent of poetry than 
the queen of spades or the king of hearts? Yet, doubtless for a wager, 
he has recorded in the Rape of the Lock a game of ombre; we follow 
it, hear it, recognise the dresses: 
‘ Behold, four kings, in majesty revered, 

With hoary whiskers and a forky beard ; 

And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow’r, 

Th’ expressive emblem of their softer power ; 

Four knaves in garb succinct, a trusty band ; 

Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand ; 

And parti-coloured troops, a shining train, 

Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain.’ ? 


We see the trumps, the cuts, the tricks, and instantly afterwards the 
coffee, the china, the spoons, the fiery spirits (to wit, spirits of wine) ; 
we have here in advance the modes and periphrases of Delille. The 
celebrated verses in which Delille at once employs and describes 
imitative harmony, are translated from Pope.* It is an expiring 
poetry, but poetry still: an ornament to put on a mantelpiece is an 
inferior work of art, but still it is a work of art. 

To descriptive talent Pope unites oratorical talent. This art, proper 
to the classical age, is the art of expressing mediocre general ideas. ” 
For a hundred and fifty years men of both the thinking countries, Eng- 
land and France, employed herein all their studies. They seized these 
universal and limited truths, which, being situated between lofty philo- 





1 Pope’s Works, ii. 154; The Rape of the Lock, ce. 2, v. 47-68. 
2 Ibid. c. 8, 160, v. 87-44. 
8 ¢« Peins-moi légérement ]’amant léger de Flore, 

Qu’un doux ruisseau murmure en vers plus doux encore,’ ete, 








CHAP. VII. | THE POETS. 209 


sophical abstractions and petty sensible details, are the subject-matter 
of eloquence and rhetoric, and form what we now-a-days call common- 
places. They arranged them in compartments ; methodically developed 
them; made them obvious by grouping and symmetry; disposed them 
in regular successions, which with dignity and majesty advance under 
discipline, and in a body. The influence of this oratorical reason be- 
came so great, that it was imposed on poetry itself. Buffon ends by 
saying, in praise of verses, that they are as fine as fine prose. In fact, 
poetry at this time became a more affected prose subjected to rhyme. 
It was only a kind of higher conversation and more select discourse. 
It is found powerless when it is necessary to paint or represent an 
action, when the need is to see and make visible living passions, large 
genuine emotions, men of flesh and blood; it results only in college 
epics like the Henriade, freezing odes and tragedies like those of Voltaire 
and Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, or those of Addison, Thomson, Johnson, 
and the rest. It makes them up of dissertations, because it is capable 
of nothing else but dissertations. Here henceforth is its domain; and 
its final task is the didactic poem, which is a dissertation in verse. 
Pope excelled in it, and his most perfect poems are those made up of 
precepts and arguments. Artifice in these is less shocking than else- 
where. A poem—lI am wrong, essays like his upon Criticism, on Man, 
and the Government of Providence, on the Knowledge and Characters of 
Men, deserve to be written after reflection; they are a study, and almost 
“a scientific monograph. We may, we even ought, to weigh all the 
words, and verify all the connections: art and attention are not super- 
fluous; the question concerns exact precepts and close arguments. In 
this Pope is incomparable. I do not think that there is in the world 
a versified prose like his; that of Boileau does not approach it. Not 
that its-ideas~are very worthy of attention; we have worn them out, 
they interest us no longer. The Essay on Criticism resembles Boileau’s 
Epitres and L’Art Poétique, excellent works, no longer read but in 
classes at school. It is a collection of very wise precepts, whose only 
fault_is their being too true. To say that good taste is rare; that we 
ought to reflect and be instructed before deciding; that the rules of 
art are drawn from nature; that pride, ignorance, prejudice, partiality, 
envy, pervert our judgment; that a criticism should be sincere, modest, 
polished, kindly,—all these truths might then be discoveries, but not so 
now. I suppose that, at the time of Pope, Dryden, and Boileau, men 
had special need of setting their ideas in order, and of seeing them very 
clearly in very clear phrases. Now that this need is satisfied, it has 





A tale of J. J. Rousseau, in which he tries to depict a philosophical clergy- 
man.—TRr. 
VOL. II. 0 


210 THE CLASSIC AGE. - [Boox m1. 


, than the other. He shows that God made all for the best, that man 

_is limited in his capacity and ought not to judge God, that our passions 

and imperfections serve for the general good and for the ends of Provi- 
"dence, that happiness lies in virtue and submission to the divine will. 
You recognise here a_sort of deism and optimism, of which there was 
much at that time, borrowed, like those of Rousseau, from the Theodicea 
of Leibnitz, but tempered, toned down, and arranged for the use of 
honest people. ‘The conception is not very lofty: this curtailed deity, 
making his appearance at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is 
but a residuum: religion being extinguished, he remained at the bottom 
of the crucible; and the reasoners of the time, having no metaphysical 
inventiveness, kept him in their system to stop a gap. In this state and 
at this place this deity resembles classic verse. He has an imposing ap- 
pearance, is comprehended easily, is stripped of efficacy, is the product 
of cold argumentative reason, and leaves the people who attend to him, 
very much at ease; on all these accounts he is akin to an Alexandrine, 
This poor conception is all the more wretched in Pope from not belong- 
ing to him, for he is only accidentally a philosopher; and to find matter 
for his poem, three or four systems, deformed and attenuated, are amal- 
gamated in his work. He boasts of having tempered them one with 
the other, and having ‘ steered between the extremes.’* The truth is, 
that he did not understand them, and that he jumbles incongruous 
ideas at every step. There is a passage in which, ‘to- ‘obtain an effect 
“of style, he becomes a pantheist ; moreover, he is bombastic, and 
assumes the supercilious, i imperious tone of a young doctor. I find no 
individual invention except in his Moral Essays ; in them is a theory of 
dominant passion which is worth reading. — After all, he went farther 
than Boileau, for instance, in the knowledge of man. Psychology is 
indigenous in England; we meet it there throughout, even in the least 
creative minds. It gives rise to the novel, dispossesses philosophy, pro- 
duces the essay, appears in the newspapers, fills current literature, like 
those indigenous plants which multiply on every soil. 

>< But if the ideas are mediocre, the art of expressing them is truly 
marvellous: marvellous is the word. ‘I chose verse,’ says Pope in his 
Design of an Essay on Man, ‘because I found I could express them 
(ideas) more shortly this way than in prose itself.’ In fact, every word 
is effective: every passage must be read slowly; every epithet is an 
epitome; a more condensed style was never written; and, on the 
other hand, no one laboured more skilfully in introducing g philosophical 
formulas into the current conversation of society. “His maxims have 
become proverbs. I open his Essay on Man at random, and fall upon 
the beginning of his second book. An orator, an author of the school 
of Buffon, would be transported with admiration to see so many literary 
treasures collected in so small a space : 





} These words are taken from the Design of an Essay on Man. 


—-s — 


THE POETS. 211 


Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is man. 
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 
A being darkly wise, and rudely great: 
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, 
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride, 
He hangs between ; in doubt to act, or rest ; 
In doubt to deem himself a God or beast ; 
In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err ; 
Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 
Whether he thinks too little or too much ; 
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused ; 
Still by himself abused, or disabused ; 
Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled, 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’ ' 
The first verse epitomises the whole of the preceding book, and the 
second epitomises the present one; it is, as it were, a kind of staircase 
leading from temple to temple, regularly composed of symmetrical steps, 
so aptly disposed that from the first step we see at a glance the whole 
building we have left, and from the second the whole edifice we are about 
to visit. Have you ever seen a finer entrance, or one more conformable 
to the rules which bid us unite our ideas, recall them when developed, 
pre-announce them when not yet developed? But this is not enough. 
After this brief announcement, which premises that he is about to treat 
-of human nature, a longer announcement is necessary, to paint in ad- 
vance, with the greatest possible splendour, this human nature of which 
e is about to treat. This is the proper oratorical exordium, like those 
which Bossuet sets at the beginning of his funeral orations; a sort of 
elaborate portico to receive the audience on their entrance, and prepare 
them for the magnificence of the temple. Couple by couple the anti- 
theses follow each other like a succession of columns; thirteen couples 
form a suite; and the last is raised above the rest by a word, which 
concentrates and combines all. In other hands this prolongation of 
the same form would become tedious; in Pope’s it interests us, so much 
variety is there in the arrangement and the adornments. In one place 
the antithesis is comprised in a single line, in another it occupies two; 
now it is in the substantives, now in the adjectives and verbs; now 
only in the ideas, now it penetrates the sound and position of the words. 
In vain we see it reappear; we are not wearied, because each time it 
adds somewhat to our idea, and shows us the object in a new light. 
This object itself may be abstract, obscure, unpleasant, opposed to 
‘poetry; the style spreads over it its own light; noble images borrowed 
from the grand and simple spectacles of nature, illustrate and adorn it. 





— . 





1 Pope’s Works, ii.; An Essay on Man, Ep. ii. 375, v. 1-18. 


212 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


For there is a classical architecture of ideas as well as of stones: the first 
like the second, is a friend to clearness and regularity, majesty and calm; 
like the second, it was invented in Greece, transmitted through Rome to 
France, through France to England, and slightly altered in its passage. 
Of all the masters who have practised it in England, Pope is the most 
skilled. 
~~ Tf Pope’s arguments were written in prose, the reader would hardly 
be moved by them; he would instinctively think of Pascal’s book, and 
remark upon the astonishing difference between a versifier and a man. 
A good epitome, a good bit of style, well worked out, well written, 
he would say, and nothing further. Clearly the beauty of the verses 
| arose from the difficulty overcome, the chosen sounds, the symmetrical 
rhythms; this was all, and it was not much. A great writer is a 
man who, having passions, knows his dictionary and grammar; Pope 
thoroughly knew his dictionary and his grammar, but stopped ed there. 
People will say that this merit is small, and that I do not inspire 
them with a desire to read Pope’s verses. True; at least I do not 
counsel them to read many. I would add, however, by way of excuse, 
| that there is a kind in which he succeeds, that his descriptive and 
oratorical talents find in portraiture matter which suits them, and that 
in this he frequently approaches La Bruyére; that several of his por- 
traits, those of Addison, Lord Hervey, Lord Wharton, the Duchess 
of Marlborough, are medals worthy of finding a place in the cabinet of 
the curious, and of remaining in the archives of the human race; that 
when he chisels one of these heads, the abbreviative. images, the ‘un- 
looked-for.connections of words, the sustained and multiplied contrasts, 
the perpetual and d extraordinary conciseness, the incessant and increas- 
ing impulse of all the strokes of eloquence combined upon the same 
spot, stamp upon the memory an impress which we never forget. It 
is better to repudiate these partial apologies, and frankly to avow that, 
on the whole, this great poet, the glory of his age, is wearisome, 
wearisome to us. ‘A woman of forty,’ says Stendhal, ‘is only beautiful 
- to those who have loved her in . their youth. ’ The poor muse in ques- 
tion is not forty years old for us; she is a hundred and forty. Let us 
remember, when we wish to judge her fairly, the time when we made 
French verses like our Latin verse. The taste has been transformed 
an age ago, for the human mind has wheeled round; with the prospect 
the perspective has changed; we must take this displacement into ac- 
count. Now-a-days we demand new ideas and bare sentiments; we 
care no longer for the clothing, we want the thing. Exordium, transi- 
tions, peculiarities of style, elegances of expression, the whole literary 
wardrobe, is sent to the old-clothes shop ; we only keep what is indis- 
pensable; we trouble ourselves no more about adornment, but about 
truth. The men of the preceding century were quite different. This 
was seen when Pope translated the Jiad; it was the Iliad written in 
the style of the Henriade: by virtue of this travesty the public admired 


Re 





CHAP. VII.] - THE POETS. 213 


it. They would not have admired it in the simple Greek guise; they 
only consented to ‘see it in powder and ribbons. It was the costume of 
the time, and it was very necessary to put iton. Dr. Johnson in his com- 
mercial and academical style affirms even that the demand for elegance 
had increased so much, that pure nature could no longer be borne. 
Good society and men of letters made a little world by themselves, 
which had been formed and refined after the manner and ideas of France. 
They had taken a correct and noble style at the same time as fashion 
and fine manners. They held by this style as by their coat; it was a 
matter of propriety or ceremony; there was an accepted and unalterable 


____— pattern; they could not change it without indecency or ridicule: to 
* write, not according to the rules, especially in verse, effusively and 
; 7 . . * Me 

____ naturally, would have been like showing oneself in the drawing-room 


p in slippers and a dressing-gown. ‘Their pleasure in reading verse was to 
7 try whether the pattern had been exactly followed, originality was only 
Ry [permivted in in details; you might adjust here a lace, there some band, 
t you were bound scrupulously to preserve the conventional form, 
to brush everything minutely, and never to appear without new gold 
lace and glossy broadcloth. The attention was only bestowed on refine- 
ments ; a more elaborate braid, a more brilliant velvet, a feather more 
gracefully arranged ; to_this were boldness and experiment reduced ; 
the smallest incorrectness, the slightest incongruity, would have offended 
their eyes; they perfected the > infinitely little. Men of letters acted like 
these coquettes, for whom the superb goddesses of Michael Angelo and 
Rubens are but milkmaids, but who utter a cry of pleasure at the sight 
of a ribbon at twenty francs a yard. A division, a displacing of verses, 
a metaphor delighted them, and this was all which could still transport 
them. gy ithe by day embroidering, bedizening, narrowing 
\ the bright classic robe, until at last the human ‘mind, feeling fettered, 
tore it, cast it away, and began to move. Now that this robe is on the 
Le ground the critics pick it up, hang it up in their museums, so that 
_-_-_— everybody can see it, shake it, and try to conjecture from it the feelings 
of the fine lords and of the fine speakers who wore it. 











ee a Se 


V. 

> It is not everything to have a beautiful dress, strongly sewn and 
{fashionable ; one must be able to get into it easily. Reviewing the whole 
train of the English poets of the eighteenth century, we perceive that 
they do not easily get into the classical dress. This gold-embroidered 
jacket, so well fitted for a Frenchman, hardly suits their figure; from 
time to time a hasty, awkward movement makes rents in the sleeves 
and elsewhere. For instance, Matthew Prior seems at first sight to 
-have all the qualities necessary to wear the jacket well; he has been an 
ambassador to France, and writes pretty French vers de société; he turns 

off with facility little jesting poems on a amet tae he is gallant, 


a man of society, a pleasant story-teller, epicurean, even sceptical like 





| 


_ other poem, very bold and philosophical, against conventional truths ~ 


214 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


the courtiers of Charles u., that is to say, as far as and including poli- 
tical roguery; in short, he is an accomplished man of the world, as 
times went, with a correct and flowing style, having at command a light 
and a noble verse, and pulling, according to the rules of Bossu and 
Boileau, the string of mythological puppets. With all this, we find 
him neither gay enough nor refined enough. Bolingbroke called him 
wooden-faced, stubborn, and said he had something Dutch in his ap- 
pearance. His manners smacked very strongly of those of Rochester, 
and the well-clad refuse which the Restoration bequeathed to the Re- 
volution. He took the first woman at hand, shut himself up with her 
for several days, drank hard, fell asleep, and let her make off with his 
money and clothes. Amongst other drabs, ugly enough and always 
dirty, he finished by keeping Elizabeth Cox, and all but married her ; 
fortunately he died just in time. His style was like his manners. 
When he tried to imitate La Fontaine’s Hans Carvel, he made it dull, 
and lengthened it; he could not be piquant, but he was biting; his 
obscenities have a cynical crudity; his raillery is a satire; and in one 
of his poems, Zo a Young Gentleman in Love, the lash becomes a knock- 
down blow. On the other hand, he was not a common roysterer. 


Of his two principal poems, one on Solomon paraphrases and treats — 


of the remark of Ecclesiastes, ‘ All is vanity.’ From this picture you 
see forthwith that you are in a biblical land: such an idea would not 
then have occurred to a friend of the Regent of France, the Duke of 
Orleans. Solomon relates how he in vain ‘ proposed his doubts to the 
lettered Rabbins,’ how he has been equally unfortunate in the hopes 
and desires of love, the possession of power, and ends by trusting to 
an ‘omniscient Master, omnipresent King.’ Here we have English 
gloom and English conclusions.*. Moreover, under the rhetorical and 
uniform composition of his verses, we perceive warmth and_passion, 
rich paintings, a sort of magnificence, and the profusion of a surcharged 
imagination. The sap in England is always stronger than in France; 
the sensations there are deeper, and the thoughts more original. Prior’s 


and pedantries, is a droll discourse on the seat of the soul, from which 
Voltaire has taken many ideas and much foulness. The whole arsenal 
of the sceptic and materialist was built and published in England, when 
the French took to it. Voltaire has only selected and sharpened the 
arrows. Observe also that this poem is wholly written in a prosaic 


style, with a harsh common sense and a medical frankness, unterrified | 


by the foulest abominations.” Candide and the Earl of Chesterfield’s 


1 Prior’s Works, ed. Gilfillan, 1851 : 
‘In the remotest wood and lonely grot, 
Certain to meet that worst of evils, thought.’ 
2 Alma, canto ii. v. 987-978: 
‘ Your nicer Hottentots think meet 
With guts and tripe to deck their feet ; 














| a a ee 


CHAP. VIL. | THE POETS. 215 


Ears, by Voltaire, are more brilliant but not more genuine productions. 
On the whole, with his coarseness, want of taste, prolixity, perspicacity, 
passion, there is something in this man not in accordance with classical 


elegance. He goes beyond it or does not attain it. 


This uncongeniality increases, and attentive eyes soon discover under 
the regular cloak a kind of-energetic and precise imagination, ready to 
break through it. In this age lived Gay, a sort of La Fontaine, as near 
La Fontaine as an Englishman can be, that is, not very near, but at 
least kind and amiable, very sincere, very frank, strangely thoughtless, 
born to be duped, and a young man to the last. Swift said of him that 
he ought never to have lived more than twenty-two years. ‘In wit a 
man, simplicity a child,’ wrote Pope. He lived, like La Fontaine, at the 
expense of the great, travelled as much as he could at their charge, lost 
his money in South-Sea speculations, aspired to a place at court, wrote 
fables full of humanity to form the heart of the Duke of Cumberland,! 
ended by settling as a friend and parasite, as a domestic poet with the 





Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. He had little of the grave in his 


character; not much of scruple and persistence. It was his sad lot, he 
said, ‘that he could get nothing from the court, whether he wrote for 
or against it.’ And he wrote his own epitaph: 


‘ Life is a jest ; and all things show it, 
I thought so once ; but now I know it,’? 


This careless laugher, to revenge himself on the minister, wrote the 
Beggars’ Opera, the fiercest and dirtiest of caricatures.? In this court 





they slaughter men in place of scratching them; babes handle the 
knife like the rest. Yet he was a laugher, but in a style of his own, 
or rather in that of his country. Seeing ‘certain young men of 
insipid delicacy,’* Ambrose Philips, for instance, who wrote elegant 
and tender pastorals, in the manner of Fontenelle, he amused him- 
self by parodying and contradicting them, and in the Shepherd’s Week 
introduced real rural manners into the metre and form of the visionary 
poetry: 


‘Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking 
the kine, tying up the sheaves, or, if the hogs are astray, driving them to their 





With downcast looks on Totta’s legs 
The ogling youth most humbly begs, 
She would not from his hopes remove 
At once his breakfast and his love. ... 
Before you see, you smell your toast, 
And sweetest she who stinks the most.’ 
1 The duke who was afterwards nicknamed ‘ the Butcher.’ 
2 Poems on Several Occasions, by Mr. John Gay, 1745, 2 vols. ii. 141. 
8 See vol. ii. ch. ii. p. 50. 
* Poems on Several Occasions ; The Proeme to The Shepherd's Week, i. 64. 


216 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIL. 


styes. My shepherd . . . sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge, 
nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none.’ ! 


Fancy a shepherd of Theocritus or Virgil, compelled to put on hob- 
nailed shoes and the dress of a Devonshire cowherd; such an oddity 
would amuse us by the contrast of his person and his garments. So 
here The Magician, The Shepherd’s Struggle, are travestied in a modern 
guise. Listen to the song of the first shepherd, ‘ Lobbin Clout :’ 


* Leek to the Welch, to Dutchmen butter’s dear, 
Of Irish swains potatoe is the chear ; 
Oat for their feasts, the Scotish shepherds grind, 
Sweet turnips are the food of Blouzelind, 
While she loves turnips, butter I’ despise, 
Nor leeks, nor oatmeal, nor potatoe prize.’ ? 


The other shepherd answers in the same metre ; and the duet continues, 
verse after verse, in the ancient manner, but now amidst turnips, strong 
beer, fat pigs, bespattered at will by modern country vulgarities and 
the dirt of a northern climate. Van Ostade and Teniers love these 
vulgar and clownish idyls ; and in Gay, as well as with them, unvarnished 
and sensual drollery has its sway. The people of the north, who are 
great eaters, always liked country fairs. ‘The vagaries of toss-pots and 
gossips, the grotesque outburst of the popular and animal mind, put 
them into good humour. One must be genuinely a worldling or an 
artist, a Frenchman or an Italian, to be disgusted with them. They 
are the product of the country, as well as meat and beer: let us try, 
in order that we may enjoy them, to forget wine, delicate fruits, to 
give ourselves blunted senses, to become in imagination compatriots 
of such men. We have become used to the pictures of these drunken 
clods, which Louis x1v. called ‘ baboons,’ to these red cooks who scrape 
their horse-raddish, and to the like scenes. Let us get used to Gay; 
to his poem Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London ; to his 
advice as to dirty gutters, and shoes ‘ with firm, well-hammer’d soles ;’ 
his description of the amours of the goddess Cloacina and a scavenger, 
whence sprang the shoeblacks. He is a lover of the real, has a pre- 
cise imagination, does not see objects on a large scale, but singly, with 
all their outlines and surroundings, whatever they may be, beautiful or 
ugly, dirty or clean. The other literary men act likewise, even the 
known classical writers, even Pope. ‘There is in Pope a minute descrip- 
tion, adorned with high-coloured words, local details, in which abbre- 
viative and characteristic features are stamped with such a liberal and 
sure hand, that you would take the author for a modern realist, and 
would find in the work an historical document.* As to Swift, he is the 





1 The Proeme to The Shepherd’s Week, i. 66. 
2 Gay’s Poems, Z'he Shepherd’s Week ; first pastoral, The Squabble, p. 80, 
3 Epistle to Mrs. Blount, ‘ on her leaving the town.’ 





aa 





ee 








CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 217 


bitterest positivist, and more so in poetry than in prose. Read his 
eclogue on Strephon and Chloe, if you would know how far men can 
debase the noble poetic drapery. They make a dishclout of it, or dress 
clodhoppers in it ; the Roman toga and Greek chlamys do not suit these 
barbarians’ shonider They are like those knights of the middle-ages, 
who, when they had taken Constantinople, muffled themselves for a 


joke, in long Byzantine robes, and went riding through the streets in 


J 


these disguises, dragging their embroidery in the gutter. 

These men will do well, like the knights, to return to their manor, 
their country, the mud of their ditches, and the dunghill of their farm- 
yards. ‘The less man is fitted for social life, the more he is fitted for_ 
solitary life. He enjoys the country the more for enjoying the world 
Tess. Englishmen have always been more'feudal and more fond of the 
country than Frenchmen. Under Louis xiv. and Louis xy. the worst 
misfortune for a nobleman was to go to his estate in the country and 
grow rusty there; away from the smiles of the king and the fine con- 
versations of Versailles ; there was nothing left but to yawn and die. 
In England, in spite of the artificial civilisation and worldly ceremonies, 
the love of the chase and of physical exercises, political interests and 
the necessities of elections brought the nobles back to their domains. 
And there their natural instincts returned. A sad and impassioned 
man, naturally self-dependent, converses with objects; a grand grey 
sky, whereon the autumn mists slumber, a sudden burst of sunshine 
lighting up a moist field, depress or excite him ; Ser things seem 
to him instinct with life; and the feeble clearness, which in the morn= 
ing reddens the fringe of heaven, moves him as much as the smile of a 
young girl at her first ball. Thus is genuine descriptive poetry born. 
It appears in Dryden, in Pope himself, even in the writers of elegant 
pastorals, and breaks out in Thomson’s Seasons. ‘This poet, the son of 
a clergyman, and very poor, lived, like most of the literary men of the 
time, on benefactions and literary subscriptions, on sinecures and poli- 
tical pensions; he did not marry for lack of money; wrote tragedies, 
because tragedies were lucrative; and ended by settling in a country- 
house, lying in bed till mid-day, indolent, contemplative, but a good 
and honest man, affectionate and beloved., He saw and loved the 
country in its smallest details, not outwardly only, as Saint Lambert,’ 
his imitator ; he made it his joy, his amusement, his habitual occupa- 
tion; a gardener at heart, delighted to see the spring arrive, happy to 











_ be able to enclose an extra field in his garden. He paints all the little 


things, without being ashamed, for they interest him; takes pleasure 
in ‘the smell of the dairy ;”-you hear him speak of the ¢ insect armies,’ 
and ‘ when the envenomed leaf begins to curl,’* and of the birds which, 





1 A French pastoral writer (1717-1803), who wrote, in imitation of Thomson, 
Les Saisons.—Tr. 


* Poetical Works of J. Thomson, ed. R. Bell, 1855, 2 vols.; ii, Spring, 18, 


218 THE CLASSIC AGE. - . [BOOK Il. 


foreseeing the approaching rain, ‘streak their wings with oil, to throw 
the lucid moisture trickling off.’1 He perceives objects so clearly that 
he makes them visible: we recognise the PR yo hha 
moist, half drowned in floating vapours, blotted here and there by violet 
clouds, which burst i in showers at the-horizon, which they darken : 
‘ Th’ effusive South 

Warms the wide air, and o’er the void of heaven 

Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.? . 

Thus all day long the full-distended clouds 

Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth 

Is deep enriched with vegetable life ; 

Till, in the western sky, the downward sun 

Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush 

Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam. 

The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes 

The illumined mountain ; through the forest streams ; 

Shakes on the floods ; and in a yellow mist, 

Far smoking o’er the interminable plain, 

In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems. 

Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.’ 
This is emphatic, but it is also opulent. In this air and this vegetation, 
in this imagination and this style, there is a heaping up, and, as it were, 
an imparting of effaced or sparkling tints; they are here the glistening 
and lustrous robe of natureand art. We must see them in Rubens—he 
is the painter and poet of the teeming and humid clime; but we find it 
also in others, and in this magnificence of Thomson: in this exagge- 
rated, luxuriant, grand colouring, we find occasionally the rich palette 
of Rubens, 


VI. 
All this suits ill the classical embroidery. Thomson’s visible imita- 


tions of Virgil, his episodes inserted like a veneering, his invocations to 
spring, to the muse, to philosophy, all the relics of the conventionalisms 
of the college, produce an incongruity. But the contrast is much more 
marked in another way. The worldly artificial life such as Louis xv. 
had made fashionable, began to weary Europe. It was found dry and 


hollow; people grew tired of always acting, submitting to etiquette. 


. They felt that gallantryis-not-leve, nor madrigals poetry, nor amuse- 


ment happiness. They perceived that man is not an elegant doll, or a 
dandy the masterpiece of nature, and that there is a world outside the 
drawing-rooms. A Genevese plebeian (J. J. Rousseau), Protestant and 
solitary, whom religion, education, poverty, and genius had led more 
quickly and further than others, spoke out the public secret aloud; 
and it was thought that he had discovered or rediscovered the country, 
conscience, religion, the rights of man, and natural sentiments. Then 





1 Poetical Works of Thomson, Spring, ii. 19. 2 Ibid. 19. 
3 Ibid. 20. 








CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 219 


appeared a new personality, the idol and model of his time, the sensi- 
tive man, who, by his grave character and relish of nature, contrasted 
the man of the court. Doubtless this personality smacks of the 
places he has frequented. He is refined and insipid, melting at the 
sight of the young lambs nibbling the springing grass, blessing the little 
birds, who give a concert to celebrate their happiness. He is emphatic 
and wordy, writes tirades on sentiment, inveighs against the age, apos- 
trophises virtue, reason, truth, and the abstract divinities, which are 
engraved in delicate outline on the frontispiece. In spite of himself, he 
continues a man of the drawing-room and the academy ; after uttering 
sweet things to the ladies, he utters them to nature, and declaims in 
polished periods about the Deity. But after all, it is through him that 
the revolt _against_ classical customs begins ; and in this respect, it is 
more precocious in Germanic Hngland than in Latin France. Thirty 
years before Rousseau, Thomson ‘had expressed all Rousseau’s senti- 
ments, almost in the same style. Like him, he painted the country with 
Dammit and enthusiasm. Like him, he contrasted the golden age of 
primitive simplicity with modern miseries and corruption. Like him, 
he exalted deep love, conjugal tenderness, the union of souls, and perfect 
esteem animated by desire, paternal affection, and all domestic joys. 
Like him, he combated contemporary frivolity, and compared the 
ancient with the modern republics : 
‘ Proofs of a people, whose heroic aims 


Soared far above the little selfish sphere 
Of doubting modern life.’! 


z Like Rousseau, he praised gravity, patriotism, liberty, virtue ; rose from 
the spectacle of nature to the contemplation of God, and showed to 
man glimpses of immortal life beyond the tomb. Like him, in fine, he 


marred the smcenty of bis emotion and the truth < of his poetry by sen- 
timental “vapidities, by pastoral billing and cooing, and by such an 
abundance of epithets, personified abstractions, pompous invocations 
and oratorical tirades, that we perceive in him beforehand the false and 
decorative style of Thomas, David,? and the Revolution. 

Others follow. The literature of that period might be called the 
library of the sensitive man. First there was Richardson, the puritanic 
printer, with his Sir Charles Grandison,* a man of | principles, accom- 
plished model of the gentleman, professor of decorum and morality, 
with a soul into the bargain. There is Sterne too, the refined and 
sickly blackguard, who, amid his buffooneries and oddities, pauses to 

eep over § or an imaginary prisoner.* There is, in particular, 
Mackenzie, ‘ the Man of Feeling,’ whose timid, delicate hero weeps five 
or.six times.a day; who grows consumptive dhrough sensibility, dares 








4 Poetical Works of Thomson, Liberty, part i. 102. ; 
? See the paintings of David, called Les Fétes de la Révolution. 
* See vol. ii. bk. iii. ch. 6, p. 167. * See vol. ii. bk. iii. ch. 7, p. 179. 


me Nssaig 


220 THE CLASSIC AGE, [BooK IIT. 


not broach his love till at the point of death, and dies in broaching it. 
Naturally, praise induces satire ; and in the opposite field we see Fielding, 
valiant roysterer, and Sheridan, brilliant rake, the one with Blifil, the 
other with Joseph Surface, two hypocrites, especially the second, not 
coarse, red-faced, and smelling of the vestry, like Tartuffe, but worldly, 
well-clad, a_good speaker, loftily serious, sad_and gentle from excess of 
tenderness, who, with his hand on his heart and a tear in his eye, 
showers on the public his sentences and periods, whilst he soils his 
brother’s reputation and debauches his neighbour's wife. A character, 


thus created, soon has an epic made for him. A Scotchman, a man of 


wit, of overmuch wit, having written to his cost an unsuccessful rhap- 
sody, wished to recover himself, went amongst the mountains of his 
country, gathered picturesque images, collected fragments of legends, 
plastered over the whole an abundance of eloquence and rhetoric, and 
created a Celtic Homer, Ossian, who, with Oscar, Malvina, and his 
whole troop, “made the tour of Europe, and, about 1830, ended by 
furnishing baptismal names for French grisettes and perruquiers. Mac- 
pherson displayed to the world an imitation of primitive manners, not 
over-true, for the extreme rudeness of barbarians would have shocked 
the people, but yet well enough preserved or portrayed to contrast with 
modern civilisation, and persuade the public that they were looking 
upon pure nature. A keen sympathy with Scotch landscape, so grand, 
sq_cold, so gloomy, rain on the hills, the birch trembling to the 
wind, the mist of heaven and the vagueness of the soul, so that every 
dreamer found there the emotions of his solitary walks and his philo- 
sophical glooms; chivalric exploits and magnanimity, heroes who set 
out alone to engage an army, faithful virgins dying on the tomb of 
their betrothed; an impassioned, coloured style, affecting to be abrupt, 
yet polished; able to charm a disciple of Rousseau by its warmth and 
elegance: here was something to transport the young enthusiasts of 
the time, civilised barbarians, scholarly lovers of nature, dreaming of 
the delights of savage life, whilst they shook off the powder which the 
hairdresser had left on their coats. 

Yet this is not the course of the main current of poetry; it lies in 
the direction of sentimental reflection: the greatest number of poems, 
and those most sought after, are emotional dissertations. In fact, a 
sensitive man breaks out in violent declamations. "When he sees a 
cloud, he dreams of human nature, and constructs a phrase. Hence 
at this time among poets, swarm the melting philosophers and the 
tearful_academicians; Gray, the morose hermit of _Cambridge, and 
Akenside, a noble arto both learned imitators of lofty Greek 
poetry ; Beattie, a metaphysical moralist, with a young girl’s nerves 
and an old maid’s hobbies; the amiable and affectionate Goldsmith, 
who wrote the Vicar of Wakefield,’ the most charming of Protestant 

reece ad 








See vol. ii. bk. iii. ch, 8, p. 182, 








at 
| 


a 
s 
ine © 


j 





CHAP, VII.] ‘THE POETS. 


221 


pastorals; poor Collins, a young enthusiast, who was disgusted with 
life, would read nothing but the Bible, went mad, was shut up in 


an asylum, and in his intervals of liberty wandered in 


Chichester 


cathedral, accompanying the music with sobs and groans; Gloyer, 
Watts, Shenstone, Smart, and others. The titles of their works 
sufficiently indicate their character. One writes a poem on The 
Pleasures of Imagination, another on the Passions and on Liberty ; 
one an Elegy in a Country Churchyard and a Hymn to Adversity, 
another a poem on a Deserted Village, and on the character of sur- 
rounding civilisations (Goldsmith’s Zraveller); another a sort of epic 
on Thermopylae, and another the moral history of a young Minstrel. 
They were nearly all grave, spiritual men, impassioned for noble ideas, 
with Christian aspirations or convictions, given to meditating on man, 


inclined to melancholy, to descriptions, invocations, lovers 


of abstrac- 


tion and allegory, who, to attain greatness, willingly mounted on stilts. 


© One of the least strict and most noted of them was Young, 


the author 


of Night Thoughts, a clergyman and a courtier, who, having vainly 
attempted to enter Parliament, then to become a bishop, married, 
lost his wife and children, and made use of his misfortunes to write 
meditations on Life, Death, Immortality, Time, Friendship, The Christian 


Triumph, Virtue’s Apology, A Moral Survey of the Nocturn 


al Heavens, 


and many other similar pieces. Doubtless there are brilliant flashes 
of imagination in his poems; seriousness and elevation are not wanting; 
we can even see that he aims at them; but we discover much more 


quickly that he makes the most of his grief, and strikes attitudes. He 
exaggerates and declaims, studies effects and style, confuses k and 


Christian ideas. Fancy an unhappy father, who says: 


* Silence and Darkness! Solemn sisters! Twins 


Of ancient night! I to Day’s soft-ey’d sister pay my court 


(Endymion’s rival), and her aid implore 
Now first implor’d in succour to the Muse.’? 


And a few pages further on invokes heaven and earth, when mention- 
ing the resurrection of the Saviour. And yet the sentiment.is fresh 
and sincere, Is it not one of the greatest of modern ideas to put 
Christian philosophy into verse? Young and his contemporaries say 
beforehand that which Chateaubriand and Lamartine were to discover. 
The true, the futile, all is here forty years earlier than in France. The 
angels and the other celestial machinery long figured in England before 
appearing in Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme and the Martyrs. 
Atala and Chactas are of the same family as Malvina and Fingal. If M. 
de Lamartine read Gray’s odes and Akenside’s reflections, he would find 


there the melancholy sweetness, the exquisite art, the fine 


arguments, 


and half the ideas of his own poetry. And yet, near as they were to 


a literary renovation, Englishmen did not yet attain it. 


In vain the 





1 Young’s Night Thoughts, 


222 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 


foundation was changed, the form persisted. They did not shake off 
the classical drapery; they write too well, they dare not be natural. 
They have always a patent stock of fine suitable words, poetic 
elegances, where each of them thought himself bound to go and 
search out his phrases. It boots them nothing to be impassioned or 
realistic ; to dare, like Shenstone, describe a Schoolmistress, and the 
very part on which she whips a young rascal; their simplicity is 
conscious, their frankness archaic, their emotion compassed, their 
tears academical. Ever, at the moment of writing, an august model 
starts up, a sort of schoolmaster, weighing on each with his full 
weight, with all the weight which a hundred and twenty years of 
literature can give his precepts. Their prose is always the slave of 
the period: Samuel Johnson, who was at once the La Harpe and the 
Boileau of his age, explains and imposes on all the studied, balanced, 
irreproachable phrase ; and the classical ascendency is still so strong 


that it domineers over the infancy of history, the only kind of English 


literature which was then European and original. Hume, Robertson, 
and Gibbon were almost French in their taste, language, education, 
conception of man. They relate like men of the world, cultivated and 
instructed, with charm and clearness, in a polished, rhythmic, sustained 
style. They show a liberal spirit, a continuous moderation, an im- 
partial reason. They banish from history all coarseness and tedious- 
ness. They write without caprice or prejudice. But, at the same 
time, they attenuate human nature; comprehend neither barbarism 
nor exaltation ; paint revolutions, as people might do who had seen 
nothing but decked drawing-rooms and dusted libraries; they judge 
enthusiasts with the coldness of chaplains or the smile of a sceptic; 
they blot out the salient features which distinguish human physiog- 
nomies ; they cover all the harsh points of truth with a brilliant and 
uniform varnish. At last there started up an unfortunate Scotch 
ploughman (Burns), rebelling against the world, and in love, with the 
yearnings, lusts, greatness, and irrationality of modern genius. Now 
and then, driving his plough, he lighted on genuine verses, verses 
such as Heine and Alfred de Musset have made in our own days. In 
those few words, combined after a new fashion, there was a revolu- 
tion. Two hundred new verses sufficed. The human mind turned on 
its hinges, and so did civil society. When Roland, being made a 
minister, presented himself before Louis xvi. in a simple dress-coat 
and shoes without buckles, the master of the ceremonies raised his 
hands to heaven, thinking that all was lost. In fact, all was changed. 











a ee 


m 
a | 
ee 

n 


s 
SP 


BOOK IV. 


MODERN LIFE. 


—ne 
CHAPTER I. 


Ideas and Productions. 





I. Changes in society—Rise of democracy—The French Revolution—Desire of 
getting on—Changes in the human mind—New notion of causes—Ger- 
man philosophy—Craving for the beyond. 

II. Robert Burns—His country—Family—Youth—Wretchedness—His yearn- 
ings and efforts—Invectives against society and church—The Jolly 
Beggars—Attacks on conventional cant—His idea of natural life—of 
moral life—Talent—Spontaneity—Style—Innovations—Success—A ffec- 
tations—Studied letters and academic verse—Farmer’s life—Employment 
in the Excise—Disgust—Excesses—Death. 

III. Conservative rule in England—The Revolution affects the style only— 


a Cowper—Sickly refinement—Madness—Retirement—The Task—Modern 
P . _ idea of poetry—Of style. 

fe IV, The Romantic school—Its pretensions—Its tentatives—The two ideas of 
= 


a modern literature—History enters into literature— Lamb, Coleridge, 
Southey, Moore—Faults of this school—Why it succeeded less in Eng- 
land than elsewhere—Sir Walter Scott—Education—Antiquarian studies 
—Aristocratic tastes—Life—Poems—Novels—Incompleteness of his his- 
torical imitations—Excellence of his national pictures—His interiors— 
Amiable raillery—Moral aim—Place in modern civilisation—Develop- 
ment of the novel in England—Realism and uprightness—Wherein this 
school is cockneyfied and English. 

V. Philosophy enters into literature—Lack of harmony in the style—Words- 
worth—Character—Condition—Life—Painting of the moral life in the 
vulgar life—Introduction of the gloomy style and psychological divisions 
—Faults of style—Loftiness of his sonnets—The Hacursion—Austere 
beauty of this Protestant poetry —Shelley—Imprudences—Theories— 
Fancy— Pantheism—Ideal characters—Life-like scenery—General ten- 
dency of the new literature—Gradual introduction of continental ideas. 


I 


N the eve of the nineteenth century began in Europe the great 
modern revolution. The thinking public and the human mind 
changed, and underneath these two collisions a new literature sprang 
up. 
223 


ae 


224 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


The preceding age had done its work. Perfect prose and classical 
tyle put within reach of the most backward and the dullest minds 
he notions of literature and the discoveries of science. Moderate 

onarchies and regular administrations had permitted the middle class 
o develop itself under the pompous aristocracy of the court, as use 
plants may be seen shooting up under trees which serve for show and 
ornament. They multiply, grow, rise to the height of their rivals, 
envelop them in their luxuriant growth, and obscure them by their 
density. A new world, commonplace, plebeian, thenceforth occupies 
the ground, attracts the gaze, imposes its form in manners, stamps its 
image in the mind. Towards the close of the century a sudden con- 
course of extraordinary events displays it all at once to the light, and 
sets it on an eminence unknown to any previous age. i rand 
applications of science, democracy appears. The steam-engine and 
spinning-jenny create in England towns of from three hundred and 
fifty thousand to five hundred thousand souls. The population is 
doubled in fifty years, and agriculture becomes so perfect, that, in spite 
of this enormous increase of mouths to be fed, one-sixth of the inhabit- 
ants provide from the same soil food for the rest ; importations increase 
threefold, and even more; the tonnage of vessels increases sixfold, the 


| exportation sixfold and more.’ Prosperity, leisure, instruction, reading, 


travels, whatever had been the privilege of a few, became the common 
property of the majority. The rising tide of wealth raised the best of 
the poor to comfort, and the best of the well-to-do to opulence. The 
rising tide of civilisation raised the mass of the people to the rudi- 
ments of education, and the mass of citizens to complete education. 
In 1709 appeared the first daily newspaper,’ as big as a man’s hand, 
which the editor did not know how to fill, and which, added to all 
the other papers, did not produce yearly three thousand numbers. In 
1844 the Stamp Office showed 71 million numbers, many as large and 
as full as volumes, Artisans and townsfolk, enfranchised, enriched, 
having gained a competence, left the low depths where they had been 
buried in their narrow parsimony, ignorance, and routine; they came 
on the scene, forsook their workman-like and supernumerary’s dress, 
assumed the leading parts by a sudden irruption or a continuous pro- 
gress, by dint of revolutions, with a prodigality of labour and genius, 
amidst vast wars, successively or simultaneously in America, France, 
the whole of Europe, founding or destroying states, inventing or restor- 
ing sciences, conquering or acquiring political rights. They grew noble 
through their great deeds, became the rivals, equals, conquerors of their 
masters; they need no longer imitate them, being heroes in their 





1 See Alison, History of Hurope ; Porter, Progress of the Nation. 
? In the Fourth Estate, by F. Knight Hunt, 2 vols. 1840, it is said (i. 175) 


that the first daily and morning paper, The Daily Courant, appeared in 1709.— — 


Tr. 








CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 225° 


turn: like them, they can point to their crusades; like them, they 
have gained the right - havislg a peony’ ; and like them; they will 
have a poetry. 

In France, the land of precocious equality and finished revolutions, 
we must observe this new character—the plebeian bent on getting on: 
Augereau, son of a greengrocer; Marceau, son of a lawyer; Murat, 
son of an innkeeper; Ney, son of a:cooper; Hoche, an old: sergeant, 
who in his tent, by night, read Condillac’s Trait¢é des Sensations ; and 
above all, that thin young»man, with lank -hair, hollow cheeks, dried 
up with ambition, his heart: full of romantic fancies and grand rough- 
hewn ideas, who, a lieutenant for seven years, read twice through the 
whole stock of a bookseller at’ Valence, who about this time (1792) in 
Italy, though suffering from itch, had just destroyed five armies with 
a troop of barefooted heroes,.and gave his: government an account of 
his victories with all his faults of spelling and of French. He became 
master, proclaimed himself the representative of the Revolution, de- 
clared ‘that the career is open to talent,’ and impelled others along 
with him in his enterprises: They follow him; because there is glory, 
and above all, advancement to be won. ‘ Twovofficers,’ says Stendhal, 
‘commanded a battery at Talavera; a ball laid low the captain. “So!” 
said the lieutenant, “‘ Frangois:is dead, I shall be captain.” ‘* Not yet,” 
said Francois, who was only stunned, and got on his feet again.’ These 
two men were neither enemies nor wicked ; on the contrary, they were 
companions and comrades ; but the lieutenant wanted to rise a step. 
Such was the sentiment which provided: men for the exploits and car- 
nages of the Empire, which caused the Revolution of 1830, and which 
now, in this vast stifling democracy, compels men to vie: with each 
other in intrigues and labour, genius and baseness, to get out of their 
primitive condition, and raise themselves to the summit, whose posses- 
sion is assigned to their union or promised to their toil. The dominant 
character now-a-days is no longer the man of the drawing-room, 
whose place is certain and his fortune made, elegant and unrufiled, 
with no employment. but to amuse and please himself; who loves 
to converse, who is gallant,-who passes his life in conversations with 
highly dressed ladies, amidst the duties of:society:and the pleasures of 
the world: it is the man in a black: coat, who works alone in his room 
or rides in a cab to.make friends and. protectors.;. often envious, feeling 
himself always above or below his station in life, sometimes resigned, 
never satisfied, but fertile in inventions, lavish of trouble, finding the 
picture of his blemishes and ‘his strength in the drama of Victor Hugo} 
and the novels of Balzac.* 

There are other and greater cares. With the state of human 
society, the form of the human mind has changed... It has changed by 





1 To realise the contrast, compare Gil Blas and Ruy Blas, Marivaux’s Paysan 
Parvenu and Stendhal’s Julien Sorel (in Rouge et Noir). 
VOL. II, ¥ 


226° “MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


a natural and irresistible development, like a flower growing into a’ 


fruit, like a fruit turning to seed. The mind renews the evolution 


which it had already performed in Alexandria, not as then in a dele- 


erious atmosphere, in the universal degradation of enslaved men, in 
the increasing decadence of a dissolving society, amidst the anguish of 
despair and the mists of a dream; but lapt in a purifying atmosphere, 
amidst the visible progress of an improving society and the general 
ennobling of free and elevated men, amidst the proudest hopes, in the 
wholesome clearness of experimental sciences. The oratorical age which 
declined, as it declined in Athens and Rome, grouped all ideas in beau- 
tiful commodious compartments, whose subdivisions instantaneously led 
the gaze towards the object which they would define, so that thence- 
forth the intellect could enter upon the loftiest conceptions, and seize 
the aggregate which it had not yet embraced. Isolated nations, French, 
English, Italians, Germans, came to draw near and know each other after 
the shaking of the Revolution and the wars of the Empire, as formerly 
the separate races, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Gauls, by the conquests 
of Alexander and the domination of Rome: so that henceforth each 
civilisation, expanded by the collision of neighbouring civilisations, can 
pass beyond its national limits, and multiply its ideas by the commix- 
ture of the ideas of others. History and criticism grew as under the 
Ptolemies ; and from all sides, throughout the universe, at all points of 
time, they were engaged in resuscitating and explaining literatures, 
religions, manners, societies, philosophies: so that thenceforth the in- 
tellect, enfranchised by the spectacle of past civilisations, could escape 
from the prejudices of its country. A new race, hitherto torpid, gave 
the signal: Germany communicated over the whole of Europe the 
impetus to the revolution of ideas, as France to the revolution of 
manners. These good folk who smoked and warmed themselves by the 
side of a stove, and seemed only fit to produce learned editions, found 
‘themselves suddenly the promoters and leaders of human thought. No 
race has such a comprehensive mind; none is so well endowed for 
lofty speculation. We see it in their language, so abstract, that beyond 
the Rhine it seems an unintelligible jargon. And yet, thanks to this 
language, they attained to superior ideas. For the specialty of this 
revolution, as of the Alexandrian revolution, was that the human mind 
became more capable of abstraction. ‘They made, on a large scale, the 
same step as the mathematicians when they passed from arithmetic to 
algebra, and from the ordinary calculus to the calculus of the infinite. 
They perceived, that beyond the limited truths of the oratorical age, 
there were deeper unfoldings ; they passed beyond Descartes and Locke, 
as the Alexandrians beyond Plato and Aristotle: they understood that 
a great architect, or. round and square atoms, were not causes; that 
fluids, molecules, and monads were not forces; that a spiritual soul or 
a physiological secretion would not account for thought. They sought 
religious sentiment beyond dogmas, poetic beauty beyond rules, critical. 









CHAP. L.}. IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS, 227 


truth beyond myths. They desired te grasp natural and moral powers 
themselves, independently of the fictitious supports to which their pre- 
decessors had attached them. All these supports, souls and atoms, all 
these fictions, fluids, and monads, all these conventions, rules of the 
beautiful and religious symbols, all rigid classifications of things natural, 
human and divine, faded away and vanished. Thenceforth they were 
Bs nothing but figures; they. were only kept as an aid to the memory, and 
= as auxiliaries of the mind; they served only provisionally, and as start- 
g ing-points. Through a common movement along the whole line of human 
? thought, causes draw back into an abstract region, where philosophy 
c had not been to search them out for eighteen centuries. Then was 
>” manifested the disease of the age, the restlessness of Werther and Faust, 
very like that which in a similar moment agitated men eighteen cen- 
turies ago; I mean, discontent with the present, the vague desire of a 
higher beauty and an ideal happiness, the painful aspiration for the 
Infinite. Man suffered from doubt, yet he doubted ; he tried to seize 
again his beliefs, they melted in his hand ; he would sit down and rest 
in the doctrines and the satisfactions whieh sufficed his predecessors, 
and he does not find them sufficient. He expends himself, like Faust, 
¥: in anxious researches through science and history, and judges them 
4 vain, dubious, good for men like Wagner,’ pedants of the academy and 
, the library. It is the beyond he sighs for; he forebodes it through the 
i formulas of science, the texts and adiveastons of the churches, through 
K the amusements of the world, the intoxications of love. A sublime 
; truth exists behind coarse experience and handed-down catechisms; a 
grand happiness exists beyond the pleasures of society and the delights 
of a family. Sceptical, resigned, or mystics, they have all caught a 
glimpse of or imagined it, from Goethe to Beethoven, from Schiller to 
Heine; they have risen towards it in order to stir up the whole swarm 
of their grand dreams ; they will not be consoled for falling away from, 
it; they have mused upon it, even during their deepest fall; they have *° 
instinctively dwelt, like their predecessors the Alexandrians and Chris- 
tians, in that splendid invisible eo in which, in ideal peace, slumber 
the creative essences and powers; and the vehement aspiration of their 
heart has drawn from their sphere the elementary spirits, ‘film of flame, 
who flit and wave in eddying motion! birth and the grave, an infinite 
ocean, a web ever growing, a life ever glowing, ply at Time’s whizzing 
loom, and weave the vesture of God.’? 

Thus rises the modern man, impelled by two sentiments, one as 
cratic, the other philosophic. From the shallows of his poverty and 
ignorance he rises with effort, lifting the weight of established society 
and admitted dogmas, disposed either to reform or to destroy them, 
‘and at once generous and rebellious. Then two currents from France 
and Germany at this moment swept into England. The dykes there 


1 ee wearer © 





1 The disciple of Faust. 2 Goethe’s Faust, sc. 1, 


3 
ioral 


228 or) MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV.. 


were so strong, they could hardly force their way, entering more slowly 
than elsewhere, but entering nevertheless. They made themselves a 
new course between the ancient barriers, and widened without bursting 
them, by a peaceful and slow transformation which continues till this 
day. | 

II. 


The new spirit broke out first in a Scotch peasant, Robert Burns: 
in fact, the man and the circumstances were suitable; scarcely ever 
was seen together more of misery and talent. He was born January 
1759, in the frost and snow of a Scotch winter, in a cottage of clay 
built by his father, a poor farmer of Ayrshire; a sad condition, a sad 
country, a sad lot. A part of the gable fell in a few days after his 
birth, and his mother was obliged to seek refuge with her child, in the 


middle of a storm, in a neighbour's use. It_is hard_to be born in 


this country. The soil is wret 

where the harvest often_fails. Burne father, already old, having little 
more than his arms to depend upon, having taken his farm at too high 
a rent, burdened with seven children, lived parsimoniously, or rather 
fasting, in solitude, to avoid temptations to expense. ‘For several 
years butchers’ meat was a thing unknown in the house.’ Robert went 
barefoot and bareheaded ; at ‘ the age of thirteen he assisted in thrash- 
ing the crop of corn, and at fifteen he was the principal labourer on the 
farm.’ The family did all the labour; they kept no servant, male or 
female. They scarcely ate, and they worked too much. ‘ This kind of 
life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley 
slave—brought me to my sixteenth year,’ Burns says. His shoulders 
were bowed, melancholy seized him ; ‘almost every evening he was con- 
stantly afflicted with a dull headache, which at a future period of his 
life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of 
fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time.’ ‘The anguish of 
mind which we felt,’ says his brother, ‘ was very great.’ The father 
grew old; his gray head, careworn brow, temples ‘wearing thin and 
bare,’ his tall bent figure, bore witness to the grief and toil which had 
spent him. The factor wrote him insolent and threatening letters which 
‘set all the family in tears.’ There was a respite when the father changed 
his farm, but a lawsuit sprang up between him and the proprietor : 





‘ After three years’ tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father 

was just saved from the horrors of a gaol by a consumption, which after two years’ 
promises kindly stepped in.’ 
In order to snatch something from the claws of the lawyers, the two 
sons were obliged to step in as creditors for arrears of wages. With 
this little sum they took another farm. Robert had seven pounds a 
year for his labour; for several years his whole expenses did not 
exceed this wretched pittance; he had resolved to succeed by force 
of abstinence and toil: 









CHAP. 1] ‘IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 229 


*I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended markets; ... but the 
first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, we 
lost half our crops.’ _ 


Troubles came apace; poverty always engenders them. The master- 
mason Armour, whose daughter was Burns’ sweetheart, was said to con- 
template prosecuting him, to obtain a guarantee for the support of his 
expected progeny, though he refused to accept him as a son-in-law. 
Jean Armour abandoned him ; he could not give his name to the child 
that was coming. He was obliged to hide; he had been subjected to 
a public punishment. He said: ‘Even in the hour of social mirth, 
my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of 
the executioner.’ He resolved to leave the country; he agreed with 
Mr. Charles Douglas for thirty pounds a year to be bookkeeper or 
overseer on his estate in Jamaica; for want of money to pay the 
passage, he was about to ‘indent himself,’ that is, become bound as 
apprentice, when the success of his volume put a score of guineas into 
his hands, and for a time brought him brighter days. Such was his 
life up to the age of twenty-seven, and that which succeeded was little 
better. . 

Fancy in this condition a man of genius, a true poet, capable of 
the most delicate emotions and the most lofty aspirations, wishing to 
rise, to rise to the summit, of which he deemed himself capable and 
worthy.) 

Ambition had early made itself heard in him: 

‘I had felt early some stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind groping 
of Homer’s Cyclops round the walls of his cave. . . . The only two openings by 
which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy, or 
the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aper- 


ture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated—there was 
contamination in the very entrance.’? 


Low occupations depress the soul even more than the body; man 
perishes in them—is obliged to perish; of necessity there remains of 
him nothing but a machine: for in ‘the kind of action in which all is 
monotonous, in which throughout the long day the arms lift the same 
flail and drive the same plough, if thought does not take this uniform 
movement, the work is ill done. The poet must take care not to be 
turned aside by his poetry; to do as Burns did, ‘think only of his 
work whilst he was at it.’ He must think of it always, in the evening 
unyoking his cattle, on Sunday putting on his new coat, counting on 
his fingers the eggs and poultry, thinking of the kinds of dung, finding 
a means of using only one pair of shoes, and of selling his hay at a 
penny a truss more. He will not succeed if he has not the patient 





1 Most of these details are taken from the Life and Works of Burns, by R. 
Chambers, 1851, 4 vols. 


? Chambers, Life of Burns, i. 14, 


230 > MODERN LIFE. : [BOOK Iv. 


dulness of a labourer, and the crafty vigilance of a’ petty shopkeeper. 
How would you have poor Burns succeed? He was out of place from 
his birth, and tried his utmost to raise himself above his condition.* 
At the farm at Lochlea, during meal-times, the only moments of re- 
laxation, parents, brothers, and sisters, ate with a spoon in one hand 
and a book.in the other. Burns, at the school of Hugh Rodger, a 

teacher of mensuration, and later at a club of young men at Torbolton, 
strove to exercise himself in general questions, and debated pro and 
con in order to see both sides of every idea. He carried a book in his 
pocket to study in spare moments in the fields; he wore out thus two 


copies of Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling. ‘The collection of songs was. 


my vade mecum. I poured over them driving my cart, or walking to 
labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, 
sublime, or fustian.’ He maintained a correspondence with several of 
his companions in the same rank of life in order to form his style, kept a 
common-place book, entered in it ideas on man, religion, the greatest 
subjects, criticising his first productions. Burns says, ‘ Never did a heart 
pant more ardently than mine to be distinguished.’ He thus divined 
what he did not learn, rose of himself to the level of the most highly 
cultivated ; ina while, at Edinburgh, he was to read through and through 
respected doctors, Blair himself; he was to see that Blair had attainments, 
but no depth. At this time he studied minutely and lovingly the old 
Scotch ballads; and by night in his cold little room, by day whilst 
whistling at the plough, he invented forms and ideas. We must think 
of this in order to understand his miseries and his revolt. We must think 
that the man in whom these great ideas are stirring, threshed the corn, 
cleaned his cows, went out to dig turf, waded in the muddy snow, and 
dreaded to come home and find the bailiffs to carry him off to prison. 
We must think also, that. with the ideas of a thinker he had the delicacies 
and reveries of a poet. Once, having cast his eyes on an engraving re- 
presenting a dead soldier, and his wife beside him, his child and dog lying 
in the snow, suddenly, involuntarily, he burst into tears. He writes: 
‘ There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more—I do not know if I should 
call it pleasure—but something which exalts me, which enraptures me—than to 
walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, 
and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain... . 
I listened to the birds and frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb 
their little songs or frighten them to another station. Even the hoary hawthorn 
twig that shot across the way, what heart, at such a time, but must have been 
interested for his welfare ?’? | 
This swarm of grand or graceful dreams, the Pate of mechanical 
toil and perpetual economy crushed as soon as they began to soar. 
Add to this a proud character, so proud, that afterwards in the 
world,’ amongst the great, ‘an honest contempt for whatever bore the 


— 





1 My great constituent elements are pride and passion. 
? Extract from Burns’ commonplace-book ; Chambers’ Life, i. 79. 








CHAP. 1] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 231 


appearance of meanness and servility’ made him ‘ fall into the opposite 
error of hardness of manner.’ He had also the consciousness of his 
own merits. ‘ Pawvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high 
an opinion of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when 
the public has decided in their favour.’* What wonder if we find at 
every step in his poems the bitter protests of an oppressed and rebellious 
plebeian ? 

We find such recriminations against all society, against State and 
Church. Burns has a harsh tone, often the very phrases of Rousseau, 
and wished to be a ‘vigorous savage,’ as he says, quit civilised life, 
the dependence and humiliations which it imposes on the wretched. 

‘It is mortifying to see a fellow, whose abilities would scarcely have made an 
eight-penny taylor, and whose heart is not worth three farthings, meet with atten- 
tion and notice that are withheld from the son of genius and poverty.’? 

It is hard to 

‘See yonder poor, o’erlabour’d wight, 

So abject, mean, and vile, 

Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 

And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 

Unmindful, though a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn.’ 4 
Burns says also: 
‘ While winds frae off Ben-Lomond blaw, 

And bar the doors wi’ driving snaw, . . . 
I grudge a wee the great folks’ gift, 
That live so bien an’ snug: 
I tent less, and want less 
Their roomy fire-side ; 
But hanker and canker 
To see their cursed pride. 
It’s hardly in a body’s power 
To keep, at times, frae being sour, 
To see how things are shar’d ; 
How best o’ chiels are whiles in want, 
While coofs on countless thousands rant, 
And ken na how to wair ’t.’4 


But ‘a man’s a man for a’ that,’ and the peasant is as good as the 
lord. ‘There are men noble by nature, and they alone are noble; the 
coat is the business of the tailor, titles a matter for the Herald’s office. 
‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, the man’s the gowd for a’ that.” 





~ 1 Chambers’ Life, i. 231. Burns had a right to think so: when he spoke at 
night in an inn, the very servants woke their fellow-labourers to come and hear 
him. 
2 Chambers, Life and Works of Robert Burns, ii. 68. 
* Man was made to Mourn, a dirge. 
*First Epistle to Davie, a brother poet. 


ch. uae tay i MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


Against such as reverse this natural equality Burns is pitiless; the 
least thing puts him out of temper. Read his ‘ Address of Beelzebub, 
to» the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the 
Right Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met 
on the 23d of May last at the Shakspeare, Covent Garden, to. concert: 
ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, 
who, as the society were informed by Mr. Mackenzie of Applecross, 
‘were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and 
masters, whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of 
Mr. M‘Donald of, Glengarry.to the wilds of Canada, in search of that 
fantastic thing—liberty !’ Rarely was an insult more prolonged and 
more biting, and the threat is. not far behind. He. warns Scottish 
members like a revolutionist: withdraw ‘that curst restriction on 
aquavitae ;’ ‘ get auld Scotland back her kettle ;’ 


‘ An’, Lord, if ance they pit her till’t, 
Her tartan petticoat she'll kilt, 





An’ durk an’ pistol at her belt, i 
She’ll tak the streets, % 
An’ rin her whittle to the hilt : 


I’ the first she meets !’} 
In vain he writes, that * 


‘ In politics if thou wouldst mix 
And mean thy fortunes be ; 
Bear this in mind, be deaf and blind, 
Let great folks hear and see.’? 


: 
Not alone did he see and hear, but he also spoke, and that aloud. He . 
congratulates the French on having repulsed conservative Europe, in ] 
arms against them. He celebrates the Tree of Liberty, planted ‘ where 
ance the Bastile stood :’ f 


* Upo’ this tree there grows sic fruit, 
Its virtues’a’ can tell, man ; 
It raises man aboon the brute, 
It makes him ken himsel’, man. 
Gif ance the peasant taste a bit, 
He’s greater than'a Lord,,man. . . . 
King Loui’ thought to cut it down, 
When it was unco sma’, man. ; 
For this the watchman ple his crown, : 
Cut off his head and a’, man.’? | 


Ee oe . 


Strange gaiety, always savage and nervous, and which, in better style, 
resembles that of the Ca ira. 

Burns is hardly more tender to the church.- At that time the strait 
puritanical garment. began to give way. “Already the learned world 





1 Harnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives. 
* The Creed of Poverty; Chambers’ Life, iv. 86. 3 Lhe Tree of Liberty. 


Ps 
a 
ae > - Py . 
i a al i 





‘CHAP.1] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 233 


of Edinburgh had Frenchified, widened, adapted it to the fashions of 
society, decked it with ornaments, not very brilliant, it is true, but 
select. In the lower strata of society dogma became less rigid, and 
approached by degrees the looseness of Arminius and Socinus. J John 
Goldie, a merchant, had quite recently discussed the authority of Scrip- 
ture." John Taylor had denied original sin. Burns’ father, pious as he 
was, inclined to liberal and humane. doctrines, and detracted from the 
province of faith to add to that of reason. Burns, after his wont, pushed 
things to an extreme, thought himself a deist, saw in the Saviour only an 
inspired man, reduced religion to an inner and poetic sentiment, and at- 
tacked with his railleries the paid and patented orthodox people. Since 
Voltaire, no one in religious matters was_more bitter-or_more jocose. 
According to him, ministers are shopkeepers trying to cheat each other 
out of their customers, decrying at the top of their voice the shop next 
door, puffing their drugs on numberless posters, and here and there set- 
ting up fairs to _push the trade. These ‘holy fairs’ are the gatherings 
of piety, where the sacrament is administered. Successively the clergy- 
men preach and thunder, in particular.a Rev. Mr. Moodie, who raves 
and fumes to throw light on points of faith—a terrible figure : 


‘ Should Hornie, as in ancient days, 
*Mang sons o’ God present him, 
The vera sight o’ Moodie face 
To’s ain het hame had sent him 
Wi fright that day. 
Hear how he clears the points o’ faith 
Wi rattlin’ an’ wi’ thumpin’ ; 
He’s stampin’ an’ he’s jumpin ! 
His lengthen’d chin, his turn’d-up snout, 
His eldritch squeel and gestures, 
Oh! how they fire the heart devout, 
Like cantharidian plasters, 
On sic a day !’2 


The minister grows hoarse, and his audience take their ease; they begin 
to eat. Each brings cakes and cheese from his bag; the young folks 
have their arms round their lassies’ waists. That was the attitude to 
listen in! There is a great noise in the inn; the cans rattle on the 
board; whisky flows, and provides arguments to the tipplers comment- 
ing on the sermon. They demolish carnal reason, and exalt free faith. 
Arguments and stamping, shouts of sellers and drinkers, all mingle 
together. It is a ‘holy fair:’ 


But now the Lord’s ain trumpet touts, 
Till a’ the hills are rairin’, 

An’ echoes back return the shouts ; 
Black Russell is na spairin’ ; 





11780. 2 The Holy Fair. 


234 MODERN LIFE. | [BOOK IV. 


His piercing words, like Highlan’ swords, 
Divide the joints and marrow. 
His talk o’ hell, whare devils dwell, 
Our vera sauls does harrow 
Wi fright that day. 


A vast unbottom’d boundless pit, 

Fill’d fu’ o’ lowin’ brunstane, 
oe raging flame, an’ scorchin’ heat, 
Wad melt the hardest whunstane. 
‘The half-asleep start up wi’ fear, 
An’ think they hear it roarin’, 
When presently it does appear 
*Twas but some neebor snorin’ 
Asleep that day.... 

How monie hearts this day converts 
O’ sinners and o’ lasses ! 
Their hearts 0’ stane, gin night, are gane, 
As saft as ony flesh is. 
There’s some are fou 0’ love divine, 
There’s some are fou o’ brandy.’! 


The young men meet the girls, and the devil has done better business 
than God. A fine ceremony and morality! Let us cherish it carefully, 
and our wise theology too, which damns men. 

As for that poor dog common sense, which bites so hard, let us send 
him across seas; let him go ‘and bark in France.’ For where shall 
we find better men than our ‘ unco guid "—Holy Willie for instance? He 
feels himself predestinated, full of never-failing grace; therefore all who 
resist him resist God, and are fit only to be punished; he may ‘ blast 
their name, who bring thy elders to disgrace, and public shame.’? 


Burns says also: 
* An honest man may like a glass, 
An honest man may like a lass, 
But mean revenge an’ malice fause 
He’ll still disdain ; 

An’ then cry zeal for gospel laws 
Like some we ken. . . « 

e « - L rather would be 
An atheist clean, 

Than under gospel colours hid be 
Just for a screen.’ % 


There is a beauty, an honesty, a happiness outside the conventionalities 
and hypocrisy, beyond correct preachings and the proper drawing- 
rooms, unconnected with gentlemen in white ties and reverends in new 
_ bands. 

Now Burns wrote his masterpiece, the Jolly Beggars, like the Gueux 





) The Holy Fair. 2 Holy Willie's Prayer. 
3 Epistle to the Rev. John M‘Math. Seles 





‘ 
3 
; 
‘ 
1 








CHAP. I.]” IDEAS ‘AND PRODUCTIONS. 235 


> 


of Béranger; but how much more picturesque, varied, and powerful! 


It is the end of autumn, the gray leaves float on the gusts of the wind; 
a joyous band of vagabonds, happy devils, come for a junketing at the 
change-house of Poosie Nansie : 
‘Wi’ quaffing and laughing 
They ranted and they sang ; 
Wi’ jumping and thumping 
The very girdle rang.’ 
First, by the fire, in old red rags, is a soldier, and his old woman is 
with him; the jolly old girl has drunk freely; he kisses her, and she 
again pokes out her greedy lips; the coarse loud kisses smack like ‘a 
cadger’s whip.’ ‘Then staggering and swaggering, he roar’d this ditty 
up ;’ 
. ‘I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batt’ries, 
And there I left for witness an arm and a limb ; 
Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me, 
I'd clatter.on my stumps at the sound of a drum...» 
He ended ; and the kebars sheuk, 
Aboon the chorus roar ; 
While frighted rattons backward leuk, 
And seek the benmost bore.’ 
Now it is the ‘ doxy’s’ turn: 
~- *JT once was a maid, tho’ I cannot tell when, 
And still my delight is in proper young men. . . « 
Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie, 
No wonder I’m fond of a sodger laddie. 
The first of my loves was a swaggering blade, 
To rattle the thundering drum was his trade... . 
The sword I forsook for the sake of the church. .. « 
Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot, 
The regiment at large for a husband I got, 
From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready, 
I asked no more but a sodger laddie. 
But the peace it reduc’d me to beg in despair, 
Till I met my old boy at a Cunningham fair; 
His rags regimental they flutter’d so gaudy, 
My heart it rejoic’d at a sodger laddie. . . . 
But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, 
Here’s to thee, my hero, my sodger laddie.’ 


I hope you think this a free style, and that the poet is not mealy- 
mouthed. His other characters are in the same taste, a Merry Andrew, 
a raucle carlin (a stout beldame), a ‘pigmy-scraper wi’ his fiddle,’ a 
travelling tinker,—all in rags, brawlers and gipsies, who fight, bang, 
and kiss each other, and make the glasses ring with the noise of their 
good humour : 

‘They toomed their pocks, and pawned their duds, 

They scarcely left to co’er their fuds, 

To quench their lowin’ drouth.’ 


236 MODERN LIFE. [BooK Iv. 


And their chorus rolls about like thunder, shaking the rafters and walls. 


‘ A fig for those by law protected ! 
Liberty’s a glorious feast ! 
Courts for cowards were erected, 
Churches built to please the priest! 


What is title? What is treasure ? 
What is reputation’s care ? 

If we lead a life of pleasure, 

*Tis no matter how or where ! 


With the ready trick and fable, 
Round we wander all the day ; 
And at night, in barn or stable, 
Hug our doxies on the hay. 





Life is all a variorum, 

We regard not how it goes ; ay 

Let them cant about decorum, 4 
- “Who have characters to lose. 


Here’s to budgets, bags and wallets ! 
Here’s to all the wandering train ! 


Here’s our ragged brats and callets ! i 
One and all cry out.—Amen.’ é 
Has any one better spoken the language of rebels and levellers. There : 
is here, however, something else than the instinct of destruction and the 4 
appeal to the senses; there is hatred of cant and return to nature. + 
Burns sings: | 


‘Morality, thou deadly bane, 
Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain ; ) 
Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is ; 
In moral mercy, truth and justice!’ 


Mercy! this great word renews all; as, eighteen centuries ago, men 
passed beyond legal formulas and prescriptions; as, under Virgil and 
Marcus Aurelius, refined sensibility and wide sympathies embraced 
beings who seemed for ever banished out of the pale of society and law. 
| Burns grows tender, and that sincerely, over a wounded hare, a mouse 
whose nest was upturned by his plough, a mountain daisy. Man, beast, 
or plant, is there so much difference? A mouse stores up, calculates, 
suffers like a man: 
*T doubt na, Mae but thou may thieve ; 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live.’ 


We even no longer wish to curse the fallen angels, the grand male- 
factors, Satan and his troop; like the ‘ randie, gangrel bodies, who in 
Poosie Nancy’s held the splore,’ they have their good = and 
perhaps after all are not so bad as people say: 


et ie) ie a i. ee 





1A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, 


| 
a ne 





IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 237 


* Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, © 
An’ let poor damned bodies be ; 
I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie, _ 
F’en toadeil, — ; 
To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me, 
4 An’ hear ussqueel! ... 
* Then you, ye auld, snic-drawing dog ! 
; Ye came to Paradise incog. 
An’ play’d on man a cursed brogue, 
(Black be your fa’ !) 
; An’ gied the infant warld a shog, 
ie *Maist ruin’d a’... . 
But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben ! 
O wad ye tak a thought an’ men’! 
Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken— 
Still hae a stake— 
I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, 
Ev’n for your sake.”?} 


We see that he speaks to the devil as to an unfortunate comrade, a 
quarrelsome fellow, but fallen into trouble. Another step, and you 
will see in a contemporary, Goethe, that Mephistopheles himself is not 
overmuch damned; his god, the modern god, tolerates him, and tell 

s that he has never hated such as he. For wide conciliating naar) 





assembles in her company, on equal terms, the ministers of destruction 

and life. In this deep change the ideal changes; citizen and orderly 

life, strict Puritan duty, do not exhaust all the powers of man. Burns] 
cries out in favour of instinct and joy, so as to seem epicurean. He has 

genuine gaiety, comic energy; laughter commends itself to him; he 

praises it and the good suppers of good comrades, where the wine flows, 

pleasantry abounds, ideas pour forth, poetry sparkles, and causes a 

carnival of beautiful figures and good-humoured people to move about 

in the human brain. 

In love he always was.” He made love the great end of existence, 
to such a degree that at the club which he founded with the young 
men of Torbolton, every member was obliged “to be the declared lover 
of one or more fair ones.’ From the age of fifteen this was his main 
business. He had for companion in his harvest toil a sweet and 
lovable girl, a year younger than himself: 

‘In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated. me in that delicious 
passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book- 
worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here 
below.’ . 


He sat beside her, with a joy which he did not understand, to ‘ pick 





1 Address to the Deil. 

2 He himself says: ‘I have been all along a miserable dupe to Love.’ His 
brother Gilbert said: ‘ He was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver.’ 

% Chambers’ Life of Burns, i. 12. 


238: MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


out from her little hand the cruel nettle-stings and thistles.’ He had 
many other less innocent fancies; it seems to me that he was at bottom 

{in love with all women: as soon as he saw a pretty one, he grew gay; 
his commonplace-book and his songs show that he set off in pursuit 
after every butterfly, golden or not, which seemed about to settle. 
Observe that he did not confine himself to Platonic reveries; he was 
as free of action as of words; obscene jokes come freely in his verses. 
He calls himself an unregenerate heathen, and he is right. He has 
even written ribald verses; and Lord Byron refers to a packet of his 
letters, unedited of course, than which worse could not be imagined: 
it was the excess of the sap which overflowed in him, and soiled the bark. 
Doubtless he did not boast about these excesses, he rather repented of 
them; but as to the uprising and blooming of the free poetic life 
toward the open air, he found no fault with it. He thought that love, 
with the charming dreams it brings, poetry, pleasure, and the rest, are 
beautiful things, appropriate to human instincts, and therefore to the 
designs of God. In short, in contrast with morose Puritanism, he 
approved joy and spoke well of happiness.* 

Not that he was a mere epicurean; on the contrary, he could be 
religious. When, after the death of his father, he prayed aloud in the 
evening, he drew tears from those present; and his Cottar’s Saturday Night 

is the most feeling of vittuous idyls. I even believe he was fundamentally 
religious. He advised his ‘ pupil, as he tenders his own peace, to keep 
up a regular warm intercourse with the Deity.” Often, before Dugald 
Stewart at Edinburgh, he disapproved of the sceptical jokes which he 

- heard at the supper table. He thought he had ‘ every evidence for 
the reality of a life beyond, the stinted bourne of our present existence ;’ 
and many a time, side by side with a jocose satire, we find in his 
writings stanzas full of humble repentance, confiding fervour, or 
Christian resignation. These, if you will, are a poet’s contradictions, 
but they are also a poet’s. divinations; under these apparent variations 
there rises a new ideal; old narrow moralities are to give place to the 
wide sympathy of the modern man, who loves the beautiful wherever 
it meets him, and who, refusing to mutilate human nature, is at once 
Pagan and Christian. 

This originality and divining instinct exist in his style as in his ; 
ideas. The specialty of the age in which we live, and which he . 
inaugurated, is to blot out rigid distinctions of class, catechism, and , 
style; academic, moral, or social conventions are falling away, and we 
claim in society dominion for individual merit, in morality for inborn 
generosity, in literature for genuine feeling. Burns was the first to 

fener on this track, and he often pursues it to’ the end. When he 
wrote verses, it was not on calculation or in obedience to the fashion: 





a a re 





- 


1See a passage from Burns’ commonplace-book in Chambers’ Life of Burns, 
i, 93, RS se . ; . 





CHAP. 1] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS 939 


e My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got 
x vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into 
quiet.’? | 


He hummed them, as he drove his plough, to old Scotch airs, which he 
passionately loved, and which, he says, as soon as he sang them, brought 
ideas and rhymes to his lips. That, indeed, was natural poetry; not 
forced in a hothouse, but born of the soil between the furrows, side 
by side with music, amidst the gloom and beauty of the climate, like. 
the violet’ gorse of the hillside and wolds. We can understand that it 
gave vigour to his tongue: for the first time this man spoke as men 
speak, or rather as they think, without premeditation, with a mixture 
of all styles, familiar and derrible, hiding an emotion under a joke, 
tender and jeering in the same place, apt to combine taproom trivialities 
with the high language of poetry,’ so indifferent was he to rules, con- 
tent to exhibit his feeling as it came to him, and as he felt it. At last, 
after so many years, we escape from the measured declamation, we hear 
a man’s voice! much better, we forget the voice in the emotion which it 
expresses, we feel this emotion reflected in ourselves, we enter into 
relations with a soul. Then form seems to fade away and disappear: 
I will say that this is the great feature of modern poetry; Burns has 
reached it seven or eight times. 

He has done more; he has made his way, as we say now-a-days. 
On the publication of his first volume he became suddenly famous. 
Coming to Edinburgh, he was feasted, caressed, admitted on a footing of 
equality in the best drawing-rooms, amongst the great and the learned, 
loved of a woman who was almost a lady. For one season he was sought 
after, and he behaved worthily amidst these rich and noble people. He 
was respected, and even loved. A subscription brought him a second 
edition and five hundred pounds. He also at last had won his position, 
like the great French plebeians, amongst. whom Rousseau was the first. 
Unfortunately he brought thither, like them, the vices of his condition 
and of his genius. A man does not rise with impunity, nor, abeve all, 
desire to rise with impunity: we also have our vices, and suffering 
vanity is the first of them. Nobody wished more anxiously than 
Burns to be distinguished This grievous pride marred his talent, and 
threw him into follies. He laboured to attain a fine epistolary style, 
and brought ridicule on himself by imitating in his letters the men of 
the academy and the court. He wrote to his loves with choice phrases, 
full of periods, as pedantic as those of Dr. Johnson. Certainly we 
dare hardly quote them, the emphasis is so grotesque. At other times 





1 Chambers’ Life, i, 38. 

2 See Tam o’ Shanter, Address to the Deil, The Jolly Beggars, A Man’s a Man 
for a that, Green grow the rushes, etc. 

* *O Clarinda, shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of being, 
where,the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of benevolence, 


ay a 3 - " = eS, = =e 
TP ee F Fr st het 
_~ ’ : * ov ts; 

f ~ - ~ ? 


240 _. MODERN LIFE. ~~ [BOOK Iv; 


he committed to his commonplace-book literary tirdlles that occurred 
to him, and six months afterwards sent them to his correspondents 
as extemporary effusions and natural improvisations. Even in his 
verses, often enough, he fell. into a grand, conventional style ;+ brought 
into play sighs, ardours, flames, even the big classical and mythological 
machinery. Béranger, who thought or called himself the poet of the 
people, did the same. A plebeian must have much courage to venture 
on always remaining himself, and never slipping on the court dress. 
Thus Burns, a Scottish villager, avoided, in speaking, all Scotch village 
expressions ; he was pleased to show himself as well-bred as fashionable 
folks. It was forcibly and by surprise that his genius drew him out of 
these proprieties: twice out of three times his feeling was marred by 
his pretentiousness, 

His success lasted one winter, after which the wide incurable wound 
of plebeianism made itself felt,—I mean that he was obliged to work for 
his living. With the money gained by his book he hired a little farm. 
It was a bad bargain ; and, moreover, we can imagine that he had not 
the money-grubbing character necessary. He says: 


‘I might write you on farming, on building, on marketing ; but my poor dis- 
tracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bedeviled with the task of the 
superlatively damned obligation to make one guinea do the business of three, that 
I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business.’ 


Soon he left his farm, with empty pockets, to fill at Dumfries the small 
post of exciseman, which was worth, in all, £90 a year. In this fine 
employment he branded leather, gauged casks, tested the make of 
candles, issued licences for the carriage of spirits. From his dunghills 
he passed to office work and grocery: what a life for such a man! 
He would have been unhappy, even if independent and rich. These 
great innovators, these poets, are all alike. What makes them poets is 
the violent afflux of sensations. ‘They have a nervous mechanism more 
sensitive than ours; the objects which leave us cool, transport t them 
suddenly beyond themselves. At the least shock their brain is set 
going, after which they once more fall flat, loathe existence, sit morose 
amidst the memories of their faults and their last delights. Burns said: 

‘My worst enemy is moi-méme. . . . There are just two creatures 1 would 
envy: a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some 
of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the 
other has neither wish nor fear.’ 


He was always in extremes, at the height or at the depth; in the 





and where the chill north-wind of prudence shall never blow over the flowery fields 
of enjoyment?’ 
1 Epistle to James Smith: 
*O Life, how pleasant is thy morning, 
Young Fancy’s rays the hills adorning, 
Cold-pausing Caution’s lesson spurning !’ 


ty aaa ~ 
ee arn - Rien Sm 





“pera 


a — vee «2 4 'P * : . wVeertr. hl 
el \ 





CHAP. ‘I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 241 


morning, ready to weep; in the evening, at table or under the table :| 
enamoured of Jean Armour, then on her refusal engaged to another, 
then returning to Jean, then quitting her, then taking her back, amidst 
much scandal, many blots on his character, still more disgust. In such 
heads ideas are like cannon balls: the man, hurled onwards, bursts 
through everything, shatters himself, begins again the next day, but in 
a contrary direction, and ends by finding nothing left, but ruins within 
and without him. Burns had never been prudent, and was so less than 
ever, after his success at Edinburgh. He had enjoyed too much; he 
henceforth felt too acutely the painful sting of modern man, to wit, 
the disproportion between desire and power. Debauch had all but 
spoiled his fine imagination, which had before been ‘the chief source 
of his happiness;’ and he confessed that, instead of tender reveries, he 
had now nothing but sensual desires. He had been kept drinking till 
six in the morning; he was very often drunk at Dumfries, not that the 
whisky was very good, but it raises a carnival in the head; and hence \ 
poets, like the poor, are fond of it. Once, at Mr. Riddell’s, he made 
himself so tipsy that he insulted the lady of the house; next day he sent 
her an apology which was not accepted, and, out of spite, wrote rhymes 
against her : lamentable excess, betraying an unseated mind. At thirty- 
seven he was worn out. One night, having drunk too much, he sat down 
and went to sleep in the street. It was January, and he caught rheumatic 
fever. They wanted to call ina doctor. ‘ What business has a physician 
to waste his time on me ?’ he said ; ‘I am a poor pigeon not worth pluck- 
ing.’ He was horribly thin, could not sleep, and could not stand on his 
legs. ‘ As to my individual self, I am tranquil. But Burns’ poor widow 
and half a dozen of his dear little ones, there I am as weak as a woman’s 
tear.’ He was even afraid he should not die in peace, and had the 
bitterness of being obliged to beg. Here is a letter he wrote to a friend : 


‘A rascal of a haberdasher, taking into his head that I am dying, has com- 
menced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. 
Will you be so good as to accommodate me, and that by return of post, with ten 


pounds? Oh James! did you know the pride of my heart, you would feel doubly 
forme! Alas, I am not used to beg!’! 


he pry. a tee a 


He died a few days afterwards, at thirty-eight. His wife was lying-in 
of her fifth child at the time of her husband’s funeral. 


II. 


A sad life, most often the life of the men in advance of their age; 
it is not wholesome to go-too quick%wBurns was so much in advance, that 
it took forty years to catch him. At this moment in England, the Con- 
servatives and the believers took the lead before sceptics and revolution- 
ists. The constitution was liberal, and seemed to be a guarantee of 
rights ; the church was popular, and seemed to be the support of morality. 


— em, 





we 1 Chambers’ Life ; Letter to Mr. Js. Burnes, iv. 205. 
VOL. IL. Q 





242, (MODERN. LIFE, [BOOK Iv. 


Practical capacity and speculative incapacity turned the mind aside from: 
the propounded innovations, and bound them down to the established 
order. ‘The people found themselves well off in their great feudal house, 
widened and accommodated to modern needs; they thought it beauti- 
ful, they were proud of it; and national instinct, like public opinion, 
declared against the innovators who would throw it down to build it up 
again, Suddenly a violent shock changed this instinct into a passion, 
and this opinion into fanaticism. The French Revolution, at first 
admired as a sister, had shown itself a fury and a monster. Pitt 
declared in Parliament, ‘that one of the leading features of this (French) 
Government was the extinction of religion and the destruction of pro- 
perty.’* Amidst universal applause, the whole thinking and influential 
class rose to stamp out this party of robbers, united brigands, atheists 
on principle ; and Jacobinism, sprung from blood to sit in purple, was 
persecuted even in its child and champion ‘ Buonaparte, who is now 
the sole organ of all that was formerly dangerous and pestiferous in the — 
revolution,’ Under this national rage liberal ideas dwindled; the 
most illustrious friends of Fox—Burke, Windham, Spencer—abandoned 
him: out of a hundred and sixty partisans in the House of Commons, 
only fifty remained to him. The great Whig party seemed to be dis- 
appearing; and in 1799, the strongest minority that could be collected. 
against the Government was twenty-nine. Yet English Jacobinism was 
taken by the throat and held down: 


‘The Habeas Corpus Act was repeatedly suspended. . . . Writers who pro- 
pounded doctrines adverse to monarchy and aristocracy, were proscribed and 
punished without mercy. It was hardly safe for a republican to avow his political 
creed over his beefsteak and his bottle of port at a chophouse. . . . Men of culti-: 
vated mind and polished manners were (in Scotland), for offences which at West- 
minster would have been treated as mere misdemeanours, sent to herd with felons 
at Botany Bay.’ 


2 Geel 


But the intolerance of the nation aggravated that of the Government. 

If any one had dared to avow democratic sentiments, he would have 
been insulted. The papers represented the innovators as wretches 
and public enemies. The mob in Birmingham burned the houses of 
Priestley and the Unitarians. In the end Priestley was obliged toleave 
England. Lord Byron exiled himself under the same constraint; and 
when he left, his friends feared that the crowd round his carriage would 
have laid hands on him. 

New theories could not arise in this society armed against new 
theories. Yet the revolution made its entrance; it entered disguised, 
and through a byway, so as not to be recognised. It was not social 
ideas, as in France, that were transformed, nor philosophical ideas, as in 


; 





1 The Speeches of William Pitt, 2d ed. 3 vols. 1808, ii. 17, Jan. 21, 1794. 
2 Jbid. iii. 152, Feb. 17, 1800. 
3 Macaulay’s Works, vii.; Life of William Pitt, 396. 





—— Oo 





CHAP. L] 


=, 


IDEAS. AND PRODUCTIONS. 243 


Germany, but literary ideas; the great rising tide of the modern mind; 


which elsewhere overturned the whole edifice of human conditions and 
speculations, succeeded here only at first in changing style and taste. 
It was a slight change, at least apparently, but on the whole of equal 
value with the others; for this renovation in the manner of writing is 
a renovation in the manner of thinking: the one led to all the rest, as 
the movement of a central pivot constrains the movement -of all the 
indented wheels. , 

Wherein consisted this reform of style? Before defining it, I prefer 
to exhibit it; and for that purpose, we must study the character and 
life of a man who was the first to use it, without any system—William 
Cowper: for his talent is but the picture of his character, and his poems 
but the echo of his life. He was a delicate, timid child, of a tremulous 
sensibility, passionately tender, who, having lost his mother at six, was 
almost at once subjected to the fagging and brutality of a public school. 
These, in England, are peculiar: a boy of about fifteen singled him out 
as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his 
temper; and the poor little fellow, ceaselessly ill-treated, ‘ conceived,’ 
he says, ‘such a dread of his (tormentor’s) figure, . .. that I well re- 
member being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees; 
and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by any other part 
of his dress.’* At the age of nine melancholy seized him, not the sweet 
reverie which we call by that namé, but the profound dejection, gloomy 
and continual despair, the horrible malady of the nerves and the soul, 
which leads to suicide, Puritanism, and madness. ‘ Day and night I was 
upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair.’ * 

The evil chenged: form, diminished, but did not leave him. As he 
had only a small fortune, though horn of a high family, he accepted, 
without reflection, the offer of his uncle, who wished to give him a place 
as clerk of the journals of the House of Lords; but he had to undergo 
an examination, and his nerves were unstrung at the very idea of having 
to speak in public. For six months he tried to prepare; but he read 
without understanding. His continual misery brought on at last a 
nervous fever. Cowper writes of himself: 

‘ The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place of execution, are probably 


much like mine, every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day, for 
more than a half year together.’ 


‘In this situation, such a fit of passion has sometimes seized me, when alone in 
my chambers, that I have cried out aloud, and cursed the hour of my birth ;: 
lifting up my eyes to heaven not as a suppliant, but in the hellish spirit of 
rancorous reproach and blasphemy against my Maker.’ # 

The day of examination came on: he hoped he was going mad, so 
that he might escape from it ; and as his reason held, he thought even 
of ‘self-murder.’ At last, whilst ‘in a horrible dismay of soul,’ insanity 





1 The Works of W. Cowper, ed. Southey, 8 vols. 1843, i. 5. 
2 Ibid. 18. % Ibid. 79. * Ibid. 81. 


244 MODERN LIFF, [BOOK Iv. | 


came, and he was placed in an asylum, whilst ‘ his conscience was scar- 
ing him, and the avenger of blood pursuing him’? to the extent even 
of thinking himself damned, like Bunyan and the first Puritans. After 
several months his reason returned, but it bore traces of the strange 
lands where it had journeyed alone. He remained sad, like a man who 
thought himself in disfavour with God, and-felt himself incapable of an 
active life. However, a clergyman, Mr. Unwin and his wife, very pious 
and very regular people, had taken charge of him. He tried to busy 
himself mechanically, for instance, in making rabbit-hutches, in garden- 
ing, and in taming hares. He employed the rest of the day like a 
Methodist, in reading Scripture or sermons, in singing hymns with his 
friends, and speaking of spiritual matters. This way of living, the 
wholesome country air, the maternal tenderness of Mrs. Unwin and 
Lady Austin, brought him a few gleams of light. They loved him so 
generously, and he was so lovable! Affectionate, full of freedom and 
innocent raillery, with a natural and charming imagination, a a graceful 
fancy,-an.exquisite delicacy, andso unhappy! He was one of those to 
whom women devote themselves, whom they love maternally, first from 
compassion, then by attraction, because they find in them alone the 
contrivances, minute and tender attentions, delicate observances which 
men’s rude nature cannot give them, and which their more sensitive 
nature nevertheless craves, These sweet moments, however, did not 
last. He says: 

‘ My mind has always a melancholy east, and is like some pools I have seen, 
which, though filled with a black and putrid water, will nevertheless in a bright 
day reflect the sunbeams from their surface.’ 


He smiled as well as he could, but with effort; it was the smile of; a 
sick man who knows himself incurable, and tries to forget it for an 
instant, at least to make others forget it: 

‘ Indeed, I wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my 
intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin 
should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in 
state, His antic gesticulations would be unseasonable at any rate, but more spe- 
cially so if they should distort the features of the mournful attendants into 
laughter. But the mind, long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary pro- 
spect, will gladly fix his eyes on any thing that may make a little variety in its 
contemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with her tail.’? 


In-fine,he-had_too delicate and too pure a heart : pious, irreproach- 
able, austere, he thought himself unworthy of going to church, or even 
of praying to God. He says also: 


_ * As for happiness, he that once had communion with his Maker must be more 
frantic than ever I was yet, if he can dream at finding it at a distance from Him.’? 





1 The Works of W. Cowper, ed. Southey, i. 97. 
2 Ibid. ii, 269 ; Letter to the Rev. John Newton, July 12, 1780, 
3 Ibid. i. 387 ; Letter to Rev. J, Newton, August 5, 1786. 





“ 


ae ll 





CHAP. L.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 245 





Cowper states then: 
‘The heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, (is) pierced with thorns, 


yet wreathed about with roses. I have the thorn without the rose. My brier is 
a wintry one; the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains.’ 


On his deathbed, when the clergyman told him to confide in the love 
of the Redeemer, who desired to save all men, he gave a passionate cry, 
begging him not to give him such consolations, He thought himself 
lost, and had thought so all his life. One by one, under this terror, all 
his faculties failed. Poor charming soul, perishing like a frail flower 
transplanted from a warm land to the snow: the world’s temperature 
was too rough for it; and the moral law, which should have supported 
it, tore it with its thorns. 
Such a man does not write for the pleasure of making a noise. 
He made verses as he painted or planed, to occupy himself, to distract 
his; mind. His soul was overcharged ; he need not go far for subjects. 
Picture this pensive figure, silently wandering and gazing along the banks 
of the Ouse. He gazes anddreams. A buxom peasant girl, with a basket 
on her arm; a distant cart slowly rumbling on behind, horses in a sweat ; 
a shining spring, which polishes the blue pebbles,—this is enough to 
fill him with sensations and thoughts. He returned, sat in his little 
summer-house, as large as a sedan-chair, the window of which opened 
out upon a neighbour’s orchard, and the door on a garden full of 
pinks, roses, and honeysuckle. In this nest he laboured. In the even- 
ing, beside his friend, whose needles were working for him, he read, or 
listened to the drowsy sounds without. Rhymes are born in such a 
life as this. It sufficed for him, and for their birth. He did not need 
a more violent career: less harmonious or monotonous, it would have 
upset him ; impressions small to us, were great to him; and in a room, 
a_garden, he founda world. In_his eyes — the s smallest_ objects were 
poetical. It is evening ; winter; “the postman comes : 
‘ The herald of a noisy world, 
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks, 
News from all nations lumbering at his back. 
True to his charge, the close-packed load behind, 
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern 
Is to conduct it to the destined inn, 
And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on. 
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, 
Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief 
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some.’ 








At last we have the precious ‘ close-packed load ;’ we open it; we wish 
to hear the many noisy voices it brings from London and the universe: 


‘ Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 





1 The Task, iv.; The Winter Evening. 


246 . MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 

' Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, 
So Tet us welcome peaceful evening in.’? 


Then he unfolds the whole contents of the newspaper—politics, news, 
even advertisements—not as a mere realist, like so many writers of 
to-day, but as a poet; that is, as a man who discovers a beauty and 
harmony i in the coal of a sparkling fire, or the movement of fingers 
over a piece of wool-work; for such is the poet’s strange distinction, 
Objects not only spring up in his mind more powerful and more pre- 
cise than they were of themselves; but also, once conceived, they are 
purified, ennobled, coloured like gross vapours, which, being transfigured 
by distance and light, change into silky clouds, lined with purple and 
gold. For him there is a charm in the rolling folds of the vapour sent 
up by the tea-urn, sweetness in the concord of guests assembled about 
the same table in the same house. ‘This one expression, ‘ News from 
India,’ causes him to see India itself, ‘with her plumed and jewelled 
turban.’* The mere notion of ‘ excise’ sets before his eyes ‘ ten thousand 
casks, for ever dribbling out their base contents, touched by the Midas 
finger of the State, (which) bleed gold for ministers to sport away.’ * 
Strictly, nature_is. like a gallery of splendid and various pictures, which 
to us ordinary folk are always covered up with cloths. At most, now 
and then, a rent suffers us to imagine the beauties hid behind the 
monotonous curtains; but these curtains the poet raises, one and all, 
and sees a picture where we see but a covering. Such is the new 
truth which Cowper’s poems brought to light. We know from him 
that we need no longer go to Greece, Rome, to the palaces, heroes, and 
academicians, to search for poetic objects. They are quite near us. 
If we see them not, it is because we do not know how to look for them; 
the fault is in our eyes, not in the things. We shall find poetry, if we 
wish,-at-our-fireside, and amongst the beds of our kitchen- garden.* 

is the kitchen-garden indeed poetical? To-day, perhaps; but to- 
morrow, if my imagination is barren, I shall see there nothing but 
carrots and other kitchen stuff. It is my sensation which is poetic, 
which I must respect, as the most precious flower of beauty. Hence 
a new Style. It is no longer a question, after the old oratorical fashion, 
of boxing up a subject in a regular plan, dividing it into symmetrical 
portions, arranging ideas into files, like the pieces on a draught-board. 
Cowper takes the first subject that comes to hand—one which Lady 
Austin gave him at hap-hazard—the Sofa, and speaks about it for a 
couple of pages; then he goes whither the bent of his mind leads him, 





1 The Task, iv.; The Winter Evening. 2 Tbid. 3 Ibid. 

* Crabbe may also be considered one of the masters and renovators of poetry, 
“but his style is too classical, and he has been rightly nicknamed ‘a Pope in worsted 
stockings,’ 








es es 





“CHAP. 1] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 947 


describing a winter evening, a number of interiors and landscapes, 
mingling here and there all kinds of moral reflections, stories, disser- 
tations, opinions, confidences, like a man who thinks aloud before the 
‘ most.intimate and beloved of his friends. ‘The best didactic poems,’ 
says Southey, ‘when compared with the Task, are like formal gardens 
‘in comparison with woodland scenery.’* This is his great poem, the 
Task. If we enter into details, the contrast is greater still. He does 
not seem to dream that he is being listened to; he only speaks to him- 
self. He does not dwell on his ideas, to set them in relief, and make 
them stand out by repetitions and antitheses; he marks his sensation, 
and that is all. We follow it in him as it is born, and we see it rising 
from a former one, swelling, falling, remounting, as we see vapour 
issuing from a spring, and insensibly rising, unrolling, and developing 
its shifting forms. Thought, which in others was curdled and rigid, 
becomes here mobile and fluent; the rectilinear verse grows flexible; 
the noble vocabulary widens its scope to let in vulgar words of con- 
versation and life. At length poetry has again become lifelike; we 
no longer listen to words, but we feel emotions; it is no longer an 
author, but a man who speaks. His life is there perfect, beneath its 
black lines, without falsehood or concoction; his whole effort is bent 
on removing falsehood and concoction. When he describes his little 
river, his dear Ouse, ‘slow winding through a level plain of spacious 
meads, with cattle sprinkled o’er,’? he sees it with his inner eye; and 
each word, cesura, sound, answers to a change of that inner vision. 
It is so in all his verses; they are full of personal emotions, genuinely 
felt, never altered or disguised; on the contrary, fully expressed, with 
their t transient shades and fluctuations; in a word, as they are, that is, 
in the process of production and destruction, not all complete, motion- 
less, and fixed as the old style represented them. Herein consists the 
great revolution of the modern style. The mind, outstripping the known 
rules-of rhetoric and eloquence, penetrates into profound psychology, 
and no longer employs words except to mark emotions. «<7 


Til. 

Now ® appeared the English romantic school, closely resembling the 
French in its doctrines, origin, and alliances, in the truths which it dis- 
covered, the exaggerations it committed, and the scandal it excited. The 
followers of that school formed a sect, a sect of ‘ dissenters in poetry,’ who 
spoke out aloud, kept themselves lode together, and repelled settled 
minds by the audacity and novelty of their theories. For their foundation 
were attributed to them the anti-social principles and the sickly sensi- 
bility of Rousseau; in short, a sterile and misanthropical dissatisfaction 
with the present institutions of society. In fact, Southey, one of their 
leaders, had begun by being a Socinian and Jacobin; and one of his 





1 Southey, Life of Cowper, i. 341. 2 The Task, i. ; The Sofa. 
31793-1794. ; 


248 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


first poems, Wat Tyler, cited the glory of the past Jacquerie in support 
of the present revolution. Another, Coleridge, a poor fellow, who had 
served as a dragoon, his brain stuffed with incoherent reading and 
humanitarian dreams, had thought of founding in America a communist 
republic, purged of kings and priests; then, having turned Unitarian, 
steeped himself at Gottingen in heretical and mystical theories on the 
Word and the absolute. Wordsworth himself, the third and most mo- 
derate, had begun with enthusiastic verses against kings: 

‘Great God, . . . grant that every sceptred child of clay, 

Who cries presumptuous, ‘‘ Here the flood shall stay,” 

May in its progress see thy guiding hand, 

And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand ; 

Or, swept in anger from the insulted shore, 

Sink with his servile bands, to rise no more! ”# 
But these rages and aspirations did not last long; and at the end of a 
few years, the three, brought back into the pale of State and Church, 
were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist, Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, 
and Southey, poet-laureate; all converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and 
intolerant Conservatives. In point of taste, however, they had advanced, 
not retired. They had violently broken with tradition, and leaped over 
all classical culture to find their models from the Renaissance and the 
middle-age. One of their friends, Charles Lamb, like Sainte-Beuve, 
had discovered and restored the sixteenth century. The most un- 
polished dramatists, like Marlowe, seemed to these men admirable; and 
they sought in the collections of Percy and Warton, in the old national 
ballads and ancient foreign poetry, the fresh and primitive accent which 
had been wanting in classical literature, and whose presence seemed to 
them to be a sign of truth and beauty. Above every other reform, 
they laboured to destroy the great aristocratical and oratorical style, 
such as it sprang from methodical analyses and court conventions, to 
adapt to poetry the ordinary language of conversation, such as is spoken 
in the middle and lower classes. They proposed to replace studied 
phrases and lofty vocabulary by natural tones and plebeian words. In 
place of the ancient mould, they tried the stanza, the sonnet, the ballad, 
blank verse, with the rudenesses and breaks of the primitive poets. They 
resumed or arranged the metres and diction of the thirteenth and six- 
teenth centuries. Charles Lamb wrote an archaic tragedy, John Wood- 
vill, which one might fancy contemporary with Elizabeth’s reign. Others, 
like Southey, and Coleridge in particular, manufactured totally new 
rhythms, as happy at times, and at times also as unfortunate, as those 
of Victor Hugo: for instance, a verse in which accents, and not syl- 
lables, were counted;* a singular medley of confused attempts, mani- 





1 Wordsworth’s Works, new edition, 1870, 6 vols. ; Descriptive Sketches during 
a Pedestrian Tour, i. 42. 

2 In English poetry as since modified, no one dreams of limiting the number of 
syllables, even in blank verse.—TRr. 





IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 249 





fest abortions, and original inventions. The plebeian, enfranchised 
trom the aristocratical costume, sought another ; borrowed one piece of 
his dress from the knights or the barbarians, another from peasants or 
journalists, not too critical of incongruities, pretentious, and satisfied 
with his motley and badly sewn cloak, till at last, after many attempts 
and many rents, he ended by knowing himself, and selecting the dress 
that fitted him. 

In this confusion of labours two great ideas are distinguished: the 
first producing historical poetry, the second philosophical; the one 
especially manifest in Southey and Walter Scott, the other in Words 
worth and Shelley ; both European, and displayed with equal brilliancy 
in France by Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset ; with greater brilliancy in 
Germany by Goethe, Schiller, Ruckert, and Heine; both so profound, 
that none of their representatives, except Goethe, divined their scope ; 
and hardly now, after more than half a century, can we define their 
nature, so as to forecast their results. 

The first consists in saying, or rather foreboding, that our ideal is 
not the ideal; it is one ideal, but there are others. The barbarian, 
the feudal man, the cavalier of the Renaissance, the Mussulman, the 
Indian, each age and each race has conceived its beauty, which was a 
beauty. Let us enjoy it, and for this purpose put ourselves in the place 
of the discoverers ; altogether; for it will not suffice to represent, like 
the previous novelists and dramatists, modern and national manners 
under old and foreign names; let us paint the sentiments of other ages 
and other races with their own features, however different these features 
may be from our own, and however unpleasing to our taste. Let us 
show our character as he was, grotesque or not, with his costume and 
speech: let him be fierce and superstitious if he was so; let us dash 
the barbarian with blood, and load the covenanter with his bundle of 
biblical texts. Then one by one on the literary stage men saw the 
vanished or distant civilisations return: first the middle age and the 
Renaissance ; then Arabia, Hindostan, and Persia; then the classical age, 
and the eighteenth century itself; and the historic taste becomes so 
eager, that from literature the contagion spread to other arts. The 
theatre changed its conventional costumes and decorations into true 
ones. Architecture built Roman villas in our northern climates, and 
feudal towers amidst our modern security. Painters travelled to imitate 
local colouring, and studied to reproduce moral colouring. Every one 
became a tourist and an archeologist; the human mind, quitting its 
individual sentiments to adopt sentiments really felt, and finally all 
possible sentiments, found its pattern in the great Goethe, who by his 
Tasso, Iphigenia, Divan, his second part of Faust, became a citizen of ° 
all nations and a contemporary of all ages, seemed to live at pleasure at 
every point of time and place, and gave an idea of universal mind. 
Yet this literature, as it approached perfection, approached its limit, and 
was only developed in order to die, Men did comprehend at last that 


250 ’ .. MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


attempted resurrections are always incomplete, that every imitation is 
only an imitation, that the modern accent infallibly penetrates the words 
which we lend to antique characters, that every picture of manners 
must be indigenous and contemporaneous, and that archaic literature 
is a false kind. They saw at last that it is in the writers of the past 
that we must seek the portraiture of the past; that there are no Greek 
tragedies but the Greek tragedies; that the concocted novel must 
give place to authentic memoirs, as the fabricated ballad to the spon- 
taneous; in short, that historical literature must vanish and become 
transformed into criticism and history, that is, into exposition and com- 
mentary of documents. 

In this multitude of travellers and historians, disguised as poets, 
how shall we select ? They abound like swarms of insects, hatched on 
a summer’s day amidst the rank vegetation; they buzz and glitter, 
and the mind is lost in their sparkle and hum. Which shall I quote? 
Thomas Moore, the gayest and most French of all, a witty railer,* too 
graceful and recherché, writing descriptive odes on the Bermudas, 
sentimental Irish melodies, a poetic Egyptian romance,” a romantic 
poem on Persia and India;* Lamb, the restorer of the old drama; 
Coleridge, a thinker and dreamer, poet and critic, who in Christabel 
and the Ancient Mariner hit the supernatural and the fantastic; Camp- 
bell, who, having begun with a didactic poem on the Pleasures of Hope, 
entered the new school without giving up his noble and half-classical 
style, and wrote American and Celtic poems, only slightly Celtic and 
American ; in the first rank, Southey, a clever man, who, after several 
mistakes in his youth, became the professed defender of aristocracy 
and cant, an indefatigable reader, an inexhaustible writer, crammed = 
with erudition, gifted in imagination, famed like Victor Hugo for the 
freshness of his innovations, the combative tone of his prefaces, the | 
splendours of his picturesque curiosity, having spanned the universe 
and all history with his poetic shows, and embraced, in the endless » 
web of his verse, Joan of Arc, Wat Tyler, Roderick the Goth, Madoc, | 
Thalaba, Kehama, Celtic and Mexican traditions, Arabic and Indian : 
legends, successively Catholic, Mussulman, Brahman, but only in verse; 
in fine, a prudent and licensed Protestant. You must receive these : 
as examples merely—there are thirty others behind; and I think that, - 
of all fine visible or imaginable sceneries, of all great real or legendary . 
events, at all points of time, in the four quarters of the world, not 
one has escaped them. This diorama is very brilliant; unfortunately : 
we perceive that it is manufactured.\\ If you would have its picture, -t 
imagine yourself at the opera. ‘The decorations are splendid, we see 
them coming down from heaven, that is, from the ceiling, thrice in an 
act; lofty Gothic cathedrals, whose rose-windows glow in the rays of 
the setting sun, whilst processions wind round the pillars, and the 





ee SO ee ee 





1See The Fudge Family. 2 The Epicurean, 3 Lalla Rookh. r 





« . 





CHAP, I.] | IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 251 


lights float over the elaborate copes and the gold-work of the priestly 
vestments ; mosques and minarets, moving caravans creeping afar over 
the yellow sand, whose lances and canopies, ranged in line, fringe 
the immaculate whiteness of the horizon; Indian paradises, where the 
heaped roses multiply in myriads, where fountains mingle their plumes 
of pearls, where the lotus spreads its large leaves, where thorny plants 
bristle their hundred thousand purple calices around the divine apes 
and crocodiles which crawl in their thickets. Meantime the dancing- 
girls lay their hands on their heart with deep and delicate emotion, 
the tenors sing that they are ready to die, tyrants roll forth their 
‘deep bass voice, the orchestra struggles hard, accompanying the varia- 
tions of sentiments with the gentle sounds of their flutes, the lugubrious 
clamours of the trombones, the angelic melodies of the harps; till at 
last, when the heroine sets her foot on the throat of the traitor, it 
breaks out triumphantly with its thousand vibrant voices harmonised 
into a single strain. A fine spectacle! we depart mazed, deafened ; 
the senses fail under this inundation of splendours; but as we return 
home, we ask ourselves what we have learnt, felt—whether we have, in 
truth, felt anything. After all, there is little here but decorations and 
scenery ; the sentiments are factitious; they are operatic sentiments : 
the authors are only clever men, libretti-makers, manufacturers of 
painted canvas; they have talent without genius; they draw their 
ideas not from the heart, but from the head. Such is the impression 
left by Lalla Rookh, Thalaba, Roderick the last of the Goths, The Curse 
of Kehama, and the rest of these poems. They are great decorative 
machines suited to the fashion. The mark of genius is the discovery 
of some wide unexplored region in human nature, and this mark fails 
them; they prove only much cleverness and knowledge. In fine, I 
prefer to see the East in Orientals from the East, rather than in 
Orientals in England; in Vyasa or Firdousi, rather than in Southey? 
and Moore. These poems may be descriptive or historical; they are 
less so than the texts, notes, emendations, and justifications which they 
carefully print at the foot of the page. - 

Beyond all general causes which have fettered this literature, there 
is a national one: the mind of these authors is not sufficiently flexible, 
and too moral. Their imitation is only literal. They know the past time 
and the distant lands only as antiquarians and travellers. When they 
mention a custom, they put their authorities in a foot-note; they do not 
present themselves before the public without being furnished with 
testimonials ; they establish by weighty certificates that they have not 
made a fault in topography or costume. Moore, like Southey, named 
his authorities ; Sir John Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley, Mr. Carew, 
and others, who had returned from the East, all ocular witnesses, state 





1 See also The History of the Caliph Vathek, a fantastic but powerfully written 
tale, by W. Beckford, published first in French in 1784, 





a 


252: MODERN LIFE. , [BOOK Iv. 


that his descriptions are wonderfully faithful, that they thought that 
. Moore had travelled in the East. In this respect their minuteness is 
ridiculous ;1 and their notes, lavished without stint, show that their 
positive public imposed on the poetical commodities the necessity of 
proving their origin and alloy. But the great truth, which lies in the 
penetration into the sentiments of the characters, escaped them ; these 
sentiments are too strange and immoral. When Moore tried to trans- 
late and recast Anacreon, he was told that his poetry was fit for ‘the 
stews.’* To write an Indian poem, we must be pantheistical at heart, 
a little mad, and pretty generally visionary: to write a Greek poem, 
we must be polytheistic at heart, fundamentally pagan, and a naturalist 
by profession. ‘This is the reason that Heine spoke so fitly of India, and 
Goethe of Greece. A genuine historian is not sure that his own civilisa- 
tion is perfect, and lives as gladly out of his country as init. Judge 
whether Englishmen can succeed in this style. In their eyes, there is 
only one rational civilisation, which is their own; every other morality is 
inferior, every other religion is extravagant. Amidst such want of reason, 
how can they reproduce different moralities and religions? Sympathy 
alone can restore extinguished or foreign manners, and sympathy here is 
forbidden. Under this narrow rule, historical poetry, which itself is 
hardly likely to live, languishes as though suffocated under aleaden cover. 
yt (/_ One of them, a novelist, critic, historian, and poet, the favourite of 
iy his age, read over the whole of Europe, was compared and almost 
equalled to Shakspeare, had more popularity than Voltaire, made 
dressmakers and duchesses weep, and earned about two hundred 
thousand pounds. Murray, the publisher, wrote to him: ‘I believe 
I might swear that I never experienced such unmixed pleasure as the 
reading of this exquisite work (first series of Tales of my Landlord) has 
afforded me. . . . Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion: 
, Opinion! we did none of us go to bed last night—nothing slept but 
my gout.”’? In France, 1,400,000 of these novels were sold, and they 
continue to sell, The author, born in Edinburgh, was the son of a 
Writer to the Signet, learned in feudal law and ecclesiastical history, 
himself an advocate, then sheriff, and always fond of antiquities, 
especially national antiquities; so that by his family, education, person, 
he found the materials of his works and the stimulus for his talent. 
His past recollections were impressed on him at the age of three, in a 
farm-house, where he had been taken to try the effect of bracing air 
on his little shrunken leg. He was wrapt naked in the warm skin of a 
recently slain sheep, and he crept about in this attire, which passed for 
a specific. He continued to limp, and became a reader. From his 
infancy he had been bred amongst the stories which he afterwards gave 





1 See the notes of Southey, worse than those of Chateaubriand in the Martyrs, 
2 Edinburgh Review. 
3 Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, 10 vols., 2d ed., 1839, ii. ch, xxxvii. p. 170. 









ee See 


CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 253 


to the public,—that of the battle of Culloden, of the cruelties practised 
on the Highlanders, the wars and sufferings of the Covenanters. At 
three he used to sing out the ballad of. Hardyknute so loudly, that 
he prevented the village minister, a man gifted with a very fine voice, 
from being heard, and even from hearing himself. As soon as he had 
heard ‘a Border-raid ballad,’ he knew it by heart. For the rest, he 
was indolent, studied by fits and starts, did not readily learn dry hard 
facts; but for poetry, playhouse-ditties, and ballads, the flow of his 
genius was precocious, swift, and invincible. The day on which he first 
opened, ‘under a platanus tree,’ the volumes: in which Percy had col- 
lected the fragments of the ancient poetry, he forgot dinner, ‘ notwith- 
standing the sharp appetite of thirteen,’ and thenceforth he flooded 
with these old rhymes not only his schoolfellows, but even all who 
would hear him. Becoming a clerk to his father, he stuffed into his 
desk all the works of imagination which he could find. ‘The whole 
Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred,’ he said, ‘and it required 
the art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon 
a domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic, .. . that 
touched upon knight-errantry, I devoured.’' Having contracted an 
illness, he was kept a long time in bed, forbidden to speak, with no other 
pleasure than to read the poets, novelists, historians, and geographers, 
illustrating the battle descriptions by setting in line and disposing little 
pebbles, which represented the soldiers. Once cured and able to walk 
well, he turned his walks to the same purpose, and developed a passion 
for the country, especially the historical regions. He said: 


‘But show me an old castle or a field of battle, and I was at home at once, 
filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers 
by the enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St. Andrews, 
the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination of the Archbishop of St. 
Andrews to some fellow-travellers with whom I was accidentally associated; and 
one of them, though well acquainted with the story, protested my narrative had 
frightened away his night’s sleep.’? 


Amidst other studious excursions, he travelled for seven years suc- 
cessively in the wild district of Liddesdale, exploring every stream 
and every ruin, sleeping in the shepherds’ huts, gleaning legends and 
ballads. Judge from this of his antiquarian tastes and habits. He 
read provincial charters, the wretched middle-age Latin verses, the 
parish registers, even contracts and wills. The first time he was 
able to lay his hand on one of the great ‘old Border war-horns,’ 
he blew it all along his route. Rusty mail and dirty parchment at- 
tracted him, filled his head with recollections and poetry. In truth, 
he had a feudal mind, and always wished to be the founder of a 
distinct branch. Literary glory was only secondary; his talent was 
to him only as an instrument. He spent the vast sums which his prose 





4 Lockhart’s Life of Sir W. Scott; Autobiography, i. 62, 2 Ibid. i. 72. 


254: MODERN LIFE. r _ [BOOK Iv.° 


and verse had won, in building a castle in imitation of the ancient! 
knights, ‘with a tall tower at either end, . .. sundry zigzagged 


gables, . . . a myriad of indentations and parapets, and machicollated ° 


eaves; most fantastic waterspouts; labelled windows, not a few of 
them painted glass; . . . stones carved with heraldries innumerable ;’? . 
apartments filled with sideboards and carved chests, adorned with 

‘cuirasses, helmets, swords of every order, from the claymore and 

rapier to some German executioner’s swords.’ For long years he held 
open house there, so to speak, and did to every stranger the ‘ honours 

of Scotland,’ trying to revive the old feudal life, with all its customs’ 
and its display; dispensing open and joyous hospitality to all comers, 

above all to relatives, friends, and neighbours; singing ballads and 
sounding pibrochs amidst the clinking of glasses; holding gay hunting-" 
parties, where the yeomen and gentlemen rode side by side; and en-’ 
couraging lively dances, where the lord was not ashamed to give’ 
his hand to the miller’s daughter. He himself, open, happy, amidst- 
his forty guests, kept up the conversation with a profusion of stories, ’ 
lavished from his vast memory and imagination, conducted his guests’ 
over his domain, extended at large cost, amidst new plantations whose 

future shade was to shelter his posterity; and he thought with a poet’s 

smile of the distant generations who would acknowledge for ancestor 
Sir Walter Scott, first baronet of Abbotsford. 

The Lady of the Lake, Marmion, The Lord of the Isles, The Fair Maid. 
of Perth, Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, who does not know 
these names by heart? . From Walter Scott we learned history. And - 
yet is this history? All these pictures of a distant age are false, 
Costumes, scenery, externals alone are exact; actions, speech, senti- 
ments, all the rest is civilised, embellished, arranged in modern guise, 
We might suspect it when looking at the character and life of the | 
author ; for what does he desire, and what do the guests, eager to hear 
him, demand? Is he a lover of truth as it is, foul and fierce; an in-— 
quisitive explorer, indifferent to contemporary applause, bent alone © 
on defining the transformations of living nature? By no means. He. 
is in history, as he is at Abbotsford, bent on arranging points of view 
and Gothic halls. The moon will come in well there between the 
towers; here is a nicely placed breastplate, the ray of light which it 
throws back is pleasant to see above these old hangings; suppose we 
took out the feudal garments from the wardrobe and invited the guests 
to a masquerade? ‘The entertainment would be a fine one, agreeable 
with their reminiscences and their aristocratic principles. English lords, 
fresh from a bitter war against French democracy, ought to enter 
zealously into this commemoration of their ancestors. Moreover, there 
are ladies and young girls, and we must arrange the show, so as not to 
Shock their severe morality and their delicate feelings, make them weep 





1 Lockhart’s Life of Sir W. Scott, vii.; Abbotsford in 1825. 








CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 955 


becomingly; not put on the stage over-strong passions, which they 


would not understand; on the contrary, select heroines to resemble: 


them, always touching, but above all correct; young gentlemen, Evan- 


. dale, Morton, Ivanhoe, irreproachably brought up, tender and grave, 


even slightly melancholic (it is the latest fashion), and worthy to lead 
them to the altar. Is there a man more suited than the author to 
compose such a spectacle? He is a good Protestant, a good husband, 
a good father, very moral, so decided a Tory, that he carries off as a relic 
a glass from which the king has just drunk. In addition, he has neither 
talent nor leisure to reach the depth of his characters. He devotes 
himself to the exterior; he sees and describes forms and externals 
much more at length than feelings and internals. Again, he treats 
his mind like a coal-mine, serviceable for quick working, and for the 
greatest possible gain: a volume in a month, sometimes in a fortnight. 
even, and this volume is worth one thousand pounds. How should he 
discover, or how dare exhibit, the structure of barbarous souls? ‘This 
structure is too difficult to discover, and too little pleasing to show. 
Every two centuries, amongst men, the proportion of images and 
ideas, the source of passions, the degree of reflection, the species of 
inclinations, change. Who, without a long preliminary training, now 
understands and relishes Dante, Rabelais, and Rubens? And how, 
for instance, could these great Catholic and mystical dreams, these 
vast temerities, or these impurities of carnal art, find entrance into 
the head of this gentlemanly citizen? Walter Scott pauses on the 
threshold of the soul, and in the vestibule of history, selects in the 
Renaissance and the Middle-age only the fit and agreeable, blots out 
frank language, licentious sensuality, bestial ferocity. After all, his 
characters, to whatever age he transports them, are his neighbours, 
‘cannie’ farmers, vain lairds, gloved gentlemen, young marriageable 
ladies, all more or less commonplace, that is, well-ordered by education 
and character, hundreds of miles away from the voluptuous fools of 
the Restoration, or the heroic brutes and fierce beasts of the Middle- 
age. As he has the richest supply of costumes, and the most in- 
exhaustible talent for scenic effect, he makes his whole world get on 
very pleasantly, and composes tales which, in truth, have only the 
merit of fashion, but which yet may last a hundred years. 

That which he himself acted lasted for a briefer time. To sustain 
his princely hospitality and his feudal magnificence, he had gone into 
partnership with his printers; lord of the manor in public and 
merchant in private, he had given them his signature, without keeping 
a check over the use they made of it. Bankruptcy followed ; at the 
age of fifty-five he was ruined, and one hundred and seventeen thousand 
pounds in debt. With admirable courage and uprightness, he refused 
all favour, accepting nothing but time, set to work on the very day, 
wrote untiringly, in four years paid seventy thousand pounds, exhausted 
his brain so as to become paralytic, and to perish in the attempt. 


256 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


Neither in his conduct nor his literature did his feudal tastes succeed, 
and his manorial splendour was as fragile as his Gothic imaginations. 
He had relied on imitation, and we live by truth only; his glory lay 
elsewhere; and there was something solid in his mind as in his 
writings. Beneath the lover of the Middle-age we find, first the 
prudent Scotchman, an attentive observer, whose sharpness has become 
more intense by his familiarity with law; a good man too, easy and 
gay, as beseems the national character, so different from the English. 
One of his walking companions (Shortreed) said : 


‘Eh me, sic an endless fund o’ humour and drollery as he had wi’ him! 
Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever 
we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel’ to everybody! He aye did as the lave 
did ; never made himsel’ the great man, or took ony airs in the company.’! 


Grown older and graver, he was none the less amiable; the most 
agreeable of hosts, so that one of his guests, a farmer, I think, on 
leaving his house, said to his wife, that he was going to bed, and 
should like to sleep for a whole twelve months, for that there was only 
one thing in this world worth living for, namely, hunting at Abbots- 
ford. 

In addition to a mind of this kind, he had all-discerning eyes, an 
all-retentive memory, a ceaseless studiousness which comprehended the 
whole of Scotland, all conditions; and you see his true talent arise, so 
abundant and so easy, made up of minute observation and sweet 
raillery, recalling at once Teniers and Addison. Doubtless he wrote 
badly, at times in the worst possible manner :? it is clear that he dictated, 
hardly re-read his writing, and readily fell into a pasty and emphatic 
style,—a style indigenous to the atmosphere, and which we read day after 
day in prospectuses and newspapers. What is worse, he is terribly long 
and diffuse; his conversations and descriptions are interminable; he is 
determined, at all events, to fill three volumes. But he has given to 
Scotland a citizenship of literature—I mean to Scotland altogether: 
scenery, monuments, houses, cottages, characters of every age and 
condition, from the baron to the fisherman, from the advocate to the 
beggar, from the lady to the fishwife. At his name alone they crowd 
forward; who does not see them coming from every niche of memory ? 
The Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies, the Anti- 
quary, Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans and her father,—innkeepers, 
shopkeepers, old wives, an entire people. What Scotch features are 
absent? Saving, patient, ‘cannie,’ cunning, necessarily; the poverty 





1 Lockhart’s Life, i. ch. vii. 269. 

2 See the opening of Ivanhoe: ‘Such being our chief scene, the date of our 
story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard 1., when his return 
from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by ~ 
his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of 
su ordinate oppression,’ It is impossible to write in a heavier style, 








CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 257 


__ of the soil and the difficulty of existence has compelled them to it: 
this is the specialty of the race. The same tenacity which they intro- 
_ duced into everyday affairs they have introduced into mental concerns, 
__ —studious readers and perusers of antiquities and controversies, poets 
also; legends spring up readily in a romantic land, amidst time-honoured 
wars and brigandism. In a land thus prepared, and in this gloomy 
clime, Presbyterianism fixed its sharp roots. Such was the real and 
modern world, enlightened by the far-setting sun of chivalry, as Sir 
Walter Scott found it; like a painter who, passing from great show- 
pictures, finds interest and beauty in the shops of a paltry provincial 
town, or in a farm surrounded by beds of beetroots and turnips. A 
continuous archness throws its smile over these pictures of interiors 
and of peculiarities, so local and minute, which, like the Flemish, indi- 
cate the rise of a bourgeoisie. Most of these good folk are comic. Our 
author makes fun of them, brings out their little deceits, parsimony, fool- 
eries, vulgarity, and the hundred thousand circumstances of ridicule 
with which their narrow sphere of life never fails to endow them. A 
barber, in The Antiquary, makes heaven and earth turn about his wigs ; 
if the French Revolution takes root everywhere, it was because the ma- 
gistrates renounced this ornament. He cries out in a lamentable voice: 

‘ Haud a care, haud a care, Monkbarns ; God’s sake, haud a care !—Sir Arthur’s 


drowned already, and an’ ye fa’ over the cleugh too, there will be but ae wig left in 
the parish, and that’s the minister’s.’} 


Mark how the author smiles, and without malevolence: the barber’s 
candid selfishness is the effect of the man’s calling, and does not repel us. 
Walter Scott is never bitter; he loves men from the bottom of his heart, 
excuses or tolerates them; does not chastise vices, but unmasks them, 
and that not rudely. His greatest pleasure is to pursue at length, not 
indeed a vice, but a hobby; the mania for odds and ends in an anti- 
quary, the archeological vanity of the Baron of Bradwardine, the aristo- 
cratic drivel of the Dowager Lady Tillietudlem,—that is the amusing 
exaggeration of sane permissible taste ; and this without anger, because, 
on the whole, these ridiculous people are estimable, and even generous. 
Even in rogues like Dirck Hatteraick, in cut-throats like Bothwell, he 
allows some goodness. In no one, not even Major Dalgetty, a professional 
murderer, a production of the thirty years’ war, is the odious unveiled 
by the ridiculous. In this critical refinement and this benevolent 
philosophy, he resembles Addison. 

: He resembles him again by the purity and endurance of his moral 
principles. His assistant, Mr. Laidlaw, told him that he was doing great 
good by his attractive and noble tales, and that young people would no 
longer wish to look in the literary rubbish of the circulating libraries, 
When Walter Scott heard this, his eyes filled with tears: 


‘On his deathbed he said to his son-in-law: ‘‘ Lockhart, I may have but a 





1 Sir Walter Scott’s Works, 48 vols., 1829; The Antiquary, ch. viii. 
VOL. II, R 


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258 _ MODERN LIFE. [BooK Iv. 


minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man—he virtuous, be religious—be a 
good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here,”’! 


This was almost his last word. By this fundamental honesty and this 
wide humanity, he was the Homer of modern citizen life. Around and 
after him, the novel of manners, separated from the historical romance, 
has produced a whole literature, and preserved the character which he 
stamped upon it. Miss Austin, Miss Bronté, Mistress Gaskell, George 
Eliot, Bulwer, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others, paint, especially — 
or entirely in his style, contemporary life, as it is, unembellished, 
in all ranks, often amongst the people, more frequently still amongst 
the middle class. And the causes which made the historical novel 
come to naught, in him and others, made the novel of manners, in him 
and others, succeed. These men were too minute copyists and too decided 
moralists, incapable of the great divinations and the wide sympathies ~ 
which unlock the door of history; their imagination was too literal, and 
their judgment too decided. It is precisely by these faculties that they 
created a new species of novel, which multiplies to this day in thou- 
sands of offshoots, with such abundance, that men of talent in this 
respect may be counted by hundreds, and that we can only compare 
them, for their original and national sap, to the great age of Dutch 
painting. Realistic and moral, these are their two features. They are 
far removed fromthe great imagination which creates and transforms, 
as it appeared in the Renaissance or in the seventeenth century, in the 
heroic or noble ages. They renounce free invention; they narrow 
themselves to scrupulous exactitude; they paint with infinite detail 
costumes and places, changing nothing; they mark little shades of 
language; they are not disgusted by vulgarities or platitudes. Their 
information is authentic and precise. In short, they write like citizens _ 
for fellow-citizens, that is, for well-ordered people, members of a pro- 
fession, whose imagination looks upon the earth, and sees things through 
a magnifying glass, unable to relish anything in the way of a picture 
except interiors and make-believes. Ask a cook which picture she 
prefers in the Museum, and she will point to a kitchen, in which the 
stewpans are so well painted that one is tempted to mix the soup in 
them. Yet beyond this inclination, which is now European, English- 
men have a special craving, which with them is national, and dates 
from the preceding century: they desire that the novel, like the rest, 
should contribute to their great work,—the amelioration of man and 
society. They ask from it the glorification of virtue, and the chastise- 
ment of vice. They send it into all the corners of civil society, and 
all the events of private history, in search of documents and expedients, 
to learn thence the means of remedying abuses, succouring miseries, 
avoiding temptations. They make of it an instrument of inquiry, 
education, and morality. A singular work, which has not its equal in 





1 Lockhart’s Life, x. 217. 








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CHAP: L] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 959 


all history, because in all history there has been no society like it, and 
which—middling to lovers of the beautiful, admirable to lovers of the 
useful—offers, in the countless variety of its painting, and the invariable 
fixity of its spirit, the picture of the only democracy which knows how 
to restrain, govern, and reform itself. . 


IV. 


Side by side with this development there was another, and with 
history philosophy entered into literature, in order to widen and modify 
it. It was manifest throughout, on the threshold as in the centre. 
On the threshold it had planted esthetics: every poet, becoming 
theoretic, defined before producing the beautiful, laid down principles 
in his preface, and originated only after a preconceived system. But 
the ascendency of metaphysics was much more visible in the middle of 
the work than on its threshold; for not only did it prescribe the form 
of poetry, but it furnished it with its elements. What is man, and 
what has he come into the world todo? What is this far-off great- 
ness to which he aspires? Is there a haven which he may reach, and a 
hidden hand to conduct him thither? These are the questions which 
poets, transformed into thinkers, agreed to agitate; and Goethe, here 
as elsewhere the father and promoter of all lofty modern ideas, at once 
sceptical, pantheistic, and mystic, wrote in Faust the epic of the age and 
the history of the human mind. Need I say that in Schiller, Heine, 
Beethoven, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Musset, the poet, in his in- 
dividual person, always speaks the words of the universal man? ‘The 
characters which they have created, from Faust to Ruy Blas, only served 
them to exhibit some great imetaphysical and social idea; and twenty 
times this too great idea, bursting its narrow envelope, broke out beyond 
all human likelihood and all poetic form, to display itself to the eyes of 
the spectators. Such was the domination of the philosophical spirit, that, 
after doing violence to literature, or rendering it rigid, it imposed on 
music humanitarian ideas, inflicted on painting symbolical designs, 
penetrated current speech, and marred style by an overflow of abstrac- 
tions and formulas, from which all our efforts now fail to liberate us. 
As an overstrong child, which at its birth injures its mother, so it has 
contorted the noble forms which had endeavoured to contain it, and 


- dragged literature through an agony of anguish and of efforts, 


This philosophical spirit was not born in England, and from Ger- 
many to England the passage was very long. For a considerable time it 
appeared dangerous or ridiculous. One of the reviews stated even, 
that Germany was a large country peopled by hussars and classical 
scholars; that if folks go there, they will see at Heidelberg a very 
large tun, and could feast on excellent Rhine wine and Westphalian 
ham, but that their authors were very heavy and awkward, and that 
@ sentimental German resembles a tall and stout butcher crying over a 
killed calf. If at length German literature found entrance, first by the 





260 3 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


attractiveness of extravagant dramas and fantastic ballads, than by the 
sympathy of the two nations, which, allied against French policy and 
civilisation, acknowledged their cousinship in speech, religion, and blood, 
the German metaphysician stood at the door, unable to overturn the 
barrier which the positive mind and the national literature opposed to 
him. He was seen trying to pass, in Coleridge for instance, a philosophic 
theologian and dreamy poet, who toiled to widen conventional dogma, and 
who, at the close of his life, having become a sort of oracle, endeavoured, 
in the pale of the Church, to unfold and unveil before a few faithful 
disciples the Christianity of the future. It did not make head; the 
English mind was too positive, the theologians too enslaved. It was 
constrained to transform itself and become Anglican, or to deform itself 
and become revolutionary ; and, in place of a Schiller and Goethe, to 
produce a Wordsworth, a Byron, a Shelley. 

The first, a new Cowper, with less talent and more ideas than the 
other, was essentially an interior man, that is, engrossed by the con- 
cerns of the soul. Such men ask what they have come to do in this world, 
and why life has been given to them; if they are just or unjust, and if 
the secret movements of their heart are conformable to the supreme 
law, without taking into account the visible causes of their conduct. 
Such, for men of this kind, is the master conception which renders them 
serious, meditative, and as a rule gloomy.’ They live with eyes turned 
inwards, not to mark and classify their ideas, like physiologists, but as 
moralists, to approve or blame their feelings. Thus understood, life 
becomes a grave business, of uncertain issue, on which we must in- 
cessantly and scrupulously reflect. Thus understood, the world changes 
its aspect; it is no longer a machine of wheels working in each other, 
as the philosopher says, nor a splendid blooming plant, as the artist 
feels, —it is the work of a moral being, displayed as a spectacle to moral 
beings. 

Figure such a man facing life and the world; he sees them, and 
takes part in it, apparently like any one else; but how different he is 
in reality! His great thought pursues him; and when he beholds a 
tree, it is to meditate on human destiny. He finds or lends a sense to 
the least objects: a soldier marching to the sound of the drum makes 
him reflect on heroic sacrifice, the support of societies ; a train of clouds 
lying heavily on the verge of a gloomy sky, endues him with that 
melancholy calm, so suited to nourish moral life. There is nothing 
which does not recall him to his duty and admonish him of his origin, 
Near or far, like a great mountain in a landscape, his philosophy will 
appear behind all his ideas and images. If he is restless, impassioned, 
sick with scruples, it will appear to him amidst storm and lightning, 
as it did to the genuine Puritans, to Cowper, Pascal, Carlyle. It will 





‘The Jansenists, the Puritans, and the Methodists are the extremes of this 
class, . 











CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 261 


appear to him ina grey fog, imposing and calm, if he enjoys, like Wands- 

orth, a calm mind and a pleasant life. Wordsworth was a wise and 
oy man, a thinker and a dreamer, who read and walked. He was 
from the first in tolerably easy circumstances, and had a small fortune. 
Happily married, amidst the favours of government and the respect 
of the public, he lived peacefully on the margin of a beautiful lake, 
in sight of noble mountains, in the pleasant retirement of an elegant 
house, amidst the admiration and attentions of distinguished and chosen 
friends, engrossed by contemplations which no storm came to distract, 
and by poetry, which was produced without any hindrance. In this 
deep calm he listens to his own thoughts ; the peace was so great, within 
him and around him, that he could perceive the imperceptible. ‘To 
me, the meanest flower that blows, can give thoughts that too often lie 
too deep for tears.” He saw a grandeur, a beauty, lessons in the trivial 
events which weave the woof of our most commonplace days. He 
needed not, for the sake of emotion, either splendid sights or unusual 
actions. The dazzling glare of the lamps, the pomp of the theatre, 
would have shocked him; his eyes are too delicate, accustomed to sweet 
and uniform tints. He was a poet of the twilight. Moral existence in 
commonplace existence, such was his object—the object of his prefer- 
ence. His paintings are cameos with a grey ground, which have a 
meaning; designedly he suppresses all which might please the senses, 
in order to speak solely to the heart. 

Out of this character sprang a theory,—his theory of art, altogether 
spiritualistic, which, after repelling classical habits, ended by rallying 
Protestant sympathies, and won for him as many partisans as it had 
raised enemies.’ Since the only important thing is moral life, let us 
devote ourselves solely to nourishing it. The reader must be moved, \ 
genuinely, with profit to his soul; the rest is indifferent: let us, then, 
show him objects moving in themselves, without dreaming of clothing 
them in a beautiful style. Let us strip ourselves of conventional 
language and poetic diction. Let us neglect noble words, scholastic 
and courtly epithets, and all the pomp of factitious splendour, which the » 
classical writers thought themselves bound to assume, and justified in 
imposing. In poetry, as elsewhere, the grand question is, not orna- 
ment, but truth. Let us leave show, and seek effect. Let us speak in 
a bare style, as like as possible to prose, to ordinary conversation, even 
to rustic conversation, and let us choose our subjects at hand, in humble 
life. Let us take for our character an idiot boy, a shivering old peasant 
woman, a hawker, a servant stopping in the street. It is the true 
sentiment, not the dignity of the folks, which makes the beauty of a 
subject; it is the true sentiment, not the dignity of the words, which 
makes the beauty of poetry. What matters that it is a villager who 
weeps, if these tears enable me to see the maternal sentiment? What 


ee 
—_——-— 





1 See the preface of his second edition of Lyrical Ballads. 








a a 


262 ’ ‘MODERN LIFE, [BOOK Iv. — 


matters that my verse is a line of rhymed prose, if this line displays 
a noble emotion? You read that you may carry away emotions, not 
phrases ; you come to us to look for a moral culture, not pretty ways 
of speaking. And thereon Wordsworth, classifying his poems ac- 
cording to the different faculties of men and the different ages of life, 
undertakes to lead us through all compartments and degrees of inner 
education, to the convictions and sentiments which he has himself 
attained. | 

All this is very well, but on condition that the reader is in his own 
position ; that is, an essentially moral philosopher, and an excessively 
sensitive man. When I shall have emptied my head of all worldly 
thoughts, and looked up at the clouds for ten years to refine my soul; 
I shall love this poetry. Meanwhile the web of imperceptible threads 
by which Wordsworth endeavours to bind together all sentiments and 
embrace all nature, breaks in my fingers; it is too fragile; it is a woof 
of woven spider-web, spun by a metaphysical imagination, and tearing 
as soon as a solid hand tries to touch it. Half of his pieces are childish, 
almost foolish ;+ dull events described in a dull style, one nullity after 
another, and that on principle. All the poets in the world would not 
reconcile us to so much tedium. Certainly a cat playing with three 
dry leaves may furnish a philosophical reflection, and figure forth a wise 
man sporting with the fallen leaves of life; but eighty lines on such a 
subject make us yawn—much worse, smile. ‘At this rate you will find 
a lesson in an old tooth-brush, which still continues in use. Doubtless, 
also, the ways of Providence are unfathomable, and a selfish and brutal 
workman like Peter Bell may be converted by the beautiful conduct of 
an ass full of virtue and unselfishness; but this sentimental prettiness 
quickly grows insipid, and the style, by its intentional ingenuousness, 
renders it still more insipid. We are not over-pleased to see a grave 
man seriously imitate the language of nurses, and we murmur to our- 


. selves that, with so many emotions, he must wet many handkerchiefs. 


We will acknowledge, if you like, that your sentiments are interesting ; 
yet you might do, without trotting them all out before us. | 
We imagine we hear him say: ‘ Yesterday I read Walton’s Complete 
ngler ; let us write a sonnet about it. On Easter Sunday I was in a 
alley in Westmoreland ; another sonnet. Two days ago I put too many 
uestions to my little boy, and caused him to tell a lie; a poem. I 
m going to travel on the Continent and through Scotland; poems 
bout all the incidents, monuments, adventures of the journey.’ 

You must consider your emotions very precious, that you put them 
all under glass? There are only three or four events in each of our 
lives worthy of being related; our powerful sensations deserve to be 
exhibited, because they recapitulate our whole existence; but not the 
little effects of the little agitations which pass through us, and the im- 





1 Peter Bell; The White Doe; The Kitten and Falling Leaves, ete. 








CHAP. 1.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 263 


perceptible oscillations of our everyday condition. Else I might end 
by explaining in rhyme that yesterday my dog broke his leg, and that 
this morning my wife put on her stockings inside out. The specialty 
of the artist is to cast great ideas in moulds as great as they; Words- 
worth’s moulds are of bad common clay, notched, unable to hold the 
noble metal which they ought to contain. 

But the metal is genuinely noble; and besides several very beauti- 
ful sonnets, there is now and then a work, amongst others The Hxcur- 
sion, in which we forget the poverty of the scenery to admire the purity 

“and elevation of the thought. In truth, the author hardly puts himself 
to the trouble of imagination; he walked along and conversed with an 
old Scotch pedlar: this is the whole of the history. The poets of this 
school always walked, regarding nature and thinking of human destiny ; 
it is their permanent attitude. He converses, then, with the pedlar, a 
meditative character, who had become educated by a long experience 
of men and things, who spoke very well (too well!) of the soul: and of 
God, and relates to him the history of a good woman who died of grief 
in her cottage; then with a solitary, a sort of sceptical Hamlet—morose, 
made gloomy by the death of his family, and the deceptions of his long 
journeyings ; then with the clergyman, who brought them to the village 
cemetery, and described to them the life of several interesting dead 
people. Observe that, passim and gradually, reflections and moral dis- 
cussions, scenery and moral descriptions, spread before us in hundreds, 
dissertations entwine their long thorny hedgerows, and metaphysical 

_thistles multiply in every corner. In short, the poem is grave and sad 
asasermon. Well! in spite of this ecclesiastical air and the tirades 

_ against Voltaire and his age,’ we feel ourselves impressed as by a dis- 
course of Theodore Jouffroy. After all, the man is convinced; he has 
spent his life meditating on these kinds of ideas, they are the poetry of 
his religion, race, climate; he is imbued with them; his pictures, stories, 
interpretations of visible nature and human life tend only to put the 
mind in the grave disposition which is proper to the inner man. I 
come here as into the valley of Port Royal: a solitary nook, stagnant 
waters, gloomy woods, ruins, gravestones, and above all the idea of 
responsible man, and the obscure beyond, to which we involuntarily 
move. I forget the careless French fashions, the custom of not dis- 
turbing the even tenor of life. There is an imposing seriousness, an 
austere beauty in this sincere reflection; respect comes in, we stop 
and are touched. This book is like a Protestant temple, august, 
though bare and monotonous. The poet sets forth the great interests 
of the soul: 





1 This dull product of a scoffer’s pen 
_ Impure conceits discharging from a heart 
Hardened by impious pride ! 
Wordsworth’s Works, 7 vols. 1849, viii. ; The Hxcursion, book 2; The Solitary, 58. 








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264 MODERN LIFE. _ [BOOK Iv. — 


‘On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, 
Musing in solitude, I oft perceive 

Fair trains of imagery before me rise, 
Accompanied by feelings of delight 

Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed ; 
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts 

And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes 
Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh 

The good and evil of our mortal state. 

—To these emotions, whencesoe’er they come, 
Whether from breath of outward circumstance, 
Or from the Soul—an impulse to herself, 

I would give utterance in numerous verse. 

Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, 
And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith ; 

Of blessed consolations in distress ; 

Of moral strength, and intellectual Power ; 

Of joy in widest commonalty spread ; 

Of the individual Mind that keeps her own 
Inviolate retirement, subject there 

To Conscience only, and the law supreme 

Of that Intelligence which governs all— 

I sing.’ 


This inviolate personage, the only holy part of man, is holy in all stages; 
for this, Wordsworth selects as his characters a pedlar, a parson, vil- 
lagers; in his eyes condition, education, habits, all the worldly envelope 
of a man, is without interest ; what constitutes our worth is the integrity 
of our conscience; science itself is only profound when it penetrates 
moral life; for this life fails nowhere: 


‘To every Form of being is assigned... . 
An active principle :—howe’er removed 
From sense and observation, it subsists 
In all things, in all natures ; in the stars 
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, 
& In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, 
The moving waters, and the invisible air. 
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread 
i Beyond itself, communicating good, 
| A simple blessing, or with evil mixed ; 
“as Spirit that knows no insulated spot, 
i No chasm, no solitude ; from link to link 
It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.’ ? 


Ese 





Reject, then, with disdain this arid science: 


‘Where Knowledge, ill begun in cold remarks 
On outward things, with formal inference ends ; 





1 Wordsworth’s Works, 7 vols. 1849, vii. ; The Haxcursion, Preface, 11. 
2 Ibid. vii. book 9, Discourse of the Wanderer, opening verses, 315. 








IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 265 


Or, if the mind turn inward, she recoils, 
At once—or, not recoiling, is perplexed 
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research. .. » 
Viewing all objects unremittingly 
In disconnexion dead and spiritless ; 
And still dividing, and dividing still, 
Breaks down all grandeur.’? 
Beyond the vanities of science and the pride of the world, there is the 
soul, whereby all are equal, and the broad and familiar Christian life 
opens at once its gates to all who would enter: 
‘ The sun is fixed, 
And the infinite magnificence of heaven 
Fixed within reach of every human eye. 
The sleepless Ocean murmurs for all ears, 
The vernal field infuses fresh delight 
Into all hearts... . ; 
The primal duties shine aloft like stars, 
The charities that soothe and heal and bless 
Are scattered at the feet of man—like flowers.’ 


So, at the end of all agitation and all search appears the great truth, 
which is the abstract of the rest: 


‘Life, I repeat, is energy of love 
Divine or human ; exercised in pain, 
In strife and tribulation ; and ordained, 
If so approved and sanctified, to pass, 
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy.’ 


The verses sustain these serious thoughts by their grave harmony, as it 
were a motet accompanying a meditation or a prayer. They resemble 
the grand and monotonous music of the organ, which in the eventide, at 
the close of the service, rolls slowly in the twilight of arches and pillars. 

When a certain phasis of the human intelligence comes to light, 
it does so from all sides; there is no part where it does not appear, 
no instincts which it does not renew. It enters simultaneously the two 
opposite camps, and seems to undo with one hand what it has made 
with the other. If it is, as it was formerly, the oratorical style, we 
find it at the same time in the service of cynical misanthropy, and in 
that of decorous humanity, in Swift and in Addison, If it is, as now, 
the philosophical spirit, it produces at once conservative harangues 
and socialistic utopias, Wordsworth and Shelley.* The latter, one of 
the greatest poets of the age, son of a rich moe beautiful as an 
angel, of extraordinary precocity, sweet, generous, tender, overflowing 
with all the gifts of heart, mind, birth, and fortune, marred his life, 





? Wordsworth’s Works, 7 vols. 1849, vii. ; The Hacursion, book 4 ; Despondency 
Corrected, 137. 

2 Ibid. 149. 3 Tbid. last lines of book 5, The Pastor, 20. 

4 See also the novels of Goodwin, Caleb Williams. 


— 


ees ee Eee eee eC 


_ 
ayy 
_ 


266 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. | 


as it were, wantonly, by introducing into his conduct the enthusiastic 
imagination which he should have kept for his verses. From his 
birth he had ‘the vision’ of sublime beauty and happiness, and the 
contemplation of the ideal world set him in arms against the actual. 
Having refused at Eton to be the fag of the big boys, he was treated 
by the boys and the masters with a revolting cruelty; suffered himself 


' to be.made a martyr, refused to obey, and, falling back into forbidden 


studies, began to form the most immoderate and most poetical dreams. 
He judged society by the oppression which he underwent, and man by 
the generosity which he felt in himself; thought that man was good, 
and society bad, and that it was only necessary to suppress established 
institutions to make earth ‘a paradise.’ He became a republican, a 
communist, preached fraternity, love, even abstinence from flesh, and 
as a means the abolition of kings, priests, and God.’ Fancy the indig- 
nation which such ideas roused in a society so obstinately attached to 
established order—so intolerant, in which, above the conservative and 
religious instincts, Cant spoke like a master. He was expelled from the 
university ; his father refused to see him; the Lord Chancellor, by a 
decree, took from him, as being unworthy, the custody of his two 
children ; finally, he was obliged to quit England. I forgot to say that 
at eighteen he married a girl of mean birth, that they had been sepa- 
rated, that she committed suicide, that he had undermined his health 
by his excitement and sufferings,’ and that to the end of his life he was 
nervous or sick. Is not this the life of a genuine poet? Eyes fixed 
on the splendid apparitions with which he peopled space, he went 
through the world not seeing the high road, stumbling over the stones 
of the roadside. That knowledge of life which most poets have in 
common with novelists, he had not. Seldom has a mind been seen in 
which thought soared in loftier regions, and more far from actual things. 
When he tried to create characters and events—in Queen Mab, in 
Alastor, in The Revolt of Islam, in Prometheus—he only produced un- 
substantial phantoms. Once only, in the Cencz, did he inspire a living 
figure worthy of Webster or old Ford; but in some sort in spite of him- 
self, and because in it the sentiments were so unheard of and so strained 
that they suited superhuman conceptions. Elsewhere his world is 
throughout beyond ourown. ‘The laws of life are suspended or trans- 
formed. We move in this world between heaven and earth, in abstrac- 
tion, dreamland, symbolism: the beings float in it like those fantastic 
figures which we see in the clouds, and which alternately undulate and 
change form capriciously, in their robes of snow and gold. 

For souls thus constituted, the great consolation is nature. They 
are too fairly sensitive to find a distraction in the spectacle and pic- 


1 Queen Mab, and notes. At Oxford Shelley issued a kind of thesis, calling it 
‘On the Necessity of Atheism.’ 

® Some time before his death, when he was twenty-nine, he said, ‘1f I die now, 
I shall have lived as long as my father.’ | 











omar. 1] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. - 267 


ture of human passions. Shelley instinctively avoided it; this sight 
re-opened his own wounds. He was happier in the woods, at the sea- 
side, in contemplation of grand landscapes. The rocks, clouds, and 
meadows, which to ordinary eyes seem dull and insensible, are, to a 
wide sympathy, living and divine existences, which are an agreeable 
change from men. No virgin smile is so charming as that of the dawn, 
nor any joy more triumphant than that of the ocean when its waves 
creep and tremble, as far as the eye can see, under the prodigal splen- 
dour of heaven. At this sight the heart rises unwittingly to the senti- 
ments of ancient legends, and the poet perceives in the inexhaustible 
bloom of things the peaceful soul of the great mother by whom every- 
thing grows and is supported. Shelley spent most of his life in the 
open air, especially in his boat; first on the Thames, then on the Lake 
of Geneva, then on the Arno, and in the Italian waters. He loved desert 
and solitary places, where man enjoys the pleasure of believing infinite 
what he sees, infinite as his soul. And such was this wide ocean, and 
this shore more barren than its waves. This love was a deep Germanic 
instinct, which, allied to pagan emotions, produced his poetry, pantheistic 
and yet pensive, almost Greek and yet English, in which fancy plays 
like a foolish, dreamy child, with the splendid skein of forms and colours. 
A cloud, a plant, a sunrise,—these are his characters: they were those 
of the primitive poets, when they took the lightning for a bird of fire, 
and the clouds for the flocks of heaven. But what a secret ardour 
beyond these splendid images, and how we feel the heat of the furnace 
beyond the coloured phantoms, which it sets afloat over the horizon !* 
Has any one since Shakspeare and Spenser lighted on such tender and 
such grand ecstasies? Has any one painted so magnificently the cloud 
which watches by night in the sky, enveloping in its net the swarm of 
golden bees, the stars: ' 


‘ The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 
And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 
When the morning star shines dead . . .? 
That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, 
Whom mortals call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor, 
By the midnight breezes strewn,’ 


Read again those verses on the garden, in which the sensitive plant 
dreams. Alas! they are the dreams of the poet, and the happy visions 
which floated in his virgin heart up to the moment when it opened out 
and withered, I will pause in time ; I will not proceed, like him, beyond 
the recollections of his spring-time: 





‘See in Shelley’s Works, 1853, The Witch of Atlas, The Cloud, To a Sky- 
lark, the end of The Revolt of Islam, Alastor, and the whole of Prometheus. 
? The Cloud, c. iii. 502. 8 Ibid. c. iv. 508. 


268 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. | 


‘ The snowdrop, and then the violet, 
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent 
From the turt, like the voice and the instrument. 


Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess, ' 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness. 


And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 

Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, 
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
Through their pavilions of tender green ; 


And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweat peal anew 
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, 

It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 


And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare ; 


And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 

As a Menad, its moonlight-coloured cup, 

Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 

Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky .. . 


And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 

Was prankt, under boughs of embowering blossom, 
With golden and green light, slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue, 


Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 

And starry river-buds glimmered by, 

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 


And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 
Which led through the garden along and across, 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, 


Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells, 

As fair as the fabulous asphodels, 

And flowerets which drooping as day drooped too, 
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 

To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.’ 


Everything lives here, everything breathes and yearns. This poem, 
the story of a plant, is also the story of a soul—Shelley’s soul, the 
sensitive. Is it not natural to confound them? Is there not a com- 





1Shelley’s Works, 1853, The Sensitive Plant, 490. 











CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 269 
munity of nature amongst all the dwellers in this world? Verily 
there is a soul in everything; in the universe is a soul: be the exist- 
ence what it will, unhewn or rational, defined or vague, ever beyond 
its sensible form shines a secret essence and something divine, which 
we catch sight of by sublime illuminations, never reaching or pene- 
trating it. It is this presentiment and yearning which raises all modern 
poetry,—now in Christian meditations, as with Campbell and Words- 
worth, now in pagan visions, as with Keats and Shelley. They hear 
the great heart of nature beat; they would reach it; they assay all 
spiritual and sensible approaches, through Judea and through Greece, 
by consecrated dogmas and by proscribed dogmas. In this splendid 
and senseless effort the greatest are exhausted and die. Their poetry, 
which they drag with them over these sublime tracks, is rent thereby. 
One alone, Byron, attains the summit; and of all these grand poetic 
draperies, which float like standards, and seem to summon men to the 
conquest of supreme truth, we see now but tatters scattered by the 
wayside. 

Yet they did their work. Under their multiplied efforts, and by 
their involuntary concert, the idea of the beautiful is changed, and 
other ideas change by contagion. Conservatives contribute to it like 
revolutionaries, and the new spirit breathes through the poems which 
bless and those which curse Church and State. We learn from Words- 
worth and Byron, by profound Protestantism? and confirmed scepti- 
cism, that in this sacred cant-defended establishment there is matter 
for reform or for revolt; that we may discover moral merits other than 
those which the law tickets and opinion accepts; that beyond conven- 
tional confessions there are truths; that beyond respected conditions 
there are greatnesses ; that beyond regular positions there are virtues ; 
that greatness is in the heart and the genius; and all the rest, actions 
and beliefs, are subaltern. We have just seen that beyond literary 
conventionalities there is a poetry, and consequently we are disposed 
to feel that beyond religious dogmas there may be a faith, and beyond 
social institutions a justice. The old edifice totters, and the Revolu- 
tion enters, not by a sudden inundation, as in France, but by slow 
infiltration. The wall built up against it by public intolerance cracks 
and opens: the war waged against Jacobinism, republican and im- 
perial, ends in victory; and henceforth we may regard opposing 
ideas, not as opposing enemies, but as ideas. We regard them, 
and, accommodating them to the different countries, we import them, 


Catholics are enfranchised, rotten boroughs abolished, the electcral 





1 * Our life is turned 
Out of her course, whenever man is made 
An offering, a sacrifice, a tool, 
Or implement, a passive thing employed 
As a brute mean.’—Wordsworth, The Excursion, 


pb 


eA Stee ee ee sie, ile atom 3) 1) eee in 4 
“ ‘ ™, y - it eT 


270 MODERN LIFE. — [Boox Iv. 


franchise lowered; unjust taxes, which kept up the price of corn, were 
repealed ; ecclesiastical tithes changed into rent charges; the terrible 

laws protecting property were modified, the incidence of taxation — 
brought more and more on the rich classes; old institutions, formerly 

established for the advantage of a race, and in this race of a class, are only — 
maintained when for the advantage of all classes; privileges become ~ 
functions; and in this triumph of the middle class, which shapes 

opinion and assumes the ascendency, the aristocracy, passing from 

sinecures to services, seems now legitimate only as a national nursery, — 
kept up to furnish public men. At the same time narrow ortho- | 
doxy is enlarged. Zoology, astronomy, geology, botany, anthropology, — 
all the sciences of observation, so much cultivated and so popular, — 
forcibly introduce their dissolvent discoveries. Criticism comes in 
from Germany, re-handles the Bible, re-writes the history of dogma, 
attacks dogma itself. Meanwhile poor Scotch philosophy is dried ~ 
up. Amidst the agitations of sects, endeavouring to transform each 
other, and the rising Unitarianism, we hear at the gates of the sacred — 
ark the Continental philosophy roaring like a wave. Now already ~ 
has it encroached upon literature: for fifty years all great writers — 
have plunged into it,—Sidney Smith, by his sarcasms against the — 
numbness of the clergy and the oppression of the Catholics; Arnold, 
by his protests against the religious monopoly of the clergy and the 
ecclesiastical monopoly of the Anglicans; Macaulay, by his history 
and panegyric of the liberal revolution ;. Thackeray, by attacking the 
nobles, in the interests of the middle class; Dickens, by attacking 
dignitaries and wealthy men, in the interests of the lowly and poor ; 
Currer Bell and Mrs. Browning, by defending the initiative and inde- 
pendence of women; Stanley and Jowett, by introducing the German 
exegesis, and by fixing biblical criticism ; Carlyle, by importing Ger- — 
man metaphysics in an English form; Stuart Mill, by importing French 
positivism in an English form; Tennyson himself, by extending over 
the beauties of all lands and al] ages the protection of his amiable 
dilettantism and his poetical sympathies,—each according to his pattern 
and his position, with various profundity ; all restrained within reach 
of the shore by their practical prejudices, all strengthened against 
falling by their moral prejudices; all bent, some with more of eager- 
ness, others with more of distrust, in welcoming or giving entrance to — 
the growing tide of modern democracy and philosophy in constitution 
and church, without doing damage, and gradually, so as to destroy 
nothing, and to make everything bear fruit. . 








“LORD BYRON. . 271 


CHAPTER IL. 


Lord Byron. 





I. The Man—Family—Impassioned character—Precocious loves—Life of ex- 
cess—Combative character— Revolt against opinion—Znglish Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers—Bravado and rashness—Marriage—Extravagance of ad- 
verse opinion—Departure—Political life in Italy—Sorrows and violence. 

II. The poet—Reasons for writing—Manner of writing—How his poetry is 
personal—Classical taste—How this gift served him—Childe Harold— 
The hero—The scenery—The style. 

III. His short poems—Oratorical manner—Melodramatic effects—Truth of his 
descriptions of scenery—Sincerity of sentiments—Pictures of sad and 
extreme emotions—Dominant idea of death and despair—Mazeppa, The 
Prisoner of Chillon, The Siege of Corinth, The Corsair, Lara—Analogy 
of this conception with the Hdda and Shakspeare. 

IV. Manfred—Comparison of Manfred and Faust—Conception of legend and 
life in Goethe—Symbolical and philosophical character of /aust — 
Wherein Byron is inferior to Goethe—Wherein he is superior—Concep- 
tion of character and action in Byron—Dramatic character of his poem— 
Contrast between the universal and the personal poet. 

V. Scandal in England—Constraint and hypocrisy of manners—How and by 
what law moral conceptions vary—Life and morals of the south—Beppo 
—Don Juan—Transformation of Byron’s talent and style—Picture of 
sensuous beauty and happiness—Haidee—How he combats British cant 
—Human hypocrisy—His idea of man—Of woman—Donna Julia—The 
shipwreck—The capture of Ismail—Naturalness and variety of his style 
—Excess and wearing out of his poetic vein—His drama— Departure 
for Greece, and death. 

VI. Position of Byron in his age—Disease of the age—Divine conceptions of 
happiness and life—The conception of such happiness by literature—By 
the sciences—Future stability of reason—Modern conception of nature. 


I, 


HAVE reserved for the last the greatest and most English of these 
artists; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall 
learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest 
together. His ideas were banned during his life; it has been attempted 
to depreciate his genius since his death. To this day English critics 
are unjust to him. He fought all his life against the society from 
which he came; and during his life, as after his death, he suffered the 
pain of the resentment which he provoked, and the repugnance to 





t 


272 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv, 


which he gave rise. A foreign critic may be more impartial, and 
freely praise the powerful hand whose blows he has not felt. 

It ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, but incapable 
of being otherwise; ever agitated, but in an enclosure without issue; 
predisposed to poetry by its innate fire, but limited by its natural 
barriers to a single kind of poetry,—it was Byron’s. 

This promptitude to extreme emotions was with him a family 
legacy, and the result of education. His great-uncle, a sort of raving — 
and misanthropical maniac, had slain in a tavern brawl, by candle- 
light, Mr. Chaworth, his relative, and had been tried before the House 
of Lords. His father, a brutal roysterer, had eloped with the wife of 
Lord Carmarthen, ruined and ill-treated Miss Gordon, his second wife ; 
and, after living like a madman and dishonest fellow, had gone, with 
the last of the family property, to die abroad. His mother, in her 
moments of fury, would tear to pieces her dresses and her bonnets. 
When her wretched husband died she almost lost her reason, and her 
cries were heard in the street. What a childhood Byron passed in 
the care of ‘this lioness;’ in what storms of insults, interspersed with 
softer moods, he himself lived, just as passionate and more bitter, it 
would take a long story to,tell. She ran after him, called him a ‘lame 
brat,’ shouted at him, and threw fire-shovel and tongs at his head. He 
held his tongue, bowed, and none the less felt the outrage. One day, 
when he was ‘in one of his silent rages,’ they had to take out of his 
hand a knife which he had taken from the table, and which he was ~ 
already raising to his throat. Another time the quarrel was so terrible, 
that son and mother, each privately, went to ‘the apothecary’s, in- 
quiring anxiously whether the other had been to purchase poison, and 
cautioning the vendor of drugs not to attend to such an ‘application, 
if made.’ When he went to school, ‘his friendships were passions.’ 
Many years afterwards, he never heard the name of Lord Clare, one of 
his old schoolfellows, pronounced, without ‘a beating of the heart.’? 
A score of times he got himself into trouble for his friends, offering 
them his time, his pen, his purse. One day, at Harrow, a big boy 
claimed the right to fag his friend, little Peel, and finding him refrac- 
tory, gave him a beating on the inner fleshy side of his arm, which he 
had twisted round to make it more sensitive. Byron, too small to fight 
the rascal, came up to him, ‘ blushing with rage,’ tears in his eyes, and 
asked with a trembling voice how many stripes he meant to inflict. 
‘ Why,’ returned the executioner, ‘ you little rascal, what is that to you ?’ 
‘Because, if you please,’ said Byron, holding out his arm, ‘I would 
take half.’* He never met an object of distress without affording him 
succour.* Later, in Italy, he gave away a thousand pounds out of every 
four thousand he spent. The sources of life in this heart were too full, 





_ 1 Byron’s Works, ed. Moore, 17 vols. 1832; Life, i. 102. 2 Ibid. i. 63, 
8 Ibid. i. 69. _ 4 Ibid. 187, 











» ) th eee, x * = ~~ =, oe . Oh wipe Bas ae 
Be ia ear ee pia ee 
» 7 * la : bs 


LORD BYRON. 37a 


and flooded forth good and evil impetuously, at the least shock. Like 
Dante, at the age of eight he fell in love with a child named Mary 
Duff. 


‘How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, 
at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word! 
. .. I recollect all our caresses, . . . my restlessness, my sleeplessness. My misery, 
my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been 
really attached since. When I heard of her being married, . . . it nearly threw me 
into convulsions.’ + 

‘My passion had its usual effects upon me. I could not sleep—I could not 
eat—I could not rest ; and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it 
was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could 
meet again, being usually about twelve hours of separation. But I was a fool 
then, and am not much wiser now.’ ? 


At twelve years he fell in love with his cousin, Margaret Parker, 

He never was wiser. Hard reading at school; vehement exercise, 
later on, at Cambridge, Newstead, and London; prolonged watches, 
debauches, long fasts, a destructive way of living,—he rushed to the 
extreme of every taste and every excess. As he was a dandy, and one 
of the most brilliant, he nearly let himself die of hunger for fear of 
becoming fat, then drank and ate greedily during his nights of reck- 
lessness. Moore said : 

‘Lord Byron, for the last two days, had done nothing towards sustenance 
beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic. . . . He 
confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three to his own share,— 
interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a 
tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near 
half a dozen small glasses of the latter. .. . After this we had claret, of which 


having despatched two bottles between us, at about four o’clock in the morning 
we parted.’ 


Another day we find in Byron’s journal the following words: 


* Yesterday, dined ¢éte-d-téte at the ‘‘ Cocoa” with Scrope Davies—sat from six 


till midnight—drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, neither 
of which wines ever affect me,’ * 


Later, at Venice: 


* ‘IT have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past. I have had some curious 
masking adventures this carnival. . . . I will work the mine of my youth to the 
last vein of the ore, and then—good night. I have lived, and am content.’5 


At this rate the organs wear out, and intervals of temperance are not 
sufficient to repair them. The stomach does not continue to act, the 


herves get out of order, and the soul undermines the body, and the 


body the soul. 


‘I always wake in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of 


‘that which pleased me over-night. In England, five years ago, I had the same 





1 Byron’s Works, Life, i. 26. 2 [bid. i. 53. 3 Jbid. iii. 83. 
* Ibid. ii. 20, March 28, 1814. ® Ibid. iv. 81; Letter to Moore, Feb. 12, 1818, 
VOL. Il, 8 


—_ 


274 MODERN LIFE. [BooK Iv. 


kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst that I have drank 
as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night after going to bed, and been 
still thirsty, . . . striking off the necks of bottles from mere thirsty impatience.’ 


Much less is necessary to ruin mind and body wholly. Thus these 
vehement minds live, ever driven and broken by their own energy, like 
acannon ball, which, when arrested, turns and seems motionless, so 
quickly it goes flying, but at the smallest obstacle leaps up, rebounds, 
raises a cloud of dust, and ends by burying itself in the earth. Beyle, 
a most shrewd observer, who lived with Byron for several weeks, 
says that on certain days he was mad; at other times, in presence of 
beautiful things, he became sublime. Though reserved and so proud, 
music made him weep. The rest of his time, petty English passions, 
pride of rank, for instance, a vain dandyism, unhinged him: he spoke 
of Brummel with a shudder of jealousy and admiration. But, small or 
great, the present passion swept down upon his mind like a tempest, 
roused him, transported him either into imprudence or genius. His 
journal, his familiar letters, all his unstudied prose, is, as it were, 
trembling with wit, anger, enthusiasm: since Saint Simon we have not 
seen more lifelike confidences. All styles appear dull, and all souls 
sluggish by the side of his. ; 

In this splendid rush of unbridled and disbanded faculties, which 
leaped up at random, and seemed to drive him without option to the 
four quarters of the globe, one took the reins, and cast him on the 
wall against which he was broken. 


‘Sir Walter Scott describes Lord Byron as being a man of real goodness of 
heart, and the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by his foolish 
contempt of public opinion. Instead of being warned or checked by public oppo- 


sition, it roused him to go on in a worse strain, as if he said, ‘‘ Ay, you don’t like © 


it; well, you shall have something worse for your pains.” ? 


This rebellious instinct is inherent in the race; there was a whole 
cluster of wild passions, born of the climate,® which nourished him: 
a gloomy humour, violent imagination, indomitable pride, a relish 
of danger, a craving for strife, the inner exaltation, only satiated by 
destruction, and that sombre madness which urged forward the Scandi- 
navian Bierserkers, when, in an open bark, under a sky cloven with the 
lightning, they launched out upon the tempest, whose fury they had 
breathed. This instinct is in the blood: people are born so, as they 





1 Byron’s Works, Life, v. 96, Feb. 2, 1821. 

2 Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, vii. 323. 

3 “If I was born, as the nurses say, with a ‘‘silver spoon in my mouth,” it hag 
stuck in my throat, and spoiled my palate, so that nothing put into it is swallowed 
with much relish,—unless it be cayenne. . . . I see no such horror in a dreamless 
sleep, and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not make 
tiresome,’ 










EA ED eR Ee eT 








 OHAP. I1.] 


LORD BYRON. 275 





are born lions or bulldogs. Byron was still a little boy in petticoats 
when his nurse scolded him rudely for having soiled or torn a new 


- frock which he had just put on. He got into one of his silent rages, 


seized the garment with his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and 
stood erect, motionless, and gloomy before the storming nurse, so as 
to set more effectually her wrath at defiance. His pride overflowed. 
When at ten he inherited the title of lord, and his name was first called 
at school, preceded by the title dominus, he could not answer the 
customary adsum, stood silent amidst the general stare of his school- 
fellows, and at last burst into tears. Another time, at Harrow, in a 
dispute which was dividing the school, a boy said, ‘ Byron won't join 
us, for he never likes to be second anywhere.’ He was offered the 
command, and then only would he condescend to take part with them. 
Never to submit to a master; to rise with his whole soul against every 
semblance of encroachment or rule; to keep his person intact and 
inviolate at all cost, and to the end against all; to dare everything 
rather than give sign of submission,—such was his character. ‘This is 
why he was disposed to undergo anything rather than give signs of 
weakness. At ten he was a stoic from pride. His foot was painfully 
stretched in a wooden contrivance whilst he was taking his Latin 
lesson, and his master pitied him, saying ‘he must be suffering.’ 


' Never mind, Mr. Rogers,’ he said, ‘ you shall not see any signs of it 


in me.’ Such as he was as a child, he continued asa man. In mind 
and body he strove, or prepared himself for strife. Every day, for 
hours at a time, he boxed, fired pistols, practised the sabre, ran and 
leaped, rode, overcame obstacles. These were the exploits of his hands 
and muscles; but he needed others. For lack of enemies he found 
fault with society, and made war upon it. We know to what excesses 
the dominant opinions then ran. England was at’ the height of the 
war with France, and thought it was fighting for morality and liberty. 
In their eyes, at this time, church and constitution were holy things: 
beware how you touch them, if you would not become a public enemy! 
In this fit of national passion and Protestant severity, whosoever pub- 
licly avowed liberal ideas and manners seemed an incendiary, and stirred 
up against himself the instincts of property, the doctrines of moralists, 
the interests of politicians, and the prejudices of the people. Byron 
chose this moment to praise Voltaire and Rousseau, to admire Napoleon, 
to avow himself a sceptic, to plead for nature and pleasure against cant 
and rule, to say that high English society, debauched and hypocritical, 
made phrases and killed men, to preserve their sinecures and rotten 





1] like Junius: he was a good hater.—I don’t understand yielding sensitive- 


-ness. What I feel is an immense rage for forty-eight hours.’ 


2 Byron’s Works, Life, i. 41. 
3*T] like energy—even mental energy—of all kinds, and have need of both 
mental and corporeal.’—Jbid. ii. 


276 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


boroughs. As though political hatred was not enough, he contracted, 
in addition, literary animosities, attacked the whole body of critics,* 
ran down the new poetry, declared that the most celebrated were 
‘ Claudians,’ men of the later empire, raged against the Lake school, 
and in consequence had in Southey a bitter and unwearied enemy. 
Thus provided with enemies, he laid himself open to attack on all sides, 
He decried himself through his hatred of cant, his bravado, his boasting 
about his vices. He depicted himself in his heroes, but for the worse; 
in such a way that no one could fail to recognise him, and think him 
much worse than he was. Walter Scott wrote, immediately after 
seeing Childe Harold: 


‘ Childe-Harold is, I think, a very clever poem, but gives no good symptom of 
the writer’s heart or morals. . . . Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it 
must require impudence almost equal to the noble Lord’s other powers, to claim 
sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from his being tired of his wassailers and 
his paramours. There is a monstrous deal of conceit in it, too, for it is informing 
the inferior part of the world that their little old-fashioned scruples of limitation 
are not worthy of his regard.’?.. . 

‘My noble friend is something like my old peacock, who chooses to bivouac 
apart from his lady, and sit below my bedroom window, to keep me awake with his 
screeching lamentation. Only, I own he is not equal in melody to Lord Byron.’ 


Such were the sentiments which he called forth in all respectable 
classes. He was pleased thereat, and did worse—giving out that in 
his adventures in the East he had dared a good many things; and he 
was not indignant when confounded with his heroes. Once he said 
he should like to feel for once the sensations of a man who had com- 
mitted a murder. Another time he wrote in his Diary: 

* Hobhouse told me an odd report,—that I am the actual Conrad, the veritable 
Corsair, and that part of my travels are supposed to have passed in privacy. Um! 
people sometimes hit near the truth, but never the whole truth. He don’t know 
what I was about the year after he left the Levant ; nor does any one—nor—nor— 
nor—however, it is a lie—‘‘ but I doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like 
truth.” ’4 


Dangerous words, which were turned against him like a dagger; but 
he loved danger, mortal danger, and was only at ease when he saw the 
points of all angers bristling against him. Alone against all, against an 
armed society; erect, invincible, even against common sense, even against 
conscience,—it was then he felt in all his strained nerves the great and 
terrible sensation, to which his whole being involuntarily inclined. 

A last imprudence brought down the attack. As long as he was 
an unmarried man, his excesses might be excused by the over-strong 
fire of a temperament which often causes youth in this land to revolt 





1 In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

? Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, iii. 389. 3 Ibid. v. 141. 

“ Moore’s Life of Byron, iii. 12, March 10, Thor’s Day. The last part of the 
sentence is a quotation from Macbeth, v. 5. 





; 








CHAP. IL] - LORD BYRON. 277 


against good taste and rule; but marriage settles them, and it was 
‘marriage which in him completed his unsettling. He found that his 
wife was a kind of model-virtue, mentioned as such, ‘a creature of rule,’ 
correct and dry, incapable of committing a fault herself, and of for- 
giving. His servant Fletcher observed, that he never knew a lady who 
could not govern his master, except his wife. Lady Byron thought her 
husband mad, and had him examined by physicians. Having learned 
that he was in his right mind, she left him, returned to her father, and 
refused ever to see him again. Thereupon he passed for a monster. 
The papers covered him with opprobrium; his friends induced him not 
to go to a theatre or to Parliament, fearing that he would be hooted or 
insulted. ‘The fury and torture which so violent a soul, precociously 
accustomed to brilliant glory, felt in this universal storm of outrage, 
can only be learned from his verses. He grew stubborn, went to 
Venice, and steeped himself in the voluptuous Italian life, even in low 
debauchery, the better to insult the Puritan prtidery which had con- 
demned him, and left it only through an offence still more blamed, his 
public intimacy with the young Countess Guiccioli, Meanwhile he 
showed himself as bitterly republican in politics as in morality. He 
wrote in 1813: ‘I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation 
of all existing governments.’ This time, at Ravenna, his house was the 
centre and storehouse of conspirators, and he generously and im- 
prudently prepared to take arms with them, to strike for the deliver- 
ance of Italy: 


‘They mean to insurrect here, and are to honour me with a call thereupon. I 
shall not fall back ; though I don’t think them in force and heart sufficient to 
make much of it. But, onward... . What signifies self?...Itis not one man 
nor a million, but the spirit of liberty which must be spread. . . . The mere selfish 
calculation ought never to be made on such occasions ; and, at present, it shall 
not be computed by me. ... I should almost regret that my own affairs went 
well, when those of nations are in peril.’ ! 


In the meantime he had quarrels with the police: his house was watched, 
he was threatened with assassination, and yet he rode out daily, and 
went into the neighbouring pine-forest to practise pistol-shooting. 
These are the sentiments of a man at the muzzle of a loaded cannon, 
waiting for it to go off. The emotion is great, nay, heroic, but it is 
not sweet; and certainly, even at this season of great emotion, he was 
unhappy. Nothing is more likely to poison happiness than a combative 
spirit. He writes: 

‘What is the reason that I have been, all my lifetime, more or less ennuyé ? 
. - - 1 do not know how to answer this, but presume that it is constitutional,—as 
well as the waking in low spirits, which I have invariably done for many years. 
Temperance and exercise, which I have practised at times, and for a long time 
together vigorously and violently, made little or no difference. Violent passions 





1 Moore, Byron’s Works; Life, v. 67, Jan. 9, 1821. 


278 | MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


did: when under their immediate influence—it is odd, but—I was in agitated, 
but not in depressed spirits. . . . Wine and spirits make me sullen and savage to 
ferocity—silent, however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not spoken to. 
Swimming also raises my spirits ; but in general they are low, and get daily lower. 
That is hopeless ; for I do not think I am so much ennuyé as I was at nineteen. 
The proof is, that then I must game, or drink, or be in motion of some kind, or I 
was miserable.’ 

‘What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful 

than indifference. If I rouse, it is intofury. I presume that I shall end (if not 
earlier by accident, or some such termination) like Swift, ‘‘dying at top.” Lega 
(his servant) came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice which I thought 
paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint, 
I have always had une dme, which not only tormented itself, but everybody else 
in contact with it, and an esprit violent, which has almost left me without any 
esprit at all.’ 
A horrible foreboding, which haunted him to the end! On his death- 
bed, in Greece, he refused, I know not why, to be bled, and preferred 
to die at once. They threatened that the uncontrolled disease might 
end in madness. He sprang up: ‘There! you are, I see, a d—d set 
of butchers! Take away as much blood as you like, but have done with 
it,’ * and stretched out his arm. Amidst such splendours and anxieties 
he passed his life. Anguish endured, danger braved, resistance over- 
come, grief relished, all the greatness and sadness of the black warlike 
madness,—such are the images which he needs must let pass before 
him. In default of action he had dreams, and he only betook himself 
to dreams for want of action.’ He said, when embarking for Greece, 
that he had taken poetry for lack of better, and that it was not his fit 
work. ‘What is a poet? what is he worth? what does he do? He is 
a babbler.’ He augured ill of the poetry of his age, even of his own; 
saying that, if he lived ten years more, they should see something else 
from him but verses. In fact, he would have been more at home as a 
sea-king, or a captain of a band of troopers during the Middle-ages. 
Except two or three gleams of Italian sunshine, his poetry and life are 
those of a Scald transplanted into modern life, who in this over-well 
regulated world did not find his vocation. 


Il. 


Byron was a poet, then, but in his own fashion—a strange fashion, 
like that in which he lived. There were internal tempests within him, 
avalanches of ideas, which found issue only in writing. He wrote: 

‘I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from 
many motives, but not ‘‘ for their sweet voices.” To withdraw myself from myself 
has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all—and 
publishing also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the 
mind, which else recoils upon itself,’ 





1 Moore, Byron’s Works ; Life, v. 60, Jan. 6, 1821. 
2 Ibid. v. 97, Feb. 2, 1821. 3 Tbid. 95. * Ibid. vi. 206. 














CHAP. IL] ; ‘LORD BYRON. © 279 


He wrote almost always with astonishing rapidity, The Corsair in ten 
days, The Bride of Abydos in four days. While it was printing he 
added and corrected, but without recasting : 

*I told you before that I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger. If 

I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again ; but if I do it, it 
is crushing.’? 
Doubtless he sprang, but he had a chain: never, in the freest flight 
of his thoughts, did he liberate himself from himself. He dreams of 
himself, and sees himself throughout. It is a boiling torrent, but 
hedged in with rocks. No such great poet has had so narrow an 
imagination; he could not metamorphose himself into another. They 
are his own sorrows, his own revolts, his own travels, which, hardly 
transformed and modified, he introduces into his verses. He does not 
invent, he observes; he does not create, he transcribes. His copy is 
darkly exaggerated, but itis a copy. ‘I could not write upon any- 
thing,’ says he, ‘without some personal experience and foundation.’ 
You will find in his letters and notebook, almost feature for feature, 
the most striking of his descriptions. The capture of Ismail, the ship- 
wreck of Don Juan, are, almost word for word, like two accounts of it 
in prose. If none but cockneys could attribute to him the crimes of his 
heroes, none but blind men could fail to see in him the sentiments of 
his characters. This is so true, that he has not created more than one. 
Childe Harold, Lara, the Giaour, the Corsair, Manfred, Sardanapalus, 
Cain, Tasso, Dante, and the rest, are always the same—one man repre- 
sented under various costumes, in several lands, with different expres- 
sions; but just as painters do, when, by change of garments, decorations, 
and attitudes, they draw fifty portraits from the same model. He 
meditated too much upon himself to be enamoured of anything else. 
The habitual sternness of his will prevented his mind from being 
flexible; his force, always concentrated for effort and strained for 
strife, shut him up in self-contemplation, and reduced him never to 
make a poem, save of his own heart. 

In what style would he write! With these concentrated and 
tragic sentiments he had a‘classical mind. By the strangest mixture, the 
books, which he preferred, were at once the most violent or the most 
regular, the Bible above all: 

‘I.am a great reader and admirer of those books (the Bible), and had read them 

through and through before I was eight years old; that is to say, the Old Testa- 
ment, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure.’? 
Observe this word: he did not relish the tender and self-denying 
mysticism of the gospel, but the cruel sternness and lyrical outcries of 
the old Hebrews. Next to the Bible he loved Pope, the most correct 
and formal of men: 





1 Moore, Byron’s Works; Life, v. 33, Ravenna, Noy. 18, 1820. 
2 Ibid. v. 2665. 


an 


280 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


‘ As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry. 
Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic 


Cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas _ 


and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, 
but I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain of burnt 
brickwork. . . . The grand distinction of the underforms of the new school 
of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean they are coarse, but shabby- 
genteel.’ ! 


_ And he presently wrote two letters with incomparable vivacity and 
spirit, to defend Pope against the scorn of modern writers. These 
writers, according to him, have spoiled the public taste. The only 
ones who were worth anything—Crabbe, Campbell, Rogers—imitate 
the style of Pope. A few others had talent; but, take them all toge- 
ther, the newest ones had perverted literature: they did not know their 
language ; their expressions are only approximate, above or below the 
true tone, forced or dull. He ranges himself amongst the corrupters,” 
and we soon see that this theory is not an invention, springing from bad 
temper and polemics; he returns to it. In his two first attempts—Hours 
of Idleness, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—he tried to follow it up. 
Later, and in almost all his works, we find its effect. He recommends 
and practises the rule of unity in tragedy. He loves oratorical form, 
symmetrical phrase, condensed style. He likes to plead his passions. 
Sheridan tried to induce Byron to devote himself to eloquence; and 
the vigour, piercing logic, wonderful vivacity, close argument of his 
prose, prove that he would have had the first rank amongst pam- 
phleteers.* If he attains to it amongst the poets, it is partly due to his 
classical system. ‘This oratorical form, in which Pope compresses his 
thought like La Bruyére, magnifies the force and swing of vehement 
ideas ; like anarrow and straight canal, it collects and dashes them down 
its slope: there is then nothing which their impetus does not carry 
away ; and it is thus Lord Byron from the first, through restless criti- 
cisms, over jealous reputations, has made his way to the public.* 

Thus Childe Harold made its way. At the first onset every one 
was agitated. It was more than an author who spoke; it was a man. 
In spite of his disavowals, it was well seen that the author was but one 
with his hero: he calumniated himself, but he imitated himself. He 
was recognised in that young voluptuous and disgusted man, ready to 
weep amidst his orgies, who 

* Sore sick at heart, 
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee ; 
"Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start, 
But Pride congeal’d the drop within his ee : 





1 Moore, Byron’s Works ; Life, v. 150, Ravenna, May 3, 1821. 

2 « All the styles of the day are bombastic. I don’t except my own ; no one has 
done more through negligence to corrupt the language.’ 

3 See his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

‘ Thirty thousand copies of the Corsair were sold in one day. 





2 


ee PE ee al is 5 








CHAP. II.] LORD BYRON. 281 


Apart he stalk’d in joyless reverie, 

And from his native land resolved to go, 

And visit scorching climes beyond the sea ; 

With pleasure drugg’d, he almost long’d for woe.’! 





Fleeing from his native land, he carried, amongst the splendours and 
cheerfulness of the south, his unwearying persecutor, ‘demon thought,’ 
implacable behind him. The scenery was recognised: it had been 
copied on the spot. And what was the whole book but a diary of 
travel? He said in it what he had seen and thought. What poetic 
fiction is as valuable as genuine sensation? What is more penetrating 
than confidence, voluntary or involuntary? Truly, every word here 
noted an emotion of eye or heart: 


‘ The tender azure of the unruffled deep. . . . 
The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown’d. . . . 
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough.’ . . .* 


All these beauties, calm or imposing, he had enjoyed, and sometimes 
suffered through them; and hence we see them through his verse. 
Whatever he touched, he made palpitate and live; because, when he ~ 
saw it, his heart had beaten and he had lived. He himself, a little later, 
quitting the mask of Harold, took up the parable in his own name; and 
who would not be touched by avowals so passionate and complete ? 


‘ Yet must I think less wildly :—I have thought 
Too long and darkly, till my brain became, 
In its own eddy boiling and o’erwrought, 
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame: 
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, 
My springs of life were poison’d. ‘Tis too late! 
Yet am I changed ; though still enough the same 
In strength to bear what time can not abate, 
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate. ... 


But soon he knew himself the most unfit 

Of men to herd with Man ; with whom he held 

Little in common ; untaught to submit 

His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell’d 

In youth by his own thoughts ; still uncompell’d, 

He would not yield dominion of his mind 

To spirits against whom his own rebell’d ; 

Proud though in desolation, which could find, 

A life within itself, to breathe without mankind. ... 


Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, 

Till he had peopled them with beings bright 

As their own beams ; and earth, and earth-born jars, 
And human frailties, were forgotten quite : 





1 Byron’s Works, viii. ; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, c. i. 6. 
2 Ibid. ¢. i. 19. 


282 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


Could he have kept his spirit to that flight’ 

He had been happy ; but this clay will sink 

Its spark immortal, envying it the light 

To which it mounts, as if to break the link 

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. 


But in Man’s dwellings he became a thing 

Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, 
Droop’d as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, 

To whom the boundless air alone were home : 

Then came his fit again, which to o’ercome, 

As eagerly the barr’d-up bird will beat 

His breast and beak against his wiry dome 

Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat 

Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat,’ ! 


Such are the sentiments wherewith he surveyed nature and history, 
not to comprehend them and forget himself before them, but to seek in 
them and impress upon them the image of his own passions. He does 
not let objects speak, but forces them to answer him. Amidst their 
peace, he is only occupied by his own emotion. He raises them to the 
tone of his soul, and compels them to repeat his own cries. All is 
inflated here, as in himself ; the vast strophe rolls along, carrying in its 
overflowing bed the flood of vehement ideas; declamation unfolds itself, 
pompous, and at times artificial (it was his first work), but potent, and 
so often sublime that the rhetorical dotings, which he yet preserved, 
disappeared under the afflux of splendours, with which it is loaded. 
Wordsworth, Walter Scott, by the side of this prodigality of accumu- 
lated splendours, seemed poor and gloomy; never since schylus was 
seen so tragic a pomp; and men followed, with a sort of pang, the train 
of gigantic figures, whom he brought in mournful ranks before our eyes, 
from the far past: 


‘I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; 
A palace and a prison on each hand: 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand : 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
O’er the far times, when many a subject land 
Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble piles, 
When Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles ! 


She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, 
Rising with her tiara of proud towers 

At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the waters and their powers: 





1 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, e. iii. 7-15. 














LORD BYRON. 283 


And such she was ;—her daughters had their dowers 

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East — 

Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 

In purple was she robed, and of her feast 

Monarchs partook, and deem’d their dignity increased. . . . } 


Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands, 

His blood-red tresses deep’ning in the sun, 

With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands, 

And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ; 

Restless it rolls, now fix’d, and now anon 

Flashing afar,—and at his iron feet 

Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done ; 

For on this morn three potent nations meet, 

To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet. 


By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see 

(For one who hath no friend, no brother there) 

Their rival scarfs of mix’d embroidery, 

Their various arms that glitter in the air! 

What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair, 
And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey ! 

All join the chase, but few the triumphs share ; 

The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away, 

And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array. . .? 


What from this barren being do we reap ? 

Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, 

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, 

And all things weigh’d in custom’s falsest scale ; 

Opinion an omnipotence,—whose veil 

Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 

And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 

Lest their own judgments should become too bright, 

And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. 


And thus they plod in sluggish misery, 

Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, 

Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 
Bequeathing their hereditary rage 

To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 

War for their chains, and rather than be free, 

Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 

Within the same arena where they see 

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.’ # 


Has ever style better expressed a soul? It is seen here labouring 
and expanding. Long and stormily the ideas boiled like metal heaped 
in the furnace. They melted there before the strain of the intense 
heat; they mingled therein their lava amidst shocks and explosions, 





! Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, ¢. iv. 1 and 2. 
2 Ibid. c. i. 39 and 40. % Ibid. c. iv. 93 and 94, 


284 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


and then at last the door is opened: a dull stream of fire descends 
into the trough prepared beforehand, heating the circumambient 
air, and its glittering hues scorch the eyes which persist in looking 
upon it. 


Til. 


Description and monologue did not suffice Byron; and he needed, 
to express his ideal, events and actions. Only events put to proof the 
force and spring of the soul; only actions manifest and measure this 
force and spring. Amidst events he sought for the most powerful, 
amidst actions the strongest; and we see appear successively The 
Bride of Abydos, The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, Parisina, The Siege 
of Corinth, Mazeppa, and The Prisoner of Chillon. 

I know that these sparkling poems have grown dull in forty years. 
In their necklace of oriental pearls have been discovered beads of glass; 
and Byron, who only half loved them, judged better than his judges. 
Yet he had judged amiss ; those which he preferred are the most false. 

His Corsair is marred by classic elegancies: the pirates’ song at the 
beginning is no truer than a chorus at the Italian opera; his scamps 
propound philosophical antitheses as balanced as those of Pope. A 
hundred times ambition, glory, envy, despair, and the other abstract 
“personages, whose images in the time of the Empire the French used 
to set upon their drawing-room clocks, break in amidst living passions.’ 
The noblest passages are disfigured by pedantic apostrophes, and the 
pretentious poetic diction sets up its threadbare frippery and conven- 
tional crnaments.? Far worse, he studies effect and follows the fashion. 
Melodramatic strings pull his characters, so as to obtain the grimace 
which shall make his public shudder : 


* Who thundering comes on blackest steed, 
With slacken’d bit and hoof of speed ? 
. Approach, thou craven crouching slave, 
Say, i is not this Thermopyle ?’ 


Wretched fashions, emphatic and vulgar, imitated from Lucan and our 
modern Lucans, but which produce their effect during a first perusal, 
and on the herd of readers. There is an infallible means of attract- 
ing a mob, which is, to shout out loud; with shipwrecks, sieges, 
murders, and combats, we shall always interest them; show them 





1 For example, ‘as weeping Beauty’s cheek at Sorrow’s tale.’ 
2 Here are verses like Pope, very beautiful and false : 
‘ And havock loath so much the waste of time, 
She scarce had left an uncommitted crime. _ 
One hour beheld him since the tide he stemm’d, 
Disguised, discover’d, conquering, ta’en, condemn’d, 
A chief on land, an outlaw on the deep, 
Destroying, saving, prison’d, and asleep !’ 


4 






— 


A ws pet, Saar) Magee aay! 


7 


= 


at 
' soi 






CHAP. II.] LORD BYRON. 285 


pirates, desperate adventurers,—these distorted or furious faces will 

draw them out of their regular and monotonous existence; they will 

go to see them as they go to the melodramas, and through the same in- 

stinct which induces them to read novels in penny numbers. Add, by 

way of contrast, angelic women, tender and submissive, all beautiful 
_as angels. Byron describes this, and adds to all these seductions a 
© panoramic scenery, oriental or picturesque adornments; old Alpine } 

; castles, the Mediterranean waves, the setting suns of Greece, the whole 
t in high relief, with marked shadows and brilliant colours, We are all 
of the people, as regards emotions; and the great lady, like the waiting- 
2 woman, sheds tears at once, without cavilling with the author as to the 
| means he uses. 

2 And yet truth flows through it all. No; this man is not an 
_ “arranger of effects or an inventor of phrases. He has lived amidst 
the spectacles he describes ; he has experienced the emotions he relates. 
He has been in the tent of Ali Pacha, and relished the strong savour of 
ocean adventure and savage manners. He has been a score of times 
near death,—in the Morea, in the anguish and the solitude of fever ; 
at Suli, in a shipwreck; at Malta, in England, and in Italy, in the 
dangers of a duel, plots of insurrection, commencements of sudden 
attacks, at sea, in arms, on horseback, having seen assassination, wounds, 
agonies close to him, and that more than once. 


‘I am living here exposed to it (assassination) daily, for I have happened to 
make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy ; and I never sleep the worse 
for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks 
of it as of a disease which may or may not strike.’?} 


He spoke the truth; no one ever held himself more erect and: firm 
in danger. One day, near the Gulf of San Fiorenzo, his yacht was 
thrown on the coast; the sea was terrific, and the rocks in sight; the 
passengers kissed their rosaries, or fainted with horror; and the two 
captains being consulted, declared shipwreck inevitable. ‘ Well,’ said 
Lord Byron, ‘ we are all born to die; I shall go with regret, but cer- 
tainly not with fear.’ And he took off his clothes, begging the others 
to do the same, not that they could save themselves amidst such waves. 


‘It is every man’s duty to endeavour to preserve the life God has given him ; 
so I advise you all to strip: swimming, indeed, can be of little use in these 
billows ; but as children, when tired with crying, sink placidly to repose, we, 
when exhausted with struggling, shall die the easier. . . .’ 


He then sat down, folding his arms, very calm; he even joked with 
the captain, who was putting his dollars into his waistcoat pocket. .. . 
The ship approached the rocks. All this time Byron was not seen to 
change countenance. A man thus tried and moulded could paint ex- 
treme situations and sentiments. After all, they are never painted 





1 Moore’s Life, iv. 345. 





286 MODERN LIFE. _[BooK Iv. 


otherwise than thus, by experience. The most inventive—Dante and 
Shakspeare—though quite different, yet do the same thing. However 
high their genius rose, it always had its feet in observation ; and their 
most foolish, like their most splendid pictures, never offer to the 
world more than an image of their age, or of their own heart. At 
most, they deduce; that is, having derived from two or three features 
the inward qualities of the man and of the men around them, they 
draw thence, by a sudden ratiocination of which they have no con- 
sciousness, the varied skein of actions and sentiments. They may be 
artists, but they are observers. They may invent, but they describe. 
Their glory does not consist in the display of a phantasmagoria, but in 
the discovery of a truth. They are the first to enter some unexplored 
province of humanity, which becomes their domain, and thenceforth 
supports their name like an appanage. Byron found his domain, which 
is that of sad and tender sentiments: it is a wild heath, and full of 
ruins; but he is at home there, and he is alone. 

What an abode! And it is on this desolation that he dwells, He 
muses on it. See the brothers of Childe Harold pass—the characters 
who people it. One in his prison, chained up with the two brothers 
remaining to him. Three others, with their father, perished fighting, 
or were burnt for their faith. One by one, before the eyes of the 
eldest, the last two languish and fade: a silent and slow agony in the 
damp darkness, into which a beam of the sickly sun pierces through 
a crevice. After the death of the first, the survivors demand that he 
shall at least be buried on a spot ‘ whereon the day might shine.’ The 
jailers 

* Coldly laugh, and laid him there: 
The flat and turfless earth above 
The being we so much did love ; 
His empty chain above it leant. 
«. . Hefaded... 
With all the while a cheek whose bloom 
Was as mockery of the tomb, 
Whose tints as gently sunk away 
As a departing rainbow’s ray.’ 


The pillars are too far apart,—the brother cannot approach the dying 
man; he listens and hears the failing sighs; he cries for succour, and 
none eomes. - He breaks his chain with a vast effort: all is over. He 
takes that cold hand, and then, before the motionless body, his senses 
are stopped up, his thoughts arrested, he is like a drowning man, who, 
after passing through anguish, lets himself sink down like a stone, and 
no longer feels existence but by a complete petrifaction of horror. 
Here is another brother of Childe Harold, Mazeppa, bound naked, 


and on a wild horse rushing over the steppes. He writhes, and his 





1 Byron’s Works, x., The Prisoner of Chillon, c. vii. and viii. 


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| CHAP. I] LORD BYRON. 287 


swollen limbs, cut by the cords, are bleeding. A whole day the course 
continues, and’ behind him the wolves are howling. The night through 
he hears their long monotonous chase, and at the end his energy fails. 


‘. . . The earth gave way, the skies roll’d round, 
I seem’d to sink upon the ground ; 
But err’d, for I was fastly bound. - 
My heart turn’d sick, my brain grew sore, 
And throbb’d awhile, then beat no more ; 
The skies spun like a mighty wheel ; 
I saw the trees like drunkards reel, 
And a slight flash sprang o’er my eyes, 
Which saw no further: he who dies 
Can die no more than then I died. ... 
I felt the blackness come and go, 
And strove to wake ; but could not make 
My senses climb up from below: 
I felt as on a plank at sea, 
When all the waves that dash o’er thee, 
At the same time upheave and whelm, 
And hurl thee towards a desert realm.’ 1 


Should I enumerate them all? Hugo, Parisina, the Foscari, the 
Giaour, the Corsair. His hero is always a man striving with the worst 
anguish, face to face with shipwreck, torture, death,—his own painful 
and prolonged death, the bitter death of his well-beloved, remorse for 
his companion, amidst the gloomy prospects of a threatening eternity, 
with no support but native energy and hardened pride. They have 
desired too much, too impetuously, with a senseless swing, like a horse 
which does not feel the bit, and thenceforth their inner doom drives 
re them to the abyss which they see, and cannot escape. What a night 
: was that of Alp before Corinth! He is a renegade, and comes with 
the Mussulmans to besiege the Christians, his old friends—Minotti, the 
father of the girl he loves. Next day he is to lead the assault, and he 
thinks of his death, which he forebodes, the carnage of his own people, 
which he is preparing. There is no inner support but rooted resent- 
ment and the fixity of stern will. The Mussulmans despise him, the 
Christians execrate him, and his glory only publishes his treason. 
Oppressed and fevered, he passes through the sleeping camp, and 
wanders on the shore: 


‘’Tis midnight: on the mountains brown 
The cold, round moon shines deeply down ; 
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky 
Spreads like an ocean hung on high, 
Bespangled with those isles of light. .. . 
The waves on either shore lay there 
Calm, clear, and azure as the air ; 





1 Byron’s Works, xi., Mazeppa, c. xiii. 167. 


288 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. | 


» And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, 
But murmur’d meekly as the brook. 
The winds were pillow’d on the waves ; 
The banners droop’d along their staves. ... 
And that deep silence was unbroke, 
Save where the watch his signal spoke, 
Save where the steed neigh’d oft and shrill, ... 
And. the wide hum of that wild host 
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast.’ ...! 


How the heart sickens before such spectacles! What a contrast be- 
tween his agony and the peace of immortal nature! How man 
stretches then his arms towards ideal beauty, and how impotently they 
fall back at the contact of our clay and immortality! Alp advances 
over the sandy shore to the foot of the bastion, under the fire of the 
sentinels ; and he hardly thinks of it : 


‘ And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall 
Hold o’er the dead their carnival, 
Gorging and growling o’er carcass and limb ; 
They were too busy to bark at him ! 
From a Tartar’s skull they had stripped the flesh, 
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ; 
And their white tusks crunch’d o’er the whiter skull, 
As it slipp’d through their jaws, when their edge grew dull. 
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, 
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed ; 
So well had they broken a lingering fast 
With those who had fallen for that night’s repast. 
And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll’d on the sand, 
The foremost of these were the best of his band : 
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, 
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, 
All the rest was shaven and bare. 
The scalps were in the wild dog’s maw, 
The hair was tangled round his jaw. 
But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, 
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, 
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, 
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey ; 
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, 
Pick’d by the birds, on the sands of the bay.’ ? 


Such is the goal of man; the hot frenzy of life ends here; buried or 


not, it matters little: vultures or jackals, his gravediggers know their 


work. The storm of his rages and his efforts have only served to cast 
him to these for their food, and to their beaks and jaws he comes only 
with the sentiment of frustrated hopes and insatiate desires. Could 
any of us forget the death of Lara after once reading it? Has any 





1 Byron’s Works, x., The Siege of Corinth, c. xi. 116, * Ibid. c. xvi. 123, 





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CHAP. I1.] LORD BYRON. 289 


one elsewhere seen, save in Shakspeare, a sadder picture of the destiny 
of a man vainly rearing against inevitable fate? Though generous, 
like Macbeth, he has, like Macbeth, dared everything against law and 
conscience, even against pity and the commonest honour. Crimes 
committed have forced him into other crimes, and blood poured out 
has made him glide into a pool of blood. As a corsair, he has slain ; 
as a cut-throat, he assassinates; and the old murders which haunt his 
dreams come with their bat’s-wings beating against the doors of his 
brain. He does not drive them away, these black visitors ; though 
the mouth remains silent, the pallid brow and strange smile bear wit- 
ness to their approach. And yet it is a noble spectacle to see man 
standing with calm countenance even under their touch. The last day 
comes, and six inches of iron suffice for all this energy and fury. Lara 
is lying beneath a lime tree, and his wound ‘is bleeding fast from life 
away.’ With each convulsion the stream gushes blacker, then stops ; 
the blood flows drop by drop, and his brow is already moist, his eye 
dim. The victors arrive—he does not deign to answer them; the priest 
brings near the absolving cross, ‘but he look’d upon it with an eye 
profane.’ What remains to him of life is for his poor page, the only 
being who has loved him, who has followed him to the end, who now 
tries to stanch the blood from his wound : 


* He scarce can speak, but motions him ’t is vain, 
He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage, 
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page... . 
His dying tones are in that other tongue, 
To which some strange remembrance wildly clung. ... 
And once, as Kaled’s answering accents ceased, 
Rose Lara’s hand, and pointed to the East: 
Whether (as then the breaking sun from high 
Roll’d back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye, 
Or that ’twas chance, or some remember’d scene, 
That raised his arm to point where such had been, 
Scarce Kaled seem’d to know, but turn’d away, 
As if his heart abhorr’d that coming day, 
And shrunk his glance before that morning light, 
To look on Lara’s brow—where all grew night. ... 
But from his visage little could we guess, 
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless. .. . 
But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew, 
And dull the film along his dim eye grew ; 
His limbs stretch’d fluttering, and his head droop’d o’er.’} 


All is over, and of this haughty spirit there remains but a poor piece 
of clay. After all, it is.the desirable lot of such hearts; they have 
spent life amiss, and rest well only in the tomb. 

A strange and altogether northern poetry, with its root in the Edda 





1 Byron’s Works, x.; Lara, c. 2, st. 17-20, 60. 
VOL, II. T 


290 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


and its flower in Shakspeare, born long ago under an inclement sky, 
on the shores of a stormy ocean,—the work of a too wilful, too strong, 
too sombre race,—and which, after lavishing its images of desolation 
and heroism, ends by stretching like a black veil over the whole of 
living nature the dream of universal destruction: this dream is here, 
as in the Edda, almost equally grand : 


* TI had a dream, which was not all a dream. 
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars 
Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth 
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air ; 
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day... . 
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour 
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks 
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black... . 
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, 
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, 
The habitations of all things which dwell, 
Were burnt for beacons ; cities were consumed, 
And men were gathered round their blazing homes 
To look once more into each other’s face. . . . 
The brows of men by the despairing light 
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits 
The flashes fell upon them ; some lay down 
And hid their eyes and wept ; and some did rest 
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled ; 
And others hurried to and fro, and fed 
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up 
With mad disquietude on the dull sky, 
The pall of a past world ; and then again 
With curses cast them down upon the dust, 
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d, 
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, 
And fiap their useless wings ; the wildest brutes 
Came tame and tremulous ; and vipers crawl’d 
And twined themselves among the multitude, 
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food : 
And War, which for a moment was no more, 
Did glut himself again ;—a meal was bought 
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left ; 
All earth was but one thought—and that was death, 
Immediate and inglorious ; and the pang 
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men 
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh ; 
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d, 
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one, We 
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept . 
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay, 
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead " 





LORD BYRON. 291 


Lured their lank jaws ; himself sought out no food, 
But with a piteous and perpetual moan, 

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand 

Which answer’d not with a caress—he died. 

The crowd was famish’d by degrees ; but two 

Of an enormous city did survive, 

And they were enemies: they met beside 

The dying embers of an altar-place 

Where had been heap’d a mass of holy nae 

For an unholy usage ; they raked up, 

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands 
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath 

Blew for a little life, and made a flame 

Which was a mockery ; then they lifted up 

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld 

Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died— 
Even of their mutual hideousness they died.’?... 


IV. 


, Amongst these immoderate and funereal poems, which incessantly 
return and insist upon the same subject, there is one more imposing 
and lofty, Manfred, twin-brother of the greatest poem of the age, 
Goethe’s Faust. Goethe says of Byron: ‘This singular intellectual poet 
| has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest 
| nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the 
impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no 
: 





one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account 
that I cannot enough admire his genius.’ The play is indeed original. 
Byron writes : 

* His (Goethe’s) Faust I never read, for I don’t know German ; but Matthew 
Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me vivd voce, and I was 
naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and 
something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred.’? 


Goethe adds: ‘The whole is so completely formed anew, that it would 
be an interesting task for the critic to point out not only the alterations 
he (Byron) has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimi- 
larity to, the original.’ Let us speak of it, then, quite at leisure: the 
subject here is the dominant idea of the age, expressed so as to display 
the contrast of two masters and of two nations. 
What constitutes Goethe’s glory is, that in the nineteenth century 
he could produce an epic poem—lI mean a poem in which genuine 
gods act and speak. ‘This appeared impossible in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, since the special work of our age is the refined consideration of 
creative ideas, and the suppression of the poetic characters by which 
other ages have never failed to represent them. Of the two divine 





1 Byron’s Works, x. ; Darkness, 283. 
2 Ibid. iv. 321; Letter to Mr. Murray, Ravenna, June 7, 1820, 


ieee? TT ” Se ,-rt( i ;t;t;™;™” 
ici wy 


292 ) MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


families, the Greek and the Christian, neither seemed capable of re- . 

entering the epic world. Classic literature had dragged down in its 
fall the mythological puppets, and the old gods slept on their old 
Olympus, whither history and archeology alone might go and arouse 
them. The angels and saints of the Middle-age, as strange and almost 
as distant, were asleep on the vellum of their missals and in the niches 
of their cathedrals; and if a poet, like Chateaubriand, tried to make 
them enter the modern world,’ he succeeded only in degrading them 
to the functions of vestry decorations and operatic machinery. The 
mythic credulity had disappeared in the growth of experience, the 
mystic in the growth of prosperity. Paganism, at the contact of 
science, was reduced to the recognition of natural forces; Christianity, 
at the contact of morality, was reduced to the adoration of the ideal. 
In order again to deify physical powers, man should have become once 
more a healthy child, as in Homer’s time. In order again to deify 
spiritual powers, man must have become once more a sickly child, as 
in Dante’s time. But he was an adult, and could not remount to the 
civilisations, or the epics, from which the current of his thought and 
his existence had withdrawn him for ever. How show him his gods, 
the modern gods? how reclothe them for him in a personal and sensible 
form, since it was precisely of all personal and sensible form that he 
had toiled and succeeded in despoiling them? Instead of rejecting 
legend, Goethe resumed it. He chose a medieval story for his theme. 
Carefully, scrupulously he followed the track of the old manners and ~ 
the old beliefs: an alchemist’s laboratory, a sorcerer’s conjuring-book, 
coarse villagers, students’ or drunkards’ gaiety, a witches’ meeting on 
the Brocken, mass in the church ; you might fancy you saw an engray- 
ing of Luther’s time, conscientious and minute: nothing is omitted. 
Heavenly characters appear in consecrated attitudes, after the text of 
Scripture, like the old mysteries: the Lord with his angels, then with 
the devil, who comes to ask permission to tempt Faust, as formerly he 
tempted Job; heaven, as St. Francis imagined it and Van Eyck painted 
it, with anchorites, holy women and doctors—some in a landscape with 
blue-grey rocks, others above in the sublime air, about the glorious 
Virgin, region beyond region, hovering in choirs. Goethe pushes the 
affectation of orthodoxy so far as to write under each his Latin name, 
and his due niche in the Vulgate.” And this very fidelity proclaims him 
a sceptic. We see that if he resuscitates the ancient world, it is as a 
historian, not-as a believer. He is only a Christian through remem- 
brance and poetic feeling. In him the modern spirit overflows de- 
signedly the narrow vessel into which he designedly seems to enclose it. 





* The angel of holy loves, the angel of the ocean, the choirs of happy spirits. 
See this at length in the Martyrs. 

? Magna peccatrix, 8. Luce, vii. 36 ; Mulier Samaritana, 8S. Johannis, iv. ; 
Maria Zgyptiaca (Acta Sanctorum), ete. 











" 
a 


CHAP, II. ] LORD BYRON. 293 


The thinker penetrates through the narrator. At every instant a cal- 
culated word, which seems involuntary, opens up beyond the veils of 


' tradition, glimpses of philosophy. Who are they, these supernaturals, 


—this god, this Mephistopheles, these angels? Their substance in- 
cessantly dissolves and re-forms, to show or hide alternately the idea 
which fills it. Are they abstractions or characters? Mephistopheles, 
revolutionary and philosopher, who has read Candide, and cynically 
jeers at the Powers,—is he anything but the ‘ spirit of negation ?’ 

The angels 


* Rejoice to share 
The wealth exuberant of all that’s fair, 
Which lives, and has its being everywhere! 
And the creative essence which surrounds, 

’ And lives in all, and worketh evermore, 
Encompass . . . within love’s gracious bounds ; 
And all the world of things, which flit before 
The gaze in seeming fitful and obscure, 

Do... in lasting thoughts embody and secure.’! 


Are these angels, for an instant at least, anything else than the ideal 
intelligence which comes, through sympathy, to love all, and through 
ideas to comprehend all? What shall we say of this Deity, at first 
biblical and individual, who little by little is unshaped, vanishes, and, 
sinking to the depths, behind the splendours of living nature and mystic 
reverie, is confused with the inaccessible absolute? Thus is the whole 
poem unfolded, action and characters, men and gods, antiquity and 
Middle-age, aggregate and details, always on the limits of two worlds— 
one sensitive and figurative, the other intelligible and formless ; one com- 
prehending the moving externals of history or of life, and all that hued 
and perfumed bloom which nature lavishes on the surface of existence, 
the other containing the profound generative powers and invisible fixed 
laws by which all these living beings come to the light of day.” At 
last see them, our gods: we no longer parody them, like our ancestors, 
by idols or persons; we perceive them as they are in themselves, and 
we need not for this renounce poetry, nor break with the past. We 
remain on our knees before the shrines where men have prayed for 
three thousand years; we do not tear a single rose from the chaplets 
with which they have crowned their divine Madonnas; we do not ex- 
tinguish a single candle which they have crowded on the altar steps; 
we behold with an artist’s pleasure the precious shrines where, amidst 
the wrought candlesticks, the suns of diamonds, the gorgeous copes, 
they have scattered the purest treasures of their genius and their heart. 
But our thought pierces further than our eyes. For us, at certain 
moments, these draperies, this marble, all this pomp vacillates; it is 





1 Goethe’s Faust, translated by Theodore Martin. Prologue in Heaven. 
2 Goethe sings: ‘ Wer ruft das Einselne zur allgemeinen Weihe 
Wo es in herrlichen Accorden schligt ?’ 


~~ 


294 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


no longer aught but beautiful phantoms; it is dispersed in the smoke, > 


and we discover through it and behind it the impalpable ideal, which 
has set up these pillars, lighted these roofs, and hovered for centuries 
over the kneeling multitude. 

To understand the legend and also to understand life, is the object 
of this work, and of the whole work of Goethe. Everything, brute 
or rational, vile or sublime, fantastic or tangible, is a group of powers, 


of which our mind, through study and sympathy, may reproduce in 


itself the elements and the disposition. Let us reproduce it, and give 
it in our thought a new existence. Is a gossip like Martha, babbling 
and foolish—a drunkard like Frosch, brawling and dirty, and the rest of 
the Dutch boors—unworthy to enter a picture? Even the female apes, 
and the apes who sit beside the cauldron, watching that it does not boil 
over, with their hoarse cries and disordered fancies, may repay the 
trouble of art in restoring them. Wherever there is life, even bestial 
or maniacal, there is beauty. The more we look upon nature, the more 
we find it divine—divine even in rocks and plants. Consider these 
forests, they seem motionless; but the leaves breathe, and the sap 
mounts insensibly through the massive trunks and branches, to the 
slender shoots stretched like fingers at the end of the twigs; it fills 
the swollen ducts, leaks out in living forms, loads the frail aments 
with fecund dust, spreads profusely through the air which ferments the 


vapours and odours: this luminous air, this dome of verdure, this long | 


colonnade of trunks of trees, this silent soil, labour and are transformed ; 
they accomplish a work, and the poet’s heart is but to listen to them 
to find avoice for their obscure instincts. - They speak in his heart ; 
still better, they sing, and other beings do the same; eae ane dis- 
tinct melody, short or long, strange or simple, alone adapted to its 
nature, capable of manifesting it fully, like a sound, by its pitch, its 
height, its force, manifests the inner bodily structure, which has pro- 
duced it. This melody the poet respects ; he avoids altering it by the 
confusion of its ideas or accent ; his whole care is to keep it intact and 
pure. Thus is his work produced, an echo of universal nature, a vast 





chorus in which gods, men, past, present, all periods of history, all — 


conditions of life, all orders of existence agree without confusion, and 
in which the flexible genius of the musician, who is alternately trans- 
formed into each one of them to interpret and comprehend them, 
only bears witness to his own thought in giving an insight, beyond this 
immense harmony, into the group of ideal laws whence it is derived, 
and the inner reason which sustains it. ; 
Beside this lofty conception, what is the supernatural part of Man- 
fred? Doubtless Byron is moved by the great things of nature; he 
leaves the Alps; he has seen those glaciers which are like ‘a frozen hur- 
ricane,’—those ‘ torrents which roll the sheeted silver’s waving column 
o’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular, like the pale courser’s tail, as 
told in the Apocalypse,’—but he has brought nothing from them but 


CHAP. IL] LORD BYRON. 295 


images. His witch, his spirits, his Arimanes, are but stage gods. He 
believes in them no more than we do. It is wholly otherwise with 
genuine gods: we must believe them; we must, like Goethe, have 
assisted long at their birth, like philosophers and scholars; we must 
have seen of them more than their externals. He who, whilst con- 
tinuing a poet, becomes a naturalist and geologist, who has followed in 
the fissures of the rocks the tortuous waters slowly distilled, and driven 
at length by their own weight to the light, may ask himself, as the 
Greeks did formerly, when they saw them roll and sparkle in their 
emerald tints, what they might be thinking, whether they thought. 
What a strange life is theirs, alternately at rest and in violence! How 
far removed from ours! With what effort must we tear ourselves 
from our old and complicated passions, to comprehend the divine youth ec 
and simplicity of a being enfranchised from reflection and form! How 
difficult is such a work for a modern man! How impossible for an 
Englishman! Shelley, Keats approached it,—thanks to the nervous 
delicacy of their sickly or overflowing imagination; but how partial 
still was this approach! And how we feel, on reading them, that they 
would have needed the aid of public culture, and the aptitude of 
national genius, which Goethe possessed! That which the whole of 
civilisation has alone developed in the Englishman, is energetic will- 
and practical faculties. Here man has braced himself up in his efforts, 
become concentrated in resistance, fond of action, and hence shut out 
from pure speculation, from wavering sympathy, and from disinterested _ 
art. In him metaphysical liberty has perished under utilitarian pre- 
occupation, and pantheistic reverie under moral prejudices. How 
would he frame to bend his imagination so as to pursue the number- 
less and fugitive outlines of existences, especially of vague existences ? 
How would he frame to leave his religion so as to reproduce indiffer- 
ently the powers of indifferent nature? And who is further from 
flexibility and indifference than he? The flowing water, which in 
Goethe takes the mould of all the contours of the earth, and which we 
perceive in the sinuous and luminous distance beneath the golden mist 
which it exhales, was in Byron suddenly struck into a mass of ice, and 
makes but a rigid block of crystal. Here, as elsewhere, there is but ' 
one character, the same as before. Men, gods, nature, all the chang- 
ing and multiplex world of Goethe, has vanished. The poet alone 
subsists, as expressed in his character. Inevitably imprisoned within 
himself, he could see nothing but himself; if he must come to other 
existences, it is that they may reply to him; and through this pre- 
tended epic he persisted in his eternal monologue. 

But again, how all these powers, assembled in a single being, make ~ 
him great! Into what mediocrity and platitude sinks the Faust of 
Goethe, compared to Manfred! As soon as we cease to see humanity 
in this Faust, what does he become? Is he ahero? A sad hero, who 
has no other task but to speak, to fear, to study the shades of his sen- 





296 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


sations, and to walk about! His worst action is to seduce a grisette, and 
to go and dance by night in bad company—two exploits which many a 
German student has aseormplished. His wilfulness is whims, his ideas 
are longings and dreams. A poet’s soul in a scholar’s head, both unfit 
for action, and according ill together; discord within, and weakness 
without; in short, character is wanting: it is the German character. 
By his side, what a man is Manfred! He is a man; there is no finer 
word, or one which could depict him better. He will not, at the sight 
of a spirit, ‘ quake like a crawling, cowering, timorous worm.’ He will 
not regret that ‘he has neither land, nor pence, nor worldly honours, 
nor influence.’ He will not let himself be duped by the devil like a 
schoolboy, or go and amuse himself like a cockney with the phantas- 
magoria of the Brocken. He has lived like a feudal chief, not like a 
scholar who has taken his degree; he has fought, mastered others; he 
knows how to master himself. If he is forced into magic arts, it is 
not from an alchemist’s curiosity, but from a spirit of revolt: 


‘From my youth upwards 
My spirit walk’d not with the souls of men, 
Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes ; 
The thirst of their ambition was not mine, 
The aim of their existence was not mine ; 
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers 
Made me a stranger ; though I wore the form, 
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh. . . . 
My joy was in the Wilderness, to breathe 
The difficult air of the iced mountain’s top, 
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect’s wing 
Flit o’er the herbless granite, or to plunge 
Into the torrent, and to roll along 
On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave. ... 
To follow through the night the moving moon, 
The stars and their development ; or catch 
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim ; 
Or to look, list’ning, on the scatter’d leaves, 
While Autumn winds were at their evening song. 
These were my pastimes, and to be alone ; 
For if the beings, of whom I was one,— 
Hating to be so,—cross’d me in my path, 
I felt myself degraded back to them, 
And was.all clay again. ... 1} 
I could not tame my nature down; for he 
Must serve who fain would sway—and soothe—and sue— 
And watch all time—and pry into all place— 
And be a living lie—who would become 
A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such 
The mass are ; I disdain’d to mingle with 
A herd, though to be leader—and of Wolves. . . .2 





1 Byron’s Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 2. 32. 2 Ibid. ; Manfred, iii. 1. 56. 





, 
q 





LORD BYRON. 297 


He lives alone, and he cannot live alone. The deep source of love, 
cut off from its natural issues, then overflows and lays waste the heart 
which refused to expand. He has loved, too well, too near to hin, his 
sister it may be; she has died of it, and impotent remorse has come to 
fill the soul which no human occupation could satisfy: 


*, . . My solitude is solitude no more, 
But peopled with the Furies ;—I have gnash’d 
My teeth in darkness till returning morn, . 
Then cursed myself till sunset ;—I have pray’d 
For madness as a blessing—’tis denied me. 
I have affronted death—but in the war 
Of elements the waters shrunk from me, 
And fatal things pass’d harmless—the cold hand 
Of an all-pitiless demon held me back, 
Back by a single hair, which would not break. 
In fantasy, imagination, all 
The affluence of my soul. . . . I plunged deep, 
But, like an ebbing wave, it dashed me back 
Into the gulf of my unfathom’d thought... . 
I dwell in my despair, 
And live, and live for ever.’ } 


Let him see her once more: to this sole and all-powerful desire flow 
all the energies of his soul. He calls her up in the midst of spirits; 
she appears, but answers not. He prays to her—with what cries, what 
grievous cries of deep anguish! How he loves! With what yearning 
and effort all his downtrodden and outcrushed tenderness gushes out 
and escapes at the sight of those well-beloved eyes, which he sees for 
the last time! With what enthusiasm his convulsive arms are stretched 
towards that frail form which, shuddering, has quitted the tomb! 
—towards those cheeks in which the blood, forcibly recalled, plants ‘a 
strange hectic—like the unnatural red which Autumn plants upon the 
perish’d leaf.’ 


‘,. . . Hear me, hear me— 


Astarte! my beloved! speak to me: 

I have so much endured—so much endure— 
Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more 
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me 
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made 
To torture thus each other, though it were 

The deadliest sin to love as we have loved. 

Say that thou loath’st me not—that I do bear 
This punishment for both—that thou wilt be 
One of the blessed—and that I shall die ; 

For hitherto all hateful things conspire 

To bind me in existence—in a life 

Which makes me shrink from immortality— 

A future like the past. I cannot rest. 





1 Byron’s Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 2. 35. 


298 


She speaks. What asad and doubtful reply! and convulsions spread 
through Manfred’s limbs when she disappears. But an instant after the 


MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


I know not what I ask, nor what I seek: 

I feel but what thou art—and what I am; 

And I would hear yet once before I perish 

The voice which was my music—Speak to me! 

For I have call’d on thee in the still night, 

Startled the slumbering birds from the hush‘d boughs, 
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves 
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name, 

Which answer’d me—many things answer’'d me— 
Spirits and men—but thou wert silent all. . . . 
Speak to me! I have wander’d o’er the earth, 

And never found thy likeness—Speak to me! 

Look on the fiends around—they fee] for me: 

I fear them not, and feel for thee alone— 

Speak to me! though it be in wrath ;—but say— 

I reck not what—but let me hear thee once— * 
This once—once more! *? 


spirits see that 


‘, . . He mastereth himself, and makes 
His torture tributary te his will. . 
Had he been one of us, he would have made 
An awful spirit.’? 


Will is the unshaken basis of this soul. He did not bend before the 
chief of the spirits; he stood firm and calm before the infernal throne, 
under the rage of all the demons who would tear him to pieces: now 
that he dies, and they assail him, he still strives and conquers : 


‘. . . Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel ; 
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know: 
What I have done is done; I bear within 
A torture which could nothing gain from thine: 
The mind which is immortal makes itself 
Requital for its good or evil thoughts— 

Is its own origin of ill and end— 

And its own place and time—its innate sense, 
When stripp’d of this mortality, derives 

No colour from the fleeting things without ; 
But is absorb’d in sufferance or in joy, 

Born from the knowledge of its own desert. 
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me; 
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey— 
But was my own destroyer, and will be 

My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends ! 
The hand of death is on me—but not yours! *% 


This ‘I,’ the invincible I, who suffices to himself, whom nothing can 





} Byron’s Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 4. 47. * Ibid. ii. 4. 49. 8 Ibid. iii. 4. 70. 











CHAP. II] LORD BYRON. 299 


hold, demons nor men, the sole author of his own good and ill, a sort 
of suffering or fallen god, but god always, even in its torn flesh, through 
the mire and bruises of all his destinies,—such is the hero and the work 
of this mind, and of the men of his race. If Goethe was the poet of 
the universe, Byron was the poet of the individual; and if in one the 
German genius found its interpreter, the English genius found its 
interpreter’ in the other. 


sg 


We can well imagine that Englishmen clamoured, and repudiated the 
monster. Southey, poet-laureate, said of him, in a fine biblical style, 
that he savoured of Moloch and Belial—most of all, of Satan; and, with 
the generosity of a fellow-literary man, called the attention of Govern- 
ment to him. We should fill many pages, if we were to copy the 
reproaches of the respectable reviews against these ‘men of diseased 
hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions 
to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the 
holiest ordinances of human society ; and, hating that revealed religion 
which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to 
disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by in- 
fecting them with a moral virus that eats into the soul.’ This sounds 
like the emphasis of an episcopal charge and of scholastic pedantry: in 
England the press does the duty of the police, and it never did it more 
violently than at that time. Opinion backed the press. Several times, 
in Italy, Lord Byron saw gentlemen leave a drawing-room with their 
wives, when he was announced. Owing to his title and celebrity, the 
scandal which he caused was more prominent than any other: he was 
a public sinner. One day an obscure parson sent him a prayer which 
he had found amongst the papers of his wife—a charming and pious 
lady, recently dead, and who had secretly prayed to God for the con- 
version of the great sinner. Conservative and Protestant England, after 
a quarter of a century of moral wars, and two centuries of moral educa- 
tion, had pushed its severity and rigour to extremes; and Puritan 
intolerance, like Catholic intolerance previously in Spain, put recusants 
out of the pale of the law. ‘The proscription of voluptuous or aban- 
doned life, the narrow observation of order and decency, the respect of 
all police, human and divine ; the necessary bows at the mere name of 
Pitt, of the king, the church, the God of the Bible; the attitude of the 
gentleman in a white tie, conventional, inflexible, implacable,—such 
were the customs then met with across the Channel, a hundred times 
more tyrannical than now-a-days: at that time, as Stendhal says, 
a peer at his fireside dared not cross his legs, for fear of its being im- 
proper. England held herself stiff, uncomfortably laced in her stays 
of decorum. Hence arose two sources of misery: a man suffers, and ~ 


/ 
} 





1 Southey, Preface to A Vision of Judgment. 





300 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


is tempted to throw down the ugly choking apparatus, when convinced 
he is alone. On one side constraint, on the other hypocrisy—these are 
the two vices of English civilisation; and it was these which Byron, 
with his poet’s discernment and his combative instincts, attacked. 

He had seen them from the first; true artists are perspicacious : 
it is in this that they outstrip us; we judge from hearsay and formulas, 
like cockneys; they, like eccentric beings, from accomplished facts, and 
things: at twenty-two he perceived the tedium born of constraint 
desolating all high life: 

‘There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink 
With the three-thousandth curtsy;... 
Saloon, room, hall, o’erflow beyond their brink, 
And long the latest of arrivals halts, 
’Midst royal dukes and dames condemn’d to climb, 
And gain an inch of staircase at a time.’ + 


He also sneered in his letters at the distinguished company in the 
country, and at the conduct of gentlemen after dinner—above all, on 
hunting days. Most of them fall asleep. As for the morals of the 
upper classes, this is what he says: 

‘ Went to my box at Covent Garden to-night. . . . Casting my eyes round the 
house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distin- 
guished old and young Babylonians of quality. . . . It was as if the house had 
been divided between your public and your understood courtesans ;—but the in- 
triguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. Now, where lay the differ- 
ence between Pauline and her mother, . . . and Lady * * and daughter? except 
that the two last may enter Carlton and any other house, and the two first are 
limited to the Opera and b— house. How I do delight in observing life as it really 
is !—and myself, after all, the worst of any!’? 


Decorum and debauchery; moral hypocrites, ‘ qui mettent leurs vertus 
en mettant leurs gants blancs;’* an oligarchy which, to preserve its 
dignities and its sinecures, ravages Europe, preys on Ireland, and holds 
in the mob by high words of virtue, Christianity, and liberty: there 
was truth in all these invectives.* It is only thirty years since the 
ascendency of the middle class has diminished the privileges and cor- 
ruptions of the great; but at that time rude words could be thrown at 
their heads. Byron said, quoting from Voltaire: | 

¢ «Ta Pudeur s’est enfuie des cceurs, et s’est refugiée sur les lévres.”... ‘* Plus 
les mceurs sont dépravées, plus les expressions deviennent mesurées ; on croit 
regagner en langage ce qu’on a perdu en vertu.” This is the real fact, as applicable 
to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English genera- 
tion ; and it is the only answer they deserve. . . . Cant is the crying sin of this 
double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers.’ ® 





1 Byron’s Works, xvii. ; Don Juan, c. 11, st. lxvii. 

2 Ibid. iii. 804 ; Journal, Dec. 17, 1813. 3 Alfred de Musset. 

4 See his terrible satirical poem, The Vision of Judgment, against Southey, 
George Iv., and official pomp. 

5 Byron’s Works, xvi. 181; Preface to Don Juan, cantos vi. vil. and viii. 








LORD BYRON. 301 


And then he wrote his masterpiece, Don Juan.’ | 

All here was new, form and foundation; for he had entered into 
a new world. The Englishman, the Northman, transplanted amongst 
southern manners and into Italian life, had become imbued with a new 
sap, which made him bear new fruit. He had been induced to read? 
the rather free satires of Buratti, and the still more voluptuous sonnets 
of Baffo. He lived in the happy Venetian society, still exempt from 
political animosities, where care seemed a folly, where life was looked 
upon as a carnival, pleasure ran through the streets, not timid and 
hypocritical, but loosely arrayed and commended. He had amused 
himself here, hotly at first, more than sufficient, and even more than too 
much, almost with the effect of killing himself; but after vulgar gal- 
lantries, having entered upon a genuine love, he had become a cavalier’ 
servente, after the fashion of the land, with the consent of the family, 
offering his arm, carrying a shawl, a little awkwardly at first, and won- 
deringly, but on the whole happier than he had ever been, and fanned 
by a warm breath of pleasure and abandon. He had seen the overthrow 
of all English morality, conjugal infidelity established as a rule, amor- 
ous fidelity raised to a duty: 

‘There is no convincing a woman here that she is in the smallest degree devi- 
ating from the rule of right or the fitness of things in having an amoroso.? . . . 
Love (the sentiment of love) is not merely an excuse for it, but makes it an actual 
virtue, provided it is disinterested, and not a caprice, and is confined to one ob- 
ject.’ * 

A little later he translated the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, to show 

‘What was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to a church- 
man on the score of religion, and to silence those buffoons who accuse me of 
attacking the Liturgy.’® 
He rejoiced in this liberty and this ease, and resolved never to fall 
again under the pedantic inquisition, which in his country had con- 
demned and damned him past forgiveness. He wrote his Beppo like an 
improvisatore, with a charming freedom, a flowing and fantastic light- 
ness of mood, and contrasted in it the recklessness and happiness of 
Italy with the prejudices and repulsiveness of England: 

‘I like . . . to see the Sun set, sure he’ll rise to-morrow, 
Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as 
A drunken man’s dead eye in maudlin sorrow, 
But with all Heaven t’ himself ; that day will break as 
Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow 
That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers 
Where reeking London’s smoky caldron simmers. 





1 Don Juan is a satire on the abuses in the present state of society, and not a 
eulogy of vice. ; 

* Stendhal, Mémoires sur Lord Byron. 

* Byron’s Works, iii. 333 ; Letter to Murray, Venice, Jan. 2, 1817. 

* Ibid. iii. 363 ; Letter to Moore, Venice, March 25, 1817. 

° Ibid. iv. 279 ; Letter to Murray, Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1820. 


302 - MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, 

Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, 

Which sounds as if it should be writ on satin, 

With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, 

And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, 

That not a single accent seems uncouth, 

Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, 
. Which we’re obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all. 


I like the women too (forgive my folly), 

From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze, 
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley 
Of rays that say a thousand things at once, 

To the high dama’s brow, more melancholy, 
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance, 
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, 
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.’ ! 


With other manners there was here another morality ; there is one for 
every age, race, and sky—I mean that the ideal model varies with the 
circumstances which fashion it. In England the severity of the cli- 
mate, the warlike energy of the race, and the liberty of the institutions 
prescribe an active life, strict manners, Puritan religion, the mar- 
riage bond, the sentiment of duty and self-command. In Italy the 
beauty of the climate, the innate sense of the beautiful, and the despot- 
ism of the government induced a leisurely life, relaxed manners, 
imaginative religion, the culture of the arts, and the study of happiness. 
Each model has its beauties and its blots,—the epicurean artist like the 
political moralist ;* each shows by its greatnesses the littlenesses of the 
other, and, to set in relief the disadvantages of the second, Lord Byron 
had only to set in relief the seductions of the first. 

Thereupon he went in search of a hero, and did not find one, which, 
in this age of heroes, is ‘an uncommon want.’ For lack of a better he 
chose ‘our ancient friend Don Juan,’—a scandalous choice: what an 
outcry the English moralists will make! But, to cap the horror, this 
Don Juan is not wicked, selfish, odious, like his fellows; he does not 
seduce, he is no corrupter. When the occasion rises, he lets himself 
drift; he has a heart and senses, and, under a beautiful sun, all this 
feels itself drawn out: at sixteen a youth cannot help himself, nor at 
twenty, nor perhaps at thirty. Lay it to the charge of human nature, 
my dear moralists ; it is net I who made it as itis. If you will grumble, 
address yourselves higher: here we are painters, not makers of human 
puppets, and we do not answer for the structure of our dancing-dolls. 
Look, then, at our Juan as he goes along ; he goes about in many places, 
and in all he is young; we will not strike him with thunder, therefore ; 





1 Byron’s Works, xi. ; Beppo, c. xliii.—xlv. 121. 

2 See Stendhal, Vie de Giacomo Rossini, and Stanley’s Life of D’Arnold. The 
contrast is complete. See also in Corinne, where this opposition is very clearly 
grasped. 





CHAP. II.] LORD BYRON. | 303 


that fashion is past: the green devils and their capers only come on 
the stage in the last act of Mozart. And, moreover, Juan is so amiable ! 
After all, what has he done that others don’t do? If he has been a 
lover of Catherine m., he only followed the lead of the diplomatic corps 
and the whole Russian army. Let him sow his wild oats; the good 
grain will spring up in its time. Once in England, he will behave him- 
self decently. I confess that he may even there, when provoked, go a 
gleaning in the conjugal gardens of the aristocracy ; but in the end he 
will settle, go and pronounce moral speeches in Parliament, become a 
member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. If you wish ab- 
solutely to have him punished, we will make him end in hell, or in an 
unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest. The 
Spanish tradition says hell; but it probably is only an allegory of the 
other state.’ 

At all events, married or damned, the good folk at the end of the 
piece will have the pleasure of knowing that he is burning all alive. 

Is it not a singular apology? Would it not aggravate the fault? 
Wait; you know not yet the whole venom of the book: together with 
Juan there are Donna Julia, Haidee, Gulbeyaz, Dudu, and the rest. 
It is here the diabolical poet digs in his sharpest claw, and he takes care 
to dig it into our foibles. What will the clergymen and white-chokered 
: reviewers say? For, in short, there is no preventing it: we must read, 
in spite of ourselves. Twice or three times following we meet here with 
happiness ; and when I say happiness, I mean profound and complete 
happiness—not mere voluptuousness, not obscene gaiety: we are miles 
away from the pretty rascalities of Dorat, and the unbridled licence of 
Rochester. Beauty is here, southern beauty, sparkling and harmoni- 
ous, spread over everything, over the luminous sky, the calm scenery, 
corporal nudity, freshness of heart. Is there a thing it does not deify ? 
All sentiments are exalted under his hands. What was gross becomes 
noble ; even in the nocturnal adventure in the seraglio, which seems 
worthy of Faublas, poetry embellishes licentiousness. The girls are 
lying in the large silent apartment, like precious flowers brought from 
all climates into a conservatory : 

‘ One with her flush’d cheek laid on her white arm, 
And raven ringlets gather’d in dark crowd 
Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm;... 
One with her auburn tresses lightly bound, 
And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit 
Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath, 
And lips apart, which show’d the pearls beneath. . . . 
A fourth as marble, statue-like and still, 
Lay in a breathless, hush’d, and stony sleep ; 
White, cold, and pure. . . a carved lady on a monument.’ ? 











1 Byron’s Works, v. 127 ; Letter to Mr. Murray, Ravenna, Feb. 16, 1821. 
2 Ibid. xvi. ; Don Juan, c. vi. st. xvi. lxviii. 


ve 


304 ‘MODERN LIFE. _ [Book rv. 


However, ‘the fading lamps waned dim and blue;’ Dudu is asleep, 
the innocent girl; and if she has cast a glance on her glass, 


‘ Twas like the fawn, which, in the lake display’d, 
Beholds her own shy, shadowy image pass, 
When first she starts, and then returns to peep, 
Admiring this new native of the deep.’} 


What will become now of Puritan prudery? Can the propricties — 


prevent beauty from being beautiful? Will you condemn a Titian 
for its nudity ? What gives a value to human life, and a nobility to 
human nature, if not the power of attaining delicious and sublime 
emotions? You have just had one—one worthy of a painter; is it 


not worth that of an alderman? Will you refuse to acknowledge 


the divine because it appears in art and enjoyment, and not only 
in conscience and action? There is a world beside yours, and a 
civilisation beside yours; your rules are narrow, and your pedantry 
pedantic; the human plant can be otherwise developed than in your 
compartments and under your snows, and the fruits it will then bear 
will not be less precious. You must confess it, since you relish them 
when they are offered you. Who has read the love of Haidee, and 


has had any other thought than to envy and pity her? She is a 


wild child who has picked up Juan—another child cast ashore senseless 
by the waves. She has preserved him, nursed him like a mother, and 
now she loves him: who can blame her for loving him? Who, in 
presence of the splendid nature which smiles on and protects them, 
can imagine for them anything else than the all-powerful feeling which 
unites them : 


* It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, 
With cliffs above, and a broad sandy shore, 
Guarded by shoals and rocks as by an host, ... 
And rarely ceased the haughty billow’s roar, 
Save on the dead long summer days, which make 
The outstretch’d ocean glitter like a lake. ... 


And all was stillness, save the sea-bird’s cry, 
And dolphin’s leap, and little billow crost 
By some low rock or shelve, that made it fret 
Against the boundary it scarcely wet. . 


And thus they wander’d forth, and hand in hand, 
Over the shining pebbles and the shells, 

Glided along the smooth and harden’d sand, 

And in the worn and wild receptacles 

Work’d by the storms, yet work’d as it were plann’d, 
In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells, 

They turn’d to rest ; and, each clasp’d by an arm, 
Yielded to the deep twilight’s purple charm. 








1 Byron’s Works, Don Juan, ¢. vi. st. lx, 


i 


a o 


9 PR eee 


Be cask 


ee Re 





} 
' 
: 


— 





CHAP. IL] ‘LORD BYRON. | 305 


They look’d up to the sky whose floating glow 
Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright ; 

They gazed upon the glittering sea below, 

Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight ; 
They heard the wave’s splash, and the wind so low, 
And saw each other’s dark eyes darting light 

Into each other—and, beholding this, 

Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss. . .. 


They were alone, but not alone as they 

Who shut in chambers think it loneliness ; 

The silent ocean, and the starlight bay 

The twilight glow, which momently grew less, 
The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay 
Around them, made them to each other press, 
As if there were no life beneath the sky 

Save theirs, and that their life could never die.’? 


An excellent opportunity to introduce here your formularies and 
catechisms : 


* Haidée spoke not of scruples, ask’d no vows, 
Nor offer’d any... 
She was all which pure ignorance allows, 
And flew to her young mate like a young bird.’ ? 


Nature suddenly expands, for she is ripe, like a bud bursting into 
bloom, nature in her fulness, instinct, and heart: 


* Alas! they were so young, so beautiful, 
So lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour 
Was that in which the heart is always full, 
“And, having o’er itself no further power, 
Prompts deeds eternity can not annul.’?... 


O admirable moralists, you stand before these two flowers like patented 
gardeners, holding in your hands the model of bloom sanctioned by 
your society of horticulture, proving that the model has not been 
followed, and deciding that the two weeds must be cast into the fire, 
which you keep burning to consume irregular growths, Well judged: 
you know your art. 

Beyond British cant, there is universal hypocrisy ; beyond English 
pedantry, Byron wars against human roguery. Here is the general 
aim of the poem, and to this his character and genius tended. His 
great and gloomy dreams of juvenile imagination have vanished; ex- 
perience has come ; he knows man now; and what is man, once known ? 
Does the sublime abound in him? Do you think that the great senti- 
ments—those of Childe Harold, for instance—are the ordinary course of 





1 Byron’s Works, xv. ; Don Juan, ¢. ii. st. clxxvii.-clxxxviii, 
2 Ibid. st. exe. 3 Ibid. c. ii. st. excii. 
VOL. II. U 


306 ‘MODERN LIFE. _ [BooK Iv. 


his life?? The truth is, that he employs most of his time in sleeping, 
dining, yawning, working like a horse, amusing himself like an ape. 
According to Byron, he is an animal; except for a few minutes, his 
nerves, his blood, his instincts lead him. Routine works over it all, 
necessity whips him on, the animal advances. As the animal is proud, 
and moreover imaginative, it pretends to be marching for its own 
pleasure, that there is no whip, that at all events this whip rarely 


touches its flanks, that at least his stoic back can make as if it did not 


feel it. It is harnessed in imagination with the most splendid trap- 
pings, and thus struts on with measured steps, fancying that it carries 
relics and treads on carpets and flowers, whilst in reality it tramples in 
the mud, and carries with it the stains and stinks of every dunghill. 
What a pastime to touch its mangy back, to set before its eyes the 
sacks full of flour which load it, and the goad which makes it go!? 
What a pretty farce! It is the eternal farce; and not a sentiment 
thereof but provides him with an act: love in the first place. Certainly 
Donna Julia is very lovable, and Byron loves her; but she comes out 
of his hands, as rumpled as any other. She has virtue, of course; and 
better, she desires to have it. She plies herself, in connection with 
Don Juan, with the finest arguments; a fine thing are arguments, 
and how proper they are to check passion! Nothing can be more 


solid than a firm purpose, propped up by logic, resting on the fear of — 


the world, the thought of God, the recollection of duty; nothing 
can prevail against it, except a déte-d-téte in June, on a moonlight 
evening. At last the deed is done, and the poor timid lady is sur- 
prised by her outraged husband; in what a situation! There anent 
read the book. Of course she will be speechless, ashamed and full of 
tears, and the moral reader duly reckons on her remorse. My dear 
reader, you have not reckoned on impulse and nerves. ‘To-morrow 
she will feel shame; the business is now to overwhelm the husband, 
to deafen him, to confound him, to save Juan, to save herself, to fight. 


The war having begun, it is waged with all kinds of weapons, firstly — 


with audacity and insults. The single idea, the present need, absorbs 
all others: it is in this that woman is awoman. This Julia cries lustily. 
It is a regular storm: hard words and recriminations, mockery and 
defiance, fainting and tears. In a quarter of an hour she has gained 
twenty years’ experience. You did not know, nor she either, what an 
actress can emerge, all on a sudden, unforeseen, out of a simple woman. 
Do you know what can emerge from yourself? You think yourself 
rational, human; I admit it for to-day; you have dined, and you are 





1 Byron says (v., Oct. 12, 1820), ‘ Don Juan is too true, and would, I suspect, 
live longer than Childe Harold. The women hate many things which strip off the 
tinsel of sentiment.’ 

2 Don Juan, c. vii. st. 2. I hope it is no crime to laugh at all things. ForI 
wish to know what, after all, are all things—but a show ? 








Yee 
et 


CHAP. II.] LORD BYRON. 307 


at ease in a pleasant room. Your machine does its duty without dis- 
order, because the wheels are oiled and well regulated; but place it in 
a shipwreck, a battle, let the failing or the plethora of blood for an 
instant derange the chief pieces, and we shall see you howling or 
drivelling like a madman or an idiot. Civilisation, education, reason, 
health, cloak us in their smooth and polished cases; let us tear them 
away one by one, or all together, and we laugh to see the brute, who 
is lying at the bottom. Here is our friend Juan reading Julia’s last 
letter, and swearing in a transport never to forget the beautiful eyes 
which he caused to weep so much. Was ever feeling more tender 
or sincere? But unfortunately Juan is at sea, and sickness sets in. 
He cries out: 


* Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, 
Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair! ... 
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew sea-sick.) .. . 
Sooner shall heaven kiss earth—(here he fell sicker.) 
Oh Julia! what is every other woe ? 
(For God’s sake let me have a glass of liquor ; 
Pedro, Battista, help me down below). 
Julia, my love !—(You rascal, Pedro, quicker)— 
Oh, Julia !—(this curst vessel pitches so) 
Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching ! 
(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.).. . 


Love’s a capricious power. . . 

Against all noble maladies he’s bold, 

But vulgar illnesses don’t like to meet; ... 
Shrinks from the application of hot towels, 
And purgatives are dangerous to his reign, 
Sea-sickness death.”4... 


Many other things cause the death of Love: 


‘Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign 
Of human frailty, folly, also crime, 
That love and marriage rarely ean combine, 
Although they both are born in the same clime; 
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine— 
A sad, sour, sober beverage.? .. . 
An honest gentleman, at his return, 
May not have the good fortune of Ulysses;.. . 
The odds are that he finds a handsome urn 
To his memory—and two or three young misses 
Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches, — 
And that his Argus bites him by—the breeches.’ ? 


These are the words of a sceptic, even of a cynic, Sceptic and cynic, 
it is in this he ends. Sceptic through misanthropy, cynic through 
bravado, a sad and combative humour always impels him; southern 





1 Byron’s Works, xv.; Don Juan, c. ii. st. xix.-xxiii. 
2 Ibid. ¢. iii. st. v. 3 bid. c. iii, st. xxiii, 


308 MODERN LIFE. 7 [BOOK IV. 


voluptuousness has not conquered him; he is only an epicurean through 
contradiction and for a moment: 
‘ Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, 
Sermons and soda-water the day after. 
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk ; 
The best of life is but intoxication.’ } 


You see clearly that he is always the same, in excess and unhappy, bent 
on destroying himself. His Don Juan, also, is a debauchery; in it he 
diverts himself outrageously at the expense of all respectable things, 
as a bullinachina shop. He is always violent, and often ferocious ; 
black imagination brings into his stories horrors leisurely enjoyed, 
—despair and famine of shipwrecked men, and the emaciation of the 
raging skeletons feeding on each other. He laughs at it horribly, like 
Swift; more, he plays the buffoon over it, like Voltaire: 
‘ And next they thought upon the master’s mate, | 
As fattest ; but he saved himself, because, 
Besides being much averse from such a fate, 
There were some other reasons: the first was, 
He had been rather indisposed of late ; 
And that which chiefly proved his saving clause, 
Was a small present made to him at Cadiz, 
By general subscription of the ladies.’ 


With his specimens in hand,’® Byron follows with a surgeon’s exactness 
all the stages of death, satiation, rage, madness, howling, exhaustion, 
stupor; he wishes to touch and exhibit the naked and ascertained 
truth, the last grotesque and hideous element of humanity. Look again 
at the assault on Ismail,—the grape-shot and the bayonet, the street 
massacres, the corpses used as fascines, and the thirty-eight thousand 
slaughtered Turks. There is blood enough to satiate a tiger, and this 
blood flows amidst an accompaniment of jests; it is in order to rail at 
war, and the butcheries dignified with the name of exploits. In this 
pitiless and universal demolition of all human vanities, what subsists ? 
What do we know except that life is ‘a scene of all-confess’d inanity,’ 
and that men are, 


‘ Dogs, or men !—for I flatter you in saying 
That ye are dogs—your betters far—ye may 
Read, or.read not, what I am now essaying 
To show ye what ye are in every way ?’* . 


What does he find in science but deficiencies, and in religion but 
mummeries?° Does he so much as preserve poetry? Of the divine 





1 Byron’s Works, xv. ; Don Juan, c. ii. st. clxxviii., clxxix. 
2 Ibid. ¢. ii. st. Ixxxi. 

3 Byron had before him a dozen authentic descriptions. 

4 Byron’s Works, xvi. ; Don Juan, ¢. vii. st. 7. 

® See his Vision of Judgment. 











CHAP. II.] LORD BYRON. 309 


mantle, the last garment which a poet respects, he makes a rag to 
stamp upon, to wring, to make holes in, out of sheer wantonness. At 
the most touching moment of Haidée’s love, he vents a buffoonery. 
He concludes an ode with caricatures. He is Faust in the first verse, 
and Mephistopheles in the second. He employs, in the midst of tender- 
ness or of murder, penny-print witticisms, trivialities, gossip, with a 
pamphleteer’s vilification and a buffoon’s whimsicalities. He lays bare 
the poetic method, asks himself where he has got to, counts the stanzas 
already done, jokes the Muse, Pegasus, and the whole epic stud, as 
though he wouldn’t give twopence for them. Again, what remains? 
Himself, he alone, standing amidst all this ruin. It is he who speaks 
here; his characters are but screens; half the time even he pushes 
them aside, to occupy the stage. He lavishes upon us his opinions, 
recollections, angers, tastes; his poem is a conversation, a confidence, 
with the ups and downs, the rudeness and freedom of a conversation 
and a confidence, almost like the olographic journal, in which, by night, 
at his writing-table, he opened his heart and discharged his feelings. 
Never was seen in such a clear glass the birth of a lively thought, 
the tumult of a great genius, the inner life of a genuine poet, always 
impassioned, inexhaustibly fertile and creative, in whom suddenly, 
successively, finished and adorned, bloomed all human emotions and 
ideas,—sad, gay, lofty, low, hustling one another, mutually impeded like 
swarms of insects who go humming and feeding on flowers and in the 
mud. He may say what he will; willingly or unwillingly we listen to 
him ; let him leap from sublime to burlesque, we leap then with him. 
He has so much wit, so fresh a wit, so sudden, so biting, such a pro- 
digality of knowledge, ideas, images picked up from the four corners of 
the horizon, in heaps and masses, that we are captivated, transported 
beyond limits; we cannot dream of resisting. Too vigorous, and hence 
unbridled,—that is the word which ever recurs when we speak of Byron ; 
too vigorous against others and himself, and so unbridled, that after 
spending his life in braving the world, and his poetry in depicting re- 
volt, he can only find the fulfilment of his talent and the satisfaction of 
his heart, in a poem in arms against all human and poetic conventions. 
To live so, aman must be great, but he must also become deranged. 
There is a derangement of heart and mind in the style of Don Juan, as 
in Swift. When a man jests amidst his tears, it is because he has a 
poisoned imagination. This kind of laughter is a spasm, and you see 
in one man a hardening of the heart, or madness; in another, excite- 
ment or disgust. Byron was exhausted, at least the poet was ex- 
hausted in him. The last cantos of Don Juan drag: the gaiety became 
forced, the escapades became digressions ; the reader began to be bored. 
A new kind of poetry, which he had attempted, had given way in his 
hands: in the drama he only attained to powerful declamation, his 
characters had no life; when he forsook poetry, poetry forsook him ; 
he went to Greece in search of action, and only found death. 


310 MODERN LIFE. | [BOOK IV. 


VI. 


So lived and so ended this unhappy great man; the malady of the 
age had no more distinguished prey. Around him, like a hecatomb, 
lie the rest, wounded also by the greatness of their faculties and their 
immoderate desires,—some extinguished in stupor or drunkenness, 
others worn out by pleasure or work; these driven to madness or 
suicide ; those beaten down by impotence, or lying on a sick-bed; all 
agitated by their too acute or aching nerves; the strongest carrying 
their bleeding wound to old age, the happiest having suffered as much 
as the rest, and preserving their scars, though healed. The concert 
of their lamentations has filled their age, and we stood around them, 
hearing in our hearts the low echo of their cries. We were sad like 
them, and like them inclined to revolt. The institution of democracy 
excited our ambitions without satisfying them; the proclamation of 
philosophy kindled our curiosity without contenting it. In this wide- 
open career, the plebeian suffered for his mediocrity, and the sceptic 
for his doubt. The plebeian, like the sceptic, attacked by a precocious 
melancholy, and withered by a premature experience, delivered his 
sympathies and his conduct to the poets, who declared happiness im- 
possible, truth unattainable, society ill-arranged, man abortive or 


marred. From this unison of voices an idea sprang, the centre of the 


literature, the arts, the religion of the age,—that there is, namely, a 
monstrous disproportion between the different parts of our social struc- 
ture, and that human destiny is vitiated by this disagreement. 

What advice have they given us for its remedy? They were great; 
were they wise? ‘Let deep and strong sensations rain upon you; if 
your machine breaks, so much the worse!’ ‘Cultivate your garden, 
bury yourself in a little circle, re-enter the flock, be a beast of burden,’ 
‘Turn believer again, take holy water, abandon your mind to dogmas, 
and your conduct to handbooks.’ ‘Make your way; aspire to power, 
honours, wealth.’ Such are the various replies of artists and citizens, 
Christians, and men of the world. Are they replies? And what do 
they propose but to satiate one’s self, to become beasts, to turn out of the 
way, to forget.? There is another and a deeper answer, which Goethe 
was the first to give, which we begin to conceive, in which issue all 
the labour and experience of the age, and which may perhaps be the 
subject-matter of future literature: ‘Try to understand yourself, and 
things in general.’ A strange reply, seeming barely new, whose scope 
we shall only hereafter discover. For a long time yet men will feel 
their sympathies thrill at the sound of the sobs of their great poets. 
For a long time they will rage against a destiny which opens to their 
aspirations the career of limitless space, to shatter them, within two 
steps of the goal, against a wretched post which they had not seen. 
For a long time they will bear like fetters the necessities which they 
must embrace as laws, Our generation, like the preceding, has been 





* 
+. 





CHAP. II. ] LORD BYRON. 311 


tainted by the malady of the age, and will never more than half be | 
quit of it. We shall arrive at truth, not at calm. All we can heal at 

present is our intellect; we have no hold upon our sentiments. But 
we have a right to conceive for others the hopes which we no longer 
entertain for ourselves, and to prepare for our descendants the happi- 
ness which we shall never enjoy. Brought up in a more wholesome 
air, they mayhap will have a wholesomer heart. The reformation of 
ideas ends by reforming the rest, and the light of the mind produces 
serenity of heart. Hitherto, in our judgments on men, we have taken 
for our masters the oracles and poets, and like them we have received 
for certain truths the noble dreams of our imagination and the im- 
perious suggestions of our heart. We have bound ourselves to the 
partiality of religious divinations, and the inexactness of literary divi- 
nations, and we have shaped our doctrines by our instincts and our 
vexations. Science at last approaches, and approaches man; it has 
gone beyond the visible and palpable world of stars, stones, plants, 
amongst which man disdainfully confined her. It reaches the heart, 
provided with exact and penetrating implements, whose justness has 
been proved, and their reach measured by three hundred years of 
experience. Thought, with its development and rank, its structure 
and relations, its deep material roots, its infinite growth through his- 
tory, its lofty bloom at the summit of things, becomes the object of 
science,—an object which, sixty years ago, it foresaw in Germany, and 
which, slowly and surely probed, by the same methods as the physical 
world, will be transformed before our eyes, as the physical world has 
been transformed. It is already being transformed, and we have left 
behind us the point of view of Byron and our poets. No, man is not 
an abortion or a monster; no, the business of poetry is not to revolt 
or defame him. He is in his place, and completes a chain. Let us 
watch him grow and increase, and we shall cease to rail at or curse 
him. He, like everything else, is a product, and as such it is right 
he should be what he is. His innate imperfection is in order, like the 
constant abortion of a stamen in a plant, like the fundamental irregu- 
larity of four facets in a crystal. What we took for a deformity, is a 
form ; what seemed to us the contradiction, is the accomplishment of 
a law. Human reason and virtue have as their elements animal in- 
stincts and images, as living forms have for theirs physical laws, as 
organic matters have for theirs mineral substances. What wonder if 
virtue or reason, like living form or organic matter, sometimes fails 
or decomposes, since like them, and like every superior and complex 
existence, they have for support and control inferior and simple forces, 
which, according to circumstances, now maintain it by their harmony, 
now mar it by their discord? What wonder if the elements of ex- 
istence, like those of quantity, receive, from their very nature, the 
irresistible laws which constrain and reduce them to a certain species 
and order of formation? Who will rise up against geometry? Who, 


‘S * et ae SRR) ee ae OS Cn ee SP Se Py Sie eerie 
SE A ET, Se ie RESO FRC ey PeahL Bon ve saree a 


312 . MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


especially, will rise up against a living geometry? Who will not, on 
the other hand, feel moved with admiration at the sight of those grand 
powers which, situated at the heart of things, incessantly urge the blood 
through the limbs of the old world, disperse the showers in the infinite 
network of arteries, and spread over the whole surface the eternal 
flower of youth and beauty ? Who, in short, will not feel himself en- 
nobled, when he finds that this pile of laws results in a regular series of 
forms, that matter has thought for its goal, and that this ideal from 
which, through so many errors, all the aspirations of men depend, is also 
the centre whereto converge, through so many obstacles, all the forces of 
the universe? In this employment of science, and in this conception 
of things, there is a new art, a new morality, a new polity, a new 
religion, and it is in the present time our task to discover them, 








THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 313 


CHAPTER III. 
The Past and the Present. 


I. The past—The Saxon invasion—How it established the race and determined 
the character—The Norman Conquest—How it modified the character and 
established the Constitution—The Renaissance—How it manifested the 
national mind—The Reformation—How it fixed the ideal—The Restora- 
tion—How it imported classical culture and diverted the national mind 
—The Revolution—How it developed classical culture and restored the 
national mind—The modern age—How European ideas widened the 
national mould. 

II. The present—Concordances of observation and history—Sky—Soil—Pro- 
ducts— Man— Commerce— Industry — Agriculture— Society — Family— 
Arts— Philosophy — Religion— What forces have produced the present 
civilisation, and are working out the future civilisation. 


§ 1. 
¥ 


AVING reached the limits of this long review, we can now 
embrace in one prospect the aggregate of English civilisation : 


everything is connected there: a few powers and a few primitive cir- 


cumstances have produced the rest, and we have only to pursue their 
continuous action in order to comprehend the nation and its history, its 
past and its present. At the beginning, and furthest removed in the 
region of causes, comes the race. A whole people, Angles and Saxons, 
destroyed, hunted out, or enslaved the old inhabitants, wiped out the 
Roman culture, settled themselves alone and pure, and, amongst the 
later Danish ravagers, only encountered a new reinforcement of the 
same blood. ‘This is the primitive stock: of its substance and innate 
properties is to spring almost the whole future growth. At this time, 
and as they then were, alone in their island, the Angles and Saxons 
attained a development such as it was, defaced, brutal, and yet solid. 
They ate and drank, built and cleared ground, and, in particular, multi- 


plied : ‘the scattered tribes who crossed the sea in leather boats, became 


a strong compact nation,—three hundred thousand families, rich, with 
store of cattle, abundantly provided with corporal subsistence, partly 
at rest in the security of social life, with a king, respected and frequent 


eer © Z re ey Fat rot, a a 
* . @ < . m 


314 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


assemblies, good judicial customs: ‘here, amidst the fire and vehemence 
of barbarian temperament, the old Germanic fidelity held men in 
unison, whilst the old Germanic independence held them upright. In 
all else they barely advanced. A few fragmentary songs, an epic in 
which still is faintly heard the warlike exaltation of ancient barbarism, 
gloomy hymns, a harsh and furious poetry, sometimes sublime and 
always rude,—this is all that remains of them. In six centuries they 
had scarcely gone one step beyond the manners and sentiments of their 
uncivilised Germany: Christianity, which obtained a hold on them by 
the greatness of its biblical tragedies and the troubled sadness of its 
aspirations, did not bring to them the Latin civilisation: this remained 
at the door, hardly accepted by a few great men, deformed, when it 
did enter, by the disproportion of the Roman and Saxon genius—always 
altered and reduced; so much so, that for the men of the Continent 
these islanders were but illiterate dullards, drunkards, and gluttons; at 
all events, savage and slow by mood and nature, rebellious against 
culture, and sluggish in development. 

The empire of this world belongs to force. These people were con- 
quered for ever and permanently,—conquered by Normans, that is, by 
Frenchmen more clever, more quickly cultivated and organised than 
they. This is the great event which was to complete their character, 
decide their history, and impress upon character and history the poli- 
tical and practical spirit which separates them from other German 
nations. Oppressed, constrained in the stiff net of Norman organisa- 
tion, although they were conquered, they were not destroyed; they 
were on their own soil, each with his friends and in his tithings ; they 
formed a body; they were yet twenty times more numerous than their 
conquerors. ‘Their situation and their necessities will create their 
habits and their aptitudes. They will endure, protest, struggle, resist 
together and unanimously ; strive to-day, to-morrow, daily, not to be 
slain or plundered, to restore their old laws, to obtain or extort guaran- 
tees; and they will gradually acquire patience, judgment, all the 
faculties and inclinations by which liberties are maintained and states 
are founded. Bya singular good fortune, the Norman lords assist them 
in this; for the king has secured to himself so much, and is found so 
formidable, that, in order to repress the great pillager, the lesser ones 
are forced to make use of their Saxon subjects, to ally themselves with 
them, to give them a share in their charters, to become their repre- 
sentatives, to admit them into Parliament, to leave them to labour 
freely, to grow rich, to acquire pride, force authority, to interfere with 
themselves in public affairs. Thus, then, gradually the English nation, 
buried by the Conquest under ground, as if with a sledge-hammer, 
extricates and raises itself ; five hundred years and more being occupied 
in this re-elevation. But, during all this time, leisure failed for fine 
and lofty culture: it was needful to live and defend themselves, to 
dig the ground, spin wool, bend the bow, attend meetings, juries, to 





CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 315 


contribute and argue for common interests : the important and respected 
man is he who knows well how to fight and get much gain. It was the 
energetic and warlike manners which were developed, the active and 
positive spirit which predominated ; they left learning and elegance to 
the Gallicised nobles of the court. When the valiant Saxon townsfolk 
quitted bow and plough, it was to feast copiously, or to sing the ballad 
of ‘Robin Hood.’ They lived and acted ; they did not reflect or write ; 
‘their national literature was reduced to fragments and rudiments, 
harpers’ songs, tavern epics, a religious poem, a few books on religious 
reformation. At the same time Norman literature faded; separated 
from the stem, and on a foreign soil, it languished in imitations ; 
only one great poet, almost French in mind, quite French in style, 
appeared, and, after him, as before him, spread an incurable drivel of 
words. For the second time, a civilisation of five centuries was found 
sterile of great ideas and works; this still more so than its neighbours, 
and for a twofold reason,—because to the universal impotence of the 
Middle-age was added the impoverishment of the Conquest, and because 
of the two component literatures, one, transplanted, became abortive, 
and the other, mutilated, ceased to expand. 


II. 


But amongst so many rough draughts and attempts, a character 
was formed, and the rest was to spring from it. The barbarous age 
had established on the soil a German race, phlegmatic and grave, 
capable of spiritual emotions and moral discipline. The feudal age 
had imposed on this race habits of resistance and association, political 
and utilitarian prejudices. Fancy a German from Hamburg or Bre- 
men confined for five hundred years in the iron corslet of William 
the Conqueror: these two natures, one innate, the other acquired, 
constitute all the springs of his conduct. So it was in other nations. 
Like runners drawn up in line at the start of the race, we see at the 
epoch of the Renaissance the five great peoples of Europe let loose, 
though we are unable at first to foresee anything of their career. At 
first sight it seems as if accidents or circumstances will govern their 
pace, their fall, and their success. It is not so: from them alone their 
history depends: each will be the artisan of its fortune; chance has 
no influence over events so vast; and it is national inclinations and 
faculties which, overturning or raising obstacles, will lead them, ac- 
cording to their fate, each one to its goal,—some to the extreme 
of decadence, others to the height of prosperity. After all, man is 
ever his own master and his own slave. At the outset of every age 
he in a certain fashion és: his body, heart, mind have a distinct 
structure and disposition; and from this enduring arrangement, which 
all preceding centuries have contributed to consolidate or to construct, 
spring permanent desires or aptitudes, by which he determines and 
acts, Thus is formed in him the ideal model, which, obscure or dis- 





316 oy MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 


tinct, complete or rough-hewn, will thenceforth float before his eyes, 
rally all his aspirations, efforts, forces, and will occupy him for centuries 
in one aim, until at length, renewed by impotence or success, he con- 
ceives a new end, and assumes a new energy. The Catholic and exalted 
Spaniard figures life like the Crusaders, lovers, knights, and, abandon- 
ing labour, liberty, and science, casts himself, at the head of his in- 
quisition and his king, into fanatical war, romanesque slothfulness, 
superstitious and impassioned obedience, voluntary and _ irresistible 
ignorance. The theological and feudal German settles in his district 
docilely and faithfully under his petty chiefs, through natural patience 
and hereditary loyalty, engrossed by his wife and household, content 
to have conquered religious liberty, clogged by the dulness of his tem- 
perament in gross physical existence, and in sluggish respect for estab- 
lished order. The Italian, the most richly gifted and precocious of 
all, but, of all, the most incapable of voluntary discipline and moral 
austerity, turns towards the fine arts and voluptuousness, declines, 
deteriorates beneath foreign dominion, takes life at its easiest, for- 
getting to think, and satisfied to enjoy. The sociable and levelling 
Frenchman rallies round his king, who secures for him public peace, 
external glory, the splendid display of a sumptuous court, a regular 
administration, a uniform discipline, European predominance, and uni- 
versal literature. So, if you regard the Englishman in the sixteenth 
century, you will find in him the inclinations and the powers which 
for three centuries are to govern his culture and shape his constitution. 
In this European expansion of natural existence and pagan literature 
we find at first in Shakspeare, Jonson, and the tragic poets, in Spenser, 
Sidney, and the lyric poets, the national features, all with incomparable 
depth and splendcur, and such as race and history have impressed and 
implanted on them for a thousand years. Not in vain did invasion 
settle here so serious a race, capable of reflection. Not in vain the 
Conquest turned this race toward warlike life and practical preoccupa- 
tions. From the first rise of original invention, its work displays the 
tragic energy, the intense and shapeless passion, the disdain of regu- 


larity, the knowledge of the real, the sentiment of inner things, the 


natural melancholy, the anxious divination of the obscure beyond,—all 
the instincts which, forcing man upon himself, and concentrating him 
within himself, prepare him for Protestantism and combat. What is 
this Protestantism which is being founded? What is this ideal model 
which it presents; and what original conception is to furnish to this 
people its permanent and dominant poem? The harshest and most 





1 See the Travels of Madame d’ Aulnay in Spain, at the end of the seventeenth 
century. Nothing is more striking than this revolution, if we compare it with 
the times before Ferdinand the Catholic, namely, the reign of Henry tv., the 
great power of the nobles, and the independence of the towns. See about all this 
history, Buckle, History of Civilisation, 1867, 8 vols., ii. ch. viii. 





Seine Sy 





CHAP. III] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 317 


practical of all,—that of the Puritans, which, neglecting speculation, 
falls back upon action, binds human life in a rigid discipline, imposes on 
the soul continuous effort, prescribes to society a cloistral austerity, 
_ forbids pleasure, commands action, exacts sacrifice, and forms the 
moralist, the labourer, the citizen, Thus is it implanted, the great 
English idea—I mean the conviction that man is before all a free and 
moral personage, and that, having conceived alone in his conscience 
and before God the rule of his conduct, he must employ himself com- 
pletely in applying it within himself, beyond himself, obstinately, in- 
flexibly, by a perpetual resistance opposed to others, and a perpetual 
restraint imposed upon himself. In vain will it at first discredit ~ 
itself by its transports and its tyranny; attenuated by the trial, it will 
gradually accommodate itself to humanity, and, carried from Puritan 
fanaticism to laic morality, it will win all public sympathy, because it 
answers to all the national instincts. In vain it will vanish from high 
society, under the scorn of the Restoration, and the importation of 
French culture ; it subsists underground. For French culture did not 
come to a head: on this too alien soil it produced only sickly, coarse, 
or imperfect fruit. Fine elegance became low debauchery ; moderate 
doubt became brutal atheism; tragedy failed, and was but declama- 
tion ; comedy grew shameless, and was but a school of vice; of this 
literature, there endured only the studies of close reasoning and good 
style; it was driven from the public stage, together with the Stuarts, 
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and liberal and moral 
maxims resumed the ascendency, which they will not again lose. For, 
with ideas, events have followed their course: national inclinations 
have done their work in society as in literature; and the English in- 
stincts have transformed the constitution and politics at the same time 
as the talents and minds. These rich tithings, these valiant yeomen, 
these rude, well-armed citizens, well nourished, protected by their 
juries, wont to reckon on themselves, obstinate, combative, sensible, 
such as the English Middle-age bequeathed them to modern Eng- 
land, were able to suffer the king to display above them his temporary 
tyranny, and weigh down the nobility with the rigour of a despot, 
which the recollection of the Civil War and the danger of high treason 
justified. But Henry vi, and Elizabeth herself, must follow in great 
interests the current of public opinion: if they were strong, it was 
because they were popular; the people only supported their designs, 
and authorised their violences, because they found in them defenders of 
their religion, and protectors of their labour.t The people themselves 
immersed themselves in this religion, and, beyond the legal establish- 
ment, attained to personal belief. They grew rich by toil, and under 
the first Stuart already occupied the highest place in the nation. At 
this moment all was decided: be events what they might, they must 








1 Buckle, History of Civilisation, i. ch, vii. 


318 MODERN LIFE, ) [Book Iv. 


one day become master. Social situations create political situations ; 
legal constitutions always accommodate themselves to real things; and 
acquired preponderance infallibly results in written rights. Men so 
numerous, so active, so resolute, so capable of sufficing for themselves, 
so disposed to draw their opinions from their own reflection, and their 
subsistence from their own efforts, will end at all hazards in seizing 
the guarantees which they need. At the first onset, and in the heat 
of primitive faith, they overturn the throne, and the current which 
bears them is so strong, that, in spite of their excess and their failure, 
the Revolution is accomplished by the abolition of feudal tenures, and 
the institution of Habeas Corpus, under Charles 1.; by the universal 
restoration of the liberal and Protestant spirit, under James 11. ; by the 
establishment of the constitution, the act of toleration, the liberation 
of the press, under William mr. From that moment England had 
found her proper place; her two interior and hereditary forces—morai 
and religious instinct, practical and political aptitude—had done their 
work, and were thenceforth to build, without impediment or destruc- 
tion, on the foundation which they had laid. 


‘ Il. 


Thus was the literature of the eighteenth century born, altogether 
conservative, useful, moral, and limited. Two powers direct it, one 
European, the other English: on one side the talent of oratorical 
analysis and the habits of literary dignity, which are proper to the 
classical age; on the other, the relish of application and energy of 
precise observation, which are proper to the national mind. Hence 
that excellence and originality of political satire, parliamentary dis- 
course, solid energy, moral novels, and all the kinds of literature which 
demand an attentive good sense, a correct good style, and a talent for 
advising, convincing, or wounding others. Hence that weakness or 
impotence of speculative thought, of genuine poetry, of original drama, 
and of all the kinds which require a wide, free curiosity, or a wide, 
disinterested imagination. The English did not attain complete ele- 
gance, nor superior philosophy; they dulled the French refinements 
which they copied, and were terrified by the French boldness which 
they suggested ; they remained half cockneys and half barbarians; they 
only invented insular ideas and English ameliorations, and were con- 
firmed in their respect for their constitution and their tradition. But, 
at the same time, they were cultivated and reformed: their wealth and 
comfort increased enormously; literature and opinion became with 
them severe even to intolerance; and their long waragainst the French 
Revolution pushed to excess the rigour of their morality, at the same 
time as the invention of machinery developed a hundredfold their 
comfort and prosperity. A salutary and despotic code of approved 
maxims, established proprieties, and unassailable beliefs, which fortifies, 





+ 





CHAP. III] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 319 


strengthens, curbs, and employs man usefully and painfully, without 
permitting him even to deviate or grow weak; a minute apparatus, 
and an admirable provision of commodious inventions, associations, 
institutions, mechanisms, implements, methods, which incessantly co- 
operate to furnish body and mind with all which they need,—such 
are thenceforth the leading and special features of this people. To 
constrain themselves and to provide for themselves, to assume self- 
command and command of nature, to consider life as moralists and 
economists, like a close garment, in which people must walk becomingly, 
and like a good garment, the best to be had, to be at once respectable 
and comfortable: these two words embrace all the springs of human 
actions. Against this limited good sense, and this pedantic austerity, 
a revolt breaks out. With the universal renewal of thought and 
imagination, the deep poetic source, which had flowed in the sixteenth 
century, expands anew in the nineteenth, and a new literature springs 
to light; philosophy and history infiltrate their doctrines in the old 
establishment; the greatest poet of the time shocks it incessantly with 
his curses and sarcasms; from all sides, to this day, in science and 
letters, in practice and theory, in private and in public life, the most 
powerful minds endeavour to open a new door to the stream of con- 
tinental ideas. But they are patriots as well as innovators, conservative 
as well as revolutionary ; if they touch religion and constitution, man- - 
ners and doctrines, it is to widen, not to destroy them: England is 
made; she knows it, and they know it. Such as this country is, based 
on the whole national history and on the whole national instincts, it is 
more capable than any other people in Europe of transforming itself 
without recasting, and of devoting itself to its future without re- 
nouncing its past. 


§ 2. 
I. 


I began to perceive these ideas when I first landed in England, 
and I was singularly struck with the mutual confirmations afforded by 
observation and history; it seemed to me that the present was com- 
pleting the past, and the past explained the present. 

At first the sea troubles and strikes a man with wonder; not in 
vain is a people insular and oceanic, especially with this sea and these 
coasts; their painters, so ill endowed, perceive, in spite of all, its 
alarming and gloomy aspect; up to the eighteenth century, amidst the 
elegance of French culture, and under the joviality of Flemish tradi- 
tion, you will find in Gainsborough the ineffaceable stamp of this 
great sentiment. In pleasant moments, in the fine calm summer days, 
the moist fog stretches over the horizon its greyish veil; the sea has 
the colour of a pale slate; and the ships, spreading their canvas, ad- 


320 . , MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


vance patiently through the mist. But look around you, and you will 
soon see the signs of daily peril. The coast is eaten out, the waves 
have encroached, the trees have vanished, the earth is softened by 
incessant showers, the ocean is here, ever intractable and fierce. It 
growls and bellows eternally, that old hoarse monster ; and the barking 
pack of its waves advance like an endless army, before which all human 
force must give way. Think of the winter months, the storms, the long 
hours of the tempest-tossed sailor, whirled about blindly by the squalls! 
Now, and in this fine season, over the whole circle of the horizon, rise 
the gloomy, wan, clouds, like the smoke of a coal-fire, some of a frail 
and dazzling white, so swollen that they seem ready to burst. Their 
heavy masses creep slowly along; they are gorged, and already here 
and there on the limitless plain a patch of sky is shrouded in a sudden 
shower. After an instant, the sea becomes dirty and cadaverous; its 
waves leap with strange gambollings, and their sides take an oily and 
livid tint. The vast grey dome has drowned and hidden the whole 
horizon; the rain falls, close and pitiless. You cannot have an idea of 
it, until you have seen it. When the southern men, the Romans, came 
here for the first time, they must have thought themselves in hell. 
The wide space stretching between earth and sky, and on which our 
eyes dwell as their domain, suddenly fails; there is no more air, we 
see but a flowing mist. No more colours or forms. In this yellowish 
smoke, objects look like fading ghosts; nature seems a bad crayon- 
drawing, over which a child has awkwardly smeared his sleeve. Here 
you are at Newhaven, then at London; the sky disgorges rain, the 
earth returns her mist, the mist floats in the rain; all is swamped: 
looking round you, you see no reason why it should ever end. Here, 
truly, is Homer’s Cimmerian land: your feet splash, you have no use 
left for your eyes; you feel all your organs stopped up, rusted by the 
mounting damp; you think yourself banished from the breathing 
world, reduced to the condition of marshy beings dwelling in dirty 
pools: to live here is not life. You ask yourself if this vast town is 
not a cemetery, in which dabble busy and wretched ghosts. Amidst the 
deluge of moist soot, the muddy stream with its unwearying iron ships, 
black insects which take and land shades, makes you think of the 
_ Styx. There being no more daylight, they create it. Lately, in a 
large square in London, in the finest hotel, for five days at a time, it 
was necessary to leave the gas alight. Melancholy besets you; you 
are disgusted with others and with yourself. What can they do in 
this sepulchre? To remain here without working is to gnaw one’s 
vitals, and end in suicide. To go out is to make an effort, to be above 
damp and cold, to brave discomfort and unpleasant sensations. Such 
a climate prescribes action, forbids sloth, develops energy, teaches 
patience. I was looking just now at the sailors at the helm,—their tar- 
paulins, their great streaming boots, their sou’-westers, so attentive, so 
precise in their movements, so grave, so self-contained. I have since 








at 


(CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 321. 


seen workmen at their cotton looms,—calm, grave, silent, economising 
their effort, and persevering all day, all the year, all their life, in the 
same regular and monotonous struggle of body and mind: their soul 
is suited to their climate. In fact, it must be so in order to live: after 
a week, we feel that here a man must renounce refined and heartfelt 
enjoyment, the happiness of careless life, the easy and harmonious © 
expansion of artistic and animal nature; that here he must marry, bring 
up a house-full of children, assume the cares and importance of a 
family man, grow rich, provide against the evil day, surround himself 
with comfort, become a Protestant, a manufacturer, a politician; in 
short, capable of activity and resistance; and in all the ways open to 


men, endure and strive. 


Yet here there are charming and always touching beauties—those, to 
wit, of a well-watered land. When, on a partly clear day, we take a 
drive into the country and reach an eminence, our eyes experience 
a unique sensation, and a pleasure hitherto unknown. In the far 
distance, at the four corners of the horizon, in the fields, on the hills, 
spreads the cool verdure, plants for fodder and food, clover, hops; lovely 
meadows overflowing with high thick grass; here and there a grove of 
lofty trees ; pasture lands hemmed in with hedges, in which the heavy 
cows feed on their knees in peace. The mist rises insensibly between 
the trees, and the prospect swims in a luminous vapour. There is 
nothing sweeter in the world, nor more delicate, than these tints; we 
might pause for hours together gazing on these pearly clouds, this fine 
aerial down, this soft transparent gauze which imprisons the rays of the 
sun, dulls them, and lets them reach the ground only to smile on it and 
caress it. On both sides of our carriage pass incessantly meadows each 
more lovely than the last, in which buttercups, meadow-sweet, Easter- 
daisies, are crowded in succession with their dissolving hues ; a sweetness 
almost painful, a strange charm, breathes from this inexhaustible and 
transient vegetation. It is too fresh, it cannot last ; nothing here is staid, 
stable, and firm, as in the South; all is fleeting, in the stage of birth 
or death, hovering betwixt tears and joy. The rolling water-drops shine 
on the leaves like pearls; the round tree-tops, the widespread foliage 
whispers in the feeble breeze, and the sound of the falling tears left by 
the last shower never ceases. How well these plants thrive in the glades, 
spread out wantonly, ever renewed and watered by the moist air! How 
the sap mounts in these plants, refreshed and sheltered against the rays 
of the sun! And how sky and land seem made to cherish their tissue and 
refresh their hues! At the least glimpse of sun they smile with delicious 
charm; you would call them frail and timid virgins under a veil about 
to be raised. Let the sun for an instant emerge, and you will see them 
grow resplendent as in a ball dress. The light falls in dazzling sheets ; 
the lustrous golden petals shine with a too vivid colour; the most splen- 
did embroideries, velvet starred with diamonds, sparkling silk seamed 
with pearls, are not to be compared to this deep hue; joy overflows 

VOL, Il, x 


322 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Iv. 


like a brimming cup. In the strangeness, the rarity of this spectacle, 
we understand for the first time the life of a humid land. The water 
multiplies and softens the living tissues ; plants increase, and have no 
substance ; nourishment abounds, and has no savour; moisture fructi- 
fies, but the sun does not fertilise. Much grass, much cattle, much 
meat; large quantities of coarse food: thus an absorbing and phlegmatic 
temperament is supported; the human growth, like the animal and 
vegetable, is powerful, but heavy; man is amply but coarsely framed ; 
the machine is solid, but it rolls slowly on its hinges, and the hinges 
generally creak and are rusty. When we look at the people nearer, it 
seems that their various parts are independent, at least that they need 
time to let sensations pass through them. ‘Their ideas do not at first 
break out in passions, gestures, actions. As in the Fleming and the 
German, they dwell first of all in the brain; they expand there, they 
rest there; man is not shaken by them, he has no trouble in standing 
still, he is not rapt: he can act wisely, uniformly ; for his inner motive 
power is an idea or a watchword, not an emotion or an attraction. He 
can bear tedium, or rather he does not weary himself; his ordinary 
course consists of dull sensations, and the insipid monotony of mechani- 
cal life has nothing which need repel him. He is made for it, his 
nature is suited for it. When a man has all his life eaten turnips, 
he does not wish for oranges. He will readily resign himself to hear 
fifteen discourses running on the same subject, demanding twenty con- 
secutive years the same reform, examining statistics, studying moral 
treatises, keeping Sunday schools, bringing up a dozen children. The 
piquant, the agreeable, are not a necessity to him. The weakness of 
his sensitive impulses contributes to the force of his moral impulses, 
His temperament makes him argumentative; he can get on without 
policemen; the shocks of man against man do not here end in explosions. 
He can discuss in the market-place, aloud, religion and _ politics, 
hold meetings, form associations, rudely attack men in office, say that 
the Constitution is violated, predict the ruin of the State: there is no 
objection to this; his nerves are calm; he will argue without cutting 
throats ; he will not raise revolutions; and perhaps he will obtain a 
reform. Observe the passers-by in the streets: in three hours you will 
see all the sensible features of this temperament; light hair, in children 
almost white; pale eyes, often blue as Wedgwood-ware, red whiskers, 
a tall figure, the motions of an automaton; and with these other still 
more striking features, those which strong food and combative life have 
added to this temperament. Here the enormous guardsman, with rosy 
complexion, majestic, erect, who twirls a little cane in his hand, dis- 
playing his chest, and showing a clear parting between his pomaded 
hair; there the over-fed stout man, short, sanguine, like an animal fit 
for the shambles, with his alarmed, astounded, yet sluggish air; a little 
further the country gentleman, six feet high, stout and tall, like the 
German who left his forest, with the muzzle and nose of a bull-dog, 














CHAP. III.] 


THE PAST AND THE PRESENT, $23 


disproportionate and straggling whiskers, rolling eyes, apoplectic face : 
these are the excesses of coarse blood and food; add to which, even in 
the women, the white front of carnivorous teeth, and the great feet, 
solidly shod, excellent for walking in the mud. Again, look at the 
young men in a cricket match or picnic party; doubtless mind does 
not sparkle in their eyes, but life abounds there: there is something of 
decision and energy in their whole being; healthy and active, ready 
for motion, for enterprise, these are the words which rise involun- 
tarily to the lips when we speak of them. Many have the air of fine, 
slender harriers, sniffing the air, and in full ery. A life passed in the 
gymnasium or in venturesome deeds is honoured in England; they 
must move their body, swim, throw the ball, run in the damp seadow, 
row, breathe in their boats the briny sea vapour, feel on their fore- 
heads the raindrops falling from the oak trees, leap their horses over 
ditches and gates; the animal instincts are intact. They still relish 
natural pleasures; precocity has not spoiled them. Nothing can be 


simpler than the young English girls; amidst many beautiful things, 


there are few so beautiful girls in the world; slim, strong, self-assured, 
so fundamentally honest and loyal, so free from coquetry! A man can- 
not imagine, if he has not seen it, this freshness and innocence; many 
of them are flowers, expanded flowers; only a morning rose, with its 
transient and delicious colour, with its petals drenched in dew, can 
give us an idea of it; it leaves far behind the beauty of the South, and 
its precise, stable, finished contours, its definitive outlines; here we 
perceive fragility, delicacy, the continual budding of life; candid eyes, 
blue as periwinkles, looking at you without thinking of your look. At 
the least motion of the soul, the blood rushes to these girls’ cheeks, 
necks, shoulders, in waves of purple; you see emotions pass over these 
transparent complexions, as the colours change in the meadows; and 
their modesty is so virginal and sincere, that you are tempted to lower 
your eyes from respect. And yet, natural and frank as they are, they 
are not languishing or dreamy; they love and endure exercise like their 
brothers ; with flowing locks, at six years they ride on horseback and 
take long walks. Active life in this country strengthens the phlegma- 
tic temperament, and the heart is kept more simple whilst the body 
grows healthier. Another observation: far above all these figures one 
type stands out, the most truly English, the most striking to a foreigner. 
Post yourself for an hour, early in the morning, at the terminus of a rail- 
way, and observe the men above thirty who come to London on business : 
the features are drawn, the faces pale, the eyes fixed, preoccupied ; the 
mouth open and, as it were, contracted; the man is tired, worn out, 


and hardened by too much work; he runs without looking round him. 


His whole existence is directed to a single end; he must incessantly 
exert himself to the utmost, practise the same exertion, a profitable one ; 
he has become a machine. This is especially visible in workmen; per- 
severance, obstinacy, resignation, are depicted on their long bony and 


sé 


324 , MODERN LIFE. - [BOOK IV. 


dull faces.’ It is still more visible in women of the lower orders: many 
are thin, consumptive, their eyes hollow, their nose sharp, their skin 
streaked with red patches; they have suffered too much, have had too 
many children, have a worked-out, or oppressed, or submissive, or 
stoically impassive air ; we feel that they have endured much, and can 
endure still more. Even in the middle or upper class this patience and 
sad hardening are frequent ; we think when we see them of those poor 
beasts of burden, deformed by the harness, which remain motionless 
under the rain without thinking of shelter. Verily the battle of life is 
harsher and more obstinate here than elsewhere; whoever gives way, falls. 
Beneath the rigour of climate and competition, amidst the strikes of 
industry, the weak, the improvident perish or are degraded; then comes 
gin and does its work; thence the long files of wretched women who 
sell themselves by night in the Strand to pay their rent; thence those 
shameful quarters of London, Liverpool, all the great towns, those half- 
naked spectres, gloomy or drunk, who crowd the dram-shops, who fill 
the streets with their dirty linen, and their tatters hung out on ropes, 
who lie on a soot-heap, amidst troops of wan children; horrible shoals, 
whither descend all whom their wounded, idle, or feeble arms could not 
keep on the surface of the great stream. The chances of life are tragic 
here, and the punishment of improvidence cruel. We soon understand 
why, under this obligation to fight and grow hard, fine sensations dis- 
appear ; why taste is blunted, how man becomes ungraceful and stiff; 


how discords, exaggerations, mar the costume and the fashion; why 


movements and forms end by being energetic and discordant, like the 
motions of a machine. If the man is German by race, temperament, 
and mind, he has been compelled in process of time to fortify, alter, 
altogether turn aside his original nature; he is no longer a primitive 
animal, but a well-trained animal; his body and mind have been trans- 
formed by strong nourishment, by corporal exercise, by austere reli- 
gion, by public morality, by political strife, by perpetuity of effort; he 
has become of all men the most capable of acting usefully and power- 
fully in all directions, the most productive and effectual labourer, as 
his ox has become the best animal for food, his sheep the best for wool, 
his horse the best for racing. 


Il. 


In fact, there is no greater spectacle than his work; in no 
age or nation of the earth, I believe, has matter ever been better 
handled and utilised, Enter London by water, and you will see an 
accumulation of toil and work which has no equal on this planet. 
Paris, by comparison, is but an elegant city of pleasure; the Seine, 
with its quays, a pretty serviceable plaything. Here all is vast. I 
have seen Marseilles, Bordeaux, Amsterdam, but I had no idea of such 
amass. From Greenwich to London the two shores are a continuous 
wharf: merchandise is always being piled up, sacks hoisted, ships 








CHAP. III] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 325 


moored; ever new warehouses for copper, beer, ropework, tar, chemicals. 
Docks, timber-yards, calking-basins, and dockyards multiply and en- 
croach on each other. On the left there is the iron framework of a 
church being finished, to be sent to India. The Thames is a mile broad, 
and is but a populous street of vessels, a winding work-yard. Steam- 
boats, sailing vessels, ascend and descend, come to anchor in groups of 
two, three, ten, then in long files, then in dense rows; there are five 
or six thousand of them at anchor. On the right, the docks, like so 
many intricate, maritime streets, disgorge or store up the vessels. 
If you get on a height, you see vessels in the distance by hundreds 
and thousands, fixed as if on the land; their masts in a line, their 
slender rigging, make a spider-web which girdles the horizon. Yet on 
the river itself, to the west, we see an inextricable forest of masts, yards, 
and cables; the ships are unloading, fastened to one another, mingled 
with chimneys, amongst the pulleys of the storehouses, cranes, cap- 
stans, and all the implements of the vast and ceaseless toil. A foggy 
smoke, penetrated by the sun, wraps them in its russet veil; it is the 
heavy and smoky air of a great hot-house; soil and man, light and 
air, all is transformed by work. If you enter one of these docks, the 
impression will be yet more overwhelming: each resembles a town ; 
always ships, still more ships, in a line, showing their heads; their 
hollowed sides, their copper chests, like monstrous fishes under their 
breastplate of scales. When we descend below, we see that this breast- 
plate is fifty feet high; many are of three thousand or four thousand 
tons. Long clippers of three hundred feet are on the point of sailing 
for Australia, Ceylon, America. A bridge is raised by machinery ; it 
weighs a hundred tons, and only one man is needed to raise it. Here 
are the wine stores—there are thirty thousand tuns of port in the 
cellars; here the place for hides, here for tallow, here for ice. The 
universe tends to this centre. Like a heart, to which the blood flows, 
and from which it pours, money, goods, business arrive hither from the 
four quarters of the globe, and flow thence to all the quarters of the 
world. And this circulation seems natural, so well is it conducted. The 
cranes turn noiselessly; the tuns seem to move of themselves; a little 
car rolls them at once, and without effort; the bales descend by their 
own weight on the inclined planes, which lead them to their place. 
Clerks, without flurry, call out the numbers; men push or pull without 
confusion, calmly husbanding their labour ; whilst the cool master, in his 
black hat, gravely, with spare gestures, and without one word, directs. 

Now take rail and go to Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Man- 
chester, to see their industry. As you advance into the coal country, 
the air is darkened with smoke; the chimneys, high as obelisks, are 
crowded by hundreds, and cover the plain as far as you can see; mul- 
tiplied diagonal lines, lofty buildings, in red monotonous brick, pass 
before the eyes, like rows of economical and busy beehives. ‘The 
blast-furnaces flame through the smoke ; I counted sixteen in one group. 


326 | MODERN LIFT. [Book Iv. 


The refuse of minerals is heaped up like mountains; the engines run 
like black ants, with monotonous and violent motion, and suddenly we 
find. ourselves swallowed up in a monstrous town. This manufactory 
has five thousand hands, one mill 800,000 spindles. ‘The Manchester 
warehouses are Babylonian edifices, a hundred and twenty yards wide and 
long, in six storeys. In Liverpool there are 5000 ships along the Mersey, 
which choke one another up; more wait to enter. The docks are six 
miles long, and the cotton warehouses on the border extend their vast 
red rampart out of sight. All things here seem built in unmeasured 
proportions, and as though by colossal arms. You enter a mill; nothing 
but iron pillars, thick as tree-trunks, cylinders as broad as a man; loco- 
motive shafts like vast oaks, notching machines which send up iron chips, 
rollers which bend sheet-iron like paste, fly-wheels which become invisible 
by the swiftness of their revolution. Eight workmen, commanded by 
a kind of peaceful colossus, pushed into and pulled from the fire a tree 
of red iron as big as my body. Coal has produced all this growth. 
England has twice as much coal as the remainder of the world. Add 
brick, the great schists, which are close to the surface, and the estuaries 
filled by the sea, so as to make natural ports. Liverpool and Man- 
chester, and about ten towns of 40,000 to 100,000 souls, are springing 
up like plants in the basin of Lancashire. Glance over the map, and you 
see the districts shaded with black—Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, 
Wales, all Ireland, which is one block of coal. The old antediluvian 
forests, accumulating here their fuel, have stored up the power which 
moves matter, and the sea furnishes the true road by which matter 
can be transported. Man himself, mind and-body, seems made to 
profit by these advantages. His muscles are resistive, and his mind 
can support tedium. He is less subject to weariness and disgust than 
other men. He works as well in the tenth hour as in the first. No one 
handles machines better; he has their regularity and precision. Two 
workmen in a cotton-mill do the work of three, or even four, French 
workmen. Look now in the statistics how many leagues of stuffs they 
fabricate every year, how many millions of tons they export and im- 
port, how many tens of millions they produce and consume; add the 
industrial or commercial states they have founded, or are founding; in 
America, China, India, Australia; and then, perhaps, reckoning men 
and value,—considering that their capital is seven or eight times 
greater than that of France, that their population has doubled in fifty 
years, that their colonies, wherever the climate is healthy, are becoming 
new Englands,—you will obtain some notion, very slight, very imper- 
fect, of a work whose magnitude the eyes alone can measure. 

There remains yet one of its parts to explore—cultivation. From 
the railway carriage we see quite enough to understand it: a field 
with a hedge, then another field with another hedge, and so on; at 
times vast squares of radishes, all in line, clean, glossy; no forests, 
here and there only a grove. The country is a great kitchen-garden 








CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 327 


—a manufactory of grass and meat. Nothing is left to nature and 
chance ; all is calculated, regulated, arranged to produce and to bring 
in profits. If you look at the peasants, you find no more genuine 
peasants ; nothing like French peasants,—a sort of fellahs, akin to the 
soil, mistrustful and uncultivated, separated by a gulf from the citizens. 
The countryman here is like an artisan; and, in fact, a field is a 
manufactory, with a farmer for a foreman. Proprietors and farmers, 
they lavish capital like great contractors, They have drained ; they 
have a rotation of crops; they have produced a cattle, the chest in 
returns of any in the world; they have introduced steam-engines into 
cultivation, and into the breeding of cattle; they perfect already per- 
fect stables. The greatest of the aristocracy take a pride in it; many 
country gentlemen have no other occupation. Prince Albert, near 
Windsor, had a model farm, and this farm brought in money. A few 
years ago the papers announced that the Queen had discovered a cure 
for the turkey-disease. Under this universal effort,’ the products of 
agriculture have doubled in fifty years. The English acre receives 
eight or ten times more manure than the French hectare; though of 
inferior quality, they have made it produce double. Thirty persons are 
enough for this work, when in France forty would be required for half 
thereof. You come upon a farm, even a small one, say of a hundred 
acres; you find respectable, worthy, well-clad men, who express them- 
selves clearly and sensibly ; a large, wholesome, comfortable dwelling— 
often a little porch, with climbing plants—a well-kept garden, ornamental 
trees, the inner walls whitewashed yearly, the floors washed weekly—an 
almost Dutch cleanness; therewith plenty of books—travels, treatises 
on agriculture, a few volumes of religion or history; first of all, the 
great family Bible. Even in the poorest cottages we find a few objects 
of comfort and recreation: a large cast-iron stove, a carpet, nearly 
always a paper on the walls, one or two moral novels, and always the 
Bible. The cottage is clean; the habits are orderly; the plates, with 
their blue pattern, regularly arranged, look well above the shining 
dresser; the red floor-tiles have been swept; there are no broken or 
dirty panes; no doors off hinges, shutters unhung, stagnant pools, 
straggling dunghills, as amongst the French villagers; the little garden 
is kept free from weeds; frequently roses and honeysuckle round 
the door; and on Sunday we can see the father, the mother, seated 
by a well-scrubbed table, with tea and butter, enjoy their home, and 
the order they have established there. In France the peasant on 
Sunday leaves his hut to visit his and: what he aspires to is posses- 
sion; what Englishmen love is comfort. There is no land in which 
they demand more in this respect. An Englishman said to me, not 
very long ago: ‘Our great vice is the strong desire we feel for all 
good and comfortable things. We have too many wants. As soon 





1 Léonce de Lavergne, Economie rurale en Angleterre, passim, 


328 ‘MODERN LIFE. 2 [BOOK Iv. 


as out peasants have a little money, they buy the best sherry and the 
best clothes, instead of buying a bit of land.’ * 

As we rise to the upper classes, this taste becomes stronger. In 
the middle ranks a man burdens himself with toil, to give his wife 
gaudy dresses, and to fill his house with the hundred thousand 
baubles of quasi-luxury. Higher still, the inventions of comfort are so 
multiplied that people are bored by them; there are too many news- 
papers and reviews on your bed-table at night; too many kinds of 
carpets, washstands, matches, towels in your dressing-room ; their re- 
finement is endless ; you would think, thrusting your feet in slippers, 
that twenty generations of inventors were required to bring sole and 
lining to this degree of perfection. You cannot conceive clubs better 
furnished with necessaries and superfluities, houses so well provided 
and managed, pleasure and abundance so cunningly understood, ser- 
vants so reliable, respectful, speedy. Servants in the last census were 
‘the most numerous class of Her Majesty’s subjects;’ in England 
there are five where in France they have two. When I saw in Hyde 
Park the rich young ladies, the gentlemen riding and driving, when I 
reflected on their country houses, their dress, their parks and stables, 
I said to myself that verily this people is constituted after the heart of 
economists: I mean, that it is the greatest producer and the greatest 
consumer in the world; that none is more apt at squeezing out and 
absorbing the quintessence of things; that it has developed its wants 
at the same time as its resources; and you involuntarily think of those 
insects which, after their metamorphosis, are suddenly provided with 
teeth, feelers, unwearying claws, admirable and terrible instruments, 
fitted to dig, saw, build, do everything, but furnished also with inces- 
sant hunger and four stomachs. 


IIT. 


How is the ant-hill governed? As the train advances, you perceive, 
amidst farms and cultivation, the long wall of a park, the facade of a 
castle, more generally of some vast ornate mansion, a sort of country 
town-house, of inferior architecture, Gothic or Italian. pretensions, but 
surrounded by beautiful lawns, large trees scrupulously preserved. 
Here live the rich bourgeois ; Iam wrong, the word is false—I must say 
gentlemen: bourgeois is a French word, and signifies the lazy rich, who 
devote themselves to rest, and take no part in public life; here it is 
quite different ; the hundred or hundred and twenty thousand families, 
who spend shonsaiids and more annually, really govern the country. 
And this is no government imported, implanted artificially and from 





1 De Foe was of the same opinion, and pretended that economy was not an 
English virtue, and that an Englishman can hardly live with twenty shillings a 
week, while a Dutchman with the same money becomes wealthy, and leaves his 
children very well off. An English labourer lives poor and wretchedly with nine 
shillings a week, whilst a Dutchman lives very comfortably with the same salary. 











‘CHAP. IIL] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 829, 


without ; it is a spontaneous and natural government. As soon as 
men wish to act together, they need leaders ; every association, volun- 
tary or not, has one; whatever it be, state, army, ship, or commonalty, 
it cannot do without a guide to find the road, enter it, call the rest, 
scold the laggards. In vain we call ourselves independent; as soon as 
we march in a body, we need a leader; we look right and left expect- 
ing him to show himself. The great thing is to pick him out, to have 
the best, and not to follow another in his stead ; it is a great advantage 
that there should be one, and that we should acknowledge him. These 
men, without popular election, or selection from above, find him ready 
made and recognised in the influential landholder, an old county man, 
powerful through his connections, dependants, tenantry, interested above 
all else by his great possessions in the affairs of the neighbourhood, 
expert in the concerns which his family have managed for three gene- 
rations, most fitted by education to give good advice, and by his influ- 
ence to lead the common enterprise to a good result. In fact, it is 
thus that things falls out; rich men leave London by hundreds every 
day to spend a day in the country ; there is a meeting on the affairs of 
the county or of the church; they are magistrates, overseers, presidents 
of all kinds of societies, and this gratuitously. One has built a bridge 
at his own expense, another a church or a school; many establish 
public libraries, with warmed and lighted rooms, in which the villagers 
in the evening find the papers, games, tea, at low charges,—in a word, 
simple amusements which may keep them from the gin-shop, Many 
of them give lectures; their sisters or daughters teach in Sunday 
schools; in fact, they give to the ignorant and poor, at their own ex- 
pense, justice, administration, civilisation. I have seen one, having 
an enormous fortune, who on Sunday in his school taught singing 
to little girls. Lord Palmerston offered his park for archery meet- 
ings; the Duke of Marlborough opens his daily to the public, ‘re- 
questing (this is the word used) the public not to destroy the grass.’ 
A firm and proud sentiment of duty, a genuine public spirit, a 
liberal notion of what a gentleman owes to himself, gives them a 
moral superiority which sanctions their command; probably from the 
time of the old Greek cities, no education or condition has been seen in 
which the innate nobility of man has received a more wholesome or 
completer development. In short, they are magistrates and patrons 
from their birth, leaders of the great enterprises in which capital is 
risked, promoters of all charities, all improvements, all reforms, and 
with the honours of command they accept its burdens. For observe, 
in contrast with other aristocracies, they are well educated, liberal, and 
march in the van, not at the tail of public civilisation. They are not 
drawing-room exquisites, as our marquises of the eighteenth century: a 
lord visits his fisheries, studies the system of liquid manures, speaks to 
the purpose about cheese ; and his son is often a better rower, walker, 
and boxer than the farmers. They are not malcontents, like the French 


330 MODERN LIFE. [BOoK Iv. 


nobility, behind their age, devoted to whist, and regretting the middle- 
ages. They have travelled through Europe, and often farther; they know 
languages and literature; their daughters read Schiller, Mabaso: and 
Lamartine with ease. By means of reviews, newspapers, innumerable 
volumes of geography, statistics, and travels, they have the world at 
their finger-ends. They support and preside over scientific societies; 
if the free inquirers of Oxford, amidst conventional rigour, have been 
able to give their explanations of the Bible, it is because they knew 
themselves to be backed by enlightened laymen of the highest rank. 
There is also no danger that this aristocracy of talent should become 
a set; it renews itself; a great physician, a profound lawyer, an 
illustrious general, become ennobled and found families. When a 
manufacturer or merchant has gained a large fortune, he first thinks of 
acquiring an estate; after two or three generations his family has taken 
root, and shares in the government of the country: in this way the 
best saplings of the great popular forest come to recruit the aristocratic 
nursery. Mark, in the last place, that the institution is not isolated. 
Throughout there are leaders recognised, respected, followed with con- 
fidence and deference, who feel their responsibility, and carry the burden 
as well as the advantages of the dignity. There is such an institution 
in marriage, by which the man incontestably rules, followed by his 
wife to the end of the world, faithfully waited for in the evenings, un- 
. shackled in his business, of which he does not speak. There is such in 
_ the family, when the father? can disinherit his children, and keeps up 
with them, in the most petty circumstances of daily life, a degree of 
authority and dignity unknown in France: if in England a son, through 
ill-health, has been away for some time from his home, he dare not come 
into the county to see his father without leave ; a servant to whom I gave 
my card refused to take it, saying, ‘Oh! I dare not now. Master is 
dining.’ There is respect in all ranks, in the workshops as in the fields, 
in the army as in the family. Throughout there are inferiors and 
superiors who feel themselves so ; if the mechanism of established power 
were thrown out of gear, we should behold it reconstructed of itself; 
below the legal constitution is the social, and human action is forced 
into a solid mould prepared for it. 

It is because this aristocratic network is strong that sethind action 
can be free; for local and natural government being rooted through- 
out, like ivy, by a hundred small, ever-growing fibres, the sudden move- 
ments, violent as they are, are not capable of pulling it up altogether. In 
vain men speak, ery out, call meetings, hold processions, form leagues : 
they will not demolish the state; they have not to deal with a set of 
functionaries who have no real hold on the country, and who, like all 
external applications, can be replaced by another set: the thirty or 





‘In familiar language, the father is called in England the governor ; in France, 
le banquier. 











CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 331 


forty gentlemen of a district, rich, influential, trusted, useful as they 
are, will become the leaders of the district. ‘As we see in the papers,’ 
says Montesquieu, speaking of England, ‘that they are playing the 
devil, we fancy that the people will revolt to-morrow.’ Not at all, it is 
their way of speaking; they only talk loudly and rudely. Two days 
after I arrived in London, I saw advertising men walking with a placard 
on their backs and their stomachs, bearing these words: ‘ Great usurpa- 
tion! Outrage of the Lords, in their vote on the budget, against the rights 
of the people.’ But then the placard added, ‘ Fellow-countrymen, peti- 
tion!’ Things end thus; they argue in free terms, and if the reasoning 
is good it will spread. Another time in Hyde Park, orators were de- 
claiming in the open air against the Lords, who were called rogues. 
The audience applauded or hissed, as it pleased them. ‘ After all,’ said 
an Englishman to me, ‘this is how we manage our business. With us, 
when a man has an idea, he writes it; a dozen men think it good, 
and then all contribute money to publish it; this creates a little associa- 
tion, which grows, prints cheap pamphlets, gives lectures, then petitions, 
calls forth public opinion, and at last takes the matter into Parliament ; 
Parliament refuses or delays it; yet the matter gains weight: the 
majority of the nation pushes, forces open the doors, and then you'll 
have a law passed.’ It is open to every one to do this; workmen can 
league against their masters; in fact, their associations embrace all 
England ; at Preston I believe there was once a strike which lasted more 
than six months. They will sometimes mob, but never revolt; they know 
political economy by this time, and understand that to do violence to 
capital is to suppress work. Above all, they are cool; here, as elsewhere, 
temperament has great influence. Anger, blood does not rise at once 
to their eyes, as in the southern nations; along interval always separates 
idea from action, and wise arguments, repeated calculations, occupy 
the interval. Go to a meeting, consider men of every condition, the 
ladies who come for the thirtieth time to hear the same speech, full 
of figures, on education, cotton, wages. They do not seem to be 
wearied ; they can bring argument against argument, be patient, pro- 
test gravely, recommence their protest ; they are the same people who 
wait for the train on the platform, without getting crushed, and who 
play cricket for a couple of hours without raising their voices or 
quarrelling for an instant. Two coachmen, who run into one another, 
set themselves free without storming or scolding. Thus their political 
association endures; they can be free because they have natural leaders 
and patient nerves. After all, the state isa machine like other machines ; 
try to have good wheels, and take care you don’t break them ; English- 
men have the double advantage of possessing very good ones, and of 
managing them coolly. 


IV. 


Such is our Englishman, with his provision and his administration. 


332 MODERN LIFE. | [BOOK IV. 


Now that he has provided for private comfort and public security, 
what will he do, and how will he,govern himself in this higher, nobler 
domain, to which man climbs to contemplate beauty and truth? At 
all events, the arts do not lead him there.. That vast London is monu- 
mental; but, like the castle of a man who has become rich, everything 
there is well preserved and costly, but nothing more. Those lofty 
houses of massive stone, burdened with porches, short columns, Greek 
decorations, are generally gloomy; the poor columns of the monu- 
ments seem washed with ink. On Sunday, in foggy weather, you 
would think yourself in a cemetery; the perfect readable names on 
the houses, in brass letters, are like sepulchral inscriptions. There is 
nothing beautiful: at most, the varnished middle-class houses, with 
their patch of green, are pleasant; we feel that they are well kept, 
commodious, capital for a business man who wants to amuse himself 
and unbend after a hard day’s work. But a finer and higher sentiment 
could relish nothing there. As to the statues, it is difficult not to laugh 
at them. You should see the Duke of Wellington, with his cocked hat 
with iron plumes; Nelson, with a cable which serves him for a tail, 
planted on his column, and pierced by a lightning-conductor, like a 
rat impaled on the end of a pole; or again, the half-dressed Waterloo 
Generals, crowned by Victory. The English, though flesh and bone, 
seem manufactured out of sheet-iron: how much more so will English 
statues look? They pride themselves on their painting; at least they 
study it with surprising minuteness, in the Chinese fashion; they can 
paint a bottle of hay so exactly, that a botanist will tell the species of 
every stalk; one artist lived three months under canvas on a heath, so 
that he might thoroughly know heath. Many are excellent observers, 
especially of moral expression, and succeed very well in showing you the 
soul in the face; we are instructed by looking at them; we go through 
a course of psychology with them; they can illustrate a novel; you 
would be touched by the poetic and dreamy meaning of many of their 
landscapes. But in genuine painting, picturesque painting, they are 
revolting. I do not think there were ever laid upon canvas such crude 
colours, such stiff forms, stuffs so much like tin, such glaring contrasts. 
Fancy an opera with nothing but false notes in it, You may see land- 
scapes painted blood-red, trees which split the canvas, turf which 
looks like a pot of overturned green, Christs looking as if they were 
baked and preserved in oil, expressive stags, sentimental dogs, un- 
dressed women, to whom we should like forthwith to offer a garment. 
In music, they import the Italian opera; it is an orange tree kept 
up at great cost in the midst of beetroots. The arts require idle, 
delicate minds, not stoics, especially not puritans, easily shocked by 
dissonance, inclined to sensuous pleasure, employing their long periods 
of leisure, their free reveries, in harmoniously arranging, and with no 
other object but enjoyment, forms, colours, and sounds. I need not 
say that here the bent of mind is quite opposite; and we see clearly 














CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 333 


_enough why, amidst these combative politicians, these laborious toilers, 


these men of energetic action, art can but produce exotic or ill-shaped 
fruit. 

Not so in science ; but in science there are two divisions, It may 
be treated as a business, to glean and verify observations, to combine 
experiences, to arrange figures, to weigh probabilities, to discover facts, 
partial laws, to possess laboratories, libraries, societies charged with 
storing and increasing positive knowledge; in all this Englishmen 
excel. They have even Lyells, Darwins, Owens, able to embrace and 
renew a science ; in the construction of the vast edifice, the industrious 
masons, masters of the second rank, are not lacking; it is the great 
architects, the thinkers, the genuine speculative minds, who fail them ; 
philosophy, especially metaphysics, is as little indigenous here as music 
and painting; they import it, and yet they leave the best part on the 
road, Carlyle was obliged to transform it into a mystical poetry, 
humorous and prophetic fancies; Hamilton touched upon it only, to de- 
clare it chimerical ; Stuart Mill, Buckle, only seized the most palpable 
part,—a heavy residuum, positivism. It is not in metaphysics that the 
English mind can find its vent. It is on other objects that the spirit 
of liberal inquiry—the sublime instincts of the mind, the craving for 
the universal and the infinite, the desire of ideal and perfect things— 
will fall back. Let us take the day on which the hush of business 
leaves a free field for disinterested aspirations. There is no more 
striking spectacle for a foreigner than Sunday in London. ‘The streets 
are empty, and the churches full. An Act of Parliament forbids any 
playing to-day, public or private ; the public-houses are not allowed to 
harbour people during divine service. Moreover, all respectable people 
are at worship, the seats are full: it is not as in France, where there 
are none but servants, old women, a few sleepy people, of private means, 
and a sprinkling of elegant ladies; but in England we see men well 
dressed, or at least decently clad, and as many -gentlemen as ladies 
in church. Religion does not remain out of the pale, and below the 
standard of public culture; the young, the learned, the best of the 
nation, all the upper and middle classes, continue attached to it. The 
clergyman, even in a village, is not a peasant’s son, with not much polish, 
fresh from college, shackled in a cloistral education, separated from society 
by celibacy, half-buried in medievalism. He is a man of the times, often 
a man of the world, often of good family, with the interests, habits, 
liberties of other men ; keeping sometimes a carriage, several servants, 
having elegant manners, generally well informed, who has read and still 
reads, On all these grounds he is able to be in his neighbourhood the 
leader of ideas, as his neighbour the squire is the leader of business. If 
he does not walk in the same path as the free-thinkers, he is not more 
than a step or two behind them; a modern man, a Parisian, can talk with 
him on all lofty themes, and not perceive a gulf between his own mind 
and the clergyman’s, Strictly speaking, he is a layman like you; the only 


334 MODERN LIFE. _ [BooK Iv. 


difference is, that he is a superintendent of morality. Even in his exter- 
nals, except for occasional bands and the perpetual white tie, he is like 
you: at first sight, you would take him for a professor, a magistrate, or 
a notary; and his sermons agree with his person. He does not anathe- 
matise the world; in this his doctrine is modern; he follows the broad 
path in which the Renaissance and the Reformation have impelled religion. 
When Christianity arose, eighteen centuries ago, it was in the East, in the 
land of the Essenes and Therapeutists, amid universal decay and despair, 
when the only deliverance seemed a renunciation of the world, an aban- 
donment of civil life, destruction of the natural instincts, and a daily 
waiting for the kingdom of God. When it rose again, three centuries 
ago, it was in the West, amongst laborious and half-free peoples, amidst 
universal restoration and invention, when man, improving his condition, 
regained confidence in his worldly destiny, and widely expanded his 
faculties. No wonder if the new Protestantism differs from the ancient 
Christianity, if it enjoins action instead of preaching asceticism, if it 
authorises comforts in place of prescribing mortification, if it honours 
marriage, work, patriotism, inquiry, science, all natural affections and 
faculties, in place of praising celibacy, retreat, scorn of the age, ecstasy, 
captivity of mind, and mutilation of the heart. By this infusion of the 
modern spirit, Christianity has received new blood, and Protestantism 
now constitutes, with science, the two motive organs, and, as it were, 
the double heart of European life. For, in accepting the rehabilitation 
of the world, it has not renounced the purification of man’s heart; on 
the contrary, it is towards this that it has directed its whole effort. It 
has cut off from religion all the portions which are not this very purifi- 
cation, and, by reducing it, has strengthened it. An institution, like a 
machine, and like a man, is the more powerful for being more special : 
a work is done better because it is done singly, and because we con- 
centrate ourselves upon it. By the suppression of legends and religious 
practices, human thought in its entirety has been concentrated on a 
single object—moral amelioration. It is of this men speak in the 
churches, gravely and coldly, with a succession of sensible and solid 
arguments; how a man ought to reflect on his duties, mark them one 
by one in his mind, make for himself principles, have a sort of inner 
code, freely accepted and firmly established, to which he may refer all 
his actions without bias or hesitation; how these principles may be 
rooted by practice; how unceasing examination, personal effort, the 
continual edification of himself by himself, ought slowly to confirm our 
resolution in uprightness. These are the questions which, with a multi- 
tude of examples, proofs, appeals to daily experience,’ are brought forward 
in all the pulpits, to develop in man a voluntary reformation, a guard and 
empire over himself, the habit of self-restraint, and a kind of modern 





1 Let the reader, amongst many others, peruse the sermons of Dr. Arnold, © 
delivered in the School Chapel at Rugby. 














CHAP. IIL] - THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 335 


stoicism, almost as noble as the ancient. On all hands laymen help in this; 
and moral warning, given by literature as well as by theology, unites in 
harmony, society, and the clergy. Hardly ever does a book paint a man 
in a disinterested manner: critics, philosophers, historians, novelists, poets 
even, give a lesson, maintain a theory, unmask or punish a vice, repre- 
sent a temptation overcome, relate the history of a character becoming 
formed. Their exact and minute description of sentiments ends always 
in approbation or blame; they are not artists, but moralists: it is only 
in a Protestant country that you will find a novel entirely occupied in 
describing the progress of moral sentiment in a child of twelve.’ All 
co-operate in this direction in religion, and even in the mystic part of it. 
Byzantine distinctions and subtleties have been allowed to fall away ; 
Germanic curiosities and speculations have not been introduced ; the 
God of conscience reigns alone ; feminine sweetness has been cut off; we 
do not find the husband of souls, the lovable consoler, whom the Jinita- 
tion of Jesus Christ follows even in his tender dreams ; something manly 
breathes from religion in England; we find that the Old Testament, 
the severe Hebrew Psalms, have left their imprint here. It is no longer 
an intimate friend to whom a man confides his petty desires, his small 
troubles, a sort of affectionate and quite human priestly guide ; it is no 
longer a king whose relations and courtiers he tries to gain over, and from 
whom he looks for favours or places ; we see in him only a guardian of 
duty, and we speak to him of nothing else. What we ask of him is 
the strength to be virtuous, the inner renewal by which we become 
capable of always doing good ; and such a prayer is in itself a sufficient 
lever to tear a man from his weaknesses. What we know of the Deity 
is that he is perfectly just; and such a reliance suffices to represent all 
the events of life as an approach to the reign of justice. Strictly 
speaking, justice alone exists ; the world is a figure which conceals it, 
but heart and conscience sustain it, and there is nothing important or 
true in man but the embrace by which he holds it. So speak the old 
grave prayers, the severe hymns which are sung in the church, ac- 
companied by the organ. Though a Frenchman, and brought up in a 
different religion, I heard them with sincere admiration and emotion. 
Serious and grand poems, which, opening a path to the Infinite, let a 
ray of light into the limitless darkness, and satisfy the deep poetic 
instincts, the vague desire of sublimity and melancholy, which this race 
has manifested from its origin, and which it has preserved to the end. 


Ke 


At the basis of the present as of the past ever reappears an inner 
and persistent cause, the character of the race; transmission and climate 
have maintained it; a violent perturbation—the Norman Conquest— 





1 The Wide, Wide World, by Elizabeth Wetherell (an American book), See 
also the novels of Miss Yonge, and, above all, those of George Eliot, 


336 _ MODERN LIFE. =~ ' “ [BOOK IV. 


warped it; finally, after various oscillations, it was manifested by the 
conception of a special ideal, which gradually fashioned or produced 
religion,. literature, institutions, Thus fixed and expressed, it was 
thenceforth the mover of the rest; it explains the present, on it de- 
pends the future ; its force and direction will produce the present and 
future civilisation. Now that great historic violences—I mean the 
destructions and enslavements of peoples—have become almost im- 
practicable, each nation can develop its life according to its own con- 
ception of life; the chances of a war, a discovery, have no hold but on 
details ; national inclinations and aptitudes alone now draw the great 
features of a national history ; when twenty-five million men conceive 


the good and useful after a certain type, they will seek and end by 


attaining this kind of the good and useful. The Englishman has 
henceforth his priest, his gentleman, his manufacture, his comfort, and 
his novel. If you wish to seek in what sense this work will alter, 
you must seek in what sense the central conception will alter. A 
vast revolution has taken place during the last three centuries in 
human intelligence,—like those regular and vast uprisings which, dis- 
placing a continent, displace all the prospects. We know that positive 
discoveries go on increasing day by day, that they will increase daily 
more and more, that from object to object they reach the most lofty, 
that they begin by renewing the science of man, that their useful 
application and their philosophical consequences are ceaselessly un- 
folded; in short, that their universal encroachment will at last com- 
prise the whole human mind. From this body of invading truths 
springs in addition an original conception of the good and the useful, 
and, moreover, a new idea of state and church, art and industry, 
philosophy and religion. This has its power, as the old idea had; it 
is scientific, if the other was national; it is supported on proved facts, 
if the other was upon established things. Already their opposition is 
being manifested; already their results begin; and we may affirm 
beforehand, that the proximate condition of English civilisation will 
depend upon their divergence and their agreement, 





=" Lp aid (- 














BOOK -V. 


MODERN AUTHORS. 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


Tue translator thinks it due to M. Taine to state, that the fifth book, on the 
Modern Authors, was written whilst Dickens, Thackeray, and Macaulay were still 
alive. He also gives the original preface of that book :— 

‘This fifth book is the sequel to the History of English Literature; it is 
written on another plan, because the subject is different. The present period is 
not yet completed, and the ideas which govern it are in process of.formation, that 
is, in the rough. We cannot therefore as yet systematically arrange them. When 
documents are still mere indications, history is necessarily reduced to studies ; 
science is moulded on existence ; and our conclusions cannot be other than incom- 
plete, so long as the facts which suggest them are unfinished. Fifty years hence 
the history of this age may be written ; in the meantime we can but sketch it. 
I have selected from contemporary English writers the most original minds, the 
most consistent, and the most contrasted ; they may be regarded as specimens, 
representing the common features, the opposite tendencies, and consequently the 
general direction of the public miud. 

‘They are only specimens. By the side of Macaulay and Carlyle we have his- 
torians like Hallam, Buckle, and Grote ; by the side of Dickens, novel-writers like 
Bulwer, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot, and many more; by the 
side of Tennyson, poets like Elizabeth Browning; by the side of Stuart Mill, 
philosophers like Hamilton, Bain, and Herbert Spencer. I pass over the vast 
number of men of talent who write anonymously in reviews, and who, like soldiers 
in an army, display at times more clearly than their generals the faculties and 
inclinations of their time and their country. Ifwe look for the common marks 
in this multitude of varied minds, we shall, I think, find the two salient features 
which I have already pointed out. One of these features is proper to English 
civilisation, the other to the civilisation of the nineteenth century. The one is 
national, the other European. On the one hand, special to this people, their 
literature is an inquiry instituted into humanity, altogether positive, and conse- 
quently only partially beautiful or philosophical, but very exact, minute, useful, 
and moreover very moral ; and this to such a degree, that sometimes the generosity 
or purity of its aspirations raises it to a height which no artist’ or philosopher has 
transcended. On the other hand, in common with the various peoples of our age, 
this. literature subordinates dominant creeds and institutions to private inquiry 
and established science—I mean, to that irresponsible tribunal which is’ erected 
in each man’s individual conscience, and to that universal authority which the 
diverse human judgments, mutually rectified, and controlled by practice, borrow 
from the verifications of experience, and from their own harmony. 

‘Whatever be the judgment passed on these tendencies and on these doctrines, 
we cannot, I think, refuse them the merit of spontaneity and originality. They 


are living and thtiving plants. The six writers, described in this volume, have 
VOL, IL. Y | 


338 MODERN AUTHORS. : [BOOK V. — 


expressed efficacious and complete ideas on God, nature, man, science, religion, 
art, and morality. To produce such ideas we have in Europe at this day but three 
nations—England, Germany, and France. Those of England will here be found 
arranged, discussed, and compared with those of the other two thinking countries.’ 





CHAPTER IL 


The Novel:—Dickens:; 
§ 1.—THE AUTHOR. 


I. Connection of the different elements of a talent—Importance of the imagina- 

tive faculty. 

II. Lucidity and intensity of imagination in Dickens—Boldness and vehemence 

of his fancy—How with him inanimate objects are personified and im- 

passioned— Wherein his conception is akin to intuition—How he de- 
scribes idiots and madmen. 

III. The objects to which he directs his enthusiasm—His trivialities and minute- 
ness— Wherein he resembles the painters of his country— Wherein he 
differs from George Sand—Miss Ruth and Genevieve—A journey in a 
coach. 

IV. Vehemence of the emotions which this kind of imagination must produce— 

. His pathos—Stephen, the factory hand—His humour—Why he attains 
to buffoonery and caricature—Recklessness and nervous exaggeration of 
his gaiety. 

§ 2.—TueE PvuBLic. 

English novels are compelled to be moral— Wherein this constraint modifies 
the idea of love—Comparison of love in George Sand and Dickens— 
Pictures of the young girl and the wife—Wherein this constraint qualifies 
the idea of passion—Comparison of passions in Balzac and Dickens—In- 
convenience of this foregone necessity—How comic or odious masks are 
substituted for natural characters—Comparison of Pecksniff and T'artujfe — 
—Why unity of action is absent in Dickens. 


§ 3.—THE CHARACTERS. 


I. Two classes of characters— Natural and instinctive characters— Artificial 
and positive characters—Preference of Dickens for the first— Aversion 
against the second. 

II. The hypocrite— Mr. Pecksniff— Wherein he is English Conipalvon of 
Pecksniff and Tartuffe—The positive man—Mr. Gradgrind—The proud. 
man—Mr. Dombey—Wherein these characters are English. 

III. Children—Wanting in French literature—Little Joas and David Copper- 
Jjield—Men of the lower orders. 

IV. The ideal man according to Dickens—Wherein this conception corresponds 
to a public need—Opposition of culture and nature in England—Reasser- 
tion of sense and instinct oppressed by conventionalism and rule—Sue- 
cess of Dickens. 














CHAP. 1] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 339 


4% ERE Dickens dead, his biography might be written. On the 
; day after the burial of a celebrated man, his friends and 
enemies apply themselves to the work; his schoolfellows relate in the 
newspapers his boyish pranks; another man recalls exactly, and word 
for word, the conversations he had with him a score of years ago. The 
lawyer, who manages the affairs of the deceased, draws up a list of the 
different offices he has filled, his titles, dates and figures, and reveals 
to the matter-of-fact readers how the money left has been invested, and 
how the fortune has been made; the grandnephews and second cousins 
publish an account of his acts of humanity, and the catalogue of his 
domestic virtues. If there is no literary genius in the family, they 
select an Oxford man, conscientious, learned, who treats the dead like 
a Greek author, amasses endless documents, involves them in endless 
comments, crowns the whole with endless discussions, and comes ten 
years later, some fine Christmas morning, with his white tie and placid 
smile, to present to the assembled family three quartos, of eight hundred 
pages, the easy style of which would send a German from Berlin to 
sleep. He is embraced by them with tears in their eyes; they make 
him sit down; he is the chief ornament of the festivities; and his work 
is sent to the Edinburgh Review. The latter groans at the sight of the 
enormous present, and tells off a young and intrepid member of the 
staff to concoct some kind of a biography from the table of contents. 
Another advantage of posthumous biographies is, that the dead man is 
no longer there to refute either biographer or man of learning. 
Unfortunately Dickens is still alive, and refutes the biographies 
made of him. What is worse, he claims to be his own biographer. 
His translator in French once asked him for a few particulars of his 
life ; Dickens replied that he kept them for himself. Without doubt, 
David Copperfield, his best novel, has much the appearance of a con- 


‘fession ; but where does the confession end, and how far does fiction 


embroider truth? All that is known, or rather all that is told, is that 
Dickens was born in 1812, that he is the son of a shorthand-writer, 
that he was himself at first a shorthand-writer, that he was poor and 
unfortunate in his youth, that his novels, published in parts, have gained 
for him a great fortune and an immense reputation. The reader may 
conjecture the rest; Dickens will tell him it one day, when he writes 
his memoirs. Meanwhile he closes the door, and leaves outside the too 
inquisitive folk who go on knocking. He has a right to do so. Though 
a man may be illustrious, he is not on that account public property; he 
is not constrained to be confidential ; he still belongs to himself ; he may 
reserve of himself what he thinks proper. If we give our works to our 
readers, we do not give our lives. Let us be satisfied with what Dickens 
has given us. Forty volumes suffice, and more than suffice, to enable us 
to know a man well; moreover, they show of him all that it is important 
to know. It is not through the accidental circumstances of his life that 
he belongs to history, but by his talent; and his talent is in his books. 


340 f MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


A man’s genius is like a clock; it has its mechanism, and amongst its 
parts a mainspring. Find out this spring, show how it communicates 
movement to the others, pursue this movement from part to part down 
to the hands in which it ends, This inner history of genius does not. 
depend upon the outer history of the man; and it is worth more, 


§ 1.—Tue AvuTHorR. 


i, 


The first question which should be asked in connection with an artist 
is this: How does he regard objects? With what clearness, what 
energy, what force? ‘The reply defines his whole work beforehand : 
for in a writer of novels the imagination is the master faculty ; the art 
of composition, good taste, appreciation of truth, depend upon it; one 
degree more of vehemence destroys the style which expresses it, changes 
the characters which it produces, breaks the framework in which it is 
enclosed. Consider that of Dickens, and you will perceive therein the 
cause of his faults and his merits, his power and his excess. 


Il. 


He has the painter in him, and the English painter. Never surely 
did a mind figure to itself with more exact detail or greater energy all 
the parts and tints of a picture. Read this description of a storm; 
the images seem photographed by a dazzling electric light : 

‘ Thebeye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in its every 
gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noon in fifty times 
that period. Bells in steeples, with the rope and wheel that moved them ; ragged 
nests of birds in cornices and nooks ; faces full of consternation in the tilted wag- 
gons that came tearing past: their frightened teams ringing out a warning which 
the thunder drowned ; harrows and ploughs left out in fields ; miles upon miles 
of hedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious as the scare- 
crow in the beanfield close at hand; ina trembling, vivid, flickering instant, 
everything was clear and plain: then came a flush of red into the yellow light ; 
a change to blue ; a brightness so intense that there was nothing else but light ; 
and then the deepest and profoundest darkness,’ ! 


An imagination so lucid and energetic cannot but animate inanimate 
objects without an effort. It provokes in the mind in which it works 
extraordinary emotions, and the author pours over the objects which 
he figures to himself, something of the ever-welling passion which over- 
flows in him. Stones for him take a voice, white walls swell out into 
big phantoms, black wells yawn hideously and mysteriously in the 
darkness; legions of strange creatures whirl shuddering over the fan- 
tastic landscape; blank nature is peopled, inert matter moves. But 
the images remain clear; in this madness there is nothing vague or 





1 Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xlii, The translator has used the ‘Charles Dickens’ 
edition, 1868, 18 vols, 











CHAP. I. THE NOVEL—DICKENS. °Y 341 


disorderly ; imaginary objects are designed with outlines as precise and 
_ details as numerous as real objects, and the dream is equal to the truth. 

There is, amongst others, a description of the night wind, quaint and 
powerful, which recalls certain pages of Notre Dame de Paris. The 
source of this description, as of all those of Dickens, is pure imagination. 
He does not, like Walter Scott, describe in order to give his reader a 
map, and to lay down the locality of his drama. He does not, like 
Lord Byron, describe from love of magnificent nature, and in order to 
display a splendid succession of grand pictures. He dreams neither of 
attaining exactness nor of selecting beauty. Struck with a certain 
spectacle, he is transported, and breaks out into unforeseen figures. 
Now it is the yellow leaves, pursued by the wind, fleeing and jostling, 
shivering, scared, in a giddy chase, lying in the furrows, drowned in the 
ditches, perching in the trees... Here it is the night wind, sweeping 
round a church, moaning as it tries with its unseen hand the windows 
and the doors, and seeking out some crevices by which to enter : 


‘ And when it has got in; as one not finding what he seeks, whatever that 
may be ; it wails and howls to issue forth again: and not content with stalking 
through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the 
deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself 
despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Amnon, 
it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls: seeming to read, in whispers, 
the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as 
with laughter ; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting.’ * 


Hitherto you have only recognised the sombre imagination of a man 
of the north, A little further you perceive the impassioned religion 
of a revolutionary Protestant, when he speaks to you of ‘a ghostly 
sound too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its 





1 «Tt was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on 
such poor creatures as the fallen leaves ; but this wind happening to come up with 
a great heap of them just after venting its humonr on the insulted Dragon, did so 
disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, 
rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking 
frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the 
extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury: for, not 
content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted 
them into the wheelwright’s saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the 
yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and 
when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their 
heels! 

‘The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was: 
for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their 
pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure; and they crept under 
the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats ; and 
tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges ; and, in short, 
went anywhere for safety.’—(Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. ii.) 

2 The Chimes, first quarter. 


342 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V, 


wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped ; in 
defiance of the. Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but 
are so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly 
round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing 
inachurch!’ But an instant after, the artist speaks again; he leads 
you to the belfry, and in the racket of the accumulated words, com- 
municates to your nerves the sensation of the aerial tempest. The 
wind whistles, blows, and gambols in the arches: 

* High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy 


arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl 
the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver!’ ! 


Dickens has seen it all in the old belfry; his thought is a mirror; not 
the smallest or ugliest detail escapes him. He has counted ‘the iron 
rails ragged with rust ;’ ‘the sheets of lead,’ wrinkled and shrivelled, 
which crackle and heave astonished under the foot which treads them ; 
‘the shabby nests’ which ‘ the birds stuff into corners’ of the mossy 
joists; the gray dust heaped up; ‘ the speckled spiders, indolent and fat 
with long security,’ which, hanging by a thread, ‘ swing idly to and fro 
in the vibration of the bells,’ and which on a sudden alarm climb up 
like sailors on their ropes, or ‘drop upon the ground and ply a score 
of nimble legs to save a life.’ This picture captivates us. Kept up 
at such a height, amongst the fleeting clouds which spread their 
shadows over the town, and the feeble lights scarce distinguished in 
the mist, we feel a sort of vertigo; and we hardly fail to discover, 
with Dickens, thought and a soul in the metallic voice of the chimes 
which inhabit this trembling castle. 

He makes a story out of them, and it is not the first. Dickens is 
a poet; he is as much at home in the imaginative world as in the 
actual. Here the chimes are talking to the old messenger, and con- 
soling him. Elsewhere it is the Cricket on the Hearth singing of all 
domestic joys, and bringing before the eyes of the desolate master the 
happy evenings, the sanguine hopes, the happiness, the quiet cheerful- 
ness which he has enjoyed, and which he has no longer. In another 
tale it is the history of a sick and precocious child who feels itself dying, 
and who, sleeping in the arms of its sister, hears the distant song of the 
murmuring waves which rocked him to sleep. Objects, with Dickens, 
take their hue from the thoughts of his characters. His imagination 
is so lively, that it carries everything with it in the path which it 
chooses, If the character is happy, the stones, flowers, and clouds 
must be happy too; if he is sad, nature must weep with him. Even 
to the ugly houses in the street, all speak. The style runs through 
a swarm of visions; it breaks out into the strangest oddities. Here is 
a young girl, pretty and good, who crosses Fountain Court and the low 


purlieus in search of her brother. What more simple? what even 





1 The Chimes, first quarter. 








ee ey * a. ee 7 _—_ a 2 
THe S . * A = 

, , i y sal . 

ro - ‘ e 


THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 343 





CHAP. 1.] 


more vulgar? Dickens is carried away by it. To entertain her, he 
summons up birds, trees, houses, the fountain, the offices, law papers, 
and much besides. It is a folly, and it is all but an enchantment: 


* Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain Court 
for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest and purest-hearted 
little woman in the world, is a question for gardeners, and those who are learned 
in the loves of plants. But, that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to 
have such a delicate little figure flitting through it ; that it passed like a smile 
from the grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker, 
sterner than before ; there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have 
leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood, that in her person 
stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the Law ; the chirping 
sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to 
listen to imaginary sky-larks, as so fresh a little creature passed ; the dingy boughs, 
unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in 
a kindred gracefulness, to shed their benedictions on her graceful head ; old love- 
letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account 
among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which, in 
their degeneracy, they formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a 
moment’s recollection of their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by. Any- 
thing might have happened that did not happen, and never will, for the love: of 
Ruth.’? : 


This is far-fetched, without doubt. French taste, always measured, 
revolts against these affected strokes, these sickly prettinesses. And 


yet this affectation is natural; Dickens does not hunt_after quaint- 


nesses; they come to him. His excessive imagination is like a string 


too tightly stretched ; it produces of it ] violent stock, 
sounds not otherwise heard. 


“We shall see how it is excited. Imagine a shop, no matter what 
shop, the most repulsive ; that of a marine store dealer. Dickens sees 
the barometers, chronometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, 
sextants, speaking trumpets, and so forth. He sees so many, sees 
them so clearly, they are crowded and crammed, they replace each 
other so forcibly in his brain, which they fill and litter; there are 
so many geographical and nautical ideas scattered under the glass- 
cases hung from the ceiling, nailed to the wall, they swamp him from 
so many sides, and in such abundance, that he loses his judgment. 
‘The shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to 
become a snug, sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good sea- 
room, in the event of an unexpected launch, to work its way securely 
to any desert island in the world.’ * 

The difference between a madman and a man of genius is not very 
great. Napoleon, who knew men, said so to Esquirol.? The same 
faculty leads us to glory or throws us in a cell in a lunatic asylum. 
It is visionary imagination which forges the phantoms of the madman 











1 Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xlv. _ * Dombey and Son, ch. iv. 
* See vol. i, note 1, page 340, 


fe a } ~ aaa! ps y . ee <a See 


344 — MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


and creates the personages of an artist, and the classifications serving 
for the first may serve for the second. The imagination of Dickens is 
like that of monomaniacs. To plunge oneself into an idea, to be 





absorbed by it, to see nothing else, to repeat it under a hundred forms, 








to enlarge it, to carry it thus enlarged to the eye of the spectator, to_ 
“dazzle and Soacwham him with it, to stamp it upon him so tenacious 











and impressive that he can never again tear it from his memory,—these 





are the great features of this imagination and | style. In this, Dawd 
Copperfield is a masterpiece. Never did objects remain more visible — 
and present to the memory of a reader than those which he describes. 
The old house, the parlour, the kitchen, Peggotty’s boat, and above 
all the school-yard, are interiors whose relief, energy, and precision are 
unequalled. Dickens has the passion and patience of the painters of . 


his nation; he reckons his details one by one, notes the various hues © 
of the old tree-tinks + ; sees the dilapidated cask, the green and broken 





flagstones, the chinks of the damp walls; he distinguishes the > strange 
smells which rise from them ; ‘marks the size of the mossy spots, rea 
the : names of the scholars ree on the door, an e 

of the letters. And this minute description has nothing cold about it: 
if it is thus detailed, it is because the contemplation was intense; it 
proves its passion by its exactness. We felt this passion without 
accounting for it; suddenly we find it at the end of a page; the bold- 
ness of the style renders it visible, and the violence of the phrase 
attests the violence of the impression. Excessive metaphors bring 
before the mind grotesque fancies. We feel ourselves beset by ex- 
travagant visions. Mr. Mell takes his flute, and blows on it, says 
Copperfield, ‘ until I almost thought he would gradually blow his whole 
being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the keys.’ We 
think of Hoffmann’s fantastic tales; we are arrested by a fixed idea, 
and our head begins to ache. These eccentricities are the style of 
sickness rather than of health. 

‘Tom Pinch, disabused at last, discovers that his master Pecksniff is a hypo- 
critical rogue. He had so long been used to steep the Pecksniff of ‘his fancy in 
his tea, and spread him out upon his toast, and take him as a relish with his beer, 
that he made but a poor breakfast on the first morning after. his expulsion.’ ? 


Therefore Dickens is admirable in the depicture of hallucinations. 
We see that he feels himself those of his characters, that he is engrossed 
by their ideas, that“he enters.into.their madness, AS an Enelishiian 
and a moralist, he has described remorse frequently. Perhaps it may 
be said that 3 makes a scarecrow of it, and that an artist is wrong to 
transform himself into an assistant of the policeman and the preacher. 
What of that? The portrait of Jonas Chuzzlewit is so terrible, that we 
may pardon it for being useful. Jonas, leaving his chamber secretly, 
has treacherously murdered his enemy, and thinks thenceforth to 




















1 David Copperyield, ch. v. 2 Martin Chuzalewit, ch. xxxvi. 








CHAP. I.]. THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 345 


breathe in peace; but the recollection of the murder gradually dis- 
organises his mind, like poison. He is no longer able to control his 
ideas; they bear ce on with the fury of a terrified horse... He is for 
ever thinking, and shuddering as he thinks, of the chamber where they 
believed he slept. He sees this chamber, counts the pattern, pictures 
the long folds of the dark curtains, the hollows of the bed which he 
has disarranged, the door at which some one might have knocked. 
The more he wants to escape from this vision, the more he is immersed 
in it; it is a burning gulf in which he rolls, struggling, with cries and 
sweats of agony. He fancies himself lying in his bed, as he ought to 
be, and an instant after he sees himself there. He fears this other 
self. The dream is so vivid, that he is not sure that he is not in 
London. ‘He became in a manner his own ghost and phantom.’ 
And this imaginary being, like a mirror, only redoubles before his 
conscience the image of assassination and punishment. He returns, 
and shuffles, with pale face, to the door of his chamber. He, a man of 
business, a reckoner, a coarse machine of positive reasoning, has become 
as fanciful as a nervous woman. He advances on tiptoe, as if he were 
afraid of rousing the imaginary man, whom he pictures lying in the 
bed. At the moment when he turns the key in the lock, ‘a monstrous 
fear beset his mind. What if the murdered man were there before 
him!’ At last he enters, and buries himself in his bed, burnt up with 
fever. ‘He buried himself beneath the blankets,’ so as to try not to 
see the cursed room ; he sees it more clearly still. The rustling of the 
coverings, the buzz of an insect, the beatings of his heart, all ery to 
him, Murderer! His mind fixed with ‘an agony of listening’ on the 
door, he ends by thinking that people open it; he hears it creak. His 
senses are distorted; he dares not mistrust them, he dares no longer 

believe in them ; ionth in this nightmare, in which drowned reason leaves 
nothing but a Shaos of hideous forms, he finds no reality but the inces- 
sant_burden of his convulsive despair. enceforth all his thoughts, 
dangers, the whole world disappears for him in ‘the one dread ques- 
tion only,’ ‘When would they find the body in the wood?’ He forces 
himself to distract his thoughts from this; they remain stamped and 
glued to it; they hold him to it as by a chain of iron. He continually 
figures himself going into the wood, ‘ going softly about it and about it 
among the leaves, approaching it nearer and nearer through a gap in © 
the boughs, and startling the very flies, that were thickly sprinkled all 

over it, like heaps of dried currants.’ And he always ends with the 
idea of the discovery ; he expects news of it, listening rapt to the cries 
and shouts in the street, hearing men come in and go out, come up and 
go down. At the same time, he has ever before his eyes that corpse 
‘lying alone in the wood;’ ‘he was for ever showing and presenting 
it, as it were, to every creature whom he saw. Look here! do you 
now of this? Is it found? Do you suspect me?’ If he had been 
condemned to bear the body in his arms, and lay it down for recogni- 




















346 ‘MODERN AUTHORS. ~ | [BOOK v. 


tion at the feet of every one he met, it could not have been more con- 
stantly with him, or a cause of more monotonous and dismal occupation 
than it was in this state of his mind.* 

Jonas is on the verge of madness. There are other characters 
quite mad. Dickens has drawn three or four portraits of madmen, 
very agreeable at first sight, but so true that they are in reality horrible. 

——e an imagination like his, 1 

0 exhibit the Jerannements of reason. ‘Two especially there are, 
Ww ar ‘make us laugh, and which make us shudder. Augustus, the 
gloomy maniac, who is on the point of marrying Miss Pecksniff; and 
poor Mr. Dick, half an idiot, half a monomaniac, who lives with Miss 
Trotwood. ‘To understand these sudden exaltations, these unforeseen 
gloominesses, these incredible summersaults of perverted sensibility ; 
to reproduce these hiatuses of thought, these interruptions of reason- 
ing, this recurrence of a word, always the same, which breaks in upon 
a phrase attempted and overturns renascent reason; to see the stupid 
smile, the vacant look, the foolish and uneasy physiognomy of these 
haggard old children who painfully involve idea in idea, and stumble 
at every step on the threshold of the truth which they cannot attain, is 
a faculty which Hoffmann alone has possessed in an equal degree with 
Dickens. The play of these shattered reasons is like the creaking of a 
dislocated door; it makes one sick to hear it. We find, if we like, a dis- 
cordant burst of laughter, but we discover still more easily a groan and 
a lamentation, and we are terrified to gauge the lucidity, strangeness, 
exaltation, violence of imagination which has produced such creations, 
which has carried them on and sustained them unbendingly to the end, 
and which found itself in its proper sphere in imitating and producing 
their irrationality. 

Ill. 


To what can this force be applied? Imaginations differ not only 
in their nature, but also in their object ; after having gauged their 
energy, we must define their domain; in the broad world the artist 
makes a world for himself; involuntarily he chooses a class of objects 
which he prefers; others do not warm his genius, and he doe 
ceive them. ‘Dickens does not perceive great things; ; “this is the second 
feature of his imagination. Enthusiasm” séizés him “In_connection with 
everything, especially i in connection with _vulgar objects, a curiosity 
shop, a sign-post, a town-crier. “He has vigour, he does not attain 
beauty. His instrument gives vibrating sounds, but not harmonious. 
If he is describing a house, he will draw it with geometrical clearness ; 
he will put all its colours in relief, discover a face and thought in the 
shutters and the pipes; he will make a sort of human being out of the 
house, grimacing and forcible, which will chain our regard, and which 
we shall never forget; but he will not see the grandeur of the long 











1 Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. li. 











CHAP. I.) | THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 347 


monumental lines, the calm majesty of the broad shadows boldly 

divided by the white plaster, the cheerfulness of the light which covers 

them, and becomes palpable in the black niches in which it is poured, 

as though to rest and to sleep. If he is painting a landscape, he will 

perceive the haws which dot with their red fruit the leafless hedges, 

the thin vapour streaming from a distant stream, the motions of an 

insect in the grass; but the deep poetry which would have seized the 

author of Valentine and André will escape him. He will be lost, like 

the painters of his country, in the minute and impassioned observation 
of small things ; he will have no love of beautiful forms and fine colours. 

He will not perceive that the blue and the red, the straight..line.and 

the “curve; are enough tc jose"vast Concerts, which amidst so many 

various expressions maintain a grand serenity, and open up in the depths 

of the soul a spring of health and happiness. Happiness is lacking in 

him ; his inspiration is a feverish rapture, which does not select its — 
objects, which animates promiscuously the ugly, the vulgar, the 
ridiculous, and which, communicating to his creations an indescribable 
jerkiness and violénce, deprives them of the delight and harmony which 
in other hands they might have retained. Miss Ruth is a very pretty 
housekeeper ; she puts on her apron: what a treasure this apron is! 
Dickens turns it over and over, like a milliner’s shopman who wants to 
sell it. She holds it in her hands, then she puts it round her waist, 
ties the strings, spreads it out, smoothes it that it may fall well, What 
does she not do with her apron? And how delighted is Dickens during 
these innocent occupations! He utters little exclamations of joyous 
fun, ‘Oh heaven, what a wicked little stomacher!’ He apostrophises 
a ring, he sports round Ruth, claps his hands for pleasure. It is 
much worse when she is making the pudding; there is a whole scene, 
dramatic and lyric, with exclamations, protasis, sudden inversions, as 
complete as a Greek tragedy. These kitchen refinements and this 
waggery of imagination make us think (by way of contrast) of the 
interior pictures of George Sand, of the room of Geneviéve the flower- 
girl, She, like Ruth, is making a useful object, ver ys since she 
will self T¢-TouMOrTGW Tor Weapence; but his bier is a ull-blown 
rose, whose. Fragile Petals ave MOUNMEd by her Hngers as by th y the fingers 
of a fairy, whose fresh corolla ts"purpled with a vermilion as tender 
as that of her cheeks; "a fragile masterpiece which has bloomed on an 
evening of poetic emotion, whilst from her window she beholds in the 
sky the piercing and divine eyes of the stars, and in the depths of her 
virgin heart murmurs the first breath of love. Dickens does not need 
such a sight for his transports; a stage-coach throws him into dithy- 
rambs; the wheels, the splashing, the cracking whip, the clatter of 
the horses, harness, the vehicle; here is enough to transport him. 
He feels sympathetically the motion of the coach; it bears him along 
with it; he hears the gallop of the horses in his brain, and goes off, 
uttering this ode, which seems to proceed from the guard’s horn; 












































An eee sy 


348 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


* Yoho, among the gathering shades ; making of no account the deep reflections 
of the trees, but scampering on through light and darkness, all the same, as if the 
light of London, fifty miles away, were quite enough to travel by, and some to 
spare. Yoho, beside the village green, where cricket-players linger yet, and 
every little indentation made in the fresh grass by bat or wicket, ball or player’s 
foot, sheds out its perfume on the night. Away with four fresh horses from the 
Bald-faced Stag, where topers congregate about the door admiring; and the last 
team, with traces hanging loose, go roaming off towards the pond, until observed 
and shouted after by a dozen throats, while volunteering boys pursue them. Now, 
with a clattering of hoofs and striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone 
bridge, and down again into the shadowy road, and through the open gate, and far 
away, away, into the wold. Yoho! . 

‘Yoho, behind there, stop that bugle fora moment ! Come creeping over to the 
front, along the coach-roof, guard, and make one at this basket! Not that we 
slacken in our pace the while, not we: we rather put the bits of blood upon their 
mettle, for the greater glory of the snack. Ah! It is long since this bottle of old 
wine was brought into contact with the mellow breath of night, you may depend, 
and rare good stuff it is to wet a bugler’s whistle with. Only try it. Don’t be 
afraid of turning up your finger, Bill, another pull! Now, take your breath, and 
try the bugle, Bill. There’s music! There’s a tone! ‘‘ Over the hills and far 
away,” indeed, Yoho! The skittish mare is all alive to-night. Yoho! Yoho! 

‘See the bright moon ; high up before we know it ; making the earth reflect 
the objects on its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cottages, church steeples, 
blighted stumps and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the sudden, 
and mean to contemplate their own fair images till morning. The poplars yonder 
rustle, that their quivering leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so 
the oak; trembling does not become him ; and he watches himself in his stout 
old burly stedfastness, without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown gate, ill 
poised upon its creaking hinges, crippled and decayed, swings to and fro before its 
glass like some fantastic dowager ; while our own ghostly likeness travels on, Yoho! 
Yoho! through ditch and brake, upon the ploughed land and the smooth, along 
the steep hill-side and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom-Hunter. 

* Clouds too! Anda mist upon the Hollow! Not a dull fog that hides it, but 
a light, airy, gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest admiration gives a new 
charm to the beauties it is spread before: as real gauze has done ere now, and 
would again, so please you, though we were the Pope. Yoho! Why, now we 
travel like the Moon herself. Hiding this minute in a grove of trees, next minute 
in a patch of vapour, emerging now upon our broad, clear course, withdrawing 
now, but always dashing on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho! A 

‘match against the Moon ! 

‘ The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when Day comes leaping up. Yoho! 
Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous street. 
Yoho, past market gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares ; 
past waggons, coaches, carts ; past early workmen, late stragglers, drunken men, 
and sober carriers of loads ; past brick and mortar in its every shape; and in among 
the rattling pavements, where a jaunty-seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve ! 
Yoho, down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old 
Inn-yard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting down, quite stunned and giddy, is 
in London !’! . 





1 Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xxxvi. 





ae oe tm es . ‘ , } ieee * 
r - . ’ i 4 ae 


CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 349° 


All this to tell us that Tom Pinch is come to London! This fit of 
lyricism, in which the most poetic extravagances spring from the most 
vulgar commonplaces, like sickly flowers growing in. a broken old 
flower-pot, displays in its natural and quaint contrasts all the sides of 
Dickens’ imagination. We shall have his portrait if we picture to our- 
selves a man who, with a stewpan in one hand and a postilion’s whip 
in the other, took to making prophecies, 


IV. 


The reader already foresees what: vehement emotions this species of 
imagination will produce. The mode of conception in a man governs 
the mode of thought. When the mind, barely attentive, follows the 
indistinct outlines of a rough sketched image, joy and grief glide past 
him with insensible touch. When the mind, with rapt attention, 





simple narrative; he only rails or weeps; he writes but satires or 
elesies. He has the feverish senility of a woman who laughs loudly, 
or melts into tears at the sudden shock of the slightest occurrence. 
This impassioned style is extremely potent, and to it may be attributed 
half the glory of Dickens, The majority of men have only weak emo- 
tions. We labour mechanically, and yawn much ; three-fourths of the 
things Teave us cold; we go to sleep by habit, and we end by ceasing. 
to remark"thehotisehold scenes, petty details, stale adventures, which 
are thé basis~of~our”éxistence. A man comes, who suddenly renders 
them interesting; nay, who makes them dramatic, changes them into 
objects of admiration, tenderness, and dread. Without leaving the 
fireside or the omnibus, we are trembling, our eyes full of tears, or 
shaken by fits of inextinguishable laughter. We are transformed, our 
life is doubled, our soul had been vegetating; now it feels, suffers, 
loves. The contrast, the rapid succession, the number of the senti- 
ments, add further to its trouble; we are immersed for two hundred 
pages in a torrent of new emotions, contrary and increasing, which 
communicates its violence to the mind, which carries it away in digres- 
sions and falls, and only casts it on the bank enchanted and exhausted. 
It is an intoxication, and on a delicate soul the effect would be too 
forcible ; but it suits the English public, and that public has justified it. 
This sensibility can hardly have more than two issues—laughter and 
tears. There are others, but they are only reached by lofty eloquence ; 
they are the path to sublimity, and we have seen that for Dickens this 
path is cut off. Yet there is no writer who knows better how to touch 
and melt; he makes us weep, absolutely shed tears; before reading 
him we did not know there was so much pity in the heart. The grief 
of a child, who wishes to be loved by. his father, and whom his father 




















350 MODERN AUTHORS. 3 [BOOK V. 


does not love; the despairing love and slow death of a poor half- 
imbecile young man: all these pictures of secret grief leave an inefface- 
able impression. ‘The tears which he sheds are genuine, and comparison 
is their only source. Balzac, George Sand, Stendahl have also recorded 
human miseries ; is it possible to write without recording them? But - 
they do not seek them out, they hit upon them ; they do not dream of dis- 
playing them to us; they were going elsewhere, and met them on their 
way. They love art better than men. They delight only in setting in 
motion the springs of passions, in combining large systems of events, in 
constructing powerful characters: they do not write from sympathy 
with the wretched, but from love of beauty. When you have finished 
George Sand’s Mauprat, your emotion is not pure sympathy; you feel, 
in addition, a deep admiration for the greatness and the generosity of 
love. When you have come to the end of Balzac’s Le Pere Goriot, your 
heart is bruised by the tortures of that anguish; but the astonishing 
inventiveness, the accumulation of facts, the abundance of general 
ideas, the force of analysis, transport you into the world of science, and 
your painful sympathy is calmed by the spectacle of this physiology of 
the heart. Dickens never calms our pare & he selects subjects in 


which it alone, and more than elsewhere, is unfolded ; the long.oppres~ 
sion of children persecuted and starved by their schoolmaster ; the life 
of the factory-hand Stephen, robbed. and dea ee 
away by his fellows, accused of theft lingering BSE ee eos 
of-a_pit into which he has fallen, maimed, consumed by fever, and 
dying when he is at length discovered. Rachael, his only friend, is 
there; and his delirium, his cries, the storm of despair in which 
Dickeiss envelopes his characters, have prepared the way for the painful 
picture of this resigned death. ‘The bucket brings up a poor, crushed 
human creature, and we see ‘ the pale, worn, patient face looking up to 
the sky, whilst the right hand, shattered and hanging down, seems as 
if waiting to be taken by another hand.’ Yet he smiles, and feebly said 
‘Rachael!’ She stooped down, and bent over him until her eyes were 
between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look 
at her. Then in broken words he tells her of his long agony. Ever 
since he was born he has met with nothing but misery and injustice ; 
it is the rule—the weak suffer, and are made to suffer. This pit into 
which he had fallen ‘has cost hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives— 





fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em 


fro’ want and hunger. . . . The men that works in pits . . . ha’ pray’n 
an’ pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder 
to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children, that they loves as well 
as gentlefok loves theirs;’ all in vain. ‘ When the pit was in work, it 
killed wi’out need ; when ’t is let alone, it kills wi’out need.’* Stephen 
says this without anger, quietly merely, as the truth. He has his 





1 Hard Times, bk. 8, ch. vi. 








CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 351. 


_ calumniator before him ; he does not get angry, accuses no one; he only 


charges the father to deny the calumny as soon as he shall be dead. 
His heart is up there in heaven, where he ‘as seen a star shining. In 
his agony, on his bed of stones, he has gazed upon it, and the tender 
and touching regard of the divine star has calmed, by its mystical 
serenity, the anguish of mind and body. 

‘Tt ha’ shined upon me,” he said reverently, ‘‘in my pain and trouble down 
below. It ha’ shined into my mind. I ha’ lookn at’t and thowt o’ thee, Rachael, 
till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. Ifsoom ha’ 
been wantin’ in unnerstan’in’ me better, I, too, ha’ been wantin’ in unnerstan’in’ 
them better. 

‘«*Tn my pain an’ trouble, lookin’ up yonder,—wi’ it shinin’ on me.—I ha’ seen 
more clear, and ha’ made it my dyin’ prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom 
toogether more, an’ get a better unnerstan’in’ o’ one another, than when I were 
in’t my own weak seln. 

* “Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin’ on me down there in my 
trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour’s home. I awmust think 
it be the very star!” 

‘They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and over 
the wide landscape ; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers 
broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown 
him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and 
forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.’ ! 


This same writer is the most railing, the most comic, the most 
jocose of English authors. And it is moreover a singular gaiety! It 
is the only kind which would harmonise with this impassioned sensi- 
bility. There is a laughter akin to tears. Satire is the sister of elegy: 
if the second pleads for the oppressed, the first combats the oppres- 
sors. Wounded by misfortunes and vices, Dickens avenges himself by 
ridicule. He does not paint, he punishes. Nothing could be mare 
damaging t than those long chapters of sustained irony, in which the 
sarcasm is “pressed line after line, more “sanguinal rae piercing ‘In the 
chosen advers five"OY Six against the Americans,—their 
bribed newspapers; “their drunken journalists, their cheating specu- 
lators, their women authors, their coarseness, their familiarity, their 
insolence, their brutality,—enough to captivate an absolutist, and to 
justify the Liberal who, returning from. New York, embraced with tears 
in his eyes the first gendarme whom he saw on landing at Havre. 
Foundations of industrial societies, interviews of a member of Parlia- 
ment and his constituents, instructions of a member of the House of 
Commons to his secretary, the display of great banking-houses, the 
laying of the first stone of a public building, every kind of ceremony 
and lie of English society, are depicted with the fire and bitterness of 
Hogarth, There are parts where the comic element is so violent, that 
it has the appearance of a vengeance—as the story of Jonas Chuzzlewit. 











1 Hard Times, bk. 3, ch. vi. 


352 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


‘The very first word which this excellent boy learnt to spell was gain, 
and the second (when he came into two syllables) was money.’ This 
fine education had unfortunately produced two results: first, that, 
‘having been long taught by his father to overreach everybody, he 
had imperceptibly acquired a love of overreaching that venerable 
monitor himself ;’ secondly, that being taught to regard everything 
as a matter of property, ‘he had gradually come to look with impa- 
tience on his’ parent as a certain amount of personal. estate,’ who would 
_ be very well ‘secured’ in that particular description of ace which 
is commonly called a coffin, and banked in the grave.’ ‘Is that my 
father snoring, Pecksniff ?’ asked Jonas; ‘tread upon his foot; will you 
be so good? The foot next you is the gouty one.’? He is introduced 
to us with this mark of attention; you may judge of the rest. At 
bottom, Dickens is gloomy, like Hogarth; but, like Hogarth, he makes 
us burst. with laughter by the buffoonery of his inventions and the 
violence of his caricatures. He pushes his characters to absurdity with 
unwonted ‘boldness. Pecksniff hits off moral phrases and sentimental 
actions so grotesque, that they make him extravagant. Never were 
heard such monstrous oratorical displays. Sheridan had already painted 
an English hypocrite, Joseph Surface ; but he differs from Pecksniff as 
much as a portrait of the eighteenth century differs from a cartoon of 
Punch. Dickens makes hypocrisy so deformed and monstrous, that his 
hypocrite ceases to resemble a man; you would call him one of those 
fantastic figures whose nose is greater than his body. This extravagant 
comicality springs from, excess of imagination. Dickens uses the same 
ring throughout. The better to make us.see the object he shows.us, 
hé dazzles the reader’s eyes with it.; but the reader is amused by this 








irregular fancy: the fire of the execution makes him forget that.the 


scene is improbable, and: he laughs heartily as he listens to the. under- 
taker, Mould, enumerating the consolations which filial piety, well 


backed by money, may find in his shop. What grief could not be 


softened. by 


‘Four horses to each vehicle. . . velvet trappings .. . drivers in cloth 
cloaks and top-boots ... the plumage of the ostrich, died black... any 
number of walking attendants, dressed in the first style of funeral fashion, and 
carrying batons tipped with brass . . . a place in Westminster Abbey itself, if he 
choose to invest it in such a purchase. Oh! donot let us say that gold is dross, 
when it can buy such things as these.” ‘‘Ay, Mrs. Gamp, you are right,” re- 
joined the undertaker. ‘‘We should be an honoured calling. We do good by 
stealth, and blush to have it mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation 
may I—even I,” cried Mr. Mould, ‘‘ have diffused among my fellow-creatures by 
means of my four long-tailed prancers, never harnessed under ten pund ten!” ’* 


Usually Dickens remains grave whilst drawing his caricatures. 
English wit consists in saying light jests in a solemn manner. Tone 





1 Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. viii. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. ch. xix. 











CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 353 


and ideas are then in contrast; every contrast makes a strong impres- 
sion. Dickens loves to produce them, and his public to hear them. ~ 

If at times he forgets to castigate his neighbour, if he tries to sport, 
to amuse himself, he is no longer happy over it. The element of the 
English character is its want of happiness. The ardent and tenacious 


imagination of Dickens is impressed with things too firmly, to pass lightly 
and ¢ gaily over the surface. H He leans, he penetrates, works into, hollows 








a 


them out ; all the ese e violent act it actions are efforts, and ern. 
ings. To ‘Fe happy, : a man must be -light-minded, as a.Frenchman.of . 
the ae eighteenth century, or Sensual, as an Italian.of the sixteenth ; a man 
must not get anxious about, NBS, to. enjoy them, Dickens does get 
anxious, and does not enjoy. ‘Take a little comical accident, such as 
you u meet with in the | strect—a gust of wind, which blows about the 
garments of a messenger. Scaramouche will grin with good humour ; 
Lesage smile like a diverted man; both will pass by and think no 
more of it. Dickens muses over it for half a page. He sees so clearly 


all the effects of the wind, he puts himself so entirely im its place, b ace, he 
imagines for it a will so impassioned and precise, h he shakes the clothes 


of the poor man hither and thither so violently and so ‘long, | he turns 




















ee ree 


the gust into a tempest,.into..a..persecution so great, that we are -e made 
giddy ; ;_and even whilst we laugh, we feel in ourselves too ‘much 


emotion and compassion to laugh heartily : 


‘ And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chatter- 
ing place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The 
wind came tearing round the corner—especially the east wind—as if it had sallied 
forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And often- 
times it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected ; for, bouncing 
round the corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it 
cried: ‘‘ Why, here he is!” Incontinently his little white apron would be caught 
up over his head like a naughty boy’s garments, and his feeble little cane would 
be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would 
undergo tremendous agitation ; and Toby himself, all aslant, and facing now in 
this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and 
worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but 
one degree removed from a positive miracle that he wasn’t zarried up bodily into 
the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other portable creatures sometimes are, 
and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some strange 
corner of the world where ticket-porters are unknown.’ 4 














If now you would picture in a glance this imagination,—so lucid, so 
violent, so passionately fixed on the object_ selected, so deeply touched 
by little things, so wholly _attached to the details and sentiments of 
vulgar lif in_incessant. emotions, so powerful in rousing 
painful pity, sarcastic raillery, nervous gaiety,—-you must fancy a 
London street on a rainy winter's night. The flickering light of the 
gas dazzles your eyes, streams through the shop windows, floods over 











' The Chimes, The First Quarter. 
VOL. II. - 


354 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


the passing forms; and its harsh light, settling upon their contracted 
features, brings out, with endless detail and damaging force, their 
wrinkles, deformities, troubled expression. If in this close and dirty 
crowd you discover the fresh face of a young girl, this artificial light 
covers it with false and excessive tones; it makes it stand out against 
the rainy and cold blackness with a strange halo. The mind is struck 
with wonder; but you carry your hand to your eyes to cover them, 
and, whilst you admire the force of this light, you involuntarily think 
of the true country sun and the tranquil beauty of day. 


§ 2.—Tue Pustic. 
I. 


Plant this talent on English soil; the literary opinion of the country 
will direct its growth and explain its fruits. For this public opinion 
is its private opinion ; it does not submit to it as to an external con- 
straint, but feels it inwardly as an inner persuasion ; it does not weary, 
but develops it, and only repeats aloud what it said to itself in secret, 

The counsels of this public taste are somewhat like this ; the more 
powerful because they. agree ‘With its naturalinclination,andurge it, 
upon its special.course :— 

‘Be moral, All your novels must be such as may be read by 
young girls. We are practical minds, and we would not have litera- 
ture corrupt practical life. We believe in family life, and we would 
not have literature paint the passions which attack family life. We 
are Protestants, and we- have St somes of re RTT 








Married or not, she thinks it beautiful, haly, pa in Shel and 
she says so. Don’t believe this; and if you do believe it, don’t say it. 
It is a bad example. Love thus represented makes msariage a secondary 
matter. It ends in marriage, or destroys it, or does without it, accord- 
ing to circumstances; but whatever it does, it treats it as inferior; it 
does not recognise any holiness in it, beyond that which love gives it, and 
holds it impious if it is excluded. A novel of this sort is a plea for 
the heart, the imagination, enthusiasm, nature; but it is often a plea 
against society and law: we do not suffer society and law to be touched, 
directly or indirectly. To present a feeling as divine, to bow before it 
all institutions, to carry it through a series of generous actions, to sing 
with a sort of heroic inspiration the combats which it wages and the 
attacks which it sustains, to enrich it with all the force of eloquence, 
to crown it with all the flowers of poetry, is to paint the life, which it 
results in, as more beautiful and loftier than others, to set it far above 
all passions and duties, in a sublime region, on a throne, whence it 
shines as a light, a consolation, a hope, and draws all hearts towards 








CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 355 


it. Perhaps this is the world of artists; it is not the world of ordinary 
men. Perhaps it is agreeable to nature; we make nature bend before 
the interests of society. George Sand paints impassioned women ; 
paint you for us good women. George Sand makes us desire to be 
in love; do you make us desire to be married. 

‘This has its disadvantages, without doubt; art suffers by it, if the 
public gains. Though your characters give the best examples, your 
works will be of less value. No matter; you may console yourself 
with the thought that you are moral. Your lovers will be uninterest- 
ing; for the only interest natural to their age is the violence of passion, 
and you cannot paint passion. In Nicholas Nickleby you will show 
two good young men, like all young men, marrying two good young 
women, like all young women; in Martin Chuzzlewit you will show 
two more good young men, perfectly resembling the other two, marry- 
ing again two good young women, perfectly resembling the other two ; 
in Dombey and Son there will be only one good young man and one good 
young woman. Otherwise, no difference. And so on. The number 
of your marriages is marvellous, and you marry enough couples to 
people England. More curious still, they are all disinterested, and the 
young man and young woman snap their fingers at money as sincerely 
as at the Opéra Comique. You will not cease to dwell on the pretty 
shynesses of the betrothed, the tears of the mothers, the tears of all the 
guests, the cheering and touching scenes of the dinner table; you will 
create a crowd of family pictures, all touching, and all as agreeable 
as screen-paintings. The reader will be moved; he will think he is 
beholding the innocent loves and virtuous attentions of a little boy and 
girl of ten. He should like to say to them: “ Good little people, con- 
tinue to be very proper.” But the chief interest will be for young 
girls, who will learn in how devoted and yet suitable a manner a lover 
ought to pay his court. If you venture on a seduction, as in Copper- 
Jield, you will not relate the progress, ardour, intoxication of the amour ; 
you will only depict its miseries, despair, and remorse. If in Copper- 
Jield and the Cricket on the Hearth you present a troubled marriage and 
a suspected wife, you will make haste to restore peace to the marriage 
and innocence to the wife; and you will deliver, by her mouth, so 
splendid a eulogy on marriage, that it might serve for a model to 
Emile Augier. If in Hard Times the wife treads on the border of 
crime, she shall check herself there. If in Dombey and Son she flees 
from her husband’s roof, she will remain pure, will only incur the 
appearance of crime, and will treat her lover in such a manner that 
the reader will wish to be the husband. If, lastly, in Copperfield you 
relate the emotions and follies of love, you will rally this poor affection, 
depict its littlenesses, not venture to make us hear the ardent, generous, 
undisciplined blast of the all-powerful passion; you will turn it into 





? A living French author, whose dramas are all said to have a moral purpose.—Tr. 


“See 


356 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


a toy for good children, or a pretty marriage-trinket. But marriage 
will compensate you. Your genius of observation and taste for details 
will be exercised on the scenes of domestic life; you will excel in the 
picture of a fireside, a family dialogue, children on the knees of their 
mother, a husband watching by lamplight by his sleeping wife, the 
heart full of joy and courage, because it feels that it is working for its 
own. You will find charming or grave portraits of women: of Dora, 
who after marriage continues to be a little girl, whose pouting, pretti- 
nesses, childishnesses, laughter, make the house gay, like the chirping 
of a bird; Esther, whose perfect kindness and divine innocence cannot 
be affected by trials or years; Agnes, so calm, patient, sensible, pure, 
worthy of respect, a very model of a wife, sufficient in herself to 
claim for marriage the respect which we demand for it. And when 
it is necessary to show the beauty of these duties, the greatness of this 
conjugal love, the depth of the sentiment which ten years of confidence, 
cares, and reciprocal devotion have created, you will find in your sensi- 
bility, so long constrained, speeches as pathetic as the strongest words 
of love. 

‘The worst novels are not those which glorify love. A man must 
live across the Channel to dare what the French have dared. With 
them, some admire Balzac; butno man would tolerate him. Some will 
pretend that he is not immoral; but every one will recognise that he 
- always and everywhere makes morality an abstraction. George Sand 
has only celebrated one passion; Balzac has celebrated them all. He 
has considered them as forces; and holding that force is beautiful, he 
has supported them by their causes, surrounded them by their cireum- 
stances, developed them in their effects, pushed them to an extreme, _ 
and magnified them so as to make them into sublime monsters, more — 
systematic and more true than the truth. We do not admit that a 
man only is an artist, and nothing else. We would not have him 
separate himself from his conscience, and lose sight of the practical. 
We will never consent to see that such is the leading feature of our 
own Shakspeare; we will not recognise that he, like Balzac, brings 
his heroes to crime and monomania, and that, like him, he lives 
in a land of pure logic and imagination. We have changed much 
since the sixteenth century, and we condemn now what we approved 
formerly. We would not have the reader interested in a miser, an 
ambitious man, a rake. And he is interested in them when the writer, 
neither praising nor blaming, sets himself to unfold the mood, training, 
phrenology, and habits of mind which have impressed in him this 
primitive inclination, to prove the necessity of its effects, to lead it 
through all its stages, to show the greater power which age and con- 
tentment give, to expose the irresistible fall which hurls man into 
madness or death. The reader, caught by this reasoning, admires the 





1 David Copperfield, ch. Ixy. ; the scene between the doctor and his wife. 








“ey 


CHAP. L] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 857 


work which it has produced, and forgets to be indignant against the 
personage created. He says, What a splendid miser! and thinks not 
of the evils which avarice produces. He becomes a philosopher and 
an artist, and remembers not that he is an upright man. Always re- 
collect that you are such, and renounce the beauties which may flourish 
on this evil soil. 

‘ Amongst these the first is greatness. A man must be interested in 
passions to comprehend their full effect, to count all their springs, to 
describe their whole course. They are diseases; if a man is content 
to blame them, he will never know them ; if you are not a physiologist, 
if you are not enamoured of them, if you do not make your heroes out 
of them, if you do not start with pleasure at the sight of a fine feature 
of avarice, as at the sight of a valuable symptom, you will not be able 
to unfold their vast system, and to display their fatal greatness. You 
will not have this immoral merit; and, moreover, it does not suit your 
LAF of mind. oa extreme sensibility, and ever-ready irony, must 





etre es ae 





you lay the See him your friend or : foe! render ith 


touching or odions;..you d do not depict h him; you are too . impassioned, 
and not en itive, On the other hand, the tenacity of your 
imagination, the vehemence. and-fixity with which. you_i Aimpress...your 
thought into the detail you. wish o grasp, limit your knowledge, arrest 


you in a single feature, prevent...you fr all the parts of a 
soul, and from soma its Wea che Your SAME MNCTE is too lively, 
too meagre. These, then, are the characters you will outline. You will 














is 





grasp a personage _ in a single attitude, you will see of him only that,” 








and-you will impose it upon him from beginning to end. His Tice 
will have-stways the’ same expression, and this expression will be 
almost always a grimace. They will have a sort of knack which will 
not quit them. Miss Mercy will laugh at every word; Mark Tapley 
will say “jolly” in every scene; Mrs, Gamp will be ever talking of 
Mrs. Harris; Dr. Chillip will not venture a single action free from 
timidity ; Mr. Micawber will speak through three volumes the same 
kind of emphatic phrases, and will pass five or six times, with comical 
suddenness, from joy to grief. Each of your characters will be a vice, 
a virtue, a ridicule personified ; and the passion, which you lend it, will 
be so frequent, so invariable, so absorbing, that it will no Ieoner be ike 
a living man,. but.an.abstraction in-man’s.clothes, The French have a 
Tartuffe like your Pecksniff, but the hypocrisy which he represents has 


not destroyed the rest of his character; if_he adds to the comedy by. 


his vice, he belongs to humanity by his nature. He has, besides his 
ridiculous | feature, a _ character an and a mood; he is coarse, strong, red i 

the face, brutal, sensual; the vehemence of his blood makes him bold ; 
his boldness makes him calm; his boldness, his calm, his decisive readi- 
ness, his scorn of men, male him a great politician. When he has 


























358 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK VY. 


entertained the public through five acts, he still offers to the psycholo- 
gist and the physician more than one subject of study. Your Pecksniff 
will offer nothing to these. He will only serve to instruct_and amuse 


bi public. He will be a living satire of hypocrisy, and nothing more. 
ou 1 give him “a taste 1 for or_brandy, it_is..gratuitously.;.in_ the mood 
wit you assign to him, nothing requires it;.he.is_so Steeped in.oily 


hypocrisy, in softiess, in a flowing style, in literary phrases, in tender 
y, that the rest of his nature has disappeared ; it is a mask, and 
not aman. But this mask is so grotesque and energetic, that it will 
be useful to the public, and will diminish the number of hypocrites. 
It is our end and yours, and the list of your characters will have rather 
the effect of a book of satires than of a portrait gallery. va 
‘For the same reason, these satires, though united, will continue 
effectually detached, and will not constitute a genuine collection. You _ 
began with essays, ; and _your larger novels are only essays tagged to-. 
gether. The only means of composing a natural and solid whole is to_ 
write the history | of a passion or of a character, to take them up at their 
birth, to see them increase, alter, become destroyed, to understand_the 
inner necessity of their development. You do not follow this develop- 
ment ; you always keep your character in the same attitude; he is a 
sizer, or a hypocrite, or a good man to the end, and always after the 
same fashion: thus he has no history. You can only change the cir- 
cumstances in which he is met with, you do not change him; he re- 
mains motionless, and at every shock that touches him, emits the same 
sound. ‘The variety of events which you contrive is therefore only an_ 
amusing phantasmagoria ; they have no connection, they do not form a 
system, , they are but a heap. You will only write lives, adventures, 
mémoirs, sketches, collections of scenes, and you will not be able to 
compose an action. “ But if the literary taste of your nation, added to 
the natural direction of your genius, imposes upon you moral intentions, 
forbids you the lofty depicture of characters, vetoes the composition of 
united aggregates, it presents to your observation, sensibility, and satire, 
a succession of original figures which belong only to England, which, 
drawn by your hand, will form a unique gallery, and which, with the 
stamp of your genius, will offer that of your country and of your time.’ 























§ 3.—TuHeE CHARACTERS, 
: i 


Take away the grotesque characters, who, are only introduced to 
fill up and to excite laughter, and you will find that all Dickens’ cha- 
racters belong to two classes—people who have feelings and emotions, 
and people who have none. En contents tie aoa oral mada 
créates with those which societ ast novels, Hard 


Times, is an abstract of all the rest. He there exalts instinct above 
reason, intuition of heart above positive science; he attacks education 



















CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 359 


built on statistics, figures, and facts; overwhelms the positive and 
mercantile spirit with misfortune and ridicule; combats the pride, 
hardness, selfishness of the merchant and the aristocrat; falls foul of 
manufacturing towns, towns of smoke and mud, which fetter the body 
in an artificial atmosphere, and the mind in a factitious existence. He 
seeks out poor artisans, mountebanks, a foundling, and crushes beneath 
their common sense, generosity, delicacy, courage, and sweetness, the 
false science, false happiness, and false virtue of the rich and powerful 
who despise them. He satirises oppressive society ; praises oppressed 
nature; and his elegiac genius, like his satirical genius, finds ready to 
his hand in the English world around him, the sphere which it needs 
for its development. 


Il, 


The first fruits of English society is hypocrisy. It ripens here 
under the double breath of religion and morality ; we know their popu- 
larity and dominion across the Channel. In a country where it is 


sconce ous to laugh on Sunday, where the gloomy Puritan has preserved 
omething of his old rancour against happiness, where the critics..of 
ancient history insert. dissertations on the virtue of Nebuchadnezzar, it 
is natural that the appearance of morality shouldbe. serviceable. It is 


a needful coin: those who lack good money coin bad; and the more 
public opinion declares it precious, the more it is counterfeited. This 
vice is therefore English. Mr. Pecksniff is not found in France. His 




















speech would disgust_Frenchmen,. If they have an affectation, it is not 
oF virtue but of vice: if they wah to succeed, they would be wrong 
to speak of their principles: they prefer to confess, their weaknesses; ; 
and if they have quacks, they are trumpeters of immorality. They 
had their hypocrites once, but it was when religion was popular. 
Since Voltaire, Tartuffe is impossible. Frenchmen no longer try to 
affect a piety which would deceive no one and lead to nothing. Hypo- 
crisy comes and goes, varying with the state of morals, religion, and 
mind ; see, then, how conformable that of Pecksniff is to the dispositions 
of his country. He does not, like Tartuffe, utter theological phrases ; 
he expands altogether in philanthropic tirades. He has marched with 
the age; he has become a humanitarian philosopher. He has called his 
daughters Mercy and Charity. He is tender, he is kind, he gives vent 
to domestic effusions. He innocently exhibits, when visited, charming 
domestic scenes; he displays his paternal heart, marital sentiments, 
the kindly feeling of a good house-master. The family virtues are 
honoured now-a-days; he must muffle himself therewith. Orgon 
formerly said, as instructed by Tartuffe : 


‘ Et je verrais périr parents, enfants, mbre, et femme, 
Que je m’en soucierais autant que de cela.’ ! 





1 Molitre, Tartuffe, i. vi. 


360 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


Modern virtue and English piety think otherwise; we must not 
despise this world in view of the next; we must improve it. Tartuffe 
will speak of his hair-shirt and his discipline; Pecksniff, of his com- 
fortable little parlour, of the charm of friendship, the beauties of nature. 
He will try to bring men together. He will be like a member of the 
Peace Society. He will develop the most touching considerations on the 
benefits and beauties of union among men. It will be impossible to hear 
him without being affected. Men are refined now-a-days, they have 
read much elegiac poetry; their sensibility is more active; they can 
no longer be deceived by the gross impudence of Tartuffe. This is why 
Mr. Pecksniff will use gestures of sublime long-suffering, smiles of inef- 
fable compassion, starts, movements of recklessness, graces, tendernesses 
which will seduce the most reserved and charm the most delicate. The 
English in their Parliament, meetings, associations, public ceremonies, 
have learned the oratorical phraseology, the abstract terms, the style 
of political economy, of the newspaper and the prospectus. Pecksniff 
will talk like a prospectus. He will possess its obscurity, its wordiness, 
and its emphasis. He will seem to soar above the earth, in the region of 
pure ideas, in the bosom of truth. He will resemble an apostle, brought 
up in the Zimes office. He will declaim general ideas on every occasion. 
He will find a moral lesson in the ham and eggs he has just eaten : 


‘ Even the worldly goods of which we have just disposed, even they have their 
moral. See how they come and go, Every pleasure is transitory.’ } 

‘** The process of digestion, as I have been informed by anatomical friends, is 
one of the most wonderful works of nature. I do not know how it may be with 
others, but it is a great satisfaction to me to know, when regaling on my humble 
fare, that I am putting in motion the most beautiful machinery with which we have 
any acquaintance. I really feel at such times as if I was doing a public service. 
When I have wound myself up, if I may employ such a term,” said Mr. Pecksniff 
with exquisite tenderness, ‘‘and know that I am Going, I feel that in the lesson 
afforded by the works within me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind!”’? 


As he folds his napkin, he will rise to lofty contemplations. You 
recognise a new species of hypocrisy. Vices, like virtues, change in 
every age. 

The practical, as well as the moral spirit, is English ; by commerce, 
labour, and government, this people has acquired the taste and talent for 
business ; this is why they regard the French as children and madmen. 
The excess of this disposition is the destruction of imagination and sensi- 
bility. Man becomes a speculative machine, in which figures and facts 
are set in array; he denies the life of the mind and the joys of the 
heart; he sees in the world nothing but loss and gain; he becomes 
hard, harsh, greedy, and avaricious ; he treats men as machinery; on a 
certain day he finds himself simply a merchant, banker, statistician ; he 
has ceased tobeaman. Dickens has multiplied portraits of the positiv 





1 Martin Chuzalewit, ch. ii. 2 Jbid. ch. viii. 





CHAP. 1] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 361 


man—Ralph Nickleby, Scrooge, Anthony Chuzzlewit, Jonas Chuzzlewit, 
Alderman Cute, Mr. Murdstone and his sister, Bounderby, Gradgrind : 
there are such in all his novels. Some are so by education, others by 
nature ; but all are odious, for they all take in hand to rail at and_ des 3 
stroy_ kindness, sympathy, compassion, disinterested affections 
emotions, enthusias ly in man, They oppress 
children, strike women, starve the poor, insult the wretched. The best 
are machines of polished steel, methodically performing their regular 
duties, and not knowing that they make others suffer. These kinds of men 
are not foundin France. Their rigidity is not in the French character. 
They are produced in England by a school which has its philosophy, its 
great men, its glory, and which has never been established amongst 
the French. More than once, it is true, French writers have depicted 
avaricious men, men of business, and shopkeepers: Balzac is full of 
them ; but he explains them by their imbecility, or makes them mon- 
sters, like Grandet and Gobseck. Those of Dickens constitute a real 
class, and represent a national vice. Read this passage of Hard Times, 
and see if, body and soul, Mr. Gradgrind is not wholly English : 





















‘* Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. 
Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. 
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will 
ever be of any service tothem. This is the principle on which I bring up my own 
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to 
Facts, sir!” 

‘The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the 
speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sen- 
tence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the 
speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his ° 
eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. 
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard 
set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, 
and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled 
on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining 
surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum-pie, as if the head had 
scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate 
carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders—nay, his very neckcloth, trained 
to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, 
as it was—all helped the emphasis. 

‘ Tn this life we want nothing but Facts, sir ; nothing but Facts!” 

‘ The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all 
backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then 
and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into 
them until they were full to the brim.! 

¢ «THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir! A man of realities. A man of facts and calcula- 
tions. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and 
nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas 
Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule anda 





1 Hard Times, book i. ch. i 





362 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to 
weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes 
to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope 
to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus 
Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent 
persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir ! ” 

‘In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to 
his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no 
doubt, substituting the words ‘‘ boys and girls” for “‘ sir,” Thomas Gradgrind now 
presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled 
so full of facts.’ 


* Another fault arising from the habit of commanding and striving is 
pride. It abounds in an aristocratic country, and no one.has..more 
soundly rated aristocracy than Dickens; all his portraits are.sarcasms. 
James Harthouse, a dandy disgusted with everything, chiefly with him- 
self, and rightly so; Lord Frederick Verisopht, a poor duped idiot, 
brutalised with drink, whose wit consists in staring at men and sucking 
his cane ; Lord Feenix a sort of mechanism of parliamentary phrases, 
out of order, and hardly able to finish the ridiculous periods into which 
he always takes care to lapse; Mrs. Skewton, a hideous old ruin, a 
coquette to the last, demanding rose-coloured curtains for her death-bed, 
and parading her daughter through all the drawing-rooms of England, 
in order to sell her to some vain husband ; Sir John Chester, a wretch 
of high society, who, for fear of compromising himself, refuses to save 
his natural son, and refuses it with all kinds of airs, as he finishes his 
chocolate. But the most complete and most English picture of the 
aristocratic spirit is the portrait of a London merchant, Mr. Dombey. 

In France people do not look for types among the merchants, but 
they are found among that class in England, as forcible as in the proudest 
chateaux. Mr. Dombey loves his house as if he were a nobleman, as much 
as himself. If he neglects his daughter and longs for a son, it is to per- 
petuate the old name of his bank. He has his ancestors in commerce, and 
he would have his descendants. He maintains traditions, and continues 
a power. At this height of opulence, and with this scope of action, he 
is a prince, and with a prince’s position he has his feelings. You see 
there a character which could only be produced in a country whose 
‘commerce embraces the globe, where merchants are potentates, where 
a company of merchants has speculated upon continents, maintained 
wars, destroyed kingdoms, founded an empire of a hundred million men. 
The pride of such a man is not petty, but terrible; it is so calm and 
high, that to find a parallel we must read again the Mémoires of Saint 
Simon. Mr. Dombey has always commanded, and it does not enter his 
mind that he could yield to any one or anything. He receives flattery 
as a tribute to which he had a right, and sees men beneath him, at a 
vast distance, as beings made to beseech and obey him. His second 





1 Hard Times, book i. ch. ii. 





CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 363 


wife, proud Edith Skewton, resists and scorns him; the pride of the 
merchant is pitted against the pride of the noble-born woman, and the 
restrained outbursts of this growing opposition reveal an intensity of 
passion, which souls thus born and bred alone could feel. Edith, to 
avenge herself, flees on the anniversary of her marriage, and gives her- 
self the appearance of being an adulteress. It is then that the inflexible 
pride asserts itself in all its stiffness. He has driven out of the house 
his daughter, whom he believes the accomplice of his wife; he forbids 
the one or the other to be brought to his memory; he commands his 
sister and his friends to be silent ; he receives guests with the same tone 
and the same coldness. Despairing in heart, eaten up by the insult, by 
the conscience of his failure, by the idea of public ridicule, he remains 
as firm, as haughty, as calm as ever. He launches out more recklessly 
in business, and is ruined ; he is on the point of suicide. Hitherto all 
was well: the bronze column continued whole and unbroken; but the 
exigencies of public morality mar the idea of the book. His daughter 
arrives in the nick of time. She entreats him; he softens, she carries 
him away ; he becomes the best of fathers, and spoils a fine novel. 


III. 


Let us look at some other personages. In contrast with these bad 
and factitious characters, produced by national institutions, you find 
good creatures such as nature made them; and first, children. 

We have none in French literature. Racine’s little Joas could 
only exist in a piece composed for the ladies’ college of Saint Cyr; 
the little child speaks like a prince’s son, with noble and acquired 
phrases, as if repeating his catechism. Now-a-days these portraits 
are only seen in France in New-year’s books, written as models for 
good children. Dickens has painted his with special gratification ; 
he did not think of edifying the public, and he has charmed it. All 
his children are of extreme sensibility ; they love much, and they crave 
to be loved. To understand this gratification of the painter, and this 
choice of characters, we must think of their physical type. English 
children have a colour so fresh, a complexion so delicate, a skin so 
transparent, eyes so blue and pure, that they are like beautiful flowers. 
No wonder if a novelist loves them, lends to their soul a sensibility and 
innocence which shine forth from their looks, if he thinks that these 
frail and charming roses are crushed by the coarse hands which try 
to bend them. We must also imagine to ourselves the households in 
which they. grow up. When at five o’clock the merchant and the 
clerk leave their office and their business, they return as quickly as 
possible to the pretty cottage, where their children have played all day 
on the lawn. The fireside by which they will pass the evening is a 
sanctuary, and domestic tenderness is the only poetry they need. A 
child deprived of these affections and this happiness will seem to be 
deprived of the air that we breathe, and the novelist will not find a 





364 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


volume too much to explain its unhappiness. Dickens has recorded 
it in ten volumes, and at last he has written the history of David 
Copperfield. David is loved by his mother, and by an honest servant 
girl, Peggotty ; he plays with her in the garden; he watches her sew ; 
he reads to her the natural history of crocodiles; he fears the hens and 
geese, which strut in a menacing and ferocious manner in the yard; 
he is perfectly happy. His mother marries again, and all changes. The 
father-in-law, Mr. Murdstone, and his sister Jane, are harsh, methodic, 
and cold beings. Poor little David is every moment wounded by hard 
words. He dare not speak or move; he is afraid to kiss his mother ; 
he feels himself weighed down, as by a leaden cloak, by the cold looks 
of the new master and mistress. He falls back on himself; mechani- 
cally studies the lessons assigned him; cannot learn them, so great is 
his dread of not knowing them. He is whipped, shut up with bread 
and water in a lonely room. He is terrified by night, and fears him- 
self. He asks himself whether in fact he is not bad or wicked, and 
weeps. This incessant terror, hopeless and issueless, the spectacle of 
this wounded sensibility and stupefied intelligence, the long anxieties, 
the watches, the solitude of the poor imprisoned child, his passionate 
desire to kiss his mother or to weep on the breast of his nurse,—all 
this is sad to see. These children’s griefs are as deep as the vexations 
ofaman. It is the history of a frail plant, which was flourishing in 
a warm air, under a sweet sun, and which, suddenly transplanted to the 
snow, sheds its leaves and withers. 

The common people are like the children, dependent, ill culti- 
vated, akin to nature, and subject to oppression. That is to say, 
Dickens extols them. That is not new in France; the novels of 
Eugéne Sue have given us more than one example, and the theme 
is as old as Rousseau; but in the hands of the English writer it has 
acquired a singular force. His heroes have admirable delicacy and 
devotion. They have nothing vulgar but their pronunciation; the rest 
is but nobility and generosity. You see a mountebank abandon his 
daughter, his only joy, for fear of harming her in any way. A young 
woman devotes herself to save the unworthy wife of a man who loves 
her, and whom she loves; the man dies; she continues, from pure self- 
sacrifice, to care for the degraded creature. A poor waggoner who 
thinks his wife unfaithful, loudly pronounces her innocent, and all his 
vengeance is to think only of loading her with tenderness and kind- 
ness. No one, according to Dickens, feels so strongly as they do the 
happiness of loving and being loved—the pure joys of domestic life. 
No one has so much compassion for those poor deformed and infirm 
creatures whom they so often bring into the world, and who seem only 
born to die. No one has a juster and more inflexible moral sense. I 
confess even that Dickens’ heroes unfortunately resemble the indignant 
fathers of French melodramas. When old Peggotty learns that his 
niece is seduced, he sets off, stick in hand, and walks over France, 





CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL—DICKENS. 365 


Germany, and Italy, to find her and bring her back to duty. But 
above all, they have an English sentiment, which fails in Frenchmen: 
they are Christians. It is not only women, as in France, who take 
refuge in the idea of another world; men turn also their thoughts to- 
wards it. In England, where there are so many sects, and every one 
chooses his own, each one believes in the religion he has made for 
himself ; and this noble sentiment raises still higher the throne, upon 
which the uprightness of their resolution and the delicacy of their 
heart has placed them. 

In reality, the novels of Dickens can all be reduced to one phrase, 
to wit: Be good, and love; there is genuine j i i 
of the heart ; sensibility is the whole man. Leave science to the wise, 
pride” to the nobles, Tuxury to the rich; have compassion on humble 
wretchedness ;- the smallest and most despised being may in himself be 
worth as much as thousands of the powerful and the proud. Take 
care not to bruise the delicate souls which flourish in all conditions, 
under all costumes, in all ages. Believe that humanity, pity, forgive- 
ness, are the finest things in man; believe that intimacy, expansion, 
tenderness, tears, are the finest things in the world. To live is nothing; 
to be powerful, learned, illustrious, is little; to be useful is not enough. 
He alone has lived and is a man who has wept at the remembrance of 
a benefit, given or received. 


Tea 








IV. 


We do not believe that this contrast between the weak and the 
strong, or this outcry against society in favour of nature, are the 
caprice of an artist or the chance of the moment. When we penetrate 
deeply into the history of English genius, we find that its primitive 
foundation was impassioned sensibility, and that its natural expression 
was lyrical exaltation. Both were brought from Germany, and make 
up the literature existing before the Conquest. After an interval you 
find them again in the sixteenth century, when the French literature, 
introduced from Normandy, had passed away: they are the very soul 
of the nation. But the education of this soul was opposite to its 
genius; its history contradicted its nature; and its primitive inclina- 
tion has clashed with all the great events which it has created or 
suffered. The chance of a victorious invasion and an imposed aristo- 
eracy, whilst establishing the enjoyment of political liberty, has im- 
pressed in the cltaracter habits of strife and pride. The chance of an 
insular position, the necessity of commerce, the abundant possession of 
the first materials for industry, have developed the practical faculties 
and the positive mind. The acquisition of these habits, faculties, and 
mind, added to the chance of an old hostility to Rome, and an old hatred 
against an oppressive church, has given birth to a proud and reasoning 
religion, replacing submission by independence, poetic theology by 
practical morality, and faith by discussion. Politics, business, and 





366 MODERN AUTHORS. - [Book v. 


religion, like three powerful machines, have created a new man above 
the old. Stern dignity, self-command, the need of domination, harsh- 
ness in dominion, strict morality, without compromise or pity, a taste 
- for figures and dry calculation, a dislike of facts not palpable and ideas 
not useful, ignorance of the invisible world, scorn of the weaknesses 
and tendernesses of the heart,—such are the dispositions which the 
stream of facts and the ascendency of institutions tend to confirm in 
their souls. But poetry and domestic life prove that they have only 
half succeeded. The old sensibility, oppressed and perverted, still lives 
and works. The poet subsists under the Puritan, the trader, the states- 
man. The social man has not destroyed the natural man. ‘This frozen 
crust, this unsociable pride, this rigid attitude, often cover a good and 
tender being. It is the English mask of a German head; and when a 
talented writer, often a writer of genius, reaches the sensibility which 
is bruised or buried by education and national institutions, he moves 
his reader in the most inner depths, and becomes the master of all 
hearts. 


=. 
- 





CHAP, IL.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 367 


CHAPTER IL 
The Novel continued.—Thackeray. 


I. Abundance and excellence of novels—Of manners in England—Superiority 
of Dickens and Thackeray—Comparison between them. 
II. The satirist—His moral intentions—His moral dissertations. 

III. Comparison of raillery in Fratice and England—Difference of the two 
temperaments, tastes, and minds. 

IV. Superiority of Thackeray in bitter and serious satire—Serious irony—Literary 
snobs—Miss Blanche Amory—Serious caricature—Miss Hoggarty. 

‘V. Solidity and precision of this satirical conception—Resemblance of Thackeray 
and Swift—The duties of an ambassador. 

VI. Misanthropy of Thackeray—Silliness of his heroines—Silliness of love— 
Inbred vice of human generosities and exaltations. 

VII. His levelling tendencies—Default of characters and society in England— 
Aversions and preferences—The snob and the aristocrat—Portraits of the 
king, the great court noble, the county gentleman, the town gentleman 
—Advantages of this aristocratic institution—Exaggeration of the satire. 

VIII. The artist—Idea of pure art— Wherein satire injures art—Wherein it 
diminishes the interest—Wherein it falsifies the characters—Comparison 
_ of Thackeray and Balzac—Valérie Marneffe and Rebecca Sharp. 
IX. Attainment of pure art—Portrait of Henry Hsmond—Historical talent of 
Thackeray—Conception of ideal man. 
X. Literature is a definition of man—The definition according to Thackeray— 
Wherein it differs from the truth. 


i, 


HE novel of manners in England multiplies, and for this there are 
several reasons: first, it is born there, and every plant grows 
well in its own soil; secondly, it is an amusement: there is no music 
there as in Germany, or conversation as in France; and men who must 
think and feel find it a means of feeling and thinking. On the other 
hand, women take part in it with eagerness; amidst the nullity of . 
gallantry and the coldness of religion, it gives scope for imagination 
and dreams. Finally, by its minute details and practical counsels, it 
opens up a career to the precise and moral mind. The critic thus is, 
as it were, swamped in this copiousness; he must select in order to 
grasp the whole, and confine himself to a few in order to embrace the 
whole. 
In this crowd two men have appeared of a superior talent, original 


368 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


and contrasted; popular on the same grounds, ministers to the same 
cause, moralists in comedy and drama, defenders of natural sentiments 
against social institutions; who, by the precision of their pictures, the 
depth of their observations, the succession and harshness of their 
attacks, have renewed, with other views and in another style, the old 
combative spirit of Swift and Fielding. 

One, more ardent, more expansive, wholly given up to rapture, an 
impassioned painter of crude and dazzling pictures, a lyric prose-writer, 
omnipotent in laughter and tears, plunged into fantastic invention, 
painful sensibility, vehement buffoonery; and by the boldness of his 
style, the excess of his emotions, the grotesque familiarity of his carica- 
tures, he has displayed all the forces and weaknesses of an artist, all 
the audacities, all the successes, and all the oddities of the imagination. 

The other, more contained, more instructed and stronger, a lover 
of moral dissertations, a counsellor of the public, a sort of lay preacher, 
less bent on defending the poor, more bent on censuring man, has 
brought to the aid of satire a sustained common sense, a great know- 
ledge of the heart, a consummate cleverness, a powerful reasoning, a 
treasure of meditated hatred, and has persecuted vice with all the 
weapons of reflection. By this contrast the one completes the other ; 
and we may form an exact idea of the English taste, by adding the por- 
trait of William Makepeace Thackeray to that of Charles Dickens. 


§ 1.—Tue Satirist, 
II. 


No wonder if in England a novelist writes satires. A gloomy and 
reflective man is impelled to it by his character ; he is still further im- 
pelled by the surrounding manners. He is not permitted to contem- 
plate passions as poetic powers; he is bidden to appreciate them as 
moral qualities. His pictures become sentences; he is a counsellor 
rather than an observer, a judge rather than an artist. You see by 
what machinery Thackeray has changed novel into satire. 

I open at random his three great works—Pendennis, Vanity Fair, 
The Newcomes. Every scene sets in relief a moral truth: the author 
desires that at every page we should find a judgment on vice and virtue ; 


he has blamed or approved beforehand, and the dialogues or portraits | 


are to him only means by which he adds our approbation to his appro- 
bation, our blame to his blame. He is giving us lessons; and under 
the sentiments which he describes, as under the events which he relates, 


we continually discover precepts of conduct and the intentions of the 


reformer. 


On the first page of Pendennis you see the portait of an old Major,’ 


a man of the world, selfish and vain, seated comfortably in his club, 
at the table by the fire, and near the window, envied by surgeon 
Glowry, whom nobody invites, seeking in the records of aristocratic 








- CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 369 


entertainments for his own name, gloriously placed amongst those of 
illustrious guests. A family letter arrives. Naturally he puts it aside, 
and. reads it carelessly after all the rest. He utters an exclamation of 
horror; his nephew wants to marry an actress. He has places booked 
in the coach (charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the 
account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was 
guardian), and hastens to save the young fool. If there were a low 
marriage, what would become of his invitations? The manifest con- 
clusion is: Let us not be selfish, or vain, or fond of good living, like 
the Major. 5 

Chapter the second: Pendennis, father of the young man, was in 
his time an apothecary, but of good family, and grieving to be reduced 
to this trade. He comes into money; passes for a physician, marries 
the relative of a lord, tries to creep into high families. He boasts all 
his life of having been invited by Sir Pepin Ribstone to an entertain- 
ment. He buys an estate, tries to sink the apothecary, and shows off 
in the new glory of a landed proprietor. ach of these details is a con- 
cealed or evident sarcasm, which says to the reader: ‘ My good friend, 
remain the honest John Tomkins that you are ; and for the love of your 
son and yourself, avoid taking the airs of a great nobleman.’ 

Old Pendennis dies. His son, the noble heir of the domain, 
‘Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks,’ begins to reign 
over his mother, his cousin, and the servants. He sends wretched verses 
to the county papers, begins an epic poem, a tragedy in which sixteen 
persons die, a scathing history of the Jesuits, and defends church and 
king like a loyal Tory. He sighs after the ideal, wishes for an un- 
known maiden, and falls in love with an actress, a woman of thirty-two, 
who learns her parts mechanically, as ignorant and stupid as can be. 
Young folks, my dear friends, you are all affected, pretentious, dupes 
of yourselves and of others. Wait to judge the world until you have 
seen it, and do not think you are masters when you are scholars. 

The instruction continues as long as the life of Arthur. Like 
Lesage in Gil Blas, and Balzac in Le Pére Goriot, the author of Pen- 
dennis depicts a young man having some talent, endowed with good 
feelings, even generous, desiring to make a name, and falling in with 
the maxims of the world; but Lesage only wished to amuse us, and \ 
Balzac only wished to stir our passions; Thackeray, from beginning to , 
end, works to correct us. Gs 

This intention becomes still more evident if we examine in detail ' 
one of his dialogues and one of his pictures. You will not find there ) 
the impartial energy, bent on copying nature, but the attentive thought- 
fulness, bent on transforming into satire objects,. words, and events, , 
All the words of the character are chosen and weighed, so as to be | 
odious or ridiculous. He accuses himself, is studious to display his 
vice, and under his voice we hear the voice of the writer who judges, 


unmasks, and punishes him, Miss Crawley, a rich old woman, falls 
VOL. II, 2A 





370 | MODERN AUTHORS. [Book y. 


ill.' Mrs. Bute, her relative, hastens to save her, and to save the 
inheritance. Her aim is to have excluded from the will a nephew, 
Captain Rawdon, an old favourite, presumptive heir of the old lady. 
This Rawdon is a stupid guardsman, a frequenter of hotels, a too clever 
gambler, a duellist, and a roue. Fancy the capital opportunity for Mrs. 
Bute, the respectable mother of a family, the worthy spouse of a clergy- 
man, accustomed to write her husband’s sermons! From sheer virtue 
she hates Captain Rawdon, and will not suffer that such a good sum of 
money should fall into°‘such bad hands. Moreover, are we not re- 
sponsible for our families? and is it not for us to publish the faults of 
our relatives? It is our strict duty, and Mrs. Bute acquits herself of 
hers conscientiously. She provides edifying stories of her nephew, and 
therewith she edifies the aunt. He has ruined so and so; he has 
wronged such a woman. He has duped this tradesman; he has killed 
this husband. And above all, unworthy man, he has mocked his aunt! 
Will that generous lady continue to cherish such a viper? Will she 
suffer her numberless sacrifices to be repaid by this ingratitude and 
this ridicule? You can imagine the ecclesiastical eloquence of Mrs. 
Bute. Seated at the foot of the bed, she keeps the patient in sight, 
plies her with draughts, enlivens her with terrible sermons, and mounts 
guard at the door against the probable invasion of the heir. The siege 
was well conducted, the legacy attacked so obstinately must yield; the 
virtuous fingers of the matron grasped beforehand and by anticipation 
the substantial heap of shining sovereigns. And yet a carping spectator 
might have found some faults in her management. She managed rather 
too well. She forgot that a woman persecuted with sermons, handled 
like a bale of goods, regulated like a clock, might take a dislike to so 
harassing an authority. What is worse, she forgot that a timid old 
woman, confined in the house, overwhelmed with preachings, poisoned 
with pills, might die before having changed her will, and leave all, 
alas, to her scoundrelly nephew. Instructive and notable example! 
Mrs. Bute, the honour of her sex, the consoler of the sick, the coun- 
sellor of her family, having ruined her health to look after her beloved 
sister-in-law, and to preserve the inheritance, was just on the point, by 
her exemplary devotion, of putting the patient in her coffin, and the 
inheritance in the hands of her nephew. 

Apothecary Clump arrives; he trembles for his dear client; she is 
worth to him two hundred a year; he is resolved to save this precious 
life, in spite of Mrs, Bute, Mrs. Bute interrupts him, and says: 

*I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump, no efforts of mine have been wanting to 


restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew has laid on the bed 
of sickness, 1 never shrink from personal discomfort ; I never refuse to sacrifice 





1 Vanity Fair. [Unless the large octavo edition is mentioned, the translator 
has always used the collected edition of Thackeray’s works in small octavo, 1855- 
1868, 14 vols. ] ; . ) 


’ 














CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 371 


myself. . . . I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of my 
husband’s family.’ + 

The disinterested apothecary returns to the charge heroically. Imme- 
diately she replies in the finest strain; her eloquence flows from her 
lips as from an over-full pitcher. She cries aloud: 

‘ Never, as long as nature supports me, will I desert the post of duty. As the 
mother of a tamily and the wife of an English clergyman, 1 humbly trust that my 
principles are good. When my poor James was in the smallpox, did I allow any 
hireling to nurse him? No!’ 

The patient Clump scatters about sugared compliments, and pressing 
his point amidst interruptions, protestations, offers of sacrifice, railings 
against the nephew, at last hits the mark. He delicately insinuates 
that the patient ‘should have change, fresh air, gaiety.’ ‘The sight 
of her horrible nephew casually in the Park, where I am told the 
wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes,’ Mrs. Bute said 
(letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), ‘would cause 
her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed again. 
She must not go out, Mr. Clump. She shall not go out as long as I 
remain to watch over her. And as for my health, what matters it? 
I give it cheerfully, sir. I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty.’ It is 
clear that the author attacks Mrs. Bute and all legacy-hunters. He 
gives her ridiculous airs, pompous phrases, a transparent, gross, and 
blustering hypocrisy. The reader feels hatred and disgust for her the 
more she speaks. He would unmask her; he is pleased to see her 
assailed, driven in a corner, taken in by the polished manceuvres of 
her adversary, and rejoices with the author, who tears from her and 
emphasises the shameful confession of her folly and her greed. 

Having arrived so far, satirical reflection quits the literary form. 
In order the better to develop itself, it exhibits itself alone. Thackeray 
comes in his proper character to attack vice. No author is more fertile 
in dissertations ; he constantly enters his story to reprimand or instruct 
us ; he adds theoretical to active morality. We might glean from his 
novels one or two volumes of essays in the manner of La Bruyére or of 
Addison. There are essays on love, on vanity, on hypocrisy, on meanness, 
on all the virtues, all the vices; and turning over a few pages, we shall 
find one on the comedies of legacies, and of too attentive relatives : 

‘ What a dignity it gives an oid lady, that balance at the banker’s! How 
tenderly we look at her faults, if she is a relative (and may every reader have a 
score of such), what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her! How the 
junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage with the 
lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman! How, when she comes to pay us 
a visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends know her station in the 
world! We say (and with perfect truth) I wish I had Miss Mac Whirter’s signa- 
ture to a cheque for five thousand pounds. She wouldn’t miss it, says your wife. 
She is my aunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss 





1 Vanity Fair, ch. xix. 


372 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


Mac Whirter is any relative? Your wife is perpetually sending her little testi- 
monies of affection ; your little girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions, and. 
foot-stools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay 
you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one! The house during 
her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other 
seasons. You yourself, dear sir, torget to go to sleep after dinner, and find your- 
self all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber. What 
good dinners you have—game every day, Malmsey-Madeira, and no end of fish 
from London! Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity ; 
and, somehow, during the stay of Miss Mac Whirter’s fat coachman, the beer is 
grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where 
her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? 
I appeal to the middle classes. 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 workbags for 
her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet—sweet vision ! 
Foolish—foolish dream !’! 


There is no disguising it. The reader most resolved not to be 
warned, is warned. When we have an aunt with a good sum to 
leave, we shall value our attentions and our tenderness at their true 
worth. The author has taken the place of our conscience, and the 
novel, transformed by reflection, becomes a school of manners. 


Ii. 


The lash is laid on very heavily in this school; it is the English 
taste. About tastes and whips there is no disputing; but without 
disputing we may understand, and the surest means of understanding 
the English taste is to compare it with the French taste. 

I see in France, in a drawing-room of men of wit, or in an artist’s 
studio, a score of lively people: they must be amused, that is their 
character. You may speak to them of human wickedness, but on con- 
dition of diverting them. If you get angry, they will be shocked ; if 
you teach a lesson, they will yawn. Laugh, it is the rule here—not 
cruelly, or from manifest enmity, but in good humour and in lightness 
of spirit. This nimble wit must act; for it the discovery of a clean 
piece of folly is a fortunate hap. As a light flame, it glides and flickers 
in sudden outbreaks on the mere surface of things. Satisfy it by 
imitation, and to please gay people be gay. Be polite, that is the 
second commandment, very like the other. You speak to sociable, 
delicate, vain men, whom you must take care not to offend, and flatter. 
You would wound them by trying to carry conviction by force, by 
dint of solid arguments, by a display of eloquence and indignation. 
Do them the honour of supposing that they understand you at the first 
word, that a hinted smile is to them as good as a syllogism established, 
that a fine allusion caught on the wing reaches them better than the 





1 Vanity Fair, ch. ix. 

















CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 373 


heavy onset of a gross geometrical satire. Think, lastly (between our- 
selves), that, in politics as in religion, they have been for a thousand 
years very well governed, over governed; that when a man is bored 
he desires to be so no more; that a coat too tight splits at the elbows 
and elsewhere. ‘They are critics from choice; from choice they like 
to insinuate forbidden things ; and often, by abuse of logic, by transport, 
by vivacity, from ill humour, they strike at society through govern- 
ment, at morality through religion. They are scholars who have been 
too long under the rod; they break the windows in opening the doors. 
I dare not tell you to please them; I simply remark that, in order to 
please them, a grain of seditious humour will do no harm. 

I cross seven leagues of sea, and here I am in a great unadorned 
hall, with a multitude of benches, with gas burners, swept, orderly, 
a debating club or a preaching house. There are five hundred long 
faces, gloomy and subdued ;* and at the first glance it is clear that 
they are not there to amuse themselves. In this land a grosser mood, 
overcharged with a heavier and stronger nourishment, has deprived 
impressions of their flat mobility, and thought, less facile and prompt, 
has lost its vivacity and its gaiety. Ifyou rail before them, think that 
you are speaking to attentive, concentrated men, capable of durable 
and profound sensations, incapable of changeable and sudden emotion. 
Those immobile and contracted faces will preserve the same attitude ; 
they resist fleeting and half-formed smiles; they cannot unbend; and 
their laughter is a convulsion as stiff as their gravity. Do not skim 
over your subject, lay stress upon it ; do not pass over it lightly, impress 
it; do not dally, but strike; reckon that you must vehemently move 
vehement passions, and that shocks are needed to set these nerves in 
motion. Reckon also that your hearers are practical minds, lovers of 
the useful; that they come here to be taught; that you owe them 
solid truths; that their common sense, somewhat contracted, does not 
fall in with hazardous extemporisations or doubtful hints; that they 
demand worked out refutations and complete explanations; and that 
if they have paid to come in, it was to hear advice which they might 
apply, and satire founded on proof. Their mood requires strong emo- 
tions; their mind asks for precise demonstrations, To satisfy their 
mood, you must not touch the surface, but torture vice ; to satisfy their 
mind, you must not rail in sallies, but by arguments. One word more: 
down there, in the midst of the assembly, behold that gilded, splendid 
book, resting royally on a velvet cushion. It isthe Bible; about it there 
are fifty moralists, who a while ago met at the theatre and pelted an 
actor off the stage with apples, who was guilty of having the wife of a 
townsman for his mistress. If with your finger-tip, with all the com- 
pliments and disguises in the world, you touch a single sacred leaf, or 





? Thackeray, in his Book of Snobs, says: ‘Their usual English expression of 
intense gloom and subdued agony.’ 


374 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ¥. 


the least moral conventionalism, immediately fifty hands on your coat 
collar will put you out of the door. With Englishmen you must 
be English, with their passion and their common sense adopt their 
leading-strings. Thus confined to recognised truths, your satire will 
become more bitter, and will add the weight of public belief to the 
pressure of logic and the force of indignation, 


IV. 


_No writer was better gifted than Thackeray for this kind of satire, » 
because no faculty is more proper to satire than reflection. Reflec- 
tion is a concentrated attention, and concentrated attention increases a 
hundredfold the force and duration of emotions. He who is immersed 
in the contemplation of a vice feels a hatred of vice, and the intensity 
of his hatred is measured by the intensity of his contemplation. At 
first anger is a generous wine, which intoxicates and exalts; when 
preserved and shut up, it becomes a liquor burning all that it touches, 
and corroding even the vessel which contains it. Of all satirists,’ 
Thackeray, after Swift, is the most gloomy. Even his countrymen! 
have reproached him with depicting the world uglier than it is. In-' 
dignation, grief, scorn, disgust, are his ordinary sentiments. When ' 
he digresses, and imagines tender souls, he exaggerates their sensibility, | 
in order to render their oppression more odious, The selfishness which ‘ 
wounds them appears horrible, and this resigned sweetness is a mortal 
insult to their tyrants: it is the same hatred which has calculated the © 
kindliness of the victims and the harshness of the persecutors. 

This anger, exasperated by reflection, is also armed by reflection. 
It is clear that the author is not carried away by passing indignation 
or pity.. He has mastered himself before speaking. He has often | 
weighed the rascality which he is about to describe. He is in posses- . 
sion of the motives, species, results, as a naturalist is of his classifica- . 
tions. He is sure of his judgment, and has matured it. He punishes 
like a man convinced, who has before him a heap of proofs, who 
advances nothing without a document or an argument, who has fore- 
seen all objections and refuted all excuses, who will never pardon, who 
is right in being inflexible, who is conscious of his justice, and who 
rests his sentence and his vengeance on all the powers of meditation 
and equity. The effect of this justified and contained hatred is over- 
whelming. When we have read to the end of Balzac’s novels, we feel 
the pleasure of a naturalist walking through a museum, past a fine 
collection of specimens and monstrosities. When we have read to the 
end of Thackeray, we feel the shudder of a stranger brought before a 
mattress in the operating-room of an hospital, on the day when moxas 
are applied or a limb is taken off. 

In such a case the most natural weapon is serious irony, because it 
bears witness to a concentrated hate: he who employs it suppresses: 
his first movement; he feigns to be speaking against himself, and con-' 





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bi he pt aes : ; Bt ; Fs 

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Ae ye NS + 


CHAP. II. ] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 375 


strains himself to take the part of his adversary. On the other hand, 
this painful and voluntary attitude is the sign of an excessive scorn ; 
the apparent protection lent to his enemy is the worst of insults. The 
author seems to say: ‘I am ashamed to attack you; you are so weak 
that, even supported, you must fall; your reasonings are your shame, 
and your excuses are your condemnation.’ Thus the more serious the 
irony, the stronger it is; the more you take care to defend your ad~ 
versary, the more you degrade him; the more you seem to aid him, 
the more you crush him. This is why Swift’s grave sarcasm 1s_ so 
terrible ; we think he is showing respect, and he slays ; his approbation is 
a flagellation. Amongst Swift’s pupils, Thackeray is the first. Several 
chapters in the Book of Snobs—that, for instance, on literary snobs— 
are worthy of Gulliver. The author has been passing in review all 
the snobs of England; what will he say of his colleagues, the literary 
snobs? Will he dare to speak of them? Certainly: 


‘ My dear and excellent querist, whom does the Schoolmaster flog so resolutely 
as his own son? Didn’t Brutus chop his offspring’s head off? You have a very 
bad opinion indeed of the present state of Literature and of literary men, if you 
fancy that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour penman, 
if the latter’s death could do the State any service. 

‘But the fact is, that in the literary profession there are no Snobs. Look 
round at the whole body of British men of letters, and I defy you to point out 
among them a single instance of vulgarity, or envy, or assumption. 

‘Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all modest in their 
demeanour, elegant in their manners, spotless in their lives, and honourable in 
their conduct to the world and to each other. You may occasionally, it is true, 
hear one literary man abusing his brother ; but why? Not in the least out of 
malice ; not at all from envy ; merely from a sense of truth and public duty. 
Suppose, for instance, I good-naturedly point out a blemish in my friend Mr. 
Punch’s person, and say Mr. P. has a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more 
crooked than thosé features in the Apollo or Antinous, which we are accustomed 
to consider as our standards of beauty ; does this argue malice on my part towards 
Mr. Punch? Not in the least. It is the critic’s duty to point out defects as 
well as merits, and he invariably does his duty with the utmost gentleness and 
candour.... 

‘That sense of equality and fraternity amongst Authors has always struck me 
as one of the most amiable characteristics of the class. It is because we know and 
respect each other, that the world respects us so much ; that we hold such a good 
position in society, and demean ourselves so irreproachably when there. 

‘Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation, that about two of 
them have been absolutely invited to Court during the present reign ; and it is 
probable that towards the end of the season, one or two will be asked to dinner 
by Sir Robert Peel. 

‘They are such favourites with the public, that they are continually obliged 
to have their pictures taken and published ; and one or two could be pointed out, 
of whom the nation insists upon having a fresh portrait every year. Nothing can 
be more gratifying than this proof of the affectionate regard which the people has 
for its instructors. : 

‘ Literature is held in such hondur in England, that there is a sum of near 


376 MODERN AUTHORS. | [BOOK V. 


twelve hundred pounds per annum set apart to pension deserving persons following 
that profession. And a great compliment this is, too, to the professors, and a 
proof of their generally prosperous and flourishing condition. They are generally 
so rich and thrifty, that scarcely any money is wanted to help them.’! 


We are tempted to make a mistake; and to comprehend this pas- 
sage, we must- remember that, in an aristocratical and monarchical 
society, amidst money-worship and adoration of rank, poor and vulgar 
talent is treated as its vulgarity and poverty deserve.2 What makes 
these ironies yet stronger, is their length ; some are prolonged during 
a whole tale, like the Fatal Boots. A Frenchman could not keep 
up a sarcasm so long. It would escape right or left through various 
emotions; it would change countenance, and would not preserve so 
fixed an attitude—the mark of such a decided animosity, so calculated 
and bitter. There are characters which Thackeray develops through; 
three volumes—Blanche Amory, Rebecca Sharp—and of whom he: 
never speaks but with insult; both are base, and he never introduces’ 
them without plying them with tendernesses: dear Rebecca! tender: 
Blanche! The tender Blanche is a sentimental and literary young 
creature, obliged to live with her parents, who do not understand her.” 


She suffers so much, that she ridicules them aloud before everybody; * 


she is so oppressed by the folly of her mother and father-in-law, that! 
she never omits an opportunity of making them feel their folly. In* 


good conscience, could she do otherwise? Would it not be on her } 


part a lack of sincerity to affect a gaiety which she has not, or a respect ; 
which she cannot feel? We understand that the poor child i is in need 
of sympathy. When she gave up her dolls, this loving heart became ‘ 
first enamoured of Trenmor, a high-souled convict, the fiery Sténio,' 
Prince Djalma, and other heroes of French novels. Alas! the imagi- 
nary world is not sufficient for wounded souls, and the craving for the 
ideal, for satiety, falls at last to worldly beings. At eleven years of 
age Miss Blanche had felt tender emotions towards a little Savoyard, 
an organ-grinder at Paris, whom she persisted in believing to be a 
prince carried off from his parents; at twelve an old and hideous 
drawing-master had agitated her young heart; at Madame de Cara- 
mel’s boarding-school a correspondence by letter took place with two 
young pupils of the college of Charlemagne. Dear forlorn girl, her 
delicate feet are already wounded by the briars in her path of life ; 
every day her illusions shed their leaves, and in vain she confides them 
to verse, in a little book bound in blue velvet, with a clasp of gold, 


entitled Mes Larmes. In this isolation, what is she to do? She grows , 
enthusiastic over the young ladies whom she meets, feels a magnetic _ 


attraction at sight of them, becomes their sister, except that she casts 





1 The Book of Snobs, ch. xvi. ; on Literary Snobs. 
* Stendhal says: ‘ L’esprit et le génie perdent vingt-cing pour cent de leur 
valeur en abordant en Angleterre.’ 

















CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 377 


them aside to-morrow like an old dress: we cannot command our feel- 

ings, and nothing is more beautiful than the natural. Moreover, as) 
the amiable child has much taste, a lively imagination, a poetic inclina~ 

tion for change, she keeps her maid Pincott at work day and night.. 
Like a delicate person, a genuine dilettante and lover of the beautiful, 
she scolds her for her heavy eyes and her pale face: 


‘Our muse, with the candour which distinguished her, never failed to remind 
her attendant of the real state of matters. ‘‘ I should send you away, Pincott, for 
you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are failing you, and you are always 
crying and snivelling, and wanting the doctor ; but I wish that your parents at 
home should be supported, and I go on enduring for their sake, mind,” the dear 
Blanche would say to her timid little attendant. Or, ‘‘ Pincott, your wretched 
appearance and slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine ; 
and I think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little cheerful ;” 
or, ‘* Pincott, I can’t bear, even for the sake of your starving parents, that you 
should tear my hair out of my head in that manner ; and I will thank you to write 
to them and say that I dispense with your services.” ’} 


This fool of a Pincott does not appreciate her good fortune. Can one. 


be sad in serving such a superior being as Miss Blanche? What joy 
to furnish her with subjects for her style! because, to confess the 
truth, Miss Blanche has not disdained to write ‘some very pretty verses 
about the lonely little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away,’ ‘sad 


exile in a foreign land.’ Alas! the slightest event suffices to wound , 


this too sensitive heart. At the least emotion her tears flow, her feel- 
ings are shaken, like a delicate butterfly, crushed as soon as touched. 
There she goes, aerial, her eyes fixed on heaven, a faint smile lingering 
round her rosy lips, a touching fairy, so consoling to all who surround 
her, that every one wishes her at the bottom of a well. 

One step added to serious irony leads us to serious caricature. Here, 
as before, the author pleads the rights of his neighbour; the only 
difference is, that he pleads them with too much warmth; it is insult 
upon insult. Under this head it abounds in Thackeray. Some of his 
grotesques are outrageous: for instance, M. Alcide de Mirobolant, a 
French cook, an artist in sauces, who declares his passion to Miss 
Blanche through the medium of symbolic dishes, and thinks himself a 
gentleman ; Mrs. Major O’Dowd, a sort of female grenadier, the most 
pompous and bragging of Irishwomen, bent on ruling the regiment, 
and marrying the bachelors will they nill they; Miss Briggs, an old 
companion, born to receive insults, to make phrases and shed tears; the 
Doctor, who proves to his scholars who write bad Greek, that habitual 
idleness and bad construing lead to the gallows. These calculated defor- 
mities only excite a sad smile. We always perceive behind the oddity 
of the character the sardonic air of the painter, and we conclude that 





1 These remarks are only to be found in the original octavo edition of Pen- 
dennis, —TR. 


~ 


378 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


the human race is base and stupid. Other figures, less exaggerated, 
are not more natural. We see that the author throws them expressly 
into palpable follies and marked contradictions. Such is Miss Crawley, ‘ 
an old immoral woman and free-thinker, who praises unequal marriages, 
and falls into a fit when on the next page her nephew makes one; who’ 
calls Rebecca Sharp her equal, and at the same time bids her ‘ put 
some coals on the fire ;’ who, on learning the departure of her favourite, ' 
cries with despair, ‘Gracious goodness, and who’s to make my chocolate ?’ 
These are comedy scenes, and not pictures of manners. There are 
twenty such. You see an excellent aunt, Mrs. Hoggarty, of Castle 
Hoggarty, settling down in the house of her nephew Titmarsh, throw 
him into vast expenses, persecute his wife, drive away his frieydil 
make his marriage unhappy. The poor ruined fellow is thrown into 
prison. She denounces him to the creditors with genuine indignation, 
and reproaches him with perfect sincerity. The wretch has been his 
aunt’s executioner; she has been dragged by him from her home, tyran- 
nised over by him, robbed by him, outraged by his wife. She writes: 

‘I have seen butter wasted as if it had been dirt, cole flung away, candles 

burned at bothends; . . . and now you have the audassaty, being placed in prison 
justly for your crimes, for cheating me of £3000. . . . You come upon me to pay 
your detts! No, sir, it is quite enough that your mother should go on the parish, 
and that your wife should sweep the streets, to which you have indeed brought 
them ; J, at least . . . have some of the comforts to which my rank entitles me. 
The furnitur in this house is mine; and as I presume you intend your lady to 
sleep in the streets, I give you warning that I shall remove it all to-morrow. Mr. 
Smithers will tell you that I had intended to leave you my intire fortune. I have 
this morning, in his presents, solamly toar up my will, and hereby renounce all 
connection with you and your beggarly family. P.S.—I took a viper into my 
bosom, and it stung me.’ } 
This just and compassionate woman finds her match, a pious man, John 
Brough, Esquire, M.P., director of the Independent West Diddlesex 
Fire and Life Insurance Company. This virtuous Christian has sniffed 
from afar the cheering odour of her lands, houses, stocks, and other 
landed and personal property. He pounces upon the fine property of 
Mrs. Hoggarty, is sorry to see that it only brings that lady four per 
cent., and resolves to double her income. He calls upon her at her 
lodgings, when her face was shockingly swelled and bitten by—never 
mind what: 

** Gracious heavens! ” shouted John Brough, Esquire, ‘‘a lady of your rank 
to suffer in this way !—the excellent relative of my dear boy, Titmarsh! Never, 
madam—never let it be said that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty should be 
subject to such horrible humiliation, while John Brough has a home to offer her, 
—a humble, happy Christian home, madam, though unlike, perhaps, the splendour 
to which you have been accustomed in the course of your distinguished career. 
Isabella, my love !—Belinda! speak to Mrs. Hoggarty. Tell her that John 
Brough’s house is hers from garret to cellar. I repeat it, madam, from garret to 








1 The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, ch. xi, . 











CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 379 


cellar. I desire—I insist—I order, that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty’s 
trunks should be placed this instant in my carriage !”’? 


This style raises a laugh, if you will, but a sad laugh. We have just 
learned that man is a hypocrite, unjust, tyrannical, blind. In our 
vexation we turn to the author, and we see on his lips only sarcasms, 
on his brow only chagrin. 


Ws 


Let us look carefully; perhaps in less grave matters we shall find 
subject of genuine laughter. Let us consider, not a rascality, but a 
misadventure ; rascality revolts, a misadventure might amuse. But 
amusement alone is not here; even in a diversion the satire retains its 
force, because reflection retains its intensity. There is in English 
fun a seriousness, an effort, an application that is marvellous, and their 
comicalities are composed ‘with as much science as their sermons. The 
powerful attention decomposes its object in all its parts, and repro- 
duces it with illusive detail and relief. Swift describes the land of 
speaking horses, the politics of Lilliput, the inventors of the Flying 
Island, with details as precise and harmonious as an experienced 
traveller, an exact inquirer into manners and countries. ‘Thus sup- 
ported, the impossible monster and the literary grotesque enter upon 
actual existence, and the phantom of the imagination takes the con- 
sistency of objects which we touch. Thackeray introduces this im- 
perturbable gravity, this solid conception, this talent for illusion, into 
his farce. Study one of his moral essays; he wishes to prove that in 
the world we must conform to received customs, and transforms this 
commonplace into an Oriental anecdote. Reckon up the details of 
manners, geography, chronology, cookery, the mathematical designa- 
tion of every object, person, and gesture, the lucidity of imagination, 
the profusion of local truths; you will understand why his raillery 
produces so original and biting an impression, and you will find here 
the same degree of studiousness and the same attentive energy as in the 
foregoing ironies and exaggerations : his enjoyment is as reflective as his 
hatred; he has changed his attitude, not his faculty : 

‘I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate self-laudation consumedly ; but 
I can’t help relating here a circumstance illustrative of the point in question, in 
which I must think I acted with considerable prudence. 

‘Being at Constantinople a few years since—(on a delicate mission)—the 
Russians were playing a double game, between ourselves, and it became necessary 
on our part to employ an extra negotiator—Leckerbiss Pasha of Roumelia, then 
Chief Galeongee of the Porte, gave a diplomatic banquet at his summer palace at 
Bujukdere. I was on the left of the Galeongee ; and the Russian agent Count de 
Diddloff on his dexter side. Diddloff is a dandy who would die of a rose in aro- 
matic pain: he had tried to have me assassinated three times in the course of the 
negotiations : but of course we were friends in public, and saluted each other in the 
most cordial and charming manner. 





1 The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, ch. ix. 


380 _ MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


‘The Galeongee is—or was, alas! for a bow-string has done for him—a.staunch 
supporter of the old school of Turkish politics. We dined with our fingers, and 
had flaps of bread for plates ; the only innovation he admitted was the use of 
European liquors, in which he indulged with great gusto. He was an enormous 
eater. Amongst the dishes a very large one was placed before him of a lamb 
dressed in its wool, stuffed with prunes, garlic, assafcetida, capsicums, and other 
condiments, the most abominable mixture that ever mortal smelt or tasted. The 
Galeongee ate of this hugely ; and pursuing the Eastern fashion, insisted on help- 
ing his friends right and left, and when he came to a particularly spicy morsel, 
would push it with his own hands into his guests’ very mouths. 

‘TI never shall forget the look of poor Diddloff, when his Excellency, rolling up 
a large quantity of this into a ball, and exclaiming, ‘‘ Buk Buk” (it is very good), 
administered the horrible bolus to Diddloff. The Russian’s eyes rolled dreadfully as 
he received it : he swallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a con- 
vulsion, and seizing a bottle next him, which he thought was Sauterne, but which 
turned out to be French brandy, he drank off nearly a pint before he knew his 
error. It finished him; he was carried away from the dining-room almost dead, 
and laid out to cool in a summer-house on the Bosphorus, 

‘When it came to my turn, I took down the condiment with a smile, said 
** Bismillah,” licked my lips with easy gratification, and when the next dish was 
served, made up a ball myself so dexterously, and popped it down the old Galeon- 
gee’s mouth with so much grace, that his heart was won. Russia was put out of 
Court at once, and the treaty of Kabobanople was signed. As for Diddloft, all was 
over with him, he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir Roderick Murchison 
saw him, under the No. 3967, working in the Ural mines. 


The anecdote is evidently authentic; and when De Foe related the 
apparition of Mrs. Veal, he did not better imitate the style of an 
authenticated account. 


VI. 


So attentive a reflection is a source of sadness. To amuse our- 
selves with human passions, we must consider them as inquisitive men, 
like shifting puppets, or as learned men, like regulated wheels, or as 
artists, like powerful springs. If you only consider them as virtuous 
or vicious, your lost illusions will enchain you in gloomy thoughts, and 
you will find in man only weakness and ugliness. “This is why Thackeray * 
depreciates our whole nature. He does as a novelist what Hobbes does . 
as a philosopher. Almost everywhere, when he describes fine senti- ‘ 
ments, he derives them from an ugly source. Tenderness, kindness, , 
love, are in his characters the effect of the nerves, of instinct, or of a 
moral disease. Amelia Sedley, his favourite, and one of his master-*. 
pieces, is a poor little woman, snivelling, incapable of reflection and | 
decision, blind, a superstitious adorer of a coarse and selfish husband, 
always sacrificed by her own will and fault, whose love is made up of j 
folly and weakness, often unjust, accustomed to see falsely, and more , 
worthy of compassion than respect. Lady Castlewood, so good and ~ 
tender, is enamoured, like Amelia, of a drunken and imbecile boor; and | 








1 The Book of Snobs, ch. i. ; The Snob playfully dealt with. 








CHAP. II.] TIE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 381 


her wild jealousy, exasperated on the slightest suspicion, implacable 
against her husband, giving utterance violently to cruel words, shows 
that her love comes not from virtue, but from mood. Helen Pen- 
dennis, the model of mothers, is a somewhat silly country prude, of 
narrow education, also jealous, and having in her jealousy all the harsh- 
ness of Puritanism and passion. She faints on learning that her son 
has a mistress: it is ‘such a sin, such a dreadful sin. I can’t bear to 
think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish he had died, 
almost, before he had done it.’?* Whenever she is spoken to of little 
Fanny, ‘the widow’s countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed a 
cruel and inexorable expression.’ Meeting Fanny at the bedside of 
the sick young man, she drives her away as if she were a prostitute and a 
servant. Maternal love, in her as in the others, is an incurable blindness: 
her son is her idol; in her adoration she finds the means of making his 
lot insupportable, and himself unhappy. As to the love of the men for 
the women, if we judge from the pictures of the author, we can but 
feel pity for it, and look on it as ridiculous. At a certain age, accord- 
ing to Thackeray, nature speaks: we meet some woman; a fool or not, 
good or bad, we adore her; it isa fever. At the age of six months 
dogs have their disease; man has his at twenty. If a man loves, it is 
not because the lady is loveable, but because he must love. Do you 
think one would drink if not thirsty, or eat if not hungry ? 

He relates the history of this hunger and thirst with a bitter vigour. 
He seems like a man grown sober, railing at drunkenness. He explains 
at length, in a half sarcastic tone, the folly of Major Dobbin for Amelia ; 
how the Major buys bad wines from her father; how he urges the 
postilions, rouses the servants, persecutes his friends, to see Amelia more 
quickly ; how, after ten years of sacrifices, tenderness, and services, he 
sees that he is held second to an old portrait of a faithless, coarse, selfish, 
and dead husband. The saddest of these accounts is that of the first love 
of Pendennis—Miss Fotheringay, the actress, whom he loves, a matter- 
of-fact person, a good housekeeper, who has the mind and the education 
of a kitchen-maid. She speaks to the young man of the fine weather, 
and the pie she has just been making: Pendennis discovers in these 
two phrases a wonderful depth of intellect and a superhuman majesty 
of devotion. He asks Miss Fotheringay, who has just been playing 
Ophelia, if the latter loved Hamlet. Miss Fotheringay answers : 

*** Tn love with such a little ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley ?” 
She bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he 
spoke, but of Ophelia of the play. ‘‘ Oh, indeed ; if no offence was meant, none 
was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him—not that glass of 
punch.” Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. ‘‘ Kotzebue? who was he?” ‘The 
author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably.” ‘‘ She did not 
know thatthe man’s name at the beginning of the book was Thompson,” she 

said. Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity. Pendennis, Pendennis—how she 








* Pendennis, ch. liv. ® Ibid. ch. lii. 





382 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


spoke the words! Emily, Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how per- 

fect she is!’! 

The first volume runs wholly upon this contrast; it seems as though 
Thackeray said to his reader: ‘My dear brothers in humanity, we are 
rascals forty-nine days in fifty ; in the fiftieth, if we escape pride, vanity, 
wickedness, selfishness, it is because we fall into a hot fever; our folly 
causes our devotion.’ } 


Vii. 


Yet, short of being Swift, one must love something; one cannot 
always be wounding and destroying; and the heart, wearied of scorn 
and hate, needs repose in praise and emotion. Moreover, to blame a 
fault is to laud the contrary quality; and a man cannot sacrifice a 
victim without raising an altar: it is circumstance which fixes on the 
one, and which builds the other; and the moralist who combats the 
dominant vice of his country and his age, preaches the virtue contrary 
to the vice of his age and his country. In an aristocratical and com- 
mercial society, this vice is selfishness and pride! Thackeray will ° 
therefore extol sweetness and tenderness. Let love and kindness be‘ 
blind, instinctive, unreasoning, ridiculous, it matters little: such as ' 
they are, he adores them; and there is no more singular contrast than , 
that of his heroes and of his admiration. He creates foolish women, ' 
and kneels before them; the artist within him contradicts the com- ” 
mentator: the first is ironical, the second laudatory; the first repre-‘, 
sents the pettiness of love, the second writes its panegyric; the top of ! 
the page is a satire in action, the bottom is a dithyramb in periods. ~ 
The compliments which he lavishes on Amelia Sedley, Helen Pendennis, 
Laura, are infinite; no author ever more visibly and incessantly paid 
court to his women; he sacrifices men to them, not once, but a hun< 
dred times : 

‘ 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 plea- 
sure which we men don’t understand, which accompanies the pain of being scari- 
fied.2 . . . Do not let us men despise these instincts because we cannot feel them. 
These women were made for our comfort and delectation, gentlemen,—with all 
the rest of the minor animals.* . . . Be it for a reckless husband, a dissipated 
son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready their hearts are to pour out their 
best treasures for the benefit of the cherished person ; and what a deal of this sort 
of enjoyment are we, on our side, ready to give the soft creatures! There is 
scarce a man that reads this, but has administered pleasure in that fashion to his 
womankind, and has treated them to the luxury of forgiving him.’ 


When he enters the room of a good mother, or of a young honest girl, 





1 Pendennis, ch. v. 
? Ibid. ch, xxi. This passage is only found in the large octavo edition.—Tr. 
3 Ibid. ch. xxi. 


* Ibid. ch. xxi., large octavo edition. These words are not in the small octavo 
edition.—Tr. 





CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 383 


he casts down his eyes as on the threshold of a sanctuary. In the pre- 
sence of Laura resigned, pious, he checks himself : 


‘And as that duty was performed quite noiselessly—while the supplications 

which endowed her with the requisite strength for fulfilling it, also took place 
in her own chamber, away from all mortal sight,—we, too, must be perforce silent 
about these virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about than a 
flower will bear to bloom in a ball-room.’? 
Like Dickens, he has a reverence for the family, tender and simple) 
sentiments, calm and pure contentments, such as are relished by the! 
fireside between a child and a wife. When this misanthrope, so re- 
flective and harsh, lights upon a filial effusion or a maternal grief, he is 
wounded in a sensitive place, and, like Dickens, he makes us weep. ? 

We have enemies because we have friends, and aversions because 
we have preferences. If we prefer devoted kindliness and tender 
affections, we dislike arrogance and harshness: the cause of love is also 
the cause of hate; and sarcasm, like sympathy, is the criticism of a 
social form and a public vice. This is why Thackeray’s novels are a 
war against aristocracy. Like Rousseau, he praised simple and affec- 
tionate manners; like Rousseau, he hates the distinction of ranks. 

He wrote a whole book on this, a sort of moral and half political 
pamphlet, the Book of Snobs. The word does not exist in France, 
because they have not the thing. The snob is a child of aristocratical 
societies: perched on his step of the long ladder, he respects the man 
on the step above him, and despises the man on the step below, without 
inquiring what they are worth, solely on account of their position; in 
his innermost heart he finds it natural to kiss the boots of the first, and 
to kick the second. Thackeray reckons up at length the degrees of 
this habit. Hear his conclusion : 

: ‘I can bear it no longer—this diabolical invention of gentility, which kills 
natural kindliness and honest friendship, Proper pride, indeed! Rank and pre- 
cedence, forsooth! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie and should be flung 
into the fire. Organise rank and precedence! that was well for the masters of 


ceremonies of former ages. Come forward, some great marshal, and organise 
Equality in society.’ 





Then he adds, with common sense, altogether English bitterness and 
familiarity : 

‘ If ever our cousins the Smigsmags asked me to meet Lord Longears, I would 
like to take an opportunity after dinner, and say, in the most good-natured way in 
the world :—Sir, Fortune makes you a present of a number of thousand pounds 
every year. The ineffable wisdom of our ancestors has placed you as a chief and 
hereditary legislator over me. Our admirable Constitution (the pride of Britons 
and envy of surrounding nations) obliges me to receive you as my senator, superior, 





1 Pendennis, ch. li. 

? See, for example, in the Great Hoggarty Diamond, the death of the little 
child. The Book of Snobs ends thus : ‘ Fun is good, Truth is still better, and Love 
best of all,’ 





384 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


and guardian. Your eldest son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in Parliament ; 
your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly condescend to be post-captains and 
lieutenant-colonels, and to represent us in foreign courts, or to take a good living 
when it falls convenient. These prizes our admirable Constitution (the pride and 
envy of, etc.) pronounces te be your due; without count of your dulness, your 
vices, your selfishness ; of your entire incapacity and folly. Dull as you may be 
(and we have as good a right to assume that my lord is an ass, as the other pro- 
position, that he is an enlightened patriot) ;—dull, I say, as you may be, no one 
will accuse you of such monstrous folly, as to suppose that you are indifferent to 
the good luck which you possess, or have any inclination to part with it. No-- 
and patriots as we are, under happier circumstances, Smith and I, I have no doubt, 
were we dukes ourselves, would stand by our order. 

‘ We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place. We would acquiesce 
in that admirable Constitution (pride and envy of, etc.) which made us chiefs and 
the world our inferiors ; we would not cavil particularly at that notion of here- 
ditary superiority which brought so many simple people cringing to our knees. 
May be we would rally round the Corn-Laws ; we would make a stand against the 
Reform Bill; we would die rather than repeal the acts against Catholics and Dis- 
senters ; we would, by our noble system of class-legislation, bring Ireland to its 
present admirable condition. 

‘ But Smith and I are not Earls as yet. We don’t believe that it is for the inte- 
rest of Smith’s army, that young De Bray should be a Colonel at five-and-twenty, 
of Smith’s diplomatic relations, that Lord Longears should go ambassador to Con- 
stantinople,—-of our politics, that Longears should put his hereditary foot into them. 

‘ This booing and cringing Smith believes to be the act of Snobs ; and he will 
do all in his might and main to be a Snob, and to submit to Snobs no longer. ‘To 
Longears he says, ‘‘ We can’t help seeing, Longears, that we are as good as you. 
We can spell even better; we can think quite as rightly ; we will not have you 
tor our master, or black your shoes any more.” ”?! 


This opinion of politics only continues the remarks of the moralist. 
If he hates aristocracy, it is less because it oppresses man than because 
it corrupts him; in deforming social life, it deforms private life; in 
establishing injustice, it establishes vice; after having forestalled the 
common weal, it poisons the soul; and Thackeray finds its trace in the 
perversity and foolishness of all classes and all sentiments. | 

The king opens this list of vengeful portraits. It is George IVv., 
‘the first gentleman in Europe.’ This great monarch, so justly re- 
gretted, could cut out a coat, drive a four-in-hand nearly as well as 
the Brighton coachman, and play the fiddle well. ‘In the vigour of 
youth and the prime force of his invention, he invented Maraschino 
punch, a shoe-buckle, and a Chinese pavilion, the most hideous build- 
ing in the world :’ 

‘Two boys had leave from their loyal masters to go from Slaughter House 
School where they were educated, and to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a 
crowd which assembled there to greet the king. THE KING? There he was, 
Beef-eaters were before the august box: the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the 
Powder Closet) and other great officers of state were behind the chair on which he 





1 The Book of Snobs, last chapter. 











CHAP, II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 385 


sate, He sate—florid of face, portly of person, covered with orders, and in a rich 
curling head of hair—How we sang God save him! How the house rocked and 
shouted with that magnificent music. How they cheered, and cried, and waved 
handkerchiefs. Ladies wept : mothers clasped their children: some fainted with 
emotion. . . . Yes, we saw him. Fate cannot deprive us of that. Others have 
seen Napoleon. Some few still exist who have beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor 
Johnson, Marie Antoinette, etc.—be it our reasonable boast to our children, that 
we saw George the Good, the Magnificent, the Great.’? 


Dear prince! the virtue emanating from his heroic throne spread 
through the hearts of all his courtiers. | Whoever presented a better 
example than the Marquis of Steyne? This lord, a king in his own 
sphere, tried to prove that he was so. He forces his wife to sit at table 
beside women without any character, his mistresses. Like a true prince, 
he had for his special enemy his eldest son, presumptive heir to the 
marquisate, whom he leaves to starve, and compels to run into debt. 
He is now making love to a charming person, Mrs. Rebecca Crawley, 
whom he loves for her hypocrisy, coolness, and unequalled insensibility. 
The Marquis, by dint of debasing and oppressing all who surround 
him, ends by hating and despising men; he has no taste for anything 
but perfect rascalities. Rebecca rouses him; one day even she trans- 
ports him with enthusiasm. She plays Clytemnestra in a charade, and 
her husband Agamemnon; she advances to the bed, a dagger in her 
hand; her eyes are lighted up with a smile so ghastly, that people quake 
as they look at her; Brava! brava! old Steyne’s strident voice was 
heard roaring over all the rest, ‘ By , She’d do it too!’ One can 
hear that he has the true conjugal feeling. His conversation is remark- 
ably frank. ‘I can’t send Briggs away,’ Becky said.—‘ You owe her 
her wages, I suppose,’ said the peer.—‘ Worse than that, I have ruined 
her.’—‘ Ruined her ? then why don’t you turn her out ?’ 

He is, moreover, an accomplished gentleman, of fascinating sweet- 
ness ; he treats his women like a pacha, and his words are like blows. 
I commend to the reader the domestic scene in which he gives the 
order to invite Mrs. Crawley. Lady Gaunt, his daughter-in-law, says 
that she will not be present at dinner, and will go home. His lord- 
ship answered : 

‘I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs at Bareacres very 
pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lending money to your relations, and 
from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are you to give orders here? You 
have no money. You've got no brains. You were here to have children, and you 
have not had any. Gaunt’s tired of you ; and George’s wife is the only person in 

_the family who doesn’t wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you 
were. . . . You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue. . . . Pray, madame, 
shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your mamma ?’? 





The rest is in the same style. His daughters-in-law, driven to despair, 





1 Vanity Fair, ch. xlviii. This passage is only found in the original octavo 
edition.—Tr. 

2 Ibid. ch. xlix, ) 

VOL. IL. 2B 


386 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


say they wish they were dead. ‘This declaration rejoices him, and he 
concludes with these words: ‘This Temple of Virtue belongs to me. 
And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by —, they shall be 
welcome.’ The habit of despotism makes despots, and the best means 
of implanting despots in families, is to preserve nobles in the State. 

Let us take rest in the contemplation of the country gentleman. The 
innocence of the fields, hereditary respect, family traditions, the pur- 
suit of agriculture, the exercise of local magistracy, must have produced 
these upright and sensible men, full of kindness and probity, protectors 
of their county, and servants of their country. Sir Pitt Crawley is a 
model; he has four thousand a year and two parliamentary boroughs. 
It is true that these are rotten boroughs, and that he sells the second 
for fifteen hundred a year. He is an excellent economist, and shears 
his farmers so close that he can only find bankrupt-tenants. A coach 
proprietor, a government contractor, a mine proprietor, he pays his sub- 
ordinates so badly, and is so niggard in outlay, that his mines ‘ are filled 
with water ; and as for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the 
kingdom knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country ;’ 
the Government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his hands, A 
popular man, he always prefers the society of a horse-dealer to the com- 
pany of a gentleman. ‘ He was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking 
with the farmers’ daughters; . . . would cut his joke and drink his 
glass with a tenant, and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh 
with the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour.’ He 
speaks with a country accent, has the mind of a lackey, the habits of 
aboor, At table, waited on by three men and a butler, on massive 
silver, he inquires into the dishes, and the beasts which have furnished 
them. ‘What ship was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?’ ‘One 
of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt: we killed on Thursday.’ ‘Who 
took any?’ ‘Steel of Mudbury took the saddle and two legs, Sir Pitt ; 
but he says the last was too young and confounded woolly, Sir Pitt.’ 
‘What became of the shoulders?’ The dialogue goes on in the same 
tone; after the Scotch mutton comes the black Kentish pig: these 
animals might be Sir Pitt’s family, so much is he interested in them. 
As for his daughters, he lets them stray to the gardener’s cottage, where 
they pick up their education. As for his wife, he beats her from time 
to time. As for his people, he exacts the last farthing of the money 
they owe him. ‘A farthing a day is seven shillings a year; seven 
shillings a year is the interest of seven guineas. Take care of your 
farthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat’ral.’ ‘He 
never gave away a farthing in his life,’ growled Tinker. ‘ Never, and 
never will: it’s against my principle.’ He is impudent, brutal, coarse, 
stingy, shrewd, extravagant ; but is courted by ministers, and a high- 
sheriff ; honoured, powerfal, he rolls in a gilded carriage, and is one 
of the pillars of the State. 

These are the rich ; probably money has corrupted them. Let us 














CHAP. I1.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 387 


look for a poor aristocrat, free from temptations ; his lofty soul, left to 
itself, will display all its native beauty. Sir Francis Clavering is in this 
case. He has played, drunk, and supped until he has nothing more 
left. Transactions at the gambling table had speedily effected his ruin ; 
he had been forced to sell out; had shown the white feather, and after 
frequenting all the billiard-rooms in Europe, been thrown into prison 
by his uncourteous creditors. To get out he has married a good Indian 
widow, who outrages spelling, and whose money was left her by her 
father, a disreputable old lawyer and indigo-smuggler. Clavering ruins 
her, goes on his knees to obtain gold and pardon, swears on the Bible 
to contract no more debts, and when he goes out runs straight to the 
money-lender. Of all the rascals that novelists have ever exhibited, 
he is the basest. He has neither resolution nor common sense; he is 
simply a man in a state of dissolution. He swallows insults like water, 
weeps, begs pardon, and begins again. He debases himself, prostrates 
himself, and the next moment swears and storms, to fall back into the 
depths of the extremest cowardice. He implores, threatens, and in the 
same quarter of an hour accepts the threatened man as his intimate 
confidant and friend : 


‘Now, ain’t it hard that she won’t trust me with a single tea-spoon ; ain’t it 
ungentlemanlike, Altamont? You know my lady’s of low birth—that is—I beg your 
pardon—hem—that is, it’s most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. 
And the very servants begin to laugh—the dam scoundrels! . .. They don’t answer 
my bell; and—and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my dress 
shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine—the confounded impu- 
dent blackguard !—and he went on dancing before my eyes, confound him! I’m 
sure he’ll live to be hanged—he deserves to be hanged—all those infernal rascals 
of valets!’1 


His conversation is a compound of oaths, whines, and ravings; he 
is not a man, but a wreck of a man: there survive in him but the dis- 
cordant remains of vile passions, like the fragments of a crushed snake, 
which, unable to bite, bruise themselves and wriggle about in their 
slaver and mud. The sight of a bank-note makes him launch blindly 
into a mass of entreaties and lies. The future has disappeared for 
him ; he sees but the present. He will sign a bill for twenty pounds at 
three months to get a sovereign. His brutishness has become imbe- 
cility ; his eyes are shut; he does not see that his protestations excite 
mistrust, that his lies excite disgust, that by his very baseness he loses 
the fruit of his baseness; so that when he comes in, one feels a violent 
inclination to take the honourable baronet, the member of parliament, 
the proud inhabitant of a historic house, by the neck, and pitch him, 
like a basket of rubbish, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. 

We must stop. A volume would not exhaust the list of perfections 
which Thackeray discovers in the English aristocracy. The Marquis 





1 Pendennis, ch. 1x. ' 4 


388. MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


of Farintosh, twenty-fifth of his name, an illustrious fool, healthy and 
self-contented, whom all the women ogle and all the men bow to; Lady 
Kew, an old woman of the world, tyrannical and corrupted, at enmity 
with her daughter, and a match-maker; Sir Barnes Newcome, one of 
the most cowardly of men, the wickedest, the falsest, the best abused 
and beaten who has ever smiled in a drawing-room or spoken in Par- 
liament. I see only one estimable character, and he is indistinet—Lord 
Kew, who, after many follies and excesses, is touched by his Puritan 
old mother, and repents. But these portraits are sweet compared to 
the dissertations ; the commentator is still more bitter than the artist; 
he wounds more in speaking than in making his personages speak. You 
must read his biting diatribes against marriages of convenience, and the 
sacrifice of girls; against the inequality of inheritance and the envy of 
younger sons; against the education of the nobles, and their traditionary 
insolence ; against the purchase of commissions in the army, the isolation 
of classes, the outrages on nature and family, invented by society and 
law. Behind this, philosophy shows a second gallery of portraits as 
insulting as the first: for inequality, having corrupted the great men 
whom it exalts, corrupts the small men whom it degrades; and the 
spectacle of envy or baseness in the small, is as ugly as that of insolence 
or despotism in the great. According to Thackeray, English society is 


a compound of flatteries and intrigues, each striving to hoist himself , 


up a step higher on the social ladder and to push back those who are 
climbing. To be received at court, to see one’s name in the papers 
amongst a list of illustrious guests, to give a cup of tea at home to some 
stupid and bloated peer; such is the supreme limit of human ambition 


and felicity. For one master there are always a hundred lackeys. Major — 


Pendennis, a resolute man, cool and clever, has contracted this leprosy. 
His happiness to-day is to bow toa lord. He is only at peace in a 
drawing-room, or in a park of the aristocracy. He craves to be treated 
with that humiliating condescension wherewith the great overwhelm their 
inferiors. He pockets lack of attention with ease, and dines graciously 
at a noble board, where he is invited twice in three years to stop a gap. 
He leaves a man of genius or a witty woman to converse with a titled 
sheep or a tipsy lord. He prefers being tolerated at a Marquess’ to being 
respected at a commoner’s. Having exalted these fine dispositions into 
principles, he inculcates them on his nephew, whom he loves, and to 
push him on in the world, offers him in marriage a basely acquired fortune 
and the daughter of a convict. Others glide through the proud drawing- 
rooms, not with parasitic manners, but on account of their splendid 
balance at the banker’s. Once upon a time in France, the nobles with 
the money of citizens manured their estates ; now in England the citizens, 
by a noble marriage, ennoble their money. For a hundred thousand 
pounds to the father, Pump, the merchant, marries Lady Blanche Stiff-, 
neck, who, though married, remains my Lady. Naturally he is scorned 
by her, as a tradesman, and moreover, hated for having made her half a 





er am 











CHAP. It.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 389 


woman of the people. He dare not see his friends at home; they are 
too vulgar for his wife. He dare not visit the friends of his wife; 
they are too high for him. He is his wife’s butler, the butt of his 
father-in-law, the servant of his son, and consoles himself by thinking 
that his grandsons, when they become Lord Pump, will blush for him 
and never mention his name. A third means of entering the aristo- 
cracy is to ruin oneself, and never see any one. This ingenious method 
is employed by Mrs. Major Ponto in the country. She has an incom- 
parable governess for her daughters, who thinks that Dante is called 
Alighieri because he was born at Algiers, but who has educated two 
marchionesses and a countess. 

‘Some one wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance of some of the 
neighbours.—We can’t in our position of life, we can’t well associate with the 
attorney’s family, as I leave you to suppose—and the Doctor—one may ask one’s 
medical man to one’s table, certainly: but his family.—The people in that large 
red house just outside of the town.—What! the chdteau-calicot. That purse- 
proud ex-linendraper—The parson—Oh ! he used to preach in a surplice. He is 
a Puseyite !’ y 
This sensible Ponto family yawns in solitude for six months, and the rest 
of the year enjoys the gluttony of the country-squires whom they regale, 
and the rebuffs of the great lords whom they visit. The son, an officer 
of the hussars, requires to be kept in luxury so as to be on an equality 
with his noble comrades, and his tailor receives above three hundred 
a year out of the nine hundred which make up the whole family 
income.” I should never end, if I recounted all the villanies and 
miseries which Thackeray attributes to the aristocratic spirit, the 
division of families, the pride of the ennobled sister, the jealousy 
of the sister who preserves her condition, the degradation of the 
characters trained up from school to reverence the little lords, the 
abasement of the daughters who strive to compass noble marriages, 
the rage of snubbed vanity, the meanness of the attentions offered, the 
triumph of folly, the scorn of talent, the consecrated injustice, the 
heart rendered unnatural, the morals perverted. Before this striking 
picture of truth and genius, we need remember that this injurious 
inequality is the cause of a wholesome liberty, that social injustice 
produces political welfare, that a class of hereditary nobles is a class 
of hereditary statesmen, that in a century and a half England has had 
a hundred and fifty years of good government, that in a century and a 
half France has had a hundred and fifty years of bad government, that 
all is compensated, and that it is possible to pay dearly for capable 
leaders, a connected policy, free elections, and the control of the 
Government by the nation. We must also remember that this talent, 
founded on intense reflection, concentrated in moral prejudices, could 
not but have transformed the picture of manners into a systematic 





1 The Book of Snobs, ch. viii. ; Great City Snobs. 
2 Ibid. ch. xxvi. ; On some Country Snobs, 


390 MODERN AUTHORS, » [Book v. 


and combative satire, exasperate satire into calculated and implacable 
animosity, blacken human nature, and become enraged, with studied, 
redoubled, and natural hatred, against the chief vice of his country and 
of his time. 


§ 2.—Tue ARTIST. 
VIII. 


In literature as well as in politics, we cannot have everything. 
Talents, like happiness, do not always follow suit. Whatever constitu- 
tion it selects, a people is always half unhappy ; whatever genius he 


has, a writer is always half impotent. We cannot preserve at«once 


more than a single attitude. To transform the novel is to deform it: he 
who, like Thackeray, gives to the novel satire for its object, ceases to 
give it art for its rule, and all the force of the satirist is the weakness 
of the novelist. 

What is a novelist? In my opinion he is a psychologist, who 
naturally and involuntarily sets psychology at work; he is nothing 
else, nor more. He loves to picture feelings, to perceive their con- 


— 


nections, their precedents, their consequences; and he indulges in this — 


pleasure. In his eyes they are forces, having various directions and 


magnitudes. About their justice or injustice he troubles himself 


little. He introduces them in characters, conceives the dominant 
quality, perceives the traces which this leaves on the others, marks 
the contrary or harmonious influences of the temperament, of educa- 
tion, of occupation, and labours to manifest the invisible world of 
inward inclinations and dispositions by the visible world of outward 
words and actions. To this is his labour reduced. Whatever these 
bents are, he cares little. A genuine painter sees with pleasure a well- 
drawn arm and vigorous muscles, even if they be employed in slaying 
aman. A genuine novelist enjoys the contemplation of the greatness 
of a harmful sentiment, or the organised mechanism of a pernicious 
character. He has sympathy with talent, because it is the only faculty 
which exactly copies nature: occupied in experiencing the emotions 
of his personages, he only dreams of marking their vigour, kind and 
mutual action. He represents them to us as they are, whole, not 
blaming, not punishing, not mutilating; he transfers them to us intact 
and separate, and leaves to us the right of judging if we desire it. His 
whole effort is to make them visible, to unravel the types darkened 
and altered by the accidents and imperfections of real life, to set in 
relief wide human passions, to be shaken by the greatness of the 
beings whom he animates, to raise us out of ourselves by the force of 
his creations. We recognise art in this creative power, impartial and 
universal as nature, freer and more potent than nature, taking up the 
rough-drawn or disfigured work of its rival in order to correct its faults 


and give effect to its conceptions. 


All is changed by the intervention of satire; and to begin with 


4 
2 
§ 
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Ve F 





CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 391 


the part of the author. When in pure novel he speaks in his own 
name, it is to explain a sentiment or mark the cause of a faculty; in 
satirical novel it is to give us moral advice. It has been seen to how 
many lessons Thackeray subjects us. That they are good ones no one 
disputes ; but at least they take the place of useful explanations. A 
third of the volume, being occupied by warnings, is lost to art. Sum- 
moned to reflect on our faults, we know the character less. The 
author designedly neglects a hundred delicate shades which he might 
have discovered and shown to us. ‘The character, less complete, is less 
lifelike ; the interest, less concentrated, is less lively. Turned away from 
him instead of brought back to him, our eyes wander and forget him ; 
instead of being absorbed, we are absent in mind. More, and worse, 
we end by experiencing some degree of weariness. We judge these ser- 
mons true, but repeated till we are sick of them. We fancy ourselves 
listening to college lectures, or handbooks for the use of young priests. 
We find the like things in gilt books, with pictured covers, given as 
Christmas presents to children. Are you much rejoiced to learn that 
marriages of convenience have their inconveniency, that in the absence 
of a friend we readily speak evil of him, that a son often afflicts his 
mother by his irregularities, that selfishness is an ugly fault? All this 
is true; but it is too true. We come to listen to a man in order to 
hear new things. These old moralities, though useful and well spoken, 
smack of the paid pedant, so common in England, the clergyman in 
the white tie, standing bolt upright in his room, and droning for three 
hundred a year, daily admonition to the young gentlemen whom parents 
have sent to his educational hothouse. 

This studied presence of a moral intention spoils the novel as well 
as the novelist. It must be confessed, a volume of Thackeray has the 
cruel misfortune of recalling the novels of Miss Edgeworth or the 
stories of Canon Schmidt. Here is one which shows us Pendennis 
proud, extravagant, hare-brained, lazy, shamefully plucked for his ex- 
aminations ; whilst his companions, less intellectual but more studious, 
took high places in honours, or passed with decent credit. This 
edifying contrast does not warn us; we do not wish to go back to 
school; we shut the book, and recommend it like medicine, to our little 
cousin, Other puerilities, less shocking, end in wearying us just as 
much. We do not like the prolonged contrast between good Colonel 
Newcome and his wicked relatives. This Colonel gives money and 
cakes to every child, money and shawls to all his cousins, money and 
kind words to all the servants; and these people only answer him with 
coldness and coarseness. It is clear, from the first page, that the 
author would persuade us to be affable, and we kick against the too 
matter-of-course invitation; we don’t want to be scolded in a novel; 
we are in a bad humour with this invasion of pedagogy. We wanted 
to go to the theatre; we have been taken in by the outside bill, and 
we growl, sotto voce, to find ourselves at a sermon, 





392 MODERN AUTHORS. — [BOOK Vv. 


Let us console ourselves: the characters suffer as much as we; the 
author spoils them in preaching to us; they, like us, are sacrificed to 
satire. He does not animate beings, he lets puppets act. He only 
combines their actions to make them ridiculous, odious, or disappoint- 
ing. After a few scenes we recognise the spring, and thenceforth we 
are always foreseeing when it is going to act. This foresight deprives 
the character of half its truth, and the reader of half his illusion. 
Perfect fooleries, complete mischances, unmitigated wickednesses, are 
rare things. The events and feelings of real life are not so arranged 
as to make such calculated contrasts and such clever combinations. 
Nature does not invent these dramatic effects: we soon see that we are 
before the foot-lights, in front of bedizened actors, whose words are 
written for them, and their gestures arranged. 

To picture exactly this alteration of truth and art, we must com- 
pare two characters step by step. There is a personage, unanimously 
recognised as Thackeray’s masterpiece, Becky Sharp, an intrigante 
and a bad character, but a superior and well-mannered woman. Let 
us compare her to a similar personage of Balzac, in les Parents pauvres, 
Valérie Marneffe. The difference of the two works will exhibit the 
difference of the two literatures. As the English excel as moralists 
and satirists, so the French excel as artists and novelists. 

Balzac loves his Valérie; this is why he explains and magnifies 
her. He does not labour to make her odious, but intelligible. He 
gives her the education of a prostitute, a ‘husband as depraved as a 
prison full of galley-slaves,’ luxurious habits, recklessness, prodigality, 
womanly nerves, a pretty woman’s disgust, an artist’s rapture. Thus 
born and bred, her corruption is natural. She needs elegance as one 
needs air. She takes it no matter whence, remorselessly, as we drink 
water from the first stream. She is not worse than her profession ; she 
has all its innate and acquired excuses, of mood, tradition, circumstance, 
necessity ; she has all its powers, abandon, graces, mad gaiety, alterna- 
tives of triviality and elegance, unmeditated audacity, comical devices, 
magnificence and success. She is perfect of her kind, like a proud 
and dangerous horse, which we admire while we fear it. Balzac 
delights to paint her with no other aim but his picture. He dresses 
her, lays on for her her patches, arranges her dresses, trembles before 
her dancing-girl’s motions. He details her gestures with as much 
pleasure and truth as if he were her waiting-woman. His artistic 
curiosity is fed on the least traits of character and manners. After a 
violent scene, he pauses at a spare moment, and shows her idle, stretched 
on her couch like a cat, yawning and basking in the sun. Like a 
physiologist, he knows that the nerves of the beast of prey are softened, 
and that it only ceases to bound in order to sleep. But what bounds! 
She dazzles, fascinates; she defends herself successively against three 
proved accusations, refutes evidence, alternately humiliates and glorifies 
herself, rails, adores, demonstrates, changing a score of times her tones, 














‘CHAP. IL] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 393 


ideas, tricks, in the same quarter of an hour. An old shopkeeper, 
protected against emotions by trade and avarice, trembles at her 
speech: ‘She sets her feet on my heart, crushes me, stuns me. Ah, 
what a woman! When she looks cold at me, it is worse than a 
stomach-ache. . . . How she tripped down the steps, making them 
bright with her looks!’ Everywhere passion, force, atrocity, conceal 
the ugliness and corruption. Attacked in her fortune by an honest 
woman, she gets up an incomparable comedy, played with a great 
poet’s eloquence and exaltation, and broken suddenly by the coarse 
burst of laughter and triviality of a porter’s daughter on the stage. 
Style and action are raised to the height of an epic. ‘When the words 
“ Hulot and two hundred thousand francs” were mentioned, Valérie 
gave a passing look from between her two long eyelids, like the glare of 
a cannon through its smoke.’ A little further, caught in the act by one 
of her lovers, a Brazilian, and quite capable of killing her, she blenched 
for an instant; but recovering the same moment, she checked her 
tears. ‘She came to him, and looked so fiercely that her eyes glittered 
like daggers.’ Danger roused and inspired her, and her excited nerves 
propel genius and courage to her brain. To complete the picture of 
this. impetuous nature, superior and unstable, Balzac at the last moment 
makes her repent. To proportion her fortune to her vice, he leads 
her triumphantly through the ruin, death, or despair of twenty people, 
and shatters her in the supreme moment by a fall as terrible as her 
success. 

Before such passion and logic, what is Becky Sharp? A calcu- 
lating plotter, cool in temperament, full of common sense, a former 
governess, having parsimonious habits, a genuine man of business, 
always proper, always active, unsexed, void of the voluptuous softness 
and diabolical transport which can give brilliancy to her character and 
charm to her profession. She is not a prostitute, but a petticoated and 
heartless barrister. Nothing is more fit to inspire aversion. The 
author loses no opportunity of expressing his own; for three volumes 
he pursues her with sarcasms and misfortunes; he puts only false 
words, perfidious actions, revolting sentiments, in her mouth. From 
her coming on the stage, at the age of seventeen, treated with rare 
kindness by a noble family, she lies from morning to night, and by 
coarse expedients tries to fish there for a husband. The better to 
crush her, Thackeray himself sets forth all these basenesses, lies, and 
indecencies. Rebecca ever so gently pressed the hand of fat Joseph: 


‘ It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable correct- 
ness and gentility will condemn the action as immodest ; but, you see, poor dear 
Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a 
servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has 
no dear mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself.’ ! 





1 Vanity Fair, ch. iv. 


394 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


A governess at Sir Pitt Crawley’s, she gains the friendship of her 
pupils by reading the tales of Crébillon the younger, and of Voltaire, 
with them. She writes to her friend Amelia: 


‘ The rector’s wife paid me a score of compliments about the progress my pupils 
made, and thought, no doubt, to touch my heart—poor, simple, country soul! as 
if I cared a fig about my pupils.’* 


This phrase is an imprudence hardly natural in so careful a person, and 
the author adds it to her part, to make it odious. A little further Rebecca 
is grossly adulatory and mean to old Miss Crawley ; and her pompous 
periods, manifestly false, instead of exciting admiration, raise disgust. 
She is selfish and lying to her husband, and, knowing that he is on the 
’ field of battle, busies herself only in getting together a little purse. 
Thackeray designedly dwells on the contrast: the heavy dragoon ‘ went 
through the various items of his little catalogue of effects, striving to 
see how they might be turned into money for his wife’s benefit, in case 
any accident should befall him.’ ‘ Faithful to his plan of economy, 
the captain dressed himself in his oldest and shabbiest uniform’ to get 
killed in : 


‘ And this famous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his campaign 

. with something like a prayer on the lips for the woman he was leaving. He 
took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed 
against his strong beating heart. His face was purple and his eyes dim, as he 
put her down and left her. . . . And Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined 
not to give way to unavailing sentimentality on her husband’s departure... . 
‘* What a fright I seem,” she said, examining herself in the glass, ‘‘ and how pale 
this pink makes one look.” So she divested herself of this pink raiment; .. . 
then she put her bouquet of the ball into a glass of water, and went to bed, and 
slept very comfortably.’ ? 


From these examples judge of the rest. Thackeray’s whole business is! 


to degrade Rebecca Sharp. He convicts her of harshness to her son, , 
theft from her tradesmen, imposture against everybody To finish, he, 


makes her a dupe ; whatever she does, it comes to nothing. Compro- ° 


mised by the advances which she has lavished on foolish Joseph, 
she momentarily expects an offer of marriage. <A letter comes, an- 
nouncing that he has gone to Scotland, and presents his compliments 
to Miss Rebecca. Three months later, she secretly marries Captain 
Rawdon, a poor dolt. Sir Pitt Crawley, Rawdon’s father, throws him- 
self at her feet, with four thousand a year, and offers her his hand. 
In her consternation she weeps despairingly. ‘ Married, married, mar- 
ried already!’ is her cry; and it is enough to pierce sensitive souls. 
Later, she tries to win her sister-in-law by passing for a good mother. 
‘Why do you kiss me here?’ asks her son; ‘you never kiss me at 
home.’ The consequence is, complete discredit; once more she is lost. 
The Marquis of Steyne, her lover, presents her to society, loads her 





1 Vanity Fair, ch. xi, é; 2 Jbid. ch, xxx. 


——— 





—————E—E——————————— 

















CHAP. II. | THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 395 


with jewels, bank-notes, and has her husband appointed to some island 
in the East. The husband enters at the wrong moment, knocks my 
lord down, restores the diamonds, and drives her away. Wandering 
on the Continent, she tries five or six times to grow rich and appear 
honest. Always, at the moment of success, accident brings her to the 
ground. Thackeray sports with her, as a child with a cockchafer, 
letting her hoist herself painfully to the top of the ladder, in order to 
pluck her down by the foot and make her tumble disgracefully. He 
ends by dragging her through taverns and greenrooms, and pointing his 
finger at her from a distance, as a gamester, a drunkard, is unwilling 
to touch her further. On the last page he installs her vulgarly in a 
fortune, plundered by doubtful devices, and leaves her in bad odour, 
uselessly hypocritical, abandoned to the shadiest society. Under this 
storm of irony and contempt, the heroine is dwarfed, illusion is 
weakened, interest diminished, art attenuated, ‘poetry disappears, and 
the character, more useful, has become less true and beautiful. 


TX. 


Suppose that a happy chance lays aside these causes of weakness, 
and keeps open these sources of talent. Amongst all these transformed - 
novels will appear a single genuine one, elevated, touching, simple, 
original, the history of Henry Esmond. Thackeray has not written a 
less popular nor a more beautiful story. 

This book comprises the fictitious memoirs of Colonel Esmond, a 
contemporary of Queen Anne, who, after a troubled life in Europe, 
retired with his wife to Virginia, and became a planter there. Esmond 
speaks; and the necessity of adapting the tone to the character sup- 
presses the satirical style, the reiterated irony, the sanguinary sarcasm, 
the scenes contrived to ridicule folly, the events combined to crush 
vice. ‘Thenceforth we enter the real world; we let illusion guide us, 
we rejoice in a varied spectacle, easily unfolded, without moral inten- 
tion. You are no more harassed by personal advice; you remain in 
your place, calm, sure, no actor’s finger pointed at you to warn you at 
an interesting moment that the piece is played on your account, and 
to do you good. At the same time, and unconsciously, you are at ease. 
Quitting bitter satire, pure narration charms you; you take rest from 
hating. You are like an army surgeon, who, after a day of fights and 
maneeuvres, sits on a hillock and beholds the motion in the camp, the 
_ procession of carriages, and the distant horizon softened by ¢he sombre 
tints of evening. 

On the other hand, the long reflections, which seem vulgar and 
dislocated under the pen of the writer, become natural and connected 
in the mouth of the character. Esmond is an old man, writing for his 
children, and remarking upon his experience. He has a right to judge 
life; his maxims are suitable to his years: having passed into sketches 
of manners, they lose their pedantic air; we hear them complacently, 


396 - MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


and perceive, as we turn the page, the calm and sad smile which has 
dictated them. 

With the reflections we endure the details. Elsewhere, the minute 
descriptions appear frequently puerile; we blamed the author for 
dwelling, with the scrupulosity of an English painter, on school adven- 
tures, coach scenes, inn episodes ; we thought that this intense studious- 
ness, unable to sympathise with lofty themes of art, was compelled to 
stoop to microscopical observations and photographie details. Here all 
is changed. A writer of memoirs has a right to record his infantine 
impressions. His distant recollections, mutilated remnants of a for- 
gotten life, have a peculiar charm; we accompany him back to infancy. 
A Latin lesson, a soldiers’ march, a ride behind some one, become 
important events embellished by distance; we enjoy his peaceful and 
familiar pleasure, and feel with him a vast sweetness in seeing once 
more, with so much ‘ease and in so clear a light, the well-known 
phantoms of the past. Minute detail adds to the interest in adding to 
the naturalness. Stories of campaign life, scattered opinions on the 
books and events of the time, a hundred petty scenes, a thousand petty 
facts, manifestly useless, are on that very account illusory. We forget 
the author, we listen to the old Colonel, we find ourselves carried back 
a hundred years, and we have the extreme pleasure, so uncommon, of 
believing in what we read. 

Whilst the subject obviates the faults, or turns them into virtues, 
it offers for these virtues the very finest theme. The powerful reflec- 
tion has decomposed and reproduced the manners of the time with a 
most astonishing fidelity. Thackeray knows Swift, Steele, Addison, St. 
John, Marlborough, as well as the most attentive and learned historian. 
He depicts their habits, household converse, like Walter Scott himself ; 
and, what Walter Scott could not do, he imitates their style so that we 
are deceived by it; and many of their authentic phrases, inwoven with 
the text, cannot be distinguished from it. This perfect imitation is not 
limited to a few select scenes; it comprises the whole volume. Colonel 
Esmond writes as people wrote in the year 1700. The trick, I was 
going to say the genius, is as great as the effort and success of Paul 
Louis Courier, in imitating the style of ancient Greece. The style of 
Esmond has the calmness, the exactness, the simplicity, the solidity of 
the classics. Our modern temerities, our prodigal imagery, our jostled 
figures, our habit of gesticulation, our striving for effect, all our bad 
literary customs, have disappeared. Thackeray must have gone back 
to the primitive sense of words, discovered their forgotten shades of 
meaning, recomposed an outworn state of intellect and a lost species 
of ideas, to make his copy approach so closely to the original. The 
imagination of Dickens himself would have failed in this. To attempt 
and accomplish it, then, were needed all the sagacity, calm, and force of 
knowledge and meditation. 

But the masterpiece of the work is the character of Esmond. 





ii eo 


j 
| 
. 
. 














_ CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 397 


Thackeray has endowed him with that tender kindliness, almost feminine, | 
which he everywhere extols above all other human virtues, and that 
self-mastery which is the effect of habitual reflection. These are the 
finest qualities of his psychological armoury; each by its contrast in- 
creases the value of the other. We see a hero, but original and new, 
English in his cool resolution, modern by the delicacy and sensibility of 
his heart. 

Henry Esmond is a poor child, the supposed bastard of Lord Castle- 
wood, and brought up by the inheritors of his name. In the first 
chapter we are touched by the modulated and noble emotion which we 
retain to the end of the volume. Lady Castlewood, on her first visit 
to the castle, comes to him in the ‘ book-room or yellow-gallery ;’ being 
informed by the housekeeper who the little boy is, she blushes and 
walked back; the next instant, touched by remorse, she returns: 

‘ With a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she took his hand 
again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying some words to him, 
which were so kind and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who had never 

looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a superior being or angel 
smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on 
one knee. To the very last hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she 
then spoke and looked, the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the 
beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a 
smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair.!... There seemed, as the 
boy thought, in every look or gesture of this fair creature, an angelical softness and 
bright pity—in motion or repose she seemed gracious alike ; the tone of her voice, 
though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost 
to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, little more 
than a menial, felt for an exalted lady, his mistress: but it was worship.’? 
This noble and pure feeling is expanded by a succession of devoted 
actions, related with extreme simplicity; in the least words, in the 
turn of a phrase, in a chance conversation, we perceive a great heart, 
passionately grateful, never tiring of inventing benefits or services, sym- 
pathising, friendly, giving advice, defending the honour of the family and 
the welfare of the children. Twice Esmond interposed between Lord 
Castlewood and Mohun the duellist; it was not his fault that the mur- 
derer’s weapon did not reach his own breast. When Lord Castlewood 
on his deathbed revealed that he was not a bastard, that the title and 
fortune were his, he burned without a word the confession which would 
have rescued him from the poverty and humiliation in which he had 
so long pined. Outraged by his mistress, sick of a wound received by 
his master’s side, accused of ingratitude and cowardice, he persisted in 
his silence with the justification in his hand: 

‘ And when the struggle was over in Harry’s mind, a glow of righteous happi- 
ness filled it ; and it was with grateful tears in his eyes that he returned thanks to 
God for that decision which he had been enabled to make.’ 3 


1 The History of Henry Esmond, bk. i. ch. i. 
3 Tbid, bk. i. ch. vii. 3 Ibid. bk. ii. ch. i, 





398 MODERN AUTHORS.. _ [BOOK V. 


Later, being in love with another, sure not to marry her if his birth 
remained under a cloud in the eyes of the world, absolved by his bene- 
factress, whose son he had saved, entreated by her to resume the name 
which belonged to him, he smiled sweetly, and gravely replied : 


‘ <*Tt was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord’s bedside,” says Colonel 
Esmond. ‘*‘ The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his heirs after 
him must bear our name. ’Tis his rightfully ; I have not even a proof of that mar- 
riage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his deathbed, told me that 
Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it when I 
was abroad. I went and looked at my poor mother’s grave in her convent. What 
matter to her now? No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive 
my Lord Viscount and set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady ; but 
Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn 
monk, or disappear in America.” 

‘ As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing 
to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung her- 
self down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of 
passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him 
feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love 
for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to be- 
stow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred 
upon a man—and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, 
could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some 
kindness upon his best and dearest friends ? 

‘ ‘Dearest saint,” says he, “‘ purest soul, that has had so much to snffer, that 
has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. “Tis for me to 
kneel, not for you: ’tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath 
my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve you!”’? 


These noble tendernesses seem still more touching when contrasted with 
the surrounding circumstances. Esmond goes to the wars, serves a party, 
lives amidst dangers and business, judging revolutions and politics from 
a lofty point of view; he becomes a man of experience, well informed, 
learned, provident, capable of great enterprises, possessing prudence 
and courage, harassed by his own thoughts and griefs, ever sad and ever 
strong. He ends by accompanying to England the Pretender, half- 
brother of Queen Anne, and keeps him disguised at Castlewood, await- 
ing the moment when the queen, dying and won over to the cause, 
should declare him her heir. This young prince, a Stuart, pays court 
to Lord Castlewood’s daughter Beatrix, whom Esmond loves, and gets 
out at night to join her. Esmond, who waits for him, sees the crown 
lost and his house dishonoured. His insulted honour and outraged 
love break forth in a superb and terrible rage. Pale, with set teeth, 
his brain fired by four nights of anxieties and watches, he preserves his 
clear mind, his restrained tone, and explains to the prince with perfect 
etiquette, with the respectful coldness of an official messenger, the folly 
which the prince has committed, and the villany which the prince has 





1 The History of Henry Esmond,‘bk. iii. ch. ii- 








ee ee 








CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 399 


contemplated. The scene must be read to see how much superiority 
and passion this calmness and bitterness imply: 


‘ «What mean you, my lord ?” says the Prince, and muttered something about 
a guet-a-pens, which Esmond caught up. 

‘¢¢The snare, Sir,” said he, ‘‘ was not of our laying ; it is not we that invited 
you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, the dishonour of our family.” 

‘«<Dishonour! Morbleu! there has been no dishonour,” says the Prince, turn- 
ing scarlet, ‘‘ only a little harmless playing.” 

‘<«That was meant to end seriously.” 

‘<1 swear,” the Prince broke out impetuously, ‘‘ upon the honour of a gentle- 
man, my lords ”— 

‘ ‘¢ That we arrived in time. No wrong hath been done, Frank,” says Colonel 
Esmond, turning round to young Castlewood, who stood at the door as the talk 
was going on. ‘‘See! here is a paper whereon his Majesty hath deigned to com- 
mence some verses in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix. Here is ‘Madame’ and 
‘Flamme,’ ‘Cruelle’ and ‘Rebelle,’ and ‘Amour’ and ‘Jour,’ in the Royal 
writing and spelling. Had the Gracious lover been happy, he had not passed his 
time in sighing.” In fact, and actually as he was speaking, Esmond cast his eyes 
down towards the table, and saw a paper on which my young Prince had been 
scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer on the morrow. 

‘“¢Sir,” says the Prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his Royal coat 
unassisted. by this time), ‘‘ did I come here to receive insults?” 

‘<*To confer them, may it please your Majesty,” says the Colonel, with a very 
low bow, ‘‘and the gentlemen of our family are come to thank you.” 

‘** Malédiction!/” says the young man, tears starting into his eyes with help- 
less rage and mortification. ‘‘ What will you with me, gentlemen ?” 

‘ «Tf your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment,” says Esmond, pre- 
serving his grave tone, ‘‘I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to 
you, and by your permission I will lead the way ;” and taking the taper up, and 
backing before the Prince with very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed into the 
little Chaplain’s room, through which we had just entered into the house :—“‘ Please 
to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank,” says the Colonel to his companion, who won- 
dered almost as much at this scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other 
actor in it. Then going to the crypt over the mantel-piece, the Colonel opened it, 
and drew thence the papers which so long had lain there. 

‘** Here, may it please your Majesty,” says he, ‘‘is the Patent of Marquis 
sent over by your Royal Father at St. Germain’s to Viscount Castlewood, my father: 
here is the witnessed certificate of my father’s marriage to my mother, and of my 
birth and christening ; I was christened of that religion of which your sainted sire 
gave all through life so shining example. These are my titles, dear Frank, and 
this what I do with them: here go Baptism and Marriage, and here the Marquisate 
and the August Sign-Manual, with which your predecessor was pleased to honour 
our race.”” And as Esmond spoke he set the papers burning in the brazier. ‘*‘ You 


will please, sir, to remember,” he continued, ‘‘that our family hath ruined itself 


by fidelity to yours ; that my grandfather spent his estate, and gave his blood and 
his son to die for your service ; that my dear lord’s grandfather (for lord you are 
now, Frank, by right and title too) died for the same cause ; that my poor kins- 
woman, my father’s second wife, after giving away her honour to your wicked per- 
jured race, sent all her wealth to the King, and got in return that precious title 
that lies in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue riband. I lay this at your 
feet, and stamp upon it : I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; and had 


400 MODERN AUTHORS. _ [BooK v. 


you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have driven it 
through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father pardoned Mon- 
mouth.” ’} 


Two pages later he speaks thus of his marriage to Lady Castlewood : 


‘That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in 
words ; ’tis of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the 
heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One ear alone—to one 
fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with. 
As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, and of the depth 
and intensity of that love which, for so many years, hath blessed me, I own to a 
transport of wonder and gratitude for such a boon—nay, am thankful to have been 
endowed with a heart capable of feeling and knowing the immense beauty and 
value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me. Sure, love vincit omnia, is 
immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than 
name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest 
faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the name of my wife 1 write the 
completion of hope, and the summit of happiness. To have such a love is the one 
blessing, in comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value ; and to think of 
her, is to praise God.’ 


A character capable of such contrasts is a lofty work; it is to be 
remembered that Thackeray has produced no other; we regret that 
moral intentions have perverted these fine literary faculties; and we 
deplore that satire has robbed art of such a talent. | 

X. 

Who is he; and what is the value of this literature of which he is 
one of the princes? At bottom, like every literature, it is a definition 
of man; and to judge it, we must compare it with man. We can do so 
now; we have just studied a mind, Thackeray himself; we have con- 
sidered his faculties, their connections, results, their different degrees ; 
we have under our eyes a model of human nature. We have a right 
to judge of the copy by the model, and to shape the definition which 
his romances lay down by the definition which his character furnishes. 

The two definitions are contrary, and his portrait is a criticism on 
his talent. We have seen that in him the same faculties produce the 
beautiful and the ugly, force and weakness, success and failure; that 
moral reflection, after having provided him with every satirical power, 
debases him in art; that, after having spread through his contemporary 
novels a tone of vulgarity and falseness, it raises his historical novel 
to the level of the finest productions; that the same constitution of 
mind teaches him the sarcastic and violent, as well as the modulated 
and simple style, the bitterness and harshness of hate with the effusions 
and delicacies of love. The evil and the good, the beautiful and the 
ugly, the repulsive and the agreeable, are then in him but remoter 
effects, of slight importance, born of changing circumstances, derived 





1 The History of Henry Esmond, bk. iii. ch. xiii. 





; 











CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL—THACKERAY. 401 


and fortuitous qualities, not essential and primitive, diverse forms which 
diverse streams trace inthe same bed. So itis with other men. Doubt- 
less moral qualities are of the first rank ; they are the motive power of 
civilisation, and constitute the nobleness of the individual; society exists 
by them alone, and by them alone manis great. Butif they are the finest 
fruit of the human plant, they are not its root; they give us our value, 
but do not constitute our elements. Neither the vices nor the virtues 
of man are his nature; to praise or to blame him is not to know hin ; 
approbation or disapprobation does not define him; the names of good 
or bad tell us nothing of what he is. Put the robber Cartouche in an 
Italian court of the fifteenth century ; he would be a great statesman. 
Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a shop ; he will 
be an exemplary tradesman. This public man, of inflexible probity, is 
in his drawing-room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so 
humane, is an idiotic politician. - Change a virtue in its circumstances, 
and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it be- 
comes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides ; on one it is 
a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of man is found concealed 
far below these moral badges; they only point out the useful noxious 
effect of our inner constitution: they do not reveal our inner con- 
stitution They are safety-lamps or railway-lights attached to our 
names, to warn the passer-by to avoid or approach us ; they are not the 
explanatory table of our being. Our true essence consists in the causes 
of our good or bad qualities, and these causes are discovered in the 
temperament, the species and degree of imagination, the amount and 
velocity of attention, the magnitude and direction of primitive pas- 
sions. A character is a force, like gravity, weight, or steam, capable, 
as it may happen, of pernicious or profitable effects, and which must 
be defined otherwise than by the amount of the weight it can lift 
or the havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to reduce 
him, as Thackeray and English literature generally do, to an aggre- 
gate of virtues and vices; it is to lose sight in him of all but the 
exterior and social side ; it is to neglect the inner and natural element. 
_You will find the same fault in English criticism, always moral, never 
psychological, bent on exactly measuring the degree of human honesty, 
ignorant of the mechanism of our sentiments and faculties; you will 
find the same fault in English religion, which is but an emotion or a 
discipline ; in their philosophy, destitute of metaphysics; and if you 
ascend to the source, according to the rule which derives vices from 
virtues, and virtues from vices, you will see all these weaknesses derived 
from their native energy, their practical education, and that sort of 
severe and religious poetic instinct which has in time past made them 
Protestant and Puritan. 


VOL IL. 2 


2 


402 -\ MODERN AUTHORS, ~— [BOOK V. 


CHAPTER IIL 
Criticism and History —Macaulay. 


I. The vocation and position of Macaulay in England. 

II, His Hssays—Agreeable character and utility of the style—Opinions— 
Philosophy. Wherein it is English and practical—His HLssay on Bacon 
—The true object, according to him, of the sciences—Comparison of 
Bacon with the ancients. 

III. His criticism—Moral prejudices—Comparison of criticism in France and 
England—Why he is religious—Connection of religion and Liberalism 
in England—Macaulay’s Liberalism—Zssay on Church and Slate. 

IV. His passion for political liberty—How he is the orator and historian of the 
Whig party—Zssays on the Revolution and the Stuarts. 

V. His talent—Taste for demonstration—Taste for development—Oratorical 
character of his mind—Wherein he differs from classic orators—His 
estimation for particular facts, experiment on the senses, personal remini- 


scences—Importance of decisive phenomena in every branch of know- — 


ledge—Lssays on Warren Hastings and Clive. 
VI. English marks of his talent—Rudeness—Humour—Poetry. 

VII. His work—Harmony of his talent, opinion, and work—Universality, unity, 
interest of his history—Picture of the Highlands—James 11. in Ireland 
—The Act of Toleration—The Massacre of Glencoe—Traces of amplifi- 
cation and rhetoric. 

VIII. Comparison of Macaulay with French historians—Wherein he is classical— 
Wherein he is English—Intermediate position of his mind between the 
Latin and the Germanic mind, 


I. 


SHALL not here attempt to write the life of Lord Macaulay. It can 
| only be related after twenty years, when his friends shall have put 
together all their recollections of him. As to what is public now, it seems 
to me useless to recall it: every one knows that his father was an aboli- 
tionist and a philanthropist; that our Macaulay passed through a most 
brilliant and complete classical education; that at twenty-five his essay 
on Milton made him famous; that at thirty he entered Parliament, and 
took his standing there amongst the first orators; that he went to India 
to reform the law, and that on his return he was appointed to high 
offices; that on one occasion his liberal opinions in religious matters 
lost him the votes of his constituents; that he was re-elected amidst 
universal congratulations; that he continued to be the most celebrated 








CHAP. IIl.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 403 


publicist and the most’ accomplished writer of the Whig party; and 
that on this ground, at the close of his life, the gratitude of his party 
and the public admiration, made him a peer of England. It will be 
a fine biography to write—a life of honour and happiness, devoted 
to noble ideas, and occupied by manly enterprises; literary in the first 
place, but sufficiently charged with action and immersed in business to 


furnish substance and solidity to his eloquence and style,—to create the 


observer side by side with the artist, and the thinker side by side with 
the writer. On the present occasion I will only describe the thinker 


and writer: I leave the life, I take his works; and first his Essays. 


Il. 


His Essays are an assemblage of articles: I confess that I am fond of 
books such as these, In the first place, we can throw down the volume 
after a score of pages, begin at the end, or in the middle; we are not 
its slave, but its master; we can treat it like a newspaper: in fact, it 
is a journal of a mind, In the second place, it is varied; in turning 
over a page, we pass from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, 
from England to India: this diversity surprises and pleases, Lastly, 
involuntarily, the author is indiscreet ; he displays himself to us, keeping 
back nothing; it is a familiar conversation, and no conversation is 
worth so much as that of England’s greatest historian. We are pleased 
to mark the origin of this generous and powerful mind, to discover 
what faculties have nourished his talent, what researches have shaped 
his knowledge ; what opinions he has formed on philosophy, religion, 
the state, literature; what he was, and what he has become; what he 
wishes, and what he believes. 

Seated in our arm-chair, with our feet on the fender, we see little 
by little, as we turn over the leaves of the book, an animated and pen- 
sive face arise before us; the countenance assumes expression and 
clearness; his different features are mutually explained and lightened 
up; presently the author lives again for us, and before us; we per- 
ceive the causes and birth of all his thoughts, we foresee what he is 
going to say; his bearing and mode of speech are as familiar to us 
as those of a man whom we see every day; his opinions correct and 
affect our own; he enters into our thoughts and our life; he is two 
hundred leagues away, and his book stamps his image on us, as the 
reflected light paints on the horizon the object from which it is emitted. 
Such is the charm of books, which deal with all kinds of subjects, 
which give the author’s opinion on all sorts of things, which lead us 
in all directions of his thoughts, and make us, so to speak, walk around 
his mind. 

Macaulay treats philosophy in the English fashion, as a practical 
man. He is a disciple of Bacon, and sets him above all philosophers ; 
he decides that genuine science dates from him; that the speculations 
of old thinkers are only the sport of the mind; that for two thousand 


~ 


404 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


years the human mind was on a wrong tack; that only since Bacon it 
has discovered the goal to which it must turn, and the method by which 
it must arrive there. This goal is utility. The object of knowledge is 
not theory, but application. The object of mathematicians is not the 
satisfaction of an idle curiosity, but the invention of machines calcu- 
lated to alleviate human labour, to increase the power of dominating 
nature, to render life more secure, commodious, and happy. The 
object of astronomy is not to furnish matter for vast calculations and 
poetical cosmogonies, but to subserve geography and to guide naviga- 
tion. The object of anatomy and the zoological sciences is not to 
suggest eloquent systems on the nature of organisation, or to set before 
the eyes the orders of the animal kingdom by an ingenious classification, 
but to conduct the surgeon’s hand and the physician’s prognosis. The 
object of every research and every study is to diminish pain, to aug- 
ment comfort, to ameliorate the condition of man; theoretical laws are 
serviceable only in their practical use; the labours of the laboratory 
and the cabinet receive their sanction and value only, through the use 
made of them by the workshops and mills; the tree of knowledge must 
be estimated only by its fruits. If we wish to judge of a philosophy, 
we must observe its effects; its works are not its books, but its acts. 
The philosophy of the ancients produced fine writings, sublime phrases, 
infinite disputes, hollow dreams, systems displaced by systems, and left 
the world as ignorant, as unhappy, and as wicked as it found it. That 
of Bacon produced observations, experiments, discoveries, machines, 
entire arts and industries: 


‘It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; 
it has increased the fertility of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; 
it has furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and -estuaries 
with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt 
innocuously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the uight with the splendour 
of the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the 
power of the human muscles ; it has accelerated motion ; it has annihilated dis- 
tance ; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch 
of business ; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into 
the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the 
land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run 
ten knots an hour against the wind.’ ? 


The first was consumed in solving unsolvable enigmas, fabricating por- 
traits of an imaginary sage, mounting from hypothesis to hypothesis, 
tumbling from absurdity to absurdity ; it despised what was practicable, 
promised what was impracticable ; and because it despised the limits 
of the human mind, ignored its power. The other, measuring our force 
and weakness, diverted us from roads that were closed to us, to start 
us on roads that were open to us; it recognised facts and laws, because 





4 Macaulay’s Works, ed. Lady Trevelyan, 8 vols. 1866 ; Essay on Bacon, vi. 222, 











CHAP. I] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 405 


it resigned itself to remain ignorant of their essence and principles; 
it has rendered man more happy, because it has not pretended to render 
him perfect; it has discovered great truths and great effects, because 


it had the courage and good sense to study small things, and to creep 


— 


for a long time over petty vulgar experiments; it has become glorious 
and powerful, because it has deigned to become humble and useful. 
Formerly, science furnished only vain pretensions and chimerical con- 
ceptions, whilst it held itself aloof, far from practical existence, and 
styled itself the sovereign of man. Now, science possesses acquired 
truths, the hope of loftier discoveries, an ever-increasing authority, 
because it has entered upon active existence, and it has declared itself 
the servant of man. Let her keep to her new functions ; let her not 
try to penetrate the region of the invisible; let her renounce what 
must remain unknown ; she does not contain her own issue, she is but 
a medium; man was not made for her, but she for man; she is like 
the thermometers and piles which she constructs for her own experi- 
ments ; her whole glory, merit, and office, is to be an instrument : 


“We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might be written, in 
which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be introduced as fellow- 
travellers. They come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage, and 
find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, mothers weeping 
in terror over their children. The Stoic assures the dismayed population that there 
is nothing bad in the small-pox, and that to a wise man disease, deformity, death, 
the loss of friends, are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to 
vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dismay. An explosion of noisome 
vapours has just killed many of those who were at work; and the survivors are 
afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an accident 
is nothing but a mere éxorponyutver. The Baconian, who has no such fine word at 
his command, contents himself with devising a safety-lamp. They find a ship- 
wrecked merchant wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable 
cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from opulence to 
beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things which lie 
without himself, and repeats the whole chapter of Epictetus, xpés rois thy daropiay 
d:daxoras. The Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns 
with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be easy to multiply illus- 
trations of the difference between the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of 
fruit, the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works.’?! 


It is not for me to discuss these opinions; it is for the reader to 
blame or praise them, if he sees fit: I do not wish to criticise doctrines, 
but to depict a man; and truly nothing could be more striking than 
this absolute scorn for speculation, and this absolute love for the prac- 
tical. Such a mind is entirely suitable to the national genius: in Eng- 
land a barometer is still called a philosophical instrument ; and philosophy 
is there a thing unknown. The English have moralists, psychologists, 
but no metaphysicians: if there is one—Hamilton, for instance— 





1 Macaulay’s Works ; Lssay on Bacon, vi. 223. 


_) ee an 


406 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


he is a sceptic in metaphysics; he has only read the German philoso- 
phers to refute them; he regards speculative philosophy as an extrava- 
gance of visionaries, and is compelled to ask his readers to pardon 
him for the strangeness of his matter, when he tries to make them 
understand somewhat of Hegel’s conceptions. The English, positive 
and practical men, excellent politicians, administrators, fighters, and 
workers, are no more suited than the ancient Romans for the abstractions 
of subtle dialectics and grand systems; and Cicero, too, once excused 
himself, when he tried to expound to his audience of senators and 
public men, the deep and audacious deductions of the Stoics. 


II. 


The only part of philosophy which pleases men of this kind is 
morality, because, like them, it is wholly practical, and only attends 
to actions. Nothing else was studied at Rome, and every one knows 
what place it holds in English philosophy : Hutcheson, Price, Ferguson, 
Wollaston, Adam Smith, Bentham, Reid, and many others, have filled 
the last century with dissertations and discussions on the rule of duty, 
and the faculty which discovers our duty; and Macaulay’s Essays 
are a new example of this national and dominant inclination: his 
biographies are less portraits than judgments. What strictly is the 
degree of uprightness and vice of the personage, that is the important 
question for him; he makes all other questions refer to it; he applies 
himself throughout only to justify, excuse, accuse, or condemn. If he 
speaks of Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Sir William Temple, Addison, 
Milton, or any other man, he devotes himself first of all to measure 
exactly the number and greatness of their faults and virtues ; he inter- 
rupts himself, in the midst of a narration, to examine whether the action, 


which he is relating, is just or unjust; he considers it as a legist anda . 


moralist, according to positive and natural law; he takes into account 
the state of public opinion, the examples which surrounded the ac- 
cused, the principles he professed, the education he has received; he 
bases his opinion on analogies drawn from ordinary life, from ‘the 
history of all peoples, the laws of all countries; he brings forward so 
many proofs, such certain facts, such conclusive reasonings, that the 
best advocate might find a model in him; and when at last he pro- 
nounces judgment, we think we are Lictaning to the summing up of a 
judge. If he analyses a literature—that of the Restoration, for instance 
—he empanels before the reader a sort of jury to judge it. He makes 
it appear at the bar, and reads the indictment; he then presents the 
plea of the defenders, who try to excuse its levities and indecencies : 
at last he begins to speak in his turn, and proves that the arguments 
set forth are not applicable to the case in question; that the accused 
writers have laboured effectually and with premeditation, to corrupt 
morals; that they not only employed unbecoming words, but that 
they designedly, and with deliberate intent, represented unbecoming 


























CHAP. IIl.] CRITICISM. AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 407 


things ; that they always took care to blot out the hatefulness of vice, 
to render virtue ridiculous, to place adultery amongst the good manners 
and necessary exploits of a man of taste; that this intention was all 
the more manifest from its being in the spirit of the times, and that 
they were pandering to a crime of their age. If I dare employ, like 
Macaulay, religious comparisons, I should say that his criticism was 
like the Last Judgment, in which the diversity of talents, characters, 
ranks, employments, will disappear before the consideration of virtue 
and vice, and where there will be no more artists, but a judge of the 
righteous and the sinners. 

In France, criticism has a more liberal gait; it is less subser- 
vient to morality, and nearer akin to art. When we try to relate a 
life, or paint the character of a man, we consider him very readily as 
a simple subject of painting or science: we only think of displaying 
the various feelings of his heart, the connection of his ideas, and the 
necessity of his actions; we do not judge him, we only wish to repre- 
sent him to the eyes, and make him intelligible to the reason. We are 
spectators, and nothing more. What matters it if Peter or Paul isa 
rascal? that is the business of his contemporaries: they suffered from his 
vices, and ought to think only of despising and condemning him. Now 
we are beyond his reach, and hatred has disappeared with the danger. 
At this distance, and in the historic perspective, I see in him but a 
mental machine, provided with certain springs, animated by a primary 
impulse, affected by various circumstances. I calculate the play of his 
motives ; I feel with him the impact of obstacles; I see beforehand 
the curve which his motion will trace out; I experience for him 
neither aversion nor disgust ; I have left these feelings on the threshold 
of history, and I taste the very deep and pure pleasure of seeing a soul 
act after a definite law, in a fixed groove, with all the variety of human 
passions, with the succession and constraint which the inner structure 
of man imposes on the external development of his passions. 

In a country where men are so much occupied by morality, and so 
little by philosophy, there is much religion. For lack of natural 
theology they have a positive theology, and demand from the Bible the 
metaphysics not supplied by reason. Macaulay is a Protestant; and 
though a very candid and liberal mind, he at times retains the English 
prejudices against the Catholic religion." Popery in England always 





1* Charles himself, and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent 
badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices,—a complete subjection of reason to 
authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mum- 
meries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a mer- 
ciless intolerance.’—Macaulay, v. 24 ; Milton. 

‘It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile, that in the sacrifice of the 
mass, Loyola saw transubstantiation take place, and that, as he stood praying on 
the steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept 
aloud with joy and wonder.’—Macaulay, vi. 468 ; Ranke, History of the Popes, 


408 : MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


passes for an impious idolatry and for a degrading servitude. After 
two revolutions, Protestantism, allied to liberty, seemed to be the reli- 
gion of liberty ; and Roman-Catholicism, allied to despotism, seemed the 
religion of despotism : the two doctrines have both assumed the name of 
the cause which they sustained. To the first has been transferred the 
love and veneration which were felt for the rights which it defended ; 
on the second has béen poured the scorn and hatred which were felt for 
the slavery which it would have introduced: political passions have 
inflamed religious beliefs; Protestantism has been confounded with the 
victorious fatherland, Roman-Catholicism, with the conquered enemy ; 
the prejudice survived when the strife ended, and to this day English 
Protestants do not feel for the doctrines of Roman-Catholics the same 
goodwill or impartiality which French Roman-Catholics feel for the 
doctrines of Protestants. 

But these English opinions are moderated in Macaulay by an ardent 
love for justice. He is liberal in the largest and best sense of the word. 
He demands that all citizens should be equal before the law, that men: 
of all sects should be declared capable to fill all public functions—that 
Roman-Catholics and Jews may, as well as Lutherans, Anglicans, and 
Calvinists, sitin Parliament. He refutes Mr. Gladstone and the partisans 
of State religion with incomparable ardour and eloquence, abundance of 
proof, and force of argument; he clearly proves that the State is only a 
secular association, that its end is wholly temporal, that its single object 
is to protect the life, liberty, and property of the citizens; that in 
entrusting to it the defence of spiritual interests, we overturn the order 
of things; and that to attribute to it a religious belief, is as though a 
man, walking with his feet, should also confide to his feet the care of 
seeing and hearing. ‘This question has often been discussed in France ; 
it is so to this day; but no one has brought to it more common sense, 
more practical reasoning, more palpable arguments. Macaulay with- 
draws the discussion from the region of metaphysics; he brings it down 
to the earth; he makes it accessible to all minds; he takes his proofs 
and examples from the best known facts of ordinary life; he addresses 
the shopkeeper, the citizen, the artist, the scholar, every one; he con- 
nects the truth, which he asserts, with the familiar and intimate truths 
which no one can help admitting, and which are believed with all the 
force of experience and habit; he carries off and conquers our belief 
by such solid reasons, that his adversaries will thank him for convincing 
them; and if by chance a few amongst us have need of a lesson on 
tolerance, they had better look for it in Macaulay’s essay on that subject. 


IV. 


This love of justice becomes a passion when political liberty is at 
stake; this is the sensitive point ; and when we touch it, we touch the 
writer to the quick. Macaulay loves it interestedly, because it is the 
only guarantee of the properties, happiness, and life of individuals; he 

















CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 409 


loves it from pride, because it is the honour of man: he loves it from 
patriotism, because it is a legacy left by preceding generations; because 
for two hundred years a succession of upright and great men have 
defended it against all attacks, and preserved it in all dangers; because 
it has made the power and glory of England; because in teaching the 
citizens to will and to decide for themselves, it adds to their dignity and 
intelligence; because in assuring internal peace and continuous progress, 
it guarantees the land from bloody revolutions and silent decay. All these 
advantages are perpetually present to his eyes; and whoever attacks 
the liberty, which founds them, becomes at once his enemy. Macaulay 
cannot look calmly on the oppression of man; every outrage on human 
will hurts him like a personal outrage. At every step bitter words 
escape him, and the stale adulations of courtiers, which he meets with, 
bring to his lips a sarcasm the more violent from being the more 
deserved. Pitt, he says, at college wrote Latin verses on the death of 
_ George 1. In this piece ‘ the Muses are earnestly entreated to weep over 
the urn of Cesar: for Cesar, says the poet, loved the muses ; Cesar, who 
could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and 
fat women.’ Elsewhere, in the biography of Miss Burney, he relates 
how the poor young lady, having become celebrated by her two first 
novels, received as a reward, and as a great favour, a place of keeper 
of the robes of Queen Charlotte; how, worn out with watching, sick, 
nearly dying, she asked as a favour the permission to depart; how 
‘the sweet queen’ was indignant at this impertinence, unable to under- 
stand that any one could refuse to die in and for her service, or that a 
woman of letters should prefer health, life, and glory to the honour of 
folding her Majesty’s dresses. But it is when Macaulay comes to the 
history of the Revolution that he hauls to justice and vengeance those 
who had violated the rights of the public, who had hated and betrayed 
the popular cause, who had outraged liberty. He does not speak as a 
historian, but as a contemporary; it seems as though his life and his 
honour were at stake, that he pleaded for himself, that he was a member 
of the Long Parliament, that he heard at the door the muskets and 
swords of the guards sent to arrest Pym and Hampden. M., Guizot has 
related the same history; but you recognise in his book the calm judg- 
ment and impartial emotion of a philosopher. He does not condemn 
the actions of Strafford or Charles; he explains them; he shows in 
Strafford the imperious character, the domineering genius which feels 
itself born to command and to break through oppositions, whom an 
invincible bent rouses against the law or the right which restrains him, 
who oppresses from a sort of inner craving, and who is made to govern 
as a sword is to strike. He shows in Charles the innate respect for 
royalty, the belief in divine right, the rooted conviction that every 
remonstrance or demand is an insult to his crown, an outrage on his 





* Macaulay, vi. 39; An Essay on William Pitt, Karl of Chatham 


410 ' MODERN AUTHORS. : [BOOK V. 


person, an impious and criminal sedition. Thenceforth you see in the 
strife of king and parliament but the strife of two doctrines; you cease 
to take an interest in one or the other, to take an interest in both; you 
are spectators of a drama; you are no longer judges at a trial. But it 
is a.trial which Macaulay conducts before us; he takes a side in it; 
his account is the address of a public prosecutor before the court, the 
most entrancing, the most harsh, the best reasoned, that was ever 
written. He approves of the condemnation of Strafford; he honours 
and admires Cromwell; he exalts the character of the Puritans; he 
praises Hampden to such a degree, that he calls him the equal of 
Washington; he has no words scornful and insulting enough for Laud ; 
and what is more terrible, each of his judgments is justified by as 
many quotations, authorities, historic precedents, arguments, conclu- — 
sive proofs, as the vast erudition of Hallam or the calm dialectics of 
Mackintosh could have assembled. Judge of this transport of passion 
and this withering logic by a single passage: 


‘For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by 
a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by 
the perfidious King who had recognised them. At length circumstances compelled 
Charles to summon another parliament: another chance was given to our fathers: 
were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former? Were they again 
to be cozened by le Roi le veut? Were they again to advance their money on 
_ pledges which had been forfeited over and over again? ‘Were they to lay a second 
Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange 
for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten 
years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, 
and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they 
would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and 
nobly. 

‘ The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom 
overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the 
facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so 
many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was 
Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private 
virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious 
zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, 
and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in Eng- 
land claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! 
Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 

‘ We charge him with having broken his coronation oath ; and we are told that 
he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the 
merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates ; and the 
defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure 
him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good 
and valuable consideration, promised to observe them ; and we are informed that 
he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o’clock in the morning! It is to such 
considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and 
his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the 
present generation. ) 














CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. All 


‘ For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a good 
man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural 
father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the 
character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most 
important of all human relations ; and if in that relation we find him to have been 
selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in 
spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.’? 


This is for the father; now the son will receive something. The 
reader will perceive, by the furious invective, what excessive rancour 
the government of the Stuarts left in the heart of a patriot, a Whig, 
a Protestant, and an Englishman : 


‘Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of 
servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and 
gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the 
coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might 
trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with com- 
placent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses 
of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The govern- 
ment had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. 
The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the 
Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was 
paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch ; and England propitiated those 
obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime 
succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and 
man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be 
a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations,’ ? 


This piece, with all the biblical metaphors, and which has preserved 
something of the tone of Milton and the Puritan prophets, shows to 
what an issue the various tendencies of this great mind were turning— 
what was its bent—how the practical spirit, science and historic talent, 
the unvaried presence of moral and religious ideas, love of country and 
justice, concurred to make of Macaulay the historian of liberty. 


¥. 


In this his talent assisted him; for his opinions are akin to his 
talent. 

What first strikes us in him is the extreme solidity of his mind. 
He proves all that he says, with astonishing vigour and authority. We 
are almost certain never to go astray in following him. If he cites 
a, witness, he begins by measuring the veracity and intelligence of the 
authors quoted, and by correcting the errors they may have committed, 
through negligence or partiality. If he pronounces a judgment, he 
relies on the most certain facts, the clearest principles, the simplest 
and most logical deductions. If he develops an argument, he never 
loses himself in a digression ; he always has his goal before his eyes ; 





? Macaulay, v. 27 ; Milton. 2 Ibid, v. 35 ; Milton, 


412 MODERN AUTHORS. - [BOOK V. 


he advances towards it by the surest and straightest road. If he rises 
to general consideration, he mounts step by step through all the grades 
of generalisation, without omitting one; he feels the ground every 
instant ; he neither adds nor subtracts from facts; he desires, at the 
cost of every precaution and research, to arrive at the precise truth. 
He knows an infinity of details of every kind; he owns a great number 
of philosophic ideas of every species; but his erudition is as well 
tempered as his philosophy, and both constitute a coin worthy of 
circulation, amongst all thinking minds. We feel that he believes 
nothing without reason; that if we doubted one of the facts which he 
advances, or one of the views which he propounds, we should at once 
encounter a multitude of authentic documents and a serried phalanx 
of convincing arguments. In France and Germany we are too accus- 
tomed to receive hypotheses for historic laws, and doubtful anecdotes 
tor attested events. We too often see whole systems established, from 
day to day, according to the caprice of a writer; a sort of fantastic 
castles, whose regular arrangement simulates the appearance of genuine 
edifices, and which vanish at a breath, when we come to touch them. 
We have all made theories, in a fireside discussion, in case of need, 
when for lack of argument we required a fictitious reasoning, like those 
Chinese generals who, to terrify their enemies, place amongst their 
troops formidable monsters of painted cardboard. We have judged 
men at random, under the impression of the moment, on a detached 
action, an isolated document; and we have dressed them up with vices 
or virtues, folly or genius, without controlling by logic or criticism the 
hazardous decisions, to which our precipitation had carried us. Thus 
we feel a deep satisfaction and a sort of internal peace, on leaving so 
many doctrines of ephemeral bloom in our books or reviews, to follow 
the steady gait of a guide so clear-sighted, reflective, instructed, able 
to lead us aright. We understand why the English accuse the French 
of being frivolous, and the Germans of being chimerical. Macaulay 
brings to the moral sciences that spirit of circumspection, that desire 
for certainty, and that instinct of truth, which make up the practical 
mind, and which from the time of Bacon have constituted the scientific 
merit and power of his nation. If art and beauty are lost, truth and 
certainty are gained ; and no one, for instance, would blame our author 
for inserting the following demonstration in the life of Addison: 

‘ He (Pope) asked Addison’s advice. Addison said that the poem as it stood 
was a delicious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of marring 
what was so excellent in trying to mend it. Pope afterwards declared that this 
insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. 

‘ Now there can be no doubt that Pope’s plan was most ingenious, and that he 
afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it necessarily follow 
that Addison’s advice was bad? And if Addison’s advice was bad, does it neces- 
sarily follow that it was given from bad motives? If a friend were to ask us 
whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances were 
ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade him from running such 











CHAP. III.! CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 413 


arisk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we 
should not admit that we had counselled him ill ; and we should certainly think 
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. 
We think Addison’s advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the 
result of long and wide experience. The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a 
successful work of imagination has been produced, it should not be recast. We 
cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance in which this rule has been 
transgressed with happy effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso 
recast his Jerusalem, Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination and his 
Epistle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with which 
he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the same experiment 
on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would, 
once in his life, be able to do what he could not himself do twice, and what nobody 
else has ever done ? 

* Addison’s advice was good. But had it been bad, why should we pronounce 
it dishonest? Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted the failure of 
Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. 
Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles the Fifth. 
Nay, Pope himself was one of those who prophesied that Cato would never succeed 
on the stage, and advised Addison to print it without risking a representation. 
But Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generosity to give 
their advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope’s heart was not of the same 
kind with theirs.’} 


What does the reader think of this dilemma, and this double series 
of inductions? The demonstration would not be more studied or 
rigorous, if a physical law were in question. 

This demonstrative talent was increased by the talent for develop- 
ment. Macaulay enlightens inattentive minds, as well as he convinces 
opposing minds; he manifests, as well as he persuades, and spreads as 
much evidence over obscure questions as certitude over doubtful points. 
It is impossible not to understand him; he approaches the subject under 
every aspect, he turns it over on every side; it seems as though he ad- 
dressed himself to every spectator, and studied to make himself under- 
stood by every individual; he calculates the scope of every mind, and 
seeks for each a fit mode of exposition; he takes us all by the hand, 
and leads us alternately to the end, which he has marked out beforehand. 
He sets out from the simplest facts, he descends to our level, he brings 
himself even with our mind; he spares us the pain of the slightest 
effort; then he leads us on, and smoothes the road throughout; we rise 
gradually without perceiving the slope, and at the end we find ourselves 
at the top, after having walked as easily as on the plain. When a sub- 
ject is obscure, he is not content with a first explanation; he gives a 
second, then a third: he sheds light in abundance from all sides, he 
searches for it in all regions of history; and the wonderful thing is, that 
hheis never long. In reading him we find ourselves in our proper sphere; 
we feel as though we were born to understand ; we are annoyed to have 





1 Macaulay, vii. 109 ; Life and Writings of Addison. 


414 Ps MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


taken twilight so long for day; we rejoice to see this abounding light 
rising and leaping forth in streams; the exact style, the antithesis of 
ideas, the harmonious construction, the artfully balanced paragraphs, the 
vigorous summaries, the regular sequence of thoughts, the frequent com- 
parisons, the fine arrangement of the whole—not an idea or phrase of 
his writings in which the talent and the desire to explain, the character- 
istic of an orator, does not shine forth. Macaulay was amember of Par- 
liament, and spoke so well, we are told, that he was listened to for the 
mere pleasure of listening, The habit of public speaking is perhaps the 
cause of this incomparable lucidity. To convince a great assembly, we 
must address all the members; to rivet the attention of absent-minded 
and weary men, we must save them from all fatigue; they must take in 
too much in order to take inenough, Public speaking vulgarises ideas ; 
it drags truth from the height at which it dwells, with some thinkers, to 
bring it amongst the crowd; it reduces it to the level of ordinary minds, 
who, without this intervention, would only have seen it from afar, and 
high above them. Thus, when great orators consent to write, they are 
the most powerful of writers; they make philosophy popular; they 
lift all minds a stage higher, and seem to magnify human intelligence. 
In the hands of Cicero, the dogmas of the Stoics and the dialectics 
of the Academicians lose their prickles. The subtle Greek arguments 
become united and easy; the hard problems of providence, immortality, 
highest good, become public property. Senators, men of business, 
lawyers, lovers of formulas and procedure, the massive and narrow 
intelligence of publicists, comprehend the deductions of Chrysippus ; 
and the book De Officits has made the morality of Panetius popular. 
In our days, M. Thiers, in his two great histories, has placed within reach 
of everybody the most involved questions of strategy and finance; if 
he would write a course of political economy for street-porters, I am 
‘sure he would be understood ; and pupils of the lower classes at school 
have been able to read M. Guizot’s History of Civilisation. 

When, with the faculty for proof and explanation, a man feels the — 
desire, he arrives at vehemence. These serried and multiplied argu- 
ments which all tend to a single aim, those reiterated logical points, 
returning every instant, one upon the other, to shake the opponent, 
give heat and passion to the style. Rarely was eloquence more sweep- 
ing than Macaulay’s. He has an oratorical impetus; all his phrases 
have a tone; we feel that he would govern minds, that he is irritated 
by resistance, that he fights as he discusses, In his books the discus- 
sion always seizes and carries away the reader; it advances evenly, 
with accumulating force, straightforward, like those great American 
rivers, impetuous as a torrent and wide asasea. This abundance of 
thought and style, this multitude of explanations, ideas, and facts, this 
vast aggregate of historical knowledge goes rolling on, urged forward 
by internal passion, sweeping away objections in its course, and adding 
to the dash of eloquence the irresistible force of its mass and weight, 








CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY, 415. 


We might say that the history of James m. is a discourse in two volumes, 
pronounced in a breath, with never-failing voice. We see the oppres- 
sion and discontent begin, increase, widen, the partisans of James 
abandoning him one by one, the idea of revolution conceived in all 
hearts, confirmed, fixed, the preparations made, the event approaching, 
growing imminent, then suddenly falling on the blind and unjust 
monarch, and sweeping away his throne and dynasty, with the violence 
of a foreseen and fatal tempest. True eloquence is that which thus 
perfects argument by emotion, which reproduces the unity of events by 
the unity of passion, which’ repeats the motion and the chain of facts 
by the motion and the chain of ideas. It is a genuine imitation of 
nature; more complete than pure analysis; it reanimates beings ; its 
dash and vehemence form part of science and of truth. Of whatever 
subject he treats, political economy, morality, philosophy, literature, 
history, Macaulay is impassioned for his subject. ‘The current which 
bears away events, excites in him, as soon as he sees it, a current which 
bears forward his thought. He does not set forth his opinion; he 
pleads it. He has that energetic, sustained, and vibrating tone which 
bows down opposition and conquers belief. His thought is an active 
force; it is imposed on the hearer; it attacks him with such supe- 
riority, falls upon him with such a train of proofs, such a manifest and 
legitimate authority, such a powerful impulse, that we never think of 
resisting it; and it masters the heart by its vehemence, whilst at the same 
time it masters the reason by its evidence. 

All these gifts are common to orators; they are found in different 
proportions and degrees, in men like Cicero and Livy, Bourdaloue and 
Bossuet, Fox and Burke. ‘These fine and solid minds form a natural 
family, and all have for their chief feature the habit and talent of pass- 
ing from particular to general ideas, orderly and successively, as we 
climb a ladder by setting our feet one after the other on every round. 
The inconvenience of this art is the use of common-place. They who 
practise it, do not depict objects with precision; they fall easily into 
vague rhetoric. They hold in their hands ready-made developments, a 
sort of portative scales, equally applicable on both sides of the same and 
every question. ‘They continue willingly in a middle region, amongst 
the tirades and arguments of the special pleader, with an indifferent 
knowledge of the human heart, and a fair number of amplifications on 
that which is useful and just. In France and at Rome, amongst the Latin 
races, especially in the seventeenth century, these men love to hover 
above the earth, amidst grand words or general considerations, in the 
style of the drawing-room and the academy. They do not descend to 
minor facts, illustrative details, circumstantial examples of vulgar life. 
They are more inclined to plead than to prove. In this Macaulay is 
distinguished from them. His principle is, that a special fact has more 
hold on the mind than a general reflection, He knows that, to give 
men a clear and vivid idea, they must be brought back to their personal 





416 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


experience. He remarks’ that, in order to make them realise a storm, 
the only method is to recall to them some storm which they have them- 
selves seen and heard, with which their memory is still charged, and 
which still re-echoes through all their senses. He practises in his style 
the philosophy of Bacon and Locke. With him, as well as with them, the 
origin of every idea isa sensation. Every complicated argument, every 
entire conception, has certain particular facts for its only support. It is 
so for every structure of ideas, as well as for a scientific theory. Beneath 
long calculations, algebraical formulas, subtle deductions, written volumes 
which contain the combinations and elaborations of learned minds, there 
are two or three sensible experiences, two or three little facts on which 
you may lay your finger, a turn of the wheel in a machine, a scalpel- 
cut in a living body, an unlooked-for colour in a liquid. These are 
decisive specimens. The whole substance of theory, the whole force of 
proof, is contained in this. Truth is here, as a nut in itsshell: painful 
and ingenious discussion adds nothing thereto; it only extracts the nut. 
Thus, if you would rightly prove, you must before al! present. these 
specimens, insist upon them, make them visible and tangible to the 
reader, as far as may be done in words. This is difficult, for words are 
not things. The only resource of the writer is to employ words which 
bring things before the eyes. For this he must appeal to the reader's 
personal observation, set out from his experience, compare the unknown 
objects presented to him with the known objects which he sees every 
day, place past events beside contemporary events. Macaulay always 
has before his mind English imaginations, full of English images, I 
mean full of the detailed and present recollections of a London street, a 
dram-shop, a wretched alley, an afternoon in Hyde Park, a moist green 
landscape, a white ivy-covered country-house, a clergyman in a white 
tie, a sailor in a sou’-wester. He has recourse tc such recollections ; 
he makes them still more precise by descriptions and statistics; he 
notes colours and qualities; he has a passion for exactness; his de- 
scriptions are worthy both of a painter and a topographer ; he writes 
like a man who sees the physical and sensible object, and who at the 
same time classifies and weighs it. You will see him carry his figures 
even to moral or literary worth, assign to an action, a virtue, a book, 
a talent, its compartment and its step in the scale, with such clearness 
and relief, that we could easily imagine ourselves in a classified museum, 
not of stuffed skins, but of sensitive, suffering living animals. 

Consider, for instance, these phrases, by which he tries to render 
visible to an English public, events in India: 











‘ During that interval the business of a servant of the Company was simply to 
wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as 
possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the 








1See in his Essay on the Life and Writings of Addison (vii. 78) Macaulay’s 
remarks on the Campaign. 














CHAP. III. ] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 417 


heat, to marry a peer’s daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give 
balls in St. James’ Square.! . . . There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to 
the English rulers of his country in the same relation in which Augustulus stood 
to Odoacer, or the last Merovingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. He lived at 
Moorshedabad, surrounded by princely magnificence. He was approached with 
outward marks of reverence, and his name was used in public instruments. But 
in the government of the country he had less real share than the youngest writer 
or cadet in the Company’s service.’? 


Of Nuncomar, the native servant of the Company, he writes : 


‘Of his moral character it is difficult to give a notion to those who are ac- 
quainted with human nature only as it appears in our island. What the Italian 
is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is 
to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organiza- 
tion of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour 
bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. 
During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more 
hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity, are qualities to which his con- 
stitution and his situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular 
analogy to his body. It is weak even to helplessness, for purposes of manly 
resistance ; but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates 
to admiration not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the 
natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the 
Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns 
are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what 
beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. 
Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, 
chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people 
of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of 
the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, 
no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them.’ * 


It was such men and such affairs, which were to provide Burke with 
the amplest and most brilliant subject-matter for his eloquence; and 
when Macaulay described the distinctive talent of the great orator, he 
described his own : 


‘ He (Burke) had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to 
live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal. India and its 
inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, 
but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of 
the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than the 
Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble ; the thatched roof of the 
peasant’s hut ; the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with his face 

to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the 
air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the 
river-side, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans 
and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants with their 
canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the 
noble lady, all those things were to him as the objects amidst which his own life 





1 Macaulay, vi. 549; Warren Hastings. 2 Jbid.. 558. . 3 bid. 555. 
VOL. I, 2D 


a Wf OO eC ewe toy ge eS, Dye ee ee 
. J) te rr : 7 . oe . 
i og : , ‘ - 
- ' ’ ’ 





418 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


had been passed, as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. 
James’s Street. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where 
suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the 
gipsy camp was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a bee-hive with the crowd 
of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of 
iron rings to scare away the hyenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrec- 
tion at Benares as of Lord George Gordon’s riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar 
as of the execution of Dr. Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing 
as oppression in the streets of London.’! 


VI. 


Other forms of his talent are more peculiarly English. Macaulay 
has a rough touch; when he strikes, he knocks down, Béranger sings: 
‘ Chez nous, point, 
Point de ces coups de poing 
Qui font tant d’honneur 4 l’Angleterre.’? 


And the French reader would be astonished if he heard a great historian 
treat an illustrious poet in this style: 


‘ But in all those works in which Mr. Southey has completely abandoned nar- 
ration, and has undertaken to argue moral and political questions, his failure has 
been complete and ignominious. On such occasions his writings are rescued from 
utter contempt and derision solely by the beauty and purity of the English. We 
find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey’s style that, even when he writes 
nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure, except indeed when he tries to be 
droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be 
humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has suc- 
ceeded farther than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he 
tells us that Bishop Spratt was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very 
small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the 
renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. A wise man might 
talk folly like this by his own fireside ; but that any human being, after having 
made such a joke, should write it down, and copy it out, and transmit it to the 
printer, and correct the proof-sheets, and send it forth into the world, is enough 
to make us ashamed of our species.’* 


We may imagine that Macaulay does not treat better the dead than the 
living. Thus he speaks of Archbishop Laud: 


‘ The severest punishment which the two Houses could have inflicted on him 
would have been to set him at liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might 
have staid, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory 
and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague, with 
his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, 
continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the 
vices of his heart in the imbecility of his intellect, minuting down his dreams, 
counting the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction of the 
salt, and listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy was 





1 Macaulay, vi. 619; Warren Hastings. 
? Béranger, Chansons, 2 vols. 1853 ; Les Boxeurs, ow L’ Anglomane. 
3 Macaulay, v. 333 ; Southey’s Colloquies on Society. 























CHAP. III. ] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 419 


the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous 
old bigot.’ + 


While he jests he remains grave, as do almost all the writers of his 
country. Humour consists in saying extremely comical things in a 
solemn tone, and in preserving a lofty style and ample phraseology, at 
the very moment when you are making all your hearers laugh, Such 
is the beginning of an article on a new historian of Burleigh: 

‘ The work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which 
Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdignag, and saw corn as 
high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the 
bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic 
scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would 
furnish out an ordinary book: and the book contains as much reading as an 
ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper 
which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand 
closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, 
and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the 
deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpah and Shalum. But un- 
happily the life of man is now threescore years and ten ;. and we cannot but think 
it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short 
an existence.’ ? 


This comparison, borrowed from Swift, is a mockery in Swift’s taste. 
Mathematics become in English hands an excellent means of raillery ; 
and we remember how the Dean, comparing Roman and English gene- 
rosity by numbers, overwhelmed Marlborough by an addition. Humour 
employs against the people it attacks, positive facts, commercial argu- 
ments, odd contrasts drawn from vulgar life. This surprises and perplexes 
the reader, without warning; he falls abruptly in some familiar and 
grotesque detail; the shock is violent ; he bursts out laughing without 
being much amused; the hit comes so suddenly and hard, that it is 
like a knock-down blow. For instance, Macaulay is refuting those who 
would not print the indecent classical authors : 

‘ We find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptations as this, 
any gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes 
and Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all 
the influences of such a state of society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of 
exposing himself to the influence of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, 
much like the felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held 
over his head from the door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling 
morning, and he was apt to take cold.’ 8 


Irony, sarcasm, the bitterest kinds of pleasantry, are the rule with 
Englishmen. They tear when they scratch. To be convinced of this, 
we should compare French scandal, as Moliére represents it in the 





1 Macaulay, v. 204; Hallam’s Constitutional History. 
2 Ibid. v. 587 ; Burleigh and his Times. 
3 Ibid. vi. 491 ; Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. 





420 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


Misanthrope, with English scandal as Sheridan represents it, imitating 
Moliére and the Misanthrope. Céliméne pricks, but does not wound; 
Lady Sneerwell’s friends wound, and leave bloody marks on all the 
reputations which they handle. The raillery, which I am about to give, 
is one of Macaulay’s tenderest : 


‘ They (the ministers) therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an experi- 
enced veteran, a man who was in war what Moliére’s doctors were in medicine, who 
thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to succeed by 
innovation, and who would have been very much ashamed of himself if he had 
taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which Peterborough employed. This 
great commander conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner. 
On the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up 
his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few 
hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty standards, all his baggage 
and all his artillery.’? 


These roughnesses are all the stronger, because the ordinary tone is 
noble and serious. 

Hitherto we have seen only the reasoner, the scholar, the orator, 
and the wit: there is still in Macaulay a poet; and if we had not read 
his Lays of Ancient Rome, it would suffice to read a few of his periods, 
in which the imagination, long held in check by the severity of the 
proof, breaks out suddenly in splendid metaphors, and expands into 
magnificent comparisons, worthy by their amplitude of being introduced 
into an epic: 

‘ Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her 
nature, was condemued to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and 
poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were 
for ever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to 
those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards 
revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, 
accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, 
made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At 
times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. 
But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those 
who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length 
be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory !’? 


These noble words come from the heart; the fount is full, and though 
it flows, it never becomes dry. As soon as the writer speaks of a cause 
which he loves, as soon as he sees Liberty rise before kim, with Humanity 
and Justice, Poetry bursts forth spontaneously from his soul, and sets 
her crown on the brows of her noble sisters: 

‘ The Reformation is an event long past. That volcano has spent its rage. The 
wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which were 
swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired, ‘I'he lava 





Macaulay, v. 672; Lord Mahon’s War of the Succession in Spain. 
* Macaulay, v. 31 ; Milton. ) 





_———— 








‘CHAP. 1.] ‘CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 421 


has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after 
having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has again turned the 
desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second great eruption 
is not yet over. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are 
still hot beneath our feet. In some directions, the deluge of fire still continues to 
spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe that this explosion, like that 
which preceded it, will fertilise the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those 
parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have 
begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of the history of past ages, 
the more we observe the sigus of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts 
filled and swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human race.’! 


I ought, perhaps, in concluding this analysis, to point out the 
imperfections caused by these high qualities; how ease, grace, kindly 
animation, variety, simplicity, pleasantness, are wanting in this manly 
eloquence, this solid reasoning, and this glowing dialectic ; why the art 
of writing and classical purity are not always found in this partisan, 
fighting from his platform; in short, why an Englishman is not a 
Frenchman or an Athenian. I prefer to transcribe another passage, 
the solemnity and magnificence of which will give some idea of the 
grave and opulent adornments, which Macaulay throws over his nar- 
rative, a sort of potent vegetation, flowers of brilliant purple, like those 
which are spread over every page of Paradise Lost and Childe Harold. 
Warren Hastings had returned from India, and had just been placed 
on his trial: 

‘On the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. 
There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery 
and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then 
exhibited at Westminster ; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calcu- 
lated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various 
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to 
the past, were collected on one spot, andinone hour. All the talents and all the ac- 
complishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation, were now displayed, 
with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. 
Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many 
troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid ; 
or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange 
stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. 
The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the 
days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the 
lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. 

‘The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great Hall of William 
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of 
thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just 
absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment 
awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where 
Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which 
has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The 





1 Macaulay, v. 595; Burleigh and his Times. ;, 


429 3 MODERN AUTHORS. [BooK v." 


avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The 
peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter 
King-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on 
points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper 
House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place 
of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George Eliott, 
Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against 
the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the 
Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the 
brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous 
by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. 
The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears 
or the emulation of an orator.° There were gathered together, from all parts of a 
great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit 
and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were 
seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. 
There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration 
on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, 
in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all 
the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of 
_ the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before 
a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the 
oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the 
greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel 
which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and states- 
men, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to 
suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted 
a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often 
paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, 
and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of 
the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful 
mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia whose delicate features, lighted up by 
love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members 
of that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged repartees, under 
the rich peacock-hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, 
more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election 
against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.’+ 


This evocation of the national history, glory, and constitution forms a 
picture of a unique kind. The species of patriotism and poetry which 
it reveals is an abstract of Macaulay’s talent; and the talent, like the 
picture, is thoroughly English, 


Vil. 


Thus prepared, he entered upon the History of England; and he 
chose therefrom the period best suited to his political opinions, his style, 
his passion, his science, the national taste, the sympathy of Europe. 
He has related the establishment of the English constitution, and con- 





1 Macaulay, vi. 628 ; Warren Hastings. 








a 
‘ 









: 





CHAP. III] | CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 423 


centrated all the rest of history about this unique event, ‘the finest 
in the world,’ to the mind of an Englishman and a politician. He has 
brought to this work a new methdd of great beauty, extreme power; 
its success has been extraordinary. When the second volume appeared, 
30,000 copies were ordered beforehand. Let us try to describe this 
history, to connect it with that method, and that method to that order 
of mind. 

The history is universal, and not broken. It comprehends events 
of every kind, and treats of them simultaneously. Some have related 
the history of races, others of classes, others of governments, others of 
sentiments, ideas, and manners; Macaulay has related all. 


‘I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I were 
merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall of administrations, of in- 
trigues in the palace, and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour 
to relate the history of the people as well as the history of the government, to trace 
the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects 
and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations, 
and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which have taken place in 
dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I shall cheerfully bear the re- 
proach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing 
before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their 
ancestors.’ ! 


He kept his word. He has separated nothing, and passed nothing by. 
His portraits are mingled with his narrative. Read those of Danby, 
Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Howe, during the account of a session, be- 
tween two parliamentary divisions. Short curious anecdotes, domestic 
details, the description of furniture, intersect, without disjointing, the 
record of a war. Quitting the narrative of important business, we 
gladly look upon the Dutch tastes of William, the Chinese museum, 
the grottos, the mazes, aviaries, ponds, geometrical garden-beds, with 
which he defaced Hampton Court. A political dissertation precedes 
or follows the relation of a battle; at other times the author is a tourist 
or a psychologist before becoming a politician or a tactician. He de- 
scribes the highlands of Scotland, semi-papistical and semi-pagan, the 
seers wrapped in bulls’ hides to await the moment of inspiration, bap- 
tized men making libations of milk or beer to the demons of the place ; 
pregnant women, girls of eighteen, working a wretched patch of oats, 
whilst their husbands or fathers, athletic men, basked in the sun; robbery 
and barbarities looked upon as honourable deeds; men stabbed from 
behind or burnt alive; repulsive food, coarse oats, and cakes, made of 
the blood of a live cow, offered to guests as a mark of favour and polite- 
ness; infected hovels where men lay on the bare ground, and where they 
woke up half smothered, half blind, and half mad with the itch. The 
next instant he stops to mark a change in the public taste, the horror 





1 Macaulay, i. 2; History of England before the Restoration, ch. i, 


424 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


then experienced on account of these brigands’ retreats, this country of 
wild rocks and barren moors; the admiration now felt for this land of 
heroic warriors, this country of grand mountains, seething waterfalls, 
picturesque defiles. He finds in the progress of physical welfare the 
causes of this moral revolution, and concludes that, if we praise moun- 
tains and a wild life, it is because we are satiated with security. He 
is successively an economist, a literary man, a publicist, an artist, an 
historian, a biographer, a story-teller, even a philosopher; by this 
diversity of parts he imitates the diversity of human life, and presents 
to the eyes, heart, mind, all the faculties of man, the complete history 
of the civilisation of his country. 

Others, like Hume, have tried or are trying to do it. They set 
forth now religious matters, a little further political events, then literary 
details, finally general considerations on the change of society and 
government, believing that a collection of histories is history, and 
that parts joined endwise are a body. Macaulay did not believe 
it, and he did well. Though English, he had the spirit of harmony. 
So many accumulated events form with him not a total, but a whole. 
Explanations, accounts, dissertations, anecdotes, illustrations, compari- 
sons, allusions to modern events, all hold together in his book. It is 
because all hold together in his mind. He had a most lively conscious- 
ness of causes; and causes unite facts. By them, scattered events are 
assembled intoea single event; they unite them because they produce 
them, and the historian, who seeks them all out, cannot fail to perceive 
or to feel the unity which is their effect. Read, for instance, the 
voyage of James 11. to Ireland: no picture is more curious. Is it, how- 
ever, nothing more than a curious picture? When the king arrived 
at Cork, there were no horses to be found. The country is a desert. 
No more industry, cultivation, civilisation, since the English and 
Protestant colonists were driven out, robbed, slain. James was received 
between two hedges of Rapparees, armed with skeans, stakes, and half- 
pikes ; under his horse’s feet they spread by way of carpet the rough 
frieze mantles, such as the brigands and shepherds wore. He was offered 
garlands of cabbage stalks for crowns of laurel. In a large district he 
only found two carts. The palace of the lord-lieutenant in Dublin was 
so ill built, that the rain drenched the rooms. The king left for Ulster ; 
the French officers thought they were travelling ‘ through the deserts of 
Arabia.’ The Count d’Avaux wrote to the French court, that, to get a 
truss of hay, they had to send five or six miles. At Charlemont, with 
great difficulty, as a mark of high favour, they obtained a sack of groats 
for the French embassy. ‘The superior officers lay in dens which they 
would have thought too foul for their dogs. The Irish soldiers were 
half-savage marauders, who could only shout, cut throats, and disband. 
Ill fed on potatoes and sour milk, they cast themselves like starved 
men on the great flocks belonging to the Protestants. They greedily 
tore the flesh of oxen and. sheep, and swallowed it half raw and 














CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 495 


half rotten. For lack of kettles, they cooked it in the skin. When 
Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, but continued 
to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair 
of brogues. At times a band slaughtered fifty or sixty beasts, took the 
skins, and left the bodies to poison the air. ‘The French ambassador 
reckoned that in six weeks, there had been slain 50,000 horned cattle, 
which were rotting on the ground. They counted the number of the 
sheep and lambs slain at 400,000. Cannot the result of the rebellion 
be seen beforehand? What could be expected of these gluttonous 
serfs, so stupid and savage? What could be drawn from a devastated 
land, peopled with robbers? To what kind of discipline could these 
marauders and butchers be subjected ? What resistance will they make 
on the Boyne, when they see William’s old regiments, the furious 
squadrons of French refugees, the enraged and insulted Protestants of 
Londonderry and Enniskillen, leap into the river and run with uplifted 
swords against their muskets? They will flee, the king at their head ; 
and the minute anecdotes, scattered amidst the account of receptions, 
voyages, and ceremonies, will have announced the victory of the Protes- 
tants, The history of manners is thus seen to be involved in the history of 
events; these cause the others, and the description explains the narrative. 

It is not enough to see causes; we must also see many. Every 
event has a multitude of them. Is it enough for me, if I wish to under- 
stand the action of Marlborough or of James, to be reminded of a disposi- 
tion or a quality which explains it? No; for, since it has for a cause 
a whole situation and a whole character, I must see at one glance and 
in abstract the whole character and situation which have produced it. 
Genius concentrates. It is measured by the number of recollections 
and ideas which it assembles in one point. That which Macaulay has 
assembled, is enormous. I know no historian who has a surer, better 
furnished, better regulated memory. When he is relating the actions of 
# man or a party, he sees in an instant all the events of his history, and 
all the maxims of his conduct; he has all the details present; he remem- 
bers them every moment, in great numbers. He has forgotten nothing; 
he runs through them as easily, as completely, as surely, as on the day 
when he enumerated or wrote them. No one has so well taught or known 
history. He is as much steeped in it as his personages. The ardent 
Whig or Tory, experienced, trained to business, who rose and shook 
the House, had not more numerous, better arranged, more precise 
arguments. He did not better know the strength and weakness of his 
cause ; he was not more familiar with the intrigues, rancours, variation 
of parties, the chances of the strife, individual and public interests. The 
great novelists penetrate the soul of their characters, assume their feel- 
ings, ideas, language; it seems as if Balzac had been a commercial tra- 
veller, a porter, a courtesan, a prude, a poet, and that he had spent his 
life in being each of these personages: his existence is multiplied, and 
his name is legion. With a different talent, Macaulay has the same 


426 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


power: an incomparable advocate, he pleads an infinite number of 
causes; and he is master of each cause, as fully as his client. He has 
answers for all objections, explanations for all obscurities, reasons for all 
tribunals. He is ready at every moment, and on all parts of his case. 
It seems as if he had been Whig, Tory, Puritan, Member of the Privy 
Council, Ambassador. He is not a poet like Michelet; he is not a 
philosopher like Guizot; but he possesses so well all the oratorical 
powers, he accumulates and arranges so many facts, he holds them so 
closely in his hand, he manages them with so much ease and vigour, 
that he succeeds in recomposing the whole and harmonious woof of 
history, not losing or separating one thread. The poet reanimates the 
dead ; the philosopher formulates creative laws; the orator knows, ex- 
pounds, and pleads causes. The poet resuscitates souls, the philosopher 
composes a system, the orator redisposes chains of arguments; but all 


three march towards the same end by different routes, and the orator, — 


like his rivals, and by other means than his rivals, reproduces in his 
work the unity and complexity of life. 

A second character of this history is clearness. It is popular; no one 
explains better, or so much, as Macaulay. It seems as if he were making 
a wager with his reader, and said to him: Be as absent in mind, as 
stupid, as ignorant as you please; in vain you will be absent in mind, 
you shall listen to me; in vain you will be stupid, you shall under- 
stand ; in vain you will be ignorant, you shall learn. I will repeat the 
same idea in so many different forms. I will make it sensible by such 
familiar and precise examples, I will announce it so clearly at the be- 
ginning, I will resume it so carefully at the end, I will mark the divi- 
sions so well, follow the order of ideas so exactly, I will display so great 
a desire to enlighten and convince you, that you cannot help being 
enlightened and convinced. He certainly thought thus, when he was 
preparing the following passage on the law which, for the first time, 
granted to Dissenters the liberty of exercising their worship : 


‘Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act 
is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peculiar 
excellences of English legislation. The science of Politics bears in one respect a close 
analogy to the science of Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate 
that a certain power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of 
pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on 
the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If the 
engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the instrumentality of real 
timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in 
treatises on Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his 
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down 
in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be found a far inferior builder 
to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of the parallelogram of 
forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathema- 


tician, the active statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most- 


important that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy 














CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 407 


of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to fix an obelisk 
on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in 
the philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But, as he who has actually to build 
must bear in mind many things never noticed by D’Alembert and Euler, so must 
he who has actually to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no 
allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The 
perfect lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see 
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can see nothing 
but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative element has 
prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty 
years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed 
scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long 
enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in 
English legislation the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom 
unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and 
much of convenience ; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly ; 
never to innovate except when some grievance is felt ; never to innovate except 
so far as to get rid of the grievance ; never to lay down any proposition of wider 
extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide ; these are the 
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the 
deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments.’ ! 


Is the idea still obscure or doubtful? Does it still need proofs, 
illustrations? Do we wish for anything more? You answer No; 
Macaulay answers Yes. After the general explication comes the par- 
ticular; after the theory, the application ; after the theoretical demon- 
stration, the practical. We would fain stop; but he proceeds: 


‘The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English law. 
To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately acquainted with 
the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time 
of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and con- 
tradictions. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will 
not bear to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle 
undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by the civil 
magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, but 
positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against noncon- 
formists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution continues to be the 
general rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which 
is given to conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by 
making a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act 
without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent minister, who is 
perfectly willing to make the declaration required from the Quaker, but who has 
doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. 
Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly declared his 
assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether re- 
jects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any declaration 
whatever on the subject. 

‘ These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who exa- 





1 Macaulay, ii. 463, History of England, ch. xi. 


498 MODERN AUTHORS. . [BOOK Vv. 


mines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the same in all 
countries and in all ages. But.these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, 
when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices of those for whom the 
Toleration Act was framed. This law, abounding with contradictions which every 
smatterer in political philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost 
skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed todo. That 
the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent 
with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, must be 
acknowledged. All that can be said in their defence is this ; that they removed a 
vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice ; that they put an end, 
at once and for ever, without one division in either House of Parliament, without 
one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes 
most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during four 
generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innumerable 
firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the world was 
not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent, and godfearing 
yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond 
the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a 
defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be 
thought complete by statesmen.’ 


For my part, that which I find complete in this, is the art of develop- 
ment. ‘This antithesis of ideas, sustained by the antithesis of words, 
the symmetrical periods, the expressions designedly repeated to attract 
the attention, the exhaustion of proof, set before our eyes the special- 
pleader’s and oratorical talent, which we just before encountered in the 
art of pleading all causes, of employing an infinite number of methods, of 
mastering them all and always, during every incident of the lawsuit. The 
final manifestation of a mind of this sort are the faults into which its 
talent draws it. By dint of development, he protracts. More than once 
his explications are commonplace. He proves what all allow. He en- 
lightens what is light. There is a passage on the necessity of reactions 
which reads like the verbosity of a clever schoolboy. Others, excellent 
and novel, can only be read with pleasure once. On the second reading 
they appear too true; we have seen it all at a glance, and are wearied. 
I have omitted one-third of the passage on the Act of Toleration, and 
acute minds will think that I ought to have omitted another third. 

The last feature, the most singular, the least English of this History, 
is, that it is interesting. Macaulay wrote, in the Edinburgh Review, 
several volumes of Essays; and every one knows that the first merit of a 
reviewer or a journalist, is to make himself readable. A thick volume 
naturally bores us; it is not thick for nothing; its bulk demands at 
the outset the attention of him who opens it. The solid binding, the 
table of contents, the preface, the substantial chapters, drawn up like 
soldiers in battle-array, all bid us take an arm-chair, put on a dressing- 
gcwn, place our feet on the bars, and study; we owe no less to the 
grave man who presents himself to us, armed with 600 pages of text 





1 Macaulay, ii. 465, History of England, ch. xi. 





CHAP. m1.] . CRITICISM AND HISTORY-—MACAULAY. 429 


and three years of reflection. . But a newspaper which we glance at in 
a club, a review which we finger in a drawing-room in the evening, 
before sitting down to dinner, must needs attract the eyes, overcome 
absence of mind, conquer newspaper readers. Macaulay attained, 
through practice, this gift of readableness, and he retains in his History 
the habits which he had acquired in the newspapers. He employs every 
means of keeping up attention, good or indifferent, worthy or unworthy 
of a great talent; amongst others, allusion to actual circumstances. You 
may have heard the saying of an editor, to whom Pierre Leroux offered 
an article on God. ‘God! there is no actuality about it!’ Macaulay 
profits by this remark. He never forgets the actual. If he mentions 
a regiment, he points out in a few lines the splendid deeds which it has 
done since its formation up to our own day: thus the officers of this 
regiment, encamped in the Crimea, stationed at Malta, or at Calcutta, 
are obliged to read his History. He relates the reception of Schomberg 
in the House: who is interested in Schomberg? Forthwith he adds that 
Wellington, a hundred years later, was received, under like circumstances, 
with a ceremony copied from the first: what Englishman is not interested 
in Wellington? He relates the siege of Londonderry, he points out 
the spot which the ancient bastions occupy in the present town, the 
field which was covered by the Irish camp, the well at which the be- 
siegers drank: what citizen of Londonderry can help buying his book ? 
Whatever town he comes upon, he notes the changes which it has under- 
gone, the new streets added, the buildings repaired or constructed, the 
increase of commerce, the introduction of new industries: hence all the 
aldermen and merchants are constrained to subscribe to his work. Else- 
where we find an anecdote of an actor and actress: as the superlative 
degree is interesting, he begins by saying that William Mountford was 
the most agreeable comedian, that Anne Bracegirdle was the most 
popular actress, of the time. If he introduces a statesman, he always 
announces him by some great word: he was the most insinuating, or 
the most equitable, or the best informed, or the most eager and the 
most debauched, of all the politicians of the day. But his great qualities 
serve him as well in this matter as his literary machinery, a little too 
manifest, a little too copious, a little too coarse. The astonishing number 
of details, the medley of psychological and moral dissertations, descrip- 
tions, relations, opinions, pleadings, portraits, beyond all, good composition 
and the continuous stream of eloquence, seize and retain the attention 
to the end. We have hard work to finish a volume of Lingard or 
Robertson; we should have hard work not to finish a volume of Macaulay. 

Here is a detached narration which shows very well, and in the 
abstract, the means of interesting which he employs, and the great 
interest which he excites. The subject is the Massacre of Glencoe, 
Macaulay begins by describing the spot like a traveller who has seen it, 
and points it out to the bands of tourists and dilettanti, historians and 
antiquarians, who yearly issue from London: 








j ars 1S ace a gre ue ee 
* - anit , ie an 
, A i ? 4 
‘ / “ ; 
- 4 ‘ ‘ 


430 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


‘Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the southern 
shore of Loch Levin, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the western coast of 
Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Inverness-shire. Near his house were two 
or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole population which he 
governed was not supposed to exceed two hundred souls. Inthe neighbourhood 
of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood and some pasture land: but a 
little further up the defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. 
In the Gaelic tongue, Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping: and, in truth, that 
pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley 
of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part 
of the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and 
when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad 
and awful. The path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and 
gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked’stone frown on both sides. 
Even in July the streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the sum- 
mits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of 
the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or 
for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shep- 
herd’s dog or the bleat of alamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates 
life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The 
progress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with 
harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate, All 
the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from 
that wilderness: but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself was 
valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer and his 
plunder.’! 


The description, though very beautiful, is written for a demonstration. 
The final antithesis explains it; the author has made it to show that 
the Campbells were the greatest brigands of the country. 

The Master of Stair, who represented William in Scotland, relying 
on the fact that Mac Ian had not taken the oath of allegiance on the 
appointed day, determined to destroy the chief and his clan. He was 
not urged by hereditary hate nor by private interest; he was a man of 
taste, polished and amiable. He did this crime out of humanity, per- 
suaded that there was no other way of pacifying the Highlands. There- 
upon Macaulay inserts a dissertation of four pages, very well written, 
full of interest and knowledge, whose diversity affords us rest, which 
leads us over all kinds of historical examples, and moral lessons : 

‘ We daily see men do for their party, for their sect, for their country, for their 
favourite schemes of political and social reform, what they would not do to enrich 
or to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our private 
cupidity or to our private animosity, whatever virtue we have takes the alarm. 
But virtue itself may contribute to the fall of him who imagines that it is in his 


power, by violating some general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit - 


on a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the remonstrances of 
conscience, and hardens his heart against the most touching spectacles of misery, 
by repeating to himself that his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble, 





1 Macaulay, iii. 513; History of England, ch. xviii. 





a 





CHAP, Il.] ‘CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 431 


that he is doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he comes 
altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence of the end, and at 
length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts which would shock a buc- 
eaneer. There is no reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric 
in Christendom, have incited ferocious marauders to plunder and slaughter a 
peaceful and industrious population, that Everard Digby would, for a dukedom, 
have blown a large assembly of people into the air, or that Robespierre would 
have murdered for hire one of the thousands whom he murdered from philan- 
thropy.’? . 

Do we not recognise here the Englishman brought up on psychological 
and moral essays and sermons, who involuntarily and every instant 
spreads one over the paper? This species is unknown in French lec- 
ture-rooms and reviews; this is why it is unknown in French histories. 
When we wish to enter English history, we have only to step down 
from the pulpit and the newspaper. 

I do not transcribe the sequel of the explanation, the examples of 
James V., Sixtus v., and so many others, whom Macaulay cites to find 
precedents for the Master of Stair. Then follows a very circumstantial 
and very solid discussion, to prove that William was not responsible for 
the massacre. It is clear that Macaulay’s object, here as elsewhere, is 
less to draw a picture than to suggest a judgment. He desires that 
we should have an opinion on the morality of the act, that we should 
attribute it to its real authors, that each should bear exactly his own 
share, and no more. A little further, when the question of the punish- 
ment of the crime arises, and William, having severely chastised the 
executioners, contents himself with recalling the Master of Stair, 
Macaulay writes a dissertation of several pages to consider this in- 
justice and to blame the king. MHere, as elsewhere, he is still the 
orator and the moralist; no means has more power to interest an 
English reader. Happily for us, he at length becomes once more a 
narrator ; the petty details which he then selects fix the attention, and 
place the scene before our eyes: 

‘The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among the 
population of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief, came, accompanied 
by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and asked what this visit meant. 
Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the soldiers came as friends, and wanted 
nothing but quarters. They were kindly received, and were lodged under the 
thatched roofs of the little community. Glenlyon and several of his men were 
taken into the house of a tacksman who was named from the cluster of cabins 
over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen. Lindsay was accommodated 
nearer to the abode of the old chief. Auchintriater, one of the principal men of 
the clan, who governed the small hamlet of Auchnaion, found room there for a 
party commanded by a serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally 
supplied, There was no want of beef, which had probably fattened in distant 
pastures: nor was any payment demanded: for in hospitality, as in thievery, 
the Gaelic marauders rivalled the Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers 





1 Macaulay, iii. 519 ; History of England, ch. xviii. 


432 MODERN AUTHORS. | [BOOK Vv. 


lived familiarly with the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt 
many misgivings as to the relation in which he stood to the government, seems 
to have been pleased with the visit. The officers passed much of their time with 
him and his family. The long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire 
with the help of some packs of cards which had found their way to that remote 
corner of the world, and of some French brandy which was probably part of 
James’ farewell gift to his Highland supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be warmly 
attached to his niece and her husband Alexander. Every day he came to their 
house to take his morning draught. Meanwhile he observed with minute atten- 
tion all the avenues by which, when the signal for the slaughter should be given, 
the Macdonalds might attempt to escape to the hills; and he reported the result 
of his observations to Hamilton. ... 

‘The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, and 
were long after their time. While they were contending with the wind and snow, 
Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom he meant to butcher 
before daybreak. He and Lieutenant Lindsay had engaged rer a, to dine 
with the old Chief on the morrow. 

‘ Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended crossed 
the mind of the Chief’s eldest son. The soldiers were evidently in a restless state ; 
and some of them uttered strange exclamations. Two men, it is said, were overheard 
whispering. ‘‘I do not like this job,” one of them muttered ; ‘‘ I should be glad 
to fight the Macdonalds. But to kill men in their beds—” ‘* We must do as we 
are bid,” answered another voice. ‘‘ If there is anything wrong, our officers must 
answer for it.”” John Macdonald was so uneasy, that, soon after midnight, he 
went to Glenlyon’s quarters. Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to 
be getting their arms ready for action. John, much alarmed, asked what these 
preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly assurances. ‘‘ Some of 
Glengarry’s people have been harrying the country. We are getting ready to 
march against them. You are quite safe. Do you think that, if you were in 
any danger, I should not have given a hint to your brother Sandy and his wife ?” 
John’s suspicions were quieted. He returned to his house, and lay down to rest.’ 


On the next day, at five in the morning, the old chieftain was assas- 
sinated, his men shot in their beds or by the fireside. Women were 
butchered ; a boy, twelve years old, who begged his life on his knees, 
was slain; they who fled half-naked, women and children, died of 
cold and hunger in the snow. 

These precise details, these soldiers’ conversations, this picture of 
evenings by the fireside, give to history the animation and life of a novel. 
And still the historian remains an orator: for he has chosen all these 
facts to exhibit the perfidy of the assassins and the horrible nature 
of the massacre; and he will make use of them later on, to demand, 
with all the power and passion of logic, the punishment of the 
criminals, 


VIII. 


Thus this History, whose qualities seem so little English, bears 
throughout the mark of a genuinely English talent. Universal, con- 





1 Macaulay, iii. 526 ; History of England, ch. xviii. 




















CHAP. TIL] =‘ CRITICISM AND HISTORY—MACAULAY. 433 


nected, it embraces all the facts in its vast, undivided, and unbroken 
woof, Developed, abundant, it enlightens obscure facts, and opens to 
the most ignorant the most complicated questions. Interesting, varied, 
it attracts and preserves the attention. It has life, clearness, unity, 
qualities which appear to be wholly French. It seems as if the author 
were a populariser like Thiers, a philosopher like Guizot, an artist 
like Thierry. The truth is, that he is an orator, and that after the 
fashion of his country; but, as he possesses in the highest degree the 
oratorical faculties, and possesses them with a national tendency and 
instincts, he seems to supplement through them the faculties which he 
has not. He is not genuinely philosophical: the mediocrity of his 
earlier chapters on the ancient history of England proves this suffi- 
ciently; but his force of reasoning, his habits of classification and 
order, bestow unity upon his History. He is not a genuine artist; 
when he draws a picture, he is always thinking of proving some- 
thing; he inserts dissertations in the most interesting and touching 
places; he has neither grace, lightness, vivacity, nor refinement, but 
a marvellous memory, vast knowledge, an ardent political passion, a 
great legal talent for expounding and pleading every cause, a precise 
knowledge of precise and petty facts which rivet the attention, charm, 
diversify, animate, and warm a narrative. He is not simply a popu- 
lariser; he is too ardent, too eager to prove, to conquer belief, to beat 
down his foes, to have only the limpid talent of a man who explains 
and expounds, with no other end than to explain and expound, which 
spreads light throughout, and never spreads heat; but he is so well 
provided with details and reasons, so anxious to convince, so rich in 
developments, that he cannot fail to be popular. By this breadth 
of knowledge, this power of reasoning and passion, he has produced 
one of the finest books of the age, whilst manifesting the genius of his 
nation. This solidity, this energy, this deep political passion, these 
moral prejudices, these oratorical habits, this limited philosophical 
power, this partially uniform style, without flexibility or sweetness, this 
eternal gravity, this geometrical progress to a settled end, announce 
in him the English mind. But if he is English to the French, he is not 
so to his nation, The animation, interest, clearness, unity of his narra- 
tive, astonish them. ‘They think him brilliant, rapid, bold; it is, they 
say, a French mind. Doubtless he is so in many respects: if he under- 
stands Racine badly, he admires Pascal and Bossuet ; his friends say 
that he used daily to read Madame de Sévigné. Nay more, by the struc- 
ture of his mind, by his eloquence and rhetoric, he is Latin; so that the 
inner structure of his talent places him amongst the classics: it is only 
by his lively appreciation of special, complex, and sensible facts, by his 
energy and rudeness, by the rather heavy richness of his imagination, 
by the depth of his colouring, that he belongs to his race. Like 
Addison and Burke, he resembles a strange graft, fed and transformed 
by, the sap of the national stock. At all events, this judgment is 
VOL. IL 25 


cael aa deg ee a ee must 
When he. has cposted the first interval, which is 1 


just as. Tove, to arrive at Carlyle for instance,—a 
_ Germanic, on the genuine imine soil, 














GHAP.IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 435 


CHAPTER IV. 
Philosophy and History.—Carlyle. 


§ 1.—StTyLE AND MIND. 


ECCENTRIC AND IMPORTANT POSITION OF CARLYLE IN ENGLAND. 

I. His strangenesses, obscurities, violence—Fancy and enthusiasm—Rudeness 
and buffooneries. 

II. Humour— Wherein it consists—It is Germanic—Grotesque and tragic 
pictures— Dandies and Poor Slaves—The Pigs’ Catechism — Extreme 
tension of his mind and nerves. 

III. Barriers which hold and direct him—Perception of the real and of the 
sublime. 
IV. His passion for exact and demonstrated fact—His search after extinguished 
 feelings—Vehemence of his emotion and sympathy—Intensity of belief 
and vision—Past and Present—Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches—His- 
torical mysticism—Grandeur and sadness of his visions— How he re- 
presents the world after his own mind. 
VY. Every object is a group, and every employment of human thought is the 
reproduction of a group—Two principal modes of reproducing it, and 
> two principal modes of mind—Classification—Intuition—Inconvenience 
of the second process—It is obscure, hazardous, destitute of proofs— 
It tends to affectation and exaggeration— Hardness and presumption 
which it provokes—Advantages of this kind of mind—Alone capable 
of reproducing the object—Most favourable to original invention—The 
use made of it by Carlyle. 


: 


§ 2.—VOocATION. 


INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN IDEAS IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND—GERMAN STUDIES OF 
. CARLYLE. 

I. Appearance of original forms of mind—How they act and result—Artistic 
genius of the Renaissance—Oratorical genius of the classic age—Philc- 
sophical genius of the modern age—Probable analogy of the three ages. 

II. Wherein consists the modern and German form of mind—How the aptitude 
for universal ideas has renewed the science of language, mythology, 
esthetics, history, exegesis, theology, and metaphysics—How the meta- 
physical bent has transformed poetry. 

III. Capital idea derived thence — Conception of essential and complementary 
parts—New conception of nature and man. 

_ IV. Inconvenience of this aptitude—Gratuitous hypothesis and vague abstraction 
—Transient discredit of German speculations. 

V. How each nation may re-forge them—Ancient examples : Spain in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries—The Puritans and Jansenists in the 





436 - MODERN AUTHORS. = [BOOK V. 


seventeenth century—France in the eighteenth century—By what roads 
these ideas may enter France—Positivism—Criticism. 

VI. By what roads these ideas may enter England—Exact and positive mind— 
Impassioned and poetic inspiration—Road followed by Carlyle. 


§ 3.—PuILosopHy, MORALITY, AND CRITICISM. 


HIS METHOD IS MORAL, NOT SCIENTIFIC—-WHEREIN HE RESEMBLES THE PURITANS 
—SARTOR RESARTUS. 


I. Sensible things are but appearances—Divine and, mysterious character of 
existence—His metaphysics. 

II. How we may form into one another, positive, poetic, spiritualistic, and 
mystical ideas—How in Carlyle German metaphysics are altered into 
English Puritanism. 

III. Moral character of this mysticism—Conception of duty—Conception of God. 
1V. Conception of Christianity—Genuine and conventional Christianity—Other 
religions—Limit and scope of doctrine, . 

V. Criticism—What weight it gives to writers—What class of writers it exalts 
—What class of writers it depreciates—His esthetics—His judgment of 
Voltaire. 7 

VI. Future of criticism—Wherein it is contrary to the prejudices of the age and 
of its vocation—Taste has but a relative authority. 


§ 4.—CoNcEPTION OF HIsToRY. 


I. Supreme importance of great men—They are revealers—They must be 
venerated. 
II. Connection between this and the German conception—Wherein Carlyle is 
imitative—W herein he is original—Scope of his conception. 

III. How genuine history is that of heroic sentiments—Genuine historians are 
artists and psychologists. 

IV. His history of Cromwell—Why it is only composed of texts connected 
by a commentary —Its novelty and worth— How we should consider 
Cromwell and the Puritans—Importance of Puritanism in modern civilisa- 
tion—Carlyle admires it, unreservedly. 

V. His history of the French Revolution—Severity of his judgment— Wherein 
he has sight of the truth, and wherein he is unjust. 

VI. His judgment of modern England—Against the taste for comfort and the 

. lukewarmness of convictions—Gloomy forebodings for the future of modern 
democracy—Against the authority of votes—Monarchical theory. 
VII. Criticism of these theories—Dangers of enthusiasm—Comparison of Carlyle 
and Macaulay. 


\7 HEN you ask Englishmen, especially those under forty, who 
amongst them are the thinking men, they first mention 

Carlyle ; but at the same time they advise you not to read him, warn- 
ing you that you will not understand him at all. Then, of course, 
we hasten to get the twenty volumes of Carlyle—criticism, history, 
pamphlets, fantasies, philosophy; we read them with very strange 
emotions, contradicting every morning our opinion of the night before. 











—~—eeyr 


CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE, 437 


We discover at last that we are in presence of an extraordinary animal, 
a relic of a lost family, a sort of mastodon, lost in a world, not made 
for him. We rejoice in this zoological good luck, and dissect him with 
minute curiosity, telling ourselves that we shall probably never find 
another animal like him.,. 


§ 1.—Sry_Le AnD Minn. 


We are at first put out. Allis new here—ideas, style, tone, the 
shape of the phrases, and the very vocabulary. He takes everything 
in a contrary meaning, does violence to everything, expressions and 
things. With him paradoxes are set down for principles; common 
sense takes the form of absurdity. We are, as it were, carried into 
an unknown world, whose inhabitants walk head downwards, feet in 
the air, dressed in motley, as great lords and maniacs, with contortions, 
jerks, and cries; we are grievously stunned by these extravagant and 
discordant sounds; we want to stop our ears, we have a headache, we 
are obliged to decipher a new language. We see upon the table 
volumes which ought to be as clear as possible—TZhe History of the 
French Revolution, for instance; and there we read these headings to 
the chapters: ‘Realised Ideals—Viaticum—Astrea Redux—Petition in 
Hieroglyphs—Windbags—Mercury de Brézé—Broglie the War-God.’ 
We ask ourselves what connection there can be between these riddles 
and such simple events as we all know. We then perceive that 
Carlyle always speaks in riddles. \/ ‘ Logic-choppers’ is the name he 
gives to the analysts of the eighteenth century; ‘ Beaver science’ is 
his word for the catalogues and classifications of our modern men of 
science. ‘Transcendental moonshine’ signifies the philosophical and 
sentimental dreams imported from Germany. ‘The religion of the 
‘rotatory calabash’ means external and mechanical religion." He can- 
not be contented with a simple expression; he employs figures at every 
step; he embodies all his ideas; he must touch forms, We see that 
he is besieged and haunted by sparkling or gloomy visions; every 
thought with him is a shock; a stream of misty passion comes bubbling 
into his overflowing brain, and the torrent of images breaks forth and 
rolls on amidst every kind of mud and magnificence. He cannot 
reason, he must paint. If he wants to explain the embarrassment of 
a young man obliged to choose a career amongst the lusts and doubts 
of the age, in which we live, he tells you of: 

‘A world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure 
of its iniquities was full; the abysses, and subterranean and supernal deluges, 
plainly broken loose ; in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. 
No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any man ; the pestiferous fogs and foul 
exhalations grown continual, have, except on the highest mountain-tops, blotted 





1 Because the Kalmucks put written prayers into a calabash turned by the wind, 
which in their opinion produces a perpetual adoration. In the same way are the 
prayer-mills of Thibet used. 


438 cared MODERN AUTHORS, - [Book v. 


out all stars: will-o’-wisps, of various course and colour, take the place of stars. 
Over the wild surging chaos, in the leaden air, are only sudden glares of revolu- 
tionary lightning ; then mere darkness, with philanthropistic phosphorescences, 
empty meteoric lights ; here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hovering, 
hanging on to its old quaking fixtures, pretending still to be a Moon or Sun,— 
though visibly it is but a Chinese Lantern made of paper mainly, with candle-end 
foully dying in the heart of it.’? ; 

Imagine a volume, twenty volumes, made up of such pictures, united 
by exclamations and apostrophes ; even history—that of the French 
Revolution—is like a delirium. Carlyle is a Puritan seer, before whose 
eyes pass scaffolds, orgies, massacres, battles, and who, besieged by 
furious or bloody phantoms, prophesies, encourages, or curses. If you 
do not throw down the book from anger or weariness, you will lose 
your judgment ; your ideas depart, nightmare seizes you, a medley of 
contracted and ferocious figures whirl about in your head; you hear 
the howls of insurrection, cries of war; you are sick; you are like 
those listeners to the Covenanters, whom the preaching filled with dis- 
gust or enthusiasm, and who broke the head of their prophet, if they 
did not take him for their leader. 

These violent outbursts will seem to you still more violent if you 
mark the breadth of the field which they traverse, From the sublime 
to the ignoble, from the pathetic to the grotesque, is but a step with 
Carlyle. With the same stroke he touches the two extremes, His 
adorations end in sarcasms. The Universe is for him an oracle and a 
temple, as well as a kitchen and a stable. He moves freely about, 
and is at his ease in mysticism, as well as in brutality. Speaking of 
the setting sun at the North Cape, he writes: 

‘Silence as of death ; for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its charac- 
ter: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow- 
heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low 
and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson 
and cloth-of-gold ; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a 
tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my 
feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable ; for who would speak, or be 
looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the 
watchmen ; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, 
whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp ?’? 


Such splendours he sees whenever he is face to face with nature. No 
one has contemplated with a more powerful emotion the silent stars 
which roll eternally in the pale firmament and envelop our little 
world. No one has contemplated with more of religious awe the 
infinite obscurity in which our slender thought appears for an instant 
like a gleam, and by our side the gloomy abyss in which the hot frenzy 
of life is to be extinguished. His eyes are habitually fixed on this 





1 The Life of John Sterling, ch. v. ; A Profession. 
? Sartor Resartus, 1868, bk. ii. ch. viii. ; Centre of Indifference. 








sf pei, coal aan 











CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 439 


vast Darkness, and he paints with a shudder of veneration and hope the 
effort which religions have made to pierce them : 

‘In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk ; the Dead all 
slumbering round it, under their white memorial stones, ‘‘in hope of a happy 
resurrection : *"—dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in any hour (say of moaning 
midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed 
up of Darkness) it spoke to thee—things unspeakable, that went to thy soul’s soul. 
Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church : he stood thereby, 
though ‘‘in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities,” yet manlike 
towards God and man: the vague shoreless Universe had become for him a firm 
city, and dwelling which he knew.’ ! 


Rembrandt alone has beheld these sombre visions drowned in shade, 
traversed by mystic rays: look, for example, at the church which he 
has painted; glance at the mysterious floating apparition, full of radiant 
forms, which he has set in the summit of the sky, above the stormy 
night and the terror which shakes mortality.2? The two imaginations 
have the same painful grandeur, the same scintillations, the same 
agony, and both sink with like facility into triviality and crudity. No 
ulcer, no filth, is repulsive enough to disgust Carlyle. On occasion, 
he will compare the politician who seeks popularity to ‘the dog that 
was drowned last summer, and that floats up and down the Thames 
with ebb and flood. . . . You get to know him by sight . . . witha 
painful oppression of nose... Daily you may see him, ... and 
daily the odour of him is getting more intolerable.’* Absurdities, 
incongruities, abound in his style. When the frivolous Cardinal de 
Loménie proposed to convoke a Plenary Court, he compares him to 
‘trained canary birds, that would fly cheerfully with lighted matches 
and fire cannon ; fire whole powder magazines.’* At need, he turns to 
clownish images. He ends a dithyramb with a caricature: he bespatters 
magnificence with wild fooleries: he couples poetry with rude jests: 

‘The Genius of England no longer soars Sunward, world defiant, like an Eagle 
through the storms, ‘‘mewing her mighty youth,” as John Milton saw her do : the 
Genius of England, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole 
skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward ; with its Ostrich-head stuck 
into the readiest bush, of old Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other ‘‘ shelter- 
ing Fallacy” there may be, and so awaits the issue. The issue has been slow ; 
but it is now seen to have been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene 
provender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,—in 
a terrible d-posteriori manner, if not otherwise!’ 


With such buffoonery he concludes his best book, never quitting his 
tone of gravity and gloom, in the midst of anathemas and prophecies. 





1 History of the French Revolution, bk. i. ch. ii. ; Realised Ideals, 
2 In the Adoration of the Magi. 

3 Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1850; Stump Orator, 35. 

* The French Revolution, i. bk. iii, ch. vii. ; Internecine, 

* Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, iii. x. ; the end. 


440 “++ MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


, He needs these great shocks. He cannot remain quiet, or stick to one 
literary province at atime. He leaps in unimpeded jerks from one end 
of the field of ideas to the other; he confounds all styles, jumbles all 
forms, heaps together pagan allusions, Bible reminiscences, German 
abstractions, technical terms, poetry, slang, mathematics, physiology, 
archaic words, neologies. There is nothing he does not tread down 
and ravage. The symmetrical constructions of human art and thought, 
dispersed and upset, are piled under his hands into a vast mass of 
shapeless ruins, from the top of which he gesticulates and fights, like 
a conquering savage, 


II, 


This kind of mind produces humour, a word untranslateable in 
French, because in France they have not the idea. Humour is a 
species of talent which amuses Germans, Northmen; it suits their 
mind, as beer suits their palate. For men of another race it is dis- 
agreeable; they often find it too harsh and bitter. Amongst other 
things, this talent embraces a taste for contrasts. Swift jokes with the 
serious mien of an ecclesiastic, performing religious rites, and develops 
the most grotesque absurdities, like a convinced man. Hamlet, shaken 
with terror and despair, bristles with buffooneries. Heine mocks his 
own emotions, even whilst he displays them. These men love travesties, 
put a. solemn garb over comic ideas, a clown’s jacket over grave ones. 


Another feature of humour is that the author forgets the public for, 


whom he writes. He declares that he does not care for it, that he 
needs neither to be understood nor approved, that he thinks and 
amuses himself by himself, and that if his taste and ideas displease it 
it has only to disappear. He wishes to be refined and original at his 
ease; he is at home in his book, and with closed doors, he gets into his 
slippers, dressing-gown, often with his feet in the air, sometimes with- 
out a shirt. Carlyle has a style of his own, and marks his idea in his 
own fashion; it is our business to understand it. He alludes to a 
saying of Goethe, of Shakspeare, an anecdote which strikes him at the 
moment; so much the worse for us if we do not know it. He shouts 
when the fancy takes him; the worse for us if our ears do not like it. 
He writes on the caprice of his imagination, with all the starts of inven= 
tion ; the worse for us if our mind goes at a different pace. He catches 
on the wing all the shades, all the oddities of his conception; the worse 
for us if ours cannot reach them. A last feature of humour is the 
irruption of violent joviality, buried under a heap of sadnesses. Absurd 
indecency appears unannounced. Physical nature, hidden and oppressed 
under habits of melancholic reflection, is laid bare for an instant. 
You see a grimace, a clown’s gesture, then everything resumes its 
wonted gravity. Add lastly the unforeseen flashes of imagination. The 
humorist covers a poet; suddenly, in the monotonous mist of prose, at 
the end of an argument, a vista shines; beautiful or ugly, it matters 








re 











CHAP. IV. | PHILOSOPHY AND’ HISTORY—CARLYLE, 441 


not; it is enough that it strikes our eyes. These inequalities fairly paint 
the solitary, energetic, imaginative German, a lover of violent contrasts, 
confirmed in personal and gloomy reflection, with sudden up-wellings 
of physical instinct, so different from the Latin and classical races, races 
of orators or artists, where they never write but with an eye to the 
public, where they relish only consequent ideas, are only happy in the 
spectacle of harmonious forms, where the fancy is regulated, and volup- 
tuousness appears natural. Carlyle is profoundly German, nearer to the 
primitive stock than any of his contemporaries, strange and unexampled 
in his fancies and his pleasantries ; he calls himself ‘a bemired aurochs 
or uras of the German woods, , . . the poor wood-ox so bemired in 
the forests.’ For instance, his first book, Sartor Resartus, which is a 
clothes-philosophy, contains, & propos of aprons and breeches, a meta- 
physics, a politics, a psychology. Man, according to him, is a dressed 
animal. Society has clothes for its foundation, ‘ How, without Clothes, 
could we possess the master-organ, soul’s seat, and true pineal gland of 
the Body Social: I mean, a Purse:’? 

“To the eye of vulgar Logic, says he, ‘what is man? An omnivorous Biped 
that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, 
and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Mz, there lies, under all those wool- 
rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven ; 
whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in Unton and Diviston ; 
and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long 
Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment ; amid Sounds 
_ and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded : 
yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God.’ 


The paradox continues, at once irregular and mystical, hiding theories 
under follies, mixing together fierce ironies, tender pastorals, love-stories, 
explosions of rage, and carnival pictures, He says well: 

‘ Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History is not the Diet of 
Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Wagram, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any 
other Battle ; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated 


with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox’s making to himself 
a suit of Leather.’ * 


For, thus clothed for the rest of his life, lodging in a tree and eating 
wild berries, man could remain at peace and invent Puritanism, that is, 
conscience-worship, at his leisure. This is how Carlyle treats the ideas 
which are dearest to him. He jests in connection with the doctrine, 
which was to employ his life and occupy his whole soul. 

Would you like an abstract of his politics, and his opinion about his 
country? He proves that in the modern transformation of religions 
two principal sects have risen, especially in England; the one of ‘ Poor 
Slaves,’ the other of Dandies. Of the first he says: 





1 Life of Sterling. 2 Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. x. ; Pure Reason. 
3 [bid. 4 Ibid. bk. iii. ch, i. ;. Incident in Modern History. 


449. ... MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V.. 


‘ Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution: we find them 
bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows, espe- 
cially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or 
not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the third Monastic 
Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to conjecture. 

‘Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle 
of wearing a peculiar Costume. . . . Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, 
lappets, and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours; through the laby- 
rinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. 
It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums, and skewers ; 
to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, 
round the loins. ‘To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by 
way of sandals. « « « 

‘One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig 
and affectionately work continually in her bosom ; or else, shut up in private 
Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom look- 
ing-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. 
Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings ; often even break- 
ing their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of 
raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. . 

‘In respect of diet they have also their observances. All Poor Slaves are 
Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings: 
other animal food they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps some strange 
inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. 
Their universal sustenance is the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone. . . . 
In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, 
and largely consumed.’ 4 ° 


Of the other sect he says: 


‘ A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is disespelt 
enough : also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not- 
inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting 
from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own 
navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. 
To my own surmise, if appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modifica- 
tion, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, Self-worship. .. . 

‘They affect great purity and separatism ; distinguish themselves by a parti- 
cular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume) ; 
likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken Lingua- 
franca, er English-French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene 
deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world.’ 

‘ They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands 
in their metropolis ; and is named Almack’s, a word of uncertain etymology. They 
worship principally by night ; and have their Highpriests and Highpriestesses, 
who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the 
Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly 
secret. Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; these they call Yashionable 
Novels : however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others 
“Se 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch. x. ; The Dandiacal Body. 2 Ibid. 





ee eee 











CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND. HISTORY—CARLYLE. 443 


Their chief articles of faith are: 


‘1. Coats should have nothing of ‘the triangle about them ; at the same time, 
wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. 

‘2, The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and slightly 
rolled. 
_ £8, No licence of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the poste- 
rial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 

‘4, There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

‘5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more tiie developed than in 
his rings. 

‘6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waist- 
coats. 

‘7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips. 

* All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly but 
peremptorily and irrevocably denying.’! 


This premised, he draws conclusions : 


‘I might call them two boundless and indeed unexampled Electric Machines 

(turned by the ‘‘ Machinery of Society ”), with batteries of opposite quality ; 
Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive: one attracts hourly towards it 
and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the Money 
thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), 
which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and 
sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state ; till your 
whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated por- 
tions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there 
bottled-up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child’s finger brings the two 
together ; and then—What then? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable 
smoke by that Doom’s-thunderpeal: the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, 
and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon, Or better still, I might 
liken—’ # 
He stops suddenly, and leaves you to your conjectures. This bitter 
pleasantry is that of a furious or despairing man, who designedly, and 
simply by reason of his passion, would restrain it and force himself to 
laugh ; but whom a sudden shudder at the end reveals just as he is. 
In one place Carlyle says that there is, at the bottom of the English 
character, under all its habits of calculation and coolness, an inextin- 
guishable furnace : 

‘ Deep hidden it lies, far down in the centre, like genial central fire, with 
stratum after stratum of arrangement, traditionary method, composed productive- 
ness, all built above it, vivified and rendered fertile by it: justice, clearness, 
silence, perseverance unhasting, unresting diligence, hatred of disorder, hatred of 
injustice, which is the worst disorder, characterise this people: the inward fire we 


say, as all such fires would be, is hidden in the centre. Deep hidden, but awaken- 
able, but immeasurable ; let no man awaken it.’ 


It isa fire of extraordinary fierceness, as the rage of devoted Berserkirs, 
who, once rushing to the heat of the battle, felt no more their wounds, and 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch. x. ; The Dandiacal Body. * Ibid, 


444 | MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


lived, fought, and killed, pierced with strokes, the least of which would 
have been mortal to an ordinary man. It is this destructive phrenzy, 
this rousing of inward unknown powers, this loosening of a ferocity, 
enthusiasm, and imagination disordered and not to be bridled, which 
appeared in these men at the Renaissance and the Reformation, and a 
remnant of which still endures in Carlyle. Here is a vestige of it, in a 
passage almost worthy of Swift, which is the abstract of his customary 
emotions, and at the same time his conclusion on the age in which we 
live : 


* Supposing swine (I mean four-footed swine), of sensibility and superior logical 
parts, had attained such culture ; and could, after survey and reflection, jot down 
for us their notion of the Universe, and of their interests and duties there,— night 
it not well interest a discerning public, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a 
stimulus to the languishing book-trade? The votes of all creatures, it is under- 
stood at present, ought to be had ; that you may ‘‘ legislate” for them with better 
insight. ‘‘ How can you govern a thing,” say many, ‘‘ without first asking its 
vote?” Unless, indeed, you already chance to know its vote,—and even something 
more, namely, what you are to think of its vote: what it wants by its vote ; and, 
still more important, what Nature wants,—which latter, at the end of the account, 

the only thing that will be got !— —Pig Propositions, in a rough form, are 
somewhat as follows : 

‘1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an immeasurable Swine’s- 
trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and of other contrasts and kinds ;— especially 
consisting of attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater quantities 
for most pigs. 

‘2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pig’s-wash ; moral good, attainability of 
ditto. 

* 3. ** What is Paradise, or the State of Innocence?” Paradise, called also State 
of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to Pigs of weak judg- 
ment) unlimited attainability of Pig’s-wash ; perfect fulfilment of one’s wishes, so 

‘that the Pig’s imagination could not outrun reality ; a fable and an impossibility, 
as Pigs of sense now see. 

‘4. ‘* Define the Whole Duty of Pigs.” It is the mission of universal Pighood, 
and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to diminish the quantity of unattainable and 
increase that of attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be 
directed thither and thither only: Pig science, Pig enthusiasm and Devotion have 
this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs. 

‘5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of universal recognition of the excellence of 
Pig’s-wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough is in order, 
and who have had enough: Hrumph! 

‘6. The Pig knows the weather ; he ought to look out what kind of weather 
it will be. 

‘7. ** Who made the Pig?” Unknown ;—perhaps the Pork-butcher. 

‘8. ‘Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom?” Pigs of observation have dis- 
cerned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called justice. Unde- 
niably at least there is a sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge, 
etc., which, if one Pig provoke another, comes out in a more or less destructive 
manner : hence laws are necessary, amazing quantities of laws. For quarrelling 
is attended with loss of blood, of life, at any rate with frightful effusion of the 
general stock of Hog’s-wash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of the 





{ 








CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 445 


universal Swine’s trough : wherefore let justice be observed, that so quarrelling be 
avoided. 

‘9. ‘* What is justice?” Your own share of the general Swine’s-trough, not 
any portion of my share. 

‘10. “But what is ‘my’ share?” Ah! there, in fact, lies the grand diffi- 
culty ; upon which Pig science, meditating this long while, can settle absolutely 
nothing. My share—hrumph !—my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive 
to get without being hanged or sent to the hulks.’?! 


Such is the mire in which he plunges modern life, and, beyond all 
others, English life; drowning with the same stroke, and in the same 
filth, the positive mind, the love of comfort, industrial science, Church, 
State, philosophy, and law. This cynical catechism, thrown in amidst 
furious declamations, gives, I think, the dominant note of this strange 
mind: it is this mad tension which constitutes his talent; which pro- 
duces and explains his images and incongruities, his laughter and his 
rages. There is an English expression which cannot be translated into 
French, but which depicts this condition, and illustrates the whole 
physical constitution of the race: His blood is up. In fact, the cold 
and phlegmatic temperament covers the surface; but when the roused 
blood has swept through the veins, the fevered animal can only be 
glutted by devastation, and only be satiated by excess. 


Ill. 


It seems as though a soul so violent, so enthusiastic, so savage, so 
abandoned to imaginative follies, so void of taste, order, and measure, 
would be capable only of rambling, and expending itself in hallucina- 
tions, full of gloom and danger. In fact, many of those who have had 
this temperament, and who were his genuine forefathers—the Norse 
pirates, the poets-of the sixteenth century, the Puritans of the seven- 
teenth—were madmen, pernicious to others and themselves, bent on 
devastating things and ideas, destroying the public security and their 
own heart. Two entirely English barriers have restrained and directed 
Carlyle: the sentiment of actuality, which is the positive spirit, and 
of the sublime, which makes the religious spirit; the first has turned 
him to real things, the other has furnished him with the interpretation 
of real things: instead of being sickly and visionary, he has become a 
philosopher and a historian, 


IV. 

We must read his history of Cromwell to understand how far this 
sentiment of actuality penetrates him; with what knowledge it endows 
him ; how he rectifies dates and texts; how he verifies traditions and 
genealogies; how he visits places, examines the trees, looks at the 
brooks, knows the agriculture, prices, the whole domestic and rural 
economy, all the political and literary circumstances; with what minute- 





1 Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1850 ; Jesuitism, 28. 


446 Ae MODERN AUTHORS, - _[BooK V. 


ness, precision, and vehemence he reconstructs’ before his eyes and 
before our own the external picture of objects and affairs, the internal 
picture of ideas and emotions. And it is not simply on his part con- 
science, habit, or prudence, but need and passion. In this great 
obscure void of the past, his eyes fix upon the rare luminous points 
as on a treasure. The black sea of oblivion has swallowed up the 
rest: the million thoughts and actions of so many million beings have 
disappeared, and no power will make them rise again to the light. 
These few points subsist alone, like the tops of the highest rocks of a 
submerged continent. With what ardour, what deep feeling for the 
destroyed worlds, of which these rocks are the remains, does the 
historian lay upon them his eager hands, to discover from their nature 
and structure some revelation of the great drowned regions, which no 
eye shall ever see again!. A number, a trifling detail about expense, 
a petty phrase of barbarous Latin, is priceless in the sight of Carlyle. 
I should like you to read the commentary with which he surrounds the 
chronicle of the monk Jocelin of Brakelond,’ to show you the impres- 
sion which a proved fact produces on such a soul; all the attention 
and emotion that an old barbarous word, a kitchen list, summons up : 


‘ Behold therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or 
dreamland, peopled with mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer’s Feedera, and Doctrines 
of the Constitution ; but a green solid place, that grew corn and several other 
things. The sun shone on it; the vicissitude of seasons and human fortunes. 
Cloth was woven and worn ; ditches were dug, furrow-fields ploughed, and houses 
built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by night returned 
home weary to their several lairs. .. . The Dominus Rex, at departing, gave us 
_ thirteen sterlingii,” one shilling and one penny, to say a mass for him. .. . For 
king Lackland was there, verily he. . . . There, we say, is the grand peculiarity ; 
the immeasurable one; distinguishing, to a really infinite degree, the poorest his- 
torical Fact from all Fiction whatsoever. ‘‘Fiction,” ‘‘Imagination,” ‘‘Imaginative 
poetry,” &c. &c., except as the vehicle for truth, or is fact of some sort. . . what is 
it??... And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety ; they 
are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose they were built for! 
Yes, another world it was, when these black ruins, white in their new mortar and 
fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. . . . Their architecture, 
belfries, land-carucates? Yes,—and that is but a small item of the matter. Does 
it never give thee pause, this other strange item of it, that men then had a sowl,— 
not by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech ; but as a truth that they knew, and 
practically went upon !’* 


And then he tries to resuscitate this soul before our eyes; for this is 
his special feature, the special feature of every historian who has the 
sentiment of actuality, to understand that parchments, walls, dress, 
bodies. themselves, are only cloaks and documents; that the true fact 
is the inner feeling of men who have lived, that the only important 





1In Past and Present, bk. ii. 2 Ibid. bk. ii, ch. i. ; Jocelin of Brakelond. 
3 Ibid, ch, ii. ; St. Hdmondsbury. 





% 
e 
F 
f 











CHAP.IV.] | PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 447 


fact is the state and structure of their soul, that the first and unique 
business is to reach that inner feeling, that all diverges from it. We 
must tell ourselves this fact over and over again: history is but the 
history of the heart; we have to search out the feelings of past 
generations, and nothing else. This is what Carlyle perceives; man is 
before him, risen from the dead; he penetrates within him, sees that 
he feels, suffers, and wills, in that special and individual manner, now 
absolutely lost and extinguished, in which he did feel, suffer, and will. 
And he looks upon this sight, not coldly, like a man who only half sees 
things in a gray mist, indistinctly and uncertain, but with all the force 
of his heart and sympathy, like a convinced spectator, for whom past 
things, once proved, are as present and visible as the corporeal objects 
which his hand handles and touches, at the very moment. He feels 
this fact so clearly, that he bases upon it all his philosophy and history. 
In his opinion, great men, kings, writers, prophets, and poets are only 
great in this sense : 

* It is the property of the hero, in every time, in every place, in every situation, 
that he comes back to reality ; that he stands upon things, and not shows of 
things,’ } 

The great man discovers some unknown or neglected fact, proclaims it ; 
men hear him, follow him; and this is the whole of history. And not 
only does he discover and proclaim it, but he believes and sees it. He 
believes it, not as hearsay or conjecture, like a truth simply probable 
and handed down ; he sees it personally, face to face, with absolute and 
indomitable faith; he deserts opinion for conviction, tradition for intui- 
tion. Carlyle is so steeped in his process, that he applies it to all great 
men. And he is not wrong, for there is none more potent. Wherever 
he. penetrates with this lamp, he carries a light not known before. He 
pierces mountains of paper erudition, and enters into the hearts of men. 
Everywhere he goes beyond political and conventional history. He 
divines characters, comprehends the spirit of extinguished ages, feels 
better than an Englishman, better than Macaulay himself, the great re- 
volutions of the soul. He is almost German in his force of imagination, 
his antiquarian perspicacity, his broad general views, and yet he is no 
dealer in guesses. The national common sense and the energetic crav- 
ing for profound belief retain him on the limits of supposition; when he 
does guess, he gives it for what itis worth. He has no taste for hazardous 
history. He rejects hearsay and legends; he accepts only partially, 
and under reserve, the Germanic etymologies and hypotheses. He 
wishes to draw from history a positive and active law for himself and us, 
He expels and tears away from it, all the doubtful and agreeable addi- 
tions which scientific curiosity and romantic imagination accumulate, 
He puts aside this parasitic growth to seize the useful and solid wood, 
And when he has seized it, he drags it so energetically before us, in order 





1 Lectures on Heroes, 1868. 


448 _ MODERN AUTHORS,» [Book vs 


to make us touch it, he handles it in so violent a manner, he places it 
under such a glaring light, he illuminates it by such coarse contrasts of 
extraordinary images, that we are infected, and in spite of ourselves 
reach the intensity of his belief and vision. 

He goes beyond, or rather is carried beyond this. The facts seized 
upon by this vehement imagination, are melted in it as ina fire. Beneath 
this fury of conception, all vacillates. Ideas, changed into hallucina- 
tions, lose their solidity, beings are like dreams; the world, appearing 
in a nightmare, seems no more than a nightmare; the attestation of the 
bodily senses loses its weight before inner visions as lucid as itself. 
Man finds no more difference between his dreams and his perceptions. 
Mysticism enters like a smoke within the overheated walls of a col- 
lapsing imagination. It was thus that it once penetrated into the 
ecstasies of ascetic Hindoos, and into the philosophy of our first two 
centuries. Throughout, the same state of the imagination has produced 
the same doctrine. The Puritans, Carlyle’s true ancestors, were all 
inclined to it. Shakspeare reached it by the prodigious tension of 
his poetic dreams, and Carlyle ceaselessly repeats after him that ‘ we 
are such stuff as dreams are made of.’ This real world, these events 
so harshly followed up, circumscribed, and handled, are to him only 
apparitions ; the universe is divine, ‘Thy daily lifeis girt with wonder, 
and based on wonder; thy very blankets and breeches are miracles. .. . 
The unspeakable divine significance, full of splendour, and wonder, and 
terror, lies in the being of every man and of every thing; the presence 
of God who made every man and thing.’ 

‘ Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experi- 
ments, and what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Leyden 
jars, and sold over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will 
honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,—ah, an unspeakable, 
godlike thing ; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, 
is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul; worship if not in words, then in 
silence.’? 


In fact, this is the ordinary position of Carlyle. It ends in wonder. 
Beyond and beneath objects, he perceives as it were an abyss, and is 
interrupted by shudderings. A score of times, a hundred times in the 
History of the French Revolution, we have him suspending his account, 
and dreaming. The immensity of the black night in which the human 
apparitions rise for an instant, the fatality of the crime which, once 
committed, remains attached to the chain of events as by a link of iron, 
the mysterious conduct which impels these floating masses to an unknown 
but inevitable end, are the great and sinister images which haunt him. 
He dreams anxiously of this focus of existence, of which we are only 
the reflection. He walks fearfully amongst this people of shadows, and 
tells himself, that he too is a shadow. He is troubled by the thought 





1 Lectures on Heroes, i.; The Hero as Divinity. 








CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 449 


that these human phantoms have their substance elsewhere, and will 
answer to eternity for their short passage. He cries and trembles at 
the idea of this motionless world, of which ours is but the mutable 
figure. . He divines in it something august and terrible. For he 
shapes it, and he shapes our world according to his own mind; he 
defines it by the emotions which he draws from it, and figures it by the 
impressions which he receives from it. A moving chaos of splendid 
visions, of infinite perspectives, stirs and boils within him at the least 
event which he touches; ideas abound, violent, mutually jostling, driven 
from all sides of the horizon amidst darkness and the flashes of light- 
ning: his thought is a tempest, and he attributes to the universe the 
magnificence, the obscurities, and the terrors of a tempest. Such a 
conception is the true source of religious and moral sentiment. The 
man who is penetrated by them passes his life, like a Puritan, in 
veneration and fear. Carlyle passes his in expressing and impressing 
veneration and fear, and all his books are preachings. 


V. 


Here truly is a strange mind, and one which makes us reflect. 
Nothing is more calculated to manifest truths than these eccentric 
beings. It will not be time misspent to discover the true position of 
this mind, and to explain for what reasons, and in what measure, he 
must fail to possess, or must attain to, beauty and truth. 

As soon as we wish to begin to think, we have before us a whole 
and distinct object—that is, an assemblage of details connected amongst 
themselves, and separated from their surroundings. Whatever the 
object, tree, animal, sentiment, event, it is always the same; it always 
has parts, and these parts always form a whole: this group, more or 
less vast, comprises others, and is comprised in others, so that the 
smallest portion of the universe is, like the entire universe, a group. 
Thus the whole employment of human thought is to reproduce groups. 
According as a mind is fit for this or not, it is capable or incapable. 
According as it can reproduce great or small groups, it is great or 
small. According as it can produce complete groups, or only certain 
of their parts, it is complete or partial. 

What is it, then, to reproduce a group? It is first to separate there- 


~ 


_— 


from all the parts, then to arrange them in ranks according to their ° 


resemblances, then to form these ranks into families, lastly to combine 
the whole under some general and dominant mark ; in short, to imitate 
the hierarchical classifications of science. But the task is not ended 
there: this hierarchy is not an artificial and external arrangement, but a 
natural and internal necessity. Things are not dead, but living; there 
is in them a force which produces and organises this group, which 
binds together the details and the whole, which repeats the type in all 
its parts. It is this force which the mind must reproduce in itself, with 
all its effects ; it must perceive it by rebound and sympathy : this force 
VOL, II. 2F 


_ 





450 “0 4).-“MODERN AUTHORS.) | _ [BOOK V,. 


must engender in the mind the entire group, and must be developed 
within it as without it: the series of internal ideas must imitate the 
series of external; the emotion must follow the conception, vision must 
complete analysis; the mind must become, like nature, creative. Then 
only can we say, We know. 

All minds take one or other of these routes, and are divided by 
them into two great classes, corresponding to opposite temperaments, 
In the first are the plain men of science, the popularisers, orators, 
writers—in general, the classical ages and the Latin races ; in the second 
are the poets, prophets, commonly the inventors—in general, the roman- 
tic ages and the Germanic races. The first proceed gradually from one 
idea to the next: they are methodical and cautious; they speak for the 
world at large, and prove what they say; they divide the field which 
they would traverse into sections to begin with, in order to exhaust 
their subject ; they march by straight and level roads, so as to be sure 
against a fall; they proceed by transitions, enumerations, summaries ; 
they advance from general to still more general conclusions ; they form 
the exact and complete classification of a group. When they go beyond 
simple analysis, their whole talent consists in eloquently pleading a 
' thesis. Amongst the contemporaries of Carlyle, Macaulay is the most 
complete model of this species of mind. The others, after having 
violently and confusedly rummaged amongst the details of a group, 
plunge with a sudden spring into the mother-notion. They see it then 
' in its entirety ; they perceive the powers which organise it ; they repro- 
duce it by divination; they depict it in miniature by the most expressive 
“words, the strangest ideas; they are not capable of decomposing it 
into regular series, they alwage perceive inalump. They think only 
by sudden concentrations of vehement ideas, They have a vision of 
distant effects or living actions ; they are revealers or poets. Michelet, 
amongst the French, is the best example of this form of intellect, and 
Carlyle is an En glish Michelet. 

He knows it, and argues plausibly that genius is an intuition, an 
insight : 

‘Our Professor’s method is not, in any case, that of common school Logie, 
where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but 
at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole syste- 
matic groups and kingdoms ; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost 
like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a 
mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan.’ } 


Doubtless, but disadvantages nevertheless are not wanting; and, in the 
first place, obscurity and barbarism. In order to understand him, we 
must study laboriously, or else have precisely the same kind of mind as 
he. But few men are critics by profession, or natural seers ; in general, 
an author writes to be understood, and it is annoying to end in enigmas. 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. viii. ; Zhe World out of Clothes. 











CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 451 


On the other hand, this visionary process is hazardous: when we wish to 
leap immediately into the familiar and generative idea, we run the risk 
of falling short; the gradual progress is slower, but more sure. The 
methodical people, so much ridiculed by Carlyle, have at least the 
advantage over him in being able to verify all their steps. Moreover, 
these vehement divinations and assertions are very often void of proof. 
Carlyle leaves the reader to search for them: the reader at times does 
not search for them, and refuses to believe the soothsayer on his 
word. Consider, again, that affectation infallibly enters into this style. 
It must assuredly be inevitable, since Shakspeare is full of it. The 
simple writer, prosaic and rational, can always reason and stick to his 
prose ; his inspiration has no gaps, and demands no efforts. On the 
contrary, prophecy is a violent condition which does not sustain itself. 
When it fails, it is replaced by grand gesticulation. Carlyle warms him- 
self up in order to continue glowing. He struggles hard ; and this forced 
perpetual epilepsy is a most shocking spectacle. We cannot endure a 
man who wanders, repeats himself, returns to oddities and exaggerations 
already worn bare, makes a jargon of them, declaims, exclaims, and 
makes it a point, like a-wretched bombastic comedian, to upset our 
nerves. Finally, when this species of mind coincides in a lofty mind with 
the habits of a gloomy preacher, it results in objectionable manners, 
Many will find Carlyle presumptuous, coarse ; they will suspect from his 
theories, and also from his way of speaking, that he looks upon himself 
as a great man, neglected, of the race of heroes ; that, in his opinion, the 
human race ought to put themselves in his hands, and trust him with 
their business, Certainly he lectures us, and with contempt. He de- 
spises his epoch ; he has a sulky, sour tone ; he keeps purposely on stilts, 
He disdains objections. In his eyes, opponents are not up to his form. 
He bullies his predecessors: when he speaks of Cromwell’s biographers, 
he takes the tone of a man of genius astray amongst pedants. He has 
the superior smile, the resigned condescension of a hero who feels 
himself a martyr, and he only quits it, to shout at the top of his voice, 
like an ill-taught plebeian. 

All this is redeeméd, and more, by rare advantages. He speaks 
truly : minds like his are the most fertile. They are almost the only 
ones which make discoveries. Pure classifiers do not invent; they 
are too dry. ‘To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man 
must first Jove the thing, sympathise with it.’ ‘Fantasy is the organ 
of the Godlike, the understanding is indeed thy window; too clear 
thou canst not make it; but fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving 
retina, healthy or diseased.’ In more simple language, this means that 
every object, animate or inanimate, is gifted with powers which con- 
stitute its nature and produce its development ; that, in order to know 
it, we must recreate it in ourselves, with the train of its potentialities, 
and that we only know it entirely by inwardly perceiving all its ten- 
dencies, and inwardly seeing all its effects. And verily this process, 


7) @“aneee Ne e  e Oy Y  ee e 


452 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


which is the imitation of nature, is the only one by which we can 
penetrate nature; Shakspeare had it as an instinct, and Goethe asa 
method. There is none so powerful or delicate, so fitted to the com- 
plexity of things and to the structure of our mind. There is none 
more proper to renew our ideas, to withdraw us from formulas, to 
deliver us from the prejudices with which education involves us, to 
overthrow the barriers in which our surroundings enclose us, It is by 
this that Carlyle escaped from conventional English ideas, penetrated 
into the philosophy and science of Germany, to think out again in his 
own manner the Germanic discoveries, and to give an original theory 
of man and of the universe. 


§ 2.— VocaTION. 


It is from Germany that Carlyle has drawn his greateat ideas. He 
studied there, he knows perfectly its literature and language, he sets 
this literature in the highest rank, he translated Wilhelm Meister, he 
wrote upon the German writers a long series of critical articles, he has 
just written a life of Frederick the Great. He has been the most 
recognised and most original of the interpreters who have introduced 
the German mind into England. This is no mean work, for it is in a 
like work that every thinking person is now labouring, _ 

A | 

From 1780 to 1830 Germany has produced all the ideas of our 
historic age ; and for half a century still, perhaps for a whole century, 
our great work will be to think them out again. The thoughts which 
have been born and have blossomed in a country, never fail to pro- 
pagate themselves in the neighbouring countries, and to be engrafted 
there for a season. That which is happening to us has happened twenty 
times already in the world; the growth of the mind has always been 
the same, and we may, with some assurance, foresee for the future what 
we observe in the past. At certain times appears an original form of 
mind, which produces a philosophy, a literature, an art, a science, and 
which, having renewed human thought, slowly and infallibly renews 
all human thoughts. All minds which seek and find are in the current; 
they only progress through it: if they oppose it, they are checked; if 
they deviate, they are slackened; if they assist it, they are carried 
beyond the rest. And the movement goes on so long as there remains 
anything to be discovered. When art has given all its works, philo- 
sophy all its theories, science all its discoveries, it stops; another 
form of mind takes the sway, or man ceases to think. Thus at the 
Renaissance appeared the artistic and poetic genius, which, born in 
Italy and carried into Spain, was there extinguished after a century 
and a half, in universal extinction, and which, with other characteris- 
tics, transplanted into France and England, ended after a hundred 








OS he el Maa 
4 p 





CIIAP. LV. ] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 453 


years in the refinements of mannerists and the follies of sectarians, 
having produced the Reformation, confirmed free thought, and founded 
science. Thus with Dryden and Malherbe was born the oratorical and 
classical spirit, which, having produced the literature of the seventeenth 
century and the philosophy of the eighteenth, dried up under the suc- 
cessors of Voltaire and Pope, and died after two hundred years, having 
polished Europe and raised the French Revolution. Thus at the end 
of the last century arose the philosophic German genius, which, having 
engendered a new metaphysics, theology, poetry, literature, linguistic 
science, an exegesis, erudition, descends now into the sciences, and 
continues its evolution. No more original spirit, more universal, more 
fertile in consequences of every scope and species, more capable of 
transforming and reforming everything, has appeared for three hundred 
years. It is of the same order as that of the Renaissance and of the 
Classical Age. It, like them, connects itself with the great works of 
contemporary intelligence, appears in all civilised lands, is propagated 
with the same inward qualities, but under different forms. It, like 
them, is one of the epochs of the world’s history. It is encountered in 
the same civilisation and in the same races. We may then conjecture 
without too much rashness, that it will have a like duration and destiny. 
We thus succeed in fixing with some precision our place in the endless 
stream of events and things. We know that we are almost in the 
midst of one of the partial currents which compose it. We can detach 
the form of mind which directs it, and seek beforehand the ideas to 
which it conducts us. 


II. 


Wherein consists this form? In the power of discovering general 
ideas. No nation and no age has possessed it in so high a degree as 
the Germans. This is their governing faculty; it is by this power 
that they have produced all they have done. This gift is properly 
that of comprehension (begreifen). By it we find the aggregate concep- 
tions (Begriffe); we reduce under one ruling idea all the scattered parts 
of a subject; we perceive under the divisions of a group the common 
bond which unites them; we conciliate objections; we bring down 
apparent contrasts to a profound unity. It is the pre-eminent philo- 
sophical faculty ; and, in fact, it is the philosophical faculty which has 
impressed its seal on all their works. By it, they have vivified dry 
studies, which seemed only fit to occupy pedants of the academy or 
seminary. By it, they have divined the involuntary and primitive 
logic which has created and organised languages, the great ideas which 
are hidden at the bottom of every work of art, the dull poetic emotions 
and vague metaphysical intuitions which have engendered religions 
and myths. By it, they have perceived the spirit of ages, civilisations, 
and races, and transformed into a system of laws the history which 
was but a heap of facts. By it, they have rediscovered or renewed the 


_ 


454 / > > MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


sense of dogmas, connected God with the world, man with nature, spirit 
with matter, perceived the. successive chain and the original necessity otf 
the forms, whereof the aggregate is the universe. By it, they have 
created a science of linguistics, a mythology, a criticism, an esthetics, 
an exegesis, a history, a theology and metaphysics, so new that they 
continued long incomprehensible, and could only be expressed by a 
separate language. And this bent was so dominant, that it subjected 
{o its empire arts and poetry themselves. The poets by it have become 
erudite, philosophical ; they have constructed their dramas, epics, and 
odes after prearranged theories, and in order to manifest general ideas, 
They have rendered moral theses, historical periods, sensible; they have 
created and applied esthetics; they had no artlessness, or made their 
artlessness an instrument of reflection; they have not loved their 
characters for themselves; they have ended by transforming them 


into symbols; their philosophical ideas have broken every instant out 


o- 


of the poetic shape, in which they tried to enclose them; they have 
been all critics,» bent on constructing or reconstructing, possessing 
erudition and method, attracted to imagination by art and study, 
incapable of producing living beings unless by science and artifice, 
really systematical, who, to express their abstract conceptions, have 
employed, in place of formulas, the actions of personages and the 
music of verse. 


III. 


From this aptitude to conceive the aggregate, one sole idea could 
be produced—the idea of aggregates. In fact, all the ideas worked out 
for fifty years in Germany are reduced to one only, that of development 
(Entwickelung), which consists in representing all the parts of a group as 
jointly responsible and complemental, so that each necessitates the rest, 
and that, all combined, they manifest, by their succession and their con- 
trasts, the inner quality which assembles and produces them. <A score 
of systems, a hundred dreams, a hundred thousand metaphors, have 
variously figured or disfigured this fundamental idea. Despoiled of its 
trappings, it merely affirms the mutual dependence which unites the - 


terms of a series, and attaches them all to some abstract property within 


them. If we apply it to Nature, we come to consider the world as a 
scale of forms, and, as it were, a succession of conditions, having in 
themselves the reason for their succession and for their existence, con- 
taining in their nature the necessity for their decay and their limita- 
tion, composing by their union an indivisible whole, which, sufficing for 
itself, exhausting all possibilities, and connecting all things, from time 
and space to existence and thought, resemble by its harmony and its 
magnificence some omnipotent and immortal god. If we apply it to 
man, we come to consider. sentiments and thoughts as natural and 





1 Goethe, the greatest of them all. 








CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND: HISTORY—CARLYLE. 455 


necessary products, linked amongst themselves like the transformations 
of an animal or plant; which leads us to conceive religions, philosophies, 
literatures, all human conceptions and emotions, as necessary series of 
a state of mind which carries them away on its passage, which, if it 
returns, brings them back, and which, if we can reproduce it, gives us 
indirectly the means of reproducing them at will. These are the two 
doctrines which run through the writings of the two chief thinkers of 
the century, Hegel and Goethe. They have used them throughout as 
a method, Hegel to grasp the formula of everything, Goethe to obtain 
the vision of everything; they have steeped themselves therein so 
thoroughly, that they have drawn thence their inner and habitual sen- 
timents, their morality and their conduct. We may consider them to 
be the two philosophical legacies which modern Germany has left to 
the human race. 


IV. 


But these legacies have not been unmixed, and this passion for 
ageregate views has marred its proper work by its excess. It is rarely 
that our mind can grasp aggregates: we are imprisoned in too narrow 
a corner of time and space; our senses perceive only the surface of 
things ; our instruments have but a small scope; we have only been 
experimentalising for three centuries ; our memory is short, and the docu- 
ments by which we dive into the past are only doubtful lights, scattered 
over an immense region, which they show by glimpses without illumi- 
nating them. To bind together the small fragments which we are able 
to attain, we have generally to guess the causes, or to employ general 
ideas so vast, that they might suit all facts; we must have recourse 
either to hypothesis or abstraction, invent arbitrary explanations, or be 
lost in vague ones, ‘These, in fact, are the two vices which have cor- 
rupted German thought. Conjecture and formula have abounded. 
Systems have multiplied, some above the others, and broken out into 
an inextricable growth, into which no stranger dare enter, having found 
that every morning brought a new budding, and that the definitive dis- 
covery proclaimed over-night was about to be choked by another infal- 
lible discovery, capable at most of lasting till the morning after. The 
public of Europe was astonished to see so much imagination and so 
little common sense, pretensions so ambitious and theories so hollow, 
such an invasion of chimerical existences and such an overflow of use- 
less abstractions, so strange a lack of discernment and so great a luxu- 
riance of irrationality. The fact was, that folly and genius flowed from 
the same source; a like faculty, excessive and all-powerful, produced 
discoveries and errors. If to-day we behold the workshop of human 
ideas, overcharged as it is and encumbered by its works, we may com- 
pare it to some blast-furnace, a monstrous machine which day and night 
has flamed unwearingly, half darkened by choking vapours, and in 
which the raw ore, piled heaps on heaps, has descended bubbling in 


~~ 





456° ae °- MODERN AUTHORS. [Book v. 


glowing streams into the channels in which it has become hard. No 
other furnace could have melted the shapeless mass, crusted over with 
the primitive scorie; this obstinate elaboration and this intense heat 
were necessary to overcome it. Now the sluggish tappings burden the 
earth; their weight discourages the hands which touch them; if we 
would turn them to some use, they defy us or break: as they are, they 
are of no use ; and yet as they are, they are the material for every tool, 
and the instrument of every work ; it is our business to cast them over 
again, Every mind must carry them back to the forge, purify them, tem- 
per them, recast them, and extract the pure metal from the rough mass. 


V. 


But every mind will re-forge them according to its own inner 
warmth ; for every nation has its original genius, in which it moulds 
the ideas elsewhere derived. ‘Thus Spain, in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, renewed in a different spirit the Italian painting 
and poetry. Thus the Puritans and Jansenists thought out in new 
times the primitive Protestantism ; thus the French of the eighteenth 
century widened and put forth the liberal ideas, which the English had 
applied or proposed in religion and politics. It is so in the present 
day. The French cannot at once reach, like the Germans, lofty 
aggregate conceptions. They can only march step by step, starting 
from concrete ideas, rising gradually to abstract ideas, after the pro- 
gressive methods and gradual analysis of Condillac and Descartes. But 
this slower route leads almost as far as the other; and in addition, 
it avoids many wrong steps. It is by this route that we succeed in 
correcting and comprehending the views of Hegel and Goethe; and if 
we look around us, at the ideas which are gaining ground, we find that 
we are already arriving thither. Positivism, based on all modern ex- 
perience, and freed since the death of its founder from his social and 
religious fancies, has assumed a new life, by reducing itself to noting 
the connection of natural groups and the chain of established sciences. 
On the other hand, history, romance, and criticism, sharpened by the 
refinements of Parisian culture, have clearly brought forward the laws 
of human events; nature has been shown to be an order of facts, man 
a continuation of nature; and we have seen a superior mind, the most 
delicate, the most lofty of our own time, resuming and modifying the 
German divinations, expounding in the French manner everything 
which the science of myths, religions, and languages had stored up, 
beyond the Rhine, during the last sixty years.* 


ae 


The growth in England is more difficult; for the aptitude for 
general ideas is less, and the mistrust of general ideas is greater: they 





Fl i 


1M. Renan, 





CHAP, IV. ] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 457 


reject at once all that remotely or nearly seems capable of injuring 
practical morality or established dogma. The positive spirit seems as 
if it must exclude all German ideas; and yet it is the positive spirit 
which introduces them. Thus theologians,’ having desired to repre- 
sent to themselves with entire clearness and certitude the characters of 
the New Testament, have suppressed the halo and mist in which dis- 
tance enveloped them; they have figured them with their garments, 
gestures, accent, all the shades of emotion which their style has marked, 
with the species of imagination which their age has imposed, amidst the 
scenery which they have looked upon, amongst the relics before which 
they have spoken, with all the circumstances, physical or moral, which 
learning and travel can render sensible, with all the comparisons 
which modern physiology and psychology could suggest; they have 
given us their precise and demonstrated, coloured and graphic idea; 
they have seen these personages, not through ideas and as myths, but 
face to face andasmen. They have applied Macaulay’s art to exegesis ; 
and if German erudition could pass unmutilated through this crucible, 
its solidity, as well as its value, would be doubled. 

But there is another wholly Germanic route by which German ideas 
may become English. This is the road which Carlyle has taken ; by this, 
religion and poetry in the two countries are correspondent; by it the 
two nations are sisters. The sentiment of internal things (insight) is 
in the race, and this sentiment is a sort of philosophical divination. At 
need, the heart takes the place of the brain. The inspired, impassioned 
man penetrates into things; perceives the cause by the shock which he 
feels from it; he embraces aggregates by the lucidity and velocity of 
his creative imagination ; he discovers the unity of a group by the unity 
of the emotion which he receives from it. For, as soon as you create, 
you feel within yourself the force which acts in the objects of your 
thought; your sympathy reveals to you their sense and connection ; 
intuition is a finished and living analysis; poets and prophets, Shak- 
speare and Dante, St. Paul and Luther, have been systematic theorists, 
without wishing it, and their visions comprise general conceptions of 
_man and the universe. Carlyle’s mysticism is a power of the same kind. 
He translates into a poetic and religious style German philosophy. He 
speaks, like Fichte, of the divine idea of the world, the reality which 
lies at the bottom of every apparition. He speaks, like Goethe, of the 
spirit which eternally weaves the living robe of Divinity. He borrows 
their metaphors, only he takes them literally. He considers the god, 
which they consider as a form or a law, as a mysterious and sublime 
being. He conceives by exaltation, by painful reverie, by a confused 
sentiment of the interweaving of existences, that. unity of nature which 
they arrive at by dint of reasonings and abstractions. Here is a last 
route, steep doubtless, and little frequented, for reaching the summits 





1 In particular, Stanley and Jowett, 


-_ 


458 | _ MODERN AUTHORS. | | [BooK V. 


from which German thought at first issued forth. Methodical analysis 
added to the co-ordination of the positive sciences; French criticism 
refined by literary taste and worldly observation; English criticism 
supported by practical common sense and positive intuition; lastly, 
in a niche apart, sympathetic and poetic imagination: these are the 
four routes by which the human mind is now proceeding to reconquer 
the sublime heights to which it believed itself carried, and which it 
has lost. These routes all conduct to the same summit, but by four 
different distances. That by which Carlyle has advanced, being the 
lengthiest, has led him to the strangest perspective. I will let him 
speak for himself; he will tell the reader what he has seen. 


§ 3.—Puitosopuy, Moratity, AND CriTIcIsM. 

‘ However it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating 

in the Head (Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as this 
of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character (Gemiith), and 
equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known 
and seen.’! 
Carlyle has related, under the name of Teufelsdroeckh, all the succession 
of emotions which lead to this Life-Philosophy. They are those of a 
modern Puritan; the same doubts, despairs, internal conflicts, exalta- 
tions, and lacerations, by which the old Puritans arrived at faith: it 
is their faith under other forms. With him, as with them, the spiritual 
and inner man is distinguished from the exterior and carnal; extri- 
cates duty from the solicitations of pleasure; discovers God through 
the appearances of nature; and, beyond the world and the instincts of 
sense, perceives a supernatural world and instinct. 


I, 


The specialty of Carlyle, as of every mystic, is to see a double mean- 
ing in everything. For him texts and objects are capable of two inter- 
pretations: the one gross, open to all, serviceable for ordinary life; the 
other sublime, open to a few, serviceable to a higher life. Carlyle says: 


‘To the eye of vulgar Logic, what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears 
Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine 
Apparition. Round his mysterious Mz, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a 
Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven. . . . Deep- 
hidden is he under that strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, 
as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is skywoven, and 
worthy of a God.’? 

‘ For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit : 
were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay, the thing 
Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, 
a Clothing of the higher, celestial, Invisible, ‘‘ unimaginable, formless, dark with 
excess of bright ?”’3 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. xi. ; Prospective. 
2 Ibid. bk. i. ch. x. 3 Pure Reason. 8 Ibid. 





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CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE, 459. 


€ All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest is not there on its own account; 
strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent 
some Idea, and body it forth.’+ 


Language, poetry, arts, church, state, are only symbols: 


‘In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less 
distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the 
Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, 
attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made 
happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, 
recognised as such or not recognised : the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God ; 
nay, if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all 
that he does symbolical ; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that 
is in him ?’? 

Let us rise higher still, and regard Time and Space, those two abysses _ 
which it seems nothing could fill up or destroy, and over which hover 
our life and our universe. ‘They are but forms of our thought... . 
There is neither Time nor Space; they are but two grand fundamental, 
world-enveloping appearances, Space and Time. These, as spun and 
woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Mr for 
dwelling here, and yet to blind it,—lie all-embracing, as the universal 
canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor illusions, in this Phantasm 
Existence, weave and paint themselves.’* Our root is in eternity; we 
seem to be born and to die, but actually, we are. 


‘ Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable ; 
that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even 
now and for ever. . . . Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an 
Appearance ; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility?’4 ‘ O Heaven, 
it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not’only carry each a future Ghost 
within him ; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them ; 
this stormy Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and 
shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME; wherein, through some mo- 
ments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. 

‘ And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish 
debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or 
uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the 
morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and 
Day ¢’5 


What is there, then, beneath all these vain appearances? What is 
this motionless existence, whereof nature is but the ‘changing and 
living robe?’ None knows; if the heart divines it, the mind perceives 
it not. ‘ Creation,’ says one, ‘lies before us like a glorious rainbow; 


but the sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us.’ We have 





? Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. xi. ; Prospective. 

2 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. iii. ; Symbols. 

3 Jbid. bk. iii. ch. viii. ; Natural Supernaturalism. 
* Ibid. > Ibid. 


— 


460 : MODERN AUTHORS. | [Book v. 


only the sentiment thereof, not the idea. We feel that this universe is 
beautiful and terrible, but its essence will remain ever unnamed. We 
have only to fall on our knees before this veiled face; wonder and 
adoration are our true attitude: . 


‘ The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), 
were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mécanique 
Céleste and Hegel’s Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observa- 
tories, with their results, in his single head,—is but a Pair of Spectacles behind 
which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may 
be useful. , 

‘ Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk through thy world by 
the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call 
Attorney-Logic: and ‘‘ explain” all, ‘‘ account” for all, or believe nothing of it. 
Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading 
domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands ; to 
whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, 
—he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt pro- 
trusively proffer thy Hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot 
through it.’} 

.* We speak of the Volume of Nature ; and truly a Volume it is, whose Author 
and Writer is God. Toreadit! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the 
Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, 
poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of 
Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the 
true Sacred-writing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a 
line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they 
strive bravely ; and from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hiero- 
glyphic writing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some Letters in the vulgar 
Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high 
avail in Practice.’? 


Do you believe, perhaps, 


‘That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, 
well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in 
this manner one day evolve itself?’?... 

‘ And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, 
and (like the Doctor’s in the Arabian tale) set in a basin, to keep it alive, could 
prosecute without shadow of a heart, but one other of the mechanical and menial 
handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble au 
organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous.’ 4 


Let the scales drop from your eyes, and look: 


‘Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province 
thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God ; that through every star, 
through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a 
present God still beams.’ 5 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. i. ch. x. ; Pure Reason. 

2 Tbid. bk. iii. ch. viii. ; Natural Supernaturalism. 
3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. bk. i. ch. x. ; Pure Reason. 
5 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. viii. ; Natural Supernaturalism. 





n 
a 


—— i 








CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE, 461 


‘ Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body ; and forth- 
issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven’s mission APPEARS. What Force and 
Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry ; one, hunter- 
like, climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed in pieces 
on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is 
recalled ; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished 
Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven’s Ar- 
tillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick- 
succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. ‘Thus, like a God-created, fire- 
breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the 
astonished Earth, then plunge again into the Inane. . . . But whence ?—O 
Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through 
Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.’ 


Il. 


: This vehement religious poetry, charged as it is with memories of 
Milton and Shakspeare, is but an English transcription of German ideas. 
There is a fixed rule for transposing,—that is, for converting into one 
another the ideas of a positivist, a pantheist, a spiritualist, a mystic, a 
poet, a head given to images, and a head given to formulas. We may 
mark all the steps which lead simple philosophical conception to its 
extreme and violent state. Take the world as science shows it; it is 
a regular group, or, if you will, a series which has a law; according 
to science, it is nothing more. As from the law we deduce the series, 
you may say that the law engenders it, and consider this law as a force. 
If you are an artist, you will seize in the aggregate the force, the series 
of effects, and the fine regular manner in which the force produces the 
series. To my mind, this sympathetic representation is of all the most 
exact and complete: knowledge is limited, as long as it does not 
arrive at this, and it is complete when it has arrived there. But 
beyond, there commence the phantoms which the mind creates, and 
by which it dupes itself. If you have a little imagination, you will 

_ make of this force a distinct existence, situated beyond the reach of 
experience, spiritual, the -principle and the substance of concrete 
things. That is a metaphysical existence. Add one degree to your 
imagination and enthusiasm, and you will say that this spirit, situated 
beyond time and space, is manifested through these, that it subsists 
and animates everything, that we have in it motion, existence, and 
life. Push to the limits of vision and ecstasy, and you will declare 
that this principle is the only reality, that the rest is but appearance: 
thenceforth you are deprived of all the means of defining it; you can 
affirm nothing of it, but that it is the source of things, and that nothing 
can be atlirmed of it; you will consider it as a grand unfathomable 
abyss ; you seek, in order to come at it, a path other than that of clear 
ideas ; you recognise sentiment, exaltation. If you have a gloomy 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch, viii. ; Natural Supernaturalism, 





462 ‘MODERN AUTHORS. : _ [BOOK ¥,. 


temperament, you seek it, like the sectarians, gloomily, amongst prostra- 
tions and agonies. By this scale of transformations, the general idea 
becomes a poetic, then a philosophical, then a mystical existence ; and 
German metaphysics, concentrated and heated, is changed into English 
Puritanism, 


‘ 


III. 


What distinguishes this mysticism from others is its practicability. 
The Puritan is troubled not only about what he ought to believe, but 
about what he ought to do; he craves an answer to his doubts, but 
especially a rule for his conduct; he is tormented by the notion of his 
ignorance, but also by the horror of his vices ; he seeks God, but duty 
also. In his eyes the two are but one; moral sense is the promoter 
and guide of philosophy : 

‘Is there no God, then ; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the 
first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has the word 
Duty no meaning ; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a 
false earthly Fantasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the gallows 
and from Dr. Graham’s Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience ! 
Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he 
was the ‘‘chief of sinners ;” and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (wohigemuth), 
spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, 
who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and 
wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of pleasure,—I tell thee, Nay !’? 


There is an instinct within us which says Nay. We discover within 
us something higher than love of happiness,—the love of sacrifice. 
That is the divine part of our soul. We perceive in it and by it the 
God, who otherwise would continue ever unknown. By it we penetrate 
an unknown and sublime world. There is an extraordinary state of 
the soul, by which it leaves selfishness, renounces pleasure, cares no 
more for itself, adores pain, comprehends holiness : 

* Only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are 
we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But 
what, in these dull, unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the 
diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our strong- 
hold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the 
Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect ! ’# 


This obscure beyond, which the senses cannot reach, the reason cannot 
define, which the imagination figures as a king and a person; this is 
holiness, this is the sublime. ‘The hero is he who lives in the inward 
sphere of things, in the True, Divine, Eternal, which exists always, 
unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial ; his being is in that... . 
His life is a piece of the everlasting heart of nature itself.’* Virtue is 
a revelation, heroism is a light, conscience a philosophy; and we shall 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. vii. ; The Everlasting No. 
Itid, > Lectures on Heroes. 











ge 


CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 463 


express in the abstract this moral mysticism, by saying that God, for 
Carlyle, is a mystery, whose only name is The Ideal. 


Ve 


This faculty for perceiving the inner sense of things, and this dis- 
position to search out the moral sense of things, have produced in him 
all his doctrines, and first his Christianity. This Christianity is very 
free : yCarlyle takes religion in the German manner, after a symbolical 
fashion. This is why he is called a Pantheist, which in plain language 
means a madman dr a rogue., In England, too, he is exorcised. His 
friend Sterling sent him long dissertations to bring him back to a per- 
sonal God. Every moment he wounds to the quick the theologians, 
who make the prime cause into an architect or an administrator. He 
shocks them still more when he touches upon dogma; he considers 
Christianity as a myth, of which the essence is the Worship of Sorrow : 


‘Knowest thou that ‘* Worship of sorrow?” The Temple thereof, founded 
some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habita- 
tion of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp 
perennially burning.’ 


But its guardians know it no more. A frippery of conventional adorn- 
ments hides it from the eyes of men. The Protestant Church in the 
nineteenth century, like the Catholic Church in the sixteenth, needs 
a reformation, We want a new Luther: 


‘For if Government is, so to speak, the outward skin of the Body Politic, 
holding the whole together and protecting it ; and if all your Craft-Guilds and 
Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular 
and osseous Tissues (lying wnder such SKIN), whereby Society stands and works ; 
—then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue which ministers Life 
and warm Circulation to the whole... 

‘ Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church Clothes have gone 
sorrowfully out-at-elbows: nay, far worse, many of them have become mere 
hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; 
but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade ; 
and the mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, 
—some generation and half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in 
unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear and 
bless us, or our sons or grandsons,’ 2 


Christianity once reduced to the sentiment of abnegation, other 
religions resume, in consequence, dignity and importance. They are, like 
Christianity, forms of universal religion. ‘They have all had a truth 
in them, or men would not have taken them up.’* They are no quack’s 





1 Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. ix. ; The Everlasting Yea, 
2 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. ii. ; Church Clothes, 
3 Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 


464 MODERN AUTHORS. | [BOOK V. 


imposture or poet’s dream. They are an existence more or less troubled 
by the mystery, august and infinite, which is at the bottom of the uni- 
verse : 

‘ Canopus shining down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that 
wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would 
pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through 
the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech 
for any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing-out on him from 
the great deep Eternity ; revealing the inner Splendour to him.’ + 


‘Grand Lamaism,’ Popery itself, interpret after their fashion the senti- 
ment of the divine ; therefore Popery itself is to be respected. ‘ While 
a pious life remains capable of being led by it, . . . let it last as long 
as it can.’* What matters if they call it idolatry ? 

‘Idol is Hidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a symbol of God. 
. . » Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things seen ? 
... The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Repre- 
sentation of Divine things, and worships thereby. .. . All creeds, liturgies, reli- 
gious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, 
things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols :—we may 
say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous.’ * 


The only detestable idolatry is that from which the sentiment has de- 
parted, which consists only in learned ceremonies, in mechanical repeti- 
tion of prayers, in decent profession of formulas not understood. The 
deep veneration of a monk of the twelfth century, prostrated before the 
relics of St. Edmund, was worth more than the conventional piety and 
cold philosophical religion of a Protestant of to-day. Whatever the 
worship, it is the sentiment which gives it its whole value. And this 
sentiment is that of morality : 

‘The one end, essence, and use of all religion past, present, and to come, was 
this only : To keep that same Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and 
shining. . . . All religion was here to remind us, better or worse, of what we 
already know better or worse, of the quite infinite difference there is between a Good 
man and a Bad; to bid us love infinitely the one, abhor and avoid infinitely the 
other, —strive infinitely to be the one, and not to be the other. ‘‘ All religion issues 
in due Practical Hero-worship.”’ 4 : 

* 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.’® 


With you it may not; but it has elsewhere. We touch here the Eng- 
lish and narrow feature of this German and broad conception. There 
are many religions which are not moral; there are more still which are 
not practical. Carlyle would reduce the heart of man to the English 





1 Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 

2 Ibid. iv. ; The Hero as Priest. 3 Ibid. 
* Past and Present, bk. iii. ch. xv. ; Morrison Again. 

5 Ibid. bk. iii. ch, xii. ; Reward. 











CHAP. IV.] 


PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE, 465 





sentiment of duty, and his imagination to the English sentiment of 
respect. The half of human poetry escapes his grasp. For if a part 
of ourselves raises us to abnegation and virtue, another part leads us to 
enjoyment and pleasure. Man is pagan as well as Christian; nature 
has two faces: several races, India, Greece, Italy, have only compre- 
hended the first, and have had for religions merely the adoration of 
overflowing force and the ecstasy of a grand imagination ; or, again, the 
admiration of harmonious form, with the culture of pleasure, beauty, 
and happiness. 


a" # 


His criticism of literary works is of the same character and violence, 
and has the same scope and the same limits, the same principle and the 
same conclusions, as his criticism of religious works. Carlyle has intro- 
duced the great ideas of Hegel and Goethe, and has confined them under 
the narrow discipline of Puritan sentiment.’ He considers the poet, the 
writer, the artist, as an interpreter of ‘the Divine Idea of the World, that 
which lies at the bottom of Appearance;’ as a revealer of the infinite, as 
representing his century, his nation, his age: we recognise here all the 
German formulas. They signify that the artist detects and expresses 
better than any one, the salient and durable features of the world which 


. surrounds him, so that we might draw from his work a theory of man 


and of nature, together with a picture of his race and of his time. ‘This 
discovery has renewed criticism. Carlyle owes to it his finest views, his 
lessons on Shakspeare and Dante, his studies on Goethe, Johnson, Burns, 
and Rousseau. Thus, by a natural process, he becomes the herald of 
German literature; he makes himself the apostle of Goethe; he has 
praised him with a neophyte’s fervour, to the extent of lacking on this 
subject skill and perspicacity ; he calls him a Hero, presents his life as an 


_ example to all the men of our century ; he will not see his paganism, 


manifest as it is, and so repellent to a Puritan, Through the same 
causes, he has made of Jean-Paul, the affected clown, the extravagant 
humorist, ‘a giant,’ a sort of prophet ; he has heaped eulogy on Novalis 
and the mystics; he has set the democrat Burns above Byron; he has 
exalted Johnson, that honest pedant, the most grotesque of literary 
behemoths. His principle is, that in a work of the mind, form is little, 
the basis is alone important. As soon as a man has a profound senti- 


- ment, a strong conviction, his book is beautiful. A writing, be it what it 


will, only manifests the soul: if this soul is serious, if it is intimately 
and habitually shaken by the grave thoughts which ought to preoccupy 
a soul; if it loves what is good, is devoted, endeavours with its whole 
effort, without a lingering thought of self-interest or self-love, to pub- 
lish the truth which strikes it, it has reached its goal. We have nothing 
to do with the talent ; we do not need to be pleased by beautiful forms ; 





1 Lectures on Heroes ; Miscellanies, passim. 
VOL. II. 2G 


466. -* MODERN AUTHORS. aS [BOOK Vv. - 


our sole object is to find ourselves face to face with the sublime; the 
whole destiny of man is to perceive heroism ; poetry and art have no other 
employment or merit. You see how far and with what excess Carlyle 
possesses the Germanic sentiment, why he loves the mystics, humorists, 
prophets, illiterate writers, and men of action, spontaneous poets, all who 
violate regular beauty through ignorance, brutality, folly, or deliberately. 
He goes so far as to excuse the rhetoric of Johnson, because Johnson 
was loyal and sincere ; he does not distinguish in him the literary man 
from the practical: he ceases to see the classic declaimer, a strange 
compound of Scaliger, Boileau, and La Harpe, majestically decked out in 
the Ciceronian gown, to see only the religious man of convictions. Such 
a habit shuts the eyes to one half of things. Carlyle speaks with scorn- 
ful indifference of modern dilettantism, seems to despise painters, ad- 
mits no sensible beauty. Wholly on the side of the writers, he neglects 
the artists; for the source of arts is the sentiment of form; and the 
greatest artists, the Italians, the Greeks, did not know, like their priests 
and poets, any beauty beyond that of voluptuousness and force. Thence. 
also it comes that he has no taste for French literature. The exact 
order, the fine proportions, the perpetual regard for the agreeable and 
proper, the harmonious structure of clear and consecutive ideas, the 
delicate picture of society, the perfection of style,—nothing which 
moves us, has attraction for him. His mode of comprehending life is 
too far removed from ours. In vain he tries to understand Voltaire ; 
all he can do is to slander him: 


‘ We find no heroism of character in him, from first to last ; nay, there is not, 
that we know of, one great thought in all his six-and-thirty quartos. . . . He sees 
but a little way into Nature ; the mighty All, in its beauty and infinite mysterious 
grandeur, humbling the small me into nothingness, has never even for moments 
been revealed to him ; only this and that other atom of it, and the differences and 
discrepancies of these two, has he looked into and noted down. His theory of the 
world, his picture of man and man’s life is little ; for a poet and philosopher, even 
pitiful. ‘‘ The Divine idea, that which lies at the bottom of appearance,” was 
never more invisible to any man. He reads history not with the eyes of a devout 
seer, or even of a critic, but through a pair of mere anticatholic spectacles. It is 
not a mighty drama enacted on the theatre of Infinitude, with suns for lamps and 
Eternity as a background, . , . but a poor wearisome debating-club dispute, spun 
through ten centuries, between the Encyclopédie and the Sorbonne. . . . God's 
Universe is a larger patrimony of St. Peter, from which it were well and pleasant 
to hunt out the Pope. . . . The still higher praise of having had a right or noble 
aim cannot be conceded him without many limitations, and may, plausibly 
enough, be altogether denied. . . . The force necessary for him was nowise a great 
and noble one; but small, in some respects a mean one, to be nimbly and season- 
ably put into use. The Ephesian temple, which it had employed many wise heads 
and strong arms for a lifetime to build, could be wnbuilt by one madman, in a 
single hour,’? 


These are big words; we will not employ the like. I will simply 





1 Life of Sterling. * Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 4 vols. ; ii. Voltaire. 





SN el a ae xg 











CHAP. IV.] | PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY——CARLYLE. 467 


say, that if a man were to judge Carlyle, as a Frenchman, as he judges 
Voltaire as an Englishman, he would draw a different picture of 
Carlyle from that which I am trying here to draw. 


| Wi 
This trade of calumny was in vogue fifty years ago; in fifty more 


- it will probably have altogether ceased. The French are beginning to 


comprehend the gravity of the Puritans; perhaps the English will end 
by comprehending the gaiety of Voltaire: the first are labouring to 
appreciate Shakspeare ; the second will doubtless attempt to appreciate 
Racine. Goethe, the master of all modern minds, knew well how to 
appreciate both.’ The critic must add to his natural and national soul 
five or six artificial and acquired souls, and his flexible sympathy must 
introduce him to extinct or foreign sentiments. The best fruit of criticism 
is to detach ourselves from ourselves, to constrain us to make allowance 
for the surroundings in which we live, to teach us to distinguish objects 
themselves from the transient appearances, with which our character 
and our age never fail to clothe them. Each one regards them through 
glasses of diverse focus and hue, and no one can reach the truth save 
by taking into account the form and tint which the composition of his 
glasses imposes on the objects which he sees. Hitherto we have 
been wrangling and pummelling one another,—this man declaring that 
things are green, another that they are yellow; others, again, that 
they are red; each accusing his neighbour of seeing wrong, and being 
disingenuous. Now, at last, we are learning moral optics; we are 
finding that the colour is not in the objects, but in ourselves; we 
pardon our neighbours for seeing differently from us; we recognise 
that they may see red what to us appears blue, green what to us 
appears yellow ; we can even define the kind of glasses which produces 
yellow, and the kind which produces green, divine their effects from 
their nature, predict the tint under which the object we are about to 
present to them will appear, construct beforehand the system of every 
mind, and perhaps one day free ourselves from every system. ‘As a 
poet,’ said Goethe, ‘I am a polytheist ; as a naturalist, a pantheist ; as 
a moral man, a deist ; and in order to express my mind, I need all these 
forms.’ In fact, all these glasses are serviceable, for they all show us 
some new aspect of things. The important point is to have not one, but 
several, to employ each at the suitable moment, not to take into account 
the particular colour of these glasses, but to know that behind these mil- 
lion moving poetical tints, optics affirm only law-abiding transformations. 


§ 4.—CoNcEPTION oF HisTorRY. 
I. 


* Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished.in this world, 
is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the 





1 See this double praise in Wilhelm Meister. 


io yi awe oe hl a 





468 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense 
creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all 
things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer 
material result, the practical realisation and embodiment of Thoughts that dwelt 
in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it 
may justly be considered, were the history of these.’ 
Whatever they be, poets, reformers, writers, men of action, revealers, 
he gives them all a mystical character: 

‘Such a man is what we call an original man ; he comes to us at first-hand. 
A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. . . . Direct 
from the Inner Fact of things ;—he lives, and has to live, in daily communion 
with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him ; he is blind, homeless, miserable, 
following hearsays ; i¢ glares-in upon him. . . . It is from the heart of the world 
that he comes ; he is portion of the primal reality of things.’ ? 
In vain the ignorance of his age and his own imperfections mar the 
purity of his original vision ; he ever attains some immutable and life- 
giving truth ; for this truth he is listened to, and by this truth he is 
powerful. That which he has discovered is immortal and efficacious: 

‘The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene 
owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of 
Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to 
the Eternities ; remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things.’ ® 

‘ No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells 
in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence 
in man’s life. Religion I find stand upon it... . What therefore is loyalty 
proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive 
admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship.’* 


This feeling is the very bottom of man. It exists even in this levelling 
and destructive age: 


‘I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant 
lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall.’ 


II. 


We have here a German theory, but transformed, made precise, 
thickened after the English manner. The Germans said that every 
nation, period, civilisation, had its idea; that is its chief feature, from 
which the rest were derived; so that philosophy, religion, arts, and 
morals, all the elements of thought and action, could be deduced from 
some original and fundamental quality, from which all proceeded and in 
which all ended. Where Hegel proposed an idea, Carlyle proposes a 
heroic sentiment. It is more palpable and moral. To complete his 
escape from the vague, he considers this sentiment in a hero, He must 





1 Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 

2 Ibid. ii. ; The Hero as Prophet. 

3 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, iii. part x. ; Death of the Protector. 
* Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 5 Ibid. 








CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. — 469 


give to abstractions a body and a soul; he is not at ease in pure con- 
ceptions, and wishes to touch a real being. 

But this being, as he conceives it, is an abstract of the rest. For, 
according to him, the hero contains and represents the civilisation in 
which he is comprised; he has discovered, proclaimed or practised an 
original conception, and in this his age has followed him. The know- 
ledge of a heroic sentiment thus gives us a knowledge of a whole age. 
By this method Carlyle has emerged beyond biography. He has redis- 
covered the grand views of his masters. He has felt, like them, that a 
civilisation, vast and dispersed as it is over time and space, forms an 
indivisible whole. He has combined in a system of hero-worship the 
scattered fragments which Hegel united by a law. He has derived 
from a common sentiment the events which the Germans derived from 
a common definition. He has comprehended the deep and distant con- 
nection of things, such as bind a great man to his time, such as connect 
the works of accomplished thought with the stutterings of infant 
thought, such as link the wise inventions of modern constitutions to 
the disorderly furies of primitive barbarism: 

‘ Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially 
brave ; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things ;—pro- 
genitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons. ... Hrolf or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 
the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour.’} 

‘ No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid Eremites, there had been no melodious 
Dante ; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter 
Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay, the finished 
Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfec- 


_ tion and is finished ; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers 


needed.’ 2 


His great poetic or practical works only publish or apply this dominant 
idea; the historian makes use of it, to rediscover the primitive senti- 
ment which engenders them, and to form the aggregate conception 
which unites them. 


Til. 


Hence a new fashion of writing history. Since the heroic sentiment 
is the cause of the other sentiments, it is to this the historian must 
devote himself. Since it is the source of civilisation, the mover of revolu- 
tions, the master and regenerator of human life, it is in this that he must 
observe civilisation, revolutions, and human life. Since it is the spring 
of every movement, it is by this that we shall understand every move- 
ment. Let the metaphysicians draw up deductions and formulas, or 
the politicians expound situations and constitutions. Man is not an 
inert being, moulded by a constitution, nor a lifeless being expressed by 
formula; he is an active and living soul, capable of acting, discover- 
ing, creating, devoting himself, and before all, of daring; genuine 





* Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 
2 Ibid. iv. ; The Hero as Priest. 


470 | MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


history is an epic of heroism. This idea is, in my opinion, as it were, 
a brilliant light. For men have not done great things without great 
emotions. The first and sovereign motive of an extraordinary re- 
volution is an extraordinary sentiment. Then we see appear and 
swell a lofty and all-powerful passion, which has burst the old dykes, 
and hurled the current of things into a new bed. All starts from this, 
and it is this which we must observe. Leave metaphysical formulas 
and political considerations, and regard the inner state of every mind ; 
quit the bare narrative, forget abstract explanations, and study im- 
passioned souls. A revolution is only the birth of a great sentiment. 
What is this sentiment, how is it bound to others, what is its degree, 
source, effect, how does it transform the imagination, understanding, 
common inclinations; what passions feed it, what proportion of folly 
and reason does it embrace—these are the main questions. If you 
wish to represent to me the history of Buddhism, you must show me 
the calm despair of the ascetics who, deadened by the contemplation 
of the infinite void, and by the expectation of final annihilation, attain 
in their monotonous quietude the sentiment of universal fraternity. If 
you wish to represent to me the history of Christianity, you must show 
me the soul of a Saint John or Saint Paul, the sudden renewal of the 
conscience, the faith in invisible things, the transformation of a soul 
penetrated by the presence of a paternal God, the irruption of tender- 
ness, generosity, abnegation, trust, and hope, which rescued the 
wretches oppressed under the Roman tyranny and decline. To explain 
a revolution, is to write a partial psychology ; the analysis of critics 
and the divination of artists are the only instruments which can attain 
to it: if we would have it precise and profound, we must ask it of 
those who, through their profession or their genius, possess a know- 
ledge of the soul—Shakspeare, Saint-Simon, Balzac, Stendhal. This is 
why we may occasionally ask it of Carlyle. And there is a history 
which we may ask of him in preference to all others, that of the revolu- 
tion which had conscience for its source, which set God in the councils 
of the state, which imposed strict duty, which provoked severe heroism. 
The best historian of Puritanism is a Puritan. 


IV. 


This history of Cromwell, Carlyle’s masterpiece, is but a collection 
of letters and speeches, commented on and united by a continuous 
narrative. The impression which they leave is extraordinary. Grave 
constitutional histories hang heavy after this compilation. The author 
wished to make us comprehend a soul, the soul of Cromwell, the greatest 
of the Puritans, their chief, their abstract, their hero, and their model. 
Fis narrative resembles that of an eye-witness. A covenanter who should 
have collected letters, scraps of newspapers, and had daily added reflec- 
tions, interpretations, notes, and anecdotes, might have written just such 
a book. At last we are face to face with Cromwell. We have his words, 












"CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND. HISTORY—CARLYLE. 471 


we can hear his tone of voice ; we seize, around any object, the circum- 
stances which have produced it ; we see him in his tent, in council, with 
the proper background, with his face and costume: every detail, the most 
minute, is here. And the sincerity is as great as the sympathy; the 
biographer confesses his ignorance, the lack of documents, the uncer- 
tainty ; he is perfectly loyal, though a poet and a sectarian. With him 
we simultaneously restrain and push our conjectures; and we feel at 
every step, through our affirmations and our reservations, that we are 
firmly planting our feet upon the truth. Would that all history were 
like this, a selection of texts provided with a commentary! I would 
exchange for such a history all the regular arguments, all the beautiful 
colourless narrations, of Robertson and Hume. I can verify, whilst 
reading this, the judgment of the author; I no more think after him, 
but for myself; the historian does not obtrude himself between me and 
his subject. I see a fact, and not the account of a fact; the oratorical 
and personal envelope, with which the narrative covers the truth, dis- 
appears; I can touch the truth itself. And this Cromwell, with his 
Puritans, comes forth from the test, reformed and renewed. We 
divined pretty well already that he was not a mere man of ambition, a 
hypocrite, but we took him for a fanatic and hateful wrangler. We 
considered these Puritans as gloomy madmen, shallow brains, and full 
of scruples. Let us quit our French and modern ideas, and enter into 
these souls: we shall find there something else than hypochondria, 
namely, a grand sentiment—am I a just man? And if God, who 
is perfect justice, were to judge me at this moment, what sentence 
would he pass upon me ?—Such is the original idea of the Puritans, 
and through them came the Revolution in England. The feeling of the 


difference there is between good and evil, had filled for them all time 


and space, and had become incarnate, and expressed for them, by such 
words as Heaven and Hell. They were struck by the idea of duty. 
They examined themselves by this light, without pity or shrinking ; 


_ they conceived the sublime model of infallible and complete virtue ; 


they were imbued therewith ; they drowned in this absorbing thought 
all worldly prejudices and all inclinations of the senses; they conceived a 
horror even of imperceptible faults, which an honest man will excuse 
in himself; they exacted from themselves absolute and continuous per- 
fection, and they entered into life with a fixed resolve to suffer and 
do all, rather than deviate one step. We laugh at a revolution about 
surplices and chasubles ; there was a sentiment of the divine underneath 
all these disputes of vestments. These poor folk, shopkeepers and 


farmers, believed, with all their heart, in a sublime and terrible God, 


and the manner how to worship Him was not a trifling thing for them: 


‘Suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent 
matter (as Divine worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its 
excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance at all, and preferred 
formless silence to any utterance there possible,—what should we say of a man 


472 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mum- 
mery? Such aman,—let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost 
your only son ; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man 
importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the 
Greeks!’! 

This has caused the Revolution, and not the Writ of Shipmoney, or any 
other political vexation. 

‘You may take my purse, ... but the Self is mine and God my Maker’s.’? 
And the same sentiment which made them rebels, made them con- 
querors. Men could not understand how discipline could survive in an 
army in which an inspired corporal would reproach a lukewarm gene- 
ral. They thought it strange that generals, who sought the Lord with 
tears, had learned administration and strategy in the Bible. They 
wondered that madmen could be men of business. The truth is, that 
they were not madmen, but men of business. The whole difference 
between them and practical men whom we know, is that they had a 
conscience ; this conscience was their flame; mysticism and dreams 
were but the smoke. They sought the true, the just; and their long 
prayers, their nasal preachings, their Bible criticisms, their tears, their 
anguish, only mark the sincerity and ardour with which they applied 
themselves to the search. They read their duty in themselves; the 
Bible only aided them. At need they did violence to it, when they 
wished to verify by texts the suggestions of their own hearta, It was 
this sentiment of duty which united, inspired, and sustained them, 
which made their discipline, courage, and boldness; which raised to 
ancient heroism Hutchinson, Milton, and Cromwell; which instigated 
all decisive deeds, grand resolves, marvellous successes, the decla- 
ration of war, the trial of the king, the purge of Parliament, the 
humiliation of Europe, the protection of Protestantism, the sway of the 
seas. ‘These men are the true heroes of England ; they display, in high 
relief, the original characteristics and noblest features of England— 
practical piety, the rule of conscience, manly resolution, indomitable 
energy. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts ° 
and the relaxation of modern manners, by the exercise of duty, by 
the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by 
resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression 
of vice. They founded Scotland, they founded the United States : at this 
day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonising the 
world. . Carlyle is so much their brother, that he excuses or admires 
their excesses—the execution of the king, the mutilation of Parliament, 
their intolerance, inquisition, the despotism of Cromwell, the theocracy 
of Knox. He sets them before us as models, and judges both past and 
present by them alone. 

V. 


Hence he saw nothing but evil in the French Revolution. He 
1 Lectures on Heroes, vi.; The Hero as King. 2 bid. 

















CHAP. Iy.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 473 


judges it as unjustly as he judges Voltaire, and for the same reasons. 
He understands our manner of acting no better than our manner of 
thinking. He looks for Puritan sentiment; and, as he does not find it, 

he condemns us. ‘The idea of duty, the polizicns spirit, self-govern- 
ment, the authority of an austere conscience, can alone, in his opinion, 

reform a corrupt society; and none of all these are to be met with in 
French society. The philosophy which has produced and guided the 
Revolution was simply destructive, proclaiming no other gospel but, 
‘that a lie cannot be believed! Philosophy knows only this: Her other 
relief is mainly that in spiritual, supra-sensual matters, no belief is 
possible.’ The theory of the Rights of Man, borrowed from Rousseau, 
is only a logical game, a pedantry almost as opportune as a ‘ Theory 
of Irregular Verbs.’ The manners in vogue were the epicurism of 
Faublas. The morality in vogue was the promise of universal happi- 
ness. Incredulity, hollow rant, sensuality, were the mainsprings of this 
reformation. Men let loose their instincts and overturned the barriers. 
They replaced corrupt authority by unchecked anarchy. In what could 
a jacquerie of brutalised peasants, impelled by atheistical arguments, end? 


‘ For ourselves, we answer that French Revolution means here the open vio- - 
lent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt, worn-out 
Authority. + ; 

‘ So thousandfold complex a Society ready to burst up from its infinite depths ; 
and these men its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves—other life- 
rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we 
must call the wisest, man is properly an accident under the sky. Man is without 
duty round him, except it be to make the Constitution. He is without Heaven 
above him, or Hell beneath him ; he has no God in the world. 

‘ While hollow languor and vacuity is the lot of the upper, and want and stag- 
nation of the lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is 
certain? ... What will remain? The five unsatiated senses will remain, the 
sixth insatiable sense (of vanity) ; the whole demoniac nature of man will remain. 

* Man is not what we call a happy animal ; his appetite for sweet victual is too 
enormous. . . . (He cannot subsist) except by girding himself together for con- 
tinual endeavour and endurance,’ ? 


But set the good beside the evil; put down virtues beside vices! These 
sceptics believed in demonstrated truth, and would have her alone 
for mistress. These logicians founded society only on justice, and 
risked their lives rather than renounce an established theorem. These 
epicureans embraced in their sympathies entire humanity. These furious 
men, these workmen, these hungry, threadbare peasants, fought in the 
van for humanitarian interests and abstract principles. Generosity and 
enthusiasm abounded in France, as well as in England; acknowledge 
them under a form which is not English. These men were devoted to 
abstract truth, as the Puritan to divine truth; they followed philosophy, 
as the Puritans followed religion ; they had for their aim universal sal- 





1 The French Revolution, i. bk. vi. ch. i. ; Make the Constitution. ? Ibid. i. 


474 fh) " MODERN AUTHORS. = _[BooK v. 


vation, as the Puritans had individual salvation. They fought against 
evil in society, as the Puritans fought it in the soul. They were gene- 
rous, as the Puritans were virtuous. They had, like them, a heroism, 
but sympathetic, sociable, ready to proselytise, which reformed Europe, 
whilst the English one only served England. 


VI. 


This extravagant Puritanism, which revolted Carlyle against the 
French Revolution, revolts him against modern England: 


‘We have forgotten God ;—in the most modern dialect and very truth of the 
matter, we have taken up the Fact of this Universe as it is not. We have quietly 
closed our eyes to the eternal Substance of things, and opened them only to the 
Shows and Shams of things. We quietly believe this Universe to be intrinsically 
a great unintelligible PerHApPs ; extrinsically, clear enough, it is a great, most 
extensive Cattlefold and Workhouse, with most extensive Kitchen-ranges, Dining- 
tables,—whereat he is wise who can find a place! All the Truth of this Universe 
is uncertain ; only the profit and loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and 
remain very visible to the practical man. 

‘ There is no longer any God for us! God’s Laws are become a Greatest-Happi- 
ness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency ; the Heavens overarch us only as an 
Astronomical Time-keeper ; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to 
shoot sentimentalities at:—in our and old Jonson’s dialect, man has lost the soul 
out of him ; and now, after the due period,—begins to find the want of it! This is 
verily the plague-spot ; centre of the universal Social Gangrene, threatening all 
modern things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the 
stem, with its roots and taproot, with its world-wide upas-boughs and accursed 
poison-exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. 
You touch the focal-centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, 
when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion ; there is no God ; man has 
lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing Kings, in 
passing Reform bills, in French Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found 
noremedy. ‘The foul elephantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, reappears in new 
force and desperateness next hour.’! 


Since the return of the Stuarts, we are utilitarians or sceptics. We 
believe only in observation, statistics, gross and concrete truths; or 
else we doubt, half believe, on hearsay, with reserve. We have no 
moral convictions, and we have only floating convictions. We have 
lost the mainspring of action; we no longer set duty in the midst of our 
resolve, as the sole and undisturbed foundation of life; we are caught 
by all kinds of little experimental and positive receipts, and we amuse 
ourselves with all kinds of pretty pleasures, well chosen and arranged. 
We are egotists or dilettanti. We no longer look on life as an august 
temple, but: as a machine for solid profits, or asa hall for refined 
amusements. We have our rich, our working-classes, our bankers, who 
preach the gospel of gold ; we have gentlemen, dandies, lords, who preach 
the gospel of manners. We overwork ourselves to heap up guineas, 





1 Past and Present, bk. iii. ch. i. ; Phenomena, 












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CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY—CARLYLE. 475 


or else we make ourselves insipid to attain an elegant dignity. Our 
hell is no longer, as under Cromwell, the dread of being found guilty 
before the just Judge, but the dread of making a bad speculation, or 
of transgressing etiquette. We have for our aristocracy greedy shop- 
keepers, who reduce life to a calculation of profits and prices; and idle 
amateurs, whose great business is to preserve the game on their estates. 
We are no longer governed. Our government has no other ambition 
than-to preserve the public peace, and to get in the taxes. Our con- 
stitution lays it down as a principle, that, in order to discover the true 
and the good, we have only to make two million imbeciles vote. Our 
Parliament is a great word-mill, where plotters out-bawl each other for 
the sake of making a noise.’ } 

Under this thin cloak of conventionalities and phrases, ominously 
growls the irresistible democracy, England perishes if she ever ceases 
to be able to sell a yard of cotton at a farthing less than others. At 
the least check in the manufactures, 1,500,000 workmen,’ without 
work, live upon public charity. The formidable masses, given up to 
the hazards of industry, urged by lust, impelled by hunger, oscillates 
between the fragile cracking barriers; we are nearing the final 
breaking-up, which will be open anarchy, and the democracy will heave 
amidst the ruins, until the sentiment of the divine and of duty has 
rallied them around the worship of heroism ; until it has discovered the 
means of calling to power the most virtuous and the most capable ; * 
until it has given its guidance into their hands, instead of making them 
subject to its caprices; until it has recognised and reverenced its 
Luther and its Cromwell, its priest and its king. 





1 «Tt is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man 
that said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, 
now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued, and waxing daily, has got 
to such a height ; and that the one method of staving off the fatal consummation, 
and steering towards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of 
reforming Parliament, but of what he calls reforming Downing Street ; a thing 
infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be strenuously carried on. To find a Parlia- 
ment more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the People 
chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not this at all; 
but to find some sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve 
for the People, if not their spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they 
would at last find to have been their instinctive will,—which is a far different 
matter usually, in this babbling world of ours.’—Parliaments, in Latter-Day 
Pamphlets. 

‘ A king or leader, then, in all bodies of men, there must be ; be their work 
what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, position, is fittest 
of all to do it. 

‘ He who is to be my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen 
forme in Heaven. Neither, except in such obedience to the Heaven-chosen, is 
freedom so much as conceivable.’ 

* Official Report, 1842. % Latier-Day Pamphicts ; Parliaments. 


476 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


VII. 


Now-a-days, doubtless, in the whole civilised world, democracy is 
swelling or overflowing, and all the channels in which it flows, are fra- 
gile or temporary. But it is a strange offer to present for its issue the 
fanaticism and tyranny of the Puritans. The society and spirit which 
Carlyle proposes, as models for human nature, lasted but an hour, and 
could not last longer. The asceticism of the Republic produced the 
debauchery of the Restoration ; the Harrisons brought the Rochesters, 
the Bunyans raised the Hobbes’ ; and the sectarians, in instituting the 
despotism of enthusiasm, established by reaction the authority of the 
positive mind and the worship of gross pleasure. Exaltation is not 
stable, and it cannot be exacted from man, without injustice and 
danger. The sympathetic generosity of the French Revolution ended 
in the cynicism of the Directory and the slaughters of the Empire. 
The chivalric and poetic piety of the great Spanish monarchy emptied 
Spain of men and of thoughts. The primacy of genius, taste, and in- 
tellect in Italy, reduced her at the end of a century to voluptuous sloth 
and political slavery. ‘What makes the angel makes the beast;’ and 
perfect -heroism, like all excesses, ends in stupor. Human nature has 
its explosions, but with intervals: mysticism is serviceable but when 
it is short. Violent circumstances produce extreme conditions; great 
evils are necessary in order to raise great men, and you are obliged to 
look for shipwrecks when you wish to behold rescuers. If enthusiasm 
is beautiful, its results and its origins are sad; it is but a crisis, and 
a healthy state is better. In this respect Carlyle himself may serve 
for a proof, There is perhaps less genius in Macaulay than in Carlyle ; 
but when we have fed-for some time on this exaggerated and demoniac 
style, this marvellous and sickly philosophy, this contorted and pro- 
phetic history, these sinister and furious politics, we gladly return to 
the continuous eloquence, to the vigorous reasoning, to the moderate 
prognostications, to the demonstrated theories, of the generous and solid 
mind which Europe has just lost, who brought honour to England, and 
whose place none can fill, 











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III. 


PHILOSGPHY—STUART MILL. 477 


CHAPTER V. 
Philosophy.—Stuart Mill. 


Philosophy in England—Organisation of positive science—Lack of general 
ideas. 

Why metaphysics are wanting—Authority of Religion. 

Indications and splendour of free thought—New exegesis—Stuart Mill— 
His works—His order of mind—To what school of philosophers he belongs 
—Value of higher speculation in human civilisation. 


§ 1.—ExposiTIon oF Mitu’s Puitosorny: 

Object of logic—Wherein it is distinguished from psychology and meta- 
physics. 

What is a judgment?— What do we know of the external and inner 
worlds ?—The whole object of science is to add or connect facts. 

The system based on this view of the nature of our knowledge. 

Theory of definitions—Its importance—Refutation of the old theory—There 
are no definitions of things, but of names only. 

Theory of proof—Ordinary theory—Its refutation—What is the really 
fundamental part of a syllogism ? 

Theory of axioms—Ordinary theory—Its refutation—Axioms are only truths 
of experience of a certain class. 

Theory of induction—The cause of a fact is only its invariable antecedent 
—Experience alone proves the stability of the laws of nature—What is a 
law !—By what methods are laws discovered ?—The methods of agreement, 
of differences, of residues, of concomitant variations. 

Examples and applications—Theory of dew. 

Deduction—Its province and method. 

Comparison of the methods of induction and deduction—Ancient employ- 
ment of the first—Modern use of the second—Sciences requiring the first 
—Sciences requiring the second—Positive character of Mill’s work—His 
predecessors. 

Limits of our knowledge—It is not certain that all events happen according 
to laws—Chance in nature. 


§ 2.—DIscussIoNn. 


. Agreement of this philosophy with the English mind—Alliance of the 


positive and religious spirits—By what faculty we arrive at the know- 
ledge of causation. 

There are no substances or forces, but only facts and laws—Abstraction— 
Its nature—Its part in science, 

Theory of definitions—They explain the abstract generating elements of 
things. 


478 - MODERN AUTHORS. : [BOOK V. 


IV. Theory of proof—The basis of proof in syllogism is an. abstract law. 
V. Theory of axioms—Axioms are relations between abstract truths—They 
may be reduced to the axiom of identity. 
VI. Theory of induction—Its methods are of elimination or abstraction. 

VII. The two great operations of the mind, experience and abstraction—The two 
great manifestations of things, sensible facts and abstract laws—Why we 
ought to pass from the first to the second—Meaning and extent of the 
axiom of causation. 

VIII. It is possible to arrive at the knowledge of first elements—Error of German 
metaphysicians—They have neglected the element of chance, and of local 
perturbations—What might be known by a philosophising ant — Idea 
and limits of metaphysics—Its state in the three thinking nations—A 
morning in Oxford.! 


I. 


HEN at Oxford some years ago, during the meeting of the British 
Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, 

a young Englishman, a man of intelligence, with whom I became inti- 
mate. He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with 





1M. Taine has published this ‘Study on Mill’ separately, and preceded it by 
the following note, as a preface :—‘ When this Study first appeared, Mr. Mill did 
me the honour to write to me that it would not be possible to give in a few pages a 
more exact and complete notion of the contents of his work, considered as a body 
of philosophical teaching. ‘‘ But,” he added, ‘‘I think you are wrong in regard- 
ing the views I adopt as especially English. They were so in the first half of the 
eighteenth century, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction against Hume. 
This reaction, beginning in Scotland, assumed long ago the German form, and 
ended by prevailing universally. When I wrote my book, I stood almost alone in 
my opinions ; and though they have met with a degree of sympathy which I by no 
means expected, we may still count in England twenty @ priori and spiritualist 
philosophers for every partisan of the doctrine of Experience.” 

‘This remark is very true. I myself could have made it, having been brought 
up in the doctrines of Scotch philosophy and the writings of Reid. I simply 
answer, that there are philosophers whom we do not count, and that all such, 
whether English or not, spiritualist or not, may be neglected without much harm. 
Once in a half century, or perhaps in a century, or two centuries, some thinker 
appears ; Bacon and Hume in England, Descartes and Condillac in France, Kant 
and Hegel in Germany. At other times the stage is unoccupied, or ordinary men 
come forward, and offer the public that which the public likes—Sensualists or 
Idealists, according to the tendency of the day, with sufficient instruction and skill 
to play leading parts, and enough capacity to re-set old airs, well drilled in the 
works of their predecessors, but destitute of real invention—simple executant 
musicians, who stand in the place of composers. In Europe, at present, the stage 
isa blank. The Germans adapt and alter effete French materialism. The French 
listen from habit, but somewhat wearily and distractedly, to the scraps of melody 


and eloquent commonplace which their instructors have repeated to them for the 


last thirty years. In this deep silence, and from among-these dull mediocrities, a 
master comes forward to speak. Nothing of the sort has been seen since Hegel.’ 


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CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 479 


specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery 
were set to work; ladies were present and took an interest in the ex- 
periments; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, God save the Queen was 


sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organisation of 


science, these voluntary subscriptions, this aptitude for association and 
for labour, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well 
fitted to accumulate, criticise, and classify facts, But yet, in this abun- 
dance, there was a void; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was 
present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned men 
verified details and exchanged recipes. It was as though I listened to 
foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather or 
dyeing cotton: general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my 
friend; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which 
the university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons, 


5%; 


One day I said to him: You lack philosophy—I mean, what the 
Germans call metaphysics. You have learned men, but you have no 
thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and 
you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for him, He is the most 
important personage in England, and I see clearly that he merits his 
position; for he forms part of your constitution, he is the guardian of 
your morality, he judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, 
he replaces with advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom the 
nations on the Continent are still encumbered. Yet, this high rank has 
the inconvenience of all official positions ; it produces a cant, prejudices, 
intolerance, and courtiers. Here, close by us, is poor Mr. Max Miiller, 
who, in order to acclimatise the study of Sanscrit, was compelled to 
discover in the Vedas the worship of a moral God, that is to say, the 
religion of Paley and Addison. Some time ago, in London, I read a 
proclamation of the Queen, forbidding people to play cards, even in 
their own houses, on Sundays. It seems that, if I were robbed, I could 
not bring my thief to justice without taking a preliminary religious 
oath ; for the judge has been known to send a complainant away who 
refused to take the oath, deny him justice, and insult him into the bar- 
gain. Every year, when we read the Queen’s speech in your papers, 
we find there the compulsory mention of Divine Providence, which 
comes in mechanically, like the apostrophe to the immortal gods on the 


_ fourth page of a rhetorical declamation; and you remember that once, 


the pious phrase having been .omitted, a second communication was 
made to Parliament for the express purpose of supplying it. All these 
cavillings and pedantry indicate to my mind a celestial monarchy ; 
naturally it resembles all others; I mean that it relies more will- 
ingly on tradition and custom than on examination and reason. A 
monarchy never invited men to verify its credentials, As yours is, 


howeyer, useful, well adapted to you, and moral, you are not revolted 


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480 MODERN AUTHORS. — [BOOK V. 


by it; you submit to it without difficulty, you are, at heart, attached 
to it; you would fear, in touching it, to disturb the constitution and 
morality. You leave it in the clouds, amidst public homage. You 
fall back upon yourselves, confine yourselves to matters of fact, to 
minute’ dissections, to experiments in the laboratory. You go culling 
plants and collecting shells. Science is deprived of its head ; but all-is 
for the best, for practical life is improved, and dogma remains intact. 


Il. 


You are truly French, he answered ; you leap over facts, and all at 
once find yourself settled in a theory. I assure you that there are 
thinkers amongst us, and not far from hence, at Christ Church, for 
instance. One of them, the professor of Greek, has spoken so deeply on 
inspiration, the creation and final causes, that he is out of favour. Look 
at this little collection which has recently appeared, Essays and Reviews ; 
your philosophic freedom of the last century, the latest conclusions of 
geology and cosmogony, the boldness of German exegesis, are here in 
abstract. Some things are wanting, amongst others the waggeries of 
Voltaire, the misty jargon of Germany, and the prosaic coarseness of 
Comte; to my mind, the loss is small. Wait twenty years, and you 





will find in London the ideas of Paris and Berlin.—But they will still — : 


be the ideas of Paris and Berlin. Whom have you that is original ?— 
Stuart Mill—Who is he ?—A political writer: His little book On 
Liberty is as admirable as Rousseau’s Contrat Social is bad.—That is a 
bold assertion.—No, for Mill decides as strongly for the independence 
of the individual as Rousseau for the despotism of the State.—Very 
well, but that is not enough to make a philosopher. What besides is 
he ?—An economist who goes beyond his science, and subordinates 
production to man, instead of man to production.—Well, but this is 
not enough to make a philosopher. Is he anything else ?—A logician. 
Very good; but of what school ?—Of his own. I told you he was 
original.—Is he Hegelian ?—By no means; he is too fond of facts and 
proofs.—Does he follow Port-Royal ?—Still less; he is too well ac- 
quainted with modern sciences.—Does he imitate Condillac ?—Certainly 
not; Condillac has only taught him to write well.— Who, then, are his 
friends ?—Locke and Comte in the first rank; then Hume and Newton. 
—Is he a system-monger, a speculative reformer ?—He has too much 
sense for that; he only arranges the best. theories, and explains the 
best methods. He does not attitudinise majestically in the character 
of a restorer of science; he does not declare, like your Germans, that 
his book will open up a new era for humanity. He proceeds gradually, 
somewhat slowly, often creepingly, through a multitude of particular 
facts. He excels in giving precision to an idea, in disentangling a 
principle, in discovering it amongst a number of different facts; in 
refuting, distinguishing, arguing. He has the astuteness, patience, 
method, and sagacity of a lawyer.—Very well, you admit that I was 








. . 
-. ban 


_ CHAP, V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 481. 


right. A lawyer, an ally of Locke, Newton, Comte, and Hume; we 
have here only English philosophy; but no matter. Has he reached 
a grand conception of the universe ?—-Yes.—Has he an individual and 
complete idea of nature and the mind ?—Yes.—Has he combined the 
operations and discoveries of the intellect under a single principle 
which puts them all in a new light?—Yes; but we have to discover 
this principle-—That is your business, and I hope you will undertake 
it.—But I shall fall into abstract generalities. —There is no harm in that ? 
—But this close reasoning will be like a quick-set hedge.—We will 
prick our fingers with it. But three men out of four would cast aside 
such speculations as idle-—So much the worse for them. For in what 
does the life of a nation or a century consist, except in the formation 
of such theories? We are not thoroughly men unless so engaged. 
If some dweller in another planet were to come down here to ask us 
the nature of our race, we should have to show him the five or six 
great ideas which we have formed of the mind and the world. That 
alone would give him the measure of our intelligence. Expound to 
me your theory, and I shall go away better instructed than after having 
seen the masses of brick, which you call London and Manchester. 


1.—ExXPERIENCE. 


I, 


Let us begin, then, at the beginning, like logicians. Mill has written 
on logic. What is logic? It isascience. What.is its object? The 
sciences ; for, suppose that you have traversed the universe, and that 
you know it thoroughly, stars, earth, sun, heat, gravity, chemical 


affinities, the species of minerals, geological revolutions, plants, animals, 


human events, all that classifications and theories explain and embrace, 
there still remain these classifications and theories to be learnt. Not 
only is there an order of beings, but also an order of the thoughts 
which represent them ; not only plants and animals, but also botany 
and zoology ; not only lines, surfaces, volumes, and numbers, but also 
geometry and arithmetic. Sciences, then, are as real things as facts 
themselves, and therefore, as well as facts, become the subject of study. 
We can analyse them as we analyse facts, investigate their elements, 
composition, order, relations, and object. There is, therefore, a science } 
of sciences; this science is called logic, and is the subject of Mill’s work, 


It is no part of logic to analyse the operations of the mind, memory, 


the association of ideas, external perception, etc.; that is the business 
of psychology. We do not discuss the value of such operations, the 
veracity of our consciousness, the absolute certainty of our elementary 
knowledge ; this belongs to metaphysics. We suppose our faculties 
to be at work, and we admit their primary discoveries. We take the 
instrument as nature has provided it, and we trust to its accuracy, 
We leave to others the task of taking its mechanism to pieces, and the 
VOL. IL . 2H 


SS Ser ey 





482 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK W. 


curiosity which criticises its results. Setting out from its primitive 
operations, we enquire how they are added to each other; how they 
are combined; how one is convertible into another; how, by dint of 
additions, combinations, and transformations, they finally compose a 
system of connected and increasing truths. We construct a theory of 
science, as others construct theories of vegetation, of the mind, or of 
numbers. Such is the idea of logic; and it is plain that it has, as 
other sciences, a real subject-matter, its distinct province, its manifest 
importance, its special method, and a certain future. 


II. 


Having premised so much, we observe that all these sciences which 
form the subject of logic, are but collections of propositions, and that 
each proposition merely connects or separates a subject and an attribute, 
that is, two names, a quality and a substance; that is to say, a thing 
and another thing. We must then ask what we understand by a thing, 
what we indicate by a name; in other words, what it is we recognise 
in objects, what we connect or separate, what is the subject-matter of 
all our propositions and all our science. There is a point in which all 
our several items of knowledge resemble one another. There is a 
common element which, continually repeated, constitutes all our ideas, 
There is, as it were, a minute primitive crystal which, indefinitely and 
variously added to itself, forms the whole mass, and which, once known, 
teaches us beforehand the laws and composition of the complex bodies 
which it has formed. 

Now, when we attentively consider the idea which we form of any- 
thing, what do we find in it? Take first substances, that is to say, 
Bodies and Minds. This table is brown, long, wide, three feet high, 
judging by the eye: that is, it forms a little spot in the field of vision; 
in other words, it produces a certain sensation on the optic nerve. It — 
weighs ten pounds: that is, it would require to lift it an effort less 
than for a weight of eleven pounds, and greater than for a weight of 





1 * Tt is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body consists of the notion 
of a number of sensations of our own or of other sentient beings, habitually occur- 
ring simultaneously. My conception of the table at which I am writing is com- 
pounded of its visible form and size, which are complex sensations of sight ; its 
tangible form and size, which are complex sensations of our organs of touch and 
of our muscles ; its weight, which is also a sensation of touch and of the muscles ; 
its colour, which is a-sensation of sight ; its hardness, which is a sensation of the 
muscles ; its composition, which is another word for all the varieties of sensation 
which we receive, under various circumstances, from the wood of which it is made ; 
and so forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently are, and, as we 
learn by experience, always might be, experienced simultaneously, or in many 
different orders of succession, at our own choice: and hence the thought of any 
one of them makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes mentally amal- 
gamated into one mixed state of consciousness, which, in the language of Locke and ~ 


Hartley, is termed a Complex Idea.’—Mu11’s System of Logic, 4th ed. 2 vols., i. 62. 









red ae 


q 
q 
a 
% 
t 


CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 483 


nine pounds; in other words, it produces a certain muscular sensation. 
It is hard and square, which means that, if first pushed, and then run 
over by the hand, it will excite two distinct kinds of muscular sensa- 
tions. And soon. When I examine closely what I know of it, I find 
that I know nothing else except the impressions it makes upon me, 
Our idea of a body comprises nothing else than this: we know nothing 
of it but the sensations it excites in us; we determine it by the nature, 
number, and order of these sensations ; we know nothing of its inner 
nature, nor whether it has one; we simply affirm that it is the un- 
known cause of these sensations. When we say that a body has 
existed in the absence of our sensations, we mean simply that if, during 
that time, we had been within reach of it, we should have had sensa- 
tions which we have not had. We never define it save by our present 
or past, future or possible, complex or simple impressions, This is so 
true, that philosophers like Berkeley have maintained, with some show 
of truth, that matter is a creature of the imagination, and that the 
whole universe of sense is. reducible to an order of sensations. It is at 
least so, as far as our knowledge is concerned; and the judgments which 
compose our sciences, have reference only to the impressions by which 
things are manifested to us. 

So, again, with the mind. We may well admit that there is in us a 
soul, an ‘ ego,’ a subject or recipient of our sensations, and of our other 
modes of being, distinct from those sensations and modes of existence ; 
but we know nothing of it, Mr, Mill says: 

‘ For, as our conception of a body is that of an unknown exciting cause of sen- 
sations, so our conception of a mind is.that of an unknown recipient, or percipient, 
of them ; and not of them alone, but of all our other feelings. As body is the 
mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious 
something which feels, and thinks. It is unnecessary to give in the case of mind, 
as we gave in the case of matter, a particular statement of the sceptical system by 
which its existence as a Thing in itself, distinct from the series of what are deno- 
minated its states, is called in question. But it is necessary to remark, that on 
the inmost nature of the thinking principle, as well as on the inmost nature of 
matter, we are, and with our faculties must always remain, entirely in the dark. 
All which we are aware of, even in our own minds, is a certain ‘‘ thread of con- 
sciousness ;” a series of feelings, that is, of sensations, thoughts, emotions, and 
volitions, more or less numerous and complicated.’ + 


We have no clearer idea of mind than of matter; we can say nothing 
more about it than about matter. So that substances, of whatever 
kind, bodies or minds, within or without us, are never for us more than 
tissues, more or less complex, more or less regular, of which our im- 
pressions and modes of being form all the threads. 

This is still more evident in the case of attributes than of substances. 
When I say: that snow is white, I mean that, when snow is presented 
to my sight, I have the sensation of whiteness. When I say that fire 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 68, 


484 ae MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


is hot, I mean that, when near the fire; I have the sensation of heat. 
We call a mind devout, superstitious, meditative, or gay, simply mean- 
ing that the ideas, the emotions, the volitions, designated by these 
words, recur frequently in the series of its modes of being. When we 
say that bodies are heavy, divisible, moveable, we mean simply that, 
left to themselves, they will fall; when cut, they will separate; or when 
pushed, they will move: that is, under such and such circumstances 
they will produce such and such a sensation in our muscles, or our 
sight. An attribute always designates a mode of being, or a series of 
our modes of being. In vain we disguise these modes by grouping, 
concealing them under abstract words, dividing and transforming them, 
so that we are frequently puzzled to recognise them: whenever we 
look at the bottom of our words and ideas, we find them, and sii 
but them. Mill says: - 


‘Take the following example: A generous person is worthy of honour. Who 
would expect to recognise here a case of coexistence between phenomena? But so 
itis. The attribute which causes a person to be termed generous, is ascribed to 
him on the ground of states of his mind, and particulars of his conduct ; both are 
phenomena ; the former are facts of internal consciousness, the latter, so far as 
distinct from the former, are physical facts, or perceptions of the senses. Worthy 
of honour, admits of a similar analysis. Honour, as here used, means a state of 
approving and admiring emotion, followed on occasion by corresponding outward 
acts. ‘*Worthy of honour” connotes all this, together with an approval of the act 





1 « Every attribute of a mind consists either in being itself affected in a certain 
way, or affecting other minds in a certain way. Considered in itself, we can pre- 
dicate nothing of it but the series of its own feelings. When we say of any mind, 
that it is devout, or superstitious, or meditative, or cheerful, we mean that the 
ideas, emotions, or volitions implied in those words, form a frequently recurring 
part of the series of feelings, or states of consciousness, which fill up the sentient 
existence of that mind. 

‘In addition, however, to those attributes of a mind which are grounded on its 
own states of feeling, attributes may also be ascribed to it, in the same manner as 
to a body, grounded on the feelings which it excites in other minds. A mind does 
not, indeed, like a body, excite sensations, but it may excite thoughts or emotions. 
The most important example of attributes ascribed on this ground, is the employ- 
ment of terms expressive of approbation or blame. When, for example, we say of 
any character, or (in other words) of any mind, that it is admirable, we mean that 
the contemplation of it excites the sentiment of admiration ; and indeed somewhat 
more, for the word implies that we not only feel admiration, but approve that sen- 
timent in ourselves. In some cases, under the semblance of a single attribute, 
two are really predicated : one of them, a state of the mind itself; the other, a state 
with which other minds are affected by thinking of it. As when we say of any 
one that he is generous. The word generosity expresses a certain state of mind, but 
being aterm of praise, it also expresses that this state-of mind excites in us another 
mental state, called approbation. The assertion made, therefore, is twofold, and 
of the following, purport: Certain feelings form habitually a part of this person’s 
sentient existence ; and the idea of those feelings of his, excites the sentiment of 
approbation in ourselves or others.’-—MILL’s Logic, i. 80. 








ed , 7 .* 





- CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 485 


of showing honour. All these are phenomena; states of internal consciousness, 
accompanied or followed by physical facts. When we say, A generous person is 
worthy of honour, we affirm coexistence between the two complicated phenomena 
connoted by the two terms respectively. We affirm, that wherever and whenever 
the inward feelings and outward facts implied in the word generosity, have place, 
then and there the existence and manifestation of an inward feeling, honour, would 
be followed in our minds by another inward feeling, approval.’ ? 


In vain we turn about as we please, we remain still in the same circle. 
Whether the object be an attribute or a substance, complex or abstract, 
compound or simple, its material is to us always the same; it is made up 
only of our modes of being. Our mind is to nature what a thermometer 
is to a boiler: we define the properties of nature by the impressions of 
our mind, as we indicate the conditions of the boiling water by the 
changes of the thermometer. Of both we know but conditions and 
changes; we make up both of isolated and transient facts; a thing is 
for us but an aggregate of phenomena. These are the sole elements of 
our knowledge: consequently the whole effort of science will be to add 
or to link facts to facts. 


TI. 


This brief phrase is the abstract of the whole system. Let us 
master it, for it explains all Mill’s theories. He has defined and inno- 
vated everything from this starting-point. In all forms and all degrees 
of knowledge, he has recognised only the knowledge of facts, and of 
their relations. 

Now we know that logic has two corner-stones, the Theories of 
Definition and of Proof. From the days of Aristotle logicians have 
spent their time in polishing them. They have only dared to touch 
them respectfully, as if they were sacred. At most, from time to time, 
some innovator ventured to turn them over cautiously, to put them in 
a better light. Mill shapes, cuts, turns them over, and replaces them 
both in a similar manner and by the same means. 


IV. 


I am quite aware that now-a-days men laugh at those who reason 

on definitions; the laughers deserve to be laughed at. There is no 
theory more fertile in universal and important results; it is the root by 
which the whole tree of human science grows and lives. For to define 
things is to mark out their nature. To introduce a new idea of defini- 
tion is to introduce a new idea of the nature of things; it is to tell us 
what beings are, of what they are composed, into what elements they 
are capable of being resolved. In this lies the merit of these dry. 
speculations; the philosopher seems occupied with arranging mere 
formulas ; the fact is, that in them he encloses the universe. 
Take, say logicians, an animal, a plant, a feeling, a geometrical, 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 110. 


= 


486 _ MODERN AUTHORS. [BooK v. - 


figure, an object or group of objects of any kind. Doubtless the object 
has its properties, but it has also its essence. It is manifested to the 
outer world by an indefinite number of effects and qualities; but all 
these modes of being are the results or products of its inner nature. 
There is within it a certain hidden substratum which alone is primitive 
and important, without which it can neither exist nor be conceived, 
and which constitutes its being and our notion of it.» They call the 
propositions which denote this essence definitions, and assert that the 
best part of our knowledge consists of such propositions. 

On the other hand, Mill says that these kinds of propositions teach 
us nothing ; they show the mere sense of a word, and are purely verbal.” 
What do I learn by being told that man is a rational animal, or that a 
triangle is a space contained by three lines? The first part of such a 
phrase expresses by an abbreviative word what the second part expresses 
in a developed phrase. You tell me the same thing twice over; you 
put the same fact into two different expressions; you do not add one 
fact to another, but you go from one fact to its equivalent. Your pro- 
position is not instructive. You might collect a million such, my mind 
would remain entirely void ; I should have read a dictionary, but not have 
acquired a single piece of knowledge. Instead of saying that essential 
propositions are important, and those relating to qualities merely acces- 
sory, you ought to say that the first are accessory, and the second 
important. I learn nothing by being told that a circle is a figure 
formed by the revolution of a straight line about one of its points as 
centre; I do learn something when told that the chords which subtend 
equal arcs in the circle are themselves equal, or that three given points 
determine the circumference. "What we call the nature of a being is 
the connected system of facts which constitute that being. The nature 
of a carnivorous mammal consists in the fact that the property of giving 
milk, and all its implied peculiarities of structure, are combined with 
the possession of sharp teeth, instincts of prey, and the corresponding 
faculties. Such are the elements which compose its nature. They are 
facts linked together as mesh to mesh in a net. We perceive a few of 





1 According to idealist logicians, this being is arrived at by examining our 
notion of it; and the idea, on analysis, reveals the essence. According to the 
classifying school, we arrive at the being by placing the object in its group, and the 
notion is defined by stating the genus and the difference, Both agree in believing 
that we are capable of grasping the essence. 

2 * An essential proposition, then, is one which is purely verbal ; which asserts 
of a thing under a particular name, only what is asserted of it in the fact of calling 
it by that name; and which therefore either, gives no information, or gives it 
respecting the name, not the thing. Non-essential or accidental propositions, on 
the contrary, may be called Real Propositions, in opposition to Verbal. They pre- 
dicate of a thing, some fact not involved in the signification of the name by which 
the proposition speaks of it ; some attribute not connoted by that name.’—MILL’s 
Logic, i. 127, 





—— ee om 


> 


CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 487 


them; and we know that, beyond our present knowledge and our future 
experience, the network extends to infinitely its interwoven and mani- 
fold threads. The essence or nature of a being is the indefinite sum 
of its properties. Mill says: 

‘The definition, they say, unfolds the nature of the thing: but no definition 
can unfold its whole nature ; and every proposition in which any quality whatever 
is predicated of the thing, unfolda some part of its nature. The true state of the 
_ case we take to be this. All definitions are of names, and of names only ; but in 
some definitions it is clearly apparent, that nothing is intended except to explain 
the meaning of the word ; while in others, besides explaining the meaning of the 
word, it is intended to be implied that there exists a thing, corresponding to the 
word.’ + 


Abandon, then, the vain hope of eliminating from properties some primi- 
tive and mysterious being, the source and abstract of the whole; leave 
entities to Duns Scotus; do not fancy that, by probing your ideas in the 
German fashion, by classifying objects according to genera and species 
like the schoolmen, by reviving the nominalism of the Middle Ages or 
the riddles of Hegelian metaphysics, you will ever supply the want of 
experience, There are no definitions of things ; if there are definitions, 
they only define names. No phrase can tell me what a horse is; but 
there are phrases which will inform me what is meant by these five letters. 
No phrase can exhaust the inexhaustible sum of qualities which make 
up a being; but several phrases may point out the facts corresponding 
to a word. In this case definition is possible, because we can always 
make an analysis, which will enable us to pass from the abstract and 
summary term to the attributes which it represents, and from these 
attributes to the inner or concrete feelings which constitute their foun- 
dation. From the term ‘dog’ it enables us to rise to the attributes 
‘mammiferous,’ ‘ carnivorous,’ and others which it represents; and from 
these attributes to the sensations of sight, of touch, of the dissecting 
knife, on which they are founded. It reduces the compound to the 
simple, the derived to the primitive. It brings back our knowledge to 
its origin. It transforms words into facts. If some definitions, such 
as those of geometry, seem capable of giving rise to long sequences of 
new truths,’ it is because, in addition to the explanation of a word, 
1 they contain the affirmation of a thing. In the definition of a triangle 





ee 5 ee 








1 Mill’s Logic, i. 162. 

2 <The definition above given of a triangle obviously comprises not one, but two 
propositions, perfectly distinguishable. The one is, ‘‘ There may exist a figure 
bounded by three straight lines ;” the other, ‘* And this figure may be termed a 
triangle.” The former of these propositions is not a definition at all ; the latter is 
a mere nominal definition, or explanation of the use and application of a term. 
The first is susceptible of truth or falsehood, and may therefore be made the 
foundation of a train of reasoning. Theo latter can neither be true nor false ; the 
only character it is susceptible of is that of conformity to the ordinary usage of 
language,’—Mi1’s Logic, i. 162. 





488 _ MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v, 


there are two distinct propositions,—the one stating that ‘there may 
exist a figure bounded by three straight lines ;’ the other, that ‘ such a 
figure may be termed a triangle.’ The first is a postulate, the second a 
definition. The first is hidden, the second evident; the first may be 
true or false, the second can be neither. The first is the source of all 
possible theorems as to triangles, the second only resumes in a word the 
facts contained in the other. The first is a truth, the second is a con- 
vention ; the first is a part of science, the second an expedient of lan- 
guage. The first expresses a possible relation between three straight 
lines, the second gives a name to this relation. The first alone is 
fruitful, because jt alone conforms to the nature of every fruitful 
proposition, and connects two facts. Let us, then, understand exactly 
_ the nature of our knowledge: it relates either to words or to things, or 
to both at once. If it is a matter of words, as in the definition of 
names, it attempts to refer words to our primitive feelings, that is to 
say, to the facts which form their elements. If it relates to beings, as 
in propositions about things, its whole effort is to link fact to fact, in 
order to connect the finite number of known properties with the infinite 
number to be known. If both are involved, as in the definitions of 
names which conceal a proposition relating to things, it attempts to do 


both. Everywhere its operation is the same. The whole matter in 


any case is either to understand each other,—that is, to revert to facts, 
or to learn,—that is, to add facts to facts. 


Vv. 


The first rampart is destroyed; our adversaries take refuge behind 
the second—the Theory of Proof. This theory has passed for two 
thousand years for an acquired, definite, unassailable truth. Many 
have deemed it useless, but no one has dared to call it false. On all 
sides it has been considered as an established theorem. Let us examine 


it closely and attentively. What is a proof? According to logicians, . 


it is a syllogism. And what is a syllogism? A group of three pro- 
positions of this kind: ‘ All men are mortal; Prince Albert is a man; 
therefore Prince Albert is mortal.’ Here we have the type of a proof, 
and every complete proof is conformable to this type. Now what is 
there, according to logicians, in this proof? A general proposition 
concerning all men, which gives rise to a particular proposition con- 
cerning a certain man. From the first we pass to the second, because 
the second is contained in the first ; from the general to the particular, 
because the particular is comprised in the general. The second is but 
an instance of the first ; its truth is contained beforehand in that of the 
first, and this is why it is a truth. In fact, as soon as the conclusion 
is no longer contained in the premises, the reasoning is false, and all 
the complicated rules of the Middle Ages have been reduced by the 





; 
4 
: 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 489 


Port-Royalists to this single rule, ‘The conclusion must be contained 
in the premises. Thus the whole process of the human mind in its 
reasonings consists in recognising in individuals what is known in the 
class; in affirming in detail what has been established for the aggre- 
gate; in laying down a second time, and instance by instance, what 
has been laid down once for all at first. 

By no means, replies Mill; for if it were so, our reasoning would 
be good for nothing. It is not a progress, but a repetition. When I 
have affirmed that all men are mortal, I have affirmed implicitly that 
Prince Albert is mortal. In speaking of the whole class, that is to say, 
of all the individuals of the class, I have spoken of each individual, and 
therefore of Prince Albert, who is one of them. I say nothing new, 
then, when I now mention him expressly. My conclusion teaches me 
' nothing; it adds nothing to my positive knowledge; it only puts in 
another shape a knowledge which I already possessed. It is not fruitful, 
but purely verbal. If, then, reasoning be what logicians represent it, 
it is not instructive. I know as much of the subject at the beginning 
of my reasoning as at the end. I have transformed words into other 
words; I have been moving without gaining ground. Now this cannot 
be the case; for, in fact, reasoning does teach us new truths. I learn 
a new truth when I discover that Prince Albert is mortal, and I discover 
it by dint of reasoning ; for, since he is still alive, I cannot have learnt 
it by direct observation. Thus logicians are mistaken; and beyond 
the scholastic theory of syllogism, which reduces reasoning to sub- 
stitutions of words, we must look for a positive theory of proof, 
which shall explain how it is that, by the process of reasoning, we 
discover facts. 

For this purpose, it is sufficient to observe, that general proposi- 
tions are not the true proof of particular propositions. They seem so, 
but are not. Itis not from the mortality of all men that I conclude 
Prince Albert to be mortal; the premises are elsewhere, and in the 
background. The general proposition is but a memento, a sort of abbre- 
viative register, to which I have consigned the fruit of my experience. 
This memento may be regarded as a notebook to which we refer to 
refresh our memory ; but it is not from the book that we draw our 
knowledge, but from the objects which we have seen. My memento 
is valuable only for the facts which it recalls. My general proposition 
has no value except for the particular facts which it sums up. 


* The mortality of John, Thomas, and company is, after all, the whole evidence 
we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to 
the proof by interpolating a general proposition. Since the individual cases are 
all the evidence we can possess, evidence which no logical form into which we 
choose to throw it can make greater than it is; and since that evidence is either 
sufficient in itself, or, if insufficient for the one purpose, cannot be sufficient for 
the other ; I am unable to see why we should be forbidden to take the shortest 


nm 


490 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


cut from these sufficient premises to the conclusion, and constrained to travel the 
‘*high priori road” by the arbitrary fiat of logicians.’+ 


‘The true reason which makes us believe that Prince Albert will die 
is, that his ancestors, and our ancestors, and all the other persons who 
were their contemporaries, are dead. These facts are the true premises 
of our reasoning.’ It is from them that we have drawn the general 
proposition; they have taught us its scope and truth; it confines 
itself to mentioning them in a shorter form ; it receives its whole sub- 
stance from them; they act by it and through it, to lead us to the 
conclusion to which it seems to give rise. It is only their representa- 
tive, and on occasion they do without it. Children, ignorant people, 
animals know that the sun will rise, that water will drown them, that 
fire will burn them, without employing this general proposition. They 
reason, and we reason, too, not from the general to the particular, but 
from particular to particular: 


‘ All inference is from particulars to particulars: General propositions are 
merely registers of such inferences already made, and short formule for making 
more: The major premiss of a syllogism, consequently, is a formula of this de- 
scription : and the conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an 
inference drawn according to the formula: the real logical antecedent, or premisses, 
being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by 
induction. Those facts, and the individual instances which supplied them, may 
have been forgotten ; but a record remains, not indeed descriptive of the facts 
themselves, but showing how those cases may be distinguished respecting which 
the facts, when known, were considered to warrant a given inference. According 
to the indications of this record we draw our conclusion ; which is, to all intents 
and purposes, a conclusion from the forgotten facts. For this it is essential that 
we should read the record correctly: and the rules of the syllogism are a set of 
precautions to ensure our doing so.’? 

‘If we had sufficiently capacious memories, and a sufficient power of maintain- 
ing order among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go on without any 
general propositions ; they are mere formule for inferring particulars from par- 
ticulars.’ * 


Here, as before, logicians are mistaken: they gave the highest place to 
verbal operations, and left the really fruitful operations in the back- 
ground. They gave the preference to words over facts. They carried 
on the nominalism of the Middle Ages. They mistook the explana- 
tion of names for the nature of things, and the transformation of ideas 
for the progress of the mind. It is for us to overturn this order in 
logic, as we have overturned it in science, to exalt particular and in- 
structive facts, and to give them in our theories that superiority and 
importance which our practice has conferred upon them for three 
centuries past. 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 211. 2 Ibid. i. 218, 3 Ibid, i, 240. 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 491 


VI. 


There remains a kind of philosophical fortress in which the Idealists 
have taken refuge. At the origin of all proof are Axioms, from which 
all proofs are derived. Two straight lines cannot enclose a space; two 
things, equal to a third, are equal to one another; if equals be added 
to equals, the wholes are equal. These are instructive propositions, for 
they express, not the meanings of words, but the relations of things. 
And, moreover, they are fertile propositions; for arithmetic, algebra, 
and geometry are all the result of their truth. On the other hand, 
they are not the work of experience, for we need not actually see with 
our eyes two straight lines in order to know that they cannot enclose a 
space ; it is enough for us to refer to the inner mental conception which 
we have of them: the evidence of our senses is not needed for this © 
purpose; our belief arises wholly, with its full force, from the simple 
comparison of our ideas. Moreover, experience follows these two lines 
only to.a limited distance, ten, a hundred, a thousand feet; and the 
axiom is true for a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million miles, and 
for an unlimited distance. Thus, beyond the point at which experience 
ceases, it is no longer experience which establishes the axiom. Finally, 
the axiom is a necessary truth; that is to say, the contrary is incon- 
ceivable. We cannot imagine a space enclosed by two straight lines : 
as soon as we imagine the space enclosed, the two lines cease to be 
straight ; and as soon as we imagine the two lines to be straight, the 
space ceases to be enclosed, In the assertion of axioms, the constituent 
ideas are irresistibly drawn together. In the negation of axioms, the 
constituent ideas inevitably repel each other. Now this does not 
happen with truths of experience: they state an accidental relation, 
not a necessary connection; they lay down that two facts are connected, 
and not that they must be connected; they show us that bodies are 
heavy, not that they must be heavy, Thus, axioms are not, and cannot 
be, the results of experience. They are not so, because we can form 
them mentally without the aid of experience; they cannot be so, be- 
cause the nature and scope of their truths lie without the limits of 
experimental truths. They have another and a deeper source. They 
have a wider scope, and they come from elsewhere. 

Not so, answers Mill. Here again you reason like a schoolman ; you 
forget the facts concealed behind your conceptions ; for examine your 
first argument. Doubtless you can discover, without making use of 
your eyes, and by purely mental contemplation, that two straight lines 
cannot enclose a space; but this contemplation is but a displaced ex- 
periment, Imaginary lines here replace real lines: you construct the 
figure in your mind instead of on paper; your imagination fulfils the 
office of a diagram on paper: you trust to it as you trust to the 
diagram, and it is as good as the other; for in regard to figures and 


492 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


lines the imagination exactly reproduces the sensation. What you have 
seen with your eyes open, you will see again exactly the same a minute 
afterwards with your eyes closed; and you can study geometrical pro- 
perties transferred to the field of mental vision, as accurately as if 
they existed in the field of actual sight. There are, therefore, experi- 
ments of the brain as there are ocular ones; and it is after just such an 
experiment that you deny to two straight lines, indefinitely prolonged, 
the property of enclosing a space. You need not for this purpose 
pursue them to infinity, you need only transfer yourself in imagination 
to the point where they converge, and there you have the impression of 
a bent line, that is, of one which ceases to be straight. Your presence 
there in imagination takes the place of an actual presence ; you can affirm 
by it what you affirmed by your actual presence, and as positively. The 
first is only the second in a more commodious form, with greater flexi- 
bility and scope. It is like using a telescope instead of the naked eye; 
the revelations of the telescope are propositions of experience; so are those 
of the imagination. As to the argument which distinguishes axioms from 
propositions of experience under the pretext that the contraries of the 
latter are conceivable, while the contraries of axioms are inconceivable, it 
is nugatory, for this distinction does not exist. Nothing prevents the 
contraries of certain propositions of experience from being conceivable, 
and the contraries of others inconceivable. That depends on the consti- 
tution of our minds. It may be that in some cases the mind may con- 
tradict its experience, and in others not. It is possible that in certain 
cases our conceptions may differ from our perceptions, and sometimes 
not. It may be that, in certain cases, external sight is opposed to 
internal, and in certain others not. Now, we have already seen that in 
the case of figures, the internal sight exactly reproduces the external. 
Therefore, in axioms of figures, the mental sight cannot be opposed to 
the actual ; imagination cannot contradict sensation. In other words, 
the contraries of such axioms will be inconceivable. Thus axioms, 
although their contraries are inconceivable, are experiments of a certain 
class, and it is because they are so that their contraries are inconceiv- 





1 ¢ For though, in order actually to see that two given lines never meet, it would 
be necessary to follow them to infinity ; yet without doing so we may know that 
if they ever do meet, or if, after diverging from one another, they begin again to 
approach, this must take place not at an infinite, but at a finite distance. Sup- 


posing, therefore, such to be the case, we can transport ourselves thither in ima- 


gination, and can frame a mental image of the appearance which one or both of the 
lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as being precisely similar 


_ to the reality. Now, whether we fix our contemplation upon this imaginary pic- 


ture, or call to mind the generalizations we have had occasion to make from former 
ocular observation, we learn by the evidence of experience, that a line which, after 
diverging from another straight line, begins to approach to it, produces the impres- 
sion on our senses which we- describe by the expression_‘‘a bent-line,” not by the 
expression ‘‘a straight line.” ’—MIL1’s Logic, i. 364. 


—_— 
“~ 











CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 493 


able. At every point there results this conclusion, which is the abstract 
of the system: every instructive or fruitful proposition is derived from 
experience, and is simply a connecting together of facts. 


VIL. 


Hence it follows that Induction is the only key to nature. This 
theory is Mill’s masterpiece. Only so thorough-going a partisan of 
experience could have constructed the theory of Induction. 

What, then, is Induction ? 


> 


‘Induction is that operation of the mind by which we infer that what we 
know to be true in a particular case or cases, will be true in all cases which 
resemble the former in certain assignable respects. In other words, Induction is 
the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a 
class is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true in 
similar circumstances at all times.’! 


This is the reasoning by which, having observed that Peter, John, and 
a greater or less number of men have died, we conclude that all men 
will die. In short, induction connects ‘mortality’ with the quality of 
‘man;’ that is to say, connects two general facts ordinarily successive, 
and asserts that the first is the Cause of the second. 

This amounts to saying that the course of nature is uniform. But 
induction does not set out from this axiom, it leads up to it; we do not 
find it at the beginning, but at the end, of our researches.? Funda- 
mentally, experience presupposes nothing beyond itself. No @ prioré 
principle comes to authorise or guide her. We observe that this stone 
has fallen, that this hot coal has burnt us, that this man has died, and 
we have no other means of induction except the addition and compari- 
son of these little isolated and transient facts. We learn by simple 
practical experience that the sun gives light, that bodies fall, that water 
quenches thirst, and we have no other means of extending or criticising 
these inductions than by other like inductions. Every observation and 
every induction draws its value from itself, and from similar ones. It is 
always experience which judges of experience, and induction of induc- 
tion. The body of our truths has not, then, a soul distinct from it, and 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 315. 

2 “We must first observe, that there is a principle implied in the very statement 
of what Induction is ; an assumption with regard to the course of nature and the 
order of the universe : namely, that there are such things in nature as parallel 
eases ; that what happens once, will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of cir- 
cumstances, happen again, and not only again, but as often as the same circum- 
stances recur. This, | say, is an assumption, involved in every case of induction. 
And, if we consult the actual course of nature, we find that the assumption is war- 
ranted. ‘The universe, so far as: known to us, is so constituted, that whatever is 
true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description ; the only difficulty 
is, to find what description.’—Mu11's Logic, i. 337. 


eS 


——————— ee eee 


—————— 


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494 MODERN AUTHORS. — [BOOK v. 


vivifying it; it subsists by the harmony of all its parts taken as a whole, 
and by the vitality of each part taken separately. 


‘ Why is it that, with exactly the same amount of evidence, both negative and 
positive, we did not reject the assertion that there are black swans, while we should 
refuse credence to any testimony which asserted that there were men wearing their 
heads underneath their shoulders? The first assertion was more credible than the 
latter. But why more credible? So long as neither phenomenon had been actu- 
ally witnessed, what reason was there for finding the one harder to be believed than 
the other? Apparently because there is less constancy in the colours of animals, 
than in the general structure of their internal anatomy. But how do we know 
this? Doubtless from experience. It appears, then, that we need experience to 
inform us in what degree, and in what cases, or sorts of cases, experience is to be 
relied on. Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it under what 
circumstances arguments from it will be valid. We have no ulterior test to which 
we subject experience in general; but we make experience its own test. Expe- 
rience testifies, that among the uniformities which it exhibits, or seems to exhibit, 
some are more to be relied on than others ; and uniformity, therefore, may be pre- 
sumed, from any given number of instances, with a greater degree of assurance, in 
proportion as the case belongs to a class in which the uniformities have hitherto 
been found more uniform.’ } 


Experience is the only test, and it is all we can have. 

Let us then consider how, without any help but that of experience, 
we can form general propositions, especially the most numerous and 
important of all, those which connect two successive events, by saying 
that the first is the cause of the second. 

Cause is a great word; let us examine it. It carries in itself a 
whole philosophy. From the idea we have of Cause depend all our 


notions of nature. To give a new idea of Causation is to transform 


human thought; and we shall see how Mill, like Hume and Comte, 
but better than them, has put this idea into a new shape. 

What is a cause? When Mill says that the contact of iron with 
moist air produces rust, or that heat dilates bodies, he does not speak 
of the mysterious bond by which metaphysicians connect cause and 
effect. He does not busy himself with the intimate force and generative 
virtue which certain philosophers insert between the thing producing 
and the product. Mill says: 


‘ The only notion of a cause, which the theory of induction requires, is such a 
notion as can be gained from experience. The Law of Causation, the recognition 
of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that 
invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in 
nature and some other fact which has preceded it ; independently of all considera- 
tion respecting the ulterior mode of production of phenomena, and of every other 
question regarding the nature of ‘* Things in themselves.” ’? 


No other foundation underlies these two expressions. We mean simply 
that everywhere, always, the contact of iron with the moist air will be 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 351, 2 Ibid. i. 859. 





——— 











CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 495 


followed by the appearance of rust; the application of heat by the 
dilatation of bodies: 

‘ The real cause, is the whole of these antecedents.’ 4 
‘There is no scientific foundation for distinguishing between the cause 
of a phenomenon and the conditions of its happening. . . . The dis- 
tinction drawn between the patient and the agent is purely verbal.’ 


‘ The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, ' 


positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every 
description, which being realised, the consequent invariably follows.’ ? 


Much argument has been expended on the word necessary : 


‘ If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is 
unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which 
will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things.’ * 


This is all we mean when we assert that the notion of cause includes 
the notion of necessity. We mean that the antecedent is sufficient and 
complete, that there is no need to suppose any additional antecedent, 
that it contains all requisite conditions, and that no other condition 
need exist. To follow unconditionally, then, is the whole notion of 
cause and effect. We havenoneelse. Philosophers are mistaken when 
they discover in our will a different type of causation, and declare it 
an example of efficient cause in act and in exercise. We see nothing of 
the kind, but there, as elsewhere, we find only continuous successions, 
We do not see a fact engendering another fact, but a fact accompanying 
another. ‘Our will,’ says Mill, ‘produces our bodily actions as cold 
produces ice, or as a spark produces an explosion of gunpowder.’ There 
is here, as elsewhere, an antecedent, the resolution or state of mind, 
and a consequent, the effort or physical sensation. Experience con- 
nects them, and enables us to foresee that the effort will follow the 
resolution, as it enables us to foresee that the explosion of gunpowder 
will follow the contact of the spark. Let us then have done with all 
these psychological illusions, and seek only, under the names of cause 
and effect, for phenomena which form pairs without exception or 
condition. 

Now, to establish these connections of phenomena, Mill discovers 
four methods, and only four,—namely, the Methods of Agreement,‘ of 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 360. ? [bid. i. 365. 3 [bid. i. 372. 

* ‘If we take fifty crucibles of molten matter and let them cool, and fifty solu- 
tions and let them evaporate, all will crystallize. Sulphur, sugar, alum, salt— 
substances, temperatures, circumstances—all are as different as they can be. We 
find one, and only one, common fact—the change from the liquid to the solid state 
—and conclude, therefore, that this change is the invariable antecedent of crystal- 
lization. Here we have an example of the Method of Agreement. Its canon is :— 

* «J. If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only 
one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances 
agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.” ’—MIu11’s Logic, i, 422, 


-_ eee eS eee eS ee eee 


ee 


496: MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V.; 


Difference, of Residues,” and of Concomitant Variations.* These are the 
only ways by which we can penetrate into nature. ‘There are no other, 
and these are everywhere. And they all employ the same artifice, 
that is to say, elimination ; for, in fact, induction is nothing else. You 
have two groups, one of antecedents, the other of consequents, each of 
them containing more or less elements, ten, for example. To what 
antecedent is each consequent joined? Is the first consequent joined 
to the first antecedent, or to the third, or sixth? The whole difficulty, 
and the only possible solution, lie there. To resolve the difficulty, and 





1 ¢ A bird in the air breathes ; plunged into carbonic acid gas, it ceases to breathe. 
In other words, in the second case, suffocation ensues. In other respects the two 
cases are as similar as possible, since we have the same bird in both, and they take 
place in immediate succession. They differ only in the circumstance of immersion 
in carbonic acid gas being substituted for immersion in the atmosphere, and we 
conclude that this circumstance is invariably followed by suffocation, The Method 
of Difference is here employed. Its canon is :— 

«<¢ TJ. If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and 
an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save 
one, that one occurring only in the former ; the circumstance in which alone the 
two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a necessary part of the cause, of 
the phenomenon.” ’—MIx1’s Logic, i. 423. 

2[* A combination of these methods is sometimes employed, and is termed the 
Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. 
It is, in fact, a double employment of the Method of Agreement, first applying 
that method to instances in which the phenomenon in question occurs, and pase 
to instances in which it does not occur. The following is its canon :— 

‘«* TTI. If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one 
circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur 
have nothing in common, save the absence of that circumstance ; the circumstance 
in which alone the two sets of instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a 
necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon.” ’]—MILt’s Logic, i. 429. 

‘If we take two groups—one of antecedents and one of consequents—and can 
succeed in connecting by previous investigations all the antecedents but one to 
their respective consequents, and all the consequents but one to their respective 
antecedents, we conclude that the remaining antecedent is connected to the re- 
maining consequent. For example, scientific men had calculated what ought to 
be the velocity of sound according to the laws of the propagation of sonorous 
waves, but found that a sound actually travelled quicker than their calculations 
had indicated, This surplus or residue of speed was a consequent for which an 
antecedent had to be found. Laplace discovered the antecedent in the heat 
developed by the condensation of each sonorous wave, and this new element, 
when introduced into the calculation, rendered it perfectly accurate. This is an 
example of the Method of Residues, the canon of which is as follows :— 

‘«*TV. Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous in- 
ductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon 
is the effect of the remaining antecedents.” ’—Mu11’s Logic, i. 431. 

3 * Let us take two facts—as the presence of the earth and the oscillation of the 
pendulum, or again the presence of the moon and the flow of the tide. To connect 
these phenomens directly, we should have to suppress the first of them, and see 





a ir 


CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 497 


to effect the solution, we must eliminate, that is, exclude those ante- 
cedents which are not connected with the consequent we are consider- 
ing.’ But as we cannot exclude them effectually, and as in nature the 
pair of phenomena we are seeking is always surrounded with-circum- 
stances, we collect various cases, which by their diversity enable the 

. mind to lop off these cireumstances, and to discover the pair of pheno- 
mena distinctly. In short, we can only perform induction by discover- 
ing pairs of phenomena: we form these only by isolation; we isolate 
only by means of comparisons. 


Vir. 


These are the rules; an example will make them clearer. We 
will show you the methods in exercise; here is an example which 
combines nearly the whole of them, namely, Dr. Well’s theory of dew. 
I will give it to you in Mill’s own words, which are so clear that you 
must have the pleasure of pondering over them : 

‘We must separate dew from rain and the moisture of fogs, and limit the 
application of the term to what is really meant, which is, the spontaneous appear- 
ance of moisture on substances exposed in the open air when no rain or visible wet 
is falling.’ ? 

What is the cause of the phenomena we have thus defined, and how 
was that cause discovered ? 

* «Now, here we have analogous phenomena in the moisture which bedews a 
cold metal or stone when we breathe upon it; that which appears on a glass of 
water fresh from the well in hot weather ; that which appears on the inside of 
windows when sudden rain or hail chills the external air ; that which runs down 





if this suppression would occasion the stoppage of the second. Now, in both 
instances, such suppression is impossible. So we employ an indirect means of 
connecting the phenomena. We observe that all the variations of the one corre- 
spond to certain variations of the other ; that all the oscillations of the pendulum 
correspond to certain different positions of the earth ; that all states of the tide 
correspond to positions of the moon. From this we conclude that the second fact 
is the antecedent of the first. These are examples of the Method of Concomitant 
Variations. Its canon is :— 

‘ <¢©-V, Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another pheno- 
menon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that 
phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation.” ’—MILL’s 
Logic, i. 435. 

1 «The Method of Agreement,’ says Mill (Logic, i. 424), ‘stands on the ground 

_ that whatever can be eliminated, is not connected with the phenomenon by any law. 
The Method of Difference has for its foundation, that whatever can not be eliminated, 
is connected with the phenomenon by a law.’ The Method of Residues is a case 
of the Method of Differences. The Method of Concomitant Variations is another 
case of the same method; with this distinction, that it is applied, not to the 
phenomena, but to their variations. 

? This quotation, and all the others in this paragraph, are taken from Mill’s 
Logic, i. 451-9. Mr. Mill quotes from Sir John Herschel’s Discourse on the Study 
of Natural Philosophy. 

VOL. II. 21 


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498 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


our walls when, after a long frost, a warm moist thaw comes’on.” Comparing 
these cases, we find that they all contain the phenomenon which was proposed as 
the subject of investigation. Now ‘‘all these instances agree in one point, the 
coldness of the object dewed in comparison with the air in contact with it.” But 
there still remains the most important case of all, that of nocturnal dew: does the 
same circumstance exist in this case? ‘‘ Is it a fact that the object dewed is colder 
than the air? Certainly not, one would at first be inclined to say ; for what is to 
make itso? But... the experiment is easy ; we have only to lay a thermometer 
in contact with the dewed substance, and hang one at a little distance above it, out 
of reach of its influence. The experiment has been therefore made ; the question 


has been asked, and the answer has been invariably in the affirmative. "Whenever - 


an object contracts dew, it is colder than the air.” 

‘Here then is a complete application of the Method of Agreement, establishing 
the fact of an invariable connection between the deposition of dew on a surface, 
and the coldness of that surface compared with the external air. But which of 
these is cause, and which effect? or are they both effects of something else? On 
this subject the Method of Agreement can afford us no light: we must call ina 
more potent method. ‘‘ We must collect more facts, or, which comes to the same 
thing, vary the circumstances ; since every instance in which the circumstances 
differ is a fresh fact: and especially, we must note the contrary or negative cases, 
i.c. where no dew is produced: ”’ for a comparison between instances of dew and 
instances of no dew, is the condition necessary to bring the Method of Difference 
into play. 

‘ «* Now, first, no dew is produced on the surface of polished metals, but it is 
very copiously on glass, both exposed with their faces upwards, and in some cases 
the under side of a horizontal plate of glass is also dewed.” Here is an instance 
in which the effect is produced, and another instance in which it is not produced ; 
but we cannot yet pronounce, as the canon of the Method of Difference requires, 
that the latter instance agrees with the former in all its circumstances except 
one: for the differences between glass and polished metals are manifold, and the 
only thing we can as yet be sure of is, that the cause of dew will be found 
among the circumstances by which the former substance is distinguished from the 
latter.’ 


To detect this particular circumstance of difference, we have but one 
practicable method, that of Concomitant Variations: 

* ** Tn the cases of polished metal and polished glass, the contrast shows evidently 
that the substance has much to do with the phenomenon ; therefore let the sub- 
stance alone be diversified as much as possible, by exposing polished: surfaces of 
various kinds. This done, a scale of intensity becomes obvious. Those polished 
substances are found to be most strongly dewed which conduct heat worst, while 
those which conduct well resist dew most effectually.” ... 

‘The conclusion obtained is, that ceteris paribus the deposition of dew is in 
some proportion to the power which the body possesses of resisting the passage of 
heat ; and that this, therefore (or something connected with this), must be at least 
one of the causes which assist in producing the deposition of dew on the surface. 

‘ ** But if we expose rough surfaces instead of polished, we sometimes find this 
law interfered with. Thus, roughened iron, especially if painted over or blackened, 
becomes dewed sooner than varnished paper: the kind of surface, therefore, has a 
great influence. Expose, then, the same material in very diversified states as to 
surface” (that is, employ the Method of Difference to ascertain concomitance of 
variations), ‘‘ and another scale of intensity becomes at once apparent ; those 





ame ale i 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 499 


surfaces which part with their heat most readily by radiation, are found to contract 

dew most copiously.” 

‘ The conclusion obisiued by this new application of the method is,. that ceteris 

_.___ paribus the deposition of dew is also in some proportion to the power of radiating 

7 heat ; and that the quality of doing this abundantly (or some cause on which that 
quality depends) is another of the causes.which promote the deposition of dew on 
the substance. 

‘ «* Again, the influence ascertained to exist of substance and surface leads us to 
consider that of texture ; and here, again, we are presented on trial with remark- 

‘able differences, and with a third scale of intensity, pointing out substances of a 
close firm texture, such as stones, metals, etc., as unfavourable, but those of a 
loose one, as cloth, velvet, wool, eiderdown, cotton, etc., as eminently favourable 
to the contraction of dew.’”’ The Method of Concomitant Variations.is here, for the 
third time, had recourse to ; and, as before, from necessity, since the texture of no 
substance is absolutely firm or absolutely loose. Looseness of texture, therefore, 
or something which is the cause of that quality, is another circumstance which 
promotes the deposition of dew ; but this third cause resolves itself into the first, 
viz. the quality of resisting the passage of heat: for substances of loose texture 
‘*are precisely those which are best adapted for clothing, or for impeding the free 
passage of heat from the skin into the air, so as to allow their outer surfaces to be 
very cold, while they remain warm within.” . . . 

‘ It thus appears that the instances in which much dew is deposited, which are 
very various, agree in this, and, so far as we are able to observe, in this only, that 
they either radiate heat rapidly or conduct it slowly: qualities between which 
there is no other circumstance of agreement than that by virtue of either, the 

body tends to lose heat from the surface more rapidly than it can be restored from 
within. The instances, on the contrary, in which no dew, or but a small quantity 
of it, is formed, and which are also extremely various, agree (so far as we can 
observe) in nothing except in not having this same property. . 

‘This doubt we are now able to resolve. We have found that, in every such 
instance, the substance must be one which, by its own properties or laws, would, 
if exposed in the night, become eolder than the surrounding air. The coldness, 
therefore, being accounted for independently of the dew, while it is proved that 
there is a connection between the two, it must be the dew which depends on the 
coldness ; or, in other words, the coldness is the cause of the dew. 

‘This law of causation, already so amply established, admits, however, of 
efficient additional corroboration in no less than three ways. First, by deduction 
from the known laws of aqueous vapour when diffused through air or any other 
gas ; and though we have not yet come to the Deductive Method, we will not omit 
what is necessary to render this speculation complete. It is known by direct 
experiment that only a limited quantity of water can remain suspended in the state 
of vapour at each degree of temperature, and that this maximum grows less and 
less as the temperature diminishés. From this i: follows deductively, that if 
there is already as much vapour suspended as the air will contain at its existing 
temperature, any lowering of that temperature will cause a portion of the vapour 
to be condensed, and become water. But, again, we know deductively, from the 
laws of heat, that the contact of the air with a body colder than itself, will neces- 
sarily lower the temperature of the stratum of air immediately applied to its 
surface ; and will therefore cause it to part with a portion of its water, which 
accordingly will, by the ordinary laws of gravitation or cohesion, attach itself to the 
surface of the body, thereby constituting dew. This deductive proof, it will have 





500 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


been seen, has the advantage of proving at once causation as well as co-existence ; 
and it has the additional advantage that it also accounts for the exceptions to the 
occurrence of the phenomenon, the cases in which, although the body is colder 
than the air, yet no dew is deposited, by showing that this will necessarily be the 
case when the air is so under-supplied with aqueous vapour, comparatively to its 
temperature, that even when somewhat cooled by the contact of the colder body, 
it can still continue to hold in suspension all the vapour which was previously 
suspended in it: thus in a very dry summer there are no dews, in a very dry 
winter no hoar frost... . 

‘ The second corroboration of the theory is by direct experiment, according to 
the canon of the Method of Difference. We can, by cooling the surface of any 
body, find in all cases some temperature (more or less inferior to that of the 
surrounding air, according to its hygrometric condition) at which dew will begin 
to be deposited. Here, too, therefcre, the causation is directly proved. We can, 
it is true, accomplish this only on a small scale ; but we have ample reason to 
conclude that the same operation, if conducted in Nature’s great laboratory, would 
equally produce the effect. 

‘ And, finally, even on that great scale we are able to verify the result. The 
case is one of those rare cases, as we have shown them to be, in which nature 
works the experiment for us in the same manner in which we ourselves perform it ; 
introducing into the previous state of things a single and perfectly definite new 
circumstance, and manifesting the effect so rapidly that there is not time for any 
other material change in the pre-existing circumstances. ‘‘It is observed that dew 
is never copiously deposited in situations much screened from the open sky, and 
not at all in a cloudy night ; but if the clouds withdraw even for a few minutes, 
and leave a clear opening, a deposition of dew presently begins, and goes on 
increasing. . . . Dew formed in clear intervals will often even evaporate again 
when the sky becomes thickly overcast.” The proof, therefore, is complete, that 
the presence or absence of an uninterrupted communication with the sky causes 
the deposition or non-deposition of dew. Now, since a clear sky is nothing but 
the absence of clouds, and it is a known property of clouds, as of all other bodies 
between which and any given object nothing intervenes but an elastic fluid, that 
they tend to raise or keep up the superficial temperature of the object by radiating 
heat to it, we see at once that the disappearance of clouds will cause the surface to 
cool ; so that Nature in this case produces a change in the antecedent by definite 
and known means, and the consequent follows accordingly: a natural experiment 
which satisfies the requisitions of the Method of Difference.’ 


IX. 

These four are not all the scientific methods, but they lead up to 
the rest. They are all linked together, and no one has shown their 
connection better than Mill. In many cases these processes of isola- 
tion are powerless; namely, in those in which the effect, being pro- 
duced by a concourse of causes, cannot be reduced into its elements. 
Methods of isolation are then impracticable. We cannot eliminate, and 
consequently we cannot perform induction. This serious difficulty 
presents itself in almost all cases of motion, for almost every movement 
is the effect of a concurrence of forces; and the respective effects of the 
various forces are found so mixed up in it that we cannot separate them 
without destroying it, so that it seems impossible to tell what part each 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 501 


force has in the production of this movement. Take a body acted upon 
by two forces whose directions form an angle: it moves along the 
diagonal; each part, each moment, each position, each element of its 
movement, is the combined effect of the two impelling forces. The two 
effects are so commingled, that we cannot isolate either of them and 
refer it to its source. In order to perceive each effect separately, we 
should have to consider the movements apart, that is, to suppress the 
actual movement, and to replace it by others. Neither the Method of 
Agreement, nor of Difference, nor of Residues, nor of Concomitant 
Variations, which are all decomposing and eliminative, can avail against 
a phenomenon which by its nature excludes all elimination and decom- 
position. We must therefore evade the obstacle; and it is here that 
the last key of nature appears, the Method of Deduction. We quit 
the study of the actual phenomenon, we pass beside it, we observe other 
and simpler cases; we establish their laws, and we connect each to its 
cause by the ordinary methods of induction. Then, assuming the con- 
currence of two or of several of these causes, we conclude from their 
known laws what will be their total effect. We next satisfy ourselves 
as to whether the actual movement exactly coincides with the move- 
ment foretold; and if this is so, we attribute it to the causes from 
which we have deduced it. Thus, in order to discover the causes of the 
planetary motions, we seek by simple induction the laws of two causes: 
first, the force of primitive impulsion in the direction of the tangent ; 
next, an accelerative attracting force. From these inductive laws we 
deduce by calculation the motion of a body submitted to their combined 
influence; and satisfying ourselves that the planetary motions observed 
coincide exactly with the predicted movements, we conclude that the 
two forces in question are actually the causes of the planetary motions. - 
‘To the Deductive Method,’ says Mill, ‘the human mind is indebted for 
its most conspicuous triumphs in the investigation of nature. To it we 
owe all the theories by which vast and complicated phenomena are 
embraced under a few simple laws.’ Our deviations have led us further 
than the direct path ; we have derived efficiency from imperfection. 


X. 


If we now compare the two methods, their aptness, function, and 
provinces, we shall find, asin an abstract, the history, divisions, hopes, 
and limits of human science. The first appears at the beginning, the 
second at the end. ‘The first necessarily gained ascendency in Bacon’s 
time,’ and now begins to lose it; the second necessarily lost ascendency 
in Bacon’s time, and now begins to regain it. So that science, after 
having passed from the deductive to the experimental state, is now 
passing from the experimental to the deductive. Induction has for its 
province phenomena which are capable of being decomposed, and on 
which we can experiment. Deduction has for its province indecom- 





1 Mill’s Logic, i. 526, 


502 "MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V.. 


posable phenomena, or such on which we cannot experiment, The first 
is efficacious in physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany, in the earlier 
stages of every science, and also whenever phenomena are but slightly 
complicated, within our reach, capable of being modified .by means 
at-our disposal. The second is efficacious in astronomy, in the higher 
branches of physics, in physiology, history, in the higher grades of every 
science, whenever phenomena are very complicated, as in animal and 
social life, or lie beyond our reach, as the motions of the heavenly 
bodies and the changes of the atmosphere. When the proper method 
is not employed, science is at a stand-still: when it is employed, science 
progresses. Here lies the whole secret of its past and its present. If 
the physical sciences remained stationary till the time of Bacon, it was 
because men used deduction when they should have used induction. 
If physiology and the moral sciences are now making slow progress, it 
is because we employ induction when deduction should be used. It 
is by deduction, and according to physical and chemical laws, that 
we shall be enabled to explain physiological phenomena. It is by 
deduction, and according to mental laws, that we shall be enabled 
to explain historical phenomena. And that which has become the 
instrument of these two sciences, it is the object of all the others to 
employ. All tend to become deductive, and aim at being summed up 
in certain general propositions, from which the rest may be deduced. 
The less numerous these propositions are, the more science advances. 
The fewer suppositions and postulates a science requires, the more per- 
fect it has become. Such a reduction is its final condition. Astro- 
nomy, acoustics, optics, present us models. We shall know nature when 
we shall have deduced her millions of facts from two or three laws. 
I venture to say that the theory which you have just heard is perfect. 
I have omitted several of its characteristics, but you have seen enough 
to recognise that induction has nowhere been explained in so complete 
and precise a manner, with such an abundance of fine and just distine- 
tions, with such extensive and exact applications, with such a know- 
ledge of effectual practice and acquired discoveries, with so complete an 
exclusion of metaphysical principles and arbitrary suppositions, and 
in a spirit more in conformity with the rigorous procedure of modern 
experimental science. You asked me just now what Englishmen have 
effected in philosophy ; I answer, the theory of Induction. Mill is the 
last of that great line of philosophers, which begins at Bacon, and which, 
through Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Herschell, is continued down 
to our own times. They have carried our national spirit into philo- 
sophy; they have been positive and practical ; they have not soared 
above facts; they have not attempted out-of-the-way paths; they have 





1See chapter 9, book vi. v. 2, 478, on The Physical or Concrete Deductive 
Method as applied to Sociology ; and chapter 18, book iii., for explanations, after 
Liebig, of Decomposition, Respiration, the Action of Poisons, etc. A whole book is 
devoted to the logic of the moral sciences ; I know no better treatise on the subject. 





> si 
y ? 









Be 
* 


= Poa tine 


ie 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 503 


cleared the human mind of its illusions, presumptions, and fancies. 
They have employed it in the only direction in which it can act; they 
only wished to mark out and lit up the already well-trodden ways of the 
progressive sciences. They have not been willing to spend their labour 
vainly in other than explored and verified paths; they have aided in 
the great modern work, the discovery of applicable laws; they have 
contributed, as men of special attainments do, to the increase of man’s 
power. Can you find many philosophers who have done as much? 


XI. 


You will tell me that our philosopher has clipped his wings in order 
to strengthen his legs. Certainly; and he has acted wisely. Expe- 
rience limits the career which it opens to us; it has given us our goal, 
but also our boundaries. We have only to observe the elements of 
which our experience is composed, and the facts from which it sets 
out, to understand that its range is limited. Its nature and its method 
confine its progress to a few steps, And, in the first place,’ the ulti- 
mate laws of nature cannot be less numerous than the several distinct 
species of our sensations. We can easily reduce a movement to another 
movement, but not the sensation of heat to that of smell, or of colour, 
or of sound, nor either of these toa movement. We can easily con- 
nect together phenomena of different degrees, but not phenomena 
differing in species. We find distinct sensations at the bottom of all 
our knowledge, as simple, indecomposable elements, separated absolutely 
one from another, absolutely incapable of being reduced one to another. 
Let experience do what she will, she cannot suppress these diversities 
which constitute her foundation. On the other hand, experience, do 
what she will, cannot escape from the conditions under which she acts. 
Whatever be her province, it is bounded by time and space; the fact 
which she observes, is limited and influenced by an infinite number of 
other facts to which she cannot attain. She is obliged to suppose or re- 
cognise some primordial condition from whence she starts, and which she 
does not explain.* Every problem has its accidental or arbitrary data: 
we deduce the rest from these, but there is nothing from which these 
can be deduced. The sun, the earth, the planets, the initial impulse 
of the heavenly bodies, the primitive chemical properties of substances, 





1 Mill’s Logie, ii. 4. 

2 <« There exists in nature a number of Permanent Causes, which have subsisted 
ever since the human race has been in existence, and for an indefinite and probably 
an enormous length of time previous. The sun, the earth, and planets, with their 
various constituents, air, water, and the other distinguishable substances, whether 
simple or compound, of which nature is made up, are such Permanent Causes. 
They have existed, and the effects or consequences which they were fitted to pro- 
duce have taken place (as often as the other conditions of the production met), 
from the very beginning of our experience. But we can give no account of the 
origin of the Permanent Causes themselves.’—MI1u’s Logic, i. 378. 


She nage 





504 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


are such data.’ If we possessed them all, we could explain everything 
by them, but we could not explain these themselves. Mill says: 

‘ Why these particular natural agents existed originally and no others, or why 
they are commingled in such and such proportions, and distributed in such and 
such a manner throughout space, is a question we cannot answer. More than this: 
we can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself ; we can reduce it to no 
uniformity, to no law. There are no means by which, from the distribution of 
these causes or agents in one part of space, we could conjecture whether a similar 
distribution prevails in another.’ ? 


And astronomy, which, just now, afforded us the model of a perfect 
science, now affords us an example of a limited science. We can pre- 
dict the numberless positions of all the planetary bodies; but we are 
obliged to assume, beside the primitive impulse and its amount, not 
only the force of attraction and its law, but also the masses and dis- 
tances of all the bodies in question. We understand millions of facts, 
but it is by means of a hundred facts which we do not comprehend ; 
we arrive at necessary results, but it is only by means of accidental 
antecedents ; so that, if the theory of our universe were completed, there 
would still remain two great voids: one at the commencement of the 
physical world, the other at the beginning of the moral world ; the one 
comprising the elements of being, the other embracing the elements 
of experience; one containing primary sensations, the other primitive 
agents. ‘Our knowledge,’ says Royer-Collard, ‘consists in tracing 
ignorance as far back as possible.’ 

Can we at least affirm that these irreducible data are so only in 
appearance, and in comparison with our mind? Can we say that they 
have causes, like the derived facts of which they are the causes? Can 
we conclude that every event, always and everywhere, happens accord- 
ing to laws, and that this little world of ours, so well regulated, is a 
sort of epitome of the universe? Can we, by the aid of axioms, quit 
our narrow confines, and affirm anything of the universe? In no wise; 





1 ¢ The resolution of the laws of the heavenly motions established the previously 
unknown ultimate property of a mutual attraction between all bodies: the reso- 
lution, so far as it has yet proceeded, of the laws of crystallization, or chemical 
composition, electricity, magnetism, etc., points to various polarities, ultimately 
inherent in the particles of which bodies are composed ; the comparative atomic 
weights of different kinds of bodies were ascertained by resolving, into more general 
laws, the uniformities observed in the proportions in which substances combine 
with one another ; and so forth. Thus, although every resolution of a complex 
uniformity into simpler and more elementary laws has an apparent tendency to 
diminish the number of the ultimate properties, and really does remove many pro- 
perties from the list ; yet, (since the result of this simplifying process is to trace 
up an ever greater variety of different effects to the same agents), the further we 
advance in this direction, the greater number of distinct properties we are forced 
to recognise in one and the same object ; the co-existences of which properties must 
accordingly be ranked among the ultimate generalities of nature.’—MILL’s Logic, 
ii, 108. 2 Ibid. i, 378, 








page 











CHAP. V. ] 





PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 505 


and it is here that Mill pushes his principles to its furthest conse- 
quences: for the law which attributes a cause to every event, has to 
him no other foundation, worth, or scope, than what it derives from 
experience. It has no-inherent necessity ; it draws its whole authority 
from the great number of cases in which we have recognised it to be 
true; it only sums upa mass of observations ; it unites two data, which, 
considered in themselves, have no intimate connection ; it joins ante- 
cedents generally to consequents generally, just as the law of gravi- 
tation joins a particular antecedent to a particular consequent; it 
determines a couple, as do all experimental laws, and shares in their 
uncertainty and in their restrictions. Listen to this bold assertion : 

‘I am convinced that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will 
fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagination has once 
learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for 
instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy how divides the 
universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law ; nor 
can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or 
indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case. The grounds, 
therefore, which warrant us in rejecting such a supposition with respect to any of 
the phenomena of which we have experience, must be sought elsewhere than in 
any supposed necessity of our intellectual faculties.’ ? 

Practically, we may trust in so well-established a law; but 

‘In distant parts of the stellar regions, where the phenomena may be entirely 
unlike those with which we are acquainted, it would be folly to affirm confidently 
that this general law prevails, any more than those special ones which we have 
found to hold universally on our own planet. The uniformity in the succession of 
events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be received not as a law of the 
universe, but of that portion of it only which is within the range of our means of 
sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To 
extend it further is to make a supposition without evidence, and to which, in the 
absence of any ground from experience for estimating its degree of probability, it 
would be idle to attempt to assign any.’? 

We are, then, irrevocably driven back from the infinite; our faculties 
and our assertions cannot attain to it; we remain confined in a small 
circle; our mind reaches not beyond its experience; we can establish 
no universal and necessary connection between facts; such a connection 
probably does not even exist. Mill stops here; but certainly, by carry- 
ing out his idea to its full extent, we should arrive at the conception of 
the world as a mere collection of facts; no internal necessity would 
induce their connection or their existence ; they would be simple arbi- 
trary, accidentally-existing facts. Sometimes, as in our system, they 
would be found assembled in such a manner as to give rise to regular 
recurrences ; sometimes they would be so assembled that nothing of the 
sort would occur. Chance, as Democritus taught, would be at the 
foundation of all things. Laws would be the result of chance, and 
sometimes we should find them, sometimes not. It would be with 





1 Mill’s Logic, ii, 95. 2 Ibid, ii, 104, 





ee ES. ee a 


506 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


existences as with numbers—decimal fractions, for instance, which, 
according to the chance of their two primitive factors, sometimes recur 
regularly, and sometimes not. This is certainly an original and lofty 
conception. It is the final consequence of the primitive and dominant 
idea, which we have discovered at the beginning of the system, which 
has transformed the theories of Definition, of Propositions, and of the 
Syllogism ; which has reduced axioms to experimental truths; which 
has developed and perfected the theory of induction; which has estab- 
lished the goal, the limits, the province, and the methods of science; 
which everywhere, in nature and in science, has suppressed interior 
connections ; which has replaced the necessary by the accidental ; cause 
by antecedent; and which consists in affirming that every assertion 


which is not merely verbal forms in effect a couple, that is to say, | 


joins together two facts which were separate by their nature. 


§ 2.—ABSTRACTION. 


I. 


An abyss of chance and an abyss of ignorance. The prospect is 
gloomy: no matter, if it be true. At all events, this theory of science 
is a theory of English science. Rarely, I grant you, has a thinker 
better summed up in his teaching the practice of his country ; seldom 
has a man better represented by his negations and his discoveries the 
limits and scope of his race. The operations, of which he composes 
science, are those in which you excel all others, and those which he 
excludes from science are the ones in which you are deficient more 
than any other nation. He has described the English mind whilst he 
thought to describe the human mind. That is his glory, but it is also 
his weakness. There is in your idea of knowledge a flaw of which the 
incessant repetition ends by creating the gulf of chance, from which, 
according to him, all things arise, and the gulf of ignorance, at whose 
brink, according to him, our knowledge ends. And see what comes of 
it. By cutting away from science the knowledge of first causes, that is, of 
divine things, you reduce men to become sceptical, positive, utilitarian, 
if they are cool-headed ; or mystical, enthusiastic, methodistical, if they 
have lively imaginations. In this huge unknown void which you place 
beyond our little world, hot-headed men and uneasy consciences find room 
for all their dreams ; and men of cold judgment, despairing of arriving at 
any certain knowledge, have nothing left but to sink down to the search 
for practical means which: may serve for the amelioration of our condi- 
tion. It seems to me, that these two dispositions are most frequently met 
with in an English mind, The religious and the positive spirit dwell there 
side by side, but separate. This produces an odd medley, and I confess 
that I prefer the way in which the Germans have reconciled science with 
faith But their philosophy is but badly written poetry.—Perhaps 
so.—But what they call reason, or intuition of principles, is only the 














CHAP, V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 507 


faculty of building up hypotheses.—Perhaps so.—But the systems which 
they have constructed have not held their ground before experience.— 
I do not defend what they have done.—But their absolute, their sub- 
ject, their object, and the rest, are but big words.—I do not defend 
their style-—What, then, do you defend ?—Their idea of Causation.— 
You believe with them that causes are discovered by a revelation of 
the reason !—By no means.—You believe with us that our knowledge 
of causes is based on simple experience ?—Still less.—You think, then, 
that there is a faculty, other than experience and reason, capable of 
discovering causes ?—Yes.—You think there is an intermediate course 
between illumination and observation, capable of arriving at principles, 
as it is affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, as we find 
that the second is ?—Yes.—What is it?—Abstraction. Let us return 
to your original idea; I will endeavour to show in what I think it in- 
complete, and how you seem to me to mutilate the human mind. But 
you must give me space ; it will be a regular argument of an advocate. 


Il. 


Your starting-point is good: man, in fact, does not know anything 
of substances; he knows neither minds nor bodies; he perceives only 
transient, isolated, internal conditions ; he makes use of these to affirm 
and name exterior states, positions, movements, changes, and avails 
himself of them for nothing else. He can only attain to facts, whether 
within or without, sometimes transient, when his impression is not 
repeated; sometimes permanent, when his impression many times 
repeated, makes him suppose that it will be repeated, as often as he 
wishes to experience it. He only grasps colours, sounds, resistances, 
movements, sometimes momentary and variable, sometimes like one 
another, and renewed. To group these facts more advantageously, he 
supposes, by an artifice of language, qualities and properties. We go 
even further than you: we think that there are neither minds nor 
bodies, but simply groups of present or possible movements or thoughts. 
We believe that there are no substances, but only systems of facts. 
We regard the idea of substance as a psychological illusion. We con- 
sider substance, force, and all the modern metaphysical existences, as 
the remains of scholastic entities. We think that there exists nothing 
but facts and laws, that is, events and the relations between them; and 
we recognise, with you, that all knowledge consists first of all in con- 
necting or adding fact to fact. But when this is done, a new opera- 
tion begins, the most fertile of all, which consists in reducing these 
complex into simple facts. A splendid faculty appears, the source of 
language, the interpreter of nature, the parent of religions and philo- 
sophies, the only genuine distinction, which, according to its degree, 
separates man from the brute, and great from little men. I mean 
Abstraction, which is the power of isolating the elements of facts, and 
of considering them one by one. My eyes follow the outline of a square, 


2 


508 MODERN AUTHORS. | [BOOK V. 


and abstraction isolates its two constituent properties, the equality 
of its sides and angles. My fingers touch the surface of a cylinder, 
and abstraction isolates its two generative elements, the idea of a 
rectangle, and of the revolution of this rectangle about one of its sides 
as an axis. A hundred thousand experiments develop for me, by an 
infinite number of details, the series of physiological operations which 
constitute life; and abstraction derives the law of this series, which is a 
round of constant loss and continual reparation. Twelve hundred pages 
teach me Mill’s opinion on the various facts of science, and abstraction 
isolates his fundamental idea, namely, that the only fertile propositions 
are those which connect a fact to another not contained in the first. 
Everywhere the case is the same. A fact, or a series of facts, can always 
be resolved into its components. It is this resolution which forms our 
problem, when we ask what is the nature of an object. It is these com- 
ponents we look for when we wish to penetrate into the inner nature of 
a being. These we designate under the names of forces, causes, laws, 
essences, primitive properties. They are not new facts added to the 
first, but a portion or extract from them; they are contained in the first, 
they have no existence apart from the facts themselves. When we 
discover them, we do not pass from one fact to another, but from one 
to another aspect of the same fact; from the whole to a part, from the 
compound to the components. We only see the same thing under two 
forms; first, as a whole, then as divided: we only translate the same 
idea from one language into another, from the language of the senses 
into abstract language, just as we express a curve by an equation, or a 
cube as a function of its side. It signifies little whether this trans- 
lation be difficult or not; or that we generally need the accumulation 
or comparison of a vast number of facts to arrive at it, and whether our 
mind may not often succumb before accomplishing it. However this 
may be, in this operation, which is evidently fertile, instead of proceed- 
ing from one fact to another, we go from the same to the same; instead 
of adding experiment to experiment, we set aside some portion of the 
first ; instead of advancing, we pause to examine the ground we stand 
on. There are, thus, instructive judgments, which, however, are not the 
results of experience: there are essential propositions, which, however, 
are not merely verbal: there is, thus, an operation, differing from experi- 
ence, which acts by cutting down instead of by addition; which, instead 
of acquiring, devotes itself to acquired data; and which, going farther 
than observation, opening a new field to the sciences, defines their 
nature, determines their progress, completes their resources, and marks 
out their end. 

This is the great omission of your system. Abstraction is left in the 
background, barely mentioned, concealed by the other operations of the 
mind, treated as an appendage of Experience; we have but to re-estab- 
lish it in the general theory, in order to reform the particular theories 
in which it is absent. 















CHAP. V.] _ PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 509 


ITT. 


To begin with Definitions. Mill teaches that there is no definition 
of things, and that when you define a sphere as the solid generated by 
the revolution of a semi-circle about its diameter, you only define a 
name. Doubtless you tell me by this the meaning of a name, but you 
also teach me a good deal more. You state that.all the properties of 
every sphere are derived from this generating formula ; you reduce an 
infinitely complex system of facts to two elements; you transform sensible 
into abstract data; you express the essence of the sphere, that is to 
say, the inner and primordial cause of all its properties. Such is the 
nature of every true definition; it is not content with explaining a 
name, it is not a mere description ; it does not simply indicate a dis- 
tinctive property ; it does not limit itself to ticketing an object which 
will cause it to be distinguished from all others. There are, besides its 
definition, several other ways of causing the object to be recognised ; 
there are other properties belonging to it exclusively: we might de- 
scribe a sphere by saying that, of all bodies having an equal surface, 
it occupies the most space ; or in many other ways. But such descrip- 
tions are not definitions; they lay down a characteristic and derived 
property, not a generating and primitive one; they do not reduce the 
thing to its factors, and reconstruct it before our eyes; they do not 
show its inner nature and its irreducible elements. A definition is a 
proposition which marks in an object that quality from which its others 
are derived, but which is not derived from others. Such a proposition 
is not verbal, for it teaches the quality of a thing. It is not the affir- 
mation of an ordinary quality, for it reveals to us the quality which is 
the source of the rest. It is an assertion of an extraordinary kind, the 
most fertile and valuable of all, which sums up a whole science, and 
in which it is the aim of every science to be summed up. There is 
a definition in every science, and one for each object. We do not in 
every case possess it, but we search for it everywhere. We have 
arrived at defining the planetary motion by the tangential force and 
attraction which compose it ; we can already partially define a chemical 
body by the notion of equivalent, and a living body by the notion of 
type. We are striving to transform every group of phenomena into 
certain laws, forces, or abstract notions, We endeavour to attain in 
every object to the generating elements, as we do attain them in the 
sphere, the cylinder, the circle, the cone, and in all mathematical loci. 
We reduce natural bodies to two or three kinds of movement— 
attraction, vibration, polarisation—as we reduce geometrical bodies to 
two or three kinds of elements—the point, the movement, the line; 
and we consider our science partial or complete, provisional or definite, 
according as this reduction is approximate or absolute, imperfect or 
complete. 





—_— 


—_ 


510 : MODERN AUTHORS. _ [BOOK V.: 


IV. 


The same alteration is required in the Theory of Proof. According 
to Mill, we do not prove that Prince Albert will die by premising that 
all men are mortal, for that would be asserting the same thing twice 
over; but from the facts that John, Peter, and others, in short, all 
men of whom we have ever heard, have died.—I reply that the real 
source of our inference lies neither in the mortality of John, Peter, 

Cand company, nor in the mortality of all men, but elsewhere. We — 
prove a fact, says Aristotle,’ by showing its cause. We shall therefore 
prove the mortality of Prince Albert by showing the cause which pro- 
duces his death. And why will he die? Because the human body, 
being an unstable chemical compound, must in time be resolved; in 
other words, because mortality is added to the quality of man. Here 
is the cause and the proof. It is this abstract law which, present in 
nature, will cause the death of the prince, and which, being present to 
my mind, shows me that he will die. It is this abstract proposition 
which is demonstrative ; it is neither the particular nor the general 
propositions. In fact, the abstract proposition proves the others. If 
John, Peter, and others are dead, it is because mortality is added to 
the quality of man. If all men are dead, or will die, it is still because 
mortality is added to the quality of man. Here, again, the part played 
by Abstraction has been overlooked. Mill has confounded it with 
Experience: he has not distinguished the proof from the materials of 
the proof, the abstract law from the finite or indefinite number of its 
applications. The applications contain the law and the proof, but are 
themselves neither law nor proof. The examples of Peter, John, and 
others, contain the cause, but they are not the cause. It is not suffi- 
cient to add up the cases, we must extract from them the law. It is 
not enough to experimentalise, we must abstract. ‘This is the great 
scientific operation. Syllogism does not proceed from the particular to 
the particular, as Mill says, nor from the general to the particular, as 


' the ordinary logicians teach, but from the abstract to the concrete ; that 


is to say, from cause to effect. It is on this ground that it forms part © 
of science, the links of which it makes and marks out; it connects 
principles with effects; it brings together definitions and phenomena. 
It diffuses through the whole range of science that Abstraction which 
definition has carried to its summit. 


iv; 


Abstraction explains also axioms. According to Mill, if we know 
that when equal magnitudes are added to equal magnitudes the wholes 
are equal, or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, it is by 





1 See the Posterior Analytics, which are much superior to the Prior—d’ airias 
xt mporipay, a 








CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. 511 


external ocular experiment, or by an internal experiment by the aid 
of imagination. Doubtless we may thus arrive at the conclusion that 
two straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we might recognise it also 
in another manner. We might represent a straight line in imagination, 
and we may also form a conception of it by reason. We may either study 
its form or its definition. We can observe it in itself, or in its generating 
elements. I can represent to myself a line ready drawn, but I can also 
resolve it into its elements. I can go back to its formation, and dis- 
cover the abstract elements which produce it, as I have watched the 
formation of the cylinder and discover the revolution of the rectangle 
which ‘generated it. It will not do to say that a straight line is the 
shortest from one point to another, for that is a derived property; but 
I may say that it is the line described by a point, tending to approach 
towards another point, and towards that point only: which amounts to 
saying that two points suffice to determine a straight line; in other 
words, that two straight lines, having two points in common, coincide 
in their entire length; from which we see that if two straight lines 
approach to enclose a space, they would form but one straight line, and 
enclose nothing at all. Here is a second method of arriving at a know- 
ledge of the axiom, and it is clear that it differs much from the first. 
In the first we verify ; in the second we deduce it. In the first we 
find by experience that it is true ; in the second we prove it to be true. 
In the first we admit the truth; in the second we explain it. In the 
first we merely remark that the contrary of the axiom is inconceivable ; 
in the second we discover in addition that the contrary of the axiom is 
contradictory. Having given the definition of the straight line, we find 
that the axiom that two straight lines cannot enclose a space is comprised 
in it, and may be derived from it, as a consequent from a principle. In 
fact, it is nothing more than an identical proposition, which means that 
the subject contains its attribute; it does not connect two separate 
terms, irreducible one to the other; it unites two terms, of which the 
second is a part of the first. It is a simple analysis, and so are all 
axioms. We have only to decompose them, in order to see that they 
do not proceed from one object to a different one, but are concerned 
with one object only. We have but to resolve the notions of equality, 
cause, substance, time, and space into their abstracts, in order to de- 
monstrate the axioms of equality, substance, cause, time, and space. 
There is but one axiom, that of identity. The others are only its ap- 
plications or its consequences. When this is admitted, we at once see 
that the range of our mind is altered. We are no longer merely capable 
of relative and limited knowledge, but also of absolute and infinite 
knowledge ; we possess in axioms facts which not only accompany one 
another, but one of which includes the other. If, as Mill says, they 
merely accompanied one another, we should be obliged to conclude 
with him, that perhaps this might not always be the case. We should 
not see the inner necessity for their connection, and should only admit 





ee 


a 


512 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv.» 


it as far as our experience went; we should say that, the two facts 
being isolated in their nature, circumstances might arise in which they 
would be separate; we should affirm the truth of axioms only in 
reference to our world and mind. If, on the contrary, the two facts are 
such that the first contains the second, we should establish on this very 
ground the necessity of their connection; wheresoever the first may be 
found, it will carry the second with it, since the second is a part of it, 
and cannot be separated from it. No circumstance can exist between 


them and divide them, for they are but one thing under different 


aspects. Their connection is therefore absolute and universal; and we 
possess truths which admit neither doubt, nor limitation, nor condition, 
nor restriction. Abstraction restores to axioms their value, whilst it 
shows their origin ; and we restore to science her dispossessed dominion, 
by restoring to the mind the faculty of which it had been deprived. 


VI. 


Induction remains to be considered, which seems to be the triumph 
of pure experience, while it is, in reality, the triumph of abstraction. 
When I discover by induction that cold produces dew, or that the 
passage from the liquid to the solid state produces crystallisation, I 
establish a connection between two abstract facts. Neither cold, nor 
dew, nor the passage from the liquid to the solid state, nor crystallisa- 
tion, exist in themselves. They are parts of phenomena, extracts from 
complex cases, simple elements included in compound aggregates. I 
withdraw and isolate them; I isolate dew in general from all local, 
temporary, special dews which I observe ; I isolate cold in general from 
all special, various distinct colds which may be produced by all varieties 
of texture, all diversities of substance, all inequalities of temperature, 
all complications of circumstances. I join an abstract antecedent to an 
abstract consequent, and I connect them, as Mill himself shows, by 
subtractions, suppressions, eliminations ; I expel from the two groups, 
containing them, all the proximate circumstances ; I discover the couple 
under the surroundings which obscure it; I detach, by a series of com- 
parisons and experiments, all the subsidiary accidental circumstances 
which have clung to it, and thus I end by laying it bare. I seem to 
be considering twenty different cases, and in reality I only consider one; 
I appear to proceed by addition, and in fact Iam performing subtraction. 
All the methods of Induction, therefore, are methods of Abstraction, 
and all the work of Induction is the connection of abstract facts. 


VII. 


We see now the two great moving powers of science, and the two 
ereat manifestations of nature. There are two operations, experience 
and abstraction ; there are two kingdoms, that of complex facts, and that 
of simple elements. The first is the effect, the second the cause. The 
first is contained in the second, and is deduced from it, as a consequent 








a 








- CHAP. V.] 


from its principle. Both are equivalent; they are one and the same 
thing considered under two aspects. This magnificent moving universe, 
this tumultuous chaos of mutually dependent events, this incessant life, 
infinitely varied and multiplied, may be all reduced to a few elements 
and their relations. Our whole efforts amount in passing from one to 
the other, from the complex to the simple, from facts to laws, from 
experiences to formule. And the reason of this is evident; for this 
fact which I perceive by the senses or the consciousness is but a 


PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL, 513 


fragment arbitrarily severed by my senses or my consciousness from © 


the infinite and continuous woof of existence. If they were differently 
constituted, they would intercept other fragments; it is the chance of 
their structure which determines what is actually perceived. They are 
like open compasses, which might be more or less extended; and the 
area of the circle which they describe is not natural, but artificial. It 
is so in two ways, both externally and internally. For, when I con- 
sider an event, I isolate it artificially from its natural surroundings, and 
I compose it artificially of elements which do not form a natural group. 
When I see a falling stone, I separate the fall from the anterior circum- 
stances which are really connected with it; and I put together the fall, 
the form, the structure, the colour, the sound, and twenty other circum- 
stances which are really not connected with it. A fact, then, is an 
arbitrary aggregate, and at the same time an arbitrary severing ;* that 
is to say, a factitious group, which separates things connected, and 
connects things that are separate. Thus, so long as we only regard 
nature by observation, we do not see it as it is; we have only a pro- 
visional and illusory idea of it. Nature is, in reality, a tapestry, of which 
we only see the reverse; this is why we try to turn it. We strive 
to discover laws; that is, the natural groups which are really distinct 
from their surroundings, and composed of elements really connected. 
We discover couples; that is to say, real compounds and real con- 
nections, We pass from the accidental’ to the necessary, from the 
relative to the absolute, from the appearance to the reality ; and having 
found these first couples, we practise upon them the same operation as 
we did upon facts, for, though in a less degree, they are of the same 
nature, Though more abstract, they are still complex. They may be 
decomposed and explained. There is some ulterior reason for their 
existence. There is some cause or other which constructs and unites 
them. In their case, as well as for facts, we can search for generating 


elements into which they may be resolved, and from which they may: 


be deduced. And this operation may be continued until we have 
arrived at elements wholly simple; that is to say, such that their 
decomposition would involve a contradiction. Whether we can find 
them or not, they exist; the axiom of causation would be falsified if 





* An eminent student of physical science said to me: ‘A fact is a superposition 
of laws.’ 


VOL. 1, OK 


Se eee 


* 


514 _ MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


they were absent. There are, then, indecomposable elements, from 
which are derived more general laws; and from these, again, more 


special laws; and from these the facts which we observe; just as in’ 
geometry there are two or three primitive notions, from which are 
deduced the properties of lines, and from these the properties of sur- 


faces, solids, and the numberless forms which nature can produce or the 
mind imagine. We can now comprehend the value and meaning of 
that axiom of causation which governs all things, and which Mill has 


mutilated. ‘There is an inner constraining force which gives rise to 


every event, which unites every compound, which engenders every 


actual fact. This signifies, on the one hand, that there is a reason for 


everything ; that every fact has its law; that every compound can be 


reduced to simple elements; that every product implies factors; that 
every quality and every being must be reducible from some superior: 
and anterior term. And it signifies, on the other hand, that the pro- 


duct is equivalent to the factors, that both are but the same thing under 
different aspects; that the cause does not differ in nature from the 
effect ; that the generating powers are but elementary properties; that 
the active force by which we represent Nature to our minds is but 
the logical necessity which mutually transforms the compound and 


the simple, the fact and the law. Thus we determine beforehand the 


limits of every science; and we possess the potent formula, which, 
establishing the invincible connection and the spontaneous production 
of existences, places in Nature the moving spring of Nature, whilst it 
drives home and fixes in the heart of every living thing the iron fangs 
of necessity. 


VITl. 


Can we arrive at a knowledge of these primary elements? For my 
part, I think we can; and the reason is, that, being abstractions, they 
are not beyond the region of facts, but are comprised in them, so that 
we have only to extract them from the facts. Besides, being the most 
abstract, that is, the most general of all things, there are no facts which 
do not comprise them, and from which we cannot extract them. How- 
ever limited our experience may be, we can arrive at these primary 
notions; and it is from this observation that the modern German meta- 
physicians have started in attempting their vast constructions. They 
understood that there are simple motions, that is to say, indecomposable 
abstract facts, that the combinations of these engender all others, and 
that the laws for their mutual union or contrarieties, are the primary 
laws of the universe. They tried to attain to these ideas, and to 
evolve by pure reason the world as observation shows it tous. They 
have failed; and their gigantic edifice, factitious and fragile, hangs in 


ruins, reminding one of those temporary scaffoldings which only serve 


to mark out the plan of a future building. The reason is, that with a 


high notion of our powers, they had no exact view of their limits, For 









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CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY——-STUART MILL. 515. 





we are outflanked on all sides by the infinity of time and space; we 


_ find ourselves thrown in the midst of this monstrous universe like a 
- shell on the beach, or an ant at the foot of a steep slope. Here Mill is 


right. Chance is at the end of all our knowledge, as on the threshold 
of all our postulates: we vainly try to rise, and that by conjecture, to 
an initial state; but this state depends on the preceding one, which 
depends on another, and so on; and thus we are forced to accept it as 
a pure postulate, and to give up the hope of deducing it, though we 
know that it ought to be deduced. It is so in all sciences, in geology, 
natural history, physics, chemistry, psychology, history ; and the primi- 
tive accidental fact extends its effects into all parts of the sphere in 
which it is comprised. If it had been otherwise, we should have neither 
the same planets, nor the same chemical compounds, nor the same 
vegetables, nor the same animals, nor the same races of men, nor, per- 
haps, any of these kinds of beings. If an ant were taken into another 
country, it would see neither the same trees, nor insects, nor disposi- 
tions of the soil, nor changes of the atmosphere, nor perhaps any of 
these forms of existence. There is, then, in every fact and in every 
object, an accidental and local part, a vast portion, which, like the 
rest, depends on primitive laws, but not directly, only through an 
infinite circuit of consequences, in such a way that between it and the 
primitive laws there is an infinite hiatus, which can only be bridged 
over by an infinite series of deductions. 

Such is the inexplicable part of phenomena, and this is what the 
German metaphysicians tried to explain. They wished to deduce from 
their elementary theorems the form of the planetary system, the various 
laws of physics and chemistry, the main types of life, the progress 
of human civilisations and thought. ‘They contorted their universal 
formule with the view of deriving from them particular cases; they 
took indirect and remote consequences as direct and proximate ones ; 
they omitted or suppressed the great work which is interposed between 
the first laws and the final consequences; they discarded Chance from 
their construction, as a basis unworthy of science; and the void so 
left, all but filled up by deceptive materials, caused the whole edifice to 
fall to ruins. 

Does this amount to saying, that in the facts with which this little 
corner of the universe furnishes us, everything is local? By no means. 
If an ant were capable of making experiments, it. might attain to the 


_ idea of a physical law, a living form, a representative sensation, an 


abstract thought; for a foot of ground, on which there is a thinking 
brain, includes all these. Therefore, however limited be the field of the. 
mind, it contains general facts; that is, facts spread over very vast 
external territories, into which its limitation prevents it from entering. 
If the ant were capable of reasoning, it might construct arithmetic,. 
algebra, geometry, mechanics ; for a movement of half an inch contains 
in abstract time, space, number, and force, all the materials of mathe- 





ee 


516 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv, 


matics: therefore, however limited the field of a mind’s researches be, 
it includes universal data; that is, facts spread over the whole region 
of time and space. Again, if the ant were a philosopher, it might 
evolve the ideas of existence, of nothingness, and all the materials of 
metaphysics ; for any phenomenon, interior or exterior, suffices to pre- 
sent these materials: therefore, however limited the field of a mind 
be, it contains absolute truths; that is, such that there is no object 
from which they could be absent. And this must necessarily be so; for 
the more general a fact is, the fewer objects need we examine to meet 
with it. If it is universal, we meet with it everywhere ; if it is absolute, 
we cannot escape meeting it. This is why, in spite of the narrowness 
of our experience, metaphysics, I mean the search for first causes, is 
possible, but on condition that we remain at a great height, that we do 
not descend into details, that we consider only the most simple ele- 
ments of existence, and the most general tendencies of nature. If any 


one were to collect the three or four great ideas in which our sciences 


result, and the three or four kinds of existence which make up our 
universe ; if he were to compare those two strange quantities which we 
call duration and extension, those principal forms or determinations of 
quantity which we call physical laws, chemical types, and living species, 
and that marvellous representative power, the Mind, which, without 
falling into quantity, reproduces the other two and itself; if he dis- 
covered among these three terms—the pure quantity, the determined 
quantity, and the suppressed quantity’—-such an order that the 
first must require the second, and the second the third; if he thus 
established that the pure quantity is the necessary commencement of 
Nature, and that Thought is the extreme term at which Nature is 
wholly suspended ; it, again, isolating the elements of these data, he 
showed that they must be combined just as they are combined, and 
not otherwise: if he proved, moreover, that there are no other elements, 
and that there can be no other, he would have sketched out a system 
of metaphysics without encroaching on the positive sciences, and have 
attained the source without being obliged to descend to trace the 
various streams. 

In my opinion, these two great operations, Experience as you have 
described it, and Abstraction, as I have tried to define it, comprise 
in themselves all the resources of the human mind, the one in its 
practical, the other in its speculative direction. ‘The first leads us to 
consider nature as an assemblage of facts, the second as a system of 
laws: the exclusive employment of the first is English; that of the 
second, German. If there is a place between these two nations, it is 
ours. We have extended the English ideas in the eighteenth century; 
and now we can, in the nineteenth, add precision to German ideas. Our 


business is to restrain, to correct, to complete the two types of mind, 





1 Die aufgehobene Quantitat, 








a Qa ee ae 
a i 





“CHAP. V.] PHILOSOPHY—STUART MILL. “617 


one by the other, to combine them together, to express their ideas in a 
style generally understood, and thus to produce from them the univer- 
sal mind. 


IX. 


We went out. As it ever happens in similar circumstances, each 
had caused the other to reflect, and neither had convinced the other. 
But our reflections were short: in the presence of a lovely August 
morning, all arguments fall to the ground. The old walls, the rain- 
worn stones, smiled in the rising sun. A fresh light rested on their 
embrasures, on the keystones of the cloisters, on the glossy ivy leaves. 
Roses and honeysuckles climbed the walls, and their flowers quivered 
and sparkled in the light breeze. The fountains murmured in the large 
lonely courts. The beautiful town stood out from the morning’s mist, 
as adorned and tranquil as a fairy palace, and its robe of soft rosy 
vapour was indented, as an embroidery of the Renaissance, by a border 
of towers, cloisters, and palaces, each enclosed in verdure and decked 
with flowers. The architecture of all ages had mingled their ogives, 
trefoils, statues, and columns; time had softened their tints; the sun 
united them in its light, and the old city seemed a shrine to which every 
age and every genius had successively added a jewel. Beyond this, 
the river rolled its broad sheets of silver ; the mowers stood up to the 
knee in the high grass of the meadows. Myriads of buttercups and 
meadow-sweet grasses, bending under the weight of their grey heads, 
plants sated with the dew of the night, swarmed in the rich soil. Words 
cannot express this freshness of tints, and their luxuriance of vegetation. 
The more the long line of shade receded, the more brilliant and full of 
life the flowers appeared. On seeing them, virgin and timid in their 
gilded veil, I thought of the blushing cheeks and modest eyes of a 
young girl who puts on for the first time her necklace of jewels. 
Around, as though to guard them, enormous trees, four centuries old, 
extended in regular lines; and I found in them a new trace of that — 
practical good sense which has effected revolutions without committing 
ravages ; which, while reforming in all directions, has destroyed 
nothing ; which has preserved both its trees and its constitution, which 
has lopped off the dead branches without levelling the trunk; which 
alone, in our days, among all nations, is in the enjoyment not only of 
the present, but of the past. 








518 ’ MODERN AUTHORS. ~ ’ [BOOK V. 


CHAPTER VI. 
Poetry.—Tennyson. 


I. Talent and work—First attempts—Wherein he was opposed to preceding 
poets—W herein he carried on their spirit. 


“IL. First period—Female characters—Delicacy and refinement of sentiment ai 


style—Variety of his emotions and of his subjects—Literary curiosity and 
poetic dilettantism—The Dying Swan—The Lotos-Eaters. 

III. Second period—Popularity, good fortune, and life—Permanent sensibility and 
virgin freshness of the poetic temperament — Wherein he is at one with 
nature—Locksley Hall—Change of subject and style— Violent outbreak and 
personal feeling—Maud. 

IV, Return of Tennyson to his first style—Jn Memoriam—Elegance, coldness, 
and lengthiness of this peem—The subject and the talent must harmonise— 
What subjects agree with the dilettante artist—The Princess—Comparison 

' with As You Like Jt—Fanciful and picturesque world—How Tennyson 
repeats the dreams and the style of the Renaissance. 

V. How Tennyson repeats the freshness and simplicity of the old epic—The 
Idylls of the King—Why he has restored the epic of the Round Table— 
Purity and elevation of his models and his poetry —Hlaine—Morte d’ Arthur 
—Want of individual and absorbing passion—Flexibility and disinterested- 
ness of his mind—Talent for metamorphosis, embellishment, and refine- 
ment. 

VI. His public—Society in England—Country comfort—Elegance—Education— 
Habits—Wherein Tennyson suits such a society—Society in France— 
Parisian life—Pleasures— Representation—Conversation—Boldness of mind 
—Wherein Alfred de Musset suits such a society—Comparison of the two 
societies and of the two poets. 


i, 


HEN Tennyson published his first poems, the critics found fault 

with them. He held his peace; for ten years no one saw his 

name in a review, nor even in a publisher’s catalogue. But when he 

appeared again before the public, his books had made their way alone 

and under the surface, and he passed at once for the greatest poet of 
his country and his time. 

Men were surprised, and with a pleasing surprise. The potent 

generation of poets who had just died out, had passed like a whirlwind. 

Like their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they had carried away 








~ CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. 519 


and hurried everything to its extremes. Some had culled the gigan- 
tic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the 
Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination with tones and 
fancies from every clime. Others had buried themselves in meta- 
physics and morality, had mused indefatigably on the human condi- 
tion, and spent their lives in the sublime and the monotonous. Others, 
making a medley of crime and heroism, had conducted, through dark- 
‘ness and flashes of lightning, a train of contorted and terrible figures, 
' desperate with remorse, relieved by their grandeur. Men wanted to 
rest after so many efforts and so much excess. Quitting the imaginative 
sentimental and Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All the 
forms and ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but puri- 
fied, modulated, set in a splendid style. He completed an age; he 
enjoyed that which had agitated others; his poetry was like the lovely 
evenings in summer: the outlines of the landscape are then the same 
as in the day-time ; but the splendour of the dazzling dome is dulled ; 
the re-invigorated flowers lift themselves up, and the calm sun, on the 
horizon, harmoniously blends in a network of crimson rays the woods 
and meadows which it just before burned by its brightness. 


II. 


What first attracted people were Tennyson’s portraits of women. 
Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, 
from the hand of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, 
embossed with flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of deli- 
cate figures, always elegant and always correct, which we might take to 
be sketched at random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white 
vellum, slightly touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy 
the tender, white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated 
many ideas and many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of 
these portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or 
shaded by the neighbouring tint, with all the boldness and success of 
the happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. And 
there could not be too much of an art so just, so consummate, in 
painting the charming prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half 
blushes, the imperceptible and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty. 
He opposes, harmonises them, makes them, as it were, into a gallery. 
Here is the frolicsome child, the little flirting fsivy, who om eis 
tiny hands, who, 

‘So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, 
From beneath her gather’d wimple 
Glancing with black-beaded eyes, 
Till the lightning laughters dimple 
‘The baby-roses in her cheeks ; 

Then away she flies.’} 





1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851 ; Lilian, 5. 





— 


em tee a 


SAP a RF — se 


Li OO ES a 


—— 


520 -MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


Then the thoughtful fair, who thinks, with staring large blue eyes: 


* Whence that aery bloom of thine, 
Like a lily which the sun 
Looks thro’ in his sad decline, 
And a rose-bush leans upon, 
Thou that faintly smilest still, 
As a Naiad in a well,. 
Looking at the set of day.’ ! 


Anew ‘the ever varying Madeline,’ now smilin , then frowning, then 
ying ? g &) 


joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the two: 
‘ Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow 
Light-glooming over eyes divine, 
Like little clouds sun-fringed.’? 


The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He 
caressed them so carefully, that his verses appeared at times far-fetched, 
affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much adornment and 
polishing; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well as in beauty. 
He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances, curious or 
pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and idyls. He 
wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the feelings of all 
ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, Ginone, Sir 
Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated alter- 
nately Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old English poets 
and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively to the little real 
events of English life, and the great fantastic adventures of extinguished 
chivalry. He was like those musicians who use their bow in the ser- 
vice of all masters. He strayed through nature and history, with no 
preoccupation, without fierce passion, bent on feeling, relishing, culling 
from all parts, in the flower-stand of the drawing-room and in the 
rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild flowers whose scent or beauty could 
charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure; smelt the 


graceful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together; pre- 


ferred those which he took from the country; found that his talent 
was nowhere more easy. They admired the minute observation and 
réfined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting 
aspects, In the Dying Swan they forgot that the subject was almost 
threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might appre- 
ciate such verses as this: 
‘Some blue peaks in the distance rose, 
And white against the cold-white sky, 
Shone out their crowning snows. 
One willow over the river wept, 
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh ; 
Above in the wind was the swallow, 





1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Adeline, 33. 2 Ibid. Madeline, 15. 





4 





*: 


POETRY—TENNYSON. 51 


Chasing itself at its own wild will, 
And far thro’ the marish green and still _ 
The tangled water-courses slept, 
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.’? 


But these melancholy pictures did not display him entirely; men 
accompanied him to the land of the sun, toward the soft voluptuousness 


_ of southern seas ; they returned, with an involuntary fascination, to the 


verses in which he depicts the companions of Ulysses, who, slumbering 
in the land of the Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like himself, forgot 
their country, and renounced action: 


‘A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, 
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; 
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke, 
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. 
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow 
From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops, 
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, 
Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with showery drops, 
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. . . . 


There is sweet music. here that softer falls 

Than petal from blown roses on the grass, 

Or night-dews on still waters between walls 

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; 

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 

Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes ; 

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 
Here are cool mosses deep, 

And thro’ the moss the ivies creep, 

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. . . . 


Lo! in the middle of the wood, 

The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud 
With winds upon the branch, and there 
Grows green and broad, and takes no care, 
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon 
Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow 
Falls, and floats adown the air. 

Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light, 
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, 
Drops in a silent autumn night, 

All its allotted length of days, 

The flower ripens in its place, 

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, 
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. . . . 


But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, 
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly), 





1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; The Dying Swan, 45. 





522 “MODERN AUTHORS. _ [BOOK V. 


With half-dropt eyelids still, 

Beneath a heaven dark and holy. 

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly 

His waters from the purple hill— 

To hear the dewy echoes calling 

From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine— 

To watch the emerald-colour’d water falling 

Thro’ many a wov’n acanthus-wreath divine! 

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, 

Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.’! 


/ 


Ti. 


Was this charming dreamer simply a dilettante? Men liked to 
consider him so; he seemed too happy to admit violent passions. Fame 
came to him easily and quickly, at the age of thirty. The Queen had 
justified the public favour by creating him Poet Laureate. <A great 
writer had declared him a more genuine poet than Lord Byron, and 
maintained that nothing so perfect had been seen since Shakspeare. 
The student, at Oxford, put Tennyson’s works between an annotated 
Euripides and a manual of scholastic philosophy. Young ladies found 
him amongst their marriage presents. He was called rich, venerated 
by his family, admired by his friends, amiable, without affectation, 
even unsophisticated. He lived in the country, chiefly in the Isle of 
Wight, amongst books and flowers, free from the annoyances, rivalries, 
and burdens of society, and his life was easily imagined to be a beauti- 
ful dream, as sweet as those which he had pictured. 

Yet the men who looked closer saw that there was a fire of passion 
under this smooth surface. A genuine poetic temperament never fails 
him. He feels too acutely to be at peace. When we quiver at the least 
touch, we shake and tremble under great shocks. Already here and 
there, in his pictures of country and love, a brilliant verse broke 
with its glowing colour through the calm and correct outline. He had 
felt that strange growth of unknown powers which suddenly arrest a 
man with fixed gaze before revealed beauty. The specialty of the 
poet is to be ever young, for ever virgin. For us, the vulgar, things 
are threadbare; sixty centuries of civilisation have worn out their 
primitive freshness ; we perceive them only through a veil of ready-made 
phrases ; we employ them, we no longer comprehend them; we see in 
them no more magnificent flowers, but good vegetables; the luxuriant 
primeval forest is to us nothing but a well-planned, over-known, 
kitchen garden. On the other hand, the poet, in presence of this 
world, is as the first man on the first day. In a moment our phrases, 
our reasonings, all the trappings of memory and prejudice, vanish 
from his mind; things seem new to him; he is astonished and ravished ; 
a headlong stream of sensations oppresses him; it is the all-potent 





1 Poems bv A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; The Lotos-Haters, 140. 





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ayes 
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. 


CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. ‘523 


sap of human invention, which, checked in us, begins to flow in 
him. Fools call him mad, the truth being that he is a seer: for we 
may indeed be sluggish, but nature is always full of life; the rising sun 
is as beautiful as on the first dawn; the streaming floods, the multiply- 


ing flowers, the trembling passions, the forces which hurl onward the 


stormy whirlwind of existence, aspire and strive with the same energy’ 
as at their birth; the immortal heart of nature beats yet, heaving its 
coarse trappings, and its beatings work in the poet’s heart when they 
no longer echo in our own. ‘Tennyson felt this, not indeed always ; 
but twice or thrice at least he has dared to make it heard. We have 
found the free action of full emotion, and recognised the voice of a man 
in these verses of Locksley Hall: 

‘Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, 

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. 

And I said, ‘‘ My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, 

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.” 

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light, 

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. 


And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs— 
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes— 


Saying, ‘‘I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong ;” 
Saying, ‘* Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, ‘‘I have loved thee long.” 


Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands ; 
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight. 
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, 

And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fulness of the Spring. 


Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, 
And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips. 


O my cousin, shallow-hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more! 

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore! 

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, 
Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue ! 

Is it well to wish thee happy ?—having known me—to decline 

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine! 

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay. 
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown, 

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. 


He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, 
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. 


What is this ? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine. 
Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine. 





524 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought: 
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. 
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand— 
Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand !’! 
This is very frank and strong. Maud appeared still more so. In it 
the rapture broke forth with all its inequalities, familiarities, freedom, 
violence. The correct, measured poet gave himself up, seemed to think 
and weep aloud. This book is the secret diary of a gloomy young man, 
soured by great family misfortunes, by long solitary meditations, who 
gradually became enamoured, dared to speak, found himself loved. He 
does not sing, but speaks; they are the hazarded, reckless words of 
ordinary conversation ; details of everyday life; the description of a 
toilet, a political dinner, a service and sermon ina village church. The 
prose of Dickens and Thackeray did not more firmly grasp real and 
actual manners. And by its side, most splendid poetry abounded and 
blossomed, as in fact it blossoms and abounds in the midst of our 
commonplaces. The smile of a richly dressed girl, a sunbeam on a 
stormy sea, or on a spray of roses, throws these sudden illuminations 
into impassioned souls. What verses are these, in which he represents 
himself in his dark little garden: 
‘ A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime 
In the little grove where I sit—ah, wherefore cannot I be 
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, 
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, 
Half lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea, 
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?’ ? 
What a holiday in his heart when he is loved! What madness in these 
cries, that intoxication, that tenderness which would pour itself on all, 
and summon all to the spectacle and the participation of his happiness! 
How all is transfigured in his eyes; and how constantly he is himself 
transfigured! Gaiety, then ecstasy, then childish fun, then satire, then 
outpourings, all ready movements, all sudden changes, like a crackling 
and flaming fire, renewing every moment its shape and colour: how 
rich is the soul, and how it can live a hundred years inaday! Sur- 
prised and insulted by the brother, he kills him in a duel, and loses her 
whom he loved. He flees; he is seen wandering in London. Whata 
gloomy contrast is that of the great busy careless town, and a solitary 
man haunted by true grief! We follow him down the noisy streets, 
through the yellow fog, under the wan sun which rises above the river 
like a ‘ dull red ball,’ and we hear the heart full of anguish, deep sobs, 
insensate agitation of a soul which would but cannot tear itself from its 
memories, Despair grows, and in the end the reverie becomes a vision : 
‘ Dead, long dead, 
Long dead ! 


1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Locksley Hall, 266. 
2 Maud, 1856, iv. 1, p. 15. 


, 














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_ CHAP. VI] POETRY —TENNYSON. 525 


And my heart is a handful of dust, 
And the wheels go over my head, 
And my bones are shaken with pain, 
For into a shallow grave they are thrust, 
Only a yard beneath the street, 
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat, 
The hoofs of the horses beat, 
Beat into my scalp and my brain, 
With never an end to the stream of passing feet, 
' Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying, 
Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter’... 
O me! why have they not buried me deep enough ? 
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough, 
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper ? 
Maybe still I am but half-dead ; 
Then I cannot be wholly dumb ; 
I will cry to the steps above my head, 
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come 
To bury me, bury me | 
Deeper, ever so little deeper.’ ? 
However, he revives, and gradually rises again. War breaks out, a 
liberal and generous war, the war against Russia; and the big, manly 
heart is healed by action and courage of the deep wound of love: 
‘ And I stood on a giant deck and mix’d my breath 
With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry. .. . 
Yet God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar ; 
And many a darkness into the light shall leap, 
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, 
And noble thought be freer under the sun, 
And the heart of a people beat with one desire ; 
For the peace, that I deem’d no peace, is over and done, 
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, 
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames 
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.’ * 
This explosion of feeling was the only one; Tennyson has not again 
encountered it. In spite of the moral close, men said that he was 
imitating Byron; they cried out against these bitter declamations ; 
they thought that they perceived the rebellious accent of the Satanic 
school; they blamed this uneven, obscure, excessive style; they were 
shocked at these crudities and incongruities; they called on the poet 
to return to his first well-proportioned style. He was discouraged, left 
the storm-clouds, and returned to the azure sky. He was right; he is 
there better than anywhere else. A fine soul may be transported, attain 
at times to the fire of the most violent and the strongest beings: personal 
memories, they say, had furnished the matter of Maud and of Locksley 
Hall ; with a woman’s delicacy, he had the nerves of a woman. The 








1 Tennyson’s Maud, 1856, xxvii. 1, p. 99, ? Ibid. xxvii. 11, p. 105. 
3 Ibid. xxviii. 8 and 4, p. 108. 


526: MODERN AUTHORS. [BOoK v.: 


fit over, he fell again into his ‘golden languors,’ into his calm reverie. 
After Locksley Hall he had written the Princess ; after Maud he wrote 
the Idylls of the King. 


IV. 


The great task of an artist is to find subjects which suit his talent. 
Tennyson has not always succeeded in this. His long poem, Jn Memo- 
riam, written in praise and memory of a friend who died young, is cold, 
monotonous, and often too prettily arranged. He goes into mourning; 
but, like a correct gentleman, with bran new gloves, wipes away his 
tears with a cambric handkerchief, and displays throughout the reli- 
gious service, which ends the ceremony, all the compunction of a 


respectful and well-trained layman. He was to find his subjects else- — 


where. To be poetically happy is the object of a dilettante-artist. 
For this many things are necessary. First of all, that the place, the 
events, and the characters shall not exist. Realities are coarse, and 
always, in some sense, ugly; at least they are heavy: we do not treat 
them at our pleasure, they oppress the fancy ; at bottom there is no- 
thing truly sweet and beautiful in our life but our dreams. We are ill 
at ease whilst we remain glued to earth, hobbling along on our two feet, 
which drag us wretchedly here and there in the place which impounds us. 
We need to live in another world, to hover in the wide-air kingdom, 
to build palaces in the clouds, to see them rise and crumble, to follow in 
a hazy distance the whims of their moving architecture, and the turns 
of their golden volutes. In this fantastic world, again, all must be 
pleasant and beautiful, the heart and senses must enjoy it, objects must 
be smiling or picturesque, sentiments delicate or lofty; no crudity, 
incongruity, brutality, savageness must come to sully with its excess the 
modulated harmony of this ideal perfection. This leads the poet to the 
legends of chivalry. Here is the fantastic world, splendid to the sight, 
noble and specially pure, in which love, war, adventures, generosity, 
courtesy, all spectacles and all virtues which suit the instincts of our 
European races, are assembled, to furnish them with the epic which they 
love, and the model which suits them. 

The Princess is a fairy tale as sentimental as those of Shakspeare.. 
Tennyson here thought and felt like a young knight of the Renaissance. 
The mark of this kind of mind is a superabundance, as it were, a 
superfluity of sap. In the characters of the Princess, as in those of 
As You Like It, there is an over-fulness of fancy and emotions. They 
have recourse, to express their thought, to all ages and lands; they 
carry speech to the most reckless rashness; they clothe and burden 
every idea with a sparkling image, which drags and glitters upon it 
like a brocade clustered with jewels. Their nature is over-rich; at 
every shock there is in them a sort of rustle of joy, anger, desire ; they 
live more than we, more warmly and more quickly. They are exces- 
sive, refined, ready to weep, laugh, adore, jest, inclined to mingle 





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CHAP. VIL] POETRY—TENNYSON. 527: 


adoration and jests, urged by a nervous rapture to contrasts, and even 
extremes. They sally in the poetic field with impetuous and changing 
caprice and joy. To satisfy the subtlety and superabundance of their 
originality, they need fairy-tales and masquerades. In fact, the Princess 
is both. The beautiful Ida, daughter of King Gama, who is monarch of 
the South (this country is not to be found on the map), was affianced 
in her childhood to a beautiful prince of the North. When the time 
appointed has arrived, she isclaimed. She, proud and bred on learned 
arguments, has become irritated against the rule of men, and in order to 
liberate women has founded a university on the frontiers, which is to 
raise her sex, and to be the colony of future equality. The prince sets 
out with Cyril and Florian, two friends, obtains permission from good 
King Gama, and, disguised as a girl, enters the maiden precincts, where 
no man may enter in on pain of death. There is a charming and rally- 
ing grace in this picture of a university for girls. The poet sports with 
beauty ; no badinage could be more romantic or tender. We smile 
to hear long learned words come from these rosy lips: 
‘ There sat along the forms, like morning doves 

That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 

A patient range of pupils.’? 
They listen to the historic dissertations and promises of the social 
revolution, in ‘ Academic silks, in hue the lilac, with a silken hood to 
each, and zoned with gold, . . . as rich as moth from dusk cocoons.’ 
Amongst these girls was Melissa, a child— 

‘ A rosy blonde, and in a college gown 

That clad her like an April daffodilly 

(Her mother’s colour) with her lips apart, 

And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, 

As bottom agates seem to wave and float 

In crystal currents of clear morning seas.’ 


Be sure that the place assists in the magic. That plain title of College 
and Faculty recalls in Frenchmen only scant and dirty buildings, which 
we might mistake for barracks or furnished lodgings. Here, as in 
an English university, flowers creep up the porches, vines cling round 
the bases of the monuments, roses strew the alleys with their petals ; 
the laurel thickets grow around the gates, the courts pile up their 
marble architecture, bossed with sculptured friezes, varied with urns 
from which droops the green pendage of the plants. ‘The Muses and 
the Graces, group’d in threes, enring’d a billowing fountain in the 
midst.’ After the lecture, some girls, in the deep meadow grass, 
‘ smoothed a petted peacock down ;’ others, 
‘ Leaning there on those balusters, high 


Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath, 





1 The Princess, a Medley, 12th ed. 1864, ii. 34. - . 2 Ibid. ii, 46, 





528 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK v. 


And sated with the innumerable rose 
Beat balm upon our eyelids.’ 


At every gesture, every attitude, we recognise young English girls; it 
is their brightness, their freshness, their innocence. And here and 
there, too, we perceive the deep expression of their large dreamy eyes: 


* Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. ... 


Dear as remember’d kisses after death, 

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.’? 


This is an exquisite and strange voluptuousness, a reverie full of delight, 
and full, too, of anguish, the shudder of delicate and melancholy pas- 
sion which we have already found in Winter's Tale or in Twelfth 
Night. 

The three friends have gone forth with the princess and her train, 
all on horseback, and pause ‘ near a coppice-feather’d chasm,’ 


‘ till the Sun 
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns,’ 


Cyril, heated by wine, begins to troll a careless tavern-catch, and betrays 
the secret. Ida, indignant, turns to leave ; her foot slips, and she falls 
into the river; the prince saves her, and wishes to flee. But he is 
seized by the Proctors and brought before the throne, where the haughty 
maiden stands ready to pronounce sentence. At this moment 


‘. . . There rose 
A hubbub in the court of half the maids 
Gather’d together: from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendour slanted o’er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, 
And gold and golden heads.; they to and fro 
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 
All open-mouth’d, all gazing to the light, 
Some crying there was an army in the land, 
And some that men were in the very walls, 
And some they cared not ; till a clamour grew 
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, 
And worse-confounded : high above them stood 
The placid marble Muses, looking peace.’ * 





1 The Princess, a Medley, 12th ed. 1864, iii. 60. 
* Ibid. iv. 76, 3 Ibid, iv. 99, 








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CHAP. VI] - POETRY—TENNYSON, . 529 


The father of the prince has come with his army to deliver him, and 
has seized King Gama as a hostage. ‘The princess is obliged to release 
the young man ; she comes to him with distended nostrils, waving hair, 
_ a tempest raging in her heart, and thanks him with bitter irony. She 
trembles with wounded pride; she stammers, hesitates; she tries to 
constrain herself in order the better to insult him, and suddenly breaks 
out: 
* «€ You have done well and like a gentleman, 

And like a prince; you have our thanks for all : 

And you look well too in your woman’s dress : 

Well have you done and like a gentleman. 

You have saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks: 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood— 

Then men had said—but now—What hinders me 

To take such bloody vengeance on you both ?— 

Yet since our father—Wasps in our good hive, 

You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 

Barbarians, grosser than your native bears— 

O would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull’d 

Our servants, wrong’d and lied and thwarted us— 

I wed with thee! Z bound by precontract 

Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho’ all the gold 

That veins the world were pack’d to make your crown, 

And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 

Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : 

I trample on your offers and on you: 

Begone : we will not look upon you more. 

Here, push them out at gates.”’+ 


How is this fierce heart to be softened, fevered with feminine anger, 
embittered by disappointment and insult, excited by long dreams of 
power and ascendency, and rendered more savage by its virginity ! 
But how anger becomes her, and how lovely she is! And how this 
fire of sentiment, this lofty declaration of independence, this chimerical 
ambition for reforming the future, reveal the generosity and pride of 
a young heart, enamoured of the beautiful! It is agreed that the 
quarrel shall be settled by a combat of fifty men against fifty other 
men. The prince is conquered, and Ida sees him bleeding on the sand. 
Slowly, gradually, in spite of herself, she yields, receives the wounded 
in her palace, and comes to the bedside of the dying prince. Before his 
weakness and his wild delirium pity expands, then tenderness, then love : 
‘ From all a closer interest flourish’d up 

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself, 

But such as gather’d colour day by day.’ ? 


1 The Princess, a Medley, iv. 102. * Ibid. v. 168. 
VOL. II, 2L 





-_ 


530 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Vv. 


One evening he returns to consciousness, exhausted, his eyes still 
troubled by gloomy visions; he sees Ida before him, hovering like a 
dream, painfully opens his pale lips, and ‘ utter’d whisperingly :’ 
“If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, 

I would but ask you to fulfil yourself: 

But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 

I ask you nothing: only, if a dream, 

Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 

Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die,” 

. . « She turned ; she paused ; 

She stoop’d ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 

And I believe that in the living world ; 

My spirit closed with Ida’s at the lips ; 

Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 

Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 

Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, 

And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 

Than in her mould that other, when she came 

From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 

And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 

Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, 

Naked, a double light in air and wave.’ ! 


This is the accent of the Renaissance, as it left the heart of Spenser and 
Shakspeare ; they had this voluptuous adoration of form and soul, and 
this divine sentiment of beauty. 


V. 


There is another chivalry, which inaugurates the Middle Age, as 
this closes it; sung by children, as this by youths; and restored in the 
Idylis of the King, as this in the Princess. It is the legend of Arthur, 
Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. With admirable art, 
Tennyson has renewed the feelings and the language; this pliant soul 
takes all tones, in order to give itself all pleasures. This time he has 
become epic, antique, and ingenuous, like Homer, and like the old 
trouveres of the chansons de Geste. It is pleasant to quit our learned 
civilisation, to rise again to the primitive age and manners, to listen to 
the peaceful discourse which flows copiously and slowly, as a river on 
a smooth slope. The mark of the ancient epic is clearness and calm. 
The ideas were new-born; man was happy and in his infancy. He 
had not had time to refine, to cut down and adorn his thoughts; he 
showed them bare. He was not yet pricked by manifold lusts; he 
thought at leisure. Every idea interested him; he unfolded it curiously, 
and explained it. His speech never jerks; he goes step by step, from 
one object to another, and every object seems lovely to him ; he pauses, 





1 The Princess, a Medley, v. 165. 





So 








CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. 531 


observes, and takes pleasure in observing. This simplicity and peace 
are strange and charming ; we abandon ourselves, it is well with us; 
we do not desire to go more quickly ; we fancy we would gladly remain 
thus, and for ever. For primitive thought is wholesome thought; we 
have but marred it by grafting and cultivation; we return to it as 
our familiar element, to find contentment and repose. 

But of all epics, this of the Round Table is distinguished by purity. 
Arthur, the irreproachable king, has assembled 


‘ A glorious company, the flower of men, 
To serve as model for the mighty world, 
And be the fair beginning of a time. 
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 
To reverence the King, as if he were 
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, . . . 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
And worship her by years of noble deeds,’? 


There is a sort of refined pleasure in having todo with such a world ; 
for there is none in which purer or more touching fruits could grow. 
I will show one—‘ Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat ’"—who, having seen 
Lancelot once, loves him when he has departed, and for her whole life. 
She keeps the shield, which he has left, in a tower, and every day goes 
up to contemplate it, counting ‘every dint a sword had beaten in it, 
and every scratch a lance had made upon it,’ and living on her dreams. 
He is wounded: she goes to tend and heal him: 


‘She murmur’d, ‘‘ vain, in vain: it cannot be. 
He will not love me: how then? must I die?” 
Then as a little helpless innocent bird, 
That has but one plain passage of few notes, 
Will sing the simple passage o’er and o’er 
For all an April morning, till the ear 
‘Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid 
Went half the night repeating, ‘‘ must I die?” ’? 


At last she confesses her secret; but with what modesty and spirit! 
He cannot marry her; he is tied to another. She droops and fades ; 
her father and brothers try to console her, but she will not be consoled. 
She is told that Lancelot has sinned with the queen; she does not 
believe it : 
‘ At last she said, ‘* Sweet brothers, yester night 
- I seem’d a curious little maid again, 
As happy as when we dwelt among the woods, 
And when you used to take me with the flood 
Up the great river in the boatman’s boat. 
Only you would not pass beyond the cape 





‘ Idylls of the King, 1864 ; Guinevere, 249. 9 Ibid. ; Hlaine, 193. 


532 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


That has the poplar on it ; there you fixt 
Your limit, oft returning with the tide. 
And yet I cried because you would not pass 
Beyond it, and far up the shining flood 
Until we found the palace of the king. 

. » « Nowshall I have my will.” ’! 


She dies, and her father and:brothers did what she had asked ; 


* But when the next sun brake from underground, 
Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows 
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier 
Past like a shadow thro’ the field, that shone 
Full summer, to that stream whereon the barge, . 
Pall’d all its length in blackest samite, lay. j 
There sat the lifelong creature of the house, f 
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, — 
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. 
So those two brethren from the chariot took | 
And on the black decks laid her in her bed, 

Set in her hand a lily, o’er her hung 

The silken case with braided blazonings 

And kiss’d her quiet brows, and saying to her: 
** Sister, farewell for ever,” and again 

*¢ Farewell, sweet sister,” parted all in tears. 
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead 
Steer’d by the dumb went upward with the flood— 
In her right hand the lily, in her left 

The letter—all her bright hair streaming down— 
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold 

Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white 

All but her face, and that clear-featured face 
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead 
But fast asleep, and lay as tho’ she smiled.’ ? 


« 
ve —— a ——— —— 


‘ 
- 
E 
; 
. 


Thus they arrive at Court in great silence, and King Arthur read the 
letter before all his knights and weeping ladies: 


© Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, 
I, sometime call’d the maid of Astolat, 
Come, for you left me taking no farewell, 
Hither, to take my last farewell of you. 
I loved you, and my love had no return, 
And therefore my true love has been my death. 
And therefore to our lady Guinevere, 
And to all other ladies, I make moan. 
Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. 
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot, 
As thou art a knight peerless.’ 


Nothing more: she ends with this word, full of ‘so sad a regret and so 





1 Tdylls of the King ; Elaine, 201. 2 Ibid. 206. 3 Thid. 218. 








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CHAP. VI.] _ POETRY—TENNYSON. 533 


tender an admiration: we could hardly find anything more simple or 
more delicate. | 
It seems as if an archeologist might reproduce all styles except the 
grand, and Tennyson has reproduced all, even the grand. It is the 
night of the final battle; all day the tumult of the mighty fray ‘roll’d 
among the mountains by the winter sea;’ Arthur’s knights had fallen 
‘man by man;’ he himself had fallen, ‘deeply smitten through the helm,’ 
and Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, bore him to a place hard by, 
‘A chapel nigh the field, 

A broken chancel with a broken cross, 

That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 

On one side lay the Ocean, and on one 

Lay a great water, and the moon was full.’! 


Arthur, feeling himself about to die, bids him take his sword Excalibur 
‘and fling him far into the middle meer ;’ for he had received it from 
the sea-nymphs, and after him no mortal must handle it.. Twice Sir 
Bedivere went to obey the king: twice he paused, and came back pre- 
tending that he had flung away the sword; for his eyes were dazzled 
by the wondrous diamond setting which clustered and shone about the 
haft. The third time he throws it: 


‘The great brand 
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, 
And flashing round and round, and whirl'’d in an arch, 
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, 
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 
By night, with noises of the northern sea. 
So flash’d and fell the brand Excalibur : 
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish’d him 
Three times, and drew him under in the meer.’? 


Then Arthur, rising painfully, and scarce able to breathe, bids Sir 
Bedivere take him on his shoulders and ‘bear me to the margin.’ 
‘Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die.’ They arrive thus, 
through ‘icy caves and barren chasms,’ to the shores of a lake, where 
they saw ‘the long glories of the winter moon:’ 


‘They saw then how there hove a dusky barge 

Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, 

Beneath them ; and descending they were ware 

That all the decks were dense with stately forms 
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these > 
Three Queens with crowns of gold—and from them rose 
A cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars, 

And, as it were one voice, an agony 

Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills 





1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Morte d’ Arthur, 189, 2 Ibid, 194. 





534 | MODERN AUTHORS. _ [BOOK V. 


All night in a waste land, where no one comes, 

Or hath come, since the making of the world. 

Then murmur’d Arthur: ‘‘ Place me in the barge,” 
And to the barge they came. ‘There those three Queens 
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept. 
But she, that rose the tallest of them all 

And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, 

And loosed the shatter’d casque, and chafed his hands 
And call’d him by his name, complaining loud. . . .’? 


Before the barge drifts away, King Arthur, raising his slow voice, con- 
soles Sir Bedivere, standing in sorrow on the shore, and pronounces 
this heroic and solemn farewell : 


‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. ... 
If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. .. . 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 
But now farewell. Iam going a long way 
With these thou seést,—if indeed I go— 
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 
To the island-valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns 
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.’ ? 


Nothing, I think, calmer and more imposing has been seen since Goethe. 

How, in a few words, shall we assemble all the features of so mani- 
fold atalent? Tennyson isa born poet, that is, a builder of airy palaces 
and imaginary castles. But the individual passion and absorbing pre- 
occupations which generally guide the hands of such men are wanting 
to him; he found in himself no plan of a new edifice; he has built 
after all the rest; he has simply chosen amongst all forms the most 
elegant, ornate, exquisite. Of their beauties he has taken but the 
flower. At most, now and then, he has here and there amused himself 
by designing some genuinely English and‘modern cottage. If in this 
choice of architecture, adopted or restored, we look for a trace of him, 
we shall find it, here and there, in some more finely sculptured frieze, 
in some more delicate and graceful sculptured rose-work ; but we shall 
only find it marked and sensible in the purity and elevation of the moral 
emotion which we shall carry away with us when we quit his gallery 
of art. 





4 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed, 1851 ; Morte d Arthur, 196. 2 Ibid. 197. 


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CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. 535 


VI. 


The favourite poet of a nation, it seems, is he whose works a man, 
setting out on a journey, prefers to put into his pocket. Now-a-days it 
would be Tennyson in England, and Alfred de Musset in France. The 
two publics differ: so do their modes of life, their reading, and their 
pleasures. Let us try to describe them; we shall better understand 
the flowers if we see them in the garden. 

Here we are at Newhaven or at Dover, and we glide over the 
rails looking on either side. On both hands fly past country-houses ; 
they exist everywhere in England, on the margin of lakes, on the edge 
of the bays, on the summit of the hill, in every picturesque point of 
view. They are the chosen abodes; London is but a business-place ; 
men of the world live, amuse themselves, visit each other, in the 
country. How well ordered and pretty is this house! If near it there 
was some old edifice, abbey, or castle, it has been preserved. The new 
building has been suited to the old; even if detached and modern, 
it does not lack style; gable-ends, mullions, broad-windows, turrets 
perched at every corner, have a Gothic air in their newness. Even this 
cottage, modest as it is, suited to people, with a very good income, is 
pleasant to see with its pointed roofs, its porch, its bright brown bricks, 
all covered with ivy. Doubtless grandeur is generally wanting; in 
these days the men who mould opinion are no longer great lords, 
but rich gentlemen, well brought up, and landholders ; it is pleasantness 
which appeals to them. But how they understand the word! All 
round the house is a lawn fresh and smooth as velvet, rolled every 
morning. In front, great rhododendrons form a bright thicket in which 
murmur swarms of bees; festoons of exotics creep and curve over the 
short grass; honeysuckles clamber up the trees; hundreds of roses, 
drooping over the windows, shed their rain of petals on the paths. Fine 
elms, yew-trees, great oaks, jealously tended, everywhere combine their 
leafage or rear their heads. ‘Trees have been brought from Australia 
and China to adorn the thickets with the elegance or the singularity 
of their foreign shapes; the copper-beech stretches over the delicate 
verdure the shadow of its dark metallic-hued foliage. How delicious is 
the freshness of this verdure! How it glistens, and how it abounds in 
wild flowers brightened by the sun! What care, what cleanliness, how 
everything is arranged, kept up, refined, for the comfort of the senses 
and the pleasure of the eyes! If there is a slope, streams have been 
devised with little islets in the glen, peopled with tufts of roses; ducks 
of select breed swim in the pools, where the water-lilies display their 
satin stars. Fat oxen lie in the grass, sheep as white as if fresh from 
the washing, all kinds of happy and model animals, fit to delight the 
eyes of an amateur and a master. We return to the house, and before 
entering I look upon the view; decidedly the love of Englishmen for 
the country is innate; how comfortable it will be from that parlour 





536 - MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


window to look upon the setting sun, and the broad network of sunlight 
spread across the woods! And how cunningly they have disposed the 
house, so that the landscape may be seen at distance between the hills, 
and at hand between the trees! Weenter. How nicely everything 
is got up, and how commodious! The least wants have been foreseen, 
provided for; there is nothing which is not correct and perfect; we 
imagine that all the objects have received a prize, or at least honour- 
able mention, at some industrial exhibition. And the attendance of the 
servants is as good as the objects; cleanliness is not more scrupulous in 
Holland ; Englishmen have, in proportion, three times as many servants 
as Frenchmen; not too many for the minute details of the service. 
The domestic machine acts without interruption, without shock, with- 
out hindrance; every wheel has its movement and its place, and the 
comfort which it dispenses falls on the mouth like honeydew, as true 
and as exquisite as the sugar of a model refinery when quite purified. 
We converse with our host. We very soon find that his mind and 
soul have always been well balanced. When he left college he found 
his career shaped out for him; no need for him to revolt against the 
Church, which is half rational; nor against the Constitution, which is 
nobly liberal: the faith and law presented to him are good, useful, 
moral, liberal enough to maintain and employ all diversities of sincere 
minds. He became attached to them, he loves them, he has received 
from them the whole system of his practical and speculative ideas; he 
does not waver, he no longer doubts, he knows what he ought to believe 
and to do. He is not carried away by theories, dulled by sloth, checked 
by contradictions, Elsewhere youth is like a stagnant or scattering 
water; here there is a fine old channel which receives and directs to 
a useful and sure end the stream of its activities and passions. He 
acts, works, rules. He is married, has tenants, is a magistrate, becomes 


a politician. He improves and rules his parish, his estate, and his 


family. He founds societies, speaks at meetings, superintends schools, 
dispenses justice, introduces improvements; he employs his reading, 
his travels, his connections, his fortune, and his rank, to lead his neigh- 
bours and dependants amicably to some work which profits themselves 
and the public.. He is influential and respected. He has the pleasures 
of self-esteem and the satisfaction of conscience. He knows that he 


has authority, and that he uses it loyally, for the good of others. And - 


this healthy state of mind is supported by a wholesome life. His mind 
is beyond doubt cultivated and occupied; he is well-informed, knows 
several languages, has travelled, is fond of all precise information; he 
is kept by his newspaper conversant with all new ideas and disco- 
veries. But, at the same time, he loves and practises all bodily exer- 
cises. He rides, takes long walks, hunts, yachts, follows closely and by 
himself all the details of breeding and agriculture ; he lives in the open 
air, he withstands the encroachments of a sedentary life, which always 
elsewhere leads the modern man to agitation of the brain, weakness 








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CHAP. VI.] , POETRY—TENNYSON. 537 


of the muscles, and excitement of the nerves. Such is this elegant 
and common-sense society, refined in comfort, regular in conduct, 


whose dilettante tastes and moral principles confine it within a sort | 


of flowery border, and prevent it from having its attention diverted. 


Does any poet suit such a society better than Tennyson? Without 
being a pedant, he is moral; he may be read in the family circle by 


night ; he does not rebel against society and life; he speaks of God 
and the soul, nobly, tenderly, without ecclesiastical prejudice ; there 
is no need to reproach him like Lord Byron; he has no violent and 
abrupt words, excessive and scandalous sentiments; he will pervert 
nobody. We shall not be troubled when we close the book; we may 
listen when we quit him, without contrast, to the grave voice of the 
master of the house, who repeats the evening prayers before the 
kneeling servants. And yet, when we quit him, we keep a smile of 
pleasure on our lips. The traveller, the lover of archeology, has been 
pleased by the imitations of foreign and antique sentiments. The 
sportsman, the lover of the country, has relished the little country scenes 
and the rich rural pictures. The ladies have been charmed by his 
portraits of women; they are so exquisite and pure! He has laid 
such delicate blushes of those lovely cheeks! He has depicted so well 
the changing expression of those proud or candid eyes! They like 
him because they feel that he likes them. More, he honours them, 
and rises in his nobility to the height of their purity. Young girls 
weep in listening to him; certainly when, a while ago, we heard the 
legend of Elaine or Enid read, we saw the fair heads drooping under the 
flowers which adorned them, and white shoulders heaving with furtive 
emotion, And how delicate was this emotion! He has not rudely 
trenched upon truth and passion, He has risen to the height of noble 
and tender sentiments. He has gleaned from all nature and all history 
what was most lofty and amiable. He has chosen his ideas, chiselled 
his words, equalled by his artifices, successes, and diversity of his style, 
the pleasantness and perfection of social elegance in the midst of which 
we read him. His poetry is like one of those gilt and painted stands 
in which flowers of the country and exotics mingle in artful harmony 
their stalks and foliage, their clusters and cups, their scents and hues. 
It seems made expressly for these wealthy, cultivated, free business 
men, heirs of the ancient nobility, new leaders of anew England. It 
is part of their luxury as of their morality ; it is an eloquent confirma- 
tion of their principles, and a precious article of their drawing-room 
furniture. 

We return to Calais, and travel towards Paris, without pausing 
on the road. There are on the way plenty of noblemen’s castles, and 
houses of rich men of business. But we do not find amongst them, as 
in England, the thinking elegant world, which, by the refinement of its 
tastes and the superiority of its mind, becomes the guide of the nation 
and the arbiter of the beautiful. There are two peoples in France: the 


538 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


provinces and Paris; the one dining, sleeping, yawning, listening; the 
other thinking, daring, watching, and speaking: the first drawn by the 
second, as a snail by a butterfly, alternately amused and disturbed by 
the whims and the audacity of its guide. It is this guide we must look 
upon! Let us enter Paris! What a strange spectacle! It is evening, 
the streets are aflame, a luminous dust covers the busy noisy crowd, 
which jostles, elbows, crushes, and swarms in front of the theatres, 
behind the windows of the cafés. Have you remarked how all these 
faces are wrinkled, frowning, or pale; how anxious are their looks, how 
nervous their gestures? A violent brightness falls on these shining 
heads ; most are bald before thirty. To find pleasure here, they must 
have plenty of excitement: the dust of the boulevard settles on the 
ice which they are eating; the smell of the gas and the steam of the 
pavement, the perspiration left on the walls dried up by the fever of a 
Parisian day, ‘the human air full of impure rattle’—this is what they 
cheerfully breathe. They are crammed round their little marble 
tables, persecuted by the glaring light, the shouts of the waiters, the 
jumble of mixed talk, the monotonous motion of gloomy walkers, the 
flutter of loitering courtesans moving anxiously in the shadow. Doubt- 
less their homes are unpleasing, or they would not change them for 
these bagmen’s delights. We climb four flights, and find ourselves in a 
polished, gilded room, adorned with stuccoed ornaments, plaster statu- 


ettes, new furniture of old oak, with every kind of pretty knick-knack » 


on the mantlepieces and the whatnots. ‘It makes a good show;’ you 
can give a good reception to envious friends and people of standing. 
It is an advertisement, nothing more; we pass half an hour there 
agreeably, and that is all. You will never make more than a house of 
call out of it; it is low in the ceiling, close, inconvenient, rented by the 
year, dirty in six months, serving to display a fictitious luxury. All 
the enjoyments of these people are factitious, and, as it were, snatched 
hurriedly ; they have in them something unhealthy and irritating. They 
are like the cookery of their restaurants, the splendour of their cafés, 
the gaiety of their theatres. They want them too quick, too lively, too 
manifold. They have not cultivated them patiently, and culled them 
moderately ; they have forced them on an artificial and heating soil; 
they grasp them in haste, They are refined and greedy; they need 
every day a stock of coloured words, broad anecdotes, biting railleries, 
new truths, varied ideas. They soon get bored, and cannot endure 
tedium. They amuse themselves with all their might, and find that 
they are hardly amused. They exaggerate their work and their expense, 
their wants and their efforts. The accumulation of sensations and 
fatigue stretches their nervous machine to excess, and their polish of 
social gaiety chips off twenty times a day, displaying a basis of suffering 
and ardour, 

But how fine they are, and how free is their mind! How this 
incessant rubbing has sharpened them! How ready they are to grasp 











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CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. 539 


and comprehend everything! How apt this studied and manifold 
culture has made them to feel and relish tendernesses and sadnesses, 
unknown to their fathers, deep feelings, strange and sublime, which 
hitherto seemed foreign to their race! This great city is cosmopolitan ; 
here all ideas may be born; no barrier checks the mind; the vast field 
of thought opens before them without a beaten or prescribed track. Use 
neither hinders nor guides them; an official Government and Church 
rid them of the care of leading the nation: the two powers are sub- 
mitted to, as we submit to the beadle or the policeman, patiently and 
with chaff; they are looked upon as a play. In short, the world here 
seems but a melodrama, a subject of criticism and argument. And be 
sure that criticism and argument have full scope. An Englishman 
entering on life, finds to all great questions an answer ready made. <A ~ 
Frenchman entering on life finds to all great questions simply suggested 
doubts. In this conflict of opinions he must create a faith for himself, 
and, being mostly unable to do it, he remains open to every uncertainty, 
and therefore to every curiosity and to every pain. In this gulf, which 
is like a vast sea, dreams, theories, fancies, intemperate, poetic and 
sickly desires, collect and chase each other like clouds. If in this 
tumult of moving forms we seek some solid work to prepare a founda- 
tion for future opinions, we find only the slowly-rising edifices of the 
sciences, which here and there obscurely, like submarine polypes, con- 
struct of imperceptible coral the basis on which the belief of the human 
race is to rest. | 
Such is the world for which Alfred de Musset wrote: in Paris he | 
must be read. Read? We all know him byheart. He is dead, and it | 
seems as if we daily hear him speak. A conversation among artists, as | 
they jest in a studio, a beautiful young girl leaning over her box at 
the theatre, a street washed by the rain, making the black pavement 
shine, a fresh smiling morning in the woods of Fontainebleau, everything 
brings him before us, as if he were alive again. “Was there ever a more 
vibrating and genuine accent? This man, at least, has never lied. He 
has only said what he felt, and he has said it, as he felt it. He thought 
aloud. He made the confession of every man. He was not admired, 
but loved; he was more than a poet, he wasa man. Every one found 
in him his own feelings, the most transient, the most familiar; he did 
not restrain himself, he gave himself to all; he had the last virtues 
which remain to us, generosity and sincerity. And he had the most 
precious gift which can seduce an old civilisation, youth. As he said, 
‘that hot youth, a tree with a rough bark, which covers all with its 
shadow, prospect and path.’ With what fire did he hurl onward love, 
jealousy, the thirst of pleasure, all the impetuous passions which rise 
with virgin blood from the depths of a young heart, and how did he 
make them clash together! Has any one felt them more deeply? He 
was too full of them, he gave himself up to them, was intoxicated 
with them. He rushed through life, like an eager racehorse in the 


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540 _MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 


country, whom the scent of plants and the splendid novelty of the 
vast heavens urge, breast foremost, in its mad career, which shatters 
all before him, and himself as well. He desired too much; he wished 
strongly and greedily to taste life in one draught, thoroughly; he 
did not glean or taste it; he tore it off like a bunch of grapes, 
pressed it, crushed it, twisted it; and he remains with stained hands, 
as thirsty as before.’ Then broke forth sobs which found an echo 
in all hearts. What! so young, and already so wearied! So many 
precious gifts, so fine a mind, so delicate a tact, so rich and mobile 
a fancy, so precocious a glory, such a sudden blossom of beauty and 
genius, and yet anguish, disgust, tears, and cries! What a mixture! 
With the same attitude he adores and curses. Eternal illusion, in- 
vincible experience, keep side by side in him to fight and tear him. 
He became old, and remained young ; he is a poet, and he is a sceptic. 
The Muse and her peaceful beauty, Nature and her immortal freshness, 
Love and his happy smile, all the swarm of divine visions barely passed 
before his eyes, when we see approaching, with curses and sarcasms, 
all the spectres of debauchery and death. He is as a man in a festive 
scene, who drinks from a carven cup, standing up, in front, amidst 
applause and triumphal music, his eyes laughing, his heart full of joy, 
heated and excited by the generous wine descending in his breast, whom 
suddenly we see growing pale; there was poison in the cup; he falls, 
and the death-rattle is in his throat; his convulsed feet beat upon 
the silken carpet, and all the terrified guests look on. This is what 
we felt on the day when the most beloved, the most brilliant amongst 
us, suddenly quivered from an unseen attack, and was struck down, 
with the death-rattle in his throat, amid the lying splendours and 
gaieties of our banquet. 

Well! such as he was, we love him for ever: we cannot listen to 
another; beside him, all seem cold or false. We leave at midnight 
the theatre in which he had heard Malibran, and we enter the gloomy 
rue des Moulins, where, on a hired bed, his Rolla* came to sleep and 
die. ‘The lamps cast flickering rays on the slippery pavement. Rest- 
less shadows march past the doors, and trail along their dress of 


draggled silk to meet the passers-by. The windows are fastened; here 


and there a light pierces through a half-closed shutter, and shows a 
dead dahlia on the edge of a window-sill. To-morrow an organ will 
grind before these panes, and the wan clouds will leave their droppings 
on these dirty walls. From this wretched place came the most im- 
passioned of his poems! ‘These vilenesses and vulgarities of the stews 
and the lodging-house caused this divine eloquence to flow! it was 





1*O médiocrité! celui qui pour tout bien 

T’apporte & ce tripot dégofitant de la vie 

Est bien poltron au jeu s'il ne dit: Tout ou rien.’ 
2 See vol. i. p. 287, n. 1. 





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CHAP. VI.] POETRY—TENNYSON. 541 


these which at such a moment gathered in this bruised heart all the 

_ splendours of nature and history, to make them spring up in sparkling 
jets, and shine under the most glowing poetic sun that ever rose! 

- We feel pity; we think of that other poet, away there in the Isle of 
Wight, who amuses himself by dressing up lost epics. How happy he 
is amongst his fine books, his friends, his honeysuckles and roses! No 
matter. De Musset, in this very spot, in this filth and misery, rose 
higher. From the heights of his doubt and despair, he saw the infinite, 
as we see the sea from a storm-beaten promontory. Religions, their 
glory and their decay, the human race, its pangs and its destiny, all that 

- is sublime in the world, appeared there to him in a flash of lightning. He 
felt, at least this once in his life, the inner tempest of deep sensations, 
giant-dreams, and intense voluptuousness, whose desire enabled him to 
live, and whose lack forced him to die. He was no mere dilettante; he 
was not content to taste and enjoy; he left his mark on human thought; 
he told the world what was man, love, truth, happiness. He sutfered, 
but he invented ; he fainted, but he produced. He tore from his entrails 
with despair the idea which he had conceived, and showed it to the eyes 
of all, bloody but alive. That is harder and lovelier than to go fondling 
and gazing upon the ideas of others. There is in the world but one | 
work worthy of a man, the production of a truth, to which we devote | 
ourselves, and in which we believe. The people who have listened | 
to ‘Tennyson are better than our aristocracy of townsfolk and bohe- / 
mians; but I prefer Alfred de Musset to Tennyson. 


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ABELARD, i. 133, 135. 

Addison, Joseph, ii. 39, 60, 67, 76; 
his life and writings, 89-115, 256, 
265, 396, 406, 412 seq., 433. 

Adbelm, i. 50, 54, 156. 

Agriculture, improvement in, in six- 
teenth century, i. 146 ; in the nine- 
teenth, ii. 224, 326 seq. 

Akenside, Mark, ii. 220. 

Alcuin, i. 50, 55. 

Alexander vi., Pope, i. 354. 

Alexandrian philosophy, i. 16. 

Alfred the Great, i. 50, 54. 

Alison, Sir Archibald, ii. 224. 

Amory, Thomas, ii. 180. 

Angelo, Michael, i. 155, 306 ; ii. 213. 

Anglo-Saxon poetry, i. 41 seq. 

Ann of Cleves, i. 157. 

Anselm, i. 61. 

Anthology, the, i. 176, 202. 

Arbuthnot, Dr. John, ii. 133. 

Architecture, Norman, i. 60, 61, 107; 
the Tudor style, 147. 

Ariosto, i. 156, 187 ; ii. 14. 

Aristocracy, British, in the nineteenth 

- century, ii. 328 seq. 

Arkwright, Sir Richard, ii. 84. 

Armada, the, i. 146, 235. 

Arnold, Dr, Thomas, ii. 270, 334. 

Arthur and Merlin, romance of, i. 62. 

Ascham, Roger, i. 153, 207, 353. 

Athelstan, i. 28, 42. 

Augier, Emile, ii. 355. 

Austen, Jane, ii. 258. 


Bacon, Francis, Lord, i. 207,'215-221, 
378, 382 ; ii. 403 seqg., 416. 

Bacon, Roger, i. 135. 

Bain, Alexander, ii. 337. 

Bakewell, Robert, ii. 84. 

‘Bale, John, i. 156. 

Balzac, Honoré de, i. 3; ii. 361, 392. 

Barclay, Alexander, i. 138 

Barclay, John, ii. 60. 

Barclay, Robert, i. 398. 

Barrow, Isaac, ii. 60, 63 seq. 

Baxter, Richard, i. 225, 396 ; ii. 60. 

Bayly’s (Lewis) Practice of Piety, i. 


INDEX 


——--= 


Beattie, James, ii. 182, 220, 

Beauclerk, Henry, i. 61. 

Beaumont, Francis, i. 245, 258-266, 
384, 387, 433. 

Becket, Thomas 4, i. 80, 

Beckford, W.., ii. 251. 

Bede, the Venerable, i. 50. 

a Duke of (John Russell), ii. 

5. 

Beethoven, Lewis van, ii. 259. 

Behn, Mrs. Aphra, i. 479 ;. ii. 29. 

Bell, Currer. See Bronté, Charlotte. 

Bénoit de Sainte-Maure, i. 61. 

Bentham, Jeremy, ii. 84, 406. 

Bentley, Richard, ii. 69, 70. 

Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem, 
i. 38-41. 

Béranger, i. 359 ; ii. 418. 

Berkeley, Bishop, ii. 69. 

Berkley, Sir Charles, i. 466. 

Berners, Lord, i. 157. 

Best, Paul, i. 391. 

Bible, English. See Wiclif, Tyndale. 

Blackmore, Sir Richard, ii. 4. 

Blount, Edward, i. 162. 

Boccaccio, i. 106, 110 ; ii. 39. 

Bodley, Sir Thomas, i. 208, 

Boethius, i. 50-53. 

Boileau, i. 469, 501 ; ii. 3, 36, 54, 196, 
202, 466. 

Boleyn, Ann, i. 232. : 

Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry St. John), 
ii. 46 seq., 69, 197, 396. 

Bonner, Edmund, i. 377. 

Borde, Andrew, i. 156. 

Borgia, Cesar, i. 354, 355. 

Borgia, Lucretia, i. 154, 354. 

Bossu (or Lebossu), ii. 3, 106, 110. 

Bossuet, i. 14; ii. 11, 211, 433. 

Boswell, James, ii. 185 seq. 

Bourchier. See Berners. 

Boyle, the Hon. Robert, ii. 69. 

Bridaine, Father, ii. 65. 

Britons, ancient, i. 29. 

Bronté, Charlotte (Currer Bell), ii, 
258, 270, 337. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, i. 207, 208, 213- 
215, 378, 382. 





Browning, Mrs., ii. 270, 337. 


’ —_ 


544 INDEX. 


Brunanburh, Athelstan’s victory at, 
celebrated in Saxon song, i. 42. 

Buckingham, Duke of (John Sheffield), 
i. 476, 498, 501. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, ii. 316 seyq., 
333. 

Bulwer, ii. 258, 337. ; 

Bunyan, John, i. 398-408, 460. 

Burke, Edmund, ii. 69, 81-88, 185, 417, 
433. 

Burleigh, Lord (William Cecil), i. 230; 
ii, 419. 

Burnet, Bishop, ii. 60. 

Burney, Francisca (Madame D’Ar- 
play), ii. 53, 84, 185, 409. 

Burns, Robert, ii. 27; sketch of his 
life and works, 228-241. 

Burton, Robert, i. 148, 209-212, 378, 
433. 

Busby, Dr. Richard, ii. 31. 

Bute, Lord, ii. 46 seq., 75. 

Butler, Bishop, i. 84. 

Butler, Samuel, i. 463-466 ; ii. 70. 

Byng, Admiral, ii. 75. 

Byron, Lord, ii. 200, 242 ; his life and 
works, 271-312. 


CapmMon, hymns of, i, 45, 48; his 
metrical paraphrase of parts of the 
Bible, 48-50, 156. 

Calamy, Edmund, i. 398. 

Calderon, i. 135, 234, 478. 

Calvin, John, i. 359, 388 ; ii. 68. 

Camden, William, i. 207. 

Campbell, Thomas, ii. 250, 280. 

Carew, Thomas, i. 201. 

Carlyle, Thomas, i. 5; ii. 270, 333 ; 
style and mind, 437 seq.; vocation, 
452 seq.; philosophy, morality, and 
criticism, 458 seg.; conception of 
history, 467. 

Carteret, John (Earl Granville), ii. 76. 

Castlereagh, Lord, i. 268. 

Catherine, St., play of, i. 61. 

Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 20, 95, 155. 

Cervantes, i. 83, 126, 187 ; ii. 158. 

Chalmers, George, i. 56. 

Chandos, Duke of (John Brydges), ii. 
197. 

Chapman, George, i. 269. 

Charles of Orleans, i. 69, 132. 

Charles 1. of England, ii. 409. 

Charles 11. and his court, i. 466 seq. 

Chateaubriand, i. 4; ii. 105. 

Chatham. See Pitt. 

Chaucer, i. 86, 87, 105, 132; ii. 39. 

Chesterfield, Lord, ii. 49 seg., 185, 
203. 

Chevy Chase, ballad of, i. 104. 

Chillingworth, William, i. 207, 379, 
381; ii. 67. 





Christianity, introduction of, into 
Britain, 1. 44, 50. 

Chroniclers, French, i. 68. 

Chronicles, Saxon, i. 53. 

Cibber, Colley, ii. 198, 205. 

Cimbrians, the, i. 31. 

Clarendon, Lord Chancellor (Edward 
Hyde), i. 207, 466. 

Clarke, Dr. John, ii. 58, 68. | 

Classic spirit in Europe, its origin and 
nature, i. 490-492. 

Classical authors translated, i. 152, 
160. 

Clive, Lord, ii. 406. 

Coleridge, Hartley, ii. 235. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ii. 248. 

Collier, Jeremy, ii. 4, 31. 

Collins, William, ii. 221. 

Colman, George, i. 530. 

Comedy-writers, English, i. 504 seq. 

Comines, Philippe de, i. 104. 

Commerce in sixteenth century, i. 
145 ; ii. 324 seq. 

Comte, Auguste, ii. 480. 

sar i Stephen-Bonnot de, ii. 456, 
480. 

Congreve, William, i. 504-522 ; ii. 53. 

Conybeare, J. J., i. 42 seq. 

Corbet, Bishop, i. 379. 

Corneille, i. 10 ; ii. 3, 13. 

Cotton, Sir Robert, i. 207, 208. 

Court pageantries in the sixteenth 
century, i. 148, 149. 

Coventry, Sir John, i. 467. 

Coverdale, Miles, i. 367, 

Cowley, Abraham, i. 204-206, 378, 
409. 

Cowper, William, ii. 243-247. 

Crabbe, George, ii. 246, 280. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, i. 362, 369. 

Crashaw, Richard, i. 378. 

Criticism and History, ii. 402 seq. 


Cromwell, Oliver, i. 5, 379, 391; ii. . 


410, 445, 470. 
Crowne, John, i. 479. 
Curll, Edmund, ii. 205. 


DANIEL, Samuel, i. 207. 

Dante, i. 113, 132, 135, 442; ii. 
457. 

Darwin, Charles, i. 10. 

Davie, Adam, i. 77. 

Davies, Sir John, i. 378. 

Day, John, i. 389. 

Decker, Thomas, i. 236. - 

De Foe, ii. 73, 151-158, 328. 

Delille, James, ii. 208. 

Denham, Sir John, i. 501-504. 

Denmark, i. 24. 

Dennis, John, ii. 93. 

Descartes, i. 473; ii. 11, 456. 


Se) 








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Dickens, Charles, ii. 258, 270; his 
novels, 339-366. — 

Domesday Book, i. 56, 63, 86. 

Donne, John, i. 203, 204, 379. 

Dorat, C. J., ii. 204, 303. 

Dorset, Earl of (Charles Sackville), i. 
497, 498. 

Drake, Admiral, i. 146. 

Drake, Dr. Nathan, i. 146, 228. 

Drama, formation of the, i. 245 seq. 

Drayton, Michael, i. 173, 179, 378. 

Drummond, William, i. 433. 

Dryden, John, i. 14, 433 ; his comedies, 
476-479, 501 ; his life and writings, 
ii. 1-44, 94, 195, 453. 

a Madame (George Sand), ii. 
355. 

Dunstan, St., i. 28 seq. 

Durer, Albert, i. 357, 358. 

Dyer, Sir Edward, i. 171. 


EARtez, John, i. 208. 

Eddas, the Scandinavian, i. 32-36; 
ii. 289. 

Edgeworth, Maria, ii. 391. 

Edward vi., i. 373. 

Edwy and Elgiva, story of, i. 29, 30. 

Eliot, George. See Evans, Mary A. 

England, climate of, i. 25. 

English Constitution, formation of 
the, i. 87. 

Elizabeth, Queen, i. 148-150, 207, 228. 

Elwin, Whitwell, ii. 195 seq. 

Erigena, John Scotus, i. 50, 54. 

Esménard, Joseph Alphonse, i. 137. 

Essex, Robert, Earl of, i. 228, 230. 

Etheredge, Sir George, i. 479. 

Evans, Mary A. (George Eliot), ii. 
258, 335, 337. 

Eyck, Van, i. 126. 


FALKLAND, Lord, i. 207. 

Farnese, Pietro Luigi, i. 354. 

Farquhar, George, i. 504-522. 

Faust, ii. 227. 

Feltham, Owen, i. 208. 

Fenn, Sir John, i. 145. 

Ferguson, Dr. Adam, ii. 71, 406. 

Fermor, Mrs. Arabella, ii. 203, 204. 

Feudalism, the protection and charac- 
ter of, i. 58, 59. 

Fichte, ii. 457. 

Fielding, Henry, i. 268, 462; ii. 
170-176, 190. 

Filmore, Sir Robert, ii. 72. 

Finsborough, Battle of, an Anglo- 
Saxon poem, i. 42, 

Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, i. 
232, 371. 

Flemish artists, i. 144, 150. 

Fletcher, Giles, i. 378. 


VOL, IL, 


INDEX. 





— ti 


545 


Fletcher, John, i. 245, 258-266, 384, 
387, 433. 

Ford, John, i. 245, 250 seg., 262, 
263 ; ii. 24. 

Fortescue, Sir John, i. 94 seq. 

Fox, Charles James, ii. 48, 76, 80 
seq. 

Foxe George, i. 393, 398, 460. 

Fox, John, i. 361 seq. 

Francis of Assisi, i. 135. 

Freeman, Edward A., i. 59. 

Frisians, the, i. 24, 25. 

Froissart, i. 68, 85, 106, 107, 110. 

Froude, J. A., i. 86, 362 seg. 

Fuller, Thomas, i. 268. 


GAIMAR, Geoffroy, i. 61, 75. 

Gainsborough, Thomas, 
painter, i. 530. 

Garrick, David, ii. 185, 188. 

Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth C., ii. 258, 337. 

Gay, John, i. 523; ii. 50, 194, 215-217. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, i. 112. 

German ideas, introduction of, in 
Europe and England, ii. 452 seq. 

Germany, drinking habits in, i. 356. 

Gibbon, Edward, 1i. 185. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, ii. 408. 

Glencoe, massacre of, ii. 430 seq. 

Glover, Richard, ii. 221. 

Godwin, William, ii. 265. 

Goethe, i. 5, 14, 442, 448; ii. 174, 227, 
249, 291-296, 452 seq. 

Gol ismith, Oliver, i. 523; ii. 73, 182- 
185. 

Goltzius, i. 165. 

Gower, John, i. 73, 136. 

Grammont, Count de, i. 
490. 

Gray, Thomas, ii. 220. 

Greene, Robert, i. 173, 176, 177, 236, 
237, 305. 

Grenville, George, ii. 75. 

Gresset, J. B. Lewis, ii. 204. 

Grey, Lady Jane, i. 152, 228. 

Grostéte, Robert, i. 73, 77. 

Grote, George, ii. 337. 

Guicciardini, Ludovic, i. 146. 

Guido, i. 13. 

Guizot, i. 89; ii. 409, 414, 433. 

Guy of Warwick, i. 62. 


landscape 


462, 489, 


Hasineton, William, i. 203. 

Hackluyt, Richard, i. 207. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, i. 363. 

Hales, John, i. 207, 379, 381; ii. 68. 

Halifax, Charles Montague, Earl of, 
ii. 91, 95, 117, 121. 

Hall, Bishop Joseph, i. 208, 379. 

Hallam, Henry, i. 98; ii. 410. 

Hamilton, Anthony, i. 462 seq, 


2M 


546 INDEX. 


Hamilton, Sir William, ii. 337. 

Hampden, John, ii. 409. 

Hampole, i. 77. 

Hardyng, John, i. 227. 

Harrington, Sir John, i. 200. 

Harrison, William, i. 146 seq. 

Hastings, Warren, ii. 81, 406, 417 seq., 
421 


Hawes, Stephen, i. 138. 

Hegel, i. 14, 17, 133; ii. 406, 455 seq. 

Heine, i. 2, 24, 302; ii. 222, 227, 249, 
259. , 

Hemling, Hans, i. 143. 

Henry Beauclerk, i. 61. 

Henry of Huntingdon, i. 30, 61. 

Henry vit. and his Court, i. 227, 362. 

Herbert, George, i. 203. ? 

Herbert, Lord, i. 207. 

Herder, John Godfrey von, i. 5. 

Herrick, Robert, i. 201, 202. 

Hertford, Earl of, i. 227. 

Hervey, Lord, ii. 212. 

Heywood, Mrs. Eliza, ii. 206. 

Heywood, John, 1. 156, 235. 

Hill, Aaron, ii. 197. 

History, philosophy of. See the Intro- 
duction, passim. 

Hobbes, Thomas, i. 472-475; ii. 26. 

Hogarth, William, ii. 190-192, 206. 

Holinshed’s Chronicles, i. 148, 207, 
231. 

Holland, i. 23 seq. 

Homer and Spenser, i. 183. 

Hooker, Richard, i. 207, 379 seq. 

Horn, King, romance of, i. 62, 83. 

Hoveden, si ohn, i. 73. 

Howard, John, ii. 84. 

Howard, Sir Robert, ii. 17. 

Howe, John, ii. 427. 

Hugo, Victor, i. 2, 139; ii. 42, 248, 
259. 

Hume, David, ii. 70, 182, 424, 471. 

Hunter, William, martyrdom of, i. 
376, 377. 

Hutcheson, Francis, ii. 71, 84, 406. 


[cELAND and its legends, i. 27, 32. 

Independency in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, i. 391 seg., 425. 

Industry, British, in the nineteenth 
century, ii. 324 seq. 

Trish, the ancient, i. 29. 

Italian writings and ideas, taste for, 
in sixteenth century, i. 153; vices 
of the Italian Renaissance, 352-356. 


James 1. and his Court, i. 200 seg. 

James I1., ii. 415. 

Jewell, Bishop, i. 233. 

Johnson, Samuel, i. 268; ii. 69, 84, 
185-192, 199, 222, 466. 





Joinville, Sire de, i. 68. 

Jones, Inigo, i. 147, 270. 

Jones, Sir William, ii. 185. - 

Jonson, Ben, i. 175, 223, 235, 433, ii. 
316 ; sketch of his life, i. 267-270 ; 
his learning, style, etc., 270-274; 
his dramas, 275-279 ; his comedies, 
279-288 ; compared with Molitre, 
288 ; fanciful comedies and smaller 
poems, 289-293. 

Jordaens, Jacob, i. 150. 

Jowett, Benjamin, ii. 270, 457. 

Judith, poem of, i. 47, 48. 

Junius, Francis, i. 49. 

Junius, Letters of, ii. 76 seg., 275. 

Jutes, the, and their country, 24 seq. 


Keats, John, ii. 295. 

Kemble, John M., i. 28, 38 seg. 
Knighton, Henry, i. 102. 
Knolles, Richard, i. 207. 

Knox, John, i. 356, 373 ; ii. 472. 
Kyd, Thomas, i. 236. 


LACKLAND, John, i. 84. 

La Harpe, ii. 466. 

Lamartine, i. 2; ii. 249, 259. 

Lamb, Charles, ii. 248, 250. 

Languet, Hubert, i. 164. . 

Latimer, Bishop, i. 90, 364, 372 seq. 

Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop 
of Canterbury, i. 61. 

Langtoft, Peter, i. 73. 

Laud, Archbishop, i. 382; ii. 418. 

Lavergne, Léonce de, i. 25. 

Law, William, ii. 70. 

Layamon, i. 76. 

Lebrun, Ponce Denis Ecouchard, 1. 
137. 

Lee, Nathaniel, ii. 18. 

Leibnitz, ii. 210. 

Leighton, Dr. Alexander, i, 391, 424. 

Lely, Sir Peter, ii. 83. 

Leo x., Pope, i. 353. 

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, i. 4. 

Lingard, Dr. John, 1. 26, 27. 

Locke, John, i. 409; ii. 67, 70 seq., 
84, 416. 

Lockhart, John Gibson, ii. 252 seq. 

Lodge, Thomas, i. 172, 235. 

Lombard, Peter, i. 132, 134. 

Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal, ii. 439. 

London in Henry viit.’s time, i. 146 ; 
in the present day, ii. 324 seq. 

Longchamps, William, i. 80. _ 

Longus, Greek romance-writer, i. 176. 

Lorris, Guillaume de, i. 69, 79. 

Loyola, i. 135, 144; ii. 407. 

Ludlow, Edmund, i. 392. 

Lulli, a renowned Italian composer, 
ii. 11, 








INDEX. 


Lully, Raymond, i. 135. 
Luther, Martin, i. 20, 144, 352-355 
Lydgate, John, 137, 138. 

Lyly, John, i. 162. 

Lyly, William, i. 152. 


Macavtay, Thomas Babington (Lord), 
ii. 270; his works, 402-434. 

Machiavelli, i. 154, 

Mackenzie, ‘Henry, i ii. 219, 230. 

Mackintosh, Sir J ames, ii. 410. 

Macpherson, James, ii, 220, 

Malcolm, Sir John, ii. 251. 

Malherbe, Francis de, ii. 453. 

Malte-Brun, Conrad, i. 24. 

Mandeville, Bernard, ii. 69. 

Manners of the people in the sixteenth 
century, i. 150 seq. 

Marguerite of Navarre, i. 110. 

Marlborough, Duchess of, ii. 212. 

Marlborough, Duke of, ii. 47, 73, 396. 

Marlowe, Christopher, i. 177, 178, 235, 
ii. 248 ; his dramas, i. 237-244. 

Marston, John, i. 269. 

Martyr, Peter, i. 369. 

Martyrs in the reign of Mary, i 
375-378. 

Marvell, Andrew, ii. 29. 

Masques, under James I., i. 149, 291. 

Massillon, i. 373. 

Massinger, Philip, ii, 235, 236, 249 


Maunideville, Sir John, i. 75, 85. 

May, Thomas, i. 398. 

Medici, Lorenzo de, i. 153. 

Melanchthon, Philip, i. 361, 369. 

Merlin, i. 62. 

Meung, Jean de, i. 76, 136. 

Miche et, Jules, i. 4, 45 ; ii. 450. 

Middleton, Thomas, i. 245, 

Mill, John Stuart, ii. 270, 333, 477-517. 

Milton, John, i. 49, 181, 207, 409-419 ; 
his prose "writings, 419-433 ; his 
poetry, 433-456 ; 11. 106, 107, 406. 

Moliére, i. 179, 300, 302, 504 seq. ; 
ii. 164, 359. 

Mommsen, Theodor, i. 15. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, ii. 
170, 197, 203. 

Montesquien, Ch., i. 16, 19. 

Moore, Thomas, ii. 182, 250 seq., 301. 

More, Sir Thomas, i i. 207, 232. 

Miiller, Max, ii. 479. 

Muller, Ottfried, i. 5. 

Murray, John, ii. 252, 301, 303. 

Musset, Alfred de, i. 2, 168, 237, 
272, 300 ; ii. 40, 222, 249, 259, 535 
seq. 


Nasu, Thomas, i. 236. 
Nayler, James. i. 391. 394, 397. 





547 


oa History of the Puritans, i. 394, 


Newcastle, Duchess of (Margaret Lu- 
cas}, 503. 

Newspaper, first daily, ii. 224. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, ii. 58, 68. 

Nicole, Peter, ii. 54. 

Norman Conquest, the, i. 56, 57, 59; 
its effects on the national language 
<7 literature, 72 seg., 102-104, ii. 

14, 

Normans, the, character of, i. 60; 
how they became French, 60 ; 
their taste and architecture, 61; 
their literature, chivalry, and suc- 
cess, 61-64 ; their position and 
tyranny in England, 71-73, ii. 314. 

Nott, Dr. John, i. 161. 

Novel, the English—its characteristics, 
i. 151 seq.; the modern school of 
novelists, ii. 337 seq. 

Nut-brown Maid, the,—an ancient 
ballad, 160. 


OatEs, Titus, ii. 32. 
Occam, William, i. 135. 
Occleve, Thomas, i. 137. 
Ochin, Bernard, i. 369. 
Oliphant, Mrs., ii. 169. 
Olivers, Thomas, ii. 60, 
Orlay, Richard van, i. 144, 
Orrery, Earl of, ii. 197. 
Otway, Thomas, ii. 18, 24. 
Ouseley, Sir William, ii. 251. 
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 208. 
Owen, John, 398. 


PaGANisM of poetry and painting in 
Italy in the sixteenth century, i 
153 seq 

Paley, William, ii. 67. 

Palgrave, Sir Francis, i. 25. 

Parnell, Dr. Thomas, ii. 194. 

Pascal, ii. 67, 149, 212, 433. 

Pastoral poetry, i. 172. 

Peele, George, i. 235. 

Penn, William, ii. 58, 427. 

Pepys, Samuel, i. 467, 468, 471. 

Percy, Thomas, ii. 248. 

Petrarch, i. 106, 156, 160. 

Philips, Ambrose, li. 194. 

Philosophy and history, i ii, 437 seq. 

Philosophy and poetry, connection of, 
i. 182. 


Picts, i. 29. 

Pickering, Dr. Gilbert, ii. 3. 

Piers Plowman’s Crede, i. 102. 

Piers Ploughman, Vision of, i. 100 
seq., 156. 

Pitt, William, first Earl of Chatham, 
li. 48, 75 seg., 409. 


548 


Pitt, William (second son of the pre- 
ceding), ii. 76, 81 seg., 242. 

Pleiad, the, i. 14. 

Pluche, Abbé, ii. 101. 

Poe, Edgar Allen, ii. 154. 

Pope, Alexander, ii. 27, 90, 93, 133, 
195-213, 279, 280, 284, 412 seq. 

Prayer-book, English, i. 369-371. 

Preaching at the Reformation period, 
i, 372. 

Presbyterians and Independents in 
the sixteenth century, 1. 391, 425. 

Price, Dr. Richard, ii. 71, 84, 406. 

Priestley, Dr., ii. 242. 

Prior, Matthew, 1. 194, 213. 

Proclus, i. 133. 

Prynne, William, i. 398. 

Pulci, an Italian painter, i. 154. 

Pultock, Robert, ii. 180. 

Purchas, Samuel, i. 207. 

Puritans, the, i. 388 seqg., 459 seq. 

Puttenham, George, i. 156, 207. 

Pym, John, ii. 409. 


QuARLEs, Francis, i. 203, 378. 


RABELAIS, i. 125, 187, 223, 306, 469 ; 
ii. 140, 180. 

Racine, i. 311 ; ii. 3, 54, 363, 433. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, i. 180, 207, 230, 
378. 

Rapin, ii. 3. 

Ray, John, ii. 69, 70. 

Reformation in England made way for 
by the Saxon character and the 
situation of the Norman Church, i. 
102-104, 139, 356 seq. 

Reid, Thomas, ii. 71, 84, 182. 

Renaissance, the English ; manners of 
the time, i. 143-156 ; the theatre its 
original product, 222 seq. 

Renan, Ernest, i. 15, 107. 

Restoration, period of the, in Eng- 
land, i. 457 seg., 521. 

Revolution, period of the, in England, 
li. 45 seq. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, i. 530; ii. 83, 
185 


Richard Coeur de Lion, i. 84. 

Richardson, Samuel, i. 462; ii. 69, 
159-169, 185, 198, 219. 

Ridley, Nicholas, i. 375. 

Ritson, Joseph, i. 90 seq. 

Robert of Brunne, i. 76, 77. 

Robert of Gloucester, i. 76. 

Robertson, Dr. William, ii. 182, 193, 
222, 471. ; 

Robespierre, ii. 54. 

ari Hood ballads, i. 90 seqg., 150, 





INDEX. 


Rochester, Earl of (John Wilmot), i. 
469 seg., 501; ii. 98, 214, 303. 

Rogers, John, martyrdom of, i. 376. 

Rogers, Samuel, ii. 280. 

Roland, Song of, i. 62, 66 seq. 

Rollo, a Norse leader, i. 60. 

Ronsard, Peter de, i. 14, 

Roscelin, i. 135. 

Roscommon, Earl of, i. 501. 

asi wars of the, i. 95, 104, 145, 


Rotheland, Hugh de, i. 73. 
Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, ii. 209. 
—T Jean Jacques, ii. 188, 204, 


Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, ii. 504. 

Rubens, i. 127, 149, 150, 195, 306; 
ii. 213. 

Ruckert, ii. 249. 

Russell, Lord William, i. 467. 


SACHEVERELL, Dr., ii. 46, 72. 

Sacy, Lemaistre de, i. 368. 

Sadler, i. 165. 

Sainte-Beuve, i. 5. 

Saintré, Jehan de, i. 85. 

St. John. See Bolingbroke, Lord. 

Saint-Simon, i. 2; ii. 362. 

St. Theresa, i. 135. 

Sand, George. See Dudevant, Madame. 

Savage, Richard, ii. 206. 

Sawtré, William, i. 103. 

Saxons, the, i. 23 seq.; characteristics 
of the race, 56; contrast with the 
Normans, 60; their endurance, 86 
seq.; their invasion of England, il. 
313, 314. 

Scaliger, ii. 466. 

Schelling, i. 17. 

Schiller, ii. 227, 249, 259. 

Scotland in the seventeenth century, 
i. 461. 

Scott, Sir Walter, i. 4, 209, ii. 2 seq., 
117 seq., 182, 249, 274, 276, 396; his 
novels and poems, ii. 252-258. 

Scotus, Duns, i. 133 seq. 

Scudéry, Mademoiselle de, i. 164. 

Sedley, Sir Charles, i. 202, 497, 498. 

Selden, John, i. 207. 

Seres, William, i. 389. 

Settle, Elkanah, ii. 4, 17. 

Sévigné, Madame de, ii. 203, 433. 

Shadwell, Thomas, i. 479; ii. 17, 35. 

Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, third 
Earl of, ii. 71. 

Shakspeare, William, i. 157, 173, 207, 
235, ii. 8, 15 seg., 316; general idea 
of, i. 293-295; his life and character, 
297-306; his style, 307-311, and man- 
ners, 311-316; his dramatis persone, 
316-320; his men of wit, 320-323; and 








women, 323-327; his villains, 327, 

328; the principal characters in his 

plays, 328-340; fancy, imagination 

—ideas of existence—love; harmony 

between the artist and his work, 
. 340-351. 

Sheffield, Lord, i. 157. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, ii. 249, 265- 
269, 295. 

Shenstone, William, ii. 221. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, i. 524 seg. ; 
ii. 76, 182. 

Sherlock, Bishop, ii. 60, 68, 159. 

Shirley, James, i. 236, Ni 

Sidney, Algernon, i. 207, 409 , 467. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, i. 157, 164. 172, 
207, 224, 382; ii. 316. 

Skelton, J ohn, i. 139. 

Smart, Christopher, ii. 221. 

Smith, Adam, ii. 71, 84. 

Smith, Sidney, ii. 53, 270. 

Smollett, Tobias, ii. 74, 176-179, 182. 

Society in Great Britain in the present 
day, ii, 328 seq.; in England and in 
France, 535 seq. 

South, Dr. Robert, ii. 60, 63, 65-67. 

Southern, Thomas, ii. 18. 

Southey, Robert, ii. 180, 247, 250, 
299, 418. 

Speed, John, i. 207. 

Spelman, Sir Henry, i. 207. 

Spencer, Herbert, ii. 337. 

Spenser, Edmund, i. 157, 174, 179, 
207, 409, 442; his life, character, 
and poetry, 180-200; ii. 14, 316, 
530. 

Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, ii. 270, 457. 

Steele, Sir Richard, ii. 76, 90, 396. 

Stendhal, Count de, i i. 19, 60, 119. 

Sterling, John, li. 438 seq. 

Sterne, Laurence, ii. 179-182, 219. 

Stewart, Dugald, ii. 84, 182, 238. 

Stillingfleet, sishop, ii. 60, 68. 

Stowe, John, i. 207. 

Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl 
of, ii. 409 seq. 

Strafford, William, i. 145. 

Strype, John, i. 225. 

Stubbes, John, i. 148, 151. 

Suckling, Sir John, i. 201, 498. 

Sue, Eugéne, ii. 364. 

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, i. 
156-161, 363. 

Swift, Jonathan, i. 462; ii. 4, 69, 70, 
76, 89 seq., 396, 419; sketch of his 
life, 117-123; his wit, 123-126; his 
pamphlets, 126- 132; his poetry, 
132-140; his philosophy, etc., 140- 
150. 


TAILLEFER, i. 63, 73. 


INDEX. 





549 


Tasso, i. 187, 193. 

Taylor, Jeremy, i. 208, 379, 382-387. 

Temple, Sir William, i. 492 ; ii. 121, 
140, 193, 406. 

Teniers, David, ii. 256. 

Tennyson, Alfred, li, 270, 337, 518- 
541. 

Thackeray, William M., ii. 258, 270; 
his novels, 367-401 

Theatre, the, i in the sixteenth century, 
i, 293 ; after the Restoration, 476, 
477, 504 seq., li. 5 seq. 

Theresa, St., i. 135. 

Thibaut of Champagne, i. 69. 

Thierry, Augustin, i. 4, 26, 44, 72; 
ii. 433. 


Thiers, Louis Adolphe, ii. 414, 433. 
Thomson, James, ii. 217-219. 
Thorpe, John, i. 37, 43. 

Tickell, Thomas, ii. 194, 
Tillotson, Archbishop, ii. 60 seq. 
Tindal, Matthew, ii. 69. 

Titian, i i. 199, 306. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, i. 15. 
Toland, John, ii. 69. 

Toleration Act, the, ii. 427, 428. 
Tomkins, Thomas, i. 377. 
Townley, James, i. 530. 

Turner, Sharon, i. 37, 42 seq. 
Tutchin, John, ii. 206. 

Tyndale, William, i. 366 seq., 378, 389. 


Urrt, Honoré d’, i. 166, 264. 
Usher, James, i. 207. 


VANBRUGH, Sir John, i. 503-522. 

Vane, Sir Harry, i i. 468. 

Vega, Lope de, i. 135, 234, 478. 

Village feasts of sixteenth century 
described, i. 150, 151. 

Villehardouin, a French chronicler, i. 
68, 85. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, i. 13. 

Voltaire, i. 11; ii. 188, 209, 300, 466. 

Vos, Martin de, i. 165. 


Wace, Robert, i. 61, 63 seqg., 73. 

Waller, Edmund, i, 202, 409, 476, 
498-501 ; ii. 193. 

Walpole, Horace, ii. 203. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, ii. 46, 51. 

Walton, Isaac, i. 208. 

Warburton, Bishop, ii. 69. 

Warner, William, i. 178. 

Warton, Thomas, i. 57, 72, 78, 135 ; 
ii, 248, 

Watt, James, ii. 84. 

Watteau, Anthony, ii. 203. 

Watts, Isaac, ii. 221. 

Webster, J: ohn, 245, 250 seg. ; ii. 24. 

Wesley, John, ii. 58-60. 


550 


Wetherell, Siabgee ii. 335. 
Wharton, ‘Lord, ii 212. 
Whitfield, George, ii. 58-60. 
Wiclif, J: ohn, i i. 102, 103, 241, 362. 
Wilkes, John, ii. 75. 

William m11., i. 493 ; ii. 315. 
Wither, George, i. 379. 

William of Malmesbury, i. 61. 
William the Conqueror, i. 63 seq. 
Windham, William, ii. 76. 
Witenagemote, the, i. 36. 
Wollaston, William Hyde, ii. 406. 





INDEX. 


Wolsey, Cardinal, i. 139, 363. 

oe William, ii. 248, 260- . 
26 : 

Wortley, Lady Mary. See Montagu. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, i. 156, 157. 

Wycherley, William, i. 14, 480-488, 
496, 503, 504, 515 ; ii. 26, 98. 


Yonex, Charlotte Mary, ii. 335. 
Young, Arthur, ii 
Young, Edward, ii. 221. 


END OF VOLUME Il 


MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
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