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1 901

CONTENTS.

I. IN HOSPITAL : RHYMES AND RHYTHMS BY

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY. . . 3

II. GERARD DE NERVAL BY AlgLTHUR SYMONS. 43

III. THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE NO I

BY WILLIAM MORRIS. . . . 81

IV. LYRICS FROM * ION ICA* BY WILLIAM CORY. 1 23

V. CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE BY JOHN

ADDINGTON SYMONDS. . . .159

VI. DEAD LOVE, AND OTHER INEDITED PIECES

BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 187

VII. A MINOR POET AND LYRICS BY AMY LEVY. 233

VIII. A PAINTER OF THE LAST CENTURY BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. . 265

IX. PROVERBS IN PORCELAIN BY AUSTIN

DOBSON 297

X. iBS TRIPLEX BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 327

CONTENTS
XI. CELTIC: A STUDY IN SPIRITUAL HISTORY ^

BY FIONA MACLEOD. . . ' 3Sl

«
XII. IN PRAISE OF THACKERAY :

I. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY BY

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS . . 389

IL IN MEMORIAM BY CHARLES DICKENS 39I

III. THACKERAY'S DEATH BY DR. JOHN

BROWN 399

THE discovery of an unsus^cted star in
th$ poetic firmament majf be said to
date from the year iSSj tvben, in bis deligbt-
ful compilation,^ tbe late Mr. Gleason
IVbite reprinted some tbirty-five pieces
signed by a **name tbat was new tons'* —
tbe name of IV. E, Henley.* An immediate
result oftbis '*find** was tbe publication of
A Book of Verses in 1888, followed in
i8p2 by The Song of the Sword and
other Verses, a title stnce changed to
London Voluntaries.3

// may seem a trifle odd tbat sucb cboice
work found no mention in any one of Mr.
Andrew Lan^s deligbtful Letters on
Literature ( i88p) ; an oversigbt, we may
surely believe, wbicb bas recently been made

I Ballades and Rondeaoa . . . with Chapter on
the Various Forms, {London, 1887).

i Contributtd to" a society paper, The London,"
during i8jj-8. QMit* ^ number of tbeu poems
banje never betn reprinted by Mr, Henley.

3 Now included under tbe tttle Poems by William
Ernest Henley, (London, 1898). In H spital as
given by us is from tbe 1888 text. For a later
series of lyrics see Hawthorn and Lavender: Songs
and Madrigals in Sortb American Review for
November, 1899.

up for in a very sufficient essay hy Mr.
Arthur SymonsA

Only the barest reference can here he
given to what all the world may now read
**writ large** concerning the friendship
which existed between the poet of ** rhymes
and rhythms ** and Robert Louis Stevenson.5
IVe are indeed told by the latter that ** the
hospital verses** were to have been dedicated
to him, and in the Envoy to these poems we
feel how very deeply the attachment was
fostered and paid back in loving kind.
Last of all the living singer bids farewell
to this man greatly beloved in words of
sorrowful sincerity :

'* O Deatb and Time, tbey chime and cbime

Like bells at sunset falling I —
Tbej^ end tbe song, tbey rigbt tbe wrong,

Tbejf set tbe old ecboes calling :
For Deatb and Time bring on tbe prime

Of God*s own cbosen weatber.
And we lie in tbe peace cf tbe Great Release

tAs once in tbe grass together.**

4 See '* Modernity in Verse '* in Studies in Two
Literatures, by Arthur Symons, {Umdon, 1897.)

5 fn tbe revised and single volume re-issue of
Stevenson's Letters tbis record of comradeship is
now accessible to that wider public not always con-
sidered by tbe projectors of editions de luxe.

for february:

Gerard De Nerval,

Arthur Symons.

In HOSPITAL:

Rhymes and Rhythms.

Om tu saurait dire k quel point un bomme, seul dans
son lii et malade, devient personnel,

BALZAC.

4 4 A LIKE as a human document, and as an artistic
J\ experiment, the 'rhymes and rhythms' named
* In Hospital ' have a peculiar value. Dated
from the Old Edinburgh Infirmary, 1873 75, they tell the
story of life m hospital, from the first glimpse of the * tragic
meanness * of stairs and corridors, through the horrors of
the operation, by way of visitors, doctors, and patients, to
the dizzy rapture of the discharge, the freedom of wind,
sunshine, and the beautiful world. The poet to whom
such an experience has come, the man, perhaps, whom
such an experience has made a poet, must be accounted
singularly fortunate. ... To roam in the sun and air with
vagabonds, to haunt the strange comers of cities, to know
all the useless, and improper, and amusing people who are
adone very much worth knowing; to live, as well as observe
life; or, to be shut in hospital, drawn out of the rapid
current of life into a sordid and exasperating inaction; to
wait, for a time, in the ante-room of death : it is such things
as these that make for poetry. . . . The very subject, to
begin with, was a discovery. Here is verse made out of
personal sensations, verse which is half physiological, verse
which is pathology; and yet, at its best, poetry. ... In
these curious poems, the sonnets and the ' rhythms,' u Mr.
Henley calls his unrhymed verse, he has etched a series of
impressions which are like nothing else that I know in

verse."

ARTHUR SYMONS.

ENTER PATIENT.

THE morning mists still haunt the stony street ;
The northern summer air is shrill and cold ;
And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old,
Where life and death like friendly chaff erers meet.
Thro* the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom
A small, strange child — so ag^d yet so young I —
Her little arm besplinted and beslung,
Precedes me gravely to the waiting room.
I limp behind, my confidence all gone.
The gray-haired soldier-porter waves me on,
And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail :
A tragic meanness seems so to environ
These corridors and stairs of stone and iron.
Cold, naked, clean — half-workhouse and half -jail.

11.

WAITING.

SQUARE, squat room (a cellar on promotion),
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight ;
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware ;
Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted :
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach.
While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

One has a probe — it feels to me a crowbar.
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.
A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers.
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.

III.

INTERIOR.

THE gaunt brown walls
Look infinite in their decent meanness.
There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle,
The fulsome fire.

The atmosphere
Suggests the haunt of a ghostly druggist.
Dressings and lint on the long, lean table —

Whom are they for ?

The patients yawn,
Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin.
A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles.

It's grim and strange.

Far footfalls clank.
The bad bum waits with his head unbandaged.
My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral .

O a gruesome world I

IV.
BEFORE.

BEHOLD me waiting — waiting for the knife.
A little while, and at a leap I storm
The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform,
The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.
The gods are good to me : I have no wife,
No innocent child, to think of as I near
The fateful minute ; nothing ail-too dear
Unmans me for my bout of passive strife.
Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick.
And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little :
My hopes are strong, my will is something weak.
Here comes the basket ? Thank you. I am ready.
But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle :
You carry Caesar and his fortunes— steady I

V.
OPERATION.

You are carried in a basket,
Like a carcase from the shambles,
To the theatre, a cockpit.
Where they stretch you on a table.

Then they bid yon close your eyelids.
And they mask you with a napkin.
And the anaesthetic reaches
Hot and subtle through your being.

And you gasp, and reel, and shudder
In a mshing, swaying rapture,
While the voices at your elbow
Fade — receding — fainter — farther.

Lights about you shower and tumble.
And your blood seems crystallising —
Edged and vibrant, yet within you
Racked and hurried back and forward.

Then the lights grow fast and furious.
And you hear a noise of waters,
And you wrestle, blind and dizzy.
In an agony of effort,

Till a sudden lull accepts you,
And you sound an utter darkness . . .
And awaken . . . with a struggle . . .
On a hushed, attentive audience.

VI.
AFTER.

LIKEAS a flamelet blanketed in smoke, -
So through the anaesthetic shows my life ;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
Faces look strange from space — and disappear.
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear —
And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet :
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
That grinds my leg and foot ; and brokenly
Time and the place glimpse on to me again ;
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
I wake — relapsing — somewhat faint and fain,
To an immense, complacent dreamery.

VII.
VIGIL.

LIYEO on one's back,
In the long hours of repose
Life is a practical nightmare —
Hideous, asleep or awake.

Shoulders and loins

Ache - - - 1

Ache, and the mattress,

Run into bould6rs and hummocks,

Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes

Tumbling, importunate, daft —

Ramble and roll, and the gas.

Screwed to its lowermost.

An inevitable atom of light,

Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper

Snores me to hate and despair.

All the old time

Surges malignant before me ;

Old voices, old kisses, old songs

Blossom derisive about me ;

While the new days

Pass me in endless procession :

A pageant of shadows

Silently, leeringly wending

On . . . and still on . . . still on.

Far in the stillness a cat

Languishes loudly. A cinder

Falls, and the shadows

Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me

Turns with a moan ; and the snorer,

The drug like a rope at his throat,

Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse.

Noiseless and strange,

Her bull's-eye half-lanterned in apron,

(Whispering me, * Are ye no sleepin' yet ? ')

Passes, list-slippered and peering,

Round . . . and is gone.

Sleep comes at last —

Sleep full of dreams and misgivings —

Broken with brutal and sordid

Voices and sounds

That impose on me, ere I can wake to it,

The unnatural, intolerable day.

VIII.
STAFF- NURSE: OLD STYLE.

THE greater masters of the commonplace,
Rembrandt and good Sir Walter — only these
Could paint her all to yon : experienced ease,
And antique liveliness, and ponderous grace;
The sweet old roses of her sunken face ;
The depth and malice of her sly gray eyes ;
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies ;
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
These thirty years has she been nursing here.
Some of them under Syme, her hero still.
Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
Patients and students hold her very dear.
The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.
They say * The Chief himself is half -afraid of her.

IX.
LADY - PROBATIONER.

SOME three, or five, or seven and thirty years ;
A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin;
Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin,
Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears ;
A comely shape ; a slim, high-coloured hand,
Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring ;
A bashful air, becoming everything ;
A well-bred silence always at command.
Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain
Look out of place on her, and I remain
Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery.
Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch . . .
* Do you like nursing ? * * Yes, Sir, very much.'
Somehow, I rather think she has a history.

STAFF -KURSE: NEW STYLE.

BLUS-EYSD and bright of face, but waning fast
Into the sere of virginal decay,
I view her as she enters, day by day,
As a sweet sunset almost overpast.
Kindly and calm, patrician to the last,
Snperbly falls her gown of sober gray,
And on her chignon's elegant array
The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste.
She talks Bsbthoven ; frowns disapprobation
At Balzac's name, sighs it at 'poor Georgb Sand's ' ;
Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands ;
Speaks Latin with a right accentuation;
And gives at need (as one who understands)
Draught, counsel, diaqgnosis, exhortation.

M I

XI. i

CLINICAL.

HIST? . . .
Through the corridor's echoes
Louder and nearer
Comes a great shuffling of feet.
Quick, every one of you,
Straighten your quilts, and be decent !
Here's the Professor.

In he comes first

With the bright look we know,

From the broad, white brows the kind eyes

Soothing yet nerving you. Here, at his elbow,

White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse,

Towel on arm and her inkstand

Fretful with quills.

Here, in the ruck, anyhow,

Surging along,

Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs —

Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles 1 —

Hustle the Class I And they ring themselves

Round the first bed, where the Chief

(His dressers and clerks at attention I )

Bends in inspection already.

So shows the ring

Seen, from behind, round a conjuror

Doing his pitch in the street.

High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones,

Round, square, and angular, serry and shove ;

While from within a voice.

Gravely and weightily fluent,

Sounds ; and then ceases ; and suddenly

(Look at the stress of the shoulders I )

Out of a quiver of silence.

Over the hiss of the spray.

Comes a low cry, and the sound

Of breath quick intaken through teeth

Clenched in resolve. And the Master

Breaks from the crowd, and goes.

Wiping his hands,

To the next bed, with his pupils

Flocking and whispering behind him.

Now one can see. Case Number One
Sits (rather pale) with his bed-clothes
Stripped up, and showing his foot
(Alas for God's image I )
Swaddled in wet, white lint
Brilliantly hideous with red.

^ I

XII.
ETCHING.

Two and thirty is the plonghman.
He's a man of gallant inches,
And his hair is close and curly,

And his beard ;
But his face is wan and sunken,
And his eyes are large and brilliant,
And his shoulder-blades are sharp,
And his knees.

He is weak of wits, religious.
Full of sentiment and yearning.
Gentle, faded — with a cough

And a snore.
When his wife (who was a widow.
And is many years his elder)
Fails to write, and that is always.

He desponds.

Let his melancholy wander,
And he'll tell you pretty stories
Of the women that have wooed him

Long ago;
Or he'll sing of bonnie lasses
Keeping sheep among the heather.
With a crackling, hackling click

In his voice.

XIII.
CASUALTY.

As with varnish red and glistening,
Dripped his hair ; his feet were rigid ;
Raised, he settled stiffly sideways :
Yon could see the hurts were spinal.

He had fallen from an engine,
And been dragged along the metals.
It was hopeless, and they knew it;
So they covered him, and left him.

As he lay, by fits half sentient,
Inarticulately moaning,
With his stockinged feet protruded
Sharp and awkward from the blankets.

To his bed there came a woman,
Stood and looked and sighed a little.
And departed without speaking.
As himself a few hours after.

I was told it was his sweetheart.
They were oix the eve of marriage.
She was quiet as a statue,
But her lip was gray and writhen.

XIV. -
AVE, CiESAR!

FROM the winter's gray despair,
From the summer*s golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.

Inevitable, silent, unseen,

Everywhere always,

Shadow by night and as light in the day,

Signs she at last to her chosen ;

And, as she waves them forth,

Sorrow and Joy

Lay by their looks and their voices,

Set down their hopes, and are made

One in the dim Forever.

Into the winter's gray delight.
Into the summer's golden dream,
Holy and high and impartial,
Death, the mother of Life,
Mingles all men for ever.

XV.
'THE CHIEF.*

HIS brow spreads large and placid, and his eye
Is deep and bright, with steady looks that stilL
Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfill —
His face at once benign and proud and shy.
If envy scout, if ignorance deny.
His faultless patience, his unyieldiTig will,
Beautiful gentleness, and splendid skill,
Innumerable gratitudes reply.
His wise, rare snule is sweet with certainties.
And seems in all his patients to compel
Such love and faith as failure cannot quell.
We hold him for another Herakles,
Battling with custom, prejudice, disease.
As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell.

XVI.
HOUSE-SURGEON.

EXCEEDING tall, but built so well his height
Half -disappears in flow of chest and limb;
Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim ;
Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted ; always bright
And always punctual — morning, noon, and night;
Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn ;
Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim ;
Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight;
His piety, though fresh and true in strain.
Has not yet whitewashed up his common mood
To the dead blank of his particular Schism :
Sweet, unaggressive, tolerant, most humane.
Wild artists like his kindly elderhood,
And cultivate his mild Philistinism.

XVII.
INTERLUDE.

OTHK fun, the fun and frolic
That The Wind that Shakes the Barley
Scatters through a penny whistle
Tickled with artistic fingers 1

Kate the scrubber (forty summers,
Stout but sportive) treads a measure.
Grinning, in herself a ballet,
Fixed as fate upon her audience.

Stumps are shaking, crutch-supported;
Splinted fingers tap the rhythm ;
And a head all helmed with plasters
Wags a measured approbation.

Of their mattress-life oblivious,
All the patients, brisk and cheerful.
Are encouraging the dancer,
And applauding the musician.

Dim the gases in the output
Of so many ardent smokers,
Full of shadow lurch the comers.
And the doctor peeps and passes.

There are, maybe, some suspicions
Of an alcoholic presence . . .
* Tak' a sup of this, my wumman ! ' . . .
New Year comes but once a twelvemonth.

XVIII.
CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD.

HSRE in this dim, dull, double-bedded room,
I am a father to a brace of boys,
Ailing, bat apt for every sort of noise,
Bedfast, but brilliant yet with health and bloom.
Roden, the Irishman, is * sieven past,'
Blue-eyed, snub-nosed, chubby, and fair of face.
Willie's but six, and seems to like the place,
A cheerful little collier to the last
They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day ;
All night they sleep like dormice. See them play
At Operations : — Roden, the Professor,
Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties ;
Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes,
Holding the limb and moaning — Case and Dresser.

XIX.
SCRUBBER.

She's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face
With flashes of the old fun's animation,
There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation
Bred of a past where troubles came apace.
She tells me that her husband, ere he died.
Saw seven of their children pass away,
And never knew the little lass at play
Out on the green, in whom he's deified.
Her kin disbersed, her friends forgot and gone.
All simple faith her honest Irish mind,
Scolding her spoiled young saint, she labours on :
Telling her dreams, taking her patients' part.
Trailing her coat sometimes : and you shall find
No rougher, quainter speech, nor kinder heart.

XX.

VISITOR.

HER little face is like a walnut shell
With wrinkling lines ; her soft, white hair adorns
Her either brow in quaint, straight carls, like horns ;
And all about her clings an old, sweet smeU.
Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl.
Well might her bonnets have been bom on her.
Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother
The subject of a real religious call ?
In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs,
Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray,
Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns,
All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales :
A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom's way,
Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails.

XXI.

ROMANCE.

i n^ALK of plack I' pursued the Sailor,
1 Set at euchre on his elbow,
* I was on the wharf at Charleston,
Just ashore from off the runner.

' It was gray and dirty weather.
And I heard a drum go rolling,
Rub-a-dubbing in the distance.
Awful dour-like and defiant.

' In and out among the cotton.

Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors.
Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows —
Poor old Dixie*8 bottom dollar 1

' Some had shoes, but all had rifles,
Them that wasn't bald, was beardless,
And the drum was rolling Dixie,
And they stepped to it like men, sir 1

* Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,
On they swung, the drum a-roUing,
Mum and sour. It looked like fighting.
And they meant it too, by thunder I '

XXII.
PASTORAL.

5 T^is the spring.

1 Earth has conceived, and her bosom,
Teeming with summer, is glad.

Thro' the green land,

Vistas of change and adventure,

The gray roads go beckoning and winding.

Peopled with wains, and melodious

With harness-bells jangling,

Jangling and twangling rough rhythms

To the slow march of the stately, great horses

Whistled and shouted along.

White fleets of cloud,

Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,

Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows.

Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds

Sway the tall poplars.

Pageants of colour and fragrance.

Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless

Walks the mild spirit of May,

Visibly blessing the world.

O the brilliance of blossoming orchards 1
O the savour and thrill of the woods.

When their leafage is stirred

By the flight of the angel of rain 1

Loud lows the steer ; in the fallows

Rooks are alert ; and the brooks

Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro* the gloaming,

Under the rare, shy stars,

Boy and girl wander

Dreaming in darkness and dew.

It's the Spring.

A sprightliness feeble and squalid
Wakes in the ward, and I sicken.
Impotent, winter at heart.

XXIII.
MUSIC.

DOWN the quiet eve,
Thro' my window, with the sunset,
Pipes to me a distant organ
Foolish ditties;

And, as when you change
Pictures in a magic lantern,
Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling
Fade and vanish.

And I'm well once more. . . .
August flares adust and torrid.
But my heart is full of April
Sap and sweetness.

In the quiet eve

I am loitering, longing, dreaming ....
Dreaming, and a distant organ
Pipes me ditties.

I can see the shop,
I can smell the sprinkled pavement.
Where she serves — her chestnut chignon
Thrills my senses.

O the sight and scent,
Wistful eve and perfumed pavement I
In the distance pipes an organ . . .
The sensation

Comes to me anew,

And my spirit, for a moment

Thro' the mnsic breathes the blessed

Air of London.

XXIV.
SUICIDE.

STARING corpselike at the ceiling,
See the harsh, unrazored features,
Ghastly brown against his pillow,
And the throat — so strangely bandaged 1

Lack of work and lack of victuals,
A debauch of smuggled whisky.
And his children in the workhouse.
Made the world so black a riddle

That he plunged for a solution ;
And, although his knife was edgeless,
He was sinking fast towards one,
When they came, and found, and saved him.

Stupid now with shame and sorrow.
In the night I hear him sobbing.
But sometimes he talks a little. I

He has told me all his troubles. '

In his face, so tanned and bloodless,
White and wide his eyeballs glitter ;
And his smile, occult and tragic.
Makes you shudder when you see it.

XXV.

APPARITION.

THIN-LEGGED, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face —
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race.
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity —
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
Of passion, impudence, and energy.
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck.
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist :
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all.
And something of the Shorter-Catechist.

XXVI.
ANTEROTICS.

LAUGHS the happy April mom
Thro' my grimy, little window,
And a shaft of sunshine pushes
Thro' the shadows in the square.

Dogs are romping thro' the grass,

Crows are cawing round the chimneys,"
And among the bleaching linen
Goes the west at hide-and-seek.

Loud and cheerful clangs the bell.
Here the nurses troop to breakfast.
Handsome, ugly, all are women . . .
O the Spring — the Spring — the Spring I

XXVII.
NOCTURN.

AT the barren heart of midnight,
When the shadow shuts and opens
As the loud flames pulse and flatter,
I can hear a cistern leaking.

Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm,
Rough, unequal, half-melodious.
Like the measures aped from nature
In the infancy of music ;

Like the buzzing of an insect.
Still, irrational, persistent, . . .
I must listen, listen, Usten
In a passion of attention ;

Till it taps upon my heartstrings.
And my very life goes dripping.
Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping,
In the drip-drop of the cistern.

XXVIII.
DISCHARGED.

CARRY me out
Into the wind and the sunshine.
Into the beautiful world.

O the wonder, the spell of the streets I
The stature and strength of the horses,
The rustle and echo of footfalls,
The flat roar and rattle of wheels I
A swift tram floats huge on us . . .
It's a dream ?

The smell of the mud in my nostrils
Is brave — like a breath of the sea 1

As of old,

Ambulant, undulant drapery,
Vaguely and strangely provocative.
Flutters and beckons. O yonder —
Scarlett — the glint of a stocking 1
Sudden a spire,

Wedged in the mist 1 O the houses,
The long lines of lofty, gray houses !
Cross-hatched with shadows and light,
These are the streets. . . .
Each is an avenue leading
Whither I will 1

Free ... I

Dizzy, hysterica], faint,

I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me

Into the wonderfol world.

T^e Old Infirmary^ Edinburgh, 1873-75.

ENVOY:

TO CHARLES BAXTER.

DO you remember
That afternoon — that Sunday afternoon 1
When, as the kirks were ringing in
And the gray city teemed
With Sabbath feelings and aspects,
Lewis — our Lewis then,
Now the whole world's I — and you,
Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came,
Laden with Balzacs

(Big, yellow books, quite impudently French)
The first of many times,
To that transformed back-kitchen where I lay
So long, so many centuries —
Or years, is it 1 — ago ?

Dear Charles, since then

We have been friends, Lewis and you and I,

(How good it sounds, * Lewis and you and II*):

Such friends, I like to think

That in us three, Lewis and me and you,

Is something of that gallant dream

Which old Dumas — the generous, the humane.

The seven-and-seventy times to be foigiven I —

Dreamed for a blessing to the race,

The immortal Musketeers,

Our Athos rests — the wise, the kind,

The liberal and august, his fault atoned,

Rests in the crowded yard

There at the west oi Princes Street. We three —

You, I, and Lewis 1 — still afoot,

In chime so long, may keep

(God bless the thought 1 )

Un jangled till the end.

W. E. H.

Chiswick, Marchy 1888.

WHEN Walter Pater died the art of
exquisite prose did not wholly die
with him. It is the merit of Mr, Arthur
Symons, friend and disciple of the dead
mastert that in a period of critical slack-
water he is first and foremost '* a man with
something to sayP « To read one of his
hooks is to read them all and having done
so to rejoice in "fresh woods and pastures
new.*^^

The essay on Gkrard de Nerval taken
from The Symbolist Movement in Liter-
ature fi8pp),which is his latest work, will
make evident our contention. It stands
alone as a sincere and sympathetic study of
one who has truly been called "the most

X "A Poet with something to say: Mr, Art bur
Symous's 'Days and Nigbts. ' ** An unsigned article
by Walter Pater in Vail IMall Gazette, Marcb 23,
1889.

3 Tbere are, in prose: An Introdaction to the
Study of BrownisKi 1886; Studies in Two Litera-
tures, t89T ; Aubrey Beardsley, an Essay, t8g8 ;
The Symbolist Movement in Literature, 1899, A
fiftb work entitled Cities is in preparation. In verse :
Days and Nights, 1889; Silhouettes, 1892; Lon-
don Nights, 189$; Silhouettes {Second edition
revised and enlarged), 1896; Amoris Victima,
1^97 ; Images of Good and Evil, 1899,

heauUful of all the lost souls of the French
Romance.** For^ as pointed out by Mr.
SjymonSf not until iSpjj when Mme. Avbde
Barine put forth a very sufficient exposition
and analysis of De Nerval* s mental make-
up y the man remained unknown for what he
was and will remain.

Sinistery indeed^ the fate of many who
led in the French Romantic Movement of
1 8)o ! Strange maladies^ which from their
multiplicity appear inseparable from all
exotic flowering and decay in %Art or
Letters y beset them. In our own time sim-
ilar phenomena reappear : from age to age
are never wholly absent or eradicable.

For Gerard de Nervaly born to pass the
torch along to Verlaine and Mallarmiy life
may have seemed in all truth " the masque
of DeatFs old comedy." The Vision
Splendid deepened as the way darkened : to
the endy despite the end as we know ity it
was "music ever and evermore.'* If this
music merged at last in utterance beyond
interpretation it irked him not for whom
Symbol had become the Thing itself — the
Ideal made one and inseparable from the
Real.

For March :
The Churches of North France

William Morris.

GlERARD DE NERVAL
By

Arthur Symons.

GiRARD 'DB HBRP'AL.

Of all that were tfy prisons — ab, untamed ,

Ab, light and sacred soul! — none holds thee now;

No wall, no bar, no body of fiesb^ but thou
tArtfree and happy in the lands unnamed,
Within whose gates, on weary wings and maimed.

Thou still would' st bear that mystic golden bough

The Sibyl doth to singing men allow.
Yet thy report folk heeded not, but blamed.

tAnd they would smile and wonder, seeing where
Thou stood'st, to watch light leaves, or clouds, or wind,

'Dreamily murmuring a ballad air.
Caught from the f^alois peasants; dost thou find

A new life gladder than the old times were,
A love more fair than Sylvie, and as kind ?

ANDRBW LANG.

*EL'DESDICHADO.
AM that dark, that disinherited, j

I That all dishonoured Prince of Aquitaine,

The Star upon my scutcheon long hath fled;
A black sun on my lute doth yet remain !
Oh, thou that didst console me not in yain,
Within the tomb, among the midnight dead.
Show me Italian seas, and blossoms wed,
The rose, the vine-leaf, and the golden grain.

Say, am I Love or Phoebus? have I been
Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen

Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay,
And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream.
And touched on Orpheus* lute as in a dream.

Sighs of a Saint, and laughter of a Fay I

GERARD DB NERVAL,
(translated by ANDREW LANG.)

GifiRARD DE NERVAL.

THIS is the problem of one who lost the
whole world and gained his own sonl.
'* I like to arrange my life as if it were a
novel," wrote Gerard de Nerval, and, indeed,
it is somewhat difficult to disentangle the
precise facts of an existence which was never
quite conscious where began and where ended
that *' overflowing of dreams into real life,"
of which he speaks. " I do not ask of God,"
he said, " that he should change anything in
events themselves, but that he should change
me in regard to things, so that I might have
the power to create my own universe about
me, to govern my dreams, instead of endur-
ing them." The prayer was not granted, in
its entirety ; and the tragedy of his life lay
in the vain endeavour to hold back the
irresbtible empire of the unseen, which it
was the joy of his life to summon about him.
Briefly, we know that Gerard Labrunie (the
name de Nerval was taken from a little piece
of property, worth some 1500 francs, which
he liked to imagine had always been in the
possession of his family) was born at Paris,
May 22, 1808. His father was surgeon-

Gl^RARD DE NERVAL

major; his mother died before he was old
enough to remember her, following the
Grande Armie on the Russian campaign;
and Gerard was brought up, largely under
the care of a studious and erratic uncle, in a
little village called Montagny, near Ermenon-
ville. He was a precocious schoolboy, and
by the age of eighteen had published six
little collections of verses. It was during
one of his holidays that he saw, for the first
and last time, the young girl whom he calls
Adrienne, and whom, under many names, he
loved to the end of his life. One evening
she had come from the chdteau to dance
with the young peasant girls on the grass.
She had danced with Gerard, he had kissed
her cheek, he had crowned her hair with
laurels, he had heard her sing an old song
telling of the sorrows of a princess whom her
father had shut in a tower because she had
loved. To Gerard it seemed that already he
remembered her, and certainly he was never
to forget her. Afterwards, he heard that
Adrienne had taken the veil ; then, that she
was dead. To one who had realised that it
is *'we, the living, who walk in a world of
phantoms,*' death could not exclude hope;

GERARD DE NERVAL

and when, many years later, he fell seriously
and fantastically in love with a little actress
called Jenny Colon, it was because he
seemed to have found, in that blonde and
very human person, the re-incarnation of the
blonde Adrienne.

Meanwhile Gerard was living in Paris,
among his friends the Romantics, writing
and living in an equally desultory fashion.
Le ban Girard was the best loved, and, in
his time, not the least famous, of the com-
pany. He led, by choice, now in Paris, now
across Europe, the life of a vagabond, and
more persistently than others of his friends
who were driven to it by need. At that
time, when it was the aim of every one to be
as eccentric as possible, the eccentricities of
Gerard's life and thought seemed, on the
whole, less noticeable than those of many
really quite normal persons. But with Gerard
there was no pose; and when, one day, he
was found in the Palais- Royal, leading a lob-
ster at the end of a blue ribbon, the visionary
had simply lost control of his visions, and
had to be sent to Dr. Blanche's asylum at
Montmartre. He entered March 21, i84i,
and came out, apparently well again, on the

Gl&RARD DE NERVAL

2 1 St of November. It would seem that this
first access of madness was, to some extent,
the consequence of the final rupture with
Jenny Colon ; on June 5, 1842, she died, and
it was partly in order to put as many leagues
of the earth as possible between him and
that memory that Gerard set out, at the end
of 1842, for the East. It was also in order
to prove to the world, by his consciousness
of external things, that he had recovered
his reason. While he was in Syria, he once
more fell in love with a new incarnation
of Adrienne, a young Druse, Sal^ma, the
daughter of a Sheikh of Lebanon; and it
seems to have been almost by accident that
he did not marry her. He returned to Paris
at the end of 1843 ^^ ^^^ beginning of 1844,
and for the next few years he lived mostly in
Paris, writing charming, graceful, remarkably
sane articles and books, and wandering about
the streets, by day and night, in a perpetual
dream, from which, now and again, he was
somewhat rudely awakened. When, in the
spring of 1853, he went to see Heine, for
whom he was doing an admirable prose
translation of his poems, and told him he
had come to return the money he had

Gl^RARD DE NERVAL

received in advance, because the times were
accomplished, and the end of the world,
announced by the Apocalypse, was at hand,
Heine sent for a cab, and Gerard found
himself at Dr. Dubois' asylum, where he
remained two months. It was on coming
out of the asylum that he wrote Sylvie^ a
delightful idyl, chiefly autobiographical, one
of his three actual achievements. On August
27, 1853, ^^ ^^^ ^o ^ taken to Dr. Blanche's
asylum at Passy, where he remained till May
27, 1854. Thither, after a month or two
spent in Germany, he returned on August
8, and on October 19 he came out for the
last time, manifestly uncured. He was now
engaged on the narrative of his own madness,
and the first part of Le Reve et la Vie appeared
in the Revue de Paris of January i, 1855.
On the 20th he came into the office of the
review, and showed Gautier and Maxime du
Camp an apron-string which he was carrying
in his pocket. **It is the girdle,'* he said,
" that Madame de Maintenon wore when she
had Esther performed at Saint-Cyr." On
the 24th he wrote to a friend : ** Come and
prove my identity at the police-station of the
Ch&telet." The night before he had been

GERARD DE NERVAL

working at his MS. in a pot-house of Les
Halles, and had been arrested as a vagabond.
He was used to sach little misadventures,
but he complained of the difficulty of writing.
'* I set off after an idea," he said, " and lose
myself ; I am hours in finding my way back.
Do you know I can scarcely write twenty
lines a day, the darkness comes about me so
close 1 " He took out the apron-string. " It
is the garter of the Queen of Sheba,*' he
said. The snow was freezing on the ground,
and on the night of the 25th, at three in the
morning, the landlord of a *' penny doss '* in
the Rue de la Vieille-Lanteme, a filthy alley
lying between the quays and the Rue de
Rivoli, heard some one knocking at the door,
but did not open, on account of the cold.
At dawn, the body of Gerard de Nerval was
found hanging by the apron-string to a bar
of the window.

It is not necessary to exaggerate the
importance of the half-dozen volumes which
make up the works of Gerard de Nerval.
He was not a great writer ; he had moments
of greatness ; and it is the particular quality
of these moments which is of interest for us.
There is the entertaining, but not more than

GERARD DV NERVAL

entertaining, Voyage en Orient ; there is the
estimable translation of Faust, and the admi-
rable versions from Heine; there are the
volumes of short stories and sketches, of
which even Les Illuminis, in spite of the
promise of its title, is little more than an
agreeable compilation. But there remain
three compositions : the sonnets, Le Reve et
la Vie, and Sylvie ; of which Sylvie is the
most objectively achieved, a wandering idyl,
full of pastoral delight, and containing some
folk-songs of Valois, two of which have been
translated by Rossetti; Le Rhe et la Vie
being the most intensely personal, a narrative
of madness, unique as madness itself; and
the sonnets, a kind of miracle, which may be
held to have created something at least of
the method of the later Symbolists. These
three compositions, in which alone Gerard is
his finest self, all belong to the periods when
he was, in the eyes of the world, actually
mad. The sonnets belong to two of these
periods, Le Reve et la Vie to the last ; Sylvie
was written in the short interval between the
two attacks in the early part of 1853. We
have thus the case of a writer, graceful and
elegant when he is sane, but only inspired,

g]£rard de nerval

only really wise, passionate, collected, only
really master of himself, when he is insane.
It may be worth looking at a few of the points
which so suggestive a problem presents to us.

II.

Gi^RARD D£ Nerval lived the transfig-
ured inner life of the dreamer. **I
was very tired of life I *' he says. And like so
many dreamers, who have all the luminous
darkness of the universe in their brains, he
found his most precious and uninterrupted
solitude in the crowded and more sordid
streets of great cities. He who had loved
the Queen of Sheba, and seen the seven
Elohims dividing the world, could find noth-
ing more tolerable in mortal conditions, when
he was truly aware of them, than the company
of the meanest of mankind, in whom poverty
and vice, and the hard pressure of civilisation,
still leave some of the original vivacity of the
human comedy. The real world seeming to
be always so far from him, and a sort of
terror of the gulfs holding him, in spite of
himself, to its flying skirts, he found some-
thing at all events realisable, concrete, in
these drinkers of Les Halles, these vaga-
bonds of the Place du Carrousel, among
whom he so often sought refuge. It was
literally, in part, a refuge. During the day
he could sleep, but night wakened him, and
that restlessness, which the night draws out

Gl^RARD DS NERVAL

in those who are really under lanar influences,
set his feet wandering, if only in order that
his mind might wander the less. The sun,
as he mentions, never appears in dreams;
but, with the approach of night, is not every
one a little readier to believe in the mystery
lurking behind the world ?

Grains t dans le mur «veugU, un rtgard qui fkpU !

he writes in one of his great sonnets; and
that fear of the invisible watchfulness of
nature was never absent from him. It is
one of the terrors of human existence that
we may be led at once to seek and to shun
solitude ; unable to bear the mortal pressure
of its embrace, unable to endure the nostalgia
of its absence. "I think man*8 happiest
when he forgets himself," says an Eliza-
bethan dramatist; and, with Gerard, there
was Adrienne to forget, and Jenny Colon
the actress, and the Queen of Sheba. But
to have drunk of the cup of dreams it to
have drunk of the cup of eternal memory.
The past, and, as it seemed to him, the
future were continually with him; only the
present fled continually from under his feet.
It was only by the effort of this contact with

GlftRARD D£ NERVAL

people who lived so sincerely in the day, the
minute, that he could find even a temporary
foothold. With them, at least, he could
hold back all the stars, and the darkness
beyond them, and the interminable approach
and disappearance of all the ages, if only
for the space between tavern and tavern,
where he could open his eyes on so frank an
abandonment to the common drunkenness
of most people in this world, here for once
really living the symbolic intoxication of
their ignorance.

Like so many dreamers of illimitable
dreams, it was the fate of Gerard to incar-
nate his ideal in the person of an actress.
The fatal transfiguration of the footlights, in
which reality and the artificial change places
with so fantastic a regularity, has drawn
many moths into its flame, and will draw
more as long as men persist in demanding
illusion of what is real, and reality in what is
illusion. The Jenny Colons of the world are
very simple, very real, if one will but refrain
from assuming them to be a mystery. But
it is the penalty of all imaginative lovers to
create for 'themselves th^ veil which hides
from them the features of the beloved. It is

^ I

GERARD DX NERVAL

their privilege, for it is incomparably more
entrancing to fancy oneself in love with Isis
than to know that one is in love with Manon
Lescant. The picture of Gerard, after many
hesitations, revealing to the astonished Jenny
that she is the incarnation of another, the
shadow of a dream, that she has been
Adrienne and is about to be the Queen of
Sheba; her very human little cry of pure
incomprehension, Mais vous ne m'aimez
pas I and her prompt refuge in the arms of
the jeune premier ridi, if it were not of the
acutest pathos, would certainly be of the
most quintessential comedy. For Gerard,
so sharp an awakening was but like the
passage from one state to another, across
that little bridge of one step which lies
between heaven and hell, to which he was
so used in his dreams. It gave permanency
to the trivial, crystallising it, in another than
Stendhal's sense ; and when death came,
changing mere human memory into the
terms of eternity, the darkness of the spirit-
ual world was lit with a new star, which was
henceforth the wandering, desolate guide
of so many visions. The tragic figure of
Aurelia, which comes and goes through all

Gl^RARD D£ NERVAL

the labyrinths of dream, is now seen always
"as if lit up by a lightning-flash, pale and
dying, hurried away by dark horsemen.**

The dream or doctrine of the re-incarnation
of souls, which has given so much consolation
to so many questioners of eternity, was for
Gerard (need we doubt?) a dream rather
than a doctrine, but one of those dreams
which are nearer to a man than his breath.
"This vague and hopeless love,** he writes
in Sylvitf ** inspired by an actress, which
night by night took hold of me at the hour
of the performance, leaving me only at the
hour of sleep, had its germ in the recollection
of Adrienne, flower of the night, unfolding
under the pale rays of the moon, rosy and
blonde phantom, gliding over the green
grass, half bathed in white mist. . . . To
love a nun under the form of an actress I . . .
and if it were the very same 1 It is enough to
drive one mad 1 *' Yes, il y a de quoi devenir
fou, as Gerard had found ; but there was also,
in this intimate sense of the unity, perpetu-
ity, and harmoniously recurring rhythm of
nature, not a little of the inner substance of
wisdom. It was a dream, perhaps refracted
from some broken, illuminating angle by

GERARD DE NERVAL

which madness catches unseen light, that
revealed to him the meaning of his own
superstition, fatality, malady : — " During my
sleep, I had a marvellous vision. It seemed
to me that the goddess appeared before me,
ss^ying to me : * I am the same as Mary, the
same as thy mother, the same also whom,
under all forms, thou hast always loved. At
each of thine ordeals I have dropt yet one
more of the masks with which I veil my
countenance, and soon thou shalt see me as
I am 1 * ** And in perhaps his finest sonnet,
the mysterious Artemis^ we have, under other
symbols, and with the deliberate inconse-
quence of these sonnets, the comfort and
despair of the same faith.

La Treizihne rezneni . . . Cestencorlaprtmiir*;
Et c'est toujours la settle, — ou c^est le seul fHonuni :
Car es-tu reine, b tot ! lapremihre ou demikr* t
Es-tu rot, tot le seul ou le dernier antant f . . .

A imez qui vous ainta du berceau dans la biire ;
Celle quej^atnai seul nCaime encor tendrement ;
(Test la mart — ou la morte . . . d dilice ! 3 tournunt I
La Rose qt^elle tient, c'est la Rose tr^mi^re.

Sainte napolitaine aux mains ^ines de/eux.
Rose au cceur violet, Jleur de sainte Gudule:
As'tu trouvi ta croix dans le disert des cienx t '

GERARD DE NERVAL

Roses BloMchss, tombez t vous insuUez nos dieuxi
Tombez^fantbmes blancs, de votrt ciel qui brule:
—:La Sainie d* Pabitnt est plus sainie A mesyeux !

Who has not often meditated, above all
what artist, on the slightness, after all, of the
link which holds our faculties together in
that sober health of the brain which we call
reason ? Are there not moments when that
link seems to be worn down to so fine a
tenuity that the wing of a passing dream
might suffice to snap it ? The consciousness
seems, as it were, to expand and contract at
once, into something too wide for the uni-
verse, and too narrow for the thought of self
to find room within it. Is it that the sense
of identity is about to evaporate, annihilating
all, or is it that a more profound identity, the
identity of the whole sentient universe, has
been at last realised? Leaving the concrete
world on these brief voyages, the fear is that
we may not have strength to return, or that
we may lose the way back. Every artist
lives a double life, in which he is for the most
part conscious of the illusions of the imagi-
nation. He is conscious also of the illusion
of the nerves, which he shares with every
man of imaginative mind. Nights of insom-

GtjJLRD DE NE&VAL

nia, days of anxioiis waiting, the sadden
shock of an event, any one of these common
disturbances may be enough to jangle the
tuneless bells of one's nerves. The artist
can distinguish ' these causes of certain of
his moods from those other causes which
come to him because he is an artist, and are
properly concerned with that invention which
is his own function. Yet is there not some
danger that he may come to confuse one with
the other, that he may "lose the thread'*
which conducts him through the intricacies
of the inner world ?

The supreme artist, certainly, is the fur-
thest of all men from this danger ; for he is
the supreme intelligence. Like Dante, he
can pass through hell unsinged. With him,
imagination is vision; when he looks into
the darkness, he sees. The vague dreamer,
the insecure artist and the uncertain mystic
at once, sees only shadows, not recognising
their outlines. He is mastered by the images
which have come at his call ; he has not the
power which chains them for his slaves.
** The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence,"
and the dreamer who has gone tremblingly
into the darkness is in peril at the hands

GERARD D£ NERVAL '

of those very real phantoms who are the
reflection of his fear.

The madness of Gerard de Nerval, what-
ever physiological reasons may be rightly
given for its outbreak, subsidence, and return,
I take to have been essentially due to the
weakness and not the excess of his visionary
quality, to the insufficiency of his imaginative
energy, and to his lack of spiritual discipline.
He was an unsystematic mystic ; his ** Tower
of Babel in two hundred volumes," that med-
ley of books of religion, science, astrology,
history, travel, which he thought would have
rejoiced the heart of Pico della Mirandola,
of Meursius, or of Nicholas of Cusa, was
truly, as he says, '* enough to drive a wise
man mad.'' "Why not also," he adds,
** enough to make a madman wise?" But
precisely because it was this amas bizarre^
this jumble of the perilous secrets in which
wisdom is so often folly and folly so often
wisdom. He speaks vaguely of the Kabbala ;
the Kabbala would have been safety to him,
as the Catholic Church would have been,
or any other reasoned scheme of things.
Wavering among intuitions, ignorances, half-
truths, shadows of falsehood, now audacious.

Gl^RARD DE NERVAL

now hesitating, he was blown hither and
thither by conflicting winds, a prey to the
indefinite.

Le Rev£ et la Vie, the last fragments
of which were found in his pockets after
his suicide, scrawled on scraps of paper,
interrupted with Kabbalistic signs and '*a
demonstration of the Imaculate Conception
by geometry," is a narrative of a madman's
visions by the madman himself, yet showing,
as Gautier says, ** cold reason seated by the
bedside of hot fever, hallucination analysing
itself by a supreme philosophic effort/'
What is curious, yet after all natural, is that
part of the narrative seems to be contempo-
raneous with what it describes, and part
subsequent to it ; so that it is not as when
De Quincey says to us, such or such was the
opium-dream that I had on such a night;
but as if the opium-dreamer had begun to
write down his dream while he was yet
within its coils. <* The descent into hell," he
calls it twice; yet does he not also write:
** At times I imagined that my force and my
activity were doubled ; it seemed to me that
I knew everything, understood everything;
and imagination brought me infinite pleas-

g]£rard D£ nerval

ures. Now that I have recovered what men
call reason, most I not regret having lost
them ? ** But he had not lost them ; he was
still in that state of doable consciousness
-which he describes in one of his visions,
when, seeing people dressed in white, ** I was
astonished," he says, ** to see them all dressed
in white ; yet it seemed to me that this was
an optical illusion.*' His cosmical visions
are at times so magnificent that he seems to
be creating myths ; and it is with a worthy
ingenuity that he plays the part he imagines
to be assigned to him in his astral influ-
ences.

'* First of all I imagined that the persons
collected in the garden (of the madhouse) all
had some influence on the stars, and that the
one who always walked round and round in
a circle regulated the course of the sun. An
old man, who was brought there at certain
hours of the day, and who made knots as he
consulted his watch, seemed to me to be
charged with the notation of the course of
the hours. I attributed to myself an influence
over the course of the moon, and I believed
that this star had been struck by the thun-
derbolt of the Most High, which had traced

GERARD DB NERVAL

on its face the imprint of the mask which I
had observed.

"I attributed a mystical signification to
the conversations of the warders and of my
companions. It seemed to me that they
were the representatives of all the races
of the earth, and that we had undertaken
between us to re-arrange the course of the
stars, and to give a wider development to the
system. An error, in my opinion, had crept
into the general combination of numbers,
and thence came all the ills of .humanity. I
believed also that the celestial spirits had
taken human forms, and assisted at this
general congress, seeming though they did
to be concerned with but ordinary occupa-
tions. My own part seemed to me to be the
re-establishment of universal harmony by
Kabbalistic art, and I had to seek a solution
by evoking the occult forces of various
religions."

So far we have, no doubt, the confusions
of madness, in which what may indeed be
the symbol is taken for the thing itself.
But now observe what follows: —

'* I seemed to myself a hero living under
the very eyes of the gods; everything in

GERARD DE NSRVAL

natare assumed new aspects, and secret
voices came to me from the plants, the trees,
animals, the meanest insects, to warn and to
encourage me. The words of my companions
had mysterious messages, the sense of which
I alone understood ; things without form and
without life lent themselves to the designs
of my mind ; out of combinations of stones,
the figures of angles, crevices, or openings,
the shape of leaves, out of colours, odours,
and sounds, I saw unknown harmonies come
forth. ' How is it,' I said to myself, ' that
I can possibly have lived so long outside
nature, without identifying myself with her I
All things live, all things are in motion, all
things correspond; the magnetic rays emanat-
ing from myself or others traverse without
obstacle the infinite chain of created things :
a transparent network covers the world,
whose loose threads communicate more and
more closely with the planets and the stars.
Now a captive upon the earth, I hold con-
verse with the starry choir, which is feelingly
a part of my joys and sorrows.' "

To have thus realised that central secret
of the mystics, from Pythagoras onwards,
the secret which the Smaragdine Tablet of

GERARD X>£ NERVAL

Hermes betrays in its ** As things are below,
so are they above": which Boehme has
classed in his teaching of " signatures," and
Swedenborg has systematised in his doctrine
of "correspondences"; does it matter very
much that he arrived at it by way of the
obscure and fatal initiation of madness ?
Truth, and especially that soul of truth
which is poetry, may be reached by many
roads ; and a road is not necessarily mislead-
ing because it is dangerous or forbidden.
Here is one who has gazed at light till it has
blinded him ; and for us all that is important
is that he has seen something, not that his
eyesight has been too weak to endure the
pressure of light overflowing the world from
beyond the world.

III.

AND here we arrive at the fondamental
principle which is at once the sub-
stance and the aesthetics of the sonnets
« composed," as he explains, *'in that state
of meditation which the Germans would call
'super-natnralistic/ " In one, which I will
quote, he is explicit, and seems to state a
doctrine.

VEXS DORES,

Homm»t librtpenseur I U crois-ht sttd^ensatU
DoMS eg mande oA la vU en touU chasg f
Dts forces que hi tiens ta liherU dispose,
Mais de tous tes conseils Punitfers est absent-

Respecte dans la bUe am efprit agissant :

Chaqtte Jleur est une ame h la Nature ielose ;

Un ntysthre d^anumr dans le mital repose ;

" Tout est sensible I " Et tout sur ton etre est puissant.

Grains, dans le mur aneugle, un regard qui f^pie I
A la utatih'e meme un verbe est attachi . . .
Nie la/aispas servir it quelque usage impie I

Souveni dans PHre obscur habiie un Dieu cachi ;
Et comme un ail naissant convert Par uspaupiireSf
Unpur esprit s'accroU sous Piforce despierres t

Bat in the other sonnets, in Artimisy which
I have qaoted, in El Desdichado, Myrtho^

G]£&ARD DE NERVAL

and the others, he would seem to be delib-
erately obscure; or at least, his obscurity
results, to some extent, from the state of
mind which he describes in Le Reve etla Vie :
** I then saw, vaguely drifting into form,
plastic images of antiquity, which outlined
themselves, became definite, and seemed to
represent symbols, of which I only seized the
idea with difficulty." Nothing could more
precisely represent the impression made by
these sonnets, in which, for the first time in
French, words are used as the ingredients
of an evocation, as themselves not merely
colour and sound, but symbol. Here are
words which create an atmosphere by the
actual suggestive qualify of their syllables,
as, according to the theory of Mallarme,
they should do; as, in the recent attempts
of the Symbolists, writer after writer has
endeavoured to lure them into doing. Per-
suaded, as Gerard was, of the sensitive unity
of all nature, he was able to trace resem-
blances where others saw only divergences ;
and the setting together of unfamiliar and
apparently alien things, which comes so
strangely upon us in his verse, was perhaps
an actual sight of what it is our misfortune

GERARD D£ NERVAL

not to see. His genius, to which madness
had come as the liberating, the precipitating,
spirit, disengaging its finer essence, consisted
in a power of materialising vision, whatever
is most volatile and unseizable in vision,
and wi'hout losing the sense of mystery, or
that quality which gives its charm to the
intangible. Madness, then, in him, had lit
up, as if by lightning-flashes, the hidden links
of distant and divergent things ; perhaps in
somewhat the same manner as that in which
a similarly new, startling, perhaps over-true
sight of things is gained by the artificial
stimulation of haschisch, opium, and those
other drugs by which vision is produced
deliberately, and the soul, sitting safe within
the perilous circle of its own magic, looks
out on the panorama which either rises out
of the darkness before it, or drifts from itself
into the darkness. The very imagery of
these sonnets is the imagery which is known
to all dreamers of bought dreams. Rose au
caur violet^ fleur de sainte Gudule; le Temple
au piristyle immense; la grotte oil nage la
syrkne: the dreamer of bought dreams has
seen them all. But no one before Gerard
realised that such things as these might be

GERARD DE NERVAL

the basis of almost a new aesthetics. Did he
himself realise all that he had done, or was
it left for Mallarm^ to theorise upon what
Gerard had but divined ?

That he made the discovery, there is no
donbt ; and we owe to the fortunate accident
of madness one of the foundations of what
may be called the practical aesthetics of Sym-
bolism. Look again at that sonnet Ariimis^
and you will see in it not only the method of
Mallarm^, but much of the most intimate
manner of Verlaine. The first four lines,
with their fluid rhythm, their repetitions and
echoes, their delicate evasions, might have
been written by Verlaine; in the later part
the firmness of the rhythms and the jewelled
significance of the words are like Mallarm^
at his finest, so that in a single sonnet we
may fairly claim to see a foreshadowing of
the styles of Mallarm^ and Verlaine at once.
With Verlaine the resemblance goes, per-
haps, no further ; with Mallarm6 it goes to
the very roots, the whole man being, cer-
tainly, his style.

Gerard de Nerval, then, had divined,
before all the world, that poetry should be
a miracle; not a hymn to beauty, nor the

GERARD DE NERVAL ^

description of beauty, nor beauty's mirror;
bat beauty itself, the colour, fragrance, and
form of the imagined flower, as it blossoms
again out of the page. Vision, the over-
powering vision, had come to him beyond, if
not against, his will; and he knew that
vision is the root out of which the flower
must grow. Vision had taught him symbol,
and he knew that it is by symbol alone that
the flower can take visible form. He knew
that the whole mystery of beauty can never
be comprehended by the crowd, and that
while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect
ezplicitness is not a necessary virtue. So it
was with disdain, as well as with confidence,
that he allowed these sonnets to be over-
heard. It was enough for him to say : —

y « retft dans la grotie ott nage la syrhu ;

and to speak, it might be, the syren's lan-
guage, remembering her : " It will be my last
madness," he wrote, "to believe myself a
poet : let criticism cure me of it." Criticism,
in his own day, even Gautier's criticism,
could but be disconcerted by a novelty so
unexampled. It is only now that the best
critics in France are beginning to realise how

Gl^RARD D£ NERVAL

great in themselves, and how great in their
influence, are these sonnets, which, forgotten
by the world for nearly fifty years, have
all the while been secretly bringing new
aesthetics into French poetry.

NOTES.
I.

GERARD D£ NERVAL.

(i8oS— 1855.)

t^apoUoH et la FroMCt Guerriire, iUgies naHonales,
1826; La mart de Talma, 1826; VAcadimie, ou Us
Membres Introuvables, eontidie iotirtque en vers, 1826 ;
Napoidon et Talma, iUgies naHonales nouvelles, 1826 ; M,
Dentscourt, ou le Cuisinier Grand Homme, 1826 ; EUgtes
National es et Satires Politiques, 1827; Faust, tragidie
de Goetbe, 1828 (suivi du second Faust, 1840) ; Couronne
Poitique de Biranger, 1828 ; Le Peuple, ode, 1830 ; Poesies
v4llemandes, morgeaux cboisis et traduits, 1830 ; Cboix
de Poisies de Ronsard et de 1(egnier, 1830 ; Nos tAdieun
is la Cbambre de Diputis de I* an 1830, 1831 ; Linore,
traduite de Burger, 1835; THquito, ophra comtque
(with Dumas), 1837 i L* Alcbimiste, drame en vers (with
Dumas), 1839; Lio Burtkbardt, drame en prou (with
Dumas), 1839 ; Seines de la Vie Orientale, 2 vols., 1848-
1850 ; Les Montenegrins, oph-a comique (with Alboize),
1849 1 ^ Chariot d* Enfant, drame et vers (with M^ry),
1850 ; Les Nuits du Ramasan, 1850 ; Voyage en Orient,
185 1 ; L'fmagier de Harlem, Ugende en prose et en vers
(with M^ry and Bernard . Lopez), 1852 ; Contes et
Facittes, 1852; Lorel/, souvenirs d'tAllemange, 1852;
Les Illuming, 1852 ; Petits Cbdteux de Bobime, 1853 ;
Les Ftlles du Feu, 1854; IMisantbropie et Repentir,
drame de Kotii^ebue, 1855 * ^ Bobime galante, 1855 ; Le
n^ive et la Vie : Aurilia, 1855 ; Le Marquis de Fayolle
(with £. Goi:ge8), 1856; CBuvres Computes, 6 vols.,

NOTES

(i, Les "Deux Faust de Goetbe ; 2, 3, Voyage en Orient ;
4, Les IllunUnis, Les Faux Saulniers ; 5, Le Rive et la
Vie, les Filles du Feu, La Bobinte gatanle ; b,Poisies
Computes)^ 1867.

The sonnets, written at different periods and never
published during the lifetime of Gerard, are contained
in the volume of Poisies Completes, where they are
imbedded in the midst of deplorable juvenilia. All, or
almost all, of the verse worth preserving was collected,
in 1897, by that delicate amateur of the cunosities of
beauty, M. Remy de Gourmont, in a tiny volume called
Les Cbimhes, which contains the seven sonnets of " Les
Chimferes," the sonnet called ** Vera Dords," the five
sonnets oi " Le Christ aux Oliviers,** auad, in facsimile
of the autograph, the lyric called '*Les Cydalises.*'
The true facts of the life of Gerard have been told for
the first time, from original documents, by Mnie.
ArvMe Barine, in two excellent articles in the Revue
de Deux Mondesj October 15, and November i, 1897,
since reprinted in Les Nevrosis, 1898.

[The exquisite Conquet edition of Sylvie (Paris,
1886) is seldom met with now save on the shelves of
the collector. The English re-issue gives no adequate
notion of the beauty of this lovely book. Our Old
World reprint is the only available edition that has
merits of its own both as translation and as a piece of
book-making.]

NOTBS

11.
TRANSLATIONS OF SONNETS.

VERS DORES.

O atheist man I are yoa the only one imbued
With thought, on earth where everything with life's a-teem?
Though license give your forces fuller scope, 'twould seem
No Universe within your counsels you include.

In every beast may'st note a mind with thought indued;
Each flower is a soul in Nature's ample scheme ;
With mysteries of love her steely metals gleam ;
"All thmgs are sentient I " and your lesser powers elude.

Behold within the sightless wall a watchful tft I
Somewhat of Trinity within all matter hides. . •
To impious uses, therefore, turn it not awry 1

Oft in the lowliest Earth-bom, hidden, God abides ;
And like the nascent eye beneath the eyelids fold.
The stone's close sheath a spirit pure doth hold.

NOTES

II.

ARTEMIS.

The thirteenth loved retnms . . . Tia e'er the first love knows ;
Alway the only one, — alway the only hoar nnflown :
For art thou queen, O thou I the first or last of those ?
Or art thou king, thoa first or last on lover's throne? . . .

Give love to those who love from cradle to life's close ;

Who hath mine only love still loveth me alone ;

rris Death — or death's consort . . . O rapture I O torment unknown I

The Rose of Allah bringing, — 'tis the mallow Rose.

Thou saint Neapolitan, whose hands the torch uprise.
Thou violet-hearted Rose, the flower of saint Gudule :
Hast found thy cross within the desert-waste of skies ?

Ye roses white, avaunt ! 'tis Love that deifies :

Avaunt ye phadtoms white, from heaven where flame holds rule :

The saints of Hell more saintly are unto mine eyes I

In rendering these two sonnets I have but sought to
retain the echoing consonances of the originals, (which
Mr. Symons so truly notes.) and divine the symbolistic
conception of the author who sometimes wandered so
far afield. Perhaps the attempt is unavailing and pre-
sumptuous, for music and color depart and the hidden
still remains obscure.

A. LBNALIB.

NOTES

III.

Another translation of tArtimis is that given by W.
J. Robertson in A Ctntury of French VtrUt (London,
189s).

The thirteenth comes again ! . . . She is, moreover,
The first and sole — or one sole moment seen :
O thou ! the first or last, art thou the queen ?

Art thou the king, thou sole or the last lover ? . -. .

Love thou whose love thy birth and bier did cover;
She whom I loved loves me no less, I ween :
Death — or one dead — O ecstasy ! O teen I

On the dusk rose she holds dense shadows hover.

Pale Saint-Gudule, whose hands are full of flame.

Whose breast the purple-hearted rose doth cherish ;
Hast thou too found thy cross in wasted skies ? . . .

White roses fall I Ye flout our Gods ^th shame :

White phantoms fall from burning heavens and perish ;
The saint of Hell is holier in these eyes I

tX0e (Biaefof

iilN the article on Amims Caibidrah ^ ' *"

1 the intense love and wonderful ,\ \ " '
knowledge Morris bad of tbe Middle Ages, i - ^^ . - a.
of French Gotbic, and of that particular \
churcb, wbicb was always to bim tbe crown
and flower of tbe wbole worlSs arcbi-
iecture, eTcpressed tbemselves in wbat is
perhaps even yet tbe noblest and most loxnng
tribute ever paid to tbe great Cathedral.
It was not written without violent struggles.
' / am to have a grind about Amiens Cathe-
dral this time* be writes from home on
tbe i/tb of January^ *it is very poor and
inadequate, I cannot help it ; it has cost me
more trouble than anything I have written
yet; I ground at it tbe other night from
nine o* clock till half past four a, m.,
when the lamp went out, and I had to creep
upstairs to bed through the great dark
bouse like a thief* The praise of Amiens
has been written by many different pens ;
but no one has ever written on it wtth such
white heat of enthusiasm and such wealth
of detailed insight. Every word of wbat

- ^ 'i I w w N ^ •(. ; I (J .s V

I This was in iB^6. Tbe essay appeared in The
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine /or February.

bs writes comes straight from his heart,
'/ thought,* he says, with simple and
unashamed modesty, * that even if I could
say nothing else about these grand churches,
I could at least tell men how I loved them.
For I will say here that I think these same
churches of North France the grandest, the
most beautiful, the kindest and most loving
of all the buildings that the earth has 0ver
borne,*

This article is headed * The Churches of
North France. No, /.' // would seem that
Morris had meant to write a series of
articles on these churches, but there is no
trace of his having begun a second. . . .
The essay on Amiens has neither the fluent
grace nor the uncertain touch of the tales ;
it is wrought as if with chisel strokes,
precise and yet passionate,** »

3 The Life of WiUiam Morris. B7 J. W.
MackaiL (1 volt., 8vo, London, 1B99), Vol. i,
PP' 9^» 97* 5^ f^io ^ot, II, pp. 261, joo.

for april:
Lyrics from Monica'

William Cory.

The Churches of North France. No. I.

William Morris.

4 4 li yi orris's first Long Vacatioii, that of 1853,

/ Y I spent in England, largely in going about visit-
ing churches. ... In the Long Vacation of
1854 he made his first journey abroad, to Belgium and
Northern France. This journey was one of profound
interest: it introduced him to the painting of Van Eyck and
Memling . . . and to what he considered the noblest works
of human inyention, the churches of Amiens, Beauvais, and
Chartres.

'Less than forty years ago,' he writes in one of the
frankly and beautifully autobiographic passages of 'The
Aims of Art,' ' I first saw the city of Rouen, then still in it
outward aspect a piece of the Middle Ages : no words can
tell you how its mingled beauty, history, and romance took
hold on me ; I can only say that, looking back on my past
life, I find it was the greatest pleasure I have ever had : and
now it is a pleasure which no one can ever have again :
it is lost to the world for ever. At that time I was an
undergraduate of Oxford. Though not so astounding, so
romantic, or at first sight so medueval as the Norman city,
Oxford in those days still kept a great deal of its earlier
loveliness : and the memory of its grey streets as they then
were has been an abiding influence and pleasure in my
life, and would be greater still if I could only forget what
they are now — a matter of far more importance than the
so-called learning of the place could have been to me in
any case, but which, as it was, no one tried to teach me, and
I did not try to learn.'

As deep a love, and one that to the end of his life kept
all its first freshness and passion, he felt for the common
country of Northern France, the soil out of which sprang^
those radiant cities and glorious churches."

J. W. MACKAXL.

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH
FRANCE.

SHADOWS OF AMIENS.

NOT long ago I saw for the first time some
of the churches of North France ; still
more recently I saw them for the second
time ; and, remembering the love I have for
them and the longing that was in me to see
them, during the time that came between
the first and second visit, I thought I should
like to tell people of some of those things I
felt when I was there ; — there among those
mighty tombs of the long-dead ages.

And I thought that even if I could say
nothing else about these grand churches, I
could at least tell men how much I loved
them ; so that, though they might laugh at
me for my foolish and confused words, they
might yet be moved to see what there was
that made me speak my love, though I could
give no reason for it.

For I will say here that I think those same
churches of North France the grandest, the
most beautiful, the kindest and most loving
of all the buildings that the earth has ever
borne; and, thinking of their past-away

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

builders, can I see through them, very
faintly, dimly, some little of the mediaeval
times, else dead, and gone from me for ever,
— voiceless for ever.

And those same builders, still surely living,
still real men, and capable of receiving love,
I love no less than the great men, poets and
painters and such like, who are on earth now,
no less than my breathing friends whom I
can see looking kindly on me now. Ah I do
I not love them with just cause, who cer-
tainly loved me, thinking of me sometimes
between the strokes of their chisels ; and for
this love of all men that they had, and more-
over for the great love of God, which they
certainly had too ; for this, and for this work
of theirs, the upraising of the great cathedral
front with its beating heart of the thoughts
of men, wrought into the leaves and flowers
of the fair earth ; wrought into the faces of
good men and true, fighters against the
wrong, of angels who upheld them, of God
who rules all things; wrought through the
lapse of years, and years, and years, by the
dint of chisel, and stroke of hammer, into
stories of life and death, the second life, the
second death, stories of God's dealing in

THK CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

love and wrath with the nations of the earth,
stories of the faith and love of man that dies
not: for their love, and the deeds through
which it worked, I think they will not lose
their reward.

So I will say what I can of their works,
and I have to speak of Amiens first, and
how it seemed to me in the hot August
weather.

I know how wonderful it would look, if
you were to mount one of the steeples of
the town, or were even to mount up to the
roof of one of the houses westward of the
cathedral; for it rises up from the ground,
grey from the paving of the street, the cav-
ernous porches of the west front opening
wide, and marvellous with the shadows of
the carving you can only guess at; and
above stand the kings, and above that you
would see the twined mystery of the great
flamboyant rose window with its thousand
openings, and the shadows of the flower-
work carved round it, then the grey towers
and gable, grey against the blue of the
August sky, and behind them all, rising high
into the quivering air, the tall spire over the
crossing.

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

But from the hot Place Royale here "with
its stunted pollard acacias, and statue of
some one, I know not whom, but some
citizen of Amiens I suppose, you can see
nothing but the graceful spire ; it is of wood
covered' over with lead, and was built quite
at the end of the flamboyant times. Once it
was gilt all over, and used to shine out there,
getting duller and duller, as the bad years
grew worse and worse; but the gold is all
gone now ; when it finally disappeared I know
not, but perhaps it was in 1771, when the
chapter got them the inside of their cathedral
whitewashed from vaulting to pavement.

The spire has two octagonal stages above
the roof, formed of trefoiled arches, and slim
buttresses capped by leaded figures; from
these stages the sloping spire springs with
crocketted ribs at the angles, the lead being
arranged in a quaint herring-bone pattern;
at the base of the spire too is a crown of
open-work and figures, making a third stage ;
finally, near the top of the spire the crockets
swell, till you come to the rose that holds
the great spire-cross of metal-work, such
metal-work as the French alone knew how
to make ; it is all beautiful, though so late.

THS CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCS

From one of the streets leading out of the
Place Royale you can see the cathedral, and
as you come nearer you see that it is clear
enough of houses or such like things; the
great apse rises over you, with its belt of
eastern chapels ; first the long slim windows
of these chapels, which are each of them
little apses, the Lady Chapel projecting a
good way beyond the rest, and then, running
under the cornice of the chapels and outer
aisles all round the church, a cornice of great
noble leaves ; then the parapets in changing
flamboyant patterns, then the conical roofs
of the chapels hiding the exterior tracery of
the triforium, then the great clerestory win-
dows, very long, of four lights, and stilted,
the tracery beginning a long way below the
springing of their arches ; and the buttresses
are so thick, and their arms spread so here,
that each of the clerestory windows looks
down its own space between them, as if
between walls : above the windows rise their
canopies running through the parapet, and
above all the great mountainous roof, and all
below it, and around the windows and walls
of the choir and apse, stand the mighty army
of the buttresses, holding up the weight of

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

the stone roof within with their strong arms
for ever.

We go round under their shadows, past
the sacristies, past the southern transept,
only glancing just now at the sculpture there^
past the chapels of the nave, and enter the
church by the small door hard by the west
front, with that figure of huge St. Christo-
pher quite close over our heads ; thereby we
enter the church, as I said, and are in its
western bay. I think I felt inclined to shout
when I first entered Amiens cathedral ; it is
so free and vast and noble, I did not feel in
the least awe-struck, or humbled by its size
and grandeur. I have not often felt thus
when looking on architecture, but have felt,
at all events, at first, intense exultation at
the beauty of it ; that, and a certain kind of
satisfaction in looking on the geometrical
tracery of the windows, on the sweeping of
the huge arches, were, I think, my first
feelings in Amiens Cathedral.

We go down the nave, glancing the while
at the traceried windows of the chapels,
which are later than the windows above
them; we come to the transepts, and from
either side the stained glass, in their huge

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windows, burns out on us; and, then, first
we begin to appreciate somewhat the scale
of the church, by looking up, along the ropes
hanging from the vaulting to the pavement,
for the tolling of the bells in the spire.

There is a hideous renaissance screen, of
solid stone or marble, between choir and
nave, with more hideous iron gates to it,
through which, however, we, walking up the
choir steps, can look and see the gorgeous
carving of the canopied stalls; and then,
alas! 'the concretion of flattened sacks,
rising forty feet above the altar ; ' but, above
that, the belt of the apse windows, rich with
sweet mellowed stained glass, under the
dome-like roof.

The stalls in the choir are very rich, as
people know, carved in wood, in the early
sixteenth century, with high twisted can-
opies, and histories, from the Old Testament
mostly, wrought about them. The history
of Joseph I remember best among these.
Some of the scenes in it I thought very
delightful ; the story told in such a gloriously
quamt, straightforward manner. Pharaoh's
dream, how splendid that was I the king lying
asleep on his elbow, and the kine coming up

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to him in two companies. I think the lean
kine was about the best bit of wood-carving
I have seen yet. There they were, a writh-
ing heap, crushing and crowding one another,
drooping heads and starting eyes, and strange
angular bodies; altogether the most won-
derful symbol of famine ever conceived. I
never fairly understood Pharaoh's dream till
I saw the stalls at Amiens.

There is nothing else to see in the choir;
air the rest of the fittings being as bad as
possible. So we will go out again, and walk
round the choir-aisles. The screen round
the choir is solid, the upper part of it carved
(in the flamboyant times), with the history of
St. John the Baptist, on the north side ; with
that of St. Firmin on the south. I remember
very little of the sculptures relative to St.
John, but I know that I did not like them
much. Those about St. Firmin, who evan-
gelized Picardy, I remember much better,
and some of them especially I thought very
beautiful; they are painted too, and at any
rate one cannot help looking at them.

I do not remember, in the least, the order
in which they come, but some of them are
fixed well enough in my memory; and,

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principally, a bishop, (St. Firmin,) preaching,
rising oat of a pulpit from the midst of the
crowd, in his jewelled cope and mitre, and
with a beautiful sweet face. Then another,
the baptizing of the king and his lords, was
very quaint and lifelike. I remember, too,
something about the finding of St. Firmin's
relics, and the translation of the same relics
when found; the many bishops, with their
earnest faces, in the first, and the priests,
bearing the reliquaries, in the second ; with
their long vestments girded at the waist and
falling over their feet, painted too, in light
colours, with golden flowers on them. I
wish I remembered these carvings better,
I liked them so much. Just about this place,
in the lower part of the screen, I remember
the tomb of a priest, very gorgeous, with
gold and colours; he lay in a deep niche,
under a broad segmental arch, which is
painted with angels ; and, outside this niche,
angels were drawing back painted curtains,
I am sorry to say. But the priest lay there
in cope and alb, and the gentle colour lay
over him, as his calm face gazed ever at the
angels painted in his resting-place. I have
dim recollection of seeing, when I was at

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Amiens before, not this last time, a tomb,
which I liked much, a bishop, I think it was,
lying under a small round arch, but I forget
the figure now. This was in a chapel on the
other side of the choir. It is very hard to
describe the interior of a great church like
this, especially since the whitewash (applied,
as I said, on this scale in 177 1) lies on every-
thing so ; before that time, some book says,
the church was painted from end to end with
patterns of flowers and stars, and histories :
think — I might have been able to say some-
thing about it then, with that solemn glow of
colour all about me, as I walked there from
sunrise to sunset ; and yet, perhaps, it would
have filled my heart too full for speaking, all
that beauty ; I know not.

Up into the triforium, and other galleries,
sometimes in the church, sometimes in nar-
row passages of close-fitting stone, sometimes
out in the open air; up into the forest of
beams between the slates and the real stone
roof : one can look down through a hole in
the vaulting and see the people walking and
praying on the pavement below, looking
very small from that height, and strangely
foreshortened. A strange sense of oppres-

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sion came over me at that time, ^en, as we
were in one of the galleries of the west front,
we looked into the church, and found the
vaulting but a foot or two (or it seemed so)
above our heads; also, while I was in the
galleries, now out of the church, now in it,
the canons had begun to sing complines, and
the sound of their singing floated dimly up
the winding stair-cases and half-shut doors.

The sun was setting when we were in the
roof, and a beam of it, striking through the
small window up in the gable, fell in blood-
red spots on the beams of the great dim
roof. We came out from the roof on to the
parapet in the blaze of the sun, and then
going to the crossing, mounted as high as
we could into the spire, and stood there a
while looking down on the beautiful country,
vnth its many water-meadows, and feathering
trees.

And here let me say something about the
way in which I have taken this description
upon me ; for I did not write it at Amiens ;
moreover, if I had described it from the bare
reminiscences of the church, I should have
been able to say little enough about the
most interesting part of all, the sculptures,

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namely; so, though remembering well enough
the general effect of the whole, and, very
distinctly, statues and faces, nay, leaves and
flower-knots, here and there ; yet, the external
sculpture I am describing as well as I can
from such photographs as I have ; and these,
as everybody knows, though very distinct
'and faithful, when they show anything at all,
yet, in some places, where the shadows are
deep, show simply nothing. They tell me,
too, nothing whatever of the colour of the
building ; in fact, their brown and yellow is
as unlike as possible to the grey of Amiens.
So, for the facts of form, I have to look at
my photographs ; for facts of colour I have
to try and remember the day or two I spent
at Amiens, and the reference to the former
has considerably dulled my memory of the
latter. I have something else to say, too ; it
will seem considerably ridiculous, no doubt,
to many people who are well acquainted with
the iconography of the French churches,
when I talk about the stories of some of the
carvings ; both from my want of knowledge
as to their meaning, and also from my telling
people things which everybody may be sup-
posed to know ; for which I pray forgiveness,

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and so go on to speak of the carvings about
the south transept door.

It is divided in the midst by a pillar,
whereon stands the Virgin, holding our Lord.
She is crowned, and has a smile upon her
face now for ever; and in the canopy above
her head are three angels, bearing up the
aureole there; and about these angels, and
the aureole and head of the Virgin, there is
still some gold and vermilion left. The
Holy Child, held in His mother's left arm, is
draped from his throat to his feet, and
between His hands He holds the orb of the
world. About on a level with the Virgin,
along the sides of the doorway, are four
figures on each side, the innermost one on
either side being an angel holding a censer ;
the others are ecclesiastics, and (some book
says) benefactors to the church. They have
solemn faces, stern, mth. firm close-set lips,
and eyes deep-set under their brows, almost
frowning, and all but one or two are beard-
less, though evidently not young ; the square
door valves are carved with deep-twined
leaf-mouldings, and the capitals of the door-
shafts are carved with varying knots of
leaves and flowers. Above the Virgin, up

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in the tympanum of the doorway, are carved
the Twelve Apostles, divided into two bands
of six, by the canopy over the Virgin's head.
They are standing in groups of two, but I do
not know for certain which they are, except,
I think, two, St. James and St. John; the
two first in the eastern division. James has
the pilgrim's hat and staff, and John is the
only beardless one among them ; his face is
rather sad, and exceedingly lovely, as, indeed
are all those faces, being somewhat alike;'
and all, in some degree like the type of face
received as the likeness of Christ himself.
They have all long hair falling in rippled
bands on each side of their faces, on to their
shoulders. Their drapery, too, is lovely;
they are very beautiful and solemn. Above
their heads runs a cornice of trefoiled arches,
one arch over the head of each apostle ; from
out of the deep shade of the trefoils flashes
a grand leaf cornice, one leaf again to each
apostle ; and so we come to the next com-
partment, which contains three scenes from
the life of St. Honor^, an early French
bishop. The first scene is, I think, the
election of a bishop, the monks or priests
talking the matter over in chapter first, then

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going to tell the bishop-elect. Gloriously-
draped figures the monks are, with genial
faces full of good wisdom, drawn into quaint
expressions by the joy of argument. This
one old, and has seen much of the world;
he is trying, I think, to get his objections
answered by the young man there, who is
talking to him so earnestly ; he is listening,
with a half-smile on his face, as if he had
made up his mind, after all. Th ese other two,
one very energetic indeed, with his heacyind
shoulders swung back a little, and his nght
arm forward, and the other listening to him,
and but half-convinced yet. Then the two
next, turning to go with him who is bearing to
the new-chosen bishop the book of the Gos-
pels and pastoral staff; they look satisfied
and happy. Then comes he with the pastoral
staff and Gospels ; then, finally, the man who
is announcing the news to the bishop himself,
the most beautiful figure in the whole scene,
perhaps, in the whole doorway ; he is stoop-
ing down, lovingly, to the man they have
chosen, with his left hand laid on his arm,
and his long robe falls to his feet from his
shoulder all along his left side, moulded a
little to the shape of his body, but falling

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heavily and with scarce a fold in it, to the
ground: the chosen one sitting there, \nth
his book held between his two hands, looks
up to him with his brave face, and he will be
bishop, and rule well, I think. So, by the
next scene he is bishop, I suppose, and is
sitting there ordering the building of a
church; for he is sitting under a trefoiled
canopy, with his mitre on his head, his right
hand on a reading-desk by his side. His
book is lying open, his head turned toward
what is going forwards. It is a splendid
head and face. In the photograph I have of
this subject, the mitre, short and simple, is
in full light but for a little touch of shade on
one side ; the face is shaded, but the crown
of short crisp curls hanging over it, about
half in light, half in shade. Beyond the
trefoil canopy comes a wood of quaint con-
ventional trees, full of stone, with a man
working at it with a long pick : I cannot see
his face, as it is altogether in shade, the light
falling on his head however. He is dressed
in a long robe, quite down to his feet, not a
very convenient dress, one would think, for
working in. I like the trees here very much ;
they are meant for hawthorns and oaks.

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There are a very few leaves on each tree,
but at the top they are all twisted about,
and are thicker, as if the wind were blowing
them. The little capitals of the canopy,
under which the bishop is sitting, are very
delightful, and are common enough in larger
work of this time (thirteenth century) in
France. Four bunches of leaves spring from
long stiff stalks, and support the square
abacus, one under each comer. The next
scene, in the division above, is some miracle
or other, which took place at mass, it seems.
The bishop is saying mass before an altar;
behind him are four assistants ; and, as the
bishop stands there with his hand raised, a
hand coming from somewhere by the altar,
holds down towards him the consecrated
wafer. The thing is gloriously carved, what-
ever it is. The assistant immediately behind
the bishop, holding in his hands a candle-
stick, somewhat slantwise towards the altar,
is, especially in the drapery, one of the most
beautiful in the upper part of this tympanum ;
his head is a little bent, and the line made
from the back of it over the heavy hair,
down along the heavy-swinging robe, is very
beautiful.

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

The next scene is the shrine of some Saint.
This same bishop, I suppose, dead now, after
all his building and ruling, and hard fighting
possibly, "with the powers that be ; often to
be fought with righteously in those times.
Over the shrine sits the effigy of the bishop,
with his hand raised to bless. On the west-
em side are two worshippers ; on the eastern,
a blind and a deaf man are being healed, or
waiting to be healed, by the touch of the
dead bishop's robe. The deaf man is leaning
forward, and the servant of the shrine holds
to his ear the bishop's robe. The deaf man
has a very deaf face, not very anxious
though; not even showing very much hope,
but faithful only. The blind one is coming
up behind him with a crutch in his right
hand, and led by a dog ; the face was either
in its first estate, very ugly and crabbed, or
by the action of the weather or some such
thing, has been changed so.

So the bishop being dead and miracles
being wrought at his tomb, in the division
above comes th'e translation of his remains ;
a long procession taking up the whole of the
division, which is shorter than the others,
however, being higher up towards the top

lOO

THE CHURCHBS OF NORTH FRANCE

of the arch. An acolyte bearing a cross,
heads the procession, then two choristers;
then priests bearing relics and books; long
▼estments they have, and stoles crossed
underneath their girdles; then comes the
reliquary borne by one at each end, the two
finest figures in this division, the first espe-
cially ; his head raised and his body leaning
forward to the weight of the reliquary, as
people nearly always do walk when they
carry burdens and are going slowly; which
this procession certainly is doing, for some
of the figures are even turning round. Three
men are kneeling or bending down beneath
the shrine as it passes ; cripples they are, all
three have beautiful faces, the one who is
apparently the worst cripple of the three,
(his legs and feet are horribly twisted,) has
especially a wonderfully delicate face, timid
and shrinking, though faithful: behind the
shrine come the people, walking slowly
together with reverent faces ; a woman with
a little child holding her hand are the last
figures in this history of St. Honor^: they
both have their faces turned full south, the
woman has not a beautiful face, but a happy
good-natured genial one.

lOI

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

The cornice below this division is of plain
round-headed trefoils very wide, and the
spandrel of each arch is pierced with a small
round trefoil, very sharply cut, looking, in
fact, as if it were cut with a punch: this
cornice, simple though it is, I think, very
beautiful, and in my photograph the broad
trefoils of it throw sharp black shadows on
the stone behind the worshipping figures,
and square-cut altars.

In the triangular space at the top of the
arch is a representation of our Lord on the
cross ; St. Mary and St. . John standing on
either side of him, and, kneeling on one
knee under the sloping sides of the arch,
two angels, one on each side. I very much
wish I could say something more about this
piece of carving than I can do, because it
seems to me that the French thirteenth
century sculptors failed less in their rep-
resentations of the crucifixion than almost
any set of artists; though it was cer-
tainly an easier thing to do in stone than
on canvass, especially in such a case as
this where the representation is so highly
abstract; nevertheless, I wish I could say
something more about it; failing which, I

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THB CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCS

will say something about my photograph
of it

I cannot see the Virgin's face at all, it is
in the shade so much; St. John's I cannot
see very well ; I do not think it is a remark^
able face, though there is sweet expression
in it; our Lord's face is very g^rand and
solemn, as fine as I remember seeing it any-
where in sculpture. The shadow of the body
hanging on the cross there, falls strangely
and weirdly on the stone behind — both the
kneeling angels (who, by the way, are holding
censers,) are beautiful. Did I say above
that one of the faces of the twelve Apostles
was the most beautiful in the tympanum ? if
I did, I retract that saying, certainly, looking
on the westernmost of these two angels. I
keep using the word beautiful so often that
I feel half inclined to apologize for it ; but I
cannot help it, though it is often quite inade-
quate to express the loveliness of some of
the figures carved here; and so it happens
surely with the face of this angel. The face
is not of a man, I should think ; it is rather
like a very fair woman's face ; but fairer than
any woman's face I ever saw or thought of :
it is in profile and easy to be seen in the

103

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

photograph, though somewhat in the shade.
I am utterly at a loss how to describe it, or
to give any idea of the exquisite lines of the
cheek and the rippled hair sweeping back
from it, just faintly touched by the light from
the south-east. I cannot say more about it.
So I have gone through the carvings in the
lower part of this doorway, and those~^ of
the tympanum. Now, besides these, all the
arching-over of the door is filled with figures
under canopies, about which I can say little,
partly from want of adequate photographs,
partly from ignorance of their import.

But the first of the cavettos wherein these
figures are, is at any rate filled with figures
of angels, some swinging censers, some bear-
ing crowns, and other things which 1 cannot
distinguish. Most of the niches in the next
cavetto seem to hold subjects; but the square
camera of the photographer clips some, many
others are in shadow, in fact the niches throw
heavy shadows over the faces of nearly all ;
and without the photograph I remember
nothing but much fretted grey stone above
^ the line of the capitals of the doorway shafts ;
grey stone with something carved in it, and
the swallows flying in and out of it. Yet

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THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

now there are three niches I can say some-
thing about at all events. A stately figure
-with a king's crown on his head, and hair
falling in three waves over his shoulders, a
very kingly face looking straight onward ; a
great jewelled collar falliog heavily to his
elbows: his right hand holding a heavy
sceptre formed of many budding flowers, and
his left just touching in front the folds of his
raiment that falls heavily, very heavily to the
ground over his feet. Saul, King of Israel.
— A bending figure with covered head, pour-
ing, with his right hand, oil on the head of a
youth, not a child plainly, but dwarfed to a
young child's stature before the bending of
the solemn figure with the covered head.
Samuel anointing David. — A king again,
with face hidden in deep shade, holding a
naked sword in his right hand, and a living
infant in the other ; and two women before
him, one with a mocking smile on her face,
the other with her head turned up in passion-
ate entreaty, grown women they are plainly,
but dwarfed to the stature of young girls
before the hidden face of the King. The
judgment of Solomon. — An old man with
drawn sword in right hand, with left hand on

105

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

a fair youth dwarfed, though no child, to the
stature of a child; the old man's head is
turned somewhat towards the presence of an
angel behind him, who points downward to
something unseen. Abraham's sacrifice of
Isaac. — Noah too, working diligently that the
ark may be finished before the flood comes.
— Adam tilling the ground, and clothed in
the skins of beasts. — There is Jacob's stolen
blessing, that was yet in some sort to be a
blessing though it was stolen. — There is
old Jacob whose pilgrimage is just finished
now, after all his doings and sufferings, all
those deceits inflicted upon him, that made
him remember, perforce, the lie he said and
acted long ago, — old Jacob blessing the
sons of Joseph. And many more which I
remember not, know not, mingled too with
other things which I dimly see have to do
with the daily occupations of the men who
lived in the dim, far-off thirteenth century.

I remember as I came out by the north
door of the west front, how tremendous the
porches seemed to me, which impression of
greatness and solemnity, the photographs,
square-cut and brown-coloured do not keep
at all ; still however I can recall whenever I

io6

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

please the wonder I felt before that great
triple porch; I remember best in this way
the porch into which I first entered, namely
the northernmost, probably because I saw
most of it, coming in and out often by it, yet
perhaps the fact that I have seen no photo-
graph of this doorway somewhat assists this
impression.

Yet I do not remember even of this any-
thing more than the fact that the tympanum
represented the life and death of some early
French bishop; it seemed very interesting.
I remember, too, that in the door-jambs were
standing figures of bishops in two long rows,
their mitred heads bowed forward solemnly,
and I remember nothing further.

Concerning the southernmost porch of the
west front. — The doorway of this porch also
has on the centre pillar of it a statue of the
Virgin standing, holding the Divine Child
in her arms. Both the faces of the Virgin
Mother and of her Son, are very beautiful ; I
like them much better than those in the
south transept already spoken of ; indeed I
think them the grandest of all the faces of
the Madonna and Child that I have seen
carved by the French architects. I have

107

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seen many, the faces of which I do not like^
though the drapery is always beautifal ; their
faces I do not like at all events, as faces of
the Virgin and Child, though as faces of
other people even if not beautifal they would
be interesting. The Child is, as in the tran-
sept, draped down to the feet ; draped too,
how exquisitely I know not how to say.
His right arm and hand is stretched out
across His mother's breast, His left hangs
down so that His wrist as His hand is a little
curved upwards, rests upon His knee; His
mother holds Him slightly with her left arm,
with her right she holds a fold of her robe
on which His feet rest. His figure is not by
any means that of an infant, for it is slim
and slender, too slender for even a young
boy, yet too soft, too much rounded for a
youth, and the head also is too large; I
suppose some people would object to this
way of carving One who is supposed to be
an infant; yet I have no doubt that the old
sculptors were right in doing so, and to my
help in this matter comes the remembrance
of Ruskin*s answer to what Lord Lindsay
says concerning the inability of Giotto and
his school to paint young children: for

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he says that it might very well happen that
Giotto could paint children, but yet did not
choose to in this instance, (the Presentation
of the Virgin,) for the sake of the much
greater dignity to be obtained by using the
more fully developed figure and face ;> and
surely, whatever could be said about Giotto's
paintings, no one who was at all acquainted
with Early French sculpture could doubt
that the carvers of this figure here, could
have carved an infant if they had thought fit
so to do, men who again and again grasped
eagerly common everyday things when in
any way they would tell their story. To
return to the statues themselves. The face
of the young Christ is of the same character
as His figure, such a face as Elizabeth
Browning tells bf, the face of One "who
never sinned or smiled;" at least if the
sculptor fell below his ideal somewhat, yet
for all that, through that face which he failed
in a little, we can see when we look, that his

I In the exphmatory remarks accompanying the
engravings from Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel,
published by the Arundel Society. I regret not being
able to give the reference to the passage, not having
the work by me.

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ideal was such an one. The Virgin's face is
calm and very sweet, full of rest, — indeed
the two figures are very full of rest ; every-
thing about them expresses it from the broad
forehead of the Virgin, to the resting of the
feet of the Child (who is almost self-balanced)
in the fold of the robe that she holds gently,
to the falling of the quiet lines of her robe
over her feet, to the resting of its folds
between them.

The square heads of the door-valves, and
a fiat moulding above them which runs up
also into the first division of the tympanum,
is covered with faintly cut diaper-work of
four-leaved flowers.

Along the jambs of the doorway on the
north side stand six kings, all bearded men
but one, who is young apparently ; I do not
know who these are, but think they must be
French kings ; one, the farthest toward the
outside of the porch, has taken his crown
off, and holds it in his hand : the figures on
the other side of the door-jambs are invisible
in the photograph except one, the nearest to
the door, young, sad, and earnest to look at
— I know not who he is. Five figures out-
side the porch, and on the angles of the

THE CHURCHES. OF NORTH FRANCE

door-jambs, are I suppose prophets, perhaps
those who have prophesied of the birth of
our Lord, as this door is apportioned to the
Virgin.

The first division of the tympanum has
six sitting figures in it ; on each side of the
canopy over the Virgin's head, Moses and
Aaron; Moses with the tables of the law,
and Aaron with great blossomed staff : with
them again, two on either side, sit the four
greater prophets, their heads veiled, and a
scroll lying along between them, over their
knees ; old they look, very old, old and pas-
sionate and fierce, sitting there for so long.

The next division has in it the death and
burial of the Virgin, — the twelve Apostles
clustering round the deathbed of the Virgin.
I wish my photograph were on a larger scale,
for this indeed seems to me one of the most
beautiful pieces of carving about this church,
those earnest faces expressing so many things
mingled with their regret that she will be no
more with them ; and she, the Virgin-Mother,
in whom all those prophecies were fulfilled,
lying so quiet there, with her hands crossed
downwards, dead at last. Ah! and where
will she go now? whose face will she see

III

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always? Ohl that we might be there tool
Oh I those faces so full of all tender regret,
which even They must feel for Her ; full of
all yearning, and longing that they too might
finish the long fight, that they might be with
the happy dead : there is a wonder on their
faces too, when they see what the mighty
power of Death is. The foremost is bend-
ing down, with his left hand laid upon her
breast, and he is gazing there so long, so
very long; one looking there too, over his
shoulder, rests his hand on him ; there is one
at the head, one at the foot of the bed ; and
he at the head is turning round his head,
that he may see her face, while he holds in
his hands the long vestment on which her
head rests.

In my photograph the shadow is so thick
that I cannot see much of the burial of the
Virgin, can see scarce anything of the faces,
only just the forms, of the Virgin lying quiet
and still there, of the bending angels, and
their great wings that shadow everything
there.

So also of the third and last division filling
the top of the arch. I only know that it
represents the Virgin sitting glorified with

112

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

Christ, crowned by angels, and with angels
all aboat her.

The first row in the vaalting of the porch
has angels in it, holding censers and candle-
sticks; the next has in it the kings who
sprung from Jesse, with a flowing bough
twisted all among them; the third and last
is hidden by a projecting moulding.

All the three porches of the west front
have a fringe of cusps ending in flowers,
hanging to their outermost arch, and above
this a band of flower-work, consisting of a
rose and three rose-leaves alternating with
each other.

Concerning the central porch of the west
front. — The pillar which divides the valves
of the central porch carries a statue of Our
Lord; his right hand raised to bless, his left
hand holding the Book ; along the jambs of
the porch are the Apostles, but not the
Apostles alone, I should think; those that
are in the side that I can see have their
distinctive emblems with them, some of
them at least. Their faces vary very much
here, as also their figures and dress; the one
I like best among them is one who I think
is meant for St. James the Less, with a long

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

club in his hands; but they are all grand
faces, stem and indignant, for they have
come to judgment.

For there above in the tympanum, in the
midst over the head of Christ, stand three
angels, and the midmost of them bears
scales in his hands, wherein are the souls
being weighed against the accusations of fhe
Accuser, and on either side of him stands
another angel, blowing a long trumpet, held
downwards, and their long, long raiment,
tight across the breast, falls down over their
feet, heavy, vast, ungirt ; and at the corners
of this same division stand two other angels,
and they also are blowing long trumpets held
downwards, so that their blast goes round
the world and through it ; and the dead are
rising between the robes of the angels with
their hands many of them lifted to heaven ;
and above them and below them are deep
bands of wrought flowers ; and in the vault-
ing of the porch are eight bands of niches
with many, many figures carved therein ; and
in the first row in the lowest niche Abraham
stands with the saved souls in the folds of
his raiment. In the next row and in the
rest of the niches are angels with their hands

114

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCE

folded in prayer ; and in the next row angels
again, bearing the souls over, of which they
had charge in life ; and this is, I think, the
most gloriously carved of all those in the
vaulting. Then martyrs come bearing their
palm-boughs; then priests with the chalice,
each of them ; and others there are which I
know not of. But above the resurrection
from the dead, in the tympanum, is the
reward of the good, and the punishment of
the bad. Peter standing there at the gate,
and the long line of the blessed entering one
by one; each one crowned as he enters by
an angel waiting there; and above their
heads a cornice takes the shape . of many
angels stooping down to them to crown
them. But on the inferno side the devil
drives before him the wicked, all naked,
presses them on toward hell-mouth, that
gapes for them, and above their heads the
devil-cornice hangs and weighs on them.
And above these the Judge showing the
wounds that were made for the salvation
of the world; and St. Mary and St. John
kneeling on either side of Him, they who
stood so once at the Crucifixion ; two angels
carrying cross and spear and nails; two

THE CHURCHES OF NORTH FRANCS

Others kneeling, and, above, other angels,
with their wings spread, and singing. Some-
thing like this is carved in the central porch
at Amiens.

Once more forgive me, I pray, for the
poor way in which I have done even that
which I have attempted to do ; and forgive
me also for that which I have left undone.

And now, farewell to the church that I
love, to the carved temple-mountain that
rises so high above the water-meadows of
the Somme, above the grey .roofs of the
good town. Farewell to the sweep of the
arches, up from the bronze bishops lying at
the west end, up to the belt of solemn
windows, where, through the painted glass,
the light comes solemnly. Farewell to the
cavernous porches of the west front, so grey
under the fading August sun, grey with the
wind-storms, grey with the rain-storms, grey
with the beat of many days' sun, from sun-
rise to sunset; showing white sometimes,
too, when the sun strikes it strongly ; snowy-
white, sometimes, when the moon is on it,
and the shadows growing blacker ; but grey
now, fretted into deeper grey, fretted into
black by the mitres of the bishops, by the

ii6

THI CHURCHBS OF NORTH FRANCE

solemn covered heads of the prophets, by
the company of the risen, and the long robes
of the judgment-angels, by hell-month and
its flames gaping there, and the devils that
feed it ; by the saved souls and the crowning
angels ; by the presence of the Judge, and by
the roses growing above them all for ever.

Farewell to the spire, gilt all over with
gold once, and shining out there, very glori-
ously; dull and grey now, alas; but still it
catches, through its interlacement of arches,
the intensest blue of the blue summer sky ;
and, sometimes at night you may see the
stars shining through it.

It is fair still, though the gold is gone,
the spire that seems to rock, when across
it, in the wild February nights, the clouds go
westward.

*¥

txae (^Mo{

BUT for * lonica' » it is quite likely that
the name of IVilliam Cory would
have small significance for us. Other than
ibis it stands for A Guide to Modem
History — practically unknown, and one
or two essays buried in books by other
men. Until his Letters and Journals were
privately printed to gratify a few personal
friends even the assigned facts of bis
uneventful life demanded correction, >
To be precise in this matter of dates :

1 (/.) lonica. | London: | Smith, Elder and Co.,
Cornhill I 1858. Fcap 8vo. *Pp, iv^i-ii6.

(2.) lonica. Part If. (No title page and tbe text
not punctuated.) Wrapper. Pp. 48. 1877, "/
sent to tbe Cambridge University Press this week
sundry rbymes, enougb to fill forty-eigbt pages
exactly ; not publisbed, but Just to 'give * av)ay
for a sbtlling a copy privately," (See Letters and
Journals, Nov. ij, 1877, pp. 434-)

(j.) lonica | George %Allen | London andOrping"
ton I 1891. Fcap. 8vo. Pp. viii'tio. too large
paper copies also, printed in quarto and numbered.

2 Extracts from the Letters and Journals of
William Cory, author of 'lonica.' Selected and
arranged by Francis Warre Cornish. Oxford:
Printed for the Subscribers ; mdcccxcvii. Crown
8vo. Portrait. Pp. iv-{-i'S86.

IVilliam Johnson^ son of IVilliam CbarUs
Johnson, was horn January 9, 182), and
assumed the name of Cory in October^
i8j2 ; he died June 1 /$ 1892. Like another
poet J — the late T. E, 'Broom, — whose Life
and Letters have so recent^ and for the
first time made known the man behind the
poet, it is to Cory's regrettably inaccessible
Letters and Journals one must go if his
singularly attractive personality is to reveal
itself.

"Since lonica appeared great develop-
ments have taken place in English verse.
In 1 8^8 there was no Rossetti, no Swin-
burne; we may say that, as far as the
general public was concerned, there was no
Matthew Arnold and no IVilliam Morris.
This fact has to be taken into consideration
in dealing with the tender humanism of
Mr.JohnsorCs verses. They are less corus-
cating and flamboyant than what we have
since become accustomed to. The tone is
extremely pensive, sensitive and melancholy.
Bui where the author is at his best, be is not-
only, as it seems to me, very original, but
singularly perfect, with the perfection of a
Greek carver of gems.**

O/* 'lonica' it would thus prove difficult
to add anything worth saying after reading
Mr. Edmund Gosse on this bygone Utile

hook,3 Cory apparently never dreamed
of having attained lyric perfection in his
rendition of Callimachus — ' They told me,
Heraclitus, they told me you were dead*
Here, once and forever, with incomparable
pathos are eight lines of chryselephantine
verse; lines that will outlast our day and
generation; verse that will endure **when
all this world of heautys gone."

'Ob t things that were t Obi things that are!"

**i

3 A Note Boggested by the repoblkation of
' lonka ' by Selwjn Image in Tbe Century Guild
Hobby Haru Jor October, 1891 {yd. Vl, pp. tog-,
ria), is also worth while reading were it not so
bopeltssly out of reach.

FOR MAY:

Clifton and a Lad*s Love,

John Addington Symonds.

Lyrics from Monica

William Cory.

4 4 nr^HBRB is perhaps no modem book of verse in which
I a certain melancholy phase of ancient thought is
better reproduced than in lonicot and this gives
its slight Tcrses their lasting charm. We have had numer-
ous resuscitations of ancient manners and landscape in
modem poetry since the days of Keats and Andr^ Chenier.
Many of these have been so brilliantly successful that only
pedantry would deny their value. But in lonica something
is given which the others have not known how to give, the
murmur of antiquity, the sigh in the grass of meadows
dedicated to Persephone. It seems to help us to compre-
hend the little rites and playful superstitions of the Greeks ;
to see why Myro built a tomb for the grasshopper she loved
and lost ; why the shining hair of Lysidice, when she was
drowned, should be hung up with songs of pity and reproach
in the dreadful vestibule of Aphrodite. The noisy blas-
phemers of the newest Paris strike the reader as Christian
fanatics tumed inside out; for all their vehenience they can
never lose the experience of their religious birth. The
same thing is true of the would-be Pagans of a milder
sensuous type. The Cross prevailed at their nativity, and
has thrown its shadow over their conscience. But in the
midst of the throng there walks this plaintive i>oet of the
loniea^ the one genuine Pagan, absolutely untouched by
the traditions of the Christian past. I do not commend the
fact ; I merely note it as giving a strange interest to these
forlorn and unpopulaur poems.''

EDMUND GOSSB,

{Gossip in a Library ^ London, 1891.)

WILLIAM CORY.

WILLIAM Cory, or to give him the
earlier name by which he is better
known, William Johnson, was bom about
1820 of an old Devonshire stock. From his
father, formerly in the navy, he inherited a
fervid patriotism, which held England to be
the noblest and most generous of nursing
mothers.

He was educated as a King's scholar at
Eton, and went on in due course to King's
College, Cambridge. At that time Kings-
men were debarred by statute from entering
for the Tripos examinations. William John-
son, probably the best man of his year, was
awarded the Chancellor's medal for an
English poem in 1843, the Camden medal
for a Latin hexameter poem and the Craven
Scholarship in 1844, became Fellow of
King's, and shortly afterwards went back to
Eton as a master. Though pre-eminent as a
scholar and composer in Greek and Latin, he
was also an accurate and philosophical stu-
dent in history and moral science. Indeed,
he was examiner at Cambridge for the Moral
Science Tripos in 1852 and 1853, and was
offered, we believe privately, the professor-

125

WILLIAM CORY

ship of Modem History in i860, on the
death of Sir James Stephen.

To the general public he is best known
as the author of lonica, a volume of verse
published in 1891. Most of the poems, how-
ever, contained in this volume, together with
others omitted in publication, had already
been printed in 1858 and 1877, in two slender
volumes under the same title, and had for
some years been fetching a considerable
price at book sales. The second of these
V9lumes is additionally curious from the fact
that it contains few capital letters and no
stops, spaces being substituted. Of the
additional poems, the imitations of Horace
had seen the light in magazines. The poems
are characterised by a culture and a refine-
ment that require, as it were, an initiation
to understand. The book, being what it
is, could hardly hope to appeal to a wide
circle. Some selections iromfonua appear
in Ward's English Poets, Still, his poetry
was to him as a wdpcpyovt as to Heine, a
sacred plaything. He never dignified it into
a vocation.

William Cory was the author in more
recent years of a book in two volumes,

126

WILLIAM CORY

entitled A Guide to Modern History, The
book is brilliant but eccentric. Many pages
are mere strings of epigrammatic allu^ons ;
it is the kind of work that is impressive in
quotations, but disappoints further reference.
Besides this, he contributed an essay to a
remarkable volume entitled Essays on a
Liberal Education^ which contains essays by
Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor Seeley,
Archdeacon Farrar, and others; this is by
far the most captivating and characteristic
expression of William Johnson's genius; it
deals with the education of the reasoning
faculties, but for its insight, poetry, and
suggestiveness might be read with pleasure
by readers totally without technical interest
in the subject.

He contributed a few pages — the char-
acter of Dr. Hawtrey — to Mr. Maxwell
Lyte's History of Eton College^ a passage
that deserves a place in any anthology of
English prose for its insight and pathos, its
masterly delineation of a complex character.

But it was as a teacher and a talker that
William Johnson most impressed himself on
his generation; there are many among a
very distinguished roll of pupils, containing

127

WILLIAM CORY

such names as Lord Rosebery, Lord Halifax,
Mr. Edward Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred Lyttelton,
and Mr. Julian Sturgis, who attribute the first
quickening not only of intellectual life, but
of serious enthusiasm, to him. Yet William
Johnson can hardly be described as a suc-
cessful general teacher ; in the first place he
was not a good disciplinarian, though, on the
whole, dreaded by the boys for his powers of
penetrating irony. It was with a division of
from fifty to sixty boys, in a small and dingy
room, that a teacher, whose every third
sentence was an epigram, whose lectures,
had they been delivered to a University
audience, would have attracted professed
students and curious listeners alike, spent
deliberately and with enthusiasm the best
hours of the best years of his life.

Here, standing astride on his crooked yet
sturdy legs, a book held up close to his eye,
he would comment, lecture, question, to the
perpetual delight and encouragement of the
few who were wise enough to feel what a
teacher they had, and sensible enough to
secure seats close to him ; of what was going
on in further comers of the room, as long as
the boys kept their peace, he was almost

128

WILLIAM CORY

totally ignorant occasionally flinging a book,
the nearest volume at hand, if a boy was
either flagrantly unoccupied or suspiciously
absorbed.

His short sight was almost phenomenal.
The legend of his pursuing a black hen some
way down £ton High-street one day when a
high wind was blowing, under the impression
that it was his hat, which all the time was
perched securely on his head, is probably
apocryphal, but certainly characteristic.

He would watch the school cricket matches
through spectacles and eye-glasses (the spec-
tacles themselves so strong that no one else
could stand them), with the added aid of a
binocular glass. For the games themselves,
though no athlete, he was an enthusiast,
connected as they are so closely with the
spirit and honour of the school. **l cheer
the games I cannot play," he wrote in lonica;
and again after a defeat in a gallantly-con-
tested match at Lord's, in an exquisite little
poem, never published, but well knowp to
his contemporaries, he wrote —

** I'd rather have the lads that lost,
So they be lads like ours."

How to be patriotic without being insular,

129

WILLIAM CORY

how to be political without being local, was
a constant pre-occupation. He was fond of
quoting the law of Solon, which punished
with confiscation of property those who in a
political sedition could be proved to have
taken neither side. He grasped the para-
doxical principle that human nature must be
educated into sympathy by antipathy, that
party spiut is the only guarantee for public
spirit ; and it was this feeling that gave him
his intense interest in an accurate knowledge
of all English engagements by land and sea.
Once, it is related, an old soldier found his
way into William Johnson's pupil-room,
which opened on to the road, and began a
whining tale about the battle of Balaclava.
" What regiment ? " said Johnson. " The
nth Hussars." "What were you doing at
10.30 on the morning of the 25th — ?" The
man thought for a moment and then made
a statement. "Right," said Johnson, and
handed him half a sovereign. The coun-
terpart of the story is that another tramp
with a similar tale ventured on the same
experiment ; the same catechism ensued ; the
imposter faltered ; he was promptly ejected,
with a sharp physical reminder to tell the

130

WILLIAM CORY

tmth. Again, it is told of him that he went
to Plymouth to visit a friend in a man-of-
war. The sailors who were rowing the gig
looked with good-hamoured contempt at the
little landsman, wrapped in a cloak, peering
through his glasses at the great hulks swing-
ing on the tide; but their feelings rapidly gave
way to respect, and respect to amazement,
when it transpired that the stranger not only
knew the position in which every one of the
aforesaid hulks lay, but the engagements
they had seen, and the names of their com-
manders. His pupils will not forget the face
with which he would look out into the street,
when the ** stately music of the Guards " was
going past: ''Brats, the British Army I'* he
would say. But he was no mere Jingo
sentimentalist. It was as certain that Cory
would take an original view of any question
as it was that ninety-nine out of a hundred
people would take the commonplace view.
And yet he was saved from being paradoxical
by his extraordinary accuracy. Never was
any one so indomitable in an argument. He
had the facts at his fingers* ends, and withal
all the down-rightness and the humour of his
great namesake ; but he had not often to use

131

WILLIAM CORY

the butt-end of the pistol, because the pistol
seldom missed fire.

In 187 1 he left Eton, changing his name
to Cory on his accession to some small
property, and lived for a while in Devon-
shire, at his brother's estate of Halsdon,
where he also married; his wife and only
son survive him. We may say in passing
that his brother also changed his name on
succeeding to this property, from Johnson
to Furse, and is the well-known Canon of
Westminster. For some years he lived in
Madeira, but latterly at Hampstead, in great
seclusion. His letters have all this time been
treasured by his friends. In these he gave
himself profusely and intently, but with deli-
cate adaptation to his correspondent. They
would form probably the best memorial of a
man of whom his pupils and contemporaries
say that they cannot exaggerate the greatness
of his ability, his genius, and his loyalty. And
yet he has hardly left a name. — From Liter-
ary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century:
Contributions towards a Literary History
of the Period, Edited by IV, Robertson
Nichols M, A., L,L. Z?., and Thomas/, IVise,
QuartOf 2 vols., London, i8g^-6.

132

LYRICS FROM MONICA.'

DESIDERATO.

OH, lost and unforgotten friend,
Whose presence change and chance deny ;
If angels turn your soft proud eye
To lines your cynic playmate penned,

Look on them, as you looked on me.

When both were young ; when, as we went
Through crowds or forest ferns, you leant

On him who loved your staff to be ;

And slouch your lazy length again
On cushions fit for aching brow,
(Yours always ached, you know) and now

As dainty languishing as then,

Give them but one fastidious look,
And if you see a trace of him
Who humoured you in every whim.

Seek for his heart within his book :

For though there be enough td mark
The man's divergence from the boy.
Yet shines my faith without alloy

For him who led me through that park ;

133

And though a stranger throw aside,
Such grains of common sentiment ;
' Yet let your haughty head be bent
To take the jetsom of the tide;

Because this brackish turind sea
Throws toward thee things that pleased of yore,
And though it wash thy feet no more,

Its murmurs mean : " I yearn for thee."

134

AFTER READING "AJAX."

THE world may like, for all I care,
The gentler voice, the cooler head,
That bows a rival to despair,
And cheaply compliments the dead ;

That smiles at all that's coarse and rash.
Yet wins the trophies of the fight.

Unscathed, in honour's wreck and crash.
Heartless, but always in the right.

Thanked for good counsel by the judge
Who tramples on the bleeding brave.

Thanked too by him who will not budge
From claims thrice hallowed by the grave.

Thanked, and self-pleased : aye, let him wear
What to that noble breast was due ;

And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare

Go through the homeless world with you.

^3S

MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH.

You promise heavens free from strife,
Pure truth, and perfect change of will ;
But sweet, sweet is this human life,

So sweet, I fain would breathe it still :
Your chilly stars I can forego,
This w^arm kind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here,

One great reality above :
Back from that void I shrink in fear,

And child-hke hide myself in love :
Show me what angels feel. Till then,
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires
From faltering lips and fitful veins

To sexless souls, ideal quires,

Unwearied voices, wordless strains :

My mind with fonder welcome owns

One dear dead friend's remembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give
To that which cannot pass away ;

All beauteous things for which we live
By laws of time and space decay.

But oh, the very reason why

I clasp them, is because they die.

136

HERACLITUS.

"Elvi Tiiy 'H/xiicXetre, rebv yMpov.

THEY told me, Heraclitus, they told
me you were dead;
They brought me bitter news to hear and

bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you

and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent
him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear
old Carian guest,

A handful of grey ashes, long long ago
at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy night-
ingales, awake,

For Death, he taketh all away, but them
he cannot take.

137

lOLE.

1WILL not leave the smouldering pyre
Enough remains to light again :
But who am I to dare desire
A place beside the king of men.

So burnt my dear CEchalian town ;

And I an outcast gazed and groaned.
But, when my father's roof fell down,

For all that wrong sweet love atoned.

He led me trembling to the ship,
He seemed at least to love me then ;

He soothed, he clasped me lip to lip ;
How strange, to wed the king of men.

I linger, orphan, widow, slave,

I lived when sire and brethren died,

Oh, had I shared my mother's grave,
Or clomb unto the hero's side.

That comrade old hath made his moan ;

The centaur cowers within his den :
And I abide to guard alone

The ashes of the king of men.

Alone, beneath the night divine —
Alone, another weeps elsewhere :

Her love for him is unlike mine,
Her wail she will not let me share.

138

A DIRGE.

NAIAD, hid beneath the bank
By the willowy river-side,
Where Narcissus gently sank,

Where unmarried Echo died,
Unto thy serene repose
Waft the stricken Anterds.

Where the tranquil swan is borne.

Imaged in a watery glass.
Where the sprays of fresh pink thorn

Stoop to catch the boats that pass,
Where the earliest orchis grows,
Bury thou fair Anterds.

Glide we by, with prow and oar :
Ripple shadows off the wave.

And reflected on the shore
Haply play about the grave.

Folds of summer-light enclose

All that once was Anterds.

On a flickering wave we gaze,
Not upon his answering eyes :

Flower and bird we scarce can praise,
Having lost his sweet replies :

Cold and mute the river flows

With our tears for Anterds.

139

AN INVOCATION.

IN EVER prayed for Dryads, to haunt
the woods again ;
More welcome were the presence of
hungering, thirsting men.

Whose doubts we could unravel, whose

hopes we could fulfil,
Our wisdom tracing backward, the river

to the rill,
Were such beloved forerunners one

summer day restored.
Then, then we might discover the Muse's

mystic hoard.

Oh, dear divine Comatas, I would that

thou and I
Beneath this broken sunlight this leisure

day might lie ;
Where trees from distant forests, whose

names were strange to thee.
Should bend their amorous branches

within thy reach to be,
And flowers thine Hellas knew not,

which art hath made more fair,
Should shed their shining petals upon

thy fragrant hair.

140

Then thou shouldst calmly listen with

ever-changing looks
To songs of younger minstrels and plots

of modem books,
And wonder at the daring of poets later

bom,
Whose thoughts are unto thy thoughts

as noon-tide is to mom ;
And little shouldst thou grudge them

their greater strength of soul,
Thy partners in the torch-race, though

nearer to the goaL

As when ancestral portraits look gravely

from the walls
Upon the youthful baron who treads

their echoing halls ;
And whilst he builds new turrets, the

thrice ennobled heir
Would gladly wake his grandsire his

home and feast to share ;
So from ^gean laurels that hide thine

ancient urn
I fain would call thee hither, my sweeter

lore to learn.

Or in thy cedam prison thou waitest for
the bee :

Ah, leave that simple honey, and take

thy food from me.
My sun is stooping westward. Entranced

dreamer, haste :
There 's fruitage in my garden, that I

would have thee taste.
Now lift the lid a moment : now, Dorian

shepherd, speak :
Two minds shall flow together, the

English and the Greek.

142

ACADEMUS.

PERHAPS there's neither tear nor smile,
When once beyond the grave.
Woe's me: bat let me live meanwhile
Amongst the bright and brave ;

My summers lapse away beneath

Their cool Athenian shade :
And I a string for myrtle-wreath,

A whetstone unto blade ;

I cheer the games I cannot play ;

As stands a crippled squire
To watch his master through the fray,

Uplifted by desire.

I roam, where little pleasures fall,

As mom to mom succeeds,
To melt, or ere the sweetness paU,

Like glittering manna-beads.

The wishes dawning in the eyes.
The softly murmured thanks ;

The zeal of those that miss the prize
On clamorous river-banks,

The quenchless hope, the honest choice.

The self-reliant pride,
The music of the pleading voice

That will not be denied,

The wonder flushing in the cheek,
The questions many a score,

When I grow eloquent, and speak
Of £ngland, and of war —

Oh, better than the world of dress

And pompous dining-out,
Better than simpering and finesse

Is all this stir and rout.

1*11 borrow life, and not grow old ;

And nightingales and trees
Shall keep me, though the veins be cold,

As young as Sophocles.

And when I may no longer live.
They'll say, who know the truth,

He gave whatever he had to give
To freedom and to youth.

144

AMATURUS.

SOMEWHERE beneath the sun»
These quivering heart-strings prove it,
Somewhere there must be one

Made for this soul, to move it ;
Some one that hides her sweetness

From neighbours whom she slights,
Nor can attain completeness.

Nor give her heart its rights ;
Some one whom I could court

With no great change of manner,
Still holding reason's fort.

Though, waving fancy's banner ;
A lady, not so queenly

As to disdain my hand.
Yet bom to smile serenely

Like those that rule the land ;
Noble, but not too proud ;

"With soft hair simply folded.
And bright face crescent-browed.

And throat by Muses moulded ;
And eyelids lightly falling

On little glistening seas.
Deep-calm, when gales are brawling.

Though stirred by every breeze ;
Swift voice, like flight of dove

Through minster-arches floating.

145

With sudden turns, when love

Gets ovemeax to doting ;
Keen lips, that shape soft sayings

Like crystals of the snow,
With pretty half-betrayings

Of things one may not know ;
Fair hand, whose touches thrill.

Like golden rod of wonder.
Which Hermes wields at will

Spirit and flesh to sunder ;
Light foot, to press the stirrup

In fearlessness and glee,
Or dance, till finches chirrup.

And stars sink to the sea.

Forth, Love, and find this maid,

Wherever she be hidden:
Speak, Love, be not afraid,

But plead as thou art bidden ;
And say, that he who taught thee

His yearning want and pain,
Too dearly, dearly, bought thee

To part with thee in vain.

T46

WAR MUSIC.

XdXirty^ din-Q irdrr* ^iccik' ivdifiXeyev.

NS hour of my boyhood, one glimpse of the past,
One beam of the dawn ere the heavens were o'ercasti:

I came to a castle by ro3ralty's grace.
Forgot I was bashful, and feeble, and base.
For stepping to music I dreamt of a siege,
A vow to my mistress, a fight for my liege.
The first sound of trumpets that fell on mine ear
Set warriors around me and made me their peer.
Meseemed we were arming, the bold for the fair,
In joyous devotion and haughty despair :
The warders were waiting to draw bolt and bar
The maidens attiring to gaze from afar :
I thought of the sally, but not the retreat.
The cause was so glorious, the dying so sweet.

I live, I am old, I return to the ground :

Blow trumpets, and still I can dream to the sound.

147

MOON-SET.

SWEET moon, twice rounded in a blithe July,
Once down a wandering English stream thou leddest
My lonely boat ; swans gleamed around ; the sky
Throbbed overhead with meteors : now thou sheddest
Faint radiance on a cold Arvemian plain,
Where I, far severed from that youthful crew,
Far from the gay disguise thy witcheries threw 4

On wave and dripping oar, still own thy reign,
Travelling with thee through many a sleepless hour.
Now shrink, like my weak will : a sterner power i

Empurpleth yonder hills beneath thee piled,
Hills, where Caesarian sovereignty was won
On high basaltic levels blood-defiled,
The Druid moonlight quenched beneath the Roman sun.

148

A SONG.

OH, earlier shall the rosebuds blow,
In after years, those happier years ;
And chDdren weep, when we lie low,
Far fewer tears, far softer tears.

II.

Oh true shall boyish laughter ring,
Like tinkling chimes, in kinder times ;

And merrier shall the maiden sing :
And I not there, and I not there.

III.

Like lightning in the summer night
Their mirth shall be, so quick and free ;

And oh I the flash of their delight
I shall not see, I may not see.

rv.

In deeper dream, with wider range.
Those eyes shall shine, but not on mine :

Unmoved, unblest, by worldly change,
The dead must rest, the dead shall rest

149

ON LIVERMEAD SANDS.

FOR waste of scheme and toil we grieve,
For snowflakes on the wave we sigh,
For writings on the sand that leave
Naught for to-morrow*8 passer-by.

Waste, waste ; each knoweth his own worth.
And would be something ere he sink

To silence, ere he mix with earth.

And part with love, and cease to think.

Shall I then comfort thee and me.
My neighbour, preaching thus of waste ?

Count yonder planet fragments ; see.
The meteors into darkness haste.

Lo I myriad germs at random float.
Fall on no fostering home, and die

Back to mere elements ; every mote
Was framed for life as thou, as I.

For ages over soulless eyes,

Ere man was bom, the heavens in vain
Dipt clouds in dawn and sunset dyes

Unheeded, and shall we complain ?

Aye, Nature plays that wanton game.
And Nature's hierophants may smile.

Contented with their lore; no blame
To rhymers if they groan meanwhile.

150

Since that which yearns towards minds of men,
Which flashes down from braiir to lip,

Finds but cold truth in mammoth den,
With spores, with stars, no fellowship.

Say we that our ungamered thought *

Drifts on the stream of all men's fate.

Our travail is a thing of naught.
Only because mankind is great.

Borne to be wasted, even so.

And doomed to feel, and lift no voice ;
Yet not unblest, because I know

So many other souls rejoice.

1863.

151

CLOVELLY BEACH.

OH, music 1 breathe me something old to-day,
Some fine air gtiding in from far away,
Through to the soul that lies behind the clay.

This hour, if thon did'st ever speak before,
Speak in the wave that sobs upon the shore,
Speak in the riU that trickles from the moor.

Known was this sea's slow chant when I was young ;
To me these rivulets sing as once they sung,
No need this hour of human throat and tongue.

The Dead who loved me heard this selfsame tide.
Oh that the Dead were listening by my side.
And I could give the fondness then denied.

Once in the parlour of my mother's sire
One sang, " And ye shall walk in silk attire."
Then my cold childhood woke to strange desire.

That was an unconfessed and idle spell,
A drop of dew that on a blossom fell ;
And what it wrought I cannot surely tell.

Far off that thought and changed, like lines that stay
On withered canvas, pink and pearly grey.
When rose and violet hues have passed away.

152

Oh, had I dwelt with music since that night 1
What life but that is life, what other flight
Escapes the plaguing doubts of wrong and right 1

Oh music I once I felt the touch of thee,
Once when this soul was as the chainless sea.
Oh, could'st thou bid me even now be free I

April, 1865.

A SERVING MAN'S EPITAPH.

A SLAVE — oh yes, a slave 1
But in a freeman's grave.
By thee, when work was done,
Timanthes, foster-son,
By thee whom I obeyed.
My master, I was laid.
Live long, from trouble free ;
But if thou com'st to me,
Paying to age thy debt.
Thine am I, master, yet.

153

REMEMBER.

Odx l^fnreis irapd r^/j^v biffiyxpai, tSs rb Trdpos wep
ia 0^', ^y<o d* 6 OavcSp ot fijifjufyofiai 6tti, rif waiarSeis'
dXX* Inrfnav Tratadiis, fiifivard ye rod irplv iralpov,
icet Tt KaXbv iro06prj<T$a, imv6v X^e, rijvos ATeari-

YOU come not, as aforetime, to the headstone
every day,
And I, who died, I do not chide because, my

friend, you play ;
Only, in playing, think of him who once was

kind and dear.
And, if you see a beauteous thing, just say, he
is not here.

tXOeQSiaefof

JOHN ADDISGTON SYMONDS was born
in Bristol 5 October, 1840, and when
a boy of eleven years came to reside at
Clifton Hill House in the suburbs where,
with varying intermissions, be made his
home until 1880. At that time with health
gone and the prospect of only a narrow span
of life remaining he finally settled at Davos
in the High Alps. His death occurred at
Rome, ip April, tSpj*

That Clifton and its vicinity played a
most important part in the emotional exist-
ence of Symonds no one can doubt who
turns to read his autobiography.^ Clifton
and a Lad's Love a may be taken to idealise
the life he led there, — lonely years yet filled
with home affections that kept sane the pas-
sionate longings of a heart never quite able
to reach the thing sought after. IVhen the

X John Addington Symonds. A Biography
Compiled from His Papers and Correspondence.
By Horatio F. Brown. Qjuarto. 2 vols. London,
1895.

3 " Tbere is an intreval of more than tbirty years
between tbe earliest of the series, * Clifton and a Lad^s
Love,* and tbe latest.** See Preface to In the Key
of Blue and Other Prose Essays, (^Loni/on, sSpj).

final leave-taking of Clifton came^ (in a
letter to bis old friend and biographer Mr.
Horatio F. Brown under date of July 21,
1 880 J we find what may serve as proem or
epilogue^ as one cboosesy to this little idyl
of lost years. It was taken on a note of
music that once again would he heard by
him, though at the last unconscious of bow
soon it presaged the end. His entire length
of days might fitly be summed up in bis
own words — * a wandering to find home.*

** Deep incommunicable spirit-speaking
power of voices. I think now there is noth-
ing like a voice for teaching me about the
soul. I think there is nothing I could fall
in love with but a voice. I think I love that
best, and that reveals most of the life I love.

** / was sitting this evening at half -past
eight f smoking under the vine at the end of
my terrace, when a beautiful thing happerud.

**j4 clear soprano voice, strong but not
full, the untrained voice of a girl, I thought,
of about eighteen years, from behind the
wall, back to back with me, gave out a
simple melody. The melody was old, proba-
bly of Italian origin, either used for hymns
in the church service or caught up from
some organ recital.

**She sang and paused.

** Then she sang again ; hut this time the
same melody was repeated on the second by
a contralto of extraordinary force and
volume and vibration. It overwhelmed me
vrith its richness, I tremble when I remem-
ber it. But this was no voice of woman or
of man. It was a boy's voice on the point
of breaking — proved by its incomparable
tbrillt by a something indescribable ^ sug-
gestive of chords resonant within the larynx,

" They sang together, against each other,
in harmony, and then at last in unison.
And after I had listened breathless, the
melody was (for them at any rate) played
out, and I heard the noise of feetihat moved
upon the street, and words and low laughter.

^* The yellow moon rose above the tulip
trees, I shut up my pipe, and moved slowly
backward; the jessamine was just in bloom,
white scented stars upon thick masses of a
night-like gloom of green,

"I shall never know anything concerning
those two lives — the ripened womanhood of
one so musically blended with the broken
boyhood and just budding manhood of the
other.

" You do not write to me. But it is well.
I am not restless for letters. I send you
this leaf from an almost leafless tree,**

For June :
Dead Love, and Other Inedited Pieces,

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Clifton

AND A Lad's Love.

tf I bad lived ere seer or priest uttveiUd
A life to come, metbimks tbot, knowing tbee,
t sbould bmve guessed tbine immortelitjr ;

For Nature, giving instincts, never failed

To give tbe ends tbey point to. Never quailed
Tbe swallow, tbrougb air'wilds, o*er tracts of sea.
To cbau tbe summer ; seeds ibat prtsoned be

*Dream of and faid tbe dajligbt. Unassatled
By doubt, impelled by yearnings for tbe main,

Tbe creature river-bom dotb tbere emerge ;
So ibou, witb tbougbts and longings tobicb our eartb

Can never compass in its narrow verge,
Sbalt tbe Jit region of tby spirit gain,

tAnd deatb fulfil tbe promptings of tby birtb,

WBSTLAND MARSTON.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY i6, 1866. — I am sick at heart for
having to leave Clifton — this room where C. and I
have sat so happily together in the mornings, with
its city view ; where Ch. has come to read with me — this
country where C and I have had such glorious walks —
these downs where H. G. D. and I have had strange com-
munings together, pacing up and down. 1 have learned,
lived, enjoyed, and grown much in freedom, strength, and
peace, and perhaps knowledge here. Now we must soon
break up our camp. And how little I have done of any
sort! What unattainable mountain-tops above me ! How
the aspect of Goethe, of Dante, of Parmenides, of Petrarch,
the great souls with which I have lived, of wind and rain
and sunlight and clouds and woods, has filled me with
inextinguishable yearnings and an agony of impotency. I
am too full to give forth. "Joy impregnates; sorrows
bring forth.''

J. A. SYMONDS.

(From Dicnry quoted in Biography, Vol. /,/. 345.)

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE.

FAR away in the valley the wind raved;
and ever and anon it lashed the panes,
whirling up powdery sleet, or bellowed in the
chimney. All the middle space of sky had
been swept bare by the hurricane. A net of
vapour hid the moon, through which she cast
a glaring blurred light upon the frozen scene.
Beneath lay the city, as clear as in daytime.
The church-towers black against the garish
snow — their tops and the roof of every
house piled with snow, while the dark fronts
of buildings traced the course of street and
quay and winding river. Far beyond, the
hills stood tall and white and spectral, divided
by the black lines of their hedgerows. As I
gazed, they seemed in that turmoil of tem-
pest to shiver and grow taller and then shrink
again, and again to move toward me from
their basements. Down there in the town
a myriad of twinkling gusty lamps danced
and flickered like stars upon a frosty night,
except that their light was redder. Our
cypresses and. tulip-trees and beeches kept
grinding and clanging at every wrench of the
blast ; and sometimes a bough, all bare and
dry, was whirled across the window-panes
and carried far into the darkness, to be

i6i

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

embedded in some distant snow-wreath. All
this commotion suggested no thrill of life, no
passion. The stolid, pale-faced, blear-eyed
heavens and earth seemed lashed by a vin-
dictive fury of dead impersonal force. How
different was this from the same landscape
last July! Then, after a sleepless night, I
rose to watch the dawn between three and
four o'clock. Golden light flooded the east-
ern hills, and came gloriously falling on my
bedroom walls, as though the sun were rising
for me alone. For there was an almost
awful stillness, through which the messenger
of day arrived. The birds who had been
chirping since the darkness of the dawn,
were hushed. No sound of human step or
wheel or rustling tree disturbed the silence
— nothing but the Cathedral clock striking a
half-hour. Domed thunder-clouds, sheeted
with gold around their moulded edges, went
sailing ponderously eastward, and amber
ripplings glimmered beneath them from the
water amid those many masts of ships
between the houses. These movements of
the travelling clouds and sparkling river
alone suggested activity, and life was barely
indicated by smoke curling from three glass-

162

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

houses. There I knew that the fires had
been kept awake all night by watchers, who
listened to the roar of the black chimneys,
crying like myself, " Would God that it were
morning I "

H$ was all beautiful: as fair
tAs summer in the silent trees ;
As bright as sunshine on the leas ;
As gentle as the evening air.

His voice was swifter than the lark ;
Softer than thistle-down his cheek ;
His eyes were stars that shyly break
At sundown ere the skies are dark*

I found him in a lowly place :
He sang clear songs that made me weep :
Long nights he ruled my soul in sleep :
Long days I thought upon his face*

"Alone : and must it then be so ?
IVhy do you walk alone ? " she cried,
I answered with a snule* to hide
The undercurrent of my woe,

163

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVK

'But bad she known^ diar friend ^ that tbou
Art living stilly she would have said:
** Oblivion should but shroud the dead;
Got throu) thy arms around him now 1 *'

Thenron my lips the smile had died:
" From deep to deeper depths I sink;
They bade me leave him on the brink.
And now helVs gulfs our paths divided

in.

This time it is no dream that stirs
The ancient fever of my brain :
The burning pulses throb again.
The thirst I may not quench recurs.

In vain I tell my beating heart
How poor and worthless were the pri{e :
The stifled wish within me dies,
But leaves an unextinguished smart.

It is not for the love of God
That I have done my soul this wrong;
' Tis not to make my reason strong
Or curb the currents of my blood.

But sloth, and fear of men, and shame
Impose their limit on my bliss :

164

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

Else had I laid my lips to bis,

And calUd him by lovers dearest name,

I walked with friends to the wood of
Druid Stoke. The clouds were like alabas-
ter in the windless sky; sunlight pouring
from them with mild intensity and silvery
clearness. There we found snowdrops, tall,
delicate, and white, among mosses and green
ivy. The corymbs of the ivy on those walls
of oolite are still ripe, fit to crown fervid ,
brows of amber-skinned Dionysus. The
little stream which threads that wood was
swollen with rain, and went brawling between
grassy banks through cresses with a pretty
childish babble. On the fir-trees by the road
to Sea-Mills rested very golden light; and
there we found red Jew's ears in the hedges.
Emerging from the wood into the lowland
by the Avon was like passing bodily into a
mellow picture by some Dutch painter. The
landscape gradually gained in breadth, and
when we reached the towing-path, there
were for us far-reaching intimations of the
sea. Seaweed clings to bits of rock, close
beneath oak-boughs and ivy roots, which go
creeping downwards to tide-level, and meet

i6s

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

the fiicas sent up from the sea to seed and
grow there. Woodland and wave kiss one
another strangely in the peace of those
inflowing and receding brackish waters. As
we travelled homewards, what wealth of
gold and fire and crimson was there abroad
on rocks and trees and clouds, what azure
of the sky, cloven by those radiant cliffs 1
Dundry, far away, that long, low, undulating
line of hill, stood clear with snow. Steamers
splashed panting up and down, fretting a
mimic sea. When at length we climbed to
Durdham Down, there lay outspread before
us glory beyond all glory. Eastward, a
mountain range of cloud, stationary, based
on blue foundations, towering through all
gradations of purple valleys, of crimsoned
alps, of golden lights contrasted with pink
shadows on ascending ridges, up to one
crowning pinnacle of purest snow. In the
west rose a jagged castlewall, fringed with
flame, broken with a breach through which
the last rays shot ineffable radiance into
calm green spaces of the sky, and smote
pavilions of frail floating clouds above.
All this sky-scape was cloud — cloud such
as I have rarely seen, so steeped in colour,

i66

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

SO fantastical in shape, so majestic in pro-
portions.

/K.

Tbe gale is upt and far away
It comes o*er changeful sea and sand^
IVhere that dim distant borderland
Stands clear and doffs her mist to-day*

The broad brown woods are close to view ;
Their crests are fringed with orange skv%
And here a beech all russet dry^
And here a black rock-pluming yew.

The river swirls with muddy flow ;
The wild white sea-gulls screaming sail
Round point and headland on the gale,
Down to the channels golden glow.

Far up in air the homeward rooks
Float dense against the liquid sky :
They hear the woods beneath them cry^
They mark the swelling of the brooks.

Faint hearty why sad? They flout the breeze.
They care not though their nests be torn;
They laugh the drenching showers to scorn :
Wilt thou not wing thy way like these ?

167

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

The chimes upon ibis troubled air
Went sighing, sobbing to the night.
Day drew the curtain from the lights
And left the new year bleak and bare.

A heaven impenetrably black;
Earth sullen^ hard, and well defined :
No hope above ; the clouds are blinds
And from the East fast whirls the wrack,

yi.

The stately ships are passing free^
Where scant light strikes along the flood;
Gaunt winter scowls o^er field and wood?
O who will bring my lave tome?

IVhite gulls fly screaming to the sea;
The bitter east wind sweeps the sky ;
Faint snow streaks on the hill-sides lie : .
O who will bring my love to me ?

The hawthorne bough is bare and dree ;
The spiky holly keeps him warm ;
Brown brake shrills shivering in the storm :
O who will bring my laoe to me ?

The bright blue sky is cold to see;
The frosty ground lies hard and bare;

i68

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

So cold is hope, so bard is care :
O who will bring my love tome?

Low on the horizon, beyond Durdham
Down, were streaks of white light, wavering
spokes and flaring lines and streamers, flash-
ing into faint rose-pink. Could the buried
sunlight still be felt so late into a night of
May ? Soon, by quiverings and motions in
these signs — for the west darkened, and
flames burst forth among the topmost stars,
and toward the east ran swords, stealthily
creeping across the heavenly spaces — I
knew that this was an Aurora Borealis. The
pageant rapidly developed, and culminated
with dramatic vividness. At the very zenith,
curving downward to the Great Bear, there
shone a nebulous semicircle — phosphores-
cent, with stars tangled in it. From this
crescent of light were effused to north and
west and east rays, bands, foam-flakes, belts,
spears, shafts of changeful hues, now rosy
red, now brightening into amethyst, now
green, now pale as ashes. The whole was
in slow and solemn movement, like lightning
congealed, which has not ceased to throb.
As glaciers are to running water, so were

169

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

these auroral flames to the quiverings of
lightning. In the midst of all the glow and
glory sparkled Ursa Major, calm and frosty.
Other stars seemed to wander in the haze,
as I have seen them in a comet's tail. The
most wonderful point in the pageant was
when the crescent flamed into intensely
brilliant violet. Then it faded; the whole
heaven for a few moments flushed with
diffused rose; but the show was over.
That supreme flash recalled the pulsing and
rutilant coruscations with which Tintoretto
spheres his celestial messengers. I could
have fancied the crescent and its meteoric
emanations to have been the shield of an
archangel. On Monte Generoso last spring
we watched a sunset of great beauty. Thun-
der-clouds hung over the extreme heights of
Monte Rosa, stationary, like the up-spread
wing of a seraph who had plunged headlong
down the western steep of flame. All the
rest of him was hidden by the mountain:
only this one wing, fretted with grain of gold
and crimson and deep blue, pointed skyward.
And restlessly against the gorgeous glow
behind it shot lightning flashes, as though
an angelic sword behind the hills were doing

170

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

dreadfully. Well, the auroral shield was fit
buckler for this seraph.

Clifton, now as ever, is full of vague yet
powerful associations. When will this Circe
cease to brew enchantments for my soul?
The trees and streets and distant views of
down and valley keep saying to me as I
walk, *^ Put upon your heart the dress which
we have woven for you; you will wear it,
whether you like or not; palpitate, aspire,
recalcitrate as you may, here it is waiting for
you I '*

I saw a vision of deep eyes

In morning sleep when dreams are true :

IVide bumid eyes ofba^y bluet

Like seas tbat kiss tbe bori^on skies.

Tben as I ga^ed, I felt tbe rain
Of soft warm curls around my cbeek.
And beard a wbisper low and meek:
" / love, and canst tbou love again ? **

A gentle youib beside me bent ;
His cool moist lips to mine were pressed^
Tbat tbrobbed and burned xaitb lore's unrest :
IVben, lOf tbe powers of sleep were spent ;

171

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

And noiseless on the airy wings
That follow after night* s dim wajy^
The beauteous hoy was gone for aye,
A theme of vague imaginings.

Yet I can never rest again :
The flocks of morning dreams are true ;
And till I find those eyes of blue
And golden curls, I walk in pain,

yiii.

Spring comes again : the blushing earth
IVill deck herself with bridal flowers :
The birds among the leafy bowers
IVill wake dumb winter* s woods with mirth.

'But I shall never find him, never :
Though winter* s snow dissolve in dew.
And hyacinth* s star-spangled blue
* Neath vernal breezes bend and shiver.

The field shall throb with marriage hymn,
And summer* s wealth shall deck the grove,
IVherethrough my feet must lonely rove.
Disconsolately seeking him.

Seek on, seek on, till autumn dies
Like sunset in drear winter* s night;

172

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

Seek oftf seek on ^ for thy delight ^
A mirage dream, before thee flies.

Brackets of grey rock jutting from the
solid cliff, and shaded by the white leaves
of the service-trees. From these perches
the eye can plunge into the massy woods
beneath. Birches fledging the precipice,
feathery ashes, tall limes and glossy oaks
mingle the billows of their verdant crests
and fill the hollow of the valley. Some-
times a wood-pigeon, pale in sunlight, blue
in shadow, passes. The sunlight streams
along the ravine, casts purple shade upon
the river, strikes in flame against the rich
red rocks beyond. The Avon is crowded
with ships and boats and steamers. These
enliven the waters, ploughing up its solemn
shadows and many-hued reflections. Have
you noticed that reflections in a stream are
more intensely coloured than real objects?
The mingling reds and greens upon the river
here glow like veined marble. Broken by
moving prows into ribs and furrows of shiv-
ered opalescence, while the blue sky gleams
back from the shadowed sides of wavelets,
these many-tinted radii flank the black bulk

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

of sea-going vessels like fins of gorgeous
sea-dragons.

Leigh Woods are as beautiful as when
I roamed in them three years ago. The
lights fall still as golden on those grey rocks
streaked with red, on the ivy and the glossy
trees, the ferns and heather and enchanter's
nightshade. This loveliness sinks into my
soul now as it did then. But it does not stir
me so profoundly or painfully. I do not feel
the unassuaged hunger of the soul so deeply.

IX,

The tide is bigb and stormy beams
Of sunlight scud across the down :
Above t the cloudy squadrons frown ;
On tbeir broad front a rainbow gleams.

Cease f boisterous wind. The west is grey
IVith glory-coated mistsy that swell
From distant seasj and gathering tell
Of coming storm and darkened day.

Leave the dank clouds to droops and guide
Toward their fair port yon sleeping sails :
Close-furled they wait the wakening gales ;
Shower-sprinkled shines the pennon wide,

174

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

Sail seawardt stately ship, andvUw
Some blessed isle where love is bred.
Bring me again my love thafs dead,
And all I have I'll give to you.

The magic of divine spring sunlight is
agsun abroad. The clearings in Leigh
Woods are sheets of blaebells. The ser-
vice-trees upon the clifEs have expanded
their white under-leafage, with thick bosses
of blossom honey-sweet; burly, big-bodied,
furry bees, banded black and red, swaying
helplessly, and swinging their unwieldy
carcasses in air, hum drunken with honey-
dew and white bloom above and underneath
and all around.

My own loved Clifton^ jocund May
Hatb decked thy batiks and bowers again;
Tby populous elms that crowd the plain,
Tby birches, fountains of green spray.

Once more I pace the lonesome woods,
I hear the thrush and cuckoo call,
I hear the tinkling raindrops fall,
I smell the scent of hidden buds.

175

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

Star-spangled bluebell heavens are spread
* Neath silky screens of tender beech ;
Tbejfews their dewy fingers reach
To lay them on the lily bed.

All that is fairy and sweety and gay^
All brightest germs of happy thought y
To-day their freshest gifts have brought
To crown the brows of laughing May.

But I am loney and sady and dully
My brain is sicky my heart is dry;
A weary longing dims the skyy
With bitter want my soul is full.

Ohy whereforey whereforey is he gone ?
He made my life one living spring;
My heart was then a Joyous thingy
And brightened when the sunbeams shone.

I see the light, I see the flowers ;
The trees are tremulous with praise ;
One craving darkens all my days;
Dead love hath dulled the Jocund hours.

XI.

It seems as though these years of pain
Had never made me man from boy,

176

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

So keenly do I feel the joy

Thai breathes in wakening spring again*

The rooks complain of coming showers ;
The sharp fresh morning breezes blow ;
The sunbeams on the river glow.
And kiss the brows of misty towers;

IVhile I along our terrace stray ,
I count the shadows on the lawn.
The clouds across the a^re drawn
In dappled films of white and grey.

All silent signs of spring are rife :
My heart leaps up to hail the hourst
That guerdon bring of vernal flowers^
And swell our veins with love and life,

I leap, I cry, ** O summer, trace
Thy hues along the deepening wood,
Thy fleecy vapours on the flood,
Thy lush green grasses o*er the chase I

" O summer, come ! Voluptuous queen^
Bright mistress of a magic wand!
And stir me with thy fairy hand,
And make me what I once have been !

" For spring is fresh on mead and hill,
As fresh as those three Aprils gone;

177

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

'Buf all my life is dead and vaatty
My pulse of love is cold and still.

**I count the shadow^ count the clottdj
%And hail the growth of silent days ;
Bui there were other notes of praise^
With which those springtide hours were loud.

"They sounded in the windy strife,
I heard them in the dim starlight t
They shouted through the landscape bright,
They made me one with nature's life**

We clambered down the cliffs, and bruised
young fennel-shoots and marjoram and thyme
and the many aromatic mints and celeries
that grow there. We saw the thorns in
bloom, and the light upon the hanging
birches of Leigh Woods, and the jackdaws
glistening from shade to sunlight as of old.
Ships came up the Avon at our feet; we
could almost touch the pennons waving from
their masts. Then we wandered on the
downs, whence we could see the channel,
silvery-grey like a lake, with film behind film
of Welsh hills traced upon the blue beyond.
All was so calm, so clear, that the eye might
trace elm-masses on the farther marge of

178

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

Severn, and the hedgerows of the npland
fields, with here and there a patch of curling
smoke.

XII,

The Hghi from yonder cliff is fled^
Tbatyesier morn so brightly shorn ;
The glory of thy love hath gone
From my dulled life^ and left it dead.

Let sunshine fade from rock and sky.
Let Leigh* s deep woodland walks he torn ;
O'er ruined woods I will not mourns
IVhich once were green^ whenyou and I

Went hand in hand among the flowers^
Whose names I taught you^ and I made
Rare crowns of columbines to shade
With purple buds the golden showers

Of your loved curls. t/It times we hung
Like eagles o'er the di^y rock^
Where faintly boomed the hammer'' s shocks
tAnd ever upward slowly swung

The sailor* s melancholy chant ;
While ships went gliding out to sea^
Sails furled and pennons floating freet
With sunlight on their sterns aslant ;

179

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

Till evening yellowed over all
From Hesper in the dewy sky —
The woods may falU I will not sigh ;
Love's star bath set, His time they fall.

XIII.

Three summers gone : and now once more
Pale autumn comes to pluck the leaf ;
On every hill they hind the sheaf;
The oak-woods redden as of yore.

The woods may hrom^e ; the golden ears
May gladden all the land with grain;
'But I shall never feel again
The gladness of those byegone years.

We climbed down the face of St. Vincent's
Rock by a path I know. The full moon
was partly hidden by heavy clouds, but the
northern sky held delicate green and pale-
blue light, and the moon poured oblique rays
upon the river and the woods. Then the
clouds sailed slowly away, and their edges
were tinct with pearl and opal. Spaces
of crystalline azure, seas of glass, swam
between them, full-filled with moonlight
and trembling with scattered stars — stars
scarcely seen in that pellucid radiance —

1 80

CLIFTON AND A LAD*S LOVE

Stars palpitating) throbbing out breathless
melodies. At length the moon emerged,
naked and roand, glorioas, midway above
the bridge, suspended in luminous twilight.
The cliif shone like marble in her plenilunar
splendour. But again the clouds gathered.
A vulture's head shot forward and swallowed
the moon's silver sphere. Again she tri-
umphed, and this time the clouds dispersed
in gauze and filmy veils of faintest shell-like
hues. Finally, Queen Luna^ reigned in
undisputed majesty. And now I seemed
to see choruses of sylphlike shapes sailing
on one side from the valley of Nightingales,
and on the other from the shadow of St.
Vincent's Rock, to meet and weave their
dances in the air; and now an arm was
thrust from the Giant's Cave, which grew
and grew until the huge hand rested on my
heart ; and now furry paws of monsters from
beneath were laid upon the knoll beside me ;
and now I saw the blanched face of Lilith
upturned imploring from the smooth slope
of the curving rock above; and then again
came troops of shadows sweeping down the
path which we had traversed ; and yet again
the gleaming scales of dragons coiled and

i8i

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

twisted on the glittering mud-banks of
Avon, and all their massive jaws were raised
to hiss.

After midnight I came home through the
avenue of Clifton churchyard, and emerged
upon the open space beyond. The valley
of the Avon was flooded with moonlight;
fleeces of almost iridescent cloud hung to
westward, and the sulphurous glare of Ash-
ton furnaces sent out flame and smoke into
that liquid argent of moon-bathed wood and
hill and meadow.

How coldly steals the j'ournejnng nigbtj
How silent sleeps the garden spray :
Far down I bear the watcb-dog bay ;
I bear ibe sbeep from yonder beigbt.

Swatbed in tbick mist tbe city lies :
Her lamps like myriad jewels peer
Tbrougb wreatbs of vapour faintly clear ;
Her cbimesfrom muffled belfries rise.

Pale as tbe moon is memory's ligbt,
Tbose April days as darkly lowers
As looms mid yonder mist tbe tower,
IVbicb iben wiib rays of morn were brigbt.

182

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

/ bear his voice like yon tbin chimes ;
As those faint lampi bis eyes are dim.
Deep midnight gloom encircles him,
Scarce can I dream of those dear times.

It is five o'clock in the morning. The
sun has not yet touched the horizon, but
the sky is yellow, barred with rose, and the
morning star is shining in pale blue above.
The city lies wrapped in thick white vapour ;
only the towers of Redcly£Ee and the Cathe-
dral rising like black islands. Here and
there trees and grassy knolls emerge from
the level sea of mist. Our garden and the
distant hills are clear in garish light of morn-
ing. The whole scene is very silent and
asleep, chill with dews, the foliage stiff with
frosty lack of warmth, the birds half waking.
Thus, as with life itself, only the great things
remain distinct to catch fading or growing
lights of sunset or of sunrise, while all around
is blurred and indistinct. Last evening the
red blaze of the west fell upon those towers
with such splendour as memory throws upon
the past. This morning they stand forth like
ominous events to be — sorrow and death,
thick-shadowed, seen only by their certainty

183

CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE

of darkness. The past glows with a sunset
flush of poetry. The future is cold with sad
features sharply defined. But the past fades
into indistinctness, while the future broadens
into perfect clarity of day.

To thee far offj more far than death
To thee I make my lonely rhymet
Condemned to see thee not in timet
Though life and love still rule thy breath.

Our pulses heat, our hearts strike on ;
They heat, hut do not heat together ;
Our years are young, hut lusty weather
IVakes in our blood no unison.

We pace the self -same field and street,
IV e hear the same strong organ roll ;
No music leaps from soul to soul,
Our paths are near, yet never meet.

Only in visions of the night
I seem with thee to watch the morn ;
A tempest swells, and thou art borne
To lands I know not far from sight.

FROht a collector's point of view the
value of this number of The Bibelot
cannot well be gainsaid. No less tban six
ineditedi if not wbolly disowned^ pieces of
prose and verse by the greatest living
English poet are here brought together
from sources unlikely of public access. To
affirm that this is an unholy labor ^ — a
ghoulish feat of the literary resurrectionist,
— is to lose sight and sense of the question
at issue.

Editorially we believe our reprint is more
than justifiable ; it is, in fact, from a bibli'
ographical outlook the highest tribute to a
great writer that his contemporaries can
pay. Unconsidered trifles — as such things
may seem io the unconsiderate trifler — they
are yet compounded of an " aureate Earth**

'*As, buried once. Men want dug up again.**

Therefore beside the youthful work of
IVilliam Morris and Dante Gabriel Ros-
setti these compositions find due place.
One of the two specimens of early prose
shows conclusively that Mr, Swinburne was
already in possession of a style bound to
find its logical devehpement in the collected

Essays and Studies of a few years later
growth. The interlude eodracted from a
forgotten little tale — The Children of the
Chapel — proves also the mastery of that
stan^aic stateliness which so speedily tooted
burgeon forth in a golden book for all time
— the Toems and "Ballads of 1866.

FOR July :

A Minor Poet, and Lyrics

Amy Levy.

DEAD LOVE.
1862,

Dead Lovb | By | Algernon C. Swinburne. | London |

John W. Parker and Son, West Strand. | 1864.

Collation: — Crown octavo, pp. 15; consisting of Half-title

(with blank reverse), pp. i-a ; Title-page, as above (with

imprint — "London: | Savill and Edwards, Printers,

Chandos Street, | Covent Garden." — in the centre of

the reverse), pp. 3-4; and Text pp. 5-15. The head«

line is Dead Love throughout, on both sides of the

page. The imprint is repeated at the foot of p. 15.

Issued in brick-red coloured paper wrappers, with the

title-page reproduced upon the front. There is a copy

in the British Museum.

A little book of great rarity, and of extreme interest.

The story (in prose) had previously appeared in Once-a-

Weekf vol. vii, October 1863, pp. 433-434, where it was

accompanied by an illustration upon wood by M. J. Lawless,

here reproduced in fac-simile. The story has never been

reprinted, and in all probability never will be.

THOMAS J. WISE.

{A BiHtographicid List of the Scarcer Works
and Uncollected Writings of Algernon Charles
Swinhtme, 1896.)

DEAD LOVE.

ABOUT the time of the great troubles in
France, that fell out between the par-
ties of Armagnac and of Burgundy, there
was slain in a fight in Paris a follower of the
Duke John, who was a good knight called
Messire Jacques d' Aspremont. This Jacques
was a very fair and strong man, hardy of his
hands, and before he was slain he did many
things wonderful and of great courage, and
forty of the folk of the other party he slew,
and many of these were great captains, of
whom the chief and the worthiest was Mes-
sire Olivier de Bois-Perc^; but at last he
was shot in the neck with an arrow, so that
between the nape and the apple the flesh
was cleanly cloven in twain. And when he
was dead his men drew forth his body of
the fierce battle, and covered it with a fair
woven cloak. Then the people of Armagnac,
taking good heart because of his death, fell
the more heavily upon his followers, and slew
very many of them. And a certain soldier,
named Amaury de Jacqueville, whom they
called Courtebarbe, did best of all that party ;
for, crying out with a great noise, "Sus,
sus 1 '' he brought up the men after him, and
threw them forward into the hot part of the

189

DEAD LOVE

fighting, where there was a sharp clamour;
and this Amaury, laughing and crying out
as a man that took a great delight in such
matters of war, made of himself more noise
with smiting and with shouting than any
ten, and they of Burgundy were astonished
and beaten down. And when he was weary,
and his men had got the upper hand of those
of Burgundy, he left off slaying, and beheld
where Messire d'Aspremont was covered
up with his cloak; and he lay just across
the door of Messire Olivier, whom the said
Jacques had slain, who was also a cousin of
Amaury's. Then said Amaury :

"Take up now the body of this dead
fellow, and carry it into the house ; for my
cousin Madame Yolande shall have great
delight to behold the face of the fellow dead
by whom her husband has got his end, and
it shall make the tiding sweeter to her/'

So they took up this dead knight Messire
Jacques, and carried him into a fair chamber
lighted with broad windows, and herein sat
the wife of Olivier, who was called Yolande
de Craon, and she was akin far off to Pierre
de Craon, who would have slain the Consta-
ble. And Amaury said to her :

190

<-.4 /

-\,

•"il

^Tl.

^^i

T 1 . -

A. ' ,' ^ »■
, ' I ' '"v -

DEAD LOVE

" Fair and dear cousin, and my good lady,
we give you for your husband slain the body
of him that slew my cousin ; make the best
cheer that you may, and comfort yourself
that he has found a good death and a good
friend to do justice on his slayer; for this
man was a good knight, and I that have
revenged him account myself none of the
worst."

And with this Amaury and his people
took leave of her. Then Yolande, being left
alone, began at first to weep grievously, and
so much that she wsis heavy and weary;
and afterward she looked upon the face of
Jacques dAspremont, and held one of his
hands with hers, and said :

"Ah, false thief and coward 1 it is great
pity thou wert not hung on a gallows, who
hast slain by treachery the most noble knight
of the world, and to me the most loving and
the faithfulest man alive, and that never did
any discourtesy to any man, and was the
most single and pure lover that ever a mar-
ried lady had to be her knight, and never
said any word to me but sweet words. Ah,
false coward 1 there was never such a knight
of thy kin."

191

DEAD LOVK

Then, considering his face earnestly, she
saw that it was a fair face enough, and by
seeming the face of a good knight ; and she
repented of her bitter words, saying with
herself :

** Certainly this one, too, was a good man
and valiant,** and was sorry for his death.

And she pulled out the arrow-head that
was broken, and closed up the wound of his
neck with ointments. And then beholding
his dead open eyes, she fell into a great
torrent of weeping, so that her tears fell all
over his face and throat. And all the time
of this bitter sorrow she thought how goodly
a man this Jacques must have been in his
life, who being dead had such power upon
her pity. And for compassion of his great
beauty she wept so exceedingly and long
that she fell down upon his body in a swoon,
embracing him, and so lay the space of two
hours with her face against his ; and being
awaked she had no other desire but only to
behold him again, and so all that day neither
ate nor slept at all, but for the most part lay
and wept. And afterward, out of her love,
she caused the body of this knight to be
preserved with spice, and made him a golden

192

DEAD LOVE

coffin open at the top, and clothed him with
the fairest clothes she could get, and had
this coffin always by her bed in her chamber.
And when this was done she sat down over
against him and held his arms about her
neck, weeping, and she said :

*'Ah, Jacques! although alive I was not
worthy, so that I never saw the beauty and
goodness of your living body with my sor-
rowful eyes, yet now being dead, I thank
God that I have this grace to behold you.
Alas, Jacques I you have no sight now to
discern what things are beautiful, therefore
you may now love me as well as another,
for with dead men there is no difference of
women. But, truly, although I were the
fairest of all Christian women that now is, I
were in nowise worthy to love you; never-
theless, have compassion upon me that for
your sake have forgotten the most noble
husband of the world.''

And this Yolande, that made such com-
plaining of love to a dead man, was one of
the fairest ladies of all that time, and of
great reputation ; and there were many good
men that loved her greatly, and would fain
^ave had some favour at her hands; of

1 93

DEAD LOVB

whom she made no account, saying always,
that her dead lover was better than many
lovers living. Then certain people said that
she was bewitched; and one of these was
Amaury. And they would have taken the
body to burn it, that the charm might be
brought to an end ; for they said that a demon
had entered in and taken it in possession;
which she hearing fell into extreme rage, and
said that if her lover were alive, there was
not so good a knight among them, that he
should undertake the charge of that sa3ring ;
at which speech of hers there was great
laughter. And upon a night there came into
her house Amaury and certain others, that
were minded to see this matter for them-
selves. And no man kept the doors ; for all
her people had gone away, saving only a
damsel that remained with her; and the
doors stood open, as in a house where there
is no man. And they stood in the doorway
of her chamber, and heard her say this that
ensues : —

** O most fair and perfect knight, the best
that ever was in any time of battle, or in any
company of ladies, and the most courteous
man, have pity upon me, most sorrowful

194

DEAD LOVE

woman and handmaid. For in your life yon
had some other lady to love you, and were
to her a most tTue and good lover ; but now
you have none other but me only, and I am
not worthy that you should so much as kiss
me on my sad lips, wherein is all this lamen-
tation. And though your own lady were the
fairer and the more worthy, yet consider, for
God's pity and mine, how she has forgotten
the love of your body and the kindness of
your espousals, and lives easily with some
other man, and is wedded to him with all
honour ; but I have neither ease nor honour,
and yet I am your true maiden and servant"

And then she embraced and kissed him
many times. And Amaury was very wroth,
but he refrained himself: and his friends
were troubled and full of wonder. Then
they beheld how she held his body between
her arms, and kissed him in the neck with
all her strength ; and after a certain time it
seemed to them that the body of Jacques
moved and sat up; and she was no whit
amazed, but rose up with him, embracing
him. And Jacques said to her :

" I beseech you, now that you would make
a covenant with me, to love me always.'*

195

DEAD LOVE

And she bowed her head suddenly, and
said nothing.

Then said Jacques :

" Seeing you have done so much for love
of me, we twain shall never go in sunder:
and for this reason has God given back to
me the life of my mortal body."

And after this they had the greatest joy
together, and the most perfect solace that
may be imagined: and she sat and beheld
him, and many times fell into a little quick
laughter for her great pleasure and delight.

Then came Amaury suddenly into the
chamber, and caught his sword into his hand,
and said to her :

** Ah, wicked leman, now at length is come
the end of thy horrible love and of thy life
at once;" and smote her through the two
sides with his sword, so that she fell down,
and with a great sigh full unwillingly deliv-
ered up her spirit, which was no sooner fled
out of her perishing body, but immediately
the soul departed also out of the body of her
lover, and he became as one that had been
all those days dead. And the next day the
people caused their two bodfes to be burned
openly in the place where witches were used

196

DEAD LOVE

to be burned: and it is reported by some
that an evil spirit was seen to come out of
the mouth of Jacques d'Aspremont, with a
most pitiful cry, like the cry of a hurt beast.
By which thing all men knew that the soul
of this woman, for the folly of her sinful and
most strange affection, was thus evidently
given over to the delusion of the evil one
and the pains of condemnation.

197

INEDITED PIECES.

I. STANZAS FROM QUEEN YSEULT, l857.

II. A LETTER ON MODERN LOVE, l862.

in. THE PILGRIMAGE OF PLEASURE, 1864.

IV. UNPUBLISHED VERSES, 1866.

V. VERSES FROM A YEAR'S LETTERS, 1877.

STANZAS FROM QUEEN YSEULT.i

nno the king came Tristram then,

1 To Moronde the evil man,
Treading softly as he can.

Spak6 he loftily in place :
A great light was on his face :
' Listen, king, of thy free grace.

I am Tristram, Roland's son ;
By thy might my lands were won,
All my lovers were undone.

IMed by thee queen Blancheflour,
Mother mine in bitter hour,
That was white as any flower.

Tho* they died not well aright,
Yet, for thou art belted knight,
King Moronde, I bid thee fight.'

A great laughter laughed they all.
Drinking wine about the hall,
Standing by the outer vrall.

But the pale king leapt apace.
Caught his staff that lay in place
And smote Tristram on the face.

201

Tristram stood back paces two,
All his face was reddened so,
Round the deep mark of the blow.

Large and bright his king's eyes grew
As knight Roland's sword he drew,
Fiercely like a pard he flew.

And above the staring eyes
Smote Moronde the king flatwise,
That men saw the dear blood rise.

At the second time he smote,

All the carven blade, I wot,

With the blood was blurred and hot.

At the third stroke that he gave,
Deep the carven steel he drave.
Thro* king Moronde's heart it clave.

Well I ween his wound was great
As he sank across the seat.
Slain for Blancheflour the sweet.

Then spake Tristram, praising^ God;
In his father's place he stood,
Wiping clean the smears of blood.

That the sword, while he did pray.
At the throne's foot he might lay ;
Christ save all ^ood knights, I say.

202

'then spake all men in his praise,
Speaking words of the old days,
Sweeter words than sweetest lays.

Said one ' to the dead queen's hair.
And her brows so straight and fair;
So the lips of Roland were.*

For all praised him as he stood.
That such things none other could
Than the son of kingly blood.

Round he looked with quiet eyes ;

* When ye saw king Moronde rise.
None beheld me on this wise.'

At such words as he did say,
Bare an old man knelt to pray ;

* Christ be with us all to<lay.

This is Tristram the good lord ;
Knightly hath he held his word.
Warring with his father's sword.'

Then one brought the diadem.
Clear and golden like pure flame ;
And his thanks did grace to them.

Next in courteous wise he bade
That fair honour should be made
Of the dear queen that was dead.

203

So in her great sorrow's praise
A fair tomb he bade them raise,
For a wonder to the days.

And between its roof and floor
Wrote he two words and no more.
Wrote Roland and Blancheflour.

X These stanzas are from Qttetn VstitlL Ccmto i.
'*0/tht birth of Sir Tristram^ and haw he voyaged
into Ireland,^* printed in UndergraducUe Pa^erSy No. i,
December, 1857.

"In point of interest the Uudergradtiate Papers
stand second only to The Germ in the list of private
and semi-private magazine rarities which inclndes The
Snob^ The Gownsman, The Gads Hill GazetU, The
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and others. In
the matter of scarcity it passes them all. No more
than three perfect copies can be at present located,
whilst the British Museum possesses two out of the
three numbers only." — Wisb.

204

II.

A UCTTER TO THB HDITOR OF The SpectotoTt
JUNB 7, 1862.

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S "MOD-
ERN LOVE."

SIR, — I cannot resist asking the favour
of admission for my protest against
the article on Mr. Meredith's last volume of
poems in the Spectator of May 24th. That
I personally have for the writings, whether
verse or prose of Mr. Meredith, a most
sincere and deep admiration is no doubt a
matter of infinitely small moment. I wish
only, in default of a better, to appeal seri-
ously on general grounds against this sort of
criticism as applied to one of the leaders
of English literature. To any fair attack
Mr. Meredith's books of course He as much
open as another man's; indeed, standing
where he does, the very eminence of his
post makes him perhaps more liable than a
man of less well-earned fame to the period-
ical slings and arrows of publicity. Against
such criticism no one would have a right to
appeal, whether for his own work or for
another's. But the writer of the article in
question blinks at stating the fact that he is

205

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S '^MODERN LOVE*'

dealing with no unfledged pretender. Any
work of a man who has won his spurs and
fought his way to a foremost place among
the men of his time, must claim at least a
grave consideration and respect. It would
hardly be less absurd, in remarking on a
poem by Mr. Meredith, to omit all reference
to his previous work, and treat the present
book as if its author had never tried his
hand at such writing before, than to criticise
the Ligende des Sihcles, or (coming to a
nearer instance) the Idyls of the King^ with-
out taking into account the relative position
of the great English or the greater French
poet. On such a tone of criticism as this
any one who may chance to see or hear of it
has a right to comment.

But even if the case were different, and
the author were now at his starting-point,
such a review of such a book is surely out of
date. Praise or blame should be thoughtful,
serious, careful, when applied to a work of
such subtle strength, such depth of delicate
power, such passionate and various beauty,
as the leading poem of Mr. Meredith's
volume: in some points, as it seems to me
(and in this opinion I know that I have

206

MR. GBORGE MEREDITH'S "MODERN LOVE"

weightier judgments than my own to back
me) a poem above the aim and beyond the
reach of any but its author. Mr. Meredith
is one of the three or four poets now alive
whose work, perfect or imperfect, is always
as noble in design, as it is often faultless in
result. The present critic falls foul of him
for dealing with ** a deep and painful subject
on which he has no conviction to express.'^
There are pulpits enough for all preachers in
prose ; the business of verse-writing is hardly
to express convictions; and if some poetry,
not without merit of its kind, has at times
dealt in dogmatic morality, it is all the worse
and all the weaker for that. As to subject,
it is too much to expect that all schools of
poetry are to be for ever subordinate to the
one just now so much in request with us,
whose scope of sight is bounded by the
nursery walls; that all Muses are to bow
down before her who babbles, with lips yet
warm from their pristine pap, after the
dangling delights of a child's coral ; and
jingles with flaccid fingers one knows not
whether a jester or a baby's bells. We
have not too many writers capable of duly
handling a subject worth the serious interest

207

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S '^MODERN LOVE"

of men. As to execution, take almost any
sonnet at random out of this series, and let
any man qualified to judge for himself of
metre, choice of expression, and splendid
language, decide on its claims. And, after
all, the test will be unfair, except as regards
metrical. or pictorial merit; every section of
this great progressive poem being connected
with the other by links of the finest and most
studied workmanship. Take, for example,
that noble sonnet, beginning

** We saw the swallows gatheriog in the skies,"

a more perfect piece of writing no man afive
has ever turned out; witness these three
lines, the grandest perhaps of the book :

" And in the largeness of the evening earth,
Our spirit grew as we walked side by side;
TJU k<mr heoatng Jur hushand^ and my bride ; "

but in transcription it must lose the colour
and effect given it by its place in the series ;
the grave and tender beauty, which makes it
at once a bridge and a resting-place between
the admirable poems of passion it falls
among. As specimens of pure power, and
depth of imagination at once intricate and
vigorous, take the two sonnets on a false

208

MK. GEORGE MEREDITH'S ^'MODERN LOVE*'

passing reunion of wife and husband; the
sonnet on the rose ; that other beginning :

" I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice, and daring not to snap
Do therefore hope for Heaven."

And, again, that earlier- one:

** All other joys of life he strove to warm.''

Of the shorter poems which give character
to the book I have not space to speak
here ; and as the critic has omitted noticing
the most valuable and important (such as
the "Beggar's Soliloquy," and the "Old
Chartist," equal to B^ranger for complete-
ness of effect and exquisite justice of style,
but noticeable for a thorough dramatic
insight, which B^ranger missed through his
personal passions and partialities), there is
no present need to go into the matter. I
ask you to admit this protest simply out of
justice to the book in hand, believing as I
do that it expresses the deliberate unbiased
opinion of a sufficient number of readers to
warrant the insertion of it, and leaving to
your consideration rather their claims to a
fair hearing than those of the book's author

209

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S "MODERN LOVE*'

to a revised judgment. A poet of Mr.
Meredith's rank can no more be profited by
the advocacy of his admirers than injured
by the rash or partial attack of his critics.

A. C. Swinburne.

210

III.

THE PILGRIMAGE OF PLEASURE.

AN ALLEGORY.i
Dramatis PBRSONiG.

Plbasukb,

Gluttony, the Vice,

Youth,

Vain Delight,

LiFB,

Sapience,

Discretion,

Death.

Pleasure. All children of men, give good heed
unto me,
That am of 'my kind very virtue bodily,
Tarn ye from following of lies and Vain Delight
That avaunteth herself there she hath but little right :
Set your hearts upon goodly things that I shall you show,
For the end of her ways is death and very woe.

Youth, Away from me, thou Sapence, thou noddy,
thon green fool I
What ween ye I be as a little child in school ?
Ye are as an old crone that moweth by a fire,
A bob with a chestnut is all thine heart's desire.
I am in mine habit like to Bacchus the high god,
I reck not a rush of thy rede nor of thy rod.

211

Life, Bethink thee» good Youth, and take Sapience
to thy wife,
For bnt a little while hath a man delight of Life.
I am as a flame that lighteth thee one hour ;
She hath fruit enow, I have but a fleeting flower.

Discretion. For pity of Youth I may weep withouten

measure.
That is gone a great way as pilgrim after Pleasure,
For her (most noble queen) shall he never have in sight.
Who is bounden all about with bonds of Vain Delight.
That false flend to follow in field he is full fain,
For love of her sweet mouth he shall bide most bitter

pain.
The sweeter she singeth, the lesser is her trust,
She will him bring full low to deadly days and dust.

Gluttony, Ow, I am so full of flesh my skin goeth
nigh to crack 1
I would not for a pound I bore my body on my back.
I wis ye wot well what manner of man am I ;
One of ye help me to a saddle by and bye. .
I am waxen over-big, for I floter on my feet ;
I would I had here a piece of beef, a worthy meat.
I have been a blubberling this two and forty year,
And yet for all this I live and make good cheer.

Vain Delight, I wot ye will not bite upon my snafile,
good Youth ;
Ye go full smoothly now, ye amble well forsooth.

212

Y(mth, My sweet life and lady, my love and mine

heart's lief,
One kiss of your fair sweet mouth it slayeth all men's

grief.
One sight of your goodly eyes it bringeth all men

ease.

Gluttony. Ow, I would I had a manchet or a piece
of cheese I

Vain Delight. Lo, where lurketh a lurden > that is
kinsman of mine ;
Ho, Gluttony, I wis ye are drunken without wine.

Youth. We have gone by many lands, and many
grievous ways,
And yet have we not found this Pleasure all these days.
Sometimes a lightening all about her have we seen,
A glittering of her garments among the fieldes green ;
Sometimes the waving of her hair that is right sweet,
A lifting of her eyelids, or a shining of her feet.
Or either in sleeping or in waking have we heard
A rustling of raiment or a whbpering of a word.
Or a noise of pleasant water running over a waste place,
Yet have I not beheld her, nor known her very face.

Vain Delight. What, thou very knave, and how
reckonest thou of me ?

X Lurden ; a lout, lubber.

213

Youth. Nay, though thou be goodly, I trow thou
art not she.

Vain Delight I would that thou wert hanged in a

halter by the neck,
From my face to my feet there is neither flaw nor fleck,
There is none happy man but he that sips and clips
My goodly stately body and the love upon my lips.
Great kings have worshipped me, and served me on

their knees,
Yet for thy sake I wis, have I set light by these.

Youth, What pratest thou of Pleasure ? I wot well
it am I.

Gluttony, Owl I would I had a marchpane or a
plover in a pie I ^

What needeth a man look far for that is near at hand?
What needeth him ear the sea, or fish upon dry land ?
For whether it be flesh, or whether it be fish,
Lo, it lurketh full lowly in a little dish.

Sapience, I charge thee, O thou Youth, thou repent

thee on this tide.
For but an hour or twain, shall thy life and thou abide;
Turn thee, I say, yea turn thee, before it be the night, -
Take thine heart in thine hand, and slay thy Vain

Delight,
Before thy soul and body in sudden and sunder be rent.

214

Youth. Nay, though I be well weary, yet will I not
repent,
Nor will I slay my love ; lo, this is all in brief.

Vain Delight. I beseech thee now begone, thon
ragged hood, thou thief I
Wherefore snuffest thou so, like one smelling of
mustard ?

Gluttony, Ow, methinks I could eat a goodly
quaking custard.

Youth, Peace, thou paunch, I pray; thou sayest
ever the same.

Vain Delight. Lo, her coats be all bemired I this is
a goodly dame,
She pranceth with her chin up, as one that is full nice.

Gluttony. Ow, I would I had a pear with a pretty
point of spice,
A comfit with a caudle is a comfortable meat ;
A cony is the best beast of all that run on feet.
I love well buttered ale, I would I had one drop ;
I pray thee, Mistress Sapience, hast thou never a
sugar sop ?

Sapience. Depart from me, thou sturdy swine, thou
hast no part in me I

215

Gluttony, Ow, I wist well there was little fair
fellowship in thee.
Good Mistress Discretion, ye be both lief and fair,
Of thy dish, I pray thee, some scrapings thou me spare.

Discretion, My dish, thou foolish beast, for thy

mouth it is not meet ;
I feed on gracious thought, and on prayer that is most

sweet,
I eat of good desires, I drink good words tor wine;
Thou art fed on husks of death among the snouts of

swine ;
My drink is clear contemplation, I feed on fasting hours,
I commune with the most high stars, and all the noble

flowers,
With all the days and nights, and ^dth love that is their

queen.

Gluttony, Ow, of this communication it recks me

never a bean 1
Shall one drink the night for wine, and feed upon the

dawn ?
Yet had I rather have in hand a cantle of brawn.

Sapience. O Youth, wilt thou not turn thee, and
follow that is right ?

Youth, Nay, while I have my living I forsake not
Vain Delight.
Till when my hairs are grey, I put her away from me.

216

Vain Delight, Nay, but in that day will I withdraw
my face from thee.
Out, out, mother mumble, thou art both rotten and raw.

Gluttony, I will reach thee, if I may, a buffet with
my paw.

Vain Delight, What, wilt thou take my kingdom ?
have this for all thy pains.

Gluttony, Ow, I would I had a toast to butter with
thy brains.

Life, Lo, this is the last time that ever we twain
shall meet,
I am lean of my body and feeble of my feet ;
My goodly beauty is barren, fruit shall it never bear.
But thorns and bitter ashes that are cast upon mine hair ;
My glory is all gone, and my good time overpast.
Seeing all my beauty cometh to one colour at the last,
A deadly dying colour of a faded face.
I say to thee, repent thee ; thou hast but little space.

Youth. What manner of man art thou ? It seems
thou hast seen some strife.

Life, I am thy body's shadow, and the likeness of

thy life,
The sorrowful similitude of all thy sorrow and sin ;
Wherefore, I pray thee, open all thine heart and let

me in.

»f

217

Lest, if thou shut oat good counsel, thou be thyself
shut out —

Gluttony, Ow, though I be lusty I have made them

low to lout,
My lungs be broken in twain with running over fast.
With beating of their bodies mine own sides have I

brast;
The heaving of mine heart it is a galling grief.
Ow, what makes thee so lean and wan? (to Life) I

trow thou lackest beef.

Vain Delight. How, what is this knave, trow ?
Youth, He saith his name is Life.

Vain Delight. By the faith of my fair body I will

give him grief to wife 1
In his lips there is no blood, in his throat there is no

breath.
Call ye this Life, by my hood ? I think it be liker Death.

Life. It is thou, thou cursed witch, hast bereft me
of mine ease,
That I gasp with my lips and halt upon my knees.

Death, Thou hast lived overlong without taking

thought for me ;
Lo, here is now an end of thy Vain Delight and thee.
Thou that wert gluttonous shalt eat the dust for bread.
Thou that wearest gold shalt wear grass above thine

head;

218

Thou that wert full big shalt be shrunken to a span,
Thou shalt be a loathly worm that wert a lordly man.
Thou that madest thy bed of silk shalt have a bed of

mould.
Thou whom furs have covered shalt be clad upon with

coId»
Thou that lovedst honey, with gall shalt thou be fed,
Thou that wert alive shalt presently be dead.

Youth, O strong Death, be merciful 1 I quake with
dread of thee.

Death. Nay, thou hast dwelt long with Life : now
shalt thou sleep with me.

Gluttony. Ow, ow, for very fear my flesh doth melt
and dwindle.
My sides and my shanks be leaner than a spindle;
Now foul fall his fingers that wound up the thread,
Good Master Death, do me no hurt; I wis I am but dead.
Now may I drink my sobs, and chew upon my sighs,
And feed my foolish body with the fallings of mine eyes.

Vain Delight, Mine eyes are turned to tears, my fair
mouth filled with moan.
My cheeks are ashen colour, I grovel and I groan.
My love is turned to loathing, my day to a weary night,
Now I wot I am not Pleasure, I am but Vain Delight I

Youth, O Death, show pity upon me, and spare me
for a space.

219

Death, Nay, thou hast far to go; rise up, uncover
thy face.

Youth, O Death, abide for a little, but UU it be the
night.

Deaths Nay, thy day is done ; look up, there is no
light.

Youth. O Death, forbear me yet till an hour be
over and done.

Death, Thine hour is over and wasted; behold,
there is no more sun I

Youth, Nay, Death, but I repent me.

Death. Here have thou this and hold.

Youth. O Death, thou art keen and bitter, thine
hands are wonder-cold !

Death. Fare forth now without word, ye have
tarried over measure.

Youth. Alas, that ever I went on Pilgrimage' of
Pleasure,
And wist not what she was ; now am I the wearier wight.
Lo, this is the end of all, this cometh of Vain Delight 1

Death. O foolish people 1 O ye that rejoice for a
three days* breath.
Lift up your eyes unto me, lest ye perish : behold, I am
Death I

220

When your hearts are exalted with laughter, and

kindled with love as with fire,
Neither look ye before ye nor after, but feed and are

filled with desire.
Lo, without trumpets I come : without ushers I follow

behind :
And the voice of the strong men is dumb; and the

eyes of the wise men are bUnd.
Your mouths were hot with meat, your lips were sweet

with wine,
There was gold upon your feet, on your heads was gold

most fine :
For blasts of wind and rain ye shook not neither

shrunk.
Ye were cloth6d with man's pain, with man's blood ye

were drunk ;
little heed ye had of tears and poor men's sighs,
In your glory ye were glad, and ye glittered with your

eyes.
Ye said each man in his heart, *^ I shall live and see

good days."
Lo, as mire and clay thou art, even as mire on weary

ways.
Ye said each man, '*I am fair, lo, my life in me stands

fast."
Ttim ye, weep and rend your hair ; what abideth at the

last?
For behold ye are all made bare, and your glory is over

and past.

221

Ye were covered with fatness and sleep ; ye wallow'd

to left and to right.
Now may ye wallow and weep : day is gone, and behold

it is night 1
With grief were all ye gotten, to bale were all ye born,
Ye are all as red leaves rotten, or as the beaten com.
What will one of you say ? had ye eyes and would not

see?
Had ye harps and would not play ? Yet shall ye play

for me.
Had ye ears and would not hear? Had ye feet and

would not go ?
Had ye wits and would not fear? Had ye seed and

would not sow ?
Had ye hands and would not wring ? Had ye wheels

and would not spin ?
Had ye lips and would not sing? was there no song

found therein ?
A bitter, a bitter thing there is comen upon you for sin.
Alas 1 your kingdom and lands 1 alas I your men and

their might 1
Alas I the strength of your hands and the days of your

Vam Delight 1
Alas 1 the words that were spoken, sweet words on a

pleasant tongue 1
Alas 1 your harps that are broken, the harps that were

carven and strung 1
Alas I the light in your eyes, the gold in your golden

hair I

222

Alas I yonr sayings wise, and the goodly things ye

warel
Alasl your glory 1 alasl the sound of your names

among men I
Behold, it is come to pass, ye shall sleep and arise not

again.
Dust shall fall on your face, and dust shall hang on

your hair ;
Ye shall sleep without shifting of place, and shall be

no more as ye were ;
Ye shall never open your mouth ; ye shall never lift up

your head ;
Ye shall look not to north or to south ; life is done, and

behold, ye are dead I
With your hand ye shall not threat ; with your throat

ye shall not sing.
Yea, ye that are living yet, ye shall each be a grievous

thing.
Ye shall each fare under ground, ye shall lose both

speech and breath ;
Without sight ye shall see, without sound ye shall hear,

and shall know I am Death.

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by Pleasure,

The ending of Youth and of Vain Delight
Full plainly here ye all have seen ;

223

Wherefore I pray you day and night.

While winter is wan and summer is green,
Ye keep the end hereof in sight,

Lest in that end ye gather teen ;
And all this goodly Christmas light,
Ye praise and magnify our Queen,
Whiles that your lips have breath ;
And all your life-days out of measure,
Serve her with heart's and body's treasure,
And pray God give her praise and pleasure,
Both of her life and death.

I Reprinted verbatim from Chapter V. of The
Children of the Chapel. A Tale. By the Author of
The chorister BreiherSt Marh Dennitt etc. [Miss
Gordon = Mrs. Disney Leith.] . . . London r 1864.
\,SecondeditioHt\%^^^ Pp. iv: 1-116.

It is stated by Mr. Wise that " most of the fragments
of verse scattered throughout the pages of this volume
were by Mr. Swinburne, particularly the lengthy poem
of 38 lines commencing, ^Your mouths were hot with
meaty your lips were sweet with wine? " If this means
anything it means that aH of the verse given in
"Chapter V.— The Pilgrimage of Pleasure^" is by
Mr. Swinburne, and as these poems "have never
appeared elsewhere than in the two editions of this
little book," we have given them entire.

The same authority assures us that *' the other long
poem" of 84 lines (**/am michle of might,") " is not
the work of Mr. Swiabume."

224

IV.

UNPUBLISHED VERSES.«

As the refluent sea-weed moves in the languid
exuberant stream,
Stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse
of the sea,
Fair as a rose upon earth, as a rose under water in

prison,
Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a
ghost rearisen.
Pale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen
in me.
And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly
toward thee in a vision.
Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are
kinder, thy lips that are loving,
Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a morn

like a dream.
From the beautiful infinite west, from the happy
memorial places
Full of the mighty repose and the lordly delight of
the dead,
Where the fortunate islands are fair with the light of
ineffable faces.
And the sound of a sea without wind is about them,
and gods overhead.

225

Come back to redeem and release me from love that
recalls and represses,
Cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent have
eaten his fill.

Thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a
manifold flower.
Thine hands are as music, thy lips as an odour that
fades in a flame,
Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, or
the bountiful hour
That makes me forget what is sin, and would make
me forget were it shame.

I Unpublishbd Vsrsbs I By | Algernon Charles
Swinburne | [1866. i]

Collation: Octavo, pp. iv; consisting of Titles as
above (with blank reverse), pp. i-ii ; and the Text of
the Verses (eighteen lines in all) pp. iii-iv.

(i) This very misleading date . . . signifies tliat the
Vtrses were written in 1866, not that they were pub-
lished in that year. They were printed and circulated
in March, 1888.— Wise.

226

V.
VERSES FROM A YEAR'S LETTERS.^

FAIR face, fair head, and goodly gentle brows,
Sweet beyond speech and bitter beyond measure ;
A thing to make all vile things virtuous,

Fill fear with force and pain's heart's blood with
pleasure ;
Unto thy love my love takes flight, and flying
Between thy lips alights and falls to sighing.

II.

Breathe, and my soul spreads wing upon thy breath ;

Withhold it, in thy breath's restraint I perish ;
Sith life indeed is life, and death is death,

As thou shalt choose to chasten them or cherish ;
As thou shalt please ; for what is good in these
Except they fall and flower as thou shalt please?

III.

Day's eye, spring's forehead, pearl above pearls' price,
Hide me in thee where sweeter things are hidden.

Between the rose-roots and the roots of spice,

Where no man walks but holds his foot forbidden ;

Where summer snow, in August apple-closes.

Nor frays the fruit nor ravishes the roses.

237

IV.

Yea, life is lif e, for thou hast life in sight ;

And death is death, for thou and death are parted.
I love thee not for love of my delight,

But for thy praise, to make thee holy-hearted ;
Praise is love's raiment, love the body of praise,
The topmost leaf and chaplet of his days.

I love thee not for love's sake, nor for mine

Nor for thy soul's sake merely, nor thy beauty's ;

But for that honour in me which is thine.
To make men praise me for my loving duties ;

Seeing neither death nor earth nor time shall cover

The soul that lived on love of such a lover.

VI.

So shall thy pr^tise be more than all it is.
As thou art tender and of piteous fashion.

Not that I bid thee stoop to pluck my kiss,
Too pale a fruit for thy red mouth's compassion ;

But till love turn my soul's pale cheeks to red.

Let it not go down to the dusty dead.

I From Chapter XX of ** A Ybar's Lbttbrs. By
Mrs. Horace Manners, A novtl in Thirty Chapters
(the story being related in the form of Letters), together
with a Prologue of Five Chapters." — Wise. Contrib-
uted to The TatUr^ from August 2sth to December
agth, 1877.

T (^-^

UK SMALL, dark girly of unmistakably
l\ Jewish type, xcitb eyes that seemed
too large for the delicate features, and far
too sad for their jfouthfulness of line and
contour."* Such was Amy Levy, poet and
novelist, horn November loth, 1861, who
died by her own hand in London, September
toth, i88p. iVhat she accomplished dur-
ing a brief period of eight years can almost
as briefly be told,* One may doubtless
gather from some of her books intimations
of sinister significance viewed in the light
of what afterward came to pass; one may
also revert to inherited melancholia z as a

/. yiewed by the eye of an artist; a description
verified by the pbotograpb we reproduce. See
Preferences in Art, Life and Literature. By Harry
Qmlter. 8vo, London, 189%. Pp. t)§'i49, (Amy
Levy : a Reminiscence and a Criticism).

a. (/) Xantippe and <aber Poems. IVrappers.
t88t (2). *A Minor 'Poet and otber Verse, 1884.
Second edition, witb portrait, i8pi. (5) A London
Plane Tree and otber Poems, 1889. (4) Reuben
Sacbs; aSketcb, 1899. Second edition, same year.
(S) Tbe Romance of a Sbop, 1888. (6) Miss
Mereditb, 1889. Sbe also translated {anonymously)
Piri*s **Comme, quoi NapoUon n*a Jamais existe.**

J. nAn opinion formulated by *'R. G." CDr.

'^S'; ******

predisposing cause for an act which in the
words of a recent poignant dedication,
** opened for herself the gates of Par-
adise" ^ — explanations explanatory of
nothing even if they state a fact.

Conceivably, youthful self-destruction is
the result of emotional immaturity. Lives
like tAmy Levy and 'Blanche Sylvie betray
lack of experience; a few more year s, a
stronger confidence in potential possibilities,
and they bad remained with us, not away
from us! Here was a brilliant young
creature whose bourgeoise environment,
(again conceivably,) bored her beyond ex-
pression. At such crises neither feminine
friendship or the sweetest domesticities suf-
fice. The emotions demanding an outlet
find none. Literally true is the old-^orld
cry of Catarina's : "/ am dying for a little
love" — apathetic negation summing itself
up in the greatest of tragic finales —
whereof " the rest is silence,"

After all what matter ? *Poets depart :
poetry does not depart. By her lyrics
tAmy Levy will be remembered when much

T^icbard Garnett) in The Dictionary of National
Biography, /rom ** personal knowledge.'*

4. See an interesting article by Florence A. H.
Morgan on " The RubAiyit in French " in The
Critic /or April.

^l5e of current rhyme " is lost in the dust
of its own buried days^ In the Mile End
Road is a flawless little Jewel : for the
moment it lifts and leaves us at the level of
greater singers^ even as the Heraclitus lines
of IVilliam Cory lift and leave him on
still higher levels of marmoreal verse*

For August :

A Painter of the Last Century,

John Addington Symonds.

A Minor Poet and Lyrics

Amy Levy.

Sle^ there beneath the lilies,
Rest there beneath the grass.

Nor know what good nor ill is
Whatever come to pass ; —

O lovely Amaryllis

Thai wast so fair, alas I

Now nothing more thoufearest

Beneath the silent sod.
No burden now thou bearest

As when thy feet here trod ; —
IVould / were with thee, dearest,

iVith thee, and thou with God.

CHARLES SATLB.

4 4 T3 '^^^^ ^^^ great mysteries oi life her soul grew
Ij frozen and appalled.

'* It seemed to her, as she sat there in the
fading light, that this is the bitter lesson of existence : that
the sacred serves only to teach the full meaning of sacri>
lege; the beautiful of the hideous; modesty of outrage;,
joy of sorrow ; life of death."

(rbubbn SACHS : A sJUtch.)

" I have had enough of wisdom, and enough of mirth,

For the way's one, and the end's one, and it's soon to the
end of the earth ;

And it's then good-night and to bed, and if heels or heart
ache.

Well, it's a sound sleep and long sleep, and sleep too deep-
to wake."

ARTHUR SYMONS.

'BROKEN MUSIC.

tA note
All out of turn in this world's instrument.

AMY LEVY.

I KNOW not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what ber voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lasbes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.

I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes

Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
Ere twilight turns to night.

I know not ; I conjecture, * Twas a girl

That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl —
' Tis hard to understand.

So precious life is ! Even to the old

The hours are as a miser's coins, and she —
IVithin her hands lay youth's unminted gold
And all felicity.

The winged impettMus spirit, the white flame

That was her soul once, whither has it flown ?
Above her brow gray lichens blot ber name
Upon the carven stone.

235

This is ber Book of Verses — wren-like notes j

Sby franknesses, blind gropings, baunting fears ;
At times across tbe cbords abruptly floats
A mist of passionate tears.

A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung^

A broken music, weirdly incomplete :
Here a proud mind, self -baffled and self -stung,
Lies coiled in dark defeat. ,

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

Reprinted by kind permission of Mr. Aldrich and
his publishers (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)-

236

A MINOR POET.

** What should such fellows as I do^
Crawling between earth and heaven f **

HERS is the phial ; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click I — there's no donbt it tnmed.
This is the third time ; there is luck in threes —
Qaeen Luck, that roles the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs I
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world).
Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand,
(Ah Tom I ah, Tom \ that was a sorry turn I )
And lectured me a lecture, all compact
Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled
From works of newest culture : ** common good ; "
*' The world's great harmonies ; " " must be content
With knowing God works all things for the best,
And Nature never stumbles." Then again,
'* The common good," and still, " the common good ; "
And what a small thing was our joy or grief
When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom,
But you might wag your philosophic tongue
From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same :
I am myself, as each man is himself —
Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves
With his own love, no other's. Friend, the world

237

Is but one man ; one man is but the world.

And I am I, and you are Tom, that bleeds

When needles prick your flesh (mark, yours, not mine).

I must confess it ; I can feel the pulse

A-beating at my heart, yet never knew

The throb of cosmic pulses. I lament

The death of youth's ideal in my heart ;

And, to be honest, never yet rejoiced

In the world's progress — scarce, indeed, discerned ;

(For still it seems that God's a Sisyphus

With the world for stone).

You shake your head. I'm base,
Ignoble ? Who is noble — you or I ?
/ was not once thus ? Ah, my f rieftd, we are
As the Fates make us.

This time is the third ;
The second time the flask fell from my hand,
Its drowsy juices spilt upon the board ;
And there my face fell flat, and all the life
Crept from my limbs, and hand and foot were bound
With mighty chains, subtle, intangible ;
While still the mind held to its wonted use.
Or rather grew intense and keen with dread,
An awful dread — I thought I was in Hell.
In Hell, in Hell 1 Was ever Hell conceived
By mortal brain, by brain Divine devised,
Darker, more fraught with torment, than the world
For such as I ? A creature maimed and marr'd

238

From very birth. A blot, a blur, a note
All out of tune in this world's instrument.
A base thing, yet not knowing to fulfil
Base functions. A high thing, yet all unmeet
For work that's high. A dweller on the earth.
Yet not content to dig with other men
Because of certain sudden sights and sounds
(Bars of broke music ; furtive, fleeting glimpse
Of angel faces 'thwart the grating seen)
Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach
To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb
The faces' full perfection. Heaven's gate.
Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to,
And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold,
Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men :
** He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive
For higher fruits than what our tillage 3rields ;
Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride I
Why play with figures ? trifle prettily
With this my grief which very simply 's said,
** There is no place for me in all the world " ?
The world's a rock, and I will beat no more
A breast of flesh and blood against a rock. . . .
A stride across the planks for old time's sake.
Ah, bare, small room that I have sorrowed in ;
Ay, and on sunny days, haply, rejoiced ;
We know some things together, you and 1 1
Hold there, you ranged row of books 1 In vain

239

Yoa beckon from your shelf. You've stood my friends
Where all things else were foes ; yet now I'll turn
My back upon you, even as the world
Turns it on me. And yet — farewell, farewell I
Yout lofty Shakespere, with the tattered leaves
And fathomless great heart, your binding 's bruised
Yet did I love you less ? Goethe, farewell ;
Farewell, triumphant smile and tragic eyes,
And pitiless world-wisdom I

For all men
These two. And 'tis farewell with you, my friends^
More dear because more near : Theokritus ;
Heine that stings and smiles ; Prometheus' bard ;
(I've grown too coarse for Shelley latterly :)
And one wild singer of to-day, whose song
Is all aflame with passionate bard's blood
Lash'd into foam by pain and the world's wrong.
At least, he has a voice to cry his pain ;
For him, no silent writhing in the dark,
No muttering of mute lips, no straining out
Of a weak throat a-choke with pent-up sound,
A-throb with pent-up passion. . . .

Ah, my son I
That's you, then, at the window, looking in
To beam farewell on one who 's loved you long
And very truly. Up, you creaking thing.
You squinting, cobwebbed casement 1

So, at last.

240

I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls
Across that endless sea of London roofs,
Weaving such golden wonders on the grey,
That almost, for the moment, we forget
The world of woe beneath them.

Underneath,
For all the sunset glory, Pain is king.
Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal ;
And 111 not grumble that it's only sun,
But open wide my lips — thus — drink it in ;
Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky
(What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue
So tender toned, you*d almost think it green)
And stretch my hands out — so — to grasp it tight.
Ha, ha I *tis sweet awhile to cheat the Fates,
And be as happy as another man.
The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine I
'Tis a fair world : if dark, indeed, with woe,
Yet having hope and hint of such a joy,
That a man, winning, well might turn aside,
Careless of Heaven . . .

O enough ; I turn
From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope.
I have hoped enough ; I would not hope again :
'Tis hope that is most cruel.

Tom, my friend.
You very sorry philosophic fool ;
*Tis you, I think, that Hd me be resign'd,

241

Trust, and be thankful.

Out on you 1 Resigned ?
I'm not resigned, not patient, not schooPd in
To take my starveling's portion and pretend
I'm grateful for it. I want all, all, all ;
I've appetite for all. I want the best :
Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life.
There's too much patience in the world, I think.
We have grown base with crooking of the knee.
Mankind — say — God has bidden to a feast;
The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks ;
In troop the guests ; each man with appetite
Keen-whetted with expectance.

In they troop,
Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize.
What's this ? what's this ? There are not seats for all I
Some men must stand without the gates ; and some
Must linger by the table, ill-supplied
With broken meats. One man gets meat for two.
The while another hungers. If I stand
Without the portals, seeing others eat
Where I had thought to satiate the pangs
Of mine own hunger ; shall I then come forth
When all is done, and drink my Lord's good health
In my Lord's water ? Shall I not rather turn
And curse him, curse him for a niggard host ?
O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years.
Till appetite grows craving, then disease ;

242

I am starved, wither'd, shrivelled.

Peace, O peace I
This rage is idle ; what avails to curse
The nameless forces, the vast silences
That work in all things.

This time is the third,
I wrought before in heat, stung mad with pain,
Blind, scarcely understanding ; now I know
What thing I do.

There was a woman once ;
Deep eyes she had, white hands, a subtle smile.
Soft speaking tones : she did not break my heart,
Yet haply had her heart been otherwise
Mine had not now been broken. Yet, who knows ?
My life was jarring discord from the first :
Tho' here and there brief hints of melody,
Of melody unutterable, clove the air.
From this bleak world, into the heart of night.
The dim, deep bosom of the universe,
I cast myself. I only crave for rest ;
Too heavy is the load. I fling it down.

EPILOGUE.

We knocked and knocked ; at last, burst in the door.
And found him as you know — the outstretched arms
Propping the hidden face. The sun had set,
And all the place was dim with lurking shade.
There was no written word to say farewell.

243

Or make more clear the deed.

I searchM and searched ;
The room held little : just a row of books
Much scrawl'd and noted ; sketches on the wall,
Done rough in charcoal ; the old instrument
(A violin, no Stradivarius)
He played so ill on ; in the table drawer
Large schemes of undone work. Poems half -writ ;
Wild drafts of symphonies ; big plans of fugues ;
Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand :
No more — the scattered pages of a tale,
A sorry tale that no man cared to read.
Alas, my friend, I lov*d him well, tho' he
Held me a cold and stagnant-blooded fool,
Because I am content to watch, and wait
With a calm mind the issue of all things.
Certain it is my blood's no turbid stream ;
Yet, for all that, haply I understood
More than he ever deem'd ; nor held so light
The poet in him. Nay, I sometimes doubt
If they have not, indeed, the better part —
These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep
Because the night or a woman's face is fair.
Meantime there is much talk about my friend.
The women say, of course, he died for love ;
The men, for lack of gold, or cavilling
Of carping critics. I, Tom Leigh, his friend
I have no word at all to say of this.

244

Nay, I had deem*d him more philosopher ;
For did he think by this one paltry deed
To cut the knot of circumstance, and snap
The chain which binds all being ?

245

TO A DEAD POET.

IKNKW not if to laugh or weep ;
They sat and talked of you —
" 'Twas here he sat ; 'twas this he said t
'Twas that he used to do.

" Here is the book wherein he read,
The room wherein he dwelt ;

And he " (they said) " was such a man^
Such things he thought and felt.*'

I sat and sat, I did not stir ;

They talked and talked away.
I was as mute as any stone,

I had no word to say.

They talked and talked ; like to a ston&
My heart grew in my breast —

I, who had never seen your face
Perhaps I knew you best.

246

SINFONIA EROICA.

(TO SYLVIA.)

My Love, my Love, it was a day in June,
A mellow, drowsy, golden afternoon ;
And all the eager people thronging came
To that great hall, drawn by the magic name
Of one, a high magician, who can raise
The spirits of the past and future days,
And draw the dreams from out the secret breast,
Giving them life and shape.

I, with the rest,
Sat there athirst, atremble for the sound ;
And as my aimless glances wandered round.
Far off, across the hushM, expectant throng,
I saw your face that fac'd mine.

Clealr and strong
Rush'd forth the sound, a mighty mountain stream ;
Across the clustering heads mine eyes did seem
By subtle forces drawn, your eyes to meet.
Then you, the melody, the summer heat,
Mingled in all my blood and made it wine.
Straight I forgot the world's great woe and mine ;
My spirit's murky lead grew molten fire ;
Despair itself Was rapture.

Ever higher.
Stronger and clearer rose the mighty strain ;
Then sudden fell ; then all was still again,

247

And I sank back, quivering as one in pain.
Brief was the pause ; then, *mid a hush profound,
Slow on the waiting air swelPd forth a sound
So wondrous sweet that each man held his breath ;
A measured, mystic melody of death.
Then back you lean'd your head, and I could note
The upward outline of your perfect throat ;
And ever, as the music smote the air.
Mine eyes from far held fast your body fair.
And in that wondrous moment seem'd to fade
My life's great woe, and grow an empty shade
Which had not been, nor was not.

And I knew
Not which was sound, and which, O Love, was you.

248

TO SYLVIA.

i i /^^ LOVB, lean thou thy cheek to mine,

V-^ And let the tears together flow " —
Such was the song you sang to me

Once, long ago.

Such was the song you sang ; and yet
(O be not wroth ! ) I scarcely knew
What sounds flow'd forth ; I only felt

That you were you.

I scarcely knew your hair was gold,
Nor of the heavens' own blue your eyes.
Sylvia and song, divinely mixt,

Made Paradise.

These things I scarcely knew ; to-day.
When love is lost and hope is fled,
The song you sang so long ago

Rings in my head.

Clear comes each note and true ; to-day.
As in a picture I behold
Your tum'd-up chin, and small, sweet head

Misty with gold.

249

I see how your dear eyes grew deep,
How your lithe body thrilled and swayed,
And how were whiter than the keys

Your hands that played. .

Ah, sweetest 1 cruel have you been,
And robbed my life of many things.
I will not chide ; ere this I knew

That Love had wings.

You*ve robbed my life of many things —
Of love and hope, of fame and pow*r.
So be it, sweet. You cannot steal

One golden hour.

250

A FAREWELL.

(AFTER HSINB.)

THE sad rain falls from Heaven,
A sad bird pipes and sings ;
I am sitting here at my window
And watching the spires of ** King's/*

fairest of all fair places,
Sweetest of all sweet towns !

With the birds, and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.

All they that dwell within thee,

To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends, and another

Gets honour, and one gets both.

The sad rain falls from Heaven ;
My heart is great with woe —

1 have neither a friend nor honoar.
Yet I am sorry to go.

251

EPITAPH.

(ON A COMMONPLACE PERSON WHO DIED IN BED.)

THIS is the end of him, here he lies :
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes.
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast ;
This is the end of him, this is best.
He will never lie on hisxouch awake.
Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak.
Never again will he smile and smile
When his heart is breaking all the while.
He will never stretch out his hands in vain
Groping and groping — never again.
Never ask for bread, get a stone instead.
Never pretend that the stone is bread.
Never sway and sway 'twixt the false and true.
Weighing and noting the long hours through.
Never ache and ache with the chok'd-up sighs ;
This is the end of him, here he lies.

252

LOI^DON POETS.

(IN MEMORIAM.)

THEY trod the streets and squares vrhere now I tread.
With weary hearts, a little while ago ;
When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow
Clung to the leafless branches overhead;
Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red
In autumn ; with a re-arisen woe
Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow ;
And paced scorched stones in summer : — they are dead.

The sorrow bf their souls to them did seem

As real as mine to me, as permanent.

To-day, it is the shadow of a dream.

The half-forgotten breath of breezes spent.

So shall another soothe his woe supreme —

** No more he comes, who this way came and went."

253

THE BIRCH-TREE AT LOSCHWITZ.

AT Loschwitz above the city
The air is sunny and chill ;
The birch-trees and the pine-trees
Grow thick upon the hill.

Lone and tall, with silver stem,

A birch-tree stands apart ;
The passionate wind of spring-time

Stirs in its leafy heart.

I lean against the birch-tree,

My arms around it twine ;
It pulses, and leaps, and quivers.

Like a human heart to mine.

One moment I stand, then sudden
Let loose mine arms that cling :

O God 1 the lonely hillside,
The passionate wind of spring \

254

LAST WORDS.

Dead I alPs done with I

R. BROWNING.

THESE blossoms that I bring,
This song that here I sing,
These tears that now I shed,
I give unto the dead.

There is no more to be done,
Nothing beneath the sun,
All the long ages through.
Nothing — by me for you.

The tale is told to the end ;
This, ev'n, I may not know —
If we were friend and friend,
If we were foe and foe.

AlVs done with utterly,
AWs done with. Death to me
Was ever Death indeed ;
To me no kindly creed

Consolatory was given.
You were of earth, not Heaven. .
This dreary day, things seem
Vain shadows in a dream,

255

Or some strange, pictured show;
And mine own tears that flow,
My hidden tears that fall,
The vainest of them aU.

256

A REMINISCENCE.

IT is so long gone by, and yet
How clearly now I see it all I
The glimmer of yonr cigarette,
The little chamber, narrow and tall.

Perseus ; your picture in its frame ;

(How near they seem and yet how far 1 )
The blaze of kindled logs ; the flame

Of tulips in a mighty jar.

Florence and spring-time : surely each
Glad things unto the spirit saith.

Why did you lead me in your speech
To these dark mysteries of death ?

257

THE SEQUEL TO "A REMINISCENCE."

NOT in the street and not in the square,
The street and square where you went and came ;
With shuttered casement your house stands bare,
Men hush their voice when they speak your name.

I, too, can play at the vain pretence,

Can feign you dead ; while a voice sounds clear
In the inmost depths of my heart : Go hence,

Go, find your friend who is far from here.

Not here, but somewhere where I can reach 1
Can a man with motion, hearing and sight,

And a thought that answered my thought and speech,
Be utterly lost and vanished quite ?

Whose hand was warm in my hand last week ? . . .

My heart beat fast as I neared the gate —
Was it this I had come to seek,

<* A stone that stared with your name and date ; *'

A hideous, turfless, fresh-made mound ;

A silence more cold than the wind that blew ?
What had I lost, and what had I found ?

My flowers that mocked me fell to the ground —

Then, and then only, my spirit knew.

258

IN THE MILE END ROAD.

ow like her ! Bat 'tis she herself,
Comes up the crowded street,
i How little did I think, the mom,

[ My only love to meet I

Whose else that motion and that mien ?

Whose else that airy tread ?
For one strange moment I forgot

My only love was dead.

259

THE PROMISE OF SLEEP.

Put the sweet thoughts from out thy mindy

The dreams from out thy breast;
No joy for thee — but thou shaltfnd

Thy rest.

ALL day I could not work for wo«,
I could not work nor rest ;
The trouble drove me to and fro.
Like a leaf on the storm's breast.

Night came and saw my sorrow cease;

Sleep in the chamber stole ;
Peace crept about my limbs, and peace

Fell on my stormy soul.

And now I think of only this, —

How I again may woo
The gentle sleep — who promises

That death is gentle too.

260

TO VERNON LEE.

N Bellosguardo, when the year was young,
We wandered, seeking for the daffodil
^ And dark anemone, whose purples fill

The peasant's plot, between the corn-shoots sprung.

Over the grey, low wall the olive flung
Her deeper greyness ; far off, hill on hill
Sloped to the sky, which, pearly-pale and still.
Above the large and luminous landscape hung.

A snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach ;
You broke a branch and gave it to me there ;
I found for you a scarlet blossom rare.

Thereby ran on of Art and Life our speech ;
And of the gifts the gods have given to each —
Hope unto you, and unto me Despair.

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-OLOe Q5i0efof

WE do not know if an attempt will ever
be made to give admirers of John
Addington Symonds a complete edition of
bis essaysA Widely scattered in various
magazines over a period of thirty years it
is doubtful if all or even the larger part
could be brought together; a dispersion
their author may have been content to abide,
resting secure on triumphs in wider fields
already won.

Among what he perhaps considered as
minor studies the article on Pietro Longhi
assuredly stands alone.^ It belongs to an
epoch in Symands^ literary life which saw
produced in rapid succession The Life of
Benvenuto Cellini, The Memoirs of Carlo
Goi^i, and, a little later but with the same
inimitable verve his crowning work — The
Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti: work
of superb achievement not easily set aside
by any later man of letters.

1 %A hihliograpby is still a disideraium. Tbe
short list given by Mr. Brown (John Addington
Symonds: A Biography, f^ol. II, pp. 387-^90)
is not complete.

2 See The Century Guild Hobby Horse, f^ol 1^,
pp. 42- §§ (London, 1889).

For those who recall A Maker of For-
gotten Tunes there will he found in this
Venetian Painter of the Last Century a
resetting of a similar old world scene. Its
colours are possibly less subdued and sombre
but the subtle suggestion of * dear dead
women* remains with us. It is indeed a
world only existing in faded aquatint ^ and
yet how real it once was 1 Forgotten days
of gold and crimson sunsets that flared
and faded long ago : lost years no living
light again illumes.

for september:
Proverbs in Porcelain

Austin Dobson.

A Venetian Painter of the Last Century

John Addington Symonds.

A VENETIAN PAINTER OF THE LAST
CENTURY, PIETRO LONGHI.

THE eighteenth century was marked in
Venice by a partial revival of the art
of painting. Four contemporary masters
— Tiepolo, Canaletti, Longhi and Gaardi —
have left abundance of meritorious work,
which illustrates the taste and manners of
society, shows how men and women dressed
and moved and took their pastime in the
City of the Waters, and preserves for us the
-external features of Venice during the last
hundred years of the Republic. »

As an artist, Tiepolo was undoubtedly the
strongest of these four. In him alone we
recognize a genius of the first order, who,
had he been born in the great age of Italian
painting, might have disputed the palm with
men like Tintoretto. His frescoes in the
Palazzo Labia, representing the embarkation
of Antony and Cleopatra on the Cydnus,
and their famous banquet at Canopus, are
worthy to be classed with the finest decora-
tive work of Paolo Veronese. Indeed, the
sense of colour, the robust breadth of design,
and the firm, unerring execution, which dis-

267

PIETRO LONGHI

tinguish that great master, seem to have
passed into Tiepolo, who revives the splen-
dours of the sixteenth century in these
superbly painted pageants. It is to be
regretted, that one so eminently gifted should
have condescended to the barocco taste of
the age in those many allegories and celes-
tial triumphs, which he executed upon the
ceilings of palaces and the cupolas of
churches. Little, except the frescoes of the
Labia reception-hall, survives to show what
Tiepolo might have achieved, had de re-
mained true to his native instinct for heroic
subjects and for masculine sobriety of work-
manship.

Of Canaletti it is not necessary to say
much. The fame which he erewhile enjoyed
in England has been obscured of late years —
to some extent, perhaps, by the eloquence of
Mr. Ruskin, but more by the finer sense for
landscape and the truer way of rendering
nature which have sprung up in Europe.
His pictures of Venetian buildings and
canals strike us as cold, tame, and mechan-
ical, accustomed as we are to the magic of
Turner's palette and the penetrative force of
his imagination.

268

METRO LONGHI

Guardi, the pupil and in some respects the
imitator of Canaletti, has met with a differ-
ent fate. Less prized during the heyday of
his master's fame, he has been steadily
acquiring reputation on account of certain
qualities peculiar to himself. His draughts-
manship displays an agreeable sketchiness ;
his colouring a graceful gemmy brightness
and a glow of sunny gold. But what has
mainly served to win for Guardi popularity^
is the attention he paid to contemporary
costume and manners. Canaletti filled large
canvasses with mathematical perspectives of
city and water. At the same time he omit-
ted life and incident. There is little to
remind us that the Venice he so laboriously
depicted was the Venice of perukes and
bag-wigs, of masks and hoops and carnival
disguises. Guardi had an eye for local col-
our and for fashionable humours. The
result is that some of his small pictures —
one, for instance, which represents a brilliant
reception in the Sala del Collegio of the
Ducal Palace — have a real value for us by
recalling the life of a vanished and irrecover-
able past. Thus Guardi illustrates the truth,
that artists may acquire posthumous impor-

269

PIETRO LON6HI

tance by felicitous accident in their choice of
subjects or the bias of their sympathies.
We would willingly exchange a dozen so-
called historical pictures for one fresh and
vivid scene, which brings a bygone phase of
civilization before our eyes.

In this particular respect Longhi surpasses
Guardi, and deserves to be styled the pic-
torial chronicler of Venetian society in the
eighteenth century. He has even been
called the Venetian Hogarth and the Vene-
tian Boucher. Neither of these titles, how-
ever, as I shall attempt to demonstrate,
rightly characterize his specific quality.
Could his numerous works be collected in
one place, or adequately reproduced, we
should possess a complete epitome of Vene-
tian life and manners in the age which
produced Goldoni and . Casanova, Carlo
Gozzi and Caterina Dolfin-Tron.

II.

VERY little is known of Longhi's career,
and that little has no great importance.
He was the son of a goldsmith, bom at
Venice in 1702, and brought up to his
father's trade. While yet a lad, Pietro

270

PIETRO LONGHI

showed unusual powers of invention and
elegance of drawing in the designs he made
for ornamental plate. This induced his
parents to let him study painting. His early
training in the goldsmith's trade, however,
seems to have left an indelible mark on
Longhi's genius. A love of delicate line
remained with him, and he displayed an
affectionate partiality for the minutest details
of decorative furniture, dress, and articles of
luxury. Some of his drawings of plate —
cofiEee-pots, chocolate-mills, ewers, salvers,
water- vessels — are exquisite -for their instinc-
tive sense of graceful curve and unerring
precision of contour. It was a period, as we
know, during which such things acquired an
almost flawless purity of outline, and Longhi
felt them with the enthusiasm of a practised
artizan.

He studied painting under Antonio Bal-
estra at Venice, and also under Giuseppe
Maria Crespi at Bologna. The baneful
influences of the latter city may be traced in
Longhi's earliest Jcnown undertakin g. This is
an elaborate work in Fresco at the Sagredo
Palace on the Grand Canal. The patrician
family of that name inhabited an old

271

PIETRO LONGHI

Venetian-Gothic house at San Felice. Early
in the last century they rebuilt the hall and
staircase in Palladian style, leaving the front
with its beautiful arcades untouched. The
decoration of this addition to their mansion
was entrusted to Pietro Longhi in 1734.
The subject, chosen by himself or indicated
by his patron, was the Fall of the Giants —
La Caduta dei Giganti. Longhi treated this
unmanageable theme as follows. He placed
the deities of Olympus upon the ceiling.
Jupiter in the centre advances, brandishing
his arms, and hurling forked lightnings on
the Titans, who are precipitated headlong
among solid purple clouds and masses of
broken mountains, covering the three sides
of the staircase. The scene is represented
without dignity, dramatic force, or harmony
of composition. The drawing throughout is
feeble, the colouring heavy and tame, the
execution unskilful. Longhi had no notion
how to work in fresco, differing herein nota-
bly from his illustrious contemporary Tiepolo.
A vulgar Jove, particularly vulgar in the
declamatory sweep of his left hand, a vulgar
Juno, with a sneering, tittering leer upon her
common face, reveal the painter's want of

272

PIETRO LONGHI

sympathy with mythological grandeur. The
Titans are a confused heap of biawny,
sprawling nudities — studied, perhaps from
gondoliers or stevedores, but showing a want
of even academical adroitness in their
ill-drawn extremities and inadequate fore-
shortenings. It was essential in such a
subject that movement should be suggested.
Yet Longhi has contrived to make the falling
rocks and lurid clouds look as though they
were irremovably wedged into their places
on the walls, while his ruining giants are
clearly transcripts from naked models in
repose. Here and there upon the ceiling
we catch a note of graceful fancy, especially
in a group of lightly-painted goddesses, —
elegant and natural female figures, draped in
pale blues and greens and pinks, with a
silvery illumination from the upper sky. But
the somewhat effeminate sweetness of this
episode is ill-combined with the dull and
impotent striving after violent effect in the
main subject; and the whole composition
leaves upon our mind the impression of
*' sound and fury, signifying nothing."

273

PIETRO LONOHI
III.

IT is singular that Longhi should have
reached the age of thirty-two without
discovering his real vocation. The absence
of brain-force in the conception, of strength
in the design, and of any effective adaptation
to architecture, which damns these decora-
tive frescoes, is enough to prove that he was
here engaged on work, for which he had no
faculty and felt no sympathy.

What revealed to him the true bias of
his talent? Did he perchance, just about
this period, come across some prints from
Hogarth ? That is very possible. But the
records of his life are so hopelessly meagre
that it were useless to indulge in conjecture.

I am not aware whether he had already
essayed any of those domestic pieces and
delineative scenes from social life, which
displayed his genuine artistic power, and for
the sake of which his name will always be
appreciated. He is said to have been of a
gay, capricious temperament, delighting in
the superficial aspects of aristocratic society,
savouring the humours of the common folk
with no less pleasure, and enjoying all

274

PISTRO LONGHI

phases of that easy-going carnival gaiety, in
which the various classes met and mingled
at Venice. These inclinations directed him
at last into the right path. For some forty
years he continued to paint a series of easel-
pictures, none of them very large, some of
them quite small, in which the Vanity Fair
of Venice at his epoch was represented with
fidelity and kindly feeling.

The panels attributed to Pietro Longhi
are innumerable. They may be found scat-
tered through public galleries and private
collections, adorning the walls of patrician
palaces, or thrust away in corners of country
houses. He worked carefully, polished the
surface of his pictures to the finish of a
miniature, set them in frames of a fixed pat-
tern, and covered them with glass. These
genre-pictures, while presenting notes of
similarity, differ very considerably in their
technical handling and their scheme of col-
our. Our first inference, after inspecting a
miscellaneous selection, is that Longhi must
have started a school of imitators. Indeed
this is probably the case; and it is certain
that some pieces ascribed to his brush are
the productions of his son Aless^ndro, who

275

PIETRO LONGHI

was born in 1733. Yet closer study of
authentic paintings by Pietro's hand compels
the critic to be cautious before he rejects, on
internal evidence of style, a single piece
assigned by good tradition to this artist.
The Museco Civico at Venice, for example,
contains a large number of Longhis, some
of which seem to fall below his usual stand-
ard. I have, however, discovered elaborate
drawings for these doubtful pictures in the
book of his original sketches, which is also
preserved there. Longhi must therefore
have painted the pictures himself, or must
have left the execution of his designs to a
pupil. Again, the style of his two master-
pieces (the Sala del Ridotto and the Parla-
torio d^un ConventOy both in the Museo Civ-
ico) differs in important particulars from that
of the elaborately finished little panels by
which he is most widely known. These fine
compositions are marked by a freer breadth
of handling, a sketchy boldness, a combined
richness and subtlety of colouring, and an
animation of figures in movement, which are
not common in the average of his genre-
pieces. When I come to speak of the family
portrait of. the Pisani, signed by his name, I

276

PIETRO LONGHI

shall have to point out that the style of
execution, the scheme of colour, and the
pictorial feeling of this large group belong to
a manner dissimilar from either of those,
which I have already indicated as belonging
to authentic Longhis.

IV.

IT has been well observed by a Venetian
writer, whose meagre panegyric is nearly
all we have in print upon the subject of this
painter's biography, that " there is no scene
or point of domestic life which he has not
treated many times and in divers ways. All
those episodes which make up the Day of a
Gentleman, as.sung at a later date by Parini,
had been already set forth by the brush of
Longhi." »

The duties of the toilette, over which
ladies and young men of fashion dawdled
through their mornings; the drinking of
chocolate in bed, attended by a wife or mis-
tress or obsequious man of business; the
long hours spent before the looking-glass.

I See V. Lazari, Elogio di Pietro Longhi. Venezia,
1862.

277

PIETRO LONGHI

with maids or valets matching complexions,
sorting dresses from the wardrobe, and fizing
patches upon telling points of cheek or fore-
head; the fashionable hair-dresser, building
up a lady's tower with tongs, or tying the
knot of a bestu*s bag-wig ; the children troop-
ing in to kiss their mother's hand at break-
fast time — stiff little girls in hoops, and tiny
cavalieri in uniform, with sword and shoe-
buckles and queue ; the vendors of flowered
silks and laces laying out their wares; the
pert young laundress smuggling a billet-doux
into a beauty's hand before her unsuspecting
husband's face; the fine gentleman ordering
a waistcoat in the shop of a tailoress, ogling
and flirting over the commission, while a
running footman with tall cane in hand
comes bustling in to ask if his lord's suit is
ready; the old patrician lolling in his easy
chair, and toying with a fan ; the abbe turn-
ing over the leaves of some fresh play or
morning paper: scenes like these we may
assign to the Venetian forenoon.

Afternoon brings ceremonious visits, when
grand ladies, sailing in their hoops, salute
each other, and beaux make legs on entering
a drawing-room, and lacqueys hand round

278

METRO LONGHI

chocolate on silver salvers. Daacing-Iessons
may perhaps be assigned to this part of the
day ; a spruce French professor teaching his
fair pupil how to drop a curtsey, or to swim
with solemn grace through the figures of the
minuet. At night we are introduced .to the
hall of the Ridotto; patricians in toga and
snow-white periwig hold banks for faro
beneath the glittering chandeliers ; men and
women, closely masked, jostle each other at
the gambling-tables, where sequins and
ducats lie about in heaps. The petty houses,
or casini, now engage attention. Here may
be seen a pair of stealthy, muffled libertines
hastening to complete an assignation. Then
there are meetings at street-corners, or on
the landing-places of traghetH — mysterious
figures flitting to and fro in wide miraculous
bautte beneath the light of flickering flam-
beaux. Both men and women in these
nocturnal scenes wear muffs, trimmed with
fur, and secured around their waist by
girdles.

Theatres, masked balls, banquets and
cofEee-houses, music parties in villa-gardens,
the assemblies of literary coteries, prome-
nades on the piazza, and carnival processions.

279

PIETRO LONGHI

obtain their due share of attention from this
vigilant observer. But, as is the way with
Longhi, only episodes are treated. He does
not, like some painters of our own time — like
Mr. Frith, R.A., for instance — attempt to
bring the accumulated details of a complex
scene before us. He leaves the context of
his chosen incident to be divined.

The traffic of the open streets — quack-
doctors on their platforms with a crowd of
gaping dupes around them, mountebanks
performing tricks, the criers of stewed plums
and sausages, fortune-tellers, itinerant musi-
cians, improvisatory poets bawling out their
octave stanzas, cloaked serenaders twangling
mandolines — such motives may be found in
fair abundance among Longhi's genre-pieces.
Nor does he altogether neglect the country.
Many of his pictures are devoted to hunting
parties, riding-lessons, shooting and fishing,
all the amusements of the Venetian villeggia-
tura. Peasants, lounging over their wine or
pottage at a rustic table, are depicted with
no less felicity than the beau and coquette
in their glory. The grimy interior of a
village tavern is portrayed with the same
gusto as a fine lady's gilt saloon.

280 .

PIETRO LONGHI

LONGHI used to tell Goldoni that they
— the painter and the playwright — ^were
brethren in Art ; and one of the poet's son-
nets records this saying : —

" Longbif ttt che la mia tnusa sorella

Cbiami del tuopinnel cbe cerca il vero.'* ^

It seems that their contemporaries were alive
to the similar qualities and the common aims
of the two men; for Gasparo Gozzi drew
a parallel between them in a number of his
Venetian Gazzetta. Indeed the resemblance
is more than merely superficial. Longhi
surveyed, human life with the same kindly
glance and the same absence of gravity or
depth of intuition as Goldoni. They both
studied nature, but nature only in her genial
moods. They both sincerely aimed at truth,
but avoided truths which were sinister or
painful.

This renders the designation of Venetian
Hogarth peculiarly inappropriate to Longhi.
There is neither tragedy nor satire, and only
a thin silvery vein of humour, in his work.
Indeed it may be questioned whether he was
in any exact sense humorous at all. What

281

PIETRO LON6HI

looks like humour in some of his pictures is
probably unconscious. In like manner he
lacked pathos, and never strove to moralize
the themes he treated. Where would
Hogarth be if we excluded Gargantuan
humour, Juvenalian satire, stern morality,
and cruel pathos from his scenes of social
life.? Longhi is never gross and never
passionate. With a kind of sensitive French
curiosity he likes to graze the darker and
the coarser side of life, and pass it by. He
does not want to probe the cancers of the
human breast, or to lay bare the festering
sores of vice. What would become of
Hogarth if he were deprived of his grim
surgical anatomy? Neither in the heights
nor in the depths was Longhi at home —
neither in the region of Olympian poetry nor
in the purgatory of man's sin and folly. He
sailed delightfully, agreeably, across the
middle waters of the world, where steering
is not difficult.

In all this Goldoni resembles him, except
only that Goldoni had a rich vein of cheerful
humour. It would be therefore more just to
call Longhi the Goldoni of painting than the
Venetian Hogarth.

282

METRO LONGHI

Longhi's portrait, unlike that of Goldoni,
betrays no sensuousness. He seems to have
had a long, refined face, with bright, benig-
nant, dark eyes, a pleasantly smiling mouth,
thin lips, and a look of gently snbrisive
appreciation rather than of irony or sarcasm.
The engraving by which I know his features'
suggests an intelligent, attenuated Addison
— not a powerful or first-rate man, but a
genially observant superior mediocrity.

Although Longhi, as a personality, is
clearly not of the same type as Hogarth,
there are certain points of similarity between
the men as artists. Both were taught the
goldsmith's trade, and both learned painting
under Bolognese influences. Both eventually
found their sphere in the delineation of the
life around them. There the similarity
ceases. Longhi lacks, as I have said, the
humour, the satire, the penetrative imagina-
tion, the broad sympathy with human nature
in its coarser aspects, which make Hogarth
unrivalled as a pictorial moralist. At the
same time, it is difficult to imagine that
Longhi was not influenced by Hogarth. In
the technique of his art he has something
which appears to be derived from the elder

283

PIETRO LONGHI

and stronger master — a choice of points
for observation, and arrangement of figures
in groups, a mode of rendering attitude and
suggesting movement ; finally, the manner of
execution reminds us of Hogarth. Longhi
adandoned his false decorative style, the
style of the Palazzo Sagredo, at some time
after 1734. This date corresponds with
Hogarth's triumphant entrance upon his
career as a satirical painter of society.
Possibly Longhi may have met with the
engravings of the Marriage a la Mode^ and
have been stimulated by them to undertake
the work, which he carried on with nothing
of Hogarth's moral force, and with a small
iportion of his descriptive faculty, yet still
with valuable results for the student of
■eighteenth century manners.

VI.

iN 1763- an Academy for the study of the
arts of design was opened by some
members of the Pisani family in their palace
at S. Stefano. The chiefs of that patrician
house were four sons of the late Doge
Alvise Pisani. According to Lazari, nty sole
•authority for this passage in Longhi's biog-

284

PIETRO LONGHI

raphy, the founder of the Academy was a
Procuratore di S. Marco, who had a son of
remarkable promise. This son he wished to
instruct in the fine arts : and Pietro Longhi
was chosen to fill the chair of painting,
which he occupied for two years. At the
end of that time, young Pisani died, and the
institution was closed — now that the hopes
which led to its foundation were extin-
guished.'

Among the few fac^s of Longhi's life this
connection with the Pisani Academy has to
be recorded. It is also of some importance
in helping us to decide whether a large

I I have followed Lazari above. But examination
of the Pisani pedigree (published for the Nozze Giusti-
Giustiniani, Rovigo, Tip. Minelliana, 1887) shows that
none of the Doge's sons was Prociuratore di S. Marco*
and that none of them had a son who died before
marriage. The only Procuratore Pisani of this period
was Giorgio Pisani (1739-1811), of the branch sumamed
In Procuratia. He played a prominent part in the
political history of the last days of the Venetian Repub-
lic But he also had no son who can be connected with
Lazari's story regarding the foundation of the Acade my.
I am obliged therefore to suppose that Lazari's
account, though substantially correct as to the existence
of the Academy in question, was based on a confused
tradition.

285

PIETRO LONGHI

portrait-picture, representing the chiefs of
the Pisani family, together with the "wife and
children of one of its most eminent members
( Luigi, a godchild of Louis XIV.), is rightly
ascribed to him. The huge canvas, which is
now in the possession of the Contessa
Evelina Almor6 Pisani, was found by her
rolled up and hidden away in a cabinet
beneath the grand staircase of the Palazzo
Pisani at S. Stefano.' It proved to be in
excellent preservation; and it is signed in
large clear text letters — Pietro Longhi, So
far there would seem to be no doubt that
the picture is genuine; and I, for my part,
am prepared to accept it as such, when I
consider that Longhi enjoyed the confidence
of the Pisani family, and presided over their
Academy, about the period when it was
executed. Yet the student of his works
cannot fail to be struck by marked diifer-
ences of style between this and other
authentic pictures from his hand.

The central group consists of the noble

I The picture now hangs on the wall of Mme.
Pisani's drawing-room in the Palazzo Barbaro on the
Grand Canal of Venice.

286

PIETRO LONGHI

Lady Paolina Gambara, wife of Luigi Pisani,
seated with her children round her.s Her
husband stands behind, together with his
three brothers and an intimate friend of the
house. Allegorical figures representing the
arts and sciences complete the composition.
In the distance is seen the princely palace
of Str^ upon the Brenta, which was designed
in part by one of the Pisani brothers. The
arrangement of these interconnected groups
is excellent ; the characterization of the
several heads, admirable ; the drawing, firm
and accurate ; and the whole scene is bathed
in a glow of roseate colour which seems
actually to radiate light. Longhi, so far as
I am aware, produced nothing in the same
style as this complicated masterpiece of
portraiture and allegorical suggestion. In
conception, execution, and scheme of colour,
it reminds us of a French painter ; and if he
had left a series of such works, he might
have deserved what now seems the inappro-
priate title of the Venetian Boucher.

I The eldest of these children was born in 1753, and
may have been about seven when the picture was
painted.

287

PIETRO LONGHI

I cannot pretend to have seen more than
a small portion of Longhi's pictures. But
this portrait of the Pisani family detaches
itself as something in a different key of
feeling and of workmanship from any with
which I am acquainted. Admirers of his
art should not fail to pay it the attention it
deserves ; and if the day comes when a
thorough study of this interesting master
shall be made, it is not impossible that gen-
uine paintings in the same manner may be
discovered.

VII.

A SERIES of frescoes attributed to Pietro
Longhi should also here be mentioned.
They decorate three sides of the staircase of
the Palazzo Sina (formerly Grassi) on the
Grand Canal. The balustrades of an open
loggia or gallery are painted with bold
architectural relief. Behind the pilasters of
this balcony a motley company of life-sized
figures promenade or stand about in groups.
Some are entering in carnival costume, with
masks and long mantles. Others wear the
gala dress of the last century. Elderly ladies
are draped in the black zendado of Venetian

288

PIETRO LONGHI

aristocracy. Grave senators bend their
courtly heads beneath the weight of snowy
periwigs. Lacqueys in livery and running
footmen in Albanian costume wait upon the
guests, handing chocolate or wines on silver
trays. This scene of fashionable life is
depicted with vivacity ; the studies of face
and attitude are true to nature ; an agreeable
air of good tone and sober animation per-
vades the whole society. Probably many of
the persons introduced were copied from the
life ; for it is reported of Longhi that one of
his greatest merits was the dexterity witb
which he reproduced the main actors in the
bel monde of Venice — so that folk could
recognize their acquaintances upon his
canvas merely by the carriage of their mask
and domino.

Owing to restoration, it is difficult to say
how far the fresco-painting was well executed,,
and to what extent the original tone has
been preserved. At present the colouring is
somewhat chalky, dull, and lifeless ; and I
suspect Longhi's brush-work suffered con-
siderably when the palace was internally
remodelled some years ago.

289

PIKTRO LONGHI
VIII.

IT only remains to speak of Pietro
Longhi's sketch-book. This collection
of original drawings, nambering 140 pieces,
and containing a very large variety of
istudies (several pages being filled on front
and back with upwards of ten separate
figures) was formed by Alessandro Longhi.
It came into the possession of the patrician
Teodoro Correr, who bequeathed it, together
with the rest of his immense museum, to the
town of Venice.

As a supplement to Longhi*s paintings,
this sketch-book is invaluable. It brings us
close to the artist's methods, aims, and
personal predilections in the choice of
motives. Most of the drawings are done in
hard black pencil or chalk, heightened and
corrected with white ; a few in soft red
chalk. Unfortunately, they have suffered to
a large extent from rubbing, and this injury
is likely to increase with time, owing to the
^clumsy binding of the volume which contains
them.

Studies from the nude are conspicuous by
their extreme rarity and want of force. Great

290

PIETRO LONGHI

attention has been paid to the details of
costume and furniture. The zendado, the
bauttay the hoop, the bag-wig, the fop*s
coat and waistcoat, the patrician's civil
mantle, the knee-breeches and stockings of
a well-dressed gentleman, are copied and
re-copied with loving care. Painters at the
easel, ballet-girls with castanets, maid-serv-
ants holding trays, grooms and lacqueys,
men on horseback, serenaders with lute or
mandoline, ballad-singers, music and dancing-
masters, women working at lace-pillows,
gentlemen in bed, sportsmen discharging
their fowling-pieces, gondoliers rowing, little
girls in go-carts or fenced chairs, seUers of
tarts in the street, country boys in taverns,
chests of drawers, pots, pans, jugs, gourds,
'wine-fiasks, parrots in cages, ladies at the
clavichord, queues, fans, books, snuff-boxes,
tables, petticoats, desks, the draperies of
doors and windows, wigs, footmen placing
chairs for guests, beaux bowing in the
doorway or whispering tender nothings at a
beauty's ear, old men reclining in arm-chairs,
embroiderers at work, muffs, copper water-
buckets, nurses with babies in their arms,
silver plate of all descriptions : — such is the

291

PIETRO LONGHI

farrago of this mnltiform and graceful, bat
limited, series of transcripts from the world
of visible objects. It is clear that Longhi
thought **the proper study of mankind is
man''; — and man as principally a clothed,
sociable, well-behaved animal.

His sketches are remarkable for their
strenuous sincerity — their search after the
right attitude, their serious effort to hit the
precise line wanted, their suggested move-
ment and seizure of life in the superficies.
They have a sustained air of good breeding,
refined intelligence, and genial sympathy
with the prose of human nature. Landscape
might never have existed so far as Longhi
was concerned. I do not think that a tree, a
cloud, or even a flower will be found among
the miscellaneous objects he so carefully
studied and drew so deftly. The world he
moved in was the world of men and women
meeting on the surface-paths of daily inter-
course. Even here, we do not detect the
slightest interest in passionate or painful
aspects of experience. All Longhi's people
are well-to-do and placid in their different
degrees. The peasants in the taverns do
-not brawl, nor the fine gentlemen fight duels,

292

PIETRO LONGHI

nor the lovers in the drawing-rooms quarrel.
He seems to have overlooked beggary,
disease, and every form of vice or suffering.
He does not care for animals. With the
exception of a parrot, a caged canary, and a
stiffly drawn riding-horse, the brute creation
is not represented in these sketches. No
sarcasm, no grossness, no violence of any
kind, disturbs the calm artistic seriousness,
the sweet painstaking curiosity of his mental
mood. The execution throughout is less
robust than sensitively deUcate. We feel a
something French, a suggestion of Watteau*s
elysium of fashion, in his touch on things.
In fine, the sketch-book corroborates the
impression made on us by Longhi's finished
pictures.

IX.

WITH all his limitations of character and
artistic scope, Longhi remains a very
interesting and highly respectable painter.
In an age of social corruption he remained
free from impurity, and depicted only what
was blameless and of good repute. We
cannot study his work without surmising
that manners in Italy were more refined than

293

PIETRO LONGHI

in our own country at that epoch — a con-
clusion to which we are also led by Goldoni's,
Carlo Gozzi*s, and even Casanova's Memoirs.
Morally licentious and politically decadent,
the Venetians undoubtedly were. But they
were neither brutal, nor cruel, nor savage,
nor sottish. Even the less admirable aspects
of their social life — its wasteful luxury and
ejffeminate indulgence in pleasure — have
been treated with so much reserve by this
humane artist, that youth and innocence can
suffer no contamination from the study of
his works. At the same time they are
delightful for their gracious realism, for their
naive touch upon the follies of the period.
Those who love to dream themselves back
into the days of hoops and perukes — and
there are many such among us now — should
not neglect to make themselves acquainted
with Pietro Longhi.

I G. B. Tiepolo; b. 1692, d. 1769. Antonio Canale»
or Canaletti; b. 1697, d. 1768. Pietro Longhi; b. 170,
d. about 1780. Francesco Guardi; b. 17x2, d. 1793.

m^ mm

SUCH is the staying quality of all true
Art that the Artist himself often
partakes of the same unconditional immor-
tality. In other words it is difficult for us
to associate old cfge with the Man or
Woman who has produced verse which will
live when we who read and they who write
are gone alike to dust : —

" Deaf the praised ear and mute the tune-
ful tongue*

»>

This is particularly true when we con-
sider Mr. Austin Dobson who was bom in
1840, and now at an age when most men
have done their best still reminds us by his
latest work that he at least has not fallen
upon mournful silence.^

Proverbs in Porcelain were first pub-
lished entire in i8jjy and have since passed

I Tbe Collected Poems of Mr. *Dobson can now
be bad in one comely octavo. {London, iSgj.)
ft is interesting to know tbat Mr. Edmund Gosse
has collected and just issued a privately printed
Carmina Votiva — /a; copies all told — wbicb con-
tains some tbree score pieces not now to be found in
any of Dobson' s publisbed volumes.

through many idiiions.^ It would he impos-
sihle to find more exquisite specimens of
lapidary art. Mr, Stedman has already
pointed out their " dainty workmanship and
comprehension of the spirit of an age^
Still later he has characterised them as
" hits of * Louis Quince ' and perfectly
unique in English verse. Nothing can
excel the heauty and pathos of * Good-Night f
'Bahette* with the ^ngelus song low-
hlended in its dying fall"^ Do they not
also in a subtlet far-off way^ remind us of
a little suite in dance music — suggestions
of days and nights remote^ withdrawn : a
curious crepuscular melody of exquisite
minor modulation — a beseeching little
sigh which almost sings us and itself
asleep ?

2 A Bibliography of Austin Dobson Attempted
by Francis Edwin Murray. 'Derby {England 1900.
Oblong crown Svo, pp. xx^S48. tA more detesta-
ble format for a most remarkable achievement could
not be imagined I

3 Victorian Poets. Pp. 47 j.

For OCTOBER:

y£s Triplex,

By '

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Proverbs in Porcelain.

''Rim en reliefs

Ob, the song where not one of the Graces

Tigbt-laces,"
Where we woo the sweet Muses not starcbly,

But archly, —

IVbere the verse, like the piper a-Maying,

Comes playing, —
And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer

In answer, —

// will last till men weary of pleasure

In measure !

it will last till men weary of laughter . . .

tAnd after I

AUSTIN DOBSON.

PROVERBS IN PORCELAIN.

4 4 A PLBASANT memory connected with the appear-
J\ ance in 1873 of VignetUs in Rhymt is that the
little book procured me the friendship of the
author of London Lyrics. My second volume of verse,
with the title prefixed to this note, was dedicated to him in
words which— as they have not been recently reprinted —
may be here preserved : —

TO FREDERICK LOCKER.

Is it to kindest Friend I send

This nosegay gathered new ?
Or is it more to Critic sure, —

To Singer clear and true ?
I know not which, indeed, nor need ;

All Three I found — in You."

AUSTIN DOBSON.

(Note in Collected Poems, p. 514.)

PROLOGUE.

ASSUME that we are friends* Assume
A common taste for old costume.
Old pictures, — hooks, Then dream us sitting,-
Us two, — in some soft-lighted room.

Outside the wind; — the "ways are mire,
IVe, with our faces towards the fire.

Finished the feast not full but fitting,
IVatch the light-leaping flames aspire.

Silent at first, in time we glow ;
Discuss " eclectics,** high and low ;

Inspect engravings, *twixt us passing
The fancies of Detroy, Moreau ;

"Reveils*' and **Couchers," "Balls " and "Fetes** ;
tAnon we glide to " crocks ** and plates.
Grow eloquent on gla^e and classing.
And half-pathetic over "states.**

Then I produce my *Pri{e, in truth ; —
Six groups in StvRES, fresh as Youth,

And rare as Love. You pause, you wonder,
{pretend to doubt the marks, forsooth I )

299

And so we fall to wfy and boa
Tbe fragiU figures smiU and bow ;

"Divitte, at lengtb, tbe fable under . . .
Tbus grew tbe ^* Scenes" tbatfollirx note.

300

THE BALLAD A -LA -MODE.

"Tout -oient h. point h qui peut attendreJ^

Scene. — A Boudoir Louis-Quince, painted with Cupids

shooting at Butterflies.

The Countess. The Baron {ber cousin and suitor).
The Countess {looking upfront ber work),
iARON, you doze.

The Baron {closing bis book).

I, Madame ? No.
I wait your order — Stay or Go.

The Countess.

Which means, I think, that Go or Stay
Affects you nothing, either way.

The Baron.

Excuse me, — By your favour graced,
My inclinations are effaced.

The-Countess.

Or much the same. How keen you grow 1
You must be reading Marivaux.

The Baron.
Nay, — *twas a song of Sainte-Aulaire.

301

The Countess.

Then read me one. We've time to spare
If I can catch the clock-face there,
'Tis barely eight.

The Baron.

What shall it be,—
A tale of woe, or perfidy ?

The Countess.

Not woes, I beg. I doubt your woes :
But perfidy, of course, one knows.

The Baron {reads).

" 'Ab, TbilHs! cruel Pbillis!

(/ beard a Sbepberd say,)
You bold me witbjfour Eyes, and yet

You bid me — Go my Way I *

" 'Ab, Colin ! foolisb Colin !

(Tbe Maiden answered so,)
I/tbai be All, tbe 111 is small,

I close tbem — You may go!* ,

'^ 'But foben ber eyes sbe opened,
{tAltbougA tbe sun it sbone,)
Sbe found tbe Sbepberd bad not stirred —

* Because tbe Light was gone ! *

**Ab, Cupid! wanton Cupid!

* Twas ever t bus your way :

302

IVben Maids would hid you ply jf our IVings,
You find Excuse to slay! "

The Countess.

Famous I He earned whatever he got : —
But there 's some sequel, is there not ?

The Baron {turning the page).

I think not. — No. Unless 'tis this :
My fate is far more hard than his ; —
In fact, your Eyes —

The Countess.

Now, that 's a breach 1
Your bond is — not to make a speech.
And we must start — so call Justine.
I know exactly what you mean I —
Give me your arm —

The Baron.

If, in return,
Countess, I could your hand but earn I

The Countess.

I thought as much. This comes, you see,

Of sentiment, and Arcady,

Where vows are hung on every tree. . .

The Baron {offering bis arm, with a low how)*
And no one dreams — of Perfidy.

Z^3

THE METAMORPHOSIS.

" On ** enricbit quaud on dort."

Scene. — j4 high sUme Seat in an Alley of clipped

Lime-trees.

The Abb6 Tirili. Monsieur L'^toile.

The ABBt {writing),

i i 'T'His shepherdess Dorine adored — "

1 What rhyme is next ? Implored ? — ignored ?
Toured? — soared ? -^ afford ? That facile Dunce,
L*£toile, wonld cap the line at once.
*Twill come in time. Meanwhile, suppose
We take a meditative doze.

[Sleeps. By-and-hy his paper falls.)

M. L'fixoiLE {approaching from the hack).

Some one before me. What I *tis you,
Monsieur the Scholar ? Sleeping too I

{Picks up the fluttering paper.)
More " Tales" of course. 'One can't refuse
To chase so fugitive a Muse 1
Verses are public, too, that fly
" Cum privilegio " — Zephyri !

{Reads.)
" Clitander and Dorine.*' Insane,!
He fancies he's a La Fontaine !

304

**/« early Days, the Godsy we find,

Taid casual Visits to Mankind; —

At least, authentic Records say so

In Publius Ovidius Nasor

(Three names for one. This passes all.

Tis " furiously *' classical ! )

" No doubt tbeir Purpose oft would be

Some * Nodus dignus yindice * ;

*On dity' not less, these earthly Tours

IVere mostly matters of Amours.

And woe to him whose luckless Flame

Impeded that Olympic Game;

Ere he could say an 'Ave * o'er.

They changed him— like a Louis-d'or"

{'^Aves," and current coinage 1 O I —
O shade of Nicholas Boileau 1 )
" Bird, Beast, or River he became :

IVith Women it was much the same.

In Ovid Case to Case succeeds ;

'But Names the Reader never reads,''

(That is, Monsieur the AbW feels

His quantities are out at heels ! )

*' Suffices that, for this our Tale,

There dwelt in a Thessalian Vale,

Of Tales like this the frequent Scene,

A Shepherdess, by name Dorine.

Trim Waist, ripe Lips, bright Eyes, had she ;—

In short, — the whole Artillery.

305

Her Beauty made some local Stir ; —
Men marked it* So did Jupiter,
This Shepherdess Dorine adored, . "
Implored, ignored, and soared, and poured —
(He 's scrawled them here 1 ) We '11 sum in brief
His fable on his second leaf.

{Pyrites.)
There, they shall know who 'twas that wrote : —

" L'Stoile's is but a mock-hird's note'^ [Eodt.

The Abb]£ (waking).

Implored *s the word, I think. But where, —
Where is my paper ? Ah 1 'tis there 1
Eh! what?

(Reads.)

The Metamorphosis.

(not in Ovid.)

'* The Shepherdess Dorine adored
The Shepherd-Boy Clitander ;
*ButJove himself, Olympus' Lord,
The Shepherdess Dorine adored.

Our t/lbhe's Aid the Pair Implored; — ••

And changed to Goose and Gander, \

The Shepherdess 'Dorine adored \

The Shepherd' Boy Clitander .' " <

306

L'£toile, — by all the Muses 1

Peste!
He 's oft, post-haste, to tell the rest.
No matter. Laugh, Sir Dunce, to-day ;
Next time 'twill be my turn to play.

307

THE SONG OUT OF SEASON.

" Point de cult* sans mysthre.'*

Scene. — ^4 Corridor in a CbcUeau, mtb Busts and

Venice chandeliers.

Monsieur L*£toile. Two Voices.

M. L'fixoiLE {carrying a Rose),

THIS is the place. Mutine said here.
" Through the Mandni room, and near
The fifth Venetian chandelier. . ."
The fifth ? — She knew there were but four; —
Still, here 's the htisto of the Moor.

(Humming.)

Tra-la, tra-la ! If Bijou wake,
She *li bark, no doubt, and spoil my shake I
I '11 tap, I think. One can't mistake ;
This surely is the door.

{Sings softly.)

** IVbenJove, the Skies' Directory

First saw you sleep ofyore^
He cried aloud for Nectar^

* The Nectar quickly pour, —

The Nectary Hehe, pour .' * "

(No sound. I '11 tap once more.)

308

{

{Sings again.)

'* Then came the Sire Apollo,
He past you where you lay ;

* Come J THan, rise andfollwD
The dappled Hart to slay, —
The rapid Hart to slay: "

{A rustling within.)

(Coquette I She heard before.)

{Sings again.)

''And urchin Cupid after
Beside the Pillow curled.

He whispered you with Laughter,
'Awake and witch the iVorld, —
O l^enus, witch the fVorld!' *'

(Now comes the last. *Tis scarcely worse,
I think, than Monsieur TAbbA's verse.)

" So waken, waken, waken,
O You, whom we adore !

Where Gods can be mistaken.
Mere Mortals must he more, —
Poor Mortals must be more! "

(That merits an encore ! )

" So waken, waken, waken !
O YOU whom we adore !"

309

{j4n imrgetic Voick.)

TiB thon, Antoink } Ah, Addle-pate 1
Ah, Thief of Valet, always late !
Have I not told thee half-past eight
A thousand times 1

(Great agitdtitm.)

Bat wait, — but wait,

M. L'£toile {stupefied).

Jnst Skies ! What hideous roar ! —
What lungs I The infamous Soubrette I
This is a turn I sha'n*t forget: —
To make me sing my cbansonnette

Before old Jourdain's door I

{Retiring slowljf.)

And yet, and yet, — it can't be she.
They prompted her. Who can it be ?

{j4 second Voice.)

It was the Abb6 Ti — ri — li 1

{In a mocking falsetto^

'* Where Gods can he mistaken,
Mere Toets must he more, —
Bad Poets must he more,**

310

THE CAP THAT FITS.
" Qui ihne ipines n*aille ddebanx.'*

Scene. — ^ Salon with blu$ and white Panels. Outside^
Tersons pass and re-pass upon a Terrace,

HORTENSE. ARMANDE. MoNSIEUR LoYAL.

Hortense (behind her fan).
OT young, I think.

Armande [raising her eye-glass) .

And faded, too 1 —
Quite faded I Monsieur, what say you ?

M. Loyal.

Nay, — I defer to you. In truth,
To me she seems all grace and youth.

Hortense.

Graceful ? You think it ? What, with hands
That hand like this (with a gesture).

Armande.

And how she stands

M. Loyal.

Nay, — I am wrong again. I thought
Her air delightfully untaught 1

HORTENSE.

But you amuse me —

M. Loyal.

Still her dress, —
Her dress at least, you must confess —

Armande.

Is odious simply I Jacotot
Did not supply that lace, I know ;
And where, I ask, has mortal seen
A hat unfeathered !

HORTENSE.

Edged with green 1

M. tX)YAL.

The words remind me. Let me say
A Fable that I heard to-day.
Have I permission ?

Both (witb enthusiasm).

Monsieur, prayl

M. IX)YAL.

**tMjfrtilia {lest a Scandal rise
The Ladys Name I thus disguise).
Dying of Ennui, once decided, —
Much on Resource herself she prided, —
•

312

■

To choose a Hat. Forthtcitb she flies
On thai momentous Enterprise.
IVbether to Petit or Legros,
I know not : only this I know ; —
Head-dresses then, of any Fashion,
Bore Names of Quality or 'Passion,
(Myrtilla tried them, almost all :

* 'Prudence, she felt, was somewhat small;

* Retirement * seemed the Eyes to hide ;
' Content * at once she cast aside,
^Simplicity* — *Pwas out of place;

* Devotion,* for an older face;
Briefly, Selection smaller grewy

* t^exatious ! odious / * — none would do !
Then, on a sudden, she espied

One that she thought she had not tried:

'Becoming, rather, — * edged with green,* —

Roses inyellow, Thorns between.

'Quick! Bring me that ! * *Tis brought. 'Completey

Divine, Enchanting, Tasteful, Neat,*

In all the Tones. 'And this you call — ? *

* " Ill-Nature," Madame. It fits all.* **

HORTENSE.

A thousand thanks I So naively turned 1

Armande.

So useful too ... to those concerned !
Tis yours ?

313

M. Loyal.

Ah no, — some cynic wit's ;
And caUed (I think) —

{Placing bis hat upon bis breast),

" The Cap that Fits."

THE SECRETS OF THE HEART.

" Le caur mine ou il nja."

Scene. — A Chalet caoered with Honeysuckle.
Ninette. Ninon.

Ninette.
nPHis way —

Ninon.

No, this way —

^ Ninette.

This way, then.
( They enter the Chalet.)
You are as changing, Child, — as Men.

Ninon.

But are they ? Is it true, I mean ?
Who said it ?

Ninette.

Sister S^raphine.
She was so pious and so good,
With such sad eyes beneath her hood.
And such poor little feet, — all bare 1
Her name was Eugenie la F^re.

315

She used to tell us, — moonlight nights, —
When I was at the Cannelites.

Ninon.

Ah, then it must be right. And yet.
Suppose for once — suppose, Ninette —

Ninette.
But what?—

Ninon.

Suppose it were not so ?
Suppose there were true men, you know I

Ninette.
And then ?

Ninon.

Why, — if that could occur.
What kind of man should you prefer ?

Ninette.

What looks, you mean ?

Ninon.

Looks, voice and all.

Ninette.

Well, as to that, he must be tall.
Or say, not "tall," — of middle size;

316

And next, he must have laughing eyes,
And a hook-nose, — with, underneath,
O ! what a row of sparkling teeth I —

Ninon {touching ber cheek suspiciously).

Has he a scar on this side ?

Ninette.

Hush I
Someone is coming. No ; a thrash :
I see it swinging there.

Ninon.

Go on.

Ninette.

Then he must fence, (ah, look, 'tis gone 1 )
And dance like Monseigneur, and sing
" Love was a Shepherd " : — everything
That men do. Tell me yours, Ninon.

Ninon.

Shall I ? Then mine has black, black hair.

I mean he should have ; then an air

Half sad, half noble ; features thin ;

A little rqyale on the chin ;

And such a pale, high brow. And then,

He is a prince of gentlemen ; —

He, too, can ride and fence and write ,

317

Sonnets and madrigals, yet fight
No worse for that —

Ninette.

I know your man.

Ninon.

And I know yours. But you '11 not tell, —
Swear it I

Ninette.

I swear upon this fan, —
My Grandmother*s I

Ninon.

And I, I swear
On this old turquoise reliquaire, —
My great, — great Grandmother's 1 1 —

(After a pause.)

Ninette I
I feel so sad.

Ninette.

I too. But why ?

Ninon.

Alas, I know not I

Ninette {with a sigh).

Nor do I.

318

" GOOD - NIGHT, BABETTE 1 **
' Si vieilUsu pouvait I — "

Scene. — j4 small neat Room, In a bigb yoUain Chair
sits a wbite-baired old Gentleman,

Monsieur Vuuxbois. Babette.

M. ViEUXBOis {turning querulously).

AY of my life I Where can she get ?
Babette ! I say I Babette 1 — Babette 1

Babette {entering hurriedly).

Coming, M'sieu' ! If M'sieu' speaks
So loud, he won't be well for weeks 1

M. ViEUXBOIS.

Where have yon been ?

Babette.

Why M*sieu* knows : —
April I . . . Ville-d'Avray ! . . . Ma'am'selle Rose 1

M. ViEUXBOIS.

Ah I I am old, — and I forget.

Was the place growing green, Babette ?

319

Babbtte.

But of a greenness 1 — yes, M*sieu' I
And then the sky so blae I — so blue 1
And when I dropped my immortelle,
How the birds sang 1

(Li/ting ber pronto her eyes,)

This poor Ma'am'selle I

M. ViEUXBOlS.

You *re a good girl, Babette, but she, —

She was an Angel, verily.

Sometimes I think I see her yet

Stand smiling by the cabinet ;

And once, I know, she peeped and laughed

Betwixt the curtains . . .

Where 's the draught ?
{She gives bim a cup.)
Now I shall sleep, I think, Babette ; —
Sing me your Norman Cbansonneite*

Babette (sings).

Once at tbe Angelus
{Ere I was dead)^

tAngels all glorious
Came to my 'Bed; —

tAngels in blue and wbite
Crowned on tbe Head."

320

((

M. ViKUXBOis (drowsily).

She was an Angel **...** Once she laughed " . .
What, was I dreammg ?

Where *s the draught ?

Babettb {showing th$ empty cup).
The draught, M'sieu' ?

M. ViEUXBOIS.

How I forget I
I am so old t But sing, BabetteI

BABETTE (5fVf^5).

" On$ was the Friend I left

Stark in the Snow ;
One was the Wife that died

Long,— long ago;
One was the Love I lost . . .

How could she know ? "

M. ViEUXBOIS (murmuring).

Ah, Paul 1 ... old Paul ! . . . Eulalie too !
And Rose . . .And 1 " the sky so blue 1 "

Babette (sings),

" One had my Mother's eyes.
Wistful and mild;

321

One had my Father's faa;

One xoas a Child :
All of them bent to me, —

Bent down and smiled! '*

(He is asleep!)

M. VisuxBOis {almost inaudibly).

"How I forget!"
" I am so old I " . . . " Good-night, Babette 1 "

EPILOGUE.

HEiGHO ! how chill the evenings get !
Good-nighty "Niifo^l— good-night, Ninette !
Your little Play is played and finished ;—
Go back, then, to your Cabinet !

Loyal, L'^toile I no more to-day !
Alas ! they heed not what we say :

They smile with ardour undiminished;
'But we, --we are not always gay!

Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella. —

(Go in peace, soul beaattful and blessed. — )

WHATEVER new light may be thrown
upon the career of the most fasci-
nating personality of this or any other age,
it would scarcely seem possible that we
could come to know Robert Louis Stevenson
more intimately, who in all lovable essen-
tials was known to us twenty years ago.^
j4t that time Virginibus Puerisque assured
the world of a new-risen essayist ranking
with Lamb and Ha^litt ; and what manner
of man that meant has since been ** writ
larger

Of the essays constituting this first
volume the one we now reprint seems in
many ways the most purely ex cathedra ;
in the later Christmas Sermon ^ Stevenson

I In the immediately forthcoming Life of Robert
Louis Stevenson by bis cousin, Mr. Graham Balfour,
we shall doubtless get what we failed to find in Mr.
Sidney Colvin's two volumes of Letters. This
indeed was premised by Mr. Colvin's introduction,
his o%vn work being by no means superseded but
rather reinforced and rounded out to completion by
the authoritative biography now in press.

a First published in Scribner's Magazine for
December, 1888, and since then issued in book form.

employs the same unforgettable language of
our own familiar friend. "No man knows
better tban I that, as we go on in life toe
must part from prettiness and the graces.
IVe but attain qualities to lose tbem ; life
is a series of farewells even in art; even
our proficiencies are deciduous and evanes-
cent." 3 True, but wbat splendid service
came of bis art; out of bis life wbat a
trumpet-call to doing out tbe duty! —

"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to xvcdl.
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt.
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair.**

For in reading 2^s Triplex we nu^
well consider this fact in passing: — many
bave been tbe discourses on Deatb^from the
great Emperor's down to our own day^ but
no one of tbem all ever approached " the
Shadow unbebeld" with such courageous
humanism, — and here forsooth bis heart
beat highest: — Ms Triplex was rightly
named

So passes one of tbe lords of life. "O
man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till

{New York, Scribners, igoo). 12 mo. bds. Pp.
iv-26. $0 cents.

3 See The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson,
f^ol. II, pp. ^^9-^40. Quoted from a letter to
Marcel Schxuob who had sent Stevenson a copy of bis
recently published Mimes.

the endt for thou sbalt restf and stand in
thy lot at the end of the days** Barely
sefoen years ago ! And yet the world of
men and women and little children who
loved him cannot make the Master dead.
Surely "some late lark is singing" there
for him who travelled hence, even as for
those who now move toward that rest for
each and all men horn*

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart in peace ;

Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul.
While the stars burn, the moons increase.

And the great ages onward roll.

Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.

Sleep, full of rest from head to feet.
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change."

for november:
Celtic :

Fiona Macleod.

ytS TRIPLEX

"j4n unconscionable time a-djfing — there is the picture
('/ am afraid, gentlemen') of your life and of mine.
The sands run out, and the hours are 'numbered and
imputed ' and the days go by ; and, when the last of
these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what
else 7 The very length is something, if we reach that
hour of separation undishonoured ; and to have lived
at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have
served."

(a CHRISTMAS SBRMON.)

OCT ofibi m^ that cooars m#,
Bladt as ibe pit from poU topoU,
I tbaak wiaUoer gods tmmf 6r

Af ibefiU drntei of drctn m s t am ci
I boot mot wimced or cried alomd,

UmUr tbi bitidgeomimgs of cbamce
My bead is bloody but mmbowML

Beyomd tbis place of wrath and tears
Looms but tbe Horror cftbe sbade.

And yet tbe menace of tbe years
Finds, and shall find me^ mnafredd

It matters not bow strait tbe gate.
How charged witb punisbments tbe scroll^

I am tbe master of mfffate:
I am tbe attain ofnyf soul

WILLIAM SRNBST HENLKT.

PROEM

To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little
and to spend a little less, to make
upon the whole a family happier for his
presence, to renounce when that shall be
necessary and not be embittered, to keep
a few friends but these without capitulation
— above all, on the same grim condition, to
keep friends with himself — here is a task
for all that a man has of fortitude and
delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who
would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit
who should look in such an enterprise to be
successful. There is indeed one element in
human destiny that not blindness itself can
controvert : whatever else we are intended to
do, we are not intended to succeed ; failure
is the fate allotted. . . .

Life is not designed to minister to a man's
vanity. He goes upon his long business
most, of the time with a hanging head, and
all the time like a blind child. Full of
rewards and pleasures as it is — so that to

PROEM

see the day break or the moon rise, or to
meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call
when he is hungry, fills him with surprising
joys — this world is yet for him no abiding
city. Friendships fall through, health fails,
weariness assails him; year after year, he
must thumb the hardly varying record of his
own weakness a^d folly. It is a friendly
process of detachment. When the time
comes that he should go, there need be few
illusions left about himself. Here lies one
who meant well^ tried a little^ failed much : —
surely that may be his epitaph, of which he
need not be ashamed.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
(From A Christmas Sermon.)

MS TRIPLEX.

THE changes wrought by death are in
themselves so sharp and final, and so
terrible and melancholy in their conse-
quences, that the thing stands alone in man's
experience, and has no parallel upon earth.
It outdoes all other accidents because it
is the last of them. Sometimes it leaps
suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug;
sometimes it lays a regular siege and creeps
upon their citadel during a score of years.
And when the business is done, there is sore
havoc made in other people's lives, and a
pin knocked out by which many subsidiary
friendships hung together. There are empty
chairs, solitary walks, and single beds at
night. Again, in taking away our friends,
death does not take them away utterly, but
leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon
intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly
concealed. Hence a whole chapter of sights
and customs striking to the mind, from the
pyramids of Egypt to the gibbets and dule
trees of mediaeval Europe. The poorest
persons have a bit of pageant going towards
the tomb ; memorial stones are set up over
the least memorable; and, in order to pre-
serve some show of respect for what remains

331

its TRIPLEX

of our old loves and friendships, we must
accompany it with much grimly ludicrous
ceremonial, and the hired undertaker parades
before the door. All this, and much more of
the same sort, accompanied by the eloquence
of poets, has gone a great way to put human-
ity in error; nay, in many philosophies the
error has been embodied and laid down with
every circumstance of logic; although in
real life the bustle and swiftness, in leaving
people little time to think, have not left them
time enough to go dangerously wrong in
practice.

As a matter of fact, although few things
are spoken of with more fearful whisperings
than this prospect of death, few have less
influence on conduct under healthy circum-
stances. We have all heard of cities in
South America built upon the side of fiery
mountains, and how, even in this tremendous
neighborhood, the inhabitants are not a jot
more impressed by the solemnity of mortal
conditions than if they were delving gardens
in the greenest corner of England. There
are serenades and suppers and much gal-
lantry among the myrtles overhead ; and
meanwhile the foundation shudders under-

332

iES TRIPLEX

foot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and
at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high
into the moonlight, and tumble man and his
merrymaking in the dust. In the eyes of
very young people, and very dull old ones,
there is something indescribably reckless
afid desperate in such a picture. It seems
not credible that respectable married people,
with umbrellas, should find appetite for a
bit of supper within quite a long distance of
a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to
smell of high-handed debauch when it is
carried on so close to a catastrophe; and
€;ven cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly
be relished in such circumstances without
something like a defiance of the Creator. It
should be a place for nobody but hermits
dwelling in prayer and maceration, or mere
born-devils drowning care in a perpetual
carouse.

And yet, when one comes to think upon
it calmly, the situation of these South Amer-
ican citizens forms only a very pale figure
for the state of ordinary mankind. This
world itself, travelling blindly and swiftly in
overcrowded space, among a million other
worlds travelling blindly and swiftly in con-

333

^S TRIPLEX

trary directions, may very well come by a
knock that would set it into explosion like
a penny squib. And what, pathologically
looked at, is the human body, with all its
organs, but a mere bagful of petards ? The
lea^t of these is as dangerous to the whole
economy as the ship's powder-magazine to
the ship ; and with every breath we breathe,
and every meal we eat, we are putting one
or more of them in peril. If we clung as
devotedly as some philosophers pretend we
do to the abstract idea of life, or were half
as frightened as they make out we are for
the subversive accident that ends it all, the
trumpets might sound by the hour and no
one would follow them into battle — the
blue-peter might fly at the truck, but who
would climb into a sea-going ship? Think
(if these philosophers were right) with what
a preparation of spirit we should affront the
daily peril of the dinn er- table : a deadlier
spot than any battle-field in history, where
the far greater proportion of our ancestors
have miserably left their bones! What
woman would ever be lured into marriage,
so much more dangerous than the wildest
sea? And what would it be to grow old?

334

MS TRIPLEX

For, after a certain distance, every step we
take in lite we find the ice growing thinner
below our feet, and all around us and behind
us we see our contemporaries going through.
By the time a man gets well into the sev-
enties, his continued existence is a mere
miracle ; and when he lays his old bones in
bed for the night, there is an overwhelming
probability that he will never see the day.
Do the old men mind it, as a matter of fact?
Why, no. They were never merrier; they
have their grog at night, and tell the raciest
stories; they hear of the death of people
about their own age, or even younger, not
as if it was a grisly warning, but with a
simple childlike pleasure at having outlived
some one else; and when a draught might
puff them out like a guttering candle, or a
bit of a stumble shatter them like so much
glass, their old hearts keep sound and
unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling with
laughter, through years of man's age com-
pared to which the valley at Balaklava was
as safe and peaceful as a village cricket-green
on Sunday. It may fairly be questioned (if
we look to the peril only) whether it was a
much more daring feat for Curtius to plunge

335

MS TRIPLEX

into the gulf, than for any old gentleman of
ninety to doff his clothes and clamber into
bed.

Indeed, it is a memorable subject for .con-
sideration, with what unconcern and gayety
mankind pricks on along the Valley of the
Shadow of Death. The whole way is one
wilderness of snares, and the end of it, for
those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable
ruin. And yet we go spinning through it
all, like a party for the Derby. Perhaps the
reader remembers one of the humourous
devices of the deified Caligula: how he
encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-
makers on to his bridge over Baise bay;
and when they were in the height of their
enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian
guards among the company, and had them
tossed into the sea. This is no bad miniature
of the dealings of nature with the transitory
race of man. Only, what a checkered picnic
we have of it, even while it lasts ! and into
what great waters, not to be crossed by any
swimmer, God's pale Praetorian throws us
over in the end I

We live the time that a match flickers;
we pop the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and

336

^S TRIPLEX

the earthquake swallows us on the instant.
Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it
not, in the highest sense of human speech,
incredible, that we should think so highly
of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the
devouring earthquake? The love of Life
and the fear of Death are two famous
phrases that grow harder to understand the
more we think about them. It is a well-
known fact that an immense proportion of
boat accidents would never happen if people
held the sheet in their hands instead of
making it fast; and yet, unless it be some
martinet of a professional mariner, or some
landsman with shattered nerves, every one
of God*s creatures makes it fast. A strange
instance of man's unconcern and brazen
boldness in the face of death !

We confound ourselves with metaphysical
phrases, which we import into daily talk
with noble inappropriateness. We have no
idea of what death is, apart from its circum-
stances and some of its consequences to
others ; and although we have some experi-
ence of living, there is not a man on earth
who has flown so high into abstraction as to
have any practical guess at the meaning of

337

MS TRIPLEX

the word ///Jr. All literature, from Job and
Omar Khayyim to Thomas Carlyle or Walt
Whitman, is but an attempt to look upon
the human state with such largeness of view
as shall enable us to rise from the consider-
tion of living to the Definition of Life. And
our sages give us about the best satisfaction
in their power when they say that it is a
vapour, or a show, or made out of the same
stuff with dreams. Philosophy, in its more
rigid sense, has been at the same work for
ages ; and after a myriad bald heads have
wagged over the problem, and piles of words
have been heaped one upon another into
dry and cloudy volumes without end, philos-
ophy has the honor of laying before us, with
modest pride, her contribution towards the
subject: that life is a Permanent Possibility
of Sensation. Truly a fine result 1 A man
may very well love beef, or hunting, or a
woman ; but surely, surely, not a Permanent
Possibility of Sensation 1 He may be afraid
of a precipice, or a dentist, or a large enemy
with a club, or even an undertaker's man;
but not certainly of abstract death. We
may trick with the word life in its dozen
senses until we are weary of tricking; we

338

^S TRIPLEX

may argue in terms of all the philosophies
on earth, but one fact remains true through-
out — that we do not love life, in the sense
that we are greatly preoccupied about its
conservation; that we do not, properly
speaking, love life at all, but living. Into
the views of the least careful there will enter
some degree of providence; no man's eyes
are fixed entirely on the passing hour; but
although we have some anticipation of good
health, good weather, wine, active employ-
ment, love, |and self-approval, the sum of
these anticipations does not amount to
anything like a general view of life's possi-
bilities and issues ; nor are those who cherish
them most vividly at all the most scrupulous
of their personal safety. To be deeply
interested in the accidents of our existence,
to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human
experience, rather leads a man to disregard
precautions, and risk his neck against a
straw. For surely the love of living is
stronger in an Alpine climber roping over a
peril, or a hunter riding merrily at a stiff
fence, than in a creature who lives upon a
diet and walks a measured distance in the
interest of his constitution.

339

JES TRIPLEX

There is a great deal of very vile nonsense
talked upon both sides of the matter : tear-
ing divines reducing life to the dimensions of
a mere funeral procession, so short as to be
hardly decent; and melancholy unbelievers
yearning for the tomb as if it were a world
too far away. Both sides must feel a little
ashamed of their performances now and
again when they di'aw in their chairs to
dinner. Indeed, a good meal and a bottle
of wine is an answer to most standard works
upon the question. When a man's heart
warms to his viands, he forgets a great deal
of sophistry, and soars into a rosy zone of
contemplation. Death may be knocking at
the door, like the Commander's statue ; we
have something else in hand, thank God, and
let him knock. Passing-bells are ringing all
the world over. All the world over, and
every hour, some one is parting company
with all his aches and ecstasies. For us
also the trap is laid. But we are so fond of
life that we have no leisure to entertain the
terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us
all through, and none of the longest. Small
blame to us if we give our whole hearts to
this glowing bride of ours, to the appetites,

340

MS TRIPLEX

to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the
mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature,
and the pride of our own nimble bodies.

We all of us appreciate the sensations;
but as for caring about the Permanence of
the Possibility, a man's head is generally
very bald, and his senses very dull, before
he comes to that. Whether we regard life
as a lane leading to a dead wall — a mere
bag's end, as the French say — or whether
we think of it as a vestibule or gymnasium
where we wait our turn and prepare our
faculties for some more noble destiny;
whether we thunder in a pulpit, or pule in
little atheistic poetry-books, about its vanity
and brevity!; whether we look justly for
years of health and vigour, or are about to
mount into a bath-chair, as a step towards
the hearse; in each and all of these views
and situations there is but one conclusion
possible: that a man should stop his ears
against paralyzing terror, and run the race
that is set before him with a single mind.
No one surely could have recoiled with more
heartache and terror from the thought of
death than our respected lexicographer; and
yet we know how little it affected his con-

341

JES TRIPLEX

duct, how wisely and boldly he walked, and
in what a fresh and lively vein he spoke of
life. Already an old man, he ventured on
his Highland tour: and his heart, bound
with triple brass, did not recoil before twen-
ty-seven individual cups of tea. As courage
and intelligence are the two qualities best
worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the
first part of intelligence to recognize our
precarious estate in life, and the first part
of courage to be not at all abashed before
the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong
carriage, not looking too anxiously before,
not dallying in maudlin regret over the past,
:stamps the man who is well armoured for
this world.

And not only well armoured for himself,

but a good friend and a good citizen to boot.

We do not go to cowards for tender dealing ;

there is nothing so cruel as panic ; the man

who has least fear for his own carcass, has

most time to consider others. That eminent

chemist who took his walks abroad in tin

shoes, and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk,

had all his work cut out for him in consid-

-erate dealings with his own digestion. So

;soon as prudence has begun to grow up in

342

MS TRIPLEX

the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its
first expression in a paralysis of generous
acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritu-
ally; he develops a fancy for parlours with
a regulated temperature, and takes his
morality on the principle of tin shoes and
tepid milk. The care of one important
body or soul becomes so engrossing that all
the noises of the outer world begin to come
thin and faint into the parlour with the
regulated temperature ; and the tin shoes go
equably forward over blood and rain. To
be over-wise is to ossify; and the scruple-
monger ends by standing stock-still. Now
the man who has his heart on his sleeve,
and a good whirling weather-cock of a brain,
who reckons his life as a thing to be dash-
ingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes
a very different acquaintance of the world,
keeps all his pulses going true and fast,
and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he
be running towards anything better than
wildfire, he may shoot up and become a
constellation in the end. Lord look after
his health. Lord have a care of his soul, says
he ; and he has at the key of the position,
and swashes through incongruity and peril

343

i«S TRIPLEX

towards his aim. Death is on all sides of
him with pointed batteries, as he is on all
sides of all of us; unfortunate surprises
gird him round; mim-mouthed friends and
relations hold up their hands in quite a little
elegiacal synod about his path: and what
cares he for all this ? Being a true lover of
living, a fellow with something pushing and
spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any
other soldier, in any other stirring, deadly
warfare, push on at his best pace until he
touch the goal. " A peerage or Westminster
Abbey I " cried Nelson, in his bright, boyish,
heroic manner. These are great incentives ;
not for any of these, but for the plain satisfac-
tion of living, of being about their business
in some sort or other, do the brave, service-
able men of every nation tread down the
nettle danger, and pass flyingly over all the
stumbling-blocks of prudence. Think of
the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb
indifference to mortal limitation that set him
upon his dictionary, and carried him through
triumphantly until the end 1 Who, if he were
wisely considerate of things at large, would
ever embark upon any work much more
considerable than a half -penny post-card?

344

iES TRIPLEX

Who would project a serial novel, after
Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in
mid-course ? Who could find heart to begin
to live, if he dallied with the consideration
of death ?

And, after all, what sorry and pitiful
quibbling all this is 4. To forego all the
issues of living in a parlour with a regulated
temperature — as if that were not to die a
hundred times over, and for ten years at a
stretch! As if it were not to die in one's
own lifetime, and without even the sad
immunities of death! As if it were not to
die, and yet be the patient spectators of
our own pitiable change! The Permanent
Possibility is preserved, but the sensations
carefully held at arm's length, as if one kept
a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It
is better to lose health like a spendthrift
than to waste it like a miser. It is better
to live and be done with it, than to die daily
in the sick-room. By all means begin your
folio ; even if the doctor does not give you
a year, even if he hesitates about a month,
make one brave push and see what can be
accomplished in a week. It is not only in
finished undertakings that we ought to

345

MS TRIPLEX

honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of
the man who means execution which outlives
the most untimely ending. All who have
meant good work with their whole hearts^
have done good work» although they may
die before they have the time to sign it.
Every heart that has beat strong and cheer-
fully has left a hopeful impulse behind it
in the world, and bettered the tradition of
mankind. And even if death catch people,
like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, la3ring
out vast projects, and planning monstrous
foundations, flushed with hope, and their
mouths full of boastful language, they should
be at once tripped up and silenced: is there
not something brave and spirited in such a
termination ? and does not life go down with
a better grace, foaming in full body over a
precipice, than miserably straggling to an
end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks
made their fine saying that those whom the
gods love die young, I cannot help believing
they had this sort of death also in their
eye. For surely, at whatever age it over-
take the man, this is to die young. Death
has not been suffered to take so much as an
illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of

346

MS TRIPLEX

life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being,
he passes at a bound on to the other side.
The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely
quenched, the trumpets are hardly done
blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of
glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit
shoots into the spiritual land.

A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies
And from the west,
fVbere the sun, his dqy*s work ended.
Lingers as in content.
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and' golden ha^e. The spires

Shine, and are changed. In the valley

Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun.

Closing his benediction,

SinkSy and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night -

Night, with her train of stars

And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing !

My task accomplished and the long day done.

My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me he gathered to the quiet west.

The sundown splendid and serene,

'Death,

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY.

tlOe mMoi

THIS essay, " a study in spiritual his-
tory" is here given with the approval
of Miss Macleod, and has a Foreword now
appearing for the first time. It was writ-
ten in cordial response to our request ask-
ing permission to include the article in
these pages, and may he taken to express
the author's latest views concerning a move-
ment in literature which from now onward
must he reckoned with as a vital force,

iVhat then is the Celtic Movement and
what its object ? ** So far as it is a fact
it is the expression of * a freshly inspired
spiritual and artistic energy, coloured by
racial temperament, and drawing its inspi-
ration from the * usufruct of an ancient
and beautiful treasure of national tradi-
tion.* Its aim is, or should be, to pour
that treasure into the common treasury of
English literature, informed with all the
qualities of the Celtic nature, and so enrich
by its infusion the common fife of the Bri-
tannic race**

" That Miss Macleod* s own work con-
forms to the ideals she has thus set forth,**'
that ** she sees the whole world transparent

{as it were) by the contained light of the
Unseen " « no one will doubt who reads
what she has entitled with such simple
brevity, Celtic.

The editor of The Bibelot cannot but
congratulate himself and his clientele that
at the same time he is bringing out From
the Hills of Dream he is also permitted to
offer a specimen of Fiona Macleod*s prose,
charged with the same high imaginative
qualities which distinguish and set apart
from all other writers of to-day the author
of The Rune of the Passion of Woman.

z See The Academy, 26 (May, igoo, pages 44^,
444, for an able review of The Divine Adventure ;
looa; By Sundown Shores; Studies in Spiritual
History.

For DECEMBER:

In Praise of Thackeray.

Celtic :

A Study in

Spiritual History.

FOREWORD

THE short essay wbicb follows appeared
first in The Contemporary Review,
and a few months later in the volume enti-
tled The Divine Adventure: lona: and
other Studies in Spiritual History: and
was the signal for much comment. But
for the moment I would recur only to the
aspect it wore for many in that country for
whose more eager spirits it was above all
intended. . . Ireland being to-day not only
the true home of lost causes hut a nursery
of the heroic powers and influences that go
forth to conquer and die : and of the pas-
sionate and evil powers and influences which
rise into fatal or paralysing miasmas.

Although in Ireland, then, this essay
towards a worthy peace, where peace may
be ; and towards a compromise, in nothing
ignoble^ for the sake of a union in a noble
destiny; was welcomed by many — there
were others, and among them one or two of
those deservedly held in highest honour,
who protested strongly. I am very far
from ill will to those who, no doubt tn part
through a hurried habit of mind, sought by
somewhat intemperate means to discredit

353

FOREWORD

the plea. I believe . . . / would say I
know, so sure am / . , , . that these bad at
heart the one thought of Ireland, the one
passion, which is indeed the solitary hope of
the Gael, the passion of nationality ; and
having this thought and this passion, con-
sidered little or for the time ignored that
reticence or grave courtesy cherished by
minds less sick with hope deferred, less
desperate with defeated dreams. 'But in
controversy nothing else was revealed than
thai an eager enthusiasm can sometimes
lead to confused thought and hasty speech,
and {it may well be) that the writer of
" Celtic** had unwittingly failed to be
explicit on the one fundamental and essen-
tial factor in Gaelic union, in the con-
tinued life and development of the Gael
. . . the proud and uffffiekUng preservation
of nationality.

The aim of this essay was to help
towards a twofold reconciliation: not
a reconciliation between '* inveterate and
irreconcilable foes " [which is but the rhet-
oric of those fevered with an epileptic
nationalism), but a reconciliation such as
may be persuaded betwilen two persons,

354

FOREWORD

each with divergent individual aims and
ideals, yet able to unite with decency and
courtesy in a league for the common good,
the commonweal. It seemed, and seems, to
the writer that common sense {there is no
Celtic word for it) makes clear that an
absolute irreconcilability is simply a cul-
de-sac, down which baffled dreams and
hopes and faiths come at last upon a blank
wall. Strength is built up out of forfeit-
ure as well as of steadfastness, and the
man or woman, cause or race wins, which
on occasion can relinquish or forbear.
Merely to be irreconcilable is merely to
prefer the blank wall to the open road.

But when that is said, it does not follow
that there are no subjects, no ideals, no
aims which stand apart from this debata-
ble ground of reconciliation. On the con-
trary, I believed, and believe, that there are
subjects, ideals, and aims whose whole hope
lies in an unswerving steadfastness.

The keynote of " Celtic " is in the sen-
tence, **we have of late heard so much of
Celtic beauty and Celtic emotion that we
would do well to stand in more surety as to
what we mean and what we do not mean."

355

FOREWORD

This necessarily merely indicative, merely
suggestive paper, xvauld perhaps better have
been reprinted without foreword, Imtfor an
amendment on an important point.

I generalised too vaguely, I find, when I
wrote " What is a Celtic writer f" . . . .
It is obvious that if one would write Eng-
lish literature, one must write in English
and in the English tradition.**

Of course I meant nothing so narrow in
claim, so foreign to my conviction, as that
one must "be English." There is no
*must,* in the Academic sense, in litera-
ture: the most vivid and original liter-
ature has in truth ever been an ignoring or
overriding of the strong word of the weak.

Only I can see how some — I am glad to
know the few, not the many — misread this
sentence. For that, I welcome this oppor-
tunity to be more explicit. There is no
need here to recur to the consideration of
the exact significance that should attach to
the designation, a * Celtic writer.* To con-
sider those only, then, who write in English,
I would add to my statement that if one
would write English literature one must
write in English and in the English tradi-

356.

FOREWORD

tiottt the rider that the English language is
not the exclusive property of that section of
our complex race which is distinctively
English y the English nation— any more
than it is the exclusive property of the
Scots J who speak ity or of the Australians ;
or of the Canadians; or of the vast and
numerically superior American nation.
The language is common to ally and is not
an insular dominion so to speak, outside of
which are allied variations, A patriotic
Belgian or Swiss is not a Frenchman
though his native language he French : and
in like manner our kinsfolk of the United
States are not English because they too
share in the heritage shaped by the genius,
moulded by the life and thought, and trans-
mitted by the living spirit of the com-
mon essential stock — now as likely to be
revealed in Massachusetts as in Yorkshire,
in Toronto as in Edinburgh, in Sydney or
Melbourne or IVashington, as in Liver-
pool, ^Manchester, or London. An Amer-
ican writes in his native language when he
writes in English : so does a Scot, now : so
does a Canadian, an Australian, a New
Zealander. Therefore the literature of

357

FOREWORD

the /Australians, tb$ Scots, the Irish, the
Americans must he in English, In a wordj
it is not the language that determines, but
the thought behind the language — ibe
colour and form of distinctive life. It is
not the language that compels genius, but
genius that compels the language.

Again, literature has laws as inevitable
as the laws which mould and determine tbe
destiny of nations. These can be evaded
b^ decay and death : they cannot be omer-
ridden. Every literature has its tradition
of excellence . . . that is, tbe sum of what
within its own limits can be achieved in
beauty and power and aptitude. This tra-
dition of excellence is what we call the cen-
tral stream. Of course if one prefer tbe
tributary, the backwater, the offshoot, there
is no reason why one should not be well
content within the chosen course. To many
it seems, for many it is, the better way; as
tbe backwater for tbe shy kingfisher, the
offshoot or tributary for tbe solitary heron.
But one must not choose the backwater and
declare that it is tbe main stream, or have
the little tributary say that though it travels
on the great flow it is not part of the river.

3S8

FOREWORD

Thai is what I meant when I said that if
one vxmld write English literature one must
write in English and in the English tradi-
tion. To say that was not to bid the Gael
cease to be Gaelic^ any more than it would
imply that the American should cease to be
American, On the contrary^ I do most
strenuously believe that the sole life of the
least value in Anglo-Celtic literature (as
in American literature) is in the. preser-
vation of the distinct racial genius, temper y
colour and contour. If the poetry of the
two foremost Irish poets of to-day did not
conform to the laws and traditions, of Eng-
lish poetry — since Mr. Yeats and Mr,
George Russell write in their native lan-
guage, English, the language to which they
were born and in which alone they can
express themselves — it might be very inter-
esting * Celtic ' or any other experimental
verse, but it would not be English poetry.
The beauty they breathe into their instru-
ment is of themselves ; is individual cer-
tainly, and in spirit and atmosphere is dis-
tinctively Gaelic rather than distinctively
English, But the instrument is English:
and to summon beauty through it, and to

359

FOREWORD

give the phantom a body and spirit of ioccel-
lence, one must follow in the footsteps of
the master-musicianSf recognising the same
limitations t observing the same needs y ful-
filling the like rigorous obligations of
mastery.

Since we have to write in English^ we
must accept the burthen and responsibility.
If a Cretan write in the Cretofi dialect, be
can be estimated by those who know Cre-
tan: but if he is ambittous to have his
irregular measures and corrupt speech
called Greek poetry he must write in Greek
and conform to the Greek tradition^ to the
laws and limitations of the Greek genius.
The Englishman, the Scot, the Irishman, the
American each, if he would write English
literature, has of necessity to do likewise.

In a very true sense, therefore, there can
be an Irish literature, a Scottish literature,
an Anglo-Gaelic literature, as well as an
English literature : but in the wider sense
it is all English literature — with, as may
be, an Irish spirit and an Irish ideal and
Irish colour, or with a Highland spirit
and a Highland ideal and Highland col-
our, or with a IVelsh spirit and a fVelsb

360

FOREWORD

ideal and IVelsh colour — as Mr. Thomas
Hardy's writings are English literature,
xvitb an English spirit and an English
ideal and English colour.

It is the desire and faith of the Irish
nation to make or mould anew a literature
as distinctively its own as the English
nation has a literature that is distinctively
its own : and to do this, in Ireland or the
Itke in Scotland, is possible only hy the cul-
tivation, the preservation at all ha^ards^
of the national spirit, of the national
idiosyncrasy, the national ideals, I would
see our peoples reconciled, believing that
in reconciliation lie the elements of strength
and advance, of noble growth and con-
quering influence : but I would not have
reconciliation at any price, and would
rather we should dwell isolate and hos-
tile than purchase peace at the cost of
relinquishment of certain things more
precious than all prosperities and tri-
umphs. The law of love is the nobler -way,
but there is also a divine law of hate. I do
not advocate, and have never advocated, a
reconciliation on any terms. I am not
English, and have not the English mind or

361

FOREWORD

.tbe English temper and in many things do
not share the English ideals ; and to pos-
sess these would mean to relinquish my own
heritage. But why should I he irreconcila-
bly hostile to that mind and that temper
and those ideals : why should I not do my
utmost to under standy sympathise ^ fall into
line with them so far as may he, since we
have all a common bond and a common
destiny?

To that mind and that temper and those
ideals do we not owe some of the noblest
achievements of the human race, some of
the lordliest conquests <yoer the instincts
and forces of barbarism, some of the love-
liest and most deathless things of the spirit
and the imagination ? '

As for the Gaelic remnant {and none
can pretend that this means Scotland and
Ireland, but only a portion of Scotland and
onlv a divided Ireland) I am ever but the
more convinced that the dream of an out.
ward' independence as a separate entity is a
perilous illusion — not because it is imprac-
ticable^ for thai alone is a fascination to
us, but because it does not, cannot alas,
reveal those dominant elements which alone

362

FOREWORD

can sbapB and control dreams become
actualities. Another and greater inde-
pendence is witbin our reacb, is ours, to
preserve and ennoble.

Strange reversals, strange fulfilments
may lie on tbe lap of tbe gods, but we bave
no knowledge of tbese, and bear neitber tbe
bigb laugbter nor tbe far voices. But we
front a possible because a spiritual destiny
greater tban tbe beigbt of imperial for-
tunes, and bave tbat wbicb mar send our
voices furtbef tban tbe trumpets of east
and west. Tbrougb ages of slow wester-
ing, till now we face tbe sundown seas, we
bave learned in continual vicissitude tbat
tbere are secret ways wbereon armies cannot
marcb. And tbis bas been given to us, a
more ardent longing, a more rapt passion
in tbe tbings of outward beauty and in tbe
things of spiritual beauty. Nor it seems
to me is there any sadness, or only tbe
serene sadness of a great day's end, tbat,
to others, we reveal in our best tbe genius
of a race whose farewell is in a tragic
lighting of torches of beauty around its

Sept., 1 90 1.

CELTIC

A WRITER might well be proud to be iden-
tified with a movement that is prima-
rily spiritual and eager, a movement of
quickened artistic life. I for one care less to
be identified with any literary movement
avowedly partisan. That is not the deliber-
ate view of literature, which carries with it
the heat and confused passions of the many.
It is not the deliberate view, which confers
passions that are fugitive upon that troubled
Beauty which knows only a continual excel-
lence. It is not the deliberate view, which
would impose the penury of distracted
dreams and desires upon those who go up to
the treasure house and to white palaces.

But I am somewhat tired of an epithet
that, in a certain association, is become
jejune, through use and misuse. It has
grown familiar wrongly ; is often a term of
praise or disdain, in each inept; is applied
without moderation; and so now is some-
times unwelcome even when there is none
other so apt and right.

The ' Celtic Movement,* in the first place,
is not as so often confusedly stated an arbi-
trary effort to reconstruct the past ; though

365

CELTIC

it is, in part, an effort to discover the past.
For myself (as one imputed to this * move-
ment * ) I would say that I do not seek to
reproduce ancient Celtic presentments of
tragic beauty and tragic fate, but do seek in
nature and in life, and in the swimming
thought of timeless imagination, for the kind
of beauty that the old Celtic poets discov-
ered and uttered. There were poets and
myth-makers in those days; and to-day we
may be sure that a new Mythus is being
woven, though we may no longer humanise
and euhemerise the forces of Nature and her
silent and secret processes; for the mytho-
poeic faculty is not only a primitive instinct
but a spiritual need.

I do not suppose our Celtic ancestors —
for all their high civilisation and develop-
ment, so much beyond what obtained among
the Teutonic peoples at the same date —
theorised about their narrative art ; but from
what we know of their literature, from the
most ancient bardic chants to the sgSul of
to-day, we cannot fail to see that the instinct-
ive ideal was to represent beautiful life. It
is an ideal that has lain below the spiritual
passion of all great art in every period.

366

CELTIC

Phidias knew it when he culled a white
beauty from the many Athenian youth, and
Leonardo when he discerned the inexplicable
in woman's beauty and painted Mona Lisa,
and Palestrina when from the sound in the
pines-and the voice of the wind in solitudes
and the songs of labourers at sundown he
wove a solemn music for cathedral aisles.
With instinct, the old Celtic poets and
romancists knew it : there are no Breton bal-
lads, nor Cymric mabinogion nor Gaelic
sgeulan, which deal ignobly with petty life.
All the evil passions may obtain there, but
but they move against a spiritual background
of pathetic wonder, of tragic beauty and
tragic fate.

All art should represent beautiful life. If
we want a vision of life that is not beautiful,
we can have it otherwise: a multitude can
depict the ignoble; the lens can replicate
the usual.

It should be needless to add that our vis-
ion of the beautiful must be deep and wide
and virile, as well as high and ideal. When
we say that art should represent beautiful
life, we do not say that it should represent
only the beautiful in life, which would be to

367

CELTIC

ignore the roots and the soil and the vivid
sap, and account the blossom only. The
vision of beautiful life is the vision of life
seen not in impossible unrelief, but in possi-
ble relief : of harmonious unity in design as
well as in colour. To say that art should
represent beautiful life is merely to give
formal expression to the one passionate
instinct in every poet and painter and musi-
cian, in every artist. There is no * art * saved
by a moral purpose, though all true art is
spiritually informed ; and I know none, with
pen or brush, with chisel or score, which,
ignobly depicting the ignoble, survives in
excellence.

In this, one cannot well go astray. Nor
do I seek an unreal Ideal. In the kingdom
of the imagination, says one of our forgotten
mystics, the ideal must ever be faithful to
the general laws of nature ; elsewhere adding
a truth as immanent: ' Man is not alone:
the Angel of the Presence of the Infinite
is with him.' I do not, with Blake, look
upon our world as though it were at best a
basis for transcendental vision, while in itself
* a hindrance and a mistake,' but rather, as a
wiser has said, to an Earth spiritualised, not

368

CELTIC

a Heaven naturalised. With him, too, I

would say, * I have a fondness for the earth,

and rather a Phrygian way of regarding it,

despite a deeper yearning to see its glades

receding into the Gardens of Heaven/

«
« «

We cannot but regret when any word, that
has peculiar associations of beauty or inter-
est, or in which some distinction obtains, is
lightly bandied. Its merit is then in conven-
ience of signal rather than in its own signifi-
cance. It is easy to recall some of these
unfortunates; as our Scottish word ^gloam-
ing,' that is so beautiful, and is now, alas, to
be used rarely and with heed ; as * haunting,*
with its implicit kinship with all mysteries of
shadow, and its present low estate ; as * mel-
ody,' that has an outworn air, though it has
three secrets of beauty ; as others, that one
or two use with inevitableness, and a small
number deftly, till the journal has it, and it
is come into desuetude.

We have of late heard so much of Celtic
beauty and Celtic emotion that we would do
well to stand in more surety as to what we
mean and what we do not mean.

369

CELTIC

I do not myself know any beauty that is
of art to excel that bequeathed to us by
Greece. The marble has outlasted broken
dynasties and lost empires: the word is
to-day fresh as with dews of dawn. But
through the heart I travel into another land.
Through the heart, I go td lost gardens,
to mossed fountains, to groves where is no
white beauty of still statue, but only the
beauty of an old forgotten day remembered
with quickened pulse and desired with I
know not what of longing and weariness.

Is it remembrance, I wonder often, that
makes many of us of the Celtic peoples turn to
our own past with a longing so great, a love
perfected through forgotten tribulations and
familiar desire of the things we know to be
impossible but so fair ? Or do we but desire
in memory what all primitive races had, and
confuse our dreams with those which have
no peace because they are immortal ?

If one can think with surety but a little
way back into the past, one can divine
through both the heart and the mind. I
do not think that our broken people had no
other memories and traditions than other
early peoples had. I believe they stood more

370

CELTIC

near to ancient forgotten founts of wisdom
than others stood: I believe that they are
the offspring of a race who were in a more
close communion with the secret powers of
the world we know and the secret powers of
the world we do not know than were any
other people. I think their ancient writings
show it, their ancient legends, their subtle
and strangely spiritual mythology. I believe
that, in the east, they lit the primitive genius
of their race at unknown and mysterious
fires ; that, in the ages, they have not wholly
forgotten the ancestral secret; that, in the
west, they may yet turn from the grey wave
that they see, and the grey wave of time
that they do not see, and again, upon new
altars, commit that primeval fire.

But to believe is one thing, to affirm is
another. Those of us who believe thus have
no warrant to show. It may well be that we
do but create an image made after the desire
and faith of the heart.

It is not the occasion to speak of what I
do believe the peculiar and excelling beauty
of the Celtic genius and Celtic literature to
be; how deep its wellsprings, how full of
strange new beauty to us who come upon it

371

CELTIC

that is so old and remote. What I have just
written will disclose that wherever else I may
desire to worship, there is one beauty that
has to me the light of home upon it ; that
there is one beauty from which, above all
others now, I hope for a new revelation;
that there is a love, there is a passion, there
is a romance, which to me calls more sud-
denly and searchingly than any other ancient
love or ancient passion or ancient romance.

But having said this, I am the more free
to speak what I have in view. Let me say
at once, then, that I am not a great believer
<in movements,' and still less in 'renas-
cences;' to be more exact, I hold myself
in a suspicion towards these terms ; for often,
in the one, what we look for is not implicit,
and in the other, we are apt rather to find
the aside and external.

So far as I understand the * Celtic Move-
ment,' it is a natural outcome, the natural
expression of a freshly inspired spiritual
and artistic energy. That this expression
is coloured by racial temperament is its dis-
tinction; that it is controlled to novel usage
is its opportunity. When we look for its
source we find it in the usufruct of an

372

CELTIC

ancient and beautiful treasure of national
tradition. One may the more aptly speak
thus collectively of a mythology and a litera-
ture, and a vast and wonderful legendary
folklore, since to us, now, it is in great part
hidden behind veils of an all but forgotten
tongue and of a system of life and customs,
ideals and thought, that no longer obtains.

I am unable, however, to see that it has
sustenance in elements of revolt. A new
movement should not be a revolt, but a sor-
tie to carry a fresh position. When one
hears, as one does every now and then, that
the Celtic movement is a revolt against the
tyranny of the English tradition, one can
but smile ; as though a plaster-cast, that is of
to-day, were to revolt against the Venus of
Milo or the Winged Victory, that is of no
day. If a movement has any inherent force,
it will not destroy itself in forlorn hopes, but
will fall into line, and so achieve where alone
the desired success can be achieved.

There is no racial road to beauty, nor to
any excellence. Genius, which leads thither,
beckons neither to tribe nor clan, neither
to school nor movement, but only to one
soul here and to another there ; so that the

373

CELTIC

Icelander hears and speaks in Saga, and the
brown Malay hears and carves delicately in
ivory; and the men in Europe, from the
Serb and the Finn to the Basque and the
Breton, hear, and each in his kind answers ;
and what the Englishman says in song and
romance and the deep utterance of his com-
plex life, his mountain-kindred say in mabin-
ogi or sgeul.

Even in those characteristics which dis-
tinguish Celtic literature — intimate natural
vision ; a swift emotion that is sometimes a
spiritual ecstasy, but sometimes is also a
mere intoxication of the senses ; a peculiar
sensitiveness to the beauty of what is remote
and solitary; a rapt pleasure in what is
ancient and in the contemplation of what
holds an inevitable melancholy; a visionary
passion for beauty, which is of the immortal
things, beyond the temporal beauty of what
is mutable and mortal — even in these char-
acteristics it does not stand alone, and per-
haps not pre-eminent. There is a beauty in
the Homeric Hymns that I do not find in
the most beautiful of Celtic chants; none
could cull from the gardens of the Gael what
in the Greek anthology has been gathered

374

CELTIC

out of time to be everlasting; not even the
love and passion of tlxe stories of the Celtic
mythology surpass the love and passion of
the stories of the Hellenic mythology. The
romance that of old flowered among the
Gaelic hills flowered also in English meads,
by Danish shores, amid Teuton woods and
plains. I think Catullus sang more excel-
lently than Baile Honeymouth, and that
Theocritus loved nature not less than Oisin,
and that the ancient makers of the Kalevala
were as much children of the wind and
wave and the intimate natural world as were
the makers of the ancient heroic chronicles
of the Gael.

There is no law set upon beauty. It has
no geography. It is an open land. And
if, of those who enter there, peradventure
any comes again, he is welcome for what he
brings ; nor do we demand if he be dark or
fair, Latin or Teuton or Celt, or say of him
that his tidings are lovelier or the less lovely
because he was born in the shadow of Gaelic
hills or nurtured by Celtic shores.

It is well that each should learn the
mother-song of his land at the cradle-place
of his birth. It is well that the people of

375

CELTIC

the isles should love the isles above all else*
and the people of the mountains love the
mountains above all else, and the people of
the plains love the plains above all else.
But it is not well that because of the whist-
ling of the wind in the heather one should
imagine that nowhere else does the wind
suddenly stir the reeds and the grasses in
its incalculable hour.

When I hear that a new writer is of the
Celtic school, I am left in some uncertainty,
for I know of many Anglo-Celtic writers but
of no 'school,* or what present elements
would inform a school. What is a Celtic
writer.^ If the word has any exact accept-
ance, it must denote an Irish or a Scottish
Gael, a Cymric or Breton Celt, who writes
in the language of his race. It is obvious
that if one would write English literature,
one must write in English and in the Eng-
lish tradition.

When I hear, therefore, of this or that
writer as a Celtic writer, I wonder if the
term is not apt to be misleading. An Eng-
lish writer is meant, who in person happens
to be an Irish Gael, or Highland, or Welsh.

I have already suggested what other mis-

376

CELTIC

use of the word obtains: Celtic emotion,
Celtic love of nature, Celtic visionariness.
That, as admitted, there is in the Celtic peo-
ples an emotionalism peculiar in kind and
perhaps in intensity, is not to be denied;
that a love of nature is characteristic is true,
but differing only, if at all, in certain intima-
cies of approach ; that visionariness is rela-
tively so common as to be typical, is obvi-
ous. But there is English emotion, English
love of nature, English visionariness, as
there is Dutch, or French, or German, or
Russian, or Hindu. There is no nationality
in these things save in the accident of con-
tour and colour. At a hundred yards a for-
est is seen to consist of ash and lime, of
e 1ms, beeches, oaks, hornbeams ; but a mile
away it is, simply, a forest.

I do not know any Celtic visionary so
rapt and absolute as the Londoner William
Blake, or the Scandinavian Swedenborg, or
the Flemish Ruysbroeck; or any Celtic poet
of nature to surpass the Englishman Keats ;
nor do I think even religious ecstacy is more
seen in Ireland than in Italy.

Nothing but harm is done by a protestation
that cannot persuade deliberate acceptance.

377

CELTIC

When I hear that * only a Celt' could have
written this or that passage of emotion or
description, I am become impatient of these
parrot-cries, for I remember that if all Celtic
literature were to disappear, the world would
not be so impoverished as by the loss of
English literature, or French literature, or
that of Rome or of Greece.

But above all else it is time that a preva-
lent pseudo-nationalism should be dissuaded.
I am proud to be a Highlander, but I would
not side with those who would *set the
heather oh fire.' If I were Irish, I would be
proud, but I would not lower my pride by
marrying it to a ceaseless ill-will, an irreconcil-
able hate, for there can be a nobler pride in
unvanquished acquiescence than in revolt.
I would be proud if I were Welsh, but I
would not refuse to learn English, or to mix
with English as equals. And proud as I
might be to be Highland or Scottish or Irish
or Welsh or English, I would be more proud
to be British — for, there at last, we have a
bond to unite us all, and to give us space for
every ideal, whether communal or individual,
whether national or spiritual.

As for literature, there is, for us all, only

378

CELTIC

English literature. All else is provincial or
dialectic.

But gladly I for one am willing to be des-
ignated Celtic, if the word signify no more
than that one is an English writer who by
birth, inheritance, and temperament has an
outlook not distinctively English, with some
memories and traditions and ideals not
shared in by one's countrymen of the South,
with a racial instinct that informs what one
writes, and, for the rest, a common heritage.

The Celtic element in our national life
h as a vital and great part to play. We have
a most noble ideal if we will but accept it.
And that is, not to perpetuate feuds, not to
try to win back what is gone away upon the
wind, not to repay ignorance with scorn, or
dulness with contempt, or past wrongs with
present hatred, but so to live, so to pray, so
to hope, so to work, so to achieve, that we,
what is left of the Celtic races, of the Celtic
genius, may permeate the greater race of
which we are a vital part, so that with this
Celtic emotion, Celtic love of beauty, and
Celtic spirituality a nation greater than any
the world has seen may issue, a nation
refined and strengthened by the wise relin-

379

CELTIC

quishings and steadfast ideals of Celt and
Saxon, united in a common fatherland, and
in singleness of pride and faith.

As I have said, I am not concerned he re
with what I think the Celtic genius has done
for the world, and for English literature in
particular, and above all for us of to-day
and to-morrow; nor can I dwell upon what
of beautiful and mysterious and wonderful it
discloses, or upon its bitter-sweet charm.
But of a truth, the inward sense and signifi>
cance of the * Celtic Movement* is, as has
been well said, in the opening of a fountain
of legends, and, as scholars aver, a more
abundant fountain than any in Europe, the
great fountain of Gaelic legends. * None can
measure of how great importance it may b e
to coming times, for every new fountain of
legends is a new intoxication for the imagin a-
tion of the world. It comes at a time when the
imagination of the world is as ready, as it was
at the coming of the tales of Arthur and of
the Grail, for a new intoxication. The arts
have become religious, and must, as relig-
ious thought has always done, utter them-
selves through legends ; and the Gaelic leg-
ends have so much of a new beauty that

380

CELTIC

they may well give the;» opening century its
most memorable symbols,'

Perhaps the most significant sentence in
M. Renan's remarkable study of the Poetry
of the Celtic Races is that where he speaks of
the Celtic Race as having worn itself out
in mistaking dreams for realities. I am not
certain that this is true, but it holds so great
a part of truth that it should make us think
upon how we stand.

I think our people have most truly loved
their land, and their country, and their
songs, and their ancient traditions, and that
the word of bitterest savour is that sad word
exile. But it is also true that in that love we
love vaguely another land, a rainbow-land,
and that our most desired country is not the
real Ireland, the real Scotland, the real Brit-
tany, but the vague Land of Youth, the
shadowy Land of Heart's Desire. And it is
also true, that deep in the songs we love
above all other songs is a lamentation for
what is gone away from the world, rather
than merely from us as a people ; or a sigh-
ing of longing for what the heart desires but
no mortal destiny requites. And true, too,
that no tradition from of old is so compell-

381

CELTIC

ing as the compelling tradition that is from
within ; and that the long sorrow of our exile
is in part because we ourselves have driven
from as that company of hopes and dreams
away which were once realities, but are now
among beautiful idle words.

In a word, we dwell overmuch among
desired illusions. These are as fair as the
rainbow, and as intimate in promise, when,
like the rainbow, they are the spiritual
reflection of certainties ; but they are worth-
less as the rainbow-gold with which the
Shee deceive the unwary, when what is the
phantom of a spiritual desire is taken to be
the reality of material fact.

And I think that we should be on g^ard
against any abuse of, that we should con-
sider this other side of, our dreams and
ideals, wherein awaits weakness as well as
abides strength. It is not ill to dream, in
a day when there are too few who will with-
draw from a continual business, a day when
there are fewer dreams. But we shall not
greatly gain if we dream only of beautiful
abstractions, and not also of actual or imag-
inative realities and possibilities. In a
Highland cottage I heard some time ago a

382

CELTIC

man singing a lament for 'Tearlach Og
Aluinn,* Bonnie Prince Charlie ; and when he
ceased tears were on the face of each that
was there, and in his own throat a sob. I
asked him, later, was his heart really so fall
of the Prionnsa Ban, but he told me that it
was not him he was thinking of, but of all
the dead men and women of Scotland who
had died for his sake, and of Scotland itself,
and of the old days that could not come
again. I did not ask what old days, for I
knew that in his heart he lamented his own
dead hopes and dreams, and that the prince
was but the image of his lost youth, and
that the world was old and grey because of
his own weariness and his own grief.

Sometimes I fear that we who as a people
do so habitually companion ourselves with
dreams may fall into that abyss where the
realities are become shadows, and shadows
alone live and move. And then I remem-
ber that dreamers and visionaries are few;
that we are no such people ; that no such
people has ever been; and that of all idle
weaving of sand and foam none is more idle
than this, the strange instinctive dread of
the multitude, that the few whose minds

383

CELTIC

and imaginations dwell among noble memo-
ries and immortal desires shall supersede the
many who are content with lesser memories
and ignoble desires.

tXOe Wefof

"All men may know bim novot and dullards blind
Into the secrets of bis soul nusy see ;
And all shall love — but, Steadfast Greatbeart, we.
We knew tbee wben tbe wide world did tbee wrong.**

AMONG contemporary tributes of love
and respect laid upon the grave of
IVtlliam Makepeace Tbackerajf there are
at least three of enduring excellence. It
was inevitable that much mediocre verse
and prose should be written on such an
occasion; the best and worst of it having
dropped out of sight > the three apprecia-
tions we here reprint ** like new-bathed stars
emerge^* shining with a renewed radiance
like the increasing fame of him they cele-
brate — ** fVhose light doth trample on our
dajfsr

It goes almost without saying that In
Memoriam is well known to every reader
of either great novelist — Dickens or Thack-

I See Anecdote Biographies of Thackeray and
Dickens edited by R. H. Stoddard. (Brie-a-Brac
Series, New York, 1874); tbe various introductory
cbapters by Mrs. Ricbmond Ritcbie to tbe thirteen
volumes of Thackeray's Complete Works, (London
and New York, iSgg); and Letters to Dead
Attthors by Andrew Lang {London, 1886). Tbis
last we much regret lack of space compels us to omit.

eray; so too is Dr,Jobn BrowtCs article
fairly fondliar to readers of Horae Sub-
secivae.s In the sonorous elegiacs of Dr.
Tarsons we find summed up all that was
the "true Thackeray — a man who would
not Hi J* by a post of the highest order,
whose lyric gifts are far less admired than
their surpassing merit demands^ This
poem we believe to he one of the noblest
eTtpressions of personal feeling extant. Its
austerity ensures its perpetuity; it will
remain when much else has fallen **into the
portion of weeds and outworn faces.**

"And if there be no meeting past the grave.
If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest.
Be not afraid, ye tuaiting hearts that weep.
For Cod still givetb His beloved sleep.
And if an endless sleep He wills'— so best I **

2 A new edition well worth having, on thin but
excellent paper, has recently been issued by A. Gr C.
Black, (Sq i6mo. ) vols, flexible cloth, London,
I poo).

3 Poems by Thomas William Parsons, (i6mo.
Boston, i8p)). The poem on Thackeray first
appeared in The Boston Advertiser January i^th,
1864, unsigned, and our reprint has been collated
with the original, ft is not included in the 1893
volume.

For January:
London Voluntaries,

William Ernest Henley.

In Praise of Thackeray.

O gentler Censor of our age.
Prime master of our ampler tongue.
Whose word of wit and genet o^ page
Were never wrotb except with wrong.
Fielding without the manner's dross,
Scott with a spirit's larger room.
What prelate deems thy grave his loss.
What Halifax erects thy tomb ?
But maybe he who so could draw
The bidden great, the humble wise.
Yielding with them to God's good law.
Makes the Pantheon where be lies.

LOKD HOUGHTON.

4 4 Y A.1I not Sony for most people, certainly not for those
I old and in pain, for ^om sleep most be a consoler
after the fitful fever. . . . Little children step off
this earth into the infinite and we tear our hearts out over
their sweet cold hands and smiling &ces, that drop indiffer-
ent when you cease holding them, and smile as the lid is
closing over them. I don't think we deplore the old who
have had enoogh of living and striving and have buried so
many others, and must be «ary of living — it seems time
for them to go — for idieie's the pleasure of stajring when
the feast is over, and the flowers withered, and the guests
gone? Isn't it better to blow the light out than sit on
among the broken meats and collapsed jellies and vapid
heeltaps? I go — to what I don't know — but to God's
next world, which is His and He made it One paces up
and down the shore yet andule— and looks towards the
unknown ocean, and thinks of the traveller whose boat
sailed yesterday. Those we love can but walk down to the
pier with us — the voyage we must make alone. Except
for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any
one who dies."

WXLUAM MAKBPBACB THACKBRAY.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

Now that his noble form is clay,
One word for good old Thackeray,
One word for gentle Thackeray,
Spite of his disbelieving eye,
True Thackeray — a man who would not lie.

Among his fellows he was peer
For any gentleman that ever was ;

And if the lordling stood in fear
Of the rebuke of that satiric pen,
Or if the good man sometimes gave a tear

They both were moved by equal laws,

They loved and hated him with honest cause ;
Twas Nature's truth that touched the men.

Oh nights of Addison and Steele,

And Swift and all those men, return I

Oh, for some writer, now, to make me feel 1

Oh, for some talker that can bid me burn !

Like Him, with His majestic power

Of pathos mix'd with terrible attack.

And probing into records of the Past,
Through some enchanted hour.
To show the white and black.

And what did not — and what deserved to last !

389

Poet and Scholar, *tis in vain

We summon thee from those dim Halls
Where only Death is absolute and holds unquestioned reign.

Even Shakspeare must go downward in His dust, —

And lie with all the rest of us in rust, —
And mould and gloom and mildewed tomb

(Mildewed or May-dewed, evermore a tomb)

Yet hoping still above our skies

To have his humble place among the Just.

And so " Hie jacet'* — that is all
That can be writ or said or sung

Of him who held in such a thrall
With his melodious gift of pen and tongue
Both nations — old and young.

Honor's a hasty word to speak.

But now I say it solemnly and slow
To the One Englishman most like that Greek
Who wrote " The Clouds " two thousand years ago.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS.

390

IN MEMORIAM.

IT has been desired by some of the personal
friends of the great writer who estab-
lished the Cornhill Magazine^ that its brief
record of his having been stricken from
among men should be written by the old
comrade and brother in arms who pens
these lines, and of whom he often wrote
himself, and always with the warmest gener-
osity.

I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years
ago, when he proposed to become the illus-
trator of my earliest book. I saw him last,
shortly before Christmas, at the Athenaeum
Club, when he told me that he had been in
bed three days — that, after these attacks,
he was troubled with cold shiverings, " which
quite took the power of work out of him '' —
and that he had it in his mind to try a new
remedy which he laughingly described. He
was very cheerful, and looked very bright.
In the night of that day week he died.

The long interval between those two peri-
ods is marked in my remembrance of him
by many occasions when he was supremely
humorous, when he was irresistibly extrava-
gant, when he was softened and serious,

391

IN MEMORIAM

when he was charming with children. But
by none do I recall him more tenderly than
by two or three that start out of the crowd,
when he unexpectedly presented himself in
my room, announcing how that some passage
in a certain book had made him cry yester-
day, and how that he had come to dinner,
'< because he couldn't help it,'* and must
talk such passage over. No one can ever
have seen him more genial, natural, cordial,
fresh, and honestly impulsive, than I have
seen him at those times. No one can be
surer than I, of the greatness and goodness
of the heart that then disclosed itself.

We had our differences of opinion. I
thought that he too much feigned a want of
earnestness, and that he made a pretense of
undervaluing his art, which was not good
for the art that he held in trust. But when
we fell upon these topics, it was never very
gravely, and I have a lively image of him in
my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair,
and stamping about, laughing, to make an
end of the discussion.

When we were associated in remembrance
of the late Mr. Douglas Jerrold, he delivered
a public lecture in London, in the course of

392

IN MEMORIAM

which he read his very best contribution to
Punchy describing the grown-up cares of a
poor family of young children. No one
hearing him could have doubted his natural
gentleness, or his thoroughly unaffected
manly sympathy with the weak and lowly.
He read the paper most pathetically, and
with a simplicity of tenderness that certainly
moved one of his audience to tears. This
was presently after his standing for Oxford,
from which place he had dispatched his
agent to me, with a droll note (to which he
afterward added a verbal postscript), urging
me to ** come down and make a speech, and
tell them who he was, for he doubted
whether more than two of the electors had
ever heard of him, and he thought there
might be as many as six or eight who had
heard of me." He introduced the lecture
just mentioned, with a reference to his late
electioneering failure, which was full of good
sense, good spirits, and good humour.

He had a particular delight in boys, and
an excellent way with them. I remember
his once asking me with fantastic gravity,
when he had been to Eton where my eldest
son then was, whether I felt as he did in

393

IN MEMORIAM

regard of never seeing a boy without want-
ing instantly to give him a sovereign? I
thought of this when I looked down into
his grave, after he was laid there, for I
looked down into it over the shoulder of a
boy to whom he had been kind.

These are slight remembrances ; but it is
to little familiar things suggestive of the
voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
encountered on this earth, that the mind
first turns in a bereavement. And greater
things that are known of him, in the way of
his warm affections, his quiet endurance,
his unselfish thoughtfulness for others, and
his munificent hand may not be told.

If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth,
his satirical pen had ever gone astray or
done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its
own petition for forgiveness, long before :

I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain;

The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain ;

The idle word that he'd wish back again.

In no pages should I take it upon myself
at this time to discourse of his books, of his
refined knowledge of character, of his subtle
acquauntance with the weaknesses of human

394

IN MEMORIAM

nature, of his delightful playfulness as an
essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads,
of his mastery over the English language.
Least of all, in these pages, enriched by
his brilliant qualities from the first of the
series, and beforehand accepted by the Pub-
lic through the strength of his great name.
But, on the table before me, there lies all
that he had written of his latest and last
story. That it would be very sad to any
one — that it is inexpressibly so to a writer —
in its evidences of matured designs never to
be accomplished, of intentions begun to be
executed and destined never to be com-
pleted, of careful preparation for long roads
of thought that he was never to traverse,
and for shining goals that he was never to
reach, will be readily believed. The pain,
however, that I have felt in perusing it, has
not been deeper than the conviction that
he was in the healthiest vigour of his powers
when he wrought in this last labour. In
respect of earnest feeling, far-seeing pur-
pose, character, incident, and a certain lov-
ing picturesqueness blending the whole, I
believe it to be much the best of all his
works. That he fully meant it to be so,

395

IN MEMORIAM

that he had become strongly attached to it,
and that he bestowed great psuns upon it, I
trace in almost every page. It contains one
picture which must have cost him extreme
distress, and which is a masterpiece. There
are two children in it, touched with a hand
as loving and tender as ever a father caressed
his little child with. There is some young
love, as pure and innocent and pretty as the
truth. And it is very remarkable that, by
reason of the singular construction of the
story, more than one main incident usually
belonging to the end of such a fiction is
anticipated in the beginning, and thus there
is an approach to completeness in the frag-
ment, as to the satisfaction of the reader's
mind concerning the most interesting per-
sons, which could hardly have been better
attained if the writer's breaking-off had been
foreseen.

The last line he wrote, and the last proof
he corrected, are among these papers through
which I have so sorrowfully made my way.
The condition of the little pages of manu-
script where Death stopped his hand, shows
that he had carried them about, and often
taken them out of his pocket here and there,

396

IN MEMORIAM

for patient revision and interlineation. The
last words he corrected in print, were, ** And
my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss."
God grant that on that Christmas Eve when
he laid his head back on his pillow and
threw up his arms as he had been wont to
do when very weary, some consciousness of
duty done and Christian hope throughout
life humbly cherished, may have caused his
own heart so to throb, when he passed away
to his Redeemer's rest I

He was found peacefully lying as above
described, composed, undisturbed, and to all
appearance asleep, on the twenty-fourth of
December, 1863. He was only in his fifty-
third year; so young a man, that the mother
who blessed him in his first sleep blessed
him in his last. Twenty years before,
he had written, after being in a white
squall :

And when, its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended.
And, as the sunrise splendid

Came blushing o'er the sea ;
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling, and making

A prayer at home for me.

397

IN MEMORIAM

Those little girls had grown to be women
when the mournful day broke that saw their
father lying dead. In those twenty years of
companionship with him, they had learned
much from him; and one of them has a
literary course before her, worthy of her
famous name.

On the bright wintry day, the last but one
of the old year, he was laid in his grave at
Kensal Green, there to mingle the dust to
which the mortal part of him had returned,
with that of a third child, lost in her infancy,
years ago. The heads of a great concourse
of his fellow-workers in the Arts were bowed
around his tomb.

CHARLSS DICKENS.

398

THACKERAY»S DEATH.

THIS great writer — our greatest novelist
since Scott (and in some senses greater,
because deeper, more to the quick, more
naked than he), our foremost wit and man
of letters since Macaulay — has been taken
from us with an awful unexpectedness. He
was found dead in bed on the morning of
24th December, 1863. This is to us so
great a personal as well as public calamity,
that we feel little able to order our words
aright or to see through our blinding tears.

Mr. Thackeray was so much greater, so
much nobler than his works, great and noble
as they are, that it is difficult to speak of
him without apparent excess. What a loss
to the world the disappearance of that large,
acute, and fine understanding; that search-
ing, inevitable inner and outer eye ; that keen
and yet kindly satiric touch ; that wonderful
humour and play of soul 1 And then such a
mastery of his mother tongue I such a style I
such nicety of word and turn I such a flavour
of speech I such genuine originality of genius
and expression! such an insight into the
hidden springs of human action! such a
dissection of the nerves to their ultimate

399

THACKERAY'S DEATH

fibrilla / sach a sense and such a sympathy
for the worth and for the misery of man 4
such a power of bringing human nature to
its essence, — detecting at once its basic
goodness and vileness, its compositeness 1
In this subtle, spiritual analysis of men and
women, as we see them and live with them ;
in this power of detecting the enduring
passions and desires, the strengths, the
weaknesses, and the deceits of the race,
from under the mask of ordinary worldly
and town life, — making a dandy or a danc-
ing-girl as real, as ' moving delicate and full
of life,' as the most heroic incarnations of
good and evil ; in this vitality and yet light-
ness of handling, doing it once and for ever,
and never a touch too little or too much, —
in all these respects he stood and stands
alone and matchless. He had a crystalline
translucency of thought and language ; there
was no mistaking or missing his meaning.
It was like the finest etching, done with a
needle and bitten in with the best aqua-
fortisy — the manih'e incisive to perfection;
while, when needed, he could rise to the full
diapason of passion and lofty declamation :
and this was not the less striking from being

400

THACKERAY'S DEATH

rare and brief, like a flash of close lightning
with its thunder quick and short.

Besides his wit, his quiet, scrupulous, and
unerring eye, his proper satiric gifts, his
amazing faculty of making his men and
women talk each in their own voice and
tongue, so that you know them before they
are named, Mr. Thackeray had, as the condi-
tion under which all these acted, a singularly
truthful, strong, and roomy understanding.
There was an immense quantity, not less than
the finest quality of mind in everything he
said. You felt this when with him and when
you measured with your eye his enormous
brain.

His greatest work, one of the great mas-
terpieces of genius in our, or indeed in any
language, without doubt, is Vanity Fair.

This set him at once and by a bound in
the first rank of fiction. One returns again
and again to it, with its freshness, its depth,
and terrible truth and power, its easy yet
exquisite characterisation, its living talk, its
abounding wit and fun.

We remember how, at the dinner given to
him many years ago here, the chairman
(Lord Neaves), with equal felicity and truth,

401

THACKERAY'S DEATH

said that two of Mr. Thackeray's master
powers were satire and sympathy, — for with-
out both of them he would not have been all
that he peculiarly was.

It should never be forgotten that his
specific gift was creative satire, — not carica-
ture, nor even sarcasm, nor sentiment, nor
romance, nor even character as such, — but
the delicate satiric treatment of human
nature in its most superficial aspects as well
as in its inner depths, by a great-hearted, and
tender and genuine sympathy, unsparing,
truthful, inevitable, but with love • and the
love of goodness and true loving^indness
over-arching and indeed animating it all. It
was well said by Brimley, in his subtle and
just estimate of our great author in his
Essays, that he could not have painted
'Vanity Fair as he has, unless Eden had
been shining in his inner eye.' It was this
sense of an all-perfect good, of a strict
goodness laid upon each one of us as an
unescapable law, it was this glimpse into the
Paradise, not lost, of the lovely and the
pure, which quickened his fell insight into
the vileness, the vanity, the shortcomings,
the pitifulness of us all, of himself not less

402

THACKERAY'S DEATH

than of any son of time. But as we once
heard him say, he was created with a sense
of the ugly, of the odd, of the meanly false,
the desperately wicked ; he laid them bare :
them under all disguises he hunted to the
death. And is not this something to have
done? Something inestimable, though at
times dreadful and sharp? It purges the
soul by terror and pity.

This, with his truthfulness, his scorn of
exaggeration in thought or word, and his
wide, deep, living sympathy for the entire
round of human wants and miseries, goes
far to make his works in the best, because a
practical sense, wholesome, moral, honest,
and of * good report.*

It is needless to enumerate his works.
We not only all know and possess them, —
they possess us; for are not Becky Sharp,
Colonel Newcome, Major Pendennis, the
Little Sister and Jeames, the Mulligan, and
the terrific Deuceace, more really existing
and alive in our minds than many men and
women we saw yesterday ?

Mr. Thackeray had, we believe, all but if
not entirely, finished a novel which was to
appear in the Cornhill next spring. It will

403

THACKERAY'S DEATH

be a sad pleasure to read the last words of
the great genius and artist to whom we owe
so much of our best entertainment.

He had a genuine gift of drawing. The
delicious Book of Snobs is poor without his
own woodcuts ; and he not only had the eye
and the faculty of a draughtsman, he was
one of the best of art critics. He had the
true instinct and relish, and the nicety and
directness, necessary for just as well as high
criticism: the white light of his intellect
found its way into this as into every region
of his work. We should not forget his
verses, — he would have laughed if they had
been called poems; but they have more
imaginative vis^ more daintiness of phrase,
more true sensibility and sense, than much
that is called so both by its authors and the
public. We all know the abounding fun and
drollery of his * Battle of Limerick,' the sweet
humour and rustic Irish loveliness of * Peg
of Limavaddy,' and the glorified cockneyism
of 'Jacob Omnium's 'Oss.' *The Ballad of
Eliza Davis,' and the joys and woes of
' Pleaceman X,' we all know ; but not so
many know the pathetic depth, the dreamy,
unforgetting tenderness, of the * Ballad of

404

THACKERAY'S DEATH

Bouillabaisse,* * The White Squall,' and *The
End of the Play,* — the last written, strangely
as it now reads, for Christmas 1848, this
day fifteen years ago. From it we take the
following mournful and exquisite lines : —

* I M say we saffer and we strive,

Not less nor more as men than boys ;
With grizzled beards at forty-five.

As erst at twelve in corduroys.
And if, in time of sacred youth.

We learned at home to love and pray,
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth

May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

I 'd say, how fate may change and shift ;
The prize be sometimes with the fool,

The race not always to the swift.
The strong may yield, the good may fall.

The great man be a vulgar clown.
The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

• •••••

We bow to Heaven that willed it so,

That darkly rules the fate of all.
That sends the respite or the blow,

That 's free to give, or to recalL

• •••••

So each shall mourn, in life's advance, ^
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed:

Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance
And longing passion unfulfilled.

405

THACKERAY'S DEATH

Amen I whatever fate be sent,
Pray God the heart may kindly glow,

Although the head with cares be bent.
And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill.
Let young and old accept their part,

And bow before the Awful Will,
And bear it with an honest heart

My song, save this, is little worth ;

I lay the weary pen aside.
And wish you health, and love, and mirth,
^ As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fiu the holy Christmas birth.

Be this, good friends, our carol still —
Be peace on earth, be peace on earth.

To men of gentle wilL*

Gentle and sacred as these words are,
they are as much an essential part of their
author's nature as that superfluity of naught-
iness, the Marquis of Steyne, in Vanity FcUr^
or the elder and truly infernal Deuceace, or
the drunken and savage parson, in Philip. It
was no ordinary instrument which embraced
so much, and no ordinary master who could
so sound its chords.

Mr. Thackeray had a warm heart to Edin-
burgh. It was here he took courage from
the cordial, appreciative reception he got

406

THACKERAY*S DEATH

when he lectured here, and he always
returned to us with renewed relish. Many
of us will now think over with a new and
deeper interest — the interest of the sudden
grave and the irrevocable and imperishable
past — on those pleasant times when he read
his 'Wit and Humour' and his * Curate's
Walk/ and, with a solemn tenderness, sim-
plicity, and perfectness, such as it is now
hopeless ever again to hear, read to us * The
spacious firmament on high,' and Johnson's
noble and touching lines on poor Levett.

We know of no death in the world of
letters since Macaulay's which will make
so many mourners, — for he was a faithful
friend. No one, we believe, will ever know
the amount of true kindness and help, given
often at a time when kindness cost much, to
nameless, unheard-of suffering. A man of
spotless honour, of the strongest possible
home affections, of the most scrupulous
truthfulness of observation and of word, we
may use for him his own words to his
* faithful old gold pen ' : —

' Nor pass the words as idle phrases by ;
Stranger I I never writ a flattery,
Nor signed the page that registered a lie.'

407

THACKERAY'S DEATH

He has joined the immortals; for we may
say of him, what we can say of few, — he is
already and for ever classic. He is beyond
the fear of forgetfulness or change, for he
has enshrined his genius in a style crystalline,
strong, beautiful, and enduring. There was
much of many great men in him, — of Mon-
taigne, Le Sage, Swift, and Addison, of
Steele, and Goldsmith, of Fielding, Moli^re,
and Charles Lamb; but there was more of
himself than of all others. As a work of
art, his Esmond is probably the most con-
summate: it is a curious tour de force^ — a
miracle not only of story-telling, but of
archaic insight and skill.

The foregoing estimate of his genius must
stand instead of any special portraiture of
the man. Yet, before concluding, we would
mention two leading traits of character
traceable, to a large extent, in his works,
though finding no appropriate place in a lit-
erary criticism of them. One was the deep
steady melancholy of his nature. He was
fond of telling how on one occasion, at Paris,
he found himself in a great crowded salon;
and looking from the one end across the

408

THACKERAY'S DEATH*

sea of heads, being in Swift's place of calm
in a crowdfi he saw at the other end a strange
visage, staring at him with an expression of
comical woebegoneness. After a little he
found that this rueful being was himself in
the mirror. He was not, indeed, morose.
He was alive to and thankful for every-day
blessings, great and small ; for the happiness
of home, for friendship, for wit and music,
for beauty of all kinds, for the pleasures of
the * faithful old gold pen;' now running
into some felicitous expression, now playing
itself into some droll initial letter ; nay, even
for the creature comforts. But his persistent
state, especially for the later half of his life,
was profoundly morne^ — there is no other
word for it. This arose in part from temper-
ament, from a quick sense of the littleness
and wretchedness of mankind. His keen
perception of the meanness and vulgarity of
the realities around him contrasted with the
ideal present to his mind could produce no
other effect. This feeling, embittered by
disappointment, acting on a harsh and sav-
age nature, ended in the scsva indignatio of

I ' An inch or two above it.'

409

THACKERAY'S DEATH

Swift ; acting on the kindly and too sensitive
nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to
compassionate sadness. In part, too, this
melancholy was the result of private calam-
ities. He alludes to these often in his
writings, and a knowledge that his sorrows
were great is necessary to the perfect appre-
ciation of much of his deepest pathos. We
allude to them here, painful as the subject
is, mainly because they have given rise to
stories, — some quite untrue, some even
cruelly injurious. The loss of his second
child in infancy was always an abiding sor-
row, — described in the * Hoggarty Diamond,'
in a passage of surpassing tenderness, too
sacred to be severed from its context. A
yet keener and more constantly present
affliction was the illness of his wife. He
married her in Paris when he was * mewing
his mighty youth,' preparing for the great
career which awaited him. One likes to
think on these early days of happiness, when
he could draw and write with that loved com-
panion by his side: he has himself sketched
the picture: 'The humblest painter, be he
ever so poor, may have a friend watching at
his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her

410

THACKERAY'S DEATH

work in her lap, and with fond smiles or talk
or silence, cheering his labours.' After some
years of marriage, Mrs. Thackeray caught a
fever, brought on by imprudent exposure at
a time when the effects of such ailments are
more than usually lasting both on the system
and the nerves. She never afterwards recov-
ered so as to be able to be with her husband
and children. But she has been from the
first intrusted to the good offices of a kind
family, tenderly cared for, surrounded with
every comfort by his unwearied affection.
The beautiful lines in the ballad of the
' Bouillabaisse ' are well known : —

'Ah me < how quick the days are flitting t

I mind me of a time that 's gone,
When here I 'd sit as now I 'm sitting,

In this same place — but not alone.
A isar young form was nestled near me,

A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me

—There 's no one now to share my cup.'

In one of the latest Roundabouts we have
this touching confession : ' I own for my
part that, in reading pages which this hand
penned formerly, I often lose sight of the
text under my eyes. It is not the words I

411

THACKERAY'S DEATH

see; but that past day; that bygone page of
life's history; that tragedy, comedy it may
be, which our little home-company was enact-
ing; that merry-making which we shared;
that funeral which we followed; that bitter,
bitter grief which we buried.' But all who
knew him know well, and love to recall, how
these sorrows were soothed and his home
made a place of happiness by his two daugh-
ters and his mother, who were his perpetual
companions, delights, and blessings, and
whose feeling of inestimable loss now will be
best borne and comforted by remembering
how they were everything to him, as he was
to them.

His sense of a higher Power, his reverence
and godly fear, is felt more than expressed —
as indeed it mainly should always be — in
everything he wrote. It comes out at times
quite suddenly, and stops at once, in its
full strength. We could readily give many
instances of this. One we give, as it occurs
very early, when he was probably little more
than six-and-twenty ; it is from the paper,
Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse.
Referring to Henri Heine's frightful words,
^Dieu qui se meurt^ *Dieu est morty and to

412

THACKERAY'S DEATH

the wild godlessness of Spiridion^ he thus
bursts out: <0 awful, awful name of God!
Light unbearable! Mystery unfathomable!
Vastness immeasurable I Who are these
who come forward to explain the mystery,
and gaze unblinking into the depths of the
light, and measure the immeasurable vast-
ness to a hair ? O name, that God's people
of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's
prophet would have perished had he seen!
Who are these that are now so familiar
with it ? ' In ordinary intercourse the same
sudden < Te Deum * would occur, always brief
and intense, like lightning from a cloudless
heaven; he seemed almost ashamed, — not
of it, but of his giving it expression.

We cannot resist here recalling one Sun-
day evening in December, when he was
walking with two friends along the Dean
Road, to the west of Edinburgh — one of
the noblest outlets to any city. It was a
lovely evening, — such a sunset as one never
forgets; a rich dark bar of cloud hovered
over the sun, going down behind the High-
land hills, lying bathed in amethystine
bloom; between this cloud and the hills
there was a narrow slip of the pure ether, of

413

THACKERAY'S DEATH

a tender cowslip colour, lucid, and as if it
were the very body of heaven in its clear-
ness ; every object standing out as if etched
upon the sky. The north-west end of
Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks,
lay in the heart of this pure radiance, and
there a wooden crane, used in the quarry
below, was so placed as to assume the figure
of a cross ; there it was, unmistakable, lifted
up against the crystalline sky. All three
gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he gave
utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid
voice, to what all were feeling, in the word
'Calvary!' The friends walked on in
silence, and then turned to other things.
All that evening he was very gentle and
serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of divine
things, — of death, of sin, of eternity, of
salvation; expressing his simple faith in
God and in his Saviour.

There is a passage at the close of the
* Roundabout Paper,* No. xxiii., De Fini-
buSf in which a sense of the ebb of life is
very marked: the whole paper is like a
soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr.
Punch, with unusually mild eye, retiring for
the night ; he is putting out his high-heeled

414

THACKERAY'S DEATH

shoes, and before disappearing gives a wist-
ful look into the passage, as if bidding it and
all else good-night. He will be in bed, his
candle out, and in darkness in five minutes,
and his shoes found next morning at his
door, the little potentate all the while in his
final sleep. The whole paper is worth the
most careful study ; it reveals not a little of
his real nature, and unfolds very curiously
the secret of his work, the vitality, and abid-
ing power of his own creations: how he
* invented a certain Costigan^ out of scraps,
heel-taps, odds and ends of characters,' and
met the original the other day, without sur-
prise, in a tavern parlour. The following is
beautiful : * Years ago I had a quarrel with
a certain well-known person (I believed a
statement regarding him which his friends
imparted to me, and which turned out to be
quite incorrect). To his dying day that
quarrel was never quite made up. I said to
his brother, "Why is your brother's soul
stUI dark against me ? It is I who ought to
be angry and unforgiving^ for I was in the
wrong! " ' Odisse quern leeseris was never
better contravened. But what we chiefly
refer to now is the profound pensiveness of

415

Thackeray's death

the following strain, as if written with a
presentiment of what was not then very
far oif: 'Another Finb written; another
milestone on thb journey from birth to the
next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn
cogitation. Shall we continue this story-
telling business, and be voluble to the end
of our age ? ' * Will it not be presently time,
O prattler, to hold your tongue?' And
thus he ends : —

* Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ;
oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the
repetitions, the old conversations over and
over again! But now and again a kind
thought is recalled, and now and again a
dear memory. Yet a few chapters more,
and then the last ; after which, behold Finis
itself comes to an end, and the Infinite
begins.'

He sent the proof of this paper to his
'dear neighbours,' in Onslow Square (Sir
Theodore and Lady Martin), to whom he
owed so much almost daily pleasure, with
his corrections, the whole of the last par-
agraph in manuscript, and above a first
sketch of it also in MS., which b fuller
and more impassioned. His fear of *enthu-

416

Thackeray's death

siastic writing* had led him, we think, to
sacrifice somthing of the sacred power of
his first words, which we give with its
interlineations : —

* Another Finis, another slice of life which
Tempus edax has devoured 1 And I may have
to write the word once or twice perhaps,
and then an end of Ends. -Knit^- is- over,
ftfid Infinite boginning. Oh the troubles,

disputes,
the cares, the ennuis the coTnplicat ietta, the
repetitions, the old conversations over and
over again, and here and there and oh the
delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the
forever remembered And thon : A few
chapters more, and then the last, and then
behold Finis itself coming to an end and the
^ifinite beginning 1 '

How like music this, — like one trying the
same air in different ways ; as it were, search-
ing out and sounding all its depths. *The
dear, the brief, the for ever remembered;'
these are like a bar out of Beethoven, deep
and melancholy as the seal He had been
suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel
enemy. He fixed with his friend and sur-
geon to come again on Tuesday; but with

417

THACKERAY'S DEATH

that dread of anticipated pain, which is a
common condition of sensibility and genius,
he put him off with a note from * yours
unfaithfully, W. M. T.* He went out on
Wednesday for a little, and came home at
ten. He went to his room, suffering much,
but declining his man's offer to sit with him.
He hated to make others suffer. He was
heard moving, as if in pain, about twelve, on
the eve of

'That the happy mom.
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid, and virgin-mother bom,
Oar great redemption from above did bring.'

Then all was quiet, and then he must have
died — in a moment. Next morning his man
went in, and opening the windows found his
master dead, his arms behind his head, as if
he had tried to take one more breath. We
think of him as of our Chalmers; found
dead in like manner; the same childlike,
unspoiled open face; the same gentle
mouth ; the same spaciousness and softness
of nature ; the same look of power. What
a thing to think of, — his lying there alone
in the dark, in the midst of his own mighty
London; his mother and his daughters

41S

THACKERAY'S DEATH

asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his
goodness. God help them, and us all !
What would become of us, stumbling along
this our path of life, if we could not, at our
utmost need, stay ourselves on Him ?

Long years of sorrow, labour, and pain
had killed him before his time. It was found
after death how little life he had to live.
He looked always fresh with that abounding,
silvery hair, and his young, almost infantine
f^ce, but he was worn to a shadow, and his
hands wasted as if by eighty years. With
him it is the end of Ends ; finite is over, and
infinite begun. What we all felt and feel
can never be so well expressed as in his own
words of sorrow for the early death of
Charles BuUer: —

'Who knows the inscrutable design 7

Blessed be He who took and gave I
' Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,
Be weeping at her darling's grave?
We bow to Heaven that willed it so,

That darkly rules the fate of all,

That sends the respite or the blow.

That *s free to give, or to recall.'

JOHN BROWN, M. D.

♦flp^ERE ends THE BIBELOT
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MISCELLANEOUS .

THE GERM:

Thoughts towards Nature in Poet-
ry, Literature and Art.

The present reprint by Mr. Elliot Slock
of London, is a line for line facsimile of
the original numbers of The Germ', as they
appeared in paper covers in 1850; the
advertisements and notices being copied in
all details.

These numbers are issued in a tasteful
case, along with an extended Preface by-
William Michael Rossetti, stitched in a
separate wrapper, so as to preserve the
facsimiUs intact and unconnected with the
modern part of the work.

The four illustrations which appeared in
the work by Holman Hunt, Ford Madox
Brown, James CoUinson, and Walter H.
Deverell, are faithfully reproduced by a
photographic process, which renders the
originals exactly.

The Preface which Mr. W. M. Rossetti
has written is exhaustive, covering 32
pages, and giving the fullest account of
the inception and publication of The Germ
which has yet been published.

ONLY 250 COPIES, ACQUIRED BY MR.
MOSHBR, HAVE BEEN PRINTED FOR SALE
IN AMERICA.

Price, $4.00 net.

The Bibelot.

Volume VII, Small 4T0, Anti^ub
Boards, $2.00 net.

A special list of the contents of preced-
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application.

A LIST OF BOOKS IN BELLES LETTRES.

MDCCCCI.

MR. MOSHER*S new List op Books
is choicely printed in red and black,
68 pages, describing each volume clearly
and impartially, and is a dainty little
bibelot in itself. Sent postpaid an affli'
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Each year sees a few exquisite additions
to "The Mosher Books" and the present
season is no exception to the rule. It is
by their quality and not from quantity that
these publications stand at the head of
American book-making.

Thomas jB* Mosher,

XLV Exchange Street, « Portland, SHaine^

Season of SUdcccci*

The Bibelot for 1902

SPECIAL NOTICE

NTENDING subscribers to The
BiBLELOT for the coming year are
urged to notify Mr. Mosher at the
earliest moment^ as it is his invariable rule
to terminate all subscriptions with the
December number.

For the past three years it has become
impossible to supply back numbers sepa-
rately, and while desiring to meet all ordi-
nary demands it is not Mr. Mosher's inten-
tion to print an edition of The Bibelot
which might prove far in excess of sales.
There are enough publications and to spare
of this ephemeral order, and the publisher
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It is further suggested that as the first
price for subscription (50 cents) is so
decidedly nominal in amount, it would be
well for those who only desire a few num-

bers here and there, to subscribe for the
entire year in advance — the only way in
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sale of special numbers is of no particular
advantage, the success of The Bibelot
being based on continuous subscriptions and
not on a few and far between sales " to the

man in the street." These remarks are

•

made, not in any spirit of fault finding, for
the cordial appreciation of Bibelot sub-
scribers is gratefully acknowledged, but are
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except in the bound volume^ or, if in wrap-
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Subscriptions for 1902 should therefore
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Bibelot it may be necessary to put to press
for the coming year.

The ChiePs Daughter

A Legend of Niagara. By Dr. Paul Carus. Illus-
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The f asdnating Indian legend of the annual sacrifice to the waters
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and sacred traditions. The scene is laid in the time of the French
exploration of the North and Af iddle West and the chief European
rdle is played by the historic figure of Father Hennepin.

The Crown of Thorns

A Story of the Time of Christ. By Dr. Paul
Carus. Illustrations by Eduard Biedermann.
Pages, 73. Price, cloth, 75 cents net (3s. 6d. net).

"The Crown of Thorns" is a stoiy of the time of Christ. It is fic-
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the Apostle Paul of Tarsus.

The Open Court Publishing Co.,

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London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd.
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By Elisabeth Luther Gary.

The ^lipssettis

^^ie Gabriel
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This is the latest of an exquisite series of works
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drowning

Poet and 3lian*

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Tennyson

His Homes, ISs Friends
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LOYE SONNETS OF A HOODLUM.

By Wallace Irwin.

IN the Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, Wallace Irwin
has written a sonnet cycle setting forth the tender
plaint of a love lorn butcher's apprentice giving
voice his passion and despair. Mr. Irwin has origi-
nated a literary curiosity and has taken a bold and
unexpected step into the comparatively unexplored field
of slang. Tne poet has done the unexpected by making
the sonnet the vehicle of such expressions as Ade might
glory in, has given full play to whimsicality^ realism
and broad humor, and has still preserved the metrical
value of the sonnet inviolate. Only a humorist could
have done this dangerous thing artistically; and Mr.
Irwin has seen the sonnet from the standpoint of a
humorist. Readers may disagree with the Hoodlum's
conception of Petrarch's Muse, but none can choose but
laugh at the numberless surprises of this surpassing
literary joke. The book is introduced by a very clever
defense of slang and its uses by Gelett Burgess. The
Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum abounds in eminently
quotable lines and reveals strikingly the lyric possibili-
ties of Slang, "the illegitimate sister of Poetry."

PRICB 2S CENTS, NBT.

OBDEB FBOH THE PUBLISHEB8

ELDER AND SHEPARD,
238 Post Street, San Francisco.

Sonnets to a lii\u,

BY ERNEST McGAFFEY.

H sequence of sonnets first recently
published in the St. Louis Mirror,
whose editor, Mr. William Marion Reedy,
contributed a foreword to the volume.

The seventy sonnets in this book con-
stitute the finest body of original Ameri-
can verse issued in the last twenty-five
years.

The volume is after the happy, dainty,
chaste manner of " The Mosher Books."

Price, ^1(1.25.

u Address ;:

WILLIAM MARION REEDY,

The Minor, If iC St Louis, Mo*

A Little Book of
Tribune Verse •

Is a coUection of poems
written by

EUGENE FIELD

While Associate Editor of The Dmver TrihunSi

i88i-*83, and

NEVER BEFORE ISSUED IN
BOOK FORM

Vellum clotb, gilt top, $i.^o.

Limited Large-Paper Edition, Three-
quarters Morocco,

$5.00.

TANDY, WHEELER & CO.,

PlfBLISHERS,

DBNVER. - - COI^ORADO.

This Gibson Picture Free

in our handsomely printed catalogue of
Books, Artistic Publications, Beautifiil
Juvenile Books, with illustrations by
Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chand-
ler Christy, Frederic Remington,
Maxfield Parrish, John La Farge,
Edward Penfield, and the majority of
the best artists of America. Over 200
pictures. Sent free to any address.

R. H. RUSSELL, Ptt^//x*^r

No. 3 West 29th Street, NEW YORK

BEAUTIFUL BOOKS.

A WIDOW AND HER FRIENDS.

CHARLES DANA GIBSON'S new book. The pictorial
history of a fascinating young widow in Mr. Gibson's skillful
style. Price $5-00.

A BUNCH OF BUCKSKINS.

By FREDERIC REMINGTON. Eight large striking
drawings in pastel, beautifully reproduced in color. The most
attractive color work produced in America. Price ^.00. Single
prints, $1.00 each.

THE NEW LIFE.

Translation and pictures by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
Fifteen large carbon reproductions of the Rossetti pictures
with the tfcxt, and an introduction by FitzRov Carrington.
Artistically printed with a cover design by Louis Rhead.
Price ^.75.

THE STORY OF CUPID AND PSYCHE.

WALTER PATER'S translation with reproductions in color
of the thirty-two famous drawings by Raphael and headpieces
and decorations from the master's paintings* and a frontispiece
in photogravure of the exquisite Psyche of Praxiteles. The
most artistically complete edition published. Carefully

{>nnted and bound. Price l3.oa Bound in brown fulTcraahed
evant, price ^is.oa

WAYSIDE PUBLICATIONS.

Inaugurated by WILL BRADLEY at the Wayside Press.
S|;>ringfield, Mass. Each issue is exquisitely arranged and
printed. Send for special prospeotus.

The above publications may be obtained of all booksellers, or
will be sent postpaid by the publisher to any address, upon
receipt of price. Beaatif td catauogue free.

R. H. RUSSELL, Publisher, 3 West 29th St, New York.

RENEWAL FORM

Mr. Thomas S. Mosber,

Tartland, Maim.

Enclosed find 50 cents for wUcb send,
postpaid, THE BIBELOT for the year 1902,
complete.

Name,

Street,

City,

State,

Foreign subscriptions are 25 cents additional to above rates.
After March ist, the subscription rate will be 75 cents. Until
that date, the price is 50 cents.

medUor of The Bibelot , ;

begs fo say; Wat owing

to the excessive work
mtaiUdupon bim during De- "' .
cember, it is nof possible ht^ ^

ibe January niimber, now or in " ■ §

future , earlier tban tbe. f$tb

of that month.

t/^llotber issues will go oi^t
asneartbe2pb of each preced-
ing fnontb as tbe purely per^
sonal element in editing The {
Bibelot will allow:

Ifotice of change in addless most be
received on or before. the 20th of/tbe
month In order to affect the ioithcoin«
ihg ntimber. The publisher cannot un-
dertake to supply missing issues of the
Bibelot when this request is not complied
with.

FRMTEDBr .

■

SMITH &> S^LB

■ ^-

PORTLAND

MAINE

■

•

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* * -^*

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